“We are,” he agreed. “I’m not doing the Pacific cruise after all. In fact, I’m accompanying—my wife on her Australian tour. And then we shall fly back together about June to London.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Leonie wrung his hand, and went on her way a little comforted, in spite of the fact that her own affairs remained unaffected by this happy reunion.
In one sense it was quite a gay last evening. Claire and Maurice were in great spirits, and Sir James was kindness itself in the plans he was making for Leonie’s enjoyment during her stay in Sydney. She had nothing to do but smile and accept and say how wonderful it all was.
But when at last she escaped to her cabin, and had shut the door and made herself safe even from Claire, she flung herself on her bed and cried her heart out. For nothing that Sydney could offer had any real charm if Mr. Pembridge had gone out of her life.
The ship had docked even before the passengers awoke next morning, and as soon as breakfast was over, people started going ashore. Everything stood ready packed in the suite which Claire and Leonie had shared throughout the voyage, and the luxurious rooms which had almost become home suddenly looked empty and alien.
All the casual goodbyes had been said. Only the one which mattered remained. And, on leaden feet, and with a throat which felt dry and aching, Leonie made her way for the last time to the familiar surgery.
He was sitting at his desk, as she had seen him a hundred times in the last weeks, but the room looked bare and singularly without purpose, now that everything had been put away.
He got up immediately when she came in, and held out his hand to her, as though he did not expect the interview to be more than brief.
“Well, Nurse”—the term was half teasing, now that she was in mufti and her nursing days were so completely over—”I have to thank you once again for all the invaluable help you gave me. I understand the Captain is making a report, and I’m sure you will be hearing gratefully from the Company.”
“Oh—I enjoyed it.” She smiled stiffly as his fingers closed round hers. “It—it was a wonderful voyage.”
“Was it?” He smiled at her. “Well, I daresay that’s how it seems now, in retrospect.”
“I hate—saying goodbye.”
“One always does,” said Mr. Pembridge, who had no doubt said fifty other unimportant goodbyes that morning. “I suppose you have everything planned for the immediate future.”
“Oh, yes.” She thought of Sir James’ kind planning, and wondered how she was to go through with it all.
“Then there’s nothing to say now but—goodbye and good luck.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Pembridge,” she said, almost in a whisper. And because she knew suddenly that the tears would come any moment now, she almost pulled her hand away and made for the door.
And then, as she reached it, he spoke again, in a quick, staccato, almost desperate way. And what he said was,
“I’m a fool to interfere, I know. But your happiness means so much to me, child. Won’t you think again? You’re making a terrible mistake, you know.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Leonie swung round as though she had been shot. She had heard only one sentence of what Mr. Pembridge had said, “You happiness means so much to me, child.”
“Wh-what did you say?” She came slowly back across the surgery to where he stood beside his desk, watching her with slightly narrowed eyes and a curious suggestion of nervousness about him.
“I said I think you’re making a mistake.”
“No, not that. The other bit. About my happiness meaning something to you.”
“Haven’t you guessed that it does?”
“No. How should I? I thought—” She stopped, because now, by a process of delayed action, the rest of his speech had impinged on her consciousness. “What do you mean about my making a mistake? What mistake?”
“Oh”—he made an impatient, despairing little gesture—“I don’t know what I can say at this point that would turn you from a path you’ve followed so determinedly. But I don’t believe you’ll be happy with Stour. I don’t think he’s worthy of you.”
“Worthy of me? Of course he’s not worthy of me. Nor of any other decent girl either,” replied Leonie with spirit. “But he doesn’t have to be. He’s nothing to me. I shan’t ever see him again if I can help it. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You—you say he’s nothing to you?” She was astonished—almost shocked—to see that Mr. Pembridge had actually gone quite pale. “You mean that—you’re not—going to marry him?”
“Marry him? I’d rather scrub floors—or preferably wards. And if they were wards at St. Catherine’s—”
She stopped suddenly, because she found it impossible to complete her brave little joke. The mention of beloved St. Catherine’s, and all it stood for, suddenly took her by the throat, and without the slightest warning she put her hands over her face and burst into tears.
