CHAPTER XXII
DR. ROB TO THE RESCUE
Into the somewhat oppressive silence which followed the addressing
and closing of the envelope, broke the cheery voice of Dr. Rob.
"Which is the patient to-day? The lady or the gentleman? Ah,
neither, I see. Both flaunt the bloom of perfect health and make the
doctor shy. It is spring without, but summer within," ran on Dr. Rob
gaily, wondering why both faces were so white and perturbed, and why
there was in the air a sense of hearts in torment. "Flannels seem to
call up boating and picnic parties; and I see you have discarded the
merino, Nurse Gray, and returned to the pretty blue washables. More
becoming, undoubtedly; only, don't take cold; and be sure you feed
up well. In this air people must eat plenty, and you have been
perceptibly losing weight lately. We don't want TOO airy-fairy
dimensions."
"Why do you always chaff Miss Gray about being small, Dr. Rob?"
asked Garth, in a rather vexed tone. "I am sure being short is in no
way detrimental to her."
"I will chaff her about being tall if you like," said Dr. Rob,
looking at her with a wicked twinkle, as she stood in the window,
drawn up to her full height, and regarding him with cold
disapproval.
"I would sooner no comments of any kind were made upon her personal
appearance," said Garth shortly; then added, more pleasantly: "You
see, she is just a voice to me--a kind, guiding voice. At first I
used to form mental pictures of her, of a hazy kind; but now I
prefer to appropriate in all its helpfulness what I DO know, and
leave unimagined what I do not. Did it ever strike you that she is
the only person--bar that fellow Johnson, who belongs to a nightmare
time I am quickly forgetting--I have yet had near me, in my
blindness, whom I had not already seen; the only voice I have ever
heard to which I could not put a face and figure? In time, of
course, there will be many. At present she stands alone to me in
this."
Dr. Rob's observant eye had been darting about during this
explanation, seeking to focus itself upon something worthy of minute
examination. Suddenly he spied the foreign letter lying close beside
him on the table.
"Hello!" he said. "Pyramids? The Egyptian stamp? That's interesting.
Have you friends out there, Mr. Dalmain?"
"That letter came from Cairo," Garth replied; "but I believe Miss
Champion has by now gone on to Syria." Dr. Rob attacked his
moustache, and stared at the letter meditatively. "Champion?" he
repeated. "Champion? It's an uncommon name. Is your correspondent,
by any chance, the Honourable Jane?"
"Why, that letter is from her," replied Garth, surprised. "Do you
know her?" His voice vibrated eagerly.
"Well," answered Dr. Rob, with slow deliberation, "I know her face,
and I know her voice; I know her figure, and I know a pretty good
deal of her character. I know her at home, and I know her abroad.
I've seen her under fire, which is more than most men of her
acquaintance can claim. But there is one thing I never knew until
to-day and that is her handwriting. May I examine this envelope?" He
turned to the window;--yes, this audacious little Scotchman had
asked the question of Nurse Rosemary. But only a broad blue back met
his look of inquiry. Nurse Rosemary was studying the view. He turned
back to Garth, who had evidently already made a sign of assent, and
on whose face was clearly expressed an eager desire to hear more,
and an extreme disinclination to ask for it.
Dr. Mackenzie took up the envelope and pondered it.
"Yes," he said, at last, "it is like her,--clear, firm, unwavering;
knowing what it means to say, and saying it; going where it means to
go, and getting there. Ay, lad, it's a grand woman that; and if you
have the Honourable Jane for your friend, you can be doing without a
few other things."
A tinge of eager colour rose in Garth's thin cheeks. He had been so
starved in his darkness for want of some word concerning her, from
that outer light in which she moved. He had felt so hopelessly cut
off from all chance of hearing of her. And all the while, if only he
had known it, old Robbie could have talked of her. He had had to
question Brand so cautiously, fearing to betray his secret and hers;
but with Dr. Rob and Nurse Gray no such precautions were needed. He
could safely guard his secret, and yet listen and speak.
"Where--when?" asked Garth.
"I will tell you where, and I will tell you when," answered Dr. Rob,
"if you feel inclined for a war tale on this peaceful spring
morning."
