THE nurse suggested that Richard should remain at Carteret Street for the rest of the night, using the sofa in the sitting-room. Contrary to his expectation, he slept well and dreamlessly for several hours, and woke up refreshed and energetic. The summer sun was dispersing a light mist. One thought occupied his mind, — Adeline’s isolation and need of succour. Mentally he enveloped her with tender solicitude; and the prospect of giving her instant aid, and so earning her gratitude, contributed to a mood of vigorous cheerfulness to which his sorrow for Mr. Aked’s death formed but a vague and distant background.
No one seemed to be stirring. He washed luxuriously in the little scullery, and then, silently unbolting the front door, went out for a walk. It was just six o’clock, and above the weazen trees which line either side of Carteret Street the sparrows were noisily hilarious. As he strode along in the fresh, sunny air, his fancy pictured scene after scene between himself and Adeline in which he rendered a man’s help and she offered a woman’s gratitude.
He determined to take upon himself all the arrangements for the funeral, and looked forward pleasurably to activities from which under different circumstances he would have shrunk with dismay. He thought of Adeline’s aunt or cousin, distant in the north, and wondered whether she or any other relatives, if such existed, would present themselves; he hoped that Adeline might be forced to rely solely on him. A milkboy who passed with his rattling cans observed Richard talking rapidly to no visible person, and turned round to stare.
When he got back to the house, he noticed that the blinds had been drawn in the sitting-room. Lottie, the chubby-armed servant, was cleaning the step; her eyes were red with crying.
“Is nurse up yet?” he asked her.
“Yes, sir, she’s in the kitchen,” the girl whimpered.
He sprang over the wet step into the passage. As his glance fell on the stairs leading up to the room where lay the body of Mr. Aked, separated from the unconscious Adeline only by a gimcrack wall of lath and plaster, an uncomfortable feeling of awe took hold of him. Death was very incurable, and he had been assisting at a tragedy. How unreal and distorted seemed the events of a few hours before! He had a curious sense of partnership in shame, as if he and the nurse and the doctor had last night done Adeline an injury and were conspiring to hide their sin. What would she say when she knew that her uncle was dead? What would be her plans? It occurred to him now that she would of course act quite independently of himself; it was ridiculous to suppose that he, comparatively a stranger, could stand to her in the place of kith and kin; he had been dreaming. He was miserably disheartened.
He made his way to the kitchen, and, pushing the door open quietly, found the nurse engaged in cooking a meal.
“May I come in, nurse?”
“Yes, Mr. Larch.”
“You seem to have taken charge of the house,” he said, admiring her quick, neat movements; she was as much at home as if the kitchen had been her own.
“We often find it necessary,” she smiled. “Nurses have to be ready for most things. Do you prefer tea or coffee for breakfast?”
“Surely you aren’t getting breakfast for me? I could have had something in town.”
“Surely I am,” she said. “If you aren’t fastidious, I’ll make tea. Miss Aked has had a moderately good night... I’ve told her...
She took it very well, said she expected it. Of course there’s a lot to be done, but I can’t bother her yet. We ought to have a telegram from Mrs. Hopkins, her aunt, this morning.”
“I wish you would give Miss Aked a message from me,” Richard broke in. “Tell her I shall be very glad to see after things — the funeral, you know, and so on — if she cares. I can easily arrange to take a holiday from the office.”
“I am sure that would relieve her from a lot of anxiety,” the nurse said appreciatively. To hide a certain confusion Richard suggested that he should be allowed to lay the cloth in the sitting-room, and she told him he would find it in a drawer in the sideboard. He wandered off, speculating upon Adeline’s probable answer to his proposal. Soon he heard the rattling of cups and saucers, and the nurse’s footstep on the stair. He laid the cloth, putting the cruet in the middle and the salt-cellars at opposite corners, and then sat down in front of the case of French books to scan their titles, but he saw nothing save a blur of yellow. After a long time the nurse came down again.
“Miss Aked says she cannot thank you enough. She will leave everything to you, — everything. She is very much obliged indeed. She doesn’t think Mrs. Hopkins will be able to travel, because of her rheumatism, and there is no one else. Here is the key of Mr. Aked’s desk, and some other keys — there should be about £20 in gold in the cash box, and perhaps some notes.”
He took the keys, feeling profoundly happy.
“I shall just go up to the office first,” he decided, “and arrange to get off, and then come down here again. I suppose you will stay on till Miss Aked is better?”
“Oh, of course.”
“She will be in bed several days yet?”
“Probably. She might be able to sit up an hour or two the day after to-morrow — in her own room.”
“It wouldn’t do for me to see her?”
“I think not. She is very weak. No, you must act on your own responsibility.”
He and the nurse had breakfast together, talking with the freedom of old friends. He told her all he knew of the Akeds, not forgetting to mention that Mr. Aked and himself were to have collaborated in a book. When Richard let this out, she showed none of those signs of timid reverence which the laity are wont to exhibit in the presence of literary people.
“Indeed!” she said politely, and then after a little pause: “I actually write verses myself sometimes.”
“You do? And are they published?”
“Oh, yes, but perhaps not on their merits. You see, my father has influence—”
“A journalist, is he, perhaps?”
She laughed at the idea, and mentioned the name of a well-known novelist.
“And you prefer nursing to writing!” Richard ejaculated when he had recovered from the announcement.
“To anything in the world. That is why I am a nurse. Why should I depend on my father, or my father’s reputation?”
