NURSE IN INDIA
Juliet Armstrong
Can one bury the past? Put it behind one forever? Nurse Stella Hantley, traveling in India as secretary-nurse to kind Miss Jellings, would have answered “Yes” to that question. She found it hard to believe that she had ever danced on the stage and dreamed of becoming a star; and the episode which had shattered her career was little more than a shadowy memory. She was safe now and could reach out to take the happiness which Roger Fendish, she knew, was on the point of offering her—and then Allegra, lovely and treacherous, came suddenly back into her life, seeking for a second time to rob her of all she valued.
CHAPTER ONE
“Why rest house—that’s what I want to know!” Sarah Jellings shifted her stout, shapeless body impatiently from one side of the vast, cane-backed chair to the other. “If there’s any building stocked with more brutally angular furniture than an Indian rest house, I’ve yet to find it.”
“Poor Jelly!” A smile lighted Stella Hantley’s dark-lashed blue eyes as she turned from watching the sunset. “Still, some of the so-called hotels we’ve struck in our recent wanderings have been a good deal worse—not even clean. Think of that place at—”
“Don’t remind me. I have too many vivid memories as it is.” Miss Jellings shuddered. “The fact is, Stella, I’m too ancient and decrepit for all this traipsing around the globe, even with a charming young nurse-cum-secretary in attendance. I ought to be sitting comfortably in a nice hotel at Bournemouth, exchanging knitting patterns with other old ladies, not indulging my mania for discovering out-of-the-way dances and writing books about them.” She gave a little sigh. “But there, when dancing is in your blood there’s no dislodging it—even though it’s more than twenty years since you tied on a pair of ballet shoes.”
Stella was silent for a moment. That phrase, “when dancing’s in your blood,” had thrown a shadow over the bright surface of her mind. But she made an effort, and said cheerfully, “Most people of your age—or of any other, come to that—would feel pretty proud at having been commissioned to write such an important book. Think of being the authority on ancient dances.”
Miss Jellings’s ugly old face fell into lines of great weariness. “That’s the way I kept myself going, up to the end of the third volume. I’d reached the Aztecs then. Now that I’m on the fifth, I’m telling myself I was a fool ever to start.” She heaved a sigh. “It isn’t that you aren’t a competent secretary, Stella; in spite of your inexperience, you’re the best I’ve ever had! As for the material—well, these age-old Hindu dances ought to be thrilling me to the marrow—”
“I should say so!” Stella’s eyes were eager now. “Why, Jelly, you and I are seeing an India that the average European misses altogether.”
“What an enthusiast you are, child.” There was kindliness and warm affection in Miss Jellings’s glance as it rested on Stella, and just for a second the homely features were touched with beauty. “I’m inclined to think you could finish this last volume just as well as I. Honestly, my dear, it’s amazing to me the way you’ve digested all these odd bits and pieces of knowledge of dancing techniques. Nurses, if you’ll forgive my saying so, are usually single-track folk; it’s miracle enough that you should have learned to work a typewriter.”
Stella turned to the window once more. Again that shadow had fallen across her mind; again she was wishing, as she had so many times lately, that she could find the courage to open her heart to this lovable old woman for whom, during the past six months, she had been working so happily as nurse, secretary and traveling companion. But no! Even to think of what she still characterized, shudderingly, as “that awful-time,” made her feel physically sick. Jelly must continue to take it for granted that the only life she had ever known was that of a hospital nurse. Those earlier years, from seventeen to twenty, must be left to the oblivion to which she had sought, in such desperate anguish, to consign them.
“It isn’t as though you weren’t a good nurse, either,” Miss Jellings’s voice went on briskly. “For all your youth, there wasn’t a nurse at that clinic to touch you. The specialist may have collared the dibs, but both he and I knew that it was really you who saved my worthless life.”
“Worthless! I wish you wouldn’t say that, Jelly.” Stella was frowning. And then she asked jerkily, “Are you certain you don’t mind my going out tonight?”
