“I love you,” she said, and began to cry.
He kissed her then, sweetly, passionately, as if he’d never let her go. “Stop crying,” he said. “I have something I want to ask you. Will you marry me?”
“I love you,” Merry said.
He gathered her close to him again. “It’s as good an answer as any,” he said.
Above them a California sun smiled, the lush sweetness of citrus blossoms filled the air, birds sang, and from the door of the house in whose driveway they were parked came the irate owner, brandishing his fists like clubs.
BAYOU NURSE, by Peggy Gaddis
(also published as Strange Shadows of Love)
Chapter One
The battered old bus lumbered to a stop, and the driver peered out at the driving rain, the jungle-like growth bending beneath the fury of the wind.
“I sure hate to put you off here, miss,” he told Lindsay worriedly.
Lindsay managed a smile, though she felt far from smiling.
“Don’t worry about it,” she answered. “I used to live at the Bayou, and I’m thoroughly familiar with these spring storms. And anyway, I’m being met by Dr. Potter.”
The driver looked enormously relieved as he slid open the creaking door and set her suitcase beneath the inadequate shelter of the rickety shed.
“Oh, well, if Doc Potter’s meeting you, you’ll be all right,” he told her. And a moment later, with a friendly wave, he was back in the bus, and it was staggering on its way through rain-filled ruts.
Lindsay watched until the early dusk, abetted by the storm, had swallowed it up. Then she turned and looked about her. It was hard not to feel depressed as she studied the swampy, marshy surroundings. Her mind went back to the hospital. The corridors would be brilliantly lit. It would be dry and warm and cozy. Visiting hours would be over, and doctors would be making their afternoon rounds. Supper trays would be appearing in the corridors. Gray Ladies would be distributing mail and flowers. Maids and orderlies would be moving swiftly and efficiently, beneath the stern eye of Miss Jansen, their supervisor.
It was a world Lindsay had known for more than five years; a world she loved and in which she felt so much at home that this bayou country where she had spent a lonely childhood and young girlhood seemed as foreign as some remote African wilderness.
Beyond the jungle-like growth she caught the glimmer of lights, and her spirits rose a little as the jeep bounced and fought its way toward her with a flickering of its lights as it dipped deep into ruts, then bounced out again.
It came to a halt, its yellow lights flooding her where she stood, and a man got out and hurried toward her. He was short, stout, in his late sixties, his florid face beaming, his battered fishing hat drawn low against the slashing rain.
“Uncle Doc!” Lindsay flung herself into arms that closed warmly about her. “Oh, it’s good to see you, darling!”
“And it’s good to see you, Lindsay girl,” said Dr. Potter, held her a little away from him and studied her for a moment. “Let me look at you! My, my, what’s happened to the little girl I sent away to train as a nurse?”
Lindsay managed a slightly unsteady laugh.
“Why, she growed, Uncle Doc. She growed and growed and growed! People do, you know.”
“Well, so they do,” he agreed. “But they don’t all grow up into beauteous young ladies like my girl did.”
“Flatterer!” Lindsay had managed to steady her voice by now. Dr. Potter stowed her suitcase inside the jeep and held the curtain back so that she could enter.
As Dr. Potter got in beside her and buttoned his curtain back into place, he looked at her for a moment in the dim light of the early dusk, and there was no longer any faint hint of levity in his tired old face.
“Lindsay, honey, you won’t ever know how I hated having to ask you to come back and look after your aunt while Amalie is in the hospital,” he said quietly. “But there just didn’t seem to be anything else to do. She can’t stay out there alone, bedridden, and nobody from the village will go near her. They either hate her or are afraid of her or both.”
“Which I take to mean that Aunt Jennifer hasn’t changed a bit,” Lindsay drawled.
“Miss Jennifer change?” Dr. Potter’s voice hooted at the bare idea. “If there’s been a change, it’s for the worse.”
Startled, Lindsay protested, “Oh, that couldn’t be!”
Dr. Potter started the jeep and turned it in a tight circle, floundering through the black muck, fighting to keep it from getting stuck, and answered, “You wouldn’t think so, would you?”
