Of Human Bondage
life went easily and was not without its pleasures: there was plenty of
time for gossip, after the day’s work a glass of beer was very good to
drink, the streets were a constant source of entertainment, if you
wanted to read there was Reynolds’ or The News of the World; ‘but
there, you couldn’t make out ’ow the time did fly, the truth was and
that’s a fact, you was a rare one for reading when you was a girl, but
what with one thing and another you didn’t get no time now not even to
read the paper.’
The usual practice was to pay three visits after a confinement, and one
Sunday Philip went to see a patient at the dinner hour. She was up for
the first time.
“I couldn’t stay in bed no longer, I really couldn’t. I’m not one for
idling, and it gives me the fidgets to be there and do nothing all day
long, so I said to ’Erb, I’m just going to get up and cook your dinner
for you.”
’Erb was sitting at table with his knife and fork already in his hands.
He was a young man, with an open face and blue eyes. He was earning
good money, and as things went the couple were in easy circumstances.
They had only been married a few months, and were both delighted with
the rosy boy who lay in the cradle at the foot of the bed. There was a
savoury smell of beefsteak in the room and Philip’s eyes turned to the
range.
“I was just going to dish up this minute,” said the woman.
“Fire away,” said Philip. “I’ll just have a look at the son and heir
and then I’ll take myself off.”
Husband and wife laughed at Philip’s expression, and ’Erb getting up
went over with Philip to the cradle. He looked at his baby proudly.
“There doesn’t seem much wrong with him, does there?” said Philip.
He took up his hat, and by this time ’Erb’s wife had dished up the
beefsteak and put on the table a plate of green peas.
“You’re going to have a nice dinner,” smiled Philip.
“He’s only in of a Sunday and I like to ’ave something special for him,
so as he shall miss his ’ome when he’s out at work.”
“I suppose you’d be above sittin’ down and ’avin’ a bit of dinner with
us?” said ’Erb.
“Oh, ’Erb,” said his wife, in a shocked tone.
“Not if you ask me,” answered Philip, with his attractive smile.
“Well, that’s what I call friendly, I knew ’e wouldn’t take offence,
Polly. Just get another plate, my girl.”
Polly was flustered, and she thought ’Erb a regular caution, you never
knew what ideas ’e’d get in ’is ’ead next; but she got a plate and
wiped it quickly with her apron, then took a new knife and fork from
the chest of drawers, where her best cutlery rested among her best
clothes. There was a jug of stout on the table, and ’Erb poured Philip
out a glass. He wanted to give him the lion’s share of the beefsteak,
but Philip insisted that they should share alike. It was a sunny room
with two windows that reached to the floor; it had been the parlour of
a house which at one time was if not fashionable at least respectable:
it might have been inhabited fifty years before by a well-to-do
tradesman or an officer on half pay. ’Erb had been a football player
before he married, and there were photographs on the wall of various
teams in self-conscious attitudes, with neatly plastered hair, the
captain seated proudly in the middle holding a cup. There were other
signs of prosperity: photographs of the relations of ’Erb and his wife
in Sunday clothes; on the chimney-piece an elaborate arrangement of
shells stuck on a miniature rock; and on each side mugs, ‘A present
from Southend’ in Gothic letters, with pictures of a pier and a parade
on them. ’Erb was something of a character; he was a non-union man and
expressed himself with indignation at the efforts of the union to force
him to join. The union wasn’t no good to him, he never found no
difficulty in getting work, and there was good wages for anyone as ’ad
a head on his shoulders and wasn’t above puttin’ ’is ’and to anything
as come ’is way. Polly was timorous. If she was ’im she’d join the
union, the last time there was a strike she was expectin’ ’im to be
brought back in an ambulance every time he went out. She turned to
Philip.
“He’s that obstinate, there’s no doing anything with ’im.”
“Well, what I say is, it’s a free country, and I won’t be dictated to.”
“It’s no good saying it’s a free country,” said Polly, “that won’t
prevent ’em bashin’ your ’ead in if they get the chanst.”
When they had finished Philip passed his pouch over to ’Erb and they
lit their pipes; then he got up, for a ‘call’ might be waiting for him
at his rooms, and shook hands. He saw that it had given them pleasure
that he shared their meal, and they saw that he had thoroughly enjoyed
it.
“Well, good-bye, sir,” said ’Erb, “and I ’ope we shall ’ave as nice a
doctor next time the missus disgraces ’erself.”
“Go on with you, ’Erb,” she retorted. “’Ow d’you know there’s going to
be a next time?”
CXIV
The three weeks which the appointment lasted drew to an end. Philip had
attended sixty-two cases, and he was tired out. When he came home about
ten o’clock on his last night he hoped with all his heart that he would
not be called out again. He had not had a whole night’s rest for ten
days. The case which he had just come from was horrible. He had been
fetched by a huge, burly man, the worse for liquor, and taken to a room
in an evil-smelling court, which was filthier than any he had seen: it
was a tiny attic; most of the space was taken up by a wooden bed, with
a canopy of dirty red hangings, and the ceiling was so low that Philip
could touch it with the tips of his fingers; with the solitary candle
that afforded what light there was he went over it, frizzling up the
bugs that crawled upon it. The woman was a blowsy creature of middle
age, who had had a long succession of still-born children. It was a
story that Philip was not unaccustomed to: the husband had been a
soldier in India; the legislation forced upon that country by the
prudery of the English public had given a free run to the most
distressing of all diseases; the innocent suffered. Yawning, Philip
undressed and took a bath, then shook his clothes over the water and
watched the animals that fell out wriggling. He was just going to get
into bed when there was a knock at the door, and the hospital porter
brought him a card.
