Air Ticket by Susan Barrie Page B

if she couldn’t believe it, “that Beverley is expecting a—baby?”
    David looked up at her with dull eyes.
    “We didn’t tell you about it because we weren’t absolutely certain, but she really was—I mean, she is — ” He didn’t seem to know quite what he was saying, and Caro took his hand and held it tightly. “How soon can I see her?” she asked.
    “Oh, I expect they ’ll let you see her soon. But she isn’t ... conscious, you know.”
    “No.” Caro swallowed something in her throat.
    “And I’m afraid you’ve had an absolutely frightful journey,” he said, gazing at her with sudden sympathy. “I rather thought Lucien would come with you.”
    “He wanted to do so, but I—I didn’t want him to,” she surprised him by answering.
    A little later she was allowed to see Beverley, but as David had warned her, her daughter was not conscious. For a moment she wished that she had someone like Lucien beside her. But Lucien was far away, and Beverley did not even know she was there. Caro was almost relieved to feel a light touch on her shoulder and hear the voice of the nurse in charge suggesting gently that as she had only just completed a very long journey it might be wiser for her to rest awhile and come back later on.
    “We don’t anticipate any immediate change,” she said, “and Mr. Rivers might like to drive you home and then return.”
    “But I’d much rather stay here—” Caro was beginning, when David roused himself from his own anxiety to insist sternly that that could not be allowed.
    “I’ll drive you home,” he said, “and you can have at least a few hours’ sleep, and then I’ll come and collect you again in the evening. Do you realize that it will soon be dawn?”
    They had a drive of about twenty minutes, and when the car drew up at last outside the small gray stone house that was Beverley’s own home, Caro realized that she was seeing it for the first time.
    David handed her over to the care of an elderly housekeeper, and within a very short space of time her head was on a lavender-scented pillow and she was drifting into sleep too exhausted for dreams. When she awakened the housekeeper was standing beside the bed with a tray of tea, the room was flooded with sunlight that looked like late-afternoon sunlight, and the little clock on the mantelpiece said five o’clock.
    Caro threw back the bedclothes and leaped up in a kind of panic.
    “Oh, why have I slept so long?” she demanded. “Why didn’t somebody wake me?”
    “It’s all right, madam,” the housekeeper said to her soothingly. “There is no bad news from the hospital, and Mr. David said he would not be returning for you until about seven o’clock. You have lots of time to drink this, have a bath and a meal before he comes for you.”
    “I couldn’t eat anything,” Caro told her.
    “We’ll see about that,” the housekeeper remarked.
    Caro caught sight of the telephone on its ivory rest beside the bed, and suddenly she reached out for it. But when she got through at last to the house in Oberlaken, it was to be told by Frau Bauer that the doctor was not there. She sank back on her pillows looking white and perturbed.
    Lucien had asked her to ring, and she had forgotten!
    All at once, as she listened to the water for her bath running not far away, she found herself feeling an almost overwhelming pity for Lucien, who had lost everything that made life worth living for him ten long and empty years ago. Lucien — whose brief hour of enchantment had died almost before it was born, and who had been left with nothing but memories to cheer and recompense him through the years. And memories, even the most magical ones, are cold and comfortless things at times —
    Caro felt tears running down her cheeks, and she put up her hands and hid her eyes. For now even she had failed Lucien!
    She got out of bed, put on her housecoat and sat down by the window, to write a brief note. At least that could be posted without