Hospital Corridors (17 page)

“But you also told me, though I didn’t recall the fact in front of the others, that you thought she’d had some trouble with her husband,” Eileen reminded her curiously. “And you said it worried you to have her come looking for fresh pastures, or something of the sort. At the time I thought you meant Morton Sanders. But it looks to me now as though you were more worried on Dr. Lanyon’s behalf.”

“Oh, I think Dr. Lanyon can look after himself all right,” Madeline retorted airily. “But he did invite me too, Eileen, and that’s all there is to it.”

Eileen looked as though she thought there might well be more. But, though curious by nature, she was also immensely good-humoured, and nothing would have induced her to ask more if she thought, as she evidently did at this moment, that Madeline would rather not be questioned further.

Only when she saw Madeline going off that afternoon, in a cherry-coloured linen suit that flattered her creamy complexion, she called out mischievously,

“Good hunting—and no complications!”

Madeline laughed and blushed a little. But she was already late, and ran out of the Nurses’ Home, to find Dr. Lanyon sitting waiting in his car.

“I’m so sorry!” She was rather breathless as she climbed into the seat beside him. “I’m afraid I’m a bit late.”

“That’s quite all right,” he told her, with a faintly indulgent smile. “We have the whole afternoon before us.”

As they drove downtown, he did not say much at first. Then he remarked suddenly,

“I hear Mrs. Sanders is leaving the Pavilion tomorrow.”

“Yes. She—they’re going back to England on Thursday.” There was a slight silence.

“So I heard,” he said politely at last. Then: “Without seeming too inquisitive, Madeline, may I ask—does it matter very much?”

She laughed, touched and strangely pleased that he called her “Madeline” again, as soon as they were out of the hospital precincts.

“It’s not inquisitive of you,” she said lightly. “And the answer to the other question is that it doesn’t matter so much, because I’m going out with Morton tomorrow evening.”

“But you often go out with him, don’t you?”

“Oh—oh, yes.” She had forgotten that only she knew the special circumstances of tomorrow’s meeting. “But tomorrow is rather special. He—he has something particular he wants to say to me before he goes.”

“I see,” said Dr. Lanyon, and then he dropped the subject. But Madeline had the impression that he was presuming to disapprove for some reason, for somehow, during the rest of the drive, he looked very much the remote and famous specialist, and not at all the humorous, exacting and yet faintly indulgent Dr. Lanyon, who got one out of scrapes and who even accepted the challenges of a Clarissa with an air of smiling bravado.

When they reached the hotel, however, and Clarissa came out to join them, he dropped his more formal manner and made himself both amusing and charming.

Somewhat to Madeline’s chagrin and surprise, she somehow found herself relegated to the back seat, while Clarissa sat in front with Dr. Lanyon. And, if she wanted to take any part in their very high-spirited conversation, she found she had to lean forward, with her arms on the back of their seat, and make determined interjections. “For all the world,” thought Madeline indignantly, “as though I were a rather unwelcome chaperone!”

She had not expected anything else from Clarissa, of course. But with Dr. Lanyon it was different. He
knew
she had come specially to—to—“look after him’ was the rather incongruous phrase which presented itself to her. But, looking at him now and seeing the gay mockery with which he was parrying some of Clarissa’s best openings, Madeline could not help thinking that she had never seen a man who seemed better able to look after himself.

“That wasn’t quite it, of course,” she assured herself. “It was just that the presence of a third-person gave the whole outing a different character.” But after a while, the presence of the third person became of more and more negligible importance.

“And for this,” thought Madeline, “for
this
I quarrelled with Morton! I might as well not be here, for all the notice they’re taking of me. I had heroics about it to Morton, and all the time it didn’t really matter if I went or stayed.”

A slow anger began to rise within her. An anger with Dr. Lanyon, even more than with Clarissa. She detested this shut-out feeling, as though she meant no more to him than a fitting at the back of his car. It was not so much the affront to her pride, though that was considerable. It was not even so much the sense of ridiculous inadequacy which had succeeded her belief that she was essential at this interview. It was the thought that Dr. Lanyon
—her
Dr. Lanyon, in a sense—could sit there laughing and talking with Clarissa—with anyone—and apparently almost forget that she herself was there.

