“I shall,” said Mr. James. “Now, if you’ll get in, please——”
I rather despised his style of driving then. He was particularly careful; slowed down round every corner, did not exceed the speed limit, did not take narrow shaves. He made the car go fast up hill, and steadied her coming down. He was an excellent driver really; a driver with great knowledge and good nerve, and without any of the vain idiot’s desire to show off.
Some weeks afterwards, when my motor education was nearing its completion, Mr. James asked me suddenly one day what I was doing it for. “Do you mean to get a post as driver?” he asked. “You could, you know. We could fairly recommend you, and I daresay some ladies would prefer to have a lady driver.”
“No,” I said, “that was not my idea. My idea was to work for your firm when you think I am good enough.”
“You drive all right. I’ll guarantee you know a lot more about the car than a good many men do who are driving it about the country at present. But what was it that you are proposing to do for us?”
“I am proposing to show cars for you. The fact is that your car looks a little bit complicated at first. If an intending purchaser found that a young girl understood it and drove it easily he would be reassured.”
“Yes,” said Mr. James reflectively. “I’d thought of that. There’s something in it, perhaps.”
He seemed to be debating the matter with himself in silence for a few moments, then he said, “Look here. I’ve got a man coming up to-morrow. He may buy a Pegasus, or he may buy some other car. Anyhow, he’s going to buy a car, and we should prefer that he bought a Pegasus. He’s a nervous kind of man, and my first idea was that in order to make him feel quite secure I would drive him myself. Now I’ll change my mind. He’d be more impressed if I sent the car out with a girl. If you sell the car to him we will pay you a small commission. Remember, he’s a nervous man. You don’t want to show him how fast the car can go. Show him how handy it is in a block or very slow traffic; the ease with which it is steered; the quietness of the engines; the impossibility of a skid.”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “I see all that. I shall sell him that car.”
I was round next morning at eleven. The possible purchaser was an elderly solicitor, retired from practice, who after long searchings of heart had decided that he would have a motor car. He looked dubiously at the big Pegasus waiting to take him his trial trip as if he expected that it might go off any moment. He was a good deal startled when he was told that I should drive him.
“Is that all right?” I heard him ask Mr. James.
“I am sending you out,” said Mr. James, “with one of the best drivers we’ve got.”
I got up, switched on the spark, and the engines started.
“Dear me,” said Mr. Hoskins, “I was always under the impression that it was necessary to wind it up—to turn a handle.”
“So it would be,” I said, “if the car had been standing for a long time, or on a very cold day, but a good four-cylinder car will generally start with switching on the spark.”
“You are a careful driver, I hope,” he said, as I took him through Piccadilly Circus.
“Yes, I think so,” I said, “but then this car is particularly easy to manage.”
His nervousness wore off as we got further away from London. He desired me ardently to show him the utmost the car could do. As it could do fifty miles an hour and we were in a police-trapped country at the time I refrained, but I showed him what it was to have plenty of power in going up steep hills. The car made nothing of them. He became silent as we drove back, and I did not bother him by chattering. Just as we were nearing home he said, “I like this car. It goes well, and there can be no great difficulty about it if a girl can drive it. I shall buy it.”
He did not buy that particular car. He got one like it, and we tuned it up for him and found him a driver. He was in great trouble about myself. If one of the ordinary drivers had taken him he would have tipped the man, but he felt that he could not tip me although he could see that I was an employed person. He sent me a charming letter of thanks and a very good motor rug. And I got my commission. Better still, I had now got back my self-respect.
After this I often drove for Mr. James when he wanted to show a car. Naturally I did not always find a purchaser, but on the whole I was fairly successful. Mr. James himself seemed to think that I had unusually good luck. I did not in the least mind what work I did. I was there one morning when Mr. Marshall had just opened a telegram. It was from a young man living in Bedford who had bought one of the cars, and it had been delivered the day before. The car had been driven to Bedford by one of Mr. James’s mechanics. It had already been run for a hundred miles and properly tuned up, and the mechanic had had no trouble of any sort with it. The telegram said, “Engines will not start. Please send man.”
“We can’t,” said Marshall.
Mr. James reflected. It was a very busy time, and everybody on the place was fully engaged. “It can’t be anything serious,” said Mr. James. “It’s some fool thing or other that he’s done.”
Then I volunteered. “I’ll go, if you like,” I said.
“Really?” said Mr. James. “It would be awfully good of you if you would. Will you go by train or drive yourself down?”
I decided to go by train. At Bedford I took a cab to the house, and told the butler who answered the door that I had called about the car. He looked a little puzzled, and showed me into the drawing-room. I was wearing my most enchanting clothes. I had put them on with intent for the fun of the thing, but I had brought my overall with me in case of need. A puzzled and sweet-looking young lady came into the room, said “Good-morning,” and shook hands, and then, “Am I right? I understand you have called about my husband’s car?”
