Hospital Corridors (14 page)

“If you really
want
me to compare you—” she hesitated.

“Yes, I do,” he told her rather imperiously.

“—I can only say that I can’t imagine ever liking Gerald well enough to feel hurt or angry if he misjudged me.”

She had not known before that Dr. Lanyon ever made a nervous or spasmodic movement of his famous, well-disciplined fingers, but at that moment she felt his hand tighten unexpectedly on hers. Then he said quietly, and in a tone she had not heard from him before,

“My dear, I’m sorry that I ever misjudged you. I hope you’ll forgive me if I hurt you—”

“Oh, Dr. Lanyon, of
course
!” She wanted to hug him in front of everyone for this capitulation, but naturally refrained. “Everything’s all right now. And, on balance, I have a lot more to acknowledge than to forgive, you know. I don’t think I have ever managed to tell you how grateful I am for the times you have come to my aid. One of the other girls says you seem to have a streamlined rescue technique.”

“Indeed?” He smiled, but a trifle drily. And, though she thought he was gratified by the tribute, she was not sure that he altogether relished the idea that he was discussed.

“But what does he suppose?” thought Madeline amusedly. “That we maintain a lofty and objective silence where our most interesting surgeon is concerned?” And, at the idea, she laughed gaily. He asked her why, naturally, but she simply said it was because she felt gay and happy. “And a little because it’s so nice to be friends again,”
she told him with a naive candour.

After that the evening was a superb success. Not only from Madeline’s own point of view, of course. The general air of festive enjoyment was the special triumph of the organizers, and never before had Madeline attended a hospital dance where there was so much easy and pleasant mixing.

Dr. Lanyon himself danced with both Ruth and Eileen, while Madeline partnered a very amusing cousin of Ruth’s and then Eileen’s boyfriend of the moment. And it was on record, though never afterwards confirmed, that Miss Ardingley danced with the pink-eared brother of the very newest recruit to the nursing staff.

But to Madeline this was her evening with Dr. Lanyon, and it was not until close on midnight that she even remembered that she was originally to have enjoyed all this with Morton. Even then, it was Dr. Lanyon who reminded her.

“Sanders doesn’t know what he’s missing,” he remarked, with that faintly sardonic smile of his, as he took her over to the big supper marquee, which had been erected in the hospital grounds.

“Morton—? Oh, well, I’m sure he was very disappointed not to be able to come,” Madeline declared hastily. “It—it was quite unavoidable.”

“Too bad,” Dr. Lanyon said without regret. “What happened, exactly?”

Madeline had not the least idea, and at this moment she felt a twinge of her previous resentment towards the erring Morton who had not even provided her with a good excuse to retail to the sceptical Dr. Lanyon. She repeated all over again the vague plea of unavoidable business, and her partner received this with an air of gravity which she found very slightly exaggerated.

They then changed the subject, and Morton Sanders was not mentioned again.

There was no actual ruling about the time for leaving the Ball, but there was a sort of tacit understanding that those who were going on duty at seven would not stay until the end. For one thing, weary revellers did not make good early morning nurses, and, for another, more room was thus left for the later comers.

Consequently, just before one o’clock, Dr. Lanyon said,

“I think it’s time I took you back to the Nurses’ Home now. You’re on duty at seven, I take it?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“And I’m operating at ten. So it looks like the last waltz, as far as we’re concerned.”

Madeline agreed at once, and, as soon as the music stopped, she said good-night to the one or two friends in her vicinity and walked across the moonlit grounds with Dr. Lanyon. The alternate deep shadow and warm summer moonlight made a beautiful picture of the grounds and the high, soaring lines of the hospital buildings, and suddenly Madeline felt an affection for the place which curiously made her part of it.

“How beautiful it looks,” she said softly, speaking her thought aloud. “Somehow, I feel tonight that I
belong
.”

He glanced at her curiously.

“Because of the Ball?” he asked amusedly.

“Oh, no. Though maybe that’s all part of it. Only, whenever you come to a new place there is a period when you feel an outsider—then a visitor—and then, at some unexpected point, part of the place. Tonight I feel I’m of the Dominion, not just
at
it.”

He laughed and put his hand on her shoulder for a moment. The shoulder furthest away from him, which was, she supposed, the nearest you could expect a famous surgeon to get to putting his arm round a nurse.

