Strange Recompense (2 page)

Once again the girl’s eyes fluttered open, but they were glazed and unseeing now, and despair took the place of fear in Jill’s heart. Convinced that she was face to face with death in one of its most pathetic forms, she no longer felt that she faced it alone. Deeply religious like most of her fellow-countrywomen, she knelt down beside the settee, realizing suddenly that she was still holding the stranger’s ring, and the fact seemed a pointer to what was expected of her. She knew, then, what to do with the ring. The girl must not die without it on her finger, no matter what reason had made her take it off before she reached Glynmareth!

Quickly she slipped it on to the third finger of the unresponsive left hand, thinking, with all her native Welsh superstition uppermost, that her patient could now die in peace.

She was still on her knees beside the settee when Doctor Melford came back with his sister, and she rose to her feet at their approach, awed into silence at being in the same room with him.

He looked human and kind now as he bent over the girl on the settee, but Jill felt that she would have fainted on the spot and utterly disgraced herself for all time if he had spoken to her at that moment. He had such an air of thoughtful dignity when he went the rounds with Matron or came in after hours to a special case, that he seemed to walk perpetually alone, and she knew that he was reputed to be one of the “coming men” in the profession.

He stood beside the settee, leaning over his patient with that look in his eyes which inspired confidence, and Jill waited with her heart beating wildly under her starched apron.

“You’ve given a restorative, Nurse?” he asked as if she was quite capable of dealing with even the most complicated case. “Has there been any reaction?”

“She seemed to regain consciousness for a minute or two,” Jill heard herself say with surprising clarity, “and then she lapsed back again. I tried twice,” she added more nervously, “with the same result.”

“Thank you.”

She could see that he was preoccupied and she signalled to Miss Melford that she had left the girl’s possessions on the table beside the settee.

Ruth nodded.

“You were going off duty, Nurse,” she said. “Thank you for your help. Matron is sending someone across from the wards.” Almost thankfully the little probationer stole away, forgetful of the ring, forgetful of everything but the fact that the Superintendent had actually spoken to her and, what was more, took it for granted that she knew what she was doing. It might be embellished just a little, she thought, when repeating her triumph in the nurses’ common-room across the way!

Ruth Melford stood watching her brother anxiously as he made his examination of their patient, feeling a responsibility out of all proportion to her obligation for the girl she had picked up off the moor, trying to read his verdict in his steady grey eyes even before they were turned in her direction.

He dropped the girl’s wrist and moved towards the window.

“We must get her to bed,” he announced. “I don’t want to take the risk of moving her over to the hospital right away, Ruth, and I know you will cope. Let her have the spare room for an hour or two, and I’ll get Matron to send someone over to help. I will be able to keep my eye on her for the next hour or so and I believe that will be all-important.”

“What do you think could have happened?” Ruth asked, still
p
erplexed by the events of the past hour, but quite sure that she
h
a
d
done the right thing by bringing the girl home with her. “She was completely bewildered when I found her, and she seems to be a stranger to the district.”

“We’ll have to report it to the police, of course,” he said, “but for the present I propose to wait. You say she told you that she couldn’t remember anything?” he added. “Where she had come from—who she was?”

“Not a thing, as far as I could gather. She was terribly upset about it and seemed almost reluctant to come with me until I insisted,” Ruth explained, speaking automatically as she thought of something else. “When you say you are prepared to wait, does it mean that she is all right—that she is going to live?”

“Of course she’s going to live!” Noel replied without any hesitation whatever. “She’s strong enough to pull through a possible bout of pneumonia, and that’s as near to a diagnosis as I can make at the moment.”

He straightened, his lean, dark face still thoughtful, and Ruth crossed the room to pick up the girl’s personal effects from the table beside the settee.

“This must be all she had in her pockets,” she said. “Powder compact, purse and a handkerchief. Not much, really, to go on, and very little with which to establish an identity. Oh! but look here! There’s a name embroidered on the handkerchief in blue ‘Anna’!” Her thin face flushed excitedly. “Do you think that will be her own name, and will it help?” she asked eagerly.

