CHAPTER III_The tunnel

There was a carriage at the door. West-end people, after late nights,

managing to keep nine o'clock appointments--in a north wind. Miriam

pressed the bell urgently. The scrubbed chalky mosaic and the busy

bright brass plate reproached her for her lateness during the long

moment before the door was opened.... It must be someone for Mr. Orly;

an appointment made since last night; that was the worst of his living

in the house. He was in his surgery now, with the patient. The

nine-fifteen patient would come almost at once. He would discover that

his charts were not out before there was any chance of getting at his

appointment book.... As the great door swung open she saw Mr. Hancock

turn the corner of the street walking very rapidly before the north

wind.... Mr. Orly's voice was sounding impatiently from the back of the

hall.... "Where's Miss Hends.... Oh--here y'are Miss Hends, I say call

up Chalk for me will ya, get him to come at once, I've got the patient

waiting." His huge frock-coated form swung round into his surgery

without waiting for an answer. Miriam scurried through the hall past Mr.

Leyton's open surgery door and into her room. Mr. Leyton plunged out of

his room as she was flinging down her things and came in briskly.

"Morning, Pater got a gas case?"

"Mm"; said Miriam. "I've got to call up Chalk and I haven't a second to

do it."

"Why Chalk?"

"Oh I don't know. He said Chalk" said Miriam angrily, seizing the

directory.

"I'll call him up if you like."

"You are a saint. Tell him to come at once--sooner," said Miriam dabbing

at her hair as she ran back through the hall and upstairs. As she passed

the turn of the staircase Mr. Hancock was let in at the front door. She

found his kettle furiously boiling on its wrought-iron stand near the

chair. The stained glass window just behind it was dim with steam. She

lowered the gas, put a tumbler in the socket of the spittoon, lit the

gas burner on the bracket table and swiftly pulled open its drawers one

by one. The instruments were all right ... the bottles--no chloroform,

the carbolic bottle nearly empty and its label soaked and defaced.

Gathering the two bottles in her hand she turned to the instrument

cabinet, no serviettes, no rubber dam, clamps not up from the workshop.

The top of the cabinet still to be dusted. Dust and scraps of amalgam

were visible about the surfaces of the paper lining the instrument

drawers. No saliva tubes in the basin. She swung round to the bureau and

hurriedly read through the names of the morning's patients. Mr. Hancock

came quietly in as she was dusting the top of the instrument cabinet by

pushing the boxes and bottles of materials that littered its surface to

the backmost edge. They were all lightly coated with dust. It was

everlasting and the long tubes and metal body of the little furnace were

dull again. "Good morning," they said simultaneously, in even tones.

There were sounds of letters being opened and the turning of the pages

of the appointment book. The chain of Mr. Hancock's gold pencil case

rattled softly as he made notes on the corners of the letters.

"Did you have a pleasant week-end?"

"Very" said Miriam emphatically.

There was a squeak at the side of the cabinet. "Yes" said Miriam down

the speaking tube.... "Thank you. Will you please bring up some tubes

and serviettes."

"Mr. Wontner."

"Thank you." ... "Mrs. Hermann is 'frightfully shocked' at the amount of

her account. What did we send it in for?"

"Seventy guineas. It's a reduction, and it's two years' work for the

whole family." The bell sounded again.... "Lady Cazalet has bad

toothache and can you see her at once."

"Con_found_.... Will you go down and talk to her and see if you can get

one of the others to see her."

"She won't."

"Well then she must wait. I'll have Mr. Wontner up." Miriam rang. Mr.

Hancock began busily washing his hands. The patient came in. He greeted

him over his shoulder. Miriam gathered up the sheaf of annotated letters

and the appointment book and ran down-stairs. "Has Mr. Leyton a patient

Emma?" "Miss Jones just gone in, Miss." "Oh, Emma, will you ask the

workshop for Mr. Hancock's rubber and clamps?" She rang through to Mr.

Leyton's room. "There's a patient of Mr. Hancock's in pain, can you see

them if I can persuade them?" she murmured. "Right, in ten minutes" came

the answering murmur. Mr. Hancock's bell sounded from her room. She went

to his tube in the hall. "Can I have my charts?" Running into her room

she hunted out the first chart from a case full and ran upstairs with

it. Mr. Hancock's patient was sitting forward in the chair urging the

adoption of the decimal system. Running down again she went into the

waiting room. The dark Turkey carpeted oak furnished length seemed full

of seated forms. Miriam peered and Lady Cazalet, with her hat already

off rose from the deep arm-chair at her side. "Can he see me?" she said

in a clear trembling undertone, her dark eyes wide upon Miriam's. Miriam

gazed deep into the limpid fear. What a privilege. How often Captain

Cazalet must be beside himself with unworthiness. "Yes, if you can wait

a little" she said dropping her eyes and standing with arms restrained.

"I think it won't be very long" she added lingering a moment as the

little form relapsed into the chair.

"Lady Cazalet will wait until you can see her" she tubed up to Mr.

Hancock.

"Can't you make her see one of the others?"

"I'm afraid it's impossible; I'll tell you later."

"Well I'll see her as soon as I can. I'm afraid she'll have to wait."

Miriam went back to her room to sort out the remaining charts. On her

table lay a broken denture in a faded morocco case; a strip of paper

directed "five-thirty sharp" in Mr. Orly's handwriting. Mr. Leyton's

door burst open. He came with flying coat-tails.

"Vi got to see that patient of Mr. Hancock's" he asked breathlessly.

"No" said Miriam "she won't."

"Right" he said swinging back. "I'll keep Miss Jones on."

Mr. Hancock's bell sounded again. Miriam flew to the tube.

"My clamps please."

"Oh yes" she answered shocked, and hurried back to her room.

Gathering up the broken denture she ran down the stone steps leading to

the basement. Her cheap unyielding shoes clattered on the unyielding

stones. The gas was on in the lunch room, Mrs. Willis scrubbing the

floor. The voices of the servants came from the kitchens in the unknown

background. She passed the lunch room and the cellar and clamped on

across the stone hall to the open door of the workshop.

Winthrop was standing at the small furnace in the box-lined passage way.

It was roaring its loudest. Through its open door the red light fell

sharply on his pink-flushed face and drooping fair moustache and poured

down over his white apron. "Good ph-morning" he said pleasantly, his eye

on the heart of the furnace, his foot briskly pumping the blower. From

the body of the room came sounds of tapping and whistling ... the noise

of the furnace prevented their knowing that anyone had come in....

Miriam drew near to the furnace, relieved at the shortness of her

excursion. She stared at the tiny shape blazing red-gold at the heart of

the glare. Winthrop gathered up a pair of tongs and drew the mould from

the little square of light. The air hissed from the bellows and the

roaring of the flames died down. In a moment he was standing free with

hot face and hot patient ironic eyes, gently taking the denture from her

hands. "Good morning" said Miriam, "Oh, Mr. Winthrop, it's a repair for

Mr. Orly. It's urgent. Can you manage it?" "It's ph--ph--sure to be

urgent" said Winthrop examining the denture with a short-sighted frown.

Miriam waited anxiously. The hammering and whistling had ceased. "It'll

be all right, Miss Ph-Henderson" said Winthrop encouragingly. She turned

to the door. The clamps.... Gathering herself together she went down the

passage and stood at the head of the two stone steps leading down into

the body of the room. A swift scrubbing of emery paper on metal was

going on at the end of the long bench, lit by a long sky-light, from

which the four faces looked up at her with a chorus of good mornings in

response to her greeting. "Are Mr. Hancock's clamps ready?" she asked

diffidently. "Jimmy ..." The figure nearest to her glanced down the row

of seated forms. The small bullet-headed boy at the end of the bench

scrubbed vigorously and ironically with his emery stick. "He won't be a

minute, Miss Henderson" said the near pupil comfortingly.

Miriam observed his spruce grey suit curiously masked by the mechanic's

apron, the quiet controlled amused face, and felt the burden of her

little attack as part of the patient prolonged boredom of his pupillage.

The second pupil, sitting next to him kept dog-like sympathetic eyes on

her face, waiting for a glance. She passed him by, smiling gently in

response without looking at him while her eyes rested upon the form of

the junior mechanic whose head was turned in the direction of the

scrubbing boy. The head was refined, thin and clear cut, thatched with

glossy curls. Its expression was servile--the brain eagerly seeking some

flowery phrase--something to decorate at once the occasion and the

speaker, and to give relief to the mouth strained in an arrested

obsequious smile. Nothing came and the clever meticulous hands were idle

on the board. It seemed absurd to say that Mr. Hancock was waiting for

the clamps while Jimmy was scrubbing so busily. But they had obviously

been forgotten. She fidgeted.

"Will somebody send them up when they're done?"

"Jimmy, you're a miserable sinner, hurry up" said the senior pupil.

"They're done" said Jimmy in a cracked bass voice. "Thank goodness"

breathed Miriam, dimpling. Jimmy came round and scattered the clamps

carefully into her outstretched hand, with down-cast eyes and a crisp

dimpling smile.

"Rule Bri_tan_nia," remarked the junior pupil, resuming his work as

Miriam turned away and hurried along the passage and through the door

held open for her by Winthrop. She flew up to Mr. Hancock's room three

steps at a time, tapped gently at the door and went in. He came forward

across the soft grey green carpet to take the clamps and murmured gently

"Have you got my carbolic?"

Miriam looked out the remainder of the charts and went anxiously through

the little pile of letters she had brought down from Mr. Hancock's room.

