by Jane Arbor
On the whole these proved to be reassuring. Some men were already home, unhurt and ready to give an eyewitness account of the explosion to Jess, who detached herself as tactfully as she could when she had asked her fruitless question as to whether anything was known of Ted Stormant. Others, detained at first and then discharged, had sent news to their families. With relief Jess was able to tick off one name after another. When only one call remained she begged Muir to leave her to do it alone while he returned to Quintains in time for his belated dinner party.
“What about your expectant mother?” he queried.
“When I’ve seen Mrs. Curie I can walk there. It is not far.”
Muir nodded agreement. “And when you are free to come up to Quintains I’ll send the car for you.”
Jess hesitated. “I may not be able to come at all,” she said with a fleeting regret for the filmy gray green gown spread invitingly upon her bed.
“But you’ll telephone? I—Liane is sure to be anxious about you.” Upon Jess’s promise to call later, he drove away.
Jess had hoped that her visit to Mrs. Curie might be as brief as her others and was completely unprepared for the outpourings of near hysteria with which she was greeted. For Mrs. Curie, as uncontrolled and excitable as a strong strain of Gypsy blood could make her, declared in a torrent of tears that she had read it in her teacup that she must expect the worst and that she realized nurse had come to tell her so.
“My man is dead, and nobody can tell me he isn’t!” she raved again and again.
But Jess had gathered different news. In fact, she had heard on her round that Dion Curie had escaped without a scratch, so that if he was not home yet there must be some other explanation for his delay.
It was reassurance, however, to which his wife refused to listen. “Shock,” she affirmed dramatically. “Shock—that’s what it’ll be. Quite all right at first, like his mates said—and then he’ll have collapsed all of a sudden. Don’t tell me, nurse—I know.”
“I don’t really think so, Mrs. Curie. You see, at the time he wasn’t even in the shop where the explosion took place. He’d gone to the canteen. He must have gone somewhere on the way home, and I daresay you can expect him at any time now.”
It was an unfortunate suggestion. Mrs. Curie flared at once to the defense of her husband. “If you are saying, nurse, that he’d have stopped off at The Three Crowns, he wouldn’t do such a thing. He’d come straight home to me!”
“Well, he isn’t here, is he?” argued Jess somewhat wearily. She was worried and anxious to return to Mrs. Stormant. All hopes of Liane’s party had faded now. But Mrs. Curie hysterically refused to be left, so there was nothing to do but to stay.
It was some considerable time later when the errant Dion turned up. He stood at the cottage door, smiling a little vacantly, and was evidently as unprepared for the violence of his welcome as Jess had been for hers.
Mrs. Curie faced him, black eyes flashing, arms akimbo. “Dion Curie, you’ve been drinking!” she accused.
“Just a couple with the boys, my dear—”
“And me nearly on my deathbed with worry about you, as nurse could tell you! Just a couple with the boys indeed!” Momentarily, words failed Mrs. Curie. But only momentarily, and under cover of the next onslaught Jess slipped away. It was clear that Dion Curie would sup upon what East Anglia calls “tongue pie,” but his lapse had already delayed Jess too long.
She almost ran the short distance to Mary Stormant’s. Fortunately, there was a telephone at the house, so that she could make her report from there and perhaps get news of Ted Stormant if none had come in yet.
Nothing had, and still Dr. Gilder was not available, though his secretary had more news for Jess. It appeared that work had now begun on the huge task of clearing the heavy debris of the wrecked workshops, and it was feared that the bodies of two or three missing men might be discovered in the ruins.
Jess listened in sick dismay, bracing herself to the task of making words of reassurance sound as if they were not empty of all real hope. But when she left the telephone and returned to Mary, she could see that with Ted Stormant’s young wife there were already urgencies that called for action and no longer for words.
Back to the telephone again to leave a message for the doctor asking him to come out as soon as he was free, and then to the work in which her skill was well accustomed and her deft hands were very sure of touch. But tonight she brought more than skill and more than ordinary compassion to it. For she felt—without having time to define the thought clearly—that this was no common fight, but one which was part of the inexorable rhythm of creation. Ted Stormant’s body might already be crushed and silent in death, but tonight his child would live—must live! For in birth was the mending of the torn pattern, the torch to be carried on, the quavering continuation of the tune...
She did not know how long it was before a tiny, protesting cry rose to challenge the hiss of the boiling kettles and the soft whisper of the dying fire. But the clock said it had been more than three hours, and still Dr. Gilder had not come.
“He needn’t come now,” thought Jess with a stab of quiet triumph as she laid the bundle that was Ted Stormant’s son in the cot, which had been lovingly made ready. But she feared that she could not postpone forever the news that Dr. Gilder would bring nor could that lighted serenity glow in Mary Stormant’s sleeping face forever.
Jess waited, tending the fire and moving about the room softly. Once she thought she heard the sound of a car, but it did not come up to the house and another half an hour passed before she had to go down to let the doctor in.
He looked haggard and tired out. But his first words were music to Jess’s ears.
“How is she? They’ve found Stormant, almost uninjured except that he was pinned by girders that had to be cut by acetylene flares—”
“Oh, I’m so glad! And the baby is born, doctor.”
