Strange Recompense (22 page)

He was evading a detailed explanation of his plans, and Ruth knew that he was depending on the element of surprise to revive memory where so much else had failed. He did not want Anna to spend the next few hours counting the time to her ordeal, her nervousness and anxiety mounting until they finally defeated his object.

“Where did you go?” he asked.

“When we came off the bus at Alnmouth we had some tea,” Ruth told him.

“At ‘The Schooner’,” Anna added eagerly. “As soon as I went in I knew I had been there before, Noel, and I thought, after that, it would all be easy—” She broke off, but her brow was no longer clouded. The groping was upwards, towards the certain light. “I knew that I had been there often in the past—happily. If it had only been a matter of place and environment,” she added with amazing insight into her problem, “I’m sure everything would have cleared for me there and then, but that’s not all it is. It’s about people, Noel—”

“Yes,” he agreed quietly. “I know. Your concern is with Ned Armstrong.”

The name drew all the color into her cheeks and Ruth saw her hand clench suddenly over her handbag.

“If only I could
do
something!” she cried.

“Whatever you want to do,” Noel said, “whatever you had set out to do, will all come right in the end, Anna. We can’t rush things. We must be prepared to wait for results—even now.”

They went to dinner, and Anna noticed the difference in Noel as he ordered their meal. He looked unaccountably younger and far more sure of the situation than he had ever been, and her pulses quickened as she let her thoughts go forward to tomorrow. A few more hours were all that might be left between her and the past. It was like walking backwards in time, re-living her life, step by step, back to that dark curtain which divided her from so much of that past that had a definite bearing on the present, too. Without the memory of the past the present was meaningless, and she knew that Noel had recognized that long ago.

Tonight, however, there was a new warmth in his voice, and his eyes were clear. It was as if he were trying to tell her that there was no need to fear, and she took fresh courage from the thought.

She even slept peacefully that night, untroubled by any dream, and when the morning came her courage was renewed. She was first down to breakfast, but Noel came in soon afterwards.

“You’ve been out walking!” she greeted him. “You’ve got a look of fresh air about you!”

“I never sleep much after six,” he said, taking the chair opposite her and unfolding his table napkin. “Anna,” he added suddenly, “before Ruth comes I want to tell you that, whatever today brings, you can always count on me. I love you, my dear—whatever that is worth in this hopeless situation.”

He did not tell her that he was fool enough to believe that her marriage had never taken place. He did not want to confuse her unnecessarily, and she still wore the wedding ring like an amulet. The ring he had bought! He smiled wryly at the irony of that thought.

“I
f
only—it had all been different,” Anna said heavily. “Oh! I can’t bear to think of forgetting all this, Noel, of perhaps not being able to remember about you or about Ruth and Glynmareth! I feel that—fate might have been kinder to us,” she added brokenly.

He did not mean her to forget, but he could not tell her that now, and he cursed Sara Enman for her interference.

“We can only work these things out when we come to them,” he said. “This afternoon I am going to take you to Alnborough to your
father
.”

A wave of deep color stained her cheeks.

“Was he really ill, Noel, or did he not answer my letter because there was something wrong—because he did not wish to see me?” she asked. “I’ve never been able to understand why my people didn’t report my disappearance to the police,” she went on unhappily. “It would have saved you so much unnecessary trouble and all these long, wearying journeys.”

“Your father has been ill,” he said. “Desperately ill, but he is well enough to see you now. Whatever he felt in the past, Anna, he wants you to go back to Alnborough now.”

“I see,” she said, looking down at her clasped hands, but not completely convinced, because there had been just a suggestion of hesitation in his voice. She would not persist with her questioning, however, because she was already grateful beyond measure for all he had done for her.

When Ruth made her appearance they decided to spend the morning going over the castle. It would fill in time, Noel said, and he had always wanted to see the place. There was, he believed, a particularly well-preserved dungeon, and the castle itself was in excellent repair.

“Ruins need too much imagination from my point of view,” he confessed, “but I can picture a reasonably preserved castle down through the ages. I’ll go round and get the car, and you had better change those fancy shoes of yours, Ruth, for we’ll have to walk when we get there.
”

Ruth left Anna to wait for them in the lounge. The big, oak-panelled room was deserted at that hour, and Anna sat down near one of the deep mullioned windows, conscious once more of the feeling of familiarity which she had experienced the afternoon before at “The Schooner”. If she had lived near here, if Noel was right and he had traced her family, it would be quite natural, but nothing could account for the unhappiness which assailed her each time she considered the past in relationship to her own family.

Something like dread stalked her mind when she contemplated her return to Alnborough, the grim old house which Noel believed she had described so faithfully, and she could only account for it by supposing that her relationship with her family had not been good. That fact alone distressed her anew as subconscious protest rose to deny it, and a deeply abiding love seemed to be entangled in her impressions of Alnborough and the past.

That these impressions were emerging, slowly but surely, from behind the veil of forgetfulness, could not be denied, however. She felt far more sure of herself now, sure of the way to the future, and only the cold fear of forgetting the present which Sara had implanted crushed hope down in her heart. When she tried to analyse it she saw it as a fundamental fear of losing the love she had, fear of losing Noel, although she had no real right to claim his love.

Despair so great that it almost shook her fine courage gripped her in its relentless stranglehold and she got to her feet with a movement as if to escape, and then she saw the other girl standing in the doorway looking in at her with naked hatred in her dark eyes.

It was someone she knew. Uncertainty and bewilderment choked the expression of surprise back in her throat and she put both hands up to it in a protective gesture as the intruder came towards her across the thick pile of the carpet.

“Jess—!”

