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By Root 827 0

house had the small signs of a family home acknowledging certain financial restrictions—not stringent, but there in the background. Resources were not unlimited. There was also a certain recent inattention to detail, as if the mind of the mistress had been upon other things. He was forcibly reminded of Hester’s occupation, and with it came an unwelcome understanding of how important it was to her. He had never before known a woman who had any profound interest outside the home and family. He admired it—wholeheartedly and with an instinctive emotion he could not deny. It brought them closer together. It made her in many ways more like a man, less alien, less mysterious. It meant she could understand his devotion to his work, his dedication of time and energy to it. She would know why at times he had to cancel social engagements, why he would stay up all night pursuing a thought, a solution, why every other normal routine of life had to be bent, or even broken, when a case was urgent. It made her so much easier to talk to. She grasped logic almost without seeming effort.

It also made her quite unlike the women whose lives were familiar to him, his own female relatives, the women he had courted in the past, or been drawn to, the wives of his friends and acquaintances. It made her somehow in another way unknown, even unknowable. It was not entirely a comfortable emotion.

The door opened and a large, ebullient man came in. He was dressed in a Norfolk tweed jacket of an indeterminate brown, and brownish gray trousers. His stance, his expression, everything about him was full of energy.

“Athol Sheldon!” he announced, holding out his hand. “I understand you’ve come to see Miss Latterly? Excellent woman. Sure she’ll care extremely well for my brother. Hideous experience, losing an arm. Don’t really know what to say to help.” For a moment he looked confused. Then by force of will and belief he assumed an air of confidence again. “Best a day at a time, what? Courage! Don’t meet tomorrow’s problems before they’re here. Too easy to get morbid. Good thing to have a nurse, I think. Family’s too close, at times.” He stood in the middle of the room, seeming to fill it with his presence. “Do you know Miss Latterly well?”

“Yes,” Rathbone said without hesitation. “We have been friends for some years.” Actually it was not as long as it seemed, if one counted the actual span of time rather than the hectic events which had crowded it. There were many other people he had known far longer but with whom he had shared little of depth or meaning. Time was a peculiarly elastic measurement. It was an empty space, given meaning only by what it contained, and afterwards distorted in memory.

“Ah … good.” Athol obviously wanted to say something else, but could find no satisfactory words. “Remarkable thing for a woman, what? Going out to the Crimea.”

“Yes,” Rathbone agreed, waiting for Athol to add whatever it was he really wanted to say.

“Don’t suppose it’s easy to settle down when you come back,” Athol continued, glancing at Rathbone curiously. He had very round, very direct eyes. “Not sure it’s entirely a good thing.”

Rathbone knew exactly what he meant, and thought so too. It had forced Hester to see and hear horror that no person should have to know, to experience violence and deprivation, and to find within herself not only strength but intelligence, skill and courage she might not have conceived, let alone exercised, at home in England. She had proved herself the equal of many men whose authority she would never have questioned in normal circumstances. Sometimes she had even shown herself superior, when the crisis had been great enough. It upset the natural, accepted order of things. One could not unlearn knowledge so gained. And she could not and would not pretend.

Rathbone agreed, but he found himself resenting the fact that Athol Sheldon should remark it. Instantly he was defensive.

“Not entirely painless, certainly; but if you consider the work of someone like Miss Nightingale, you cannot but be enormously grateful for the difference