Nurse in Waiting

by Jane Arbor

  He looked back at her quickly. But her head was lowered and her eyes did not meet his. He said slowly: “You must understand about this, Joanna. Justin’s going will make me free of Carrieghmere again. But while you are here I can’t belong completely to it. That’s why you must go.”

  “I do understand. You mean that I belong—as no one else about you does—to a time when your future with the estate seemed a very long way off? I think it’s very natural that you should long to be rid of—of all the associations I stand for—”

  “All the associations you stand for!” echoed Roger. “Well, perhaps that’s putting it as well as I could myself. But perhaps I have been tempted to put it more floridly by saying that you’ve been the blessed guide to my weaknesses, whereas I suppose I’ve got to find my strength—alone. I can’t keep you for ever, Joanna. Don’t you see that I’m afraid of finding that I’ve kept you too long?”

  There was a strangely pleading note in his voice, a note which she did not understand.

  But she did not try to answer it. And she stilled the crying of her own heart with words which sounded as cold, as impersonal, but were as necessary as a surgeon’s knife. She said:

  “I do understand that you don’t need to rely upon me any longer—for anything. That’s natural—and gratifyingly healthy. And—we don’t need to make an emotional issue of it—do we?”

  She did not have to look at him to know that he had flinched from the implied rebuff. But his reply showed that he accepted it. He said:

  “I’m sorry. But I warned you that I might sound over-florid in trying to tell you what you have meant to me while you’ve been here. I forgot that in England it’s not ‘good form’ to mention the feelings. The Irish are the other way. And, on the whole, you and I are fairly typical products of our races. Don’t you agree?”

  It was as studied a rebuff as her own had been. And it seemed to Joanna that she would hear for ever the brief, defensive coldness of the words they used to each other, and which symbolized the inevitable parting of their ways.

  After that, she noticed that Roger appeared to be at pains to emphasize the fact that he was no longer dependent on either her nursing or her company. He went out on to the estate every day now, and when it looked as if they might be left alone together he would make an excuse to leave her or would contrive for someone else to break up a possible téte-a-téte.

  On the day of Shuan’s ordeal at the Horse Show he was out all the morning, and when the time for the programme came around he asked Cook and Roseen to watch it too. And at an exciting point Mrs. Kimstone walked in, announcing herself brightly as having come to “keep lonely Roger company.”

  “The Colonel has gone to the Show so I drove myself over, as I had heard you weren’t going. Of course I didn’t expect to find you surrounded by bevies—!” she said brightly, her eye lighting somewhat accusingly upon Joanna.

  Roger ignored the archness of this remark as he motioned her to a seat and said briefly: “Sit down and shut up. There’s a good soul, Marty. The kid has had a ‘clear round’ and she hasn’t come on yet for the jump off. But she’s still got a chance of a place...”

  With elaborate caution Mrs. Kimstone moved across to the chair he had indicated. “I’ll be like a little mouse,” she promised. “Of course I realized how wrapped-up you would be in watching Shuan’s event. But I hadn’t grasped that Nurse Merivale was still with you, or I wouldn’t have made rather a sacrifice in coming over on what I thought was an errand of mercy—”

  “Marty, please!” begged Roger.

  The thin lips pursed and she looked slightly offended. “Oh, all right,” she said. “Now tell me—how far has Shuan got? But of course—you were just telling me, weren’t you—?”

  Her voice trailed away as Roger looked at her with renewed exasperation. And after that only the commentator’s voice broke the silence.

  Until at last—... I’ll repeat the result of that event. The winner was Agomcar: Miss Hurry. The runner-up was Lady of Belmont: Miss Shuan Ferrall. The third place was taken by Random: Mrs. Clare Booset. We are now leaving the Dublin Horse Show at Ballsbridge and returning you to the studio...

  The little party relaxed its tension. Roger switched off and took a cigarette as if it had been something for which he had been waiting for a long time. He murmured: “Second place! Good kid.” And that was all.

