The drive through the lanes in the dusk drew the soft shadows of a grey veil over that enchanted day and there was little enchantment in the railway carriage into which she flung herself, only just in time, at the junction. It was the end of a long and busy day, and though she now had the carriage to herself it reeked of stale smoke and the traffic of the day.
She put the roses on the opposite seat where she could enjoy their beauty and live on for a little while in the world from which they came. But she found herself clutching the folder which held Geoff's manuscript—and her problem. A problem which had to be faced.
Since she could not have her dream, ought she to renounce even the memory of it, and accept the reality? The reality was that Geoff loved her—as she loved Mark. But not loving him, could she make Geoff happy?
She could not answer that question and so she decided for the time being to evade it and hoped that time itself might bring its own solution.
So much can happen in the life of a hospital ward in the
space of twenty-four hours that Fay felt, when she went on duty the next morning, that she had been away at least a week. But even before she went on duty she had had to solve the problem of how to get Toni's roses to Mark. One thing was quite certain : she was not going to be seen carrying a large bunch of roses through the hospital corridors and depositing them at Mr. Osborne's office. She could have sent them by one of her junior nurses—but that might have led to a certain amount of whispering and giggling in the ward kitchen or the linen room. In the end she decided to leave them at the porter's desk with an instruction to send them along to the Registrar's office, and she stood over the man while he laboriously wrote on a piece of paper : "From Mrs. Travers."
Nurse Moore was already on duty when Fay came through the swing doors and followed her into the office.
"Ah, there y'are, Sister dear. And did ye have a good day? Faith and I do declare you've caught the sun !"
"Well, I was sitting in it for a long time," Fay admitted, "but I didn't think it would show. It must have got very pallid since I came to London."
"No and indeed you haven't," the staff nurse hastened to assure her. "It's not scorched ye are but just a sort of extra glow. Did you enjoy yourself?"
"Very much," Fay admitted, and then added, "Though it was sad too in one way. My old friend is very frail—it may well be the last time I shall see her."
"Oh now, and isn't that a shame—and she such a grand lady too, by the sound of it."
Fay looked a little startled, for she had not told anyone where she was spending her day off, except that it was in the country. Kate Moore, who was not dim, caught the look of surprise and explained, "Mr. Osborne was telling us all about it yesterday—about you knowing his grandmother, and all."
Fay wondered at Mark's indiscretion. There was no harm in it, but any sort of connection between a member of the nursing staff and one of the medical officers always caused a bit of scandal-mongering.
She changed the topic abruptly. "What's in the Report?" she enquired, flicking the book open.
"Well, Mr. Andrews went home—and nearly cried when he went. Old Mr. Bowker took a sudden thrombosis and collapsed. Coronary. He couldn't stand it, of course."
"Poor old man," Fay said softly.
"It's the way I'd like to go meself," Staff Nurse said. "Quick and clean."
"Yes, I suppose so. Anything else?"
"Nothing special. Geoff's definitely on the waiting list for the convalescent home, but it'll be about a week yet, the Almoner says. Oh, and Rainbow's back—at least she will be in ten days' time. She's back in her flat and'll be coming back here, so they say."
"Of course she will," Fay agreed. "I'm only filling her place temporarily. I'm glad she's better again."
But was she really glad? Had her time on Stanhope Ward been happy or unhappy? Would she miss her almost daily meetings with Mark? Or would it be to remove a constant source of nagging pain?
She supposed that she would not know the answer to that until she had tried not seeing him again—it was a question that only time would answer.
And just then she did not have any time, for after the briefest of taps the office door burst open and Mark appeared. "Here, these must be for you," he said, dumping the red roses on her desk.
"But I was told specifically to give them to you," Fay exclaimed.
Mark, who had obviously been going on to say something further, stopped abruptly and regarded Fay with a curious glance. "All!" he said then, which exasperated her by its tone, which carried all sorts of implications without disclosing any of them. Then he grinned boyishly as he said, "Oh, well then, I give them back to you. I'm in Clinic all day today, and anyway, there's no room in my cell—they'd just be wasting their fragrance. You have them." And before she could demur he was gone.
"Aren't they gorgeous?" Nurse Moore admired and sniffed hard. "Red roses."
It was a mere statement of fact, and Fay thought that her imagination was playing tricks when it seemed as though there was an undercurrent of some other meaning which the Irishwoman put into those two words.
After a day off duty there were a hundred and one things requiring the personal attention of the Sister, both in the ward and on her desk. This at any rate was the excuse she gave to herself for not going into the side ward until the morning was well advanced. It was not quite the truth—at least not the whole truth. She had not yet made up her mind what line she ought to take with Geoff. Above all else, she did not want to hurt him—but whether it was kinder to nip his emotions now, while they were still, she hoped, in the bud, or whether it was kinder to let him go on hoping for a while until time and separation did their work she could not be quite sure. Then too she was not clear about her own feelings. She did not love Geoff, but she had grown very fond of him, and there was something heart-warming about being loved.
She had a few moments of most unusual quiet before she made up her mind to visit the last of her patients—a moment when no one knocked on the office door and even the noises from the ward kitchen were muted behind closed doors. She found herself staring hard at the vase of red roses which Staff had arranged on her desk. And she knew that there lay the kernel of the problem of what to do about Geoff. She tried to be objective, cool and clinical in her approach. Mark was not free to receive her love or to give his in return. Mark was a surgeon, and if it were necessary he would not hesitate to cut out any growth that might detract from the good working of the organ it had attacked. Love like some cancer had got at her heart and could grow to no good purpose—so it had to be cut out. Even as she thought it, some pain like a knife turning in her heart made her physically wince. But she had decided on her course of action. She must cut all thought of Mark out of her heart, and to help in that process she would ask Matron if she might return to Anderson Ward and Sister Brownlow. As far as Geoff was concerned she would—temporise.
