NG PHYSICIAN
[CIS BRETT YOUNG
THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
I
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE CRESCENT MOON
THE IRON AGE
THE DARK TOWEH
DEEP SEA
UNDERGROWTH
(with E. Brett Young)
MARCHING ON TANGA
POEMS 1916-1918.
E. P. DTJTTON & COMPANY
NEW YORK
THE
YOUNG PHYSICIAN
BY
FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG
AUTHOR OF "MABCHING ON TANGA," ETC.
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
Copyright, 1920,
By E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY
All Rights Reserved
First printing March, 19SO
Second printing March, 1920
Third printing. . .September, 1920
Printed in the United States of America
To
THOMAS BRETT YOUNG, M.D.
WITH THE LOVE AND ADMIRATION
OF HIS SON
2139016
CONTENTS
BOOK I
CHAPTEB PAQB
i. MURDERER'S CROSS 1
II. GOLDEN MEDIOCRITY 16
m. THE GREEN TREES 27
IV. MIDSUMMER 42
V. AIRS AND GRACES 57
VI. THUNDER WEATHER 69
VII. IMPURITY 86
VIII. HOMEWARDS 107
EX. THE DARK HOUSE ... . . 124
X. THRENODY 153
XI. THE THRESHOLD 184
XII. THE HILLS 211
BOOK II
I. THE CITY OF IRON 249
II. MORTALITY BEHOLD 272
III. CARNIVAL . , v . 296
IV. SCIENCE - . 324
vu
via CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
V. ROMANCE . 346
VI. THE DRESSER 372
VII. THE CLERK 403
Vin. LOWER SPARKDALE 435
IX. EASY ROW 460
X. WHITE ROSES . 487
BOOK I
The green trees, when I saw them
first through one of the gates, trans-
ported and ravished me; their sweet-
ness and unusual beauty made my
heart to leap and almost mad with
ecstasy, they were such strange
and wonderful things. The skies
were mine, and so were the sun and
moon and stars, and all the world
was mine, and I the only spectator
and enjoyer of it.
THOMAS TRAHEBNB.
THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
CHAPTER I
MURDERER'S CROSS
ABOVE and beyond the zone of villas, some still
white with newly-mixed mortar and the latest
unadorned by more than twelve-foot tendrils of
ampelopsis or rambling roses, the downs bent their
bow to the sky. The horizon loomed so smooth
and vast that the plantations of pine and beech
which fringed the summits were powerless to break
the nobility and purpose of its contour, etched gray-
black against the hem of a thunder-cloud that was
of the colour of ink. Between the banks a chalk
road climbed: an aspiring road, felted in the
trodden parts with dust but cross-veined with flinty
gutters through which rain poured, like London
milk, in stormy weather. A smell of hot earth was
in the air. The turf at the wayside was parched
and slippery, so that Edwin Ingleby, plodding up
the slope, was forced to keep to the white roadway
by the slipperiness of his boot-leather. A rather
pitiful figure he made, this small boy in an Eton
jacket, his waistcoat now unbuttoned and his
school cap crumpled in his hot hands. He walked
and ran straight upward, as though the devil were
2 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
at his heels; sometimes looking behind him to see
if there were any one in pursuit, sometimes wiping
the sweat from his forehead with the crumpled cap.
A wagonette, drawn by a pair of horses and
burdened with trippers, jolted past him, throwing
up a cloud of chalk-dust that made his eyes smart.
Inside it swayed seven fat women in black bodices.
The guard, who was sufficiently sober, in his own
opinion, to ride on the step, was seen to laugh at
the dust-smothered boy in the road.
"Poor lamb," said the most motherly of the seven.
"Wouldn't 'e like a lift?"
"Gowing the hopposite way, mem," said the
guard. "One of them College lads."
" 'Ot 'e looks !" said the lady. "Going to rine
kets and dorgs, too."
Edwin Ingleby rubbed the dust out of, or into,
his eyes and went plugging on to the top of the
ridge where the road dipped through a belt of
beeches into the trough between two billows of
down, losing itself within high banks of turf which
bordered the plough-land, satiny now with bearded
wheat and infinitely restful. He sat down on the
bank with his feet in the gutter and began to mop
up tears with the cap that he had lately used for
mopping up sweat. All the time that he was crying,
his heart was really full of almost incontinent
valour, and that was why his tears made him angry.
He began talking to himself :
"Damned beast . . . great beefy beast. ... If
only the men could see what a damned beast he is.
If Lay ton or some one could give him what he
wants. Only no one could fight him. . . . He's got
MURDERER'S CROSS 3
a weak heart, and it might kill him. I suppose that
would be murder. ..."
The word suddenly got a new significance. They
called this road Murderer's Cross Road. High up
in the grassy bank some pious person had cut a St.
Andrew's cross to commemorate the murder of a
postman who had been relieved of his bags and
his life on a dark night a century ago. The col-
lege tradition said that it was haunted. Certainly
it had an ugly sound. Murderer's Cross Road: a
name to be whispered.
"Funny . . ." said Edwin. "There's nothing
very awful about it. I could understand a chap
wanting to murder a chap. Quite easily. Only he
might be sorry about it afterwards. I wouldn't
mind murdering Griffin."
He took a silver watch out of his pocket and
laid it on the bank beside him. He could see that
there was a full hour to spare before the bell in
the water tower would jangle for the evening roll-
call in the corner of the Quad ; and so he lay back
easily on the bank, stretching out his legs and
arms in the form of the St. Andrew's cross scored
in the hedge a little farther on. Lying thus he
could watch the shimmer on the bearded wheat.
He had always loved the softness of this dip in
the downs. He had loved it on winter mornings
delicately dusted with rime, in November when
flints lay like a bloom on the pale fallow, in March
when the bloom turned green. Now the thunder-
clouds had rolled away, rumbling, from the south,
and a breath of cooler air was moving through the
valley, throwing the surface of that green sea into
4 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
wave-like motion ; the waves shuddered faintly and
the sound came to his ears as though re-echoed from
the heavy woods which stood still in the heat,
bounding the green ripples; and lying there, with
his eyes half-closed, Edwin was already afloat,
bearing westward with the set of the tide in the
track of Cortes and Columbus and Pizarro and
other adventurous voyagers. It was not really very
difficult for him to forget his tears. Although the
fear of Griffin, that had first driven him afield, was
a cruel obsession to which he was liable by night
ajid day, he had long ago discovered that silence
and solitude could make him free of any wonder
which he chose to imagine. It had been like that
even when he was quite little; he had always
possessed the faculty of day-dreaming; and now
that his imagination was beginning to flush at the
sound of great names, and the pomps of chivalry
and legend were slowly unfolding before him with
their subtle suggestiveness unhampered by such
knowledge of detail as would be alive to incongrui-
ties, his idleness became daily more precious. He
suddenly remembered that Achaean assembly
stirred by Agamemnon's words "as when the West
wind eometh to stir a deep cornfield with violent
blast, and the ears bow down. . . ." And now the
wind-moved wheat bent like a stricken army before
knightly lances, and the roll of retreating thunder
awoke echoes of the guns of Waterloo. ... *
n
It was nearly three years since Edwin had first
seen Griffin, oddly enough on the very first day of
MURDERER'S CROSS 5
his life at St. Luke's. Mrs. Ingleby had come down
from the Midlands with him, a little anxious, for
there were pitfalls in public school life (it was
in ninety-five), but immensely proud of Edwin's
entrance scholarship. They had crossed London
together in a hansom, and on the smoky platform at
Victoria, she had bidden him a good-bye which cost
her some pangs, for the poor boy was half dead
with train-sickness. Edwin was her only child,
and some smouldering ethic decreed that he must
not be pampered, but when she raised her veil to
kiss him, tears escaped beneath its rim. Those tears
were very unsettling; they gave him a sudden
glimpse of his mother in a new light; but he felt
too ill even to watch her hurrying to the end of
the platform. His head ached so violently in the
sulphurous station air that he wouldn't have minded
much if some one, say his next-door neighbour in
the train, a city clerk who smoked the most manly
tobacco, had relieved him of the half-sovereign, the
last gift of all, that he clutched mechanically in
his left-hand trouser pocket or if the porters, in
the fine free way they have, had smashed all the
jampots in the playbox so obstrusively white and
new, with
E. INGLEBY
115
in black lettering on the lid.
The rest of that journey he had been too prostrate
and lethargic to realise. Somewhere the shouting
of a familiar word had bundled him out of his
6 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
corner; a porter whom he had tipped fumblingly
had bundled him into a cab which smelt of straw,
and at last the martial-looking personage who re-
ceived him at the grand entrance had conveyed
him up a broad flight of stone stairs and along a
corridor that echoed their two pairs of foot-steps,
to the housemaster's room, where, in an atmosphere
of mellow honeydew, Mr. Selby sat at his desk,
trifling with a bath-list of the big dormitory.
Ingleby sat at one end of a luxurious sofa, feeling
very sick. It seemed as though he could never
escape from the smell of tobacco. At the other end
of the sofa sat another boy, perhaps three years
older than Edwin. He was tall for his age and
inclined to be fat. His feet were small and shapely,
and their smallness accentuated the heavy build
of his shoulders, so that the whole boy seemed to
taper downwards on the lines of a peg-top. He
had a broad face, covered with freckles, regular but
undistinguished features, and eyes, rather wide
apart, of a peculiar cold and light blue. His hair
was crisp and sandy; his whole get-up a little
dandiacal within the limits of black and gray. He
kept on fingering silver coins, that jingled together
faintly in the depths of his pocket ; perhaps he was
counting them in the dark ; perhaps he was merely
fidgeting.
Mr. Selby looked up from his bath-list.
"Well, Griffin, and what is your pleasure?"
"Letter from father, sir."
A letter from father would need an answer. Mr.
Selby, although an expert in the tortuous psy-
chology of parents, was a lazy man. He sighed as
MURDERER'S CROSS 7
he opened it. "H'm . . . No games? You don't look
particularly ill, Griffin."
"Doctor said I was growing too fast, sir ...
something about my heart." Griffin's manners were
irreproachable.
Mr. Selby smiled.
"Very well, Griffin, very well. I will speak to
the head-master about you. And who is this
miserable weed?"
There had been no break in the drawl of Mr.
Selby's voice with this change of subject, and Edwin
did not hear, or heard without understanding.
Griffin shook him by the shoulder. He lurched for-
ward like a creature coming out of a cellar into
day light.
"Ingleby, sir," he said.
"Ingleby . . . Oh, yes. Let me see. You won't
need to take the placing exam, to-morrow because
of your scholarship papers. You'll be in the lower
fourth. So Griffin will look after you. Do you
hear, Griffin? I think Ingleby will be in your
form. You are not overwhelmingly likely to get a
move, are you?"
Griffin murmured "No, sir."
"Then you can conduct this Ingleby to D dormi-
tory, Griffin."
Griffin whispered "Come on," and walked ahead
down the length of the corridor and another flight
of stairs to a room of immense length, with white-
washed walls, along which were ranged as many
as thirty red-blanketed beds. Down the centre of
the dormitory a trastled table of well-scoured wood
8 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
held a double row of wash-hand basins and soap-
dishes.
"There you are," said Griffin, in a very off-hand
way. "You'd better bag a bed."
"Which one is mine, please?" Edwin asked. His
head was aching so furiously that he could have
lain down on the floor.
"I've told you, you've got to bag one. Don't you
hear? You'd better go and ask that man over there.
Try the next one to his."
That man over there was a stumpy boy with the
face of a hyena and a shock of black hair, who
scowled at Ingleby's approach.
"Here, get away. You can't come here. I don't
want any new kids near me. Keep him to yourself,
Griffin."
Ingleby was thrown violently into Griffin's arms,
and then buffeted backwards and forwards like a
shuttlecock between them. This game proved to
be such excellent fun that wherever he sought a
bed on which to lay his things it was continued by
his immediate neighbours. He was. greenly pale
and beginning to cry when a tall, dark boy, wear-
ing glasses, arrived and made straight for the group
that surrounded him.
"Here's Layton," whispered some one.
"What's this?" he asked. "A new boy? What's
your name?"
"Ingleby."
"What's the matter?"
"They won't let me find a bed."
"Come along down this end, then." He moved
majestically to the end of the dormitory nearest
MURDERER'S CROSS 9-
to the door and pointed to a vacant bedstead..
"There you are," he said. He was kindly without
the least trace of unbending. Ingleby took him for
a prefect ; already he had received the canonisation,
of heroism. He stood and watched Edwin spread
out his nightshirt on the bed. At this moment the
climax of his migraine arrived. Edwin was sick.
Layton's lips curled. "Dirty little skunk," he-
said as he hurried away.
A slipper, cleverly aimed from the other end of
the room, caught Ingleby full on his burning cheek..
The pain seemed to blind him.
And a skunk, in spite of himself, he remained,
for small boys are as persistently unintelligent as>
parrots in their memory for names. Ingleby's.
"skunkhood" became a tradition that he never
wholly lived down during his first years at St.
Luke's. In them he experienced all the inevitable-
qualms of homesickness, although even these were
more tolerable than the physical qualms which had
complicated his arrival, for they passed quickly
in the excitement of a new life, the adoption of
new standards, the spring of new ambitions. It
was a thousand times unfortunate that he should
have made such a sensational debut, that chance
should have included such circumstances as Griffin
and a sick-headache in his first day; for all that
was instinct in the boy rebelled against the
category in which he found himself placed, the
definition of his status that had been hastily formu-
lated by a few small boys, and almost tacitly ac-
cepted by the masters.
To begin with, he had very few of the attributes
io THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
of the skunk. He was neither dirty nor under-
sized : indeed he had a nice instinct for personal
cleanliness, and all the slim, balanced beauty of
a young boy's figure. He was far from unintelli-
gent though this counts for little enough in the
schedules of precedence at school. It amounted to
this : he was not used to the company of other boys ;
he had never played games; he had made himself
objectionable on his first night in the dormitory
and Layton had called him a skunk. Griffin saw
to the rest, seconded by the lad with the hyena face,
who bore the illustrious name of Douglas. Strange-
ly enough no one but Ingleby seemed to have tapped
the romance in the hyena-faced's name. Setting
out to find any tokens of Chevy Chase beneath the
black mop, he was caught staring in Hall, and as
a proper retribution for such insolence, subjected
to the pain and indignity of a "tight six" with a
gym shoe, his head wedged in two stocks of Mr.
Griffin's thighs. New boys of his own age, and
smaller, seeing this exhibition, formed a very low
estimate of Ingleby. They shuddered also at the
knowledge that he had been heard to ask the dif-
ference between a drop-kick and a punt.
This isolation, except for purposes of chastise-
ment, weighed heavily on Edwin. He didn't wish
to be different from others, although he felt that
his mind was somehow of a painfully foreign text-
ure. He knew that things somehow struck him
differently ... but he was so far from taking this
as a mark of superiority that he was heartily
ashamed of it. His whole ambition was towards
the normal ; he tried vigorously to suppress imagi-
MURDERER'S CROSS u
nation, humour, all the inconvenient things with
which he had been cursed ; to starve them, to destroy
them. He became studious of the ways of normal-
ity. Griffin and the noble Douglas were handy
exemplars; Layton, the head of the house, an un-
attainable ideal. Layton, indeed, was something of
a variant ; but Layton, by means of his slim skull's
capacity for retaining facts and an ingratiating
piety, had passed beyond the pale of everyday en-
deavour. Edwin longed to be normal, and they
wouldn't let him. He cultivated assiduously the
use of the fashionable slang; and that, of course,
was easy. He whipped up an interest in outdoor
games; played his very hardest in the ordinary
house football, and even volunteered to take part
in the Soccer games organised on fag-days for small
boys by Mr. Selby, who nursed a lazy grudge
against the Rugby Code. "The Miserable Weeds,"
they were called, enshrining his favourite epithet.
But though he plunged out of school every morning
to practise place-kicking in the fields before din-
ner, Ingleby was not destined to shine in sport.
His habit of dropping off to sleep between fitful
bursts of brilliance almost caused him to be up-
rooted from Mr. Selby's plantation of weeds. This
didn't worry him much, because Soccer was not
popular; but after two trials in the house third,
which the baleful Douglas captained, he was de-
graded to the scratch side known as Small Boys;
and even here the scrum extinguished a talent that
might have shone in the three-quarter line.
And since he failed in every endeavour to attain
normality, whether by devotion to games or by
12 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
those attempts which he made to prove that he
was neither "coxy" nor "pi," by a retiring manner
and a foul tongue, he began to crawl back into his
shell, nursing a passionate hatred, not unmixed
with envy, for all those people whom he couldn't
hope to be like. And so, in a little time, this danger-
ous humiliation turned to a sort of pride. It pleased
him to count himself their superior even when he
was most downtrodden. His form master had re-
cently been boring the class with a little disserta-
tion on Marcus Aurelius. Edwin became a Stoic,
spending his days in far corners of the box-room,
munching a slowly dwindling store of biscuits.
Once Griffin caught him with his locker door open
and pinioned him against the benches while
Douglas made free with his Petits-Beurres to the
rest of the box-room. For such contingencies as
this the Emperor's system of philosophy seemed
hardly adequate.
Most of all he dreaded the dormitory; for here
the abandonment of clothes laid him open to partic-
ularly painful forms of oppression; the shock and
horror of bedclothes ragged just as he was falling
off to sleep; the numbing swing of a pillow, the
lancinating flick of wet towels; Oh! a hell of a
life, only to be terminated by the arrival of Layton,
who had the privilege of sitting up till eleven, with
black rings round his spectacled eyes. He was read-
ing for a scholarship at Cambridge. Then Ingleby
would really get off to sleep, or sometimes, if he
were too excited, watch the moonlight, broken by
the stone mullions of the windows, whiten the long
washing-table and cast blue shadows so intense that
MURDERER'S CROSS 13
they heightened the bareness of the dormitory; or
else he would listen to the harsh breathing of
Douglas, who slept with his mouth open, and won-
der what all those heavy sleepers were dreaming
of, or if they dreamed at all. And then his own
magic casements were opened.
At St. Luke's he had discovered the trick quite
a new thing for him of historical dreaming. His
form were busy with the age of the Stuarts, under
the direction of a master named Leeming, a mild-
eyed cleric, rather shy of boys and feverishly grate-
ful whenever he sprung a response to his own en-
thusiasms.
Ingleby drank deep of the period's romance, and
this heady wine coloured his dreams. He would
dream sometimes of the tenanted oak of Boscobel,
watching with agony the movements of the Round-
head searchers; sometimes he would stand elbow-
ing in the crowd about that scaffold at Whitehall,
when the martyr king stepped out. The man at
his left hand had been eating garlic. Ha! a
Frenchman. One of those musketeers! . . . He
would tremble with delight. He wished that he
could tell Mr. Leeming of his dreams, but they were
far too precious to risk being bruised by laughter
or unconcern. All night long this queer panoramic
rubbish would go seething through his brain, until,
at six-fifteen, one of the waiters swung a harsh bell
outside the dormitory door and he would turn over,
trying to piece together the thin stuff that ita
clangour had so suddenly broken, until the ten-foil
rang, and the rush for early school began. He
14 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
greV to love the winter terms because the darkness
lasted longer.
But he did write to his mother about it. Always
on Sunday mornings the sergeant would come in
with a letter from her, full of the strangely remote
news of home; how the garden was looking, what
Aunt Laura was doing, and how they talked of
felling the elm-trees in the lane. Sometimes, with
the lavishness of an angel, she would put a couple
of penny stamps inside for his reply. The odd
stamp would buy a stick of chocolate or a packet
of nougat at the tuck shop. And in these letters
she rose, quite unexpectedly, to the recitation of
his dreams. "How lovely it must be for you," she
wrote. "When you come home for the holidays at
Christmas we will read some of Scott's novels aloud
Waverley and Nigel, and that will give you some-
thing more to dream about." He began to realise
what he hadn't seen before: that his mother was
really a wonderful playfellow much better, when
he came to think of it, than any of the boys. He
would have so much to explain to her. . . . "Oh,
you dear, you are lovely !" he wrote in reply.
And then one day, that sneak Douglas, fooling
about in the dormitory with Edwin's toothbrush,
happened to see the words that were faintly printed
on the ivory handle:
INGLBBY, CHEMIST, HALESBY.
"Oho," he said.
At breakfast, after a propitiatory but futile help-
ing of jam from Edwin's pot, he broke the glad
news to Griffin.
MURDERER'S CROSS 15
"Ingleby's father's a chemist, Griff."
"Then that's why he's such a skunk, Duggy. Is
it true, Ingleby?"
"Yes. He's a chemist."
"Then he isn't a gentleman."
"Of course he's a gentleman."
"Not if he's in trade. They oughtn't to have sent
you to school here. It's a bally shame."
That same afternoon Edwin was poring over a
letter at his desk in Big School. His mother al-
ways told him to keep her letters. "Some day you
may like to look at them," she said. He was read-
ing this letter for the tenth time to see if he could
extract some last scrapings of the atmosphere of
home which it had brought him.
"Who's that letter from? . . . Girl?" said Griffin
rudely.
"A lady."
"What!"
"My mother."
"Christ! Your mother isn't a lady, or she
wouldn't have married a chemist ... or be your
mother."
And then Edwin jumped up, overturning the
form on which he had been sitting, and lashed out
at Griffin's face. He wanted to smash the freckled
thing. He only caught the boy's cheek with the flat
of his hand, and then, after a second of dazed won-
der at his own achievement, he rushed out of Big
School, across the Quad, and up that white, dust-
felted road to the downs.
CHAPTER II
GOLJ)EN MEDIOCRITY
OF course he got his thrashing in return ; but, in
the end, he found himself the gainer by that
unthinkable outburst. The incident had been noted,
and there were those who relished the blow to
Griffin's prestige, a blow which no recriminatory
lickings could efface. Edwin assured himself that
he had that day lighted such a candle in England
as should never be put out. It seemed, indeed, as
though the affair had revealed to some of his own
classmates that intellectual superiority which they
had overlooked before ; and, in particular, it made
the basis of a friendship between himself and one
of his rivals, a boy named Widdup, who combined
with a head for mathematics Edwin's blank
despair a certain proficiency in games. Widdup
disliked Griffin.
"Great beefy beast," he said. "If they'd make
him play footer and sweat some of the fat off him
he'd have been a bit quicker on you. He wasn't
half waxy about it. He hates being laughed
at. . .
And so, as the terms slipped by, St. Luke's ceased
to be a purgatory. Edwin contracted certain timid
16
GOLDEN MEDIOCRITY 17
friendships as this with Widdup and adored a
series of perfectly ordinary prefects. He shook
down into his proper place in the scheme of things,
and after that nobody took much notice of him.
Even the Griffin-Douglas coalition, who never for-
gave, troubled him very little. Certain outbursts
of persecution he took as a matter of course; such
was the teaching of history ; but the ways of these
two were now widely divergent from those in which
he trod. The dormitory was the only place in
which they inevitably met, for he had managed to
move his seat in Hall some way from that of Griffin ;
and in chapel, the only other place they had in
common, he was safe.
The friendship with Widdup notably ripened.
They were both members of the same branch of the
Natural History Society, the one that was labelled
astronomical. The subject was unpopular, for its
pursuit was nocturnal and made no exciting appeal
to the hunting instinct of boys. The section met
every fortnight in the room of one of the mathe-
matical masters. And since they met at night, they
managed to escape second Prep. Their president,
Mr. Heal, was a rather melancholy performer on
the flute, and Edwin, generally contriving to turn
up some minutes before the meeting began, would
stand at the door listening to the innocent gentle-
man playing to himself unaccompanied folk-tunes
that he had collected in the holidays. At the first
sound of a door-knock Heal would unscrew his flute
and pack it into a case lined with puce-coloured
plush ; but it seemed as though an afterglow of
tenderness still lingered on his unusually dull fea-
'i8 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
ii
tures. As for astronomy, they never got much
farther than the mere names of constellations and
their figures, although Widdup often asked ques-
tions which almost tapped the mathematical mas-
iter's subject. These adventures were discouraged,
for Mr. Heal had grown to hate mathematics. But
they did learn to find their way about the paths
of the sky, and often, on frosty winter evenings,
when the clear vault above the downs was like jet,
Edwin and Widdup would walk up and down the
Quad and imagine that they could feel the heave
of the spinning world, while they watched Capella
scale the dome of sky. And once, when he had
come to the master's room a little early on the night
of the section meeting, Mr. Heal cleared his throat
and, taking Edwin by the ear, began to read from
an olive-green book that he held in his hand. He
read atrociously. "How do you like this?" he said.
"H'm?" He said "H'm" with a little snarl in it.
i "The Dog Star and Aldebaran, pointing to the
restless Pleiades, were half up the southern sky,
and between them hung Orion, which gorgeous con-
stellation never burnt more vividly than now, as it
swung itself forth above the rim of the landscape ;
Castor and Pollux with their quiet shine were al-
most on the meridian: the barren and gloomy
square of Pegasus was creeping round to the North-
West; far away through the plantation Vega
sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the leafless
trees, and Cassiopeia's chair stood daintily poised
in the uppermost boughs."
Edwin thought it was "fine."
"Better than the Story of the Heavens f" asked
GOLDEN MEDIOCRITY 19
Mr. Heal. "Come, come, Ingleby . . . surely not?"
"Bather, sir," said Edwin.
Mr. Heal shut the book. "The barren and gloomy
square of Pegasus," he murmured to himself. And
all the rest of that evening Edwin found himself
remembering the phrase. The bareness and the
gloom of Pegasus had never struck him before ; and
now, at a sudden suggestion, the whole atmosphere
of the sky had changed ; the vague heavens became
habitable to his fancy; new and immense territory
opened before him. . . .
He told Widdup what he remembered of the pas-
sage that Heal had read.
"Poor old Tommy," said Widdup compassionate-
ly. "It isn't an exact square at all. It's an irregular
quadrilateral, and I don't see anything gloomy
about it. Stars aren't gloomy anyway. Look how
they sparkle. Look at Vega."
Above the gable of the swimming bath that won-
derful star throbbed white.
n
In the Lent term they both had measles and woke
with swollen eyes to find each other side by side.
In the same ward at the Sanatorium was Layton's
successor, Payne, a thawed, thin, almost unfamiliar
Payne ; and while they swam upon the first buoyant
spirits of convalescence, the sheer hulk of Griffin
was hove in, in the snivelling misery of the early
stages. Edwin thought that Griffin had never
looked so beastly, and rejoiced in the pig's humilia-
tion ; but when, at last, Griffin recovered he found
his ancient victim a handy plaything, and for want
20 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
of anything better to do attempted to seduce Wid-
dup from Edwin's friendship. Edwin never quite
forgave Widdup his defection ; and when they were
all better and back in school again he found that
he still had to avoid Griffin on whom the habit of
persecution had been regrafted. It seemed such a
pity ... he thought he had outgrown all that sort
of thing.
And now he hated Griffin for a new reason.
While they were together in the Sanatorium, after
the departure of Payne, Griffin had spoken boast-
fully of his relations with one of the "Skivvies"
whose morning task was the making of beds in D
dormitory. It appeared that Griffin had met her
first by accident, and later by appointment, and
he himself described her as "very hot pastry." He
was familiar with certain shops in the neighbour-
hood of Shaftesbury Avenue, which made per-
suasion easy. To Edwin, whose life at home had
kept him in ignorance of all that a boy of fifteen
ought to know, everything sounded horrible, and
he said so. He remembered the look of the girl
quite well : rather anaemic with black hair and a
pretty oval face. Griffin and Widdup howled over
Ms innocence, and began to instruct him in the
"origins of life." All these things came as a great
shock to Edwin. He felt a passionate conviction
that the other two were fooling him. Unfortunately
his father had never employed a coachman.
"I don't believe a bit of it," he said with tears
in his eyes.
"You silly kid," said Widdup. "Everybody
knows it's true."
GOLDEN MEDIOCRITY 21
"I don't believe my father would do a thing like
that," cried Edwin.
It seemed suddenly as if the world had become a
gross and horrible planet. The fetters of earth
were galling his limbs. He felt a sudden immense
yearning for the coolness and cleanliness of stellar
space. If only he could pass the rest of his life in
the great square of Pegasus ! . . . And he was con-
soled by the assurance that in heaven, at any rate,
there was no marrying or giving in marriage. . . .
m
Next term, to his great joy, he was moved up
into the Upper Fourth, and had for his form-master
the gentle Mr. Leeming, a fat and cheerful cleric
with clean-shaven cheeks that shone like those of
a trumpet-blowing cherub. He was very short-
sighted, rather lazy, and intensely grateful for the
least spark of intelligence to be found in his class.
Edwin soon attracted him by his history and essays.
His mother had fulfilled her promise of reading
The Fortunes of Nigel aloud in the holidays, and,
as luck would have it again, the Upper Fourth
were supposed to be concentrating on the early
Stuarts. To the bulk of the form the period was a
vast and almost empty chamber like the big school-
room, inhabited by one or two stiff figures, devital-
ised by dates a very dreary place. But to Edwin
it was crowded with the swaggerers of Alsatia, the
bravoes of Whitehall, with prentices, and penniless
Scotchmen, and all the rest of Scott's gallant com-
pany.
22 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Have any of you read Nigel?" Mr. Leeming
asked the class.
"I have, sir," said. Edwin shyly.
"I have already gathered so, Ingleby. Has any-
body else read, it?"
Silence. "I think I shall ask the head master
to set it to the Middle School as a holiday task,"
said Mr. Leeming.
Thus narrowly did Edwin escape the disaster of
having Scott spoiled for him.
Mr. Leeming was the master in charge of the
library, and Edwin began to spend the long winter
lock-ups in this room. Most of the boys who fre-
quented it came there for the bound volumes of the
Illustrated London News, with their pictures of the
Franco-Prussian War, Irish evictions, the launch-
ing of the Great Eastern, and mild excitements of
that kind. Edwin found himself drawn early to
the bookcase that held the poets. To his great joy
he discovered that the key of his playbox fitted the
case; and so he would sometimes sneak into the
room at odd moments in the day and carry away
with him certain slim green volumes from the top
shelf. These were Johnson's Lives of the Poets,
together with their Complete Works. He had been
attracted to them in the first place by the memory
of a polished urn, about as graceful in contour as
a carpenter's baluster, that stood in a neglected
corner of the parish church at home. This urn was
encircled by a scroll which bore these directions :
"O smite thy breast and drop a tear
For know thy Shenstone's dust lies here."
GOLDEN MEDIOCRITY 23
A palpable falsehood; for Edwin had already dis-
covered the tomb of the elegist in another part of
the churchyard, elbowed almost into the path by
that of a Victorian ironmonger.
But it was something to have been born in the
same parish as a poet ; and Edwin, at an age when
everything is a matter of taking sides, ranged him-
self boldly with Shenstone and pitted his judgment
against that of Johnson, who rather sniffed at the
poet's unreality, and quoted Gray's letters in his
despite. The crook and the pipe and the kid were
to Edwin very real things, as one supposes they
were almost real to the age of the pastoral ballad;
and the atmosphere was the more vital to him be-
cause he dimly remembered the sight of the poet's
lawns frosted on misty mornings of winter, the
sighing of the Leasowes beeches, and the damp
drippings of the winter woods. Thus he absorbed
not only Shenstone but Shenstone's contempora-
ries: men like Dyer and Lyttleton and Akenside,
and since he had no other standard than that of
Johnson he classed them by the same lights as their
contemporaries. Brooding among Augustan poet-
asters in the library Mr. Leeming found him.
"Poetry, Ingleby?"
"Yes, sir."
"Let me see? Prior? Ah, that was a little age,
Ingleby ! The Augustans were not great men, and
some of them were very coarse, too. Have you
read the Idylls of the King?"
Mr. Leeming introduced Ingleby to the great
Victorian, for he himself was an ardent believer in
all the Galahad nonsense, and was astonished at
24 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Ingleby's ignorance of the school in which those
cherubic cheeks had expanded. He was very fond
of talking about purity and conceived it his duty
to keep his class spotless. In the Lent Term, when
the form were working through the catechism, his
glosses were most apparent. The explanation of
some passages troubled him. "From fornication
. . . that's a bad thing," he would mutter.
And once having put Edwin in the way of per-
fection he was not going to look back. A week or
two later he asked him how he was getting on with
Tennyson. "Who is your favourite character in
the Idylls?" he asked.
Edwin glowed. "Oh, sir, Launcelot or Bors."
"But what about Sir Percivale? 'Sir Percivale
whom Arthur and his knighthood called "The
Pure," ' " he quoted in the Oxford variety of
Cockney.
"I don't know, sir," stammered Edwin. r< They
seem somehow made differently from me."
"Arthur," said Mr. Leeming impressively, "has
a great and wonderful prototype whom we should
all try to imitate no matter how distantly."
Edwin, who had read the dedication, wondered
why Mr. Leeming lowered his voice like that in
speaking of the Prince Consort.
In some ways he was grateful to Mr. Leeming
for superintending his literary diet, but he soon
detected a sameness in the fare. One day he had
got hold of a big Maroon edition of George Gordon,
Lord Byron, with romantic engravings of the New-
stead ruins and the poet's own handsome head, and
Mr. Leeming had swooped down on him, faintly
GOLDEN MEDIOCRITY 25
flushed. "Lord Byron," he had said, "was not a
good man. Have you read Hiawatha f" And he
reached down Longfellow . . . Longfellow in green
boards decorated with a geometrical design in gold,
and irritating to the touch.
At last Edwin was almost driven from the library
by Mr. Leeming's attentions. He never read Byron
because the books were too big to be sneaked out of
the room beneath a buttoned coat; but he did read,
without distinction, nearly every volume of poetry
that he could smuggle out in this way. He read
these books in second "prep" when Layton was por-
ing over Plato at his high desk, when Widdup was
working out the cricket averages of the second
eleven, and Griffin was looking for spicy bits in the
Bible. And as second prep was generally a period
of great sleepiness since the boys had risen so-
early, and by that time of evening the air of the
house classroom had been breathed and rebreathed
so many times as to be almost narcotic, the poetry
that he read became interwoven with the strands
of his dreams. Dreamy and exalted, poppy-
drenched, all poetry seemed at this time; and it
was to intensify this feeling of sensuous languor
that he so often chose the poems of Keats.
In an introduction to the volume he had dis-
covered that Keats had been an apothecary, and
this filled him with a strange glow; for since the
unforgettable incident of the toothbrush he had
been (against his will) diffident about his father.
He determined never again to be ashamed of the
shop. When he read of "rich lucent syrops tinct
with cinnamon," he remembered a great cut-glass
26 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
bottle of some cough linctus that glowed like a ruby
in the shop window when the gas was lit at night.
In other ways he tapped a good deal of the romance
of his father's calling. He remembered a drawer
labelled "Dragon's blood" . . . the very next best
thing to a dragon's teeth with their steely harvest.
He recalled a whole pomander-full of provocative
scents; he shuddered at the remembered names of
poisons, and other names that suggested alchemy.
He almost wanted to tell Mr. Leeming when next
they spoke together, of his father's trade, but he
wasn't quite sure if Mr. Leeming approved of Keats.
It was not likely that he would see very much more
of this master, for he was high up in his form and
certain to get a move into the Lower Fifth at the
end of the term. In some ways he was not sorry;
for the signs of Mr. Leeming's affection, the warm
encircling arm, the pervading scent of honeydew,
and the na'ive glances of those watery eyes were
embarrassing. Before they parted Mr. Leeming
showed his intentions more clearly.
"Would you like to learn Hebrew, Ingleby?" he
said.
Edwin would have liked to learn Hebrew but
not out of school hours. He hesitated.
"I thought you might some day wish to take Holy
Orders, and I should be glad to teach you."
"I will ask my father, sir," said Edwin modestly.
That was one of the penalties of having interest-
ing eyes.
CHAPTER III
THE GREEN TREES .
THE holidays that followed this term were the
most marvellous. From first to last they were
bathed in the atmosphere of mellow gold that
makes beautiful some evenings of spring, all tender
and bird-haunted; and his mother, too, was more
wonderful than she had ever been before. On the
very first evening when she had come upstairs to
tuck him in and to kiss him good-night, she sat on
the bedstead leaning over him with both her arms
round his neck and whispering secrets to him. Very
extraordinary they were; and as she told him, her
lips were soft on his cheek. She said that only a
month before she had expected to have a baby sister
for him she had always longed so much to have a
baby girl and before the first jealousy that had
flamed up into his mind had died away, she told
him how the baby had been born dead, and how
terribly she had felt the disappointment. He won-
dered, in the dark, if she were crying.
"But now that I've got my other baby again,"
she said, "I am going to forget all about it. We'll
be ever so happy by ourselves, Eddie, won't we?
In the evenings when father is down at business
27
28 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
we will read together. This time we'll take turns
reading, for you're growing such a big boy. And
we'll go wonderful walks, only not very far, because
Dr. Thornhouse says I'm not strong enough yet.
I want you to tell me everything everything you
do and think about at school, because you're all I've
got now. And you're part of me, Eddie, really."
At this she clutched him passionately.
For a moment Edwin was nearly crying, and
then, suddenly, he saw another side of it: her ex-
pressed feelings were somehow foreign to him and
made him ashamed, as did Mr. Leeming's watery
eyes when he talked about Arthur's prototype. In
the face of this eager emotion he felt himself un-
responsive and a little consciously superior and
male. He didn't want to feel superior to his mother
1 but there it was! Even at breakfast next morn-
ing he was shy, and it surprised him when he saw
her clear gray-green eyes wholly free from any an-
swering shame. So unconscious was she of his
scrutiny that he went on looking at her really
looked at her for the first time in his life. And
looking, he began to differentiate this new being,
so fragile and eager and girlish, from the old tra-
ditional mother whom he had loved and accepted
as unquestionably as the miles of blue sky above
him. He discovered that she was a woman, remem-
bered Griffin, and blushed.
"What a colour you've got, boy," said his father.
And it struck him also that she was smaller than
she used to be.
"Isn't mother rather thin?" he asked his father.
Mr. Ingleby smiled, and in his grave, shy way
THE GREEN TREES ... 29
put out his hand to touch hers as it lay on the
table.
"You silly boy," said his mother.
But her denials did not satisfy him. He knew,
for certain, that she was different from the mother
whom he had known. He noticed, too, that she
was not allowed to eat the same food as the rest
of them. Sometimes she would forget their rules
and taste things that were forbidden, and then
his father would gravely reprove her. Instead of
bread she was ordered to eat a sort of biscuit which
Edwin's curiosity made him anxious to taste. He
was disappointed; for they had no taste at all.
"What are they made of?" he asked; and they told
him "Gluten. . . . That's the sticky part of wheat
without starch."
And yet, in spite of her illness, they had never
been happier together. The new intimacy, that
had begun with her painful confidences of the first
evening, continued. In particular she told him of
the difficulties which she was having with his
Aunt Laura, her sister, who had lately married
a small manufacturer and come to live near
Halesby. The story was an old one and rather
unhappy. It began years and years ago in the
days of his mother's childhood, days that she re-
membered so unhappily that she never really
wanted to recall them. He had never before known
anything about his mother's childhood. He had
just taken her for granted in her present surround-
ings. Kow, in the long firelight evenings, she told
him how her forefathers and his had once been
great people, living in a stone border castle high
30 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
above the Monmouth marches, and how, with the
lapse of time and the decay of the bloody age in
which their violence had prospered, the family had
fallen from its estate and lost its lands; how the
tower of the castle had been broken and under its
shadow a farmhouse had arisen in which they had
lived and scraped what income they could make
from a little valley-land and many acres of moun-
tain pasture. Now there were none of them left
there; but still, where the tracks grew stony and
the orchards began to thin away, the walls of the
house crumbled patiently under the shadow of over-
hanging mountain-ridges. "Your grandfather was
the last of them, Eddie," she said. "He was a farm-
er." And for a moment consciousness of Griffin
and his social prejudices invaded the picture. She
told him of spring days, when the clouds would
come sweeping out of England on the back of the
east wind and be hurried like the frothy comb of
a wave against the mountains, and how they would
then break asunder on the darens and fall back in
a drenching mist over the-lonely house by Felindre,
and for days the farm would be islanded in fog.
But on the summit above them, the sheep were
grazing in the sunlight and the buzzards hunting,
and in the misty lowlands beneath lay orchards
full of faint-scented apple blossom. "We were not
the only decayed family there," she said. "There
were others, and greater such as the Grosmonts
of Trecastel. But old Mr. Grosmont had two sons,
and father only had three daughters. I was a sort
of ugly duckling, Eddie; they never really liked
me. And I was never happy there."
THE GREEN TREES ... 31
"I think I must be like you, darling," said Edwin.
"I had a rotten time at St. Luke's at first. Even
now I don't quite seem to be ... I don't know
. . . ordinary."
She smiled and kissed him.
"My father was a dear," she said, "but mother
really hated me. Your Aunt Carrie was much
cleverer and better-looking than me, and so they
always made a fuss of her and left me to myself.
She had all the advantages. You see, I suppose
they thought she was worth it. She was a beautiful,
selfish creature, with the most lovely hair."
"I'm sure it wasn't lovelier than yours, darling,"
said Edwin.
"Then she went and threw herself away, as
mother called it, on a man she met at a hunt ball
in Hereford. And she died, poor thing, with her
first baby. It was an awful blow to mother. It
made her more horrid to me than ever. I suppose
she found me such a poor substitute. If it had
been me it wouldn't have mattered. I went to
keep house for your great-uncle in North Brom-
wich; and there I met your father. I have never
been really happy. You see, nobody had ever taken
any notice of me before that. Then mother began
to put all the hopes that had been disappointed in
Carrie on Aunt Laura. Nothing was too good for
her. They spoiled her, and spoiled her. It was
worse when father died and mother was left to do
what she liked with the money. And when your
Aunt Laura came here and met Mr. Fellows and
married him, your grandmother blamed me. I
couldn't help it ... and in any case Mr. Fellows
32 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
is an awfully nice, quiet man. I did all I could
for her, too, getting her house ready and that sort
of thing, and now she's so dreadfully difficult. I
suppose she's really annoyed to think that she
hasn't done better for herself with all her ad-
vantages of education, and just lets it off on me. It's
dreadfully awkward, Eddie. I think she's even
jealous that their house isn't as big as ours. I
simply daren't tell your father the sort of things
she's said. If he knew one of them he'd never for-
give her. He's like that about anything that affects
me."
"I should be, too," said Edwin.
"Would you?" she smiled.
"Yes. . . . You've made me hate Aunt Laura
already."
"You mustn't feel like that, Eddie. She's young,
and she's been spoilt. It isn't all her fault, prob-
ably."
"If it were any one but you I wouldn't mind.
But you're so wonderful." He loved to look into
her eyes when she loved him.
n
After this they had wonderful times together.
In the mornings Edwin would indulge his glorious
idleness among the books of the dining-room
shelves, and after middle-day dinner, when hia
father had gone back to the shop, he would set
out with his mother up the lane under the tall
elms and through the sloping field that led to the
mill pond. They did not walk very far because she
must not be over- tired ; but the field was so crowded
THE GREEN TREES ... 33
with wonders that they were tempted further.
Cowslips steeped the meadows in their vinous per-
fume; and between the saplings of the hazel copse
they saw the sheeted hyacinths gleaming like pools
that mirror the sky in open places. Beyond the
land of meadows and copses they came to a belt of
the old forest, through which they could see up a
broad green lane to the very shoulders of the hills :
Pen Beacon heaving its fleece of black firs, and the
domed head of Uffdown.
His mother would sigh a little when she saw
the hills. In weather that threatened rain from
the west they would seem so near, with their con-
tour hard against the watery sky and the cloud
shadows all prussian blue.
"Oh, I should love to be there, Edwin," she would
say.
"Can't we walk there some day, dearest?"
"It's such a terrible drag up. We should both
be dreadfully tired."
"Oh, I wish we could, mother; I do wish we
could."
The day of their last walk together, when they
came to the end of the green lane and were sitting
on the gate, she jumped down on the far side and
set off walking up the track.
"Come along, Eddie," she said, "I'm going up to
Uffdown."
"Oh, mother," he cried. "Isn't it too far? I
should like to carry you !"
And half-doubting, but fearfully eager for ad-
venture, they set off together. As they climbed up-
ward it seemed that the air grew sweeter every
34 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
moment, and when they had left the wood behind
them they came out on to a stony lane with a sur-
face of grit veined by the tracks of storm-water,
and on either side banks of tufted grass along
which gorse was swaying in the breeze. And here
the clouds seemed to be racing close above their
heads, all dazzling white, and the blue in which
they moved was deep and limpid. Mrs. Ingleby's
gray-green eyes were full of laughter and her face
flushed with the climb.
"Oh, mother," Edwin panted, "what an awful
lick you go ! Hadn't we better sit down a bit?"
"And catch cold! You careless boy. We'll get
to the top soon now."
"But you mustn't tire yourself."
She laughed at him.
"Oh, this air is wonderful," she said. "Just as if
it had come straight out of the blue, all washed
and clean."
On the top of Uffdown where the cloak of pine
droops to a hollow between the two peaks, they
sat on a dry, yielding hedge-side, where the grass
was thick as the fleece of a mountain sheep, and
four lovely counties dreamed below them.
"Eddie," she asked, half joking, "where does the
west wind come from?"
Edwin was willing to instruct.
"Oh, I don't know, dearest from Wales and the
sea, I suppose."
"Put your head close to mine and I'll show you.
. . . Those hills that look like mountains cut out
of blue cardboard are the Malverns, and far, ever
so far beyond them yes, just to the left you see
THE GREEN TREES ... 35
/
a level ridge that drops suddenly in the west. You
don't know what that is, Eddie, do yon?"
"No I don't like to look at single things. I like
to feel it's all what d'you call it? all dreamy
underneath one."
"But you must look at that. It's the mountain,
Eddie, close to where I was born."
"Felindre?" he asked.
"Yes."
"But I never knew that you could see it from
here. You never told me."
"You know why. I told you that I was never
happy there. And now, you see, since the old peo-
ple died and the land was sold, it really has nothing
to do with us."
"Still, it's rather wonderful to be looking into
into another country. It is Wales, isn't it?"
"Yes part of it's in Wales. Felindre is in Eng-
land."
Edwin pondered for a moment.
"I'm rather glad I'm not half- Welsh, anyway,"
he said. "But I wish I'd been there."
"Do 3 r ou?" she answered dreamily. "Yes I wish
we had been there together. It was a different sort
of life. I thought I just thought I should like
to see it again."
He was a little alarmed at the wistf ulness in her
voice.
"Mother what do you mean?" he cried.
"Nothing, Eddie, nothing. It was another life."
She put her arms round his neck and pulled him
gently to her. He was content to lie there, with
his head on her breast, while she talked in a low
36 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
voice of that distant place and of her own child-
hood. He listened in a dream and did not speak at
all until she began to tell him a long story which
the Felindre shepherd, Morgan, had told her when
she was a child. Then Edwin opened his eyes and
stopped her.
"Dearest, I know that story," he said. "Oh, go
on, it's wonderful. . . ."
"Perhaps I've told it to you before: perhaps I
told you when you were a baby I used to talk
to you a great deal in your cradle. Perhaps . . .
I was rather lonely when you came, Eddie."
"Oh, no, I'm sure you haven't. . . ."
"Look, the cloud is blotting out my mountain
now," she said. "It is time we were going." The
counties were asleep already.
Over the brow of the hill they stepped into a
different world, for where the smoke of the black
country had blotted the fading skyline a hundred
pit fires were beginning to blink out, and nearer
still a pillar of flame shot up into the sky.
"Oh, look, mother," Edwin cried.
"They're puddling the iron at the great Mawne
furnaces. Stand still a moment, we might almost
hear their roar."
But no sound came to them but the clear tinkle
of a stream plunging into its mossy cup, and thia
seemed to bring them back into touch with the
lands that they had left. They hurried down
through the dark woodland paths, and when they
reached the little town lights had bloomed in all
the ugly cottage windows, and the streets seemed
deserted, for the children were indoors.
THE GREEN TREES ... 37
in
She told him that she was rather tired, and would
like to lie down and rest for a little time before
supper; and with the glow of the hill air still on
his cheeks and his limbs full of a delicious lassitude
he strolled down the lane and into the ill-lighted
street of the town. He passed through the little
passage at the side of the shop and through the
dark bottle-room where he had to pick his way
among drug hampers and empty acid-carboys.
Through the upper part of the glass door he could
see his father sitting on a high stool at the desk,
his spectacles half-way down his nose, dreaming
among the bad debts in his ledger. Edwin stood
there for several minutes, for the picture fascinated
him.
Mr. Ingleby had now reached the indeterminate
period of middle age: his hair was gray, rather
thin about the crown, and wanted cutting. In the
shop he always wore a black alpaca jacket, and
this, by reason of its thinness, made his chest look
mean and skimpy. In this state of comparative
repose he was not impressive. From time to time
he raised his hand to scratch his shoulder. A cus-
tomer came in to buy a ca~ke of soap and Mr.
Ingleby climbed down from his stool to attend to
her. He opened a glass case, and, groping for this
particular soap, upset at least half a dozen others.
Edwin noticed his hands, which were clumsy and
heavily veined on the back, and felt sorry for him
when he stooped to pick up the cakes of soap that
he had upset. It all seemed so inelastic, so different
38 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
from the eager youth of his mother. Examining
his father from a physical standpoint he recalled
the day on which Widdup had begun his sexual
education and had laughed at his innocent ideals.
Now Edwin laughed at himself; and the laugh
made Mr. Ingleby look up as if a flying beetle had
banged against his ear.
"Hallo, boy," he said. "You were late for tea,
you two !"
"Oh, we had a lovely walk right on to Uff-
down."
"I hope you didn't tire your mother. You must
be careful, Eddie. Do you want me to give you
something to do? You shall weigh these powders
then : Phenacetin, five grains in each. Only try to
be quiet; I have to get on with these Lady-day
bills."
Mr. Ingleby yawned and Edwin started to weigh
powders.
"Father, what is Dragon's Blood?"
"It isn't the blood of dragons, Edwin. . . ." Mr.
Ingleby smiled under his glasses.
"Oh, father, don't rot."
"Dragon's Blood is a resin. It's prepared from
Dracwna Draco, and it's used for mahogany var-
nishes."
"O-oh."
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Edwin."
Silence for five minutes.
"Father . . . Keats was a chemist."
"Keats?" Mr. Ingleby pronounced the word in
the same tone as he would have used if he had been
saying "Kea tings, madam?"
THE GREEN TREES ... 39
"The poet."
"Oh Keats. Yes, of course he was. He was
consumptive, too. Died in Italy."
"Yes, father." Edwin was thankful to leave it
at that ; thankful that his father knew just so much,
even if he didn't know any more. It would be
terrible to know more than your father, to feel
that he was a sort of intellectual inferior to you
a boy of fifteen. He would not talk of these things
any more.
They walked home in silence. It seemed as if
Mr. Ingleby were still worrying about his wife's
tiredness, for when she tried to joke with him at
the supper table he was moody and restrained.
"I'm not really a bit overdone," she protested,
kissing his forehead.
"You're like a pair of children, the two of you,"
he said, and indeed his gray seriousness seemed
to isolate him from all the joy of youth that was in
them.
That night Edwin's mother sat for a long time
on the bed talking to him in a low voice. She
would not tell him any more about the mountain
farmstead that had once been a castle, even when
he begged her to do so. She wanted to talk, she
said, about all that he was to do during the term,
to make wonderful plans for the holidays, when
the days would be longer and they would be able
to sit out under the limes on the lawn in the
twilight.
"I am going to plant evening stock," she said,
"all along the lawn border in between the irises.
Besides, I shall be stronger then and we will often
40 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
take our tea with us to Uffdown." And at last
she said, "Eddie, you bad boy, you must really go
to sleep now, darling. You've got such a big
journey before you to-morrow, and you're sure to
get a headache if you don't have a good night's
sleep." She kissed him many times.
IV
And when she had passed downstairs to the din-
ing-room where her husband sat before the fire in
a plush arm-chair, lightly dozing, she kissed him,
too. She was feeling queerly flushed and emotional,
and somehow the atmosphere of that little room
felt stuffy to her after the air of the open spaces.
"I'm restless to-night, dear," she said. "I hate
Eddie going back to school. It's dreadful to be
parted from your baby just when he's beginning
to be more and more part of you."
"Come close to me, by the fire, child," he said.
"No ... I want some music, I think."
She went into the drawing-room and lit the
candles on the piano. Sitting there, in the pale
light, with a shawl thrown over her muslin tea-
gown, she looked very frail and pathetic, against
the piano's ebony. She played the Sonata Appas-
sionata of Beethoven, and the rather tawdry little
knick-knacks on the piano danced as if they were
made uncomfortable by the rugged passion. The
whole room seemed a little bit artificial and thread-
bare, ministering to her discontent. When the
Sonata was finished she still sat at the piano, con-
scious of her own reflection in its polished panels,
and wanting to cry. She could not bear the taunt-
THE GREEN TREES ... 41
ing of that image, and so she snuffed the candles
and sat in the dark.
Edwin tossing on the verge of sleep was conscious
of the music ceasing, and, in the silence that fol-
lowed, the cool cries of the owls.
CHAPTER IV
MIDSUMMER
EDWIN had expected that the wrench of going
back to school after these holidays would be
unbearable: but when he returned to St. Luke's
next day he was almost astonished at his own ac-
ceptance of the change. It was evening when he
arrived, and boys who had come from a greater
distance than he were already unpacking their
play-boxes in the long box-room. Edwin sniffed
the smell which he had once found so alien that
mingled odour of cricket flannels, biscuits, bat-oil,
and faint mustiness, with relish. He passed
through the swing-doorway into the library, dark
and echoing and groped his way towards the poetry
bookshelves. He ran his fingers over the brass
netting that protected their case, he even tried his
play-box key to see if it had lost its cunning. The
lock opened easily, and he felt for the backs of the
big maroon volumes of Byron with their shiny
title-plates. He thought of Mr. Leeming and of
Sir Percivale. A foolish phrase, one of a kind that
he had often lately found running through his brain
- rhythmical groups of words that meant nothing
in particular formed itself in his mind and stuck
42
MIDSUMMER 43
there. "The white lie of a blameless life." He
laughed at himself. These words that came from
nowhere were the strangest things. He heard the
echo of his own laugh in the dark and empty room.
The white lie of a blameless life. ... It pleased
him to think that he had done with Mr. Leeming
as a form-master, even though the question of
Hebrew and Holy Orders remained unanswered.
Stepping out of the library he was hailed by
Widdup; a plumper, sunbrowned Widdup fresh
from three weeks with a doctor uncle in Devonshire.
There had been long drives through the lanes at
the back of Start Bay where the primroses (so
Widdup assured him) were as big as door-handles;
there had actually been sea-bathing in April, and
the joy of watching huge liners, homeward bound
from India r making the Start. "And hills . . .'*
said Widdup, "you never saw such hills. Talk
about these downs. . . ."
"It's awfully hilly country at home," said Edwin.
They were walking side by side and up and down
the quadrangle, from the gym to the swimming
bath, and dozens of couples were crossing and re-
crossing in the same track. From time to time
they would catch a few words of conversation,
eager and excited, as they passed. Above them
stretched a deep sky powdered with dust of gold.
"What did you say?" said Widdup. "I'm awfully
sorry, old chap. I didn't catch it. Douglas shouted
to me. . . ."
"I don't know . . ." said Edwin. "Oh, yes . .. .
hills. I said there are some ripping hills at home.
One called Uffdown."
44 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"But these hills in Devonshire . . . you've got
to get out of the trap for nearly every one. I used
to drive my uncle. It was awful sport. You'd
think I was rotting, but it's true."
The chapel bell started tolling in short jerks.
The couples began to drift towards the northern
end of the Quad, where the gates were being un-
bolted. For five minutes exactly the gravel of fhe
wide path sloping to the chapel gave out a grating
sound beneath the pressure of many hundred feet.
The last stragglers hurried in. The master on duty
entered the porch. All the life of that dark mass
of buildings spread upon the bare edge of the downs
became concentrated within the walls of the chapel.
Its stained glass windows glowed as with some
spiritual radiance. Inside they began to sing the
hymn which is used at the beginning of the term :
"Kank by rank again we stand
From the four winds gathered hither,
Loud the hallowed walls demand
Whence we come and how and whither . . ."
and from the open doors there issued a faintly
musty smell, as though indeed the dead air of the
holiday-time were dispossessed and young life had
again invaded its ancient haunt.
It seemed to Edwin from the first as though the
concentrated delights of this summer term were
surely enough to efface every memory of discom-
fort and suffering that had clouded his early days
at St. Luke's. He was exceptionally happy in Ms
MIDSUMMER 45
new form. The form-master, whose name was
Cleaver, was an idle man with a young wife and
a small income of his own, circumstances that com-
bined to make him contented with the conditions
of servitude at St. Luke's which weighed so heavily
on the disappointed and underpaid Selby. He was
also a fine cricketer, accepting the worship which
was the prerogative of an old "blue," and convinced
in his own mind if ever that kingdom were pos-
sessed by anything so positive as a conviction >
that the main business of the summer term was
cricket. The atmosphere of the cricket-field, with
its alternations of strenuousness and summery
lassitude, pervaded his classroom, and the tradi-
tions of that aristocratic game, in which nobody
could conceivably behave in a violent or unsports-
manlike manner, regulated his attitude towards the
work of his form.
Edwin found it fairly easy to keep his average
going at the departments of the game in which Mr.
Cleaver was concerned : Latin and Greek and Eng-
lish. If, as occasionally happened, he made a cen-
tury, Cleaver was ready to congratulate him as a
sportsman and a brother. To be beaten by some
yorker of Tacitus was no crime if he had played
with a straight bat and didn't slog. Even a fool
who could keep his end up had Mr. Cleaver's sym-
pathy.
It was not only in a spiritual atmosphere of the
Lower Fifth that Edwin found content. The class-
room which the form inhabited was the most pleas-
ant in the whole school, placed high with a bow-
window overlooking a pleasant lawn that a poplar
46 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
overshadowed. Beyond the lawn lay a belt of dense
thickets full of singing birds, on the edge of which
laburnum and lilac were now in flower: so that
when Edwin's innings was over, or Mr. Cleaver was
gently tossing up classical lobs to the weaker mem-
bers of the form, he could let his eyes wander over
the warm air of the lawn to plumes of purple
lilac waving in the summer breeze, or the tops of
the avenue of lime-trees leading to the chapel spire.
Even in the heat of the day the Lower Fifth class-
room was cool and airy, visited only by wandering
bees and scents of lime and lilac beckoning towards
a golden afternoon.
The term was full of lovely animal delights ; the
luxury of flannels and soft felt hats; the warmth
of a caressing sun ; the contrast of cool drinks and
water-ices; the languors of muscular fatigue; the
reviving ecstasy of a plunge into the green depths
of the swimming bath; the joy of extended twi-
lights, and, in the thin air of evening, a multitude
of sounds, soothing because they were so familiar
as to be no more disturbing to consciousness than
silence : boys' voices calling in the fields, the clear
click of bat and ball, the stinging echoes of the
fives-court. Great days . . . great days . . .
Edwin found himself becoming keen on cricket
not indeed from any ambitions towards excellence,
though the mere fact of sitting at Mr. Cleaver's
feet was an inspiration, but for the sheer joy of
tiring himself at the nets and the peculiar charm
of the game's setting of sunburn and white flannels
and green fields. Cricket was a part of this divine
summer, and therefore to be worshipped. Little
MIDSUMMER 47
by little as he practised he found he was beginning
to improve, and before the middle of the term he
was developing into a fair bowler of medium pace
and had taken his own place in the house second
eleven. It did him good in other ways ; for in this
capacity he found that he was at length accepted
naturally and without any exceptional effort on his
part. So, miraculously, he seemed to have arrived
at a degree of normality. This, in itself, was a
triumph.
Spending long afternoons with his team in the
lower fields, he found that he could feel really at
home with other "men." He discovered qualities
in them that he had never guessed before. In the
cricket field even Douglas became tolerable; no
longer a terrible and baleful influence with scowl-
ing brows under a mop of black hair, but just a
jolly good wicket-keeper. Edwin began to be fever-
ishly interested in the fortunes of the second eleven :
kept their averages, produced an elaborate table of
league results, conceived a secondary but violent
interest in the progress of his own County, Worces-
tershire, in those days, thanks to the brilliancy of
the Foster brothers slowly rising to fame. Some-
times while he lay on the grass, watching his own
side bat, he would see the figure of old, fat Leem-
ing ambling along the path. He would shrink into
the concealment of his uniform flannel, being afraid
that his patron would speak to him and isolate him
from his pleasant company. Leeming was not fond
of cricket and his shadow would mar this particular
joy. Only when he had passed relief would come.
Great days . . . great days.
8 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
m
In the pursuit of these joys it is not to be sup-
posed that Ingleby forsook his friends the poets.
In the flush of early June, before the crowding of
midsummer's high pomps, there came to him many
moments of ecstasy. In the spinney at the back
of the head master's house there was a nightingale
to which his evening dreams were dedicated. All
the twilights were full of delicious scents and
sounds. Of all other times he remembered most
clearly certain evenings when he would walk all
alone up the long slope of the gravel-path from the
chapel, hearing the whizzing wings of the cock-
chafers that made their home in the shrubs on
either side. Sunday evenings . . . Sundays were
the most wonderful days of all ; not, indeed, because
the chapel services made any religious appeal to
him the advances of Mr. Leeming had scotched
that long ago but because of the peculiar atmos-
phere of freedom which the long day possessed and
which, somehow, even the Head's sermons failed
to mar. He hated the Head's sermons; he hated,
in particular, the sight of Griffin, who was a use-
ful member of the choir, singing, like any golden-
headed cherub, a solo in the anthem. But he loved
the music, and particularly the psalms, with which
the daily matins and evensong made him so familiar
that he couldn't help knowing many of them by
heart.
The chants to which the psalms were sung at St.
Luke's had been specially composed for the school
chapel by Dr. Downton, the organist, who had fitted
MIDSUMMER 49
them with modulations that were, at the least, sur-
prising to ears which could not be happy or feel
secure far from the present help of tonic and domi-
nant. Most of the congregation at St. Luke's con-
sidered that Sammy's tunes were rotten. At first
they were inflicted upon the choir in manuscript;
but in Edwin's second summer they appeared col-
lected in a slim gray volume, and Heal, who acted
as choirmaster, explained that they were the result
of the most careful study of the Hebrew text, of
night-long ecstasies, and the deep brooding of Dr.
Downton's mind. It gave Edwin a picture of Sam-
my, with his gray, impassive face, weaving his tunes
out of the silence of the night by candlelight in the
high turret-room which that solitary master in-
habited, and for this alone he began to love the
St. Luke's Psalter. It is certain, at any rate, that
his early acquaintance with strange harmonic ideas
made a great deal of the most modern music easy
to him in after years. Later, in North Bromwich,
when he became immersed in the flood of Wagner,
he often wondered whether Sammy in his lonely
tower, had known these wonders, and cherished
them up there all by himself. He certainly couldn't
associate that sort of music with the nr.ivetes of Mr.
Heal's flute. And yet, you never can tell. . . . Mr.
Heal knew his Hardy. . . .
Then there were Sunday walks with Widdup
over the downs under a grilling sun, and through
the woods of York Park, where Griffin and Doug-
las, poaching, had encountered keepers; but the
glare and dryness of a chalk country in summer
does not invite exercise, and the most precious
50 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
hours of all were spent on the sloping banks be-
tween the Grand Entrance and the chapel. Here,
early on a Sunday morning, Edwin and Widdup
would carry out an armful of rugs and cushions:
and there all day they would lie in the shade of the
limes, reading, writing letters (Ingleby always had
a letter from his mother to answer on Sundays),
watching the restless flight of little copper butter-
flies, seeing the hot sky deepen to an almost south-
ern blue behind the pointed gables of the school.
Against such skies the red brick of St. Luke's be-
came amazingly beautiful. It seemed to Edwin that
in his home, on the edge of the black country, the
sky was never so clear and deep. Lying there he
would read the books that he had smuggled out of
the library . . . poetry ... a great deal of it.
Novels ... he read, and he always remembered
reading, Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination:
"The Murder in the Hue Morgue," "The Pit and the
Pendulum," "The Masque of the Ked Death." Such
titles! There seemed to be no end to the leisure
of those days.
With the middle of the term came the Race Meet-
ing on the Downs. During the whole of Race Week
the college bounds were tightened, so that no boy
dared show his face outside the iron gates. Within
the short memory of the school, a prefect no less!
had been expelled, confronting his own house-
master on the edge of Tattersall's ring.
On Wednesday of the week the race for the Six
Thousand Guineas, the greatest of the classics, was
to be run, St. Luke's within its closed gates buzzed
like a hive. In every house and every form there
MIDSUMMER 51
were sweepstakes. Griffin made a book ; boasted in
Hall that he meant to see the "Guineas" run or die.
Ingleby very nearly admired him for his courage.
The great day came. All morning from the open
windows of the Lower Fifth classroom he could
hear the rumble of loaded brakes climbing the
Downs road. In those days there were no motors,
but white dust, up-churned by many hundreds of
wheels, filled the air and drifted in clouds into the
college quad. From a high wall at the back of the
swimming-bath they could see the road itself and
the unceasing, hot procession moving upwards;
brakes full of men who carried beer-bottles ; bookies
in white top-hats; costers with buttons as big as
half-crowns driving carts drawn by little donkeys
whose thick coats were matted with sweat; gipsies
out to prey upon the rest of mankind ; smart gentle-
men in dog-skin gloves driving tandem ; regimental
drags. All the road was full of dust and torn paper
and the odour of beer and sweat, and every member
of the crowd looked anxiously forward, as though
he feared he would be too late for the "Guineas,"
toward the summit of the Downs where the grand
stand, like a magnificent paper-rack, stood up white
against the sky. Down in the playing-fields that
afternoon nobody thought much of cricket. For all
the locked iron gates, the eager consciousness of
the crowd on the Downs had invaded St. Luke's.
Ingleby was scoring for his own side's innings.
Douglas, who was sitting astride of a bat, kept his
eyes fixed on the airy summit of the grand stand,
now fringed with the black bodies of a thousand
spectators. He pulled out his watch.
52 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
' "They're off!" he said. "My God, don't I envy
old Griff!"
Ingleby forgot his scoring. He, too, was won-
dering what had happened. He could imagine it
easily, for several times on the Downs he had
crossed the tan gallops on which, it was said, horses
from the royal racing stables were trained, and seen
incredibly slender creatures, lithe as greyhounds,
thundering neck and neck, over the sprinkled bark.
He could think of nothing swifter or more exciting
on earth. The game stopped. All the players were
looking at the grand stand, as though their eyes
could tell them which horse had won. Two min-
utes. Three. From the top of the Downs a great
roar came down to them. Some monstrous beast,
no congregation of men, was roaring there. The
black fringe on the grand stand became animated
by waving arms and hats and sticks. A cloud of
tinier specks detached themselves. These were the
carrier pigeons ; and in a very little time they were
flying high above the playing-fields, seeing, no
doubt, the black mass of London outstretched so
many miles away.
"God ... I wish I could shoot one," said Doug-
las. "I never heard such a row as they made up
there. Ingleby, I'll lay you two to one the Prince's
horse has won."
That evening witnessed the canonisation of
Griffin. Veritably he had seen the Guineas. A
crowd of admirers listened to his story between
preps in the house classroom. His manner was in-
dolent and boastful. This was to be no more than
the first of many exploits. On Friday Ladies' Day
MIDSUMMER 53
the race for the Birches would be run. He had
put the money he had won over the Guineas on a
horse called Airs and Graces, and was going to see
her bring his money home.
Ingleby had never heard the name of this horse
before, but when the house sweepstakes for the
Birches was drawn he found that Airs and Graces
had fallen to him. Griffin, who evidently consid-
ered that this animal's destinies were in his keep-
ing, offered him a pound for his ticket. Ingleby
wasn't having any. Douglas, called in to give an
opinion on the damnableness of that skunk Ingle-
by's sticking to a sweepstake ticket for which he
had been given a fair offer, agreed it was a bloody
shame that a man like that should have drawn any-
thing but a blank. What did he know about rac-
ing? Racing was a pastime of gentlemen in which
he couldn't obviously have any interest. Did Ingle-
by understand that Griffin was going to see the race
itself, a thing that he would never have the guts
to do in all his life?
A couple of years before Ingleby would not have
known how to meet the coalition ; it is possible, even,
that he would have given up his ticket, and im-
probable that he would have received the pound
that Griffin offered. By this time he had learnt
that no answer at all was better than the softest;
that when Griffin and Douglas started that sort of
game the best thing was to keep his temper and
clear out as quickly as possible. On this occasion
the chapel bell saved him. All through the service
that evening he was pondering on Griffin's words,
trying, rather obstinately, to convince himself that
154 }THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
they weren't true; that he wasn't the skunk they
had agreed to call him; that he was sufficiently
gentle in birth to have an interest in what the
newspapers called "the sport of kings," that, at a
pinch, he might summon up sufficient "guts" to
emulate the boldness of such a daring customer as
Griffin. Perhaps it was all too horribly true. . . .
He couldn't accept it. It was inconceivable that
all the attributes of knightly courage should be
vested in people like Griffin; and yet he couldn't
be certain that he wasn't deceiving himself. It was
so easy to imagine oneself brave . . . the easiest
thing in the world. "That's the worst of me," he
said to himself, "I can imagine anything. I could
imagine myself hiring a coach and wearing a white
top-hat and asking old fat Leeming to come to the
Birches with me on Friday. I'm all imagination
and silly rot of that kind; but when it comes to
the point I'm no damned good at all."
It wasn't the first time that he had realised de-
fects of this kind. Term after term he had been
reproaching himself for the lack of moral or phys-
ical courage.
There was only one way out of it : to prove that
he was capable of the things which he feared by
doing them. In this way he had driven himself to
batter his hands to pulp by playing fives without
gloves; for this he had taken a dive into the deep
end of the swimming-bath for the sole reason that
he found it impossible to float in the shallow water
and had determined to swim ; for this he had forced
himself to spend long hours, or to waste long hours,
over Geometry, the subject that he hated most
MIDSUMMER 55
Now, in the same way, and wholly for his own sat-
isfaction, he determined to go to the Birches.
That night, walking up and down the Quad, he
opened the subject to Widdup. He said,
"Do you know I drew Airs and Graces in the
house sweep? Griffin offered me a quid for the
ticket."
"I should jolly well let him have it," said Widdup,
explaining the mathematical side of the question.
"You see, you've won a twenty to one chance al-
ready. The chances against the horse winning are
. . . well you can work it out easily. I'll do it for
you in second prep. Besides, old Griff has a lot GI
money on the horse and he's going to see the race
run."
"Well, so am I," said Ingleby. Widdup laughed,
and that annoyed him.
"What do you think of it?"
"I think you're a damned fool," said Widdup.
Ingleby left it at that. Perhaps Widdup was
right. But why in the world should the same thing
count for heroism in the case of Griffin and folly
in his own? He distrusted the mathematical
Widdup's sense of proportion. In any case he had
to go through with it. If he didn't, no subsequent
heroism could ever persuade him that he wasn't a
coward and worthy of every epithet with which
Griffin had loaded him. It was in the same spirit,
lie imagined, that knights in the ages of chivalry
had set themselves to perform extravagant tasks,
that saints had undergone monstrous privations;
just to convince themselves that they weren't as
deficient in "guts" as they feared.
56 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
The business came more easily than he had ex-
pected when first he tied himself to his resolve.
Friday at St. Luke's was a "fag-day." On Friday
afternoon, that is to say, there were no organised
games. The afternoon prep started at half-past
three, and afternoon school at four-fifteen. The
great race, he learned, was to be run at three
o'clock; and this would give him time to miss the
hour of prep which was not supervised and to be
ready for an innings of Greek with Cleaver. An
easy game, Greek. . . . For once in a way he was
prepared to slog like blazes.
Up to the last moment Widdup refused to think
that he would go through with it. He didn't be-
lieve, indeed, until he saw Edwin climb on to the
top of the wooden fence in the nightingale's spinney
at the back of the Head's house and drop over into
the road.
"Now, I should think you've had enough of it,"
said Widdup. "If the old man came along and
saw you there, you'd be bunked to-morrow. Come
along. . . ."
"I'll be back just after three," said Edwin. "You'll
be here to give me a hand over?"
"All right," said Widdup. "You are a bloody
fool, you know."
CHAPTER Y
AIRS AND GRACES
HE didn't need telling that. With every step
the conviction was borne in on him, and when
he came to the end of the wooden palings that
marked the school boundary he was very near to
giving up his enterprise. He could easily, so easily,
slip over the hedge on the opposite side of the road
and wait there until the race was over and the
bookies' messenger-boys came racing down the hill
on their bicycles, bells tingling all the way; and
then he could meet Widdup at the appointed place
and say that he had seen the race. By that time
rumour would have told him the winner's name.
But that wouldn't do. Not that he cared two*
pence-halfpenny whether he told the truth or a lie
to Widdup, but because he would feel such a
wretched coward in his own mind. He had got to
prove to himself that he possessed the moral courage
which he doubted. It was only the existence of
the very real danger and he envisaged not only
his own expulsion, but harrowing scenes of remorse
and distress at home that made the thing a fair
test. He had to go through with it.
Beyond the line of fencing, even standing in mid-
stream of that determined crowd, he felt himself
curiously unprotected. He did a curious thing. He
57
58 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
turned his college cap, with its circular stripes
of green, inside out, presenting to the world a dirty
brown lining. This wasn't enough for him : he also
turned up the collar of his Eton coat. But the
crowd was thinking of one thing only and none
seemed to notice him. They noticed nothing. Even
the sellers of the race cards and the tawny gipsies
who cried for a piece of silver to cross their palms,
and promised good luck, were unheeded. Edwin
concealed himself, or imagined some measure of
concealment, in an eddy of dust between a heavy
wagonette, crammed with men who looked like li-
censed victuallers, and a coster's donkey cart. He
found that by holding on to the step of the wagon-
ette he felt safer. It was reassuring to hold some-
thing. What a rotten coward he was !
At last one of the men in the last seat of the
wagonette who had been rolling about with his eyes
closed, opened them and looked at Edwin. They
were curiously watery eyes, and his mouth was all
over the shop. When he had dreamily considered
the phenomenon of Edwin for a little while he ad-
dressed him,
"You look ? ot, young man."
It was hot, Edwin panted.
"Bloody 'ot," said the man in the wagonette. As
an afterthought he took a bottle of beer, about a
quarter full, from his pocket. The cork came out
with a pop. "Gas," said the fat man, and chuckled.
"Gas . . . eh?" He took a swig, and with the froth
fringing his moustache, offered the bottle to Edwin.
Edwin shook his head.
"You won't?" said the fat man. "You're workin'
AIRS AND GRACES 59
'arder than I am. Oh, well, if 'e won't," he con-
tinued dreamily, and finished the bottle. Then he
pitched it over the hedge.
The dust was terrible. On either side of the track
the hedges and banks were as white as the road.
The horses pulled well, and even hanging on the
step Edwin found it difficult to keep up with them.
At the crest of the hill the driver whipped them
into a trot. Edwin let go the step and was cursed
fluently by the coster for standing in the way of his
donkey-cart. His friend waved him good-bye. He
found himself caught up in a stream of other walk-
ers, hurrying in a bee-line for the grand stand, now
distantly visible with the royal standard drooping
above it. Behind him and in front the black snake
of that procession stretched, sliding, literally, over
the shiny convolutions of the Down that the feet
of the foremost had polished, and moving in a sort
of vapour of its own, compact of beer and strong
tobacco and intolerable human odours. From the
crown of the Downs Edwin looked back at the play-
ing-fields, the tiny white figures at the nets and in
the fives-court that sometimes stopped in their play
to watch the black serpent in whose belly he now
moved. They seemed very near far too near to
be comfortable ; and even though he knew that no-
body down there could possibly see him, he felt
happier when a billow of the Down hid the plain
from sight.
It was only when he reached the grand stand,
losing himself in the thick of the crowd that clus-
tered about it, that he began to feel safe. He looked
at his watch and found that he had a quarter of
60 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN,
an hour to spare. A little old man in seedy black
clothes grabbed his elbow fiercely. "Young sir,
young sir," he said, "take my advice . . . gratis;
free; for nothing." He laughed, and Edwin saw
gray bristles stretched on his underlip. "Take my
advice. Never expose your watch at a race-meeting.
Myself . . . I've learnt it from long experience,
my own and my friends'. . . . Never even take a
watch when I go racing. No, I leave it at home.
A beautiful half -hunter by Benson of Ludgate Hill,
with enamelled face. Yes. . . . You take my ad-
vice. A thing to always remember. Yes. . . ."
Edwin seriously thanked him. A roar went up
from the crowd. "The Prince. The Prince has en-
tered the Royal Box," said the old man. "God bless
him." He raised a dusty top-hat, An extraordi-
nary gesture for this wrinkled, gnomish creature.
"Yes," he mumbled; "a handsome time-piece. . . .
Benson of Ludgate Hill. A very prominent firm.
We shall see nothing here. You follow me."
Edwin followed. More beer, more tobacco, more
of the curious composite smell, more positively veg-
etable than human, that he had begun to associate
with trampled pieces of paper, probably the debris
of bags that had once held fruit of some kind. The
little man pushed his way deftly through the crowd.
He was so small and inoffensive that nobody seemed
to notice him; and indeed the leading character-
istics of this crowd's vast consciousness seemed to
be good humour. The bookies in their white hats,
the many-buttoned costers, the sweating men in
black coats, the very waiters in the refreshment
tents, staggering under leaning towers of beef'
AIRS AND GRACES 61
plates, seemed determined to enjoy themselves in
spite of the heat and the smell of their neighbours
Tinder the white-hot sky.
Edwin, too, forgot his anxieties. The vastnesa
of the crowd subtly shielded him. He felt newly
secure, and his spirit was caught up into its ex-
citement and good humour. He even turned down
his collar. And all the time his mind exulted in a
queer sense of clarity, an intoxication due, per-
haps, to his successful daring. In this state he
found all his surroundings vivid and amusing; all
colours and sounds came to him with a heightened
brilliancy. He smiled, and suddenly found that a
young gipsy woman with her head in a bright
handkerchief was smiling back at him. He thought
it was jolly that people should smile like that. He
thought what jolly good luck it was meeting his
guide, the shiny shoulders of whose frock coat he
saw in front of him. His quick mind had placed
the little man already: a solicitor's clerk in some
ancient worm-eaten Inn of Court, a relic of the
dark, lamp-litten London of Dickens : a city of yel-
low fog and cobbled pavements shining in the rain :
of dusty, cobwebbed law-stationers' windows and
cosy parlours behind them where kettles were sing-
ing on the hob of a toasting fire, and punch was
mixed at night.
It seemed to him that he could have met no more
suitable person than his friend; for really all this
racing crowd were making a sort of Cockney holi-
day of the kind that the greatest Victorian loved
most dearly. He began to find words for it all.
He must find words for it, for it would be such fun
62 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
writing to his mother about it. If he dared. . . .
It would be time enough to write a letter about it
when the business was finished without disaster.
There was always the possibility that he would be
found out and expelled. Even if that should happen,
he thought, he would like to tell his mother. . . .
Together they passed the level of the grand stand.
This huge erection of white-painted wood provided
the only constant landmark, for Edwin was not
tall enough to see above the shoulders of the adult
crowd in which he was moving. Now they had left
the grand stand behind it seemed that they must
surely be crossing the course. And then a bell
clanged and the crowd parted like a great wave of
the Bed Sea in pictures of the Exodus. Edwin
found himself clinging to the coat-tails of his friend,
and the little man, in turn, hanging on, as if for
his life, to a whitewashed post from which the next
wave would have sucked him back. The crowd
swayed gently, settling down and leaving them
stranded upon the very edge of the course. "That's
a trick worth knowing," said Edwin's friend.
Opposite them the stands, well known to him on
Sunday walks as a vast skeletal erection, stood
clothed in flesh and blood : tier upon tier of human
faces packed one above the other looked down on
him. Edwin had never before realised how pale
the faces of men and women were. From the midst
of them there rose a ceaseless murmur of human
speech, shrilling occasionally like the voices of star-
lings when they whirl above an autumn reed bed,
and then, as suddenly, still. For one extraordinary;
AIRS AND GRACES 63,
moment they were nearly silent. "They're off !" said
the little man. . . .
Again the murmur of the stands arose. A bookie
just behind them was doing his best to get in a
last few bets, entreating, proclaiming passionately
the virtues of "the old firm." His red face lifted
above the crowd, and while he shouted saliva drib-
bled from his mouth. A curious roaring sound
came from the other side of the horse-shoe course
a mile or more away. He stopped with his mouth
open in the middle of a sentence. Something had
happened over there. Everybody, even those who
couldn't see anything, turned in the direction from
which the sound came. Edwin turned with them.
He couldn't imagine why. And when he turned his
eyes gazed straight into those of Miss Denning, the
matron of the College Sanatorium, marvellously
dressed for the occasion and leaning upon the inno-
cent arm of Mr. Heal. Thank God, Mr. Heal was
short-sighted! Edwin felt himself blushing. He
knew for certain that she had seen and recognised
him; for his sick headaches had often taken him
to the Sanatorium and he had always been rather
a favourite of hers. She stared straight at him and
her eyes never wavered. Obviously the game was
up. He fancied that her lips smiled faintly. Never
was a smile more sinister.
Edwin had an impulse to bolt . . . simply to
turn tail and run at his hardest straight back to
the college. He couldn't do that. Between him
and escape, an impassable river, lay the parabola
of yellow grass over which the Birches was even
now being run. Feeling almost physically sick, he
64 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
slipped round to the other side of his companion.
He wished that gnomish creature had been bigger.
"They're at the corner ... if you lean out you
can see ... look, they're coming into the straight
. . . Airs and Graces leading. Down they come.
L The finest sight in the civilised world."
Edwin didn't see them. He saw nothing but the
phantom of Miss Denning's eyes, her faint and
curiously sinister smile. He wished to goodness
the race were over. Now everybody was shouting.
The stands rose with a growl like great beasts heav-
ing in the air. Something incredibly swift and
strepitant passed him in a whirl of wind and dust.
The crowd about him and the heaving stands broke
into an inhuman roar. The little old man beside
Mm was jumping up and down, throwing his top-
hat into the air and catching it again. The whole
world had gone shouting and laughing mad. Edwin
heard on a hundred lips the name of Airs and
Graces. It meant nothing to him. Now he could
only think of escape ; and as the crowd bulged and
burst once more over the course he made a dash
for the other side.
