“It was then that I telephoned you. I thought it would be unfair for Geraldine to come back here, to learn the true state of affairs either from general rumor or from me.”
“Well, I suppose you’re right. Even though”—he made a slight face—I can't say l relish the task of telling her.”
“But, sir, you don’t have to. You see—”
“Oh, yes, of course. You said the situation had become even more complicated. Go on.”
“I went to see Jeremy”—for a moment her voice sank almost to a whisper, as she recalled the hopes and then the frightful shock of that interview—“and I took the parcel with me. He told me to open it.” She hesitated so long that Maxwell Perring said, almost impatiently,
“Well, was the ring in it?”
“Yes, sir. The ring was in a case, and on the case were the words, ‘To Geraldine, with love from Jeremy.’ ”
She had not been sure she world be able to bring out the words steadily, but there was no tremor in her voice as she uttered them. She even looked quite calm. It was Maxwell Perring who looked appalled. And that was on behalf of the patient rather than Alma, in that first moment.
“Good God!” he exclaimed. “How unfortunate that you opened the thing in front of him. How did he take the shock?”
“He didn’t have to,” Alma explained almost unemotionally. “I managed to conceal the case and give him only the ring. He put that on my finger, with every sign of satisfaction, and now he thinks I’m engaged to him—with Geraldine’s ring.”
“But”—he glanced at her hand—“you’re not wearing it.”
“No, of course not!” She spoke almost violently. “It isn’t mine. I can’t bear the sight of it.”
“I see.” Maxwell Perring got up from his chair and began to pace slowly up and down, while Alma watched him. She had, of course, every confidence in him as a surgeon. But whether or not he could solve this personal tangle was a very different matter. Presently he came to a stop in front of her.
“As a doctor,” he said slowly, looking down gravely at her, “I’m naturally more concerned with the well-being of my patient than with anything else—”
“I am too, sir!”
“And, at present, the most important thing is still that he should be shielded from any shock or the necessity of any great mental effort. Once he recovers his memory—”
“But I can’t wait for that, Mr. Perring,” Alma broke in passionately. “I can’t go on living a lie like this! The ring was bought for Geraldine. It belongs to her. I can’t go on wearing it. You do see that, don’t you?”
Whether he saw it or not was never settled. For at that moment the door was thrust open, and into the room came a pale and agitated Geraldine.
“What’s this ridiculous story?” she demanded of Alma, without so much as a glance at her cousin, “this talk of an engagement? Sister Evans says Jeremy gave you a ring—that you’re engaged. It isn’t to be borne! How dare you? You stole a march—”
“That will do,” said Maxwell Perring’s voice coldly. “Sit down, Geraldine, and I’ll explain.”
“You can’t explain. It’s nothing to do with you. I tell you—”
“Sit down,” repeated her cousin quietly. And Geraldine sat down.
“Now—if Sister Miles will allow me to do the explaining—?”
“Oh, please.” With a slight gesture Alma indicated her own inability to enter into further explanations and her thankfulness at having the matter taken out of her control.
Then she leaned forward, with her face in her hands, while Maxwell Perring explained, with astonishing economy of words and accuracy of detail, what had just been made clear to him.
Geraldine remained almost wordless throughout. Only, when he came to the inscription on the jewel-case, she uttered a deeply satisfied, “Ah! So I was right. Where is the ring?”
“I have it in my room.” Alma raised her head and looked across the room at the other girl with shadowed eyes.
“You must give it to me!”
“Just a moment. It has been given to Sister Miles!” Maxwell Perring pointed out.
“But it belongs to me!”
“Not until it has been given to you by Truscott.”
“But he intended it for me.”
“He has apparently changed his mind.”
“Only because he’s ill and confused.”
“Very possibly. But until he is well and in full possession of the facts again, his property can’t be disposed of on his behalf by someone else.”
“Max, don’t be ridiculous! This isn’t an academic argument. The ring is mine.”
“The ring, my dear, is Truscott’s. He has chosen to give it to Sister Miles, who intends, I imagine, to return it to him as soon as he is well enough to deal with the implication of such an action.”
“And what do I do, meanwhile?” Geraldine flushed and then paled with the intensity of her anger.
“Exactly the same as Sister Miles,” was the dry retort. “Control your feelings as best you can and wait.”
"Wait?” That’s easy enough to say! You don’t understand. You never would understand, because you’re cold and utterly unfeeling. You’ve never been in love yourself—Charity says not—and you’ve no right to tell other people what to do in such a situation. I couldn’t keep my real feelings from Jeremy, now that I know for certain that he loves me and wants to marry me.”
“You don’t know that for certain,” her cousin pointed out, ignoring the strictures on his own capacity for being in love. “All you know is that there was a time when he loved you and wanted to marry you. That phase has passed—temporarily, it may well be. But until it returns, with returning memory, I’m afraid, my dear, you’re going to have to do exactly what I tell you.”
“What you tell me?”
