Marcella — Bk. 3 Ch. 4

CHAPTER IV.

Marcella on her way home turned into a little street leading to a great block of model dwellings, which rose on the right hand side and made everything else, the mews entrance opposite, the lines of squalid shops on either side, look particularly small and dirty.

The sun was beating fiercely down, and she was sick and tired.

As she entered the iron gate of the dwellings, and saw before her the large asphalted court round which they ran--blazing heat on one side of it, and on the other some children playing cricket against the wall with chalk marks for wickets--she was seized with depression.

The tall yet mean buildings, the smell of dust and heat, the general impression of packed and crowded humanity--these things, instead of offering her rest, only continued and accented the sense of strain, called for more endurance, more making the best of it.

But she found a tired smile for some of the children who ran up to her, and then she climbed the stairs of the E. block, and opened the door of her own tenement, number 10. In number 9 lived Minta Hurd and her children, who had joined Marcella in London some two months before.

In sets 7 and 8, on either side of Marcella and the Hurds, lived two widows, each with a family, who were mostly out charing during the day.

Marcella's Association allowed its District Nurses to live outside the "home" of the district on certain conditions, which had been fulfilled in Marcella's case by her settlement next door to her old friends in these buildings which were inhabited by a very respectable though poor class.

Meanwhile the trustees of the buildings had allowed her to make a temporary communication between her room and the Hurds, so that she could either live her own solitary and independent life, or call for their companionship, as she pleased.

As she shut her door behind her she found herself in a little passage or entry.

To the left was her bedroom.

Straight in front of her was the living room with a small close range in it, and behind it a little back kitchen.

The living room was cheerful and even pretty.

Her art-student's training showed itself.

The cheap blue and white paper, the couple of oak flap tables from a broker's shop in Marchmont Street, the two or three cane chairs with their bright chintz cushions, the Indian rug or two on the varnished boards, the photographs and etchings on the walls, the books on the tables--there was not one of these things that was not in its degree a pleasure to her young senses, that did not help her to live her life.

This afternoon as she opened the door and looked in, the pretty colours and forms in the tiny room were as water to the thirsty.

Her mother had sent her some flowers the day before.

There they were on the tables, great bunches of honey-suckles, of blue-bells, and Banksia roses.

And over the mantelpiece was a photograph of the place where such flowers as Mellor possessed mostly grew--the unkempt lawn, the old fountain and grey walls of the Cedar Garden.

The green blind over the one window which looked into the court, had been drawn down against the glare of the sun, as though by a careful hand.

Beside a light wooden rocking chair, which was Marcella's favourite seat, a tray of tea things had been put out.

Marcella drew a long breath of comfort as she put down her bag.

"Now, _can_ I wait for my tea till I have washed and dressed?"

She argued with herself an instant as though she had been a greedy child, then, going swiftly into the back kitchen, she opened the door between her rooms and the Hurds.

"Minta!"

A voice responded.

"Minta, make me some tea and boil an egg!

there's a good soul!

I will be back directly."

And in ten minutes or so she came back again into the sitting-room, daintily fresh and clean but very pale.

She had taken off her nurse's dress and apron, and had put on something loose and white that hung about her in cool folds.

But Minta Hurd, who had just brought in the tea, looked at her disapprovingly.

"Whatever are you so late for?"

she asked a little peevishly.

"You'll get ill if you go missing your dinner."

"I couldn't help it, Minta, it was such a bad case."

Mrs. Hurd poured out the tea in silence, unappeased.

Her mind was constantly full of protest against this nursing.

Why should Miss Boyce do such "funny things"--why should she live as she did, at all?

Their relation to each other was a curious one.

Marcella, knowing that the life of Hurd's widow at Mellor was gall and bitterness, had sent for her at the moment that she herself was leaving the hospital, offering her a weekly sum in return for a little cooking and house service.

Minta already possessed a weekly pension, coming from a giver unknown to her.

It was regularly handed to her by Mr. Harden, and she could only imagine that one of the "gentlemen" who had belonged to the Hurd Reprieve Committee, and had worked so hard for Jim, was responsible for it, out of pity for her and her children.

The payment offered her by Miss Boyce would defray the expense of London house-rent, the children's schooling, and leave a trifle over.

Moreover she was pining to get away from Mellor.

Her first instinct after her husband's execution had been to hide herself from all the world.

But for a long time her precarious state of health, and her dependence first on Marcella, then on Mary Harden, made it impossible for her to leave the village.

