You Took My Heart (3 page)

* * * *

Then something happened which put Sister Millet and her petty tyrannies right out of Joan’s head. It was a Sunday afternoon with routine work cut down to a minimum. Only Joan and Nurse Scatt were on duty. It was ward tea-time and the patients’ Sunday visitors had just gone leaving a litter of gifts behind them. There were flowers to put in water and fruit to pack as neatly as possible in the bedside lockers. Beside the fruit there were the less poetical offerings of eggs and butter and lump sugar. Joan couldn’t get used to the messiness of keeping food of all sorts in the small lockers, together with soap and toothpaste and worn undergarments. It didn’t seem to go with the strict hygiene which dominated every other department of the hospital life. But it was a time-honored custom and it kept the patients happy.

She was busy trying to fit warmish butter and a fruit jelly into the jumble of old Mrs. Eldon’s bedside possessions when Nurse Scatt called to her.

“There’s an emergency coming in. Perros is taking it. Mastoid. Kid of seven. Private patient. I want you to get room fifteen ready,” Scatty said breathlessly.

Joan hurried away. Room fifteen was rose-colored and pleasant with a chintz-covered armchair and an eiderdown quilt on its bed. Private patients, it seemed, had luxuries. Also they were a perfect curse as a rule, Scatty said, throwing the clean sheets down on the bed. Joan, whisking blankets about, wanted to know why the child of seven wasn’t going to the children’s block.

“Because the G.P. who’s sending him in wants him to have a room to himself. There aren’t any sidewards on the kids’ block,” Scatty explained.

They finished the bed by a neat sleight-of-hand just as the lift came up and stretcher-wheels sounded on the stone corridor outside.

Joan felt a pang of pity for the small
golden-haired
boy living under the brown stretcher-blankets. His pointed face was wan with terror, his grey eyes wide. A tall, slim girl walked beside him,
golden-haired
like the child, wide-eyed too and even more terrified. The mother, Joan supposed, in spite of her youth, and started with a pang of recollection as she looked at that curiously striking face. Where had she seen it before? At the ballet, of course, that was it. The pictured face she had studied on the foyer wall while she waited for Garth that memorable evening. Her interest quickened ... She hadn’t imagined a youthful ballerina having a small son who developed acute mastoiditis. It was tragic and pathetic.

She was very gentle helping to lift the child from the stretcher, laying him on the folded blankets of the newly made bed and fixing the pillows beneath him. “We aren’t going to hurt you, dear,” she said in answer to the pitiful questioning of the eyes looking up at her.

The child’s lips quivered. “If only Mummy could stay with me,” he said in a brave, shaky voice.

The golden-haired young woman knelt down beside her. “Mummy
is
going to stay,” she asserted. “They’ll let me, won’t they?” she shot at Joan.

“Of course they will,” Joan told her and fervently hoped she was right.

Scatty put her head in the door. “I want you to admit this patient while I get on with the ward work. Come and help me as soon as you’re through.”

Joan murmured, “Yes, Nurse Scatt, and hoped that she would remember all the details of admission. They were fairly simple. Name and age for the chart. Pulse and temperature. Then a blanket-bath. She set to work. It was difficult with the young mother sitting on the bed, the child’s hot hand in her own Joan hadn’t the heart to move her and after a moment or two she began to help. That was all wrong, of course. Scatty would be furious if she came in. But Joan couldn’t help it. It was easy to sense the passionate attachment between these two human beings, easy to sense the awful acuteness of their terror in this emergency. You had to do everything you could to make it easy for them.

Ivan Petrovna was the name Joan wrote on the chart-head. They were Russian, of course, like most ballet folk.

Madame Petrovna said, “It has all happened so quickly. Two days ago Ivan was so well. Then this terrible earache and high fever.”

When she spoke, her face went soft and wistful, her great eyes eloquent with appeal. The photograph in the theatre had left out her coloring. It was gold and creamy and delicate with those unbelievable brown eyes. Madame Petrovna, Joan thought, was the most attractive person she had ever seen. And it wasn’t that she was smartly dressed. Her black frock was shiny with age, only redeemed from its shabbiness by the vivid gipsy scarf at the neck and the single heavy bangle on her slender wrist. But Petrovna’s body was so beautifully shaped that it didn’t seem to matter what she wore. She moved with the supple ease of the dancer, using her hands a little when she talked. Her voice was thick and dulcet, with a faintly foreign intonation which gave it unusual charm.

