Hospital Corridors

by Mary Burchell.

  “Yes.”

  “Not Clarissa’s husband?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Madeline passed the known facts in rapid mental review. It was not for her to talk of Clarissa’s affairs. But, on the other hand, she would undoubtedly be fairly frank about them herself when she arrived, for that was Clarissa’s way.

  “I don’t really know very much,” she said slowly. “But Enid says something in her letter about some trouble between them.”

  “Do you mean she’s left him?”

  “Not—not permanently, I think,” Madeline said, anxious to minimize any trouble which might blow over later.

  “Does one leave a husband temporarily?” enquired Dr. Lanyon sarcastically, evidently not thinking very much of Madeline’s efforts at tact.

  “I don’t see why not,” Madeline retorted. “Lots of—of silly couples separate for a while, but come together and make a go of it later.”

  “The Atlantic Ocean seems a rather substantial barrier to set up meanwhile,” was the somewhat dry reply. “Well”—he glanced at the pile of record cards, stacked neatly on his desk—“thank you for these.”

  It was her unmistakable dismissal, and Madeline withdrew, not feeling specially elated by the way she had handled the situation, but not really able to see what else she could have done or said.

  That evening she wrote to her stepmother and to Clarissa, to say how truly delighted she was at their coming. And since, with the exception of the Dr. Lanyon complication, this was a hundred per cent true, the letter was sincere and she was happy writing it. After that, there seemed nothing much else to do until they came, except, perhaps, tell the news to Morton and enlist his sympathetic co-operation.

  Morton, however, proved neither sympathetic nor cooperative. On the contrary, he laughed immoderately at the idea of Clarissa “following Lanyon up,” as he put it, and prophesied all sorts of complications.

  “Morton, stop being so tiresome!” Madeline exclaimed vexedly. “It isn’t so wildly funny. And you talk as though Clarissa were a perfectly free agent. She is still married to Gerald, you know, and any trouble may well blow over presently.”

  “Not if Clarissa has decided that Lanyon is a better proposition. And she will, of course, once she sees him in his natural setting, with all you little white-capped nurses burning incense at his shrine.”

  “We don’t burn incense,” Madeline said crossly, “at anybody’s shrine. And if we did, Clarissa wouldn’t have a chance of seeing it. She won’t be allowed in the hospital.”

  “Don’t you believe it!” Morton leaned back, handsome and amused, and grinned at her. “It’ll take more than hospital rules to keep our Clarissa out. She’s capable of turning up, like a film heroine, at the dramatic moment—substituting for a nurse at some important operation, and handing the surgeon his scalpel, or whatever one does hand a surgeon, and ogling him soulfully over her mask at the same time.”

  Madeline laughed reluctantly.

  “You really are ridiculous, Morton. I thought you might be a help to me over this, and now you won’t do anything but make jokes.”

  “Darling girl, in what way did you want me to help?” Morton wanted to know. “If you feel you ought to look after Nat Lanyon, I don’t. I would even suggest that he might be able to look after himself.”

  “He wasn’t able to before,” Madeline said with a sigh.

  “Well—he’s had his lesson,” Morton retorted carelessly. “If he hasn’t enough sense to keep out of Clarissa’s clutches a second time, he deserves what’s coming to him.”

  “Well, you won’t actually encourage her, will you?” begged Madeline, suddenly apprehensive of Morton’s particular type of sense of humour.

  “I expect so,” he said, and grinned again.

  “Morton—please. You are hard,” Madeline said angrily.

  “Hard as nails,” he agreed, still carelessly. “And with a tinge of malicious humour. Has it taken you all this time to find that out about me, my sweet?”

  She was silent, aware suddenly of a queer little chill in the region of her heart. He was speaking in joke, of course. She was even supposed to laugh at this. But, in the very depths of her consciousness, Madeline asked herself if a disturbingly true word had been spoken in jest.

  The impression was gone in a moment, and just then Morton leaned forward to imprison her hand between both of his.

