by Susan Barrie
Dallas smiled, a trifle uncertainly.
“Have you had lunch?” he asked, and when she admitted that she had, suggested that they went somewhere and had an early tea together.
“As a matter of fact, I skipped lunch, and I’m beginning to feel a trifle peckish. And afterwards I can drive you home. By the way, how is Cousin Martin?” he asked.
“Almost completely fit,” she told him, and tried to think of a good, sound excuse why he should not drive her home. “After next week I won’t be looking after him,” she added. “I’m going back to London.” “A pity,” he commented, and looked down at her regretfully. “However, I’m often in London, and I’ll look you up at your nursing home—Ardrath House, isn’t it?—the next time I’m there. I usually stay a couple of days or so, and we could do a theatre, or something of the sort.”
Meeting him, and being forced to enter into a conversation with him, and parry his sometimes searching questions, proved such a diversion that she forgot to dwell on her shock of the morning, and the reason why she was in Oldthorpe, and she was actually grateful to him, by the time they had consumed a pot of tea, lots of hot buttered scones and some of his favorite chocolate cake, for appearing when he did . . . especially as she probably owed her life to him.
She told him about the visitor of the morning, and he failed to look in the least surprised.
“Oh, yes, I knew she was planning a visit,” he said. His eyes roved over her appreciatively. “She’s been looking up Stephanie at her school in Bournemouth, or wherever it is, and I expect they’ll have a lot to talk about.”
Dallas was sure they would. And, judging by that incredulous expression in Martin’s eyes when his wife walked into the library, after neglecting him for so long, it wouldn’t be all about Stephanie!
She felt as if the slice of home-made cake she had been previously enjoying had become dust and ashes in her mouth, and she found it impossible to swallow another morsel.
“She—Mrs. Loring—is exceptionally lovely,” she remarked, and Brent smiled even more appreciatively.
“Yes, she is, isn’t she? Quite a girl! But not as lovely as someone I once knew. Her sister, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh?” Dallas said.
He shrugged.
“I don’t think we’d better talk about her now. It’s a sore subject . . . rather a painful one for me! Have some more cake? ” and he suddenly noticed that she had left the better part of a slice on her plate untouched.
“Appetite failed? Oh, well . . . You’re looking brighter than when I first saw you. But for me, you know, you’d have been hit by that car.”
“I know.” She smiled at him tremulously. “It just shows I wasn’t meant to be hit by it, doesn’t it?”
On their way back to Loring Court, she began to feel uneasy in case he should expect to be invited in. But she need not have worried. He slowed the car just inside the main gates, and said wryly that perhaps it would be better if she walked the rest of the way.
“We don’t want to send your patient’s blood-pressure up at this stage of his convalescence,” he remarked. “And the sight of me does seem to have a bad effect on him! ”
He helped her out of the car, squeezed her hand when she said goodbye and thanked him for the tea, and said that he would be seeing her again soon . . . he hoped!
Dallas walked the rest of the way up the drive. It was about a quarter to five—much later than she had anticipated being back— and her employer was waiting for her at the head of the terrace steps, the October dusk gathering round him.
CHAPTER SIX
SHE took once quick look at his face and realized that he was in a very bad humor indeed.
He glanced deliberately at the watch on his wrist.
“So you’re back at last, Nurse Drew!” he exclaimed. “I hope you’ve had a very pleasant day? Was that the bus I heard starting up at the drive gates just now? You must have had an exceptionally considerate driver to drop you off practically on the doorstep!”
“I didn’t come home by bus,” Dallas replied, so perturbed by his anger that she sounded breathless and on the defensive.
“That,” he informed her, with the utmost dryness, “is something I had deduced already. For one thing, the last bus leaves Oldthorpe at three o’clock in the afternoon according to the new autumn schedule, and it’s now nearly five. Did you by any chance thumb a lift?”
She shook her head.
