Читать книгу The Dark House - Warwick Deeping - Страница 10

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It was not that Teddy Burgoyne sang the curtain down upon any possible romance, or warned youth away from all houses with green verandas and windows that were suggestively French. Southfleet might allow Dr. Burgoyne his cap and bells and his tra-las, and his baritone voice, for Dr. Burgoyne had a particular way with him, nor need a little naughtiness offend the most prudish of patients. Teddy Burgoyne might be no very profound physician, but he carried with him into parlours and bedrooms the perfume of sentiment, and stirred even in elderly breasts little tremors of excitement. Dr. Burgoyne was superabundantly male. He could not help being gallant to any woman, whatever her age might be, or however austere her reputation. And women liked it. Southfleet was so severely correct that a doctor who squeezed your hand and sat by your bed and felt your pulse as though its flutterings flattered the occasion, might be wine instead of barley-water. Even the old pussies saw to their caps and curls when Dr. Burgoyne was expected. “What a man! Dear, naughty Dr. Burgoyne, so handsome and so sympathetic.” Quite a number of ladies who were bored with the infinite correctness of middle-class morals, perhaps, without realizing the elemental causes of the complaint, found it pleasant to be a little out of sorts when Dr. Burgoyne could be called in. It was not the pharmacopœia that mattered. Dr. Burgoyne instilled into them that subtle stimulus which every woman craves for, and will swallow, even though she be eighty.

But to young Richmond, of course, no such temperamental colourfulness could be permitted. As a doctor he was as new as his hat, and like his hat he had to be stainless and polished. Even Dr. Davidson, when he heard of the brawl in Jessamy Lane, asked Richmond to dinner, and taking him to his study to smoke a pipe, became the paternal philosopher.

Had John considered marriage? No, and Dr. Davidson twinkled. He was not speaking as the father of five unmarried daughters. Marriage, in the profession, could be likened to a kind of insurance.

Richmond did not confess that his Rachel was Fortune, for whom he might be willing to serve for seven years.

“Is it so very important, sir?”

“To marry the right person, John.”

“Someone socially acceptable.”

There was irony in the remark, and Dr. Davidson did not like irony, for he had found it not very helpful in dealing with the diseases of women.

“Not in the shallow sense. Don’t misunderstand me. There are many good reasons why a professional man should be married.”

“Double harness, sir.”

“Oh, come, come, I’m not playing paterfamilias. A doctor holds a rather particular position. He receives confessions. He has to learn to hold his tongue.”

“Even to his wife?”

“Of course. There are pitfalls. We have to tread a very narrow and sometimes a rather perilous path. Women sometimes fall in love with their medical attendants.”

Richmond smiled. He did not ask dear, prim Dr. Davidson whether that had been his experience.

“And if one is married?”

“That does safeguard the conventions.”

And then, Dr. Davidson laughed, as though he had seen Mr. Pecksniff in the mirror, and was not enamoured of the creature.

“Life’s so relative, John, like our results. I don’t think one realizes what a groping business it is. You are young, full of new knowledge that must seem so actual. It did so to me.”

“In the beginning?”

“Yes. One is quite convinced that one is a devilish clever fellow. Everything is going to be according to the text-book.”

“And it isn’t. Of course—I——”

“Wait a moment. I am not a destroyer of the faith to heal. But sometimes one feels oneself pottering about a dark house with a candle. But haven’t we slipped away from the marriage question? Not that I want to over-emphasize it. But we doctors, even in our home life, do owe something to our patients. I don’t think the results we gain are ever what they might be unless our patients believe in us not only as doctors, but as men.”

Dr. Davidson appeared to be having trouble with his pipe. He kept a vase full of feathers on the mantelpiece for use in such emergencies, and while he was prodding the pipe stem with a feather, Richmond observed him, suspecting that he had said more than he had proposed to say, and was suddenly feeling uncomfortable about it.

“Well, keep it in mind, John.”

“I will. Love as social insurance.”

“No, no, no, don’t misunderstand me. If you marry the right woman, other people will think her right.”

“And if they don’t?”

Dr. Davidson had his pipe alight.

“They will let her know it, poor dear.”

