Doctor's Love

by Jane Arbor

  Mrs. Tempest looked at the bent dark head with something of a shrewd understanding in her eyes. “Well, when he comes professionally you still might like to ask him to come over and have a meal with us in the ordinary way—as a friend, I mean. After all—” (was there an unaccustomed note of asperity in the quiet, modulated tone?) “—even local G.P.S, however busy they are, can usually make and keep social appointments!”

  Lysbet looked up eagerly. It was just like Aunt Alicia—just as generous and kind and tolerant as she always was—to wish to put no obstacle in her niece’s way to meeting and knowing people, even when she herself did not particularly care for them, as Lysbet was sure she did not care for Doctor Guyse.

  “I’d like to do that,” she agreed. “And I’d rather like to ask a Mrs. Ware too, sometime. She’s acting as the doctor’s secretary; she’s quite young, but she is the widow of an old friend of Doctor Guyse. She has a little boy called Ian—he’d probably like to try to ride the new pony—”

  She stopped as her aunt, with a smile, made a mock gesture as of embracing the universe. “Let them all come!” she said wryly.

  The two of them were in the garden together when, a couple of mornings later, Doctor Guyse was announced.

  As he strode across the lawns towards them Mrs. Tempest glanced quickly at her niece’s face and then at Richard’s tall figure, tanned face and fair hair increasingly bleached by the sun as the summer wore on.

  Her swift thought: “He’s opinionated. But he’s presentable. Does Lysbet really?” was interrupted by the need to greet him, and by the look in her niece’s eyes as she laughingly held out her hand to Richard Guyse, Mrs. Tempest found herself answered. Lysbet was in love!

  While Richard was asking a few professional questions drinks were brought out from the house, and he accepted a glass of sherry and a cigarette before going further on his rounds.

  The conversation was general, but while they talked Mrs. Tempest’s thoughts were all with Lysbet and of how that intuitive guess of her own was being proved right.

  For there was no doubt that Lysbet, though vivacious always, had seemed to light up from within at the sight of the man before her.

  And the man? What of him? Was he learning to love Lysbet in return? Putting an idle word or two into the conversation now and again, Mrs. Tempest was watching him shrewdly.

  He was sitting forward in his chair, elbows upon his knees a cigarette between his fingers. In this position he was forced to look up at Lysbet as they talked, and in the frank, grey eyes raised to the girl’s face there seemed to the watching older woman to be something not far short of worship. Their talk too she realized, spelt the story of a blossoming friendship which was already full of little jokes and references at which they laughed together but which meant nothing to anyone else. Love, after all, was made up of such stuff as this—the fanned fire in Lysbet’s eyes, the look of adoration in the man’s, while their lips used a mere chatter of ordinary, prosaic words to sing the secret song—‘I love you’—to each other’s heart.

  Mrs. Tempest roused herself to suggest that Lysbet should show Doctor Guyse the grounds...

  As they stood up she said lightly: “You’ll stay to luncheon, Doctor?”

  Richard hesitated, glanced from her to Lysbet, and then with an obvious effort answered rather ruefully: “I’d love to. But I really mustn’t today. I’ve got several cases a long way out in the country.”

  “Then another day? Tuesday, perhaps? Even though Lysbet won’t be able to play, we could make up some tennis—”

  “I should like that,” agreed Richard, and when Mrs. Tempest had named the hour at which they usually lunched the two young people moved off together.

  When they had gone she sat alone, staring out across the sunlit lawn before her. Once she shivered slightly, as if the sun, which still shone from an unshadowed sky, had gone behind a cloud. Then she reached for her cigarette case, lit a cigarette and smoked it thoughtfully.

  This thing—the probability that one day Lysbet would fall in love and want to marry the man of her choice—was something which she had always known her guardianship of the girl must face, sooner or later. Now that it had happened, how was she going to handle the situation? And what was it going to mean?

