Hospital Corridors

by Mary Burchell.

  “No,” Madeline retorted with energy, “I don’t know that it is. I wanted to fly, and I don’t want to spend the best part of a week looking after an invalid.”

  “But, my dear, it’s not as though she’s really ill,” protested Clarissa airily, which immediately made Madeline reflect that the not-really-ill patient is usually the one who gives all the trouble. “It’s a wonderful opportunity.”

  Madeline looked unconvinced.

  “How far have you committed me?” she enquired.

  “I said I was nearly sure you would agree. Personally, I think it’s providential.”

  Madeline smiled a little drily.

  “If she were really ill, of course I would be prepared to help,” she said. “But someone who is vaguely described as a nerve case can be almost anything from a spoiled woman to a raving lunatic.”

  “She’s not a raving lunatic,” Clarissa asserted, with such comforting conviction that Madeline laughed.

  “Well, that’s something,” Madeline conceded with humour. And then, as a new thought struck her, she turned quickly to her stepmother. “Why, of course, if my passage were paid, I could leave over the air flight I’ve already booked. It could be deferred until later in the year and then you could use it! That would make it possible for you to come and visit me.” Enid exclaimed with delight, while Clarissa said complacently,

  “I knew you’d see the advantages if you thought it over. Here’s Morton Sanders’ phone number. You’d better have a long-distance call and arrange to see him some time.” Madeline had already planned to go to London for a couple of days during that week, in order to visit the airline office and make her final arrangements. So, later that evening, she telephoned to Clarissa’s one-time employer in order to arrange a meeting.

  It was a gay, faintly mocking voice which replied to her. A voice which curiously excited her interest, though she could not quite have said why.

  “I shall be immensely relieved if you can arrange to travel with us, Miss Gill,” Morton Sanders said frankly. “My mother isn’t seriously ill, in the sense of being incapacitated all the time. She has some sort of neurological trouble which results in violent headaches and a tendency to nervous collapse. But if you’re with us I shall feel much less worried on her account.”

  In some odd way, the interesting voice banished any doubts Madeline had entertained about the proposed arrangement, and she found herself saying how glad she was that Clarissa had made the suggestion that she could help. She arranged a time for her call at the Sanders’ London flat, and came away from the telephone thoughtful and in some way intrigued.

  “He sounds nice,” she said carelessly to Clarissa.

  “Nice?” Clarissa considered the choice of word and laughed. “I don’t know that he’d consider that a compliment himself. But he definitely has something.”

  Madeline naturally asked what.

  “It’s rather difficult to say. You’ll see what I mean when you meet him. He has all the charm of success, of course—and a sort of mocking gaiety which is provocative. I don’t think,” Clarissa said, with sudden and unusual insight, “that he believes in anyone or anything but himself.”

  “That doesn’t sound at all attractive to me!” Madeline exclaimed rather indignantly.

  “It is. Especially to women,” Clarissa assured her equably. “I suppose each one hopes to make him believe in her, as the great exception. He’s a good deal run after, and his mamma just tears herself to pieces between pride in him and jealousy of all the other women.”

  Madeline’s misgivings returned at this point a hundredfold, but it was too late to draw back now. And so she went to London a few days later, and met Morton Sanders for the first time.

  Less than two weeks ago. It was hard to believe that now. Madeline ran her hand thoughtfully up and down the deck rail and tried to decide whether she was glad or sorry that he had come into her life.

  He had made an instantaneous impression, that morning in the elegant drawing-room of his London home. Quite extraordinarily handsome by any standards, he was tall and well-built, with lively intelligent eyes and a well-cut mouth that would have been sensual but for the firm way he set his lips.

  To Madeline he had been charming, almost cordial, in his manner—but she had immediately known what Clarissa had meant about the provocative nature of his attraction. He had spoken of his mother with a sort of cool affection, and she had, with some difficulty, reminded herself that it was Mrs. Sanders, not Morton Sanders, who would be her concern during the voyage.

