Dr. Raste arrived, but only after an interval of nearly half an hour, which seemed to Violet like half a night. The fact was that, despite much practice, he could not dress in less than about twenty minutes; nor was it his habit to run to his patients, whatever their condition. He came with the collar of his thick overcoat turned up. Violet met him on the landing; she had shut the bedroom door behind her. He was calm; he yawned; and his demeanour hovered between the politely indifferent and the politely inimical. He spoke vaguely, but in his loud tone, in reply to Violet's murmur: "I was afraid you weren't coming, doctor."
Violet had by this time lost her sense of proportion. She was incapable of bearing in mind that the doctor lived daily and nightly among disease and death, and that he was more accustomed to sick people than to healthy. She did not suspect that in the realism of his heart he regarded sick people and their relations in the mass as persons excessive in their fears, ruthless in their egotism, and cruel in their demands upon himself. She had no conception that to him a night-call was primarily a grievance and secondarily an occasion to save life or pacify pain. She might have credited that fifty per cent. of his night-calls were unnecessary, but she could never have guessed that he had already set down this visit to Riceyman Steps as probably the consequence of a false, foolish, feminine alarm. She began to explain to him at length the unique psychology of the sufferer, as though the doctor had never before encountered an unwilling and obstinate patient. The doctor grew restless.
"Yes. Just so. Just so. I'd better have a look at him."
"I haven't dared to tell him I've sent for you," said Violet piteously, reproachful of the doctor's inhumanity.
"Tut-tut!" observed the doctor, and opened the bedroom door.
He sniffed on entering, glanced placidly at Henry, then at the fireplace, and then went to the window and drew the curtains and blind aside.
"I should advise you to have a fire lighted at once, and we'll open the window a bit."
He put his hat carefully on the chest of drawers, but did not even unbutton his overcoat or turn down his collar. Then he removed his gloves and rubbed his hands. At last to Henry:
"Well, Mr. Earlforward, what's this I hear?"
No diplomacy with the patient! No ingenious excusing of his presence! The patient just had to accept his presence; and the patient, having no alternative, did accept it.