The Little Doctor (15 page)

CHAPTER
SEVEN

N
ine o’clock was striking as Jane struggled into full consciousness the following morning. She felt annoyed, because she had planned to be up early, and wondered if Valerie, too, had overslept. They generally made the first breakfast at eight o’clock to be
p
ut on the slopes before nine.

Valerie s room was empty when she tapped on the door half an hour later. With a wry little smile she turned towards the lift, hoping that Valerie was not going to sulk all day. After all, it was Christmas Eve and they had shared a lot of fun over the choice of their fancy dress for the ball in the evening. Christmas was no time for bad blood, especially when it was over a complete misunderstanding or, rather, a misconception of the truth. Once Valerie was definitely assured of Max’s continuing love she would forget the sharp little incident on the verandah, but Jane could not promise herself that she could clear up Valerie’s other source of annoyance quite so easily.

She did not even want to think about Edward Jakes, far less “steal” him from Valerie, who had no right to feel about him as she did.

The dining room was emptying when she pushed open the glass doors. Most people appeared to have breakfasted early and gone. The hotel was unusually quiet.

Herr Adler had a message for her when she went back into the hall.

“Ah, Doctor!” he exclaimed, “I have word for you from Mrs. Kilsyth. She did not wait for you because she knew that you could not make so long a run. They have taken packed lunches and they will be away all day.”

Something seemed to grip hard on Jane’s throat and her heart began to pound.

“
This run you mention, Herr Adler,” she questioned. “Is it one of the normal excursions? I mean, is it difficult—or long?”

“Not too long.” The proprietor shook his fair head. “Difficult, maybe. Perhaps even a little dangerous in places. Only the experienced skier should go there. For the beginner—” Again he shook his head. “It is not good for novices.”

Jane tried to tell herself that Valerie was an experienced skier. She tried all day, but always there was the thought of her last conversation with Max at the back of her mind. He had asked her to guard Valerie against unnecessary fatigue and her own waywardness.

Valerie might or might not have gone on this difficult, exhausting run across the mountains with anger in her heart. The day’s skiing might even have been decided on the evening before, and Edward Jakes was most definitely with her. Both their skis and sticks were missing from the ski room, but Jakes’ fur-lined black anorak, which he used in the evenings, was still hanging in the hall. He had every intention of returning.

The latter part of the afternoon was an agony to Jane. She went up on to the more gentle slopes, but her exhilaration had gone completely out of the sport. After two brief runs she made her way back to the hotel. A bus carrying a group of skiers stood at the foot of the verandah steps, and as they got out she saw that they were mostly “long distance” people who had come back with the bus after a strenuous day on the upper slopes.

One of them, a hard-bitten looking woman called Mrs. Elgg, greeted her briefly.

“That young charge of yours is a fool,” she offered without preliminary. “She’s not fit to tackle the Weissfluhjoch runs. They left us at the Parsenn hut. Jakes is all right, of course—he’s got the stamina of a bull—but that girl!”

She made a deprecating little sound in her throat and would have passed on into the hotel if Jane had not caught her sleeve.

“Mrs. Elgg,” she questioned urgently, “should they have come back with you on the bus—met you somewhere, I mean?”

“No, not really. They could have run down the whole way and caught the train back from Davos.” Mary Elgg glanced at her watch. “I wouldn’t begin to worry yet,” she advised more kindly. “The train isn’t due in for another half-hour.”

“Is it—the last train?” Jane asked.

“No, but it’s the last one they’re likely to get if they haven’t been caught somewhere on the way down. As I said, that girl’s not fit for the Weissfluhjoch—not by a long chalk!”

Jane stood rooted to the spot. What was she to do now? What
could
she do? If she were to walk down to the station to meet the train it might only anger Valerie, antagonizing her further, and it would certainly give Edward Jakes more scope for sarcasm at her expense. The watchdog. The over-anxious nanny. The too-attentive friend. She supposed he could justifiably use them all.

Waiting in the hotel made every passing minute seem an eternity. The heavy hands of the clock dragged around to five and the pleasant clink of teacups began to grate on her nerves. People spoke to her and she answered them automatically, but always her glance went past them to the door.

When she saw Max she could not believe her own eyes, but he swung both glass doors wide and came straight toward her. When she rose to meet him her limbs were shaking.

“Max,” she heard herself asking foolishly, “why have you come?”

He smiled down at her one-sidedly.