  Before Madeline had been taken to meet her patient, the doctor had come in and, sending Morton Sanders upstairs to announce their arrival, had contrived to have a few words alone with her.

  “It’s not altogether an easy case, Nurse,” he had said with candour, “but there will be little professional work involved. There is certainly some deep neurological disturbance, and the headaches are genuine enough. But, in addition, she is a very attractive, self-centred woman who has been spoiled. If she takes a fancy to you, you’ll have no trouble at all. Otherwise—Well, it’s only for a week,” he finished philosophically. “One of those difficult borderline cases where it’s hard to tell how much is true sickness and how much self-indulgence.”

  “Just the sort of thing I should have chosen to avoid,” thought Madeline ruefully. But there was nothing she could do about it now.

  That first meeting with Mrs. Sanders had been quite reassuring. Undoubtedly delicate-looking, very beautiful, and singularly soft-voiced, she had inspired Madeline with pity rather than misgiving. And everything had promised well when her cool, beautiful fingers had closed round Madeline’s hand and she had said rather pathetically,

  “I’m so glad you’re coming with us. I’ve been dreading this journey.”

  It did occur to Madeline that no one was forcing her to take the journey. But she spoke reassuringly and in her most friendly manner, and after some discussion it was arranged that they should meet at the boat, since Morton Sanders and his mother would be coming from London and Madeline from her Yorkshire home.

  That meeting on the boat! Madeline smiled ruefully now when she recalled it, but she had felt hot with annoyance and embarrassment at the time.

  She herself had arrived first, still aching a little from the good-byes which had had to be said, but interested after all to find herself actually aboard a transatlantic liner.

  The suite reserved for her employers and herself was far more luxurious than anything she had imagined—curiously reminiscent of an elegant country house, with chintz curtains fluttering at the windows and the furniture both intrinsically beautiful and admirably designed to save space.

  She was enchanted with it all, and when Mrs. Sanders arrived on the arm of a sympathetic stewardess, Morton being elsewhere engaged on something to do with the luggage, Madeline hurried forward with an eager smile.

  But there was no answering smile on Mrs. Sanders’ face. Her dark eyes looked as beautiful as ever, but surprise and then unmistakable vexation clouded their depths.

  “But, Nurse,” she said, her voice soft, but her displeasure obvious, “you’re not in uniform!”

  “Why—why, no, Mrs. Sanders.” Madeline was taken aback by this greeting. “I wasn’t expecting to wear uniform on the journey. I’m not entitled to wear my All Souls uniform now I’ve left, you know. And until I reach Montreal I—”

  “That is not of any interest to me!” The beautiful voice was suddenly very cold. “Your expenses are being paid in order that you should act as nurse to me on this journey. I expect you to look like a nurse.”

  Madeline bit her lip to control the anger which rose in her at this form of address. But a glance of humorous sympathy from the stewardess—as well as the warning note of hysteria which she detected in her employer’s voice—prompted her to reply peaceably,

  “I can’t have my Dominion uniforms until I arrive, Mrs. Sanders. But I have some white overalls with me—”

  “And caps, I
hope.”

  “And caps,” agreed Madeline, remembering thankfully that she had kept some of her All Souls caps, for sentiment’s sake as much as anything.

  “Very well. Wear them, please,” Mrs. Sanders said, and went on to her own cabin, leaving Madeline feeling like a Victorian housemaid caught in undress, as she put it to herself. This, so far as Mrs. Sanders’ attitude was concerned, had set the keynote for the journey. Not, Madeline decided later, that she particularly wanted to establish any sense of inferiority in her young companion. It was just that she liked the picture of herself as fragile and suffering, with a trained nurse in attendance. And for this purpose some sort of uniform was essential!

