Nurse Trent's Children

CHAPTER ONE

One of the wards of
Little Families was missing! Cathy, casting an experienced eye over her group, saw at once there were only nineteen girls where there should be twenty. She knew at once it would be Christabel. It had been Christabel in Aden, Christabel in Ceylon, Christabel in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne. It had been Christabel a hundred times between those ports at sea. A hundred times Cathy had hurried below, where the children were forbidden, and above, which she and the purser had agreed for the other passengers’ comfort would be wiser to make
o
ut of bounds; a hundred times she had stood at the rails, trembling, just in case Christabel
had
climbed up, lost her balance and
—

Oh, it was too awful to think about. Cathy put Janet, who was fourteen, in charge now and ran for the last time, she hoped, to the rails. Within the hour it would be journey’s end. Whatever else happened to Christabel it would not be a watery grave.

The great ship had cleared Sydney Heads and was sliding smoothly past a pretty inlet that David Kennedy had told her was Watson’s Bay. Cathy saw a long pier, a crescent of yellow beach, a green foreshore, and then red roofs rising as though on tiptoe to the sky. It was a Gypsy-blue sky. Miss Watts, the hospital superintendent, had told her about that. She had told her of the city’s red roofs. In another moment, thought Cathy ruefully, we’ll be in sight of the Harbor Bridge. “The first glimpse,” Miss Watts had recounted, “is quite impressive.” Cathy grimly put aside the anticipation she had hugged for over a month. The only glimpse she wanted at the moment was of Christabel, thin-legged, tow-haired, elfin-faced Christabel, the only “only” of her own Little Families group.

Little Families was a charitable foundation in England instituted to transport to other countries in the Commonwealth such children as now possessed no blood ties to their homeland and would benefit from a new environment. The emphasis of the foundation was found in its name. Little Families comprised, as far as possible, entire family units. Cathy’s own group, for instance, consisted of one set of four sisters, one set of three, six sets of two, making nineteen of her twenty charges. The twentieth child was Christabel Harris, now missing from C deck of the liner
Winona
and sending her frantic housemother first up, then down, then along to the forbidden swimming pool and from there to the almost deserted gymnasium at one end of its tiled splendor.

As she caught sight of her, Cathy thought Christabel was alone. She ran eagerly forward to catch the little girl thankfully to her. As she approached she scolded her in the good-natured fashion that Christabel both knew and paid little attention to. Before she reached her, however, others hands had caught up the child. They were strong muscular hands, almost as brown as the brown eyes' that regarded Cathy coldly as she raised her own indignant blue ones. “No strong-arm methods here, aunty,” warned a rather brawling but decisive voice, and Cathy sighed, knowing that Christabel must have regaled this man with all the Little Family occurrences. Otherwise he would not have known that to the young wards the guardian was always either aunt or uncle. Catherine, therefore, was Aunt Cathy.

For a moment the two regarded each other—the man with the child in his arms and the girl.

Cathy saw a very tall male clad only in immaculate white exercise shorts and an equally immaculate white athletic T-shirt. The man saw a simply dressed, rather slight young woman.

The physical vitality of the man, the gentle prettiness of the girl escaped both of them. Brown eyes and blue eyes met stormily, and it was a long moment before the silence was broken.

Cathy said frigidly, “I am not in the habit of using strong-arm methods.”

“No? That is not what I’ve been given to believe from the infant.”

Cathy remembered her stories to the children each night, some with cruel stepmothers who for their wickedness were changed into witches, and she groaned inwardly.

Futilely, she said, “Christabel has a vivid imagination.”

“I haven’t,” said Christabel blandly. She looked kindly on Aunty Cathy, whom she loved very much, and repeated, “I haven’t, but I have a teddy.”

“He’s waiting for you, Christy. He growled, ‘Where’s my mommy?’ ”

Christabel wriggled in the big arms. “Poor little
f
ing, he’s lonely. I’ll go now, Jerry.”

Cathy looked faintly reproving, but the man brushed any remonstrances aside with a dominant wave of his hand. Strong-arm methods would have been easy, Cathy thought, with him. “Don’t correct her.
I
told her to call me that.”

“Thank you for minding her, but she must come along now. Say goodbye to Mr. Jerry, Christabel.”

