Doctor Raoul's Romance (14 page)

There was another conference. Then a nurse came to Adrien. “Will you follow me, please, mam’selle?”

Adrien followed the nurse through the long white corridors, so like those of an English hospital, and yet with a subtle difference she felt but could not have explained. But she was not a nurse now. She was a girl going to the bedside of the man she loved, who was desperately ill. She must get through to him somehow, even if he was unconscious and assure him of her love, give him the will to live.

At last they came to the private ward where he lay.

“Only a few minutes, mam’selle,” the nurse warned.

Adrien nodded. How often had she said that to visitors, but always with such compassion in her heart. Did this nurse feel that way too? Her face was stern, but yes, her eyes were kindly.

Then Adrien forgot everything except Raoul. She approached his bed, and stood there looking down at him. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow and irregular.

“Raoul,” she whispered. “Raoul.”

He did not move. She bent over him and took the hand lying so motionless on the bedclothes.

“Raoul darling, it’s me, Adrien. I ... love
you
...
”

Something stirred in his face.

“Raoul darling, I love you,” she repeated.

Slowly the gray eyes opened, the lips smiled.

“Adrien
...
”
he murmured.

“Yes, Raoul darling. Adrien. Your ex-mock-
fiancée
. I love you, darling, love you. You were right, I loved you long before I realized it. And if you’ll put up with me, I’ll never leave you again!”

It was still an uphill road Raoul had to take. Under the care of the doctors at his own hospital, Raoul became much better, able to walk short distances without getting tired, suffering more rarely from the blinding headaches that were part of his illness.

They had a quiet little civil marriage in Val d’Argent. Not a religious marriage yet. That could wait until they were ready to be husband and wife in reality and not in name only.

There followed fruitless visits to doctors in various parts of Europe. Each hopeless consultation became etched into Adrien’s mind.

“By all the laws of biology known to me, my friend, you should have been dead months ago,” one doctor had told Raoul.

“Really, they might have more sympathy!” Adrien exclaimed once, in Vienna, after what had struck her as a particularly gruelling session with a very eminent German physician. But Raoul only smiled.

“Do you think the doctor liked telling us what he did? Did you see his eyes, Adrien? You are a nurse, my love—you should know better than to condemn him for lack of sympathy. Did you find it easy to tell a patient, or a patient’s wife, that there was no hope? That no cure had been found for his disease? That all the medical knowledge in the world could not help him?”

“I’m sorry, darling. I had forgotten that. But it’s so hard to see you suffer like this.”

“Yes, it is hard, my little Adrien. I have asked too much of you. Always I feared that, when I married, I should ask too much of my wife.”

Adrien smiled, “but you didn’t ask anything, darling. Only my love.”

After six months of fruitless wandering, Raoul came to a decision. It was a lovely June evening, and they were walking together through the streets of Rome, when he suddenly took her arm and said with quiet determination, “I’ve had enough, Adrien. I’m going home.”

She looked at him, frightened.

“Darling, what do you mean? You’re not going to give up?”

He shook his head.

“I am determined to find a cure myself, Adrien. After all, I was a heart specialist. Now I shall change my
métier
.
I shall become a specialist in rare African diseases. And you, my darling wife, shall be my assistant. I hereby appoint you, with this kiss.”

His tone was almost gay. And Adrien, with his lips on hers, felt her heart almost break with love and pride.

She smiled at him.

“Right, darling. We’ll do as you say. We’ll go home, to Paris. We’ll fight together, you and I, and something tells me we’ll win.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A
year later, once again on a bright June day, a party was held at Val d’Argent, to celebrate the marriage of Dr. Raoul Dubois and Miss Adrien Grey at the English church at Versailles.

Blanche was there, with Pierre, a bright ruby shining on her
finger. She had just finished her training at the drama college and was wild with excitement because she had been offered a small part in a West End production.

Frances had grown into a tall, thin, rather serious little English schoolgirl with a sudden disarming grin.

Geoffrey had changed very little. Indeed his first term report from prep school had given his mother considerable alarm.

“Really, he seems a little demon, for seven!” she confided to Adrien. “I’m quite worried about him.”

But Adrien only smiled. “He’ll come around,” she said. “Give him time to settle down.”

Denise de Neuf surprised everybody by coming to the wedding. She had been away from the chateau for more than a year, staying near relatives in the south. She had even sent her little boys to school there. But now she had come back with a new secret little smile. Adrien and Raoul both hoped very much that somebody from Provence, land of romance and troubadours, had brought that smile to her lips.

Still in her white brocade and veil and orange-blossom wreath, Adrien glanced up at Raoul as he stood beside her, and involuntarily her arm pressed against his side. He was here—her husband. With restored health beaming from his bright gray eyes, his figure energetic and erect, and only the white curls in his hair and a few deep lines in his face to show the gravity of the illness through which he had passed.

Adrien would never forget those last few days of suspense—that hour when, face set, eyes shining, he had taken her in his arms and held her very close, and then shut himself up in his laboratory to inject, into his bloodstream, the serum which she knew might just as easily bring death as life.

But when she went to him, his face was peaceful, and his breath came easily. She took his pulse, anxiously, and he smiled at her tenderly, and ran his fingers through her dark hair.

“Steadier, isn’t it?” he asked. “In spite of the fact that it’s you who are taking it? And the fever’s going, Adrien. I think ... I think this is it.”

Each day, as he continued with the injections, he became visibly better. At first Adrien could not believe this sudden, wild happiness. But at the end of the month they both knew that Raoul would be restored to health.

The reception was over at last, and Adrien changed into her cream going-away dress. And they were off at last, amidst a shower of confetti and good wishes.

In the car, Raoul turned to her, “Are you sure you want to spend our honeymoon in Paris, darling?”

“Where else?” she whispered. “Oh yes, I know it’s going to be our future home as well, but what does that matter? We’ve been around the world together,” she said, “but in Paris we were happiest.”

That night they walked by the river, and watched, once again, how it gathered all the lights of sky and city and water into itself. And then she sighed with ecstasy.

“No more make-believe love,” she said. “It’s the real thing now. For Nicholas and Gillian. For Blanche and Pierre. I hope for Denise and her ‘southerner.’ And for us.”

“Especially for us,” said Raoul.

His arm tightened around her, and he kissed her. A new kind of kiss, a kiss that gathered up the past and looked towards the future.

“Darling—my darling little Adrien. Did I not tell you that our love was never make-believe?”

She laughed up at him.

“I can’t think why I was so long believing you.”

“Never mind. You believe it now. And you are my wife, ‘for better, for worse.’ You can’t get away from me now.”

“Do you think I’m likely to try?” said Adrien.

Paris, city of lovers, wrapped its cloak of lights and shadows softly around them.

Arm in arm, cheek to cheek, they came
home
...