1
It was now quite dark, and the lamp at the end of Naseby Terrace suddenly lighted and shone into the room. Feeling her privacy unbearably invaded, Dorothea sprang up from the bed and drew the curtains with an angry hand.
After having once returned thus to ordinary life from her private world of grief, it seemed childish (excessive and unworthy of a Dean) to cast herself down on the bed again; she stumbled across the room and put on a light. Her smooth bare arms now prickled with gooseflesh; she realised that she was cold, that rain was pouring down outside; angrily she tore off her bright thin frock and began to dress herself in the skirt and cardigan and high-necked blouse which she wore to work in the shop. The change from the hot colours and exciting pattern of the frock to this plain black and white attire seemed to Dorothea to match the change in her life: poetry had fled and she was left with colourless, chilly prose. As she dressed she decided, with a kind of despairing mockery, to examine all her possessions with a view to eliminating some before her departure for Scarborough—this practical and immensely dreary task, she told herself sardonically, suited her mood. She had just thrust her arms into the sombre wool when the telephone rang downstairs.
Could it be Richard? The colour rushed to her cheek at the thought. But no; she had told Richard she was going to bed with a headache, and Richard, who was familiar with the position of Mrs. Eastwood’s telephone, was incapable of dragging a girl with a headache out of bed and down the stairs to answer a call from him. No; the call would prove to be some dreary business matter for Mrs. Eastwood. Dorothea listened casually for a moment, expecting to hear Mrs. Eastwood tread heavily along the hall to answer it. This did not happen, and it then struck Dorothea that she had, in fact, heard without noticing it through her first wild outburst of tears, the sound of the front door closing, so that probably her landlady had gone out. She sighed with exasperation, considered for a moment the possibility of letting the telephone ring but rejected it as altogether too irresponsible, and ran downstairs.
2
Nothing whatever could be heard at first when she put the receiver to her ear, but the practical Dorothea Dean was familiar with this situation and merely said: “Press Button A” in a weary tone. The coins fell and clicked, and Mrs. Eastwood’s voice came through, panting and anxious as Dorothea had never heard it before, relating the story of her old tenant who had gassed himself, alone with his daughter, up Black-stalls Brow, no telephone, ambulance on its way.
“But she wants her husband and it’s only natural, after all, and I’m afraid of a miscarriage, you see,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “He’s at a class at the Hudley Technical College, his name’s Peter Trahay or something, you must get hold of him somehow, Dot.”
“How do you spell it?”
“How should I know?” said Mrs. Eastwood irritably. “They’ll know him at the Technical, surely. Get him up here quick. I’m afraid of a miscarriage, you see.”
“You’ll stay with her till her husband comes?” urged Dorothea.
“Well—I suppose I had better go back,” said Mrs. Eastwood reluctantly. “But it’s a mile or more up the road—the ambulance will be there before me, or at least I’m hoping so.”
“You must go back to her, Mrs. Eastwood,” said Dorothea firmly.
“You get her husband!” shouted Mrs. Eastwood.
Dorothea slammed down the receiver angrily. Of course she would find the poor girl’s husband. Her heart went out to the girl. Recently married, expecting a first baby. Ah, what would not Dorothea give to be in such a situation! And now that wonderful, beautiful happiness was threatened by tragedy. She ruffled the pages of the local directory with a practised hand, found the Technical College quickly under the general heading of Hudley Corporation and dialled, and urged the toll-call operator to hasten, and waited. A female voice which Dorothea classified as teen-age answered, and Dorothea crisply told the story. The owner of the voice was clearly moved to sympathy and eager to help, but puzzled.
“Do you know which class he was attending?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” said Dorothea. “But can’t you visit all of them?”
“We’ve more than a thousand students here tonight,” replied the teen-age clerk primly.
“It’s a matter of life and death,” said Dorothea.
“We’ll do our very best,” replied the clerk. “But some of the students have already left, you know.”
“Please do your best,” urged Dorothea.
“Oh, I will,” replied the teen-ager earnestly.
3
Dorothea rang off and stood considering. From being cold and stiff she now found she was hot-cheeked and trembling; she felt as if, having been stranded on an icy bank of loneliness and rejection, she had been thrown back into the warm pulsating current of life with all its passion and all its agony. She imagined the dark hillside, the lonely house, the dying man, the young daughter, perhaps already in physical pain, certainly in nervous anguish, longing for the love and protection of her husband as Dorothea longed now for Richard Cressey.
Dorothea’s eyes filled with tears; she followed the deep impulse of her heart and telephoned to Richard.