The Little Doctor (20 page)

She found Valerie lying in a hollow at the foot of the hill. Crumpled and bruised, she looked like a discarded flower half-hidden in a tangle of dead heather. The yellow sweater was torn near the shoulder and the bright hair had tumbled over the stubborn face. Valerie’s eyes were closed, her teeth clenched, as if in these last seconds she had fought a desperate battle with the great horse who must now be well on his way to Whinstanley Hall.

“Val—!”

Jane dropped to her knees beside the
inert figure. Valerie was still breathing. It was a ragged, whimpering sound, and Jane’s hand found the resistant heart with fear stabbing into her own.

Valerie was badly injured. There was no doubt about that.

“Can I give you any help?”

The voice shocked her, but she turned with relief to confront the man who had come so unexpectedly on the scene. He was a small, thickly-set man, possibly a farm worker or even the farmer himself, and he had kind, understanding eyes. He also looked strong enough to carry a frail burden for miles, although he was not a young man.

“I saw her riding over the moor,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the ridge. “I was up there on the hill with some sheep. I’m from the Spinney Farm yonder,” he added. “You were at the house with your car a while since, weren’t you? My name’s Fielding. They’re expecting my first grandchild down there any minute.
”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Jane was still bending over Valerie, her hands travelling professionally over her slim body, finding the damage she had already feared might be there. “I’m not sure whether we can move her yet, Mr. Fielding,” she
a
dded. “Certainly we couldn’t get her as far as the Hall.”

“The farm’s only a stone’s throw,” the farmer pointed out. “I’ll fetch something to carry her on.”

"I think that would be best.”

He had returned before Jane had finished her examination. There was another man with him, a laborer who looked terrified to death. He stood back, his face averted, as Jane and the farmer eased Valerie on to the improvised stretcher they had brought.

Silently they made their way to the farm. It was no more than ten minutes’ walk, but by the time they got there Valerie was dead.

There had been no flicker of consciousness, no knowledge of pain. The little clenched teeth had relaxed and Valerie’s lips had parted, as if in a smile.

They laid the stretcher on a wooden settle inside the farmhouse door. The farmer looked down at Valerie as he took out a handkerchief to mop his brow. The laborer had already disappeared.

“We knew her,” he said briefly. “She was a regular fly-by-night was that one. The funny thing was,” he added slowly, “you couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. She had a lot of money, but she never seemed to have any peace.”

Jane stood quite still. From somewhere at the back of the house, on the floor above them, came a thin, high-pitched wail—the first strangely-pathetic cry of a newly-born child.

“Life and death,” the farmer said gruffly. “At the same moment under the same roof. Perhaps she would have been better with a child to look after.”

Jane found it impossible to answer him.

“I must get word through to Marton Heights,” she said vaguely. “Have you a telephone?”

“There’s a box at the foot of the road. We haven’t the phone in the house.”

Dazed by the rapidity of events, Jane made her way back along the rutted track to where it joined the dale road. She had not even thought of what she was going to say to Max when she dialled his number.

The bell seemed to ring and ring interminably before the receiver was finally lifted at the other end. She heard Max’s familiar voice.

“Marton Heights.”

“Max—this is Jane.” Her own voice sounded miles away. “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you.”

“It’s Val,
”
he guessed immediately. “Where are you, Jane?”

“At the Spinney Farm, The people are called Fielding.”

There was the briefest pause.

“On Jakes’ estate,” Max said slowly at last. “I’ll get there as, fast as I can.”

He had rung off before she was able to give him the rest of her message. He did not know that Valerie was dead.

Blindly she walked back up the track. I can’t wait, she thought.
I
have to get away. But she knew that she had to wait for Max to come.

In her absence they had moved Valerie to a small bedroom on the ground floor adjoining the kitchen, a maid’s room with simple furniture and a little window overlooking the eternal hills.

When Max came in he had obviously been told the truth. He seemed not to see Jane, going straight to the bed and standing there almost as if he had been in the room before. Almost as if he had expected this.

Then, s
u
ddenly, he knelt down and buried his ravaged face in the white counterpane.

Jane drew back, closing the door between them.

CHAPTER
TEN

“It
’s a question of decision, Jane, whether you’re absolutely sure of what you want to do.”

Nicholas helped her out of his car. She was on her way to Joe Otley’s wedding with Olive Baxter. It was the end of May and Jane had seen nothing of Max since that dreadful day in the dale when Valerie had been carried home from the Spinney Farm.

There had been many rumors. Marton Heights was to be sold; another doctor was coming to take over Max’s practice in the village; Max himself was going abroad. Once he had phoned her to thank her for her help when Valerie had needed her, but their conversation had been
b
rief.

“I have to go on working, Nick,” she said. “I wish it could be here, at Allingham, but I don’t know. As you say, I have to make the decision—quite soon.”

“Which means you still haven’t changed your mind about marrying me,” he reflected.

She hated herself for hesitating even for the fraction of a second before she said, “I wish I could see you settled and happy with someone else, Nick.”

“That isn’t a fair answer, but we’ll let it pass.” He paused at the gateway to the church. “Give them my good wishes, will you? And Jane, when you’re sure, come and tell me.”

She wanted to be sure. It would have been so easy, so comforting, to accept Nick’s love.

Other guests were following her up the path to the church door. It was a simple little gathering of people waiting for the bride they all knew
and
loved.

Standing, at last, Jane watched Olive walk slowly down the aisle op her father’s arm, nervous but in no way hesitant, going to stand by Joe’s side, confident and sure of what she wanted from life. Olive had always been in love with Joe, she supposed. They had worked together with the Unit and had most other things in common. Joe had been Olive’s first love.

The words of the marriage ceremony, ages old and beautiful, drifted through the quiet church, sinking deeply into her distressed mind. She heard Joe make his responses in a firm, clear voice, and then Olive.

“
Wilt thou obey him and serve him, love, honor and keep him in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so tong as ye both s
hall
live?
”

Outside in the sunshine birds were singing in the elms around the churchyard wall. The bell above her head began to ring, chime after chime tumbling out from the old gray tower.

It was then that she saw Max. He was standing just outside the gate, in a slant of sunshine, looking toward her.

“I thought you would be here,” he said. “I saw you going into the church.”

He held open the door of his car and she got in. Without speaking he drove to the edge of the town.

“Jane,” he said, when he pulled up on the brow of a hill. “I’m leaving Marton. I think it’s the best thing for me to do. I’m starting over again.” He turned, looking at her as he had done all these weary years ago. “Is there any hope—any at all—that you would come with me?”

“I am with you, Max,” she said softly. “I have been—always.”

He took her into his arms, gently yet possessively.

“Jane!” he whispered. “Jane! I think I’ve always known that.
When I married Val it was because she needed me, because her father had put her in my care for the few years she had to live. There was no other way. She had no one else, and I owed him that, at least.”

“If you had told me,” she said, her lips close to his throat. “If only you had told me, Max.”

“
How could I? It wouldn’t have been fair to you. The other way was best. You had a chance then to forget me, to make your own happiness. If you had found it with Nicholas Pell, I should have tried to be content.”

“This is the only way,” she whispered. “We belong together.”

He kissed her, passionately now, all the love
and
longing of so many years pouring out to encompass her in the warmth of belonging.