Meanwhile, Cathy put Denise out of her mind, caught up on her medical reports, unpacked a few nursing manuals she had put at the bottom of her big trunk, and wrote a letter to England between supervising the play periods of both the boys and the girls.
The letter was to Miss Watts. It was long overdue, but she had wanted to have something to write, other than first impressions.
Her impressions were deeper now. She had a lot of things to tell. Best of all, she had the news of her intention to finish her career. She knew, as a nurse herself, Miss Watts would be pleased. She put all her doubts and fears in the pages—the fears that she might not succeed. It was good to pour out her soul to an old friend.
She finished the letter, addressed and stamped it to go air mail, then slipped out to mail it.
On the way back someone caught up to her—someone with a smile that always helped and encouraged her. It was David.
“You’re back earlier than I expected,” she greeted him warmly.
“A couple of days. I would have been here a week ago had I known.”
“You mean our trouble?”
“Yes. Cathy, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I felt like doing that, but I knew by the time you returned it would all be over.”
“I would have flown. I would have been back the same afternoon.”
“I know, David, but I could cope.”
“You’re a brick.”
They walked along together, and she told him all that had happened.
“An emergency tracheotomy,” he whistled. “That must have been tricky. I guess you were worried.”
“No, I wasn’t.” Her voice stopped suddenly. She hadn’t been worried, she remembered. She had been confident, trustful. She had known Christabel’s little ship would be all right with Dr. Malcolm at the helm.
David was regarding her thoughtfully.
Presently he said, “How is the baby now?'”
“Doing fine. After tomorrow we can see her.”
“Then I’ll take you tomorrow night.”
That brought up the subject of Cathy’s continuation of study. Tomorrow night she began her lessons.
She told him briefly, then awaited his opinion.
He was all approval. “That’s splendid, Cathy. It’s splendid of the doctor, too, to encourage you.”
“I don’t think he had me in mind; he was thinking of Little Families.” She remembered with a flush how he had given his other reasons, “a girl with a career is less likely to fall, like a ripe peach, into the first willing hands.” She did not tell this to David.
David reported facts he had gleaned in Melbourne. “It’s possible that our smaller-and-mixed-unit plea might come up at the next sitting of parliament. I have several of the big men down there interested in it.”
“Is that necessary?”
“Very necessary, Cathy. That is why everyone is so anxious to keep in with Fayette Dubois. Apart from the money needed, she has a considerable number of valuable contacts. In other words, she could, if she would, pull strings.”
“If she would...” Cathy looked at David questioningly.
“There has to be something in it for her,” returned David succinctly.
“But she has money, you said...”
“Forget money, Cathy.”
“Then you mean ... notoriety?”
“Mrs. Dubois would not be against that, but I meant something else...”
“Something else?”
“I should say somebody.”
“I don’t understand.”
But Cathy did, of course. It was Dr. Malcolm Fayette wanted. She recalled that evening at the nightclub and those odd scraps of conversation. How had they gone? “You have neglected me terribly ... You can’t do that to a Dubois, hasn’t anyone told you...? Of course it’s blackmail, but I mean it. I’d be ruthless enough to do anything to keep you.”
How ruthless, thought Cathy now. Sufficiently ruthless to withdraw her patronage? Not to pull those “strings” as David said?
The man changed the subject.
“How is the garden going? How are the Marys attending it? Any contrary ones?”
“Only the usual.”
“So Denise won’t cooperate.”
“She hasn’t even planted her seeds. She says they were not as good as the other girls’ packets.”
“She’ll be sorry when I allot the prizes. There’s going to be a present for every gardener who has raised a plant.”
“That eliminates Denise, and she’ll hate it.”
“She must hate some things in life, Cathy. Face up to it, she can’t be protected all the time.”
“I know, David, but...”
“But what?”
She told him about Mrs. Latrobe, and he nodded thoughtfully. “Could be the solution,” he admitted, “but of course it’s out of the question.”
“Is it?”
“Oh, Cathy, Cathy-girl, don’t start on the pigeon now. We’ve enough on our hands with elimination of the present segregating system.”
“I know.” Cathy sighed. Deep down in her heart, she knew it was Denise’s only way out. Perhaps there had to be some things in life that Denise hated, as David said, but she knew Denise better than he did, and she knew there was nothing that Denise would even like, if that miracle of complete personal love did not come true.
After he had put away his things she accompanied him around the garden. The little gardeners trailed behind, their faces expectant.
“A block of chocolate for every one of you,” he praised lavishly.
“Denise Lane hasn’t done a thing,” they reported indignantly.
“Then, alas, no chocolate for Denise.”
They raced off in childish cruelty to tease the lazy gardener, and Cathy said dubiously, “Do you think you should have done that?”
“Yes, I do. I told you before, Cathy, the child can’t be wrapped in cotton wool all the time. Nobody’s so special that she can’t be touched, and Denise must learn that. She is too ingrown, too secret. Soon we’ll find her becoming proud of her difference, and then we’ll have a worse problem on our hands. Individuals are no use, Cathy. Somewhere there is a job, or a place, or a person to which we all must turn.”
