The Stars Look Down (51 page)

Hilda had got on wonderfully at Belgrave Square; in six months she had at her finger ends as much as the average nurse acquires in a three years’ training. Already Miss Gibbs, the matron, had her eye upon Hilda as something quite out of the ordinary. Miss Gibbs had commended Hilda and moved Hilda to the theatre. In the theatre Hilda’s qualities seemed exactly right. Dark, self-contained and precise, Hilda functioned in that theatre with forbidding and unerring accuracy. Hilda’s spare-time studying had been extensive but it was her instinct, her temperament which made her so pluperfect. You looked at Hilda and saw that it was impossible for her to blunder. Mr. Ness looked at Hilda several times during her first week in the theatre, his quick darting glance, when Hilda had anticipated something which he required. Ness was the honorary, a short blunt gingery man who sweated offensively while he worked, but a wonder at abdominal surgery. Later, he suggested quietly to Miss Gibbs that Hilda might shortly be useful as his theatre sister.

When Hilda was told of Ness’s interest in her work she showed no elation—the signal honour, as Miss Gibbs euphoniously named it, left Hilda quite unmoved. She had a little thrill of inward satisfaction, quickly suppressed, but she was not overcome. Success had firmed Hilda’s predetermination and set her ambition higher than before. When she stood by Ness watching him make his incisions, sutures and anastomoses, she did not fix her mind upon the time when as theatre sister she would intimately assist him in this work. No, she watched Ness operate and fixed her mind upon the
day when she herself would operate. That was Hilda’s ambition, she had always wanted to be a doctor—a surgeon. Always. She was a little late in beginning, perhaps, but she was still young, only twenty-five. And since her miraculous emancipation from the Law Hilda had sworn to herself that nothing would stop her in achieving her goal. In the meantime Hilda was happy—she had an end in view, she had her work, and she had Grace.

Grace had not achieved Hilda’s crashing success, indeed Grace was not a success at all. Untidy, unpunctual, inaccurate—poor Grace had none of the qualities essential to success. While Hilda rose like a rocket to the giddy heights of the operating theatre, Grace remained scrubbing floors and basins in the basement. Grace didn’t mind. Grace was perfectly contented: so contented that she had twice been before Miss Gibbs’ for giving tea to patients’ wives in the ward kitchen and once for smuggling Gold Flake in to a sergeant disciplined for swearing at the ward sister. Grace, as Miss Gibbs did not hesitate to say, was incompetent, hopelessly incompetent—Grace would never be
anything
, Miss Gibbs said, unless she mended her ways.

But these ways were Grace; and nobody but Miss Gibbs and Hilda seemed to want Grace to mend them. Grace was a great favourite with the other nurses. At the nurses’ home, a house in Sloane Street, quarter of a mile away, there was always someone in Grace’s untidy little cubby hole begging or giving a cigarette, or a
Bystander
, or a gramophone record, or one of the make-believe chocolates that the war had produced. Or asking Grace out to tea or to the pictures, or to meet a brother home on leave.

Hilda hated this. No one came to Hilda’s austerely tidy room and Hilda did not want anyone to come: no one except Grace. Yes, Hilda wanted Grace, wanted Grace all to herself and with all her heart. She froze the friendly visiting, nipped Grace’s friendships in the bud.

“Why,” she scornfully remarked one morning towards the end of March, “must you go out with that Montgomerie creature?”

“Old Monty’s not a bad sort, Hilda,” Grace answered apologetically, “we only went to the Kardomah.”

“The woman’s impossible!” said Hilda jealously. “You must come out with me on your next half-holiday. I’ll arrange it.”

Hilda arranged most things for Grace, continued, in her
possessive love, to dictate to Grace. And Grace—artless, simple and sweet-natured as ever—submitted cheerfully.

But Grace would not submit to Hilda about the letters. Grace did not argue, she did not contradict. On this point she simply refused to submit to Hilda. And these letters worried Hilda to death. Every week and sometimes twice a week the letters came from France, with the field postmark and the same handwriting, a man’s handwriting. Hilda saw that Grace was in close correspondence with someone at the front and at last Hilda could bear it no longer. One April evening, as she walked through the darkened streets to the home with Grace, Hilda said:

“You had another letter, to-day, another letter from France?”

Staring hard at the pavement in front of her Grace said:

“Yes.”

Because she was upset, Hilda’s manner became colder and more forbidding.

