LITMIR.BIZ

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with a longing eye on the comfort of the bed, undressed with the speed of lightning, unpinned her hair, brushed it perfunctorily and went to find a bathroom. There were several, none supplying more than tepid water, so she cleaned her teeth, washed her face and hands with the same speed with which she had brushed her hair and, after a quick look at the sleeping Mary, retired to her room, where, without daring to take off her dressing gown, she jumped into bed. And as she closed her eyes the front door bell rang.

      She waited a moment, pretending to herself that she hadn’t heard it, but when it pealed again she got out of bed, picked up her torch, thrust her feet into slippers and started downstairs. The wind was fiercer now and the draughts eddied around her, chilling her to the bone. Only the thought of the unfortunate person on the doorstep urged her on. It would be the nurse, arrived by some miracle Julia was far too tired to investigate, or perhaps the cook and the maid from Hawick, although she fancied that the town was a good many miles away. She undid the bolts of the front door, slid the chain back and opened its creaking weight on to the fog and wind and snow outside.

      There was a man on the top step, a very large man, who stood wordless and patient while she allowed her torch to travel his considerable length. She knew that he was staring at her from the gloom and when she said impatiently, ‘Oh, do come in—we’ll both catch our deaths of cold…’ he stepped into the hall without uttering a word, only when he had locked the door behind her did he say without heat,

      ‘Of all the damn fool things to do—opening a door to a complete stranger in the dead of night!’

      Julia’s beautiful eyes opened wide. ‘But you rang the bell.’

      ‘And have you never heard of opening a door on its chain? I might have been armed with a shotgun.’

      Julia interrupted him in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘Don’t be absurd—who’d be out on a night like this with a shotgun?’

      He laughed then. ‘Since you’re kind enough to trust me, could I beg shelter until the morning? I’m on my way down from Edinburgh and quite obviously I’ve taken the wrong road.’

      He gave himself a shake and the snow tumbled off him, to lie unmelting on the floor. ‘You’re not alone in this place?’

      ‘No,’ said Julia with calm, ‘I’m not—there are two ambulance men asleep upstairs, so tired they won’t hear a sound—and my patient—oh, and there’s a kind of ancient family retainer, but I haven’t seen him for several hours.’

      He took the torch from her hand and shone it deliberately on her.

      ‘You are a fool,’ he remarked mildly. ‘Here you are, a very beautiful girl unless my eyes deceive me, with two men sleeping like the dead upstairs, an old retainer who’s probably deaf and a patient chained to his bed…’

      ‘Look,’ said Julia patiently, ‘I’m very tired—you’re welcome to a bed,’ she waved a vague arm towards the staircase. ‘There are plenty of empty rooms if you like to choose one. Are you hungry?’

      She had taken the torch once more from his grasp and shone it briefly on him. ‘Take off that coat,’ she advised. ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on—will bacon and eggs do?’

      ‘Not only beautiful but kind too,’ he murmured. ‘Thank you, I’m famished. Where’s the kitchen? Go back to bed and I’ll look after myself.’

      She was already on her way kitchenwards. ‘It’s warmer there than anywhere else. Come along.’

      Ten minutes later he was sitting at the kitchen table devouring the food she had cooked, while she made the tea. ‘Thank heaven there’s a gas stove,’ Julia commented as she fetched two cups. ‘The wind took the electric and the telephone.’

      ‘How very whimsical!’

      Julia poured him another cup of tea and then filled her own cup. In the little silence which followed a clock wheezed dryly and struck twice, and the wind, taking on a new strength, howled like a banshee round the house. Julia looked up to see the stranger’s eyes fastened on her. He smiled and said, ‘If you trust me, go to bed—I’ll clear up and find myself a room.’

      She got to her feet and picked up her torch, yawning as she did so. ‘There’s your candle,’ she indicted a brass candlestick with its snuffer which she had put ready for him. ‘Don’t come into my room, will you? It’s at the top of the stairs—nor the third one on the right—that’s my patient’s. Good night.’

      She wondered why he looked amused as he wished her good night, getting politely to his feet as he did so, which small action somehow reassured her.

      Not that she needed reassuring, she told herself, lying curled up in her chilly bed; the fire had died down and the warmth it had engendered had already been swallowed up by the icy air. She shivered and decided that she liked him, even though she knew nothing about him, neither his name nor his business, but she liked his face—a face she felt she could trust, with strong features and steady blue eyes and a mouth that was firm and kind. And even though he had called her a fool—which she was bound to admit was the truth—he had also called her beautiful. She fell uneasily asleep, smiling a little.

      Something wakened her in the pitch darkness, a sound, not repeated. She switched on the torch to find that it was just after six o’clock, and sat up in bed, the better to listen. The sound came again—a hoarse croak. She was out of bed, thrusting her feet into her slippers as the list of post-operative complications liable to follow an appendicectomy on a diabetic patient unfolded itself in her still tired mind. Carbuncles, gangrene, broncho-pneumonia…the croak came again which effectively ruled out the first two, and when she reached her patient’s bedroom and saw Mary’s flushed face as she lay shivering in bed, she was almost sure that it was the third.

      As she approached the bed Mary said irritably, ‘I feel so ill, and I can’t stop coughing—it hurts.’

      ‘I’ll sit you up a bit,’ said Julia with a calm she didn’t feel. Sudden illness on a hospital ward was one thing, but in an isolated house cut off from the outside world, it was quite a different matter. She fetched more pillows and propped the girl up, took her temperature which was as high as she had expected it to be, and gave her a drink, while all the time she was deciding what to do. Presently, when Mary was as comfortable as she could be made, Julia said,

      ‘I’m going to send someone for the doctor—once we’ve got you on an antibiotic you’ll feel better within hours. Will you stay quietly until I come back?’

      She found the stranger in the third room she looked into, lying on his back on a vast fourposter bed, fast asleep. She put out an urgent hand and tapped a massive shoulder and he opened his eyes at once, staring at her with a calm which she found most comforting.

      Before she could speak he said reflectively, ‘The hair’s a little wild, but I still think you’re a beautiful girl. What’s the matter?’

      Julia swept her long black hair impatiently on one side the better to see him. ‘My patient—she’s ill. I’m afraid I must ask you to go and find a doctor or a telephone or—or something. I can’t ask the ambulance men to go; they’ve got to go back to London today and they must have a night’s sleep.’

      He had sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. ‘And I, being a man of leisure, am the obvious one to sacrifice on the altar of frostbite and exposure.’

      Julia just stopped herself in time from wringing her hands. ‘I’d go myself, but who’s to look after Mary if I do?’

      ‘A moot point,’ he conceded, and stood up, reassuringly large. ‘And before I detect the first rising note of hysteria in your very delightful voice, I must tell you that I am a doctor.’

      Julia’s first reaction was one of rage. ‘You beast,’ she said roundly, ‘letting me get all worried!’

      He smiled at her and lifted her neatly to sit on the bed and then sat down beside her. ‘I am of the opinion that if I were not a doctor I should even now be meekly dressing

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