Nurse in Waiting (15 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Gradually as the
reluctant Irish spring advanced, Roger Carnehill began to find strength where there had been complete atrophy and peace where he had known pain. But neither Dr. Beltane nor his Dublin surgeon would allow him to ‘rest on the laurels’, so to speak, of this partial recovery.

“You’ve got to work for it, young man!” Dr. Beltane adjured him. “Exercises—and more exercises
—
and no shirking possible, because Nurse Merivale’ll be superintending every minute of ‘em!”

So every morning Roger, bored but reasonably submissive, stretched and flexed his stiffened legs and made archways of the spine that was beginning to respond again to his will.

“Kindergarten stuff!” he would grumble to the quiet tone of Joanna’s: “One—two—relax!” And she would smile at him, but would insist upon the steady rhythm being kept up.

At last he said: “Look here, can’t you abandon this metronome business? I’ve got the idea now
—
in fact I dream ‘One—two—relax’ o’ nights. Why shouldn’t we talk instead, and you can pull me up if I start slacking?”

Joanna agreed, knowing that if he became too bored he would not try. But after a little desultory conversation as he worked he said suddenly: “This is too silly too. How can I talk while I’m going up and down like the coils of a sea-serpent?
You
talk to me. Tell me things
—”

“What sort of things?” smiled Joanna.

“Oh—things. Anything, so long as I don’t have to say ‘Really?’ at the top of an arch or ‘Is that so?’ at the bottom! Tell me—tell me about when you were a little girl!”

The
naiveté
of this request took Joanna by complete surprise. Of what possible interest could her childhood be to him? But the memory of it, happy though money-restricted, was vividly with her, and she found it easy to talk about it to him. It became a kind of saga which ran on from day to day, to which Roger listened intently, even correcting details of it here and there.

And when he reached the stage of being able to sit in a wheel-chair by the window before being ‘settled down’ for the night, he began to tell her about his own boyhood, of his hated schooldays in the North—
“
among the Orangemen”—as he called them; of his passionate homesickness for Carrieghmere through eight months of the year, and the wild delight of possessing and being possessed by it during the other four.

“When my father died,” he said one night, “I vowed I’d give the rest of my life to Carrieghmere and all it stood for. But since all this happened I’ve had to let go—or, rather, have it wrested from me. The running of it has virtually gone to McKiley, and now Mother has fogged the issue with this fool idea of journalism. A
Carnehill—a
journalist!”

Joanna thought it best to change the subject. “You’ll take the reins again soon. The estate will be yours once more.”

“Yes.” He added thoughtfully: “It’ll have been more than two years. I wonder whether the reins one goes to take up are at all the same as one believed one lay down? Whether I shall find that Carrieghmere has marched ahead without me? You know—I’m going to be half-afraid of that ?”

“Nothing can have changed much in two years,” Joanna assured him. “And nearly all invalids have that fear at some time or another—that they’re not going to like taking up their responsibilities again.”

He glanced at her obliquely. “Of course. I forgot. Even my personal reactions aren’t my own. They simply occupy a line or two in that ‘official’ casebook which you claim you don’t keep!”

The kitchen of Carrieghmere was a pleasant place. It was frequently warmer than the rest of the house, for one thing. Mrs. Carnehill would often be there, experimenting with recipes, and the more
recherché
scents of her cookery would mingle with the homely smell of cabbage and boiling bacon from which the kitchen places of Irish houses never quite escape. Joanna often thought wryly that when she was gone from here this is what she would take most pungently with her—the remembered scent of Carrieghmere which was partly of its own homeliness and partly of the aroma of burning peat and earthier smells still which is the very essence and breath of Irish air.

This evening Mrs. Carnehill was not there. But Shuan was, and so were Michael and
René
Menden.

Shuan was moodily digging grease from a crack in the table with the point of a knife. Michael sat saddle-wise across a chair, his arms folded upon the back of it.
René
stood, very upright, at Shuan’s side, looking down at her bent head.

Michael was saying: “Sure, an’ he can’t be doin’ it to ye, Miss Shuan. Wasn’t I tollin’ himself so, this very day?”

Shuan flung down the knife and looked up, pushing her fingers into the hair at each side of her face in a way that was very much her own.

“That’s what I don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t consult me—he
told
me!”

René
said: “I think he cannot have the power
—
”

And Joanna put in gently: “What’s the matter? May I know?”

They reacted characteristically.
René
bowed in her direction, Shuan took up the knife and went on with her excavations and Michael touched a cap which wasn’t there.

“ ‘Tis the terrible trouble Miss Shuan is in
—”
he began. But Shuan put in:

“It’s not ‘terrible trouble’. It’s just—awkward.”

And
—
Joanna thought, “It’s always the same with her. Except for that night of Roger’s crisis when she couldn’t do anything but turn to me for help, it’s as if she is impelled to tone down everything she feels because she can’t bear to accept sympathy from me.”

Michael accepted the check in good part. “ ‘Tis Mr. McKiley. He has told Miss Shuan that he has had a good offer for the mare she had set her heart on training for the Horse Show.”

For the moment, thinking absently in
terms
of a local fete, Joanna asked innocently: “Which Horse Show?”

She might have committed high treason. Even
René
looked pityingly at her and Shuan replied scornfully:

“The
Dublin
Horse Show, of course. In August.”

“But whose mare is it?” asked Joanna bewilderedly.

“She’s ours. We bred her here. And she’s got a first-rate chance, no matter whether Michael or I rode her.”

“Then surely Mr. McKiley
—
?”