Garth was aflame With eagerness. "Have you a chair, doctor?" he
said. "And has Miss Gray a chair?"
"I have no chair, sir," said Dr. Rob, "because when I intend
thoroughly to enjoy my own eloquence it is my custom to stand. Nurse
Gray has no chair, because she is standing at the window absorbed in
the view. She has apparently ceased to pay any heed to you and me.
You will very rarely find one woman take much interest in tales
about another. But you lean back in your own chair, laddie, and
light a cigarette. And a wonderful thing it is to see you do it,
too, and better than pounding the wall. Eh? All of which we may
consider we owe to the lady who disdains us and prefers the scenery.
Well, I'm not much to look at, goodness knows; and she can see you
all the rest of the day. Now that's a brand worth smoking. What do
you call it--'Zenith'? Ah, and 'Marcovitch.' Yes; you can't better
that for drawing-room and garden purposes. It mingles with the
flowers. Lean back and enjoy it, while I smell gun-powder. For I
will tell you where I first saw the Honourable Jane. Out in South
Africa, in the very thick of the Boer war. I had volunteered for the
sake of the surgery experience. She was out there, nursing; but the
real thing, mind you. None of your dabbling in eau-de-cologne with
lace handkerchiefs, and washing handsome faces when the orderlies
had washed them already; making charming conversation to men who
were getting well, but fleeing in dread from the dead or the dying.
None of that, you may be sure, and none of that allowed in her
hospital; for Miss Champion was in command there, and I can tell you
she made them scoot. She did the work of ten, and expected others to
do it too. Doctors and orderlies adored her. She was always called
'The Honourable Jane,' most of the men sounding the H and
pronouncing the title as four syllables. Ay, and the wounded
soldiers! There was many a lad out there, far from home and friends,
who, when death came, died with a smile on his lips, and a sense of
mother and home quite near, because the Honourable Jane's arm was
around him, and his dying head rested against her womanly breast.
Her voice when she talked to them? No,--that I shall never forget.
And to hear her snap at the women, and order along the men; and then
turn and speak to a sick Tommy as his mother or his sweetheart would
have wished to hear him spoken to, was a lesson in quick-change from
which I am profiting still. And that big, loving heart must often
have been racked; but she was always brave and bright. Just once she
broke down. It was over a boy whom she tried hard to save--quite a
youngster. She had held him during the operation which was his only
chance; and when it proved no good, and he lay back against her
unconscious, she quite broke down and said: 'Oh, doctor,--a mere
boy--and to suffer so, and then die like this!' and gathered him to
her, and wept over him, as his own mother might have done. The
surgeon told me of it himself. He said the hardest hearts in the
tent were touched and softened. But, it was the only time the
Honourable Jane broke down."
Garth shielded his face with his hand. His half-smoked cigarette
fell unheeded to the floor. The hand that had held it was clenched
on his knee. Dr. Rob picked it up, and rubbed the scorched spot on
the carpet carefully with his foot. He glanced towards the window.
Nurse Rosemary had turned and was leaning against the frame. She did
not look at him, but her eyes dwelt with troubled anxiety on Garth.
"I came across her several times, at different centres," continued
Dr. Rob; "but we were not in the same departments, and she spoke to
me only once. I had ridden in, from a temporary overflow sort of
place where we were dealing with the worst cases straight off the
field, to the main hospital in the town for a fresh supply of
chloroform. While they fetched it, I walked round the ward, and
there in a corner was Miss Champion, kneeling beside a man whose
last hour was very near, talking to him quietly, and taking measures
at the same time to ease his pain. Suddenly there came a crash--a
deafening rush--and another crash, and the Honourable Jane and her
patient were covered with dust and splinters. A Boer shell had gone
clean through the roof just over their heads. The man sat up,
yelling with fear. Poor chap, you couldn't blame him; dying, and
half under morphine. The Honourable Jane never turned a hair. 'Lie
down, my man,' she said, 'and keep still.' 'Not here,' sobbed the
man. 'All right,' said the Honourable Jane; 'we will soon move you.'
