“If he goes, I shall go with him. Annie can stay in her position here if you’ll have her,” Lisa announced. She had expected no more of Jarrell.
Jarrell’s eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. “Oh? And what would you do?”
At that moment, Lisa hated him as well. The scar on her forehead was livid. “We would go to some large city and hire out as servants. Toby is good with horses, and if I were a housemaid or housekeeper, I could look out for him.”
“That’s very amusing, Lisa, and touchingly naive of you to think that anyone would hire a half-wit and a girl with as ugly a disfigurement as yours,” Mrs. Stephens drawled. “I can’t think why you don’t cover it up so that we all don’t have to look at it all the time.”
Jarrell’s face went still. “On second thought,” he said levelly at last, “I don’t think I’ll decide right now after all. Both of you stay away from Toby unless someone else is with you. Whoever disobeys will be packed off immediately.”
Eric’s sister had gone too far, Lisa exulted. She just couldn’t let well enough alone, could she? “Dr. Jarrell, I want to tell Toby what has gone on and tell him to refuse to see either of us alone. Since I can’t do it by myself, would you care to accompany me?”
“Perhaps I’d better — it might disprove my theory of intuition.” He gave her a cold smile.
When they reached the stables, Toby was nowhere to be found. “I think he’s frightened,” Lisa guessed. Sure enough, they finally found him cowering behind a stack of feed sacks, shivering and sucking his thumb. It was hard to reconcile this Toby with the sunny young man who had such an easy mastery over Pearl, or the silent confident companion of their moorland runs.
Lisa knelt beside him. “There, Toby, it’s not all that bad. Dr. Jarrell understands and he knows it isn’t your fault.” She put a hand gently under his chin and turned his head to look her in the eyes. His face was anguished, and his blue eyes had a hurt, bewildered look like that of a dog who doesn’t know what he’s being punished for. “Even if in the end you have to go, I’ll be with you to take care of you.”
He shook his head mutely, and two tears slid down his cheeks. He put his head against her shoulder. She held his head against her fiercely and looked up at Jarrell. “It’s like torturing a baby rabbit. I feel guilty for ever having brought him here. And what’s he to do now, tell me that? He’s eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but who will marry him or even lie with such as he? The awful part is he knows he’s different. You’ve all condemned him to go Eric’s way because now he knows his need.”
“I think he would have come to that knowledge sooner or later anyway, Lisa. It’s his mind that never grew up, not his body. You won’t have to go unless you want to, Toby. We owe you that much at least.”
Lisa breathed a sigh of relief. Jarrell wasn’t as hard-headed as she had thought, and Toby’s misery had obviously touched him. She wiped away Toby’s tears, patted him reassuringly, and finally elicited a shaky smile. “There now, everything’s all right. Don’t worry anymore, Toby — please?”
He nodded and slowly rose to his feet, a large — even handsome — young man with the mind of a child.
As they walked up toward the house, Jarrell offered, “You brought me down there on purpose, didn’t you?”
“I — don’t know,” she answered lamely.
“Well, it worked, but damned if I know how I’m going to handle this. I know what I think happened, but since that is sheer prejudice on my part, I can’t act on it.”
Lisa stopped and faced him. “I asked you this once before, and now I’m asking once again because it affects Toby and me as well. Why is Carrie Stephens living here? Whatever you believe or don’t believe, I know that she isn’t pining away for her dead husband. You’ve trapped yourself in a situation you can’t get out of, but she hasn’t. What on earth keeps her here?”
“Believe me, Lisa I don’t know. I’ve encouraged her and Eric both to leave, but somehow it never happens.”
“If Toby stays, she can’t, you know. I’ll be in nursing in London, you leave for weeks at a time, and Eric goes to Burresford. The first thing you know, there’ll be another unwanted child.”
His face went still again. “What makes you think Cynthia’s child was unwanted?” he demanded.