The one strangled cry was all she uttered. The name had burst in her brain like an exploding shell, leaving a havoc of confusion and darkness behind it after that first blinding revelation of light.

“I thought your memory wasn’t all that far gone!” Jess Marrick sneered. “You remember me, and you remember what you did, sneaking off with Ned—you and him planning everything while you slept under my father’s roof and he wrote to me like a lover! And now you want to come back, don’t you? Something’s gone wrong, and you want to come back!” Jess laughed sharply. “Well, you never shall! My father can’t do without me at Alnborough now, and he knows it! The farm means more to him than his life. It would kill him to part with it, but he needs me to run it with him! You were the one who ran the house, but anyone could do that. I helped him to run the farm,” Jess boasted. “I was as good as any man out in the fields, and I still am, but the day you come back to Alnborough, Anna Marrick, I leave it!” Her lips twisted with
p
assionate denunciation. “You can take your choice,” she flung at
h
er sister. “You’ll kill my father if you go to Alnborough,
because he will be forced to leave it if I leave
!”

The harsh, brittle voice rang in Anna’s ears with no very clear meaning behind the words except the fact that she was being denied the right to return home, denied the right to memory and the past.

“You can’t do this, Jess,” she appealed desperately. “I’ve got to remember, and only you can help me! I’ve got to go to Alnborough, as Noel says—”

“He’s in love with you!” Jess accused, “Anyone could see that yesterday when he tried to make me do his bidding, but he knows now what you did to me and Ned Armstrong—
”

A
nna covered her face with her hands.

“Jess, please—please try to let me think!” she cried. “Please try to help me! I have tried to help you. Oh! why doesn’t it all come back to me? Why can’t I tell you all I want you to know?”

“Because you are ashamed of what you have done!” Jess assured her. “And whatever
has happened between you and Ned, it serves you right! You want to crawl back and be
accepted again, don’t you? But you won’t be! I’ll stand in your way if it is the last thing I
do, for I hate you with an everlasting hatred—”

“Be quiet, you little fool!” Noel came striding past her and went to Anna, but he turned on Jess almost immediately, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her with a depth of passion rarely seen in him. “You don’t know what you are talking about, and you have no decision to make,” he said. “It will not matter in the slightest whether you leave Alnborough or not. I shall take Anna there this afternoon and you can listen to the truth with the rest of us or not, just as it pleases you. And now,” he added, releasing her abruptly, “if you have any sense of pity left, you will go and leave us to look after your sister.”

Jess stared back at him with concentrated hatred burning in her eyes, but she knew better than to renew her tirade against Anna in his presence.

“Don’t go,” Anna said haltingly. “Jess, if you would only try to understand—how difficult it is just at first—adjusting to everything. It’s like—feeling one’s way through a jungle, hoping that civilization is coming nearer all the time, yet never being quite sure, never being able to see anything clearly for the dense undergrowth. It’s—praying that you’re going to win through, praying for the return
of life as you know it, yet—yet—
”

Noel moved and put a protecting arm about her shaking shoulders, drawing her back to the chair she had left.

“Take your time,” he advised.

“It’s—coming back,” she whispered. “Noel, I knew her—I knew Jess!”

“Yes,” he said grimly. “It’s just a pity she succeeded in slipping in when my back was turned. All right, Jess,” he added, turning to the other girl, “you needn’t make the effort to understand if it’s too much for you.” His voice altered suddenly, becoming surprisingly gentle. “You won’t believe it, but perhaps I can understand how you feel just now, how far from forgiveness you are at this moment.”

“I’ll never forgive her!” Jessica Marrick cried again. “I’ve vowed never to speak to her as long as I live!”

“Never is a bitter word,’ Noel told her, “and life is long. You’ll learn to love again, Jess, and live to forget all this.”

He led her to the door, returning immediately to Anna’s side with all his concern etched in the deep lines around his mouth and eyes. Her own face was colorless, drawn into the lines of perplexity he hated to see, but he knew that this was the supreme effort, the final endeavour that must bring results.

“She hates me,” she whispered. “You could see that, couldn’t you, but I tried to help her. Oh! if only I could think why she needed my help so much! If only I could understand why! It was about Ned.
”

“Jess and Ned were to have been married,” he prompted quietly while his own heart contracted at the irony of the situation, of helping her to remember this part of her story which he prayed might be wrong. “Their wedding was planned, Anna. Do you remember that? His voice reverted to the old note of authority. “You must remember! You were to have been her bridesmaid, I suppose.”

“Yes—yes!” She drew in a sharp breath, one hand still clasped to her throat as if she would force the words out. “It was all planned. My mother was dead and Jess had been so good to me—looking after me all these years. I was bewildered, Noel, when my mother died. It didn’t seem possible that someone I had loved and relied upon for all the comfort and happiness that came my way should suddenly have been taken from me—cut down at the height of her own happiness.”

“You were very fond of your mother,” he suggested, “and Jess was kind to you after she died. You were, in fact, a happy and devoted family, who would have gone to any lengths to help one another.”

She nodded, accepting the authenticity of his statement with an eagerness he had never seen in her before.

“I worked in the house because I was more like my mother and Jess liked the outside jobs. My father taught her to do everything about the farm, as he would have taught a son. A son! She paused, searching diligently for the connecting thought. “When Ned first started coming to the farm to see Jess we resented him a little, I suppose. Perhaps I was even a little jealous, and my father thought he was going to break up the happiness we had built round ourselves at Alnborough like a wall, but soon my father was accepting him as a son, as an addition to our small family circle. The fact that he went to sea made it simple enough, for Jess could still be at home a great deal of her time. We would not really lose her!”