“Tell me about this mastoid operation,” she begged. “Is it safe—simple?”

“Perfectly simple,” declared Joan out of her ignorance. “Ivan will be well before we know where we are.” She smiled reassuringly at the wide-eyed little boy—grey misty-lashed eyes quite unlike his mother’s brown ones. It was important to keep him as peaceful as possible now and the anxious questionings of his parent were not good. So Joan firmly discouraged them.

Madame Petrovna switched over to the subject of doctors. “You have such clever surgeons here I am told,” she said hungrily. “That is good. This specialist who is to see Ivan—I did not quite catch his name when our doctor telephoned just now?”

“Perros,” Joan put in.

The brown eyes went tight and wary. “Perros,” she whispered almost as though to herself. “Strange it should be that name. But this man who is so famous, he must be old—yes?”

“No, he is not old,” Joan said, seeing the lovely face before her grow curiously puzzled. “Did you know a surgeon of that name then?”

Madame Petrovna shook her head. “Not a surgeon. Just someone very young indeed. A great many years ago. It could not be the same.”

She leaned over her son then murmuring the liquid endearments of her own tongue.

When the blanket-bath was over Joan went back to the ward to plunge into the evening ritual of washing and screens. Scatty it was who took Garth Perros to room fifteen when he arrived to make his preliminary examination.

Joan met him a quarter of an hour later in the corridor when she was fetching the milk for the patients’ supper. His face was ashen and he passed her without a word, without a look. He was like a sleep-walker with that dazed, terrible expression in his eyes. Joan stood quite still with the pitcher of milk in her hands. Something had gone wrong with Garth. Something very serious. Was it the condition of the child he had just seen? Was it that this operation was to be so much more than ordinarily difficult that it dismayed him,
to the point of terror. Joan
couldn’t
quite believe that. Garth was so sure, so experienced.

With a troubled feeling she went into the ward-kitchen and began to cut the thick pieces of bread and butter which she would serve with the mugs of hot milk. Scatty came in, fussing with a hypodermic needle. She had just given Ivan a preliminary sedative she said, and explained the principle of ante-operation sedatives to her usually eager pupil. But Joan wasn’t listening.

“I met Mr. Perros just now,” she said, when Scatty was done. “He looked so ill, so odd!”

Scatty nodded. “I was just going to tell you. It’s the queerest thing you ever heard. When he marched into number fifteen just now I thought he was going to faint. I’ve never seen a man turn so many colors of the rainbow. And Madame Petrovna, she went white as a sheet too and called him by his Christian name. Then because I was in the room they pulled themselves together. But you can mark my words there is something very peculiar about the whole thing. They have obviously met before and in pretty dramatic circumstances I should say.” With another nod of her head Scatty rushed away.

Joan poured milk into the big aluminum saucepan and lighted the gas-ring. Then she ranged the mugs carefully on the tray, counting them twice over to make sure she had the correct number. Everything she did was done with exaggerated care—as though she were a little drunk.

She went through her subsequent duties in a stiff, mechanical fashion. Garth’s stricken face wouldn’t go out of her mind. And the odd way Madame Petrovna had looked when she heard his name. The odd things she had said. But it was years ago since she had known somebody called Perros. It couldn’t have been Garth, Joan told herself firmly, and nevertheless believed that it was.

How many years ago had Madame Petrov
n
a meant, she asked herself, taking the heavy tray into the ward. Eight? It was eight years ago that Garth had stayed away from Dipley and she had always suspected that an unhappy love-affair had been at the bottom of
that.
But it was silly to go on like this with no evidence whatever to support her suspicions. An exotic, foreign creature like Madame Petrovna couldn’t possibly mean anything to the clear and candid Garth. And yet he had been so upset at his encounter with her that even a prosaic person like Scatty had noticed it!

With a sigh Joan carried hot milk and bread and butter to Mrs. Eldon. The old lady peered up at her waiting expectantly for the usual cheery word which accompanied Joan’s services. But for once there was none forthcoming.

“What has happened to our little nurse’s smiles this evening?” Granny Eldon murmured with kindly concern. “You look right tired, dearie! When are you going off duty to get some rest? It’s crool the way they works young things in this hospital. That’s what I say.”

Joan scarcely heard her. She was listening to the wheels of the stretcher taking Ivan to the lift. In a moment he would soar upwards to the grim white theatres on the top floor, and Garth would be waiting for him there.

