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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Of Human Bondage
+
+Author: W. Somerset Maugham
+
+Release Date: October, 1995 [eBook #351]
+[Most recently updated: December 5, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OF HUMAN BONDAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Of Human Bondage
+
+by W. Somerset Maugham
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a
+rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a
+room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced
+mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and
+went to the child’s bed.
+
+“Wake up, Philip,” she said.
+
+She pulled down the bed-clothes, took him in her arms, and carried him
+downstairs. He was only half awake.
+
+“Your mother wants you,” she said.
+
+She opened the door of a room on the floor below and took the child
+over to a bed in which a woman was lying. It was his mother. She
+stretched out her arms, and the child nestled by her side. He did not
+ask why he had been awakened. The woman kissed his eyes, and with thin,
+small hands felt the warm body through his white flannel nightgown. She
+pressed him closer to herself.
+
+“Are you sleepy, darling?” she said.
+
+Her voice was so weak that it seemed to come already from a great
+distance. The child did not answer, but smiled comfortably. He was very
+happy in the large, warm bed, with those soft arms about him. He tried
+to make himself smaller still as he cuddled up against his mother, and
+he kissed her sleepily. In a moment he closed his eyes and was fast
+asleep. The doctor came forwards and stood by the bed-side.
+
+“Oh, don’t take him away yet,” she moaned.
+
+The doctor, without answering, looked at her gravely. Knowing she would
+not be allowed to keep the child much longer, the woman kissed him
+again; and she passed her hand down his body till she came to his feet;
+she held the right foot in her hand and felt the five small toes; and
+then slowly passed her hand over the left one. She gave a sob.
+
+“What’s the matter?” said the doctor. “You’re tired.”
+
+She shook her head, unable to speak, and the tears rolled down her
+cheeks. The doctor bent down.
+
+“Let me take him.”
+
+She was too weak to resist his wish, and she gave the child up. The
+doctor handed him back to his nurse.
+
+“You’d better put him back in his own bed.”
+
+“Very well, sir.” The little boy, still sleeping, was taken away. His
+mother sobbed now broken-heartedly.
+
+“What will happen to him, poor child?”
+
+The monthly nurse tried to quiet her, and presently, from exhaustion,
+the crying ceased. The doctor walked to a table on the other side of
+the room, upon which, under a towel, lay the body of a still-born
+child. He lifted the towel and looked. He was hidden from the bed by a
+screen, but the woman guessed what he was doing.
+
+“Was it a girl or a boy?” she whispered to the nurse.
+
+“Another boy.”
+
+The woman did not answer. In a moment the child’s nurse came back. She
+approached the bed.
+
+“Master Philip never woke up,” she said. There was a pause. Then the
+doctor felt his patient’s pulse once more.
+
+“I don’t think there’s anything I can do just now,” he said. “I’ll call
+again after breakfast.”
+
+“I’ll show you out, sir,” said the child’s nurse.
+
+They walked downstairs in silence. In the hall the doctor stopped.
+
+“You’ve sent for Mrs. Carey’s brother-in-law, haven’t you?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“D’you know at what time he’ll be here?”
+
+“No, sir, I’m expecting a telegram.”
+
+“What about the little boy? I should think he’d be better out of the
+way.”
+
+“Miss Watkin said she’d take him, sir.”
+
+“Who’s she?”
+
+“She’s his godmother, sir. D’you think Mrs. Carey will get over it,
+sir?”
+
+The doctor shook his head.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+It was a week later. Philip was sitting on the floor in the
+drawing-room at Miss Watkin’s house in Onslow gardens. He was an only
+child and used to amusing himself. The room was filled with massive
+furniture, and on each of the sofas were three big cushions. There was
+a cushion too in each arm-chair. All these he had taken and, with the
+help of the gilt rout chairs, light and easy to move, had made an
+elaborate cave in which he could hide himself from the Red Indians who
+were lurking behind the curtains. He put his ear to the floor and
+listened to the herd of buffaloes that raced across the prairie.
+Presently, hearing the door open, he held his breath so that he might
+not be discovered; but a violent hand pulled away a chair and the
+cushions fell down.
+
+“You naughty boy, Miss Watkin WILL be cross with you.”
+
+“Hulloa, Emma!” he said.
+
+The nurse bent down and kissed him, then began to shake out the
+cushions, and put them back in their places.
+
+“Am I to come home?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, I’ve come to fetch you.”
+
+“You’ve got a new dress on.”
+
+It was in eighteen-eighty-five, and she wore a bustle. Her gown was of
+black velvet, with tight sleeves and sloping shoulders, and the skirt
+had three large flounces. She wore a black bonnet with velvet strings.
+She hesitated. The question she had expected did not come, and so she
+could not give the answer she had prepared.
+
+“Aren’t you going to ask how your mamma is?” she said at length.
+
+“Oh, I forgot. How is mamma?”
+
+Now she was ready.
+
+“Your mamma is quite well and happy.”
+
+“Oh, I am glad.”
+
+“Your mamma’s gone away. You won’t ever see her any more.” Philip did
+not know what she meant.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Your mamma’s in heaven.”
+
+She began to cry, and Philip, though he did not quite understand, cried
+too. Emma was a tall, big-boned woman, with fair hair and large
+features. She came from Devonshire and, notwithstanding her many years
+of service in London, had never lost the breadth of her accent. Her
+tears increased her emotion, and she pressed the little boy to her
+heart. She felt vaguely the pity of that child deprived of the only
+love in the world that is quite unselfish. It seemed dreadful that he
+must be handed over to strangers. But in a little while she pulled
+herself together.
+
+“Your Uncle William is waiting in to see you,” she said. “Go and say
+good-bye to Miss Watkin, and we’ll go home.”
+
+“I don’t want to say good-bye,” he answered, instinctively anxious to
+hide his tears.
+
+“Very well, run upstairs and get your hat.”
+
+He fetched it, and when he came down Emma was waiting for him in the
+hall. He heard the sound of voices in the study behind the dining-room.
+He paused. He knew that Miss Watkin and her sister were talking to
+friends, and it seemed to him—he was nine years old—that if he went in
+they would be sorry for him.
+
+“I think I’ll go and say good-bye to Miss Watkin.”
+
+“I think you’d better,” said Emma.
+
+“Go in and tell them I’m coming,” he said.
+
+He wished to make the most of his opportunity. Emma knocked at the door
+and walked in. He heard her speak.
+
+“Master Philip wants to say good-bye to you, miss.”
+
+There was a sudden hush of the conversation, and Philip limped in.
+Henrietta Watkin was a stout woman, with a red face and dyed hair. In
+those days to dye the hair excited comment, and Philip had heard much
+gossip at home when his godmother’s changed colour. She lived with an
+elder sister, who had resigned herself contentedly to old age. Two
+ladies, whom Philip did not know, were calling, and they looked at him
+curiously.
+
+“My poor child,” said Miss Watkin, opening her arms.
+
+She began to cry. Philip understood now why she had not been in to
+luncheon and why she wore a black dress. She could not speak.
+
+“I’ve got to go home,” said Philip, at last.
+
+He disengaged himself from Miss Watkin’s arms, and she kissed him
+again. Then he went to her sister and bade her good-bye too. One of the
+strange ladies asked if she might kiss him, and he gravely gave her
+permission. Though crying, he keenly enjoyed the sensation he was
+causing; he would have been glad to stay a little longer to be made
+much of, but felt they expected him to go, so he said that Emma was
+waiting for him. He went out of the room. Emma had gone downstairs to
+speak with a friend in the basement, and he waited for her on the
+landing. He heard Henrietta Watkin’s voice.
+
+“His mother was my greatest friend. I can’t bear to think that she’s
+dead.”
+
+“You oughtn’t to have gone to the funeral, Henrietta,” said her sister.
+“I knew it would upset you.”
+
+Then one of the strangers spoke.
+
+“Poor little boy, it’s dreadful to think of him quite alone in the
+world. I see he limps.”
+
+“Yes, he’s got a club-foot. It was such a grief to his mother.”
+
+Then Emma came back. They called a hansom, and she told the driver
+where to go.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+When they reached the house Mrs. Carey had died in—it was in a dreary,
+respectable street between Notting Hill Gate and High Street,
+Kensington—Emma led Philip into the drawing-room. His uncle was writing
+letters of thanks for the wreaths which had been sent. One of them,
+which had arrived too late for the funeral, lay in its cardboard box on
+the hall-table.
+
+“Here’s Master Philip,” said Emma.
+
+Mr. Carey stood up slowly and shook hands with the little boy. Then on
+second thoughts he bent down and kissed his forehead. He was a man of
+somewhat less than average height, inclined to corpulence, with his
+hair, worn long, arranged over the scalp so as to conceal his baldness.
+He was clean-shaven. His features were regular, and it was possible to
+imagine that in his youth he had been good-looking. On his watch-chain
+he wore a gold cross.
+
+“You’re going to live with me now, Philip,” said Mr. Carey. “Shall you
+like that?”
+
+Two years before Philip had been sent down to stay at the vicarage
+after an attack of chicken-pox; but there remained with him a
+recollection of an attic and a large garden rather than of his uncle
+and aunt.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You must look upon me and your Aunt Louisa as your father and mother.”
+
+The child’s mouth trembled a little, he reddened, but did not answer.
+
+“Your dear mother left you in my charge.”
+
+Mr. Carey had no great ease in expressing himself. When the news came
+that his sister-in-law was dying, he set off at once for London, but on
+the way thought of nothing but the disturbance in his life that would
+be caused if her death forced him to undertake the care of her son. He
+was well over fifty, and his wife, to whom he had been married for
+thirty years, was childless; he did not look forward with any pleasure
+to the presence of a small boy who might be noisy and rough. He had
+never much liked his sister-in-law.
+
+“I’m going to take you down to Blackstable tomorrow,” he said.
+
+“With Emma?”
+
+The child put his hand in hers, and she pressed it.
+
+“I’m afraid Emma must go away,” said Mr. Carey.
+
+“But I want Emma to come with me.”
+
+Philip began to cry, and the nurse could not help crying too. Mr. Carey
+looked at them helplessly.
+
+“I think you’d better leave me alone with Master Philip for a moment.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+Though Philip clung to her, she released herself gently. Mr. Carey took
+the boy on his knee and put his arm round him.
+
+“You mustn’t cry,” he said. “You’re too old to have a nurse now. We
+must see about sending you to school.”
+
+“I want Emma to come with me,” the child repeated.
+
+“It costs too much money, Philip. Your father didn’t leave very much,
+and I don’t know what’s become of it. You must look at every penny you
+spend.”
+
+Mr. Carey had called the day before on the family solicitor. Philip’s
+father was a surgeon in good practice, and his hospital appointments
+suggested an established position; so that it was a surprise on his
+sudden death from blood-poisoning to find that he had left his widow
+little more than his life insurance and what could be got for the lease
+of their house in Bruton Street. This was six months ago; and Mrs.
