Part 66 (1/2)

”You said I was to come and wake you,” said Minta, drawing up the blind; ”but I don't believe you're a bit fit to be going about. Here's some hot water, and there's a letter just come.”

Marcella woke with a start, Minta put the letter on her knee, and dream and reality flowed together as she saw her own name in Wharton's handwriting.

She read the letter, then sat flushed and thinking for a while with her hands on her knees.

A little while later she opened the Hurds' front-door.

”Minta, I am going now. I shall be back early after supper, for I haven't written my report.”

”There--now you look something like!” said Minta, scanning her approvingly--the wide hat and pretty black dress. ”Shall Daisy run out with that telegram?”

”No, thanks. I shall pa.s.s the post. Good-bye.”

And she stooped and kissed the little withered woman. She wished, ardently wished, that Minta would be more truly friends with her!

After a brisk walk through the June evening she stopped--still within the same district--at the door of a house in a long, old-fas.h.i.+oned street, wherein the builder was busy on either hand, since most of the long leases had just fallen in. But the house she entered was still untouched. She climbed a last-century staircase, adorned with panels of stucco work--slender Italianate reliefs of wreaths, ribbons, and medallions on a pale green ground. The decoration was clean and cared for, the house in good order. Eighty years ago it was the home of a famous judge, who entertained in its rooms the legal and literary celebrities of his day. Now it was let out to professional people in lodgings or unfurnished rooms. Edward Hallin and his sister occupied the top floor.

Miss Hallin, a pleasant-looking, plain woman of about thirty-five, came at once in answer to Marcella's knock, and greeted her affectionately.

Edward Hallin sprang up from a table at the further end of the room.

”You are so late! Alice and I had made up our minds you had forgotten us!”

”I didn't get home till four, and then I had to have a sleep,” she explained, half shyly.

”What! you haven't been night-nursing?”

”Yes, for once.”

”Alice, tell them to bring up supper, and let's look after her.”

He wheeled round a comfortable chair to the open window--the charming circular bow of last-century design, which filled up the end of the room and gave it character. The window looked out on a quiet line of back gardens, such as may still be seen in Bloomsbury, with fine plane trees here and there just coming into full leaf; and beyond them the backs of another line of houses in a distant square, with pleasant irregularities of old brickwork and tiled roof. The mottled trunks of the planes, their blackened twigs and branches, their thin, beautiful leaves, the forms of the houses beyond, rose in a charming medley of line against the blue and peaceful sky. No near sound was to be heard, only the distant murmur that no Londoner escapes; and some of the British Museum pigeons were sunning themselves on the garden-wall below.

Within, the Hallins' room was s.p.a.cious and barely furnished. The walls, indeed, were crowded with books, and broken, where the books ceased, by photographs of Italy and Greece; but of furniture proper there seemed to be little beside Hallin's large writing-table facing the window, and a few chairs, placed on the blue drugget which brother and sister had chosen with a certain anxiety, dreading secretly lest it should be a piece of self-indulgence to buy what pleased them both so much. On one side of the fireplace was Miss Hallin's particular corner; her chair, the table that held her few special books, her work-basket, with its knitting, her accounts. There, in the intervals of many activities, she sat and worked or read, always cheerful and busy, and always watching over her brother.

”I wish,” said Hallin, with some discontent, when Marcella had settled herself, ”that we were going to be alone to-night; that would have rested you more.”

”Why, who is coming?” said Marcella, a little flatly. She had certainly hoped to find them alone.

”Your old friend, Frank Leven, is coming to supper. When he heard you were to be here he vowed that nothing could or should keep him away.

Then, after supper, one or two people asked if they might come in. There are some anxious things going on.”

He leant his head on his hand for a moment with a sigh, then forcibly wrenched himself from what were evidently recurrent thoughts.

”Do tell me some more of what you are doing!” he said, bending forward to her. ”You don't know how much I have thought of what you have told me already.”

”I'm doing just the same,” she said, laughing. ”Don't take so much interest in it. It's the fas.h.i.+on just now to admire nurses; but it's ridiculous. We do our work like other people--sometimes badly, sometimes well. And some of us wouldn't do it if we could help it.”

She threw out the last words with a certain vehemence, as though eager to get away from any sentimentalism about herself. Hallin studied her kindly.

”Is this miscellaneous work a relief to you after hospital?” he asked.