Surgeon of Distinction

by Mary Burchell

It was over. The whole agonizing see-saw of hopes and fears had collapsed at last. Not since her first faint anxieties, back in the Chelsea flat, had anything been so final. Alma sat on the bed and stared at the wall. There was something almost soothing in staring at anything so blank.

  That was how she felt herself. Blank—blank—blank.

  It was over.

  Presently she roused herself and looked absently at the clock, and was astounded to find that so much of the evening was still remaining.

  What was she to do with it? she asked herself. Not that it mattered. Only—she could not go on spending it in this aimless, idiotic way. Just sitting there—under the same roof as Jeremy but a thousand miles away from him.

  Suddenly she hated the place and longed to escape from it. Almost feverishly, she changed into street clothes. She must go out. It hardly mattered where, but she must go out.

  On the way downstairs she met Sister Pollock, who stopped her and said sympathetically,

  “I’m so sorry you weren’t able to see your fiancé today. Mr. Perring’s always super-careful about keeping his patients free from excitement. But he’s getting on splendidly n w. You’ll soon be able to see him again, I’m sure.”

  “Thank you.” Alma hoped she sounded a little less stony than she felt. “But he’s not my fiancé, you know.”

  “Not—? But I thought—?” Sister Pollock opened both her eyes and her mouth quite wide and left them like that.

  “I know. It’s all very complicated,” Alma said helplessly. “I don’t think I can explain now.”

  And she went on down the stairs, leaving Sister Pollock staring after her.

  At the bottom of the stairs she ran into the pretty, out-spoken young nurse on her theatre staff, who had been the first to refer to what she called “the nice romantic story” about Alma. She smiled now, and quite obviously longed to stop and ask a question.

  But Alma drew all the dignity and seniority of a theatre sister around her, like a cloak of protection, and, giving the eager girl a rather chilly little nod, she passed on.

  She hated doing it. It made her feel like a stranger, to act so uncharacteristically. And it hurt her almost physically to know that the girl glanced after her with an embarrassed, puzzled expression. But there was nothing she could do about it.

  “I can’t stand any more questions and explanations,” she told herself passionately. “I can’t talk to anyone any more. They must think what they like—guess what they like. I’ve had enough—oh, much, much more than enough!”

  And then she had to take a tight hold on herself, in case she should begin to cry in the street.

  She walked quite rapidly for a while, and presently found herself in the theatre district. Most of the crowds had gone in an hour ago or more. But at the Corinthian, near Cambridge Circus, it seemed there was a later show, for people were streaming into its porticoed entrance.

  For a moment or two Alma stood, undecided, on the fringe of the crowd. She felt in no mood for a theatre. But then she felt in no mood for anything that she could define, and in a theatre there would at least be something to take her mind off her own miserable affairs.

  There might be no seat available, of course, for she remembered now reading that the show—some sort of high class revue—was drawing the town. But if there were a seat to be had—

  She approached the box office, and found that one ticket for a stall had just been returned. It was more than she had meant to pay, but that seemed unimportant at the moment. Alma took the ticket and passed on into the luxurious, intimate interior of the Corinthian.

  Her seat was an excellent one, in the sixth row, only one place removed from the centre gangway, and, as she studied her programme, she felt herself insensibly relax a little. Not that her inner misery was any less. But the frightful tenseness which had driven her to the borders of hysteria began to abate.

  The gangway seat beside her was empty, and on the other side of her were a pleasant, elderly couple who spoke to each other—when they spoke at all—in quiet tones. No one would ask her questions during the next few hours. No one would speak to her. No one even knew who she was. She had only to sit there and look at the stage and take in as much or as little of the show as she cared to absorb.

  The lights began to dim and an odd sensation of relief stole over her. Then someone slipped into the gangway seat beside her, and, turning her head, she saw that it was Maxwell Perring.

  “Hello,” he said, giving her a friendly nod and smile. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

  Then the curtain went up and the show began.

  At first, Alma did not pay much attention to what was happening. The proximity of Maxwell Perring seemed to draw her back into orbit of her own unhappy affairs, and she felt her nerves go taut again. But there was something so calm and relaxed about the tall figure of the surgeon beside her, something so matter of fact and reassuring about that handsome profile, glimpsed in the light reflected from the stage, that she felt the tension lessen once more.

  Presently, she even began to take some interest in what was happening on the stage. And when her companion murmured, “This is the highlight of the evening,” she sat up and actually felt some curiosity.

  “Have you seen Beranova before?” he enquired, just before the curtains parted.

  “No. But I’ve read about her, of course. She’s the Russian girl who does songs and sketches, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. But not like anyone else at all.”

  He was right, Alma knew, from the first moment that the slender, almost childish figure came on to the stage. It seemed impossible that anyone so frail and almost gentle should take hold of an audience and play on its emotions in this masterly way. But everything she did—everything she said or sang in that slightly husky voice—had significance.

