Consulting Surgeon (14 page)

With the impersonal, didactic words he dismissed her from his interest as he had done so often before. But in her new spirit of determination to try to forget that she loved him, Ursula allowed herself to remember only fleetingly his: “Hope deferred is better than hope annihilated,” and would not question even in her thoughts what he could know of either.

She felt sure that he would not forget his promise to look up the hospital records, so she was not surprised when, on her return to duty one afternoon, Nurse Freedom met her with the news that he had telephoned the ward, asking her to be at Shere Court that evening.

On arrival there she asked for Mrs. Damon, but on hearing that she was spending the evening with friends she went straight to the library to wait for Matthew. She looked about her, and seeing that he had not yet put out the books he wanted to show her, she decided to take a book into the window-seat until he came.

She was still at the shelves, choosing one, when the door opened. She turned about quickly, expecting Matthew. But it was Averil who stood there—Averil in a deep ruby dinner-gown of finely pleated wool, wearing Eastern bangles that covered her forearms like gauntlets and, in contrast to Ursula in summery linen, appearing exquisite and exotic.

Her tone came near to accusation as she asked: “Lucy hadn’t said you were expected tonight?”

“I wasn’t—except by Mr. Lingard.”

Averil closed the door slowly behind her. “You are meeting
Matthew
—
here
?” Each piece of emphasis was an insolence.

“Yes. I’ve got an appointment with him to consult some early records of the Easterbrook Trust that he says are here.”

With the same slow deliberation Averil came forward until she faced Ursula across the shining mahogany of the library table.

“Isn’t that asking me to believe a great deal?” she asked silkily.

“It happens to be the truth.”

“What—the unlikely story that there are some papers here about your hospital, or that Matthew should have found it necessary to make a rendezvous here with you?”

The nails of Ursula’s clenched hands resting upon the table dug deep into her palms. She was struggling for control as she said: “If you find it difficult to believe the one, you may have equal difficulty with the other.”

Averil laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “I do, I assure you. For one thing, if it were true, Matthew would have mentioned it to me.”

“Then perhaps”—Ursula looked at her watch— “as he can’t be very long now, would you prefer that he confirmed it?”

For a moment Averil hesitated, as if not sure of her ground. But she recovered herself to say: “That’s daring of you
—inviting
me to give you away! Why are you so sure that I wouldn’t? Or is it that you think you can depend sufficiently on Matthew’s chivalry to confirm your story, even though he realizes just how blatantly you are throwing yourself at his head?”

Before Ursula could reply the telephone shrilled in the hall and Averil went to answer it. While she was away Ursula’s tingling indignation had time to subside, for, sure of Matthew’s support in this matter at least, she could afford to ignore even the ugliest of the other girl’s insinuations.

But when Averil returned she seemed to have acquired a new confidence. She said: “That was Matthew on the phone,” her lips curling about the words.

“Yes?” Ursula’s tone was expectant.

“He was dining here tonight, but he rang to say that he would be very late, as he has been called out on an urgent case.”

Ursula picked up her bag, her gloves. “And he mentioned, I dare say, that he wouldn’t be able to see me as he had arranged?”

The words dropped into a pause that seemed endless. Then Averil allowed a faintly perplexed frown to crease her brows. She said: “Really, I don’t recollect that he made any particular point about you. But did you expect him to? I mean, if he knew nothing about your being here, there was no reason why he should—was there?”

Without another word Ursula went out of the room, out of the house. Because there had been nothing personal about her appointment with Matthew she could not let herself feel hurt. But to have been put—and to be left!—in so utterly false a position rankled badly. Probably quite excusably Matthew had forgotten the appointment. But what a triumph for Averil’s malice his omission had proved!

When she was alone Averil lay back in one of the deep library chairs, watching the curling smoke from her cigarette with eyes that were more narrowly calculating than she ever permitted them to be in public.