  “Look, my darling—if you’ll stop looking so worried, I’ll do whatever you want,” he promised, with sudden, charming capitulation. “I’ll take Clarissa out and though I can’t guarantee to keep her out of mischief, I’ll try to direct her attention elsewhere. Is that what you want me to say?”

  Madeline nodded, her eyes on his.

  “And what will you do in return for that?” he wanted to know.

  She didn’t answer in words. Instead, she leaned forward until their lips met, and there was another of those long, breathless, exciting kisses, which left Madeline wondering why she concerned herself so much about someone else’s love affairs, when her own were quite enough to deal with.

  As the next two weeks slipped past, joyful anticipation began to supersede any misgivings she had about Clarissa’s coming. The sheer idea of having her family with her again became of paramount importance, and she could not help feeling that her fears on Dr. Lanyon’s behalf had been rather exaggerated. This was the more so when she realized, day after day in the theatre, that there seemed no emergency with which he could not cope.

  Miss Dennis had been right. There were occasions when one felt one could almost applaud.

  “Well, of course. He gives a performance,” Morton said rather scornfully, when she told him this. “Do you suppose he doesn’t enjoy playing the role of the famous Dr. Lanyon? He’s a bit of a show-off, you know.”

  “He is not!” Madeline flew to his defence with an indignation which surprised herself. “He’s a wonderful surgeon and every bit of him is sincere.”

  “Very possibly. But most virtuosos at their job play to the gallery,“ retorted Morton, unmoved. “You bet he plays to his particular gallery—which would be you nurses and the students.”

  She was surprised to remember afterwards that she actually quarrelled with Morton about that. Or, at least, came as near to quarrelling as his teasing good-humour would permit After that she decided to keep Nat Lanyon out of the conversation. The subject never seemed to lead to a peaceful discussion.

  The next day she was rather surprised to be summoned to Dr. Lanyon’s office, but, when she got there, it seemed that he only wanted to give her some special instructions about a case. Then, when his secretary had gone off to fetch something he required, he suddenly said, not very agreeably, “Well, when are the visitors expected?”

  “The—? Oh, on Friday.” Madeline simply could not help smiling happily at the prospect. “I’m hoping to be off duty in time to meet them.”

  He smiled slightly too then, perhaps in sympathy.

  “I meant to come over and ask you last night when I saw you at the Cafe Martin. But you left before I could do so.”

  “At the Cafe Martin? Were you there? I didn’t see you.”

  “No. I had the pleasurable impression that you were too busy giving Morton Sanders a piece of your mind to notice anyone.”

  “I was?” She was astonished, and a little bit annoyed. “I had a very pleasant evening with him!”

  “Is that so?” Dr. Lanyon looked rather more amused than she thought the occasion warranted. “You seemed a good deal annoyed when I looked your way.”

  “But I assure—Oh!” she remembered suddenly, and laughed and blushed. “Oh, that was nothing.”

  “You pique my curiosity,” said Dr. Lanyon politely. So politely that a mischievous impulse suddenly prompted Madeline to say,

  “We were talking about you, as a matter of fact.”

  Up went his eyebrows.

  “I should be greatly mortified by the description of myself as ‘noth
ing’ if I had not the impression that you were defending me with gratifying heat,” he remarked. “Do tell me on what grounds.”

  “Oh—” She laughed rather confusedly again. “I had been saying how much I admired your operating. That sometimes one almost felt like applauding—”

  He gave her a mocking bow in acknowledgement of this.

  “—and Morton said that was because it was a performance.”

  “So it is, I suppose, in a way,” Dr. Lanyon said equably. “But he meant in the sense of a show. In fact, he—he called you a bit of a show-off, and that was what made me mad.”

  “My dear girl, how charming of you.” The famous surgeon looked extremely amused. “But”—he considered the charge with an objective air—“I think perhaps I am.”

  “Oh, Dr. Lanyon!”

  “Here’s Miss Murphy,” he said, as his secretary came back into the room. “Let’s ask her what she thinks. Miss Murphy, would you say that I’m a bit of a show-off, where my work is concerned?”

  His secretary looked so little surprised that Madeline wondered suddenly if he often spoke to her with this amused, almost boyish candour.

