1
Everything was ready for the two o'clock patient. There was no excuse
for lingering any longer. Half past one. Why did they not come up? On
her way to the door she opened the corner cupboard and stood near the
open door hungry, listening for footsteps on the basement stairs,
dusting and ranging the neat rows of bottles. At the end of five minutes
she went guiltily down. If he had finished his lunch they would wonder
why she had lingered so long. If she had hurried down as soon as she
could no one would have known that she hoped to have lunch alone. Now
because she had waited deliberately someone would read her guilt. She
wished she were one of those people who never tried to avoid anything.
The lunch-room door opened and closed as she reached the basement
stairs. James's cheerful footsteps clacked along--neat high-heeled
shoes--towards the kitchen. She had taken something in. They were still
at lunch, unconsciously, just in the same way. No. She was glad she was
not one of those people who just went on--not avoiding things....
Mr. Hancock was only just beginning his second course. He must have
lingered in the workshop.... He was helping himself to condiments; Mr.
Orly proffered the wooden pepper mill; "oh--thank you"; he screwed it
with an air of embarrassed appreciativeness. There was a curious fresh
lively air of embarrassment in the room making a stirring warmth in its
cellar-like coolness. Miriam slipped quietly into her place hoping she
was not an interloper. At any rate everyone was too much engrossed to
ponder over her lateness. Mr. Orly was sitting with his elbows on the
table and his serviette crumpled in his hands, ready to rise from the
table, beaming mildness and waiting. Mrs. Orly sat waiting and smiling
with her elbows on the table.
"Ah," said Mr. Orly gently as Miriam sat down, "here comes the clerical
staff."
Miriam beamed and began her soup. It was James waiting to-day too, with
her singing manner; a happy day.
Mrs. Orly asked a question in her happiest voice. They were fixing a
date.... They were going ... to a _theatre_ ... together. Her astonished
mind tried to make them coalesce ... she saw them sitting in a row, two
different worlds confronted by one spectacle ... there was not a scrap
of any kind of performance that would strike them both in the same way.
"Got anything on on Friday Miss Henderson?"
The sudden question startled her. Had it been asked twice? She answered,
stammering, in amazed consciousness of what was to follow and accepted
the invitation in a flood of embarrassment. Her delight and horror and
astonishment seemed to flow all over the table. Desperately she tried to
gather in all her emotions behind an easy appreciative smile. She felt
astonishment and dismay coming out of her hair, swelling her hands,
making her clumsy with her knife and fork. Far away, beyond her grasp
was the sense she felt she ought to have, the sense of belonging;
socially. It was being offered. But something or someone was fighting
it. Always, everywhere someone or something was fighting it.
Mr. Orly had given a ghostly little chuckle. "Like dining at
restaurants?" he asked kindly and swiftly.
"I don't think I ever have."
"Then we shall have the pleasure of initiating you. Like caviare?"
"I don't even know what it is" said Miriam trying to bring gladness into
her voice.
"Oh--this is great. Caviare to the million eh?--oh, I ought not to have
put it like that, things one would rather have said otherwise--no
offence intended--none taken I hope--don't yeh know really?--Sturgeon's
roe, y'know."
"Oh, I know I don't like _roe_" said Miriam gravely.
"Chalk it up. Miss Henderson doesn't like roe."
Miriam flushed. Pressing back through her anger to what had preceded she
found inspiration.
"My education has been neglected."
"Quite so, but now's your chance. Seize your opportunity; carpe diem.
See?"
"I thought it was caviare, not carp" said Mr. Hancock quietly.
Was it a rescue, or a sacrifice to the embarrassing occasion? She had
never heard him jest with the Orlys. Mrs. Orly chuckled gleefully,
flashing out the smile that Miriam loved. It took every line from her
care-fashioned face and lit it with a most extraordinary radiance. She
had smiled like that as a girl in response to the jests of her many
brothers ... her eyes were sweet; there was a perfect sweetness in her
somewhere.
"Bravo Hancock, that's a good one.... Ye gods and fishes large and small
listen to _that_" he murmured half turning towards the door.
