Nurse Linnet's Release (21 page)

They were to have been married
...
She wore a magnificent diamond ring on her finger, but he never looked happy
...

They were engaged to be married
...
!

She always felt that people were saying that when she drew near to them.

That last night on board she went up on to the boat deck by herself and thought about Guy. She couldn’t really see him as anyone who had ever represented anything important or vital in her life, but she thought about him. Actually, she thought about him all the time. She remembered his last words to her, when he had smiled at her in that strange, whimsical fashion which should have warned her:

“It’s a long time since I called you Nurse Kintyre, isn’t it
...
?
”

She stood beside the ship’s rail, beneath stars that were like diamonds scattered broadcast across a pall of velvet, but without any moonlight chequering the deck with white light and shadow, and gradually she felt as if remorse was lifting up its head inside her and determined to tear her apart if it could.

“If only,” she thought to herself, “if only I had been a better actress
...
!
”

But she couldn’t shed any tears for him. She didn’t seem to have any tears to shed for anyone. She felt numb and confused and comfortless, like a small bewildered animal, when she made her way down to her cabin at last, and she knew she wouldn’t get any sleep.

She waited in her cabin while the excitement of farewells and promises to write and keep in touch were going on around her the following morning, feeling the necessity of keeping out of the way until Diana joined her and assured her that they were actually going ashore. She didn’t want to say any farewells herself, because of that question-mark which haunted her, and she didn’t seem to have much strength left for farewells, either, which, in any case were harrowing—unless you were like Diana and ignored them altogether, save where they concerned a certain attractive and wealthy American who she knew quite definitely
would
keep in touch! In fact, the thing Diana had worked for had actually happened, and she had definitely promised to marry him when he returned by the same route in six weeks’ time.

All the cases were packed and had been collected, and Linnet sat alone in the cabin. She thought of Guy’s cabin, and wondered how soon it would be occupied again. She wondered whether it had been occupied before by someone who had done the same thing that Guy had done.

She knew that her thoughts were running away with her—that she was trembling inside, and that she actually felt a little sick, and she wondered how she was going to summon up the strength to go ashore at all. She wondered what use she was going to be to Diana in this frame of mind, and in this shaken state of nerves.

She looked at her trembling hands and asked herself whether it was delayed shock. Dr. Ardroath had been very kind and insisted on giving her sedatives, but she hadn’t always taken them because they seemed to dull her brain. Now she wished that Dr. Ardroath would give her something that would stop her thinking altogether. She wished that Dr. Ardroath was Adrian Shane Willoughby who, as Guy had once mockingly declared, appeared upon the scene whenever she needed him in order to pick up the pieces and put them together again.

Adrian
...
!
She suddenly put her hands up over her face and thought how badly she needed him now.

And then the door behind her opened without even a warning tap, and she turned her head dully and saw that it was Adrian who was standing there. He closed the door firmly behind him and came across to her. He went down on his knees beside her chair and his arms went round her as if he would protect her against all the world, and as she bent her head wearily against his shoulder—too bemused even to care how he came to be there, or even to marvel that he was there—she heard herself muttering stupidly:

“Have you—have you come to pick up the pieces?”

CHAPTER XXI

Diana displayed an amazing amount of tact—far more tact than Linnet would ever have credited her with—and left them to dine
alone together that night. She had so many friends in Mombasa, she said, whom she was anxious to contact as soon as possible, that there was no reason why they should spare any thoughts for her, because she would be dining with people she had been looking forward to seeing again for weeks.

So Linnet and Adrian had dinner alone together at a table placed discreetly in a corner of the big dining-room of the hotel where they were staying. It was a big, modern hotel, and a window behind them overlooked the colourful scene that was
Mombasa at an hour of the day when the night with its thousands of stars was preparing to descend and blot out all the violently contrasting hues, and wrap a velvet mantle over everything.

Linnet was no longer feeling only half alive, and she was no longer feeling as if she and she alone was responsible for Guy’s untimely end. The remembrance of Guy still saddened her inexpressibly, but he was no longer a shadow that threatened to engulf her and even deprive her of her reasoning powers. Guy had once said that he would never let her go, and if by dying he kept her remorselessly chained to his memory then she would be defeating the very reason why he had died—or so Adrian had pointed out to her.

“He couldn’t live without you, and he knew you would never really belong to him—so he took the only way out,” he had explained to her gently, while they were still alone together in her cabin that had brought her all the way from England. “That is to say, he took the only way out that a man of his temperament could take. He wouldn’t have been satisfied with the little you were willing to give him—he was not the type to believe in half measures. And so he died!”

“Dr. Ardroath said—said he had already seen him that day because he believed he was in for another attack of malaria,” Linnet had whispered. “Do you think that that had anything to do with it?”

“I think it very likely did,” Adrian had answered, but she wondered whether he was merely trying to console her.