+Carey, already in delicate health, finding herself with child, had lost
+her head and accepted for the lease the first offer that was made. She
+stored her furniture, and, at a rent which the parson thought
+outrageous, took a furnished house for a year, so that she might suffer
+from no inconvenience till her child was born. But she had never been
+used to the management of money, and was unable to adapt her
+expenditure to her altered circumstances. The little she had slipped
+through her fingers in one way and another, so that now, when all
+expenses were paid, not much more than two thousand pounds remained to
+support the boy till he was able to earn his own living. It was
+impossible to explain all this to Philip and he was sobbing still.
+
+“You’d better go to Emma,” Mr. Carey said, feeling that she could
+console the child better than anyone.
+
+Without a word Philip slipped off his uncle’s knee, but Mr. Carey
+stopped him.
+
+“We must go tomorrow, because on Saturday I’ve got to prepare my
+sermon, and you must tell Emma to get your things ready today. You can
+bring all your toys. And if you want anything to remember your father
+and mother by you can take one thing for each of them. Everything else
+is going to be sold.”
+
+The boy slipped out of the room. Mr. Carey was unused to work, and he
+turned to his correspondence with resentment. On one side of the desk
+was a bundle of bills, and these filled him with irritation. One
+especially seemed preposterous. Immediately after Mrs. Carey’s death
+Emma had ordered from the florist masses of white flowers for the room
+in which the dead woman lay. It was sheer waste of money. Emma took far
+too much upon herself. Even if there had been no financial necessity,
+he would have dismissed her.
+
+But Philip went to her, and hid his face in her bosom, and wept as
+though his heart would break. And she, feeling that he was almost her
+own son—she had taken him when he was a month old—consoled him with
+soft words. She promised that she would come and see him sometimes, and
+that she would never forget him; and she told him about the country he
+was going to and about her own home in Devonshire—her father kept a
+turnpike on the high-road that led to Exeter, and there were pigs in
+the sty, and there was a cow, and the cow had just had a calf—till
+Philip forgot his tears and grew excited at the thought of his
+approaching journey. Presently she put him down, for there was much to
+be done, and he helped her to lay out his clothes on the bed. She sent
+him into the nursery to gather up his toys, and in a little while he
+was playing happily.
+
+But at last he grew tired of being alone and went back to the bed-room,
+in which Emma was now putting his things into a big tin box; he
+remembered then that his uncle had said he might take something to
+remember his father and mother by. He told Emma and asked her what he
+should take.
+
+“You’d better go into the drawing-room and see what you fancy.”
+
+“Uncle William’s there.”
+
+“Never mind that. They’re your own things now.”
+
+Philip went downstairs slowly and found the door open. Mr. Carey had
+left the room. Philip walked slowly round. They had been in the house
+so short a time that there was little in it that had a particular
+interest to him. It was a stranger’s room, and Philip saw nothing that
+struck his fancy. But he knew which were his mother’s things and which
+belonged to the landlord, and presently fixed on a little clock that he
+had once heard his mother say she liked. With this he walked again
+rather disconsolately upstairs. Outside the door of his mother’s
+bed-room he stopped and listened. Though no one had told him not to go
+in, he had a feeling that it would be wrong to do so; he was a little
+frightened, and his heart beat uncomfortably; but at the same time
+something impelled him to turn the handle. He turned it very gently, as
+if to prevent anyone within from hearing, and then slowly pushed the
+door open. He stood on the threshold for a moment before he had the
+courage to enter. He was not frightened now, but it seemed strange. He
+closed the door behind him. The blinds were drawn, and the room, in the
+cold light of a January afternoon, was dark. On the dressing-table were
+Mrs. Carey’s brushes and the hand mirror. In a little tray were
+hairpins. There was a photograph of himself on the chimney-piece and
+one of his father. He had often been in the room when his mother was
+not in it, but now it seemed different. There was something curious in
+the look of the chairs. The bed was made as though someone were going
+to sleep in it that night, and in a case on the pillow was a
+night-dress.
+
+Philip opened a large cupboard filled with dresses and, stepping in,
+took as many of them as he could in his arms and buried his face in
+them. They smelt of the scent his mother used. Then he pulled open the
+drawers, filled with his mother’s things, and looked at them: there
+were lavender bags among the linen, and their scent was fresh and
+pleasant. The strangeness of the room left it, and it seemed to him
+that his mother had just gone out for a walk. She would be in presently
+and would come upstairs to have nursery tea with him. And he seemed to
+feel her kiss on his lips.
+
+It was not true that he would never see her again. It was not true
+simply because it was impossible. He climbed up on the bed and put his
+head on the pillow. He lay there quite still.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Philip parted from Emma with tears, but the journey to Blackstable
+amused him, and, when they arrived, he was resigned and cheerful.
+Blackstable was sixty miles from London. Giving their luggage to a
+porter, Mr. Carey set out to walk with Philip to the vicarage; it took
+them little more than five minutes, and, when they reached it, Philip
+suddenly remembered the gate. It was red and five-barred: it swung both
+ways on easy hinges; and it was possible, though forbidden, to swing
+backwards and forwards on it. They walked through the garden to the
+front-door. This was only used by visitors and on Sundays, and on
+special occasions, as when the Vicar went up to London or came back.
+The traffic of the house took place through a side-door, and there was
+a back door as well for the gardener and for beggars and tramps. It was
+a fairly large house of yellow brick, with a red roof, built about five
+and twenty years before in an ecclesiastical style. The front-door was
+like a church porch, and the drawing-room windows were gothic.
+
+Mrs. Carey, knowing by what train they were coming, waited in the
+drawing-room and listened for the click of the gate. When she heard it
+she went to the door.
+
+“There’s Aunt Louisa,” said Mr. Carey, when he saw her. “Run and give
+her a kiss.”
+
+Philip started to run, awkwardly, trailing his club-foot, and then
+stopped. Mrs. Carey was a little, shrivelled woman of the same age as
+her husband, with a face extraordinarily filled with deep wrinkles, and
+pale blue eyes. Her gray hair was arranged in ringlets according to the
+fashion of her youth. She wore a black dress, and her only ornament was
+a gold chain, from which hung a cross. She had a shy manner and a
+gentle voice.
+
+“Did you walk, William?” she said, almost reproachfully, as she kissed
+her husband.
+
+“I didn’t think of it,” he answered, with a glance at his nephew.
+
+“It didn’t hurt you to walk, Philip, did it?” she asked the child.
+
+“No. I always walk.”
+
+He was a little surprised at their conversation. Aunt Louisa told him
+to come in, and they entered the hall. It was paved with red and yellow
+tiles, on which alternately were a Greek Cross and the Lamb of God. An
+imposing staircase led out of the hall. It was of polished pine, with a
+peculiar smell, and had been put in because fortunately, when the
+church was reseated, enough wood remained over. The balusters were
+decorated with emblems of the Four Evangelists.
+
+“I’ve had the stove lighted as I thought you’d be cold after your
+journey,” said Mrs. Carey.
+
+It was a large black stove that stood in the hall and was only lighted
+if the weather was very bad and the Vicar had a cold. It was not
+lighted if Mrs. Carey had a cold. Coal was expensive. Besides, Mary
+Ann, the maid, didn’t like fires all over the place. If they wanted all
+them fires they must keep a second girl. In the winter Mr. and Mrs.
+Carey lived in the dining-room so that one fire should do, and in the
+summer they could not get out of the habit, so the drawing-room was
+used only by Mr. Carey on Sunday afternoons for his nap. But every
+Saturday he had a fire in the study so that he could write his sermon.
+
+Aunt Louisa took Philip upstairs and showed him into a tiny bed-room
+that looked out on the drive. Immediately in front of the window was a
+large tree, which Philip remembered now because the branches were so
+low that it was possible to climb quite high up it.
+
+“A small room for a small boy,” said Mrs. Carey. “You won’t be
+frightened at sleeping alone?”
+
+“Oh, no.”
+
+On his first visit to the vicarage he had come with his nurse, and Mrs.
+Carey had had little to do with him. She looked at him now with some
+uncertainty.
+
+“Can you wash your own hands, or shall I wash them for you?”
+
+“I can wash myself,” he answered firmly.
+
+“Well, I shall look at them when you come down to tea,” said Mrs.
+Carey.
+
+She knew nothing about children. After it was settled that Philip
+should come down to Blackstable, Mrs. Carey had thought much how she
+should treat him; she was anxious to do her duty; but now he was there
+she found herself just as shy of him as he was of her. She hoped he
+would not be noisy and rough, because her husband did not like rough
+and noisy boys. Mrs. Carey made an excuse to leave Philip alone, but in
+a moment came back and knocked at the door; she asked him, without
+coming in, if he could pour out the water himself. Then she went
+downstairs and rang the bell for tea.
+
+The dining-room, large and well-proportioned, had windows on two sides
+of it, with heavy curtains of red rep; there was a big table in the
+middle; and at one end an imposing mahogany sideboard with a
+looking-glass in it. In one corner stood a harmonium. On each side of
+the fireplace were chairs covered in stamped leather, each with an
+antimacassar; one had arms and was called the husband, and the other
+had none and was called the wife. Mrs. Carey never sat in the
+arm-chair: she said she preferred a chair that was not too comfortable;
+there was always a lot to do, and if her chair had had arms she might
+not be so ready to leave it.
+
+Mr. Carey was making up the fire when Philip came in, and he pointed
+out to his nephew that there were two pokers. One was large and bright
+and polished and unused, and was called the Vicar; and the other, which
+was much smaller and had evidently passed through many fires, was
+called the Curate.
+
+“What are we waiting for?” said Mr. Carey.
+
+“I told Mary Ann to make you an egg. I thought you’d be hungry after
+your journey.”
+
+Mrs. Carey thought the journey from London to Blackstable very tiring.
+She seldom travelled herself, for the living was only three hundred a
+year, and, when her husband wanted a holiday, since there was not money
+for two, he went by himself. He was very fond of Church Congresses and
+usually managed to go up to London once a year; and once he had been to
+Paris for the exhibition, and two or three times to Switzerland. Mary
+Ann brought in the egg, and they sat down. The chair was much too low
+for Philip, and for a moment neither Mr. Carey nor his wife knew what
+to do.
+
+“I’ll put some books under him,” said Mary Ann.
+
+She took from the top of the harmonium the large Bible and the
+prayer-book from which the Vicar was accustomed to read prayers, and
+put them on Philip’s chair.
+
+“Oh, William, he can’t sit on the Bible,” said Mrs. Carey, in a shocked
+tone. “Couldn’t you get him some books out of the study?”
+
+Mr. Carey considered the question for an instant.
+
+“I don’t think it matters this once if you put the prayer-book on the
+top, Mary Ann,” he said. “The book of Common Prayer is the composition
+of men like ourselves. It has no claim to divine authorship.”
+
+“I hadn’t thought of that, William,” said Aunt Louisa.
+
+Philip perched himself on the books, and the Vicar, having said grace,
+cut the top off his egg.
+
+“There,” he said, handing it to Philip, “you can eat my top if you
+like.”
+
+Philip would have liked an egg to himself, but he was not offered one,
+so took what he could.
+
+“How have the chickens been laying since I went away?” asked the Vicar.
+
+“Oh, they’ve been dreadful, only one or two a day.”
+
+“How did you like that top, Philip?” asked his uncle.
+
+“Very much, thank you.”
+
+“You shall have another one on Sunday afternoon.”
