Consulting Surgeon (6 page)

Ursula glanced at him quickly, wondering whether she had imagined that his sympathy sounded guarded. She did not know that in the space of that momentary pause he had asked himself whether he knew how young—or how old—Averil Damon really was. Whether indeed she had ever been young enough not to know just what she wanted and how to achieve it. He was remembering her as he had last seen her, when she and Foster had come to bid him
bon voyage
on the airfield. She had been dressed carelessly—and still exquisitely—in slacks and a white shirt, with a fine Shetland sweater tied by its sleeves across her throat. Her smooth black hair appeared to have been twisted into its great knot with a single turn of the wrist, and her wide mouth that was like a scarlet wound in the pallor of her face had quivered slightly as she had said good-bye.

Impossible to know, of course, how much she had minded that he was going home. Impossible always to gauge the real depth of any of Averil’s feelings beneath the wonted extravagance of her gestures and her speech. He had seen a lot of his cousins in Cairo, and the three of them had had some good times together. But Averil’s farewell—her lips upon his and her arms flung about his shoulders—had been such as another woman would have reserved for a lover or a husband. Over her shoulder he had glanced at Foster’s face and had surprised there the bewildered jealousy that was inseparable from his adoration of Averil. But the next instant husband and wife had been laughing and waving to him as he went aboard the aircraft. Averil’s hand, he noticed, was tucked beneath Foster’s arm and her fingers were already creeping towards a cosy, possessive linking with his as they turned away.

Yes, impossible to answer the girl at his side with anything other than a non-committal echo of her own words. For just how “dreadful” it was to be for Averil to find herself a widow at twenty-seven he confessed he did not know.

Ursula was saying musingly: “I suppose Mrs. Damon and Mrs. Foster Damon will have to find comfort in each other. Will she make her home at Shere Court, do you think?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so; at least for a time.”

“You would be glad of that, wouldn’t you?”

“Glad of it? What do you mean?”

This time her words were so sharply echoed that Ursula was taken aback. She explained: “I meant, of course, that you would surely be glad for your aunt to have someone of her own permanently with her, once Mrs. Foster Damon comes home?”

“Oh. Yes, it will be the best possible arrangement, I dare say.” But had he any measure of how compatible Lucy Damon and Averil might find themselves? True, they should be linked by a common sorrow, but they would carry it differently. Averil would dramatize hers; Lucy, however stricken at first, would learn to mask hers with dignity.

As they were drawing near to the outskirts of Sheremouth he said: “I think it may be best if you are not introduced at first in your professional capacity. That can be explained later, when you must return to hospital. Do you agree?”

“Please do whatever you think best.”

“You see, I don’t want to frighten Aunt Lucy into believing that I regard her as a medical case. She resents her weak heart enough as it is, and I don’t think she should be distressed into irritation or into any other emotion that she can be possibly spared. And I feel that you and she may have a better chance to get to know each other if there is no starched-apron atmosphere coming between you. Do you understand?”

A little hurt, Ursula said: “I think you could trust me to keep my ‘starched apron’ in the background, if you asked me.”

“All the same, I would rather you allowed me to introduce you unconventionally as someone whom I have known for a long time.”

“A long time?” she queried. “You have been abroad for two years, remember.”

“Yes, well—perhaps I knew you before, that. Possibly, when, already tight-lipped with ambition, you were just about to launch yourself upon a career which you were determined should take you far.”

“
No—not that
!” For a moment she believed that he must hear the involuntary cry that broke through the fortitude of years. But it had only been her own heart crying, and almost at once she was controlled enough to ask coolly: “Do we really need this background of alleged intimacy?”

He considered that. Then: “I suppose we don’t really, if it offends you,” he said indifferently. “I only thought that it might lend weight to my having brought you down with me. But, of course, it’s not necessary. I see that.”

Certainly he had a polished ability to close a subject in which he had no further interest, thought Ursula rather wearily, noting the coolness of his tone. She sat back, closing her eyes for the first time, while the car was set to climb the Downs on the last mile of its journey.

