“General practitioner,” said W.G., rubbing himself down with a pair of flesh-gloves. “They all go in for hyphens. It impresses the lower-middle classes. When I go into practice, my son, I shall be known as Dr. William George-Brown, if I can afford the extra letters on a plate.”
“Lower Sparkdale’s a pretty awful slum, isn’t it?”
“Never been there. It’s time you cleared off to the bathroom. You’ll feel better when you’re awake.”
Edwin spent the morning in writing, and four times rewriting, a letter to his father. It was a difficult job, for he felt that the reasons for his departure could not be explained in words, and he was particularly anxious to make it clear that it was purely a matter of temperament and that he didn’t wish it to imply any criticism of Mr. Ingleby’s plans. When he had finished it he found that it was far too late to visit the surgery of Dr. Altrincham-Harris. He therefore waited till the evening, and then took a steam-tram through a succession of sordid streets, past the public abattoirs and the newly-opened Rowton House, to the level of 563 Lower Sparkdale.
The extreme end of that street was not as bad as he had imagined it might be, for at this point the slum ended, resolving itself into the edge of a growing suburb of red-brick. Number 563 was a corner house secretively curtained with dirty muslin on flat brass rods. A shining plate revealed the qualifications, such as they were, of C. Altrincham-Harris, Physician and Surgeon, and as the front door seemed to have sunk into a state of disuse, Edwin entered at another, marked “Surgery,” round which a number of poorly-clad women, some of them carrying babies, were clustered.
Inside the door was a narrow waiting-room that concentrated into an incredibly small number of cubic feet the characteristic odour of an out-patient department. Every seat was occupied, and Edwin, deciding to wait for his turn, stood listening to a varied recitation of medical history that every patient seemed compelled by the surroundings to relate to her neighbour. At the moment when he entered a very stout woman, who had been drinking, had the ear of the company, talking loudly over the shoulder of a pasty child whose neck was covered with the pin-points that fleas make on an insensitive skin, and occasionally, in accessions of tenderness, hugging it to her bosom.
“So I says to the inspector . . . yes, inspector, ’e ’ad the nerve to call ’isself . . . says I, you can take your summonses to ’ell, I says. I love my children, I says. There’s more love for the little ’armless things in my finger than there’ll ever be in your bloody body, I says. And I caught ’er up and carried ’er straight along ’ere to the doctor. Doctor ’Arris knows me, I says, and what’s more ’e shall ’ave a look at Margaret’s ’ead with ’is own eyes. Shan’t ’e, my pretty?” The child wriggled as she was clasped in another beery embrace.
A bell tingled inside. “Now we shall see,” said the lady determinedly rising. “And ’ave a stifficate if it costs me two shillin’s.”
The room murmured low applause and sympathy, and she entered the surgery, emerging, two minutes later, with the testimonial in her mouth.
“What did I tell yo’?” she said. “The doctor says there ain’t one. Not one. It’s time these inspectors was done away with. I only ’ope ’e will summons me. Good-night, all.”