Nurse Lang

by Jean S. MacLeod

  “Very commendable of her,” Grant said in a tone which seemed to brush Serena’s offer aside, “but first things first.” He turned back to Moira. “You can be fixed up across at the hospital, too, but I’m to take you over to see Matron first.” He glanced down at his watch. “Perhaps you would come now, while the visitors are in?” he suggested. “We’ve got rather a busy round later on and I believe it’s Matron’s off-duty tomorrow.”

  “When will you take Philip across?” Moira asked as she followed him from his brother’s room. “I think he’s even looking forward to it now.”

  “I shall want him in before next week-end,” he said thoughtfully. “I like a patient to become acclimatized to the hospital atmosphere for a day or two before a big operation like this. Sir Archibald will be here on Monday.”

  “So soon!” Something seemed to be gripping Moira by the throat and all the color had fled out of her face.

  “Philip’s all right now,” Grant told her steadily. “You mustn’t worry about that. You shouldn’t, you know,” he added almost kindly, “when you have been largely responsible for the change in him.”

  “You don’t think, though, that I should be with him afterwards?”

  “To nurse him? No, I don’t think that would be really good for either of you.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Philip would take advantage of your very ready sympathy to get too much of his own way.”

  “How hard you are!” she flashed.

  “I have been accused of that before,” he said grimly, “but I think it preferable to—weakness.”

  “You don’t make much allowance for other people’s weaknesses, then?” she challenged.

  “Why should I, after I have recognized them for what they are?” His mouth softened a little. “Besides,” he added, “Philip will mend more quickly with a certain amount of enforced discipline, and you might quite easily cramp my style in that direction.”

  “I could never imagine anyone doing that,” Moira flashed back, conscious of bitter disappointment at the thought of not really being allowed to help with Philip’s after-care, but aware, too, that Grant’s suggestions were probably for the best.

  She walked on by his side in the March sunlight, feeling cold and chilled by his indifference, and only when they reached the hospital did there seem to be any bond between them.

  Moira followed him along the white corridors to the matron’s room on the ground floor.

  “She’ll be expecting you,” he said. “By the way, I haven’t told her anything about Philip—about your engagement.”

  Before she knocked on the shining green and chromium door she hesitated. This was the final step towards staying at Mellyn. Once she had gone into Matron’s room and been approved, there would be no turning back. She drew in a deep breath and knocked.

  “Come in!”

  The corridor outside had been dim, but the room she entered was flooded in sunlight, giving a general impression of warmth and welcome which was enhanced by the woman sitting behind the broad mahogany desk. The Matron of Mellyn Cottage Hospital was a woman who held the attention to the exclusion of everything else. She was small and stout and homely, with steel-grey hair waved softly round a pleasant, happy face, and only in the eyes, blue and penetrating and shrewd, was there any hint of the things which made up this woman’s daily life. Honor Cavendish had made nursing her life’s work and it was by sheer ability that she sat where she was now. The grace of sympathy and the healing of understanding lay upon her with a fine nobility. They lost her nothing of authority, because she was a woman who would be obeyed and loved.

  “Sit down, my dear,” she said, indicating a chair beside her desk. “Mr. Melmore has spoken to me about you. You came to the Priory to take care of his brother, I understand, and he thinks you would like to work for us here when young Mr. Philip comes over next week.” There was a slight pause, in which Moira was aware of being studied with smiling frankness by those shrewd blue eyes, and then Honor Cavendish continued her questioning. “You are, of course, State registered? Mr. Melmore did mention that your previous job was with a shipping company, but he said you had previous hospital training and experience.”

  Moira explained about St. Theodore’s.

  “The shipping job was accidental, in a sense,” she added. “I was deputizing for my sister while she underwent an operation. It was more or less a holiday as far as I was concerned.”

  “I see.” Matron examined a white card on the desk in front of her, filling in a detail or two before she looked up again. “You do understand, of course, that your friendship with the Melmores will make no difference to your status if you come here?”

  “I should never have expected that, ma’am,” she said. “My—connection with Mr. Melmore is entirely professional.”

  “He spoke very well of you,” Matron said, clasping her hands together over the record card as if something which had disturbed her had been satisfactorily explained away and she was prepared for a few minutes’ pleasant conversation.

  “It’s very kind of him.” She hesitated, and then rushed on with what she wanted to say. “When—his brother comes across to the hospital I shall have to look round for somewhere to stay, but I don’t know Mellyn very well. I—wonder if you could advise me?”

  “We have an excellent Nurses’ Home,” she was told. “It’s new and modern and I am quite sure you would be happy there, but unfortunately I can’t offer you a vacancy before the end of the month. The nurse whose place you will be taking will be working out her notice, but I hardly think the Melmores will make it difficult for you to stay where you are for the next three weeks or so.”

  As she left Matron’s room she could feel the old excitement stirring in her veins as she thought of the work ahead of her, and some of her heartache seemed to recede into the background. This was the life she loved; this was her chosen profession. Nothing would ever compensate for love, but at least the sort of work she knew herself suited to might help to drive some of the hollow emptiness out of her heart.

