At the new year Philip became dresser in the surgical out-patients’
department. The work was of the same character as that which he had
just been engaged on, but with the greater directness which surgery has
than medicine; and a larger proportion of the patients suffered from
those two diseases which a supine public allows, in its prudishness, to
be spread broadcast. The assistant-surgeon for whom Philip dressed was
called Jacobs. He was a short, fat man, with an exuberant joviality, a
bald head, and a loud voice; he had a cockney accent, and was generally
described by the students as an ‘awful bounder’; but his cleverness,
both as a surgeon and as a teacher, caused some of them to overlook
this. He had also a considerable facetiousness, which he exercised
impartially on the patients and on the students. He took a great
pleasure in making his dressers look foolish. Since they were ignorant,
nervous, and could not answer as if he were their equal, this was not
very difficult. He enjoyed his afternoons, with the home truths he
permitted himself, much more than the students who had to put up with
them with a smile. One day a case came up of a boy with a club-foot.
His parents wanted to know whether anything could be done. Mr. Jacobs
turned to Philip.
“You’d better take this case, Carey. It’s a subject you ought to know
something about.”
Philip flushed, all the more because the surgeon spoke obviously with a
humorous intention, and his brow-beaten dressers laughed obsequiously.
It was in point of fact a subject which Philip, since coming to the
hospital, had studied with anxious attention. He had read everything in
the library which treated of talipes in its various forms. He made the
boy take off his boot and stocking. He was fourteen, with a snub nose,
blue eyes, and a freckled face. His father explained that they wanted
something done if possible, it was such a hindrance to the kid in
earning his living. Philip looked at him curiously. He was a jolly boy,
not at all shy, but talkative and with a cheekiness which his father
reproved. He was much interested in his foot.
“It’s only for the looks of the thing, you know,” he said to Philip. “I
don’t find it no trouble.”
“Be quiet, Ernie,” said his father. “There’s too much gas about you.”
Philip examined the foot and passed his hand slowly over the
shapelessness of it. He could not understand why the boy felt none of
the humiliation which always oppressed himself. He wondered why he
could not take his deformity with that philosophic indifference.
Presently Mr. Jacobs came up to him. The boy was sitting on the edge of
a couch, the surgeon and Philip stood on each side of him; and in a
semi-circle, crowding round, were students. With accustomed brilliancy
Jacobs gave a graphic little discourse upon the club-foot: he spoke of
its varieties and of the forms which followed upon different anatomical
conditions.
“I suppose you’ve got talipes equinus?” he said, turning suddenly to
Philip.
“Yes.”
Philip felt the eyes of his fellow-students rest on him, and he cursed
himself because he could not help blushing. He felt the sweat start up
in the palms of his hands. The surgeon spoke with the fluency due to
long practice and with the admirable perspicacity which distinguished
him. He was tremendously interested in his profession. But Philip did
not listen. He was only wishing that the fellow would get done quickly.
Suddenly he realised that Jacobs was addressing him.
“You don’t mind taking off your sock for a moment, Carey?”
Philip felt a shudder pass through him. He had an impulse to tell the
surgeon to go to hell, but he had not the courage to make a scene. He
feared his brutal ridicule. He forced himself to appear indifferent.
“Not a bit,” he said.
He sat down and unlaced his boot. His fingers were trembling and he
thought he should never untie the knot. He remembered how they had
forced him at school to show his foot, and the misery which had eaten
into his soul.
“He keeps his feet nice and clean, doesn’t he?” said Jacobs, in his
rasping, cockney voice.
The attendant students giggled. Philip noticed that the boy whom they
were examining looked down at his foot with eager curiosity. Jacobs
took the foot in his hands and said:
“Yes, that’s what I thought. I see you’ve had an operation. When you
were a child, I suppose?”
He went on with his fluent explanations. The students leaned over and
looked at the foot. Two or three examined it minutely when Jacobs let
it go.
“When you’ve quite done,” said Philip, with a smile, ironically.
He could have killed them all. He thought how jolly it would be to jab
a chisel (he didn’t know why that particular instrument came into his
mind) into their necks. What beasts men were! He wished he could
believe in hell so as to comfort himself with the thought of the
horrible tortures which would be theirs. Mr. Jacobs turned his
attention to treatment. He talked partly to the boy’s father and partly
to the students. Philip put on his sock and laced his boot. At last the
surgeon finished. But he seemed to have an afterthought and turned to
Philip.
“You know, I think it might be worth your while to have an operation.
Of course I couldn’t give you a normal foot, but I think I can do
something. You might think about it, and when you want a holiday you
can just come into the hospital for a bit.”
Philip had often asked himself whether anything could be done, but his
distaste for any reference to the subject had prevented him from
consulting any of the surgeons at the hospital. His reading told him
that whatever might have been done when he was a small boy, and then
treatment of talipes was not as skilful as in the present day, there
was small chance now of any great benefit. Still it would be worth
while if an operation made it possible for him to wear a more ordinary
boot and to limp less. He remembered how passionately he had prayed for
the miracle which his uncle had assured him was possible to
omnipotence. He smiled ruefully.
“I was rather a simple soul in those days,” he thought.
