“Perhaps I wasn’t only thinking of patients,” Karl murmured as the music ended and people all around them clapped politely. “I think we shall stay where we are,” he suggested. “I do not have much opportunity for dancing. I should like to stay for the next one, please, knowing I may be called away at any moment.”
Jane was relieved to hear it, but too polite to say so. She allowed him to take her in his arms and moved her feet in time to the music, but all the time she was conscious of the strength, the ruthless strength, of this man, the way in which his glance searched the room, so that she caught herself wondering who it was whom he sought to destroy.
“Excuse me, please!” He stopped dancing, took his arms from holding her, and returned the salute of a man who had entered the room, threading his way between the dancers, until he stood before Karl himself. The man held out a note and said something, very rapidly, in Dalasalavian, so that Jane could not follow the trend of the conversation at all. With a completely set expression Karl took the note and tore it into tiny pieces, then he stuffed the pieces into his pocket, turned on his heel, bowed formally, apparently ignoring the fact that Jane had promptly clasped her hands behind her back like a little girl.
“I had hoped to have the pleasure of acting as your escort back to the hospital,” he told her. “Now, I am afraid, I may be delayed for hours at the station, perhaps all night. Please allow me to express my regrets, Staff Nurse.”
“It’s quite all right, thank you. I mean
...
I’m sorry you have to work when everyone else appears to be enjoying themselves,” Jane said in confusion, adding, because she did not like to see anyone—not even Karl Brotnovitch—look so sorry for himself, “I suppose that is what happens when one is a person of some importance in the community.” '
“I knew you would understand,” Karl returned, and bowed once more before turning on his heel, beckoning to his man, and striding from the ballroom.
Jane looked round for someone she knew, hoping with all her heart that Jim would have seen what had happened and come to her side, but although he must have witnessed the incident he was at the other side of the room talking with the Ambassador and one or two business men of the town, and merely smiled.
Apparently no rescue was to be attempted from that quarter, and feeling, rightly or wrongly, that she had been made conspicuous as she had been Kar
l’
s partner when the policeman came in, she looked round for Kevin, who also seemed to have disappeared.
She was turning in some relief to one of the younger members of the Embassy staff who had been introduced to her earlier by John Gamm who had made a point of renewing their brief acquaintance as soon as the St. George’s party had arrived. She had barely spoken more than a couple of words when suddenly, without warning, Kevin was back, appearing at her side so abruptly that anyone with a more suspicious mind than Jane’s would have jumped to the conclusion that he had purposely absented himself for a time and now deemed it safe to return.
From that moment he attempted to take charge of her. One or two other people came and asked her to dance, but always Kevin seemed to be waiting for her. She looked helplessly in Dr. Lowth’s direction more than once, but he either couldn’t or wouldn’t respond to the appeal she knew was in her eyes.
By the time the last waltz and the national anthems of the two countries had been played, Jane, almost without knowing why, was beginning to wish she had not come to the ball at all. It had all started off so well, she reflected as she put on her wrap and took a last careful
look at herself in the powder-room mirror. She had felt Jim Lowth liked her dress. She had sensed he was seeing her as someone entirely different, dressed in a gown of shimmering silver and shots of colour, wearing make-up discreetly, and with her hair specially set by Dorothy. She knew she looked a very different girl from the one he had seen every day since she came to Seonyata, in her white and blue uniform and wearing her regulation dark stockings and flat-heeled, sensible shoes.
Now, however, as he made his polite good-nights and escorted the
little
party out to his car, he looked once more the reserved, formal and polite Dr. Lowth whom she had at first encountered.
He drove more quickly back to the hospital than he had driven out to the Embassy, and when he halted the car outside the block of flats where the nursing staff lived, he leaned over and opened the door.
“Dr. Dean will do the round with me, Staff,” he said firmly. “You two girls get some rest. You haven’t, either of you,” courtesy, Jane supposed, made him include Dorothy in the sentence, “missed any one of the dances so far as I could see. You’ll be tired in the morning. Hurry to bed and get a good night’s rest!”
Jane let Dorothy lead the way upstairs. The caretaker wasn’t asleep, even tonight. Suddenly she found it irritating that, no matter what hour she moved about the place, he was there. Impulsively she turned to the other girl.
