Marry a Stranger (17 page)

They gave two dinner parties in that week, for one thing, returning the hospitality of the Adens, and inviting Colonel Barstoke—who was an elderly bachelor—and the local doctor and his wife on the second occasion, and Stacey managed to do great credit to herself as a hostess, and Martin’s wife, as a result of both these dinners.

Had she been a happily married wife, and had everything around her been entirely normal, with no Miss Fountain to look critically on at her efforts, no elegant, cold-eyed Vera Hunt to hope secretly—or so Stacey was sure she did hope!—that something might go wrong and cover her in humiliation, Stacey would have enjoyed having friends to the house, and making the most of them when they did come. She had a natural aptitude for making people feel at home, and she liked providing them with the sort of hospitality which she felt was only the due of anyone visiting her in her home. She could manage servants, too, and get the best out of them, as she was doing with Hannah, and Mrs. Moss, who now obliged daily in the kitchen. And when, towards the end of the week, Mrs. Elbe arrived, she knew that she had someone at last whom she could really depend on, and so pleased was she to see her that she all but threw herself into her arms when she opened the front door to her. Only the recollection of her position as the wife of an eminent London doctor prevented her from doing so—that and the fact that Vera Hunt was coming down the stairs at the time.

But afterwards, in the kitchen, over a cup of tea with Mrs. Elbe, she did not hesitate to be much more herself, and Dr. Guelder’s former London housekeeper looked at his wife very critically.

“I expected to find you looking much bonnier,” she said. “Why, you
’
re scarcely any fatter than when I saw you last, and that color in your cheeks comes and goes. Is it because you’re lonely here when the doctor’s away?”

“Oh, no, I’m perfectly all right,” Stacey hastened to assure her, “and at the moment I’m so busy that I haven’t got much time to think of myself.”

“No, I rather gathered that,” Mrs. Elbe said, with some sternness. “But why you’ve got that Miss Hunt here I can’t think—although of course I know it’s none of my business!”

Stacey hastened to pour her out another cup of tea, and said nothing. Mrs. Elbe, drinking the tea and approving of it after her long journey, thought what she would have described to one of her own kind as “her own thoughts,” and also said nothing further on the subject.

That night, almost as soon as they had finished dinner, the telephone rang sharply in the hall
.
Stacey, crossing the hall on the way to the drawing room, whither Hannah had just preceded her with the coffee tray, heard Martin answering the call, and she heard him give what she thought was a kind of resigned sigh as he said: “All right, Hurst, I’ll come! I’ll be with you in about a quarter of an hour.”

He put down the receiver, and looking up he saw Stacey, who had come to a pause in the middle of the hall, looking at him.

“That was young Hurst,” he said, “ou
r
local G.P. He’s a bit concerned about a case of his—some local woman having a baby—and I’ve promised to look in and see if I can give him any support. Don’t bother about keeping coffee for me. It would probably be stone cold, anyway, by the time I return.”

“I’ll see that there’s some fresh for you when you do return,” she told him, and for once she spoke to him completely naturally, and she even smiled at him a little. “Poor woman! I do hope everything turns out well for her. Is it a first baby?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know very much about her at all.” He stood looking down at her for a moment, thinking how well a flash of interest in her eyes became her, and a little eager flush in her cheeks. He had seen very little of her the last few days, what with escorting Vera on her early morning rides, and his walks and talks with Bruce Carter, whom he liked, and entertaining Vera in the evenings. Stacey had seemed to pass her time over the past few days flitting between the kitchen and the living rooms, always preoccupied, and always, he felt sure, very anxious that nothing should be lacking in the entertainment she was providing for his guests. And she had done remarkably well! He was quite proud of her!

And now she stood looking up at him with those large eyes of hers, and he had the feeling that she was slightly disappointed because he was going out. But
he could not be sure...

He put out his hand and lightly tweaked one of her curls, which felt as if it would like to spring back and encircle his finger.

“Well, hold the fort while I’m away. I won
’
t be longer than I can help,
”
he said.

She watched him pulling on his coat over his evening clothes and winding a white silk scarf about his neck, because the night was both raw and chill. Then, when he had let himself out of the door, and she had listened to the last of his footsteps walking round the house to the garage, she went on her way to the drawing room, where the news of his sudden summons was received with disgust on the part of Vera Hunt, and a certain amount of professional interest on that of Bruce Carter.

“Isn’t that just like some village woman to be completely inconsiderate?” Vera exclaimed indignantly. “And at this time of the evening, too! Do they imagine doctors have nothing better to do
than
to run round and attend to them at all hours?”

“This particular woman is very ill, otherwise Dr. Hurst would not have troubled Martin,” Stacey replied, with an unusual note of coldness in her voice. “And I don’t suppose she’s capable at the moment of being considerate or inconsiderate.”