  “Sure,” said Miss Murphy. “All men are show-offs.”

  “You see? Miss Murphy reduces the problem to very simple terms.” Dr. Lanyon smiled at Madeline.

  “And why shouldn’t they be?” Miss Murphy went on indulgently. “If they have something to show off about. The bores are the ones that show off with nothing to back it up. But if a man’s brilliant, let him take some natural pride in it, I say. You wouldn’t be quite such a great surgeon, Dr. Lanyon, if you hadn’t a certain flair for making a dramatic whole of your work.”

  “Miss Murphy, I don’t know what I’m going to do when you get married,” Dr. Lanyon said, passing his hand over his hair, and smiling ruefully. “No one else will minister to my ego quite so charmingly.”

  “You’ll have to get married yourself,” Miss Murphy told him briskly. “And then there’ll be someone ministering to your ego every morning over the toast and marmalade. If you choose the right wife, that is.”

  “Perhaps I’ll think about it,” murmured Dr. Lanyon. “And meanwhile, thank you for defending me, Miss GUI. I hope I haven’t destroyed any illusions about selfless surgeons by admitting to some human vanity.”

  Madeline laughed reluctantly and said she did not regret her defence of him. Then she went out of the room and, after a moment, Miss Murphy followed her, on some errand of her own. As she caught up with Madeline in the corridor, she said,

  “Don’t you listen to his nonsense. He’s the least vain man I ever knew. In proportion to his gifts, I mean.”

  “That’s what I would have said,” Madeline agreed with a smile.

  “He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t enjoy his successes, but all the credit in the world means nothing to him, if he doesn’t feel that he did everything that was humanly possible and a little bit beyond.”

  “I know. That’s what he feels in the theatre. He’s nice, isn’t he?” Madeline said on sudden impulse.

  “He’s the best and kindest and cleverest man I ever knew,” Miss Murphy replied emphatically. “That cool, impersonal air is just a facade, you know. I wish he’d marry some pearl of a woman, who wouldn’t let him work quite, so hard. Sometimes I wonder if he took a bad knock from some harpy. He never seems to bother about women much.”

  “Perhaps,” said Madeline non-committally, and hurried off with an air of being too busy to stay and discuss even Dr. Lanyon any longer.

  But she thought a lot about what Miss Murphy had said, and wondered if seeing Clarissa again might cure him or whether the meeting, and the knowledge that Clarissa’s marriage had not proved a success, would create a fresh complication in his life.

  Before she could worry very much about this, however, Friday arrived, and full of happy excitement, Madeline went to the airport to meet the plane that was bringing Enid and Clarissa. And, once, the first greetings and embraces were over, Madeline could not help noticing that there was a subtle change in Clarissa. As they drove to the hotel, she kept on glancing unobtrusively at her half-sister, and her heart ached a little when she realized that, mingled with Clarissa’s natural pleasure and interest, was a touch of quite unfamiliar melancholy.

  It was not discontent That Madeline could have understood and recognized as a natural Clarissa reaction. It was something quieter and more fundamental, and unquestionably it added to the erstwhile vivacious and lightweight Clarissa a fresh and poignant attraction.

  On the way to the hotel they naturally spoke only of superficial matters. The journey, the arrival, the streets and buildings they were passing. But, once they had arrived, and Enid was dealing with the formalities at the reception desk, Clarissa turned to Madeline and said almost abruptly,

  “I suppose Enid wrote you about me and Gerald?”

  “A little—yes. I’m so sorry, dear. But—though I don’t want to offer trite comfort—sometimes the most desperate-seeming situations do work out in the end.”

  “This won’t,” was all Clarissa said. And then Enid rejoined them and they went up to their rooms.

  Here Madeline was able to have a few private words with her stepmother, because she lingered in her room while Clarissa went to unpack a few things in the room next door. Not wanting to seem eager to gossip as soon as Clarissa’s back was turned, she merely said,

  “How bad are things, Enid? She looks much quieter and sadder than I expected.”

  Her stepmother sighed and fluffed up her pretty hair disconsolately.

