“To gain time!” Lacy too leaned forward. “That’s exactly what I do mean. Why, Evelyn, do you mean to tell me that you—you can believe for a single instant that he doesn’t know who he is?” She gave a little, excited laugh. “Oh, my dear, you can’t, you really can’t believe it! Those stupid men can swallow it if they like. But don’t tell me that you believe in it. If he’d just lost his memory, and didn’t know who he was at all—that would be quite another pair of shoes. But to tell me that he’s either Jack or Jim, and doesn’t know which—no, I’d never be able to believe that, not if I lived to be three hundred. No, I’m sure, sure, sure that he’s Jack. And oh, Evelyn, you will make him happy and not keep him waiting too long, won’t you? You see,”—Lacy’s torrent of words slowed down a little—“it’s quite simple. And I can’t see what you’ve got to wait for. If it’s Jack, all you have to do is to marry him. And really, my dear, even if it was Jim, I should advise your having another wedding, just in case——”
“Don’t, Lacy!” The words came with a gasp; and as they came, Evelyn was on her feet and half way towards the door.
Lacy stared after her, on the edge of offence. But when the door opened and shut again sharply, she smiled and nodded to herself.
“I believe she’s frightfully in love with him,” she said. “And of course it’s Jack—it always was.”
Manning, busy over his correspondence in the dining-room, looked up from a half-written letter with a scowl which was meant to discourage Lacy, in case she should be—as she usually was—in a conversational mood. Instead of Lacy he saw Evelyn. She had her hand on the door, and it was evident that something had shaken her. There was no colour in her face, and her breathing was quick and irregular.
Now what had Lacy been saying, was Manning’s thought as he swung round in his chair with a “Well, what is it?”
Evelyn tried to force a smile, but her trembling lips betrayed her. She stood where she was, and said,
“Monkey!”
Manning came across to her.
“What’s the matter, old girl?”
“Monkey, did he read it? Do you think he read it?”
“He?—oh, Laydon. Did he read what?”
“That horrible paper. Lacy says he did.” There was just the faintest quiver in the low voice.
“What paper? I’m afraid I haven’t got there.”
Evelyn put one hand to her throat.
“The paper with that paragraph in it—about me. Lacy showed it to you. Monkey, do you think he read it? She seems to think he did.”
Monkey gave a long whistle of dismay. Lacy deserved a spanking for this. Too bad of her—yes, really too bad!
“My dear girl, why should he have read it?”
“It was here? He might have read it?”
Manning screwed up his face.
“I suppose so. How on earth can I tell? My dear girl, what does it matter? Who’s going to take any notice of what that sort of rag has got to say about anyone? It’s all lies anyhow.”
Evelyn lifted blank, pathetic eyes.
“Do you think he read it? Lacy’s sure he read it. It—it wasn’t just lies, you know, Monkey. If it was, I wouldn’t mind. But it wasn’t. I was thinking about Chris; and I had really made up my mind that I would marry him. I thought he wouldn’t be like most men. I—I haven’t got what most men want. But I’m fond of Chris, and I didn’t think he’d be one of the demanding sort——” She broke off and put her hand on his arm.
“All right, old girl—steady!”
A very faint smile trembled on her lips for an instant.
“I want you to know”—the smile trembled away—“I’ve been so frightfully lonely—I didn’t think I could go on. And Chris—it wouldn’t have been fair with most men, you know,—taking a lot, and not giving very much isn’t fair. But Chris”—she laughed very faintly—“he’s so fond of himself that I didn’t think he’d miss what I hadn’t got to give. Only when it came to the point I couldn’t do it. That’s what I wanted you to know. I’d refused him before I got your letter—I really had.”
She gave his arm a convulsive squeeze and ran out of the room without another word.
XVI
Manning drove Evelyn out to the Königswald next day. She had not seen him alone since the evening before. As soon as they were clear of the traffic she turned to him and said,
“I made a fool of myself last night—I’m sorry.”