  She had, Alma realized, the gift of absolute pathos. Simple, unforced, inescapable. And with it a touch of that most exquisite and subtle form of humor which is always near the borderline of tears.

  The house roared its applause and called her back again and again, and Alma found herself applauding as enthusiastically as all the others, her own unhappiness forgotten for the moment.

  Beranova’s act ended the first half of the programme, and, as the lights went up for the interval, Alma turned to Maxwell Perring and exclaimed, “She’s absolutely wonderful! And what an adorable personality. One feels it right across the footlights.”

  “Yes. She’s an enchanting person,” he agreed. “Exactly the same in real life as she appears upon the stage.”

  “Do you know her, then?” Alma glanced at him with a mixture of diffidence and curiosity.

  “Yes. Though I know her husband better. He’s my lawyer. He found her in a camp for displaced persons, you know. I suppose if he hadn’t found her she would just be one of Europe’s thousands of forgotten people by now. Life’s a strange thing.”

  “Yes,” Alma agreed soberly, “it certainly is.”

  “And strangest of all is that everything passes,” he said slowly. “Even the most acute unhappiness.”

  “I wonder why you say that?” Again she glanced at him, but more quickly this time and searchingly.

  “I was thinking,” he said, unmoved, “how that girl must often have thought that life would never contain anything but misery and frustration and squalor for her. And now she’s an adored wife, and the darling of the great British public.”

  “But—you didn’t mean—only her, did you? You said that for me too—about acute unhappiness passing.”

  “Yes,” he said, and he smiled at her, in much the same way he smiled at his patients when he had to tell them they must trust everything to his skill.

  “But why did you say it to me tonight, Mr. Perring? Just tonight, of all times?”

  “Because I thought you needed it, I suppose.”

  “You know what has happened?”

  “I know from your general air that something has happened. I suppose it’s in connection with Trusco
tt, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s recovered his memory completely and recognized Geraldine, as well as you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And—it’s Geraldine he wants to marry?”

  “Yes,” said Alma for the third time.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, kindly but not at all emotionally, so that the words did not press too hard on her jangled nerves. “It was almost bound to happen, you know. But that, of course, is no great consolation when it does happen.—Do you want to see the second half of this show?”

  She looked at him in surprise.

  “Not specially—no. But, as I’m here—”

  “I wondered if you would prefer to come out with me and have something to eat. Have you had any sort of dinner or supper yet?”

  “No,” said Alma, suddenly remembering that, in the turmoil of the evening, she had not gone near the dining room at the nursing home.

  “Then I think you had certainly better come out with me now,” he told her with decision. “We’ve seen the best of this, with the Beranova act. What do you say? Shall we go?”

  “Why—why, yes, sir, thank you. If you think it’s best,” said Alma, immediately under the compulsion of putting her surgeon’s wishes first.

  “I’m not ordering you,” he reminded her, with some amusement. “I’m merely making a suggestion which you are quite at liberty to reject.”

  “No, sir. I’d like to come, please.” Alma smiled at him.

  And so they left the theatre together, as the lights were going down again, and about five minutes’ walk brought them to a quiet Soho restaurant where Maxwell Perring was evidently very well known.

  “It’s unpretentious, but the food’s good, and we shan’t be disturbed here,” he told her. Which made Alma realize suddenly that she was quite ravenously hungry, in spite of her broken heart.

  “You shouldn’t forget about your meals,” he told her, when he saw from her interest in the menu that she was indeed hungry. “Theatre sisters need a lot of strength and energy for their job. They can’t afford to neglect their health.”

  “It was rather a—special occasion, sir,” she pleaded. “I had a good deal to make me forget about meals—and everything else,” she added, and a shadow came over her face again.

  “Tell me how it happened. Unless you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I don’t mind talking about it. Not to you,” Alma said, almost naively, and a very faint smile passed over the surgeon’s face.

  She did not notice the smile. She was too busy arranging her own thoughts. And presently, in an uncertain, stumbling sort of way, she began to tell him the story of Jeremy’s complete recovery and the final blow to her own hopes.

  He hardly interrupted her at all. Only to ask an occasional question. But at the end, he said, with what would have been almost brutal finality in anyone else,

  “Then it’s completely decided that his interest in you is only friendly, and it’s Geraldine he wants to marry?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “I must return him his ring,” Maxwell Perring said in parenthesis. “He’s going to need it. And what are your plans?”

  “M-my plans, sir? I haven’t got any.”

  “That’s not a good idea. One should always have plans,” he told her with a smile.

  “You mean—am I going to stay on at the nursing home?”

  “I hope you are,” he said with emphasis.

  Alma made no reply. For the first time, she was contemplating life at the nursing home without Jeremy and without any hope of Jeremy in the future. Geraldine would still be there—until she married—a perpetual reminder of all she had lost. And, over and above those more intimate miseries, would be the almost unbearable humiliation of knowing that everyone on the staff had some garbled version or other of her unhappy story.

