The Tunnel · Chapter 3 (1/6)

III

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 weekend?”

“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.”

“Confound.⁠ ⁠… 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 downstairs. “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 armchair 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 coattails.

“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 passageway. 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 shortsighted 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 skylight, 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 doglike 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 downcast eyes and a crisp dimpling smile.

“Rule Britannia,” 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 straightforward 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 daybooks 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.