by Susan Barrie
From her own point of view she knew that she was going to miss Miranda enormously, for in three months she had become really fond of her, and sometimes she was almost agonizingly sorry for her. And the superb comfort of Ketterings, the loveliness of its surroundings and the old-fashioned, never-failing attentiveness of Purvis were things she would never quite forget.
Today, while he served her lunch, he looked, she thought, a little downcast, and when she questioned him as to whether anything was wrong, he gave a sudden sigh and made a rather hopeless movement with his shoulders.
“Nothing in particular, nurse, only Miss Miranda seems upset because she insists you are going to leave us very soon. Is that true, nurse?”
“I’m afraid it is, Purvis. But she can do without me now, you know. You, Mrs. Abbott and Fiske are all she needs. Between the three of you I know you’ll combine to spoil her and do all that it is possible to do for her nowadays.”
The old man, who had served another family in this same house, but had never, perhaps, had quite such a fondness for any member of it as he had for his present master’s small, golden-haired, helpless wisp of a daughter, poured Lucy’s coffee carefully, and then fetched another sigh from the depths of his being.
“Do you think she’ll ever be herself again, nurse?”
Lucy looked up at him, a smile in the blue eyes he thought rarely attractive.
“We can but hope she will, Purvis.”
That night while she lay in bed, Lucy heard a car purring its way almost noiselessly up the driveway, and since there was no disturbance of any kind, and the front door opened and closed as soundlessly as the car had glided over the gravel of the driveway, she could only conclude that it was the master of the place who had come home one day earlier than was his normal custom. He had arrived at Ketterings on a Thursday, instead of on a Friday!
In the morning Purvis confirmed that Sir John was home, but Miranda, when Lucy went to her after her own breakfast, had not seen her father. She had been fed and washed by Fiske, who was secretly only happy when she was doing things for the invalid, and a queer look invaded her overbright blue eyes when she learned that Sir John was back.
“Oh!” she said, looking at Nurse Nolan with her head on one side, a birdlike habit she had formed. “Then I’ll be seeing him, won’t I?”
“I expect so, darling,” Lucy replied. “He’s bound to want to have a chat with you.”
It seemed unnatural to her that a father, after an absence from home of a whole month, should not have gone hastening to his daughter at the very earliest opportunity, but she knew that would have been quite unlike Sir John.
She purposely kept rather out of the way that day in case Sir John should wish to have a talk alone with his daughter, and she saw nothing of him herself until evening. Then, when she was thinking of making some alteration to her dress in preparation for having dinner alone in her own sitting room, the summons she had been expecting came. “Sir John would like to see you in the library. Nurse Nolan!” It was Purvis who tapped quietly at her door, and who conveyed the summons to her.
“Oh, very well, Purvis. I’ll go down immediately.”
She glanced at herself hastily in her mirror to make sure that her cap was at nothing suggestive of a flighty angle on her hair and that there was no shine on her nose. A quick flick with a powder puff dealt with the nose, and a face tissue pressed against her soft, full lips removed most of the traces of lipstick. In the hospital there had been a rule against lipstick that clung to her still whilst on duty, and although she felt naked without it, she used it very sparingly except when she was going out and away from her patient.
The library was in a remote wing of the house that also contained Sir John’s private apartments, and save when he was at home, the corridor leading to it was very dimly illuminated. Tonight, as he was at home, there seemed to be a positive blaze of illumination to guide Lucy’s footsteps over the rich, thick, crimson carpet, and when she reached the library door and tapped on it she felt as if the harshness of the lights had taken all the color out of her face.
Sir John’s voice called to her almost immediately to enter, and she turned the handle of the stout oak door noiselessly, and then found herself on the fringe of a vast room wherein a fire burned pleasantly on the wide hearth, for the September evenings were cool.
In front of the fire, on a thick skin rug, was Muffin, Sir John’s spaniel, with a curly black-satin coat, and large golden eyes that never left Sir John’s face when he was at home. Whether Sir John ever made a fuss of the dog Lucy had sometimes wondered, for she had never seen him do so, although its devotion to him was obvious, but he seemed to accept it as natural that it should behave like his shadow when he was at Ketterings. Tonight it lay with its nose on its paws, and its paws almost on the instep of one of his shoes as he stood beside it on the rug.
“Ah, good evening. Nurse Nolan!” he greeted her, in the strangely quiet voice she remembered.
CHAPTER THREE
He moved forward at once to place a chair for her, and as she accepted it Nurse Nolan managed to absorb a few little things about him that were also very much as she remembered them—his weakness for immaculate linen, and the quiet skill of his tailor. His dark gray suit fitted him to perfection, and nothing could have been more correct and formal than the way his tie was knotted. As he lifted his wrist to glance at his wristwatch and compare it with the face of the clock on the mantelpiece, she noted how lean and virile it was, and noted the suggestion of strength in the long-fingered, well-cared-for hand attached to it.
“You didn’t waste very much time. Nurse Nolan,” he remarked, something that might have been the merest suspicion of a smile in his eyes as he looked at her. “I sent for you barely five minutes ago, and here you are!”