“Who is it writes to you?”

At first Grace did not answer. She flushed quickly in the darkness. But she did answer—there was never evasion or artifice about Grace.

“It’s Dan Teasdale.”

“Dan Teasdale.” Hilda’s voice was both shocked and scornful. “You mean Teasdale, Teasdale the baker’s son?”

Grace said very simply:

“Yes.”

“Good heavens!” Hilda burst out. “You don’t mean to say—well, in all my life I never heard anything so sickeningly idiotic—”

“Why is it idiotic?”

“Why?” Hilda sneered. “Why, indeed? Don’t you think it rather cheap to work up a romance with a baker’s lout?”

Grace was very pale now, and her voice extremely quiet.

“You can say unkind things, Hilda,” she said. “Dan Teasdale has nothing to be ashamed of He writes me the nicest letters I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t think there’s anything cheap about that.”

“You don’t,” Hilda said scathingly. “Well, I do. And I won’t have you behaving like an infatuated school-girl. Too many silly women have thrown themselves away already. Their war heroes!—oh, it’s disgusting,
disgusting
. You’ve got to stop these letters.”

Grace shook her head.

“I’m sorry, Hilda.”

“You’ve got to, I tell you.”

Grace shook her head again.

“I won’t,” she said. Tears stood in Grace’s eyes but there was a queer finality in her voice which knocked the rage right out of Hilda and really frightened her.

Hilda said no more that evening: but she took up an attitude and tried to coerce Grace by that attitude. She froze Grace, spoke to her cuttingly, generally ignored her with a sort of scornful contempt. This lasted for a fortnight and the letters still came.

Then in a secret panic Hilda suddenly changed. She unbent completely, apologised to Grace, petted and wheedled Grace and took Grace out to the Kardomah, a café greatly favoured by the nurses, for the nicest tea that money and Hilda’s influence with the proprietress could procure. For a whole week Hilda spoiled Grace and Grace received the spoiling as submissively as she had received the scolding. Then Hilda tried once again to persuade Grace to give up writing to Dan. No use, no use at all, Grace would not give up writing to Dan.

Hilda watched the letters, these abominable interminable letters, she went down early every morning to inspect the letter rack, in a kind of hatred. And then, one morning in June she noticed with a start that the postmark of the letter just arrived was Loughborough.

She stopped Grace after breakfast. In a controlled voice she asked:

“Is he wounded?”

“Yes.” Grace kept her eyes averted.

“Seriously?”

“No.”

“In hospital?”

“Yes!”

A secret relief flooded Hilda, deep down within herself she was overwhelmed by relief—Loughborough was a long way off, a very long way off. Since the wound was not serious Dan would soon be back in France. But her lip curled. She sneered:

“He really ought to have been brought here, of course. That’s how it happens in the best penny-farthing romances.”

Grace turned away quickly. Yet before she could go Hilda went on:

“So lovely for him to come out of the anæsthetic and find
you by his bedside ready to fling your arms round his neck.”

The quivering in Hilda’s voice showed how much it hurt Hilda to say that—it hurt her horribly. Yet she had to say it. She was inflamed with jealousy.

Grace did not answer Hilda. She went into the ward carrying Dan’s letter in the pocket of her apron. She read it several times while she was on duty.

Dan had been in the big push in at the Somme, had been wounded in the left forearm and wrist. He would be well almost immediately, he wrote, his arm did not hurt him in the slightest, it was just that he could not use his hand.

Dan’s letters became irregular about the end of July, but on the evening of the very last day of the month as Grace walked down Sloane Street, she saw someone in uniform standing with his arm in a sling exactly opposite the home. She was alone and walking rather slowly for she was tired, saddened by the thought of Arthur, of all the changes at home in Sleescale. For once everything seemed wrong. Miss Gibbs had given her another lecture for untidiness, and she was upset at not hearing from Dan—it was amazing how much she had come to depend on these letters of Dan’s. At the sight of that figure in uniform she stopped, not very sure. And then all at once she was sure. Her heart leaped within her breast. It was Dan. He crossed the street and saluted her.

“Dan! I thought… yes, I thought it was you.” The pleasure she felt at seeing him shone in her face; she did not feel tired now but, forgetting all about being tired and sad, she held out her hand.

