Of Human Bondage (110 page)

  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.