The doctor and Mrs. Lewis looked at each other, clearly surprised. Mrs. Lewis began to laugh. “If we’d thought to give any of the servants a look at her, we’d have known right away, wouldn’t we?”
Dr. Jarrell smiled, which changed his whole face. “Not too clever, were we, but how were we to know that a Burresford girl had anything to do with this locality? So go on,” he said to Lisa.
“There’s nothing else to go on about. I don’t know what happened or how I got here, but I live on the farm and have since I was nine.”
“And before that?”
“I don’t know.”
His look became intent again. “Who were your father and mother?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never known.”
He looked at Mrs Lewis, who remarked, “Well, it seems the mystery is still there.”
“But it explains a lot why she’s had so much confusion from a blow of fairly limited severity.” He turned back to Lisa. “If you grew up on a farm, how can you speak the way you do?”
“ ’Appen Ay kin talk like farm folk,” Lisa said, dropping into the country speech.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Dr. Jarrell exclaimed.
“But that doesn’t explain being able to speak above your class,” Mrs. Lewis protested. “You never learned that on a farm.”
“I can’t help it,” Lisa snapped, “that’s the way I’ve always talked. Uncle John said my father left me with him, but he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell me anything about him or my mother either except that she was killed in some kind of accident.”
“When did you burn your hand?” Dr. Jarrell asked, gently pulling it out from under the covers and turning it this way and that as he examined it closely. “This is an old injury.”
Lisa found she didn’t mind his looking at it, though she herself didn’t like to. “I don’t know. It’s been that way ever since I can remember.”
“And how far back can you remember?” he asked.
“I don’t remember coming to the farm, but I remember things Aunt Sarah says happened soon after I got there, so I was nine. That’s what my father told Uncle John, that I was nine.” Her head was hurting quite a bit now, and when she touched it with her hand she found a big lump of bandaging on one side of her forehead.
“You’re getting tired,” Dr. Jarrell said, “so we’ll wait on changing the dressings; we can talk more later on. Right now I want you to sleep again.” He poured a little medicine from a bottle on the table into a glass of water and handed it to her. She drank it down and lay back with a sigh.
As she drifted off to sleep, she heard the door shut, then Mrs. Lewis’s voice “I don’t care what you say, that girl is no prostitute.” The doctor said something she couldn’t hear, then Mrs. Lewis again: “When that damned Eric brought her here and said where he’d found her, I thought so, too, but I examined her looking for signs of venereal disease in case we should be trying to treat that as well. The girl’s never even been bedded down.”
She lost his answer as oblivion closed over her head once more.
When she woke again, morning sun was pouring through the windows, and the air had that lovely soft quality that comes with sun after a long rain. She could hear birds singing somewhere, a sound nearly drowned out by horses’ hoofs. On an impulse, she got out of bed to go over to the window. Her head hurt when she stood up and she felt momentarily a little dizzy, but she finally made it to the window and looked out. Below her on the drive she saw two horsemen. Dr. Jarrell was on a delicate bay mare whose coat was curly with dried sweat, as if she had been ridden hard and then walked cool. She played with the bit and ducked her head nervously, but she stood still. It was the other rider who made Lisa’s heart lurch. There on the familiar red stallion was the young man with the reddish-gold hair. The horse was dancing sideways and throwing his head, obviously showing off for the mare. His sleek coat showed no signs of dried sweat, and Lisa surmised that the two riders were only meeting in passing.
Lisa made use of a chamber pot she found beneath the bed and a pitcher of water, bowl, and towel on the dresser. There was a big silver comb and a silver brush there, too. In the mirror, she saw a pale face with a thick bandage bound to one side of her forehead by a strip that went clear around her head. Around the outer edge of the eye on the hurt side was a partially healed cut with small neat stitches in it. The edges of a still livid bruise showed from the edge of the bandage. Whatever could have happened? She searched her mind, but could bring up no image. How much time had she lost? Days? Years?