“Yes,” I said. “He wired to the Pegasus people for an engineer to be sent. I am the engineer.”
She seemed considerably staggered. “Do you mean this? Really? You an engineer?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you mind?” It was rather cheeky.
Then she found her husband for me, a fluffy, enthusiastic young man, weary and dirty with long wrestling with that car’s interior. I went with him to the shed and looked it over.
There was perhaps one teaspoonful of petrol in the tank. I pointed out to him that petrol cars went better when petrol was used. We then filled up the tank and started. I think I never saw anyone so absolutely abject. What he wanted to do, and did not dare to do, was to ask me not to reveal the nature of the trouble to the firm when I got back. He needn’t have minded. To the firm it was all in the day’s work. And the curious thing was that the young man was by no means a fool in mechanical matters; it was simply that he had not happened to think of the petrol.
I got along very well now. I might have saved myself a good deal of trouble if I had started on this business at once. I was now making an income which justified me, I thought, in removing from my little flat to something better and nearer to the middle of civilisation. It was Minnie Saxe who decided it for me. She lingered one morning after she had brought my breakfast; not lachrymose—for she never wept—but stern and depressed.
“I am afraid I shall have to leave you, miss,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Why?”
“Well, father’s broken down again. These last three weeks he’s brought back his money a shilling short, and great paper bags of almond-rock in his pocket. Nothing I can say seems to be able to save him.”
I did not smile outwardly. “Well, what are you going to do about it, Minnie?”
“I am going to do what I ought to have done long ago. He’s got a bit of money put by, and I know where there’s a good opening. I’m going into the sweets and general.”
“What!” I said. “Going to sell sweets? But your father will eat the stock.”
“That’s just it,” said Minnie. “What’s more, he’ll be encouraged to eat it. What’s more, when he’s finished he’ll be made to go on again. He’ll get that and nothing else for a week, and if he can look sugar in the face at the end of it I’m a Dutchman. Him a grown man too! I could find another girl to do you, miss, I think, though I won’t say that she’d be quite my class. Still, I would have her here the week before I left, and if anybody can knock a thing into a girl’s head I think I can.”
I explained to Minnie that she need not trouble, and that I should move from the neighbourhood.
Some time later I made a point of visiting Miss Saxe’s emporium. I was served by her father, who looked distinctly chastened and rather thinner. He told me that his daughter was a wonderful girl, and I believed him. He waved one hand over the assorted boxes on the counter. “I never touch anything of this kind now,” he said. “One loses one’s taste for it as one gets older.” So Mr. Saxe was happily reclaimed.
The Pegasus people began now to manufacture a light cheap 6½ h.-p. runabout car. It was entered for a reliability trial, and Mr. James told me that I was to drive it. I was nearly off my head with joy over that. Subsequently I nearly broke my heart over it. I’ll tell the story as briefly as possible. I had already tried the car thoroughly myself and did not know of anything in the same class to touch it. I was not the least nervous; indeed, now I come to think of it, I believe I have never been nervous. The first day it did splendidly, and we were more than a minute ahead of everything up Onslow Hill. The second day the car broke down, and Mr. James and myself were unable to find what was wrong and put it right again within the time limit. Nothing but the turn of a screw was required, and a few minutes later we were ready to start, but our chance was gone as far as that trial was concerned. Mr. James got a couple of pressmen whom he knew to get up on the car, and we had a little private demonstration. One of the pressmen afterwards wrote on the question as to whether reliability trials really proved reliability. I did not talk much during our run; I was too much upset by the failure of the car. As soon as I could I got back to the muggy little hotel.
Mr. James came in there and asked for me, and I went down to see him.
“What have you been crying for?” he said sharply.
“Nothing,” I said, which is what an ass of a woman would say.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he went on. “It was my fault for sleeping in a bedroom. The next time I go in for one of these things I’ll sleep on my car. That needle valve never went wrong by itself. Prove it? Of course I can’t prove it. But I know it, though I am going to say nothing about it.”
So far we had been standing up. He then sat down and immediately and in rather a dictatorial way asked me if I would marry him.
I told him that I would not. He could do all these things without appearing in the least to be a fool. It was I and not he who seemed to be humiliated when I refused him.
I left the service of the Pegasus people in consequence. Mr. James thought it would be better, and had no doubt whatever that he could find me another post. So these external personal qualities which had brought me fortune before, now cut off, for the time at least, the profitable employment which I had found for myself by sheer hard work and common sense.
I sometimes thought at this time that if there were no men in the world women would get on a good deal better.
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 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 mustn’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 be 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 so 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 cue. 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 subconscious 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 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.”
Dr. 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 Dr. 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 interesting 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 the 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
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH