Hospital Corridors

by Mary Burchell.

  Madeline exclaimed in concern at once, and was going on to ask details about her stepmother when Clarissa cut in once more.

  “It’s nothing serious, really. But I don’t expect she’ll want to go out tomorrow. However, I most certainly will.”

  “I—see.” Madeline did some anxious calculating.

  “But I tell you what we could do, Madeline.” Clarissa had evidently been doing some calculating too. “You come and keep Mother company here, and I’ll go with Nat. Mother would love to have you, and I should love to go with Nat”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Madeline felt a dreadfully unnatural daughter as she said this. “Unless Enid definitely needs someone with her—in which case we will call the whole thing off—I shall come in the car too. Dr. Lanyon specially invited me.”

  “Bravo,” murmured Dr. Lanyon beside her amusedly. “You guard my interests admirably.”

  She glanced at him, flushed and felt rather foolish and annoyed.

  “What’s that?” Clarissa was saying. “But, darling, don’t be silly! I’m sure he would excuse you—willingly, in the circumstances.”

  “No,” Madeline said. “He would not. I can’t stay and discuss it now. I’ll tell Dr. Lanyon that we’ll both come, unless Enid is really unwell and needs us.” Then she firmly said, “Good-bye,” and hung up the receiver.

  “Excellently managed. You are a diplomat, Miss Gill,” Dr. Lanyon said, with an air of amused approval. “I will call for you at three.” Then he handed her the reference she had originally come to trace, and dismissed her with a nod.

  Madeline went off on her own affairs again, half relieved, half disturbed by this conversation. It was pleasant to feel that she and Dr. Lanyon were on good, even curiously confidential, terms again. But she could not help thinking that all his casual talk about meeting Clarissa hid some angry pain still, and an uneasy certainty that he could still be badly hurt by her. Else why did he insist, however laughingly, that he would need Madeline’s company in the next few weeks?

  “Of course, he would really be much better advised to keep out of her way altogether,” thought Madeline, a little impatiently. But then that would mean leaving his pride out of account. And men, reflected Madeline, could be very difficult where their pride was concerned.

  Late that afternoon, when she had gone off duty and was ready to go downtown to visit Enid and Clarissa, she was called to the telephone, and, with immediately rising spirits, she heard Morton’s gay tones at the other end of the wire.

  “Hello, my sweet. Have the visitors arrived safely?” he enquired.

  “They have.” Madeline smiled to herself, because, though she always assured herself that she paid little attention to Morton’s extravagant forms of address, there was no doubt that she liked them. “I am just going down to the hotel now. Would you like to join us?”

  “I should love to,” Morton assured her. “But I’m afraid I can’t today. I’ll promise to squire them next week—at least, in the earlier part of it. But—this is really why I called up—I want you to myself tomorrow, darling. I’ll call for you about half-past three.”

  “Oh, Morton, I’m sorry!” There was genuine dismay in her voice. “I can’t. Dr. Lanyon is taking us out driving tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Lanyon? Oh, you can put him off,” Morton declared easily. “You don’t have to join the party, do you?”

  “Yes,” Madeline said firmly, “I’m afraid I do.”

  “But why? The clearer the run, the more Clarissa will enjoy herself. They can put your stepmother in the back of the car and—”

  “Enid won’t be going. She isn’t well.”

  “Then that makes your presence all the more superfluous. Let Clarissa have Nat to herself. She’ll enjoy it.”

  “But he won’t.”

  “Darling, don’t be silly—and rather tiresome.” Morton laughed impatiently. “How do you know he won’t? He’s probably dying to have a heart-to-heart talk to the semidetached Clarissa.”

  “No, he is not,” retorted Madeline obstinately.

  There was an astonished silence. Then Morton said,

  “Are you his confidante, then?”

  “No, of course not. But I know quite well it’s a situation he wants to avoid. Anyone in his position would, if they had any decency and common sense.”

  Again there was an astonished pause. Then Morton spoke, in a much more persuasive and conciliatory tone than he customarily used to her. Or indeed, to anyone else.

