The Lone Hand (Pain)/Chapter 8
VIII.— A Loss and a Gain.
Shortly after the events which I last narrated I happened one sunny morning to be walking down Oxford-street. I had just come back from an interview with a firm of motor manufacturers. They had made me an offer, and I had refused it. As I was walking along I found myself touched on the arm by a girl of about my own age. She was extremely well dressed—much better dressed than I was; and in appearance she was not altogether unlike me except for two points—she was exceedingly pale, and her expression was one of acute anxiety.
“Will you help me?” she said.
It was impossible to suppose that she was a beggar. The idea that she was insane flashed across me for a moment; then I noted her extreme pallor and thought that she might be ill. I am not quite inhuman.
“Yes,” I said. “I will help you if I can. What is the matter?”
“I have lost my memory,” she said. “It has all gone suddenly and absolutely. I do not know what my name is or where I am. I am very reluctant to apply to the police—it means so much publicity. It would be horrible to me. If you could take me somewhere where I could rest for a little time I think my memory would come back again. I hope so. I can't tell you how grateful I should be to you.”
“What made you ask me?”
“Because you looked so nice,” she said simply. “A long stream of people went past me and at first they confused me very much; then I began looking at faces. I looked for a long time, and yours was the first I could trust. If you would take me with you I would not give you more trouble than I could help, and I would do everything I was told. I—I believe there is some money in the bag I have here.”
“That is not a very important point,” I said.
“I don't know. I think I must have money. I think I must always have had it. I have been looking at my clothes, and they seem to me to be very good.”
“So they are,” I said.
She smiled faintly. “It seems so queer to be talking to a stranger like this; only you see I don't know what to do. I don't know how I came here or where I am to go.”
I liked the girl. “At present,” I said, “you will come with me to my flat and have some luncheon. If your memory doesn't come back then you can stay there for the present. I have a spare room, and I will make you quite comfortable. I live alone. Then to-morrow, if your memory has not returned, we can talk about it and decide what is best to do. You must have friends. They will almost certainly advertise for you.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much. I feel quite safe now that I have met you. A few moments ago I was frightened out of my life. How long will it take us to walk to your flat?”
“I don't know,” I said, “and in all probability I never shall.” I stopped a four-wheeler that was crawling past us. The girl was obviously too tired and ill to walk. “Won't you get in?” I said.
She got in and leaned back. “I feel utterly worn out,” she said. “I shall have to wait a little before I can tell you how much I thank you.”
“Come,” I said. “You musn't be silly. After all, we are both human beings. Don't look on an act of ordinary decency as if it were unparalleled heroism.”
Again came that ghost of a smile. I could see that she and I would laugh at the same things, which is in itself a bond of union. She talked no more until we were nearing Hensley-mansions. When the cab stopped she was quite wide-awake and alert, but although she was sitting next the door she did not attempt to open it.
I noted that. The conscious mind could remember nothing, but the sub-conscious mind was remembering absolutely. She was a girl whose carriage-door was opened for her.
It was really delightful to see the change which came over her when she got into my flat. “Now at last I feel safe,” she said, and drew a deep breath. “Don't let me go out again. Don't leave me alone if you can help it. I'm quite all right, really; it's only that I feel terribly pulled down, and for the moment some of myself is not in my keeping. I'm sure it will come back. I shall remember directly.” Suddenly she stopped and seized my hand and kissed it. I told her not to he an idiot, and we both laughed. She absolutely refused to go to bed. She said, “I have had too much of that,” without seeming to know the meaning of the words she used. At this time my flat was run by a good woman who was an excellent cook. She was also a widow, but that did not matter so much. I explained to Mrs. Mason as far as I could do so discreetly the state of affairs, and she at once became intensely interested. She also became slightly disapproving. She let me see clearly that she considered that I had not done enough. My suggestions as to luncheon were waived aside imperiously. “Leave it to me, miss,” said Mrs. Mason. “I know what illness is. I shouldn't wish to seem to boast, but there are few families has had as much illness as mine has. Leave it to me.”