Not speaking, he shook hands shyly. His shyness of her amounted almost to a disease, he seemed afraid almost to look at her. Grace had never seen anyone afraid of her before, it was so ridiculous she wanted to laugh and cry at once. Quickly, before she should do anything so stupid as that, she said:

“Have you been waiting, Dan? Didn’t you go into the home?”

“No,” he said, “I didn’t want to be worrying you. I thought I might see you for a minute as you went in.”

“A minute!” She smiled again; suddenly she looked at his wounded arm.

“How is your arm?”

“They’ve had some trouble with the wrist… the tendons,” he said. “I’m sent up here for orthopædic treatment at the Langham clinic. Electricity and one of these new exercise
machines. Six weeks’ treatment before I can go back.”

“Six weeks!”

Her gasp of pleasure almost reassured him. He said awkwardly:

“I was wondering if you, that’s to say if you wouldn’t mind… if you hadn’t anything better to do…”

“No,” she said with a little rush, “I wouldn’t mind. And I’ve got
nothing
better to do.” She paused, gazing at him with bright eyes. Her hair stuck out comically from her nurse’s cap; there was a distinct smut on her cheek. “I’ve got two hours off to-morrow. Shall we have tea?”

He laughed, his eyes still on the ground:

“That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

“I know, I know, it’s awful, I’ve invited myself,” she ran on, “but oh, Dan, it’s too marvellous for words. There’s hundreds of things we can do in six weeks.” She broke off. “There isn’t any other girl you’ve been writing to you want to take around?”

He lifted his eyes in such concern that now it was her turn to laugh. She laughed happily. It was splendid seeing Dan again. Dan had always been the most marvellous companion, from those very early days when he had given her a drive on the van up the Avenue and made her pick a most beautiful cream bun out of the basket. The same Dan who had made whistles for her out of willow shoots, and shown her the golden wren’s nest in Sluice Dene and brought her harvest plaits from Avory’s farm. And for all his second-lieutenant’s uniform and his arm in a sling Dan wasn’t a bit changed from these good old days. He ought, she knew, to have come back from the front very curt and commanding, completely reorganised inside and out. But Dan, like herself, would never be reorganised: he was the same shy, humble Dan. Grace did not dream that she was in love with Dan but she did know that she had not been so happy since she left the Law. She held out her hand.

“To-morrow at three, Dan. Wait for me outside. And don’t come too near or you’ll get Mary Jane the sack.” She ran up the steps before he could reply.

They met next day at three and they went to the new Harris’s in Oxford Street for tea. They talked and talked. Dan, when he got over his shyness, was the most interesting talker—that, at least, was what Grace thought—and he on his side wanted her to talk, was eager to listen to what she said, which struck Grace as unusual and pleasant. Encouraged,
she poured out to him all her worries about Arthur and her father. He heard her in silence, sympathetically.

“Things haven’t been right at home since the disaster, Dan,” she concluded, her eyes earnest and sad. “I can’t think of it as the same place. Somehow I can’t think that I’ll ever go back.”

He nodded his head.

“I understand, Grace.”

She gazed at him earnestly: “You won’t go back to the Neptune, will you, Dan? Oh, I’d hate to think of you going back to that awful pit.”

“Well,” he answered, “I think I’ve had enough. You see, I’ve had time to think it over. I never liked it, I daresay, but—oh, what’s the use of saying it again? It’s been said so many times before, you know, the disaster and everything.” He paused. “If I get through the war I want to go farming.”

“Yes, Dan,” she said.

They went on talking. They talked so long that the waitress came twice to demand haughtily if they required anything further.

Afterwards they took a walk through the Park; they went round the Serpentine, then back by Hyde Park Corner. Five o’clock came before they realised it. Outside the Nurses’ Home Grace paused. She said:

“If I haven’t been a complete nuisance, Dan, perhaps we can go out again?”

Grace and Dan began to go out regularly. They went to the oddest places and they enjoyed themselves—oh, how they enjoyed themselves! They walked on the Chelsea Embankment, took the steamboat to Putney and the bus to Richmond, they found out queer little tea shops, they had macaroni and minestrone in Soho—it was all banal and beautiful, it had happened a million times before and yet it had never happened to Grace and Dan.

But one evening as they came back from a walk in Kensington Gardens they ran directly into Hilda, outside the Home. Hilda knew all about Grace’s expeditions with Dan and Hilda though burning to speak had kept herself cuttingly aloof. But now Hilda stopped. She smiled freezingly at Dan and said: