The Young Physician

by Francis Brett Young

This speculation he did his best to stifle while the rector galloped over the desert wastes of the Litany: but the kneeling posture was rendered uncomfortable by the presence in front of him of an old maiden lady who smelt of caraway seeds, a spice that Edwin detested. A hymn followed. Luckily, this time his father did not sing. Poor creature. . . . Edwin was now so ashamed of his criticism that he almost wished he would. And then they settled down to the sermon.

From the first Edwin had decided that he would not listen. The simple austerity of the service at St. Luke’s, where the liturgy was allowed to unfold its sonorous splendours for itself, had bred in him a distaste for the rector’s histrionics. So he did not hear them, contenting himself with a detailed examination of such of the congregation as were within his range. He saw them classified in their social gradations from the pompous distinction of Sir Joseph Hingston, the ironmaster, who, in spite of his baronetcy, wore a frock coat that did not differ greatly from that of Mr. Ingleby, to their late maid, dressed in black, and now conscious of the reflected glory that she had almost sacrificed by leaving. And the thing that impressed him most about this very various gathering was their shabbiness, and the fact that nearly all of those whom he knew seemed so much older than they had been when he last saw them.

Thinking of the light and elegance and cleanliness of St. Luke’s, it appeared to him that Halesby was indeed a muddy and obscure backwater and that his own people, sitting in the pew beside him, were in reality as much fitted to inhabit it as all the rest of the shabby congregation. Even the Willises, his mother’s new friends, whom a wave of commercial prosperity had carried forward into one of the front pews of the nave within calculable distance of the glory of Sir Joseph Hingston himself, would have looked very ordinary folk in the chapel at St. Luke’s.

He began to wonder if Griffin, and more latterly Aunt Laura, had been right: whether, after all, his mother had made an ambitious mistake in sending him to a public school when the ancient foundation of the Halesby Grammar School had stood waiting for the reception of him and his kind. There, in the fifth row on the left of the nave, sat Mr. Kelly, the grammar school’s head-master: a swarthy Irishman with a sinister, rather disappointed face. He wasn’t at all Edwin’s idea of a schoolmaster. Even old fat Leeming looked more distinguished than that. And yet, if he were good enough for the son of the opulent Walter Willis, he must surely be good enough for the son of an ordinary Halesby tradesman.

For the greater part of the sermon these problems of social precedence engaged Edwin’s puzzled mind. It had come as something of a shock to him to find that his mother came of a farming stock, even though the farmers had lived in a Norman castle and had once been good enough to bear a lance in company with the Lords Marchers. Examining the face of his father, who appeared to be engrossed in the rector’s rhetoric, Edwin decided that his features were really far too distinguished to belong naturally to a country chemist. Here, perhaps, in spite of present circumstance, lay the explanation of his own indubitable gentility. It was funny, he reflected, that he had never heard anything from his mother about the origins of the Inglebys: he had not even known from what part of the country their stock had sprung, and this ignorance made the expedition on which they were to start on the morrow more enthralling than ever. It was quite possible that the discovery of some illustrious ancestry might put him right with himself and justify his claim to a birthright which at present seemed rather shadowy.

Even if this failed, he decided, there remained Oxford. A fellow of Balliol (his imagination travelled fast) would have a right to hold up his head with any one in that congregation—Sir Joseph Hingston not excepted—even though the name of the fellow’s father happened to be printed on his toothbrush. It might even be for him to restore the prestige of the Ingleby name. “But in that case,” he thought, “it will be better for me to buy my toothbrushes somewhere else. . . .” Even the fact that Keats was a chemist did not modify this determination.

The sermon ended, and during the collection a hymn was sung. Half an hour before this, a gowned verger had stolen on tiptoe to the Inglebys’ pew and whispered in Mr. Ingleby’s ear, depositing a wooden plate lined with velvet under the seat as furtively as if it were something of which he was ashamed. When the collection began Edwin’s father left his pew and began to carry the plate round the transept in which they were seated.

Edwin, out of the corner of his eye, saw a glow of satisfaction spread over the features of Aunt Laura. Now, more than ever, the depth of the family’s grief was to be demonstrated in the eyes of all men. Edwin thought it was a rotten shame to make his father collect on this Sunday of all Sundays. The hymn was a short one, and for several minutes after it was finished the clink of silver and the duller sound of copper coins was heard in every corner of the echoing church. Then the sides-men formed themselves into a double file and moved singly up the aisle. First came Sir Joseph Hingston, erect and podgy, with his smooth grey waistcoat in front of him like the breast of a pouter pigeon. Mr. Willis, of Mawne, with a humbler but not unambitious abdominal development followed him. Edwin conceived a fanciful theory that when Mr. Willis, in the course of time, should have grown as wealthy as the baronet, there would be nothing to choose between their profiles. A miserly but erect old gentleman named Farr, who had once given Edwin a halfpenny, followed Mr. Willis. Last but one came Edwin’s father, with the red-bearded undertaker an eager last.

On the whole, Edwin was satisfied (as was obviously Aunt Laura) with Mr. Ingleby’s appearance. He certainly looked more like the father of a fellow of Balliol than Sir Joseph Hingston. The money descended with a series of opulent splashes into the brass salver that the rector held in front of the chancel steps: the organist (in private life he was a carpenter) meanwhile extemporising vaguely in the key of C. The rector carried the salver arm-high to the altar, as though he were exhibiting to the Almighty the personal fruits of his oratory. Mr. Ingleby stole quietly to his seat bathed in the admiring glances of Aunt Laura. A short prayer . . . “And now to God the father. . . .” The organist launched into his latest achievement: the Gavotte from Mignon.

Outside the church the summer sunlight seemed more exhilarating than ever. It was worth while, Edwin thought, to have suffered the dreariness of the morning’s service to experience this curious feeling of lightness and relief. He supposed that he was not alone in this sensation; for the crowd that moved slowly from the churchyard gates with a kind of gathering resilience was a happy crowd, and its voices that at first were hushed soon became gay and irresponsible in spite of the slight awkwardness that its Sunday clothes imposed on it. No doubt they were anticipating their Sunday dinner, for, as Edwin had noticed, the liturgy of the Church of England has some value as an apéritif. Even Aunt Laura was full of a subdued playfulness. “What a shame, Albert,” she said, “that the rector didn’t appoint you to collect to-day.” She patted his arm.