The Young Physician

by Francis Brett Young

“Not dead? . . . she’s not dead?”

“No, no. We must all be brave, Eddie.”

“We must all be brave.” . . . He hated to hear her talk like that. What had she to be brave about? It wasn’t her mother who was dying, only her sister. A sister wasn’t like a mother. It was all very well to say these conventional things. He didn’t believe she really meant them. She could cry her eyes out before he’d believe her, however kind she might try to be. It wasn’t any good her trying to be kind now. She hadn’t been kind to his mother. He remembered the day when her callousness had made his mother cry. He couldn’t pity her now; he couldn’t put up with her condolences; he believed he hated her. He would hate any one in the world who had given his mother a moment’s pain. She was so little and beautiful and perfect. . . .

And yet, when he sat opposite to Aunt Laura in the Halesby train, and examined her more closely, he could see for himself that the strain of the last few days had somehow chastened her—she seemed to have lost some of her florid assurance, and her eyes looked as if she had been crying. She even seemed to have shrunk a little. And this made matters worse, for it seemed to him that the very thing which had obliterated what he most disliked in her had also accentuated the family likeness. All the time, beneath this face, which he distrusted, he could see a faint and tantalising resemblance to the other face that he adored. If any one had suggested to him that Aunt Laura was in any way like his mother, he would have denied it indignantly; but the likeness was there, a curious, torturing likeness of feature. He didn’t know then what in after years he was to realise time after time: that grief has a way of suppressing individual characteristics and reducing the faces of a whole suffering family to their original type after the manner of a composite photograph. It was tantalising, and so harrowing that he dared not look at her any longer.

At Halesby they walked up from the station together almost without speaking. The little house on the edge of the country wore a strangely tragic air. Downstairs all was quiet. After the big echoing rooms at St. Luke’s it seemed ridiculously small. Nobody inhabited the rooms, and the soft carpet created a curious hushed atmosphere in which it seemed sacrilege to speak in anything but a whisper. Aunt Laura took off her hat and veil.

“I’d better carry my bag upstairs,” said Edwin. He felt somehow, that in his little old room he could be happier. He could even, if he wanted to, throw himself on the bed and give way to the tears which were bound to come.

“No . . . you’d better wait here,” said Aunt Laura. “Your father is sleeping in your room. You see it wouldn’t do for him to be in hers. He’s been there for three nights. And I’m in the spare room. I think you’re going to sleep over at Mrs. Barrow’s.”

Edwin flamed with jealousy. What was Aunt Laura doing in the house? She, above all people, had no right to be there.

“But I could sleep on the sofa in the drawing-room,” he said.

“You mustn’t make difficulties, Eddie. It’s all arranged. The specialist has been out this afternoon to see her with Dr. Moorhouse. He may be upstairs now.”