Of Human Bondage
Doctor South gave him a look, but did not reply directly.
“What’s that you’re reading?”
“Peregrine Pickle. Smollett.”
“I happen to know that Smollett wrote Peregrine Pickle.”
“I beg your pardon. Medical men aren’t much interested in literature,
are they?”
Philip had put the book down on the table, and Doctor South took it up.
It was a volume of an edition which had belonged to the Vicar of
Blackstable. It was a thin book bound in faded morocco, with a
copperplate engraving as a frontispiece; the pages were musty with age
and stained with mould. Philip, without meaning to, started forward a
little as Doctor South took the volume in his hands, and a slight smile
came into his eyes. Very little escaped the old doctor.
“Do I amuse you?” he asked icily.
“I see you’re fond of books. You can always tell by the way people
handle them.”
Doctor South put down the novel immediately.
“Breakfast at eight-thirty,” he said and left the room.
“What a funny old fellow!” thought Philip.
He soon discovered why Doctor South’s assistants found it difficult to
get on with him. In the first place, he set his face firmly against all
the discoveries of the last thirty years: he had no patience with the
drugs which became modish, were thought to work marvellous cures, and
in a few years were discarded; he had stock mixtures which he had
brought from St. Luke’s where he had been a student, and had used all
his life; he found them just as efficacious as anything that had come
into fashion since. Philip was startled at Doctor South’s suspicion of
asepsis; he had accepted it in deference to universal opinion; but he
used the precautions which Philip had known insisted upon so
scrupulously at the hospital with the disdainful tolerance of a man
playing at soldiers with children.
“I’ve seen antiseptics come along and sweep everything before them, and
then I’ve seen asepsis take their place. Bunkum!”
The young men who were sent down to him knew only hospital practice;
and they came with the unconcealed scorn for the General Practitioner
which they had absorbed in the air at the hospital; but they had seen
only the complicated cases which appeared in the wards; they knew how
to treat an obscure disease of the suprarenal bodies, but were helpless
when consulted for a cold in the head. Their knowledge was theoretical
and their self-assurance unbounded. Doctor South watched them with
tightened lips; he took a savage pleasure in showing them how great was
their ignorance and how unjustified their conceit. It was a poor
practice, of fishing folk, and the doctor made up his own
prescriptions. Doctor South asked his assistant how he expected to make
both ends meet if he gave a fisherman with a stomach-ache a mixture
consisting of half a dozen expensive drugs. He complained too that the
young medical men were uneducated: their reading consisted of The
Sporting Times and The British Medical Journal; they could neither
write a legible hand nor spell correctly. For two or three days Doctor
South watched Philip closely, ready to fall on him with acid sarcasm if
he gave him the opportunity; and Philip, aware of this, went about his
work with a quiet sense of amusement. He was pleased with the change of
occupation. He liked the feeling of independence and of responsibility.
All sorts of people came to the consulting-room. He was gratified
because he seemed able to inspire his patients with confidence; and it
was entertaining to watch the process of cure which at a hospital
necessarily could be watched only at distant intervals. His rounds took
him into low-roofed cottages in which were fishing tackle and sails and
here and there mementoes of deep-sea travelling, a lacquer box from
Japan, spears and oars from Melanesia, or daggers from the bazaars of
Stamboul; there was an air of romance in the stuffy little rooms, and
the salt of the sea gave them a bitter freshness. Philip liked to talk
to the sailor-men, and when they found that he was not supercilious
they told him long yarns of the distant journeys of their youth.
Once or twice he made a mistake in diagnosis: (he had never seen a case
of measles before, and when he was confronted with the rash took it for
an obscure disease of the skin;) and once or twice his ideas of
treatment differed from Doctor South’s. The first time this happened
Doctor South attacked him with savage irony; but Philip took it with
good humour; he had some gift for repartee, and he made one or two
answers which caused Doctor South to stop and look at him curiously.
Philip’s face was grave, but his eyes were twinkling. The old gentleman
could not avoid the impression that Philip was chaffing him. He was
used to being disliked and feared by his assistants, and this was a new
experience. He had half a mind to fly into a passion and pack Philip
off by the next train, he had done that before with his assistants; but
he had an uneasy feeling that Philip then would simply laugh at him
outright; and suddenly he felt amused. His mouth formed itself into a
smile against his will, and he turned away. In a little while he grew
conscious that Philip was amusing himself systematically at his
expense. He was taken aback at first and then diverted.
“Damn his impudence,” he chuckled to himself. “Damn his impudence.”
CXVII
Philip had written to Athelny to tell him that he was doing a locum in
Dorsetshire and in due course received an answer from him. It was
written in the formal manner he affected, studded with pompous epithets
as a Persian diadem was studded with precious stones; and in the
beautiful hand, like black letter and as difficult to read, upon which
he prided himself. He suggested that Philip should join him and his
family in the Kentish hop-field to which he went every year; and to
persuade him said various beautiful and complicated things about
Philip’s soul and the winding tendrils of the hops. Philip replied at
once that he would come on the first day he was free. Though not born
there, he had a peculiar affection for the Isle of Thanet, and he was
fired with enthusiasm at the thought of spending a fortnight so close
to the earth and amid conditions which needed only a blue sky to be as
idyllic as the olive groves of Arcady.