Mounted police were pressing back the tide ; but
Edwin was small, and quick enough to get over.
He pushed and wriggled his way through masses
to which there seemed to be no end. Only in the
rear of the stands the density of the crowd thinned.
Then he broke into a run and though he was soaked
with sweat and his head was aching fiercely, he
did not stop running until a billow of the Down
had hidden the stands from sight.
In a little hollow littered with tins and other
AIRS AND GRACES 65
debris, and choked with nettles and some other hot-
smelling herb, he lay, recovering his breath, and,
for the first time, thinking, beside a diminished dew-
pond of dirty water. He was miserable. Fate now
brooded over him as heavily as the white-hot sky,
and he couldn't, for the life of him, imagine why.
It was ridiculous, in any case, that the mere sight
of a woman's eyes should have worked so extraor-
dinary a miracle. Yet this was no less than the
truth. Suddenly, without a shadow of warning, all
the happiness and light and colour had gone out of
his adventure. That which had been, at least, mag-
nificent, had now become childish or nearly silly.
Reflecting, he couldn't be satisfied that anything
was changed. Nothing had really changed except
himself; and he didn't want to admit that he had
changed either. No, he hadn't changed. Only his
mind was just like the dewpond at his feet in which
the burning sky was mirrored. Some days it would
be blue and white and others black with thunder.
But the pool would be just the same. "I oughtn't
to be more miserable now than I was when I came
up here; and then, apart from being a bit funky,
I felt ripping." None of these sober reflections re-
lieved him. All the rest of the way back he felt
hunted and miserable, and something very near to
panic seized him at the point when he reached the
college palings.
At the corner, looking horribly scared, Widdup
was waiting.
"Thank goodness you've come," he said. Then
he suddenly went white.
"What's the matter?" cried Edwin.
66 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Oh, Lord, it's the Head."
The voice of the head-master came next,
"Hallo, what are you doing here? Let me see *
Widdup, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir."
A mortar-board topped the palings.
"Ingleby What's this? What's this? What are
you doing there?"
A moment of brilliant inspiration.
"Widdup and I were fooling, sir, and he chucked
my cap over the fence. May I get it, sir?"
"Serious very serious," muttered the Head.
"The letter of the law. Eace-week. You're out of
bounds, you know technically out of bounds. Boys
have been expelled for less. Yes, expelled. Ruin
your whole career."
Edwin saw that he was in a good humour; saw,
in the same flash, the too-literal Widdup, white with
fear.
"I'm sorry, sir," he said . . . "awfully sorry."
"Mph. . . . What were you two doing here?"
"I wanted to get some poplar leaves for my puss-
moth caterpillars." Silence then, rather lamely,
"They're in the fourth stage, sir."
"Are they?" The Head smiled, possibly because
he approved of this fervent manifestation of what
the head-masters' conference called "nature study,"
possibly at Edwin's sudden revelation of schoolboy
psychology. Decidedly he approved of the puss-
moths. He had been reading Fabre aloud to his
wife. Fabre, too, was a schoolmaster, poor devil!
He did not speak his thoughts : schoolmasters never
can. He said,
AIRS AND GRACES 67
"Let me see, Ingleby, you're in the Lower Fifth?"
"Yes, sir."
"I must speak to Mr. Cleaver. . . ." He didn't
say what he must speak about. "All right get
along with you." He left them, walking away with
his hands joined behind his back supporting an im-
mense flounce of black silk gown. Edwin scrambled
over the fence ; his hands, as they clutched the top
of it, were trembling violently.
"Well, you are a prize liar," said Widdup, "and
the old man believed every word of it."
"I know," said Edwin. "That's the rotten part
of it. . . ."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Oh, I don't know. . . ." He knew perfectly
well what he meant.
"Who won?"
"Airs and Graces."
"Then you've won the sweep."
"Yes."
Ten minutes later he was back in Mr. Cleaver's
classroom trying to make himself so inconspicuous
that he wouldn't be called upon to make an exhibi-
tion of himself, and, as luck would have it, nothing
of any difficulty came his way to drag him from
his comfortable obscurity. Even though the in-
tense excitement of his adventure had now faded,
the atmosphere of that high room had changed. He
felt that he didn't somehow belong to it ; or, rather,
that he had left something behind. All through
that drowsy hour some part of him was still being
hurried over the hot downs, swept along in the
sweating crowds of the racecourse, and this cir-
68 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
cumstance made his present life strangely unreal,
as though he were a changeling with whom it had
nothing in common. Gradually, very gradually, the
old conditions reasserted themselves, but it was
not until the insistent discipline of the evening ser-
vice in chapel had dragged him back into normal-
ity that his adventure and the influence of the
strange people with whom he had rubbed shoulders
began to fade. Widdup, with his unblushing admi-
ration, helped. There was no shutting him up.
"Well, you have a nerve," he said. "I wonder
what you'll do next. . . ."
"Oh, stow it," said Edwin. "I've finished with
that sort of thing. I'm not cut out for a blood."
"I can't think how you did it."
"Neither can I. It was damned silly of me. I
just wanted to satisfy myself that . . . that I had
some guts, you know. I didn't really care what
you chaps thought about it. It was sort of pri-
vate. ."
CHAPTER VI
THUNDER WEATHER
THAT night a thrilled but incredulous dormi-
tory discussed the exploit of Ingleby. With-
out pretending to have approached the dizzy
achievements of Griffin, Edwin perceived that in
addition to reassuring himself he had managed to
atone for a little of his former reputation. He
found himself treated with something that was
almost respect, partly for the daring of the whole
expedition, but even more for the crowning achieve-
ment of his inspired lie.
"I wish you hadn't told them that," he said to
Widdup.
"Why not?" said Widdup. "That was the best
part of it."
"I don't think so. I don't mind telling a lie, but
it's rotten if the chap you tell it to believes you."
"Get out," said Widdup. "If you want to know
the truth it's only another example of your rotten
cockiness."
Why? Why? Why? ... He couldn't under-
stand it. It seemed to him that the most natural
decent things in the world were all labelled as ab-
normalities. Even if he had proved to his own
69
70 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
satisfaction that he possessed the usual amount of
"guts," it seemed that he was a kind of freak.
There was no getting to the bottom of the mystery.
Yet, when he came to consider himself, he was cer-
tain that his attitude was infinitely humble. Per-
haps that was the trouble. Other chaps didn't think
about themselves. Edwin envied them unfeignedly.
He felt that he was condemned to travel a sort of
vicious circle. Thus, if he were honest to himself
he was bound to fail in the ordinary normal stand-
ard and to be considered, if not a prig, an oddity.
If, by enormous efforts, he were to compel himself
into the trodden ways of thought and conduct, he
couldn't be honest and in the process of regain-
ing his honesty he found himself fighting his way
back to the original misfortune. There was no way
out of it. Isolated he must be. He determined,
above all things, that even if he were not ashamed
of his isolation, he wouldn't be proud of it. It wasn't
easy.
The whole incident of the Birches which, after
all, he had meant for a sort of private trial was
becoming a nuisance. He almost welcomed the
attitude of Griffin, who scoffed at the whole busi-
ness and refused to believe he had been there.
Griffin, his own reputation for valour and cunning
being in question, determined to prove that Edwin
had not been near the race. In the dormitory that
night the coalition set themselves to this business,
beginning with an examinatllp at the hands of
Griffin himself.
"Widdup says you went to see the Birches run."
"Does he?" said Edwin.
THUNDER WEATHER 71
"Now, none of your fooling, Ingleby. You're a
damned little liar. You never put your nose near
the races."
"Well, it doesn't matter to you anyway."
"Doesn't it? You'll soon know that it does.
We're not going to have any liars in this house.
You'd better tell the truth at once."
"All right, then. I did go to the races."
"The swine ! . . . Get a towel, Duggie."
"Well . . . you asked me. . . ."
"Now, I'm going to prove that you're a liar.
Of course you know that already. But you ought
to be shown up for your own good. Then you'll get
a tight six. What were Airs and Graces' colours?"
"I don't know what his colours were."
Griffin howled. "HIS . . . listen to the swine. He
doesn't know a horse from a mare, Duggie. Ingleby,
how do you tell a horse from a mare?" Edwin
blushing, was overwhelmed with laughter. By this
time the towel was ready, wet, and twisted into a
cable. "I'll teach you the colours of Airs and
Graces," said Griffin. "We've had quite enough of
your airs and graces here. Next time you'll find it
pays to tell the truth in this dormitory."
Edwin got his six, having been bent double over
the end of his own bed by the other seekers after
truth. It was worth it. When the lights were out
and he was comfortably settled in bed he decided
that that sort of thing oughtn't to make any differ-
ence. "My mind to me a kingdom is," he said to
himself; and in his mind the great guts question
had been settled for ever. As for the lamming. . . .
Well, it might have been a gym shoe. . . . While
72 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
lie lay thinking of these things he was surprised
to hear the voice of Widdup, who slept next to
him, speaking in a whisper. "I say," he said,
"did you really go to the Birches, or were you pull-
ing my leg?"
"Of course I did," he replied. It gave him a
little shock to find that so slight a thing as a dis-
play of physical violence had shaken Widdup's
faith.
"I'm glad of that," came Widdup's apologetic
whisper. A long silence. "You've won the sweep,
anyway," said Widdup. "Thirty-eight and six-
pence." Edwin grunted.
"If you reckon that you'll be here four more
years, taking into account the number of men
average, you know who go in for the house sweep
every year, you could calculate the exact chances
against your ever "
He was asleep.
n
And while he slept after that day of unusual ex-
citement and fierce colour, he had a curious dream.
In the beginning it reflected a little of the anxieties
of the afternoon, for he found himself hurrying in
the middle of a huge and sweaty crowd which made
no way for him. He did not know why he was run-
ning so violently ; but of one thing he was certain,
and this was that he was going to be late. At first
he had in front of him the little man in the rusty
coat who had been his companion on the Downs:
the same queer creature now endowed with an
aspect even more grotesque and an agility more
THUNDER WEATHER 73
elfish, so that Edwin knew from the first that this
time he was sure to lose him and never to catch
him up again. All the masses of people through
whom he pressed were moving even faster than him-
self and in the same direction, so that it seemed as
if he could never gain ground at all, but must go
on running for ever with no sight of his goal, nor
any hope of getting nearer to it. At last his breath
gave out, and he stopped. It wasn't a bit of good ;
for the moving crowd wouldn't stop w r ith him, and
he was pushed forward by this multitude of tall
people, knowing that if he faltered for a moment or
fell (as in the end he must), he would certainly be
trampled to death by the feet of those who followed.
At last the little man outstripped him altogether,
and feeling that he had lost all hope, Edwin gave a
cry. When he cried out the whole hurrying crowd
melted away, the noise of their padding footsteps
left a clear patch of silence (it was like that) and
a puff of cool, thin air blew suddenly right into his
nostrils. He thought, "I'm not going to be late after
all. . . . Why didn't they tell me that I was going
to Uffdown?" There was no air like that in the
world. He drank it down in gulps as a horse drinks
water. "Eddie, you'll choke yourself," his mother
said. . . . "The light won't last much longer." "But
why should it last, darling?" he replied. "You've
got to look over there," she said, "in the west. You
see that level ridge dropping suddenly? Well, it's
the third farm from the end. Do you see?"
"Yes, darling, I can see it quite clearly. . . ."
And he did see it. A long building of bluish stone
with small windows set flush in the walls and no
74 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
dripstones save one above the oak doorway. Not
a soul to be seen. It looked as if the place had been
deserted by living creatures for many years. "I
can see it," he said, "but I don't think anybody lives
there."
"But you can see it?" she asked him eagerly.
"Can you see the little bedroom window on the left
the third from the end quite a little window?"
It was difficult to see, for, after all, it was more
than a hundred miles away, and all the time that
he was looking, the streamers of cloud kept rolling
down from the darens on the mountain and drench-
ing the whole scene in mist. "Eddie . . . there's
not much time," she pleaded. "Do tell me."
"Yes," he said. "I can see the window you mean."
She sighed. "I'm so glad, Eddie. I did want
to show it you."
"But why were you in such a hurry?"
"It was my last chance of showing it to you."
'^Whatever do you mean, darling?"
She turned her face away. Now it was quite
dark. "I'm really dreaming," he thought, "and this
is a sort of stage on which they can do lightning
tricks like that." But there was no doubt about
it being Uffdown. All round the sky the pit-fires
of the black-country were flickering out. And
though he couldn't see her face, he could feel her
soft hand in his. "At any rate, I've written . . ."
she said at last.
That was the sentence which he carried in his
mind when he awoke. A letter. But she didn't
usually write to him before Sunday, and it was
now only Saturday. Yet, when he came into Hall
THUNDER WEATHER 75
for breakfast a letter was lying on his plate. There
was something so strange about the whole business
that he was almost afraid to open it. He had a
sudden, awful intuition that she was dead. Ridicu*
lous, of course, for dead people didn't write letters.
Smiling at himself, yet scarcely reassured, he
opened the letter and read it.
"My Darling Boy (she wrote), Did you really
make fifteen ? You must be getting on. Aunt Laura,
has just been in to tea, and we talked such a lot
that I have only just time to write this before father
goes down to business and can post it. I have
some very interesting news for you. The other
afternoon Mrs. Willis of Mawne came in to see me.
She and Lilian are going to Switzerland for a
month this summer, and now she suggests that I
should join them there. It won't be just yet, and
I think no, Pm sure that I should be back again
before your holidays. Father wants me to go. I
haven't been very well, and the doctor says he's
sure it would do me good. All my life I've wanted
to see Switzerland. I'm most awfully excited about
it, Eddie, and father says he can spare me. Won't
it be wonderful? They are going about the end
of June. I won't forget that postal order, but I'm
rather poor myself just at present. Eddie, do you
keep my letters? I think I should like you to. The
double stocks which father planted in the long bed
are just coming out.
"Good-bye, my darling,
"Tour loving
"Mother."
76 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Of course nothing, in spite of the news of the
Swiss excursion, could be more ordinary. That
would be wonderful for her ... of course it would.
And yet, in spite of all these reasonable convictions
he couldn't get that dream out of his head. Some-
thing, he felt sure, was going wrong.
He tried to analyse the source of his disquietude.
"Perhaps I'm jealous," he thought. He was most
awfully jealous of anything that other people had
to do with his mother, and, anyway, he didn't know
these Willis people very well. They were new
friends of hers: a family of wealthy iron-masters
whose works had suddenly risen in the year of the
Franco-Prussian war, and were now slowly but gi-
gantically expanding. They lived at Mawne Hall,
a sad but pretentious mansion of the departed Pom-
frets, of which Edwin knew only the wrought-iron
gates at the bottom of a steep drive. They had a
son, Edward, of very much the same age as him-
self, but the Willises had no great educational am-
bitions (that was where Edwin's mother came in),
and had sent him to the ancient but decaying Gram-
mar School of Halesby, an impossible concern in
the eyes of any public-schoolboy. The Willises had
pots of money. Here again Edwin suspected them.
It rather looked as if they had "taken up" his moth-
er; and nobody on earth had the right to do that.
He hated the Willises (and particularly Edward)
in advance. He always hated people he hadn't met
when he heard too much about them. He thought
that the new intimacy probably had something to
<lo with his Aunt Laura, who was diffuse and fussy
THUNDER WEATHER 77
i>
and ornate, and not a patch on his mother. No-
body was a patch on his mother . . .
He couldn't get rid of his anxiety, and so, in the
heat of the moment, before morning school, he an-
swered her letter. "Oh, darling, don't go to Switz-
erland with a lot of strangers. If you do go, I feel
that I shall never see you again," he wrote. He
knew it wouldn't be any good. She couldn't rea-
sonably do anything but smile at his fancies. But
he couldn't help it. He even took the trouble to
post the letter in the box at the Grand Entrance,
so as to make certain that he couldn't change his
mind.
On the way into the classroom he met Griffin,
who pushed a packet into his hand. "Here you are,"
he said. "Take it." It was thirty-eight shillings
in silver, the first prize in the house sweep on the
Birches. He wished he had remembered about it.
He would have told his mother in the letter not to
bother about the postal order. It was an awful
thing to think of her being hard-up and himself
rolling in this prodigious and ill-gotten fortune.
The morning class was listless, for the weather
remained at a great pitch of heat, and the only thing
that any one thought of was the fixture with the
M.C.C. which would begin at noon. Cleaver always
assisted as umpire at this match, and so the de-
serted Lower Fifth occupied a corner of the Big
Schoolroom by themselves. In this great chamber
it was said that the roof-span was as wide as
any in England Edwin dreamed away the morn-
ing, reading, sometimes, the gilt lettering on the
boards on which the names of scholars were record-
78 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
ed: giants who had passed before him along the
same corridors, and whose names were only mem-
orable as those of heroes in a mythology, or more
ponderably evident in reports of parliamentary de-
bates and the scores of county cricket teams.
Opposite him hung the board devoted to the win-
ners of entrance scholarships. His own name was
there. Edwin Ingleby . . . 1895. He remembered
the day when it had almost embarrassed him with
its fresh gold lettering. Now the leaf had toned
down, and the name had sunk into obscurity be-
neath a dozen others. So the passage of fleet time
was measured on these tables. In a few more years
nobody who didn't take the trouble would read his
name. Even those of the batch before "him were
lialf -buried in obscurity. One other name arrested
him: G. H. Giles. He knew nothing of Giles ex-
cept that this brilliant beginning had been followed
by disaster. The name of Giles appeared on no
other board; for the term before Edwin came to
St. Luke's Giles had been expelled from the school.
Edwin didn't know what he had been expelled for;
but the circumstance, remembered, afflicted him
with a kind of awe. "It might happen so easily," he
thought. Why, if he hadn't lied to the Head the
day before he might have been expelled himself,
and years afterwards some one sitting in his place
would stare at the name of Ingleby with the self-
same awe. The voice of Mr. Leeming, stuck fast
where Edwin had left him a year before, in the
Stuart period, recalled him. "We will pass over
the unpleasant . . . most unpleasant side of Charles
THUNDER WEATHER 79
the Second's reign. Unfortunately, he was a thor-
oughly bad man, and his court . . ."
Edwin heard no more, but he heard another sound
peculiar to the Big Schoolroom on Saturday morn-
ings: the measured steps of the school sergeant
plodding down the long stone corridor which led
to the folding doors. On Saturday morning the
form-masters presented their weekly reports to the
Head, and boys whose names came badly out of the
ordeal were summoned to the office to be lectured,
to be put on the sort of probation known as "Satis-
fecit," or even to be caned.
The Lower Fifth knew none of these terrors.
Cleaver was far too easy-going to take his weekly
report seriously ; but the lower ranks of Mr. Leem-
ing's form trembled. You could never be sure of
old Leeming. The folding doors opened. Mr. Leem-
ing stopped speaking, and the sergeant walked up
to his desk and stood waiting at attention while
Leeming read his list. He looked over his glasses.
"Let me see ... Sherard . . ." he said. "Sherard,
the head-master wishes to see you at twelve-thirty."
His voice was so gently sympathetic that nobody
could possibly imagine that he had had anything to
do with this calamity. "Then . . . the Lower
Fifth . . ." he fumbled with the paper. "Ingleby.
The head-master will se,e you at the same time."
He looked over at Edwin with the most pained sur-
prise. "Very good, sergeant," he said.
Edwin felt himself going white. Yes, that was
it. That was the explanation of his feeling of un,
rest. He was going to share the fate of the tradi-
tional Giles. Good Lord . . think of it! Miss
8o THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Denning had done this. And yet he could hardly
believe it she had always been far too nice for
that. Now his face was burning. It struck him
that it wasn't a bit of good worrying. If it weren't
... if it weren't for his mother it really wouldn't
be so bad. He couldn't bear to think of her dis-
appointment in his disgrace. She thought so
much of him. It wouldn't be quite so bad if she
were not ill. It might kill her. Good God! . . .
that would be awful! Suppose, after all (it was
no good supposing), that the Head wanted to see
him about something else. . . . There wasn't any-
thing else. Unless . . . unless it were something
to do with his mother. Unless she were seriously
ill ... even something worse. But he had her
letter. It couldn't be that. Yesterday she was well
enough to write to him. No . . . the story was out,
and he was going to be expelled. In three quarters
of an hour he would know the worst. He wished
that the time would pass more quickly. Time had
never been so slow in passing. The clock in the
tower chimed the quarter. From where he sat he
could see the tower through the upper lights of the
long window. He could see the minute-hand give
a little lurch and move infinitesimally forward. He
remembered Widdup telling him exactly how many
times it moved to the minute. Was it twice . . .
or three times? He had forgotten. There must be
something wrong with the clock to-day. In the
middle of this purgatory one half-humorous fancy
came to him: "At any rate old Griff will know;
that I did go to the races now."
JHUNDER WEATHER 81
in
They waited, ten or twelve of them, in the twi-
light of the passage outside the Head's study. The
atmosphere of this place resembled that of a crypt,
or more properly since the keynote of the St.
Luke's architecture was baronial rather than mon-
astic a dungeon. The only light that came to
them entered by way of certain dusty windows of
lancet shape on either side of the gothic porch. Be-
neath these windows languished a pale array of
botanical specimens rotting in their test tubes
and bearing witness to the week-old zeal of the
Head's particular section of the Natural History
Society.
They waited, a miserable company of all shapes
and sizes : some, who knew the worst, with a rather
exaggerated jauntiness, determined to make the
best of it: others, such as Edwin r being in doubt
of their fate and burdened with a spiritual appre-
hension far worse than any physical penalty which
might overtake them.
The sergeant opened the door. "Sherard W.,"
he said. Sherard W. crammed a sweaty cap into
his pocket and started forward, eager to get it
over. The aperture which admitted him showed no
more than the end of a table crammed with books,
a number of highly-varnished shelves, a polished
floor covered with Turkey carpet, and a blaze of
mocking sunshine. The nails in the heels of Sher-
ard W.'s boots rang on the stone flags. When he
reached the Turkey carpet his steps became silent.
The door closed. The rest of them strained to
82 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
listen. They heard little: nothing but the quiet
rumour of the head-master's voice, and little patches
of silence in which the replies of Sherard W. were
not heard at all. A moment later he emerged. A
number of whispered questions assailed him, but
Sherard W. didn't feel like answering questions. He
brushed by the rest of them as quickly as he could
go, with his school-cap pressed to his eyes. An-
other patch of sunlight was revealed. "Fraz-
er . . ." called the sergeant. And Frazer, a tall lout
of a boy with sallow face, came forward and was
swallowed up in the same way as Sherard W. A
minute later the sound of dull blows was heard.
"Frazer's got it," said somebody. "One . . .
two . ,. . three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . . Poor
old Frazer!"
"Six from the Head isn't equal to three from
Cleaver. You should see Cleaver's biceps in the
gym."
One by one the members of the crowd entered and
returned. It seemed to Edwin that his turn would
never come. All the time that he waited his imagi-
nation ( accursed gift ! ) was playing with the hidden
scene within : the long table, that he had seen only
once before, and, at the head of it, the lean, bearded
figure in the silk gown wielding an absolute power
of life and death like God in the Old Testament.
Yes, it was just like that. He remembered a mina-
tory text that hung cobwebbed in one of the attics
at home : PREPARE To MEET THY GOD. It was not
pleasant to hear these muffled sounds of chastise-
ment, but what was a flogging (the Head's favour-
ite word) compared with the more devastating fate
THUNDER WEATHER 83
that awaited him? "That's why he's keeping me
till last," he thought.
"Ingleby . . ." said the sergeant. Edwin had
time to fancy that his tone implied a more awful
enormity than he had put into any other name. He
entered, and stood waiting in the sunlight. It was
rather less frightening than he had imagined, this
long room, relatively luxurious, and the pale man
at the head of the table with his lined, black-beard-
ed face, and the peculiar twitching of his left arm
which had always added to the sinister side of his
equipment. For a moment he took no notice of Ed-
win. Then he looked up and smiled. Would the
storm never break?
"Ah . . . Ingleby."
"Yes, sir."
"I hope your entomological zeal isn't going to
take you up to the racecourse, Ingleby. How are
the puss-caterpillars getting on?"
He smiled again, and showed his teeth beneath
his shaggy moustache. Edwin was seized with a
sudden terror. The worst had happened, and now
the Head was playing with him. He could say
nothing.
"Eh? . . . What's the matter with you? You
aren't faint, are you? You'd better sit down."
Edwin trembled into a chair.
"Now, are you all right?"
"Yes, sir."
"I sent for you, Ingleby, because I have been hav-
ing a talk with Mr. Leeming."
What in the world had old fat Leeming to do
with it? Edwin wished he would get it over.
84 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Mr. Leeming has always given me good reports
of you ... I don't know if you deserve them . . .
and last night I saw Mr. Cleaver, who . . . um . . .
um . . . tells me that you are one of ... No, I'll
leave that part out . . . that you've got plenty of
brains when you choose to use them, but that you
are somewhat lacking in application. H'm?"
"Yes, sir."
Why wouldn't he get to the point?
"He says, Ingleby, that you're a dreamer. Well,
you know, there's no use for dreamers in this world.
They're not wanted. Even dreamers with the bless-
ing of good brains. H'm?"
"Yes, sir."
"But Mr. Leeming is satisfied, and so am I, that
if you chose to make an effort, and take a ... a
healthy interest in things, we might do some good
with you. You might win scholarships, and be a
credit to the school. That's what we want. That's
what your parents sent you here for. Now . . .
now Mr. Leeming tells me that you aspire to be-
coming a priest of the church. . . ."
"No, sir."
"No . . .? But Mr. Leeming told me he had
talked the matter over with you?"
"He mentioned it, sir ... but I didn't say any-
thing. I ... don't think I do want to, sir."
The Head frowned. "You mean that you don't
feel worthy of so great a vocation? Well, you're
young. You're a promising boy. I want to do what
is best for you . . . and the school. At the end
of this term you are likely to get a move, and after
a certain time I don't think, from the scholarship
THUNDER WEATHER 85
point of view, you can begin to specialise too early.
You have shown a certain . . . aptitude for Eng-
lish. You might read History. You might stick
to Classics. What do you think about it?"
"I should like to read History, sir."
<r Very well, I'll write to your father about it. We
won't say anything more about the Church for the
present. That will come later. I expect Mr. Leem-
ing will talk it over with you. You may go now."
CHAPTER VII
IMPURITY
fin HE "little chat" as Mr. Leeming would cer-
A tainly have called it did not take place for a
long time, for the reverend gentleman's mind had
become exercised with a problem of greater impor-
tance than the devotion of Edwin. It wasn't exactly
his fault. Mr. Leeming was a bachelor. He was now
in his forty-third year. Naturally endowed with
an intense shyness of disposition which the forced
publicity of his two professions, in the pulpit and
the classroom, had overlaid with a veneer of suave
assurance, he was none the less a man of ardent,
if timid passions. He himself had always been
aware of this powerful sensual element in his na-
ture. With a certain degree of courage he had
subjected it to a deliberate mortification. Obsti-
nately he had fitted his body to the Procrustean
couch that his conscience recommended: obsti-
nately, and in a degree successfully. Not quite
successfully . . . for his original appetites were un-
wieldy, and if they had been coerced in one direc-
tion they had undoubtedly and demonstrably over-
flowed in another, as witnessed the growing expanse
of his waistcoat.
This waistcoat, on week-days of broadcloth and
86
IMPURITY 87
on Sundays of a more sensual silk, was the symbol
of Mr. Leeming's possibilities. He didn't know it.
Even if he were aware, in the lacing of his boots,
of its physical existence; he hadn't the least idea
of its spiritual significance. If he had realised this,
if he had been content to see himself as he actually
stood upon the brink of his morning bath instead
of as a snowy surpliced priest of God or a knightly
figure in the armour of Sir Percivale (such, indeed,
was his Christian name), Mr. Leeming might have
been a healthier and a happier man. As it was, the
devil that he believed he had conquered, in reality
possessed his soul.
In his quest for the thing which he had labelled
purity he had unconsciously allowed the idea of
"Impurity" to become an obsession. In the activi-
ties of a parish, hustled by the continual accidents
of stark life and stabilised by the actual responsi-
bility of a wife and an increasing family, Mr. Leem-
ing might have become a thinner and a wiser man.
In the sedentary and monotonous duties of a pub-
lic school, he had become gradually more fat and
introspective, and, as the years advanced, more per-
petually conscious of the unashamed presence
throughout human nature of his own suppressed
desires, more frightened . . . and more curious
... of their terrible existence and more terrible
power. Mr. Leeming, with the best intentions in
the world, was in a bad way.
A number of circumstances favoured the develop-
ment of the unfortunate gentleman's obsession. In.
the last Easter holidays he had attended a confer-
ence of assistant masters in London, at which the
88 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
whole question had been discussed with the great-
est solemnity, and plans had been formulated for
the stamping out of "impurity" in every public
school in England. The speeches of the delegates
had convinced him of his own blindness. It was
impossible that St. Luke's should be so very differ-
ent from any other public school, yet other people
had assured the meeting that in their own schools
tthe disease was "rampant," and Mr. Leeming had re-
turned to his summer duties convinced that if only
he looked with sufficient care more ills than he had
ever suspected might be found. He had become a
man with a mission.
For a crusade of this kind St. Luke's was not by
any means an ideal field. The head-master, for all
his imposing presence, was not a practical man. He
was intolerant of enthusiasms in his staff, not so
much because they were symptomatic of ill-breed-
ing, but because they tended to disturb the pleasant
ordered tenor of his life. Croquet and botany were
sciences of more interest to him than education. He
believed in hard games, corporal punishment, na-
ture study, and the classics. He hated extremes. The
golden mean was his creed, his weakness, and his
apology. He hadn't any use for Mr. Leeming's in-
tensities. He could even be picturesque on oc-
casion. "If you are going to appoint yourself in-
spector of our dirty linen, Leeming," he said, "you
really mustn't expect me to do the washing."
"I don't think you understand me, sir," Mr. Leem-
ing began. . . .
"Oh, don't I?" said the Head. The word Im-
purity formed voicelessly on Mr. Leeming's lips.
IMPURITY 89
"It is a scandalous thing . . . scandalous . . ."
he complained to the common-room, "that a man
who knows what is right and is determined to fol-
low it shouldn't be properly backed by the head-
master. The matter is vital. It is the most im-
portant ... by far fhe most important problem
in modern education. Any means are justified to
purge the schools of this sort of thing. . . ."
"I can see you, Leeming," drawled Selby, "in
the role of agent provocateur." The common-room
exploded.
"What is wanted in the public schoolmaster is
a higher sense of seriousness," Leeming spluttered.
"You have no sense of suspicion."
"What is more wanted in the public schools,"
said Cleaver, "is a suspicion of sense common
sense."
"All you fellows talk," said Dr. Downton, "as if
the whole thing were a problem for the public
schools purely and simply. It's nothing of the kind.
It's not the ignorance of the average schoolmaster
as much as the ignorance of the average parent. I
mean ignorance of the nature of boys . . . lack
of sympathy, lack of responsibility. And when ugly
things happen they shove it on to us."
"That's what they pay a hundred and fifty a
year for," said Cleaver.
"Of which we don't see any too much . . ." Selby
growled.
"None of you take it seriously. The thing ia
enormous," said Leeming. "What can you expect
in a way of improvement when a housemaster like
Selby makes jokes about it? I'm convinced that
90 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
there's only one way. . . . You can't drive boys.
You've got to understand their hearts."
"You've got to understand their bodies," said
Cleaver.
Mr. Leeming flushed. "I think you are merely
disgusting, Cleaver."
"He's quite right," said Downton. "It isn't sexu-
al education, it isn't moral instruction that's going
to work the miracle. When a boy reaches a cer-
tain age and it isn't the same age with all boys
he begins to be conscious, and quite properly, of
his physical passions. You needn't shudder, Leem-
ing. They exist. You know they exist as well as
anybody. Well, when he reaches that stage a pub-
lic school isn't the proper place for him."
"The games would go to pot," said Cleaver. From
his point of view there was no more to be said.
"It depends entirely on your boy. Some are too
old at seventeen. Some are perfectly safe at nine-
teen. The trouble is that just when you get them in
eight of these dangers you put them in supreme au-
thority. A prefect can do pretty well as he
likes. . . ."
"It's the essence of the system . . . responsi-
bility," said Selby.
"It gives them what Shaw said about something
else: the maximum of inclination with the maxi-
mum of opportunity."
"Shaw?" said Cleaver. "You fellows are too deep
for me. Anyway, I don't believe there's much
wrong here. So long." He swung out of the room.
"That kind of man," said Mr. Leeming, "is at the
root of the whole business."
IMPURITY 91
Dr, Downton was almost angry. 'Ton know,
Leeming, you're talking bosh. The thing's solving
itself. All over the world schoolboys are getting
wider interests at school. In their homes they're
taking a more equal place in family life. It is no
longer a matter of being seen and not heard.
They're being treated like human beings. The
more you treat them like human beings the less
likely they are to behave like young animals. And
the greatest mistake of all is to keep on talking
to them about it. Every boy of a certain age is
curious, and quite naturally curious, about his
physical possibilities. So is every girl. . . ."
"My dear Downton," said Leeming flushing, "I
shall be obliged if you won't er pursue the sub-
ject. You make it painful. . . ."
"Very well," said Downton gathering up the
skirts of his gown.
"Thank you." Leeming left the room. Selb
smiled lazily.
"If only," he said, "if only our friend Leeming
had ever enjoyed the advantage of a really bad
woman's society."
n
Unconscious of the doom which was being forged
for their chastisement in the white heat of Mr.
Leeming's troubled brain, the school lay scattered
along the perimeter of the cricket-field waiting
for the players to emerge from the pavilion. They
came, and the great expanse of green was made
more beautiful by their scattered figures. Every-
thing in the game seemed spacious and smooth and
92 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
clean the white flannels of the players; the paler
green of the rolled pitch; the new red ball; the
sharp click of the bat. Before lunch the school
had lost three wickets, but now it seemed as if a
stand were to be made. The studious Carr, the
head of Edwin's house, was batting steadily ; while
Gilson, the school's most showy batsman, who would
play for Surrey in the holidays, was beginning to
get set. Edwin and Widdup had their deck-chairs
side by side, and Douglas, for want of Griffin, ab-
sent on some deeper business, had pitched himself
near them, reclining upon a positive divan of
downy cushions.
The winnings of the house sweepstake, easily
gained, and therefore easily to be spent, supplied
the natural accompaniment of ices and ginger beer
or that inimitable compound of both that *was
known as the Strawberry Cooler. Under such cir-
cumstances the mere fact of lazy existence was a
pleasure. Even when the cautious Carr was
bowled, the long partnership ended, and the St.
Luke's wickets began to fall like autumn leaves, the
serene beauty of the day was scarcely clouded.
In the middle of the afternoon the figure of Mr.
Leeming drifted along the edge of the field. He
halted on the path immediately in front of Edwin
with his back to the spectators, considerably in-
commoding Douglas's view of the play. "Old
Beelzebub's a friend of yours, isn't he, Ingleby?"
said Douglas lazily. "You might tell him that he
isn't made of glass." But Mr. Leeming, suddenly
aware of a voice behind him, turned and came
towards them, smiling.
IMPURITY 93
"Ah, Ingleby," he said. "Is that you?"
He sat on the grass beside them, very carefully,
as befitted a man of his figure. "A beautiful day.
Let me see, who are we playing?"
"The M.C.C., sir."
"Ah, yes . . . the Marylebone Cricket Club. Are
you fond of cricket, Ingleby?"
"Of course I am, sir."
"I very seldom see you now. That's the pity of
it. The better a boy is the less you see of him. He
passes through your form quickly, and that's the
end of it. And how is Widdup?"
Widdup was very well, if a little impatient.
"You and Ingleby are great friends, Widdup.
Quite inseparable. I've often seen you walking
up and down the quad at night. I wonder what
it is you have in common, eh?"
Widdup didn't know. They'd always been pals.
They'd always slept alongside each other. That
was how you got to know a chap.
"Well, Ingleby, what are you reading in these
days?"
"Well hit, sir; oh, well hit. . . . Make it five.
I beg your pardon, sir ... I don't think I'm read-
ing anything in particular."
Slowly it became evident to Mr. Leeming that
the audience which he had honoured with his com-
pany was bored. With great dignity he picked
himself up and left them.
"He's a funny old swine," said Douglas.
"I used to think he was rather decent," said
Edwin. "Horribly 'pi' you know."
"I don't trust him," said Douglas. "I always feel
94 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
as if he's up to some low-down business or other.
He goes mooching about in those old felt slippers
of his, and you never know where he is. The other
day he came into the long box-room when Griff
and I were there playing Nap. You couldn't tell
he was coming. He's like a damned old tomcat.
I can't think how you stick him, Ingleby. . . ."
"I don't, really," Edwin confessed.
"And old Griff says he follows him like a shadow.
Just lately he's taken to haunting the swimming-
bath. I don't know what he goes there for. He
never used to. He never goes in. I don't suppose
the fat beast can swim."
"He could float . . ." said the practical Widdup.
The golden afternoon dragged out its lovely
length. The atmosphere of luxurious indolence
grew so heavy that it became too great an effort
to think of carrying the rugs and deck-chairs back
to the studies; and when Douglas had left them to
keep an appointment with Griffin, Widdup and
Edwin sat on till the meadows swam with soft
golden light, till the tops of the pyramidal lime-
trees became the colour of their blossoms, and the
sun cast long shadows upon the yellow fields. In
this delightful hour the sounds of the match from
which excitement had faded almost as the fierce-
ness had faded from the sky, became no more than
a placid accompaniment to the dying day. At six-
thirty stumps were drawn. The wide fields began
to empty and soon no life was seen upon them but
low dipping swallows who skimmed the smooth
lawn as though it were the surface of some placid
IMPURITY 95
lake. Upon the hillside a straggling trail of boys
could be seen taking home their rugs and cushions
as though they were returning from a day of toil
instead of one of the most exquisite idleness.
"Come on," said Widdup at last; "we shall be
late for chapel." And indeed another twenty
minutes found them assembled in the oak pews for
evensong. They sang the Nunc Dimittis, a canticle
which for all the rest of his life Edwin associated
with the placid closing of a summer day, and the
mild rays of the departing sun blazed through the
stained glass of the west window upon the pale
mosaic of the nave. When they emerged from the
chapel the sun had set, the skyline of the downs lay
low and almost cold, and cockchafers were whirring
blindly among the sticky tops of the conifers along
the chapel path.
In the middle of the crowd that stuck congested
in the porch Edwin found himself wedged between
Douglas and Griffin. They whispered together be-
hind his back. "Well, are you going?"
"Of course I'm going, I told you."
"You've fixed it up with her?"
"Yes, she's up to any sport. Why don't you
come with us?"
"Two's company. . . ."
"Go on with you. . . . You can easily pick up
another. You're not a sportsman, Duggie."
"I don't take risks of that kind. You bet your
boots I don't. Why don't you ask Ingleby? He's
a blood. Says he went to see the Birches. And
he's flush, too. Won the sweep."
96 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Ingleby?" Griffin scoffed. "I bet you he'd
funk it."
"Funk what?" said Edwin.
"Going down town to-night. There's a fair on.
I'm taking the skivvy from J dorm. She's all right.
She knows a thing or two."
"Don't talk so loud, you ass," said Douglas.
"Well, will you come?"
"No, I won't," said Edwin.
"You said you went to the Birches."
"I did go to the Birches."
"Well, nobody believes you. Now's your chance
to show your pluck. Come along, gentlemen, show
your pluck. . . . Three to one bar one. . . . 'Ere
you are, sir. The old and trusted firm. Ingleby
. . . you are a rotten little funk !"
Edwin said nothing. "He's got more sense than
you have, anyway, Griff," said Douglas.
That night in the dormitory when the lights were
turned down Griffin had not appeared. Douglas,
who slept next to him, had constructed, by means
of his own bolster and another confiscated from
the bed of the small boy on whom the animosity of
the coalition was now chiefly lavished, a very
plausible imitation of Griffin's prostrate figure. As
Griffin habitually slept in a position which enabled
him to absorb his own fugginess, this was not diffi-
cult. When Edwin went to sleep Griffin had not
arrived. Drugged with fresh air he slept un-
troubled by any dream. In the middle of the night
(as it seemed) he awoke, not because he had
heard any sound but rather because he had become
aware in his sleep of some unusual presence. He
IMPURITY 97
did not move, but slowly opened his eyes, and all
he saw was the figure of Mr. Selby, gigantically
tall, clad in a long bath-gown of Turkish towelling
and carrying a lighted candle that cast a shadow
even more gigantic on the whitewashed walls. He
moved slowly and his bedroom slippers made no*
sound on the boarded floor. Opposite the foot of Ed-
win's and Widdup's bed he paused for a moment.
Edwin closed his eyes. He felt the eyelids quiver.
Why on earth should Selby want to look at him?
He passed on, and Edwin, cautiously opening his
eyes, saw him pause again opposite the gap be-
tween Douglas and Griffin. At this point he
waited longer. He appeared to be thinking. He
passed on and then suddenly turned back and
gently lifted the sheet from Griffin's pillow. Gently
he replaced it. Edwin was almost too sleepy to
realize that Griffin wasn't there; but when he did,
the first thought which came into his mind was one
of spontaneous and inexplicable loyalty. He
thought, "Poor old Griff : He's in for it." And yet,
if there was one person in the world against whom
he had a reasonable excuse for hatred . . . Very
silently Selby left the dormitory. Edwin became
conscious of the ghostly noises of the night : a night-
jar spinning in the wood at the back of the School-
house: the boom of a cockchafer that some en-
thusiast had captured and imported into the dormi-
tory. The clock in the high turret struck twelve.
The chime wandered clanging over the empty
quadrangle.
98 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
in
The next week was the most sensational that
had ever shaken the placid life of St. Luke's. The
fall of Griffin was no startling matter deliberately
he had been "asking for it," and the escapade of
the fair in race-week was no more than a crown-
ing glory. Still, it was an impressive affair. Im-
mediately after breakfast next morning it wag
whispered that Griffin had been sent to the in-
fectious ward in the sanatorium, which was always
devoted, by reason of its size rather than any con-
scious attempt at symbolism, to the isolation of
moral leprosy. It became certain and Edwin,
after his vision of Selby's visit in the night had
taken it for granted that Griffin was to be
"bunked." In the afternoon, Douglas, faithfully
prowling near his comrade's prison, had seen
Griffin, splendidly unrepentant, at the high window
of his condemned cell. Griffin had smiled. Griffin,
evidently, didn't give a damn for the whole busi-
ness. The house thrilled. Of such stuff heroes
were made. It remained to be seen, in the opinion
of the critical, how Griffin would shape in the su-
preme test of the scaffold on which he would prob-
ably be birched before the assembled school. The
betting was all on Griffin's being a sportsman.
There followed a day of suspense. Consultations
between masters were noticed. Selby, for a whole
hour, had been closeted with the Head. Old fat
Leeming had been sent for at last to join their
deliberations. What had Leeming to do with it?
Other housemasters had been summoned to the
IMPURITY 99
room beneath the clock and emerged with un-
usually serious faces. Who was this Griffin that
his fate should shake the foundations of Olympus?
The Head, indeed, showed his seriousness more
clearly than all the others. He arrived late in
chapel, where the service had waited on his coming :
he stalked up the aisle, as full of omen as any
black crow, with his pale seamed face and his
shaggy black beard, and his arms crossed behind
his back beneath the skirts of his gown. From
his high seat at the end of the chancel he scowled
on the whole school as if he hated it. At supper
a message was read out. The school would as-
semble by classes in the Big Schoolroom at noon.
Poor old Griff. . . . The sergeant, it was said, had
been seen binding a new birch in the porter's lodge.
It was all very romantic and thrilling. Edwin,
conscious now for the first time of the extreme
foolhardiness of his racecourse adventure, felt
himself a greater dog than ever. And then, when
the stage was set, and the audience attuned to an
atmosphere of tragedy by so much thunder-
weather, Griffin, from whom the glamour of the
heroic had been gradually fading in the shame of
his captivity, achieved the dramatic. He bolted.
With a ladder of knotted sheets he climbed down
the waterspout and disappeared into open country.
Griffin lived somewhere in Kent. In half a day he
would reach home.
For Selby's house it was a great morning.
Edwin, in spite of his hatred of Griffin, shared in
the general elation. Such private feuds were small
ioo THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
concerns in the face of the common enemy. Douglas
was flown with insolence.
"I knew old Griff would do them," he said. "By
God . . . that's a man if you like. It's the nastiest
knock old Selby's had in his life. Think of it ...
a chap with a weak heart like old Griff shinning
down a waterspout!"
Edwin wondered if the meeting in the Big
Schoolroom would be off, or whether, perhaps, it
would be postponed and Griffin hauled back from
the bosom of his family to go through with it.
"You silly ass," said Douglas. "Of course they
can't fetch him back. He's done them brown."
But the morning went on without any alteration
in the programme. At twelve o'clock the solemn
procession began: the whole black-coated popula-
tion of St. Luke's filtering through narrow corri-
dors and the wide folding doors into the big
Schoolroom. The whole business was impressive;
for nobody spoke and no sound came from the
crowd but the drag of slowly-moving feet and arms
that brushed one another. They were like a flock
of sheep driven away from market on a narrow
road between dusty hedges, for none of them knew
what was coming. Rumour was busy with whispers.
Griffin had been found in a ditch with his leg
broken and had been hauled back to fulfil his
sentence. Like Momnouth, Edwin thought. Griffin,
in company with the pale skivvy from "D" had
been arrested by the police at Waterloo. Other
rumours, less credible, as, for instance, that
Cleaver, meeting a jockey friend of his in a little
pub called the Grenadier in the Downs Koad, had
IMPURITY 101
walked into a taproom full of School House bloods
on Sunday morning. Indeed, these were strenuous
days.
The school settled down. The Head, lean, crow-
like, flapped the wings of his gown. He seemed to
find it difficult to make a beginning, and while he
waited for a word his left arm twitched. Then
he began. It was obvious that his pause had been
nothing more than a rhetorical trick designed to
fix the attention of an audience already thrilled
by uncertainty. He wasn't at a loss for words at
all. He boomed, he ranted, he bellowed, he rolled
his "r's" and his eyes. The masters, sitting at their
high desks, remained discreet and rather bored
... all except Mr. Leeming, to whom the orator
appeared as an inspired prophet of God. For the
subject of his harangue was Mr. Leeming's own:
Impurity; and the whole meeting the immediate
result of Mr. Leeming's investigations. The cur-
tain had gone up with a most theatrical flourish
upon the Great Smut Row.
The essence of the Head's speech was a general
threat. Certain things had been discovered; cer-
tain further inquiries were to be made; the fate
of a large number of boys lay in the balance ; more
details were known, in all probability, than any
of the victims suspected; to the youngest among
them he made a special appeal; confession, imme-
diate confession, would be th better part of valour;
he looked to every member of the school to aid him
in the task, the sacred duty, of purging St. Luke's
of this abominable thing. Indeed it is possible
that he meant what he said. His port was bad,
102 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
and he knew better than to drink it ; but the heady
vintage that he brewed from sonorous words
knocked him over every time.
The meeting dissolved in silence. For the mo-
ment the school was impressed, less by the gravity
of the charge than by its indefiniteness. The same
evening brought tales of segregated suspects, of
tearful and terrible interviews in the rooms of
housemasters, of prefects suspended : of a veritable
reign of terror lettres de cachet and the rest of
it in Citizen Leeming's house. "D" dormitory
and the others in charge of the languid Selby suf-
fered least. When evening came to set a term
to rumours only two were missing the black
Douglas, and an insignificant inky creature of the
name of Hearn, whom the threats of the head-
master had driven to some grubby confession. An
atmosphere of immense relief fell upon the awed
dormitory and found vent in a memorable "rag."
But Edwin did not sleep. There was no reason
why he should not have slept ; but he couldn't help
feeling, against reason, that in some way he might
be dragged into the toils of vengeance; that some
peculiar combination of circumstances might impli-
cate him in the business, even though he had never
had anything to do with it. Somehow appearances
might be against him. In particular he became
suspicious of Mr. Leeming's attentions to him in
the past. He imagined that the wily creature had
suspected him, and tried, for that reason, to find
a way into his confidence. What other explana-
tion could there be? His avoidance of Mr. Leem-
IMPURITY 103
ing could only have increased the suspicion. Plain-
ly, he was done for.
He remembered, with a perilous clearness, words
that had passed between them to which he had
given no thought. Now they appeared terribly
significant. "You and Ingleby are great friends,
Widdup," Leeming had said only a few days before.
"Quite inseparable. I've often seen you walking
up and down the. quad at night. I wonder what
you have in common, eh?" Now Edwin knew why
he wondered. And Widdup, like a damned fool,
had said that they slept alongside each other. Sup-
posing old Leeming imagined. ... It was too bad.
He lay there staring at the rafters and wondering
what could be done. He would like to write to
his mother about it. But a man couldn't write to
his mother about a thing like that. And his father
wouldn't understand. In the end he determined
that the only thing he could possibly do was to go
and see Leeming next day and assure him that
there was nothing . wrong with their friendship.
"And then," he thought, "the old beast won't be-
lieve me. He'll think that I've gone to him because
I have a guilty conscience, and he'll suspect me
more than ever. He'll go and make all sorts of
inquiries and something will come out that will be
difficult to explain." How could anything come
out when there wasn't anything wrong? He could
not give a reasonable answer to this question, and
yet he was afraid. From this spiritual purgatory
of his own making he passed into an uneasy sleep.
Next morning, in the middle of early school, the
104 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
sergeant entered with a message for Mr. Cleaver,
and waited while the master read it.
"Ingleby," he said at last, "Mr. Selby wants to
speak to you. You had better go at once."
Edwin packed up his books with trembling
hands. He went very white. It seemed to him that
the eyes of the whole form were on him. They
were thinking, "Hallo, here's another of them.
Ingleby! Who would have thought it?" He heard
the footsteps of the sergeant go echoing down the
corridor as steadily and implacably as the fate that
was overtaking him. He only wanted to get it over.
As soon as he was out of the classroom he ran, for
every moment of uncertainty was torture to him.
He ran across the quad and climbed the stairs,
breathless, to the low room still steeped in stale
honeydew, where his life at St. Luke's had begun
and must now so abruptly end. Mr. Selby sat at
his desk waiting for him. When Edwin entered
the room he looked suddenly embarrassed and
fingered an envelope on his desk.
"Ingleby, I sent for you urgently . . ."
"Yes, sir."
"It probably came as a shock to you ... or per-
haps you were prepared?"
"No, sir."
"Then you must pull yourself together. You
can't guess what it is?"
"No, sir." . . . But he could. It came to him
suddenly, huge and .annihilating, swamping in the
space of a second all the uneasiness and terror that
had shadowed him in the night. Those things were
nothing . . . nothing.
IMPURITY 105
"Oh, sir ... my mother . . ."
"Yes . . . It's your mother, Ingleby. I'm sorry
to be the bearer of bad news. Very sorry. . . ."
"Tell me, sir. She's dead. Oh ... she's
dead . . . ?"
Mr. Selby unfolded the telegram although he al-
ready knew its contents.
"No. It's not so bad as that. But she's ill ...
very ill . . ."
"I knew. . . . The minute you spoke I knew,
sir. . . ."
"You had better catch the eight o'clock train
at the Downs station. You need only take your
little bag. You can get it from the matron. 7 '
"Yes, sir. . . ."
"Have you any money?" Mr. Selby almost
smiled to see him so eager to go.
"No, sir. . . . Only about eightpence."
"You can't go without money, you know. Here's
a sovereign. Now, cheer up, there's a good fellow.
Cheer up!" He smiled wanly, and Edwin burst
into tears. Mr. Selby laid an awkward hand on
his shoulder. It was very decent of him, Edwin
thought, as he stood with his fists in his eyes, one
of them clutching the sovereign that Selby had
given him.
"Thank you, sir ... but it's awful, it's
awful. . . ."
"Of course, of course. . . ."
He shepherded Edwin out of the room. When
the boy had gone, Mr. Selby, an unemotional man,
tore the telegram into small pieces and placed
them, with a confirmed bachelor's tidiness, in the
io6 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
waste-paper basket. Then lie lit a pipe of honey-
dew; and the blue smoke from the bowl together
with the brown smoke that he expelled from his
nostrils shone cheerily in the morning sun that
beat through the latticed window on to a woman's
photograph standing on the desk in front of him.
For a moment he gazed at the faded image. He
had not thought of her for years.
CHAPTER VIII
HOMEWARDS
IN a morning air of miraculous freshness Edwin
left the quad by the iron gates on the eastern
side. The square was quite empty, for all its usual
inhabitants were now in early school. He noticed
an unusual aspect of space and cleanliness. He
could not remember ever having seen it empty be-
fore. He noticed the tuck-shop in the corner by
the swimming-bath. This, too, was closed, and the
windows were heavily shuttered. It was a small
thing, but it suddenly occurred to him that people
put up their shutters or pulled down their blinds
when some one lay dead in a house. It seemed to
him like a sort of omen. He said to himself, "I
must think of something else ... I must think of
something else. I can't bear it." The only other
time when he had ever thought of death had been
a single moment a week or so before when his
mother had written about her plan of a visit to
Switzerland. And then the thought had been no
more than an indefinite shadow, too remote to be
threatening. Now it was different. The threat
was ponderable and vast. "Death ... I mustn't
think of it. I must think of something else."
He had to think of something else; for by the
107
io8 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
time the gate clanged behind him the clock in the
tower struck the quarter, and he knew that he had
barely time to catch his train. With his bag in
his hand he started running up the road between
the tufted grassy banks; past the scene of his last
adventure, the oak paling beside the nightingale's
spinney, past the last of the new villas, and so, on
to the open downs. It was a strange adventure
for him to reach them so early in the morning.
Their turf was silvered still with a fine dew that
made it even paler than a chalk down should be.
Fold beyond beautiful fold they stretched before
him. The woody belts of beech and pine lay veiled
in milky mist, and the air which moved to meet him,
as it seemed, over that expanse of breathing grass,
was of an intoxicating coolness and sweetness
which went to his head and made him want to shout
or sing. The spring of a summer morning in the
spring of life ! It was all wrong. Surely no awful
devastation of death could overshadow such an
ecstasy of physical happiness? He refused to be-
lieve it. It was all fantastic nonsense. Of course
she wasn't dead. Your mother couldn't die without
your feeling it. ...
At the station he had five minutes to spare. He
changed his sovereign, and was relieved to be rid
of the responsibility of one coin, and to fill his
pocket with silver. There were several coppers
in the change, and these he placed in a penny-in-
the-slot machine, extracting several metallic ingots
of chocolate cream. He was ready for these at
once, for his only breakfast had been a hurried
cup of tea and a slice of bread and butter in the
HOMEWARDS 109
matron's room. The train jolted out of the station,
and soon he was travelling eastward with the high
water-tower of St. Luke's dipping gradually be-
neath a long horizon.
The morning grew more beautiful. In some
strange way its beauty seemed to have got into his
blood; for he tingled with a kind of mild ecstasy
which he couldn't help feeling unsuitable almost
irreverent, to the tragic occasion. There was ad-
venture in it and the added charm of the unex-
pected. He was going home. Surely it was reason-
able enough to be excited at such a prospect as that,
to smell the fine summer scents that were so dif-
ferent in a midland shire; to see the gorse ablaze
on Pen Beacon and Uffdown and the green glades
of the old Mercian wood. Of course it was always
wonderful to be going home.
He remembered other homecomings from St.
Luke's; the first, and best of all, when, on a De-
cember morning they had crowded into the house-
master's room where Mr. Selby sat in his dressing-
gown, with a gaslight flaring, handing out the little
paper packets of travelling money; how the damp
platform at the station had been crowded with
human happiness and such a holiday spirit of inde-
pendence that Griffin and Douglas had lighted
cigarettes while they waited for the train. That
was the town station. He reflected that he had
only once before been to the Downs, where the train
service, except on race days, was not so good ; that
had been on the occasion of his first visit to St.
Luke's for the scholarship exam. He had come
down in an Eton suit, fortunately correct, and an
I io THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
unfortunate topper that he would have given his
life to hide when he found that they were not worn.
And his mother had come down with him. At the
thought of her the old numbing dread fell upon
his heart. Perhaps this was the very carriage in
which they had travelled. He remembered the
journey so well : how she had sat in the right-hand
corner, with her face to the engine, wearing a tail-
or-made grey coat and skirt, a velvet hat and a veil.
He had been looking at her rather critically, for he
was anxious that she should seem what she was
the most beautiful creature in the world. And
when he was looking at her with this in his mind
she had smiled at him, for no other reason in the
world probably but that she loved him; and with
that smile he had been satisfied that she really
was beautiful. And he had noticed how lovely
her hands were when she took her gloves off. . . .
Now, the memory of the moment made him want
to cry, just as the beauty of the morning made
him full of exultation. It was a most perilous
mixture of emotions.
By this time the region of downs had been left
far behind. They were gliding, more smoothly, it
seemed, through the heavily-wooded park country
of the home counties. Stations became more fre-
quent, and the train began to fill with business peo-
ple hurrying to London for their morning's work.
They settled themselves in their carriages as
though they were confident that their seats had
been reserved for them. They were all rather care-
fully, rather shabbily dressed: the cuffs of their
coats were shiny, and the cuffs of their shirts
HOMEWARDS in
fringed, and one of them, a gentleman with a top-
hat half-covered by a mourning-band, wore cuff-
covers of white paper. They all read their morn-
ing papers and rarely spoke; but when they did
speak to each other they used an almost formal
respect in their addresses which implied that they
were all respectable, God-fearing people with re-
sponsibilities and semi-detached houses. Edwin
they ignored not so much as a wilful intrusion as
an unfortunate accident. He began to feel ashamed
that, by starting from the terminus, he had occu-
pied a corner seat to which the gentleman with
the paper cuffs had an inalienable right.
In a little while the villas from which this popu-
lation had emerged began to creep closer to the
track, and by the seventh station their backs were
crowding close to the embankment with long, nar-
row gardens in which the crimson rambler rose
seemed to have established itself like a weed. The
houses, too, or rather the backs of them, grew more
uniform, being all built with bricks of an unhealthy
yellow or putty colour. Soon there were no more
buildings semi-detached. The endless rows seemed
to be suffering some process of squeezing or con-
striction that made them coalesce and edged them
closer and closer to the railway line. Soon the
gardens grew so small that there was no room in
them for green things, only for a patch of black
earth occupied by lean cats, and posts connected
by untidy pieces of rope on which torn laundry
was hung out to collect the smuts or flap drearily
in a night of drizzle. Then the gardens went alto-
gether ; and the beautiful and natural love of green
ii2 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
things showed itself in sodden window-boxes full
of languishing geranium cuttings or mignonette.
The very atmosphere seemed to have been subjected
to the increasing squeeze; for the mild air of the
downs had here a yellow tinge as though it were
being curdled. To complete the process the train
plunged, at last, into a sulphurous tunnel, emerg-
ing amid acrid fumes in a sort of underground
vault where the door was opened by a ticket-col-
lector with a red tie, tired already, who shouted
"Tickets, please."
None of the respectable suburban gentlemen
took any notice of him, for by purchasing season
tickets they had rendered themselves immune from
his attentions ; but he glared at Edwin, and Edwin
passed him his ticket, which was handed on as if it
were a curiosity and a rather vulgar possession by
the gentlemen on his side of the compartment. The
door was slammed. The man with the top-hat
placed it carefully on his head and adjusted the
paper cuffs. Others folded their morning papers
and put them in their pockets. One, apparently
recognizing a friend who was sitting opposite to
him, for the first time, said "Good-morning," and
the train passed amid thunderous echoes under the
arch and into Victoria Station. All his fellow-pas-
sengers were adepts at evacuation, and before he
knew where he was Edwin was alone in the car-
riage.
He was very lonely and yet, somehow, a little
important. Usually, at term end, he had crossed
London with Widdup, whose westward train also
started from Paddington. He hailed a hansom,
HOMEWARDS 113
and one that was worthy of its name: a shining
chariot, all coach-builders' varnish, with yellow
wheels and polished brass door-handles and clean
straw that smelt of the stable on its floor. The
cabman was youngish, mahogany-complexioned,
and ready to be facetious. He called Edwin "My
lord," and Edwin hardly knew whether to treat
him seriously or not. "Geawing to the races, my
lord?" he said. The Lord knew Edwin had had
enough of races for a bit. He said "Paddington."
"Ascot or Newbury?" said the cabby, climbing to
his seat.
It was a great moment. The movement was all
so swift and luxurious, the hansom so delicately
sprung that it swayed gently with the horse's mo-
tion. The polished lamps on either side were filled
with wedding rosettes. Inside on either hand were
oblong mirrors in which Edwin could almost see
his own profile: a subject of endless curiosity.
There was even a little brass receptacle for cigar-
ash. A Cunarder of a cab! The cabby whistled
"Little Dolly Daydreams" with a ravishing
tremolo. The cab, which had jolted a trifle on the
setts of the station-yard, passed among a flight of
feeding pigeons out of the iron gates into the bowl-
ing smoothness of the Palace Road. My word, this
was life. . . . Life ! . . . Perhaps she was dead al-
ready. Oh, why should a day like this be marred?
It seemed to him, after a moment's thought, that
it was possible even if it were wrong to be
possessed by two and opposite emotions at once.
He was miserable to feel an alarm which wasn't
exactly definite or real, and yet he could not help
114 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
enjoying this astounding and unforeseen adventure.
"If I do feel like that," he thought, "it can't be
exactly wrong." And that comforted him.
He surrende -ed himself to the joys of the morn-
ing. The streets were so wide and clean, the green
fringe of the park so pleasant: through the rail-
ings he could see men and women on horseback
taking an early ride, enjoying, like him, the cool-
ness of the morning air. He wondered at the great
white stucco houses of Park Lane, standing back
from the wide pavement with an air of pompous
reticence. Before one of them, remnant of a sum-
mer dance the night before, a tented portico,
striped with red and white, overstretched the pave-
ment. Edwin did not know what kind of people
lived in these houses, but in the light of this morn-
ing it seemed to him that theirs must be an exist-
ence of fabulous happiness, all clean and bright
and shining as the morning itself or the rubber-
tired hansom, spinning along with its yellow spokes
beside the neat park railings. All of them were
surely exalted, splendid creatures, born to great
names and a clear-cut way of life without the least
complication, dowered with a kind of instinctive
physical cleanliness.
At the corner, by Marble Arch, the hansom cab,
silent but for its jolly jingling bells, nearly ran over
an old gentleman in a frock coat with an exquisite
white stock and a noble nose. His name was prob-
ably Cohen ; but Edwin thought he must be at least
an Earl.
Once again the resorts of elegance were left be-
hind. The hansom, heaving heavily, was checked
HOMEWARDS 115
on the slope of the gradient descending to the de-
parture platform at Paddington. Opposite the
booking-office it stopped, and Edwin was released
from this paradisaical loosebox. The cabby, wish-
ing him the best of luck at Goodwood, patted his
horse, whom he had christened Jeddah, and
climbed up again to his seat whistling divinely.
Edwin was disgorged upon the long platform at
Paddington that rumbled with the sound of many
moving trollies below a faint hiss of escaping
steam, and smelt, as he had always remembered
it, of sulphur mingled with axle grease and the pe-
culiar odour that hangs about tin milk-cans. He
was thankful to be free of it, sitting in the corner
of a third-class carriage opposite a stout woman
with eyes that looked as if she had been crying all
night, and a heavy black veil, whose hat was sur-
mounted by coloured photographs of the Memorial
Theatre at Stratford and Brixham Trawlers wait-
ing for a Breeze.
This train ran out of London more easily than
the other had entered it. The area of painful con-
striction seemed more narrow, and in an incredibly
short time he found himself gliding along the
Thames valley with the ghostly round tower of
Windsor Castle on his left.
At Reading, where the sidings of the biscuit
factory reminded him of teas which he had
"brewed" with Widdup, the woman opposite took
out a crumpled paper bag, and began to eat sand-
wiches. She lifted her veil to do so, and the process
suddenly proclaimed her human. Edwin saw that
she wasn't, as he had imagined, a sombre, mute-like
i;6 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
creature, but a woman of middle age with a com-
fortable face and a methodical appetite.
He began to wonder what he should say if she
offered him a sandwich, for he dreaded the idea of
accepting anything from a stranger, and at the
same time could not deny that he was awfully
hungry, for the chocolate creams that he had ab-
sorbed at the Downs station had failed to dull his
normal appetite. This emergency, however, never
arose. The woman in black worked steadily
through her meal, and when she had finished her
packet of sandwiches folded the paper bag tidily
and placed it in a wicker travelling basket, from
which she produced one of those flask-shaped
bottles in which spirits are sold at railways sta-
tions. From this she took a prolonged and delicious
gulp; recorked and replaced it, smiled to herself,
sighed, and lowered her portcullis once more.
It cheered Edwin to think that she wasn't as
inhuman and sinister as he had imagined; and in
a little while he saw beneath her veil that she had
closed her eyes and was gradually falling asleep.
The sun, meanwhile, was climbing towards the
south, and the railway carriage began to reflect
the summery atmosphere of the green and pleasant
land through which the train was passing. It
made golden the dust on the window-pane at Ed-
win's elbow and discovered warm colours in the
pile of the russet cloth with which the carriage was
upholstered.
It was a country of green woods and fields of
ripening mowing-grass from which the sound of a
machine could sometimes be heard above the
HOMEWARDS 117
rumble of the train. It all seemed extraordinarily
peaceful. A cuckoo passed in level flight from one
of the hedgerow elms to the dark edge of a wood.
In the heart of the wood itself a straight green
clearing appeared. It reminded Edwin of the green
roads that pierced the woods below Uffdown, and
he remembered, poignantly, the walk with his
mother in the Easter holidays when they had
reached the crown of the hills at sunset. Some
day, they had said, they would make that journey
again. Some day . . . perhaps never. Was it quite
impossible to get away from that threatening
shadow? But even while he was thinking how un-
reasonable and how cruel the whole business was,
another sight fell upon his eyes and filled him with
a new and strange excitement: a small cluster of
spires set in a city of pale smoke, and one com-
manding dome. He held his breath. He knew that
it was Oxford. *
This, then, was the city of his dreams. Here, in
a little while, he would find himself living the
new life of leisure and spaciousness and culture
which had become his chief ambition. This was
his Mecca: "That lovely city with her dreaming
spires," he whispered to himself. It was indeed
merciful that the vision of his second dream should
come to cheer him when the first became so peril-
ously near extinction.
Even when the train began to slow down among
red-brick suburbs of an appalling ugliness the
mood of excitement had not faded. The train
ran in smoothly, and the woman in black awoke
and blew her nose. Edwin, looking out of the car-
ii8 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
riage window, saw a congregation of demigods in
grey flannel trousers, celestial socks, and tweed
Norfolk coats lounging with a grace that was
Olympian upon the platform. All of them, he
thought, were supremely happy. In this holy city
happiness had her dwelling. One of them his
back was turned to Edwin reminded him of Lay-
ton, the old head of the house. He remembered
with a thrill, that Layton, who had won a scholar-
ship at New College, was now in Oxford. Of course
it must be he. Very excited, Edwin slipped out of
the carriage and ran after him. "Layton!" he
called. And the young man looked round. "What
do you want?" he said. It wasn't Layton at all.
Edwin apologised. "I'm awfully sorry. I thought
you were a chap I knew."
The porters were slamming the doors and he
only just managed to scramble into his seat before
the train started. The woman in black spoke for
the first time. She had a soothing voice, with a
west-country burr that reminded him of his father
and Widdup. "I thought you were going to be
left behind," she said. "I saw your bag was
labelled North Bromwich."
Shouts were heard on the platform. "North
Bromwich next stop. . . . Next stop North Brom-
wich . . ." Edwin sat down panting, and the train
moved off. "Next stop North Bromwich. . . ."
The words echoed in his brain, and chilled him. He
didn't want to look back to see the last of Oxford.
Next stop North Bromwich. At North Bromwich
he would know the worst. Swiftly, inevitably, the
HOMEWARDS 119
train was carrying him towards it. The tragedy
had to be faced.
He was seized with a sudden inconsolable fear of
desolation. His eyes brimmed with tears so that
the coloured landscape could not be seen any
longer. The tears gathered and fell. He could
feel them trickling down his cheeks, and when he
knew that he could not hold them back any longer
the strain of his emotion was too strong for him,
and, against his will, he sobbed aloud, burying his
face in his hands.
The woman in black, hearing the sobs, raised her
veil and looked at him.
"What is it, my dear?" she said.
"Oh, nothing . . . nothing."
"Folks don't cry about nothing. . . ."
She spoke quite kindly, and her kindness was
too much for him. It gave him quite an unaccount-
able feeling of relief to speak about it.
"It's . . . it's my mother," he said.
"There now. ... Is it really? That's bad for
'ee. When did she pass away?"
"She isn't dead. I ... I hope she isn't. But
she's awfully ill."
"Don't cry now, boy. While there's life there's
hope. I always tells them that."
"Who do you tell that to?"
The black woman laughed. "Who do I tell
that to? Ha . . . that's a good 'un. Why, dearie,
my patients, of course."
"I don't understand. . . . What sort of pa-
tients?"
120 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Well, Mr. Inquisitive, if you must know, I'm a
monthly nurse."
Still Edwin did not understand. He asked,
"Do many of them die?"
"Why, bless my heart, no. It's more a matter
of births than deaths. Not that I haven't a' seen
deaths. And laid them out. But I'll tell you some-
thing. It's my belief that they all die happy. And
though it's hard on a young boy like you to lose
his best friend that's his mother it's my belief
that death is a happy release. Yes, a happy re-
lease. I always tell them that. Especially after a
long illness. I wonder, has your dear mother been
ill for a long time?"
Edwin thought. "Yes."
"Perhaps," said the black woman with relish,
"Perhaps you could give me some idea of what she
was suffering from and then I could tell you near
enough."
"I think," said Edwin, "it was diabetes."
"Diabetes . . . think of that! I've a' had sev-
eral with that. It's a bad complaint. Very. I'm
afraid I can't give you the hopes that I'd like to."
"But don't they ever get better?" Edwin asked
in agony. "I expect they do sometimes, don't
they?"
"It all goes to sugar," said the woman enigmati-
cally. "I ought to know for I've had them. Yes
. . ^ I've had them. But while there's life there's
hope. That's what I always say. And a boy's best
friend is his mother. You must never forget her."
"I couldn't forget her. Oh, I wish you'd never
told me," said Edwin, sobbing once more.
HOMEWARDS , 121
"Now, dearie, don't take on so. You mustn't
take on so. You must take what God gives you.
I always tell them that."
"I won't take what God gives me," he cried. "I
won't. I can't bear to lose her."
"Ssh. . . . You mustn't say that. It's wicked to
say that ; I should be frightened to be struck dead
myself if I said a thing like that in God's hear-
ing."
She looked nervously at the luggage rack above
her head as if she expected to find the Almighty
in hiding there. Edwin followed the direction of
her glance and read: "This rack is provided for
light articles only it must not be used for heavy
luggage" He wondered inconsequently, whether
the stop, which was missing, should come before or
after the word "only."
"You must cheer up, dearie," said the black
woman soothingly. "While there's life . . ."
Edwin wished she would shut up. He was sorry
that she had ever spoken, and yet he couldn't quite
suppress a desire to be further informed on certain
technical details which this authority had at her
finger-tips. "Is it a painful death?" he asked
slowly, wiping away the last of his tears.
"Painful? . . . Well . . . not to say painful.
Not as painful as some. Most of mine passed away
in their sleep like. And they look so peaceful and
happy. It's a great consolation to their friends.
Just like a doll, they look. That's better. You
mustn't cry. That's a brave boy. Upon my word,
even though I'm used to it, it's quite upset me talk-
ing to you." She gave a little laugh and dived once
122 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
more for the bottle of spirits. "This wouldn't be
no use to you," she said, as she took a swig.
Edwin shook his head.
"Every woman has a mother's feelings. And I
know what they go through. I understand. I do.
Now, that's right. Cheer up and be a good lad.
Hope for the best. That's what I tell them. . . ."
"This rack is intended for light articles only.
It must not be used for heavy luggage. This rack
is intended for light articles. Only it must not
be used for heavy luggage. While there's life
there's hope. While there's life there's hope. While
there's life there's hope."
So, in the pitiful whirl of Edwin's brain, foolish
words re-echoed, and in the end the empty phrase
seemed to attach itself to the regular beat of the
train's rhythm as the wheels rolled over the joints
in the rails. Mesmerised by the formula he only
dimly realised that they were now roaring, under
a sky far paler and less blue, towards the huge
pall of yellowish atmosphere beneath which the
black country sweltered.
Soon the prim small gardens told that fthey
were touching the tentacles of a great town. A
patch of desert country, scarred with forgotten
workings in which water reflected the pale sky, and
scattered with heaps of slag. A pair of conical blast
furnaces standing side by side and towering above
afche black factory sheds like temples of some savage
religion, as indeed they were. Gloomy canal wharfs,
fronting on smoke-blackened walls where leaky
steampipes, bound with asbestos, hissed. The ex-
haust of a single small engine, puffing regular jets of
HOMEWARDS 123
dazzling white steam, seen but not heard. A canal
barge painted in garish colours, swimming in yel-
low water, foul with alkali refuse. A disused fac-
tory with a tall chimney on which the words Harris
and Co., Brass Founders, was painted in vertical
letters which the mesmeric eye must read. An-
other mile of black desert, pools, and slag heaps,
and ragged children flying kites. Everywhere a
vast debris of rusty iron, old wheels, corroded boil-
ers, tubes writhen and tangled as if they had been
struck by lightning. An asphalt school-yard on a
slope, with a tall, gothic school and children
screaming their lungs out, but silent to Edwin's
ears. Endless mean streets of dusky brick houses
with roofs of purple slate and blue brick footpaths.
Dust and an acrid smell as of smoking pit heaps.
More houses, and above them, misty, and almost
beautiful, the high clock tower of the Art Gallery.
A thunderous tunnel. . . . The clamour of the
wheels swelled to an uproar. "While there's life
there's hope. While there's life there's hope." Un-
der the gloom of the great glass roof the train
emerged.
"Good-bye, dearie," said the black woman, smil-
ing. "I hope it's not as bad as you think. You
never know. Don't forget your bag, now."
He could easily have done so.
CHAPTER IX
THE DARK HOUSE
AUNT LAURA was waiting for him on the plat-
form. It was a very strange sensation. Al-
ways at other times when he had come home from
St. Luke's his mother had met him at North Brom-
wich, and even now it seemed natural to look for
her, to pick out her fragile figure from all the
others on the platform, and then to kiss her cool
face through her veil. On these occasions neither of
them would speak, but he would see her eyes smil-
ing and full of love looking him all over, drowning
him in their particular kindness. Aunt Laura was a
poor substitute. To-day she was a little more dif-
fuse and emotional than usual, and at the same
time curiously kinder. She kissed him her lips
were hot and he felt that the kiss was really noth-
ing more than an attempt to conceal an entirely
different emotion and to hide her eyes. On his
cheek her lips trembled. He dared not look at her
for he was afraid that in her eyes he would be
able to read the worst. It had to be faced. At
last he managed to say,
"How is she?"
And above the roar of the station he heard an
124
THE DARK HOUSE 123
uncertain voice answer. "She's very ill, Eddie . .
very ill indeed."
"Not dead? . . . she's not dead?"
."No, no. We must all be brave, Eddie."
"We must all be brave." . . . He hated to hear
her talk like that. What had she to be brave
about? It wasn't her mother who was dying, only
her sister. A sister wasn't like a mother. It was
all very well to say these conventional things. He
didn't believe she really meant them. She could
cry her eyes out before he'd believe her, however
kind she might try to be. It wasn't any good her
trying to be kind now. She hadn't been kind to
his mother. He remembered the day when her cal-
lousness had made his mother cry. He couldn't
pity her now; he couldn't put up with her con-
dolences ; he believed he hated her. He would hate
any one in the world who had given his mother a
moment's pain. She was so little and beautiful and
perfect. . . .
And yet, when he sat opposite to Aunt Laura in
the Halesby train, and examined her more closely,
he could see for himself that the strain of the last
few days had somehow chastened her she seemed
to have lost some of her florid assurance, and her
eyes looked as if she had been crying. She even
seemed to have shrunk a little. And this made
matters worse, for it seemed to him that the very
thing which had obliterated what he most disliked
in her had also accentuated the family likeness.
All the time, beneath this face, which he distrusted,
he could see a faint and tantalising resemblance to
the other face that he adored. If any one had sug-
' 126 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
i
gested to him that Aunt Laura was in any way like
his mother, he would have denied it indignantly;
but the likeness was there, a curious, torturing
likeness of feature. He didn't know then what in
after years he was to realise time after time : that
grief has a way of suppressing individual charac-
teristics and reducing the faces of a whole suffer-
ing family to their original type after the manner
of a composite photograph. It was tantalising, and
so harrowing that he dared not look at her any
longer.
At Halesby they walked up from the station to-
gether almost without speaking. The little house
on the edge of the country wore a strangely tragic
air. Downstairs all was quiet. After the big echo-
ing rooms at St. Luke's it seemed ridiculously small.
Nobody inhabited the rooms, and the soft carpet
created a curious hushed atmosphere in which it
seemed sacrilege to speak in anything but a whis-
per. Aunt Laura took off her hat and veil.
"I'd better carry my bag upstairs," said Edwin.
He felt somehow, that in his little old room he
could be happier. He could even, if he wanted to,
throw himself on the bed and give way to the tears
which were bound to come.
"No . . . you'd better wait here," said Aunt Lau-
ra. "Your father is sleeping in your room. You
see it wouldn't do for him to be in hers. He's been
there for three nights. And I'm in the spare room.
I think you're going to sleep over at Mrs. Bar-
row's."
Edwin flamed with jealousy. What was Aunt
THE DARK HOUSE 127
Laura doing in the house? She, above all people,
had no right to be there.
"But I could sleep on the sofa in the drawing-
room," he said.
"You mustn't make difficulties, Eddie. It's all
arranged. The specialist has been out this after-
noon to see her with Dr. Moorhouse. He may be
upstairs now."
"But I can't, I can't be so far away. I ought to
be here. She would like me to be here."
"Eddie, dear ... do be a good boy. Here comes
your father."
And his father came. Strangely, strangely old
and worn he looked in the shabby alpaca coat.
Edwin had never realised that he could be so pa-
thetic. He smiled at Edwin, a smile that was un-
utterably painful. "Eddie . . . my boy," he said,
and kissed him, "I'm glad you've come. . . . She
was anxious for you to come. . . ."
"Oh, father. . . ."
"We must all be brave, Eddie." Again that ter-
rible smile.
"Father, may I go and see her . . . ?"
"The doctor says that nobody had better see her
to-night."
"Yes, Eddie, we must obey the doctor's orders,
dear," said Aunt Laura.
"But you've seen her . . . you saw her this
morning, didn't you?"
"That was different," said Aunt Laura. "I was
up all night with her."
"It isn't different, is it, father? Aunt Laura's
nothing to her. . . ."
128 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Eddie, Eddie. . . ." Aunt Laura protested.
"Father, if she asked for me she ought to see
me. . . ."
"She's so ill, Eddie. I'm afraid she wouldn't
know you."
"Oh, I'm sure she would. . . ."
"Edwin, you mustn't worry your father; there's
a good boy."
"Oh, Aunt Laura . . ." Then fiercely, "She's
my mother. . . ."
Edwin's father sighed and looked away. Aunt
Laura, with a business-like change of tone which
implied that Edwin's question was disposed of,
whispered to his father, "Is she still sleeping?"
"Yes. . . . The doctor says it isn't really sleep,
it's coma."
Coma ... a gloomy and terrible word! What
did it mean? Edwin remembered the woman in
the train. "Most of them pass away in their sleep
like." '
"I think I'll go and lie down for an hour," said
his father.
"Yes, do, John," said Aunt Laura encouragingly.
"You need it. I'll go upstairs myself to be handy
if the nurse wants anything."
This was the first that Edwin had heard of a
nurse. The idea inspired him with awe. His father
sighed and turned to go.
"Father . . . can't I go up, only for a minute?"
Aunt Laura, who had taken upon herself the role
of protectress and manager of the distressed house-
hold, intervened,
"Eddie, you mustn't worry your father. We're
THE DARK HOUSE 129
all in trouble, and you mustn't be a nuisance."
His father went, without speaking.
"Well, when can I see her?" Edwin demanded.
"To-morrow. . . . You must be patient like the
rest of us. Now I must go upstairs. You'll be
quiet, won't you? Mrs. Barrow has your bedroom
ready, and if you take your bag over she'll give you
some tea. She promised to look after you. She
was most kind. Or, if you like, and will keep very
quiet, you can stay here and read."
"I didn't come home to sit down here and read.
Why did they send for me to come if they won't
let me see her? I want her. . . ."
"Hush . . ." said Aunt Laura, with an air of
being scandalised. She left him, closing the door
with exaggerated quietness behind her, leaving him
alone in the room that had once witnessed so much
happiness. He didn't know what to do. Read?
The idea was ridiculous. He looked at the familiar
shelves, on which he knew the place and title of
every book. A sense of the room's awful emptiness
oppressed him, for everything in it recalled the
memory of his darling's presence; the books that
they had read together; the big chair in which he
had sat cuddled in her arms; her workbasket on
the table by the window; and terribly pathetic
a shopping list scribbled on the back of an enve-
lope. He couldn't bear to be alone in the room
with so many inanimate reminders; and while he
was debating where he should go, a sudden angry
jealousy flamed up in his heart towards the other
people in the house: his father, Aunt Laura, the
doctor, and the unknown nurse who shared the
130 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
privilege that was denied him and didn't realise its
value. He clenched his hands and cried aloud:
"We belong to one another. . . . She's mine. . . .
She's mine. I hate them."
He opened the door softly and stepped into the
hall. Scarcely knowing what he was doing he
looked into the drawing-room. There stood the
piano with a sonata of Beethoven upon the music-
stand. The room was full of a curious penetrat-
ing odour which came, he discovered, from a big
vase full of pinks that had faded and gone yellow.
Some days ago, he supposed, his mother had picked
them. Her hands ... he worshipped her hands.
A strange and uncontrollable impulse made him
bend and kiss the dead flowers.