“I know what you mean, and I’m glad you feel at home here. I hope that what you said earlier this evening about our being friends again has something to do with it.”

“Why, of course it has,” Madeline told him.

Then she said good-night to him on the steps of the Nurses’ Home, and so far as Madeline was concerned the Governors’ Ball was over. But not the discussions about it.

For days afterwards, when two or three nurses were gathered together, you might be sure that they were talking of what had happened at the Ball either to themselves or each other or someone who had been a subject of general interest there. In this last group Madeline found herself placed, and quite a number of people who hardly knew her name could identify her as “the girl who went to the Ball with Dr. Lanyon.” It was a certain type of fame, and not at all unacceptable. This in no way affected the ordinary working relationship between her and Dr. Lanyon, however, and Madeline was not so foolish as to expect it to do so. In the theatre she was just one of the nurses to him, and she was humbly grateful for the simple distinction of being one who did her work well.

Not until three days after the Ball did Morton telephone, and then he wanted to know if she would come dancing with him that evening.

“I’d rather just dine, Morton, if you don’t mind,” Madeline said. “We’ve had some heavy days, and I feel more like putting my feet up than dancing on them.”

“Of course, if you would rather. I only thought—I was so sorry to have disappointed you over the Ball, and guessed you might like to dance somewhere else instead.”

“It’s very sweet of you. But I did go to the Ball, after all, you know.”

“You did? I’m glad,” Morton said generously. “Did you go in a group of students and nurses?”

“No. I went with Dr. Lanyon,” Madeline explained.

“The devil you did!” Morton sounded half amused and half annoyed. “How did that come about?”

“He asked me and I accepted,” Madeline stated composedly.

“I guessed as much as that on my own,” Morton retorted, still on that note of half-annoyed amusement. “But I thought you and he were hardly on speaking terms. That you had quarrelled over Clarissa.”

“That’s blown over,” Madeline explained.

“You don’t say!” The faintest tinge of irony had crept into his voice. “Well, meet me this evening, darling, and you shall tell me all about the Ball and the reconciliation.”

But when she met him that evening, and they went to their favourite place for dinner, somehow there was very little talk of either Dr. Lanyon or the Ball. As always, there seemed so much to say about themselves, and he was so openly happy to be with her again and made love to her so delightfully in that half-mocking, half-serious way of his, that she was excited, disturbed and enraptured all at once.

“Not that I’m blind to his faults,” thought Madeline quite truly. “But then one can like—or love—a person without that.” And she looked at Morton, with his lazily smiling eyes and his faintly unhappy mouth, and wondered if “like” or “love” were the word which really applied in his case.

Afterwards they drove out for some way along the road which runs almost beside the St. Lawrence through the lovely old villages of Repentigny and Lavaltrie. Here it was almost possible to suppose one was driving through France. On one side was the great waterway of Canada—too immense to be associated with the smaller-scale scenery of Europe—but on the other were tree-shaded cottages and farmhouses that could have been brought straight from Normandy. Poplars lined the edge of the road, and once, as they drove through a village, Madeline was amused and astonished to see a large sign which said, “English Spoken Here.”

She pointed this out to Morton. But he laughed and said, “It’s quite a claim to make in this part of the country. In these small village resorts they cater mostly for the local French-Canadians. And, as you see, the churches and cottages and even the trees make up a purely French scene. It makes one almost homesick.” And he sighed rather impatiently, Madeline thought.

“It doesn’t make me homesick,” she maintained stoutly. “I’m beginning to love it here.”

“But not as a permanent home, surely?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m not looking as far ahead as that,” Madeline declared. At which he laughed and said,

“And I suppose I’m the last person to suggest that anyone should. Enjoy today, for tomorrow may not come is rather my philosophy.”

“Is it?” Madeline looked dubious. “I wouldn’t go as far as that. It seems to make life rather—purposeless, somehow.”

He flashed her his charming and mischievous smile.

“And to you, my sweet and serious-minded Madeline, life has a very definite purpose, I suppose?”

“Not so cut and dried as you make it sound,” Madeline protested. “But I couldn’t indulge in even the loveliest day-to-day drifting for more than the length of a reasonable holiday, I think.”

