by Jane Arbor
As they drove she asked, “That was Nurse Mawney’s car you were in, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. She picked me out from under the hedge a while back. It saved me from a thorough soaking.”
Jane Bretton glanced at him in arch amusement. “How convenient for you. And what a pleasant tete-a-tete you were having when I came by! Do you find Nurse Mawney attractive?”
“She is a charming person,” declared Peter stoutly.
“Is she?” The emphasis underlined Jane’s opinion that Jess was nothing of the sort, but Peter was too wrapped up in thoughts of Liane to notice it. And the conversation lapsed into generalities until Quintains was reached.
There Peter thanked her for the lift and went into the house as Muir and Edgar Bretton came out together.
As she opened the car door for her husband Jane greeted Muir gaily, “Don’t you think I should charge for my shuttle taxi service—setting down one passenger and taking up another?”
“You were able to give young Seacombe a lift?”
“Yes. I took him over from Nurse Mawney between here and Crane. My carburetor was giving me trouble, and he came to the rescue. Afterward I felt a little guilty, wondering whether my arrival on the scene had broken up a rendezvous—”
“A rendezvous?” Muir’s tone was sharp.
“Well, the cozy session by the roadside in Nurse Mawney’s car certainly looked like one—”
“Ha, I scent romance!” put in her husband facetiously. But Jane ignored the interruption and, alert to advantage ahead, raised falsely pleading eyes to Muir’s.
“Naturally you won’t make trouble for them over this, will you?” she asked.
“Trouble? Nurse Mawney’s private affairs are surely her own?”
“But of course they are! Only—well, there could be criticism of her for conducting them in her duty hours and under cover of her uniform, couldn’t there?”
“She was in uniform?”
“Oh, yes. Didn’t I say so? If she hadn’t been, I shouldn’t have thought anything of it.”
“And as she was?” Muir rapped out.
“As she was,” Jane paused and shrugged, “as she was, I’m afraid I found the incident in rather bad taste. Dawdling with a man in a car on a side road isn’t quite the behavior expected of a trusted person like a nurse. But perhaps I’m overfastidious—”
“You’re something of a spoilsport, if you ask me,” murmured Edgar Bretton. “What harm was there in the girl’s stopping for a chat with her boyfriend if she had the time to spare?”
Again Jane ignored him, keeping a calculating eye upon Muir’s inscrutable face. If she had scored her point—done a little gratuitous harm to Jess’s professional reputation with someone as influential as Muir—she was satisfied for the moment. The recurring drop of water that wore away the stone could not be accused of overdoing its effects...
But Muir’s attitude was unrewarding. “Are you accusing Nurse Mawney of impropriety?” he demanded flatly.
“Of course not. I know nothing against her—”
“And if you did?”
“If I did—well, in that case I probably shouldn’t be the only one to know it, and then even Dr. Gilder might have to agree that her appointment was a mistake, as I thought it was in the first place. But naturally I hope it won’t come to that.”
“Do you?” murmured Muir noncommittally as he turned back toward the house.
He left Jane afraid that, for all her care, she had said too much, and he had seen it for the baseless malice that it was. Next time, she determined, she must take her stand upon the firm ground of fact...
When Peter Seacombe had gone Jess wondered whether Liane would call her or suggest that they should meet. For she argued that if she had any value to the girl as a friend, surely Liane would need her now.
But Liane made no sign. It was as if she had drawn an invisible but impenetrable barrier between herself and Jess on the subject of Peter. She might never have confided those first hopes and later despairs to Jess at all. And though Jess tried not to be hurt, she was.
She knew that it was possible to regret lightly given or overdramatized confidences. She had known such regrets herself. But she had believed Liane had turned to her in a deep, sincere need, which appeared to exist no longer. Was it really that Liane wished she had kept her secret? Jess felt she would far rather believe that than that Liane was the sort of girl for whom friendship was a violent affair that later faded to indifference. But her present embarrassed diffidence with Jess seemed to point to it.