“It’s outrageous!” thought Madeline, and suddenly found that she wanted to cry.

She told herself that it was because of her wasted afternoon, and her affronted pride. But she knew in her heart that, illogical though it might be, she wanted to cry for the simple fact that Dr. Lanyon had not thrown a glance or a word at her since Clarissa had got into the car.

“I’m just as bad as Clarissa, wanting to gather in all the males in sight,” Madeline told herself angrily. “And I’m not even good-humoured about it, as she is. But—oh, Dr. Lanyon, how
could
you tell me, in that half-smiling way, not to let you down, when all the time it really didn’t matter to you a cent if I came on this trip or went off with Morton?”

They drove for fifty miles or more through the Ottawa River Valley, taking the historic river road through the charming villages of St. Andrews East and Carillon, then on to Cushing, with its old, square timbered houses, dating back to pioneer days. Any other time Madeline would have been enchanted, but today she looked at everything through the mists of her own disappointment and disillusion.

By the time they stopped for a combined late tea and early dinner, Madeline felt so resentfully superfluous that she could not be sociable over the meal and appeared stiff and ill at ease.

“How quiet you are, darling,” Clarissa said carelessly once.

“I feel quiet,” Madeline retorted curtly, and was annoyed afresh that Dr. Lanyon gave her a glance of amused surprise.

How did he
suppose
she felt?

On the long drive back they talked to her a little more, but it was all quite careless, surface conversation, which would have been much the same if Enid had been there or if no one extra had been there. It was, so far as Madeline and her high purpose were concerned, a completely wasted, stupid afternoon and evening.

When at long, long last they got back into Montreal and left Clarissa at the hotel, Dr. Lanyon turned and said carelessly,

“Are you coming in front?”

She longed to say “No,” but felt that this might seem childishly ungracious, and underline her offended feelings too sharply. So she transferred to the front seat once more, and sat stiffly beside him all the way up to the hospital. Then, just before they drew up before the Nurses’ entrance, she said, in a chilly little voice,

“I can’t see that my presence was exactly necessary, Dr. Lanyon.”

“But it’s always welcome,” he assured her, so gallantly that she felt sure he was laughing at her.

“Thank you.” Her voice was still cold. “But I think in future you’d better take Clarissa on her own.”

“And look after myself?” he enquired, with that sidelong, glinting smile at her.

“I never saw a man better able to look after himself,” she cried angrily. And, as the car stopped just then, she wrenched open the door, flung an angry “Good-night” at him, and ran as fast as she could into the Nurses’ Home.

She had the horrid impression that he looked after her and laughed.

She would never help him again! Never, never, never! Morton had been all too right, weeks ago, when he vowed he could look after himself. She had been stupid and wrong to sacrifice herself—and Morton—to him for even one afternoon and evening. She hated him. Quite passionately and suddenly, she assured herself that she hated him. And, as though to clinch the matter, she rushed up to her own dear room and shed some angry tears, for her wasted hours and her wasted friendship—and the knowledge that she must hate the most attractive man at the Dominion Hospital.

Not even to Eileen did she divulge any hint of the fiasco. She went to bed early, though not to sleep until much later, and when she got up next morning there was no time for discussion of one’s weekend.

It happened to be a fiercely busy day in the theatre. The heat was intense, and the strain of concentration sufficiently trying even for the nurses. For the man who was operating, Madeline knew, it must be almost unbearable. And yet those strong, beautiful, clever hands never faltered, and once or twice when she caught the gleam of his curiously light eyes above his mask, she saw that their expression was calm and clear.

In some strange way, he seemed a different person from the man who had taken her and Clarissa out yesterday, and so bitterly hurt both her pride and her affections.

“Well, no—not my affections,” she thought hastily, and then firmly dismissed her own private thoughts and concentrated afresh on her work.

It was over at last—that long spell of gruelling work. And suddenly she was free, and a relaxing hour or two lay before her; and then the meeting with Morton. Morton, who understood her and loved her as the mocking and self-dedicated surgeon never could. (Not that she wanted Dr. Lanyon.to love her, of course, she added to herself a little confusedly.)