All but three were straight-forward appointments to be sent. One bore

besides the pencilled day and date the word "Tape" ... she glanced

through it--it was from a University settlement worker, asking for an

appointment for the filling of two front teeth.... She would understand

increasing by one thickness per day until there were five, to be

completed two days before the appointment falls due so that any

tenderness may have passed off. Mrs. Hermann's letter bore no mark. She

could make a rough summary in Mr. Hancock's phraseology. The third

letter enclosed a printed card of appointment with Mr. Hancock which she

had sent without filling in the day and hour. She flushed. Mr. Hancock

had pencilled in the missing words. Gathering the letters together she

put them as far away as her hand would reach, leaving a space of shabby

ink-stained morocco clear under her hands. She looked blindly out of the

window; hand-painted, they are hand-painted, forget-me-nots and gold

tendrils softly painted, not shining, on an unusual shape, a merry

Christmas. Melly Klismas. In this countree heapee lain, chiney man lun

home again, under a red and green paper umbrella in the pouring rain,

that was not a hand-painted one, but better, in some _strange_ way,

close bright colours drawing everything _in_; a shock. I stayed in

there. There was something. Chinee man lun _home_ again. Her eye roamed

over the table; everything but the newly-arrived letters shabby under

the high wide uncurtained window. The table fitted the width of the

window. There was something to be done before anything could be done.

Everything would look different if something were done. The fresh

letters could lie neatly on the centre of the table in the midst of

something. They were on the address books, spoiled by them. It would

take years to check the addresses one by one till the old books could be

put away. If the day books were entered up to date, there would still be

those, disfiguring everything. If everything were absolutely up to date,

and all the cupboards in perfect order and the discounts and decimals

always done in the depot-books to time there would be time to do

something. She replaced the letters in the centre of the table and put

them back again on the address books. His nine-forty-five patient was

being let in at the front door. In a moment his bell would ring and

something must be said about the appointment card. "Mr. Orly?" A big

booming elderly voice, going on heavily murmuring into the waiting-room.

She listened tensely to the movements of the servant. Was Mr. Orly in

"the den" or in his surgery? She heard the maid ring through to the

surgery and wait. No sound. The maid came through her room and tapped at

the door leading from it. _Come_ in sang a voice from within and Miriam

heard the sound of a hammer on metal as the maid opened the door. She

flew to the surgery. Amidst the stillness of heavy oak furniture and

dark Turkey carpet floated the confirming smell. There it was all about

the spittoon and the red velvet covered chair and the bracket table, a

horrible confusion--and blood stains, blood blotted serviettes, forceps

that made her feel sick and faint. Summoning up her strength she

gathered up the serviettes and flung them into a basket behind the

instrument cabinet. She was dabbing at the stains on the American cloth

cover of the bracket when Mr. Orly came swinging in, putting on his grey

frock-coat and humming Gunga Din as he came. "Regular field day" he said

cheerfully. "I shan't want those things--just pop 'em out of sight." He

turned up the cupboard gas and in a moment a stream of boiling water

hissed down into the basin filling the room with steam. "I say, has this

man got a chart? Don't throw away those teeth. Just look at this--how's

that for twisted? Just look here." He took up an object to which Miriam

forced reluctant eyes, grotesquely formed fangs protruding from the

enclosing blades of a huge forceps. "How's that eh?" Miriam made a

sympathetic sound. Gathering the many forceps he detached their contents

putting the relic into a bottle of spirit and the rest into the hidden

basket. The forceps went head first into a jar of carbolic and Miriam

breathed more freely. "I'll see to those. I say has this man got a

chart?" "I'll see" said Miriam eagerly making off with the appointment

book. She returned with the chart. Mr. Orly hummed and looked. "Right.

Tell 'em to send him in. I say, vi got any gold and tin?" Miriam

consulted the box in a drawer in the cabinet. It was empty. "I'm afraid

you haven't" she said guiltily. "All right, I'll let y'know. Send 'im

in," and he resumed Gunga Din over the wash-hand basin. Mr. Hancock's

bell was ringing in her room and she hurried off with a sign to the

little maid waiting with raised eyebrows in the hall. Darting into her

room she took the foils from the safe, laid them on a clean serviette

amongst the litter on her table and ran upstairs. Mr. Leyton opened his

door as she passed "I say, can you feed for me" he asked breathlessly,

putting out an anxious head. "I'll come down in a minute" promised

Miriam from the stairs. Mr. Hancock was drying his hands. He sounded his

bell as she came in. The maid answered. "I'm so sorry" began Miriam.

"Show up Mr. Green" said Mr. Hancock down the speaking tube. "You

remember there's Lady Cazalet?" said Miriam relieved and feeling she was

making good her carelessness in the matter of the appointment card.

"Oh con_found_." He rang again hurriedly. "Show up Lady Cazalet." Miriam

swept from the bracket table the litter of used instruments and

materials, disposing them rapidly on the cabinet, into the sterilising

tray, the waste basket and the wash-hand basin, tore the uppermost leaf

from the headrest pad, and detached the handpiece from the arm of the

motor drill while the patient was being shown upstairs. Mr. Hancock had

cleared the spittoon, set a fresh tumbler, filled the kettle and whisked

the debris of amalgam and cement from the bracket table before he began

the scrubbing and cleansing of his hands, and when the patient came in

Miriam was in her corner reluctantly handling the instruments, wet with

the solution that crinkled her fingertips and made her skin brittle and

dry. Everything was in its worst state. The business of drying and

cleansing, freeing fine points from minute closely adhering fragments,

polishing instruments on the leather pad, repolishing them with the

leather, scraping the many little burs with the fine wire brush,

scraping the clamps, clearing the obstinate amalgam from slab and

spatula, brought across her the ever-recurring circle. The things were

begun, they were getting on, she had half-done ... the exasperating

tediousness of holding herself to the long series of tiny careful

attention-demanding movements ... the punctual emergence when the end

was in sight of the hovering reflection, nagging and questioning, that

another set of things was already getting ready for another cleansing

process; the endless series to last as long as she stayed at Wimpole

Street ... were there any sort of people who could do this kind of thing

patiently, without minding? ... the evolution of dentistry was

wonderful, but the more perfect it became the more and more of this sort

of thing there would be ... the more drudgery workers, at fixed salaries

... it was only possible for people who were fine and nice ... there

must be, everywhere, women doing this work for people who were not nice.

They _could_ not do it for the work's sake. Did some of them do it

cheerfully, as unto God. It was wrong to work unto man. But could God

approve of this kind of thing ... was it right to spend life cleaning

instruments ... the blank moment again of gazing about in vain for an

alternative ... all work has drudgery. That is not the answer....

Blessèd be Drudgery, but that was housekeeping, not someone else's

drudgery.... As she put the things back in the drawers, every drawer

offered tasks of tidying, replenishing, and repapering of small boxes

and grooves and sections. She had remembered to bring up Lady Cazalet's

chart. It looked at her propped against the small furnace. Behind it

were the other charts for the day complete. The drug bottles were full,

there was plenty of amadou pulled soft and cut ready for use, a fair

supply of both kinds of Japanese paper. None of the bottles and boxes of

stopping materials were anywhere near running short and the gold drawer

was filled. She examined the drawers that held the less frequently used

fittings and materials, conducting her operations noiselessly without

impeding Mr. Hancock's perpetual movements to and fro between the chair

and the instrument cabinet. Meanwhile the dressing of Lady Cazalet's

painful tooth went quietly on and Mr. Leyton was waiting, hoping for her

assistance downstairs. There was no excuse for waiting upstairs any

longer. She went to the writing table and hung over the appointment

book.

It was a busy day. He would hardly have half an hour for lunch.... She

examined the names carefully, one by one, and wrote against one "ask

address," underlined and against another "enquire for brother--ill."

Lady Cazalet drew a deep sigh ... she had been to other dentists. But

perhaps they were good ones. Perhaps she was about thirty ... had she

ever gone through a green baize door and seen a fat common little man

with smooth sly eyes standing waiting for her in a dark stuffy room

smelling of creosote? Even if she had always been to good ones they were

not Mr. Hancock. They were dentists. Cheerful ordinary men with ordinary

voices and laughs, thinking about all manner of things. Or apparently

bland, with ingratiating manners. Perhaps a few of them, some of his

friends and some of the young men he had trained were something like

him. Interested in dentistry and the way it was all developing, some of

them more enthusiastic and interested in certain special things than he

was. But no one could be quite like him. No other patients had the lot

of his patients. No other dentist was so completely conscious of the

patient all the time, as if he were in the chair himself. No other

dentist went on year after year remaining sensitive to everything the

patient had to endure. No one else was so unsparing of himself ...

children coming eagerly in for their dentistry, sitting in the chair

with slack limbs and wide open mouths and tranquil eyes ... small bodies

braced and tense, fat hands splayed out tightly on the too-big arms of

the chair in determination to bear the moment of pain bravely for

him.... She wandered to the corner cupboard and opened it and gazed idly

in. But none of them knew what it cost.... "I think you won't have any

more pain with that; I'll just put in a dressing for the present"--she

was Lady Cazalet again, without tooth-ache, and that awful feeling that

you know your body won't last ... they did not know what it cost. What

always doing the best for the patient _meant_. Perhaps they knew in a

way; or knew something and did not know what it was ... there would be

something different in Mr. Hancock's expression, especially in the three

quarters view when his face was turned away towards the instrument

cabinet, if he saved his nerves and energy and money by doing things

less considerately, not perpetually having the instruments sharpened and

perpetually buying fresh outfits of sharp burs. The patient would suffer

more pain ... a dentist at his best ought to be more delicately strong

and fine than a doctor ... like a fine engraving ... a surgeon working

amongst live nerves ... and he would look different himself. It was in

him. It was keeping to that, all day, and every day, choosing the best

difficult tiresome way in everything that kept that radiance about him

when he was quietly at work ... I mustn't stay here thinking these

thoughts ... it's that evil thing in me, keeping on and on, always

thinking thoughts, nothing getting done ... going through life like--a

stuck pig. If I went straight on things would come like that just the

same in flashes--bang, bang, in your heart, everything breaking into

light just in front of you, making you almost fall off the edge into the

expanse coming up before you, flowers and light stretching out. Then you

shut it down, letting it go through you with a leap that carries you to

the moon--the sun, and makes you bump with life like the little boy

bursting out of his too small clothes and go on choking with song to do

the next thing deftly. That's right. Perhaps that is what they all _do_?