“I wouldn’t, no.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” Dr. Potter agreed grimly. “Amalie’s granddaughter, Lucy-Mae, and her husband, Jasper, agreed to come and do the housework and cooking. But Lucy-Mae refuses to go near Miss Jennifer, and Jasper is scared to death of her. Claims the other fishermen say she is a witch and can ruin their day’s catch by casting a spell.”
“Oh, come now, Uncle Doc!”
Dr. Potter grinned at her.
“Oh, I know you and I don’t believe in witches and spells,” he began, but Lindsay made a little gesture that stopped the words.
“I’m not sure that I don’t, under the circumstances,” she admitted wryly, and added before he could protest, “How is Amalie?”
“Oh, she’s going to be all right now that I can tell her you are here looking after Miss Jennifer,” Dr. Potter answered. “When I told her at the hospital this afternoon that you were coming back to the Bayou to take care of Miss Jennifer, she burst into tears and cried out, ‘Oh, I thanks you, Lawd! I knew my baby would come home did she know how bad us needed her. And us do need her mighty bad, don’t us, Doc Potter?’”
Lindsay’s laugh was rueful.
“Amalie has good reason to know how deeply Aunt Jennifer instilled a sense of duty in me as I was growing up,” she reminded him. “‘One does one’s duty, Lindsay, regardless of one’s wishes or inclinations. Why else would I have taken you into my home when your mother and father were killed in that fishing boat accident? Not because I wanted to, but because it was my duty!’”
“Was she really as bad as that?” Dr. Potter wondered aloud, scowling.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten!”
“Well, I didn’t remember she was quite as brutal as that.” The jeep had been fighting its way through the storm, sending up sheets of water where it bounced into deep ruts. But ahead of them now a few faint lights were visible, and Lindsay knew they were approaching the small bayou fishing village which supplied Miss Jennifer with the bulk of her not inconsiderable income.
“Still like being a nurse, honey?” Dr. Potter asked her.
“Love it!” Lindsay answered sincerely. “And I’ll never stop being grateful to you for making it possible.”
“Shucks!” Dr. Potter tried to deny his pleasure. “As a doctor, I consider it my sworn duty to recruit every girl I see who seems to me to have the potentialities of a really good R.N. Which you did, honey. All I did was get you the chance.”
“That’s all?” Lindsay’s lovely mouth was a thin, taut line, and there was deep bitterness in her silver-gray eyes. “I’ve always wondered what kind of pressure you put on Aunt Jennifer to persuade her to pay for my training and my keep. I’m sure you will be happy to know I have repaid her in full. Plus interest, of course.”
Dr. Potter was so startled the jeep slued a little, and when he had it back in the ruts, he demanded, “And she let you?”
“Let me?” Lindsay’s laugh was mirthless. “I thought you knew her better than that!”
Dr. Potter was scowling. “But the money was your own. It was insurance your parents left you,” he protested.
“Which she insisted she had already spent on me before the nurse-training idea came up,” Lindsay told him, and added swiftly, “Let’s not ta
lk about it anymore, Uncle Doc. I don’t want to be fightin’ mad when I get there. I’ve tried to learn to ‘let the dead past bury its dead’ and stop looking back over my shoulder at things that are over and gone and that can never happen again. For when I remember, I get fightin’ mad, and that’s just plain silly.”
Dr. Potter sighed heavily.
“Now I’m sorrier than ever that I sent for you,” he told her.
Lindsay put a hand on his arm and said warmly, “Don’t be, Uncle Doc. There was nothing else for you to do, and we both know it.”
“No, I suppose not,” he agreed reluctantly. “Well, maybe it won’t be for long. Amalie should be out of the hospital in two or three weeks.”
“With a broken hip, at her age? More likely six or seven or even more,” Lindsay corrected him.
“Well, maybe I can find somebody else—” he began.
“You can’t, and we both know it,” Lindsay interrupted him. “They hate her here at the Bayou, and we both know there isn’t a man, woman or child that will come near her. Those who think she is a witch are afraid of her; and those who don’t believe in witches just won’t put up with her disposition.”
