CXIV
The three weeks which the appointment lasted drew to an end. Philip had attended sixty-two cases, and he was tired out. When he came home about ten o’clock on his last night he hoped with all his heart that he would not be called out again. He had not had a whole night’s rest for ten days. The case which he had just come from was horrible. He had been fetched by a huge, burly man, the worse for liquor, and taken to a room in an evil-smelling court, which was filthier than any he had seen: it was a tiny attic; most of the space was taken up by a wooden bed, with a canopy of dirty red hangings, and the ceiling was so low that Philip could touch it with the tips of his fingers; with the solitary candle that afforded what light there was he went over it, frizzling up the bugs that crawled upon it. The woman was a blowsy creature of middle age, who had had a long succession of still-born children. It was a story that Philip was not unaccustomed to: the husband had been a soldier in India; the legislation forced upon that country by the prudery of the English public had given a free run to the most distressing of all diseases; the innocent suffered. Yawning, Philip undressed and took a bath, then shook his clothes over the water and watched the animals that fell out wriggling. He was just going to get into bed when there was a knock at the door, and the hospital porter brought him a card.
“Curse you,” said Philip. “You’re the last person I wanted to see tonight. Who’s brought it?”
“I think it’s the ’usband, sir. Shall I tell him to wait?”
Philip looked at the address, saw that the street was familiar to him, and told the porter that he would find his own way. He dressed himself and in five minutes, with his black bag in his hand, stepped into the street. A man, whom he could not see in the darkness, came up to him, and said he was the husband.
“I thought I’d better wait, sir,” he said. “It’s a pretty rough neighbour’ood, and them not knowing who you was.”
Philip laughed.
“Bless your heart, they all know the doctor, I’ve been in some damned sight rougher places than Waver Street.”
It was quite true. The black bag was a passport through wretched alleys and down foul-smelling courts into which a policeman was not ready to venture by himself. Once or twice a little group of men had looked at Philip curiously as he passed; he heard a mutter of observations and then one say:
“It’s the ’orspital doctor.”
As he went by one or two of them said: “Good-night, sir.”
“We shall ’ave to step out if you don’t mind, sir,” said the man who accompanied him now. “They told me there was no time to lose.”
“Why did you leave it so late?” asked Philip, as he quickened his pace.
He glanced at the fellow as they passed a lamp-post.
“You look awfully young,” he said.
“I’m turned eighteen, sir.”
He was fair, and he had not a hair on his face, he looked no more than a boy; he was short, but thick set.
“You’re young to be married,” said Philip.
“We ’ad to.”
“How much d’you earn?”
“Sixteen, sir.”
Sixteen shillings a week was not much to keep a wife and child on. The room the couple lived in showed that their poverty was extreme. It was a fair size, but it looked quite large, since there was hardly any furniture in it; there was no carpet on the floor; there were no pictures on the walls; and most rooms had something, photographs or supplements in cheap frames from the Christmas numbers of the illustrated papers. The patient lay on a little iron bed of the cheapest sort. It startled Philip to see how young she was.
“By Jove, she can’t be more than sixteen,” he said to the woman who had come in to ‘see her through.’
She had given her age as eighteen on the card, but when they were very young they often put on a year or two. Also she was pretty, which was rare in those classes in which the constitution has been undermined by bad food, bad air, and unhealthy occupations; she had delicate features and large blue eyes, and a mass of dark hair done in the elaborate fashion of the coster girl. She and her husband were very nervous.
“You’d better wait outside, so as to be at hand if I want you,” Philip said to him.
Now that he saw him better Philip was surprised again at his boyish air: you felt that he should be larking in the street with the other lads instead of waiting anxiously for the birth of a child. The hours passed, and it was not till nearly two that the baby was born. Everything seemed to be going satisfactorily; the husband was called in, and it touched Philip to see the awkward, shy way in which he kissed his wife; Philip packed up his things. Before going he felt once more his patient’s pulse.
“Hulloa!” he said.
He looked at her quickly: something had happened. In cases of emergency the S. O. C. senior obstetric clerk had to be sent for; he was a qualified man, and the ‘district’ was in his charge. Philip scribbled a note, and giving it to the husband, told him to run with it to the hospital; he bade him hurry, for his wife was in a dangerous state. The man set off. Philip waited anxiously; he knew the woman was bleeding to death; he was afraid she would die before his chief arrived; he took what steps he could. He hoped fervently that the S. O. C. would not have been called elsewhere. The minutes were interminable. He came at last, and, while he examined the patient, in a low voice asked Philip questions. Philip saw by his face that he thought the case very grave. His name was Chandler. He was a tall man of few words, with a long nose and a thin face much lined for his age. He shook his head.
“It was hopeless from the beginning. Where’s the husband?”
“I told him to wait on the stairs,” said Philip.
“You’d better bring him in.”
