“I—see. He did come into the nursing home. But—I missed him.”
“Oh, what a shame! But he’s sure to get in touch with you as soon as he can,” Miss Perring declared confidently. “And I must tell you, Alma, I’m so happy about the news of your engagement. You’re the ideal girl for Max.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Alma, wishing she could be sure that Max also thought so at this moment. “Could you—could you give me the telephone number of his flat?”'
“Yes. Of course. Wait a moment.”
She waited a moment. Then Miss Perring gave Max’s London number with great clarity, and considerable pains to ensure that Alma got it right. But, even when she had checked the number and rung off, Alma still felt that it brought her no nearer to Max.
She tried the number, but with a queer conviction that there would be no reply.
There was no reply. And after that there was nothing she could do but wait.
Much later, she tried the number again. But with the same result. Then she went to bed and cried herself to sleep.
Sunday brought with it fresh access of hope. And, as soon as she felt she could reasonably do so, Alma tried Max’s telephone number again. But, neither then nor on any of the other half dozen nerve-racking occasions she tried it during the day, did she get any reply.
For all the sign he gave, and for all the possibility there seemed of getting in touch with him, Max might have been dead. Or married to someone else.
It was one of the most miserable days of Alma’s life. Much more miserable, it seemed to her now, than anything which Jeremy had had the power to inflict. And when she thought of having to go into the theatre next morning, and meet Max simply in his capacity as surgeon, she felt she would almost rather die.
But, fortunately or unfortunately, these choices are not given to us. Monday morning came and Alma was still alive, though pale and wretched.
A faint glimmer of happiness came to her in the shape of a cable from her father, to say that he and her stepmother had to make their visit even sooner than they had expected. They were flying over and should arrive the following day.
But even this seemed of minor importance when she found herself in the theatre, surrounded by the familiar routine of preparation, but aware of nothing so much as that she was waiting—waiting for Max to come in.
When the moment of meeting did finally come, she was, by the most extraordinary stroke of luck, alone in the scrubbing-up room. And, knowing that it might be hardly more than seconds before someone else entered, she wasted no time on preliminaries.
“Max,” she said urgently, coming towards him. “I must—”
Then she stopped in her tracks, almost transfixed by the cool, polite, uninterested glance he gave her.
“Good morning, Sister. We have a long list today. Everything ready?”
“Yes, sir. But—Max—”
“There’s no time for conversation just now, I’m afraid,” he said coldly. “You should know I don’t like unimportant chatter when work is pressing, Sister.”
“Y-yes, sir,” she stammered. And, with shaking fingers, she began to help him to put on his mask and gown.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
For the first minute or two after Max’s figurative slap in the face, Alma felt almost stunned. If he had in fact struck her, she could not have been more shattered, and only the automatic, precision-drilled part of her went on functioning.
But, as surgeon-in-charge, he had virtually told her to get on with her work and stop bothering him. And, as theatre sister, there was nothing for her to do but obey. In a sort of nightmare, she followed him into the theatre.
So far as her professional self was concerned, she proceeded to go through all the routine motions. Not a thing forgotten, not a detail omitted. But for the real Alma Miles—the girl who now knew that she loved Maxwell Perring—the world had fallen into pieces, and she walked dazedly through the ruins.
Not a soul around them must suspect that anything was wrong. And not a soul did, she was sure of that. Possibly Maxwell Perring was even more intensely absorbed than usual in his work. Possibly s e herself looked a trifle pale and strained. But during a morning of exceptionally difficult cases, it was not to be wondered at if both surgeon and theatre sister looked unusually grave.
“Only an hour more. Only half an hour more. Only ten minutes more,” she encouraged herself. “It will be over soon. Nothing goes on forever. It will be over soon.”
And at last it was over. At least, the morning session was. And Max walked out without so much as a glance at her.
There was no question of following him then. She had to stay and superintend the clearing up and preparation for the afternoon list of operations. But she dared to hope that, instead of leaving the nursing home, he might go to his consulting room to look at correspondence or attend to some other part of the office side of his work.
And, the moment she was free, she went along to his room and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” his voice said. And—still quite unknowing what she was to say—Alma went in, her heart beating so hard that it made her feel slightly sick.
He was sitting behind his big desk and he looked up as she entered. But she had the impression that he had not been either writing or examining anything. He had just been sitting there.
“I—had—to come.” She came forward impulsively until only the desk stood between them. “I must speak to you, Max.”
“About what?” he asked coolly.
“Oh, you know! About that miserable business on Saturday. When you—when you thought you—caught me kissing Jeremy.”
“I saw you kissing Jeremy,” he corrected her coldly. “I have no reason to doubt the evidence of my own eyes.”