“Nonsense!” said Manning.
Evelyn laughed.
“What a nice, polite host!”
Manning scowled.
“I’m not.”
“You are. The perfect host, polite and polished. You do Lacy great credit, you know.” Then her voice changed. “You hated it like poison—you know you did.”
“Why dig it up?”
“Well, I just wanted to say——” She stopped, biting her lip; quite suddenly her smile came out—a delightful smile, as sunny as a spring day. “I did make a fool of myself, and I don’t want you to have a wrong idea about what I said. I mean I don’t want you to think I just go on being stupid and unhappy all the time. I don’t, you know; I—I’m afraid I can’t. Some people can, but I can’t. I can’t go on being unhappy. I can be as miserable as anyone for a bit, but I can’t go on with it; I—I get bored.”
He looked at her and saw her eyes full of tears, and behind the tears a twinkle. She nodded at him and winked away a very bright drop.
“I get spasms of being lonely—like toothache And then it stops, and everything seems pretty good again—you know, nice people like you and Lacy, and one’s bulbs coming up, and kittens, and babies, and things like that. I simply can’t go on morbing. Is that dreadful?”
Manning glared at the radiator cap.
“For the Lord’s sake, don’t talk rot!” he said violently. “Thank heaven you’re normal, and not one of those beastly, morbid people who spend their time with their heads screwed round backwards looking into the past. Women love doing it—simply love it, the same as they love making scenes.”
“Monkey!”
“You do. All women love scenes, same as all men detest ’em. The proper place for Woman-Woman with a capital W, my dear—is melodrama. She loves every minute of it, because any proper melodrama is just a series of scenes one after the other, all deuced painful and harrowing, with the heroine bang in the lime-light.”
“Monkey, you fiend!”
He gave her a malicious grin.
“You don’t like it because it’s true. Talking of melodrama, I saw a topping one once, where the villain kept on following the girl all round the stage; and every time she said ‘Unhand me!’ he came out with ‘I will not tell herrr I have killed herrr fatherrr’ in one of the best parade voices I’ve ever heard. He’d corpsed the old man a little earlier in the same scene, and he and the girl had to dodge Father’s boots every time they crossed the stage.”
He slowed down and pointed with his left hand.
“That’s where the bank fell in.”
Evelyn looked. Her mind filled with the picture of the pitch dark, rainy night. They drove on in silence. When the car stopped she got out without a word, took off her fur coat, and threw it down on the back seat.
“Sure you’d rather go alone?” said Manning.
“Yes, quite sure.”
“Well, it’s no distance—straight on up that path until you come to the clearing.”
Evelyn walked slowly up the path. It was cold and damp among the trees—cold and damp and still. She wished that she had kept her coat. She wished that she were already face to face with Anna Blum. She wished that she had not come.
Anna Blum was washing up. When she heard the knock at the door she took her red hands out of the steaming water and called,
“Herein!”
The door was pushed a little, timidly, and there was a second knock. Anna dried her hands and went to the door, wondering who might be there. Not someone from the village. No, certainly not someone from the villa
ge—and Mina would not knock. She saw Evelyn first as a slim, dark figure, then as a girl with a young, beautiful face and anxious eyes. The eyes looked at her, and a pretty voice said in halting German:
“Are you Frau Blum—Frau Anna Blum?”
“Certainly.”
Anna still held the door in one moist, steaming hand.
“May I come in?”
“Certainly,” said Anna again; and this time she let go of the door and stood back.
Evelyn took the chair which Anna set for her and there was a little silence. It was broken by Anna.
“You are English, Fräulein?”
“Yes,” said Evelyn. Then she smiled. “My German is so bad; I have not spoken it since I was a child.”
Anna nodded.
“Since you are English, it is because of Anton you are come. Na?”
“Yes.”
Anna had remained standing by the table. Now she drew forward her usual chair, and sat down just where she had sat on the night of the storm while Manning questioned her. This girl too would ask questions no doubt. Perhaps she was a sister. Yes, she must be Anton’s sister.