  There had been too much interest in the supposed engagement to Jeremy for her to hope to escape. Within a matter of hours now they would all be enjoying Geraldine’s romance, at secondhand. And she, Alma, would be the silly girl—or worse still, “the poor dear”—who had imagined Jeremy wanted her when he didn’t.

  “It’s almost worse than being jilted,” she thought. And aloud she said impulsively,

  “I don’t think I could face it.”

  “No?”

  The one syllable goaded her into further explanation more quickly than any argument would have done.

  “You see, sir, it isn’t only being reminded of all the unhappiness by everything round me, and by Geraldine’s presence. It’s that—that everyone knows. The story, in one form or another is all round the place as it is. Everyone will be curious or sorry or—amused. I simply couldn’t face it,” she repeated, almost pleadingly.

  “These things are fairly soon forgotten.”

  “Oh, no, sir, they aren’t. You don’t know anything about a nursing community if you can think that”

  “The moment you’re engaged to someone else—”

  “But why should I be? I—I haven’t the faintest expectation of such a thing. And I don’t want it, anyway!”

  “No? But you agree that such a thing would completely nullify the pity—or the amusement?”

  “Well, yes. I suppose it might. But it simply doesn’t enter into the matter. I don’t know what you’re thinking of, sir.” Alma looked half puzzled and half impatient.

  “I was thinking,” said Maxwell Perring, turning his glass reflectively on its stem, “that perhaps you would consider becoming engaged to me.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Alma stared across the table at Maxwell Perring in incredulous amazement.

  “I—don’t understand,” she said uncertainly. “You’re suggesting that I should become engaged to you? You can’t be serious, sir!”

  “I’m perfectly serious,” he assured her, though in fact he was smiling slightly.

  “But—why should I? I mean—why should you?” she exclaimed rather incoherently.

  “Because it’s a good idea. Don’t you think so?” The smile deepened until it touched those keen, knowledgeable eyes of his. “It would be the most effective counter possible against any tendency to regard you at the nursing home with either pity or amusement.”

  “But, sir—”

  “Don’t keep calling me ‘sir’.” He spoke half amusedly, half impatient y. “I’m asking you to marry me. You can’t address anyone as ‘sir’ when he’s proposing to you.”

  “No—of course not. But, s—Mr. Perring, I mean—you can’t ask me to marry you, just because it would stop embarrassing gossip about the Jeremy incident.”

  “I’m not. That isn’t by any means my only reason for asking you.”

  “You mean”—her eyes widened in fresh incredulity—“that this isn’t just a—a momentary impulse on your part?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “You thought before this evening of asking me to marry you? Before you knew of my unhappy position?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Did you?” She was immeasurably astonished and, in some inescapable way, intrigued. For her part, she had never thought of him as anything but the brilliant surgeon for whom she was pleased to work. That he should, all the time, have been regarding her not only as his theatre sister but as the girl he might possibly marry, was something so astonishing that she was silent, in contemplation of the fact.

  “Eat your supper,” he said, again with that slight smile. “And think it over. I’ve already lectured you on neglecting your meals.”

  “I don’t know that I can.”

  “Of course you can. You were very hungry a few minutes ago.”

  “That’s true.” Smiling a little in her turn, she began to eat what had been set before her, but without much awareness of what it was. Then, after a minute, she laid down her fork.

  “Mr. Perring, may I ask you something very personal?”

  “Oh, certainly. This is a rather personal conversation,” he reminded her.

  �
��People do propose marriage for quite a variety of reasons, I know. Why did you think you would like to marry me?”

  “Do you want me to say that I’m madly in love with you?”

  “No!” she said quickly, before she could stop herself.

  “I thought not. And I’m not going to say it,” he told her coolly. “But, as you yourself observed, people propose marriage for a variety of reasons. I want to get married—it’s as simple as that. I want someone to run my home, now that my sister is going away, and share my life. I like and respect you more than any other woman I know. The corollary is obvious.”

  “It sounds very—logical, put like that,” said Alma, unable to suppress a slight smile as she wondered, passingly, if any other woman had ever had a proposal of marriage reduced to a corollary to clear thinking.

  “It is logical,” he agreed.

  “But hardly—romantic.”

  “My dear girl, do you want me to be romantic about it?”

  “N-no. Not really,” she said, and bit her lip.

  For she had had enough of romance, so-called, she told herself bitterly. Jeremy had represented romance, and for Jeremy she had almost tom herself to pieces. If romance were to be represented by the last few months of hopes and fears, frustration and anguish, then she would take logical tranquillity. As represented by Maxwell Perring?

  She looked across the table at him again. And immediately every instinct told her that he represented very much more than logical tranquillity. He represented, in fact, an almost completely unknown quantity.

  She knew him as a surgeon, as a wonderful man in the operating theatre, as a just and not unkindly employer, even though he did not suffer fools gladly. But—as a husband?—as a lover? She had never even thought of him in such a capacity, and to do so now gave her the most extraordinary impression of embarking on something both fascinating and frightening.