Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/338

330 before my time. It is agreeable to solace one’s self in that way; but I am inclined to ask, am I not behind my time?

Everybody is jostling everybody; there’s no time to see who’s down. The hour is striking by Rexford Cathedral; don’t you hear its clang through the rattle of carts and waggons, and the puffing of steam over the bridge yonder? There’s no time to be lost—the train will start! Time waits for no man—there are three minutes to get up the steps, take your ticket, into the carriage, and be off! There’s the bell! Good heavens, and there’s the whistle! It’s off! it’s off! There’s nothing left but a long line of floating white steam, that curls over and under, over and under, and vanishes before the wind. Your coach may have knocked down the greengrocer’s boy, but why doesn’t he get out of the way? These are not days to be putting your hands in your pockets and staring about. You must be up and away—here, there, everywhere—or you’d better give up the race at once. But if we are all to be so bustling, all so fleet of foot, all so strong of wind, who’s to win? I want to run without knocking my neighbours before me, sending them flying into space. I want to live, but I don’t want to prevent others living too.

But it isn’t the spirit of the time. If I do not boast and bluster, I’m nothing. And therefore it is that I sit at home looking at the hundreds that pass and repass, but nobody turns in. They cross the road to Barlington, or they go round the corner to Scorlings, and I sit waiting for the patients that never come.

I go up-stairs to my drawing-room, and look up Clifton Street. People are coming down quite fast. There’s Sims. I know his wife’s expectant. Is he—is he coming—I think—no, he’s turned the corner. Well, well.

Yesterday I went into the nursery, and found my eldest daughter, Lydia, sitting alone, with her gazelle-like eyes suffused with tears. In reply to my question as to what was wrong with her, she only smiled like her mother, and said, “She had been moping.” I knew what it meant. I stirred the fire, by way of showing that I was cheerful, and not afraid of my coal bills. I hummed the latest box-organ tune, and Lydia brightened up amazingly. No one would have guessed how choked my voice was, and how I had to push it forcibly out against its will. When Lydia went away I gave over humming, and I said in the bitterness of my heart, “For God’s sake, will the patients never come!”

Then I took a doleful journey through the rooms. I felt that I was becoming stupid. A sort of counter irritation might have its effect; so I go into the waiting-room that I may survey the nine chairs that are never sat upon. There I find my oldest boy of twelve comfortably settled by the window, reading by stealth my medical books, although I have decidedly set my face against his following in my footsteps. I could have taken the books from his hand and burnt them, but