“Dear Sir—I beg to offer myself as a candidate for the post of medical officer, temporary, for the town and district of Dunailin, on the terms of your advertisement in The British Medical Journal.”
Dr. Farelly, like the Etruscans in Macaulay’s poem, “could scare forbear to cheer.” He walked jauntily back to his house, relit his pipe and sat down to read the rest of the letter.
Theophilus Lovaway was apparently a garrulous person. He had covered four sheets with close typescript. He began by stating that he was only just qualified and had never practised anywhere. He hoped that Dr. Farelly would not consider his want of experience a disqualification. Dr. Farelly did not care in the least.
If Theophilus Lovaway was legally qualified to write prescriptions, nothing else mattered. The next three paragraphs of the letter—and they were all long—described, in detail, the condition of Lovaway’s health. He suffered, it appeared, from a disordered heart, weak lungs, and dyspepsia. But for these misfortunes, the letter went on, Theophilus would have devoted himself to the services of his country in her great need. Dr. Farelly sniffed. He had a prejudice against people who wrote or talked in that way. He began to feel less cheerful. Theophilus might come to Dunailin. It was very doubtful whether he would stay there long, his lungs, heart, and stomach being what they were.
The last half of the letter was painfully disconcerting. Two whole pages were devoted to an explanation of the writer’s wish to spend some time in the west of Ireland. Theophilus Lovaway had managed, in the middle of his professional reading, to study the literature of the Irish Renaissance. He had fallen deeply in love with the spirit of the Celtic peasantry. He described at some length what he thought that spirit was. “Tuned to the spiritual” was one of the phrases he used. “Desire-compelling, with the elusiveness of the rainbow’s end,” was another. Dr. Farelly grew despondent. If Theophilus expected life in Dunailin to be in the least like one of Mr. Yeats’ plays, he was doomed to a bitter disappointment and would probably leave the place in three weeks.
But Dr. Farelly was not going to give up hope without a struggle. He put the letter in his pocket and walked across the road to Timothy Flanagan’s shop.
“Flanagan,” he said, “I’ve got a man to take on my job here.”
“I’m glad to hear it, doctor,” said Flanagan. “It would be a pity now if something was to interfere with you, and you wanting to be off massacring the Germans. If the half of what’s in the papers is true, its massacring or worse them fellows want.”
“The trouble is,” said Dr. Farelly, “that the man I’ve got may not stay.”
“Why wouldn’t he stay? Isn’t Dunailin as good a place to be in as any other? Any sensible man——”