“Yes, certainly. I am the surgeon in charge,” he replied, with a touch of cold authority which obviously impressed, while it maddened, Geraldine.
She no longer queried his right to give the orders. She merely shot an angry glance in Alma’s direction and demanded furiously,
“And what are you telling her to do?”
“As I’ve said before—much the same as I’m telling you. Only, in Alma’s case”—it was the first time he had spoken of her in this way, and possibly he did it now in order to soften what he was about to say—“I shall also have to suggest that she does not see Truscott again until the situation is clearer.”
“And do you think she’ll obey you?” asked Geraldine scornfully.
“I have no doubt of it,” he replied drily.
“Thank you, sir.” Alma found her voice at last, though it sounded a little husky. “I’ll do whatever you think best, of course. But Jeremy will want some explanation if I don’t appear, you know. He—he expects me to go and see him some time tomorrow, in order to discuss—things.”
“What things?” Geraldine interjected contemptuously.
“He thinks”—Alma reminded her with an effort—“that we are engaged. Until he is disabused of the notion, he naturally supposes we—we have a good deal to—say to each other.”
“That’s why I think you’d better not see each other,” cut in Maxwell Perring, before Geraldine could give her opinion of that aspect. “To allow this thing to develop on what I can only call the wrong lines would simply be to build up an even bigger shock for him when he does finally discover the truth. We’ll have to report you to him as sick. It needn’t”—he smiled faintly—“be anything very serious. You can have ’flu or something of the sort. Something which makes it inadvisable for you to go near him for the time being. That can be arranged with whoever is in charge, I suppose.”
“Very well, sir.” So anxious was Alma to rule out even the faintest suggestion of wistfulness that her tone sounded almost cold.
“And how about me?” Geraldine’s eyes gleamed with eagerness. “May I see him?”
“Your times and places of duty are nothing to do with me,” Maxwell Perrin
g said rather disagreeably. “Are you on duty on his floor?”
“Oh, yes. I can see him quite naturally.”
“Well, there’s nothing against that, provided you take back completely your assertion that you couldn’t keep your feelings to yourself,” her cousin told her a little unkindly. “There’s no harm in his seeing you. In fact, it should help in restoring the lost sections of the past, I suppose. But no explanations must be forced on him, you understand. He must take the initiative and he must set the pace.”
“Yes, yes. I do understand that. I can wait quite patiently so long as I can see him sometimes,” Geraldine insisted.
And, to the very bottom of her soul, Alma thought how bitterly true that was. She too could have waited—oh, so patiently—for an indefinite time, if only she could have seen Jeremy sometimes, and had some basis for hope.
But all that was over now. Mr. Perring, it seemed to her, was now neatly tying up the ends of the situation in much the same way he neatly stitched up a case after an operation. In an odd way, this whole ghastly interview had been rather like an operation. A wrong and painful situation had more or less been set right. Only, without much anaesthetic, she thought wryly.
“Well, that seems to settle matters,” observed Maxwell Perring, at that moment. “So far as the situation can be settled at all, that is.”
“Except that we haven’t decided about the ring,” his cousin reminded him obstinately.
“What about the ring?”
“Who is going to keep it?”
“Alma, I suppose. It was given to her. Whether intentionally or by mistake is immaterial at this moment.”
“Nonsense! She can't keep it. It isn’t hers. It—”
“I don’t want to keep it, sir.” Again Alma spoke in that cold, stony way, because she felt that if she used any other sort of tone she might begin to cry.
“But who else can?” He sounded faintly irritated, as though he had now had more than enough of the business. As no doubt he had.
“I could—” Geraldine began.
“Of course you couldn’t,” he retorted impatiently. “This is where we came in. We can’t start the argument all over again. I think, Sister—”
“I thought, sir,” Alma interrupted diffidently, “that perhaps you would keep it.”
“I?” The idea of taking charge of another man’s engagement ring obviously did not commend itself to Maxwell Perring, and for a moment he looked as though he thought he had already been much too deeply involved. Then possibly he saw that there was only one way to stop further discussion. At any rate, he shrugged impatiently and said,
“Very well. I suppose that might be the answer. If you bring it down to me, I’ll take charge of it for the time being.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll fetch it.”
Alma went out of the room, leaving Geraldine and the surgeon to make whatever family goodbyes seemed proper to the occasion. She felt almost numb by now. As though she herself had absorbed all the shock from which she had protected Jeremy. Presently she would feel differently, of course, but at the moment it was almost as though someone else—someone she observed quite impersonally—went up in the lift to the top floor.
She felt as though there were no spring, no vitality left in her. Even her step lacked its usual lightness as she went along the passage to her room. A room which looked oddly unfamiliar as she glanced round.
Only when she opened a drawer and took out the case which contained Jeremy’s ring did the dreadful, personal intimacy of it all rush back upon her, and she felt such a stab of anguish that she knew the merciful numbness was beginning to pass.