“Curse you,” said Philip. “You’re the last person I wanted to see
tonight. Who’s brought it?”
“I think it’s the ’usband, sir. Shall I tell him to wait?”
Philip looked at the address, saw that the street was familiar to him,
and told the porter that he would find his own way. He dressed himself
and in five minutes, with his black bag in his hand, stepped into the
street. A man, whom he could not see in the darkness, came up to him,
and said he was the husband.
“I thought I’d better wait, sir,” he said. “It’s a pretty rough
neighbour’ood, and them not knowing who you was.”
Philip laughed.
“Bless your heart, they all know the doctor, I’ve been in some damned
sight rougher places than Waver Street.”
It was quite true. The black bag was a passport through wretched alleys
and down foul-smelling courts into which a policeman was not ready to
venture by himself. Once or twice a little group of men had looked at
Philip curiously as he passed; he heard a mutter of observations and
then one say:
“It’s the ’orspital doctor.”
As he went by one or two of them said: “Good-night, sir.”
“We shall ’ave to step out if you don’t mind, sir,” said the man who
accompanied him now. “They told me there was no time to lose.”
“Why did you leave it so late?” asked Philip, as he quickened his pace.
He glanced at the fellow as they passed a lamp-post.
“You look awfully young,” he said.
“I’m turned eighteen, sir.”
He was fair, and he had not a hair on his face, he looked no more than
a boy; he was short, but thick set.
“You’re young to be married,” said Philip.
“We ’ad to.”
“How much d’you earn?”
“Sixteen, sir.”
Sixteen shillings a week was not much to keep a wife and child on. The
room the couple lived in showed that their poverty was extreme. It was
a fair size, but it looked quite large, since there was hardly any
furniture in it; there was no carpet on the floor; there were no
pictures on the walls; and most rooms had something, photographs or
supplements in cheap frames from the Christmas numbers of the
illustrated papers. The patient lay on a little iron bed of the
cheapest sort. It startled Philip to see how young she was.
“By Jove, she can’t be more than sixteen,” he said to the woman who had
come in to ‘see her through.’
She had given her age as eighteen on the card, but when they were very
young they often put on a year or two. Also she was pretty, which was
rare in those classes in which the constitution has been undermined by
bad food, bad air, and unhealthy occupations; she had delicate features
and large blue eyes, and a mass of dark hair done in the elaborate
fashion of the coster girl. She and her husband were very nervous.
“You’d better wait outside, so as to be at hand if I want you,” Philip
said to him.
Now that he saw him better Philip was surprised again at his boyish
air: you felt that he should be larking in the street with the other
lads instead of waiting anxiously for the birth of a child. The hours
passed, and it was not till nearly two that the baby was born.
Everything seemed to be going satisfactorily; the husband was called
in, and it touched Philip to see the awkward, shy way in which he
kissed his wife; Philip packed up his things. Before going he felt once
more his patient’s pulse.
“Hulloa!” he said.
He looked at her quickly: something had happened. In cases of emergency
the S. O. C.—senior obstetric clerk—had to be sent for; he was a
qualified man, and the ‘district’ was in his charge. Philip scribbled a
note, and giving it to the husband, told him to run with it to the
hospital; he bade him hurry, for his wife was in a dangerous state. The
man set off. Philip waited anxiously; he knew the woman was bleeding to
death; he was afraid she would die before his chief arrived; he took
what steps he could. He hoped fervently that the S. O. C. would not
have been called elsewhere. The minutes were interminable. He came at
last, and, while he examined the patient, in a low voice asked Philip
questions. Philip saw by his face that he thought the case very grave.
His name was Chandler. He was a tall man of few words, with a long nose
and a thin face much lined for his age. He shook his head.
“It was hopeless from the beginning. Where’s the husband?”
“I told him to wait on the stairs,” said Philip.
“You’d better bring him in.”
Philip opened the door and called him. He was sitting in the dark on
the first step of the flight that led to the next floor. He came up to
the bed.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Why, there’s internal bleeding. It’s impossible to stop it.” The S. O.
C. hesitated a moment, and because it was a painful thing to say he
forced his voice to become brusque. “She’s dying.”
The man did not say a word; he stopped quite still, looking at his
wife, who lay, pale and unconscious, on the bed. It was the midwife who
spoke.
“The gentlemen ’ave done all they could, ’Arry,” she said. “I saw what
was comin’ from the first.”
“Shut up,” said Chandler.
There were no curtains on the windows, and gradually the night seemed
to lighten; it was not yet the dawn, but the dawn was at hand. Chandler
was keeping the woman alive by all the means in his power, but life was
slipping away from her, and suddenly she died. The boy who was her
husband stood at the end of the cheap iron bed with his hands resting
on the rail; he did not speak; but he looked very pale and once or
twice Chandler gave him an uneasy glance, thinking he was going to