“I am afraid my father has misled you with his irreverent expressions. He will have to atone by explaining.”
“You see, Doctor,” said Mr. Bellingham, “Ruth is a literary searcher—”
“Oh, don’t call me a searcher!” Miss Bellingham protested. “It suggests the female searcher at a police station. Say investigator.”
“Very well, investigator or investigatrix, if you like. She hunts up references and bibliographies at the Museum for people who are writing books. She looks up everything that has been written on a given subject, and then, when she has crammed herself to a bursting-point with facts, she goes to her client and disgorges and crams him or her, and he or she finally disgorges into the Press.”
“What a disgusting way to put it!” said his daughter. “However, that is what it amounts to. I am a literary jackal, a collector of provender for the literary lions. Is that quite clear?”
“Perfectly. But I don’t think that, even now, I quite understand about the stuffed Shepherd Kings.”
“Oh, it was not the Shepherd Kings who were to be stuffed. It was the author! That was mere obscurity of speech on the part of my father. The position is this: A venerable Archdeacon wrote an article on the patriarch Joseph—”
“And didn’t know anything about him,” interrupted Mr. Bellingham, “and got tripped up by a specialist who did, and then got shirty—”
“Nothing of the kind,” said Miss Bellingham. “He knew as much as venerable archdeacons ought to know; but the expert knew more. So the archdeacon commissioned me to collect the literature on the state of Egypt at the end of the seventeenth dynasty, which I have done; and tomorrow I shall go and stuff him, as my father expresses it, and then—”
“And then,” Mr. Bellingham interrupted, “the archdeacon will rush forth and pelt that expert with Shepherd Kings and Sequenen-Ra and the whole tag-rag and bobtail of the seventeenth dynasty. Oh, there’ll be wigs on the green, I can tell you.”
“Yes, I expect there will be quite a skirmish,” said Miss Bellingham. And thus dismissing the subject she made an energetic attack on the toast while her father refreshed himself with a colossal yawn.
I watched her with furtive admiration and deep and growing interest. In spite of her pallor, her weary eyes, and her drawn and almost haggard face, she was an exceedingly handsome girl; and there was in her aspect a suggestion of purpose, of strength and character that marked her off from the rank and file of womanhood. I noted this as I stole an occasional glance at her or turned to answer some remark addressed to me; and I noted, too, that her speech, despite a general undertone of depression, was yet not without a certain caustic, ironical humor. She was certainly a rather enigmatical young person, but very decidedly interesting.
When she had finished her repast she put aside the tray and, opening the shabby handbag, asked:
“Do you take any interest in Egyptian history? We are as mad as hatters on the subject. It seems to be a family complaint.”
“I don’t know much about it,” I answered. “Medical studies are rather engrossing and don’t leave much time for general reading.”
“Naturally,” she said. “You can’t specialize in everything. But if you would care to see how the business of a literary jackal is conducted, I will show you my notes.”
I accepted the offer eagerly (not, I fear, from pure enthusiasm for the subject), and she brought forth from the bag four blue-covered, quarto notebooks, each dealing with one of the four dynasties from the fourteenth to the seventeenth. As I glanced through the neat and orderly extracts with which they were filled we discussed the intricacies of the peculiarly difficult and confused period that they covered, gradually lowering our voices as Mr. Bellingham’s eyes closed and his head fell against the back of his chair. We had just reached the critical reign of Apepa II when a resounding snore broke in upon the studious quiet of the room and sent us both into a fit of silent laughter.
“Your conversation has done its work,” she whispered as I stealthily picked up my hat, and together we stole on tiptoe to the door, which she opened without a sound. Once outside, she suddenly dropped her bantering manner and said quite earnestly:
“How kind it was of you to come and see him tonight. You have done him a world of good, and I am most grateful. Good night!”
She shook hands with me really cordially, and I took my way down the creaking stairs in a whirl of happiness that I was quite at a loss to account for.
V
The Watercress-Bed
Barnard’s practise, like most others, was subject to those fluctuations that fill the struggling practitioner alternately with hope and despair. The work came in paroxysms with intervals of almost complete stagnation. One of these intermissions occurred on the day after my visit to Nevill’s Court, with the result that by half-past eleven I found myself wondering what I should do with the remainder of the day. The better to consider this weighty problem, I strolled down to the Embankment, and, leaning on the parapet, contemplated the view across the river; the gray stone bridge with its perspective of arches, the picturesque pile of the shot-towers, and beyond, the shadowy shapes of the Abbey and St. Stephen’s.
It was a pleasant scene, restful and quiet, with a touch of life and a hint of sober romance, when a barge swept down through the middle arch of the bridge with a lugsail hoisted to a jury mast and a white-aproned woman at the tiller. Dreamily I watched the craft creep by upon the moving tide, noted the low freeboard, almost awash, the careful helmswoman, and the dog on the forecastle yapping at the distant shore—and thought of Ruth Bellingham.
What was there about this strange girl that had made so deep an impression on me? That