The four weeks of his engagement at Farnley passed quickly. On the
cliff a new town was springing up, with red brick villas round golf
links, and a large hotel had recently been opened to cater for the
summer visitors; but Philip went there seldom. Down below, by the
harbour, the little stone houses of a past century were clustered in a
delightful confusion, and the narrow streets, climbing down steeply,
had an air of antiquity which appealed to the imagination. By the
water’s edge were neat cottages with trim, tiny gardens in front of
them; they were inhabited by retired captains in the merchant service,
and by mothers or widows of men who had gained their living by the sea;
and they had an appearance which was quaint and peaceful. In the little
harbour came tramps from Spain and the Levant, ships of small tonnage;
and now and then a windjammer was borne in by the winds of romance. It
reminded Philip of the dirty little harbour with its colliers at
Blackstable, and he thought that there he had first acquired the
desire, which was now an obsession, for Eastern lands and sunlit
islands in a tropic sea. But here you felt yourself closer to the wide,
deep ocean than on the shore of that North Sea which seemed always
circumscribed; here you could draw a long breath as you looked out upon
the even vastness; and the west wind, the dear soft salt wind of
England, uplifted the heart and at the same time melted it to
tenderness.
One evening, when Philip had reached his last week with Doctor South, a
child came to the surgery door while the old doctor and Philip were
making up prescriptions. It was a little ragged girl with a dirty face
and bare feet. Philip opened the door.
“Please, sir, will you come to Mrs. Fletcher’s in Ivy Lane at once?”
“What’s the matter with Mrs. Fletcher?” called out Doctor South in his
rasping voice.
The child took no notice of him, but addressed herself again to Philip.
“Please, sir, her little boy’s had an accident and will you come at
once?”
“Tell Mrs. Fletcher I’m coming,” called out Doctor South.
The little girl hesitated for a moment, and putting a dirty finger in a
dirty mouth stood still and looked at Philip.
“What’s the matter, Kid?” said Philip, smiling.
“Please, sir, Mrs. Fletcher says, will the new doctor come?” There was
a sound in the dispensary and Doctor South came out into the passage.
“Isn’t Mrs. Fletcher satisfied with me?” he barked. “I’ve attended Mrs.
Fletcher since she was born. Why aren’t I good enough to attend her
filthy brat?”
The little girl looked for a moment as though she were going to cry,
then she thought better of it; she put out her tongue deliberately at
Doctor South, and, before he could recover from his astonishment,
bolted off as fast as she could run. Philip saw that the old gentleman
was annoyed.
“You look rather fagged, and it’s a goodish way to Ivy Lane,” he said,
by way of giving him an excuse not to go himself.
Doctor South gave a low snarl.
“It’s a damned sight nearer for a man who’s got the use of both legs
than for a man who’s only got one and a half.”
Philip reddened and stood silent for a while.
“Do you wish me to go or will you go yourself?” he said at last
frigidly.
“What’s the good of my going? They want you.”
Philip took up his hat and went to see the patient. It was hard upon
eight o’clock when he came back. Doctor South was standing in the
dining-room with his back to the fireplace.
“You’ve been a long time,” he said.
“I’m sorry. Why didn’t you start dinner?”
“Because I chose to wait. Have you been all this while at Mrs.
Fletcher’s?”
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t. I stopped to look at the sunset on my way
back, and I didn’t think of the time.”
Doctor South did not reply, and the servant brought in some grilled
sprats. Philip ate them with an excellent appetite. Suddenly Doctor
South shot a question at him.
“Why did you look at the sunset?”
Philip answered with his mouth full.
“Because I was happy.”
Doctor South gave him an odd look, and the shadow of a smile flickered
across his old, tired face. They ate the rest of the dinner in silence;
but when the maid had given them the port and left the room, the old
man leaned back and fixed his sharp eyes on Philip.
“It stung you up a bit when I spoke of your game leg, young fellow?” he
said.
“People always do, directly or indirectly, when they get angry with
me.”
“I suppose they know it’s your weak point.”
Philip faced him and looked at him steadily.
“Are you very glad to have discovered it?”
The doctor did not answer, but he gave a chuckle of bitter mirth. They
sat for a while staring at one another. Then Doctor South surprised
Philip extremely.
“Why don’t you stay here and I’ll get rid of that damned fool with his
mumps?”
“It’s very kind of you, but I hope to get an appointment at the
hospital in the autumn. It’ll help me so much in getting other work
later.”
“I’m offering you a partnership,” said Doctor South grumpily.
“Why?” asked Philip, with surprise.
“They seem to like you down here.”
“I didn’t think that was a fact which altogether met with your
approval,” Philip said drily.
“D’you suppose that after forty years’ practice I care a twopenny damn
whether people prefer my assistant to me? No, my friend. There’s no
sentiment between my patients and me. I don’t expect gratitude from
them, I expect them to pay my fees. Well, what d’you say to it?”
Philip made no reply, not because he was thinking over the proposal,