Philip opened the door and called him. He was sitting in the dark on the first step of the flight that led to the next floor. He came up to the bed.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Why, there’s internal bleeding. It’s impossible to stop it.” The S. O. C. hesitated a moment, and because it was a painful thing to say he forced his voice to become brusque. “She’s dying.”
The man did not say a word; he stopped quite still, looking at his wife, who lay, pale and unconscious, on the bed. It was the midwife who spoke.
“The gentlemen ’ave done all they could, ’Arry,” she said. “I saw what was comin’ from the first.”
“Shut up,” said Chandler.
There were no curtains on the windows, and gradually the night seemed to lighten; it was not yet the dawn, but the dawn was at hand. Chandler was keeping the woman alive by all the means in his power, but life was slipping away from her, and suddenly she died. The boy who was her husband stood at the end of the cheap iron bed with his hands resting on the rail; he did not speak; but he looked very pale and once or twice Chandler gave him an uneasy glance, thinking he was going to faint: his lips were gray. The midwife sobbed noisily, but he took no notice of her. His eyes were fixed upon his wife, and in them was an utter bewilderment. He reminded you of a dog whipped for something he did not know was wrong. When Chandler and Philip had gathered together their things Chandler turned to the husband.
“You’d better lie down for a bit. I expect you’re about done up.”
“There’s nowhere for me to lie down, sir,” he answered, and there was in his voice a humbleness which was very distressing.
“Don’t you know anyone in the house who’ll give you a shakedown?”
“No, sir.”
“They only moved in last week,” said the midwife. “They don’t know nobody yet.”
Chandler hesitated a moment awkwardly, then he went up to the man and said:
“I’m very sorry this has happened.”
He held out his hand and the man, with an instinctive glance at his own to see if it was clean, shook it.
“Thank you, sir.”
Philip shook hands with him too. Chandler told the midwife to come and fetch the certificate in the morning. They left the house and walked along together in silence.
“It upsets one a bit at first, doesn’t it?” said Chandler at last.
“A bit,” answered Philip.
“If you like I’ll tell the porter not to bring you any more calls tonight.”
“I’m off duty at eight in the morning in any case.”
“How many cases have you had?”
“Sixty-three.”
“Good. You’ll get your certificate then.”
They arrived at the hospital, and the S. O. C. went in to see if anyone wanted him. Philip walked on. It had been very hot all the day before, and even now in the early morning there was a balminess in the air. The street was very still. Philip did not feel inclined to go to bed. It was the end of his work and he need not hurry. He strolled along, glad of the fresh air and the silence; he thought that he would go on to the bridge and look at day break on the river. A policeman at the corner bade him good-morning. He knew who Philip was from his bag.
“Out late tonight, sir,” he said.
Philip nodded and passed. He leaned against the parapet and looked towards the morning. At that hour the great city was like a city of the dead. The sky was cloudless, but the stars were dim at the approach of day; there was a light mist on the river, and the great buildings on the north side were like palaces in an enchanted island. A group of barges was moored in midstream. It was all of an unearthly violet, troubling somehow and awe-inspiring; but quickly everything grew pale, and cold, and gray. Then the sun rose, a ray of yellow gold stole across the sky, and the sky was iridescent. Philip could not get out of his eyes the dead girl lying on the bed, wan and white, and the boy who stood at the end of it like a stricken beast. The bareness of the squalid room made the pain of it more poignant. It was cruel that a stupid chance should have cut off her life when she was just entering upon it; but in the very moment of saying this to himself, Philip thought of the life which had been in store for her, the bearing of children, the dreary fight with poverty, the youth broken by toil and deprivation into a slatternly middle age he saw the pretty face grow thin and white, the hair grow scanty, the pretty hands, worn down brutally by work, become like the claws of an old animal then, when the man was past his prime, the difficulty of getting jobs, the small wages he had to take; and the inevitable, abject penury of the end: she might be energetic, thrifty, industrious, it would not have saved her; in the end was the workhouse or subsistence on the charity of her children. Who could pity her because she had died when life offered so little?
But pity was inane. Philip felt it was not that which these people needed. They did not pity themselves. They accepted their fate. It was the natural order of things. Otherwise, good heavens! otherwise they would swarm over the river in their multitude to the side where those great buildings were, secure and stately, and they would pillage, burn, and sack. But the day, tender and pale, had broken now, and the mist was tenuous; it bathed everything in a soft radiance; and the Thames was gray, rosy, and green; gray like mother-of-pearl and green like the heart of a yellow rose. The wharfs and store-houses of the Surrey Side were massed in disorderly loveliness. The scene was so exquisite that Philip’s heart beat passionately. He was overwhelmed by the beauty of the world. Beside that nothing seemed to matter.