Dr. Potter heaved a sigh and managed a rueful grin.
“You do remember her, don’t you?”
“How could I forget her?” Lindsay answered wryly.
The jeep had turned now and was heading toward the village. Suddenly a shapeless figure in dripping oilskins loomed up in the yellow light, and Dr. Potter brought the jeep to a grinding halt and thrust his head out between the curtains.
“Who the devil is that? You want to get run over?” he bellowed into the rain-washed dusk.
The figure sloshed toward him, and as it crossed the jeep’s lights Lindsay saw that it was a woman.
“That you, Doc?” the woman called.
“Now who in blazes would it be a night like this except me?”
“Just wanted you to stop by and see the baby, Doc. She looked right peaked to me,” the woman answered. “Hey, you got somebody with you.”
“I have, indeed,” Dr. Potter answered. “Miss Jennifer’s niece has come to look after her while Amalie’s in the hospital. I haven’t time to stop now, Sara. I’ll stop on my way back. You’ve probably been stuffing the baby with boiled cabbage or something equally certain to upset her stomach.”
But the woman was not listening. She was peering intently at Lindsay, and a smile with more than a tinge of bitterness touched her thin-lipped mouth.
“Well, well, well, if it ain’t Lindsay herself come back to the Bayou, like she used to say she never would in a thousand years. And how many years has it been, Lindsay? Not more than five or six, has it?” she demanded.
“Hello, Sara,” Lindsay said without expression.
“So you remember me,” Sara drawled. “I am surprised.”
“You shouldn’t be. While we were in school together you took great pains to impress yourself on my memory. I was very relieved when you ran off and married Lije Wayland and I was free of your harassment.”
Lindsay’s tone had been quite cool, and the woman laughed.
“Golly, that sure was a long time ago,” she drawled. “He got killed in an accident at the sawmill. He was a born fisherman, and I always tried to tell him so, but he got in a fight with Witch Jennifer, and she took his boat away from him. So he got him a job at the sawmill.”
Dr. Potter interrupted her brusquely.
“I’ll stop by on my way back to town, Sara, but right now I have to get Lindsay home. She’s wet, and I’m sure she’s cold. I’ll see you later.” And he started the jeep so suddenly that the woman barely stepped away from it in time to avoid the splash from its spinning wheel.
Lindsay said, as they drove on, “She will hate you for that.”
“I’ll worry about that some day fifty or sixty years from now,” Dr. Potter growled. “That woman is the village pest. In my opinion, she’s much more of a witch than your aunt.”
“Nice to know Aunt Jennifer has some competition.” Lindsay was trying hard to manage a lighter tone as she braced herself for what she knew lay around the next sharp bend in the makeshift road. “Did Aunt Jennifer really take his boat away from him? Lije Wayland, I mean?”
“He borrowed the money from her to pay for it, and then he got lazy and wouldn’t go out on trips and began drinking. What else could Miss Jennifer do?”
“So now Sara is a widow.”
“Sara? Not a bit of it. She married again, within six months after Lije was buried.”
Lindsay scarcely heard him, for at last they were approaching Bayou House. And it was just as she remembered it. Only the storm-lashed night, the darkness and the soughing wind through the trees added their own special funereal touch to the scene.
The gaunt old house perched at the very edge of the bayou. It was solidly built, but there had never been the slightest effort to make it even faintly attractive. There was a wide verandah that ran around three sides, and the supporting roof posts were smothered in vines that swung and rustled in the damp breeze. Lindsay knew that the vines were honeysuckle, clematis and coral vine. But on this January night they were leafless and snaky-looking. A window showed the thin light of an oil lamp. Otherwise, the ugly old house was as dark as the descending night.
The rickety split-rail fence was sagging as if it had grown tired of trying to enclose a garden that no longer existed, save for a few tangled rose bushes and a gardenia bush or two. All were sadly in need of attention, she noted as Dr. Potter wheeled the jeep up the drive. There were towering oleanders that had grown unchecked until they brushed the top of the verandah.