“Her person is Mrs. Latrobe then,” put in Cathy stubbornly.
“Oh, my dear,” reproved David gently. Shrugging her shoulders in resignation, Cathy turned with him to the house.
The next morning proved David wrong. In his punishment of Denise anyhow. Instead of a wistful, regretful, sorry little girl there had arisen much earlier than the other children a positive tornado of revenge.
Racing out to the garden Denise had stamped, kicked and jumped on every carefully nurtured flower. She had knelt down and scrabbled her small fists destructively through their roots. By the time old Jeffreys came, and Jeffreys preferred to start at dawn, the damage was done. Before him lay the mutilation and ruins of what had been a thriving plot.
“I could hardly believe me eyes,” he reported breathlessly to Cathy and David and a hovering Elvira. “Everything was doing so nicely. Carrots ready to pull, lovely heads of lettuce, then there were those poppies just opening their buds.”
Cathy met David’s eyes. Denise, they telegraphed to each other.
David went off with the old man to examine the debris. Cathy and Elvira stood silently till he returned.
He did not say anything. He simply spread significant palms.
“Bad?” murmured Cathy.
“Nonexistent,” he told her.
“Oh, dear.” said Cathy.
They were all silent again.
“The question, of course, is Denise,” ventured David presently.
“You mean ... punishment?”
“Yes.”
“Deprivation wasn’t any good, was it? It only made her worse.”
“A hairbrush is what she needs,” said Elvira stoutly.
“No,” said Cathy definitely, “that is out. It would only make Denis
e a heroine to herself, a stoic. Besides, she’s just had a booster needle, so we must go gently.”
“She didn’t go gently with the children’s gardens,” mumbled Elvira. “Poor mites, and all the time they put into it.”
David was watching Cathy. “I think,” he said evenly, “this is Aunty Cathy’s pigeon. She is the housemother, and the care of the girls is her responsibility. ”
Cathy shot him a grateful look. “I’ll see to Denise,” she promised.
She went inside and up the stairs to the dormitories. The children were up with one exception—Denise. She must have performed her damaging act while still in her small nightie. She lay cuddled in a mutinous little ball well down in her bed. Underneath the bed Cathy could see her slippers. They were caked in mud.
She bent down and picked up the evidence.
“Denise,” she said quietly, “how did your slippers get so dirty?”
No answer.
“Was it when you were digging up all the plants this morning and jumping and stamping on them until they were dead?”
Denise looked at her with narrowed smoldering eyes. “If you know why are you asking me?”
“Because when Mrs. Latrobe hears about it, as of course she must, she will ask me if it is true.”
The eyes were wide open now. There was panic in them.
“Mrs. Latrobe...”
“Mrs. Latrobe loves you, Denise. She told me so yesterday. She said she would like you for her own little girl, though, of course, she would not want anyone who went through life doing things like this...” and Cathy dropped the slipper.
Denise was crying. It was a soft heartbroken cry that stabbed at Cathy. Poor little scrap, she thought, poor, lost, bewildered, hungry little scrap.
“I want to be Mrs. Latrobe’s little girl, Aunty Cathy, oh, I do, I do.”
“Then you must be good.”
“I will, Aunty Cathy.”
Cathy sat on the bed and put her arms around her. Denise sobbed, “When can I go with Mrs. Latrobe?”
“When you are very good.”
It was against the principles of every book ever written on child management. It was against the rules of her training at Little Families. Children must never be bribed to good behavior, never lured there with the promise of a reward, particularly, and Cathy’s heart reproached her, a reward that could never be given.
Deprivation had not worked, but bribery had, bribery that was a lie and an evasion, and must later have its adverse effect on the child.
I am weak, thought Cathy, helping Denise to dress quickly so that she might catch up with the others. I am more than weak, I am evil. I have let that child build a castle in the air, a castle she can never reach.
Elvira was frankly amazed at the new docility in their most flourishing problem child. “You’re a marvel,” she gasped to the housemother. “What did you do?”
David made no comment. Cathy supposed with a deep sense of guilt that he had guessed what form her treatment had taken.
“Oh, Cathy,” he sighed, shaking his head.
“It might come true one day,” she defended herself.
“You know it can’t.”
Meanwhile Denise was digging in the garden, making herself so nice to the others that some of the more forgiving ones were pressing upon her generous shares of Uncle David’s reward chocolate.
She refused them, though her mouth watered with longing. Chocolate was a rare treat at Redgates. Refusal made her feel a step nearer to her goal though. “Oh, Mrs. Latrobe, dear Mrs. Latrobe,” she whispered, kneeling down to replant a still-intact stem of onion.
Then she said softly and experimentally, “Mommy.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As the day wore on, Cathy found herself becoming progressively more and more nervous for the night that lay ahead, her first lesson, the things she felt sure she had forgotten, the doctor’s censure—Dr. Malcolm himself.
A dozen times she ran upstairs to make sure she had put out her manuals and had included an exercise book for notes. When she sharpened her pencil a third time Elvira commented dryly, “There soon won’t be any pencil left.”
