When obligations conflict, a reputation for reliability in one sphere can be preserved only by causing disappointment in another. If Charles Scott had known that Margaret’s impression of him was of a dependable man he would have been pleased, for this was a character he wished to deserve. But on this dependability others had first claim. It was because he would not betray those who already relied on him that he was forced to break what he too recognized to have been a near-promise. Nothing prevented him from making the call which had been arranged except his own decision to stay at home: but it was a decision that he had no power to change.
At their first encounter, on the morning of the fire, it had seemed to him that he had seen the young student somewhere before. Her red hair and freckled face were distinctive, but he could not put a name or occasion to the memory, and he was in too much of a hurry to pursue a matter of little importance. A great many students came to St Bartholomew’s Hospital for a few weeks or months in the course of their training. It was true that not many of them were women, and Charles would certainly have remembered if he had had this one under his direct supervision; but it was likely enough that at some time they had passed in a ward or corridor.
Their second meeting was a different matter. After the discovery of the fire, Charles’s first concern had been to drag Jamie out of danger. When that was accomplished, he was appalled to discover that the collapse of the burning ladder left him unable to follow Miss L up into the children’s ward. The firemen came as quickly as could be expected in the fog, he supposed, but every moment of waiting was an agony to him. When at last he was able to scramble up to the hoist platform and found her not only safe but working calmly and speedily inside the ward to bring each child in turn within reach of rescue, his relief and admiration were as heartfelt as his previous anxiety. But it was afterwards, in the cab, that a new and more protective emotion was born. Margaret, who had been ashamed of her grimy skin and smoky clothes, and even more ashamed of her tears of nervous and physical exhaustion, would have been astonished to learn that this was the moment when Charles fell in love with her.
He was amazed himself by the suddenness of his reaction to her collapse, but this did not prevent him from instinctively making good use of the situation by slipping a supporting arm round her waist. Her slimness and the trusting way in which she allowed her tired body to relax against his side excited him. He made sure of her address before parting, he sent flowers on the next day, and he planned to visit her on the Saturday, assuming that she would need all the intervening time to recover from the shock of her experiences. Considering that their acquaintance was such a short one, it appeared to be developing at a gratifying speed.
The unexpected meeting at the theatre changed his intentions in the passage of a single sentence. When he caught sight of her from a distance at the end of the first act, there was a moment of jealousy: the blond gentleman - who, he hoped, might be attached to the plain young woman sitting beside him - turned to Miss L, whose smile indicated that their relationship was an affectionate one. But she herself was able to relieve his anxiety when they met later in the promenade, introducing the handsome companion as her brother. Then his happiness was cruelly shattered as she told him her full name.
Margaret Lorimer!
In his distress he walked all the way home from the theatre. At every step he tried to persuade himself that Lorimer, although not as common a name as Scott, was yet by no means unusual. There must be thousands of Lorimers in England. Yes, but how many of them would be called Margaret, and how many of the Margaret Lorimers would have red hair, and how many red-haired Margaret Lorimers would have a brother called Ralph?
There was no need to torture himself in a private inquisition. As soon as he heard the name, he had remembered where he had seen Margaret Lorimer before. It was in Bristol, a good many years ago. Charles had spent little of his life there after the age of twelve. He had gone to boarding school then and came to London when he began his medical training at the age of eighteen. But holidays had been spent at home and although his father did not mix socially with his richer patients, Charles had once attended a concert at which the Lorimer family was pointed out to him.
Margaret would have been no more than fifteen years old at that time, but he had noticed even then the mature, determined expression which impressed him again now. It would be possible, he told himself, to write for confirmation to one of his boyhood friends who still lived in Bristol. It would be known there whether John Junius Lorimer’s daughter had left the city to take a medical training. Yet the letter would not be worth the time devoted to writing it. The answer must be as certain as doomsday. He had fallen in love with the only woman in the world whom he could not possibly marry.
