"That is my intention and desire, Clara," he answered in the intervals of lighting another cigarette. "What do you see against it?"
"Oh! nothing," she answered, shrugging her shoulders, "except the results which commonly follow from madness of any sort. To begin with, you will infuriate our uncle"
"Strike that out," interrupted Andrew, "for I have done it already. Nothing can make him hate me more than he does."
"who," went on Clara, taking no notice, "with all his enormous interest would otherwise have been able to help you to a career in almost any walk of life that offers rewards at the end of itor earlier"
"To those with relatives whose money gives them direct or indirect means of corruption and thereby of lifting the undeserving over the heads of the deserving," suggested Andrew.
Again she shrugged her shoulders, and went on:
"Next, you will starve. Your Socialist medical man won't pay you anything, and such an appointment will lead you nowhere."
"Don't alarm yourself, Clare. I haven't the slightest fear of suffering from the want of proper nutriment. Food is cheap in the East End, and a couple of pints of stout will furnish as much stimulant as is desirable in twentyfour hours. Also, if I pass in Surgery, as I think I shall, I have every hope that my hospital will not entirely cast me off. Perhaps you didn't know, Clara, that surgery is my only love, that I have a natural instinct that way and, if I may say so, a flair for diagnosis. For instance, there is a gland in your neck that I long to remove, although you may not be aware of the thing. It spoils the proportions and under certain circumstances may be dangerous some day."
"Please leave my glands alone," said Clara. "I don't know what glands are."
"Then why did you lift your hand and touch that to which I alluded, Clara, not knowing that I cultivate the art of observation? Any competent physician will tell you that it might become the seat of tubercle, to which all our family are prone."
"You won't frighten me with your talk of glands," replied Clara quite calmly, "or because one side of my neck swells when I have a cold. Well, if you give no weight to my arguments, what are yours? What you have to urge in favour of the course of life which you propose to follow?"
Andrew drew himself up and threw his cigarette into the fire. In a moment his whole aspect changed. From that of a somewhat annoying, assertive and egotistical youth, it became one of an earnest young man animated by a great purpose.
"I'll tell you if you will open your mind and are sufficiently interested to listen," he said. "I have this to urge: that our time here is short, and that whatever we understand by God Almighty lays upon us the duty of making of it the best use possible, not only for our own sakes, but for that of the world in which we live, according to the opportunities that may be given to us. Now mine, I know, are very humble. I am nobody and nothing, a person without prospects." (Here Clara opened her innocentlooking eyes and stared at him.) "But I believe that I have some ability in a certain line and I intend to use it to the best of my power in serving my fellowmen. An opportunity of doing so has come to me in a locality where my fellowmen, and women and children, are more numerous and probably more miserable than they are anywhere else upon the earth. In these circumstances I do not intend to allow my person advantage, or what seems to be my advantage as you see it, to weigh with me. That is my answer."
"And a jolly good one, too," exclaimed Algernon, suddenly sitting up amidst his sofacushions among which he had seemed to be somnolent, and breaking into the conversation.
"You're a real sport, Andrew, more power to your elbow! I'm no use, I know, and never shall be," here by accident or design he coughed, "but," he added with an outburst of genuine felling, "I respect you, old fellow, whatever Clara may think."
"Please leave my thoughts out of the question, Algernon," said Clara with severity. "Perhaps I also respect Andrew. But I try to look all round things and not to be carried away by sudden enthusiasms, and I think that in his own interests he is making a mistake. He would do better to fall in with his uncle's wishes, or prejudices if you choose to call them so."
"And I think that I shall do better to fall in with what I consider to be my duty, and to leave my interests to look after themselves, Clara. That, however, is no particular virtue on my part, since they do not excite me."
"Which means that you are going to be a slum doctor, Andrew."
"Yes, my dear, that's what it means, also that if you happen to meet me when you are driving in the Atterton carriage and pair, I shall not expect you to recognize your humble relative."
"Don't be silly, Andrew. You wouldn't if you only knew how ridiculous you become when you are on your high horse."
"High horse! A neat repartee for the carriage and pair, on which I congratulate you, Clara. But don't let's wrangle. Our lines are laid in different places, that is all, and I dare say we shan't see much of each other in the future, so we had best part friends. Goodbye, old girl," and stretching out his long arm, he took her round the waist, drew her to him and gave her a kiss.