It seemed no time before the girls were home from school again, the play period supervised, dinner served, Children bathed and put to bed.
“This is it,” accepted Cathy grimly, and she pushed her things into her briefcase and went down the stairs.
The weight of the briefcase under her arm made her think of training days in England. How often had she run across to a lecture, legs in their black stockings, hurrying because she was late as usual, cap bouncing on her head. How she had envied the nurses in their crimson capes. Once she had said to Judith, “It’s worth the drudge just to wear a cape.”
“Little Red Riding Hood had one,” grumbled Judith, “and with much less trouble.”
“But look what happened to her.”
“Nothing to what will happen to us when we don’t pass.”
“You mean if we don’t, and I can’t believe that. We’ll all come through with flying colors. Florence Nightingales every one of us.”
As she pulled on an unheroic navy jacket instead of the heroic crimson cape, Cathy wondered what Helen and Judy were doing now. Standing alone in the lobby, she felt suddenly small and homesick. She had half a mind to turn back, climb the stairs, and go to bed. In bed one could try to rid oneself of all the desolation that sometimes came crowding relentlessly; then in the morning, drained of useless regret, face a brave new day. She hesitated, tempted, but the crimson cape triumphed. With her chin high she went out to meet her fate.
David was waiting for her. “I’m walking over with you.”
“There’s no need really.”
“I think there is. It’s quite dark. Besides, I have a letter to mail.”
“I’ll be a few hours, David. You mustn’t wait for me.”
“I’m only delivering the goods, Cathy. I’ll leave the returning to the doc.”
They fell in step together and were soon discussing their old topics—everything to do with Little Families, of course. They talked easily and companionably, and Cathy was glad he had been waiting. She had now no time to become nervous again, for before she knew it they were at the office gate.
David did not linger. “Good luck, Nurse Trent,” he encouraged and was gone.
Cathy went down the path, but before she could press the bell the door opened.
“Doctor’s expecting you. Office hours are over. Go right ahead,” beamed Mrs. Williams.
Dr. Malcolm was adjusting the curtains as she entered. His hand dropped to his side and he came to his desk, waving her to the other smaller table.
“Sit down, Miss Trent. Enjoy your ‘soothing’ walk?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“I see now why you were so anxious for the exercise. I should think he would make a very soothing companion,”
Cathy answered obscurely, “Very.”
“A pity though, you did not tell me your real reason for refusing my offer of transport at the first.”
“I did.”
The doctor did not comment. He merely raised one supercilious brow and, nettled, Cathy broke into stumbling explanation.
“I met him by accident. David had a letter to mail. We walked down together. Why do you always have to probe like this?”
Barely concealing a yawn, Dr. Malcolm said, “Please take out your books, Miss Trent.”
Cathy obeyed, annoyed with him for having baited her, annoyed with herself for having bitten.
He leafed over her Modern Nursing Procedure and suddenly shot out a question.
Still upset with herself, she could not answer.
He turned another page and asked a second question.
This time she did not know and told him so.
A third question she made a guess at and failed.
“So,” he said judiciously and turned too obviously to the beginning of the book.
“Perhaps you can remember a little e
lementary stuff. Ward management, for instance. How would you clean a patient’s locker?”
Red with indignation, Cathy remained silent.
“Come, Miss Trent, I’m waiting. How would you clean a patient’s locker?”
Resentfully she answered because she knew he would insist on it, the first page of her old manual rising before her, “The outside is washed with hot soapy water, the drawer is removed and scrubbed, the inside of the cupboard is scrubbed and left open to dry.” She raised mutinous eyes to him.
“Pray proceed.”
“But...”
“Proceed.”
“Fresh paper is placed in the drawer and cupboard. Metal tops are polished with mineral turpentine or methylated spirit.”
“Good, in fact, very good. A pass in Stage 1, Nurse Cathy.” Cathy flung down the pencil with which she had been playing nervously as she stumbled out her answer. She moved to rise.
“Sit down, Miss Trent, and please compose yourself. The first essential of a nurse is a calm, sweet and pliable nature.”
“We are not expected to be angels.”
Again the soaring brow. “Who spoke of angels in the same breath as Catherine Trent? Enough of this—” as she went to rise again “—and enough of this elementary stuff, too. You must know more than patients’ lockers. What are the requirements for an antipyretic pack?”
She remembered it at once and told him clearly and concisely. “How would you reckon the amount of drug to give a child over two years and under twelve? You may demonstrate that one on paper.”
She wrote it down and handed it to him.
That took considerably longer than the other questions. She thought she handled it all right.
He did not commend her. Cathy had the feeling he never would.
More questions and answers followed, and he corrected and explained in one or two places where she had gone wrong. Then, leaning forward, he flung out his arm and said unexpectedly, “My pulse, please.”
She took it tremblingly and consulted her watch.
In her agitation she held her thumb instead of her three fingers there at first, and only caught her own beat. Then she calmed down and noted the rate, rhythm, volume and tension. She told him and let his wrist go.
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