Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham (best novels to read txt) 📗

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, but because he was astonished. It was evidently very unusual for someone to offer a partnership to a newly qualified man; and he realised with wonder that, although nothing would induce him to say so, Doctor South had taken a fancy to him. He thought how amused the secretary at St. Luke’s would be when he told him.

“The practice brings in about seven hundred a year. We can reckon out how much your share would be worth, and you can pay me off by degrees. And when I die you can succeed me. I think that’s better than knocking about hospitals for two or three years, and then taking assistantships until you can afford to set up for yourself.”

Philip knew it was a chance that most people in his profession would jump at; the profession was overcrowded, and half the men he knew would be thankful to accept the certainty of even so modest a competence as that.

“I’m awfully sorry, but I can’t,” he said. “It means giving up everything I’ve aimed at for years. In one way and another I’ve had a roughish time, but I always had that one hope before me, to get qualified so that I might travel; and now, when I wake in the morning, my bones simply ache to get off, I