Simon said: “Let’s get this straight. Carol is just a quibble, because you could surely credit me with being willing and ready to take over responsibility of her as well? And if you marry me you don’t need a finished training behind you—I’ll take you as you are.
So that it all boils down to ‘loving’ me—and wanting to s
hir
k all that marrying me would imply, even to the sacrifice of your precious vow! That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it?”
“Simon, don’t! You’re spoiling everything!”
He glanced round at her, hurt and incredulous. “Spoiling things? So what? I suppose I’m spoiling your picture of yourself loved and in love, but without any obligations on your side? Or maybe you hadn’t got any further than wanting to show off your engagement ring for your common-room to gloat over? And if I refuse to take Carol or your idiotic vow for excuse, I suppose you can always plead that nurses are needed and that you are indispensable?”
All his wounded pride was lashing his tongue to a cruelty that he would regret. But he loved her! He wanted to marry her! He wanted to marry her
now.
To cherish and protect her now, w
hil
e their love still held the wonder of a discovery that they had just made together.
He heard Sara saying:
“I wouldn’t plead that, because until I’m trained I’m certainly not indispensable. Not much more, I daresay, than just a—a passenger on the ward. That’s why, once I’ve begun, I’ve
got
to finish getting myself trained. As a doctor, Simon, surely you can understand that?”
Simon said slowly: “I’m afraid I’m a man before I’m a doctor, and I know I want to marry the girl I love. If she happens to be a trained nurse, that’s all right. But if she weren’t, she’d still have everything I’d ask of a wife, and everything I’d look for in the mother of the children I hope we’d have.”
The silence that followed was tense and pregnant. It was a moment which a riper experience than either
possessed might have turned to gentleness and tolerance. But in Sara’s reply there was only a hurt disillusionment as she said: “But you aren’t willing to wait for me, are you?”
“As I see it, there’s no need to wait. We are
y
oung, and we’re in love, and we can marry. Why should we wait? Or were you paving the way for your own suggestion that we could marry and that you could go on and finish your training?” Simon’s tone was crisp, almost impersonal now.
Sara shook her head. “No. If I married you I should want what you want—just to be your wife and to have your children. But you won’t try to see my
side of it—you only want me on
your
terms
—
”
She broke off as Simon thumped the steering-wheel with both hands in a gesture of utter despair. “I give up,” he said savagely. “When it has come to talking of ‘terms’ it’s time to stop arguing. There’s either nothing more to say—or a lot too much! You’d better get out, Sara. It
is
late now, and I oughtn’t to have kept you so long. Good night.”
He reached across and o
pened the doo
r for her. Dumbly she climbed out. Then she turned. “Simon
—
you’re not going
—just like that
!”
But the door had slammed and the staccato revving of the ancient engine drowned her words.
She stood forlornly on the pavement, watching the tail-light wink and finally disappear. A sob rose and ached in her throat, threatening to choke her. And to think that, so very short a time ago, she had believed that loving Simon was all that she wanted to ask of life!
Kathryn was shocked by the change in Sara when
next they met for more than a few minutes. She had lost all the sunniness she had regained after passing her exams., but now she was not overwrought and nervy as she had been before them. She seemed listless and apathetic, as if a light behind her eyes had suddenly gone out.
Worried about her, Kathryn debated what could have happened.
True, she had just been transferred to night instead of day duty on Sister Bridgeworth’s ward, and that was always upsetting to a nurse undertaking it for the first time. As Kathryn knew only too well, until your system slowly adjusted itself, you worked and ate and slept, dogged by the conviction that your world had gone madly askew. But she felt instinctively that Sara’s trouble was not physical, and in any case, Home Sister kept her own close watch upon the usual effects of such changes of duty.
Could it be that Sara was resenting the change because it meant that she was not now likely to meet Simon on duty? But Sara must learn to accept such things in nursing! It could be, perhaps, that the girl was fretting because her topsy-turvy hours kept her from seeing as much of Carol as before. But none of the possibilities, Kathryn thought, seemed to add up to sufficient cause for that dumb, haunted abandonment which Sara did not try to hide, but which she allowed to go unexplained.
In the end, the clue was to come from Simon, not Sara at all. Kathryn, on her way off duty, met him outside as he was going to his car. She nodded a greeting to him, and was surprised when he stood still in her path to ask: “I wonder if you’d do something for me, would you?”
“Yes, of course. What is it?”
“It’s a scarf of Sara’s. She left it in the car after Carol’s party, and I didn’t find it until she had gone. Would you give it to her?”
Kathryn took the square of chiffon from him. “I don’t think she has missed it. But why don’t you give it to her yourself?”
“I haven’t seen her since. And she is on night duty now.”
“Yes, but
—
” Kathryn stopped short, her instinct
warned by his non-committal tone. His eyes, too, were as wary and withdrawn as Sara’s had been lately. She said evenly: “I haven’t seen much of her either. Night duty does upset things, doesn’t it? But I’ll see that she gets the scarf.”
“Thanks. I thought you would.” Without another word Simon drove away.
Sara too! And she had envied Sara, believing that between her and Simon nothing could go wrong! Yet something had, and the realisation that Sara had come so soon upon an unhappiness which matched her own was almost more than she could bear. Was it Sara who had rejected love—or love which had failed Sara? Until the girl gave her her confidence she would have to wonder, though the return of the scarf might help to break down the barriers Sara had set up.
She took it to her room that evening before the meal that would be supper for her, “breakfast” for Sara.
At Kathryn’s knock, instead of calling “Come in,” Sara came to the door to open it. Kathryn had the fleeting impression that she was guarding the privacy of her room as if it were the only citadel of refuge that she had.