“Malcolm is the name, madam.”

“He’s the ship doctor,” said Christabel knowledgeably. “He looked down my froat and listened to me with a little microphone.”

Cathy raised her brows, but the man spoke before she could make any comment.

“Don’t be alarmed. I won’t tender a bill. I was just assuring myself that the child was in the health I desire her to be.”

“
You
desire her to be...?” The girl’s voice was coldly questioning.

Beneath his brown cheeks Cathy was gratified to see the blood rising quickly. It made him look almost like an American Indian, she thought. She raised her brows again and waited.

Presently he said, “Is it so odd then, that I desire a child’s good health?”

“
This
child or
all
children?”

“All children—particularly the children on my ship, and particularly again, the Little Families.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“Not at all, it’s merely a filial gesture. I was a ward myself once.”

“You were?” She looked surprised.

“Is it that astounding?”

“No, but
...
” Her eyes roved quickly over him, taking in the material as well as physical well-being of the man. Little Families was not a particularly lucrative group. Cathy had been instructed many times that expenses on the voyage out must be kept to a minimum. Yet this man was a doctor, and by the look of his expensive dressing gown flung carelessly over a parallel bar, he was fairly affluent as well. She glanced away, but he had read her thoughts.

“Not all Little Families are condemned to a life of penury.”

“I’m sure no Little Families are.” Her rejoinder was quick and loyal.

“
I see, madam, you are all lighted up with the purpose of your work.”

“Would you want me be otherwise?”

“I am not interested enough to care one way or another.”

“Then why are you baiting me like this?”

“Baiting you?”

“I should have said baiting Little Families. You don’t like them, do you?”

A pause, then, “No, I don’t.”

“Yet you were one once yourself?”

“I just said so.”

There was a silence. Cathy was trying to
b
e reasonable. When this man was a young child being transported to Australia by the foundation, she thought, conditions might have been different, harder, more restricted. After all, even in private families life was on a much narrower canvas twenty years ago than it was today. Possibly the man standing before her had carried into his maturity some of the futility and resentment left over from his youth.

“Perhaps you have a few unpleasant
m
emories,” she suggested, though not very convinced. Believing in Little Families as she did, she could not credit that any unpleasant memories could be justified.

He did not answer, and she went on briskly, “
I
assure you
methods are improved now. We study the children, we
...
”

He stopped her. Not by a word, but by depositing Christabel gently on the floor and going across and slipping his arms into the expensive dressing gown. The look he gave her when he finished tying the gold silk belt, however, was anything but gentle.

“Finished selling me the foundation, aunty?” he said without humor. “If so, I suggest you return to your other nineteen children, consisting of one set of four sisters, one set of three, six sets of two, and this little only.”

“How did you know that?”

“I made it my business to know. I don’t sit all day twiddling my thumbs waiting for rich patients. Would it surprise you to learn that everyone of your twenty girls, as well as everyone of Mr. Kennedy’s twenty-three boy
s
, has, like Christabel, already been peered down and s
o
unded?”

Cathy said coldly, “Certainly it would surprise me. I am never absent that long.”

The man’s lip curled. “You have been absent long enough this morning for a child to fall over a rail and be drowned.”

“Or, on the other hand, medically examined,” flashed Cathy, finding it hard to keep her temper in hand.

Suddenly it escaped her and she turned on him angrily. “What right have you to interfere? The children were all thoroughly investigated before they left England.”

“A matter of over a month ago now. Indeed, it is five weeks.”

“
Children are not usually medically checked every month,” she retorted.

“
Normal
children are not.”

“These are normal.” She flashed it at him.

“I see. It is normal then to be left without parents, to be transported some thousands of miles to a new country and forced to make new roots.”

“You know that is not what I meant when you brought up that word ‘normal.’ ”

“What did you mean then?” The brown eyes were hard.

“That they were average kiddies needing only average vigilance.”

“They have had that?”

“Certainly. I have watched them carefully, checked up on every little ill.”

“You are a doctor, too, then?”

“No.” Her voice was uneven in its irritation. He must know she was not a doctor.

“A nursing graduate perhaps?”

