At the new year Philip became dresser in the surgical out-patients’ department. The work was of the same character as that which he had just been engaged on, but with the greater directness which surgery has than medicine; and a larger proportion of the patients suffered from those two diseases which a supine public allows, in its prudishness, to be spread broadcast. The assistant-surgeon for whom Philip dressed was called Jacobs.
He was a short, fat man, with an exuberantjoviality , a bald head, and a loud voice; he had a cockney accent, and was generally described by the students as an ‘awful bounder’; but his cleverness, both as a surgeon and as a teacher, caused some of them to overlook this. He had also a considerable facetiousness , which he exercised impartially on the patients and on the students. He took a great pleasure in making his dressers look foolish.
Since they were ignorant, nervous, and could not answer as if he were their equal, this was not very difficult. He enjoyed his afternoons, with the home truths he permitted himself, much more than the students who had to put up with them with a smile. One day a case came up of a boy with a club-foot. His parents wanted to know whether anything could be done. Mr. Jacobs turned to Philip.
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"凯里,这个病人最好由你来看。这个课题你该了解一下。"
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‘You’d better take this case, Carey. It’s a subject you ought to know something about.’
Philip flushed, all the more because the surgeon spoke obviously with a humorous intention, and his brow-beaten dressers laughed obsequiously . It was in point of fact a subject which Philip, since coming to the hospital, had studied with anxious attention. He had read everything in the library which treated of talipes in its various forms. He made the boy take off his boot and stocking.
He was fourteen, with a snub nose, blue eyes, and a freckled face. His father explained that they wanted something done if possible, it was such a hindrance to the kid in earning his living. Philip looked at him curiously . He was a jolly boy, not at all shy, but talkative and with a cheekiness which his father reproved. He was much interested in his foot.
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"要知道,这脚不过样子难看些吧,"他对菲利普说,"可我丝毫不觉得不便。"
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‘It’s only for the looks of the thing, you know,’ he said to Philip. ‘I don’t find it no trouble.’
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"住嘴,厄尼,"他父亲呵斥道,"你废话说得太多了。"
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‘Be quiet, Ernie,’ said his father. ‘There’s too much gas about you.’
Philip examined the foot and passed his hand slowly over the shapelessness of it. He could not understand why the boy felt none of the humiliation which always oppressed himself. He wondered why he could not take his deformity with that philosophic indifference . Presently Mr. Jacobs came up to him. The boy was sitting on the edge of a couch, the surgeon and Philip stood on each side of him; and in a semi-circle, crowding round, were students. With accustomed brilliancy Jacobs gave a graphic little discourse upon the club-foot: he spoke of its varieties and of the forms which followed upon different anatomical conditions.
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"我想你那只跛足是呈马蹄形的,是不?"他说着,猛然转向菲利普。
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‘I suppose you’ve got talipes equinus?’ he said, turning suddenly to Philip.
Philip felt the eyes of his fellow-students rest on him, and he cursed himself because he could not help blushing. He felt the sweat start up in the palms of his hands. The surgeon spoke with the fluency due to long practice and with the admirableperspicacity which distinguished him. He was tremendously interested in his profession. But Philip did not listen. He was only wishing that the fellow would get done quickly. Suddenly he realised that Jacobs was addressing him.
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"凯里,让你脱一会儿袜子,你不会介意吧?"
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‘You don’t mind taking off your sock for a moment, Carey?’
Philip felt a shudder pass through him. He had an impulse to tell the surgeon to go to hell, but he had not the courage to make a scene. He feared his brutal ridicule . He forced himself to appear indifferent.
He sat down and unlaced his boot. His fingers were trembling and he thought he should never untie the knot. He remembered how they had forced him at school to show his foot, and the misery which had eaten into his soul.
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"他总是把双脚保养得好好的,洗得干干净净的,是不?"雅各布操着刺耳的伦敦土音说。
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‘He keeps his feet nice and clean, doesn’t he?’ said Jacobs, in his rasping, cockney voice.
The attendant students giggled . Philip noticed that the boy whom they were examining looked down at his foot with eager curiosity. Jacobs took the foot in his hands and said:
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"是啊,这一点我预料到了。我看你这只脚是动过手术的。我想是小时候动的手术吧?"