“Oh, I wish I were back at St. Catherine’s,” she sobbed, like a disconsolate child exiled from all that mattered. “I’d l-love to scrub floors, and—and if you were there—”
“Don’t, darling!” Suddenly and incredibly, Mr. Pembridge took her in his arms and began to kiss her. “Don’t cry like that. What is it you want? You shall have it—anything in the world, if it’s humanly possible to get it for you. What do you want, Leonie?”
“Th-this will do to go on with. J-just having you kiss me and call me ‘darling’.”
“But you could have had that any time you liked,” he protested, kissing her wet cheek again. “Any time on the voyage. You only had to say the word.”
“What word?” inquired Leonie, not unreasonably, though she kissed him softly, to show that she was not really angry with him. “You were never anything but very much the Senior Surgeon. If I made the slightest overture—”
“But you made it as plain as you could that it was that damned assistant of mine that you wanted.”
“I did not. I wanted you. Terribly!”
And then, for a frightful moment, she realized that she had said a great deal more than she had a right to say, even if he called her “darling” and kissed her, and in a sort of panic she struggled to get away from him.
But Mr. Pembridge held her lightly but securely and said,
“Oh, no, my dearest. I’m not going to let you go now. Not until this whole tormenting muddle is explained.”
“It’s—it’s a dreadfully long story.”
“I don’t mind about that. I’ve had enough of half knowledge and misunderstandings.”
“But before I tell you about it, would you tell me one thing?”
“If I can.”
“Only you can. Why are you so different all at once? Why are you holding me and—and kissing me and calling me lovely names?”
“Because I adore you,” said the Senior Surgeon, as though stating the obvious.
“Oh, Mr. Pembridge—”
“My name is Simon,” he told her.
“Yes, I know. It’s a lovely name—Simon.” She smiled suddenly and put up her hand against his thin cheek. “Do you really—love me?”
“More than I can say.” He looked down at her with a tenderness all the more moving because it had been held in check so long.
“But—what about the—the other girl?”
“What other girl?”
“The one—who died. Only yesterday you said you couldn’t bear to go back to St. Catherine’s because of her. There was such real pain in your voice when you spoke of it. You said you would go anywhere but there, and you sounded as though your grief were as fresh as ever.”
“Did I?” Simon Pembridge said slowly. “Well, the thought of St. Catherine’s did hurt almost more than I could bear. But not because of her, poor girl. What I couldn’t face was the thought of the place without you.”
“Mr. Pembridge!—Simon, I mean—was that it?”
He nodded.
“Then you—you have managed to—get over her at las
t?”
“Leonie”—he drew her close against him in a nervous, loving clasp that went strangely to her heart— “I’m going to tell you something I have never told anyone else. You’re the only person who has a right to know it. I had ceased to love her before she was taken ill. I’m inclined to think she, too, knew we had made a mistake. I don’t know. But if she had lived, I cannot imagine that we should have gone on with the engagement.”
“Then—losing her was not the absolute heartbreak it might have been?”
“In some ways, it was worse,” he said sombrely. “I felt that in some dreadful way I had failed her. I kept on thinking that if I had truly loved her, her well-being would have meant so much to me that I would have realized the trouble in time. Or that if she had known there was a strong, unconquerable love between us, that might have turned the scale and given her the strength to hold on, instead of slipping away. I tell you, Leonie, there were times during those first months when I felt like her murderer.”
“But, darling”—deliciously, experimentally, she called him that for the first time—”you know that’s quite illogical and unreasonable, don’t you?”
“I know it when I hold you,” he said, with a sigh. “You’re so real and dear and calm. One can’t be feverish and tormented in your presence.”
In all her life, Leonie had never expected to hear that she supplied such a need to any man. Least of all to the Senior Surgeon—to Simon Pembridge. But, as she heard these words, she knew suddenly that nothing anyone else would ever say to her could mean so much.
“My dear”—she took his hand, one of those clever, beautiful hands she loved so well—”you’ll never tell me anything sweeter than that, and if I really give you peace and happiness, I’ll ask nothing more of life.”