Richmond did not talk the Victorian lingo. Young men do not, unless they are prigs, but he was not so innocent as to forget that a top-hat and frock-coat were sacred symbols. The fact remained that he was not inveigled into Holly Lodge by the mother siren, perhaps because when he and the daughter happened to pass each other in the street she appeared to hurry past him. All that they exchanged was a lift of the hat and a faint and half-stifled smile. Her aloofness should not have perplexed Richmond, but it did so. Nor should it have left him with the impression that, for some reason or other, and in spite of the rather intimate incident that had brought them together, she did not wish for any other intimacies. Richmond was not Burgoyne. He too was superabundantly male, but with a difference. When a face such as Lucy Lancaster’s floated past him behind a veil of hypersensitive coolness, he supposed that she was feeling as she looked. Oh, very well, then, he was not going to solicit that which she did not wish to give! No easy cynicism paraded the old cliché that a woman may turn her back on you to make you more eager to see her face. Nor did he divine the mother behind the daughter, or realize that a young girl may suffer from subtleties of feeling that do not penetrate the thicker skin of the striding and pragmatical young male.

In September Dr. Burgoyne took his holiday, a shooting holiday, as he let all the world know, spent with his brother-in-law who had an estate in Norfolk. Dr. Burgoyne’s brother-in-law was no more than a gentleman farmer, but, after all, did not the Norfolk tradition justify a little stretching of the longbow. And while Teddy was shooting at partridges and hitting only half the number that he claimed, some of Teddy’s patients agreed in feeling with Dr. Davidson that the new young man should be sampled.

Richmond, making up the day’s visiting list in the surgery with Dr. Davidson, had Mrs. Borrowdale assigned to him. Also, Lady Feygate and Miss Shallowbrass. He did not comment on the assignment. He understood what was in his senior’s mind, and felt himself quite capable of dealing with any patient.

“Anything particular about the cases, sir?”

Dr. Davidson rubbed his chin.

“I believe in the open mind. Besides, women like talking. Listen. It’s an art.”

Richmond smiled. He supposed that the manner and the length of your attention depended upon the social status of the patient. You had to harmonize the cunning of the serpent with the Grace of God. But should that be so? You gave an old club-chronic, three minutes and something active in a bottle, but gentlewomen expected other values from you. Well, he was feeling that his attitude might depend upon the nature of the case. Maybe he was in that phase when an over-confident young man feels justified in resenting humbug, without having analysed those elements that elude a too dogmatic diagnosis.

Not yet would he understand those words of old Davidson’s, that the human body is like a dark house which you explore by the light of a little, flickering candle. That he would come to understand it, both as the physician and the man, with heart-searchings and tribulation, was part of his destiny, but on this September morning he set out to visit these ladies with all the confidence of that cock-sure age. He belonged to the generation that followed Darwin, Pasteur and Lister. Nature’s battlements were being stormed. Everywhere she was surrendering to that little potent person, man.

Richmond began with White Lodge and Mrs. Borrowdale. He found a very golden-haired, succulent, high-bosomed lady sitting up in bed, and very much prepared for the occasion. She had blue eyes that popped between fat eyelids, and a voice of tonsillar refinement. She extended a little pudgy hand to Richmond, and was gracious to him.

“Ah, Doctor, our first encounter, I think. Take that chair. What particularly pleasant weather.”

Richmond sat down, observing the lady, and conscious of being observed by her. No doubt she was conferring upon him a very great favour, and his impulse was to respond to her patronage with a dose of sincerity.

“I am a great sufferer, Dr. Richmond. No doubt you have been advised by dear Dr. Burgoyne.”

Richmond had not. No Burgoyne diagnosis was likely to appeal to him, but he was prepared to listen to the lady.

“It is my dyspepsia. So distressing. Dr. Burgoyne could tell you that I am the most self-denying of women.”

Was she, indeed! Richmond sat and listened to her description of her gastric disharmonies, and appraising the flabby texture of her, was inwardly and cynically amused. Might he see her tongue? He gazed at it and realized how great was the honour she was conferring upon him.

“Yes, a little furred. How are the motions?”

Mrs. Borrowdale closed her blue eyes for a moment as though such indelicate things needed veiling.

