You Took My Heart by Elizabeth Hoy Page A

Joan comforted her as well as she could, fetching an armful of cheerful magazines from the library, finding a specially lovely vase of roses and a plate of grapes from the stock of flowers and fruit which had just come in from some Church Harvest Festival.
    And all the time she was a little envious of the luxury of the other girl’s tears. Mary Cree could he in bed and sob quite openly, she could seek for sympathy and find it. No one expected her to be anything but broken up because her young man had died. Everyone was sorry for Mary. But Garth was dead too, and there must be no tears. No weakness. If love went out of your life because of some other woman you had to hold your head up, remember your pride.
    Soberly, with her lips in a grim line, Joan went off presently for her own meal. Garth was coming to the ward at four o’clock, but she wouldn’t be there. There was a kind of wretched triumph in the reflection. Sister Millet had asked her to go down to Out Patients to relieve a probationer who was ill, and she had only been too glad of the chance of escape.
    All through the bright hours of the afternoon she filled in case-sheets, helped visiting patients in and out of waiting rooms and dressing rooms, ran in the wake of fussy, overworked staff nurse who was furious when she didn’t know by instinct just where all the files in the receiving office were kept.
    At six, draggled and tired, she was sent into the main waiting-hall to tell the patients still sitting there hoping for their turns to come that the work of the day was over and the doctors leaving. She saw a black bonnet nodding frantically to her, a beaming smile. It was Mrs. Eldon. Joan stopped for a word with her. The old lady was quite well again, she said happily, and almost done with the hospital. Today she was merely waiting for the nice young man in the dispensary to bring her the last bottle of her tonic.
    Joan talked to her for a while, wa rm ed by her friendliness, her gratitude. “It was all due to you, dearie,” Mrs. Eldon told her, “that I had such a good long convalescence. The lady almoner got me a lovely place in a home by the sea. Now I’m fit for work again, and looking for a job.”
    Joan asked her what sort of job, and while the old lady rambled on about her prowess as a housekeeper or a plain needle-woman, she recalled with a stab of pain Vera Petrovna, who wasn’t really Vera Petrovna at all, but Mrs. Garth Perros. Vera wanted someone badly for a few hours in the mornings to take Ivan for a daily walk in the park.
    Somehow or other Joan made herself say Vera’s name quietly, repeating to Mrs. Eldon again and again the address of the Bloomsbury flat until she had got it thoroughly into her head. Mrs. Eldon was once more filled with gratitude. She seized Joan’s hand and shook it. She said, “You’re my good angel, Nurse. I can’t thank you enough!” Her wrinkled old eyes were filled with tears.
    Joan was quite touched by all this. She was young enough to feel just a shade important over the things she had been able to do for Mrs. Eldon. Helping people had a queer satisfaction about it—made you all warm and good inside, she decided. Maybe she would give her life to just this, and no more. Maybe it would be enough. She thought of nuns with their calm, still faces, of wonderful Sisters of Charity who went out to Leper colonies, of Miss Darley, rather less remote than these beings; Miss Darley so proud and so powerful and fulfilled in her responsible work as Matron of the big hospital. There were lots of things for women in life besides love and marriage after all. It was silly to fret yourself sick because the dream of your heart had been shattered, silly to go back to the Nurses’ Home and find yourself quite without appetite for supper, to creep up to bed afterwards and sob yourself to sleep for the second night in succession. Yet that is precisely what she did!
    And the next day she had forgotten all about Mrs. Eldon and about