Strange Recompense

by Catherine Airlie

  “I—hope he’ll get it,” Anna said. “But you’ll hate leaving here, Ruth.”

  “Yes,” Ruth answered with absolute candour, “but I can’t stand in his way.”

  “Making sacrifices is part of life,” Anna said in a strained undertone which completely changed her voice. “Ruth, I want to go away.”

  Ruth glanced at her sharply.

  “We’ve been over all this before,” she pointed out.

  “I know, but—I feel it will be best to go. I’ve thought it all over. Sister Enman said once that a fresh mind on a case was sometimes nine-tenths of the way towards a solution, that—that a doctor could be too near to a case to see it objectively.” She paused, clenching her hands nervously by her side in an effort to still their trembling. “I wonder if Noel would put me in touch with the specialist he told me about in Bristol? He mentioned him the other day when—when we hadn’t got very far with the tests we were doing, and I thought I could—go into hospital there.” She raised dark, unhappy eyes to Ruth’s, as if pleading with her to understand. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate all Noel has done,” she begged, “or that I think he has failed. It’s just—just that I feel someone else might be—the best decision.”

  Ruth came across the room to stand facing her on the hearthrug. “Anna, my dear, that isn’t your true reason for wanting to go is it?” she asked gently.

  “How can I stay!” The cry came straight from Anna’s heart, wrung from her against her will. “How can I go on accepting your kindness and doing nothing in return! Ruth, I must go. I must!”

  Ruth’s eyes lifted suddenly to the door to see her brother unexpectedly standing there with a look in his eyes that seared straight across her heart.

  “Anna, what nonsense is this?” he demanded, striding across the room. “You know you have no right to talk like this—no right to leave us. You know I can keep you here by compulsion, if I wish!”

  Softly Ruth tiptoed out of the room, drawing the door behind her, leaving them face to face with the most hopeless situation she had ever been a party to, her pity reaching out to them, yet conscious that there was nothing further she could do. It remained to Noel, now, to resolve their problem.

  “If you wish!” Anna echoed Noel’s last words with a kind of hopelessness which he had never heard in her voice before. “But you must not force me to stay. You know I must go. You know it is the only thing to do now.”

  She looked at him, trying to keep the agony of her love from welling to her eyes, but he saw it and came to her in one long stride.

  “Anna—my little love!” Roughly he took her into his arms, holding her close, his lips against her hair. “How can I bear to lose you? How can I let you go!”

  She lay in his arms, conscious of peace abounding, of the world and its problems suddenly shut out. Only the caressing movement of his hand against her hair seemed real in that moment when his love stood confessed in all its tenderness and passion. And then, swiftly, he pressed her head against him in an agony of longing reflected poignantly in her own heart, and put her gently but firmly from him. She saw the compressed lines about his mouth and the hardness of his eyes as he said harshly:

  “This is no solution. But I beg of you not to run away. I’m giving myself another week to solve all this. After that I shall be forced to take you to someone else.”

  “You are going away?” she asked unsteadily.

  “Yes. If you stay here quietly with Ruth you’ll be helping all you can.”

  If you stay quietly with Ruth! Did he know how much he was offering her, how much she longed to stay forever in this lovely backwater where life’s rush and turmoil was muted, and kindness, and love surrounded her on all sides?

  “I’ll stay,” she promised at last, “if Ruth will have me.”

  “I don’t think there’s any fear of that,” he told her as he turned towards the door. “Ruth has accepted you, Anna, and that means a great deal.”

  He told his sister his plans when Anna had gone to bed and they were alone, and Ruth found herself frowning over them.

  “You’re quite sure about this?” she asked. “You think it is sure to bring results?”

  “I’m hoping it will—hoping against hope.”

  “At whatever cost to yourself?” Her eyes were steady on his. The time had passed for pretence between them.

  “At whatever cost,” he repeated firmly.

  “Then go,” she said, “and God bless you, my dear!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  NOEL LEFT GLYNMARETH early on the following Monday morning, travelling across country until he reached the Great North Road, which he followed as far as Boroughbridge. Here he decided to spend the night, putting up at The Three Arrows, where he dined well and slept comfortably, setting out early again for his real objective.

  Over breakfast in the hotel’s spacious dining-room he had studied a road map of the district, and instead of continuing on the main highway he branched off and was soon winding along narrow by-ways, through little villages as old as time itself, flanked by the broad acres of Yorkshire he had heard so much about but had never visited until now, the rich agricultural belt of waving corn and heavy-eared wheat that lies close under the knees of the Hambleton Hills.

  He had made up his mind to follow every clue, no matter how slight, and the village of Alne lay somewhere ahead of him.

  Once, when he stopped to ask his way, he realized how little he really had to go on. He was searching for a girl called Anna in a possible half-dozen villages or small towns over a wide area of the north-east coast, and he had nothing but a snapshot to help him with his explanations.

  The most likely person, he considered, would be the local vicar, and when he had steered the car through a beautiful avenue of trees, like a cool green tunnel in the summer sunshine, he came upon the village church with its gaunt, many-gabled old vicarage facing it across the road.

