Alma managed to make an exchange with one of the nurses at Oakdene, so
that she herself could be with Con and be doing duty at the same time
and yet not leave St Barnabas’s any shorter-handed than it was.
It was a bit irregular, perhaps, but it was either that or giving up
nursing altogether, which she had no wish to do till the war was over.
But be with Con, now that she had got him back from the dead, so to
speak, she vowed she would, cost what it might.
“If anyone needs me it is my husband,” she told Mrs Matron, “and I’m
going to stick to him no matter who else suffers.” At which the Matron
smiled indulgently and arranged matters as she wished.
“It is dreadful for Dr Dare,” she said. “And we must do all we can to
help. I saw about it in the papers.”
“He was very much put out about that. He can’t imagine where they got
hold of it.”
“He’s to have the D.S.O. too, I see. And I’m sure he deserves it. What
is he going to do?”
“He’s going on with his own work. Young Grant, who saved his life, and
stuck to him all through, and brought him home, is just splendid. He’s
a medical, you know, though he hadn’t quite finished his courses. He’s
to stop and be Con’s hands, but I imagine his head will do good service
as well. They did a certain amount of study while they were in Germany,
to keep their minds off other matters, and they’re setting to work
again at once.”
“That’s fine--for both of them.”
But before that week was out they had another surprise in a visit from
Sir James Jamieson, the Harley Street brain-specialist.
He was a tall, white-haired man, with a forehead like the dome of
St Paul’s, only much whiter. He knew more about brains than any man
in Great Britain, and, in spite of a life devoted to other people’s
aberrations, was of a most genial and jovial disposition, and of a very
tender heart.
“Well?”--was his surprising greeting to Con. “When are you going to be
ready to start work with me?”
And Con gazed at him in incredulous amazement, behind which sprang up
and fluttered a wild incredible hope.
Sir James, he knew, loved a joke. But he was the last man in the world
to spin a joke against a man left handless against the world.
“Do you mean it, sir?” gasped Con, shaken out of his natural politeness
by so stupendous an instant levelling of all the barriers he had seen
in front of him.
“Mean it, my dear boy?--of course I mean it. Do you suppose I’ve wasted
precious hours coming down into the wilds of Willstead to say things
I don’t mean? I wanted you before and I want you more than ever now.
Those miserable devils didn’t chop off any of your brain, did they?
Well, it’s your good, sound, searching brain I want. We’ll find hands
for you all right. There is no lack of hands in the world, but brains
are sadly lacking, I’m sorry to say, and what there are are not all
what they might be.”
He had talked on, like the perfect gentleman he was, to give Con time
to recover himself.
And now Con looked at him with shining eyes,--eyes in which the light
of a new great hope in life shone mistily through the excitation of his
feelings, like stars shining up out of the sea,--and he said, “You make
a new man of me, Sir James.... I feared ... and now----” and Sir James,
being a Scotchman himself, understood better than all the words in the
world could have told him.
“Now I want a cup of tea,” said the great man jauntily, “and if the
two Mrs Dares are available it would be a pleasure to me to make their
acquaintance.”
Con, without moving, touched a button under the carpet with his foot
and Robert Grant, who had fixed it up for him only that morning, came
in.
“This is my good friend, Robert Grant, Sir James,” and the old man and
the young one, in acknowledging the introduction, glanced keenly at one
another for a moment and appeared mutually satisfied. “Would you beg
my mother to join us, Robert, and tell them to send in tea at once.
And then if you’d slip across and ask my wife to come over for a few
minutes I’d be much obliged.”
“Who’s he?” asked Sir James, as Grant vanished.
“He saved my life out there and has been everything to me these last
five months. He’s a medical, and the best fellow alive. He’s consented
to be my hands.”
“Good! I like the looks of him.”
“He’s better even than he looks and his brain is quite all right. He’s
one of the exceptions. We’ve drawn very close together these months out
there. He’s consented to stop with me, but he’s got ambitions of his
own----”
“Of course,--being a Scotchman.”
“And I’m hoping that he won’t really be sacrificing himself entirely by
devoting himself to me. We did a certain amount of study out there and
he’s getting quite keen on the brain.”
“We’ll find him his place all right. Keen men are none too
plentiful--especially on the brain.”
Mrs Dare came in, and Alma a few minutes after her, and when they had
been made to understand the wonderful news, while Sir James drank his
tea, they were almost as much overcome as Con himself had been.
When they tried to express a little of what they felt about it, Sir
James genially stopped them with, “You see, I want him. I don’t know
any other youngster whose ideas chime with my own as his do. And I like
that Grant boy. And I like you two. I’m inclined to think we shall all
get along uncommonly well together. You have lost a son out there, Mrs
Dare.”
“Our youngest. He was just nineteen.”
“I saw about it. It is sad for us to lose them so young and in such a
way. But the gain is all theirs when they die as your boy did, and we
may not mourn unduly. My dear lad died in South Africa and in very much
the same way--trying to save a friend. After all--it’s a noble death to
die. And you are nursing, my dear?”--to Alma.
“Wounded officers at Oakdene, next door. I was at St Barnabas’s but I
made an exchange. You see, I hadn’t seen my husband since the morning
we were married.”
“Quite right! Your experience will at all events bring sympathy to his
work.”
“That’s why I took up nursing, four years ago.”
“Good girl! You’re the right kind for a doctor’s wife,” and then he
shook hands with them, patted Con on the shoulder and bade him get
ready for the move into town, shook hands cordially also with Robert
Grant and told him they would know one another better before long, and
then hurried into his impatient motor and whirled away back to town.
“Now isn’t that wonderful?” said Con, with a happier face than he had
worn since Landrecies.
“He’s splendid,” said Alma. “I love him already.”
“For your sake I am very thankful, my dear boy,” said his mother. “God
is very gracious to us. If He takes, He also gives, and His ways are
very wonderful.”