Hospital Corridors (7 page)

She completed her few last duties and tried to find Ruth, who might, she felt, be able to give her a few crumbs of comfort and advice for the coming interview. But Ruth was busy elsewhere, and so, with outward calm and inward trepidation, Madeline took her reluctant way to Miss Ardingley’s office.

Here she had to wait at least ten minutes, feeling faintly sick. And then Miss Ardingley came in, shut the door behind her and sat down at her desk. Madeline had risen, of course, when her superior came into the room, but Miss Ardingley coldly waved her to a seat again, though somewhat as though it were a stool of penitence.

“Please sit down, Miss Gill. I want to speak to you at some length—and very seriously.”

Madeline sat down again and tried to look as though she did not know what it was all about Miss Ardingley moved one or two articles unnecessarily on her desk, and Madeline could not altogether escape the impression that the older woman was really rather enjoying this scene.

“Miss Gill,” she said at last, “I want to say at once that I have no fault to find with your actual work. In that respect you are a satisfactory nurse. But though, really, I don’t expect to have to speak like this to any of my senior nurses, your general behaviour while you are on duty is often, to say the least of it, unbecoming. I’m not only referring to the incident this morning—”

“Truly, Miss Ardingley, that was not my fault,” Madeline interrupted eagerly.

“Please let me finish. I know Mr. Sanders said something about his being more to blame than you. That may well be
so,
but, Miss Gill, you must know as well as I do that such things simply do not happen to a well-behaved nurse on duty. I might not think so much of the incident if I didn’t know, from my own observation, that you miss no opportunity of talking to any attractive man who comes into the place—”

“That simply isn’t true!” exclaimed Madeline indignantly.

“I’m sorry, Miss Gill, that is the impression you give. And—though this has nothing to do with me, of course, except as confirming my own view—Mrs. Sanders tells me that it was much the same on board ship.”

“Why, how dare she say such a thing!” Madeline was too angry to think about anyone’s professional status at this moment, and she spoke as one very furious woman to another. “There were only two men on board whom I really spoke to at all. One was Mr. Sanders, whom I could hardly avoid, and the other was Dr. Lanyon who—”

She had not even heard the light tap on the door, so that she was quite unprepared for the interruption in Nat Lanyon’s faintly drawling voice.

“Miss Ardingley, I’d like a word with you about Mrs. Curtis—Oh, I’m sorry, I see you’re busy. Perhaps it will do if I see Miss Fearon.”

“No, no—not at all!” A private talk with Dr. Lanyon was too highly prized to be lightly cast aside. “I had almost finished what I had to say to Miss Gill.” Miss Ardingley turned once more to Madeline. “I hope you will think very seriously over what I’ve said, and that I shall not have any occasion to speak to you like this again.”

Dr. Lanyon slightly raised his expressive eyebrows and glanced from Miss Ardingley’s curiously triumphant figure to Madeline’s flushed, distressed face. There was a moment’s silence, while Madeline turned to go. Then, as she reached the door, the surgeon who had hardly ever been known even to recognize a nurse in uniform said quietly,

“Just a moment, Miss Gill.”

Madeline hesitated, and Dr. Lanyon turned to the head of the Private Pavilion.

“Miss Ardingley, the last thing I want to do is to interfere in what is strictly your own province. But I happened to hear a few words as I came in, and I have an idea that some misunderstanding has arisen here. May I express an opinion or would you think that impertinent of me?”

Even Miss Ardingley could not bring herself to reject such an unheard-of overture from the famous surgeon.

“Why—why, of course, Dr. Lanyon. Please say whatever you want to say.”

He inclined his head slightly, but very slightly, in acknowledgement of that.

“I gathered that someone—Mrs. Sanders, I think—had given you to understand that Miss Gill did not behave very well on board ship—”

“Dr. Lanyon, that’s really no business of mine!”

