Chapter XVI Jim’s Patients
Thereafter, watching his friend closely, Koko observed a gradual change overcoming Jim. Often enough Jim’s merry smile flashed up, ’tis true, but when it died away the normal expression it left on his face was not quite what it had been of yore. There was a wistfulness in Jim’s eyes nowadays that Koko had never seen there before.
This change made clear to Koko the fact that Jim’s medical student cubbishness had largely taken wing. Jim was no longer Fortune’s spoilt boy. The outline of his face was less round, his features were more distinctive, his chin seemed set in a firmer mould, and the soft lines about the corners of his mouth, though still apparent, were not so soft as they had been but a few months since.
Koko was particularly struck by the alteration in Jim when, after a fortnight’s absence in the country, he looked the Long ’Un up at his surgery one evening in the latter part of November.
Jim greeted his friend warmly, offered him a cigar, poked up the fire, and then, by way of avoiding more awkward topics, began to talk about his work.
He had much of interest to relate of his daily rounds, and Koko, listening in the kind of way that is so helpful to a talker—that is to say, with unassumed appreciation—realised that Jim had indeed tackled a hard nut in the Mount Street district. For Jim had to go into such slums as your apple-faced peasant in the wide, wind-blown shires would not live in rent free. In these foul places herded scum from across the seas that gloried in its filth, and regarded decent quarters with positive repugnance. Jim had to make his way through crooked alleys into crime-infested courts—into courts where no policeman would go unaccompanied by a fellow. Jim went alone, however, trusting to luck and his two good fists to get out again in the event of his meeting a hostile gang of Hooligans.
Jim told Koko of a squalid room he had that day been into which contained four separate families—each family occupying a corner.
Koko smiled. “I suppose they don’t mind it?” he said.
“Mind it!” cried Jim. “Why, they like it, man! Being a lot in a room keeps them warm. They’re company for each other. When number one family has a scrap with number two, three and four look on and applaud. Nice friendly arrangement—eh?”
“Don’t some of these scraps turn out seriously?”
“Sometimes. The fellow who showed me up to-day is known to have killed a man in a scrap—but he got off by some queer hitch in the evidence. A very civil spoken chap—burglar by profession.”
Koko opened his eyes. “A bit different from taking fees in Harley Street?” he said.
“Not so remunerative, but more exciting,” returned Jim. “The other day,” he added, “I was attending a woman, when her husband came up with a crowbar and told me to stand aside, as he wanted to ‘finish’ her.”
“What did you do?”
“Asked him to wait till I’d done with her. He said he would if I’d have a drink, so we had some gin together, and then he lay down in a corner, saying he’d finish her after he’d had a nap. The lady told me not to worry, as he’d be as gentle as a lamb when he’d slept his drink off. She understood him, you see.”
“She’d a fine nerve,” commented Koko.
“Another time,” continued Jim, “I was called to see an old chap who lived by himself in a garret. He’d got D.T.s very hot indeed, and was sitting up in bed with the counterpane covered with sovereigns and bank-notes. There must have been hundreds of pounds there. Miser, I suppose. When I arrived he was holding conversations with imaginary relatives who were evidently (in his opinion) after his cash. He was threatening one with a revolver, and calling him all sorts of purple names. It was the revolver business which made the other people in the house send for me. To oblige him, I threw his imaginary relatives out of the window, and told him they’d fallen on their heads in the court below. That pleased him, and he said he would like to reward me for my trouble. I thought he was going to press a tenner on me, but instead he asked me if I could change half-a-sovereign. I said I could, and he then gave me half-a-crown.”
Koko chuckled joyously. “And after that?”
“Then a few dozen more imaginary relatives came in, and I threw them all out of the window. After a bit of a struggle with himself he gave me another shilling for doing this, and then I sent him to a hospital, money and all, and there he croaked, and now they can’t find a single real relative to take over his property.”
Jim discoursed for some time about his experiences, but at length Koko had to hasten away to fulfil an engagement, and so Jim locked up his surgery and bent his steps homewards.
Trudging down Blackfriars Road, he found a barrel-organ playing at the point where a by-street branched off in the direction of Derby Crescent. Jim loved a barrel-organ, and stopped to listen to this one. The organ-grinder had chosen a good pitch, in the glare of a great electric lamp-post. There was a small crowd of wayfarers watching a number of little girls dancing in front of the organ. Jim watched them too, and was delighted with the performance, for the little maids danced with thorough enjoyment and kept perfect time. One or two couples of grown-up girls were waltzing to the music—although the organ wasn’t playing a waltz—but Jim was not interested in these.
Jim had visited many a music-hall in the company of Koko, the red-haired student at Matt’s, and others, and had frequently watched the skilful gyrations of trained ballet-dancers, but it seemed to him that this queer little dance, with the heavens for a roof and a muddy wood-block road for a floor, was a much better dance than any he had seen in a music-hall. The organ played a merry tune—full of straightforward melody—and Jim was quite infected with it. He began to wonder when he had last danced—when he would dance again. And meanwhile he watched the little maids, and smiled at the earnest way in which they tripped in and out among each other, quite in the proper style and order; and he gave a shilling to the Italian woman who came round to collect.
As Jim listened to the music and watched the dainty steps of the little street dancers, he felt genuinely happy. The scene pleased him; it chased the wistfulness from his face, and he felt loth to continue his walk homewards. He was interested. These people around him were his people now; these people were his patients. Poor they were—starving, some of them—and he was their doctor. Had matters fallen out otherwise, it would have been his destiny to attend a very different class of patient. He would, in all probability, have assisted his grandfather—have ridden a horse, worn the best of clothes, and eaten and drunk “like a lord.” He would have hunted and shot, and lived the life of a country gentleman, with just enough work to do to prevent himself from experiencing ennui. But instead of that he was fighting for an existence in Mount Street—among the poorest of the poor. No hunting, no shooting, no old port; it was grim fighting in Mount Street—hard work and a hard life—hardly earned money and money hard to get, even when he had earned it.
Still, he reflected, he lived. It was life—he lived strenuously. He was working in the heart of the greatest city in the world; he was living a man’s life. Wasn’t this, after all, better than lolling round a ready-made practice? Of course, that was good work, useful work—but this work in Mount Street was on a different plane. It was sheer fighting, and Jim, being a “scrapper” by nature, was filled with a feeling of fierce joy. He knew that he had played the fool, and that this was the penalty. But it was a penalty of a mixed kind, for it was a test which he relished. It was a test which would have knocked out a weak man, but Jim felt that he was getting a firmer foothold every day he trod the grimy pavement leading to his surgery.
Presently the little girls stopped—panting—and the organ-grinder dropped his handle. It was time he moved on.
So it was over, and Jim found himself feeling sorry. The other onlookers strolled away, and Jim was turning down the by-street, when he felt a touch on his arm, and looked round to find Dora Maybury by his side.