She was going to say, “Wasn’t it?” but thought better of it. “Oh never mind, it’s none of my affair,” she said wearily. “I don’t understand you people and never shall. There are things like the riding and the moors I’ll miss, but on the whole I’ll be glad to be gone.”
“Will you?” His dark eyes with their gold flecks seemed to look into her very heart.
“Yes,” she lied defiantly, “the sooner the better.”
The moment was gone. “Then we’d best work hard on your hand, hadn’t we?” he said lightly, and she knew she had only imagined something that had gone before.
12
That afternoon the people from Burresford and their little boy appeared. He was five years old and had been burned the year before when his nightgown caught on fire, burning his thigh, side, and the inside of his arm before they could get the fire out. The mother was grimly determined that something should be done for their boy; the father was doubtful.
“We went to three doctors in Burresford and one in London,” he said, “and they all told us that operations carry a high risk, that we shouldn’t consider one if we valued the boy’s life.”
“But just look at him,” the mother cried. “Our poor little Teddy’s arm can’t be raised at all now.”
“How could it have possibly gotten that way?” Lisa asked Mrs. Lewis later as they draped the sheet over the table.
“The nursemaid misunderstood the doctor’s orders, and when she changed his bandages, she bandaged his arm to his side so that he couldn’t fling it about and hurt
himself. He put up such a fuss when they changed his dressings anyway that they left them that way, thinking it would hurt him less. The burned areas adhered, and now he is the way you see him.”
“Didn’t the doctor say anything?”
“They never took him back. The child had shrieked so when he was treated by the doctor that they thought it best to do it themselves.”
“But when they took the bandages off, couldn’t they see what was happening?”
“They finally did, but he yelled so when they wanted to pull his arm free that they left it. I think they thought that when it healed entirely, it would come free of itself.” Mrs. Lewis paused, then burst out, “Oh, heaven only knows what they thought, but they were so tender-hearted they made a cripple of their son!”
Lisa wondered if anyone had made a cripple of her, too.
The boy was placed on the table, howling with terror in spite of his mother holding one hand and his father the other. Both of them were crying, too, which didn’t help. “Now Teddy, now Teddy darling,” was all his mother could say over and over. Lisa came up to the table and gave a piercing whistle, which shut off the boy’s shrieks entirely for a moment as he gazed at her with round eyes. Then she trilled an absolutely true imitation of a skylark’s song, followed by a magpie’s cawing, a fair horse whinney, and a pig’s grunting and snuffling. By the time she got around to a donkey’s bray, Mrs. Lewis had eased the parents out of the room and was standing ready with the ether mask. Now that he had stopped crying, the sedation given him beforehand took effect, and he was all but asleep as Lisa explained to him that it would smell awful for a brief time, but then it was like having a good sleep. When he woke, it would all be over and he could play like the other boys. As he took the first breath of ether, there was a sporadic protest from the hands Lisa held in hers, but then he was quiet.
“What are we going to do without you?” Jarrell asked her, smiling, and she had the strange feeling once again that he was seeing more than her outward appearance.
Lisa found that everyday country animal operations like gelding horses and playing midwife to those silly sheep had more than prepared
her for a simple operation like this, and she watched impassively as Jarrell deftly cut the arm free while she herself dripped ether on the gauze cone over the boy’s face under Mrs. Lewis’s watchful eye. The whole operation took perhaps twenty minutes and wouldn’t have taken that long except that some care was needed to free the armpit.
“They’re going to have to get used to the idea of his hurting, or they might as well not have had this done,” Jarrell commented. “It’s going to take a lot of exercising to get that arm so it will raise again.”
“Do you think they will?” Lisa asked, interested in his opinion.
“Difficult to say. Letting him get that way to begin with would seem to indicate they won’t, but you never can tell. They came a long way toward it by bringing him here at all.”
That evening Lisa nursed him and slept in his room with him, the parents sleeping in the room next door, all of which freed Mrs. Lewis to resume running the household. She held his head when he was sick, later fed him his soup, and showed him how to fold paper, cut it with scissors, and end with elaborate designs when the paper was unfolded.
