Strange Recompense (24 page)

“But Jess is!” Ruth said. “I wonder when she’ll come home?”

“I mean to be here when she does,” he said. “I’m not risking any setbacks at this stage.”

“Apart from Jess upsetting her, you think Anna should be all right?”

“There’s nothing at all the matter with her now. She’s got back her memory and she’s as normal as you or me.” Noel took out his pipe for the first time that day. “She hasn’t e
v
en the usual blank spot concerning the time between,” he added with such relief in his voice that Ruth heaved a sigh of relief, too.

“Can I say thank heaven for that, Noel?”

“You can,” he told her. “It might so easily have been the other way round.”

When Anna came down she insisted that they should stay. She was gay and smiling in her new-found happiness, and even the shadow hovering at the back of her eyes could not dim the radiance of her face as she moved about the familiar room, touching this and that as a blind person might who had suddenly been given back the sight of her eyes.

“Surely you can spare twenty-four hours, Noel, even though you are a busy doctor?” she asked.

Noel agreed.

When Bill Cranston’s car drove along the narrow road to the farm and her sister got out and slammed the door she went slowly to meet her, realizing by the expression on Jess’ face that the coming interview was going to be far more difficult than she could have imagined.

“You’ve no idea how sorry I am about all this, Jess,” she began. “It has been—difficult for me, too, you know. I had no idea who I was or where I had come from when I was picked up in Wales.”

Jess glared at her with no sign of softening in her eyes.

“So your doctor friend tol
d
me,” she said icily. “He was most concerned about you when he came here last week. You certainly get the men with your air of helplessness! I’ve heard before that it works every time!’

“Jess,” Anna appealed, “please don’t let’s quarrel over something that is far too big for petty spite! Ned is dead,” she added flatly. “He never loved me. I can swear to you that this is true.”

“But you couldn’t convince me with all the glib talk in the world that he died loving me!” Jess cried. “Something happened to change him, so what was it? He turned to you for sympathy. Why didn’t he come to me?”

“Is that why you hate me so much, Jess?” Anna asked quietly. “It was—inevitable, in a way,” she went on when her sister did not answer. “You see, we had all known each other for so long and Ned and I were good friends—because of you. He had no one else to turn to, so I suppose I was his natural choice.”

“He discussed me with you! He told you he had stopped loving me! He ran to my sister to tell her the things he was not man enough to say to my face! Well, if that was Ned Armstrong I’m better without him! I’m glad it’s all over,” Jess cried passionately. “I’m glad there won’t be any more heartache and tears—because now I know! There are other people—there’s someone else who will love me in the way that I want, and maybe I’ll be glad in the end that Ned Armstrong didn’t come back!”

She flung past Anna into the dairy, her head held high, the stormy glint of tears in her eyes that a fierce, unbridled pride would not let her shed, and Anna followed her and stood beside the bench where Jess had flung down her parcels.

“You know you don’t mean that,” she said gently. “Oh, Jess! if I could only make you understand how well I know about—all this—about how you feel now, the utter hopelessness and the bitter despair! I’ve felt all that during the past few weeks for a different reason and—love may have passed me by, too—”

Her voice broke, but Jess Marrick could not concern herself with another’s sorrow in that moment of her own most bitter grief. Her pain was the blinding kind that shut off insight and did not know the meaning of compassion.

“If you really didn’t want—Ned for yourself,” she asked slowly, “why
d
id you go off and meet him like that without a word?”

“How could I tell you the truth when it came to me in that way?” Anna asked honestly. “Jess, I know it is terribly difficult for you, but please try to believe me when I say that Ned was deeply unhappy about it all, that he had fought round after round the issue for weeks, but still couldn’t reach any other conclusion. He could not—he would not marry without the love you had a right to expect from him.”

Jess flushed darkly, but this time she had nothing to say. Then, quite suddenly, she collapsed into the wheeled-backed chair beside the bench and buried her face in her hands.