But the atmosphere of that room was if anything
more cruel than the other. He couldn't stay there.
Once more he found himself in the darkness and
quiet of the hall. The house had ifever been so
silent. Only, in the corner an oak grandfather's
clock with a brass face engraved with the name of
Carver, Hay, ticked steadily. In the silence he
heard his own heart beating far faster than the
clock.
Scarcely knowing what he was doing he climbed
upstairs and crept quietly to the door of the room
where his mother was lying. He knelt on the mat
outside the door and listened. Inside the room
there was no sound ; not even a sound of breathing.
If only he dared open the door. ... If only he
could see her for a second she might smile at him
and he would be satisfied. He was thankful to
find that the mere fact of being nearer to her made
THE DARK HOUSE . 131
him feel more happy. For a long time he knelt
there, and then, hearing a slight noise in his own
room, where his father was supposed to be resting,
he stole downstairs again, a little comforted,
opened the front door and went out into the garden.
Mrs. Barrow, at whose house it had been ar-
ranged that Edwin should put up for the night,
was the Ingleby's nearest neighbour and their land-
lady. The gardens of the two houses stood back
to back with a high wall between, and the relations
of the neighbours had always been so friendly that
the little door in the wall was never locked, even
though it was so seldom used that tendrils of ivy
had attached themselves to the woodwork, form-
ing a kind of natural hinge.
On the Inglebys' side of the wall lay a modern
well-kept garden, not more than twenty years old.
Edwin's mother had a passion for flowers, and his
father had made the gratification of her pleasure
his favourite hobby, so that Edwin's earliest memo-
ries of both of them were associated with the gath-
ering of fruits and blooms, with the rich odours
of summer, or, above all, the smell of newly-turned
earth. This summer Mr. Ingleby had planted the
long bed that stretched along the side of the house
towards the door in Mrs. Barrow's wall with masses
of delicately-coloured stocks. Though the form of
these flowers was not particularly beautiful their
scent rose to meet him in a hot wave of overpower-
ing sweetness. He remembered a letter in which
132 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
his mother had told him how wonderful they were.
Everything reminded him of her. . . .
He passed through the door in the wall and en-
tered another world.
Everything connected with Mrs. Barrow was in
character. She was a little old woman, the widow
of a small manufacturer who had set his mark upon
the countryside by the erection of. a chimney stack
taller than any other in the district, so tall that
even from the summit of Pen Beacon it made a
landmark more prominent than the slender spire
of Halesby church. In Edwin's eyes its presence
was so familiar that he had almost become fond of
it. Many and many times on windy days he had
watched the immense structure swaying gently as
a reed in a summer breeze. Under the shadow of
Mr. Barrow's monument lay an old garden designed
on the formal lines of a hundred years ago, full of
honeysuckle arbours and narrow twisted paths : so
rich, and so tangled that every year a great part
of its fruitfulness ran to waste. Long rows of
lavender were there; and alleys of hoary apple-
trees whose, gnarled branches overreached the
paths: and the whole place was so crowded with
decaying vegetable matter and the mould of fallen
leaves that even in high summer it had an autum-
nal savour and a ripe smell that was not unlike that
of an apple loft.
Through this shady precinct he passed carrying
his hand-bag, pausing only in a sudden patch of
light where a bank of tawny scabious diffused an
aromatic perfume in the sun. He paused, not be-
cause he was impressed by their garish beauty, but
THE DARK HOUSE 133
because many of the heads were now frequented by
a new hatch of Comma butterflies eagerly expand-
ing their serrated wings, drugged already with the
flowers' harsh honey. Edwin had never seen this
uncommon butterfly before. In the neighbourhood
of St. Luke's the species, which is notoriously ca-
pricious, had never appeared. He wished that he
had a butterfly net with him: for by catching one
of them he would have scored over Widdup.
So he passed to Mrs. Barrow's house, a dark
Georgian structure as twisted and autumnal as
her garden, and there, in a gloomy sitting-room,
he found the old lady herself, a little demure crea-
ture with round-hunched, shawl-covered shoulders,
like the dormouse in Alice in Wonderland, taking
tea with her companion, a decorous lady of the same
age named Miss Beecock.
They did their best to make Edwin feel at home.
They never mentioned his mother, but it was so ob-
vious that their maidenly commonplaces were only
designed to divert his mind from the tragic shadow
which he carried with him, that Edwin felt inclined
to scandalise them by talking of it. ... Their
deliberate awkward kindness, the cautious glances
which they exchanged, the little sniff of emotion
which Mrs. Barrow concealed in her empty teacup,
when the pitiful contemplation of Edwin's youth
and innocence overcame her, would have been
amusing if there had been room for anything amus-
ing on the darkened earth.
When they had finished the buttered scones and
medlar jelly which Mrs. Barrow made from fruit
that fell on the dark leaf -mould of her garden, Mrs.
134 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Barrow herself moved with short steps to a mahog-
any bureau, and calling Edwin to her side, showed
him one of those secret drawers whose secret every-
body knows, smelling of cedar wood and aged russia
leather. From this drawer she produced a purse
made of beadwork, and from the purse her fragile
fingers extracted a Georgian five-shilling piece,
which, with a sigh, she then presented to Edwin.
"If I were you," she said, "I don't think I should
spend it. Old coins like that are valuable. Mr.
Barrow had a great interest in anything old and
historical."
Edwin was so surprised by this generosity that
he almost forgot to thank her; but Miss Beecock,
in a shrill, soft voice, reminded him of his duty,
saying: "Now, isn't that kind of Mrs. Barrow,
Edwin?" Edwin hastily agreed that it was, and
the old ladies smiled at one another, as though they
were saying, "Isn't that clever of us, to give him a
toy that will take his mind off his mother?" In
the silence that followed, a canary which had been
pecking at a lump of sugar stuck in the bars of his
cage, attracted by the bright hues of the ribbon on
Mrs. Barrow's cap, broke into a shrill twitter.
"Sweet . . . swee . . . t," said Mrs. Barrow with
pursed lips.
"Sweet . . . sweet," echoed Miss Beecock, with
a little laugh.
"I think I will take my crochet on to the lawn,"
said Mrs. Barrow.
"If you have your shawl, and the grass is not too
damp," Miss Beecock reminded her.
"There was a heavy dew last week," said Mrs.
THE DARK HOUSE 135
Barrow. "Which day was it? I think it must have
been Tuesday. Yes ... it was Tuesday. That
was the day on which I spoke to Mr. Waldron
about thinning the grapes. And now, Edwin, would
you like to fetch a book from the drawing-room?
You may prefer to bring it out on to the lawn.
You know the way. The key is on the outside of
the door."
Edwin said, "Yes." He left them and climbed
the creaking oak stairs, to the first story landing,
a wide passage of polished wood lit by a shining
fanlight that overlooked the street. He knew the
room well enough. It had been one of the delights
of his childhood. It was long, and irregular in
shape, and crammed with curious things that he
had once found entertaining.
He unlocked the door and released immediately
a concentrated odour of the same character as that
which had issued from the secret drawer in Mrs.
Barrow's bureau. Damp and cedar wood and
mouldy russia leather. All the chairs in the room
were covered with white draw-sheets as though
they were dead and awaiting burial. The Venetian
blinds were down, and when Edwin raised them,
the heavy rep curtains at the side of the three tall
windows admitted no more than an ecclesiastical
twilight.
There, however, stood the things which had de-
lighted his youth. Nothing had been moved a hair's-
breadth for many years : since the day, indeed, long
before Edwin was born, when Mr. Barrow had died.
It was the best room of the house: and so rever-
enced by Mrs. Barrow that she would never have
136 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
dreamed of living in it or using it at all except on
Christmas Day, when a melancholy family party
of relatives and possible heirs assembled to do their
duty by the old lady. Then, and only then, a fire
was lighted, extracting from the walls a curious
odour of dry rot, which resembled, curiously
enough, the apple-loft odour which pervaded the
garden.
Edwin was soon at home. Here was a great
glass-fronted mahogany bookcase the wonder of
which he had never thoroughly explored. Here
was the flat glass showcase, shaped like a card-
table in which a number of Mr. Barrow's curiosi-
ties reposed. Here was the great musical-box
(glass-topped again) with its prickly brass cylin-
der and twanging teeth for notes, and a winding
lever that made a sound as impressive as the wind-
ing of a grandfather's clock.
Edwin thought he would try a tune. He wound
up the mechanism, pressed over the starting lever,
and the prickly cylinder began slowly to revolve.
It made a bad start; for no one knows how many
years ago it had been stopped in the middle of a
tune. Then, having finished the broken cadence,
it burst gaily into the song called "Mousetraps for
Sale," a pathetic ballad which may have sounded
sprightly in the ears of young people fifty years
ago, but in this strange room was invested with a
pathetic and faded quality which made Edwin wish
it would stop. There was no need for him to pull
back the lever, for the musical box, as though guess-
ing his wishes, suddenly petered out with a sort of
metallic growl. Edwin laughed in spite of himself,
THE DARK HOUSE 137
at this peculiar noise, and hearing the echo of his
own laugh turned to find himself staring into the
jealous eyes of a portrait of a Victorian gentleman
whom he took to be the late Mr. Barrow, for whose
delectation, over his glass of punch, the instrument
had been purchased. Edwin began to feel a little
uneasy. The feeling annoyed him. "I'm silly to
be like this," he said to himself. "I suppose it's
the uncertainty. . . . Oh, I wish I knew. . . ."
He took refuge in the bookcase, from which he
extracted, to his great delight, the complete works
of Shenstone in two volumes, bound in slippery calf
and published by Dodsley in the year seventeen-
seventy. . . . The books were in a beautiful state
of preservation. Edwin doubted if they had ever
been read. Mr. Barrow, no doubt, had purchased
them simply for their local interest. With a final
glance at Mr. Barrow's portrait, in a faint hope
that he approved of his choice, Edwin let down
the blinds, so that no light penetrated the room
but a single gleam reflected from the glass pane of
a wool-worked fire-guard that hung from a bracket
at the side of the fireplace. With a shiver he re-
locked the door. . . .
When he reached the garden with his Shenstone,
the light was failing.
"You were a long time, Edwin," said Mrs. Bar-
row.
"Yes, wasn't he?" echoed Miss Beecock. "I'm
afraid it is time Mrs. Barrow was going in."
Quietly, and with a leisure that seemed to pre-
sume an endless placidity of existence, the old
ladies folded their work, sighed, and recrossed the
138 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
lawn towards the house. In a little time came
supper: biscuits and milk on which a thick cream
had been rising all day. Then Mrs. Barrow kissed
him good-night. He felt her face on his cheek: a
little chilly, but lax and very soft. Miss Beecock
lighted him to bed with a candle in a highly-
polished brass candlestick. The sheets were cool
and of old linen. The bedroom smelt of apples.
With the air of "Mousetraps for Sale" in his head,
and a sleepy consciousness of ancient creaking tim-
bers, Edwin fell asleep.
He slept long and dreamlessly, waking in the
morning to find the sun shining brilliantly through
Mrs. Barrow's lace curtains. At first he could not
remember where he was, so completely had sleep,
bred of long fatigue, obliterated his consciousness.
Before he opened his eyes he had half expected to
hear the noise of Widdup turning out of bed with
a flop, or the clangour of the six-thirty bell. And
then, with a rush, the whole situation came back to
him: this was Halesby, and the new day might
be full of tragedy.
At his bedside Miss Beecock, who had stolen into
the room an hour or so before in slippered feet and
found him sleeping, had placed a glass of creamy
milk and biscuits. It was awfully kind of her,
Edwin thought, as he sipped the yellow cream at
the top of the glass. Outside in the garden it was
very quiet. He had overslept the morning chorus
of birdsong; but he heard the noise of a thrush
cracking snail-shells on the gravel path beneath his
window. He had forgotten to wind up his watch
overnight; and when he found it in his waistcoat
THE DARK HOUSE 139
pocket where he had left it he saw that it had
stopped. "I'd better get up, anyway," he thought,
and while he stood at the door wondering if Mrs.
Barrow's house ran to a bathroom, he heard a clock
in the hall give a loud whirr and then strike ten.
"Good Lord, I've overslept myself," he thought.
"I'd better buck up."
Abandoning the uncertainty of hunting for a bath
he dressed and came downstairs to the sitting-room
(that was*what it was called) in which the meals
had been served the day before. Mrs. Barrow was
sitting there in pleasant sunlight, wearing a less
elaborate cap and a Shetland shawl, and the canary,
whose brass cage and saffron plumage now shone
brilliantly in the morning sunlight, was singing like
mad. When Edwin came into the room she smiled
at him.
"We're so glad that you slept well," she said.
"Miss Beecock went to have a look at you but you
were sleeping so soundly that she didn't like to dis-
turb you. You must have been tired out. Now
you'll be ready for breakfast."
At this point Miss Beecock entered the room, her
attire modified in the same degree as that of Mrs.
Barrow.
"Ah . . ." she said with a little laugh. , "Here
you are. I must ask Annie for your breakfast."
"He'd like a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, and
some buttered toast," said Mrs. Barrow temptingly.
"Yes, of course he would," said Miss Beecock.
"I think. if you don't mind," said Edwin, "I'd
like to go home. It's so late."
140 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Oh, you needn't mind us," chimed the two old
ladies.
That wasn't exactly what Edwin had meant, but
he allowed himself to be persuaded, and even en-
joyed his breakfast, to the accompaniment of the
twitterings of the canary and his two hostesses.
"You'll sleep here again to-night, won't you?"
they said when he was ready to go. Edwin thanked
them. "Oh, we're only too pleased to be of any
assistance to your mother," they said, pursuing his
departure with the kindest and most innocent of
smiles.
This time he did not linger in the old garden : he
was far too anxious to get home and learn how
things were going. At the door in the wall his
heart stood still. What was he going to find? It
seemed to him that something terrible might be
waiting for him on the other side of the wall. It
was a silly apprehension, he thought, and when he
stepped into it the new garden was as sunny as
the old. Only, on the long walk beside the bed of
stocks, a mattress, blankets, and sheets were spread
out to air in the sun. The scent of some disinfec-
tant mingled with that of the flowers. His fears
supplied an awful explanation. It was the bedding
from his mother's room that was spread out there
in the sun. And when he looked up to the windows
of the house above him, he saw that the blinds were
down. That, of course, needn't mean anything on
the sunny side of the house. In a great hurry he
turned the corner to the front and saw that the
blinds on that side were down as well.
THE DARK HOUSE 141
m
In the darkened dining-room Aunt Laura sat at
his mother's desk writing letters with dashing flu-
ency. When he came in she stopped her writing
and rose to meet him. "Edwin, my poor dear," she
said, holding out her hands to him. He took no
notice of her hands.
"She's gone," he said, "in the night?"
"Yes. ... In the night. She passed away quite
quietly. It's a dreadful blow for us, Edwin, we
must be brave. . . ."
He hadn't time for sentiments of that kind. "She
was alive when I came yesterday. And you wouldn't
let me see her. You, of all people. . . . She hated
you. She told me so. She always hated you . . .
and she'd hate you for this more than anything."
"Edwin," she cried, "don't say these terrible
things."
"They're true . . . true. I wish it were you who
were dead. It was you who stopped me from see-
ing her . . . my little darling. . . . Damn you
. . . damn you."
"Edwin . . . you don't know what you're saying.
You're cruel."
"Cruel. . . . I like that. Cruel. Tow talk about
cruelty. . . ."
"Edwin. . . ." Aunt Laura clutched nervously
at her breast. It was funny to see this big blowzy
woman crumple up like that. She flopped down
in a red plush chair and started crying softly in
a thin voice. Edwin didn't mind. Let her cry.
142 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
She deserved it. Nothing of that kind could soften
his indignant heart.
"Where's father?" he asked at last.
"I don't know. He's upstairs somewhere," she
said between her sobs. "For goodness' sake, Ed-
win, don't go and say things like this to the poor
man. We all have this trouble to bear. And we've
had the strain of nursing her. Now, don't be
hasty," she pleaded.
"All right," said Edwin, and left her.
Upstairs on the landing he found a pale, shadowy
figure in which he could scarcely recognise his fa-
ther. Neither of them could speak at all. Edwin
had been ready with the reproaches that had come
to his lips in the presence of Aunt Laura; but he
couldn't do it. This man was too broken. He was
face to face with a grief as great as his own. There
were no words for either of them. The boy and the
man clung together in each other's arms, overcome
with pity and with sorrow. On the landing, out-
side the door of the room where she lay dead, they
stood together and cried quietly to each other. And
now it seemed to Edwin as if pity for his father
were overriding even the intensity of his own grief ;
for she had been everything to him, too, and for so
many years. He felt that he would have done any-
thing in the world to comfort this desolate man,
whom he had always taken for granted and never
really loved. But his mother had loved him. He
wondered if they could do anything to assuage the
bitterness of their loss by loving one another. They
were two people left alone with nothing else in the
world but each other. Why not . . .? That, he
THE DARK HOUSE 143
thought, was what his mother would have wished.
He felt his father's tears on his forehead, the
roughness of his father's grey beard. He felt the
man's body quivering with sobs, and the arms which
clutched his body as if that were the only loved
thing left to him in life. They went together into
the little room that had always been Edwin's, and
there they knelt together beside the bed. He didn't
exactly know why they knelt, but kneeling there
at his side, with his arm still clasped about his
waist, he supposed that his father was praying;
and though Edwin could not understand what good
prayer could do, it seemed to him a simple and a
beautiful thing. It made him feel that he loved
his father more than ever. He wished that he could
pray himself. He tried to pray . . . for what?
There was nothing left in this world for him to
pray for. At last his father rose to his feet in the
dim room, and Edwin rose with him. He spoke,
and the tears still choked his voice and his bearded
lip trembled. "Edwin," he said, "I shall never be
able to get over this. I'm broken. . . . My life
. . . my life has . . ." He stopped.
"You don't know what she was to me, Eddie. I
can't realise, Eddie, there are only two of us left.
We must help each other to bear it. We must be
brave."
Strange that a phrase which had sounded like
cant on the lips of Aunt Laura should now seem
the truest and most natural thing imaginable.
"We ... we were like children together," said
his father.
144 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Again they stood for a little while in silence. At
last Edwin, still gripping his father's arm, said,
"Father, may I see her?"
"Of course, dear. . . ."
They went together to the room, and his father
opened the door and pulled up one of the blinds.
Mrs. Bagley, the charwoman who did odd work in
the house and was an expert in this melancholy
office, had drawn a clean white sheet over the bed.
His mother lay there in a cotton nightdress with
her hands folded in front of her, and her lips gently
smiling. Even her cheeks were faintly flushed, but
the rest of her face and her hands were of a waxen
pallor. She looked very small and childlike. She
looked like a small wax doll. In this frail and
strangely beautiful creature Edwin could only rec-
ognise a shadow of the mother that he knew. It
was a little girl that lay there, not his mother.
Edwin spoke in a whisper,
"Should I kiss her?"
His father nodded and turned away.
But he did not kiss her as he had thought he
would. For some reason he dared not, for he could
not feel certain that it was she at all. He only
touched her hands, the hands that he had always
worshipped, with his fingers. They were cold ; and
still her lips smiled. The room was full of the
odour of Sanitas which some one had sprayed or
sprinkled over the floor. For the rest of his life
the smell was one which Edwin hated; for in his
mind it became the smell of death.
THE DARK HOUSE 145
IV
On the evening after the funeral Edwin sat alone
in the drawing-room. He sat there because the
other room was still cumbered with the remnants
of a melancholy repast: several leaves of mahog-
any had been dragged down from the dust of the
attic and had lengthened the dining-room table to
such an extent that there was scarcely room to
move in it, and round this table, in the sunny after-
noon, had clustered a large collection of people who
smelt of black crape and spoke in lowered, gentle
voices, out of respect for the woman whom, it
seemed to Edwin, they had never -known.
Everybody who entered the house and there
were many, for Mr. Ingleby was much respected in
Halesby wore the same grave air. Even the un-
dertaker, a brisk little man with a fiery red beard
and one shoulder lower than the other from the
constant carrying of coffins, treated his daily task
with the same sort of mute reverence. His face, at
any rate, wore an expression that matched that of
the mourners; and Edwin was only disillusioned
as to the sincerity of his expression when he heard
him swearing violently at the driver of the first
mourning carriage. This moment of relaxation
caused him to forget himself so far as to whistle
a pantomime song as he crossed the drive.
The black-coated people in the dining-room did
not hear him: they were far too busy being seri-
ous: and behind them, from time to time, Edwin
could see the grey face of his father, with curiously
tired and puzzled eyes. Puzzled * . . that was the
146 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
only word for them. It was just as if the man
were protesting, in all simplicity, against the un-
reason and injustice of the blow which had fallen
on him. Edwin, savagely hating the presence of
all these hushed, uninterested people, found in his
father's suffering face a sudden reinforcement to
his anger. It was a shame, a damned, ghastly
shame, that a simple man like that should be hit
in the dark ; and even more pathetic that he should
be simple enough to take the sympathy of his neigh-
bours at its face value. Edwin glowed with a new
and protective love for his father. It was as well
that some generous emotion should be born to take
the place of his numb grief.
Above all, the sight of his Aunt Laura, who was
conscientiously doing the honours of the house,
maddened him. He could not look at her without
remembering that she had been selfish and unkind
to his mother; that, on the very last day, she had
robbed him of the privilege of seeing his darling
alive. Even now, he believed that she was enjoying
herself. Her eyes occasionally brimmed with tears,
but that meant nothing. They were such easy tears
... so different from the terrible tears that had
shaken his father's body on the day of desolation.
If only she were dead, he thought, there would be
no great loss.
And yet, while he thought of this, he suddenly
caught sight of her husband, the little manufac-
turer whom he had lately begun to know as Uncle
Albert, a small man with a shiny bald head and a
diffident manner : and in the eyes of Uncle Albert,
which were fixed upon his wife, he saw an extraor-
THE DARK HOUSE 147
dinary mixture of love and admiration for this
shallow, diffuse creature whom he had found him-
self hating.
"If Aunt Laura were to die," he thought, "Uncle
Albert might very well be like father is to-day.
That's a queer idea. . . ." He was amazed at the
complications of human relationships and the po-
tential pain that love brings with it. He thought,
"It's no good thinking about it. ... I give it up.
I don't really wish she were dead. I only wish
. . . that there were no such thing as death. Why
does God allow it?" No answer came to him: but
in place of an answer another angry impulse.
"Curse God," he thought, meaning the God of Mr.
Leeming, the God to whom this queer collection of
people were to dedicate his mother's soul. Another
thought followed quickly: "What's the good of
cursing him? He doesn't exist. If he existed this
sort of thing couldn't happen. . . ."
People were seriously setting themselves to the
putting on of black kid gloves that the undertaker
had provided. The horses on the gravel drive were
getting uneasy and the cab wheels made a grating
noise. Heavy steps were heard descending the
stairs awkward steps like those of men moving
furniture. Edwin saw that his father had heard
too. He was looking towards the closed door of
the room. He wanted to go and take his father's
hand and hold it, but the space round the edge of
the table was packed with people. Now they had
opened the hall door. He dared not look out of the
window.
The voice of Aunt Laura, most studiously kind,
148 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
said to him : "Eddie, you'll come along with your
father and Uncle Albert and me." He said, "All
right." People at the side of the table made way
for him. On his way he found himself abreast of
his friend, Miss Beecock. She said nothing, but
smiled at him and put her arm on his sleeve. She
was wearing black silk mittens, and her eyes were
full of tears. That weak, tearful smile nearly did
for Edwin.
The first cab was drawn up at the hall door.
Edwin scrambled in last. Aunt Laura, with a
rustle of black silk, made way for him. She took
out her handkerchief, and Edwin was stifled with
a wave of scent. He hated scent: but anyway it
was better than Sanitas. He saw his father's puz-
zled eyes on the other side of the cab ... so old,
so awfully old. Uncle Albert took out his hand-
kerchief, too. Evidently, Edwin thought, it was
the correct thing to do. He had misjudged him.
Uncle Albert proceeded to blow his nose.
They were driving through the High Street. Aunt
Laura noticed that most of the shop shutters were
up, and in several cases tradesmen were standing
at their shop doors bare-headed as they passed.
"It's very kind of them . . . very nice to see so
much respect, John," she said to his father. Mr.
Ingleby said "Yes," and Aunt Laura, with a little
laugh that was merely a symptom of nervousness,
went on: "I expect there'll be a crowd at the
cemetery gate." This time Mr. Ingleby said noth-
ing and Uncle Albert once more stolidly blew his
nose. "Albert, dear, I wish you wouldn't," said
Aunt Laura. The brakes grated, and the cab stopped
THE DARK HOUSE 149
with a jerk. "Come along, Edwin, jump out, there's
a good boy," said Aunt Laura. "You'll walk with
your father."
He walked with his father. The church was full.
His father went with bowed head, seeing nothing;
but Edwin was conscious of many faces that he
knew. In the middle of the aisle the thought sud-
denly came to him that these people weren't really
there to do honour to his mother: they were so
many that most of them could never have known
her: no, they were just curious people who had
flocked there to find something sensational in the
faces of the mourners. In a dull place like Halesby
a funeral, and such an important funeral, was
an unusual diversion. And this revelation made
him determined that whatever happened he would
show no emotion that might tickle the sensations 1
of these ghouls. He only wished to goodness that
he could explain the matter to his father so that
he too might give them nothing to gloat over.
In the church, where a faint mustiness mingled
with the exotic scent of arum lilies that diffused
from the heap of wreaths on the coffin, Edwin held
himself upright. They sang a hymn : "I heard the
voice of Jesus say . . . Come unto me and rest"
the first quatrain in unison, and Edwin sang with
them, just as he would have sung in the chapel at
St. Luke's. In the churchyard, when they walked
in procession behind the bearers to the grave-side,
his eyes were still dry, his lips did not tremble,
though Aunt Laura's scented handkerchief was now
drenched with tears, and even Uncle Albert, a vir-
tual outsider, was on the edge of violent emotion.
ISO THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
The burial service was nothing to Edwin. There
was no consolation in it nor, to him, the least atom
of religious feeling. A mockery, a mockery, a
solemn and pretentious mockery. For she was dead
. . . she had vanished altogether, and the thing
that they were burying with muttered formulas
and tears was no more she than the empty parch-
ment of the cocoon is the glowing butterfly. Let
them cry their eyes out. That was not grief. Beyond
tears. Beyond tears. . . .
With a curious air of relief that was very near
to a furtive gaiety, the party drove back 'and re-
assembled in the dining-room. All except Mr.
Ingleby. "He has gone to his room, poor dear,"
said Aunt Laura, with her nervous laugh. "Mrs.
Barrow, do have a slice of ginger-cake. Just a
little?" Eound the long table conversation began
to flow, cautiously at first, but with an increasing
confidence, when it became clear that it was un-
attended by any revengeful consequences.
"Didn't you think it was awfully nice to see the
people in High Street so respectful, Mrs. Willis?"
said Aunt Laura. Edwin looked up. This then
was the Mrs. Willis of Mawne Hall with whom his
mother had planned the visit to Switzerland. He
saw a middle-aged woman in black satin, with a
gold watch-chain round her neck and jet in her
bonnet. She caught his interested eyes and in re-
turn smiled. Aunt Laura went unanswered. "I
wonder," Edwin thought, "if she understands
what a fraud the whole thing is." At any rate
she looked kind . . . and she had been kind to his
mother too. A moment later she said good-bye, and
THE DARK HOUSE 151
when Aunt Laura had escorted her to the door,
for Mrs. Willis was a person of consequence, the
rest of the company began to disappear. At last
Edwin was left alone in the room with his aunt
and uncle. Aunt Laura's face, that had been glow-
ing with hospitable smiles, now took a more seri-
ous cast.
"Edwin," she said, "I want to speak to you."
"Do you?" said Edwin. "Well ... go on."
"It's very painful . . . I'm afraid . . . I'm half
afraid that it will have upset your father, poor
man as if he hadn't enough to put up with."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"How can you ask? I mean your behaviour to-
day. In the church. In the cemetery. You stood
there just as if ... just as if ... oh, it was most
irreverent. Not a sign of grief! You must have
noticed it, Albert?"
Uncle Albert, most uncomfortable at his inclu-
sion in this family scene, but fully aware of the
disaster which would follow denial, said, "Yes . . .
yes . . . yes, certainly."
"Every one must have noticed it," Aunt Laura
went on. "It was a public scandal. It was un-
natural. It showed such a curious lack of feeling."
"Feeling," said Edwin. "What do you know
about feeling?"
"Steady, Edwin, steady," from Uncle Albert.
"If mother were here," he said, "and could hear
you talking this damned piffle she'd laugh at you.
That's what she'd do."
"Edwin!"
152 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"It's true. . . . She couldn't stick your sort of
grief at any price."
"On the very day of her burial. . . ."
"She's not buried. It wasn't she you buried. Oh,
I'm sick of you. . . ."
"Edwin . . ." said Uncle Albert, who felt that
something in the way of protection was demanded
of him. "Really now . . ."
"Oh, I don't mean you, uncle," said Edwin.
"You cruel boy," Aunt Laura sobbed.
He left them there. He carried his bitterness
into the drawing-room on the other side of the
passage. ... It was very quiet there. Through
the bow window floated the perfume of the bed of
stocks. In the corner stood the piano. He had
often listened to his mother playing at night when
he was in bed. He loved her to play him to sleep.
The piano was shut; and the shut piano seemed to
him symbolical. All the music and all the beauty
that had been there had gone out of the house. The
house was an empty shell. Like a dry chrysalis.
Like a coffin. There, on the hearthrug, where he
had crawled as a child, he lay down and cried.
CHAPTER X
THRENODY
FROM this emotional maelstrom the current of
Edwin's life flowed into a strange peace. It
seemed that the catastrophe of Mrs. Ingleby's death
had taken the Halesby household by surprise and
stunned it so thoroughly that it would never re-
cover its normal consciousness. Edwin's father,
who had now returned to the ordinary round of
business, was still dazed and puzzled, and very
grey. Their servant, a young woman with an ex-
aggerated sense of the proprieties, or perhaps a
dread of living alone in such a gloomy house, had
given notice. Only Aunt Laura, to Edwin's shame,
showed the least capacity for dealing with the
situation.
However few of the graces may have fallen to
her lot, she was certainly not lacking in the do-
mestic virtues. When the maid departed with her
tin trunk and many tearful protestations of her
devotion to the memory of the dear mistress, Aunt
Laura turned up her sleeves and took possession of
the kitchen, and Mr. Ingleby, who had gloomily
anticipated a domestic wilderness, found that in
spite of the maid's defection, ambrosial food ap-
153
154 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
peared before him like manna from heaven, the
only difference being that Uncle Albert, who could
not be permitted for one moment to remain a
bachelor, took his meals with the family.
The relation between Edwin and Aunt Laura was
still difficult. She could not forget and he could
not withdraw the bitter things that had been said
on that most mournful day, though her native good
humour, which was profuse and blustery like the
rest of her, made it difficult for her to maintain
an attitude of injured benignance. Even Edwin
had to admit that she was a good cook; but the
excellence of her food was qualified by her inces-
sant chatter and her nervous laugh. Edwin simply
couldn't stick them ; but it amazed him to find that
Uncle Albert evidently found them cheerful and
reassuring. Indeed, it was possibly one of the
reasons why he had fallen in love with her, being
a man who resembled her in nothing and whose
enthusiasms could never get him beyond a couple
of words and a giggle.
Mr. Ingleby too seemed to emerge without seri-
ous irritation from this diurnal bath of small-talk,
retiring, as Edwin supposed, to certain gloomy
depths of his own consciousness where the froth
and bubble of Aunt Laura's conversation became
imperceptible. Even when she spoke to him directly
though most of her observations were addressed
to the world in general he would not trouble to
answer her: a slight which Aunt Laura took quite
good-humouredly.
"Bless you," she would have said, "the man's so
wrapped up in himself that he's miles away from
THRENODY 155
anywhere. Of course you can understand it in a
man of his age, especially when you realise how
devoted he was to poor Beatrice" Mrs. Ingleby's
name might never now escape the commiserating
prefix "but when a boy like Edwin tries it on it's
another matter altogether. It's simply conceit.
Personally, I think it was a great mistake of his
poor mother's to send him to St. Luke's. The gram-
mar school's good enough for the Willises. A great
mistake. . . . The boy is getting ideas of himself
that aren't warranted by his position. I don't
know what we are to do with him. We certainly
can't have him running wild here." And Uncle
Albert would say: "Certainly, certainly, my
love. . . ."
In spite of these pronounced opinions Aunt
Laura was careful not to cross swords with Edwin
himself. Indeed, she went a good deal out of her
way to propitiate him with various material kind-
nesses, and particularly certain delicacies in the
way of food, which, to the ruin of her figure in later
life, represented to her the height of earthly enjoy-
ment. Edwin didn't quite know how to take these
attentions. He couldn't help disliking her, and
the fact that she was really kind to him rather
took the wind out of his sails. He would have been
much happier if they had been allowed to remain
in a state of armed neutrality.
A fortnight passed . . . happily for Edwin in
spite of all that he felt he ought to feel. He missed
his mother awfully. That was true enough. And
yet . . . and yet it was also true to say that he
was only beginning to live: to appreciate the joy
156 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
of his growing strength : to realise the enchanted
domains that were open to his eager feet and to
his eager mind. Here he had freedom, leisure,
health : so much of the world to see : so much of
human knowledge to explore. And though the
thought of death, and the particular disaster that
had befallen him fell upon his spirit sometimes
with a shadow that plunged the whole world into
desperate darkness, he could not deny that the
shadow was gradually lifting, and the character of
the agony that had desolated him was becoming
less spontaneous, till, in the end, it became almost
a calculable emotion that might be indulged or
banished at will. He found it difficult to under-
stand this. He thought: "I'm a brute, a callous,
insensitive brute. What would she think of
me . . . ? And yet, I can't help it. I'm made like
that. ..." And then, after long and bitter de-
liberation: "I believe she would understand. I
expect she was made like that too. I'm sure she
was. And if there's one thing in the world that
she'd hate it would be that I should force myself
to pretend anything."
The high summer weather held. Never was there
such a June. Edwin, in the joy of perfect health,
would get up very early in the morning when the
dew lay on the roses, and run in a sweater and flan-
nel trousers down the lane and over the field to the
mill-pond where he and his mother had walked so
often in the evenings of spring. Here, where the
water was deepest and great striped perch stole
slowly under the camp-shedding, he would strip and
bathe, lying on his back in the water so that low
THRENODY 157
sunbeams came dancing over the surface into his
eyes that were on the level of the flat water-lily
leaves and their yellow balls now breaking into
cups.
Afterwards when he would sit glowing on the
bank, the sun would be rising and growing warmer
every minute, and this new warmth would seem to
accentuate the odour of the place that was compact
of the yellow water-lily's harsh savour, the odour
of soaked wood, and another, more subtly blended :
the composite smell of water that is neither fast
nor stagnant, the most provocative and the coolest
smell on earth.
On the way home he would sometimes get a whiff
of the miller's cowhouse, when the door was thrown-
open, and from within there came a sound of quiet
breathing or of milk hissing in a pail. And some-
times, from the garden, the scent of a weed bonfire
would drift across his path. All things smelt more
poignantly at this early hour of the morning. All
things smell more wonderfully early in life. . . .
With these wonders the day began ; but stranger
things lay in store for him. He revisited all his
old haunts: the tangled woods and gardens of
Shenstone on the hill-side: the ruins of the Cis-
tercian abbey on whose fall the poet had moralised^
the little chapel that marked the grave of the mur-
dered Mercian prince. His bicycle took him far-
ther. Westward . . . always westward.
In those days it always seemed to him as if the
mountainous country that his mother had shown
him that evening on Uffdown, rolling away into
remote and cloudy splendours, must be the land of
158 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
his heart's desire : and though he could never reach
it in a day, he managed several times to cross the
Severn and even to scale the foothills upon the
farther bank from which he could see the Glee Hills
rising in a magnificent bareness, shaking the woods
and pastures from their knees. And these distant
hills would tempt him to think of the future and
other desires of his heart: in the near distance
Oxford, where Layton and other demigods in grey
flannel trousers abode, and beyond the fine untrav-
elled world, rivers and seas and forests, desolate
wonderful names. China . . . Africa . . . "Some
day," he said to himself, "I will go to Africa. . . ."
In this way he began to think of his present
adventures as a kind of prelude to others remoter
and more vast. One day he had ridden farther away
than usual, and having taken his lunch at the
bridge town of Bewdley, he pushed his bicycle up
the immense hill that overshadows the town along
the road to Tenbury. For all its steepness this
mountain road was strangely exhilarating, the air
that moved above it grew so clean and clear. Below
him, between the road and the river, lay the mighty
remnants of the Forest of Wyre.
His way tumbled again to a green valley, where
no mountains were to be seen; and while Edwin
was deciding to turn off down the first descending
lane and explore the forest, he heard a sound of
spades and pickaxes and came upon a group of
navvies, several of them stripped to the waist in
the sun, working at a cutting of red earth that was
already deep on either side of the road. For the
most part they worked in silence ; but one of them,
THRENODY 159
a little one-eyed man, with a stiff soldierly back,
encouraged them with a string of jokes. They
called him "Gunner," and the elaboration with
which his chest had been tattooed with nautical
symbols led Edwin to suppose that he was a sailor.
When he saw Edwin leaning on his bicycle and
watching the work, he called out to him, asking if
he wanted a job. Edwin shook his head. "I reck-
on," said the Gunner, "that a foreman's job would
be more in your line, Gaffer. It's a fine sight to see
other people working. The harder the better."
The men laughed and stretched their backs, lean-
ing on their spades, and Edwin could see how a
fine dew of sweat had broken out under the hair
on their chests. It seemed to him a noble sight.
"What are you working at?" he asked. "Is it a
railway?"
"To hell with your railway," said the Gunner.
"Who would make a railway heading for the river
Severn? No . . . It's a pipe-track. This here's the
Welsh water scheme."
"Where is it going to?"
"North Bromwich."
"And where does it come from?"
"From Wales. . . . From the Dulas Valley,
where they're rebuilding the reservoir under a hill
they call Savaddan. And a black job it is, I can tell
you."
"Is it anywhere near a place called Felindre?
I think it must be."
"Right, my son. The pipe-line goes through Fe-
lindre. Sixty or eighty mile from here."
"My people come from Felindre . . ."
160 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Well, God pity them. . . . That's all I can say.
I've been in that place on a Christmas Day, and
not a pint of beer stirring. . . . Ah, that's a black
job. Well, mates, come on. . . ."
Again the men who had been listening, lifted
their picks and spades, and the busy clinking
sounds of digging began again. Edwin wished the
Gunner good-afternoon, and began to push his bi-
cycle up the hill again. Sixty or eighty miles. . . .
That wasn't so very far. Six or eight hours' ride.
. . . Perhaps some day he could go there. He half
persuaded himself with a sentimental argument
that it was only natural that he should be happy
in the country from which his mother's people had
come; that even the borderland of it must be pos-
sessed by the same curiously friendly atmosphere.
"I'm always most happy west of Severn," he
thought. And then he began to wonder about the
sailor whom the men called Gunner. Perhaps that
man had actually been in Africa. . . .
He managed to get a sixpenny tea at a little
general shop on the very crown of the hills, where
a small hamlet named Far Forest stood. The ro-
mantic name of the place appealed to him; and it
was a curious adventure to sit down alone to tea
in a back room that smelt of candles and paraffin
and bacon. At the shop door a serious old man
with a white beard had received him; but the tea
was brought to him by a little girl in an extremely
clean pinafore whom the old man addressed as
Eva.
She was a curious mixture of shyness and friend-
liness, and her serious eyes examined Edwin mi-
THRENODY 161
nutely from under straight dark eyebrows. When
she came in with the tea she found Edwin examin-
ing some books that stood in a cupboard with a
glass door. Evidently she was very proud of them.
"They are my brother James's prizes," she said,
and went on to explain how clever he was and what
a scholar, until the old man called "Eva," and she
returned to him in the shop. It was all amazingly
peaceful, with the westering sun flooding the door-
way where the old man had been sitting out in a
chair when Edwin arrived : and opposite the door
was a little patch of green strewn with mossy bould-
ers, a kind of platform in front of which the huge
panorama of Clee and all the Radnor hills ex-
panded.
"In a place like this," Edwin thought, "people
never change." It was a ripping, placid sort of
existence, in which nothing ever happened, but all
things were just simple and serious and tender like
the eyes of the little girl named Eva who had
brought him his tea. "Good-evening, sir," said the
old man at the door. It was rather nice to be
called "Sir." Coasting down the hill into Bewdley,
Edwin had all the joy of the state that he called
"the after-tea feeling." It was exhilarating and
splendid : and at the end of it came the misty river
town with its stone bridge and the great river of
the Marches swirling proudly to the south. When
he neared home, divinely tired and hungry, the
black-country stretched before him in a galaxy of
starry lights. As he crossed the brow of the hill
above Halesby, the Willis' Mawne furnaces sud-
denly lit the sky with a great flower of fire.
162 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
n
At home, Auntie Laura was in possession.
Evidently she was primed with serious business;
for Edwin could see that his father sat spiritually,
if not physically, pinioned in the plush arm-chair.
Aunt Laura wore an air of overpowering satisfac-
tion. Evidently she had already triumphed, and
she smiled so cheerfully at Edwin that he felt con-
vinced that she had scored him off in some way.
On the side of the fire opposite to his father Uncle
Albert sat smoking, not as if he enjoyed it, but
because it gave him the excuse of an occupation
into which he might relapse in moments of tension.
"Well, here he is at last," said Aunt Laura.
"We've been talking about you, Edwin."
Edwin had guessed as much.
"Well, what is it?" he said, and his tone implied
that he was certain that some dark scheme had been
launched against his peace of mind. Uncle Albert
puffed uncomfortably at his pipe and nicotine or
saliva made a gurgling noise in it. Mr. Ingleby
sighed. Aunt Laura, tumbling to the hostility of
the new atmosphere, hastened to propitiate.
"I expect you're hungry, Edwin," she said. . . .
"No. . . . I'm not hungry, thanks. What is it?"
"You needn't be cross, Edwin. . . . We've de-
cided. . . ." So it was all arranged. . . . "We've
decided that your father must go away for a rest
... a little holiday. . . ."
"Yes. . . . And that means, of course, that we
shall have to shut up the house until he returns,
and of course that will be quite easy, because it's
THRENODY 163
time you were getting back to St. Luke's. We
thought you had better go on Monday."
"Monday?" It was now Saturday.
"Yes. . . . Monday. It is fortunate that your
uncle has to go into North Bromwich on business
that day. . . ."
"Yes. . . . Yes. . . . Business," put in Uncle Albert,
as though he were anxious to explain that his visit
to that sink of iniquity was in no way connected
with pleasure.
Edwin burned with sudden and quite unreason-
able indignation.
"And you agreed to this, father?"
"Yes. . . . Of course I agreed. Your aunt is quite
right. I am overtired. It was a terrible strain.
And the doctor suggested that my native air. . . ."
"Oh ... I don't mean that," said Edwin. "I
mean about St. Luke's ... I can't go back now
... of course I can't . . ."
"Don't be ridiculous and childish, Edwin," said
Aunt Laura severely. "You don't imagine just be-
cause" with a hushed and melancholy inflection
"this . . . has happened, you're never going to
school again?"
"No. ... I don't mean that. Of course I don't.
Only . . . only the term is nearly over. In an-
other fortnight all the chaps will be going away
for the hols. It isn't worth it. I should feel . . ."
"We weren't considering your feelings so much
as your good," said Aunt Laura complacently.
"Father . . . father . . . you can't mean it. You
see. ... I don't know. ... it would all be so
strange. So awfully difficult. I should have lost
164 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
touch with all the work the form was doing. I
shouldn't be able to pick it up. It's rotten . . .
rotten . . ."
"Edwin, you will distress your father . . ."
"Oh, Aunt Laura, do let father speak for him-
self."
Immense volumes of yellow smoke signalled
Uncle Albert's distress.
"Father . . ."
"It's difficult, Edwin . . ."
"But it isn't difficult, father, dear. Aunt Laura
doesn't realise. She doesn't realise what it would
be like going back like that to St. Luke's. It would
only be waste of time. Father, I'd read during the
hols. ... I would, really. It isn't that I want
to get out of going back to work. It isn't that a
bit. I'd work like blazes. Only . . . only every-
thing now seems to have gone funny and empty
. . . sort of blank. I ... I feel awful without
mother . . ."
"Edwin . . ." warningly, from Aunt Laura.
That Aunt Laura should presume to correct him
in a matter of delicacy! "Of course you don't un-
derstand," he said bitterly. "You don't want me
to speak about mother. You've had your excite-
ment out of it. You've had your chance of bossing
round, and now you want to arrange what I shall
do for the rest of my life, I suppose. ' You've no
... no reverence."
He was really very angry. It was always difficult
for him to be anything else with Aunt Laura ; for he
felt that it was somehow horribly unjust for her
to be alive when his mother was dead, and he could
THRENODY 165
never, never forget what his darling had told him
of her stupid jealousy. On this occasion Aunt
Laura seemed to be less disturbed than usual by
his violence. She spoke with a calculated coolness
that compelled the admiration of her husband, sit-
ting very uncomfortably on the edge of the storm,
desperately anxious to show that without his tak-
ing sides his wife could rely on his support.
"It's funny, Edwin," said Aunt Laura, stroking
her black skirt, "that you should use the word
Keverence. ... It reminds me of something that I
wanted to speak to you about. You realise, don't
you, that we are all supposed to be .in mourning?
And yet, day after day, I see you going down the
town in a pair of white canvas gym. shoes.
White. . . ! Now, you mustn't talk to me about
reverence, Edwin."
Edwin burst out laughing. It was no good argu-
ing with the woman. He gave a despairing glance
at his father. Was it possible that the man could
listen seriously to superficial cant of this kind? Was
it possible that he could tolerate the woman's pres-
ence in the house? He looked, and he saw nothing
but tiredness and desolation in the man's face. He
saw that in reality his father was too tired for
anything but compromise. All life, all determina-
tion had been stamped out of him, and though
Edwin clutched at the sympathy which he knew
must be concealed in the man's mind, he began to
realise that, after all, circumstances , had left the
whole household curiously dependent on Aunt
Laura; that without her the whole domestic ma-
chine would collapse, and that, therefore, the in-
i66 ,THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
fliction must be suffered patiently. Edwin deter-
mined to leave the matter where it stood, but Aunt
Laura, inflamed with approaching triumph, would
not let it rest. "I am sure that you agree with me,
John," she threw out challengingly.
"No doubt Edwin did not understand. You know
more about the people in the town than we do,
Laura."
"Compromise . . ." thought Edwin, "but I sup-
pose it can't be helped." At any rate nothing that
he might do should give the man a moment's dis-
comfort. He possessed himself in silence.
"But I think, perhaps," Mr. Ingleby went on,
"that Edwin is right. It would be hardly worth
while going back to St. Luke's for a fortnight."
"Of course you know best, John," Aunt Laura
hurried to assure him, "but it's really quite im-
possible for us to put him up while the house is
closed and you are away. You know that we've
arranged to have the painters in."
On a matter of fact, and one outside controversy,
Uncle Albert felt that he was safe in giving his
support.
"I quite understand that," said Mr. Ingleby, "but
it's a simple matter. Edwin can come with me."
"Oh, father, how wonderful!"
"Well, of course," said Aunt Laura, "if he won't
be a nuisance to you. . . ." But Edwin was too
pleased and excited to mind what she said. He
kissed his father, and Mr. Ingleby, with a curious
tenderness, clasped his arm. It seemed that catas-
trophe had strange uses. Already it had thrown
the ordinary course of life into more than one curi-
THRENODY 167
cms byway, and now, behold, he was to embark
upon another strange adventure, to become familiar
with another sort of life. He determined that his
duty (whatever that might be) should not suffer
by it. When they returned from their holiday, all
through the summer months, he would work like
anything: he would make that Balliol scholarship
that had seemed part of an indefinite future, as
near a certainty as made no matter. He would
show them in other words Aunt Laura and Uncle
Albert what he could do.
"If we are going on Monday I had better think
of packing," he said. "Shall I need to take many
things, father?"
"Oh, don't worry your father, Edwin," said Aunt
Laura.
m
Sunday came with its usual toll of dreariness.
The customary penance of the morning service was
actually the least trying part of it to Edwin. To
begin with, the parish church of Halesby was a
structure of great beauty. Originally an offshoot
of the abbey that now stood in ruins above the long
string of slowly silting fishponds on the Stour, the
grace and ingenuity of successive ages of priestly
architects had embellished its original design with
many beautiful features, and the slender beauty
of its spire, crowning a steep bank above the de-
graded river, had imposed an atmosphere of dignity
and rest upon the rather squalid surroundings of
this last of the black-country towns. The music,
even though it was not in any way comparable with
i68 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
that of St. Luke's, was good, and the recent arrival
of a young and distinguished rector from Cam-
bridge, whose voice and person would have qualified
him for success as a bishop, or an actor manager,
had restored to the building some of its popularity
as a place of resort or of escape from the shuttered
Sunday streets.
At ten o'clock the fine peal of bells filled the air
with an inspiriting music. Edwin remembered,
hearing them, the melancholy with which they had
often inspired him on dank evenings of autumn
when the ringers were at practice. Very different
they sounded on this summer morning, for a gentle
wind was moving from the hills to westward, and
chime eddied in a soft air that was clearer than
the usual, if only because it was Sunday and the
smoke of a thousand furnaces and chimney stacks
no longer filled it with suffocation.
At ten-fifteen precisely Aunt Laura appeared in
the dining-room, in a black silk dress smelling faint-
ly of lavender: a minute later, Uncle Albert, in a
frock coat, coaxing the last sweetness from his
after-breakfast pipe. Mr. Ingleby also had ex-
changed the alpaca jacket in which he had been
leisurely examining his roses, for the same uniform.
Uncle Albert, Edwin noticed, had not yet removed
the deep band of crape from his top-hat. As usual,
Aunt Laura appeared a little flustered, the strain
of conscious magnificence in her millinery making
it difficult for her to collect her thoughts.
"Are you sure you have all the prayer-books,
Albert?" she asked anxiously.
THRENODY 169
Uncle Albert regretfully knocked out his pipe.
"Yes, my dear," he said.
"Don't scatter those ashes all over the fireplace,
Albert. The least you can do is to keep the room
tidy on Sunday."
"Yes, my dear."
"Edwin, have you got your prayer-book? Why,
boy, you've actually put on a grey striped tie. Kun
and change it quickly. I don't know what people
will think."
Edwin, smarting, obeyed. When he returned the
atmosphere of impatience had increased. Aunt
Laura was saying: "John, dear, are you sure that
the clock is right? I'm afraid the bells have stopped.
No . . . thank goodness, there they are again. That's
better, Edwin. Now we really must start. You
have the money for the collection, Albert? Give
it to me, or you'll be sure to leave me without any.
I do hope we shan't be late. We should look so
prominent. . . ."
Why should they look s prominent? The ques-
tion puzzled Edwin all the way down through the
quiet streets. B,ut even though this mystery exer-
cised his mind he could not help appreciating the
curious atmosphere of the route through which they
progressed: At the corner of the street the first
familiar thing smote him : it was the odour of stale
spirits and beer that issued from between the closed
doors of the Bull's Head public-house, behind which
it had been secreted ever since an uproarious clos-
ing time the night before. Then came the steep
High Street, and from its gutters the indescribable
smell of vegetable refuse left there overnight from
170 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
the greengrocer's stalls. On an ordinary morning
it would not have been noticed, for the motion of
wheeled traffic in the highway and the sight of
open shop windows would have distracted the at-
tention. On Sunday morning, however, it became
the most important thing in the road, and seemed
to emphasise the deadness of the day in contrast
to the activities and dissipations of Saturday night.
It called attention to the indubitable sordidness of
the whole street: the poverty of its grimy brick:
the faded lettering above the shop windows: the
paint that cracked and peeled from the closed shut-
ters. On this morning Halesby was a squalid and
degraded town. Even Mr. Ingleby's shop in the
High Street looked curiously small and mean.
Edwin disliked the sight of his own name printed
over it. It reminded him of Griffin's social prej-
udices.
They entered a small door in the transept when
the last bell was tolling; and as they stepped into
the full church Edwin realised at last the reason
of Aunt Laura's particular anxieties. They were
on show. This was the first occasion, since the
funeral, that the family had entered the church,
and, in accordance with an immemorial custom, the
congregation were now engaged in searching their
faces and their clothing for evidences of the grief
that was proper to their condition.
Kneeling in the conventional opening prayer,
Edwin could see through his folded fingers that the
whole of the gathering was engaged in a ghoulish
scrutiny of their party. Now, for the first time,
-he realised the full meaning of the horror with
THRENODY 171
which his grey tie had inspired Aunt Laura. He
could even feel Aunt Laura, who remained kneeling
longer than usual, wallowing in the emotion that
her presence evoked. It was a rotten business. If
he could have dared to do so without causing an
immense scandal, Edwin would have t got up and
left the church. He saw Aunt Laura glance at his
father with a kind of proprietary air, as if this
exhibition w r ere really her own responsibility and
the degree of interest that Mr. Ingleby's appearance
aroused were to her credit.
Edwin also looked at his father. He wondered
if Mr. Ingleby were in the least conscious of the
spectacle to which he was contributing: decided
that he wasn't. He was thankful for that. It be-
came apparent to him that, if the truth were known,
his father was a creature of the most astonishing
simplicity: a simplicity that was almost pathetic.
He could see, he knew that the whole church must
see, that the man had suffered. The brutes. . . .
He was awfully sorry for his father. And he loved
him for it. The whole affair was shameful and de-
grading. Never mind ... in another twenty-four
hours they would be clear of all this sort of thing.
It was something to be thankful for.
"When the wicked man turneth away from his
wickedness and doeth that which is lawful and
right. . . ." The rector began to intone. He spoke
the words as though his whole soul were behind
them : his voice vibrated with a practiced earnest-
ness: and all the time Edwin could see his dark
eyes scrutinising the congregation in detail, con-
gratulating himself on the presence of his sup-
172 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
porters, speculating on the absence of certain
others. In the final cadence of the sentence, a
masterly modulation that would have made you
swear that his whole life was in his mission, his
eyes swivelled into the corner where the Ingleby
party were sitting, and Edwin could have bet his
life that they lighted up with a kind of satisfac-
tion at the addition of this undoubted attraction to
his morning's entertainment. It even seemed to
him that the rector's glances almost imperceptibly
indicated to his wife, a little woman of a pathetic
earnestness qualified for the ultimate bishopric
by a complete subjection to her husband's person-
ality, the fact that the Inglebys were on view.
The rector, who had views on the advantages of
scamping the drier portions of the church service
and stressing any sentence that held possibilities
of fruity sentiment, soon got into his stride. He
was in excellent voice that morning, and on two
occasions in the first lesson availed himself of an
opportunity of exploiting the emotional break it
was very nearly a sob that had done so much to
establish his reputation in his early days at
Halesby. He was making hay while the sun shone:
for in the confirmation service such opportunities
are more limited.
Edwin enjoyed the psalms. There was even
something familiar and pleasant in the tunes of
the Cathedral Psalter after the exotic harmonies
of St. Luke's. He sang the tenor part (when last
he remembered singing them it had been alto) and
lost his sense of his surroundings in the beauty of
the words. In the middle of them, however, he be-
THRENODY 173
came conscious of his father singing too. He had
never sat next to his father in church before. His
mother had always separated them: and for this
reason he had never before heard his father sing.
The result filled him with horror. Mr. Ingleby had
no idea of tune and was apparently unconscious
of this disability. Edwin reflected how great an
interest music had been in his mother's life:
realised that from this part of her his father .must
always have been isolated by this natural barrier.
It was strange. ... He began to wonder what
they really had in common. He remembered
Griffin. No ... not that. . . .
This speculation he did his best to stifle while
the rector galloped over the desert wastes of the
Litany : but the kneeling posture was rendered un-
comfortable by the presence in front of him of an
old maiden lady who smelt of carraway seeds,
a spice that Edwin detested. A hymn followed.
Luckily, this time his father did not sing. Poor
creature. . . . Edwin was now so ashamed of his
criticism that he almost wished he would. And
then they settled down to the sermon.
From the first Edwin had decided that he would
not listen. The simple austerity of the service at
St. Luke's, where the liturgy was allowed to unfold
its sonorous splendours for itself, had bred in him
a distaste for the rector's histrionics. So he did
not hear them, contenting himself with a detailed
examination of such of the congregation as were
within his range. He saw them classified in their
social gradations from the pompous distinction of
Sir Joseph Hingston, the ironmaster, who, in spite
174 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
of his baronetcy, wore a frock coat that did not
differ greatly from that of Mr. Ingleby, to their
late maid, dressed in black, and now conscious of
the reflected glory that she had almost sacrificed by
leaving. And the thing that impressed him most
about this very various gathering was their shabbi-
ness, and the fact that nearly all of those whom
he knew seemed so much older than they had been
when he last saw them.
Thinking of the light and elegance and cleanli-
ness of St. Luke's, it appeared to him that Halesby
was indeed a muddy and obscure backwater and
that his own people, sitting in the pew beside him,
were in reality as much fitted to inhabit it as all
the rest of the shabby congregation. Even the
Willises, his mother's new friends, whom a wave of
commercial prosperity had carried forward into
one of the front pews of the nave within calcul-
able distance of the glory of Sir Joseph Kingston
himself, would, have looked very ordinary folk in
the chapel at St. Luke's.
He began to wonder if Griffin, and more latterly
Aunt Laura, had been right: whether, after all,
his mother had made an ambitious mistake in send-
ing him to a public school when the ancient founda-
tion of the Halesby Grammar School had stood
waiting for the reception of him and his kind.
There, in the fifth row on the left of the nave, sat
Mr. Kelly, the grammar school's head-master: a
swarthy Irishman with a sinister, rather disap-
pointed face. He wasn't at all Edwin's idea of a
schoolmaster. Even old fat Leeming looked more
distinguished than that. And yet, if he were good
THRENODY 175
enough for the son of the opulent Walter Willis,
he must surely be good enough for the son of an
ordinary Halesby tradesman.
For the greater part of the sermon these problems
of social precedence engaged Edwin's puzzled mind.
It had come as something of a shock to him to
find that his mother came of a farming stock,
even though the farmers had lived in a Norman
castle and had once been good enough to bear a
lance in company with the Lords Marchers. Ex-
amining the face of his father, who appeared to be
engrossed in the rector's rhetoric, Edwin decided
that his features were really far too distinguished
to belong naturally to a country chemist. Here,
perhaps, in spite of present circumstance, lay the
explanation of his own indubitable gentility. It
was funny, he reflected, that he had never heard
anything from his mother about the origins of the
Inglebys: he had not even known from what part
of the country their stock had sprung, and this
ignorance made the expedition on which they were
to start on the morrow more enthralling than ever.
It was quite possible that the discovery of some
illustrious ancestry might put him right with him-
self and justify his claim to a birthright which at
present seemed rather shadowy.
Even if this failed, he decided, there remained
Oxford. A fellow of Balliol (his imagination trav-
elled fast) would have a right to hold up his head
with any one in that congregation Sir Joseph
Kingston not excepted even though the name of
the fellow's father happened to be printed on his
toothbrush. It might even be for him to restore
1 76 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
the prestige of the Ingleby name. "But in that
case," he thought, "it will be better for me to buy
my toothbrushes somewhere else. . . ." Even the
fact that Keats was a chemist did not modify this
determination.
The sermon ended, and during the collection a
hymn was sung. Half an hour before this, a gowned
verger had stolen on tiptoe to the Inglebys' pew
and whispered in Mr. Ingleby's ear, depositing a
wooden plate lined with velvet under the seat as
furtively as if it were something of which he was
ashamed. When the collection began Edwin's
father left his pew and began to carry the plate
round the transept in which they were seated.
Edwin, out of the corner of his eye, saw a glow
of satisfaction spread over the features of Aunt
Laura. Now, more than ever, the depth of the
family's grief was to be demonstrated in the eyes
of all men. Edwin thought it was a rotten shame to
make his father collect on this Sunday of all Sun-
days. The hymn was a short one, and for several
minutes after it was finished the clink of silver
and the duller sound of copper coins was heard in
every corner of the echoing church. Then the sides-
men formed themselves into a double file and
moved singly up the aisle. First came Sir Joseph
Kingston, erect and podgy, with his smooth grey
waistcoat in front of him like the breast of a pouter
pigeon. Mr. Willis, of Mawne, with a humbler but
not unambitious abdominal development followed
him. Edwin conceived a fanciful theory that when
Mr. Willis, in the course of time, should have grown
as wealthy as the baronet, there would be nothing
THRENODY 177
:
to choose between their profiles. A miserly but
erect old gentleman named Farr, who had once
given Edwin a halfpenny, followed Mr. Willis. Last
but one came Edwin's father, with the red-bearded
undertaker an eager last.
On the whole, Edwin was satisfied (as was ob-
viously Aunt Laura) with Mr. Ingleby's appear-
ance. He certainly looked more like the father of
a fellow of Balliol than Sir Joseph Kingston.
The money descended with a series of opulent
splashes into the brass salver that the rector held
in front of the chancel steps: the organist (in pri-
vate life he was a carpenter) meanwhile extempo-
rising vaguely in the key of C. The. rector carried
the salver arm-high to the altar, as though he were
exhibiting to the Almighty the personal fruits of
his oratory. Mr. Ingleby stole quietly to his seat
bathed in the admiring glances of Aunt Laura. A
short prayer . . . "And now to God the fath-
er. . . ." The organist launched into his latest
achievement: the Gavotte from Mignon.
Outside the church the summer sunlight seemed
more exhilarating than ever. It was worth while,
Edwin thought, to have suffered the dreariness of
the morning's service to experience this curious
feeling of lightness and relief. He supposed that
he was not alone in this sensation; for the crowd
that moved slowly from the churchyard gates with
a kind of gathering resilience was a happy crowd,
and its voices that at first were hushed soon became
gay and irresponsible in spite of the slight awk-
wardness that its Sunday clothes imposed on it.
No doubt they were anticipating their Sunday din-
178 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
ner, for, as Edwin had noticed, the liturgy of the
Church of England has some value as an aperitif.
Even Aunt Laura was full of a subdued playful-
ness. "What a shame, Albert," she said, "that the
rector didn't appoint you to collect to-day." She
patted his arm.
"Oh, I don't know, my dear. ... It wasn't my
turn, you know."
"Oh, I know that," said Aunt Laura, "but on a
day like this it would have been rather a delicate
compliment. I must speak to the rector about it."
"I don't think I should do that," said Uncle Al-
bert, with some alarm.
She laughed gently. "Don't be an old juggins,"
she said.
All down the High Street, in the moving crowd,
Edwin could smell the savour of roast beef and
baked potatoes and cabbage water wafted from
innumerable kitchen windows. ,
IV
In the afternoon they left Aunt Laura and Uncle
Albert asleep in two arm-chairs on opposite sides
of the drawing-room fireplace, and Edwin and his
father went for a walk by the old abbey fish-ponds.
It was the first time for many years that Edwin
had been for a walk with his father, and the experii
ence promised a new and exciting intimacy to which
he looked forward with eagerness.
Even at this hour of the day the Sabbath
atmosphere imposed itself on the countryside. The
road that they followed was long and straight
THRENODY 179
with an open frontage above the reedy pools, and
along the cinder path at the side of it a great num-
ber of men were lounging: a strange and foreign
population of miners from the Mawne pits, who
only emerged from their cavernous occupation on
this day of the week, and other industrial workers
from the great steel rolling mills that lay in the
Stour Valley to westward.
None of them took any notice of Edwin and his
father. It was even doubtful if they knew who
they were; for these men passed a curiously sepa-
rate existence, and Mr. Ingleby would only be
familiar to their wives who did the family shopping
on Saturday nights while their masters were wait-
ing for the football results in their favourite pubs.
On this day the miner's passion for sport of all
kinds asserted itself in the presence of a great
number of slim, jacketed whippets, each warranted
to beat anything on four legs for speed, slinking
tenderly at their masters' heels.
It seemed strange to Edwin that his father
should know none of these men. It showed him
again how remote and solitary the man's life must
have been in this ultimate corner of the Black
Country. "We don't really belong here," he
thought. "We're foreigners. . . ." And the reflec-
tion pleased him, though he remembered, with a
tinge of regret, that by this denial he dissociated
himself from his old idol the poet of the Pastoral
Ballad.
Soon they left the cinder path behind, and
plunged into a green lane descending to a water-
mill, turned by the tawny Stour, as yet unsullied
i8o THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
by the refuse of factories. At a sandstone bridge,
whose parapet was deeply carved with the initials
of lovers long since dead or disillusioned, they
paused, and, for the first time, began to talk.
"It's a funny thing, father," Edwin said, "but I
don't even know where we are going to-mor-
row. . . ."
Mr. Ingleby smiled. "Don't you, Edwin? Well,
the doctor said it would be best for me to go to my
native air ; and it struck me as rather a good plan.
I never went there with your mother. It belonged
to another life. It is quite twenty years since I
have been in Somerset."
"Somerset . . . ? I didn't even know it was
Somerset."
"No. . . . Well, as I say, it was another world."
Somerset. . . . Edwin's imagination began to
play with the word. He could remember very
little: only a huge green county sprawling on a
map with rivers . . . yes, and hills. A county
stretched beside the Severn Sea. The Severn again !
A western county. Cheddar cheese. Lorna Doone.
Cider. Coleridge. Sedgemoor.
"But what part of Somerset?"
"The eastern end."
That was a pity. The farther west the better.
"I suppose it's rather a flat county?"
"A great part of it. Did you ever hear of Men-
dip?
" 'The rugged miners poured to war
From Mendip's sunless caves.' "
THRENODY 181
"Yes, of course. . . ."
"I came from a li&le village on the top of Mendip.
Twenty years ago it was decaying. Now I expect
there's next to nothing left of it. Twenty years
makes a lot of difference. It's made a lot of dif-
ference to me."
"And what was the name of the village?"
"I don't suppose you will ever have heard it.
It was called Highberrow."
"Highberrow . . . no. It's a jolly name."
"I don't think it ever struck me in that light."
"Highberrow ... is it right in the hills?"
"Yes . . . quite high up. I don't know how
many hundreds of feet. I wasn't interested in
that sort of thing then. It lies right under Axdown,
the highest point of the range. On a clear day you
can see right over the Bristol Channel into Wales.
All the mountains there. The Brecon Beacons.
The Sugarloaf. The Black Mountain."
"The Black Mountain. But how strange. Why,
when you were a little boy you must have been
nearly able to see the place where mother lived.
With a big sea between. It must have been won-
derful . . ."
"Yes ... I suppose it was. I scarcely remem-
ber. Look right down in that deep pool. That's a
trout."
"A trout. . . . Where? Do show me . . ."
The vision of Mendip faded instantly, and Edwin
only saw the rufous sands of the pool beneath the
bridge, and in it a shadowy elongated figure with
its head to the slow stream and faintly quivering
fins. In Devonshire, Widdup had told him, the
182 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
rivers swarmed with trout: you could catch them
all day long if you wanted to, and Edwin, loyal
to his own county's excellences, had only been able
to produce the silvery roach of the millpool, shoal-
ing round the water-lilies and the mythical legend
of carnivorous pike lurking in Mr. Willis's ponds
in the Holloway. He wished he had known that
there were veritable trout in the Stour. Now it
was too late to do anything; but when they re-
turned from their holiday, he determined that he
would catch this shadowy creature, even if he had
to induce it to gorge a worm. Still, it was quite
possible that by the time he returned he would
have captured many trout. For Somerset lay next
to Devon on the map.
"Are there many trout in Mendip?" he asked.
"No. . . . There is only one river of any size.
The Ax, that runs underground and comes out of
Axcombe gorge, and there are practically no trout
in the Ax. It's a dry country. Limestone. Very
barren too."
That didn't really matter. In a day or two Ed-
win would be able to see for himself. On their way
home they spoke very little. His father seemed to
find it difficult to talk to him ; and in a little while
Edwin became conscious of his own unending
string of questions that led nowhere.
But all that night he dreamed of Mendip. A
vast, barren, mountain^country, his dreams pic-
tured it ; waterless, and honeycombed with the dark
caves from which Macaulay's miners had poured
to war; a deserted countryside full of broken vil-
lages and bounded by steep cliffs against which the
THRENODY 183
isolating waters of the Severn Sea broke in a sound-
less tumult. And there Ax, the sacred river, ran
through caverns measureless to man. A fluent
gentleman with a noble brow and burning grey
eyes pointed out the course of the river to him. He
was the only other soul beside Edwin and his
father, in all that desert country, and Edwin intro-
duced him to Mr. Ingleby as Mr. Coleridge rather
diffidently, for he was not sure how the poet would
take it until he remembered and explained that
Keats was a chemist. There, on the high crown of
Axdown, his mother joined them. She, it seemed,
was not afraid of Mr. Coleridge. She took his arm
so familiarly that Edwin trembled for her; but the
poet only smiled, while she pointed out to him a
mass of huge fantastic mountains ranged beyoncl
the gleaming sea. "You've got to look over there,"
she said. "You see that level ridge dropping sud
denly? Well, it's the third farm from the end.
Can you see the little bedroom window on the ex-
treme left? . . . quite a little window?" Coleridge
nodded, and Mr. Ingleby, too, shielded his eyes
with his hands and looked. "It was my last chance
of showing it to you," she said.
"But there are practically no trout in the Alph,"
said Coleridge.
CHAPTER XI
THE THRESHOLD
/in HE next evening, when Edwin and his father
JL reached Bristol, a steady drizzle had set in
from the west. They pushed their bicycles out of
the station yard at Temple Meads and rode be-
tween slippery tramway lines towards a small
hotel, a stone's-throw from Bristol Bridge, where
Mr. Ingleby had decided to put up for the night.
"It's no use trying to ride on to Wringford this eve-
ning," he said, "for the wind will be against us and
it's collar work most of the way. I think we can
be comfortable here to-night. I used to know the
landlord of this place. He was a Mendip man."
The Mendip landlord, of course, had been dead
for many years, having made his descent by the
route that is particularly easy for licensed victual-
lers; but it happened that his daughter had mar-
ried the new tenant, and this woman, a comfortable
creature who spoke with the slight burr that ap-
peared in Mr. Ingleby's speech in times of anger
or any other violent emotion, welcomed them for
her father's sake, and gave them a bare but cleanly
room on the second story.
The windows of this room looked down obliquely
184
THE THRESHOLD 185
on to the tidal basin of the Avon, thronged with
small coasting tramps and sailing ships: and Ed-
win was content to stay there watching them; for
he had never seen the traffic of a harbour before.
It was still too wet to think of going out on to the
quays; but even from a distance the misty spec-
tacle, enveloped in veils of driving rain, was ro-
mantic.
Edwin watched while a pair of busy tugboats
pushed and pulled and worried the hull of a wooden
schooner in to mid-stream. The water was high,
and she was due to catch the falling tide to Avon-
mouth. Whither was she bound? He did not know.
Perhaps her way lay down channel to pick up
a cargo of bricks from Bridgewater. Perhaps she
was setting out at that moment to essay the icy
passage of the Horn. Perhaps, in another four
months, she would have doubled the Cape and lie
wallowing in the torpid seas about Zanzibar. It
inspired Edwin to think that he was standing at
one of the gateways of the world. From the site
of the stone bridge above their lodging, just four
hundred years ago, the Venetian pilot, Cabot, had
cast loose in the selfsame way, and sailed westward
with his three sons, Lewes, Sebastyan, and Sancto,
to the mainland of unknown America. To-day,
from the same wet quays, other adventurous prows
were stretching forth to the ends of the earth. To
China ... To Africa. Here begins the sea that
ends not till the world's end.
With his accustomed curiosity as to the origins
of his own emotions Edwin was not long in deciding
that his growing eagerness to see the beauty and
i86 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
strangeness of the world must have sprung from
the fact that his ancestors had lived upon the
shores of this great waterway. From Highberrow,
his father had told him, you could see the whole
expanse of the Bristol Channel. From Highber-
row, perhaps, some forbear of his own had watched
the caravels of Cabot setting down channel with
the ebb tide. He was bewildered with the splen-
dour of his heritage. It was impossible to imagine
that Sir Joseph Kingston's family had the least
share in such a romantic past.
In the evening, after supper, the rain ceased,
and Mr. Ingleby proposed that they should go for
a walk through the city. He had known it well
in his youth, and it seemed to fill him with an
almost childish delight to show Edwin the things
that he remembered. They passed through many
narrow winding streets where the overhanging
houses of the merchant venturers stood, and an-
cient churches had been huddled into corners by
the growing city. "I remember every inch of it,"
said Mr. Ingleby, with a happy laugh. Again they
crossed the river, and skirting a line of shipping
warehouses, now cavernous and deserted, they
plunged into a sordid quarter full of sailors' drink-
ing dens that smelled of rum, and marine stores
that smelled of tar.
"Where are we going?" Edwin asked.
'^You'll see in a minute," said Mr. Ingleby. And,
in a minute, Edwin saw.
They had emerged from the huddled houses into
a large open space, and in the midst of it rose a
miracle of beauty such as Edwin had never seen
THE THRESHOLD 187
before: a structure too delicate in its airy loveli-
ness to have been built of stone; so fragile in its
strength that it seemed impossible that the slender
flying buttresses should support it. The shadowy
spire could be seen dimly piercing a sky that had
been washed to clearness by the rain; but inside
the church, for some reason unknown, the lamps
had been lighted, and the whole building glowed
as though it had been one immense lantern. There
could not be another miracle of this kind in the
world, Edwin thought.
He remembered a white model of the Taj Mahal
at Agra, that stood beneath a dome of glass in Mrs.
Barrow's drawing-room, an intricate carving of
ivory with a huge dome and many fretted
minarets. Edwin remembered that the Taj Mahal
was supposed to be one of the wonders of the world ;
but he could not believe that it was as beautiful
as this : it was too fanciful, too complicated in its
detail, while this church, for all its delicacy, was
so amazingly simple in its design.
"St. Mary Redcliffe," said Mr. Ingleby. "I al-
ways thought it was a fine church, but I don't think
I ever saw it lit up like this before." He paused,
and they gazed at the church for a little while in
silence. "It's a funny thing," he said at last, "that
a great master can sign a picture and the name of a
poet be remembered by his writings, while the
greatest artists of the Middle Ages, people who
planned and built wonderful things like this . . .
and I suppose it is more beautiful to-day than
when it was first finished . . . should be quite for-
gotten. A funny thing. ... I should think the
188 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
man who made this church must have devoted his
life to it."
Edwin glowed. It came as a delightful surprise
to him that his father should think of a thing like
this. He was ashamed to confess that he hadn't
believed him capable of it. It was the sort of
thing that he would only have expected of hie
mother. "What a rotten little snob I am," he
thought. And though he happened to know, quite
by accident, from the Rowley Poems of Chatterton,
that the builder of Kedcliffe was William Cannynge,
round whose shadowy reputation the work of the
wondrous boy had grown, he could not for the life
of him reveal this piece of learning, since it would
have spoiled the originality of his father's reflec-
tion. He only said, "Yes," but the train of thought
was so strong in him that he couldn't resist asking
Mr. Ingleby if he knew which was the muniment
room.
"The muniment room. Why?"
"Because it was in the muniment room that
Chatterton pretended that he found the Eowley
manuscripts."
"Chatterton? Ah, yes. . . . Thomas Chatterton,
the poet."
"Yes."
"I'm afraid I don't know. I never read any of
his poems, but I believe he starved in London and
committed suicide with Arsenious Oxide."
This gleam of professional interest tickled Ed-
win. Keats: Keatings. Chatterton: Arsenious
Oxide.
"They found Arsenic on his lips. He made no
THE THRESHOLD 189
mistake about it. The lethal dose is a very small
one. A grain or so would have done it. Why, it's
beginning to rain again. We'd better go. I hope
it will clear up by to-morrow."
They walked back to their lodging in a fine
drizzle. On the way Edwin's father took his arm.
The action gave Edwin a curious sensation. It sug-
gested to him that his father was lonely; that the
natural instinct of love in the man was making
him eager for some sort of sympathy. It was
pitiable; for, in reality, they were strangers . . .
there was no getting away from the fact that they
were strangers.
"I must make it easy for him," Edwin thought.
"However impossible it may seem, I must make
it easy. I must know him. I must love him.
Whatever it costs I must love him. It is ridiculous
that I should have to choose my words and even
at times be a little dishonest when it ought to be
the most natural and easy thing in the world to
be myself with him. Of course it's difficult at
present; but later on, when we know each other
better, it will be all right."
When they returned to their lodging their clothes
were wet, and they went together into the kitchen
of the defunct publican's daughter. She gave them
two of her husband's coats to wear while their own
were drying, and for a long time they sat over the
fire talking to her. It was evident that though Mr.
Ingleby was himself unknown to her, she knew
all about his family ; for she asked him many ques-
tions about various people in Highberrow and
Wringford, whom they knew in common. Mr. Ingle-
190 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
by could tell her very little, but the landlady was
able to supply him with a lot of gossip from the
Mendip villages.
"We heard that you were married," she said.
"Yes," replied Mr. Ingleby. "But I've just had
a great blow. I've lost my wife."
"Dear, dear . . . that's very sad for 'ee."
"Yes. ... I shall never get over it."
"And this is your eldest? My word, how time
flies!"
"Yes. . . . He's the only one."
"To look at him at first you wouldn't say there
was much of an Ingleby in him."
"No. He takes after his mother's family."
"And yet, on second thoughts, he's got a look of
your brother William's boy, Joe, about his eyes.
Now that's a strange thing. Talking of your
brother William, I haven't seen or heard of him
for years."
"I haven't seen him for twenty years myself.
We're cycling to Wringford to-morrow. We shall
put up with him,"
"Well, remember me to him. He was always a
great favourite of dad's."
"Will's a good fellow."
"I suppose he's in the same place? Mr. Grise-
wood would be a fool to get rid of a man like that.
Good gardeners are scarce. ..."
Edwin could not understand this at all. It was
obvious that the woman must be making some mis-
take; for it was clearly impossible that his Uncle
William could be a gardener. Still, his father of-
fered no protest.
THE THRESHOLD 191
"They tell me," she went on in her soft West-
country voice, "that he've apprenticed that boy Joe
to Hares, the shoeing-smith."
"I didn't know that," said Mr. Ingleby.
"Well, of course, it may be all right," the land-
lady went on, "but there's always the future to
think on. My husband always says that the day
of the horse is over. What with steam and elec-
tricity, and these new things that I see in the paper
they are running from London to Brighton!
There's a gentleman near Bridgewater who has one
of these new motor-cars on the road. Of course,
I suppose they are fairly reliable on the flat."
Edwin was thankful that the excitements of
motor traction had diverted her from the uncom-
fortable subject of his cousin's profession ... if
that were the right word to apply to the calling
of a Shoeing-smith ; but the matter still troubled
and bewildered him when they went upstairs to
bed. It was one that would not wait for explana-
tion, and so he tackled his father as soon as they
were alone.
"Father, what was that woman talking about?
What did she mean when she said that Uncle Will
was a gardener?"
"What did she mean?" Mr. Ingleby laughed.
"Why she meant what she said. He is a gardener.
He's never been anything else."
"But, father . . . it's impossible."
"It isn't impossible, boy. It's the truth. Didn't
you know? Didn't mother ever tell you?"
"No. ... I don't think she ever spoke of him.
I . .1 can't understand it."
192 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"You sound as if it had come as a shock to you,
Eddie."
"No . . . yes ... I suppose it did."
"You didn't imagine that you'd find your an-
cestry in Debrett, Eddie?"
"No ... but that's different. It's . . . it's sort
of bowled me over."
Mr. Ingleby laughed. It seemed that he was
really amused at Edwin's consternation.
"I suppose it's natural for a schoolboy to be a
bit snobbish," he said.
"No ... it isn't that. Honestly it isn't, father.
Only I'd kind of taken us for granted. I wish you'd
tell me all about it. You see, I know absolutely
nothing."
"It's a long story, Eddie. But of course I'll tell
you. Then you won't have any more of these dis-
tressing surprises. Suppose you get into bed first."
It was a strange sight to Edwin to see his father
kneel down in his Jaeger nightgown and pray.
The boy had never done that since his second term
at St. Luke's.
n
Lying in bed with his father's arm about him,
Edwin listened to a long and strange narration
that overwhelmed him with alternations of humilia-
tion that made him ashamed, and of romance that
thrilled him. Mr. Ingleby began at the beginning.
Their family had lived, it appeared, for years with-
out number, in the village of Highberrow on Men-
dip in a combe beneath the great camp of Silbury,
and the calling of all these Inglebys had been that
THE THRESHOLD 193
of the other inhabitants of Highberrow : they were
miners, working for lead in the seams that the
Romans, and perhaps the Phoenicians before them,
had discovered in the mountain limestone. Even
so early as in the youth of Edwin's father the in-
dustry had been decaying, for the traditional meth-
ods of the Mendip miner were unscientific : he had
been content to dig for himself a shallow working
from which he collected enough of the mineral that
is called calamine to keep him in pocket and in
drink.
"We Mendip folk," said Mr. Ingleby, "are a
strange people, very different in our physique from
the broad Saxons of the turf-moors beneath us. I
suppose there is a good deal of Cornish blood in
us. Wherever there are mines there are Cornish-
men; but I think there's another, older strain:
Iberian . . . Roman . . . Phoenician. I don't know
what it is ; but I do know that we're somehow dif-
ferent from all the rest of the Somerset people: a
violent, savage sort of folk. Did you ever hear of
Hannah More?"
"No." Edwin had been born too late in the
century.
"Well, she was before my time too ; but she made
the Mendip miners notorious by trying to convert
them. I don't suppose she succeeded. At any rate
neither she nor her influences would ever have con-
verted your grandfather. He was a wonderful man.
Even though my memory is mostly of the way in
Which I was afraid of him, I can see what a won-
derful man he was. And your Uncle Will would
tell you the same."
I 9 4 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"He was a miner . . . ?"
"Yes. ... A miner amongst other things.
was a dowser too."
"A dowser? What is that?"
"Don't you know? The divining-rod. A thing
that all the scientists have been unable to explain.
