Nurse Lang (3 page)

“The second day,” he repeated. “We’re not through with that yet and there will be twelve more to go at midnight to-night!”

“Is it wise to count time like that?” she asked.

“Why not? One day looks pretty much the same as the next when you are forced to view them from a cane chair on the broad of your back. There’s the rim of the sea to look at, and the ship’s rail, and the bridge and the masts and the sky!”

Bitterness lay buried in that last word, the thought of the vast blue canopy of space arched above him which had once been his paradise.

“When I came out here,” he continued in a tense, choked undertone, “I flew a plane over. That's what I intended to do for a living.” Once again the brief laugh grated against the silence of their isolated retreat. “Nothing could have been freer than that, and I wanted to escape. But the harsh gods laughed and sent me crashing down to earth again!”

Moira did not answer him for a moment. It was easy to understand all that he felt, but she sensed that pity was the last of his needs. She dared not show him pity, although her heart was full of it.

“Nothing is really final,” she said at last. “Your brother is taking you home to England in the hope of a cure.”

“Grant?” He smiled. “Yes, he likes his resident guinea-pig, and I suppose they always have some hope of a recovery.”

“Haven’t you?” she challenged, a first spark of anger stirring in her heart at this unfair criticism of his brother.

“Not much,” he returned laconically. “I’ve cashed my chips, I guess.”

“That’s no way to talk!” The anger was real now, very near the surface. “If you are going to accept defeat in the beginning we can do nothing for you.”

“Who wants to live—crippled?” he demanded sullenly.

“Is that the alternative?” she asked more gently.

“What else could it be?”

“However wrong I may be,” she said, “I’ve got to say this. You’re not being entirely fair to your brother. Without faith even the most brilliant surgeon can find himself handicapped. You’re—giving in before the fight has begun.”

“You know all the answers, don’t you?” Philip Melmore said. “But the point is that life probably still means something to you.”

Her remaining anger crumbled before the implication in the bitter words, but she was determined not to let him sink back into that moody silence again.

“It can mean something to you, too,” she said, stooping to pick up his book which had fallen to the deck. “Life has a way of—pointing out these things to us, in time.”

“Which proves that you’ve never been really disappointed in life,” he retorted.

“Not—in this way,” she said. “Not directly, perhaps, but I have seen other people’s disappointments and near despairs and I can tell you from that experience that we are always given just enough courage and strength to bear our burdens.”

“Don’t sermonize!” he said, shutting out the comfort in her words. “I’m not like other people!”

“We all think that,” she returned, “but we are, you know, deep down. There are none of us so very different.” Impulsively she laid a hand on his arm. “Can’t you convince yourself that there’s hope in the future—some kind of hope? A man like your brother would never have held it out otherwise.”

“Don’t you believe it!” he declared. “Grant can be as ruthless as the devil when it comes to getting his own way about something he feels sure about.”

“There are different kinds of ruthlessness,” she pointed out, still defending the man she did not really know. “There are often reasons for what might seem at the time to be a harsh decision.”

“Being cruel to be kind, you mean, I suppose,” he returned derisively. “That appears to be part of your stock-in-trade in the medical profession—the nasty-tasting medicine that works wonders! The sugar coated pill! The white light of hope shining at the bottom of a well!”

“I think you know what I mean,” she said. “You owe it to your brother to have faith, at least.”

He lay for a long moment, tensely still under the light ship’s blanket which covered the lower part of his body and in the brilliant sunshine his grey eyes seemed to glitter.

“Debts are dangerous things to live with,” he said at last. “I can’t really see that I owe Grant very much. It seems to me that the boot is on the other foot,” he added grimly, “but I couldn’t expect you to know about that.” He picked up his book, dismissing her. “If you must come out to this part of the deck,” he added, “to please Grant or justify yourself with the shipping company, please come alone. I don’t like the look of your friend, the ship’s surgeon!”

It was Gregory Paston’s youth and freedom he resented most, Moira realized as she walked away. How easy it was to see his tortured comparisons, the thoughts which drove like fiery demons of envy through his brain, sowing the seeds of bitterness and resentment broadcast in his heart!

She was sitting at her tea when the stewardess from A deck came down to the saloon.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Nurse,” she said, “but it’s that young Mr. Melmore in A2. He’s asked for a tray to be taken upon deck and he wants you to bring it. Seems that he won’t be moved from where he is till everybody else has gone down for dinner or some such nonsense! I suppose he’s sensitive about his condition,” she added more kindly, “but we saw plenty, of that during the war—we older ones!”

“Mr. Melmore may not be able to look at it like that just now,” Moira said, taking up the tray. “I don’t mind going on deck at all. There’s nothing to do in the sick-bay just now. People seem to have forgotten they’re at sea!”