She wished her thoughts would stop turning and turning in this agitated and formless way. But it would be all right when she was with Morton. It always was. For he made her certain that he loved her and she loved him—when he was with her.

Madeline told herself that she knew now what her answer would be, when he asked her the question which she herself had so foolishly delayed. There would have to be a separation, of course, because she could not go back to England yet. But before he went, everything would be settled.

Suddenly calm, she dressed in the prettiest dress she had—a lovely grey and green patterned silk—and went to meet Morton with happiness and confidence in her heart.

CHAPTER XIV

As Madeline emerged from the Nurses’ Home to find Morton waiting in his car, she was, for a moment, irresistibly reminded of the previous afternoon, when she had come out to find Dr. Lanyon waiting there. But she quickly crushed down the recollection, because, for some reason, it gave her the most curious stab of pain, and just now she wanted to think only of happy things.

Seeing her coming, Morton swung open the door of the car. And, as she got in beside him, he flashed her his most caressing smile and kissed her.

“Well, my sweet—so we’ve made it at last. This is our first reconciliation meeting, isn’t it?”

She laughed, a little uncertainly. But she returned his kiss and settled herself more comfortably in her seat.

“I’m sorry. I believe now it was all my fault,” she said generously. “Can we leave it at that?”

“We certainly can,” he assured her. “Though I feel it’s more than I deserve.” And, with a satisfied air, he started the car.

A curious reluctance to plunge straight into what she knew was to be an emotional scene made her say casually,

“I hear Clarissa and Enid had a lovely morning sightseeing with you. I have just been talking to Enid on the phone.”

He smiled reminiscently.

“Clarissa is certainly an attractive creature,” was what he said. “Unsuccessful marriage has improved her.”

“Morton!” Madeline was a good deal shocked. “That’s rather a callous way of putting it, surely.”

“Truth often is callous, when stated objectively,” he retorted carelessly.

Madeline was silent. She didn’t want him talking about Clarissa, or anything else, with callous objectivity just now. So she roused herself presently to ask, with at least some semblance of interest and concern, about his mother.

“I brought her back to the hotel this afternoon. She is definitely a great deal better. Judy Elliott is with her this evening, which made it easier to manage this time together.”

“I’m so glad!” Madeline exclaimed, but her fervour related more perhaps to Judy Elliott’s presence than to anything to do with Mrs. Sanders, which was understandable.

When they arrived at the restaurant he had chosen, she realized immediately that the evening was to be, as she had supposed, one of intimate, quiet conversation. There was no so-called music to disturb them, no dancing to distract them. Only an atmosphere of luxurious relaxation and distinction.

“I don’t know this place at all.” She glanced round with approving interest.

“No? It’s the pleasantest place in Montreal, if one wants a real talk,” he assured her. And presently they were seated at an isolated corner table, choosing a meal which sounded superbly attractive—except that Madeline had a nervous, almost apprehensive feeling within her which somehow made all food seem rather superfluous.

“Well”—he leant back in his chair and smiled at her, as the waiter departed with their order—“What did you think of my news?”

“Your news? Oh, your departure for England? It—it was a terrific surprise, of course.”

“For me too. I certainly shouldn’t have wished to have things meshed like this. But it’s a matter of business with which I can’t argue.”

“I see.” She glanced down at the cloth, absently tracing the pattern on it with her finger, and wondering just what he meant by “things”.

“Will you miss me, Madeline?” He leaned forward suddenly, to put his hand over hers, and immediately her fingers were still.

“Why—of course. You know I will.”

“How much, I wonder?”

She was silent, hoping it was not captious of her to feel that it was for him to define his sense of loss, not for her. But he remained silent, and after a moment she said,

“I’m sure you know how much I’ve—enjoyed our times together. It—it will mean a big gap when you go.”

His fingers tightened suddenly on hers.

“But suppose you came too, Madeline?” he said gently. “Then there wouldn’t have to be that big gap.”

She looked up then, startled to find that the great decision was suddenly before her, and even more startled to find that the strange uncertainty which had beset her for days was not immediately resolved.