In a dry country like Mendip the dowser is a most
important person; for neither man nor beast can
live without water, and he is the only person who
can tell where a well should be sunk. Your grand-
father was a strange looking man with very clear
grey eyes under a black head of hair and heavy
bristling brows. Even when he grew very old his
hair and his beard were black.
"I was the youngest of the family. All the others,
except your Uncle Will, have died and for some
reason or other I was not brought up in my father's
cottage but in that of my grandmother, a tiny,
tumbledown affair lying in the valley under Sil-
bury. We were very humble people, Eddie. I don't
suppose anywhere in the world I could have passed
a quieter childhood. It's a long way off now. One
only remembers curious, unimportant things.
"When I was four years old I was sent to the
village school. I don't think it exists any longer.
You see the population of Highberrow disappeared
naturally with the abandonment of the mining.
Even in my childhood, as I told you, the workings
were running pretty thin. The miners were begin-
ning to find that they couldn't pick up much of a
living on their own calamine claims; and so they
drifted back gradually your grandfather along
with them to the oldest workings of all : the mines
THE THRESHOLD 195
that the Romans had made two thousand years ago.
You may be certain that the Romans, with their
thoroughness, hadn't left much behind. Why, in
their days, Mendip must have been a great place,
with a harbour of its own on the mouth of the Ax,
and great roads radiating everywhere: to Ciren-
cester, Exeter, and Bath. Even in the Middle Ages
there was a population of fifty thousand souls on
Mendip. Now I don't suppose there are a thou-
sand in all the mining villages put together.
"So my father went to work in the Roman mines
at Cold Harbour; for a new company had been
started that was reclaiming the sublimated lead
that had been left in the Romans' flues. And there,
as a little boy, I used to carry him his dinner,
through the heather, over the side of Axdown.
You'll see Axdown for yourself to-morrow : a great
bow of a hill. There used to be a pair of ravens
that built there. I've seen them rising in great
wide circles. They seemed very big to me. I was
almost frightened of them; and when I found the
skeleton of a sheep one day on the top of Axdown
under the barrows, I made sure that the ravens
had killed it.
"I suppose I was a pretty intelligent boy. I
know that the men at the workings by Cold Har-
bour, where I took father's dinner, used to joke
with me a good deal. They used to like the way
in which I hit back at them with my tongue.
Father didn't take any notice of it. He was always
the same dark, silent man, with very few words,
and no feelings, as you'd imagine, except the violent
passions into which he would burst out when he'd
196 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
been drinking. He didn't often drink, though. He
was a good man, Eddie. A good man. . . . And so
I myself came to work in the mines."
"I can't believe it, you know, father. It's so un-
like you . . . and mother."
"Of course it was long before I knew your
mother. And it does seem funny, looking back on
it. I'm very glad now, mind you, that I had the
experience. It's a fine thing for any man at some
time of his life to have had to face the necessity of
earning his living by the use of his hands. You'll
never know what that means, I suppose. It's a
pity. . . .
"Well, while I was working at Cold Harbour,
my mother died. I forgot to tell you that Grannie
had died some years before, and her cottage under
Silbury had been left empty there was no one liv-
ing in Highberrow to fill it and was already
tumbling into ruins. I haven't told you about your
grandmother, my mother. I don't know that I can
tell you much. I think she was in some ways a
little hard. I don't know. ... I thought the world
of her, and perhaps it was my father's difficult na-
ture that made her seem harder than she was. Be-
sides, being brought up with Grannie, I was a sort
of stranger to her. I don't know how father came
across her. There's no doubt about it, she was a
superior woman. If you're still feeling a little sore
about your social origin, Eddie, you can console
yourself with the fact that she had a cousin who
was a solicitor or was it a solicitor's clerk?
somewhere near London. At any rate, poor soul,
she died. She was ill for several months, and I,
THE THRESHOLD 197
being the youngest, had to stay at home and nurse
her. It was in that way that I met Dr. Mar-
shall. . . .
"I'll tell you about him in a moment ; but think-
ing of the days of my mother's death puts me in
mind of a strange thing that happened at the time
that will show you what sort of man your grand-
father was. Early on in the family there had been
a girl that died to whom my mother was particu-
larly devoted ; and a little before the end she knew
that it couldn't be many weeks mother told my
father that she would like to be buried in a particu-
lar corner of the churchyard near to this daughter
of theirs.
"Father never spoke of it. He rarely spoke of
anything. But I suppose he took it in all the same.
Anyway, when she was dead, the old sexton came
up to see father about the grave, and he told him
where she had said she wanted to lie. The next
night the sexton came up again. I can see him
now a funny, old-fashioned little man with red
whiskers and said it couldn't be done, because the
soil was so shallow at that particular point. I can
see my father now. He hadn't been drinking; but
he flew suddenly into such a black rage that the
poor little gravedigger (Satell was his name) ran
out frightened for his life. I think I was pretty
frightened too, for father went out after him carry-
ing one of the great iron bars that the miners use
for drilling. I thought for a moment that the loss
of mother had turned his head. It hadn't. He just
went there and then, in the night, to the church-
yard, and worked away with his mining tools at
198 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
the rock that poor old Satell said he couldn't dig.
He bored his holes and he blasted the rock with
the black powder they used in those days, and he
dug my mother's grave in the place where she
wanted it. You see what a strange man he was!
You may say what you like, Eddie I've often
thought of it since but that was a grandfather
worth having."
"Yes ... he was worth having," Edwin agreed.
"But I was speaking of Dr. Marshall," his father
continued. "He was the beginning of my new life.
But for the accident of my mother's illness I don't
suppose I should ever have met him. During the
last month he came fairly often : not that he could
do much good for her, poor thing, but because she
was it's a wretched phrase a superior woman,
and because no doubt she liked to talk to him, and
he knew it. Practice in Highberrow can't have
been very profitable; though I'm sure that my
father paid him every penny that he owed him. He
was that kind of man.
"And when she died, Dr. Marshall took a fancy
to me. I could tell you a good deal about him if
it were worth while. He was a physician of the old
school, learned in experience rather than in books.
It is probable that he made mistakes; but I'm
equally certain that he learned by them. The week
after mother died he asked your grandfather if he
could have me to wash bottles and make myself
generally useful in his surgery at Axcombe. And
my father didn't refuse. It would have been unlike
him if he had done so ; for I think his idea in life
was to let every individual work out his own sal-
THE THRESHOLD 199
vation for himself. It was a good plan, for it made
the responsibility definite. . . .
"So I went to Axcombe to Dr. Marshall's house.
There was plenty of hard work in it. 1 think a
country doctor earns a poor living more honestly
than most men. I had to share the doctor's work
getting up early in the morning (that was no hard-
ship to a miner's son) to clean up the surgery
(and I can tell you it took some cleaning), to turn
out of bed in the middle of the night to harness
the pony if the message that called him took him
over roads, or to saddle the cob if the hill tracks
were too rough for wheels.
"Sometimes I had long night journeys on my
own; for the doctor, in spite of his practical head
for dealing with disease, was curiously unmethod-
ical and would often leave behind the particular
instrument that he wanted most, and in the middle
of the night a boy of my own age from one of the
hill villages would come battering at the door as
though his life depended on it. And they'd go on
battering, you know, as if they thought that the
sound of it would make me get up more quickly.
Perhaps it did : at any rate I can remember scramb-
ling downstairs in the dark and reading the notes
that the doctor sent by candlelight: and then I
would turn out, half asleep, and walk over the hills
above Axcombe when the gorge was swimming to
the brim with fine milky mist and a single step, if
one were silly enough to go dreaming, would have
sent one spinning down a sheer four hundred feet
like the hunting king in the legend. I'm forget-
200 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
ting that you don't know the legend and have never
seen the gorge. . . .
"Stall, I shall never forget those strange night-
journeys. I don't think I had begun to appreciate
Mendip until I walked the hills at night. I found
that I could think so clearly, and I was just
beginning, you see, to have so much to think about.
Books. . . .
"At Highberrow, in my father's cottage, there
were only two books altogether: the Bible, and a
tract by Miss Hannah More called 'The Eeligion
of the Fashionable World.' But Dr. Marshall's
house at Axcombe was crammed with books: rub-
bish, most of them, I expect; but printed books;
and whenever I was not working I was reading.
It was the pure excitement of attaining knowledge
of any kind that made me read; and of course I
wasted a great deal of valuable time in ways that
were unprofitable. The doctor did not help me
much; he was far too busy to worry much about
my education ; but I know that he approved of my
eagerness, and liked to see me reading. I used to
sleep in the loft above the stable in those days, and
I know that my candles made him rather nervous
of fire. But he did help me, in his own way. He
put me on to a little Latin, with the strictly practi-
cal idea of making it more easy for me to dispense
the prescriptions that he wrote in the old manner
without abbreviations; and he also introduced me
to another book that I don't suppose you've ever
heard of: called Religio Medici by Sir Thomas
Browne."
"I know it," said Edwin.
THE THRESHOLD 201
"Do you? I supposed it was merely a medical
curiosity. Latin, he thought, would be useful to
me in other ways. You see, like many of the old
medical practitioners that spent their lives in the
lanes, he was very interested in botany: not
scientific botany just the identification and
botanical names of the flowers that blossomed year
by year in the hedges. In the early summer he
would drive home with the bottom of the dogcart
tangled with flowers that he had picked while he
walked the pony up some hill ; and he would pitch
them over to me and tell me to learn the names of
them. It wasn't very difficult; for in the surgery-
shelves there was a fine set of Ann Pratt with ex-
cellent illustrations. And sometimes he would
come home with a small insect of some kind in a
pillbox and arrange it under the microscope on the
table under the dispensary window; and he'd say,
'Wonderful . . . wonderful!' not because he'd
made any biological observations, but just because
it revealed a lot of unsuspected detail.
"It was a favourite trick of his to show his pa-
tients a sample of their own blood corpuscles under
the microscope too. 'There they are,' he'd say, 'like
a pile of golden guineas, and if you had a millionth
part as many guineas as you have of these in your
body, you'd be the richest man in England.' This
sort of thing used to impress his patient's tremen-
dously. And he knew it. I suppose it gave them
confidence in him; though he didn't need any
superstitious aids of this kind. The whole history
of his life as a doctor should have been enough to
make them trust him. Still, I suppose it was the
202 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
old tradition of the medicine man who dealt in
curious magic. His common sense and the crafts-
manship that he had won by experience were his
real guarantees.
"He was extraordinarily practical in everything
except money matters. In these, even I could have
taught him a good deal. It was a pathetic sight to
see him making out his bills. He always put off
the evil day, with the result that they were only
sent out about once in three years. I don't sup-
pose doctors can afford to be like that in these
days. . . . But then, what was the use of money
to him? All his tastes were simple and inexpensive.
He was unmarried. During all the years that I
was with him he never took a holiday, unless it
were to go to Taunton and buy a new horse. I
do not think there are many of his kind left.
"You can see, though, what a huge difference he
made to my life. If I hadn't gone to live with him
at Axcombe, I might still have been a miner if
there are any miners left on Mendip or perhaps a
gardener like your Uncle Will. And where would
you have been, Eddie? He was careful, and I
think very wisely careful, not to turn my head.
'Ambition,' he would say to me, 'is all very well
in moderation. But don't be too ambitious, John.
Happiness is more important in this life than suc-
cess, and very few men have a full share of both.
Still, you're a sharp lad, and there's no reason why
you shouldn't get on in the world and be happy too
if you don't expect too much/ As time went on we
began to talk a little about my future. 'Don't be
in too much of a hurry,' he used to say. 'You're
THE THRESHOLD 203
young, and there's plenty of time ahead of you.'
"Of course it would be ridiculous to suppose that
I hadn't ambitions. Naturally enough, I had de-
termined to be a doctor like my master. The small
things that I did for him convinced me that it would
be an easy matter. When he was out in the coun-
try people who had walked in from remote villages
would ask me to prescribe for them, and sometimes,
with an immense sense of importance, I would do
so. It wasn't difficult. He ran his practice, to all
intents and purposes, on three stock mixtures and
half a dozen pills. But I shall never forget one
evening when one of my father's fellow workmen
from Highberrow came in with a raging toothache,
and I, being anxious to show off, volunteered to
take the tooth out for him. I remember I showed
him a microscopic sample of his own blood as a
preliminary. But when I came to take out the
tooth I made a mess of it. He was a tremendous
big fellow with jaws like steel, and though I pulled
hard enough to move him in the chair, I only suc-
ceeded in breaking the tooth and making the pain
worse. I got my head well smacked for my trouble,
and decided that whatever else I were to be, I
wouldn't risk dentistry as a career.
" 'There's no reason,' the doctor would say, 'why
you shouldn't make a good chemist in time.' Of
course that seemed a very small thing to me; and
yet . . . think what I might have been ! I was six-
teen, just your own age, Eddie, when he died. Of
course he killed himself, as many doctors do, with
work. People make a great fuss when a mission-
ary in some outlandish country lays down his life,
204 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
as they call it, for his flock. But country doctors
are doing that every month in the year all over
England I don't mean the social successes in Har-
ley Street and from what I've seen of it their
widows can't count on much gratitude.
"It was a hard winter . . . the year eighteen
sixty-seven . . . and there happened to be a great
deal of illness in the hills. We were worked pretty
hard, both of us, but the doctor had no chance of
taking a rest : he was the only medical man living
within ten miles: and in the end he, too, caught a
heavy cold, and had to go on working through it.
In the end he had to give up. It was pneumonia ;
and the last thing he did was to write a letter ask-
ing a consultant in Bristol to come down and see
him. He was a kindly man, but I suppose Dr.
Marshall was to him only a case. The old fellow
refused to have any one but me to nurse him. 'John
and I understand each other,' he said.
"It was a terrible battle: to see a great strong
man like that fighting for breath. They didn't give
oxygen in those days. It went on for four days
and on the fifth, or rather in the middle of the
night he called to me faintly, and I found him
lying on his back breathing more softly, very pale
and drenched with sweat, 'This is the crisis . . .
fifth day . . .' he said. He told me to cover him
with all the blankets I could find, to give him some
brandy, and to take his temperature. It was a
funny job for a boy. I had never seen a great man
suddenly go weak like that. His temperature had
fallen below normal. 'Ah . . .' he said. 'I thought
so. . . . Brandy. . . .'
THE THRESHOLD 205
"But he couldn't take it himself. Tou've got
to be the doctor now, John/ he said. There wasn't
any more fight left in him. All that day he hardly
spoke at all, but at night he called me to his side
and told me to make a bonfire of all the books
and the bills we'd been making out the week before.
( I shan't want any more money/ he said. 'But you
will ... a little. . . . I've seen to that. You're a
good lad. Don't aim too high. And don't think
too much about money. Money is the root of all
evil. . . .'
"I scarcely took any notice of what he said. I
only knew that I was going to lose the only friend
I had. He died early next morning, and I was just
like a dog: I couldn't bring myself to leave him.
"I stayed in the house . . . you see, it seemed
as if I couldn't go anywhere else, until after the
funeral. Then the lawyers told me that he had left
me a hundred and fifty pounds in his will. It seemed
to me a tremendous lot of money. I didn't realise
what a little way it would go; but it seemed to
make my dreams possible. I would be a doctor,
like him ... as near like him as it was possible
to be. That was my first idea; but then I remem-
bered what he had told me, and decided that it
would be better to become a chemist first. In that
way I could make sure of my living.
"I left Axcombe. It was necessary that I should
go to some big city to study and more or less by
accident I chose North Bromwich. It was a tre-
mendous change for me who had lived all my life
in the country : I was very lonely and awkward at
first. But that wasn't the worse of it. I began to
206 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
discover my own ignorance : to see that, as a matter
of fact, I knew nothing but the homely routine of
the doctor's surgery, the names of a few drugs and
their doses, a smattering of Latin, and the botany
of the local wild flowers. I knew nothing of life.
I couldn't even pull out a tooth without breaking it.
"It came as an awful shock to me. I began to
see the reasons of the doctor's cautious advice. He
realised that I Tiad a great deal of the dreamer in
me. I rather think that you have it too, Eddie.
No doubt it comes to both of us from those strange,
dark, mining-people. I saw that I should have to
pull myself together and drive myself hard if my
ambitions were not- to end in disaster. I had to
pinch and scrape. I had to set out and learn the
most elementary things from the beginning. I had
thought that my fortune was made. Perhaps it
was a wise thing that the doctor had left me no
more money. It taught me that nobody could make
my fortune but myself.
"It was a hard fight, I can tell you: for while
I was building my schemes for the future I had to
provide for the present. You see I had soon
realised that it wouldn't do to spend any of my
little capital. I won't tell you now how I lived.
It would be too long a story. But I can assure you
that I had a hard time in North Bromwich, getting
all my dreams knocked out of me one by one, thirst-
ing literally thirsting for clean air and country
ways.
"It sounds rather like a tract, but it's quite true
to say that town life has a lot of temptations too
for a country boy. I could see everywhere the
THE THRESHOLD 207
power of money and the luxuries that money could
purchase without realising the work that money
represents, and all this was very disconcerting to a
boy of my temperament with more than a hundred
pounds in the bank. Still, as it happened, nothing
went wrong. In the day-time I worked with my
hands. At night I tried to educate myself, very
slowly, very hardly for in those days poor people
had not the opportunities of education that are
open to them in these. I sometimes wonder if peo-
ple to-day realise the difference.
"I worked on quietly for years, never wasting a
penny or an hour. Don't take it for virtue in me.
It wasn't that. It was just that the old doctor's
influence on me had been sound and I couldn't af-
ford to do otherwise. As a matter of fact I suppose
there must have been hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of young men in that city in exactly the same situa-
tion. Only I didn't know one of them. I was lonely
. . . absolutely solitary. I never heard an accent
of my own country's speech. I never saw a patch
of real green or a sky that hadn't smoke in it. I
made my friends in books: not the kind of books
that you've been brought up on I hadn't time for
poetry or frills of that kind: books of solid facts:
knowledge for the sake of knowledge. You see all
the things that you would take for granted, hav-
ing known them as a birthright, so to speak, were
new and unknown to me." One book was a sort of
gospel to me. It was called Self Help, written by
a man named Smiles.
"So when you hear of a self-made man it may
not mean much; but a self-educated man, I can
208 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
tell you, means a good deal. In the end, of course,
I gradually came within sight of my ambition.
From a van-driver to a firm of wholesale chemists
I became an assistant, an apprentice in their retail
house. I took my examinations. I qualified as a
dispensing chemist. Later, by a curious piece of
chance, I met your mother. We became friends.
She was the first person in whom I had confided
since I left Mendip. She seemed to understand.
It was a strange thing for me, after all those years,
to be able to talk about myself. I can't tell you
what a wonderful relief it was. And then we found
that we loved one another and married. We went
out into the country near North Bromwich to find
a village to make a home in, and we came across
Halesby. The place was very different from what
it is now twenty years ago. We were very happy.
No. ... I won't talk about it. But you can see
now, that behind your life there were quite a lot
of complicated things that don't appear on the sur-
face. It's really better that you should know
them."
"It makes me love you, father," said Edwin. "Be-
cause, of course, it is all so wonderful. I expect
if I had been you I should still have been in Ax-
combe. I don't think I could have done what you
did."
"You might have done a great deal more. There's
no knowing what's in us until we are tried. That
sounds like Samuel Smiles ; but it's quite true. At
any rate it's time we were asleep, boy. I think the
rain has stopped."
They said good-night, and Edwin kissed his
THE THRESHOLD 209
father; but for several hours later he heard the
clocks of Bristol chiming. In a little time he knew
by the quiet breathing of his father that he was
asleep, and hearing this sound and thinking of the
grey man who lay beside him, he was overwhelmed
with an emotion in which pity and passionate de-
votion were curiously mingled. He felt strangely
protective, as though it were the man who had
fought such a hard battle who was weak, and he,
who had never endured anything, were the stronger.
He conceived it a kind of sacred duty to see that
for all the rest of his life his father should never
suffer any pain or even discomfort from" which he
could protect him. It was a more vivid version of
the feeling that had bowled him over once before,
when they had knelt together after his mother's
death. It was a wholly illogical sentiment and
yet, when he came to think it over, he came to the
conclusion that something of the same kind must
have underlain his mother's tenderness towards his
father. He was eager to persuade himself that
there was no compassion in it: only love and ad-
miration.
"He is the most wonderful man in the world," he
thought, "and I never knew it." Remorse over-
came him when he remembered that once, at St.
Luke's, he had been ashamed of Mr. Ingleby's call-
ing. There couldn't be another chap in the school
who had a father that was a patch on him. He
remembered a more recent cause for shame: the
shiver of discomfort that the landlady's revelation
of his Uncle Will's occupation had given him. He
had thought that a gardener uncle would be an un-
210 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
comfortable skeleton in the cupboard of a Fellow
of Balliol. Instead of that he now knew that he
should have been proud of it : he should have been
proud of anything in the world that did honour
to his father. Everything that he was, every shred
of culture that he possessed had its origin in the
devotion and the sufferings of this wonderful man,
and, whatever happened, he determined that he
would be worthy of them.
The cathedral clock slowly chimed two. Edwin
turned over and fell asleep in a mood of strange,
exalted happiness.
CHAPTER XII
THE HILLS
UNDER a sky of rain-washed blue they had left
Bristol, and after an hour of hard riding came
to an easy upland plateau where the road lay white
and clear before them, so clean between its wide
margins of rough turf, that it seemed to have some
affinity with the sky. On their way they had met
few people, but the carters with whom they had
exchanged a morning greeting were all smiling and
friendly, very different from the surly colliers that
slouched about the cinder-paths at Halesby.
"Good-maarnin'," they said, and the very dialect
was friendly.
"We're over the worst of the road," said Mr.
Ingleby. "In a minute or two we shall see the
hills."
And, from a final crest, the road suddenly fell
steeply through the scattered buildings of a hamlet.
An inn, with a wide space for carts to turn in, stood
on a sort of platform at the right-hand side of the
highway, and in front of the travellers lay the mass
of Mendip: the black bow of Axdown with its
shaggy flanks, the level cliffs of Callow, and a bold
seaward spur, so lost in watery vapours that it
might well have claimed its ancient continuity
with the islands that swam beyond in the grey sea.
211
212 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
In the light of his new enthusiasm Edwin found it
more impressive than any scene that he remem-
bered: more inspiring, though less vast in its per-
spective, than the dreamy plain of the Severn's
upper waters that he had seen so many times from
Uffdown. For these hills were very mountains, and
mightier in that they rose sheer from a plain that
had been bathed in water within the memory of
man. And, more than all this . . . far more . . .
they were the home of his fathers.
"Now that we are in Somerset we should drink
the wine of the country."
They pushed their bicycles on to the platform
before the inn door, and Mr. Ingleby called for
cider, a pale, dry liquid with a faint acridity very
different from the sugary stuff that comes to the
cities in bottles from Devonshire.
"Yes, it's good cider," said Mr. Ingleby, tasting.
"Where does it come from?" he asked the landlord,
who brought it.
"It do be a tidy drop o' zidur," said the man.
"It do come from Mr. Atwell's varm into Burrow-
down."
"In" with the accusative, thought Edwin.
"Is old Aaron Atwell still living?" asked his
father.
The landlord laughed. The gentleman must have
been away a long time from these parts. Mr. At-
well had been dead these fifteen years.
"The cider's the same," said Mr. Ingleby.
" 'Tis a marvellous archard, sure 'nuff," said the
landlord. "And last year was a wunnerful year
for apples. 'Tis all accardin' . . ."
THE HILLS 213
They left him, and coasted gently down the hill.
Descending, it seemed to Edwin that the dome of
Axdown lost some of its mountainous quality ; and
by the time that they had reached the level of the
plain in which Wringford lay, he was hardly con-
scious of its imminence more than as a reminder
that this soft, green country was not wholly de-
voted to quietude and sleep, but that a cool and
lively air must always be rolling from the hidden
slopes. They came to a green, bordered by elms
in heavy leaf, on which a solitary donkey and a
flock of geese were grazing. Now the road was
dead level and the hedges rich with fragile dog-
rose petals and thickets of hemp-agrimony that
were not yet in flower. Superficially, the road
might have been part of Warwickshire; but there
was nothing of the Midlands in the air that moved
above it.
"Take the next turn to the right," shouted Mr.
Ingleby to Edwin, riding ahead.
In the middle of a village drenched with the
perfume of roses, Edwin turned to the right down
a narrow lane. By this time his father had reached
his level. "Here we are," he said. They dis-
mounted.
It was a small cottage with a green-painted porch
and carefully tended garden in front of it. The
place was built of the stone of the country and
washed with the pinkish lime of the hills. In the
garden roses and bright annuals were blooming,
and a huge acacia, hung with ivory blossom,
shadowed the garden gate. On the gate itself Ed-
win read a crudely painted name: Geranium Cot-
214 JHE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
tage. Mr. Ingleby smiled. "Your Uncle Will is
very fond of geraniums." They opened the gate and
pushed in their bicycles. Everything in the gar-
den was so meticulously orderly that to wheel them
over the mown grass seemed sacrilegious. The
porch, at which they waited, was full of choice
geraniums. Their hot scent filled the air. Mr.
Ingleby knocked gently with a polished brass
knocker. Slow steps were heard within moving
over a flagged floor. The door was opened, dis-
closing a stone passage that smelt of coolness and
cleanliness. It was like the smell of a sweet dairy.
An elderly woman, with a plump and placid face
and grey hair, received them. All her figure except
her black sateen bodice was covered with a coarse
but snowy apron.
"Why, John," she said. -"It do be a treat to see
you."
She took Mr. Ingleby in her arms and kissed him.
"Poor fellow, too," she said. The embrace implied
more than any of the condolences that Edwin had
heard in Halesby.
"And this is Edwin," she said. "Well, what a
great big man, to be sure !" She proceeded to em-
brace Edwin, and he became conscious of the
extraordinary softness and coolness of her face.
"Come in and make yourselves comfortable," said
Aunt Sarah Jane. "We're used to bicycles in this
house. Our Joe has one. He goes to work on it
every day, and sometimes on a Sunday rides over
to Clevedern on it. Come in, John." Edwin fol-
lowed his father into the living-room. It was clean,
strikingly clean, and curiously homely. On the!
THE HILLS 215
walls hung a picture of Queen Victoria, looking like
a pouter pigeon in her jubilee robes, and another
of the sardonic Disraeli. There were several padded
photograph albums with gilt clasps, and other
photographs decorated the mantelpiece and a side
table. These were all accommodated in fretwork
frames.
"Joe do keep us supplied with up-to-date photo-
graph frames," said Aunt Sarah Jane, following
Edwin's glances with a touch of motherly pride.
"He's like his father. Clever with his fingers."
Edwin found that the photographs were familiar.
His father was there: an ardent, younger father,
with black whiskers and a determined mouth. A
father confident in the virtue of self-help. His
mother, too, in a tight-fitting costume of the
eighties, with a row of buttons down the front from
the throat to the hem. And, wonder of wonders,
there was Edwin himself in a sailor suit. The dis-
covery of his own portrait did something to destroy
the illusion of unreality that occupied the place.
Obviously he really belonged to it. For years,
without his knowing it, his image had been part
of this unfamiliar room. Even though he had not
known of their existence he had evidently been a
familiar accepted person to these people. Even
their friends must have known him by sight. It
was strange. It was pathetic. "I can see a touch
of our Joe in him, John," said his aunt, who had
been examining him closely. "An' there do be a
look of your father as well."
"Do you think so?" said Mr. Ingleby.
216 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Joe's a great boy, too," said Aunt Sarah Jane
lovingly.
It was clear enough who was the idol of this
household.
"There now, your dinner will be spoiling. Take
the boy upstairs, John."
She left them, and Edwin followed his father
up a crooked stair to a low room above the garden.
A cool wind was blowing down from Axdown, and
the filagree shadow of the lace window-curtains
danced on the white coverlet of the bed. The room
smelt faintly of lavender. It seemed to Edwin a
wonderful room, "full of sweet" he couldn't re-
member the line "peace and health and quiet
breathing." There was nothing quite so placid as
this in the life that he had known.
They washed their dusty faces and came down-
stairs again, and Edwin, seated by the sunny
window of the front room, relapsed into a state of
perfect drowsiness, content merely to exist and
drink in the sweet and simple atmosphere of
humble content. This, he supposed, was what his
father by his struggles and sacrifices had lost. Was
it worth while? The complications of this question
were far too great for Edwin to decide.
The men folk of Geranium Cottage did not re*
turn to dinner, and after that meal, in which suet
dumplings played an important part, Edwin re-
tired to a trellised structure at the back of the
garden, bowery with honeysuckle, that Aunt Sarah
Jane described as the harbour. Here, drugged with
more cider and fresh air, he dozed away the early
afternoon. He was asleep when his father came to
THE HILLS 217
call him for tea. After all, it was not surprising
that he was sleepy, for they had talked into the
small hours the night before. Certainly Aunt
Sarah Jane's tea was worth waking up for. Quince
marmalade and clotted cream, and wheaten scones
that she had baked that morning. Edwin, ready
now for any further revelations, would not now
have been shocked to hear that in her young days
she had been a cook. In this beatific state of re-
freshment he was anxious to explore.
"When are we going to Highberrow, father?"
"And this was to be a restful holiday," Mr.
Ingleby laughed. "Why, now, if you like."
Edwin would have run to the linhay behind the
house for the bicycles, but his father called him
back. The hill was so steep, he told him, that it
would be easier for them to walk.
"Well, John, Will '11 be tarrable disappointed if
you aren't here when he comes home from work,"
said Aunt Sarah Jane. "This young man of yours
do go too fast for me."
"Oh, we won't be long," said Mr. Ingleby.
And so they set off together for Highberrow,
making, first of all, a straight line for the base of
the hills and then following a green lane that
skirted the foot of them but was so overshadowed
with hazel that the slopes could not be seen. In
a mile or so they cut into the main road again,
by an iron milestone that said "Bridgwater 18:
Bristol 14." The road climbed along a quarried
terrace in the hill-side, and to the left of it lay a
deep valley, on the farther slope of which lay half
a dozen pink-washed cottages with gardens falling
218 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
to the bed of an attenuated stream; and behind
the cottages a steep hill-side rose abruptly to a
bare height crowned with ancient earthworks.
"That," said Mr. Ingleby, "is Silbury camp.
There's an old rhyme about it. It is supposed to
be full of buried gold. When I was a boy I often
used to lie up there in the sun, gazing out over the
channel. In spring all the meadows between the
camp and Highberrow Batch are full of daffodils.
I often used to wish there were daffodils in
Halesby. . . ."
In a little while they came to the church of High-
berrow, placed like a watch-tower on the edge of
the Batch, surveying the immense relics of pagan-
ism on the opposite side of the valley. It was a
humble and not very beautiful building ; but Edwin
entered the churchyard with awe, for it seemed to
him that so much of the past that had made him
lay buried there. And the inscriptions on the
tombstones reinforced this idea; for the church-
yard was veritably crowded with the remains of
dead Inglebys. It made the past, a piece of knowl-
edge so recent to him that it still held an atmos-
phere of unreality and phantasy, so ponderable,
that in comparison with it his present condition
seemed almost unreal. His father led him through
the long grass, starry with yellow ragwort, to the
corner in which his grandmother was buried.
"This is the place that I told you about," he
said.
"The place where my grandfather went out at
night and blasted the rock?"
"Yes."
THE HILLS 219
It was incredible. Until that moment the story
had been only a legend. Edwin wondered how ever
his father could have broken away from the tradi-
tion of centuries and left the hills. The roots of
their family had pierced so deeply into the soil, yes,
even beneath the soil and into the veins of the solid
rock. The conditions of his own life seemed to him
the tokens of an unnatural and artificial thing.
They left the churchyard by a narrow lane that
always climbed. They passed the village inn : a
long, windswept building, so bare and so exposed
to weather that even the tenure of the lichen on
the tiles seemed precarious. Over the lintel a
weathered board showed them the name of Ingleby
in faded letters. Edwin pointed to it.
"Yes," said his father. "I suppose he is some
remote cousin of yours. Everybody that is left in
this village must be related to us in some degree;
though I don't suppose any of them would remem-
ber me. You see, I went to Axcombe when I was
a good deal younger than you." He smiled. "I am
like a ghost returning to its old home. Like a
ghost. . . ."
And yet, to Edwin, the whole place seemed
familiar. He was not in the least surprised when,
opposite a windy farm-house, in front of which the
dry blades of a dishevelled dracaena shivered as
though protesting against its wintry exile, his
father turned off to the left along a road that had
once been gay with cottage gardens and trim build-
ings of stone, but was now suggestive of nothing but
ruin and desolation. By one of these pathetic ruins
his father paused.
220- THE X YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"This was your grandfather's house, Eddie. It
was here that I was born."
Now there remained only the ground-plan of a
house, and the only sign of habitation in all the
ruin was to be seen in the smoke-blackened stones
of the chimney. The garden, indeed, lay beautiful
in decay, for there, as everywhere in this deserted
countryside, the golden ragwort had taken posses-
sion ; but within the walls of the house only nettles
shivered.
"You'll always find nettles in deserted human
habitations. I don't know why," said Mr. Ingleby.
"There is a rather unusual botanical curiosity to
be found among the workings at Cold Harbour,"
he went on, "the Eoman Nettle. Urtica . . .
Urtica. . . . My memory isn't what it used to be.
It has a bigger leaf than the ordinary nettle and a
much more poisonous sting. It's only found in
places where the Eomans have been."
Why, in the face of this harrowing desolation,
should he be thinking of things like that? A
ghost ... with as little passion or feeling as a
ghost: emotions so different from the passionate
resentment that now filled Edwin's heart.
"Ah . . . here is the school. I suppose they
couldn't pull that down. I remember when it was
newly built. It was there that I learnt my alpha-
bet. . . ."
In the whole of the lane the school was the only
whole building.
"If you come to the edge of the Batch you will
see the valley bottom where I spent my childhood
with your great-grandmother."
THE HILLS 221
They passed on, and saw, a hundred feet beneath
them, the valley of the little stream. More ruins,
many of them; but one or two cottages still in-
habited. The lower cottages lay close to the water,
and in four or five places the stream was spanned
by a clapper bridge. In one of the gardens ghostly
children were playing, and in another ghostly
washing flapped in a breeze that had risen with
the coolness of evening. Mr. Ingleby pointed out
to Edwin his great-grandmother's home. It was
the cottage in the garden of which the children were
playing.
From the chimney a trail of smoke dwindled up
against the grey hill-side.
"I should like to see inside it," said Edwin.
"Would you? No ... I don't think it would
be worth going down into the hollow to see it.
You'd only be disappointed. I don't expect there'd
be anything much to see. Besides, we haven't time.
I want to take you to a little farm it isn't really
big enough to be called a farm at the top of the
lane under Axdown. They call it the Holloway.
Why I can't imagine, for it is the highest point of
the whole village. Your aunt tells me that your
grandfather's sister, your own great-aunt Lydia, is
still living there, and I think I had better go and
see her."
He turned again, and Edwin followed him. It
seemed strange to him that his father should not
be anxious to look inside the house where his child-
hood had been spent. A ghost ... a ghost. . . .
They passed the windy farm once more. A man,
in muddy gaiters, was driving cows into the yard.
222 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
He was the first creature apart from the ghostly
children in the valley that they had seen. A tall
man, with a gaunt, grey face, who did not even
turn to look at them or give them good-evening, al-
though they must surely have been the only living
people that he had seen that day. It was impossible
to believe from the sight of its exterior that the
farm was now inhabited.
"Who do you think he is?" Edwin asked.
"I don't know. I haven't the least idea. The
people at that farm used to be named Ingleby ; and
he certainly has the figure of your grand-
father. . . ."
"Won't you stop and speak to him?"
"Why should we?"
"But he would be awfully pleased to see you and
know who you are. . . ."
"I don't expect he would."
A moment later Mr. Ingleby said,
"Now, the ruins of this cottage ought to interest
you, Edwin."
"Why? Is it one of ours?"
"No, but the old woman who lived in it in my
day was always supposed to be a witch. Mendip
people were always great believers in witchcraft.
I shouldn't wonder if your aunt believes in 'ill-
wishing' to this day. I suppose she was really a
harmless old body. The story was that a daughter
of hers, with whom she had quarrelled, married a
small dairy farmer down by Axcombe, and no
sooner had she gone to live with him than the poor
man's cows went dry. His business failed. He
had to sell his stock. He was ruined, and took to
THE HILLS 223
drink ; and in all the public-houses for miles round
he used to rail against his mother-in-law, and say
that she was responsible for the whole business.
She was a lonely old creature, very poor and dirty,
and when we were children and going up to the
Holloway we used to cover our eyes and run for
fear we should catch sight of her. No one even
knew when she died. They found her, I heard,
when she had been dead for a week or ten days."
Edwin shivered. These hill-people, it seemed,
were hard and cruel. No doubt he must have some
of their stony cruelty in his own being somewhere.
At last they reached the farm at the top of the
Holloway. It was a poor building, only a little
more hospitable than the ruins in the valley. Mr.
Ingleby knocked at the door, and a sturdy, middle-
aged man with an iron hook in place of his right
hand lifted the latch and stared at them.
"You don't know me, Isaac?" said Mr. Ingleby.
"Noa. ... I can't say I do know 'ee."
'I'm John Ingleby."
"John Ingleby! . . . Well, and I'm proud to see
'ee, John. Do 'ee step inside and see mother. I
can't shake hands with 'ee the way I was used to.
I lost en in a mowin'-machine five years back.
Come in then."
He led the way into a dark cabin. Everything
in it was dark, partly, perhaps, because the win-
dows were full of flower-pots ; partly because all the
furniture was darkened with age or smoke or
grime. The only bright colours in its brownness
were a number of shining copper utensils and a
224 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
fine show of geraniums in the window. Isaac fol-
lowed Mr. Ingleby's eyes towards these flowers.
"Purty, ban't they?" he said with pride. "Your
brother Will sent mother they."
In the gloom of the fireplace, where a pile of
turves smouldered, mother began to dissociate her-
self from the surrounding brownness. She was a
very old woman. Edwin had never seen any one
so old sitting bolt upright in a straight-backed
oaken chair. Her face seemed to Edwin very
beautiful, for extreme age had taken from it all
the extraneous charm that smoothness and colour
give, leaving only the sheer chiselled beauty of
feature. It was a noble face, finely modelled, with
a straight nose, a tender mouth, and level brows
beneath which burned the darkest and clearest eyes
that Edwin had ever seen. Her hair was white and
scanty, but little of it was seen beneath the white
bonnet that she wore. Edwin felt her eyes go
through him in the gloom.
"Here's cousin John come to see 'ee, mother,"
said Isaac, bending over her.
"John? What John?" said the old lady.
It struck Edwin at once that her speech was
purer and more delicate than that of her son.
"John Ingleby, Aunt Lydia," said Edwin's father.
"You need not raise your voice, my dear," she
said. "My sight and my hearing are wonderful,
thank God."
"Then you remember me, Aunt Lydia?"
"Of course I remember you, John. Though it's
many and many years since my eyes saw you. And
how are you, my dear? They tell me that you have
THE HILLS 225
done great things in the world. You're a doctor,
like poor Dr. Marshall."
"No . . . I'm not a doctor. I'm in business.
I'm a chemist."
"I knew it was something of the kind. You
needn't speak so loud. And they told me you had
married. I suppose this is your boy. A fine boy,
surely. He has a look of your grandfather."
"Yes, this is Edwin."
"I don't remember that name in our family. It
sounds like a fanciful name. Come here, my dear,
and let me look at you."
Edwin went to her, and she kissed him. Her face
was so cold and smooth that she might almost have
been dead.
"And how is your dear wife, John?"
"I've had a terrible blow, Aunt Lydia. I've lost
her."
"Ah . . . that was bad for you, and bad for the
boy, too."
"I shall never get over it." Mr. Ingleby's voice
trembled.
"Yes, of course, you say that. It's natural that
you should. You're young. But when you live
to be as old as I am you'll know better. You will
get over it. When a few years have gone by you'll
marry again."
"Never, Aunt Lydia . . . never. . . ."
"Yes. . . . That's what you feel now. But I
know the family. The Inglebys are always very
tender in marriage. I've seen many of them that
have lost their wives, and they always marry again.
I don't suppose that I shall live to hear of it; but
226 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
when the time comes you'll remember what I said."
"No, Aunt Lydia . . . never."
"Time is a wonderful thing, John. I'm glad to
have seen you and your boy. I hope he'll take
after you you were always the best of them."
She gave a little sigh. Evidently she was tired.
The flame that burned behind her black eyes was
so very feeble for all its brightness. Isaac, who
had been watching her with the devotion of a
practised nurse, saw that she could not stand any
more talking.
"Now, mother, that's enough, my dear," he said.
"Kiss me, John," she said. And Mr. Ingleby
kissed her.
"Well, now that you be here after all these
years," said Isaac cheerily, as he rearranged the
red shawl round his mother's shoulders, "you won't
leave us without taking something. There do be a
lovely bit of bacon I have cut. Do 'ee try a bit
now, and a mug of cider."
Edwin, who was already hungry with his walk,
and was rapidly acquiring a taste for the wine of
the country, now became aware of the fact that the
dark ceiling was decked with sides of bacon and
hams that hung there slowly pickling in the turf
smoke that saturated the atmosphere of the room.
He was disappointed when his father declined to.
take any of this delicacy.
. "Well, a mug of cider, then," Isaac persisted.
He went into an inner chamber down three stone
steps, with three china mugs hanging on his hook.
"You see, I do be pretty handy with en," he
laughed.
THE HILLS 227
They drank their cider solemnly. It was even
drier than that which they had drunk for lunch
at Wringford, and so free from acidity that all that
Edwin could taste was that faint astringent bit-
terness. It had also a bouquet that was less like
the odour of apples than that of a flour-mill. A
wonderful drink. . . . They said good-bye, and
Isaac, who seemed to Edwin the most kindly and
patient creature he had ever met, showed them to
the door.
By this time the sun was setting, and the cool
wind from the west had freshened. Edwin saw,
for the first time, the huge panorama on which
they had turned their backs as they climbed the
hill to the Holloway. Perhaps it was the strange-
ness of all his recent experience; perhaps, partly,
the exhilaration that proceeded from Isaac's cider,
but the sight struck Edwin as one of greater
magnificence than any he had ever seen before.
From their feet the whole country sloped in a series
of hilly waves to the shores of the channel, and
that muddy sea now shone from coast to coast in a
blaze of tawny light: now truly, for the first time,
one of the gateways of the world. And beyond the
channel stood the heaped mountains of Wales, very
wild and black in their vastness. The sight was so
impressive that on their way down the lane they
did not speak.
At last Edwin said,
"I think Aunt Lydia has a very beautiful face.
She looks like some old grand lady."
"She is very like your grandfather," said his
228 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
father. "She must be over ninety. It is a great
age."
And on the way home Edwin began to imagine
what his strange grandfather the dowser must have
been, with the figure of the lonely farmer, his black
beard and hair, and his great-aunt Lydia's noble
features and piercing eyes.
n
They stayed for a week at Geranium Cottage,
sinking without any effort into its placid life.
Edwin was content merely to live there, soaking
up the atmosphere of Wringford village, and only
thinking of Highberrow as a strange and ghostly
adventure, possible, but too disturbing to be in-
dulged in. The tiredness of Mr. Ingleby, who
never showed the least inclination to revisit the
place, made this abstention easier. In the whole
of his week at Wringford Edwin only made one
attempt to see Highberrow again. The impulse
came to him very early one morning, just at the
hour of dawn when the birds had fallen to silence,
and Joe, who happened to be working for his mas-
ter at a village some miles away, was splashing
about under the pump in the yard at the back of
the linhay. Mr. Ingleby was still asleep, and Ed-
win, dressing quietly, stole downstairs and set off
towards the hills, this time on his bicycle.
He followed the high road, and left the machine
in a quarry opposite the point where the first pink-
washed cottages appeared. By this time he was
almost sorry that he had come there: for he was
quite certain that the village he was now going to
THE HILLS 229
visit would be a very different place from the dead
or hallucinated Highberrow that he and his father
had penetrated some days before. He felt this so
strongly that he wouldn't take the risk of spoiling
that marvellous impression, and instead of follow-
ing the road that they had taken before, he changed
his mind, crossed the valley of the pink cottages,
and climbed the shaley slope of Silbury. In the
fosse that surrounded the encampment a hundred
white tails bobbed at once, and, laughing, he
scrambled up the sides of what had once been Sil-
bury Camp, and now was Silbury Warren.
Here, lying full length upon the top of the
vallum, as perhaps a Belgic ancestor, or an ancestor
who held the crest before the Belgae came, had lain
before him, he could look over the combe' towards
the church of Highberrow on the Batch. And the
church tower was all he saw of Highberrow again :
a feature most unrepresentative of the spirit of that
pagan place. Even the church tower at this hour
of the morning could scarcely be seen for mist, and
all the time cold mist was pouring down in a dense,
impalpable stream from the milky coverlet that
spread upon Axdown and Callow and all the hills
beyond. In the plain nothing could be seen at
first ; and from the sleeping villages no mist-muffled
sound was heard ; but by degrees the pattern of the
plain's surface, with its dappled orchards, its green
pasturage and paler turf -moors, cut by the straight
bands of the rhines, the sluggish channels through
which the surface water drained into the sea, be-
came more clear, and with this the sounds of the
country grew more distinct : indefinite noises, such
230 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
as the creaking of cart-wheels in a hidden lane, the
squeak of a pump-handle at Ihe back of the pink
cottages, the clink of a pick in the quarry. The
whole world awoke, and Edwin, too, found that he
was awake and awfully hungry. He scrambled
down the slope. Smoke was now rising from the
chimneys of the cottages in the combe. He was
back at Wringford in time for breakfast.
By this time he had begun to feel quite at home
in Geranium Cottage. He had made the discovery
of his cousin and his Uncle Will. The latter he
found wholly lovable: a creature of slow, quiet
speech, as leisurely and peaceful as his vocation,
and full of small kindnesses that surprised by rea-
son of their unexpectedness.
The thing that most impressed Edwin in his
uncle's nature was the extraordinary tenderness he
showed towards the green things that were his care.
Perhaps the west-country custom of dispensing
with the neuter pronoun and speaking of all in-
animate creatures as if they were persons, made
his solicitude for their welfare more noticeable.
But he was not only kind to them in his speech : his
short and clumsy-looking fingers, that seemed to be
built for nothing but the roughest of labour, became
amazingly sensitive and delicate as soon as he be-
gan to handle the plants in his garden, so that
every touch had in it the nature of a caress.
In this life, of the devoted husbandman, he was
evidently wholly contented; and he made it seem
to Edwin the most natural and human on earth.
The fascination of watching his uncle's hands grew
upon him, and in the end he would watch the man,
JHE HILLS 231
who had been busy at the same work in his master's
garden all day, tending his own favourites at home
until the light began to fail, and Aunt Sarah Jane
would call the two of them in to supper. The spec-
tacle had a sort of hypnotic effect upon the boy, it
was so slow and measured, as slow almost, Edwin
thought, as the processes of germination and growth
which it was his uncle's vocation to assist. His
fingers even handled the purple soil as if he loved
it.
His cousin was a different matter altogether : a
tall, dark-haired boy, a couple of years older than
Edwin. He had, much more distinctly than Uncle
Will, the Ingleby face, the features that were to
be seen at their best in the old lady at the Holloway
farm. And he possessed in a high degree the qual-
ity that had carried Edwin's father out into the
world: a seriousness that made him anxious to
"get on," promptings of which were now being sat-
isfied in an accumulation of the periodical publica-
tions that have taken the place of Mr. Samuel
Smiles in these days : weeklies devoted to all kinds
of useful hobbies electricity, wood-carving, plumb-
ing the series that eventually culminated in the
gigantic illusion of the Self-Educator.
To these short cuts to power the young man
devoted all his evenings, and though he was quite
natural in his anxiousness to be friendly with
Edwin, with whose subtler and more contemplative
nature he had at present so little in -common, the
attempts were not very successful. Between these
two there lay a far more obvious gulf than that
which separated Edwin from the older people. In
232 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
a way, he could not help admiring his cousin's
earnestness, probably because he knew that he
could never imitate it, and yet he sometimes found
himself examining it in a mood of absolute detach-
ment that made his sympathy feel artificial.
Just before he left St. Luke's he had been reading
Darwin's Origin of Species, and in the light of this
work the efforts of his father, followed by those
of his cousin Joe, seemed to him an excellent in-
stance of the tendency of ancient stocks to vary
or sport in definite directions. In the earnest Joe
Edwin found the phenomenon a little troublesome,
for the sight of the immense energies that the youth
was putting into channels that were futile dis-
tressed him, and the more so because to correct the
Waste it would have been necessary to begin again
from a point so distant that Joe would be faced
with the spectacle of more than half of his present
energies wasted. So Edwin thought as little as the
consciousness of his own selfishness would allow
him, of all the labours that were typified by the
fretwork mahogany frames that surrounded the
photographs of the Halesby Inglebys, listening in-
stead to the endless tales of his Aunt Sarah Jane,
in the hour when she became talkative, after supper.
By this time Edwin was so interested in his own
romantic origins that any story of the old High-
berrow would do for him; and his aunt, with her
soft Somerset voice, her picturesque phrasing, and
her unfailing memory for social details, rebuilt,
night after night, the life of the decayed village as
it had been in the old dowser's time, evolving by
degrees a human comedy which resembled that of
THE HILLS 233
its great exemplar by the way in which the protag-
onists of one episode became mere incidentals to
another. Edwin knew them all by name, and recog-
nised them as if he had met them in the flesh when-
ever lie heard of them.
In this way, sitting in the smell of the window
geraniums over a leisurely supper of bread and
cheese, in his uncle's case literally washed down
with cider, he heard a story that he always remem-
bered with pride and pity and a degree of passionate
resentment: the story of how the village of his
fathers had sunk into decay.
Highberrow, it appeared, had been built on what
was then a common moorland, by the men who
lived in it, laboriously, stone by stone. Their right
to these fruits of their labour had never been called
into question, and the whole spirit of the village
had been happy and prosperous, as well it might,
seeing that it owed nothing to the care of any out-
sider and could pay its way. And during those
prosperous times its liberties seemed secure from
danger. But when the decay of the grouvier's in-
dustry led to unemployment and poverty, and the
younger men of the Highberrow families began to
look for their living overseas, the little community
became so weak that the owner of the manor-house
saw his opportunity. As Lord of the Manor he
disputed the "squatters' right" of the Highberrow
villagers, and through his agents demanded a rent
that would have made living, impossible for most
of them, for the cottages that they or their fore-
fathers had built. If they refused to pay the rent,
he said, they would be evicted, not in order that
234 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
other people might be introduced who would pay,
but merely to satisfy the landlord's convictions of
the Tightness of his principle. That was the way
in which he put it. Merely out of spite would be
a more accurate description of his motives.
Highberrow was in a bad way. The villagers
were either very old or very young, and in either
case their feebleness made the whole organism unfit
to resist the inroads of the parasite. What is more,
they were very poor, and the very nature of the
Mendip mining industry had made them so far indi-
vidualist that the idea of combined resistance did
not occur to them. The landlord wisely started his
operations with an old woman whose cottage lay
nearest to the woods in which his pheasants were
bred. Almost incredibly poor, she had lived on the
products of her garden and her poultry. To pay
rent was out of the question. Sheer 'age and inertia
made it impossible for her to move, and in the
course of time she was evicted with her miserable
belongings, and went to die at the home of a mar-
ried daughter.
Emerging from this easy contest, the landlord,
or perhaps his agent, moved on to the next. It
was unfortunate for him, and fortunate for the
villagers, that he now pitched on the cottage of
Thomas Ingleby, the dowser, Edwin's grandfather.
The old man had this in his favour: that he was
a man of two trades, that even when the mining
had failed him he could make a living with the
divining rod, and the consciousness of this power
no doubt stiffened his resistance. Another eviction
was decreed, but this time things did not go so
THE HILLS 235
easily. When the landlord's men arrived from the
manor to empty the house, another party appeared
from the Cold Harbour mines, and as soon as the
furniture was dragged out at the front door it was
seized and taken in again at the back.
"It were a proper field-day," said Uncle Will
quietly, "I do remember it well. I can see your
father now, John, standing over beyond the road
with his back to the wall, not speakin' a word, just
smokin' of his pipe."
The landlord's men saw that this sort of thing
might go on for ever and none the better for it, so
they just gave it up, but old Ingleby (Edwin had
already canonised him as a "village Hampden")
had shown the rest of the Highberrow people what
could be done, and gradually stirred them into com-
bined action.
It was a little, pitiful attempt. He himself put
into it all his savings, a matter of a few pounds,
and to this were added as many shillings as could
be scraped together in the village. He took the
money to a lawyer in Axcombe Bayliss was his
name an honest man with a sense of justice and,
one suspects, some admiration for the sturdiness
of his client. Bayliss worked the matter up and
made a case of it, and no further attempts at evic-
tion were made in Highberrow in the meantime.
The village even regained a little of its former
confidence, and for some time the landlord did not
show his face in it. But once more luck was against
Highberrow. Bayliss, the good lawyer, died. He
had been careful to keep the matter in his own
hands, and when it came to be considered by his
236 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
successor, a partner with social ambitions, the new
man would not touch it: partly because there ap-
peared to be no more money in it (as was probably
the case), and partly because he was in 'the habit
of meeting the Lord of the Manor in the hunting-
field, and was on card-playing terms with the agent.
There followed an exodus of despair. The people
'of Highberrow, who had no more money to fight
with, packed up their pitiable belongings and left
their houses rather than face the trouble of eviction.
Not so Thomas Ingleby. The agent returned to the
attack. There were threats: a stormy interview,
in which the dowser faced the landlord himself. A
final week's notice was given, and Ingleby made
sure once more of the support of his friends from
the neighbouring villages. But no further attempt
at eviction was made. At the last moment the land-
lord climbed down. He arranged another inter-
view, and at this the terms for the whole village
were settled. For the lives of the present occu-
pants, or for a period of sixty years, the cottages
should remain rent-free. It was not everything,
but 'twas a famous victory. "That is why Aunt
Lydia do be still living up to the Holloway to this
day," said Aunt Sarah Jane.
"And I suppose grandfather lived there till he
died," said Edwin.
"No, the poor dear. When he did grow very aged
your uncle and I went up to Highberrow and per-
suaded en that he weren't fit to look after himself.
You should 'a seed the dirt in that house! And
he corned down to live along of we. But he were
never happy, were he, Will?"
THE HILLS 237
"Noa ... he were never happy."
"He were a quare old man. Us seed very little
of en. Arften people would come for en from a
distance that wanted water found, and he did spend
the day roving the country cutting blackthorns for
his dowsing. Right up to the day when he took
to his bed, poor soul."
"I should like to have seen him dowsing," said
Edwin. "I haven't even seen the twigs that they
use."
"Why, that would have been easy enough. Only
the other day I throwed out a lot that belonged to
your grandfather."
Edwin blushed at this sacrilege. "And could
Uncle Will find water with a twig?" he asked.
"Not I," laughed his uncle. "But they do say it
runs in families. Have you ever tried, John?"
"I tried when I was a boy," said Mr. Ingleby,
"but nothing happened."
"I expect our Joe could," said Aunt Sarah Jane,
with infinite faith in her offspring.
"No, mother, I've tried it," said Joe, from the
lamplit corner where he was wrestling with the
science of sanitary inspection.
"I wonder if I could . . ." said Edwin.
"Well, you shall have a try," laughed his uncle.
"At this time o' night?" said Aunt Sarah Jane,
scandalised.
"Let the boy have a try," said Uncle Will, rising.
" 'Tis a beautivul moonlight night, and I'll take
him over the field where the new water-pipe runs."
"You'm mad, the two of you," said his aunt with
a sigh.
238 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Edwin and his uncle went out into the garden,
and there the boy watched the gardener's clumsy,
skilful hands cut a forked twig from a blackthorn
bush.
"Hazel do work as well," he said, "but father
always used the thorn."
Then they went out together over a dewy meadow,
and his uncle showed him how to hold the rod:
with his two hands turned palm upwards, the arms
of the twig between the third and fourth fingers,
the thumb, and the palm of each hand, and the fork
downwards between them. Over the meadow grass
they walked slowly, then suddenly the tip of the
rod began to turn upwards by no agency of which
Edwin was aware. It was very thrilling, for his
hands were quite still.
"There you are," said his uncle, "you've a found
our water-pipe."
"Hold the rod down, uncle," Edwin said.
He did so, and now the mysterious force was so
strong that the arms of the twig snapped.
"Now, you've gone and broke it," said Uncle Will.
"Come in or you'll catch cold."
They went in together.
"Well . . .?" said Mr. Ingleby.
"Oh, he's a proper dowser, sure enough," said
Uncle Will.
Edwin was still curiously thrilled with the whole
business. He felt that a little more excitement in
his attainment was due to him; but no one, not
even his father, seemed in the least impressed. It
comforted him to think that his cousin Joe, his
eyes fixed on his book in the corner, had really less
THE HILLS 239
in common than himself with the strange dark peo-
ple from whom they were both descended. It was
better, he thought, to be a born dowser than a
Fellow of Balliol. More wonderful still to be both.
All the rest of that evening he felt a queer elation
in his mysterious birthright, and when his father
yawned and they both w T ent up to bed he lay awake
for a long time listening to the drowsy music of
the corncrake and the wail of hunting owls, trying
to put himself more closely in touch with the ro-
mantic past that had bred him: with that mag-
nificent figure his grandfather, and the innumerable
strange and passionate ancestry that slept under
the shadow of Highberrow church on the Batch.
"Yea, I have a goodly heritage," he thought. And
so he came to think of his father, through whom
these things came to him : of his hard achieve-
ments, of his loneliness, of his difficulty of express-
ing if it were not a disinclination to express all
the powerful and stormy things that must lie hidden
in his heart. And a feeling of passionate kinship
carried Edwin away: an anxiety to show his love
for his father in unmistakable ways ; to make clear
to him once and for all the depth of his son's de-
votion. He began to think of his father as a mother
might think of her child. It must have been in
that way, he imagined, that his own mother had
thought of her husband. The night was so still
that he imagined he could hear the rusty ivory of
the acacia-blossom falling at the gate.
240 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
in
They were in the train on their way home from
Bristol, passing smoothly under the escarpment of
the lower Cotswolds. The fortnight had passed
with an astounding swiftness. After leaving Wring-
ford they had cycled over the back of Mendip, past
the mines at Cold Harbour, where they had paused
for half an hour to look at the workings, now de-
serted and overgrown with ragwort and scabious,
and the Koman amphitheatre, to the great lime-
stone gorge above Axcombe; and from there they
had ridden to Wells, where, beyond streets that
flowed eternally with limpid water, they had gazed
on the wonder of the cathedral and seen the white
swans floating in the palace moat under a sky that
was full of peace. Only for a moment had they
seen the masts of Bristol and Kedeliffe's dreamy
spire; and now in a few hours they would be back
in Halesby : in another world.
As they travelled northwards Edwin was think-
ing all the time of the work that he would do in
his little room above the bed of stocks. It should
be a fragrant room, he thought, and a good one for
reading, for when his attention wandered he would
be able to lift his eyes to a line of gentler hills
crowned by the dark folds of Shenstone's hanging
woods. And there he would be able to dream of
the coloured past and of his own exciting future,
and the enchanted life that he would soon be lead-
ing among the noblest works of men in letters and
in stone. Oxford, his Mecca . . . the eternal city
of his dreams. He allowed his fancy to travel west-
THE HILLS 241
ward over the rolling Cotswold and droop by the
slow descent of river valleys to that sacred place.
His father's voice dispelled his dream. They were
alone in the carriage and their privacy made speak-
ing easy.
"Edwin . . . I've been thinking a good deal about
your future."
"Yes, father?"
"I've been thinking it over in my own mind. I
talked it over a week or two ago with your Uncle
Albert. He's a sound man of business, you know.
Then I felt that I couldn't trust my judgment: the
whole world was upside down ; but now I feel that
I can think clearly, and of course I am anxious to
do my best for you. I've been thinking about this
Oxford plan. . . ."
"Yes." *
"You know quite well, Edwin, that I'm not a
rich man. I'm a very poor man. You can under-
stand that, better than you could before, after this
holiday. And when people have very limited means
and are getting on in life this business has made
me an old man, you know they have to be very
careful in their decisions. Looking at it from every
point of view, I don't think it would be fair of me
to let you go to Oxford."
"Father . . . what do you mean?"
"To begin with, there's the expense."
"But I shall get a scholarship. I'll work like
anything. I'll make sure of it."
"I'm sure you would. You're a good boy. But
that isn't everything by a long way. When you've
got your scholarship, supposing you do get it, the
242 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
expense would begin. I shouldn't like you to feel
at a hopeless disadvantage with men of your own
year. You would have to live quite a different life
from them. You wouldn't be able to afford any of
their pleasures."
"I shouldn't want their pleasures."
"That is a rash thing to say. But I'm looking
even farther ahead. What can you expect to do
when you've taken a degree in Arts?"
"A fellowship. . . ."
"Ah, but that is a matter of considerable uncer-
tainty. I've seen so many men who have managed
to scrape through a university degree and then been
thrown on the world in a state of miserable poverty.
Look at Mr. Kelly at the grammar-school. You
wouldn't like to live his life; but I believe he has
quite a brilliant university career behind him. No
... I don't think it would be fair to you."
"But mother and I always said . . ."
"Yes, I know . . . you were a pair of dreamers,
both of you. If you felt any very strong desire
to become a parson there might be something in
it, though that, too, is a miserable life often enough.
But you don't, do you?"
"No ... of course not."
"So I think that while I am living you should
have the chance of learning a useful profession.
What about doctoring?"
"But that would be expensive too."
"I know that . . . but I think we could do it.
We should have a little in common. I might even
be able to help you. And in a way ... in a way
I should feel that in you I was realising some of
THE HILLS 243
my own old ambitions. It is a noble profession,
Eddie: the most humane in the world. No one
need ever be ashamed of being a doctor. I think
that a parson who professes religion for the sake
of a living is rather to be despised."
"Father, I'm sure it would cost too much. Six
years, you know. . . ."
"Five . . . only five, if you pass all your examina-
tions. And it need not be so expensive as you
think. During the last year they have turned the
old College in North Bromwich into a University.
They give a degree in medicine. And while you
were studying there you could still live with me at
Halesby. I should be glad of your company."
This appeal to Edwin's pity was difficult to re-
sist. It recalled to him all the resolutions that he
had made in the night at Wringf ord : the devotion
with which he had determined to devote himself to
his father's welfare: the determination that he
should never do anything that could cause the man
a moment's pain. It was difficult . . . difficult.
"You could still get your scholarship," his father
went on. "There are several endowments of that
kind at the North Bromwich medical school. I
have a pamphlet at home that gives all the particu-
lars. I had even shown it to your mother."
"And what did she say, father?"
"She didn't say much. She knew it would be a
great disappointment to you. But I think she real-
ised that it would be a good thing for you; and I
know she looked forward to having you at home."
"Yes . . . she must have known what a disap-
244 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
pointment it would be. Father, I wish you would
think it over again."
"I want you to think it over, too. At present
it naturally comes as a shock to you; but I think
you'll see in time. . . ."
He couldn't see. He knew that he could never
see it in that light. It was going to take all the
beauty that he had conceived out of his life. It
was going to ruin all his happiness. In place of
light and cleanliness and learning it was going to
give him . . . what? The darkness of a smoky
city; its grime; the mean ideals of the people who
lived beneath its ugliness. Even <the memory of
the enthusiasm with which he had thought of the
life of old Dr. Marshall, his father's patron, couldn't
mitigate the dreariness of the prospect. The idea
of living for ever in company with dirt and
misery and harrowing disease repelled him. It
was no good telling him that contact with these
misfortunes developed the nobler faculties of man.
It was not the life that he had wanted. His soul
sent forth a cry of exceeding bitterness. And while
he sat there, full of misery and resentment, the
train was carrying them onward into the gloom
that always overshadowed the City of Iron.
BOOK II
. . . so that with much ado I was
corrupted, and made to learn the
dirty devices of the world.
THOMAS TRAHERNB.
CHAPTER I
THE CITY OP IRON
HE city of iron stands upon three hills and its
A valleys were once watered by two rivers; but
since the day when its name was humbly written
in Doomsday these pastoral features have disap-
peared, so that the hills are only known as tramway
gradients that testify to the excellence of the Cor-
poration's power station, and the rivers, running
in brick culverts, have been deprived not only of
their liberty but even of their natural function of
receiving a portion of the city's gigantic sewage.
The original market of North Bromwich has been
not so much debauched from without, in the manner
of other growing towns, as organised from within
by the development of its own inherent powers for
evil. It is not a place from which men have wil-
fully cast out beauty so much as one from which
beauty has vanished in spite of man's pitiful aspira-
tions to preserve it. Indeed, its citizens are objects
rather for pity than for reproach, and would be
astonished to receive either, for many of them are
wealthy, and from their childhood, knowing no
better, have believed that wealth is a justification
and an apology for every mortal evil from ugliness
to original sin.
249
250 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
In the heart of the city the sense of power, im-
pressive if malignant, is so overwhelming that one
cannot see the monstrosity as a whole and can al-
most understand the blindness of its inhabitants.
Go, rather, to the hills beyond Halesby, to Uffdown
and Pen Beacon, where, with a choice of prospects,
one may turn from the dreamy plain of Severn and
the cloudy splendours of Silurian hills, to its pillars
of cloud by day and its pillars of fire by night ; and
perhaps in that remoter air you may realise the
city's true significance as a phenomenon of un-
conquered if not inevitable disease. If you are a
physician, you will realise that this evil has its
counterpart in human tissues, where a single cell,
that differs not at all from other cells and is a
natural unitln the organism, may suddenly and, as
it seems, unreasonably acquire a faculty of mon-
strous and malignant growth, cleaving and multi-
plying to the destruction of its fellows a cell gone
mad, to which the ancients gave the name of cancer.
The inhabitants of North Bromwich, who are a
tolerant people, and proud of the fact, w r ould smile
at this reflection. They are not in the habit of
surveying the midden in which they are bred from
remote hilltops, except on Bank Holidays, at which
time they have discovered a truth from which they
might learn more : that with the aid of hill air and
exercise, whether it be that of cocoanut shies or
swing-boats, or the more hazardous pursuit of don-
key-riding, it is possible to absorb a greater quan-
tity of alcohol in a given time without unduly
suffering than in the atmosphere of their own
streets. But they have not time to learn, and since
THE CITY OF IRON 251
they have never known any other conditions of
living, they exhibit the admirable human character-
istic of making the best of their surroundings and
persuading themselves that their hallucinated ex-
istence is typical of human life. They are even
eager, pathetically eager, to find and to proclaim
its virtues, and that they may do this more easily
they 'have invented specious names for the disease
and its results: Industry for the first, and, for
the second, Progress.
In the vindication of a Municipal Conscience
(making the best of a bad job) they periodically
extend the area over which their coat of arms, a
reminder of days when chivalry existed, is dis-
played. The coat of arms itself is an unfortunate
symbol, for it is supported by the figure of a brawny
slave who carries the hammer with which his chains
have been forged ; but the motto at least is encourag-
ing. It is the word "Forward," expressing the
aspirations of the citizens towards the day when
all England may be as the Black Country. The
watcher on Uffdown may give it a more far-sighted
significance : "forward, to the day when there shall
be no more coal, and the evil, of its own inanition,
perish."
For the present, at any rate, the city showed no
signs of perishing. During the last year or two,
its tentacles had spread farther than ever before,
swarming into the wet and lonely valley of the
Dulas Fechan, a deep cleft in the mountains beyond
Felindre where a noisy river ran through under-
growth older than man's memory. From this val-
ley, the council had decreed, the rain of the Savad-
52 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
dan watershed, which geology had destined for the
Wye and later for the Atlantic, must now traverse
eighty miles or more of conquered territory, and
after being defouled by the domestic usages of
North Bromwich, must find its way into the Trent,
and so to the German Ocean, as the Komans
thoughtlessly labelled the North Sea. "Water,"
said the Mayor, who was also known as Sir Joseph
Astill, the brewer, "water is one of the necessities
of life. It is our duty to the public to see that
they have it, and that they have it pure and un-
adulterated."
So the Welsh water came, and the altruistic
baronet took the credit for it. Indeed the pro-
gressive spirit of North Bromwich found its incar-
nation in this fleshy gentleman. It was he who
presented the municipal art gallery with their un-
rivalled collection of Madox-Jones cartoons, to say
nothing of three portraits of himself exemplifying
(he had an elegant vocabulary) the styles of the
three greatest portrait painters of modern times.
It was he who saved the art of music from degrada-
tion by fighting, with all the weight of his personal
influence, against the performance of secular music,
music, that is, divorced from "sacred" words, upon
the Sabbath. It was he, again, who aroused public
feeling on the question of the university : "the first
Modern university," he called it.
He accomplished its endowment, equipped it with
a principal whose name was a household word in
the homes of the great middle classes; and finally
Bet the seal of modernity on his creation, less than
twenty years before the total prohibition of alcohol
THE CITY OF IRON 253
became law in retrograde America, by instituting
a learned faculty and providing a degree in the
science of ... brewing. Just as an example of the
city's liberality, there was also a faculty of Arts.
The faculty of Science, of course, was important,
if only as an appendage to the brewing school;
those of Engineering and Mining flattered the in-
dustries of the district; that of Commerce taught
its graduates to write business letters in every
spoken tongue and give the Yankees what for ; and
lastly, that of Medicine, supplied a necessary anti-
dote to the activities of most of the others.
Sir Joseph Astill was proud, as well he might be,
of the Medical School. "In this city," he boasted,
"there are actually more hospital beds per centum
of inhabitants than in any other in the whole coun-
try. The North Bromwich medical student has a
greater opportunity of studying disease, in all ita
aspects, than the alumnus of any other school in
the world. Thousands of beds lie waiting for hia
scrutiny; and I am glad to say that very few of
them are ever empty."
Edwin's first serious acquaintance with North
Bromwich had begun at the end of the summer
holidays, through which he had worked with a good
deal less than the fiery enthusiam that he would
have put into his reading for the Balliol scholar-
ship. The syllabus of the examination for the
Astill Exhibition had amazed him by its simplicity :
the prescribed books were works that he had ab-
sorbed some years before at St. Luke's, and though
the mathematical side of the business worried him,
as it had always done, it was clear that in North
254 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Bromwich the classics were regarded really as a
polite accomplishment rather than as an integral
part of a gentleman's equipment in life: so that
these drowsy summer months were really a period
of comparative idleness in which he had time to
brood on his regrets and become gradually recon-
ciled to his new fate. In this spirit he approached
the examination. Even the capitoline eminence/m
which the university buildings were placed, with
the tremendous renaissance buildings of the Coun-
cil House and the Corinthian Town Hall, did not
greatly impress him. He saw rather the squalid
slums from which these pretentious buildings rose.
It was so different, he thought, from Oxford, and
he passed the flagged courtyard with its cool foun-
tain and the benevolent statue of Sir Joseph Astill
in a frock coat and carrying a rolled umbrella on
which the sculptor had lavished all the feeling of
his art, without the least shadow of spiritual obei-
sance.
With two other long-legged candidates he had
worked through his papers in a small room whose
windows overlooked the quiet square and a phan-
tom stream of noiseless traffic beyond. The first
paper had been mathematical, and its intricacies
kept his mind so busy that he had little time for re-
flection. From time to time he would see one of
the long-legged competitors reducing the end of his
penholder to wood-pulp in the earnestness of rumi-
nant thought; and occasionally the deep boom of
the clock in the tower of the Art Gallery would
remind him that time was veritably passing; but
time passed swiftly, and he was almost surprised
THE CITY OF IRON 255
to find himself once more in an air that for all
its vitiation was less sleepy than that of the sealed
examination room. By the end of the first evening
all that he feared in the examination papers was
over. To-morrow he would be on his own ground
and the modern university could do its damnedest.
Next day the classical papers were distributed
and Edwin, who found them easy, could see that
his pen-chewing friend was in a bad way. All the
passages set for translation were familiar: the
grammatical questions consisted of old catches that
had been drilled into him by Mr. Leeming in the
Upper Fourth. As far as he was concerned, it was
a walk over. He had time to take in more of his
surroundings and to watch the silent coloured
stream of traffic filtering through the narrows
where the bulk of the Town Hall constricted the
street. At the end of each day he found his father
anxiously awaiting him. He was eager to see and
handle the examination papers for himself. He
seemed impressed by their difficulty, and Edwin
found it hard to reassure him without appearing
objectionably superior. He seemed rather surprised
that Edwin, on the eve of such a formidable ordeal,
should choose to take out his bicycle and ride to-
wards the hills, so surprised that it became a matter
for serious debate with Edwin whether he should do
as he wanted to do and appear priggish, or affect
an anxiety that didn't exist merely to please his
father. In the end he decided to be honest at all
costs.
The part of the examination that he enjoyed
most was the viva-voce in Classics. For this trial
256 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
he was led up many flights of stone steps to a room
full of books in which the Dean of the Faculty of
Arts awaited him : a kindly, nervous old man with
a grey beard, with whom Edwin immediately felt
at home. His nervousness seemed to Edwin ap-
propriate: it implied the indubitable fact that in
North Bromwich Arts was a sideshow that counted
for nothing, and that the professor's dignity, as
Dean of a learned Faculty, was a precarious and
^insubstantial thing. "Your papers were excellent,
: . . excellent," he said to begin with. "Now, I
should like you to read me something." He pointed
to a bookshelf. "Let us start with some Greek."
"What would you like, sir?"
"Oh, it's not what I should like. What would
you like to read? Something that really appeals
to you."
Edwin felt that the dean was watching him, like
ia cat stalking a bird, as his fingers approached the
bookshelf. It was a curious responsibility, for it
would be an awful shame, if he chose something
that the old man didn't approve of. Sophocles. . . .
!Why not Sophocles?
He picked out the Antigone, and chose the great
chorus :
*Epws bvlKare ju&xcw, 1
"Epcos, 6s cv KTiyjuatri TrtTrets, . . .
"Let's have it in Greek first."
Edwin read it in the level voice which the Head
of St. Luke's had always used for the recitation of
Greek poetry. When he had finished the first
strophe he looked up and saw that the Dean's weak
THE CITY OF IRON 257
eyes, beneath their tortoiseshell spectacles, were
brimming with tears.
"That will do," he said, "unless you'd prefer to
go on . . ."
Edwin read the antistrophe.
"Yes ... I don't think you need translate it,"
said the Dean. He paused for a moment, then,
replacing the volume, went on. "In this university
I am known as the Professor of Dead Languages.
Dead languages. What?"
They passed a pleasant half-hour together. In
Latin Edwin chose Lucretius and a passage from
the Georgics, at the end of which the Dean confided
to him that he kept bees. "Thank you, that will
do," he said. "I gather that you are entering the
Medical School. . . . Well, it is a noble profession.
I don't know what we should do without doctors,
I'm sure."
Four days later Mr. Ingleby received him at the
breakfast table with unconcealed emotion. "You've
got your scholarship, Edwin. I'm . . . I'm as
pleased as if I'd won it myself. I never had the
opportunity of winning a scholarship in my life."
The hand in which he held the letter trembled.
He kissed Edwin fervently. "This is a great day
for me," he said: and Edwin, glowing, felt that
anything was worth while that could give such
pleasure to the man that he had determined to love.
On a bright morning at the beginning of Septem-
ber Edwin found himself one of a crowd of ten or
fifteen youths, waiting with a varying degree of
258 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
assurance, outside the office of the Dean of the Med-
ical" Faculty in James Street, a sordid thorough-
fare in which the pretentious buildings of the old
College of Science hid its hinder quarters. The door
was small, and only distinguished from its neigh-
bours, a steam laundry and brassworker's office,
by a plate that bore the inscription, "University of
North Broinwich. Medical School." Inside the
door stood a wooden box for a porter, usually empty,
but in its moments of occupation surveying a long,
dark cloakroom with a hundred or more numbered
lockers and corresponding clothes-hooks, on a few
of which undergraduates' gowns and battered mor-
tar-boards were hanging. This morning the Dean
was holding audience of all the first year men, and
each of the crowd in which Edwin now found him-
self a negligible unit, was waiting until his name
should be called from the office, and, in the mean-
time, surveying his companions with suspicion and
being surveyed with a more confident and collec-
tive suspicion by seniors who happened to drift
through the corridors on business or idleness, and
showed evidence of their initiation by familiarity
with the porter.
Only one face in the company was in the least
familiar to Edwin : that of a ponderous young man
with immaculate black hair carefully parted in the
middle, who had sat stolidly through the Astill Ex-
hibition examination a few desks away from him.
As he did not appear to be anxious to recognise
this fact, Edwin abandoned his own intention of
doing so, and, like the rest of the company, pos-
sessed his soul in silence. In the meantime he
JHE CITY OF IRON 259
watched the others with a good deal of interest and
speculation.
1 They were a strangely mixed company: a few
of them, of whom Edwin himself was one, mere
boys, to whom the air of the schoolroom still clung :
some obvious men of the world, scrupulously, even
doggily dressed, in an age when the fancy waist-
coat had reached the zenith of its daring; others,
and one other in particular, a seedy looking person
with a dejected fair moustache, were clearly old
enough to be the fathers of the youngest. It was
to the second of these classes, the bloods, that
Edwin found his attention attracted, and particu-
larly to a paragon of elegance, whose waistcoat was
the orange colour of a blackbird's bill with light
blue enamelled buttons, whose hair was mathemati-
cally bisected and shone with expensive unguents,
and whose chin differed from that of Edwin in being
shaved from sheer necessity instead of from motives
of encouragement.
This person exuded an atmosphere of prosperity
and style that took Edwin's fancy immensely, and
he wore grey flannel trousers as correctly turned
up as any that Edwin had seen upon the enchanted
platform of the station at Oxford. It was evident
that the process of waiting bored him ; for he took
out of the pocket of the amazing waistcoat a gold
hunter watch with a front enamelled in the same
shade of light blue. The lid flicked upon noiselessly
when he touched a spring, and Edwin began to be
exercised in his mind as to what happened when
he put on a waistcoat of a different pattern, as ob-
viously a person of this degree of magnificence must
2<5o THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
frequently do. Did he change the buttons, or did
lie change the watch? Edwin, surveying him,
looked unconsciously at his own Waterbury; and,
as he did so, the magnificent creature glanced at
him with a pair of savage brown eyes, and, as Edwin
decided, summed him up for good and all.
"Mr. Harrop, please," said the porter. And Mr.
Harrop pocketed his hunter and disdainfully en-
tered the office.
Edwin, relieved from his scrutiny, turned his at-
tention to the most impressive figure of all : a young
man fully six feet four in height, but so broadly
and heavily built that his tallness was scarcely
noticeable. His face was good-humoured, and very
plain, with the look of battered obstinacy that may
sometimes be seen in that of a boxer. Perhaps thia
idea was reinforced by the fact that his short nose
was broken, and that he carried his whole face a
little forward, staring out at the world from under
bushy black eyebrows. He seemed made for rough
usage, and his undoubted strength was qualified by
a degree of awkwardness that showed itself in his
clumsy hands. These, at the present time, were
clasped behind his back, beneath the folds of a
brand-new undergraduate's gown that, because of
his great height, looked ridiculously small. His
whole aspect was one of terrific earnestness. Evi-
dently he was taking this business, as he would
surely have taken any other, seriously. That, no
doubt, was the reason why on this occasion he alone
appeared in academical dress. His clasped hands,
his lowered head, his bulldog neck all spoke of a
THE CITY OF IRON 261
determination to go through with this adventure at
all costs.
"Mr. Brown," said the porter, and nearly blun-
dering into the returning elegance of Mr. Harrop,
he slouched into the Dean's office as though he
were entering the ring for the heavy-weight cham-
pionship of the world.
In the end Edwin found himself left alone with a
youth of his own age, a tall, loose-limbed creature,
with an indefinite humorous face, a close crop of
curly fair hair and blue eyes. Edwin rather liked
the look of him. He was young, and seemed ap-
proachable, and though his striped flannel suit was
more elegant than Edwin's and he wore a school
tie of knitted silk, Edwin took the risk of address-
ing him.
"We seem to be the last."
"Yes. I expect the Dean will keep me last of
all, bad cess to him! That's because I happen to
be a sort of cousin of the old devil's." He spoke
with a soft brogue that had come from the south
of Ireland.
"Mr. Ingleby, please/'
Edwin pulled himself together and entered the
Dean's office.
A pleasant room : at one big desk a suave, clean-
shaven gentleman with thin sandy hair and gold-
rimmed spectacles. At another a little dark man
with a bald head and a typewriter in front of him.
"Mr. Ingleby?" said the first. His voice was re-
fined, if a little too precise.
"Yes, sir."
"Well, Mr. Ingleby, what are you going to do?
62 JHE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Ah, yes . . . you are the Astill scholar. Very good.
Very good. Are you proposing to take a London
degree?"
"No, sir. North Bromwich."
"Well ... it is possible you may change your
mind later. Have you taken the London Matricu-
lation ?"
"No, sir. I was on the classical side at St. Luke's.
I was reading for a scholarship at Oxford."
"And changed your mind . . . or" (shrewdly)
"had it changed for you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is your father a doctor?"
"No." It really doesn't matter what my father
is, thought Edwin, and the Dean, as though answer-
ing his reflection, said :
"No. . . . That doesn't matter." And, after a
pause: "Well, Mr. ... er ... Ingleby, you have
made a good beginning. I hope it will continue
satisfactorily. That is all, thank you. Good-morn-
ing." He held out his hand to Edwin, who was
astonished into putting out a moist hand himself.
"Yes," continued the Dean in a suave, reflective
voice, "you will pay your fees to my secretary, Mr.
Hadley. This is ... er ... Mr. Hadley. Yes."
Mr. Hadley acknowledged the introduction with
a lift of the right eyebrow and Edwin left the room.
"Mr. Martin," said the secretary, as he left, and
"Mr. Martin, please," the porter repeated.
"I say, wait a moment for me," said the loose-
limbed Irishman to Edwin in passing.
It was so friendly as to be cheering.
THE CITY OF IRON 263
"He seems a decent old bird," said Martin, emerg*
ing a few minutes later.
"I thought you said he was your cousin?"
"So he is. You see I'm Irish, and so is he; and
in Ireland pretty nearly everybody who is anybody
is related to everybody else." He plunged into a
lengthy demonstration of the relationships of the
Southern aristocracy, with warnings as to the gulfs
that separated the Martins from the Martyns, and
the Plunketts from the Plunkets, rambling away
through a world of high-breeding and penury in
which all the inhabitants called each other by their
Christian names, and spent their lives in hunting,
point-to-point racing, and elaborate practical jokes.