+
+Mr. Carey always had a boiled egg at tea on Sunday, so that he might be
+fortified for the evening service.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Philip came gradually to know the people he was to live with, and by
+fragments of conversation, some of it not meant for his ears, learned a
+good deal both about himself and about his dead parents. Philip’s
+father had been much younger than the Vicar of Blackstable. After a
+brilliant career at St. Luke’s Hospital he was put on the staff, and
+presently began to earn money in considerable sums. He spent it freely.
+When the parson set about restoring his church and asked his brother
+for a subscription, he was surprised by receiving a couple of hundred
+pounds: Mr. Carey, thrifty by inclination and economical by necessity,
+accepted it with mingled feelings; he was envious of his brother
+because he could afford to give so much, pleased for the sake of his
+church, and vaguely irritated by a generosity which seemed almost
+ostentatious. Then Henry Carey married a patient, a beautiful girl but
+penniless, an orphan with no near relations, but of good family; and
+there was an array of fine friends at the wedding. The parson, on his
+visits to her when he came to London, held himself with reserve. He
+felt shy with her and in his heart he resented her great beauty: she
+dressed more magnificently than became the wife of a hardworking
+surgeon; and the charming furniture of her house, the flowers among
+which she lived even in winter, suggested an extravagance which he
+deplored. He heard her talk of entertainments she was going to; and, as
+he told his wife on getting home again, it was impossible to accept
+hospitality without making some return. He had seen grapes in the
+dining-room that must have cost at least eight shillings a pound; and
+at luncheon he had been given asparagus two months before it was ready
+in the vicarage garden. Now all he had anticipated was come to pass:
+the Vicar felt the satisfaction of the prophet who saw fire and
+brimstone consume the city which would not mend its way to his warning.
+Poor Philip was practically penniless, and what was the good of his
+mother’s fine friends now? He heard that his father’s extravagance was
+really criminal, and it was a mercy that Providence had seen fit to
+take his dear mother to itself: she had no more idea of money than a
+child.
+
+When Philip had been a week at Blackstable an incident happened which
+seemed to irritate his uncle very much. One morning he found on the
+breakfast table a small packet which had been sent on by post from the
+late Mrs. Carey’s house in London. It was addressed to her. When the
+parson opened it he found a dozen photographs of Mrs. Carey. They
+showed the head and shoulders only, and her hair was more plainly done
+than usual, low on the forehead, which gave her an unusual look; the
+face was thin and worn, but no illness could impair the beauty of her
+features. There was in the large dark eyes a sadness which Philip did
+not remember. The first sight of the dead woman gave Mr. Carey a little
+shock, but this was quickly followed by perplexity. The photographs
+seemed quite recent, and he could not imagine who had ordered them.
+
+“D’you know anything about these, Philip?” he asked.
+
+“I remember mamma said she’d been taken,” he answered. “Miss Watkin
+scolded her…. She said: I wanted the boy to have something to remember
+me by when he grows up.”
+
+Mr. Carey looked at Philip for an instant. The child spoke in a clear
+treble. He recalled the words, but they meant nothing to him.
+
+“You’d better take one of the photographs and keep it in your room,”
+said Mr. Carey. “I’ll put the others away.”
+
+He sent one to Miss Watkin, and she wrote and explained how they came
+to be taken.
+
+One day Mrs. Carey was lying in bed, but she was feeling a little
+better than usual, and the doctor in the morning had seemed hopeful;
+Emma had taken the child out, and the maids were downstairs in the
+basement: suddenly Mrs. Carey felt desperately alone in the world. A
+great fear seized her that she would not recover from the confinement
+which she was expecting in a fortnight. Her son was nine years old. How
+could he be expected to remember her? She could not bear to think that
+he would grow up and forget, forget her utterly; and she had loved him
+so passionately, because he was weakly and deformed, and because he was
+her child. She had no photographs of herself taken since her marriage,
+and that was ten years before. She wanted her son to know what she
+looked like at the end. He could not forget her then, not forget
+utterly. She knew that if she called her maid and told her she wanted
+to get up, the maid would prevent her, and perhaps send for the doctor,
+and she had not the strength now to struggle or argue. She got out of
+bed and began to dress herself. She had been on her back so long that
+her legs gave way beneath her, and then the soles of her feet tingled
+so that she could hardly bear to put them to the ground. But she went
+on. She was unused to doing her own hair and, when she raised her arms
+and began to brush it, she felt faint. She could never do it as her
+maid did. It was beautiful hair, very fine, and of a deep rich gold.
+Her eyebrows were straight and dark. She put on a black skirt, but
+chose the bodice of the evening dress which she liked best: it was of a
+white damask which was fashionable in those days. She looked at herself
+in the glass. Her face was very pale, but her skin was clear: she had
+never had much colour, and this had always made the redness of her
+beautiful mouth emphatic. She could not restrain a sob. But she could
+not afford to be sorry for herself; she was feeling already desperately
+tired; and she put on the furs which Henry had given her the Christmas
+before—she had been so proud of them and so happy then—and slipped
+downstairs with beating heart. She got safely out of the house and
+drove to a photographer. She paid for a dozen photographs. She was
+obliged to ask for a glass of water in the middle of the sitting; and
+the assistant, seeing she was ill, suggested that she should come
+another day, but she insisted on staying till the end. At last it was
+finished, and she drove back again to the dingy little house in
+Kensington which she hated with all her heart. It was a horrible house
+to die in.
+
+She found the front door open, and when she drove up the maid and Emma
+ran down the steps to help her. They had been frightened when they
+found her room empty. At first they thought she must have gone to Miss
+Watkin, and the cook was sent round. Miss Watkin came back with her and
+was waiting anxiously in the drawing-room. She came downstairs now full
+of anxiety and reproaches; but the exertion had been more than Mrs.
+Carey was fit for, and when the occasion for firmness no longer existed
+she gave way. She fell heavily into Emma’s arms and was carried
+upstairs. She remained unconscious for a time that seemed incredibly
+long to those that watched her, and the doctor, hurriedly sent for, did
+not come. It was next day, when she was a little better, that Miss
+Watkin got some explanation out of her. Philip was playing on the floor
+of his mother’s bed-room, and neither of the ladies paid attention to
+him. He only understood vaguely what they were talking about, and he
+could not have said why those words remained in his memory.
+
+“I wanted the boy to have something to remember me by when he grows
+up.”
+
+“I can’t make out why she ordered a dozen,” said Mr. Carey. “Two would
+have done.”
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+One day was very like another at the vicarage.
+
+Soon after breakfast Mary Ann brought in The Times. Mr. Carey shared it
+with two neighbours. He had it from ten till one, when the gardener
+took it over to Mr. Ellis at the Limes, with whom it remained till
+seven; then it was taken to Miss Brooks at the Manor House, who, since
+she got it late, had the advantage of keeping it. In summer Mrs. Carey,
+when she was making jam, often asked her for a copy to cover the pots
+with. When the Vicar settled down to his paper his wife put on her
+bonnet and went out to do the shopping. Philip accompanied her.
+Blackstable was a fishing village. It consisted of a high street in
+which were the shops, the bank, the doctor’s house, and the houses of
+two or three coalship owners; round the little harbor were shabby
+streets in which lived fishermen and poor people; but since they went
+to chapel they were of no account. When Mrs. Carey passed the
+dissenting ministers in the street she stepped over to the other side
+to avoid meeting them, but if there was not time for this fixed her
+eyes on the pavement. It was a scandal to which the Vicar had never
+resigned himself that there were three chapels in the High Street: he
+could not help feeling that the law should have stepped in to prevent
+their erection. Shopping in Blackstable was not a simple matter; for
+dissent, helped by the fact that the parish church was two miles from
+the town, was very common; and it was necessary to deal only with
+churchgoers; Mrs. Carey knew perfectly that the vicarage custom might
+make all the difference to a tradesman’s faith. There were two butchers
+who went to church, and they would not understand that the Vicar could
+not deal with both of them at once; nor were they satisfied with his
+simple plan of going for six months to one and for six months to the
+other. The butcher who was not sending meat to the vicarage constantly
+threatened not to come to church, and the Vicar was sometimes obliged
+to make a threat: it was very wrong of him not to come to church, but
+if he carried iniquity further and actually went to chapel, then of
+course, excellent as his meat was, Mr. Carey would be forced to leave
+him for ever. Mrs. Carey often stopped at the bank to deliver a message
+to Josiah Graves, the manager, who was choir-master, treasurer, and
+churchwarden. He was a tall, thin man with a sallow face and a long
+nose; his hair was very white, and to Philip he seemed extremely old.
+He kept the parish accounts, arranged the treats for the choir and the
+schools; though there was no organ in the parish church, it was
+generally considered (in Blackstable) that the choir he led was the
+best in Kent; and when there was any ceremony, such as a visit from the
+Bishop for confirmation or from the Rural Dean to preach at the Harvest
+Thanksgiving, he made the necessary preparations. But he had no
+hesitation in doing all manner of things without more than a
+perfunctory consultation with the Vicar, and the Vicar, though always
+ready to be saved trouble, much resented the churchwarden’s managing
+ways. He really seemed to look upon himself as the most important
+person in the parish. Mr. Carey constantly told his wife that if Josiah
+Graves did not take care he would give him a good rap over the knuckles
+one day; but Mrs. Carey advised him to bear with Josiah Graves: he
+meant well, and it was not his fault if he was not quite a gentleman.
+The Vicar, finding his comfort in the practice of a Christian virtue,
+exercised forbearance; but he revenged himself by calling the
+churchwarden Bismarck behind his back.
+
+Once there had been a serious quarrel between the pair, and Mrs. Carey
+still thought of that anxious time with dismay. The Conservative
+candidate had announced his intention of addressing a meeting at
+Blackstable; and Josiah Graves, having arranged that it should take
+place in the Mission Hall, went to Mr. Carey and told him that he hoped
+he would say a few words. It appeared that the candidate had asked
+Josiah Graves to take the chair. This was more than Mr. Carey could put
+up with. He had firm views upon the respect which was due to the cloth,
+and it was ridiculous for a churchwarden to take the chair at a meeting
+when the Vicar was there. He reminded Josiah Graves that parson meant
+person, that is, the vicar was the person of the parish. Josiah Graves
+answered that he was the first to recognise the dignity of the church,
+but this was a matter of politics, and in his turn he reminded the
+Vicar that their Blessed Saviour had enjoined upon them to render unto
+Caesar the things that were Caesar’s. To this Mr. Carey replied that
+the devil could quote scripture to his purpose, himself had sole
+authority over the Mission Hall, and if he were not asked to be
+chairman he would refuse the use of it for a political meeting. Josiah
+Graves told Mr. Carey that he might do as he chose, and for his part he
+thought the Wesleyan Chapel would be an equally suitable place. Then
+Mr. Carey said that if Josiah Graves set foot in what was little better
+than a heathen temple he was not fit to be churchwarden in a Christian
+parish. Josiah Graves thereupon resigned all his offices, and that very
+evening sent to the church for his cassock and surplice. His sister,
+Miss Graves, who kept house for him, gave up her secretaryship of the
+Maternity Club, which provided the pregnant poor with flannel, baby
+linen, coals, and five shillings. Mr. Carey said he was at last master
+in his own house. But soon he found that he was obliged to see to all
+sorts of things that he knew nothing about; and Josiah Graves, after
+the first moment of irritation, discovered that he had lost his chief
+interest in life. Mrs. Carey and Miss Graves were much distressed by
+the quarrel; they met after a discreet exchange of letters, and made up
+their minds to put the matter right: they talked, one to her husband,
+the other to her brother, from morning till night; and since they were
+persuading these gentlemen to do what in their hearts they wanted,
+after three weeks of anxiety a reconciliation was effected. It was to
+both their interests, but they ascribed it to a common love for their
+Redeemer. The meeting was held at the Mission Hall, and the doctor was
+asked to be chairman. Mr. Carey and Josiah Graves both made speeches.
