You Took My Heart (15 page)

Then Joan fainted again.

This time the faint persisted in a most troublesome fashion because it was not so much faintness as a general collapse, brought on by over-tiredness and weeks of worry and this icy twenty-mile drive in an open car. Also it was the onset of the most serious illness Joan had ever had in her healthy young life. They called it influenza at the hospital, but it was much nearer to double pneumonia.

So that she didn’t know anything clearly about that dreadful night until days afterwards, And she never knew how splendid Barney was, getting her bark to the Nurses’ Home, handing her there to the Sister-in-charge with the most tactful of explanations. (As it happened the temperature which the Sister’s thermometer registered just afterwards was all the explanation that was needed.) Nurse Langden had been stricken down by a particularly virulent form of influenza with the characteristic suddenness of that disease in the midst of a party to which her friend had taken her. Of the wild drive and the tragic accident they had witnessed Barney said never a word. And it was directly thanks to Barney, too, that Mrs. Garth Perros’ death was reported in the next day’s papers without one sensational or gossip-stimulating detail.

In the weeks to come Joan would thank Barney for that amazing night’s work of his, but on the frosty February afternoon when she opened her eyes to see the red sunset light splashing the white walls of her small hospital ward it was not Barney she was thinking of but her own racking, tormenting pain. For aeons now, every time she roused herself out of her hot nightmare drowsiness there was always this pain. Her bones and her head, her legs and her back, her very soul seemed to be steeped in it. Even in the nightmare drowsiness she was aware of it.

She was in a side ward in the isolation block of St. Angela’s. She knew that. Isolation because the influenza was of an epidemic nature. Other nurses were down with it. Patients developed it by their dozens. The distracted probationer who brought her ice-cold drinks at intervals told her they were rushed off their feet. In a dim way Joan tried to take that in. In a dim way she thought about Vera and the wild night ride, too stupid with fever to wonder what the outcome of that tragic death had been. Too stupid to feel its full horror.

Then on a sunny, almost spring-like morning about a week later her temperature was normal, and she was propped up on pillows for a little while to admire the vases of flowers Barney had sent her. “Flowers from Mr. O’Crea every day,” the overworked probationer told her with a romantic little sigh. “And telephone calls and enquiries!”

Two days later Barney himself was admitted. He was very tender and gentle, not mentioning Vera’s death until Joan herself insisted upon it, plying him with questions. They had found her address, he said, in a pocket-book in her handbag—a cottage not a mile away from the scene of the accident. Ivan, he understood, had been taken to Dipley to his grandparents, Garth had sailed a day or two ago for America, where he had been invited to preside at some important medical conference.

“We made as much as we could of that in the
Clarion
,” Barney went on virtuously, “stressing his pluck in fulfilling this public engagement in spite of his deep personal grief—you know the kind of thing. I haven’t let one word slip out that might have hurt him, Joan!”

“I’m glad,” Joan murmured weakly, thinking that Garth had gone away without trying to see her, without sending her one word of a message. And somehow she didn’t care. She was all burned up inside, as though the fever had literally devoured her, leaving her nothing but an empty, shrivelled husk for a heart. It was comforting in a way. Because too much had happened, too much that could hurt and sear. The very thought of Garth and his love now was like ashes in her soul.

When Barney was gone she lay thinking about Vera. It was very pathetic, if one were able to feel pathos; the poor girl with her mind half crazed at last, hiding her son in that poverty-stricken cottage, changing her name, losing connection with everyone she knew, even the pursuing Stefan, working in that awful Diable place, half starving herself, driven on by the
name
less fears which were a legacy from her terrible, tragic childhood. Life hadn’t been much of a party for Vera Petrovna when you came to think of it!

For a while Joan pondered this miserably, even weeping weakly a little. Then overcome by fatigue she sank into a heavy slumber.

They were dreary days that followed in the small side ward but at last the meaning arrived when she was all bundled up in her fur coat and shaken and tottery found herself being helped downstairs to the comfortable hospital ambulance for the forty-mile drive to St. Angela’s Nurses’ Convalescent Home.

They were very good to her there. For hours at a time she lay on a balcony overlooking the sea, reading or dozing in the thin spring sunshine. She ate and she drank. She went for short walks obediently. She retired to bed at the ridiculous hour of six o’clock. And all the time she was dead inside, with a tired, endless sort of deadness. There wasn’t anything she wanted particularly, nor anything she didn’t want. She just existed.

Even when on a certain Sunday afternoon a familiar brown car drove up beneath her balcony her heart stirred only a little. But it was good to see kindly Mrs. Perros once more, to hear her speak of Garth’s triumphs in New York, to watch her face light up as she spoke of her grandson who was thriving in Dipley’s bracing air. “Thriving and bonny,” she said.

