The Silent Valley

by Jean S. MacLeod

  Jane had never heard her friend so eloquent before, and it seemed that Della had been haranguing herself as much as her audience. Yet surely Della could not be unsure of Stuart's affection? Not now, when her cure was a certainty and the light of achievement was already burning in his eyes.

  'It's so easy to see it like that, in theory,' she said, turning away so that Della might not see her eyes. 'We're all fools in practice, though.'

  'And I could have sworn that Stuart was no fool!' Della mused, as the bedroom door closed on Jane's rigid, unbending little back.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Two days later Stuart left Oberzach for Vienna. An early Fohn was blowing and tempers were on edge in consequence. The snow had become sticky and moist and it was difficult to get about even on the sleigh. Then, overnight, the wind changed and a freezing breath came down the valley from the north. Conditions on the roads became dangerous and inexperienced skiing was out of the question.

  Housebound, Jane became restive. She knew that she must leave Oberzach before Stuart returned, but the difficult part would be saying good-bye to Della and the Freys.

  Della made it very difficult indeed.

  'You're deserting your post!' she accused. 'And that while the commanding officer is away, too! I would not have credited you with such baseness. Does Stuart know about this?'

  'Yes, he knows,' Jane answered quite truthfully. Stuart had not put any obstacle in the way of her going except to ask if they could depend upon her while Tom remained there. As if Tom's being at Oberzach really mattered!

  'I know Doktor Frey was going to offer you a job here at the clinic,' Della went on, and Jane was left wondering if Stuart had put his foot down on the suggestion as soon as it had been made.

  'If you really mean to go,' Della said at last, convinced that argument was no longer of any avail, 'at least go and see Dad when you get back to Norchester. He'll expect you to report, and I'm determined to keep in touch, Jane.'

  'You've definitely made up your mind about going home?' Tom asked when he heard the news. 'Could it mean that you've changed it, too, about marrying me?'

  'It couldn't, Tom. I'm not thinking about marrying anyone.'

  The disappointment on his face would have been comical if it had not suddenly been sincere.

  'I can't think why,' he said. 'At one time I imagined you were hankering after Hemmingway, but now you're not even waiting till he gets back from Vienna. Women never cease to amaze me!' He lit a cigarette. 'How many times do you think I shall have to ask you before you say "yes"?'

  'I think—I'd stop trying now, if I were you,' Jane said gently. 'I'm sorry, Tom, but it just doesn't seem any use.'

  Two days before they were due to leave the valley Tom made a final ski trip to the head of the plateau with the two guides who had come to their rescue that day when Stuart had found them in the hut above the glacier.

  Jane spent the afternoon with Della, strolling as far as the wood on the way to the caves, but they turned back before they reached the ice and she was thankful beyond measure for something which felt like a reprieve.

  The parting with Della was to be brief. They both wanted it that way.

  'No regrets!' Della said. 'Because we're sure to meet again.'

  Jane made her way back to Oberzach with a heavy heart. Doktor Frey was genuinely grieved at their parting and had made every effort to keep her. He could not understand why she insisted on going when she had made so many friends in Switzerland, he said wistfully, but he did understand that the ties of home were binding, too. Jane had no home ties, none in the way the kindly little professor meant, but she did not tell him so.

  They were sitting together on the glassed-in terrace at the front of the house when the ambulance drew up at the foot of the steps and a white-faced maid came to call the doctor.

  'It's the English gentleman!' she cried. 'He has been hurt.'

  They carried Tom in on a stretcher, still in his torn windcheater and blood-spattered vorlages, his face white and distorted with pain, though he tried to smile in Jane's direction as he passed.

  Calmly, Doktor Frey took charge. He was with Tom for more than an hour and then Jane could wait no longer. She crept up to the bedroom where the two ambulance men still remained and knocked on the door.

  Albert Frey came out, closing the door firmly behind him.

  'Can I help?' Jane asked. 'Can I do anything?'

  He shook his head.

  'We've given him something to let him sleep for an hour or two,' he said heavily. 'It is the best we can do.'