Perhaps that's why they won't stop to remember. Do you realise? Do you

realise you're in Brussels? Just _look_ at the white houses there with

the bright green trees against them in the light. It's the _air_, the

clearness. Sh--If they hear you, they'll put up the rent. They were just

Portsmouth and Gosport people, staying in Brussels and fussing about

Portsmouth and Gosport and Aunt this and Mr. that.... I shan't realise

Brussels and Belgium for years because of that. They hated and killed me

because I was like that.... I must be like that ... something comes

along, _golden_, and presently there is a thought. I can't be easy till

I've said it in my mind, and I'm sad till I have said it somehow ... and

sadder when I have said it. But nothing gets done. I must stop thinking,

from now, and be fearfully efficient. Then people will understand and

like me. They will hate me too, because I shall be absurd, I shan't be

really in it. Perhaps I shall. Perhaps I shall get in. The wonder is

they don't hate me more. There was a stirring in the chair and a gushing

of fresh water into the tumbler. _Why_ do I meet such nice people? One

after another. "There" said Mr. Hancock, "I don't think that will

trouble you any more. We will make another appointment." Miriam took the

appointment book and a card to the chair-side and stayed upstairs to

clear up.

When she reached the hall Mr. Orly's door was standing wide. Going into

the surgery she found the head parlourmaid rapidly wiping instruments

with a soiled serviette. "Is it all right, James?" she said vaguely,

glancing round the room.

"Yes miss," answered James briskly emptying the half-filled tumbler and

going on to dry and polish it with the soiled serviette ... the

housemaid spirit ... the dry corner of a used serviette probably

appeared to James much too good to wipe anything with. Telling her would

not be any good. She would think it waste of time.... Besides, Mr. Orly

himself would not really mind; and the things were "mechanikly clean"

... that was a good phrase of Mr. Leyton's ... with his own things

always soaking even his mallets, until there was no polish left on the

handles; and his nailbrush in a bath of alcohol.... Mr. Orly came in,

large and spruce. He looked at his hands and began combing his beard,

standing before the overmantel. "Hancock busy?"

"Frightfully busy."

Miriam looked judicially round the room. James hovered. The north wind

howled. The little strip of sky above the outside wall that obscured the

heavily stained glass of the window seemed hardly to light the room and

the little light there was was absorbed by the heavy dull oak furniture

and the dark heavy Turkey carpet and dado of dull red and tarnished

gold.

"It _is_ dark for April" murmured Miriam. "I'll take away your gold and

tin box if I may."

"Thank ye" said Mr. Orly nervously, wheeling about with a harsh sigh to

scan the chair and bracket-table; straightening his waistcoat and

settling his tie. "I got through without it--used some of that new

patent silicate stuff of Leyton's. All right--show in the Countess."

James disappeared. Miriam secured the little box and made off. On her

table was a fresh pile of letters, annotated in Mr. Orly's clear stiff

upright rounded characters. She went hurriedly through them. Extricating

her blotter she sat down and examined the inkstand. Of course one of her

pens had been used and flung down still wet with its nib resting against

the handle of the other pens.... Mr. Leyton ... his gold filling; she

ought to go in and see if she could help ... perhaps he had finished by

now. She wiped away the ink from the nib and the pen-handles.

Tapping at Mr. Leyton's door she entered. He quickly turned a flushed

face his feet scrabbling noisily against the bevelled base of the chair

with the movement of his head. "Sawl right Miss Henderson. I've

finished. 'V'you got any emery strips--mine are all worn out."

Back once more in her room she heard two voices talking both at once

excitedly in the den. Mrs. Orly had a morning visitor. She would

probably stay to lunch. She peered into the little folding mirror

hanging by the side of the small mantelpiece and saw a face flushed and

animated so far. Her hair was as unsatisfactory as usual. As she looked

she became conscious of its uncomfortable weight pinned to the back of

her head and the unpleasant warm feeling of her thick fringe. By

lunch-time her face would be strained and yellow with sitting at work in

the cold room with her feet on the oil-cloth under the window. She

glanced at the oil lamp standing in the little fireplace, its single

flame glaring nakedly against the red-painted radiator. The telephone

bell rang. Through the uproar of mechanical sounds that came to her ear

from the receiver she heard a far off faint angry voice in incoherent

reiteration. "Hullo, hullo" she answered encouragingly. The voice faded

but the sounds went on punctuated by a sharp angry popping. Mr. Orly's

door opened and his swift heavy tread came through the hall. Miriam

looked up apprehensively, saying "Hullo" at intervals into the angry din

of the telephone. He came swiftly on humming in a soft light baritone,

his broad forehead, bald rounded crown and bright fair beard shining in

the gloom of the hall. A crumpled serviette swung with his right hand.

Perhaps he was going to the workshop. The door of the den opened. Mrs.

Orly appeared and made an inarticulate remark abstractedly and

disappeared. "Hullo, hullo" repeated Miriam busily into the telephone.

There was a loud report and the thin angry voice came clear from a

surrounding silence. Mr. Orly came in on tiptoe, sighed impatiently and

stood near her drumming noiselessly on the table at her side. "Wrong

number" said Miriam, "will you please ring off?"

"What a lot of trouble they givya" said Mr. Orly. "I say, what's the

name of the American chap Hancock was talking about at lunch yesterday?"

Miriam frowned.

"Can y'remember? About sea-power."

"Oh" said Miriam relieved. "Mahan."

"Eh?"

"Mahan. May-ann."

"That's it. You've got it. Wonderful. Don't forget to send off Major

Moke's case sharp will ye?"

Miriam's eyes scanned the table and caught sight of a half hidden

tin-box.

"No. I'll get it off."

"Right. It's in a filthy state, but there's no time to clean it."

He strode back through the hall murmuring Mahan. Miriam drew the tin

from its place of concealment. It contained a mass of dirty cotton-wool

upon which lay a double denture coated with tartar and joined by

tarnished gold springs. "Eleven thirty sharp" ran the instruction on an

accompanying scrap of paper. No address. The name of the patient was

unfamiliar. Mrs. Orly put her head through the door of the den.

"What did Ro want?"

Miriam turned towards the small sallow eager face and met the kind sweet

intent blue glint of the eyes. She explained and Mrs. Orly's anxious

little face broke into a smile that dispelled the lines on the broad

strip of low forehead leaving it smooth and sallow under the smoothly

brushed brown hair.

"How funny" said Mrs. Orly hurriedly. "I was just comin' out to ask you

the name of that singer. You know. Mark something. Marksy...."

"Mar-kaysie" said Miriam.

"That's it. I can't think how you remember." Mrs. Orly disappeared and

the two voices broke out again in eager chorus. Miriam returned to her

tin. Mastering her disgust she removed the plate from the box, shook the

cotton-wool out into the paper-basket collected fresh wool, packing

paper, sealing wax, candle and matches and set to work to make up the

parcel. She would have to attack the workshop again and get them to take

it out. Perhaps they would know the address. When the case was half

packed she looked up the patient's name in the ledger. Five entries in

about as many years--either repairs or springs--how simple dentistry

became when people had lost all their teeth. There were two addresses, a

town and a country one written in a long time ago in ink; above them

were two in pencil, one crossed out. The newest of the address books

showed these two addresses, one in ink, neither crossed out. What had

become of the card and letter that came with the case? In the den with

Mrs. Orly and her guest....

Footsteps were coming neatly and heavily up the basement stairs.

Winthrop. He came in smiling, still holding his long apron gathered up

to free his knees. "Ph--Ph--Major Moke's case ready?" he whispered

cheerfully.

"Almost--but I don't know the address."

"It's the ph--ph--_Buck_inam Palace Otel. It's to go by hand."

"Oh, thank goodness" laughed Miriam sweeping the scissors round the

uneven edge of the wrapping paper.

"My _word_" said Winthrop, "What an eye you've got I couldn't do that to

ph-save melife and I'm supposed to be a ph-mechanic."

"Have I," said Miriam surprised, "I shan't be two minutes; it'll be

ready by the time anybody's ready to go. But the letters aren't."

"All right. I'll send up for them when we go out to lunch," said

Winthrop consolingly, disappearing.

Miriam found a piece of fine glazed green twine in her string box and

tied up the neat packet--sealing the ends of the string with a neat blob

on the upper side of the packet and the folded paper at each end. She

admired the two firmly flattened ends of string close together. Their

free ends united by the firm red blob were a decorative substitute for a

stamp on the white surface of the paper. She wrote in the address in an

upright rounded hand with firm rotund little embellishments. Poring over

the result she examined it at various distances. It was delightful. She

wanted to show it to someone. It would be lost on Major Moke. He would

tear open the paper to get at his dreadful teeth. Putting the stamps on

the label, she regretfully resigned the packet and took up Mr. Orly's

day-book. It was in arrears--three, four days not entered in the ledger.