Towards the end of February it was clear that Cronshaw was growing much
worse. He was no longer able to get up. He lay in bed, insisting that
the window should be closed always, and refused to see a doctor; he
would take little nourishment, but demanded whiskey and cigarettes:
Philip knew that he should have neither, but Cronshaw’s argument was
unanswerable.
“I daresay they are killing me. I don’t care. You’ve warned me, you’ve
done all that was necessary: I ignore your warning. Give me something
to drink and be damned to you.”
Leonard Upjohn blew in two or three times a week, and there was
something of the dead leaf in his appearance which made the word
exactly descriptive of the manner of his appearance. He was a
weedy-looking fellow of five-and-thirty, with long pale hair and a
white face; he had the look of a man who lived too little in the open
air. He wore a hat like a dissenting minister’s. Philip disliked him
for his patronising manner and was bored by his fluent conversation.
Leonard Upjohn liked to hear himself talk. He was not sensitive to the
interest of his listeners, which is the first requisite of the good
talker; and he never realised that he was telling people what they knew
already. With measured words he told Philip what to think of Rodin,
Albert Samain, and Caesar Franck. Philip’s charwoman only came in for
an hour in the morning, and since Philip was obliged to be at the
hospital all day Cronshaw was left much alone. Upjohn told Philip that
he thought someone should remain with him, but did not offer to make it
possible.
“It’s dreadful to think of that great poet alone. Why, he might die
without a soul at hand.”
“I think he very probably will,” said Philip.
“How can you be so callous!”
“Why don’t you come and do your work here every day, and then you’d be
near if he wanted anything?” asked Philip drily.
“I? My dear fellow, I can only work in the surroundings I’m used to,
and besides I go out so much.”
Upjohn was also a little put out because Philip had brought Cronshaw to
his own rooms.
“I wish you had left him in Soho,” he said, with a wave of his long,
thin hands. “There was a touch of romance in that sordid attic. I could
even bear it if it were Wapping or Shoreditch, but the respectability
of Kennington! What a place for a poet to die!”
Cronshaw was often so ill-humoured that Philip could only keep his
temper by remembering all the time that this irritability was a symptom
of the disease. Upjohn came sometimes before Philip was in, and then
Cronshaw would complain of him bitterly. Upjohn listened with
complacency.
“The fact is that Carey has no sense of beauty,” he smiled. “He has a
middle-class mind.”
He was very sarcastic to Philip, and Philip exercised a good deal of
self-control in his dealings with him. But one evening he could not
contain himself. He had had a hard day at the hospital and was tired
out. Leonard Upjohn came to him, while he was making himself a cup of
tea in the kitchen, and said that Cronshaw was complaining of Philip’s
insistence that he should have a doctor.
“Don’t you realise that you’re enjoying a very rare, a very exquisite
privilege? You ought to do everything in your power, surely, to show
your sense of the greatness of your trust.”
“It’s a rare and exquisite privilege which I can ill afford,” said
Philip.
Whenever there was any question of money, Leonard Upjohn assumed a
slightly disdainful expression. His sensitive temperament was offended
by the reference.
“There’s something fine in Cronshaw’s attitude, and you disturb it by
your importunity. You should make allowances for the delicate
imaginings which you cannot feel.”
Philip’s face darkened.
“Let us go in to Cronshaw,” he said frigidly.
The poet was lying on his back, reading a book, with a pipe in his
mouth. The air was musty; and the room, notwithstanding Philip’s
tidying up, had the bedraggled look which seemed to accompany Cronshaw
wherever he went. He took off his spectacles as they came in. Philip
was in a towering rage.
“Upjohn tells me you’ve been complaining to him because I’ve urged you
to have a doctor,” he said. “I want you to have a doctor, because you
may die any day, and if you hadn’t been seen by anyone I shouldn’t be
able to get a certificate. There’d have to be an inquest and I should
be blamed for not calling a doctor in.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. I thought you wanted me to see a doctor for
my sake and not for your own. I’ll see a doctor whenever you like.”
Philip did not answer, but gave an almost imperceptible shrug of the
shoulders. Cronshaw, watching him, gave a little chuckle.
“Don’t look so angry, my dear. I know very well you want to do
everything you can for me. Let’s see your doctor, perhaps he can do
something for me, and at any rate it’ll comfort you.” He turned his
eyes to Upjohn. “You’re a damned fool, Leonard. Why d’you want to worry
the boy? He has quite enough to do to put up with me. You’ll do nothing
more for me than write a pretty article about me after my death. I know
you.”
Next day Philip went to Dr. Tyrell. He felt that he was the sort of man
to be interested by the story, and as soon as Tyrell was free of his
day’s work he accompanied Philip to Kennington. He could only agree
with what Philip had told him. The case was hopeless.
“I’ll take him into the hospital if you like,” he said. “He can have a
small ward.”
“Nothing would induce him to come.”
“You know, he may die any minute, or else he may get another attack of
pneumonia.”
Philip nodded. Dr. Tyrell made one or two suggestions, and promised to
come again whenever Philip wanted him to. He left his address. When
Philip went back to Cronshaw he found him quietly reading. He did not
trouble to inquire what the doctor had said.
“Are you satisfied now, dear boy?” he asked.
“I suppose nothing will induce you to do any of the things Tyrell
advised?”
“Nothing,” smiled Cronshaw.