"His hands were injured from a struggle, he told me, with some drunken
man," she said half to herself. Then aloud, "Antony, did you see either
of these letters?"
"Yes; Mr Hallett asked me to look at them, to see if I knew the
handwriting as well as he; and, besides, in one of her intervals of
reason, poor Linny clung to her brother, and begged him never to let Mr
Lister see her again."
"Did she say why?" asked Miss Carr hoarsely.
"Yes; she said he had such power over her that she was afraid of him."
A half-hysterical sob seemed to rise to Miss Carr's lips, but her face
was very stern and unchanged.
Then, rising quickly, as if a sudden thought occurred to her, she
crossed the room to a little Japanese cabinet, and took out a short,
thick cord, as it seemed to me; but, as she placed it in my hands, I saw
that it was a short hair watch-guard, finished with gilded swivel and
cross.
She placed it in my hands without a word, looking at me intently the
while, as if questioning me with her eyes.
"That is Linny Hallett's chain," I said. "She made that guard herself,
of her own hair. How did it come here?"
"Mr Lister dropped it, I suppose," she said, with a look of scorn
flashing from her eyes. "It was found by one of my servants in the hall
after he was gone, and brought to me. I had forgotten it, Antony, until
now."
There was again a deep silence in the room, but at last she broke it
with an eager question.
"Tell me about this Linny Hallett," she said. "You have often told me
that she is pretty. Is she good?"
"Oh yes, I am sure she is," I said; "but she is weak and wilful, and she
must have loved Mr Lister very much to turn as she has from so true a
brother as Mr Hallett."
"And--Mr Hallett--is he a good brother to her?"
"Good brother!" I exclaimed, my admiration for my friend carrying me
away; "he is all that is noble and patient and good. Poor Hallett! he
is more like a father to Linny than a brother, and then his patience
with his poor mother! Oh, Miss Carr, I wish you knew him, too!"
She darted an inquiring look at me and then turned away her head,
speaking no more, but listening intently as I told her of poor Hallett's
patience under misfortune, relating the story again of his noble
sacrifice of self to keep those who were dear to him; of the anxiety
Linny caused him, and of his tenderness of the unreasonable invalid he
made his care.
Then, being thus set a-going, I talked, too, of the model, and our
labours, and again of my ambition to get to be an engineer in order to
help him, little thinking how I had turned myself into a special pleader
to the advancement of my poor friend's cause.
At last, half-ashamed of my earnestness, I looked inquiringly in my
companion's face, to find that she was listening intently, and she
looked up at me as I ceased.
"And this Mr--Mr Hallett," she said softly, "is still a workman in
Messrs. Ruddle and Lister's employ?"
"Oh _no_! Miss Carr," I exclaimed; "he told me he could never enter the
place again, and that he dared not trust himself to meet Mr Lister face
to face. He has not been there since, and he never will go there now."
Miss Carr seemed to breathe more freely as I said these words, and then
there was another interval of silence.
"Is Mr Hallett poor?" she asked then.
"Oh yes, very poor," I said. "He has been obliged to stop his work over
his invention sometimes, because the money has to go to buy wine and
little choice things for poor Mrs Hallett. She is always repining and
talking of the days when she had her conservatory and carriage, and,
worst of all, she blames poor Hallett so for his want of ambition. Yes,
Miss Carr," I said, repeating myself to willing ears, "and he is one of
the truest and best of men. He was not always a workman, you know."
"Indeed!" she said; and I saw that she bent her head lower as she
listened.
"No," I said enthusiastically, as I, in my heart, set up Stephen Hallett
as the model I meant to imitate. "His father was a surgeon in
Warwickshire, and Mr Hallett was at college--at Oxford, where he was
working to take honours."
Miss Carr's lips parted as she still sat with her head bent.
"He told me all about it one evening. He was sent for home one day to
find his father dying; and, a week later, poor Mr Hallett found himself
with all his father's affairs upon his hands, and that he had died
heavily in debt."
Miss Carr's head was slowly raised, and I felt proud then to see how I
had interested her.
"Then," I continued, "he had to try what he could do. He could not go
back to college; for it took everything, even the furniture, to pay off
his father's debts, and then, one day, Miss Carr, he had to sit down and
think how he was to keep his widowed mother, and his sister, and
himself."
Miss Carr was now sitting with her head resting upon her hand, her elbow
upon her knee, listening intently to all I said.
"Mr Hallett and his father had some type and a little press in one of
the rooms, with which they used to print poems and little pamphlets, and
Mr Hallett had learnt enough about printing to make him, when he had
taken his mother and sister up to London, try and get employment in an
office. And he did; and he says he used to be horribly afraid of being
found out and treated as an impostor; but by working with all his might
he used to manage to keep up with the slow, lazy ones, and then, by
degrees, he passed them; and now--oh, you should see him!--he can set up
type much faster than the quickest man who ever came into the office."
"And does he keep his mother and sister now?" she said dreamily.
"Oh yes," I said; "Mrs Hallett has been an invalid ever since Mr
Stephen Hallett's father died."
Miss Carr had sunk back in the corner of the couch, closing her eyelids,
and I thought I saw a couple of tears stealing down her cheeks; but
directly after she covered her face with her hands, remaining silent
like that for quite half-an-hour--a silence that I respected to the end.
At last she rose quietly, and held out her hand.
"Antony," she said softly, "I am not well to-night. Forgive me if I
have disappointed you. Another time we must make up for this."
"Oh, Miss Carr," I said, "you have been so grieved."
"Yes, greatly grieved, Antony, in many ways--not least that I spoke to
you so harshly as I did."
"But you are not angry with me?" I said. "You forgive me for not
speaking out."
"Forgive you?" she said softly--"forgive you, my boy?--yes. But go now;
I do not feel myself. Good-night, Antony, my dear boy; go."
To my surprise, she took me tenderly in her arms and kissed me, leading
me afterwards to the door, and laying her cheek against my forehead
before she let me out.
"Come to me to-morrow, Antony; come again to dinner; perhaps the next
day I may be leaving town."