+
+When Mrs. Carey had finished her business with the banker, she
+generally went upstairs to have a little chat with his sister; and
+while the ladies talked of parish matters, the curate or the new bonnet
+of Mrs. Wilson—Mr. Wilson was the richest man in Blackstable, he was
+thought to have at least five hundred a year, and he had married his
+cook—Philip sat demurely in the stiff parlour, used only to receive
+visitors, and busied himself with the restless movements of goldfish in
+a bowl. The windows were never opened except to air the room for a few
+minutes in the morning, and it had a stuffy smell which seemed to
+Philip to have a mysterious connection with banking.
+
+Then Mrs. Carey remembered that she had to go to the grocer, and they
+continued their way. When the shopping was done they often went down a
+side street of little houses, mostly of wood, in which fishermen dwelt
+(and here and there a fisherman sat on his doorstep mending his nets,
+and nets hung to dry upon the doors), till they came to a small beach,
+shut in on each side by warehouses, but with a view of the sea. Mrs.
+Carey stood for a few minutes and looked at it, it was turbid and
+yellow, [and who knows what thoughts passed through her mind?] while
+Philip searched for flat stones to play ducks and drakes. Then they
+walked slowly back. They looked into the post office to get the right
+time, nodded to Mrs. Wigram the doctor’s wife, who sat at her window
+sewing, and so got home.
+
+Dinner was at one o’clock; and on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday it
+consisted of beef, roast, hashed, and minced, and on Thursday, Friday,
+and Saturday of mutton. On Sunday they ate one of their own chickens.
+In the afternoon Philip did his lessons, He was taught Latin and
+mathematics by his uncle who knew neither, and French and the piano by
+his aunt. Of French she was ignorant, but she knew the piano well
+enough to accompany the old-fashioned songs she had sung for thirty
+years. Uncle William used to tell Philip that when he was a curate his
+wife had known twelve songs by heart, which she could sing at a
+moment’s notice whenever she was asked. She often sang still when there
+was a tea-party at the vicarage. There were few people whom the Careys
+cared to ask there, and their parties consisted always of the curate,
+Josiah Graves with his sister, Dr. Wigram and his wife. After tea Miss
+Graves played one or two of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, and Mrs.
+Carey sang When the Swallows Homeward Fly, or Trot, Trot, My Pony.
+
+But the Careys did not give tea-parties often; the preparations upset
+them, and when their guests were gone they felt themselves exhausted.
+They preferred to have tea by themselves, and after tea they played
+backgammon. Mrs. Carey arranged that her husband should win, because he
+did not like losing. They had cold supper at eight. It was a scrappy
+meal because Mary Ann resented getting anything ready after tea, and
+Mrs. Carey helped to clear away. Mrs. Carey seldom ate more than bread
+and butter, with a little stewed fruit to follow, but the Vicar had a
+slice of cold meat. Immediately after supper Mrs. Carey rang the bell
+for prayers, and then Philip went to bed. He rebelled against being
+undressed by Mary Ann and after a while succeeded in establishing his
+right to dress and undress himself. At nine o’clock Mary Ann brought in
+the eggs and the plate. Mrs. Carey wrote the date on each egg and put
+the number down in a book. She then took the plate-basket on her arm
+and went upstairs. Mr. Carey continued to read one of his old books,
+but as the clock struck ten he got up, put out the lamps, and followed
+his wife to bed.
+
+When Philip arrived there was some difficulty in deciding on which
+evening he should have his bath. It was never easy to get plenty of hot
+water, since the kitchen boiler did not work, and it was impossible for
+two persons to have a bath on the same day. The only man who had a
+bathroom in Blackstable was Mr. Wilson, and it was thought ostentatious
+of him. Mary Ann had her bath in the kitchen on Monday night, because
+she liked to begin the week clean. Uncle William could not have his on
+Saturday, because he had a heavy day before him and he was always a
+little tired after a bath, so he had it on Friday. Mrs. Carey had hers
+on Thursday for the same reason. It looked as though Saturday were
+naturally indicated for Philip, but Mary Ann said she couldn’t keep the
+fire up on Saturday night: what with all the cooking on Sunday, having
+to make pastry and she didn’t know what all, she did not feel up to
+giving the boy his bath on Saturday night; and it was quite clear that
+he could not bath himself. Mrs. Carey was shy about bathing a boy, and
+of course the Vicar had his sermon. But the Vicar insisted that Philip
+should be clean and sweet for the lord’s Day. Mary Ann said she would
+rather go than be put upon—and after eighteen years she didn’t expect
+to have more work given her, and they might show some consideration—and
+Philip said he didn’t want anyone to bath him, but could very well bath
+himself. This settled it. Mary Ann said she was quite sure he wouldn’t
+bath himself properly, and rather than he should go dirty—and not
+because he was going into the presence of the Lord, but because she
+couldn’t abide a boy who wasn’t properly washed—she’d work herself to
+the bone even if it was Saturday night.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Sunday was a day crowded with incident. Mr. Carey was accustomed to say
+that he was the only man in his parish who worked seven days a week.
+
+The household got up half an hour earlier than usual. No lying abed for
+a poor parson on the day of rest, Mr. Carey remarked as Mary Ann
+knocked at the door punctually at eight. It took Mrs. Carey longer to
+dress, and she got down to breakfast at nine, a little breathless, only
+just before her husband. Mr. Carey’s boots stood in front of the fire
+to warm. Prayers were longer than usual, and the breakfast more
+substantial. After breakfast the Vicar cut thin slices of bread for the
+communion, and Philip was privileged to cut off the crust. He was sent
+to the study to fetch a marble paperweight, with which Mr. Carey
+pressed the bread till it was thin and pulpy, and then it was cut into
+small squares. The amount was regulated by the weather. On a very bad
+day few people came to church, and on a very fine one, though many
+came, few stayed for communion. There were most when it was dry enough
+to make the walk to church pleasant, but not so fine that people wanted
+to hurry away.
+
+Then Mrs. Carey brought the communion plate out of the safe, which
+stood in the pantry, and the Vicar polished it with a chamois leather.
+At ten the fly drove up, and Mr. Carey got into his boots. Mrs. Carey
+took several minutes to put on her bonnet, during which the Vicar, in a
+voluminous cloak, stood in the hall with just such an expression on his
+face as would have become an early Christian about to be led into the
+arena. It was extraordinary that after thirty years of marriage his
+wife could not be ready in time on Sunday morning. At last she came, in
+black satin; the Vicar did not like colours in a clergyman’s wife at
+any time, but on Sundays he was determined that she should wear black;
+now and then, in conspiracy with Miss Graves, she ventured a white
+feather or a pink rose in her bonnet, but the Vicar insisted that it
+should disappear; he said he would not go to church with the scarlet
+woman: Mrs. Carey sighed as a woman but obeyed as a wife. They were
+about to step into the carriage when the Vicar remembered that no one
+had given him his egg. They knew that he must have an egg for his
+voice, there were two women in the house, and no one had the least
+regard for his comfort. Mrs. Carey scolded Mary Ann, and Mary Ann
+answered that she could not think of everything. She hurried away to
+fetch an egg, and Mrs. Carey beat it up in a glass of sherry. The Vicar
+swallowed it at a gulp. The communion plate was stowed in the carriage,
+and they set off.
+
+The fly came from The Red Lion and had a peculiar smell of stale straw.
+They drove with both windows closed so that the Vicar should not catch
+cold. The sexton was waiting at the porch to take the communion plate,
+and while the Vicar went to the vestry Mrs. Carey and Philip settled
+themselves in the vicarage pew. Mrs. Carey placed in front of her the
+sixpenny bit she was accustomed to put in the plate, and gave Philip
+threepence for the same purpose. The church filled up gradually and the
+service began.
+
+Philip grew bored during the sermon, but if he fidgetted Mrs. Carey put
+a gentle hand on his arm and looked at him reproachfully. He regained
+interest when the final hymn was sung and Mr. Graves passed round with
+the plate.
+
+When everyone had gone Mrs. Carey went into Miss Graves’ pew to have a
+few words with her while they were waiting for the gentlemen, and
+Philip went to the vestry. His uncle, the curate, and Mr. Graves were
+still in their surplices. Mr. Carey gave him the remains of the
+consecrated bread and told him he might eat it. He had been accustomed
+to eat it himself, as it seemed blasphemous to throw it away, but
+Philip’s keen appetite relieved him from the duty. Then they counted
+the money. It consisted of pennies, sixpences and threepenny bits.
+There were always two single shillings, one put in the plate by the
+Vicar and the other by Mr. Graves; and sometimes there was a florin.
+Mr. Graves told the Vicar who had given this. It was always a stranger
+to Blackstable, and Mr. Carey wondered who he was. But Miss Graves had
+observed the rash act and was able to tell Mrs. Carey that the stranger
+came from London, was married and had children. During the drive home
+Mrs. Carey passed the information on, and the Vicar made up his mind to
+call on him and ask for a subscription to the Additional Curates
+Society. Mr. Carey asked if Philip had behaved properly; and Mrs. Carey
+remarked that Mrs. Wigram had a new mantle, Mr. Cox was not in church,
+and somebody thought that Miss Phillips was engaged. When they reached
+the vicarage they all felt that they deserved a substantial dinner.
+
+When this was over Mrs. Carey went to her room to rest, and Mr. Carey
+lay down on the sofa in the drawing-room for forty winks.
+
+They had tea at five, and the Vicar ate an egg to support himself for
+evensong. Mrs. Carey did not go to this so that Mary Ann might, but she
+read the service through and the hymns. Mr. Carey walked to church in
+the evening, and Philip limped along by his side. The walk through the
+darkness along the country road strangely impressed him, and the church
+with all its lights in the distance, coming gradually nearer, seemed
+very friendly. At first he was shy with his uncle, but little by little
+grew used to him, and he would slip his hand in his uncle’s and walk
+more easily for the feeling of protection.