  Joanna smiled across at him and said quietly: “I’m awfully glad!” And Roseen, edging towards the door with Cook said: “That makes Miss Shuan’s party the certain thing now!”

  Mrs. Kimstone, who had begun to say: “Of course the competition nowadays is nothing to what it was—” pricked her ears with curiosity and demanded of Roger: “Party? What party?”

  “A fancy-dress dance I promised Shuan if she took a place at the Show. You’ll be getting an invitation—”

  “Fancy dress? Or, dear—that means the Colonel and I will have to be a Highland Lad and Lassie again! Couldn’t you have made it a sober, decent affair of evening dress, Roger?”

  “Not my idea. Shuan’s entirely—” he was retorting cheerfully when the telephone began to ring.

  Joanna rose to answer it, but he intervened. “I’ll go,” he said. “It’ll be Shuan, wanting to gloat.”

  When he had gone Mrs. Kimstone took from her bag a piece of grey knitting which seemed identical with that on which she had been working months before. Frowning over it, she remarked: “You know, I didn’t expect to find you still here, Nurse. I’d understood that Roger was completely independent of care now—”

  “Dr. Beltane wished me to stay on for a while. But I go very soon.”

  “Before this party they have planned? What a pity!” Mrs. Kimstone’s small eyes glittered.

  “A pity?” Joanna did not think it necessary to say that the proposed date of the party was a week before that of her own departure from Carrieghmere.

  “Well, yes. Because I dare say you would like to know that there was to be a ‘happy ending’ for your patient. And I should think it likely what, now he is cured and can have complete confidence in his future, Roger will announce his engagement to Shuan at this party.”

  “And I,” said Joanna quietly, “should think it extremely improbable!”

  Mrs. Kimstone looked at her sharply. “Indeed, Nurse? Why? If I remember rightly, you took this attitude once before. Though how it ties up with that complete detachment you claim to preserve—!”

  “It was you who suggested that I probably felt I ought to remain detached,” Joanna reminded her. “Whereas I have—” she chose her words carefully, “the—warmest interest in Mr. Carnehill’s future. And I simply don’t believe that he thinks—yet—of Shuan as his wife.”

  “But she is devoted to him!”

  “So we agreed before. But surely you don’t suggest that Shuan herself would say that that was—enough?”

  “I don’t know, I’m sure. But in my day,” retorted Mrs. Kimstone with asperity, “a girl accepted an advantageous proposal of marriage without too much question. And Roger can offer her everything!”

  “One day—I hope he may.” The brief words marked her heart’s finial renunciation. And once they were spoken she knew them to be true—she did hope that Roger would find fulfilment with Shuan, and not with some stranger whom she herself would never know.

  “But you grudge him the possibility that he may know his own mind now! Really, Nurse, I think you exceed your office in presuming to predict your patient’s future in this way!”

  “Perhaps I do. I’m sorry,” said Joanna quietly, and controlled herself only with a difficulty as Mrs. Kimstone, ignoring the apology, went on with an assumed thoughtfulness:

  “Of course there may be something more to it. You must have had quite a lot of influence with Roger while he has been ill, and that may have led you into mistaken notions of your own. You say you don’t think he has the smallest notion of asking Shuan to marry him.” She frowned, as if in search of words with which to express her mea
ning. Then, triumphantly: “Now you know, in my day we hadn’t a word for that kind of thing. But don’t these modern psychologists call it—wishful thinking?”

  And from the sudden draining of color from Joanna’s face Mrs. Kimstone believed that her shot had gone home.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  For Shuan’s dance Joanna thought of sending to London for a Cinderella costume which she had worn once at a nurses’ social. But when she mentioned this to Mrs. Carnehill the older woman, with a perception which was unusual with her, said: “You know, I can’t quite see you as a Cinderella. You are so fair, so clean-cut. I always think of Cinderella—until that business with the pumpkin—as a mousy, insignificant creature. And no one could ever call you that, Joanna!”

  “Well, does it matter?” asked Joanna with a smile that was a little weary.

  “It does! I want you to shine at this party of ours. I wonder what else we could think of for you? Wait now, till I have it!”

