“Jim!” It was her very warmest, softest, deepest voice.
He stood there and looked at her. He had come here because his feet had brought him. At every turning, at each cross-road and bend, he had known his way, yet he could not at any time have said where he was going; he could only have said that he didn’t know. Yet all the time he knew that his feet were following a familiar path. In the dark this feeling strengthened. It took him into Hazelbury West with the sure sense of a homing animal, and it had brought him here.
As he stood staring at the house, the strangest sense of forgotten things came to him from the shape of the three pointed gables, the half seen chimney stacks, the blank windows, the ivy, and the falling curtains of Virginia creeper.
And then feet running lightly over the gravel, and a girl holding him by the arm and saying, “Jim!” She said it again, softly, with caught breath. She was bareheaded. The moonlight had stolen all her colour. Her hair was shadowy and dark, her face just a half seen paleness, her eyes dark but catching the light as water does, her hands holding his arms, small and yet strong, her breath coming quickly, quickly, her parted lips dark where daylight would have shown them red.
“Jim!”
He went on looking at her. The hands on his arm began to shake.
“Jim—why don’t you speak? Jim—you’re not drowned!”
He said, “I’m not drowned—”
That was an easy thing to say. The pressure of those half remembered things increased. It was like the intolerable pressure of water. It was easy to say, “I’m not drowned.” Just for a moment it eased the pressure. He looked down and saw that her eyes were wide and piteous.
“Jim—what’s the matter? Why do you look like that, as if you didn’t know me?”
He said in a heavy, shaken voice,
“I—don’t—know you.”
The hands let go of his arm; she stepped back. He had a sense of emptiness and loss.
And then she was laughing—such a pretty laugh, low, and full of something that was very young and innocent.
“But I’m Caroline! Darling—didn’t you guess? I don’t call that a bit bright of you. Who did you think I was?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know … Caroline?”
Caroline stopped laughing, because something in the slow tentative way in which he said, “Caroline?” made her stop.
“Jim—what’s the matter? Jim darling!”
“Why do you call me that?”
And all at once Caroline began to feel cold. The dream was changing in the way dreams do. One minute she had found Jim and her heart was singing with joy, and the next there was a vague something that was cold and frightening. She didn’t know what it was, and that made it worse. She said,
“What do you mean, Jim?” and he caught her up in a loud harsh voice.
“Why do you call me Jim? Jim what?”
Caroline said, “Oh!” and backed away.
“Jim—What’s the matter?”
“Jim what?”
“Aren’t you well?”—That was just a whisper.
He controlled his voice.
“Tell me why you called me Jim.”
“Because it’s your name. Don’t you know?”
“No.”
“Jim darling, don’t you know that you’re Jim Randal?”
He went past her in a blundering sort of way—right past her and as far as the stone steps which led up to the heavy door. He sat down on the second step and leaned over his knees with both hands covering his face. It was just as if a dam had broken. All those things which had been battering against his consciousness came flooding in through the breach. He was giddy and buffeted. He sat there, and knew that he was Jim Randal, and that this was Hale Place where he had grown up. This was Hale Place, and he was Jim Randal. But of course he was Jim Randal. Who was Jim Riddell? “You’re Jim Riddell, and I’m your wife.” Who had said that? Nesta—Nesta Riddell. “I’m Nesta”—“I’m Caroline”…… Nesta—Caroline—Jim.… Jim Riddell—Jim Randal.
He lifted his head like a man coming up out of deep water.
“I’m Jim Randal, and this is Hale Place.”
Caroline was sitting on the step beside him. Her hand came out and touched his.
“Didn’t you know?”
“No.”
“Oh, Jim! But you know now.”
“Yes.” He gave her hand a squeeze. “It’s awfully odd—” He stopped, laughed a little uncertainly, and let go of her. “Odd? It makes my head go round!”
Caroline did not speak. She didn’t really want to speak. She wanted to sit quite still and let the knowledge that Jim wasn’t drowned soak right down into her. It was like silver water coming in with waves of joy. It was like a tide of light and happiness. She didn’t feel dizzy like Jim; she felt safely, blessedly secure and fixed. Everything was right again, and Jim was here; if she put out her hand, she could touch him. But she didn’t really want to put it out. Just for the moment she had all the happiness that she could hold. One drop more, and it might brim over the drain away. When he got up, she leaned her shoulder against the stone baluster which flanked the steps and watched him with shining eyes.
He walked to the edge of the grass and, turning, looked again at the house. That was just how she had seen him from her window. How long ago? Half an hour? It was very strange to think that the world could change and be quite a different world to you in half an hour.
Jim stood and looked at the house. He looked at it for a long time. Then he walked to the edge of the gravel sweep and back again. He did this several times, and just at the end a little whispering dread stirred in Caroline’s mind. It was like birds talking before daylight. You never know what it is that the birds are saying, or what sort of day they are waking you to. The whisper gave Caroline this feeling, but almost before she recognized it she saw Jim coming back.
She pulled herself up by the balustrade and stood on the step above him. He said,
“Caroline, I’m in a mess.”