“No, I know,” Dr. Lanyon agreed drily. “But, unless the impression were corrected, it might, quite unconsciously, of course, influence your judgment of Miss Gill later. I happened to cross on the same boat. Miss Gill had an extraordinarily dull and busy time with an exacting patient, and I’m sure she had no occasion for even legitimate fun, much less anything else. In fact, I believe the only time she so much as saw the inside of the ballroom was one evening when I took her dancing for half an hour. Isn’t that so, Miss Gill?” He turned suddenly to Madeline, standing motionless near the door.

“Yes, Dr. Lanyon,” Madeline said softly, controlling a mad desire to fling her arms round him and hug him with gratitude.

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone so experienced as you”—Nat Lanyon’s beautiful voice took on the slightest shade of flattery—“that in Mrs. Sanders we have a typical case of nervous, possessive jealousy, Miss Ardingley. Frankly, she’s something of a mischief-maker. And between her and her good-looking and philandering son, Miss Gill steered a difficult path very creditably. I think it would be unfair if I didn’t say as much, since I had an opportunity to observe the truth of the matter.”

There was a struggle on Florence Ardingley’s handsome face. To no one else in the hospital, she was sure, had Dr. Lanyon ever spoken with such confidential friendliness before. Even the fact that Madeline was the subject of the talk could not quite destroy that. It was impossible to be less than gracious in the face of such a delightful departure from precedent.

“Well—thank you, Dr. Lanyon. That does rather alter the situation,” she said at last.

“I hope,” Madeline ventured to say in her turn, “that it—it also explains why I couldn’t stop Mr. Sanders kissing me in the kitchen this morning.”

She saw a sudden flash of uncontrollable amusement in Dr. Lanyon’s face.

“I’m sure it does, Miss Gill,” he said, before Miss Ardingley could speak. “But Miss Ardingley naturally expects that, now you are forewarned, you will be able to take evasive action in future.”

Even Miss Ardingley smiled reluctantly at this, and Madeline actually laughed aloud—though timidly.

“I—I will, certainly. Thank you, Dr. Lanyon, for speaking for me. And thank you, Miss Ardingley,” she added tactfully “for listening so patiently.”

“Now perhaps we can discuss Mrs. Curtis.” Dr. Lanyon turned back to Miss Ardingley with his usual abrupt manner, and obviously became immersed in professional considerations immediately.

Thankfully, Madeline slipped away and went off duty, feeling as though she had done two days’ hard work and could scarcely crawl across to the Nurses’ Home.

When she arrived in her room, she found both Eileen and Ruth waiting for her.

“Whatever happened today?” Ruth enquired immediately. “Flossie went about all afternoon looking as though she were sucking lemons, and I gathered it had something to do with you.”

“She caught Morton Sanders kissing me in the kitchen,” said Madeline, tossing off her cap and undoing her stiff belt. “And, before there are any misunderstandings, you may as well know that I didn’t want him to, didn’t encourage him to, and hadn’t the faintest idea that he was going to.”

“But what
happened
?” cried Eileen, who had shrieked with mingled delight and horror at the initial statement

Madeline, now beginning to recover a little from the events of the day, gave an entertaining account of the sequel.

“But I don’t understand. You talk as though Dr. Lanyon were always popping in and out, like someone in a French farce,” exclaimed Eileen. “How did he come to be on the scene so often?”

“Oh—I don’t know.” Madeline pushed back her hair rather wearily. “I hadn’t thought about it. Anyway, it was only three times.”

“Only three times!” repeated Eileen, amused and incredulous. “It’s usually considered epoch-making if he speaks to one once. How come you worked the oracle three times?”

Madeline laughed doubtfully.

“Well, the first time he just came to see Mrs. Curtis, who’s a patient of his. The second time he’d finished the visit at more or less the same moment as I had finished any unofficial visit to Mrs. Sanders. It wasn’t
so
strange that we ran into each other again in the corridor, I think.”