  For a few minutes deep thought clouded the blue eyes of which her son’s were so true a reflection.

  Then she exclaimed: “The very thing! Come with me.”

  Obediently, Joanna followed the sturdy little figure out of the room and across to the long drawing-room which was so seldom used and where she had waited on the chill spring day for Dale Woodward to come to her for the last time.

  On the far wall from the door hung the portrait of a girl at which she had looked vaguely on that day. Mrs. Carnehill halted before it.

  Bewildered, Joanna stared. “That’s the Reynolds portrait,” she said obviously.

  “Clarissa Carnehill,” supplemented the older woman gently. “Roger’s ancestress—English, as fair as you are, and painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1767. Look at her now—hasn’t she the look and figure of you to the very life?”

  Joanna looked in silence. She saw a girl, seemingly of about her own age, dressed in the graceful high-waisted gown of the period and with a blue-lined cloak flung back from her shoulders. One long-fingered hand rested upon the head of an Irish wolfhound, the other was at her side, holding a wide-brimmed leghorn hat. Her skin was very fair and her hair was of the same pale gold as Joanna’s own. Her eyes were blue where Joanna’s were grey, but there was indeed in this girl of the eighteenth century, long since dead, a likeness to herself which she could not deny.

  “What relation was she to—to you?” she asked Mrs. Carnehill.

  “Nothing to me—except by marriage, of course. But she was Roger’s great-great-great-grandmother. The Roger Carnehill of that day met her in London and married her before she was eighteen. I think she was about twenty-five when this portrait was painted. Your likeness to someone had puzzled me, but I knew who it was only when I was trying just now to picture you in the dress of some period not our own. Then I thought of Clarissa—and I knew that for you to be Clarissa at Shuan’s party would be the only thing possible.”

  “But I couldn’t!” protested Joanna. “The dress, for one thing—I couldn’t hope to get that sprigged satin copied!”

  “But I have it still!” said Mrs. Carnehill surprisingly.

  “Not—not the dress itself?”

  “Indeed I have. Not the hat, but the dress has always been kept carefully and is as good as it was then. We could manage a hat ... We could even provide you with a wolfhound—Colonel Kimstone breeds them!”

  “But I couldn’t, Mrs. Carnehill,” repeated Joanna. In the first breathless moment she had used the difficulty of the dress as an excuse to cover the far deeper dismay she felt at the idea. She knew that she feared more than anything the scorn and anger Roger might show if she attempted to masquerade as his kinswoman.

  “But it’s only fun—a play—a kind of tableau!”

  “All the same, I can’t think that Mr. Carnehill would—would care for it,” murmured Joanna wretchedly.

  “Roger? He’ll not be told anything about it until he sees you at the dance! You’d have to promise that you wouldn’t tell him. It’s my idea entirely and it’s to be my secret. And what objection would he have, to be sure?”

  “Well, don’t you see that the picture, even the dress itself, must have associations for your family on which I haven’t any right to intrude? There must be someone close to him for whom the dress should be kept. Shuan—”

  “Shuan?” Mrs. Carnehill looked up at the portrait critically. “Tell me now,” she countered, “have you ever seen Shuan with the look of that girl upon her? And there’s the difference in their coloring—Shuan, with the wild Irish darkness of her, and Clarissa, open and fair. No, the fancy I have to see a living Clarissa at the dance would be lost entirely if Shuan attempted it. Come now, Joanna—say you’ll indulge me!”

  “I’d love to—”

  “Then that’s settled. You are doing it to please me. Come upstairs with me now, and I’ll show you the dress and the cloak this minute. Both Roger and Shuan are out, so we’ll not be disturbed.”

  Upstairs, Joanna sat upon the closed lid of the chest from which the gown and the cloak of finest merino had been taken with loving care, and smoothed with reverent fingers the lovely fall of the satin.

