Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

‘I hope you don’t think I’m a criminal, Sir Sigismund,’ he began earnestly, ‘or a lunatic. I should be sorry if I had given your servant that impression; he seemed such a nice man. It’s the case with many people, isn’t it, that the telephone confuses them and makes them say what they don’t mean. I’m not unusual in that respect, am I?’

‘Unusual, yes,’ put in the doctor. ‘Not, of course, unique!’

Mr. Amber looked troubled. ‘Well, anyhow, not unique. But it wasn’t about my aphasia—no, not aphasia, absent-mindedness’ (he sought the doctor’s eye for approval of this emendation, and the latter nodded) ‘that I wanted to ask your advice, Sir Sigismund. It was about something else.’

Mr. Amber hesitated.

‘Yes?’ said Sir Sigismund Keen.

‘I’m afraid you’ll think me frivolous, seeming and looking as well as I do, to consult you on such a trifling matter. With your experience, I expect you only like attending cases that are almost desperate, cases of life and death?’

‘Doctors are not undertakers,’ replied Sir Sigismund. ‘Let me assure you, Mr. Amber, that if only from a pecuniary point of view, I like to be in well before the death. My patients often recover. I’m sure I hope you will.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr. Amber, a little scared, ‘it’s not a question of recovery, not in that sense, so much as of establishing the health. I don’t look ill, do I?’

‘I can’t see very well,’ said the doctor. ‘Won’t you come a little nearer, Mr. Amber? This is a more comfortable chair, and it must tire you to talk from a distance.’

Mr. Amber, aware that his naturally confidential voice had to be raised rather ludicrously to make itself heard across the room, complied. He sat down nervously on the edge of the chair.

‘Now,’ said Sir Sigismund, ‘tell me about yourself.’

‘About myself?’ echoed Mr. Amber, looking hopelessly round the room.

‘Yes, yourself’ said Sir Sigismund energetically, ‘and your symptoms.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr. Amber, on firm ground at last, ‘I haven’t any symptoms. I’m only a little run down. All I want is a tonic.’

‘A tonic!’ The idea seemed as unfamiliar to Sir Sigismund as the notion of his own personality had appeared strange to Mr. Amber.

‘There,’ said Mr. Amber in a melancholy tone, ‘I was afraid you’d think me frivolous.’

Sir Sigismund recovered himself. ‘No, not frivolous, Mr. Amber, anything but that. Your request is a very reasonable and sensible one. Only, you see, there are so many different tonics, suitable for different conditions in the patient. There is a type of man, I might say a figure of a man, for whom cod-liver oil would be less beneficial than, say, Parrish’s Food.’

‘Byno-Hypophosphites,’ Mr. Amber corrected.

Sir Sigismund bowed.

‘I’ve tried that,’ said Mr. Amber. ‘It didn’t seem to do me any good; neither did Easton’s Syrup, though there is said to be poison in it.’

There was a pause.

‘I thought you would be able to recommend me something better,’ said Mr. Amber at last, rather lamely.

‘But you give me so little to go on!’ cried Sir Sigismund, exasperated by his patient’s marches and counter-marches. ‘Better for what? On your own showing you are highly strung; if you want me to prescribe for your nerves, I shouldn’t recommend a tonic but a sedative, bromide, perhaps.’

‘Bromide!’ repeated Mr. Amber, awestruck. ‘Isn’t that a drug?’ The doctor suppressed an exclamation.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘I haven’t tried drugs,’ said Mr. Amber reflectively. ‘If I had a drug by me when an attack came on——’

‘Tell me about your attacks,’ said the doctor. ‘You feel faint, perhaps?’

‘Oh, no, not faint ,’ Mr. Amber protested. ‘I feel giddy and ill, you know, and the room goes round; and then if I can, I lie down; or when I’m outside I sit on a doorstep; and if I have time I drink some brandy——’

‘How do you mean,’ said Sir Sigismund, ‘if you have time?’

‘Well,’ said Mr. Amber reluctantly, ‘sometimes there isn’t time.’

‘You mean, before you f——’

‘Oh, no, I don’t faint. Everything goes dim and dark, but it’s all over in a minute. If I fainted, there might be something wrong with my heart, and that would be serious and—and interfere with my work perhaps.’