  She had needed time, she told herself. That was why, after her first intuition of the feeling that ran between Lysbet and Richard Guyse, she had made to conceal her resentment of the high-handed attitude which the man had taken up over Lysbet’s case. She did not normally brook such interference with her wishes; she certainly had been mad to find herself accepting Doctor Guyse socially

  Could she, she wondered, hope that for Lysbet it was an infatuation which would pass? If it were, she had probably done the right thing by throwing them together, giving it a chance to work itself out. But in her heart Mrs. Tempest knew that what she had seen this morning was no infatuation.

  It was something, on the contrary, which would need the most delicate handling. For Lysbet, at twenty-three, might do as she pleased in the matter of marriage. And the very last thing which Mrs. Tempest wanted was either to antagonize the girl or to throw her over-precipitately into the arms of Richard Guyse—or indeed into those of any man, until she herself had had time ... time ... time ...

  Meanwhile, Lysbet, having taken at its literal face value her aunt’s direction to show the grounds of Falcons to Richard, had brought him at last by way of an archway cut in a thick yew hedge into the kitchen gardens where rows of vegetables were growing on either side of box bordered gravel paths.

  Since leaving the lawns they had talked and joked on a dozen different subjects and Lysbet was savoring the joy of being able to say something which might mean very little, but of which such meaning as it had would be taken by her companion and tossed back to her in the age-old shuttlecock and battledore game of being in love.

  She reached out and pulled a big pea-pod at the identical instant at which Richard did the same.

  “Have a pea!” they offered simultaneously, but Richard’s pod was open first while Lysbet fumbled one-handedly at hers.

  “Look—nine!” he counted. “Oughtn’t I to wish or something?”

  Lysbet shook her head, her dark hair falling over her face as she bent to count her own. “Nine’s too common—you oughtn’t to get a wish under at least ten. Now I’ve got ten!”

  “H’m. Inferior peas to mine, no doubt,” commented Richard, opening his mouth to take in the contents of his pod at one gulp. “But wish away. What are you going to wish?”

  Lysbet looked shocked. “You must never tell wishes!” she said childishly. “If you do they don’t come true.”

  Richard looked at her, knew instantly the dearest wish of his own heart but merely said lightly: “Do they ever?”

  Lysbet considered this. “Yes—in the end, almost always, I think. Only it often means that you have to do something about what you want as well as merely wishing. I can’t exactly explain—”

  She broke off, and Richard, full of his own tumultuous thoughts, did not press her. Silence fell for a minute or two as they stood side by side idly pulling at the pea-pods. Then Lysbet said suddenly: “How is Mrs. Ware?”

  Richard looked at her quizzically. “Are you inquiring about Caroline’s health, or do you mean, how is Caroline with regard to me, her employer, or how am I, her employer, with regard to Caroline?”

  Lysbet laughed. “All three, I daresay!”

  Richard took a deep breath. “Well, physically I suppose Caroline is blooming. She comes into the surgery each morning looking like a delicate white flower opening to the sun. But I’m afraid that our effect upon each other is such that, at the day’s end, that magnolia-sheen of hers is badly tarnished and upon me there’s practically no veneer at all!”

  “You’re still laughing at her!” protested Lysbet, not knowing what it was that impelled her to take Caroline’s part, unless it was some queer sense of the loyalty which ought to ran between women. “I think it was pretty brave
of her to take on a completely new job like that—”

  Richard thrust his hands into his pockets and drew himself up. “Yes, I suppose it was,” he admitted more seriously. “I’m afraid, knowing Caroline as I do, I’ve been inclined to see it as evidence of that intense practicality of her which she is at such pains to conceal beneath her baby ways. When she asked me to help her she was shrewd enough to know that I couldn’t let her down, and though I could forgive her for being shrewd, I can’t bear her air of never having heard tell of the word, much less understanding its meaning. Forgive my talking about her like this—”

  “I don’t know that I do!” retorted Lysbet with spirit. “I admire her, if she were really afraid of the future, for having done something about it before it closed in on her. If you hadn’t given her a job I daresay someone else would have done. So, whether she works for you or for anyone else, at least she is earning her own living—achieving independence. I—oh I know that I can only envy her with all my heart!”