  The door of the vicarage stood hospitably open on this warm July day and the vicar himself came in answer to his summons. He was evidently a man who knew his flock, and it was obvious after only a few minutes’ consultation that he could do nothing to help.

  “It’s an unusual name for these parts,” he pointed out, adjusting his horn-rimmed spectacles to study Noel more closely. “I should have remembered it even if the girl had left here many years ago.”

  Another blank, Noel thought as he offered the older man his thanks and his sincere apologies for wasting his time. Was it always going to be like this? Was he never going to be able to give Anna back that blank period in her life, the only way in which she was not completely normal?

  His destination now was Northumberland, and he drove straight on for the next three hours, forgetful of food or fatigue as he felt instinctively that he was coming nearer to his goal. Here he came closer to the sea, that grey North Sea of Anna’s remembering, and here, too, were the very moors and the grey old houses she had described so accurately!

  Coming upon them for the first time, he marvelled at the fund of detail she had managed to convey in this respect, and took new hope from it. He had come thus far and the way seemed suddenly clear.

  His first objective was Alnwick, but he did not waste much time there. He was now more than ever convinced that the letters ALN were incorporated in the name of this northern town, but he felt that he would have to search outside the town itself for her actual home.

  Then, almost by accident, he came upon a signpost on a road going towards the sea with a word printed on it which made every nerve in his body vibrate with excitement. Here, perhaps, was journey’s end!

  A sudden, ungovernable sense of loss and disappointment assailed him for a moment as his love crushed all other considerations out of his mind, and he saw himself handing Anna over to someone who had a greater right to comfort her than he would ever have.

  Fierce, primitive jealousy blinded him, but he knew that he must not waver. What he was doing was his own part in her return to life, all he could give her f
or the future, and he must give it willingly. What he was about to lose had never really been his to take. Some other man would gain because he had the prior right, and Anna would eventually forget him.

  He had said it himself. “When all this is over you will remember the past but you will have forgotten all that came between.” He tortured himself with the repetition of the thought, wondering if there had ever been a case history to prove differently, searching his mind for the hope, and then he acknowledged that it was one of the mercies for which man could not account and that he should not wish it otherwise. A merciful blacking out, that was all!

  Alnmouth! The name on the signpost danced before his eyes in the sunlight, mocking him, and then he let in his clutch and drove on.

  Far ahead he could see the red-tiled roofs and the church spire of a fairy-tale village rising clear against the blue of sea and distant horizon, a cluster of tiny houses built on a spit of land with a shining curve of silver river girdling it round. It looked so much out of this world that he was almost tempted to take it for a mirage until he remembered the down-to-earth signpost which had said ALNMOUTH—4 miles.

  The road wound with every hundred yards and he lost sight of the village from time to time, coming upon it again at a new angle of beauty and feeling more than ever convinced that here was his destination. His pulses quickened as he drove through the narrow main street between old sandstone cottages and the little village shops, and before he thought of looking for a hotel he drove straight on to the sea front.

  In spite of the heat of the sun a cold wind seemed to blow in from the sea, and he turned the car round and drove back a little way along the cobbled street to a picturesque little inn he had noticed.

  The proprietor of “The Schooner” could just manage to find him a single room, although it was in the height of the season, and when he had washed and changed he wandered down to the lounge. He had quite forgotten that he had not eaten all day and was turning his next move over in his mind when he heard his name from the other side of the room.

  “Noel! Noel Melford, by all that’s wonderful!”

  His surprise was no greater than Sara’s appeared to be, and he went towards her with a sense of companionship stirring in him which he had never felt in Sara’s company before, and which was probably the aftermath of that chill loneliness of spirit he had experienced out there on the sea front. Here was someone who would understand, someone who knew all about his present problem and would be willing to help, viewing it with him from the professional angle, at least. The emotional one was not a thing to be shared even by an old acquaintance like Sara.

  “How good to see you!” he declared with far more warmth than he had ever used at their meetings in the past. “Like a breath of home in a foreign land, in fact,” he added, laughing.

  “May one ask what made you choose this particular ‘foreign land’?” Sara smiled, sitting down again.

  She wore fine blue tweeds with a grey knitted jumper and, out of uniform, she looked softer and altogether more feminine, somehow. Noel realized that he had never thought of Sara much—out of uniform. She was the perfect nurse, and she was Ruth’s friend. Apart from that, he had never really studied Sara’s attributes, only knowing that she had irritated him at times in a vague, inexplicable way but she was both efficient and indispensable at the hospital, so that he accepted her in his home both as Ruth’s friend and an interesting colleague.

  “You may!” he returned, adding more seriously: “This appears to be something of a coincidence, Sara, you and I being here together. I know, of course, that you’re on holiday and I ought not to thrust hospital affairs at you like this, but perhaps Anna’s isn’t quite an ordinary case.”

  “Was it ever a hospital case?” Sara asked somewhat sharply. “You were more than a little interested in it right from the start.”

  “Yes,” he agreed with a frankness which struck like a knife, “and I am hoping that I may come to the end of my quest here.”