“I knew how he felt!” she cried. “But I would not accept it! I knew on his last leave, and I ignored it. I talked him out of telling
me because I was so sure that I could settle everything in my own way, and—afterwards I hated you for knowing all about it, for sharing my shameful secret!”

The stark, unexpected confession dropped into a deep silence, broken as Anna bent closer to her sister and said kindly:

“There’s no shame attached to losing someone you love, Jess. So many of us have to face that bitterness, and courage is the only answer. You always had plenty of courage in the old days,” she went on quietly. “Don’t let this spoil your life now.”

Tears were seeping through between Jess Marrick’s work
roughened fingers, the slow, difficult tears of a hard nature that accepts grief harshly, and when she lifted her head her face was disfigured by them.

“It’s easier for you,” she said. “You never loved anyone like that.”

Anna did not contradict her, and after a while Jess got to her feet and began to fumble with her parcels.

“Bill Cranston wants me to marry him,” she said.

“Maybe you will one day,” Anna answered, “but not just now. It will take time for you to forget Ned, to look at all this without bitterness.”

Jess turned towards the window, staring out at the distant moors. “I should thank you for trying to bring him back to me,” she acknowledged almost resentfully. “I see now that you did.”

The sullen admission was all the appreciation Anna was likely to receive for her effort, but she did not want to be thanked for what she had done. The family ties which she had accepted from infancy had made that the most natural thing in the world and she had not hesitated when they had demanded the effort from her.

“I suppose,” Jess said, nodding towards the closed door of the kitchen, “these people will be staying for a meal?”

“I would like them to stay,” Anna said. “They have been so good to me, Jess.”

The meal Jess insisted on preparing was plain and not very attractive. She had none of her sister’s finer points and considered the household tasks as chores which had to be overcome in the shortest possible time, but Anna would not interfere with her preparations once she had made the offer, and she let her preside at the head of the table when they finally sat down.

They washed the dishes together afterwards, while Ruth expressed her deep interest in the running of the farm and melted some of the ice from Jess’ manner.

“I’ll show you round,” she offered unexpectedly. “I’ll be making butter tomorrow and I’ll show you how it’s done, if you like. Town folk always like to see these things.”

Noel smiled across at Anna when they had gone.

“And now it’s up to you!” he said. “I’d like to see those moors of yours—particularly that spot you described when you wrote about your home.”

“High Garnet?” Anna said disappointedly. “It’s over seven miles away.”

“That won’t matter. We can take the car.”

They motored towards the sea, to a high tableland where the rough grass crowned the outcrops of rock and shale, and where the breath of the sea came, salt-laden, from the north-east, and Noel slowed up almost by instinct on the brow of a hill.

“This is it,” he said. “This should have been where I found you, Anna!”

She turned to look at him, her eyes shy but steady on his.

“It was, really,” she said. “I think I must have put all my heart and all my love into the description of High Garnet, Noel.”

Gently he drew her to him, taking her hand, and more gently still he turned it over and drew the wedding ring from the third finger where she still wore it. He put it in his pocket without a word, but he kept her hand in his as he looked down towards the sea.

“Anna,” he said at last, “I want you to come back to Glynmareth one day—in your own time. You know that I love you. I’ve never been able to hide it, and there’s no reason why I should hide it now.” His voice vibrated on a note of passion as he turned to take her in his arms, his dark head bent suddenly to claim her lips. “Tell me that I needn’t wait too long,” he demanded. “These past few weeks have been near-purgatory enough!”

“You needn’t wait, Noel!” she whispered. “I’ll come! Oh, my dear! I’ll come!”

His lips sought hers again and again with a passionate tenderness of possessing.

“If I had lost you,” he said huskily, “nothing would have been the same again. It’s been a strange interlude, Anna, but it’s over and we belong together now!”

“Yes,” she said gently, “we belong together! I think we always have.”