“My dear Renee”—Mr. Pembridge stood up and took the singer by the hand—”the best possible thing that could happen to Nicholas would be for him to fall in love with one of the dozens of charming girls on board. It would give him a purpose in life, without which every man is sick in a greater or lesser degree. And, if she obligingly returned his affection, it would give him the feeling that someone cared whether he lived or died. Nothing does more than that for one’s will to live and get better, you know.”
And if Leonie had not been feeling sorry for Renee Armand, she would have been tempted to laugh at the look of consternation which came over her face at this diagnosis.
“I don’t think Nicholas is at all likely to fall in love with one of the charming girls on board, as you put it,” she said crisply. “Jeunes filles were never in his line. He liked a woman to be intelligent and stimulating.
“Then we must hope that someone who stimulates him will materialize,” Mr. Pembridge replied pleasantly. “And fortunately almost anything can happen on board ship. During my year afloat I have seen all manner of romances blossom.”
“And is that all you can prescribe for Nicholas?” The singer’s voice actually trembled with annoyance.
“No I will see what I can do in the way of professional advice. Whether or not he takes it is another thing,” Mr. Pembridge said. “There again we must hope that the intelligent and stimulating companion helps.”
He smiled at her as he said that, and for a moment the Frenchwoman blinked her lashes and looked as though some unfamiliar thought had struck her. Then she, too, smiled—but reluctantly.
“Touché,” she said. And, reaching up, she kissed him lightly on the cheek, and made an exit as effective as her entry.
For a moment Leonie was tempted to point out that she did not appear to be the only one who could not avoid kisses in the surgery. But she remembered, just in time, how poorly that line had paid off before. Besides, she must accept the fact that she was Nurse Creighton now, and there are certain things which no nurse says to the Senior Surgeon, however unusual the circumstances.
She did, however, find enough courage to revert to the unfortunate incident and say,
“Mr. Pembridge, I think I should say something in explanation of my attitude to Mr. Stour. You see—”
“Please don’t bother, Nurse. I find it inexpressibly boring to discuss intimate affairs which don’t concern me in the least,” Mr. Pembridge assured her crushingly. “So long as you conduct yourself properly in my surgery, I am not at all interested in what you do elsewhere.”
There was really nothing to add to this, particularly as the next patient now made an appearance. A busy half-hour followed, in which the nurse-and-doctor relationship was maintained at its politest and most formal. And then Leonie was free to go and have lunch, before helping with the lunches in the hospital quarters.
It was too early for any passengers in the big dining room, and as Leonie sat there eating her solitary meal— served to her by a friendly steward who seemed to think, like everyone else, that she was something of a heroine to have donned uniform in the emergency—she began to wonder, after all, why she had let herself in for all this.
Her social life—the life she had been enjoying so much—was inevitably now cut to a minimum. And, in exchange, she had a situation in which Kingsley Stour would probably be increasingly difficult to deal with, while Mr. Pembridge was already presuming to exercise a degree of cool disapproval very lowering to her morale and joy of living.
It was hard not to think that perhaps Claire had been right when she declared that Leonie had accepted her position much too impulsively.
Later, in the glow of satisfaction engendered by a spell of duty among grateful and comfortable patients, Leonie felt better. But the knowledge of duty well done, though gratifying, was not, she decided, complete compensation for the scorn and disapproval of someone one liked.
It was at this point that she made the astonishing discovery that she did indeed like Mr. Pembridge.
For years she had thought of him—when she thought about him at all—as a sarcastic, unreasonable person who had treated her with undue severity in her early hospital experience. If anyone had asked if she liked him, she would have replied with an unequivocal “no”.
But now, though she still thought him sarcastic and sometimes unreasonable, and though he was undoubtedly treating her with undue severity, she could not say that she disliked him. In fact—since that was rather negative praise—she had to admit that she liked him.
She liked his cool, appraising glance, his unexpected smile, his special sense of humor, and above all the unaffected way he gave praise on the occasions when he thought praise was due. This was something worth waiting for, worth working for, and it was something she found she missed sadly when she stood in the shadow of his disapproval.
In thinking of all this, Leonie suddenly decided that she would have no more nonsense with Kingsley Stour. However well-intentioned her plan might have been, it could not fail to put her in a doubtful and unrealistic position. And she did not want Mr. Pembridge to see her in that light, she decided. She wanted him to see her as a responsible, likeable girl. The sort one chose for a nurse one could trust or a friend whom one could value.
So determined was she to carry this new line of conduct into effect that she contrived to make her encounters with the Assistant Surgeon in the next twenty-four hours brief, cool and almost entirely in the presence of a third person.
She was helped in this by an unusually busy surgery. But she also had to do some quick thinking and a certain degree of manoeuvring—which he immediately detected, she was sure, and resented far more than his careless smiling air might have suggested.
