Dear Tiberius; (aka Nurse Nolan) (16 page)

Lucy said,
“
Good night
”
quietly, and turned the handle of the door.

Lynette continued to smile at her tantalizingly, and called sweetly,
“
Thanks for the milk!
”

Lucy closed the door very gently after she had left the room, and she had a vision of Lynette lying examining the ring on her finger, and still smiling. It was a triumphant smile, and she had every reason to feel triumphant. For one day she would be the wife of Sir John, and the mistress of Ketterings—a mother for Miranda!

But just then Lucy, as she returned slowly to her own quarters in the house, was unable to spare any thoughts even for Miranda. She could pity no one—not even herself!

After that night t
he days flew by, and Lucy realized that for her the period of uneventful calm she had known at Kettering was over.

Miranda simply lived for the moment when she would be carried into an aircraft and soar into the sky, and Lucy both looked forward to and dreaded that moment for reasons that were altogether different from those that animated the breast of the small invalid.

She felt, now, that she would be glad to say goodbye to Ketterings—but she dreaded the arrival in Vienna. Miranda had been put into a frame of mind that caused her only to look forward, but Lucy had served for four years in a big London hospital, and she had seen cases like Miranda
’
s before. Miranda had once been a healthy, sturdy child, but she was no longer in anything approaching that condition. As a result of his examination of her Dr. Wern had come to the conclusion that she could stand a certain amount, but not more than that amount. It was up to her father to make the final decision—and he had made it. Lucy, deep at the bottom of her heart, knew that he was right, but that did not prevent her from searching the wasted lines of Miranda
’
s small face that had once been jauntily heart-shaped, and trying not to recall an expression Lynette Harling
’
s well-meaning but not particularly tactful mother had once made use of. She had said that there was
“
something
”
in Miranda
’
s face...!

In addition to trying to forget this, Lucy took herself to task because the attitude of mind she was bringing to Miranda
’
s case was not sufficiently detached. Not detached enough to make it easy for the patient herself, who should be unaware of any tension in the atmosphere around her. But, try as she would Lucy could not regard Miranda as purely and simply a patient—any more than she could look upon Miranda
’
s father as purely and simply an employer!

They were both inextricably woven into the very threads of her life these days, and the knowledge that that was so made her at times more than uneasy.

Ought she, she wondered sometimes, to allow this case to be taken on by someone else—someone who would give Miranda all the heartening boost to her morale that she needed, and yet be in no danger of failing her because of personal feelings that could, if she was not constantly careful, get the upper hand?

But she had only to remember what Dr.
Wern
had said to her about Miranda
’
s counting on her to be instantly aware that whatever happened she must see this thing through. And when it was over—when it was over she would give up private nursing and go back into the hospital, she thought. She would probably devote herself to children
’
s nursing.

Lynette Harling returned to London with her mother, who had completed the heliotrope sweater during her stay at Ketterings and had started another of even more violent hue and intricate pattern. With them went Francis Burke, who could have enjoyed himself very little while he was a guest beneath the well-preserved Elizabethan roof of Ketterings—or that was Lucy
’
s private opinion!

Sir John traveled to London with his departing visitors, but he returned after only a few days
’
absence, and the final arrangements for the transportation of Miranda and Lucy to Austria went ahead with suddenly accelerated speed.

Dr. Wern had obviously made it quite clear that he wished for as little delay as possible, and although Lucy could have wished that they could have waited until the always slightly depressing days of autumn had passed, and winter, too, and spring had come around with its feeling of greater hopefulness, she recognized that Dr. Wern was probably wise. Miranda
’
s
“
bad days
”
were not growing any fewer, and each one exacted its toll of her little stock of remaining strength.

So, although they left Ketterings on a day in late October when there seemed to be a flurry of snow in the cold air, and the sky was leaden and devoid of any sort of promise, Lucy told herself that it would be a good thing to be gone at last. But the faces of Fiske and Abbott, and even Eva, the little underhousemaid, pressed to the glass of the schoolroom window, and watching th
e
m as they disappeared down the driveway in the big white ambulance that was taking them to London, upset her at the last moment. She knew what each was thinking and feeling.

Purvis stood on the steps and watched until a curve of the driveway took them out of sight.

The problem of where Miranda was to stay for the one night she would have to spend in London before she was carried aboard the plane for Vienna had been solved by Kathleen offering her spare room. It was large enough to hold a bed for Miranda, and at the same time enable Lucy to remain near her in another single bed. Sir John had been graciously pleased to accept this offer from Kathleen, whom he had met only once in the foyer of the Colossus, because he agreed with Lucy that a hotel would be scarcely ideal for that one night, considering the circumstances. And although Mrs. Harling had offered her own room in the small mews apartment she and Lynette occupied, Sir John, for reasons of his own, had not accepted the offer.

