Roger Bevere's arm proved obstinate. Swollen and inflamed as I had never
seen any arm yet, it induced fever, and he had to take to his bed.
Scott, who had his wits about him in most ways, had not spoken a minute
too soon, or been mistaken as to the probable danger; while Mr. Pitt
told Roger every time he came to dress it, beginning with the first
evening, that he deserved all he got for being so foolhardy as to
neglect it: as a medical man in embryo, he ought to have foreseen the
hazard.
It seemed to me that Roger was just as ill as he was at Gibraltar
Terrace, when they sent for his mother: if not worse. Most days I got
down to Paradise Place to snatch a look at him. It was not far, taking
the underground-railway from Miss Deveen's.
I made the best report I could to Lady Bevere, telling
nothing--excepting that the arm was giving a little trouble. If she
got to learn the truth about certain things, she would think the
letters deceitful. But what else could I do?--I wished with all my
heart some one else had to write them. As Scott had said to me about
the flitting from Mrs. Long's (the reason for which or necessity, I
was not enlightened upon yet), I could not betray Bevere. Pitt assured
me that if any unmanageable complications arose with the arm, both
Lady Bevere and Mr. Brandon should be at once telegraphed for. A fine
complication it would be, of another sort, if they did come! How about
Miss Lizzie?
Of all the free-and-easy young women I had ever met with, that same
Lizzie was the freest and easiest. Many a time have I wondered Bevere
did not order her out of the room when she said audacious things to him
or to me--not to say out of the house. He did nothing of the kind; he
lay passive as a bird that has had its wings clipped, all spirit gone
out of him, and groaning with bodily pain. Why on earth did he allow
her to make his house her abode, disturbing it with her noise and her
clatter? Why on earth--to go on further--did he rent a house at all,
small or large? No one else lived in it, that I saw, except a little
maid, in her early teens, to do the work. Later I found I was mistaken:
they were only lodgers: an old landlady, lame and quiet, was in the
kitchen.
"Looks fearfully bad, don't he?" whispered Lizzie to me on one occasion
when he lay asleep, and she came bursting into the room for her bonnet
and shawl.
"Yes. Don't you think you could be rather more quiet?"
"As quiet as a lamb, if you like," laughed Lizzie, and crept out on
tiptoe. She was always good-humoured.
One afternoon when I went in, Lizzie had a visitor in the parlour. Miss
Panken! The two, evidently on terms of close friendship, were laughing
and joking frantically; Lizzie's head, with its clouds of red-gold hair,
was drawn close to the other head and the mass of black braids adorning
it. Miss Panken sat sipping a cup of tea; Lizzie a tumbler of hot water
that gave forth a suspicious odour.
"I've got a headache, Mr. Johnny," said she: and I marvelled that she
did not, in her impudence, leave the "Mr." out. "Hot gin-and-water is
the very best remedy you can take for it."
Shrieks of laughter from both the girls followed me upstairs to Roger's
bedside: Miss Panken was relating some joke about her companion, Mabel.
Roger said his arm was a trifle better. It always felt so when Pitt had
been to it.
"Who is it that's downstairs now?" he asked, fretfully, as the bursts of
merriment sounded through the floor. "Sit down, Johnny."
"It's a girl from the Bell-and-Clapper refreshment-room. Miss Panken
they call her."
Roger frowned. "I have told Lizzie over and over again that I wouldn't
have those girls encouraged here. What can possess her to do it?" And,
after saying that, he passed into one of those fits of restlessness that
used to attack him at Gibraltar Terrace.
"Look here, Roger," I said, presently, "couldn't you--pull up a bit?
Couldn't you put all this nonsense away?"
"Which nonsense?" he retorted.
"What would Mr. Brandon say if he knew it? I'll not speak of your
mother. It is not nice, you know; it is not, indeed."
"Can't you speak out?" he returned, with intense irritation. "Put what
away?"
"Lizzie."
I spoke the name under my breath, not liking to say it, though I had
wanted to for some time. All the anger seemed to go out of Roger. He lay
still as death.