Faintly alarmed, Leonie adopted an even more aloof manner when on duty, and, in consequence, knew she would have to face some sort of showdown in her off-duty hours.
The moment came during their third evening out from Port Said, when most of the passengers were in the air-conditioned ballroom, watching a film show. Leonie had a few hours to herself as Nurse Meech was on duty in the hospital quarters, and, availing herself of her semi-official status, she changed to a cool frock and sought out a corner of the upper deck where a breath of breeze was stirring.
Overhead arched a star-spangled sky, while, far out in the Indian Ocean, it seemed as though the waves were edged with an almost phosphorescent glow which gave back an answering glitter. Free from her duties, Leonie relaxed contentedly, glad to be alone and peacefully unoccupied.
But before she had had much opportunity of enjoying her peace, it was abruptly broken by the Assistant Surgeon, who, coming along the deck with an air of purpose, dropped into the chair beside her and said, without preamble,
“Isn’t it about time you and I had a talk?”
“Is it?” She smiled at him, with a laziness she was far from feeling. “I thought we’d had almost too much time to talk to each other in the last few days.”
“But always with someone else present,” he reminded her grimly.
“That’s true.”
“By your special arrangement, if I’m not much mistaken.”
Leonie did not choose to answer that, and after a moment he asked,
“Why was that, Leonie? Why have you been avoiding every chance of our being alone together?”
“I didn’t very much care for what happened when we were alone together,” she replied coolly. “You don’t seem to have any sort of idea of taking my professional position seriously, and you let me in for a particularly unpleasant type of rebuke.”
“From Pembridge?”
“Of course.”
“Damned impudence on his part!”
“Not at all.” She was still quite cool. “I didn’t like it, and I felt it was certainly not my own fault. But, thanks to your attitude, I was made to appear cheap and frivolous and without much sense of fitness. As my immediate boss, he was perfectly entitled to rebuke me.”
“Don’t
be absurd! You know, and he knows, that you’re a private passenger, right outside his authority and—”
“No. That’s where you make a mistake. I have accepted the position of nurse under him and, with it, I’ve accepted the usual conditions and responsibilities. I’m not playing at this thing, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner we shall work harmoniously together.”
“Leonie”—he looked half amused, half astonished— “you talk like a junior matron who’s taking her position too seriously,” he protested.
“I’m sorry. If you don’t like my way of taking things, you don’t have to come and talk to me about it. In fact, I’d be just as pleased if you didn’t.”
Even to her own ears that sounded rather harsh from one who had previously shown some degree of interest in the handsome young Assistant Surgeon. To him it acted like a match to gun-powder.
“Leonie, what’s the matter with you?” He leaned forward and caught both her hands in his, turning her so that she had to look at him. “I haven’t done anything to deserve that! I’m sorry if that ass Pembridge chose to throw his weight about and be puritanical, and if you like I’ll go and knock his head back for him—”
“Oh, no. I don’t think so,” put in Leonie coldly.
“But, in any case,” Kingsley Stour went on, disregarding the sceptical interruption, “he’s of less than no importance to us, surely. Maybe I did choose the wrong setting in which to make love to you, but you can’t expect a man who feels as I do to be too precise about that.”
“And how do you feel—exactly?” inquired Leonie, looking him straight in the eye.
“You know how I feel about you,” he retorted’ unabashed, and with such a look of reproachful surprise that she was shaken.
But after a moment she collected herself and said quietly,
“Mr. Stour, I sometimes think you must have forgotten the things that were said in our earlier conversations.”
“Our earlier conversations?”
“Yes. When we first came on board. When I told you that I was worried on Claire’s behalf, and you assured me that you loved her and wanted only her good. Have you really forgotten? It’s very recent history, you know, to be so conveniently ignored.”
He looked taken aback then. To tell the truth, he looked as though he truly had forgotten all that, and was astounded to have to face it again and realize that it had actually happened. Either, Leonie thought, he was doing this extraordinarily well, or else, in some perverse way, his affections really had been captured at last by the one girl who was proof against his wooing.
“I know it seems improbable,” he muttered, passing his hand over his hair in a perplexed gesture. “Sometimes I wonder myself what’s hit me. But—I can’t tell you how—all that’s so completely and utterly past that it’s as though it never happened.”
“Not,” Leonie said coldly, “to Claire.”
He stirred uneasily.
“I’m desperately sorry about that. But she’ll get over it. She’s got everything and everyone in the world to choose from.”
“But she came on this voyage because she chose you,” Leonie pointed out.
“I can’t help it,” he said, almost violently. “People change—they can’t say how or when—and when they do—”
“Mr. Stour”—Leonie spoke slowly and clearly, determined that for once this philanderer should look his own conduct in the face—”a fortnight ago you described yourself as in love with Claire.”
“But it’s over,” he insisted. “It’s irretrievably past. Stop throwing up the past at me. It’s you I love and want to marry!—and you know it.”
