The Young Physician

by Francis Brett Young

There, however, stood the things which had delighted his youth. Nothing had been moved a hair’s-breadth for many years: since the day, indeed, long before Edwin was born, when Mr. Barrow had died. It was the best room of the house: and so reverenced by Mrs. Barrow that she would never have dreamed of living in it or using it at all except on Christmas Day, when a melancholy family party of relatives and possible heirs assembled to do their duty by the old lady. Then, and only then, a fire was lighted, extracting from the walls a curious odour of dry rot, which resembled, curiously enough, the apple-loft odour which pervaded the garden.

Edwin was soon at home. Here was a great glass-fronted mahogany bookcase the wonder of which he had never thoroughly explored. Here was the flat glass showcase, shaped like a card-table in which a number of Mr. Barrow’s curiosities reposed. Here was the great musical-box (glass-topped again) with its prickly brass cylinder and twanging teeth for notes, and a winding lever that made a sound as impressive as the winding of a grandfather’s clock.

Edwin thought he would try a tune. He wound up the mechanism, pressed over the starting lever, and the prickly cylinder began slowly to revolve. It made a bad start; for no one knows how many years ago it had been stopped in the middle of a tune. Then, having finished the broken cadence, it burst gaily into the song called “Mousetraps for Sale,” a pathetic ballad which may have sounded sprightly in the ears of young people fifty years ago, but in this strange room was invested with a pathetic and faded quality which made Edwin wish it would stop. There was no need for him to pull back the lever, for the musical box, as though guessing his wishes, suddenly petered out with a sort of metallic growl. Edwin laughed in spite of himself, at this peculiar noise, and hearing the echo of his own laugh turned to find himself staring into the jealous eyes of a portrait of a Victorian gentleman whom he took to be the late Mr. Barrow, for whose delectation, over his glass of punch, the instrument had been purchased. Edwin began to feel a little uneasy. The feeling annoyed him. “I’m silly to be like this,” he said to himself. “I suppose it’s the uncertainty. . . . Oh, I wish I knew. . . .”

He took refuge in the bookcase, from which he extracted, to his great delight, the complete works of Shenstone in two volumes, bound in slippery calf and published by Dodsley in the year seventeen-seventy. . . . The books were in a beautiful state of preservation. Edwin doubted if they had ever been read. Mr. Barrow, no doubt, had purchased them simply for their local interest. With a final glance at Mr. Barrow’s portrait, in a faint hope that he approved of his choice, Edwin let down the blinds, so that no light penetrated the room but a single gleam reflected from the glass pane of a wool-worked fire-guard that hung from a bracket at the side of the fireplace. With a shiver he re-locked the door. . . .

When he reached the garden with his Shenstone, the light was failing.

“You were a long time, Edwin,” said Mrs. Barrow.

“Yes, wasn’t he?” echoed Miss Beecock. “I’m afraid it is time Mrs. Barrow was going in.”

Quietly, and with a leisure that seemed to presume an endless placidity of existence, the old ladies folded their work, sighed, and recrossed the lawn towards the house. In a little time came supper: biscuits and milk on which a thick cream had been rising all day. Then Mrs. Barrow kissed him good-night. He felt her face on his cheek: a little chilly, but lax and very soft. Miss Beecock lighted him to bed with a candle in a highly-polished brass candlestick. The sheets were cool and of old linen. The bedroom smelt of apples. With the air of “Mousetraps for Sale” in his head, and a sleepy consciousness of ancient creaking timbers, Edwin fell asleep.

He slept long and dreamlessly, waking in the morning to find the sun shining brilliantly through Mrs. Barrow’s lace curtains. At first he could not remember where he was, so completely had sleep, bred of long fatigue, obliterated his consciousness. Before he opened his eyes he had half expected to hear the noise of Widdup turning out of bed with a flop, or the clangour of the six-thirty bell. And then, with a rush, the whole situation came back to him: this was Halesby, and the new day might be full of tragedy.

At his bedside Miss Beecock, who had stolen into the room an hour or so before in slippered feet and found him sleeping, had placed a glass of creamy milk and biscuits. It was awfully kind of her, Edwin thought, as he sipped the yellow cream at the top of the glass. Outside in the garden it was very quiet. He had overslept the morning chorus of birdsong; but he heard the noise of a thrush cracking snail-shells on the gravel path beneath his window. He had forgotten to wind up his watch overnight; and when he found it in his waistcoat pocket where he had left it he saw that it had stopped. “I’d better get up, anyway,” he thought, and while he stood at the door wondering if Mrs. Barrow’s house ran to a bathroom, he heard a clock in the hall give a loud whirr and then strike ten. “Good Lord, I’ve overslept myself,” he thought. “I’d better buck up.”