You Took My Heart (6 page)

When they stopped for dinner at a roadhouse she danced with Barney, and going home in the car as late as they dared, she leaned her shoulder contentedly against his shoulder. At the door of the home they whispered their good nights and Joan promised Barney she would go out with him again on her very next night off duty.

She was still telling herself that she was happy as she got into bed. Her life was filling up so beautifully. Now her off duty times with Barney for a friend would be as busy as her on-duty times. That was grand, fine! So long as you didn’t have any time to think in this world you were all right.

CHAPTER SIX

It w
as the next day that Vera telephoned. Joan had forgotten that possibility. She was caught by the warm, golden voice with its faint huskiness before she could escape, saying politely, “Yes, Madame Petrovna, this is Joan Langden. How-do-you-do?’

With a sense of inner panic she wondered if the call meant some kind of invitation to be eluded. She
couldn
’t
go to the Bloomsbury flat again. She just couldn’t bear it ... Garth making toast and running around with saucepans of milk in his hand ... Garth teasing Vera, laughing with her ... Garth playing with Ivan, who called him
Mr. Perros
! It was too sickening. Too horrible. Why didn’t they tell the child Garth was his father? Why couldn’t it be all open and honest and clear, brought out o: this furtive mystery?

No, Joan decided, clutching the receiver in a wet palm, she would make any excuse on earth now to avoid Vera Petrovna ... Vera Perros, that is, and her strange
ménage
.
She would be downright rude about it if necessary.

But in the end it was easier than she had feared. Vera had only telephoned to thank Joan for sending her Mrs. Eldon. The old lady was proving herself a real comfort, taking Ivan out for his daily walks, and helping in the house besides. She was gentle and sweet and
sympatico
, Vera said. Her only fault, if she had a fault, was her verbosity. She would talk, all day if she were allowed. But, after all, she was old, Vera added graciously, and the old must have their little weaknesses.

“And you’ll come to see us very soon, won
’
t you?” she ended sweetly.

Joan murmured something polite and noncommittal and the conversation came to an end.

It had taken place in the full publicity of the hallway at the Nurses’ Home, and Joan, turning away from the instrument, saw Sister Millet standing close to her, her face rigid with disapproval.

Joan colored angrily. How dare the woman stand there listening to her? And quite unabashed, Sister Millet was owning to having listened. “Don’t you know yet,” she asked icily, “that any kind of familiarity between nurses and patients at St. Angela’s is most severely frowned upon? And this applies to ex-patients, too. Friendships must not be indulged in, nor favors received from these people by probationers in training. Matron would be most annoyed if she heard of it.”

Joan’s angry blush deepened. It was beastly of the Millet to pounce on her like this for so trivial a fault—and in the hearing of so many passers-by, too. Pink-clad probationers leaving the dining-room threw her half-mischievous, half-sympathetic glances, and Greta, the parlormaid, lingering with a tray of evening post for Matron, was frankly enjoying her discomfiture.

Joan said with spirit, “But Madame Petrovna is scarcely an ex-patient.”

“No, but Mrs. Eldon is,” replied Sister Millet tartly, showing how thoroughly she had listened to every word spoken.

Joan made an effort to control her indignation. “Can’t I even help a poor old woman to get a job of work?” she asked with an exasperated inflexion which was hardly as respectful as it might have been.

Sister Millet drew herself up with an affronted air. “I don’t like your manner, Nurse Langden,” she announced. “Please remember that you are talking to your ward-sister and
not
arguing with a mere probationer. I think we had better have this out. Come into my sitting room for a moment.”

Sulkily Joan followed her into the Sisters’ drawing room on the far side of the hall. It was a cosily furnished apartment with deep arm chairs, good carpets and plenty of cushions and flowers. Sister Millet seated herself in one of the inviting chairs and bade Joan be seated in another. This was surprising. Joan had expected a scolding, and here was the Millet smiling quite charmingly (“greasily” was Joan’s private word for it!) and actually offering her a cigarette.