"_Can't_ you, Roger?"
"Too late, Johnny," came back the answer in a whisper of pain.
"Why?"
"She is my wife."
I leaped from my chair in a sort of terror. "No, no, Roger, don't say
that! It cannot be."
"But it _is_," he groaned. "These eighteen months past."
I stood dazed; all my senses in a whirl. Roger kept silence, his face
turned to the pillow. And the laughter from below came surging up.
I had no heart affection that I was aware of, but I had to press my hand
to still its thumping as I leaned over Roger.
"Really married? Surely married?"
"As fast and sure as the registrar could marry us," came the smothered
answer. "We did not go to church."
"Oh, Roger! _How_ came you to do it?"
"Because I was a fool."
I sat down again, right back in the chair. Things that had puzzled me
before were clearing themselves now. _This_ was the torment that had
worried his mind and prolonged, if not induced, the fever, when he first
lay ill of the accident; this was the miserable secret that had gone
well-nigh to disturb the brain: partly for the incubus the marriage
entailed upon him, partly lest it should be found out. It had caused him
to invent fables in more ways than one. Not only had he to conceal his
proper address from us all when at Gibraltar Terrace, especially from
his mother and Mr. Brandon; but he had had to scheme with Scott to keep
his wife in ignorance altogether--of his accident and of where he was
lying, lest Lizzie should present herself at his bedside. To account for
his absence from home, Scott had improvised a story to her of Roger's
having been despatched by the hospital authorities to watch a case of
illness at a little distance; and Lizzie unsuspiciously supplied Scott
with changes of raiment and other things Roger needed from his chest of
drawers.
This did for a time. But about the period of Roger's quitting Gibraltar
Terrace, Lizzie unfortunately caught up an inkling that she was being
deceived. Miss Panken's general acquaintance was numerous, and one day
one of them chanced to go into the bar-room of the Bell-and-Clapper,
and to mention, incidentally, that Roger Bevere had been run over by a
hansom cab, and was lying disabled in some remote doctor's quarters--for
that's what Scott told his fellow-students. Madam Lizzie rose in
rebellion, accused Scott of being no gentleman, and insisted upon her
right to be enlightened. So, to stop her from making her appearance at
St. Bartholomew's with inconvenient inquiries, and possibly still more
inconvenient revelations, Roger had promptly to quit the new lodgings at
Mrs. Long's, and return to the old home near the Bell-and-Clapper. But
I did not learn these particulars at first.
"Who knows it, Roger?" I asked, breaking the silence.
"Not one of them but Scott," he answered, supposing I alluded to the
hospital. "I see Pitt has his doubts."
"But they know--some of them--that Lizzie is here!"
"Well? So did you, but you did not suspect further. They think of course
that--well, there's no help for what they think. When a fellow is in
such a position as mine, he has to put up with things as they come. I
can't quite ruin myself, Johnny; or let the authorities know what an
idiot I've been. Lizzie's aunt knows it; and that's enough at present;
and so do those girls at the Bell-and-Clapper--worse luck!"
It was impossible to talk much of it then, at that first disclosure; I
wished Roger good-afternoon, and went away in a fever-dream.
My wildest surmises had not pictured this dismal climax. No, never; for
all that Mistress Lizzie's left hand displayed a plain gold ring of
remarkable thickness. "She would have it thick," Roger said to me later.
Poor Roger! poor Roger!
I felt it like a blow--like a blow. No good would ever come of it--to
either of them. Worse than no good to him. It was not so much the
unsuitableness of the girl's condition to his; it was the girl herself.
She would bring him no credit, no comfort as long as she lived: what
happiness could he ever find with her? I had grown to like Roger, with
all his faults and failings, and it almost seemed to me, in my sorrow
for him, as if my own life were blighted.