Major Moke repair--one guinea, she wrote. Mr. Hancock's showing out bell

rang. She took up her packet and surveyed it upside down. The address

looked like Chinese. It was really beautiful ... but handwriting was

doomed ... short-hand and typewriting ... she ought to know them if she

were ever to make more than a pound a week as a secretary ... awful.

What a good thing Mr. Hancock thought them unprofessional ... yet there

were already men in Wimpole Street who had their correspondence typed.

What did he mean by saying that the art of conversation was doomed? He

did not like conversation. Jimmy came in for the parcel and scuttled

downstairs with it. Mr. Hancock's patient was going out through the

hall. He had not rung for her to go up. Perhaps there was very little to

clear and he was doing it himself.

He was coming downstairs. Her hands went to the pile of letters and

busily sorted them. Through the hall. In here. Leisurely. How are you

getting on? Half amused. Half solicitous. The first weeks. The first

day. She had only just come. Perhaps there would be the hand on the back

of the chair again as before he discovered the stiffness like his own

stiffness. He was coming right round to the side of the chair into the

light, waiting, without having said anything. She seemed to sit through

a long space waiting for him to speak, in a radiance that shaped and

smoothed her face as she turned slowly and considered the blunted grave

features, their curious light, and met the smiling grey eyes. They were

not observing the confusion on the table. He had something to say that

had nothing to do with the work. She waited startled into an overflowing

of the curious radiance, deepening the light in which they were grouped.

"Are you busy?" "No," said Miriam in quiet abandonment. "I want your

advice on a question of decoration" he pursued smiling down at her with

the expression of a truant schoolboy and standing aside as she rose. "My

patient's put off" he added confidentially, holding the door wide for

her. Miriam trotted incredulously upstairs in front of him and in at the

open surgery door and stood contemplating the room from the middle of

the great square of soft thick grey green carpet with her back to the

great triple window and the littered remains of a long sitting.

Perhaps a question of decoration meant altering the positions of some of

the pictures. She glanced about at them, enclosed in her daily

unchanging unsatisfying impressions--the green landscape plumy with

meadow-sweet, but not letting you through to wander in fields, the

little soft bright coloury painting of the doorway of St. Mark's--San

Marco, painted by an Englishman, with a procession going in at the door

and beggars round the doorway, blobby and shapeless like English

peasants in Italian clothes ... bad ... and the man had worked and

studied and gone to Italy and had a name and still worked and people

bought his things ... an engraving very fine and small of a low bridge

in a little town, quiet sharp cheering lines; and above it another

engraving, a tiresome troubled girl, all a sharp film of fine woven

lines and lights and shadows in a rich dark liny filmy interior, neither

letting you through nor holding you up, the girl worrying there in the

middle of the picture, not moving, an obstruction.... Maris ... the two

little water colours of Devonshire, a boat with a brown sail and a small

narrow piece of a street zig-zagging sharply up between crooked houses,

by a Londoner--just to say how crooked everything was ... that thing in

this month's Studio was better than any of these ... her heart throbbed

suddenly as she thought of it ... a narrow sandy pathway going off,

frilled with sharp greenery, far into a green wood.... Had he seen it?

The studios lay safely there on the polished table in the corner, the

disturbing bowl of flowers from the country, the great pieces of

pottery, friends, warm and sympathetic to touch, never letting you grow

tired of their colour and design ... standing out against the soft dull

gold of the dado and the bold soft green and buff of the wall paper. The

oil painting of the cousin was looking on a little superciliously ...

centuries of "fastidious refinement" looking forth from her child's

face. If she were here it would be she would be consulted about the

decoration; but she was away somewhere in some house, moving about in a

dignified way under her mass of gold hair, saying things when speech

became a necessity in the refined fastidious half-contemptuous tone,

hiding her sensitive desire for companionship, contemptuous of most

things and most people. To-day she had an interested look, she was half

jealously setting standards for him all the time.... Miriam set her

aside. The Chinese figures staring down ferociously from the narrow

shelf running along the base of the high white frieze were more real to

her. They belonged to the daily life here, secure from censure.

From the brown paper wrappings emerged a large plaque of Oriental

pottery. Mr. Hancock manoeuvred it upright, holding it opposite to her

on the floor, supported against his knees. "There--what do you think of

that?" he murmured bending over it. Miriam's eyes went from the veinings

on his flushed forehead to the violent soft rich red and blue and dull

green covering the huge concave disc from side to side. It appeared to

represent a close thicket of palm fronds, thin flat fingers,

superimposed and splaying out in all directions over the deep blue

background. In the centre appeared the head and shoulders of an enormous

tiger, coming sinuously forward, one great paw planted on the greenery

near the foremost middle edge of the plaque.

"M'm," said Miriam staring.

Mr. Hancock rubbed the surface of the plaque with his forefinger. Miriam

came near and ran her finger down across the rich smooth reliefs.

"Where shall I put it?" said Mr. Hancock.

"I should have it somewhere on that side of the room, where the light

falls on it."

Mr. Hancock raised the plaque in his arms and walked with it to the wall

raising it just above his head and holding it in place between the two

pictures of Devonshire. They faded to a small muddled dinginess, and the

buff and green patterning of the wall-paper showed shabby and dim.

"It looks somehow too big or too small or something.... I should have it

down level with the eyes, so that you can look straight into it."

Mr. Hancock carefully lowered it.

"Let me come and hold it so that you can look" said Miriam advancing.

"It's too heavy for you" said Mr. Hancock straining his head back and

moving it from side to side.

"I believe it would look best" said Miriam "across the corner of the

room as you come in--where the corner cupboard is--I'm sure it would"

she said eagerly and went back to the centre of the carpet.

Mr. Hancock smiled towards the small oak cupboard fixed low in the angle

of the wall.

"We should have to move the cupboard," he said dubiously and carried the

heavy plate to the indicated place.

"That's simply lovely" said Miriam in delight as he held the plaque in

front of the long narrow façade of black oak.

Mr. Hancock lowered the plaque to the floor and propped it crosswise

against the angle.

"It would be no end of a business fixing it up" he murmured crossing to

her side. They stood looking at the beautiful surface blurred a little

in the light by its backward tilt. They gazed fascinated as the plaque

slid gently forward and fell heavily breaking into two pieces.

They regarded one another quietly and went forward to gather up the

fragments. The broken sides gritted together as Miriam held hers steady

for the other to be fitted to it. When they were joined the crack was

hardly visible.

"That'll be a nice piece of work for Messrs. Nikkoo" said Mr. Hancock

with a little laugh, "we'd better get it in back behind the sofa for the

present." They spread the brown paper over the brilliant surfaces and

stood up. Miriam's perceptions raced happily along. How had he known

that she cared for things? She was not sure that she did ... not in the

way that he did.... How did he know that she had noticed any of his

things? Because she had blurted out "Oh what a perfectly lovely picture"

when he showed her the painting of his cousin? But that was because he

admired his cousin and her brother had painted the picture and he

admired them both and she had not known about this when she spoke.

"Did you see this month's Studio?" she asked shyly.

He turned to the table and took up the uppermost of the pile.

"There's a lovely green picture" said Miriam, "at least I like it."

Mr. Hancock turned pages ruminatively.

"Those are good things" he said flattening the open page.

"Japanese flower Decorations" read Miriam looking at the reproduced

squares of flowering branches arranged with a curious naturalness in

strange flat dishes. They fascinated her at once--stiff and real,

shooting straight up from the earth and branching out. They seemed

coloured. She turned pages and gazed.

"How nice and queer."

Mr. Hancock bent smiling. "They've got a whole science of this you know"

he said; "it takes them years to learn it; they apprentice themselves

and study for years...."

Miriam looked incredulously at the simple effects--just branches placed

"artistically" in flat dishes and fixed somehow at the base amongst

little heaps of stones.

"It looks easy enough."

Mr. Hancock laughed. "Well--you try. We'll get some broom or something,

and you shall try your hand. You'd better read the article. Look

here--they've got names for all the angles.... 'Shin'--he read with

amused admiring delight, 'sho-shin' ... there's no end of it."

Miriam fired and hesitated. "It's like a sort of mathematics.... I'm no

good at mathematics."

"I expect you could get very good results ... we'll try. They carry it

to such extraordinary lengths because there's all sorts of social

etiquette mixed up with it--you can't have a branch pointing at a guest

for instance--it would be rude."

"No wonder it takes them years" said Miriam.

They laughed together, moving vaguely about the room.

Mr. Hancock looked thoughtfully at the celluloid tray of hairpins on the

mantelshelf, and blew the dust from it ... there was something she

remembered in some paper, very forcibly written, about the falsity of

introducing single specimens of Japanese art, the last results of

centuries of an artistic discipline, that was it, that had grown from

the life of a secluded people living isolated in a particular spot under

certain social and natural conditions, into English household

decoration.... "Gleanings in Buddha Fields" the sun on rice-fields ...

and Fujiama--Fuji-no-San in the distance ... but he did not like

Hearn--"there's something in the chap that puts me off" ... puts

off--what a good phrase ... "something sensuous in him" ... but you

could never forget Buddha Fields. It made you know you were in Japan, in

the picture of Japan ... and somebody had said that all good art, all

great art, had a sensuous element ... it was dreadful, but probably true

... because the man had observed it and was not an artist, but somebody

looking carefully on. Mr. Hancock, Englishman, was "put off" by

sensuousness, by anybody taking a delight in the sun on rice fields and

the gay colours of Japan ... perhaps one ought to be "put off" by Hearn

... but Mr. Hancock liked Japanese things and bought them and put them

in with his English things, that looked funny and tame beside them. What

he did not like was the expression of delight. It was queer and annoying

somehow ... especially as he said that the way English women were

trained to suppress their feelings was bad. He had theories and fixed

preferences and yet always seemed to be puzzled about so many things.