CXV
Philip spent the few weeks that remained before the beginning of the winter session in the out-patients’ department, and in October settled down to regular work. He had been away from the hospital for so long that he found himself very largely among new people; the men of different years had little to do with one another, and his contemporaries were now mostly qualified: some had left to take up assistantships or posts in country hospitals and infirmaries, and some held appointments at St. Luke’s. The two years during which his mind had lain fallow had refreshed him, he fancied, and he was able now to work with energy.
The Athelnys were delighted with his change of fortune. He had kept aside a few things from the sale of his uncle’s effects and gave them all presents. He gave Sally a gold chain that had belonged to his aunt. She was now grown up. She was apprenticed to a dressmaker and set out every morning at eight to work all day in a shop in Regent Street. Sally had frank blue eyes, a broad brow, and plentiful shining hair; she was buxom, with broad hips and full breasts; and her father, who was fond of discussing her appearance, warned her constantly that she must not grow fat. She attracted because she was healthy, animal, and feminine. She had many admirers, but they left her unmoved; she gave one the impression that she looked upon love-making as nonsense; and it was easy to imagine that young men found her unapproachable. Sally was old for her years: she had been used to help her mother in the household work and in the care of the children, so that she had acquired a managing air, which made her mother say that Sally was a bit too fond of having things her own way. She did not speak very much, but as she grew older she seemed to be acquiring a quiet sense of humour, and sometimes uttered a remark which suggested that beneath her impassive exterior she was quietly bubbling with amusement at her fellow-creatures. Philip found that with her he never got on the terms of affectionate intimacy upon which he was with the rest of Athelny’s huge family. Now and then her indifference slightly irritated him. There was something enigmatic in her.
When Philip gave her the necklace Athelny in his boisterous way insisted that she must kiss him; but Sally reddened and drew back.
“No, I’m not going to,” she said.
“Ungrateful hussy!” cried Athelny. “Why not?”
“I don’t like being kissed by men,” she said.
Philip saw her embarrassment, and, amused, turned Athelny’s attention to something else. That was never a very difficult thing to do. But evidently her mother spoke of the matter later, for next time Philip came she took the opportunity when they were alone for a couple of minutes to refer to it.
“You didn’t think it disagreeable of me last week when I wouldn’t kiss you?”
“Not a bit,” he laughed.
“It’s not because I wasn’t grateful.” She blushed a little as she uttered the formal phrase which she had prepared. “I shall always value the necklace, and it was very kind of you to give it me.”
Philip found it always a little difficult to talk to her. She did all that she had to do very competently, but seemed to feel no need of conversation; yet there was nothing unsociable in her. One Sunday afternoon when Athelny and his wife had gone out together, and Philip, treated as one of the family, sat reading in the parlour, Sally came in and sat by the window to sew. The girls’ clothes were made at home and Sally could not afford to spend Sundays in idleness. Philip thought she wished to talk and put down his book.
“Go on reading,” she said. “I only thought as you were alone I’d come and sit with you.”
“You’re the most silent person I’ve ever struck,” said Philip.
“We don’t want another one who’s talkative in this house,” she said.
There was no irony in her tone: she was merely stating a fact. But it suggested to Philip that she measured her father, alas, no longer the hero he was to her childhood, and in her mind joined together his entertaining conversation and the thriftlessness which often brought difficulties into their life; she compared his rhetoric with her mother’s practical common sense; and though the liveliness of her father amused her she was perhaps sometimes a little impatient with it. Philip looked at her as she bent over her work; she was healthy, strong, and normal; it must be odd to see her among the other girls in the shop with their flat chests and anaemic faces. Mildred suffered from anaemia.
After a time it appeared that Sally had a suitor. She went out occasionally with friends she had made in the work-room, and had met a young man, an electrical engineer in a very good way of business, who was a most eligible person. One day she told her mother that he had asked her to marry him.
“What did you say?” said her mother.
“Oh, I told him I wasn’t over-anxious to marry anyone just yet awhile.” She paused a little as was her habit between observations. “He took on so that I said he might come to tea on Sunday.”
It was an occasion that thoroughly appealed to Athelny. He rehearsed all the afternoon how he should play the heavy father for the young man’s edification till he reduced his children to helpless giggling. Just before he was due Athelny routed out an Egyptian tarboosh and insisted on putting it on.
“Go on with you, Athelny,” said his wife, who was in her best, which was of black velvet, and, since she was growing stouter every year, very tight for her. “You’ll spoil the girl’s chances.”
She tried to pull it off, but the little man skipped nimbly out of her way.
“Unhand me, woman. Nothing will induce me to take it off. This young man must be shown at once that it is no ordinary family he is preparing to enter.”
“Let him keep it on, mother,” said Sally, in her even, indifferent fashion. “If Mr. Donaldson doesn’t take it the way it’s meant he can take himself off, and good riddance.”
