The Silent Valley

by Jean S. MacLeod

  Immersed in his work, Stuart appeared to be avoiding Oberzach. She did not see him again until Doktor Frey told her she could visit Della.

  Four days had passed since the abortive climb and their patient did not appear to be suffering from any ill effects, apart from the first desperate fatigue.

  Tom drove her up to the plateau. Thoroughly self-possessed, he borrowed the Freys' sleigh whenever he wished to get about without propelling himself on his own two feet, and they drove through the crystalline afternoon air to the accompaniment of jangling harness and tinkling sleigh bells.

  In the silence as they ran in the shadow of the pines, he said unexpectedly:

  'What will you do when all this peters out, Jane?'

  'I don't know.' She held her breath. 'It's—so different here—so free, and there's not so very much to go back to.'

  'Back to Norchester, you mean?' There was a pause, awkward with unsaid things, although Jane had honestly tried to put the memory of the past behind her. 'I'm sorry about that unpleasant piece of misunderstanding in the operating theatre, Jane,' he said at last. 'If it would have helped, I would have spoken, up sooner, but Hemmingway's; evidence at the inquest settled the issue. The blood transfusion wouldn't have made any difference, anyway.'

  'All the same,' he mused, as if to dismiss any need for argument, 'you've not done too badly out of it, have you?' He glanced about him appreciatively. 'It must be costing old man Cortonwell a packet to keep you and Della out here.'

  Jane flushed.

  'I've been thinking about that,' she confessed. 'If Della is to remain at the clinic, I must go home.'

  'And no one will decide that but Hemmingway, I suppose? He appears to be the master-mind hereabouts!'

  'He's certainly the doctor in charge,' Jane said frigidly.

  At the clinic Doktor Frey was waiting for them, his face wreathed in smiles. He led Tom away to the laboratories while Jane was escorted to Della's room by a trim maid in a grey dress.

  'Hullo!' said Della, rising from the chaise-longue on her private balcony. 'I wondered when Stuart was going to let me see you!'

  So it had been Stuart's edict and not Doktor Frey's! Jane wondered if he really thought her companionship necessary to Della now that he was so contemptuous of her inefficiency.

  Della did not look much different, except perhaps that she was a little paler and a trifle more constrained.

  'This place isn't so bad,' she confessed when they were seated close to the balcony rail overlooking the long vista of snow-clad valley and towering, sun-kissed peaks. 'It isn't run on hospital lines at all. One is allowed to remain a human being. Apart from Stuart, everyone is being most kind and terribly considerate.'

  Apart from Stuart! Della smiled at the question in Jane's eyes.

  'He's furious, of course! You don't really expect him to be lenient after an episode like last week's, do you?' she asked. 'His anger was the most perfectly leashed thing I've ever seen, but it was none the less effective for that! I duly crumbled before it, but it didn't seem to give him as much satisfaction as I thought it might.'

  'Possibly because his anger wasn't mainly with you,' Jane said. 'I was far more responsible for allowing you to go off like that.'

  'My dear Jane!' Della laughed. 'You don't honestly believe that, do you? You couldn't have stopped me, you know, once I had made up my mind. We both know that, and so does Stuart.'

  Jane was not so easily convinced, however.

  'I had a job to do,' she said, 'and I slipped up on it,' She drew a long deep breath. 'That's the way Stuart will look at it.'

  'You know him almost as well as I do!' Della declared. 'He knew I wouldn't be able to get much farther than here, even on my stubborn determination, by the way, and now he looks on it as a good move, I suppose. It's proving his contention that sanatoria aren't the fearsome things one is inclined to imagine!' She studied Jane carefully for a moment. 'He's terribly conscientious about his work. It means such a lot to him, and I know my case in particular is important, but nothing—no personal reason—will ever make Stuart deviate from a preconceived plan.'

  'Has Stuart arranged for you to stay up here, Della?' Jane asked.

  'For the present.' Della glanced round as her bedroom door opened. 'He issues orders, but he never really tells me what he thinks,' she added affectionately as Stuart strode across the room and came out to stand beside her.

