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.”