The clattering of boots on the stone stairs was followed by the rattling
of the loose door knob and the splitting open of the door. Mr. Leyton
shot into the room searching the party with a swift glance and taking
his place in the circle in a state of headlong silent volubility. By the
way he attacked his lunch it was clear he had a patient waiting or
imminent. It occurred to Miriam to wonder why he did not always arrange
his appointments round about lunch-time ... but any such manoeuvre would
be discovered and things would be worse than ever. Mr. Orly watched
quietly while he refused Mrs. Orly's offer to ring for soup, devouring
bread and butter until she should have carved for him,--and then
extended his invitation to his son.
"Oh, is this the annual?" asked Mr. Leyton gruffly. "What's the show?"
"My dear will you be so good as to inform Mr. Leyton of----"
"Don't be silly Ro" said Mrs. Orly trying to laugh "we're going to
Hamlet Ley."
"We have the honour of begging Mr. Leyton's company on the occasion of
our visit, dinner included, to----"
"What's the date?" rapped Mr. Leyton with his tumbler to his lips.
"The date, ascertained as suited to all present with the exception of
your lordship--oh my God, Ley" sighed Mr. Orly hiding his face in his
serviette, his huge shoulders shaking.
"What have I done now?" asked Mr. Leyton, gasping after his long drink.
"Don't be so silly Ley. You haven't answd fathez queshun."
"How can I answer till I'm told the _date_?"
"Don't be silly, you can come any evening."
"_Friday_" whispered Miriam.
"_What?_" said Mr. Orly softly, emerging from his serviette, "a traitor
in the camp?"
"Friday is it? Well, then it's pretty certain I _can't_ come."
"Don't be silly Ley--you haven't any engagements."
"_Haven't I?_ There's a sing-song at Headquarters Friday."
"Enough, my dear, enough, press him no more" said Mr. Orly rising. "Far
be it from us to compete. Going to sing Ley or to song, eh? Never mind
boy, sorry you can't come" he added, sighing gustily as he left the
room.
"You'll be able to come Ley won't you?" whispered Mrs. Orly impatiently
lingering.
"If you'd only let me know the date beforehand instead of springing it
on me."
"Don't be si'y Ley it vexes Father so. You needn't go to the si'y
sing-song."
"I don't see how I can get out of it. It's rather a big function; as an
officer I ought to be there."
"Oh never mind; you'd better come."
Mr. Orly called from the stairs.
"All right darling" she said in anxious cheerful level tones hurrying to
the door. "You _must_ come Ley, you can manage somehow."
Miriam sat feeling wretchedly about in her mind. Mr. Leyton was busily
finishing his lunch. In a moment Mr. Hancock would re-assert himself by
some irrelevant insincerity. She found courage to plunge into speech, on
the subject of her two lessons at the school. Her story strove strangely
against the echoes and fell, impeded. It was an attempt to create a
quiet diversion.... It should have been done violently ... how many
times had she seen it done, the speaker violently pushing off what had
gone before and protruding his diversion, in brisk animated deliberately
detached tones. But it was never really any good. There was always a
break and a wound, something left unhealed, something standing unlearned
... something that can only grow clear in silence....
"You'll never learn cycling like _that_" said Mr. Leyton with the
superior chuckle of the owner of a secret, as he snatched up a biscuit
and made off. She clung fearfully to his cheerful harassed departing
form. There was nothing left now in the room but the echoes. Mr. Hancock
sat munching his biscuits and cheese with a look of determined steely
preoccupation in his eyes that were not raised above the level of the
spread of disarray along the table; but she could hear the busy
circulation of his thoughts. If now she could endure for a moment. But
her mind flung hither and thither seeking with a loathed servility some
alien neutral topic. She knew anything she might say with the
consciousness of his thoughts in her mind would be resented and slain.
To get up and go quietly away with some murmured remark about her work
would be to leave him with his judgment upon him. What he wanted was to
give her an instruction about something in a detached professional voice
and get rid of her, believing that she had gone unknowing, and remaining
in his circle of reasonable thoughts. She hit out with all her force,
coming against the buttress of silent angry forehead with random speech.
"I can't believe that it's less than two months to the longest day."
"Time flies" responded Mr. Hancock grimly. She recoiled exhausted by her
effort and quailed under the pang in the midday gaslit room of
realisation of the meaning of her words. Her eye swept over the
grey-clad form and the blunted features seeking some power that would
stay the inexorable consumption of the bright passing days.
"'Tempus fugit' I suppose one ought to say" he said with a little laugh
getting up.
"Oui," said Miriam angrily, "le temps s'envole; die Zeit vergeht, in
other words."