  She raised her hand to him and he clasped it for a moment before his fingers fastened over her pulse.

  I've got to go, Jane thought desperately. Neither of them has any real need of me now.

  When their tea was brought in Stuart shared it with them. Della was very gay. She appeared to have entirely forgotten the ski run and Stuart's righteous anger and was ready and willing to co-operate with him again in every way. Only once, when she asked about the Kirchhofer brothers did the old Della show through, the old irritation with her poor, frail body which refused to answer the dictates of her restless heart.

  'I suppose they've gone on to St. Moritz,' she said. 'Martin is confident about the jump this year. He's on top of his form.' Her voice shook a little. 'Hans, of course, will win the slalom. There's no one to beat him!'

  Stuart's lips were tightly compressed as he listened and he did not answer Della's statement. It was as if he had no immediate assurance to offer her.

  Della drained her cup, saying quite naturally:

  'This is my rest period. Why not take Jane up to the caves, Stuart? She hasn't seen them yet.'

  'Why not?' Stuart agreed, getting to his feet. 'Doctor Sark is still busy in the laboratory.'

  'Oh!' Della said, glancing at Jane. 'Is Tom Sark here? I thought Stuart went down for you. He said he would.'

  Tom had usurped that privilege, but it did not seem to matter very much, Jane thought. Neither did the proposed visit to the caves, although it would give her an opportunity of telling Stuart that she must go home.

  He led the way downstairs, through the long, glass-protected verandah where Doktor Frey's patients greeted him as an old friend, eyeing Jane speculatively.

  'How far is it to the caves?' she asked. 'Do you think we ought to go?'

  He paused to light his pipe in the shelter of the glass screen.

  'That's entirely up to you,' he told her enigmatically. 'Della believes that you should see all the local beauty spots while you remain here.'

  The last few words pierced her like a barbed shaft. In spite of the fact that she had already made up her own mind to go, she had not' expected him to accept her decision as a foregone conclusion.

  'Della can be the most thoughtful person I know at times,' she said defensively, 'but she is apt to forget that you are a busy doctor. Leisure was never your strong point, Stuart.'

  'Yet all work and no play has been known to make Jack a dull boy!' he returned easily. 'Even doctors have to stretch their legs on occasion, and this one can take an order now and then.'

  An order from Della! There was something different about him this afternoon, Jane thought, a strange, almost boyish elation which took years from his age and made him the ideal companion for an afternoon's outing. She would let him take her on this walk to the caves, accepting his companionship as it came, the last intimate moment, perhaps, before they parted for good.

  She knew now that she would not—could not—return to Norchester. It was too full of memories for her, too much a part of the past she was resolved to forget.

  'Why the sudden preoccupation?'

  'I was wondering what happens to a career that gets hacked about like mine,' she answered frankly. 'Does it always end up with the odd private nursing job, backed by the helpful specialist?'

  'Either that or you get married,' he said briefly. 'I thought the alternative was fairly obvious.'

  'Not always,' she flashed, hurt by his apparent indifference. 'Marriage isn't the answer to every disappointment in life.'

  They had left the clinic behind and were on the pathway to the glacier, and in
the shadow of the giant pines he looked down at her with a baffled expression in his eyes.

  'I thought it was the culminating point of all happiness, though,' he said. 'Do you remember you once told me something like that? You said that your career could so easily be submerged in the little things of loving, of the everyday job of simply being a wife.'

  'That applied in those days,' she said huskily. 'I'm older now.'

  'And wiser?'

  'It's difficult to say. Perhaps one's values do change with the passing years.'

  'And sacrifices become easier, do you mean?'

  She knew that he had considered her unwilling to sacrifice her life in England and her career for a student doctor's life abroad four years ago, but his continuing bitterness was difficult to bear.

  'Sacrifices aren't a question of time or readiness,' she said unevenly. 'They are demanded of you at any time and you meet them according to your own conscience.'

  'But surely there must be some yard-stick of values?' he suggested doggedly. 'Or does it all come back to love again? Either your love is great enough to sustain a particular sacrifice or it is not?'