The red horse and his rider! They were familiar; she knew they were. This time she got an image, briefly of horse and rider bursting out of a fire, then flicking to their thundering by when she was on a cart. But where? Toby! Toby was there, yes, and his father, and there was a pony ... Try as she might, she couldn’t remember where they had been or why. Mrs. Lewis had said it would come to her, so maybe she shouldn’t try too hard. At least she remembered Mrs. Lewis and the doctor and last night’s conversation, which was more than she had obviously been able to remember before.
She had thankfully gotten back in bed when a tap on the door preceded Mrs. Lewis and the doctor again. After asking her how she felt, he turned his attention to her head. Mrs. Lewis meanwhile had put the kettle on the fire she had blown into life. He took a small, wicked looking pair of scissors from Mrs. Lewis’s tray and put his other hand gently but firmly on her head.
“This will sting a little, but you mustn’t jerk or I’ll put your eye out.” He looked at her steadily. “Do you think you can hold still?”
She looked back at him and knew she could keep from flinching “Yes,” she said.
Carefully he inserted the thin blade of the scissors under one of the stitches around her eye. She heard a faint snip, then felt a tiny sharp pain as he pulled the stitch out. She held still. Four times he repeated the snip and pull, then squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. “Good girl,” he said approvingly. Thank God you’re not a shriek-and-fainter.” He and Mrs. Lewis exchanged an amused glance as Mrs. Lewis patted the nearly healed cut with alcohol, making it sting again.
He peered at the cut. “You’ll have a thin pink line there,” he said at last, “but it won’t be noticeable. Now that’s another matter,” he added, pointing to her forehead.
Without having to be asked, Mrs. Lewis came over with the basin full of hot water from the kettle. Dr. Jarrell cut the bandage around Lisa’s head, then with cotton soaked in hot water he gently worked at removing the heavy bandage pad from her forehead. Gentle as he was, it hurt, and she began to feel sick.
“Only a little more,” he said, giving a small jerk that finally freed the bandage but made her gasp, tears coming to her eyes. “Now there, Mrs. Lewis, is a job of work, if I do say so,” he commented, paying no attention to Lisa herself.
“Very pretty, doctor,” Mrs. Lewis agreed, smiling, and Lisa was aware that at the moment only he and Mrs. Lewis and whatever the job of work on her forehead was existed for the two of them.
She couldn’t help wondering what was between them. They were very close, for sure, yet they called each other “Dr.” and “Mrs. Lewis.” While she was thinking about all this, Mrs. Lewis brought her a hand mirror, which showed her to her dismay Dr. Jarrell’s “pretty job of work.” A huge bruise that had faded to an ugly green and yellow was cloven down the middle by a line of black dried blood crisscrossed by stitches. Little beads of fresh blood showed here and there where the bandage had been pulled off. Her hand faded to insignificance as she realized that her face would be marked forever by a livid, puckered scar like the one Mrs. Miller at the Dunwiddleston market had down one cheek. She wanted to cry.
“It doesn’t look like much now, does it?” the doctor asked sympathetically. “From here to here,” he said indicating part of the long wound, “you will have a fine straight line that will eventually turn white. You were lucky that the skin was split rather than torn. I would call that a first class kind of scar, wouldn’t you,
Mrs. Lewis? He smiled at his assistant who today was in a pale blue dress patterned with dark blue sprigs.
For once Mrs. Lewis didn’t seem to be completely in sympathy with him. “Please, Dr. Jarrell,” she pleaded, “wouldn’t you even consider — ”
His face darkened, and he became the grim figure she had seen from a distance several times in Dunwiddleston. “No, Mrs. Lewis, I would not,” he broke in rudely. “We’ve been through this before, and you know damned well why I can’t consider it. Though why you of all people want to bury yourself out here, I can’t think. Best surgical nurse I ever had, and here you are playing housekeeper to a lot of freaks.”
Mrs. Lewis looked on the edge of tears. “As long as you bury yourself here, Dr. Jarrell, I’ll bury myself here.” She turned abruptly and slammed the door.
Dr. Jarrell turned back to Lisa, still looking grim. “Let’s get these stitches out.” His voice was grim as well, but his hands were deft and gentle. “You’ll be better off without a bandage now,” he said at last. “The less pressure and protection, the faster it will heal.”