  “Look, darling, you and I are not going to quarrel over Nat Lanyon,” he told her. “If he needs a watch-dog, he’s not going to have my best girl in the role. Granted he would like to have you there tomorrow afternoon—the fact is that I want you too, very much more than Nat Lanyon ever will. Madeline, I have something very special I want to say to you. It concerns us both—very deeply.”

  “But—but, Morton—” Suddenly she felt as though her heart were beating high up in her throat. “Does it have to be said tomorrow afternoon? Wouldn’t some other time do just as well?”

  “No.”

  Unconsciously her fingers gripped the telephone receiver until her hand hurt. She had promised Dr. Lanyon. He had even, lightly, but somehow significantly, asked her not to let him down, and she had vowed she would not. But—but was her presence really vital? Did Dr. Lanyon really need to have her with him half so much as she needed to meet Morton tomorrow afternoon?

  “If he means—what I think he means, it’s something to affect my whole life,” she thought desperately. And at that moment Morton’s voice said,

  “Are you still there, Madeline?”

  “Yes, yes. I’m just thinking. You see, I promised—I—”

  Morton’s annoyed laugh cut in on that.

  “Does it really take so long to decide between Lanyon and me?” he enquired impatiently, evidently expecting to shock her into a decision.

  But she was completely silent. For though the shock was there, it was not at all the kind of shock which Morton presumably intended to administer.

  “To decide between Lanyon and me.” It was a ridiculous way of putting it, of course. There was no clear-cut decision to be made on a common basis. And yet—“To decide between Lanyon and me.” The phrase seemed to whirl round and round in her brain without ever attaching itself to anything which had gone before in her experience.

  “Madeline—?” There was something puzzled and—incredibly—hurt in Morton’s tone. “I don’t understand you. What is it?”

  “I’m terribly sorry—” She found the words at last. “I just can’t make it tomorrow, Morton. At least, not tomorrow afternoon or early evening. I—I promised him. And I can’t let him down.”

  “Can’t let him down?” When Morton repeated the words, they seemed to gather an absurd, almost impertinent, significance. “It’s a matter of trivial convenience to him, and to me it’s vital.”

  “It’s vital to him too,” Madeline insisted, in a small voice but out of the depths of complete conviction. “Please understand. We have all the time in the world, dear, and he—”

  “We have not all the time in the world, Madeline.” Morton’s voice was suddenly sombre. “That’s why I’m making such a point of this. My mother is coming out of hospital on Monday and we’re flying back home on Thursday. Now do you realize why I must see you tomorrow—and alone?”

  CHAPTER XIII

  “What’s that you say?” cried Madeline, sudden and acute dismay sharpening the tone of her voice. “You’re going home on Thursday?”

  “Yes.” He was brief about that, and all the more telling because of it.

  “But why, Morton, why? It surely can’t be necessary to leave so suddenly.”

  “Unfortunately, my dear, it is. There is some urgent business I must attend to in London, and Mother is also very anxious to get home—so anxious, she’s even prepared to fly for once. So now you see why it’s essential that you give Nat Lanyon the go-by and come out with me instead.”

  Afterwards sh
e was to be astounded at her own obstinacy—the almost obsessive determination with which she clung to the idea that she must go with Dr. Lanyon, as she had promised him. She actually felt herself go pale, as the full significance of the choice now presented itself to her. But she never really hesitated.

  “I can’t,” she heard herself say quite clearly. “I promised Dr. Lanyon first.”

  She was almost sure that Morton gasped aloud. Then, for the first time since she had known him, she detected ice-cold anger in his voice as he said,

  “Are you crazy? Have some sense of proportion about this thing!”

  “I promised Dr. Lanyon first,” she repeated helplessly. “I’m sorry, Morton.”

  “Then I’m sorry, too,” he said, and quite gently he replaced the receiver at his end of the wire.

  “Morton!” She shook the instrument which had suddenly gone dead in her hand, and stared at it in a sort of horrified fascination. Then, after a long moment, she replaced it with exaggerated care, and turned slowly away, aware all at once that she was trembling uncontrollably.

