by Jane Arbor
Matthew interposed: “Forgive me, but we are at cross-purposes. I certainly understand there was an engagement between the Professor and your stepsister, but...”
“Well, there was—in a way—but it wasn’t true, you see! It was Ned’s surgeon’s idea—”
Matthew stood up. “Do you mind, Coralie, if I don’t discuss a colleague’s case with you?”
“No, but really, Matthew, this is funny, now that it’s all over, and Ned is getting well, and doesn’t mind a bit! You see, after his accident Ned thought he was engaged to Bear, and while he was delirious his surgeon wanted him to go on believing it to soothe him. Bear had to play ball, of course, and she hasn’t breathed a word either way. But when I went to visit Ned one day he told me himself, so I know it’s true—!”
If she expected her companion to evince interest she was disappointed. He merely crooked his arm towards her as an invitation to return to the ballroom. As she took it she was thinking: ‘What a snibbing sort of person he can be! I must have been mad to imagine myself in love with him, when he can’t even laugh with me as Dirk does—all the time!’
Unexpectedly, Ursula had not to endure the thing she had most dreaded—the sight of Averil in triumphant possession of Matthew throughout the evening. For up to the moment when he came to ask Ursula herself to dance he had, she thought, danced only once with Averil.
Guided by Matthew’s light, expert touch she glided smoothly into the rhythm of the waltz and gave herself up to the brief pleasure of feeling his arm about her, however conventionally. But the crowd of dancers, enlivened by a preceding square-dance, was noisily boisterous about them; there was some wild reversing, resulting in “bumping and boring,” and after a few turns round the room Matthew stood still.
“Would you care to let them work this off?” he asked.
“It doesn’t annoy me too much. I—”
“The moon is rising over the sea, and it’s quiet on the terrace.” It was an indication of his own preference, so she assented by turning at his side to move off the dance floor.
Outside the night was warm, and in an angle of the terrace where they went to lean on the balustrade they were quite alone.
Matthew said: “You are pleased with the reception of your tableau?”
“Very. I must thank you for all the help you gave.”
He smiled. “On the contrary—your inspiration, our joint execution. The honors are yours. As, indeed, a successful woman can usually contrive them to be.”
“You regard me as a—successful woman?”
“Aren’t you? Haven’t you been at pains to make it clear that you meant to be?”
“Have I? You make it sound as if I put success before everything else.”
He turned to face her squarely in the moonlight. “Until tonight I would have said that you did.”
“And tonight?” She knew herself breathless for his reply.
But when it came, after a pause that seemed significant, it told her nothing. He said: “Perhaps it is that, lacking the austerities of your uniform, you appear a little more approachable, more vulnerable. That dress...”
She was in love. She had chosen the dress for his eyes alone. But she made her tone as light as she judged his to have been as she replied: “You have seen me out of uniform before.”
“But not by moonlight.”
“Moonlight is notoriously deceptive.” She wondered whether they were upon the edge of a conventionally flirtatious exchange and despised herself for her part in it.
Matthew said gravely: “You are very sure of yourself, aren’t you? I could use other descriptions—untouched, poised, remote—but they add up to assuredness. And that challenges a man. In fact, some women make it their technique.”
“You suggest that it is part of mine?” She was trembling.
He shook his head. “No. With you I judge it to be real—part of your character, in fact. And that has been formed by an evenness of fortune that has never challenged you yet. You could not possibly be so sure if you had ever suffered, known failure, ached with longing, been baffled by frustration, loved, and feared you were not loved in return. You are”—he turned to her and seemed to find in the cream and green of her dress the comparison he sought—“you are like a flower bud that keeps its petals tightly wrapped about its heart, either not ready or not willing to meet the wind of circumstance. I’ve no doubt that spells safety to you, but it is what I mean by the challenge you offer to a man.”
