It would be such an awful labour … in the long interval the strength for it would disappear. Thoughts must be kept away. Activities. The weekend would be a vacuum of tense determination. That was the payment for headlong speech. Speech, thought-out speech, does nothing but destroy. There had been a moment of hesitation in the train, swamped by the illumination coming from the essay. …
The morning’s letters lay unopened on her table. Dreadful. Dealing with them would bring unconsciousness, acceptance of the situation would leap upon her unawares. She gathered them up conversationally, summoning presences and the usual atmosphere of the working day, but was disarmed by the trembling of her hands. The letters were the last link. Merely touching them had opened the door to a withering pain. When the appointments were kept, she would no longer be in the house. The patients crowded through her mind; individuals, groups, families, the whole fabric of social life richly unrolled day by day, for her contemplation; spirited away. Each letter brought the sting of careless indifferent farewell.
At the hall door James was whistling for a hansom; it was a dream picture, part of the week that was past. A hansom drew up, the abruptly reined-in horse slipping and scrabbling. Perhaps there was a patient hidden in Mr. Leyton’s quiet sounding surgery. Once more she could watch a patient’s departure; the bright oblong of street … he was away for the weekend. There was no patient. It was a dream picture. Dream figures were coming downstairs. … Mrs. Orly, Mr. Orly, not yet gone; coming hurriedly straight towards her. She rose without thought, calmly unoccupied, watching them come, one person, swiftly and gently. They stood about her, quite near; silently radiating their kindliness.
“I suppose we must say goodbye,” said Mrs. Orly. In her sweet little sallow face not a shadow of reproach; but lively bright sorrow, tears in her eyes.
“I say, we’re awfully sorry about this,” said Mr. Orly gustily, shifting his poised bulk from one foot to the other.
“So am I,” said Miriam seeking for the things they were inviting her to say. She could only smile at them.
“It is a pity,” whispered Mrs. Orly. This was the Orlys; the reality of them; an English reality; utterly unbusinesslike; with no codes but themselves; showing themselves; without disguises of voice or manner, to a dismissed employee; the quality of England; old-fashioned.
“I know.” They both spoke together and then Mrs. Orly was saying “No, Ro can’t bear strangers.”
“If you don’t want me to go I shall stay,” she murmured. But the sense of being already half reinstated was driven away by Mrs. Orly’s unaltered distress.
“Ungrateful?” The gustily panting tones were the remainder of the real anger he had felt, listening to Mr. Hancock’s discourse. They had no grievance and they had misunderstood his.
“No,” she said coldly, “I don’t think so.”
“Hang it all, excuse my language, but y’know he’s done a good deal for ye.” “All expectation of gratitude is meanness and is continually punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person.” … “we are lucky; we ought to be grateful;” meaning, to God. Then unlucky people ought to be ungrateful. …
“Besides,” the same gusty tone “it’s as good as telling us we’re not gentlemen; y’see?” The blue eyes flashed furiously.
Then all her generalisations had been taken personally. … “Oh well,” she said helplessly.
“We shall be late, laddie.”
“Surely that can be put right. I must talk to Mr. Hancock.”
“Well, to tell y’honestly I don’t think y’ll be able to do anything with Hancock.” Mrs. Orly’s distressed little face supported his opinion, and her surprising sudden little embrace and Mr. Orly’s wringing handshake meant not only the enduring depths of their kindliness but their pained dismay in seeing her desolate and resourceless, their certainty that there was no hope. It threw a strong light. It would be difficult for him to withdraw; perhaps impossible; perhaps he had already engaged another secretary. … But she found that she had not watched them go away and was dealing steadily with the letters, with a blank mind upon which presently emerged the features of the coming weekend.
“Well as I say—” Miriam followed the lingering held-in cold vexation of the voice, privately prompting it with informal phrases fitting the picture she held, half-smiling, in her mind, of a moody, uncertain, door-slamming secretary, using the whole practice as material for personal musings, liable suddenly to break into long speeches of accusation. But if they were spoken, they would destroy the thing that was being given back to her, the thing that had made the atmosphere of the room. “It will be the most unbusinesslike thing I’ve ever done; and I doubt very much whether it will answer.”
“Oh well. There’s not any reason why it shouldn’t.” She smiled provisionally. It was not yet quite time to rise and feel life flowing about her in the familiar room, purged to a fresh austerity by the coming and passing of the storm. There was still a rankling, and glorious as it was to sit talking at leisure, the passing of time piled
