Deadlock

her presence Miriam enquired whether Mrs. Bailey were out. “Mother’s lying down,” said Sissie sullenly, “she’s got one of her headaches.” Miriam sympathised. “I want her to have the doctor; it’s no use going on like this.” Miriam was drawn irresistibly towards Mrs. Bailey, prostrate in her room with her headache. She went down the hall feeling herself young and full of eager strength, sinking with every step deeper and deeper into her early self; back again by Eve’s bedside at home, able to control the paroxysms of pain by holding her small head grasped in both hands; she recalled the strange persistent strength she had felt, sitting with her at night, the happiness of the moments when the feverish pain seemed to run up her own arms and Eve relaxed in relief, the beautiful unfamiliar darkness of the midnight hours, the curious sharp savour of the incomprehensible book she had read lying on the floor by the little beam of the nightlight. She could surely do something for Mrs. Bailey; meeting her thus for the first time without the barrier of conversation; at least she could pit her presence and her sympathy against the pain. She tapped at the door of the little room at the end of the passage. Presently a muffled voice sounded and she went in. A sense of release enfolded her as she closed the door of the little room; it was as if she had stepped off the edge of her life, out into the wide spaces of the world. The room was lit feebly by a small lamp turned low within its smoky chimney. Its small space was so crowded that for a moment she could make out no recognisable bedroom shape; then a figure rose and she recognised Mr. Gunner standing by a low camp bedstead. It’s Miss Henderson he said quietly. There was a murmur from the bed and Miriam bending over it saw Mrs. Bailey’s drawn face, fever-flushed, with bright wild eyes. “We think she ought to have a doctor,” murmured Mr. Gunner. “M’m,” said Miriam absently.

“Good of you,” murmured Mrs. Bailey thickly. Miriam sat down in the chair Mr. Gunner had left and felt for Mrs. Bailey’s hands. They were cold and trembling. She clasped them firmly and Mrs. Bailey sighed. “Perhaps you can persuade her,” murmured Mr. Gunner. “M’m,” Miriam murmured. He crept away on tiptoe. Mrs. Bailey sighed more heavily. “Have you tried anything?” said Miriam dreamily, out into the crowded gloom.

The room was full of unsightly necessaries, all old and in various stages of dilapidation, the overflow of the materials that maintained in the rest of the house the semblance of ordered boardinghouse life. But there was something vital, even cheerful in the atmosphere; conquering the oppression of the crowded space. The aversion with which she had contemplated, at a distance, the final privacies of the Baileys behind the scenes, was exorcised. In the house itself there was no life; but there was brave life battling in this room. Mrs. Bailey would have admitted her at any time, with laughing apologies. Now that her entry had been innocently achieved, she found herself rejoicing in the disorder, sharing the sense Mrs. Bailey must have, every time she retired to this lively centre, of keeping her enterprise going for yet one more day. She saw that to Mrs. Bailey the house must appear as anything but a failure and the lack of boarders nothing but unaccountable bad luck. “A compress, or hot fomentations, hot fomentations could not do harm and they might be very good.”

“Whatever you think my dear; good of you,” murmured Mrs. Bailey feebly. “Not a bit,” said Miriam looking about wondering how she should carry out, in her ignorance, this mysteriously suggested practical idea. There was a small fire in the little narrow fireplace, with a hob on either side. Standing up she caught sight of a circular willow pattern sink basin with a tap above it and a cupboard below set in an alcove behind a mound of odds and ends. The room was meant for a sort of kitchen or scullery; and it had been the doctors’ only sitting-room. How had the four big tall men, with their table and all their books, managed to crowd themselves in?

In the dining-room Sissie responded with unconcealed astonishment and gratitude to Miriam’s suggestions and bustled off for the needed materials, lingering, when she brought them, to make useful suggestions, affectionately controlling Mrs. Bailey’s feeble efforts to help in the arrangements, and staying to supply Miriam’s needs, a little compact approving presence.

As long as the hot bandages were held to her head Mrs. Bailey seemed to find relief and presently began to murmur complaints of the trouble she was giving. Miriam, longing to sing, threatened to withdraw unless she would remain untroubled until she was better, or weary of the treatment. At ten o’clock she was free from pain, but her feet and limbs were cold.

“You ought to have a pack all over,” said Miriam judicially.

“That’s what I felt when you began,” agreed Mrs. Bailey.

“Of course. It’s the even temperature. I’ve never had one, but we were all brought up homeopathically.” Sissie went away to make tea.

“Was you?” said Mrs. Bailey drawing herself into a sitting posture. Miriam launched into eager description of the little chest with its tiny bottles of pilules and tinctures and the small violet-covered book about illnesses strapped into its lid; the home-life all about her as she talked.⁠ ⁠… Belladonna; aconite; she was back amongst her earliest recollections, feeling small and swollen and feverish; Mrs. Bailey, sitting up, with her worn glad patient face seemed to her more than ever like her mother; and she could not believe that the lore of the book and the little bottles did not reside with her.

“Aconite,” said Mrs. Bailey, “that was in the stuff the doctor give me when I was so bad last year.” That was all new and modern. Mrs. Bailey must see if