It might not have been quite so bad--not _quite_--had Lizzie been a
different girl. Modest, yielding, gentle, like that little Mabel I had
seen, for instance, learning to adapt her manners to the pattern of her
husband's; had she been that, why, in time, perhaps, things might have
smoothed down for him. But Lizzie! with her free and loud manners, her
off-hand ways, her random speech, her vulgar laughs! Well, well!
How was it possible she had been able to bring her fascinations to bear
upon him--he with his refinement? One can but sit down in amazement and
ask how, in the name of common-sense, such incongruities happen in the
world. She must have tamed down what was objectionable in her to sugar
and sweetness while setting her cap at Bevere; while he--he must have
been blind, physically and mentally. But no sooner was the marriage over
than he awoke to see what he had done for himself. Since then his time
had been principally spent in setting up contrivances to keep the truth
from becoming known. Mr. Brandon had talked of his skeleton in the
closet: he had not dreamt of such a skeleton as this.
"Must have gone in largely for strong waters in those days, and been in
a chronic state of imbecility, I should say," observed Pitt, making his
comments to me confidentially.
For I had spoken to him of the marriage, finding he knew as much as I
did. "I shall never be able to understand it," I said.
"_That's_ easy enough. When Circe and a goose sit down to play chess,
no need to speculate which will win the game."
"You speak lightly of it, Mr. Pitt."
"Not particularly. Where's the use of speaking gravely now the deed's
done? It is a pity for Bevere; but he is only one young man amidst many
such who in one way or another spoil their lives at its threshold.
Johnny Ludlow, when I look about me and see the snares spread abroad
in this great metropolis by night and by day, and at the crowds of
inexperienced lads--they are not much better--who have to run to and fro
continually, I marvel that the number of those who lose themselves is
not increased tenfold."
He had changed his tone to one solemn enough for a judge.
"I cannot _think_ how he came to do it," I argued. "Or how such a one as
Bevere, well-intentioned, well brought up, could have allowed himself to
fall into what Mr. Brandon calls loose habits. How came he to take to
drinking ways, even in a small degree?"
"The railway refreshment-bars did that for him, I take it," answered
Pitt. "He lived up here from the first, by the Bell-and-Clapper, and I
suppose found the underground train more convenient than the omnibus. Up
he'd rush in a morning to catch--say--the half-past eight train, and
would often miss it by half-a-minute. A miss is as good as a mile.
Instead of cooling his heels on the draughty and deserted platform, he
would turn into the refreshment-room, and find there warmth and sociable
company in the shape of pretty girls to chat with: and, if he so minded,
a glass of something or other to keep out the cold on a wintry morning."
"As if Bevere would!--at that early hour!"
"Some of them do," affirmed Pitt. "Anyway, that's how Bevere fell into
the habit of frequenting the bar-room of the Bell-and-Clapper. It lay
so handy, you see; right in his path. He would run into it again of an
evening when he returned: he had no home, no friends waiting for him,
only lodgings. There----"
"I thought Bevere used to board with a family," I interrupted.
"So he did at first; and very nice people they were: Mr. Brandon took
care he should be well placed. That's why Bevere came up this way at
all: it was rather far from the hospital, but Mr. Brandon knew the
people. In a short time, however, the lady died, the home was broken up,
and Bevere then took lodgings on his own account; and so--there was no
one to help him keep out of mischief. To go on with what I was saying.
He learnt to frequent the bar-room at the Bell-and-Clapper: not only to
run into it in a morning, but also on his return in the evening. He had
no sociable tea or dinner-table waiting for him, you see, with pleasant
faces round it. All the pleasant faces he met were those behind the
counter; and there he would stay, talking, laughing, chaffing with the
girls, one of whom was Miss Lizzie, goodness knows how long--the places
are kept open till midnight."
"It had its attractions for him, I suppose--what with the girls and the
bottles."