Then she turned and saw me. I was in the most nondescript khaki, a
non-com's jacket which I had caught up on leaving the tent, and
various odds and ends of my outfit which had survived the wear and
tear of the campaign. Also I was dusty with a long gallop. 'Here,
serjeant,' she said, 'lend a hand with this poor fellow. I can't
have him disturbed just now.' That was Jane's only comment on the
passing of a shell within a few yards of her own head. Do you wonder
the men adored her? She placed her hands beneath his shoulders, and
signed to me to take him under the knees, and together we carried
him round a screen, out of the ward, and down a short passage;
turning unexpectedly into a quiet little room, with a comfortable
bed, and photographs and books arranged on the tiny dressing-table.
She said: 'Here, if you please, serjeant,' and we laid him on the
bed. 'Whose is it?' I asked. She looked surprised at being
questioned, but seeing I was a stranger, answered civilly: 'Mine.'
And then, noting that he had dozed off while we carried him, added:
'And he will have done with beds, poor chap, before I need it.'
There's nerve for you!--Well, that was my only conversation out
there with the Honourable Jane. Soon after I had had enough and came
home."
Garth lifted his head. "Did you ever meet her at home?" he asked.
"I did," said Dr. Rob. "But she did not remember me. Not a flicker
of recognition. Well, how could I expect it? I wore a beard out
there; no time to shave; and my jacket proclaimed me a serjeant, not
a surgeon. No fault of hers if she did not expect to meet a comrade
from the front in the wilds of--of Piccadilly," finished Dr. Rob
lamely. "Now, having spun so long a yarn, I must be off to your
gardener's cot in the wood, to see his good wife, who has had what
he pathetically calls 'an increase.' I should think a decrease would
have better suited the size of his house. But first I must interview
Mistress Margery in the dining-room. She is anxious about herself
just now because she 'canna eat bacon.' She says it flies between
her shoulders. So erratic a deviation from its normal route on the
part of the bacon, undoubtedly requires investigation. So, by your
leave, I will ring for the good lady."
"Not just yet, doctor," said a quiet voice from the window. "I want
to see you in the dining-room, and will follow you there
immediately. And afterwards, while you investigate Margery, I will
run up for my bonnet, and walk with you through the woods, if Mr.
Dalmain will not mind an hour alone."
When Jane reached the dining-room, Dr. Robert Mackenzie was standing
on the hearth-rug in a Napoleonic attitude, just as on the morning
of their first interview. He looked up uncertainly as she came in.
"Well?" he said. "Am I to pay the piper?"
Jane came straight to him, with both hands extended.
"Ah, serjeant!" she said. "You dear faithful old serjeant! See what
comes of wearing another man's coat. And my dilemma comes from
taking another woman's name. So you knew me all the time, from the
first moment I came into the room?"
"From the first moment you entered the room," assented Dr. Rob.
"Why did you not say so?" asked Jane.
"Well, I concluded you had your reasons for being 'Nurse Rosemary
Gray,' and it did not come within my province to question your
identity."
"Oh, you dear!" said Jane. "Was there ever anything so shrewd, and
so wise, and so bewilderingly far-seeing, standing on two legs on a
hearth-rug before! And when I remember how you said: 'So you have
arrived, Nurse Gray?' and all the while you might have been saying.
'How do you do, Miss Champion? And what brings you up here under
somebody else's name?"
"I might have so said," agreed Dr. Rob reflectively; "but praise be,
I did not."
"But tell me" said Jane "why let it out now?"
Dr. Rob laid his hand on her arm. "My dear, I am an old fellow, and
all my life I have made it my business to know, without being told.
You have been coming through a strain,--a prolonged period of
strain, sometimes harder, sometimes easier, but never quite
relaxed,--a strain such as few women could have borne. It was not
only with him; you had to keep it up towards us all. I knew, if it
were to continue, you must soon have the relief of some one with
whom to share the secret,--some one towards whom you could be
yourself occasionally. And when I found you had been writing to him
here, sending the letter to be posted in Cairo (how like a woman, to
strain at a gnat, after swallowing such a camel!), awaiting its
return day after day, then obliged to read it to him yourself, and
take down his dictated answer, which I gathered from your faces when
I entered was his refusal of your request to come and see him, well,
it seemed to me about time you were made to realise that you might
as well confide in an old fellow who, in common with all the men who
knew you in South Africa, would gladly give his right hand for the
Honourable Jane."