  “He’s right, I must be crazy,” she muttered to herself as, back in her own room, she sank down on the side of her bed, forgetting for a moment even her appointment with Enid and Clarissa, in her distress and agitation. “And yet what else could I do? I promised—”

  Even to herself the reiteration of that seemed tiresome now, and she could imagine how profoundly irritating it must have been to Morton.

  “It would have made any man mad,” she told herself remorsefully. “But it was true! And anyway, why did the appointment have to be at Morton’s chosen time, and his time only? If he had something so important to tell me—the most important thing—why did it have to be only during those few short hours I’d promised to Dr. Lanyon?”

  She knew she had handled the situation badly. But, on the other hand, she felt, for the first time, an element of cool criticism creep into her appraisal of Morton’s behaviour.

  “If it was so desperately important, surely Morton might also have cancelled something and seen me today? Or why not have indulged me, even if it seemed the height of absurdity, and arranged to see me on Monday? That’s surely not so much to ask if one—loves someone?”

  Her sense of fairness reminded her at that point that Morton had said his mother was coming out of hospital on Monday. No doubt he would have to fetch her himself and be very much at her disposal that day. Possibly, even, his idea had been that everything between himself and Madeline should be irrevocably settled before he fetched her.

  Again Madeline felt all her self-doubts return, and she wondered if she had thrown away her happiness for the sake of a piece of inexplicable obstinacy.

  “But I promised—” she thought. And because her mind seemed to stick always at this point, like a gramophone record that would go no further, she realized that it was useless to sit there going over and over the scene. She must go downtown to the hotel and see her stepmother and Clarissa.

  When she arrived at the hotel, she found to her great relief that Clarissa was out and that Enid, comfortably ensconced in bed, was on her own.

  “Now, don’t start worrying,” were her stepmother’s first words. “There’s nothing wrong that won’t be right again in a couple of days. All I need is rest.”

  Having satisfied herself that this was really more or less the case, Madeline sat down by the bed, greatly relieved, and said,

  “Enid, don’t think I’m deserting you and being unfeeling if I too go out with Dr. Lanyon tomorrow. You see—”

  “Darling, of course not! I shouldn’t think any girl unfeeling for wanting to go out with Dr. Lanyon. He’s the most attractive creature—quite apart from that indefinable aura of interest which success always gives a man.”

  “Oh, it’s not only that.” Madeline was faintly surprised to have her difficult decision attributed to Dr. Lanyon’s personal charm. It’s more than that. Enid, I’m afraid Clarissa is going to salve her wounded pride and affections by trying to have him on a string again. If I—well, if I—”

  “Take him into protective custody,” suggested Enid mischievously.

  “Oh, no! Not exactly that.” Madeline was slightly annoyed by the expression. “It’s simply that Clarissa can’t be anything like so dangerous if there’s a third person there.”

  “No, darling, of course not,” her stepmother agreed soothingly. “And what”—she looked reflectively at Madeline—“are his views on the subject? Or don’t you know?”

  “He—he would prefer me to be there.”

  “Nice man,” murmured Enid, with an air of satisfaction which Madeline thought slightly exaggerated in the circumstances.

  “I suppose he feels it’s safer,” Madeline said.

  “He didn’t look to me like a man who concerns himself greatly with safety,” Enid retorted good-humouredly. “Now tell me about the other man in your life—Morton Sanders.”

  “Morton?” Madeline was rather startled to have him brought so suddenly into the conversation when he had been occupying her thoughts in such an agitating manner. “I don’t know that there’s very much to—to tell you about him.”

  “Not?” Enid polished the nails of one hand on the ball of the other thoughtfully. “Your letters were rather full of him.”

  “Were they? He took—takes me out a great deal. And of course I went to stay for that weekend with those nice cousins of his, as I wrote to you.”