“Of course not. As a matter of fact your—Mr. Rutherford drove me home. I ran into him in Oldthorpe and he offered to drive me back.”
“How nice,” her employer commented icily, “for both of you!” He turned and led the way into the house, limping more noticeably than he had done for days, and leaning heavily on the stick he had not yet discarded. They went in through the open French window of the library, and Dallas thought it looked infinitely attractive in the failing light, with a log fire blazing on the hearth, and a reading lamp already glowing softly on the huge walnut desk. She also thought it had a most attractive smell, compounded of the burning apple logs, cigarette smoke and a far more elusive, far more subtle feminine perfume which must have hung about it since Mrs. Martin Loring returned to it that morning.
“Sit down, please,” Martin requested, with uncompromising abruptness, as Dallas stood hugging her parcels up in her arms and looking quite uncertain what she ought to do or say next.
She sat down in a deep leather chair, with her parcels in her lap.
“To begin with, I don’t think I was consulted this morning before you decided to take a day off,” the doctor enunciated clearly. “To go on with, I don’t approve of my nurse—or any nurse, if it comes to that—so far forgetting what is expected of her as to disappear into the blue without issuing any previous warning, or making any arrangements for the welfare of her patient, particularly when she is receiving an extremely generous salary from me. I pay you to make yourself useful to me, Nurse Drew, not to go off shopping for the day, and keeping assignations with my cousin.”
She gasped.
“But I’ve already told you that I ran into him by accident! And Mrs. Loring—your aunt—was perfectly well aware of where I had gone, and why I had gone. I didn’t consult you because—well, because you weren’t free at the time.”
“And because I wasn’t free—because I had a visitor—you decided to sneak off and leave me to cope as best I could. If I didn’t need you, Nurse, you wouldn’t still be here.”
Her face grew hot.
“I deny that I ‘sneaked off,” she said, controlling her indignation with difficulty. “I don’t think I thought of Mrs. Loring as a—a visitor!—and there isn’t very much that I can do for you now that you are almost completely fit again that you can’t do for yourself. I realize that I’m a little late—” “A little,” he agreed, with icy emphasis.
“But I received permission from your aunt to take the better part of the day off, and as you were entertaining a—a visitor, it didn’t seem to me that you would need me.”
“Mrs. Loring left almost immediately after lunch,” he informed her, as if, in some curious way, she was responsible for the early departure. “And I’ve no doubt she thought it extremely odd that you absented yourself the very instant she arrived. As a matter of fact, she commented on the fact that you weren’t wearing your uniform.” Dallas’s face was suddenly quite a study.
“But you asked me to wear it as little as possible when I first came here,” she reminded him. “You said that you disliked uniform. And normally I wear it throughout the whole of the daytime, and it’s only in the evenings that I change into something more informal. That again is because you asked me to be more informal in the evenings! ”
“My dear Nurse,” he returned, crushingly, “surely after a year of nursing discipline—and I’ll admit a year isn’t very long!—you have learned the lesson all nurses learn, sooner or later—that in his, or her, own interests the patient should not be humored. If I’d asked you to wear a bikin
i or a sun-suit I don’t imagine you would have humored me to such an extent, would you? There are rules to every game, you know, and they have to be adhered to. And nursing is not a game.”
She felt as if the color seeped slowly out of her face, and inside herself she started to tremble. She had never been entirely sure of him, either as a doctor or a patient—as a doctor he could bite, if the mood was on him; as a patient he was far too whimsical—and now, in his capacity as both doctor and patient, he had wiped the ground from under her feet. He made her feel as if she had transgressed every rule in the nursing calendar . . . and it only needed him to remind her that she had once slapped his face!
She got slowly and somewhat awkwardly to her feet, ignoring the odd parcel that slipped from her grasp and rolled under a settee. She swallowed twice before she spoke.
“It seems to me, Doctor, that you could dispense with me almost immediately,” she got out huskily. “We had arranged that I should return to London next week. Wouldn’t it be far better from your point of view if I left at once? Tomorrow, anyway.”
