by Peggy Gaddis
“Well, may I offer congratulations and my best wishes?” said Drew suavely.
“And what about Hilary being fired?” demanded Mrs. Barton.
Drew glanced across the room to where Hilary and Dr. Marsden sat, and some of the easy charm left his face.
“There has been a misunderstanding,” he said smoothly. “I don’t know where you got the idea that Miss Westbrook was being discharged. She has resigned because she feels her nursing abilities are not receiving full scope here and she wants to go where she will be needed more.”
“That’s not true, Drew Ramsey and you know it,” Mrs. Keenan flamed indignantly. “I demanded that you fire her because I would not tolerate her presence here any longer. She was rude and insolent, and I found her completely incompetent—”
“That’s a lie!” Mrs. Barton flashed hotly. “She is one of the most capable nurses in her profession, and if she was rude to you—I don’t believe she’d know how to be—it was because you are so unpleasant yourself!”
“Ladies, ladies!” pleaded Drew, because by now dinner was forgotten and the other guests were gathered about the table where Mrs. Keenan sat, with Mrs. Barton and Mr. Hodding on one side of it, Drew on the other.
Mrs. Barton looked about the group, and with bright spots of color like tiny flags in her cheeks, her eyes touched with fire, addressed them all.
“Are we going to stand aside and let the Duchess have her way with Miss Westbrook? You all know how kind she’s been, what a fine nurse she is, how lucky a place like this is to have her—”
“If that nurse stays, I leave!” Mrs. Keenan cried furiously.
Mrs. Barton looked down at her curiously, and then back at the group.
“Who would you rather have stay, Mrs. Keenan or Hilary?” she asked.
There was smothered laughter, and voices that left no doubt that it was Hilary who was the choice of the guests.
Hilary pulled her arm free of Dr. Marsden’s, crossed to the centre of the battle and stood back of Mrs. Keenan’s chair, where she could face the group, smiling, affection in her eyes.
“You’re all very sweet and I’m very grateful to you for your expression of confidence in me,” she told them. “But Mr. Ramsey told you the truth; I’m leaving of my own free will, not because of Mrs. Keenan.”
A tall, regal looking old woman Hilary knew to be in her eighties tapped her stick on the floor and said firmly, “Then I shall go, too. My sister and I are very attached to you, Miss Westbrook. You’ve been most kind and understanding; you’ve never laughed at us or let us feel that you thought we were a couple of silly old women—”
“I never did, Miss Lucy, for a single moment.”
“That’s very kind of you, my dear,” said the woman gratefully. “But I’m sure the place wouldn’t be the same without you. Would it, Clarissa?”
And Clarissa, a year younger than Miss Lucy, completely under Miss Lucy’s domination, squeaked obediently, “Oh, no, dear Lucy, it wouldn’t at all.”
Several others announced their departure, if Hilary went; and Drew’s anxiety grew as their voices chimed in. He looked down at Mrs. Keenan who sat rigid in her chair, fury still riding high in her eyes.
Suddenly, she banged her chair backward, almost bowling Hilary over, interrupting Hilary’s soothing words that would have tried to keep all the T. & C. guests here.
“Then so be it!” Mrs. Keenan snapped dramatically, her scathing gaze swinging from one to the other of the guests in the group. “You’ve made it pretty plain that she stays—and that means I go!”
Miss Lucy nodded her head.
“I must say I think you’re being very wise, Kate,” she said gently. “Because if you insist on staying, after Miss Westbrook goes, I’m afraid you won’t be at all popular.”
“Since I never have been, why should that bother me?” demanded Mrs. Keenan violently.
“Did you expect to be popular, Kate?” asked Miss Lucy. “I’ve known you for years, yet when we met here, after Clarissa and I came, you ignored us, pretended you’d never seen us before; you never wanted friends, Kate, or if you did, you took a very peculiar way of making them.”
“Because I didn’t want the kind of friends you and Clarissa had,” snapped Mrs. Keenan, her voice shaking. “I don’t care whether people like me or not.”
