A Case of Heart Trouble (18 page)

She called every few feet that she took to try and attract the dog’s attention, but Joe was not yet properly accustomed to his name, and she had little hope that he would bound out suddenly from under a pile of dead leaves and hurl himself at her in a relieved fashion. Where the waters of the lake formed wind-whipped spirals that shot into the air like fountains she stood looking up and down the deserted strip of soggy beach and fastened her eyes on the boathouse, and there, shivering in the shelter of the stone steps that led up to the landing-stage, she caught sight of him at last. But still he wouldn’t come to her call, and she had to plunge through the mud and the reeds to get to him. Before she was able to snatch him up a large-sized wave all but knocked her off her feet, and she wasn't merely drenched to the skin, she looked as if she had been immersed in the lake, when at last she turned back into the shelter of the woods.

After the tumult of the lake shore the woods really did seem calm, and with Joe tucked inside her coat—not that that availed him very much, but it deadened the sound of the noises that terrified him—

she leaned against a tree-trunk to get back her breath. She could feel Joe's heart beating like a small sledge-hammer against her, but his whimpers were carried away on the wings of the wind.

How long she leant there against the tree she had no real idea, but she felt extraordinarily exhausted after her efforts, and by the time she turned to make her way back through the woods to the drive it seemed to her to be several degrees darker than when she set out. And it was then that she lost her way, following a dimly seen track that would eventually have brought her out on the far side of the village if she hadn't suddenly realized that she appeared to be getting nowhere, and paused to consider the situation. Luckily she had a fairly good bump of location, and although neither country born nor country bred her instincts told her that Loring Court was somewhere over on her right, and that if she followed the path she was pursuing she would have a long walk back by road to the Court, since it was growing darker every moment and it would be impossible without a wider knowledge of the woods to return by the way she had come.

So she allowed her instincts free rein, followed a track that veered off to the right, and drew a long breath of relief when she found herself back on the Loring Court drive, but away down at the far end, near the main gates, and it took her some little time, with the full force of the wind now in her face, to reach the house, from which lights were already beginning to stream forth into the greyness of early night.

The front door was open, and Dr. Loring and his sister-in-law were standing on the steps, the latter disgruntled after a return from the village, the former wearing a raincoat which he was hastily buttoning up as if about to set forth into the night.

When Dallas appeared in the pale beam of the lights she looked more like some wild creature of the woods than a young woman trained to look crisp and immaculate in uniform. Her face was torn and scratched by brambles, her hair was no longer of a pale primrose fairness but dark as honey and plastered with rain; her raincoat was flying open because she had the puppy hugged inside it, and her Wellington boots were oozing slime. In addition to being lacerated her face was very pale; she looked tired, but vaguely triumphant.

Joanna exclaimed with relief when she saw her. “Well, I’m jolly glad you found the little beast! Stephanie’s been driving us mad with her lamentations, and I thought we’d have to get together a

search party to come and look for you. ’’ Dr. Loring took her by the shoulders and literally thrust her into the warmth and luxurious comfort of the hall. Only, unlike his sister-in-law, Joanna, he didn’t look relieved ... he looked furious.

“What do you think you’ve been up to?” he demanded. “What do you think you’re employed for? To catch pneumonia running about in soaking wet woods looking for dogs?”

Bewilderedly Dallas handed over Joe to its owner, whose radiant face was a reward in itself as she received it.

“Careful, darling,” Dallas warned, a little faintly. “He’s awfully wet. I should take him to the kitchen and get Edith to dry him for you . . .

“You look as if you could do with a nip of raw spirit,” Joanna exclaimed, a certain amount of genuine compunction in her voice as she surveyed the other girl. She frowned at Martin Loring, whose expression was still as black as thunder. “Stop scowling at the girl, Martin,” she ordered, “and fetch her a small brandy. I think she needs it.”

With her own hands she ripped off Dallas’s raincoat and then led her into the library, where she put her with kindly roughness into a chair. Dr. Loring refused to allow her to relieve him of the glass of brandy, and he put it into Dallas's hands himself. As the deathly weariness in her small white face looked out at him he uttered something that sounded a little strangled, and then said that he had ordered Mrs. Baxter to start running a hot bath for her, and after that she was to go straight to bed.

