down. She retreated to the far end of the table taking her place on Sissie’s right hand, separated from Dr. von Heber by the thin Norwegian and the protruding bulk of Mrs. Barrow. Mr. Mendizabal with a pencil and paper at the side of his plate was squarely opposite to her. His méfiant sallies to the accompaniment of Sissie’s giggles and Miss Strong’s rapid sarcastic remarks, made a tumult hiding her silence. She heard nothing of the various conversations sprouting easily all round the table. The doctors were far-off strongholds of serenity, unconscious of their serenity, unconscious of her and of their extraordinary taking of the Baileys and Mr. Gunner for granted. … Dr. von Heber was a silence broken by small courteously curving remarks. Dr. Hurd laughed his leaping delighted laugh in and out of an unmeditated interchange with Mr. Gunner and Mrs. Bailey. If she had been at their end of the table they would not have perceived her thoughts, but they would have felt her general awareness and got up at last disliking her. They changed the atmosphere but could not make her forget the underlying unchanged elements nor rid her of her resentment of their unconsciousness of them. There was a long interval before the puddings appeared. Mrs. Bailey was trying to answer questions about books. Dr. Hurd did not care for reading, but liked to be read to, by his sisters, in the evening, and had come away, at the most exciting part of a book … a wonderful authoress, what’s her name now—Rosie—Newchet. … He was just longing to know how it ended. Was it sweet and wonderful, or too dreadful for anything to contemplate a student, a fully qualified doctor having Rosa Nouchette Carey read to him by his sisters? Dr. von Heber was not joining in. Did he read novels and like them? No one had anything to say; no one here knew even of Rosa Nouchette Carey … and that man Hunter … he’s great … he’s father’s favourite; what’s this, Mr. Barnes of New York. … Archibald Clavering Gunter said Miriam suddenly, longing to be at the other end of the table. Beg pardon? said Sissie turning aside for a moment from watching Mr. Mendizabal’s busy pencil. There he is shouted Mr. Mendizabal flinging out his piece of paper—gastric ulcer—there he is. There was a drawing of a sort of crab with huge claws.—My beautiful gastric ulcer—Have you been to the ’ospital today Mr. Mendizzable asked Mrs. Bailey through the general laughter. I have been madame and I come away. They say they welcome me inside again soon. Je m’en fiche. The faces of both doctors were turned enquiringly. Dr. Hurd’s look of quizzical sympathy passed on towards Miriam and became a mask of suppressed hysterical laughter. Perhaps he and Dr. Heber would scream and yell together afterwards and make a great story of a man in a London pension. Dr. Hurd would call him a cure. My word isn’t that chap a cure? Brave little man. Caring for nothing. How could he possibly have a gastric ulcer and look so hard and happy and strong. What was Dr. von Heber silently thinking? The doctors disappeared as soon as dinner was over, Dr. von Heber gravely rounding the door with some quiet formal phrases of politeness, and the group about the table broke up. He’s a bit pompous Mr. Gunner was saying presently to someone from the hearthrug. Was he daring to speak of Dr. von Heber? Presently there were only the women left in the room. Miriam felt unable to depart and hung about until the table was cleared and sat down under the gas protected by her notebook. The room was very quiet. Sissie and Mrs. Bailey were mending near a lamp at the far end of the table. Miriam’s thoughts left her suddenly. The tide of life had swept away leaving an undisturbed stillness, a space swept clear. She was empty and nothing. In all the clamour that had passed she had no part. In all the noise that lay ahead, no part. Strong people came and went and never ceased, coming and going and acting ceaselessly, coming and going, and here, at her centre, was nothing, lifeless thoughtless nothingness. The four men studied apart in the little room, away from the empty lifeless nothingness … the door opened quietly. Mrs. Bailey and Sissie looked expectantly up and were silent. Something had come into the room. Something real, clearing away the tumult and compelling peaceful silence. She exerted all her force to remain still and apparently engrossed, as Dr. von Heber placed an open notebook and a large volume on the table exactly opposite to where she sat and sat down. He did not see that she was astonished at his coming nor her still deeper astonishment in the discovery of her unconscious certainty that he would come. A haunting familiar sense of unreality possessed her. Once more she was part of a novel; it was right, true like a book, for Dr. Heber to come in in defiance of everyone, bringing his studies into the public room in order to sit down quietly opposite this fair young English girl. He saw her apparently gravely studious and felt he could “pursue his own studies” all the better for her presence. She began writing at random, assuming as far as possible the characteristics he was reading into her appearance. If only it were true; but there was not in the whole world the thing he thought he saw. Perhaps if he remained steadily like that in her life she could grow into some semblance of his steady reverent observation. He did not miss any movement or change of expression. Perhaps you need to be treated as an object of romantic veneration before you can become one. Perhaps in Canada there were old-fashioned women who were objects of romantic veneration all their lives, living all the time as if they were Maud or
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