How wrong he was! How utterly, cruelly wrong! She said in a low voice: “Surely in time the bud will open—to the sun? But, of course, the wind of a man’s arrogance can’t wait for that. It must try to tear it apart—for sheer destruction’s sake!”
He turned to her urgently. “No! For—” He broke off as his arms went round her, crushing her to him while his lips sought her mouth, her throat and then more gently her brow.
For a moment the answering passion within her yielded to him and her body curved into his embrace as if she thought, for one mad instant of time, this were really love.
But it was not. It was not! And even now she had not the plea that he had cheated her. He had been at pains to explain beforehand lightly, cynically, that she had done no more than pique his male pride. He loved, he was engaged to marry another woman, yet he must still turn destructive hands upon her!
She was still trembling as she tore herself out of his arms. She felt his own hands quiver as they fell reluctantly from her shoulders. But she told herself she could not afford to pity his wounded pride of conquest. Now he must let her go. They had no more to say to each other.
But as, sick at heart, she turned away, he said: “Apologies have never come easily to me.”
Chillingly she replied: “I should not have expected you would find it necessary to apologize for something that, on your own admission, was no more than an interesting experiment.”
“You believe that?”
“Didn’t you take trouble to prepare me to believe it?”
As she left him there was dignity in the carriage of her head, the line of her shoulders, the very whisper of her dress upon the floor.
But in her heart there was the final setting of a hope that should never have dawned.
CHAPTER EIGHT
PERHAPS it was inevitable that after the Centenary everyone should be suffering from a sense of anticlimax. In the common room tempers were short, and on the wards even the bedridden patients, whose interest in the gaieties had been only at secondhand, were depressed and inclined to irritability.
For Ursula, whose very confidence had been destroyed by that cruelly tantalizing moment in Matthew’s arms, the days seemed to offer trials which earlier she could have taken in her stride, but which, she was appalled to notice, now taxed her strength and patience almost beyond endurance.
“I’m not ill, and all this will pass in time,” she assured herself again and again. But every morning she flinched before the reflection in her mirror of the darkened circles beneath her eyes; her duty hours loomed like ordeals to be endured, and her nights became a ceaseless fight for sleep against the churning activity of her mind. Her only consolation was that she had not to face Matthew. For he had mentioned at dinner at Shere Court before the Ball that he was taking some weeks’ vacation, and that his work would be done by Mr. Chaddesleigh while he was away.
The Indian summer which had graced the Centenary celebrations had broken suddenly into the autumn that was already overdue, and Mrs. Craig began to chafe restlessly against remaining any longer at Sheremouth.
“Weather doesn’t matter so much in town,” she declared, shivering. “If it weren’t for Coralie, I wouldn’t have stayed so long. But now, thank goodness, Mr. Denman and Dirk are coming to London too.”
Ursula was sorry to see them go, but she was happy for Coralie, and at their parting responded eagerly to the girl’s ecstatic hug.
“Bear, darling,” declared Coralie with rare generosity, “do you know, I’ve realized that Dirk
is really all your doing?”
“Coralie, my pet, I must disclaim all responsibility for the existence of Dirk!” retorted Ursula with spirit.
“But you can’t! How should I ever have met him if you hadn’t known Matthew—outside hospital, I mean—and hadn’t gone with him to Shere Court in the first place?”
“If you hadn’t known Matthew and hadn’t gone with him to Shere Court.” ‘What irony, that a chance fortune which at first flung Coralie into a hopeless infatuation, should now spell happiness for her and only heartbreak for me!’ was Ursula’s swift thought.
But Coralie was worrying: “Now that I couldn’t care less about Matthew for myself, I do wish Averil treated him better—”
“Really, I think you could let Matthew fend for himself, Coralie!” Ursula’s tone was cold.
“How can he, when he’s not here and doesn’t know what’s going on? That Brigadier Dallant has stayed on at the Court and is taking Averil everywhere. It’s what I said would happen. When Averil is married to Matthew she will do the same to him as she did to Foster—she’ll break his heart and won’t even care!”
