PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE
Dr. Irechester was a man of considerable attainments and an active,
though not very persevering, intellect. He was widely read both in
professional and general literature, but had shrunk from the arduous path
of specialization. And he shrank even more from the drudgery of his
calling. He had private means, inherited in middle life; his wife had a
respectable portion; there was, then, nothing in his circumstances to
thwart his tastes and tendencies. He had soon come to see in the late Dr.
Evans a means of relief rather than a threat of rivalry; even more easily
he slipped into the same way of regarding Mary Arkroyd, helped thereto by
a lingering feeling that, after all and in spite of all, when it came to
really serious cases, a woman could not, at best, play more than second
fiddle. So, as has been seen, he patronized and encouraged Mary; he told
himself that, when she had thoroughly proved her capacity--within the
limits which he ascribed to it--to take her into partnership would not be
a bad arrangement. True, he could pretty well choose his patients now;
but as senior partner he would be able to do it completely. It was
well-nigh inconceivable that, for example, the Naylors--great
friends--should ever leave him; but he would like to be quite secure of
the pick of new patients, some of whom might, through ignorance or whim,
call in Mary. There was old Saffron, for instance. He was, in
Irechester's private opinion, or, perhaps it should be said in his
private suspicions, an interesting case; yet, just for that reason,
unreliable, and evidently ready to take offense. It was because of cases
of that kind that he contemplated offering partnership to Mary; he would
both be sure of keeping them and able to devote himself to them.
But his wife laughed at Mary, or at that development of the feminist
movement which had produced her and so many other more startling
phenomena. The Doctor was fond of his wife, a sprightly, would-be
fashionable, still very pretty woman. But her laughter, and the opinion
it represented, were to him the merest crackling of thorns under a pot.
The fine afternoon had come, a few days before Christmas, and he sat,
side by side with Mr. Naylor, both warmly wrapped in coats and rugs,
watching the lawn tennis at Old Place. Doctor Mary and Beaumaroy were
playing together, the latter accustoming himself to a finger short in
gripping his racquet, against Cynthia and Captain Alec. The Captain could
not yet cover the court in his old fashion, but his height and reach made
him formidable at the net, and Cynthia was very active. Ten days of
Inkston air had made a vast difference to Cynthia. And something else was
helping. It required no common loyalty to lost causes and ruined
ideals--it is surely not harsh to indicate Captain Cranster by these
terms?--to resist Alec Naylor. In fact he had almost taken Cynthia's
breath away at their first meeting; she thought that she had never seen
anything quite so magnificent, or--all round and from all points of view,
so romantic; his stature, handsomeness, limp, renown. Who can be
surprised at it? Moreover, he was modest and simple, and no fool within
the bounds of his experience.
"She seems a nice little girl, that, and uncommon pretty," Naylor
remarked.
"Yes, but he's a queer fish, I fancy," the Doctor answered, also rather
absently. Their minds were not running on parallel lines.
"My boy a queer fish?" Naylor expostulated humorously.
Irechester smiled; his lips shut close and tight, his smile was quick but
narrow. "You're matchmaking. I was diagnosing," he said.
Naylor apologized. "I've a desperate instinct to fit all these young
fellows up with mates as soon as possible. Isn't it only fair?"
"And also extremely expedient. But it's the sort of thing you can leave
to them, can't you?"
"As to Beaumaroy--I suppose you meant him, not Alec--I think you must
have been talking to old Tom Punnit--or, rather, hearing him talk."
"Punnit's general view is sound enough, I think, as to the man's
characteristics; but he doesn't appreciate his cunning."
"Cunning?" Naylor was openly astonished. "He doesn't strike me as a
cunning man, not in the least."
"Possibly, possibly, I say--not in his ends, but in his means and
expedients. That's my view. I just put it on record, Naylor. I never like
talking too much about my cases."
"Beaumaroy's not your patient, is he?"
"His employer, I suppose he's his employer, Saffron is. Well, I thought
it advisable to see Saffron alone. I tried to. Saffron was reluctant,
this man here openly against it. Next time I shall insist. Because I
think, mind you, at present I no more than think, that there's more in
Saffron's case than meets the eye."
Naylor glanced at him, smiling. "You fellows are always starting
hares," he said.
"Game and set!" cried Captain Alec, and--to his partner--"Thank you very
much for carrying a cripple."
But Irechester's attention remained fixed on Beaumaroy, and consequently
on Doctor Mary, for the partners did not separate at the end of their
game, but, after putting on their coats, began to walk up and down
together on the other side of the court, in animated conversation, though
Beaumaroy did most of the talking, Mary listening in her usual grave and
composed manner. Now and then a word or two reached Irechester's ears,
old Naylor seemed to have fallen into a reverie over his cigar, and it
must be confessed that he took no pains not to overhear. Once at least he
plainly heard "Saffron" from Beaumaroy; he thought that the same lips
spoke his own name, and he was sure that Doctor Mary's did. Beaumaroy was
speaking rather urgently, and making gestures with his hands; it seemed
as though he were appealing to his companion in some difficulty or
perplexity. Irechester's mouth was severely compressed and his glance
suspicious as he watched.