  She stared at him, uncomprehending, not daring to think. The professor passed a hand across his eyes in a gesture of weariness.

  'This is terrible,' he said. 'He is so young.'

  Jane moistened lips suddenly gone dry, but words refused to come.

  'I must send for other advice,' the doctor said, moving towards the stairs. 'We must have a second opinion before I can ask his people to accept my verdict.'

  'You mean that ‑'

  She could not face up to the fear in her heart. There were no words in which to express it. Albert Frey gazed at her steadily.

  'If he lives,' he said quietly, knowing that she expected the truth, 'the chances are that he will not walk again.'

  'No! Oh, no!' The cry fell from Jane's lips and she dug her nails into the soft flesh of her palms in a frantic effort at control. 'This other opinion you speak about, Doktor Frey? It is the best that can be had?'

  'Undoubtedly, the very best.'

  She had no need to ask. The Swiss were like that, generous and sure in their giving. All that was necessary now was to wait.

  During the long watches of the night she sat by Tom's bedside, a fine perspiration beading her upper lip each time his breathing seemed to die in the silence of the quiet room, but by the morning he was still alive. His long, spare body lay rigidly under the bedclothes, one arm flung outwards as if in mute protest at this sudden blow which fate had dealt, and Jane could not look at its latent strength without her lips trembling. To remain crippled for the rest of one's life! All the small weaknesses of his character were suddenly submerged in pity, and even when Hilde came to relieve her in the early hours of the morning she could not sleep while his future hung so precariously in the balance.

  The specialist reached Oberzach by mid-day. Doktor Frey took him up to Tom's room and they remained there for over an hour, and when they came down again they found Jane still standing where they had left her in the lounge.

  There's no hope, she thought, searching their shadowed faces.

  'It is necessary to be very brave, Jane,' Albert Frey told her kindly. 'I know that Doctor Sark was your friend and it is true to say that he was very fond of you.'

  'Will he die?' Jane broke in. 'Oh, Doktor Frey, is that what you are trying to tell me?'

  His grey head bowed, Albert Frey moved towards her.

  'There is nothing that we can do,' he said.

  'How long?' she asked, after a pause.

  'Three or four weeks, at most.'

  'Does he—want to go home?' she asked in a stunned whisper, wondering even as she uttered the words why she should ask. 'Would it—hasten things if we moved him?'

  The elderly specialist shook his head.

  'It will make little difference. Stretcher cases are often taken back to England from our mountains, but, happily, not as this one. The sprained ankle or displaced thigh, perhaps. Often not so serious as they are painful.'

  Jane nodded dumbly, wondering if they had told Tom.

  'Does he know?' she asked.

  'It would not do to tell him just now,' Albert Frey said. 'I shall send with you a full report to his own doctor in England.' He brushed away a tear, of which he was not at all ashamed. 'It is indeed tragic not to be able to help one so young and full of the joy of living.'

  Jane turned abruptly to the window. Her heart seemed to be bursting and a tight band pressed heavily across her brows. The headache had been there all morning, pe
nt-up grief treading on the heels of disaster, and in spite of Hilde's kindness and her brother's ready sympathy she felt very much alone, responsible, almost, for what was to become of the man lying in the bedroom upstairs.

  'He' is asking for you,' Albert Frey said. 'You will go to him soon?'

  'Yes—right away.'

  Jane went slowly up the stairs. In all her experience of nursing she had known nothing like this, the uncertainty of it, the sudden, devastating tragedy, and before she opened the bedroom door she had to dash betraying tears from her eyes. It felt like the calmness of despair that took her across the room to Tom side with the shadow of a smile on her lips.

  'Hullo, Jane!' he greeted her in the ghost of his old voice. 'I asked them to send you in when they'd made me presentable.' He indicated the chair beside the bed and she sank down into it thankfully. 'You see, I didn't want you to go off to England without me!'

  'I wouldn't do that, Tom,' she whispered. 'We hadn't planned to go till tomorrow.'

  'How long is it going to be till I'm able to get up?' he asked.

