For Ever and Ever

by Mary Burchell

  “Then she was pleased to see her father?”

  “Very, I think. I’m not sure,” Mr. Pembridge added reflectively, “that the word isn’t relieved.”

  “Ah!” said Leonie, on a note of profound satisfaction. “Then she wanted him to come and—and extricate her.”

  “It’s a comforting theory,” agreed Mr. Pembridge, still in that dry tone. “And, on the whole, I think it is correct. Anyway, my money is on the cousin now. I should say that the happy marriage which you so eagerly foresaw is all but arranged by this time.”

  “Do you really think so?” Leonie was enchanted, and did not bother to hide the fact. “Oh, I can’t tell you how—how happy, how relieved I am.”

  “You don’t need to,” said Mr. Pembridge somewhat disagreeably. “I can imagine it. Haven’t we any surgery patients this morning?”

  “It doesn’t seem like it.” Leonie was a trifle subdued by his manner, and pulled down her cuffs and tried to look composed and very professional.

  He sat down at his desk and glanced at her.

  “Have you spoken to Stour yet about Sir James’ arrival?”

  “N-no. I tried to find him, but he was nowhere about.”

  “I believe he was going ashore, now I come to think of it. Well—I suppose you’ll have a heart-to-heart discussion later.”

  That wasn’t quite how Leonie herself would have described it, so she said rather briefly, “I suppose so,” and Mr. Pembridge then abandoned the subject.

  Very much later, when surgery was over and Leonie was alone, tidying up, Sir James sought her out.

  “May I come in, Miss Creighton?” He stood in the doorway. “Mr. Pembridge said I should find you here.”

  “Of course, Sir James. Come in.” Leonie set a chair for him, glad that he had asked Mr. Pembridge’s permission, rather than hers, before breaking the rule of no visitors in the surgery outside surgery hours.

  “I wanted to come and tell you right away how much I appreciate the way you have looked after Claire.” Sir James ignored the offered chair and, through force of habit, sat down behind the desk—in Mr. Pembridge’s chair, which secretly annoyed Leonie.

  “It’s been wonderful knowing her and having her for a friend,” Leonie replied sincerely. “You don’t have to thank me, Sir James.”

  “I can understand how you feel.” Sir James could not bring himself to reject any compliment paid to his child. “But you must have had some anxious moments.”

  “Indeed, yes!” agreed Leonie, from the bottom of her heart.

  “However, all’s well that ends well,” went on Sir James, not disdaining a cliché in the fullness of his content. “And there’s one thing abundantly clear,” he added, with a satisfied little chuckle, “now that Maurice has turned up and captured her fancy so completely, she’s not going to waste any more thoughts on that fellow who worried me so much some months ago.”

  “I hope not,” agreed Leonie, wondering if her employer had recovered sufficiently from his own illness to stand something in the nature of a shock.

  “Perhaps I troubled myself unduly, in any case,” Sir James said musingly. “Very likely she never thought of him again, once she got on board.”

  “On the contrary,” Leonie felt bound to say, “she thought of him a great deal, Sir James. You see—he was also on board.”

  “He was—what?” Sir James looked thunderstruck, and a slow, furious color suffused his face.

  “Oh, please don’t agitate yourself,” Leonie cried. “And the danger is quite over now. At least, I think it is. But—”

  “Why didn’t you let me know this before?” rapped out her employer.

  “I was going to. Or, rather, I think I was going to,” Leonie admitted more exactly. “And then I received the news that you had had a heart attack and must not be troubled with anything that might upset you.”

  “Absolute nonsense!” snorted Sir James impatiently, but she saw that the recollection of his illness made him view her behavior in a different light. “Well—tell me the whole thing now.”

  “It’s a long story, Sir James,” Leonie sighed.

  “Never mind. I want the whole story—however long it is.”

  And so, sitting opposite him in Mr. Pembridge’s surgery, Leonie at last unburdened herself to her employer of all the harrowing experiences which she had had to deal with on the voyage. He hardly interrupted her at all. Only from time to time he put a brief question in order to elucidate a point. Then at last, when she had finished her story, he said,

  “So the fellow is still here—on board?”

  “Yes, Sir James. At least, I think he has gone ashore at the moment.”

  “And my girl considers herself more or less engaged to him?”

  “Oh, no! I very much doubt that,” Leonie hastened to say. “She started this voyage thinking that, I am sure, though I understand she refused to give a final decision until we reached Australia.”

  “Well, we’ve reached Australia,” Sir James pointed out.

  “Yes, yes. But a great many things have happened in between. And most important of all has been the return of her cousin into her life.”

  “Maurice, eh?” Sir James considered that. “But they haven’t seen much of each other yet. Not enough to make a major decision about their lives.”

  “No, of course not. But quite enough to make Claire realize that she doesn’t want someone else.”

  “You think so?” He looked doubtful and worried. “I wish I knew what to do about this. I’ll have to have a serious talk with her, and it’s the last thing I wanted to do, just when everything was so—happy and pleasant between us.”

