The Little Doctor (12 page)

Nor did she encounter Valerie. The dale seemed curiously empty, but she did hear that Max had engaged a young locum to take over for him during the two weeks embracing Christmas and the New Year.

Her own plans were still unmade. She
had time
off, but had still not decided
where to go.
Anywhere would do. It didn’t really matter, she thought. Which was foolish, of course, but it was the way she felt.

Allingham was more empty than she could have imagined, with Nicholas still in America and the prospect of a hospital Christmas looming ahead.

That, too, was a peculiar reaction on her part. She had always enjoyed Christmas in hospital, throwing herself into the festivities with a zest that had surprised many of her colleagues and endeared her anew to her patients. They were mostly children, and she loved them all, even the difficult ones. She thought of the Christmas tree they always had and Nicholas dressing up as Santa Claus, because the name was his by right. Nicholas, so patient and understanding, so ready to wait. But would he wait forever?

The week before she was to begin her own leave, the caravan was due at Kirby Marton.

“There’s a terribly sparse attendance this morning,” Olive Baxter observed, looking in at the consulting room door. “And it’s not all that cold.”

Jane saw only two patients in the first hour.

“I’m just twiddling my thumbs here!” she remarked when Joe came to the waiting-room steps. “I wonder what’s the matter with everybody this morning?”

“I’ve been along to the post office,” Joe said. “They’ve
g
ot some sort of epidemic in the dale. Nobody knows rightly what it is.” Jane’s thoughts flew straight to Max, yet she could not presume to think that she was needed.

When she saw him an hour or two later, however, she was not so sure. He looked as if he had been up all night, and the night before that.

“Max,” she asked urgently, “is it really an epidemic?”

He smiled a trifle grimly.

“Not quite, but it
’
s about next door to being one. Enteritis has spread pretty well right through the dale. I’ve reported it, of course, and I
’
ve not got to the source of it yet. I thought I’d cleared everything up so efficiently, too, ready for young Bellerby to take over on Monday.”

“Of course—your holiday!” Jane remembered, knowing that it would not really matter to him. “It’s unlucky, Max—and terribly disappointing for Valerie.”

He smoothed his hand quickly over his hair.

“I couldn’t possibly leave a locum to cope with this,” he said. “Bellerby’s all right with the general work, but handing over an epidemic into the bargain hardly seems fair. Besides—”

“You wouldn’t go, Max, anyway,” Jane said. “I know you too well.”

He smiled at that.

“Neither would you.”

“I wish I could offer to help, but I wouldn’t be
you.
Not to your patients,” she decided. “Couldn’t you get help at least?”

He shook his head and she knew that she shouldn’t have asked. He had come to the caravan and was standing in the cramped space of the tiny consulting room, filling it to capacity, it seemed.

“I came to see if you had any cotton wool to spare,” he said. “My own supply has run out and I can’t get any more through till tomorrow.”

She found what he wanted, pencilling a note for Joe and marking it “emergency.”

“If you’d like me to stay,” she offered, “I can send the caravan back to Allingham. I really ought to be able to do something,” she added.

“There is something you can do,” he said unexpectedly.

Surprised, she turned from her desk to look at him.

“Yes, Max?” she asked.

“You could—go with Valerie.”

Jane stared back at him incredulously. She had forgotten about Valerie in the more urgent need of his patients and, to be truthful, of Max himself. It did not matter about a child’s disappointment, because if Valerie was fretting over her lost holiday, she could be no more than a child at heart.

“I promised to take her to Switzerland,” Max went on steadily. “This means a great deal to her, Jane. She’s been—content, planning it all these weeks. It’s like going back on one’s word to a sick child.”

Why a
sick
child? A
q
uick rush of anger blurred Jane’s vision, blunting her reasoning. Valerie wasn’t sick. She was wayward and petulant and thoroughly spoiled, and Max was utterly wrong to give in to her.

But how could she tell him so when he had asked for her help? It was the help she had offered. “I really ought to be able to do something.”

“Tell me what you want me to do,” she said.