  When she reached the Priory it was bathed in the warm yellow glow of the afternoon sunlight, its high Gothic windows glinting with diamond sparks from a distance, its arched roofs and ruined cloisters, dim and grey and old, looking friendly and welcoming as she approached, and something caught in her throat as she looked at it. It was a lovely old house, mellowed by the generous hand of Time, and she saw Grant’s love of it mirrored in the love of generations of Melmores in the past. There would be nothing remote about his approach to Mellyn, and he would guard what it stood for with his life, if need be. She thought of him and Philip playing there as children, their parent’s pride in two sturdy, growing boys, one of them the heir to it all, a Melmore in the male line to carry on their tradition in the years to come.

  With a sickening twist of the heart she wondered if Grant would ever see a son of his own at the Priory. The future demanded that of him, at least, but over the future lay the shadow of Kerry and the past.

  She stood shaken by the thought, chilled and curiously lonely. The future had so little to give either of them. And then she saw Grant coming towards her through the trees.

  It almost seemed as if he had been waiting for her return there on the way to the Priory, and he glanced back at the house, at the picture it made from where they stood.

  “You were thinking about the house,” he said.

  “It—seemed to come to life all of a sudden,” she confessed truthfully, because his encouraging smile expected truth. “All the past—the people who have lived here—your ancestors—all with their own particular pride in it. It seemed that you had a great responsibility to Mellyn.”

  “And to the future?” He glanced at her curiously, his eyes frankly probing. “You feel that I should marry one day and provide Mellyn with the necessary heir? But surely there is more to marriage than just that?”

  “Much more.” The hot color ran like a flag into her cheeks as it always did w
hen he watched her so intently. “I was speaking generally. You see,” she added simply, “the house seemed to demand it.”

  “Life puts a great many demands upon us, Moira,” he said briefly. “But it should not demand that we make hasty decisions to regret for a lifetime afterwards.” There was hardness in his tone now. “If I never marry there will always be Philip to provide Mellyn with its heir.”

  “Do you think that would be the same?” she demanded.

  “Why not? Philip and I are the same flesh and blood.”

  “But—for your own sake. No one should go through life utterly alone.”

  “Because, by doing so, we are not fulfilling our destiny?” he queried. “But supposing destiny has no real meaning? There are people who choose to walk alone.”

  “It isn’t the same,” she cried impulsively. “They lose so much—all the warmth of contact and friendship...”

  “And, of course, love?”

  She turned to face him, her eyes accusing in the bright sunlight. “Why do you sneer at love?” she asked. “Surely you can see that it does exist.”

  “Far from sneering,” he protested, “I have the strongest desire imaginable to prove its worth, but I am hard to convince.”

  “You are hard in so many other ways,” she said before she could control her emotion. “You will not let yourself—unbend.”

  He smiled at that.

  “How little you know of me,” he said, but the barrier, if it had been down at all during these past few minutes, was up again and in the next breath he was asking her about her interview with Matron.

  “How did you fare over at the hospital? Matron’s a good soul, really, although she has apparently let love pass her by.”

  “She was very kind,” Moira admitted, ignoring the second half of this remark because it seemed that they would never see eye to eye about love. “She gave me the impression that I had got the job.”

  He looked down at her as they turned towards the house.

  “And you’re glad about that?”

  “Exceedingly glad. It is the work I love. Going back to the hospital made me realize just how much I have missed the life on the wards.”

  “Matron has promised to find me some accommodation in the Nurses’ Home,” she said swiftly. “I—won’t be able to stay on here, of course, when Philip goes over to the hospital.”

  He looked surprised, as if he had not considered such a change necessary.

  “Why not?” he asked. “Mellyn is surely big enough to hold us both.”

  “You don’t understand,” she tried to explain, thinking that she would have lived willingly with him at Mellyn for the rest of her life. “It wouldn’t be the right sort of thing for me to do while I was working on the wards.”

  His mouth relaxed in a whimsical smile.

  “Do you invariably do the right thing, Moira? Have you never felt like kicking over the traces and taking something for yourself?”

  He expected an answer, and she could only answer truthfully.

  “I suppose I have done, quite often, but they have always been things that didn’t matter very much.”

  “And the big things?” he queried relentlessly.

  “There’s never been anything—really big that I’ve wanted so badly as all that.”

  Until now, she thought, biting her lip.

  “You appear to have been fortunate,” he observed dryly. “Does it lull you into a state of blissful content where you are perfectly willing to watch the world go by?”

  “Nobody can afford to watch the world go by,” she objected. “It’s a poet’s dream. I should hate a man to be without ambition for the future.”

  The future has featured quite a lot in our discussion this afternoon,” he mused as they neared the door. “I take it that you still feel Mellyn’s future to be my personal responsibility rather than Philip’s?”

  It was difficult to understand him in this mood.

