The patients suffering the four long sittings were all of the best group, leisurely and untroubled as to the mounting up of guineas, and three of them intelligently appreciative of what was being done. They knew all about the “status” of modern dentistry and the importance of teeth. They were all clear serene tranquil cheerful people who probably hardly ever went to a doctor. They would rate oculists and dentists on a level with doctors and two of them at least would rate Mr. Hancock on a level with anybody. … Tomorrow would be quite different, a rush of gas cases, that man who was sick if an instrument touched the back of his tongue; Mrs. Wolff, disputing fees, the deaf-mute, the grubby little man on a newspaper … he ought to have no patients but these intelligent ones and really nervous and delicate people and children.
“I sometimes wish I’d stuck to medicine.”
“Why?”
“Well—I don’t know. You know they get a good deal more all round out of their profession than a dentist does. It absorbs them more. … I don’t say it ought not to be the same with dentistry. But it isn’t. I don’t know a dentist who wants to go on talking shop until the small hours. I’m quite sure I don’t. Now look at Randle. He was dining here last night. So was Bentley. We separated at about midnight; and Randle told me this morning that he and Bentley walked up and down Harley Street telling each other stories, until two o’clock.”
“That simply means they talk about their patients.”
“Well—yes. They discuss their cases from every point of view. They get more human interest out of their work.”
“Of course everybody knows that medical students and doctors are famous for stories. But it doesn’t really mean they know anything about people. I don’t believe they do. I think the dentist has quite as much opportunity of studying human nature. Going through dentistry is like dying. You must know almost everything about a patient who has had much done, or even a little—”
“The fact of the matter is their profession is a hobby to them as well as a profession. That’s the truth of the matter. Now I think a man who can make a hobby of his profession is a very fortunate man.”
How surprised the four friendly wealthy patients, especially the white-haired old aristocrat who was always pressing invitations upon him would have been, ignoring or treating her with the kindly consideration due to people of her station, if they could have seen inside his house yesterday and beheld her ensconced in the most comfortable chair in his drawing-room … talking to Miss Szigmondy.
Each time she came downstairs she sat urgently down to the most pressing of her clerical duties and presently found her mind ranging amongst thoughts whose beginnings she could not remember. She felt equal to anything. Every prospect was open to her. Simple solutions to problems that commonly went unanswered round and round in her head presented themselves in flashes. At intervals she worked with a swiftness and ease that astonished her, making no mistakes, devising small changes and adjustments that would make for the smoother working of the practice, dashing off notes to friends in easy expressive phrases that came without thought.
Rushing up towards lunch time in answer to the bell she found Mr. Hancock alone. He turned from the washstand and stood carefully drying his hands. “Are they showing up?” he murmured and seeing her, smiled his sense of her eagerness to communicate and approached a few steps waiting and smiling with the whole of his face exactly as he would smile when the communication was made. There was really no need to tell. Miriam glanced back for an incoming patient. “Miss Szigmondy,” she began in a voice deep with laughter.
He laughed at once, with a little backward throw of his head just as the patient came in. Miriam glided swiftly into her corner.
At teatime she found herself happily exhausted, sitting alone in the den waiting for the sound of footsteps. For the first time the gas-stove was unlit. The rows of asbestos balls stood white and bare. But a flood of sunlight came through the western panes of the newly washed skylight. The little low tea-table with its fresh uncrumpled low hanging white cover and compact cluster of delicate china stood in full sunshine amidst the comfortable winter shabbiness. The decorative confusion on the walls shone richly out in the new bright light. It needed only to have all the skylights open, the blue of the sky visible, the thin spring air coming in, the fire alight making a summery glow, to be perfect; like spring teatime in a newly visited house. The Wilsons’ sitting-room would be in an open blaze of shallow spring sunshine. She saw it going on day by day towards the rich light of summer … jealously. One ought to be there every day. So much life would have passed through the room. Every day last week had been full of it, everything changed by it, and now, since yesterday it seemed months ago. It seemed too late to begin going down again. One thing blots out another. You cannot have more than one thing intensely. Quite soon it would be as if she had never been down; except in moments now and again, when something recalled the challenge of their point of view. They would not want her to go down again unless she had begun to be different. Until yesterday she might have begun. But yesterday afternoon they had been forgotten so completely, and waking up from yesterday she no longer wanted to begin their way of being different. But other people
