"I tell you, Algy, and mind you, I am a medical man, or shall be next week, that you drink too much of the family whisky. It has poisoned thousands and is poisoning you, although I dare say yours comes out of the best vat, not that which has made millionaires of West & Co., and a peer of your grandfather―" (here that unwilling eavesdropper, Lord Atterton, snorted and muttered something that Clara could not catch). "Claret should be your tipple, and perhaps a couple of glasses of port after dinner, no more."
"Claret is poor stuff to lean on when one feels low, Andrew; besides, I am not fool enough to drink West's whisky; I know too much about it, for you see I'm in the business. Anyway, a short life and a merry one for me," replied Algernon with a husky chuckle.
Then they entered the room.
"Would you be so good as to shut that door, Andrew," said his uncle icily.
"If you wish, Uncle, though it should be left open for the room is far too hot,—Ah! I thought so," he added, glancing at a thermometer which hung upon the wall, "over seventy–two, and no wonder when you have a fire upon a mild September afternoon, and everything shut."
"I hate cold," interrupted Algernon.
"I dare say," replied Andrew. "Most of us do hate what does us good. As a matter of fact, you should live in a low temperature with all the windows open."
"Perhaps, Andrew," said Lord Atterton, puffing himself out like a turkey cock, "you will be so good as to allow me and Algernon to regulate our house in our own way?"
"Certainly, Uncle. It isn't my business, is it? Only I wouldn't if I were your medical adviser. Where there is a tendency to a pulmonary weakness," he added rather sententiously, "as in our family," and he glanced at Algernon, "fresh air is essential."
"Thank you for that information," replied his uncle with sarcasm, "but I have already sought advice upon the point from the heads of the profession to which I understand you intend to belong."
"Then why do you not follow it?" said Andrew coolly, whereon the discreet Clara, foreseeing trouble, intervened hurriedly with a question.
"Are you really going to be a doctor soon, Andrew?" she asked.
"Yes, I hope so, Clara. I have just gone through my final examination, which is why I'm able to come and look you up, for the first time in six months, I think."
"And for the last in six years, I hope," muttered Lord Atterton to himself.
If Andrew overheard him he took no notice, but went on gaily.
"I don't suppose that any of you know what it is to work for twelve or sometimes fourteen hours a day, but if you did, you would understand that it does not leave much time for paying visits. Such amusements are for the idle rich."
"Indeed," growled Lord Atterton. "Well, I think I have done as much as that in my time."
"I think you misunderstand me, Uncle," went on the imperturbable Andrew. "By work, I mean intellectual research in any branch of knowledge; I do not mean the mere pursuit of wealth in a business."
Algernon in the background chuckled hoarsely, a faint and swiftly repressed smile flittered over Clara's placid features like a shadow over a still lake, and Lord Atterton turned purple.
"What do you mean, young man?" he gasped.
"Oh! nothing personal," replied the gay Andrew in the intervals of lighting a cigarette, "but I think you will admit, Uncle, that there is a difference between, let us say, the skilful advertisement of patent medicines or alcoholic drinks with the assistance of a large office staff, and the mastering of a science by individual application."
"All that I am inclined to admit at present," ejaculated Lord Atterton, "is that you are a most offensive young prig."
"Do you think so?" answered Andrew with an airy smile. "Well, I dare say from your point of view you are right. Everything depends upon how one looks at things, doesn't it, Uncle? Now I hate trade and look upon the drink traffic as a crime against the community, at any rate where the manufacture of spirits is concerned, having seen too much of their effects, and I dare say that these convictions make me intolerant, as all young people are apt to be―"
"And I hate impertinent Pill–boxes, like yourself, Sir," shouted Lord Atterton.
"Which shows," replied Andrew calmly, "that intolerance is not peculiar to the young. By 'Pill–boxes' I suppose you symbolize the Medical Profession in general, of which I am informed you are a great supporter where your own ailments and those of your family are concerned. Now if hate, as it is fair to assume, implies disbelief, why do you employ them?"
Lord Atterton tried to answer, but only succeeded in gurgling.
"Such disparagement," went on Andrew, "seems peculiarly unjust in your case, Uncle, seeing that one of your grandfathers was an eminent 'Pill–box' of the old school whose monographs upon certain subjects are still studied, and, so far as I am able to judge, infinitely the most respectable and useful man that our family has produced."
Here Algernon, on a sofa in the background, burst into convulsive screams of laughter which he tried vainly to stifle with a cushion, while the infuriated Lord Atterton rushed from the room uttering language which need not be recorded.
"You've done it this time," said Algernon, removing the sofa cushion and sitting up. "If there's one thing his Lordship hates" (he always called his father his Lordship behind his back), "it is any allusion to his medical ancestor whose mother was a mill–hand and who dropped his h's."
"I expect that's where his vigour came from, and if he dropped h's, he picked up lives, hundreds of them; indeed, he was a most admirable person."
"Oh! Andrew," broke in Clara, "can't you stop fooling? Don't you see that you are ruining yourself?"
"Well, if you ask me, Clara, I don't. Besides, how am I ruining myself? I expect nothing from my uncle who has never given me anything, except an occasional luncheon and many lectures. I know that everybody goes about blacking his boots just because he is so rich, so it can't hurt him to hear a little of the truth by way of a change."
"But it may hurt you, Andrew. What are you going to do when you become a doctor?"
"Oh, that's all arranged. An excellent fellow called Watson, a really clever man though a bit of a Socialist, who might be anything but because of his opinions prefers a practice in Whitechapel, is going to take me as an assistant. He was one of the examiners and suggested it himself only this morning, from which I gather that I have passed all right. It is a splendid opening."
"Indeed," remarked Clara doubtfully, "and what is Doctor Watson going to pay you?"
"I don't know. Something pretty small, I expect, but that doesn't matter to me, for I've a couple of hundred a year of my own, you know, which is riches to most young doctors."
Clara looked him up and down with an air of genuine if tempered amazement on her face that was not entirely unmixed with admiration. Then she asked:
"Do you really mean to say, Andrew, that it is your intention to become the assistant of an unknown Socialistic practitioner in the East End who will pay you little or nothing?"
"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 it—or 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.