  “How could I advise you about a thing like that,” she said, “when you know so well what you will do?”

  He laughed outright.

  “How wrong you are there!” he declared. “At the moment I am on the horns of the proverbial dilemma, but apparently I must seek my own way out.” She could not believe that he had been appealing for help when he always seemed so sure of the way he would go, nor could she feel that she had any help to offer him apart from looking after Philip. Perhaps that was what he meant. By taking care of Philip she was looking after Mellyn’s future, too.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Two days later Philip was moved over to the hospital. Serena stood on the steps at the front door and watched the ambulance drive away, glad that Philip had not made any sort of fuss about being moved at the last minute, glad that the comings and goings at Mellyn would now cease, and above all glad that Moira would soon follow her cousin down the avenue for the last time.

  She was alone in the Priory again and she felt a freedom out of all proportion flooding over her like warming sunshine after the bleak chill of rain. All these weeks when Grant had been away in South Africa attending to Philip she had had the place to herself, to wander about at will and give her own orders to the servants, and now it could be like that again. It would be like that if Grant did not marry.

  Moira sat in the ambulance beside Philip, with Grant riding in the cab in front. She was still in her old uniform of starched head-square and white coat because her responsibility for Philip was not quite at an end, and she knew that it would not end even when she had handed him over to Matron and put on the severe blue hospital dress and frilled cap which would be waiting for her at the end of her journey. There was still the promise she had made to Philip to see this thing through to the end.

  “Well, here we are! This is something new for both of us, Phil. Wish me luck!”

  “You won’t need it for very long,” he assured her. “Once I’m on my feet again our luck will be mutual!”

  Grant came round to open the doors for them and walked beside the trolley as the attendant wheeled Philip to the lift.

  “Your room’s on the first floor,” he explained, “where you can see the Priory windows through the trees.”

  He had arranged all that, Moira realized, sensing Philip’s deep attachment to his home and the raw, grating newness which being a patient in the hospital he knew so well would bring, and she thanked him inwardly for his thoughtfulness.

  Philip demanded that she should stay with him until he was settled into his new quarters.

  “Whatever orders Grant likes to issue afterwards, you’re still my nurse,” he said, “until someone comes along to take your place.” Matron came in and Grant stood aside, watching his brother’s reaction to his first experience of real authority, but Philip could be charming when he liked.

  “You’re not going to find me an easy patient,” he warned. "My one idea is to get out of here as quickly as possible!”

  Honor Cavendish gave him a warm, friendly smile.

  “We can’t afford to keep you much longer than a month,” she said. “We need the bed.”

  Moira took her leave of Philip as soon as the ward sister came in. “You will be reporting for duty, Nurse,” Matron said, following her from the room. “If you’ll come this way I’ll introduce you to the sister in charge of the physiotherapy section. They have quite a session over there this afternoon I believe, and they’ll be glad of your help. Doctor Hillier is in charge.”

  The sister in charge was a tall, angular woman in her mid-forties, sallow-skinned and acid-looking, and she surveyed her new recruit with no great show of enthusiasm.

  “Have you done this sort of work before?” she asked.

  “No, but I’ve always thought it would be most interesting. I have of course, seen it in action in the wards.”

  “We have a very big out-patients’ department here,” the older woman observed speculatively. “I think you’d better go down there to start with. Miss Jackson, the technician will show you your way about
and I’ll come and see how you are getting on later.”

  Moira worked non-stop for the next three hours, realizing that ward routine was one thing and out-patients quite a different proposition altogether. When the last sufferer had been ushered through the swing doors and the last car had driven away from the car-park there was still the paraphernalia of their treatments to clear away and she took her orders from Sister with a feeling of weariness which she had almost forgotten about during these past few leisurely months at sea.

  She was cleaning out the last sluice when Elizabeth put her neat head in at the door.

  “How goes it?” she asked cheerfully. “Has your first day left you all in one piece?”

  “I’m not quite sure yet!” Moira smiled. She had seen Elizabeth from time to time during the day, glimpses of her as a patient was shown in or out of her surgery, but there had been no opportunity for a word in conversation until now. “My feet have reached a stage where I don’t know whether they are at the end of my legs at all!”

  “They’re still there, I can assure you,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve got some forms to fill up before I go,” she added, “but if you’d like to wait I can run you home.”

  For the first time Moira faced the thought of her return to the Priory and the memory of Serena made her heart turn over. She could not imagine what Serena’s attitude would be now that her presence was no longer essential at the Priory as Philip’s nurse and she felt that Grant would only be irritated by any suggestion of friction between them.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she found herself confiding. “There’s no reason why I should consider the Priory a comfortable lodging now that Philip has gone. It wasn’t exactly in my contract.”

  “What exactly was in your contract?” she asked.

  “I—promised to nurse Philip until he was strong enough to undergo this operation.” Moira bent over the sluice, scrubbing industriously. “Grant thought I could help and he was so—anxious about Philip at that time because Phil wasn’t co-operating at all well.”