Before he told her Max said: “Thank you, Jane,” with so much
feeling and so much relief in his voice that she knew she would never
b
e able to back out, no matter what he asked of her.

“I’ve settled everything—booked i
n
at a suitable hotel,” he explained. “Valerie wanted to go to St. Moritz, but she’s settled for a smaller place. I have the plane reservations and all the other details are in order. It would only remain substituting your name for mine.” He looked down directly into her eyes. “I know I’m asking a lot of you, Jane,” he added, “but I’d feel at ease in my mind if you were with Valerie.”

“You could, of course, cancel this present booking and go out later on,” she found herself suggesting with just the faintest trace of irritability in her voice.

Max turned away.

“I couldn’t do that to her, Jane,” he said in an odd, strained undertone. “There’s too much at stake. Valerie has built so much into this trip. I can’t—I just mustn’t disappoint her.”

Jane wanted to cry out that he was being a fool, pandering to Valerie’s every whim in this way. It was a form of weakness she could not understand in him, something which only another man might be able to explain. Loving Valerie to distraction, he was even willing to submerge his own strong personality to keep his wife happy. Whatever Valerie’s wish, it was necessary to grant it.

What would he have done about the holiday, Jane wondered, if she had not been available to go with Valerie? With an epidemic on his hands, would he have sacrificed every rigid principle of his profession and left the dale to its fate so that his wife would not be disappointed?

Jane, who had watched him take the Hippocratic Oath, could not believe that he would ever contemplate such a thing.

“Does Valerie know?” she asked.

“I said that I might ask you to take my place.”

“I see.” Methodically Jane began to sort out the things on her desk. “Do you think I ought to see her before we go?”

"If you wouldn’t mind.” He looked immensely relieved, some of the strain already lifted from his face. “She’s been getting things ready for weeks—never really been far afield.” There was relief in his voice. “Clothes give her a great deal of pleasure,” he mused with a faintly indulgent smile. She seems to have run the gamut of the color schemes, but so long as it makes her happy—” He
p
aused, looking at her again in that queer way that had puzzled
h
er so often during the past two months. “I realize I’m being very selfish over this, Jane,” he added apologetically. “You surely must have made plans of your own?”

“I haven’t,” she admitted honestly. “I’ve toyed with several ideas and not liked any of them. Quite frankly, I was rather at a loose end. There was Christmas at the hospital, of course, and Nicholas coming back—”

He looked down at her.

“I’d forgotten about that,” he said. “Pell will be back from America. I ought to have remembered, Jane.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jane tried to say lightly. “Nicholas will have lots to do. Think of all the lectures he
’ll
be asked to give! And he’ll be a positive lion at cocktail parties, having ‘done’ the States!” There was a brief silence.

“Are you in love with him, Jane?”

“I like him very much.”

“And you’re going to marry him?”

“I—I suppose so.

“Did you
h
ave anything definite planned—for Christmas?”

“I promised to give him my answer when he came back.”

“And I’ve made that impossible now?”

“Only for a week or two. I don’t think Nicholas feels that it is so very urgent.” She smiled a little. “Although he did say that he would like to be settled in a home of his own before he reached forty!”

His mouth tightened, but he said immediately, “You must tell me when to congratulate him.”

Jane chose to ignore that.

“Will Valerie be at Marton Heights this afternoon?” she asked.

“Yes, I’m quite sure she will. As I said, she hasn’t gone out a great deal these past few weeks, and now she’s mortally afraid of this epidemic, in case she goes down with enteritis before she can get away.”

Jane’s back was toward him and she smiled wryly. It was typical of Valerie. So much fear and concern for herself!

“I don’t think she’ll catch enteritis,” she said briefly.

When she reached Marton Heights, she found the house deserted. It was almost four o’clock and growing dark; yet there were no lights visible in any of the downstairs rooms. Idly and not very hopefully, she wandered around to the back door to
encounter Timson, the chauffeur, polishing Valerie’s car in the stable yard.

“
I
thought everyone was out,” she began as the stocky little
Yorkshireman saluted her. “I rang the front door bell, but there was no answer.”

