Consulting Surgeon Read online

  “Bear, you simply mustn’t be cross with me. I’ve got to see you!” There was urgency behind Coralie’s plea, and Ursula’s fears flew at once to Mrs. Craig.

  “Coralie—it’s not—Mama?”

  “Mummy? Why should it be? She’s all right. It’s—oh, it’s no good, Bear. I must talk to you. When are you free?”

  “I’m having two hours this afternoon. But won’t it wait until tomorrow?”

  “No, it won’t. I’ll meet you for tea in the town. You must come.”

  When Coralie herself came to the rendezvous she looked pale and strained, and she made no more than a faint attempt to share the tea which Ursula had ordered. She ate nothing, drank only a little in reluctant gulps, and at her stepsister’s gentle question: “What is the matter, Coralie?” her cup rattled noisily into its saucer before being pushed aside.

  Her eyes were hurt and her mouth puckered like a child’s as she said: “It’s—Averil and—Matthew.”

  “What about them?” Ursula’s throat felt dry and tight as she put the question.

  “They—they’re in love with each other. They are going to be married as soon as Averil is out of mourning.” Coralie glanced up quickly, misread something which she saw in her stepsister’s face and accused: “I believe you knew! And you hadn’t the decency to tell me!”

  “I knew nothing, dear. You must believe that—”

  “But you did! I see it all now. Even when I asked you what they were to each other you tried to put me off. You knew then and you wouldn’t tell me.” Coralie’s eyes narrowed. “I may even have been right when I thought in London that perhaps you wanted Matthew for yourself!”

  ‘It is sheer unhappiness that is sharpening her tongue to cruelty,’ thought Ursula as she took the shock of that last accusation. For she knew that her own secret had been guarded too well—even from herself!—for Coralie to be able to guess how near the truth she came.

  “Dear,” she tried again gently, “I couldn’t hold back from you something I didn’t know. After all, Averil loved her husband, and lost him no more than a few weeks ago. How could I have supposed that she could bring herself to turn so soon to—his cousin?”

  There was silence. Then Coralie said with slow significance: “Averil didn’t love Foster.”

  “Coralie, you can’t know that—!”

  “But I do. Averil told me so herself. It was one night when she’d been out with Matthew and I’d been sitting with Mrs. Damon. Afterwards, when the old lady had gone to bed, Averil came over all expansive, walking about the room smoking—you know the way she does?”

  Ursula did know. In imagination she could see the lithe, pantherlike figure pacing the floor, the studied, dramatic gestures, the cigarette in its long holder used for emphasis, the husky, plaintive voice telling its story.

  Coralie went on: “I hated listening. Not about herself and Foster—that could happen to anyone, I suppose. But she seemed to want to boast about it.” The girl yielded to a little shiver of distaste and Ursula cried urgently: “Coralie, don’t go on. It is no concern of ours, after all.”

  But Coralie’s chin went up stubbornly. “It is of mine—because of Matthew,” she said with pathetic pride. “She is just not worthy of him, Bear! She and Foster hadn’t been happy for a long time, she said. He was jealous of her men friends, and he said she spent far too much money—a lot more than he could afford on a captain’s pay—though I think she was banking on what his mother might leave him in her will. But the worst thing of all, Bear, is that when Foster was killed they had had an out-and-out quarrel, and she had gone to an hotel, meaning to fly back to England to teach him a lesson. She had already booked her place on the plane, and when the news came through she didn’t cancel it, but used it as if nothing had happened. That means, Bear, that even when Foster was dead she—sort of—ran away! And one day, if she marries Matthew, she might do the same or worse to him!”

  Ursula sat silent. So that accounted for so much that had been obscure. For Averil’s swift arrival, when she might have been expected to stay for, at least, the last cruel duties arising from her husband’s death. For—most revealing of all—her own passionate declaration to Ursula: “I don’t want to go on remembering Foster for ever...!” That had not meant that she shrank from remembering the agony of loss; on the contrary, she wanted to forget a man for whom love had already died.

  At last Ursula managed to ask: “And you think you know that they—Averil and Matthew—are engaged?”