“No, I suppose you don’t Kate, which is why I am so sorry for you,” said Miss Lucy quietly.
“Sorry for me!” blazed Mrs. Keenan, this the final outrage. “You dare feel sorry for me. You—you tradesman’s daughter!”
She whirled about, stumbled, and Hilary’s hand shot out and steadied her, but Mrs. Keenan fought her off with fury.
“Take your hands off me! I will not be mauled!” she screamed, and Drew put an arm about her, soothing her, steadying her, as he marched her across the room and down the corridor.
There was a silence for a moment after they had gone, and then the group surrounded Mr. Hodding and Mrs. Barton. There were excited questions about their marriage announcement and the whole ugly scene dissolved into one of laughter and chatter.
Dr. Marsden touched Hilary’s arm, nodded towards the corridor and she walked with him, her head lowered.
“I hated that,” she said huskily.
“I know you did, I hated it for you,” admitted Dr. Marsden. “But aren’t you happy to know how you rate with them?”
“Yes of course, the darlings but—well, I can’t help feeling sorry for Mrs. Keenan,” Hilary confessed. “She’s got herself locked away in a deep, dank dungeon and nobody is going to drag her out.”
“Apparently, she likes it there,” Dr. Marsden pointed out logically.
“Oh, Stuart, what am I going to do?”
Dr. Marsden smiled down at her, hearing for the first time her use of his given name and realizing that it had been completely unconscious.
“Why, I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay!”
She looked up at him swiftly.
“But Mrs. Keenan, she won’t stay if I do,” she protested.
“I have a hunch Drew would much rather lose her than the dozen or more others who have just announced they’ll leave if you do,” he pointed out.
“But there just isn’t any other place like this for them to go to, I mean where they’d be as comfortable, as luxuriously cared for.”
“They’ll realize that, of course,” Dr. Marsden told her, “in time, I’m sure, to prevent a wholesale exodus. Meanwhile, you promised to stay on until the end of the week, and who knows what may happen in that length of time.”
And meanwhile, in Dr. Marsden’s private office, one eye on the closed door, Ethel, the off-duty switchboard operator was making a telephone call to one of the reporters who had come out for the story of the wreck.
“Hi, sweetie, what’s on your mind?” he asked when she finally got him on the phone.
“How’d you like a nice big story, Bill?” she asked softly.
“Now don’t tell me the good Ole T. & C. is flinging a strawberry festival or a box-supper party,” he protested mildly.
“Don’t be a goop! This is a wedding.”
“No foolin’! The bride wore crutches and the groom was attended by a man with a butterfly net?”
“Jason Hodding is being married to Mrs. Lily-Mae Barton.”
“Hi!” gasped Bill. “Not old Gotrocks Hodding? You’ve got to be kidding, he’s the most woman-shy old cluck that ever lived.”
“Mrs. Barton just announced it publicly in the dining room, and he had a smile that practically buttoned in the back!” Ethel assured him eagerly.
“Boy, oh, boy, oh boy,” Bill enthused. “Lily-Mae Barton, eh? I suppose she’s ninety and decrepit?”
“She’s nothing of the kind,” snapped Ethel. “She’s in her late sixties and as spry as a cricket. Anyway, I’ve got to run now. I’d lose my job if the Boss found I’d spilled the story.”
“They can’t hope to keep it a secret,” said Bill and added gratefully, “Hone
y-Bun, this buys you the finest dinner in town on your next day off. I love you to pieces!”
“I bet!” jeered Ethel, and put down the receiver and chuckled.
Chapter Twenty-one
Drew guided Mrs. Keenan to the comfortable arm-chair beside the window, against which the moon-silvered night was pressing, the fragrance of the garden stealing in on a soft breeze that tried to cool the old woman’s hot face.
“Shall I have one of the P.N.s help you get ready for bed?” suggested Drew politely.
“I’ve been dressing and undressing myself since I was five years old,” she snapped ungraciously.
He turned to the door, and her voice halted him.
“So I’m to leave, am I?”
Drew turned and studied her for a moment, this time with no pretense of his usual charming graciousness.