Lindsay drew a deep, hard breath and squared her shoulders as she went up the steps and crossed the old verandah, Dr. Potter walking behind her with her suitcase. She dropped her hand to the doorknob, turned it, and the door swung open before her, letting her into a large, old-fashioned hall that ran straight through the house to a covered runway at the back that led to the kitchen. There was no light in the hall, save for yellow lamplight that spilled through an open door on the left. For just a moment Lindsay stood quite still, bracing herself. Behind her Dr. Potter put down her suitcase and watched her with deep pity and affection in his tired, faded eyes. But Lindsay was conscious only of that partly open door, from which suddenly came a woman’s rasping voice, calling, “Who’s out there? Come on in or get out, one or the other.”
Lindsay crossed the hall and stepped through the lighted doorway into the room. A huge bed with a high headboard and a footboard with a thickly carved roll stood in the corner, and tucked into the bed was an enormous and very old woman, a most incongruous-looking ruffled night-cap on her head, tied beneath her ample chins. Her eyes were steel-gray behind her spectacles.
“So you’re back, are you?” she rasped.
“Hello, Aunt Jennifer,” said Lindsay without expression. “I’ve come to stay with you until Amalie gets back.”
“Well, just remember I didn’t send for you,” growled the old woman.
“I know you didn’t, Aunt Jenifer,” Lindsay said. “I came back because I felt it was my duty.”
The steely old eyes flashed, and the trap-like mouth snapped.
“Well, I’m glad you’ve got the decency not to lie and say you came out of any affection you felt for me,” she snapped.
Lindsay’s smile was mirthless.
“Did you ever indicate you wanted my affection?” she asked.
“Because I didn’t!” snapped the old woman. “I took you in because it was my duty, as a Mallory, to take in the last of the Mallorys, since my nephew had no more sense than to marry a girl without a penny and then get drowned while they were out fishing. No, I never wanted your affection, or even your gratitude. I did what I felt was my duty, and that’s all. And don’t you ever forget it!”
“Oh, I won’t!
You never gave me the chance, did you? From the first moment I came here, when I was only five and heartbroken and bewildered because my parents were gone, you began telling me you didn’t want me here, but because there was no other place for me to go, it was your duty to keep me,” Lindsay said evenly. “I would have been much happier in an institution, but that would have reflected on the mistress of Bayou House, to have her grandniece in an institution, wouldn’t it?”
If she had hoped to sting the old woman, she was doomed to disappointment, because Miss Jennifer’s thin-lipped mouth was touched by a smile of malice.
“And anyway, no institution would have accepted you because of me. They all think I’m rolling in money,” she pointed out.
Dr. Potter came forward, and his tone was stern.
“Now see here, Miss Jennifer. I sent for Lindsay, and she has made a considerable sacrifice of her time and of her energy to come here to stay with you until Amalie gets well. And I forbid you to mistreat her!”
“Mistreat her?” Miss Jennifer indicated her helpless body with a disdainful gesture. “Now how in the world could I mistreat her when I am helpless and defensive like this?”
“You’re about as helpless and defenseless as a mountain lion, Miss Jennifer, and we all know it,” Dr. Potter assured her. “But you will do as Lindsay says, and that’s final.”
“Oh, I will, will I? Well, we’ll just see about that,” Miss Jennifer snorted.
Ignoring her, Lindsay turned briskly to Dr. Potter.
“And now, Uncle Doc, if you will brief me about her medication and treatment?”
“Be happy to.” Dr. Potter grinned warmly to her.
“He’s got me on some fool treatment that calls for ‘wonder drugs’ that are so expensive the wonder is anybody is expected to be able to pay for them,” Miss Jennifer snorted. “I take them when I want to and refuse them when I don’t!”
Lindsay studied her, a twinkle in her silver-gray eyes.
“Oh, you may have been able to get away with that with Amalie, because she’s afraid of you,” she drawled sweetly. “But remember, Aunt Jennifer, I’m a registered nurse, and I’ve been rigidly trained to obey a doctor’s orders; not the whims and fancies of a rebellious patient. If Dr. Potter says you are to have certain medications at a certain time, you may be quite sure that on the dot of that time you’ll take exactly what’s been prescribed for you.”
The Nurse Novel Page 16