“Why can’t we take Lisa home with us?” he asked his parents hopefully.
“Why, I don’t think she’d be interested, darling,” his mother explained. “She’s a nurse, not a governess. And what would we do with Miss Stanhope?”
The boy made a face. “I know what I would like to do with her,” he announced ominously.
“Never mind, Teddy,” Lisa said, laughing. “I’ll come visit you sometimes and you can show me your toy soldiers. Would you like that?”
“If you ever do think of giving up nursing,” Teddy’s father said, “do let us have first pick, would you?” He gave her his card. A distillery owner! He looked more like a parson, and Lisa stifled a giggle.
“Do you have a horse?” she asked Teddy conversationally. This could lead to a possible escape if things with the household here took a further turn for the worse.
“Oh yes,” Teddy exclaimed, “a pony named Jester. He’s a bay with a white star and a long, long mane and tail. He bites,” he added thoughtfully.
“It will be no time at all until you’re riding him again,” Lisa promised. “And you’ll have to do the exercises we give you like a trooper or you’ll never be able to start jumping, and jumping is more fun than anything else in the world.”
“Not quite anything,” Jarrell laughed from the door, “but very close to it at that. How’s our patient?” he asked Teddy, feeling his pulse and putting a hand on his forehead.
“Lisa’s going to teach me how to do the horse and the pig and the donkey,” Teddy offered. “I would learn to do the bird, too, only I can’t whistle yet.”
“I see you’ve made a conquest,” Jarrell said to Lisa.
“She certainly has,” Teddy’s father agreed. “We’re trying to steal her away from you.” He was only half-jesting.
“Oh? And are you going?” Jarrell asked, still smiling.
“I might,” she challenged him.
“Will you, Lisa? Will you really?” Teddy demanded.
“Not so fast, young man,” Lisa laughed. “You see, Teddy, I have to help the people who are sick. You’re sick now, and I’m helping you, but when you don’t need me anymore, then I have to go to someone else who’s sick. Does that make sense to you?”
“But I’ll always need you,” Teddy said plaintively.
“No you won’t. Your arm will heal and you’ll be out riding Jester and playing with your friends, and you won’t even remember me. Now I’m going down to eat and your mama can call me if necessary, but I don’t think you’ll need me, do you? I’ll be back to say goodnight, and sleep right here in the room with you. Would you like that?”
“All right, but hurry back,” Teddy called.
“I’ll have trays sent up for you,” Lisa said to Teddy’s parents, “and you can eat right here in the room with him.”
“Goodnight,” Jarrell said. “I think it’s safe to say that the operation was a complete success.”
“Thank you, doctor,” Teddy’s mother answered, “and thank you, Lisa. You’re fortunate in having her, doctor.”
Jarrell and Lisa went downstairs together. “Am I fortunate?” Jarrell asked, obviously not expecting an answer.
Dinner was a strained affair. Cynthia and Eric were sunk in thought, Mrs. Stephens pointedly ignored Lisa, and Jarrell and Mrs. Lewis were having a technical discussion of some new surgical instrument, oblivious to the others. Lisa excused herself even before dessert and returned thankfully upstairs, where she entertained Teddy and his parents with some of her market skits. Then she gave him his pain medicine, waited until the Lawtons had said goodnight to him, and turned off the lamps, leaving a single candle burning by her bed to read by.
She was a long time getting to sleep that night, even though she was deathly tired. It seemed that at Hartsite a long time would go by peacefully with nothing happening, and then all of a sudden a whole series of things would happen all at once, most of them bad. When she finally got to sleep, the rider thundered through her dreams once more, but she could no longer see his face.
The next morning Teddy was ravenously hungry and ate enough for a grown man. He didn’t want to stay in bed, so Lisa brought up Eric’s puzzle, and the four of them became engrossed in it until Jarrell and Mrs. Lewis showed up late in the morning to change his dressings.