  “Not officially yet. For some reason Averil seemed to want me to know that there was an understanding between them, but she warned me not to mention it to Matthew, because it was a sore point with him that they couldn’t possibly announce the engagement soon.”

  At that Ursula’s whole instinct of love for the man cried out. How could she believe him so insensitive? But love, she supposed, had its own urgencies, and if Matthew loved Averil deeply, he must long to claim her for his own before everyone. And had either she or Coralie the right to question that?

  Coralie was saying miserably: “Of course, I’ve just played into Averil’s hands. All the time, right from when she first asked me to Shere Court, she has only been making use of me.”

  ‘As,’ thought Ursula in a flash of revealing memory, ‘she wanted to make use of me, when she shirked the responsibility of caring for Foster’s mother in her sorrow even perhaps feared that she might betray, against her own advantage, that she and the old lady shared no mutual love for the dead man.’

  Coralie raced on: “You see, she wanted to spend all her time with Matthew. So, though at first the three of us went out together, Averil gradually contrived it so that I should stay with Mrs. Damon while she had Matthew. Until lately I didn’t mind, because Mrs. Damon is awfully sweet, and being often at the Court at least gave me the chance to—to see more of Matthew than I would have done—” Again the full young lips quivered pitifully, and Ursula laid a tentative hand over hers as she said: “If only I’d admitted to myself how you were coming to care for him, I might have helped!”

  Coralie wrenched her hand away. “I’ve never had a chance,” she pouted. “I fell in love with him at sight. But first there was you. And then there was Averil—”

  “I was never your rival with him!”

  “Well, perhaps I imagined that,” said Coralie with unconscious cruelty. “But there’s still Averil. And now I feel I don’t want to see her again.”

  “All the same, you can’t break with her completely because of this. You haven’t any deep grievance against her, and to quarrel openly with her would involve explanations to Mrs. Damon. And if she still believes that Averil loved Foster as she did herself, one hasn’t the right to risk destroying her ideals. Where is Averil today, by the way?”

  “She and Matthew drove to Southampton to meet some Americans, a business man and his son, friends of Mrs. Damon’s whom she hasn’t seen for years. They are going to stay at the Court.”

  “Then their being there should make things easier for you with Averil. How old is the son, do you know?”

  “Only about twenty. Pimply, I dare say,” retorted Coralie, dismissing the unfortunate young man with a curl of her pretty lips.

  Ursula suppressed a smile. Young men of her own age had never had merit in Coralie’s eyes. She said: “Well, I still think it will help, having them there. Then when you and Mama leave Sheremouth, you can drop the acquaintanceship quite naturally.” ‘As I shall have to, in the end,’ she thought poignantly. ‘Only my ending, when it comes, will be a ruthless tearing at my roots, the handing over of all my work on Christian Shere ward to someone else as well as the life sentence of never seeing Matthew again...’

  Even so, her natural resilience of character rallied sufficiently to enable her not to dread her visit to Shere Court. She was looking forward to seeing Mrs. Damon again, Matthew might well not be there, and she believed she had enough poise to meet Averil as if she knew nothing of what Coralie had told her.

  Whe
n she woke next morning she was glad that the sun was shining from a cloudless sky. That meant that the navy-and-white bordered silk suit she planned to wear would be as suitable for the morning as it would be for informal dinner at Shere Court that night. If it had been cold or wet she would have had to wear jersey, which would have been out of place if Mrs. Damon and Averil dressed for dinner.

  She left hospital at mid-morning and walked the mile up to Shere Court, revelling in the brilliant sunshine as she went. The house stood squarely facing the sea at the front, and looking out over the rolling Downs beyond its garden at the back. Doors and windows were wide, and finding no one about she went round the side of the house to find Mrs. Damon under the spreading cedars on the lawn.

  “My dear! My dear—how glad I am to see you!” The old lady came to meet her with hands outstretched and with innocent warmth lifting her parchment cheek to be kissed.

  Ursula was infinitely touched. She smiled: “I’m so glad to come. And I think you are looking much better yourself, Mrs. Damon.”