He put his cheek against her hair.
“I don’t understand in the least how happiness has suddenly been thrust into my hands like this,” he said tenderly. “But I’m holding it tight for ever more. Now explain to me, beloved, if you possibly can, why you seemed to find Stour’s company irresistible, why even the sight of your own pretty friend with him sent you into agitation, why you persistently refused, even after he quarrelled with you that morning in the surgery, to be saved from duty with him, and finally why he told me himself, only yesterday, that you and he were going to be married in Sydney the day after tomorrow.”
“He told you that?”
“Most certainly. That was when I finally gave up the last glimmer of hope.”
“Oh, Simon! For a clever man, and a more than clever surgeon, you really have been very silly. I suppose,” she said reflectively, “that was his final spiteful kick, because I rescued Claire from him. That was what he meant when he said he’d make me sorry.”
“Please—you said you’d explain,” Mr. Pembridge smiled down at her.
And so, standing in the circle of his arm, her head against his shoulder, Leonie told him the whole story, from the moment when she had seen Claire and Kingsley Stour together on the upper desk, that very first evening.
Like Sir James, he asked a question or two from time to time. And, unlike Sir James, he interrupted the recital with more than an occasional kiss.
“I do see,” he said in the end, “why you behaved the way you did. But you must also admit that I had some reason for being deceived.”
“But to believe that rat!” exclaimed Leonie reproachfully. “It wasn’t as though you didn’t know his type. How could you take his unsupported word that I was going to marry him?”
“It didn’t seem unsupported, darling,” said the Senior Surgeon humbly. “Not in view of all I had observed up to then. Besides, I suppose the truth is that I was so desperately anxious about everything to do with you, so wretched in my jealousy and despair, that I didn’t really exercise my common sense.”
She laughed and hugged him in the immensity of her relief and happiness. And at that moment Nurse Meech came in.
“Oh, sir—” She was so taken aback that she didn’t even have the sense to withdraw unobtrusively from what she evidently thought was a regrettable scene.
“That’s all right, Nurse. Come in and be the first to congratulate us,” said Mr. Pembridge affably.
At this Nurse Meech opened her mouth quite wide. For, as she told Nurse Donley with great originality afterwards, you could have knocked her down with a feather. But romance delighted her. And a romance which involved both a surgeon and a nurse (or even an ex-nurse) was the nicest thing possible.
So she wrung them both by the hand and said so much about her pleasure and joy that it was a few minutes before she remembered why she had come in at all.
“Oh, Miss Creighton, I forgot—Miss Elstone and her father are looking for you everywhere. They’re ready to go ashore.”
“Why, of course! I forgot all about them too! I must go,” Leonie declared to her beloved.
“Wait a moment. When do I see you again? And where are you staying?” He held her hand fast.
“At the Australia. I’m there for two weeks. And then—and then“ Her voice faltered and her face fell. “Then Sir James is sending me back to London by air.”
“Oh, no, he isn’t,” said the Senior Surgeon. “You tell him you’re engaged to me, and that I make the decisions for you in future.”
She laughed, in incredulous delight, at the picture of the future which this conjured up.
“I’ll tell him. He won’t mind. He’ll be thrilled! And so will Claire. Oh, there’s so much to tell them. And I mustn’t keep them any longer.”
Indeed, so sharp was her awareness of her employer’s authority that she gave Mr. Pembridge only the hastiest kiss before she almost ran towards the door.
But there was an authority more compelling than anything Sir James could employ.
“Nurse—” said Mr. Pembridge quietly.
“Sir?” She turned quickly, and he held out his arms to her.
“Oh—” She laughed and ran back into his arms, and Nurse Meech said afterwards that it was better than anything she had ever seen on the pictures.
“Tell me, darling—you’re mine for always now, aren’t you?” he whispered urgently.
“For ever and ever,” she promised, with all her heart. And she knew then that whether she went with him on the Pacific cruise, or stayed in Australia, or returned to London, home was, quite simply, here in his arms.
For Ever and Ever Page 19