“That’s your decision, Mrs. Keenan,” he told her flatly. “But may I say I think you might be happier elsewhere?”
“So a mere nurse is more important to you than the money I pay? I have a sizable investment in this place, don’t forget that. If I leave, I shall want that back, every blinking cent of it!” she flung the words at him spitefully.
He regarded her with cool disfavor.
“The club is paying a nice profit,” he reminded her. “It’s a very good investment.”
She sneered at him.
“But it would be extremely inconvenient for you to scrape up a hundred thousand dollars—in cash, mind you!—wouldn’t it?”
“Inconvenient, perhaps, but by no means impossible,” he assured her quietly. “If I cannot be of service, I think I’ll say goodnight.”
“You come back here!” she snapped at him. “I haven’t finished with you yet.”
“Haven’t you, Mrs. Keenan? That’s too bad because I have quite finished with you,” said Drew coolly, opened the door, walked through it and closed it behind him, taking with him the memory of her incredulous, utterly furious face.
He walked down the corridor towards the lobby and Dr. Marsden and Hilary waited for him.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Mr. Ramsey,” Hilary quietly.
He studied her curiously for a moment without answering.
“I assure you, Drew, Hilary had nothing to do with that scene—” Dr. Marsden began, nettled at Drew’s slowness to answer her.
“Oh, I’m quite sure of that,” said Drew at last, and both Dr. Marsden and Hilary stared at him, wide-eyed. “Matter of fact, I think getting Mrs. Keenan out of here will be one of the best things that could happen to the T. & C. We’ve got a long waiting list so her room will be taken in twenty-four hours, at most. And this time, we’ll try to choose a little more carefully. We can’t have the place being upset by another—Duchess.”
He grinned; and Hilary, emboldened, laughed.
“I don’t think there is another quite like her, Mr. Ramsey!” she said frankly.
“Let’s hope if there is, we don’t get her!” said Drew and then, “Miss Westbrook, what have you decided?”
She looked up at him, startled, questioning.
“I mean about leaving us,” Drew went on. “Surely, if Mrs. Keenan leaves, you will reconsider and stay on? You, too, Stuart, though I never took your resignation seriously, as you know.”
Hilary looked up at Dr. Marsden.
“You handed in your resignation? You didn’t tell me,” she protested.
“Probably because he knew it wasn’t going to be accepted,” Drew cut in. “After all, the field of gerontology is a limited one. That is, it’s not often a man finds such a perfect place to study and practice geriatrics as here.”
“I told you, Drew, that I’d stay on only if you opened the wards to some of my needy cases that for various reasons were not eligible for hospitalization elsewhere,” Dr. Marsden said. “The injured from the bus accident haven’t wrecked the place; they haven’t lowered the ‘tone’ of the hospital. In fact the newspaper stories were quite flattering in their description of how a place like this rallied to the care of the injured.”
Drew said sharply, “Look, do we have to go into that again, now? It’s been quite a day. Let’s all get some sleep and maybe we can discuss things a little more rationally tomorrow. It’s only Thursday and you promised to stay until Sunday, Miss Westbrook.”
“I know,” Hilary agreed. “Have you found somebody to replace me?”
Drew’s glance was definitely unpleasant.
“No, and I’m not yet quite sure how I’m going to raise one hundred thousand dollars in cash when Mrs. Keenan leaves,” he snapped and walked away.
Hilary looked after him and then up at Dr. Marsden and shrugged.
“I really started something when I came to work out here, didn’t I?” she admitted wryly.
Dr. Marsden said gently, a twinkle in his eyes,
“It would seem so.”
She flared up indignantly, unreasonably hurt.
“Well, you might at least admit that I didn’t do it deliberately,” she told him hotly. “How was I to know what a cock-eyed kind of place this is? I’ll be glad to go, darned glad!”
And with her nose in the air, she marched away from him towards her own room, not looking back; denying even to herself that she hoped he would follow her, and deeply grateful that she could reach the sanctuary of her own room before tears overwhelmed her. Because she wept seldom and always unwillingly and felt that she had disgraced herself if ever she wept in front of other people—especially Dr. Stuart Marsden.
