Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham [225]
“I tell you, my boy,” said Ramsden, “you’re jolly well out of it. Harry says that if he’d suspected for half a second she was going to make such a blooming nuisance of herself he’d have seen himself damned before he had anything to do with her.”
Philip thought of her sitting on that doorstep through the long hours of the night. He saw her face as she looked up dully at the landlady who sent her away.
“I wonder what she’s doing now.”
“Oh, she’s got a job somewhere, thank God. That keeps her busy all day.”
The last thing he heard, just before the end of the summer session, was that Griffiths’ urbanity had given way at length under the exasperation of the constant persecution. He had told Mildred that he was sick of being pestered, and she had better take herself off and not bother him again.
“It was the only thing he could do,” said Ramsden. “It was getting a bit too thick.”
“Is it all over then?” asked Philip.
“Oh, he hasn’t seen her for ten days. You know, Harry’s wonderful at dropping people. This is about the toughest nut he’s ever had to crack, but he’s cracked it all right.”
Then Philip heard nothing more of her at all. She vanished into the vast anonymous mass of the population of London.
LXXXI
At the beginning of the winter session Philip became an out-patients’ clerk. There were three assistant-physicians who took out-patients, two days a week each, and Philip put his name down for Dr. Tyrell. He was popular with the students, and there was some competition to be his clerk. Dr. Tyrell was a tall, thin man of thirty-five, with a very small head, red hair cut short, and prominent blue eyes: his face was bright scarlet. He talked well in a pleasant voice, was fond of a little joke, and treated the world lightly. He was a successful man, with a large consulting practice and a knighthood in prospect. From commerce with students and poor people he had the patronizing air, and from dealing always with the sick he had the healthy man’s jovial condescension, which some consultants achieve as the professional manner. He made the patient feel like a boy confronted by a jolly schoolmaster; his illness was an absurd piece of naughtiness which amused rather than irritated.
The student was supposed to attend in the out-patients’ room every day, see cases, and pick up what information he could; but on the days on which he clerked his duties were a little more definite. At that time the out-patients’ department at St. Luke’s consisted of three rooms, leading into one another, and a large, dark waiting-room with massive pillars of masonry and long benches. Here the patients waited after having been given their “letters” at midday; and the long rows of them, bottles and gallipots in hand, some tattered and dirty, others decent enough, sitting in the dimness, men and women of all ages, children, gave one an impression which was weird and horrible. They suggested the grim drawings of Daumier. All the rooms were painted alike, in salmon-color with a high dado of maroon; and there was in them an odor of disinfectants, mingling as the afternoon wore on with the crude stench of humanity. The first room was the largest, and in the middle of it were a table and an officer chair for the physician; on each side of this were two smaller tables, a little lower: at one of these sat the house-physician and at the other the clerk who took the “book” for the day. This was a large volume in which were written down the name, age, sex, profession of the patient, and the diagnosis of his disease.
At half past one the house-physician came in, rang the bell, and told the porter to send in the old patients. There were always a good many of these, and it was necessary to get through as many of them as possible before Dr. Tyrell came at two. The H.P. with whom Philip came in contact was a dapper little man, excessively conscious of his importance: he treated the clerks with condescension and patently resented the familiarity of older students who