Philip thought it was a severe ordeal that the young man was being exposed to, since Athelny, in his brown velvet jacket, flowing black tie, and red tarboosh, was a startling spectacle for an innocent electrical engineer. When he came he was greeted by his host with the proud courtesy of a Spanish grandee and by Mrs. Athelny in an altogether homely and natural fashion. They sat down at the old ironing-table in the high-backed monkish chairs, and Mrs. Athelny poured tea out of a lustre teapot which gave a note of England and the country-side to the festivity. She had made little cakes with her own hand, and on the table was home-made jam. It was a farm-house tea, and to Philip very quaint and charming in that Jacobean house. Athelny for some fantastic reason took it into his head to discourse upon Byzantine history; he had been reading the later volumes of the Decline and Fall; and, his forefinger dramatically extended, he poured into the astonished ears of the suitor scandalous stories about Theodora and Irene. He addressed himself directly to his guest with a torrent of rhodomontade; and the young man, reduced to helpless silence and shy, nodded his head at intervals to show that he took an intelligent interest. Mrs. Athelny paid no attention to Thorpe’s conversation, but interrupted now and then to offer the young man more tea or to press upon him cake and jam. Philip watched Sally; she sat with downcast eyes, calm, silent, and observant; and her long eye-lashes cast a pretty shadow on her cheek. You could not tell whether she was amused at the scene or if she cared for the young man. She was inscrutable. But one thing was certain: the electrical engineer was good-looking, fair and clean-shaven, with pleasant, regular features, and an honest face; he was tall and well-made. Philip could not help thinking he would make an excellent mate for her, and he felt a pang of envy for the happiness which he fancied was in store for them.
Presently the suitor said he thought it was about time he was getting along. Sally rose to her feet without a word and accompanied him to the door. When she came back her father burst out:
“Well, Sally, we think your young man very nice. We are prepared to welcome him into our family. Let the banns be called and I will compose a nuptial song.”
Sally set about clearing away the tea-things. She did not answer. Suddenly she shot a swift glance at Philip.
“What did you think of him, Mr. Philip?”
She had always refused to call him Uncle Phil as the other children did, and would not call him Philip.
“I think you’d make an awfully handsome pair.”
She looked at him quickly once more, and then with a slight blush went on with her business.
“I thought him a very nice civil-spoken young fellow,” said Mrs. Athelny, “and I think he’s just the sort to make any girl happy.”
Sally did not reply for a minute or two, and Philip looked at her curiously: it might be thought that she was meditating upon what her mother had said, and on the other hand she might be thinking of the man in the moon.
“Why don’t you answer when you’re spoken to, Sally?” remarked her mother, a little irritably.
“I thought he was a silly.”
“Aren’t you going to have him then?”
“No, I’m not.”
“I don’t know how much more you want,” said Mrs. Athelny, and it was quite clear now that she was put out. “He’s a very decent young fellow and he can afford to give you a thorough good home. We’ve got quite enough to feed here without you. If you get a chance like that it’s wicked not to take it. And I daresay you’d be able to have a girl to do the rough work.”
Philip had never before heard Mrs. Athelny refer so directly to the difficulties of her life. He saw how important it was that each child should be provided for.
“It’s no good your carrying on, mother,” said Sally in her quiet way. “I’m not going to marry him.”
“I think you’re a very hard-hearted, cruel, selfish girl.”
“If you want me to earn my own living, mother, I can always go into service.”
“Don’t be so silly, you know your father would never let you do that.”
Philip caught Sally’s eye, and he thought there was in it a glimmer of amusement. He wondered what there had been in the conversation to touch her sense of humour. She was an odd girl.
CXVI
During his last year at St. Luke’s Philip had to work hard. He was contented with life. He found it very comfortable to be heart-free and to have enough money for his needs. He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it. He knew that the lack made a man petty, mean, grasping; it distorted his character and caused him to view the world from a vulgar angle; when you had to consider every penny, money became of grotesque importance: you needed a competency to rate it at its proper value. He lived a solitary life, seeing no one except the Athelnys, but he was not lonely; he busied himself with plans for the future, and sometimes he thought of the past. His recollection dwelt now and then on old friends, but he made no effort to see them. He would have liked to know what was become of Norah Nesbit; she was Norah something else now, but he could not remember the name of the man she was going to marry; he was glad to have known her: she was a good and a brave soul. One evening about half past eleven he saw Lawson, walking along Piccadilly; he was in evening clothes and might be supposed to be coming back from a theatre. Philip gave way to a sudden impulse and quickly turned down a side street. He had not seen him for two years and felt that he could not now take up again the interrupted friendship. He and Lawson had nothing more to say to one another. Philip was no longer interested in art; it seemed to him that he was able to enjoy beauty with greater force than when he was a boy; but art appeared to him unimportant. He was occupied with the forming of a pattern out of the manifold chaos of life, and the materials with which he worked seemed to make preoccupation with pigments and words very trivial. Lawson had served his turn. Philip’s friendship with him had been a motive in the design he was elaborating: it was merely sentimental to ignore the fact that the painter was of no further interest to him.