+
+They had supper when they got home. Mr. Carey’s slippers were waiting
+for him on a footstool in front of the fire and by their side Philip’s,
+one the shoe of a small boy, the other misshapen and odd. He was
+dreadfully tired when he went up to bed, and he did not resist when
+Mary Ann undressed him. She kissed him after she tucked him up, and he
+began to love her.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Philip had led always the solitary life of an only child, and his
+loneliness at the vicarage was no greater than it had been when his
+mother lived. He made friends with Mary Ann. She was a chubby little
+person of thirty-five, the daughter of a fisherman, and had come to the
+vicarage at eighteen; it was her first place and she had no intention
+of leaving it; but she held a possible marriage as a rod over the timid
+heads of her master and mistress. Her father and mother lived in a
+little house off Harbour Street, and she went to see them on her
+evenings out. Her stories of the sea touched Philip’s imagination, and
+the narrow alleys round the harbour grew rich with the romance which
+his young fancy lent them. One evening he asked whether he might go
+home with her; but his aunt was afraid that he might catch something,
+and his uncle said that evil communications corrupted good manners. He
+disliked the fisher folk, who were rough, uncouth, and went to chapel.
+But Philip was more comfortable in the kitchen than in the dining-room,
+and, whenever he could, he took his toys and played there. His aunt was
+not sorry. She did not like disorder, and though she recognised that
+boys must be expected to be untidy she preferred that he should make a
+mess in the kitchen. If he fidgeted his uncle was apt to grow restless
+and say it was high time he went to school. Mrs. Carey thought Philip
+very young for this, and her heart went out to the motherless child;
+but her attempts to gain his affection were awkward, and the boy,
+feeling shy, received her demonstrations with so much sullenness that
+she was mortified. Sometimes she heard his shrill voice raised in
+laughter in the kitchen, but when she went in, he grew suddenly silent,
+and he flushed darkly when Mary Ann explained the joke. Mrs. Carey
+could not see anything amusing in what she heard, and she smiled with
+constraint.
+
+“He seems happier with Mary Ann than with us, William,” she said, when
+she returned to her sewing.
+
+“One can see he’s been very badly brought up. He wants licking into
+shape.”
+
+On the second Sunday after Philip arrived an unlucky incident occurred.
+Mr. Carey had retired as usual after dinner for a little snooze in the
+drawing-room, but he was in an irritable mood and could not sleep.
+Josiah Graves that morning had objected strongly to some candlesticks
+with which the Vicar had adorned the altar. He had bought them
+second-hand in Tercanbury, and he thought they looked very well. But
+Josiah Graves said they were popish. This was a taunt that always
+aroused the Vicar. He had been at Oxford during the movement which
+ended in the secession from the Established Church of Edward Manning,
+and he felt a certain sympathy for the Church of Rome. He would
+willingly have made the service more ornate than had been usual in the
+low-church parish of Blackstable, and in his secret soul he yearned for
+processions and lighted candles. He drew the line at incense. He hated
+the word protestant. He called himself a Catholic. He was accustomed to
+say that Papists required an epithet, they were Roman Catholic; but the
+Church of England was Catholic in the best, the fullest, and the
+noblest sense of the term. He was pleased to think that his shaven face
+gave him the look of a priest, and in his youth he had possessed an
+ascetic air which added to the impression. He often related that on one
+of his holidays in Boulogne, one of those holidays upon which his wife
+for economy’s sake did not accompany him, when he was sitting in a
+church, the cure had come up to him and invited him to preach a sermon.
+He dismissed his curates when they married, having decided views on the
+celibacy of the unbeneficed clergy. But when at an election the
+Liberals had written on his garden fence in large blue letters: This
+way to Rome, he had been very angry, and threatened to prosecute the
+leaders of the Liberal party in Blackstable. He made up his mind now
+that nothing Josiah Graves said would induce him to remove the
+candlesticks from the altar, and he muttered Bismarck to himself once
+or twice irritably.
+
+Suddenly he heard an unexpected noise. He pulled the handkerchief off
+his face, got up from the sofa on which he was lying, and went into the
+dining-room. Philip was seated on the table with all his bricks around
+him. He had built a monstrous castle, and some defect in the foundation
+had just brought the structure down in noisy ruin.
+
+“What are you doing with those bricks, Philip? You know you’re not
+allowed to play games on Sunday.”
+
+Philip stared at him for a moment with frightened eyes, and, as his
+habit was, flushed deeply.
+
+“I always used to play at home,” he answered.
+
+“I’m sure your dear mamma never allowed you to do such a wicked thing
+as that.”
+
+Philip did not know it was wicked; but if it was, he did not wish it to
+be supposed that his mother had consented to it. He hung his head and
+did not answer.
+
+“Don’t you know it’s very, very wicked to play on Sunday? What d’you
+suppose it’s called the day of rest for? You’re going to church
+tonight, and how can you face your Maker when you’ve been breaking one
+of His laws in the afternoon?”
+
+Mr. Carey told him to put the bricks away at once, and stood over him
+while Philip did so.
+
+“You’re a very naughty boy,” he repeated. “Think of the grief you’re
+causing your poor mother in heaven.”
+
+Philip felt inclined to cry, but he had an instinctive disinclination
+to letting other people see his tears, and he clenched his teeth to
+prevent the sobs from escaping. Mr. Carey sat down in his arm-chair and
+began to turn over the pages of a book. Philip stood at the window. The
+vicarage was set back from the highroad to Tercanbury, and from the
+dining-room one saw a semicircular strip of lawn and then as far as the
+horizon green fields. Sheep were grazing in them. The sky was forlorn
+and gray. Philip felt infinitely unhappy.
+
+Presently Mary Ann came in to lay the tea, and Aunt Louisa descended
+the stairs.
+
+“Have you had a nice little nap, William?” she asked.
+
+“No,” he answered. “Philip made so much noise that I couldn’t sleep a
+wink.”
+
+This was not quite accurate, for he had been kept awake by his own
+thoughts; and Philip, listening sullenly, reflected that he had only
+made a noise once, and there was no reason why his uncle should not
+have slept before or after. When Mrs. Carey asked for an explanation
+the Vicar narrated the facts.
+
+“He hasn’t even said he was sorry,” he finished.
+
+“Oh, Philip, I’m sure you’re sorry,” said Mrs. Carey, anxious that the
+child should not seem wickeder to his uncle than need be.
+
+Philip did not reply. He went on munching his bread and butter. He did
+not know what power it was in him that prevented him from making any
+expression of regret. He felt his ears tingling, he was a little
+inclined to cry, but no word would issue from his lips.
+
+“You needn’t make it worse by sulking,” said Mr. Carey.
+
+Tea was finished in silence. Mrs. Carey looked at Philip
+surreptitiously now and then, but the Vicar elaborately ignored him.
+When Philip saw his uncle go upstairs to get ready for church he went
+into the hall and got his hat and coat, but when the Vicar came
+downstairs and saw him, he said:
+
+“I don’t wish you to go to church tonight, Philip. I don’t think you’re
+in a proper frame of mind to enter the House of God.”
+
+Philip did not say a word. He felt it was a deep humiliation that was
+placed upon him, and his cheeks reddened. He stood silently watching
+his uncle put on his broad hat and his voluminous cloak. Mrs. Carey as
+usual went to the door to see him off. Then she turned to Philip.
+
+“Never mind, Philip, you won’t be a naughty boy next Sunday, will you,
+and then your uncle will take you to church with him in the evening.”
+
+She took off his hat and coat, and led him into the dining-room.
+
+“Shall you and I read the service together, Philip, and we’ll sing the
+hymns at the harmonium. Would you like that?”
+
+Philip shook his head decidedly. Mrs. Carey was taken aback. If he
+would not read the evening service with her she did not know what to do
+with him.
+
+“Then what would you like to do until your uncle comes back?” she asked
+helplessly.
+
+Philip broke his silence at last.
+
+“I want to be left alone,” he said.
+
+“Philip, how can you say anything so unkind? Don’t you know that your
+uncle and I only want your good? Don’t you love me at all?”
+
+“I hate you. I wish you was dead.”
+
+Mrs. Carey gasped. He said the words so savagely that it gave her quite
+a start. She had nothing to say. She sat down in her husband’s chair;
+and as she thought of her desire to love the friendless, crippled boy
+and her eager wish that he should love her—she was a barren woman and,
+even though it was clearly God’s will that she should be childless, she
+could scarcely bear to look at little children sometimes, her heart
+ached so—the tears rose to her eyes and one by one, slowly, rolled down
+her cheeks. Philip watched her in amazement. She took out her
+handkerchief, and now she cried without restraint. Suddenly Philip
+realised that she was crying because of what he had said, and he was
+sorry. He went up to her silently and kissed her. It was the first kiss
+he had ever given her without being asked. And the poor lady, so small
+in her black satin, shrivelled up and sallow, with her funny corkscrew
+curls, took the little boy on her lap and put her arms around him and
+wept as though her heart would break. But her tears were partly tears
+of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone.
+She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+On the following Sunday, when the Vicar was making his preparations to
+go into the drawing-room for his nap—all the actions of his life were
+conducted with ceremony—and Mrs. Carey was about to go upstairs, Philip
+asked:
+
+“What shall I do if I’m not allowed to play?”
+
+“Can’t you sit still for once and be quiet?”
+
+“I can’t sit still till tea-time.”
+
+Mr. Carey looked out of the window, but it was cold and raw, and he
+could not suggest that Philip should go into the garden.
+
+“I know what you can do. You can learn by heart the collect for the
+day.”
+
+He took the prayer-book which was used for prayers from the harmonium,
+and turned the pages till he came to the place he wanted.
+
+“It’s not a long one. If you can say it without a mistake when I come
+in to tea you shall have the top of my egg.”
+
+Mrs. Carey drew up Philip’s chair to the dining-room table—they had
+bought him a high chair by now—and placed the book in front of him.
+
+“The devil finds work for idle hands to do,” said Mr. Carey.
+
+He put some more coals on the fire so that there should be a cheerful
+blaze when he came in to tea, and went into the drawing-room. He
+loosened his collar, arranged the cushions, and settled himself
+comfortably on the sofa. But thinking the drawing-room a little chilly,
+Mrs. Carey brought him a rug from the hall; she put it over his legs
+and tucked it round his feet. She drew the blinds so that the light
+should not offend his eyes, and since he had closed them already went
+out of the room on tiptoe. The Vicar was at peace with himself today,
+and in ten minutes he was asleep. He snored softly.
+
+It was the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, and the collect began with the
+words: O God, whose blessed Son was manifested that he might destroy
+the works of the devil, and make us the sons of God, and heirs of
+Eternal life. Philip read it through. He could make no sense of it. He
+began saying the words aloud to himself, but many of them were unknown
+to him, and the construction of the sentence was strange. He could not
+get more than two lines in his head. And his attention was constantly
+wandering: there were fruit trees trained on the walls of the vicarage,
+and a long twig beat now and then against the windowpane; sheep grazed
+stolidly in the field beyond the garden. It seemed as though there were
+knots inside his brain. Then panic seized him that he would not know
+the words by tea-time, and he kept on whispering them to himself
+quickly; he did not try to understand, but merely to get them
+parrot-like into his memory.
+
+Mrs. Carey could not sleep that afternoon, and by four o’clock she was
+so wide awake that she came downstairs. She thought she would hear
+Philip his collect so that he should make no mistakes when he said it
+to his uncle. His uncle then would be pleased; he would see that the
+boy’s heart was in the right place. But when Mrs. Carey came to the
+dining-room and was about to go in, she heard a sound that made her
+stop suddenly. Her heart gave a little jump. She turned away and
+quietly slipped out of the front-door. She walked round the house till
+she came to the dining-room window and then cautiously looked in.