“I admire you for not doing so,” Richard replied. Hitherto he had only read about such women, and had questioned if they really existed. He grew humble before her, recognising a stronger spirit. Yet her self-reliance somehow chafed him, and he directed his thoughts to Adeline’s feminine trustfulness with a slight sense of relief.
The funeral took place on Sunday. Richard found the formalities to be fewer and simpler than he had expected, and no difficulties arose of any kind. Mrs. Hopkins, as Adeline had foreseen, was unable to come, but she sent a long letter full of advice, and offering her niece a temporary home. Adeline had not yet been allowed to leave her bed, but on the Sunday morning the nurse had said that she might sit up for an hour or two in the afternoon, and would like to see Richard then.
He returned to Carteret Street on foot when the funeral was over.
“You are glad it is all finished?” the nurse said.
“Yes,” he answered a little wearily. His mind had dwelt on Mr. Aked that day, and the lonely futility of the man’s life had touched him with chill, depressing effect. Moreover, now it came to the point, he rather dreaded than desired that first interview with Adeline after her uncle’s death. He feared that despite any service he had rendered, they were not much more than acquaintances. He morbidly conjectured what she would say to him and how he would reply. But he was glad when the nurse left him alone at the door of Adeline’s room. He knocked rather louder than he had intended, and after hesitating a second walked in. Adeline was seated in an armchair near the window, fully dressed in black, with a shawl over her shoulders. Her back was towards him, but he could see that she was writing a letter on her knee. She looked round suddenly as the door opened, and gave a little “Oh!” at the same time lifting her hands. Her face was pale, her hair flat, and her eyes large and glittering. He went up to her.
“Mr. Larch!” She held his hand in her thin white one with a soft, weak pressure, silently gazing at him while tears gathered in her upturned eyes. Richard trembled in every part of his body; he could not speak, and wondered what was the matter with him.
“Mr. Larch, you have been very kind. I shall never be able to thank you.”
“I hope you won’t bother about any thanks,” he said. “Are you better?” And yet he wished her to say more.
With apparent reluctance she loosed his hand, and he sat down near her.
“What should I have done without you!... Tell me about to-day. You can’t think how relieved I am now that it is over — the funeral, I mean.”
He said there was nothing to tell.
“Were there many other funerals?”
“Yes, a lot.”
He answered her questions one after another; she seemed to be interested in the least detail, but neither of them mentioned the dead man. Her eyes seldom left him. When he suggested that she must dismiss him as soon as she felt tired, she laughed, and replied that she was not likely to be tired for a very long while, and that he must have tea with her and nurse.
“I was writing to my two uncles in San Francisco when you came in,” she said. “They will be terribly upset about me at first, poor fellows, but I have told them how kind you have been, and Uncle Mark always used to say I had plenty of sense, so that ought to ease their minds.” She smiled.
“Of course you have made no definite plans yet?” he asked.
“No, I sha’n’t settle anything at present. I want to consult you about several things, but some other time, when I am better. I shall have enough money, I think — that is one solid comfort. My aunt Grace — Mrs. Hopkins — has asked me to go and stay with her. Somehow I don’t want to go — you’ll think it queer of me, I daresay, but I would really prefer to stop in London.”
He noticed that she said nothing as to joining her uncles in San Francisco.
“I fancy I shall like London,” she went on, “when I — know it.”
“You aren’t thinking, then, of going to San Francisco?”
He waited apprehensively for her answer. She hesitated. “It is so far — I don’t quite know how my uncles are situated—”
Evidently, for some reason, she had no desire to leave London immediately. He was very content, having feared that she might pass at once away from him.
They had tea on a little round chess-table. The cramped space and the consequent necessity of putting spare plates of cake on the bed caused some amusement, but in the presence of the strong, brusque nurse Adeline seemed to withdraw within herself, and the conversation, such as it was, depended on the other two.
“I have been telling Miss Aked,” the nurse said after tea was over, “that she must go to the seaside for a week or two. It will do her an immense deal of good. What she needs most of all is change. I suggested Littlehampton; it is rather a quiet spot, not too quiet; there is nice river scenery, and a quaint old port, and quantities of lovely rustic villages in the neighbourhood.”
“It would certainly be a good thing,” Richard agreed; but Adeline said, rather petulantly, that she did not wish to travel, and the project was not discussed further.
He left soon afterwards. The walk home seemed surprisingly short, and when he got to Raphael Street he could remember nothing of the thoroughfares through which he had passed. Vague, delicious fancies flitted through his head, like fine lines half recalled from a great poem. In his room there was a smell from the lamp, and the windows were shut tight.
“Poor old landlady,” he murmured benignantly, “when will she learn to leave the windows open and not to turn down the lamp?”
Having unfastened one of the windows, he extinguished the lamp and went out on to the little balcony. It was a warm evening, with a cloudy sky and a gentle, tepid breeze. The noise of omnibuses and cabs came even and regular from Brompton Road, and occasionally a hansom passed up Raphael Street. He stood leaning on the front of the balcony till the air of traffic had declined to an infrequent rumble, his thoughts a smiling, whirling medley impossible to analyze or describe. At last he came in, and, leaving the window ajar, undressed slowly without a light, and lay down. He had no desire to sleep, nor did he attempt to do so; not for a ransom would he have parted with the fine, full consciousness of life which thrilled through every portion of his being. The brief summer night came to an end; and just as the sun was rising he dozed a little, and then got up without a trace of fatigue. He went to the balcony again, and drank in all the sweet invigorating freshness of the morning. The sunlit streets were enveloped in an enchanted silence.