“At last! You’re the very first I’ve not had to argue with as to what
is and what is not a public school. Expelled?”
“No,” I said, after a moment’s hesitation; “no, I was not expelled. And
I hope you won’t expel me if I ask a question in my turn?”
“Certainly not.”
“Are you Mr. Maturin’s son?”
“No, my name’s Theobald. You may have seen it down below.”
“The doctor?” I said.
“His doctor,” said Theobald, with a satisfied eye. “Mr. Maturin’s
doctor. He is having a male nurse and attendant by my advice, and he
wants a gentleman if he can get one. I rather think he’ll see you,
though he’s only seen two or three all day. There are certain questions
which he prefers to ask himself, and it’s no good going over the same
ground twice. So perhaps I had better tell him about you before we get
any further.”
And he withdrew to a room still nearer the entrance, as I could hear,
for it was a very small flat indeed. But now two doors were shut
between us, and I had to rest content with murmurs through the wall
until the doctor returned to summon me.
“I have persuaded my patient to see you,” he whispered, “but I confess
I am not sanguine of the result. He is very difficult to please. You
must prepare yourself for a querulous invalid, and for no sinecure if
you get the billet.”
“May I ask what’s the matter with him?”
“By all means—when you’ve got the billet.”
Dr. Theobald then led the way, his professional dignity so thoroughly
intact that I could not but smile as I followed his swinging coat-tails
to the sick-room. I carried no smile across the threshold of a darkened
chamber which reeked of drugs and twinkled with medicine bottles, and
in the middle of which a gaunt figure lay abed in the half-light.
“Take him to the window, take him to the window,” a thin voice snapped,
“and let’s have a look at him. Open the blind a bit. Not as much as
that, damn you, not as much as that!”
The doctor took the oath as though it had been a fee. I no longer
pitied him. It was now very clear to me that he had one patient who was
a little practice in himself. I determined there and then that he
should prove a little profession to me, if we could but keep him alive
between us. Mr. Maturin, however, had the whitest face that I have ever
seen, and his teeth gleamed out through the dusk as though the withered
lips no longer met about them; nor did they except in speech; and
anything ghastlier than the perpetual grin of his repose I defy you to
imagine. It was with this grin that he lay regarding me while the
doctor held the blind.
“So you think you could look after me, do you?”
“I’m certain I could, sir.”
“Single-handed, mind! I don’t keep another soul. You would have to cook
your own grub and my slops. Do you think you could do all that?”
“Yes, sir, I think so.”
“Why do you? Have you any experience of the kind?”
“No, sir, none.”
“Then why do you pretend you have?”
“I only meant that I would do my best.”
“Only meant, only meant! Have you done your best at everything else,
then?”
I hung my head. This was a facer. And there was something in my invalid
which thrust the unspoken lie down my throat.
“No, sir, I have not,” I told him plainly.
“He, he, he!” the old wretch tittered; “and you do well to own it; you
do well, sir, very well indeed. If you hadn’t owned up, out you would
have gone, out neck-and-crop! You’ve saved your bacon. You may do more.
So you are a public-school boy, and a very good school yours is, but
you weren’t at either University. Is that correct?”
“Absolutely.”
“What did you do when you left school?”
“I came in for money.”
“And then?”
“I spent my money.”
“And since then?”