It would have been wiser, of course, not even to look inside the case at the ring which was no longer hers. Academically speaking, it had no connection with her. If it belonged to any girl, it belonged to Geraldine. And yet—in a sort of wretched fascination, she opened the case and gazed down at the beautiful ring which, however mistakenly, Jeremy had himself put upon her finger.
“He gave it to me!” her heart cried rebelliously. “Surely nothing can change that? It can’t all just be—wiped out when he remembers. Or can it?”
That was the question which must remain agonizingly in abeyance until time or skill should heal Jeremy to the point when he could judge this thing for himself.
Suddenly the brightness of the ring grew dim, as she felt the tears rush into her eyes, and, with a wordless little sound she closed the case. It was no good indulging in wild weeping at this moment. She had to go downstairs and give the ring into Mr. Perring’s safe, if somewhat reluctant, keeping.
Down she went once more, keeping such a tight hold upon her emotions that her expression was almost grim. And one or two of the staff whom she passed on the way glanced at her twice in vague surprise.
Geraldine had already gone, and Maxwell Perring was alone in the waiting room when she returned. He too was looking a trifle grim by now, and she supposed he might well be wondering annoyedly how he had ever allowed himself to become involved in the love affairs of the nursing staff.
“Here is the ring, sir.”
It might have been a curtain ring for all the emotion she allowed her voice. And she held out the case rather stiffly to him, as though he were a stranger.
“Thank you.” He took it and put it into his pocket. “I’m sorry about this business, Sister.”
“I’m sorry too, sir.” She spoke coldly and looked past him, in case he might see how near she was to tears.
“I’m afraid you felt it was unfair to me to advise your not seeing Truscott when Geraldine was to be allowed to do so.”
“No,” she said unemotionally. “I don’t think about it at all. I’m willing to abide by whatever you think is best for him.”
“So? Well, I suppose that’s satisfactory,” he said, looking profoundly dissatisfied. “Try not to be too upset about this, and get as good a night’s rest as possible. We have a tough day in the theatre tomorrow.”
“I shan’t allow my work to suffer, if that’s what you mean, sir.”
“That isn’t what I mean at all,” he replied rather disagreeably. “But I don’t know that I’m improving matters by prolonging this conversation. Goodnight, my child.”
“G-goodnight, sir.”
The sudden change in the form of address and the unexpected gentleness of his tone almost knocked the last prop from under Alma’s precariously balanced self-control. But one didn’t cry in front of one’s surgeon, or put him in the unprofessional position of having to console one in the staff waiting room. And so she somehow maintained her composure until he had gone out of the room.
She stood there, very still, listening to his footsteps crossing the hall. She heard him say goodnight to the porter, and she heard the front door close behind him.
And then, because there was no real privacy in the staff waiting room, she fled upstairs to her own room, where she could cry to her heart’s content—if that were really the phrase to describe the almost physical misery which weighed on her heart.
He had told her to get as good a night’s rest as she could, and she had assured him that her work should not suffer the next day. But what were words compared to the dull, sickening, anguished sense of loss which drove sleep from her and set her wondering, wondering, wondering how this unspeakable situation between herself and Jeremy could ever be resolved?
“One becomes resigned,” she told herself. “One learns to live with unhappiness and loss. Everyone has to in time. It’s merely a case of accustoming oneself to it.”
Brave words, but singularly little help in the first anguished hours of realization. And, in spite of all her resolution and powers of self-discipline, it was a pale and shadowy-eyed Alma who appeared in the theatre the next morning.
Nothing, however, was missing from her usual efficiency and alertness. No flicker of inattention was allowed to mar the perfection of co-operation with the surgeon and the theatre staff. Only, towards the end of a heavy day, she looked much more e
xhausted than usual.
And Maxwell Perring, who noticed most things, must have noticed that too. Because, when all the work of the day was over, and he was taking off his mask and robe, he said curtly,
“You didn’t follow my advice, I’m afraid, about getting a good night’s rest.”
“I did my best, sir.” She even managed to smile faintly. “One can’t always arrange these things.”
“No. I suppose not. I saw Truscott this morning.” He spoke so impersonally that she was able to bear the reference quite easily. “He showed the most marked improvement and is mending steadily.”
“I’m glad. Did you—say anything about my not being able to visit him this evening?”
“Yes. He referred to you himself, which made it quite easy.”
Alma wondered hungrily in what terms he had referred to her, but it was not possible to ask.
“I said that you were in bed, with a high temperature and suspected influenza.”
“Was he satisfied?”
“I don’t know that ‘satisfied’ was quite the term.” Maxwell Perring smiled slightly. “He accepted my explanation. I told the sister-in-charge—Sister Pollock—that I considered he had had too much excitement lately and that I had thought it expedient to resort to this small ruse in order to keep you out of the way.”
“Oh, thank you, sir.” Alma was glad to be spared that part of the explanation. “She didn’t query that?”
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