Interim

at the hearthrug with an air of judicial profundity, no, at least oh yes, I think it is raining and drifted helplessly towards the window. The challenge was behind her. She would have to face it again. A borrowed voice said briskly within her yes it’s pouring, I hope it will be fine tomorrow, what weather we have had; well goodnight Mrs. Bailey. I have been to a lecture she said in imagination standing by the window. It was what any other boarder would have said and then so fine, such a splendid lecturer and told the subject and his name and one idea out of the lecture and they would have agreed and gone cheerfully to bed, with no thoughts. To try and really tell anything about the lecture would be to plunge down into misrepresentations and misunderstandings and end with the lecture vanished. To say anything real about it would lead to living the rest of her life with the Baileys helping them with their plans⁠ ⁠… she turned and came busily back. It’s very late she murmured. Mrs. Bailey smiled and yawned. At least not so very late, not quite tomorrow she pursued turning round to the clock and back again to consult the pictures and the wallpaper. Just staying there was answering Mrs. Bailey’s question. Suddenly she laughed out and turned, laughing, as if she were about to communicate some mirthful memory. It’s too absurd she said distracted between the joy of her lingering laughter and the need for instantly inventing an explanation. Mrs. Bailey was laughing delightedly. There was a most absurd thing⁠—chanted Miriam above her laughter; a gentle tap took Mrs. Bailey scurrying to the door. May I have a candle Mrs. Bailey murmured a low voice in a curious solidly curving intonation. Certainly doctor answered Mrs. Bailey’s voice in the hall. She scurried away downstairs. Miriam turned towards the window and stood listening to St. Pancras clock striking midnight. Then those men in the little back sitting-room were doctors. How pleased and proud Mrs. Bailey must be. How wonderful of her to say nothing about them. Can I have a candle missuz Bailey. Wrapped away in the suave strong courteous voice were the knowledge and the fineness of a world no one in the house knew anything about. Mrs. Bailey dimly knew, and screened it fearing to lose it. She had the wonderful voice all to herself. “Good evening.” The voice was in the room. Miriam turned instantly; a square strong-looking man a little over middle height with flat pale fair hair smooth on a squarish head above grave bluntly moulded features was moving easily forward from the door. They met at the end of the table standing one each side the angle of the fireside corner, smiling as if her murmured response to his greeting had been a speech in a play ready-made to bring them together. Miriam felt that if she had said oh I’m so glad he would have responded yes; so am I. My name’s von Heber he announced quietly, his restrained uncontrollably deepening smile sending out a radiance all round her. It was as if they had met before without the opportunity of speaking and here at last was the opportunity and they had first to smile out their recognition of its perfection. They stood in a radiant silence, his even tones making no break in their interchange. She felt a quality in him she had not met before; in the ease of his manner there was no trace of the complacent assumption of the man of the world. His deference was no mask worn to decorate himself. It was deliberate and yet genuine. It was the shape in which he presented to her, personally, set above and away from her ugly clothes and her weariness, the beam of delight which had been his inward greeting. The completeness and confidence of his delight, his own completeness and security revealed to her an unknown reading of life that she longed to hold and fathom. She offered in return as a measure of her qualification, the laughter she had laughed to Mrs. Bailey, hoping he had heard it. I find this custom of putting down the light at eleven very inconvenient he was saying. Miriam smiled and listened eagerly for more of the low even curiously curving intonations. I propose to take the London medical examination in July and I’ve a good deal of hard work to get through prior to that date. He had not been going to stop speaking but Miriam found an immense welcoming space for the word she summoned in vain desperately from far away Wimpole Street. The conjoint she declared at last eagerly, almost before the word reached her consciousness. The Conjoint he repeated and as his voice went on Miriam contemplated the accumulation they had gathered. She stood smiling, growing familiar with the quality of his voice, gathering the sense of a word here and there. Through his talk he smiled a quizzical pleased appreciation of this way of listening. She felt as if they were talking backwards, towards something already said and when she took in I’m taking the postgraduate course at your great hospital near here she tried in vain to resist the temptation of leading his talk down into detail. The way to preserve the charm unbroken would be to let him go on talking. She might even listen carefully, and learn the meaning of the postgraduate course and its place in the London medical world; the whole of the London medical world was being transformed by this man into something simple and joyful. But the eager words had escaped her⁠—oh; that’s the one with the glorious yarn. Tell me the yarn he chuckled gently, showing a row of strong squarish flawless teeth. Well, she said the big surgeons were operating and the patient was collapsing and one said I think it is time we called in Divine aid. Nonsense said the