That decision made, she walked briskly into the side ward. Mr. Oliver, who was hidden behind The Times, quickly dropped his paper when he heard her footstep.
"Come along Sister, do—and put this poor boy out of his misery or his temperature will go up sky-high. How did you like it?"
Geoff looked up from his scribbling with a shy smile and a question in his eyes. But the question was not entirely, she felt, on the merits of his prose and she knew that she had to tread carefully not to commit herself.
"I think it is very good indeed. If this is the first time you've tried your hand at writing all I can say is that you're remarkably good. And you've got a great future before you in the literary field."
"I don't know about that," Geoff said. "It may be that I shall only ever write this one book. But I'm glad you like it —now I can go ahead." And now his eyes were saying "Thank you."
Fay strove to keep things on a practical level. "I'm sure that many publishers would be glad to commission the work on the basis of these first chapters. If you like to get them typed and let me have them, together with a brief synopsis of the rest of the story, I could send them to one or two firms with whom my father used to be in contact."
"There's fame for you, my boy—you've as good as made your name already. Oh, this is exciting! I never thought when I came into hospital that I'd be sharing a room with a famous novelist."
They laughed at the old man's enthusiasm and from the broad wink which he gave her Fay gathered that yesterday Geoff had been very much in the dumps with Mr. Oliver trying to raise his hopes for him.
"Hold hard!" said Geoff, but there was a new ring of confidence in his voice. "Thanks a lot—it was good of you to spare the time to read it on your day off."
"Not a bit—it whiled away a train journey," she told him. "Now, what about it? Would you like me to submit it for you?"
"Yes, please. But I think—if you don't mind—I would rather finish the book first—"
"Why, haven't you made up your mind how it ends yet?" Mr. Oliver put in. "Must have a happy ending, my boy. I'm the general public and I like to have a happy ending to my novels."
They laughed again, but Geoff's eyes were serious as he stared at Fay, so that she knew her every flicker of expression would register with him "I know how I want it to end all right, but somehow the characters seem to take over at times and I'm not sure where they're going next. I'd rather wait until it's finished, please."
"Perhaps you're wise," she agreed quietly, and she knew that she and Geoff were speaking of other things than appeared to Mr. Oliver's ears.
"May I let you see the other chapters as they work out? Even if I go to the convalescent home place I could post them to you."
"Of course you could," Fay agreed readily, "and I shall look forward to getting them. Can you arrange about typing, by the way—is your own good enough?" she indicated the little portable on the side table.
They were almost back on the everyday level again, but not quite. When Geoff asked, "Did you enjoy your day off?" there was some underlying intensity which startled her for a moment until Mr. Oliver put in, "Yes, Mr. Osborne was telling us about your visit to his mother—"
"Grandmother," Fay corrected quickly. Grandmother seemed so much less personal than mother, and she went on again to explain her own connection with Toni Travers.
Staff Nurse Moore put her head in at the door. "Matron wants to see you over in her office, Sister dear," she called.
On her way to Matron's office Fay walked as one committed to a certain course of action over which she was glad she had no control. If it had been left entirely to her she was not sure that she would have had the courage to uproot herself from the environment in which she had some daily contact, some glimpse at least of Mark; but since someone else was making the decision for her she would add her little spoke and ask to go back to the "Seminary." That was the safest place of all.
"Sit down, Sister," Matron greeted her with a smile. "You
were off duty yesterday, but I daresay your staff nurse has told you that Sister Rainbow came in. She has reported fit for duty now, but she has a few days' leave over from last year, so I suggested that she should clear those up and take over from you as from Friday of next week."
"Yes, Matron. I'm glad she's fit again."
"You did understand when you took over from her that it was only temporary, didn't you?"
"Oh yes, Matron, I quite understood, and I'm quite ready to go back to staff nurse on Anderson if Sister Browning still wants me."
As soon as the words were out Fay knew that she had done the wrong thing. It was not for her to suggest what her next appointment should be. As she watched the slight look of disapproval which crossed the Matron's face she hoped that she had not jeopardised her chances of being sent back to pediatrics by being too eager.
"We have been very pleased with the way you have run Stanhope," Matron's expression almost robbed the words of their tribute. "The consultants speak very highly of you, so I am afraid Sister Browning will have to continue to cope with her present staff. No, Sister, I think you mentioned when you came here that you wanted to get all the experience you could and that you were particularly interested in surgery?"
"Yes," Fay murmured, her heart beginning to sink.
"So we are posting you as Theatre Sister—junior to Sister Miles, of course. Well, Sister?"
Fay was aware that some words of thanks ought to have sprung to her lips. She was being given a plum—a plum for which most of the other Sisters would have given their ears. "B-but—" she stammered.
"No buts about it, Sister," Matron told her tartly. "It is a signal honour—especially as your appointment was recommended by one of the surgeons."
Outside Matron's office Fay felt as though the floor, the walls and ceiling were all playing tricks with her, spinning round and heaving beneath her feet. But there was the usual to-ing and fro-ing so that she dared not pause even for a
moment without attracting attention, and that was the last thing she wanted.
By the time she got back to her own ward things had steadied down a bit. She thought grimly as she pushed through the swing doors that fate did not intend to let her take the easy road.