“Lord! I wish I had a little of your stability and tranquillity in me,” Morton exclaimed, more than half seriously. “You must be a restful person to live with, my sweet.”

Madeline did not answer that. But she clasped her hands rather tightly in her lap, and wondered if it were of special significance to him that she seemed a restful person to live with.

He said no more about it at the time—perhaps he thought the implication was enough at this stage—but when he had brought her back home, he kissed her good-bye as of right.

And this was no careless kiss briefly exchanged at the end of a pleasant evening. It was a long, tender kiss, with a hint of passion in it, and the significance and radiance of it followed Madeline all the way up in the lift, and along the polished corridor to her own chaste room.

Even the fact that she had gathered a letter with an English stamp from the rack in the hall hardly penetrated her consciousness, and when she reached her own room, she sat down on the side of her bed and, for once, looked at Enid’s writing on the envelope almost without interest.

“A letter from home,” she thought almost absently. “How nice.” And then, “
How
he kissed me! Does any man kiss one like that unless he means something very special?”

With her mind still on Morton and the way he had said good-bye, she slid her thumb under the flap of Enid’s letter. Then suddenly her interest quickened, for the pages had been folded outwards, so that immediately her glance fell on the opening words.

Darling [Enid had written], prepare to receive your family! for Clarissa and I shall be with you less than three weeks after you get this letter.

CHAPTER XI

Astonishment,
delight and acute dismay all assailed Madeline at one and the same time.

Here was news indeed! And wonderful news, so far as Enid’s coming was concerned. But—did she want to see Clarissa here, in all the circumstances? Frankly, she did not. And, admitting the fact rather grimly to herself, she read on with some distinct apprehension.

I know this will be an immense surprise to you, but I hope a lovely one. Of course I didn’t really mean to come out to visit you so soon—I thought later on, when you were feeling homesick, might be better. But circumstances have rather decided things for me.

Madeline dear, it’s no good pretending that Clarissa’s marriage is a success. I’ve resolutely refused to interfere, and I don’t want to take sides now, though of course my natural inclination is to support my own child, however ill-judged she may be. One certain thing is that she is most unhappy, and it’s come to an open break between them.

Clarissa says she will not go back to him, but, as you and I know, Clarissa says a lot of things she doesn’t mean. At the moment they’re rubbing so on each other’s nerves that I don’t think there’s any point in their staying together, even if she would do so. On the other hand, for any young couple to fix up a definite separation is so sad and final. The sort of thing that leaves bad feelings, even if one manages to bridge the gap later.

In the circumstances, I suddenly thought that much the best compromise would be for me and Clarissa to make the proposed visit to you together. It will give her new experiences and a new outlook, as well as an adequate reason for leaving Gerald without actually calling it a separation. It may even give her a chance to find that she misses him.

I’ve spoken to Gerald about it, and, as far as he is willing to agree with anyone at the moment, he agrees with me. And so the arrangements are being made in a great hurry, and we are leaving England in about three weeks’ time.

Of course I am very sorry for the situation which has brought this about, but I can’t help being happy at the thought of seeing you so soon, dear. This is something which makes up for all the very unpleasant times we have had recently. Clarissa too is truly excited and pleased at the prospect, and of course she joins me in sending her love.—Ever your affectionate Mother.

Madeline carefully laid down the letter on the bed and addressed her own reflection in the mirror opposite.

“You were a perfect idiot,” she said bitterly, “ever to write home about Dr. Lanyon. Clarissa would have gone to Paris and bought clothes to console herself, if you hadn’t written all that stuff about his thin, charming smile, and his fame as a surgeon. Now, of course, she’ll come and make mischief here. And he’ll think I’m partly responsible for the arrangement.”

She was still gloomily turning over the letter when Eileen looked in, and said immediately,

“Hello, what’s the matter? Someone left you a fortune and forgotten to sign the will?”

“No.” Madeline rallied enough to laugh at that.

“Well then—” Eileen came further into the room and saw the envelope with the English stamp. “I say! ” her tone changed. “You haven’t had bad news from home, have you?”

“No, no.” Madeline shook her head. “On the contrary. Enid—my stepmother—is coming out to visit me.”

“Don’t you like her?”

“I
love
her! My sister Clarissa is coming too.”

“Oh, I see.” Eileen was nothing if not shrewd. “She’s the fly in the amber?”