  “Yes, I am, dear.” They went side by side to settle under the trees, the old lady adding with a little sigh that she supposed in time she would find the courage to accept her sorrow.

  “I dare say,” she said tremulously, “that I have much to be thankful for.” And while Ursula was wondering what philosophy taught gratitude for the loss of an only son, she went on: “I’ve repeated to myself so often all that you said to comfort me on that first awful night—that in time I should remember Foster with no pain at all.”

  “And does it become any easier?”

  “Not yet, really. But I’m trying to believe that it will. Meanwhile, has Matthew told you that now I have visitors to distract me?—an old friend, Claude Denman from America, and his son Dirk, who is a charming boy.”

  “It was Coralie who told me,” said Ursula. “Shall I be meeting them today?”

  “Oh, yes, they’ll be coming back to dinner, but the day was so lovely that they wanted to get out—Americans are always restlessly on the move, aren’t they?—so as you were coming to keep me company, I packed them all off. They went in the two cars Claude and Coralie and Dirk in mine, and Matthew and Averil in Matthew’s.”

  Nothing in Ursula’s face betrayed the little sick pang in her heart at the news. Just then drinks were brought, and she was able to busy herself pouring sherry for her hostess and choosing a long iced drink for herself.

  After luncheon, while Mrs. Damon rested, she wandered round the kitchen gardens, chatting to the gardener and picking fruit just where she willed. Afterwards she sun-bathed and dozed on the lawn, and, after a leisurely tea, went to the room Mrs. Damon always referred to as “Ursula’s,” in order to freshen up for dinner.

  Coming down into the lounge hall as the party arrived home, she found herself being introduced to Claude Denman, a robust man with crinkled humorous eyes and a shock of white hair, and to Dirk, dark-eyed, deeply suntanned and, as she noted with amusement, clearly a complete stranger to pimples!

  Averil greeted her with a slight insolence: “D’you mean that you have actually left the charts and the red tape to look after themselves for a whole day?” Matthew, standing slightly apart from the others, nodded to her across their heads. And Coralie, nervously ill at ease, announced at once that she must go, as Mrs. Craig was expecting guests to dinner.

  At that Dirk Denman swung round impulsively. “Say, you’re not leaving?” Ursula found his accent attractive.

  “Yes, I must—”

  “Please stay!” He was pleading with his eyes as well as with words.

  But Coralie would not. Her lips trembled slightly as she turned to Matthew. “Will you—I mean, would you mind driving me down?” It was clearly a last pathetic bid for his attention, and Ursula’s heart ached for her.

  “I’d drive you—”

  “Yes, of course.” Dirk and Matthew had spoken in unison. But Coralie ignored Dirk’s offer. And Averil’s husky voice struck in: “I’ll come down with you. Matthew, you can give me a drink at the Grand before we come back to dinner.”

  Matthew looked quickly at Mrs. Damon. “Is that all right, Aunt Lucy?”

  “Yes, of course.” But a slight shadow crossed her face.

  Conversation was general as they took their evening drinks and waited for Matthew and Averil to return, though it seemed a long time before they did. Mrs. Damon had dinner held back and thereafter she seemed uneasy, as if the delay were beginning to annoy her. When the car was at last heard approaching even Ursula felt a sharp sense of relief, as if more than a belated dinner were at stake. The car, however, went on round the side of the house towards the garage, and Mrs. Damon frowned.

  “That is tiresome of Averil,” she said. It was significant that she blamed Averil, not Matthew. “Ursula, my dear—would you go out and ask them to hurry?”

  Ursula could not show unwillingness to do so, though until she saw Matthew’s car standing outside and realized that probably Mrs. Damon’s car had been used to take Coralie back, she wondered why he and Averil had not come straight in to the house.

  The garage appeared closed, as the door had swung to in the evening breeze. She hoped she would meet the other two crossing the courtyard before she reached it. But she did not, and afterwards the cruel detail of each of the next few moments seemed to be etched with pain upon her memory.

  The sight of her own fingers round the edge of the heavy door; the silence from within; the sight of Averil and Matthew standing together by the driving side of the car; Averil’s hands creeping up to link with clasped fingers round the man’s neck while her lithe body arched backward so that her face was lifted to his; the low murmur of her husky voice; and the words she spoke, each stabbing separately at Ursula’s heart.

