Nurse in Love

by Jane Arbor

  As he spoke Socrates climbed over his shoulder and walked nonchalantly down his back before leaping to the floor. Kathryn was sorry to see him go, for she felt that somehow he had been a bulwark between her and Adam whose present manner she did not understand.

  She shook her head. “I’m not hungry—”

  “Then dinner can wait. Won’t you sit down?” He indicated the inviting armchair, and when she was seated he thrust his hands into his pockets and stood looking down at her. His eyes seemed to travel all over her, as if she were a stranger whose looks he had pledged himself to memorise. At last he said slowly: “So you’re leaving the Wardrop?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Matron told me this morning.” The answer was not unexpected, but he went on: “She was puzzled as to your possible reasons for doing so, but I took the liberty of telling her what I believed them to be—”

  “You could hardly have known what they were.”

  “I thought I did—then. I was wrong, as I’ve been wrong about a great many things. I told Matron that I believed you were leaving to be married—”

  “Married? Dr. Brand, you had no right!”

  “I know that. You must forgive me. I think I derived a savage kind of satisfaction from putting the thing into so many words, facing myself as well as Matron with the inevitability of it. You see, I hadn’t then talked to Steven I was with Matron this morning, remember. It was not until I lunched with Steven that he told me that Sir Paul had accepted him on the staff of the South African clinic and that he hoped, by exercising patience, to persuade Thelma to make up her mind to go out with him. And that meant the only thing that mattered to me, Kathryn—it told me that you wouldn’t be going out there as Steven’s wife!”

  With bewildered weariness Kathryn murmured: “You were disappointed? You wanted me to marry Steven—so much?”

  “So much?” Impulsively Adam knelt down by her chair. “On the contrary, so little, my very dear! Don’t you understand?”

  Kathryn turned away from him, questioning that she had actually heard the endearment, and not daring to trust the hope aroused by the seeming entreaty in his eyes. In a tight, hard voice she said: “I only know I understood you very well when you wanted to thrust me into marrying Steven. Isn’t it likely that I should expect you to be disappointed when you learned that he and I had defied your decisions for us, and had achieved only a very satisfying friendship of our own?”

  For a long moment there was silence. Then Adam stood up and went to sit on the other side of the hearth, resting his forearms on his knees and staring at his clasped hands.

  In a low voice he said: “I deserved that. But I have already asked so much of you that I’m daring to ask that you should believe what I must say now. Kathryn, I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you!”

  “You hated and despised me—for what you thought I’d done to Steven!”

  “No. That was the overflow of the stored anger I’d been harbouring against the woman I’d expected to find you to be—ruthless and calculating where your own best interests were concerned and willing to throw Steven over when yours and his did not coincide. You were quite different, and a true instinct in me knew it. But I’d stored that anger too long, though when I used it against you I felt that somehow I was using it in my own defence as much as in Steven’s. I didn’t want to fall in love with the woman Steven loved, but by the time he returned to England I knew that I’d done so irrevocably and for ever.” Adam paused and looked at Kathryn, compelling her eves to meet his. “If you’ve believed me so far,” he said harshly, “perhaps you can guess what happened then?”

  “You didn’t tell him—”

  “No, I didn’t tell him. And when I learned that all his hopes of making good and of happiness were centred upon you, still I conceived it as the only thing my friendship could do for him—to stand aside from any hope of you for myself.”

  “You didn’t think of what you might be doing—to me?” The words came in no more than a whisper from Kathryn’s lips.

  “To you? But I couldn’t have harmed you by what I did unless you loved me in return. No, Kathryn, I’d created for myself a big enough problem—but that wasn’t part of it. Meanwhile, I had to school myself to controlling every look and every word when I was with you and every thought when I was not. Sometimes, I admit, a small voice suggested that I was attempting the impossible and that friendship did not demand it of me. Sometimes I allowed myself to listen. Once was when, not long ago. I tried to tell you what you’d done to me at that first meeting—”

  “And you didn’t realise even then what you had done to me?”

  “Oh, I know I’d been unjust, but I tried to explain that—” Adam broke off suddenly and raised his head in a listening attitude, as if only now was he hearing what she had said.

  “What I’d done to you!” he murmured wonderingly. Then, in a single moment, he was at her side again, holding out both hands to her, drawing her to face him. “Kathryn, are you telling me that you have loved me—all the time?”

  “Almost all, I think. And loving you destroyed my sense of proportion. If I hadn’t cared so much, I might have laughed at your determination to hand me over to Steven. And I shouldn’t have been so hurt when I was given an inkling that you thought I was far too much in evidence off the ward as well as on.”