A. new world to Edwin.
They strolled down Sackville How together, and
cutting through the Arcades came out into the wide
thoroughfare of Queen Street that had been driven
through an area of slums in honour of Victoria's
first jubilee.
"By the way, what's your school?" said Denis
Martin.
"St, Luke's."
"Never heard of it."
"I don't suppose you would, in Ireland."
"Oh, I didn't go to school in Ireland. Nobody
does. I was at Maryborough. Is St. Luke's one of
those soccer schools?"
"Good Lord, no. ... We play rugger. We're
pretty good."
"Who do you play?"
"Merchant Taylors and St. Paul's, and one or
two others."
264 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"H'm. . . . They're day schools, aren't they? Is
St. Luke's that sort?"
Edwin, with enthusiasm, expounded the St.
Luke's legend, that nobody outside of St. Luke's has
ever been known to believe. Martin, meanwhile,
looked a little supercilious and bored. He spoke
as from a distant world in a tone that implied that
the people of North Bromwich could never call each
other by their Christian names or hunt or race or
play practical jokes with an air of being born to it.
"I expect we're a pretty mixed lot here," he said.
And Edwin, with the guilty consciousness of be-
ing more than a little mixed himself, replied : "Yes."
"An extraordinary collection. That great dark
fellow looks an absolute tyke. Then there's the
chap with the waistcoat "
"Yes. . . . Harrop was the name."
"I don't know the name," said Martin dubiously.
"Never heard of the family. He was wearing an
Oriel tie."
"Oriel. . . . Do you mean Oxford?"
"Yes, one of my cousins was there. That's how
I know it. I should think they turfed him out on
account of that waistcoat. Still, Oxford isn't what
it used to be." "In the eyes of a Southern Union-
ist," he might have added. But the news was grate-
ful to Edwin. "I shouldn't wonder," Martin went
on, "if lots of decent people didn't end by coming
to schools like this. I expect it is the Dean's idea,
you know. I say, what about lunch? Do you know
of any decent place?"
In ancient days, when he had come into North
Bromwich shopping with his mother, Edwin had
THE CITY OF IRON 265
always been taken to Battle's, the great confec-
tioner's in Queen Street, but now, passing the doors
in this exalted company, he felt that the company
of a crowd of shabby shopping women would hardly
be suitable: besides, he might even run the risk
of meeting his Aunt Laura, who also frequented
the shop, so he left Battie's prudently alone.
"I know one place," said Martin. "I should think
it's all right. The food's decent anyway."
He led the way up a side street to an elegant
resort frequented by the professional classes of
North Bromwich, where these was a long counter
set out with sandwiches like a buffet at a dance,
and all the customers seemed at home. In the
ordinary way Edwin would not have dared to enter
it, but Martin, with the elegant confidence of South-
ern Unionism, showed him the way, and seated at
a marble-topped table they trifled with Plover on
toast. Martin, of course, did the choosing, and in
his dealings with the tiny carcass showed a famili-
arity with the correct method of consuming small
birds that Edwin was pleased to learn. "Ever shoot
plover?" he said. No . . . Edwin had never shot
anything : he didn't particularly want to shoot any-
thing; but he realised that it was a great accom-
plishment to be able to talk about it as though he
had never done anything else.
"I'll pay," said Martin. "We can square up after-
wards."
They did so and, thawed by the process of feed-
ing, began to talk more easily. "Are you digging
in this place?" Martin asked. Edwin told him that
he lived in the country.
266 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"In the country? I didn't know there was any
here. Have you any decent shooting?"
"Unfortunately, no." He remembered, however,
the solitary trout under the bridge below the abbey.
"There's fishing of sorts," he said.
"What sorts?"
"Oh, trout "
"Brown trout? There's not much fun in that.
White trout . . . sea trout you call them in Eng-
land . . . are good sport. Still, we'll have a day
together next spring. I'll get my rods over."
The subject was dangerous, and so Edwin asked
him where he was living: "With your cousin, I
suppose."
"Oh, no. ... I don't know the old divil, you
know. I've rooms with an old lady up in Alvaston.
She's rather a decent sort. House full of animals."
He didn't specify what the animals were. "I'd bet-
ter go and unpack some of my things. I suppose I
shall see you at the Chemistry Lecture to-morrow.
So long. . . . Oh, I forgot. . . . What's your
name?"
"Ingleby."
"Ingleby. . . . Eight-o." He boarded a passing
bus with the air of stepping on to a coach and four.
Edwin took the next train home. On the oppo-
site platform of the station he caught a glimpse of
the great bulk of the man named Brown walking
up and down with earnestness in his eyes and under
his arm a huge parcel of books. He gave Edwin
the impression of wanting to throw himself into the
adventure of the medical curriculum as he might
have thrown himself into a Rugby scrum, expecting
THE CITY OF IRON 267
a repetition of the tremendous battering that he
seemed already to have undergone.
Thinking of him, and of the aristocratic Martin,
and of Harrop, a product which Oriel had finished
to the last waistcoat button, and, more dimly, of the
elderly gentleman with the dejected moustaches, it
seemed to Edwin that he himself was appallingly
young and callow and inexperienced. 'How was he
going to stand up to these people with their knowl-
edge of the world and its ways: men who had al-
ready, by virtue of their birth or experience, learned
how to dress and live and move without effort in
the crowded world? Yet with them, he knew, he
must now take his place. It would be difficult . . .
awfully difficult. He had everything, even the most
elementary rules of conduct, to learn. He was a
child who had never known another human being
except his mother and a few school friends of his
own age. He had not even the savoir-vivre of
Griffin. And, in this new life, it seemed to him that
the dreams on which he had depended must be
useless or even more, a positive handicap to his
success.
The moments of sudden spiritual enlightenment
that one reads of in the lives of saints, or of con-
verts to Salvationism, are not a common experience
in those of ordinary men ; and though, in the turn
of every tide, there is a critical period, measurable
by the fraction of a second, in which the waters
that have swayed forwards retire upon themselves,
to the eyes of an observer the change of motion is
so gradual as to be only slowly perceived. In Ed-
win's life the death of his mother had been the
268 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
real point of crisis; but this he had only dimly
realised when his hopes of Oxford had been dashed
for ever in a third-class compartment hurtling un-
der Bredon Hill. Between it and the present mo-
ment there had hung a period of dead water (so
to speak) in which the current of his life had
seemed suspended ; but now he knew that there was
no doubt biht that a change had overtaken him, and
that he would never again be the same.
All his life, up to this point, had been curiously
inorganic: a haphazard succession of novel and
bewildering sensations: a kaleidoscope of sensual
impressions changing almost too rapidly to be ap-
preciated so rapidly that it had been impossible
for him to think of one in relation to another. Some
of them had been painful ; some enthralling in their
beauty ; some merely engrossing because they were
full of awe: yet all had been ecstatic, and tinged
in some degree with a visionary light. Now, as
always, it was clear that he must be a dreamer;
but, from this day onwards, it also became clear
that his visions must be something more to him
than a series of coloured impressions, succeeding
one another without reason and accepted without
explanation. In the future they must be corre-
lated with experience and the demands of life. In
that lost age of innocence the people with whom he
came into contact had interested him only as figures
passing through the scenes that were spread for
his delectation. They had been external to him.
He had lived within himself and his loneliness had
been so self-sufficient that it would have made no
great difference to him if they had not been there.
THE CITY OF IRON 269
Now he was to take his part in the drama at which,
in times before, he had merely sat as a bemused
spectator. It was a stirring and a terrifying pros-
pect.
The train from North Bromwich stopped at every
station, and the whole of the journey lay through
the black desert that fringes the iron city, a vast
basin of imprisoned smoke, bounded by hills that
had once been crowned with woods, but were now
dominated by the high smoke-stacks of collieries,
many of them ruined and deserted. ^At a dirty
junction, so undermined with workings that the
bridge and the brick offices were distorted in a
manner which suggested that the whole affair might
some day go down quick into the pit, he changed
into the local train. The railway company evi-
dently did not consider the passenger traffic of
Halesby worth consideration, for the carriages
were old and grimy. Edwin chose a smoker because
the cushions were covered with American leather
and therefore more obviously clean. He found him-
self, in the middle of his reflections, sitting opposite
a coloured photograph of the great gorge at Ax-
combe, a town that was served by the same line.
The picture carried him suddenly to another aspect
of his too complicated life. Keally, the whole busi-
ness was hopelessly involved. He thought, grimly,
how he could have taken the wind out of Martin's
genealogical sails by blurting out the astounding in-
telligence that his uncle was a gardener. And what
would the gentleman with the waistcoat have said?
He laughed at the idea.
Through a short but sulphurous tunnel the train
270 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
emerged into the valley of the Stour: the vista
of the hills unfolded, and later the spire of Halesby
church appeared at the valley's head. Well, a be-
ginning of the new life had to be made some day,
and now as well as ever.
Walking home along the cinder pathway beside
the silting fish-ponds it seemed to him that in the
light of his new experience, Halesby was a primi-
tive and almost pitiable place, and the same mood
held him when he made his way home by the short
cut through Mrs. Barrow's cloistered garden and
entered his father's house. Under the south wall
the bed of double stocks was still in flower, though
faded and bedraggled. Their scent reminded him
of what a world of experience he had traversed in
less than three months. He went straight up to
his own bedroom. On the bed lay two parcels ad-
dressed to him. The larger contained his under-
graduate's cap and gown. He put them on in front
of the glass and rather fancied himself. The act
struck him as in a way symbolical : it was the
token of an initiation. From that day forward he
was a medical student. For five or six years, prob-
ably for the rest of his life, he would spend his time
in the presence of the most bitter human experi-
ence; but there was something elevating in the
thought that he need not be a helpless spectator:
he would be able to effect positive good in a way
that no scholar and no preacher of religion or ab-
Btract morality could possibly attain. "This is my
life," he thought. Well, it was good to know any-
thing as definite as that.
The second parcel contained a number of tech-
THE CITY OF IRON 271
nical books dealing with the subjects of his first
year's curriculum: Chemistry, Physics, Biology,
Physiology, and Anatomy. The last appeared to
be the most exciting. "Fearfully and wonderfully
made . . ." he thought. He set to work at once
preparing the little room for work, making it as
comfortable as he could with a writing table in the
window that looked out over Shenstone's woods
and dethroning the superannuated Henty and Fenn
from the bookshelf. He could not find it in his
heart to treat his poets so cavalierly, and so there
they stayed. Greek and Latin and English. "I
shall never drop my classics," he thought. A reso-
lution that has been forgotten nearly as often as it
has been made. In the Blenheim orange-tree at
the bottom of the garden a thrush was singing.
Bullfinches were fighting shrilly in the raspberry
canes. He threw open the window, and there
ascended to him the heavy, faded perfume of the
bed of stocks. On the mantelpiece stood a photo-
graph of his mother. Looking at it, it seemed to
him that she smiled.
CHAPTER II
MORTALITY BEHOLD .
HE was happy : even Halesby became a grateful
place of retirement after his long days in
North Bromwich. The mornings of early autumn
were very beautiful, and it was with a good deal
of zest that he would scramble through his break-
fast and leave the house early to catch the eight
o'clock train. He usually made use of the short cut
through Mrs. Barrow's garden and the cinder path
beside the fish-ponds, and in this brisk walk, with
the blood of youth running happily in his veins,
he would catch a little of the exhilarating atmos-
phere of early morning in the country. When the
frosts began, as they do early on that high plateau,
the morning air seemed stronger and more bracing
than ever.
Circumstance, in a little more than three
months, had exalted him to the state of those metro-
politan season-ticket holders whose majesty he had
disturbed on the day when he left St. Luke's for
good. He was now in a position to appreciate their
exclusiveness, and to look upon all chance people
who intruded on the privacies of the eight o'clock
train with the same mingled curiosity and con-
272
MORTALITY BEHOLD ... 273
tempt. In every way a season ticket, in its cover
of dark blue morocco, was a thing superior to the
transitory and ignoble pasteboard. He could hardly
resist a sigh of bored superiority on the first oc-
casion when he produced it. He travelled second-
class, thus rising to the highest level of luxury in
travelling permitted to any inhabitants of Halesby,
unless it were the local baronet or Mr. Willis of
Mawne, whom even Sir Joseph Kingston could not
outdo.
Most of the other season-ticket holders travelled
second; and in this way, by making a habit of
taking his place in the same carriage, for senti-
mental reasons one that contained a series of west-
country pictures, Edwin began to be on speaking
terms with many members of this select company.
They included a youth articled to a solicitor in
North Bromwich, the son of a Halesby postmaster,
who was inclined to establish terms of familiarity ;
a gentleman with a bloated complexion and a fawn-
coloured bowler hat, reputed to be a commercial
traveller, who carried a bag in which samples may
well have been hidden; a superior person with a
gruff voice who was a clerk in a bank in the city,
and on Saturdays carried a brown canvas bag and
a hockey stick; and a withered man of fifty who
travelled into North Bromwich daily on some busi-
ness connected with brass, and, on damp mornings,
exhibited evidences of an asthmatic complaint that
aroused Edwin's budding professional interest.
It was he who first admitted Edwin to the con-
versation of the compartment, by confessing to him
that he had been the despair of doctors since child-
274 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
hood : that three specialists had assured his mother
that she would never rear that boy : that in spite of
this he had always paid four times as much in doc-
tor's bills as in income-tax, that in his belief they
only kept him alive for what they could get out of
him, and that his life had been an unending misery,
as harrowing, upon his word, as that of any of the
sufferers who were illustrated in the papers hold-
ing their backs with kidney complaint, until his
missus had said: "Don't throw any more money
away on these doctors, John, I'll have a talk with
Mr. Ingleby," . . . and with the aid of Ingleby's
Asthma Cure he had become relatively whole. Evi-
dently he knew who Edwin was. "What do you
think of that now?" he wheezed, and covered the
embarrassment into which Edwin was immediately
thrown by not waiting for his reply and continuing :
"I suppose, now, you'll be learning to be a chemist
like your father?"
"No . . . I'm a medical student. I'm going to
be a doctor."
"Well . . . I'll be damned," said the asthmatical
person. He did not say why; but the looks of the
superior bank clerk, who immediately lowered his 1
paper and stared at Edwin as though it were his
duty to decide whether Edwin were a fit person to
enter a learned profession or not, and then con-
temptuously went on with his reading, supplied
the kind of commentary that might have been in-
tended. When the asthmatical subject said that
he was damned, the gentleman with the bloated
complexion and the fawn-coloured bowler, who al-
ways opened his morning paper with fingers that
MORTALITY BEHOLD ... 275
trembled, either with excitement or as a result of
the night before, at the column headed Turf Topics,
gave a snigger and spat on the floor to conceal it.
And the articled clerk, at this display of ill breed-
ing, turned up his nose.
It was a strange little company that assembled
in the second-class smoker every morning; and the
strangest part of it, to Edwin, was the fact that
each of them, entrenched, as it were, behind his
morning paper, affected a frigid disinterest, yet
eagerly listened to the conversation and eagerly
scrutinised the appearance of the others. All of
them had their little fixed habits. In one place
they put their gloves: in another their umbrellas.
Every morning they began to read their papers at
the same column and folded them at the same point
in the journey. They seemed just as regular in
their habits as the wheels of the carriage in which
they travelled, revolving and stopping and shunt-
ing and being braked at an identical time and place
for six days out of the seven.
When he had tumbled to this, Edwin found that
the whole of the main line train that he caught
every morning at the junction was occupied by per-
haps a hundred grouped units of the same kind. It
amused him to sample them; and when one ap-
pealed to him he would become a member of it for
a time and see what he could make of it. Naturally
there were more interesting people on the main
line than on the Halesby branch ; and in the end he
himself became such a familiar figure on the eight-
twenty from the junction that he could say "Good-
morning" to nearly every group of seasons on the
276 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
train. He was even taken to the heart of the su-
perior gruff-voiced bank clerk in the Halesby car-
riage. Indeed, he knew every one of them, finding
them human people who, in the manner of the Eng-
lishman and the hedgehog, had put out their pro-
tective spikes upon a first acquaintance.
The only Halesby traveller of whom he could
make nothing was the bloated person in the fawn-
coloured bowler, who began the morning with turf
topics and then proceeded to suck a copying pencil
till his lips were the colour of his cheeks, and, thus
inspired, to underline the names of a number of
horses in the day's programme. Apart from his
habit of spitting on the floor, a custom which prob-
ably saved the poor man from death by poisoning
with copying ink, he was inoffensive. Edwin was
even sorry for him sometimes when he saw him
hung up over his forecasts. Then he would tilt the
fawn-coloured bowler on to the. back of his head,
and scratch his head under the sandy fringe of
hair. Edwin was sorry because, with a head like
that, it must have been so difficult to forecast any-
thing.
He did not see many women on the morning
train. In those days female enterprise was a good
deal checked by conventions that died more slowly
in the Midland plain than elsewhere. From
Halesby itself there were only four season-ticket
holders of the opposite sex. Two of them were em-
ployed in the same large drapery establishment in
Queen Street, and were excessively ladylike and
careful in all their behaviour. Edwin had never
spoke to either of them ; but he discovered in both
MORTALITY BEHOLD . . , 277
an identical physical state: that peculiar greenish,
waxen pallor that appears to be the inevitable re-
sult of serving in a draper's shop. The black dresses
on which their employers insisted, heightened this
effect of fragility, and on mornings when tiredness
had made them start too late for the train, so that
they had to hurry over the last hundred yards, Ed-
win would notice how they panted for breath within
their elegant corsets and how faint was the flush
that came into their cheeks.
He felt a little sorry for them ; but they were not
in the least sorry for themselves. In Halesby their
employment at a monstrous third-rate drapery store
gave them a position of unusual distinction as
arbiters of feminine fashions, and they would not
have exchanged their distinguished anaemia for any
other calling under the sun. In their profession
this toxic pallor, as of sea-kale blanched in a cellar,
was regarded as an asset. It was considered
French. And did not their shortness of breath,
upon the least exertion or emotion, cause their
bosoms to rise and fall like those of the heroines
of the serial fiction that they read, when they were
not too tired, in the train?
Edwin was not attracted by them any more than
by the other couple : a pair of pupil teachers from
an elementary school in one of the northern
suburbs, who also dressed for the part that they
were fulfilling in life, and wore spectacles as tokens
of their studiousness. The instinct of sex had as
yet scarcely asserted itself in him. He was a little
curious about it, and that was all. Subconsciously,
perhaps, it found expression in his anxieties about
278 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Ms personal appearance. He was beginning to take
a considerable interest in what should or should
not be worn, treating it more as a matter of abstract
science than as one of practical politics; for he
had few clothes beyond those in which he had left
St. Luke's, and was not likely to have any oppor-
tunity of extending his wardrobe until these were
worn out. In those days the weekly called To-Day
had reached its most vigorous phase, and a column
headed Masculine Modes was a matter of earnest
consideration to Edwin every Thursday, when the
paper appeared. In the spring, he decided, he
would buy an overcoat with Eaglan sleeves. The
weekly authority, who styled himself "The Major,"
was dead nuts on Kaglan sleeves. Beneath this
fashionable covering Edwin's interior defects
would be well hidden, and, given a natty red tie
(de rigueur, said the Major, with the indispensable
blue serge reefer suit) and a bowler hat with a
curly, but not too curly, brim, he should be able to
compete with the burly bank clerk as cynosure for
the eyes of the pale young ladies in the "drapery"
and a spectacle of awe for the studious pupil-
teachers.
Edwin soon became absorbed in the routine of
the first year student's life, and had very little time
to think about anything else./ He had to work hard
to keep pace with it, and the realisation of this was
a striking lesson to him. At St. Luke's he had
found that his advance in knowledge made the work
progressively more easy. Here he was breaking
MORTALITY BEHOLD ... 279
new ground from the beginning, acquiring knowl-
edge of a kind that owed nothing to general culture
and came to him none the easier for his possession
of it. The only things in his new work that seemed
easy and logical to him were those scientific names
that were derived from Latin and .Greek. Other-
wise the very rudiments and nature of the subjects
were new to him.
The most astonishing part of the whole business
was the way in which the formidable assembly that
had glared at him, as he imagined, outside the
Dean's office, simplified itself. He had been pre-
pared to find them creatures of a different tissue
from himself, and particularly such apparitions as
Harrop and the immense Brown. He soon saw that
as far as the career of Medicine was concerned they
were identically in the same box as himself: that
neither knowledge of the world nor elegance of at-
tire could help either of them to acquire the abso-
lute knowledge that was the one thing essential to
success. It made no matter that these two ap-
proached the same problem from essentially dif-
ferent angles: Brown with his earnest brows
knitted and a look of indomitable but baffled de-
termination; Harrop as though the issue didn't
really matter as long as the crease in his trousers
was in the right place; but in either case Edwin
saw that they had to work as hard or harder than
he did.
His first acquaintance, Martin, who was now be-
coming his friend, since the work that they shared
in common bridged the social gulf of which Edwin
alone was aware, seemed to possess the faculty of
280 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
doing things and learning facts almost in spite of
himself. He was not in any way brilliant, but he
had a way with him and a certain shrewdness that
not infrequently underlies the superficial indolence
of the Celt. Above all things Edwin found him
good company, for the picturesqueness of his brogue
and a sense of humour, not of the verbal kind in
which Edwin himself dealt, but the broader humour
that arises from situations, and personal charac-
teristics, made his society a peculiar joy. At the
first lecture on Chemistry, a dull dissertation on
first principles, Edwin had gravitated to the seat
next to him, and for the rest of the term they kept
the same places and afterwards compared notes.
Edwin couldn't help liking him, even though he
was conscious of the radical social misunderstand-
ing that underlay their friendship.
The technical sciences of Chemistry and Physics
made no strong appeal to Edwin. They seemed to
him matters of empirical knowledge that must be
acquired according to schedule but would have very
little connection with the work of his profession,
and he found them too near to the desperate sub-
ject of mathematics to be congenial. He could find
nothing romantic or human in them ; and this fact,
in itself, is a sufficient indictment of the way in
which they were taught.
Anatomy was another matter altogether. He had
anticipated the beginning of this study with a feel-
ing in which awe and an instinctive distaste were
mingled. From the first day he had known that
somewhere up at the top of the building lay the dis-
secting room, a place that his fancy painted as a
MORTALITY BEHOLD ... 281
kind of Chamber of Horrors. On his way to the
theatre, in which the Dean lectured on Anatomy
with a scholarly refinement of phrase that trans-
cended the natural elegance of Martin and a fasci-
nating collection of coloured chalks, he had passed
the gloomy door and seen a blackboard on which the
names of the Prosectors were recorded in white let-
tering. But he preferred not to look inside. Mar-
tin, to whom all adventures came more easily,
settled the point for him.
"I say," he said immediately after the lecture,
"have you put yourself down for a part?"
"A part? What do you mean?"
"Anatomy. Dissecting. They're shared between
two, you know. In the first term we're supposed
to do an Upper or a Lower. Suppose we go shares
in one "
"All right," said Edwin. "Which shall it be?"
"Well, I think an Upper will be better. There's
less fat and mess about it. We'd better go and
choose one now."
"All right."
"Come along, then." Martin opened the door of
the dissecting room and held it while Edwin
entered. It was a long, irregular chamber, with a
low glass roof and an asphalt floor. Edwin's first
impression was one of light and space : the second,
of a penetrating odour unlike anything that he had
smelt before. He could not give a name to it, and
indeed it was complex, being compact of a pungent,
unknown antiseptic and another fainter smell that
was, in fact, that of ancient mortality. The effect
of the whole was strange but not nauseating as
282 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
he would have expected. All down the room at
short intervals long zinc tables, with a tin bucket
at the head of each, were ranged. Most of the
tables were empty; but on four or five of them
"subjects" were either displayed or lay draped in
coarse, unbleached calico. One or two of them
sprawled on their faces, but most of them, being
as yet unappropriated, were supported under their
backs by small metal platforms from which the
heads rolled back and the limbs were stretched out
in a posture of extreme but petrified agony. To
Edwin's eyes it was a lamentable and terrible
sight. He wondered by what chain of degradations
the body of a man who had lived and known the
youth and pride of body that he himself possessed,
who had experienced aspirations and dreams and
hope and love, should descend to this final in-
dignity. He stood still. He did not dare, for the
moment, to come nearer.
"How do they get here?" he asked Martin.
"Oh, they're paupers, you know. Old men and
women, most of them, who die in the workhouses
and are not claimed by their relatives. Instead of
burying them they send them along here. The
anatomy porters collect them. Then they're pickled
for feo long in a kind of vat in the cellars of this
place, and they inject them with arsenic to preserve
them, and pump red paint into their arteries so
that they're easier to dissect. I shouldn't like the
job myself} but I suppose the porters are used to
it. You get used to anything, you know. Besides,
they aren't a bit like they are when they're first
dead. I think that's the chap for us. I had a look
MORTALITY BEHOLD . . , 283
at him the other day. It's always better to choose
an old one. The muscles are cleaner. Less work."
They approached the second table. The subject
was an old and withered man: his grey hair was
shaven, and his mouth hung open, showing that
he had lost his teeth. Martin had been quite right.
He didn't look in the least like a dead man. He
did not look like a man at all: only a pathetic,
tanned skeleton with tight-drawn sinews and
toughened skin: a dried mummy, from which all
the contours of humanity had shrunk away. It
wasn't so bad after all. The picture that Edwin's
imagination had anticipated, that of a crude and
horrible human shambles, was not here. No . . .
the idea of humanity was too remote to be in the
least insistent. For a moment, in spite of this con-
solation, Edwin went pale. Martin noticed it.
"I say, this isn't going to turn you up, is it?"
"No. . . . I'm all right. I was only . . . think-
ing."
"Thinking?" said Martin, with a laugh. "I
shouldn't do too much of that if I were you. We'd
better make a start to-morrow on the right Upper.
I'll put our names down."
He turned towards the glass case in which hung
notices of lectures and the printed cards on which
the names of dissectors were recorded, and while
he did so Edwin still stood thinking. He thought:
Was this really a man who had lived and breathed
and aged and suffered? Where had he been born?
How long ago? Had he ever loved? Had he ever
married? Had he ever wondered what the future
would bring to him? surely his fancies had never
284 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
envisaged this. Perhaps he had been born in some
remote hamlet of the marches, some sweet smelling
village like Far Forest, from which the iron
tentacles of the city had drawn him inwards and
sapped his life, leaving, in the end, this dry shell,
like the sucked carcass of a fly blowing in a spider's
web. If this were the end of poverty and desola-
tion, what a terrible thing poverty must be. Did
the poor and the outcast ever dream that they
might come to this? And yet, after all, what did
it matter? . . .
He awoke from his dream. It was evident that
lie was the only dreamer in that long room. At
many of the other tables second year men were
sitting quietly dissecting or gossiping or thumbing
manuals of practical anatomy yellow with human
grease. It amazed him that men should be able
to joke and smoke their pipes and appear to be con-
tented in such an atmosphere; but the wisdom of
Martin's phrase returned to him.: "You get used to
anything, you know."
Among the dissectors already at work in their
white overalls, he saw the ponderous frame of the
man called Brown. He, at any rate, was not letting
the grass grow under his feet. Already he was en-
gaged in reflecting the skin from the "Lower" on
which he was working. His clumsy hands found
the work difficult, as was shown by the anxiety of
his partner, an immaculate smooth young man,
whom Edwin already knew by the name of Maskew,
dressed in the Major's indispensable navy serge
reefer, with the correct red tie and a big orchid in
MORTALITY BEHOLD ... 285
his buttonhole. He took an elaborate meerschaum
pipe out of his mouth to protest :
"Good Lord, Brown, there's another cutaneous
nerve gone phut. Do be careful !"
And Brown, with an exaggerated earnestness:
"I say, old man, I am sorry. I simply can't use
the damned things. Do you mean to say that's a
nerve?" He held up in his forceps a tiny white fila-
ment of tissue.
"Yes," said Maskew, returning to his pipe.
"Branch of the great gluteal. Listen to what Cun-
ningham* says : 'The buttock is liberally supplied
with cutaneous nerves : a fact much appreciated by
schoolboys.' "
Brown scratched his head with the handle of his
scalpel. "Well, I'm in an absolute fog. You'd bet-
ter take this job on to-morrow, and I'll do the read-
ing. What does 'cutaneous' mean, anyway?"
"Cutis," thought Edwin, "Skin." After all, it
seemed, the dead languages had their uses. By this
time he had recovered from the first shock of his
distaste; he was getting used to the odour of the
room, and so, ji moment later, he and Martin
strolled over to a table at which one of the prosec-
tors was engaged in preparing a specimen for the
Dean's lectures. It was almost pleasant to watch
the deftness with which he defined the line of a
pink, injected artery, wielding his scalpel as deli-
cately and as surely as a painter at work on a can-
vas. They watched .him working in silence. "Mce
part, isn't it?" he said with condescension.
"Yes," said Martin, "this sort of thing must be
rattling good practice for surgery."
286 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Oh, surgery's quite different," said the prosector.
"This is a lazy job. There's no hurry about it. This
fellow won't bleed to death."
So Edwin and Denis Martin began to work on
their Upper, and the dissecting room that had been
an abode of horror and an incentive to philosophy
became no more than the scene of their daily
labours. Edwin accepted his new callousness with-
out regret for the sensitive perceptions that he had
lost, for he saw that his heart and his imagination
were not really less tender for the change; they
had merely come to a working agreement with the
demands of his new life, and had attained this satis-
factory state not so much by a suppression of
sensibility as by an insistence on the objective as-
pects of his work.
This fact explained to him, at the very beginning
of his career, the fallacy of medical callousness in
relation to pain or physical distress. He saw, on
reflection, that if a doctor exaggerated the impor-
tance of subjective sensations in his patient he
might well lose sight of his own object, which was
nothing more nor less than removing their cause :
that, for example, the fear of death, the anxiety of
relatives and the patient's own perception of in-
tolerable pain, were of infinitely less importance
to the physician than the presence of a focus of
danger in the patient's appendix. A sustained ob-
jectivity was the only attitude of mind in which a
doctor could live at the same time happily and effi-
ciently.
The only feature of the dissecting room that now
seemed objectionable was the smell of the powerful
MORTALITY BEHOLD ... 287
antiseptic that was used for preserving the subjects.
For a week or two Edwin was conscious of its per-
vading every moment of his life, his train-journeys,
his meal-times, even his sleep. But in a little time
his olfactory nerves became so used to it that they
discounted its presence, and the fact that his
neighbours in railway carriages did not seem to
shrink from him, convinced him that after all he
did not go about the world saturated in odours of
the charnel house.
The winter term went on, and to the sense of
hurry and frustration that had embarrassed him
at first and found its perfect expression in the
knitted brows of the monstrous Brown, succeeded
an atmosphere of leisure and method and ease.
Edwin had time for other things than work. He
began to know the men of his year, and to discover
that even the most formidable of them weren't half
as formidable as they had seemed. Harrop, in-
deed, w r as still a little remote. After the spacious-
ness of Oriel, where he had devoted a couple of
years to a liberal education in which the acquisition
of knowledge was of less importance than the
acquisition of style, North Bromwich, with its con-
centration on the virtues rather than the graces of
life and the very questionable sartorial shapes that
inhabited it, naturally seemed a little cheap; but
in a little time even Harrop became modified and
humble if a little contemptuous, and the most re-
splendent of his waistcoats retained no more
significance than the oriflamme of a lost cause.
Brown was the more approachable of the two,
and for Brown, Edwin soon conceived something
288 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
that was very nearly an affection. With his impres-
sive physique and his experience of a rough world
in which Edwin had never moved, was mingled a
childlike enthusiasm for his new work, a rich,
blundering good humour, and great generosity. He
was not clever, and showed an intense admiration
for better heads than his own; but for all that he
was much more intelligent than he looked, and to
Edwin his enthusiasm and earnestness were worth
a good deal more than his intellectual attainments.
Once or twice, wandering into the Anatomical
Museum, he had come upon Brown standing rapt
in front of a specimen dissection or quietly sweat-
ing up bones with a Gray's Anatomy open before
him, and he had sung out to Edwin as if he were
an old friend of his own age and they had put in
an hour of work together. "You know, you're a
lot quicker than I am," said Brown. "I suppose it
comes of being decently educated. I expect that
when you were learning Latin and Greek I was
knocking about the world making a damn fool of
myself." Then they would light their pipes (the
dissecting room had made smoking necessary to
Edwin) and Brown would yarn on for half an hour
about his romantic adventures, his bitter quarrels
with his people, the adventures that had befallen
him in Paris when he went there to play football
for the Midlands, in all of which the passionate,
headstrong, obstinate and withal lovable nature of
the big fellow would appear.
"I expect it all sounds to you like a rotten waste
of time, mucking about with my life like this," he
said. "But you know I'm not at all sorry I've had
MORTALITY BEHOLD ... 289
it. ... I didn't take up this doctoring business in
a hurry, without thinking about it. I thrashed the
matter out ; and I came to the conclusion that doc-
toring's a good human sort of game: it's a sort of
chance of pulling people out of the rotten messes
of one kind or another that they get themselves into
through no fault of their own, poor devils, just
because they're made like you and me and the rest
of us. If you go on the bust, or knock about the
country with a football team on tour, or go on the
tramp and sleep in a hedge or a barn or a Rowton
House, as I did when I had the last flare-up with
the old man, you rub against a lot of people. They're
all just the same as yourself, you know. You can
see yourself in the best of them as well as the worst ;
and, taking them all round, they're all damned good
at the bottom. They've all got to fight out their
own way in life with their heads or their fists or
their feet. And the only chap that can really help
them in it is a doctor. That's the conclusion I've
come to. God! . . . you'll scarcely believe it, but
once I was converted. I know it's damn funny ; but
it's a fact that when I was a youngster and had
been on the periodical bust a revivalist chap got
hold of me and persuaded me that I was saved. It's
a funny sort of feeling, I can tell you. I thought
I was going off my nut until I went to see a doctor
and he put my liver right. It's a fine humane game,
Ingleby. You can take it from me. . . . But I can
tell you, with one thing and another, I've got my
work cut out."
He shook his head seriously, and the puzzled,
dogged expression of frustrate determination that
290 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Edwin knew so well came into his eyes. ''We're
wasting time, my son," he said. "Let's get on with
the blasted humerus. Now, what is the origin of
the Supinator Longus? Come on . . ."
On one of these pleasant occasions he confided
to Edwin the reason why he had his work cut out.
His father, a stern Calvanistic Methodist, had
finally washed his hands of him. "I've been a bit of
a rolling stone, you see," said Brown, "and you
can't blame the poor old fellow. So he just planked
down six hundred and fifty pounds one day and
told me that I could do what I liked with it, but
that was the last I should get from him. It suited
me down to the ground. I didn't much care what
became of me then. It was a couple of years ago.
So I had a royal bust ... a sort of glorious wind-
up to the season . . . and then sat down to think.
I had just five hundred left, and so I had to think
what the devil I was going to do with it, and my
prospects seemed so putridly rotten that the only
thing I could do was to go on the bust again. I
didn't enjoy it much that time. Jaded palate,
you know. . . . But I had a bit of luck. I met a
trainer fellow in the Leicester lounge with a couple
of women, and he put me on to a double for the
Lincoln and National. I've no use for horse-racing.
If it was the owners that were racing there'd be a
vestige of sport in it; but it always seems to me a
shame that decent, clean creatures like horses
should make a living for a lot of dirty stiffs out of
the ruin of working men and small shopkeepers.
Still, I dreamed about this double, and as I'm a
weak superstitious sort of chap, I put a tenner on
MORTALITY BEHOLD ... 291
it. That's the first and the last bet I've ever had on
a horse. But the thing happened to come off; and
last spring I found myself with twelve hundred
pounds instead of six-fifty. So I began to think
it out. I remembered that doctor fellow who cured
me of being converted, and I thought, "By Gad, I'll
be a doctor.' A five year's course. Well, I'm not
particularly brilliant at the top end, and so I al-
lowed six. Six into twelve goes twice. Two hun-
dred a year for fees and living and clothes out-
size and recreation. You see, it's pretty tight.
Come along and have some lunch at Joey's."
m
They went downstairs to the cloak-room where
the porter was now a familiar of Edwin's. It had
been decided that it would not be becoming for a
really modern university, like that of North Brom-
wich, to impose the sight of such an anachronism
as academic dress on the streets, a rule that had
been something of a disappointment to Edwin, and
so they left their gowns behind. Joey's was an
institution of some antiquity, opposite to the
Corinthian town-hall, with which Brown had been
acquainted in his unregenerate days. It was a long
find noisy bar at which, for the sum of fourpence,
one consumed a quarter of the top of a cottage
loaf, a tangle of watercress, a hunk of Cheddar
cheese, and a tankard of beer. This combination
of excellences was known as a "crust and bitter,"
and it was eaten standing at the counter.
Edwin was gradually becoming a regular cus-
tomer at this place ; for Martin's delicate fancy for
292 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
plovers on toast and other such refinements had
proved too expensive for him, and apart from their
joint labours in the dissecting-room, they were be-
ginning to see less of each other not from any ill-
will on the part of either, but simply because Mar-
tin's position in the house of the old lady in Alvas-
ton, whose house was full of animals, had intro-
duced him to the social life of that elegant suburb
in which so perfect a carpet knight was bound to
shine; and Martin's social engagements with en-
couraging matrons and innumerable eligible daugh-
ters were becoming so pressing that his acquaint-
ance with the black heart of the city was gradually
becoming more and more casual. For this reason,
apart from his natural inclination, Edwin was
thrown into daily contact with Brown and his part-
ner Maskew.
Maskew was a more typical product of the Mid-
lands. His home, and all his upbringing, had lain
in one of the great black towns that cluster, like
swollen knots, upon the North Bromwich system
of railways. He had never lived in the country;
he did not even know what country was, and his
distinctive if provincial urbanity showed itself in
a hundred ways in his dress, that was a little too
smart, in his speech, that was not quite smart
enough, in a certain lack of fresh air in his mental
atmosphere. His people were wealthy, and his
tastes, without emulating the style of Harrop, were
expensive. He was handsome, and if his hair had
been shorter and not so mathematically correct he
would have been handsomer. Still, he was intensely
interested in women, and a great retailer of Rabe-
MORTALITY BEHOLD ... 293
laisian stories. He wore buttoned boots and was
very nearly a first-class billiard player.
A more unusual combination than his partner-
ship with the abrupt and unsubtle Brown it would
have been difficult to imagine; but even in his un-
doubted cleverness, his nature was complimentary,
and Edwin found himself happy in the society of
both. In their company he became a habitue of the
Dousita Cafe ; a subterranean privacy in which ex-
cellent coffee was served in the most comfortable
surroundings by young ladies whose charms had
already made something of a sensation in that
decorous city. Maskew, naturally, knew them all
by their Christian names, and treated them with a
familiar badinage that impressed Edwin, mildly
ambitious but quite incapable of imitation, by the
ease with which it was performed. The cushioned
seats and the mild stimulus of the coffee and ciga-
rettes would even rouse the massive Brown to a
ponderous levity by which the lady of their choice,
a certain Miss Wheeler, whose uncle, Maskew seri-
ously confided to Edwin, was a bishop, was obvious-
ly flattered. Edwin could understand any woman
being attracted by Brown, or rather, "W.G." as the
need of a distinction had by this time made his
familiar name. It also pleased him to see the way
in which W.G. went red in his bull neck on a cer-
tain occasion when Maskew had delicately over-
stepped the limits of good taste in his conversation
with Miss Wheeler. But the niece of the bishop
did not blush. . . .
In the intervals between lectures they would
congregate in their gowns in a dismal chamber,
294 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
at the very bottom of the cramped building that
was called the Common Room, drinking tea and
eating squashed-fly biscuits. This place was fre-
quented not only by members of the Medical School
but by students of other faculties whom Edwin
regarded with some contempt. One afternoon on
entering this room Edwin found W.G. holding forth
with some indignation before a notice that had
been pinned on the board asking for a list of fresh-
men who were anxious to play Rugby football dur-
ing the present season. So far, only five or six
names had appeared: W.G.'s, naturally enough,
came first, for his prowess in the game was well
known in the North Bromwich district.
"Isn't it a damnable thing," he said indignantly,
"in a school of this size to see a measly list like
that?"
"You can stick mine down," said Edwin.
"Well ... as a matter of form, my son . . .
though I don't see what good you're likely to be to
the club except to give it tone."
"I play soccer," said Maskew.
"You would," said W.G. "Nice gentlemanly
game."
"Rugger isn't all beef," put in Edwin.
"No," said W.G., "but the team wants weight.
And this place is simply thick with great, hefty,
science men and brewers who've never known the
meaning of a healthy sweat in their lives. Upon
my word, it sickens me. Look at that chap."
He pointed to a corner in which a big fellow lay
huddled up in a deep basket chair. He had
shoulders that would have appeared massive by
MORTALITY BEHOLD ... 295
the side of any others but W.G.'s : a fair wide face
marked with freckles, a sandy moustache and crisp,
curly red hair. "That's the kind of swine that
ought to be working in the scrum."
Edwin looked, and as he did so, instinctively
went pale. A curious survival of the instinct of
physical fear had shaken him. It was ridiculous.
"I know that chap," he said in an off-hand way.
"He's no good. I was at school with him. He's
got a weak heart. His name's Griffin."
CHAPTER III
CARNIVAL
/CHRISTMAS came: an old-fashioned Christmas
y*s with hoar frost on the fields and hard roads
gleaming with splintered light reflected from a
frosty sky. In this raiment of frozen moisture
even the black desert of Edwin's morning pilgrim-
age appeared fantastically beautiful. The vacation
did not suspend his work; for though no lectures
were given, the dissecting room was still open ; and
here, on icy mornings, when the asphalt floor was
as cold as the glass roof, he would freeze for an
hour at a time watching Brown and Maskew at
work, Martin having been whisked off to spend a
baronial Christmas of scratch dances in Ireland.
A few months in North Bromwich had made a
great change in Edwin. He had lost much of his
old timidity, shaved twice a week, smoked the plug
tobacco to which Brown had introduced him, and
was no longer shy with any creature on earth of
his own sex. With women it was different. . . .
Ease and familiarity with this baffling sex would
come, no doubt, in time; but for the present one
or two desperate essays at conversation with the
elegant Miss Wheeler in the absence of his friends
296
CARNIVAi: 297
had been failures. And Miss Wheeler was not the
least approachable of her sex. There were several
women medical students in his year; but in their
case he had not felt the incentive to gallantry that
the softer charms of ^liss Wheeler suggested. Even
if they had not insulated themselves with shape-
less djibbehs of russet brown, and bunched back
their hair in a manner ruthlessly unfeminine, the
common study of a subject so grossly material as
anatomy would have rubbed the bloom from any
budding romance.
In the Biological laboratory, however, he found
a figure that exercised a peculiar attraction on him.
She was an American girl, a science student, who
with the severity of the medical women's dress con-
trived to combine an atmosphere of yielding femi-
ninity. She had a soft voice, for the tones of which
Edwin would listen, big grey-blue eyes, soft dark
hair, and very beautiful arms that her dark over-
alls displayed to perfection. Edwin would have
found it difficult to define the way in which she at-
tracted him : certainly he didn't cherish any definite
romantic ideas about her; but he did find her in
some subtle way disturbing, so that he would be
conscious of her presence when she came into the
lab. ; surprise himself listening for her voice when
she spoke to the professor, and find that, without
any definite volition, his eyes were watching her
profile. And one day when she passed him and
her overall brushed his sleeve, he found that he
was blushing. Maskew, with his usual easy famili-
arity, was already on joking terms with her, and
would sometimes sit on the table where she kept
298 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
her microscope while they talked and laughed to-
gether; but though Edwin had every chance of
sharing in this intimacy, he couldn't bring himself
to do so; and when, in the end, he was introduced
to her formally, he wished that he were dead, and
could not speak a word for awkwardness.
With men, on the other hand, he was now quite
at his ease, even, strangely enough, with the once
formidable Griffin. Since the day when he had dis-
covered his old enemy in the Common Boom they
had often spoken to one another: they had even
sat side by side in the deep basket chairs, one of
which was now Griffin's habitual abode, and talked
of the old days at St. Luke's, and sometimes, in the
afternoon, they would share a pot of tea. There
was no awkwardness in their conversation, as Ed-
win had feared there might be, for Griffin appar-
ently took his expulsion as a matter of course, and,
on the whole, as rather a good joke. Of course
Griffin had changed. It was clear to Edwin from
the first that in some way he had shrunk not in-
deed physically, for he was fatter than ever; but
the air of conscious and threatening physical su-
periority that Edwin had found so oppressive in
his school days had vanished. Moreover, he was
now prepared to accept Edwin as an equal, and
make him the confidant of the amorous adventures
that now absorbed his time, adventures to which
the affair with the chambermaid at St. Luke's had
been the mildest possible prelude. Compared with
Griffin's positive achievements, the daring of
Maskew's relation with the young ladies of the
Dousita seemed a trifle thin. Griffin's father, with
CARNIVAL 299
a shrewd appreciation of his son's peculiar gifts,
had entered him as a student at the school of brew-
ing; and if once he could overcome his natural
indolence, there was no reason why, in the future,
he should not become a partner in the firm of his
uncle, Sir Joseph Astill, and control the destinies
of a number of barmaids beyond the dreams of con-
cupiscence. On these prospects, Griffin, lounging
in his basket chair, brooded with a heavy satisfac-
tion.
"It's a funny thing, isn't it?" Edwin said one
day, "that we should be the only St. Luke's men in
this place."
"Oh, some are bound to turn up sooner or later,"
said Griffin. "The other day, when I was up in
town, I ran against Widdup you remember Wid-
dup and he told me that his people thought of
sending him here to take up engineering."
"That would be rather good fun," said Edwin.
"And he's cut out for it too. He's got that sort of
head. I should rather like to see old Widdup."
"Oh, he'll roll up one of these days. Are you
doing anything in particular this afternoon? I
have to stroll down to see the stage-manager at the
Gaiety ... an awful good sport. Suppose we go
down the town and get a drink on the way ..."
In spite of the temptations of this adventure,
Edwin declined. In the dissecting room, half an
hour later, Brown hailed him :
"What the devil were you doing with that pig
of a brewer, Ingleby?"
"He's an old school friend of mine."
"Well, I should keep that dark, if I were you.
300 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
He's a bad hat, that chap. We don't want Ingleby's
virginal innocence corrupted, do we, Maskew?"
"Oh, he's not a bad sort," Edwin protested.
"He's a nasty fellow, and he'll come to a rotten,
sticky end," said Brown. "Now, what do you think
of this small sciatic, you old roue, for a tricky bit
of dissection?"
After all, Edwin reflected, old Brown knew
something of the world. He had to admit to him-
self that there was something obscene about Griffin.
It was difficult to explain, for Maskew, by his own
account, was almost equally worldly, and yet
Maskew was undeniably a decent fellow while
Griffin undeniably wasn't. He joined his friends at
their work, and could think about nothing else ; for
Maskew's brains were as good as his own, though
of a different texture, and he had to be attentive
to keep pace with them. All through the vac. he
worked at anatomy with these two, sometimes in
the icy dissecting room, sometimes over coffee at
the Douaita, sometimes in the cozy, diminutive
diggings that Brown inhabited in Easy Kow, a
street of Georgian houses at the back of the uni-
versity buildings and near the Prince's Hospital.
They were pleasant days. Edwin, in spite of his
lightness, had now found a place in the scrum of
the second fifteen, and on Saturday evenings, when
both of them were drugged with their weekly
debauch of exercise, he and W.G. would meet at
the diggings in Easy Kow, and after a steaming hot
bath, in the process of which Edwin never failed
to be impressed by the immensity of his friend's
physique, they would set off down the town together
CARNIVAL 301
and make a tremendous meal at the Coliseum grill :
Porterhouse steak with chipped potatoes and huge
silver tankards of bitter ale. Then they would go
on together to a theatre or a music hall, too pleas-
antly dulled, too mildly elated to question the
humour of the most second-rate comedian. After
the show W.G. would walk down to the station with
Edwin, and see him off into the last train for
Halesby, and Edwin, leaning out .of the carriage
window, would see the big man turn and go clum-
sily along the platform with the gait that he had
noticed on the very first day of his life as a medical
student. Brown was a wonderful fellow. In half
an hour, Edwin reflected, when his train was still
puffing away through the dark, W.G. would be back
in his diggings with a clay pipe stuck in his mouth
and a huge text-book of Anatomy open on his knees,
driving facts into that puzzled brain with the
violent thoroughness of an engine that drives piles.
When the last train arrived at Halesby, the town
would be in darkness, for, in the black country in
those days the only places of amusement were the
public houses and these had been shut for an hour
or more. Only from the upper windows of innumer-
able mean dwellings lights would be seen, and some
times the voice of a drunken husband heard grumb-
ling. But the path beside the fish-ponds was beauti-
ful, even on a winter night, and Edwin would feel
glad as he plodded along it that he didn't live in
North Bromwich, where the night noises of the
country were never heard. So he would pass quietly
up the empty lane, his footsteps echoing on the
hard pavement, and come at last to the little house
302 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
set in the midst of shrubberies that smelt of winter.
Very humble and quiet, and even pitiable it seemed
after the glaring streets of the city that he had
left behind.
It was an understood thing that on Saturdays,
when he had been playing football, Edwin should
return by the last train; and so his father did not
sit up for him on these occasions. The matter had
been settled at the cost of some awkwardness. On
the first two or three Saturdays of the football sea-
son Edwin had come home late, to find Mr. Ingleby
growing cold over the embers of a fire in the dining-
room, sleepy but intensely serious, and his tired
eyes had examined Edwin so closely that he felt
embarrassed, being certain that his face must bear
signs of a number of enormities that he had never
dreamed of committing. It was the same, unrea-
sonable feeling of guilt that he had experienced at
St. Luke's in the middle of Mr. Leeming's pitched
battle for purity, and the sensation was so strong
that he felt it useless to try and hide it.
"Why do you look at me like that, father?" he
said. The quietude and humility of the little room
seem to him as full of accusation as his father's
face.
"What do you mean, boy?"
"I think you know what I mean. . . . There's
really no need for you to wait up for me like this."
"I like to lock the house up," his father replied,
with a quietness that made Edwin's voice sound
rowdy and violent. "I have always done so. After
all, it's usual."
"You are anxious about me. Why should you
CARNIVAL 303
be more anxious about me when I come in at twelve
than when I come in at six?"
"I know you're passing a critical period, Eddie.
. . . I'm not unsympathetic. I've been through it
myself. And naturally I'm anxious for you. I
know that a town is full of temptations for a boy
of your age. I don't know what your friends are
like. I don't know what sort of influences you're
coming in contact with "
"But I don't see why that should make you want
to sit up for me. Keally, I don't. What good does
it do?"
"I like to see you when you come in." Edwin was
uncomfortably aware of this.
"But suppose I was drunk when I came in,
father " he said.
"I don't suppose anything of the sort "
"No, but supposing I was. What advantage
would there be in your seeing me? What good
would it do?"
"At any rate I should know that there was a
danger."
"Well, if that's all th'e trouble, we can soon get
over it. I promise you, that I'll tell you the very
first time that I am in the least drunk. Then you
needn't worry about waiting for it. I suppose it's
bound to happen some day."
"I sincerely hope it isn't, Eddie. It isn't pleasant
to me to hear you talk like that."
"No. ... I suppose it would be pleasanter if we
pretended that nothing of the kind ever happened.
But it wouldn't be honest, would it? I should think
it's the duty of every one to be drunk some time or
304 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
other, if it's only to see what it feels like. Surely,
father, you "
"Edwin, Edwin. . . . Really we mustn't be per-
sonal. You forget that I'm your father."
"But I don't, father. I thought we were going
to be such tremendous pals, and honestly there isn't
much to be pals on if you aren't ever personal. We
ought to talk about everything. We oughtn't to
hide anything. I don't see much fun in it if I have
to do all the telling and you don't give anything
in return. It isn't fair."
"But, my dear boy," said Mr. Ingleby, with a
nervous laugh, "you seem to neglect the fundamen-
tal fact that I'm your father."
"I don't see why that should prevent us being
honest. I don't see why it should prevent you from
trusting me "
"I do trust you, Eddie."
"Then that's all right; so you needn't wait up
for me again."
Thus the matter was settled, at any rate on the
surface, though Edwin was always conscious on
the morning after his late arrivals of an anxious
scrutiny on his father's part.
"He doesn't really trust me," he thought, and this
conviction made him more anxious than ever to
be really intimate with his father, to make him
share, as much as possible, the life that he was
living in North Bromwich. It made him talk
deliberately of the men who were his friends, and
the work that he was doing, explaining with the
greatest freedom the domestic difficulties of W.G.,
and the worldly accomplishments of Maskew: and
CARNIVAL 305
this frankness gave him confidence until he dis-
covered that such revelations only ended by arous-
ing his father's suspicions. In Mr. Ingleby's mind
it was evident that the sterling qualities of W.G.,
as recited by Edwin, were of less importance than
his potentialities as an agent in Edwin's corruption.
"If I'd only given him one side of W.G.," thought
Edwin, "he'd have been quite happy. If we're going
to be happy, it would be much better for me to tell
him nothing that his imagination can work on."
He found himself travelling round the old vicious
circle that appeared to be the inevitable result of
being honest with himself. There must, after all,
be something in the fundamental fact that Mr.
Ingleby was his father. Ridiculous though it might
seem, the ideal relation between father and son was
evidently impossible. "Well," he said with a sigh,
"it isn't my fault. I've done my best."
The whole artificiality of their relation only
dawned on him when he mentioned to his father
one evening that he had met Griffin and told him
that his old enemy turned out to be a nephew of
Sir Joseph Astill. "I'm glad to hear of it," said Mr.
Ingleby. "I hope you'll continue to be friends.
Sir Joseph Astill is a very distinguished man."
Edwin didn't see what that had to do with it ; but
he resisted the temptation of telling his father that
Griffin was a distinctly bad egg, and that in com-
parison with him W.G., with his herculean pas-
sions, was indeed a paragon of knightly virtues. If
it pleased his father to invest Griffin with his
uncle's reflected glory, why shouldn't he do so? And
Edwin held his tongue.
306 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
In the end the atmosphere of veiled anxiety that
awaited him at home became definitely irksome, and
since the most absolute candour on his part would
not mend matters, he found himself gradually
avoiding his father's company. It was the last
thing in the world that he wanted to do; but it
seemed inevitable; and as the months passed, he
gave up all hopes of the sort of intimacy that he
had desired, and relapsed into the solitude of his
own room, or even, as a last resort, the company
of Aunt Laura, who was at least unsuspicious.
Another thing attracted him to her house. All
the days of his childhood at home had been full
of music, for his mother had been a capable pianist,
and he had spent long hours stretched out on the
hearthrug in the drawing-room listening to her
while she played Bach and Beethoven and occasion-
ally Mendelssohn on the piano. At St. Luke's, too,
without any definite musical education, he had felt
a little of the inspiration that Dr. Downton infused
into the chapel services. Since he had returned to
Halesby all these pleasures had left him; for Mr.
Ingleby was not in the least musical, and the piano
that had been closed a few days before his mother's
death, had never been reopened. At this period he
had not realised the musical possibilities of North
Bromwich, and in Aunt Laura's house he recap-
tured a little of this stifled interest.
She was really an accomplished musician, and
though the kind of music that she affected was be-
coming limited by the very character of her life
as the wife of an undistinguished manufacturer of
small hardware in a small black-country town, the
CARNIVAL 307
taste, which had originally been formed in Ger-
many, existed and was easily encouraged by Ed-
win's admiration of her attainments. Here, usually
on Sundays, when in addition to the attraction of
music her admirable cooking was to be appreciated,
Edwin passed many happy hours. She sang well,
and could accompany herself with something of a
natural genius, and though the songs that she sang
were often enough the sugary ballads of the period
that had witnessed her musical extinction, Edwin
found them satisfying to his starved sense of music,
and would even persuade her, on occasion, to play
the pieces of Chopin, Beethoven, and Bach with
which his mother had made him familiar.
Nothing aroused in him an acute remembrance
of those ancient happy days more easily than music.
He wished, above all things, that he might some day
be able to taste these joys for himself; and so he
persuaded his aunt to teach him the notes on the
piano, and having an inherited aptitude, he soon
found that he could pick his way through simple
compositions, preferably in the open key, that he
found among his mother's music at home. Mr.
Ingleby, who had no ear, appeared to be unmoved
by these painful experiments; and to Edwin, the
long winter evenings were made magical by their
indulgence. He would sit at the piano in the draw-
ing-room for hours at a time, and here, in a strange
way, he found himself curiously in touch with the
vanishing memory of his mother. At times this
feeling was so acute that he could almost have
imagined that she was there in the room beside him,
and sometimes he would sit still at the piano in long
308 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
intervals of silence, just drinking in this peculiar
and soothing atmosphere. Eventually these diver-
sions made Mr. Ingleby uneasy.
"You spend a good deal of time at the piano,
Edwin," he said. "I do hope you are not letting it
interfere with your work."
Edwin said nothing; but from that time onward
it seemed to him that even this, the most harmless
of his amusements, had become a matter for grudg-
ing and suspicion. At first he only felt indignation
and anger; but later he realised that this, along
with his father's other anxieties, probably had its
origin in financial considerations. The cost of his
education in North Bromwich was a big thing for a
country chemist to face. If once he failed, the
whole of his early effort might be wasted. But
then, he was not going to fail.
H
The terminal examinations at Christmas had
made him sure of this. They showed him that in
his own year he and Maskew were in a class by
themselves; and though Maskew beat him easily
in all the subjects of the examination, it satisfied
him a little to think that Maskew had probably
put in a good deal more work than he had, particu-
larly in anatomy, where he had the advantage of
working in partnership with W.G., for whom the
subject of medical education was of the most deadly
seriousness.
Early in the Lent term Edwin found himself
introduced to a new stratum of North Bromwich
society, through the accident of his acquaintance
CARNIVAL 309
with Griffin. The new university had inherited
from the old college of science and the still older
medical school, the tradition of a pantomime night,
a visit en masse to one of the North Bromwich
theatres, where this elevating art-form flourished
for three months out of the twelve. The evening
was one of fancy dress, rowdiness, and general
licence, in which the stage suffered as much as the
auditorium, and the unfortunate players were pro-
pitiated for the ruin of their performance by a
series of presentations.
Arrangements for this function were always
made with a high seriousness. The committee was
composed of representatives from each year in the
school of medicine and from each of the other
faculties. In this affair, as in all matters of sport
or communal life, the older foundation of the
medical school took the most prominent part; but
the prestige of Griffin as the nephew of the Vice-
Chancellor and an acknowledged expert on all mat-
ters theatrical, had induced the brewers to run him.
for the secretaryship; and since the secretary was
the official on whom the bulk of the work fell, and
no one was particularly anxious to take on the job,
Griffin, in his first year, had been elected to the
post.
There was no denying the fact that it suited him.
To begin with, he was already on intimate terms
with every theatre manager and stage-doorkeeper
in North Bromwich, and was used to dealing with
the susceptibilities of theatrical people. Again, he
had plenty of money, a circumstance that would
help him in the preliminaries, which were expen-
3io L THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
isively conducted in the local Bodega and other bars
and restaurants. Also, it gave Griffin something
to do ; for the life of the student in brewing was of
the leisurely and somnolent character that one
would naturally associate with malt liquors, and
most of his time had previously been spent sprawl-
ing in a deep basket chair in the Common Room,
playing an occasional languid game of poker, or
jingling sovereigns in his pocket while he waited
for the results of racing in the evening papers.
At the annual meeting, which Edwin had not
been sufficently interested to attend, there had been
the usual difficulty in selecting a member from the
unknown quantities of the first year, and Griffin,
full of resource, had suggested Edwin, who was
straightway elected, and summoned to attend the
deliberations that followed. His election caused a
good deal of amusement to his friends, and partic-
ularly Martin, who preserved an aristocratic con-
tempt for this vulgar theatrical business, and W.G.,
who prophesied Edwin's conversion into a thorough-
going blood ; but it introduced him to a new and be-
wildering society in which he met a number of men
of his own faculty who had already become impres-
sive at a distance.
Such were the brothers Wade, the elder unap-,
proachable in his final year, the younger of an ele-
gance surpassing that of Harrop. Such was
Freddie St. Aubyn, a slight and immaculate figure
with fair hair and moustache, and the most care-
fully cultivated reputation for elegant dissipation
in North Bromwich. This Byronic person had al-
ready suffered the pangs of a long intrigue with the
CARNIVAL 311
premiere danseme in a musical comedy company,
on whom he was reputed to have spent money and
passion lavishly but without the least suggestion
of grossness.
In addition to this he was a poet: that is to
say, he had published two volumes of verse that
were so eclectic as to be out of print. At the pres-
ent time he had stuck midway in his medical career
pending the issue of his unhappy passion ; and pre-
sented the unusual spectacle of a "chronic," not by
force of incompetence, but by choice. In point of
fact, he was an unconscious survival from the
nineties, and the lady of his choice resembled a
creation of Beardsley more than any type common-
ly known to nature. Edwin was impressed, for
the writer of the exhausted Poems of Passion was
the first poet that he had met in the flesh. Natural-
ly, St. Aubyn's attitude towards the first-year man
was a little patronising ; but Edwin found his mix-
ture of cynicism and melancholy enchanting, and
was particularly impressed when Freddie, languid-
ly supporting his sorrows in one of the Common
Boom easy-chairs, offered him a fill from his pipe.
"Oh, by the way, there's opium in it," he said
casually.
Visions of Coleridge and de Quincey invaded Ed-
win's mind. He stopped filling his pipe.
"Opium? Why on earth do you put opium in
it?"
"It is an aid to the imagination," said Freddie,
"and it deadens pain."
"Mental pain," he added sgnificantly, after a
pause. "For that alcohol is useless. I've tried it."
312 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"I think I'll have some of my own, if you don't
mind," said Edwin.
"I quite agree with you. It would be much
wiser," said St. Aubyn. "Luckily you have no need
for it. Facilis descensus Averni."
From that day forward Edwin was always eager-
ly searching the face and the pupils of Freddie for
any symptoms of opium poisoning. He never found
any; and W.G., to whom he confided this thrilling
incident, assured him that there was nothing in it,
that Freddie had probably never smoked opium in
his life, and that the whole thing was nothing more
than one of the poseS that this gentleman adopted
for shocking the youthful and bourgeois. The im-
pressive Freddie, according to W.G., was a damned
anaemic waster. If only it had not been for the
exhausted Poems of Passion, Edwin might have
agreed with him.
The solemn meetings of the panto-night commit-
tee engaged Edwin three afternoons a week. As a
congregation of amazing bloods they were enthrall-
ing but as business gatherings they were more re-
markable still. They were held in the saloon bar
of a modern public house, all palatial mahogany,
red plush and plate-glass, called the White Horste;
and the principal business of the day was the con-
sumption of hot whisky with sugar and slices of
lemon in it, during which Griffin, armed with a
conspicuous note-book, reported on his activities,
^hich appeared mainly to be social.
"On Thursday," he would say, "I took Mary
Xoraine to lunch at the Grand Midland, and she
asaid . . ." or "I saw Tommy Fane in his dressing-
CARNIVAL 313
room the other night, and he said : 'Look here, old
boy. . . .' * Apparently all Griffin's theatrical
friends called him "old boy." The effect of these
narrations on Griffin would be so exhausting that
he found it necessary to order more whisky all
round. The manager himself would bring it in; a
brilliant gentleman named Juniper with red baggy
cheeks the laxness of which w r as compensated by
a waxed moustache that stuck out on either side
as if a skewer had transfixed them. To Griffin this
magnificent creature was most decorous; for the
White Horse was one of Astill's houses, and Griffin
had taken the trouble to inform him that the great
Sir Joseph was his uncle. In spite of, rather than
as a result of these meetings, the panto-night ar-
ranged itself. The date was fixed, the bouquets and
presents purchased, the announcements in the
papers that warned any patrons of pantomime
that on this particular night they could not hope
to see a normal performance, inserted. Griffin, in
the Common Room, became a centre of feverish
importance, and even Edwin, in spite of the super-
ciliousness of Martin, and the rough chaff of W.G.,
caught a little of the reflected glamour.
Edwin now had to face the ordeal of announcing
the approach of panto-night to his father. If he
were to see the thing through, as was his duty as
a member of the committee, it would be quite im-
possible for him to catch the last train to Halesby,
which left North Bromwich at nine-thirty, except
on Thursday and Saturday night. Mr. Ingleby,
hearing, saw the pit gaping beneath Edwin's feet.
"You didn't mention this to me before. ... I sup-
3H THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
pose you have had to spend quite a lot of time at
these committee meetings? I think it was rather
unwise of you to undertake it in your first year.
. . . There's only four months before your exami-
nation."
"Oh, I think the exam, will be all right," said
Edwin airily.
"I don't like to hear you speak like that, Edwin,"
said his father. "Over-confidence is a dangerous
thing."
"But it wouldn't be any better pretending that
I didn't think it was all right, surely?"
"Well, humility is a great virtue."
"Not any greater than honesty."
"It's all very well to talk about honesty; but it
would have been more honest, wouldn't it, if you'd
told me that" he hesitated "this was going on?"
"There you are. . . . That's the whole point. If
I told you everything you wouldn't sleep for
imagining things that hadn't happened. It's the
thing that's worried me ever since I was at school.
If you're absolutely honest with other people, life
simply isn't worth living, because they don't under-
stand it. It isn't done. I've come to the conclusion,
father, that the only thing that really matters is to
be honest with yourself."
"If you can trust yourself "
"Well, I think I can. . . . And I wish you'd be-
lieve in it."
"I do, Edwin. Only naturally I'm anxious.
You're a child. Where is this . . . this perform-
ance held?"
"At the Queen's Theatre this year."
CARNIVAL 315
"Well, I suppose that is better than a music hall."
His father's prejudice against the music halls, or,
as they were then beginning to be called, Theatres
of Varieties, was an old story. Edwin could hardly
resist the temptation of telling him that the per-
formers in the pantomime were nearly all music-
hall artistes, but Mr. Ingleby saved him, by asking
him where he intended to sleep.
"Oh, I expect W.G. will give me a shake-down in
his digs."
"I suppose," said Mr. Ingleby, with a shade of
anxiety, "that Brown is also on the committee "
The idea of the honest W.G. as a member of this
constellation of bloods tickled Edwin. He now
wished to goodness he'd never told his father of
W.G.'s family differences and of his lucky double
on the Lincoln and National.
"Oh, no, old W.G.'s far too sober for this sort of
thing."
It was an unfortunate word.
"Sober?" repeated Mr. Ingleby. "Well, I sup-
pose you will have to go ; but I do hope "
He didn't say what he hoped ; but Edwin knew,
and was content to leave it at that.
in
The great day came, and Edwin found, as some
compensation for the scoffing of W.G. and the super-
ciliousness of Martin and Maskew, that his position
was really one of some importance. All the first-
year men, even the immaculate Harrop, had de-
cided to go to the theatre, and up to the last minute
Edwin was busy selling tickets. He had asked
316 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
W.G. to put him up, and W.G., as a matter of form,
had consented. "I don't suppose I shall see you
after midnight, my son," he said. With his usual
thoroughness in everything that he attempted, W.G.
had determined to make a night of it. "It will do
me good to make a damned fool of myself for once
in a way," he said, "if it's only for the sake of realis-
ing it afterwards . . ."
They put in a hard afternoon's work together
first, and then he and Edwin and Maskew went to-
gether to W.G.'s rooms to change. They were all
rather excited, and W.G. carried a bottle of whisky
in each of his coat pockets, the first of which was
broached as an aperitif while they were changing.
In less than an hour they emerged, W.G. attired
as nearly as convention would allow him, in the
manner of his woaded ancestry: a splendid cave-
man with lowering black brows and hairy arms like
those of a gorilla, a disguise that only called for a
little accentuation of his natural characteristics to
be made effective ; Maskew, again in character, as a
Restoration cavalier; and Edwin in the modest
guise of Pierrot. In the foyer of the theatre they met
Martin, who had driven down in a hansom from
Alvaston clothed in six feet of baby linen, with a
feeding bottle round his neck. The stalls were al-
ready full of a carnival crowd of students, and the
rest of the house was crowded with spectators who
had come to enjoy the rag, and other unfortunate
people who had entered in ignorance of the festival
and the fact that their form of entertainment was
to be changed for one night only.
There, among the crowd, Edwin found Griffin, a
CARNIVAL 317
fleshy and unsubtle Mephistopheles, the Mephis-
topheles of Gounod, not of Goethe, and Freddie St.
Aubyn, romantically pale in a wig of black curls
that he had procured for his presentation of Byron.
Freddie, in the interests of verisimilitude, had even
shaved his moustache.
Only the earlier part of the performance re-
mained in Edwin's memory. The rest of it was no
more to him than a brilliant haze, from which single
moments of wild picturesqueness detached them-
selves : as when he had a vision of a prehistoric man
armed with a waving whisky bottle for a club and
feebly restrained by a flushed cavalier, flown with
insolence and wine, storming his way through the
surging crowd in front of the stalls bar and plant-
ing his feet upon the counter; or of the same bar-
barian, gently armed by a tactful manager in eve-
ning dress, putting his weapon to the usages of
peace and friendliness by uncorking it and offering
its contents to a firm but good-humoured police-
man.
"What a splendid fellow W.G. is," Edwin thought
to himself. "Splendid . . . splendid . . . magnifi-
cent." And while he was thinking this, a sombre
poet with shining eyes drew him aside and con-
fessed to him, almost with tears, that all this bril-
liance and colour and life meant nothing to him
compared with the memory of the Beardsley lady,
whose ankles were so thin that they might be
spanned with his little finger. "As light as a
feather," said the poet, "gossamer . . . swansdown
... all soul. Of course, old fellow, I know that
318 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
you can understand. I shouldn't talk like this to
any other person in the world."
And Edwin understood, and realised the justice
of the poet's choice of a confidant so sympathetic-
ally that he was spurred to confidences on his own
part. "You see, I happen to be a poet myself," he
said, and to prove it he felt bound to recite a sonnet
that he had composed a year or two before at Stt
Luke's. A magnificent sonnet it seemed to him, per-
haps more magnificent for Jlie accompaniment of a
song in waltz rhythm by the theatre orchestra. It
was flattering to find that Byron agreed with him
as to its excellence ; but while the poet was pressing
Ms hand in congratulatory brotherhood, and Edwin
was just deciding to recite it all over again, the
sinister figure of Mephistopheles appeared and
parted them, telling him that Miss Marie Loraine
was now singing the last verse of her song and that
in two minutes it would be his duty to present her
with a bouquet and a pair of silver hair-brushes.
Still reciting the most telling lines of his sonnet,
he was conducted by Mephistopheles through the
manager's office, where a young lady who, in her in ;
viting softness, resembled Miss Wheeler, was count-
ing the counter-foils of tickets, and through a sub-
terranean passage with the welcome chill of a cata-
comb, to the wings of the theatre, where a florid
bouquet was thrust into his hands.
It struck Edwin that the scent of the flowers was
of a suffocating heaviness, until he realised that
the overpowering perfume of which he was aware
proceeded not from the bouquet but from the scents
and powders of a bevy of creatures of unnatural
CARNIVAL 319
loveliness who stood waiting in the wings. They
were the ladies of the chorus, and the nature of
their costume would have given them an excuse
for shivering; but they did not appear to be con-
scious of the heat that throbbed in Edwin's brain.
The scent and the proximity of such a huge expanse
of naked flesh excited him. At this moment all
his awkwardness seemed to have vanished. He
could not believe that he was the same person who
had blushed at "the mere contact of the American
girPs overall, or sat speechless in the presence of
Miss Wheeler at the Dousita. His old modesty
seemed to him to have been a ridiculous and inex-
cusable folly; for, at the moment, he would have
welcomed the prospect of making the most shame-
less advances to any one of these houris in competi-
tion with any man of his acquaintance. With the
air of a Sultan he surveyed them, deciding to which
of those blossoms the handkerchief should be
thrown.
"Now get along with you," said the stage-man-
ager, pushing him forward.
He gripped the presents in his hands, and tread-
ing on air, advanced on to the stage, where Miss
Marie Loraine was kissing her hands to the stalls.
The stage was very big, and sloped in such a way
that he felt his feet impelled towards the footlights ;
but, being determined that he would accomplish
his mission with dignity, Edwin steered a steady,
if resilient, course. In front of him he saw a crea-
ture before whose elegance and beauty the beauty of
the chorus was as nothing. She stood waiting for
Itim and smiled. For a moment Edwin faced the
320 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
auditorium, a vast and dark abyss in which not
a single face was to be seen. It gave him a sudden
fright to think that so many thousands of unseen
eyes were fixed upon the patch of limelight in which
he stood. He pulled himself together. This was
the moment, he thought, in which it was for him
to make some speech worthy of the bewildering love-
liness that stood before him.
"Go on," said the impatient voice of Mephia-
topheles in the wings. "Buck up."
"Miss Loraine," said Edwin, with a flourish, "I
have the honour of " The middle of his sentence
was broken by a crash and a tremendous peal of
laughter from the unseen thousands. The younger
Wade, arrayed in the panoply of a Roman legionary
and balanced upon the parapet of the stage box,
had fallen with a clash of armour into the big drum.
Edwin thrust the bouquet and the hair-brushes into
the arms of Miss Loraine, herself convulsed with
laughter. With a terrific draught the curtain swept
down.
"Splendid," said the voice of Mephistophelean
The rest of the evening was more confused than
ever. He remembered a vision of this surpassing
beauty standing in the wings in a long silk wrapper
that her dresser had thrown over her shoulders,
and thanking him for his presentation. To Edwin
the moment seemed the beginning of a passionate
romance. He remembered other moments in the
auditorium, in which W.G. and Maskew figured.
He remembered the taste of a glass of Benedictine,
a liqueur that he had never tasted before, that
Maskew gave him to pull him together again after
CARNIVAL 321
his exertions on the stage. He remembered a flash-
ing of lights, an uproar, a free-fight, and the sing-
ing of "God Save the Queen." And then he found
himself a member of a small but distinguished
brotherhood streaming at a tremendous rate up the
wide street that led towards the Prince's Hospital.
All of them were medicals, and most of them his
seniors. Freddie St. Aubyn, the Wade brothers,
W.G., and Maskew were among them. Out of the
main road they passed singing into the meaner
streets that surrounded the hospital : miserable
streets with low houses and courts clustered on
either side, from the upper .windows of which
astonished working men and women in their night-
dresses put out their heads to look at the vocal pro-
cession. Opposite the portico of the hospital was
a cab rank on which a solitary hansom was stand-
ing with the horse asleep in the shafts and the
driver taking his rest inside. The sight appeared to
arouse the fighting instincts of the elder Wade.
"Good God," he said, with indignation, "here's a
cab. What the hell does the fellow think he's doing
here at this time of night? He must be drunk. Look
at it!"
His brother, who could carry his liquor better,
tried to persuade him to leave the cab alone; but
before any one knew what was happening, he had
thrown himself on it and turned the whole affair
upside down in the road. Edwin heard a crash
of splintered glass ; he saw the cab on its side and
the sleepy horse with its legs in the air. He thought :
"Good God! What has happened?" And the next
thing he saw was a red-faced cabman, buttoned
322 THE .YOUNG PHYSICIAN
up to his ears, crawling out of the wreckage and
cursing fluently at Wade, who stared for a moment,
dazed, at the havoc his strength had created, and
then bolted for the shelter of the hospital. The
cabman, now thoroughly awakened, bolted after
him. Edwin glowed with admiration for Wade'g
achievement. It was the deed of a Titan, a splendid
Berserker. The cabby had burst through the con-
course on the hospital steps, thirsting for the blood
of Wade, who, by this time, was lying quietly on
a hooded stretcher swatched in bandages and quite
unrecognisable. A house surgeon in a white overall
confronted the cabman. The hospital porters in
uniform stood solemnly at his elbow. The house
surgeon was assuring the cabby that he was drunk :
the cabby telling the lot of them exactly what he
thought of them.
"Take hold of this fellow," said the house
surgeon to the porters, "and hold him while I get a
stomach pump." The porters, specially qualified
for dealing with midnight drunks, obeyed. There
was a splendid struggle in which the foaming cabby
was pitched out into the road, ing their ing
eyes to Hell. The bandaged Wade was carried
solemnly upstairs on his stretcher and brought
round with whisky in the house surgeon's room, a
chamber full of Olympian card-players, pickled
with cigar-smoke and the fumes of alcohol. Some
one, it was the cavalier, began to play the piano.
Edwin seized the opportunity to recite his sonnet,
until W.G. laid a monstrous hand on his mouth.
That vision ended, and to it succeeded one of
cool, deserted streets with far too many kerb-stones
CARNIVAL 323
for Edwin's liking, and then the dishevelled sitting-
room in W.G.'s digs in which they had dressed with
a pale gas-jet hissing and flaring and a momentary
impression of W.G. asking him where he'd put the
damned corkscrew. Edwin remembered rising to
a brilliant extreme of wit. "Am I your corkscrew's
keeper?" he said; and while he was explaining at
length the aptness of his mot W.G. knocked the
neck off the bottle with his poker, eclipsing any
possible verbal brilliance.
In the middle of the night Edwin woke and
staggered in the dark to the washhand-stand, where
he drank a draught of water, so cool and sweet as
to be astonishing, until he remembered that it had
possibly come from the mountains beyond Felindre.
W. G. was snoring heavily on the bed that he had
just left. W.G.'s snoring got on his nerves so that
he had to prod him in the ribs and wake him, a pro-
ceeding that W.G. seemed unjustly to resent.
"I say, W.G.," he said, "do you think I was
drunk?"
"Drunk?" said W.G. "Good God, you didn't
wake me to ask me that? You'll know all right in
the morning."
Edwin only knew that his head was splitting and
that he was hellishly cold.
CHAPTER IY
SCIENCE
WG.'S prophecy that Edwin would know all
about it in the morning proved correct ; but
it was some consolation to him to know that he
shared the experience with his friends. All the
next day he went about his work with Maskew feel-
ing a little light-headed, and a peculiar weakness
in the legs made him disinclined for any exertion
that could be avoided. Maskew recovered himself
more easily ; but W.G., who never did anything by
halves, solemnly embarked on a "bust" that lasted
for a whole week.
This defection disgusted Maskew, who, in his
hard, capable way, believed in moderation in all
things even in vice. He considered W.G.'s con-
duct "a bit thick"; principally because he was de-
prived of his company in the dissecting room ; but
to Edwin the big man's debauch seemed in some
ways heroic and in keeping with his titanic physical
nature : a spectacle rather for awe than for reproof.
It was even impressive to see W.G. returning like a
giant refreshed with vice, throwing his huge
energies into the pursuits that he had abandoned
as readily as he had lately squandered them in an
324
SCIENCE 325
atmosphere of patchouli. In this line Edwin
would have found it constitutionally impossible to
compete with W.G., but, for all that, he could not
deny that he felt better, more confident, and more
complete for the pantomime experience. It even
flattered him to find himself regarded as something
of a blood by the humbler members of his year who
had witnessed his adventure on the Queen's Theatre
stage, though he could not conceal from himself
the fact that Martin, more absorbed than ever in
blameless but exacting relations with the eligible
young ladies of Alvaston, was a little supercilious
as to his attainments.
With the approach of the summer and the first
examination he found little time for anything but
work. The preparation for the exam, was so much
of a scramble that he had no time to realise the
imaginative significance of the subjects in which
he was engaged. He did not guess that the little
fat professor of Physics who lectured so drily on
the elements of his science was actually employing
his leisure in the tremendous adventure of weighing
the terrestrial globe, or that certain slender aerials
stretched like the web of a spider from a mast at
the top of the university buildings were actually
receiving the first lispings of wireless telegraphy,
an achievement to which that bearded dreamer, the
Principal, had devoted twenty years of his life.
To Edwin there was nothing intrinsically ro-
mantic in Chemistry or Physics. His mind could
not conceive that science was a minute and infinite-
ly laborious conquest of the properties of matter.
Atoms and Molecules and the newly-dreamed
326 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Electrons, still trembling in the realms of impon-
derable speculation, were no more to him than
abstractions unrelated to the needs of practical
human life. They were only facts to be learned
by rote, symbols to be memorised and grouped to-
gether on paper like the letters in an algebraic cal-
culation ; and the whole of this potentially romantic
experience was clouded by his own headachy dis-
taste for the gaseous smells of the laboratory: the
choking yellow fumes of chlorine that escaped from
the glass cupboards in which it was manufactured,
and the less tolerable, if more human, odour of
Sulphuretted Hydrogen, in an air that was desic-
cated by the blue flames of half a hundred Bunsen
burners. These two subjects w r ere nothing more
than an arid desert of facts relating to dead mat-
ter through which he had to fight his way, and he
hated them.
In comparison with them, Biology was something
of an oasis. Here, at any rate, he had to deal with
life, a mystery more obvious and less academic.
The contemplation of its lower forms, such as the
Amoeba, a tiny speck of dreamy protoplasm stretch-
ing out its languid tentacles, living its remote and
curiously detached life with no aims beyond that
of bare mysterious existence, filled him with a
strange awe. The laboratory in which these re-
searches were conducted, was high and airy and not
associated with any unpleasant smells except at the
season when the class were engaged upon the dis-
section of the hideous dog-fish. It had even its
aspects of beauty in the person of the fair American
in her dark overall ; and for this reason, if for no
SCIENCE 327
other, Edwin found himself becoming most pro-
ficient in his knowledge of the subject.
In the middle of the summer the examination
came. Maskew was an easy first, and carried off
the Queen's scholarship for the year; Edwin came
second with a first-class, which, even if it didn't
satisfy himself, was enough to make his father en-
thusiastic; Martin ambled through with an ease
that challenged Edwin's respect, and W.G., horribly
intense and determined through all the week of
the exam., scraped through by virtue of sheer bull-
dog tenacity. The result of the examination did
Edwin good if only by convincing him that Maskew,
for all his suburban flashiness and his inferior gen-
eral education, had a better head than his own.
