Читать книгу Outrageous Fortune - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 7

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There was no more talk that day. It was Min who brought him his meals, and Min was much too scared to talk. She left the door wide open, put down the tray, and was gone. He guessed she thought of a man who had forgotten his name and his wife as well over the border line of insanity. Presently she would come back with a quick glance over her shoulder, pick up the tray, and hurry from the room. He could almost hear her breath of relief as the door swung to. Nesta never came near him.

He lay in the darkened room and wrestled with the thing that had happened to him. Presently the sheer blank horror passed. He wasn’t mad. His head ached, but he could order and control his thoughts in a perfectly normal manner. He could repeat the multiplication table and the capitals of all the countries in Europe. He knew that there was a Labour government in power, and that Ramsay Macdonald was Prime Minister. He knew all the ordinary things which don’t need thinking about, but he didn’t know anything at all about himself. The minute he began to think about himself the fog came up and choked his mind, and, with the fog, the horrible panic sense of being lost in empty space.

He forced thought back to the things he knew. He had had a knock on the head. His memory would come back all right if he would let it alone. That was it—he’d got to let it alone—keep himself quiet, eat, sleep, say the multiplication table, conjugate French verbs, count sheep jumping over a hedge.

The sun went behind a cloud, the room darkened. Presently he did sleep, and, sleeping, heard again that voice which he took to be his own. Echoing it, he muttered and cried out.

Min ran half way up the stairs and called to Nesta shut in her room.

“Nesta! He’s talking to himself!”

There was no answer.

“Nesta! He does frighten me. He just keeps right on. Can’t you come down?”

Nesta’s door opened. Nesta stood there, harshly contemptuous.

“What a baby you are!”

“He keeps right on talking.”

“Well, you needn’t take any notice, need you? Go into the kitchen and shut the door!”

With a frightened gasp Min took in the fact that Nesta was dressed for the street.

“You’re not going out!”

“Why shouldn’t I go out?”

“I can’t stay alone here.”

“Why, what d’you think he’ll do to you?”

“Oh, Nesta, please don’t go.”

Nesta pushed past her.

“Don’t be a fool, Min!” she said, and ran downstairs.

There were three rooms on the ground floor—kitchen, parlour, and bedroom. The two latter were at the back. Nesta stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs. The vague mutter of a man’s voice came along the passage. After a moment’s hesitation she walked to the bedroom door and stood there listening, with the handle turned and the mutter louder. Every now and then there were words.

“Green—beads—” said the muttering voice. “Finest in the world—no one knows but me—no one—green—like a kid’s beads—” Then, with a change of tone, “They’ll never find them—nobody’ll ever find them—unless I show them how—Emily’s dead.”

Nesta had pushed the door ajar. If she spoke to him, would he answer, or would he wake? Old Caroline Bussell used to say that if you could put a sleeping person’s right hand into a basin of cold water without waking them, they would answer you anything in the world you liked to ask. People said she’d done it too, and that was why she had such a hold over Mr Entwhistle—she’d certainly got something more than a housekeeper’s place at the hall.

“Isn’t it awful?” said Min’s voice at her elbow.

Nesta shut the door and whirled round in a fury.

“Get into the kitchen and stay there!” she said, and banged out of the house.

It was a little house in a street of little houses on the outskirts of Ledlington. She turned her back on the town and walked in the opposite direction until the rows of houses gave way to fields and hedges, with here and there a cottage or a farmstead. She was walking to walk the anger out of her. She didn’t care where she went or how far. She was walking to get away from the look in Jim’s eyes when he heard she was his wife. If she couldn’t walk away from the anger which was tearing her, she might just as well throw in her hand.

What did it matter how he looked at her as long as she got the emeralds? This was the cool, calculating Nesta who bossed her brother and meant to boss Jim Riddell.

“I’m not poison, for him to look at me like that! What’d he do if I chucked him out to go on the parish?” This was a curious incalculable Nesta who had seen herself refused. This Nesta’s hot fancy played with the thought of taking Jim Riddell twenty, thirty, forty miles into the country and leaving him nameless, penniless. She could do it easily enough—another sleeping draught, Tom’s car, a quick run out to the marshes or Winborough Common. “Wouldn’t mind if he died either. If there was another fog—” She pulled herself up with a jerk. And throw away the emeralds? Not much! He knew where they were, and he’d got to say.

She walked on, her mind very busy. Min had got to be kept away from him. Fortunately she was scared to death. “She is a fool. But then Tom would marry a fool. He wanted a change after me—someone to make him feel the real he-man.” She gave a laugh of affectionate contempt. “Tom! Anyhow he’ll do as I tell him, or he’ll know the reason why.”

She walked for an hour, and came home with her plans made. Tom was back from the garage, and Min was all smiles again.

They left Jim Riddell to himself and turned on the radio in the parlour.