The Young Physician

by Francis Brett Young

“I don’t see why that should prevent us being honest. I don’t see why it should prevent you from trusting me—”

“I do trust you, Eddie.”

“Then that’s all right; so you needn’t wait up for me again.”

Thus the matter was settled, at any rate on the surface, though Edwin was always conscious on the morning after his late arrivals of an anxious scrutiny on his father’s part.

“He doesn’t really trust me,” he thought, and this conviction made him more anxious than ever to be really intimate with his father, to make him share, as much as possible, the life that he was living in North Bromwich. It made him talk deliberately of the men who were his friends, and the work that he was doing, explaining with the greatest freedom the domestic difficulties of W.G., and the worldly accomplishments of Maskew: and this frankness gave him confidence until he discovered that such revelations only ended by arousing his father’s suspicions. In Mr. Ingleby’s mind it was evident that the sterling qualities of W.G., as recited by Edwin, were of less importance than his potentialities as an agent in Edwin’s corruption. “If I’d only given him one side of W.G.,” thought Edwin, “he’d have been quite happy. If we’re going to be happy, it would be much better for me to tell him nothing that his imagination can work on.”

He found himself travelling round the old vicious circle that appeared to be the inevitable result of being honest with himself. There must, after all, be something in the fundamental fact that Mr. Ingleby was his father. Ridiculous though it might seem, the ideal relation between father and son was evidently impossible. “Well,” he said with a sigh, “it isn’t my fault. I’ve done my best.”

The whole artificiality of their relation only dawned on him when he mentioned to his father one evening that he had met Griffin and told him that his old enemy turned out to be a nephew of Sir Joseph Astill. “I’m glad to hear of it,” said Mr. Ingleby. “I hope you’ll continue to be friends. Sir Joseph Astill is a very distinguished man.” Edwin didn’t see what that had to do with it; but he resisted the temptation of telling his father that Griffin was a distinctly bad egg, and that in comparison with him W.G., with his herculean passions, was indeed a paragon of knightly virtues. If it pleased his father to invest Griffin with his uncle’s reflected glory, why shouldn’t he do so? And Edwin held his tongue.

In the end the atmosphere of veiled anxiety that awaited him at home became definitely irksome, and since the most absolute candour on his part would not mend matters, he found himself gradually avoiding his father’s company. It was the last thing in the world that he wanted to do; but it seemed inevitable; and as the months passed, he gave up all hopes of the sort of intimacy that he had desired, and relapsed into the solitude of his own room, or even, as a last resort, the company of Aunt Laura, who was at least unsuspicious.

Another thing attracted him to her house. All the days of his childhood at home had been full of music, for his mother had been a capable pianist, and he had spent long hours stretched out on the hearthrug in the drawing-room listening to her while she played Bach and Beethoven and occasionally Mendelssohn on the piano. At St. Luke’s, too, without any definite musical education, he had felt a little of the inspiration that Dr. Downton infused into the chapel services. Since he had returned to Halesby all these pleasures had left him; for Mr. Ingleby was not in the least musical, and the piano that had been closed a few days before his mother’s death, had never been reopened. At this period he had not realised the musical possibilities of North Bromwich, and in Aunt Laura’s house he recaptured a little of this stifled interest.

She was really an accomplished musician, and though the kind of music that she affected was becoming limited by the very character of her life as the wife of an undistinguished manufacturer of small hardware in a small black-country town, the taste, which had originally been formed in Germany, existed and was easily encouraged by Edwin’s admiration of her attainments. Here, usually on Sundays, when in addition to the attraction of music her admirable cooking was to be appreciated, Edwin passed many happy hours. She sang well, and could accompany herself with something of a natural genius, and though the songs that she sang were often enough the sugary ballads of the period that had witnessed her musical extinction, Edwin found them satisfying to his starved sense of music, and would even persuade her, on occasion, to play the pieces of Chopin, Beethoven, and Bach with which his mother had made him familiar.