  Forewarned by what Clarissa had said of Mrs. Sanders’ jealousy where any woman noticed by her son was concerned, Madeline maintained a scrupulously circumspect, even reserved, air towards him. He found this amusing, she rather thought, and not a little intriguing. And, though he avoided anything in his mother’s presence which might lead to trouble, Madeline had an idea from the beginning that he intended to get to know her very much better when she was off duty and, so to speak, in her own identity.

  In practice, however, her off-duty hours proved few. And, in any case, a deep, inner instinct warned Madeline that, even when Mrs. Sanders was not there, it would be wiser to avoid any intimate contact with Morton Sanders. Though whether this was because of any possible trouble with his mother or because of his own rather dangerous attraction she was not sure.

  In point of fact, it was while she was attempting to avoid just such a meeting that she had first encountered the unknown man who intrigued and interested her.

  It was fairly late one evening, when Mrs. Sanders was settled for the night and Madeline, suddenly tired of her makeshift uniform, decided to change and go out on deck.

  She slipped into a grey chiffon dinner dress and, taking the beautiful red stole which had been Enid’s extravagant parting gift to her, went out on deck.

  For a while she stood by the rail, watching groups and couples pass and repass, emerging from the shadows and disappearing into them once more. And though at first the scene fascinated her, presently a sense of loneliness and isolation began to come upon her, for, thanks to Mrs. Sanders’ demands upon her, there was hardly a contact she had been able to make on board. She had no part in this scene at all.

  Suddenly, it seemed silly to have put on her beautiful dress and the challenging stole—dressing up for an occasion which did not exist. And, even as she thought this, she saw Morton Sanders coming along the deck towards her.

  He had not seen her yet, and all at once she was passionately anxious that he should not see her thus. Standing there all alone, dressed up, as though—almost as though she were waiting for him, she thought, blushing hotly in the dark. She turned and hurried away, hardly caring where she went, so long as he did not catch up with her.

  She had no idea where she was going and almost immediately found herself at a dead end, except for a ladder which apparently led to an even higher deck. Without hesitation Madeline ran up this. But, as she reached the top, she caught her foot in a fold of her dress, stumbled and-would have fallen if someone had not stepped from a patch of shadow and caught her by the arm.

  “You are in a hurry, aren’t you?” said a man’s voice with a hint of amusement in it. “Are you running away from someone?”

  “Oh, no—no, not exactly,” she stammered, too confused to think of anything light and self-possessed. “I just—didn’t want—to be seen.”

  “Didn’t you? But”—he regarded her in the half-light with still amused but not unkindly eyes—“if I may say so, you seem to me very well worth seeing.”

  “Oh”—she caught her breath on an embarrassed little laugh—“thank you. I didn’t mean quite that. I—” Then the impossibility of explaining struck her and she finished rather lamely, “It was all a bit silly, really.”

  “Then forget about it,” he said easily. “Come and look at the stars and talk to me instead.”

  She looked at him then with more attention and saw that, although he was not outstandingly tall and was rather slightly built, he had an air of easy and unmistakable authority which made his lightly spoken invitation a compliment.

  So she fell into step beside him and almost immediately he asked abruptly,

  “Why haven’t I seen you before? Are you a particularly glamorous stowaway or something?”

  “Oh, no!” Madeline laughed and began to feel more at ease. “I’m—” She hesitated, decided not to be too expansive about herself, and said, “I’m travelling with my employer and his mother. They keep me pretty busy.”

  He glanced at her quizzically.

  “Then it seems a pity to waste your short hour of liberty hiding yourself on the top deck in that remarkably attractive dress. Why aren’t you dancing in the ballroom down below?” he said, as a door opened somewhere and the murmur of dance music drifted up to them.

  “Mostly because I don’t know anyone to dance with,” Madeline confessed with a smile. “There hasn’t been much chance to meet anyone and—”

  “Then come now,” he said rather imperiously, and he took her hand, lightly but as though he did not expect her to draw it away. “Come and dance with me.”