“There’s always the chronically sea-sick!” the stewardess grunted.

“We’ve got four of them up there. Down on their bunks as soon as they come on board, with their finger never off the bell when they’re not sound asleep!”

Moira carried the tray along the deck in the hot afternoon sunshine, glad of the shade of the bridge awning as she reached the sheltered corner where Philip Melmore still lay. He was alone for the moment, but she knew that his brother had been with him for most of the day.

“I’ve brought you some French rolls, a piece of Madeira cake, and some Russian tea!” she announced. “What could be fairer than that?”

“Some more French rolls and a Vienna sausage!”

“Then, you are hungry?”

“It would seem so.”

“I’ll go and enquire about the sausage,” she offered.

“No—stay where you are. We can call a steward if we see one, and you can talk while I eat what’s here.” He surveyed the tray she set before him with evident relief. “Not invalid diet, anyway, thank heaven! There appears to be plenty of fruit.”

“We’re sailing past where it comes from!”

“Away from Africa,” he mused. “Do you regret that? My brother told me this is your last voyage.”

“I shall miss the sunshine and the warmth,” Moira confessed, “and I have to find a job once I get back to England.”

“Nursing?”

“There's nothing else I know about.”

“Grant says you’re a natural for this sort of work,” he mused, leaving her to wonder what else his brother had said about her while he finished his rolls and cherry jam, and Moira could not truthfully say that she got much further with him during the hour which followed.

“Thanks for bringing the tray. Though perhaps I should say thanks for bearing with me for so long!”

“I don’t think I’ve borne very much,” she answered lightly. “Except the heat of the sun on my poor nose! It’s sure to skin now. It’s my Equator penalty!”

“Is there always one—a penalty, I mean?” He reached suddenly and grasped her hand. “You look as if there shouldn’t be any penalties where you are concerned,” he added unexpectedly.

Before she could answer him, before she could draw her hand away, there was a firm step on the deck behind them and Grant Melmore appeared.

“So you’ve found your way back?” he said, smiling a little as he lifted the tray for her. “I see that Philip has eaten a reasonable meal under your influence.” Curiously disturbed by look and words alike, Moira rescued the tray and beat a hasty retreat as the first dressing gong sounded in a distant part of the great ship.

CHAPTER THREE

ASCENSION was behind them, a tall, dark rock on the broad Atlantic waste, when Grant finally came in search of her.

“I’ve been wondering how busy you were,” he said, hesitating at the surgery door as if he had expected to find Greg with her.

“I’m almost through.” She kept her back to him, stacking new dressings into their sterile jars so that he would not see the swift, tell-tale flush which she had not been able to control at the sound of his awaited voice. “I go off duty at four.”

“Oh! Then, it’s hardly fair of me to come at ten to four with a request,” he said.

She turned slowly.

“Is it about Philip?”

“Yes.” He came into the surgery and stood looking about him. “He’s not weathering this heat very well, I’m afraid, which is not surprising. It’s enough to try any normal human being’s patience, and we haven’t had a breath of wind all day to help matters. Don’t think I’m complaining about the ship’s excellent ventilation system,” he added with a slow smile. “It’s just tropic depression and the fact that there’s nothing Phil can do about breaking the monotony. He has asked to see you,” he added briefly.

“Of course I’ll come,” Moira said. “Would you like me to have tea with him?”

“With us both,” he suggested. “Unless you are otherwise engaged?”

“I meant to read and drink endless cups of Russian tea on the shady side of the sun lounge,” she said, “but I suppose dozens of other people will have thought of that by now.”

“Philip and I have been lucky,” he said, standing aside so that she could precede him through the narrow doorway. “Most people appear to respect our comparative privacy.”

“People are generous on the whole,” she answered, feeling her own depression lifting like a cloak from her shoulders as she walked beside him. “Most of them understand about your brother without having to be told.”

“Philip has been fortunate having you,” he acknowledged. “I hear you’ve been warding off the curious most effectively all morning.”

“I’ve done my best. It’s kindness, of course, in most cases, that makes people ask about him, and—pity.”

“Which he will not abide at any price!”

“Yes,” she said, “I’ve sensed that.”

“You’re popular with him,” he told her, turning to look at her as they came on deck, as if he would discover the reason. “So popular that I dare say if I suggested that you might come all the way with us he would accept it without a murmur.”

“I—suppose you mean—all the way home,” she managed unevenly.

“Would that be impossible?”

“No. No—only I hadn’t thought about it,” she added lamely.

“Well, think about it now,” he said briefly. “Philip will need someone to look after him until he goes into hospital—someone professional.”

That was all. Moira wondered why her heart should sink so dismally when it had almost turned over for joy in that first moment, but there was no time to analyse such feelings. They had reached the boat-deck and Philip’s retreat.

