SIXTY-TWO

arah was tarrying in the professor’s study when the bell rang, an unwelcome but inevitable interruption to a moment of tranquillity. It reverberated all the louder because the house was unusually quiet, the insistent peals rattling back and forth off the walls of empty hallways. The morning clinic was over, all of the visitors despatched with poultices and prescriptions. Dr Simpson was on his way to Musselburgh to see a patient, Raven was out on a house call, Mrs Simpson had taken the children to visit a friend in Trinity, and of course Miss Grindlay remained confined in her room.

Poor Mina had not emerged in days. She was distraught and inconsolable over the news that her intended husband had absconded, having been unmasked as a fraud. She was told that he lied about his uncle and the fine house in Canaan Lands, that his intentions towards her were insincere and that his name was probably not even John Beattie.

‘We may never know who he truly was,’ Dr Simpson had informed his weeping sister-in-law, but it was the knowledge of what he truly was that she had to be protected from. Sarah did not like to think what it would do to Mina if she were to learn this, and still less what had really happened to him at the hands of three people who lived with her under the same roof.

The bell sounded a second time. Sarah sighed and was about to head for the door when she remembered that she didn’t have to respond. Though she knew Jarvis was out on an errand, the new girl had started yesterday, so she could let her jump to it instead.

With a smile she resumed the task of restocking the medicine cabinet, arranging the bottles in neat rows, labels to the front. She took a satisfaction from their careful organisation and from her understanding of their names, regarding the medicines as tokens of her new responsibilities.

Dr Simpson had taken on a second housemaid in order to free more of Sarah’s time for assisting with clinics and other related matters. This had come about as a result of her informing the professor that she intended to hand in her notice so that she might seek her living as a nurse at the Royal Infirmary.

‘Why ever would you want to do that, Sarah?’ he asked, looking not merely surprised but, she would have to admit, a little hurt.

‘Through my duties here, I have felt privileged to assist in the care of patients and would prefer a position that allowed me to dedicate more of my time to that.’

‘That strikes me as a terrible waste. As a nurse at the Infirmary, you will spend most of your time washing floors and emptying bedpans. A bright girl like you will learn a great deal more if you simply remain here.’

‘But what is the point of learning that which I cannot put it into practice? I could accumulate more knowledge than any man in Edinburgh, but my status would be that of the best-read housemaid in the city.’

Passion drove her words, but she feared she had been injudicious in venting her frustrations to Dr Simpson in such an unguarded manner. The professor had merely nodded, however.

‘It may not always be thus,’ he said softly. ‘And if things are ever to be different, it will take women like you to change them.’