It was not till Marcella's proposal came that her way was clear.

She sold her bits of things at once, took her children and went up to Brown's buildings.

Marcella met her with the tenderness, the tragic tremor of feeling from which the peasant's wife shrank anew, bewildered, as she had often shrunk from it in the past.

Jim's fate had made her an old woman at thirty-two.

She was now a little shrivelled consumptive creature with almost white hair, and a face from which youth had gone, unless perhaps there were some traces of it in the still charming eyes, and small open mouth.

But these changes had come upon her she knew not why, as the result of blows she felt but had never reasoned about.

Marcella's fixed mode of conceiving her and her story caused her from the beginning of their fresh acquaintance a dumb irritation and trouble she could never have explained.

It was so tragic, reflective, exacting.

It seemed to ask of her feelings that she could not have, to expect from her expression that was impossible.

And it stood also between her and the friends and distractions that she would like to have.

Why shouldn't that queer man, Mr. Strozzi, who lived down below, and whose name she could not pronounce, come and sit sometimes of an evening, and amuse her and the children?

He was a "Professor of Elocution," and said and sung comic pieces.

He was very civil and obliging too; she liked him.

Yet Miss Boyce was evidently astonished that she could make friends with him, and Minta perfectly understood the lift of her dark eyebrows whenever she came in and found him sitting there.

Meanwhile Marcella had expected her with emotion, and had meant through this experiment to bring herself truly near to the poor.

Minta must not call her Miss Boyce, but by her name; which, however, Minta, reddening, had declared she could never do.

Her relation to Marcella was not to be that of servant in any sense, but of friend and sister; and on her and her children Marcella had spent from the beginning a number of new womanish wiles which, strangely enough, this hard, strenuous life had been developing in her.

She would come and help put the children to bed;

she would romp with them in their night-gowns; she would bend her imperious head over the anxious endeavour to hem a pink cotton pinafore for Daisy, or dress a doll for the baby.

But the relation jarred and limped perpetually, and Marcella wistfully thought it her fault.

Just now, however, as she sat gently swaying backwards and forwards in the rocking-chair, enjoying her tea, her mood was one of nothing but content.

"Oh, Minta, give me another cup.

I want to have a sleep so badly, and then I am going to see Miss Hallin, and stay to supper with them."

"Well, you mustn't go out in them nursin' things again," said Minta, quickly; "I've put you in some lace in your black dress, an' it looks beautiful."

"Oh, thank you, Minta; but that black dress always seems to me too smart to walk about these streets in."

"It's just _nice_," said Minta, with decision.

"It's just what everybody that knows you--what your mamma--would like to see you in.

I can't abide them nursin' clothes--nasty things!"

"I declare!"

cried Marcella, laughing, but outraged; "I never like myself so well in anything."

Minta was silent, but her small mouth took an obstinate look.

What she really felt was that it was absurd for ladies to wear caps and aprons and plain black bonnets, when there was no need for them to do anything of the kind.

"Whatever have you been doing to your cheek?"

she exclaimed, suddenly, as Marcella handed her the empty cup to take away.

Marcella explained shortly, and Minta looked more discontented than ever.

"A lot of low people as ought to look after themselves," that was how in her inmost mind she generally defined Marcella's patients.

She had been often kind and soft to her neighbours at Mellor, but these dirty, crowded Londoners were another matter.

"Where is Daisy?"

asked Marcella as Minta was going away with the tea;

"she must have come back from school."

"Here I am," said Daisy, with a grin, peeping in through the door of the back kitchen.

"Mother, baby's woke up."

"Come here, you monkey," said Marcella; "come and go to sleep with me.

Have you had your tea?"

"Yes, lots," said Daisy, climbing up into Marcella's lap.

"Are you going to be asleep a long time?"

"No--only a nap.

Oh!

Daisy, I'm so tired.

Come and cuddlie a bit!

If you don't go to sleep you know you can slip away--I shan't wake."

The child, a slight, red-haired thing, with something of the ethereal charm that her dead brother had possessed, settled herself on Marcella's knees, slipped her left thumb into her mouth, and flung her other arm round Marcella's neck.

They had often gone to sleep so.

Mrs. Hurd came back, drew down the blind further, threw a light shawl over them both, and left them.

An hour and a half later Minta came in again as she had been told.

Daisy had slipped away, but Marcella was still lying in the perfect gentleness and relaxation of sleep.

"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 pass 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-fashioned 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 spacious 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 fashion 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.

"For the present.

