Marcella

"I should think your second doctor will take care of that!" said Hallin.

"I don"t know. I couldn"t help it. But it is one of our first principles not to question a doctor. And last week too I got the a.s.sociation into trouble. A patient I had been nursing for weeks and got quite fond of had to be removed to hospital. She asked me to cut her hair. It was matted dreadfully, and would have been cut off directly she got to the ward. So I cut it, left her all comfortable, and was to come back at one to meet the doctor and help get her off. When I came, I found the whole court in an uproar. The sister of the woman, who had been watching for me, stood on the doorstep, and implored me to go away. The husband had gone out of his senses with rage because I had cut his wife"s hair without his consent. "He"ll murder you, Nuss!" said the sister, "if he sees you! Don"t come in!--he"s mad--he"s _been going round on "is "ands and knees on the floor_!""--Hallin interrupted with a shout of laughter.

Marcella laughed too; but to his amazement he saw that her hand shook, and that there were tears in her eyes.

"It"s all very well," she said with a sigh, "but I had to come away in disgrace, all the street looking on. And he made such a fuss at the office as never was. It was unfortunate--we don"t want the people set against the nurses. And now Dr. Blank!--I seem to be always getting into sc.r.a.pes. It is different from hospital, where everything is settled for one."

Hallin could hardly believe his ears. Such womanish terrors and depressions from Marcella Boyce! Was she, after all, too young for the work, or was there some fret of the soul reducing her natural force? He felt an unwonted impulse of tenderness towards her--such as one might feel towards a tired child--and set himself to cheer and rest her.

He had succeeded to some extent, when he saw her give a little start, and following her eyes he perceived that unconsciously his arm, which was resting on the table, had pushed into her view a photograph in a little frame, which had been hitherto concealed from her by a gla.s.s of flowers. He would have quietly put it out of sight again, but she sat up in her chair.

"Will you give it me?" she said, putting out her hand.

He gave it her at once.

"Alice brought it home from Miss Raeburn the other day. His aunt made him sit to one of the photographers who are always besieging public men.

We thought it good."

"It is very good," she said, after a pause. "Is the hair really--as grey as that?" She pointed to it.

"Quite. I am very glad that he is going off with Lord Maxwell to Italy.

It will be ten days" break for him at any rate. His work this last year has been very heavy. He has had his grandfather"s to do really, as well as his own; and this Commission has been a stiff job too. I am rather sorry that he has taken this new post."

"What post?"

"Didn"t you hear? They have made him Under-secretary to the Home Department. So that he is now in the Government."

She put back the photograph, and moved her chair a little so as to see more of the plane trees and the strips of sunset cloud.

"How is Lord Maxwell?" she asked presently.

"Much changed. It might end in a sudden break-up at any time."

Hallin saw a slight contraction pa.s.s over her face. He knew that she had always felt an affection for Lord Maxwell. Suddenly Marcella looked hastily round her. Miss Hallin was busy with a little servant at the other end of the room making arrangements for supper.

"Tell me," she said, bending over the arm of her chair and speaking in a low, eager voice, "he is beginning to forget it?"

Hallin looked at her in silence, but his half sad, half ironic smile suggested an answer from which she turned away.

"If he only would!" she said, speaking almost to herself, with a kind of impatience. "He ought to marry, for everybody"s sake."

"I see no sign of his marrying--at present," said Hallin, drily.

He began to put some papers under his hand in order. There was a cold dignity in his manner which she perfectly understood. Ever since that day--that never-forgotten day--when he had come to her the morning after her last interview with Aldous Raeburn--come with reluctance and dislike, because Aldous had asked it of him--and had gone away her friend, more drawn to her, more touched by her than he had ever been in the days of the engagement, their relation on this subject had been the same. His sweetness and kindness to her, his influence over her life during the past eighteen months, had been very great. In that first interview, the object of which had been to convey to her a warning on the subject of the man it was thought she might allow herself to marry, something in the manner with which he had attempted his incredibly difficult task--its simplicity, its delicate respect for her personality, its suggestion of a character richer and saintlier than anything she had yet known, and unconsciously revealing itself under the stress of emotion--this something had suddenly broken down his pale, proud companion, had to his own great dismay brought her to tears, and to such confidences, such indirect askings for help and understanding as amazed them both.

Experiences of this kind were not new to him. His life consecrated to ideas, devoted to the wresting of the maximum of human service from a crippling physical weakness; the precarious health itself which cut him off from a hundred ordinary amus.e.m.e.nts and occupations, and especially cut him off from marriage--together with the ardent temperament, the charm, the imaginative insight which had been his cradle-gifts--these things ever since he was a lad had made him again and again the guide and prop of natures stronger and stormier than his own. Often the unwilling guide; for he had the half-impatient breathless instincts of the man who has set himself a task, and painfully doubts whether he will have power and time to finish it. The claims made upon him seemed to him often to cost him physical and brain energy he could ill spare.