  Leonie looked kindly at her employer, very sorry for him in his role of worried parent, and said diffidently,

  “May I make a suggestion?”

  “Please do. You seem to have handled this business with a great deal of ingenuity and sense.”

  “Then—could you bring yourself not even to mention this business to Claire? Believe me, a little indulgent blindness on your part, and a great deal of affectionate attention on her cousin’s part, will do far more than any lecturing or arguing.”

  Sir James looked astonished.

  “D’you mean—say absolutely nothing at all to Claire about this?”

  “Absolutely nothing.” Leonie was emphatic. “In two days more we shall be at Sydney. She will leave the ship with you and Mr. Elstone—”

  “And you,” put in Sir James with a smile.

  “And me,” agreed Leonie with a pang. “She will be among friends and relatives. And, from everything I have seen of Mr. Stour, he will recognize that he has lost the game and merely fade out.”

  “But what am I to say to the fellow himself?” objected Sir James.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? But we are going to be aboard the same ship for two days and nights. Are you suggesting I should pretend I don’t even see him?”

  “Just that, Sir James.”

  “But that’s letting him down much too lightly,” objected Leonie’s employer, who had obviously been longing for the last half-hour to get at the Assistant Surgeon and tell him exactly what he thought of him.

  “I can imagine few things more mortifying than to be absolutely overlooked,” replied Leonie meditatively. “You’ve already done it once, and he simply hated it.”

  “I’ve already done it? When?”

  With a touch of humor, Leonie described the encounter on the stairs, and, when he had got over his astonishment, Sir James burst out laughing.

  “You’re a very clever girl, my dear,” he said admiringly. “And I believe you’re right. I shall do exactly as you suggest, and when we get to Sydney, you shall have the finest two weeks of your life, before we fly you back to London.”

  “Thank you, Sir James,” replied Leonie, smiling, though her heart sank at that moment into her neat black “ward” shoes. For the thought of going back to London, while Mr. Pembridge continued on board the Capricorna for the Paci
fic cruise, was almost more than she could bear.

  During the rest of that day she saw nothing at all of the Assistant Surgeon and guessed that he made it his business to stay ashore until the very last minute. But late in the evening they sailed once more, on the last lap of the Australian run, and Leonie did not have to wait long before the expected storm broke.

  He sought her out at the deserted end of the upper deck, where she had taken herself for a breath of evening air and a spell of quiet now her hours of duty were over. She had been there about ten minutes, watching the stars come out in a pale night sky, and thinking of the heart-breaking but inevitable parting which lay before her in two days’ time. And when she heard footsteps behind her, she thought for a wild and wonderful moment that it was Mr. Pembridge. Then she turned, and saw an angry Kingsley Stour.

  “Oh—hello,” she said lamely.

  “You unmitigated little cheat and liar,” he returned, without any of his usual smooth address.

  “Sit down and relax,” Leonie retorted coldly, recovering her self-possession. “And stop calling me names which don’t apply.”

  “You told me you hadn’t cabled to Sir James.”

  “I hadn’t. Mr. Pembridge cabled.”

  “Of his own accord?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And you expect me to believe that? You must think me a fool.”

  “No, I don’t altogether,” Leonie replied coolly. “I think you’re a bit of a fool and a bit of a rogue, but not completely either. If you employed your admirable gifts in facing your responsibilities instead of dodging them—”

  “I didn’t come here to have you give me a smug lecture,” he interrupted roughly.

  “Very well. But if you came here to get the truth— the truth is that I did not cable to Sir James, but I did know Mr. Pembridge had done so. He ordered me to keep the fact from Claire, and inevitably I had to keep it from you too.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it. Or, rather, I think you cooked the thing up between you. Pembridge is just wax in your hands.”

  Leonie was so astonished at this that she laughed aloud.

  “Don’t you believe it,” she said, with a sigh that was more revealing than she knew. “He’s wax in no one’s hands. But I don’t think we’re getting anywhere with this conversation. I’ve told you all I have to say, and now you’d better go.”

  “And you think that’s the end of it?” For a moment he towered over her.

  “I don’t know what else there can be,” she replied shortly.

  “No? Well, that shows that in your way you’re a bit of a fool too. I told you,” he said slowly, “that you might be sorry if you did anything in a hurry. It was silly of you to rush off that cable in spite of my warning. Now you’re going to be sorry, Leonie.”

  Before she could reply to this, he turned on his heel and left her. But she looked after him without any real sense of alarm, for the words had been a trifle too melodramatic, and, in any case, with Sir James and Maurice Elstone on board, she hardly thought Kingsley Stour would be able to do anything much to injure her.

  Far, far more important was the fact that time was slipping away, the last two days were shortening hour by hour, and very soon she would be saying goodbye to Mr. Pembridge and leaving him on the other side of the world.

