Strange Recompense (6 page)

“I understand,” she said. The sun had gone beyond the black cloud of her forgetting again and her heart was darkened by misery. “I can’t hope for everything to come my way—all at once,
”
she acknowledged.

He left her with a brief smile, striding off round the end of the house to the hospital where, tomorrow morning, she would go to work, and suddenly she realized that he had taken her the first few steps towards freedom. She stood looking after him with untold gratitude in her eyes and a welling emotion in her heart which she did not attempt to name, knowing that, whatever had gone before, the memory of his kindness and understanding would always be in the future.

For a moment she could not bring herself to go back into the house even to help Ruth. The peacefulness of the garden, with its still water and the perfumes wafted on the summer breeze, claimed her, and her thoughts were still of Noel when she heard Dennis Tranby’s car drive away and a gate slam somewhere close at hand.

Even then she did not turn immediately towards the house, and Sara Enman met her out there as she made her way along the shrubbery path to the villa.

There was a bright red spot of color high up on each of Sara’s cheeks and her eyes were steel-grey an
d
cold as they met the uncertain smile which Anna offered. She was very much the experienced nursing sister in her approach, however, cool, calculating and ruthlessly analytical.

“We really ought to have you over in the wards, you know,” she observed. “You can’t really expect Miss Melford to go on coping with stray patients like this, even if you do feel doubtful about us. Believe me, Doctor Melford has a heavy enough day’s work without attending to an extra patient in his spare time.”

Anna’s cheeks flamed, but she tried to give Sara the credit of thinking only in terms of Noel.

“I will be coming over to the hospital,” she said, conscious of a certain amount of satisfaction at being able to drop her bombshell. “But not as a patient. Doctor Melford feels that I am quite capable of holding down a job while I am under treatment and he apparently needs help with his paper work.”

The hospital has a qualified secretary to do that sort of thing, if only Noel would ask for her,” Sara snapped. “Did you ask Doctor Melford to give you this job?” she asked suspiciously.

Anna hesitated.

“I asked Doctor Tranby,” she confessed truthfully.

“Oh, Dennis Tranby!” Sara exclaimed scornfully. “The typical G.P.! Always interfering in things that can’t possibly concern him and never getting on with his own work! He should learn to leave the hospital to those best qualified to cope with it.” There was actual venom in Sara’s voice now. “I suppose he passed your request on to Doctor Melford and Noel felt too sorry for you to refuse it.”

Again Anna flushed.

“Doctor Melford did not say he was sorry for me.”

She thought that she could not bear the idea of Noel Melford’s pity, and believed that neither Ruth nor her brother had shown her anything but understanding. Pity, she felt, would have sounded the knell of hope.

“You must be rather a millstone round Noel’s neck at the moment,” Sara went on. “He had just got rid of a great deal of police work when Tim Wedderburn took over.”

The word stung Anna, and she knew that Sara had mentioned the law deliberately, with all its subtle suggestion of something wrong in her past. She felt that she hated the older girl, but the real despair was not being able to remember, not being able to defend herself against any accusation. It came back to that a dozen times a day, really.

“I don’t think either Doctor Tranby or Doctor Melford would have employed me if they hadn’t needed my services or felt sure that I could do the work,” she said stiffly and with a dignity she was far from feeling. “I can only do my best to justify their trust.” Sara turned on her heel with a small, articulate sound which might have meant anything, making her way into the house with a purposefulness which kept Anna where she was.

“I’ve just been talking to your Orphan of the Storm,” she told Ruth maliciously, “and she has announced that she is taking over our job as Noel’s secretary! Quick work, I should say, but I can’t
h
elp wondering if Noel is entirely wise.”

Ruth moved away from the window where she had been watching Anna in the garden, her hands clasped tightly in front of her, her kind mouth firm.

“Noel knows what he is doing, Sara,” she said quietly.

“I sincerely hope so.” Sara’s lips twisted a little. “Have you noticed the absence of the wedding ring?” she went on smoothly. “That girl was wearing one yesterday, if I am not mistaken, and now she has taken it off. Could she have imagined that none of us noticed the fact?”

“I don’t know.” Ruth’s voice rang out sharply in the quiet room. “But no matter what her reason has been for disposing of her ring, I’m quite sure it was not to deceive us.”