“But the third time.” It was Ruth who looked reflective then. “Yes, the third time does require some explanation.”

“But he came back specially to speak to Miss Ardingley about Mrs. Curtis,” Madeline explained. “In fact, if she hadn’t been available, he meant to speak to you, Ruth. He said as much.”

“Did he now?” Ruth actually laughed at that.

“Yes. Why not?”

“Because he’d already spoken to me at some length about Mrs. Curtis. I can’t think that there was anything else much left to say.”

“O-oh.” For the first time Madeline considered in detail what she had said to Dr. Lanyon in the corridor. “I told him I was in for a row. Do you suppose—”

“You told him that! You really are the most unexpected and extraordinary girl,” exclaimed Eileen. “Who else would have thought of confiding her difficulties to Dr. Lanyon, I’d like to know?”

“It wasn’t quite that!”

“Oh yes, it was. I bet he was so intrigued that he came back on purpose to carry a torch for you with Flossie. What do you say, Ruth?”

But Ruth laughed and shook her head.

“Wasn’t it Napoleon who said, ‘Look at things as they are, not as you would wish them to be’?” she retorted a little enigmatically. And then one of the other nurses put her head in and said,

“You’re wanted on the phone, Madeline.”

“
I
am?” Madeline looked startled for a moment, as though she thought that, on this day, no summons could herald anything but disaster. “Who is it?”

“
I
don’t know, my dear. Sounds like a boy-friend—with a very nice speaking voice.”

“It’s the Sanders man, who kissed you in the kitchen,” Eileen declared. “He probably wants to grovel apologetically.”

“I doubt it,” Madeline said, with a grim smile, as she went to take the call. “Morton Sanders is not the grovelling sort.”

It was indeed Morton Sanders’ laughing, teasing voice which replied to her rather severe “Hello?” And he was certainly not in any grovelling mood. On the contrary, he asked in a tone that was almost masterful, in spite of its gay note,

“When am I going to see you?”

“I don’t know,” said Madeline, unable to forget all the trouble he had caused her.

“What are you doing this evening?”

“I—haven’t quite decided,” she said, though she knew perfectly well that all she intended to do was to spend the evening writing home, since both Eileen and Ruth were going out.

“May I decide for you, then? Come out to dinner with me. I know a charming place, about halfway out towards the Laurentians. I’ll call for you early and we can take our time, and I promise to get you back before the fair-haired dragon locks the door.”

Madeline laughed reluctantly.

“Miss Ardingley has nothing to do with my off-duty time.”

“All the better. But I’ll take the greatest care to see I don’t get you into
any
dragon’s black books. I am terribly sorry about this morning, Madeline.” He was apologizing at last, but his tone was singularly lighthearted.

“So am I. You don’t know what trouble you landed me in.”

“Did I? Then I’m sorry all over again.” There was a shade of seriousness in his voice that time. “And you must let me take you out and prove the fact. You shall tell me all about it, and we’ll make a wax figure of Miss A. and stick pins in it.”

“We’ll do nothing of the sort,” Madeline retorted, but she had to laugh. “When will you come for me?”

“Six o’clock. At the entrance to the Nurses’ Home?”

“Oh, no!” Innocent though the expedition was, Madeline had a superstitious feeling that on a day like this, Miss Ardingley would surely see her entering Morton Sanders’ car and deduce something discreditable from the fact.

“No—after all, I’ll meet you downtown.”

“But why? There’s nothing clandestine about this meeting, is there?”

“Of course not!” She spoke a shade more emphatically than she meant to do. “It’s just—I’d rather meet downtown. I shall have to be there in any case,” she added, excusing herself the small lie rather guiltily.

“Very well. In the lounge of the Mount Royal?”

“Yes. At six o’clock.” Madeline could not quite disguise the note of gay anticipation in her voice as she bade him good-bye. Then she rang off and went to her room, trying to pretend to herself that the idea of an evening in the company of Morton Sanders excited no more than a certain sense of amused curiosity within her.