  'I haven't asked Doktor Frey yet.' She had managed to keep her eyes unwaveringly on his. 'You may have to travel back as you are. It will be a—longish job, Tom.'

  'I had an idea it would.' He stared up at the ceiling, his mouth twisting a little. 'You'll stand by, Jane?' he asked. 'You won't let me down in this?'

  'No,' she said quietly. 'I won't let you down.'

  There was a long silence. He lay studying her face, noting its pallor and the dark shadows beneath her eyes.

  'I thought we might be going back engaged to be married,' he said slowly, the wisp of a smile straying at the corners of his mouth. 'Foolish of me, I suppose, but there you are! Love knows no laws or laughs at locksmiths or something! You wouldn't consider it, Jane—not now that this has happened?' he begged on a more serious note.

  Deep down in his voice Jane recognised the half forlorn •tone of the schoolboy, the uncertainty which she had glimpsed in Tom once or twice before in spite of the thick shell of arrogance with which he had learned to protect himself.

  'If you wish it,' she said. 'If it will make you feel happier —more secure.'

  She could not say why she had added these last two words, but the swift look of gratitude which followed the initial surprise in his eyes was answer enough. Tom was no more sure of his way in life than any of them, with the possible exception of Stuart!

  The thought of Stuart stabbed deep, but she thrust it from her. He did not come into this. They would have left Oberzach before he returned from Vienna.

  Tom moved restlessly on the bed.

  'Get me back to England, Jane,' he said. 'There's something I have to do.'

  CHAPTER TEN

  It's ghastly!' Della cried. 'Ghastly! I've been so full of self-pity, too.' Her large amber eyes searched Jane's face. 'Jane, does he know?'

  'Good gracious, no!' Jane turned round from the window where she had been staring out at the snow. 'There would be no point in telling him—no point whatever.'

  'And this engagement of yours?' Della looked as perplexed as she had been feeling ever since she had heard of Tom Sark's accident and the fact that Jane had promised to marry him. 'I thought ‑'

  Jane came across the room to stand by her side. 'Never mind what you thought, Della,' she said gently. 'Be a dear and make it all sound thoroughly natural when you go up to see him. Tom has been asking me to marry him for months.'

  'But what about Stuart?' Della asked, still in that bewildered tone. 'What is he going to say?'

  'I can't see that it matters, since we'll probably be in England before Stuart gets back here.' Jane ran her fingers wearily through the soft waves of her hair. 'The specialist and Doktor Frey both think Tom can be moved, so I don't think Stuart would object.'

  Della was still looking at her in a puzzled way when Albert Frey came in to take her up to Tom's room. I just don't understand Jane, she thought. She's changed so much in so short a time.

  Della in an active mood was far more dynamic than even Jane imagined, however. When she had seen Tom and heard that he had fallen in with the idea of a swift return to England she permitted Doktor Frey to drive her back to the clinic in spite of the falling snow.

  'Can't you do anything to stop them?' she demanded as soon as they had left Oberzach behind. 'Jane can't be allowed to leave before Stuart gets here.'

  Events were moving much too rapidly for the mild little professor who liked his life to run to a set pattern, and he rubbed his hand in a perplexed way up and down his chin.

  'Sometimes I am greatly confused by the English temperament,' he confessed. 'It is said that you are a cold race, not given to passion or hasty decisions, but I am not at all convinced of that. First, you do not trust me—or Stuart— sufficiently to come to the clinic and then you change your mind—so!' He snapped his fingers. 'Then we have Jane, who seemed so much in love with Stuart, becoming engaged to this poor boy who has been so dreadfully injured. Is it out of sympathy, I ask myself, that she will do such a thing? because, if it is so, it is a great mistake. There may yet be a miracle of healing and he will hold her to her promise. I have seen such miracles happen quite often in my profession,' he added mildly.

  'Stuart will have to know,' she said. 'At least he'll have to be told that they are leaving here.'