Then, a week or two before Christmas, her manner changed again. She and Jess had met at one of the farms on Muir’s estate where Jess was attending a bedridden old lady and where Liane had cycled over to bring some invalid delicacies from Muir. And Jess was struck at once by her changed appearance since they last met—casually in the village—when Liane had been pale and listless and reluctant to meet her eyes.
Now she seemed to have regained some of that radiance that had seemed to light her spirit from within when love had dawned for Peter Seacombe. She seemed less on the defensive and there was an occasional tremor of secret excitement in her voice. Even the tilt of her fair head had an expectant, almost a listening air, and Jess wondered whether she was indeed expecting some word or sign from Peter; whether they had found some solution which, at their parting, had seemed insoluble without pain for someone. But she was determined not to force any confidence the girl did not give freely.
Liane helped Jess to make the patient’s bed and then perched on the windowsill while Jess served a dish of the gruel that had come from Quintains.
Liane asked suddenly, “Jess, what are you doing at Christmas? Are you going away?”
“No, I shall be here over the holiday.”
“But it will be a holiday for you? You won’t be on duty, will you?”
“Only on emergency call or if there was a very urgent case.”
“Oh, I’m glad. Because I wondered—that is, Muir wanted me to ask you—if you would care to spend Christmas with us at Quintains?”
“Christmas Day, you mean? Yes, I’d like to,” said Jess, telling herself that she must not make anything of the fact that the invitation had been Muir’s suggestion.
But Liane said quickly, “No, more than that. Couldn’t you come on Christmas Eve and stay for the three nights, going back to Mrs. Boss’s on the morning after Boxing Day?”
“I’d like that still better,” Jess agreed smilingly. “I expect I could have any telephone calls put through from Mrs. Boss’s, couldn’t I?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll tell Muir then. We shall be very quiet, you know—just Muir and Mrs. Seacombe and myself, though there will be a Boxing-Day party for the estate children, and Muir says Edgar and Jane Bretton usually come for dinner on that night.”
Even that prospect could not dampen Jess’s pleasure at the invitation. She had been dreading her first Christmas without a home to go back to, without someone of her very own to plan presents and silly surprises for, without that sense of security and of belonging somewhere, which the Christ child had been denied in his stable, yet which had been sought and cherished in every real family since.
Christmas at Quintains would not be the same as it would have been at home. For no one family can share its Christmas lore and traditions with another, nor explain its childish customs, nor even agree on the proper ritual of food or the giving of presents. And at Quintains there would be two people—Liane and herself—with memories and sadnesses to hide. But Quintains was a gracious house that had seen many Christmases celebrated within its mellow, kindly walls. Quintains had been home to its own folk for a very long time. And at Quintains there was Muir, whose thought for her inevitable loneliness had prompted him to this kindness that meant so much to her.
On Christmas Eve, Liane and Muir called for her in the car after doing some last-minute shopping in Starmouth. When Jess went out to join them she found the seat beside Muir had been left vacant for her,
while Liane, looking gay and quite happy in a scarlet suit, sat behind, completely wedged in by chunky parcels and a pile of glowing holly.
“We haven’t decorated the house yet,” she explained to Jess. “We are going to do it tonight, so that you can help. Muir says you are bound to have plenty of experience, because hospitals are always decorated so beautifully for Christmas.”
“I said ‘so efficiently,’ ” corrected Muir over his shoulder. “I imagine that in the hospital the decorating gets itself done as just another part of the admirable—if rather impersonal—routine, doesn’t it?” he asked Jess.
“As a matter of fact, it doesn’t,” she told him. “Because it is mostly done by the patients themselves, who throw themselves into planning for it weeks beforehand and usually manage to make it their own concern in each ward. As for the children, they are not above a bit of pre-Christmas malingering, so as to make quite sure of their share of the fun!”
Muir and Liane laughed as the car drew up at the front door of Quintains. There they shared the task of unloading their purchases to be carried into the house by Muir’s man, while Mrs. Seacombe came to welcome Jess and show her to her room.