She slept badly, of course, and when she came out of the dining room after breakfast, one of the P.N.s came to meet her.
“Mrs. Keenan is asking for you, Miss Westbrook, she’s in quite a state,” reported the woman eying Hilary with a lively curiosity so that Hilary was certain that the news of last night’s commotion in the dining room was by now all over the place. Trust the grape-vine for that, she reminded herself grimly, as she marched down the corridor to Mrs. Keenan’s room.
Mrs. Keenan was in bed, looking somehow oddly shrivelled and painfully old, as she turned her head on her pillow and eyed Hilary with a markedly unfriendly eye, which Hilary ignored.
“Good morning, Mrs. Keenan,” she said, professionally cheerful, polite. “You wanted to see me?”
“No,” growled Mrs. Keenan. “I didn’t want to see you, I have to see you.”
“So?” Hilary waited, composed, the perfect picture of the well-trained nurse awaiting the needs of her patient.
“I didn’t sleep very well last night,” began Mrs. Keenan accusingly.
“I’m so sorry,” said Hilary pleasantly. “You should have had the nurse on duty bring you a sleeping tablet.”
“I didn’t want a sleeping tablet, because I didn’t want to sleep,” answered Mrs. Keenan shortly. “I had some thinking to do.”
There seemed to be no answer required to that so Hilary offered none. She merely waited at the foot of the bed, her eyes taking in the pasty, worn look of the old woman, the purplish bruises under her eyes, the sagging jaw-line, the tired, harassed old eyes. And inevitably, she felt pity stirring in her heart for this unpleasant old woman whom nobody liked, much less loved.
“When are you leaving?” Mrs. Keenan demanded.
“Sunday afternoon, if Mr. Ramsey finds a replacement for me,” answered Hilary quietly.
“And I suppose the others will be leaving, too—that Barton woman, and Hodding and the others.” Mrs. Keenan’s voice shook ever so slightly.
“Mrs. Barton and Mr. Hodding, I suppose, since they are going to be married, but I doubt if any of the others will really go.”
“They will if you leave,” Mrs. Keenan cut in. “They made that very plain. Either I have to leave or they will.”
Suddenly, the worn, pathetic old face crumpled and slow, bitter tears crept down the raddled old cheeks, as her voice became a wail, “And I don’t want to go!”
The stirring of pity in Hilary’s heart overflowed into a momentary forgetfulness of al
l she and the others in the club had against the woman, and she went to the side of the bed, and bent over the weeping woman.
“Oh, come now, Mrs. Keenan, you know you don’t have to leave unless you want to.” She tried to soothe the distraught woman.
“I don’t want to!” Mrs. Keenan wailed. “This is the nearest thing to a home I’ve ever had. I feel safe here. Not—alone, and as if I could—die in the night and not be found for days and days. That’s the most horrible thing in the world, to d-d-die like that. That’s why I don’t want to go away.”
“Mrs. Keenan, listen to me,” Hilary put an arm about the shaking shoulders, piled the pillows higher, and reached for a cleansing tissue on the bedside table, to wipe away the tears.
“You can stay here just as long as you want to; you’re one of the most—treasured guests ...”
“Because I own a share in the place and pay the same rates as everybody else, in spite of being a part owner,” Mrs. Keenan cut in bitterly. “Oh yes, my money is always welcome, even if I’m not!”
“You were very angry with me when I tried to tell you that was your own fault,” Hilary reminded her gently.
For a moment the quivering shoulders stiffened and Hilary thought Mrs. Keenan was going to blast her indignantly again. But instead Mrs. Keenan lay propped against her pillows for a moment, her eyes straight ahead.
“I suppose you were right,” Mrs. Keenan admitted at last. “When I was just a child, not more than four or five, my father began teaching me that anybody who was kind to me was only after some advantage, that the children I played with came to see me only because I had a lot of toys, and later, as I grew older, boys and girls were nice to me for just what they could get out of me...”
Appalled, Hilary stared at her.