Outrageous Fortune (3 page)

“Then you don't know that he was on the
Alice Arden
?”

“No. But I'm afraid—because he hasn't written—and when I didn't hear, I came home—and then last night there was that S.O.S., and I thought—” She stopped and fixed pleading eyes on the sister. “You're sure it wasn't Jim?”

The sister nodded.

“I'm afraid so. Riddell was the name, though we couldn't be sure about it at first—Jimmy Riddell—and his wife has taken him away.”

“Oh—” said Caroline. “And he hadn't any papers or anything of that sort?”

“Not a thing—nothing at all, except the torn-off end of a letter.”

“Oh, that's something!” Caroline's voice thrilled. “A bit of a letter? Oh please what was on it?”

“Nothing but the signature,” said the day sister.

“What? Your affectionate Uncle Alfred, or Aunt Maria, or Cousin Jemima?”

The day sister felt a little disturbed; she did not know why.

“No—it was only the name.”

“What name?”

“Just Caroline.”

Caroline put both hands to her head as if she were afraid that her hat would blow off in some violent, intangible wind. She felt giddy with the rush of it. It slapped her face and sang in her ears. She held on to her bright brown curls and opened her eyes as far as they would go.

“Caroline?” she said in her very deepest voice.

“That's all.”

“It's quite enough. My dear thing, it's more than enough—because I am Caroline.”

“Oh!” said the sister. Then she said, “Caroline—” in an experimental sort of way. Then she stopped dead.

“Caroline Leigh,” said Caroline with a warm rush of words. “I told the girl who let me in, but I expect she forgot—or perhaps she just didn't like the name—lots of people don't. But I
am
Caroline Leigh, and I wrote to him and signed it just like that—just Caroline. And what do you think of that?”

The sister did not seem able to think at all. She took refuge behind Nesta Riddell.

“Mrs Riddell said he was her husband.”

“Is her name Caroline?”

“I don't know. I did ask her if she knew anyone by that name?”

“And what did she say?”

“She said she might.”

Caroline stopped holding her curls. The wind had blown past her and away. Her right hand took her left hand and pinched it hard.

“She said he was her husband?”

“Yes.”

“She ought to know. What was he like? I ought to have asked that straight away—oughtn't I? What was he like?”

The day sister looked vague. Her mind didn't work as quickly as that; it did not in fact work quickly at all, except on the accustomed lines of routine.

Caroline's eyes sparkled and implored. They were bright, as deep spring water is bright—bright, and brown, and eager.

“Oh, what was he like? Aren't you going to tell me?”

“Well—” said the sister slowly, “it's not so very easy to say, you know.”

“His age, height, weight, colour, hair, eyes?” Caroline flung the words at her like a handful of pebbles.

The day sister caught at the easiest question, “Well, his hair was what you'd call betwixt and between—nothing very special, you know.”

“And his eyes?”

“I never noticed them—he'd mostly got them shut.”

Caroline picked up the rest of the pebbles and threw them one by one. She wanted to shake the sister, but she restrained herself.

“Age?”

“Oh, he wasn't old.”

“About thirty?”

“He might have been.”

“Height?”

“Oh, just ordinary.”

“Colouring?”

“Well, he was sunburnt—we all noticed that.”

“Where has she taken him?”

“Marley,” said the sister. “It's only eight miles from here, and if it will set your mind at rest—”

“Yes—I must see him. I'll go there. Thank you very much—I'll go.” She turned, and turned back again. “You haven't got that bit of my letter, I suppose?”

This was going too far for the day sister.

“I don't see how it could be your letter,” she protested. “No—we left it in his pocket just where it was.”

Caroline turned again. The signature would have told her everything at once. Now she'd got to wait and wait and wait. Eight miles, or eight hundred, were all the same when you wanted to know something at once—at once.

“Miss Leigh—”

Of course she hadn't said good-bye. How frightfully, unforgivably rude. She flung round with an impulsive hand out.