Her brother took the fragment of linen from her, stretching it out between his strong hands to reveal the embroidered name.

“It’s possible,” he agreed, answering her first question. “And every little thing helps if this is a case of true amnesia. We shall find that out when she regains full consciousness, but I don’t propose to trouble her with too many questions until she has slept for at least twelve hours.”

He glanced down at the settee to find his patient’s eyes wide and full upon him, quietly thoughtful eyes, gently inquiring as they lingered on his strong face, and a surging pity welled in him as he recognized her utter helplessness.

“Can you tell me where I am—who I am?” she asked unsteadily, still with those wide eyes fixed on his. “I have lost my memory. I know that someone brought me here in a car, but—before that,
I
have no memory at all.”

“What you feel now may pass as soon as you have had a good rest,” he explained. “These are the essential things at present:
I
am a doctor, and I shall look after you.”

Her eyes clung to his for a moment longer, and then, slowly, they closed and a small sigh of utter exhaustion escaped her lips. Noel Melford turned round to where his sister waited.

“Best leave her where she is,” he advised as they went from the room together. “She’ll mend more quickly that way.”

“What do you think, Noel?” Ruth asked. Now that they could speak more freely she was beginning to realize that she had committed them both to considerable responsibility. “Do you think she’s likely to get her memory back and—how soon shall we have to tell the police about her?”

“Right away, I think.” He took out a cigarette and lit it, blowing the smoke thoughtfully above his head. “Her people may be trying to trace her, and if there’s been an accident anywhere the police may be looking for her even now. It’s a grim business, this amnesia, difficult to fight at the best of times,” he observed, “and generally full of all sorts of complications. How old would you say that child was?”

Ruth considered.

“Older than she looks in the present circumstances,
I
should think,” she decided. “About twenty-three or four. Does age help?”

“Everything helps. Approximate age may help to establish possible reasons for the amnesia, although there are no hard and fast rules. In the morning I shall see what I can do with the one clue we have found—the name on the handkerchief. Anna, wasn’t it? If it is really her own name, which is very likely, then the rest may be easy.” He moved restlessly about the kitchen, following in her wake as she prepared a meal, as if he sought some sort of assurance from her presence. “We could have done without this.”

Ruth turned to put an affectionate hand on his arm.

“I’m sorry, Noel,” she apologized. “I’ve thrust this on you without a great deal of thought, I’m afraid, when you were busy enough in the ordinary way—too busy,
I
sometimes think.” Her eyes pleaded with him to understand. “But
I
had to bring her home, Noel. There was something about her—not actually pathetic—that’s not the right word—but—in need of help.’ She turned away, not quite sure why she should suddenly feel that she was pleading with him on her own account. “I had to bring her,” she repeated
.

“Of course you had to bring her!” He put a firm hand under her arm. “Your motherly instinct will out, old
l
ady! Don’t worry too much about it,” he went on to advise. “We’ve handled amnesia before. I’ll give Tranby a ring in the morning and get him to come over and have a look at your
protégé
e and if she’s all right by then we can send her on her way rejoicing.”

He had spoken lightly for her benefit, but Ruth knew that he had never taken any of his cases lightly, that the girl she had brought to Glynmareth would remain their responsibility until he had established her identity beyond the shadow of a doubt and freed her from her present bondage.

“Hullo, there, Ruth! I’ve brought along the necessary help. Fancy you turning the villa into a rival establishment!”

The gay voice drifted in from the garden and Ruth turned to the open door.

“It’s Sara!” she smiled “We’re in here, my dear—consulting in the kitchen!”

