You Took My Heart (10 page)

In the gold and glittering dining-room of the Carchester she laughed delightedly at Barney’s feeblest witticisms. She ate the luscious food set before her with a dazed kind of enjoyment, glanced at her fellow-diners who were all famous or interesting in some way—luxurious,
suave
, amusing people whose world this was. She admired the exquisite women in their exquisite frocks, and Barney told her she was more exquisite than any of them.

She didn’t believe him, of course, but turned all the same to flash a smile at herself in the slim, mirrored wall panel beside her. The new frock she had put on for the occasion was certainly a distinct success; a daringly lovely frock of sapphire tulle and lace, cut low at the back, draped tightly in front, its skirt foaming out in ruffles that suggested a Victorian bustle. She had bought it in a moment of extravagance on her first shopping expedition in London—the day after her Berkeley evening with Garth, to be exact. She’d pictured herself needing it for a winter too beautifully taken up with Garth’s invitations, Garth’s dinners and theatres and dances. But she wouldn’t let herself think of that now, seeing her flushed small face in the mirror beside her, her gleaming goldy-brown hair piled high on her brow, her thin curving eyebrows so effectively darkened, her lips softly scarlet.

“You look like one of those tall blue fluffy flowers tonight,” Barney told her. “A delphinium, I think it’s called. Come on! Let’s dance.”

The music crooned softly about them, shirts swished and silver sandalled feet went slurring on the perfect floor. Once Barney stooped quickly, lightly, his lips brushing the curls on her brow. “Sorry,” he murmured, “but I had to do that. You’re the loveliest thing, Joan Langden, and I’m falling in love with you—which will never do! No journalist should ever marry until he is fat and forty and sure of his success.”

“Thanks!” Joan laughed. “But who said anything about marriage? It takes two to make a marriage, you know.’

“I do, indeed,” sighed Barney sadly, “and I’ve no illusions about the way you feel over me. Still and all, I might make you change your mind if I really set meself to it!” He grinned his nice impudent grin.

“See that chap over there?” he whispered presently, “that’s the much married Duke of Axshire, and the blonde he’s dancing with is an ex-wife!”

Joan looked at the handsome, florid aristocrat with an unwilling interest, a sullen, rather unpleasant looking person, she thought.

“Good story,” Barney was murmuring. “The present wife is nineteen and went yesterday to a Swiss sanatorium with T.B. lungs. Hubby hasn
’
t lost much time in looking up old friends, has he?”

“Oh, how disgusting!” Joan said hotly.

“But good story, all the same,” Barney persisted. “Mind if we go back to our table now and I leave you for a moment? I’ll have to put a ’phone-call through to our gossip editor about this. After all, he gave me these tickets tonight and I’ve got to do something to earn them.”

“Do you mean you’re going to have it put in the paper about the Duke and the ex-wife dancing here?” asked Joan, rather shocked.

Barney nodded smilingly.

“But isn’t that rather a mischievous thing to do?” Joan went on earnestly. “I mean, supposing the poor little new wife in the Swiss sanatorium reads about it?”

Barney shrugged. “That’s her look out,” he said crisply. “And my look out is my job. It would go hard with me if it ever came out that I’d passed up a fine little scandal like this one!” With another smile he was gone.

Joan, toying with an ice in his absence, felt distinctly uncomfortable. Barney’s action seemed to her ruthless and a little unnecessary. She was vaguely disappointed in him. Still, she told herself after a moment’s reflection, Barney was ambitious and young and he wanted to get on in his profession. He didn’t really mean to be mischievous or unkind. She tried to forget the unpleasant little episode when he came back to her, watching the cabaret now, the whirling dancers in their rainbow of colored lights, the darkie singers, the fat lady in feathers who shrieked American vaudeville songs in a hoarse, incredible tone.

Then it was eleven, and because of Joan’s limited time they had to go. Barney said he’d had enough of it, anyhow, as he had to be on early duty the next day. In the palm-filled foyer he helped her tenderly into her wrap and suddenly Garth was there looking at them, Garth bowing with an incredulous, hurt, bewildered look in his grey eyes—and Vera beside him tall and lovely in a black velvet frock, one massive diamond star in her golden hair.

It was all over in an instant, and they were outside getting into their taxi, Joan hating herself for her trembling knees and violently beating heart. For why shouldn’t Garth bring Vera to the Carchester? she asked herself. It was natural enough that they should decide to come along for the second cabaret at midnight. Garth would be finished at the hospital now ... finished with small Dilly and the glittering operating theatre. And Vera who had waited for him through a long, lonely evening would be glad of a little diversion. Oh, it was the most natural thing in the world for them to be at the Carchester together after the day’s work. And of course, this settled everything. Vera
must
be installed at Welbeck Street. It couldn’t be any other way in the face of this fresh evidence. Or could it? Round and round in her mind went the mad merry-go-round of questioning again.