“But it wasn’t what you thought! He was kissing me—”
“Really, Alma, what does it matter?” With an impatient movement of his hand, he dismissed what he evidently considered to be pointless hair-splitting. “Of course it matters! I didn’t want him to do it.”
“You were not making any strenuous effort to prevent him, as far as I could see,” he replied drily.
“But he was ill, and I had—”
“Wait a moment.” He stopped her eager explanation simply by raising his hand. “Let’s go back to the beginning of this, if we’re really going to discuss it. Why, in the first place, did you telephone me on Saturday morning, to say something prevented your coming to Windhurst in the afternoon? What prevented your coming?”
“What—prevented—?”
She stared at him in helpless dismay. She had almost forgotten that phase of the situation. In that moment, it was all she could do even to recall her state of mind at the time when she had telephoned to postpone her visit. It was all so long past—that absurd doubt she had once had, and which had prompted her panic call.
There had been a time—no longer ago than Saturday morning, it seemed—when she had thought she might not want to go on with her engagement. That was inconceivable now. But that was how it had been. And that was what she was going to have to explain away before she even raised the question of Jeremy’s mis-statements.
“Don’t you remember?” There was a cool, merciless note in his voice. “You telephoned to say you couldn’t come down to Windhurst. You said it would take too long to explain on the phone, but you just could not come. We have plenty of time now, Alma. As a matter of curiosity—and as a preliminary to anything else you want to tell me about what happened on Saturday afternoon—why couldn’t you come?”
“I—it’s—terribly difficult—” she stammered.
“I’m sure it is. But”—he got up and put a chair for her—“sit down,” he said peremptorily, “and tell me now. I’m waiting.”
And, as she dropped into the chair he had set for her, he leaned back against his desk, his arms folded, and looked down at her.
In that dreadful moment, she supposed she ought to have foreseen this and worked out what she was going to say. A clever,
resourceful girl would have either thought out a credible explanation or discovered some way in which to make the truth sound less damaging. As it was, she heard herself say, in a low, frightened voice,
“I got into a—a sort of panic. I wasn’t sure I wanted to—to go on with our marriage. I felt I simply couldn’t go down to Windhurst and talk about plans for the future when I didn’t even know what I wanted the future to be. So I—telephoned and—postponed the visit.”
“And went instead to spend the afternoon with Truscott?”
“No. Not really. It—it was almost by chance that I visited him.”
She heard for herself how improbably those words hung on the air, but she winced when he said, almost conversationally,
“Alma, you must think me an extraordinarily stupid sort of man.”
“Oh, I don’t! I think you’re w-wonderful,” she exclaimed, with a catch in her voice.
“As a surgeon—yes, I know. You said something about that once before. About regarding me as a surgeon, rather than a man.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t put it like that at all,” she cried. “I said—”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now.” He spoke almost gently, but with a gentleness which sounded curiously dangerous. “What we’ve said to each other isn’t really of much importance any more. I had a talk with Truscott—”
“He told you a lot of lies!”
“My dear, what he said was entirely convincing, and I’m afraid it fitted in with my own observation. I don’t blame you for loving Truscott and not loving me. You never pretended to me about that. What I will not tolerate is your playing the two of us while you try to decide which you want.”
“But I wasn’t doing that! It was simply—”
“Alma, why do you try to prolong the deception, for no more than a bit of face-saving? You’ve just told me that, as recently as Saturday morning, you didn’t know your own mind and couldn’t come and discuss the future with me. Instead, on the Saturday afternoon, I find you kissing and embracing Truscott. How does one explain that away?”
“I don’t know,” said Alma, from the depths of such despair that she could not even start to correct his description of her attitude to Jeremy.
There was a short silence. Then she asked, without looking at him,
“What do you want me to do?”
“Do? I don’t want you to do anything.”
“I mean I suppose I’d better give you back your ring and—”
He made another of those sharp, impatient movements of his hand.
“I don’t think we can have any more giving and returning of rings in this place without appearing entirely ridiculous.” he said shortly. “The engagement is over, of course. I suppose it was stupid of me ever to talk you into it, on such a shaky basis. But, so far as outward forms go, let’s do whatever will cause least comment. For the moment, for God’s sake go on wearing the thing.”
She wanted to cry, “Don’t you dare talk of my ring like that!” But it was not her ring any longer. It was his.
“At some future date,” he went on, but she interrupted him. And this time her voice was as cold and matter-of-fact as his.
“I think I have the solution. My father and stepmother are arriving from the States tomorrow, for a short visit. When they return, they very much want me to go back with them. I shall go, and I shan’t return here. I’ll send you back your ring, of course, before I leave the country.”
“Do as you like about the ring,” he said, with what seemed to her the most terrible indifference. “The rest of the plan sounds satisfactory.”