He was lying back in his chair, restless and overheated even in the shade of the thick sun-canopy which had been erected for his comfort, and he did not look up with any enthusiasm as she approached by his brother’s side.

“I wondered if I might have my tea up here where it’s really cool,” Moira said, stepping inside the wire rope. “It’s hot everywhere, but at least you get what wind there is on this side.”

“A furnace blast,” he grumbled, “straight out of Africa. I thought she had thrown all she had at me in Natal!”

She would not let him revert to his accident in this frame of mind, but she saw instantly that it was no use trying to force cheerfulness. Philip was in no mood for uplift, so she spoke of the book he had been reading while Grant went to order their tea.

As soon as his brother had gone Philip demanded querulously: “Where were you all day yesterday?”

“Tending the sick. It’s what the shipping company employs me to do.”

“I know I’ve no right to question that,” he acknowledged moodily, “but need you have been inaccessible
all
day?”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized gently. “I didn’t know you wanted to see me.”

“I’ve—got used to you,” he said flatly, his burning, fever-bright eyes searching her face. “Has Grant asked you what you are going to do when this voyage is over—when you get back to Southampton?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean ‘not exactly’?”

“He asked me to think about—going home with you,” she confessed.

“And what have you decided?” he demanded.

“Nothing yet.”

“How long is it going to take you to make up your mind?”

“Philip,” she asked, “do you want me to come?”

“Grant wants it.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Yes—I suppose I do, if I must have a nurse.”

“You remember that I’m practically a stranger,” she persisted, not wanting any mistake to be made. “We’ve known each other for exactly three and a half days.”

“Which can be a lifetime on board ship!” The cool, incisive words cut across the silence as Grant Melmore stepped within the half-circle of the roped-off deck and sat down on the end of his brother’s chair. “Momentous decisions should be approached carefully, though,” he added, cautioning words which sent Moira’s thoughts flying to Gregory Paston’s angry warning of two days ago.

“Yes,” she agreed, “I must have time to think. I haven't got a job to go to when I land, but I have never done private nursing before and I might not suit.”

“May I suggest that you’re doing very well at the present moment?” he said. “The work on board ship is very seldom surgical.”

“And, therefore, not important?" Moira challenged.

“I haven’t said that,” he countered easily as he poured her tea. “Of course, I’m more interested in surgery because it’s my own line, but I can also recognize the need for skilled nursing in other branches of the profession.”

“You’re talking over my head!” Philip objected. “And I refuse to be analysed and treated as an object!”

He appeared to be making some sort of effort for Moira’s benefit, but when she had persuaded him to eat a fast-curling sandwich and a piece of dry sponge-cake, she glanced across to where Grant was sitting. It was obvious that Philip was tiring himself, and without waiting for her to speak, Grant nodded.

“We’re going below, Phil,” he said. “I’ve had enough of this tropic heat for one day, and that molten-looking sky over there can only mean a storm.”

Philip made no demur. The heat had tired him beyond belief, and by the time he had been carried back to his cabin Moira could see the deepening look of concern in Grant’s eyes.

“If you’ll sit with him for a minute or two,” he suggested, “I’ll go and have a word with Doctor Paston.”

He was calling Gregory Paston in at the first sign of serious trouble, which was the recognized thing to do, and Moira found herself wondering how Greg would meet the professional courtesy. High-handedly, she supposed, surrendering her fingers to Philip’s fevered grasp as he sought to detain her on his own account.

“Don’t go yet,” he appealed hoarsely. “There’s nothing seriously wrong, you know. Only this raging fire in my throat.”

All that night she sat with him, taking spells with Grant to wipe the steaming perspiration from his face and chest, praying that nothing would happen to him in an urgency of tenderness which surged through her like a great tide which embraced Grant, too, when she realized how tired he looked. He had evidently not spared himself for days, and behind him stretched those weeks of anxiety while his brother’s life had hung in the balance in Cape Town. Was it all going to end like this with a tropical fever at sea?

“We can’t let him go out like this!” Grant muttered harshly. “He’s got to have his chance.”

The revelation behind the words smote her, making her ashamed of her own betraying thoughts of him when Gregory Paston had cast that first doubt. Whatever had happened, whatever had come between him and Philip, there was nothing in his mind now but his brother’s safety. Philip was like a child to him, the child he had brought up and nurtured over the difficult years, and no sacrifice would be too great for him to make for his brother’s welfare in the future.

She recognized the fact even as she saw its danger, for Philip was the type to take without question. He was like Jill in that respect. He expected things from life.

Grant moved to the porthole, looking out across a sea like the underpart of a dove’s wing. The storm that had passed in the night had tossed them mercilessly, but it had been swift and soon over and the sea lay flat and calm and grey as the light in the east strengthened.