“Oh, a little difficult, doctor.”

“Do you take anything?”

“Yes, but my organs are so delicate.”

Richmond stood up, and laying a hand upon the bedclothes, suggested that he would like to examine her. She smiled at him, with a little tentative ogle.

“Oh, yes, certainly, but, please, be gentle.”

Richmond’s hand explored that warm fat pillow of an abdomen. H’m, yes, flatulence. Too much sugar, probably. Too much of everything.

“Any tenderness here?”

“Just a leetle.”

“You suffer, after meals, from discomfort.”

He wanted to say wind, but the word promised to be too indelicate.

“Yes. Terrible discomfort. A little lower down, too.”

Almost, her face suggested that she liked these explorations, and very gravely Richmond withdrew his hand. One should not go too far with such a lady!

“Now, please tell me, what do you eat?”

She lied to him serenely, and he felt that she was lying. To all intents and purposes Mrs. Borrowdale was a healthily selfish woman. What she needed was a week scrubbing floors on a diet of plain bread and water. Should he tell her so? He wanted to tell her so. And after all that was his business.

He sat by the bed in silence for some seconds.

“Oh, Doctor, why so serious? Don’t tell me you have discovered something dreadful.”

“No, madam, I was considering your diet.”

“Diet! But I never eat anything unusual.”

“No chocolates?”

There was a box of bonbons on the dressing-table, and realizing that Richmond had seen it, she became arch with him.

“Oh, Doctor, you are too quick. Yes, one or two a day.”

“I suggest you refrain for a week. No rich cake. No rich puddings or pastry, no heavy wine.”

“How Spartan! But didn’t I assure you that I am not at all greedy.”

He smiled, and looked at her in a particular way, and she was shrewd enough to realize that he did not believe her. Well, really! When dear Dr. Burgoyne was so sympathetic and full of comprehension, and would even pop a chocolate between your lips, and sing “Tra-la, sweets to the sweet.” She did not think she liked this grave, severe young man who stared at you as though you were just a case.

She said: “I don’t think you quite understand me, Dr. Richmond. No doubt a little medicine is what I need. Dr. Burgoyne’s special. It always does me so much good. Please see that Mr. Byng sends me a bottle. He knows what I have.”

Richmond rose and gave her a little bow. Why the devil had she sent for a member of the firm when Dr. Burgoyne could function even when absent? Had mere curiosity prompted her? Well, he hoped she was satisfied.

Descending the White Lodge stairs, he heard the angry snarling and yapping of a dog. Richmond felt capable of letting himself out of the house, but as he opened the front door, another door opened, and a fat and bad-tempered fox-terrier, escaping from the maid who had tried to grab him, charged furiously at Richmond’s legs. This was not dear Dr. Burgoyne, but a wicked interloper.

“Be careful, sir, he bites.”

Richmond, seeing that the little brute meant business, and was the spoilt cur of a spoilt mistress, waited, right foot poised, and as the dog charged in, he gave the animal a nicely timed swing of the foot. It bundled him over, and he retired snarling and yelping, unaccustomed, like his mistress, to such frank treatment. Richmond walked out and closed the door.

Another door opened, and Mrs. Borrowdale’s voice was heard.

“Florrie, is that poor Gyp?”

“Yes, m’am.”

“What has happened?”

“He tried to bite the doctor, m’am, and the doctor kicked him.”

“The brute! I’ll never have him inside my house again. Bring the poor dear up, Florrie. Poor Gyppo, poor pet, did the nasty man kick you! Yes, most certainly I shall write to Dr. Davidson and complain.”

Richmond’s next visit was paid to Miss Shallowbrass who lived at No. 8 Tenterden Terrace. Miss Shallowbrass did not expect him, or rather, she had expected Dr. Davidson, but since Miss Shallowbrass was described as the lay-vicar of St. Jude’s, she was capable of dealing or misdealing with every problem that arose. Miss Shallowbrass was a hard, sandy-faced, sinewy little woman with an ecclesiastical mouth, and a nose that was red at the tip. She was exceedingly active in Southfleet, energizing, organizing this, that and the other. She ran the Choral Society, and the various Missions, and St. Jude’s Sunday School, and Richmond found her sitting at a desk covered with tracts and pamphlets and correspondence.