Like the excellent man of business that he was^
Maskew did not rest upon his oars : the week af tee-
the examination, and the first of the long vacation,
found him and W.G. back in the dissecting room,
plugging into anatomy, the next year's principal
subject, and Edwin saw at once that if he were to
keep pace with his rival he would have to forgo the
months of summery leisure to which he had looked
forward in the vacation. Martin was playing tennis
in Ireland, and so he found himself thrown once
more into the society of these two.
It was a pleasant time, for their leisure was their
own and there were no lectures to tie them to their
work. They did a great deal of their reading in
W.G.'s rooms, full of easy-chairs, and wreathed in
tobacco smoke that escaped through a French
window into a tiny garden plot green and pleasant
under the white Midland sky, and this room became
328 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
a haven of escape from the burning brick pavements
in which Edwin and his friends would work to-
gether without strain, talking of the future and of
W.G.'s romantic past, and stabilising their own
ideas on the uncertainties of sex : a problem that so
far had meant very little to Edwin, but which W.G.
was not in a position to ignore.
"You know, it's damned funny," he said, "but
when you get to know more about things, when
you've done some anatomy and that, you begin to
think of sex -in a different light. It knocks all the
mystery out of it, and I'm sure that's a jolly sound
thing. Good Lord, when I think of the ignorance
with which I started on this sort of thing ! Finding
out everything by experiment, you know. . . . Why,
if I'd had a short course of anatomy before I left
school I should have been saved a lot of rotten ex-
periments that didn't do me or any one else any
good. I'd have been a damned sight cleaner-
minded than I ever was. A medical training's a
jolly good thing in that way: shows you exactly
where you are instead of letting you go fumbling
about in the dark."
"Knocks all the poetry out of it though," said
Maskew.
"Poetry be damned," said W.G. seriously,
"there's a good deal too much of your poetry about
it. Poetry and mystery and a lot of bunkum like
that . . . Male and female created He them. I don't
particularly admire the method. I think He made
rather a better job of the amceba. Think how much
simpler it would be to split open a chunk of proto-
plasm instead of having to make a ridiculous fool
SCIENCE 329
of yourself if you want to propagate your species.
Still, there it is, and the sooner you realise exactly
what it means and what it's all about, the less you
worry your head about it."
"Well, of course, if you're going to treat it in
that light you're going to knock all the pleasure
out of life " Maskew protested.
"Oh, you're a sensualist," said W.G. "The main
thing that I have against it is that it wastes valu-
able time." He became scornful. "Think of all
these rotten fellows who spend their days writing
books on sexual problems, analysing their rotten
little sensations in detail and gloating over myster-
ies of sex. It's only their ignorance that makes
them like that. What they want is a thorough
course of anatomy and a whack of practical experi-
ence to cure them; and if every one else had the
same sort of education there'd be no sale for their
books."
Edwin, listening to their sparring, remembered
the library at St. Luke's and a certain shelf of
anatomical works that was always kept locked with
a special key that Mr. Leeming carried mysteriously
on his watch-chain. On the whole, he agreed with
W.G. and his preferences for the methods of the
Amoeba's parthenogenesis. He wondered, however,
if the kind of education that W.G. advocated would
have scotched the production of such works as
Romeo and Juliet or the love poems of Shelley.
"It would be rather rotten if you did away with
love, W.G.," he said.
"Oh, I'm not talking about love," said W.G.
"I'm talking about a fellow's ordinary physical
336 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
needs. Being in love is not the same thing as that."
"It is usually," said the cynical Maskew.
"It's all a ridiculous mix-up," said Edwin.
"Thank God it doesn't worry us."
n
With the beginning of the new year these deli-
cious hours of leisure disappeared. Edwin and his
friends, with the assurance of second-year men, be-
came the real possessors of the dissecting room.
Anatomy and physiology now absorbed all their
time, and the leisurely interest in the first subject,
which had been subsidiary in the first year, was
now a matter of academical life and death. From
the simple anatomical details of the upper and
lower extremities that he had dissected with Martin
in the year before, he passed to the more vital
regions of the human body: the thorax, the
abdomen, and the head and neck. He still attended
the polished course of lectures on anatomy that the
Dean delivered in the theatre; but this process he
was forced to regard as a waste of time, since the
Dean's presentation of the subject did not differ
greatly from that of any text-book of anatomy, and
the Dean's personality, which curiously resembled
that of his cousin Martin, was too aristocratically
remote ever to seem real.
In the dissecting room, on the other hand, he be-
came acquainted and fascinated with the first of his
medical instructors who had aroused his imagina-
tion. This was the chief demonstrator of Anatomy,
Robert Moon, or, more familiarly, Bobby, a figure
of romantic picturesqueness. He was tall and in-
SCIENCE 33!
clined to be fat, he always wore a black frock-coat,
and his serious face, which was of a size and pallor
that his surname suggested, was crowned by an
erect crop of black and curly hair. In Edwin's first
year he had always seemed to him a strange and
distant figure, walking slowly up and down the
dissecting room, on the occasions when he emerged
from the dark chamber which he inhabited in the
corner near the door, like a fat and rather sinister
spider.
He rarely spoke : when he did so it was with a
broad, north country accent and the most extraordi-
nary deliberation and formality in his choice of
words. With the men in the second year he pos-
sessed an enormous reputation not only for his
exhaustive knowledge of anatomy, by the side of
which the Dean's attainments seemed merely those
of a dilettante, but also for his excellence as a coach.
Edwin and his two friends became sedulous at-
tendants at his tutorials, where, standing in im-
mobile dignity behind one of the zinc dissecting-
room tables in front of an appropriate background
of blackboard, and surrounded by a ring of second-
year students, who came to sit at his feet volunta-
rily, like the disciples of a Greek philosopher, he
would demonstrate the details of some ragged
anatomical part that had lain in spirit until it was
of the colour and consistency of leather.
In Bobby's demonstrations there was neither
imagination nor romance: they were merely fas-
cinating in virtue of the amazing exactitude of the
detail which his brain had acquired through long
familiarity with the dismembered fragments of
332 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
humanity. There was nothing in the way of minute
observation that could escape him, and his ques-
tions were so searching and unexpected that even
Maskew, who had himself a prodigious memory for
minute detail and could carry the letter of a text-
book in his head, was constantly floored by them.
It was a magnificent stimulus to Edwin ; for it be-
came a kind of game to master a part so thoroughly
that Bobby could not stump him.
By this time he was so used to railway travelling
that between the morning discussion of the progress
of the war that had just broken out in South Africa,
and the appearance of halfpenny papers, that multi-
plied like greenfly in this heated atmosphere, he
could read his text-books of anatomy in a crowded
carriage without disturbance apart from the natural
curiosity that a vision of luridly coloured diagrams 1
awakened in the minds of his fellow passengers, and
particularly the bank clerk, who thirsted in a way
that W.G. would have approved for technical in-
struction in the matter of certain organs. Edwin
prepared himself for the demonstrator's tutorials
as rigorously as if he had been approaching a vital
examination; he spent long hours in his bedroom,
utterly heedless of his wide prospect of wintry fields,
thinking of nothing but his collection of bleached
bones, now carefully marked with coloured chalks
to show the origins and insertions of muscles, and
particularly those intricate fretted plates that are
joined to form the fragile casket of the human skull.
So engrossed was he in absorbing the mere details
of their physical form that his mind had no room
for other speculations of the kind that had im-
SCIENCE 333
pressed him in the days of his first acquaintance
with anatomy. It never struck him that the articu-
lated skull which grinned at him from his mantel-
piece when he woke each morning, had once con-
tained the convolutions of a human brain: a mass
of pulpy matter that had been the origin of strange
complications of movement and feeling and thought,
the storehouse of memories, the spring of passions
and the theatre of dreams. He did not even know
if the skull were that of a man or a woman. To
him it was no more than an assembly of dry bones,
intricate in their relations with one another, pierced
by the foramina of bewildering nerves and blood-
vessels, all of which must be visualised and stored
and remembered within the limits of another struc-
ture of the same kind the sutures and eminences
of which he could feel with his own fingers when
he rubbed his puzzled head.
He used to go back to Mr. Moon's tutorials con-
vinced that he knew all that was to be known of the
subject in hand, and then Bobby, in his slow Lan-
cashire voice, with broadened "a"s and "u"s, would
put to him some leisurely question that showed him
that he knew nothing. Very decorously and slowly
these questions would be asked; and since the an-
swers were concerned with the dryest and most ex-
act of physical facts, guessing was of no help to
him and silence the only refuge of the ignorant. No
display either of knowledge or ignorance had the
least effect on Bobby Moon. His wide and dreamy
face showed no emotion on the discovery of either.
On very rare occasions he would descend to a kind
of ponderous verbal humour, slow and elephantine,
334 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
like the humour of Beethoven; but even in
these moments his face showed no signs of emo-
tion, and he would pass on without waiting for any
recognition of his joke to the next lethargic ques-
tion. "Mr. Harrop," he would say slowly, "what is
the fotty pod of Hovers?" And Harrop, sitting on
a high stool that showed his variegated socks to
perfection, would reply that the fatty pad of Havers
was a small cushion of fat set in the head of the
femur to lubricate the hollow of the acetabulum.
The picturesque figure of Moon soon began to
dominate Edwin's impressions of the dissecting
room. There was something provocative in the
remoteness of this black and solitary form from all
the concerns of human life. Edwin conceived him
to be a kind of cerebral abstraction, no man, but
an advanced text-book of anatomy; curiously en-
dowed with the powers of locomotion and speech
but bereft of any human characteristic. It amazed
him to discover, in the end, that Bobby Moon was
nothing of the sort, but a creature of the most deli-
cate human tenderness, so sensitive to the appeals
of beauty and humanity that he had been forced to
adopt the impassive mask that was all that his pu-
pils knew of him from an instinct of self-protec-
tion.
It happened in this way. During the early part of
his second year Edwin had become conscious of a
new figure in the dissecting room, that of a man
named Boyce, a student with a brilliant reputation
who had managed in some inexplicable way to fail
in his first examination and be left behind by the
other men of his year. He was a tall, fair creature,
SCIENCE 335
with a long face and small, very blue eyes. The
society of Alvaston had made him friendly with
Martin, from whom Edwin's new relations were
gradually separating him. The only characteristic
that Edwin had so far noticed in Boyce was an
almost literary fluency in the use of foul language
which left even Harrop gasping. Boyce was work-
ing alone on a thorax a few tables away from Edwin.
He was a neat and laborious dissector, and Edwin
had been tempted to admire the skill with which
he had defined the network of blood-vessels, the sys-
tem of coronary arteries and veins, with which the
human heart is enmeshed. Boyce was evidently far
less unapproachable than Edwin had imagined, and
while they were examining his dissection together
they had not noticed the approach of Dr. Moon, who
had walked slowly to their table and stood gazing
at the specimen through his moonlike pince-nez.
They did not realise that he was near them until
they heard his voice, slowly intoning a line of
poetry. "The heart," he said: "arras'd in purple
like a house of kings. Are you acquainted with that
line, Mr. Boyce?"
"No, sir. Who wrote it?"
"A man named Francis Thompson. He was a
medical student at Manchester, several years senior
to me."
"Oh, I know his name," said Boyce. "He is a
friend of my father's."
"A great poet," said Bobby solemnly. "A great
poet. The contemplation of mortality in this place
should be full of poetical reflections. You see, this
336 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
is the heart of a very old or a very dissolute man.
The coronary arteries are stiff with atheroma."
"I was thinking, sir," said Edwin, encouraged,
"of the heart of Shelley that Trelawny was sup-
posed to have picked out of the funeral pyre when
the body was burned. His account says that only
the heart was left. He gave it to Hunt, didn't he?
But you'd think the heart would be burned more
easily "
"Yes. . . . It's an unlikely story. Shelley's hearth
he looked up dreamily at the ceiling "Shelley's
heart. . . . It's a strange reflection." And he moved
away, his big head still in the air and his hands
behind his back.
"I say," said Edwin, "I'd no idea Bobby was like
that. You wouldn't associate him with poetry,
would you? He seems such an awfully matter-of-
fact chap. Dry bones, you know."
Boyce laughed. "Oh, you don't know Bobby.
Nobody does here except my father. He's an in-
curable sentimentalist. He lives an awfully lonely
sort of life in some digs up in Alvaston. His mind's
crammed with poetry and old music and a lot of
ethnological lumber. Do you know, he's about the
biggest authority in England on prehistoric man?"
"I hadn't the least idea. I imagined he dreamed
of nothing but bones and soft parts."
"You would. . . . But he's a wonderful chap
really. Are you keen on poetry?"
"Of course I am."
"There's no 'of course' about it. I don't imagine
that your friends Brown and Maskew are particu-
larly interested in it. My guvnor's by way of being
SCIENCE 337
a poet, you know. Bobby's awfully keen on his
work. Do you know it?"
Edwin was ashamed to say he did not.
"Oh, I'm not in the least surprised," said Boyce.
"He's not appreciated, you know, except by other
poets, like this fellow Thompson. I think he's
rather good, as a matter of fact, quite apart from
the fact that he's my father. If you'll come up
to our place some day I can show you a lot of in-
teresting things in his library : first editions and
things like that. I'd no idea that you were keen
on them."
The tone implied such an appreciation of Edwin's
hectic past as typified by his solitary appearance
on the stage of the Queen's Theatre that he hastened
to deny the impeachment. He was tremendously
pleased to have struck a man like Boyce, who went
on to talk about music, of which Edwin knew noth-
ing, and exuded an easy atmosphere of culture, of
a kind that he envied, without ever losing sight of
the fact that Edwin had come to him in rather a
questionable shape. Edwin was thrilled to think
that he had reached the threshold of a new and ex-
citing friendship which made his association with
Brown and Maskew seem commonplace and shabby ;
but he was far too shy to force himself on Boyce,
and so the acquaintance remained for many months
at the exact stage in which it had begun, and he
had to be content with the sudden insight that
Boyce had given him into the hidden, romantic
qualities of Dr. Moon.
Sometimes, while he was scrubbing his hands with
carbolic soap, the only thing that really banished
338 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
the smell of the dissecting room from his fingers,
he would hear Boyce discussing music, and particu-
larly the work of Tschaikowsky, whose sixth sym-
phony had just inflamed his imagination, with Mr.
Moon in his gloomy bunk, and he would go on
washing his hands until they were ridged and sod-
den in the hope of hearing what they were saying
or even of entering into their conversation, until
W.G. would come along and drag him off to Joey's,
asking him what the hell he was dawdling about.
Then Edwin would be almost ashamed of W.G.'s
company, and hated himself for it, since he knew
in his heart of hearts that, even if he were a Phil-
istine, W.G. was one of the best and soundest fel-
lows on earth.
The friendship with Boyce, however, was bound to
come. It began with the formation of a small liter-
ary society, that had been originated by certain of
the third-year men with whom Boyce was acquaint-
ed, and which held its meetings in the newly-opened
smoking room that adjoined Dr. Moon's chamber
of horrors. Papers were read every fortnight, and
discussions followed in which Edwin had scarcely
dared to take part, but Boyce was a polished and
fluent protagonist. In the end, when the first en-
thusiasms of the society, to which Brown and Mas-
kew, naturally enough, did not belong, had been
spent, Edwin was asked to read a paper. He chose
for his subject Browne's Religio Medici, a work
with which this medical audience seemed strangely
unacquainted. The paper was a success, and at the
end of the meeting Boyce accosted him friendlily
and asked him why he had never been up to see
SCIENCE 339
his father's books. Edwin withheld the obvious
reply that the invitation had not been pressed al-
though he had never ceased to think of it; and
Boyce at once suggested that they should go up
to Alvaston together that evening. "We can put
you up for the night if that will be more conveni-
ent," he said.
They walked up together under the high, frosty
sky, talking of poetry, of all the beautiful things
that they had worshipped in common without know-
ing it. It seemed strange to Edwin that they should
have worked side by side for a couple of years and
scarcely spoken to each other when all the time they
had so many delights that might have been shared.
The unlocking of this closed and secret chamber of
his heart gave him a strange feeling of elation and
made the world suddenly beautiful. The hard and
wintry pavement seemed curiously smooth and re-
silient; the roadway ran in masterly and noble
curves, the black branches of plane-trees and labur-
nums, even the pointed gables of the smug suburban
villas seemed to take on a new and piercing beauty
against the starry sky, and they swung along to-
gether as triumphant in their ecstasy of youth as
if indeed they were treading on the stars.
"What a topping night," said Boyce. "God . . .
look at Vega!" He waved his long arms and
quoted :
"Or search the brow of eve, to catch
In opal depths the first faint beat
Of Vega's fiery heart. . . ."
340 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Whose is that?"
"My guvnor's. He's a tremendous chap on astron-
omy."
"It's damned good," said Edwin, thrilling.
"Not bad, is it? He's a very sound man, the
guvnor. I think you'd like him."
But when they reached the Boyces' house they
found that the poet was not at home. In place of
him Edwin was introduced to a mild and beautiful
figure with a soft voice who turned out to be Boyce's
mother. She had her son's soft blue eyes, and spoke
to him with such caressing tenderness that Edwin
Was seized with a sudden feeling of aching empti-
ness for the memory of his own mother, of whom,
so potent is the anodyne of time, he had scarcely
thought for more than a year.
Boyce presented Edwin with a high social rec-
ommendation. "A friend of Denis Martin's," he
said. Mrs. Boyce smiled on him.
"Look here," said her son, "I'm afraid we can't
very well go into the guvnor's study. He hates any
one invading it when he's not there. Let's go up-
stairs to my own room and talk."
Edwin had a passing vision of the forbidden
chamber, the flanks of a grand piano in which a
reflection of firelight glowed red, and endless shelves
of gilt-lettered books. The rest of the house seemed
to him rather untidy, as if it were no more than a
dry chrysalis protecting the central beauty of the
poet's room; but he had not time to see much fol-
lowing in the rear of Boyce's long-legged progress
up the stairs. He found himself, at last, in a small
attic with a gable window that framed the starry
SCIENCE 341
sky: the kind of room that satisfied all his own
ideals of comfort and seclusion.
Boyce was proud and willing to exhibit his treas-
ures. They showed a curious mixture of the school-
boy, represented by photographic groups of cricket
teams, glass cases of butterflies, and a tasseled
Rugby cap, and the more mature intelligence that
now possessed them. Edwin and he sat down oppo-
site one another in a couple of easy-chairs, and
talked and smoked incessantly all that evening.
They spoke of Wordsworth, the idol of Boyce's liter-
ary devotions, of Browning, whose claims to poetry
he would not allow, and of Shenstone, whose name
he had never met before. By this time Edwin was
getting rather ashamed of his early admiration for
Shenstone, and the fact that Boyce had never heard
of the Pastoral Ballad confirmed him in his decision
that the author was an acquaintance whom he had
better drop. They went on to Francis Thompson *
Dr. Moon's quotation from the Anthem of Earth
had sent Edwin searching for his works in the
municipal library and he now learned that this be-
wildering genius, w r ho had once, like him, been a
medical student, had actually slept in the room
beneath his feet.
"He never qualified," said Boyce dreamily, "and
yet medicine is a wonderful thing. I should think
the fact that the medical man is always face to
face with mortality" he pointed to a suspended
skeleton in the corner "and all the other Big funda-
mental things like birth and pain, ought to give
him a sort of sense of proportion and make him
sensitive to the beauties of life. Your friend, Sir
342 THE YQUNG PHYSICIAN
Thomas Browne, is an example. Then there's
Kabelais."
"There are heaps of others," said Edwin.
"Well, yes. . . . Keats."
"Byron and Akenside," Edwin supplied from the
eighteenth century.
"I don't know the gentleman," said Boyce.
"Well, then, Goldsmith and Crabbe. Crabbe's
rather good, you know. And Shelley "
"Shelley?"
"Yes, Shelley walked a hospital when he was in
London with Harriet."
"I'd no idea of that," said Boyce, "but there's a
modern fellow that the guvnor's rather keen on,
named Bridges. Kobert Bridges, who's a physi-
cian."
"I've never heard of him."
"No . . . he's not well known, but I believe he's
pretty good."
And so they talked on, deciding that the world
was ripe for great poetical achievement, awed to
think that perhaps they were living, without know-
ing it, in the beginning of a great age of literature ;
convinced, to a degree of enthusiasm, of the splen-
dour and magnanimity of the calling that they had
adopted; conscious thrillingly conscious of the
fact that the whole world lay before them full of
undreamed delights as mysterious and yet as clear
as the wintry sky.
Edwin had to run for his train. He didn't mind
running. On a night like this he felt that violent
exercise was a mode of expressing the curious ela-
tion that his talk with Boyce, and his excitement
SCIENCE 343
in the new friendship that promised so many hours
of happiness, had given him. At the gates of the
station he paused to buy an evening paper. It con-
tained the news of Buller's defeat at Colenso and
the result of a cup-tie between North Bromwich
Albion and Notts Forest, but he had no room in his
mind for football or for this African war in which
W.G., to the ruin of his future finances, was itching
to enlist. Edwin's thoughts were of the great names
and the great works of which he and Boyce had
been talking. The newspaper lay folded on his
knees; the flares of the black country swept past
him in the night, unseen. He was not even aware
of the other occupants of the carriage until he sud-
denly found himself staring straight into the eyes
of his opposite, whom he recognised as Edward
Willis, the son of Walter Willis of the Great Mawne
Furnaces.
All Aunt Laura's attempts, heroically made in
the interests of social advancement, had so far failed
to bring about a friendship between these two.
Edwin, on his side, could never get out of his head
an unreasonable prejudice against the Willises, the
natural result of Aunt Laura's adulation of their
wealth, and even a knowledge of his own humble
origins had not affected his traditional distrust of
people whom he regarded as flashy and self-made.
In Edward Willis he found a creature even more
shy than himself, and the very fact that Mrs. Willis
and Aunt Laura, putting their heads together, had
decided to throw them into each other's arms, was
enough to create an atmosphere of distrust and un-
easiness. The sudden recognition in the railway
344 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
carriage was merely an embarrassment. Edwin
was startled into saying "Hallo," and Willis replied
in exactly the same way ; then both of them retired
with precipitation to the cover of their evening
newspapers, from which they listened to the con-
versation of a commercial traveller who was return-
ing home from London and had all the latest and
most authentic gossip on the South African situa-
tion.
"Mind you," he said, "they're wily fellows, these
old Boers ; we may not be up to their dirty tricks :
I'm proud to say we aren'.t. We shouldn't be Eng-
lish if we were. But one thing, sir, you'll see in
the end, and that is that dogged British pluck will
come through. You mark my words."
Edwin felt an overpowering impulse to say that
dogged British pluck pretty obviously hadn't come
through at Colenso; but Edward Willis's presence
made him far too self-conscious to commit himself,
and at the next station the traveller and his friend
picked up their bags and departed, breathing the
word "Buller" as if it were an incantation war-
ranted to fortify and console. Edwin and Willis
were alone.
When their silence had become altogether too
ridiculous, Edwin plucked up his courage and said,
"Kotten thing this war."
"I don't know," said Willis. "It's all right for
my old man."
"What do you mean?"
"Iron. . . . We're chock full of Government work
for South Africa: gun-carriages and rifle barrels.
Yon're doing medicine, aren't you?"
SCIENCE 345
"Yes."
"Lucky devil. You're learning to cure people
while I'm learning to make things to kill them."
He stared out of the window towards a patch of
sky in which the glow of his father's furnaces pul-
sated as though it registered the beatings of a
savage, fiery heart, and relapsed into gloomy si-
lence. The tunnel swallowed them, and in a moment
they pulled up at Mawne Hall. Willis prepared
to go. "I say," he said, "we're giving a dance
next week " and hesitated.
"What for?" said Edwin, for want of something
better.
"I don't know . . . unless it's to celebrate the
Colenso casualties. I believe you're invited. I hope
you'll come."
"Thanks," said Edwin. But Willis was gone.
CHAPTER V
ROMANCE
MB. INGLEBY wanted to know why he was so
late.
"I read a paper at the Literary Society," he said,
"and then went back to Alvaston with a man named
Boyce. He's a son of Arthur Boyce."
"The auctioneer?" asked Mr. Ingleby.
"No . . , the poet."
Mr. Ingleby's features showed a faint anxiety, as
though he doubted if such an influence were
healthy. "Well, I hope your paper was a success,"
he said.
"Oh, I think it went all right. Any letters?"
"Yes . . . two. Here they are." He handed them
to Edwin.
One of them was the invitation from Mawne. He
showed it to his father.
"A dance " said Mr. Ingleby.
"Yes. ... I suppose I'd better go."
"Your Aunt Laura told me about it. If it won't
interfere with your work, I don't see why you
shouldn't."
"I haven't any proper clothes. Evening dress,
you know.*
ROMANCE 347
"I snppose that is quite necessary," said Mr.
Ingleby regretfully.
Edwin could see that the question of expense
was troubling his father's mind. He wished to
goodness he would say so outright, instead of look-
ing vaguely distressed. It would be so much more
satisfactory. As it was, he could only feel indefi-
nitely in the wrong, as if the dance were a piece
of reckless and inexcusable levity in which he had
no right to take a part. The dress suit, the acquisi-
tion of which had been anticipated with some
satisfaction, now appeared to him in the terms of
an accumulation of small change hardly earned
in his father's dusty shop : as the outcome of penny-
worths of Epsom Salts, sticks of liquorice, or teeth-
ing powders. It was humiliating, and even distress-
ing to realise that every single comfort or luxury
that he enjoyed even the prime necessities of life,
had to be accumulated, literally scraped together
from this incredibly humble source and by the per-
sonal exertions of this simple and pathetic person.
With these conditions in his mind he could not bear
accepting money from his father, the weight of hi8
obligation was so overwhelming. Now he found it
difficult to face the idea of a tailor's bill that might
represent the profit on at least three days of small
trading in the shop.
"I don't think I'd better go, father," he said.
"It would be rather ungracious if you didn't,
Edwin," his father replied. "It was extremely kind
of the Willises to ask you. I think you'd better
go and be measured to-morrow by Mr. Jones."
The idea of a Halesby tailor's cut was not inspir-
348 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
ing and made Edwin inclined to press his refusal ;
but Mr. Ingleby went on to explain that Mr. Jones
owed him a bill that he had begun to look upon as
a bad debt, and that Edwin's dress suit would be
a way of working it off. This circumstance made
the order less shameful, except in so far as it ap-
plied to the hateful penury of Mr. Jones, whom
Edwin remembered as a man with a beard, as
shabbily unlike a tailor's dummy as it was possible
for a man to be. The occurrence was unfortunate
in another way ; for such an addition to his ward-
robe would almost certainly scotch the idea of ask-
ing for a dress allowance, a plan which had been
maturing in his brain for some months and only
needed a callous frame of mind for its performance.
Next evening, however, he went to see Mr. Jones,
who measured him obsequiously, and assured him
that in the happy days before he was his own mas-
ter, he had actually cut morning-coats for Sir
Joseph Astill, a gentleman who was very difficult
to fit on account of a 'slight ... er ... fullness in
the figure. Edwin, primed by the observations of
The Major in To-Day, was able to tell Mr.
Jones exactly what he wanted, and Mr. Jones's
manner, when he rubbed his hands over Edwin's
instructions, did not suggest for a moment the fact
of which Edwin was all the time aware : that this
was not a bona-fide order, but a rather shabby way
of making him pay a bill that he had scamped for
a couple of years.
Stepping out of Mr. Jones's melancholy shop,
Edwin thanked heaven that his father had not
wanted him to follow in his footsteps ; for it seemed
ROMANCE 349
to him that the life of a struggling tradesman in a
small town must be the most humiliating on earth.
He was awfully sorry for all of them as he walked
down the street and read their names on the boards
above Jheir windows. He had never quite realised
their condition before he smelt the particular odour
of lower middle-class poverty, vaguely suggestive
of perambulators, aspidestras, and boiled mutton,
that moved down the linoleum floored passage at
the back of Mr. Jones's shop.
In due course the clothes arrived. On the whole,
Mr. Jones had not done badly ; but even so, Edwin
was still scarcely qualified for the business in hand.
He had never learned to dance, and it was neces-
sary to acquire this accomplishment in a little more
than a week. At first he had decided to pull his
courage together and approach Martin, whose eligi-
bility compelled him to be an expert dancing man ;
but, at the last moment, he funked a confession
that would expose such depths of social ignorance,
and went instead to a certain Professor Beagle,
who advertised classes in dancing and deportment
at the hour of five on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and
Saturdays, in the Queen's Assembly Rooms, next
door to the theatre of the same name.
On the next Tuesday afternoon Edwin presented
himself to Mr. Beagle at the advertised hour. He
found him alone sitting on a platform at the end
of a long room that smelt of dust and moth-eaten
rep curtains. When Edwin appeared at the other
end of the room the professor dismounted, cleared
his throat, clasped his hands in front of him, and
made a formal bow. He was a little man, and very
350 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
fat. He wore a navy blue coat that was cut very
short at the back, so that it ruckled up over his
round haunches, and his collar rose so high and
stiff above a white Ascot tie, that he was forced to
carry his head tilted backwards in the direction of
his waxed moustache. His face was purple and his
watery eyes stared, whether as the result of the
collar's asphyxiation or his past manner of life it
was difficult to say. His feet were excessively small,
and his striped grey trousers tapered to the ankles
in such a way that every step he made seemed a
nice feat of balancing. He bowed to Edwin, and
Edwin explained the urgent circumstances of his
mission.
"I see," said Professor Beagle. "I quite under-
stand. You must not, 'owever, expect me to be
able to turn you out as I should wish to in the
time at our disposal. Perhaps you will be good
enough not to mention my name in this connection,
and keep my instructions, as it were, dark?"
Edwin assured him of secrecy, and the professor
proceeded to ask him where the dance was to be
held. "I do not wish to teach you anything that
will not be useful," he said. "In some circles the
Quadrille, which I myself consider the most digni-
fied of dances, is still in favour. In others the
Valeta is coming into vogue. In different planes
of society different conditions prevail."
In the end the professor decided that Edwin's
case called for the Waltz, the Lancers, and the
Polka, with the possible addition of the Pas de
Quatre. He demonstrated to Edwin the position
ROMANCE 351
in which his feet should be placed, and then invited
him to have a try at the waltz.
"You will take my harm, please, in the following
way ... so. ... Now, neither grarsping nor
clarsping, let the lady's 'and lie gently in yours,
with the fingers 'alf bent, and under no circum-
stances squeeze the figger. So ..."
Edwin placed his right arm above the ruckles in
Professor Beagle's broad back: into his left hand
a podgy fist descended like a lump of moist dough,
and from the little man's back-tilted, strangled head
a faint sound of whistling proceeded that raked
Edwin's own nostrils with a cross-fire of whisky
and cachous. Then the professor began to revolve
like a peg top, and Edwin felt himself swept round
by the arm that lay upon his shoulder, to the
rhythm of the whistled tune, which was sometimes
suspended and replaced by: "Wonn-two-three.
Wonn-two-three. Wonn-two-three. Gen-tly now.
Keep-on-the. Tips-of-your. WONN-two-three. Toes."
In this manner they circled the room several
times. Edwin was getting out of breath; but the
professor, to whom this form of exercise was so
usual as to be negligible, showed no signs of fa-
tigue, except that his eyes became a little more
glassy and his cheeks more purple. Indeed, the
power by which he swung Edwin round the room
was a thing of mystery; for his little feet did not
eeem to move, and the upper part of his body was
rigid. He moved like a cyclone or a dust-storm, Ed-
win thought, revolving terrifically on its own axis.
"I am afraid," said Professor Beagle formally at
the end of the first lesson. "I am afraid you have
352 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
no great natural gift. It is better that I should
be candid with you. You will need half a dozen
lessons at least before you can take your place
with the young ladies in one of my advanced
classes."
Edwin stuck to it. On six more occasions he
visited the Assembly Kooms, where, with exactly
the same formalities, Mr. Beagle received him.
With Mr. Beagle in his arms, prevented by sheer
physical bulk from, in any circumstances, squeez-
ing the figger, he revolved in the vortex of the
waltz. In the Lancers he set to imaginary part-
ners, or went "visiting" with Mr. Beagle's hand
lying gently in his, with the fingers 'alf bent. In
the Pas de Quatre, where the draught of whisky
and cachous was happily directed forwards, he
pointed an awkward toe alongside Mr. Beagle's
tapered and elegant extremity. In the end the
professor pronounced himself satisfied with him.
"If I were you," he said, "I think I should come
along to my advanced class this evening and fa-
miliarise yourself with the proximity of young
ladies. The fee is a purely nominal 'alf-crown."
Edwin decided to do so, and walked up in the
evening with his patent leather pumps in his
pocket. He felt very shy. The place was lighted
with flaring gas jets, and in a room marked Gentle-
men, that he had always taken for a lavatory, a
number of young men, who looked like shop assist-
ants, were putting on white kid gloves. They all
seemed to know one another and to look upon
Edwin as an intruder. No one spoke to him, and
he waited in the cloak room until the last had dis-
ROMANCE 353
appeared before he dared to emerge. From the
room on the opposite side of the passage there
issued a breeze of concentrated perfumes, and a
round of subdued titters. This room was labelled
"Ladies."
While Edwin stood waiting and wondering if he
dare risk an encounter, the door opposite opened
and a bevy of bloused figures appeared. The sight
of the first took him by surprise : it was the elder
of the two anaemic young ladies in the drapery who
travelled in the morning train with him from
Halesby. She gave him a smile of recognition that
revealed her defective teeth. This prospect was
altogether too much for him. An acute shyness
drove him back into the cloak room, and, as soon
as he had taken off his pumps and put on his shoes
again, he left the Queen's Assembly Rooms and
bolted down Sackville Row to his train.
The Willis's dance, to which Edwin had looked
forward with such mingled pleasure and anxiety,
was destined to bring forth a violent emotional ex-
perience. Mr. Jones had not undergone the experi-
ence of cutting for the undulant figure of Sir Joseph
Kingston for nothing. Apart from the fact that
the sleeves were rather too long for his arms,
Edwin's dress coat was a success, and, as Aunt
Laura benignantly pointed out, it was just as well
that some allowance should be made for future
growth. Mr. Jones had been extremely anxious
that Edwin should be supplied with a magenta silk
handkerchief, an ornament which, he was assured,
354 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
all the best people wore stuffed in the corner of
their waistcoats.
On this problem the Major had never delivered
judgment, so Edwin mustered sufficient courage to
approach Denis Martin for advice. Martin scorn-
fully told him that the idea was preposterous. "It'a
the kind of get-up that your friend Maskew would
adopt," he said. He also impressed upon Edwin
the fact that the infallible index of a bounder in
evening-dress was a ready-made tie. No doubt the
advice was excellent; but it let Edwin in for an
hour of agony on the evening of the dance, when
the tie refused to answer to the Major's printed in-
structions, and finished up by making him look as
if he had gone to bed in his boots and slept on it.
He had never been to Mawne Hall before. That
pretentious mansion with its castellated facade
set on a steep bank above the valley of the Stour,
in which the works that maintained it lay, was so
brightly lit upon this evening that it glowed like
a lantern through the bare boughs of the hanging
wood beneath. In the gun-room at the side of the
hall in which the hats and coats of the guests were
being received by Bassett, the Willises' coachman,
he recognised a number of incredibly elegant crea-
tures of his own sex with shining white waistcoats,
pearl studs, and immaculate ties. He knew scarcely
any of them, for they were mostly neighbouring
ironmasters or professional people to whose society
the Willises' money had proved a sufficient introduc-
tion. Among them he recognised Sir Joseph Kings-
ton, playing ducks and drakes with his aitches, and
wearing, to Edwin's encouragement, a flagrantly
ROMANCE 355
ready-made tie. In this particular, at any rate, he
was one up on the baronet. He hoped that some
one else would realise this fact. In the middle of
these reflections he thought he heard a voice that
he recognised, and turned to find himself rubbing
shoulders with Griffin. Edwin said, "Good-eve-
ning."
"Good Lord, Ingleby, are you here? I haven't
seen you since the pantomime night. What are you
doing here? Do you know these people?"
It struck Edwin that he spoke rather contemptu-
ously of his hosts.
"Yes. ... I live near here, you know," he re-
plied. "I didn't know the Willises were friends
of yours." As a matter of fact he knew nothing
about the Willises' friends; but it sounded rather
well.
"No ... I don't know them," said Griffin, "but
the old man is a business friend of my uncle's, and
apparently they were rather hard up for men.' ? The
sound of waltz music was heard, and Griffin left
him hurriedly. "See you later," he said.
Edwin, anxious not to be left behind, pulled on
his gloves and split the thumb of one of them. He
passed through the hall, where his name was an-
nounced, rather contemptuously, as he thought, by
Hannah, the Willises' tall and starchy servant, and
was received in a manner that was reassuring and
homely by Mrs; Willis. She spoke for a moment
of his mother, and tears gathered in her rather
watery eyes ; then she introduced him to her small
daughter Lilian, very self-conscious in a white
party frock with a pale blue waistband, and an-
356 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
other dark girl with beautiful grey eyes and a
creamy rather than pale complexion, who was
standing beside her. Miss Dorothy Powys, she said.
Edwin, hedging for safety, booked a dance with
Lilian, who took the matter as seriously as him-
self. Next, no doubt, he must have a shot at Miss
Dorothy Powys, in spite of the disturbing beauty
of her eyes ; but when he came to ask her for a
dance, he saw that Griffin was talking to her.
"May I have another number sixteen?" Edwin
heard him ask easily. She smiled and nodded. Her
smile seemed to Edwin very beautiful : so beautiful,
indeed, that he couldn't possibly bring himself to
approach her when Griffin turned away. It was
awfully silly of him, he thought.
The evening was not exactly a success. He pol-
kaed with Lilian, and took his place in the Lancers
with several mature ladies to whom Mrs. Willis
introduced him. Luckily none of these belonged
to Halesby, a circumstance that must be attributed
to Mrs. Willis's tact, so that the question of his
origin never arose. He danced according to the
letter of Professor Beagle's instructions. Neither
grasping nor clasping, he let the ladies' hands lie
gently in his with the fingers half bent, and in no
circumstances did he squeeze the figger. What he
missed was the terrific motive power that the un-
ladylike Professor Beagle had applied to his revolu-
tions. It now appeared to him that to supply this
was the part of the male ; and as most of the matrons
with whom Mrs. Willis supplied him were bulky,
he had his work cut out. Once, returning thor-
oughly blown from one of these adventures he
ROMANCE 357
caught the eye of Dorothy Powys; and he thought
she smiled. Could this be true? He wondered.
. . . During the greater part of the evening when
he had not been dancing he had found himself fol-
lowing her movements with his eyes. He had de-
cided that she must be at least a year or two older
than himself ; but that didn't really matter, for she
seemed to him a creature of such very perfect grace,
and her eyes, in the moment when he caught them,
had been so wonderful. After the next dance, which
was the one that she had booked with Griffin, he
watched them disappear into the library.
It made him feel sick with himself that he hadn't
taken the opportunity of his introduction. What
a damned fool he was! And afterwards, when he
watched her, she did not smile at all, either for
him or for any one else. Indeed, she seemed pale,
and anxious, as if something had happened to up-
set her. In despair Edwin wandered off into the
card-room, where he saw Lady Kingston, who was
partnering Mr. Willis at bridge, revoke three times
in two games, to the intense annoyance of her hus-
band. From the card-room he strolled on to the
buffet, where he found Griffin absorbing quantities
of whisky and soda. He begged Edwin to join him ;
but Edwin, who was particularly anxious to be-
have himself, struck to claret-cup.
"Well, have you struck any cuddle?" said Griffin
brutally, with his mouth full.
"Any what?"
"Cuddle. . . . Girls. . . . What the devil do you
think one comes to a dance for?"
"No. ... I haven't," said Edwin.
358 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Well, they are a pretty scratch lot," Griffin con-
fessed. "That Powys girl's all right though."
Edwin blushed furiously. He suddenly wanted
to throw his glass of claret-cup at Griffin's head.
Why? . . . He calmed himself.
"Do you know her?" he asked.
"Never met her before to-night. She's got a top-
ping figure. She must be pretty well connected.
Lord Alfred Powys is one of their directors here."
"But you don't mean to say " Edwin began.
"The night is yet young," said Griffin, gulping
another whisky. "God, there's number twelve! I
must hook it."
Edwin wandered back to the ballroom. He
couldn't keep away from it, but, at the same time,
he was anxious not to appear disengaged, for fear
that Mrs. Willis should induce some other heavy
partner to abandon her arm-chair for his amuse-
ment. He hung about the pillars of the folding
doors that led into the supper room, just out of
range of Mrs. Willis's maternal gaze. From this
point he could watch the beautiful Miss Powys, and
wonder, with a sort of bitter excitement, exactly
what Griffin had meant by his suggestions. Watch-
ing her, he could not believe that she could be any-
thing but graceful and beautiful in everything she
did. The band started to play the music for waltz :
number sixteen. He remembered it was the second
dance that Griffin had booked with her. For some
reason that he couldn't imagine, he felt that he
wanted to be near when Griffin came for her : per-
haps he could tell her attitude towards him by
something that she might say. He went over to
ROMANCE 359
the place where she was sitting next to Mrs. Willis.
He tried not to look at her.
In a moment he heard Griffin's voice. "Ours, I
think." The tone was a little blurred by Griffin's
potations.
"I think you've made a mistake," she said.
Edwin turned round, and at the same moment
she looked towards him. "Surely I am dancing this
with you, Mr. Ingleby."
"But look here, I'm sure these are your initials
on my programme, Miss Powys. Let me look at
yours."
He tried to take the programme from her fingers,
but she moved it away.
"Really, we mustn't contradict each other, Mr.
Griffin. The dance is Mr. Ingleby's. Will you take
me, please?" she said to Edwin. ;
In an ecstatic dream Edwin found himself walk-
ing away with her on his arm. It was a miracle,
an astounding, beautiful miracle. She picked up
her skirt by the loop of ribbon with which it was
suspended and looked him full in the eyes, smiling.
"Shall we start?" she said.
They started. In one fatal moment Edwin, who
hadn't been doing badly at the beginning of the
evening, forgot every single precept that Professor
Beagle had taught him.
"I say, what a shocking dancer you are," she said
with a laugh.
"I'm most awfully sorry, I only learnt this week."
Now that his mind was diverted fey speaking to her
the steps came more naturally*
360 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"That's better," she said. "Who on earth taught
He confessed to Professor Beagle, and she ap-
peared to be amused.
"You see you're dancing away from me all the
time. Just as if you were afraid of me. You ought
to hold me closer. It upsets the what d'you call
it ... centre of gravity."
"I was told never under any circumstances to
- " He couldn't very well repeat Professor Bea-
gle's formula.
"Now you're getting on beautifully. Don't think
about it. That's the idea. Just dance."
The music ended. "Where would you like to go?"
he asked.
"Out into the hall, if you don't mind ... on
the stairs. I want to explain to you. It was really
awfully good of you to take me on."
"It was a wonderful piece of luck for me."
They sat together on the shallow oak staircase
and she proceeded to tell him that Griffin had up-
set her in the dance before by trying to kiss her
shoulder. "I really couldn't stick a repetition of
that," she said. "Besides, I think the man had
been drinking. So I just pitched upon your poor
innocence and lied for all I was worth. Who are
you, by the way? I only just remembered your
name when Mrs. Willis introduced us. She's rather
a dear, isn't she?"
The music of the next dance struck up. "Are
you dancing?" Edwin asked eagerly.
"I don't know, I expect so. Just look at my
programme. It's too dark for me to see."
ROMANCE 361
Edwin took the programme from her fingers. It
was a thrilling moment. In the dusk he deciphered
two initials, "E.W.," he said.
"Oh, that's only Edward Willis. He's very shy
of me. If you've nothing better to do I think we'll
stay here."
It was so easy to talk to her. To Edwin, indeed, it
seemed as if he had now become articulate for the
first time in his life. She did not speak very much
of herself ; but she asked him many questions about
his life at school, where, he confided to her, he had
first known Griffin, and then again about his new
work in North Bromwich. And when she did speak
her voice was low, and her speech, to his ears, of
an amazing limpid purity, more beautiful than any
human speech he had ever heard. Edwin would
have liked to listen to it for ever. He felt that
he wanted words to describe its peculiar music, but
no words came to him. He could only remember
a line in Browning's Pauline:
"Her voice was as the voice of his own soul
Heard in the calm of thought. . . ."
That was the nearest he could get to it; but th%
words, although they expressed a little of his ab-
sorption, did not convey the musical qualities that
he wanted to describe. He tried to compare it with
the tones of some instrument that he knew, but
neither wood-wind nor strings suggested what he
wanted. No ... it was a sound nearer to nature
than any man-made instrument. It was the voice
of a Naiad : the sound of running water in a clear
brookland. And all the time that he listened to
362 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
her he was thrillingly conscious of her physical
presence. She was sitting on the stair beneath
him, and fortunately she could not see that he was
gazing at her in the gloom, thinking how beauti-
fully shaped was the nape of the neck from which
her dark hair was drawn upwards; overcome by
the loveliness and smoothness of her curved shoul-
der.
"I'm talking all the time," he said, "and you're
saying nothing. It's rather a shame . . . because
you speak so beautifully."
"Whatever do you mean?" For a moment her
eyes were on his. He dared not look at them. He
could not answer her, for the moment seemed full
of such an overpowering sweetness.
"Do tell me."
"Oh, I only mean that when you say a thing like
that, it ... it suggests that everything about you
is marvellously clean and clear and musical "
He paused, for he felt that she might laugh at him.
"Yes ... go on," she said.
"Like water in a hill country. It makes me feel
as if I weren't within a hundred miles of North
Bromwich."
She laughed softly, but not unkindly.
"No, I'm not a bit like that. I'm really awfully
hard and worldly I wish I were the least bit what
you imagine. You're most awfully young, aren't
you?"
Perhaps she did not mean the word cruelly, but
it seemed very cruel to Edwin. It was quite pos-
sible that she was a few years older than himself,
if age were to be counted by years ; but in reality
ROMANCE 363
he knew that she was beautifully young, certainly
young enough to love and to be loved.
"Don't let's talk about me," she said.
"But I want to talk about you."
He wanted to talk about nothing else. His head
was full of words that he wanted to throw before
her like jewels, but he did not know how much he
dared to say. He knew it was impossible for him
to express a hundredth part of his delight in her.
It would be nearly as bad as kissing her neck in
the manner of Griffin, to say that the curve of it
sent him delirious with joy. It would be indecency
rather than candour to say that the faint scent of
her intoxicated him. He was silent with tremulous
emotion. He wondered if she could be conscious
of it; and he could not guess, for she, too, did not
speak. From the ballroom they heard the music
of another dance begin. Two shadowy couples
emerged from the passage beneath them. A cur-
tain of Indian beading made a sound like dead
leaves driven over a dry pavement by the wind.
The intruders' voices died away.
"I suppose we must go too," she said with a sigh.
"Why must you go? Are you dancing?" Edwin
asked, with a catch in his throat,
"No, I don't think I shall dance any more. I
was rather upset. It was silly of me. But I think
we'd better go."
Edwin offered her his arm in the best manner of
Professor Beagle.
"Thank you," she said in a low voice. For a
moment she hesitated. She was smiling, and her
eyes were wonderful in the gloom. Their faces
364 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
were level with each other. And, suddenly, amaz-
ingly, she kissed him.
"I'm going," she said. Edwin tried to take her
hand as she moved away from him. For a second
it lay in his, soft and small and warm. Then,
before his arms had time to follow the impulse of
his flaming brain, she had slipped away from him
and passed into the shadow of the passage. He
stood there at the foot of the stairs alone, his heart
thudding like a steam-hammer in a bewildered, in-
toxicating elation. Why had she left him? Why?
. . . unless it were only a part of her adorable
modesty. That must be the reason : and yet it was
hardly consistent with an exalted ideal of modesty
to kiss a young man, whom she had only known
for fifteen minutes, on the lips. A new aspect of
the miracle presented itself to him. Was it possi-
ble, after all, that Griffin had been right, that she
was really exactly what he had insinuated, a fast
little baggage who had determined, in a sudden
caprice, to throw Griffin over and try a new experi-
ment?
He could not believe it. Everything that he had
noticed and adored in her, her grey eyes, the de-
licious quality of her speech, her fragrance, the in-
describable fineness there was no other word for
it of her, denied the possibility. He found it diffi-
cult to realise that she had gone in the moment of
such an astounding revelation. Such was the way
of a Naiad, melting away out of her sweet mortality
in the moment of possession. Standing alone at
the foot of the gloomy staircase, listening in a
dream to the luscious music of the Choristers' waltz,
ROMANCE 365
he tried to recreate his dream out of memory. Noth-
ing of her was left but her delicate perfume. On
the stairs he saw a small crumpled muslin hand-
kerchief from which the perfume came. He picked
it up with the reverence of a pilgrim touching a
relic, eagerly triumphant that he had managed to
rescue a fragment of his dream. It did not strike
him that this tiny square of scented muslin was
presumably the instrument with which divinity
blew its nose: and indeed its dimensions scarcely
fitted it for this material function. He placed it
in the satin-lined pocket of Mr. Jones's creation.
It pleased him to think that it lay near his heart.
This, of course, was only the beginning of a
romance. No doubt, in the course of the evening,
he would see her again. Somehow he must per-
suade her to see him alone, and then he would be
able to do all the magnificently passionate things of
which her flight had cheated him. He would kiss
her; he would hold her exquisiteness in his arms;
he would tell her all the glorious things that he had
been fool enough to withhold.
He went back into the ballroom. Nobody seemed
to notice him there. It pleased him to think that
these ordinary people were too dull in their per-
ceptions to guess at the wonder in his heart. It
was a secret that he shared with only one other
person in the world, and that secret had altered
his whole outlook on life. He was no longer the
timid boy, conscious of his social disadvantages and
of his new dress clothes, who had entered the
Willises' house a couple of hours before, but a man,
a lover, to whose passion the whole beauty of the
366 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
world ministered, a creature miraculously placed
beyond the reach of envy or of scorn. He was
happy to wait patiently for the supreme moment
whenjie should see her again. And so he waited,
"mildly tolerant of Griffin, over whom he had scored
so easily, of Edward Willis, who performed with a
set face his penitentiary programme of duty-dances,
of Mrs. Willis, who watched the joy of her small
daughter Lilian with the proud but anxious eyes
of a mother hen, of Mr. Willis circulating among
his guests with an expansive smile, of poor Lady
Kingston, still revoking automatically in the card-
room.
But Dorothy Powys never returned to the seat
that she had occupied under the shadow of Mrs.
Willis's wings. She had told him that she didn't
mean to dance any more, but surely that didn't
mean that he was not to see her again. He grew
uneasy. Of course she could easily escape if she
wanted to do so, for she was staying in the house.
He wondered if he dared ask Mrs. Willis what had
become of her, but decided that this would certainly
give him away.
Instead of doing this he posted himself in a cor-
ner from which he could hear everything that was
said in Mrs. Willis's circle. This was not a very
profitable pursuit, for Mrs. Willis was not an inter-
esting talker, and the only excitement that pene-
trated the broody calm that surrounded her was the
arrival of her husband, very excited over a telephone
message, that had no foundation in fact, announc-
ing the relief of Lady smith by General Buller.
Edwin was beginning to give the business up as
ROMANCE 367
a bad job when he saw a tall, languid man, whom
he considered to be rather shabbily dressed, ap-
proach Mrs. Willis and ask her what had happened
to his niece.
"Oh, she was here half an hour ago," said Mrs.
Willis. "The poor child told me that she had a
headache and was going to bed. I told Hannah
to take her a hot water bottle. ... I do hope
you're quite comfortable, Lord Alfred," she went
on. "It is nice, isn't it? to see all these young people
enjoying themselves. At least it would be, if one
didn't have to think of all the pojor creatures in
South Africa being fired at by these treacherous
Boers."
And the tall, shabby man mumbled, "Yes . . .
yes, certainly. . . . Very," in his beard.
It was enough for Edwin. He said good-bye to
Mrs. Willis, who seemed only mildly surprised at
his departure, and left the house. There was no
reason now why he should stay. On the stone ter-
race he paused, listening for a moment to the
muted music from within the house. In the upper
stories only one window was lighted. He could
see the glowing yellow pane beyond a bough of one
of the cedars with which the lawn was shaded. He
wondered if that window were hers. He would
like, he thought, to stay there all night in the black
shadow of the cedar, gazing at that window and
feeling that he was near her. Later on, no doubt,
the light would be extinguished, and then he would
imagine her lying there asleep. How beautiful
she must be when she lay there sleeping!
He sighed, and went on his way, under the won-
368 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
derful night. He climbed the steep slope of Mawne
Bank, under the smouldering pit-fires, in a dream,
and found himself, surprised, beneath the walls of
the cherry orchard at the back of Old Mawne Hall.
Inside the walls the cherry-trees lay locked in a
wintry sleep. He stopped, for the steepness of the
hill had stolen his breath. He remembered a day
when he walked there with his mother. "How
mother would have loved her!" he thought. Yes
. . . she was more wonderful than his mother. On
the day that he remembered, so many years ago,
it had been spring. The branches had been full of
billowy bloom. Now, in the wintry night, he felt
that spring was near : spring was in his blood, stir-
ring it to new and passionate aspirations as in a
few months time it would stir the dreamy sap of
the cherry-trees. A strange, unseasonable miracle.
Glorious, indefinite words formed themselves in hia
mind. Spring, with its warm, perfumed breath,
triumphing beautifully over the powers of winter
and death. Death at Colenso under those tawny
kopjes. Love in his heart. A sublime, ecstatic
muddle. . . . The Mawne furnaces leapt into a
sudden flower of fire that made the sky above them
tawny. Love was like fire ... an exultant leap-
ing flame.
He did not know where he was going until he
found himself at home in his little shabby room
taking off his dress-suit and staring at himself as
a stranger in the dusty mirror. "Who am I?" he
thought, "that this should have happened to me?
I do not know myself. I am greater and more
wonderful than the image that I see in the glass."
ROMANCE 369
He placed his precious talisman of muslin under
his pillow, and wondered if he might be blessed
with a dream of her. "She kissed me," he thought.
"She kissed my lips "
m
It was evident that if he were to see her again
he must make friends with Edward Willis. He was
sorry that he had not done so before. For once
in a way the recommendations of Aunt Laura had
been prophetically right. His self-consciousness
made it difficult for him to do so, for he felt certain
that this cold, calculating young man would see
through him. For two days he debated with him-
self on the various ways in which Mawne might
be approached without coming to any satisfactory
conclusion. On the third he was so lucky as to
meet his victim on the Halesby train. Willis did
not seem in the least anxious to renew their ac-
quaintance ; and it was at the expense of some awk-
wardness that Edwin managed to drag him into
conversation.
They talked a little about the war, which Willis
seemed to view from a remote and pessimistic
angle. From that, by way of Mr. Willis's Lady-
smith rumour, they passed on to a discussion of the
dance. Edwin was enthusiastic.
"I'm glad you enjoyed yourself," said Willis. "I
hate dancing."
"I rather admired that Miss Powys," said Edwin.
"Dorothy Powys? Yes, she's a pretty girl, isn't
she?"
"Who is she?"
370 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Oh, she's a niece of Lord Alfred Powys, one of
our directors. Lives with him, I believe. I don't
really know her."
"Isn't she staying with you?"
"Oh, no. . . . She only stayed at Mawne for
the night of the dance. Her uncle happened to
be coming over for a directors' meeting, and the
governor asked him to bring her along with him
as there was a dance on."
This was all very discouraging.
"Where do they live?" Edwin asked.
"Somewhere over in the Teme valley, I think.
Lord Alfred's a great fisherman. He's a nice chap."
"And she lives with him?"
"Yes. ... I think he's sort of adopted her. But
I understand she's going to India sometime next
month." .
"India? What on earth is she going to India
for?"
"Going to be married to some fellow in the In-
dian army. A major, I think he is."
"To be married " said Edwin.
And the train pulled up at Mawne Hall.
IV
He took it very hardly. On the face of it, it
seemed that her kiss had been, no more than a piece
of mad, cynical trifling; but his respect for him-
self which was considerable, as became his years
would not allow him to believe this. He decided,
instead, that Dorothy Powys's kiss had been the
symbol of a great and noble passion, fated, in the
melancholy manner of nearly every legendary lore,
ROMANCE 371
to frustration. He was convinced ttiat the un-
known major in the Indian army would never be
loved ; that the memory of that intense moment on
Mr. Willis's back stairs would haunt his wife 'for
ever, and temper with romance the vistas of an un-
happy marriage. The main result of the incident
in Edwin's case was a spate of passionate but imita-
tive verses, a new devotion to such music as re-
pressed his particular portion of weltschmerz, and
an anxiety to confide the story, with elaborations,
to some sympathetic friend. He turned it on to
W.G.
"Well, W.G., what do you think of it?" he asked,
when he had finished.
W.G. sucked at his pipe and smiled good-
humouredly.
"Better luck next time, old chap," he said.
CHAPTER VI
THE DRESSER
IN the following June the second professional
examination was held. On a stifling morning,
when the blue brick pavements of North Bromwich
reflected a torrid heat, and a warm wind, blowing
like a sirocco from the black desert outside, swept
the streets with clouds of dust, Edwin, Maskew,
and W.G. waited in the cloakroom outside the
Dean's office to see the results of the examination
posted. Maskew was the only one of the three
who showed no signs of nervousness; for W.G.
could never overcome the difficulty of expressing
his thoughts on paper, and Edwin had passed ten
minutes of purgatory with an outside examiner in
the anatomy viva. He knew, on the other hand,
that his Physiology had been extraordinarily good,
and put his faith in the general impression of in-
telligence that he hoped he had created.
The porter came out with the lists, and W.G.,
striding to meet his fate like some Homeric hero,
snatched the paper from his hands. He went very
white as he read it.
"Good God " he said. "Well, I'm damned "
"Rotten luck if you're down, W.G.," said Maskew
sympathetically.
372
THE DRESSER 373
"Down? . . . I'm not down. I'm through."
He still looked bewildered. Edwin took the
paper from his trembling hands. As he had ex-
pected Maskew was first, but he saw that he him-
self was second on the list. Martin had ambled
through respectively somewhere about the middle.
W.G. and Harrop were last and last but one. He
pinned the list on the notice-board. It was an
exhilarating moment in which he was conscious of
the herculean, sweaty handgrip of W.G., who was
muttering: "Well, I'm damned if we don't all de-
serve it."
Talking and laughing together, they went out
to lunch at Joey's and caught the next train down
to Evesham, where the coolness of the glassy Avon
made the June heat more tolerable, and in the eve-
ning, blistered with rowing and sunshine, they
came back to North Bromwich, dined together, and
afterwards went to a music-hall. It was wonder-
ful to Edwin to see the physical elation of W.G.
The big man wanted to dance like a child, and it
was with difficulty that Maskew restrained him
from smashing a plate-glass window in Sackville
Row. "You're a cold-blooded swine, Maskew," he
said indignantly. "God, man, don't you feel you
want to do something? You must let off steam in
some way, and it's just as well to do it decently."
Next morning the Dean sent a message to Edwin
and Maskew, asking them to call at his office dur-
ing the morning. They went together, and were re*
ceived with his usual urbane politeness.
"Good-morning, Mr. Maskew . . . Mr. Ingleby.
. . . You had better sit down. I am very pleased
374 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
to see your names at the top of the list. Yes . . .
very pleased. I've consulted Dr. Moon, and he ap-
proves your appointment as prosectors. It is an
office that you will be very wise to undertake if
you have any surgical ambitions, and I am very
pleased to offer it to you. Perhaps you will let
me know to-morrow? Thank you, gentlemen. . . .
Good-morning."
"Shall you take it?" said Edwin, as soon as they
were outside.
"Of course I shall. I'm rather keen on Anatomy.
It only means putting one back a year, and it's
worth it a hundred times over, if one gets the pri-
mary Fellowship. You'll be a fool if you don't do
it. We should have a topping time together. No
lectures . . . just a year of research work."
"I shall have to think about it," said Edwin.
It was the financial side of the question that had
to be considered. To add another year to a course
that was already expensive in pursuit of an elusive
Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons: was
it worth while? To begin with, he might easily
fail. The primary examination was notoriously
fluky, the results depending on the individual
caprices and preferences of examiners. Edwin
knew very well that better men than himself had
failed in it. If, after draining his father's pockets
for another year, he should be ploughed, the situa-
tion would be altogether too pathetic.
Anything that affected his father's purse seemed
to Edwin, in those days, a matter for delicacy and
shame. He hated to receive money from him. It
was an acute embarrassment to see him write a
THE DRESSER 375
cheque. He wrote slowly, with a regular, formal
hand, and all the time Edwin, watching him, would
think how many small, degrading sales of tooth
paste and castor oil and pennyworths of camphor
had gone to the making of that tenuous bank-ac-
count, and how easily and carelessly the painful
accumulations would be spent. He hated asking
his father for money, and for this reason had com-
pelled himself to refrain from asking for the per-
fectly reasonable and necessary allowance that he
had been wanting to settle for the last year.
And so he did not dare to tell his father that he
had been offered the prosectorship and the oppor-
tunity of taking the Fellowship. If he had done so
he was almost certain that Mr. Ingleby would have
consented, and his father's sacrifice would have
thrown such a weight of obligation on him that life-
would not have been worth living. Indeed, if, in
the end, he should have failed, his shame would have
been intolerable. These reflections on the humility
and penury of his father always plunged Edwin into
a debauch of sentiment in which he would return
with the zeal of a prodigal to the resolutions that
he had made at the time of his mother's death.
They filled him with a kind of protective fervour
that might easily have been mistaken for love, but
was, in reality, an excuse for its absence. Still,
even if the sentiment harrowed, it consoled, and
Edwin was heroically elated by the performance
of a sacrifice that he had not been brave enough
to refuse.
It pleased him also to find that W.G. was thank-
ful for his decision. "You see, it would have been
376 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
rotten for me," he said, "if you and Maskew had
both been left behind. When you've got into the
habit of working with a fellow in your first two
years, it's a bit of a break to have to go on by
yourself. Of course, I should never have the least
earthly chance of getting the Fellowship, and even
if- 1 had, I couldn't afford to waste a year over it.
I'm damned glad you're coming on with me,
Ingleby."
The tribute was flattering. Edwin, always rather
pathetically anxious for friendship, was particular-
ly pleased to have it offered so frankly by a creature
as unlike him in every way as W.G. There was
something stable and reliable about the big man's
simplicity. He felt that he would be as loath to
give offence to W.G. as to his father; and though
he still felt some indefinite hankerings after the
atmosphere of culture that he would have enjoyed
in the society of Boyce, he couldn't deny the fact
that W.G. was a sound and splendid fellow, and a
good man to have by his side in an emergency.
Together they plunged into the new world of
hospital life.
n
Two general hospitals supplied the clinical needs
of the North Bromwich Medical School. The older,
from which the school had originated, was a small
institution, the Prince's, with which Edwin had
become acquainted on -the occasion of his first panto-
night. It stood in the upper and healthier part of
the city, in the middle of the slums that lie upon
the fringe of the fashionable suburb of Alvaston:
THE DRESSER 377
a solid building of early Victorian red brick, with
a stone portico facing upon a thoroughfare of rather
older houses that had once been reputable but had
now degenerated into theatrical lodging-houses.
The hospital itself was small enough to be homely,
and W.G. and Edwin soon became accustomed to
its narrow entrance hall, and the lodge in which
porters, who already knew all that was to be known
about the reception of casualties, were housed.
Edwin would arrive at the hospital early in tho
morning, when no sign of life was to be seen in
the "professional" lodgings sleeping with drawn
blinds upon the other side of the road. At this time
of the day the hospital porch smelt clean and anti-
septic, for the stream of stinking humanity had not
yet begun to trickle through. He would hang his
coat in the narrow passage that served for cloak-
room and lounge with a cigarette in his mouth
before the glass-fronted notice-boards on which the
lists of operations for the day were exhibited, and
exchange greetings with the night porter departing
in a state of drowsy ill-temper, or the day-porter
coming on duty with a military swagger and his
grey hair plastered down with vaseline, from the
casualty department, and cold water.
Here, too, the members of the consulting staff
would arrive in their frock-coats and top-hats : great
men, such as Lloyd Moore, the outstanding surgical
genius of the Midlands; old Beaton, the professor
of surgery, with his long, grey beard, and Hartley,
the ophthalmologist, whose reputation was Eu-
ropean. These giants would pass on through the
swinging doors to their wards or consulting rooms,
378 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
and on the very stroke of nine, W.G., who was a
bad riser, and always cut things fine, would plunge
in, carrying with him the strenuous atmosphere of
a cold sponge and breezy enthusiasm. Then the
clock would strike nine, and they would pass on
together arm in arm, into the huge, airy waiting-
hall with innumerable benches set crosswise like
the pews in a church ; and, at the same moment, the
military porter, who had been marshalling the
queue of out-patients, would release them, and a be-
wildering crowd of poorly-clad human wreckage
would drift in behind them, settling patiently into
the benches opposite the door of the department
from which they were seeking relief.
The work of Edwin and W.G. lay in the Casualty
Department, a small room full of pleasant morning
light. On one side of it ran a long counter with
shelves for bottles, and drawers in which plasters,
dressings, and ointments were kept. On the other,
half a dozen chairs were ranged for the reception
of patients. The medical staff consisted of four
persons only: two professionals, a young and en-
thusiastic surgeon named Mather who held the post
of Assistant Surgeon to Out-patients, and an elderly
sister who had been on the job for years, and two
amateurs in the shape of Edwin and W.G.
All of them were clothed in white overalls; for
the work of the casualty department was of a dirty
nature, and these long garments also served as some
protection from the swarming parasites that lived
upon the bodies of their patients. Edwin, who suf-
fered agonies of irritation from their attacks, also
armed himself with a glass-stoppered bottle of ether
THE DRESSER 379'
with which he would drench the seat of irritation
in the hopes of inflicting death or at least uncon-
sciousness upon his tormentors. i
Then, one by one, the patients would file in, and
plant themselves upon the wooden chairs : old men
whose skins were foul with the ravages of eczema
and dirt combined; women, exhausted in middle
age by child-bearing, and the accepted slavery of
housework; sturdy mechanics who had been the
victims of some unavoidable accident; pale young
women, made anxious for their livelihood by illness
that its conditions had caused, and, more terrible
than all, the steady stream of wan, transparent
children, the idols of maternal care, the victims of
maternal ignorance.
In the human wreckage of the casualty depart-
ment there was no great variety; but all of it was
new to Edwin and W.G., and they threw themselves
into the labour with enthusiasm, working so hard
from nine o'clock till one, that their backs ached
and they lost all sense of the passage of time.
Mather himself seemed to them a prodigy of skilful-
ness, so swift in his decisions, so certain and adroit
in the work of his hands. Even the sister, whom
Edwin had originally regarded as a mere woman,
aroused their admiration by the ease with which she
worked and her invincible good humour. Edwin
found that she could teach him more than his male
superiority would ever have dreamed.
Little by little the astounding confusion of their
work began to seem more simple. Bandages, that
had seemed condemned to unsightly ruckles, or
liable to fall unrolled upon the dirty floor, began to
380 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
fold themselves in symmetrical designs. Edwin and
W.G. vied with one another in the neatness of their
dressings. The smell of the place, that had seemed
at first to fester beneath an unconvincing veil of
carbolic and iodoform, now seemed natural to their
nostrils, even pleasant in its familiarity.,
Edwin began to have time to look about him,
to form individual attachments to the patients who
came there every day, to take a particular interest
in cases that he regarded as his own. Gradually,
from the mass of evil-smelling humanity, person-
alities began to emerge and even intimacies that
were flattering because they implied a trust in his
own imperfect skill.
He did not know the names of his patients any
more than they knew his. To him they were
grouped under conventional generics: Daddy,
Granny, Tommy, Polly, and the like. To them he
was always "Doctor"; but the thing that made
them human and lovable to him was the sense of
their dependence on him; and the preference for
his attentions that was sometimes timidly ex-
pressed, gave him a flush of gratification deeper
than any he had ever known. It pleased him to
think that it was true when his patients told him
that he dressed them more gently than the other
workers in the casualty department. Such confi-
dences almost convinced him that he had found a
vocation.
After lunch Edwin and W.G. would talk over
their cases together in the lounge of the Dousita.
Maskew, who still met them every day at this
resort, found their conversation boring, and fell
THE DRESSER 381
back more and more upon the charms of Missi
Wheeler, who did. not seem to have varied by a
single hairpin since the day of their first acquaint-
ance. And from the discussion of their individual
cases, W.G. would sometimes pass on to the more
general questions that their work aroused.
"This life's worth living/' he would say. "When
you first take up medicine and spend a couple of
years over learning the atomic weights of heavy
metals or dissecting the stomach of an earthworm,
you begin to wonder what the devil you're getting
at; by Gad, this hospital work opens your eyes.
You're doing something practical. What's more,
you're doing a job that no professor of classics or
stinks could touch, and you see the actual results
of your treatment on your patients."
"Thank God, I'm not one of them, W.G.," said
Maskew morosely. "As a matter of fact, it's no
more than when an electrical engineer finds a short
circuit and makes a new connection, or when a
carpenter makes a job of a rickety staircase."
"That's all you know about it, my friend," said
W.G. "In our job you're dealing with human life ;
you're relieving physical pain and sometimes you
get thanked for it, which is damned pleasant. And
you've a responsibility too. If you make a slip the
poor devil you're experimenting on is going to
suffer. You may even kill him. And the extraordi-
nary thing is that he trusts you . . ."
To Edwin also that was the most extraordinary
thing, and, indeed, the most pathetic. It showed
him that the practice of medicine imposed an
actual moral discipline on those who followed it:
382 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
an obligation of the most meticulous honour and
devotion. But if the discipline of practice de-
manded much, it repaid a thousandfold. He had his
reward not only in the thanks of the scabrous old
men whose varicose ulcers, or "bad legs/' as they
called them, he dressed, but in the rarer conscious-
ness of actual achievement which came to him more
frequently as the scope of his work extended.
One case in particular he always remembered,
principally because it was the first of the kind. She
was a little Jewish tailoress who laboured at piece-
work in some sweater's den in the rookeries on the
southern side of the hospital. She was not beauti-
ful. Her face had the peculiar ivory pallor, and
her whole body the unhealthy brittleness, of plants
that have sprouted in a cellar. But her voice was
soft, and her hands, the fingertips of which were
made callous by the plucking of threads and rough
with innumerable needle pricks, were beautifully
shaped. A week or so before she had stabbed her
left forefinger with an infected needle, and lit a
focus of suppuration in the tendon sheath. She
had to live, poor thing ! and so, for a week she had
worked in a state of agony, while the tissues grew
tense and shiny with compression, and the pain
would not let her sleep. At last, when she could
work no longer, she had come to the casualty de-
partment, nursing her poisoned hand in a bandana
handkerchief. She had not slept for four nights,
and was very near to tears.
Edwin, who saw that surgery was needed, showed
the case to Mather. The surgeon stripped the sleeve
from her thin, transparent arm and showed him
THE DRESSER 383
the red lines by which the poison was tracking up
the lymphatics towards the glands of the axilla that
stood like blockhouses in the way of bacterial in-
vasion.
"Why didn't you come before?" he said, with a
roughness that was not unkind. How many times
was Edwin to hear those very words !
"I couldn't, doctor. There was my work "
"There'd be no more work for you, my dear, if
you went on much longer," said Mather: and then,
to Edwin, "Yes . . . you'd better incise it at once,
I'm busy putting up a fracture. Straight down in
the middle line. Don't be afraid of it."
"Oh, you're not going to cut me, doctor?" she
said. "Not till to-morrow. . . . Oh, please . . .
when I've had a night's sleep."
He was very nervous. He assured her that he
would give her no pain; but while he left her to
fetch the scalpel and the dressings he heard a queer
drumming noise and turned to see that it was made
by the heels of his patient trembling on the floor.
He was nearly as tremulous himself.
"I promise you I won't hurt you," he said, and
she returned him a painful smile. It was a look
he knew. "Just like the eyes of a dog," W.G. had
said.
He sprayed the finger with ethyl chloride, that
froze into a crust like hoarfrost on the fingertip and
blanched the skin that was already pale with the
pressure inside it. All the time the girl was mak-
ing little nervous movements, and sometimes her
heels began to drum again until she tucked them
Tinder the bar of her chair.
384 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"I'm sorry, doctor, I can't help it," she said.
Then, with his scalpel, he made a clean longi-
tudinal cut through the tense skin down to the
bone of the phalanx. She gave a start and clutched
his hand so that he nearly gave it up. "I've got to
do it/' he thought. "I must do it." It was the first
time that he had ever cut with a knife into living
flesh. A strange sensation. . . . But the bead of
matter that escaped showed him that he had got
to the root of the trouble, and the sight of it filled
him with a new and curious exultation.
It was a long business, for the neglected pressure
had impaired the vitality of the bone and the wound
would not heal until the dead spicules had been
separated from the living tissue. Edwin dressed
the finger every morning. The patient would have
been a poor subject at the best of times, and he
knew that the fact that she was now out of work
probably meant that she was starving. It would
have been easy for him to tell her that she must
have plenty of nourishing food; but he knew well
enough that the words would have been no more
than a mockery. In the hospital wards, he reflected,
she might have been well fed; but the wards at
the Prince's were full of more serious cases who
could not walk to the hospital to receive their treat-
ment. On occasions of this kind he wished that
he were a millionaire: an extravagant idea for
doctors are never millionaires. He could only ram
iron into her and dress her and try to get her well
so that she might travel back around the vicious-
circle to the conditions that had been responsible
for her illness. It seemed to him that people who
THE DRESSER 385
were not doctors could never really know anything
about life.
In a little while there were others, many of them,
in whose cases he knew that he had been privileged
to effect some positive good : notably an old woman,
always dressed in black and loaded with crepe as
though she were attending her own funeral, who
had fractured her wrist by slipping on an icy pave-
ment one evening when she was fetching her hus-
band's supper beer, an office that she appeared far
too ladylike ever to have performed. She had put
out her hand to save herself, and a Colles fracture
of the ulna and radius had been the result.
She called Edwin "My dear," and the first thing
that he noticed about her was the amazing cleanli-
ness of her withered skin. He remembered the
fortitude that she had shown when first he reduced
the fracture ; how her bony fingers, on one of which
was a wedding-ring worn very thin, had clasped his.
For some curious reason he felt very tenderly to-
wards her, and when the bones were set and he had
passed her on to the massage department, he felt
quite lost without her early "Good-morning !" That
was another strange thing about medical practice:
the way in which people with whom he was thrown
into an intimate sympathy for a few days passed
completely and irrevocably out of his life.
W.G. and Edwin found their experience so in-
triguing that they took turns to visit the casualty
department in the afternoons when the work was
light, and the absence of Mather gave them a free
hand in the performance of minor surgery. At
this time of the day the work of the department
386 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
was more suggestive of its name; for the people
who came there were nearly all the victims of sud-
den illness or accident that needed diagnosis and
immediate treatment. It pleased Edwin to deal
with these off his own bat, and he spent the long
afternoons that were free from lectures in suturing
wounds, removing brass filings or specks of cinders
from eyes, extracting teeth, gaining confidence
every day and suffering the mingled emotions of
pain, pity, and violent indignation. Not infre-
quently the last . . . for he saw so much suffering
that might easily have been prevented but for the
ignorance or callousness of humanity. These things
aroused his anger; but he soon realised that anger
was the one emotion that a doctor is most wise to
suppress.
Sometimes a woman from one of the neighbour-
ing slums would enter in a state of hollow-eyed
terror, carrying in her shawl a child that was
obviously dying from broncho-pneumonia.
"Why, in the name of Heaven, didn't you come
up before?" he would ask indignantly.
"The neighbours said it was only the teething,
doctor," she would reply.
Edwin would try to suppress an inclination to
damn the neighbours upside down. "Surely you
could see the child was ill?" he would say.
"Yes, doctor, but how could I get away? There's
seven of them, bless their hearts, and me going
with another, and the house looking like a pig-
sty, and the master's dinner to cook. I haven't got
no time to spare for hospitals."
And he knew that she spoke the truth, contenting
THE DRESSER 387
himself, as he filled in the form for admission to
the children's ward, with telling her that the diet
of bread-crusts soaked in beer, which she had been
giving it, was not ideal for a baby eight months
old.
"Take the baby along to ward fourteen," he would
say, "they'll do what they can for it," and be met,
as likely as not, with a volume of tigerish abuse
from a wild-eyed woman who swore that if her
baby was going to die it wasn't going to do so in
any bloody hospital, was it, my pretty? the last
words sinking to a maternal coo and being accom-
panied by a paroxysm of kisses on the baby's lips
that were already blue for want of breath. And
then Edwin would control his indignation and re-
sort to wheedling and coaxing, feeling that if the
baby were left to the mercies of maternal instinct,
he himself w r ould be little better than a murderer.
Indeed, the responsibilities of his calling and its
immense obligations impressed themselves on him
more deeply every day. He saw that this profession
of medicine was not to be taken lightly; that his
work in it would be -useless, almost impious, if it
were not religiously performed. Even from the
earliest ages this had been so. One day, idly read-
ing a back number of the Lancet, he came upon a
historical article that contained a translation of
the Hippocratic oath, which had been administered
to all those who were initiated in the mysteries of
medicine two thousand years ago. It seemed to
him that it might have been written on the day
that he read it. Thus it ran :
388 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"I swear by Apollo the Healer, and ^Esculapius,
and Hygieia, and Panacea ; and I call all Gods and
Goddesses to witness, that I will, according to my
power and judgment, make good this oath and
covenant that I sign. I will use all ways of medical
treatment that shall be for the advantage of the
sufferers, according to my power and judgment,
and will protect them from injury and injustice.
Nor will I give to any man, though I be asked to
give it, any deadly drug, nor will I consent that it
should be given. But purely and holily I will keep
guard over my life and my art.
"And into whatever houses I enter, I will enter
into them for the benefit of the sufferers, departing
from all wilful injustice and destructiveness, and
all lustful works, on bodies, male and female, free
and slaves. And whatever in practice I see or hear,
or even outside practice, which it is not right should
be told abroad, I will be silent, counting as unsaid
what was said.
"Therefore to me, accomplishing this oath and
not confounding it, may there be enjoyment of life
and art, being in good repute among all men for
ever and ever: but to me, transgressing and
perjured,, the contrary."
Fine reading, Edwin thought. . . . The only
deity of whom hef was not quite certain was
Panacea. Obviously the classical representative of
Mother Siegel. It seemed to him a pity that the
modern student was not bound by the formulae of
the Physician of Cos.
His three months in the casualty department
THE DRESSER 389
passed away quickly, and in the spring of the year
he found himself attached as dresser to that
startling surgeon, Lloyd Moore. The appointment,
as he soon realised, was a privilege; for Lloyd
Moore was the one man of unquestionable genius in
the North Bromwich Medical School. At first the
experience was rather alarming, for the vagaries of
his chief, and, not least, his genial vulgarity, seemed
at first as though they were going to destroy the
pretty edifice of ideals that Edwin had constructed
on the basis of the Hippocratic oath and his ex-
perience in the casualty department. Lloyd Moore,
to begin with, was no respecter of persons, ancient
or modern; his wit was ruthless and occasionally
bitter, as Edwin had reason to know ; his language,
particularly in moments of stress, was unvarnished
and foul, even in the presence of w r omen.
On the surface, indeed, he seemed a person whom
Hippocrates would have regarded as undignified
and improper.- Sometimes in the out-patient de-
partment Edwin would blush for his chief's violence
and cruelty, but, in the end, all these things were
forgotten in the realisation that the little man was
a great surgical genius, to whom diagnosis was a
matter of inspired, unerring instinct, and practice
a gift of the gods. Nor were his virtues merely
professional. L.M. (as he was always called) was
a man of the people, one who had fought his way
inch by inch into the honourable position that he
held as the greatest of surgeons and the wealthiest
practitioner in the Midlands. The unpaid work of
the hospital absorbed him even to the neglect of
private practice, and every doctor in the district
390 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
knew that he could count on the very best of the
great man's skill for a nominal fee in any case of
emergency. Far more than any consultant in the
Midlands, he was regarded as the general practi-
tioner's friend, and, as a result of this confidence,
all the most interesting surgical material of the
district found its way into his clinic.
In a little time Edwin became wholly subject to
the spell of this amazing personality, until it seemed
strange to him that he could ever have doubted
the propriety of anything that L.M. said or did.
He wondered more and more at the man's titanic
energy, for Lloyd Moore was a little fellow, so pale
that he always looked as if he were fainting with
exhaustion. His patients also adored him, and
more than once Edwin was told in the wards by
elderly female admirers that Mr. Lloyd Moore was
the very image of Jesus Christ.
In the days of the casualty department Edwin's
main concern had been with the alleviation of im-
mediate pain. The problem of the wards was
graver, being no less than the balance of life and
death. In the achievements of L.M.'s scalpel, he
saw the highest attainment of which surgery was
capable. In a hundred cases offhand he could say
to himself that but for Lloyd Moore's skill the pa-
tient would have died, and when he saw the fragile
figure of the surgeon with his pale face and burn-
ing eyes enter the theatre, Edwin would think of
him as a man worn thin by wrestling with death
* . . death in its most cruel and invincible moods.
But in the theatre, at the time of one of L.M.'s
Emergency operations, there was no time for dream-
THE DRESSER 391
ing or for romantic speculation. An atmosphere
of materialism, of pure, sublimated action filled the
room as surely as the sweet fumes of chloroform
and ether. Everything about the place was clean
and bright and hard, from the frosted glass of the
roof and the porcelain walls to the shining instru-
ments that lay newly sterilised in trays on the
glass-topped tables. Even the theatre sister, in
her white overall, gave an impression of clean,
bright hardness. Indeed, in this white temple of
sterility, everything was clean except those parts
of the patient's body that the nurses in the wards
had not scrubbed with nail-brushes and shaved and
painted with iodine, and the language of L.M.,
whose physical lustrations had no effect whatever
on his vocabulary.
Even L.M.'s language was at times a relief, for it
seemed to be the only human thing that ever gained
admission to the theatre, and the sister was so in-
human as never to take the least notice of it. Not
a smile, nor even the least compression of the lips
marked her appreciation or disapproval of the
surgeon's sallies. Physically she was an extremely
attractive woman, with very beautiful eyes that
were not without their effect upon Edwin ; but the
influence of the place robbed her of any sexual at-
tributes, so that she became no more than a
monosyllabic automaton, intent, devoted, faultlessly
prepared for any of the desperate emergencies of
surgery. From the first Edwin had noticed that
the more embarrassing physical details of the pa-
tients had no disturbing effect upon her modesty.