She was absent and distraught answering Barney’s questions on the homeward journey, submitting to his friendly good-night kiss on the threshold of the Home.

And suddenly in her own little room taking off her fine frock she was tired with a deadly tiredness. Gemma sitting up in bed rubbed sleepy eyes. “Where on earth have you been?” she enquired complainingly. “I’ve been killing myself, simply killing myself trying to keep awake for you.”

“I’ve been out on a special pass,” Joan explained shortly. “With your friend Barney O’Crea, if you want to know. We went to that new show at the Carchester.”

“My friend nothin’,” Gemma said with a yawn. “It’s you Barney’s crazy about—and just as well too, as it turns out. You’ve lost your other boy friend good and proper, it seems!”

Joan, in the act of pulling off long silk stockings, was struck suddenly still. “What boy friend?” she asked in a voice that tried hard to be casual.

“Garth Perros. That’s what I’ve been keeping awake to tell you about. The great Garth scandal! The Nurses’ Home was simply buzzing with it tonight. It’s that Russian ballet dancer woman he picked up in our own little Dale Ward. It seems he’s living with her now—that he’s got her right there in his respectable Welbeck Street flat and she’s calling herself ‘Mrs. Perros.’ What do you know about that!”

“Where did you hear all this?” Joan managed to ask.

“From Scatty originally, afterwards from pretty nearly everyone. They are all talking about it. You know what a hero Garth is in this place!”

“But Scatty,” murmured Joan bleakly, “how did she know?”

“From Sister Millet, of course, and
she,
my dear, had it right from the horse’s mouth—in other words from Mrs. Eldon. Old Eldon, it seems, has a morning job with Madame Petrovna, taking the boy out. In the afternoon she comes here sewing, and the Millet waylays her and lures her with cups of tea in her own room and gossips with her. Anyhow, Mrs. Eldon told her last week of the upheaval there was when the Petrovnas moved into Garth Perros’ house and how two of the maids walked out and refused to work for Garth any longer as they didn’t think it was ‘quaite naice.’ ” Gemma giggled. “It sounds as though Garth has gone mad, doesn’t it? He can’t possibly expect to get away with a thing like this. You know what the committee is! And you can bet that the Millet has already seen to it that they’ll hear of it.”

Joan jumped into her small, icy-cold bed and snapped off the light with a vicious hand. “It sounds like a lot of disgusting old women’s gossip to me,” she said. “It sounds in fact like Sister Millet—than which nothing could be more vile and spiteful. Supposing Madame Petrovna
is
staying at Welbeck Street! There’s probably some quite simple explanation to it all.”

“But calling herself ‘Mrs. Perros,’ persisted the shocked Gemma.

“Well, perhaps she
is
Mrs. Perros,” Joan said stoutly.

“Then why wasn’t there a wedding—an announcement of some kind? Oh, and the boy! Gosh, I’m so sleepy I nearly forgot the most spicy bit of all. The kid is Garth’s, it seems. Even Mrs. Eldon is a bit scandalized over that revelation. I must say it all sounds pretty fishy.” Gemma yawned again. “I thought you might be able to throw some light on it all, knowing Garth the way you do.”

But Joan had no intention of throwing light into the mischievous recesses of Gemma’s little mind.

She said hotly, “Knowing Garth the way I do I’m pretty certain anything he is doing is all right and if any members of the staff dare to hint in my presence anything to the contrary I’ll tell them straight out they are a bunch of liars.”

“Gosh,” murmured Gemma admiringly, “you’re a loyal little pal, aren’t you? I wouldn’t take it so sweetly if a blonde Russian dancing woman tried to walk off with my Alan, I can tell you!”

Joan didn’t answer that. In the darkness her eyes stung with tears. Fiercely she clenched her tends, holding back the sobs which threatened her. Her mind was a turmoil, her heart a sharp and bitter pain. Garth and Vera together ... it was all settled for her now. There was no more need for wondering. Ivan had won, as she had known he would. She tried hard to be glad about it. Only Garth was managing it all so badly, defying the conventions this way, going his own high-handed road in this impulsive fashion. Of course there would be gossip to live down now unless he did some humble explaining to somebody ... to whom, she didn’t quite know. But he ought to have managed it better than this!