“He says he’s got a duty to the place. That an excellent offer isn’t to be turned down for the sake of what he calls the ‘off-chance’ of her taking a prize at the Show. I can’t make him see that the honor alone
—”

“But it can’t be a question for Mr. McKiley to decide,” protested Joanna. “If the mare is Carrieghmere property a decision like that must rest with Mr. Carnehill.” She turned to
René
. “Oughtn’t you or Mrs. Carnehill to speak to him about it? Or—or would you like me to?”

She had been looking at
René
, and nothing had prepared her for Shuan’s passionate denial. The girl’s face flamed as she exclaimed: “You’ll do nothing of the kind! I’ll not have Roger’s help asked for the sake of any horse, mare or foal on the place! Nor for my sake! I’ll fight this out with Justin myself. If he insists on selling Deirdre I’ll have to make-do with one of the second-raters. But I’ll not have anyone whining to Roger for me on account of any horseflesh in Ireland!”

Joanna was so taken aback that her tone was rather cold as she replied: “You seem to forget that Mr. McKiley appears to be proposing to sell Mr. Ca
rn
ehill’s property without his consent, and that your feelings don’t matter, except to you, one way or the other.”

“But he couldn’t do it if he hadn’t Roger’s consent. If not about Deirdre in particular, obviously he knows he has the right to judge for himself about buying or selling for the estate. Otherwise he wouldn’t dare to do it. But I’ll
not
have Roger appealed to!”

Joanna said nothing, feeling that about Justin’s authority to act upon his own judgment she was probably right. After all, Roger had known about the wholesale felling of the timber in the park when she had thought he might be ignorant
of it
. So p
rob
ably there was some tacit agreement between his employers and himself, and Roger only resented his use of his authority when he believed himself slighted in not being consulted about details.

René
said gently: “I myself will speak to Mr.
McKiley
—”

And though Shuan replied moodily:

“There’s nothing you can do,
René
,” the glance she gave him was newly kind and friendly, and Joanna saw the young man flush with pleasure.

“And which of the others would ye put into training if Deirdre goes
,
Miss Shuan?” Michael was asking.

“I don’t know. Tansie or Lady of Belmont, I suppose. What do you think?”

Michael levered himself from the chair. “Could ye spare a scattered minute now, the way we’d be lookin’ at the both of them in their boxes?”

Shuan rose. But before she left the kitchen with the stable-lad she said to
René
: “Are you coming too?”

He nodded eagerly. But when the other two had gone he lingered a moment with Joanna. He said: “She is—brusque, little Shuan. But by it she means nothing. In reality she has—has got?—no, I do not understand the English ‘got’—she has the heart of gold!”

Joanna nodded and smiled. With a sort of warm glow at her own heart she was thinking: “I’m glad
René
can love Shuan like that—seeing her faults, accepting them and yet loving her all the same. Because, even if she gives him nothing in return he’ll suffer, but ultimately he’ll not lose anything. Giving everything of yourself in love
must
do something for you—it can’t all be wasted in loss and frustration and pain
...
”

But the glow faded as she remembered that Shuan had no thought for
René
because all her own were with Roger. And Roger Carnehill, if Mrs. Kimstone were to be believed, had no intentions towards Shuan other than those of the
ma
ri
age de convenance
—the cold-blooded, pre-arranged affair into which he might go, with his eyes open certainly, but for other reasons than love. Perhaps because he felt that an alliance with Shuan, who knew and loved the estate as he did, would be a good thing for Carrieghmere. Perhaps because he knew his mother wished it.

That was why he had been so resentful of Mrs. Kimstone’s curiosity. You did not, thought Joanna, mind the pryings of busybodies when secretly you knew they were far from the truth. Only when they came too “warmly” near your own privacies of thought did you want to shy away from their probing fingers
...

But she knew that she hated the idea of Roger’s meaning to—to
use
Shuan’s wholehearted devotion like that. She thought incredulously: “But he
can’t
!
For he’s not like that. He is odd and
—
indirect and sometimes intolerant. But he is
real
—with a sort of essential honesty which surely wouldn’t let him? He mustn’t marry Shuan unless he loves her as she loves him
...
”

And Joanna did not know why that last thought of all was like an iron clamp closing slowly and inexorably about her own heart.

When she went back to Roger’s room she was sorely tempted to break Shuan’s confidence and tell him about the proposed sale of the mare, Deirdre. But she found it difficult not to believe that at least in a general way the whole thing had his consent. And the girl had been so passionate in her determination not to appeal to him that Joanna said nothing. If he did not know of it already, sooner or later he would hear of it from Mrs. Carnehill or McKiley. And it was really no business of hers.

A few days later she heard from
René
that the sale had gone through.

“Shuan hasn’t said anything about it,” she told him, making a mental reservation of: “She wouldn’t
—
to me!”

“What does she feel about it, do you think?”

He hesitated. “She is brave. She says little. But I think she has begun to—hate Justin McKiley.”

Joanna thought it best not to discuss this side of the matter with
René
. Perhaps, as Dale had suggested, she had already become too deeply involved in the “personalities” of Carrieghmere. One day she must leave it all behind her. When Roger really began to move about and to take up the threads again, that day would not be far off. And for her own sake she could not allow Carrieghmere and the people in it to lay too great a hold upon her life.

So she said only: “I dare say she has begun to train one of the other mares she mentioned?”

“Yes. The Lady of Belmont. She has asked me to help with the training.” He sighed. “She would not allow it, but I cannot believe that Mr. Carnehill would have permitted the mare Deirdre to be sold if he had known
—”

Joanna sighed too. “Well, there it is,
René
. Shuan had evidently made up her mind about it and it’s too late now. You can help her best now by encouraging her with Lady of Belmont—making her accept Mr. McKiley’s challenge by determining to win!”

René
smiled faintly. “Shuan knows more about horses than I shall ever know. I cannot hope to make her believe anything if she does not know it for herself. But I will help her—
mais, sans doute
!”