Strange Recompense (19 page)

Ruth put a hand over hers, seeing the distress.

“Don’t think too much about it just now,” she counselled. “We have made progress and that, in itself, must be a good thing. You could never have gone on not knowing, Anna.”

“No, I realize that, but—it’s this dreadful feeling of helplessness that’s so paralyzing. I’ve left everything to Noel—”

“That’s in the nature of things where a doctor is concerned. A diagnosis is necessary in every case, and a cure—if possible.”

And what was the cure for love? Anna could not answer that, nor could Ruth, but she got to her feet as the garden gate swung on its stiff hinges, and crossed swiftly to the window.

“Here comes the post,” she said. “I’ll get it, Anna, if you like
.
”

Anna sat deathly still while Ruth was out of the room. It seemed as if she could not move, as if every muscle in her body was tense, waiting for their verdict in the letter they were expecting, and she felt as a man might while he sat waiting the return of the jury in a matter of life and death. And then Ruth came back into the room and said simply:

“It’s from Northumberland, Anna, but it’s addressed to Noel.” Anna rose unsteadily to her feet, gripping the back of her chair until the knuckles showed white through the flesh.

“Is it from my people, do you think?” she asked with all the old rush of unutterable loneliness sweeping over her at the thought of belonging again. “Do you think it might be an answer to the letter I wrote to my father?”

“I don’t know,” Ruth said, laying the envelope down on the table between them. “Take it to Noel and he will tell you.”

Anna lifted the envelope and held it between her hands, the writing on the outside coming up to meet her in vague, blurred lines, advancing and receding dizzily in a meaningless jumble of letters which yet held their own strange meaning, the handwriting known to her yet just evading her power to put a name to the sender.

“Oh! if I could only think,” she cried bitterly. “If I could only remember everything!”

Ruth let her go out without answering. She will remember, she thought, and that remembering will affect each one of us!

Anna did not know how she managed to reach Noel’s consulting rooms, but when she did her first overwhelming reaction was relief to find that they were empty. He had not completed his rounds of the wards and she was assured of a few minutes’ grace in which to pull herself together, so that she might confront him with at least a semblance of dignity and self-control.

She laid the letter on his blotting-pad and crossed to the window to wait. Whatever the envelope contained, she was determined that the burden of it must not be placed on Noel’s shoulders again, and so adamant was she in this respect that she was almost tempted to open the letter and read its verdict before he came. She shrank from the impulse, however, shaken by the thought of an emotion so powerful that it could all but shatter the principles of a lifetime, and when she heard Noel’s footsteps on the corridor outside she swung round from the window to race him, her cheeks devoid of color and her eyes, with a world of pain in their depths, fixed on the door through which he would come.

There was a feeling of fatality in the sound of the heavy tread she had come to know so well, a sense of events crowding in upon her over which she had no control.

Noel opened the door and stood looking at her for a moment, and then he saw the envelope lying on his desk and he moved across the room and lifted it without a word.

The letter contained two sheets of notepaper covered in neat, symmetrical handwriting, a woman’s handwriting with a purposeful thickness about it on the down strokes which suggested determination and a force of will above the average.

It was headed simply “Alnborough, Thursday”, and was the reply, through Noel, to Anna’s appeal of almost a week before. “Dear Doctor Melford,” Noel read,

As my father is unable to reply to the recent communication he received from my sister, Anna Marrick, I am taking the liberty of answering it through you. My father took a slight stroke on receiving the letter, but I am quite sure that I understand his feelings in this matter and can advise you about them without delay.

My father and I want nothing more to do with my sister, Anna Marrick, whose photograph I am returning herewith. My sister went away with my
fiancé
on the eve of our marriage, so perhaps you will be able to understand my feelings about all this, and my father can never forget that he trusted Anna with her mother’s wedding ring to give to the man she was about to marry, with his blessing on it for our happiness. The unforgivable will never be discussed in this house, and I can assure you that we want no more to do with Anna Marrick that once was.

Yours sincerely,

Jessica Marrick.”

Noel crumpled the strangely-phrased epistle in his hand until it was a tight ball which he tossed into the waste paper basket without comment.

“Noel,” Anna whispered, “was it—about me?”

