FOURTEEN
It was the spring of 1916, nearly fourteen months since Hilda and Grace had come to nurse in London, and Hilda was happier than she had ever been. The disturbing changes in her father, all the painful echoes of the Neptune disaster, the whole grim business of Arthur’s imprisonment, as related in Aunt Carrie’s woeful letters, affected her very little. When Grace came to her, weeping: “Oh, Hilda, we must do something about Arthur. We can’t stay here and let this happen,” Hilda snapped: “What can we do? Nothing. Except keep out of it.” Whenever Grace attempted to broach the subject Hilda cut her short in this brusque fashion.
Lord Kell’s house was in Belgrave Square, a large mansion which had been stripped — except for the beautiful cut-glass chandeliers, a few pictures and some tapestry panels — and converted into an adequate hospital, for which purpose it was admirably suited. Six of the rooms were enormous, each as big as an average ballroom, with high ceilings and polished oak floors, and these became the wards. The big conservatory at the back was transformed to an operating theatre; and it was here that Hilda had her happiest moments.
Hilda had got on wonderfully at Belgrave Square; in six months she had at her finger ends as much as the average nurse acquires in a three years’ training. Already Miss Gibbs, the matron, had her eye upon Hilda as something quite out of the ordinary. Miss Gibbs had commended Hilda and moved Hilda to the theatre. In the theatre Hilda’s qualities seemed exactly right. Dark, self-contained and precise, Hilda functioned in that theatre with forbidding and unerring accuracy. Hilda’s spare-time studying had been extensive but it was her instinct, her temperament which made her so pluperfect. You looked at Hilda and saw that it was impossible for her to blunder. Mr. Ness looked at Hilda several times during her first week in the theatre, his quick darting glance, when Hilda had anticipated something which he required. Ness was the honorary, a short blunt gingery man who sweated offensively while he worked, but a wonder at abdominal surgery. Later, he suggested quietly to Miss Gibbs that Hilda might shortly be useful as his theatre sister.
When Hilda was told of Ness’s interest in her work she showed no elation — the signal honour, as Miss Gibbs euphoniously named it, left Hilda quite unmoved. She had a little thrill of inward satisfaction, quickly suppressed, but she was not overcome. Success had firmed Hilda’s predetermination and set her ambition higher than before. When she stood by Ness watching him make his incisions, sutures and anastomoses, she did not fix her mind upon the time when as theatre sister she would intimately assist him in this work. No, she watched Ness operate and fixed her mind upon the day when she herself would operate. That was Hilda’s ambition, she had always wanted to be a doctor — a surgeon. Always. She was a little late in beginning, perhaps, but she was still young, only twenty-five. And since her miraculous emancipation from the Law Hilda had sworn to herself that nothing would stop her in achieving her goal. In the meantime Hilda was happy — she had an end in view, she had her work, and she had Grace.
Grace had not achieved Hilda’s crashing success, indeed Grace was not a success at all. Untidy, unpunctual, inaccurate — poor Grace had none of the qualities essential to success. While Hilda rose like a rocket to the giddy heights of the operating theatre, Grace remained scrubbing floors and basins in the basement. Grace didn’t mind. Grace was perfectly contented: so contented that she had twice been before Miss Gibbs’ for giving tea to patients’ wives in the ward kitchen and once for smuggling Gold Flake in to a sergeant disciplined for swearing at the ward sister. Grace, as Miss Gibbs did not hesitate to say, was incompetent, hopelessly incompetent — Grace would never be anything, Miss Gibbs said, unless she mended her ways.
But these ways were Grace; and nobody but Miss Gibbs and Hilda seemed to want Grace to mend them. Grace was a great favourite with the other nurses. At the nurses’ home, a house in Sloane Street, quarter of a mile away, there was always someone in Grace’s untidy little cubby hole begging or giving a cigarette, or a Bystander, or a gramophone record, or one of the make-believe chocolates that the war had produced. Or asking Grace out to tea or to the pictures, or to meet a brother home on leave.
Hilda hated this. No one came to Hilda’s austerely tidy room and Hilda did not want anyone to come: no one except Grace. Yes, Hilda wanted Grace, wanted Grace all to herself and with all her heart. She froze the friendly visiting, nipped Grace’s friendships in the bud.
“Why,” she scornfully remarked one morning towards the end of March, “must you go out with that Montgomerie creature?”
“Old Monty’s not a bad sort, Hilda,” Grace answered apologetically, “we only went to the Kardomah.”
“The woman’s impossible!” said Hilda jealously. “You must come out with me on your next half-holiday. I’ll arrange it.”
Hilda arranged most things for Grace, continued, in her possessive love, to dictate to Grace. And Grace — artless, simple and sweet-natured as ever — submitted cheerfully.
But Grace would not submit to Hilda about the letters. Grace did not argue, she did not contradict. On this point she simply refused to submit to Hilda. And these letters worried Hilda to death. Every week and sometimes twice a week the letters came from France, with the field postmark and the same handwriting, a man’s handwriting. Hilda saw that Grace was in close correspondence with someone at the front and at last Hilda could bear it no longer. One April evening, as she walked through the darkened streets to the home with Grace, Hilda said:
“You had another letter, to-day, another letter from France?”
Staring hard at the pavement in front of her Grace said:
“Yes.”
Because she was upset, Hilda’s manner became colder and more forbidding.
“Who is it writes to you?”
At first Grace did not answer. She flushed quickly in the darkness. But she did answer — there was never evasion or artifice about Grace.
“It’s Dan Teasdale.”
“Dan Teasdale.” Hilda’s voice was both shocked and scornful. “You mean Teasdale, Teasdale the baker’s son?”
Grace said very simply:
“Yes.”
“Good heavens!” Hilda burst out. “You don’t mean to say — well, in all my life I never heard anything so sickeningly idiotic—”
“Why is it idiotic?”
“Why?” Hilda sneered. “Why, indeed? Don’t you think it rather cheap to work up a romance with a baker’s lout?”
Grace was very pale now, and her voice extremely quiet.
“You can say unkind things, Hilda,” she said. “Dan Teasdale has nothing to be ashamed of He writes me the nicest letters I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t think there’s anything cheap about that.”
“You don’t,” Hilda said scathingly. “Well, I do. And I won’t have you behaving like an infatuated school-girl. Too many silly women have thrown themselves away already. Their war heroes! — oh, it’s disgusting, disgusting. You’ve got to stop these letters.”
Grace shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Hilda.”
“You’ve got to, I tell you.”
Grace shook her head again.
“I won’t,” she said. Tears stood in Grace’s eyes but there was a queer finality in her voice which knocked the rage right out of Hilda and really frightened her.
Hilda said no more that evening: but she took up an attitude and tried to coerce Grace by that attitude. She froze Grace, spoke to her cuttingly, generally ignored her with a sort of scornful contempt. This lasted for a fortnight and the letters still came.