“ ’Scuse my shirtsleeves Miss Hens’n. I say I’ve got a new song—like to try it presently or are ye too busy?”
Poised between the competing interests of many worlds Miriam basked in the friendly tones.
“Well I have got rather a fearful lot of things to do.”
“Come and try it now, d’ye mind?”
“Have your tea Ro, darling.”
“Right my love, right, right, always right—Hancock busy?”
“Yes; he has two more patients after this one.”
“Marvellous man.”
“Mr. Hancock never gets rushed or flurried does he? He’s always been the same ever since we’ve known him.”
“He’s very even and steady outwardly,” said Miriam indifferently.
“You think it’s only outward?”
“Well I mean he’s really frightfully sensitive.”
“Just so; it’s his coolness carries him through, self-command, I wish I’d got it.”
“You’d miss other things boysie; you can’t have it both ways.”
“Right m’love—right. I don’t understand him. D’you think anyone does, Miss Hens’n—really—I mean. D’you understand him?”
“Well you see I haven’t known him very long—”
“No—but you come from the same district and know his relatives.”
“The same Berkshire valley and his cousins happened to be my people’s oldest friends.”
“Well don’t ye see, that makes all the difference—I say I heard a splendid one this afternoon. D’you think I could tell Miss Hens’n that one Nelly?—you’re not easily shocked, are you?”
“I’ve never been shocked in my life,” said Miriam getting to her feet.
“Must ye go? Shall we just try this over?”
“Well if it isn’t too long.”
“Stop and have a bit of dinner with us can ye?”
Miriam made her excuse, pleading an engagement and sat down to the piano. The song was a modern ballad with an easy impressive accompaniment, following the air. The performance went off easily and well, Mr. Orly’s clear trained baritone ringing out persuasively into the large room. Weathering a second invitation to spend the evening she got away to her room.
Her mind was alight with the sense of her many beckoning interests, aglow with fullness of life. The thin piercing light cast upon her table by the single five candle power bulb, drawn low and screened by a green glass shade was warm and friendly. She attacked her letters, despatching the appointments swiftly and easily in a bold convincing hand and drafted a letter to Mrs. Hermann that she carried with a glow of satisfaction to Mr. Hancock’s room. When his room was cleared in preparation for his last patient it was nearly six o’clock. She began entering his daybook in the ledger. The boy coming up for the letters brought two dentures to be packed and despatched by registered post from Vere Street before six o’clock. “They’ll be ready by the time you’ve got your boots on,” said Miriam and packed her cases brilliantly in a mood of deft-handed concentration. Jimmy clattered up the stairs as she was stamping the labels. When he fled with them she gave a general sigh and surveyed the balance of her day with a responsible cheerful wicked desperation; her mind leaping forward to her evening. The daybooks would not be done, even Mr. Hancock’s would have to go up unentered; she had not the courage to investigate the state of the cash book; Mr. Leyton’s room was ready for the morning; she ran through to Mr. Orly’s room and performed a rapid perfunctory tidying up; many little things were left; his depleted stores must be refilled in the morning; she glanced at his appointment book, no patient so far until ten. She left the room with her everyday guilty consciousness that hardly anything in it was up to the level of Mr. Hancock’s room … look after Hancock, I’m used to fending for myself … but he knew she did not do her utmost to keep the room going. There were times when he ran short of stores in the midst of a sitting. That could be avoided.
When Miriam entered his room at half past six Mr. Hancock was switching off the lights about the chair. A single light shone over his desk. The fire was nearly out.
“Still here?”
“Yes,” said Miriam switching on a light over the instrument cabinet.
“I should leave those things tonight if I were you.”
“It isn’t very late.”
She could go on, indefinitely, in this confident silence, preparing for the next day. He sat making up his daybook and would presently come upon Mrs. Hermann’s letter. As long as he was there the day lingered. Its light had left the room. The room was colourless and dark except where the two little brilliant circles of light made bright patches of winter evening. Their two figures quietly at work meant the quiet and peace of the practice; the full, ended day, to begin again tomorrow in broad daylight in this same room. The room was full of their quiet continuous companionship. It was getting very cold. He would be going soon.
He stood up, switching off his light. “That will do excellently,” he said with an amused smile, placing Mrs. Hermann’s letter on the flap of the instrument cabinet and wandering into the gloomy spaces.
“Well. I’ll say good night.”
“Good night,” murmured Miriam.
Leaving the dried instruments in a heap with a wash leather flung over them she gathered up the books, switched the room into darkness, felt its promise of welcome and trotted downstairs through the quiet house. The front door shut quietly on Mr. Hancock as she reached the hall. She flew to get away. In five minutes the books were in the safe and everything locked up. The little mirror on the wall, scarcely lit by the single globe over the desk just directed the angle of her hat and showed the dim strange eager outline of her unknown face. She fled down the hall past Mr. Leyton’s room and the opening to the forgotten basement, between the heavy closed door of Mr. Orly’s room and the quiet scrolled end of the balustrade and past the angle of the high dark clock staring with its unlit face down the length