So my new friend—if one must condescend to details—received quintessential soup, roast chicken, and a milk-pudding. As Mrs. Mason knows, if there is one thing I hate more than another it is milk-pudding, but very little she cared.
As we sat down to luncheon my friend said suddenly, “I have forgotten my medicine.”
Here was a clue. I tried to show no absorbing interest and to ask quite casually, “What medicine do you mean?”
The look of pained anxiety which had quite left her face now came back again. “What medicine do I mean?” she repeated. “There was something—always—before luncheon. Please, don't ask me any questions. It's no good. I can't remember, and it makes me so wretched.” She seemed to be on the verge of tears. I asked her no more questions, and I felt like a perfect pig for having asked her that one, but I had the usual fool-consolation that I had acted for the best. I could not find out that there was anything wrong with her mind. Distinctly she had a humorous side. She could see all that was quaint in Mrs. Mason, and asked numberless questions about her. She was not in the least surprised when I told her that I was an engineer. “Almost everybody's something nowadays,” she remarked, and I was quite certain that it was not her own remark; it was an echo which her sub-conscious mind had caught up from the time before she lost her memory, and had now reproduced at the call of a fitting occasion. But of whatever subject we spoke she always came back to the same thing. It was always, “I am safe now. I'm quite safe. I needn't bother any more. It will come right. Oh, you are good to me!”
I made her drink one glass of port at luncheon, and I made her sleep afterwards. At first she hesitated, but I told her that I was not going out—that I should be in the next room all the time. Then she consented. This was a crucial test with me. I went into her room twice, and found her fast asleep. It would not have surprised me if, when she woke again, she had entirely failed to remember me or the circumstances which had led to her making my acquaintance. On the contrary, she remembered me perfectly. The only curious thing that struck me at tea-time was that she called me Rose at times. “Thanks awfully, Rose,” she would say when I passed her anything.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her why she called me Rose, but the other question which I had put to her had been disastrous, and I refrained. After tea she put her head in her hands and said she was going to think hard, and it would all come back. She made me renew a promise that I would not go to the police. I think she struggled in this way for about an hour, and then she flung herself back in her chair and burst into tears. I consoled her as well as I could, and by dinner-time she was quite herself again; there was even a touch of colour in her face. She talked well; I think even it would have been said that she talked brilliantly. There was nothing apparently wrong with her but her lapse of memory.
After dinner I said to her, “I have sent for my doctor. He's quite a nice old man, and you won't mind him a bit. I have not told him that you have lost your memory, and I shall not tell him so. Perhaps he will be able to give you something that is good for you.”
Doctor Morning (whose acquaintance I had continued) came and saw my friend, and saw me afterwards. I gave him no information and no lead.
“Well?” I said.
“Yes, Miss Castel,” said the doctor. “Your friend—by the way, you forgot to give me her name—is extremely anæmic. She is recovering from a severe illness. She has had diphtheria badly. Let her rest and feed her up, and don't let her worry. She seems inclined to worry about something or other. I'll send something round for her directly.”
After the doctor had gone I found from my friend that she had been perplexed by some of his questions. She hoped that she had answered rightly—that he had suspected nothing. I recalled the faintest possible twinkle in Doctor Morning's eye as he told me that I had forgotten to give him my friend's name. I wished now that I had made a clean breast of it. He was probably aware, anyhow, that he was dealing with a quite interesing case of amnesia.
The whole thing came out as my friend was going to bed. I had gone to her room with her, and as she was saying good-night she suddenly observed, “But I don't know your name. It's ridiculous. I never asked you. Do tell me what your name is.”
“I'm Miss Castel—Wilhelmina Castel.”
She clasped her hands impulsively together and then pressed them over her eyes.