“I’m not very sure.
”
He came over to stand beside her, putting a protective arm about her slim shoulders. “We’ve come to rather a ticklish bit in this case history of yours,” he went on with that studied medical impartiality she had heard him use in his work many times during the past few weeks. “It may involve another visit to the north of England, but this time I want you to come with me. We’ll make it a family outing, if you like. It’s quite time Ruth had a week-end free from the eternal domestic round.”

Blessing him inwardly for that casual approach which was calculated to give her courage, Anna went in search of Ruth, and Noel sat down at his desk and lifted the telephone that would put him through to the hospital switchboard.

“Get me Doctor Tranby’s home, will you, please?” he asked. “You can say it’s urgent.”

Dennis came to the other end of the line without delay. “I say, old man, I’m in the middle of my surgery! Is there anything wrong?” he asked.

“I’ll want you to take over here for a couple of days, Dennis,” Noel told him. “I’m going north again.”

“A reply to the letter?” Dennis asked, immediately interested. “Yes, but hardly the reply I had expected.”

“You can’t mean that the old man has refused his help?” Dennis said aghast.

“I’m not quite sure who is refusing,” Noel, answered. “A letter came this morning from the sister. Oh, they’re Anna’s people all right. There seems to be no doubt whatever about that. They recognized her from the snapshot we sent, but there’s some ugly business about a family quarrel that must be cleared up right away.”

“So long as it finally gives the lie to that trumped-up yarn of Sara Enman’s it may not be so bad!” Dennis said hopefully.

“That’s just it.” Noel’s tone was clipped, hiding all emotion. “It doesn’t. It appears to be the same story with a good deal of personal venom thrown in.”

“Look here, old man, I’ve got to come over there and see you. It’s no use us talking over the phone like this. I’m damnably sorry about everything—”

Noel cut him short.

“You needn’t be. I’ve no intention of letting anything under the sun come between Anna and her chance of regaining her memory—not even murder.”

His voice was so emphatic that Dennis would not have argued even if he had felt inclined.

“What do you propose to do?” he asked.

“I intend to make these people face facts in a realistic way. The father has apparently had a stroke of some kind—a shock to the nerves, no doubt. It may or it may not be serious, but in any case I intend to go north at once and I shall take Anna with me—Anna and Ruth.”

“I wish I could offer my help in a less static role,” Dennis said, “but we can’t both be away from the hospital at once. Are you taking Sara back with you?”

Noel’s most decisive “No!” rang across the distance between them with no suggestion of doubt about it whatever.

“Thank heaven for that!” Dennis observed. “Wherever that woman goes there’s sure to be mischief!”

“She’s had her say,“ Noel returned grimly. “I’m not concerned with Sara any more, though we certainly have her to thank for discovering Alnborough.”

Which will be a most bitter pill for Sara to swallow, Dennis thought when the line had gone dead.

There was no hesitation about Ruth’s decision to accompany them on that fateful journey north, and Anna could only marvel once more at the real meaning of friendship.

Noel was determined that no time should be lost and they set out immediately, their small week-end cases packed with the necessities for a few days’ stay.

Sitting in the back of the car with Ruth, Anna felt utterly dependent upon them both, but she knew that neither Noel nor Ruth grudged the time they were spending on her behalf. Noel had not told her all his plans, but she knew that he would not be returning to Northumberland so quickly if he did not believe that he would find the solution to her problem there, and the nervousness she had been trying to hide ever since he had come back from the hospital increased with each northward mile.

She had not pressed him to tell her the contents of the letter he had thrown into the waste-paper basket beneath his desk, but she knew that it had started then on this journey. It was enough for her that Noel considered their presence in Northumberland necessary, and she knew that it was being made in her interests. She could bring sane and cool reasoning to bear in that respect, but it was useless to try to reason against the dictates of her heart, which saw the remaining hours of her present happiness pouring out like sand through a glass and she powerless to stay it.

At seven o’clock Noel pulled the car up at a wayside hotel.

“We’re not going any further than this tonight,” he said. “It will make it too much of a strain. I think I should be able to get rooms here. It’s not quite on the beaten track, although it’s one of the best places I know. I came here a lot during my hospital year at Sheffield.”

