“CHRISTIAN VELLACOTT.”
He folded the note and slipped it into an envelope, which he addressed to “Sidney Carew, Esq., St. Mary Western, Dorset.” Then he slipped noiselessly out of the room and upstairs to where Mrs. Strawd had a small sitting-room of her own. The little woman heard his footstep on the old creaking stairs, and opened the door of her room before he reached it.
“If I went away for three weeks,” he said, “could you do without me?”
“Of course I could,” replied the little woman readily. “Just you go away and take a holiday, Master Christian. You need it sorely, that I know. You do indeed. We shall get on splendidly without you. I'll just have my sister to come and stay, same as I did when you had to go to the Paris House of Parliament.”
“I have not had much of a holiday, you see, for two years now!”
“Of course you haven't, and you want it. It's only human nature—and you a young man that ought to be in the open air all day. For an old woman like me it's different. We're made differently by the good God on purpose, I think.”
“Well, then, if your sister comes it must be understood, nurse, that I make the same arrangement with her as exists with you. She must simply be a duplicate of you—you understand?”
The little woman laughed, lightly enough.
“Oh, yes, Master Christian, that is all right. But you need not have troubled about that. She never would have thought of such a thing as wages, I'm sure!”
“No,” replied he gravely, “I know she would not, but it will be better, I think, to have it understood beforehand. Gratitude is a very nice thing to work for, but some work is worth more than gratitude. If you are going out for your walk, perhaps you will post this letter.”
Before Christian went to bed that night he held a candle close to the mirror and looked long and hard at his own reflection. There were dark streaks under his eyes, his small mouth was drawn and dry, his lips colourless. At each temple the bone stood out rather prominently, and the skin was brilliant in its whiteness and reflected the light of the candle. He felt his own pulse. It was beating, at one moment fast and irregular, at the next it was hardly perceptible.
“Yes!” he muttered, with a professional nod—in his training as a journalist he had learnt a little of many sciences—“yes, old Bodery was right.”