Rage against Sister Millet, against Mrs. Eldon, even against the chattering Gemma, seethed in her mind., It was a foul, disgusting, hideous world. Almost she didn’t want to live in it any more. Pressing her hot face into her pillows she told herself that St. Angela’s was a hot-bed of evil-mouthed females and passionately she wished that she might shake its dust from her feet and blot it out of her life forever.

For long after Gemma’s gentle breathing proclaimed her asleep she lay there, in a tense fever of resentment. She did not weep. Tears were no use now. She must steel herself to the final loneliness which Gemma’s half-expected news had brought her. She must strengthen herself somehow to meet the insidious whispers against Garth which
tomorrow
would surely bring. In the end she wondered if she should warn him about the outbreak of stupid gossip. It wouldn’t be easy. But suddenly it seemed most clearly her duty to tell Garth how busily Sister Millet was campaigning against him. There might be something he could do to stop her tongue! Yes, she decided, tomorrow she would swallow her shrinking fears and have it out with Garth—tell him he couldn’t go on like this, that it was foolish, unfair to himself, unfair to Vera,
and Ivan. He would be angry, of course. But that couldn’t be helped. He’d got to be told the way they were all talking.

The definite resolution somehow eased her and at last she fell exhaustedly asleep.

CHAPTER TEN

But
the next day it was so much harder than she had imagined. Things happened so quickly. There was no need for her to open the painful subject with Garth after all because it was he who started it. In the long gloomy corridor with the lights glowing at mid-morning against the swirling, clinging November fog he came to her, his face white with suppressed fury.

He said, “Where can we talk, Joan? I’ve got to have a word with you!” And she knew then that he had already learned about the unkind whispering and was already hurt by it beyond her saving. Throwing caution to the winds she pushed open the door of the linen-room.

“In here, Garth,” she breathed with a scared look over her shoulder for prowling staff nurses. But there was nobody about to hinder her and in the warm little room with its piles of clean airing sheets and faint smell of iodoform she turned to him.

He asked angrily, “Have
you
heard all this disgusting rubbish about myself and Vera?” He didn’t wait for her answer. He went on, breathless now with indignation. “Simply because I try to put right an old wrong—because I have my own wife and son to live in my home they come about my ears like a nest of hornets! I’ve been commanded by the committee to appear before them at the Annual Board Meeting tomorrow to answer ‘certain charges against my conduct of my personal affairs.’ That’s how they worded their letter to me this morning—their damned, impertinent letter! As though they were a bunch of policemen, or inquisitors. They go on to thank me for my invaluable services to St. Angela’s but point out gently that it is vitally necessary for every member of their staff, even those in the highest executive positions, to be above reproach in every way.

“In other words they are quite ready to dispense with my invaluable services unless I can trot out my marriage certificate and put their nasty minds at rest about my morals.”

His eyes were so coldly angry looking down at her, his voice was so coldly aloof asking, “Do you know who is at the bottom of all this, Joan?”

Did he think
she
was, she wondered for one awful startled moment. Then she put the unworthy suspicion from her. Of course Garth didn’t connect her with this wretched business. He knew better than that. But he was fighting in the dark ... he needed her help. She gave him what she could. She told him that it was Sister Millet who had started this mare’s-nest of gossip. “But it’s all so silly, Garth,” she murmured placatingly, “you can soon put it right.”

“I’m not even going to try to put it right,” he returned. “I’m resigning today. I absolutely refuse to crawl before that self-righteous Committee, discussing my private affairs with them. Why couldn’t they trust me a little?”

She shook a bewildered red-gold head. “I don’t know, Garth, dear. There isn’t much trust in this world, is there? People are horrible—but, you mustn’t feel so badly about it. And you mustn’t, oh, you mustn’t resign! That would be as tragic as it is unnecessary.”

Her blue eyes were warm with pleading looking up at him. I wanted to save you this very thing, she could have told him. That’s why I cleared out of our tangle. Don’t let my sacrifice be wasted. It wasn’t an easy one!

But of course, she couldn’t say anything of the sort, she could only stand there with her heart in her eyes waiting for his answer, murmuring her ineffectual soothing little commonplaces. “Don’t act in a hurry, Garth, I beg you,” she ended.

But he only turned to the door impatiently. “I’m resigning at once,” he told her implacably. “And now we’d better get out of this cubby-hole or there’ll be another ripe little scandal about my philandering with probationers.”