Ivan’s mother would be alone now, somehow enduring this awful interval of suspense. Joan tried to keep away from room fifteen but in the end her heart drove her in there with a comforting cup of freshly made tea.

Madame Petrovna was still sitting on the bed—now bleakly empty and forsaken, her colorless face
mask-like.

“I brought you some tea,” Joan murmured.

The girl looked at her blankly. She did
not
attempt to take the cup Joan held out to her. She did not seem to see it.

“How long will they be?” she asked in a voice gone harsh and cracked as though with long fever. Her great eyes searching Joan’s face for some crumb of reassurance were almost like mad eyes in the intensity of their anxiety. “How long?” she repeated. “For I cannot bear much more. Why
wouldn’t
they let me go with him? Why? Why? He looked so little, so helpless going away from me. They’d put him to sleep with something. They cut off his lovely hair, ’ she said with a sob. Then suddenly she was all broken up, throwing herself down on the bed, her slender body shaken with weeping.

It was better so. Joan knew that. Tears would ease that awful tension. But her own eyes were wet as she uttered what comfort she could. Presently she took the unwanted tea away and sent Scatty in instead. Scatty knew all about soothing hysterical outbursts though she looked as though she
were
quite incapable of one herself. Scatty at moments
like
this was a tower of strength. In a little while she had restored calm to the occupant of room fifteen, and about three-quarters of an hour later the stretcher came back.

Joan was in the small adjoining private bathroom folding away the rubber sheets which would be used for Ivan’s bed. Garth had come back with his patient. She heard his voice. It was hollow and tense and unnatural, but the words he spoke were good. The operation had been quite simply and effectively accomplished and the child had stood it remarkably.

Nurse Scatt went away rolling the stretcher in front of her. Garth and Madame Petrovna were done now.

Garth said, “He’ll be all
night
, Vera. A month from now if all goes well he will be on his feet again perfectly fit.”

Joan made a little sound so that they would realize she was in the bathroom close by. She wanted to walk boldly out. But somehow the courage to perform this simple action would not
come
to her. She stood perfectly still, her hands clasped hotly together ... waiting for she knew not what. Only that she couldn’t go out. She couldn’t see Garth again with that awful look on his face. She couldn
’
t bear to see any more this stranger he had called by name ... this terrifying disturbing stranger.

She heard the gush of feminine weeping again, broken now by queer strained laughter.

“I’m so glad, Garth. Oh, I’m
so
glad. And
it’s
the queerest thing in the world that it should be you, my dear, who has saved Ivan. You don’t know yet how queer.”

“It’s an odd coincidence,” Garth murmured in agreement. “But I’m glad to have helped you, Vera—
and
your son. He’s very nice.”

“My son—” said Madame Petrovna quietly—“and
yours
, Garth. You didn’t guess that, did you?”

CHAPTER THREE

Hidden in the
bathroom Joan stood perfectly still. There was the most extraordinary feeling in her head—as though all the sense had been emptied out of it. It felt hollow and dead and there were no thoughts in it of any kind. She knew that Vera Petrovna and Garth were still talking in low hurried tones, quite clearly, but she could not have told what they Were saying. Words didn’t make sense to her any more. The last words that had made any sense went on echoing and echoing around the small glistening bathroom like a gramophone record that has got stuck

My son ... and yours, Garth. You didn’t guess that, did you? My son, and yours.

With steady hands Joan folded the last of the red rubber sheets. She folded it in four, then in eight, then opened it out and folded it all over again. When it slid to the floor at her feet she didn’t seem to see it go. It was her own face she was seeing looki
n
g at her out of the slice of mirror above the bath. White cap with tendrils of warm chestnut hair tucked into it, and below the cap arched brows and wide blue eyes, only they didn’t look blue any more, but black, as though they were in pain.

Nurse Scatt had come back into room fifteen. Garth was going.

She was like a hunted animal listening now, taking in every movement on the other side of the door. She’d got to get out of this bathroom somehow without being seen. She’d got to keep it from them forever that she’d overheard ...
Them
! Vera Petrovna and Garth.

They were coupled already together in her mind, a common enemy.