  “She doesn’t tell me very much, and that’s the truth. But my own feeling is that there’s not much chance of a reconciliation. I haven’t questioned her, because I’m inclined to think that, unless someone has a passionate urge to pour out the whole story, the less said the better. People say you can’t take back actions. But I think you can’t always take back words either. They have a dreadful way of defining a situation and closing the way back.”

  Madeline hugged her stepmother, partly as a means of consolation and partly as a tribute to her wisdom.

  “Well, let’s not talk about it ourselves just now. Wait and see what time and new surroundings will do,” she said comfortingly.

  Neither of the travellers felt tired and both were ready to go out as soon as they had eaten. But when Madeline asked what they most wanted to see, they voted with one voice for her own quarters in the hospital. ,

  “We want to have some idea of your background, darling,” her stepmother explained. “We can do all the standard sightseeing later. Shall we be allowed to see much?”

  “Well, of course.” Madeline laughed. “I spoke to Miss Onslow about it, and I can certainly take you over the Nurses’ Home and show you my own room. We’ll go right away.”

  As they drove along the wide boulevard towards the higher part of the city and the hospital, Madeline took both pride and pleasure in pointing out things which were now familiar to her.

  “Why, you’re quite at home here already,” Enid exclaimed.

  “Do you know lots of nice people?” enquired Clarissa, to whom people were always more interesting than places.

  “Only at the hospital so far. Oh—and some very nice cousins of Morton Sanders, who live out at the Laurentian Mountains.”

  “Morton?” Clarissa laughed reminiscently, as though she had only just recalled him—but with some pleasure. “Yes, of course, he’s still here, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. Mrs. Sanders is still at the Private Pavilion.”

  “Making a nuisance of herself as before?” enquired Enid, who had gathered something of the previous trouble from Madeline’s letters.

  “I don’t see her much now,” Madeline explained. “I’m in the theatre most of the time.”

  “The theatre! Oh, the operating theatre. Such an odd term for such an unpleasant place,” Enid said reflectively.

  But Clarissa asked immediately, “Do you sometimes see Nat there?”

  �
��Of course.” Madeline sounded calm and matter-of-fact “He often operates in the theatre where I’m on duty.”

  Clarissa smiled again, as though she recalled him too with pleasure. And then they arrived at the hospital.

  Madeline had instructed the driver to take them to the main entrance, because she could then show Enid and Clarissa the superb entrance hall, before taking them through the block and across the grounds to the Nurses’ home.

  It was just at the end of the evening visiting hour and the big, marble-panelled hall was full of people, with a good sprinkling of nurses and some doctors going and coming. The whole scene was one of cheerful activity, and Madeline paused to let the other two have the full effect.

  Suddenly she saw Ruth, and was just about to dash over and bring her to be introduced, when an exclamation from Clarissa arrested her.

  “Why, Nat!” she heard her half-sister say. “Nat darling, how lovely to see you.”

  And as she turned in dismay to view the scene, she saw an animated, transformed Clarissa throw her arms round Dr. Lanyon and kiss him in front of what she morbidly felt was the whole staff and faculty of the Dominion Hospital.

  CHAPTER XII

  If Madeline had never admired Dr. Lanyon before, she would have paid him a wholehearted tribute then for the good-humoured composure with which he received Clarissa’s onslaught. He laughed a little, returned her kiss lightly and said,

  “Clarissa, my dear, how very nice to see you.”

  “And how much did that cost him?” thought Madeline. “She really is incorrigible. And in front of everyone too!”

  To Madeline it was obvious, and surely it must be to Dr. Lanyon as well, that indefinable waves of interest were flowing outward from the scene of which he and Clarissa were the centre. To most of the visitors, of course, this was just a greeting, like any other greeting. But to the nurses and students and the occasional doctor who happened to be around, history was (to quote Eileen’s later comment) being made.

  Dr. Lanyon turned then to Madeline and her stepmother, and Enid was introduced. Nothing could have been more charming than his air of friendly interest, and Madeline recalled hearing one of the students once say that “if Dr. Lanyon really chose to turn on the charm, the walls of Jericho couldn’t stand against it”.