Sara’s eyebrows shot up.

“I sincerely hope your faith in her will remain justified,” she murmured. “You were always much too trusting, Ruth.”

“Maybe,” Ruth answered easily enough, but the conversation seemed to have driven a small wedge between Sara and her, forcing them apart a little, and she was sorry. Ruth liked to keep her friends, but she also thought that she knew genuineness when she met it. Anna seemed to be genuine enough, and although the fact of the missing ring was odd, Ruth was quite sure that there would be some simple explanation of its removal.

CHAPTER THREE

THE LONG, TORTUOUS task of aiding Anna’s recovery began the following morning in Noel’s consulting rooms at the hospital, and in this respect he was quite ruthless. No stone was to remain unturned, no avenue unexplored. He set to work with a grim determination which surprised even Anna, who had been prepared for anything, throwing copies of half a dozen newspapers at her across his desk.

“Read through these and see if they mean anything to you,” he commanded. “We may as well begin at the beginning.”

While she read he worked at his desk without appearing to remember her at all, and as she turned page after page and no one item of news stood out for her to claim her interest over the others, which she supposed was what he wanted, she felt the old sense of hopelessness creeping over her and grew more nervous and restive with each passing minute.

Finally he pushed back his chair and came towards her, his grey eyes steady on her flushed face.

“All right,” he said, “don’t make a labor of it. We’ve drawn a blank, so we’re going to fold up the newspapers and go out.” He turned back his cuff to look at his watch. “Slip across and borrow a hat from Ruth, and don’t be any longer than you can help.”

She obeyed him without question, although she could not understand why he should suddenly want her to wear a hat.

Anna inspected Ruth’s hat in the mirror, satisfied with what she saw apparently, because she was still smiling when she met Noel in the hall.

They drove swiftly down the tree-lined approach to the hospital and out through the south gates towards the edge of the town where a small chapel stood on a hill and several cars were already parked on the gravel sweep before the main door.

“We’re getting out here,” he told her as he pulled his own car in behind the others. “Don’t worry about anything that may happen, Anna,” he added. “I shall be in charge and nothing can harm you.”

It was strange the amount of comfort she found in that thought although she could not understand why he was taking her to a Welsh Methodist church at this time of day and on a Tuesday into the bargain. Then, as he led her swiftly down the aisle after a hurried consultation with someone at the door, she realized that they were about to witness a wedding.

Organ music filled the church, swelling to a final magnificent chord as they found a seat at the side of the aisle, in full view of the waiting bridegroom and the assembled guests, but the notes were no more than a dreadful avalanche of sound to Anna as she sat with bowed head, trying to restrain an almost overwhelming impulse to rise and run back down the aisle to the sunlit world outside. A feeling akin to claustrophobia clamped down on her senses and it seemed as if she was beating against bars in some narrow prison.

“I can’t go through with it,” she murmured. “I don’t want to let you know, but I can’t go through with it. It’s not that my love has changed,” she added in a breathless whisper, the words forced from her against her will and almost as if she were repeating a formula. “It’s just that I don’t want to be married...”

Noel Melford’s fingers closed firmly over hers and somehow she knew that the words she had repeated were not her own. They had the hollow quality of an echo about them, an echo out of the past, but she could not nail them down to any memory. Her head was spinning round and her mind so confused by the impression she had received since entering the dim, cool chapel that she could no longer reason clearly. All she could feel was that desperate desire for escape, and then she knew that she could not escape because Noel Melford sat between her and freedom and his hand was firm and detaining on her arm.

During the ceremony, as the kindly old parson’s voice suggested the full meaning of the marriage bond, Noel did not turn his head once to look at her. He appeared to be deeply engrossed by what was being said, his keen mind weighing each phrase, each turn of a sentence, to extract the fullest meaning from them, but when the happy couple followed the parson to the vestry and some of the guests made their way out to the porch with gaily colored bags of confetti, he led her out into the sunshine and straight to his waiting car.

He did not start the engine immediately, however, sitting with his arm along the steering wheel until bride and bridegroom appeared in the chapel doorway.

Anna’s attention was riveted on the young couple, and Noel watched her as she sat still and erect, so still that she scarcely seemed to breathe at all. Then, slowly and painfully a single tear forced its way between her thick lashes and fell unheeded down her cheek.