  Afterwards she was a little astonished to think how willingly she went with him, without even knowing his name. In retrospect, the way he had made the decision for her had seemed almost peremptory. And yet, at the time, that indefinable air of authority had had its effect. She had gone with him—and she had enjoyed herself immensely, for the short time that was left before the dance music ceased.

  It had been, she reflected now, as the boat slowly nosed its way towards the dock, about the nicest thing which had happened on the whole voyage. It had not been repeated—there had been no opportunity for that—and she had not seen him to speak to again until he had come to stand beside her as she took her first long look at Quebec.

  Madeline glanced at her watch and decided it was time to go to her cabin, slip on her white overall and cap once more, and see if Mrs. Sanders wanted anything before she settled for the night. Tomorrow, when they readied Montreal, they would be saying good-bye, and that, thought Madeline, would probably be the most welcome thing Mrs. Sanders would ever say to her.

  That it would also mean saying good-bye to Morton Sanders was not such a welcome thought. But perhaps it was just as well that they had never come to know each other better. She had the curious conviction that people had sometimes very much regretted knowing him well.

  And, even as she thought this, and assured herself, not quite sincerely, that she was glad things had turned out this way, Morton Sanders came along the deck and stopped beside her, to look down at her with that curiously provocative smile.

  “Well, it’s beginning to look like journey’s end, isn’t it? We get into Montreal sometime tomorrow.”

  “Yes. Some time in the afternoon, I hear.” She wished that didn’t sound quite so stiff and formal, but could think of nothing to add to it.

  He leant his arm on the rail, but he didn’t talk about Quebec. He said,

  “You know, Miss Gill, I’ve hardly seen anything of you on this voyage.”

  “But of course you have!” she protested, the quick colour coming into her cheeks. “Every day and—”

  “No, no, you misunderstand me. I’ve seen plenty of Nurse Gill—always looking after my dear mamma so tactfully and properly. But I’ve hardly seen anything of Madeline Gill—who is, I’m sure, a much more interesting and intriguing person.”

  “Well”—she laughed a little doubtfully—“there hasn’t been much opportunity to be anything but Nurse Gill on this voyage. Your mother really did need a good deal of attention, you know. Some of her trouble is temperamental, but by no means all of it. She’s quite a sick person at times.”

  “I know. That’s partly why I’ve persuaded her to go into hospital when we get to Montreal.”

  He said that quite calmly and wait
ed, with rather obvious enjoyment, for her reaction.

  “Into—hospital?” She tried to make her own voice sound as calm and matter-of-fact as his.

  “Yes. I understand that at the Dominion there’s some special treatment for her sort of trouble.”

  There was a very slight pause.

  “I didn’t know that,” Madeline said at last. “Then Mrs. Sanders is going to be a patient in the hospital where I’m nursing?”

  “Yes. In the private patients’ pavilion. I shall come and see her there.”

  “Yes, of course. That will be very nice for her.”

  “I shall also come and see you,” Morton Sanders stated smilingly.

  “But I shall be on duty, Mr. Sanders. I shall be Nurse Gill—probably no longer in charge of your mother, but very busy, nevertheless, with other patients.”

  “Of course.” He was still smiling at her. “But the difference will be at, at the Dominion, you’ll have regular off-duty hours. I hope you will keep some of those for me. And then perhaps we can get to know each other a little better.”

  She wished her heart wouldn’t pound in this perfectly ridiculous way about what was, after all, a very natural invitation from her sister’s one-time employer. If it were worded a little—unusually, there was no need to attach any special significance to that. And then, “I really must go to your mother now.”

  He made no attempt to detain her, but he strolled along the deck beside her and she could not help being very much aware of his smiling, half-mocking presence. Then, just before they reached the entrance to their suite, they passed Madeline’s unknown friend, who gave a smile and a slight bow of recognition.

  It did not occur to her that he was acknowledging an acquaintanceship with her companion as well as herself until Morton Sanders said in a tone of amused surprise.