‘It’s time I was off,’ he said, bending down and kissing her quickly. ‘I’m late as it is.’
He hurried out, though he wasn’t late. He knew he wasn’t late, only he did want to get into what air there was,—into, anyhow, sunlight, out of that darkened bedroom.
She too knew he wasn’t late, but she too wanted him for once to go, because she had a secret appointment for half-past ten, and it was ten already; a most important, a vital appointment, the bare thought of which thrilled her with both fear and hope.
She didn’t know if anything would come of it, but she was going to try. She had written to the great man and told him her age and asked if he thought he could do anything for her, and he had sent a card back briefly indicating 10.30 on this day. Nothing more: just 10.30. How discreet. How exciting.
She had read about him in the papers. He was a Spanish doctor, come over to London for a few weeks, and he undertook to restore youth. Marvellous, blissful, if he really could! A slight operation, said the papers, and there you were. The results were most satisfactory, they affirmed, and in some cases miraculous. Suppose her case were to be one of the miraculous ones? She hadn’t the least idea how she would be able to have an operation without Christopher knowing, but all that could be thought out afterwards. The first thing to do was to see the doctor and hear what he had to say. Who wouldn’t do anything, take any pains, have any operation, to be helped back to youth? She, certainly, would shrink from nothing. And it sounded so genuine, so scientific, what the doctor, according to the papers, did.
The minute Christopher had gone she hurried into her clothes, refused breakfast, hadn’t time to do her face—better she shouldn’t that day, better she should be seen exactly as she really was—and twenty minutes after he left she was in a taxi on the way to the great man’s temporary consulting rooms in Portland Place.
With what a beating heart she rang the bell. Such hopes, such fears, such determination, such shrinking, all mixed up together, as well as being ashamed, made her hardly able to speak when the nurse—she looked like a nurse—opened the door. And suppose somebody should hear her when she said who she was? And suppose somebody she knew should see her going in? If ever there was a discreet and private occasion it was this one; so that the moment the door was opened she was in such a hurry to get in out of sight of the street that she almost tumbled into the arms of the nurse.
It gave her an unpleasant shock to find herself put into a room with several other people. She hadn’t thought she would have to face other seekers after youth. There ought to have been cubicles—places with screens. It didn’t seem decent to expose the seekers to one another like that; and she shrank down into a chair with her back to the light, and buried her head in a newspaper.
The others were all burying their heads too in newspapers, but they saw each other nevertheless. All men, she noticed, and all so old that surely they must be past any hopes and wishes? What could they want with youth? It was a sad sight, thought Catherine, peeping round her newspaper, and she felt shocked. When presently two women came in, and after a furtive glance round dropped as she had done into chairs with their backs to the light, she considered them sad sights too and felt shocked; while for their part they were thinking just the same of her, and all the men behind their newspapers were saying to themselves, ‘What fools women are.’
The nurse—she looked exactly like a nurse—came in after a long while and beckoned to her, not calling out her name, for which she was thankful, and she was shown into the consulting room, and found herself confronted by two men instead of one, because Dr. Sanguesa, the specialist, could only say three words in English—‘We will see’ were his words—so that there was another man there, dark and foreign-looking too, but voluble in English, to interpret.