The road took them past the grounds of the Easterbrook Trust, and she opened her eyes again to glance up at the familiar dimly defined squares of the windows of Christian Shere ward. The time for lights-out was past; the night staff would have been on duty for over two hours; in the beds the patients slept, were silently tended or lay fretting for the coming of dawn. The bustle and activity of the daytime might appear to have ceased there, as it did everywhere else. But it had not. At night the pulse of the hospital scarcely slowed, and that, Ursula had often thought, was one of the more satisfying aspects of the work. In business life, problems might have to be shelved at the day’s end, put away with the closing of the books, with the shutting of the safe. But in hospital to the relief of pain there was no pause. At the end of your tour of duty you handed over, without check, to someone else. It was the endless, marathon passing of a torch—a torch that must sometimes inevitably be carried to failure, but one which you often shared in carrying to success.

The car turned in at the wide gates of Shere Court, and Matthew drew up before the portico of the front door. Ursula glanced at the many lighted windows; here also was a house which, tonight, did not sleep.

Matthew dragged their cases from the car and rang the bell. Ursula shivered slightly in the night air, and he put a solicitous hand lightly beneath her elbow as they waited for the door to be answered.

Steps sounded within; in the wide doorway a maid stood ready to welcome them in. But behind her another figure was silhouetted—someone who thrust the girl aside without ceremony, coming forward to snatch feverishly at Matthew’s hands, drawing him into the house, ignoring Ursula.

With a gesture of complete and hopeless abandon Averil flung her arms about Matthew, dropped her head upon his shoulder and sobbed: “Oh, Matthew, Matthew, my dear! You came to me because you knew how utterly,
utterly
I was going to need you! I hardly let myself hope that you would come so soon. But I should have known that you would—shouldn’t I?”

Behind them Ursula stood, silent and puzzled. She guessed that the lovely, tragic figure in Matthew Lingard’s arms must be Foster Damon’s widow. But how had she reached England so soon after Foster’s death? Surely she had not been expected for at least two or three days?

Pity for the young widow mingled in her mind with a little sense of disappointment. Now there should be no need for her to fulfil the task Matthew Lingard had asked of her. For the two bereaved women would turn to each other for pity and comfort. A stranger like herself would be only an intrusion upon their sorrow. And Averil Damon, at least, had known where to come for sanctuary.

Ursula stood waiting, watching the man’s head bent in compassion above the girl’s, his eyes and attention for no one but her, his hand lightly upon the sheen of her hair.

It seemed a long time before Averil raised her head to stare at Ursula. There was a faint, querulous hostility in her whisper: “Matthew, who is this? Why is she here?”

“This is Ursula Craig, Averil—a friend of mine. She offered to come down with me to be with Aunt Lucy until you could get here. You see, we couldn’t have known that you could arrive so soon.”

Her dark eyes accused him piteously. “Then you—you didn’t really come—for me? Didn’t they tell you I was coming at once?”

“My dear, I’ve told you—I had no idea that you could be more than merely on your way, though I may have misunderstood the message I got.”

Averil looked down at her hands where a wisp of handkerchief was being dragged into a rag. She muttered: “It’s no more than a matter of hours, by air. And I had to get away—
had
to, don’t you understand?”

“Yes, of course. And I’m glad—if only for Lucy’s sake. How is she taking it?”

“I don’t know. She’s too quiet. I suppose she is sort of stricken, but she’ll hardly even talk to me. I can’t seem to reach her—she has withdrawn so into herself. And what does she think that does to
me?
I was Foster’s wife, after all!”

Averil’s voice rose upon a note of hysteria and, laying an arm protectively about her shoulders, Matthew glanced at Ursula. To Averil he said: “Don’t fret about it. Sorrow makes people unthinkingly cruel—even Aunt Lucy, who was never intentionally cruel in her life. Now I am going to her, and I want you to try to get some rest.”

“I can’t hope to sleep.”

“I can promise that you will, if you’ll do as I tell you.” Gently he turned her towards the staircase, saying over his shoulder to Ursula: “I’ll get a maid to show you to a room while I see that Averil gets to bed. Will you be ready presently to go to my aunt?” His tone was that of someone used to giving orders, and it was impossible not to obey his quiet, efficient assurance. Nor was it reasonably possible to envy the gentle understanding he had for Averil Damon. Yet, momentarily, Ursula did find herself envying Averil’s appeal to a pity and compassion which he kept well hidden from the world.

She followed the maid to a room, the charming comfort of which seemed to wrap her about with welcome as if it had been waiting just for her.

