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  “What’s happened to you, Mrs. Napier?” asked the nurse.

  “Happened?” Mrs. Napier glared at her through her thick-lensed, gold-framed spectacles. “I’ve been lying here for hours. I might have died for all that you care. You all hate me. I’d far better be dead. I pray that you will never be like me.”

  “Amen to that!” exclaimed Nurse Hawkins fervently. Then, in softer tones, she added: “There, you’ll soon feel better now. Let me see if you can walk to the nearest pillar. Ups-a-daisy! Don’t fall down again; left, right, left, right. I’ll go and fetch the bath-chair for you.”

  The thought of the bath-chair acted like a spur, and Mrs. Napier began to walk slowly, still crossing her legs one over the other, to the pillars which supported the open, glass-covered verandah which ran round the south front of the Hydro. There she left her.

  “That dreadful nurse!” said Mrs. Napier. “She neglects me so. I think I shall have to go away from here. Nobody cares about me.” She began to whimper.

  “Oh no, you can’t mean that,” protested Miss Astill in her gentle, ladylike voice. “Nurse Hawkins is very trying, we know, but you must have patience with her. She has all the faults of an unbeliever. But you must never think of leaving the Hydro. Where else would you ever find such comfort and peace, and anyone so thoughtful as the dear, kind doctor? The one fear of my life is that I might have to live somewhere else. You surely could not deliberately choose to go away. Besides, we should all miss you so much.”

  Mrs. Napier smiled.

  “Perhaps I spoke hastily,” she said. “If you want me to stay, of course, I will. You are always so kind.”

  “That’s right,” replied Miss Astill with an encouraging smile. “Now I must leave you. I am going to take my morning exercise along the shrubbery path.” She jerked herself away.

  Mrs. Napier began dusting down the front of her shapeless brown woollen cardigan suit with a large silk handkerchief. A burst of laughter from the croquet lawn arrested her attention, and she looked up.

  “Those horrid Marstons,” she thought. She could never make up her mind which of the four she hated the most; the supercilious mother, the bad-tempered father, or the two stupid, giggling girls. What did any of them know about suffering like hers?

  Another laugh. Mrs. Napier glared suspiciously at them.

  Were they laughing at her? No, it was at Mr. Marston, who was driving all the croquet balls off the edge of the lawn because he was annoyed at losing the game. And his language! Really, she could not stay and listen to it.

  She made two steps, crabwise, holding on to the nearest pillar, then relaxed as she saw that they were not going to play any more. As they walked away Mr. Marston’s loud voice could be heard discussing, like any bridge-player, every wrong stroke which had been made during the whole course of the game, both by his partner and by his opponents.

  Mrs. Napier looked beyond the croquet lawn to the grassy edge of the bright-red cliff, and across the sunlit sweep of Devonshire Bay to the opposite arm of land from which the distant, vast expanse of Dartmoor rose in a dim purple haze. The thought of the moors soothed her. As she stood there on the terrace gazing across towards them, a deep peace enfolded her, and she forgot the troubles of the morning. It was thus that the moors had looked down with unchanging brows on the troubles of countless generations, so big were they, so calm, so remote.

  She remembered the time when they had not been so remote to her. Thirty-five years ago she and Mortimer had spent their honeymoon on those same moors, and had tramped for hours among the tors. She in a short plaid cape and long tweed skirt, and he in ulster and deerstalker, with a half-plate camera strapped to his back. What fun that camera had brought to them! How often had they been turned away and refused food and shelter because some worthy farmer’s wife had mistaken it for a pedlar’s pack or for part of the equipment of the scorned tinker folk.

  They had never been content to tramp the easier, wooded paths which skirted the edge of the moor. Each day had seen the conquest of yet another of the highest tors, and they had dared the long road which swept down to the little grey village of Widdicombe, only to shoot up again to an equal height on the other side in a gigantic switchback. In those days she had skipped along the crisp loamy undergrowth as actively as a goat, often running to the top of a rise before Mortimer, and calling, in the high-pitched voice he had loved, upon all the new beauties of form and colour which lay before her eyes.

  Now she could no longer run, or even walk, and she pretended that she was happier for it. Such joys as she and Mortimer had experienced had vanished, she said, with the charabanc, whose noisy, motley crowds of boisterous holidaymakers so often disturbed the peace of the country. But in her heart she knew that she envied them, just as she envied the straight, lissom limbs of Miss Blake and Winnie Marston, who could still tramp the red turf of the moors while she had to be wheeled about in a bath-chair.

  The rolling sound of the great Chinese gong from the entrance hall of the Hydro cut across her mind. It imbued the scattered figures in the grounds and on the terrace with a sudden, single purpose. They passed through the double swing-doors, leaving the brown-clad figure of Mrs. Napier alone.

  She remained there until the cheerful rattle of knives and forks echoed through the open dining-room windows, then, looking round furtively to make sure that no one was in sight, she walked steadily towards the front doors into the Hydro.

  Published by Dean Street Press 2015

  Copyright © 1942 Harriet Rutland

  All Rights Reserved

  This ebook is published by licence, issued under the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme.

  First published in 1942 by Skeffington & Son

  Cover by DSP

  ISBN 978 1 910570 85 2

  www.deanstreetpress.co.uk