  Averil said: “Somehow, Matthew, I’ve known all along that it would come to this.” And: “It might have been too late, mightn’t it? I’m glad now that I told you about that letter from Francis. He adores me too, but—”

  Did Matthew reply? Ursula was not to know, for in the instant of distaste for her eavesdropping her hold upon the door loosened and it swung to again, making no sound.

  She recrossed the courtyard, her legs feeling heavy and reluctant. Sick despair was questioning: “Why should it matter, when Coralie had told you as much, when you have known all along that he could never love you?” And honesty knew that it was because, against the faintest doubt, hope could still grow; against certainty it must die—as it had died tonight at the sight of Averil in Matthew’s arms.

  Now she understood the significance of his words: “Other warmths will glow if one keeps one’s hands outstretched.” She remembered that momentarily she had let herself believe that in saying that to her he had meant it for her. But of course he had not. He had been referring to Averil, voicing his conviction that for Averil to love again would be natural and right, and even then, probably, holding fast to the hope that she would come to love him as he must believe she had loved Foster.

  ‘Well, it’s over now,’ thought Ursula. ‘At least I can’t claim that he ever encouraged or deceived me, so that I haven’t even a cheap bitterness to fall back upon. Just a blank now. The sort of blank I faced after Denis died. So many minutes and hours and days to be filled with other things than love. I did it before. I can do it again. I must do it again.’

  When Matthew and Averil followed her in a few minutes later and the party adjourned to the dining room, only courage and pride carried her through the meal. Fortunately the conversation was mostly of Claude Denman’s and Dirk’s plans for their stay and of their inevitable comparisons between the American and English ways of life. It appeared that Dirk was studying architecture, and his father had half promised that he should stay or in England for a year in order to acquaint himself with historic examples of building which America could not offer.

  After dinner father and son went with Mrs. Damon into the garden, Matthew went to make a telephone call, and Ursula and Averil were left together.
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br />   Ursula glanced at her watch, meaning to leave as soon as the others returned, but into the silence Averil suddenly flung her challenge.

  “Well,” she said with raised brows, “I suppose Coralie told you about Matthew and me, but you couldn’t be content until you had seen for yourself? I hope you were satisfied?”

  Ursula whitened. “I don’t think I know what you mean?” she asked.

  “Really? Then may I explain by suggesting that you should do your spying more discreetly? You weren’t able to disguise the clicking of your heels on the cobbles of the yard, and I know you saw me in Matthew’s arms in the garage—”

  “Mrs. Damon was anxious that dinner should not wait any longer, and she sent me to fetch you,” declared Ursula hotly.

  “But you weren’t an unwilling messenger, were you? Well, I determined that, since you were paying your money, you should have your peepshow. Matthew co-operated quite well, didn’t he?”

  “You mean that you—both of you—actually staged an embrace that I couldn’t help seeing? How—how despicably cheap!”

  “Oh, don’t blame Matthew. He didn’t know you were there. You should congratulate me, rather, for putting painlessly something that I thought you should know.”

  “Why should you find that necessary?” Beneath the table between them Ursula’s fingers intertwined in a grip that was an exquisite pain.

  “Well, wasn’t it?” Averil rose and moved away, then over her shoulder repeated with insolent significance: “Wasn’t it? If only to warn you to keep off the grass in future, or rather to keep to the medicine bottles and bandages in your ward, which, if you weren’t blinded by your enthusiasm for chasing him, you’d realize is the only place where Matthew has ever wanted you or appreciated you.”

  “Hadn’t you better justify that accusation?” Ursula’s voice was dangerously quiet.

  “Surely there’s no need?” Averil’s voice was correspondingly airy. “Why, a baby could read the meaning of your worming yourself into his favor! Working on his feeling for Lucy to get yourself invited here before you thought I could get to England, pretending you couldn’t stay on, just to appear important, getting Coralie to do your spying for you when you couldn’t do it yourself. As if I had anything to hide—!”