The practice in the Walworth Road was a big and a poor one. The majority of the patients were hoarse-voiced costermongers from East Street and its purlieus, seamstresses, labourers, and factory hands. There is nothing mean in “the Road” itself, as it is called in the neighbourhood, but alas! many of the streets that run off it towards the Old Kent Road are full of squalid poverty.
It was not my duty to be at the dispensary at night, the night calls being attended to by a medical friend of the man whose practice I was taking charge of; therefore at ten o’clock each night the boy closed the door, put out the red light, and I took the omnibus for Chelsea.
One night just as the last patient, a garrulous old man with gout, had taken his departure and the cheap American timepiece on the mantelshelf was chiming ten, the signal for Siddons, the boy, to turn off the gas in the red lamp, I heard voices in the shop that had been turned into a waiting-room. It was after hours, and Siddons had his orders, therefore I did not anticipate that he would disobey them. But he did, for he entered, saying:—
“There’s a lady just come, sir. Must see you, sir—very urgent, she says.”
“No, sir—stranger,” replied the sharp Cockney youth.
I groaned within myself, and announced my readiness to see her. She entered, and as she did so and our eyes met I rose to my feet, open-mouthed, utterly dumb.
MY visitor evidently noticed my stupefaction. She must have done, or she would not have been a woman.
The reason of my sudden surprise was not because I recognized her, but on account of her perfect and amazing beauty. Every doctor sees some pretty faces in the course of practise, but having been asked to set down the chief details of this romance, I must here confess that never in all my life had I set eyes upon such a sweet and charming countenance.
I judged her to be about twenty, and the manner in which she entered the dingy consulting-room that reeked with the pungent odour of iodoform showed that, although not well dressed, she was nevertheless modest and well bred. She wore a plain, black tailor-made skirt, a trifle the worse for wear, a white cotton blouse, a small black hat, and black gloves. But her face held me fascinated; I could not take my eyes off it. It was oval, regular, with beautifully-moulded cheeks, a small, well-formed mouth, and fine arched brows, while the eyes, dark and sparkling, looked out at me half in wonder, half in fear. Hers was a kind of half-tragic beauty, a face intensely sweet in its expression, yet with a distinct touch of sadness in its composition, as though her heart were burdened by some secret.