“I think it best if you go downstairs a bit,” Mrs. Lewis suggested to the Lawtons. “The garden is beautiful now; perhaps you’d like to get some air.”
They obviously were torn, but finally went off docilely enough. Jarrell had been experimenting with oiled bandages, and these came off fairly easily, but not without screams from Teddy. Lisa held his other hand and comforted him as best she could. To herself she was thinking that there was nothing she had ever heard as heartrending as> the scream of a child when down the farther darker corridors of her mind there echoed another scream that went on and on, not a child at all. She turned white and shut her eyes.
“This is the Hast one, Teddy,” Jarrell was saying, and the child’s scream rang out piercingly again, followed by sobs.
“There, all through,” Jarrell reassured the child, and Lisa opened her eyes, unaccountably shaken. “He can go home after I’ve looked at it tomorrow,” he remarked to Mrs. Lewis, who nodded. “Even that fool Caldwell in Burresford can change dressings.”
That afternoon while Teddy had his nap, Lisa went downstairs, got herself some tea, and sat in the garden, glad to get out in the fresh air. From this autumn on, she would be getting little air that wasn’t smoky and grimy. Tommy, who spent his days outdoors now, sauntered out from behind some asters and came up to her to have his jaw scratched. Purring, he rolled over on his back to have his stomach rubbed, kneading his paws comically in the air, a look of absolute bliss on his face.
Eric came out of the house and walked slowly toward her. He sat down silently on the stone bench beside her and picked up a leaf that he began methodically to pull to pieces. Lisa let him alone until he was ready to talk.
“Lisa, I don’t know how to say this, but I think we had best not see much of each other for a while.” He wouldn’t look at her.
“I was wondering when you would decide if the mad rapist was Toby, your sister, or me. I see you’ve decided.”
“Oh, it’s not that,” he said miserably. “Or else only partly that. I just thought that — that if we stayed away from each other for a time we would see each other more clearly, if you know what I mean, decide if we really wanted to get serious.”
“I wasn’t aware that we were seeing all that much of each other, Eric,” Lisa reminded him gently, “nor aware that we had gotten very serious yet, either. Does this mean that you want to start going to Burresford again? If you do, you know, you can leave me out of any further thoughts of seriousness ever again. But I can’t promise anything even if you don’t go, so there’s no threat to it.”
“Ah Lisa, I’ve ha
d more fun with you not making love to you than any woman I’ve ever known. I, uh, just want to be sure you’re sure.” He was uncharacteristically fumble-tongued and ill at ease, and yet he looked more handsome than ever. The sun glowed on his reddish-gold hair, and the uncertainty in his grey eyes gave him a new dimension of humanity.
“Well, of course, Eric,” Lisa replied, still puzzled by him. “Whatever you think best, I’ll go along with.”
He looked almost hurt that she was so amenable, as if he had expected a scene. “You have to realize that you burst upon this household like a bombshell. We had all settled into an uncomplicated existence that we could all live with. I had Burresford, Cynthia had her food, Carrie had her garden, and Mark had his book and his black funks.”
“Black funks? Dr. Jarrell? He often seems grim, but I’d hardly call that a black funk.”
“He hasn’t had one since you’ve been here. He locks himself in his study, drinks himself into a blind rage, and breaks everything he can get his hands on. They used to go on for days at a time — that was why he gave up practising medicine. You can’t very well be a surgeon and cut people up while you’re having week-long binges, can you?”
“When was the last one?”
“Oh, I don’t really remember, a little less than a year ago, I suppose. I wasn’t here at the time. I have to admit, they’ve been getting farther between as time goes on. I made the mistake of telling him once he ought to come along with me to Burresford instead, and he jumped clean down my throat. Needless to say, I never made that suggestion again.” Eric had a look of honest indignation on his face that made Lisa giggle.
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