Australian Hospital (16 page)

“I!”

Candace turned almost startled eyes on Mr. Laurence.

“But that is impossible, it is—”

“My dear, it is the truth.”

A moment went by in complete silence.

Candace could hear the clock ticking in the hallway. Somebody attending to the furnace. An aide sang on duty. “Mr. Laurence,” she whispered almost brokenly, “I can’t believe it—”

He nodded his head in his brisk bird-like way.

Another silent moment.

“Was—was there any money as well?”

“Not a penny. This Bruce had got through everything. From all reports he had got through his health as well. He died in Mexico—no wife—not many friends, so far as they have been able to discover. I am sorry to hear of such an end to such a grand family.”

Candace still sat frozen.

At last she murmured, “But how could I—I—”

Mr. Laurence understood at once.

“Run Manders? You couldn’t. It would need a lot of money to be maintained properly and there is none at all, as I have just said. I’m afraid, my dear, you will have to sell it.”

“Sell Manders!” She thought of little Miss Hilary, and her love for the place. Her eyes blurred.

Mr. Laurence perceived her emotion, and obviously approved. However, he had business to attend to, and he did so briskly.

“Now we come to the practical side of things. It is not so harrowing as you would believe. Indeed, I think you will be quite satisfied over Mr. Asquith’s suggestion.”

Her eyes questioned Mr. Laurence, but she did not speak. “You are well aware how interested Miss Fielding was in Manathunka. That is why she wanted you to come here. She could not see it, so she chose you to be her eyes.

“Now, Australia, my dear, is not unique in having this home. There are many in all parts of the globe. Many in England. The directors of one such place, Elderwood, have been forced, through the onset of trade and progress, to vacate their premises and go further into the country. Mr. Asquith has suggested, in memory of the employer he knows you respected so much, that you offer Manders to them at a reduced rate.”

Candace closed her eyes a moment. She saw the dignified house that Miss Fielding had loved being used in a manner that Miss Fielding would have approved.

She heard Mr. Laurence saying gently that in this manner the estate would be satisfactorily preserved, kept in the way its age and beauty deserved.

Then he was telling her, in quite a business-like way now, that there was no reason at all why she should heed Mr. Asquith’s suggestion.

“The property is yours to do with as you like. You could sell to a higher bidder. Even turn it into flats.”

“Oh, no—” She spoke it quickly, and Mr. Laurence smiled and beamed his approval.

“I thought you would react to it like that. You loved it, too. However, my dear, the amount the Elderwood Sanatorium could offer is by no means a fortune.”

“How much?” whispered Candace. Her voice seemed to have left her.

It seemed quite a lot, though Mr. Laurence said it was only a small sum; that Elderwood was practically being given a grant.

“Miss Fielding would have liked it that way,” said Candace slowly but with conviction. “She would have liked even more what I shall do with her money.”

She had risen. Mr. Laurence rose as well.

“My dear, I must remind you—” he began with concern as her meaning dawned on him.

“Mr. Laurence, how much did you say again?”

He named the figure.

“Would that be as much as Sir Geoffrey Bourton would donate?”

A look passed over the secretary’s face.

“Miss Jamieson, you don’t mean—Now, look here, my child, charity is a fine thing, but it begins at home—” He realised his words too late, tried to retract them, then smiled ruefully but admiringly.

“You are a very grand person,” he said. “Foolish, perhaps, but what is the good of my talking?”

“No good at all, Mr. Laurence.”

She went to the door.

“Where are you going now?”

“Across to Dr. Halliday to tell him.”

“You are
sure,
my dear? This is a big thing you are giving away—”

“You have to give to receive,” she answered with a smile,, “and I’ve never been surer.”

“Then God bless you, though, I don’t know even now—Miss Jamieson—Miss Jamieson, it’s
raining
—”

Candace did not heed him.

She ran through the raindrops across the lawn to the house.

Her knock on the door of the Honoraries’ Room was answered with a brusque, “Come in.”

Candace entered.

It was the first time in weeks that Stephen Halliday had seen her without her veil, and now he sat staring at the girl in the grey dress he had always liked, her eyes glowing rather than shining, glowing as though there were candles behind them—raindrops on her pale hair.

He rose mechanically, but did not speak.

Candace came up to him.

“Please,” she said directly, “I want to make a donation. There are a few things I want to do first—that is, if there is enough money. I would like to bring Gwenda out here. Matron would be agreeable. And then there is Mr. Laurence. Would it be possible for him to go home and see it before we pass it over?”

Stephen stared at her.

Her words did not make sense. The only thing he understood was that she was offering money again, and his lips hardened.

“I refused Buckland’s money before,” he said furiously. “I thought I made it perfectly clear, Miss Jamieson.”

“Presumably.”

“And
Rosemary’s
.”

Stephen whirled round at this, his eyes searching. “Rosemary,” he said almost stupidly. “John and Rosemary—”

For a moment Candace hesitated. Perhaps Mr. Tilburn had been wrong about Stephen. Perhaps it was more than Manathunka that had taken the doctor so often to Bibaringa. Perhaps it
had
been the Tilburns’ daughter—Then Stephen was speaking aloud, though it sounded more as though he was thinking to himself.

“John and Rosemary, not John and—”

He turned again on her, his eyes narrowing.

“Then what is it you are offering?”

She told him briefly, hoping her incoherent words made sense.

