The Young Physician

by Francis Brett Young

“Now get along with you,” said the stage-manager, pushing him forward.

He gripped the presents in his hands, and treading on air, advanced on to the stage, where Miss Marie Loraine was kissing her hands to the stalls. The stage was very big, and sloped in such a way that he felt his feet impelled towards the footlights; but, being determined that he would accomplish his mission with dignity, Edwin steered a steady, if resilient, course. In front of him he saw a creature before whose elegance and beauty the beauty of the chorus was as nothing. She stood waiting for him and smiled. For a moment Edwin faced the auditorium, a vast and dark abyss in which not a single face was to be seen. It gave him a sudden fright to think that so many thousands of unseen eyes were fixed upon the patch of limelight in which he stood. He pulled himself together. This was the moment, he thought, in which it was for him to make some speech worthy of the bewildering loveliness that stood before him.

“Go on,” said the impatient voice of Mephistopheles in the wings. “Buck up.”

“Miss Loraine,” said Edwin, with a flourish, “I have the honour of—” The middle of his sentence was broken by a crash and a tremendous peal of laughter from the unseen thousands. The younger Wade, arrayed in the panoply of a Roman legionary and balanced upon the parapet of the stage box, had fallen with a clash of armour into the big drum. Edwin thrust the bouquet and the hair-brushes into the arms of Miss Loraine, herself convulsed with laughter. With a terrific draught the curtain swept down.

“Splendid,” said the voice of Mephistopheles.

The rest of the evening was more confused than ever. He remembered a vision of this surpassing beauty standing in the wings in a long silk wrapper that her dresser had thrown over her shoulders, and thanking him for his presentation. To Edwin the moment seemed the beginning of a passionate romance. He remembered other moments in the auditorium, in which W.G. and Maskew figured. He remembered the taste of a glass of Benedictine, a liqueur that he had never tasted before, that Maskew gave him to pull him together again after his exertions on the stage. He remembered a flashing of lights, an uproar, a free-fight, and the singing of “God Save the Queen.” And then he found himself a member of a small but distinguished brotherhood streaming at a tremendous rate up the wide street that led towards the Prince’s Hospital. All of them were medicals, and most of them his seniors. Freddie St. Aubyn, the Wade brothers, W.G., and Maskew were among them. Out of the main road they passed singing into the meaner streets that surrounded the hospital: miserable streets with low houses and courts clustered on either side, from the upper windows of which astonished working men and women in their nightdresses put out their heads to look at the vocal procession. Opposite the portico of the hospital was a cab rank on which a solitary hansom was standing with the horse asleep in the shafts and the driver taking his rest inside. The sight appeared to arouse the fighting instincts of the elder Wade.

“Good God,” he said, with indignation, “here’s a cab. What the hell does the fellow think he’s doing here at this time of night? He must be drunk. Look at it!”

His brother, who could carry his liquor better, tried to persuade him to leave the cab alone; but before any one knew what was happening, he had thrown himself on it and turned the whole affair upside down in the road. Edwin heard a crash of splintered glass; he saw the cab on its side and the sleepy horse with its legs in the air. He thought: “Good God! What has happened?” And the next thing he saw was a red-faced cabman, buttoned up to his ears, crawling out of the wreckage and cursing fluently at Wade, who stared for a moment, dazed, at the havoc his strength had created, and then bolted for the shelter of the hospital. The cabman, now thoroughly awakened, bolted after him. Edwin glowed with admiration for Wade’s achievement. It was the deed of a Titan, a splendid Berserker. The cabby had burst through the concourse on the hospital steps, thirsting for the blood of Wade, who, by this time, was lying quietly on a hooded stretcher swatched in bandages and quite unrecognisable. A house surgeon in a white overall confronted the cabman. The hospital porters in uniform stood solemnly at his elbow. The house surgeon was assuring the cabby that he was drunk: the cabby telling the lot of them exactly what he thought of them.

“Take hold of this fellow,” said the house surgeon to the porters, “and hold him while I get a stomach pump.” The porters, specially qualified for dealing with midnight drunks, obeyed. There was a splendid struggle in which the foaming cabby was pitched out into the road, —ing their —ing eyes to Hell. The bandaged Wade was carried solemnly upstairs on his stretcher and brought round with whisky in the house surgeon’s room, a chamber full of Olympian card-players, pickled with cigar-smoke and the fumes of alcohol. Some one, it was the cavalier, began to play the piano. Edwin seized the opportunity to recite his sonnet, until W.G. laid a monstrous hand on his mouth.

That vision ended, and to it succeeded one of cool, deserted streets with far too many kerb-stones for Edwin’s liking, and then the dishevelled sitting-room in W.G.’s digs in which they had dressed with a pale gas-jet hissing and flaring and a momentary impression of W.G. asking him where he’d put the damned corkscrew. Edwin remembered rising to a brilliant extreme of wit. “Am I your corkscrew’s keeper?” he said; and while he was explaining at length the aptness of his mot W.G. knocked the neck off the bottle with his poker, eclipsing any possible verbal brilliance.