IV
This time, when he returned to the house, Alan did not feel in the least guilty, although he was now coming deliberately in Hunter’s absence, and to collect evidence against him. On the contrary, he felt like a knight sallying forth to rescue a lady from duress.
He rang the bell without hesitation, and the girl opened the door. He had a plan. He explained to her that the doctor had invited him to make use of his medical library whenever he wished—which was true—and that he needed to look up fractures for a plaintiff in a damage suit—which was not true. He made his explanation long and markedly polite, and he was pleased to notice that she forgot all that nonsense about saying “sir.” Instead, she preceded him into the library as if it were her own, lighted a lamp, and, going to the bookshelves, brought out two volumes.
“These are on fractures,” she said.
This did not surprise him. She looked like a girl who would know all sorts of things.[Pg 116]
“I’ll sit here and make a few notes, if you don’t mind,” Alan said, for this was part of his plan.
He waited until he heard a door close after her somewhere. He waited a little longer; then he rose. He intended to be awkward, and to pull down a lot of books, making a great deal of noise. Then she would come back and help him to pick them up, and it would be easy enough, in such circumstances, to start a conversation. But—well, if his intention was to make a noise, he did that, certainly, and the girl did come back, in great haste; but it is not possible to believe that it was part of his plan to pull the bookcase over entirely, or that a bronze bust should fall and hit him on the side of the face.
“I’m very sorry,” he said earnestly. “I don’t know how I came to be so clumsy. I—really I’m very sorry.”
“So am I,” said she. “Let’s see!”
To his amazement, she took his chin in fingers surprisingly strong, and turned his face toward the light.
“You’d better come into the office,” she said.
“It’s nothing, thanks,” he began, but she had already vanished through the door, and he felt obliged to follow.
He said nothing at all while she washed and dressed the trifling wound, but he watched her moving about the bright, glittering little room, he noted her precision, her deftness, her familiarity—and he tried to draw conclusions.
“You’re a trained nurse!” he suddenly exclaimed.
She turned toward him, and for the first time he saw her smile.
“No, Mr. Lorrimer, I’m not,” she said. “Now I think you’ll do very nicely.”
It was a tone of polite dismissal, but he did not intend to go.
“I’ll help you first to repair the damage I did,” he said.
She replied that he needn’t.
He said that he wanted to, and must; and because he was just the sort of young man he was, and because she had the intelligence to see it, she admitted him then and there to a sort of friendship. After the bookcase was set upright again, and all the books restored to order, they sat down, one on either side of the library table, in the most natural way in the world.
“You’d make a wonderfully good nurse,” he observed.
“I’m afraid not,” she answered, smiling again. “I shouldn’t like it at all!”
“But you seem to know a good deal about that sort of thing,” he went on. “It must interest you.”
She made no reply, and for a moment he feared she had thought him unduly curious—impertinent, perhaps; but there was no sign of displeasure in her face. She was looking thoughtfully before her, grave, serene, almost as if she had not heard him. Suddenly he fancied he understood.
“Of course!” he said to himself. “She’s in love with Hunter, and naturally she takes an interest in his work. That’s why she’s here, filling a servant’s place, simply so that she can be near him!”
There was no reason why this should make him indignant, yet, instead of being touched by the idea of such devotion, he was angry and disappointed.
“I wonder what Mrs. Carew thinks of it!” he pursued. “She probably thinks that this girl isn’t good enough for her precious Noel. She would object to such a marriage; or perhaps she doesn’t know what the girl is. Perhaps he doesn’t know, either. I may be the only one who has guessed her secret.”
Then it occurred to him that he was drawing conclusions from very insubstantial premises, also that he was forgetting the object for which he had come, and that his silence might not be impressing her favorably. Looking at her again, he was forced to the unwelcome conclusion that she didn’t care whether he spoke or not. It was presumptuous nonsense to feel sorry for a girl like this. Whatever she did, she intended to do; there was no helplessness or futility in those fine features.
Alan felt ashamed of himself for trying to find out about her in any indirect way. She deserved to be treated with absolute honesty and candor. He knew she would not misunderstand anything else.
“I came back here to see you,” he said bluntly.
She accepted that tranquilly.
“As soon as I saw you, I felt a very great interest in you,” he went on. “I don’t mean that as an impertinence, or as a compliment. It’s simply the truth. There are some human beings who make that sort of impression on others, and it seems to me a foolish and a wrong thing to stifle that interest because it doesn’t happen to be conventional.[Pg 117]”
“As a human being, I welcome your interest,” said she, with her quiet smile. “I’ve heard of you from Noel, and I’m sure I should enjoy talking to you.”
“Of course I knew at once that you weren’t what you—you pretended to be,” he went on rather clumsily.
She stopped him.
“It wasn’t pretending, Mr. Lorrimer. I am here as a servant.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“It suits me. After all, there’s nothing better in life than really serving the people who need you, is there?”
“Sometimes there is,” he answered promptly. “It may mean the sacrifice of a fine life to a much less valuable one.”
A faint color rose in her cheeks.
“Well, you see,” she said, “I don’t feel wise and perfect enough to judge which lives are the most valuable.”
He was silent, because he could not well say that her life was a hundred times more valuable than all the Mrs. Carews and Dr. Hunters ever born—that in her grave youth, and her fine and dignified simplicity, she seemed to him absolutely invaluable.
“I dare say you’re right,” he answered seriously. “I’m sure your way is a good way. If you think you really would care to talk to me, when may I come again?”
“I have Sunday afternoons off,” she answered, and he believed there was a hint of a laugh in her voice.
“Then I’ll come at—”
“Oh, no! That’s not the way it’s done. I’ll meet you somewhere and we’ll take a walk,” she said, and this time she could not suppress a smile.
Alan refused to smile, however. He didn’t care if she came in an apron. He was willing to sit on the back steps, or in the kitchen, so long as he could be with her. It wasn’t a joke—it was serious, the most serious thing he had ever known.
He proposed a convenient meeting place, and she agreed to it.
“But I’d rather you didn’t mention me to any one, please,” she added. “I like a—a very quiet life, just now.”