Dear Tiberius; (aka Nurse Nolan)

by Susan Barrie

  “Very well.” Lynette turned away. And then she turned back and looked at him under her amazing eyelashes. “Good night, John!”

  “Good night, Lynette, my dear!”

  When she had gone he turned again to Lucy, but once more he was the purely impersonal and very formal employer of the early days of their acquaintance.

  “Good night to you, too, Nurse Nolan. We’ll go into this matter of Miranda, and Dr. Wern’s purely tentative arrangements, tomorrow, or at the first convenient opportunity.” And then he, too, had gone along the corridor, and Lucy was left feeling as if a good deal of the warmth and comfort had departed out of her room, and it was really a very bleak and unfriendly little room that she was no longer able to take any pleasure in.

  When she carried the glass of milk to Miss Harling, the latter was already in bed, lying luxuriating in the comfort of silk sheets and fat, downy pillows piled beneath her red head. She wore a nightdress that suggested a cobweb dyed to the faint hue of a primrose stalk, and a white lace bedjacket was draped carelessly around her shoulders. She was lying examining a ring on the third finger of her left hand when Lucy entered, and she did not immediately raise her eyes from it when the latter stood beside the bed.

  Lucy laid down the bottle of aspirin tablets on the bedside table, and was careful not to spill the milk as she set that down also.

  “It might be a good idea,” she suggested, “if you’re sleeping badly, if you see your doctor when you get back to town. He would probably be able to give you something that would be more helpful than aspirin tablets. You may even have been overworking and need a tonic.”

  Lynette gazed up at her with an amused expression. “You’re trying so hard to regard me with strict impartiality, aren’t you, Nurse Nolan?” she murmured. Her eyes grew even more amused at Lucy’s faintly abashed expression, and then she held up her hand for the other to see her ring. “How do you like that?” she asked. “It’s a beauty, isn’t it?”

  Lucy gazed at the ring and felt her heart turn over. It was more than a beauty—it was superb, and must have cost a small fortune. It was one magnificent diamond, set in a claw of platinum, and beneath the softened rays of the silk-shaded electric light the colors in it were breathtaking. She could feel that Lynette was almost gloating over it.

  “It ... it’s lovely!” she exclaimed.

  “Far more than lovely,” the ballerina replied, looking at her with hard, glittering, taunting green eyes. “I would say that it is every girl’s idea of an engagement ring! But, unfortunately, not many girls are ever likely to receive such a ring, for not many men could afford to provide them with anything like it!”

  Lucy was silent, and Lynette mocked at her a little.

  “You did understand that I said—engagement ring?”

  “Yes,” Lucy heard herself replying, with no emotion of any kind in her voice. “And that means that I am to congratulate you?”

  “You can if you like, my dear—” the green eyes dancing with malicious humor “—but I don’t really expect you to do so! However, the point of this is that I think you should be aware of the position that now obtains in this house—or will very shortly obtain! We are making no announcements because I have certain commitments that make it undesirable at the present time, but I thought it only fair to let you know—just in case you have been harboring any cosy little schemes of your own! Any schemes to draw you and Miranda and Miranda’s very comfortably placed father a little closer together! And it wouldn’t be any use your trying to convince me that you have never had such a thought in mind!”

  “In that case, I won’t attempt to do so,” Lucy told her, but her tone was rather flat—as if something inside her had received a shock, and she had not yet fully recovered from it.

  “How sensible you are!” Lynette murmured. And then she smiled more amiably. “However, you’ve got a trip to Vienna ahead of you, and you’ll be seeing something more of that nice Dr. Wern, won’t you? I thought he was quite extraordinarily attractive, and, of course, that sort of man has got something no ordinary man possesses! I suppose it’s the power of life and death—it makes them curiously irresistible.”

  Lucy said nothing, and turned to leave the room. Lynette called after her, “If you don’t agree with me now. Nurse Nolan, you may do so when you have been in Vienna a few weeks! I was there only a few months ago, and although it’s changed since the war, it still has the Danube flowing through it—and its own particular brand of magic! I’ll be surprised if you don’t manage to enjoy yourself somehow!”

  Lucy said, “Good night” quietly, and turned the handle of the door.

  Lynette continued to smile at her tantalizingly, and called sweetly, “Thanks for the milk!”

  Lucy closed the door very gently after she had left the room, and she had a vision of Lynette lying examining the ring on her finger, and still smiling. It was a triumphant smile, and she had every reason to feel triumphant. For one day she would be the wife of Sir John, and the mistress of Ketterings—a mother for Miranda!

  But just then Lucy, as she returned slowly to her own quarters in the house, was unable to spare any thoughts even for Miranda. She could pity no one—not even herself!

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  After that night the days flew by, and Lucy realized that for her the period of uneventful calm she had known at Kettering was over.

  Miranda simply lived for the moment when she would be carried into an aircraft and soar into the sky, and Lucy both looked forward to and dreaded that moment for reasons that were altogether different from those that animated the breast of the small invalid.

