Side Of The Angels A Novel

Basil King

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. The difficulty was, in the first place, one of date - not the date of a month or a year, but of a generation or a century. Had Thorley Masterman found himself in love with Rosie Fay in 1760, or even in 1860, there would have been little to adjust and nothing to gainsay. In 1860 the Fays were still as good as the Thorleys, and almost as good as the Mastermans. Going back as far as 1760, the Fays might have been considered better than the Thorleys had the village acknowledged standards of comparison, while there were no Mastermans at all. That is, in 1760 the Mastermans still kept their status as yeomen, clergymen, and country doctors among the hills of Derbyshire, untroubled as yet by that spirit of unrest for conscience' sake which had urged the Fays and the Thorleys out of the flat farmlands of East Anglia one hundred and thirty years before.

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• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 23 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819916673
• Langue: English

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CHAPTER I
The difficulty was, in the first place, one of date– not the date of a month or a year, but of a generation or acentury. Had Thorley Masterman found himself in love with Rosie Fayin 1760, or even in 1860, there would have been little to adjustand nothing to gainsay. In 1860 the Fays were still as good as theThorleys, and almost as good as the Mastermans. Going back as faras 1760, the Fays might have been considered better than theThorleys had the village acknowledged standards of comparison,while there were no Mastermans at all. That is, in 1760 theMastermans still kept their status as yeomen, clergymen, andcountry doctors among the hills of Derbyshire, untroubled as yet bythat spirit of unrest for conscience' sake which had urged the Faysand the Thorleys out of the flat farmlands of East Anglia onehundred and thirty years before.
During the intervening period the flat farmlandsremained only as an equalizing symbol. Thorleys, Fays, Willoughbys,and Brands worked for one another with the community of interestsdeveloped in a beehive, and intermarried. If from the process ofintermarriage the Fays were, on the whole, excluded, thediscrimination lay in some obscure instinct for affinity of whichno one at the time was able to forecast the significance.
But by 1910 there was a difference, the differenceapparent when out of the flat farmlands seismic explosion hasthrown up a range of mountain peaks. For the expansion of thecountry which the middle nineteenth century had wrought, theThorleys, Mastermans, Willoughbys, and Brands had been on thealert, with eyes watchful and calculations timed. The Fays, on theother hand, had gone on with the round of seed-time and harvest,contented and almost somnolent, awakening to find that the ages hadbeen giving them the chances that would never come again. It wasacross the wreck of those chances, and across some other obstaclesbesides, that Thorley Masterman, for the first time sincechildhood, looked into the gray-green eyes of Rosie Fay and got thethrill of their wide-open, earnest beauty.
He was then not far from thirty years of age, havingstudied at a great American university, in Paris, Berlin, andVienna, and obtained other sorts of knowledge of mankind. He knewRosie Fay, in this secondary, grown-up phase of their acquaintance,as the daughter of his first patient, and he had obtained his firstpatient through the kindly intervention of Uncle Sim. From Februaryto November, 1910, his "shingle" had hung in one of the two streetsof the village without attracting a patient at all. He had alreadybegun to feel his position a trial when his half-brother's dailyjest turned it into a humiliation. "Must be serious matter, Thor,"Claude would say, "to be responsible for so many valuablelives."
Mr. Leonard Willoughby, his father's partner in theold "banking-and-broking" house of Toogood & Masterman, enjoyedthe same sort of chaff. "Looking pale, Thor. Must be working toohard." "Never mind, Thor," Mrs. Willoughby would encourage him."When I'm ill you shall get me – but then I'm never ill."
At such minutes her daughter Lois could only smilesympathetically and talk hurriedly of something else. As he hadmeant since boyhood to marry Lois Willoughby when the moment formarriage came, Thor counted this tactfulness in her favor.
Nevertheless, he was puzzled. Having disregarded hisfuture possession of money and prepared himself for a useful careerwith all the thoroughness he could command, nobody seemed to wanthim. It was not that the village was over-provided with doctors.Every one admitted that it wasn't – otherwise he would not havesettled in his native place. The village being really a townshipwith a scattered population – except on the Thorley estate, whichwas practically part of a great New England city, where there wererows of suburban streets – it was quite insufficiently served byDr. Noonan at one end and Dr. Hill at the other, for Uncle Sim inthe Old Village could scarcely be said to count. No; the openingwas good enough. The trouble lay, apparently, in Thorley Mastermanhimself. Making all allowances for the fact that a young physicianmust wait patiently, and win his position by degrees, he had reasonto feel chagrined. He grew ashamed to pass the little house in theOld Village which he had fitted up as an office. He grew ashamed togo out in his runabout.
