Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham [333]
“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 two-penny 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 realized 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 don’t mind where particularly, but just away, to places I’ve never been to.”
Now the goal seemed very near. He would have finished his appointment at St. Luke’s by the middle of the following year, and then he would go to Spain; he could afford to spend several months there, rambling up and down the land which stood to him for romance; after that he would get a ship and go to the East. Life was before him and time of no account. He could wander, for years if he chose, in unfrequented places, amid strange peoples, where life was led in strange ways. He did not know what he sought or what his journeys would bring him; but he had a feeling that he would learn something new about life and gain some clue to the mystery that he had solved only to find more mysterious. And even if he found nothing he would allay the unrest which gnawed at his heart. But Doctor South was showing him a great kindness, and it seemed ungrateful to refuse his offer for no adequate reason; so in his shy way, trying to appear as matter-of-fact as possible, he made some attempt to explain why it was so important to him to carry out the plans he had cherished so passionately.
Doctor South listened quietly, and a gentle look came into his shrewd old eyes. It seemed to Philip an added kindness that he did not press him to accept his offer. Benevolence is often very peremptory. He appeared to