Charles himself was rational enough on the subject. When her father’s bank collapsed, Margaret Lorimer had been only twenty-one. She could not conceivably bear any responsibility for what had happened. No one, as far as he knew, had even accused her of extravagance. There had certainly been gossip about the young man she proposed to marry, but the fact that the engagement had come to nothing was in her favour. If Charles had lived alone, responsible only for himself, he would have added to his earlier feelings an even deeper admiration for a young woman who had wasted no time in weeping over the riches she had lost. All credit to her for setting to work to make herself a useful member of society!
Charles, however, did not live alone. He shared his cramped suburban home with his parents. There had been no choice in the matter, for the Receiver who administered the affairs of Lorimer’s Bank after its collapse had left his father and mother destitute. Their house, their furniture, and all their savings had been sucked into the almost bottomless pit of debt for which the bank’s shareholders found themselves responsible. Charles had accepted his responsibilities as a dutiful son, assuring his parents that they could rely on him for support. So Margaret had been perfectly correct in her estimate of him as dependable, but it was this which must inevitably prevent him from ever meeting her again.
His mother wanted him to marry. Her abrupt change of fortune had shocked her into a state of querulous frailty. She was bewildered by the need to leave her comfortable home in Clifton and live in the narrow terrace house in Islington which was all that Charles could afford. To see her only son married, to hold the first grandchild in her arms, was her fondest hope. It would be a sign that her life was returning to normal again.
Her husband, though, would never return to normal. In years he was not an old man. There had been a time, immediately after the disaster, when Charles had reluctantly considered the possibility of leaving London and setting himself up as a general practitioner in the country. There, his father might share the practice and heal himself by a return to work.
The idea had never been more than a dream. Dr Scott senior was not likely to recover from the shock of his ruin, as his demented behaviour at Brinsley House had foreshadowed. Even to himself Charles did not use the word ‘mad’ but he had to accept that on this one subject his father’s mind was unhinged. Not only that, but it was all too easy for almost everything that happened to be connected with the one subject, however carefully Charles fought to control every conversation. It would be out of the question to mention Margaret Lorimer, even as a stranger glimpsed at a casual meeting. To expect that she could ever be received as a daughter-in-law was to reach for the moon.
As he strode through the chilly streets of London on the way home from the theatre that evening, Charles tried desperately to find a way round the impasse. Suppose he never brought Margaret home, never mentioned her name. They could meet in her lodgings, in hospitals, in public places. Even as he imagined it, he knew that all this was impossible. His parents might live for another twenty years. They would never change their attitude. How could he possibly expect a young woman to accept such a situation with no prospect of its ending?
Only as he arrived at his own front door did he admit to himself in so many words what had happened. ‘I have fallen in love with Margaret Lorimer,’ he said aloud, and sighed. Well, that was his mistake and his misfortune. No one had asked him to do it, and he must stifle his feelings as best he might. But there had been precious little time for Margaret Lorimer to fall in love with him. She had liked him; he felt pretty sure of that - and she would have been as flattered as any other woman when his flowers arrived. She might even be looking forward to his call; and if he kept his word she would have good reason for wondering whether he was interested in her. It would be too late after that to apologize and withdraw. He must come to a standstill now, before her emotions were involved. It was the only kindness which he had in his power to offer. ‘Margaret Lorimer must not be allowed to fall in love with me,’ he said; and tried to make the second statement as certain as the first.
If Charles had been a philanderer, he would not have bothered himself about the feelings of someone whom he could drop from his life as soon as she became troublesome. It was because he was both kind and honourable that he forced himself to spend the weekend on which he had intended to call doing an extra duty on behalf of one of the other surgeons. Both then and afterwards he was unhappy, but he supposed that the hurt in his heart would heal as time passed. Nothing, he told himself, could alter his determination never to see Margaret Lorimer again.
