“Is it Miss Henderson?” he said nervously as she passed.
“Yes,” said Miriam stopping dead, flooded with sadness.
“I have been hoping to see you for the last ten days,” he said hurriedly and as if afraid of being overheard. In the impenetrable gloom darker than the darkness his voice was a thread of comfort.
“Oh yes.”
“Could you come and see me?”
“Oh yes of course.”
“If you will give me your number in Wimpole Street I will send you a note.”
“My dear!”
The tall figure, radiant, lit from head to foot, “as the light on a falling wave” … “as the light on a falling wave.” …
Everything stood still as they gazed at each other. Her own self gazed at her out of Miss Dear’s eyes.
“Well, I’m bothered,” said Miriam at last, sinking into a chair.
“No need to be bothered any more, dear,” laughed Miss Dear.
“It’s extraordinary.” She tried to recover the glory of the first moment in speechless contemplation of the radiant figure now moving chairs near to the lamp. The disappearance of the gas, the shaded lamp, the rector’s wife’s manner, the rector’s wife’s quiet stylish costume; it was like a prepared scene. How funny it would be to know a rector’s wife.
“He’s longing to meet you. I shall have a second room tomorrow. We will have a tea party.”
“It was today, of course.”
“Just before you came,” said Miss Dear, her glowing face bent, her hands brushing at the new costume. “You’ll be our greatest friend.”
“But how grand you are.”
“He made my future his care some days ago, dear. As long as I live you shall want for nothing, he said.”
“And today it all came out.”
“Of course he’ll have to get a living, dear. But we’ve decided to ignore the world.”
What did she mean by that. … “You won’t have to.”
“Well, dear, I mean let the world go by.”
“I see. He’s a jewel. I think you’ve made a very good choice. You can make your mind easy about that. I saw the great medicine man today.”
“It was all settled without that, dear. I never even thought about him.”
“You needn’t. No woman need. He’s a man who doesn’t know his own mind and never will. I doubt very much whether he has a mind to know. If he ever marries he will marry a wife, not any particular woman; a smart worldly woman for his profession, or a thoroughly healthy female who’ll keep a home in the country for him and have children and pour out his tea and grow things in the garden, while he flirts with patients in town. He’s most awfully susceptible.”
“I expect we shan’t live in London.”
“Well, that’ll be better for you, won’t it?”
“How do you mean, de‑er?”
“Well. I ought to tell you Dr. Densley told me you ought to go abroad.”
“There’s no need for me to go abroad, dear, I shall be all right if I can look after myself and get into the air.”
“I expect you will. Everything’s happened just right, hasn’t it?”
“It’s all been in the hands of an ’igher power, dear.”
Miriam found herself chafing again. It had all rushed on, in a few minutes. It was out of her hands completely now. She did not want to know Mr. and Mrs. Taunton. There was nothing to hold her any longer. She had seen Miss Dear in the new part. To watch the working out of it, to hear about the parish, sudden details about people she did not know—intolerable.
XXXII
The short figure looked taller in the cassock, funny and hounded, like all curates; pounding about and arranging a place for her and trying to collect his thoughts while he repeated how good it was of her to have come. He sat down at last to the poached eggs and tea laid on one end of the small book-crowded table.
“I have a service at four-thirty,” he said busily eating and glaring in front of him with unseeing eyes, a little like Mr. Grove only less desperate because his dark head was round and his eyes were blue—“so you must excuse my meal. I have a volume of Plato here.”
“Oh yes,” said Miriam doubtfully.
“Are you familiar with Plato?”
She pondered intensely and rushed in just in time to prevent his speaking again.
“I should like him I know—I’ve come across extracts in other books.”
“He is a great man; my favourite companion. I spend most of my leisure up here with Plato.”
“What a delightful life,” said Miriam enviously, looking about the small crowded room.
“As much time as I can spare from my work at the Institute and the Mission chapel; they fill my active hours.”
Where would a woman, a wife-woman, be in a life like this? He poured himself out a cup of tea; the eyes turned towards the teapot were worried and hurried; his whole compact rounded form was a little worried and anxious. There was something—bunnyish about him. Reading Plato the expression of his person would still have something of the worried rabbit about it. His face would be calm and intent. Then he would look up from the page, taking in a thought, and something in his room would bring him back again to worry. But he was too stout to belong to a religious order.
“You must have a very busy life,” said Miriam, her attention wandering rapidly off hither and thither.
“Of course,” he said turning away from the table to the fire beside which she sat.