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‘Yes, that’s what I thought. I see you’ve had an operation. When you were a child, I suppose?’
He could have killed them all. He thought how jolly it would be to jab a chisel (he didn’t know why that particular instrument came into his mind) into their necks. What beasts men were! He wished he could believe in hell so as to comfort himself with the thought of the horrible tortures which would be theirs. Mr. Jacobs turned his attention to treatment. He talked partly to the boy’s father and partly to the students. Philip put on his sock and laced his boot. At last the surgeon finished. But he seemed to have an afterthought and turned to Philip.
‘You know, I think it might be worth your while to have an operation. Of course I couldn’t give you a normal foot, but I think I can do something. You might think about it, and when you want a holiday you can just come into the hospital for a bit.’
Philip had often asked himself whether anything could be done, but his distaste for any reference to the subject had prevented him from consulting any of the surgeons at the hospital. His reading told him that whatever might have been done when he was a small boy, and then treatment of talipes was not as skilful as in the present day, there was small chance now of any great benefit. Still it would be worth while if an operation made it possible for him to wear a more ordinary boot and to limp less. He remembered how passionately he had prayed for the miracle which his uncle had assured him was possible to omnipotence . He smiled ruefully.
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"那会儿,我真傻!"他暗自思忖着。
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‘I was rather a simple soul in those days,’ he thought.
Towards the end of February it was clear that Cronshaw was growing much worse. He was no longer able to get up. He lay in bed, insisting that the window should be closed always, and refused to see a doctor; he would take little nourishment , but demanded whiskey and cigarettes: Philip knew that he should have neither, but Cronshaw’s argument was unanswerable.
‘I daresay they are killing me. I don’t care. You’ve warned me, you’ve done all that was necessary: I ignore your warning. Give me something to drink and be damned to you.’
Leonard Upjohn blew in two or three times a week, and there was something of the dead leaf in his appearance which made the word exactly descriptive of the manner of his appearance. He was a weedy-looking fellow of five-and-thirty, with long pale hair and a white face; he had the look of a man who lived too little in the open air. He wore a hat like a dissenting minister’s. Philip disliked him for his patronising manner and was bored by his fluent conversation.
Leonard Upjohn liked to hear himself talk. He was not sensitive to the interest of his listeners, which is the first requisite of the good talker; and he never realised that he was telling people what they knew already. With measured words he told Philip what to think of Rodin, Albert Samain, and Caesar Franck. Philip’s charwoman only came in for an hour in the morning, and since Philip was obliged to be at the hospital all day Cronshaw was left much alone. Upjohn told Philip that he thought someone should remain with him, but did not offer to make it possible.
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"想到那位伟大的诗人孤零零地呆在家里,实在叫人担心。喂,他很可能死的时候身边连个人影也没有呢。"
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‘It’s dreadful to think of that great poet alone. Why, he might die without a soul at hand.’
‘I wish you had left him in Soho,’ he said, with a wave of his long, thin hands. ‘There was a touch of romance in that sordidattic . I could even bear it if it were Wapping or Shoreditch, but the respectability of Kennington! What a place for a poet to die!’
Cronshaw was often so ill-humoured that Philip could only keep his temper by remembering all the time that this irritability was a symptom of the disease. Upjohn came sometimes before Philip was in, and then Cronshaw would complain of him bitterly. Upjohn listened with complacency.
He was very sarcastic to Philip, and Philip exercised a good deal of self-control in his dealings with him. But one evening he could not contain himself. He had had a hard day at the hospital and was tired out. Leonard Upjohn came to him, while he was making himself a cup of tea in the kitchen, and said that Cronshaw was complaining of Philip’s insistence that he should have a doctor.
‘Don’t you realise that you’re enjoying a very rare, a very exquisite privilege? You ought to do everything in your power, surely, to show your sense of the greatness of your trust.’
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"这种罕见的、微妙的特权,我可担当不起呀,"菲利普顶了一句。
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‘It’s a rare and exquisite privilege which I can ill afford,’ said Philip.
The poet was lying on his back, reading a book, with a pipe in his mouth. The air was musty; and the room, notwithstanding Philip’s tidying up, had the bedraggled look which seemed to accompany Cronshaw wherever he went. He took off his spectacles as they came in. Philip was in a towering rage.