“If we are to talk, it will be better if we can understand one another,” she said. “When I talk like this, can you understand me, Fräulein?”
“Yes, I can understand.”
Anna picked up her knitting.
“That is famous. I will speak in German, and you can speak in English. Oh, yes, I understand English very well. I can even talk it—very much as you talk German, Fräulein. But each will be happier in her own language—nicht wahr?”
Evelyn said ‘Yes,’ and was increasingly aware of Anna’s command of the situation. It was Anna, not she, who would conduct this interview; and what Anna desired to say would be said, no more and no less.
Evelyn had not felt so much at a loss for years. She sat with her hands in her lap, waiting. Anna finished a row, and began another before she spoke:
“You wished to see me, Fräulein—to talk?”
“Yes, Frau Blum.”
“Tell me then what it is that you want?”
Evelyn felt her colour rise. A rush of emotion gave her words.
“You saved his life—you took care of him all those years—I wanted to see you.”
Anna’s face did not change. The needles clicked steadily.
“Is he well?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“He wrote to me,” said Anna with a tinge of pride in her voice. “He said that he was well, and that his grandfather had acknowledged him.” She bent a sudden, direct look on Evelyn. “Of you, Fräulein, he said nothing. Are you his sister?”
Evelyn pulled off her left-hand glove and held out the hand with the wedding-ring upon it.
“I am married. I am Jim Laydon’s wife.”
“Jim.” Anna repeated the word in a slow, meditative fashion.
“Frau Blum,” said Evelyn, “I’ve come here to ask you a question. May I ask it? And before you answer it, will you think what the answer means to me? He says he doesn’t know whether he is Jim Laydon or Jack Laydon. And I—I am Jim Laydon’s wife. You can think what that means. He’s come back like this; and I don’t know whether I’m his wife, or whether I’ve been a widow for ten years.”
Anna Blum went on knitting.
“Herr Je! You look so young!” she said.
Evelyn made an impatient gesture.
“I was eighteen when we were married. I’m twenty-eight now, Frau Blum.”
“You look very young,” said Anna placidly.
“Frau Blum, please.”
“You have not asked me anything yet.”
“No, but I’m going to. And you will—you will try and remember, won’t you? It’s so terribly important.”
“I will do my best.”
“The thing I want to ask is this. His identity disc”—she put her hand to her throat—“you know, the medal with the name. They all had it—your people too. What happened to it?”
Anna’s gaze was candid.
“Ach, ja—that? It was in my statement; the Herr Major can show it to you. I took it from his neck and put it with his clothes at the top of the waterfall where my poor nephew was drowned.”
“Yes, I know. But, Frau Blum—the name. If you took it from him, if you had it in your hand, there was the name on it. Didn’t you—didn’t you see the name?”
Anna shook her head.
“All was as I told the Herr Major. I took it from his neck, and I put it with the clothes by the waterfall. There is nothing else to say.”
Evelyn was leaning forward, her hands stretched out, palm upwards.
“Frau Blum, you must have seen the name. Think what it means to me!”
“That is what you all say—must, must—I must have seen it—I must have read the name.”
Evelyn felt that she was being spoken to as if she were a child; Anna’s tone was so good-humoured and unhurried.
“Na, I will tell you just how it was, and you will see whether there was that must”—she used the English word—“I will tell you. And you have to think that there was a great storm, and that I was alone with him in a dark house, and nothing but one small light to see by. It is very easy to say must. But I was there with a wounded man, and all my work cut out to get the clothes off him and get him to bed. Then when I had done it, I remembered the medal, and I took it off his neck. There was just the one little light, and the draught blew it here and there. I took the medal in my hand, and I looked at it; and where the name was, blood had run down from his wound and dried. That’s the truth. I didn’t touch it or wash it off. I did not tell that to the Herr Major, because very certainly he would have said ‘Why did you not wash it? Why did you not look?’” Anna nodded gently over the clicking needles. “Yes, he would have said that. Men do not understand these things; but you perhaps will understand. Quite suddenly it came to me that I did not want to touch it, or to know who he was. Perhaps there has been a time when you have felt like that or—perhaps not. But that is the truth, and if you like, I will put my hand on the Bible and swear that it is so.”
