On the third floor of a house in Delahay Street there used to be a room
which was at once sitting-room and "workshop." A blue plate here and
there over the mirror, the shabby arm-chair on the hearth, and a modest
collection of books on the wall, gave it an air of home. The long
white table, littered with plans and paints, before the window, and a
theodolite in the corner, showed that it served for office too.
A man familiar with that interior had just entered the passage, and as
he began to ascend the stairs a smile of anticipated welcome softened
the rigidity of his face. He was a tall, loosely-built man, who was
generally credited with five more years than the two-and-thirty he had
really seen; a man who, a physiognomist would have asserted, formed
few friendships and was a stanch friend. Possibly it was the gauntness
of the face that caused him to appear older than he was, possibly its
gravity. He did not look as if he laughed readily, as if he saw much in
life to laugh at. He did not look impulsive, or emotional, or a man to
be imagined singing a song. He could be pictured the one cool figure
in a scene of panic with greater facility than participating in the
enthusiasm of a grand-stand. Not that you found his aspect heroic, but
that you could not conceive him excited.
He turned the handle as he knocked at the door, and strode into the
room without awaiting a response. The occupant dropped his T-square
with a clatter, giving a quick halloa:
"Philip! Dear old chap!"
Dr. Kincaid gripped the outstretched hand.
"How are you?" he said.
Walter Corri pushed him into the shabby chair, and lounged against the
mantelpiece, smiling down at him.
"How are you?" repeated Dr. Kincaid.
"All right. When did you come up?"
"Yesterday afternoon."
"Going to stay long?"
"Only a day or two."
"Pipe?"
"Got a cigar; try one!"
"Thanks."
Corri pulled out a chair for himself. "Well, what's the news?" he said.
"Nothing particular; anything fresh with you?"
"No. How's your mother?"
"Tolerably well; she came up with me."
"Did she! Where are you?"
"Some little hotel. I'm charged with a lot of messages----"
"That you don't remember!"
"I remember one of them: you're to come and see her."
"Thanks, I shall."
"Come and dine to-night, if you've nothing on. We have a room to
ourselves, and----"
"I'd like to. What are you going to do during the day?"
"There are two or three things that won't take very long, but I was
obliged to come. What are _you_ doing?"
"I've an appointment outside at twelve; I shall be back in about an
hour, and then I could stick a paper on the door without risking an
independence."
"You can go about with me?"
"If you'll wait."
"Good! Where do you keep your matches?"
"Matches are luxuries. Tear up _The Times_!"
"Corri's economy! Throw me _The Times_, then!"
Kincaid lit his cigar to his satisfaction, and stretched his long legs
before the fire. Both men puffed placidly.
"Well," said Corri, "and how's the hospital? How do you like it?"
"My mother doesn't like it; she finds it so lonely at home by herself.
I thought she'd get used to it in a couple of months--I go round to
her as often as I can--but she complains as much as she did at the
beginning. She's taken up the original idea again, and of course it is
dull for her. And she's not strong, either."
"No, I know."
"Tell her I'm going to be a successful man by-and-by, Wally, and cheer
her up. It enlivens her to believe it."
"I always do."
"I know you do; whenever she's seen you, she looks at me proudly for
a week and tells me what a 'charming young man' Mr. Corri is--'how
clever!' The only fault she finds with you is that you haven't got
married."
"Tell her that I have what the novelists call an 'ideal.'"
"When did you catch it?"
"Last year. A fellow I know married the 'Baby'--an adoring daughter
that thought all her family unique."
"And----?"
"My ideal is the blessing who is still unappropriated at twenty-eight.
She'll have discovered by then that her mother isn't infallible; that
her brothers aren't the first living authorities on wines, the fine
arts, horseflesh, and the sciences; and that the 'happy home' isn't
incapable of improvement. In fact, she'll have got a little tired of
it."
"You've the wisdom of a relieved widower."
"I have seen," said Corri widely. "The fellow, you know! Married
fellows are an awfully 'liberal education.' This one has been turned
into a nurse--among the several penalties of his selection. The
treasure is for ever dancing on to wet pavements in thin shoes and
sandwiching imbecilities between colds on the chest. He swears you may
move the Himalayas sooner than teach a girl of twenty to take care of
herself. He told me so with tears in his eyes. I mean to be older than
my wife, and she has got to be twenty-eight, so it's necessary to wait
a few years. I may be able to support her, too, by then; that's another
thing in favour of delay."
"I'll represent the matter in the proper light for you on the next
occasion."
"Do; it's extraordinary that every woman advocates matrimony for every
man excepting her own son."
"She makes up for it by her efforts on behalf of her own daughter."
"Is that from experience?"
"Not in the sense you mean; I'm no catch to be chased myself; but I've
seen enough to make you sick. The friends see the ceremonies--I see the
sequels."
"'There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman's
pulse.' But Yorick was an amateur! I should say a horrid profession,
in one way; it can't leave a scrap of illusion. What's a complexion to
a man who knows all that's going on underneath? I suppose when a girl
gives a blush you see a sort of chart of her muscles and remember what
produces it."