“Wait!” she cried. “Wait! It's all coming back. You cannot be Miss Castel. I'm Miss Castel—Cynthia Castel. I remember it distinctly. I remember Marley Court, and my sweet nurse Rose. Yes, I remember everything.”
I laughed. “It's all quite simple,” I said. “Marley Court is where my grandfather lives. He quarrelled with my father—you may have heard him speak of it. You are a daughter of my father's younger brother. I heard of you as a baby once in days long back. We are first cousins. Isn't it ridiculous and melodramatic?”
After that there was a long hour's talk. My cousin's memory had come back as suddenly as it had gone. This, I was told afterwards, is not unusual. She could tell me a good deal about my grandfather. One sentence stuck in my memory. “He's not violent any more.” Cynthia had lived with him since her parents' death. I was calling her Cynthia before the end of that hour's talk, when I reproached myself for keeping her awake too long and insisted on leaving her. Her joy at recovering her memory was pathetic, and her intense gratitude to myself was absurd.
“Suppose,” she said, “that I had not asked you for your name? “
“Well,” I said, “aren't your things marked?”
She shook her head. “Only initials.”
“And the bag?” I asked.
We hunted up the bag. It contained the return half of her ticket, a handkerchief, and a purse with four shillings and sixpence in it, but nothing by which I could certainly have identified her. She could remember now why she had come to London; it was an old and unimportant engagement with a dressmaker. It had been cancelled in consequence of her health. She could not remember going to the station. From that point until she met me everything was like a forgotten dream.
There were advertisements in every paper next morning—discreet advertisements with no name given. I put her into the train and spoke to the guard about her. I might have travelled with her, but I did not wish to meet Grandpapa. I had not forgotten the letter he wrote to me when my father died.
I did meet him in the end. One has to forgive one's own flesh and blood. The letter which he sent to me was pathetic in its senile shakiness and absolutely right. He could not begin to thank me, so he said, for what I had done for Cynthia; all he wanted was to say he was sorry and ashamed. He would have liked to be friends with me before he died, but he supposed that was impossible. He would have liked also to have been of service to me, but from what he heard I no longer needed his help, and was too proud to take it in any case. “Otherwise I should have liked a chance to have made up to you a very little for my obstinate cruelty to your father.”
The letter touched me, and I am an impulsive person. I sent a telegram, and followed it.
Cynthia met me at the station, driving a fat pony in a governess cart, and very much inclined to cry when she saw me. I met my grandfather, who was very vague and grey, and shrunk, and sad. We became friends at once. I met Rose, the woman who had nursed Cynthia, and Rose said that I had supplanted her, and she would call me out. She was quite charming. Many people were staying at the house amongst others I met—
Let me get it over quickly, for the one thing that I will not tell is my love-story. It was very brief and tempestuous. In a few months I was playing with the lone hand no longer. I, with all my independence and all my common-sense, fell hopelessly in love, and acknowledged in white satin, Honiton lace, and orange blossom that I was a woman after all. Well, one might be worse things. One of the most expensive of my wedding presents came from Mr. James. The 36-h.p. Pegasus car is of importance. I taught my husband to drive it.
Postscript.
I have been looking at these pages over again. I wrote them at the time when the things happened, and that is years ago; yet they all seem but yesterday. It seems but yesterday that Minnie Saxe brought to me, in the days of my extreme poverty and hunger, six kippers, fat and well-liking. It seems but yesterday that I stepped out on the platform at Charing Cross Station and drove from there with a man whom I had never met in my life in order that I might personate a dead woman. And now?
And now, right away in the country, it is all very quiet but for the voices of two small children overhead. Even as I write this I am interrupted by a grave man of imperturbable mien—a man who may possibly have seen a joke in the servants' hall, but has never permitted himself to see one outside of it. He announces with the utmost solemnity, “Master Bernard desired me to say, m'lady, that the head of the toy duck has come off, and he would be glad if your ladyship would step upstairs and see about it.”
“Thanks, Jenkins,” I said. “Tell him I'm coming.”
THE END.