So Dear to My Heart Page 2

  “Of course,” the man responded immediately, and rising, he assisted her to her feet. He kept a firm hold of her arm as she took her first steps away from the settee. She still felt a little wobbly about the knees but she resisted the temptation to make an impulsive, clutching movement at his black-clad arm.

  “And you’re quite sure there’s nothing I can do?’

  It was the young woman again—the young woman with the startling blue eyes that were smiling at Virginia almost too sweetly but without any real concern.

  “Nothing,” her dinner companion assured her, and guided Virginia in the direction of the elevator. “Thanks, Carla.”

  “Then don’t be long, Leon,” she called after him. “Remember that we haven’t a great deal of time if we’re going on to the Van Loons’.”

  Her eyes ceased to smile the instant Virginia’ s back was turned to her, but the waiter who was hovering near attracted her notice and she addressed him with a tiny, petulant frown between her slender, arched brows, while the original blond culprit escaped to the dining room with his companion.

  “Such appalling clumsiness!” she exclaimed, in biting and penetrating accents that could not fail to reach the ears of the departing offender. “A couple of hooligans, surely?”

  Whereupon the unfortunate young German’s ears turned redder than ever and his friend dragged him to a table in a corner, screened by a palm in a brass-bound tub—which was actually the table at which Virginia herself had sat.

  In the entrance to the elevator Virginia, looked once more into the grave dark eyes of the man who was waiting to say good night to her and she shyly tried to thank him.

  “You were most kind.” she said.

  “Not at all.” he answered. “It was an unfortunate accident.”

  The elevator carried her to her bedroom on the third floor. Once inside the room her weariness crowded upon her as if it was something physical that was seeking to crush her, and her head started to ache abominably. She undressed without thinking coherently of anything whatsoever and tumbled into bed at last with a sensation of vast relief. It was a bed that was much too large for her but so deliciously soft and comfortable that she fell asleep immediately without even remembering to turn off the light.

  CHAPTER TWO

  In the morning, very much to her annoyance, Virginia slept late, and instead of the pleasant hour looking at new and strange shops filled with intriguing but costly trifles far beyond the reach of her limited purse strings, which friends had warned her to expect, but which she had promised herself the evening before, she had to dash off to keep her appointment with Dr. Hanson without even waiting for a cup of coffee. She had intended to buy Lisa something rather captivating in the bed-jacket line, as well as the magazines she had promised her, but they would have to wait now.

  Dr. Hanson’ s house had an austerity about its furnishings that was more or less what she had expected, but there were bowls of flowers in his waiting room and she admired his taste in watercolors very much indeed. They lent a touch of color to the severe white walls and some blue delft china on a dark oak dresser looked homey and attractive.

  She was admitted by a maid and then interviewed by a secretary who conducted her to Dr. Hanson’ s consulting room. He was seated at a desk when she entered and he did not look up immediately, but the secretary pulled up a chair for her.

  She did not sit down but remained rooted to the floor, so overcome by surprise that she almost allowed it to pass her lips. She nearly said, as he looked up slowly at last and surveyed her with his quiet eyes, “You! ”

  He smiled at her slightly.

  “Sit down. Miss Holt.” His English was certainly almost faultless. He did not offer to shake hands with her but rose and stood behind his desk until he saw that she was comfortably seated. “How is the head this morning?”

  “Oh better-much better.” Her astonishment was passing but the sense of confusion it had brought with it remained for a brief while longer. “That is to say, it’s a bit tender still,” putting her fingers rather gingerly to the lump that had made it impossible to wear a hat “and it hurts when I touch it. But I slept so well last night that I made myself late this morning and I really haven’ t thought very much about it. ”

  “Good,” he said. “It was a nasty knock you received but I said you would feel better this morning, didn’t?”