So very often Anna had tried to picture his past, to see those years he could remember so clearly and all they had contained, envying him the power to look back and wondering, sometimes, why h
e
had never married. She knew that he had immersed himself in his career to the exclusion of a great many other things, but she also knew from experience that love could come unawares.

In the last few weeks she had tried to remember just when she had fallen in love with Noel—she who had no right to fall in love with anyone!—but the knowledge escaped her. It had not come upon her as a sudden revelation, but the days had become suddenly fair and full of life, and she, who had known despair and had walked in dark places, had been led out into the light again, into the beauty and the full glory of life, to see it through new eyes.

Nothing
c
ould ever dim that memory for her! No, not even Sara’s oft-repeated warning that returning memory of the more distant past would blot out these intervening weeks forever!

The certainty of her belief that all this must endure even if it could only be in bitter-sweet retrospect was the one sure thing in her mind, a conviction so lasting that she accepted it now without question or doubt.

An indifferent traveller at any time, Ruth reached the hotel with a raging headache which nothing would alleviate but a darkened room and a good night’s rest.

“It’s dinner and straight to bed for Ruth,” Noel ordered when he joined them in the quaint little upstairs lounge adjoining the dining-room. “You’ll feel all right in the morning, old girl!”

“This is really all my fault,” Anna said, distressed by Ruth’s obvious discomfort. “You would never have come on such a long journey by road if it hadn’t been for me.”

“I’ve got used to this sort of thing whenever I leave home,” Ruth said imperturbably. “I come prepared, and I don’t intend to become a martyr to car-sickness and never go out because of it! Noel will give me a bromide and I’ll sleep as peacefully as a baby! Once the motion of the car stops going on in my head the symptoms gradually die down.”

“I know you’d far rather be back in the garden at Glynmareth,” Anna said, wondering suddenly if she would ever see Ruth’s garden again.

Had she stood beside the laughing brook for the last time and felt the sun-warmed grey stone under her feet as a parting caress?

The agony of the thought stabbed through her, finding its relentless way to her heart. You will never return again, something seemed to be repeating within her. This is the end! The end!

“What, a delightful place this is!” Ruth said. “Everything is so old-world and perfect, not in the usual pseudo-olde-worlde way one sees so much, but absolutely genuine!”

“It’s not really difficult to recognize the genuine article,” her brother returned quietly, his eyes just resting on Anna’s burnished head where the gleam of the wall bracket behind them picked up the rich glint of red in her hair. “The real thing has a depth and beauty that all the clever shams in the world can never achieve.” He pushed the drinks he had ordered across the small table between them. “It can’t make the headache any worse,” he told Ruth, “and it might help you to enjoy your dinner.”

“It wouldn’t hurt me to do without a meal,” Ruth said, “but you’ve spoken so often about this place that I feel I really ought to see the famous dining-room before I die!”

“Is the headache as bad as that?” Anna asked with a smile in her eyes that was more tender than teasing. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a headache, but I do sympathize.”

“Not even when you were flung clear of the car that night?” Noel’s question exploded between them, cutting across their lazy conversation with the impact of an eruption, and he sat waiting intently for the effect he hoped it would produce.

Anna’s hands flew to her face, as if she would protect it, and she lowered her head defensively, as if something had shattered only a few inches from where she sat, but her eyes, fixed on the polished surface of the table before her and the three half-emptied glasses, were still puzzled and full of pain.

“I can’t, Noel!” she pleaded. “I know about the car—but that’s all. Perhaps it will all come back gradually and I’ll know why I was there and what exactly happened, but just now it’s as if someone were holding back a curtain just sufficiently for me to catch one glimpse at a time.”

“It will swing clear one of these days,” he said, trying to crush back his disappointment. He would have liked to take Anna back to Alnborough, remembering.

They emptied their glasses and he led the way into the dining-room, a superb apartment surprising in proportion and furnishing for a hotel situated in such a remote spot, and Anna followed him down the shallow, red-carpeted steps to their table in one of the window bays with a feeling that here was their real parting.

Whatever tomorrow brought, whatever there was to face of pain or heartache in the days which would follow, this was their day. She knew that Noel had meant it to be so, that he had brought her here to share his own memories of the past, those happy, blissful days when he had first applied all he had learned in six years of study.