She was thinking that Francis Dallant, who had written to her recently, whose name she kept carefully before Matthew, and who was a brigadier already, and well in with the people who mattered, might prove a better marriage speculation than Matthew in the end. Or he mightn’t. Ahead of Matthew lay Harley Street, possibly ultimately a peerage. It was a pity that between them the choice must be made. Even while Foster was alive she had known herself sure of Francis. Of Matthew she had never been able to be sure. Francis, at least, would take her away from here, away from Lucy Damon whose continual talk of Foster bored her. But through the misty smoke of her imagination she already heard herself being referred to as “Lady Lingard, the wife of the distinguished surgeon.” Certainly marriage to Matthew was a prize not lightly to be given up. She wished she knew just what threat she had to fear from Ursula Craig, who obviously had designs on him. But he was so enigmatic. He yielded nothing that he did not want known. Perhaps it would be as well to keep Francis Dallant as a card to be used...

When Matthew came on to the ward the next morning he brought with him the book of engravings and the other records from Shere Court. In Ursula’s office he said: “I was sorry about last night. My defection was quite unavoidable, but it gave you an unnecessary journey to the Court.”

“Of course I understood. You were too busy, naturally, to remember our appointment, but my going to the Court was no trouble at all.”

He glanced at her sharply. “I didn’t forget that I had arranged to meet you there. What makes you think I did? I telephoned.”

“Yes. Averil took the message.”

“But I don’t understand. Didn’t she pass my apologies to you?”

What reply to make to cover an omission that must have been deliberate on Averil’s part? At last Ursula managed: “She said that you had been called out urgently—”

“And that I was sorry to be forced to break my appointment?”

“She said, I think, that you could not hope to arrive until much later, so as I was due to spend the rest of the evening with Mama and Coralie, I had to leave.”

“I see.” His tone was non-committal, and as she took up one of the books he had brought to show her, she did not see the keen questioning of his eyes. After a minute of pause he said: “Yes, well, these are the documents you should have seen last night. This engraving of a ward, for instance—you might copy that for your tableau, don’t you think?”

“What a dreary place it was!” was Ursula’s comment upon the portrayal of an interior, narrow as a vault beneath an exaggeratedly arched roof.

Matthew laughed shortly. “Yes, unmitigated gloom by comparison with Christian Shere ward today. And yet, for those days, it spelt a compassionate humanity that was a great advance on much that had gone before. I must say that I’m proud to claim my very slight connection with old Christian Shere—”

“I am too,” put in Ursula quickly. “I mean. I’m glad to be privileged to carry on his traditions, not that for me there’s any other connection, of course—”

“I understood you.” Again she missed a significance in his glance as he added: “Lacking any closer bonds with you. I think the old man would have been content with what you have made of his particular ward.”

How sweet the rare praise was, however impersonal. At least, she had helped to modify his intolerant opinion of senior nurses which had led to their first clash.

But he had gone on to say: “We must see how faithfully we can copy this engraving. I’ll put the hospital carpenters on to the setting of your stage. You must see to the dressing of your ‘nurses.’ get all the property details right. By the way, what staff are you going to be able to spare from real duty that night?”

Ursula explained that, though Matron had promised to spare everyone possible, the actual staffing of the tableau—both as nurses and “patients”—would have to be done from those off duty. With a smile she added that she believed she would not lack for offers.

“Yes. People love make-believe,” he agreed. And before they parted with most of their plan sketched out he asked: “Will you do me the honor of joining my party for dinner beforehand? Aunt Lucy has given me the hospitality of the Court for that night, and I have already asked Mrs. Craig and Coralie. Claude Denman and Dirk will still be here, but I suppose your own fiancé won’t be out of hospital by then?”

“My ...? No, Ned is not walking yet.” Beneath the slow, betraying flush her face was white.

“But you will come yourself?”