  “My sweet, where did you get that idea? As if I could ever have seen too much of you, except for fear of betraying myself to you! Why I never dared to ask you here, to see you actually here in my home, which I longed to make yours. And until to-night, when I knew at last that you were not going to marry Steven after all, I’d only once ventured to ask you to share a meal with me. When I found you here before me, I knew that I’d already wasted far too much time, and whatever your answer might be, I had to tell you all that I have told you now.”

  “I don’t understand it all. You told Matron that you knew I was leaving to be married. But you couldn’t have had any suggestion of that from Steven when, until he lunched with you, you didn’t even know about the South African job?”

  “I did know about it, though until I saw Steven I didn’t know it was settled. Sir Paul had told me that he was considering Steven for one of the posts on offer, and also that he understood he would be going out as a married man—married, Kathryn, to you!”

  “But Steven didn’t allow Sir Paul to believe that!”

  “No. But Thelma did. You know how she has always tried to do Steven’s living as well as her own? I suppose she wanted that job for him pretty badly, and knowing Sir Paul was looking for married men, she told him she hoped Steven would be eligible in that particular, and mentioned your name. It might have been wishful thinking, though it could have done Steven more harm than good, if Sir Paul had got the idea that he had been deceived. But it was something she had set her heart upon, hadn’t she?”

  Kathryn caught back the impulse to reveal to Adam that she suddenly knew why. Thelma had wanted Adam enough to make even her real concern for Steven serve that end. But in her own new sweet knowledge and security of Adam’s love, Thelma had become a shadowy figure without threat. One day she would ask him what Thelma had meant to him. But not now.

  He went on: “Now Steven’s only worry is lest she should decide against going out to South Africa with him. Personally, I think she will go. As I see Thelma, she’s never so ‘real’ or so sincere as when she is doing battle for Steven. It’s her one lovable trait when so much else about her—her arrogance and her sophistication—isn’t lovable at all. Anyhow, at the time I believed she knew Steven’s plans well enough to justify my telling Matron what I did—”

  “Matron!” Kathryn started in sudden guilt. “I had an appointment with her more than an hour ago!”

  “But you were phoning her when I came in!”

  “Yes, but she wasn’t in her quarters. I must try again. What on earth am I to say? She’ll never forgive me—”

  Adam pushed her gently back into her chair. �
��As your future husband—though it occurs to me that I haven’t yet asked you to marry me—I’m entitled to take over any such awkwardnesses and embarrassments. I’ll phone Matron—”

  “But what are you going to tell her?”

  “The truth. That you tried to ring her, and that since then you’ve been too engrossed. No, otherwise engaged, I think. There’s a choice double meaning to that. And there’s an additional item of information I owe her too.”

  “I believe you’re going to have to confess that you were wrong when you told her I was going to be married!”

  “Not at all. There’s nothing to confess. You see, when I told her you were going to marry, I didn’t tell her whom, and she didn’t ask. Now I’m going to rectify the omission—that’s all!”

  When Adam returned he was laughing softly He was away for some time, during which Kathryn sat on in the candlelight, trying to savour the unbelievable thing—that Adam loved her. And she was resolving: I must never let it fade from being the wonder that it is now. If ever it’s in danger of becoming commonplace, or I’m taking it for granted, I must always remember that there was a time when I believed it could never happen, and that when it did it was like a glory round me.

  “What did Matron say?” urged Kathryn.

  “She was as wily as a fox. When I told her, she said that she had suspected some romantic significance to your ‘private reasons’, and that to my free piece of information she had already supplied the bridegroom’s name in her own mind, only she hadn’t wanted to embarrass me by forcing a premature announcement. She graciously added that I was to be congratulated, as you and I were ‘ideally suited’. In short, she conveyed the impression that she had blessed our union weeks ago!”

  “I don’t believe a word of it. About her knowing, I mean,” protested Kathryn laughingly.

  “Neither do I. After all, dearest, we didn’t know ourselves—then, did we?”

  Kathryn shook her head. “My ‘private reasons’ meant only that I was running away before it was too late—”

  “And now you’re staying with me—for always.” His hands were framing her head as he tilted her face up to his.

  Kathryn murmured: “You haven’t kissed me yet—”

  “Haven’t I?” His eyes challenged hers mischievously, but the true depth of his meaning seemed to burn into her brain. A lovely colour suffused her face and throat as she whispered:

  “So you did know I wasn’t Thelma that night?”

  “I never for an instant supposed you were. But I had to challenge you with some name not your own or you would have realised I’d recognised you. I’ve told you that I had my moments of weakness. That was one of the worst—and yet the best—that I had to endure.”

  “You meant to kiss me—like that?” The memory of the touch of his lips upon hers in the darkness was a heady, melting excitement.

  “I meant to kiss you—like that. As I’m doing now—”

  But he was wrong. As he sought and found her mouth there was a difference. In that first kiss there had been passion driven blindly by despair. The second, though it spoke of a ripe passion still, promised the hope of a fulfilment that would be their love’s armour against the world.