Pitt nodded. "It has for many a one besides him, Johnny. Roger had to
call for drink; possibly without the slightest natural inclination for
anything, he had perforce to call for it; he could hardly linger there
unless he did. By-and-by, I reckon, he got to like the drink; he
acquired the taste for it, you see, and habit soon becomes second
nature; one glass became two glasses, two glasses three. This went on
for a time. The next act in the young man's drama was, that he allowed
himself to glide into an entanglement of some sort with one of the said
girls, Miss Lizzie Field, and was drawn in to marry her."
"How have you learnt these particulars?"
"Partly from Scott. They are true. Scott has a married brother living up
this way, and is often running up here; indeed at one time he lived with
him, and he and Bevere used to go to and fro to St. Bartholomew's in
company. Yes," slowly added the doctor, "that refreshment-room has been
the bane of Roger Bevere."
"And not of Scott?"
"It did Scott no good; you may take a vow of that. But Scott has some
plain, rough common-sense of his own, which kept him from going too far.
He may make a good man yet; and a name also, for he possesses all the
elements of a skilful surgeon. Bevere succumbed to the seductions of the
bar-room, as other foolish young fellows, well-intentioned at heart,
but weak in moral strength, have done, and will do again. Irresistible
temptations they present, these places, to the young men who have to
come in contact with them. If the lads had to go out of their way to
seek the temptation, they might never do it; but it lies right in their
path, you perceive, and they can't pass it by. Of course I am not
speaking of all young men; only of those who are deficient in moral
self-control. To some, the Bell-and-Clapper bar-room presents no more
attraction than the Bell-and-Clapper Church by its side; or any other
of such rooms, either."
"Is there not any remedy for this state of things?"
Pitt shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose not," he said. "Since I pulled
up from drinking, I have been unable to see what these underground
railway-rooms are needed for: why a man or woman, travelling for
half-an-hour, more or less, must needs be provided with places to drink
in at both ends of the journey and all the middles. Biscuits and buns
are there as well, you may say--serving an excuse perhaps. But for one
biscuit called for, there are fifty glasses of ale, or what not. Given
the necessity for the rooms," added Pitt, with a laugh, "I should do
away with the lady-servers and substitute men; which would put an end
to three parts of the attraction. No chance of _that_ reformation."
"Because it would do away with three parts of the custom," I said,
echoing his laugh.
"Be you very sure of that, Johnny Ludlow. However, it is no business of
mine to find fault with existing customs, seeing that I cannot alter
them," concluded the doctor.
What he said set me thinking. Every time I passed by one of these
stations, so crowded with the traffic of young city men, and saw the
bottles arrayed to charm the sight, their bright colours gleaming and
glistening, and looked at the serving-damsels, with their bedecked
heads, arrayed to charm also, I knew Pitt must be right. These rooms
might bring in grist to their owners' mill; but it struck me that I
should not like, when I grew old, to remember that I had owned one.
* * * * *
Roger Bevere's arm began to yield to treatment, but he continued very
ill in himself; too ill to get up. Torment of mind and torment of body
are a bad complication.
One afternoon when I was sitting with him, sundry quick knocks
downstairs threatened to disturb the doze he was falling into--and Pitt
had said that sleep to him just now was like gold. I crept away to stop
it. In the middle of the parlour, thumping on the floor with her cotton
umbrella--a huge green thing that must have been the fellow, when made,
to Sairey Gamp's--stood Mrs. Dyke, a stout, good-natured, sensible
woman, whom I often saw there. Her husband was a well-to-do coachman,
whose first wife had been sister to Lizzie's mother, and this wife was
their cousin.
"Where's Lizzie, sir?" she asked. "Out, I suppose?"
"Yes, I think so. I saw her with her bonnet on."
"The girl's out, too, I take it, or she'd have heard me," remarked Mrs.
Dyke, as she took her seat on the shabby red sofa, and pushed her bonnet
back from her hot and comely face. "And how are we going on up there,
sir?"--pointing to the ceiling.
"Very slowly. He cannot get rid of the fever."
She lodged the elegant umbrella against the sofa's arm and turned
sideways to face me. I had sat down by the window, not caring to go back
and run the risk of disturbing Roger.