  She felt, now, that she would be glad to say goodbye to Ketterings—but she dreaded the arrival in Vienna. Miranda had been put into a frame of mind that caused her only to look forward, but Lucy had served for four years in a big London hospital, and she had seen cases like Miranda’s before. Miranda had once been a healthy, sturdy child, but she was no longer in anything approaching that condition. As a result of his examination of her Dr. Wern had come to the conclusion that she could stand a certain amount, but not more than that amount. It was up to her father to make the final decision—and he had made it. Lucy, deep at the bottom of her heart, knew that he was right, but that did not prevent her from searching the wasted lines of Miranda’s small face that had once been jauntily heart-shaped, and trying not to recall an expression Lynette Harling’s well-meaning but not particularly tactful mother had once made use of. She had said that there was “something” in Miranda’s face...!

  In addition to trying to forget this, Lucy took herself to task because the attitude of mind she was bringing to Miranda’s case was not sufficiently detached. Not detached enough to make it easy for the patient herself, who should be unaware of any tension in the atmosphere around her. But, try as she would Lucy could not regard Miranda as purely and simply a patient—any more than she could look upon Miranda’s father as purely and simply an employer!

  They were both inextricably woven into the very threads of her life these days, and the knowledge that that was so made her at times more than uneasy.

  Ought she, she wondered sometimes, to allow this case to be taken on by someone else—someone who would give Miranda all the heartening boost to her morale that she needed, and yet be in no danger of failing her because of personal feelings that could, if she was not constantly careful, get the upper hand?

  But she had only to remember what Dr. Wern had said to her about Miranda’s counting on her to be instantly aware that whatever happened she must see this thing through. And when it was over—when it was over she would give up private nursing and go back into the hospital, she thought. She would probably devote herself to children’s nursing.

  Lynette Harling returned to London with her mother, who had completed the heliotrope sweater during her stay at Ketterings and had started another of even more violent hue and intricate pattern. With them went Francis Burke, who could have enjoyed himself very little while he was a guest b
eneath the well-preserved Elizabethan roof of Ketterings—or that was Lucy’s private opinion!

  Sir John traveled to London with his departing visitors, but he returned after only a few days’ absence, and the final arrangements for the transportation of Miranda and Lucy to Austria went ahead with suddenly accelerated speed.

  Dr. Wern had obviously made it quite clear that he wished for as little delay as possible, and although Lucy could have wished that they could have waited until the always slightly depressing days of autumn had passed, and winter, too, and spring had come around with its feeling of greater hopefulness, she recognized that Dr. Wern was probably wise. Miranda’s “bad days” were not growing any fewer, and each one exacted its toll of her little stock of remaining strength.

  So, although they left Ketterings on a day in late October when there seemed to be a flurry of snow in the cold air, and the sky was leaden and devoid of any sort of promise, Lucy told herself that it would be a good thing to be gone at last. But the faces of Fiske and Abbott, and even Eva, the little underhousemaid, pressed to the glass of the schoolroom window, and watching them as they disappeared down the driveway in the big white ambulance that was taking them to London, upset her at the last moment. She knew what each was thinking and feeling.

  Purvis stood on the steps and watched until a curve of the driveway took them out of sight.

  The problem of where Miranda was to stay for the one night she would have to spend in London before she was carried aboard the plane for Vienna had been solved by Kathleen offering her spare room. It was large enough to hold a bed for Miranda, and at the same time enable Lucy to remain near her in another single bed. Sir John had been graciously pleased to accept this offer from Kathleen, whom he had met only once in the foyer of the Colossus, because he agreed with Lucy that a hotel would be scarcely ideal for that one night, considering the circumstances. And although Mrs. Harling had offered her own room in the small mews apartment she and Lynette occupied, Sir John, for reasons of his own, had not accepted the offer.

  Kathleen was the ideal person to play hostess to Lucy and Miranda for that one night, and Miranda especially appreciated her smiling, gay-eyed welcome. She appeared to think it a perfectly natural thing that a child of twelve, who had once been extremely active, should be carried with a great deal of care to avoid any unnecessary jarring into the bright sitting room of the apartment, where the tea-things were set out on a round table close to the fire, and there were crumpets, and hot buttered tea cakes, and a multitude of little cakes to tempt the invalid. Miranda, clutching Joey tightly in her arms, beamed despite her tiredness at the sight of the flowered cups and the silver teapot, and the firelight reflected in the silver kettle.

  “We don’t have a silver teapot at home, do we, Noly?” she said to Lucy. “At least, not in the schoolroom! And even yours is only a china one.”

  “Ah, but then you don’t live in the highly civilized manner we affect here in the heart of the great capital,” Kathleen teased her. She bent to make the acquaintance of Joey, and Miranda displayed him proudly. “I hope he’s a good traveler?” she said. “He’d probably take more kindly to a sea trip than an air trip.”

  Aside, she whispered to Lucy, “I thought perhaps a quarter of an hour in here, and then we’ll get her to bed? Everything’s ready!”