So that was why she had begun to be afraid. She said,
“What sort of a mess, Jim?”
There was a pause.
“I don’t know that it’s fair to tell you—in fact it’s not. I’m confused still, but I do know that. You oughtn’t even to be here.”
“How dreadful!” said Caroline. “Where else ought I to be?”
“In bed—and you’d better be getting along, my dear. I don’t know how you came here at all.”
“Oh, I followed you. All romantic, darling—it really was. I looked out of my bower window, and you lifted up the latch and came into the garden and stood looking up. And I knew you at once, so I followed you, and about half way I began to think supposing it wasn’t you at all, or supposing it was a grimly ghost like the ballad says—so it was most awfully, awfully brave of me to keep on. I’ve never really liked even hide-and-seek in the dark, and in some ways moonlight’s worse, because almost anything might be a grimly ghost by moonlight. And if you think, after that, I’m going back to bed without hearing all about everything, well, you’ve just got to think again, darling—and quite differently.”
This was a Caroline he knew—a sweet, imperious, gently obstinate Caroline, with a laugh in her voice and a coaxing hand on his arm. Since she could speak at all he had been “Jim darling.” He said heavily,
“All the same, you’d better go.”
“As if I would! Jim—tell me—what’s the matter?”
“Go home, Caroline!”
“You’re home.”
He pulled away from her roughly.
“Don’t talk nonsense!” Then, on a changed note, “Caroline—go!”
The laugh went out of her voice as she said,
“You know I won’t go. You know I won’t.”
“I know you ought to.”
“We ought to do lots of things that we don’t do—lots, and lots, and lots of things. And this is one of the things that I’m not going to do—not
if the Prime Minister, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Robert Arbuthnot all stood in a row and said go. Darling—wouldn’t it be funny if they did? And I should just blow them each a nice kiss—you know, the sort you put on your palm and push up to the top of your middle finger like this.” She pushed a kiss delicately into position and blew it at him. “And then I should say, ‘The answer is in the negative’; or in other words, ‘I’ll be Jericho’d if I do!’ I’ve put it very tactfully because of the Archbishop, though I don’t suppose he’s half so easily shocked as Robert is.”
She came down from the steps and slid a hand through his arm. Her voice dropped on to a deep loving note.
“It’s no use, darling—you’ve got to tell me. Better get it over. You can’t make me go.”
“I ought to be able to make you.”
“Come and sit down,” said Caroline seriously. “Now, Jim—what have you been doing, and why did you let me think you had been drowned?” Her voice went down into despairing depths.
“Did you?”
“Yes—in the Alice Arden. And there was an S.O.S. about a man in hospital at Elston who had lost his memory, and I went to see if it was you, and they said—Jim, they said that he had just been fetched away by his wife. That wasn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How could it be you?”
“It was.”
“How could it be?”
Caroline felt as if everything had begun to shake a little, like a reflection in water when someone throws a stone into it. Everything that had been so safe and steady had become no more than a shaken picture in troubled water.
Jim was silent. He did not know of any answer to her question.
She went on in a trembling voice.
“I went to Ledlington. The sister said you had my letter—a bit of it—the bit with my name—with Caroline—so I went. But it wasn’t you, Jim—it wasn’t you.”
“You went to Ledlington?”
“I found her. She dropped a bill, and the sister gave it to me, so I found her. Her name was Riddell—Mrs Riddell. She was the most horrible woman. But it was her husband who was in the hospital at Elston—it wasn’t you.”
Jim did not speak. He looked through the moonlight to the dark trees. Caroline gazed at him with wide, frightened eyes.
“It was her husband,” she said in a whisper. “It couldn’t be you—you’re not her husband.”
He spoke then in a loud, harsh voice.
“She says I am.”
Caroline felt the words strike her like stones, like sharp, heavy stones. They hurt so much and weighed so heavily that she could not get her breath. Jim had hurt her like that. It was like the most dreadful nightmare. She tried to speak, and could not make any sound. And then all at once she heard Jim’s voice, sharp with alarm.
“Caroline—don’t look like that!”
Caroline got her breath with a gasp.
“Why did you say it? You oughtn’t—you mustn’t! Jim darling!”
He caught her wrists and held them in a hard, heavy grip.
“Pull yourself together! Do you hear? Oh yes, you can if you like. You’re just making it more difficult for us both.”
She had been straining away from him, her voice broken and her whole body shaking, but at his last words she went quiet and limp. He let go of her, and she drooped forward. It was just as if some spring had failed. She said in a little lifeless voice,
“Tell me.”
A vapour, that was hardly cloud, had passed across the moon. The air was dark between them; he could not see her face. She leaned her head on her hand and waited. Her silence made her seem a long way off.
He began to speak in a strained, level voice.
“I’m going to tell you—but it isn’t easy, because I don’t know where I am. You see, the last thing I remember is landing at Liverpool on the first of July. I remember getting into the train for London, and after that there’s a gap until I woke up in Ledlington.”
