H庄园的午餐07

III

Dr. Lord was a young man of thirty-two. He had sandy hair, a pleasantly ugly freckled¹ face and aremarkably square jaw². His eyes were a keen, piercing light blue.

“Good morning, Mrs. Welman,” he said.

“Good morning, Dr. Lord. This is my niece, Miss Carlisle.”

A very obvious admiration³ sprang into Dr. Lord’s transparent⁴ face. He said, “How do you do?”

The hand that Elinor extended to him he took rather gingerly as though he thought he might breakit.

Mrs. Welman went on:

“Elinor and my nephew have come down to cheer me up.”

“Splendid!” said Dr. Lord. “Just what you need! It will do you a lot of good, I am sure, Mrs.

Welman.”

He was still looking at Elinor with obvious admiration.

Elinor said, moving towards the door:

“Perhaps I shall see you before you go, Dr. Lord?”

“Oh—er—yes, of course.”

She went out, shutting the door behind her. Dr. Lord approached the bed, Nurse O’Brienfluttering behind him.

Mrs. Welman said with a twinkle:

“Going through the usual bag of tricks, Doctor: pulse, respiration⁵, temperature? What humbugsyou doctors are!”

Nurse O’Brien said with a sigh:

“Oh, Mrs. Welman. What a thing, now, to be saying to the doctor!”

Dr. Lord said with a twinkle:

“Mrs. Welman sees through me, Nurse! All the same, Mrs. Welman, I’ve got to do my stuff,you know. The trouble with me is I’ve never learnt the right bedside manner.”

“Your bedside manner’s all right. Actually you’re rather proud of it.”

Peter Lord chuckled⁷ and remarked:

“That’s what you say.”

After a few routine questions had been asked and answered, Dr. Lord leant back in his chair andsmiled at his patient.

“Well,” he said. “You’re going on splendidly.”

Laura Welman said: “So I shall be up and walking round the house in a few weeks’ time?”

“Not quite so quickly as that.”

“No, indeed. You humbug⁶! What’s the good of living stretched out like this, and cared for like ababy?”

Dr. Lord said:

“What’s the good of life, anyway? That’s the real question. Ever read about that nice mediaevalinvention, the Little Ease? You couldn’t stand, sit or lie in it. You’d think anyone condemned⁸ tothat would die in a few weeks. Not at all. One man lived for sixteen years in an iron cage, wasreleased and lived to a hearty⁹ old age.”

Laura Welman said:

“What’s the point of this story?”

Peter Lord said:

“The point is that one’s got an instinct to live. One doesn’t live because one’s reason assents¹⁰ toliving. People who, as we say, ‘would be better dead,’ don’t want to die! People who apparentlyhave got everything to live for just let themselves fade out of life because they haven’t got theenergy to fight.”

“Go on.”

“There’s nothing more. You’re one of the people who really want to live, whatever you sayabout it! And if your body wants to live, it’s no good your brain dishing out the other stuff.”

Mrs. Welman said with an abrupt¹¹ change of subject:

“How do you like it down here?”

Peter Lord said, smiling:

“It suits me fine.”

“Isn’t it a bit irksome for a young man like you? Don’t you want to specialize? Don’t you find acountry GP practice rather boring?”

Lord shook his sandy head.

“No, I like my job. I like people, you know, and I like ordinary everyday diseases. I don’t reallywant to pin down the rare bacillus of an obscure disease. I like measles¹² and chicken pox and all therest of it. I like seeing how different bodies react to them. I like seeing if I can’t improve onrecognized treatment. The trouble with me is I’ve got absolutely no ambition. I shall stay here till Igrow side-whiskers and people begin saying, ‘Of course, we’ve always had Dr. Lord, and he’s anice old man: but he is very old-fashioned in his methods and perhaps we’d better call in youngso-and-so, who’s so very up to date….’”

“H’m,” said Mrs. Welman. “You seem to have got it all taped out!”

Peter Lord got up.

“Well,” he said. “I must be off.”

Mrs. Welman said:

“My niece will want to speak to you, I expect. By the way, what do you think of her? Youhaven’t seen her before.”

Dr. Lord went suddenly scarlet¹³. His very eyebrows¹⁴ blushed. He said:

“I—oh! she’s very good-looking, isn’t she? And—eh—clever and all that, I should think.”

Mrs. Welman was diverted. She thought to herself:

“How very young he is, really….”

Aloud she said:

“You ought to get married.”

 

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