“Oh, please forgive me—you've been so kind!”

But the sister was taking something out of her apron pocket.

“That's nothing. But if you're seeing Mrs Riddell, perhaps you'll give her this.” She held out a flimsy folded paper. “The nurse who let her in thinks she must have dropped it when she opened her bag. She's just given it to me, and though I don't suppose it's important, still if you are seeing her—”

“Yes, of course. What's the address?”

“She didn't say—but Marley's quite a small place.”

“Good-bye, and thank you,” said Caroline.

IV

Tides rising and falling—waves rocking—and a long dream that rocked with them—rocking—rocking. He was swinging like a pendulum between the dream and some vague waking state—swing, swing—out and back again—out and back again. When he swung out, there was a sense of light and women's voices; but when he swung back, there was the rise and fall of water, and black fog, and only one voice, that never stopped. He thought the voice was his own, and when he was in the dream he knew very well what it was saying; but when he swung towards the light the meaning drained away and was gone even before he lost the sound.

Presently the swing of the pendulum became uneven. There was a long swing out into the light, and a short swing back into the fog. The voice dwindled, and its meaning went from him. The light beat strong and warm against his eyelids. They opened, and up went an arm in an instinctive movement to shield his eyes. There was sunlight in the room, slanting across the bed in which he lay. As he moved, someone else moved too. There was a soft hurry of footsteps. A blind came down with a click and the sun was shut out. His arm dropped.

He rose on his elbow, and saw a girl turning back from the window, a very pretty girl with silver flaxen hair and big pale blue eyes. She wore a blue overall, and she was looking at him rather as a small child looks at a tiger in a cage.

She said “Oh!” in a soft, breathless way and edged towards the door.

He sat up, closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them again. The girl had almost reached the door.

“I say—don't go,” he said in an alarmed voice.

The girl stood where she was.

“I'll tell Nesta,” she said.

He repeated the name.

“Who's Nesta?”

She looked really terrified when he said that.

“Oh
please
—” she began.

“I say, don't look so frightened—I only want to know where I am.”

This was apparently something that could be answered. A little modest pride displaced her timidity.

“You're at our place—Tom's and mine. I'm Min.”

“Oh—” He was expected to know who Tom was..… Tom and Min. He certainly didn't, but it was obvious that he ought to.

The girl said again, “I'll tell Nesta,” and got as far as turning the handle of the door, when he stopped her.

“No—do wait a moment. Can't you tell me what's happened? I don't know—I—” His voice stopped dead. He didn't know. What didn't he know?

He shut his eyes and tried to pierce the fog that filled his mind. He had had a dream about fog, and a dream about a voice. He had left the voice behind in the dream, but the fog had come with him. It filled his brain. He groped in it and found nothing.

At the sound of the closing door he opened his eyes again. Min was gone, and where she had been standing there was now someone else—an older woman with dark hair and a high colour. She came across the room, sat down on the edge of his bed, and smiled a ready-made smile.

“Well, Jimmy—so you're awake?” she said.

He felt an immediate prickle of irritation. Her eyes were too close together. Who was she? And what was she doing calling him Jimmy? He loathed being called Jimmy.

“Well?” said Nesta Riddell in her hard bright voice. “You look pounds better. You've slept round the clock, you know. Are you hungry? You ought to be. Min's getting you something.”

He said, speaking slowly and with a sort of frowning intensity.

“Why did you call me Jimmy?”

Nesta Riddell stared.

“Isn't it your name?”

The frown became a sheer straining effort to find an answer to that. And it beat him. He didn't know—he didn't know what his name was. He knew that he hated being called Jimmy. That stuck out like a corner in his mind, but he couldn't get round it.

“Look here,” said Nesta Riddell, “You wait till you've had something to eat. Here's another pillow for you. And if I were you I shouldn't go bothering my head about things at present.”