“How soon will I be able to remember things?” Lisa asked. “I don’t even know how long ago all this happened.”
“It’s been two weeks. Head injuries have strange results we don’t know much about. We do know that a hard blow to the head can make the brain swell, causing all kinds of disturbances; but we can’t make much more than a guess as to what kind of disturbances or how long. Your reflexes didn’t indicate a blood clot, only sever contusion. You can remember a lot more now than you could before, so you’re coming out of it, but it might be days, weeks, months, or even years before you regain your full memory of every detail of the accident. Something else happened to you when you were nine, probably more in the nature of an emotionally traumatic shock.”
“Then I might have lost another piece of my life as well?” Lisa felt a mixture of fright and loss.
“Probably not for long, and almost certainly not for good.” He picked up her claw-like hand. “This was a burn, there is no doubt about that. If you are willing,” and here he looked her straight in the eyes again, “I think I can give you some movement of your fingers. The hand will never look the same as the other, but you will be able to use it in a limited way. Would you like that?”
She looked at the poor, misshapen thing and tried to imagine being able to pick things up with it, but she couldn’t. “I — suppose so,” she said hesitantly. At his sudden scowl, she added, “I don’t mean to be ungrateful — it’s just that I never thought of being able to use it. But yes — yes, I’d like you to do what you can with it.”
“There is just one thing.” He held the hand where she couldn’t help looking at it. “You’ll have to stop hiding it. You’ll have to learn that if you don’t mind, no one else will, either.”
“But it’s so ugly,” Lisa whispered.
“It may be different, it may be scarred, it may even be maimed until it is repaired. It is not ugly.” His tone was firm, even commanding, and Lisa could feel the force of his belief. “People — all of us — may be hurt or sick or maimed inside, but when you think they are ugly, then you become ugly. My wife is sick, my brother Eric is maimed, and my sister Carrie is hurt.”
“And you?” Lisa asked.
“I am all three, and I’m trying not to be ugly as well. Sometimes I don’t try hard enough.” He walked to the window and stood with his back to her. His tone became matter of fact. “In a few days at most you should be able to go back home. I don’t want to do your hand until much later when I’m sure that any results of the injury are healed. By the way, I rode by your farm today, but no one was there. I left a note. Your uncle does read, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” Lisa said, puzzled, “but it’s odd they both went to market. What day is it?”
“It’s Wednesday.”
Lisa’s puzzlement turned to a faint alarm. “But market day is Saturday. Do you suppose they could be out looking for me? Did anything seem wrong?”
“No, nothing. The house and barn were both empty, but I could see sheep grazing in a field nearby. Well, when they get back my note should reassure them. I asked them to stop by the next time they went to Dunwiddleston.” They must have turned the horse and the ewes out in case they were gone for a while, or maybe taken them to Toby’s. Tippy must have gone with them. What a lot of trouble I’ve caused, Lisa thought. If she could only remember what happened, and why she had been in Burresford that she had only seen once in her life, when she went to that awful wedding and was so sick. Almost for a moment she thought a piece of memory would slide into place, but then the elusive feeling was gone.
“I want you to stay in bed for another day or two, or until you don’t feel dizzy when you get up. Mrs. Lewis will bring you your meals. I want her to keep an eye on you.”
“You wouldn’t have anything I could read, would you?” she asked hesitantly. “A newspaper, perhaps, or a book? I should even be glad to read a medical book, if that’s all you have.”
Jarrell looked at her dumbstruck. “You read? You actually want a book to read?”
She nodded.
“Well, I’ll be damned. You never cease to astound me. Of course, I’ll have Mrs. Lewis bring some books with your breakfast.” He went out shaking his head.
He was true to his word, for Mrs. Lewis brought in four books along with eggs, ham, biscuits with jam, and tea with milk. Two were books by a man named Charles Dickens, one by Daniel Defoe, and one by a Mrs. Radcliffe called The Mysteries of Udolpho. The next two days fled by as she suffered through the supernatural horrors faced in the medieval castle by Emily St. Aubyn, commiserated with and then became exasperated with Pip and his great expectations, and was awed by the ingenuity of the shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe. Jarrell saw her once, but they had little conversation, for she was reluctant to stop reading even to let him look at her head.