“And there’s still not a thing you can do about it, dear,” Ursula assured her wearily. But in her present bitterness she doubted that Averil Damon’s power to hurt could possibly be greater than Matthew’s own.
Ned was the next to go.
Though he had been an ideal patient while he was really ill, convalescence irked him, and as soon as he could hobble a few steps he clamored for discharge.
“It’s the maddening regularity of everything—the meals, the washings, the dressings—all to the tick of the clock,” he complained ruefully to Ursula.
“We couldn’t run a hospital except by the clock, Ned,” she reminded him. But she knew that time was a tyranny to which Ned had never yet yielded, and that even to eat or to sleep by normal people’s habit was beyond his power.
Now she was alone again, as she had been before. And the inexorable routine of Christian Shere ward went on.
Grannie Mottram, offered a variety of covers for her hot-water bottle—the range included plush, crochet and flannel—discarded them as well as the bottle with withering scorn; Miss Calcum lay in bed concocting pinpricks of constant demand upon the nurses—or so it seemed to Ursula’s jangled nerves; and the whole ward, loving little Sarah Caspar and admiring her for her long months of courage, now found itself dismayed and baffled by her present despair.
Ursula exerted every power of persuasion she had to rally her towards hope. “You are getting well at last, Sarah,” she urged. “Mr. Lingard is sure of it; we all know it here on the ward. If you can only be patient for a week or two more Mr. Lingard may get you up and allow you to walk a few steps. Just at first, that is. Then when you have had a little practice you’ll gradually walk more. Imagine how proud we shall be when we meet you striding about the ward!”
Sarah plucked restlessly at her sheet. “Mr. Lingard is only saying that,” she muttered.
“Sarah, look at me!” Ursula’s voice was imperative, but the hand that was laid upon the girl’s was infinitely gentle.
Sarah raised reluctant eyes.
“Tell me, have you known Mr. Lingard to break any promise he has made to you? About making a successful operation on your hip? About letting me tell you just what is happening to it while it mends? Have you, Sarah?”
“N-no, Sister, I suppose not...”
“Then why can’t you believe that he is telling the truth now, when he promises that in a very little while you will be walking?”
There was a long, pregnant pause. Relentlessly Ursula held the girl’s gaze; wide-eyed, Sarah stared back at her. Then the floodgates of her bewilderment broke. She turned her face into her pillows and burst into a storm of weeping.
Silently Ursula rose and pulled a screen about her bed. Then: “Sarah, what is it?” she asked gently. “Don’t you believe that at least I’d tell you the truth—always?”
Sarah lifted her ravaged face. “I—I want to, Sister. You’ve been so good to me and I love you so. But she says that nothing any of you—the nurses or the doctors—tell us is ever true, and that you just say things to deceive us into thinking we are getting well when we aren’t. She said that Mr. Lingard is just p-playing with me, experimenting, I believe she said—” The tears flowed again, choking the words.
In sheer perplexity Ursula looked down at the bent tragic head.
“ ‘She!” Who on earth could have been so malignant? No nurse, certainly. Who then could have so poisoned the child’s mind?’
“Who told you this, Sarah?” she asked quietly.
“Miss—Miss Calcum. She is always saying it. She says that no one has troubled to cure her, and why should I think that Mr. Lingard cares about curing me?”
Though Ursula found herself aghast at what she heard, she realized that her first duty lay in the reassurance of the child who had at last given up her rankling, hope-destroying secret. With both Sarah’s hands in hers she set herself to the task, first asking her to recall some of the many cases they had both seen brought in to Christian Shere—some of them broken, despairing people who had gone out again weeks or months later, facing their futures with new hope. Then she demanded whether Sarah supposed that they had not had to trust their surgeons and their nurses and to try to believe of them what they said.
Gradually, by a mental effort of her own that was exhausting, she knew herself to have gained ground on the girl’s doubts. And when she left Sarah at last she believed that she had at least laid the foundations of new confidence in Sarah’s heart.