  Sara gazed down at her neat brogues. They were stained with seawater and sand and suggested that she might have walked some considerable distance along the shore.

  “Have you—found anything?” she asked.

  “I arrived less than an hour ago,” he explained, “but I must start my inquiries right away. In a small place like this it ought to be easy.”

  She looked out of the window for a moment, not answering him, and then she took out one of her own cigarettes and tapped it thoughtfully against her case.

  “Noel,” she said, “doesn’t it occur to you that you might be wasting your time?”

  He looked at her in frank surprise.

  “In what way?” he asked coldly.

  “Do you really think this girl wants her memory back? You’ve tried everything and failed.”

  She saw a pulse beat quickly in his cheek as he struggled with some emotion or other, but it did not daunt her. Sara was far too sure of herself to be easily intimidated.

  “Failure is something I shall never admit,” he said harshly. “One can’t bear to go on seeing the shadow of fear in a woman’s eyes like that and do nothing about it. Besides, it is my duty to my profession to go on trying.”

  “Not exactly.” Her voice came clipped and cool as he held his lighter for her. “We all considered that she should have been handed over to Tim Wedderburn long ago, you know!”

  His mouth hardened and he snapped the flame out with a quick flick of his wrist.

  “ ‘Handing people over’ isn’t as easy as that, Sara,” he said. “To a sensitive nature like Anna’s the thought of being in the hands of the police is never conducive to a rapid solution of the problem.”

  Sara bit her lip. She had not intended to antagonize him, and she did not trust herself to answer. She felt that she could have swept Anna and her eternal problem into final oblivion without a qualm, but here she was with Noel, alone with him at last in a veritable paradise that had stirred .even her unresponsive heart, and already the girl he had championed had thrust herself between them! She saw Anna as a pale ghost which she was determined to lay forever as soon as the opportunity came her way, and she had believed that opportunity near enough before Noel had suddenly appeared on the scene. She recognized that she must move warily now, that Noel would not be dictated to nor would he deviate from his chosen path until he was certain that it was leading him nowhere.

  Let him stay, then, she decided, and draw one more blank to dishearten him finally, perhaps! She had spent two days in Alnwick making the same sort of inquiries as he was about to make here, and she was convinced that the girl had not lived there, yet a tenacity which had always been evident in her work had kept her where she was. She would not help Noel. She knew that he could not afford to be away from Glynmareth for any great length of time, but she still had eight days in which to sift this mystery to its dregs and she was determined that she would be first to come upon the truth.

  As they went into dinner Sara said with an intimate smile, “Of course you know I’ll help you all I can, Noel. This won’t be the first time we’ve worked on a difficult case together, quite apart from the hospital, and I dare say it won’t be the last. Do you remember the old gardener who used to pester Ruth for her autograph because he imagined she was Ellen Terry?”

  Noel smiled.

  “He was a harmless old soul, and I’m glad he died in harness rather than in an institution. I think he would have liked the idea of going out as he did—just falling asleep among his flowers. I should have hated to have to certify him.”

  She studied him with her elbows on the table, propping her chin, her head on one side.

  “Sometimes, when I’m permitted these intimate glimpses of you,” she said softly, “I think you’re far too sensitive to have become a good doctor. People recognize that sort of thing, you know, and take advantage of it.”

  He laughed.

  “My dear Sara, I assure you I don’t often open my heart, and certainly not to my patients! A doctor, like
everyone else, is the better for a certain amount of sympathy in his make-up. Otherwise, he becomes merely a healing machine.”

  “It’s sympathy then, that has brought you up here on such a slender clue?” she asked quickly.

  “You can call it that,” he said. “Sympathy and determination to solve this problem in the shortest possible time.”

  “How long can you give yourself?”

  “Unfortunately, only a few days. Four at the most.”

  “Noel,” she said suddenly, “why not leave it to me? Suppose we draw up a plan of action? Two minds are always better than one, and it will probably save time in the end.”

  Noel hesitated.

  “Truthfully, Sara,” he confessed, “I don’t think I have a plan yet. I rushed off here more or less on an impulse when I had what I considered to be a good enough clue to be going on with. I started out by going to a place in Yorkshire, but I drew a blank there. I did discover, though, that people are eager enough to help in a case like this, and I am hoping I shall meet with the same sort of co-operation here. There’s no earthly reason, though, for you to spoil your holiday.”

  “Why shouldn’t I help?” she argued. “You appear to be willing to give up part of yours.”

  “It’s different in my case,” he said briefly.

  “I can’t see why,” she told him calmly. “Unless, of course, you’re in love with your patient.”

  “You know that Anna is already married,” he said stiffly. “There can be no question of love—or anything else between us.”

  “How simple that sounds, Noel!” she said. “Sometimes you remind me of an adolescent schoolboy for all your achievements!”

  “The ideals of an adolescent are often enviable,” he returned quietly. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll take a walk on the sea front. I’ve been driving all day and it has left me cramped.”

  Fool; Sara called herself. Fool, to have chanced so much!