Kathleen was the ideal person to play hostess to Lucy and Miranda for that one night, and Miranda especially appreciated her smiling, gay-eyed welcome. She appeared to think it a perfectly natural thing that a child of twelve, who had once been extremely active, should be carried with a great deal of care to avoid any unnecessary jarring into the bright sitting room of the apartment, where the tea-things were set out on a round table close to the fire, and there were crumpets, and hot buttered tea cakes, and a multitude of little cakes to tempt the invalid. Miranda, clutching Joey tightly in her arms, beamed despite her tiredness at the sight of the flowered cups and the silver teapot, and the firelight reflected in the silver kettle.

“
We don
’
t have a silver teapot at home, do we, Noly?
”
she said to Lucy.
“
At least, not in the schoolroom! And even yours is only a china one.
”

“
Ah, but then you don
’
t live in the highly civilized manner we affect here in the heart of the great capital,
”
Kathleen teased her. She bent to make the acquaintance of Joey, and Miranda displayed him proudly.
“
I
hope he
’
s a good traveler?
”
she said.
“
He
’
d probably take more kindly to a sea trip than an air trip.
”

Aside, she whispered to Lucy,
“
I
thought perhaps a quarter of an hour in here, and then we
’
ll get her to bed? Everything
’
s ready!
”

Lucy nodded. She was feeling curiously exhausted herself, and she was glad to remove her hat, because it seemed to have been pressing upon the dark waves of her hair like a constricting bandage. She was to have a final interview with Sir John in less than an hour, and the thought of it made her absurdly nervous, with a sensation like a tightly wound clock going on inside her. Kathleen, when they had got Miranda comfortably tucked in her little bed, and very soon afterward fast asleep—apparently quite undisturbed by the
thought of all that, awaited her the following day
—
suggested that her sister just had time to snatch a hot bath, and change the clothes she was wearing, before Sir John arrived, she then explained that she and her husband were dining out that night in order to leave the apartment free for Lucy to receive her employer in a suitable manner.

“
I
thought that you would be able to talk more freely, and, in any case, it would otherwise seem a crush. But you must promise to eat the cold supper I
’
ve left you in the refrigerator. And perhaps Sir John might be prevailed on to stay and have some with you. If you can persuade him, there
’
s heaps.
”

But Lucy, fumbling with the clasp of her belt and finding it extraordinarily awkward to undo, did not think for one moment that Sir John would be inclined to remain and share a cold supper with her.

But she felt better after her bath, and the change of clothes helped her still more. The dress
s
he donned was, however, a very severely simply affair of gray corded silk, with an ivory collar and cuffs. As she looked at herself in the mirror she thought,
I
never seem to get away from a suggestion of uniform with him
….

And then she remembered that he had seen her in her dark red housecoat, and in one of the Italian cotton dresses she had brought home from her last holiday; the one she had worn in the rose garden at Ketterings on the sparkling morning when she had watched him come leaping up the terrace steps after his early morning ride.

All that seemed very long ago now, somehow, and outside, tonight, there was fog—not thick fog, but the kind that wrapped the lamp in spirals of trailing vapor, and smelled acrid in the nostrils. She could hear the wailing of sirens on the river, and traffic seemed to be proceeding slowly under the windows. She walked to one of them and partially drew back the curtains. A taxi was drawing up outside the
entrance to the block of apartments, and
as she
watched, a man descended. He was, as far as
she could
make out, in evening clothes, and as he bent to
get a
handful of change he drew out of his pocket
to
settle with the taximan, his uncovered head wa
s
dark in the fa
int rays of light which streamed through
various windows of the apartments.
As w
alked toward the entrance across the wet
street
Lucy felt her heart begin to beat in a manner th
at
made her feel breathless. She wonde
red at the
absurd welter of emotions that was going on insi
de and
what she could do to subdue them—for she m
ust subdue
them and appear strictly normal
.
All the instincts of her training must be brough
t
to the fore, and she must concentrate on her p
atient
; think only of her and for her. Sir John himself wa
s
feeling a little abnormal, because this was the la
st he
would see Miranda for—well, perhaps for quite a
long
time, and he could not but be affected in some wa
y.
So gradually Lucy forced herself to appear calm, at least—and when the front
door of
the apartment shrilled suddenly she went to ope
n it
with all the inscrutable poise of her profession. Sir John stood there with a
coat
over his arm, but
otherwise he was severely black
.

“
Good evening, Nurse Nolan,
”
he said.

Lucy stood back for him to enter, and he fo
llowed her i
nto the little sitting room of the apartment, when had arranged chrysanthemums in pottery bowls and the tangy scent of them mingled with the scent of the fog finding its way through the pan window. Sir John seemed to square his shoul
ders and
stood on the hearth rug and looked around him.
Then
he turned and looked at Lucy.

Lucy was
absurdly nerv
o
us when she found herself alone
with her em
ployer in Kathleen
’
s little flower-filled sitting
room. Sir
John looked grave—graver than she had ever
seen him
—and there was tension in the very atmosphere. He did not turn to her at once, but continued
to stare at
the fire, and when at last he did turn and survey
her with
a curious glance, his gray eyes had an
aura
of strain
in
them that was also new.