Sometimes Philip thought of Mildred. He avoided deliberately the streets in which there was a chance of seeing her; but occasionally some feeling, perhaps curiosity, perhaps something deeper which he would not acknowledge, made him wander about Piccadilly and Regent Street during the hours when she might be expected to be there. He did not know then whether he wished to see her or dreaded it. Once he saw a back which reminded him of hers, and for a moment he thought it was she; it gave him a curious sensation: it was a strange sharp pain in his heart, there was fear in it and a sickening dismay; and when he hurried on and found that he was mistaken he did not know whether it was relief that he experienced or disappointment.
At the beginning of August Philip passed his surgery, his last examination, and received his diploma. It was seven years since he had entered St. Luke’s Hospital. He was nearly thirty. He walked down the stairs of the Royal College of Surgeons with the roll in his hand which qualified him to practice, and his heart beat with satisfaction.
“Now I’m really going to begin life,” he thought.
Next day he went to the secretary’s office to put his name down for one of the hospital appointments. The secretary was a pleasant little man with a black beard, whom Philip had always found very affable. He congratulated him on his success, and then said:
“I suppose you wouldn’t like to do a locum for a month on the South coast? Three guineas a week with board and lodging.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” said Philip.
“It’s at Farnley, in Dorsetshire. Doctor South. You’d have to go down at once; his assistant has developed mumps. I believe it’s a very pleasant place.”
There was something in the secretary’s manner that puzzled Philip. It was a little doubtful.
“What’s the crab in it?” he asked.
The secretary hesitated a moment and laughed in a conciliating fashion.
“Well, the fact is, I understand he’s rather a crusty, funny old fellow. The agencies won’t send him anyone any more. He speaks his mind very openly, and men don’t like it.”
“But d’you think he’ll be satisfied with a man who’s only just qualified? After all I have no experience.”
“He ought to be glad to get you,” said the secretary diplomatically.
Philip thought for a moment. He had nothing to do for the next few weeks, and he was glad of the chance to earn a bit of money. He could put it aside for the holiday in Spain which he had promised himself when he had finished his appointment at St. Luke’s or, if they would not give him anything there, at some other hospital.
“All right. I’ll go.”
“The only thing is, you must go this afternoon. Will that suit you? If so, I’ll send a wire at once.”
Philip would have liked a few days to himself; but he had seen the Athelnys the night before (he had gone at once to take them his good news) and there was really no reason why he should not start immediately. He had little luggage to pack. Soon after seven that evening he got out of the station at Farnley and took a cab to Doctor South’s. It was a broad low stucco house, with a Virginia creeper growing over it. He was shown into the consulting-room. An old man was writing at a desk. He looked up as the maid ushered Philip in. He did not get up, and he did not speak; he merely stared at Philip. Philip was taken aback.
“I think you’re expecting me,” he said. “The secretary of St. Luke’s wired to you this morning.”
“I kept dinner back for half an hour. D’you want to wash?”
“I do,” said Philip.
Doctor South amused him by his odd manner. He got up now, and Philip saw that he was a man of middle height, thin, with white hair cut very short and a long mouth closed so tightly that he seemed to have no lips at all; he was clean-shaven but for small white whiskers, and they increased the squareness of face which his firm jaw gave him. He wore a brown tweed suit and a white stock. His clothes hung loosely about him as though they had been made for a much larger man. He looked like a respectable farmer of the middle of the nineteenth century. He opened the door.
“There is the dining-room,” he said, pointing to the door opposite. “Your bed-room is the first door you come to when you get on the landing. Come downstairs when you’re ready.”
During dinner Philip knew that Doctor South was examining him, but he spoke little, and Philip felt that he did not want to hear his assistant talk.
“When were you qualified?” he asked suddenly.
“Yesterday.”
“Were you at a university?”
“No.”
“Last year when my assistant took a holiday they sent me a ’Varsity man. I told ’em not to do it again. Too damned gentlemanly for me.”
There was another pause. The dinner was very simple and very good. Philip preserved a sedate exterior, but in his heart he was bubbling over with excitement. He was immensely elated at being engaged as a locum; it made him feel extremely grown up; he had an insane desire to laugh at nothing in particular; and the more he thought of his professional dignity the more he was inclined to chuckle.
But Doctor South broke suddenly into his thoughts. “How old are you?”
“Getting on for thirty.”
“How is it you’re only just qualified?”
“I didn’t go in for the medical till I was nearly twenty-three, and I had to give it up for two years in the middle.”
“Why?”
“Poverty.”
Doctor South gave him an odd look and relapsed into silence. At the end of dinner he got up from the table.
“D’you know what sort of a practice this is?”
“No,” answered Philip.
“Mostly fishermen and their families. I have the Union and the Seamen’s Hospital. I used to be alone here, but since they tried to make this into a fashionable sea-side resort a man has set up on the cliff, and the well-to-do people go to him. I only have those who can’t afford to pay for a doctor at all.”
