Nurse Linnet's Release (19 page)

“I’ve taken you by surprise tonight—upset you a bit! But tomorrow morning you may even be pleased I’m here, because you’re not altogether indifferent to me, Linnet. And now, I don’t want you to catch a chill, and your small face looks pale, so go
below to your cabin, and sleep well and don’t try and get things sorted out in your mind. There’s nothing to sort out—I’ve already sorted everything for you!”

CHAPTER
XIX

When Linnet reached her cabin she found Diana already there, and seated in her most comfortable armchair. Diana was wearing one of her glamorous dressing-gowns, and looked as if she were ready for bed, but she had plainly been waiting for Linnet.

“I have to report failure so far as the American is concerned,” she said, assuming at once that Linnet would be interested. “He’s one of those cagey males out of whom you can get little or nothing until you know them a little better. We went once round the deck, and then he decided it was too cold and hared off to the bar, and I came to bed. But I will find out all I want to know in time,” with a small determined smile. And then she noticed that Linnet was looking pale and strained, and she added: “Oh! So you’ve seen Guy!”

Linnet stood looking down at her rather curiously.

“You knew about his making up his mind to come with us?”

Diana shrugged her lovely shoulders, and spread expressive hands.

“My dear, you know Guy! By this time you should know him almost as well as I do! And I had the feeling that he wouldn’t let you go off without him. But I hope you were reasonably understanding? After all, he
is
very devoted.”

Linnet slipped out of her coat and hung it up in the wardrobe. “There was no reason why he should have kept the fact from me that he was coming with us,” she said, in a very quiet voice. “I don’t understand behaviour of that sort. Guy is very—complex,” she added.

“My dear, I’ve always told you so.” Diana flicked ash from her cigarette into an ash-tray. “And,” looking at her with a kind of serious interest, “you’re really the last person he should be thinking about marrying, because you’ll never understand him, and he won’t really understand you, and there seems to be no basis for a promising sort of marriage at all. Unless you’re terribly fond of him, it seems to me you’re risking a good deal.”

Linnet sat down rather limply and looked as if she were drained of emotion. She also looked terribly uncertain, and unable to conceal the fact.

“
Are
you terribly fond of him?” Diana asked.

Linnet clasped her fingers together tightly, and looked down at them.

“No,” she answered truthfully. “But,” she added quickly, “I like him very much!”

“Obviously you must hold him in some form of esteem,” Diana commented rather dryly, “otherwise you wouldn’t have become engaged to marry him. You’re not the type—or I wouldn’t have said you were!—to be tempted by a man’s possessions. You’re the Florence Nightingale sort—the little lady with a lamp, going round holding the hands of interesting male patients and getting them to fall for you in a very big way, just as Guy fell! But, in the case of Guy, I don’t think ‘liking’ is enough to justify marrying. However, as I told you once before, having got him to fall for you, in a way he’s never fallen for anyone else, he isn’t in the least likely to let you go. So what are you going to do about it?” looking at her with rather hard eyes.

Linnet tried to meet those eyes, and she felt that it was necessary to justify herself if she could.

“I did think—at one time—that I
...
”

“That you were just a little bit in love with him?”

“Yes.”

“But something has helped you recently to discover that you aren’t?” The lovely golden eyes gleamed harder and colder. “It’s Adrian Shane Willoughby, isn’t it?”

This time Linnet looked at her, frankly amazed.

“How did you know?”

“I didn’t
...
” Diana made a curious face, almost one of renunciation, while she smiled twistedly. “But he came to visit us at the cottage when he really needn’t have done, and it was he who actually suggested that you were the ideal person to look after me when the time came for me to leave Aston House
—
I think he thought you badly needed a change!—and looking back over the past few weeks I realize that it was you who were at the back of his thoughts all the time I was trying to persuade myself that he was interested in me. Oh, don’t look upset!” as Linnet did begin to look disturbed. “I’m not the type to give my heart without any reservations, and I know when I’ve been making a mistake, and am capable of forgetting about it in good time. You and Adrian would make an excellent pair—you’re both interested in the same things, and you don’t belong to either mine or Guy’s world, which is a world of excitement and living for the present and hoping for all sorts of things! Guy’s hoping for a kind of heaven when he settles down with you, but he won’t find it—and you’ve been falling more and more under the spell of Dr. Shane Willoughby for quite a while now, haven’t you?”

“I—” Linnet began, and found that she could say no more.

Diana smiled at her in an odd way, because although her eyes were still hard there was a certain amount of compassion in her smile.

“You don’t have to admit anything, darling,” she said, in her dry, cool voice, “because I’m not one of those people who need all their i’s dotted and their t’s crossed. I ought to dislike you very much because a man I cast my own eyes on discovered in you something more to his liking, but I don’t—perhaps because there are so many more fish in the sea, and next time I’ll make sure the fish I attempt to catch is more suited to me!”