Then he shook Algernon by the hand, bidding him come to a certain address if he wanted any gratis medical advice, and to look after himself in various ways, and departed at a run, nearly knocking over a stately menial who was bringing coffee and liqueurs.
"I think that Andrew is mad," remarked Clara, smoothing her hair which had been disarranged by the energy of his embrace.
"I dare say," said Algernon, as he tossed off a glass of cognac, "but I only wish I were half as mad. I tell you, Clara, that he is the best of the family, as you will come to see one day. Though when you do, I shan't be here."
"Perhaps," said Clara, "for no one knows what may happen in the future, and if he should succeed, it may alter my views."
"Succeed," ejaculated Algernon with a hoarse chuckle. "Do you mean to the title?"
"You know very well that I meant nothing of the sort, Algernon," she answered with a look of calm contempt, and left the room.
"All the same she did, although she may not have known it," reflected Algernon, as, after another halfglass of cognac, he settled himself down to snooze among the sofa cushions. "Clara thinks that no one sees through her, but I do. She's a deep one, is Clara, and, what's more, she'll always get her way. But when she has, what is the good of it?" Then he went off to sleep till teatime.
Chapter II
Mrs. Josky
Lord Atterton, who had been taking a little walk round the square to soothe his nerves, returned when he thought that Andrew had departed. In fact, he chose an unlucky moment, for just as he opened the front door of West House and stepped across the threshold, he came into violent and personal collision with that young gentleman who was rushing out at a great pace, thinking of something else and not looking where he was going.
"Confound you for an awkward fellow!" exclaimed his Lordship. "You've smashed my hat."
Andrew picked up the article which had served as a buffer between their two colliding bodies and now resembled a halfclosed concertina.
"Very sorry," he said, surveying the topper critically. "It does seem rather the worse, doesn't it? But cheer up, Uncle, you can afford a new one, which will give employment. The hatting trade is rather depressed just now they tell me in Whitechapel."
"Cheer up!" gasped Lord Atterton. "I may as well tell you outright, Andrew, that your visits to this house are the last things to cheer me up. First you outrage my feelings and then you crush my hat which was new. Oh! hang it all," he added, hurling the wreck into the corner of the hall, "the less I see of you in the future the better I shall be pleased, and there you have it straight."
"I rather think your sentiment is reciprocated," remarked Andrew in a reflective voice. "Somehow we seem to get on each other's nerves, don't we?"
"Yes, nerves and toes," replied his Uncle wrathfully, lifting the foot upon which Andrew had trodden.
"If you wore a sensible soft hat as I do, instead of a tall one, it wouldn't have happened, Uncle, but it's no use crying over squashed chimneypots, and for the rest, you need not fear that I shall put any strain upon your hospitality. I'm sorry about Algernon, though, as I'm fond of him and should like to see him sometimes. Uncle, I may as well take this opportunity to tell you that whatever your smart Harley Street men may say, you are treating him wrongly."
"Indeed, and how out of your great experience would you advise that the case should be dealt with, Andrew?" he asked with heavy sarcasm.
"Well, to begin with, Uncle, you should cut off his liquor. He drinks too much, as does everyone in this house except Clara. Thenopenair and perhaps a winter in Switzerland. I'll ask my man Watson what he thinks about that. Unless you change your methods and can persuade him to change his, it is my duty to say that the results may be very serious indeed."
"Oh!" ejaculated Lord Atterton, "confound you for a presuming young puppy, and confound Watson, whoever he may be, and confound everything!"
Then, without waiting for any possible answer, he rushed into the nearest room and slammed the door.
Andrew strolled into the street, crossing it to the square railings, lit a third cigarette, and while he did so contemplated the façade of his uncle's palatial mansion.
Looks like whisky, he mused; metaphorically stinks of whisky and ought to have a gigantic bottle of West's Best (Lord! Shall I ever live down that name?) with the famous advertisement of redshirted Canadians refreshing themselves amidst golden sheaves with the same in the intervals of their noble toil, set upon the parapet among the chimneypots.
In short, look at the whole infernal place, and then think of its presiding genius, my noble and opulent relative who sits within like a great baldheaded spider fat with the blood of a thousand victims, and therefore preeminent in the spider world.
He paused and laughed at his own metaphor, for when not depressed Andrew was a merry soul; then, continuing his reflections, he walked towards Oxford Street to take a bus for Whitechapel.