  'What does it matter?' she said. 'Some people are born to sacrifice—others aren't. Talking about it won't do any good.'

  'I thought it might,' he said. 'I was foolish enough to think that it might elucidate many things, but don't let me distress you, Jane. The impulses of the past are entirely your own affair.'

  They reached the caves, low, blue-white caverns hewn out of the solid ice by the passing years, and he stood aside for her to go on before him.

  The breathless quality of such an adventure should have entranced Jane, but their conversation on the way through the wood had obliterated all happier thought. Stalactites and stalagmites danced before her eyes in crazy, tortuous patterns, suggestive of pain and the vicissitudes of birth.

  Blindly she turned to make her way out into the daylight and as blindly stumbled, twisting her foot on the rough slate of the cave floor.

  An involuntary cry escaped her, and instantly she was caught up in Stuart's arms, feeling the wild beating of his heart against her own, the pressure of his mouth as it came down almost savagely against hers. The domed roof above them was obliterated by his dark head and nothing mattered but his nearness as she responded passionately to his kisses, knowing that there would never be another love like this in all her life.

  It was Stuart who finally held her away from him.

  'So the past isn't entirely a forgotten phase!' he said harshly. 'For all your wild reasoning, Jane, it still matters to you!'

  His eyes glittered in the weird blue light and she felt the cold from the glacier for the first time, possessing her,' sinking into her heart. Could he have missed her like that deliberately, punishing her, arousing love to throw it back in her face?

  Shame submerged her as she remembered her own passionate response, her utter abandonment to his kisses, and she ran from him in blind fury, stumbling down the steep incline from the caves among boulders and rough shale along a rutted, half-defined path which led back to the snowfield.

  She ran on, reaching the path which led among the trees, and here .the ankle she .had wrenched gave way completely and she sank ignominiously deep in the soft snow, waiting helplessly for Stuart to reach her.

  He helped her to her feet, supporting her with a strong arm about her waist and she felt the trembling of her body like a betrayal. His very touch had the power to unnerve her. She had shown him how much she cared and he was merely amused.

  'Don't speak to me I' she sobbed unreasonably. 'Don't touch me! I know that I hate you now.'

  He continued to hold her, patiently almost.

  'Tell me that in a saner moment, Jane,' he said as he bent to unclasp her snow-boot.

  Calmly, professionally, he set about the task of strapping up her ankle, using his handkerchief torn into strips. She hated him for his cold control of the situation, for she subdued sort of kindness which had replaced his former ruthlessness, and then all her emotions collapsed into the helplessness of despair. How could he have grown like this? By what biter reasoning did he justify his treatment of her now for the errors of the past?

  He led her, limping a little, back to the clinic and produced a more professional bandage for the injured foot.

  'I could have done without this,' she said unevenly when Della met them in the lounge. 'It looks as if I'm going to be indoors for a day or two.'

  It was then that she remembered her decision to tell Stuart that she must leave Switzerland. She was doubly certain now. There was nothing between them but the bitterest enmity.

  Going back in the sleigh with Doktor Frey driving and Tom sitting under the bearskin rug by her side, she tried to perfect her plans.

  'I'm going home, Tom,' she said.

  He smiled at her one-sidedly.

  'Why, may I ask ?'

  'For one reason—Della is staying on at the clinic and will have no need for special nursing. At one time I imagined that she needed my companionship, too, but perhaps I was wrong.'

  'Why do you worry about anyone like Della?' he asked dispassionately. 'She has everything she wants, and soon she will have her health back. I saw her latest X-ray plates this afternoon and they were highly satisfactory. Hemmingway showed them to me when I first went in. He was like a man who has just received a reprieve from a death sentence,' he added carefully. 'Della will marry him in a year's time and all will be right with their world. They'll go back to Norchester and be the celebrated Mr. and Mrs. Hemmingway. "He's the great lung man, you know—right at the top of his profession" !' he mocked.