+Philip was still sitting on the chair she had put him in, but his head
+was on the table buried in his arms, and he was sobbing desperately.
+She saw the convulsive movement of his shoulders. Mrs. Carey was
+frightened. A thing that had always struck her about the child was that
+he seemed so collected. She had never seen him cry. And now she
+realised that his calmness was some instinctive shame of showing his
+feelings: he hid himself to weep.
+
+Without thinking that her husband disliked being wakened suddenly, she
+burst into the drawing-room.
+
+“William, William,” she said. “The boy’s crying as though his heart
+would break.”
+
+Mr. Carey sat up and disentangled himself from the rug about his legs.
+
+“What’s he got to cry about?”
+
+“I don’t know…. Oh, William, we can’t let the boy be unhappy. D’you
+think it’s our fault? If we’d had children we’d have known what to do.”
+
+Mr. Carey looked at her in perplexity. He felt extraordinarily
+helpless.
+
+“He can’t be crying because I gave him the collect to learn. It’s not
+more than ten lines.”
+
+“Don’t you think I might take him some picture books to look at,
+William? There are some of the Holy Land. There couldn’t be anything
+wrong in that.”
+
+“Very well, I don’t mind.”
+
+Mrs. Carey went into the study. To collect books was Mr. Carey’s only
+passion, and he never went into Tercanbury without spending an hour or
+two in the second-hand shop; he always brought back four or five musty
+volumes. He never read them, for he had long lost the habit of reading,
+but he liked to turn the pages, look at the illustrations if they were
+illustrated, and mend the bindings. He welcomed wet days because on
+them he could stay at home without pangs of conscience and spend the
+afternoon with white of egg and a glue-pot, patching up the Russia
+leather of some battered quarto. He had many volumes of old travels,
+with steel engravings, and Mrs. Carey quickly found two which described
+Palestine. She coughed elaborately at the door so that Philip should
+have time to compose himself, she felt that he would be humiliated if
+she came upon him in the midst of his tears, then she rattled the door
+handle. When she went in Philip was poring over the prayer-book, hiding
+his eyes with his hands so that she might not see he had been crying.
+
+“Do you know the collect yet?” she said.
+
+He did not answer for a moment, and she felt that he did not trust his
+voice. She was oddly embarrassed.
+
+“I can’t learn it by heart,” he said at last, with a gasp.
+
+“Oh, well, never mind,” she said. “You needn’t. I’ve got some picture
+books for you to look at. Come and sit on my lap, and we’ll look at
+them together.”
+
+Philip slipped off his chair and limped over to her. He looked down so
+that she should not see his eyes. She put her arms round him.
+
+“Look,” she said, “that’s the place where our blessed Lord was born.”
+
+She showed him an Eastern town with flat roofs and cupolas and
+minarets. In the foreground was a group of palm-trees, and under them
+were resting two Arabs and some camels. Philip passed his hand over the
+picture as if he wanted to feel the houses and the loose habiliments of
+the nomads.
+
+“Read what it says,” he asked.
+
+Mrs. Carey in her even voice read the opposite page. It was a romantic
+narrative of some Eastern traveller of the thirties, pompous maybe, but
+fragrant with the emotion with which the East came to the generation
+that followed Byron and Chateaubriand. In a moment or two Philip
+interrupted her.
+
+“I want to see another picture.”
+
+When Mary Ann came in and Mrs. Carey rose to help her lay the cloth.
+Philip took the book in his hands and hurried through the
+illustrations. It was with difficulty that his aunt induced him to put
+the book down for tea. He had forgotten his horrible struggle to get
+the collect by heart; he had forgotten his tears. Next day it was
+raining, and he asked for the book again. Mrs. Carey gave it him
+joyfully. Talking over his future with her husband she had found that
+both desired him to take orders, and this eagerness for the book which
+described places hallowed by the presence of Jesus seemed a good sign.
+It looked as though the boy’s mind addressed itself naturally to holy
+things. But in a day or two he asked for more books. Mr. Carey took him
+into his study, showed him the shelf in which he kept illustrated
+works, and chose for him one that dealt with Rome. Philip took it
+greedily. The pictures led him to a new amusement. He began to read the
+page before and the page after each engraving to find out what it was
+about, and soon he lost all interest in his toys.
+
+Then, when no one was near, he took out books for himself; and perhaps
+because the first impression on his mind was made by an Eastern town,
+he found his chief amusement in those which described the Levant. His
+heart beat with excitement at the pictures of mosques and rich palaces;
+but there was one, in a book on Constantinople, which peculiarly
+stirred his imagination. It was called the Hall of the Thousand
+Columns. It was a Byzantine cistern, which the popular fancy had
+endowed with fantastic vastness; and the legend which he read told that
+a boat was always moored at the entrance to tempt the unwary, but no
+traveller venturing into the darkness had ever been seen again. And
+Philip wondered whether the boat went on for ever through one pillared
+alley after another or came at last to some strange mansion.
+
+One day a good fortune befell him, for he hit upon Lane’s translation
+of The Thousand Nights and a Night. He was captured first by the
+illustrations, and then he began to read, to start with, the stories
+that dealt with magic, and then the others; and those he liked he read
+again and again. He could think of nothing else. He forgot the life
+about him. He had to be called two or three times before he would come
+to his dinner. Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the
+world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing
+himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know
+either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would
+make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.
+Presently he began to read other things. His brain was precocious. His
+uncle and aunt, seeing that he occupied himself and neither worried nor
+made a noise, ceased to trouble themselves about him. Mr. Carey had so
+many books that he did not know them, and as he read little he forgot
+the odd lots he had bought at one time and another because they were
+cheap. Haphazard among the sermons and homilies, the travels, the lives
+of the Saints, the Fathers, the histories of the church, were
+old-fashioned novels; and these Philip at last discovered. He chose
+them by their titles, and the first he read was The Lancashire Witches,
+and then he read The Admirable Crichton, and then many more. Whenever
+he started a book with two solitary travellers riding along the brink
+of a desperate ravine he knew he was safe.
+
+The summer was come now, and the gardener, an old sailor, made him a
+hammock and fixed it up for him in the branches of a weeping willow.
+And here for long hours he lay, hidden from anyone who might come to
+the vicarage, reading, reading passionately. Time passed and it was
+July; August came: on Sundays the church was crowded with strangers,
+and the collection at the offertory often amounted to two pounds.
+Neither the Vicar nor Mrs. Carey went out of the garden much during
+this period; for they disliked strange faces, and they looked upon the
+visitors from London with aversion. The house opposite was taken for
+six weeks by a gentleman who had two little boys, and he sent in to ask
+if Philip would like to go and play with them; but Mrs. Carey returned
+a polite refusal. She was afraid that Philip would be corrupted by
+little boys from London. He was going to be a clergyman, and it was
+necessary that he should be preserved from contamination. She liked to
+see in him an infant Samuel.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+The Careys made up their minds to send Philip to King’s School at
+Tercanbury. The neighbouring clergy sent their sons there. It was
+united by long tradition to the Cathedral: its headmaster was an
+honorary Canon, and a past headmaster was the Archdeacon. Boys were
+encouraged there to aspire to Holy Orders, and the education was such
+as might prepare an honest lad to spend his life in God’s service. A
+preparatory school was attached to it, and to this it was arranged that
+Philip should go. Mr. Carey took him into Tercanbury one Thursday
+afternoon towards the end of September. All day Philip had been excited
+and rather frightened. He knew little of school life but what he had
+read in the stories of The Boy’s Own Paper. He had also read Eric, or
+Little by Little.
+
+When they got out of the train at Tercanbury, Philip felt sick with
+apprehension, and during the drive in to the town sat pale and silent.
+The high brick wall in front of the school gave it the look of a
+prison. There was a little door in it, which opened on their ringing;
+and a clumsy, untidy man came out and fetched Philip’s tin trunk and
+his play-box. They were shown into the drawing-room; it was filled with
+massive, ugly furniture, and the chairs of the suite were placed round
+the walls with a forbidding rigidity. They waited for the headmaster.
+
+“What’s Mr. Watson like?” asked Philip, after a while.
+
+“You’ll see for yourself.”
+
+There was another pause. Mr. Carey wondered why the headmaster did not
+come. Presently Philip made an effort and spoke again.
+
+“Tell him I’ve got a club-foot,” he said.
+
+Before Mr. Carey could speak the door burst open and Mr. Watson swept
+into the room. To Philip he seemed gigantic. He was a man of over six
+feet high, and broad, with enormous hands and a great red beard; he
+talked loudly in a jovial manner; but his aggressive cheerfulness
+struck terror in Philip’s heart. He shook hands with Mr. Carey, and
+then took Philip’s small hand in his.
+
+“Well, young fellow, are you glad to come to school?” he shouted.
+
+Philip reddened and found no word to answer.
+
+“How old are you?”
+
+“Nine,” said Philip.
+
+“You must say sir,” said his uncle.
+
+“I expect you’ve got a good lot to learn,” the headmaster bellowed
+cheerily.
+
+To give the boy confidence he began to tickle him with rough fingers.
+Philip, feeling shy and uncomfortable, squirmed under his touch.
+
+“I’ve put him in the small dormitory for the present…. You’ll like
+that, won’t you?” he added to Philip. “Only eight of you in there. You
+won’t feel so strange.”
+
+Then the door opened, and Mrs. Watson came in. She was a dark woman
+with black hair, neatly parted in the middle. She had curiously thick
+lips and a small round nose. Her eyes were large and black. There was a
+singular coldness in her appearance. She seldom spoke and smiled more
+seldom still. Her husband introduced Mr. Carey to her, and then gave
+Philip a friendly push towards her.
+
+“This is a new boy, Helen, His name’s Carey.”
+
+Without a word she shook hands with Philip and then sat down, not
+speaking, while the headmaster asked Mr. Carey how much Philip knew and
+what books he had been working with. The Vicar of Blackstable was a
+little embarrassed by Mr. Watson’s boisterous heartiness, and in a
+moment or two got up.
+
+“I think I’d better leave Philip with you now.”
+
+“That’s all right,” said Mr. Watson. “He’ll be safe with me. He’ll get
+on like a house on fire. Won’t you, young fellow?”
+
+Without waiting for an answer from Philip the big man burst into a
+great bellow of laughter. Mr. Carey kissed Philip on the forehead and
+went away.
+
+“Come along, young fellow,” shouted Mr. Watson. “I’ll show you the
+school-room.”
+
+He swept out of the drawing-room with giant strides, and Philip
+hurriedly limped behind him. He was taken into a long, bare room with
+two tables that ran along its whole length; on each side of them were
+wooden forms.
+
+“Nobody much here yet,” said Mr. Watson. “I’ll just show you the
+playground, and then I’ll leave you to shift for yourself.”
+
+Mr. Watson led the way. Philip found himself in a large play-ground
+with high brick walls on three sides of it. On the fourth side was an
+iron railing through which you saw a vast lawn and beyond this some of
+the buildings of King’s School. One small boy was wandering
+disconsolately, kicking up the gravel as he walked.
+
+“Hulloa, Venning,” shouted Mr. Watson. “When did you turn up?”