He soon saw that if she had permitted herself for
392 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
one moment to be a woman she could not have re-
mained the wholly admirable theatre-sister that she
was. "But I can't imagine," he thought, "how any
man could marry a nurse "
From such reflections he would be roused by the
anaesthetist's laconic "Ready." On one side of the
^operating table he would stand, and on the other
L.M. with the theatre-sister ready at 'his elbow.
The surgeon would pick up a scalpel carelessly, as
a man picks up a pencil to write, and then, ap-
parently with as little thought, he would make a
long, clean incision through the skin and superficial
fatty tissues of the abdomen, putting his head on
one side to look at it like an artist whose pencil
has described a beautiful curve. Then, sharply:
"Swabs . . . Ingleby, what the hell do you think
you're doing?" And Edwin would press a swab
of gauze to the incision to absorb the blood that
escaped from the subcutaneous veins.
"Eight."
Layer by layer the various planes of fascia,
muscle, and peritoneum would be opened and neatly
laid aside, every one of them slipped in its own
pair of artery forceps. Then, from the gaping
wound, that L.M. probed with his thin finger, a
sickening odour would rise . . . one that Edwin
never remembered apart from the other sickening
smell of ether.
"Pus. ... I thought so," L.M. would say. "The
brute's perforated, damn him." And Edwin knew
that yet another creature had been snatched out
of the jaws of death.
In the hands of L.M. surgery seemed so simple.
THE DRESSER 393
His scalpel for he used fewer instruments than
any surgeon Edwin ever knew was a part of him
in the same way as a perfect rider is part of his
horse. There was never any hesitation in his
surgery, never any room for doubt ; everything was
straightforward and self-evident from the first in-
cision to the last suture; and he was at his best
when he threw into it a touch of bravura, rejoicing
in the amazing virtuosity of his own technique and
playing, a little, to the gallery.
"There you are," he would say, "you see there's
nothing in it. Nothing at all but a working knowl-
edge of anatomy and a dollop of common-sense.
That's all surgery. Why on earth should they pay
me a hundred guineas for doing a simple thing like
that? There's nothing in it, is there?"
Edwin knew that there was a great deal in it:
genius, and more than genius: a life of devotion
to one end only; infinite physical strains; cruel
disappointments; harrowing mistakes. For even
L.M. had made mistakes in his time ; and a doctor
pays for his mistakes more heavily than any other
man.
Apart from the performance of emergency opera-
tions, that might take place at any hour of the
day or night, the surgeon only occupied his theatre
on three mornings in the week; and the greater
part of Edwin's time was devoted to the work of
the wards. Here he performed his proper function
as dresser, being, under the house-surgeon, respon-
sible for the after-treatment of the patients on whom
L.M. had operated. This business kept his hands
full. Nearly all the acute surgical cases needed
394 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
dressing daily, and some more than once a day. It
was usual for the dresser to leave the second dress-
ing to be done by the house-surgeon on his evening
round, or by the sister of the ward, who would
doubtless have performed it as well as either of
them ; but nothing could induce Edwin, in his new-
est enthusiasm, to drop a case into which his teeth
were fixed.
The morning visits were ceremonial. The great
floors of the wards shone like the faces of such
patients as were fit to be scrubbed with a soapy
flannel ; the rows of beds were set with a mathe-
matical correctness, the sheets turned down at
exactly the same level; the water in the jugs stood
hot, awaiting the dresser's hands, his towel lay
folded in the jug's mouth ; a probationer, pink-faced
and red-armed, stood waiting to do his professional
pleasure ; morning sunlight flickered over the leaves
of aspidestras that flourished in pots on the central
tables, and on the trays of dressing instruments
that were ready for his hand.
At ten o'clock precisely, Edwin, an older and
more experienced Edwin whose shaves were no
longer a luxury, whose clothes no longer looked as
if he were in the act of growing out of them, and
whose collars were adorned by the very latest thing
in ties, would enter the ward, roll up his shirt-
sleeves, and be helped on with a white overall by
the obedient probationer whose main function in
life this office seemed to be or sometimes by the
sister herself. The new Edwin, product of six
months in hospital, was no longer afraid of these
attentions because they happened to be performed
THE DRESSER 395
by women. In a mild way he was even an amateur
of the physical points exhibited by the genus pro-
bationer, and had arrived at a touching intimacy
with the sisters, who found in him a clean and
pleasant mannered youth, and on occasion hauled
him out of the difficulties into which his inexperi-
ence landed him. Thus attired, he would begin his
progress of the ward, followed, wherever he went,
by the females who had robed him, the junior push-
ing before her the wheeled glass table on which the
dressings and instruments were kept, For the time
being he was, or imagined himself to be, the most
important person in the ward, until, perhaps, the
house-surgeon entered, and his attendants forsook
their allegiance and hastened to put themselves at
the service of this superior person.
In the duties of the wards Edwin became far
more familiar with his cases than in the casualty
department. The work was less hurried, and the
patients themselves were less fully armed with the
conventional social gestures by which men and
women protect and hide themselves. They lay in
bed helpless, dependent on the hospital staff for
every necessity and amusement; and the stress of
physical pain or the catastrophe of a major opera-
tion had generally shaken from them the little
superficialities that they had gathered to them-
selves in the course of everyday life. Edwin noticed
that, even at their worst, the women were hardly
ever too ill to be a little concerned for their per-
sonal appearance, and, as they grew better, the
patients of both sexes would make an heroic attempt
to appear as they wished themselves to seem rather
396 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
than as they were; but he realised, none the less,
that the doctor gets nearer to the bed-rock of human
personality than any other man who ministers to
humanity. With him, the person into whose hands
their suffering bodies were committed in an almost
pitiful confidence, they were concerned to hide
themselves far less than with any other; and in
this triumphant discovery Edwin flattered himself
that he was becoming richly learned in human
nature. He did not realise how little he had
learned.
One thing, however, that these days taught him,
he never lost in after life : an intense appreciation
of the inherent patience and nobility of human
beings, the precious ore that the fire of suffering
revealed. Even the worst of his patients in North
Bromwich as elsewhere disease is an impartial
enemy, falling on the virtuous and abandoned alike
revealed such amazing possibilities of good. In
these hospital wards the fundamental gregarious
instinct of mankind, with the unselfishness and
sympathy that go along with it, asserted itself.
The common life of the ward was happy, extraordi-
narily happy. Removed from the ordinary re-
sponsibilities of wage-earning and competition, fed
and housed and tended without question, the pa-
tients lived together as happily as a community
of African savages, supported by the female labour
of the nursing staff, obedient to the unquestioned
authority of the sister in charge.
And in Edwin's eyes these, too, were wonderful
people. At first he had taken them more or less
for granted; but gradually he realised the tremen-
THE DRESSER 397
dous sacrifices that their life implied: the long
hours : the unceasing strain of keeping their temper :
the clean, efficient materialism for which they must
have sacrificed so much of the obvious beauty of
life, committing themselves for most of them were
middle-aged to an abnegation of the privileges of
marriage and motherhood in a cloistral seclusion as
complete as that imposed on the useless devotee
of some mystical religion. He took it for granted
that the life of a nun was useless to any one except
herself. . . . Well, this was a religion worth some
sacrifice: the religion of humanity. They them-
selves would only have called it a profession. At
first it had seemed to him that their interests were
narrow and their lives, of necessity, mean. He
had been astonished at the small things that gave
them pleasure: a bunch of primroses from a grate-
ful patient; a ride on the top of a bus; a word of
commendation from one of the consulting staff; a
house-surgeon's or even a student's compliment;
and, above all, the passionate attachments and
enmities that made up the life of the nunnery in
which they lived : but in the end he began to sym-
pathise with them in the humility of their pleas-
ures, to feel that anything might be forgiven to
creatures who had made so great a sacrifice. In a
mild way he idealised them; and for this reason
they decided that he was "quite a nice boy."
m
In the winter of his third year Edwin's newly
formulated enthusiasm for humanity in the bulk
suffered something of a check. The hospital ab-
sorbed him so completely that in those days he saw
very little of the city, going to and from his lectures
and his work in the Pathological Laboratory at the
University without taking any real share in the life
of North Bromwich, or being aware of the passions
and interests that swayed the city's heart. Coming
down from the hospital, one evening in December,
he suddenly became conscious of a constriction in
the traffic which grew more acute as it reached the
narrows that debouch upon the open space in front
of the town hall ; and while he was wondering what
could be the cause of this, a huge rumour of voices,
not unlike that which proceeds from a Midland foot-
ball crowd when it disapproves of a referee, but
deeper and more malignant, reached his ears.
He wondered what was the matter, and since it
looked as if the traffic were now completely blocked
on the main road, he Cut down the quiet street that
faces the university buildings and overlooks the
paved court in which the statue of Sir Joseph Astill
inappropriately dispenses water to a big stone
basin. Almost immediately he found himself upon
the fringes of an immense crowd over which the
waves of threatening sound that he had heard at
a distance were moving like cats-paws on a sullen
sea. The windows of the town-hall itself blazed
with light, making the outlines of the Corinthian
pillars that surrounded it almost beautiful. He
edged his way into the black crowd. It was com-
posed for the most part of workers in iron and
brass, and exhaled an odour of stale oil. In a mo-
ment of relative silence he asked the man who stood
in front Of him, a little mechanic who had not
THE DRESSER 399
troubled to change the oily dongarees in which he
worked, what was the matter.
"It's Lloyd George ... the b ," he said, and
spat fiercely.
Edwin was not sure where he had heard the name
before. He seemed to remember it as that of a
Welsh member of Parliament who had come into
notoriety during the debates on the South African
War. He inquired what Lloyd George was doing.
"Come to speak agen' Joe," said the mechanic
savagely ; and, as a wave of sound that had started
somewhere in the middle of the crowd came sweep-
ing towards them, he suddenly began to squeal
hoarsely like a carnivorous beast in a cage: a
ridiculous noise, that seemed, nevertheless, to ex-
press the feelings of the multitude. From scraps
of conversation that he heard beneath the crowd's
rumour, Edwin began to understand that this
beggarly Welshman, who had spent the last few
years in vilifying the workmen of Xorth Bromwich
generally, and their political idol in particular, had
actually dared to bring his dirty accusations to the
political heart of the city: the town-hall in which
their favourite had delivered his most important
speeches; that, at this very moment, the meeting
which popular feeling had proscribed, was begin-
ning behind the Corinthian pillars, and that the
just indignation of North Bromwich had deter-
mined that he should not escape with his life.
It struck Edwin that whatever else the Welsh-
man might be, he was certainly not lacking in cour-
age; but, for all that, he found it difficult to pre-
vent his own feelings in the matter from being
400 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
swamped and absorbed and swept away by the
crowd's vast, angry consciousness. Almost in spite
of himself, his heart palpitated with vehement
malice against the intruder. He felt that he would
have experienced a brutal satisfaction in seeing him
torn limb from limb.
A yell of extraordinary savagery, in which he
found it difficult not to join, rose from the square.
The meeting, it seemed, had begun. Edwin saw
members of the crowd scattering in all directions.
A cry of "stones !" was raised, and he saw that men,
women, and children were streaming towards an
area of slum that was being dismantled to make
room for some monument of municipal grandeur,
returning with caps and hands and aprons full of
stones and broken brick. Soon the air was full of
flying missiles, and though the crash of glass could
not be heard, ragged holes were torn in the frosted
glass of the town-hall windows.
A body of police, tremendous strapping fellows,
marched by, followed by impotent jeers and hoot-
ing, and planted themselves in front of all the doors
with truncheons drawn. Their presence seemed to-
enrage the crowd, inflaming that suppressed hate
of the forces of order that slumbers in most men's
hearts. The volleys of stones increased as the sup-
plies of ammunition grew more plentiful. A little
dark man with a red tie monotonously shouting the
words: "Free speech!" was caught up, and, as it
seemed to Edwin, trampled to death. Somewhere
in the middle of the struggling masses people be-
gan to sing the revivalist hymn : "Shall we gather
at the river?" It reached Edwin in an immense
THE DRESSER 401
and gathering volume, with words adapted for the
occasion :
"Shall we gather at the fountain,
The beautiful, the beautiful, the fountain?
We'll drown Lloyd George in the fountain,
And he won't come here any more."
The very volume of sound was impressive and
inspiring.
Suddenly the crowd was parted by the arrival of
a new body. It was a phalanx of university stu-
dents who had dragged an immense beam of oak
from the debris of the dismantled slum and were
hurling it forward as a battering ram against one
of the principal doors. Edwin could see amongst
them the towering shoulders of W.G., and the mouth
of the elder Wade, the hero of the hansom cab, wide
open and yelling. It seemed as though the savagery
of the crowd had reached its height: they tore a
way through it, trampling the fallen as they went.
And then the police, who had been held in reserve,
charged at right angles to them, hitting out right
and left with their loaded batons. The less coura-
geous part of the crowd tried to scatter. The wave
of a stampede spread outwards till it reached the
edge on which Edwin was standing. He was thrown
violently from his feet into the chest of a stranger,
who shouted, "Hallo, Ingleby " It was Mat-
thew Boyce. "I think we'd better get out of this,"
lie said.
The words seemed to pull Edwin back into sanity.
Together they forced their way into a street that
was empty but for a stream of people hurrying to
402 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
the square with stones. They stood panting in
the quiet.
"God . . . what animals men are!" said Boyce.
"I suppose it was something like this a hundred
years ago, when they burned Priestley's house."
"Yes, it's pretty rotten," said Edwin, "but didn't
you feel you wanted to join in it?"
"Yes, that's the amazing part of it," said Boyce.
"What's happening to you in these days? We seem
to have lost sight of one another." [>bu8
They walked down to the station together.
"It's an extraordinary thing, isn't it?" said Ed-
win, "that ordinary peaceable men should go mad
like that?"
"They aren't men," said Boyee. "They're a
crowd." . ' n; , . ; > . 7/ 'k> a-t v I > [no-. . tU i ftorft
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if I KK nsflfit ')([t ^uil(f(.i-
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-
}r>d]
CHAPTER VTI
hm;
THE CLERK
-
boo..'
WITH this chance encounter, the friendship
of Edwin and Matthew Boyce really began ;
and during the fourth year, that now opened before
him, the figure of W.G., who had dominated his
stage by sheer physical magnitude, gradually re-
ceded. It was inevitable ; for the atmosphere of the
Boyces' house at Alvaston, with its air of culture
and refinement, was far more in keeping with Ed-
win's inclinations than the obtuse, if honest, com-
panionship of W.G. Edwin felt some misgivings
for his desertion; but Maskew, who had now bril-
liantly taken his Primary Fellowship, began his
hospital career and rejoined his old partner. So,
seeing that the needs of W.G. were provided for
and his responsibilities of friendship at an end,
Edwin drifted into a happy intimacy with the poet's
son.
They were both so young as to be convinced that
they were very old. The world was theirs ; for they
were full of health and contentment and, at pres-
ent, so free from complication that they could en-
joy to the full the treasures of the past and shape
the future into splendid dreams. In the beginning
they had found a field of common interest in great
403
404 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
works of literature; but these enthusiasms did not
carry them very far, for the appreciation of literary
masterpieces is at its best a solitary pleasure that
is not increased by the joy of sharing. It was in
the enjoyment of music that their friendship found
the most intense of its pleasures.
Edwin's musical development had been slow.
The first seeds had been planted in his babyhood
when, without understanding, he had listened to his
mother's playing. The chapel services at St. Luke's
made interesting by the exotic harmonies of Dr.
Downton, had nursed his interest in the beauty of
organised sound. The closed piano in his mother's
drawing-room had been the symbol of an instinct
temporarily thwarted, and from this he had escaped
by way of Aunt Laura's late Victorian ballads
which had seemed to him very beautiful in their
kind. Luckily his mother's library of music had
been good if old-fashioned, and when he amused
himself, more or less indiscriminately, by trying to
learn the piano at home, he had been forced to do
so by way of the sonatas of Beethoven, Schubert,
and Mozart, and the Wohltemperiertes Klavier of
Bach.
The emotional disturbance of his strange adven-
ture with Dorothy Powys had thrown him into an
orgy of verse-making which produced such poor
results that he was forced to turn to the love-poetry
of the Elizabethans and of Shelley, which he em-
broidered with musical settings that gave him more
satisfaction. These attempts at song-writing
pleased him for a time; but it was not until he
became friendly with Boyce that he began to realise
THE CLERK 405
what music was. Not only were the Boyces the
possessors of a grand-piano on which his homely
tinklings became magnificently amplified, but his
friend's father, the poet, was intimately acquainted
with the best of modern music.
Boyce introduced Edwin to the great German
song-writers from Schubert and Schumann to Hugo
Wolf, and laid the foundations of a feverish devo-
tion to Wagner, whom the friends approached per-
force by way of Tannhauser and Lohengrin, the two
operas that the Moody Manners company ventured
to present to provincial audiences. Edwin dis-
covered that North Bromwich, a city that takes its-
music as a boa-constrictor takes food, in the tri-
ennial debauch of a festival and then goes to sleep
again, supported or rather failed to support a
society for the performance of orchestral music.
The concerts were held fortnightly in the town-hall,
the windows of which had now been repaired, and
to these concerts Edwin and his friend went to-
gether, always sitting in the same two seats under
the gallery at the back of the hall. In this way
they heard a great deal of good music : the nine sym-
phonies of Beethoven, with the Leeds Choir in the
last: the usual orchestral extracts from the Ring,
the Meistersingers Overture, and the Siegfried
Idyll : the fourth, fifth, and sixth symphonies of
Tschaikowski : the tone-poems of Strauss, and a
small sprinkling of modern French music. These
were ambrosial nights to which they both looked
forward, and Martin, who had developed an unex-
pected inclination for music, sometimes went with
them.
406 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
The concerts became the central incident in a
kind of ritual. At seven o'clock the two, or some-
times three, would meet in the grill room behind
the bar at Joey's and consume a gross but splendid
repast of tripe and onions together with a pint or
more of bitter Burton. All the best music, they
had decided, was German, and beer was the only
drink on which it could be fully appreciated, de
Quincey's preference for laudanum notwithstand-
ing. Pleasantly elated, they would cross the road
to the town-hall and take their familiar seats,
pleased to recognise the people who, like themselves,
were regular attendants or subscribers to this un-
fashiojiable function ; and Boyce, who, by virtue of
his distinguished parentage, knew every one in
North Bromwich who was interested in music,
would point out to them all the distinguished people
who were present : Oldham, the critic of the Mail,
whom Arthur Boyce declared to be the soundest
living writer on musical subjects, and Marsden, who
did the musical criticism for the Courier. Matthew
knew them both. Oldham, he said, was a wonder-
ful fellow, who wrote with a pen of vitriol that
made such short work of baser metals that the gold
of beauty appeared brighter for his writing. Old-
ham became Edwin's prophet; but, on the whole,
he preferred the looks of Marsden.
* rl , . ,_ , ... , . , )Hi
"What is Marsden like?" he asked.
' iU> M8
"Marsden? Oh, well, as a matter of fact, Mars-
den's a bit of a gas bag. The governor says that he
always reminds him of an old hen. Didn't you
notice him in Joey's talking nineteen to the dozen
THE CLERK 407
to that queer fellow with a face like a full moon
who sits in front of us?"
The fellow with the face like a full moon was
only one of twenty or thirty people with whom the
friends experienced a sort of comradeship on these
nights. Perhaps the most wonderful time was the
end of the concert when they would walk out to-
gether into the spring night, parting at the corner
of the town-hall; and the memory of great
musical moments would accompany Edwin home
through miles of darkling country, and even fill his
little room at Halesby with their remembered glory
or wander through his dreams.
His life at home was the least satisfactory part
of these enchanted years. There were moments,
indeed, when it seemed as if the ideal relationship
with his father, that had been his early ambition,
were being realised. Sometimes, on a Sunday
morning, they would walk round the garden to-
gether in the sun, and Edwin would experience a
return of the passionate good-will and anxiety to
please that had overwhelmed him in the moment of
their bereavement; but their two natures were
radically so different that such moments were rare,
and, when they came, were really more of an em-
barrassment than a pleasure.
He felt that, on his side at any rate, the relation-
ship was artificial; that, however unnatural it
might seem, he really had to whip himself up to a
proper appreciation of his father's virtues. A sense
of veiled but radical antagonism underlay all their
dealings with each other ; and at times this hidden
thing, that Edwin held in such dread, came so
408 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
perilously near to the surface as to threaten an
open rupture.
The question of Edwin's allowance created one of
these dangerous situations. Edwin knew that it
was impossible for him to live the ordinary life of
a medical student in North Bromwich without one ;
but the distaste for speaking of money matters,
which arose from his delicate appreciation of his
father's finances, had made it difficult to approach
the subject. At last he had screwed up his courage
to the point of making a very modest demand, and
his father, instead of realising the difficulty he had
found in doing so, had hedged in a way that made
Edwin feel himself a hard and mercenary parasite.
"All right, father, we won't say anything more
about it," he said, comforting himself with the as-
surance that in a couple of years he would be
qualified and in a position to earn his own living
and pay his way. On the strength of this, and
with his eyes wide open, he ran up a number of
small tailors' bills in North Bromwich; and all
would have been well if Mr. Ingleby, in a fit of ab-
sent-mindedness, had not opened these incriminat-
ing documents and leapt to the conclusion that his
son was going rapidly to the dogs. An unfortunate
scene followed.
"I suppose you realise, Edwin," he said, "that
you are a minor, and that while you are under age
I am responsible for these bills ?"
"I've not the least intention of letting you pay
them," said Edwin.
"I'm afraid I have no alternative. I want you
to tell me truthfully if there are any others."
THE CLERK 409
"Of course there are others. Please don't bother
about them. In a little while 'I shall be able to
pay them."
"This is a great blow to me/' said 'Mr. Ingleby
solemnly, overwhelming Edwin with a picture of
virtuous poverty staggering from a cowardly blow
in the dark; and the obvious distrust with which
his father regarded him made his position at home
almost intolerable. It seemed to him that his
father now looked upon all his pleasures, with sus-
picion ; and, as a natural result, he lived more than
ever to himself, only returning to Halesby late at
night or at times when he knew that his father
would be busy in the shop. One circumstance came
to bridge the gap between them, a course of
pharmacology that Edwin took early in his fourth
year. He was delighted to find a subject in which
his father was more learned than himself, and spent
a number of hours that were almost happy in the
shop answering the questions that Mr. Ingleby put
to him on pharmacopoeial doses and searching the
little nests of drawers for rare drugs to identify
in their raw state. But the pharmacology course
was short, and the subject that was so important
in his father's life was small and unimportant in
Edwin's. In addition to which he could not help
feeling a sort of ethical prejudice against the com-
placency with which his father discharged patent
medicines that he knew to be worthless if not harm-
ful.
Every circumstance tended to isolate him from
the influences of Halesby. His sudden attempt to
be friendly with Edward Willis had withered un-
410 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
der the humiliating denouement of his adventure
with Dorothy Powys; the new fields of music that
he explored with Matthew Boyce had made him
discontented with Aunt Laura's ballads; the gen-
eral air of elegance and refinement with which he
had become acquainted in one or two Alvaston
houses to which the Boyces had introduced him,
made everything in Halesby, even his own home,
seem a little shabby and unsatisfactory. North
Bromwich, and his work there, claimed him more
and more.
ii
Even when his first enthusiasms and the inspir-
ing generalisations that arose from them were ex-
hausted, he found that he could not escape from the
fascination of the studies which he now pursued,
for the most part, in the company of Matthew
Boyce. His third year had not only introduced him
to the romance of surgery and the human interests
of hospital life. He had spent long hours in the
pathological laboratory and had made acquaintance
with bacteriology, a science that was still in its
infancy.
In this work he had shared a desk with Boyce,
to whom it was particularly attractive, and between
them they had developed a bacteriological technique
rather above the average, taking an imaginative de-
light in the isolation of the microscopic deadly
forms of vegetable life that are responsible for
nearly all the physical sufferings of mankind.
When they looked together at the banded bacilli of
tubercule, stained red with carbolfuchsin, they saw
THE CLERK 411
more than a specimen under a coverglass : they saw
the chosen and bitter enemies of genius, the malig-
nant, insensate spores of lowest life that had
banished Keats to fade in Rome, Shelley to drown
by Via Reggio, Stevenson to perish in Samoa: the
blind instruments of destruction that were even
then draining ttie last strength from the opium-
sodden frame of the author of The Hound of
Heaven. Here, in a single test-tube, they could see
enclosed enough of the organisms Of cholera to
sweep all Asia with a wave of pestilence; here,
stained with Indian ink, the dreamy trypanosome
that had wrapped the swarming shores of the
Nyanzas of dark Africa in the sleep of death.
Both of them were seized with a passionate fever
for research, to rid humanity of this insidious and
appalling blight. Now, more than ever, they felt
the supreme responsibilities of their calling; and
when, in their fourth year, they passed on to their
work in the medical wards, as clerks to the senior
physician at the Infirmary, and saw the effects of
bacterial havoc on the bodies of men and women,
their enthusiasm rose to a still higher pitch.
The canons of the new university decreed that
students who had learnt their surgery at one hos-
pital should study medicine at the other. It was
something of a disappointment to Edwin to ex-
change the homely atmosphere of Prince's, where
everything was familiar, for the colder and more
formal wards of the Infirmary. This hospital,
which was nearly twice the size of the other, was
situated in the lower and less healthy part of the
city. At Prince's there had been a way of escape
412 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
westwards through the pleasant suburban greens of
Alvaston to the country and the hills. The Infirm-
ary, in its terra-cotta arrogance, had been set down
in the heart of unreclaimed slums, in such a way
that its very magnificence and efficiency were de-
pressing by contrast. Edwin disliked the palatial
splendour of its shining wards which, for all their
roominess, were full of an air that suffocated; for
the windows were never opened, and the atmosphere
that the patients breathed had been sucked into the
place by an immense system of forced .ventilation,
filtered until it seemed to have lost all its nature,
heated, and then propelled througli innumerable
shafts into every corner of the building. In the
basement of the hospital the machine that was re-
sponsible for this circulation of heated air made a
melancholy groaning; and this sound made the
whole structure seem more like an artificial as-
sembly of matter than a real hospital with a per-
sonality and a soul.
It is possible that the teaching methods of the
Infirmary were superior to those of Prince's; and
the supporters of the institution prided themselves
on the fact that the nursing staff was drawn from
a higher social stratum; but for a long time Ed-
win felt considerably less at home there than he
had been at the older hospital. The ward work,
however, was even more fascinating, for the reason,
no doubt, that his wonder was now tempered with
a higher degree of erudition.
He found his new chief an inspiring figure. In
the first place, the fact that he was a gentleman
and a man of culture made him an effective con-
THE CLERK 413
trast to that dynamic but plebeian genius, L.M.
He was a graduate of one of the older universities,
and though this counted for little in the mind of
Edwin, who now affected to despise the city of his
broken dream, it did lend an air of distinction to
Sir Arthur Weldon's discourses. He had a quiet
voice, an admirable manner with women patients
or nurses, and beautiful hands, on one of which he
wore a signet ring embellished with his crest and
a motto which his presence merited : "In toto teres
atque rotundus." The rotundity, it may be added,
was so mild as to do no more than accentuate the
elegance of a gold and platinum watch-chain that
he wore. He was a great stickler for the traditions
and dignity of his profession, and no word that was
not infallibly correct disturbed the urbanity of his
slow and polished periods. For this reason his
tutorials in the wards were models of academic
dignity, and much frequented by students who knew
that he was far too anxious for the form of his dis-
course to break its continuity by asking awkward
questions. He treated his clerks, and indeed every
member of his classes, as if they were gentlemen
nurtured in the same fine atmosphere as himself.
He inspired confidence, and demanded nothing in.
return but correctness of behaviour and speech.
All these things made it easy to work for him;
and the fact that over and above these social quali-
ties he was a particularly sound physician, with a
reputation that was already more than provincial,
made Edwin sensible of the privilege of acting as
his clerk.
His specialty was disease affecting the heart or
4H THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
lungs, and though his wards at the infirmary were
open to all sorts of general medical cases, these
two types of tragedy came most frequently under
Ms care and Edwin's observation. Sir Arthur
exacted from his clerks the preparation of accurate
and voluminous notes on all his cases, and Edwin
spent many hours in the wards extracting from his
patients the details of family and medical history
and moulding them into a balanced and intelligible
report. The emotions that the study of the tubercle
bacillus had aroused in him in the laboratory were
reinforced a hundred times in the wards devoted
to phthisical patients, too far advanced in dissolu-
tion for sanatorium treatment, that were his chief's
especial care.
They were most of them creatures of intelligence
and sensitiveness above the average of the hospital
patient ; their eyes shone between their long lashes
with a light that may have been taken for that of
inspiration in those of dead poets ; even in the later
stages of the disease, when their strength would
hardly allow them to drag up their emaciated limbs
in their beds, and their bodies were wrung nightly
with devastating sweats or attacks of haemorrhage
that left them transparent and exhausted even
then they were so ready to be cheerful and to let
their imagination blossom in vain hope, that Edwin
found them the most pitiful of all his patients. The
spes phthisica seemed to him the most pathetic as
well as the most merciful of illusions.
In this ward he became acquainted with one pa-
tient in particular, a boy, the son of labouring par-
ents whom heredity and circumstance alike had
THE CLERK 415
marked down from the day of his birth to be a
victim of the disease. His mother and two sisters
had died of it, and all his short life had been spent
in a labourer's cottage made deadly by the family's
infection, at the sunless bottom of a wet Welsh
valley.
As a child he had been too delicate to enjoy the
fresh air that he would have breathed on the way
to the village school. He had lived, as far as Ed-
win could make out, in the single room in which his
mother had lain dying, and had learned to read and
write at her side. Then she had died ; and as soon
as he was old enough he had been sent out to
work on the farm where his father was employed,
an occupation that might well have saved him if
the work and the exposure had not been too severe,
or if he had not returned at night to the infected
hovel. As it was, in the rainy autumn weather of
the hills, he had caught a chill and sickened with
pleurisy, and thus the inevitable had happened.
He was only fifteen. Education had never come
his way, and he had never read any books but the
Confessions of Maria Monk and the family Bible;
but whenever Edwin came to go over his chest and
make the necessary report of progress fallacious
word upon his case sheets, he noticed that the boy
would hide a sheet of paper on which he had been
writing. His confidence was easily won, and with-
out the least shame he showed Edwin what he had
been doing. He had spent his time in writing verses
composed, for the most part, in the jingling meas-
ures of Moody and Sankey's hymns. They were
sprinkled with strange dialect words that filled
4i6 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
them with splashes of sombre colour ; most of them
were frankly ungrammatical ; but there were things
in some of them that seemed to Edwin to bear the
same relation to poetry as the mountain tricklinga
of that far hill country bore to the full stream of
Severn. Their banalities, faintly imitated from
the banalities of the hymn book, were occasionally
relieved by phrases of pure beauty that caught the
breath with surprise.
"Why do you do this?" Edwin asked, and when
he had recovered from the shyness and diffidence
into which the question had cast him, the boy told
him that he wrote his verses because he couldn't
help it, because the words became an obsession to
him and would not let him sleep until they were
written down. The thin flame of creative aspiration
showed itself in other ways, in the patient's vivid
delight in colours and sounds, and in the strange
pictures, having no relation to nature, that he drew
with coloured chalks.
It seemed to Edwin that in this case the exhaus-
tion of chronic disease had revealed the existence,
as it sometimes will, of a faint fire of natural genius.
"There, but for the spite of heaven," he thought,
"goes John Keats," and, with the feelings of an
experimenter in explosives who mixes strange
reagents, he lent his patient a copy of the poet's
works.
The boy fell on them eagerly. He confessed that
he did not understand them; but he would read
them all day, mispronouncing the words as the
classical student perhaps mispronounces those of
the Greek poets, but extracting from their sono-
THE CLERK 417
rous beauty a curious and vivid sensual satisfaction.
A single line would sometimes throw him into a
kind of trance, and he would lean back in his bed
with the book open on his chest and his slender
clubbed fingers clasped above it, repeating to him-
self his own version of the words without any con-
ception of their real meaning. Sometimes a line
would fill him with memories :
"Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery moon, and eve's one star . . ."
"That is like our home," he would say.
The house-physician did not approve of these
experiments. On principle he would have disap-
proved of poetry, and in this case he considered the
reading of it unhealthy. As if there were any
element of health in this misfortune! ... A few
weeks later the patient had an attack of haemoptysis
and died.
It was only in such cases of chronic illness that
the question of the patient's intellectual state arose.
Such speculations might mitigate the fatigue of
slow siege warfare that had only one end in view,
but the acute medical wards, and particularly those
devoted to acute pneumonia, were the scene of
shorter and more desperate conflicts, grapplings
with death, in which the issue was doubtful and
medicine could at least give support, and some-
times turn the tide.
These were indeed terrible battles, in which de-
voted nursing counted for much. To Edwin it
418 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
was a sight more awe-inspiring than the quiet of
death, to watch a strong man stretched upon his
back, breathing terribly through the night-long
struggles of pneumonia. In it he could see the
most tremendous expression of a man's will to live,
in the clenched hands, in the neck, knotted and
swollen with intolerable strain, in the working of
the muscles of the face and nose in their supreme
thirst for air. The sound of this breathing would
fill the room that was otherwise so silent that one
could hear the soft hiss of the oxygen escaping from
its cylinder. The train of students that followed
Sir Arthur round the wards would stand waiting
in the doorway, knowing that nothing was to be
seen, and the physician himself would step quietly
to the square of red screens and exchange a whisper
with the sister who stood at the patient's bedside,
her lips compressed as though their muscles were
contracting in sympathy with the other tortured
muscles that she watched.
"Well, how is he?" the physician would ask.
"I think he's holding his own. No sleep."
"That's a pity. Well, persevere with the brandy
and the warm oxygen."
"Yes, sir." Her tense lips scarcely moved.
And then Edwin's chief, so quietly that the pa-
tient did not know what he was doing, being indeed
no more than a mass of labouring muscles bent on
life, would feel the temporal pulse in front of the
ear with his firm white finger.
"Not so bad, sister . . . not so bad."
Then he would sweep away with the tails of his
frock-coat swinging.
THE CLERK 419
"Ingleby, did you notice anything about the pa-
tient's hands?"
"His hands, sir?"
'Tea ... his hands."
"No, sir. Nothing, I'm afraid. I don't think he
was plucking the bedclothes . . . carphology, do
they call it?"
"You had better look the word up if you are not
sure. No ... it was a finer movement. He was
rolling his thumbs over the tips of his index fingers,
just like a man making pellets of bread at a dinner
party. There are men who do that. Remember
it. It's a bad sign in a case of lobar pneumonia.
Come along, gentlemen. The pneumococcus is a
sporting antagonist. Short and sweet. I'd as soon
die of pneumonia as anything and have a run for
my money. That case has put up a good fight."
That "case" ... On the face of it the use of the
word seemed to justify the accusation of gross
materialism that is so usually made against the
profession of medicine. The patient who lay there
fighting for his life was, in the physician's eyes, a
case, and not, as Edwin, who had taken notes of
his history in the earlier stages of the disease, knew
him to be a bricklayer's labourer fro>m Wolverbury
with a wife and six children, two of whom had died
in infancy. He was a case: a human body, the
soulless body that Edwin had learned in detail
through two years of labour in the dissecting room,
consisting of a heart hard-pressed, a nervous system
starved of oxygen and weakened by the virus of
pneumonia, and a pair of clogged lungs. This was
the whole truth as far as it concerned the physician.
420 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
The calamity was a material calamity to be fought
with material weapons, and the state of his soul, or
his relations with his wife and the rest of the com-
munity in which he lived, only mattered in so far
as they affected his body and revealed him to have
been a clean-living and temperate man. For the
rest he was a case ; and it were well for the physi-
cian to leave the animula, vagula, blandula to the
poets. This was one of the hard lessons of medicine.
These were sombre things; but it must not be
imagined that they reflected the general tenor of
hospital life. The Infirmary, indeed, was so vast
as to be microcosmic, and its loves, its jealousies,
and its ambitions combined to produce a broad ef-
fect of human comedy, not without tears, but
leavened by the rich, and often unprintable humour
that flourished in the out-patient department. Hos-
pital politics, hospital scandals, hospital romances,
combined to make life a vivid and exciting experi-
ence. In the toils of the last, spring found W.G.
securely bound. Harrop, too, had launched into a
desperate affair with a probationer in the children's
wards whom the matron promptly transferred to
the infectious block and perpetual quarantine. Ed-
win and Boyce escaped this epidemic of tenderness
that swept through the fourth year like measles.
They were far too absorbed in their own interests
and discoveries to worry their hearts about any-
thing in a nurse's cap and apron.
Spring passed in a swift vision of plum-blossom
in the Boyce's Alvaston garden and two weeks of
musical debauchery, one Wagnerian and the other
of Gilbert and Sullivan. Most of the time they
THE CLERK 421
were working at high pressure; but a week before
the beginning of the fourth examination, Boyce
proposed that they should cycle down together to
the country house that his father rented in Glouces-
tershire, and blow away the vapours of forced ven-
tilation with Cotswold air.
On the eve of an examination it seemed a daring
but enthralling plan. Edwin put the proposal be-
fore Mr. Ingleby, and was surprised to find that
he didn't object. Indeed, it had seemed to Edwin
for several months that his father was curiously
distrait and less interested than usual in his work.
This consent freed his conscience, and the two
friends set off together on a Saturday afternoon in
the spirit of abandoned holiday that is the highest
privilege of youth. They had decided to take no
medical books with them. As far as they were
concerned, the examination might go hang; for a
whole week they would live with no thought for the
morrow, taking long rides over the Cotswolds,
lunching at village inns on bread and cheese, re-
turning at night to feasts of beans and bacon and
libations of Overton cider.
They started from the infirmary at half -past two,
and had soon left the dust and tram-lines of North
Bromwich behind. The smooth, wide road that they
followed stretched in magnificent undulations over
the heights of the Midland plateau from which they
could see the shapes of Uffdown and Pen Beacon
fading into the west under a pale, black-country
sky. In front of them southward the sky was
blue.
422 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"We're in for ripping weather," Boyce shouted as
he rode ahead.
The weather didn't really matter: they were in
for a great adventure. From the plateau they glided
swiftly to the vale of Kedditch, and when they had
left that sordid little town behind they climbed the
backbone of the Ridgway, where the road follows
the thin crest of a line of small hills and overlooks
on either side two dreaming plains. In a blue haze
of summer these green dominions lay asleep, so
richly scattered with dark woodlands that no hu-
man habitation could be seen. They were as lonely
as the sky. Westward of Severn the Glees and Mal-
verns towered over Wales; but Boyce appeared to
be more interested in certain lower wooded hills
upon the eastern side. He made Edwin the con-
fidant of his latest romance.
"She and I," he said, "used to bicycle out from
Alvaston in the cool of the evening . . . about an
ho.ur and a half's easy ride. It was early last sum-
mer. Those woods are full of nightingales. We
used to sit on a gate and listen to them and ride
home together in the dark. I can tell you it was
pretty wonderful."
Of course it was wonderful. Everything must be
wonderful in this enchanted country. Riding along
in the afternoon sunlight Edwin constructed for
himself just such another passionate adventure;
and the figure with which he shared these imaginary
ecstasies was, for want of a better, Dorothy Powys.
While the dream nightingales were singing their
hardest and he was on the point of renewing that
unforgettable kiss, they came to a cottage <half
THE CLERK 423
timbered and lost in clematis and honeysuckle
where a steep road fell on either side at right anglea
to the ridge.
"Eight," shouted Boyce, "we'll take the road
down through the Lenches."
"What are the Lenches?" said Edwin, riding
abreast.
"Villages. Five of them, I think. There's Eous
Lench and King's Lench and Abbot's Lench, and
two others. They're a proper subject for a poem."
"Right-o . . . let's collaborate," said Edwin.
"How's this for a beginning?"
"As I was riding through the Lenches
I met three strapping country wenches."
And laughing together, they constructed a series
of frankly indecent couplets, recording the voy-
ager's adventures with all three. It was a matter
of the most complete collaboration, for the friends
supplied alternate lines, outdoing one another in
Eabelaisian extravagance. Edwin, however, pro-
vided the final couplet, which, he declared, gave the
composition literary form :
"Home to my vicarage I hasted
Feeling the day had not been wasted."
"A parson of the type of Herrick," said Boyce.
"Yea . . . but more serious."
"That kind of affair is awfully serious . . . at the
time."
The gables of Evesham and its one tall tower
swam in a golden dust. They drank cider in the
424 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
inn courtyard, purchased a couple of Bath chaps
at a grocer's and crossed the Avon. Through an
orchard country they rode in that hour of evening
when bird-song is most wistful. The sun went
down in a blaze of splendour behind Bredon Hill.
The perfume of a beanfield swept across the road.
"Good God, isn't it good?" said Boyce. "We are
nearly there."
A village of Cotswold stone half hidden in blos-
soms of crimson rambler received them. The gar-
dens were full of sweet-williams, pale phloxes, and
tall hollyhocks. "Straight on," Boyce called.
A sign-post pointed up the hill to Overton. They
dismounted, and pushed their bicycles up a steep
lane in the twilight. Bats were flitting everywhere,
and a buff-coloured owl fluttered heavily between
the overarching elms. A faint tinkle of trickling
water came to their ears.
"That is the sound of Overton," said Boyce.
"Slow water trickling in the night."
They slept together in the low-beamed room, so
soundly that the sun was high before they wakened
next morning.
The week that now followed was the very crown
of youth. The Boyce's summer house stood upon
a patch of terraced ground, being the highest of
the three farms round which the hamlet of Overton
clustered, and overlooked the blossomy vale of
Evesham bounded by the Cotswold escarpment,
blue and dappled with the shadows of cloud.
"Parva domus: magna quies" read the motto that
Matthew's father, the poet, had placed above the
lintel of the door : "small house : great quietness" '
THE CLERK 425
and indeed it seemed to Edwin that there could be
no quieter place on earth.
He and Matthew would smoke their morning
pipes together on a stone terrace that bleached in
the sun along the edge of a garden that the poet had
planted for perfume rather than for beauty of
bloom. Here they would sit, nursing books that
were unread, until the spirit tempted them to set
out towards the blue escarpment, and, after a hard
climb, lose themselves in the trough of some deep
billow of Cotswold and fall asleep on a bank of
waving grasses, or follow some runnel of the Leach
or Windrush until it joined the mother stream,
where they would strip and float over the shallows
with the sun in their eyes, emerging covered with
the tiny water leeches that gave one of the rivers
its name.
On the height of Cotswold they found an inn that
was half farm, possessing a barrel of cider that Ed-
win was almost ready to acknowledge as the equal
of that which he had drunk in Somerset ; and, for
further attraction a huge yellow cat beneath the
lazy stare of whose topaz eyes Matthew sat wor-
shipping. In the evening the air that moved over
the wolds grew cool and dry and more reviving than
any juice of yellow apples, and with their lungs
full of it they would spin down the winding hills
into the plain, past many sweet-smelling villages
and golden manor-houses, reaching Overton about
sunset, when the evening stocks, that Mr. Boyce
had planted along the approaches to his doorway,
recovered from their lank indolence and drenched
426 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
the air with a scent that matched the songs of
nightingales.
There Mrs. Pratt, the wife of a neighbouring
labourer, would have their dinner ready: tender
young beans and boiled bacon and crisp lettuce
from the garden that Matthew dressed according
to the directions of his epicurean father; and with
their meal, and after, they would drink the dry
and bitter cider made at the middle farm from the
apples of orchards that now dreamed beneath them.
Then came music. The drawing-room piano
stood by the open window, and a soft movement
of air disturbed the flames of the candles in silver
candlesticks that lighted the music stand. No other
light was there; and in the gloom beyond, Edwin,
playing the tender songs of Grieg and Schumann,
and the prelude to Tristan, would see the long legs
of Matthew stretched dreaming on a sofa. The
nights were so silent that it seemed a pity to mar
them with music ; and for a long time Edwin would
sit in silence at the piano, while strong winged
moths fluttered in out of the darkness and circled
round the candle's flame. Last of all, before they
turned in, they would go for a slow walk over
meadows cool in the moonlight, listening to the
silence "Solemn midnight's tingling silentness,"
Matthew quoted or to the gentle creaking of the
branches of elms, now heavy with foliage, that em-
bosomed their small house.
The last day of their holiday was wet; but that
made no great difference to them, for a succession
of showers drew from the drenched garden a per-
fume more intense. They spent the day in musical
THE CLERK 427
exploration, and when the darkness came they sat
together talking far into the night. They talked of
North Bromwich, for the ponderable influence of
the morrow had already invaded their quietude, and
of their future work.
"In a year's time/ 7 said Edwin, "we shall be
qualified."
"What shall you do?"
"Oh, general practice, I suppose. That's the
easiest way to make a living. It's what .most men
do."
"I don't like the idea of it," said Matthew. "It's
sordid, unsatisfactory work. A hard living in
which science stands no chance. Selling bottles of
medicine quite harmless, of course, but unneces-
sary to people who don't really need them. You
have to do it to make a living. If you don't the
other people cut you out."
"I don't think it's as bad as that. There must
be something fundamentally good about medical
practice. You are actually helping the people who
are genuinely ill."
"That's the ideal side of it. But there's another.
I don't think I shall risk it. If the governor can't
let me have enough money to wait for consulting
practice, I shall have a shot at one of the services.
I think the Indian Medical Service is the thing.
Fairly good pay, a chance of seeing the world, and
a good sporting life."
"India ?" Edwin had never thought of it.
Sitting there in an English dusk the idea appealed
to him. Great rivers: burning plains under the
icy rampart of Himalaya : strange, dark religions.
428 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
India. . . . Yes, it sounded good. His imagination
went a little farther ahead. A hill-station accord-
ing to 'Kipling, or perhaps a more solitary canton-
ment in the plains where the commandant was a
major in the Indian army and the wife of the com-
mandant, a girl whose name had once been Dorothy
Powys. And the major, of course, would succumb
to some pernicious tropical disease through which
Edwin would nurse him devotedly; and when he
was dead and buried his beautiful wife would come
to Edwin the only other Englishman in the sta-
tion, and say: "I never really loved him. I never
really loved any one but you." Altogether an ex-
tremely romantic prospect. . . . Yes, the Indian
Medical Service would do very well. . . .
The last night was more beautiful in its silence
than any other. It had been a wonderful week.
There would never be another like it. The crown
of youth. And, as it came to pass, the end of youth
as well.
m
It was late that night when Edwin reached home.
After the huge openness of the Cotswold expanses,
the air of Halesby, lying deep in its valley, seemed
to him confined and oppressive, and to add to this
impression there was a sense of thunder in it.
After supper his father went to his writing desk
and pulled out a sheaf of bluish, translucent papers
which he spread out on the table, and began to
study intently. Edwin, sprawling, tired and con-
tented, in the corner, watched him lazily.
"Whatever have you got there, father?" he said.
THE CLERK 429
"Plans . . . architect's plans," Mr. Ingleby re-
plied nervously.
"Plans? What for? Surely you aren't thinking
of building a new house."
"Well, not exactly. No ... I am thinking of
adding to this one."
"But that would be an expensive job. Isn't it
big enough for us?"
"Yes. It's big enough at present ; but it may not
be shortly."
"What do you mean?"
Edwin laughed uneasily, for he could not under-
stand this air of mystery. Mr. Ingleby rose from
his plans and cleared his throat. The little lamp-
lit room immediately became full of an atmosphere
of suppressed intensity, in which the tick of the
clock could be heard as if it were consciously call-
ing attention to the importance of the moment.
"I mean. ... As a matter of fact, I had intended
telling you this evening ; but I found it difficult to
do so, because . . . because I could not be quite
sure how you'd take it. It ... it may come as a
shock to you. I am thinking of enlarging the house
because I am proposing to be married again."
"Married? Good God!"
A feeling of inexplicable passion choked Edwin
so that his voice did not sound as if it were his
own.
"Yes, I knew it would come as a surprise to you.
Probably you'll find it difficult to understand my
feelings. You mustn't be hasty."
"Good God !" Edwin's amazement could find no
other words.
430 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"You are the first person I have told, Edwin.
I've thought a good deal about it ... about you
particularly, and I've quite satisfied myself that I
am not doing you any injustice. In another year
I suppose you will be going out into the world and
leaving me. Don't decide what you think too
hastily."
He paused, but Edwin could not speak.
"If you'll listen, I'll tell you all about it. I
think you will approve of my choice. I'll tell
you "
"For God's sake, don't. Not now "
"Very well. As you wish." Mr. Ingleby's hands
that held the architect's papers trembled. He
smiled, kindly, but with a sort of bewilderment.
"As you wish," he repeated.
And Edwin, feeling as if he would do something
ridiculous and violent in the stress of the curiously
mingled emotions that possessed him, went quickly
to the door and ran upstairs to his room, where he
flung himself on his bed in the dark.
In a little while he found himself, ridiculously,
sobbing. He could not define the passionate mix-
ture of resentment, jealousy, shame, and even
hatred, that overwhelmed him. He could not under-
stand himself. A psycho-analyst, no doubt, would
have found a name for his state of mind, describing
it as an "(Edipus complex" ; but Edwin had never
heard of psycho-analysis, and only knew that his
mind was ruthlessly torn by passions beyond the
control of reason. He made a valiant attempt to
think rationally. Primarily, he admitted, it wasn't
Ms business to decide whether his father should
THE CLERK 431
marry again or remain a widower. His father was
a free agent with responsibilities towards Edwin
that were rapidly vanishing and would soon be
ended. He couldn't even suggest that this new
marriage would be the ruin of any vital comrade-
ship between them, for the hopes of this ideal state
that he had once cherished, had not been realised
during the last few years. There was no reason
why his father's marriage should affect him per-
sonally, or even financially, for he had never
reckoned on the least paternal support when once
he should be qualified. There was not even the
least suggestion that his father was physically un-
suitable for the married state, for there was no rea-
son why he should not live for many years to come.
There were actually valid arguments, that Edwin
could not dispute, in favour of the plan such as
Mr. Ingleby's loneliness, soon to be increased, and
the discomfort that he had suffered as an elderly
widower at the hands of a series of inefficient house-
keepers. From every point of view the world would
be justified in concluding that he was doing the
correct and obvious thing. Why, then, should Ed-
win lie on his bed in the dark wetting his pillow
with tears, and sick with shame?
No reason could assuage his suffering. However
calmly he tried to consider the matter, the thought
of his mother rose up in his mind ; a vision of her,
beautiful and pathetic, and indefinitely wronged,
came to reinforce his indignation. He lit a candle
and gazed for a long time at her photograph, the
one that he had always kept in his desk at St.
Luke's and scarcely noticed for the last three years ;
432 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
and though he knew that she was dead and pre-
sumably beyond the reach of any human passion,
the sight of her features filled him more than ever
with this unconscionable resentment so devastating
in its intensity. The portrait took him back to the
tenderness that he remembered at the time of her
death, and particularly that strange moment when
he and his father had knelt together in the little
room across the landing. The smell of Sanitas. . . .
And then he remembered another incident in the
gloom of that brown room at the Holloway on the
windy crown of Mendip, whence he had seen all the
kingdoms of the earth. Thinking of this, he
seemed to hear the voice of a very old woman, who
said, "The Inglebys are always very tender in
marriage. I've seen many of them that have lost
their wives, and they always marry again." How
could she have known? And then the thought of
a strange woman in the house, treading in the
places where his mother's steps had once moved,
swept him off his feet again.
"I could never stay here," he thought. "I could
never stay here. ... I should do something desper-
ate and cruel and unreasonable. I couldn't help
myself. I must go. It's a pity . . . but I must go.
I couldn't stay here. I simply couldn't."
With this determination in his mind, but with-
out the least idea of the way in which it might be
realised, he arrived at a state of comparative
serenity, in which he could contemplate his mother's
photograph without so much passionate resentment
at the slur that was being laid on her memory. Now
he saw everything in terms of his new resolution.
THE CLERK 433
He saw, pathetically, the little bed in which he had
slept for so many years, the shelves on which his
favourite books were ranged, the piano and the
sheaves of his mother's music that he had managed
to install in his room: all the small details that
went together to create its atmosphere of homeli-
ness.
"How the devil shall I manage to leave them?"
he thought. He went to the window and saw, be-
yond the garden trees, the low line of those familiar
hills: the landscape that he had always delighted
in as his own, and that now was to be his no longer.
He sighed, for to leave them seemed to him im-
possible ; they were so familiar, so much a definite
part of his life. A curious impulse seized him to
creep downstairs and out of the house, and visit
the grave in the cemetery where his mother was
laid; but he restrained himself from this debauch
of sentiment, "It will do no good," he thought.
"It's all over." He even wondered if he might feel
happier if he went down to Aunt Laura's house
and confided in her : perhaps she would understand.
At least she was his mother's sister and might be
conscious of the indignity ; but when he had almost
determined to do this, he reflected that she and
his uncle were probably in bed, and a ludicrous
picture of her putting her head out of the window
to ask what was the matter, with her hair in curl-
ing pins, restrained him. Besides, it would be
rather ridiculous to fall back upon the sympathies
of a person whom he had neglected for several years.
"No. ... I must go on my own way," he thought.
"It's a sort of break in my life, just like the big
434 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
break before. It's got to be faced, and it's no good
worrying about it."
He suddenly remembered that in twelve hours'
time he would be sitting for his fourth examination,
and that it would be wise for him to get some sleep ;
so he undressed and went to bed, wondering how
many more times he would undress in that little
room and caring less than he would have expected.
He fell asleep soon, for he was thoroughly tired out,
and slept so soundly that he did not see his father
enter the room a few hours later. He came in
softly, in his dressing-gown, carrying a candle, and
stooped above Edwin's sleeping figure with troubled
eyes.
CHAPTER VIII
LOWER SPAEKDALB
NEXT day, in a fever of restlessness, Edwin
essayed and passed his fourth professional ex-
amination. He had expected to get a first-class in it,
but when he found himself near the bottom of the
list in the neighbourhood of W.G., he was not seri-
ously disturbed. The subjects of Forensic Medicine
and Toxicology were unimportant, and now that his
life had taken this sudden change of direction, it
did not much matter what sort of a degree he took.
His one concern was to get qualified and licensed
to earn his living on the bodies of his fellow-men
as quickly as possible.
Since his interview with his father, the deter-
mination to leave Halesby had not faltered, al-
though he had not then calculated the difficulties
that now faced him. To begin with, he had no
money beyond a few pounds that his mother had
placed to his credit in the Post Office Savings Bank
in his childhood. Luckily his college and hospital
fees had been paid in advance, and he was only
concerned with the actual cost of living and the
fees for the final examination. In some way or
other he would have to live for twelve months, and
he smiled to himself to think that he was in very
435
436 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
much the same position as his father had occupied
thirty years before.
On the whole, he thought, his father must have
had less cause for anxiety, with Dr. Marshall's two
hundred pounds behind him and the humble stand-
ards of a village boy in place of Edwin's more elabo-
rate traditions of life. He felt that he needed the
advice of a sound man with some knowledge of the
world. In an emergency of this kind Matthew
Boyce could offer him very little but sympathy, and
so he turned naturally to the counsels of that bat-
tered warrior, W.G., feeling, at the same time,
rather shabby in making use of a friend whom he
had practically neglected in the last two years.
W.G. providentially didn't look at it in that light.
He had always regarded Edwin from a fatherly
standpoint, and the mere fact that this was a case
of rebellion against domestic authority of the kind
in which he had been engaged since his childhood
made- him sympathetic, though he didn't, as Edwin
saw to his despair, appreciate the delicacies of the
situation.
"I can quite see why you want to cut adrift," he
said. "It's a feeling that any one's who's dependent
gets, if he has any guts in him; but I'm damned
if I see any cause or just impediment why these
two persons shouldn't enter into holy matrimony."
"I suppose it's just rotten sentimentality. Still
... I can't help it. There it is. It's the idea of
seeing another woman in my mother's place. I
simply couldn't stick it, W.G."
"Well, old chap, I'm quite prepared to believe
you know best. The thing is, what are you going
LOWER SPARKDALE 437
to do? You can't live on nothing in this hard world.
You can share my bed for a week or two if you
like. I'm sorry it won't be for longer ; but marriage
appears to be in the air. To tell you the truth, I'm
going to get married myself."
"You married? . . . Good Lord! What on earth
IP
are you doing that for?"
"I don't know. Force of circumstance, I sup-
pose. It's one of the things that happens when
you least expect it."
"Do I know her, W.G.?"
"Oh, yes . . . you know her. It's Sister Merrion
in Number Twelve."
There came to Edwin a vision of a tall, dark
girl, with wavy brown hair and Irish eyes, whom
he couldn't help remembering at the infirmary.
"I didn't even know that you were friendly."
"We weren't until about three weeks ago. I hap-
pened to notice that she was looking rather down
in the mouth, and took her out to tea ; and then the
poor girl broke down at the Dousita and told me
all about her home affairs. It's the devil and all
to see a pretty girl like that crying. She'd been
having a thin time of it at home with her father:
a pretty rotten sort of fellow, I gathered, and that
seemed the only way out of it. So we're going to
be married next month. A sort of fellow-feeling,
you know."
"But . . . Good Lord . . . are you in love with
her?"
"Ot course I am, you old ass. I shouldn't marry
her if I wasn't. It'll be a bit of a pinch till I'm
qualified, though."
438 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"I say, I hope you'll be happy."
A sudden pang of something like envy over-
whelmed Edwin. The picture of settled peace, ro-
mantic love in a cottage, that W.G. was about to
share with the undeniably beautiful Sister Merrion
struck him as an ideal state.
"You're a lucky devil, W.G.," he said.
It seemed unreasonable that W.G. should devote
himself to the smaller problem of Edwin's ways and
means on the eve of such a momentous adventure.
It hardly seemed fair to bother him.
"We're going into rooms in Alvaston at first,"
he said. "It'll be less expensive than furnishing,
and we don't intend to indulge in a family for the
present. Meanwhile, if I were you, I should go and
talk to the manager at Edmondson's. He may be
able to put you on to something. Yes . . . have
a shot at him first, and mention my name, he's a
very decent sort."
Edwin laughed to himself. It seemed to him that
he was in the grip of a curiously ironical fate, for
Edmondson's was the identical firm of wholesale
druggists with whom his father had been employed
on his first arrival at North Bromwich. History
was repeating itself in a way that was proper to
romance.
In the afternoon he went down to Edmondson's
and asked for the manager, a vigorous person with,
shrewd eyes that he screwed up habitually when-
ever he made a point in his conversation. He called
Edwin "Doctor" : a form of address that was flatter-
ing, until Edwin realised that it was no more than
LOWER SPARKDALE 439
a habit with him. "Ingleby," he said ; 'let me see,
I know the name."
"Probably you know my father. He's in business
at Halesby."
"Ah, yes, of course . . . your father. Come along
to my room, doctor, and have a cigar."
In this varnished chamber, decorated with a col-
lection of barbarous surgical instruments, survivals
of the Middle Ages, Edwin unbosomed himself. The
manager listened in silence, screwing up his eyes,
from time' to time* to show that he was taking in
Edwin's story.
"Well," he said at the end of it. "Do you want
me to tell you what I think of it, doctor? Candidly,
you know."
Edwin was only too anxious for another opinion.
"Well, I think you don't know when you're well
off. To tell you the truth, doctor, I think you're
a damned fool. That's straight. See?"
"I'm not surprised," said Edwin. "Still, I've
made up my mind. I'm not going to stay at home.
I can't do it, that's all. I'm only wondering if you
can put me in the way of a job of some kind."
"Well, doctor, that's easier said than done. When
you're qualified, it'll be a different matter alto-
gether. I think I can promise to keep you in <lo-
cums' at four or five guineas a week, as long as
you like to take them; but I can't honestly say
there's anything for you at present. It's not like
the old days when doctors were allowed to keep
unqualified assistants."
"I'm through my fourth exam., you know. I could
do dispensing."
440 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Dispensing. . . . Yes, I hadn't thought of that.
Well, doctor, I'll see what I can do for you. You
know what I think of it, don't you? In the mean-
time you'd better leave your address. No good
writing to Halesby, I suppose?"
Edwin gave him the address of W.G.'s diggings,
and went off, hopelessly discouraged, to find his
friend. W.G., however, was at present far too en-
grossed in the charms of Sister Merrion to be avail-
able. So Edwin went on to the Boyce's house in
Alvaston, only to find that Matthew had cycled
down to Overton again with his father. It was
impossible for him to settle to any work; so he
took an afternoon train to Halesby, at a time when
he knew his father would be busy at the shop, and
collected the few belongings that he felt he must
take with him.
The atmosphere of the house was inexpressibly
poignant. Within its walls, he reflected, dwelt the
ghost of all his childhood, and memories of his
mother, that had lain submerged in his conscious-
ness for many years, rose to meet him wherever he
went. Well, he would never see the place again.
This exile, it pleased him to think, was his final
sacrifice to her memory. That was the best way
in which he could express it. At the worst, an-
other voice whispered, it was an excess of mawkish
.sentiment.
All through the afternoon, and particularly when
tie disinterred small pieces of the lumber that he
Jiad collected in his schooldays, this sense of a
ghostly childhood haunted him. It followed him
jdown the stairs into the hall, where the grandfather
LOWER SPARKDALE 441
clock ticked steadily as it had ticked ever since
he could remember, into the dead drawing-room,
soon to be made alive by the tastes of another femi-
nine personality ; on the lawn, where the limes were
shedding their sticky bloom; on the way to the
station, when he lugged his bag through the gnarled
shadows of Mrs. Barrow's ancient garden, and
caught a glimpse of the old lady's kindly nodding
bonnet as she smiled at him from her place in the
window, where she sat hermetically sealed in an
atmosphere of Victorian decay.
There were the reedy pools and Shenstone's hang-
ing woods, ghostly waters and woodlands, never
to be seen again. And there was the platform of
Halesby station, reeking of hot coal dust and ashes,
and, from the incoming train, a flux of shabby peo-
ple, including the bank-clerk in tennis flannels and
the mysterious commercial traveller with the brown
leather bag, reading the Pink } Un as he walked.
From this, through the black-country's familiar des-
ert, the train carried him into the bitter reality of
North Bromwich. With something approaching the
feelings of an intruder he installedhimself inW.G.'s
diggings, and made a supper, undeniably pleasant,
of bread and cheese with a large bottle of W.G.'s
beer. The latter, which happened to be Astill's
XXXX, induced a mood of tolerant sleepiness, and
luckily prepared him to receive, at midnight or
thereabouts, the confidences of his friend on the
subject of Sister Merrion's intellectual charms.
"You know, old chap, she's different from me
reads poetry by the hour when she's in the bunk on
night duty. Longfellow's her favourite. A long
442 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
> i
way above my head and all that ; but it's a wonder-
ful thing, when you come to think of it, to be mar-
ried to an intellectual woman. ..." So the words
poured into Edwin's drowsy ears. He was far too
sleepy to smile, and, Longfellow apart, it did seem
to him a comfortable and even enviable thing to be
the adored centre of the universe in_the Irish eyes
of a tender creature with wavy brown hair and a
painful domestic tragedy. W.G. was still moralis-
ing on his past wickedness and the prospect of a
blameless future when Edwin fell asleep.
Next morning he was awakened by his friend,
boisterous and ruddy from a bath, performing a
strange ritual of prostrations and contortions in
front of an open window discreetly veiled with flut-
tering butter-muslin. Edwin lazily watched the
sinuous play of muscles under the shaggy limbs of
W.G. through half-closed eyelids.
"You'd make a topping subject for dissection,
W.G.," he said.
"Hallo!" W.G. answered from between his legs.
"You awake, you old slacker? There's a letter for
you that came up with the tea. Tea's cold, by the
way."
"Thanks," said Edwin, as W.G. skimmed the let-
ter over to him. "Good Lord, it's from Edmond-
son's."
It was a note hastily scribbled advising Edwin
to go at once and see Dr. Altrincham-Harris at 563
Lower Sparkdale, North Bromwich, between nine
LOWER SPARKDALE 443
and ten a.m., or six and nine p.m., and signed by
the manager who screwed his eyes up.
"Five hundred and sixty-three, Lower Spark-
dale," Edwin groaned. "I say, that sounds pretty
bad. Altrincham-Harris is rather hot stuff for
Lower Sparkdale, isn't it? Queer place for a double-
barreler."
"General practitioner," said W.G., rubbing him-
self down with a pair of flesh-gloves. "They all go
in for hyphens. It impresses the lower-middle
classes. When I go into practice, my son, I shall
be known as Dr. William George-Brown, if I
can afford the extra letters on a plate."
"Lower Sparkdale's a pretty awful slum, isn't
it?"
"Never been there. It's time you cleared off to
the bathroom. You'll feel better when you're
awake."
Edwin spent the morning in writing, and four
times rewriting, a letter to his father. It was a
difficult job, for he felt that the reasons for his
departure could not be explained in words, and he
was particularly anxious to make it clear that it
was purely a matter of temperament and that he
didn't wish it to imply any criticism of Mr. Ingle-
by's plans. When he had finished it he found that
it was far too late to visit the surgery of Dr. Al-
trincham-Harris. He therefore waited till the
evening, and then took a steam-tram through a
succession of sordid streets, past the public abat-
toirs and the newly-opened Kowton House, to the
level of 563 Lower Sparkdale.
The extreme end of that street was not as bad
444 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
as he had imagined it might be, for at this point
the slum ended, resolving itself into the edge of a
growing suburb of red-brick. Number 563 was a
corner house secretively curtained with dirty mus-
lin on flat brass rods. A shining plate revealed the
qualifications, such as they were, of C. Altrincham-
Harris, Physician and Surgeon, and as the front
door seemed to have sunk into a state of disuse,
Edwin entered at another, marked "Surgery,"
round which a number of poorly-clad women, some
of them carrying babies, were clustered.
Inside the door was a narrow waiting-room that
concentrated into an incredibly small number of
cubic feet the characteristic odour of an out-patient
department. Every seat was occupied, and Edwin,
deciding to wait for his turn, stood listening to a
varied recitation of medical history that every pa-
tient seemed compelled by the surroundings to re-
late to her neighbour. At the moment when he en-
tered a very stout woman, who had been drinking,
had the ear of the company, talking loudly over the
shoulder of a pasty child whose neck was covered
with the pin-points that fleas make on an insensi-
tive skin, and occasionally, in accessions of tender-
ness, hugging it to her bosom.
"So I says to the inspector . . . yes, inspector,
>e 'ad the nerve to call 'isself . . . says I, you can
take your summonses to 'ell, I says. I love my
children, I says. There's more love for the little
'armless things in my finger than there'll ever be
in your bloody body, I says. And I caught 'er up
and carried 'er straight along 'ere to the doctor.
Doctor 'Arris knows me, I says, and what's more
LOWER SPARKDALE 445
'e shall 'ave a look at Margaret's 'ead with 'is own
eyes. Shan't 'e, my pretty?" The child wriggled
as she was clasped in another beery embrace.
A bell tingled inside. "Now we shall see," said
the lady determinedly rising. "And 'ave a stifflcate
if it costs me two shillin's."
The room murmured low applause and sympathy,
and she entered the surgery, emerging, two minutes
later, with the testimonial in her mouth.
"What did I tell yo'?" she said. "The doctor
says there ain't one. Not one. It's time these in-
spectors was done away with. I only 'ope 'e will
summons me. Good-night, all."
She went out, hugging the child in both arms,
and a pale woman, respectably dressed, who had
sat through her tirades in silence, took her place in
the doctor's consulting room. Dr. Altrincham-
Harris didn't keep her long. She came out, like
the rest of them, after an interview that lasted per-
haps two minutes, carrying a bottle of medicine
wrapped up in one of the papers that are called
comic. Again the bell rang.
"Good God," Edwin thought, "and this is general
practice!" It was evident that he had entered a
world in which the academic methods of diagnosis
and prescription with which he had been educated
were not followed. On the surface it was quite
clear that the physician could not have given an
eighth part of the usual time or care to the con-
sideration of any single case. He remembered in-
stances of hospital patients who had affected to
despise the perfunctoriness of the methods of the
Prince's out-patient department, and had boasted
446 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
that they would receive better attention from the
hands of a "private doctor." He hoped to goodness
that none of these unfortunate people would drift
into the hands of Dr. Altrincham-Harris.
His own turn came, and relieved to be rid of the
stink of the waiting-room, he entered the surgery.
Dr. Harris was sitting in an attitude of impatience
behind a desk littered with papers. He was a little
man, with grey, untidy hair and a drooping mous-
tache. He held a pencil in his hand, as if he were
itching to dash off another prescription, and an
open drawer in the desk at his right hand was full
of small silver. When he saw that Edwin was bet-
ter dressed than the majority of his patients, his
manner changed at once. "Please sit down," he
said. "Now, what can I do for you?"
Edwin hesitated, for he found it difficult to be-
gin. Dr. Harris encouraged him with a wink, and
a grip of his left arm.
"Now, my boy, you needn't be frightened of me.
You'll find the doctor's your best friend. Had a
bit of bad luck, eh? Well, you're not the first, and
you won't be the last."
The wink was the most disgusting part of this
performance, but Edwin, quickly recovering his
sense of humour, pulled out Edmondson's letter
and handed it to the doctor.
"Well, now, why didn't you say so at first," said
Dr. Harris, scratching a bristly grey chin. "Yes . . .
I did mention to their manager that I was in want
of some one to do a bit of rough dispensing and
keep this place tidy. You see I don't live here. It's
what we call a lock-up, and the work's so pressing
LOWER SPARKDALE 447
that I've really no time to do my own dispensing.
I suppose you hold the Apothecaries' Hall Diploma
passed your exams and that?"
"No . . . I'm a medical student. I took phar-
macology in my last exam. I'm in my final year."
"Hm ... I shouldn't have thought it. You look
very young. Final year . . ." Then his eyes bright-
ened. "Have you done your midwifery yet?"
"Xo, I shall do that later in the year."
"That's a pity ... a pity. You could have been
very useful to me in that way, keeping cases going,
you know, so that I could be in at the finish. I
could do twice the amount of midwifery that I do
now if I had some one to keep an eye on them.
Before the General Medical Council did away with
unqualified assistants, I used to keep three of them :
paid me well, too. Now I've got to do everything
myself. It's a dog's life, but there's money in it,
I don't mind telling you. Well, there's no time to
waste. What do you want?"
"I want a place to live in and my keep, and just
enough money to keep me going till I'm qualified.
That's all. You'll understand . . . I'm on my own,
and I've just about ten pounds to carry me over
^a year. I hope you can give me a job."
"I suppose you could take a hand with dressings
:and things like that?"
Edwin saw that the little man was out for bar-
gaining, but as long as he could feel that, some-
thing was being settled he didn't really mind.
"Yes ... I can do anything you like to use me
for in your surgery hours. I can't promise more.
Tou see, I have to pass my final."
448 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"You can learn a lot of useful things about gen*
eral practice here," said Dr. Harris. "It should
be extremely useful to you. You see, I've been at
this game for thirty years. It's a great chance for
you." He took up a handful of silver from the
open drawer and started to jingle it. "Look here,
you're wasting time."
Edwin agreed.
"Well, suppose I take you on, I might be able
to give you three . . . better say two pounds a
month. You can feed up at my place and sleep
here. If you sleep here, you'll be able to take night-
messages and telephone them up to me. There's a
bedroom fitted up. One of my assistants used to
sleep here. How will that suit you?"
With a feeling of intense relief Edwin accepted.
"Very well, then, there's no reason why you
shouldn't begin at once, just to get into the way
of things." He paused, and added as an after-
thought: "We'll count that you start from to-
morrow."
He led Edwin behind the green baize curtain at
the back of his desk, disclosing a set of shelves and
a counter stained with the rings of bottles and
measuring glasses. At the end of the counter was*
a sink into which a tap with a tapered nozzle
dripped dismally. One drawer held labels, another
corks, a third a selection of eight-ounce, four-ounce,
and two-ounce bottles. At the back of the counter
stood a row of Winchester Quarts, of indefinite con-
tents, labelled with the Roman numerals from one
to nine. Dr. Harris swabbed the swimming coun-
LOWER SPARKDALE 449
ter with a rag that was already saturated with
medicines.
"You can learn all you want in five minutes," he
said. "There's no time for refinements in this sort
of practice. These big bottles are all stock mix-
tures, and whatever they teach you in your uni-
versities, I can tell you that these nine mixtures
will carry you through life. There you are . . .
Number One : White Mixture. Number Two : Soda
and Rhubarb. Number Three : Bismuth. You have
to go easy with Number Three: Bismuth's expen-
sive. Number Four: Febrifuge . . . Liquor Am-
mond Acet : and that. Number Five: Iron and
Mag. : Sulph. And so on. . . . Number Nine : Mer-
cury and Pot : lod . . . you know what that's for,"
with a laugh, "we use a lot of that here. Now
you've one ounce of each stock mixture to an eight-
ounce bottle, and a two-tablespoonful dose. I used
to put them up in six-ounce bottles ; but if you give
them eight ounces they think they're getting more
for the money: they don't realise they're getting
eight doses instead of twelve, and that's their look-
out, isn't it? Same proportions for children and
infants, only you use the four and two-ounce bot-
tles instead, with dessert-spoon and teaspoonful
doses. Simple, isn't it? But you want to simplify
if you're going to make money in these days. Now,
is that quite clear?"
"Quite clear."
"Well, then, when a patient comes in I have a
look at him with my experience you can tell in a
moment and I give you a slip of paper behind the
.curtain. Like this. 'Mrs. Jones. No. 5. T.D.S.'
450 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Mrs. means an eight-ounce bottle. One ounce of
Number Five stock mixture. One tablespoonful
three times a day. Then, if I put '4tis horis' in-
stead of 'T.D.S.,' it means a tablespoonful every
four hours ; but I only do that when I see they can
afford to get through the bottle more quickly.
You'll find powders in that drawer. Antifebrin
it's cheaper than phenacetin and caffein. And calo-
mel for children. Then, as I w r as saying, while I
have a look at the patient and ask him one or two
questions you make up the medicine."
"Suppose, when you've had a talk to him, you
change your mind about the treatment."
"I never change my mind. There's no time for
that," said Dr. Harris. "And if I did we could
change the medicine next time. But you needn't
worry about the treatment: that's my part of the
business. Why" and the little man expanded
"I shouldn't w r onder if we got through as many as
a hundred patients in a couple of hours, the two
of us together. Now, are you ready?"
He left Edwin behind the curtain and rang his
bell. A patient entered, and as soon as the doctor
had said good-evening to her the prescription was
passed behind the curtain and Edwin proceeded to
fill a bottle from one of the Winchester Quarts. This
business went on monotonously for another hour.
Edwin dispensed mechanically in a kind of dream.
He never saw a single patient; but little scraps of
conversation showed him that most of them were
suffering from the evils of poor housing and a
sedentary life. It consoled him to think that most
of the mixtures that he dispensed were relatively
LOWER SPARKDALE 451
harmless. Sometimes, by an access of solicitude
and deference in the doctor's voice, he could gather
that the patient was of a higher social degree, and
he smiled to find, in these cases, that the mixture
was invariably prescribed in four-hourly doses.
All the men, it appeared, were judged to be in
need of White Mixture or Rhubarb : all the women
demanded Iron and Mag: Sulph: all the children
were treated with a treacly cough mixture or calo-
mel powders. In the space of an hour he must
have, dispensed at least forty bottles of medicine,
and towards the end of the evening he noticed that
Dr. Harris became even more perfunctory in his
examinations if such a word were ever justified
and that signs of irritation began to show them-
selves in his voice. At last the waiting-room bell
rang twice, and no patient appeared.
"That's the lot," said Dr. Harris, appearing from
behind the curtain. "I think I'll have a wash." It
was the first time that he had washed his hands
in the whole of the evening. "Well, you see what
it's like," he said, "I think I'll have a nip of
whisky." He produced a vitriolic bottle from a
cupboard and mixed some whisky with water in a
medicine-measure.
"A good average day," he said. "Three pounds
ten." He shovelled the silver from the drawer into
a leather bag that weighed down his coat pocket.
"That takes a lot of making at a shilling a time.
Well, how do you like it?"
"I think I shall be able to manage," said Edwin,
who was not anxious to commit himself.
"You'd better come and see your room."
452 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
It was a bare bedroom on the first floor with iron
bedstead and a dejected washhand-stand, but it
seemed to Edwin that, at least, it would be quiet
and free from distractions. "I shall be able to read
here," he thought, "and after all, it's only for twelve
months."
"Not much to look at," said Dr. Harris apologeti-
cally. "I'll send you down some bedding to-night.
I'll expect you for breakfast at eight o'clock sharp.
You'd better come along and have some supper
now."
"I think I'd better go and collect some of my
things. I've been staying with a friend in his dig-
gings."
"All right. As you like," said Dr. Harris. "Nine
o'clock sharp to-morrow morning then? You have
to be punctual if you're to make money in this
business."
Edwin said good-night, keeping the key of the
surgery. When the doctor had gone he went back
into the curtained dispensary and tried to introduce
a little order into the waste. A strange life, he
thought ... a strange and degrading life. If this
were general practice, he wondered why he had
ever despised his father's trade, for surely there
was more dignity in selling tooth-brushes than in
dealing so casually with the diseases of human be-
ings. "I must talk it over with old W.G.," he
thought. "He's a sound man." But he knew at the
bottom of his heart that he couldn't afford to specu-
late on the ethics of the case. All that mattered
to him, for the present, was the necessity of find-
ing a roof any roof to shelter him and food to
LOWER SPARKDALE 453
keep him alive. He was a beggar, and could not
choose, and had every reason to be thankful for this
or any solution of his difficulties.
"It sounds bad," said W.G., when Edwin had ex-
panded on the refinements of Dr. Harris's medicine,
"but, in a way, you're lucky to have fallen on your
feet so quickly. As a matter of fact, you don't
deserve it. You're an old fool to have left home,
you know. Now, there's some chance of your ap-
preciating how comfortable you were."
Boyce was more sympathetic, entering with great
pains and seriousness into the cause of Edwin's
spiritual nausea. The results of it pleased him in
so far as they meant that in future Edwin would
be living in North Bromwich, and promised a per-
petuation of the delightful comradeship that they
had enjoyed in the summer. "I expect we shall
see a lot of you, old boy," he said, "ambrosial eve-
nings, you know."
Edwin laughed. "The evenings won't be exactly
ambrosial. I shall be earning my two pounds a
month filling eight-ounce bottles with rubbish at
a shilling each. I shall feel like compounding in
a felony. It's the devil . . ."
m
And it was pretty bad. No more concerts or
operas; no week-ends at Overton; no dinners at
Joey's; no possible diversion of any kind that im-
pinged upon the hours between six and nine. And
yet Edwin was happy. For the first time in his life,
and at a price, he was realising what independence
meant. Even the break at Halesby had passed off
454 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
without any severe emotional disturbance. He had
written to his father again, telling him his new
address and what he was doing, and his father had
replied in his formal business hand, not, indeed,
with any offer of help, but with an implied approval
of what he had done, enclosing a number of bills
(opened) and a couple of second-hand book cata-
logues.
There was nothing unfriendly in the letter, no
heroics of outraged paternity. Eeading between
the lines, Edwin felt that by consulting no interests
but his own he had made an awkward situation
easy for his father. In that case, he reflected, Mr.
Ingleby might very well have made him an allow*
ance. It gave him a sense of grim satisfaction to
remember that he was still a minor and that even
if he were too proud to use it, he still held the
weapon of his father's legal responsibility rh re-
serve, but the next moment he was ashamed of this
reflection : when it came to a point the element of
pathos in his father's history and person always
disarmed him.
It was enough that he should be happy, princi-
pally for the reason that his days were so full and
any moments of relaxation came to him with a
more poignant pleasure than any he had known
before. He had very little time for reading out-
side the subjects of his final exam., that now over-
whelmed him with an increasing weight. For
pleasure he read little but lyrical poetry, finding
his chief enjoyment in the last hour before he fell
asleep in Dr. Harris's empty lock-up, with a copy
of Mackail's selections from the Greek Anthology
LOWER SPARKDALE 455
that he had salved from one of the second-hand
bookstalls in Cobden Street.
In spite of himself, he was beginning to like
Charles Altrincham-Harris. He didn't for one
moment alter his opinion of the degradation to
which the man had subjected the nobilities of his
calling, his meanness and his avarice. In his deal-
ings with the unfortunate people who came to the
shilling doctor for treatment, he still abhorred him ;
he knew him to be a person whose mind was a sink
of pseudo-professional prurience, and whose body
and habits were unkempt and unclean; but for all
this, he could not deny the fact that in his rela-
tions with his dispenser he displayed a curious vein
of natural kindness, and that his ideals, apart from
his loathsome business, were of a touching sim-
plicity.
Every morning they met at breakfast. The doc-
tor believed in good food as a basis for work, and
his housekeeper, a small, shrewish woman of fifty,
was an excellent cook. At the breakfast table he
would impart to Edwin the more salacious para-
graphs of the morning paper, which he always
opened at the page that contained the records of
the divorce-court. He took no notice of politics.
"They can do what they like as long as they don't
legislate about us" And though Edwin felt sin-
cerely that the sooner his kind were legislated for,
the better, he was thankful that his employer was
not a political bore or bigot.
After breakfast Dr. Harris always smoked a clay
pipe in his carpet slippers, a present from a patient
who, for some unimaginable reason, had been grate-
456 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
ful. Then they would walk down to 563 Lower
Sparkdale together in the fresh morning air, and
the combination of gentle exercise with deeper
breathing would impel the little man to make
Edwin the confidant of his ambitions.
"Twelve thousand pounds," he would say, "that's
all I want. Twelve thousand pounds. Five hun-
dred a year. Then I shall find a quiet little place
in the country and have a rest. Keep bees and
poultry: that's what I shall do, and smoke a pipe
in the garden in the evening when the poor devil
that buys my practice is going down to the surgery
to rake in the shillings."
In these moments he would reflect on the begin-
ning of his career. "I took a good degree, you know.
You wouldn't think it to look at me now, would
you? No ... I had bad luck, and a bad wife,
which is the worst sort of luck. She lost me my
practice, and so I grew sick of medicine. I couldn't
be bothered with the social side of it. Money was
what I wanted : money and quiet. And so I took
a dose of medicine : fifteen years at a shilling a bot-
tle, with advice thrown in, and then a quiet life.