  Actually he thought she was looking remarkably fresh in her neat spring suit with a little blouse of palest daffodil yellow that had its tiny collar turned down over the suit. The sunlight that was streaming into his room found all the golden lights in her hair and her complexion was something to marvel at in the broad, clear light of day. She had a shy look in her gray eyes that made them peculiarly attractive.

  “You’ re wondering whether I knew who you were last night, aren’t you?” he said at last, smiling again. “Well, I didn’t at the time but I found out afterward at the reception desk.” He passed a silver cigarette box across to her and then leaned across the desk to hold the end of his lighter to her cigarette. She thought that his dark eyes had an amused look in them. “You’re younger than your sister, aren’t you. Miss Holt?”

  “Why, no,” she answered. “Actually I’m nearly four years older. But Lisa does sometimes look a little--well, she takes life rather seriously, for one thing, and since her accident she hasn’ t been too happy....”

  That was a vast understatement but at least it brought Lisa forward into the picture without any more delay, and her heart was knocking with anxiety to learn what he thought were the chances of her much-loved younger sister. She hardly dared to ask him but he could see from her expression what her thoughts were. His face became suddenly grave and thoughtful and he stared down at the top of his desk where a little pile of neatly typewritten letters awaited his signature.

  He picked up his fountain pen and toyed with it for a moment and she could see that his hands were beautiful—beautifully formed and cared for with sensitive tips to the long fingers. His wrists beneath his immaculate cuffs had a look of strength and virility about them.

  “Miss Lisa, I take it, has ambitions as a concert pianist?” he said.

  “She had ambitions,” Virginia replied quietly.

  He still stared at the desk.

  “And if those ambitions are not realized, is she, do you think, the type to refuse to consider any other sort of a career or any other kind of life that does not include music? Is music her whole life or do you think in time she might become reconciled to listening to it rather than creating it? She is young. There is every possibility that she will marry one day—”

  “I don’ t think Lisa would ever regard marriage as a compensation she could accept instead of a musical career,” Virginia told him slowly and quite honestly.

  ““Don’ t you?” He looked at her suddenly, keenly. “Is your family ambitious. Miss Holt? Is it, perhaps, in the blood?”

  “Oh, no. I’m sure it isn’t.” A faint pink invaded her cheeks as she felt him studying her. “As a family we are not in the least brilliant and I think that is why we are all so proud of Lisa, so terribly proud!” Her eyes sought his. “Is there any hope for her. Dr. Hanson? Will she— will she play again? if you decide to operate, that is?”

  “I will be quite frank with you. Miss Holt.” He lighted himself another cigarette although hers was smoldering almost unheeded between her fingers. “I am quite sure that I can restore to your sister the almost complete use of her right hand. So little doubt is there of that that I do not even say if she is willing to take the risk. But whether I can restore to her the flexibility in her fingers that in time will turn her into a prominent pianist is another matter. Almost certainly she will play again—well enough to make a first-class teacher of music, if necessary! But to be a teacher of music is not the niche she has carved out for herself in her imagination, is it? It is not what you all have hoped for her?”

  Virginia admitted with a cold feeling at her heart that it most certainly wa
s not. The hopes of the family had been boundless where Lisa was concerned and even now they still hoped.... And it was hope, and hope alone, that was at the back of Lisa’ s fortitude, the reason why she was prepared to undergo almost anything if it held out the promise of the future she had planned. But if there was no real

  chance of its ever being given back to her....

  Virginia tried to explain to Dr. Hanson the way Lisa felt about things, with her intense nature and her inability to do by halves anything she wished to do. The way she allowed herself to be consumed by her ambition. If she ever fell in love—and she might do so one day, Virginia thought—then it would be a love that would consume her just as her ambition consumed her and would certainly not be denied. It would sweep all before it—even, perhaps, those things now nearest to her heart—and any slight difficulties in the way of its fulfillment would be regarded as no difficulties at all by Lisa. For that was the way she was made. An enormously powerful spirit in a slight and rather fragile body that was inclined to mislead some people. It might even have misled Dr. Hanson although he listened with attention to all that Virginia thought it necessary to tell him about her sister, and when her voice wandered off—when she realized that there was little more she could say to put Lisa’s side of her unhappy story more clearly to him—she was by no means certain that he was entirely sympathetic, for his voice and his expression gave away nothing at all.