The runabout had been worse than an extravagance,since, on the ground that it would take him to his patients themore quickly, he had felt justified in borrowing its price. Themost useful purpose it served now was to bring Mr. Willoughby homefrom town when unfit to come by himself. Otherwise its owner hatedtaking it out of the garage, especially if Claude were in sight.Claude had envied him the runabout at first, but soon found a wayto work his feeling off. "Anybody dying, old chap?" he would ask,with a curl of his handsome lip. "Hope you'll get to him intime."
It was while in the runabout, however, in the earlypart of a November afternoon, that the young doctor met his uncleSim. "Hello, Thor!" the latter called. "Where you off to? Waslooking for you."
Thor brought the machine to a standstill. Uncle Simthrew a long, thin leg over his mare's back and was on the ground."Whoa, Delia, whoa! Good old girl!"
He liked to believe that the tall bay was spirited.Standing beside Thor's runabout, he held the reins loosely in hisleft hand, while the right arm was thrown caressingly over Delia'sneck. The outward and visible sign of his eccentricity was in hisdifference from every one else. In a community – one might say acountry – in which each man did his utmost to look like every otherman, the fact that Simeon Masterman was willing to look like no onebut himself was sufficient to prove him, in the language of hisneighbors, "a little off." It was sometimes said that he suggestedDon Quixote – he was so tall, so gaunt, and so eager-eyed – and,except that there was no melancholy in his face, perhaps he did."Got a job for you." The old man's voice was nasal and harshwithout being disagreeable.
Grown sensitive, Thor was on his guard. "Not one ofyour jobs that are given away with a pound of tea?" he said,suspiciously. "I don't know about the pound of tea – but it's givenaway. Giving it away because I can't deal with it myself. Calls forsome one with more ingenuity – so I've told 'em about you."
Thor laughed. "Don't wonder you're willing to giveit up, Uncle Sim." "You'll wonder still less when you've seen thepatient. By the way, it's Fay's wife. 'Member old Fay, don'tyou?"
The young man nodded. "Used to be Grandpa Thorley'sgardener. Has the greenhouses on father's land north of the pond.Some sort of row going on between him and father now. What's shegot?" "It's not what she's got, poor woman; it's what she hasn'tgot. That's what's the matter with her." "I'm afraid it's a varietyof symptom I never heard of." "No; but you'll hear of it soon.Whoa, Delia! Steady! Good girl! If you can treat it you'll be themost distinguished specialist in the country. Whoa, Delia! I'mgiving you the chance to begin."
Thor wondered what was at the back of the oldfellow's mind. There was generally something in what he said if youcould think it out. "Since you've diagnosed the case, Uncle Sim – "he began, craftily. "Can't I give you a tip for the treatment? No,I can't. And it wouldn't do any good if I did, because she won'ttake my medicine." "Perhaps I could make her."
The old man laughed harshly. "You! That's good. Why,you'd be the first to make game of it yourself."
He had his left foot in the stirrup and his rightleg over Delia's back before Thor could formulate another question.As with head thrown back he continued his amused chuckling, therewas about him, in spite of his sixty years, a somethingirresponsible and debonair that would have pleased Franz Hals orSimon de Vos.
Within ten minutes Thor was knocking at the door ofa small house with a mansard roof, situated in what had once beenthe apple-orchard of a farm. All but a sparse half-dozen of thetrees had given place to lines of hothouses, through the glass ofwhich he could see oblongs of vivid green. He was so preoccupiedwith the fact of paying his first visit to his first patient asscarcely to notice that the girl who opened the door was pretty. Healmost ignored her. "How do you do, Miss Fay? I'm Dr. ThorleyMasterman. I believe your mother would like to see me. May I go toher at once?"
He was in the narrow hallway and at the foot of thestairs when she said: "You can go right up. But perhaps I ought totell you that she's not – well, she's not very sick."
He looked at her inquiringly, getting the firstfaint impression of her beauty. "What's the matter, then?" "That'swhat we don't know." After a second's hesitation she added,"Perhaps it's melancholy." Another second passed before she said,"We've had a good deal of trouble."
The tone touched him. Her way of holding her head,rather meekly, rather proudly, sufficiently averted to give him thecurve of the cheek, touched him, too. "What kind of trouble?" "Oh,every kind. But she'll tell you about it herself. It's all she'lltalk about. That's why we can't do anything for her – and I don'tbelieve you can." "I'd better see."
Following her directions given from the foot of thestairs, he entered a barely furnished bedroom of which two sidesleaned inward, to correspond to the mansard grading of the roof.One window looked out on the greenhouses, another toward Thorley'sPond. Beside the former, in a high, upholstered arm-chair, sat atall woman, fully dressed in black, with a patchwork quilt of manycolors across her knees. In spite of gray hair slightly disheveled,and wild gray eyes, she was a handsome woman who on a larger scalemade him think of the girl down-stairs. "How do you do, Mrs. Fay?"he began, feeling the burden of the situation to be on himself."I'm Dr. Thor – " "I know who you are," the woman said,ungraciously. "If you hadn't been a M