These calls sharpened his curiosity, and he began to keep his eye peeled during the doctor’s office hours in the afternoon. He would go to the window and look out each time the door-bell rang, and in a little while he became convinced of what he had already begun to suspect, “that the doctor’s practice was devoted exclusively to women”. Their ages ranged from young womanhood to elderly haghood, they were of all kinds and conditions, but the one thing that was true of these patients was that they all wore skirts. No man ever rang that door-bell.
George would sometimes tease Mrs. Purvis about this unending procession of female visitors, and would openly speculate on the nature of the doctor’s practice. She had a capacity for self-deception which one often encounters among people of her class, although the phenomenon is by no means confined to it. No doubt she guessed some of the things that went on below stairs, but her loyalty to anyone she served was so unquestioning that when Geprge pressed her for information her manner would instantly become vague, and she would confess that, although she was not familiar with the technical details of the doctor’s practice, it was, she believed, devoted to “the treatment of nervous diseases”.
“Yes, but what kind of nervous diseases?” George would ask. “Don’t the gentlemen ever get nervous, too?”
“Ah-h,” said Mrs. Purvis, nodding her head with an air of knowing profundity that was very characteristic of her. “Ah-h, there you ‘ave it!”
“Have what, Mrs. Purvis?”
“‘Ave the hanswer,” she said. “It’s this Moddun Tempo. That’s what Doctor says,” she went on loftily, in that tone of unimpeachable authority with which she always referred to him and quoted his opinions. “It’s the pace of Moddun Life—cocktail parties, stayin’ up to all hours, and all of that. In America, I believe, conditions are even worse,” said Mrs. Purvis. “Not, of course, that they really are,” she added quickly, as if fearing that her remark might inadvertently have wounded the patriotic sensibilities of her employer. “I mean, after all, not ‘avin’ been there myself, I wouldn’t know, would I?”
Her picture of America, derived largely from the pages of the tabloid newspapers, of which she was a devoted reader, was so delightfully fantastic that George could never find it in his heart to disillusion her. So he dutifully agreed that she was right, and even managed, with a few skilful suggestions, to confirm her belief that almost all American women spent their time going from one cocktail party to another—in fact, practically never got to bed.
“Ah, then,” said Mrs. Purvis, nodding her head wisely with an air of satisfaction, “then you know what this Moddun Tempo means!” And, after a just perceptible pause: “Shockin’ I calls it!”
She called a great many things shocking. In fact, no choleric Tory in London’s most exclusive club could have been more vehemently and indignantly concerned with the state of the nation than was Daisy Purvis. To listen to her talk one might have thought she was the heir to enormous estates that had been chief treasures of her country’s history since the days of the Norman conquerors, but which were now being sold out of her hands, cut up piece-meal, ravaged and destroyed because she could no longer pay the ruinous taxes which the government had imposed. She would discuss these matters long and earnestly, with dire forebodings, windy sighs, and grave shakings of the head.
George would sometimes work the whole night through and finally get to bed at six or seven o’clock in the dismal fog of a London morning. Mrs. Purvis would arrive at seven-thirty. If he was not already asleep he would hear her creep softly up the stairs and go into the kitchen. A little later she would rap at his door and come in with an enormous cup, smoking with a beverage in whose soporific qualities she had the utmost faith.
“‘Ere’s a nice ‘ot cup of Ovaltine,” said Mrs. Purvis, “to git you off to sleep.”
He was probably nearly “off to sleep” already, but this made no difference. If he was not “off to sleep”, she had the Ovaltine to “git him off”. And if he was “off to sleep”, she woke him up and gave him the Ovaltine to “git him off” again.
The real truth of the matter was that she wanted to talk with him, to exchange gossip, and especially to go over the delectable proceedings of the day’s news. She would bring him fresh copies of The Times and the Daily Mail, and she would have, of course, her own tabloid paper. Then, while he propped himself up in bed and drank his Ovaltine, Mrs. Purvis would stand in the doorway, rattle her tabloid with a premonitory gesture, and thus begin:
“Shockin’, I calls it!”