+
+The small boy came forward and shook hands.
+
+“Here’s a new boy. He’s older and bigger than you, so don’t you bully
+him.”
+
+The headmaster glared amicably at the two children, filling them with
+fear by the roar of his voice, and then with a guffaw left them.
+
+“What’s your name?”
+
+“Carey.”
+
+“What’s your father?”
+
+“He’s dead.”
+
+“Oh! Does your mother wash?”
+
+“My mother’s dead, too.”
+
+Philip thought this answer would cause the boy a certain awkwardness,
+but Venning was not to be turned from his facetiousness for so little.
+
+“Well, did she wash?” he went on.
+
+“Yes,” said Philip indignantly.
+
+“She was a washerwoman then?”
+
+“No, she wasn’t.”
+
+“Then she didn’t wash.”
+
+The little boy crowed with delight at the success of his dialectic.
+Then he caught sight of Philip’s feet.
+
+“What’s the matter with your foot?”
+
+Philip instinctively tried to withdraw it from sight. He hid it behind
+the one which was whole.
+
+“I’ve got a club-foot,” he answered.
+
+“How did you get it?”
+
+“I’ve always had it.”
+
+“Let’s have a look.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Don’t then.”
+
+The little boy accompanied the words with a sharp kick on Philip’s
+shin, which Philip did not expect and thus could not guard against. The
+pain was so great that it made him gasp, but greater than the pain was
+the surprise. He did not know why Venning kicked him. He had not the
+presence of mind to give him a black eye. Besides, the boy was smaller
+than he, and he had read in The Boy’s Own Paper that it was a mean
+thing to hit anyone smaller than yourself. While Philip was nursing his
+shin a third boy appeared, and his tormentor left him. In a little
+while he noticed that the pair were talking about him, and he felt they
+were looking at his feet. He grew hot and uncomfortable.
+
+But others arrived, a dozen together, and then more, and they began to
+talk about their doings during the holidays, where they had been, and
+what wonderful cricket they had played. A few new boys appeared, and
+with these presently Philip found himself talking. He was shy and
+nervous. He was anxious to make himself pleasant, but he could not
+think of anything to say. He was asked a great many questions and
+answered them all quite willingly. One boy asked him whether he could
+play cricket.
+
+“No,” answered Philip. “I’ve got a club-foot.”
+
+The boy looked down quickly and reddened. Philip saw that he felt he
+had asked an unseemly question. He was too shy to apologise and looked
+at Philip awkwardly.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Next morning when the clanging of a bell awoke Philip he looked round
+his cubicle in astonishment. Then a voice sang out, and he remembered
+where he was.
+
+“Are you awake, Singer?”
+
+The partitions of the cubicle were of polished pitch-pine, and there
+was a green curtain in front. In those days there was little thought of
+ventilation, and the windows were closed except when the dormitory was
+aired in the morning.
+
+Philip got up and knelt down to say his prayers. It was a cold morning,
+and he shivered a little; but he had been taught by his uncle that his
+prayers were more acceptable to God if he said them in his nightshirt
+than if he waited till he was dressed. This did not surprise him, for
+he was beginning to realise that he was the creature of a God who
+appreciated the discomfort of his worshippers. Then he washed. There
+were two baths for the fifty boarders, and each boy had a bath once a
+week. The rest of his washing was done in a small basin on a
+wash-stand, which with the bed and a chair, made up the furniture of
+each cubicle. The boys chatted gaily while they dressed. Philip was all
+ears. Then another bell sounded, and they ran downstairs. They took
+their seats on the forms on each side of the two long tables in the
+school-room; and Mr. Watson, followed by his wife and the servants,
+came in and sat down. Mr. Watson read prayers in an impressive manner,
+and the supplications thundered out in his loud voice as though they
+were threats personally addressed to each boy. Philip listened with
+anxiety. Then Mr. Watson read a chapter from the Bible, and the
+servants trooped out. In a moment the untidy youth brought in two large
+pots of tea and on a second journey immense dishes of bread and butter.
+
+Philip had a squeamish appetite, and the thick slabs of poor butter on
+the bread turned his stomach, but he saw other boys scraping it off and
+followed their example. They all had potted meats and such like, which
+they had brought in their play-boxes; and some had ‘extras,’ eggs or
+bacon, upon which Mr. Watson made a profit. When he had asked Mr. Carey
+whether Philip was to have these, Mr. Carey replied that he did not
+think boys should be spoilt. Mr. Watson quite agreed with him—he
+considered nothing was better than bread and butter for growing
+lads—but some parents, unduly pampering their offspring, insisted on
+it.
+
+Philip noticed that ‘extras’ gave boys a certain consideration and made
+up his mind, when he wrote to Aunt Louisa, to ask for them.
+
+After breakfast the boys wandered out into the play-ground. Here the
+day-boys were gradually assembling. They were sons of the local clergy,
+of the officers at the Depot, and of such manufacturers or men of
+business as the old town possessed. Presently a bell rang, and they all
+trooped into school. This consisted of a large, long room at opposite
+ends of which two under-masters conducted the second and third forms,
+and of a smaller one, leading out of it, used by Mr. Watson, who taught
+the first form. To attach the preparatory to the senior school these
+three classes were known officially, on speech days and in reports, as
+upper, middle, and lower second. Philip was put in the last. The
+master, a red-faced man with a pleasant voice, was called Rice; he had
+a jolly manner with boys, and the time passed quickly. Philip was
+surprised when it was a quarter to eleven and they were let out for ten
+minutes’ rest.
+
+The whole school rushed noisily into the play-ground. The new boys were
+told to go into the middle, while the others stationed themselves along
+opposite walls. They began to play Pig in the Middle. The old boys ran
+from wall to wall while the new boys tried to catch them: when one was
+seized and the mystic words said—one, two, three, and a pig for me—he
+became a prisoner and, turning sides, helped to catch those who were
+still free. Philip saw a boy running past and tried to catch him, but
+his limp gave him no chance; and the runners, taking their opportunity,
+made straight for the ground he covered. Then one of them had the
+brilliant idea of imitating Philip’s clumsy run. Other boys saw it and
+began to laugh; then they all copied the first; and they ran round
+Philip, limping grotesquely, screaming in their treble voices with
+shrill laughter. They lost their heads with the delight of their new
+amusement, and choked with helpless merriment. One of them tripped
+Philip up and he fell, heavily as he always fell, and cut his knee.
+They laughed all the louder when he got up. A boy pushed him from
+behind, and he would have fallen again if another had not caught him.
+The game was forgotten in the entertainment of Philip’s deformity. One
+of them invented an odd, rolling limp that struck the rest as supremely
+ridiculous, and several of the boys lay down on the ground and rolled
+about in laughter: Philip was completely scared. He could not make out
+why they were laughing at him. His heart beat so that he could hardly
+breathe, and he was more frightened than he had ever been in his life.
+He stood still stupidly while the boys ran round him, mimicking and
+laughing; they shouted to him to try and catch them; but he did not
+move. He did not want them to see him run any more. He was using all
+his strength to prevent himself from crying.
+
+Suddenly the bell rang, and they all trooped back to school. Philip’s
+knee was bleeding, and he was dusty and dishevelled. For some minutes
+Mr. Rice could not control his form. They were excited still by the
+strange novelty, and Philip saw one or two of them furtively looking
+down at his feet. He tucked them under the bench.
+
+In the afternoon they went up to play football, but Mr. Watson stopped
+Philip on the way out after dinner.
+
+“I suppose you can’t play football, Carey?” he asked him.
+
+Philip blushed self-consciously.
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Very well. You’d better go up to the field. You can walk as far as
+that, can’t you?”
+
+Philip had no idea where the field was, but he answered all the same.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+The boys went in charge of Mr. Rice, who glanced at Philip and seeing
+he had not changed, asked why he was not going to play.
+
+“Mr. Watson said I needn’t, sir,” said Philip.
+
+“Why?”
+
+There were boys all round him, looking at him curiously, and a feeling
+of shame came over Philip. He looked down without answering. Others
+gave the reply.
+
+“He’s got a club-foot, sir.”
+
+“Oh, I see.”
+
+Mr. Rice was quite young; he had only taken his degree a year before;
+and he was suddenly embarrassed. His instinct was to beg the boy’s
+pardon, but he was too shy to do so. He made his voice gruff and loud.
+
+“Now then, you boys, what are you waiting about for? Get on with you.”
+
+Some of them had already started and those that were left now set off,
+in groups of two or three.
+
+“You’d better come along with me, Carey,” said the master “You don’t
+know the way, do you?”
+
+Philip guessed the kindness, and a sob came to his throat.
+
+“I can’t go very fast, sir.”
+
+“Then I’ll go very slow,” said the master, with a smile.
+
+Philip’s heart went out to the red-faced, commonplace young man who
+said a gentle word to him. He suddenly felt less unhappy.
+
+But at night when they went up to bed and were undressing, the boy who
+was called Singer came out of his cubicle and put his head in Philip’s.
+
+“I say, let’s look at your foot,” he said.
+
+“No,” answered Philip.
+
+He jumped into bed quickly.
+
+“Don’t say no to me,” said Singer. “Come on, Mason.”
+
+The boy in the next cubicle was looking round the corner, and at the
+words he slipped in. They made for Philip and tried to tear the
+bed-clothes off him, but he held them tightly.
+
+“Why can’t you leave me alone?” he cried.
+
+Singer seized a brush and with the back of it beat Philip’s hands
+clenched on the blanket. Philip cried out.
+
+“Why don’t you show us your foot quietly?”
+
+“I won’t.”
+
+In desperation Philip clenched his fist and hit the boy who tormented
+him, but he was at a disadvantage, and the boy seized his arm. He began
+to turn it.
+
+“Oh, don’t, don’t,” said Philip. “You’ll break my arm.”
+
+“Stop still then and put out your foot.”
+
+Philip gave a sob and a gasp. The boy gave the arm another wrench. The
+pain was unendurable.
+
+“All right. I’ll do it,” said Philip.
+
+He put out his foot. Singer still kept his hand on Philip’s wrist. He
+looked curiously at the deformity.
+
+“Isn’t it beastly?” said Mason.
+
+Another came in and looked too.
+
+“Ugh,” he said, in disgust.
+
+“My word, it is rum,” said Singer, making a face. “Is it hard?”
+
+He touched it with the tip of his forefinger, cautiously, as though it
+were something that had a life of its own. Suddenly they heard Mr.
+Watson’s heavy tread on the stairs. They threw the clothes back on
+Philip and dashed like rabbits into their cubicles. Mr. Watson came
+into the dormitory. Raising himself on tiptoe he could see over the rod
+that bore the green curtain, and he looked into two or three of the
+cubicles. The little boys were safely in bed. He put out the light and
+went out.
+
+Singer called out to Philip, but he did not answer. He had got his
+teeth in the pillow so that his sobbing should be inaudible. He was not
+crying for the pain they had caused him, nor for the humiliation he had
+suffered when they looked at his foot, but with rage at himself
+because, unable to stand the torture, he had put out his foot of his
+own accord.