“I don’t want to be hard on you, Nurse,” she said, “but I have to point out to you when you are breaking the rules.”

“Thank you, Sister,” Joan answered meekly, but with an inner feeling of uneasiness. What was the Millet up to now? It was difficult to trust this sudden change of front.

For a few minutes the older woman questioned her quite sympathetically about Mrs. Eldon. How was the old lady making out? Had the almoner finished helping her? What sort of work was she looking for ?

Joan told her.

At the mention of needlework Sister Millet nodded kindly, and said that she herself would be able to help the old lady in that respect. “I’ll speak to the other sisters also,” she said. “No doubt, several of them will be glad to give her odd jobs to do. I might even ask Miss Don to have her taken on the permanent outdoor staff for darning and mending of linen. It wouldn’t interfere with her morning work for Madame Petrovna in the least.”

Joan was surprised and grateful. After all, she told herself, the Millet was not such a bad old stick. It was decent of her to take up the Eldon case like this.

She rose to go, but Sister Millet was not yet, it seemed, finished with her. Of Madame Petrovna she was talking now, still kindly, silkily. “She is such a charming girl,” she said. “One cannot help feeling sorry for her struggling on alone with that boy to educate. You’ve known her some time, haven’t you?”

“Oh, no!” Joan murmured in a soft, startled tone. She didn’t at all like the turn the conversation had taken. “Only since she came here to hospital with Ivan.”

“Ah,” mused Sister Millet. “Then it is your friend Mr. Perros who knows her. I thought perhaps she had some connection with Dipley—that—er—you as well as Mr. Perros had known her before she came here.”

Joan shook her head.

“Mr. Perros has been very good to her,” Sister Millet persisted.

At which Joan colored violently, and hated herself for doing it!

Sister Millet’s small eyes looked amused, noting that tell-tale blush. “It’s not that I’m being inquisitive,” she went on. “But I hoped you might have been able to tell me something of Madame Petrovna’s life—of her present circumstances. Her husband, of course, is dead?”

“I don’t know,” Joan stammered in a muffled voice. “I don’t know anything about her.”

“Then I’d better ask Garth Perros. It is simply that the Lady Almoner was talking to me about her the other day. It is the question of her bill to the hospital. It hasn’t been paid yet! We don’t want to be hard on her—naturally. But we’ve got to find out something of her circumstances.”

Sister Millet smiled her dismissal. “Don’t you worry about it, my dear,” she said cordially. “I’ll have a talk with Perros.”

Joan got out of the room with cheeks still burning. Every word that had been spoken seemed natural, inevitable, even unusually benevolent, but she was filled with a sense of foreboding all the same. For Garth’s sake—of course. Garth who meant nothing to her, with whom she had quite definitely finished. But if Sister Millet should question him about Vera, what would he do? Answer suavely, cleverly, evasively probably. And it was Garth who ought to be paying Ivan’s hospital account—not Vera. Supposing the Millet suspected that?

Oh, it was horrible, all this mystery and intrigue. There were things impossible to reconcile no matter which way you turned ... Vera’s poverty and struggle ... Garth’s comparative comfort, even wealth, Garth with his West End clientele and big fees.

With a sense of extreme distaste Joan put the whole matter out of her head (or thought she did), and turned into the probationers’ recreation room to have a game of table tennis with Gemma before going up to bed. Garth could stew in his own unsavoury juice, she told herself indignantly, and ran into the long brightly-lit room where pink clad probationers hopped lithely on either side of the long green tables chasing the bouncing, popping white balls. There was warmth in here, an
d
the music of the radio, and young voices laughing, calling. It was safe and bright and reassuring. Hungrily, Joan sensed the homely atmosphere.

“Are you ready, Gemma?” she cried, serving her ball with smashing force across the net.

“Pig!” groaned Gemma, and missed it.