“Of course not, child. I shall go to bed early, and Muhammad Ali will bring me a nice little dinner on a tray. And now tell me what you’re going to wear. You’d better not make yourself too beautiful, dining with three bachelors, or they might start quarreling over you!”
A faint smile touched Stella’s warm red mouth. Little did she guess how desirable she looked standing there, her strong, slender body braced against the frame of the long window, her short fair curls tinged red gold by the dying flames of the sunset.
“They’re more likely to quarrel with me,” she declared. “There’s some talk of bridge afterward, and you know what my calling’s like.”
“Pretty awful!” Miss Jellings chuckled. “Still, there’s one person who won’t find fault with you, and that’s your host. With him as your partner you can go down five tricks, doubled and vulnerable—”
“Oh, Roger’s amiable enough.” Stella tried to sound casual.
But Miss Jellings was not going to let her off so easily. “In point of fact,” she observed judicially, “Mr. Fendish looks to me as though he might have a very hot temper indeed. Now the other two are quite different. Old Mr. Blonson has the permanent blandness that all missionaries acquire; as for that good-looking, young Frenchman—Monsieur Verle or whatever his name is—he’s probably incapable of frowning for more than two seconds at anything in skirts.”
“Then why say that Roger won’t be cross?” Stella began unguardedly, only to break off, flushing at the glint of satirical amusement in the old woman’s eyes.
“My dear Stella, don’t pretend you’re not aware that Roger Fendish is falling head over heels in love with you.”
“Jelly, what nonsense! Why, we’ve only known each other six days.”
“Six minutes was sometimes enough, when I was a young girl,” was Miss Jellings’s swift retort. And then, with a little grimace of pain she began to haul herself out of the hard, deep chair that was so cruel to feminine curves. “I’ve only one request to make of you, and that is that you’ll postpone marrying the man till you’ve seen me safely back to England.”
“How absurd you are, Jelly!” Stella’s face was crimson as she ran to help her. “Me—a staid and sober hospital nurse!”
“You—a girl of twenty-five with a figure like a nymph’s and a curly yellow head like a cupid’s!” Miss Jellings achieved a teasing smile. “And now call Muhammad Ali to bring our drinks onto the veranda. I’ve a notion to toast your luck in a gin and lime before you go. ”
Within a half hour the sun had slipped behind the foothills in a blaze of scarlet and gold; and almost at the instant of its setting, darkness fell like a pall, and the warmth of the day was invaded by the crisp tang of a typical cold-weather evening. It was a relief to turn indoors again. But when two hours later Stella, hearing the sound of Roger’s car, called good-night to Miss Jellings and stepped out onto the veranda again, the world was once more flooded with light. The moon, climbing up the sky, was spilling silver radiance over plane and hill and making fairylike the distant huddle of low, flat roofs, interspersed with domed mosque and towering temple that was the native city.
“It’s very good of you to fetch me,” she said, as the big, burly man jumped out of the car and came hurrying up the veranda steps. “You should have let me come in a tonga.” She was trying to speak naturally, but Jelly’s teasing had disturbed her more
than she would have cared to own; and in her anxiety not to behave like a flustered schoolgirl, she was adopting an air of formal politeness very different from her usual gay camaraderie.
“What an idea!” Tall as she was, Roger Fendish topped her by a good head, and he was smiling down at her protectively now, with an expression on his rugged features that certainly lent color to Miss Jellings’s triumphant assertions. “Are you sure you’re going to be warm enough?” he went on, looking her up and down. “As you’ve probably learned by now, the nights can be pretty chilly at this time of year.”
She snuggled herself more closely into her fur coat and nodded.
“I’m fine, thank you,” she told him, and hoped, as she climbed into the car beside him, that the ridiculous thumping of her heart would pass unnoticed.