For this reason the meeting which took place on the first Monday of the new year was unwelcome and disturbing -all the worse because he had no warning of it. The supervision of students was a normal part of his duties as a surgeon in a teaching hospital: and because so many of the older surgeons in his own and other hospitals were still not reconciled to the introduction of women to their profession, Charles found himself allotted a larger proportion of the students from the London School of Medicine for Women than would have come his way had they been divided evenly between the teaching hospitals. So there was nothing to dismay him in his first glimpse of the two young women who awaited his arrival that morning, neatly dressed in clean white smocks and plain skirts and with their hair strained severely back into buns. It was a different matter when he came near enough to recognize them.
For a moment he was unable to speak. Then he gave a quick nod of recognition.
‘Miss Lorimer. Miss Morton.’
His voice emerged coldly; it was because he could not think what else to say. His behaviour in turning away without a further word was brusque to the point of rudeness, he knew; it was because his thoughts were confused.
Margaret Lorimer was owed an apology: there could be no doubt of that. But if he made one - at least with enough sincerity to render it acceptable - he would be in danger of restoring the very situation which he had determined to avoid. It was impossible for him to make a friend of Margaret Lorimer. Therefore, it would be a kindness, surely, for this to be made clear from the first moments. If he had to work with her for the next six or eight weeks, that was something which would have to be endured; but he must start by making it clear that the relationship could only be one of teacher and pupil.
Another thought intruded. He had met Margaret Lorimer for the first time in her adult life by accident. Their second encounter, at the theatre, had been a coincidence, but one coincidence was not unusual in a relationship. A second coincidence, however, was less easy to accept. This third meeting, it was true, arose naturally out of their shared profession of medicine. Nevertheless, Margaret must have been aware that in coming to Bart’s she was likely to see him again. She knew he worked there, and knew he was a surgeon. It seemed likely that she had actually asked to do her surgical work with him. In that case, she was pursuing him. If any embarrassment was to be felt at this unfortunate meeting, she - who had contrived it - should be the one to feel it.
She did feel it. His behaviour that day was unforgivable, and he could see that she was upset by it. He was abrupt and uninformative in assigning the work to be done by her. Whenever there was an unusual dressing to be removed and replaced, it was Miss Morton he called. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Margaret as she worked alone. He noted the firm but gentle neatness with which she applied the routine dressings, her sympathetic manner with the patients, the hopeful air with which she reported that she had done everything he had asked, the disappointment with which she heard that Miss Morton might accompany him into the operating theatre but that there was no room for both of them.
The silent struggle continued for five days. It was an unhappy period for Charles, for he was fighting his own considerate nature as well as his more particular feelings about Margaret. He was not surprised, although he pretended to be, when at the end of the week she asked whether she could speak to him.
‘Of course.’ Still maintaining his pretence of indifference, he waited to hear that she intended to move to another hospital.
‘I would be glad if our conversation could be a little less public’ Margaret looked round at all the occupants of the surgical ward in which they were standing. Charles shrugged his shoulders and thought for a moment. There were few places in the hospital which could be called private, but it was possible that the library might be empty. He led the way there and opened the door for her to go inside. She turned to face him without sitting down.
‘In July I shall be sitting for my diploma examination in Surgery,’ she said. ‘I am not likely to do well in it if the rest of my time here is spent as fruitlessly as this past week. No doubt I can find somewhere else to offer me more valuable experience. But I would be interested to know before I leave why you have gone to such pains to deny it to me here.’
He had thought that she would slip away from St Bartholomew’s in silence, perhaps even in tears, and had certainly not expected to find himself accused. As a doctor, he had a good deal of experience of women who were sick, of helpless women like his mother, of frivolous women, and of earnest but still subservient women like the other female students he had supervised in the past. He was not at all accustomed to women who stood up for themselves.
‘I am sorry if you have found me unhelpful,’ he said weakly.