“Come in for a few minutes,” she suggested, “and I’ll make a pot of tea,” but Dorothy shook her head, smiling slightly.
“I’m tired, Staff,” she admitted candidly. “And so must you be, even though I realise that just now you don’t think you’ll sleep. Just remember a man like Dr. Lowth isn’t used to having someone else take what he wants, even if he doesn’t realise he wants it. He’s still
suffering from the amount of attention you seemed to be paying to Dr. Dean. I’m afraid I couldn’t keep him away from you, except when the Chief of Police came in and sort of took charge! I don’t know where Kevin went then, but he vanished, and I should imagine Dr. Lowth noticed that too. If it’s any consolation,” she smiled again, this time a more normal smile than Jane had ever seen her
give, “I would say Dr. Lowth’s jealous. You’ll have to give it time, Staff. That’s about all!”
“I wonder?” Jane said flatly, and turned to her own door. “See you on duty in the morning.” But when she had changed into her pyjamas and dressing-gown there seemed little point in making tea for one, and feeling unaccountably depressed by the ending of what had promised to be a perfect evening, she slipped into bed and lay wide-eyed, staring into the darkness, seeing only Jim Lowth’s face in her mind, until sleep overcame her and she slept soundly until Nurse Dawlish, as always, tapped on her door.
The next day seemed strangely flat after the excitement of
th
e Embassy ball. What she had expected Jane could not have said, but Jim did not even ask if she had enjoyed herself or mention their foregoing evening in any way. Instead he plunged into a long and complicated conversation of the new outpatients’ clinic he was hoping to have established before the next winter set in, and, she thought as she made her round of the first ward, for all the difference last evening had made it may as well never have happened.
Someone else who seemed to be unusually depressed that day was Kevin Dean. For the first time since she had come to St. George’s Jane saw him really down in the dumps, as he expressed it, and without any of the usual smiles or jokes with which he was wont to lace his conversation. For the first time, too, the twinkle was absent from his blue eyes, and when he caught up with
J
ane walking along one of the long passageways, he grumbled, as he had never done before, about the folly of being so far away from home, and all the things and folks one can best get along with.
Depressed herself, Jane listened to his grumbles and, she realised later, added a few of her own. All the same she had no intention of behaving in anything remote from her usual manner, but when he said suddenly: “We’ve never had an evening out together, have we, Staff? You’ve always been on duty or sewing or something. What about tonight? I know Nurse Wroe’s doing the rounds, she told me so this morning. Won’t you let me take you round a little and see if we can’t dig up a little fun of some sort or other?”
Jane would never have agreed, but she was disappointed in the fact that Jim had pushed her off with Dorothy the previous evening, not even making the excuse of wanting her to go round the wards with him! Plainly he couldn’t care what she did or whom she went around with, no matter what he had said of Kevin Dean earlier. Anyhow, she told herself, she was only responsible to him where hospital matters were concerned. What she did with her free time, her private life, was her own concern, much as she wished he might also make it his!
“I’d like that,” she said briskly. “What time, and where do we meet?”
“I’ll pick you up at the flat,” Kevin grinned. “Remember—you’re not allowed to go wandering around Seonyata alone or without an escort. I’ll be round about eight. See if you can dig up a little number as fetching as the dress you wore last night, will you?” he asked cheekily. “You looked stunning.”
“I’ll try,” Jane smiled, but the words, and the smile, were as so much dust in her mouth. It was always pleasant to be appreciated to be admired, but how much
better, how much more welcome it would have been had the words been spoken by James Lowth!
She was ready at eight sharp, wearing a royal blue sweater and a cream-coloured woollen checked skirt which she’d bought last winter and never worn much before coming to Dalasalavia. Kevin whistled as he saw her.
“I think your hair’s out of this world,” he exclaimed, “and my name isn’t Karl Brotnovitch! I hate to imagine what you might be doing to that man’s blood pressure!”
“He looks as though he can control that as well as he controls everything else,” Jane joked, and was instantly ashamed of herself. Karl was merely doing his job, n
o
matter what that job entailed. As a stranger and a foreigner it was none of Jane’s business as to what he did or how he chose to set about it. She had, she decided, no right to criticise, and wished all the more, that she hadn’t even so much as implied criticism when she saw how greatly Kevin laughed at the little sally.
