by Susan Barrie
There was silence in the room for several seconds while the logs stirred on the hearth, and Muffin, who had stretched himself out in his favorite position on the rug, started to give vent to little snores as he dropped into a doze. And then Sir John most unexpectedly allowed a sigh to escape him.
“Well, I’m glad you can say that, Nurse Nolan!” There was another pause, and then, “It’s a pity Wern’s chosen this weekend, because I imagine he’ll be staying a night, at least, and the atmosphere of a kind of house party....” His eyes met those of the girl who looked so slim and young in her neat tailored suit, but who he knew could be quite extraordinarily efficient and resourceful, and he saw that he had no need to emphasize his meaning. The visit of the Austrian specialist would have been better timed if it had been arranged for one of those weekends when Ketterings was empty of visitors, but at its most dignified, and there was no Mrs. Harling, with her unmistakable Cockney accent, knitting heliotrope sweaters in the drawing room, and no Francis Burke lounging on the terrace and betraying the fact that he was very far from happy—to say nothing of a temperamental ballerina who might, or might not, decide to make herself agreeable.
But, on the other hand, if Sir John proposed to marry the ballerina...!
Lucy confessed to herself that she was a little bewildered.
“But I’ve no doubt at all that you will prove as helpful as you know how if Dr. Wern requires your assistance, nurse, and—” with a sudden smile “—for that reason I’m very glad that you decided to stay on with Miranda!”
“I’m glad that I shall be here with Miranda,” Lucy replied quietly.
Sir John seemed to become preoccupied all at once, and after a short while she left him—receiving a faintly surprised
permission to do so when she inquired whether there was anything more he wanted her for—and as she mounted the stairs to her own wing of the house she caught sight of Mrs. Harling, in a highly unsuitable housecoat of purple velvet, making her way to her daughter’s room. Ahead of her went Eva, the little underhousemaid, with a tray supporting a decanter filled with pale, straw-colored liquid that was probably sherry, and two glasses.
Mrs. Harling looked at Lucy a little sheepishly.
“At this hour of the day Lynette always seems to feel a little exhausted,” she explained, “particularly after an outing. She used herself up so much, you know, when she’s dancing—and this afternoon, apparently, she was very badly upset.”
“You mean about the accident to her suit?” Lucy inquired, in obvious surprise.
“Well, yes.” Mrs. Harling admitted, “that and other things!”
What, Lucy wondered, were the other things? And she felt suddenly strongly inclined to echo Sir John’s expressed opinion that this was a highly unfortunate weekend for Dr. Rupprecht Wern to choose to visit Ketterings for the first time.
But when Dr. Wern arrived was so unlike anything Lucy had allowed herself to imagine that afterward she felt sure neither she nor Sir John need have worried about the fact that the latter was entertaining guests. A psychologist would probably have accepted them, and been interested by them. Dr. Wern aroused interest among the guests, and allowed everyone to feel that in some peculiar way they were of absorbing interest to him.
He had a voice that was even quieter than Sir John’s, very white teeth and brown eyes that smiled reassuringly. He was not particularly young, but he had the figure of an athlete— probably a mountain climber, since his home was among mountains—very beautiful hands that were strong and flexible at the same time, and there was something soothing about him that seemed to be a part of his personality. Even Miranda, who had been working herself up into almost a low fever at the thought of his visit and all that it might mean for her, relaxed very nearly on the instant that he crossed the threshold of her room. And when he sat down beside her on the edge of her bed and smiled at her, picking up the absurd black-and-white velvet penguin that she kept always near to her, and examined it with interest, Lucy could almost feel the tension going out of her limbs.
“Well, well!” he exclaimed, as he made the penguin bob its head until it looked like a drowsy businessman recovering after a heavy lunch, “is this a friend of yours?”
Miranda smiled back at him.
“It’s Joey,” she said. “Lucy gave it to me.”
“Lucy?”
“Nurse Nolan,” she told him.
He glanced up at the slim, straight figure, once more in uniform, who stood close to the head of the bed, and one of his dark eyebrows lifted a little, after which his lips curved in a smile.
“Ah, yes!” he exclaimed. “I see!”
After a time he drew Lucy aside and spoke to her in a subdued voice, “I wonder whether you would leave me with the child for perhaps ten minutes?” he said. “After that you can rejoin us.”
Lucy went out at once into the corridor, and she stood looking out of a deep-set window, partly filled with armorial bearings, at the shaven lawn over which she had watched Sir John and Lynette Harling strolling arm in arm a few nights before. This afternoon Lynette was resting in her room, and Sir John was downstairs in his library probably occupied in pacing the library floor.
Lucy realized that in her early estimate of Sir John she had excluded something that she knew now ought not to have been excluded. There was something—some very real attunement between the father and daughter, or, at any rate, there was a real acknowledgment of his responsibility for her welfare deeply ingrained in Sir John, and a determination that her welfare should come before a good many other things. That strange, cold air of reserve in which he cloaked himself and his feelings no longer completely deceived Lucy. A man capable of ardor he probably was not, but she was sure that at the present time, at least, concern for Miranda was deeply alive in his breast.