  She realized that in the life he led he must come upon cases of even greater hardship and frustration than Lisa’ s. For Lisa, after all, had not only survived her accident, but was comparatively whole again, even if she could no longer pursue her chosen career. But he must surely recognize that Lisa was young she had every right to expect much of life, and the fact that she was so plucky about everything should surely earn her his esteem?

  And Lisa as a teacher of music, when she had hoped to delight vast audiences? Oh no, thought Virginia.

  “And there is no more hope than that?” she asked at last with rather a shaky note in her voice.

  “Yes,” he replied instantly, to her surprise, “there is! But I thought it best that you should have the true picture of the case put before you. At worst your sister will regain the use of her right hand and arm, which at the moment are practically paralyzed; such use, I mean as any ordinary person would have. At best she will regain the fullest use of the fingers of her right hand and that will mean that she can go ahead with her career after exercises, of course, to strengthen the fingers and render them supple again.”

  “Oh!” Virginia exclaimed and her eyes began to shine.

  “But” he said with emphasis on the word, “at the moment she is far too tense and strung up to make success, even on a moderate scale, at all likely, if I operate at once. She is like a violin string that is too taut. She must be made to relax, and with that object in view I propose keeping her at the clinic for a week or two until I can judge the effect that complete physical, if not mental, rest and relaxation have had on her. And the effect of the air here should prove beneficial in her case, also.’’ Virginia felt her heart sink again. They had hoped that the operation would be soon, cutting down the expense and the length of their visit. But if it was important to Lisa....

  “You will remain near her?” Dr. Hanson asked, studying her face in that unconcealed fashion that made her feel more than a little embarrassed. She found it difficult to meet his eyes all the time because they affected her with the odd belief that it was a comparatively simple matter for him to read all the secrets that dwelt behind her own gray eyes.

  “Oh, yes.” she answered at once. “I must. I promised her, and in any case I couldn’t bear to leave her..”

  “Then you will stay on at the hotel?”

  She shook her head. “That would be too expensive. I shall have to find somewhere cheaper.”

  “I see.” he said. He appeared to consult a calendar on his desk and then he looked up at her again. “In that case I might be able to help you—if you would like me to do so?”

  She assured him that she would be more than grateful, “I’ m a stranger in a strange land,” she said. She laughed a little ruefully. “I don’t even understand the language.”

  He regarded her with an odd, cool smile in his eyes. “I’m sure you speak schoolgirl French well enough,” he told her, and stood up. “If you’ll forgive me. Miss Holt, I have a very busy morning ahead of me, and there is not much more we have to talk about at the present time. But if I can give you a lift back to your hotel I will.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She felt a little abashed by his abrupt method of terminating the interview; but when they went out to his car, standing long and sleek and black in front of his house, and he opened the door for her to sit beside him, he repeated his willingness to help her in the matter of finding accommodation more suited to her pocket than the hotel at which she was presently staying, and she again thanked him.

  “In the meantime,” he said, “you must do your best to keep your sister cheerful and it will be as well if you do not let her know that there is any doubt at all about the absolute success of the operation, when I decide to perform it.”

  BUT LISA, when Virginia saw her that afternoon, reflected in her enormous eyes the question that had been making her feel restless all day, even before she uttered it with her lips.

  “Have you seen Dr. Hanson? And what did he say to you. Jinny?” Virginia sank down in a long cane chair, which was placed beside Lisa’ s on a veranda that overlooked the lake, and onto which her quite pleasantly furnished bedroom opened. For a moment Virginia was so entranced by the beauty of the lake that she did not answer. The whole panorama still made her think of a drop scene at the theater, but this afternoon there was a faint haze over the water and the sun was shining as through a curtain of gauze. The sky was a tender, tranquil blue and there were one or two unreal clouds drifting across it. She thought, “A blue sky of spring, white clouds on the wing....’’