Jane looked at him, her eyes full of gratitude. For the moment she
could not speak.
"But tell me, my dear," said Dr. Rob, "tell me, if you can: why does
the lad put from him so firmly that which, if indeed it might be his
for the asking, would mean for him so great, so wonderful, so
comforting a good?"
"Ah, doctor," said Jane, "thereby hangs a tale of sad mistrust and
mistake, and the mistrust and mistake, alas, were mine. Now, while
you see Margery, I will prepare for walking; and as we go through
the wood I will try to tell you the woeful thing which came between
him and me and placed our lives so far apart. Your wise advice will
help me, and your shrewd knowledge of men and of the human heart may
find us a way out, for indeed we are shut in between Migdol and the
sea."
As Jane crossed the hall and was about to mount the stairs, she
looked towards the closed library door. A sudden fear seized her,
lest the strain of listening to that tale of Dr. Rob's had been too
much for Garth. None but she could know all it must have awakened of
memory to be told so vividly of the dying soldiers whose heads were
pillowed on her breast, and the strange coincidence of those words,
"A mere boy--and to suffer so!" She could not leave the house
without being sure he was safe and well. And yet she instinctively
feared to intrude when he imagined himself alone for an hour.
Then Jane, in her anxiety, did a thing she had never done before.
She opened the front door noiselessly, passed round the house to the
terrace, and when approaching the open window of the library, trod
on the grass border, and reached it without making the faintest
sound.
Never before had she come upon him unawares, knowing he hated and
dreaded the thought of an unseen intrusion on his privacy.
But now--just this once--
Jane looked in at the window.
Garth sat sideways in the chair, his arms folded on the table beside
him, his face buried in them. He was sobbing as she had sometimes
heard men sob after agonising operations, borne without a sound
until the worst was over. And Garth's sob of agony was this: "OH, MY
WIFE--MY WIFE--MY WIFE!"
Jane crept away. How she did it she never knew. But some instinct
told her that to reveal herself then, taking him at a disadvantage,
when Dr. Rob's story had unnerved and unmanned him, would be to ruin
all. "IF YOU VALUE YOUR ULTIMATE HAPPINESS AND HIS," Deryck's voice
always sounded in warning. Besides, it was such a short
postponement. In the calm earnest thought which would succeed this
storm, his need of her, would win the day. The letter, not yet
posted, would be rewritten. He would say "COME"--and the next minute
he would be in her arms.
So Jane turned noiselessly away.
Coming in, an hour later, from her walk with Dr. Rob, her heart
filled with glad anticipation, she found him standing in the window,
listening to the countless sounds he was learning to distinguish. He
looked so slim and tall and straight in his white flannels, both
hands thrust deep into the pockets of his coat, that when he turned
at her approach it seemed to her as if the shining eyes MUST be
there.
"Was it lovely in the woods?" he asked. "Simpson shall take me up
there after lunch. Meanwhile, is there time, if you are not tired,
Miss Gray, to finish our morning's work?"
Five letters were dictated and a cheque written. Then Jane noticed
that hers to him had gone from among the rest. But his to her lay on
the table ready for stamping. She hesitated.
"And about the letter to Miss Champion?" she said. "Do you wish it
to go as it is, Mr. Dalmain?"
"Why certainly," he said. "Did we not finish it?"
"I thought," said Jane nervously, looking away from his blank face,
"I thought perhaps--after Dr. Rob's story--you might--"
"Dr. Rob's story could make no possible difference as to whether I
should let her come here or not," said Garth emphatically; then
added more gently: "It only reminded me--"
"Of what?" asked Jane, her hands upon her breast.
"Of what a glorious woman she is," said Garth Dalmain, and blew a
long, steady cloud of smoke into the summer air.