She heard Garth say, “I’ll look in a little later on. The boy will be all right now; I think. The ether effects are passing off nicely. Keep him quiet, Nurse.” Then he was gone with Scatty pattering behind him. Joan peeped forth cautiously. Vera Petrovna was kneeling by the child’s bed, her golden head buried in her hands. She might have been praying ... or weeping. Joan didn’t know. Noiselessly in her rubber ward-shoes, she crept from the room. When she found herself safely in the corridor she wanted to run ... she didn’t know where. Just anywhere away from the sound of Vera Petrovna’s voice repeating that astounding, incredible statement.

Garth’s son! The small pathetic Ivan with the bandaged head was Garth’s son. And Vera. What then was Vera to Garth?

Still with that dazed feeling Joan went into the ward. It was Sunday evening—still Sunday evening, although the world had been turned upside down. That seemed most extraordinary!

Mrs. Eldon was waiting for her late treatment and there was the ward-kitchen to mop over and leave clean for the night-nurses. Scatty was sitting at the white enamel table in the centre of the ward writing the day’s report.

She looked up sharply when Joan came in and said, “You’ve forgotten to take the flowers from the mantelpiece. Where on earth have you been all this time?”

Joan didn’t answer her. She walked heavily down the room to-the empty fireplace and collected the vases of half-faded roses.

“Don’t leave them in the corridor with the fresh flowers,” warned Scatty. “Those roses are withered. Throw them into the waste-pan in the lotion-room.”

Joan said, “Yes, Nurse Scatt.”

There was a lovely, sweet scent from the dying roses. As she carried them they dropped great petals of scarlet, slow as tears, so that she had to come back with a dustpan and brush and sweep them up. They were like splashes of blood on the pale polished boards ... And Vera Petrovna and Garth had been lovers. That was the essential, terrible, earth-shaking fact today’s drama had disclosed. Eight years ago it must have been. Ivan was seven ... all the pieces of the puzzle fitting in now, the mystery made clear. That was the summer of Garth’s odd behavior, his anguish—and his plain, ordinary sulks. The year when she had lost him and known him lost. The year she had worked so hard to win him back again.

In the ward-kitchen Joan fumbled for the galvanized tin pail and big curly mop. She filled the pail with hot water from the tap, shook soap-flakes into it and began to wash over the dark, green linoleum ... Garth and Vera Petrovna had been lovers and Ivan was their son. Things like that happened in life, of course, remotely, without reality. You read about them in books or in rather sordid newspaper stories. It hadn’t seemed possible they could come near you. But Garth who had kissed her so passionately under the apple trees, Garth who had held her in his arms, who had so many times so nearly told her that he loved her ... Garth was now the centre of just such a story. He had loved, he had erred perhaps, in a past too easily forgotten, and now the past had come back to strike at him. The past in the lovely shape of Vera Petrovna, with her golden hair and husky voice, her wistful, appealing eyes. What effect would she have upon Garth? What would it do to him now that he knew that Ivan was his son?

With small icy hands Joan carried the pail of suds away down the corridor to be emptied in the lotion-room sink. Vera Petrovna was in the corridor too—talking to the fat, motherly night-sister. She looked very tall and fragile against a sunset window with the flowers which had been banished from the ward for the night massed behind her. She looked all drained and finished somehow, her face like an ivory mask under her tiled hat, her great eyes fastened upon night-sister’s homely countenance with that avid hunger for assurance they had held ever since she had walked into the hospital beside Ivan’s stretcher.

Night-sister was saying, “He’ll be quite all right with me, Mrs. Petrovna. You can rely on that. I’ll ring you up at your flat if he should waken and ask for you. I promise you.”

Vera said, “I’ll be at the Berkeley, dining with er—a friend. Maybe I’ll be there an hour; not more. After that I’ll be at the Museum number I’ve given you. How early can I come back here in the morning?”

“Nine o’clock,” night-sister told her, and Joan took her humble scrubbing-pail into the lotion-room, lifted it on to the splash-board and stood staring at it as though she were wondering what it was and how it had got there.

Garth was taking Vera to dine at the Berkeley. Of course it was Garth who was the friend. They would have to get away alone together at the first opportunity to talk about Ivan—wouldn’t they? They would have to talk about the past and their amazing meeting. It was perfectly natural, even right in a way that they should. Garth couldn’t very well do any less than offer to look after his old friend Madame Petrovna and give her dinner this night of all nights, in her pain and distraction.

Scatty put a disapproving face round the lotion-room door. “You’ll be late for supper, Langden. Hurry up, for goodness’ sake! What on earth has come over you this evening? You’re about as snappy as a sick tortoise!”