She was tired, but she knew she must not give way to weariness yet. So she made a quick toilet and felt much freshened by the time he came for her.

At Mrs. Damon’s door he whispered: “I have seen her and told her about you, but she is dazed with a sort of mute despair, as Averil said. Will you try to urge her towards sleep? Or talk to her, if that is what would comfort her most? I’ll come in with you, but after that I’m going to slip away. Will you do what you can?” Ursula nodded agreement, and together they went to stand within the circle of light about Mrs. Damon’s bed.

He said: “Aunt Lucy, dear, I’ve brought Ursula as I promised,” and then with a nod of confidence to Ursula he was gone.

The two women looked at each other for a long moment in silence, while Ursula reflected that where beauty depended upon breeding and character, neither shock nor sorrow had the power to obscure it, even temporarily. Mrs. Damon, though elderly and white-haired now, must have been a very lovely woman, and still carried traces of beauty in every finely drawn line of her face.

She turned her head away at last, murmuring: “I’m afraid I don’t understand about you. Did Matthew tell me why he brought you?”

“He thought,” said Ursula gently, “that you would be quite alone until Mrs. Foster Damon reached England. You see, he didn’t know that she could possibly arrive so soon.”

“No, I didn’t expect her either. And I can’t remember now how she managed it, though I dare say I was told. But what can you do for me? What can anybody do?”

Ursula stepped forward and pressed the hand—the fingers of which were ceaselessly puckering and smoothing the sheet. “So little, I know,” she began, “but...”

The hand beneath hers suddenly turned and gripped her own while the clouded blue eyes lighted with hope. “Perhaps you
knew
Foster?” breathed Mrs. Damon.

Ursula shook her head. “I didn’t, I am afraid. Only I have known what it is to lose—by death and quite suddenly—someone whom I loved very much.”

“But it couldn’t have been your only son, as Foster was mine?”

“No. Denis—the man I loved—had never even told me that he loved me in return, though I hoped that one day he would ask me to marry him. Outwardly, you see, my loss was infinitely less than yours, Mrs. Damon. But when it happened, I thought that no one could ever have been asked to bear so much.”

Beyond her own engulfing tragedy Lucy Damon had, as yet, little compassion to spare. But in instinctive pity for the girl at her side she said: “You poor child! Tell me about it, won’t you?”

“I would rather you told me about Foster,” said Ursula, for she shared Matthew’s hope that to draw the old lady out in talk might be to serve her best. Behind this dry-eyed, bewildered sorrow there must surely be a piling storm of regret and of memory that should seek expression in words and perhaps come at last to the blessed relief of tears?

But in the blue eyes lifted to hers there was only a frightened stare. Mrs. Damon whispered: “I can’t tell you about Foster, because something seems to have happened in my head, so that I can’t remember him any more. My own son—and I can’t even recall what he looked like when I last saw him! Even the sound of his voice has gone—I can’t explain to Matthew, and I daren’t tell Averil—she wouldn’t understand. She would think that—that I hadn’t loved him.”

“She couldn’t believe that,” Ursula assured her gently. “And being able to remember Foster will come back when you are less tired than you are now.”

“Will it?”

“I know it will, and Averil will help you if you will let her. She was with Foster until a day or two ago, remember. There must be many things she must want to tell you about him, if you will talk to her. And later, you know, when you remember him it will be without any pain at all. A time will come when you and Averil will be able to recall even the funniest or the most endearing things he did without any of the heartache you will feel for a long while yet. And when that time comes you will wonder that you ever had to strive to remember him or were hurt when you did, for by then he will be as inseparable from you as one of your senses or your ability to breathe. After that, you will never lose anything of Foster that you want to keep.”

(It had been Denis’s philosophy. And hadn’t she painfully learned the conviction of its truth to the point where, tonight, to the aid of another’s bewildered sorrow she was able to pass it on?)

Mrs. Damon protested faintly: “Child, you are too young to know so much about suffering! Won’t you tell me about yourself—please?”

“Really you should try to sleep!”

“I mustn’t sleep!” And because Ursula sensed that the old lady feared that on the far side of sleep she might wake to find that she had lost even more of Foster, she judged it best to yield.

She drew a chair to the bedside and with Mrs. Damon’s hand in hers she began talking of the things which she had not thought it could interest anyone to hear.