  “Well?” Lisa insisted. “What did he say?”

  Virginia decided to be truthful, up to a point.

  “That you’ve got to be a good girl and stop worrying about all this and relax. It’s no good, Lisa! You can’t expect any man to give you back the use of your hands if you won’ t help him a little by unwinding yourself at least a bit. He says you’re like a violin string and you’ve got to let yourself go. You must try to do that, Liz.”

  “Hmm! ” Lisa exclaimed. “He did make some remark of a similar kind to me when he came to see me after breakfast this morning. At least he said I was not to worry and that I was to make, the most of my stay here because this is a wonderful part of the world in spring. Instead of examining me he talked a lot about the flowers and how soon the snow vanishes from the valleys and what it’s like here in summer. He’s very fond of his own country, I must say, and he seems very self-assured.”

  “I suppose most surgeons are self-assured,” Virginia said. “Otherwise other people wouldn’t have confidence in them.”

  “No.” Lisa agreed with a shadow crossing her face. “One does have to entrust rather a. lot to them, doesn’t one?”

  Virginia decided to change the subject.

  “Anyway,” she said, “You’re looking much better. You’ve actually got a spot of color in your cheeks, and lying there like that all tucked up in that camel’s-hair rug you appear really luxurious.”

  Lisa smiled at her.

  “I’ve been told that I’ve got to be very lazy for the next day or so,” she said, “and the air here is so much like champagne that it would be a poor complexion that didn’ t perk up a little after a morning spent on this balcony.” And then, determinedly, she returned to the question that interested her. “Did Dr. Hanson say anything else to you, Jinny?” “No, darling, nothing of any importance. ” Virginia stretched herself in her chair and appeared to be enjoying the sunshine. “He’s satisfied that he can get your fingers to work if you cooperate by forgetting everything and making the most of the wee
ks that you ’ve got to stay here.”

  “Weeks?” Lisa exclaimed, aghast.

  “Yes, darling, two or three. And I must say you could hardly be in a nicer spot.”

  “But what about you?” Lisa asked. “Will you be able to afford to stay at that hotel all that time? Why, we were planning to return to England in not much more than two weeks! ”

  “I know,” Virginia answered. “But I’ve got all that in hand and I’ll look for somewhere cheaper. I might even manage to get taken in by a Swiss family. That would be a good deal pleasanter than a hotel.”

  She decided not to tell Lisa about Dr. Hanson’s half promise to find her somewhere else to stay in case by some chance he couldn’ t help her—for whatever happened Lisa must have her belief in him kept well and truly buoyed up. Nor would she tell her sister about the little incident of her bump on the head the night before. Lisa was inclined to worry over things like that. She would worry about Virginia, alone and unprotected in a strange hotel and although she was the elder of

  the two, lacking Lisa’ s calm confidence and composure when making contact with fresh faces and unexplored situations.

  As if she had the power to read Virginia’s thoughts, Lisa looked at her affectionately and observed suddenly, “Poor old Jinny! I don’ t like to think of you all on your own and without anyone to talk to.”

  “Then don’t think,” Virginia advised, “it isn’t necessary.”

  “But you’ll find it so dull. And although the hotel’s expensive I’d rather think of you there than hunting around looking for doubtful lodgings. You’re not the type, somehow.”

  “You mean that I have a helpless streak in me? Or you imagine I have!”

  “No, it’s not that. But you look helpless.”

  “Thank you,” she said with an amused smile in her eyes.

  “You’re the feminine type—the ultrafeminine type! And you’re too pretty.”

  “Goodness! ” Virginia exclaimed. “You amaze me! I’ ve always thought of myself as passably plain.”