That was all I wanted. And I've very nearly got
it. Another year or two will make me secure.
Security . . . that's what I wanted. Well, here we
are. . . ."
So the morning's work began, and no morning,
as far as Edwin could see, was different from any
other. He was thankful when the clock struck ten,
and Dr. Harris ruthlessly locked his surgery door.
Then, fortunately, he was obliged to take the next
tram to the hospital ; for if he had lingered, as he
LOWER SPARKDALE 457
was sometimes forced to do on Sundays, Dr. Harris
would have lit his pipe and proceeded to regale him
with anecdotes of medical experiences that always
related to sex, on which he dwelt with a slow, de-
liberate satisfaction, like a dog that nuzzles a piece
of garbage.
The aspects of medical science that related to
sex were the only ones in which he was really in-
terested. He possessed an expensive and eclectic
library of books on these subjects, to which he was*
always adding others that he bought from the col-
porteurs of medical pornography who are continu-
ally pestering the members of his profession. These
he would pore over at night, when Edwin was provi-
dentially engaged in reading for his final. "Medi-
cine is an extremely interesting profession from
that point of view," he would say, and indeed the
dispenser soon discovered that this aspect of the
medical profession supplied Dr. Harris with a great
number of his patients. In the squalid underways.
of the city he had established a reputation for skill
and discretion in the treatment of contagious dis-
ease, and the unfortunate victims who came to
Lower Sparkdale from more reputable suburbs
were ready to pay through the nose for his advice.
One night, hearing behind his curtain the over-
tures of one of these cases that he knew so well, he
suddenly became aware of a tone that was familiar
in the patient's voice. Listening more closely he
could have sworn it was the voice of Griffin.
Evidently it was a person of some consequence, for
Dr. Harris devoted as much as five minutes to his
examination.
458 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"I suppose you wouldn't like a prescription?"
"No, you'd better make it up for me," said the
voice that resembled that of Griffin.
"Certainly . . . delighted."
Dr. Harris breathed heavily, as he always did
when writing a prescription, and then passed the
slip of paper behind the curtain to Edwin. Edwin,
looking at once for the name at the head of the
prescription, was disappointed. The patient had
preferred to remain anonymous. He dispensed the
medicine, and when Dr. Harris had said good-bye
to the patient he could not resist the temptation of
looking from behind the curtain to verify his sus-
picions. He could only see the back of the depart-
ing patient, but the suspicion filled him with a
queer -sensation of awe.
It showed him a new aspect of medicine that had
never occurred to him in hospital life, but would,
no doubt, be present often enough in private prac-
tice. Griffin was a person well known to Edwin
and his friends, a person about whose adventures
and their consequences he would easily and nat-
urally have spoken. If he had retailed the incident
to Maskew and W.G. in the Dousita, it would have
been the occasion of a little pity and probably some
irreverent mirth. But he saw at once that he could
do nothing of the sort. He had become, for the
first time in his life, the keeper of a professional
secret. For the rest of the world, however inter-
ested, Griffin and Griffin's disease must not exist.
Edwin felt the weight of a new responsibility,
reflecting that in his future life he would in all
probability become possessed of many such secrets
LOWER SPARKDALE 459
and that there might be occasions on whicn his
sense of duty would be divided between the tra-
ditional discretion of Hippocrates and the instincts
of humanity. He invented a hypothetical case for
his own confusion. Supposing he had a sister to
w r hom Griffin was engaged: supposing that they
were going to be married in a week after this un-
comfortable knowledge had come into his posses-
sion, endangering the whole of her future happiness
and perhaps her life: what, in that case, should:
be his attitude towards the question of professional
secrecy? What would he do? Would he be justi-
fied in telling her what he knew? Hippocrates said
"No"; but Hippocrates' refusal narrowed the field
of possibilities to confronting Griffin with his own
shame and threatening him with . . . what? Not
with exposure for that Hippocrates forbade. Obvi-
ously with death. And that would be murder. . . .
Balancing the relative heinousness of murder
and perjury, Edwin began to laugh at himself, and
while he did this a curious reminiscence came into
his mind : the picture of a small boy, who resembled
him in very little but had been himself, lying in the
hedge side of Murderer's Cross Road, on the downs
above St. Luke's, reflecting on the same problem of
the justification of homicide and saying to himself
as he brooded on his wrongs: "I can quite easily
understand a chap wanting to murder a chap." And
this picture tempting him further, he relapsed into
a dream of those strange, remote days tinged with
extremes of happiness and misery, and both of
them unreal. . . .
He thought no more of Griffin.
CHAPTER IX
EASY ROW
FOR a whole year Edwin inhabited the room
above the lock-up surgery in Lower Sparkdale.
It was a happy year, for into it was crowded a
great wealth of experience and elevating discovery
to which the mechanical drudgery of Dr. Harris's
dispensing room acted as ballast. In his medical
studies he began to feel for the first time the fruits
of his earlier labours: to realise that all medicine
was little more than an intelligent application to
life of the theoretical subjects that he had mastered
without reasoning. From the very first day of his
experience in the dissecting room there was nothing
in all that he had learnt that had not its direct
bearing on his present practice; and the reflection
that he possessed all this essential knowledge ready
for use was exhilarating in itself. Again, the fact
that he was now standing on his feet, actually earn-
ing his own living, gave him a greater happiness
than he had ever known in his days of dependence ;
it made him accept the routine of Lower Sparkdale
as a penance, cheering him with the thought that
so much sacrifice was really necessary before he
should be master of himself.
He was lonely; but this seemed inevitable, for
460
EASY ROW 461
no person in his senses could be expected to grind
along in a steam-tram to Lower Sparkdale for the
sake of his company; and the final year was too
full of strenuous studies for all of them to allow
of much indulgence in the joys of friendship. Mat-
thew Boyce made a few heroic attempts. He even
spent several evenings in Harris's dispensary, find-
ing the shilling doctor's clinical and commercial
methods something of a joke. They were no joke
to Edwin: he had recognised long ago that they
were no more than Harris's solution of the problem
of living. The doctor saw nothing unworthy in
them. He did his best, within his limited knowl-
edge, for his patients. He was kind, and even, on
occasion, generous. If there were fault to be found
it must be with the State that allowed such igno-
rant men to deal with precious human bodies^ and
not with him. When the first humour of the ex-
perience was exhausted Boyce came to the surgery
no more. Little by little Edwin's insulation became
more complete, and in the end he relapsed into the
degree of loneliness that he had known in his early
days at St. Luke's.
Given the opportunity, he almost enjoyed it.
There was something remote and secret about this
little room in the corner house above the grinding
trams, and when the surgery emptied at night and
he went upstairs to work he would find himself
suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of thankful-
ness for the fact that it was so peculiarly his : that
his own books and pictures and clothes had made it
individual and different from any other room in
the whole of the city. And when the town slept^
462 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
and he sat on reading into the early hours of the
morning, the lonely chamber was like a lighthouse
set in seas of night, and dreams of the misty lands
beyond Severn, of Mendip couched in darkness, or
of the sleeping wolds by Overton, would beat at
Ms lighted window like seabirds in the night.
At first the sacrifices that his poverty demanded
had seemed no more than part of a new and excit-
ing game. It was some months before he realised
that, literally, he could not afford the indulgence
of a single pleasure that cost money. If he were
to free himself from the bondage of Dr. Harris's
dispensary it was absolutely necessary that he
should save enough money to pay his examination
fees. He began to find a new delight in carefully
hoarded shillings, and this practice threw him into
a curious sympathy with his employer. Each of
them, on a different scale, was committed to a pres-
ent sacrifice for the sake of future freedom; and
this reflection reconciled him in some degree to the
inconveniences that Dr. Harris's miserly ways in-
flicted on him.
It was galling, none the less, to find that he could
not afford to buy a single new book, to hire a piano,
or to hear any music except the free recitals by
which the municipal organist convinced the citizens
of North Bromwich that they were getting some-
thing for their money, in debauches of sound that
reminded them how much the organ had cost.
Sometimes, to Edwin's joy, he played the fugues
of the Well-tempered Clavier, and on their wide
streams he would be carried from springs of moun-
tain sweetness, by weir and cataract to solemn tidal
EASY ROW 463
waters and lose himself at last in seas of absolute
music. Time after time lie thanked God for Bach,
and walked home to his garret like a man who has
gazed upon the splendour of a full sea and carries
its tumult in his mind far inland.
Through all these experiences Edwin was so pos-
sessed by the one idea of holding on until his final
exam, was over that he scarcely missed the society
of his friends. He knew that his friendship with
Boyce was founded too deeply in common experi-
ence ever to be shaken by his own changed circum-
stances : it might lapse, but it could never be broken.
He always felt that the future held more for them
than the past had ever given ; but his other friends,
Maskew and Martin in particular, seemed to have
been translated to another place of existence. In
the wards and in the lecture theatres he would meet
them; but elsewhere they had nothing in common
with his way of existence.
Even W.G. seemed gradually to be slipping away
from him an unreasonable state, for Edwin, after
all, was now for the first time sharing something
of the big man's early experience. For several
months they had scarcely spoken, and then, one
day, nearly ran into each other's arms in Sackville
Row, and almost mechanically wandered off to the
Dousita together. In the shades of the smoking-
room nothing had changed. When they sank into
the cushions of their favourite corner Miss Wheeler
approached them with an exact replica of the smile
with which, four years before, she had engaged the
heart of Maskew; and when she took their order,
she stood on one leg in exactly the same position,
464 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
leaning, with a hint of tiredness that was not sur-
prising in a young woman who habitually breathed
tobacco smoke in place of oxygen, with her hand
on the curtain at the side of their settee.
"I never see Mr. Maskew now," she said with a
sigh. "I can't think whatever 'as happened to all
you boys, I'm sure."
She brought them coffee, and W.G., who had
scarcely spoken, but whose knitted brows testified
to the pressure of some urgent problem, said :
"Well, how do you like it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Being on your own."
"Oh, it's all right," said Edwin.
"I never thought you'd stick it," W.G. confessed.
"I didn't think you had it in you. You see, in your
case there was never the least necessity for it."
"There was, you know "
"I could have understood it if you'd had a regular
bust-up. I should certainly have stayed at home
if the governor hadn't booted me out. You never
had anything of that kind."
"No . . . not exactly. But the position was the
same. I had a sort of ... of emotional cold-douche.
I was awfully sensitive about my mother. My fa-
ther and I were all wrong. We'd really nothing in
common. And it's turned out all right. That's the
main thing."
"You're a quixotic ass, my son. No . . . that's
not the word, but it's the same sort of thing. It
was really damned foolish of you."
"It's jolly sound to stand on your own feet. Yon
know where you are for the first time. It was only
EASY ROW 465
uncomfortable because he was really awfully de-
cent. He is now: but he hasn't the faintest glim-
mering of my point of view."
"They rarely have," said W.G. gloomily. "Still,
you haven't made such an ass of yourself as I
have."
"Something new?"
"Yes . . . I'm married."
"Good God!"
"It isn't as bad as that," W.G. chuckled. "I
thought it would come as a bit of a shock to you."
"But why on earth ?"
"Well, you see she w r as awfully unhappy at home.
Brute of a father. And we simply got tired of
waiting. That's all. You must come and see us.
She always remembered your clerking in her ward.
We're living in furnished rooms in Alvaston. It's
an amazing experience, you know, marriage. Quite
different from anything else of the kind." In view
of W.G.'s experience in these matters Edwin was
ready to take this for granted.
"I should think it is a damned funny thing," he
said.
They parted. There was something almost pathet-
ic to Edwin in W.G.'s hot handclasp. He felt that
W.G. was up against something far bigger than
anything that had happened to him before: a
strange, momentous adventure, yet one that was
thrilling and, in a way, enviable. Once again he
found himself admiring the big man's desperate
daring. W.G. with a wife, and probably, in a few
years, children ! . . . Assuredly they were all grow-
ing old.
466 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
n
In all that summer Edwin scarcely saw a patch
of living green except the leprous plane-trees that
sickened in the hospital square. The current of
his life flowed slowly through the culverts of grimy
brick that led from Lower Sparkdale to the Infir-
mary. He became part of the stream of dusty hu-
manity that set citywards and back again with the
regularity of a tide. In December he came to the
end of his penance. The final examination was
fixed for the beginning of January, and before he
could sit for it, he was compelled to take a course
of practical midwifery, twenty cases in all, which
compelled his residence for a couple of weeks in
the neighbourhood of the Prince's Hospital, the in-
stitution to which this department was attached.
Matthew Boyce and he had decided a year before
that they would do this work together, and though
the unusual strain of the fortnight in Easy Bow
would be a doubtful preliminary to the effort of
the final examination, the two friends had always
looked forward to the experience.
The authorities of the Prince's Hospital, lacking
obstetrical wards, had made this course the oppor-
tunity for establishing an Out-patient Department
that could deal with ten cases a week at the nominal
charge of five shillings each. The students worked
in pairs, and though they could never be sure of
attending their cases together, the resident staff of
the hospital, and, if necessary, a consultant phy-
sician, were always available in case of an emer-
gency. Edwin and Boyce were housed in one of
EASY ROW 467
the faded Georgian buildings that faced the hos-
pital. Its lower stories, like those of all its neigh-
bours, were devoted to theatrical lodgings; but a
special night-bell, polished by the moist hands of
forty anxious husbands every month, communicated
with the upper room in which the resident students
attempted to sleep. The house was as well known.
to all the poorer people in the neighbouring war-
rens as were the faces pale with sleeplessness of
the students who issued from it, carrying the black
bags that were symbolical of their labours, a source
of mysterious speculation to the children of the
district, and of amusement to the "professionals"
who inhabited the front rooms.
On a Monday morning in December the landlady
received Edwin and Boyce and installed them in a
small room at the back of the ground-floor infested
with portraits of smiling young ladies in tights,
inscribed, with the most dashing signatures imagin-
able, to herself. Mrs. Meadows was evidently very
proud of these decorations and called attention to
the most blatant pair of legs by polishing the glass
of their frame with her apron.
"I hope you gentlemen will be comfortable," she
said. "Not that I doubt it. I don't have many
complaints." The statement was a challenge, and
implied that if there should be any complaints the
lodgers might look to themselves.
"It's a nice fresh room," she said, throwing open
a French window that disclosed a small patch of
black earth that had once been covered with grass
but was now untenanted by any living organisms
but cats and groundsel.
468 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"I like them to keep the window open. It takes
away the smell of the gentlemen's disinfectant. Not
but what it's clean, I dare say."
Edwin and Boyce would have assented in any
case if it were only to release the-composite lodging-
house smell that penetrated the room from the ad-
joining "domestic offices," and Mrs. Meadows's
kitchen where, it would be imagined, turnip-tops
simmered day and night upon a gas-ring.
"Then there's a pianoforte," she said, hesitating
at the dusty portiere. "I find that professionals
like a pianoforte. It's cheery like."
In a little while it became apparent that the pro-
fessionals liked a pianoforte, in every one of the
thirty odd houses within earshot, even if they could
not play one. From the hour of midday, when they
rose, until six o'clock, when they betook themselves
to their various theatres, the pianos of Easy How
were never silent.
"It's no good trying to do any work in this place,"
said Edwin.
"There won't be any time, anyway," said Boyce.
"You wait till the fun begins."
They lunched together on steak-and-kidney pud-
ding and turnip-tops with a brand of bottled beer
in which Mrs. Meadows showed an admirable taste,
and in the early afternoon the fun began.
From the beginning, Fate had decreed a compli-
cation by deciding that Mrs. Hadley, back of num-
ber four, court sixteen, Granby Street, and Mrs.
Higgins over number fifty-four Rea Barn Lane,
should conspire to increase the population of North
Bromwich at the same moment. Mr. Hadley and
EASY ROW 469
Mr. Higgins achieved a dead heat, arriving on the
doorstep together in a dripping perspiration with
messages of an equal urgency.
"This is rather rotten," said Boyce. "Which of
these ladies will you take?"
"I'll have Mrs. Higgins," said Edwin. "I suppose
the bag's all right?"
The bag was right enough, though it contained
very little that could do any harm, and smelt abomi-
nably of Lysol. Mr. Higgins, still out of breath,
with beads of sweat sweeping an alluvium of metal
dust into the furrows of his cheeks, carried the
bag for Edwin. For all his exhaustion, Mr. Hig-
gins wanted to run, and Edwin, walking with long
strides beside him, was in danger of losing his dig-
nity by being swept into the same degree of panic.
The reflection that this would betray his inexperi-
ence held him back. ,
"The nurse said very urgent, doctor," Mr. Hig-
gins panted.
"Yes . . . yes. You mustn't excite yourself . It'll
be all right."
"I suppose," said Mr. Higgins doubtfully, "you're
well up in these sort of cases, doctor? I expect
you've seen a lot of them?"
Edwin wished he had been able to grow a mous-
tache for the occasion.
"Hundreds," he said.
Mr. Higgins gave a sigh of relief. "That's a good
thing. That's a very good thing. You see, I'm
nairvous, doctor. I lost my fairst over it, and I
don't want to lose this one. Very young she is."
"Is this her first?"
470 JHE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"Yes, doctor."
Another bit of bad luck !
Through a maze of gritty streets they hurried,
reaching, at last, a house beside a corner "public"
which a cluster of women, gossiping in their aprons
on the doorstep, proclaimed as the site of this mo-
mentous birth. One of them snatched the black
bag from Mr. Higgins. "You get away, 'Iggins, and
'ave a pint of beer quiet like. This baint no place
for an 'usband. This way, doctor. Here she is,
poor lamb."
She pushed her way up the stairs, breathing
heavily. Her bunchy skirts filled the staircase,
which was no wider than a loft-ladder and very
dark.
" 'Ere 'e is," she cried triumphantly, as she
pushed open a matchboard door. " 'Ere 'e is. 'Ere's
the doctor. Now you won't be long, my lover. 'E'll
'elp you. You'll 'elp 'er, won't you, doctor?"
She deposited the talismanic bag triumphantly
on the foot of the bed ; then she winked at Edwin :
"I'll go and keep 'Iggins out of the way," she said.
"I'm that glad youVe come, doctor," said the
nurse. She was a little shrivelled woman, with a
nervous smile and her hair packed into a black net
with a wide mesh that made her whole head sombre
and forbidding. Her lips twitched when she
smiled, and Edwin, who had been counting on the
moral support of her experience, saw at once that
she was even more anxious than himself. He was
soon to know that the women who acted as profes-
sional midwives in the North Bromwich slums were
usually widows left without means, who adopted
EASY ROW 471
this profession with no other qualification than a
certain wealth of subjective experience, on which
they were careful to insist. The claim : "I've had
eight of them myself, so / ought to know," did
not atone for the fact that they didn't actually know
anything at all. Mrs. Brown, the lady to whose
mercies the trustful Mr. Higgins had committed his
second, was a timid specimen of the class. Beneath
her protestations of experience her soul quaked
with terror, and a hazy conviction that if anything
went wrong, she, the unregistered, would probably
be committed for manslaughter, reduced her to a
state of dazed incompetence in which she heard
without hearing Edwin's none too confident direc-
tions. She went downstairs tremulously to bring
hot water, and Edwin was left alone with his pa-
tient.
"It won't be long, doctor, will it?" she said.
"Of course not ... of course not," said Edwin.
He felt very much of a fraud, for he hadn't the
least idea how long it would be. The whole picture
was moving: the patient, a girl of twenty-four or
five, her honey-coloured hair drawn back tightly
from a face that was blotched already with tears,
but not ill-looking: the humility of the little bed-
room with its hired furniture and certain humble
attempts at ornamentation : pink ribbon bows upon
the curtains, a ridiculous china ornament on the
mantelpiece, and brass knobs at the foot of the bed-
stead, so polished that they had already become
loose. No doubt Mrs. Higgins the second had been
in respectable suburban service, and these worthy
efforts were the signs of an attempt to introduce
472 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
into Kea Barn Lane the amenities of Alvaston. She
lay quietly on the bed, gazing at nothing while
Edwin unpacked his bag. He did not look at her,
but became suddenly conscious that her body had
given a kind of jump and that her hands were des-
perately clutching a towel that Mrs. Brown had
knotted to the rail at the bottom of the bed. Then
he heard the joints of the bedstead creak. "It's all
right. Cheer up. ... It won't be long," he said.
Mrs. Brown emerged panting from the stairway
with hot water. "That's right, my lover, that's
right. . . . That's another one less. Now, let the
doctor have a look at you." .
A strange business. ... It was a moment that
might have been difficult; but Edwin soon realised
that the seriousness of the occasion, the fact that
this young creature's life was veritably in his hands,
made modesty seem a thing of no account. In the
eyes of this woman Edwin was not a young man
but an agency of relief from pain. In the body
that pain dominated there could be no room for
blushes. Edwin, trying to summon all his hardly
learned theory to his aid in practice, was suddenly
impressed with the obligations that this confidence
imposed on him. He remembered the terms of the
Hippocratic oath. Yea ... a goodly heritage!
"Is it all right, doctor?" said the anxious voice
of Mrs. Brown.
"Yes,, it's all right."
"Thank the Lord for that! You hear what the
doctor says, my lover "
"But it will be a long time yet."
"Oh, don't say that, doctor, don't say that," Mrs.
EASY ROW 473
Higgins wailed. "You aren't going to leave me?"
"It's no good staying here now," he said, as gently
as he could. "It's really all right. It's only a
matter of time."
"Can't you help her a bit, doctor?"
Of course he couldn't. A business of that kind
would mean calling in the house-surgeon from the
Prince's. He was determined not to be driven into
a panic, though this would have been easy enough,
when he was convinced that the case was taking a
normal though inevitably lengthy course.
"I expect you'll want me again some time this
evening," he said.
Mrs. Brown showed him downstairs. "You're
sure it is all right, aren't you, doctor?" she said.
"Perfectly all right. You know what a first case
is."
"I'd ought to," said Mrs. Brown proudly. "I've
had eight myself."
He trudged back to Easy Row, where the pro-
fessionals' pianos, tuned in quarter-tones, were al-
ready combining to show their catholicity in musi-
cal taste. Boyce w T as drowsing in an easy-chair with
the Greek Anthology open in his lap.
"Well, how's your Mrs. Higgins?" he asked lazily.
"Oh, she's all right. A primip. Is Mrs. Hadley
through her little troubles?"
"B.B.A. Born before arrival. A soft job. Saves
a lot of trouble."
"My good lady will haul us out in the middle of
the night, damn her !" said Edwin. A conventional
mode of expression, for he didn't in the least feel
like damning Mrs. Higgins. In his mind he still
474 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
carried the picture of her plain hair and blotched
face : he could hear the sound of that sudden shud-
der and the noise of the bedstead creaking.
The evening passed quietly. They tried to read,
but found the feeling of suspense made that im-
possible. No message came from Mrs. Higgins, and
as they were almost certain to be called out in the
night, they went to bed early. While they were un-
dressing, Boyce humming softly the Liebestod from
Tristan, the bell in their bedroom rang.
"Mrs. Higgins," said Edwin. "I'd better go and
see."
He groped -his way downstairs. In the front
room a party of music-hall artistes were making a
noisy supper. Before he could reach the door the
bell rang again, and when he opened it, a big man
whose breath smelt of liquor, lurched into the hall.
"Are you the doctor?"
"Yes."
"You're to come at once to thirty-four Greville
Street. It's the missus. The nurse says it's urgent."
The nurse always said it was urgent. Boyce
came downstairs grumbling.
"We'd better go together."
"What about my friend, Mrs. Higgins?"
"Oh, damn Mrs. Higgins!" said Boyce.
It was a clear and frosty night, in which all
points of light, whether of starshine, or street-
lamps, or of blue sparks crackling from the tram-
way cables, shone brightly. The Greville Street
husband lurched along beside them, just sufficiently
awake to show them the way through a maze of
rectangular byways to a street that lay upon the
EASY ROW 475
outer edge of the district that the hospital covered.
The chill clarity of the air dispelled sleep. It was
even pleasant to be walking there, for at this time
of the night the town was so empty that they might
almost have been walking over a country road.
"Here it is," said the husband thickly.
Boyce and Edwin entered together. The front
room of the house was crowded with people who
should have been in bed. They sat clustered about
a table on which stood a number of bottles from
one of which the messenger had evidently extracted
his peculiar perfume. In the corner chair, next to
the window, an old woman in a lace cap had fallen
asleep. Opposite her a very dirty old man toasted
his shins in front of the fire. A strapping girl with
dark, untidy hair, and aa almost aggressive phys-
ical beauty was holding forth shrilly to a group of
three women who had wandered in to drink and
gossip from a neighbouring court.
"Here they are," said the husband sullenly, "two
on 'em."
"My God! . . . Two of them? Is that all?" said
the dark girl, examining and, as it seemed, approv-
ing.
Upstairs they found a midwife of another but
equally characteristic type: a fat woman whose
attention was divided between the patient in bed
and the cheerful company in the front room. On
the surface she was a little patronising, an attitude
that the two students' inexperience made it difficult
for them to resent. "I know what you doctors
want," she said, standing with her sleeves rolled
up over her red forearms. "Plenty of hot water,
476 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
that's what you want. I've got some disinfectant
too. I've often been with the 'ospital doctors. Now
we shan't be long."
She bustled downstairs, looking into the front
room for a drink on her way to the kitchen. Boyce,
confident in the completion of his first case, took
the lead in questioning the patient, a slightly older
version of the dark sanguine girl they had seen
below. Her whole attitude towards the business,
though less pathetic than that of the unforgotten
Mrs. Higgins, was equally moving. It implied such
a cheerful and courageous acceptance of life and
this most uncomfortable of its experiences. Her
amazing vitality pervaded the room. It could be
seen in her masterful smile, in the grip of her red
fingers on the knotted towel, in the deep suffusion
of her face. A jolly woman, built in the mould of
a fighter, who would neither take quarter nor give
it. When Boyce had examined her she smiled, dis-
closing a fine set of teeth, and solemnly winked.
"Well, doctor, what about it?"
"Listen to 'er," said the midwife, chuckling.
"That's the way to take it!"
"Well, it's all right, you know, but it won't be
just yet awhile."
"My God ... I didn't pay the 'ospital five bob
for you to tell me that. Look 'ere, doctor, my elder
sister 'ad a horrible time with her first. 'Ad to
'ave it took off 'er. Be a sport, doctor, and give us
a smell of chloroform. Come on, now ! There's two
on you. . . . 'Ard-'earted devils all you doctors are.
Bain't they, Mrs. Perkins?" She smiled at the mid-
wife, and then, suddenly, her face changed and
EASY ROW 477
she clutched at the knotted towel. "Oh, my!" she
said, and Edwin saw the veins in her neck swell,
and heard her clench her teeth.
"That's the way, dearie. That's the way," said
Mrs. Perkins, gritting her own teeth in sympathy
and smoothing back the hair from the patient's
brow.
Edwin and Boyce were debating as to whether it
were worth while staying when a messenger from
the hospital arrived from below to say that Mrs.
Hadley, Boyce's patient of the afternoon, was "took
worse," and so Edwin was left alone once more in
the squalor of the patient's room. He sat waiting
in a chair that was supposed to be easy, listening
to the conversation of the woman and her nurse.
Most of it was family history of a scandalous kind,
and the manner of its expression was extremely
frank. In the course of his hospital work he had
never before realised the extraordinary contradic-
tions of the code by which the talk of the working-
class is governed. In its mixture of delicacies and
blatancies it amazed him. Both the women were
flunt gossips, and the conversation never ceased,
except in those moments of acute and sudden ten-
sion when the patient's hands clutched at her towel
and the midwife mopped her brow. Then, when
the upstairs room was silent, a murmur of laughter
and loud voices would come up the stairs from
below. In this family, at any rate, the occasion of
a birth did not lack celebration. Even the patient
was curious about what was happening downstairs.
"What's our Susan doing?" she said from time to
time.
478 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
An interminable business. As the night wore on
it grew very chilly, and Edwin shivered in his chair.
The case hung fire unaccountably, and in this, the
first of many such cold vigils, he fell into a strange
mood, often to be repeated, in which the sublime
influences of night and solitude combined to purge
his reflections of pettiness and showed him what
an unimaginable mystery his own life was. The
patient fell into an uneasy doze. The midwife
nodded in her chair, snatching up her head with a
conscious jerk whenever it lolled over her fat bosom.
The smelly oil-lamp on the mantelpiece gave an
occasional sputter when a drop of water was sucked
up into the wick. In the room below the excited
talk bad petered out and only a sound of soft snor-
ing was heard, like the breathing of cows in a byre.
Edwin thought of many things. It seemed to
him that his mind burned clear as frosty starlight
lighting forgotten memories of his childhood. He
thought of his own mother. He wondered if she
had lain like the woman on the bed on the night
when he was born. He wondered if it had been in
the least like this, and whether another doctor,
whose name he did not even know, had sat by the
fireplace in the little room at Halesby waiting and
peeing his own life stretched out before him in this
light of perilous clarity. He thought of St. Luke's
of a thousand small things that had lain sub-
merged for years and now appeared unbidden. The
strangeness of his own experience, the elements of
linked circumstance that had combined to twist his
life into its present state and make him what he
was. He thought of his father, with an unusual
EASY ROW 479
degree of charity, realising that this man too was
no more than a slave of the same blind influences
driven hither and thither in spite of his innate
goodwill. Edwin was ashamed to think that he had
been angry with him. In his present mood it seemed
to him an unreasonable thing that one should be
angry with any human creature. Pity . . . yes, and
love but never anger. So, like a devotee in a
Tibetan lamassary, he saw his fellow creatures, his
father, himself, the midwife, and the woman on the
bed, bound helpless to the revolving wheel which
is the earth. And the earth seemed very small be-
neath the stars. . . .
At two o'clock in the morning the handsome girl
from downstairs, who was the patient's sister, came
softly into the room and asked the midwife if she
would like a cup of tea. The patient blinked at
her with red eyes.
"How is it going, Sally?" said the sister.
"Oh, it's all right. I suppose it's got to be worse
before it's better," she said, with a laugh. "Ask
the doctor if he'll have some tea too."
Edwin accepted gratefully. It was harsh stuff
that had been standing on the hob downstairs for
some hours already. Mrs. Perkins was easily per-
suaded into doctoring hers with a tablespoonful of
brandy from the bottle that is a regular constitu-
ent of the working class layette. The sister sat at
the foot of the bed and stared lazily at Edwin.
"You look tired, doctor," she said.
Edwin admitted that he had had a biggish day.
"You ought to get a bit of sleep," said the dark
480 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
girl. "Sorry there bain't no spare beds in the house ;
but you can turn in with me if you like."
She looked so daringly provocative that Edwin
had a horrible suspicion that she meant it; but it
was evidently the sort of joke that Greville Street
understood, for the patient on the bed cried, "Ethel,
you are a cough-drop, you'll make the doctor blush,"
and Mrs. Perkins rocked with laughter until she
spilt her tea.
"Well, why should you have all the fun, Sally?
It isn't every day we get a nice young man in the
house."
"Fun . . .," said the patient wryly. "You'll know
all about this sort of fun some day."
"Not just yet, thank you," said Ethel. "I can
look after myself better than that."
She went downstairs again. Edwin was beginning
to feel a little unhappy about the case. To his in-
experience the long delay seemed abnormal, and his
imagination presented to him a series of textbook
disasters. While he stood doubting whether he
should give himself away by sending to the hos-
pital for the house-surgeon, he was startled by a
sudden cry. Now, at any rate, there was no doubt
about it. At this rate, he thought, it could not be
long. But it took three hours: three hours of des-
perate struggle in which he could give no help,
though the thing was so fierce that he found his
sympathies snatched up into it : so that he held his
breath and clenched his hands and felt his own
temples bursting with effort. There had been no
experience like it. As he sat at the bedside with
the patient's fingers clasped about his wrist, he
EASY ROW 481
had the feeling that this woman, who had joked
with him half an hour before with the dry, coura-
geous cynicism that colours the philosophy of her
class, was not an individual human soul any longer ;
not a woman at all, but a mass of straining, tor-
tured muscle animated by the first force of life.
So it had been since the first woman cried out in
the night under the tangles of Caucasus: so it
would always be : the most sublime and terrible of
all physical experiences, a state of sheer physical
possession, more powerful than any spiritual
ecstasy imaginable.
At five o'clock the baby was born a boy, and
Mrs. Perkins, standing by with a skein of twisted
thread in her hand, danced with nervousness. Ed-
win's hands also trembled ; but his heart was light-
ened with a sudden relief, as though the labour
had been his and his also the accomplishment. A
palpably ridiculous state of mind . . . but it took
him like that.
The dark girl put her head in at the door. She
was very pale now. Had the whole household
shared in these physical throes?
"Is it all right?" she said.
"Yes . . . it's a boy. A beautiful boy."
"Hallo, Eth," said a quiet voice from the bed.
"Go and tell Jim."
It was the first word the patient had spoken.
A moment later she opened her eyes and stared
in a dazed way at Edwin. She smiled. She was a
woman again an extraof dinarily chastened woman
and somehow strangely beautiful. "Thank you,
482 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
doctor/' she said. "You 'elped me ever so. Did
I be'ave very bad, Mrs. Perkins?"
"Bad? You be'aved fine," said Mrs. Perkins,
wrapping the baby in a blanket and putting it in
the fender.
The patient gave a deep sigh and seemed to
relapse into her thoughts. From time to time she
would say a couple of words in a weak-contented
voice.
" 'As Eth told Jim?" she asked several times, and
then : "What'll mother think?"
"You be quiet, my lover," said the midwife.
"Don't you disturb yourself with talking."
At last she said suddenly : "I'm better now," and
asked if she might see the baby. Mrs. Perkins un-
wrapped the blanket from a red and frowning fore-
head and showed it to her. She touched its cheek
with her finger and smiled miraculously. The ac-
tion seemed to bring her submerged personality to
the surface again.
"Ugly little b ," she said, with a happy laugh.
"Looks as if 'e'd been on the booze."
"I shan't forget the way you 'elped me, doctor,"
she said again, when Edwin left the house. Al-
though it was still dark, the workmen's trams had
begun to run, and lights appeared in the lower win-
dows of public houses where hot soup was on sale.
When he entered the bedroom of their lodging, Ed-
win found, and envied, Boyce sleeping stertorously
with the blankets pulled over his head and an over-
coat on his feet. Three hours later, when the land-
lady came to call them, he woke, and explained to
Edwin the excitements of his own night: how, in
EASY ROW 483
the middle of it, Edwin's own Mrs. Higgins had
called him out ("decent little woman," said Boyce),
and how, from sixteen Granby Street, he had been
called to a case at the other end of the district in
a common lodging-house kept by a Pole.
"No hot water ... no soap . . . nothing but a
bucket that they'd used for scrubbing the floors.
Not even a bed! Just a straw mattress with a
couple of grey blankets on it. Two other children
and a man in the room. And crawling! I've
stripped and had a rub down with a towel, but I
feel as if they were all over me now. You couldn't
see them on the grey blankets, you know,"
"Sounds dismal. Had they a capable woman?
My Mrs. Perkins wasn't up to much."
"Midwife? My dear chap, they didn't run to
luxuries like that. It is a bit thick, isn't it? when
a modern surgeon-accoucheur is reduced to wash-
ing the baby with his own soap. As a matter of
fact, it was an extraordinarily interesting perform-
ance. The thing felt as if it would break. But seri-
ously, you know, this sort of thing teaches you a bit
about twentieth century housing."
"Yes, it's pretty bad," said Edwin. "There's one
thing about it: working all night like this gives
you a terrific appetite."
m
For a few days the extreme novelty of their ad-
venture sustained them, but after five nights of
broken or obliterated sleep, the presence of the
night-bell at their bedside stood for a symbol of
perpetual unrest. Their days were spent in visit-
484 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
ing patients whom they had attended. All examina-
tion work was made impossible by the fatigue that
follows want of sleep, and the fact that they were
committed to a kind of enforced idleness made their
sojourn in Easy Kow almost as much a holiday as
the great summer days at Overton.
Both of them found that they could not even read
for pleasure; and so the undisturbed hours of the
day were passed in talk and in music. Mrs.
Meadows's piano had suffered under the fingers and
thumbs of countless guests; but Edwin and Boyce
shared the cost of a tuner and worked together
through the Wagner scores and the subtler treas-
ures that lay hidden in the songs of Hugo Wolf.
They had few visitors, for this community of taste
had already begun to isolate them from their stu-
dent friends; but Boyce's father, the poet, often
came to have tea with them and to share their
music, a man as versatile and sanguine as Mere-
dith's Roy Richmond, and yet so versed in every
variety of knowledge and so reverent of beauty that
Edwin felt there was no such company in the world :
one who took all beauty and knowledge for his
province.
One afternoon a message came to the house in
Easy Row from the hospital, and as Mrs. Meadows
was engaged in some obscure adjustment of her
toilet, Edwin went to the door to receive it. He
took the message, and was returning when another
figure appeared on the path. It was that of a young
girl of his own age, or, perhaps, a little older, and
she hurried forward when she saw that he was clos-
ing the door. He waited.
EASY ROW 485
"You weren't going to shut me out, were you?"
she said. She smiled, and Edwin saw that her eyes
were of a warm hazel such as sunshine reveals in
peaty river water. Before them Edwin found him-
self blushing.
"No, indeed," he said. "Do you want Mrs.
Meadows? I'll go and tell her."
"Mrs. Meadows? This is thirty-seven, isn't it?"
"Yes . . . thirty-seven."
"I've come to see my friend, Miss Latham. She's
lodging here."
"I'm so sorry. Of course. I expect she's in the
front room."
"Thank you." She spoke very demurely. He
stood aside to let her pass and with her a faint
fragrance of white rose.
By this time Miss Latham herself had emerged,
a blowsy woman who was taking a small part in
the Christmas pantomime at the theatre, and had
introduced herself to the friends through Mrs.
Meadows a few days before.
"Why, Rosie, my dear, isn't this just sweet of
you? Fancy finding you on the step flirting with
Doctor . . . Dr. Ingleby! That's right, isn't
it?"
"Oh, what a shame, Hetty! We weren't, were
we?" Ingenuously she turned her eyes on Edwin
again. Were they hazel? Perhaps they were al-
most amber. A matter of light . . .
"No . . . I'm afraid we weren't. She didn't
give us time."
"Two doctors in the house ! Think of that !" said
Miss Hetty Latham, whose conversation habitually
486 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
ran from one note of exclamation to another.
"Imagine how safe we feel, Kosie !"
And Rosie surveyed Edwin seriously.
"Aren't you awfully young?"
"I suppose I am rather. I'm not qualified yet.
But I expect to be next week."
"Then you must be awfully clever too "
"What on earth are we all doing talking here in
the passage? Come along in and have a cup of
tea," said Miss Latham boisterously.
"As you two are such great friends already, I
suppose it's waste of time introducing you."
"Really " Edwin protested.
"Very will, then. Dr. Ingleby: Miss Rosie
Beaucaire. I never get the order right. You can
take it or leave it. May he come to tea with us,
Rosie?"
"Of course he may."
"Come along then, both of you . . ."
CHAPTER X
WHITE ROSES
IT was the first of many amazing adventures, to
which Matthew Boyce supplied a calculated and
cynical commentary, watching Edwin as though
he were the subject of a physiological experiment
as indeed he was. But lack of sympathy in one
quarter was scarcely likely to worry Edwin when
he had found it so overwhelmingly in another. In
a few days Miss Latham, the most tactful of
duennas, had withdrawn from the scene. On the
first night of their acquaintance Edwin had taken
the hazel-eyed Miss Beaucaire back to her lodg-
ings in Prince Albert's Place at the back of the
theatre, where the pantomime was in rehearsal. All
the way through the squalid, lamp-lit streets they
had talked of things that were entrancing, simply
because they had to do with her. Edwin thought
that no companionship in all his life had been so
natural and so easy; and this was not surprising,
for the young woman, in addition to physical
charms that were armoury enough in themselves,
had developed the faculty commonly acquired by
ladies of her profession, of devoting herself entirely
to the companion of the moment and giving the
487
488 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
impression that she had never known, and would
never want to know, any other person in the world.
Bosie was only twenty-four, but had given at least
the last third of her life to studying male of the
species of which Edwin was a peculiarly ingenuous
example. At the door of her lodgings she had con-
jured an atmosphere of mysterious intimacy. Speak-
ing in a voice that was low and of a thrilling ten-
derness, she had said :
"I mustn't ask you to come in to-day. It's a
dreadful shame; but mother has one of her head-
aches, and the noise might disturb her. You under-
stand, don't you?"
Edwin, with a vision of an elderly and delicate
version of Rosie herself lying on a sofa with a
handkerchief dipped in eau-de-cologne over her eyes,
assented. He thought it a very beautiful considera-
tion on Kosie's part. A small black and tan terrier
came dancing into the hall with a friendly yelp.
"Be quiet, Imp ... oh, do be quiet ! Isn't he a
duck?" she said. "Now, I must really go." She
held out her hand. A moment before she had taken
off her glove, and Edwin, who had scarcely ever
touched the hand of a woman before, thought that
her fingers were the softest and most delicate things
on earth.
"You'll come and have tea with us, won't you?
I should like you to meet mother."
"Of course, I'd like to. When?"
"Oh . . . quite soon. Any day this week.
Promise me you won't forget . . ." As if he could
ever forget! Her exquisite humility quite bowled
him over. When she had closed the door behind
WHITE ROSES 489
her he walked away dazed with an unfamiliar
emotion that made the mean street, with its uni-
form row of mid- Victorian houses on one side, and
on the other the blank wall of the theatre and huge,
sooty warehouses, seem a holy place. The Halesby
Eoad, with its streaming traffic, shared the same
transfiguration. The speed and strength of the
horses enthralled him ; the faces of men and women
walking homeward from their work in the city
seemed triumphantly happy; the smooth wood-
pavement, polished by the rolling of innumerable
wheels, shone like a street in heaven. It seemed to
Edwin as if the whole world had somehow been
uplifted by a secret knowledge of his own experi-
ence. A night of wonder. . . .
"Well, what is the young woman's name?" asked
Boyce, when he returned to Easy Row.
"Beaucaire. She's principal girl Jin the
pantomime at the Queen's."
"H'm. . . . Attractive little piece. But she
can't be up to much if she's a pal of the Latham
woman's. I've seen her there several times."
"Oh, that means nothing," Edwin explained. "I
don't think she's at all keen on her. They acted to-
gether somewhere years ago. You can't drop peo-
ple when they've been kind to you. I don't think
she's at all keen on her. She's quite all right. Lives
with her mother in Prince Albert's Place."
"Pretty rotten sort of street. Got a bad name,
you know. I believe, as a matter of fact, it's con-
sidered rather the thing to lug an official mother
about with you."
THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"You don't mean " Edwin began, going very
white.
"Of course I don't. I don't know anything about
her. Only, for God's sake, take care of yourself.
A young woman of that kind generally has a fair
share of experience, and you . . . well, you haven't
exactly. Besides, it's just as well to remember that
the final's coming off in ten days."
The less said about the final the better.
"She isn't a chorus girl, you know. If you'd met
her I think you'd admit that she's a lady. She told
me that her mother "
Boyce chuckled.
"As a matter of fact," said Edwin, clinching the
argument, "her father was a country parson in
low circumstances."
"I understand they usually are," said Boyce with
a yawn.
Their night was complicated by two new cases.
Next morning they appeared at breakfast with
slightly ruffled tempers. They sat at opposite ends
of the table, Edwin reading, without understand-
ing, one of Oldham's caustic critiques on a sym-
phony concert the night before, his friend glued to
his beloved anthology.
"What did you say her name was?" said Boyce,
apropos of nothing. "Rosie, wasn't it?"
Edwin grunted.
"Have you ever sampled the Sortes Virgilianae?
I sometimes try that trick with the anthology.
There are plenty of generalisations, so it often
comes off rather well. How's this for last night?"
H'm "
WHITE ROSES t 491
"Are you listening?"
"Yes, fire away."
Boyce quoted :
*H TO. poda, podoevaav ex X&p'W) &XM rl
) TO. poda, r]l <rvvan<f>OTpa.',
"Rather neat, isn't it? While I was hanging
about that case in Craven Street, I made a transla-
tion for you. Tell me what you think of it.
*You of the roses, rosy-fair,
Sweet maiden, tell me whether
You or the roses are your ware,
Or both of them together.' "
"Damned rotten, anyway," said Edwin. "Maiden's
the wrong word . . ."
It comforted him, none the less, to find that
Rosie did not revisit Miss Latham, though this
lady pointedly rallied him on the doorstep, sug-
gesting that his intimacy with Miss Beaucaire had
reached a stage to which he had not yet attained
but aspired devoutly. The work at Easy Row, that
had slackened for a few days, came on with a rush ;
and though the image of this delicate creature now
filled his nightly vigils, being even more precious
for the squalid surroundings in which it came to
him, he found it impossible to visit the lodgings in
Prince Albert's Place, to which his thoughts with
tantalising regularity returned.
The flood of work held until their fortnight was
out, leaving them both washed-out and irritable.
To speak frankly, the last few days of their com-
radeship had not been a success. Although Edwin
492 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
made it clear that he didn't wish to discuss the
affair of Kosie with Boyce, the incident of the Greek
epigram rankled. He found it impossible to take
the matter lightly, feeling that it was necessary to
convince himself at all costs that he wasn't making
a fool of himself, and finding it difficult to do so.
On the Monday next before the final examination
he found himself a free man. It was a questionable
liberty, for its enjoyment really depended on the
result of this ordeal. He had definitely severed
his connection with Dr. Harris, intending to devote
all his spare time at Easy How and the week after
to preparations for the exam. A big gamble. . . .
Ten pounds and a few shillings was all he possessed
in the world, except a problematical degree in
medicine which, in another seven days, might make
him certain of four guineas a week as long as he
chose to work. The margin seemed so small and the
chance so desperate that he burned the last of his
boats, selling his microscope to a pawnbroker for
twelve pounds. Twenty-three pounds. . . . One
could do a lot with twenty-three pounds . . . sup-
posing nothing went wrong.
He found a cheap bed-sitting-room in a quiet
street at the back of the University buildings. Here,
and in the museums, he would be able to put in a
week of intensive cramming. He found that he
couldn't do it. He had reckoned without the un-
reasonable quantity of Kosie. The first night on
which he settled down to read in his new lodging
the thought of her would not let him rest. It was
ridiculous. What he wanted was a hard walk. He
would go up to Alvaston and rout Boyce out of his
WHITE ROSES 493
study for a tramp in the moonlight towards South-
field Beeches. He would apologise to Boyce for his
bearishness during the last few days. Hadn't they
assured each other on one of their ambrosial eve-
nings at Overton more than a year ago, that the
friendship of two men was a more precious and
lasting experience than anything that the love of a
woman could give? The whole thing was just the
result of physical staleness: a symptom of the
monotonous fatigue of the last year. He was going
to get rid of it at all costs. He turned out the gas
and went downstairs.
It was a discouraging night. A soft winter drizzle
had set in from the We&t, and in the jaded Halesby
Road nebulous street lamps were reflected in a layer
of black slime that covered the wood-pavement. The
shop windows were misted with rain, and the few
people who had ventured out into the street trod
carefully as though they were afraid of slipping.
A brutal night if ever there was one. Plodding up
the street with the rain in his face he found that
he was passing the end of Prince Albert's Place.
He passed it by twenty paces, and then, almost
against his will, turned round again. It was no
good. There she was, for certain, within forty
yards of him. If he were to walk along the road
on the opposite side under the blank walls of the
warehouses, he would be able to see the very room
that held her exquisiteness. He did so. There was
a light in the front room of the lower story, but the
blinds were down, and he could not see any one
inside. He crossed the road boldly and stood for
a moment on the doorstep. It gave him a peculiar
494 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
stab of happiness to feel so near her. He railed
against the combination of shyness and convention
that held him ; for if he were to do the thing that
was reasonable and downright, he would have
walked straight into the house and told her the
thousand things that choked his heart he would
have kissed her soft hands and gazed into her shy,
adorable eyes. Yes, he would have kissed her eyes
too. No doubt it would rather have taken the
mother's breath away. Probably Rosie had never
given him another thought since he left her on the
doorstep. That was the funny part of it. He
laughed at himself, and the sound of his laugh must
somehow have penetrated the hall, for the black and
tan terrier barked shrilly. "Really, I'm off my
head, you know," he said to himself, and wandered
off again into the wet streets, walking, until the
small hours, those unimaginable slums in which his
labours of the last fortnight had lain. "God . . .
it's ridiculous!" he thought, "but a man can't help
falling in love." It seemed to him that the phantom
of Dorothy Powys regarded him seriously.
n
Next afternoon he presented himself at Prince
Albert's Place. A landlady who might well have
been Mrs. Meadows's sister took in his card, and
after a little buzz of conversation that might have
been explained in a dozen sinister ways, he was ad-
mitted to the little room, whose lighted windows he
had surveyed the night before. Rosie came forward
to meet him. Once again, trembling, he took her
WHITE ROSES 495
hand. He even fancied divine flattery ! that she
blushed.
"This is my friend Dr. Ingleby, mother," she
said.
"Very pleased to meet you, I'm sure," said Mrs.
Beaucaire. "Won't you come and sit over here?"
In the shadow of Mrs. Beaucaire Edwin took his
Beat. She was a large woman with a husky voice
and a big, dissipated face that had once been hand-
some. If she had any place in the scheme of things
it was surely as a foil to the fragile grace of her
daughter. Rosie, with an occasional sideways
glance, was busy talking to a little man with a blue
shaven chin and an immense mobile mouth, who
looked like a bookie.
"I suppose you know Mr. Flood?" said Mrs.
Beaucaire.
Edwin confessed that he did not
"The Mr. Flood, you know. Bertie, this is Mr.
Ingleby. ... I beg your pardon, Dr. Ingleby," and
the great comedian shook hands with Edwin and
hoped he was well.
The atmosphere of the lodgings was very easy
and familiar. Bertie Flood, the Mirth-maker of
Three Continents, as the newspapers described him,
devoted himself in an easy paternal manner to
Rosie. It became apparent to Edwin, over-
shadowed by the bulk and impressiveness of Mrs.
Beaucaire, that whenever Mr. Flood could make
an opportunity of handling Rosie, he did so, and
also that Rosie did not in any way resent the
process. It even seemed to him that she invited
Mr. Flood's attentions.
496 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
"We're very unconventional people, you know,
Dr. Ingleby quite Bohemian," said Mrs. Beaucaire
in a thick voice.
Edwin agreed that the relation was delightful.
It was only by an effort of concentration that he
could hear what the mother was saying. All the
time his eyes were on Eosie, so divinely fragile
in her white muslin blouse. He shuddered when
Bertie Flood touched her. Nothing but the delight-
ful innocence of the girl could have induced her to
suffer the presence of this satyr. And yet it seemed
to him that she was doing all that she could to
please him. . . .
"Yes, my poor husband : the vicar I always call
him habit, you know had a small parish in the
North of England. I have a son in the church too.
Both he and Rosie really take after the father."
"Yes. . . . Exactly," said Edwin. In that mo-
ment Eosie had smiled at him, and the smile was
enough. God, what a woman !
"The vicar came from a very old family. In the
North it is recognised, but in a place like North
Bromwich it is very difficult for us to meet the right
sort of people. I have to be very careful for Eosie's
sake. The child is so trusting. I was so glad, you
know, when she told me that she had met you at
Miss Latham's. One feels so safe with a doctor.
You'll be able to look after her a bit ... see that
she don't get too tired. Pantomime is very tiring,
you know. I myself suffer agonies from indiges-
tion. What with that and my headaches, I'm
afraid I'm a poor companion for her. As I say,
WHITE ROSES 497
both the children take after the dear vicar. Kosie
isn't a bit like me."
"No," said Edwin, still dazed by the memory of
her smile; but, as he spoke, his eyes met those of
Mrs. Beaucaire, and he saw to his amazement that
they were really the eyes of Rosie, that her dis-
coloured nose had once been of the same shape as
her daughter's, that the sagging, sensual mouth was
in fact a degraded version of Rosie's too. It was a
revelation, blasphemous but prophetic. He would
not consider it. He dared not look at her.
A moment later Bertie Flood left them. Tea
wasn't much in his line, he said, and his complexion
confirmed the assertion. Mrs. Beaucaire saw him
to the door. Edwin and Rosie were alone.
It was a wonderful minute. He felt that she
could never seem more beautiful, more delicate,
more exquisite than at this moment standing in
her pale loveliness against the grimy lodging-house
wallpaper, with her hands clasped before her.
"I had to come," he said.
"I had been expecting you. I'm awfully glad you
found time."
Found time! ... He wanted to tell her of his
strange adventure of the night before : how he had
stood in the dripping rain beneath her window,
hungry for the sight of her, unsatisfied. She stood
as though she would be glad to listen; but there
Was no time. Mrs. Beaucaire, after a noisy and
pointed demonstration in the hall, re-entered. It
seemed that there was nothing left for him but to
take his departure.
"Surely you're not going so soon?" she said.
498 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
And he stayed. It was all delightfully intimate
and domestic. These people seemed to possess the
rare faculty of putting a visitor as shy as Edwin
at his ease. Mrs. Beaucaire did most of the talking,
enlarging on Kosie's devotion to the parson brother,
regretting that circumstance, and possibly the un-
reasonable prejudice of country people against
theatrical connections, had deprived him of the
family living : and Rosie listened quietly, more com-
pelling in her demure silences than Mrs. Beaucaire
at her most impressive.
Once or twice in the afternoon that lady tactfully
left them, returning, each time with a renewed
vigour and a scent that suggested the combination
of eau-de-cologne and brandy. These solitary mo-
ments were very precious to Edwin. Neither of
them spoke more than a few words, but the air be-
tween them seemed charged with emotion. It was
six o'clock when he left Prince Albert's Place.
"You won't forget us, will you?" said Mrs. Beau-
caire with enthusiasm. "It will be so nice for Rosie
to have some one to take her to rehearsal. I don't
like her mixing with the boys in the company. It
isn't the thing. And we don't happen to have any
really nice friends in the Midlands. In the North
it would have been quite different."
A delirious week slipped by. In spite of every
resolution Edwin had found it impossible to work.
His new lodging was not inspiring; but this was
only one of the excuses that he invented to salve
his conscience. He knew the real reason for this
divine, unreasonable restlessness. Even if it were
to wreck his chances in the final examination it
WHITE ROSES 499
could not be avoided, and there was no reason
why it should be excused. He knew that he was in
love, and before this unquestionable miracle he
abased himself.
Mrs. Beaucaire, now satisfied that she could in-
dulge a "headache" and take to her bed as often as
she chose, did not question his presence at Prince
Albert's Place : she was even ready on occasion to
treat it with a mild facetiousness. Rosie, who
lapped up adoration as naturally as a kitten takes
to milk, treated it as a matter of course. Edwin
rather wished that she wouldn't take as a matter
of course the most wonderful thing in the world.
There was a passivity in her acquiescence that
filled him with a fear that she was used to this sort
of thing or even a little bored by it. She mopped
up his devotions with an ease that would have been
disconcerting if he had not always been bemused
by her beauty. Surely it was enough that she
should be beautiful !
In the morning Mrs. Beaucaire always had a
headache of another kind next day Edwin would
escort Rosie to her rehearsal at the theatre. He
became familiar with the frowsty box in which the
lame stage-doorkeeper sat like an obscene spider
guarding the baize-covered board on which the com-
pany's letters were kept. The man came to know
him and would pass him in through the swinging
doors with a peculiarly evil leer. Sometimes, at
the stage door they would become involved in a
mass of patchouli-scented chorus, and Edwin would
thrill at the dignity and refinement with which
$oo THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Rosie, in her white fox furs, would slip through
this vulgar tumult.
So to the stage with its vast cobwebbed walls, its
huge echoes and the mysterious darkness of the
flies, where looped ropes and grimy festoons of for-
gotten scenery hung still as seaweed in a deep sea.
There, in the sour and characteristic odour of an
empty stage, Edwin would wait for her in a little
alcove of the whitewashed wall in which iron cleats
were piled, and the unmeaning murmur of the re-
hearsal would come to him mingled with the shrill
voice of the producer, who ended every sentence
with the words "my dear," or "old boy," and the
noise of the carpenter hammering wood in the flies.
His original acquaintance, Miss Latham, discreet-
ly avoided him, but the comedian, Bertie Flood,
seemed inclined to be familiar. One morning he
dragged Edwin off to his dressing room for a smoke.
He sat with his legs on either side of a chair, his
fawn-coloured bowler on the back of his head, look-
ing more than ever like a bookie.
"Well, old boy," he said, "how goes it? How's
the little Beaucaire?"
"She's all right, as far as I know," said Edwin,
who was inclined to resent the description.
"Ma had any headaches lately? I know what
ma's headaches will end in. Cirrhosis of the liver.
You're a doctor, aren't you? Well, I know all about
that. Had it myself. Just realised in time that it
didn't pay. Now I never touch anything but gin.
Do you want a word of advice?"
Edwin thanked him.
WHITE ROSES 501
"May seem funny from a chap that gets two hun-
dred a week for making a damn fool of himself."
"Not at all," said Edwin politely.
"Well, if you'll take my advice, you'll go easy in
that direction. Treat it as a business proposition.
Ma's a bad old woman . . . only don't tell her I
said so. You see I'm a friend of the family. Dear
little girl, Rosie, too. Verbus Satienti I always
let 'em think I was at Oxford Good for business."
It was rather disturbing; for though it was no
news to Edwin that Mrs. Beaucaire's headaches
were euphemistic, the fact had done no more than
contribute to the ideal qualities with which he had
invested her daughter. There was something ro-
mantic as well as pitiful in the idea of Rosje's con-
trasting innocence: the rose that has its roots in
foulness is not less a rose. It had even seemed to
him that the complete collapse of Mrs. Beaucaire
might throw Rosie into his arms: a situation that
would be full of romantic and tender possibilities;
and the girl's inimitably virginal air was enough
to convince him that Bertie Flood's other sugges-
tions were no more than the natural products of
a mind degraded by the atmosphere of the music-
hall. He was convinced too that he had no cause
for jealousy. Ever since he had first visited her,
Rosie had never spent more than a few hours of
daylight out of his sight.
On the last day of the week before the examina-
tion his confidence suffered something of a shock.
It was a raw winter morning, but he had set his
heart on taking her into his own hill-country, and
she, with her usual sweet submission, but without
502 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
a hint of enthusiasm, had consented. He had
planned to avoid the Halesby side of the range and
to approach it from the southern escarpment. Early
in the morning he paid a visit to Parkinson's, the
florist's, in the Arcade, where he bought a bunch
of pale, exotic roses : white roses, that should match
her own sweetness and fragility. Once she had
expressed a general liking for flowers, and since
then it had been his delight to give them to her.
She mopped up his flowers and his passion with the
same dreamy passivity.
From the corner of the Place he saw a weedy,
black-coated figure in front of Number Ten; and
as he approached, the figure entered and the door
closed behind him. Edwin wondered vaguely if it
might be the parson brother. The landlady opened
the door in a flurry. It almost seemed as if she
wanted to conceal something.
"I don't think Miss Beaucaire can see you for a
bit," she said. "Won't you call later in the morn-
ing?"
He told her that he would wait, as they had an
appointment, and a train to catch.
"Then will you kindly wait in my room. You
mustn't take any notice of the state it's in," she
said, still on the defensive.
The state of the landlady's room was not inspirit-
ing. On a dirty table cloth lay the remains of last
night's supper. On the window sill stood a chevaux
de frise of empty brandy bottles that Edwin
couldn't help associating with Mrs. Beaucaire. The
arm-chairs, covered with dirty chintz overalls that
suggested a layer of more ancient dirt beneath,
WHITE ROSES 503
were not inviting. He preferred to stand. The
house was as quiet and secretive as usual; but
from the next room he heard an irritating rumour
of voices. One of the voices, he could have sworn,
was Rosie's. A little later he heard a laugh, and
the suspicion became a disquieting certainty, for
the laugh was one that he knew well with a dif-
ference. It was as if Mrs. Beaucaire had laughed
with Rosie's voice. He found it difficult to restrain
himself from bursting into the room and settling
the matter once and for all. Again the laugh
and then a long silence. He heard steps in the
passage, a whispered conversation with the land-
lady, and then Rosie came in to him, flushed, and
with her fair hair disordered. He could not speak.
He only gave her the roses.
"Thank you, Eddie," she said, scarcely noticing
them. Her lips were parted and her eyes shone
with excitement. She had never seemed to him
more beautiful, but there was something frighten-
ing in her beauty.
'Whatever is the matter with you?" she said.
"Why do you look so serious?"
"Who was your visitor?"
"Oh, that's it, is it? You silly boy! You surely
don't mean to say you're jealous?"
"Please tell me "
"It was only a priest. I had to make my con-
fession."
"A priest? I thought your people belonged to
the Church of England."
"That doesn't prevent me from being a Catholic.
It's much better for professional girls to be Cath-
504 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
olics. They look after you when you're on the
road."
He could not say any more about it. It seemed
to him that her eyes were anxious as though she
were not quite sure how much he had heard.
"You believe me, don't you?" She spoke in a
frightened whisper.
"Of course I do. We've just time for our train.
You are coming, aren't you?"
She said: "Of course I am," and ran upstairs
singing to put her hat on.
The roses lay neglected on the sideboard where
she had placed them. In five minutes she returned,
thoroughly dressed for her new role of country girl
with brogued shoes and a short skirt of Harris
tweed.
"I'm ready," she said gaily.
It was a wonderful day. They walked together
under dull skies that made the berries in the hedge-
rows and the waning fires of autumn glow more
brightly, and even ministered to the girl's own
beauty. The cool air and the walking made her
cheeks glow with a colour that was natural and
therefore unusual. Edwin was so entranced with
her companionship that he forgot his anxiousness
of the morning; so lost in the amazing beauty of
her hazel eyes and her cheek's soft contour that he
did not notice that she was limping. Halfway to
the summit of the hills she stopped, gave a little
sigh, and sat down on the bank of a hedge.
"I'm awfully sorry, Eddie. My foot hurts. I
think this shoe's too tight."
"They look simply splendid."
WHITE ROSES 505
"I know. I only bought them yesterday just
specially for to-day."
"But it's ridiculous to go for a long walk in new
shoes !"
"Do you mind if I take them off for a minute?"
"Of course not. Let me undo the laces."
He knelt at her feet. It was a wonderful and
thrilling experience to loosen the laces, to feel her
small feet in their smooth silk stockings. His
hands trembled.
"I wish you wouldn't touch my feet. I'm awfully
sorry : it's one of the things I can't bear. You don't
mind, do you?"
"You mustn't blame me. They're so beautiful."
She smiled. Her modesty delighted him.
Sitting there together, so miraculously alone,
he began to talk about his future. "I shan't see
you for a whole week. It will be unbearable. But
when the exam, is over and I'm qualified it will be
such a relief. I shall feel able to say the things that
I want to say to you."
For a long time she was silent. Then she said:
"What are you expecting to do?"
"I think I shall go in for one of the services.
What do you think of the Indian Medical? It
would be wonderful to see India. I've always
thought that I should like to know something of
the world. I think it's a good life. Women gen-
erally love it. What do you think about it?"
"I should think it would be rather nice. But
wouldn't it be awfully hot? I've known one or
two boys in the Indian Army. There's lots of danc-
ing and that sort of thing, isn't there?"
506 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
He laughed. Dancing wasn't his strong point,
as Professor Beagle could have told her, and in
any case India didn't mean dancing to him. She
did not seem at all anxious to pursue the subject.
"I think we could walk back to the hotel now,"
she said. "I'm simply starving." They walked
down the hill together, almost in silence. When
they reached the hotel, she disappeared in the com-
pany of the barmaid, leaving Edwin to wait for her
in the coffee-room. He almost resented her ab-
sence. He felt that he couldn't spare her for a
moment. Waiting at the table he picked up a week-
old copy of the North Bromwich Courier. Gazing
idly at the front page, he caught sight of his own
name. It was the announcement of a wedding.
INGLBBY: FELLOWS. On the tenth of December,
at the Parish Church, Halesby, John Ingleby to
Julia, elder daughter of the late Joseph Fellows,
of Mawne, Staffs.
He was overwhelmed with a sudden indescribable
emotion that was neither jealousy, anger, nor
shame, but curiously near to all three. He sat be-
wildered, with the paper in front of him. Eosie
returned to find him blankly staring.
"Why, what's the matter with you? You look
as if you'd seen a ghost."
"Yes. ... I think I have. It's nothing, really.
Nothing at all."
He drank more than he need have done of a
villainous wine that was labelled Chateau Margaux,
but had probably been pressed on the hot hill-sides
of Oran. In the train, on the way home, he felt
WHITE ROSES 507
flushed and sleepy, but, all the time, divinely con-
scious of the warmth and softness of Kosie sitting
beside him. They were alone in the first-class car-
riage. "I'm sleepy too," she said. He drew her
gently to his side, and she rested, content, with her
head on his shoulder. In the wonder of this he
forgot the newspaper and its staggering contents.
As they neared North Bromwich she stood up in
front of the mirror to arrange her hair, and Edwin,
pulling himself together, saw that his blue coat was
floured with a fine bloom of powder.
She still found it difficult to walk, and so they
drove in a hansom to Prince Albert's Place, very
grimy and sinister in the dusk.
"You needn't ring," she said, taking out a latch-
key and showing him into the narrow hall. "Let's
be very quiet, so as not to disturb mother."
"I don't think I'll come in," he said. He knew
that he must make an end somewhere.
"Not even to be thanked? I've enjoyed myself
most awfully."
She stood before him in the gloom of the hall as
though she were waiting for something. It felt as
if the dark space between them must break into
flame. Their lips met.
"Good God! . . . how wonderful you are!" he
said.
"Next week," she whispered.
m
Edwin had arranged to spend the following day
with the Boyces at their house in Alvaston. He
found it difficult to contain himself, for the delicious
508 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
memory of their parting the night before swamped
his efforts at conversation with the persistency of
waves that follow one another in a rising tide. It
seemed to him impossible that his state should not
be evident to the whole household, and particularly
to Matthew, who knew him so well.
In the afternoon, when they sat smoking together
in Boyce's study at the top of the house, he felt
that he was on the brink of a confession. The only
thing that restrained him from it was the memory
of the epigram and of his friend's translation. He
felt in his bones that Boyce would not be sym-
pathetic and though his infatuation suggested that
he wouldn't much care whether Boyce were sym-
pathetic, or suspicious, an intuitive dread of sus-
picion and its possible effects on his own reason
made him hold his tongue. It was in the nature of
Boyce, who didn't happen, for the moment, to be
in love, to be critical, to sweep away Kosie's per-
fections in a generalisation: and the appeal of a
generalisation to the mind of youth is so strong that
Edwin was afraid to hear it. Somewhere in his sub-
merged reason he admitted that Boyce's judgment
on the matter would probably be sound, and reason
was the last tribunal in the world before which he
wished this exceptional case to be presented. An
unsatisfactory day. For the first time in their
lives, the relations of the two friends were in-
definitely strained.
He left Alvaston early in the evening. On his
way to his lodging he passed the gloomy entrance
to Prince Albert's Place. It would have been easy,
so easy, to call at Number Ten, but he had deter-
WHITE ROSES 509
mined, once and for all, that the examination week
should be free from distractions, and pride in his
own strength of mind held him to his course, though
he realised, almost gladly, that even if he were
master of his feet he could not control his thoughts.
He wondered if he would dream of her . . .
Next day the rigours of the final examination
overtook him. This was the supreme ordeal in
which every moment of his professional life from
the day when he first entered the dissecting room
to the night of the last midwifery case, would stand
the test of scrutiny. He was not exactly afraid of
it. He knew that his knowledge and technical skill
were at least above the average of his year, and
felt that with ordinary luck he would be among the
first four of a field of twelve. The year was not one
of exceptional brilliance, and comparisons were
therefore in his favour.
On the first day, in the viva-voce examination on
surgery, he did, for one moment, lose his head, but
when once he had pulled himself together and ac-
customed himself to the conditions of the test, he
settled down into a state of fatalistic equanimity,
taking the rough with the smooth and deciding that,
on the whole, he was not likely to make a hopeless
fool of himself.
On the first night he went to bed early, but on
the second, feeling that his mind would be clearer
for some diversion, he went to a music-hall with
W.G. and his wife. Drinking beer in the bar with
his friend, he suddenly heard his name called, and
felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to find him-
self in front of a face that was curiously familiar,
510 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
and in a moment found that he was shaking hands
with Widdup, a small and rather chastened Wid-
dup, who spoke to him with the slow, precise voice
that he had known at St. Luke's.
"I thought it was you, Ingleby," he said. "I
wondered if I should run across you."
Avoiding a hair-raising display on the slack wire,
they stood talking. Widdup, it appeared, had been
destined for an engineering career in North Brom-
wich, when his mathematical genius had won him
a scholarship at Cambridge.
"A pity, in & way, for I should have seen more
of you. I suppose that sort of thing always hap-
pens to school friendships." At present he was
visiting a firm of iron-founders on business. They
talked together of old times : of the day when Ed-
win, greatly daring, had seen the Birches run : of
the languid Selby, now head-master of a small pub-
lic-school in Norfolk, and of old fat Leeming. Be-
tween the conscious effort of remembering St.
Luke's and the unbidden image of Kosie, Edwin's
head was in a whirl.
"And old Griffin," said Widdup. "That's another
funny thing. I ran slap into him in the lounge of
the Grand Midland to-night. Up to the same old
games, you know. Yes ... he had a girl with
him. Bather an attractive little piece: something
to do with the pantomime, he told me. What was
her name? The old brute introduced me, too ! Yes
... I think I've got it. Beaucaire. . . . Rosie
Beaucaire. Rather a rosy prospect for old Griff,
I should imagine. Why, what the devil's the mat-
ter with you?"
WHITE ROSES 511
"I'm all right, thanks," said Edwin. "It's this
exam., you know. Let's have another drink." He
called for whisky and soda.
"Chin-chin," said Widdup.
Edwin polished off a couple of drinks and then
told Widdup that he must rejoin his friend, leaving
him staggered at his abrupt departure. He didn't
rejoin W.G. He walked straight out of the theatre
and off up the Halesby Koad. He had determined
to go straight to Rosie's lodgings and thrash the
matter out; but by the time he reached Prince
Albert's Place he had thought better of it.
It was the most natural thing in the world, he
reflected, that Griffin should know the Beaucaires,
for Griffin was constantly in touch with theatrical
people. It was even natural that Griffin, knowing
her, should take Rosie to the Grand Midland. It
was the obvious thing to do if you had money to
spend, as Griffin had. It would be just like the
irony of fate, he reflected, if Griffin should afflict
him with unhappiness in this case as he had done in
so many others. He remembered the bitter suffer-
ings of those early days at St. Luke's that Widdup
had so clearly recalled. He remembered Dorothy
Powys and the dance at Mawne : his suspicions, his
agonised resentment. Even more darkly there came
to him the memory of a voice in Dr. Harris's sur-
gery, a conviction, never yet established, that Griffin
had no right to know any woman. This reflection,
he knew, implied a doubt of Rosie's innocence: an
imputation that he could not possibly admit. And
yet . . . and yet . . . He remembered the warning
that Bertie Flood had given him in his dressing
512 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
room. He remembered the visitor in the black coat
four days before. His mind was in hell.
In this purgatory of doubt and horror, he lived
for the rest of the week. In the daytime the prog-
ress of the examination engrossed him, but at
night he always found himself hanging about the
darkness of Prince Albert's Place, hoping against
hope, that his suspicions were unfounded, not dar-
ing to put them to the test, lest they should be con-
firmed.
On Friday night, when the last of his medical
ordeals was over, he went straight to Number Ten.
It was a wonderful moment. Now, with a clear
conscience hie might see her again ; now, once more,
he could know the ecstasy of her kisses and forget
the ungenerous nightmare in which he had lived
through the later stages of the exam. He ap-
proached the dirty doorway with his heart beating
wildly. At first his ring was unanswered, but a
little later the landlady came to the door with a
red, suspicious face, opening it jealously, as though
she feared to let him in.
He inquired for Miss Beaucaire. Miss Beaucaire
was out. Did the woman know when she was ex-
pected to return? She hadn't the least idea. Was
Mrs. Beaucaire in, then? Mrs. Beaucaire was in,
but invisible. Mrs. Beaucaire had one of her head-
aches. Edwin suggested that he should wait in
their room. Impossible. Mrs. Beaucaire was lying
down there. He hung upon the doorstep as if he
were waiting at the gates of paradise. At last the
landlady took it upon herself to close the door.
WHITE ROSES 513
She must have thought he was mad. Perhaps he
was mad. . . .
For an hour or more he waited in the rain. It
occurred to him that at least the woman was speak-
ing the truth, for there was no light in either of the
front rooms. The Grand Midland. ... It was
there that Widdup had seen them. He walked to
Sackville Row at a great pace and straight into the
hotel, where waiters and elderly commercial gentle-
men stared at his wet clothes and his haggard face.
He went into each of the dining-rooms and down
the stairs to the Turkish lounge. Nowhere was
Eosie or Griffin to be seen. A search of this kind
was ridiculous, but every moment that the agony
was extended made him more desperately anxious.
He walked back in the drizzle to Prince Albert's
Place and paced the pavement under the black
walls of the warehouses. The road was deserted.
There was no sound in it at all but the dripping of
water from some neglected spout. He walked up
and down in the shadow, and as he walked he
became conscious of something like a personality
in the faces of the long row of lodging-houses,
something sinister, as though their shuttered
windows concealed a wealth of obscene experience
like the eyes of ancient street-walkers. The souls
of those squat Victorian houses were languidly in-
terested in him. Another victim. . . . That was
what he must seem to them. And still the windows
of Number Ten were unlighted.
He heard the clock in the Art Gallery chime
eleven: a leisurely, placid chime muffled by gusty
rain. Perhaps the woman had lied to him. Per-
514 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
haps, at that very moment Rosie was sleeping peace-
fully in the unlighted upper story. He was over-
wrought with the strain of the examination on the
top of this devastating passion. He had better go
home.
He turned to go, and at that very moment he
saw two figures approaching from the Halesby
Eoad. The street lamp, at the corner, threw their
shadows on the shining pavement. One of them
was Eosie he would have known her anywhere
and the other, beyond doubt, was Griffin. He was
seized with the same blind passion that had swept
over him in the big schoolroom at St. Luke's ten
years before, an impulse to murder that he could
only control by digging his finger nails into his
hands.
He stood there trembling in the shadow of the
blank wall, huddling close to it for support and
for protection. They passed him, and he heard
Kosie's quiet laugh. Her laugh was one of the
things about her that he had loved most. They
stopped at the door, and Eosie took out her latch-
key. It was almost a repetition of the scene in
which he had shared a week before. Now, perhaps,
she would kiss him. He felt that if he saw her kiss-
ing Griffin he could have killed them both. Murder-
er's Cross Eoad. ... A hundred thoughts came
swirling through his brain. They entered, and
closed the door behind them. Griffin: the old
Griffin: the human beast of St. Luke's. The new
Griffin : the gross North Bromwich womaniser : the
Griffin of Dr. Harris's surgery. . . . Edwin saw
himself upon the edge of a ghastly, unthinkabl
WHITE ROSES 515
tragedy. He must prevent it. At all costs. At the
cost of life if needs be.
He crept quickly across the road. The houses
watched him. The window of the lower room
bloomed suddenly with a yellow light. He stood
with his hands clutching the window-sill, listening.
Once again he heard Rosie's laugh, and a rumour
of deeper speech that he knew to be the voice of
Griffin. The shadow of Griffin's shoulders swept
the window, swelling gigantically as it passed. The
light was turned down, but not extinguished.
Rosie's laugh again. He could have killed her for
that laugh, for it mocked him. The faint shadow
of the man's shoulders retreated. He guessed that
they were standing at the door. The door of the
room closed softly. Now there was no sound except
the heavy breathing that one hears in the neigh-
bourhood of a pigsty at night. Was Griffin still
there?
Another beam of light fell on the shining street.
Some one had lighted the gas in the room upstairs.
Was Griffin still below? Panic seized him. He
must know. At all costs he must know. Dr. Harris's
surgery. ... If he had to break in the front door
he must know. As he reached it he tripped over an
iron boot-scraper. The step barked his shin. Of
course the door was locked, but wonder of won-
ders Rosie had left the latchkey outside. He
opened the door softly and went on tip-toe into the
hall. In the room on the right he still heard the
grunting noise. Thank God, Griffin was still there !
At least he could tell him that he knew!
He opened the door. In the half-light he could
516 JHE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
see that the room was empty except for Mrs. Beau-
caire, who lay stretched on the sofa, snoring heavily
with her vile mouth open. On the table stood an
empty brandy bottle. The place stank of brandy.
Now he knew the worst. He stumbled upstairs
in the dark and knocked frantically at the door
of the front bedroom. Kosie answered: "Who is
it?"
"It's I. For God's sake, let me in."
"Who the devil is it?" said the voice of Dr.
Harris's consulting-room.
Kosie answered him in excited whispers.
"You can't come in, Eddie," she said. "How on
earth did you get into the house? Please go away.
I can't see you. I can't, really."
"I'm coming in, I tell you. If you don't open
the door, I'll smash it. I mean what I say."
"Ingleby ?" the voice muttered. "What the
devil has Ingleby to do with you? All right. I'll
go. I'll chuck the fellow downstairs."
"Oh, don't . . . please don't. . . . Let him go
quietly."
Griffin unlocked the door. He stood facing Ed-
win in his shirt-sleeves. Bosie, still dressed,
clutched at the mantelpiece. The vein in the middle
of Griffin's forehead bulged with anger. His short
neck was flushed.
"What the hell " he began and then they
closed. Edwin's heel ripped up the corner of the
carpet as they swayed together. Suddenly Griffin's
grip slackened. His face blanched, and in a mo-
ment Edwin was letting down a sheer weight upon
the bed.
WHITE ROSES 517
"What's the matter?" Rosie screamed, and flung
herself beside him. "What's the matter?"
"Good God ! . . . He's gone."
"No . . . No " she cried.
Edwin tore open Griffin's shirt, listening for an
impulse that was not there.
"He's gone," he said, panting. "He's dead. . . .
Heart. ... He always had a rocky heart. He's
dead."
The awful word seemed to pull Rosie together.
They stared at each other blankly with wide eyes.
"Are you sure?" she whispered.
"Yes. ... Of course "
She rose to her feet, speaking in a voice that was
quite new to him.
"Eddie . . . for God's sake, go ... now! . . .
quickly !"
"I can't go."
"Go quickly, I tell you. Don't be a damned little
fool. You don't want to be mixed up in this.
Eddie, for God's sake. . . . It's 'natural causes,'
Eddie."
He blundered down the dark stairs and out into
the street. He could not walk. He cowered under
the warehouse wall opposite, gazing, as though
fascinated, at the yellow square of window. The
discreet Victorian houses surveyed him as if the
horror that the yellow blind concealed were an
ordinary occurrence in their dingy lives. They
were used to death. And death did not change
them. A rubber-tyred hansom rolled smoothly up
the Halesby Road, past the mouth of the Place. At
the corner, under the gas-lamp, Edwin saw the
Si8 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
figure of a policeman with rain shining on his cape.
The sight recalled him to a sense of awful possi-
bilities. For the moment he dared not move. He
flattened himself against the warehouse walls and
did not realise that he was standing directly under
the dripping waterspout. In the western sky rose
the baleful glare of an uncowled furnace. The
policeman strolled away, and Edwin, cautiously
emerging, set off through the rain up the Halesby
Koad towards the hills. He felt that he needed
their solitude and darkness.
IV
Next day, a haggard and desolate figure, he ap-
peared in the cloak-room of the University where
the examination results were displayed. In a dream
he realised that he was now a Bachelor of Medicine,
but in the realisation there was none of the joy that
he had anticipated. He stood before the board be-
wildered, until W.G. came up behind him and
wrung his hand.
"You look as if you'd been making a night of it,
my boy," he said. "Come and have some coffee at
the Dousita."
W.G. was on the top of himself. "It was a pretty
near thing. The external examiner in Medicine
gave me hell ; but it's all right. God ! . . . it's diffi-
cult to believe, isn't it? What are you going to
do?"
"I don't know. A voyage, I should think."
He hadn't thought of it before.
"That's not a bad idea. Bit of a rest cure, eh?
That's the only disadvantage, I don't mind telling
WHITE ROSES 519
you, of being married. I couldn't leave the missus."
W.G. babbled on happily. "Did you see the eve-
ning paper?" he said. "I see that fellow Griffin's
done for. I always said he'd come to a nasty, sticky
end. Some woman or other. ... I remember your
saying that he couldn't play footer because of his
heart. Ah, well . . . that's ong fewine the less, poor
devil!"
When W.G. left him, Edwin called for a time-
table and looked out the trains to Liverpool. There
was one that started in half an hour. He caught
it, and next morning presented himself at a ship-
ping office in Water Street.
The medical superintendent received him.
<r You want a ship? Well, you know, you look
very young. When were you qualified?"
"Yesterday," Edwin confessed.
"Very young. Still, you won't be stale. You
don't drink, by any chance?"
"I'm practically a total abstainer." The man
scrutinised Edwin's haggard eyes.
"H'm. . . . Well, as it happens, one of our men
has failed us. I'll give you a ship, the Macao, if
you can sail to-morrow. Bather short notice, eh?"
"I think I can do it. What about equipment?"
"Oh, we don't go in for brass-bound uniforms on
our ships. Ten pounds a month and bonus. What?"
"Where is she going to?"
"China. You may call at Japan for coal with
luck. See the world, you know. That's what most
of you fellows are after. You'll have to go aboard
to-night, Birkenhead Docks."
"I'll be there."
520 THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
And with trembling hands he signed his contract.
In a wintry evening he crossed the Mersey ferry.
A salt wind from the west boomed up the channel.
Edwin, in the bows, felt his face drenched with
spray. "It's clean," he thought. "It will make me
cleaner. That's what I need. I don't believe I shall
ever feel anything again, until I'm washed clean.
I'm old . . . old and- numb. I've lost my sense of
enjoyment. I wonder if it will ever come back \o
me!"
As he stood there in the salt breeze, some words
of Traherne, his mother's countryman, came into
his mind:
<< You shall never enjoy this world aright till the
sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed
with the heavens and crowned with the stars."
Perhaps they were true. He wondered.
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