CHAPTER V

As Madeline entered the lounge of the Mount Royal that evening she thought that surely neither London nor New York could provide a more varied, or better dressed, crowd of people than those she saw around her.

She herself was wearing that peculiar shade of sea-green which is so specially becoming to creamy-skinned brunettes, and her grey eyes shone with an inner excitement which could also be read in the slight parting of her red lips and the quick turn of her graceful head as she looked about her.

Morton Sanders was already waiting for her, and as he came towards her across the great carpeted space she thought, with an entirely unexpected catch at her heart, that he was the best-looking man in the place.

When she had seen him that morning she had been too agitated to consider him objectively, and all the while she had known him on board he had been Mrs. Sanders’ son and, in some sense, her own employer. Now she saw him for the first time as a man—possibly a friend—who admired her and found her interesting. It took nothing from her pleasure to realize that he was also a man whom many men and most women looked at as he passed “Why, hello. You’re even lovelier out of your uniform than in it,” he declared as he greeted her. (Perhaps he too was seeing her in some way for the first time.) “Will you come and have a drink before we start?”

She smiled and shook her head.

“No, thank you. It’s too nice an evening to spend sitting around indoors. And I’m longing to have my first sight of the Laurentians.”

“Well, it won’t be more than a distant glimpse this evening, I’m afraid,” he told her. “But it’s pleasant country, and the place we’re heading for is on one of the dozens of small lakes. Shall we go?”

They had to walk a little way to where the car was parked, because, as Madeline had already discovered, the rather narrow streets of downtown Montreal present a traffic problem which puts casual parking out of the question.

She was very much aware of him, tall, graceful and rather dominating, as he walked beside her, and once, as they crossed the road, he put his hand round her arm. There was not even the smallest suggestion of unnecessary pressure, or anything other than a touch to guide her, but she was aware suddenly of a little current of excitement, as though there were the slightest charge of electricity in his strong, well-shaped fingers.

She told herself not to be silly and schoolgirlish. But the sensation was repeated as he handed her into the car, and she knew suddenly that, with all his air of lazy sophistication and worldly veneer, he also had a streak of sheer animal magnetism in him, which was probably what made him so dangerously attractive.

While they threaded their way out of town he gave most of his attention to his driving. But, once they were out on the highway and heading north, he turned to smile at her and ask,

“Well, what happened this morning after I had left?”

“Oh—do we have to talk about it?” Pleasantly relaxed as she was, sitting there beside him, the breeze from the open window fanning her cheek, she felt no wish to relive old troubles.

“I must say I’m curious,” he admitted. “Besides, how do I apologize, if I don’t know what I’m apologizing for?”

“You can apologize for the fact that I had to take the rap for your bit of ill-timed nonsense,” she retorted drily.

“But it was not just nonsense, Madeline.” His tone was suddenly serious and, in spite of herself, she caught her breath. “I was so damned glad to see you, my dear. When I caught sight of you and realized that I’d found you without even having to look for you, I felt as though life had handed me a bonus. You didn’t really expect me to go past as though I hadn’t noticed you, did you?”

“N-no. But—”

“And then, when you looked up at me, startled—your eyes widening the way they do when you’re surprised or pleased—Come, I can’t think it was such a crime to kiss you!”

Madeline thought of Madame Loncini’s “The scene was ill-chosen!” But perhaps if one felt suddenly and deeply glad, one simply did not wait to choose the scene.

“I don’t want to go on making an issue of it,” she said, more gently. “But Miss Ardingley certainly used the incident as a peg on which to hang a very trying lecture.”

“The blonde dragon? I hoped I’d sweetened her!”

“No more than passingly,” Madeline assured him ruefully. “She was delighted to be able to tell me that my general conduct was unbecoming, and she added that she understood from Mrs. Sanders that I had behaved just as badly on the boat, coming over.”