"D'you think it right to try to introduce single pieces of Japanese art

into English surroundings?" she said tartly, beginning on the

instruments.

"East is East and West is West and never the twain can meet?"

"That's a dreadful idea--I don't believe it a bit."

Mr. Hancock laughed. He believed in those awful final dreary-weary

things ... some species are so widely differentiated that they cannot

amalgamate--awful ... but if one said that he would laugh and say it was

beyond him ... and he liked and disliked without understanding the

curious differences between people--did not know why they were

different--they put him off or did not put him off and he was just. He

liked and reverenced Japanese art and there was an artist in his family.

That was strange and fine.

"I suppose we ought to have some face-powder here," mused Mr. Hancock.

"They'll take longer than ever if we do."

"I know--that's the worst of it; but I commit such fearful depredations

... we want a dressing room ... if I had my way we'd have a proper

dressing room downstairs. But I think we must get some powder and a

puff.... Do you think you could get some...?" Miriam shrank. Once in a

chemist's shop, in a strong Burlington Arcade west-end mood buying some

scent, she had seized and bought a little box.... La Dorine de Poche ...

Dorin, Paris ... but that was different to asking openly for powder and

a puff ... la Dorine de Dorin Paris was secret and wonderful.... "I'll

try" she said bravely and heard the familiar little sympathetic laugh.

Lunch would be ready in a few minutes and none of the letters were done.

She glanced distastefully at the bold handwritings scrawling, under

impressive stamped addresses with telephone numbers, and names of

stations and telegraphic addresses, across the well-shaped sheets of

expensive note-paper, to ask in long, fussy, badly-put sentences for

expensive appointments. Several of the signatures were unfamiliar to her

and must be looked up in the ledger in case titles might be attached.

She glanced at the dates of the appointments--they could all go by the

evening post. What a good thing Mr. Hancock had given up overlooking the

correspondence. Mrs. Hermann's letter he should see ... but that could

not anyhow have been answered by return. The lunch-bell rang.... Mr.

Orly's letters! There was probably a telegram or some dreadful urgent

thing about one or other of them that ought to have been dealt with.

With beating heart she fumbled them through--each one bore the word

answered in Mrs. Orly's fine pointed hand. Thank goodness. Opening a

drawer she crammed them into a crowded clip ... at least a week's

addresses to be checked or entered.... Mr. Hancock's unanswered letters

went into the same drawer, leaving her table fairly clear. Mr. Leyton's

door burst open, he clattered down the basement stairs. Miriam went into

his room and washed her hands in the corner basin under the patent

unleaking taps. Everything was splashed over with permanganate of

potash. The smell of the room combined all the dental drugs with the

odour of leather--a volunteer officer's accoutrements lay in confusion

all over on the secretaire. Beside them stood an open pot of leather

polish. Mr. and Mrs. Orly passed the open door and went downstairs. They

were alone. The guest had gone.

"Come and share the remains of the banquet Miss Hens'n."

"_Do_ have just a bit of somethin', Ro darling, a bit of chicking or

somethin'."

"Feeling the effects?" remarked Mr. Leyton cheerfully munching, "I've

got a patient at half past" he added nervously glancing up as if to

justify his existence as well as his remark. Miriam hoped he would go

on; perhaps it would occur to Mrs. Orly to ask him about the patient.

"You'd feel the effects my boy if you hadn't had a wink the whole

blessed night."

"Hancock busy Miss Hens'?" Miriam glanced at the flushed forehead and

hoped that Mr. Orly would remain with his elbows on the table and his

face hidden in his hands. She was hungry and there would be no peace for

anybody if he were roused.

"Too many whiskies?" enquired Mr. Leyton cheerfully, shovelling salad on

to his plate.

"Too much whisking and frisking altogether sergeant," said Mr. Orly

incisively, raising his head.

Mrs. Orly flushed and frowned at Mr. Orly.

"Don't be silly Ley--you know how father hates dinner parties."

Mr. Orly sighed harshly, pulling himself up as Miriam began a

dissertation on Mr. Hancock's crowded day.

"Ze got someone with him now?" put in Mrs. Orly perfunctorily.

"Wonderful man" sighed Mr. Orly harshly, glancing at his son.

"Have a bit of chicking Ro."

"No my love no not all the perfumes of Araby--not all the chickens of

Cheshire. Have some paté Miss Hens'--No? You despise paté?"

A maid came briskly in and looked helpfully round.

"Who's your half past one patient Ley?" asked Mrs. Orly nervously.

"Buck" rapped Mr. Leyton. "We going to wait for Mr. Hancock, Mater?"

"No, of course not. Keep some things hot Emma and bring in the sweets."

"Have some more chicken Miss Hens'--Emma!" he indicated his son with a

flourish of his serviette. "Wait upon Mr. Leyton, serve him speedily."

Emma arrested looked helpfully about, smiled in brisk amusement, seized

some dishes and went out.

Mrs. Orly's pinched face expanded. "Silly you are, Ro." Miriam grinned,

watching dreamily. Mr. Leyton's flushed face rose and dipped

spasmodically over the remains of his salad.

"Bucking for Buck"--laughed Mr. Orly in a soft falsetto.

"Ro, you _are_ silly, who's Buck, Ley?"

"Don't question the officer Nelly."

"Ro, you _are_ absurd," laughed Mrs. Orly.

"Help the _jellies_ dearest" shouted Mr. Orly in a frowning whisper.

"Have some jelly, Miss Hens'. It's all right Ley ... glad you so busy,

my son. How many did you have this morning?" Mopping his brow and

whisking his person with his serviette he glanced sidelong.

"Two" said Mr. Leyton, noisily spooning up jelly, "any more of that

stuff mater, how about Hancock?"

"There's plenty here" said Mrs. Orly helping him. Miriam laboured with

her jelly and glanced at the dish. People wolfed their food. It would

seem so conspicuous to begin again when the fuss had died down; with Mr.

Orly watching as if feeding were a contemptible self-indulgence.

"Had a beastly gold case half the morning" rapped Mr. Leyton and drank,

with a gulp.

"Get any help?" said Mr. Orly glancing at Miriam.

"No" said Mr. Leyton in a non-committal tone, reaching across the table

for the cheese.

"Hancock too busy?" asked Mr. Orly. "Have some more jelly, Miss Hens'n."

"No thank you" said Miriam.

"A bit of cheese; a fragment of giddy Gorgonzola."

"No thanks."

Mrs. Orly brushed busily at her bodice, peering down with indrawn chin.

The room was close with gas. If Mr. Hancock would only come down and

give her the excuse of attending to his room.

"What you doing s'aafnoon?" asked Mr. Leyton.

"I, my boy, I don't know," said Mr. Orly with a heavy sigh, "string

myself up, I think."

"You'd much better string yourself round the Outer Circle and take

Lennard's advice."

"Good advice my boy--if we all took good advice ... eh Miss Hens'n? I've

taken twenty grains of phenacetin this morning."

"Well, you go and get a good walk," said Mr. Leyton clattering to his

feet. "S'cuse me, Mater."

"Right my boy! Excellent! A Daniel come to judgment! All right Ley--get

on with you. Buck up and see Buck. Oh-h-h my blooming head. Excuse my

language Miss Hens'n. Ah! Here's the great man. Good morning Hancock.

How are you? D'they know you're down?"

Mr. Hancock murmured his greetings and sat down opposite Miriam with a

grave preoccupied air.

"Busy?" asked Mr. Orly turning to face his partner.

"Yes--fairly" said Mr. Hancock pleasantly.

"Wonderful man.... Ley's gone off like a bee in a gale. D'they know

Hancock's down Nelly?"

Miriam glanced at Mr. Hancock wishing he could lunch in peace. He was

tired. Did he too feel oppressed with the gas and the pale madder store

cupboards? ... glaring muddy hot pink?

"I've got a blasted head on ... excuse my language. Twenty of 'em,

twenty to dinner."

"Oh yes?" said Mr. Hancock shifting in his chair and glancing about.

"_Nelly!_ D'they know he's down? Start on a paté, Hancock. The remains

of the banquet."

"Oh ... well, thanks."

"You never get heads do ye?"

Mr. Hancock smiled and began a murmuring response as he busied himself

with his paté.

"Poor Ro he's got a most awful head.... How's your uncle Mr. Hancock?"

"Oh--thank you.... I'm afraid he's not very flourishing."

"He's better than he used to be, isn't he?"

"Well--yes, I think perhaps on the whole he is."

"You ought to have been there, Hancock. Cleave came. He was in no end of

form. Told us some fine ones. Have a biscuit and butter Miss Hens'n."

Miriam refused and excused herself.

On her way upstairs she strolled into Mr. Leyton's room. He greeted her

with a smile--polishing instruments busily.

"Mr. Hancock busy?" he asked briskly.

"M'm."

"You busy? I say if I have Buck in will you finish up these things?"

"All right, if you like" said Miriam, regretting her sociable impulse.

"Is Mr. Buck here?" She glanced at the appointment book.

"Yes, he's waiting."