"I knew a physician who used to say he had never cared for any woman
who hadn't a fatal disease," replied Kincaid; "how does that go with
your theory? She was generally consumptive, I believe."
"Do you understand it?"
"Pity, I dare say, first. Doctors are men."
"Yes, I suppose they are; but somehow one doesn't think of them that
way. Between the student and the doctor there's such an enormous gap.
It's a stupid idea, but one feels that a doctor marries, as he goes to
church on Sunday--because the performance is respectable and expected.
Some professions don't make any difference to the man himself; you
don't think of an engineer as being different from anybody else; but
with Medicine----"
"It's true," said Kincaid, "that hardly anybody but a doctor can
realise how a doctor feels; his friends don't know. The only writer who
ever drew one was George Eliot."
"If you're a typical----"
"Oh, I wasn't talking about myself; don't take me! When a man's
thoughts mean worries, he acquires the habit of keeping them to himself
very soon; that is, if he isn't a fool. It isn't calculated to make him
popular, but it prevents him becoming a bore."
"Out comes your old bugbear! Isn't it possible for you to believe a
man's pals may listen to his worries without being bored?"
"How many times?"
"Oh, damn, whenever they're there!"
"No," said Kincaid meditatively, "it isn't. They'd hide the boredom, of
course, but he ought to hide the worries. Let a man do his cursing in
soliloquies, and grin when it's conversation."
"Would it be convenient to mention exactly what you do find it possible
to believe in?"
"In work, and grit, and Walter Corri. In doing your honest best in
the profession you've chosen for the sake of the profession, not in
the hope of what it's going to do for you. You can't, quite--that's
the devil of it! Your own private ambitions _will_ obtrude themselves
sometimes; but they're only vanity, when all's said and done--just
meant for the fuel. What does nine out of ten men's success do for
anyone but the nine men? Leaving out the great truths, the discoveries
that benefit the human race for all time, what more good does a man
effect in his success than he did in his obscurity? Who wants to see
him succeed, excepting perhaps his mother--who's dead before he does
it? Who's the better for his success? who does he think will be any
better off for it? Nobody but No. 1! Then, whenever the vanity's sore
and rubbed the wrong way, you'd have him go to his friends and take it
out of them. What a selfish beast!"
"Bosh!" said Corri. "Oh, I know it isn't argument, but 'bosh!'"
"My dear fellow----"
"My dear fellow, you had a rough time of it yourself for any number of
years, and----"
"And they've left their mark. Very naturally! What then?"
"Simply that now you want to stunt all humanity in the unfortunate
mould that was clapped on _you_. You understand the right of every pain
to shriek excepting mental pain. You'd sit up all night pitying the
whimpers of a child with a splintered finger, but if a man made a moan
because his heart was broken, you'd call him a 'selfish beast'!"
Kincaid ejected a circlet of smoke, and watched it sail away before he
answered.
"'Weak,'" he said, "I think I should call that 'weak.' It was a very
good sentence, though, if not quite accurate. This reminds me of old
times; it takes me back ten years to sit in your room and have you
bully me. There's something in it, Corri; circumstances are responsible
for a deuce of a lot, and we're all of us accidents. I'm a bad case,
you tell me; I dare say it's true. You're a good chap to put up with
me."
"Don't be a fool," said Corri.
The "fool" stared into the coals, nursing his big knee. He seemed to
be considering his chum's accusation.
"When I was sixteen," he said, still nursing the knee and contemplating
the fire, "I was grown up. In looking back, I never see any transition
from childhood to maturity. I was a kid, and then I was a man. I was
a man when I went to school; I never had larks out of hours; I went
there understanding I was sent to learn as much, and as quickly as I
could. Then from school I was put into an office, and was a man who
already had to hide what he felt; my people knew I wanted to make this
my profession, and they couldn't afford it. If I had let the poor old
governor see--well, he didn't see; I affected contentment, I said a
clerkship was 'rather jolly'! Good Lord! I said it was 'jolly'! The
abasement of it! The little hypocritical cur it makes of you, that
life, where a gape is regarded as a sign of laziness and you're forced
to hide the natural thing behind an account-book or the lid of your
desk; when the knowledge that you mustn't lay down your pen for five
minutes under your chief's eyes teaches you to sneak your leisure when
he turns his back, and to sham uninterrupted industry at the sound
of--his return. With the humbug, and the 'Yes, sirs,' and the 'No,
sirs,' you're a schoolboy over again as a clerk, excepting that in an
office you're paid."
"My clerk has yet to come!" said Corri, grimacing.
"Yes, he's being demoralised somewhere else. How I thanked God one
night when my father told me if I hadn't outgrown my desire he could
manage to gratify it! The words took me out of hell. But when I did
become a student I couldn't help being conscious that to study was an
extravagance. The knowledge was with me all the time, reminding me of
my responsibility--although it wasn't till the governor died that I
knew how great an extravagance it must have seemed to him. And I never
spreed with the fellows as a student any more than I had enjoyed myself
with the lads in the playground. Altogether, I haven't rollicked,
Corri. Such youth as I have had has been snatched at between troubles."
"Poor old beggar!"
Kincaid smiled quickly.