“Hell, I am sorry! I didn’t mean Mother to come into this.”

“Of course not. But she and Miss Ardingley are already getting along very nicely. I think Miss Ardingley told her something of this morning’s incident, and after that I suppose they had a wonderful ten minutes pulling me to pieces.”

“My poor Madeline! So it meant a very bad row?”

She thought of saying she was not his Madeline, but then she was afraid of sounding as though she took him too seriously.

“It would have meant a worse one if Dr. Lanyon had not come in while Miss Ardingley was wiping the floor with me. He very kindly took it upon himself to speak for me.”

“Nat Lanyon did? Come, that was handsome of him!” Morton Sanders laughed. “Or was it a sort of family feeling because of your connection with Clarissa?”

“No, of course not. Anyway,” Madeline added a little uncomfortably, “he doesn’t know that I’m Clarissa s half-sister.”

“Not even yet? Well, perhaps that’s wise of you. He might take it into his head to turn vicious, and then you’d have two of them on your hands.”

Madeline found this such an extraordinarily disagreeable prospect that she said quickly and defensively,

“I don’t think he’s at all the kind of person to turn vicious, as you put it, over something one couldn’t help. Do you really?”

“To be frank, I hadn’t given Nat Lanyon a great deal of thought,” Morton admitted carelessly. “But, since you ask me, I think these one-idea men always have an element of danger about them.”

“But is he a one-idea man?”

“Most certainly. Or he was until he met your sister. I suppose that is why he is so brilliant. When concentration of interest amounts to a passion, you get either genius or danger. Perhaps both,” he added musingly.

Madeline was silent, digesting this. Then she glanced at her companion and said rather diffidently,

“I didn’t really know much of what happened between him and Clarissa, you know. It all took place away from home, and then suddenly she married Gerald, with hardly a word of explanation to us. I don’t want to seem curious, and sometimes I feel very uncomfortable about knowing anything of it, especially when the other girls speculate and say he never looked at any women, except in the light of a nurse or a patient But there are other times when I feel that, if I know anything at all, I wish I knew more, so as to be able to assess the situation.”

“I can tell you a little, if you’re really interested,” Morton said good-naturedly. “They met at a party, and she caught him right off his guard and knocked him for six. I should say it’s quite true that he never interested himself in a woman before.”

“Were you there?” Madeline enquired. “When it happened, I mean.”

“Yes. One and only case I’ve ever seen of love at first sight,” he remarked with a reminiscent smile.

“For both of them?”

“Lord, no, my dear! Even family partiality can’t lead you to suppose that your sister is capable of love at first sight Nor even,” he added judicially, “much love at any sight.” Madeline was angry at this brutal frankness, but she knew he was perfectly right and could not bring herself to defend Clarissa with any warmth. So she asked instead,

“What happened then?”

“Oh, it all drifted along very sweetly for a while—Clarissa intrigued by a type she had never met before, and Lanyon putting in some concentrated lovemaking, I suppose, when he wasn’t busy lecturing to students on anatomy, or whatever it was. It couldn’t possibly have lasted, of course. She got bored and decided she preferred someone who had more time for her.”

“Was there a—a terrible upset about it in the end?”

“I don’t imagine so. As you probably know, Clarissa has a genius for avoiding all unpleasantness. My guess is that she just brushed him off by post a few hours before going off on her honeymoon.”

Madeline again felt this was brutal, but again knew that he had judged Clarissa with merciless clarity, and after a moment she said reluctantly,

“You seem to know Clarissa very well.”

“My dear girl, she worked for me for two years!”

“Yes. She knew you pretty well, too,” Madeline retorted, as though that might redress the balance a little for the erring Clarissa.

“Did she?” Morton flashed his indescribably attractive smile at Madeline. “This is so
much
more interesting than Nat Lanyon’s unsuccessful courtship, if you don’t mind my saying so. Did she tell you all about me?”