"You haven't got anybody else this afternoon" observed Miriam.

"I know. But I want to be down at Headquarters by five in full kit if I

possibly can. Has the Pater got anybody?"

"No. The afternoon's marked off--he's going out, I think. Look here,

I'll clear up your things afterwards if you want to go out. Will you

want all these for Mr. Buck?"

"Oh--all right, thanks; I dunno. I've got to finish him off this

afternoon and make him pay up."

"Why pay up? Isn't he trustworthy?"

"Trustworthy? A man who's just won three hundred pounds on a horse and

chucked his job on the strength of it."

"What a fearfully insane thing to do."

"Lost his head."

"Is he very young?"

"Oo--'bout twenty-five."

"H'm. I spose he'll begin the rake's progress."

"That's about it. You've just about hit it" said Mr. Leyton with heavy

significance.

Miriam lingered.

"I boil every blessed thing after he's been ... if that's any indication

to you."

"_Boil_ them!" said Miriam vaguely distressed and pondering over Mr.

Leyton standing active and aseptic between her and some horror ...

something infectious ... it must be that awful mysterious thing ... how

awful for Mr. Leyton to have to stop his teeth.

"Boil 'em" he chuckled knowingly.

"Why on earth?" she asked.

"Well--there you are" said Mr. Leyton--"that's all I can tell you. I

_boil_ 'em."

"Crikey" said Miriam half in response and half in comment on his

falsetto laugh, as she made for the door. "Oh, but I say, I don't

understand your boiling apparatus, Mr. Leyton."

"All right, don't you worry. I'll set it all going and shove the things

in. You've only to turn off the gas and wipe 'em. I daresay I shall have

time to do them myself."

When she had prepared for Mr. Hancock's first afternoon patient Miriam

sat down at her crowded table in a heavy drowse. No sound came from the

house or from the den. The strip of sky above the blank wall opposite

her window was an even cold grey. There was nothing to mark the movement

of the noisy wind. The room was cold and stuffy. Shivering as she moved,

she glanced round at the lamp. It was well trimmed. The yellow flame was

at its broadest. The radiator glared. The warmth did not reach her. She

was cold to the waist, her feet without feeling on the strip of

linoleum; her knees protruding into the window space felt as if they

were in cold water. Her arms crept and flushed with cold at every

movement, strips of cold wrist disgusted her, showing beyond her skimpy

sleeves and leading to the hopelessness of her purplish red hands

swollen and clammy with cold. Her hot head and flushed cheeks begged for

fresh air. Warm rooms, with carpets and fires; an even, airy warmth....

There were people who could be in this sort of cold and be active, with

cool faces and warm hands, even just after lunch. If Mr. Leyton were

here he would be briskly entering up the books--perhaps with a red nose;

but very brisk. He was finishing Buck off; briskly, not even talking.

Mr. Hancock would be working swiftly at well up-to-date accounts,

without making a single mistake. Where had he sat doing all those pages

of beautiful spidery book-keeping? Mr. Orly would be rushing things

through. What a drama. He knew it. He _knew_ he had earned his rest by

the fire ... doing everything, making and building the practice ...

people waiting outside the surgery with basins for him to rush out and

be sick. Her sweet inaccurate help in the fine pointed writing on cheap

paper ... the two cheap rooms they started in.... The Wreck of the _Mary

Gloucester_ ... "and never a doctor's brougham to help the missis

unload." They had been through everything together ... it was all there

with them now ... rushing down the street in the snow without an

overcoat to get her the doctor. They were wise and sweet; in life and

wise and sweet. They had gone out and would be back for tea. Perhaps

they had gone out. Everything was so quiet. Two hours of cold before

tea. Putting in order the materials for the gold and tin she propped her

elbows on the table and rested her head against her hands and closed her

eyes. There was a delicious drowsiness in her head but her back was

tired. She rose and wandered through the deserted hall into the empty

waiting room. The clear blaze of a coal fire greeted her at the doorway

and her cold feet hurried in on to the warm Turkey carpet. The dark oak

furniture and the copper bowls and jugs stood in a glow of comfort. From

the centre of the great littered table a bowl of daffodils asserted the

movement of the winter and pointed forward and away from the winter

stillness of the old room. The long faded rich crimson rep curtains

obscured half the width of each high window and the London light

screened by the high opposing houses fell dimly on the dingy books and

periodicals scattered about the table. Miriam stood by the mantelpiece

her feet deep in the black sheepskin rug and held out her hands towards

the fire. They felt cold again the instant she withdrew them from the

blaze. The hall clock gonged softly twice. The legal afternoon had

begun. Anyone finding her in here now would think she was idling. She

glanced at the deep dark shabby leather armchair near by and imagined

the relief that would come to her whole frame, if she could relax into

it for five undisturbed minutes. The ringing of the front door bell sent

her hurrying back to her room.

The sound of reading came from the den--a word-mouthing word-slurring

monotonous drawl--thurrah-thurrah-thurrah; thurrah thurrah ... a single

beat, on and on, the words looped and forced into it without any

discrimination, the voice dropping uniformly at the end of each sentence

... _thrah_.... An Early Victorian voice giving reproachful instruction

to a child ... a class of board school children reciting.... Perhaps

they had changed their minds about going out.... Miriam sat with her

hands tucked between her knees musing with her eyes fixed on the thin

sheets of tin and gold ... extraordinary to read any sort of text like

that ... but there was something in it, something nice and good ...

listening carefully you would get most of the words. It would be better

to listen to than a person who read with intelligent modulations, as if

they had written the thing themselves; like some men read ... and

irritatingly intelligent women ... who knew they were intelligent. But

there ought to be clear ... enunciation. Not expression--that was like

commenting as you read; getting at the person you were reading to ...

who might not want to comment in the same way. Reading, with expression,

really hadn't any expression. How wonderful--of course. Mrs. Orly's

reading had an expression; a shape. It was exactly like the way they

looked at things; exactly; everything was there; all the things they

agreed about, and the things he admired in her ... things that by this

time she knew he admired.... She was conscious of these things ... that

was the difference between her and her sister, who had exactly the same

things but had never been admired ... standing side by side exactly

alike, the sister like a child--clear with a sharp fresh edge; Mrs. Orly

with a different wisdom ... softened and warm and blurred ... conscious,

and always busy distracting your attention, but with clear eyes like a

child, too.

Presently the door opened quietly and Mrs. Orly appeared in the doorway.

"Miss Hens'n" she whispered urgently. Miriam turned to meet her flushed

face. "Oh Miss Hens'n" she pursued absently, "if Mudie's send d'you mind

lookin' and choosin' us something nice?"

"Oh" said Miriam provisionally with a smile.

Mrs. Orly closed the door quietly and advanced confidently with

deprecating bright wheedling eyes. "Isn't it tahsome" she said

conversationally. "Ro's asleep and the carriage is comin' round at half

past. Isn't it tahsome?"

"Can't you send it back?"

"I want him to go out; I think the drive will do him good. I say, d'you

mind just lookin'--at the books?"

"No, I will; but how shall I know what to keep? Is there a list?"

Mrs. Orly looked embarrassed. "I've got a list somewhere" she said

hurriedly, "but I can't find it."

"I'll do my best" said Miriam.

"_You_ know--anythin' historical ... there's one I put down 'The Sorrows

of a Young Queen.' Keep that if they send it and anything else you

think."

"Is there anything to go back?"

"Yes, I'll bring them out. We've been reading an awful one--awful."

Miriam began fingering her gold foil. Mrs. Orly was going to expect her

to be shocked....

"By that awful man Zola...."

"Oh yes" said Miriam, dryly.

"Have you read any of his?"

"Yes" said Miriam carefully.

"_Have_ you? Aren't they shockin'?"

"Well I don't know. I thought 'Lourdes' was simply wonderful."

"Is that a nice one--what's it about?"

"Oh you know--it's about the Madonna of Lourdes, the miracles, in the

south of France. It begins with a crowded trainload of sick people going

down through France on a very hot day ... it's simply stupendous ... you

feel you're in the train, you go through it all"--she turned away and

looked through the window overcome ... "and there's a thing called 'La

Rêve'" she went on incoherently with a break in her voice "about an

embroideress and a man called Felicien--it's simply the most _lovely_

thing."

Mrs. Orly came near to the table.

"You understand about books don't you," she said wistfully.

"Oh no" said Miriam. "I've hardly read anything."

"I wish you'd put those two down."

"I don't know the names of the translations," announced Miriam with

conceited solicitude.

A long loud yawn resounded through the door.

"Better, boysie?" asked Mrs. Orly turning anxiously towards the open

door.

"Yes, my love," said Mr. Orly cheerfully.

"I _am_ glad, boy--I'll get my things on--the carriage'll be here in a

minute."

She departed at a run and Mr. Orly came in and sat heavily down in a

chair set against the slope of the wall close by and facing Miriam.

"Phoo" he puffed, "I've been taking phenacetin all day; you don't get

heads do you?"

Miriam smiled and began preparing a reply.

"How's it coming in? Totting up, eh?"

"I think so" said Miriam uneasily.

"What's it totting up to this month? Any idea?"

"No; I can see if you like."

"Never mind, never mind.... Mrs. O's been reading ... phew! You're a

lit'ry young lady--d'you know that French chap--Zola--Emmil Zola----"

Mr. Orly glanced suspiciously.

"Yes" said Miriam.

"Like 'im?"

"Yes" said Miriam firmly.

"Well--it's a matter of taste and fancy" sighed Mr. Orly heavily.