As if at some given signal, he swung the car clear of the line of traffic, out beyond the chapel and onto the open moor. Anna was still staring straight ahead, eyes completely remote, seeing nothing of the road before them, until he drew up on the brow of the hill overlooking the Mareth valley and turned to look at her.

“What did you remember?” he demanded,

“The church,” she gasped, and then she went on more slowly and more coherently: “When I first went in I wanted to run away.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to escape, I think. I—don’t think I wanted to get away from anyone in particular.” She clasped her hands tightly in front of her. “Oh, it’s so difficult to explain—to tell anyone—”

“It isn’t difficult to tell me,” he insisted. “Why did you want to leave the church?”

“I wanted to get away from something. It was like being shut up in a too-small room—closed away for life. I felt that I had been there before, that I had heard the organ playing like that before.”

“For yourself?”

She passed a trembling hand over her forehead.

“I don’t know. Perhaps it was personal, that feeling, but I can’t be sure. I only know that I felt as if I were waiting for something dreadful to happen, that I had been there before and knew exactly what was coming, as one does in a dream.”

“It often happens with the conscious mind, too.” he explained, “but go on. What was it you were waiting for?”

“I can’t remember that. I don’t really know,” she repeated. “It was like a great dark pall rolling towards me, blotting out everything—the altar, the man standing there, the music and the sunlight streaming in across the aisle. I felt that I was going down the aisle and out at the church door—alone.”

“What came after that?” He bent over her, willing her with all the force at his command to answer him. “Think, Anna! Think!”

“I can’t!” She covered her face with her hands. “There isn’t anything left now but the blackness and the emptiness.”

There was a tense moment before he relaxed, leaning back against the cushioning to produce his cigarettes, his eyes narrowed in thought as they scanned the deep green valley ahead.

“Smoke?” he asked, proffering the case.

She took a cigarette clumsily, imagining her companion making a mental note of the fact that she had not smoked a great deal from the way she handled it, and suddenly she was able to relax.

“What a session!” she said unsteadily but without undue emotion. “How long before you give up altogether?”

“One doesn’t ‘give up’ so easily as that,” he assured her, inhaling deeply. “To stop trying would be to acknowledge defeat, and this effort is still in its infancy. D’you know,” he added casually, “that hat is the emblem of the greatest day in my life! Ruth wore it at the graduation ceremony, and I can still see those two fantastic fully-blown roses bobbing for a vantage point in the middle of the hall. She had got herself a seat behind the fattest professor’s wife imaginable who was wearing a veritable fruit-barrow on her head and evidently wouldn’t give an inch!”

“What did Ruth do in the end?”

“She waved her programme so much that the fruit-barrow hat tilted forward and by sheer weight toppled into its owner’s lap!” They laughed as he started the car, and he thought with satisfaction that this was the second time in one day he had heard his patient laugh with complete spontaneity.

“I’m dropping you at the villa for lunch,” he said, “and then you can go over to the hospital at two o’clock and put in a couple of hours’ work to salve your conscience, if you like. You’ll find a stack of filing to be stowed into that green metal cabinet next to the window in my room, and then you can take the draft of the report on my blotting-pad along to the general office and have it ty
p
ed. Anyone will tell you where our efficient secretary has her lair,
”
he explained, “but don’t expect her to come to the consulting room even if you ring a bell till Doomsday!”

“You’re sure I won’t get in the way?” Anna asked, thinking of her encounter with
S
ara the evening before.

“Nobody will worry about you,” he assured her. “You will find you are in an isolated little world of your own in the east wing, since it is too cold for anything but the kitchens and the Superintendent’s consulting rooms!”

“I’m sorry you’re so ba
d
ly treated!” she smiled. “Can nothing be done about it?”

“Strictly between ourselves,” he grinned, “I should hate anything to be done about it! I like the idea of my splendid isolation and I rarely feel the cold.”

She said quickly “Neither do I. It’s warmer here, of course.”

“Warmer?” he prompted. “Warmer than your home, Anna?” She started, surprised that he should find something revealing in such an ordinary remark, and then she shook her head dismally.

“Oh, I wish I could give you some satisfaction, some kind of help when you are trying to do so much for me!” she cried.