Read Outrageous Fortune for Free Online

don’t feel better—I fell well,” she looked pleased; but when he added, “I expect I look like a cut-throat,” she coloured and ran away.
    He shaved, dressed himself, and was relieved to find himself no more than just a little shaky. His clothes he discovered in a neat pile upon a shelf screened by a chintz curtain. The suit had been pressed, but it still had a smell of sea-water about it; one or two rents had been neatly mended. He frowned at the clothes. They fitted him, so he supposed that they were his; but he couldn’t remember them—he couldn’t remember anything.
    When he was dressed, he sat down on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. It was just as if a black gulf of nothingness were cutting him off from everything that had happened to him up till now. On this side of the gulf his mind was working in a perfectly normal manner. Yesterday, for instance, was on this side of the gulf, and he remembered all about yesterday; he could have repeated his conversation with Nesta verbatim. But as to what had happened to him on the other side of the gulf, he had only her statements to go by. He went over them with a sort of puzzled horror.
    His name was Jim Riddell.
    He was married.
    He had married Nesta Williams at the Grove Road registry office on July 25th.
    He had been on his way to Glasgow when the Alice Arden came to grief.
    He had been going to Glasgow to “get off the map.”
    He ran his hands through his hair and asked himself why—and why—and why?
    Why had he married a woman who hadn’t the faintest atom of attraction for him? You may marry a woman for her looks, or for money, or for ambition, or for purely animal reasons, or for pity, or because you happen to love her. Not a single one of these reasons applied to Nesta Riddell. She was not an object of pity; the Williams were certainly not well-to-do; and mentally and physically she repelled him. Over and above all this, he had a sense of her strangeness. He could not believe that he had held her in his arms, that they had kissed. She was stranger to him than someone whom he had never met—far more deeply strange than any of the forgotten people on the wrong side of the black gulf which cut him off from his past.
    He left that.
    Why had he been going to Glasgow?
    Nesta had given him the answer—to “get off the map.”
    Why had he got to “get off the map?”
    The answer to that was somewhere on the other side of the gulf.
    He went over everything that had happened yesterday down to the time when he had fallen asleep to the faint sound of Jack Payne’s orchestra through the partition wall. He had slept without waking. He had slept without waking, but not without dreaming. He leaned his head on his hands, and knew that those sleeping hours had not been spent in unconsciousness. The shadows of swift clashing events moved in them. They were like the shadows of fierce darting fish seen through waters veiled by mist. Mist—fog. Fog came into it—fog, and a voice. His voice? Behind the fog, strange violent things, happening at an incredible speed, flashing through his mind too quickly to be grasped..… like beads of light, strung on a dark chain..… like a kid’s green beads. For an instant he saw a small brightly lighted picture. The light came from above, and swinging to and fro beneath it was a string of square green stones. They swung from a man’s hand. There were eight of them—big, square, green stones; a double chain of pearls between every two. He saw the man’s hand, and the square green stones, and the light shining down on them. The voice said, “Like a kid’s green beads,” and everything went dark.
    Some time after this Nesta was at the door. He thanked heaven that he was up and dressed. If he had had to lie there whilst she sat on the edge of his bed and talked, he might not be able to hide the violence of his recoil. Women