Hospital Corridors (15 page)

“No. I had the pleasurable impression that you were too busy giving Morton Sanders a piece of your mind to notice anyone.”

“
I
was?” She was astonished, and a little bit annoyed. “I had a very pleasant evening with him!”

“Is that so?” Dr. Lanyon looked rather more amused than she thought the occasion warranted. “You seemed a good deal annoyed when I looked your way.”

“But I assure—Oh!” she remembered suddenly, and laughed and blushed. “Oh, that was nothing.”

“You pique my curiosity,” said Dr. Lanyon politely. So politely that a mischievous impulse suddenly prompted Madeline to say,

“We were talking about you, as a matter of fact.”

Up went his eyebrows.

“I should be greatly mortified by the description of myself as ‘nothing’ if I had not the impression that you were defending me with gratifying heat,” he remarked. “Do tell me on what grounds.”

“Oh—” She laughed rather confusedly again. “I had been saying how much I admired your operating. That sometimes one almost felt like applauding—”

He gave her a mocking bow in acknowledgement of this.

“—and Morton said that was because it was a performance.”

“So it is, I suppose, in a way,” Dr. Lanyon said equably. “But he meant in the sense of a show. In fact, he—he called you a bit of a show-off, and that was what made me mad.”

“My dear girl, how charming of you.” The famous surgeon looked extremely amused. “But”—he considered the charge with an objective air—“I think perhaps I am.”

“Oh, Dr. Lanyon!”

“Here’s Miss Murphy,” he said, as his secretary came back into the room. “Let’s ask her what she thinks. Miss Murphy, would you say that I’m a bit of a show-off, where my work is concerned?”

His secretary looked so little surprised that Madeline wondered suddenly if he often spoke to her with this amused, almost boyish candour.

“Sure,” said Miss Murphy. “All men are show-offs.”

“You see? Miss Murphy reduces the problem to very simple terms.” Dr. Lanyon smiled at Madeline.

“And why shouldn’t they be?” Miss Murphy went on indulgently. “If they have something to show off about. The bores are the ones that show off with nothing to back it up. But if a man’s brilliant, let him take some natural pride in it, I say. You wouldn’t be quite such a great surgeon, Dr. Lanyon, if you hadn’t a certain flair for making a dramatic whole of your work.”

“Miss Murphy, I don’t know what I’m going to do when you get married,” Dr. Lanyon said, passing his hand over his hair, and smiling ruefully. “No one else will minister to my ego quite so charmingly.”

“You’ll have to get married yourself,” Miss Murphy told him briskly. “And then there’ll be someone ministering to your ego every morning over the toast and marmalade. If you choose the right wife, that is.”

“Perhaps I’ll think about it,” murmured Dr. Lanyon. “And meanwhile, thank you for defending me, Miss GUI. I hope I haven’t destroyed any illusions about selfless surgeons by admitting to some human vanity.”

Madeline laughed reluctantly and said she did not regret her defence of him. Then she went out of the room and, after a moment, Miss Murphy followed her, on some errand of her own. As she caught up with Madeline in the corridor, she said,

“Don’t you listen to his nonsense. He’s the least vain man I ever knew. In proportion to his gifts, I mean.”

“That’s what I would have said,” Madeline agreed with a smile.

“He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t enjoy his successes, but all the credit in the world means nothing to him, if he doesn’t feel that he did everything that was humanly possible and a little bit beyond.”

“I know. That’s what he feels in the theatre. He’s nice, isn’t he?” Madeline said on sudden impulse.

“He’s the best and kindest and cleverest man I ever knew,” Miss Murphy replied emphatically. “That cool, impersonal air is just a facade, you know. I wish he’d marry some pearl of a woman, who wouldn’t let him work
quite,
so hard. Sometimes I wonder if he took a bad knock from some harpy. He never seems to bother about women much.”

“Perhaps,” said Madeline non-committally, and hurried off with an air of being too busy to stay and discuss even Dr. Lanyon any longer.

But she thought a lot about what Miss Murphy had said, and wondered if seeing Clarissa again might cure him or whether the meeting, and the knowledge that Clarissa’s marriage had not proved a success, would create a fresh complication in his life.