She was silent for a moment. In the strangest and most illogical way, she was almost sorry for him. For she was certain that for once he spoke from his heart, and that, by a cruel stroke of irony, he was indeed in love—as far as he could be—with someone who had played him on his own line.
“Are you willing to tell Claire that?” she asked at last.
“Tell Claire?” He was aghast. “Why—why, no. There’s no need to be as brutal as that, surely.”
“Then how do you expect her to find out the new state of affairs?”
He was terribly reluctant to face the unpleasant consequences of his action, she saw, and guessed that he usually contrived to ignore them.
“Well, she’ll—gradually realize that things have changed. There was nothing absolutely settled between us, you remember. I was planning to stay in Australia, but she was not at all sure that she was going to do the same. By the time we reach the end of the voyage she will—understand.”
No longer did Leonie feel sorry for him—illogically or otherwise.
“Have you thought,” she inquired deliberately, “what stages of heartbreak she will have had to go through before she reaches final realization?”
“But, Leonie, that’s life. We all have our moments of heartbreak,” he declared. “Claire’s a darling, but that father of hers is quite right. We aren’t meant for each other.”
“Perhaps that is true,” Leonie agreed, with a touch of grim humor, lost on her companion.
“Whereas you and I—” He caught her hand again.
“No”—she drew her hand away—”it’s too early to decide.”
“Too early! My God, how cold and deliberate you are!” He gazed at her with a sort of angry, hungry eagerness. “Don’t you care that I love you?”
“I care about Claire—who is my friend—and how she is going to be told that you no longer love her,” Leonie said. “I am certainly not going to have you making love to me until that is settled.”
“I tell you, these things settle themselves,” he insisted sulkily.
“Well, that isn’t the way this is going to be worked out,” she retorted crisply. “If you are not going to tell her—I shall.”
“You will?”
Leonie nodded and, passingly, she wished she could show half the resolution with Mr. Pembridge that she seemed able to display towards Kingsley Stour.
“But how?” he asked uneasily.
“Frankly, as between two people who trust each other. Are you willing to support my story if she comes to you for confirmation, as she is bound to do?”
“I still think it’s quite unnecessary—” he began.
“It’s the only basis on which I’m willing to—to plan the future,” Leonie said.
“Do you know you haven’t even admitted that you love me?” he countered.
“I can’t,” Leonie said, “until you’re free. And, in my view, you’re not free, so far as Claire is concerned. You’re morally committed to her.”
“Very well.” He brushed the question of moral commitment aside hastily. “If those are your terms, I’m not going to quarrel with them. I don’t think you know what trouble you’re stirring up, or how easily most of it could be avoided. But if you insist on telling Claire before you’ll even tell me you love me, I’ve nothing more to say.”
“Good.” She got up with perhaps too much decision for a girl who was supposed to be in love—however troubledly.
“Don’t I even get a kiss?” He stood up too.
But she had a superstitious feeling that Mr. Pembridge would rise out of the deck beside her if she allowed Kingsley Stour to kiss her. And so she shook her head.
“Later—later,” she said, almost impatiently. And then she left him, almost running along the deck, in her eagerness to leave one unpleasant scene behind and get another one over.
She had not really expected to find Claire in their suite. But, to her surprise, she was sitting there, curled up in one of the armchairs and looking pale and sorry for herself.
“Hello—what’s the matter?” Leonie asked, running a quick, professional glance over her. “You look rather under the weather.”
“I’m all right,” Claire said. But, when pressed for details, she admitted to having felt sick earlier in the evening, and to a sharp, though intermittent pain both that day and the previous day.
“Would you like me to get Mr. Pembridge to come and see you?” Leonie, feeling suddenly anxious, decided that she had not been keeping a sufficiently watchful eye on her charge.
But Claire shook her head. And then, just as Leonie was deciding that this was not the moment for painful revelations, Claire gave her the ideal opening by asking curiously,
“What were you and Kingsley discussing so earnestly, a quarter of an hour ago?”
“Oh, you saw us, did you?” Leonie felt suddenly cold and taut, now that she knew the moment was upon her.
“Yes. But you seemed so deeply occupied with each other that I really didn’t like to interrupt.” Claire laughed slightly, but as though she had not found the situation altogether to her liking. ,
“Well,” Leonie said slowly, “since you ask me, perhaps this is as good a time as any to tell you.”
“Tell me—what?” Claire looked wide-eyed and startled, and Leonie wished passionately that there were some way of making her see the truth without too much pain.
“Claire, you’ve never talked to me very frankly about Kingsley. But—you’re pretty fond of him, aren’t you?”
“You know I am!”
“Dear—there’s no possible way of saying this to you without hurting you—but he doesn’t mean to marry you, you know.”
“Indeed he does! As soon as we can make my father see things our way.” Claire’s pale cheeks flushed angrily. “Kingsley and I know each other a great deal better than you ever supposed. We—we knew each other when we came on board.”
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