"Chacun à son goût--shake an ass and go, as they say. One's enough for

me. I can't think why they do it myself--sheer well to call a spade a

spade sheer bestiality those French writers--don't ye think so, eh?"

"Well no. I don't think I can accept that as a summary of French

literature."

"Eh well, it's beyond me. I suppose I'm not up to it. Behind the times.

Not cultured enough. Not cultured enough I guess. Ready dearest?" he

said addressing his wife and getting to his feet with a groan. "Miss

Hens'n's a great admirer of Emmil Zola."

"She says some of his books are pretty, didn't you, Miss Hens'n. It

isn't fair to judge from one book, Ro."

"No my love no. Quite right. Quite right. I'm wrong--no doubt. Getting

old and soft. Things go on too fast for me."

"Don't be so silly, Ro."

Drowsily and automatically Miriam went on rolling tin and gold--sliding

a crisp thick foil of tin from the pink tissue paper leaved book on to

the serviette ... a firm metallic crackle ... then a silent layer of

thin gold ... then more tin ... adjusting the three slippery leaves in

perfect superposition without touching them with her hands, cutting the

final square into three strips, with the long sharp straight bladed

scissors--the edges of the metal adhering to each other as the scissors

went along--thinking again with vague distant dreamy amusement of the

boy who cut the rubber tyre to mend it--rolling the flat strips with a

fold of the serviette, deftly until they turned into neat little twisted

crinkled rolls--wondering how she had acquired the knack. She went on

and on lazily, unable to stop, sitting back in her chair and working

with outstretched arms, until a small fancy soap box was filled with the

twists--enough to last the practice for a month or two. The sight filled

her with a sense of achievement and zeal. Putting on its lid she placed

the soap box on the second chair. Lazily, stupidly, longing for tea--all

the important clerical work left undone, Mr. Orly's surgery to clear up

for the day--still she was working in the practice. She glanced

approvingly at the soap box ... but there were ages to pass before tea.

She did not dare to look at her clock. Had the hall clock struck three?

Bending to a drawer she drew out a strip of amadou--offended at the

sight of her red wrist coming out of the harsh cheap black sleeve and

the fingers bloated by cold. They looked lifeless; no one else's hands

looked so lifeless. Part of the amadou was soft and warm to her touch,

part hard and stringy. Cutting out a soft square she cut it rapidly into

tiny cubes collecting them in a pleasant flummery heap on the blotting

paper--Mr. Hancock should have those; they belonged to his perfect

treatment of his patients; it was quite just. Cutting a strip of the

harsher part, she pulled and teased it into comparative softness and cut

it up into a second pile of fragments. Amadou, gold and tin ... Japanese

paper? A horrible torpor possessed her. Why did one's head get into such

a hot fearful state before tea? ... grey stone wall and the side of the

projecting glass roofed peak of Mr. Leyton's surgery ... grey stone wall

... wall ... railings at the top of it ... cold--a cold sky ... it was

their time--nine to six--no doubt those people did best who thought of

nothing during hours but the work--cheerfully--but they were always

pretending--in and _out_ of work hours they pretended. There was

something wrong in them and something wrong in the people who shirked.

La--te--ta--te--te--ta, she hummed searching her table for relief. Mr.

Hancock's bell sounded and she fled up to the warmth of his room. In a

moment Mudie's cart came and the maid summoned her. There was a pile of

books in the hall.... She glanced curiously at the titles worried with

the responsibility--'The Sorrows'--that was all right. 'Secrets of a

Stormy Court' ... that was the sort of thing ... "you can't make a silk

purse out of a sow's ear" ... one day she must explain to Mr. Orly that

that was really "sousière" a thing to hold halfpence. 'My Reminiscences'

by Count de Something. Perhaps that was one they had put down. The maid

presented the volumes to be returned. Taking them Miriam asked her to

ask Mr. Hancock if he had anything to change. 'Cock Lane and Common

Sense' she read ... there was some sort of argument in that ... the

'facts' of some case ... it would sneer at something, some popular idea

... it was probably by some doctor or scientific man ... but that was

not the book.... 'The Earth' ... Emile Zola. She flapped the book open

and hurriedly read a few phrases. The hall pulsated curiously. She

flushed all over her body. "There's nothing for Mr. Hancock, miss." "All

right; these can go and these are to be kept," she said indistinctly.

Wandering back to her room she repeated the phrases in her mind in

French. They seemed to clear up and take shelter--somehow they were

terse and acceptable and they were secret and secure--but English people

ought not to read them; in English. It was--outrageous. English men. The

French man had written them simply ... French logic ... English men were

shy and suggestive about these things--either that or breezy ... "filth"

which was almost worse. The Orlys ought not to read them at all ... it

was a good thing the book was out of the house ... they would forget.

But she would not forget. Her empty room glanced with a strange confused

sadness; the clearing up upstairs was not quite done; but she could not

go upstairs again yet. Three-fifteen; the afternoon had turned; her

clock was a little slow too. The warm quiet empty den was waiting for

the tea-tray. Clearing the remnants from her table she sat down again.

The heavy stillness of the house closed in.... She opened the drawer of

stationery. Various kinds of notepaper lay slid together in confusion;

someone had been fumbling there. The correspondence cards propped

against the side of the drawer would never stay in their proper places.

With comatose meticulousness she put the whole drawer in order,

replenishing it from a drawer of reserve packets, until it was so full

that nothing could slide. She surveyed the result with satisfaction; and

shut the drawer. She would tidy one drawer every afternoon.... She

opened the drawer once more and looked again. To keep it like that would

mean never using the undermost cards and notepaper. That would not do

... change them all round sometimes. She sat for a while inertly and

presently lazily roused herself with the idea of going upstairs. Pausing

in front of a long three-shelved whatnot filling the space between the

door and the narrow many drawered specimen case that stood next her

table she idly surveyed its contents. Nothing but piles of British

Dental Journals, Proceedings of the Odontological Society, circulars

from the Dental Manufacturing Companies. Propping her elbows on the

upper shelf of the what-not she stood turning leaves.

"Tea up?"

"Don't know" said Miriam irritably, passing the open door. He could see

she had only just come down and could not possibly know. The soft

jingling of the cups shaken together on a tray by labouring footsteps

came from the basement stairs. Mr. Leyton's hurried clattering

increased. Miriam waited impatiently by her table. The maid padded

heavily through swinging the door of the den wide with her elbow. When

she had retired, Miriam sauntered warm and happy almost before she was

inside the door into the den. With her eyes on the tea-tray she felt the

afternoon expand.... "There's a Burma girl a settin' and I know she

thinks of me." ... "Come you _back_ you British soldier, come you _back_

to Mandalay." Godfrey's tune was much the best; stiff, like the words,

the other was only sing-song. Pushing off the distraction she sat down

near the gently roaring blaze of the gas fire in a low little chair,

upholstered in cretonne almost patternless with age. The glow of the

fire went through and through her. If she had tea at once, everything

would be richer and richer, but things would move on, and if they came

back she would have finished and would have to go. The face of the

railway clock fixed against the frontage of the gallery at the far end

of the room said four-fifteen. They had evidently ordered tea to be a

quarter of an hour late and might be in any minute ... this curious

feeling that the room belonged to her more than to the people who owned

it, so that they were always intruders.... Leaving with difficulty the

little feast untouched ... a Dundee cake from Buszards ... she browsed

rapidly, her eyes roaming from thing to thing ... the shields and

assegais grouped upon the raised dull gold papering of the high opposite

wall, the bright beautiful coloured bead skirts spread out amongst

curious carved tusks and weapons, the large cool placid gold Buddha

reclining below them with his chin on his hand and his elbow on a red

velvet cushion, on the Japanese cabinet; the Japanese cupboard fixed

above Mrs. Orly's writing table, the fine firm carved ivory on its

panels; the tall vase of Cape gooseberries flaring on the top of the

cottage piano under the shadow of the gallery; the gallery with its

upper mystery, the happy clock fastened against its lower edge, always

at something after four, the door set back in the wall, leading into her

far-away midday room, the light falling from the long high frosted

window along the confusion of Mr. Orly's bench, noisy as she looked at

it with the sound of metal tools falling with a rattle, the drone and

rattle of the motor lathe, Mr. Orly's cheerful hummings and whistlings,

the bench swept down the length of the room to her side ... the movable

shaded electric lamp; Mr. Orly's African tobacco pouch bunched

underneath it on the edge of the bench near the old leather armchair

near to the fire, facing the assegais; the glass-doored bookcase on

either side of the fireplace, the strange smooth gold on the strips of

Burmese wood fastened along the shelves, the clear brown light of the

room on the gold, the curious lettering sweeping across the gold.

"Tea? Good."

Mr. Leyton pulled up a chair and plumped into it digging at his person

and dragging out the tails of his coat with one hand, holding a rumpled

newspaper at reading length. When his coat-tails were free he scratched

his head and scrubbed vigorously at his short brown beard.

"You had tea?" he said to Miriam's motionlessness, without looking up.

"No--let's have tea," said Miriam. Why should he assume that she should

pour out the tea....

"I _say_ that's a _nasty_ one" said Mr. Leyton hysterically and began

reading in a high hysterical falsetto.

Miriam began pouring out. Mr. Leyton finished his passage with a little

giggling shriek of laughter and fumbled for bread and butter with his

eyes still on the newspaper. Miriam sipped her hot tea. The room darkled

in the silence. Everything intensified. She glanced impatiently at Mr.