  While the little professor inspected a group of cultures he had been anxious to check up on in the laboratory she put through a call to Vienna. Stuart was not in his hotel, but the concierge would take a message to be delivered to him immediately he returned. Della's voice was calm and crystal-clear as she dictated it over the line.

  'Just say, "Come back at once. Most urgent." And you can sign it "Della".'

  When she put down the instrument she sat staring at it for several seconds without moving, but when Doktor Frey came back into the lounge she had made up a table for bridge with three of his oldest patients. As he passed she made an odd little face at him, which he answered with his kindest smile.

  Stuart reached Oberzach the following morning. Jane saw him get out of the hired car and could not believe the evidence of her own eyes, yet her first emotion was one of overwhelming relief.

  'What's gone wrong?' he asked. 'I've had a message from Della, but all it said was "Come back at once".'

  So, it was anxiety over Della that had brought him, Jane thought, even as she recognised the unreasonable nature of the jealous heart-cry.

  'It's Tom,' she explained. 'There's been an accident—a serious accident, but Della shouldn't have sent for you.'

  Her throat felt parched and she knew that she must look like death. Stuart took her by the arm and led her gently to one of the cane chairs on the covered verandah.

  'Tell me about it as calmly as you can,' he commanded. 'When did it happen? Couldn't you have sent for me immediately, Jane?'

  'Doktor Frey was here, and we've had a specialist since— from Zurich, I think.'

  His expression sharpened.

  'What exactly is the trouble?'

  'It's—his spine.' She buried her face in her hands, all the accumulated misery of the past two days crowding in to sap her courage. 'It's so unfair! He was so young—so vital ‑'

  Gently he drew her hands away from her face, looking deep into her tear-filled eyes.

  'How serious is this, Jane?' he demanded. 'What was the specialist's verdict? Do you know?'

  'There—just isn't any hope. There's absolutely nothing they can do.'

  'But, good God,' he protested, 'there surely must be something! They can't just abandon the case!'

  'I think,' she said slowly, stiffly, 'Doktor Frey knew from the beginning. When they first brought him down from the mountains he said that—if Tom lived he would never walk again.'

  Numbly she was repeating Albert Frey's words, as if by the very repetition of them she could make something of them, at last.

  Stuart straightened, his mouth grim his eyes the colour of slate.

  'I see,' he
said. 'It appears to be beyond their skill out here.'

  And therefore beyond human skill, Jane thought. The Swiss were among the greatest surgeons in the world and Tom had been given the benefit of Zurich's greatest name. If anything could be done, it would have been done here, on the spot.

  She felt that Stuart knew that, too. He stood at the edge of the verandah staring unseeingly out at the freshly fallen snow, and then he wheeled round to confront her with the question she was expecting.

  'Has he made any decision about going home? It was your intention, I believe.'

  'Yes,' Jane said. 'We were going together.' She steeled herself for what she had to say. 'We're engaged, Stuart ‑'

  He stared at her as if he thought he might not have heard correctly.

  'Good God!' he said, but that was all.

  Albert Frey came in, greeting his arrival with obvious relief, and they went off together to see Tom.

  Jane remained where she was, cold now that the sun had deserted the verandah, but hardly feeling it. She seemed too deeply plunged in unhappiness to move, and when Stuart came back downstairs he rang the bell and ordered some coffee.

  'Strong and black, Erna,' he said when the maid answered his summons. 'When did you last eat?' he added, turning to Jane.

  'Hilde brought me up a tray, but I couldn't eat anything,' Jane answered. The thought of food was revolting. 'I can't now, Stuart. Please just let me drink the coffee.'

  'If you don't eat something we'll have you collapsing on our hands next,' he told her almost brusquely. 'Some sandwiches, Erna, and plenty of coffee, there's a good girl!'

  He sat watching while Jane ate, forcing the food down between gulps of steaming beverage, and when she had finished he said decisively:

  'I'm coming back to England with you. It would be impossible for you to make such a journey on your own.'

  'But—Della?' she protested weakly.

  'Della will be quite safe here,' he said briefly. 'She'll be full of her own importance, having done the only sane thing in the past forty-eight hours.'