She heard footsteps away at the end of the corridor, and she looked up. Sir John was approaching quietly over the thick carpet. He struck Lucy as having little color in his face, and his hair by contrast looked very thick and black.
“Don’t tell me. Nurse Nolan—” he smiled rather bleakly “—that you’ve been turned out?”
Lucy reassured him with an answering smile.
“As a matter of fact, Dr. Wern has carried out his examination of Miranda, and I think he now wants to talk to her.”
“I see.”
He stood staring out of the window, and she wondered whether he, too, had any thoughts of the other night, when he and Miss Harling had escaped from everyone else and found themselves alone in the starry magic of the night.
The door behind them opened and Dr. Wern emerged. He shut the door carefully before he looked at Sir John and nodded.
“Ah, Sir John, I would like to speak to you,” he said. “Where can we talk?”
He looked through the open doorway into Lucy’s comfortable little sitting room, where all the equipment for tea making was set out on a low table near the fire.
“This looks very nice,” he said. “May we go in here?”
But Sir John hesitated.
“This is Nurse Nolan’s sitting room,” he said.
Lucy, however, interposed at once.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter at all! As a matter of fact I was going to offer Dr. Wern a cup of tea—and you, too, Sir John, if you were up here—and I thought that perhaps you might like to talk in this room, as it is rather cut off from the rest of the house, and still near enough to Miranda.”
“Oh, well, in that case,” Sir John murmured, “I quite agree that it’s a good idea,” and he stepped into the middle of the room and stood looking about it as if he had never seen it at such close quarters before and it now provided him with a certain amount of interest.
Dr. Wern smiled in his charming manner at Lucy when she supplied him with a cup of tea, and then he, too, lay back and surveyed the room. Lucy was glad that she had meticulously thrust away out of sight all her very personal possessions, and that everything was very spick-and-span; but even so, the room had a cos
y, lived-in quality, and it seemed to captivate the prominent specialist from Vienna. He lay back comfortably in his deep, tapestry-covered chair, and, as if he was quite unaware that there was any consuming anxiety on the part of the other two to learn the verdict he had reached as a result of his examination of Miranda, talked lightly on subjects that were quite unrelated to his visit while he consumed several of the sweet biscuits and macaroons Lucy had extracted from Mrs. Abbott. And then, when he had declined a third cup of tea, he went around the room examining the watercolors on the walls, and finally he halted before the bookcase that contained Lucy’s own books.
“I see you are devoted to Jane Austen.” He gave her the smile that seemed to light up his brown eyes. “The perfect sedative!” he added.
Sir John did not miss the way those brown eyes seemed to rest upon the girl in the little starched cap that sat at absolutely the right angle on her dark curls, as if he found something to admire openly about her—just as he had openly admired the watercolors. And with a golden ray of late sunlight finding its way between the curtains and touching very gently the oval outline of her cheek, with its perfect peach-like skin, and her downcast, very white eyelids, as she bent above the tea tray on the little oval table, there was certainly quite a lot about her that anyone who felt disposed to do so could admire. Sir John’s own eyes flickered away from her face very quickly as she looked up, and she thought that he frowned suddenly and rather noticeably.
His own cup of tea was growing cold at his elbow, and she noticed that the knuckles of his clasped hands were showing rather white.
She stood up rather abruptly.
“I must ask you both to excuse me,” she said. “I really must return to Miranda.”
Neither of the two men requested her to stay, and she was sufficiently familiar with the ways of doctors, eminent and otherwise, to know that they had their own methods of breaking bad news to parents. She did not quite like Dr. Rupprecht Wern’s delayed method that send a cold feeling to her heart
Miranda, when she joined her, was lying very still on her bed, but Gentian, the offspring of the stable cat, had managed to creep into the room and was bearing her company by lying comfortably disposed on her pillow. One of Miranda’s thin hands was stroking it lovingly. Her eyes—so brightly blue that they made Lucy think of twin blue lakes in the sunshine—gazed up at Lucy with a smile in them.
“He’s nice, isn’t he?” she said without mentioning any name. “Really frightfully nice!”
“Dr. Wern? I’m glad you think so,” Lucy returned, forcing herself to smile back as if she hadn’t a genuine care in the world at that moment. She took a seat by the bed and automatically she, too, started to stroke Gentian. “It’s half the battle when you can honestly say you like the individual who comes and pokes and prods you when you don’t want to be poked and prodded.”
“Oh, but he didn’t poke and prod at all! His hands hardly seemed to touch me.”
“Well, that’s splendid.” But Lucy still felt cold inside. “I noticed that he had very beautiful hands.”
“Yes.” Miranda was gazing out of the window at the dying light. “He says he’s going to make me walk again!”
“He did? Oh...!” Lucy felt the breath catch in her throat, and she could not go on. She swallowed hard for a few moments, and then she exclaimed, “But that’s wonderful, darling, wonderful!” She searched Miranda’s face with eyes that sought to be absolutely convinced, and the shining gaze of the twelve-year-old returned to her, tinged with a touch of triumph.