"Now come, sir," she said, "let us talk comfortable: you won't mind
giving me your opinion, I dare say. I have looked out for an opportunity
to ask it: you being what you are, sir, and his good friend. Them
two--they don't hit it off well together, do they?"
Knowing she must allude to Bevere and his wife, I had no ready answer
at hand. Mrs. Dyke took silence for assent.
"Ah, I see how it is. I thought I must be right; I've thought it for
some time. But Lizzie only laughs in my face, when I ask her. There's
no happiness between 'em; just the other thing; I told Lizzie so only
yesterday. But they can't undo what they have done, and there's nothing
left for them, sir, but to make the best of it."
"That's true, Mrs. Dyke. And I think Lizzie might do more towards it
than she does. If she would only----"
"Only try to get a bit into his ways and manners and not offend him with
hers," put in discerning Mrs. Dyke, when I hesitated, "He is as nice a
young gentleman as ever lived, and I believe has the making in him of a
good husband. But Lizzie is vulgar and her ways are vulgar; and instead
of checking herself and remembering that he is just the opposite, and
that naturally it must offend him, she lets herself grow more so day by
day. I know what's what, sir, having been used to the ways of gentry
when I was a young woman, for I lived cook for some years in a good
family."
"Lizzie's ways are so noisy."
"Her ways are noisy and rampagious," assented Mrs. Dyke, "more
particularly when she has been at her drops; and noise puts out a sick
man."
"Her drops!" I repeated, involuntarily, the word calling up a latent
doubt that lay in my mind.
"When girls that have been in busy employment all day and every day,
suddenly settle down to idleness, they sometimes slip into this habit or
that habit, not altogether good for themselves, which they might never
else have had time to think of," remarked Mrs. Dyke. "I've come in here
more than once lately and seen Lizzie drinking hot spirits-and-water in
the daytime: I know you must have seen the same, sir, or I'd not mention
it--and beer she'll take unlimited."
Of course I had seen it.
"I think she must have learnt it at the counter; drinking never was in
our family, and I never knew that it was in her father's," continued
Mrs. Dyke. "But some of the young women, serving at these bars, get to
like the drink through having the sight and smell of it about 'em all
day long."
That was more than likely, but I did not say so, not caring to continue
that branch of the subject.
"The marriage was a misfortune, Mrs. Dyke."
"For him I suppose you gentlemen consider it was," she answered. "It
will be one for her if he should die: she'd have to go back to work
again and she has got out o' the trick of it. Ah! she thought grand
things of it at first, naturally, marrying a gentleman! But unequal
marriages rarely turn out well in the long run. I knew nothing of it
till it was done and over, or I should have advised her against it; my
husband's place lay in a different part of London then--Eaton Square
way. Better, perhaps, for Lizzie had she gone out to service in the
country, like her sister."
"Did she always live in London?"
"Dear, no, sir, nor near it; she lived down in Essex with her father
and mother. But she came up to London on a visit, and fell in love with
the public life, through getting to know a young woman who was in it.
Nothing could turn her, once her mind was set upon it; and being sharp
and clever, quick at figures, she got taken on at some wine-vaults
in the city. After staying there awhile and giving satisfaction, she
changed to the refreshment-room at the Bell-and-Clapper. Miss Panken
went there soon after, and they grew very intimate. The young girl left,
who had been there before her; very pretty she was: I don't know what
became of her. At some of the counters they have but one girl; at
others, two."
"It is a pity girls should be at them at all--drawing on the young men!
I am speaking generally, Mrs. Dyke."
"It is a pity the young men should be so soft as to be drawn on by
them--if you'll excuse my saying it, sir," she returned, quickly. "But
there--what would you? Human nature's the same all the world over: Jack
and Jill. The young men like to talk to the girls, and the girls like
very much to talk to the young men. Of course these barmaids lay
themselves out to the best advantage, in the doing of their hair and
their white frills, and what not, which is human nature again, sir. Look
at a young lady in a drawing-room: don't she set herself off when she is
expecting the beaux to call?"