Maybe he didn’t mean to make the last word sound scornful. But somehow it did. Joan flushed hotly, escaping from him, running down the corridor to her morning tasks, seeing Sister Perry coming out of the surgical ward her face drawn and anxious. “I’ve been looking for you, sir,” Joan heard her say. “It’s the child Parsons. There’s a marked collapse this morning. House surgeon is with her now but I’m afraid it’s too late.”

“Why wasn’t I told before?” Garth boomed angrily, almost pushing Sister Perry aside in his haste to get into the ward.

“It happened so quickly,” Sister Perry murmured apologetically, beckoning Joan now to come too, because she might be needed, because they might all be needed unless indeed it was too late.

It seemed that it was, standing there by the small white bed with its tiny, motionless occupant. The gay nursery screens had been drawn to hide this final drama from the eyes of the other children in the ward, and within the walls of colored chintz small Dilly lay in the last extremity of her exhaustion. The young house surgeon bending over her looked serious and wise, but somehow entirely helpless. At the foot of the bed the humble woman who was Dilly’s mother stared ahead with wide, pain-filled eyes.

It was very quiet for a moment—as though they were all waiting for those last labored breaths. Then the breathing stopped.

Joan felt her blood run cold. So far she had not seen death in her hospital work, and now most passionately on this troubled morning she did not want to see it. Not Dilly, her heart cried out in protest, not poor little Dilly with her eager, resentful eyes, her pitiful attempts at bravery!

“It’s all over, I’m afraid, sir,” the house surgeon was murmuring sententiously. Joan heard a quick sob from Dilly’s mother, a muttered oath from Garth. “It’s not going to be over so easily as this!” he said brusquely, his eyes glowing suddenly, his face coming to life with a fierce and desperate determination.

“Get the mother out of the way,” he ordered curtly. “Bring the oxygen tent—bring strychnine, a hypodermic. Get a saline ready.”

Sister Perry fled. Two staff nurses appeared like magic. The house surgeon seemed to dwindle visibly, standing helplessly by to watch the great Garth Perros at work. To Joan was left the task of guiding Mrs. Parsons from the bedside, murmuring swift reassurances.

“My poor tortured baby,” sobbed the poor woman. “Why can’t they leave her alone now to her rest! It’s all over. Can’t they see it’s over. She ain’t the first one I seen die.”

Joan said wildly, “Mr. Perros’ patients don’t die, Mrs. Parsons. They aren’t allowed to.” It sounded utterly mad. Somehow she got Mrs. Parsons away to one of the waiting-rooms and then went back to the ward.

Garth had his coat off and his shirt-sleeves turned up. He had knocked one of the screens over. He didn’t seem to care. He was like a man possessed, a lock of unruly hair, fallen now over his knotted brow. He had Dilly lying on her face, her small naked body almost covered by his kneading hands. The hypodermic needle was lying with its point stuck into the floor where he had thrown it.

One of the staff nurses caught Joan by the wrist, “Hot-water bottle—four of them. Quickly!” she whispered. Joan ran.

When she came back with the first relay of bottles Dilly was lying on her face—breathing very slowly. But breathing! It seemed like the wildest, the most impossible of miracles. Joan wanted to cry out in her excitement. She watched Garth setting the oxygen tent in place, regulating the flow of life-giving air.

Sister Perry whispered to her as calmly as though all this were the most ordinary occurrence imaginable in the hospital routine. “It’s all right, now, Nurse, you can get on with your work.”

Joan went away to polish chromium taps and dust bathrooms feeling shaken and faint, but at the same time elated. She was more deeply stirred by Dilly’s remarkable recovery than she had been by any other incident since her arrival at St. Angela’s. Hospitals were wonderful, she reflected. Half the time you bothered about fluff under beds and clean washbasins and tidy quilts—trivial, stupid little things, and then something like this happened! But it was Garth, of course, Garth was magnificent. Now she knew where he got his sensational reputation. It was because he did not know when he was beaten, because he
would
n
’t
be beaten. Death was something he fought with a grim and splendid fanaticism. He wouldn’t let a Dilly Parsons slip out of the world any more easily than he would let a prince or a king go. The life he had in his clever, sensitive hands was for everyone alike. St. Angela’s was incredibly lucky to have him. St. Angela patients were the most privileged sick people in the world. And yet Garth was going to resign, throw up this by far the most important part of his life-work because of a few narrow, mean minds and clacking tongues. It was tragic! It was unthinkable.

In the waiting-room Mrs. Parsons wept quietly, gratefully, now that the crisis was over. Joan took her a comforting cup of tea and some sandwiches at lunch-time. In a little while she would be able to see her small daughter again. It all seemed, she told Joan, like a wonderful dream. “But you’ve got such clever doctors here in this hospital, miss,” she ended reverently.

