The three weeks which the appointment lasted drew to an end. Philip had
attended sixty-two cases, and he was tired out. When he came home about
ten o'clock on his last night he hoped with all his heart that he would
not be called out again. He had not had a whole night's rest for ten days. The case which he had just come from was horrible. He had been fetched by a huge, burly man, the worse for liquor, and taken to a room in an evil-smelling court, which was filthier than any he had seen: it was a tiny attic; most of the space was taken up by a wooden bed, with a canopy of dirty red hangings, and the ceiling was so low that Philip could touch it with the tips of his fingers; with the solitary candle that afforded what light there was he went over it, frizzling up the bugs that crawled upon it. The woman was a blowsy creature of middle age, who had had a long succession of still-born children. It was a story that Philip was not unaccustomed to: the husband had been a soldier in India; the legislation forced upon that country by the prudery of the English public had given a free run to the most distressing of all diseases; the innocent suffered. Yawning, Philip undressed and took a bath, then shook his clothes over the water and watched the animals that fell out wriggling. He was just going to get into bed when there was a knock at the door, and the hospital porter brought him a card.
"Curse you," said Philip. "You're the last person I wanted to see tonight. Who's brought it?"
"I think it's the 'usband, sir. Shall I tell him to wait?"
Philip looked at the address, saw that the street was familiar to him, and
told the porter that he would find his own way. He dressed himself and in
five minutes, with his black bag in his hand, stepped into the street. A
man, whom he could not see in the darkness, came up to him, and said he
was the husband.
"I thought I'd better wait, sir," he said. "It's a pretty rough
neighbour'ood, and them not knowing who you was."
Philip laughed.
"Bless your heart, they all know the doctor, I've been in some damned
sight rougher places than Waver Street."
It was quite true. The black bag was a passport through wretched alleys
and down foul-smelling courts into which a policeman was not ready to
venture by himself. Once or twice a little group of men had looked at
Philip curiously as he passed; he heard a mutter of observations and then
one say:
"It's the 'orspital doctor."
As he went by one or two of them said: "Good-night, sir."
"We shall 'ave to step out if you don't mind, sir," said the man who
accompanied him now. "They told me there was no time to lose."
"Why did you leave it so late?" asked Philip, as he quickened his pace.
He glanced at the fellow as they passed a lamp-post.
"You look awfully young," he said.
"I'm turned eighteen, sir."
He was fair, and he had not a hair on his face, he looked no more than a
boy; he was short, but thick set.
"You're young to be married," said Philip.
"We 'ad to."
"How much d'you earn?"
"Sixteen, sir."
Sixteen shillings a week was not much to keep a wife and child on. The
room the couple lived in showed that their poverty was extreme. It was a
fair size, but it looked quite large, since there was hardly any furniture
in it; there was no carpet on the floor; there were no pictures on the
walls; and most rooms had something, photographs or supplements in cheap
frames from the Christmas numbers of the illustrated papers. The patient
lay on a little iron bed of the cheapest sort. It startled Philip to see
how young she was.
"By Jove, she can't be more than sixteen," he said to the woman who had
come in to `see her through.'
She had given her age as eighteen on the card, but when they were very
young they often put on a year or two. Also she was pretty, which was rare
in those classes in which the constitution has been undermined by bad
food, bad air, and unhealthy occupations; she had delicate features and
large blue eyes, and a mass of dark hair done in the elaborate fashion of
the coster girl. She and her husband were very nervous.
"You'd better wait outside, so as to be at hand if I want you," Philip
said to him.