“It is wonderful, isn’t it? I knew you’d think so! To walk again as I used to do, and to run, and....” She broke off, two pearly white front teeth biting hard at her lower lip, while Gentian purred noisily right beside her ear. And then she continued brightly, “But it will probably be months before I can walk again, and in order that I can do so I’ve got to go to Vienna—fly there! Isn’t it thrilling? And you, too, Noly....”
“Me, too?” Lucy sounded a little weak.
“Yes, Dr. Wern said so. He said you’d be sure to want to accompany me, and when I told him that I couldn’t bear it if you stayed behind he said he would use his influence to persuade you if necessary! But it isn’t necessary, is it, Noly?” gazing at her anxiously.
“No, darling, not if your father agrees to all this.”
“He will! Of course, he will!”
“Yes, I expect he will.”
But Lucy could see that Miranda’s eager mind was leaping so wildly ahead, and she was so intensely excited within herself, that a sedative just then seemed highly desirable, and she got up and quietly mixed something in a glass at the bedside table and gave it to her.
“Now drink this, poppet, like a good girl, and I expect I’ll be hearing all about this a little later on from your father, and probably Dr. Wern himself. So, if you go right off to sleep now, in the morning I’ll probably have some real news for you.”
“It can’t be any better news than mine,” Miranda murmured, but already she was growing drowsy, and she smiled contentedly, and very soon she was fast asleep.
But although Lucy fully expected to hear footsteps outside in her corridor at almost any moment after that, it was not until nearly an hour after dinner that Dr. Wern tapped quietly at her sitting-room door, and she hurriedly bade him enter.
He was still wearing the dark lounge suit in which he had arrived at the house that afternoon, and she wondered whether it was not his custom to change for the evening, or whether it was simply that he had traveled as light as possible. But, whatever the case, he looked extraordinarily impeccable, and she realized that he was a very attractive man. His features were finely cut, and his brown hair was inclined to curl crisply. His eyes had an exceptionally kind look in them as he put out a hand and grasped one of hers.
“I’m sorry this has to be goodbye. Nurse Nolan—for the time being, at any rate! I’m leaving very early in the morning, and so I thought it best to say my farewell to you tonight.”
“Oh oh, I see!” Lucy exclaimed, as she felt her fingers retained firmly for a moment, and then released.
“My talk with Sir John lasted rather a long time, so I was unable to get up to see you earlier. But I’ve no doubt the little one has told you—something?” He looked at her keenly. “Sir John will tell you more, and all the arrangements we have made, and so forth. But the important thing I should like to be sure of before I leave is that Miranda can count on you?”
“You mean that that I will stay with her until she no longer requires me?”
“Yes.” He seemed to consider the matter, and then he nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I think you can put it like that.”
Lucy assured him that Miranda could count on her, but the confirmation of all that Miranda had told her, which she was dying to hear, was not forthcoming. Dr. Wern was obviously a man of few words where his patients were concerned, and he added nothing to what he had already said to her, beyond giving a few instructions and repeating the hope that they would meet again before very long, and then he accorded her a brief, military type of bow, and uttered the words “Auf Wiedersehen.” A quick flash of his white teeth, and he was gone.
When he had left the room Lucy wondered how he had fared below stairs with the other members of the house party, assuming that he had had to meet them for dinner, even if he and Sir John had remained for a long time in conference in Sir John’s library. Later that evening she heard a light gust of peculiarly penetrating feminine laughter, which she recognized immediately, floating to her from the head of the stairs, and she deduced that it was Lynette Harling saying good-night to someone. And when a short, pleasant laugh, which she also already recognized, came in answer, she knew it was the doctor, who must have made an appeal to her. And then doors closed and there was silence once more.
Sir John did not find his way to Lucy’s room that night, although she did not dare to think about undressing until it was very late, in case he wished to have a conversation with her. She sat straining
her eyes over an embroidered tea cloth she was working, and listening for his step in the corridor, but as the clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the minutes, and at last the grandfather clock in the hall below chimed the hour of midnight, and he did not come, she began to be overcome by a feeling of queer but indefinable anxiety. She began to be uneasy. And she was also, she knew—for some reason that she also could not explain—disappointed.
CHAPTER TEN
She did not see Sir John at all during daylight the following day, and Dr. Wern was carried away from the house in his host’s big, chauffeur-driven Bentley almost immediately after a very early breakfast that he consumed alone.
Miranda was excited from the moment she woke up, and she wanted to know all that her father and Dr. Wern had had to say to Lucy after she went to sleep the previous evening. And although Lucy was unable to state truthfully that her father had said anything at all to her, she was able to gratify the invalid with the information that the doctor from Vienna had exacted a promise from her that she would remain with Miranda—which no doubt also meant accompanying her to Vienna!
“Well, that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?” Miranda demanded, with a brightness that refused to dim. “My father must agree with the doctor, and you and I will go off in an airliner and fly all the way to Vienna—to Austria, just think of it! Do you think we’ll be airsick?”
“I hope not,” Lucy replied, with a smile. She had never flown herself, but she was an excellent sailor, and somehow she felt certain that Miranda, despite her state of invalidism, would prove an enthusiastic traveler.