The Young Physician

by Francis Brett Young

In an introduction to the volume he had discovered that Keats had been an apothecary, and this filled him with a strange glow; for since the unforgettable incident of the toothbrush he had been (against his will) diffident about his father. He determined never again to be ashamed of the shop. When he read of “rich lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon,” he remembered a great cut-glass bottle of some cough linctus that glowed like a ruby in the shop window when the gas was lit at night. In other ways he tapped a good deal of the romance of his father’s calling. He remembered a drawer labelled “Dragon’s blood” . . . the very next best thing to a dragon’s teeth with their steely harvest. He recalled a whole pomander-full of provocative scents; he shuddered at the remembered names of poisons, and other names that suggested alchemy. He almost wanted to tell Mr. Leeming when next they spoke together, of his father’s trade, but he wasn’t quite sure if Mr. Leeming approved of Keats. It was not likely that he would see very much more of this master, for he was high up in his form and certain to get a move into the Lower Fifth at the end of the term. In some ways he was not sorry; for the signs of Mr. Leeming’s affection, the warm encircling arm, the pervading scent of honeydew, and the naïve glances of those watery eyes were embarrassing. Before they parted Mr. Leeming showed his intentions more clearly.

“Would you like to learn Hebrew, Ingleby?” he said.

Edwin would have liked to learn Hebrew—but not out of school hours. He hesitated.

“I thought you might some day wish to take Holy Orders, and I should be glad to teach you.”

“I will ask my father, sir,” said Edwin modestly. That was one of the penalties of having interesting eyes.

CHAPTER III
THE GREEN TREES . . .

I

The holidays that followed this term were the most marvellous. From first to last they were bathed in the atmosphere of mellow gold that makes beautiful some evenings of spring, all tender and bird-haunted; and his mother, too, was more wonderful than she had ever been before. On the very first evening when she had come upstairs to tuck him in and to kiss him good-night, she sat on the bedstead leaning over him with both her arms round his neck and whispering secrets to him. Very extraordinary they were; and as she told him, her lips were soft on his cheek. She said that only a month before she had expected to have a baby sister for him—she had always longed so much to have a baby girl—and before the first jealousy that had flamed up into his mind had died away, she told him how the baby had been born dead, and how terribly she had felt the disappointment. He wondered, in the dark, if she were crying.

“But now that I’ve got my other baby again,” she said, “I am going to forget all about it. We’ll be ever so happy by ourselves, Eddie, won’t we? In the evenings when father is down at business we will read together. This time we’ll take turns reading, for you’re growing such a big boy. And we’ll go wonderful walks, only not very far, because Dr. Thornhouse says I’m not strong enough yet. I want you to tell me everything—everything you do and think about at school, because you’re all I’ve got now. And you’re part of me, Eddie, really.” At this she clutched him passionately.

For a moment Edwin was nearly crying, and then, suddenly, he saw another side of it: her expressed feelings were somehow foreign to him and made him ashamed, as did Mr. Leeming’s watery eyes when he talked about Arthur’s prototype. In the face of this eager emotion he felt himself unresponsive and a little consciously superior and male. He didn’t want to feel superior to his mother—but there it was! Even at breakfast next morning he was shy, and it surprised him when he saw her clear gray-green eyes wholly free from any answering shame. So unconscious was she of his scrutiny that he went on looking at her—really looked at her for the first time in his life. And looking, he began to differentiate this new being, so fragile and eager and girlish, from the old traditional mother whom he had loved and accepted as unquestionably as the miles of blue sky above him. He discovered that she was a woman, remembered Griffin, and blushed.