It’s absurd of Jelly, she was saying to herself vehemently. Just because Roger Fendish and I like each other, she starts up this hare about falling in love. And she tried to ignore the little tremors of delight that shot through her at the feel of his shoulder pressed close to hers as they rounded a bend in the road—the little pricks of pain that troubled her as she reflected that within a week or two she and Jelly would be moving on to another part of India, hundreds of miles away, and that she and Roger might never see each other again.
She found, when they reached Roger’s bungalow, that she was the first guest to arrive; and beaming with satisfaction over this, Roger took her on a tour of his home. To her surprise and pleasure—for she had never suspected him of artistic leanings—it was furnished with some taste; there were some good pictures on the walls, as well as the inevitable sets of antelope horns, and the hangings were of soft-patterned cretonne that might well have come from Liberty’s.
“Why, each room is more charming than the last,” she told him as he showed her, with some pride, into his study. And then she caught her breath as she noticed, in a place of honor on his desk, the studio portrait of a very lovely young girl: a girl with a small, heart-shaped face and wide, dark eyes.
Allegra! Surely she must be dreaming—wandering in some horrible nightmare! What was a photograph of Allegra Glydd, of all people in the world, doing on Roger’s desk?
She was trembling so violently, it seemed inevitable that he would notice; but to her relief he moved forward to adjust a curtain, and when he turned around again she had managed to get some control over herself.
“Isn’t she sweet?” he exclaimed, handing her the photograph in its silver frame. “Allegra Glydd is her name. She is going to marry my favorite brother—young Jim. They got engaged last summer when he was home on leave, and by Jove, he’s been in seventh heaven ever since.”
“She’s certainly lovely.” Stella could not drag her eyes away from that pictured face, though it was sheer torment to look at it.
“And what a fine little sport, too!” Roger’s tone was enthusiastic. “Do you know that kid’s persuaded an aunt and uncle of hers to bring her out here for the cold weather? She couldn’t bear to be separated from Jim even for a few months!”
“You mean she’s in India now?” It was hard to keep her voice steady, but she succeeded.
“Yes, she’s in Bombay, where Jim’s stationed. I hope to get leave to run down there before very long. We’re all boys in our family, and a new and charming sister-in-law is an event.”
“I suppose so!” Stella managed to achieve a smile.
“She was on the stage once, dancing,” Roger went on more soberly, as he replaced the photograph in its former position, “but fate dealt her a very shabby trick. She got mixed up in a rotten set and—oh, I don’t know the ins and outs, but there was a very nasty bit of business over a jewel theft. She was a mere baby—scarcely seventeen—and in any case there was no blame attached to her at all. But a frightful scandal blew up, and she shook the dust of the stage from her feet forever.”
“Very wise of her.” For the life of her Stella could not keep the bitterness out of her tone. But Roger, it was plain, noticed nothing. He said, frowning a little, “Maybe I shouldn’t be talking about it, but—well, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, Stella, but you’re the kind of girl who invites confidences. There’s something so sympathetic about you, so ... so warming.”
“That’s the trained-nurse manner!” Queer that she should be able to find words so easily—and such flippant words at that—when her brain felt half-paralyzed.
“You may remember the case,” he continued, a little frown creasing his forehead. “There was another girl concerned—a girl two or three years older than Allegra; Star Lefreyne, I think her name was. Anyway, from what I can gather, she was the real culprit, though—”
And then, just as Stella was thinking wildly, I must stop him—I must, there was the sound of voices in the hall.
A servant, noiselessly parting the curtains, announced softly, “The sahibs are here.”
“Very well, Hussein.” He turned to Stella. “If you’ll wait here, I’ll fetch them. We may as well have our cocktails in here. Take that big chair and make yourself comfortable.”
Thankful at being alone, even for a few seconds, Stella sank down into an armchair and tried to regain some semblance of composure. She had looked forward so eagerly to this little dinner at Roger’s, and now—oh, she would give anything she possessed to escape the ordeal of being in his company, to have the chance of an evening’s solitude in which to bring some sort of order to the chaos of her mind.