  Her head was bent low over it and she seemed to be examining the exquisite delicacy of the tiny hand-embroidered flower-sprigs which she had noticed in the portrait. But she was thinking that this gown, preserved so perfectly for nearly two hundred years, symbolized, more than anything else, the enduring permanence of a heritage like Carrieghmere—Roger’s heritage!—something in which she, the city-bred English girl, had no part.

  And as she touched the age-old satin she knew that she was being tempted—by the mere putting-on of a lovely dress!—to “make-believe” for the space of a few brief hours that she and Carrieghmere, its traditions and even its future, belonged to each other!

  A day or two before the dance Shaun asked abruptly: “What are you coming as?”

  “A secret!” hedged Joanna smilingly.

  “That’s all right. I only asked. I didn’t suppose you’d tell me,” returned Shaun imperturbably. Then with an oblique look she went on: “I’ve asked Justin to the dance. Do you suppose Roger is going to mind?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. It would have been difficult not to invite him, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes. So he’s coming. He’s bringing Magda too.”

  “Oh. Neither Mrs. Carnehill nor Mr. Carnehill have met her, have they?”

  “What you mean is—they won’t like her!” said Shuan in quick defiance.

  “I didn’t say so.”

  “No. But anyone could see that you were doing a sort of check-up in your mind on the likely effect of Magda on Mums and on Roger. She’s not their sort, I know. But she’s all right.”

  “Do you like her?” queried Joanna.

  Shuan shrugged. “She’s all right,” she said again, adding naively: “I enjoy—just looking at her.”

  Joanna agreed. “She is rather—exquisite, isn’t she?”

  Shuan nodded. “Yes. Her clothes—! You know, she must have an awful lot of money, though she doesn’t work, and she doesn’t seem to have any people.”

  Joanna bent her head over the fine linen cloth which she was darning for Mrs. Carnehill. “I think,” she said carefully, wondering whether she was stripping Shuan of any illusions by what she was about to say, “that, from something he said to me, Mr. McKiley—helps her.”

  “You mean—that she does some sort of job for him?”

  “Yes—perhaps—” (How could she express to Shuan her own idea of the undefined relationship between Magda and Justin McKiley of which her knowledge of the man had warned her?)

  She was not prepared for the girl’s reception of her hesitating admission. There was neither embarrassment nor reserve in Shuan’s retort: “But that’s not news! I’ve known that for a long time!”

  Joanna looked up quickly. “What do you mean?” she demanded .

  “Well—that Magda does some sort of job for Justin and that he pays her well for it. When I sai
d about her having plenty of money and not having any people or anything I wanted to know if you had guessed too—”

  “I didn’t have to. He told me—”

  “He didn’t tell you what she does?”

  “No.” A wave of misgiving, even of fear, flooded over Joanna. She remembered suddenly that which both Justin and Roger had said of Shuan. Justin had said: “She will ride a conviction to the last whiplash.” And Roger: “She has periodic pursuits of cock-eyed ideas to which she is prepared to sacrifice herself and everyone else’s peace of mind.” And it seemed to Joanna that she herself might have stumbled unawares upon some secret mission which, however misguided, just now appeared to Shuan as the very meaning of her life.

  She said urgently: “Shuan—what are you hinting at? You’re making a mystery of something! What do you know?”

  “I don’t know! I’m guessing too—!”

  There was an airy note in her voice which touched Joanna jarringly. She said sharply: “Well, don’t—I beg of you—interfere in something you don’t understand. If there’s anything about Justin McKiley or Magda or the two of them that you can only guess at, leave it alone. I believe I know the man better than you possibly could. And you can’t but get hurt if you try to—to meet him on his own ground.”

  Shuan laughed. “Hurt? How could I get hurt? Justin is nothing to me! And people don’t get hurt unless they care about somebody else—too much. And I don’t even particularly like Justin. Ask René—he knows what I felt about Justin’s selling Deirdre when I don’t believe he need have done. So it’s impossible that he could have any power to hurt me. And I—happen to be enjoying myself immensely!”

  Joanna made one last effort. “Shuan—if you won’t tell me what all this is about, will you tell—Roger, before it’s too late?”