  She wondered what really clever, glamorous girls did on such an occasion—girls who were supposed to be able to attract any man and make him their slave. But she didn’t think there was anything which would make Mr. Pembridge her slave. And, anyway, she didn’t want him as a slave. She wanted him as his charming, slightly arrogant, inimitable self.

  Later she went to say goodnight to Claire, in the small hospital ward where she still slept. And a very pink-cheeked, bright-eyed Claire she found there.

  “Oh, Leonie, what a day it’s been!”

  Leonie smiled.

  “You’ve certainly had your fill of excitement,” she agreed. “And your father is so happy to be with you again.”

  “I know. He’s such a darling.” There was a half remorseful note in Claire’s voice. “And—he has an odd habit of being right about things, somehow.”

  “I should think,” Leonie agreed gravely, “that your father is one of the shrewdest—and kindest—of men.”

  “Ye-es.” Claire was silent for a moment. Then she said suddenly, “Leonie, what am I going to do about Kingsley?”

  “How do you mean, dear?”

  “You know what I mean. I’ve had such a lot of time to think about things while I’ve been lying here ill. And I know he—he isn’t all that I thought. And then,” she added, with naive irrelevance, “there’s Maurice.”

  “Yes,” agreed Leonie, “there’s Maurice, who could really hardly be nicer.”

  “Oh, Leonie, do you think that too?”

  “When I look at you two together I think of a hand and a glove,” Leonie replied, smiling. “A very firm, warm hand, and a beautiful, decorative glove.”

  “You do? Oh, my dear, that’s just how it feels.” Claire smiled doubtfully, but as though she could not quite suppress her happiness. “Do you think I’m behaving very badly to Kingsley?”

  “No,” said Leonie, and she did not even offer to elaborate that.

  “How am I going to tell Father, I wonder?” Claire faced another unpleasant reality reluctantly.

  “You don’t need to. I told him,” Leonie replied calmly.

  “You told him! Oh, Leonie, how could you?—Well, I suppose someone had to, with Kingsley here as large as life. But if Father knows, why hasn’t he come rampaging to me, with reproaches and warnings?”

  “He thought it better to make little of the whole incident and not speak about it at all.”

  “Impossible! That isn’t Father’s way.”

  “No? Well, I persuaded him it was the best way,” Leonie explained with a smile.

  “Leonie, you’re a witch! You really managed that?—But what about Kingsley? What sort of scene does Father propose to make with him, I wonder?”

  “That’s been glossed over too, Claire. You don’t need to worry. Your father simply ignored Kingsley. There’ll be no scene there. There will be nothing unpleasant or agitating. Unless you want to make an issue of it, the whole thing is over.”

  “But I—I’ll have to speak to Kingsley about it.”

  “That’s for you to decide. But I doubt if he will seek a discussion,” Leonie said. “He knows it’s over too.”

  And in this she was perfectly correct. No one saw much of the Assistant Surgeon during those last few days, and the only person who remarked upon it was Nurse Meech, who thought he left too much for Mr. Pembridge to do.

  During the final clearing up and packing which the last day involved, Leonie found the courage and opportunity to ask Mr. Pembridge timidly about future plans.

  “You are going on the Pacific cruise, aren’t you?” she said, as casually as she could.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And then? I—I suppose you’ll be doing the return journey almost immediately after?” She thought if she could even start counting up the weeks until he might be back in London, that would be something.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I might stay on in Australia.”

  “Stay on in Australia!” She simply could not hide her dismay. “Oh, but—why?”

  “Why not?” He raised his eyebrows and looked as though he thought her questions a trifle impertinent.

  “But I thought—I thought you were going back to St. Catherine’s and—”

  “Oh, not there!” he exclaimed, as though the very mention of the place tormented and exasperated him. “Anywhere but there.”

  And then Leonie knew there was nothing more to say.

  “I’m sorry.” She spoke almost in a whisper.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he replied curtly, and turned to speak to Nurse Meech, as she came into the surgery.

  And that was all. Better go and finish her packing now, Leonie
supposed. They would be in quite early in the morning, and Claire would need all the assistance she could give.

  On her way from the surgery to her cabin, Leonie hardly noticed the occasional smile or greeting directed towards her, until someone barred her way and Nicholas Edmonds’ voice said,

  “Hello. Why are you cutting me dead?”

  “Oh—I’m sorry—” She gave a breathless little laugh. “I didn’t notice—I was thinking—”

  “About something which worries you?” he suggested shrewdly.

  “Oh, no.” She pulled herself together and answered firmly, not wanting questions at this moment. “You look very bright and well.” She turned the subject quickly. “I think the voyage must have done you a lot of good.”

  “I think it must.” His smile had some particular meaning, she thought suddenly, and she saw his glance go amusedly and, she thought, tenderly, to Renee Armand, who was laughing and talking not far away.

  “I see. It’s not only a question of health?” She smiled too, then, able to rejoice in someone else’s happiness in spite of her own heartache.

  “Not entirely,” he conceded.

  “I’m so glad! Did she—? Are you—?”