“I’ll say one thing for you, Polly; you’re a good chum, and you always were. I hope your Nevill’s Court friends appreciate the fact.”
“They are far more appreciative than the occasion warrants,” I answered. “But to return to this question: how will this day week suit you?”
“It will suit me,” Thorndyke answered, with a glance at his junior.
“And me too,” said the latter; “so, if it will do for the Bellinghams, we will consider it settled; but if they can’t come, you must fix another night.”
“Very well,” I said, rising and knocking out my pipe. “I will issue the invitation tomorrow. And now I must be off to have another slog at those notes.”
As I walked homeward I speculated cheerfully on the prospect of entertaining my friends under my own (or rather Barnard’s) roof, if they could be lured out of their eremitical retirement. The idea had, in fact, occurred to me already, but I had been deterred by the peculiarities of Barnard’s housekeeper. For Mrs. Gummer was one of those housewives who make up for an archaic simplicity of production by preparations on the most portentous and alarming scale. But this time I would not be deterred. If only the guests could be enticed into my humble lair it would be easy to furnish the raw materials of the feast from outside; and the consideration of ways and means occupied me pleasantly until I found myself once more at my writing-table, confronted by my voluminous notes on the incidents of the North Syrian War.
VIII
A Museum Idyll
Whether it was that practise revived a forgotten skill on my part, or that Miss Bellingham had overestimated the amount of work to be done, I am unable to say. But whichever may have been the explanation, the fact is that the fourth afternoon saw our task so nearly completed that I was fain to plead that a small remainder might be left over to form an excuse for yet one more visit to the reading-room.
Short, however, as had been the period of our collaboration, it had been long enough to produce a great change in our relations to one another. For there is no friendship so intimate and satisfying as that engendered by community of work, and none—between man and woman, at any rate—so frank and wholesome.
Every day had arrived to find a pile of books with the places duly marked and the blue-covered quarto notebooks in readiness. Every day we had worked steadily at the allotted task, had then handed in the books and gone forth together to enjoy a most companionable tea in the milkshop; thereafter to walk home by way of Queen Square, talking over the day’s work and discussing the state of the world in the far-off days when Ahkhenaten was king and the Tell-el-Amarna tablets were a-writing.
It had been a pleasant time, so pleasant, that as I handed in the books for the last time, I sighed to think that it was over; that not only was the task finished, but that the recovery of my fair patient’s hand, from which I had that morning removed the splint, had put an end to the need of my help.
“What shall we do?” I asked, as we came out into the central hall. “It is too early for tea. Shall we go and look at some of the galleries?”
“Why not?” she answered. “We might look over some of the things connected with what we have been doing. For instance, there is a relief of Ahkhenaten upstairs in the Third Egyptian Room; we might go and look at it.”
I fell in eagerly with the suggestion, placing myself under her experienced guidance, and we started by way of the Roman Gallery, past the long row of extremely commonplace and modern-looking Roman Emperors.
“I don’t know,” she said, pausing for a moment opposite a bust labelled “Trajan” (but obviously a portrait of Phil May), “how I am ever even to thank you for all that you have done, to say nothing of repayment.”
“There is no need to do either,” I replied. “I have enjoyed working with you so I have had my reward. But still,” I added, “if you want to do me a great kindness, you have it in your power.”
“How?”
“In connection with my friend, Doctor Thorndyke. I told you he was an enthusiast. Now he is, for some reason, most keenly interested in everything relating to your uncle, and I happen to know that, if any legal proceedings should take place, he would very much like to keep a friendly eye on the case.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
“I want you, if an opportunity should occur for him to give your father advice or help of any kind, to use your influence with your father in favor of, rather than in opposition to, his accepting it—always assuming that you have no real feeling against his doing so.”
Miss Bellingham looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments, and then laughed softly.
“So the great kindness that I am to do you is to let you do me a further kindness through your friend?”
“No,” I protested; “that is where you are mistaken. It isn’t benevolence on Doctor Thorndyke’s part; it’s professional enthusiasm.”
She smiled sceptically.
“You don’t believe in it,” I said; “but consider other cases. Why does a surgeon get out of bed on a winter’s night to do an emergency operation at a hospital? He doesn’t get paid for it. Do you think it is altruism?”
“Yes, of course. Isn’t it?”
“Certainly not. He does it because it is his job, because it is his business to fight with disease—and win.”
“I don’t see much difference,” she said. “It’s work done for love instead of for payment. However, I will do as you ask if