He started limping up and down the length of the room, and during the course of his uneven progress he lighted and cast away— or rather, ground out in an ash tray—a cigarette, threw another into the fire, and finally glared with distaste at the one he finally succeeded in getting to light.
He threw that away, too.
“You shouldn’t throw in the sponge, Nurse, before the moment is ripe,” he observed at last. “However, I’ve decided to take a short Mediterranean cruise before returning to duty, and that being so it probably would be as well if we parted company fairly quickly. I’ve got to get used to tying my own shoe laces, and so forth.” He looked her rather oddly in the eyes. “You can leave tomorrow, if you like, or the day after. I’ll send a note to Matron telling her you’ve looked after me excellently, and on the next occasion when I get hit by a bus, or my car gets involved in another argument with a taxi, I’ll put forward a special request to have you take charge of me.”
“I sincerely hope there will be no other occasion when you get hit by a bus, Doctor,” Dallas replied, making a desperate effort to keep her voice sounding natural. “But if you do require nursing again I think it would be better if you asked for someone more experienced than me to take charge of you. I’m afraid I haven’t proved very satisfactory.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” He cocked his head on one side, and for a moment the old quizzical humor peeped through. “You’ve done your best, and it isn’t your fault that you’re—well, inexperienced, shall we say?”
The door opened, and Aunt Letty joined them. She looked relieved at the sight of Dallas.
“I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you, Nurse . . .” she began.
But her nephew held up his hand.
“Spare her, Aunt,” he begged. “She has already given me an account of her day, and I think we ought to let her off any further recriminations. I’ve just been telling her that I’m off to the Mediterranean, and I think we ought to drink to my complete restoration to health, as the saying goes.”
“Off to the—?” Aunt Letty stared at him, startled. “And when did you decide to do that? Only yesterday you were talking about staying on here until Christmas! ”
He smiled at her, a slightly one-sided, coolly amused smile.
“Shall we say that my mind was altered for me this morning? Or perhaps a little later than this morning! But the decision now taken is unalterable! ” This morning? Dallas thought. With the sudden reappearance of his wife? Were they going on the cruise together? That seemed the only possible explanation of such a sudden decision, and such a ruthless manner of getting rid of her, Dallas!
Mrs. Loring hadn’t approved of the way she wore casual clothes. The fact that she was young! . . .
Dallas returned to London the following day. She left Loring Court immediately after an early breakfast, and was driven to the station by Dr. Loring’s chauffeur. Dr. Loring himself was not in evidence at the moment of her departure, but his aunt waved her goodbye from the top of the steps. Dallas had the feeling that she was sorry she was going—perhaps very sorry, for they had got on together extremely well—and it was only Martin Loring who had belatedly decided that he would have done better to have picked upon an older nurse.
As she sat in the train, journeying to London— and at least she had been provided with a seat in a first class carriage, well supplied with magazines, and instructed to have lunch in the restaurant car— she thought of the moment when she had said goodbye to her patient the night before. It was after dinner, when she had asked to be excused in order to do her packing, and he had accompanied her to the door of the dining room and held it open for her.
He had held out his hand in a casual, friendly manner, and she had put hers into it. His face had looked a little set when she glanced upwards at it, suddenly, but his lips were smiling with the slight one-sidedness that so often distinguished his smile.
“No hard feelings, Nurse?” he asked. “Because I lost my
temper yesterday? Of course you’ve looked after me splendidly. And I’m afraid I've been anything but an easy patient. The one thing I wish you is a really exemplary patient next time . . . and no mean advantages taken! ”
His eyes gleamed for an instant, she realized he was referring to the episode of the kiss, and she turned away.
“Goodbye, Doctor. I hope when you return from your cruise you will be absolutely fit.”