When, later, she sought out Miss Calcum, she reflected that it was as well that she had waited for her anger to cool. Now she thought that she could act with justice, though she meant ruthlessly to destroy any chance that the malice could be repeated.
The day was raw but still, and Miss Calcum had demanded that her bed should be wheeled out on to the balcony, saying she was “stifled” in the ward. Once settled out there, she claimed she was cold and wished to be brought back. But Ursula, knowing she had been put in a sheltered corner, instructed the probationers to leave her there as she wished to speak to her alone.
Crisply and concisely Ursula dealt with the matter of Sarah’s fears—despairs that had been fostered by the work of a cruel, malicious tongue.
Miss Calcum bridled and flushed. “I only speak as I find, Sister. Even by your countless rules and regulations, one may have one’s opinions, I suppose?”
“Certainly. But they shouldn’t be passed on to the destruction of another person’s hope. Sometimes, Miss Calcum, enduring hope and the will to recover are the only qualities doctors and nurses have to work upon. Sarah had plenty of both until you saw fit to destroy them.”
“She has needed plenty of both, surely? Months, the child has been here—”
“She will be here for months yet. But every day will take her so many hours nearer to full recovery, if you let her alone, which I must ask you to do.”
“Are you forbidding me, Sister Craig, to speak to another patient who happens to be in the same ward as myself?”
“I am not forbidding you, Miss Calcum. I am asking you merely not to discuss Sarah’s case with her. Won’t you agree to that?”
Miss Calcum blustered: “You shall not issue orders to me when not one of you—doctors, surgeons, nurses alike—has ever attempted to understand my case or what I go through—”
“I think we can claim to have tried.”
“Then you have succeeded singularly badly. Never have I had less attention, less consideration, more interference with my wishes—!”
But at that point, Ursula, fearing to be betrayed into a blameworthy retort, bowed before the storm of words and returned to the ward.
How difficult it was to keep any such matter private was something which experience of hospital had already taught her. In the sluice-room, in the ward kitchen, even in the general dining room she could sense the eager, gossiping talk which it c
aused.
At any other time, she told herself, she would have risen above it—would have jokingly parted the chattering probationers, conveyed lightly to outsiders that a minor crisis on Christian Shere ward was no concern of theirs. But the depression that weighed her down magnified the incident out of all proportion until, by the time its sequel was complete, she had taken the blame entirely to herself.
She was returning to duty the following day when she was met by Nurse Freedom, full of the drama of the morning’s happenings. “Sister, what do you think? Miss Calcum has gone!”
“Miss Calcum—left hospital? What are you talking about, Staff? She hasn’t had her discharge from Mr. Chaddesleigh.”
“Well, believe it or not, her bed is empty now. She insisted on discharging herself this morning. Demanded that a pro. should help her to pack her things, called a taxi and went—just like that.”
“But you tried to dissuade her? You did something, surely? Of course, you reported it?”
“Of course, Sister. I rang Matron’s office; she wasn’t on duty, but Senior Sister came over and talked to Miss Calcum, tried to insist that she should at least wait to see Mr. Chaddesleigh. But Milady wouldn’t listen to a word, and took herself off.”
“But she wasn’t ready for discharge! Mr. Lingard—”
“She said she was going to an excellent doctor she knew—a man who was being kept out of practice by nothing but the malice of the B.M.A.,” put in Nurse Freedom, not without a faint malice of her own.
“Oh, dear, that means a quack.” Ursula drew out a chair and sat down, pressing a hand to her brow. After a moment or two she looked up to ask: “Where do you suppose we could have failed so completely with her, Freedom?”
“We failed with her? Why, Sister, we’ve done everything! You, especially—”
“Everything, seemingly, but the right thing. Everything but what Mr. Lingard said she needed most—reassurance of her own importance, making her feel of interest to somebody, letting her know that we really cared that she should get well.”