A tall young woman in the uniform of a nursing sister appeared in the doorway, her immaculate white coat and cap dazzling bright in the sunshine as she paused for a moment to consider brother and sister with a satisfied smile. Sara Enman experienced the old thrill of warmth and achievement as she looked into Noel Melford’s eyes, although, as yet, she could not lay claim to his affections with any real authority. His eyes were a little remote today, she mused, telling herself that she understood that look because she understood Noel and all that his profession meant to him as no one else could understand. When he was engrossed in a case nothing else mattered to him, and quite often he had taken her into his confidence in that respect, a compliment which Sara appreciated to the full. As second in command of the nursing staff, she held her own small niche in the little community of which he was virtually head, and a sense of power had developed in her out of all proportion to her importance. She was beginning to make herself objectionable to those who worked under her, but she kept that side of her character for the hospital wards and those times when Noel was well out of earshot!

There were things about Noel she might never know, tender, passionate things that went deep to the soul of the man, but she had assured herself that she could do without these things because they had so many other things in common. She was the sort of
p
erson Noel needed, someone who would understand his work and is ambitions and share his interests with him. That, Sara had decided, was really the most important thing in life.

Her friendship with Ruth had been cultivated largely to the end of getting to know Noel in his off-duty hours, a thing which might not have been possible otherwise, and as she came into the kitchen she smiled at Ruth.

“Why the kitchen?” she asked “And where’s the patient?”

“Noel wants her to sleep all she can,” Ruth explained. “We’ve left her on the settee in the sitting-room. It’s comfortable enough there and there’s no point in moving her upstairs at present.”

“Not when we’ll be moving her across to the wards in the morning,” Sara agreed briskly taking charge automatically. “I’ll make all the arrangements and then you won’t have any more trouble. What’s the matter?” she asked, turning to Noel for the first time.

“Amnesia,” he said briefly. “She’s young. It may only be a temporary lapse.”

“I see.” Ruth watched Sara’s face take on its most professional expression, her grey eyes rather hard, her fine lips firmly compressed as she accepted the cigarette Noel proffered. “Another case for Inspector Evans, I suppose. We’ve had ‘em before!”

“
Not like this,” Ruth heard herself saying sharply, contradicting the suggestion in the younger girl’s voice. “This girl
’
s different.”

Sara’s carefully shaped eyebrows went up.

“In what way?” she asked mildly. “They mostly turn out to have a fairly seedy history, picked up off the street like that.”

“This girl wasn
’
t exactly picked up off the streets,” Noel informed her quietly. “Ruth came across her out on the moors after she had walked some considerable distance, it seems. She doesn’t look—the other type.”

Sara glanced at him sharply, then at Ruth.

“This certainly makes a difference,” she said in a completely changed voice. “Could there have been an accident, do you suppose? Perhaps she walked away from the scene of it in a dazed condition and can’t quite recall what happened. She may have had a blow of some kind, on the head, for instance, which would account for the amnesia,” she added professionally.

“We shall take all that into account,” Noel said. “We’ll know by the time we report the case,” he added. “And the police will check up on possible accidents in the district.”

“It almost seems as if Noel is reluctant to call in the police,” Sara observed as Ruth filled a hot-water bottle at the sink. “I wonder why?”

Ruth handed her the bottle.

“You’ll see for yourself in a minute,” she said. “Will you carry that in for me?”

The nurse who had come across from the hospital was still waiting in the hall and Ruth smiled as she recognized the girl, glad that “Topsy” Craven was on duty because of a rich quality of understanding in her make-up which she had discovered
d
uring her own recent illness, when she had been nursed back to health in one of the privat
e
rooms at the hospital.

“Your patient is in here, Topsy,” she explained, opening the sitting-room door. “My brother doesn’t think she should be moved, so we won’t bother to undress her until she has had a long, refreshing sleep.”

Sara had preceded her into the room and was standing looking down at the nameless girl on the settee with her most professional expression.

“Young, indeed,” she mused, “to have come to this! Loss of memory. One invariably associates it with some sort of tragedy. Well,” she concluded briskly, “we should know part of the answer by the morning, if not all of it.”

For the remainder of the afternoon Ruth found herself chained to the house, “hovering,” as she put it, “outside the sitting-room like a broody hen with her first patch of chicks,” waiting for any sound from within that would tell her the girl was awake.