She hesitated. So useless to tell him, she thought, that she
was
, only that she did not have her final certificate; that on the morning of the last examination, which, she was quite sure and Miss Watts had been sure, she would have passed with high marks, the accident had happened and she had had to forgo the test for which she had studied so arduously and so long.

She remembered it clearly, standing now in the paneled ship gymnasium, the child Christabel beside her, the ship’s doctor at the child’s side. She remembered Miss Watts telling her of the accident to her parents who had been driving up to the St. Cloud Hospital to celebrate with their daughter her release at last from studies.

Examination papers do not wait. Helen and Judith and Phili
p
pa and the rest had all filed past glancing sympathetically as Miss Watts had taken her arm and drawn her into the office instead of the examination hall.

Afterward Miss Watts had said, “If I could, I would have postponed telling you. A girl’s final is so important. But your father was not yet gone, and I thought you had better be with him...”

He had died by the time Cathy had reached his side though. He had joined her mother, who had been killed instantly in that ghastly crash.

Miss Watts had murmured encouragingly that there were other exams, that she could still finish her studies, but being an understanding woman, she had nodded quietly when Cathy had protested vehemently that she never would finish, not now...

“Perhaps you feel like that at present. Well, there are plenty of posts for semi
-
trained girls, and with the reference St. Cloud will give you... Now, I wonder...” The older woman had sat tapping the tips of her fingers together.

“You’re all alone, aren’t you, Catherine?” Not often did she speak to her girls by their first name.

Cathy had murmured, “Yes.”

“No relatives left?”

“Very few and very distant.”

“No one to tie you to
... England?”

Cathy had looked at her, surprised.

“No,” she admitted.

“Then I advise you to get away, my dear.
Right away
.”

“Where?” A semi
-t
rained nurse, thought Cathy, was going to find it difficult enough, even with a St. Cloud reference, at home, but abroad, where the hospital was just a name, it would be doubly hard.

“Where?” she whispered again.

“I was thinking of Australia, though Little Families do go to South Africa and New Zealand as well.” Miss Watts’s voice was contemplative.

“Little Families?”

“A charitable group—you must have heard of it—that transports and sets up in family units in warmer countries certain selected English orphans in need of more clement climates. At least that was the idea set down in the primary foundation, and the first young emigrants were all a little below par in health.
Now, however, the sick list has been long exhausted, and all the recommended eligible children, even those in robust health, can and do go.”

“How do you know of this, Miss Watts?”

“Because I was housemother of one once in Sydney.”

“
You
were?”

Miss Watts nodded. Her eyes had a faraway look.

“We all have our sorrow, Nurse Trent,” she said presently. “After the First World War I went out to marry an Australian I had met on one of his furloughs in London.”

“Yes?” Cathy’s voice had been a little breathless. Mis
s
Watts had always seemed like such an automaton. Fair, of course, sometimes kindly, but never had one associated her with romance.

“He died the day before I arrived,” said Miss Watts. “His was one of war’s horrible aftermaths. John’s people were wonderful and wanted to keep me with them indefinitely, but I was independent and found myself a job with Little Families. I was housemother for as long as it took me to save enough to come home to England. Somehow I had to be back in London—the place where I first met John. But I’ve revisited Australia since then simply because I like it. I did consider living there, but I had got myself established at St. Cloud and had a fair future. Not like
you, my dear
—”
She glanced at Cathy sympathetically.

“I don’t know what to say,” Cathy had murmured, but Miss Watts had not seemed to hear her.

“Sydney’s red roofs touching that Gypsy-blue sky,” she had recalled, “the first glimpse of the bridge. It wasn’t there when I went out to join John, of course. I saw it on my second trip. Oh, yes, Nurse Trent, I am sure you’ll like it there.”

“But I haven’t got the job yet,” pointed out Cathy.

“You will. I have always kept in touch with Little Families. It is one of those organizations you can never let go of. It gets into your heart. I know one word from me to Mr. Prentice, the English manager, will get you on the next shipment, which is in about six weeks from now.”

“I don’t know whether I’m suitable.”

“But
I
know.” Miss Watts’s voice was confident. “You were always good in the children’s ward.”

“I liked it,” admitted Cathy.

“You are also young, adaptable and healthy. The job was made for you. Especially now that
...”
Miss Watts’s voice trailed off, but the silence was significant.