“Joan, you’ve
got
to come back with us,” she announced at last. “That’s what we’ve come for. We’ll be sorely hurt, the doctor and I, if you refuse to do this. After all, we’ve driven the best part of two hundred miles to fetch you, and we’ve persuaded your Matron here to let you go. She says it will be at least another fortnight before you are fit for duty at St. Angela’s and you might just as well spend that time with us. It will be much more cheerful for you than this nursing home atmosphere.”

Her persuasions were unending in their eloquence. So that at last Joan gave in for peace’ sake. Because after all it didn’t matter very much where she was and Dipley couldn’t hurt her. Even Garth couldn’t hurt her any more, and anyway Garth was away.

The next morning early she was bundled once more into her fur coat and packed into the back of the family car with Mrs. Perros and an assortment of rugs and hot water bottles.

After that it was in the garden of the old white house at Dipley that she did her convalescing, lying by the hour in a big basket chair on the loggia, watching the sun shining on the brave daffodils and on the new spikes of grass and the tender budding trees. In the forenoons after his session at the local private school Ivan would come to her, bringing his jig-saw puzzle, or the Mr. Dippy of whom now he was beginning to be secretly ashamed. He would prattle away to her excitedly of his experiences in the fascinating new world of school where he was for the first time having contact with children of his own age.

The doings of someone called Podgy Smith and another boy named Ernest were of immense and most thrilling importance to him. “Podgy Smith threw ink
right
across the floor today wif his pen!” he would relate breathlessly; or, “Ernest has a muscle on the top of his arm that sticks out like this!” He would hold up his own skinny arm for inspection.

And Joan, watching him, playing with him, after a while going for short rides with him when he cantered on his small pony beside her, found something gradually stirring to life in her once more—something she had thought, had hoped was dead. She would catch herself waiting for that t
ri
ck the child had of twisting his mouth a little when he smiled—Garth’s trick! She would wait for the glance of his direct grey eyes, listen with a stab at her heart as he turned to her boastfully to call, “See that, Joan!” when he had performed some feat of mild daring with the fat, good natured pony. It was Garth all over again! It was the boy companion of her own childhood come back in this dear old place that had always been home. That was home now, poignantly, unbearable, in spite of everything that had happened to make each memory bitter.

And then one golden March evening when they came back to the house after a long canter over the flat, salty marshes when the whole green world was shining like crystal in the clear radiance of the setting sun,
Garth was there.
Quietly and without any warning, he stepped out from the loggia to meet them, seeing the boy glowing and sturdy walking up the drive with the pony-reins slung over his arm, the girl beside him tall and slender, her warm, bright hair in rings about her pale, uplifted face.

With a shout of joy Ivan ran to meet him, but the man’s steady gaze was still fixed on the girl as he raised the child to his shoulder. A serene look it was, filled with a strange sweet peace and deep contentment.

“Garth!” Joan said shyly. “Garth!”

He did not touch her, did not speak for a moment, just stood there looking at her as though he could never be done looking. Then he said with a sigh that was sheer relief: “I’ve come home to you, Joanna, home to you all. It’s
good
!”

They turned to the house together and Mrs. Perros was there, and the doctor, fussing and glowing with delight over Garth’s unexpected arrival. There was a cosy English tea, and a pleasant English fire roaring in the old-fashioned grate. There were small sweet wood violets in a crystal bowl on the table. Violets, Mrs. Perros pointed out, Joan had gathered only that morning in the woods behind the house.

After a hilarious bedtime romp with Ivan in which they all joined more or less, Joan and Garth found themselves on the loggia once more, a twilit loggia now touched by the rays of a rising, golden moon. Late birds sang, thrushes and blackbirds and small, sleepy sparrows, and Garth took out his pipe and regarded it contentedly.

It was a wonderful relief to him, he said, to find how quickly Ivan had adapted himself to his new life, how completely he seemed to have become accustomed to the absence of his mother.

It was the first mention of Vera’s death, and in the silence that followed Joan could hear the quick throbbing of her pulses.

“And you, Garth?” she found herself asking presently, in a strangely shy voice.

His hand was warm and reassuring finding her own in the twilight. “
You
know how it is with me, Joanna,” he said softly. “You don’t have to ask.” His eyes were alive suddenly, very young, very eager in his tired, lined face. He said, “There hasn’t been one moment of the long journey home I haven’t been thinking of you, Joanna. Not one moment but my heart has been hurrying on ahead of me! I couldn’t believe it when I found you here—like this—with Ivan! It was wonderful.”

The last words were spoken in a whisper, almost as though to himself. Then he turned to her again, his fingers tightening on her firm, cool little hand. “I’ve been a fool in the past, my dear. I’ve spoiled things for you over and over again. I know that—bitterly. But there’s never been a day I haven’t been loving you, longing for you. I wonder if you can believe that and forgive me for—the rest?”

For a while she was silent, watching the moon as it rose behind the veil of young spring trees, hearing the last drowsy twitter of the birds, the far-off cry of curlews out on the wide marshes.

She was smiling at last, turning to him. “You know how it is with me, too, Garth,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to ask.”