“If I came too, Morton? But I couldn’t come too, in practical fact.”

“Yes, you could.” He was speaking eagerly now. “After all, you came over here in charge of my .mother. We can make out an excellent case for her needing you on the way back. There would be some difficulty at the hospital, I daresay, but nothing that couldn’t be smoothed out. They can’t detain you if you insist on going and—”

“But I shouldn’t dream of insisting on going!” Her voice cut in, suddenly cold and incisive, so that she hardly recognized it herself. “We’re desperately busy. I’m considered a reliable theatre nurse. One doesn’t just
walk out
, leaving people flat.”

For a moment, Dr. Lanyon’s strong, clever, life-saving hands seemed to come before her, and she had the fantastic impression that he might hold out one of them for an instrument and no one would be there to supply it.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said almost impatiently to Morton. “One doesn’t toss aside one’s duties and obligations like that.”

“But, darling, you can nurse anywhere. It doesn’t have to be in Canada, where I can’t see you. It can easily be in London,” he said, half amused, half exasperated.

“I prefer it to be in Canada,” Madeline retorted, suddenly knowing that she preferred it to be in the Dominion Hospital, and in Dr. Lanyon’s operating theatre, and in the radius of his personality and his genius. How she had supposed she could leave—

And then, with an almost physical shock, the exact meaning of what Morton had said clicked into place.

He had told her she could nurse in London, offering as a bait the fact that she could see him there. She could
nurse
in London. She could take this preposterous, unprecedented course of deserting the Dominion and flying to London, for the sole purpose of being handy if he wanted to see her. Cold, calm rage and disgust took hold of Madeline.

“I think,” she said gently, “that you under-estimated my devotion to my work here. When you told me on the telephone that there was something you must discuss with me, was this what you had in mind, Morton—the idea that I should some how manage to free myself from my obligations at the Dominion and come back to London to nurse there?”

“Of course. You don’t really want this separation any more than I do, do you?” He smiled at her with the glance that had once fascinated and faintly confused her. “If I cut through the tangle of formalities for you—”

“Morton, don’t,” Madeline said quietly. “You embarrass me. I didn’t know you were so stupid.”

“Stupid?” He flushed darkly at the word, evidently finding it disagreeably novel in application to himself.

“Yes—stupid,” Madeline repeated. “But you’re not the only one,” she added, with a little spurt of self-disgust. “Maybe we have both rather glamorized this very nice friendship. But, now that circumstances have quite naturally ended it, let’s not give it a significance it never had.”

“Madeline!” He was astounded and, for once, completely nonplussed. “Don’t talk in that cold, clinical way. What’s happened to you? Perhaps I sprang this on you too suddenly. But you know you love me and—”

“No,” she said quite gently, “I do not love you, Morton. But I’ll be more honest with you than you’ve been with me. It was not until this evening that I was certain of the fact. Now it’s as certain to me as tomorrow’s dawn. You’ve been amusing and charming and great fun. I think perhaps you always are. But there’s nothing more to it than that.”

“You mean you’re in love with that poseur Nat Lanyon,” he flung at her, and for a moment his eyes were so hard and bright that she hardly knew him.

Then suddenly it came to her that Morton was not so stupid, after all. Out of the mud and ruins of this evening of misunderstanding and disillusionment, he had dredged the one diamond of naked truth. She loved Nat Lanyon.

“I don’t think it’s much good our talking like this to each other,” she heard herself say very calmly. “I don’t even think there’s much point in my staying at all.” She got up and reached for her coat.

“Madeline!” Even while he held it for her he continued to argue. “Darling, don’t be so angry and impulsive. If you’ll only listen—”

“I’m not being impulsive.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m not even very angry, Morton, for we are what we are. But you and I have said all there is to say to each other. Let’s bring down the curtain and call it a day.”

To her own surprise, she even reached up and kissed his cheek. Then she turned and went out of the restaurant, just as the astonished waiter came hurrying up with their meal.