‘You are not sorry at all,’ Margaret replied. ‘Your unhelpfulness has been so sustained that it must have a purpose, and I take the purpose to be my departure. You will discover soon, I hope, that you have succeeded. But I shall have to explain to the Dean my application to be transferred. What reason am I to give? I thought at first that you must be one of those who disapprove of women students, but you have been considerate to my friend. I have done something to anger you, and it seems that it happened between our first meeting and this week. But you have given me no clue to what it might be. I think I deserve an explanation.’
‘Yes,’ he said. He longed to comfort her, for behind the bold words he could hear her voice trembling. She was not finding it easy to challenge him. ‘I mean, yes, you deserve an explanation. But I cannot give it to you. When I said I was sorry, I meant it. My behaviour may have disappointed you earlier as well, and if you noticed it I apologize for that as well. But it is not a matter I can discuss. Your plan to move to another hospital is a wise one. I will send a note to your Dean to say that it is no longer possible for me to supervise two students at once.’
‘After I have gone, you will never be troubled by me again,’ said Margaret. ‘So tell me now what this explanation is which cannot be given. Should I not in fairness be allowed to judge for myself what I have done to deserve your coldness?’
Charles turned away and paced up and down the library for a few moments. He had achieved the effect he intended. For her own sake, he had told himself, Margaret must not be allowed to like him, and her antagonism now was clear enough. It would be foolish to jeopardize this success just for the sake of letting her leave with a true picture of his motives. If he hesitated, it was because his respect for Margaret had been increased by her behaviour in the past few days and the past few minutes. Between what he longed to say and what he knew it would be sensible to say, there was a chasm impossible to bridge.
‘Dr Scott,’ Margaret began. Her tone rebuked him. Distraught, he turned back to face her.
‘Have you never said those two words before?’ he demanded. ‘When you learned my name, did it not strike you as familiar?’
Before answering, Margaret paused long enough to show him that it was unnecessary to continue the conversation; she had already guessed what he had at last made up his mind to tell her.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I remarked on it to Lydia. But Scott is a common enough name, and London is not Bristol. It seemed too unlikely a coincidence that we should prove to have been even so remotely connected in the past. You are telling me, then, that our family physician was
‘My father,’ he agreed. ‘My father, whom the behaviour of your father has driven to the borders of sanity, and perhaps beyond.’ It was the first time he had made such an admission. ‘Because of a Lorimer, my parents are destitute, dependent entirely upon myself. Because of a Lorimer, my father is no longer able to face the world.’
‘I am sorry, deeply sorry. But do you hold me to blame for that?’
‘No,’ he confessed. ‘And if I had met you in normal circumstances; if I had been properly introduced, knowing your name before I had time to form any opinion on your character, if I had found you to be of no more interest to me than a casual acquaintance, I should have been as polite to you as to any other young lady. If I have been rude - well, I admit frankly that I have treated you inexcusably — it is because my real wish was to know you better, and I was angry that fate should have interposed this barrier between us. I feel as Romeo must have done when he learned who Juliet was. Yet my situation is worse even than Romeo’s. I love my father and have no wish to evade my duty to him; nor can I be happy if I cause him pain. The impediment is in my own mind. If it were any other barrier, I could break it down: but not this one.’
‘It would have been kinder of you to tell me this earlier,’ suggested Margaret. She had become very pale and Charles feared that she might faint. He pulled out a chair from beneath one of the library tables and put out a hand to support her, but she moved just far enough away to avoid his touch as she sat down.
‘You will understand that I was not aware of your full name until I learned it at the theatre, just as we were parting,’ he said. ‘After that I thought it wisest to make you angry. I could not trust myself to hold to my purpose if you were kind to me; and I did not believe that you could understand my responsibilities to my parents.’ By now he was as upset as she was, though he struggled to conceal it.
‘I loved my father as much as you love yours,’ she told him. ‘At the time when the bank collapsed I was engaged to be married - were you aware of that? The engagement proved to be incompatible with my affection for my father, so it was ended. I am perfectly able to understand your feelings.’ There was a very long silence. Then she looked up at him and forced a smile. ‘But that is not to say that I agree with the way you have chosen to express them.’