“Good for you, Mrs. Guelder!” Dr. Carter exclaimed, clapping his hands approvingly. “You’re the right stuff for a doctor’s wife, and that’s one thing I can tell Martin, if he doesn’t already know it.” Stacey looked at him with a smile almost of gratitude in her eyes, but Vera’s color rose high on her cheeks, and she looked at Stacey witheringly.

“That’s all very well,” she said, “but why should Martin be summoned away from his house like this? Martin’s patients are in London, not here. Dr. Hurst should realize that.”

Stacey did not reply, but Dr. Carter said soothingly: “Oh, as to that, Miss Hunt, a doctor—any doctor—is never really on holiday, and we can always learn, you know.”

But Vera was in no mood to be placated, and she buried herself in a book until the ten o’clock news on the wireless, after which, with arched eyebrows and a coldly triumphant look in her eyes, she professed astonishment because Martin had not yet returned.

“There you are, you see!” she said. “Dr. Hurst is obviously keeping Martin hanging about because he can’t cope with the case himself! And that’s incompetence, even if the woman isn’t inconsiderate!” Stacey looked at Dr. Carter, and he responded by suggesting that it would be very nice if they could have some more coffee, and she went out to the kitchen to see what she could do about it.

But when the grandfather clock in the hall chimed eleven, and then twelve delicate strokes of midnight, and still Martin had not returned, Bruce Carter suddenly roused himself and announced that, if no one objected, he was going upstairs to bed.

“This looks like being a whole night job, and you’d be wise, Mrs. Guelder, if you went to bed too—and you also, Miss Hunt, if you value your beauty sleep,” he added.

“As to that,” Vera informed him coldly, “I seldom go to bed before one or two o’clock in the morning when I'm in London—and frequently
much
later—but since there seems to be nothing very much to do here
...
” She had discarded the book, which was not sufficiently sophisticated for her taste, and stood up. “Poor Martin! What an evening!” she observed, and swept with much grace to the door.

Stacey, although she went to her room, did not find sleep come easily to her. At first she did not undress but sat before her dressing table studying her reflection in the mirror, and listening for the sound of Martin’s car drawing up on the gravel sweep outside. Then she slipped off her evening gown and put on a dressing gown, and sat down again before the mirror and gave her hair a thorough brushing. But after listening to the hall clock chime another hour after midnight she lay down on the outside of her bed, under the eiderdown, and despite her intention not to do so she must have fallen asleep, because she was awakened by the noise of wheels crunching over the gravel towards the garage.

She slid hastily from beneath the eiderdown and, still partly bemused by sleep, stood listening to the careful opening and closing of the great front door. Without even putting on her light or looking at herself in a mirror—for her thoughts were all for Martin, not for herself—she moved to her own door and, turning the handle cautiously, peeped through the crack until she could see the oak staircase bathed in the light from the swinging chandelier in the hall. Footsteps were moving down there in the hall, and she stole silently to the head of the stairs and looked down at the tall figure of her husband somewhat wearily divesting himself of his heavy overcoat, and tossing it onto an ancient oak settle with a gesture which proved he was far more tired than he would ever have been likely to admit.

Wraith-like though her movements were, he must have heard them, for he looked up at her suddenly, and he shook his head at sight of her standing there in her dusky peach dressing gown with the little upstanding collar which acted as a frame for her face.

“Why aren’t you in bed?” he demanded sternly. “And why, also, aren’t you asleep?”

She moved swiftly down the stairs until she stood beside him, and ignoring his questions she said quickly: “I promised to keep some coffee hot for you, but you were such a long time that we decided to go to bed. I have been in bed, and I think I’ve been asleep, but now I’m awake I’m going to heat that coffee for you. Go into the library and I’ll bring it to you there.”

She felt that he was having a mental struggle with himself—a conviction that he ought to order her back to bed fighting an overwhelming desire for the coffee, and to her relief the coffee won. He smiled at her with a kind of desperate tiredness in his eyes, and his lips had the rather twisted, wry look about them which she had so often noticed before.

“Well, in that case I’ll come through to the kitchen with you. There’s no need for you to carry a tray into the library,” he told her. “And the kitchen will at least be warm, whereas the library fire is almost certain to be out. And that dressing gown you’re wearing doesn’t look particularly thick to me.”

She said nothing, but turned and led the way to the kitchen, he switching on all the necessary lights for her, and when they reached it a delightful sensation of warmth stole out to greet them, for the big boiler fire had been well stoked up for the night. Some quite savory odors of cooking still hung about the large, white-tiled space, and Hannah’s small tabby kitten was asleep on top of the range.

Martin Guelder picked up the kitten and put it on his shoulder while Stacey moved about efficiently preparing the coffee. When it was ready something inspired her to ask him whether he was hungry.