Joan with a start pulled down her sleeves, put on her cuffs and followed obediently in Scatty’s wake.

The night-nurses were already hurrying along the corridors to their posts in twos and threes. Across the square the supper-bell tinkled. It was Sunday night and Miss Don would be taking the meal. It was the worst possible night for any unpunctuality. Under the shadowy, whispering trees Nurse Scatt and Joan began to run. It seemed incredible to Joan that the wrath of Miss Don could still matter, and yet in some incredible fashion, and in spite of her agonized preoccupation, it
did
matter. The subtle, relentless discipline of hospital life had already got into her blood. If the world were crashing around her in ruins she would automatically continue to answer bells and watch clocks and flatten herself against walls respect
fully
for Matron to pass her by.

Though it was not of that she was thinking as breathlessly, in the nick of time, she took her place at the probationers’ long table.

It was another table she was picturing, a small and intimate one set out with fine glass and silver in a dignified room with long mulberry curtains. And across the table a man and a girl would be talking, a grey-eyed young man with a puckered, unhappy brow, and a golden slender girl with the face of a broken madonna—talking together as though their lives depended now on what they might say to each other, on what they might plan to do.

* * * *

Joan didn’t know how she got through the nightmare days that followed. In the morning she would waken in her narrow hospital bed with the courage fresh to her rested nerves. She would tell herself she was making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Men did have youthful love-affairs that sometimes rose up in after years to haunt them. Men did have mistresses and nameless, pathetic little children. But the world did not come to an end because of that. It was life. It was the way things were. You had to grow up and face it some time.

But the courage born of this hasty philosophizing never lasted her long. And even while she lay waiting for the harsh morning bell to ring out she would know that it was no good. Garth was lost to her. Nothing would ever be the same between them again. It was the streak of puritan in her, she would tell herself; it was perhaps plain and unvarnished jealousy ... it was this or it was that. And at best it was a pain which seized her heart in a vice and left it without life or reason.

She went through her duties in a blind, mechanical fashion, somehow weaving for herself an outer armor of appearances behind which she could hide her wound. She listened to Gemma chattering in their shared bedroom, even contriving chatter back. It would be so dreadful if the inquisitive Gemma should notice her distress, question her about it. So that in the Nurses’ Home, in the wards, she was brighter than usual with a hard, unreal brightness.

And with a passion of secret purpose she concentrated on avoiding Garth. If she were wheeling the instrument trolley for his dressing she kept her eyes fixed on the floor, on Sister Millet assisting him, on the cruel, shining little knives and probes in the clear glass trays. She would not exchange the briefest of glances with him. If she saw him in the corridor she was gone with a whisk of her starched skirts, hiding in the lotion-room (that inviolable sanctuary of all hunted probationers). She could not, would not speak to Garth yet nor allow herself to be cornered by him. One day of course she would have to acknowledge his existence again ... but not yet, her heart cried out in panic. She couldn’t bear it yet.

And it was specially hard that week because Garth was so much more than usual in evidence on Dale floor. Morning and afternoon, very often evenings as well, he went along to room fifteen. It wasn’t because Ivan was dangerously ill any longer. Ivan was recovering rapidly.

Perhaps it was the presence of Ivan’s golden-haired mother that drew the young surgeon. Madame Petrovna snatched every moment she could from rehearsals and performances to sit by the bedside of her boy. Maybe it was that, Joan thought to herself in dull misery, which took Garth with the odd, half-thrilled, half-expectant expression on his face hurrying along Dale corridor. At all events his conduct was so marked and so wholly unusual that Sister Millet in the end became aware of it.

She mentioned it to Nurse Scatt one afternoon in the ward-kitchen with a glint in her eye for the junior probationer who was polishing ward-knives and forks at a corner of the much scrubbed dresser.

“Mr. Garth Perros,” said Sister sneeringly, “is honoring Dale floor with a lot of his attention this week, Nurse. Have you noticed it? I wonder what the attraction can be!”

Nurse Scatt giggled.

“It isn’t often, of course,” the Millet continued, her eyes fixed with a sort of spiteful triumph on Joan’s downcast lashes and flushing cheeks, “that we have beautiful Russian ballet dancers in our midst. And young Ivan’s mother is an extremely attractive creature. No doubt that fact is not lost on our good Mr. Perros!”