The scene was ended by Gertie Naylor calling these laggards in to tea, to
which meal the rest of the company had already betaken itself.
At the tea table they found General Punnit discoursing on war, and giving
"idealists" what idealists usually get. The General believed in war; he
pressed the biological argument, did not flinch when Mr. Naylor dubbed
him the "British Bernhardi," and invoked the support of "these medical
gentleman" (this with a smile at Doctor Mary's expense) for his point of
view. War tested, proved, braced, hardened; it was nature's crucible; it
was the antidote to softness and sentimentality; it was the vindication
of the strong, the elimination of the weak.
"I suppose there's a lot in all that, sir," said Alec Naylor, "but I
don't think the effect on one's character is always what you say. I think
I've come out of this awful business a good deal softer than I went in."
He laughed in an apologetic way. "More, more sentimental, if you like,
with more feeling, don't you know, for human life, and suffering, and so
on. I've seen a great many men killed, but the sight hasn't made me any
more ready to kill men. In fact, quite the reverse." He smiled again.
"Really sometimes, for a row of pins, I'd have turned conscientious
objector."
Mrs. Naylor looked apprehensively at the General: would he explode? No,
he took it quite quietly. "You're a man who can afford to say it, Alec,"
he remarked, with a nod that was almost approving.
Naylor looked affectionately at his son and turned to Beaumaroy. "And
what's the war done to you?" he asked. And this question did draw from
the General, if not an explosion, at least a rather contemptuous smile:
Beaumaroy had earned no right to express opinions!
But express one he did, and with his habitual air of candor. "I believe
it's destroyed every, scruple I ever had!"
"Mr. Beaumaroy!" exclaimed his hostess, scandalized; while the two
girls, Cynthia and Gertie, laughed.
"I mean it. Can you see human life treated as dirt, absolutely as cheap
as dirt, for three years, and come out thinking it worth anything? Can
you fight for your own hand, right or wrong? Oh, yes, right or wrong, in
the end, and it's no good blinking it. Can you do that for three years in
war, and then hesitate to fight for your own hand, right or wrong, in
peace? Who really cares for right or wrong, anyhow?"
A pause ensued--rather an uncomfortable pause. There was a raw sincerity
in Beaumaroy's utterance that made it a challenge.
"I honestly think we did care about the rights and wrongs--we in
England," said Naylor.
"That was certainly so at the beginning," Irechester agreed.
Beaumaroy took him up smartly. "Aye, at the beginning. But what about
when our blood got up? What then? Would we, in our hearts, rather have
been right and got a licking, or wrong and given one?"
"A searching question!" mused old Naylor. "What say you, Tom Punnit?"
"It never occurred to me to put the question," the General answered
brusquely.
"May I ask why not, sir?" said Beaumaroy respectfully.
"Because I believed in God. I knew that we were right, and I knew that we
should win."
"Are we in theology now, or still in biology?" asked Irechester,
rather acidly.
"You're getting out of my 'depth anyhow," smiled Mrs. Naylor. "And I'm
sure the girls must be bewildered."
"Mamma, I've done biology!"
"And many people think they've done theology!" chuckled Naylor. "Done it
completely!"
"I've raised a pretty argument!" said Beaumaroy, smiling. "I'm sorry! I
only meant to answer your question about the effect the whole thing has
had on myself."
"Even your answer to that was pretty startling, Mr. Beaumaroy," said
Doctor Mary, smiling too. "You gave us to understand that it had
obliterated for you all distinctions of right and wrong, didn't you?"
"Did I go as far as that?" he laughed. "Then I'm open to the remark that
they can't have been very strong at first."
"Now don't destroy the general interest of your thesis," Naylor implored.
"It's quite likely that yours is a case as common as Alec's, or even
commoner. 'A brutal and licentious soldiery,' isn't that a classic phrase
in our histories? All the same, I fancy Mr. Beaumaroy does himself less
than justice." He laughed. "We shall be able to judge of that when we
know him better."
"At all events, Miss Gertie, look out that I don't fake the score at
tennis!" said Beaumaroy.
"A man might be capable of murder, but not capable of that," said Alec.
"A truly British sentiment!" cried his father. "Tom, we have got back to
the national ideals."