Philip saw that the rivalry was a sore point with the old man.
“You know that I have no experience,” said Philip.
“You none of you know anything.”
He walked out of the room without another word and left Philip by himself. When the maid came in to clear away she told Philip that Doctor South saw patients from six till seven. Work for that night was over. Philip fetched a book from his room, lit his pipe, and settled himself down to read. It was a great comfort, since he had read nothing but medical books for the last few months. At ten o’clock Doctor South came in and looked at him. Philip hated not to have his feet up, and he had dragged up a chair for them.
“You seem able to make yourself pretty comfortable,” said Doctor South, with a grimness which would have disturbed Philip if he had not been in such high spirits.
Philip’s eyes twinkled as he answered.
“Have you any objection?”
Doctor South gave him a look, but did not reply directly.
“What’s that you’re reading?”
“Peregrine Pickle. Smollett.”
“I happen to know that Smollett wrote Peregrine Pickle.”
“I beg your pardon. Medical men aren’t much interested in literature, are they?”
Philip had put the book down on the table, and Doctor South took it up. It was a volume of an edition which had belonged to the Vicar of Blackstable. It was a thin book bound in faded morocco, with a copperplate engraving as a frontispiece; the pages were musty with age and stained with mould. Philip, without meaning to, started forward a little as Doctor South took the volume in his hands, and a slight smile came into his eyes. Very little escaped the old doctor.
“Do I amuse you?” he asked icily.
“I see you’re fond of books. You can always tell by the way people handle them.”
Doctor South put down the novel immediately.
“Breakfast at eight-thirty,” he said and left the room.
“What a funny old fellow!” thought Philip.
He soon discovered why Doctor South’s assistants found it difficult to get on with him. In the first place, he set his face firmly against all the discoveries of the last thirty years: he had no patience with the drugs which became modish, were thought to work marvellous cures, and in a few years were discarded; he had stock mixtures which he had brought from St. Luke’s where he had been a student, and had used all his life; he found them just as efficacious as anything that had come into fashion since. Philip was startled at Doctor South’s suspicion of asepsis; he had accepted it in deference to universal opinion; but he used the precautions which Philip had known insisted upon so scrupulously at the hospital with the disdainful tolerance of a man playing at soldiers with children.
“I’ve seen antiseptics come along and sweep everything before them, and then I’ve seen asepsis take their place. Bunkum!”
The young men who were sent down to him knew only hospital practice; and they came with the unconcealed scorn for the General Practitioner which they had absorbed in the air at the hospital; but they had seen only the complicated cases which appeared in the wards; they knew how to treat an obscure disease of the suprarenal bodies, but were helpless when consulted for a cold in the head. Their knowledge was theoretical and their self-assurance unbounded. Doctor South watched them with tightened lips; he took a savage pleasure in showing them how great was their ignorance and how unjustified their conceit. It was a poor practice, of fishing folk, and the doctor made up his own prescriptions. Doctor South asked his assistant how he expected to make both ends meet if he gave a fisherman with a stomach-ache a mixture consisting of half a dozen expensive drugs. He complained too that the young medical men were uneducated: their reading consisted of The Sporting Times and The British Medical Journal; they could neither write a legible hand nor spell correctly. For two or three days Doctor South watched Philip closely, ready to fall on him with acid sarcasm if he gave him the opportunity; and Philip, aware of this, went about his work with a quiet sense of amusement. He was pleased with the change of occupation. He liked the feeling of independence and of responsibility. All sorts of people came to the consulting-room. He was gratified because he seemed able to inspire his patients with confidence; and it was entertaining to watch the process of cure which at a hospital necessarily could be watched only at distant intervals. His rounds took him into low-roofed cottages in which were fishing tackle and sails and here and there mementoes of deep-sea travelling, a lacquer box from Japan, spears and oars from Melanesia, or daggers from the bazaars of Stamboul; there was an air of romance in the stuffy little rooms, and the salt of the sea gave them a bitter freshness. Philip liked to talk to the sailor-men, and when they found that he was not supercilious they told him long yarns of the distant journeys of their youth.
Once or twice he made a mistake in diagnosis: (he had never seen a case of measles before, and when he was confronted with the rash took it for an obscure disease of the skin;) and once or twice his ideas of treatment differed from Doctor South’s. The first time this happened Doctor South attacked him with savage irony; but Philip took it with good humour; he had some gift for repartee, and he made one or two answers which caused Doctor South to stop and look at him curiously. Philip’s face was grave, but his eyes were twinkling. The old gentleman could not avoid the impression that Philip was chaffing him. He was used to being disliked and feared by his assistants, and this was a new experience. He had half a mind to fly into a passion and pack Philip off by the next train, he had done that before with his assistants; but he had an uneasy feeling that Philip then would simply laugh at him outright; and suddenly he felt amused. His mouth formed itself into a smile against his will, and he turned away. In a little while he grew conscious that Philip was amusing himself systematically at his expense. He was taken aback at first and then diverted.