‘But surely your attacks interfere with your work as it is?’ the doctor asked.

‘Only at odd times,’ said Mr. Amber, ‘If my heart was affected I should have to stay in bed like my Aunt Edith; she was my last relation left in the world, and she was bedridden for years.’

Sir Sigismund Keen fingered the stethoscope that lay on the table by his hand. But seeing a look of apprehension on his patient’s face he let it drop and said tentatively, ‘I could examine you quite easily without this.’

Alarm made Mr. Amber voluble.

‘I’ve no doubt you could, Sir Sigismund. To a specialist of your standing the inventions of science must seem merely figureheads.’ Anxiety to convey his sense of Sir Sigismund’s superiority to ordinary practitioners almost choked Mr. Amber’s utterance, and he went on more slowly. ‘That’s why I came to you. I knew you would be able to tell at a glance what . . . what kind of tonic would be best for me.’

Sir Sigismund did not raise his eyes from the blotting-paper on which he was scribbling.

‘Yes, I can tell something.’

Mr. Amber’s face showed a momentary discouragement; but he said with a forced cheerfulness: ‘But it isn’t anything serious, is it? Whereas if I had called in Dr. Wormwood, my own doctor, he would have insisted on examining me and then it would have been revealed’ (Mr. Amber’s voice dropped at the word) ‘that I had angina pectoris and perhaps even pericarditis and hypertrophy as well.’

Sir Sigismund rose.

‘I can assure you, Mr. Amber, that a medical examination doesn’t necessarily reveal the presence of any of those disorders; and cases of the three being found together would be, to say the least, extremely rare.’ He continued very kindly: ‘You worry too much about yourself. You are——’

‘A hypochondriac,’ interposed Mr. Amber eagerly.

‘Well, no, I wouldn’t say that,’ said the doctor. ‘But it is evident from your unusual familiarity with medical terms and your—your apt use of them, that you have been uneasy about your health. Indeed, you told me so yourself.’

‘I read about diseases for pleasure!’ said Mr. Amber simply. ‘But of course it is hard when you have so many of the symptoms, not to feel that you must have at any rate one or two of the diseases.’

Sir Sigismund Keen squared his shoulders against the chimney-piece.

‘That is exactly my point. If I gave you my word of honour that you weren’t such an exceptional victim of misfortune it would reassure you, wouldn’t it?’

Mr. Amber admitted that it would.

‘But before I can do that I’m afraid I must examine you.’ It was Sir Sigismund’s last word.

‘No!’ cried Mr. Amber, rising rather shakily to his feet. ‘Why should I submit to such an indignity? I won’t be examined, and take my clothes off in this icy room when I am so susceptible to chills!’ His technical vocabulary hadn’t deserted him, but, swaying slightly, he went on in a more conciliatory tone: ‘You couldn’t possibly want to examine me, Sir Sigismund! I am an uninteresting specimen; they told me so when I was passed for a sedentary occupation into the Army. They said I was a miserable specimen, too. They said I wasn’t the sort of man you would want to look at twice.’ Memories of Mr. Amber’s dead life seemed to rush to the surface. ‘And for all you say, I know you would tell me that I’m very ill, perhaps dying lingeringly! Though it would be worse to die suddenly.’ Mr. Amber’s voice dropped and he steadied himself by the arm of the chair. ‘I only came to ask you for a tonic; surely that’s a simple thing. A good strong tonic. I wouldn’t have minded taking it, even if it had disagreed with me at first! But you doctors are all alike; you will pry into the body of a perfectly uninteresting person, you will have your money’s worth! You shan’t be disappointed, Sir Sigismund. I’m not a rich man, but I can afford to pay your fee.’ Mr. Amber fumbled desperately in his pockets, bringing up a strange medley of possessions and dropping them on the floor; but the effort had been too much for him and he had lost the support of the chair. Sir Sigismund caught him as he was falling and lifted him on to a sofa. Mr. Amber lay quite still. Sir Sigismund undid his collar which was fastened with a patent stud and, as he came round, conducted the examination which Mr. Amber, in his waking senses, had so passionately withstood.