Nurse Lang Read Online Free Page A

has begun.”
    “You know all the answers, don’t you?” Philip Melmore said. “But the point is that life probably still means something to you.”
    Her remaining anger crumbled before the implication in the bitter words, but she was determined not to let him sink back into that moody silence again.
    “It can mean something to you, too,” she said, stooping to pick up his book which had fallen to the deck. “Life has a way of—pointing out these things to us, in time.”
    “Which proves that you’ve never been really disappointed in life,” he retorted.
    “Not—in this way,” she said. “Not directly, perhaps, but I have seen other people’s disappointments and near despairs and I can tell you from that experience that we are always given just enough courage and strength to bear our burdens.”
    “Don’t sermonize!” he said, shutting out the comfort in her words. “I’m not like other people!”
    “We all think that,” she returned, “but we are, you know, deep down. There are none of us so very different.” Impulsively she laid a hand on his arm. “Can’t you convince yourself that there’s hope in the future—some kind of hope? A man like your brother would never have held it out otherwise.”
    “Don’t you believe it!” he declared. “Grant can be as ruthless as the devil when it comes to getting his own way about something he feels sure about.”
    “There are different kinds of ruthlessness,” she pointed out, still defending the man she did not really know. “There are often reasons for what might seem at the time to be a harsh decision.”
    “Being cruel to be kind, you mean, I suppose,” he returned derisively. “That appears to be part of your stock-in-trade in the medical profession—the nasty-tasting medicine that works wonders! The sugar coated pill! The white light of hope shining at the bottom of a well!”
    “I think you know what I mean,” she said. “You owe it to your brother to have faith, at least.”
    He lay for a long moment, tensely still under the light ship’s blanket which covered the lower part of his body and in the brilliant sunshine his grey eyes seemed to glitter.
    “Debts are dangerous things to live with,” he said at last. “I can’t really see that I owe Grant very much. It seems to me that the boot is on the other foot,” he added grimly, “but I couldn’t expect you to know about that.” He picked up his book, dismissing her. “If you must come out to this part of the deck,” he added, “to please Grant or justify yourself with the shipping company, please come alone. I don’t like the look of your friend, the ship’s surgeon!”
    It was Gregory Paston’s youth and freedom he resented most, Moira realized as she walked away. How easy it was to see his tortured comparisons, the thoughts which drove like fiery demons of envy through his brain, sowing the seeds of bitterness and resentment broadcast in his heart!
    She was sitting at her tea when the stewardess from A deck came down to the saloon.
    “I’m sorry to bother you, Nurse,” she said, “but it’s that young Mr. Melmore in A2. He’s asked for a tray to be taken upon deck and he wants you to bring it. Seems that he won’t be moved from where he is till everybody else has gone down for dinner or some such nonsense! I suppose he’s sensitive about his condition,” she added more kindly, “but we saw plenty, of that during the war—we older ones!”
    “Mr. Melmore may not be able to look at it like that just now,” Moira said, taking up the tray. “I don’t mind going on deck at all. There’s nothing to do in the sick-bay just now. People seem to have forgotten they’re at sea!”
    “There’s always the chronically sea-sick!” the stewardess grunted.
    “We’ve got four of them up there. Down on their bunks as soon as they come on board, with their finger never off the bell when they’re not sound asleep!”
    Moira carried the tray along the deck in the hot