“Damn his impudence,” he chuckled to himself. “Damn his impudence.”
CXVII
Philip had written to Athelny to tell him that he was doing a locum in Dorsetshire and in due course received an answer from him. It was written in the formal manner he affected, studded with pompous epithets as a Persian diadem was studded with precious stones; and in the beautiful hand, like black letter and as difficult to read, upon which he prided himself. He suggested that Philip should join him and his family in the Kentish hop-field to which he went every year; and to persuade him said various beautiful and complicated things about Philip’s soul and the winding tendrils of the hops. Philip replied at once that he would come on the first day he was free. Though not born there, he had a peculiar affection for the Isle of Thanet, and he was fired with enthusiasm at the thought of spending a fortnight so close to the earth and amid conditions which needed only a blue sky to be as idyllic as the olive groves of Arcady.
The four weeks of his engagement at Farnley passed quickly. On the cliff a new town was springing up, with red brick villas round golf links, and a large hotel had recently been opened to cater for the summer visitors; but Philip went there seldom. Down below, by the harbour, the little stone houses of a past century were clustered in a delightful confusion, and the narrow streets, climbing down steeply, had an air of antiquity which appealed to the imagination. By the water’s edge were neat cottages with trim, tiny gardens in front of them; they were inhabited by retired captains in the merchant service, and by mothers or widows of men who had gained their living by the sea; and they had an appearance which was quaint and peaceful. In the little harbour came tramps from Spain and the Levant, ships of small tonnage; and now and then a windjammer was borne in by the winds of romance. It reminded Philip of the dirty little harbour with its colliers at Blackstable, and he thought that there he had first acquired the desire, which was now an obsession, for Eastern lands and sunlit islands in a tropic sea. But here you felt yourself closer to the wide, deep ocean than on the shore of that North Sea which seemed always circumscribed; here you could draw a long breath as you looked out upon the even vastness; and the west wind, the dear soft salt wind of England, uplifted the heart and at the same time melted it to tenderness.
One evening, when Philip had reached his last week with Doctor South, a child came to the surgery door while the old doctor and Philip were making up prescriptions. It was a little ragged girl with a dirty face and bare feet. Philip opened the door.
“Please, sir, will you come to Mrs. Fletcher’s in Ivy Lane at once?”
“What’s the matter with Mrs. Fletcher?” called out Doctor South in his rasping voice.
The child took no notice of him, but addressed herself again to Philip.
“Please, sir, her little boy’s had an accident and will you come at once?”
“Tell Mrs. Fletcher I’m coming,” called out Doctor South.
The little girl hesitated for a moment, and putting a dirty finger in a dirty mouth stood still and looked at Philip.
“What’s the matter, Kid?” said Philip, smiling.
“Please, sir, Mrs. Fletcher says, will the new doctor come?” There was a sound in the dispensary and Doctor South came out into the passage.
“Isn’t Mrs. Fletcher satisfied with me?” he barked. “I’ve attended Mrs. Fletcher since she was born. Why aren’t I good enough to attend her filthy brat?”
The little girl looked for a moment as though she were going to cry, then she thought better of it; she put out her tongue deliberately at Doctor South, and, before he could recover from his astonishment, bolted off as fast as she could run. Philip saw that the old gentleman was annoyed.
“You look rather fagged, and it’s a goodish way to Ivy Lane,” he said, by way of giving him an excuse not to go himself.
Doctor South gave a low snarl.
“It’s a damned sight nearer for a man who’s got the use of both legs than for a man who’s only got one and a half.”
Philip reddened and stood silent for a while.
“Do you wish me to go or will you go yourself?” he said at last frigidly.
“What’s the good of my going? They want you.”
Philip took up his hat and went to see the patient. It was hard upon eight o’clock when he came back. Doctor South was standing in the dining-room with his back to the fireplace.
“You’ve been a long time,” he said.
“I’m sorry. Why didn’t you start dinner?”
“Because I chose to wait. Have you been all this while at Mrs. Fletcher’s?”
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t. I stopped to look at the sunset on my way back, and I didn’t think of the time.”
Doctor South did not reply, and the servant brought in some grilled sprats. Philip ate them with an excellent appetite. Suddenly Doctor South shot a question at him.
“Why did you look at the sunset?”
Philip answered with his mouth full.
“Because I was happy.”
Doctor South gave him an odd look, and the shadow of a smile flickered across his old, tired face. They ate the rest of the dinner in silence; but when the maid had given them the port and left the room, the old man leaned back and fixed his sharp eyes on Philip.
“It stung you up a bit when I spoke of your game leg, young fellow?” he said.
“People always do, directly or indirectly, when they get angry with me.”
“I suppose they know it’s your weak point.”
Philip faced him and looked at him steadily.