  The last words were spoken with an almost savage intensity as Lysbet turned away from the startled look in Richard’s face. She had said too much of all that had been troubling her lately! What would he think of her?

  For answer he took her gently by the wrist, turned her around to face him.

  “You?” he said. “You ‘envy’ Caroline? What on earth for? And if you do, is there any reason in the world why you shouldn’t go and do likewise?”

  Lysbet turned her wrist within his grasp, testing whether he would release her. He did so instantly and she said dully: “But I can’t. You don’t understand—”

  “Perhaps I do. Your Aunt?” Richard’s tone was dry.

  “Yes. If ever I have tested her about it she has always asked me whether there was anything I wanted that I hadn’t got, and then said that she couldn’t possibly spare me. I’ve got nothing, and all my life she has given me so much, too much.”

  “Everything except your freedom as an individual. ‘So much, too much’!” commented Richard sardonically, then added, “Haven’t you, young woman, been getting things rather out of proportion?” he asked. “What, after all, is there to prevent your taking matters into your hands and breaking away tomorrow if you want to?”

  “Perhaps—” began Lysbet slowly, fumbling for the expression of her meaning, “the thing that prevents me is the same as the idea which you say drove you to give Mrs. Ware a job against your better judgment. I don’t stay with Aunt Alicia because I’m too lazy to get out because, if she wants me, I must stay. That’s all there is to it.”

  Richard laughed. “All right. Touché—and perhaps I understand a misguided loyalty of that sort better than you know. But what made you tell me this? Is there anything I can do?”

  Lysbet flashed a look of gratitude to him for his words, but of his help she would have none.

  “No—oh, no! I tell you that my staying here with Aunt Alicia is all my own doing really. I could go away today—or tomorrow—but I’m not going! I’ve sometimes thought, you know, that Aunt Alicia could never bear to be alone. She seems haunted by the fear of it—not that, with her looks and her money and her hosts of friends, she need ever be lonely. But it’s something to which I wouldn’t dare to condemn her.”

  Richard gave her a long, long look before, as by silent, common consent they turned to walk back towards the house.

  “Well, men do strange things in the name of loyalty,” he said cryptically, “but it seems that women do even stranger!”

  Lysbet did not answer and it was not until they were crossing the last terraced lawn that Richard spoke again.

  “Had it ever struck either you or your aunt that one day you would expect to leave her—in marriage?”

  Lysbet started, and a blush suffused her face to the very hair line. “I—I suppose we haven’t thought about it much,” she admitted.

  Richard smiled. That blush had given him hope and courage, qualities upon which he wasn’t going to trade today, but which he was going to husband and to hoard against a day in the future when, please God!

  He held out his hand to her. “Well, hadn’t you better begin thinking about it? It sometimes—happens, you know!”

  Then he was gone, leaving Lysbet standing quite still looking after him until, when he was out of sight, she turned away with a little tremulous sigh upon her lips.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  At breakfast on the following Tuesday morning Mrs. Tempest finished reading her mail and then asked Lysbet: “How many people are coming for tennis today, darling?”

  Lysbet prepared to count on her fingers. “I’m afraid it’s going to be rather a Box-and-Cox affair—people popping in, just as others are popping out,” she admitted. “You see, we weren’t able to give anyone much notice. Let’s see—Doctor Guyse and Mrs. Ware are coming to lunch, but they’ll have to leave after tea for the doctor’s surgery hour. And Barry has had to go to Newcastle for some obscure reason and won’t get here until about teatime, he says. Then there are Mr. and Mrs. Peterson and Johnnie, and Long John Silver—and that’s all. The worst of giving parties in this neighborhood is that there’s always such a shortage of men, Aunt Alicia!”

  “Well, thanks be for our dear Major Silver who is always available and has never been known to refuse an invitation to anything,” commented Mrs. Tempest dryly. “Anyway, it looks as if we shall need only one court. Shall we walk down to see if Sampson has got it ready?”