“I am,” he admitted at once. “In fact, I’m starving. I don’t feel as if I’d ever had any dinner.” Whereupon she disappeared once more into the larder, and reappeared with a plateful of tempting-looking ham sandwiches, which certainly caused his eyes to glisten. As she poured him out his coffee, and he took a seat at the kitchen table, he uttered a sigh of mingled pleasure and weariness.

“I didn’t think I was coming back to be waited on,” he told her. “And certainly not by you, at this hour of the night—or, rather, morning! And although I know I ought to have sent you back to bed, I simply hadn’t the strength of mind to do so.
”
She had
sunk
down on a stool in front of the shiny black range, and she certainly formed a most pleasing picture with her tumbled dark curls and her slightly flushed cheeks, and the exquisite dressing gown standing out stiffly around her like a crinoline. “Thank you, Stacey! You’re a very good doctor’s wife.”

That was the second time she had heard that in only a few hours, and it pleased her. Her shadowed violet eyes glowed.

“And how is the patient Dr. Hurst called you in to see?” she asked. “Is she—is she going to be all right? And has the baby arrived yet?”

“A boy,” he answered, replying to the last part of her question first. “A great, lusty lump of a child weighing nearly ten pounds, and thriving at the moment splendidly. The mother”—he paused, and then absentmindedly took another sandwich—“the mother had a bad time, but she’s going to be all right, too.” He did not tell her that at one time it very nearly had not been all right, because there was something so sensitive, and, somehow, defenceless, about her upturned face, that he didn’t want to see any further shadows cast upon it. As it was, it was far too serious a face for a young married woman with few cares, and a husband who made absolutely no demands upon her. “But I’m glad Hurst called me in,” he added.

She watched the diminishing plate of sandwiches, and having declined any herself decided that she would have a cup of coffee, and as she sat sipping it she saw that his eyes were resting upon her with an unusually sombre look in them.

“I couldn’t help being a little bit horrified, however,” he told her, “by the conditions inside that cottage. There seemed to have been little or no preparation made for the arrival of the child, and there are several other children, most of whom se
e
m to be toddlers still. The woman’s mother is coming to take charge of them tomorrow—or as soon as she can arrive from the north of England—but in the meantime the husband is having a heavy time doing his best to cope with the situation. I’m going to look in again tomorrow morning, and I was wondering
—
”

“Yes?” she asked.

“The district nurse is doing all she can, but she’s got little time to spare, and it suddenly occurred to
me
—”

He was looking at her again, and the expression on his face was speculative, while at the same time that faint smile slid into his eyes.

“I wonder whether you’d hate very much to come along with me? Of course, you wouldn’t be required to do anything—or, that is to say, nothing you’d dislike doing. But the children are so small, and the poor wretched mother has gone through enough without worrying too much, and if you could only stay with them for half an hour you might give them a little confidence until the grandmother arrives...
”

“Of
course
,”
she answered at once, and her whole face flushed with pleasure because he had asked her. “Why, there might be quite a lot of things I could do. I’m quite good with small children, and I like them, too—and there might be something the mother would like me to do for her
...
”

“There might,” he agreed, but he wondered what the woman he had last seen lying with toil-roughened hands and exhausted, not very attractive face in her humble cottage bed, with the baby lying on a pillow beside her, would think of this slender vision with the heart-shaped face and the enormous, thoughtful eyes who was his wife. Not that he forgot that she was a doctor’s daughter, and this sort of thing should not come as much amiss to her as it almost certainly would come to—well, he could only think of Vera Hunt, and he was quite certain that no consideration whatsoever would induce Vera to so much as set foot inside a cottage where the atmosphere was thick
with the mingled fumes of paraffin oil and somewhat stale cooking, and quite a large collection of rather unwashed humanity.

But Stacey had a look in her eyes sometimes which he could only describe as intensely humane—and he knew that she could be strangely earnest, and she was not one to flinch from unpleasantness. She had worked for Vera Hunt until she had collapsed on her feet, when at least she might have uttered a small complaint. But she had not complained.

“Don’t forget I used to do a lot of things with, and for, Daddy, that were very similar to the things you’re asking me to do now,” she told him. “In those days he never hesitated if he wanted someone to prove useful, and as I was always more or less handy I got many tasks handed out to me that I didn’t always like. Not that the fact that I didn’t like doing them ever stopped me doing them,” she added hastily. “And, mostly, I was only too pleased to help.”

“Yes; I think you would be,” he said slowly, and then he glanced at the large kitchen clock and noticed that it was practically three in the morning, and he rose hastily and, putting out both hands, pulled her to her feet also. “And now up to bed, young lady, or you’ll look an exhausted prima-donna in the morning, and you won’t feel a bit like indulging in any good works. And thank you a thousand times for spoiling your night's rest in order to look after my creature comforts. I should probably have gone to bed hungry and cold and too tired to sleep, but for you. Now I think there’s every danger that I shall oversleep tomorrow morning.”