For a while she walked, hardly knowing or caring where she was going. An abnormal clarity at last about her own feelings seemed to reduce her physical surroundings to something seen in a dream, and she passed the other hurrying people as though they were ghosts. For beside her there walked a reality more concrete than any actual figure. It was Nat Lanyon she loved.

How she could have doubted it she could not imagine now. How she could have supposed that she just admired him, worried about him, found him romantically thrilling seemed inexplicable now. She loved him, and it had been sheer jealousy of Clarissa which had made her so angry yesterday.

Nat Lanyon, whose hand had caught her and upheld her—literally—the first time she had seen him, and whose influence had been her subtle protection during those early weeks at the Dominion. Nat Lanyon, whose brilliance and tenderness, whose strength and genius, performed near miracles day by day under her very eyes. And she had thought that Morton—
Morton
, that charming man of straw—was of greater importance to her.

“But in the final analysis I chose Dr. Lanyon,” she thought defensively. “When it was really a choice between them, I refused to break my promise to him. At least I had the instinct for that.”

Only then she remembered the fiasco which had resulted, and the dust and ashes of yesterday’s expedition settled on her afresh. She had gone, setting his possible need above Morton’s desire, as now she would have done without hesitation and in full knowledge of her real feelings. But he had not needed her. He had found Clarissa charming. And she herself had been—superfluous.

Suddenly she found that she was crying. Not the hot, hurt, impatient tears of yesterday. But cold, slow tears which had something of despair and resignation in them. She loved Nat Lanyon, and he thought her of less than no importance. She had wasted the days and weeks which had been bestowed upon her—when she had been, in some delightful way, almost his protégée. Now Clarissa had come back into his life, and the niche which perhaps she might have made for herself was gone.

Madeline found that, without even noticing what she was doing, she had paused at a tramway stop, waiting for a street-car that would take her to the hospital. Until now no one had joined her. But at this moment, she saw a small group of people approaching, and in confusion and shame she turned away. She would walk further and conquer her absurd emotions. Then, when she was sensible and composed again—

A car drew up abruptly at the kerb, making her jump. “Madeline,” said the one voice in the world which she most wanted to hear, “do you need a lift to the hospital?”

“N-no.” She turned her startled, tearful gaze upon him. But he evidently attached to her refusal exactly as much value as it merited. For, leaning forward to open the door of the car, he said,

“Get in. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

She hesitated, but there was something about him which was difficult to gainsay, and after a moment she obediently slipped into the seat beside him. He shut the door again and suddenly the self-contained intimacy of a small space enfolded them.

“Do you want to go anywhere special?” he enquired.

“No.” She shook her head.

“Shall I drive around a bit?”

“P-please.”

“Then don’t cry any more. You may not know it yet, but he isn’t worth it.”

“He?” said Madeline, and for a moment the inconsiderable shadow of Morton drifted across her recollection. “You don’t suppose I was crying about Morton, do you?” she exclaimed indignantly.

He shot her a surprised glance.

“I—did suppose so. I thought you’d just come from your momentous interview with him.”

“Oh—yes, I have. But there was nothing to that. He’s what you always said—a philanderer. A—a charming man of straw. He’s going back to London on Thursday,” she added indifferently, forgetting that Dr. Lanyon was already aware of that. “It doesn’t matter.”

And in those three words the immensity of Morton’s unimportance stood revealed to them both.

There was a curious little silence. Then Dr. Lanyon said, as though he were choosing his words very carefully, “Then why, Madeline, were you crying when I found you just now?”

No answer.

“General disillusionment with life?” he enquired, the faintest note of amusement creeping into his voice.

It was that note of amusement which did it, recalling, as it did, her jealous anguish of the previous day.

“No, damn you,” she said with a deep sob. “It was you—yesterday—saying I mustn’t let you down—playing on my sympathies—making me quarrel with Morton when it seemed so desperately important—and then treating me like—like a not very useful car gadget. If you love Clarissa—”

“But I don’t love Clarissa,” he said, and drew the car to a stop in a quiet side street. “I don’t love Clarissa any more than you love that insufferable charmer, Morton Sanders. I love you, my darling, and have loved you ever since you came pelting over to my office to ask for protection from Miss Ardingley. Why—”