Not that Miss Shallowbrass was embarrassed by the unexpectedness of his presence. Nothing embarrassed her, and that may have been why she was the most unpopular person in Southfleet. She appeared to be so infinitely sure that it was her business to manage everything and everybody that her interferences could be incredibly impertinent.

Miss Shallowbrass boasted of her candour. She looked Richmond up and down as though inspecting a boy who was attending her bible-class for the first time.

Richmond stood hat in hand, considering the lady. Possibly he liked her as little as he had liked Mrs. Borrowdale, but differently so. He was quite ready to assure her that he was not eager to act as her physician.

“Dr. Davidson asked me to call.”

Miss Shallowbrass put down her pen, and observing her fingers Richmond surmised that she suffered from chilblains in winter.

“Oh, very well. Sit down, Dr. Richmond. I gather that this is a kind of introduction. Well, let us make the best of it, even though you are rather young.”

Richmond smiled upon her.

“Even doctors must be born.”

Miss Shallowbrass looked puzzled. She was one of those stupidly acute women who spend their lives in picking up pins and sticking them into pincushions or people.

“Experience is so important. I am a rather candid person, Dr. Richmond.”

“Sincerity should always appeal to a doctor.”

“Presumably, but one may be a little fastidious, shall we call it?”

“Perhaps you would prefer to regard this as merely a social visit?”

Miss Shallowbrass sniffed. It was a habit of hers.

“Well, Dr. Richmond, perhaps I had better regard you professionally. Young men must begin. My trouble is a very usual one. It is constipation.”

She threw the word at him like a Christian virgin defying a pagan mob, and Richmond was moved to sudden, inward laughter. Could so active and peripatetic a person suffer from sluggish bowels? But might not that explain her waspish energy?

“A most usual complaint. And may I ask what you do for it?”

“Do for it? I suffer for it. Salts, my dear young man, and senna, and sometimes aloes.”

“Habitually?”

She gave him a sandy stare.

“Of necessity. Would you suggest——?”

“I would only suggest, Miss Shallowbrass, that that which goes into the body may matter.”

“Sir, I regard my body as a mere Balaam’s ass.”

“But why whip it?”

The lady bridled. It was only too evident that she had no sense of humour, not a speck of it.

“I have many occupations, many duties, Dr. Richmond. I hold that one should not fawn upon the flesh.”

“May I write you a prescription, and suggest——?”

“You may write me a prescription. I will try it. But as to my habit of life, Dr. Richmond——”

“That is inviolable.”

She puckered up her eyes at him. She frowned. This was a somewhat presumptuous young man.

“Indubitably. Write your prescription, Dr. Richmond. I have an open mind.”

Richmond made a note in his little case-book and escaped. Ye gods, was private practice to be all flatulence and constipation? Oh, possibly! Probably. And he was wishing life to be all Cæsarian section and compound fracture and colotomy. Well, at all events no dog had tried to bite him at No. 8 Tenterden Terrace, even if the lady had been more than a little acid. Those shiny, stringy, interfering fingers! He did not like Miss Shallowbrass, and he was to like her less in the days that were to come.

Richmond drove next to Martyr’s Grange, the house of the Feygates, feeling that as a physician he was somewhat superfluous so far as the ladies were concerned. The Grange lay on the outskirts of the town, a James I house, old and tree sheltered and gracious. It had a garden which was notable for its roses, and the ancient hedges of yew and of box, and an immense fish-pond upon which water-lilies floated. Would Lady Feygate be like those other women, ready to patronize his newness, or to resent it? He stood in the brick porch, with its oak seats, and felt himself raw and a little resentful. He heard the door open, and turning to meet a servant, found himself confronting a handsome old gentleman dressed in the style of the forties. The old gentleman had very fine white hair, a fresh face, a club foot, and rather exquisite manners.

“Dr. Richmond, I believe?”

“Yes, sir. Dr. Davidson wished me——”

“Of course, of course. It is a pleasure to meet you. My wife is upstairs. Oh, John, please show Dr. Richmond to her ladyship’s room. You see, Richmond, I am something of a Byron.”

