Mary said sharply, 'Being a hospital nurse would be quite good enough for me!'
'Yes, and you'd sooner do nothing at all, wouldn't you? Strutting about with your airs and your graces and your fine-lady-do-nothing ways. Laziness, that's what you like, my girl!'
Mary protested, tears springing to her eyes, 'It isn't true, Dad. You've no right to say that!'
Nurse Hopkins intervened with a heavy, determinedly humorous air. 'Just a bit under the weather, aren't we, this morning? You don't really mean what you say, Gerrard. Mary's a good girl and a good daughter to you.'
Gerrard looked at his daughter with an air of almost active malevolence. 'She's no daughter of mine – nowadays – with her French and her history and her mincing talk. Pah!'
He turned and went into the lodge again.
Mary said, the tears still standing in her eyes, 'You do see, Nurse, don't you, how difficult it is? He's so unreasonable. He's never really liked me even when I was a little girl. Mum was always standing up for me.'
Nurse Hopkins said kindly, 'There, there, don't worry. These things are sent to try us! Goodness, I must hurry. Such a round as I've got this morning.'
And as she stood watching the brisk retreating figure, Mary Gerrard thought forlornly that nobody was any real good or could really help you. Nurse Hopkins, for all her kindness, was quite content to bring out a little stock of platitudes and offer them with an air of novelty.
Mary thought disconsolately, 'What SHALL I do?'
Chapter 2
I
Mrs. Welman lay on her carefully built-up pillows. Her breathing was a little heavy, but she was not asleep. Her eyes – eyes still deep and blue like those of her niece Elinor, looked up at the ceiling. She was a big, heavy woman, with a handsome, hawk-like profile. Pride and determination showed in her face.
The eyes dropped and came to rest on the figure sitting by the window. They rested there tenderly – almost wistfully.
She said at last, 'Mary -'
The girl turned quickly. 'Oh, you're awake, Mrs. Welman.' Laura Welman said, 'Yes, I've been awake some time.' 'Oh, I didn't know. I'd have -'
Mrs. Welman broke in, 'No, that's all right. I was thinking – thinking of many things.'
'Yes, Mrs. Welman?'
The sympathetic look, the interested voice, made a tender look come into the older woman's face. She said gently, 'I'm very fond of you, my dear. You're very good to me.'
'Oh, Mrs. Welman, it's you who have been good to me. If it hadn't been for you, I don't know what I should have done! You've done everything for me.'
'I don't know -I don't know, I'm sure.' The sick woman moved restlessly, her right arm twitched – the left remaining inert and lifeless. 'One means to do the best one can, but it's so difficult to know what is best – what is right. I've been too sure of myself always.'
Mary Gerrard said, 'Oh, no, I'm sure you always know what is best and right to do.'
But Laura Welman shook her head. 'No – no. It worries me. I've had one besetting sin always, Mary: I'm proud. Pride can be the devil. It runs in our family. Elinor has it, too.'
Mary said quickly, 'It will be nice for you to have Miss Elinor and Mr. Roderick down. It will cheer you up a lot. It's quite a time since they were here.'
Mrs. Welman said softly, 'They're good children – very good children. And fond of me, both of them. I always know I've only got to send and they'll come at any time. But I don't want to do that too often. They're young and happy – the world in front of them. No need to bring them near decay and suffering before their time.'
Mary said, 'I'm sure they'd never feel like that, Mrs. Welman.'
Mrs. Welman went on, talking perhaps more to herself than to the girl: 'I always hoped they might marry. But I tried never to suggest anything of the kind. Young people are so contradictory. It would have put them off! I had an idea, long ago, when they were children, that Elinor had set her heart on Roddy. But I wasn't at all sure about him. He's a funny creature. Henry was like that – very reserved and fastidious… Yes, Henry…'
She was silent for a little, thinking of her dead husband.
She murmured, 'So long ago – so very long ago… We had only been married five years when he died. Double pneumonia… We were happy – yes, very happy; but somehow it all seems very unreal, that happiness. I was an odd, solemn, undeveloped girl – my head full of ideals and hero-worship. No reality.'
Mary murmured, 'You must have been very lonely – afterward.'
'After? Oh, yes – terribly lonely. I was twenty-six – and now I'm over sixty. A long time, my dear – a long, long time.'
She said with sudden brisk acerbity, 'And now this!'
'Your illness?'
'Yes. A stroke is the thing I've always dreaded. The indignity of it all! Washed and tended like a baby! Helpless to do anything for myself. It maddens me. The O'Brien creature is good-natured – I will say that for her. She doesn't mind my snapping at her and she's not more idiotic than most of them. But it makes a lot of difference to me to have you about, Mary.'
'Does it?' The girl flushed. 'I – I'm so glad, Mrs. Welman.'
Laura Welman said shrewdly, 'You've been worrying, haven't you? About the future. You leave it to me, my dear. I'll see to it that you shall have the means to be independent and take up a profession. But be patient for a little – it means too much to me to have you here.'
'Oh, Mrs. Welman, of course – of course! I wouldn't leave you for the world. Not if you want me -'
'I do want you.' The voice was unusually deep and full. 'You're – you're quite like a daughter to me, Mary. I've seen you grow up here at Hunterbury from a little toddling thing – have seen you grow into a beautiful girl. I'm proud of you, child. I only hope I've done what was best for you.'
Mary said quickly, 'If you mean that your having been so good to me and having educated me above – well, above my station – if you think it's made me dissatisfied or – or – given me what Father calls fine-lady ideas, indeed that isn't true. I'm just ever so grateful, that's all. And if I'm anxious to start earning my living, it's only because I feel it's right that I should, and not – and not – well, do nothing after all you've done for me. I – I shouldn't like it to be thought that I was sponging on you.'
Laura Welman said, and her voice was suddenly sharpedged, 'So that's what Gerrard's been putting into your head? Pay no attention to your father, Mary; there never has been and never will be any question of your sponging on me! I'm asking you to stay here a little longer solely on my account. Soon it will be over… If they went the proper way about things, my life could be ended here and now – none of this long-drawn-out tomfoolery with nurses and doctors.'
'Oh, no, Mrs. Welman, Dr. Lord says you may live for years.'
'I'm not at all anxious to, thank you! I told him the other day that in a decently civilized state all there would be to do would be for me to intimate to him that I wished to end it, and he'd finish me off painlessly with some nice drug. 'And if you'd any courage, Doctor,' I said, 'you'd do it anyway!' '
Mary cried, 'Oh! What did he say?'
'The disrespectful young man merely grinned at me, my dear, and said he wasn't going to risk being hanged. He said, 'If you'd left me all your money, Mrs. Welman, that would be different, of course!' Impudent young jackanapes! But I like him. His visits do me more good than his medicines.'
'Yes, he's very nice,' said Mary. 'Nurse O'Brien thinks a lot of him and so does Nurse Hopkins.'
Mrs. Welman said, ' Hopkins ought to have more sense at her age. As for O'Brien, she simpers and says, 'Oh, Doctor,' and tosses those long streamers of hers whenever he comes near her.'