But once the realization was actually embedded in her mind that he, Adrian, had arrived out of the blue and was with her, and was proposing to stay with her, a great deal of the horror that had engulfed her over the last few days melted away magically, and when Diana confessed that it was she who had cabled for him she knew that she would be eternally grateful to her. Diana had said, when she looked in to find Linnet weeping helplessly, and for the first time since the appalling shock of Guy’s death, in Adrian’s arms, that she would be all right now, and had touched her sympathetically on her short dark curls and, displaying her first possession of extreme tactfulness, left them alone again together.

And now Linnet had shed so many tears that she no longer felt an oppressive burden lying just above her heart, and although her head felt heavy her spirit was appreciably lighter. But it was not yet light enough, Adrian thought.

He rose as soon as they had finished their coffee and told her that he had got to talk to her alone.

“It’s too public out on the balcony,” he said, “and so I’m coming up to your room.”

When they reached there he put her into a chair near the big window, and then walked to the window and stood staring out. She thought that there was something a trifle grim about the set of his shoulders, and had the feeling all at once that something not too pleasant was coming. But she also had the feeling that the unpleasantness had got to be faced.

The light was fading outside, and he switched on a silk-shaded lamp. He came across to her purposefully.

“Linnet,” he said, taking a chair near to her, “there’s something I’ve got to tell you—something Diana particularly wants you to know! She need never have mentioned it—certainly not to me—but she thought I was the best person to let you know, and I think she’s right!”

“W-what is it?” Linnet inquired, and because she looked so slight, and her face looked so small and pale and blurred by grief, and her eyes were heavy and dark and without any of the violet colour he remembered, he hesitated just for a moment. But only for a moment. Then he told her quietly:

“It might help you to get this matter of Monte
i
th’s death into better perspective—and that is Diana’s opinion, too—if you hear a little more of the truth about him!” He paused, and leaned a little towards her with his hands clasped between his knees. His eyes rested steadily on her face. “Linnet, dearest, that night when the man you were engaged to marry left you—that night you saw him for the last time—he went straight to Diana’s cabin! He had been to her cabin more than once during the voyage, And you did not know about it. It was Diana who was the last person to see him before he died—not you!”

Linnet licked her lips.

“You mean—?” she barely breathed.

“I’m afraid I do,” he answered. And then, after they had both sat quiet for perhaps half a minute, while one half of Linnet’s brain absorbed the intelligence that had just been imparted to her, Adrian said more quickly: “But you have only been told that because your peace of mind, perhaps, depended on it! Because when something calculated to upset one’s balance and destroy one’s peace of mind occurs, then everything connected with it has got to be cleared up. And if you like to go on believing that Guy was in love with you—which I think he was!—that doesn’t make it necessary for you to believe that he gave you everything, including loyalty, and in return demanded unswerving loyalty from you. He never really gave anything of value to you—and you are free to think of him sometimes as I imagine a woman of your type always will do when a man has shown her something special. For, at least, you were the only woman he ever wanted to marry—Diana assures me of that!”

Linnet closed her eyes, and when she opened them again a little of their colour had come back, although they were drowned in mist.

“Thank you,” she whispered, “for telling me—and I’d like you to thank Diana for me. I need never mention it to her. And I shall—as you said—always think of Guy as someone who did offer me something rather special, in spite of—in spite of—” But there her voice failed her.

Adrian went across to her, and once again he knelt beside her chair. It was a deep basket chair, and she seemed lost in it, and he drew her tightly and comfortingly into his arms.

“And now may I talk about—us?” he asked.

She nodded, still unable to speak.

He drew her up out of the chair, and then sat down in it himself with her closely cradled in his arms, and after sitting with his cheek resting on her hair for a moment he said:

“I told you, before you left England, that I was going to leave the country, too, didn’t I? Well, nothing that has happened since has caused me to change my mind or decide that I must alter my plans, and I’d like to hear you say that you agree with them. I know that at this stage you don’t feel very much like thinking about anything—that plans must be made for you—but even so you have got to be consulted. I can’t just marry you without asking your permission!” He lightly touched her cheek, his fingers caressing it gently. “And I want to marry you straight away, Linnet! Before I left England to fly out here I went to see both your parents, and explained everything to them. I have their unhesitating consent to marry you the instant you say ‘Yes’ yourself, and after that I thought I’d take you to the West Coast and find out about things there. About accommodation, and so forth, and, how you think you’d like it. Because if you don’t like it, Linnet, and you want to go back to England—then we will go back to England.”

She looked up at him a little dreamily, tilting her head back against his shoulder, and his eyes as they looked down at her were very blue—merely looking into them was like swimming about in blue water, she thought. She wanted to swim about in that blue water for the rest of her life, and the west coast of Africa or England, or any other corner of the globe—it didn’t matter at all to her where she lived, so long as the arms that held her now would go on holding her, and those deep blue eyes would always be there for her to gaze into and forget everything else that was unimportant.

For home is where the heart is, and her heart belonged to him, and she had so nearly defrauded him of it. But now, it was his for ever.

“Adrian,” she murmured, as if she was talking in a dream, “you know what Ruth said to Naomi
...
Well, that’s all I’ve got to say to you! Except,” she added, her eyes softening wonderfully as she gazed at him, and even beginning to glow a little, while a rush of colour poured into her pale face, “that I love you!”