Again there was a short silence. Then she realized that the interview was over. There was absolutely nothing else to say, and, rising stiffly, she walked out of the room, while he returned to his desk without, so far as she could judge, even glancing after her.
“It’s over,” she kept on telling herself. “It’s over. Through my own criminal indecision and Jeremy’s selfishness, I’ve lost Max. The best and dearest and most wonderful man I shall ever know. And now I have to go on pretending to everyone that it’s all right—that I’m still engaged to him and still looking forward to marrying him.”
If the morning had been a waking nightmare, the afternoon was little better. And the next day was simply a continuation of it—until the evening, when she could escape from the nursing home at last, to go to the hotel where her father and stepmother should already have arrived.
She felt almost literally as though she escaped. Like a prisoner who gained the outside world again, after being caged with despair for a constant companion.
Even the streets had a new charm. And the people who passed her had a special appeal, because they were not the colleagues and companions before whom she had to pretend and pretend and pretend.
She found suddenly that she was longing unspeakably to see her father and Juliet. Not only were they her own. They knew nothing at all of the hideous complications of the last few months. She would not have to explain to them or act a part for them. She would only have to be herself.
And then—oh, blessed relief—they proposed to take her away out of it all.
That in so doing they would put the Atlantic between her and Max was something she would think about later. Already she felt a premonitory ache at her heart when she thought of leaving him so far behind. But what did physical distance add, really, to a separation like theirs? It was already absolute and final.
By the time she arrived at the hotel, she had begun to feel more like her normal self. Arid as she was wafted up by lift to the suite they occupied, she found that she still had the capacity to be excited and eager.
She almost ran along the corridor. And when she saw her father standing in the doorway, she flung herself into his arms with something suspiciously like a sob.
“My darling child!” He kissed her warmly. “It’s been much too long. We should have come to fetch you before.”
“Oh, no—no—I’ve been all right.” She hugged him afresh. “Only, when I actually see you, there’s such a lovely feeling of belonging.”
“So there should be. So there should be,” declared her father, looking a good deal moved.
Then Juliet came forward and embraced Alma and said,
“You’re going to find it difficult to refuse to come back with us after this.”
“I’m not going to refuse.” Alma smiled affectionately from one to the other. “I—I can’t wait to go back with you.”
“Come, that’s wonderful!” Her father looked very pleased. “Particularly as our stay here has to be unexpectedly short. But we’ll talk about that over dinner. I hope you’re hungry. Juliet and I both are, and we only waited for you.”
Alma said she was hungry too, and found this was indeed the case. It had been hard to eat with much appetite during the last few days, and the idea of a family meal—even in the hotel restaurant—seemed singularly attractive at this moment.
They went down together, talking all the way, starting all sorts of subjects and never quite finishing any of them, in the manner of people who are concerned with each other’s affairs but have not had an opportunity to discuss them for a long time.
“Darling, you’re looking just a little bit peaky,” declared Juliet, who didn’t look in the least peaky herself. “You’ve been working much too hard.”
“It’s difficult not to, if you’re a theatre sister,” Alma explained, with a smile. “But I’m all right, really.”
“Will you find it difficult to get away? What about that surgeon who specially wanted you to work for him?”
“He’ll understand,” Alma said calmly. “They’ll all understand that I naturally want to go back with you for a visit.”
“Even at very short notice?” her father enquired. “How short?”
“In a week’s time.”
“A week?” She thought of Max, and her heart seemed to hurt physically. But, aloud, she went on, “Should we be going by air?”
“No. By boat.
I have to return that way for business reasons. I can arrange an extra reservation for you, of course,” he added, with the air of a man who never had to do much more than press a button or give instructions to his secretary when he wanted travelling arrangements settled.
“That’s the advantage of being in the business,” Juliet pointed out with a smile.
“It sounds almost too exciting.” Alma smiled too.
“No, not too exciting. Just exciting enough,” declared Juliet, who obviously liked doing things in a hurry. “See what you can arrange, dear.—My, what a good-looking man that is who’s come in. He’s looking your way, Alma. Do you know him?” With a queer feeling of inevitability, Alma turned her head, and Maxwell Perring bowed coolly to her as he passed.
“That’s Max. Mr. Perring,” she said slowly. “The surgeon for whom I work.”
“You don’t say!” Juliet looked extremely interested. “I didn’t realize you were on those terms.”
“What terms?” Alma asked rather flatly.
“Well, you called him ‘Max’ just now, before you corrected yourself. I always thought theatre sisters were kind of formal with their surgeons.”
“They are!” declared Alma, who simply could not imagine what would have happened if any other theatre sister had addressed him as Max. “But we—we sometimes call the surgeons by—by nicknames among ourselves.”
“I see.” Juliet was satisfied. “He certainly looks like a charmer.”
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