Moira turned to look at Philip’s pale, defeated face, thinking how young he looked with his fair hair tumbled on his damp brow and one arm flung out across the sheet as if in childish protest, and suddenly she realized how tired she was, how much she had given to that silent struggle by Grant Melmore’s side.

It was over now. The fever had spent itself and Philip would be back to normal in a day or two, but in these past few hours something had been cemented between them that would endure.

She drew away from the bed, stooping to fold the discarded blankets on to a chair, and instantly Grant crossed to her side.

“Leave these,” he commanded, taking the last one from her. “The stewardess will attend to them when she comes.” He was looking down at her, his eyes searching her face as the strengthening daylight struggled with the yellow glow from Philip’s bedside lamp. “You’re tired,” he said, “and I’m going to send you straight to bed.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll give you ten minutes to get in, and then I’ll bring you something to drink.”

"There’s Philip,” she objected instantly, although her tiredness pressed like a great weight on her brow. “I can easily get a cup of milk from the galley on my way down.”

“Philip will sleep well into the morning now,” he said, leading her towards the cabin door, “and I want to make sure that you will do the same.”

“Drink it all,” he commanded, holding out a tumbler with a yellow liquid in it. “It will do you good. I’ll leave word with Paston that you’re not to be disturbed before lunch.”

“What did you put in it?”

“A professional secret. You’re my patient now, not a nurse, so don’t ask unnecessary questions. You’ll thank me for it when you wake up,” he declared.

Before she lost consciousness she wondered what Greg would say when she did not put in an appearance in the surgery, but there was comfort in the thought that Grant Melmore would take care of Greg.

They were north of the Cape Verde Islands before Philip was allowed to come on deck again. His bout of fever had left him thin, but the intense equatorial heat had passed and the wind was no longer a furnace blast. He was installed in his old corner under the bridge, and Moira found him there after she had distributed the usual quota of pills and lotions to the various passengers on the sick-list. The bay still remained empty, which left her free to help the stewardesses with their cabin cases, but the ship had been wonderfully free of illness or accident on this final home-run and she had more time to herself in consequence.

Philip asked the question which had never been very far from her thoughts since the day he had gone down with the fever.

“What are you going to do about Grant’s offer?”

“I haven’t made up my mind,” she was forced to confess.

“You’ve had plenty of time to think about it.” He turned his head to look at her, his grey eyes accusing. “Surely you can do this, Moira? It wouldn’t be for very long.”

The appeal was direct now and she gave way before it.

“If it would please you,” she said, “I’ll come.”

“It will please Grant.” He was trying not to show his elation. “He wants me to go into hospital, but I won’t go until it’s absolutely necessary and Serena’s not the sort of person who would make a good nurse.”

“Serena is your cousin who lives with you?”

Philip nodded, making a wry mouth.

“Grant gave her a home years ago and I suppose she’s been everlastingly grateful since—in her own queer way. Serena and I don’t hit it off very well,” he added bluntly. “We never did see eye to eye, but she worships Grant.”

Moira conjured up her own picture of Serena, which was later to prove so wrong.

“Well,” he demanded, “are you going to chance us?”

“If—your brother still thinks that I can help.”

“Grant wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise,” Phillip assured her dryly.

“Are you—quite alone at the Priory, except for Serena?” she was forced to ask.

“Did you expect there would be—someone else?”

“I wondered. I know so little about your home life, Philip, and if I am to work there I should know if I am likely to fit in.”

“You’d fit in anywhere,” he assured her. “And you’ll be right for Mellyn, Moira. It's the sort of place you’ll love on sight. It’s old and wooded, with a river running through the park and acres of good riding land.”

His voice quivered before the memory of the past, but his enthusiasm for his boyhood home had dispelled some of the tension in it as he looked beyond the present to days so long since when he and Grant had roamed the grassy rides about Mellyn together and he had been taught how to handle a gun and saddle a horse and snare rabbits in the nearby woods. Whatever had come between them since could scarcely have wiped out such a lasting memory. There must be something left.

She wondered about the girl who had come between them, trying to imagine the sort of person she had been until Philip said abruptly:

“If you’re thinking about Kerry, she’s dead.”

“I’m sorry,” she faltered, not knowing what else could be said.

“I thought you must have heard something. Grant told me the Oliver Chilterns were on board and the woman is an inveterate scandal-monger. She’s known Grant and me all our lives, and, of course, she knew about Kerry.”

That was obviously to be an end to confidences for one day. His voice sank into a deep silence which was not broken till Moira got to her feet.

“Please don’t think I have been trying to probe into your private affairs, Philip,” she begged gently. “I didn’t mean to ask you about Kerry—or anything else.”

“Grant would probably have told you,” he said, his eyes following her movements as she tidied the books and magazines into the arm slots of his chair.