It was a small room on the first floor, and it offered its own intimate welcome to Jess at once. Its color scheme was cream and honey-gold, the cream-painted dressing table having skirts of cream-and-gold-flowered chintz that matched the curtains drawn against the winter night and the puffy cushions of the cream-painted tub chair in front of the blazing fire. The walls were cream, the carpet a slight deeper gold than the candlewick bedspread on the bed set into its own small alcove; a door led into an adjoining bathroom, which Jess was to share with Liane whose room was beyond, Mrs. Seacombe said.
Before the older woman left her to freshen up in readiness for the tea that was to be taken in front of the fire in the lounge hall below, Jess asked her about Peter, to be told that Mrs. Seacombe had heard from him for Christmas nearly two weeks earlier.
“He’d been on leave in Tokyo for four days, and he sent me a gorgeous kimono, all stiff silk and embroidery. Quite lovely, but so unsuitable for an old woman like me,” said Mrs. Seacombe, though Jess could see she was delighted all the same.
Jess had had a Christmas card from Peter and had brought it to show his mother, who asked her to add it to all the others—Muir’s and Liane’s and her own—which were already set out in the traditional way on a table in the hall. Although Jess doubted whether Muir would care for her cards to be added to his and Liane’s, she had to agree with Mrs. Seacombe that in the matter of Christmas cards the more was certainly the merrier.
When she went down to tea she took Peter’s card and one that she had received from Petra Tempton-Burney, though not, of course, any she had received from people Muir and Liane did not know. She found Muir alone in the lounge hall and handed him the cards rather diffidently.
“Mrs. Seacombe suggested I should add these to yours—they are from Peter Seacombe and Petra,” she explained.
Muir glanced at them. “That’s kind of you—if you don’t mind sharing them, Liane will be pleased. She is making quite a thing of our collection and has been fairly snatching my mail from me since the first cards began to come in.” He walked over to the wide mantelshelf with Jess. “She had one herself from young Seacombe. It’s here somewhere—” And he pointed to a flower-study reproduction that was a companion piece to Jess’s card from Peter. Looking at it, she saw through his pathetic little ruse and felt glad for him that it had apparently succeeded. By sending companion cards both to her and to Liane and signing them identically he had kept his secret safe. Though how wise even a Christmas message was, if he had really parted from Liane, Jess dared not judge.
After tea the decorations were piled on the floor of the hall and they all set about putting them up. Muir functioning on a tall stepladder, Mrs. Seacombe handing nails, staples and the hammer, and the two girls selecting and tying the greenery into bunches and festoons. When the last nail was driven Muir came down to sit on the bottom step of the ladder and to regard his handiwork with a critical eye.
“That last loop dips too much,” he accused Jess, who had directed its fixing from below.
“But it had to dip slightly more than the others or it would have hidden the mistletoe,” she objected.
“Then the mistletoe must be moved over,” he ruled. “The present lack of symmetry offends my eye.”
“You can’t move the mistletoe! Why, we put it up first, so as to get it quite central.” The new objection came from Liane.
Muir’s glance for her was gently quizzical. “I thought mistletoe functioned successfully anywhere?” he teased over his shoulder as he remounted the ladder.
He did the adjustments to his own satisfaction and when he had finally set aside the stepladder he turned to Mrs. Seacombe with a smile. “Now—will you test the efficacy of the mistletoe with me?” he asked. And before she could protest he had planted a kiss upon her cheek, much to her surprise and embarrassment.
“Why, Mr. Forester! You shouldn’t! I’m long past mistletoe kissing, as you should know very well!”
“You liked it,” he accused.
“Well, maybe I did. But mistletoe is for young folks—like Miss Hart, like Nurse Mawney—”
Muir’s amused glance passed from her embarrassed blushes to Liane, slid momentarily to Jess. He held out a hand to Liane. “Well?” he invited lightly.
