Chapter LV

by William Somerset Maugham

　　Philip's ideas of the life of medical students, like those of the publicat large, were founded on the pictures which Charles Dickens drew in themiddle of the nineteenth century. He soon discovered that Bob Sawyer, ifhe ever existed, was no longer at all like the medical student of thepresent.It is a mixed lot which enters upon the medical profession, and naturallythere are some who are lazy and reckless. They think it is an easy life,idle away a couple of years; and then, because their funds come to an endor because angry parents refuse any longer to support them, drift awayfrom the hospital. Others find the examinations too hard for them; onefailure after another robs them of their nerve; and, panic-stricken, theyforget as soon as they come into the forbidding buildings of the ConjointBoard the knowledge which before they had so pat. They remain year afteryear, objects of good-humoured scorn to younger men: some of them crawlthrough the examination of the Apothecaries Hall; others becomenon-qualified assistants, a precarious position in which they are at themercy of their employer; their lot is poverty, drunkenness, and Heavenonly knows their end. But for the most part medical students areindustrious young men of the middle-class with a sufficient allowance tolive in the respectable fashion they have been used to; many are the sonsof doctors who have already something of the professional manner; theircareer is mapped out: as soon as they are qualified they propose to applyfor a hospital appointment, after holding which (and perhaps a trip to theFar East as a ship's doctor), they will join their father and spend therest of their days in a country practice. One or two are marked out asexceptionally brilliant: they will take the various prizes andscholarships which are open each year to the deserving, get oneappointment after another at the hospital, go on the staff, take aconsulting-room in Harley Street, and, specialising in one subject oranother, become prosperous, eminent, and titled.The medical profession is the only one which a man may enter at any agewith some chance of making a living. Among the men of Philip's year werethree or four who were past their first youth: one had been in the Navy,from which according to report he had been dismissed for drunkenness; hewas a man of thirty, with a red face, a brusque manner, and a loud voice.Another was a married man with two children, who had lost money through adefaulting solicitor; he had a bowed look as if the world were too muchfor him; he went about his work silently, and it was plain that he foundit difficult at his age to commit facts to memory. His mind worked slowly.His effort at application was painful to see.Philip made himself at home in his tiny rooms. He arranged his books andhung on the walls such pictures and sketches as he possessed. Above him,on the drawing-room floor, lived a fifth-year man called Griffiths; butPhilip saw little of him, partly because he was occupied chiefly in thewards and partly because he had been to Oxford. Such of the students ashad been to a university kept a good deal together: they used a variety ofmeans natural to the young in order to impress upon the less fortunate aproper sense of their inferiority; the rest of the students found theirOlympian serenity rather hard to bear. Griffiths was a tall fellow, witha quantity of curly red hair and blue eyes, a white skin and a very redmouth; he was one of those fortunate people whom everybody liked, for hehad high spirits and a constant gaiety. He strummed a little on the pianoand sang comic songs with gusto; and evening after evening, while Philipwas reading in his solitary room, he heard the shouts and the uproariouslaughter of Griffiths' friends above him. He thought of those delightfulevenings in Paris when they would sit in the studio, Lawson and he,Flanagan and Clutton, and talk of art and morals, the love-affairs of thepresent, and the fame of the future. He felt sick at heart. He found thatit was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.The worst of it was that the work seemed to him very tedious. He had gotout of the habit of being asked questions by demonstrators. His attentionwandered at lectures. Anatomy was a dreary science, a mere matter oflearning by heart an enormous number of facts; dissection bored him; hedid not see the use of dissecting out laboriously nerves and arteries whenwith much less trouble you could see in the diagrams of a book or in thespecimens of the pathological museum exactly where they were.He made friends by chance, but not intimate friends, for he seemed to havenothing in particular to say to his companions. When he tried to interesthimself in their concerns, he felt that they found him patronising. He wasnot of those who can talk of what moves them without caring whether itbores or not the people they talk to. One man, hearing that he had studiedart in Paris, and fancying himself on his taste, tried to discuss art withhim; but Philip was impatient of views which did not agree with his own;and, finding quickly that the other's ideas were conventional, grewmonosyllabic. Philip desired popularity but could bring himself to make noadvances to others. A fear of rebuff prevented him from affability, and heconcealed his shyness, which was still intense, under a frigidtaciturnity. He was going through the same experience as he had done atschool, but here the freedom of the medical students' life made itpossible for him to live a good deal by himself.It was through no effort of his that he became friendly with Dunsford, thefresh-complexioned, heavy lad whose acquaintance he had made at thebeginning of the session. Dunsford attached himself to Philip merelybecause he was the first person he had known at St. Luke's. He had nofriends in London, and on Saturday nights he and Philip got into the habitof going together to the pit of a music-hall or the gallery of a theatre.He was stupid, but he was