‘How would you have had me behave? How would you have me behave now?’
‘By all means think of yourself as Romeo if you wish,’ she said. ‘But it would be foolish of you to cast me as Juliet. I am not a fourteen-year-old girl pining for a husband. I am twenty-six years old, and in the middle of a professional training. When I am qualified I intend to practise as a doctor. In the course of my career I hope to make many friends amongst my colleagues. Male friends as well as female. You have the reputation, Dr Scott, of being able to accept the prospect of women working as doctors. Can you not also entertain the revolutionary notion of offering them friendship as though they were men?’
‘That would make little difference to the difficulties within my family. I could never so much as mention your name at home.’
‘You have friends, no doubt, on the staff of this hospital,’ said Margaret. ‘Do you take them all home and present them to your father, or amuse him in the evenings by reciting their names? I suspect not. But are they any less your friends for meeting you in one side of your life only? If you feel that it would be a deceit even to continue knowing me as a professional acquaintance, I cannot argue with that. But my own conscience is not at risk, and it is not necessarily just that you should sacrifice me to yours.’
‘I did not see myself as sacrificing you,’ said Charles, ‘but as keeping you free from an acquaintanceship which could have nothing to offer and which might cause you distress. I cannot look into the future of my life as clearly as you evidently can into yours.’
‘My view of the future is limited by examinations,’ said Margaret. She stood up again, straight-backed and steady-eyed, smiling as cheerfully as though the conversation just ended had been about trivialities, and not one which might have altered the whole course of his life. ‘You must remember from your own student days how implacably each examination follows the one before. At the moment I have only one concern, and that is to acquire as much knowledge and experience of surgery as possible. I hope very much that you are going to tell me now that I may return here next week and count on you to teach me everything you know.’
Charles looked down at her with an unhappiness he could not fathom. He had said far more than he ever intended, but all the agonizing justification for his previous silence and bad manners had been swept away by Margaret’s understanding. He had pretended, even to himself, that his boorish behaviour had been entirely in her interest, not his own. Now he had to recognize that he had been protecting himself, and that his defences had been destroyed.
What he had explained to Margaret, and what she seemed to have accepted, was only half the probelm. She had heard him talk of Romeo and Juliet but had interpreted his words solely in terms of Montagues and Capulets, of feuds between fathers. Her solution absolved him of any anxieties on her account, but did not alter the fact that he loved her and yet would never be able to tell her so more openly than today. The friendship which she seemed to think would be enough for her might be a source of more pain than pleasure to him. This was his last chance to turn away. He could be rude once more, finally and unforgivably rude. He could watch her eyes cloud with hurt and disappointment. He could see her walk out of the room and be sure that this time she would never come back. All this was possible. He struggled to collect his courage.
No, it was not possible. She was smiling at him. Her freckled face was friendly, and trusting even though she had no grounds for trust. He could not bring himself to hurt her again. Instead, he smiled back.
‘You had better come early on Monday,’ he said. ‘I intend to perform an ovariotomy. The operation is almost as dangerous as the condition it hopes to relieve. I undertake it only as a last resort for a patient who will certainly die if nothing is done. Many surgeons refuse to attempt it at all, because the high rate of failure does their reputations no good. You have probably not had the opportunity to observe the operation before. It will be useful to you in forming your opinion on its desirability. I shall look forward to seeing you then.’
Margaret’s renewed smile was sufficient reward. She held out her hand as though the gesture sealed some kind of compact between them. Charles leaned a little forward as he took it: wanting to kiss her, wishing that she would kiss him. It was impossible, of course. He restrained himself, and she presumably had no such feelings to restrain. Margaret went smiling from the room, leaving him to come to terms as best he could with the bitter-sweetness of a love which was neither rejected nor acknowledged.