“Why? Because it’s Christmas and I couldn’t stay away! Once the enteritis began to clear up and there was no sign of a fresh outbreak I was really quite free to come,” he said. “But surely you know all this?” he added. “I cabled Valerie this morning.”

“I—we’ve been out all day.” Jane’s face was deathly pale and her hands were hot and sticky as she thrust them into the pockets of her woollen jacket. “Valerie went out with a party. They were all much too experienced for me. I would have held them up if I had gone with them. I’m really not very good.”

She knew that she was speaking against time, against the hand of the clock that told her that the train had come in long ago. And against the darkness now fallen, narrowing the snow-covered approach to the hotel so that they could not see as far as the road.

People were sauntering toward the lift, going up to dress for dinner.

“Jane;” Max said, “what’s the matter? Where is Val?”

His voice was quite firm and kind, but she knew that he had seen her hesitation and guessed at her fear.

“She—hasn’t come back yet.”

He put down his travelling case just inside the door.

“And the others?” he asked quietly.

“They—the main party—came in with the bus.”

Jane could only tell him the truth now. This was an emergency, something with which they were both familiar, and nothing but the truth would do. “Valerie went on over the pass.”

“For God’s sake!” Max said beneath his breath. “Not
alone
?”

“No. Edward Jakes was with her.”

The name lashed out at him. She could see the veins standing like taut cords at his temples and the flash of dark anger in his eyes.

“When did they leave?” he demanded.

“Early this morning.” She lifted her head to look at him, ready for the sting of his contempt. “I slept late. We didn’t get to bed until after midnight. There was the usual dancing, and I thought Valerie would want to rest this morning. She looked tired—”

“And yet she went out on this long and exhausting run first thing.”

It was more of a reflection than a question, and she did not reply, standing there with the utmost misery in her heart, waiting for his anger to break.

But Max was not angry. She saw that as he turned from her to seek out Herr Adler in his bright little office. He was tense and anxious, with an overwhelming sense of disaster eating deep into his heart. If he had lost Valerie, Jane thought bleakly, she would be to blame.

Herr Adler decided that a search party might be necessary. He had been about to suggest it, he told Max, and had only been waiting for the next train to come in so that they might be quite sure.

There was a bitter look about Max’s mouth when he came back to where Jane stood before the fire.

“I could almost have expected this,” he said in what must have been an unguarded moment. And then, covering up: “Valerie attempts to do too much.”

But there was more to it than that, Jane felt; more than Max could tell her. More in a professional way perhaps, colleague to colleague, only he had decided not to commit himself at the present moment.

She remembered the letter he had given her before she had left England, wondering if she should return it to him now, but it did not seem the right time to do so. Anyway, if there should be an emergency, he was here, on the spot, now, and she would have no need of the letter.

“Do you think we ought to wait for the next train to come in?” she asked.

He paced to the window and back.

“No,” he said. “It wouldn’t be any use. I’ve a feeling in my bones that they won’t be on it. I think that something has happened. Val’s too fond of her creature comforts to stay out overnight in a mountain hut, and she knows the dangers of skiing after dark. Besides, there’s Jakes.” His face darkened and once again the muscles tensed under the pulse beating at his temple. “He’s an experienced mountaineer. He wouldn’t take any unnecessary risks. My guess is that they’ve bitten off more than they could chew—or at least, more than Valerie could cope with, but she wouldn’t tell him. She’s like that,” he added flatly. “Avid for life.” The anger in his eyes had faded and she saw them haunted by a dark tragedy. He hated Edward Jakes, but beneath the primitive jealousy of the lover there lay a deeper fear. It was as if he was not so much afraid of losing Valerie to Jakes as to her own impelling zest for life.

“If you have to go out,” she begged, “you’ll take me with you? I’m a doctor. I might even be able to help.
”

He looked at her as if he had only just thought about her in her professional capacity.

“
I
couldn’t risk that,” he said. “It might be dangerous.”

Strangely hurt by his refusal, Jane attempted to argue the point.

“I’m not a child, and I’ve been trained to danger,” she pointed out. “Even if I couldn’t come all the way with you—”

She paused, something about the look in his eyes stopping her. For a moment they were the eyes of the Max of long ago, the boy with whom she had dreamed through lazy summer afternoons in the sheltered quadrangle of an ancient university; the Max who had walked by her side in the cool shade of age-old cloisters with the muted chimes from a clock tower echoing peacefully in their hearts. Then, as if a page had been turned too quickly, the gray eyes were drowned again in the man’s present agony.