There was no excuse that she could make. But in the bitter-sweet pleasure of accepting was the canker of the thought of Averil Damon. On such an occasion her flaunting pride in her possession of Matthew could well prove unendurable. There was no weapon of equal power to turn against her. There was only their shared knowledge that, for her own mean ends, Averil had stooped to that lie by omission. And that was a weapon that Ursula scorned to use. She preferred to remember the incident as evidence that, even in so small and impersonal a matter, Matthew had not failed her.

On the night of the Centenary Ball a week or two later Christian Shere ward’s historically faithful tableau evoked more interest than any other on show, merited special praise from Matron, and gathered crowds about it throughout the evening.

By the inadequate light of candles and oil-lamps it showed nurses in drab, ankle-length gowns moving silently about the narrow aisles between the pallet beds; “patients” groaned and tossed realistically, and above the whole scene loomed the dim, forbidding arch of the roof that could not have been contrived without Matthew’s advice and influence.

Among others, Dirk Denman visited it several times, confessing himself fascinated and shocked. Standing before it was Coralie’s fingers shyly linked to his in the convenient shelter of her flowing chiffon skirts, he demanded of Ursula: “Say, conditions like that don’t exist any longer in England, do they?”

“Not really, Dirk. We are just managing to progress by painful degrees!”

He regarded her in perplexity. Then: “You are laughing at me!” he accused ruefully.

“Of course, I am. Benighted we may be by American standards, but we
are
a hundred years in front of that”—indicating the tableau.

“Well, a lot of your architecture isn’t,” he challenged. “I’ve bagged some monstrosities in Sheremouth—”

“But surely some graciousness and beauty too, Dirk? For instance, the lovely crescent sweep of Regency Colonnade or the Norman church among that piled huddle of the fishermen’s cottages down by the harbor?” The intervening voice belonged to Mrs. Damon, venturing into public for the first time since Foster’s death and looking frailly dignified in a gown of black lace.

The three of them turned to Dirk, whose manners were faultless, bowed to the old lady. “Ma ‘am,” he declared with a twinkle, “I was just coming to them!”

She tapped his shoulder playfully. “I’m sure you were! Meanwhile, if you ever achieve the building of anything as enduringly perfect as the Colonnade I’ll forgive you everything!”

She turned to Coralie to remind her that she had booked the next dance with Matthew, and the little group broke up in laughter, the two young people moving off together.

Mrs. Damon turned to Ursula with a smile. “I’d say, wouldn’t you, that Dirk’s eye for beauty isn’t for the moment on the line of buildings, at all, but is focussed at about its own level?”

“You mean Coralie? Do you really think...?”

“Don’t you? It must have been a swift courtship, but it seems to go well. Will Mrs. Craig approve, do you suppose?”

“I think so. And Coralie seems cut out for a young marriage.” Mrs. Damon was silent. Then: “Aren’t all normal women?” she queried thoughtfully. “You yourself, Ursula, dear—had your Denis lived, you would have married him, rather than make a career of nursing, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I would—then. It is only since that nursing has become so fascinating.”

“I knew I was right,” smiled Mrs. Damon. “But without betraying your confidence I couldn’t convince Matthew that nursing was for you a courageous ‘second-best,’ even if it was one in which you had made a success and had found happiness. He would have it that you had mapped out your life’s plans from the start and that if you married it would only be another calculated move in your scheme of things. He even claimed you had told him as much, though, of course, he was mistaken.”

“I wonder that he was interested to argue it,” murmured Ursula. “He seemed so at the time.” Mrs. Damon changed the subject by taking the girl’s hands impulsively in hers, holding her at arm’s length.

“A lovely, lovely dress, my dear! So exactly yours—fresh and utterly flowerlike!”

Ursula was pleased. She, too, had loved the dress at first sight, had known instinctively that she must have it for this occasion. It was of a pearly cream, the corsage softly draped, the wide, filmy skirt hung with ribbon-narrow strips of so pale a leaf-green that it seemed to be misted over rather than covered by them. It was strapless, but the bare shoulder-line was softened by the chiffon stole of leaf-green, knotted at the nape of the neck to hang narrowly to floor level, the very semblance of a flower stalk.