“Oh, it’s you
—
” she began, and stopped as she
saw the filmy wisp in Kathryn’s hand. “Where did you
get that? I
—
” She stood aside, allowing Kathryn
to enter.
“Simon Glenn asked me to give it to you.”
“I must have left it in his car.”
“Yes. He said he hadn’t seen you since Carol’s part
y.”
“No, we haven’t met.” Sara was aimlessly moving her toilet things on the dressing-table. “What—what else did he tell you?” she demanded truculently.
“Nothing else.” Kathryn paused before adding gently: “He didn’t need to, Sara. I’d say that he’s just as unhappy as you are that you’ve—quarrelled.”
“I’m
not
unhappy!” Angry tears welling in Sara’s blue eyes belied her words. “I—I’m only teaching myself to forget that I ever wanted him to fall in love with me.
And
that I thought I loved him more than anyone—not more than Carol, of course, just differently. But he won’t try to understand, so loving couldn’t ever have been real to him, any more than I
—
I’m letting it be for me in future!”
“Sara
dear
!”
Kathryn sat down on the bed, drawing the girl down beside her. “What doesn’t Simon understand? Or is it possible that there’s something you don’t understand about
him
? Surely it’s nothing so dreadful that you couldn’t discuss it reasonably and quietly? Because, if you really did love him, you won’t be able to forget him by determining to, almost overnight. You’ll only live it down, live
through
it, and that could take a long time. Are you telling me that there’s anything between you and Simon that could be worth all that?”
“
I
think there is. Simon must, too, or he’d have come to me since to tell me that he understood really.”
Sara paused, and then asked piteously: “Kathryn, I
was
right, wasn’t I, to tell Simon that I must wait to marry him until I’ve finished my training and I’m qualified?”
Kathryn’s memory flashed back again to the softly lighted restaurant where Sara, starry-eyed and very sure, had never foreseen all this. She asked gravely: “And that’s the issue between you? Simon wanted to marry you at once, I suppose?”
“Yes, and I wanted to say Yes so much. Instead, I asked him to wait, and he sort of flared into anger. And after that we said some dreadful things to each other. I accused him of not trying to see my side, and he—Kathryn, he said I evidently just wanted the glamour of being engaged! He
couldn’t
have said that if he’d cared for me at all. And there was a lot more, of course, before we parted. But I was right, I know I was. And you do, too, don’t you?”
“Dear, it’s impossible for a third person to say!
I
understand, because I know how determined you’ve been from the beginning that nothing should come between you and your training, once you’d begun. Do you remember that I teased you about it?”
Sara nodded wretchedly. “Yes. I suppose I ought never to have let myself get fond of Simon.”
“If you’d been wiser than anyone could expect you to be at your age, you might have foreseen that loving Simon might bring you to facing this decision sooner or later. But if neither of you had been serious it mightn’t ever have arisen, so that no one would have been justified in warning you. But now that it has, are you quite sure that you and Simon couldn’t reach some agreement about it?”
“He wouldn’t try. He said he ‘gave up’, and told me to get out of the car. And after the things he’d said, I was glad to. We haven’t spoken to each other since, except on the ward when we couldn’t hel
p
it, before I went on nights. What’s more, I know I’m right, and I’m
not
going to be the first to give in.”
“You’d let him go rather? Perhaps to some other girl a lot less worthwhile than you? Sara, do consider what you are doing and whether you are doing it only for pride’s sake. You’d lose nothing by going to Simon to tell him that you’d like to discuss it again. So will you go?” urged Kathryn.
“No, I won’t.”
“Then will you let me go?”
Sara’s head flung up defiantly. “No. I’m not going to involve you, Kathryn. I know I asked your advice, but I don’t really want it. This is something I’ve decided for myself, and if I’m wrong I mustn’t be able to shift the blame—afterwards.” Her lips quivered on the last word.
“Oh, Sara
!
” Kathryn stopped, feeling baffled
and helpless, knowing herself defeated by the stubborn, falsely courageous streak in the girl’s character, the same one which had blindly risked Carol’s future and her own for the ideal of caring for the child without help from anyone.
They sat in silence for a minute or two before Kathryn looked at her watch and rose. “We’d better go down,” she said.
“Yes.” Sara went back to the dressing-table to pin on her cap. As she adjusted her cuffs she turned about to ask most wonderingly: “Kathryn, why do you suppose men want everything arranged just their way?”
“Aren’t we the same? Aren’t
you
?”
challenged Kathryn.
“Yes, well
—
” Sara hesitated. “I know I’m digging
in my heels now, but at the time I wasn’t
suddenly
angry and sort of frustrated, as Simon was. It seems to me that they hate it when we don’t fall
at once
into the pattern they’ve planned for us. Look at your Dr
.
Brand, for instance, at what he told Thelma Carter
about you
—
” Sara broke off quickly, aghast at her
unguarded words.
Kathryn stiffened. “About me? What did Dr
.
Brand say about me?”
“Kathryn, I’m sorry! I oughtn’t to have repeated it!”
“You’d better finish it now. What did Dr
.
Brand say about me?”
Sara lowered her eyes. “It was Thelma gossiping, really. She said that you were cultivating your friendship with me so that, because of Carol, you would have an excuse for going often to Barbara Thorley’s and meeting Dr
.
Brand—she called him Adam—there. And when I said that was absurd, because you had known Barbara and Victor long before I did, she said that perhaps she was wrong, but that she certainly had the impression from Dr
.
Brand that he saw far too much of you off the ward. ‘Dogging his footsteps’ was the beastly phrase Thelma used
—
Forgive me, Kathryn. I listened, because I had no choice. But I never, never meant that you should hear it
!”