"There's more feeling in 'you poor old beggar!' than in a letter piled
up with condolence. It's hard lines one can't write 'poor old beggar'
to every acquaintance who has a bereavement." The passion that had
crept into his strong voice while speaking of his earlier life to the
one person in the world to whom he could have brought himself to speak
so, had been repressed; his tone was again the impassive one that was
second-nature to him.
"Believe me," he said, harking back after a pause, "that idea of the
medical profession, that 'respectable and expected' idea of yours,
is quite wrong. Oh, it isn't yours alone, it's common? enough; every
little comic paragraphist thinks himself justified in turning out a
number of ignorant jokes at the profession's expense in the course of
the year; every twopenny-halfpenny caricaturist has to thank us for a
number of his dinners. No harm's meant, and nobody minds; but people
who actually know something of the subject that these funny men are so
constant to can tell you that there's more nobility and self-sacrifice
in the medical profession than in any under the sun, not excepting the
Church. Yes, and more hardships too! The chat on the weather and the
fee for remarking it's a fine day isn't every medical man's life; the
difficulty is to get the fees in return for loyal attendance. Nobody's
reverenced like the family doctor in time of sickness. In the days of
their child's recovery the parents love the doctor almost as fervently
as they do the child; but the fervour's got cold when Christmas comes
and the gratitude's forgotten. And they know a doctor can't dun them;
so he has to wait for his account and pretend the money's of no
consequence when he bows to them, though the butcher and the baker and
the grocer don't pretend to _him_, but look for _their_ bills to be
settled every week. I could give you instances----"
He gave instances. Corri spoke of difficulties, too. They smoked their
cigars to the stumps, talking leisurely, until Corri declared that he
must go.
"In an hour, then, I'll call back for you," said Kincaid; "you won't be
longer?"
"I don't think so. But why not wait? You can make yourself comfortable;
there's plenty of _The Times_ left to read."
"I will. I want to write a couple of letters--can I?"
"There's a desk! Have I got everything? Yes, that's all. Well, I'll be
as quick as I can, but if I _should_ be detained I shall find you here?"
"You'll find me here," said Kincaid, "don't be alarmed."
The other's departure did not send him to the desk immediately,
however. Left alone, it was manifest how used the man had been to
living alone. It was manifest in his composure, in his deliberation, in
the earnestness he devoted to the task when at last he attacked it. He
had just reached the foot of the second page when somebody knocked at
the door.
"Come in," he said abstractedly.
The knock was repeated. It occurred to him that Corri had omitted to
provide for the contingency of a client's calling. "Come in!" he cried
more loudly, annoyed at the interruption.
He glanced over his shoulder, and saw that the intruder was a woman,
with something in her hand.
"Mr. Corri?"
"Mr. Corri's not in," he replied, fingering the pen; "he'll be back
by-and-by."
Mary lingered irresolutely. Her temples throbbed, and in her weakness
the sight of a chair magnetised her.
"Shall I wait?" she murmured; "perhaps he won't be very long?"
"Eh?" said Kincaid. "Oh, wait if you like, madam."
She sank into a seat mutely. The response had not sounded encouraging,
but it permitted her to rest, and rest was what she yearned for now.
How indifferent the world was! how mercilessly little anybody cared
for anybody else! "Wait, if you like, madam"--go and die, if you like,
madam--go and lay your bones in the gutter, madam, so long as you
don't bother me! She watched the big hand hazily as it shifted to and
fro across the paper. The man probably had money in his pocket that
signified nothing to him, and to her it would have been salvation. He
lived in comfort while she was starving; he did not know that she was
starving, but how much would it affect him if he did know? She wondered
whether she could induce him to give an order for the book; perhaps he
was just as likely to order it as the other man? Then she would take a
cab back to Mr. Collins and ask him for her commission at once, and go
and eat something--if she were able to eat any longer.
She roused herself with an effort, and crossed the room to where he sat.
"I came to see Mr. Corri from Messrs. Pattenden," she faltered, "about
a new work they're publishing. I've brought a specimen. If I am not
disturbing you----?"
She put it down as she spoke, and stood a pace or two behind him,
watching the effect.
"Is this woman very nervous?" said Kincaid to himself. "So she's a
book-agent! I thought she had something to sell. Good Lord, what a
life!"
"Thanks," he answered. "I'm very busy just now, and I never buy my
books on the subscription plan."
"You could have it sent in to you when it's complete," she suggested.
He drummed his fingers on the title-page. "I don't want it."
"Perhaps Mr. Corri----?"
"I can't speak for Mr. Corri; but don't wait for him, on my advice. I'm
afraid it would be patience wasted."
He shut the _Album_ up, intimating that he had done with it. But the
woman made no movement to withdraw it, and he invited this movement by
pushing the thing aside. He drew the blotting-pad forward to resume
his letter; and still she did not remove her obnoxious specimen from
the desk. He was beginning to feel irritated.
"If you choose to wait, madam, take a seat," he said.... "I say
take----"
He turned, questioning her continued silence, and sprang to his feet
in dismay. The book-agent's head was lolling on her bosom; and his
arm--extended to support her--was only out in time to catch her as she
fell.