Before she could worry very much about this, however, Friday arrived, and full of happy excitement, Madeline went to the airport to meet the plane that was bringing Enid and Clarissa. And, once, the first greetings and embraces were over, Madeline could not help noticing that there was a subtle change in Clarissa. As they drove to the hotel, she kept on glancing unobtrusively at her half-sister, and her heart ached a little when she realized that, mingled with Clarissa’s natural pleasure and interest, was a touch of quite unfamiliar melancholy.

It was not discontent That Madeline could have understood and recognized as a natural Clarissa reaction. It was something quieter and more fundamental, and unquestionably it added to the erstwhile vivacious and lightweight Clarissa a fresh and poignant attraction.

On the way to the hotel they naturally spoke only of superficial matters. The journey, the arrival, the streets and buildings they were passing. But, once they had arrived, and Enid was dealing with the formalities at the reception desk, Clarissa turned to Madeline and said almost abruptly,

“I suppose Enid wrote you about me and Gerald?”

“A little—yes. I’m so sorry, dear. But—though I don’t want to offer trite comfort—sometimes the most desperate-seeming situations do work out in the end.”

“This won’t,” was all Clarissa said. And then Enid rejoined them and they went up to their rooms.

Here Madeline was able to have a few private words with her stepmother, because she lingered in her room while Clarissa went to unpack a few things in the room next door. Not wanting to seem eager to gossip as soon as Clarissa’s back was turned, she merely said,

“How bad are things, Enid? She looks much quieter and sadder than I expected.”

Her stepmother sighed and fluffed up her pretty hair disconsolately.

“She doesn’t tell me very much, and that’s the truth. But my own feeling is that there’s not much chance of a reconciliation. I haven’t questioned her, because I’m inclined to think that, unless someone has a passionate urge to pour out the whole story, the less said the better. People say you can’t take back actions. But I think you can’t always take back words either. They have a dreadful way of defining a situation and closing the way back.”

Madeline hugged her stepmother, partly as a means of consolation and partly as a tribute to her wisdom.

“Well, let’s not talk about it ourselves just now. Wait and see what time and new surroundings will do,” she said comfortingly.

Neither of the travellers felt tired and both were ready to go out as soon as they had eaten. But when Madeline asked what they most wanted to see, they voted with one voice for her own quarters in the hospital. ,

“We want to have some idea of your background, darling,” her stepmother explained. “We can do all the standard sightseeing later. Shall we be allowed to see much?”

“Well, of course.” Madeline laughed. “I spoke to Miss Onslow about it, and I can certainly take you over the Nurses’ Home and show you my own room. We’ll go right away.”

As they drove along the wide boulevard towards the higher part of the city and the hospital, Madeline took both pride and pleasure in pointing out things which were now familiar to her.

“Why, you’re quite at home here already,” Enid exclaimed.

“Do you know lots of nice people?” enquired Clarissa, to whom people were always more interesting than places.

“Only at the hospital so far. Oh—and some very nice cousins of Morton Sanders, who live out at the Laurentian Mountains.”

“Morton?” Clarissa laughed reminiscently, as though she had only just recalled him—but with some pleasure. “Yes, of course, he’s still here, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Mrs. Sanders is still at the Private Pavilion.”

“Making a nuisance of herself as before?” enquired Enid, who had gathered something of the previous trouble from Madeline’s letters.

“I don’t see her much now,” Madeline explained. “I’m in the theatre most of the time.”

“The theatre! Oh, the operating theatre. Such an odd term for such an unpleasant place,” Enid said reflectively.

But Clarissa asked immediately, “Do you sometimes see Nat there?”

“Of course.” Madeline sounded calm and matter-of-fact “He often operates in the theatre where I’m on duty.”

Clarissa smiled again, as though she recalled him too with pleasure. And then they arrived at the hospital.

Madeline had instructed the driver to take them to the main entrance, because she could then show Enid and Clarissa the superb entrance hall, before taking them through the block and across the grounds to the Nurses’ home.