“Doctor Perros,” Joan told her fervently, “is the best doctor not only in St, Angela’s, but in the whole of London!”

At one o’clock when the ward staff nurse went away for lunch Joan was detailed to sit by Dilly’s bed and keep an eye on the oxygen apparatus. Garth found her there when he strolled in for a last look at his patient before departing for Welbeck Street and his own expensive consulting-room. There was a warm glint of satisfaction in his eye as he felt the steady pulse and noted the even, effortless breathing.

Joan looked at him with new awe and admiration on her candid, lovely little face. “You were so wonderful, this morning, Garth!” she said softly.

He smiled at her. “Not really wonderful,” he countered. “It’s simply that I’ve got a certain amount of common sense. And I like forlorn hopes and lost causes. You can often save a life by sheer obstinacy, you know.” His grey eyes twinkled again.

He was pleased about Dilly, as indeed he might well be.

Joan said, “If you hadn’t been here, Garth, this baby would have died.” Her fine little face under its white cap, its rings of gold-brown hair, was desperately pleading, desperately eloquent, her red lips quivered. “You can’t leave hospital, Garth,” she whispered. “
You can’t do it
!”

He did not answer her but she knew he was moved. He was gruff turning away from her, crisply giving her some final instructions. With a prayer in her heart she watched him go. For a day and a night the prayer went on, wordlessly, passionately. Then she knew that it
was answered. Garth had faced the Committee, explained to them his relationship with Vera Petrovna. The chattering nurses buzzed with the story at tea-time on the afternoon of the Board Meeting. It was a first-class sensation. Garth Perros and Vera Petrovna the lovely Russian girl! To think of them being married all this time, quarrelling, drifting apart, finding each other again in the very wards of the hospital. The pink-clad girls in their white aprons sighed in unison, sighed in romantic satisfaction. It was all too marvellous!

Joan in her place at the end of the long table listened and said little. Not even Gemma’s inquisitive questionings could move her. “But you knew, Langden. You knew
something
all along I’ll bet my boots, and you never let us in on it. I think you’re
mean
!”

The Committee had recanted nobly to a man, they had even apologized. It was all over—the foolish, unpleasant scandal was laid and Sister Millet most beautifully defeated. Garth was reinstated with full honor. There was nothing now, it seemed, that could disturb his useful work at the hospital, nothing to smirch his name.

Nibbling at thick slices of bread and butter with little appetite Joan was thankful. The whole awful incident had somehow justified her. For how would it have gone with Garth and his career if she had listened to his hot pleading, if it had been his divorce from Vera the prim committee folk had unearthed in their investigations instead of this simpler, domestic upheaval with its happy ending?

Oh, she had done the right thing in refusing to marry him—the right thing, not only by Ivan but by Garth’s precious work. She had saved his life intact for him. For twenty-four hours she went about in a glow of inner satisfaction that did much to allay the aching of her heart. Then the fresh storm broke.

The Board Meeting at which Garth talked had been on Wednesday. It was Friday when Joan came downstairs a little early for six-thirty duty to find Greta the parlormaid with her nose buried in the morning newspaper. The girl glanced up with an expression of shocked and mischievous delight.

“Seen this. Nurse Langden?” she asked.

Joan, reading over her shoulder, took in with one swift agonized glance the glaring black headlines, saw Vera’s lovely face all smudged with printer’s ink, and Ivan—even poor little Ivan, dragged into it, standing by a park bench with the hateful old gossiping Eldon. It was all there, the intimate little family story which sounded so romantic, so ordinary even when it was told in privacy. But here in these screaming headlines it was an outrage.
“Famous Young Surgeon’s Dramatic Reunion with Beautiful Ballet Wife after Years of Separation!”
yelled the
Morning Clarion.

The letterpress which followed left nothing unsaid. Whoever had written this account had got hold of every detail and made the most of it, twisting it cruelly in the process. Vera’s years of struggle and poverty while her husband climbed to giddy heights of fame ... Vera hiding Ivan from the father who did not know of his existence—because (said the writer sententiously) these foolish young people had quarrelled so bitterly that the lovely and courageous dancer made up her mind they would never be re-united. And at all costs she must keep the son she worshipped. This father who had failed her should have no part in his upbringing. But it was the child who healed their wounded hearts—who in his illness brought the lovers once more together. It is the kind of miracle that happens once in a hundred years ... The sentimental rubbish flowed on; Ivan’s arrival at the hospital, Vera’s discovery that the surgeon who was to operate on him was none other than his own father, her long-lost husband ...