“You've behaved like an idiot,” he said, the same queer, strangled note in his voice, “but apparently you did it in a good

cause. Stephanie's got back her dog, and you—well, if you hadn't returned when you did I was just setting out to look for you. Why you couldn't let me know that the confounded animal had gone and got itself lost I can't think, when I was sitting in the library only a few feet away. But no! I have to be left undisturbed until tea-time, when Mrs. Baxter said something about you going out in the rain. And then Joanna returned with the full story! ”

The look he bent on Joanna suggested that he might find it hard to forgive her. But Joanna was resigned to the fact that, for once, she had blundered badly.

“If only that ridiculous daughter of yours hadn't insisted on taking the dog with us this afternoon everything would have been all right,” she said. “But she did insist, and I got annoyed — ”

“And if Dallas develops anything serious after this little lot I’ll hold you entirely responsible,” Martin Loring told her bleakly.

But to Dallas, gazing up at him wearily and taking mechanical sips at her brandy, the remarkable thing was that he called her Dallas. She had never expected him to do that again.

His dark grey eyes met her clouded green ones.

“Drink up,” he ordered, with sudden, exquisite gentleness, “and then I'll carry you upstairs to your room. I don't think you could manage those stairs on your own.”

C H A P T E R F I F T E E N

The next morning inevitably Dallas awakened with a sore throat and a temperature, and when Stephanie came in with Joe to share her bed for a short while before dressing she sent her away to get dressed at once. She didn't want the child acquiring any of her germs, but she thought she knew how to deal with her own trouble.

Lots of aspirin, and a rest in bed during the morning. She rang her bell for Mrs. Baxter, and asked her to keep silent about her indisposition.

“If Edith could take charge of Stephanie for this morning, I'll be up in the afternoon and perfectly all right,” she said. “If Dr. Loring should make any enquiries about me please don’t let him know I'm anything but completely fit, will you?”

But Mrs. Baxter went straight downstairs to the dining room, where the doctor was ignoring the dishes on the sideboard and smoking a cigarette with his coffee, and told him that she thought Nurse Drew was decidedly unwell, and perhaps he ought to see her. Joanna hadn’t yet made her appearance.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Baxter,” he returned, crushing out his halffinished cigarette in an ash tray. “I was going up to see her in any case. I had a fairly shrewd idea she wouldn’t be one hundred per cent fit this morning. I’ll come at once.”

Dallas was lying huddled under her bedclothes when he entered the room without knocking, and he could see at once that she was battling with a considerable temperature. He sat down beside the bed and reached for her wrist, and as he did so he asked: “How many aspirins have you taken this morning?”

Dallas peeped up at him a trifle guiltily.

“Oh, just a couple or so.”

“So long as it was only a couple or so I’ll give you something else that should bring down that temperature fairly soon. However, you’ll have to remain where you are for today, and probably tomorrow as well.” He ran his hand across her hot forehead and cheeks, and the coolness and firmness of his hand made her long to catch hold of it and keep it pressed to her face. He looked down at her with eyes that were a trifle inscrutable, although she was relieved that no criticism looked out of them . . . not even a suspicion of hardness or disapproval. “How are you feeling, Dallas?” he asked quietly.

Her lip trembled for a moment, and she caught it up between her teeth to steady it.

“Not—not too bad,” she answered untruthfully. “Which means that you’re feeling pretty ghastly.” The hand stayed on her fore-head and pressed gently over her eyes. “Poor little one! Never mind.” And then, still more quietly: “Why did you do such a crazy thing, Dallas, as to go looking for that dog on your own? You might have sprained your ankle running round in circles in the woods, and then how would have got home? In any case, why didn’t you call me?”

She turned away her face for a moment, and then she allowed herself the luxury of meeting his eyes fully.

“Yesterday morning you and Mrs. Loring seemed to think I was a pretty poor thing staying shut up in the house,” she told him. “And it occurred to me that perhaps I was.”