“Born? Bless my soul!” His kindly face puckered into a tired smile. “How is Mary?”
“Sleeping at the moment. But she had a bad time.”
“Naturally. Were you with her in time, nurse?”
“Yes, fully.”
“Good. Then you’d better get along for some rest yourself. I ordered a relief nurse to follow on after me, so I’ll wait until she comes, and you needn’t report again until tomorrow. By the way, Muir Forester is waiting at the corner of the lane to take you home.”
The car that had not come as far as the house! Stupid with weariness, Jess protested, “Mr. Forester? But—but he is holding a dance for Miss Hart!”
“Well, he must have cut it, for he is in his car down there, waiting for you. I had a word with him. He said your landlady told him you were still here, and as he knew you didn’t have your car, he came down for you. Cut along now, nurse, and—” the doctor’s parting shot was delivered from halfway up the stairs “—don’t let’s have any more criticism of the squire’s care for his flock. It happens to include yourself!”
That was all it was, of course. Her work had made her part of the little feudal world lying in the protective shadow of Quintains and taking much of its substance from the squire, its master. But when she stumbled out into the darkness and came to where Muir Forester stood awaiting her by the open door of his car, somehow it was, in her utter weary need, as if he had put out a gentle solicitous hand to her alone.
Dazzled by the headlights that faced her, she was upon him almost before she knew it. She reached out blindly and suddenly, unbelievably, found his arm about her, his fingers gripping and tightening upon her shoulder.
For a blessed moment of relief, of yielding up her tiredness to his taut-held strength, she leaned against him, making believe that here, in the circle of his arm, was her rightful place of peace.
Then his voice came, cool and steadying. “All well now? I’ve come to take you home.”
She answered him with the flat simplicity of a child. “Yes. Mary Stormant has a son, and Ted is not badly hurt.�
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Muir put her into the seat beside him, drew a rug over her knees. “Yes, Dr. Gilder told me about Ted. Were you alone with Mary?”
“Yes, quite alone.”
Thereafter that became the pattern of their conversation—brief questions and answers tossed into the shared darkness, with an illusion of intimacy about their silences.
“What is the time?” Jess asked, though she knew within a little.
“After midnight,” he told her.
“You must have left the dance at full swing. I feel guilty for bringing you away. You needn’t have come for me.”
“Did you suppose I should leave you to walk back alone at this time of night?”
Jess smiled faintly. “Nurses on district in cities do it with far more risk. And they come to no harm.”
“Perhaps not. But I didn’t think it either necessary or desirable that you should tonight.” The impersonal words chilled her.
Another silence.
“Is Liane enjoying her party?” she asked.
“Very much, I think. She is wearing white, you know, and she looks ethereal.”
“She would, and I wish I could have been there to see her.”
“You wouldn’t care to come up to Quintains now?”
Jess shook her head. “Not now. It is very late.” She could not go as she was, and she must not ask him to wait while she changed. He had given enough of his time to her tonight already.
He nodded. “I think you are wise, and Liane understands.” As he spoke he drew into the curb outside Jess’s rooms. His footsteps echoed on the empty roadway as he got out and went around to open the door on her side. He took her hand, helping her to alight, and when she drew herself upright they were very close.
To Jess’s hungry heart the moment of parting seemed to demand an important phrase—something said between them that might be remembered and cherished in the bleak times ... But her tongue could not invite it, and when it came, it came from Muir.
“Good night—Jess,” he said.
CHAPTER SIX
For Jess, Muir’s unexpected use of her Christian name remained with her—glowingly, like a caress—for days afterward. Then its significance began to fade and when, at their next meeting, his manner was as coolly formal as ever, she saw that she had read into it, and into the rest of his kindly care of her that night, something that had not been there. After his coldness on the occasion of Michael’s surprise visit and his assumption that Peter Seacombe had been making love to her, she had craved a gesture from him. With the quiet tenderness of his “Good night—Jess” she had deluded herself that she had got it. But of course she had not. It had been no more than a slip into the way in which he probably responded when Liane or Peter called her Jess. Nothing more than that.
Meanwhile the lovely summer had broken up into a tempestuous autumn, which, on that bleak, open coast, had nothing mellow nor lingering about it. Sometimes winter seemed already to threaten and when Jess huddled prematurely into woollies under her uniform and set out, morning after morning, in topcoat and boots, she dreaded what the real depth of winter might bring.
Once or twice she cast a rueful regret toward Michael and her promise that he should come down for a weekend before the autumn. By now even autumn seemed on its way out, but with the onset of the bad weather Jess’s work had increased so much that she had had little chance to arrange anything with him. She supposed that he would suggest coming when he wanted to. Meanwhile, her weekends seemed as full of work as the rest of her days.
As Peter Seacombe’s leave drew to an end Jess saw less of Liane and of him than she had done before. She could not quite decide what was the cause of this. Earlier, while the weather had still been good, they had sometimes called for her to go swimming or to walk around the golf course with them, and though she had not always been able to go, sometimes she had done so. She was much busier now and her professional visits to Mrs. Seacombe had finished, so inevitably they met less. But all the same Jess had a feeling that Liane was avoiding her, not wanting to be pressed to the step she knew Jess thought she should take. Jess, understanding and pitying her, tried not to be hurt. But she was. And Liane’s avoidance of her made her promise to Peter an empty one. For how could she persuade Liane to act, when the girl shied from even the gentlest approach to the subject of Muir?