  They went out through the french window together and as they crossed the lawn in the hot sunshine Mrs. Tempest asked: “About this Mrs. Ware—why did you ask her today? I should think Doctor Guyse would have preferred to come alone, wouldn’t he?”

  Lysbet hesitated. “Well, when I phoned her she sounded as if she looked forward awfully to coming, and by asking her today it meant that the doctor could bring her out and take her back by car. Otherwise she would have had to catch a bus, somehow she doesn’t look at all the sort of person who ought to have to travel by a bus!”

  At the back of Lysbet’s mind lurked the vague knowledge that she wanted to see Caroline Ware and Richard Guyse together, but she did not define this to Aunt Alicia.

  “Why, isn’t she neat and be-spectacled and secretary-looking?” asked aunt.

  Lysbet laughed. “Wait until you see her! She’s neat, but she’s decorative as a piece of Dresden and about as fragile in appearance.”

  A straw of hope which had floated her way seemed to Mrs. Tempest to be turning and strengthening within her grasp—

  She glanced quickly at Lysbet. “You mean—she’s attractive?”

  To Lysbet came a returning vision—of Caroline crossing a room with a bouquet cradled in her arms. “Very attractive, I should say,” she answered quietly.

  “Then perhaps your Doctor Guyse will be asking her to combine the work of wife and secretary before long. He is a bachelor, isn’t he?” Mrs. Tempest spoke as if the subject had the merest passing concern for her, instead of being one of many testing thrusts she had lately made in Lysbet’s direction.

  The girl, standing upon the newly marked service line of the court, seemed for the moment to be completely intent upon toeing it with accuracy. When she had done it to her satisfaction she said with a too studied indifference: “Yes, he is a bachelor. But I don’t know about him and Mrs. Ware. Only that they’ve been friends for years.”

  “Well, it’ll be fun, seeing whether we think the wedding bells will ring for them in the near future,” commented Mrs. Tempest. “Or is that sort of thing regarded as ‘fun’ only by the over-forty-five’s I wonder? When we’re past middle age we have to take so much of our pleasure at secondhand! Don’t you wish,” she added, changing the subject, “that you were able to play today, darling? You look as if you were dying to get one of those first services of yours whizzing down the centre line!”

  Lysbet threw back her head with an air of flinging off a thought which burdened her. “Yes I do. I’m simply tingling to play and swim again before the summer goes. Although�
�”

  “Although?” her aunt prompted, her arm lightly across Lysbet’s shoulders as they turned back to the house.

  “Just that sometimes—a lot too often lately—I’ve been thinking I haven’t the right to spend all my time doing such things. I ought to be earning my living properly, even though I blink away from the thought and you, because you are sweet and generous, actually encourage me to blink! But I’m much too dependent on you, Aunt Alicia. And I shouldn’t be. It isn’t right.”

  As she spoke Lysbet turned away, pulled savagely at a head of lavender, shredded the florets between her fingers and let them fall, one by one, to the ground.

  Into the charged silence came Aunt Alicia’s voice: “I’m sorry you feel like this, Lysbet. But do you consider that you thank me—or serve yourself—by this sort of outburst? Your own father made your uncle and me your guardians. What can you find to resent in that?”

  “But that was when I was a child! I’m grown-up now. And you can’t guess how humiliating it is to know that for everything I have—whether it’s necessities, or clothes, or luxuries, or anything—I’m dependent on you—”

  “And do you suppose your father would have had me deny you anything that I could afford to give you, or to cut short my care for you because, as you say, you are ‘grownup now’? You say, too, that you are ‘humiliated’. Is that, Lysbet—” the lovely voice, which had been cold, had a note of appeal in it—“is that generous of you? You ignore the fact that in staying here with me you do me service which I hoped you were glad to do. But for you, it seems, it is ‘humiliation’!”

  Impulsively Lysbet turned about. “Oh, I’m sorry, Aunt Alicia! I’m sorry! If you want me, of course I’ll stay with you! It’s simply that, all the while, I am taking—taking. And you are giving. More, always, than I’ve a right to expect. Other girls in my position have to work for their living. If—if anything happened—”