Hospital Corridors (18 page)

“Dr. Lanyon!” she exclaimed, dropping her hands and staring at him in incredulous joy.

“My name is Nat,” he said, and took her in his arms and kissed her all over her face.

“I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!” She was clinging to him and returning his kisses, between laughter and tears. “It couldn’t have been as early as that. Why did you hint all that nonsense about danger from Clarissa and your feelings for her, if you say you were in love with me?”

“How else do you suppose I could make sure of your company on a dozen occasions?” he retorted amusedly.

“But when you had my company, what did you
do
with it?” she cried reproachfully. “You hardly looked at me yesterday. You laughed and talked to her.”

“There wasn’t much else I could do when you had told me you were having a vital meeting with Morton tonight, so that he could tell you something special which would make even his departure bearable.”

“O-oh! I forgot.” She leaned against him, ineffably soothed by his nearness, but disturbed by a sudden thought. “Nat—you do know he’s of no importance at all now, don’t you?”

“I gathered that.”

“I mean—you won’t ever think that I loved you on the rebound, as a sort of second best?”

“If you will never suppose that I loved you as a second best to Clarissa,” he replied with a smile. “But tell me, how and when did you know you loved me?”

“Less than an hour ago—when Morton accused me of it.”

“Morton did? Morton Sanders put your feelings into words for you?”

“Yes.”

“Come, the fellow has his uses,” declared Dr. Lanyon, in high good humour. “Let’s remember him kindly—if we have to remember him at all.”

Madeline laughed and rather shyly hugged him.

“Nat, I hope Clarissa won’t be shocked and hurt. You see—’

“Clarissa won’t mind in the least,” he asserted confidently. “Except that I believe”—he smiled reflectively—“that she’ll accept me willingly as a brother-in-law.”

The dizzy implications of that silenced Madeline for a moment, but her misgivings returned.

“I don’t think,” she said diffidently, “that brothers-in-law mean much to Clarissa.”

“I don’t think anything means much to Clarissa at the moment, except that Gerald has returned to her,” replied Nat Lanyon.

“Gerald!” Madeline sat up and stared at him in astonishment “Did you say
Gerald
? What do you mean?”

“But didn’t you know? Oh, perhaps you might not. I think he’d only just arrived.” Nat Lanyon roused himself to think of affairs other than his own. “I called in at the hotel this evening, hoping to be handy if there were any news of the one member of the family who really interested me.” He touched her cheek lightly. “Gerald had arrived by air, having, I suppose, decided that after all he couldn’t go on without his Clarissa.”

“You mean—? Are you telling me that they’re reconciled?” A most wonderful warmth and joy were beginning to flood her heart.

“Well, it looked extraordinarily like that to me.” Nat smiled at her. “I offered my good wishes, felt intensely superfluous, and decided to withdraw. I was driving slowly homeward, when I saw you weeping by a lamp-post.”

“Nat! What a way to describe me! And, anyway, who had made me cry?”

He took her in his arms again then and looked at her with that calm reassurance that made people place their lives in his hand.

“You shall never shed another tear on my account,” he said quietly, “so long as we both shall live.” And, with a long sigh of complete and utter satisfaction, Madeline kissed him as she knew now she had longed for weeks to kiss him.

They drove slowly homeward after that, but by such a roundabout way that presently they found themselves at the highest point of Westmount, with all Montreal lying below, strung out like a vast panorama of light and shadow. It was too dark now to see much but the outlines, but street-lamps drew in shining dotted lines the principal design of the city.

“Stop here for a while, Nat,” she said softly. “I want to look at my little bit of Canada.”

He stopped immediately, humouring her, and together they looked out over the darkening city.

“It’s beautiful,” she said half to herself. “It’s beautiful, and now it’s my home.”

“It’s only one corner of your home, my darling,” he assured her. “All the years and all the miles are there for us both. From ocean to ocean it will all be your home. Together we’ll watch the sunrise in the Rockies, the water come swirling down Kicking Horse River, and the mists clearing from the Valley of the Ten Peaks. You haven’t seen more than the smallest beginning of it yet.”

“I know. It’s so vast one can’t quite imagine it even now.” She smiled slowly. Then musingly she said, “Canada. They call it the land of the future, don’t they?”

“They do. And perhaps they’re right.” He smiled too then. “At any rate, it’s the land of our future.”

Then he started the car once more, and they drove at their own pace back to the hospital, secure in the knowledge that tonight, not only Canada, but all the world was theirs.

Mary Burchell has written more than seventy Harlequin Romances since
Hospital Corridors
was first released in 1958. Her novels celebrate a zest for living, a sincere concern for people and a wonderful winning way with a happy ending.