Then, one stormy morning, when Jess was driving to the village of Crane she came upon Peter sheltering from a sharp bout of rain beneath an entirely inadequate hedge.
She drew into the curb and opened the near door for him.
“Hop in, and I’ll give you a lift,” she said.
“Thanks.” Peter dived in beside her, spattering water like a spaniel. “Only I happen to be going the other way— back to Quintains.”
“Oh. Well, I’m in no hurry, so you can shelter until this blows over.” Jess looked at his clinging windbreaker and his dripping hair. “You seem to have exhausted the possibilities of your hedge,” she commented smilingly.
“Yes, I had. So if you’ll harbor me for a bit, I’ll be grateful. I’ve been over to the golf club to wind up my temporary membership and to collect a sweater I’d left there.”
“Where is your car?”
“I’ve delivered it back to the garage. I’m off tomorrow, you know, though I don’t leave London till the evening of the day after.”
“You are going back to Korea?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause. Then with a world of meaning in the question Jess asked, “And Liane?”
“She is spending the day in London the day after tomorrow,” said Peter significantly. He added with a touch of bravado, “It was Muir’s suggestion that she should go up to town and that she could meet me for luncheon, as it would be my last day.”
“Muir suggested that?”
“Yes. Mother had already decided that she would rather say goodbye to me at Quintains, and I could see, poor lamb, that she didn’t like Liane’s meeting me at all. But as it was Muir’s idea there was nothing she could do about it, though I wished she hadn’t looked so hurt.”
“And you let Muir arrange this for you and Liane— with him still not knowing? Peter, how could you? How could Liane? And she claimed that she didn’t mean to deceive him!” Jess cried in dismay.
Peter laid a hand over hers where they lay crossed upon the steering wheel. “You are angry, Jess—and no wonder,” he said wretchedly. “But if you’d ever loved anyone as I love Liane—or as hopelessly—you’d know how fatally easy it is to snatch at such crumbs.”
“Even when Muir offers them? Muir, whom Liane wrongs every minute she allows to pass without telling him the truth?” challenged Jess.
“Even then, I’m afraid. But I suppose you’ve never been tempted by love to make much out of pitifully little, so you wouldn’t know—” Peter paused. Then, without having noticed Jess’s wince of pain, he raised sad, frank eyes to hers. “And it is so very little after all,” he said gently. “A last meal together in a crowded restaurant; perhaps an hour in the park afterward, a train for Liane, a transport plane for me. Then—nothing. Even if Muir knew, could he grudge us that?”
Jess caught her breath in swift pity. “You mean—you and Liane will part? You won’t even write to her?”
“Not a very practical suggestion, Jess dear.”
“But it might not have to be like this—if only Liane would confess to Muir!”
“It’s the way Liane thinks it should be,” commented Peter, his mouth hard.
“I promised you I’d try to persuade her otherwise—”
“But she hasn’t given you a chance?”
“No. Oh, Peter, I’m so sorry. It’s such a coil of wretchedness for you—” Jess broke off and they sat in silence, watching the raindrops dry upon the windshield as the wind tore the storm out to sea and the weak sun came through the clouds.
Jess drew on her driving gloves again, and Peter made a move to get out as another car, driven by a woman, approached from Crane and
stopped a little way behind them.
Peter looked back toward it as he alighted. “That car is in trouble. It looks like the Bretton’s. Yes, there’s Jane getting out.”
Jess stiffened. She did not want an encounter with Jane Bretton, but the courtesy of the road demanded that she should do what she could, so she said she would wait while Peter walked back to investigate.
“I’ll wave you on if she is all right. Meanwhile—goodbye, Jess.”
“Goodbye, Peter. Good luck. Would it help,” she asked hesitantly, “if I wrote to you sometimes to—to give you news of Liane?”
He shook his head. “No. Thanks all the same. But one day you might have to tell me the one thing I shouldn’t want to hear, and I should hear that from mother, anyway. No, Jess, don’t write.” With which he walked away, and then Jess waited only long enough for his wave before driving on to Crane, reflecting that as he probably would not want to revisit Quintains at Muir’s invitation, she would never see him again.
Jane Bretton fluttered a hand at Peter as he approached. “Lucky me,” she commented. “It’s a choke in the carburetor, but it will probably clear itself if you’ll jiggle while I press the accelerator.”
“All right. Go ahead.” Peter lifted the hood, and after a minute, their combined effort was rewarded by the engine’s pulsing into activity once more. Peter waved to Jess and stood, deep in thought, watching as she drove from sight. He came to to hear Jane Bretton almost crooning at him.
“When you can spare me your attention, I was asking if I could drop you anywhere?”
“Thanks. I was walking back to Quintains.”
“Then let me give you a lift. My husband is up there, doing the quarterly accounts with Muir, so I could drop you and collect him.”