She took her place beside him in the small car and they set off through the darkened streets at a pace she was certain both Dr. Jim and Karl Brotnovitch would have frowned upon. There were, however, no alarming incidents, and although she had not the faintest, idea where they were going she saw with a sense of shock Kevin had halted outside the doors of the New Thought Club.
“We’re not supposed to go in there, are we?” she queried, but he only laughed and, taking her arm, propelled her inside.
“Most of my friends hang out here,” he told her, and stopped to speak to the youth who stood by the inner door. The young man gave Jane a searching look and then a bright smile, and within minutes they were admitted to a long, low room overflowing with young people, with the air thick with tobacco smoke, noisy with
the twanging of a dozen stringed instruments of a kind Jane had seen nowhere else but in Seonyata.
Before she knew much about it they were the centre of a small, gay group where everyone appeared to know everyone else and have a great deal to say. Jane, knowing so little of the language, was at a loss, but there appeared to be a great deal of excitement. One young man was speaking loudly, vehemently, gesticulating as though to emphasise his points which all appeared to be of a somewhat violent nature.
“What’s this?” she whispered to Kevin as he brought two drinks to the table. “Some sort of revolutionary movement?”
“Not really,” he told her, grinning. “They’re just fed up, that’s all. What sort of life is there for any of them here? Work, work and more work, and all they can see at the end of it is getting older and older, as their parents have done before them! They’re a lively lot. They deserve something bette
r
, but the country’s not wealthy enough yet to do any of the things which need doing
...
He broke off as the young man who had been speaking jumped down from the table he had mounted, and banged on its surface with his tankard. It seemed the signal for which they had all been waiting, for within minutes more and more tankards were being banged, more and more voices joining in a song which the youth had started to sing and which swelled to a loud chorus, rousing, but, Jane felt, in some way menacing.
She was about to say as much to Kevin when someone else came hurriedly through the door which led to this inner room. He was a young policeman, and for a moment the crowd seemed to close its ranks against him, but he had time for none of them. Without hesitation he advanced towards Kevin who was apparently known to him.
“Dr. Dean
,”
he said breathlessly, “Dr. Lowth asked me to find you. There’s been an accident and there’s to be
...
how do you call it? ... an emergency operation. You are wanted, both of you, you and the pretty nurse,” and before Jane could gather herself together he had clicked his heels in exactly Karl’s fashion, bowed and left.
“Here we go again!” Kevin made a grimace as he explained to the others in fairly fluent Dalasalavian what had happened. “Every time I come here someone does something daft enough to warrant
Dr. Lowth’s sending for me! It’s almost as though he arranges things on purpose, but I know he can’t do that. If there’s been an accident then it’s a genuine one, just as the row which’ll
—
follow my being here again will be equally genuine! Sorry I let you in for this, Staff! I might have known it would happen again
...
and he warned me last time!”
“He didn’t warn
me
!
” Jane said crossly, and then wished she could have bitten back the words. He’d warned her, more than once, both about the New Thought Club, joining in anything other than her own work duties, just as Ann had warned her. In addition, she remembered, colouring slightly, he had warned her, as Ann had done, about a too close association with Kevin Dean!
Well, it was too late to do anything about that now, she decided as Kevin drove as quickly as He could back to the hospital. She was already angry with Jim Lowth
—
and yet what right had she to be angry? All he had done was to take her out and try to give her a little pleasure in this strange new world in which she had found herself, and if he looked upon her as just another piece of hospital furniture, what right had she to compla
in.
There was no law, in love or out of it, which said a man must love in return when once he was found to be beloved
... but with all her heart she wished there might be or that one could be invented before she was face to face with James Lowth again.
There was little time to brood about her own feelings or those of Dr. James Lowth, however, once she was changed into her uniform and had presented herself in the ward. She was quickly informed of the emergency, which had been caused by a boiler’s exploding in one of the older factories which so many of the more progressively-minded people of the country were determined to have closed and their orders for work transferred to one or other of the newer community-owned factories which were, one by one, being opened.