Leyton's bent unconscious form. His shirt and the long straight narrow

ends of his tie made a bulging curve above his low-cut waistcoat. The

collar of his coat stood away from his bent neck and its tails were

bunched up round his hips. His trousers were so hitched up that his bent

knees strained against the harsh crude Rope Brothers cloth. The ends of

his trousers peaked up in front, displaying loose rolls of black sock

and the whole of his anatomical walking-shoes. Miriam heard his busily

masticating jaws and dreaded his operations with his tea-cup. A wavering

hand came out and found the cup and clasped it by the rim, holding it at

the edge of the lifted newspaper. She busied herself with cutting stout

little wedges of cake. Mr. Leyton sipped, gasping after each loud

quilting gulp; a gasp, and the sound of a moustache being sucked. Mr.

Hancock's showing out bell rang. Mr. Leyton plunged busily round,

finishing his cup in a series of rapid gulps. "Kike?" he said.

"M" said Miriam, "jolly kike--did you finish Mr. Buck?"

"More or less----"

"Did you boil the remains?"

"Boiled every blessed thing--and put the serviette in k'bolic."

Miriam hid her relief and poured him out another cup.

Mr. Hancock came in through the open door and quickly up to the

tea-tray. Pouring out a cup he held the teapot suspended, "another cup?"

"No thanks, not just at present" said Miriam getting to her feet with a

morsel of cake in her fingers.

"Plenty of time for my things" said Mr. Hancock sitting down in Mr.

Orly's chair with his tea, his flat compact slightly wrinkled and

square-toed patent leather shoes gleamed from under the rims of his soft

dark grey beautifully cut trousers with a pleasant shine as he sat back

comfortable and unlounging, with crossed knees in the deep chair.

Mr. Leyton had got to his feet.

"Busy?" he said rapidly munching. "I say I've had that man Buck this

afternoon."

"Oh yes" said Mr. Hancock brushing a crumb from his knee.

"_You_ know--that case I told you about."

"Oh yes?" said Mr. Hancock with a clear glance and a slight tightening

of the face.

Miriam made for the door. Mr. Hancock was not encouraging the topic. Mr.

Leyton's cup came down with a clatter. "I'm fearfully rushed" he said.

"I must be off." He caught Miriam up in the hall. "I say tea must have

been fearfully late. I've got to get down to headquarters by five

_sharp_."

"You go on first" said Miriam standing aside.

Mr. Leyton fled up through the house three steps at a time.

When she came down again intent on her second cup of tea in the empty

brown den a light had been switched on, driving the dark afternoon away.

The crayon drawings behind the piano shone out on the walls of the dark

square space under the gallery as she hesitated in the doorway. There

was someone in the dim brightness of the room. She turned noiselessly

towards her table.

"Come and have some more tea Miss Hens'n."

Miriam went in with alacrity. The light was on in the octagonal brass

framed lantern that hung from the skylight and shed a soft dim radiance

through its old glass. Mrs. Orly still in her bonnet and fur-lined cape

was sitting drinking tea in the little old cretonne chair. She raised a

tired flushed face and smiled brightly at Miriam as she came down the

room.

"I'm dying for another cup; I had to fly off and clear up Mr. Hancock's

things."

"Mr. Hancock busy? Have some cake, it's rather a nice one." Mrs. Orly

cut a stout little wedge.

Clearing away the newspaper Miriam took possession of Mr. Leyton's

chair.

Mr. Orly swung in shutting the door behind him and down the room peeling

off his frock coat as he came.

"Tea darling?"

"Well m'love, since you're so pressing."

Mr. Orly switched on the lamp on the corner of the bench and subsided

into his chair his huge bulk poised lightly and alertly, one vast leg

across the other knee.

"'Scuse my shirt-sleeves Miss Hens'n. I say I've got a new song--like to

try it presently or are ye too busy?"

Poised between the competing interests of many worlds Miriam basked in

the friendly tones.

"Well I _have_ got rather a fearful lot of things to do."

"Come and try it now, d'ye mind?"

"Have your tea Ro, darling."

"Right my love, right, right, always right--Hancock busy?"

"Yes; he has two more patients after this one."

"Marvellous man."

"Mr. Hancock never gets rushed or flurried does he? He's always been the

same ever since we've known him."

"He's very even and steady outwardly" said Miriam indifferently.

"You think it's only outward?"

"Well I mean he's really frightfully sensitive."

"Just so; it's his coolness carries him through, self-command, I wish

I'd got it."

"You'd miss other things boysie; you can't have it both ways."

"Right m'love--right. I don't understand him. D'you think anyone does,

Miss Hens'n--really--I mean. D'you understand him?"

"Well you see I haven't known him very long----"

"No--but you come from the same district and know his relatives."

"The same Berkshire valley and his cousins happened to be my people's

oldest friends."

"Well don't ye see, that makes all the difference--I say I heard a

splendid one this afternoon. D'you think I could tell Miss Hens'n that

one Nelly?--you're not easily shocked, are you?"

"I've never been shocked in my life" said Miriam getting to her feet.

"Must ye go? Shall we just try this over?"

"Well if it isn't too long."

"Stop and have a bit of dinner with us can ye?"

Miriam made her excuse, pleading an engagement and sat down to the

piano. The song was a modern ballad with an easy impressive

accompaniment, following the air. The performance went off easily and

well, Mr. Orly's clear trained baritone ringing out persuasively into

the large room. Weathering a second invitation to spend the evening she

got away to her room.

Her mind was alight with the sense of her many beckoning interests,

aglow with fulness of life. The thin piercing light cast upon her table

by the single five candle power bulb, drawn low and screened by a green

glass shade was warm and friendly. She attacked her letters, despatching

the appointments swiftly and easily in a bold convincing hand and

drafted a letter to Mrs. Hermann that she carried with a glow of

satisfaction to Mr. Hancock's room. When his room was cleared in

preparation for his last patient it was nearly six o'clock. She began

entering his day-book in the ledger. The boy coming up for the letters

brought two dentures to be packed and despatched by registered post from

Vere Street before six o'clock. "They'll be ready by the time you've got

your boots on" said Miriam and packed her cases brilliantly in a mood of

deft-handed concentration. Jimmy clattered up the stairs as she was

stamping the labels. When he fled with them she gave a general sigh and

surveyed the balance of her day with a responsible cheerful wicked

desperation; her mind leaping forward to her evening. The day books

would not be done, even Mr. Hancock's would have to go up unentered; she

had not the courage to investigate the state of the cash book; Mr.

Leyton's room was ready for the morning; she ran through to Mr. Orly's

room and performed a rapid perfunctory tidying up; many little things

were left; his depleted stores must be refilled in the morning; she

glanced at his appointment book, no patient so far until ten. She left

the room with her everyday guilty consciousness that hardly anything in

it was up to the level of Mr. Hancock's room ... look after Hancock, I'm

used to fending for myself ... but he knew she did not do her utmost to

keep the room going. There were times when he ran short of stores in the

midst of a sitting. That could be avoided.

When Miriam entered his room at half past six Mr. Hancock was switching

off the lights about the chair. A single light shone over his desk. The

fire was nearly out.

"Still here?"

"Yes" said Miriam switching on a light over the instrument cabinet.

"I should leave those things tonight if I were you."

"It isn't very late."

She could go on, indefinitely, in this confident silence, preparing for

the next day. He sat making up his day-book and would presently come

upon Mrs. Hermann's letter. As long as he was there the day lingered.

Its light had left the room. The room was colourless and dark except

where the two little brilliant circles of light made bright patches of

winter evening. Their two figures quietly at work meant the quiet and

peace of the practice; the full, ended day, to begin again to-morrow in

broad daylight in this same room. The room was full of their quiet

continuous companionship. It was getting very cold. He would be going

soon.

He stood up, switching off his light. "That will do excellently" he said

with an amused smile, placing Mrs. Hermann's letter on the flap of the

instrument cabinet and wandering into the gloomy spaces.

"_Well._ I'll say good night."

"Good night" murmured Miriam.

Leaving the dried instruments in a heap with a wash leather flung over

them she gathered up the books switched the room into darkness, felt its

promise of welcome and trotted downstairs through the quiet house. The

front door shut quietly on Mr. Hancock as she reached the hall. She flew

to get away. In five minutes the books were in the safe and everything

locked up. The little mirror on the wall, scarcely lit by the single

globe over the desk just directed the angle of her hat and showed the

dim strange eager outline of her unknown face. She fled down the hall

past Mr. Leyton's room and the opening to the forgotten basement,

between the heavy closed door of Mr. Orly's room and the quiet scrolled

end of the balustrade and past the angle of the high dark clock staring

with its unlit face down the length of the hall, between the high oak

chest and the flat oak coffer confronting each other in the glooms

thrown by Mrs. Orly's tall narrow striped Oriental curtains; she saw

them standing in straight folds, the beautiful height and straightness

of their many coloured stripes, as they must have been before the

outside stripe of each had been cut and used as a tie-up; and was out

beyond the curtains in the brightly lit square facing the door. The

light fell on the rich edge of the Turkey carpet and the groove of the

bicycle stand. In the corner stood the blue and white pipe, empty of

umbrellas. Her hand grasped the machine-turned edge of the small flat

circular knob that released the door ... brahma; that was the word, at

last.... The door opened and closed with its familiar heavy wooden

firmness, neatly, with a little rattle of its chain. Her day scrolled up

behind her. She halted, trusted and responsible, for a long second in

the light flooding the steps from behind the door.

The pavement was under her feet and the sparsely lamplit night all round

her. She restrained her eager steps to a walk. The dark houses and the

blackness between the lamps were elastic about her.