But his quick tremulous sympathy rendered him really a defenceless prey in such matters. Marcella threw herself upon him as others had done; and there was no help for it. Since their first memorable interview, at long intervals, he had written to her and she to him. Of her hospital life, till to-night, she had never told him much. Her letters had been the pa.s.sionate outpourings of a nature sick of itself, and for the moment of living; full of explanations which really explained little; full too of the untaught pangs and questionings of a mind which had never given any sustained or exhaustive effort to any philosophical or social question, and yet was in a sense tortured by them all--athirst for an impossible justice, and aflame for ideals mocked first and above all by the writer"s own weakness and defect. Hallin had felt them interesting, sad, and, in a sense, fine; but he had never braced himself to answer them without groans. There were so many other people in the world in the same plight!

Nevertheless, all through the growth of friendship one thing had never altered between them from the beginning--Hallin"s irrevocable judgment of the treatment she had bestowed on Aldous Raeburn. Never throughout the whole course of their acquaintance had he expressed that judgment to her in so many words. Notwithstanding, she knew perfectly well both the nature and the force of it. It lay like a rock in the stream of their friendship. The currents of talk might circle round it, imply it, glance off from it; they left it unchanged. At the root of his mind towards her, at the bottom of his gentle sensitive nature, there was a sternness which he often forgot--she never.

This hard fact in their relation had insensibly influenced her greatly, was constantly indeed working in and upon her, especially since the chances of her nursing career had brought her to settle in this district, within a stone"s throw of him and his sister, so that she saw them often and intimately. But it worked in different ways.

Sometimes--as to-night--it evoked a kind of defiance.

A minute or two after he had made his remark about Aldous, she said to him suddenly,

"I had a letter from Mr. Wharton to-day. He is coming to tea with me to-morrow, and I shall probably go to the House on Friday with Edith Craven to hear him speak."

Hallin gave a slight start at the name. Then he said nothing; but went on sorting some letters of the day into different heaps. His silence roused her irritation.

"Do you remember," she said, in a low, energetic voice, "that I told you I could never be ungrateful, never forget what he had done?"

"Yes, I remember," he said, not without a certain sharpness of tone.

"You spoke of giving him help if he ever asked it of you--has he asked it?"

She explained that what he seemed to be asking was Louis Craven"s help, and that his overtures with regard to the _Labour Clarion_ were particularly opportune, seeing that Louis was pining to be able to marry, and was losing heart, hope, and health for want of some fixed employment. She spoke warmly of her friends and their troubles, and Hallin"s inward distaste had to admit that all she said was plausible.

Since the moment in that strange talk which had drawn them together, when she had turned upon him with the pa.s.sionate cry--"I see what you mean, perfectly! but I am not going to marry Mr. Wharton, so don"t trouble to warn me--for the matter of that he has warned me himself:--but my _grat.i.tude_ he _has_ earned, and if he asks for it I will _never_ deny it him "--since that moment there had been no word of Wharton between them. At the bottom of his heart Hallin distrusted her, and was ashamed of himself because of it. His soreness and jealousy for his friend knew no bounds. "If that were to come on again"--he was saying to himself now, as she talked to him--"I could not bear it, I could not forgive her!"

He only wished that she would give up talking about Wharton altogether.

But, on the contrary, she would talk of him--and with a curious persistence. She must needs know what Hallin thought of his career in Parliament, of his prospects, of his powers as a speaker. Hallin answered shortly, like some one approached on a subject for which he cares nothing.

"Yet, of course, it is not that; it is injustice!" she said to herself, with vehemence. "He _must_ care; they are his subjects, his interests too. But he will not look at it dispa.s.sionately, because--"

So they fell out with each other a little, and the talk dragged. Yet, all the while, Marcella"s inner mind was conscious of quite different thoughts. How good it was to be here, in this room, beside these two people! She must show herself fractious and difficult with Hallin sometimes; it was her nature. But in reality, that slight and fragile form, that spiritual presence were now shrined in the girl"s eager reverence and affection. She felt towards him as many a Catholic has felt towards his director; though the hidden yearning to be led by him was often oddly covered, as now, by an outer self-a.s.sertion. Perhaps her quarrel with him was that he would not lead her enough--would not tell her precisely enough what she was to do with herself.

CHAPTER V.

While she and Hallin were sitting thus, momentarily out of tune with each other, the silence was suddenly broken by a familiar voice.

"I say, Hallin--is this all right?"

The words came from a young man who, having knocked unheeded, opened the door, and cautiously put in a curly head.

"Frank!--is that you? Come in," cried Hallin, springing up.

Frank Leven came in, and at once perceived the lady sitting in the window.

"Well, I _am_ glad!" he cried, striding across the room and shaking Hallin"s hand by the way. "Miss Boyce! I thought none of your friends were ever going to get a sight of you again! Why, what--"

He drew back scanning her, a gay look of quizzing surprise on his fair boy"s face.

"He expected me in cap and ap.r.o.n," said Marcella, laughing; "or means to pretend he did."

"I expected a sensation! And here you are, just as you were, only twice as--I say, Hallin, doesn"t she look well!"--this in a stage aside to Hallin, while the speaker was drawing off his gloves, and still studying Marcella.