“Not—all about you.”

“What then?”

“She said,” Madeline told him slowly, “that you had a sort of mocking but provocative gaiety—which is true, of course—but that you didn’t believe in anyone or anything but yourself.”

There was a rather astonished little silence. Then Morton laughed shortly.

“Very penetrating of our Clarissa. I didn’t give her credit for so much judgment,” he said lightly. But, glancing at him, Madeline saw that he was frowning, and, inexplicably, a sort of compassion for him entered her heart.

“Is it true, Morton?” she asked almost gently, using his Christian name for the first time. “That you believe in nothing and no one but yourself?”

“Not entirely,” he retorted flippantly. “For I have no very profound belief, I suppose, even in myself.”

“O-oh,” Madeline said, and then was silent “What does that mean, exactly?” he enquired with a smile—that sidelong smile which curiously disturbed her. “That you find the statement shocking?”

“Oh, no. Sad, rather. It must be dreary, I think, believing in nothing.”

Again there was an astonished silence. Then he said impatiently, almost resentfully,

“I don’t think many people suppose I have a dreary life. They incline to think me lucky. After all, I have marvellous health, worldly success, and enough prosperity to indulge all my reasonable aspirations and even some of my unreasonable ones.”

“But that doesn’t necessarily add up to happiness, does it?” Madeline said.

“You funny child! I don’t know. What is happiness, anyway?” he demanded mockingly. “Isn’t it something to do with avoiding unpleasant things and engineering pleasant ones?”

“No, of course not!” This time she was obviously shocked. “What then?”

He was amused and intrigued, she saw. “
You
tell
me
what happiness is.”

“But I can’t, exactly. I’m not clever enough. I only know that it’s a state of mind, and almost entirely independent of outside things. But if it’s to have any permanency and—and inner radiance, it must be founded on belief. In oneself, in others and in the ultimate rightness of things. At least, that’s how it seems to me.”

“Oh, God, perhaps you’re right” He spoke half mockingly, half unhappily. “Anyway, I think perhaps I believe in you—a little. But look—there’s your first distant view of the Laurentians, and in twenty minutes we should have reached our destination.”

His manner changed completely after that. He refused to be serious. He teased her and amused her and made her laugh a good deal. And presently they came to a tiny lakeside settlement—a cluster of chalet-like houses, fringing the shores of a lovely stretch of water.

Away in the distance rose the Laurentian Mountains, their peaks dark against the late evening sky, and closer at hand were smaller, pineclad hills, sloping down almost to the water’s edge. In the pale light of evening, colours were muted, but in the general hush individual sounds were more distinct, so that one heard the soft lap of the water against the little wooden jetty, and the sound of two children calling to each other in a garden across the lake.

“It’s perfectly heavenly!” Madeline exclaimed.

“Near enough to happiness?” he enquired. But, though he spoke laughingly, Madeline thought he was anxious to have her praise what he had offered her.

“Complete happiness,” she assured him. “Thank you. You couldn’t have chosen a lovelier place to bring me.”

They dined on the lakeside terrace of an inn which looked as though it might have been transported from Switzerland. And, while they ate superb fried chicken and watched the light fade across the water, he made her talk of herself and her future plans.

He seemed glad that she had not settled for more than a year in Canada, and prophesied confidently that she would come home at the end of it.

“But what makes you think that?” she asked, a little nettled.

“I shall persuade you to do so,” he replied gravely. And she could not, for the life of her, decide whether this were a joke or something more.

The light was already almost gone when they started for home. But after a while an early summer moon came up over the horizon and lighted them on their way with a pale, golden glow.

“We must do this again—soon,” he declared, as he bade her good-night outside the Nurses’ Home. And Madeline said with truth that she would love to.

“But
please
, if you meet me when I’m on duty, don’t accord me more than the most conventional greeting,” she begged.