“There’s nothing much the matter with me now,” he admitted. He called out to her as she was about to ascend the stairs: “I’ll see you at Ardrath House!” She didn’t answer. When they came face to face in Ardrath House—if they ever came face to face, which was unlikely, as she was so junior—he would be the visiting consultant, and she would have no status at all. And if he condescended to notice her it would be simply and solely because she had once helped to while away long evenings at Loring Court, and played chess and backgammon with him.
She found it difficult to settle down in London again after her month at Loring Court. November was a very cold, grey month, for one thing, and December was even colder. There were lots of colds and influenza about, and she herself went down with influenza about a week before Christmas. She was feeling very shaky and completely unlike herself when she was allowed up for Boxing Day in the Nurses’ Home, only to take to her bed again the following day with a steadily mounting temperature.
She supposed that but for the powerful modern drugs that were used on her she would have had a very bad time indeed, quite unlikely to have escaped pneumonia, and her convalescence might have lasted indefinitely. As it was, she was sent home to recuperate for a fortnight in the middle of January, and by the time she returned to duty the excited word was going round the nursing home that Dr. Loring was back in Harley Street.
He must have grown tired of the Mediterranean, or else the weather hadn’t been up to standard there, for he had proceeded as far as the Bahamas in his search for sun and physical vigor. Or was it a kind of protracted second honeymoon? Dallas wondered, when she heard of the extent of his travels.
When she saw him again for the first time for three months she experienced something like a, shock because he looked so well. So brown that he must have spent countless hours doing nothing but courting the beneficial effects of the sun . . . and bathing in deliciously warm waters. He no longer walked with even a trace of
a limp, his eye was bright and alert, and he was as straight and elegant as he had ever been as he ascended the stairs with Matron.
Dallas had seen his car outside, and she was in a sense prepared for a sudden encounter. But she expected him merely to nod at her, and to pass on. She wasn’t prepared to have him stop— thereby making it necessary for Matron to stop, too—and ask her how she was.
“You’re hardly an advertisement for Ardrath House, Nurse,” he remarked, frowning. “The last time I saw you you were looking reasonably fit, but since then something’s happen
ed to you. What?”
“Nurse Drew was one of the unfortunate ones who caught influenza just before Christmas,” Matron took it upon herself to explain. “We had quite an epidemic, and at one time it looked as if the entire nursing home was going down with it. However, nearly everyone made a fairly speedy recovery except poor Nurse here. She gave us quite a lot of trouble,” smiling forgivingly at ‘poor Nurse’, “and had to be sent home. As a matter of fact she has only just returned to duty.”
“I see,” Martin Loring exclaimed. But he went on frowning at Dallas. “And does that mean you’ve had a proper check-up since you returned? You look
to me as if you could do with a few weeks where I’ve just come from.”
Dallas coughed . . . she hadn’t yet conquered the nasty, irritating little cough that was a legacy from the bout of influenza.
“Oh, I’m very much better now,” she assured him, with a stiffness that made her voice sound stilted and slightly strained.
His eyebrows ascended a little, as if he could disagree with that statement. Matron was impatient to move on, but he had not yet finished with Nurse Drew.
“My aunt was asking about you the other day,” he remarked. “At the moment she’s in London, and she asked me to remember her to you if I saw you.” “That was very kind of Mrs. Loring,” she returned, just as stiffly. “Please thank her for the card she sent me at Christmas. It was most kind of her. I’m afraid I wasn’t well enough to return the compliment. Will you be so good as to explain to her?” “Of course,” he said.
Dallas knew what was expected of her, and she turned and disappeared along the nearest corridor as if she was a piece of thistledown and a little breeze had blown her away. Dr. Loring followed Matron’s straight back along the opposite corridor with a definite cleft between his dark brows.
It was during her off-duty break the following afternoon that she ran into him again. She had been shopping in Oxford Street, and was walking back to Ardrath House through some of the quieter byways when his car came sneaking round a corner and pulled up within a few feet of her. His door was held open, and he looked out at her smilingly.