After a time it appeared that Sally had a suitor. She went out occasionally with friends she had made in the workroom, and had met a young man, an electrical engineer in a very good way of business, who was a most eligible person. One day she told her mother that he had asked her to marry him.
‘What did you say?' said her mother.
‘Oh, I told him I wasn't over-anxious to marry anyone just yet awhile.' She paused a little as was her habit between observations. ‘He took on so that I said he might come to tea on Sunday.'
It was an occasion that thoroughly appealed to Athelny. He rehearsed all the afternoon how he should play the heavy father for the young man's edification till he reduced his children to helpless giggling. Just before he was due Athelny routed out an Egyptian tarboosh and insisted on putting it on.
‘Go on with you, Athelny,' said his wife, who was in her best, which was of black velvet, and, since she was growing stouter every year, very tight for her. ‘You'll spoil the girl's chances.'
She tried to pull it off, but the little man skipped nimbly out of her way.
‘Unhand me, woman. Nothing will induce me to take it off. This young man must be shown at once that it is no ordinary family he is preparing to enter.'
‘Let him keep it on, mother,' said Sally, in her even, indifferent fashion. ‘If Mr Donaldson doesn't take it the way it's meant he can take himself off, and good riddance.'
Philip thought it was a severe ordeal that the young man was being exposed to, since Athelny, in his brown velvet jacket, flowing black tie, and red tarboosh, was a startling spectacle for an innocent electrical engineer. When he came he was greeted by his host with the proud courtesy of a Spanish grandee and by Mrs Athelny in an altogether homely and natural fashion. They sat down at the old ironing-table in the high-backed monkish chairs, and Mrs Athelny poured tea out of a lustre teapot which gave a note of England and the countryside to the festivity. She had made little cakes with her own hand, and on the table was home-made jam. It was a farmhouse tea, and to Philip very quaint and charming in that Jacobean house. Athelny for some fantastic reason took it into his head to discourse upon Byzantine history; he had been reading the later volumes of the Decline and Fall; and, his forefinger dramatically extended, he poured into the astonished ears of the suitor scandalous stories about Theodora and Irene. He addressed himself directly to his guest with a torrent of rhodomontade; and the young man, reduced to helpless silence and shy, nodded his head at intervals to show that he took an intelligent interest. Mrs Athelny paid no attention to Thorpe's conversation, but interrupted now and then to offer the young man more tea or to press upon him cake and jam. Philip watched Sally; she sat with downcast eyes, calm, silent, and observant; and her long eyelashes cast a pretty shadow on her cheek. You could not tell whether she was amused at the scene or if she cared for the young man. She was inscrutable. But one thing was certain: the electrical engineer was good-looking, fair and clean-shaven, with pleasant, regular features, and an honest face; he was tall and well made. Philip could not help thinking he would make an excellent mate for her, and he felt a pang of envy for the happiness which he fancied was in store for them.
Presently the suitor said he thought it was about time he was getting along. Sally rose to her feet without a word and accompanied him to the door. When she came back her father burst out:
‘Well, Sally, we think your young man very nice. We are prepared to welcome him into our family. Let the banns be called and I will compose a nuptial song.'
Sally set about clearing away the tea things. She did not answer. Suddenly she shot a swift glance at Philip.
‘What did you think of him, Mr Philip?'
She had always refused to call him Uncle Phil as the other children did, and would not call him Philip.
‘I think you'd make an awfully handsome pair.'
She looked at him quickly once more, and then with a slight blush went on with her business.
‘I thought him a very nice civil-spoken young fellow,' said Mrs Athelny, ‘and I think he's just the sort to make any girl happy.'
Sally did not reply for a minute or two, and Philip looked at her curiously: it might be thought that she was meditating upon what her mother had said, and on the other hand she might be thinking of the man in the moon.
‘Why don't you answer when you're spoken to, Sally?' remarked her mother, a little irritably.
‘I thought he was a silly.'
‘Aren't you going to have him then?'
‘No, I'm not.'
‘I don't know how much more you want,' said Mrs Athelny, and it was quite clear now that she was put out. ‘He's a very decent young fellow and he can afford to give you a thorough good home. We've got quite enough to feed here without you. If you get a chance like that it's wicked not to take it. And I daresay you'd be able to have a girl to do the rough work.'
Philip had never before heard Mrs Athelny refer so directly to the difficulties of her life. He saw how important it was that each child should be provided for.
‘It's no good your carrying on, mother,' said Sally in her quiet way. ‘I'm not going to marry him.'
‘I think you're a very hard-hearted, cruel, selfish girl.'
‘If you want me to earn my own living, mother, I can always go into service.'
‘Don't be so silly, you know your father would never let you do that.'
Philip caught Sally's eye, and he thought there was in it a glimmer of amusement. He wondered what there had been in the conversation to touch her sense of humour. She was an odd girl.
CXVI
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 th
at 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 practise, 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 bedroom 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 seaside 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 copper-plate 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 were 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.