Looking back, I could see the pit behind me; the fog standing on the
road like a solid wall, straight up and down. Again I felt a pride in
the hill. "Down there," I thought, "those groping feet and shouting
voices; that man and that horse ... they don't guess!"
I walked briskly up the hill, and presently stepped on to the pavement;
but at the edge of the asphalt, where tufted grass should grow,
something crackled and hissed under my feet. Under the torchlight the
unnatural grass was white and brittle with rime, fanciful as a stage
fairy scene, and the railings beyond it glittered too.
I slid in the road as I turned down the drive; a sheet of ice was spread
where the leaky pipe is, and the steps up to the house door were
slippery.
But oh, the honeysuckle and the rose-trees...! Bush, plant, leaf, stem,
rimed from end to end. The garden was a Bond Street jeweller's!
Perhaps the final chapter on Mr. Pettitt....
In the excitement of the ward I had almost forgotten him; he is buried
in the Mess, in the days when I lived on the floor below.
To-night, as I was waiting by the open hatch of the kitchen for my tray
to be filled with little castles of lemon jelly, the hot blast from the
kitchen drawing stray wisps of hair from beneath my cap, I saw the
familiar limping figure--a figure bound up with my first days at the
hospital, evoking a hundred evenings at the concerts, in the
dining-room. I felt he had been away, but I didn't dare risk a "So
you're back!"
He smiled, blushed, and limped past me.
Upstairs in the ward, as I was serving out my jellies, he arrived in the
doorway, but, avoiding me, hobbled round the ward, visiting every bed
but the one I was at at the moment. Then he went downstairs again.
I passed him on the stairs. He can't say he didn't have his opportunity,
for I even stopped with my heavy tray and spoke to him.
Half an hour later he was back in the ward again (not his ward), and
this time he found the courage of hysteria. There in the middle of the
ward, under the glaring Christmas lights, with the eyes of every
interested man in every bed glued upon us, he presented me with a fan
wrapped in white paper: "A little present I bought you, nurse." I took
it, eyes sizzling and burning holes in my shoulders, and stammered my
frantic thanks.
"You do like it, nurse?" he said rapidly, three times in succession.