The Tunnel · Chapter 3 (6/6)

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 shirtsleeves 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 fullness 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 daybook 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 daybooks 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 daybook 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 tomorrow 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.