  Stuart came to Oberzach that evening, following them down from the plateau on foot, and it seemed that his coming forced the issue of Jane's departure. He was like an elated schoolboy over the prospect of Della's recovery.

  'This Loti treatment has proved a hundred per cent, beneficial in cases like Della's,' he explained when the doctor excused himself after dinner to write some letters. 'It's quick, too. No tedious time-lag waiting for final results.'

  'Which means that Della has agreed to stay at the clinic until she can go home with absolute safety?' Jane asked.

  'It will be essential,' he said. 'All the necessary apparatus is there, and Loti himself has promised to come up here as soon as he is free.'

  'I'm so glad!' Jane cried. 'So glad for Della. She could never have accepted half measures.'

  He glanced at her keenly.

  'You're pretty sure about that,' he said, 'yet you don't exactly apply it in your own case.'

  'I—don't come into this,' she said harshly. 'It's Della that counts. You're so certain of this cure and she had accepted the clinic. It isn't at all what she expected.' She clasped her hands tightly, striving for the confidence and courage she knew she would need. 'She'll be a model patient from now on. I feel sure of it!'

  'And so,' he added for her, 'you wish to go home?'

  Her eyes met his in a quick look of surprise.

  'Don't ask me how I know,' he mocked. 'The indications are unmistakable.'

  'I can't stay on, Stuart,' she said stonily. 'My work here is finished.'

  'Don't you think I might be the competent judge of that?' he queried, rising to light a spill for his pipe from the crackling pine logs.

  'I was Della's choice,' she reminded him. 'You could never have wanted me to come out here, Stuart.'

  'All the same,' he said, 'you came partly on my recommendation. And now you want me to send you home. Can you tell me why?'

  His eyes remained steady on hers, probing, demanding an unequivocal answer.

  'Because Della does not need me any more,' Jane said. 'She is entirely relaxed and happy at the clinic under Doktor Frey.'

  'Is that your only reason?' he persisted, standing squarely in front of her and taking the pipe from between his strong teeth. 'Della's welfare? Della's happiness? What about your own happiness, Jane?'

  She gripped the arm of her chair, praying that her vo
ice would not quiver and betray her as she answered :

  'I feel that I shall be happier back in England.'

  He bent to knock out the contents of his pipe against the stone hearth, as if it had no longer the power to soothe him.

  'I see.' He straightened, squaring his shoulders. 'I take it that we can still depend upon you to a certain extent while Doctor Sark remains at Oberzach?'

  'Yes,' Jane said dispiritedly. 'I shall probably travel back with Tom.'

  It was Jane who finally told Della of her decision to leave. She preferred it that way and Stuart had not interfered.

  'Going home?' Della echoed in blank dismay. 'But why, Jane? Why?'

  'For the simple reason that I can't expect your father to go on paying a salary to someone who is no longer necessary in your scheme of things.'

  'What rot!' Della objected emphatically. 'Anyway, that's not a very complimentary way to put it, is it? I need you now, as much as ever, Jane, if it's only to bolster up my morale.'

  'You'll have Stuart,' Jane pointed out, 'and Doktor Frey.'

  'Stuart can't stay here holding my hand for ever,' Della said. 'He's got work to do. He goes off next week, I believe, for a session in Vienna—a fortnight's conference, or something. You'll be letting me down, Jane, if you desert me now.'

  Jane smiled.

  'It's nice of you to put it like this, Della,' she said. 'But I really have made up my mind to go.'

  'Because you're in love with Tom Sark?' Della demanded incredulously.

  'No; that's not the reason.'

  'You're not even thinking of marrying the man?'

  Jane hesitated. Had she been thinking of marrying Tom, accepting what Stuart had once called 'second best'?

  'I don't know. He has asked me to marry him ‑'

  'You'd be a fool even to think about it,' Della interrupted impatiently. 'Oh! whatever is the matter with everybody these days?' she cried. 'Nobody seeing straight, everybody going about biting each other's heads off—nobody really happy at all! Why can't we go and tell the person we love, fair and square, that life won't be worth a tinker's curse without them instead of bottling it all up inside and calling our stupidity by the name of pride!'