“I’ll say it isn’t!” put in Scatty with another of her hateful giggles, and she proceeded to tell Sister Millet the dramatic way in which Mr. Perros and the Russian girl had greeted each other when they first met in room fifteen.

Sister Millet pricked up her ears at that, her face going greedy and eager all at once at the scent of a piece of gossip so particularly spicy. So Petrovna and Perros had already known each other before she came to the hospital! That was interesting.

Sister Millet said Mr. Perros was a dark one, a deep one, and she would never have suspected him of being the type who fell for foreign dancing girls. But then you never could tell—could you?

“But of course,
you
knew of his liking for ballet, Nurse Langden,” she went on, turning to Joan. “He takes you to ballet on your off-duty nights, doesn’t he?”

The sneering smile which accompanied this remark made Joan go hot all over. She clenched her hands tightly to prevent herself hurling the knife-box into Sister Millet’s twisted, revolting face. She thought with a sudden panic: if only this creature knew the whole truth about Garth and Vera Petrovna how terrible it would be! And Scatty like a fool had put her well on the way to discovering quite a lot. The facts even dimly guessed by her, purveyed to the world on her malicious tongue would be enough to ruin Garth’s reputation at the hospital, wreck his career. Instinctively, Joan knew that it would give Sister Millet the greatest possible satisfaction to do this. Garth had hurt her badly, whether wittingly or unwittingly, and hers was not the type of nature to forgive.

Piling the brightly shining spoons in the kitchen-table drawer, Joan wondered bleakly if it were her duty to warn Garth to be more careful about his visits to room fifteen, and if there were any way in which she could do this without letting him know that she was aware of his old intrigue with the Russian girl. It was a difficult problem, and for the moment it baffled her. She could not yet trust herself to speak to Garth about Vera without betraying her feelings.

Then she discovered that it wasn’t only Vera who drew Garth to room fifteen. It was Sunday again, and Ivan, a whole week away from his operation, was sufficiently convalescent to sit propped up with pillows, and enjoy a mild game with a jig-saw puzzle which he adored. Throughout the morning Joan had snatched odd moments from her duties to run in and help him with its intricacies.

She liked Ivan. She couldn’t help herself. In the beginning—those first strange days after Vera Petrovna’s revelation when he had lain still and small in his bed, she had tended him with a sense of shrinking. He was so close to her hurt. There was nothing about him that did not make her heart cry out in protest. Even, she was a little afraid of him in some curious way, as though his very life was a threat to her own.

But later, when the first shock of her agony had been assimilated, she began to see him differently. He was, after all, just a small boy in bed with bandaged yellow curls and large appealing grey eyes. When his dressing was being done he held her hand tightly for comfort. He did not cry out or moan. He was so little, so brave. He said to her with his quaint, old-fashioned air, “This isn’t very nice, but it is something I have to put up with. Mummie says little boys have to learn to put up with things, as well as grownups.”

Joan’s throat had gone lumpy and hot at that because it came to her with a pang that in all probability Vera Petrovna’s philosophy of endurance had been learned in a pretty bitter school.

That was the day she bought Ivan the jig-saw puzzle when she went out for her off-duty walk, and she couldn’t help feeling warm at the heart when she saw the appreciation with which it was received. It occurred to her that for some reason Ivan hadn’t had many toys given to him in his short life. He was so unspoiled, so fresh and lovely in his enthusiasm for the little chips of colored wood.

And so that slack Sunday morning while she was waiting for the mid-day lunches to be served, Joan ran back again to room fifteen, almost at interested as Ivan was in the problem of the cow with the
missing
horns and the house that hadn’t any roof.

Only this time Garth was there, sitting most unprofessionally on the patient’s bed, his back very road and square in its week-end tweeds.

Her heart turned over sickeningly at the sight of him, and he jumped up very quickly and said “Come on in, Joan. I was hoping I’d catch you this morning.”

She couldn’t say anything to that. She couldn’t escape. There was nothing for it now but to advance into the small sunny room with its chintz armchair and high surgical bed. She was thinking in bewilderment: He’s never come on a Sunday mo
rn
ing before. Honoraries never do come on Sundays. He journeyed all across London and sacrificed his weekly game of golf for this. Why?

She saw the answer in his eyes looking down at the small boy so gravely engrossed with the pieces of colored puzzle. Garth had come to see Ivan. There was an expression now on his mobile, sensitive face she had never seen there before, a kind of proud affectionate, almost pitying tenderness. It was quite an unconscious expression, and his hand resting protectingly on Ivan’s small shoulder had a possessive, hungry look about it that made her want to cry.