good-humoured and never took offence; he alwayssaid the obvious thing, but when Philip laughed at him merely smiled. Hehad a very sweet smile. Though Philip made him his butt, he liked him; hewas amused by his candour and delighted with his agreeable nature:Dunsford had the charm which himself was acutely conscious of notpossessing.They often went to have tea at a shop in Parliament Street, becauseDunsford admired one of the young women who waited. Philip did not findanything attractive in her. She was tall and thin, with narrow hips andthe chest of a boy."No one would look at her in Paris," said Philip scornfully."She's got a ripping face," said Dunsford."What does the face matter?"She had the small regular features, the blue eyes, and the broad low brow,which the Victorian painters, Lord Leighton, Alma Tadema, and a hundredothers, induced the world they lived in to accept as a type of Greekbeauty. She seemed to have a great deal of hair: it was arranged withpeculiar elaboration and done over the forehead in what she called anAlexandra fringe. She was very anaemic. Her thin lips were pale, and herskin was delicate, of a faint green colour, without a touch of red even inthe cheeks. She had very good teeth. She took great pains to prevent herwork from spoiling her hands, and they were small, thin, and white. Shewent about her duties with a bored look.Dunsford, very shy with women, had never succeeded in getting intoconversation with her; and he urged Philip to help him."All I want is a lead," he said, "and then I can manage for myself."Philip, to please him, made one or two remarks, but she answered withmonosyllables. She had taken their measure. They were boys, and shesurmised they were students. She had no use for them. Dunsford noticedthat a man with sandy hair and a bristly moustache, who looked like aGerman, was favoured with her attention whenever he came into the shop;and then it was only by calling her two or three times that they couldinduce her to take their order. She used the clients whom she did not knowwith frigid insolence, and when she was talking to a friend was perfectlyindifferent to the calls of the hurried. She had the art of treating womenwho desired refreshment with just that degree of impertinence whichirritated them without affording them an opportunity of complaining to themanagement. One day Dunsford told him her name was Mildred. He had heardone of the other girls in the shop address her."What an odious name," said Philip."Why?" asked Dunsford."I like it.""It's so pretentious."It chanced that on this day the German was not there, and, when shebrought the tea, Philip, smiling, remarked:"Your friend's not here today.""I don't know what you mean," she said coldly."I was referring to the nobleman with the sandy moustache. Has he left youfor another?""Some people would do better to mind their own business," she retorted.She left them, and, since for a minute or two there was no one to attendto, sat down and looked at the evening paper which a customer had leftbehind him."You are a fool to put her back up," said Dunsford."I'm really quite indifferent to the attitude of her vertebrae," repliedPhilip.But he was piqued. It irritated him that when he tried to be agreeablewith a woman she should take offence. When he asked for the bill, hehazarded a remark which he meant to lead further."Are we no longer on speaking terms?" he smiled."I'm here to take orders and to wait on customers. I've got nothing to sayto them, and I don't want them to say anything to me."She put down the slip of paper on which she had marked the sum they had topay, and walked back to the table at which she had been sitting. Philipflushed with anger."That's one in the eye for you, Carey," said Dunsford, when they gotoutside."Ill-mannered slut," said Philip. "I shan't go there again."His influence with Dunsford was strong enough to get him to take their teaelsewhere, and Dunsford soon found another young woman to flirt with. Butthe snub which the waitress had inflicted on him rankled. If she hadtreated him with civility he would have been perfectly indifferent to her;but it was obvious that she disliked him rather than otherwise, and hispride was wounded. He could not suppress a desire to be even with her. Hewas impatient with himself because he had so petty a feeling, but three orfour days' firmness, during which he would not go to the shop, did nothelp him to surmount it; and he came to the conclusion that it would beleast trouble to see her. Having done so he would certainly cease to thinkof her. Pretexting an appointment one afternoon, for he was not a littleashamed of his weakness, he left Dunsford and went straight to the shopwhich he had vowed never again to enter. He saw the waitress the moment hecame in and sat down at one of her tables. He expected her to make somereference to the fact that he had not been there for a week, but when shecame up for his order she said nothing. He had heard her say to othercustomers:"You're quite a stranger."She gave no sign that she had ever seen him before. In order to seewhether she had really forgotten him, when she brought his tea, he asked:"Have you seen my friend tonight?""No, he's not been in here for some days."He wanted to use this as the beginning of a conversation, but he wasstrangely nervous and could think of nothing to say. She gave him noopportunity, but at once went away. He had no chance of saying anythingtill he asked for his bill."Filthy weather, isn't it?" he said.It was mortifying that he had been forced to prepare such a phrase asthat. He could not make out why she filled him with such embarrassment."It don't make much difference to me what the weather is, having to be inhere all day."There was an insolence in her tone that peculiarly irritated him. Asarcasm rose to his lips, but he forced himself to be silent."I wish to God she'd say something really cheeky," he raged to himself,"so that I could report her and get her sacked. It would serve her damnedwell right."