It was just at the end of the evening visiting hour and the big, marble-panelled hall was full of people, with a good sprinkling of nurses and some doctors going and coming. The whole scene was one of cheerful activity, and Madeline paused to let the other two have the full effect.

Suddenly she saw Ruth, and was just about to dash over and bring her to be introduced, when an exclamation from Clarissa arrested her.

“Why,
Nat
!” she heard her half-sister say. “Nat darling, how lovely to see you.”

And as she turned in dismay to view the scene, she saw an animated, transformed Clarissa throw her arms round Dr. Lanyon and kiss him in front of what she morbidly felt was the whole staff and faculty of the Dominion Hospital.

CHAPTER XII

If Madeline had never admired Dr. Lanyon before, she would have paid him a wholehearted tribute then for the good-humoured composure with which he received Clarissa’s onslaught. He laughed a little, returned her kiss lightly and said,

“Clarissa, my dear, how very nice to see you.”

“And how much did that cost him?” thought Madeline. “She really is incorrigible. And in front of everyone too!”

To Madeline it was obvious, and surely it must be to Dr. Lanyon as well, that indefinable waves of interest were flowing outward from the scene of which he and Clarissa were the centre. To most of the visitors, of course, this was just a greeting, like any other greeting. But to the nurses and students and the occasional doctor who happened to be around, history was (to quote Eileen’s later comment) being made.

Dr. Lanyon turned then to Madeline and her stepmother, and Enid was introduced. Nothing could have been more charming than his air of friendly interest, and Madeline recalled hearing one of the students once say that “if Dr. Lanyon really chose to turn on the charm, the walls of Jericho couldn’t stand against it”.

“I suppose,” he said to Enid, “that Madeline”—he had never called her that before!—“is showing you over the nurses’ quarters. If you want to see something of the hospital itself and the operating section, do come to my office afterwards and I’ll be glad to act as guide. I shall be there for the next hour,” he added to Madeline.

“Thank you, Dr. Lanyon,” Madeline murmured in her most submissive and official manner, which seemed to amuse Clarissa greatly. Then Dr. Lanyon bade them a pleasant good-bye and went coolly on his way, apparently unaware of the sensation that had been made.

“Dear Nat! How lovely to see him again. I adore him in that white coat,” declared Clarissa, thoroughly animated now. “We’ll just hurry up and see Madeline’s room and then rejoin him in his office, as he says.”

All too obviously, the Nurses’ Home and Madeline’s quarters had become of very secondary interest.

Without comment Madeline led the way into the lift, where she introduced them both to Ruth and to Eileen, who had come on the scene just in time to witness the incredible greeting. Ruth’s composure rivalled that of Dr. Lanyon himself, but Eileen’s bright eyes were nearly popping out of her head, and only an eloquent glance from Madeline checked the questions which were obviously trembling on her lips.

Enid was genuinely, and Clarissa perfunctorily, interested in all that Madeline had to show them, but somehow her own pride and pleasure had clouded over now. The meeting with Dr. Lanyon and Clarissa’s evident determination to exploit the situation crowded out anything so simple as the charming appointments of her room or the beautiful view of Montreal from her window. Indeed, though Clarissa did glance from the window absently, she dismissed the view without comment, turning almost immediately to ask,

“Did Nat know I was coming, Madeline? Or was it a complete surprise for him?”

“He knew,” Madeline said briefly. “I told him.”

“And did he seem pleased with the news?”

“It’s difficult to say.” Madeline felt that sounded stupid and unco-operative, but there was nothing else with winch she could temporize.

Clarissa laughed impatiently.

“You are a funny girl. I’ll wager I’d have been able to tell. What did he say?”

“Oh, I’ve forgotten, Clarissa. Is it all that important, anyway?”

“It could be.” Clarissa glanced at herself in Madeline’s mirror and laughed mischievously but with genuine charm.

Madeline had a great desire to cry, “Oh, leave him alone, Clarissa! Why can’t you leave him alone to get over you? You’re only ministering to your own vanity in all this. You don’t care how much he’s hurt, so long as you can make yourself forget the Gerald fiasco for a few weeks.”