Mrs. Dyke paused for want of breath. Her tongue ran on fast, but it told
of good sense.
"The barmaids are but like the young ladies, sir; and the young fellows
that congregate there get to admire them, while sipping their drops at
the counter; if, as I say, they are soft enough. When the girls get hold
of one softer than the rest, why, perhaps one of them gets over him so
far as to entrap him to give her his name--just as safe as you hook and
land a fish."
"And I suppose it has a different termination sometimes?"
Honest Mrs. Dyke shook her head. "We won't talk about that, sir: I can't
deny that it may happen once in a way. Not often, let's hope. The young
women, as a rule, are well-conducted and respectable: they mostly know
how to take care of themselves."
"I should say Miss Panken does."
Mrs. Dyke's broad face shone with merriment. "Ain't she impudent? Oh
yes, sir, Polly Panken can take care of herself, never fear. But it's
not a good atmosphere for young girls to be in, you see, sir, these
public bars; whether it may be only at a railway counter, or at one of
them busy taverns in the town, or at the gay places of amusement, the
manners and morals of the girls get to be a bit loose, as it were, and
they can't help it."
"Or anybody else, I suppose."
"No, sir, not as things are; and it's just a wrong upon them that they
should be exposed to it. They'd be safer and quieter in a respectable
service, which is the state of life many of 'em were born to--though a
few may be superior--and better behaved, too: manners is sure to get a
bit corrupted in the public line. But the girls like their liberty;
they like the free-and-easy public life and its idleness; they like the
flirting and the chaffing and the nonsense that goes on; they like to be
dressed up of a day as if they were so many young ladies, their hair
done off in bows and curls and frizzes, and their hands in cuffs and
lace-edgings; now and then you may see 'em with a ring on. That's a
better life, they think, than they'd lead as servants or shop-women, or
any of the other callings open to this class of young women: and perhaps
it is. It's easier, at any rate. I've heard that some quite superior
young people are in it, who might be, or were, governesses, and couldn't
find employment, poor young ladies, through the market being so
overstocked. Ah, it is a hard thing, sir, for a well-brought-up young
woman to find lady-like employment nowadays. One thing is certain,"
concluded Mrs. Dyke, "that we shall never have a lack of barmaids in
this country until a law is passed by the legislature--which, happen,
never will be passed--to forbid girls serving in these places. There'd
be less foolishness going on then, and a deal less drinking."
These were Pitt's ideas over again.
A loud laugh outside, and Lizzie came running in. "Why, Aunt Dyke, are
you there!--entertaining Mr. Johnny Ludlow!" she exclaimed, as she threw
herself into a chair. "Well, I never. And what _do_ you two think I am
going to do to-morrow?"
"Now just you mind your manners, young woman," advised the aunt.
"I am minding them--don't you begin blowing-up," retorted Lizzie, her
face brimming over with good-humour.
"You might have your things stole; you and the girl out together," said
Mrs. Dyke.
"There's nothing to steal but chairs and tables. I'm sure I'm much
obliged to you both for sitting here to take care of them. You'll
never guess what I am going to do," broke off Lizzie, with shrieks
of laughter. "I am going to take my old place again at the
Bell-and-Clapper, and serve behind the counter for the day: Mabel
Falkner wants a holiday. Won't it be fun!"
"Your husband will not let you; he would not like it," I said in my
haste, while Mrs. Dyke sat in open-mouthed amazement.
"And I shall put on my old black dress; I've got it yet; and be a
regular barmaid again. A lovely costume, that black is!" ironically ran
on Lizzie. "Neat and not gaudy, as the devil said when he painted his
tail pea-green. You need not look as though you thought I had made
acquaintance with him and heard him say it, Mr. Johnny; I only borrowed
it from one of Bulwer's novels that I read the other day."
If I did not think that, I thought Madam Lizzie had been making
acquaintance this afternoon with something else. "Drops!" as Mrs. Dyke
called it.
