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ANTHONY MANTON made no social calls for the first three weeks of his residence in Bulboro—he was too busily occupied with the claims of the practice. There are some who may have come to him out of sheer curiosity, but there was a genuinely large amount of sickness. Influenza seemed to have laid half the inhabitants of Bulboro low and to have kept the doctors busy day and night.

He met men of his own profession, who did not resent his intrusion, accepting his inheritance of old Manton’s kingdom without question.

It would seem that aristocratic Bulboro shared the views of Lady Beatrice, for he was not called in to prescribe for the West End, and it seemed that they had decided to wait until they had become acquainted with him socially, before they developed any of the distressing symptoms peculiar to the idle and the moneyed classes.

He saw much of Ambrose Cohen in those days. The little man would drive over in the evenings, and spend a couple of hours in Anthony’s study, smoking and discussing everything under the sun, save Bulboro society. To this he made no further reference, and added nothing to the information which he offered at the station on the day of Tony’s arrival.

The town was one of strong antagonism, Anthony gathered, but he had no further demonstration of religious feeling until one night he was called to a case in Mansfield Street.

He had been sent for by a distracted mother to find a youth of fifteen in a condition which suggested shock.

The boy was a weakling and was unfitted, physically, to accept the flogging which had been given to him.

The youngster’s body was covered with weals, and the weeping mother admitted that he had suffered at the hands of his father.

It was no part of Anthony’s business to interfere with the exercising of a parent’s right to chastise an errant son, but here was a case which might easily develop seriously. His stethoscope discovered a suggestion of pneumonia, a complication which might very easily follow upon so cruel a beating as the boy had received. The house was a decent one, in a decent thoroughfare, and the parents of the child were evidently fairly well-to-do people.

Anthony made another examination of the shivering, moaning boy on the bed and wrote his prescription.

When he had finished he rose.

“Exactly why was this boy punished in this brutal way?” he asked.

The woman hesitated.

Before she could reply the door was flung open and a man came in. He was of the superior artisan type, below middle height, a wisp of black whisker covered the lower part of his thin face. His eyes were the eyes of a fanatic, his hair long and carefully brushed, and he faced Doctor Anthony Manton defiantly, his hands thrust in his trousers pockets, his head on one side.

“Do you want to know why I flogged that boy, sir?” he demanded.

“I have asked your wife,” said Anthony calmly, “and as you seem to have been listening at the door it will be unnecessary for her to repeat my question.”

The man was ripe for argument, and his first words explained his creed in so far as his eavesdropping was concerned.

“I have a right to listen to what I like in my own house,” he said. “And I tell you this, that I flogged this boy to save his immortal soul.”

Anthony looked at him a little amazed.

“You have considerably jeopardized his mortal body,” he said dryly. “There may be a complication of pneumonia in this case, and if by any chance the boy dies I shall give evidence to this effect—in any case I shall report this matter.”

The man looked at him open mouthed.

“Dies!” he said.

Anthony nodded.

“There is just a possibility that he will, in which case you will be tried for manslaughter. I do not think,” he went on carefully, “that I have ever seen a more brutal case of flogging; and I have lived in a nigger country where atrocities of this character are supposed to abound. There is nothing I can imagine that the boy could have done that would have justified your cruelty.”

The old defiant look returned to the father’s face.

“You are speaking now, sir, to a God-fearing man, to one who has found Christ,” he lifted his eyes to the ceiling automatically, “who has trod the way of salvation, who has accepted grace and redemption at his Saviour’s hands. This is my son,” he pointed vigorously to the bed, “a consorter with idolatrous people, who left my house the other night with a lie on his lips, saying that he was going to a Bible-reading, and who was seen by a brother in the devil’s playhouse, absorbing filth of the modern Gomorrah. It is better,” he said, his voice trembling with passion, “that he should die by my hand than that his soul should go down to hell, damned beyond redemption.”

Anthony stared at the man calmly and coldly, and did not speak as the other babbled on with scraps from Scripture and glib phrases of admonition.

Anthony looked at the boy again and recognized him. He was the lad he had seen in the vestibule of the theatre.

When the father had finished, the doctor picked up his hat.

“My friend,” he said, and there were times when his voice had a cruel, piercing quality, “I do not know your name.”

“My name is Gill,” said the man.

Anthony bowed his head slightly.

“Well, Mr. Gill,” he said, “I will tell you a few home-truths which may not interest you, and which you will probably reject in your arrogance——”

The man started.

“I repeat, in your arrogance,” said Anthony. “You will be surprised to learn that you are highly neurotic; you have no stamina, you have no particular reasoning power, and I should imagine very little education. To give way to your fury, and flog a boy as you have flogged this child, is a symptom of moral degeneracy. In other words,” he said carefully, “you are almost as great a beast as any of the people you have just been abusing, only your beastliness takes another form. You can, if you wish, allow me to attend to this boy; if you do not wish you may call in another doctor. For my part, I consider it is my duty to report this matter to the police.”

“I am prepared to suffer,” said the man, squaring his shoulders. “I am prepared to be persecuted even as my Master was, even as my dear pastor has been.”