“What?” said Caroline. All the droop went out of her. She sat bolt upright and stared at him through the dusk.
“I was told I’d been rescued from the Alice Arden—found on a ledge on the cliffs after she broke up, and taken to the Elston cottage hospital. I was told that my wife had fetched me away.”
“Who told you?”
“She did.”
“That Riddell woman?”.
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“She showed me a marriage certificate.”
“Yours?”
“She said so.”
“And you believed her?”
“I suppose I did—yes, of course I did. I didn’t know who I was or how I’d got there—I didn’t know anything except what she told me. She said my name was Jim Riddell, and that hers was Nesta Riddell. Her brother and sister-in-law said the same thing. She said we’d been married at the Grove Road registry office. She showed me the certificate. Of course I believed her.”
“But it isn’t true!” said Caroline in a warm, indignant voice.
He was silent.
“Jim—it isn’t true!”
He said, “I can’t remember anything after the first of July.”
“Not anything?”
She saw him wince. He said,
“Bit of things broken up..… It’s worse than not remembering at all—much worse.”
“You wrote to me on the seventh of July,” said Caroline quickly.
“Where from?”
“London. But you didn’t give any address—you said to write to your bank.”
“And you wrote?”
“I wrote, and Aunt Grace wrote. I was staying with her at Craigellachie. She asked you to come up, and you didn’t answer for three whole days—and then you didn’t write to me, only to Aunt Grace.”
“What did I say?”
“You said you might be able to come later on. And then you didn’t write again till a fortnight ago, and you said you might be able to get off on the seventh if Aunt Grace could have you, and you would take a steamer up the coast. And then—and then—you never came.”
“That was the last you heard?”
“Yes. Don’t you remember anything about it?”
“No.”
“You said you remembered—bits.”
He shook his head impatiently.
“I don’t remember writing to you at all. The things I remember—” He broke off. Vividly before his mind there appeared, like the broken bits of kaleidoscope, the things that he remembered—a decanter and two glasses; a syphon with the light striking through it; Elmer Van Berg lifting his glass; the bubbles rising in it—tiny bubbles racing upwards to the brim. That was one sharply coloured piece.
The sweat came out on his forehead. He said, quick and uneven,
“I remember drinking with Elmer Van Berg.”
XIV
The vapour passed from before the moon, and he saw Caroline like her own ghost, looking at him with wide, startled eyes. She could not have told why the words startled her so—“I remember drinking with Elmer Van Berg.” Why shouldn’t he remember it? What was there to startle her in that?
He went on speaking.
“There wasn’t anything about that in the papers—I read them all this morning. But the tray and the glasses must have been there.”
A light nervous shudder passed over Caroline.
“The papers?” she said.
He nodded.
“I read them all. The tray and the glasses must have been there when they found Elmer.”
“Jim! What are you saying?”
He said, “I wonder if they’ve got my finger-prints.”
Caroline flung herself towards him and caught his hand.
“Jim—I’m frightened. What are you saying?”
“I’m telling you what you wanted to know. That’s one of the bits I remember—drinking with Elmer Van Berg the night he was shot. Do you want to hear any more?”
Caroline’s hand clung to his.
“Yes,” she said.
He laughed.
“You won’t like it. You’d better go home.”
“Tell me.”
She felt his hand twitch. His voice changed.
“It’s not like remembering really—it’s like seeing a lot of little pictures—broken. There’s one of a fog. And I can hear someone talking—I don’t know whether it’s me or someone else. It’s beastly. The voice keeps saying, ‘Like a kid’s green beads—no one knows but me—no one knows where they are—a kid’s green beads—’” He stopped. She felt the muscles rise as he clenched his hand.
She came nearer, pressing against him as if she could protect him from this something which threatened. Whatever it was, he was Jim, and hers. She had a passionate conviction that she could keep him safe whatever happened.
“There’s another bit about the emeralds. I can see them under the light. I can’t see Elmer—only his hand under the light, and the emeralds hanging from it—eight of them, with little pearl chains between them—‘like a kid’s green beads.’”
Caroline put her arms around him.
“Don’t, darling!”
“Do you think I shot him?”
“No!” said Caroline, in a quick, fierce voice.
“She said I did—to get the emeralds.”
“That woman?”
“Yes, Nesta. She said Jim Riddell shot him and took the emeralds. She was in it too. And he hid the emeralds and went off up to Glasgow by the Alice Arden—only he never got there, because she was wrecked.”
“What has that got to do with you?” said Caroline, still in that new fierce voice.
“She says I’m Jim Riddell.”
“You’re not! Why should you be?”
“I don’t know—Caroline, I don’t know.” She felt a shudder pass over him. “If I could remember—but I can’t remember.”
“You will.”
He was silent. Her words went echoing through the empty spaces of his mind: “Remember—remember—you will remember.” They repeated themselves endlessly and died away. Suppose he didn’t remember. There was a six weeks gap in his life. Suppose he never remembered what had happened in those six weeks. Suppose he did remember. Suppose he had really shot Elmer Van Berg ……
Outrageous Fortune Page 9