"There I shall be to-morrow, at the old work, and you can both come and
see me at it," said Lizzie. "I'll treat you more civilly, Mr. Johnny,
than Polly Panken did."
"But I say that your husband will not allow you to go," I repeated to
her.
"Ah, he's in bed," she laughed; "he can't get out of it to stop me."
"You are all on the wrong tack, Lizzie girl," spoke up the aunt,
severely. "If you don't mind, it will land you in shoals and quicksands.
How dare you think of running counter to what you know your husband's
wishes would be?"
She received this with a louder laugh than ever. "He will not know
anything about it, Aunt Dyke. Unless Mr. Johnny Ludlow here should tell
him. It would not make any difference to me if he did," she concluded,
with candour.
And as I felt sure it would not, I held my tongue.
By degrees, as the days went on, Roger got about again, and when I
left London he was back at St. Bartholomew's. Other uncanny things had
happened to me during this visit of mine, but not one of them brought
with it so heavy a weight as the thought of poor Roger Bevere and his
blighted life.
"His health may get all right if he will give up drinking," were the
last words Pitt said to me. "He has promised to do so."
* * * * *
The weather was cold and wintry as we began our railway journey. From
two to three years have gone on, you must please note, since the time
told of above. Mr. Brandon was about to spend the Christmas with his
sister, Lady Bevere--who had quitted Hampshire and settled not far from
Brighton--and she had sent me an invitation to accompany him.
We took the train at Evesham. It was Friday, and the shortest day in the
year; St. Thomas, the twenty-first of December. Some people do not care
to begin a journey on a Friday, thinking it bodes ill-luck: I might have
thought the same had I foreseen what was to happen before we got home
again.
London reached, we met Roger Bevere at the Brighton Station, as agreed
upon. He was to travel down with us. I had not seen him since the time
of his illness in London, except for an hour once when I was in town
upon some business for the Squire. Nothing had transpired to his
friends, so far as I knew, of the fatal step he had taken; that was a
secret still.
I cannot say I much liked Roger's appearance now, as he sat
opposite me in the railway-carriage, leaning against the arm of the
comfortably-cushioned seat. His fair, pleasant face was gentle as ever,
but the once clear blue eyes no longer looked very clear and did not
meet ours freely; his hands shook, his fingers were restless. Mr.
Brandon did not much like the signs either, to judge by the way he
stared at him.
"Have you been well lately, Roger?"
"Oh yes, thank you, Uncle John."
"Well, your looks don't say much for you."
"I am rather hard-worked," said Roger. "London is not a place to grow
rosy in."
"Do you like your new work?" continued Mr. Brandon. For Roger had done
with St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and was outdoor assistant to a surgeon
in private practice, a Mr. Anderson.
"I like it better than the hospital work, Uncle John."
"Ah! A fine idea that was of yours--wanting to set up in practice
for yourself the minute you had passed. Your mother did well to send
the letter to me and ask my advice. Some of you boys--boys, and no
better--fresh from your hospital studies, screw a brass-plate on your
door, announcing yourselves to the world as qualified surgeons. A few of
you go a step further and add M.D."
"Many of us take our degree as physician at once, Uncle John," said
Roger. "It is becoming quite the custom."
"Just so: the custom!" retorted Mr. Brandon, cynically. "Why didn't
_you_ do it, and modestly call yourself Dr. Bevere? In my former days,
young man, when some ultra-grave ailment necessitated application to a
physician, we went to him in all confidence, knowing that he was a man
of steady years, of long-tried experience, whose advice was to be relied
upon. Now, if you are dying and call in some Dr. So-and-so, you may find
him a young fellow of three or four and twenty. As likely as not only an
M.B. in reality, who has arrogated to himself the title of Doctor. For I
hear some of them do it."
"But they think they have a right to be called so, Uncle John. The
question----"
"What right?" sharply demanded Mr. Brandon. "What gives it them?"
"Well--courtesy, I suppose," hesitated Roger.
"Oh," said Mr. Brandon.