Jess saw her figure stiffen, but she went quietly over to him. It was a gesture as obedient as a child’s and the touch of Muir’s lips to her brow might have been no more than a child’s reward for docility. But above Liane’s head Muir’s eyes met Jess’s, and for a single instant of time there was a fire in them, fire unseen by Liane, unheeded by Mrs. Seacombe, burning its meaning for Jess who saw it as a brief, betraying flame—the flame of love for Liane that he had deliberately suppressed by his will, yet which had leaped unbidden to his eyes.
Jess looked away, feeling oddly shamed by the naked revelation of such depth of feeling. But the next minute Muir had patted Liane upon the shoulder and, turning about, went to light his pipe by the fire. His manner now was so casual and at ease that Jess almost doubted that she had seen what she had.
They had a quiet Christmas Day. They all went to early service in the dark of Christmas morning, coming back to breakfast and making their modest exchange of presents after it.
Muir gave Liane a pair of antique earrings and had chosen perfume for Jess. Jess was delighted with Liane’s present—an early morning tea set for one person in prettily patterned fine china. She herself gave Liane a large, pure-silk scarf depicting historic occasions and had chosen for Muir a leather map holder for his car. She could not very well give him anything personal and had been glad when the idea of the map carrier had presented itself.
Afterward Muir went to play golf, returning in time for a traditional Christmas dinner, which was followed by the sated ease that is the pattern of most family Christmas afternoons. In the evening Muir and Mrs. Seacombe played piquet and cribbage while the girls wrapped gifts for the estate children’s party. And after a cold evening meal, which no one wanted very much, they all played rummy and newmarket, a session at which Liane’s luck was so unbroken that by midnight she was as much of a Croesus as their play for halfpenny stakes would allow.
They all shared her childish pleasure in her winnings. Muir threatened to touch her for the loan of some of them and Jess, watching her scoop the pile of counters into her lap, was hoping that the quip about lucky at cards would occur to no one. Fortunately it did not. Or was it, rather, that love was a word that held its reluctances for all of them?
Boxing Day was busy from early morning onward and Mrs. Seacombe had to allow even Liane to do her share of sandwich cutting and the laying of tables.
Jane Bretton, who was expected to be there in time to help to receive the children, did not arrive until they were sitting down to tea and then preferred to supervise while other people worked. Wi
th furs drooping negligently over her arms she met Jess carrying a heavy tray between kitchen and dining room.
“How very workmanlike you look, nurse,” she commented with a glance at Jess’s sensible overall and rolled sleeves. “But I suppose you are well used to coping with communal feasts of this sort? Hospitals go in for things in such a wholesale way, I always think.”
“Yes, don’t they?” Awkward though the tray was, Jess supported it with aching wrists while she looked her enemy straight in the eye. “So wholesale always—about alleviating pain and mending broken limbs and even lives, and curing sick children and making as happy as possible the people they can’t cure! All that happens to be a large-scale job, Mrs. Bretton, and one that can’t be tackled in any but a wholesale way—” And Jess swept on toward the dining room with head held high. Perhaps it was as well she did not witness the chagrin she left behind.
She loved helping with children and she had not had the task of making a party “go” since her last spell of duty on the children’s ward at The Charter Hospital before she qualified. And though she was tired, she was quite sorry when Muir—a patriarchal Santa Claus—had handed out the last gift from the Christmas tree and their small guests had departed in chattering, excited groups.
Mrs. Bretton had already gone home to change for Muir’s dinner party, a fact which amused Jess and Liane as they had expected she would have come to the party in something that would be suitable also for the informal evening to follow. As it was she had successfully evaded both the preparations and the inevitable clearing up. But she had made herself very pleasant with the children and would probably dine out for weeks afterward on little anecdotes of how cute they had been.
When she returned with her husband they brought with them someone else—Jane’s sister, the district nurse of whom Petra Tempton-Burney had told Jess. She was a woman of about thirty-five, very masculine in appearance with short, iron-gray hair and a slow, wide-mouthed smile. She was as different as possible from Jane, and Jess, on being introduced to Miss Windle, took to her at once.