Joan served again. A fault this time. And Garth could go hang for all she cared, she told herself school-girlishly, inelegantly. Garth’s affairs were as nothing to her any more. Nothing at all. Let the Millet bait him, pester him, trap him if she liked into admitting the relationship he strove so curiously to keep secret. Why didn’t he face the world like a man anyway, and give Vera the position that was rightfully hers? Garth, of all people, behaving in this mean, extraordinary fashion! It was almost impossible to believe, and yet it was true. Her blue eyes were wild suddenly, not seeing the green table any more, nor the bouncing little ball.

“Joan Langden,” called Gemma reprovingly as she missed her sixth ball in succession. “What’s the matter with you tonight? Are you supposed to be playing ping-pong or just beating the air?”

“Beating the air,” said Joan with a crazy little laugh. “That just about expresses it, Gemma, darling. Beating the air!”

* * * *

Then it was winter suddenly and very definitely. In the early mornings the little pink nurses shivered as they ran across the blustery square, huddled now in their serviceable thick blue cloaks, their heads bent before the flurries of rain and buffetings of wind. The plane trees and the sycamores stood stripped save for a few ragged, disconsolate leaves, and the pigeons huddled together for warmth moaning softly. Inside the great hospital the steam heat was turned on and the ward fires lighted, blossoming banks of flame and crimson in the big grates at the end of the long, pleasant rooms. There were chrysanthemums now in the vases, brown and gold and creamy, smelling a little tonicky and bitter after the summer roses. There were extra blankets on the neat beds and crimson dressing jackets for the women in Dale Ward.

And with a start one morning Joan realized that her days on this momentous first floor of hers were almost over. She had served her initial three months. She was no longer a novice. Her preliminary examination was now safely behind her, and her long weekend holiday in front of her. At the end of each three months of duty and before you were changed to another floor you were entitled to five whole days’ holiday. That was one of the nice things about St. Angela’s.

Joan, trying to feel as enthusiastic about it as she ought to have done, realized with a pang that she had nowhere to go for her five days’ leave. A wave of pure homesickness washed over her. Longingly now she thought of the old red-walled rectory at Dipley, of the country lanes deep in fallen crimson leaves, of the great sweep of the marshes still ragged with blackberry vines and trails of yellowing bracken. It would have been good to go home, she reflected ... if there had still been a home to go to! Bravely she listened to the other girls making their plans, and tried hard to think up some plan for herself. She might go to Epsom to a distant and rather
crotchety
spinster cousin. Or she might just stay in London, put up at some quiet boarding house and have breakfast in bed and visit museums and cinemas all day But somehow, neither of these alternatives was really thrilling.

Then one morning, just in the nick of time, there was the letter waiting for her in the rack outside the breakfast room with its big, generous handwriting and Dipley postmark. It was from Mrs. Perros—Garth’s mother. Joan flushed with pleasure as she read it. Mrs. Perros had written to remind her that she had promised them a visit on her first really, long weekend. They were impatient to see her. Dipley was still looking very lovely and autumnal, and there was a new filly in the stable for her to ride. Couldn
’
t she make the visit soon? What about the weekend approaching?

Joan put the letter down with a sigh of longing. The Perroses were darlings. She would love to go ... more than anything else in the world she needed a breath of Dipley air. Resolutely she put the thought of Garth aside. Garth, after all, was quite distinct from his mother and father. Dr. and Mrs. Perros had been friends of Joan’s as long as she could remember. Garth’s extraordinary behaviour need not rob her now of that friendship. In fact it must
not
rob her. She couldn’t afford to lose touch with the older people ... she loved them and they loved her. And most of all, they stood for Dipley.

Dreamily sipping weak tea and munching toast, Joan pondered. Garth hadn’t bothered her in a long while now. Not since that bitter scene in the ward kitchen. She had spoken her mind then and he had accepted, apparently, his dismissal. He had left her alone as she had asked him to. And she told herself she was glad about that, seeing him remote and distant, a correct young surgeon moving about the hospital wards and corridors, nodding to her briefly if an acknowledgment were unavoidable, but otherwise seemingly unaware of her existence. That was the way she wanted it. That was grand.