The pillow was comfortable. He relaxed against it, conscious of a swimming head. Then Min came in with a tray, and he found that he was faint with hunger.

Nesta watched him eat and drink. When he had finished, she took away the tray and came back to her seat on the bed.

“Well?” she said, “feeling better?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Want to talk?”

“Yes.”

“All right—go ahead—”

That was easier said than done. Where were you to begin when you had no landmarks? He went back to the question he had asked before.

“Do you mind telling me where I am?”

“You're at Tom's place—in Ledlington.”

He opened his eyes upon her very directly.

“And who is Tom?”

“My brother,” said Nesta Riddell. Then she laughed a little. “Come, Jimmy—you're not going to say you've forgotten Tom?”

He put his hand up to his head.

“I can't remember. Have I had a crack on the head?”

She nodded, watching him.

“Do you mind telling me how I got here?”

“You really don't remember? Well, I'll go back to a week ago. You know what had happened. You said you'd got to get off the map for a bit. I was to come here, and you were going to work up the coast to Glasgow. I don't know what name you went under, but you were on the
Alice Arden
when she got driven ashore on the Elston sands. There was a gale first, and then an awful fog, and she broke up against the cliffs. Very few people were saved. They took you into the Elston cottage hospital, and Tom and I fetched you away yesterday. Can't you really remember anything about it?”

His hand went up to his eyes and pressed on them. He said,

“Tom—” His voice choked on the word. Then, in a dull whisper, “I remember—the fog.”

For a moment it was the fog which was pressing against his eyes—the fog; not his own hand. And behind the fog things moved—vague, horrible things. He jerked himself out of the fog and flung out his hand.

“No—I can't remember.”

“What—nothing?”

“No—no—”

“Not your own name?”

“I don't—know—”

“Your name's Jim Riddell,” said Nesta sharply.

The name came back to him like a faint echo from somewhere in his mind. It was as if someone had spoken it from behind that deadening fog. She said, “Your name is Jim Riddell,” and something in his own mind answered her.

He said the name aloud: “Jim—” Then with more confidence, “Yes—Jim.”

He preferred Jim to Jimmy any day of the week. Jim Riddell … He left the name and began to go over what she had said. He took the easiest part first.

“You brought me here yesterday? I can't remember anything about it.”

“You needn't worry about that. They gave you some kind of a sleeping-draught to take you over the move, and when we got you here you had a good drink of hot milk and off you went again like a baby.”

“Why did you bring me here?” His voice was quiet and direct.

Nesta's dark eyebrows rose.

“That's a funny thing to ask. Where else should I take you? We'd agreed to give London a miss, hadn't we?”

He groped for memories of London.

“London?”

“You're not going to say you've forgotten London!”

“I've forgotten everything. I—” His hand closed upon the edge of the bed. He shut his eyes for a moment, giddy with the sense of empty space all round him. There were no landmarks, nothing to steer by, no horizon line, no faintest, farthest star.

He opened his eyes, clutching desperately at this tangible present—the firm softness of the bed on which he lay; the sunlight at the edge of the blind; the brown linoleum on the floor, with its parquet pattern; the blanket with the three pink stripes across his feet; the texture of the twilled cotton sheet. These things were reassuringly actual.

The woman who sat on the end of the bed looking at him was also actual, but somehow not so reassuring. He didn't like her very much. He didn't like the way she was dressed, or the way she did her hair, or those near-set eyes of hers. He supposed she was handsome, but he didn't like her. She had a black dress with little magenta and yellow squiggles on it. The pattern hurt his eyes.

Her voice cut sharply across his thought—a bright voice with an edge to it.

“You're not going to tell me you've forgotten
me,
Jimmy!”

He looked at her with growing apprehension. There was no echo from the fog. But she called him Jimmy. She had brought him here. And she said “we.” She said “we,” and she called him Jimmy. His hand clenched hard upon the bed. He had to force his voice.