“Oh, you are one of Pastor Childe’s children,” smiled Anthony.

“I am,” said the man sternly. “I am, under God, the lay assistant of that blessed saint on earth, an unworthy pupil——”

“Oh, you are unworthy all right,” said Anthony with a little curl of his lips. He reached the door and turned round, and for a moment the men stood face to face. “Since I am a doctor in a civilized town,” said Anthony, “I am prevented from taking the course that I should, if I were just an ordinary man and had to deal with you under these circumstances. Because,” he added, half to himself, “I think I should have served you almost as badly as you have served your son. Good morning.”

The man, in an ungovernable fit of rage, followed him to the landing.

“For two pins I would kick you out of the house,” he said.

“My friend,” said Dr. Anthony Manton with an ugly little smile. “I should desire nothing better, but you are such a puny little devil that I dare not hope that you will put your threat into execution.”

He left the house unmolested.

Perhaps an ordinary doctor, similarly circumstanced, might have felt it was not his duty to go any further than warning the parent, but Anthony Manton was independent alike of the support of Bulboro, the opinions of Bulboro, or the execration of Bulboro, and he made his way to the nearest police-station and reported the case.

A week later another name was added to the list of Bulboro’s martyrs, for Mr. James Gill was sent to prison for twenty-eight days without the option of a fine.

Thus was Anthony Manton introduced to Bulboro society. In normal circumstances he might have found his action universally approved, but Bulboro was a city of partisans: no public man could make more than six enemies. He could never possibly hope to make six friends.

You might estrange the Baptist and retain the Congregationalist, be utterly damned in the eyes of the Church, and entertained at tea by an enthusiastic Baptist congregation. You might be on speaking terms with Father Carter and his Romanist friends, and yet acquire no savour of happiness if you were to be affected by the sight of Mrs. Gamage crossing the road with great ostentation lest the fragrance of incense polluted her delicate nostrils—for Mrs. Gamage was the leader of the young women’s league which was affiliated to the Baptists, and had a working arrangement with the Wesleyans.

One important feature of intercommunal life must be recorded, and it is this: that you might remain friends with every sect, and with every sub-section of religious thought in Bulboro, always provided you were inclined to Wesleyanism and worshipped openly under the Reverend George Haverstock. For the Wesleyans are the Holy Romans of the Nonconformist world, have greater confidence in their method of worship than the most bigoted of Ritualists, yet are sufficiently tolerant of other methods to admit that they might be right.

Anthony Manton’s action was approved by at least three sections of religious thought in Bulboro, and for three different reasons. It was approved by the Church of England because it conveyed to those uninitiated Church people, who were hovering everlastingly on the brink of Nonconformity, that that section which Mr. Gill represented was cruel to children. It was welcomed by the Congregationalists, because the unfortunate man who was serving out his martyrdom in Bulboro jail had been the sternest critic of their political propaganda. It was welcomed by a large party made up of all sects who overtly or covertly disliked the imprisoned man.

The case revealed Anthony Manton in a light which was not favourable to himself. There was talk of an open boycott, but since the boycott could only be directed against the free dispensary, and since the free dispensary could not in any way be injured by the abstention of malcontents, the boycott was abandoned, and indeed the whole agitation, which arose like a sudden storm in an Indian ocean, died as suddenly, and the after-thunder of an electric controversy was heard only in the mutter of correspondence in the Bulboro Herald.

Lady Beatrice read the account, but she had had a fuller report from her husband, who, in his dual capacity of ecclesiastical authority and Justice of the Peace, had attended the court.

“Of course,” she said, “I am awfully glad this Gill man has got into serious trouble, but I do not know whether it was wise of our young Dr. Manton. What do you think, Jerry?”

They were dining together on the evening following the police-court proceedings. Jerry reached out for the petits-fours.

“I think he is going to be rather a bore,” she said carelessly, “I rather dislike these horrible reformers, especially the melodramatic ones. Of course the man was a beast and all that, and deserved all that could be given to him, but one likes one’s friends to be rather less in the limelight.”

“You will have an opportunity of meeting him to-night,” said the Rector.

He glanced at his wife, as he invariably did, for her approval. “I met him to-day,” he went on, “and asked him to come along after dinner; he plays bridge apparently.”

“But that is rather an odd way of bringing a man into one’s family circle, isn’t it?” Lady Beatrice asked with a frown.

“He is rather an unusual man,” apologized Heron Wendall, “and he seems pretty busy.”

“But why didn’t you ask him to dinner?” asked his wife.

“He never dines out,” the Rector hastened to explain. “I repeat, my dear, he is a most extraordinary man, and you have either got to take him just as you find him or else cut out all idea of meeting him. You will never get him to your afternoons.”

She made no reply. The result of to-night’s visit would prove the wisdom or otherwise of her husband’s action.

Anthony came soon after nine. A thinnish man they thought him in his dress suit, though he was well shaped. His brown face showed the browner against the white of his evening dress; he was neither embarrassed by the warm greeting of Lady Beatrice nor made uncomfortable by the casual reception he received at the hands of the beautiful Miss Brand.