“I hardly dared afford it!” she admitted. “It was the copy of a model and was called—what do you think?—just ‘Nettle!’ When the salesgirl assured me that it was ‘my’ dress, I didn’t know whether to be flattered or not. But I bought it all the same.”

“But, of course...! Why, it was perfectly named,” exclaimed Mrs. Damon delightedly. “They have caught exactly the cream and green of the wild flowering nettle—”

“Then I must certainly warn my partners!” put in Ursula laughingly.

The old lady’s eyes softened. “My dear, the nettle that flowers has no sting. Didn’t you know?” she asked.

On the terrace outside the ballroom Coralie sipped her cocktail and revelled in airy ripostes to Matthew’s teasing about Dirk. But her claim to poise was betrayed by her suddenly gleeful: “Fancy! If Mummy and Mr. Denman don’t consider we’re too young, I may be married before Bear is even engaged!”

Matthew tapped the ash from his cigarette. “Isn’t that rather an impossible jugglery with time, considering that she is engaged to be married already?”

“Bear
engaged?
But she’s not!”

“To Professor Primrose, surely! You even predicted it yourself.”

Matthew’s tone was studiedly level.

“To Ned?” Coralie stared, then choked upon a little gulp of laughter. “But do you mean then that
you
weren’t in that secret? I think no one was supposed to be, but I never dreamt that
you
wouldn’t know—”

Matthew interposed: “Forgive me, but we are at cross-purposes. I certainly understand there was an engagement between the Professor and your stepsister, but...”

“Well, there was—in a way—but it wasn’t
true,
you see! It was Ned’s surgeon’s idea—”

Matthew stood up. “Do you mind, Coralie, if I don’t discuss a colleague’s case with you?”

“No, but really, Matthew, this is
funny,
now that it’s all over, and Ned is getting well, and doesn’t mind a bit! You see, after his accident Ned thought he was engaged to Bear, and while he was delirious his surgeon wanted him to go on believing it to soothe him. Bear had to play ball, of course, and
she
hasn’t breathed a word either way. But when I went to visit Ned one day he told me himself, so I
know
it’s true—!”

If she expected her companion to evince interest she was disappointed. He merely crooked his arm towards her as an invitation to return to the ballroom. As she took it she was thinking: ‘What a
snibbing
sort of person he can be! I must have been mad to imagine myself in love with him, when he can’t even laugh with me as Dirk does—all the time!’

Unexpectedly, Ursula had not to endure the thing she had most dreaded—the sight of Averil in triumphant possession of Matthew throughout the evening. For up to the moment when he came to ask Ursula herself to dance he had, she thought, danced only once with Averil.

Guided by Matthew’s light, expert touch she glided smoothly into the rhythm of the waltz and gave herself up to the brief pleasure of feeling his arm about her, however conventionally. But the crowd of dancers, enlivened by a preceding square-dance, was noisily boisterous about them; there was some wild reversing, resulting in “bumping and boring,” and after a few turns round the room Matthew stood still.

“Would you care to let them work this off?” he asked.

“It doesn’t annoy me too much. I—”

“The moon is rising over the sea, and it’s quiet on the terrace.” It was an indication of his own preference, so she assented by turning at his side to move off the dance floor.

Outside the night was warm, and in an angle of the terrace where they went to lean on the balustrade they were quite alone.

Matthew said: “You are pleased with the reception of your tableau?”

“Very. I must thank you for all the help you gave.”

He smiled. “On the contrary—your inspiration, our joint execution. The honors are yours. As, indeed, a successful woman can usually contrive them to be.”

“You regard me as a—successful woman?”

“Aren’t you? Haven’t you been at pains to make it clear that you meant to be?”

“Have I? You make it sound as if I put success before everything else.”

He turned to face her squarely in the moonlight. “Until tonight I would have said that you did.”

“And tonight?” She knew herself breathless for his reply.