[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.‘No, darling, Miss Kinglake,’ Catherine said primly.‘And she’s been pretty cagey about this rich man of hers, I can tell you! And all the time we’d felt sorry for her because she seems so alone.You just can’t tell, can you? They say it’s the quiet ones who are the deepest!’Mark knew Catherine pretty well, but she seemed so certain of her facts, and Gwenny had been cool to him, to say the least.Any friendliness had come from him to her, never in reverse.He had to be honest: her own manner had been consistent from the first time they had met on the old drive at Fairmead, and she had shown him nothing but hostility.Hostility for the stranger poaching on her preserves, hostility towards the man who appeared to have done outrageous things to her family; and now she had made it clear that she didn’t like being treated by him and wished she could go home.That much he had gathered, the last time he had visited her.On top of all that, Catherine’s remarks didn’t seem unreasonable.He altered his mind and went to see Tilda Sansom instead of Gwenny.Gwenny heard his voice across the passage and waited for him to appear, but he didn’t come.She wanted badly to ask him if he had had any hand in the buying of Mrs.Yeedon’s cottage, or whether it had just happened that for some reason best known to the property company interested, that cottage had been bought and Mrs.Yeedon had been given permission to stay in it for the rest of her life.Of course such things did happen sometimes when there was the possibility of an outcry locally, if it looked as if a big company was going to cause hardship to just one local person who was well-known.Yet it was odd, wasn’t it? She was so worried about Mrs.Yeedon, and Mrs.Yeedon was so fretful about her future—and now it had become mysteriously straightened out?But on cold sober thinking, Gwenny had to admit that it would really be no concern of Mark Bayfield’s.He had seemed hardly interested when she had told him about her fears for the old woman and the cottage.All he was concerned with was his personal battle with the pneumonia, not the person who was suffering from it.He had said as much.He had said as much when he had been condemning sentimentality about the patients.No, Gwenny thought, he wouldn’t be the one to try and keep the cottage for the old woman, so she had nothing to thank him for.He was only interested in marrying Catherine Allen, and buying Willow House for her.Gwenny loathed her, loathed Mark Bayfield, loathed the whole Bayfield family—and she turned her attention to wondering who could possibly be sending Gwenny Kinglake those expensive daily floral offerings.Who could the rich man be?But next day the flowers didn’t come.CHAPTER XINow a different phase began.The flowers left a big gap and everyone talked about it.Cosgrove said, ‘Hello, no flowers today?’ and Catherine Allen stared blankly at the space where they had been, and raised her eyebrows as high as they would go.‘What, has he deserted you, little one? Had a row, perhaps?’ And Sister commented on the stoppage of the flow.Sister had been glad of them.As each fresh bouquet arrived, she took the one from the day before and put it on the wards.Now there were only the wilting ones from yesterday and nothing to replace them.Part of the different pattern was that the R.M.O.never came into the room alone, but brought several other people with him—Sister or Staff, Sir Giles, or his own houseman.Gwenny never had a chance of speaking to him personal and private any more.Well, she asked herself savagely, why want to speak to him personal and private, since he was going steady with Catherine Allen? Catherine so cock-a-hoop that she practically danced around the place, and didn’t flirt with any man, except the R.S.O.and that, Gwenny considered, was positively indecent.She saw him go to the room Tilda was in (of course, he was still looking after that broken arm of Tilda’s, she supposed!) and Catherine stopped in front of him at the door, and they looked at each other with the special message-sending—message-receiving look of people who were secretly in love.Gwenny had seen it before, and had often wondered what it would be like: what it would be like to look at Mark Bayfield like that, and to have Mark Bayfield look back at her like it.There she was again! Dreaming about him, when he was to marry Catherine Allen presumably, because hadn’t he acquired Willow House for her? And Catherine Allen was flirting with Arthur Peake! Gwenny was so angry, she felt like saying something to Arthur Peake about being disloyal to the R.M.O., only she never got the chance.Arthur Peake never came into her room any more, after those first few times which mysteriously coincided with the appearance of Catherine Allen with a water jug or tray.She lay staring at the ceiling, feeling at times very ill, and at others almost her old self.It came and went, the fever which she now shared with Tilda, and she often wondered if Tilda hated the onset of the burning fire that raged through her, and the shivering afterwards, the pains in the joints, and the desperate craving to fall asleep and forget everything.But she could get no word to Tilda, nor from her.It was into this existence that an event plunged which was to turn Gwenny’s world upside down.It happened with the ambulance bells one afternoon not long afterwards.Cosgrove, at the window, commented, ‘Oh, oh, trouble, trouble.I see all the signs of another little lot from our famous by-pass! Funny, it’s supposed to cut out accidents, not send more of them in to us.Such a lot that by-pass cost, and it’s given us even more work.Oh, that’s funny!’ she said, and her face changed and she broke off, and turned away from the window.‘What’s funny?’ Gwenny wanted to know.‘Nothing.Just thought I saw your brother Laurence get out of that ambulance.Oh, I must have been mistaken.He’s gone back to London, hasn’t he?’Gwenny was frightened again.She had had this feeling the day that Tilda came into hospital.‘I don’t know.I suppose so.I don’t know why he was still down here, anyway.Please find out for me!’Cosgrove hesitated.She was feeling decidedly guilty about having mentioned the thing at all to Gwenny.She supposed she ought to try and put it right now, before it was too late, and Gwenny Kinglake relapsed into her usual upset.‘I could ring down to Casualty, I suppose.Your sister is working down there for the rest of the week.I could ask for her.Would she tell me, do you think?’‘I don’t know, but try! Try!’ Gwenny urged.Cosgrove came back some time later and said,‘Casualty is in a bit of a state.It seems that your clot of a brother rammed Sir Giles’s car.’Cosgrove had no tact at all [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]