But of course she could not say any of this. Instead she said without enthusiasm,

“Well, I think that’s about all here. If you’ve seen all you want, we may as well go down. We have a lovely lounge and—”

“Oh, I expect we could see that another time,” Clarissa cut in, though quite good-humouredly. “One hospital lounge is very much like another, I imagine. Let’s go and find Nat.” There was a very slight silence. Then Enid said,

“Perhaps it’s a little late to do any more looking round this evening. We have had a tiring day.”

Madeline could have hugged her stepmother again. But Clarissa countered immediately,

“Oh, no! We both agreed that we felt as bright as needles. We don’t want to pass this opportunity by. I don’t think one is taken round the Dominion Hospital by Dr. Nat Lanyon every day, is one, Madeline?”

“No,” Madeline said, angry with herself that she felt so helpless and could add nothing to that.

It was Enid who put the real issue into words.

“Don’t you think it would be more—seemly if we let someone else take us round, Clarissa? I suppose he felt bound to make the polite and friendly gesture in that first moment. But after all, darling, you were engaged to him and you did jilt him.”

“Oh, Mother, don’t be so sweet and stuffy!” Clarissa laughed and gave her mother a light kiss of infinite charm. “One doesn’t treat a broken engagement like a three-act tragedy nowadays. Nat has taken it all in his stride and is probably quite thrilled at the new development.”

“I still think it would be better to go back to our hotel now, and have a quiet meal with Madeline,” Enid said obstinately. But she was not the only obstinate one in the family.

“Well, you go, darling, if that’s how you feel,” Clarissa replied, without a trace of ill-humour. “I expect I can find someone to direct me to Nat’s office, and he can give me a one-man lecture on operating theatres. I’ll join you later.”

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” Madeline spoke again, somehow hiding her dismay and anger under a casual exterior. “We will all go, but we mustn’t keep him long. I know he has had a very long day.”

So down they went in the lift once more and back to the main block, Madeline wondering unhappily all the way if he would hold it against her that she had not been able to prevent this.

If he did, he hid the fact. For when they entered his office he rose to receive them, with that slight, charming smile on which Madeline had commented with such unfortunate results, and seemed ready to conduct them round that part of the hospital which was his special domain.

Either by design or chance Madeline found herself paired off with Enid, while Clarissa and Dr. Lanyon walked a little ahead of them. Certainly from time to time he turned to include Enid in any special explanation, but .more than once Madeline, while showing something to Enid, caught snatches of conversation which were intended for two rather than four.

Once she heard Clarissa say, almost challengingly, “You don’t ask me where Gerald—where my husband—is.” But she could not hear his reply.

Then Clarissa said, a surprised note in her voice,

“Oh, she told you as much as that? I didn’t realize you had such a cosy chat about me. She told
me
she couldn’t even decide whether you were pleased or not at the news of my coming.”

Then Enid asked a rather fearful question about some very harmless piece of equipment, and Madeline had to lose the thread of the conversation between the other two.

In the theatre where Dr. Lanyon did most of his operating he waited for the other two to come up with him before he made some brief but interesting explanations.

“It all seems a bit gruesome,” Enid said, glancing over her shoulder as though she thought an unconscious body might be wheeled in at any moment.

“It really isn’t, you know.” Dr. Lanyon smiled at her. “It’s tremendously interesting and—exhilarating.”

“Depending on whether you’re on the table or beside it,” retorted Enid, unconvinced.

He laughed then, and looked at Enid as though he liked her.

“If you’re on the table you don’t know anything about it,” he assured her kindly. “And for the rest of us, there is really nothing quite so exciting and rewarding as the challenge to preserve fife and make whole. It ‘gets you’ as nothing else does.”

“Yes, I can imagine that,” Enid conceded. While Clarissa, looking round with a reflective smile, said,

“So this, so to speak, is your stage.”

He shot her an amused glance.

“Yes. Here I play to my gallery—if that’s what you meant.”

“I suppose I did.” Clarissa’s glance slid over him with a sort of admiring appraisal which obviously took in everything that was attractive about him. “
Do
you play the great man just a little, as well as being the conscientious surgeon, Nat?”

“Madeline says not,” he replied unexpectedly.