“The servants are all off into Richmond,” he informed her. “We all get a day to do our Christmas shopping. The doctor insists on that.” He glanced toward the oak door set in the high brick wall surrounding the yard. “Mrs. Kilsyth should be back any minute now, ma’am. She went off shortly after lunch with Mr. Jakes.”

The information hit Jane between the eyes.

“You’re—quite sure, Timson?”

He returned her searching scrutiny with a steady gaze.

“Quite, ma’am.”

“Will you te
l
l Mrs. Kilsyth I called?” she asked. “Will you say it was about going to Switzerland together? She’ll understand that.” Getting back into, her car, she heard the distant sound of horses’ hooves clattering over the metalled road on the far side of the wall. Two horses, she decided, from the regular clip-clop as the, riders approached the wooden door, but she would not wait to meet Valerie and her companion.

With all this anger in her heart her tongue would surely have run away with her. She could not bear the suggestion of humiliation where Max was concerned, and the sense of furtiveness and intrigue about Valerie’s friendship with Edward Jakes made her feel sick.

Driving swiftly, she reached Allingham and the flat in just under an hour, a time which Nicholas would have considered a record for her.

Before she had taken her key out of the lock, the telephone jangled shrilly across the hall.

“Hullo there, Jane!” Valerie’s voice came clearly over the line. “I’m sorry I missed you. I was out riding. Timson told me you’d called.”

“I thought we might have had a chat about Switzerland,” Jane answered a trifle dryly. “I’d just seen Max.”

“Isn’t it devastating?” Valerie said. “Poor darling! He’s all tangled up in this dreadful epidemic, Jane. He’s far, far too conscientious, you know. Of course you’re going to say that a doctor can’t be too conscientious,” she ran on, “but there are limits! Max hasn’t had a decent holiday for two years, and now this has to come along just when we were all ready to go! Max is dreadfully, dreadfully disappointed, but he may just be able to get out for t
h
e final weekend. He won’t commit himself, of course—Max never will where his patients’ welfare is concerned—but he thinks he ought to have broken the back of this thing by then. It’s horrible, isn
’
t
it,” she added fretfully. “All this frustration over such a little thing!”

“An epidemic isn’t a little thing,” Jane was forced to remind her tartly. “But Max will cope.”

“What’s this Beverley man like?” Valerie asked. “Or is it Bellerby?”

“He’s a good enough doctor, I think.”

“Oh, Jane! Don’t be so stuffy!” Valerie’s laughter floated back to her. “I mean, is he young, presentable, or what?”

“He wears a false nose and he’s got no eyelashes!” Jane informed her brusquely. “Otherwise he’s quite normal.”

“Jane, you are funny!” Valerie gurgled. “You’ve got such a
p
eculiar sense of humor. Well now, about Switzerland. Next to
h
aving Max with me, I’d love to go with you. Do you ski?”

“Not very well, but I can get around.”

“Oh—wonderful! I should hate to go out with a beginner. You’ll hire your skis there, of course? You really haven’t a lot of time to prepare.”

“
I shall manage,” Jane said.

“I’m so relieved that I’m not going to be disappointed.” Valerie heaved a deep, contented sigh.
“
After all my preparations and all these dreary weeks up here alone, I should have died of frustration, I’m sure.”

“One doesn’t die of these things,” Jane said, still a trifle dryly. “All the same, Valerie, I hope we can have a happy enough holiday together.”

“Oh, I’m sure we can,” Valerie decided immediately. “So long as you don’t intend to act jailer! Perhaps Max feels that you will be very strict and he can trust you to see that I don’t go off the rails?”

“
I hope he can trust me,” Jane said.

Valerie dismissed the remark with a brief silence.

“I’ll come down to Allingham at the weekend,” she promised, “and we can go into all the final details. Max will fix up everything else. He’s most frightfully efficient.”

“Ring me when you want to come,” Jane said.

“Oh—Jane!” There was sudden urgency in Valerie’s tone. “You needn’t mention to Max about this afternoon, if you see him. He—it would only worry him to think I was riding with Eddie. He doesn’t trust Eddie’s horses!”