“Not really. I’d hate to give the impression that I’m not very fond of Clarissa too. But she’s had some trouble with her husband. And Clarissa looking for fresh fields is apt to be a little dangerous. I just hope—” She broke off and sighed.

“Are you afraid she may snaffle Morton Sanders?” enquired Eileen, with sympathetic candour.

“Oh,
no
! She worked for him for two years and they have no illusions about each other,” Madeline said, and then was slightly surprised at her own way of putting it.

“Then I don’t know why you need worry,” objected Eileen. “Unless you think Dr. Lanyon might be in danger.” And she laughed a good deal at her own wit.

Madeline contributed a rather hollow-sounding “Ha, ha,” at this point, just for the look of things, but she was really turning over in her mind how she could possibly convey the news to Dr. Lanyon, and thus lessen the shock of Clarissa’s arrival, without seeming to have had a hand in the arrangement herself.

“When are they coming?” Eileen enquired.

“In about three weeks’ time,” said Madeline, trying to sound full of joyful anticipation instead of vague apprehension.

“You’ll have to arrange some nice trips for them,” Eileen declared. “Get Morton Sanders to run you all up to Quebec when you have days off, and you must go to the Lakes—and to Niagara Falls. There’ll be a Jot for them to do.”

“Yes,” agreed Madeline, remembering that Enid and Clarissa would be tourists, while she was working here. It would be natural for them to go off for days—possibly weeks—at a time. She need not imagine them perpetually around in Montreal, with Clarissa having little to do but make mischief with Nat Lanyon.

On this reflection she cheered up and was able to appear sufficiently happy about the family visit to satisfy Eileen’s expectations on that point.

But the following day, when she was on duty and inevitably seeing a great deal of Dr. Lanyon, she felt her misgivings return. She would simply have to say something to him about Clarissa’s coming, or else he would think, still more, that she had had something to do with arranging the visit He would think it anyway, of course. But smug silence and then the production of Clarissa like a rabbit out of a hat would be bound to savour of malice.

“Sometime between now and then—” Madeline kept on telling herself, with faintly comforting intention of putting off the evil day.

But that afternoon as good an opportunity as any was ruthlessly presented to her when, once more, she was sent to his office with a sheaf of record cards.

“If his secretary is there, I can’t say anything, of course,” Madeline assured herself. “I should simply have to wait for a better occasion. There’s no real hurry. They won’t be here for nearly three weeks and—”

His secretary was not there. Dr. Lanyon was sitting alone in his office, apparently thinking hard about one of his cases, for he was leaning back in his chair, which he had tipped at a perilous angle, staring thoughtfully out of the window and tapping his excellent front teeth with the top of his fountain pen.

He said, “Hello,” quite agreeably when Madeline came in. Then he righted his chair and with a brief, “Put them there, will you?” he began to write rapidly and with absorption.

Madeline stood there, uncertain and with her heart beating. In a sense, this was an excellent opportunity to speak to him. It was not often that one could expect to find him alone in his office. On the other hand, he was so completely immersed in what he was doing that to interrupt him was going to be difficult.

He flicked over a page and seemed so entirely oblivious of her presence that she felt that as far as he was concerned she had already gone. With cowardice she turned towards the door. But the thought of her unwelcome knowledge weighed heavily on her and, summoning her resolution, she turned back again and slightly cleared her throat.

“Dr. Lanyon—” she ventured rather timidly.

“Um-hm?” He did not look up.

“I had a letter from Enid—from my stepmother—yesterday. About Clarissa.”

He did look up then.

“Really?” he said, but rather coldly, as though he thought Clarissa an unsuitable subject for mention in these professional surroundings. “You must forgive me if I’m not very much interested.”

“But I think—you might be. She—they’re coming out here on a visit. And please don’t blame me,” she said very hurriedly, seeing the way his face hardened. “I had nothing to do with it. I shall be delighted to see them personally, of course. But—but in some ways Clarissa—” Her voice trailed off. Then she added, unhappily, “I thought it was better to tell you than to let it come as a surprise.”

There was silence for a moment. Then he said, rather heavily,

“Thank you.”

Once more she turned to go, but his voice arrested her. “Wait a moment. You say your stepmother and Clarissa are coming. Do you mean—just the two of them?”

“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 not
h
ing 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.”