As she crushed out the end of her cigarette and lighted another Linnet asked herself a little dully:

Was she already thinking of the American
...
?
Provided she discovered he was unattached
...
!

“It’s a bit complicated, isn’t it?” Diana said, staring thoughtfully at the tip of her cigarette once it was alight. “And there isn’t very much I can do to help you. But perhaps after you’ve passed through the Red Sea with Guy you’ll change your mind about him ... It wouldn’t be the first miracle the Red Sea had wrought, especially when the man is personable and has a lot to commend him, as Guy very definitely is, and has! If it were me, for instance
...
” and she smiled with a slow, seductive, if slightly cynical allure which conveyed a good deal, even to Linnet.

But, long before they reached the Red Sea, the situation so far as Guy and herself was concerned had, Linnet realized, deteriorated rather than improved. During the early part of the voyage they managed to appear much as they had always appeared when they were together, and in the excitements and interest of the voyage itself Linnet’s mind was a little distracted from the burning urgency of her problem, and there were moments when it seemed to her that it could be safely shelved for a while.

There were several pleasant passengers in the First Class and Linnet as she got to know them found her mind distracted still more, although Guy was not an easy person to relegate to a temporary background, even if it was only the background of thought. For, throughout the whole of the day-time, and until she went to bed, he was at her elbow, and his behaviour was very much the behaviour of a determined and possessive
fiancé
.

Combined with the effects of the ring she wore on her finger, his persistent shadowing of her, and the way in which he escorted her on every possible occasion, during shore trips or afloat, prevented any other man daring to approach very near to her, because Guy’s jealousy flamed quickly, and he managed to make it obvious. The ship’s doctor reminded Linnet almost painfully at times of Adrian, although he was actually an older man, and would never possess the charm which Adrian possessed—in her opinion, at any rate—and when he found out that her job in life was nursing, they not unnaturally gravitated together a little, and Linnet found a certain peace and comfort in talking to him, whenever the opportunity presented itself, and Guy did not seek to thrust himself between them.

The expression in the doctor’s face told her that life had not so far come up to his expectations, or might actively have deprived him of something. She could never be quite sure, but she knew that the touches of grey at his temples were far more noticeable than his age warranted, and considerably more noticeable than the light powdering of frost at the temples of Adrian Shane Willoughby. And when she was in a pensive mood, and unaware that anyone was watching her, Linnet’s face, too, gave away a good deal—at least to a discerning man.

Once, when Guy had consented to leave her alone for a short while in order to play tennis with Diana and her American—by this time her constant attendant—and another young woman, and Linnet and the doctor were standing beside the ship’s rail looking companionably out over the sparkling sea, he turned his head and looked down at the enormous diamond on the third finger of her
left hand.

Linnet followed the direction of his gaze, and then felt herself flushing a little, and she realized afterwards that it was a defensive kind of flush.

“So you’re going to be married very soon,” he said, as if he had been following a private line of thought of his own.

Linnet felt herself flushing still more, although she felt uneasy at the same time.

“Who told you that?” she asked.

He smiled slightly.

“Who other than Major Monteith? You haven’t a very patient
fiancé
, Miss Kintyre—and no one could really blame him for that!” looking appreciatively at the small, delicate, lightly tanned face, lighted by the not particularly happy violet eyes.

“We haven’t any definite plans for our marriage,” she said, her fingers unconsciously gripping the rail, for the one thing she was always striving to avoid these days were definite plans for her marriage.

“You haven’t, perhaps,” Dr. Ardroath replied, smiling at her with a tinge of compassion mixed with perplexity this time, because he could see no reason why a young and attractive girl like her should be marrying someone against her will. “But I’m quite certain Major Monteith has! And he belongs to a type that so often gets its way in this world!”

And Linnet knew uneasily that that at least was right.

As if he sensed that he was being discussed, Guy himself appeared suddenly behind them, and from the scowling line of his brows as he threw himself into a deck-chair—although Linnet was standing at the rail—and the unconcealed sullenness in his eyes, she knew that he was in no good temper. He and Diana had lost the set against the American and his partner, and because she knew that he hated anything of that sort happening to him, and always looked upon it as a kind of affront, Linnet decided that that no doubt was the explanation for his sullenness. But when she saw him looking upwards at the doctor, and realized that he was not concealing the fact that he had no particular liking for him, she knew that his bad temper went deeper.

Dr. Ardroath smiled at them both and moved away, and Guy pulled Linnet impatiently down into the chair beside him.

“That fellow,” he said, “reminds me too much of Shane Willoughby to arouse very much liking in my breast, and I wish you wouldn’t always appear to be chatting to him—cosy little chats that put my back up! It may be that you’re discussing the kind of shop doctors and nurses appear to enjoy—the kind of thing I avoided that night Nurse Blake wanted us both to celebrate her engagement—but I don’t like to see any man’s eyes looking at you with admiration, and Ardroath was admiring you just now all right.”