What a bitterly ironic thing life could be! An hour or two ago, she had been wishing she could talk to Miss Jellings about that dreadful time five years before, when the bottom had dropped out of her world, but had decided that she could not bear to let her thoughts wander to the past. Now, without the slightest preparation, her mind had been forced back violently to those grim days; she had been compelled to meet—if only from a photograph—those smiling, too innocent brown eyes she had striven so hard all these years to shut from her memory.
Allegra—pretty as a flower, treacherous as an adder! What misery she had brought to the handful of people who had tried to protect and befriend her! What ruin! Her theft of jewels from that rich old woman at the Golden Shoe dance club—bad as it was—might have been forgiven. Everyone knew how hard up she was for money, and how that snobbish pride of hers in an old and honored name revolted against taking help from her fellow workers. But to shield herself, when faced with arrest, by planting the gems on the girl she was living with...!
She shuddered as she recalled the torment of those days when she had seen herself, in imagination, thrust into prison for something with which she had not the smallest connection. How she had escaped that fate still seemed a miracle. The evidence was too conflicting, it appeared, to allow actually convicting anyone. But the undeserved punishment she had had to bear had been bitter enough: hard words from the magistrate about exercising a bad influence on a girl so much younger than herself—words flung in black streamers across the pages of the popular press—and the swift realization that her stage career, which had begun so brightly, was finished.
She was not the only one, of course, who had suffered. There was not a boy or girl in Allegra’s immediate set who did not come under the lash of the magisterial tongue. Even Allegra, though treated by the bench and in the press as an innocent child, heartlessly fooled by those who should have protected her, had found it expedient to turn her back on the theater. But none, surely, had suffered half as cruelly as she herself—the “Star Lefreyne” of whom Allegra had always been so queerly, so wickedly jealous. For apart from receiving the lion’s share of that horrible publicity, none of the others had been so set on making a success of a dancing career, nor had had such rosy prospects.
One thing is certain, she told herself feverishly, as she heard the voices of Roger and his guests coming nearer. If Allegra is going to be a member of the Fendish family, this friendship between Roger and myself must come to an end. It’s a mercy that that nonsense of Jelly’s is nonsense; that neither of us wi
ll be hurt! She tried desperately to make herself believe that those last brave words were true.
Torturing as these reflections were, the few moments alone had made it possible for Stella to. pull herself together, and she was able to greet her fellow guests with the appearance, at least, of smiling serenity. The Reverend Basil Blonson was a middle-aged man, with kindly, shortsighted eyes and a permanent stoop; a few long hairs were combed carefully across his bald head, and the skin on his face hung as untidily about his features as his clothes about his person. He seemed a little shy, Stella thought, as though unused, after long years in this forgotten corner of India, to meeting Englishwomen in sophisticated evening dress. Not so Armand Verle, the good-looking young Frenchman, who had left Paris only eighteen months earlier to take up the post of tutor in the raja’s palace, twenty miles away at Bhindi. His brown eyes were alight with appreciation as they traveled swiftly over her, and holding her hand for a little longer than courtesy demanded, he told her in excellent English that the sight of a well-dressed European woman was as refreshing as an iced drink at the end of a long hot day.
“I haven’t seen a woman in an evening gown since I came to Kotpura State,” he informed her sadly. “Of course at Bhindi, where Englishwomen never penetrate, one does not expect it. But here in Ghasirabad, where there is a trickle of tourists during the cold weather—well, I think it is shameful the way the women—English and American—leave all their pretty dresses packed away in their wardrobe trunks and treat us to their dowdiest garments.”
Roger gave his rumbling laugh, looking at the Frenchman much as a mastiff might look at a too exuberant Pekingese.
“Ghasirabad has no attractions in the way of dances or horse racing. It’s only natural that most women should want to save up their finest feathers for Delhi and Simla. Be reasonable, Verle.”
“Tonight I have no need to be reasonable!” Armand Verle, smiling now, had turned his gaze back to Stella. “Tonight I am—grateful! Thank you, Miss Hantley, for looking so lovely.”
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