“Naturally I came at once, since you wanted to see me,” she replied.
He studied her for a moment longer, with that expressionless look on his face that she so well remembered, and then he turned from her and stared into the fire.
“Miranda is about the same?” he observed at last, rather shortly.
“Have you seen her?” Lucy asked, countering the question.
“Since I returned last night? Yes, I saw her just before tea this afternoon. She seems to me remarkably fragile.”
“She is remarkably fragile,” Lucy agreed.
Once more, he turned to look at her. He seemed to study her hard this time.
“And yet you tell me in your letter that the time has arrived for you to depart from Ketterings? And Miranda seems to be considerably upset because you propose to leave her so soon. Have you any very good reason for wishing to leave, Nurse Nolan?”
Nurse Nolan felt her face flush faintly as his eyes bored into her—eyes that were still quite cold, but full of a restrained sort of curiosity.
“Only the excellent reason that Miranda is as well as I think—for the time being—she is likely to be, and there is little point in her growing accustomed to having me with her, when sooner or later I shall have to leave her. And, frankly, Miss Fiske is quite capable of doing all the things I do for her at present. In fact, sometimes I feel that Miss Fiske is a little—well, unhappy, because she is not allowed to do more.”
“Miss Fiske’s unhappiness, or her happiness, are not of particular interest to me at the moment,” he observed, so dryly that Nurse Nolan felt the color suddenly flame in her cheeks, and she felt almost too much abashed to meet his eyes.
“No, I suppose not,” she agreed hastily, and then endeavored to make him recognize what it was she had been trying to press home to him. “But all I meant by that is that Miss Fiske is completely devoted to Miranda, and so entirely trustworthy that you need have no fears about her taking the utmost care of Miranda once I have gone. And there seems little object in your employing two people when one would be more than sufficient.”
“Meaning by that that you really are rather anxious to be gone yourself, and you would like us to discuss the actual da
te of your departure?’ There was something so coldly sarcastic in his face that she felt anger begin to stir in her, and her blue eyes darkened. “No doubt you find Ketterings rather dull, and when a patient ceases to respond to treatment that must also contribute to the dullness of a case? But as Miranda seems to have formed quite an attachment for you—”
“It is not only Miranda who has formed an attachment, for me—I think that poor, wistful waif of a child would tie knots in anyone’s heartstrings!” Lucy interrupted him, her voice actually shaking a little as emotion rose up in her and threatened to choke her. She got to her feet in order to confront him. Really, he was far, far less pleasant than on the three occasions when they had met before, she decided. Then she had suspected that he was merely indifferent, but now she felt certain he could be hostile—and with a kind of hostility it would be difficult to fight, because his most powerful weapon was the arctic chill he could introduce into his voice. “And it’s not because I want to go that I’ve made up my mind I must go—I’d stay here forever if I thought it would do any good!”
“Ah! Then that, at least, is something!”
“But what good would it do?” She flung out her hands rather helplessly.
“It would, at least, make Miranda happy.” He picked up a heavy silver cigarette box from a table and offered it to her. “Do sit down again. Nurse Nolan, and don’t misunderstand anything I am likely to say. Being a young woman, you have a perfect right to find the country dull! But why do you refer to Miranda as a waif?”
“Because that’s the way I think of her,” she admitted, declining a cigarette, and moistening the sudden dryness of her lips with the tip of her tongue.
One of his eyebrows lifted.
“In some ways she is quite a fortunate waif!”
“Because she has every comfort, and you are her father?” He had never seen eyes so dark, and yet so blue as hers as she lifted them to his face, and for a moment they looked full at one another. “Possibly she is fortunate, Sir John, to be the daughter of a rich man, but I shall always think of her as—alone, somehow, and fighting her battle alone, because those who are always near to her are not in any way connected to her by ties of blood!”
“I see,” he said slowly, and studied the tip of his cigarette.
“I expect that sounds impertinent,” Lucy remarked, at the end of a long silence.
He looked at her again. He did not answer her directly. “Would you consider staying on with Miranda as a more or less permanent arrangement. Nurse Nolan?” he asked quietly. “Not as her nurse, but as her companion and friend? One whom she can be happy to have near her? In return for a satisfying remuneration, of course!”
Somehow Lucy had not been unprepared for this, but even so, she did not quite know how to answer him. She stared downward at her own hands clasped in her lap, and at her delicate, pale pink nails.
“Have you been in touch yet with Dr. Wern, in Vienna?” she inquired without looking up.
“As a matter of fact, I have,” Sir John answered, and she looked up quickly. “But it may be several weeks before he is able to spare the time to fly over here and examine Miranda.”
“Oh!” Lucy exclaimed. A gleam of hope shone in her eyes. “Then he really is going to examine her?”
“He has said that he will.”
“Then I will certainly stay,” Lucy informed him, “for as long as Miranda really requires me.”