“Are you very glad to have discovered it?”
The doctor did not answer, but he gave a chuckle of bitter mirth. They sat for a while staring at one another. Then Doctor South surprised Philip extremely.
“Why don’t you stay here and I’ll get rid of that damned fool with his mumps?”
“It’s very kind of you, but I hope to get an appointment at the hospital in the autumn. It’ll help me so much in getting other work later.”
“I’m offering you a partnership,” said Doctor South grumpily.
“Why?” asked Philip, with surprise.
“They seem to like you down here.”
“I didn’t think that was a fact which altogether met with your approval,” Philip said drily.
“D’you suppose that after forty years’ practice I care a twopenny damn whether people prefer my assistant to me? No, my friend. There’s no sentiment between my patients and me. I don’t expect gratitude from them, I expect them to pay my fees. Well, what d’you say to it?”
Philip made no reply, not because he was thinking over the proposal, but because he was astonished. It was evidently very unusual for someone to offer a partnership to a newly qualified man; and he realised with wonder that, although nothing would induce him to say so, Doctor South had taken a fancy to him. He thought how amused the secretary at St. Luke’s would be when he told him.
“The practice brings in about seven hundred a year. We can reckon out how much your share would be worth, and you can pay me off by degrees. And when I die you can succeed me. I think that’s better than knocking about hospitals for two or three years, and then taking assistantships until you can afford to set up for yourself.”
Philip knew it was a chance that most people in his profession would jump at; the profession was over-crowded, and half the men he knew would be thankful to accept the certainty of even so modest a competence as that.
“I’m awfully sorry, but I can’t,” he said. “It means giving up everything I’ve aimed at for years. In one way and another I’ve had a roughish time, but I always had that one hope before me, to get qualified so that I might travel; and now, when I wake in the morning, my bones simply ache to get off, I don’t mind where particularly, but just away, to places I’ve never been to.”
Now the goal seemed very near. He would have finished his appointment at St. Luke’s by the middle of the following year, and then he would go to Spain; he could afford to spend several months there, rambling up and down the land which stood to him for romance; after that he would get a ship and go to the East. Life was before him and time of no account. He could wander, for years if he chose, in unfrequented places, amid strange peoples, where life was led in strange ways. He did not know what he sought or what his journeys would bring him; but he had a feeling that he would learn something new about life and gain some clue to the mystery that he had solved only to find more mysterious. And even if he found nothing he would allay the unrest which gnawed at his heart. But Doctor South was showing him a great kindness, and it seemed ungrateful to refuse his offer for no adequate reason; so in his shy way, trying to appear as matter of fact as possible, he made some attempt to explain why it was so important to him to carry out the plans he had cherished so passionately.
Doctor South listened quietly, and a gentle look came into his shrewd old eyes. It seemed to Philip an added kindness that he did not press him to accept his offer. Benevolence is often very peremptory. He appeared to look upon Philip’s reasons as sound. Dropping the subject, he began to talk of his own youth; he had been in the Royal Navy, and it was his long connection with the sea that, when he retired, had made him settle at Farnley. He told Philip of old days in the Pacific and of wild adventures in China. He had taken part in an expedition against the head-hunters of Borneo and had known Samoa when it was still an independent state. He had touched at coral islands. Philip listened to him entranced. Little by little he told Philip about himself. Doctor South was a widower, his wife had died thirty years before, and his daughter had married a farmer in Rhodesia; he had quarrelled with him, and she had not come to England for ten years. It was just as if he had never had wife or child. He was very lonely. His gruffness was little more than a protection which he wore to hide a complete disillusionment; and to Philip it seemed tragic to see him just waiting for death, not impatiently, but rather with loathing for it, hating old age and unable to resign himself to its limitations, and yet with the feeling that death was the only solution of the bitterness of his life. Philip crossed his path, and the natural affection which long separation from his daughter had killed she had taken her husband’s part in the quarrel and her children he had never seen settled itself upon Philip. At first it made him angry, he told himself it was a sign of dotage; but there was something in Philip that attracted him, and he found himself smiling at him he knew not why. Philip did not bore him. Once or twice he put his hand on his shoulder: it was as near a caress as he had got since his daughter left England so many years before. When the time came for Philip to go Doctor South accompanied him to the station: he found himself unaccountably depressed.
“I’ve had a ripping time here,” said Philip. “You’ve been awfully kind to me.”
“I suppose you’re very glad to go?”
“I’ve enjoyed myself here.”
“But you want to get out into the world? Ah, you have youth.” He hesitated a moment. “I want you to remember that if you change your mind my offer still stands.”
“That’s awfully kind of you.”
Philip shook hands with him out of the carriage window, and the train steamed out of the station. Philip thought of the fortnight he was going to spend in the hop-field: he was happy at the idea of seeing his friends again, and he rejoiced because the day was fine. But Doctor South walked slowly back to his empty house. He felt very old and very lonely.