“We have just been hearing about you,” said the girl, when the conventional exchanges had been made.

“I am sorry,” he replied shortly.

The girl looked at him with interest. Was he going to be a bore or would he develop humorously?

“You are quite a hero in the eyes of Bulboro,” she said.

“Which is Bulboro?” he asked calmly, “the Bulboro of The Chad or the Bulboro of West Hill?”

“A little of both,” she smiled.

“Bulboro’s conception of heroism,” he said, “is, I am afraid, rather crude.”

He did not intend to be offensive—even to unconscious Bulboro; he was stating what he thought was an obvious fact.

“It is rather a wretched place, don’t you think?” he went on, “to the man who thinks and feels, it is an impossible place: it is so horribly compact, so horribly complacent, so horribly complete in itself—complete without any outside assistance. One can imagine a giant hand clipping away Bulboro from the world and leaving frayed ends of telegraph wires and railway lines, and Bulboro going on its way for a thousand years without realizing that it was isolated.”

“What a horrible prospect!” she shuddered.

He agreed with a nod.

They had gone into the drawing-room, where card-tables had been set out.

He cut Geraldine as his partner, an unfortunate happening, because Geraldine was an expert player and was moreover somewhat imperious in her attitude toward her partners.

It was good fun if you loved Geraldine, and all men of her age loved her almost automatically. It was amusing if you were old enough to see the humorous side of it. She had never yet had the bad luck to cut with a partner who was young and sufficiently oblivious to her charms to be resentful of her criticism. He seated himself opposite with a smile and said: “I hope, Miss Brand, that you are not a very exacting player, I am afraid my bridge is very poor.”

She made a little face, but recovered herself with a laugh.

“So many people say that,” she said, “only to invite expressions of admiration later on in the game.”

He was not an ideal player, as she was soon to discover. He conveyed the impression (with reason) that his mind was occupied elsewhere—a fatal quality in a bridge player, and especially exasperating to one who takes the game seriously.

Before the first hand had been played she had addressed two or three characteristically cutting remarks to this acquaintance of an evening.

They were such as would have passed unnoticed in her own set or excited no more than an embarrassed giggle or two from the youth of her acquaintance.

Anthony Manton began by being amused, passed into a brief stage of irritation (not unnatural) and ended by making a swift appraisement of this girl, an appraisement which was neither complimentary nor unkind.

He lost the rubber—it was auction—with five hundred points down. The girl was very serious; bridge was something more than a recreation.

She did not gamble; the money value of the points did not count, but a faux pas at bridge was a deplorable exhibition in her eyes, and a lapse of table manners. A man leading from the ace-queen stood on the same bench of social degradation as the outsider who took a dessert spoon to his peas.

“You are a perfectly awful player,” she said frankly. She was flushed, and really annoyed.

“Aren’t I?” agreed Anthony. “I warned you.”

“I hope you are a better doctor,” she said with the calm insolence of masterful youth and commanding beauty.

He looked at her oddly for a moment and held her eyes.

Lady Beatrice saw the storm brewing, and was nervous. Dr. Anthony Manton was a new type of creature for whom she had no exact formula.

“Cut, Jerry,” she said. “Cut again and possibly you will get Edward; we have had all the luck.”

But the girl was in her most stubborn mood. This young man had not yielded, had neither been flustered nor penitent, had not worshipped at the shrine where the knees of all manner of men had bent. Instead he regarded her with a sort of good-natured hostility.

“I do not think I will play any more,” she said, and the words had hardly left her lips when she realized the extent of her gaucherie.

“You think me horrid, don’t you?” she said quickly, and smiled at the young man.

“I think you are rather spoilt,” he said quietly. “I have heard so much about you, and I am a little disappointed.”

The girl went red and white; nobody had ever dared speak to her like this; what was left of her reason told her that the man was at least outraging certain conventions.

She might have withdrawn and carried the day with her, but this was a new experience—never before had she met a man who had dared to treat her so rudely.

“You have absolutely no right,” she breathed, “to tell me you are disappointed in me; I have never had such an impertinence addressed to me.”

He was still looking at her; his eyes had not left her face. He was perfectly calm and self-possessed.

“It was an impertinence on your part,” he said quietly, “to refer to my play and compare my skill as a doctor with my genius as a card player. That was unpardonable, even from a young and inexperienced girl, because I suppose that even here in Bulboro you were taught certain conventions must be observed. I suppose I had better go,” he said with a smile, and received no encouragement to remain.

The Rector saw him to the door, and was murmuring polite regrets, but since he could remember no precedent to such a situation, he went back to the drawing-room with the discomforting sense that, whatever else had happened, he would be held responsible. He came back prepared to meet a gathering storm, and was agreeably surprised to find that the girl and his wife were laughing.

“Extraordinary,” he said.

“But don’t you think he was abominable?”

The Rector looked at Lady Beatrice, but found no beam of light to lead him to the right path.

“It was extraordinary,” he repeated safely.