On Saturday she announced to Mrs. Lewis that she was going to take a bath and get dressed. The big copper tub was a quarter filled with water and a fire lit in the narrow brick firebox underneath it. Then the fire was allowed to die and cold water was put in to the desired temperature. Mrs. Lewis gave her a piece of scented soap and a large towel, and she splashed about for half an hour in the warm water. She had never felt so clean.
Dressed in a cotton frock belonging to Mrs. Lewis, she ventured down the stairs. Hartsite may have looked grim and forbidding from the outside, but inside the walls were painted pastel colors, the wood panelling was light in color, and the dining room and parlor were papered in rich colors and patterns of red and blue and green and gold.
“It was Dr. Jarrell’s sister, Mrs. Stephens, who had the house redone,” Mrs. Lewis told her when she found her admiring the dining room.
“What about his wife?” Lisa asked. “Wasn’t she interested?”
Mrs. Lewis’s face turned to stone. “Dr. Jarrell’s wife has been an invalid ever since her baby was born dead.”
“Oh, how terrible for her,” Lisa exclaimed, shocked. She couldn’t help thinking, though, of poor Aunt Sarah who had lost seven and had the eighth run away, but didn’t so much as complain about it. “Can’t she have any more?”
Mrs. Lewis started to say something, then thought better of it. “Well as things are, she certainly can’t have any more.” Her tone did not invite further questions on the subject.
“What about Dr. Jarrell’s sister? What happened to her husband?”
“Her husband is dead.” Again the tone invited no further questions.
“And the brother?”
Mrs. Lewis’s face softened. “Eric is one of those young men you shouldn’t like, except you can’t help it.”
“Why, what’s wrong with him?”
“You’ll be going back home soon, and with any luck at all you’ll never find out. Let’s just leave it that he’s a bit wild.”
“I already know that,” Lisa smiled, “along with all the rest of the Dunwiddleston folk.”
“I
dare say his reputation has preceded him, all right,” Mrs Lewis answered. “I’ll show you the kitchen where you’ll be taking your meals now that you’re up. You already know Mrs. Priddy from the village, I think. She’s our cook.”
“What do you mean, she’ll be taking her meals in the kitchen?” a masculine voice broke in from behind them.
They whirled around, startled, to face a laughing young man with reddish-gold hair, the rider of the sorrel stallion.
“I didn’t know you were back, Eric,” Mrs. Lewis said, smiling.
“I got back late last night. This, I take it, is the patient?” He looked her over with mock seriousness, his grey eyes laughing at her. “I can’t exactly say that no one would guess you’d gotten into an argument with Christian’s hoof. What in the devil were you doing in the middle of the street, anyway?”
“I could ask you why you were racing a horse on the wet cobbles, too,” Lisa snapped.
“There’s nothing wrong with her spirit, is there?” he asked Mrs. Lewis.
But Mrs. Lewis was staring at her. “How do you know he was racing?” she asked Lisa. They were both still, expectant.
“I — I don’t know,” Lisa replied at last. “It just came out.” The brief flash of knowledge was gone, and she couldn’t dredge it up again, though they questioned her closely.
“She’ll remember soon enough,” Mrs. Lewis finally said, “probably even before she leaves in the next few days.”
Eric pulled a sad face. “All the more reason for her not to eat in the kitchen. If you only know how grim meals were here,” he said to Lisa, “you’d agree to eat with us as an act of mercy.”
A smile tugged at Mrs. Lewis’s mouth. “All right, I’ll ask the doctor. It would be nice to have somebody different to talk to for a change.”
Eric grabbed Mrs. Lewis’s hand and pressed it to his mouth. “You’re an angel, Mrs. L.” In irrepressible spirits he bounded off up the stairs.
“Sometimes he’s just like a puppy,” Mrs. Lewis sighed. “I wish he were like that all the time.”
Lisa Page 5