Someone must know she was in London, free, earning her own living. Lilla? She would not see the extraordinary freedom; earning would seem strange and dreadful to her … someone who would understand the extraordinary freedom. … Alma. Alma! Setting forth the London address in a heavy careless hand at the head of a postcard she wrote from the midst of her seventeenth year, “Dear A. Where are you?”
Walking home along the Upper Richmond Road; not liking to buy sweets; not enjoying anything to the full—always afraid of her refinements; always in a way wanting to be like her; wanting to share her mysterious knowledge of how things were done in the world and the things one had to do to get on in some clever world where people were doing things. Never really wanting it because the mere thought of that would take the beauty of the syringa and make it look sad. Never being able to explain why one did not want to do reasonable clever things in a clever brisk reasonable way; why one disliked the way she went behaving up and down the Upper Richmond Road with her pretty neat brisk bustling sidling walk, keeping her secret with a sort of prickly brightness. The Upper Richmond Road was heaven, pure heaven; smelling of syringa. She liked flowers but she did not seem to know. … Syringa. I had forgotten. That is one of the things I have always wanted to stop and remember. … What was it all about? What was she doing now? Anyhow the London postcard would be an answer. A letter, making her see Germany and bits of Newlands and what life was now would answer everything, all her snubs and cleverness and bring back the Upper Richmond Road and make it beautiful. She will know something of what it was to me then. Perhaps that was why she liked me even though she thought me vulgar and very lazy and stupid.
III
There was a carriage at the door. West-end people, after late nights, managing to keep nine o’clock appointments—in a north wind. Miriam pressed the bell urgently. The scrubbed chalky mosaic and the busy bright brass plate reproached her for her lateness during the long moment before the door was opened. … It must be someone for Mr. Orly; an appointment made since last night; that was the worst of his living in the house. He was in his surgery now, with the patient. The nine-fifteen patient would come almost at once. He would discover that his charts were not out before there was any chance of getting at his appointment book. … As the great door swung open she saw Mr. Hancock turn the corner of the street walking very rapidly before the north wind. … Mr. Orly’s voice was sounding impatiently from the back of the hall. … “Where’s Miss Hends. … Oh—here y’are Miss Hends, I say call up Chalk for me will ya, get him to come at once, I’ve got the patient waiting.” His huge frock-coated form swung round into his surgery without waiting for an answer. Miriam scurried through the hall past Mr. Leyton’s open surgery door and into her room. Mr. Leyton plunged out of his room as she was flinging down her things and came in briskly. “Morning, Pater got a gas case?”
“Mm;” said Miriam. “I’ve got to call up Chalk and I haven’t a second to do it.”
“Why Chalk?”
“Oh I don’t know. He said Chalk,” said Miriam angrily, seizing the directory.
“I’ll call him up if you like.”
“You are a saint. Tell him to come at once—sooner,” said Miriam dabbing at her hair as she ran back through the hall and upstairs. As she passed the turn of the staircase Mr. Hancock was let in at the front door. She found his kettle furiously boiling on its wrought-iron stand near the chair. The stained glass window just behind it was dim with steam. She lowered the gas, put a tumbler in the socket of the spittoon, lit the gas burner on the bracket table and swiftly pulled open its drawers one by one. The instruments were all right … the bottles—no chloroform, the carbolic bottle nearly empty and its label soaked and defaced. Gathering the two
