Read Curtain for Free Online

unsympathetic.

Curtain

Chapter 5
    I had only met Mrs Franklin once before. She was a woman about thirty - of what I should describe as the Madonna type. Big brown eyes, hair parted in the centre, and a long gentle face. She was very slender and her skin had a transparent fragility.
    She was lying on a day bed, propped up with pillows, and wearing a very dainty negligee of white and pale blue.
    Franklin and Boyd Carrington were there drinking coffee. Mrs Franklin welcomed me with an outstretched hand and a smile.
    “How glad I am you've come, Captain Hastings. It will be so nice for Judith. The child has really been working far too hard.”
    “She looks very well on it,” I said as I took the fragile little hand in mine.
    Barbara Franklin sighed.
    “Yes, she's lucky. How I envy her. I don't believe really that she knows what ill health is. What do you think, Nurse? Oh! Let me introduce you. This is Nurse Craven, who's so terribly, terribly good to me. I don't know what I should do without her. She treats me just like a baby.”
    Nurse Craven was a tall good-looking young woman with a fine colour and a handsome head of auburn hair. I noticed her hands, which were long and white - very different from the hands of so many hospital nurses. She was in some respects a taciturn girl, and sometimes did not answer, She did not now, merely inclined her head.
    “But really,” went on Mrs Franklin, “John has been working that wretched girl of yours too hard. He's such a slave driver. You are a slave driver, aren't you, John?”
    Her husband was standing looking out of the window. He was whistling to himself and jingling some loose change in his pocket. He started slightly at his wife's question.
    “What's that, Barbara?”
    “I was saying that you overwork poor Judith Hastings shamefully. Now Captain Hastings is here, he and I are going to put our heads together and we're not going to allow it.”
    Persiflage was not Dr Franklin's strong point. He looked vaguely worried and turned to Judith inquiringly. He mumbled:
    “You must let me know if I overdo it.”
    Judith said:
    “They're just trying to be funny. Talking of work, I wanted to ask you about that stain for the second slide - you know, the one that -”
    He turned to her eagerly and broke in.
    “Yes, yes. I say, if you don't mind, let's go down to the lab. I'd like to be quite sure -”
    Still talking, they went out of the room together.
    Barbara Franklin lay back on her pillows. She sighed. Nurse Craven said suddenly and rather disagreeably:
    “It's Miss Hastings who's the slave driver, I think!”
    Again Mrs Franklin sighed. She murmured:
    “I feel so inadequate. I ought, I know, to take more interest in John's work, but I just can't do it. I daresay it's something wrong in me, but -”
    She was interrupted by a snort from Boyd Carrington, who was standing by the fireplace.
    “Nonsense, Babs,” he said. “You're all right. Don't worry yourself.”
    “Oh, but, Bill dear, I do worry. I get so discouraged about myself. It's all - I can't help feeling it - it's all so nasty. The guinea pigs and the rats and everything. Ugh!” She shuddered. “I know it's stupid, but I'm such a fool. It makes me feel quite sick. I just want to think of all the lovely happy things - birds and flowers, and children playing. You know, Bill.”
    He came over and took the hand she held out to him so pleadingly. His face as he looked down at her was changed, as gentle as any woman's. It was, somehow, impressive - for Boyd Carrington was so essentially a manly man.
    “You've not changed much since you were seventeen, Babs,” he said. “Do you remember that garden house of yours and the bird bath, and the cocoanuts?”
    He turned his head to me.
    “Barbara and I are old playmates,” he said.
    “Oh! Playmates!” she protested.
    “Oh, I'm not denying that you're over fifteen years younger than I am. But I played with you as a tiny tot when I was a young man. Gave you pickabacks, my