“Good!” Sir John exclaimed, and walked away from her to the fireplace. He bent and ruffled the silky coat of Muffin, who instantly looked up at him adoringly. “There is one thing I should mention to you. Nurse Nolan. You will probably not find it so dull here in future, because I have made up my mind to do a certain amount of entertaining.” He did not look up at her, but appeared to be concentrating all his attention on Muffin. “As a matter of fact, perhaps I also ought to let you know that I am thinking of—”
A deep, booming noise filled the air reaching them, as it seemed, from the hall, and he broke off and looked up at the clock.
“Time to change for dinner. Purvis never postpones things, although he is quite well aware that you are still in here. He has so few opportunities nowadays to sound a dressing gong.”
“But, you were saying. Sir John...?” Lucy reminded him.
A blank expression descended over his face.
“On second thought I don’t think it is important enough to mention just now.” He glanced again at the clock. “Then I can take it that you will remain. Nurse Nolan?”
“If you really wish me to,” she replied.
“I do.” And then with a sudden, quite surprising smile parting his thin, firm lips and disclosing very white teeth he said, “But one thing I must not forget, Miranda is most anxious that you shall cease to wear a uniform. Nurse Nolan. Is it quite impossible that you can agree to that?”
Lucy was considerably taken aback, but as he had asked her to stay on in the capacity of a companion for Miranda rather than a nurse, she decided that she could agree, at least for a few months.
“It would seem that our poor, wistful waif of a child is capable of expressing her opinions,” Sir John murmured, looking at her rather oddly as he opened the library door for her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Miranda was delighted when the news was conveyed to her that Nurse Nolan was to remain with her. She wound her thin arms around Lucy’s neck as she bent over her the following day to loop a ribbon through the fair hair, and gave her quite a powerful hug.
“It’s wonderful!” she declared. “And it’s still more wonderful that you’re going to wear ordinary clothes!”
Lucy laughed.
“Church-going clothes!” she elaborated.
“Yes, church-going clothes!”
“But if that is the desire of your royal highness I shall have to go to London to pick up rather more of my wardrobe. I’ve only got a few things here that I can wear, and in any case I didn’t imagine I would be away so long, so I’ll have to leave you for a brief spell.”
It was true that when she had obeyed the summons to go to Ketterings she had more or less “downed tools” and dropped everything, and she had certainly not imagined that the case would occupy so much of her time. She was provided with a room in her sister’s Chelsea apartment when she was not nursing, and that room housed practically all her possessions in this world.
Sir John, when he was given to understand that Nurse Nolan required leave of absence for a few days, gave permission readily. And then he took Lucy completely aback by announcing that he intended to visit his firm’s London office and offered to drive her to London himself in his own car—or rather, he invited her to accompany him in the backseat of the car while his chauffeur drove them!
At first Lucy was almost awed by the very thought of sharing the silver gray upholstered seat of the big Bentley for several hours with her employer, but that did not prevent her from feeling grateful for the invitation. And she accepted with a suitably demure expression that might, or might not, have deceived him.
Against all precedent. Sir John stayed at Ketterings until Thursday. When he and Lucy left, Miranda and Miss Fiske waved to them from the window of the room that had once been Miranda’s schoolroom, and that overlooked the driveway. And then, as they glided away through the subdued brilliance of a perfect September morning, Lucy lay back against the seat and decided that she might as well make the most of this unique experience.
They shot between the curly, wrought-iron gates that guarded the approach to the residence, and out into a winding country road bordered by high hedges alive, with rose hips, and the pink and orange flowers of the spindle tree. Beyond the hedges were brown fields where the newly turned earth was shimmering with gossamer, and beyond the fields the purple outline of the moor, with the white road cutting across it like a white ribbon unfolding itself until it reached the deeper purple distance, and the wavy line of hills.
Lucy, in her neat gray tailored suit and little hat that sat more inse
curely on her brown curls than her cap ever did—the outfit that so aroused Miranda’s admiration on Sundays—was unaware that Sir John’s eyes rested on her in rather a speculative fashion, but she did know that in her heart she was deeply pleased to think that she was coming back to Ketterings, and that this departure did not mean farewell to it.
They stopped for lunch at a little hotel where the service was excellent and the food good, and Sir John ordered wine with the meal. Lucy was so charmed by the unchallengeable antiquity of the dining room, with its carefully chosen pieces of period furniture, and the view of a sleepy market town out of the window, that she was only partly attentive to Sir John’s conversation that, however, was of a purely conventional order and required no flights of imagination to follow it.
She rather gathered—or she had gathered when they were traveling side by side in the car—that he preferred long spells of silence, broken by a few observations occasionally concerning the scenery they passed through, to a bright and entertaining flow of chatter.
He set her down outside her sister’s block of apartments when they reached Chelsea, and she thanked him with real gratitude for the comfortable method in which she had been permitted to make a long journey. He rewarded her thanks with the faintest of smiles, told her that if she happened to be traveling back on the day when he himself returned to Ketterings he would be pleased to offer her transport again, provided her with a telephone number where she could contact a secretary, and then signaled to Jennings, his chauffeur, to drive on.