  “Don’t think I’m forcing confidences, darling. I just thought that you sounded a little bit in love with him. I wondered if it were a lot,” Enid explained candidly. Madeline did not answer that immediately. She stared thoughtfully at her stepmother, as though her words had brought her own thoughts into some new sort of focus.

  “Sometimes I wonder that myself,” she said slowly at last.

  “O-oh? You’re not more sure about it than that?”

  “I’m completely sure of it when I’m with him,” Madeline admitted, and ruffled up her smooth dark hair rather distractedly. “He makes love in the most—the most devastating way, and makes me feel that nothing is so important as that I should go on seeing him and being with him. Then, sometimes, when I’m away from him, it seems to me that he has no—no real tenderness. That, in a way, he is an unhappy, troubled spirit himself, and that one couldn’t really be happy with him, however much—or perhaps, particularly if—one loved him.”

  Enid listened to this rather hesitating exposition without any attempt to interrupt. Then, as Madeline became silent, she said thoughtfully,

  “Tenderness is not an absolute essential in the man one loves, though I think myself that it’s important I’m not really in favour of helping troubled spirits to find happiness at the expense of oneself, but, of course, if you love him, none of the rules of common sense apply in quite the same degree. My own feeling is, darling, that you don’t know yet if you love him and that you’d be well advised to give the whole thing more time to develop. After all”—she settled herself back comfortably against the pillows—“there’s no real hurry, is there?”

  “That’s just it,” Madeline murmured unhappily, “there is. He’s going back to England on Thursday.”

  “To England?” Enid sat up again with energy. “And he wants your answer before then?”

  “Not exactly. It hasn’t got as far as that.” For a moment, Madeline thought how tenuous and uncertain the whole situation was. “He telephoned just before I came down here, told me of his coming departure and said he must see me tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I see.” Enid considered that. Then she said suddenly, “But isn’t that when you and Clarissa are going out with Dr. Lanyon?”

  “Yes. I told Morton I couldn’t come.”

  “You—did you really, darling?” said Enid, looking quite extraordinarily interested. “But wasn’t that rather ill-advised?”

  “I can’t help it. I’d promised Dr. Lanyon first.” Madeline’s voice took on an unconsciously obstinate note, as though she had alr
eady repeated that in the teeth of opposition. Which, indeed, she had!

  “I’m sure he would release you from your promise, in the circumstances,” Enid said.

  “Yes, I’m sure he would,” Madeline agreed. “But I wouldn’t ask him to do so.”

  For a moment Enid looked as though she were going to argue the point. Then her guileless glance rested on the troubled face of her stepdaughter.

  “Perhaps you are right, darling,” she said mildly. And at that moment Clarissa knocked and came into the room.

  Madeline was not quite certain if Enid had detected her footsteps a second or two earlier and brought the conversation to an end in consequence, or if the “Perhaps you are right, darling,” represented her considered opinion on the situation. At any rate, Clarissa’s entry altered the tone of the conversation completely.

  She too referral to the invitation for the following afternoon, but in a rather off-hand manner, and as though she thought Madeline both silly and tiresome for insisting on coming too. This, Madeline found, she could bear with equanimity, and, characteristically, Clarissa’s good humour was soon restored.

  Since it was not possible for Enid to go out, they spent some very pleasant hours discussing everything that had happened during the time they had been separated. Everything, that is to say, except Clarissa’s disastrous marriage. Round this subject she skirted with a sort of careless cynicism that both puzzled and disturbed Madeline. It was not at all like Clarissa to adopt this attitude, and Madeline wondered more than once if it concealed more deeply wounded feelings than any with which she had ever credited her half-sister.

  In the course of the conversation, Morton’s name inevitably came up, and Clarissa exclaimed,

  “Morton! I simply must telephone him. He’ll never forgive me for being here twenty-four hours without calling him up.” Madeline thought he probably would. But, in an uneasy, fascinated way, she was not averse to having Clarissa do what she herself could not at the moment venture to do. She wished passionately that Clarissa would have put through the call in Enid’s room. But, not unnaturally perhaps, she chose to go next door to her own room.