He frowned swiftly.

“You little idiot! ” he exclaimed. “How could you possibly think such a thing?”

She smiled wryly.

“Well, by comparison with Mrs. Loring I do seem to be a bit of a hot-house plant, and in my profession you have to be tough. She’s right about that. Sickly nurses are no good to anyone.”

“Little fool,” he said softly. Once more he reached for her hand, and this time he held it closely between both his own. “I know one

patient who recovered remarkably when you looked after him; and as for Joanna . . . well, if you take anything Joanna says seriously you’re far less intelligent than I thought you! Don't you know she’s what is known as a poseur? She adapts herself to any given situation. For instance, if a tough character is required, she becomes a tough character. If a languorous and beautiful character is more likely to impress, she becomes languorous and beautiful.”

“But she is beautiful.” Dallas said quickly, through the dryness in her throat. “You said so yourself.”

“Did I?” He smiled at her, and for the first time for days it was a warm and protective smile, a tender and an understanding smile. “And what if I did? Aren't you even more beautiful?”

Dallas's lip quivered again.

“Don’t be silly,” she said.

“I’m not in the least silly.” He bent over her and turned her face towards him, holding it with his hands. “To me you’re the most beautiful thing in the world, Dallas, and I think it’s important that you should get that well and truly into your head. I know you’ve formed a very unfavourable opinion of me, and this isn’t the moment to rid you of false notions, but if I tell you that they are false—completely false! —will you promise to lie there quietly and swallow all the nasty potions I might dole out to you knowing and believing that to me you are . . . desperately important?”

Her whole face radiated such a look of wonderment and relief that he knew his treatment had worked so far, and the rest was up to him. He carried both her hands up to his lips, kissed them and caressed them with almost unbelievable gentleness, and then tucked them back inside the bedclothes and rang the bell for Mrs. Baxter.

But before the housekeeper arrived Dallas said something that she couldn’t prevent herself saying. “But Joanna?” she asked. “I thought—’’ “Whatever you thought it's entirely wrong,” he told her,

smiling and placing a finger over her lips. She knew a wild desire to kiss the finger, but somehow she refrained.

“And you’re not—?”

“No, I'm not,” he said firmly.

Mrs. Baxter came in with hot water bottles, although Dallas's shivering had subsided and she was glowing all over by this time, and received instructions concerning Nurse Drew from her master. Martin disappeared, after directing a long, long look at the bed—and fulfilling Mrs. Baxter's secret beliefs and wishes on a subject she hadn't dared to

confide to anyone—and Dallas was made thoroughly comfortable and her room put to rights, and she was allowed to settle down and doze blissfully through the morning, although she would have much preferred to be in full possession of her senses and lie awake marvelling over her sudden exquisite happiness.

She had no very clear idea of what happened during the remainder of the day, but she knew that people visited her from time to time . . . Mrs. Baxter and Edith; Stephanie, who looked round the door anxiously when no one had her under close observation, and whispered penetratingly that she hoped she would soon be better; Joe, who managed to insinuate himself under her eiderdown, and, of course, Martin. He came in without disturbing her when she was asleep, and was sitting beside the bed when she opened her eyes. On one occasion she saw that he was reading a book, and was sitting very comfortably in a deep armchair.

She wondered how long he had been there, and was sure he would really prefer his own deep armchair in the library.

Towards evening her temperature dropped, although it went up again later. But she had a good night, and by morning her temperature was normal, and she felt almost completely herself. She lay luxuriously waiting for Edith to bring her morning tea, and revelling in the knowledge that the man she adored had certainly expended all his efforts on her the previous day, and whatever the treatment he had made use of, it had worked remarkably.

He came in to see her before her breakfast tray arrived, and satisfied

himself as to her condition. She knew that he was trying to be strictly impersonal as he took her temperature and used his stethoscope on her, and she looked away from his eyes, so that not for one moment could they meet and become locked. But the feel of his hands, the warmth of his breath as he bent over her, sent wild thrills vibrating in all directions all over her body, and she could have gasped with relief when, the examination over, he sat down on the side of the bed and told her that she would do.