“No, Jane, you couldn’t come—all the way.”

His tone had been far too gentle to soun
d
bitter, and once again she thought of the letter he had given her.

“If there is anything else I can do?” she suggested. “I feel guilty, Max, letting Val go. I should have been with her all the time.
”

He did not answer that. If he felt that she had failed him personally he did not say so. All his thoughts were already back with Valerie and the arrangements being made to get a search party out on to the mountains.

I’ve got to go, Jane thought. I’ve got to go at least half of the way. If I had been more strict this might never have happened.

The accusation was unjust, but she did not see it in that way. No one could be strict with Valerie. Always, she had gone her own way, courting danger, almost. Laughing at life.

Jane shivered. Valerie was not a child, but if anything had happened to her she would hold herself forever responsible. Max had trusted her, and now it seemed that she had betrayed his trust. She had defaulted over the first simple thing he had asked of her. Was it any wonder, then, that he should refuse her present offer of help?

U
nhappily she went up in the lift to get back into her ski-suit, lacing up her heavy boots with trembling fingers as she remembered the look in Max’s eyes, which had been neither disappointment nor disillusion nor anger, but a vague, undefinable hurt that had pierced straight to her heart.

He was standing with Herr Adler and two guides when she reached the entrance hall. The whole atmosphere was one of efficiency and restraint. There was no sign of panic, no suggestion of anything amiss. The residents who had already gathered about the fireplace with their pre-dinner cocktails looked around at them with vague interest and then got on with their drinks.

Jane wanted to scream. The whole thing was so cold, so desperately impersonal. Herr Adler’s guests were apparently not to be disturbed by what might, after all, be only an irritating little incident.

Max was speaking to one of the guides, a tall, fair-haired young man tanned by the sun and mountain air to the color of rich honey, whose loose-limbed body and steady blue eyes suggested a confidence words alone could never have conveyed.

Jane’s heart lifted a little at the mere sight of him and the small, wiry, middle-aged man who was his companion. She had seen them both on the ski slopes in their gray vor
l
ages and scarlet sweaters, instructing with the utmost patience the nervous and the confident alike. The little, wizened brown man had taken her own class only the day before and she had found herself progressing wonderfully well under his encouragement. He smiled as she came up, touching his cap.

Jane looked swiftly toward the pack and ropes and irons he had left just inside the door. She also saw that the big main door was closed, a sigh that more snow was expected or was already falling.

Max’s face was grim. He seemed to be arguing with the younger guide.

“I’m coming with you,” he said. “I’m a doctor, and Mrs. Kilsyth is my wife. It’s absolutely essential that I should get to her if she is in trouble.”

The guide bowed to the inevitable.

“As you say,” he murmured politely. “It may not be necessary for us to climb very far.”

Jane caught her breath. Max was far from being an experienced mountaineer. Like her own, most of his skiing had been confined to his student days and mostly it had been done in Scotland, where the season in the Cairngorms and the Grampains was short. It was not nearly so hazardous as skiing among the wicked-looking peaks of Graubunden under conditions that seemed to be worsening with every hour.

Max turned toward her.

“You’d better stay here, Jane,” he commanded. “It looks as if we’re going to have a nasty night.” He glanced at his watch. “At the moment we’re waiting for the local doctor who usually g
o
es out with the search parties.”

Jane could not argue any more; not in the face of Max’s opposition and the worsening conditions.

“
If I could only
do
something!” she murmured.

“Perhaps you can.” Max’s reply surprised her. “They wanted me to go so
f
ar, to some hut or other they set up as a sort of base in case of serious accident, but I’ve persuaded them to let me go on. If they can’t contact the local doctor, you might be able to make the hut.” He looked at her searchingly.
“
I know how you feel,” he said abruptly. “And I know how action helps.”

Jane let her breath go in a sigh of relief.

“I won’t get in the way,” she promised. “If we’re losing precious time, Max, need we wait for the local doctor?”

“I suppose not. Quite likely he’ll follow on.” He turned to the young Swiss. “We have another doctor here,” he explained. “Doctor Langdon has offered to go with us as far as the hut,” he added firmly and obviously for Jane’s benefit.

Both guides looked at her, exchanged brief, doubtful glances, and finally nodded their approval.

“It is time that we are gone,” Hans Kampel decided. “Doctor Cheisel will follow us up soon.” He gave Jane a reassuring smile as he turned to pick, up his rucksack. “You will do all right. Remember what I tell you yesterday, and all will be well!”