Part 3 (1/2)

Hester was so furious she was rooted to the spot. His statements were monstrously irrelevant, patronizing and complacent, and she had no weapons she dared use against him. She could tell him all the incompetent, self-preserving, inadequate things she thought he was, but it would only defeat her purposes and make an even more bitter enemy of him than he was now. And perhaps John Airdrie would suffer.

With a monumental effort she bit back the scalding contempt and the words remained inside her.

”When are you going to operate on the child?” she repeated, staring at him.

He colored very faintly. There was something in her eyes that discomfited him.

”I had already decided to operate this afternoon, Miss Latterly. Your comments were quite unnecessary,” he lied-and she knew it, but kept it from her face.

”I am sure your judgment is excellent,” she lied back.

”Well what are you waiting for?” he demanded, taking his hands out of his pockets. ”Put that child down and get on with it! Do you not know how to do what I asked? Surely your competence stretphes that far?” He indulged in sarcasm again; he still had a great deal of status to recoup. ”The bandages are in the cupboard at the end of the ward, and no doubt you have the key.”

Hester was too angry to speak. She laid the child down gently, rose to her feet.

”Is that not it, hanging at your waist?” he demanded.

She strode past him, swinging the keys so wide and hard they clipped his coattails as she pa.s.sed, and marched along the length of the ward to fetch the bandages.

Hester had been on duty since dawn, and by four o'clock in the afternoon she was emotionally exhausted. Physically, her back ached, her legs were stiff, her feet hurt and her boots felt tight. And the pins in her hair were digging into her head. She was in no mood to continue her running battle with the matron over the type of woman who should be recruited into nursing. She wished particularly to see it become a profession which was respected and remunerated accordingly, so women of character and intelligence would be attracted. Mrs. Stansfield had grown up with the rough-and-ready women who expected to do no more than scrub, sweep, stoke fires and carry coals, launder, clean out slops and waste, and pa.s.s bandages. Senior nurses like herself kept discipline rigid and spirits high. She had no desire, as Hester had, to exercise medical judgment, change dressings herself and give medicines when the surgeon was absent, and certainly not to a.s.sist in operations. She considered these young women who had come back from the Crimea to overrate themselves greatly and be a disruptive and highly unwelcome influence, and she said so.

This evening Hester simply wished her good-night and walked out, leaving her surprised, and the lecture on morals and duty pent up unspoken inside her. It was very unsatisfying. It would be different tomorrow.

It was not a long journey from the infirmary to the lodging house where Hester had taken rooms. Previously she had lived with her brother, Charles, and his wife, Imogen, but since the financial ruin and death of their parents, it would be quite unfair to expect Charles to support her for longer than the first few months after she returned from the Crimea early in order to be with the family in its time of bereavement and distress. After the resolution of the Grey case she had accepted the help of Lady Callandra Daviot to obtain the post at the infirmary, where she could earn sufficient to maintain herself and could exercise the talents she possessed in administration and nursing.

During the war she had also learned a good deal about war correspondence from her friend Alan Russell, and when he died in the hospital in Scutari, she had sent his last dispatch to his newspaper in London. Later, when his death had not been realized in the thousands of others, she did not amend the error but wrote the letters herself, and was deeply satisfied when they were printed. She could no longer use his name now she was home again, but she wrote now and then, and signed herself simply as one of Miss Nightingale's volunteers. It paid only a few s.h.i.+llings, but money was not her primary motive; it was the desire to express the opinions she held with such intensity, and to move people to press for reform.

When she reached her lodgings, her landlady, a spare, hardworking woman with a sick husband and too many children, greeted her with the news that she had a visitor awaiting her in the parlor.

”A visitor?” Hester was surprised, and too weary to be pleased, even if it was Imogen, who was the only person she could think of. ”Who is it, Mrs. Home?”

”A Mrs. Daviot,” the landlady replied without interest. She was too busy to be bothered with anything beyond her duties. ”Said she'd wait for you.”

”Thank you.” Hester felt an unexpected lift, both because she liked Callandra Daviot as well as anyone she knew, and because characteristically she had omitted to use her t.i.tle, a modesty exercised by very few.

Callandra was sitting in the small, well-worn parlor by the meager fire, but she had not kept on her coat, even though the room was chill. Her interesting, individual face lit up when Hester came in. Her hair was as wild as always, and she was dressed with more regard for comfort than style.

”Hester, my dear, you look appallingly tired. Come and sit down. I'm sure you need a cup of tea. So do I. I asked that woman, poor creature-what is her name?-if she would bring one.”

”Mrs. Home.'' Hester sat down and unb.u.t.toned her boots. She slipped them off under her skirt with an exquisite relief and adjusted the worst of the pins in her hair.

Callandra smiled. She was the widow of an army surgeon, now very much past her later middle years, and she had known Hester some time before the Grey case had caused their paths to cross again. She had been born Callandra Grey, the daughter of the late Lord Shelburne, and was the aunt of the present Lord Shelburne and of his younger brother.

Hester knew she would not have come simply to visit, not at the end of a hard day when she was aware Hester would be tired and not in the best frame of mind for company. It was too late for genteel afternoon calling, and far too early for dinner. Hester waited expectantly.

