On the couch the girl lay very still with half-closed eyes. Her long blonde braids tied with blue ribbons lay on the pillow on either side of her sweet, pale little face, making it look more childlike than ever.
"I can"t see why I can"t remember," she said to Larry as he sat down on the edge of the other cot opposite her. "I try so hard."
"Don"t try. You are just wearing yourself out doing it. It will be all right in time. Don"t worry."
"I can"t help worrying. It is--oh, it is horrible not to have any past--to be different from everybody in the world."
"I know. It is mighty tough and you have been wonderfully brave about it.
But truly I do believe it will all come back. And in the meanwhile you are going to one of the best places in the world to get well in. Take my word for it."
"But I don"t see why I should be going. It isn"t as if I had any claim on you or your people. Why are you taking me to your home?" The blue eyes were wide open now, and looking straight up into Larry Holiday"s gray ones.
Larry smiled and Larry"s smile, coming out of the usual gravity and repose of his face, was irresistible. More than one young woman, case and non-case, had wished, seeing that smile, that its owner had eyes for girls as such.
"Because you are the most interesting patient I ever had. Don"t begrudge it to me. I get measles and sore throats mostly. Do you wonder I s.n.a.t.c.hed you as a dog grabs a bone?" Then he sobered. "Truly, Ruth--you don"t mind my calling you that, do you, since we don"t know your other name?--the Hill is the one place in the world for you just now. You will forgive my kidnapping you when you see it and my people. You can"t help liking it and them."
"I am not afraid of not liking it or them if--" She had meant to say "if they are at all like you," but that seemed a little too personal to say to one"s doctor, even a doctor who had saved your life and had the most wonderful smile that ever was, and the nicest eyes. "If they will let me," she subst.i.tuted. "But it is such a queer, kind thing to do. The other doctors were interested in me, too, as a case. But it didn"t occur to any of them to offer me the hospitality of their homes and family for an unlimited time. Are you Holidays all like that?"
"More or less," admitted Larry with another smile. "Maybe we are a bit vain-glorious about Holiday hospitality. It is rather a family tradition.
The House on the Hill has had open doors ever since the first Holiday built it nearly two hundred years ago. You saw Uncle Phil"s wire. He meant that "welcome ready." You"ll see. But anyway it won"t be very hard for them to open the door to you. They will all love you."
She shut her eyes again at that. Possibly the young doctor"s expression was rather more un-professionally eloquent than he knew.
"Tired?" he asked.
"Not much--tired of wondering. Maybe my name isn"t Ruth at all."
"Maybe it isn"t. But it is a name anyway, and you may as well use it for the present until you can find your own. I think Ruth Annersley is a pretty name myself," added the young doctor seriously. "I like it."
"Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley," corrected the girl. "That is rather pretty too."
Larry agreed somewhat less enthusiastically.
Ruth lifted her hand and fell to twisting the wedding ring which was very loose on her thin little finger.
"Think of being married and not knowing what your husband looks like.
Poor Geoffrey Annersley! I wonder if he cares a great deal for me."
"It is quite possible," said Larry Holiday grimly.
He had taken an absurd dislike to the very name of Geoffrey Annersley.
Why didn"t the man appear and claim his wife? Practically every paper from the Atlantic to the Pacific had advertised for him. If he was any good and wanted to find his wife he would be half crazy looking for her by this time. He must have seen the newspaper notices. There was something queer about this Geoffrey Annersley. Larry Holiday detested him cordially.
"You don"t suppose he was killed in the wreck, do you?" Ruth"s mind worked on, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
"You were traveling alone. Your chair was near mine. I noticed you because I thought--" He broke off abruptly.
"Thought what?"
"That you were the prettiest girl I ever saw in my life," he admitted. "I wanted to speak to you. Two or three times I was on the verge of it but I never could quite get up the courage. I"m not much good at starting conversations with girls. My kid brother, Ted, has the monopoly of that sort of thing in my family."
"Oh, if you only had," she sighed. "Maybe I would have told you something about myself and where I was going when I got to New York."
"I wish I had," regretted Larry. "Confound my shyness! I don"t see why anybody ever let you travel alone from San Francisco to New York anyway,"
he added. "Your Geoffrey ought to have taken better care of you."
"Maybe I haven"t a Geoffrey. The fact that there was an envelope in my bag addressed to Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley doesn"t prove that I am Mrs.
Geoffrey Annersley."
"No, still there is the ring." Larry frowned thoughtfully. "If you aren"t Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley you must be Mrs. Somebody Else, I suppose. And the locket says _Ruth from Geoffrey_."
"Oh, yes, I suppose I am Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley. It seems as if I must be. But why can"t I remember? It seems as if any one would remember the man she was married to--as if one couldn"t forget that, no matter what happened. But if there is a Geoffrey Annersley why doesn"t he come and get me and make me remember him?"
Larry shook his head.
"Don"t worry, please. We"ll keep on advertising. He is bound to come before long if he really is your husband. Some day he will be coming up our hill and run away with you, worse luck!"
Ruth"s eyes were on the ring again.
"It is funny," she said. "But I can"t make myself _feel_ married. I can"t make the ring mean anything to me. I don"t want it to mean anything. I don"t want to be married. Sometimes I dream that Geoffrey Annersley has come and I put my hand over my eyes because I don"t want to see him.
Isn"t that dreadful?" she turned to Larry to ask.
"You can"t help it." Larry tried manfully to push back his own wholly unreasonable satisfaction in her aversion to her presumptive husband.
"It is the blow and the shock of the whole thing. It will be all right in time. You will fall on your Geoffrey"s neck and call him blessed when the time comes."
"I don"t believe he is coming," she announced suddenly with conviction.
Larry got up and walked over to her couch.
"What makes you say that?" he demanded.
"I don"t know. It was just a feeling I had. Something inside me said right out loud: "He isn"t coming. He isn"t your husband." Maybe it is because I don"t want him to come and don"t want him to be my husband. Oh, dear! It is all so queer and mixed up and horrid. It is awful not to be anybody--just a ghost. I wish I"d been killed. Why didn"t you leave me?
Why did you dig me out? All the others said I was dead. Why didn"t you let me _be_ dead? It would have been better."
She turned her face away and buried it in the pillow, sobbing softly, suddenly like a child.
This was too much for Larry. He dropped on his knees beside her and put his arms around the quivering little figure.
"Don"t, Ruth," he implored. "Don"t cry and don"t--don"t wish you were dead. I--I can"t stand it."
There was a tap at the door. Larry got to his feet in guilty haste and went to the door of the stateroom.
"It is time for Mrs. Annersley"s medicine," announced the nurse impersonally, entering and going over to the wash stand for a gla.s.s.
The white linen back safely turned, Larry gave one swift look at Ruth and bolted, shutting the door behind him. The nurse turned to look at the patient whose face was still hidden in the pillow and then her gaze traveled meditatively toward the door out of which the young doctor had shot so precipitately. Larry had forgotten that there was a mirror over the wash stand and that nurses, however impersonal, are still women with eyes in their heads.
"H--m," reflected the onlooker. "I wouldn"t have thought he was that kind. You never can tell about men, especially doctors. I wish him joy falling in love with a woman who doesn"t know whether or not she has a husband. Your tablets, Mrs. Annersley," she added aloud.