“Nonsense,” she returned, but she felt both irritated and vexed, not merely because his jealousy was a little abnormal, but because she was afraid that Dr. Ardroath was aware of it.

As the days grew longer and warmer she found that Guy grew still more difficult. It was not that he was unaccustomed to extremes of temperature, and in some moods he stood up to them far better than most of the people around him. But his possessiveness and his jealousy seemed to increase with the brazen warmth of the sun that lapped them about from dawn till dusk, and his temper was seldom even.

Sometimes she wondered whether it was her fault—whether he was so sure now that she was withholding so much of herself from him that his feeling of frustration was increasing, and that therefore he was not to blame for outbursts with which she sometimes found it difficult to cope.

There was so much beauty all around them—the days and the nights were breathtakingly beautiful, Linnet thought. From the moment the sun set, and a violet twilight descended upon the ship and the sea became deep and dark like indigo, life became definitely a little unreal, and moved at a tempo that was unreal also.

She saw friendships ripening around her so rapidly that it was amazing—or would have been amazing, but for those perfect nights. Linnet would have appreciated the other passengers so much if sometimes she could have been quite alone with them, instead of always finding Guy at her elbow. For Guy had no use for that disturbing moment when the moon rose, and molten magic poured over the ship and transmuted its decks and its superstructure to gold. He had no time for stars that looked as if they were lamps suspended by invisible threads and hanging in a sky of purple velvet, or a night wind that came at the face with the texture of silk and tang of wine-dark seas.

He had no time for anything but the unwilling moments when she permitted him to hold her in his arms; and then the very urgency of his hold, and his determination to force from her, if it was at all possible, a response that would at least do something to mitigate his ever-increasing need of her, didn’t merely repel Linnet, but caused her to dread finding herself alone with him in any part of the ship.

The night before they reached Suez there was a dance on board. It was a gala dance,. at which fancy-dress was more or less optional, and neither Linnet nor Diana wore it. Diana was too adult to be intrigued by fancy-dress, and her main preoccupation at that time was the pursuit of the rich American who at last seemed to be showing signs of serious interest in her. So, instead of fancy-dress, she wore a spectacular evening-gown of gold brocade, and Linnet wore a rather severely simple white dress which made her look very young and curiously vulnerable, and even Guy’s eyes softened a little when he saw her in it, and he was particularly gentle to her throughout almost the whole of the evening.

The day-to-day life of a liner on the high seas was not, Linnet had realized for some time, the ideal life for anyone of Guy’s temperament, for there were so many excuses for visiting the bar, and so many idle moments when sheer boredom drove him to drink more than he might otherwise have done. Although his life out East had taught him to become a hard drinker for some time now, Linnet realized that in that as in everything else moderation had never been his watchword. He was inclined to tease her constantly for being what he termed a little Puritan, but sometimes she thought her Puritanism was one of the things about her that intrigued him, and that it was simply because she was a little different to the kind of women he was accustomed to mixing with—Diana, for instance—that her attraction was so strong.

She did not flatter herself that she could ever hold a candle to Diana so far as looks were concerned, and it was a constant wonder to her, and a source of warmth and secret gratification, that one man at least could have preferred her to the golden glamour of the widow.

Guy, she felt certain, had played quite an important part in Diana’s life at one time, and even now the two of them sometimes looked at one another in a way—when she caught them doing so—that shocked Linnet a little. On Diana’s side, in spite of her American, and in spite of Adrian who had held her interest before him, it was a provocative look. On Guy’s side it held something that was difficult to describe—but which was nevertheless, in fleeting moments, very decidedly interest.

On the night of the dance Guy appeared unusually controlled and detached, Linnet thought. He also looked a little paler than usual, even allowing for his coating of healthy tan.

Only during the voyage he had had a mild attack of malaria, and Linnet, all her professional instincts aroused at once, had looked after him with the greatest care, with the assistance of Dr. Ardroath. But the attack had been in no way protracted, and definitely mild compared with the viciousness of the attack which had caused him to be admitted as a patient to Aston House in the spring of the year, and had been the means of making him and Linnet acquainted with one another, and which seemed so long ago now to Linnet that she sometimes wondered whether it had happened in a dream.

They danced together once or twice, but she thought he seemed a little bored by dancing, and consented to accompany him on deck. The boat deck was the favorite with couples anxious to be alone on nights like this, and although Guy seemed to have little or no desire to dance, even with Linnet, he was as anxious as ever to be alone with her. He placed chairs for them side by side where the moonlight, like a knife, cut the shadows into two, and merely silvered the hem of Linnet’s gown when she lay quiet and relaxed in hers.

Guy took up his position beside the rail and looked at her. His eyes were curiously deep and dark tonight, like sluggish pools, with, only a brooding kind of life in them. He smoked a cigarette thoughtfully, and over the glowing tip of it he studied her so quietly and so persistently that Linnet at last was rendered curiously uneasy by that unwavering regard, and whether it was the effect of the moonlight she could not be sure, but she was certain now that he did look much paler than usual.