The Young Physician

by Francis Brett Young

He left them there. He carried his bitterness into the drawing-room on the other side of the passage. . . . It was very quiet there. Through the bow window floated the perfume of the bed of stocks. In the corner stood the piano. He had often listened to his mother playing at night when he was in bed. He loved her to play him to sleep. The piano was shut; and the shut piano seemed to him symbolical. All the music and all the beauty that had been there had gone out of the house. The house was an empty shell. Like a dry chrysalis. Like a coffin. There, on the hearthrug, where he had crawled as a child, he lay down and cried.

CHAPTER X
THRENODY

I

From this emotional maelstrom the current of Edwin’s life flowed into a strange peace. It seemed that the catastrophe of Mrs. Ingleby’s death had taken the Halesby household by surprise and stunned it so thoroughly that it would never recover its normal consciousness. Edwin’s father, who had now returned to the ordinary round of business, was still dazed and puzzled, and very grey. Their servant, a young woman with an exaggerated sense of the proprieties, or perhaps a dread of living alone in such a gloomy house, had given notice. Only Aunt Laura, to Edwin’s shame, showed the least capacity for dealing with the situation.

However few of the graces may have fallen to her lot, she was certainly not lacking in the domestic virtues. When the maid departed with her tin trunk and many tearful protestations of her devotion to the memory of the dear mistress, Aunt Laura turned up her sleeves and took possession of the kitchen, and Mr. Ingleby, who had gloomily anticipated a domestic wilderness, found that in spite of the maid’s defection, ambrosial food appeared before him like manna from heaven, the only difference being that Uncle Albert, who could not be permitted for one moment to remain a bachelor, took his meals with the family.

The relation between Edwin and Aunt Laura was still difficult. She could not forget—and he could not withdraw—the bitter things that had been said on that most mournful day, though her native good humour, which was profuse and blustery like the rest of her, made it difficult for her to maintain an attitude of injured benignance. Even Edwin had to admit that she was a good cook; but the excellence of her food was qualified by her incessant chatter and her nervous laugh. Edwin simply couldn’t stick them; but it amazed him to find that Uncle Albert evidently found them cheerful and reassuring. Indeed, it was possibly one of the reasons why he had fallen in love with her, being a man who resembled her in nothing and whose enthusiasms could never get him beyond a couple of words and a giggle.

Mr. Ingleby too seemed to emerge without serious irritation from this diurnal bath of small-talk, retiring, as Edwin supposed, to certain gloomy depths of his own consciousness where the froth and bubble of Aunt Laura’s conversation became imperceptible. Even when she spoke to him directly—though most of her observations were addressed to the world in general—he would not trouble to answer her: a slight which Aunt Laura took quite good-humouredly.

“Bless you,” she would have said, “the man’s so wrapped up in himself that he’s miles away from anywhere. Of course you can understand it in a man of his age, especially when you realise how devoted he was to poor Beatrice”—Mrs. Ingleby’s name might never now escape the commiserating prefix—“but when a boy like Edwin tries it on it’s another matter altogether. It’s simply conceit. Personally, I think it was a great mistake of his poor mother’s to send him to St. Luke’s. The grammar school’s good enough for the Willises. A great mistake. . . . The boy is getting ideas of himself that aren’t warranted by his position. I don’t know what we are to do with him. We certainly can’t have him running wild here.” And Uncle Albert would say: “Certainly, certainly, my love. . . .”

In spite of these pronounced opinions Aunt Laura was careful not to cross swords with Edwin himself. Indeed, she went a good deal out of her way to propitiate him with various material kindnesses, and particularly certain delicacies in the way of food, which, to the ruin of her figure in later life, represented to her the height of earthly enjoyment. Edwin didn’t quite know how to take these attentions. He couldn’t help disliking her, and the fact that she was really kind to him rather took the wind out of his sails. He would have been much happier if they had been allowed to remain in a state of armed neutrality.

A fortnight passed . . . happily for Edwin in spite of all that he felt he ought to feel. He missed his mother awfully. That was true enough. And yet . . . and yet it was also true to say that he was only beginning to live: to appreciate the joy of his growing strength: to realise the enchanted domains that were open to his eager feet and to his eager mind. Here he had freedom, leisure, health: so much of the world to see: so much of human knowledge to explore. And though the thought of death, and the particular disaster that had befallen him fell upon his spirit sometimes with a shadow that plunged the whole world into desperate darkness, he could not deny that the shadow was gradually lifting, and the character of the agony that had desolated him was becoming less spontaneous, till, in the end, it became almost a calculable emotion that might be indulged or banished at will. He found it difficult to understand this. He thought: “I’m a brute, a callous, insensitive brute. What would she think of me . . .? And yet, I can’t help it. I’m made like that. . . .” And then, after long and bitter deliberation: “I believe she would understand. I expect she was made like that too. I’m sure she was. And if there’s one thing in the world that she’d hate it would be that I should force myself to pretend anything.”