Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham [330]
There was another pause. The dinner was very simple and very good. Philip preserved a sedate exterior, but in his heart he was bubbling over with excitement. He was immensely elated at being engaged as a locum; it made him feel extremely grown-up; he had an insane desire to laugh at nothing in particular; and the more he thought of his professional dignity the more he was inclined to chuckle.
But Doctor South broke suddenly into his thoughts.
“How old are you?”
“Getting on for thirty.”
“How is it you’re only just qualified?”
“I didn’t go in for the Medical till I was nearly twenty-three, and I had to give it up for two years in the middle.”
“Why?”
“Poverty.”
Doctor South gave him an odd look and relapsed into silence. At the end of dinner he got up from the table.
“D’you know what sort of a practice this is?”
“No,” answered Philip.
“Mostly fishermen and their families. I have the Union and the Seamen’s Hospital. I used to be alone here, but since they tried to make this into a fashionable seaside resort a man has set up on the cliff, and the well-to-do people go to him. I only have those who can’t afford to pay for a doctor at all.”
Philip saw that the rivalry was a sore point with the old man.
“You know that I have no experience,” said Philip.
“You none of you know anything.”
He walked out of the room without another word and left Philip by himself. When the maid came in to clear away she told Philip that Doctor South saw patients from six till seven. Work for that night was over. Philip fetched a book from his room, lit his pipe, and settled himself down to read. It was a great comfort, since he had read nothing but medical books for the last few months. At ten o’clock Doctor south came in and looked at him. Philip hated not to have his feet up, and he had dragged up a chair for them.
“You seem able to make yourself pretty comfortable,” said Doctor South, with a grimness which would have disturbed Philip if he had not been in such high spirits.
Philip’s eyes twinkled as he answered:
“Have you any objection?”
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 copper-plate engraving as a frontispiece; the pages were musty with age and stained with mold. 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 marvelous 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 were 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