It is more exciting, and one sees more character.

But there are drawbacks.

In hospital everything was settled for you--every hour was full, and there were always orders to follow.

And the 'off' times were no trouble--I never did anything else but walk up and down the Embankment if it was fine, or go to the National Gallery if it was wet."

"And it was the monotony you liked?"

She made a sign of assent.

"Strange!"

said Hallin, "who could ever have foreseen it?"

She flushed.

"You might have foreseen it, I think," she said, not without a little impatience.

"But I didn't like it all at once.

I hated a great deal of it.

If they had let me alone all the time to scrub and polish and wash--the things they set me to at first--I thought I should have been quite happy.

To see my table full of glasses without a spot, and my brass-taps shining, made me as proud as a peacock!

But then of course I had to learn the real work, and that was very odd at first."

"How?

Morally?"

She nodded, laughing at her own remembrances.

"Yes--it seemed to me all topsy-turvy.

I thought the Sister at the head of the ward rather a stupid person.

If I had seen her at Mellor I shouldn't have spoken two words to her.

And here she was ordering me about--rating me as I had never rated a house-maid--laughing at me for not knowing this or that, and generally making me feel that a raw probationer was one of the things of least account in the whole universe.

I knew perfectly well that she had said to herself, 'Now then I must take that proud girl down a peg, or she will be no use to anybody;' and I had somehow to put up with it."

"Drastic!"

said Hallin, laughing; "did you comfort yourself by reflecting that it was everybody's fate?"

Her lip twitched with amusement.

"Not for a long time.

I used to have the most absurd ideas!

--sometimes looking back I can hardly believe it--perhaps it was partly a queer state of nerves.

When I was at school and got in a passion I used to try and overawe the girls by shaking my Speaker great-uncle in their faces.

And so in hospital; it would flash across me sometimes in a plaintive sort of way that they _couldn't_ know that I was Miss Boyce of Mellor, and had been mothering and ruling the whole of my father's village--or they wouldn't treat me so.

Mercifully I held my tongue.

But one day it came to a crisis.

I had had to get things ready for an operation, and had done very well.

Dr. Marshall had paid me even a little compliment all to myself.

But then afterwards the patient was some time in coming to, and there had to be hot-water bottles.

I had them ready of course;

but they were too hot, and in my zeal and nervousness I burnt the patient's elbow in two places.

Oh!

the _fuss_, and the scolding, and the humiliation!

When I left the ward that evening I thought I would go home next day."

"But you didn't?"

"If I could have sat down and thought it out, I should probably have gone.

But I couldn't think it out--I was too _dead_ tired.

That is the chief feature of your first months in hospital--the utter helpless fatigue at night.

You go to bed aching and you wake up aching.

If you are healthy as I was, it doesn't hurt you; but, when your time comes to sleep, sleep you _must_.

Even that miserable night my head was no sooner on the pillow than I was asleep; and next morning there was all the routine as usual, and the dread of being a minute late on duty.

Then when I got into the ward the Sister looked at me rather queerly and went out of her way to be kind to me.

Oh!

I was so grateful to her!

I could have brushed her boots or done any other menial service for her with delight.

And--then--somehow I pulled through.

The enormous interest of the work seized me--I grew ambitious--they pushed me on rapidly--everybody seemed suddenly to become my friend instead of my enemy--and I ended by thinking the hospital the most fascinating and engrossing place in the whole world."

"A curious experience," said Hallin.

"I suppose you had never obeyed any one in your life before?"

"Not since I was at school--and then--not much!"

Hallin glanced at her as she lay back in her chair.

How richly human the face had grown!

It was as forcible as ever in expression and colour, but that look which had often repelled him in his first acquaintance with her, as of a hard speculative eagerness more like the ardent boy than the woman, had very much disappeared.

It seemed to him absorbed in something new--something sad and yet benignant, informed with all the pathos and the pain of growth.

"How long have you been at work to-day?"

he asked her.

"I went at eleven last night.

I came away at four this afternoon."

Hallin exclaimed, "You had food?"

"Do you think I should let myself starve with my work to do?"

she asked him, with a shade of scorn and her most professional air.

"And don't suppose that such a case occurs often.

It is a very rare thing for us to undertake night-nursing at all."

"Can you tell me what the case was?"

She told him vaguely, describing also in a few words her encounter with Dr. Blank.

"I suppose he will make a fuss," she said, with a restless look, "and that I shall be blamed."

"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 Association 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 scrapes.

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 glass 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 pass 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!"