“You didn’t see anything at all?” Evelyn was a little breathless. She believed Anna. It was impossible to sit there looking at Anna, listening to Anna, without feeling convinced that every word was true. “Didn’t you see anything at all?”
There was a quiet pause. The room felt still, unnaturally still. No room should feel like that in the day-time.
Anna had dropped her knitting on to her knee.
“Yes, one thing I saw.” The words came with great deliberation.
“Please, Frau Blum, please.”
Anna looked at her. Behind the quiet composure of this look she had her thoughts. She looked at Evelyn, and the thoughts clamoured in her; they were like creatures behind bars. Fortunately the bars were very strong. “You are beautiful, and you are young”—that’s what the thoughts said—“Young and beautiful, and perhaps you think that you love him, that you know how to love him. Mein Gott! How should you know how to love him? Presently you will take happiness from him, and love from him; and because you are happy you will think that you know how to love him. I have taken nothing. And I am not young, and I am not beautiful. You will take; but you cannot give as I have given, because I have given everything—the love of my country and the love of my own folk, and the friendship of my neighbours, all given, all gone. And it will never come back. And he will never come back. So now I have nothing.”
The thoughts did not pass into words in Anna’s mind. They were present as feeling only, and this feeling had something high and proud that mixed with the pain and helped her to bear it.
“Please, please, Frau Blum,” said Evelyn quivering. She felt that she could not support Anna’s gaze for another instant—Anna’s calm, serious gaze. “Oh, please,” she whispered—“please.”
Anna took up her knitting again.
“I saw one letter. It was a ‘J.’ That does not help you?”
Evelyn p
ut her hands over her face. After a moment’s silence she said,
“No, that doesn’t help at all.”
She felt the tears run down behind her hands—hot, burning tears. She did not cry easily; and yet, now she was crying, she could not have said why. She believed Anna, but she did not understand Anna. She had the feeling that in this room, just beyond her reach, there was something vital to her happiness, and that no effort of hers could bring it within her grasp. After a moment she dried her eyes.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I hoped so much that you would know.”
Anna said nothing.
“I hoped——” said Evelyn. Then her hand tightened on the wet, rolled-up handkerchief it held, and she stopped. When she could trust her voice, she leaned forward. “There was one other thing I wanted to ask you. Major Manning said you told him that once or twice in the years Anton was with you—you said—you told him, that he had talked—when he was ill. I wanted to ask you about that.”
“Ach, ja,” said Anna. “That is true.”
“Then will you tell me about it? If he talked and you heard what he said, it might be such a help. You see that, don’t you?”
“Certainly. But what he said would not help you—no.”
“If you would tell me! Please tell me.”
“Certainly I will tell you.” Always the calm friendly voice, the calm, assured manner. “I will tell you, but it will not help. There were three times that he spoke, as I told the Herr Major—once before we came here; and once after; and once at the very beginning of all. The two last times”—she shrugged her shoulders—“Na, it was nothing. Perhaps you have heard someone speak in their sleep, quick and indistinct, so that no one could tell what the words are—a sound of words, but not real words at all. Well, it was like that. I could not tell you whether the sound was like German or like English. I think he dreamt that he was talking, and made a sound. I do not think there were any words to hear.”
“And the first time?” said Evelyn quickly. “Tell me about that.”
Anna was silent for a moment; she did not know whether to speak or not. She knitted her row to the end, and considered the matter. After all, it was only a word or two; and perhaps if she spoke, this girl would go away satisfied. Anna wanted her to go before Josef came in. “Yes, the first time was different. But it will not help you.”
The Amazing Chance Page 11