And now ... well, he needn’t know anything about this visit until it was over. His mother might mention it to him when she wrote to him, but that would not matter. What did matter were the forlorn five days stretching ahead of Joan and the hunger and thirst for the country that was upon her—her own country.

She rushed away as soon as the meal was over and telegraphed her acceptance to Mrs. Perros. After that her excitement steadily mounted, it was wonderful to think that tomorrow she would actually step out of the slow local train on to Dipley’s nasturtium-clad platform! That Cranley the stationmaster would greet her and the sweet air of the marshes blow on her London-pale cheeks. She would hear words of welcome wherever she went—in the post office, in the grocer’s and the butcher’s. She would go into the little church where as a child she had fidgeted through her father’s long sermons and she would linger a while in the churchyard where the new, sad grave stood under the yews.

There were tears in her blue eyes as she packed her suitcase that evening. But they were not unhappy tears altogether. The wound of her father’s death had healed and closed in these last busy, fruitful weeks. She could go back to the old place now with peace in her heart, peace and thankfulness.

Deliberately, as was her habit now, she did not think of Garth as she folded her soft velvet dress for dinner time, her best fluffy negligee for luxurious late mornings in bed. It was Garth’s home she was going to—but that mustn’t count at all. In a way it was her own home also. Mrs. Perros had always been a second mother to her—much closer indeed than the shadowy person who had died in her early childhood and whom she had scarcely remembered.

No, she told herself firmly. Garth must not be allowed to rob this precious holiday of one moment of its sweetness.

Then at last it was tomorrow and Joan was on her way. In the dusty railway carriage she sat tense and keyed up, her glance keen for each familiar landmark as the train neared its destination. She saw the flat green fields of Suffolk, the straight roads with their borders of fine poplars, the wide ribbon of river that laced the marshes, the lonely, empty countryside under an evening sky of clearest frosty green.

Then it was Dipley and she was dragging her suitcase out on to the platform, too impatient to wait for the services of Tom Edmonds, the lame porter, who was still hobbling afar off. There were pink roses of excitement glowing in her fair cheeks, stars in her blue eyes; and standing there hesitant she was so much more lovely than she knew, a tall, slim girl in a suit of sapphire colored wool, the red-gold silken hair laid close to her smooth young forehead beneath the jaunty hat.

Mrs. Perros would be here in a moment, she told herself. There was the doctor’s car with the glint of sun on it beyond the barrier. She saw the plump familiar figure hurrying then, running towards her between the dying beds of summer flowers, and the whitewashed stones and country milk cans.

With a sickening jerk her heart stood still. Because Mrs. Perros was not alone. It was Garth holding her arm, helping her in her haste, smiling with her as she cried out her welcome. Garth looking so debonair, so careless, his grey eyes twinkling—as though there were no dark and hurting bitterness between them!

For a moment Joan did not know what to do, her glance turning away desperately as though, too late, she sought some means of escape. This was terrible. This was
mean
, she thought in a perfect flurry of resentment. It was Garth then who had worked this miraculous timely invitation for her. Garth who had planned the whole thing. For, of course, he had known that her five days’ holiday was due. She hadn’t dreamed of this in her wildest moments. Garth never left town for odd weekends in the midst of his work. It wasn’t usually possible for him to get away. But this time he had contrived it somehow.

Oh, she had been a fool to come! To walk so nicely into his trap ... for there would be no avoiding him now! Before her suddenly the weekend stretched with its nightmare possibilities and her heart quailed.

“Joan, my dear, how nice to see you!” Mrs. Perros said, kissing her.

“Joanna! This is great,” Garth echoed, and with all the assurance in the world, stooped and kissed her too!