When she had finished he went and stood a while by the window, then he turned and leaned against it and regarded her speculatively.

“You are serious?”

“Very serious.”

“You know what you are offering?”

“I know.”

“Why are you doing this, Candace?”

She paused, examining herself. Why?
Why?
It was for Manathunka, of course—Manathunka that was home to her now. Yet there was something else as well—She found she could not answer him; she could not meet his glance. He crossed to her side and tilted her chin so as to search deep into her eyes.

“This makes it very hard,” he said, almost harshly.

“What does?”

“Your money makes it harder again for me to tell you what has been tearing at my heart for a long, long time.”

She waited, breathless now.

“If I accept your offer, it puts me in the same position as I was with Eve—tied to a woman who holds the strings of the money bags. If I don’t accept it, I am worse off still. For how, Candace Jamieson, could I ask an heiress to marry me?”

She shrank away from him, from the inscrutable light in his vivid blue eyes, but he would not let her retreat.

“You don’t want my proposal, is that it?” he said dominantly.

“I don’t want it as—just that. As a—proposal.”

“What else is there?”

“Sometimes there is love.” She said it simply.

His face changed. He looked at her sharply.

“What makes you think I have not that commodity?”

“I don’t think it because I know you have. But it is all used up—on Manathunka. You told me so yourself. You said you could never put a woman before that which is nearest to your heart.”

“Yes, I said that.” His voice was even. “I had always hoped the woman who would be mine would stand there with me—equal to that vision—”

His words trailed off.

He turned slowly upon her.

“I hoped it,” he said, “but I never thought it could come true. Could it
—could
it, Candace?”

She did not answer him. There were tears in her eyes. And she could not speak because his lips were on hers.

A long time after Candace asked shyly, “When did you first know you loved me?”

“You appealed to me right from the beginning. I had had a letter from Eve—”

“Yes, I must know about that, too.”

He looked whimsically at her, then went on with his story.

“I thought I was in love with Eve. I left Australia for my post-graduate course with her vision in my heart. She is very good-looking, you know.”

Candace nodded.

“Then her letters began to arrive, and they gradually revealed more and more of her real character. I tell you, Candace, I was sick of her within a few weeks.”

“Yet you returned when she asked you to—”

“I returned because
Laurence
wrote to me. Laurence was not satisfied with the way Manathunka was going. I had not wanted to leave London so soon. I was in the middle of my work, but I knew if Laurence was dissatisfied, I must come back at once. He has always been dependable.”

Candace waited for him to resume.

“I saw you on deck. You looked little more than a schoolgirl. I had the vision of Eve in my mind, and what I saw in you was like—like a sprig of lilac after a red hibiscus.”

“Eve is never a red hibiscus,” said Candace. “A lily, yes, but—”

“That’s how I saw it,” he insisted stubbornly. “The sharp, beautiful, scentless flower—the soft fragrant one.

“I don’t know whether I was in love with you, or not. I know I was sufficiently attracted to spend more than I had budgeted for on a gift at Aden—a gift, incidentally, you never wore.”

She held up her hand.

“I did not know where it had come from.”

“You must have known when I completed the set at Christmas.”

“I did not know then. I had not lifted it out, and it was only today that I found your card.”

He was looking at the ring, twisting it round her slim finger.

“I chose this because the stone reminded me of your eyes. Candid grey. Set in with a smutty finger. Bog-shadow eyes.” He was pulling off the ring—changing it to her left hand.

“If you had given me an inch of encouragement all this would have happened months ago. I told you once that I only spoke as I thought—that I only did as I meant—and yet when I took you in my arms that night before we disembarked you drew away from me, and that evening I ‘disciplined’ you”—his lips twitched—“you deliberately escaped me. You should have known I was only following my heart.”

“With your eyes chips of ice?”

“Had you looked longer you would have seen the ice melt, my darling. You must remember I was not well disposed to women.”

Candace withdrew from his arms.

“I would not remember
that
,” she said pointedly, her expression reminding him of something. “If you only ever did what you meant, Stephen, what about the night of the ball?”

“I wanted to explain to you once. Do you remember?”

“Yes, I said a moon and stars accounted for everything.”

“You were wrong. Several nights before the ball you had deliberately escaped me—briefly, if melodramatically, you had
spurned
me. My pride was pricked. The male ego is easily deflated, my girl. I wanted to punish you, Candace. I knew you were watching, so I did—what I did to Eve.” A moment went past.

“Was that fair to her?”

“Frankly, I don’t care. I don’t think she does, either. As a matter of fact Eve has stolen a march on me—as usual. She has sickened of everything here—me, included—and told me so before I can tell her. It’s better that way, I expect. When you came in just now, Candace, I was sitting here wondering how on earth we could make ends meet now that the Dawson and Bourton support will no longer be forthcoming.”

“Will any of the small subscribers draw out?”

“I don’t think so. Dawson and Bourton were always the only dissenters. I believe they wouldn’t have lasted long, anyway. Some men must have a
popular
charity—one that attracts favourable attention, press notices, social contacts, all that—Manathunka has never been a society centre.”

“Matron told me why you were so close to this home,” said Candace softly. “She told me about your grandfather—a man with one vision—and how he gave that vision to your mother and so to you.”

His arms were round her. His lips were on her soft hair. “Does it make any difference between us?”