Knowing that this child was his own hadn’t horrified Garth, then. It had done something quite different from that—it had made him look proud like this, given him this air of happiness, of suppressed excitement. The knowledge coming to hurt her in a new way, puzzled her, shut her out further from him than ever.

He said casually enough, “Where have you been hiding yourself all these days, Joanna? I’ve peered into every nook and cranny on Dale floor for you, and all I’ve succeeded in locating was the tail of your skirt vanishing round the nearest corner. Almost as though you were running away from me. Were you?”

Joan tried to laugh naturally. “Certainly not,” she said. “I’ve been busy. I’m busy now actually and Scatty will have something to say if she catches me loafing in here. I just popped in to see how Ivan was getting on with that puzzle.”

“I’m getting on beautifully since Doctor Perros came,” Ivan told her excitedly. “Look! We’ve found that cow’s other horn and the red bit for the farmhouse roof.”

Joan bent over to see, her pulses throbbing in her throat because when Ivan looked up at her like this with his lovely, direct grey eyes he was so terribly, so terrifyingly like Garth. They were Garth’s eyes shining there in the small heart-shaped face beneath the white bandages. It was Garth’s own characteristic, twinkly smile.

“I’m
so
glad about the cow’s horn,” she said.

And Sister Millet, she was thinking ... how soon would it be before that watchful woman discovered Ivan’s dramatic resemblance to his too attentive surgeon? How soon would it be before the talkative Scatty began to joke about it in her coarse, earthy fashion? It was so clear for anyone to see if they thought of it—so specially clear somehow today now that Ivan was looking stronger.

She turned then as if she would go, but Garth caught at her arm. “No you don’t, young woman!” he said jocularly.
“I
’m not letting you vanish again until I’ve wrung some sort of explanation out of you. Why have you been keeping out of my way all the week? Why have you avoided me so carefully—so that you wouldn’t even let your eyes say a friendly ‘how-do?’ to me across the dressing trolley? What have I done, Joanna? What
can
I have done to deserve such treatment?”

“Nothing,” cried Joan wildly. “Oh, nothing, Garth! It is just that I have been busy. Truly it is.”

“Then you’ve got to stop being as busy as all that,” he said drily. “I don’t like it.”

He was standing in front of her now to hinder her going. He looked very tall, very masterful, towering over her. He took her hand gently in his own, and she wanted to cry out against that. She was amazed at the flood of bitterness his touch aroused in her. She couldn’t bear it ... the smell of his tweedy-smoky Harris coat came to her, the fresh, soapy scent of his skin. This nearness was awful ... an outrage flaying her heart with pain.

“Joanna, darling, what is it?” he asked in a low tender voice.

She didn’t know how lovely she was looking up at him with that quivering intensity on her fine little face, her lips childishly parted, her eyes wide and afraid. She didn’t know now much too evident was the distress she ought to have hidden from him.

“I’ve hurt you in some way, though I haven’t meant to. Tell me what it is that’s annoying you, Joanna?” he urged.

“I’m not annoyed,” Joan said. Which was true enough. Annoyed was hardly the word to describe the turmoil of her feelings.

But Garth would not be put off. “I always know when you are cross with me, no matter how much you may try to hide it,” he told her with so loving, so reproachful a smile that her heart felt like breaking.

“When you were seven and I first called you Joanna you had a knack of opening your eyes very wide and looking at me with the utmost dignity and coldness. That look scared me even then. It scares me now.” His fingers tightened round her arm as he drew her nearer.

“Is it because you think I’ve forgotten I was going to take you to the ballet that you’re angry with me?” he asked. “Because, I
haven
’t
forgotten, my dear. The tickets are here in my pocket-book at this moment. I’ve got them for Wednesday—that’s still your late night off, isn’t it?”

She shook her head with a choking feeling. With frantic urgency she pulled away from him and made for the door.

“
Not ballet
!”
she whispered, the very sound of the word now sickening her ... Vera Petrovna in white, diaphanous skirts flitting light as a blown leaf across a flood-lit stage, her golden head thrown back, her painted mouth smiling, her brown eyes serious and intent ... Vera on magic tip-toe, poised like a bird, one slender forefinger held beneath her rounded chin while the audience applauded and the violins laughed and sang ... Oh, she could see it all so clearly!