”Menard Grey comes to trial the day after tomorrow,'' Callandra said quietly. ”We must testify on his behalf-I presume you are still willing?”

”Of course!” There was not even a second's doubt.

”Then we had better go and meet with the lawyer I have employed to conduct his defense. He will have some counsel for us concerning our testimony. I have arranged to see him in his rooms this evening. I am sorry it is so hasty, but he is extremely busy and had no other opportunity. We may have dinner first, or later, as you please. My carriage will return in half an hour; I thought it unsuitable to leave it outside.” She smiled wryly; explanation was not necessary.

'' Of course.'' Hester sank deeper into her chair and thought of Mrs. Home's cup of tea. She would have that well before she thought of changing her clothes, putting her boots on again, and traipsing out to see some lawyer.

But Oliver Rathbone was not ”some lawyer”; he was the most brilliant advocate practicing at the bar, and he knew it. He was a lean man of no more than average height, neatly but unremarkably dressed, until one looked closely and saw the quality of the fabric and, after a little while, the excellence of the cut, which fitted him perfectly and seemed always to hang without strain or crease. His hair was fair and his face narrow with a long nose and a sensitive, beautifully shaped mouth. But the overriding impression was one of controlled emotion and brilliant, all-pervading intelligence.

His rooms were quiet and full of light from the chandelier which hung from the center of an ornately plastered ceiling. In the daylight they would have been equally well illuminated by three large sash windows, curtained in dark green velvet and bound by simple cords. The desk was mahogany and the chairs appeared extremely comfortable.

He ushered them in and bade them be seated. At first Hester was unimpressed, finding him a little too concerned for their ease than for the purpose of their visit, but this misapprehension vanished as soon as he addressed the matter of the trial. His voice was pleasing enough, but the preciseness of his diction made it memorable so that even his exact intonation remained with her long afterwards.

”Now, Miss Latterly,” he said, ”we must discuss the testimony you are to give. You understand it will not simply be a matter of reciting what you know and then being permitted to leave?”

She had not considered it, and when she did now, that was precisely what she had a.s.sumed. She was about to deny it, and saw in his face that he had read her thoughts, so she changed them.

”I was awaiting your instructions, Mr. Rathbone. I had not judged the matter one way or the other.”

He smiled, a delicate, charming movement of the lips.

”Quite so.” He leaned against the edge of his desk and regarded her gravely. ”I will question you first. You are my witness, you understand? I shall ask you to tell the events of your family's tragedy, simply, from your own point of view. I do not wish you to tell me anything that you did not experience yourself. If you do, the judge will instruct the jury to disregard it, and every time he stops you and disallows what you say, the less credence the jury will give to what remains. They may easily forget which is which.”

”I understand,” she a.s.sured him. ”I will say only what I know for myself.”

”You may easily be tempted, Miss Latterly. It is a matter in which your feelings must be very deep.” He looked at her with brilliant, humorous eyes. ”It will not be as simple as you may expect.”

”What chance is there that Menard Grey will not be hanged?” she asked gravely. She chose deliberately the harshest words. Rathbone was not a man with whom to use euphemisms.

”We will do the best we can,” he replied, the light fading from his face.”But I am not at all sure that we will succeed.''

”And what would be success, Mr. Rathbone?”

”Success? Success would be transportation to Australia, where he would have some chance to make a new life for himself-in time. But they stopped most transportation three years ago, except for cases warranting sentences over fourteen years-” He paused.

”And failure?” she said almost under her breath. ”Hanging?”

”No,” he said, leaning forward a little. ”The rest of his life somewhere like the Coldbath Fields. I'd rather be hanged, myself.”

She sat silent; there was nothing to say to such a reality, and trite words would be so cra.s.s as to be painful. Callandra, sitting in the corner of the room, remained motionless.

”What can we do that will be best?” Hester said after a moment or two. ”Please advise me, Mr. Rathbone.”

”Answer only what I ask you, Miss Latterly,” he replied. ”Do not offer anything, even if you believe it will be helpful. We will discuss everything now, and I will judge what will suit our case and what, in the jury's minds, may damage it. They did not live through the events; many things that are perfectly clear to you may be obscure to them.” He smiled with a bleak, personal humor that lit his eyes and curved the corners of his abstemious mouth. ”And their knowledge of the war may be very different from yours. They may well consider all officers, especially wounded ones, to be heroes. And if we try too clumsily to persuade them otherwise, they may resent the destruction of far more of their dreams than we are aware of. Like Lady Fabia Grey, they may need to believe as they do.”

Hester had a sudden sharp recollection of sitting in the bedroom at Shelburne Hall with Fabia Grey, her crumpled face aged in a single blow as half a lifetime's treasures withered and died in front of her.

”With loss very often comes hatred.” Rathbone spoke as if he had felt her thoughts as vividly as she had herself. ”We need someone to blame when we cannot cope with the pain except through anger, which is so much easier, at least to begin with.”

Instinctively she looked up and met his gaze, and was startled by its penetration. It was both a.s.suring and discomfiting. He was not a man to whom she could ever lie. Thank heaven it would not be necessary!