The discussion ended in laughter, and the talk turned to lighter matters;
but, as Mary Arkroyd drove Cynthia home across the heath, her thoughts
returned to it. The two men, the two soldiers, seemed to have given an
authentic account of what their experience had done to them. Both, as she
saw the case, had been moved to pity, horror, and indignation that such
things should be done, or should have to be done, in the world. After
that point came the divergence. The higher nature had been raised, the
lower debased; Alec Naylor's sympathies had been sharpened and
sensitized; Beaumaroy's blunted. Where the one had found ideals and
incentives, the other found despair--a despair that issued in excuses and
denied high standards. And the finer mind belonged to the finer soldier;
that she knew, for Gertie had told her General Punnit's story, and,
however much she might discount it as the tale of an elderly martinet,
yet it stood for something, for something that could never be attributed
to Alec Naylor.
And yet, for her mind traveled back to her earlier talk by the tennis
court, Beaumaroy had a conscience, had feelings. He was fond of old Mr.
Saffron; he felt a responsibility for him, felt it, indeed, keenly. Or
was he, under all that seeming openness, a consummate hypocrite? Did he
value Mr. Saffron only as a milk cow, the doting giver of a large
salary? Was his only desire to humor him, keep him in good health and
temper, and use him to his own profit? A puzzling man, but, at all
events, cutting a poor figure beside Alec Naylor, about whom there could
circle no clouds of doubt. Doctor Mary's learning and gravity did not
prevent her from drawing a very heroic and rather romantic figure of
Captain Alec--notwithstanding that she sometimes found him rather hard
to talk to.
She felt Cynthia's arm steal around her waist, and Cynthia said softly,
"I did enjoy my afternoon. Can we go again soon, Mary?"
Mary glanced at her. Cynthia laughed and blushed. "Isn't he splendid?"
Cynthia murmured. "But I don't like Mr. Beaumaroy, do you?"
"I say yes to the first question, but I'm not quite ready to answer the
second," said Mary with a laugh.
Three days later, on Christmas Eve, one whom Jeanne, who caught sight of
him in the hall, described as being all there was possible of ugliness,
delivered (with a request for an immediate answer) the following note for
Mary Arkroyd:
DEAR DR. ARKROYD:
Mr. Saffron is unwell, and I have insisted that he must see a doctor. So
much he has yielded, after a fight! But nothing will induce him to see
Dr. Irechester again. On this point I tried to reason with him, but in
vain. He is obstinate and resolved. I am afraid that I am putting you in
a difficult and disagreeable position, but it seems to me that I have no
alternative but to ask you to call on him professionally. I hope that Dr.
Irechester will not be hurt by a whim which is, no doubt, itself merely a
symptom of disordered nerves, for Dr. Irechester has been most attentive
and very successful hitherto in dealing with the dear old gentleman. But
my first duty is to Mr. Saffron. If it will ease matters at all, pray
hold yourself at liberty to show this note to Dr. Irechester. May I beg
you to be kind enough to call at your earliest convenience, though it is,
alas, a rough evening to ask you to come out?
Yours very faithfully,
HECTOR BEAUMAROY.
"How very awkward!" exclaimed Mary. She had prided herself on a
rigorous abstention from "poaching"; she fancied that men were very
ready to accuse women of not "playing the game" and had been resolved
to give no color to such an accusation. "Mr. Saffron has sent for
me--professionally. He's ill, it seems," she said to Cynthia.
"Why shouldn't he?"
"Because he is a patient of Dr. Irechester, not a patient of mine."
"But people often change their doctors, don't they? He thinks you're
cleverer, I suppose, and I expect you are really."
There was no use in expounding professional etiquette to Cynthia. Mary
had to decide the point for herself, and quickly; the old man might be
seriously ill. Beaumaroy had said at the Naylors' that his attacks were
sometimes alarming.
Suddenly she recollected that he had also seemed to hint that they were
more alarming than Irechester appeared to appreciate; she had not taken
much notice of that hint at the time, but now it recurred to her very
distinctly. There was no suggestion of the sort in Beaumaroy's letter.
Beaumaroy had written a letter that could be shown to Irechester! Was
that dishonesty, or only a pardonable diplomacy?
"I suppose I must go, and explain to Dr. Irechester afterwards." She rang
the bell, to recall the maid, and gave her answer. "Say I will be round
as soon as possible. Is the messenger walking?"
"He's got a bicycle, Miss."
"All right. I shall be there almost as soon as he is."
She seemed to have no alternative, just as Beaumaroy had none. Yet while
she put on her mackintosh, it was very wet and misty, got out her car,
and lit her lamps, her face was still fretful and her mind disturbed. For
now, as she looked back on it, Beaumaroy's conversation with her at Old
Place seemed just a prelude to this summons, and meant to prepare her for
it. Perhaps that too was pardonable diplomacy, and no reference to it
could be expected in a letter which she was at liberty to show to Dr.
Irechester. She wondered, uncomfortably, how Irechester would take it.