Sir Roger Feygate went out into the garden, and Richmond followed the manservant up the broad oak stairs to a long gallery with many windows. This house had mystery. It seemed to be penetrated by some essence that was peaceful and fragrant. It was exquisitely still.

He found himself bowing to a pale woman with grey hair who was lying on a sofa. She had a fragile face, and very gentle eyes. She smiled and spoke to him at once, and held out a hand.

“Dr. Richmond. I have been looking forward to meeting you. I feel that I know you already through Dr. Davidson.”

Richmond felt moved to kiss that very delicate hand.

“Sit down, and let us talk.”

He sat down beside the couch, facing her obliquely.

“About yourself, your ladyship?”

“Oh, no. When one has been an invalid for years, as I have, one wishes to escape a little. Doctors are for emergencies, and not to be taken daily!”

He rose to her spirit. This was a woman who was sick in body, but not in soul, and to such a woman you could give your uttermost.

“One has a preference for emergencies.”

She surveyed him calmly and kindly.

“I imagine so from what I hear. Surgery, Dr. Richmond. Eclat, the difficult thing.”

“Your ladyship is teasing me.”

“Am I? But at your age accomplishment should seem so important.”

“I like to feel so.”

“And at mine, it is contemplation. So, extremes meet. My trouble is my heart. I mention it to forget it. There are times when the wretched thing needs assistance.”

“I shall be very proud if, at any time, I can assist.”

She was silent for a moment, observing him.

“Yes, I think you would be. When life flutters in one, one asks for calmness. So, Southfleet is to be your home.”

He nodded at her.

“Yes, it seems so.”

“That sounds rather impermanent.”

“I had other ideas, I admit it.”

“A career?”

“Oh, perhaps.”

“What is career, Dr. Richmond, but finding yourself happy in finding something to do? But, forgive me, that sounds like Miss Shallowbrass.”

And Richmond laughed.

“Yes, if the things one does seem adequate.”

Her fingers played with the gold chain she was wearing.

“I think, Dr. Richmond, that had I your destiny, I should find it with the common people, those who labour with their hands.”

“Are heads excluded?”

She gave him an almost roguish glance.

“No, exceptions do occur. Were I a physician I think I should become bored with imaginary ills, if imaginary ills do happen. That is a thing that has puzzled me. And these people who prefer to be sick.”

“I think so.”

“I wonder. Some disharmony which you doctors don’t discover. But those who labour to live are rather different, I think. I wish you well of them, Dr. Richmond.”

When he left her it was with a sense of strength and refreshment, for, sick woman though she was, Richmond had brought more out of that room than he had taken into it. What was the secret of such charm? Here was a woman whom life chained to a sofa or a cushioned carriage, and yet her spirit was more active for your happiness than all the scratching of a dozen Shallowbrass hens. Richmond, letting himself out into the garden, met Sir Roger in the drive leading to the lodge-gate, doing dot and go one with that shortened leg, and helping himself with a stick.

“Well, Doctor, and how is the patient?”

Richmond, looking into that fresh old face, would have said that he was speaking to a young man, not an old one. Here was no absurd, middle-class hauteur, but a kindliness and a courtesy that hailed God in all men.

“I am ashamed to say, sir, that I did not examine her. I think it was her ladyship who——”

Sir Roger cocked a jocund eye at him.

“Who did the examining? The spirit that heals, Richmond, and is never afraid. You doctors should welcome it.”

“I do, sir, even though I am supposed to be young.”

“Ah, age is relative, Richmond, and wisdom somehow the gift of the gods. Do fools ever cease from being fools, especially do the dear ladies? But how ungallant of me! Have you read Don Juan?”

He used the soft, Spanish J, and for a moment Richmond was puzzled.

“Byron’s gentleman, sir?”

“Yes, very lame stuff. The cynics, like the critics, seem to live so much on sour grapes. And the moral is?”

“Never eat grapes until you are sure they are ripe, sir?”

Sir Roger tapped the gravel with his stick.

“Good, very good, Richmond. If you are wise as to that you will be good for yourself and for others.”