Anyway, I'm not wanted there. The old gentleman told me that pretty straight, as I meant that he should, for I can't bear the sight of him, purseproud, vulgar man who calls himself noble. I like Algernon, though, if he is dissipating himself to death with his weak lungs, for he has good instincts, which will never develop in this world, poor old chap. And Clara isn't at all bad. She thinks herself deep as an ocean, and is as easy to see through as a plateglass window. Her transparency is quite delightful; one sees her making her hand for every trick, and yet feels quite sure she will win the game, and at any rate she never makes rows; she fights with the rapier, not with the broadsword. Also at bottom she isn't unkind.
At this point he found a bus, and having clambered on to the top of it, still followed his train of thought.
Let's look at the other side of the picture. I criticize my uncle and Clara, and they criticize me. They look on me as a spoiled darling, ruined by an adoring mother, now happily departed, and they consider me vain because people think me clever; also opinionated because so farwell, I have done well in my small way. Further, they dislike my views of life and duty, which are opposed to the interests and instincts of their gilded, pinchbeck rank, and do not appreciate the connection with the common medical student who probably will never be heard of in the world. Nor can they understand that such an earthworm may have ideas of his own and wish to make his private tunnel out of sight of the golden creatures who walk about in Cavendish Square. Well, Andrew, they are quite right as they see things; also, I dare say that you are offensive, though the patients in the hospital don't think so. And you are quite right as you see the things. So the upshot of it is, that you had better go your own way and leave them to go theirs towards the oblivion which will swallow you all. But all the same, you are sorry for Algernon, the noble inheritor of West's Whisky.
In due course Andrew reached his rooms in a little street that opened off the Whitechapel Road. It was, and probably still is, a rather squalidlooking street where dwelt small tradesmen, with a proportion of the humbler class of Jews. The houses were of stucco with basements but not tall, and the one in which Andrew lived was inhabited by the widow of a working tailor and her little daughter. Fortunately the tailor had insured his life for £1200 so that his relict was not left penniless, and being an inveterate Londoner, preferred to live on among the people whom she knew.
To occupy herself she had taken to dealing in secondhand clothes and furs in a small way and, more for company than for anything else, she took a lodger in her two upper rooms. Her name was Mrs. Josky, though from what country Josky the departed originally hailed Andrew never discovered. Probably he, or his father, was a Polish Jew. She herself was a plain, goodtempered, bustling and talkative little Cockney, full of a lively sympathy with everybody and everything. Like most of her class she was, however, somewhat superficial, except in one particular, her love for her daughter, a little girl of nine whose big dark eyes, premature development and Eastern style of budding beauty, revealed her Semitic blood. This child Mrs. Josky adored. She was her one passion in life (Josky, apparently, had produced no deep impression upon her during their brief association).
Therefore it came about that she also adored Andrew, for what reason will be seen.
After his mother's death Andrew gave up the little house in Campden Hill where they had lived so happily, and having stored the best of the furniture together with a few heirlooms, looked for lodgings near the hospital where he was studying, with the double object of being close to his work and of observing the people of the East End.
Casually walking down Justice Street, for so it was oddly called, as he presumed because some forgotten Daniel had once come to judgment there, he reached No. 13, and observed that over the little shop of which the window was filled with old coats and rather motheaten fur garments, was exhibited a placard inscribed, "Good rooms to let with meals." There were very similar placards in many other windows, but the unconventional Andrew was attracted to No. 13 by a desire to defy superstition.
So in due course he became Mrs. Josky's tenant, and very comfortable she made him from the first. A little later on, however, had he been living in a good house with a devoted mother and a staff of welltrained servants, he could not have been better looked after. It happened thus. Shortly after he took up his abode in Justice Street, the little girl, who was named Lauretta, or Laurie for short, contracted pneumonia very badly indeed. Although he was not yet a qualified practitioner, Andrew diagnosed the disease at once, with the result that implore as he would, Mrs. Josky absolutely refused to call in any doctor, declaring that young Mr. West was cleverer than all of them put together, and that he and no one else should attend Laurie. Nor would she have a nurse, not from motives of economy, but because of a kind of fierce maternal jealousy which prevented her from allowing any other woman to come near her child. The end of it was that Andrew had to double the part of physician and nightnurse, rather an exhausting business for a young man who worked all day, especially as, this being his first case, he was filled with doubts and anxieties.