Mrs. Clarke pushed Sarah Hannigan to one side, and stood glaring up at him.
"Something's happened to me knee with that fall I had down the bl--down the stairs. I'm beside me self with the pain of it. I don't know if I'll be able to get back home through this snow, the drifts are chin high."
"Mrs. Clarke, I've got to have help! You'll come up here if I have to carry you up!"
"Begod, an' I will not 1 Look at that!" she cried.
He bounded down the stairs towards her. She had pulled up her skirt and was disclosing her knee, already laid bare for inspection.
He looked at it. Well, that settles that. The damned woman, you would think she had done it on purpose. He thought a moment . "Nurse Snell, that's it! She'll come. How can I get... ?"
"It's no use. She's in the heart of Jarrow this very minute after a case; I saw her go only a couple of hours ago." Mrs. Clarke was triumphant.
"It's nobody you'll get this night. Now, Doctor Kelly used to----' "
Be quiet, woman! " He glared at her, the point of his beard thrust out.
Begod, if she could only strike him down dead! Him to speak to her like that, and to call her--woman 1 . She that was looked up to and respected for her knowledge all round these black buildings, all fifteen streets of them. They had even sent for her from Shields and Jarrow to deliver, before today, and Doctor Kelly had said she was every bit as good as himself. Yet this young snot . with i7
his big, newfangled motor-car and' his fine clothes, and his voice like a foreigner . would tell her to shut up! Even Tim Hannigan there, who put the fear of God into everybody in the fifteen streets with his swearing and bashing, when the mood was on him, even he had never dared to tell her . Dorrie Clarke . to shut up. Her blood boiled. She fastened the top of her stocking into a knot and rolled it down her leg to make it secure; she pulled her coat tighter about her and limped to the kitchen door, before turning to him.
"You may be a doctor ... yet that's got to be proved ... but yer no gentleman. You can strike me off your club; and I wouldn't work on a case where you are to save me the workhouse; I'm a particular woman.
And take my word for it, you won't reign longi' The snow whirled into the kitchen as she pulled open the door.
"Keep that leg up for a few days," he called after her.
"You go to Hell's flames 1' was the rejoinder. A fleeting shadow, that could have been amusement, passed over Tim Hannigan's face. Throughout the conversation he had sat immobile in the straight-backed, wooden arm-chair dead in front of the fire, staring at the glowing slack which the good draught of the big chimney kept bright.
Sarah Hannigan stood near the bare kitchen table in the centre of the room, picking at her bass bag and her shawl alternately, and her pale, weary eyes never left the doctor's face. She watched him think a minute after Dorrie Clarke had banged the door, then swiftly wrote something on a piece of paper which he took from a notebook.
"I'm sending for Doctor Davidson, Mrs. Hannigan," he said, as he wrote.
"Perhaps your husband will get this note to him as soon as possible?"
"I'll take it, doctor," said Sarah, breathlessly.
"No, you have your shopping to do, and you must get something to keep that room warm.
Your husband can take it. "
She looked helplessly from the back of her husband's head to the bearded face of this strange doctor. He didn't know; he was so cool and remote; from another world altogether; didn't the sovereign prove that? If it got round he threw his money about he'd have no peace.
And him speaking to Dorrie Clarke like that, and now asking Tim to go a message. Oh, Holy Mary! "I'll go on me way, doctor...."
Certainly not! Mr. Hannigan," he addressed the back of Tim's head, still immobile, 'will you kindly get this message to Doctor Davidson at once? Your daughter is a very sick woman."
Only Tim Hannigan's head turned; his pale eyes, under their overhanging, grizzly eyebrows, seemed to work behind a tliin film.
They moved slowly over the doctor and came to rest, derisively, on his black, pointed beard.
"Hell's cure to her!" he said slowly. His upper lip rested inside his lower one and his eyes flashed a quick glint at his wife before he turned his head to the fire again.
"Sir, do you know that your daughter might die?"
Tim's head came back with a jerk as if he was silently laughing.
"Doctor, please ... let me. Oh, please! I'll get there in no time."
Sarah grabbed the folded note from his hand, and he let her go without a word. The back door banged again, and he still stood staring at the back of Tim Hannigan's head. He felt more angry than ever he had done in his life before. These people! What were they? Animals? That frightful, fat, gin-smelling woman, and this man, callous beyond even the wildest stretches of imagination. He would like to punch that beastly mouth, close up those snake eyes. Oh, why get worked up?
He'd need all his energy. He turned and went back up the stairs, groping at