  Lucy nodded. She was feeling curiously exhausted herself, and she was glad to remove her hat, because it seemed to have been pressing upon the dark waves of her hair like a constricting bandage. She was to have a final interview with Sir John in less than an hour, and the thought of it made her absurdly nervous, with a sensation like a tightly wound clock going on inside her. Kathleen, when they had got Miranda comfortably tucked in her little bed, and very soon afterward fast asleep—apparently quite undisturbed by the thought of all that, awaited her the following day—suggested that her sister just had time to snatch a hot bath, and change the clothes she was wearing, before Sir John arrived, she then explained that she and her husband were dining out that night in order to leave the apartment free for Lucy to receive her employer in a suitable manner.

  “I thought that you would be able to talk more freely, and, in any case, it would otherwise seem a crush. But you must promise to eat the cold supper I’ve left you in the refrigerator. And perhaps Sir John might be prevailed on to stay and have some with you. If you can persuade him, there’s heaps.”

  But Lucy, fumbling with the clasp of her belt and finding it extraordinarily awkward to undo, did not think for one moment that Sir John would be inclined to remain and share a cold supper with her.

  But she felt better after her bath, and the change of clothes helped her still more. The dress she donned was, however, a very severely simply affair of gray corded silk, with an ivory collar and cuffs. As she looked at herself in the mirror she thought, I never seem to get away from a suggestion of uniform with him….

  And then she remembered that he had seen her in her dark red housecoat, and in one of the Italian cotton dresses she had brought home from her last holiday; the one she had worn in the rose garden at Ketterings on the sparkling morning when she had watched him come leaping up the terrace steps after his early morning ride.

  All that seemed very long ago now, somehow, and outside, tonight, there was fog—not thick fog, but the kind that wrapped the lamp in spirals of trailing vapor, and smelled acrid in the nostrils. She could hear the wailing of sirens on the river, and traffic seemed to be proceeding slowly under the windows. She walked to one of them and partially drew back the curtains. A taxi was drawing up outside the entrance to the block of apartments, and as she watched, a man descended. He was, as far as she could make out, in evening clothes, and as he bent to get a handful of change he drew out of his pocket to settle with the taximan, his uncovered head was dark in the faint rays of light which streamed through various windows of the apartments. As walked toward the entrance across the wet street Lucy felt her heart begin to beat in a manner that made her feel breathless. She wondered at the absurd welter of emotions that was going on inside and what she could do to subdue them—for she must subdue them and appear strictly normal. All the instincts of her training must be brought to the fore, and she must concentrate on her patient; think only of her and for her. Sir John himself was feeling a little abnormal, because this was the last he would see Miranda for—well, perhaps for quite a long time, and he could not but be affected in some way. So gradually Lucy forced herself to appear calm, at least—and when the front door of the apartment shrilled suddenly she went to open it with all the inscrutable poise of her profession. Sir John stood there with a coat over his arm, but otherwise he was severely black.

  “Good evening, Nurse Nolan,” he said.

  Lucy stood back for him to enter, and he followed her into the little sitting room of the apartment, when had arranged chrysanthemums in pottery bowls and the tangy scent of them mingled with the scent of the fog finding its way through the pan window. Sir John seemed to square his shoulders and stood on the hearth rug and looked around him. Then he turned and looked at Lucy.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lucy was absurdly nervous when she found herself alone with her employer in Kathleen’s little flower-filled sitting room. Sir John looked grave—graver than she had ever seen him—and there was tension in the very atmosphere. He did not turn to her at once, but continued to stare at the fire, and when at last he did turn and survey her with a curious glance, his gray eyes had an aura of strain in them that was also new.

  “It was good of your sister to let me see you alone here,” he said. “Tomorrow night there will be a considerable number of miles between us.”

  It was so true that Lucy could say nothing. There was a constriction in her throat, and for a moment she felt frightened by the number of miles there would be between them. She and Miranda alone in Vienna—he and Miss Harling together here in London!

  “How do you feel about all this?” he asked suddenly, as if he was determined to discover how
she really felt behind that purposely unrevealing exterior she presented.

  “Well,” she admitted truthfully, “I shall be glad when we are there.”

  “You mean you will feel better when you have established contact with Dr. Wern again?

  “Probably,” she agreed.

  He walked away from her a few paces, and stood looking at a watercolor on the wall. They heard the tugs hooting on the river. “I shall be thinking about you both this time tomorrow night,” he said.

  Lucy did not answer.

  Sir John glanced at her over his shoulder.

  “Would it be wise for me to see Miranda?”

  Lucy did not hesitate.

  “She is fast asleep, and unlikely to waken if we are very quiet. Come this way,” she invited, and he followed her into Miranda’s room.

  There was a dim light burning, and it showed him his daughter’s shadowy form, lying peacefully asleep beneath the plain white quilt. Her spun-gold hair was spread out on the pillow, and there was a delicate pink color in her cheeks. She looked almost healthy as she lay there.

  Sir John stood beside the bed looking down at her with eyes that took in every detail of her appearance. He made a slight movement with his hand as if to touch her, and then withdrew it. Watching him, Lucy thought that something like a noiseless half sigh escaped him.