“Madeline!” Clarissa looked at her half-sister in some astonishment, as though it had never occurred to her that Madeline would express an opinion in such terms. “Is that the way you doctors and nurses talk to each other when you get together?”

“Not really—no.” He smiled slightly at Madeline, who stood by, faintly flushed and, she knew quite well, curiously at a disadvantage when her lovely half-sister was holding the floor. “I’ve forgotten how we got on the subject. But I know my secretary held the view that I dramatized myself a little, while Madeline defended me.”

“Defended you?” Clarissa laughed lightly and scornfully. “I think it’s much more interesting if you do dramatize yourself a little. I wouldn’t thank anyone who reduced me to terms of solid worthiness and nothing else.”

“I didn’t do that!” Madeline exclaimed indignantly. So indignantly that the others all laughed, and Dr. Lanyon put his hand lightly on her shoulder.

“I’ve forgotten just what you did say,” he told her, “but I remember thinking you defended me in very acceptable and gratifying terms. I’m sure I shouldn’t have felt that way if you had reduced me to a dead level of solid worthiness only, as your sister says.”

She smiled then, curiously comforted by the touch of his hand on her shoulder. And after a few minutes they all came out of the theatre and Dr. Lanyon seemed to think the tour of inspection was over. To Madeline, who feared Clarissa was quite capable of suggesting that they should all have supper together, it was a relief to see Dr. Lanyon glance at his wrist-watch and to hear him say,

“I’m so sorry, but I must leave you now. I have a late consultation.”

“Of course. You’ve been most kind to give us so much of your time,” Enid told him sincerely.

“It was a pleasure.”

“Is it a pleasure that you’re going to repeat, Nat?” Clarissa gave him her lovely, casual smile. “We shall be in Montreal for some time and, if you’re not too busy and too much in demand, I hope we shall see something of you.”

“Of course,” he said pleasantly. “I’ll call you up some time next week.” Then he said good-bye and left them.

Conscientiously Madeline showed them over lecture halls, library and dining-rooms. But, as Clarissa said, none of it seemed quite so exciting as the experience of having a famous surgeon show them over one of the operating theatres.

“I’d forgotten how attractive he was,” she added musingly. “I can’t think now why I turned him down so finally. Or else maybe he’s mellowed a bit. Or perhaps I’ve changed.”

Madeline felt so panic-stricken when she heard this that she found herself wishing Clarissa would turn round and go right back home. Then she calmed herself determinedly with the assurance that Dr. Lanyon was not such easy game as all that. It was true that he had returned Clarissa’s kiss when she had greeted him, but he had never once appeared to find the situation out of his control.

In fact, when she reflected on his faintly smiling, easy manner, she thought perhaps Clarissa was the one who had been left guessing. But guessing very pleasurably—which was what made the situation dangerous.

Madeline accompanied Enid and Clarissa back to their hotel, but she did not stay with them. By now they were both feeling the reaction after their day of excitement, and Madeline too had to think about early duty in the morning. So she bade them both an affectionate good-night, promised to telephone as soon as she was off duty the next day, and returned in a rather sober mood to her own quarters in the hospital.

Here she was greeted with a flood of questions and comments, Eileen dominating the chorus with,

“How on earth did you keep all this to yourself? You never even hinted that you had a sister who was on kissing terms with Dr. Lanyon!”

“Oh, well—” Madeline laughed rather feebly. “Clarissa kisses very easily. She’s an expansive type, and—”

“Expansive! I’ll say she’s expansive. But he kissed her back again instead of withering her to the roots with a glance. That’s what none of us can get over.”

“He knew her rather well, back home in England,” Madeline said, trying to make that sound very natural and matter-of-fact.

“Then you must have known him too,”
one of the other girls said curiously.

“No. I just knew of him. And I met him on the boat coming out.”

“But was it because he knew your sister so well that he rather took you under his wing?” Eileen wanted to know. “You never said much about his connection with her.”

“I didn’t know how much he would like his private background talked about,” Madeline said. “I thought the—the less I talked about them—him—the better.”

“Well, of course, what we all really want to know is—Is
she
the girl who sent him back here rather—rather humanized?” Eileen retorted mischievously.