+
+And then he felt the misery of his life. It seemed to his childish mind
+that this unhappiness must go on for ever. For no particular reason he
+remembered that cold morning when Emma had taken him out of bed and put
+him beside his mother. He had not thought of it once since it happened,
+but now he seemed to feel the warmth of his mother’s body against his
+and her arms around him. Suddenly it seemed to him that his life was a
+dream, his mother’s death, and the life at the vicarage, and these two
+wretched days at school, and he would awake in the morning and be back
+again at home. His tears dried as he thought of it. He was too unhappy,
+it must be nothing but a dream, and his mother was alive, and Emma
+would come up presently and go to bed. He fell asleep.
+
+But when he awoke next morning it was to the clanging of a bell, and
+the first thing his eyes saw was the green curtain of his cubicle.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+As time went on Philip’s deformity ceased to interest. It was accepted
+like one boy’s red hair and another’s unreasonable corpulence. But
+meanwhile he had grown horribly sensitive. He never ran if he could
+help it, because he knew it made his limp more conspicuous, and he
+adopted a peculiar walk. He stood still as much as he could, with his
+club-foot behind the other, so that it should not attract notice, and
+he was constantly on the look out for any reference to it. Because he
+could not join in the games which other boys played, their life
+remained strange to him; he only interested himself from the outside in
+their doings; and it seemed to him that there was a barrier between
+them and him. Sometimes they seemed to think that it was his fault if
+he could not play football, and he was unable to make them understand.
+He was left a good deal to himself. He had been inclined to
+talkativeness, but gradually he became silent. He began to think of the
+difference between himself and others.
+
+The biggest boy in his dormitory, Singer, took a dislike to him, and
+Philip, small for his age, had to put up with a good deal of hard
+treatment. About half-way through the term a mania ran through the
+school for a game called Nibs. It was a game for two, played on a table
+or a form with steel pens. You had to push your nib with the
+finger-nail so as to get the point of it over your opponent’s, while he
+manoeuvred to prevent this and to get the point of his nib over the
+back of yours; when this result was achieved you breathed on the ball
+of your thumb, pressed it hard on the two nibs, and if you were able
+then to lift them without dropping either, both nibs became yours. Soon
+nothing was seen but boys playing this game, and the more skilful
+acquired vast stores of nibs. But in a little while Mr. Watson made up
+his mind that it was a form of gambling, forbade the game, and
+confiscated all the nibs in the boys’ possession. Philip had been very
+adroit, and it was with a heavy heart that he gave up his winning; but
+his fingers itched to play still, and a few days later, on his way to
+the football field, he went into a shop and bought a pennyworth of J
+pens. He carried them loose in his pocket and enjoyed feeling them.
+Presently Singer found out that he had them. Singer had given up his
+nibs too, but he had kept back a very large one, called a Jumbo, which
+was almost unconquerable, and he could not resist the opportunity of
+getting Philip’s Js out of him. Though Philip knew that he was at a
+disadvantage with his small nibs, he had an adventurous disposition and
+was willing to take the risk; besides, he was aware that Singer would
+not allow him to refuse. He had not played for a week and sat down to
+the game now with a thrill of excitement. He lost two of his small nibs
+quickly, and Singer was jubilant, but the third time by some chance the
+Jumbo slipped round and Philip was able to push his J across it. He
+crowed with triumph. At that moment Mr. Watson came in.
+
+“What are you doing?” he asked.
+
+He looked from Singer to Philip, but neither answered.
+
+“Don’t you know that I’ve forbidden you to play that idiotic game?”
+
+Philip’s heart beat fast. He knew what was coming and was dreadfully
+frightened, but in his fright there was a certain exultation. He had
+never been swished. Of course it would hurt, but it was something to
+boast about afterwards.
+
+“Come into my study.”
+
+The headmaster turned, and they followed him side by side Singer
+whispered to Philip:
+
+“We’re in for it.”
+
+Mr. Watson pointed to Singer.
+
+“Bend over,” he said.
+
+Philip, very white, saw the boy quiver at each stroke, and after the
+third he heard him cry out. Three more followed.
+
+“That’ll do. Get up.”
+
+Singer stood up. The tears were streaming down his face. Philip stepped
+forward. Mr. Watson looked at him for a moment.
+
+“I’m not going to cane you. You’re a new boy. And I can’t hit a
+cripple. Go away, both of you, and don’t be naughty again.”
+
+When they got back into the school-room a group of boys, who had
+learned in some mysterious way what was happening, were waiting for
+them. They set upon Singer at once with eager questions. Singer faced
+them, his face red with the pain and marks of tears still on his
+cheeks. He pointed with his head at Philip, who was standing a little
+behind him.
+
+“He got off because he’s a cripple,” he said angrily.
+
+Philip stood silent and flushed. He felt that they looked at him with
+contempt.
+
+“How many did you get?” one boy asked Singer.
+
+But he did not answer. He was angry because he had been hurt
+
+“Don’t ask me to play Nibs with you again,” he said to Philip. “It’s
+jolly nice for you. You don’t risk anything.”
+
+“I didn’t ask you.”
+
+“Didn’t you!”
+
+He quickly put out his foot and tripped Philip up. Philip was always
+rather unsteady on his feet, and he fell heavily to the ground.
+
+“Cripple,” said Singer.
+
+For the rest of the term he tormented Philip cruelly, and, though
+Philip tried to keep out of his way, the school was so small that it
+was impossible; he tried being friendly and jolly with him; he abased
+himself, so far as to buy him a knife; but though Singer took the knife
+he was not placated. Once or twice, driven beyond endurance, he hit and
+kicked the bigger boy, but Singer was so much stronger that Philip was
+helpless, and he was always forced after more or less torture to beg
+his pardon. It was that which rankled with Philip: he could not bear
+the humiliation of apologies, which were wrung from him by pain greater
+than he could bear. And what made it worse was that there seemed no end
+to his wretchedness; Singer was only eleven and would not go to the
+upper school till he was thirteen. Philip realised that he must live
+two years with a tormentor from whom there was no escape. He was only
+happy while he was working and when he got into bed. And often there
+recurred to him then that queer feeling that his life with all its
+misery was nothing but a dream, and that he would awake in the morning
+in his own little bed in London.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Two years passed, and Philip was nearly twelve. He was in the first
+form, within two or three places of the top, and after Christmas when
+several boys would be leaving for the senior school he would be head
+boy. He had already quite a collection of prizes, worthless books on
+bad paper, but in gorgeous bindings decorated with the arms of the
+school: his position had freed him from bullying, and he was not
+unhappy. His fellows forgave him his success because of his deformity.
+
+“After all, it’s jolly easy for him to get prizes,” they said, “there’s
+nothing he CAN do but swat.”
+
+He had lost his early terror of Mr. Watson. He had grown used to the
+loud voice, and when the headmaster’s heavy hand was laid on his
+shoulder Philip discerned vaguely the intention of a caress. He had the
+good memory which is more useful for scholastic achievements than
+mental power, and he knew Mr. Watson expected him to leave the
+preparatory school with a scholarship.
+
+But he had grown very self-conscious. The new-born child does not
+realise that his body is more a part of himself than surrounding
+objects, and will play with his toes without any feeling that they
+belong to him more than the rattle by his side; and it is only by
+degrees, through pain, that he understands the fact of the body. And
+experiences of the same kind are necessary for the individual to become
+conscious of himself; but here there is the difference that, although
+everyone becomes equally conscious of his body as a separate and
+complete organism, everyone does not become equally conscious of
+himself as a complete and separate personality. The feeling of
+apartness from others comes to most with puberty, but it is not always
+developed to such a degree as to make the difference between the
+individual and his fellows noticeable to the individual. It is such as
+he, as little conscious of himself as the bee in a hive, who are the
+lucky in life, for they have the best chance of happiness: their
+activities are shared by all, and their pleasures are only pleasures
+because they are enjoyed in common; you will see them on Whit-Monday
+dancing on Hampstead Heath, shouting at a football match, or from club
+windows in Pall Mall cheering a royal procession. It is because of them
+that man has been called a social animal.
+
+Philip passed from the innocence of childhood to bitter consciousness
+of himself by the ridicule which his club-foot had excited. The
+circumstances of his case were so peculiar that he could not apply to
+them the ready-made rules which acted well enough in ordinary affairs,
+and he was forced to think for himself. The many books he had read
+filled his mind with ideas which, because he only half understood them,
+gave more scope to his imagination. Beneath his painful shyness
+something was growing up within him, and obscurely he realised his
+personality. But at times it gave him odd surprises; he did things, he
+knew not why, and afterwards when he thought of them found himself all
+at sea.
+
+There was a boy called Luard between whom and Philip a friendship had
+arisen, and one day, when they were playing together in the
+school-room, Luard began to perform some trick with an ebony pen-holder
+of Philip’s.
+
+“Don’t play the giddy ox,” said Philip. “You’ll only break it.”
+
+“I shan’t.”
+
+But no sooner were the words out of the boy’s mouth than the pen-holder
+snapped in two. Luard looked at Philip with dismay.
+
+“Oh, I say, I’m awfully sorry.”
+
+The tears rolled down Philip’s cheeks, but he did not answer.
+
+“I say, what’s the matter?” said Luard, with surprise. “I’ll get you
+another one exactly the same.”
+
+“It’s not about the pen-holder I care,” said Philip, in a trembling
+voice, “only it was given me by my mater, just before she died.”
+
+“I say, I’m awfully sorry, Carey.”
+
+“It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t your fault.”
+
+Philip took the two pieces of the pen-holder and looked at them. He
+tried to restrain his sobs. He felt utterly miserable. And yet he could
+not tell why, for he knew quite well that he had bought the pen-holder
+during his last holidays at Blackstable for one and twopence. He did
+not know in the least what had made him invent that pathetic story, but
+he was quite as unhappy as though it had been true. The pious
+atmosphere of the vicarage and the religious tone of the school had
+made Philip’s conscience very sensitive; he absorbed insensibly the
+feeling about him that the Tempter was ever on the watch to gain his
+immortal soul; and though he was not more truthful than most boys he
+never told a lie without suffering from remorse. When he thought over
+this incident he was very much distressed, and made up his mind that he
+must go to Luard and tell him that the story was an invention. Though
+he dreaded humiliation more than anything in the world, he hugged
+himself for two or three days at the thought of the agonising joy of
+humiliating himself to the Glory of God. But he never got any further.
+He satisfied his conscience by the more comfortable method of
+expressing his repentance only to the Almighty. But he could not
+understand why he should have been so genuinely affected by the story
+he was making up. The tears that flowed down his grubby cheeks were
+real tears. Then by some accident of association there occurred to him
+that scene when Emma had told him of his mother’s death, and, though he
+could not speak for crying, he had insisted on going in to say good-bye
+to the Misses Watkin so that they might see his grief and pity him.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Then a wave of religiosity passed through the school. Bad language was
+no longer heard, and the little nastinesses of small boys were looked
+upon with hostility; the bigger boys, like the lords temporal of the
+Middle Ages, used the strength of their arms to persuade those weaker
+than themselves to virtuous courses.
+
+Philip, his restless mind avid for new things, became very devout. He
+heard soon that it was possible to join a Bible League, and wrote to
+London for particulars. These consisted in a form to be filled up with
+the applicant’s name, age, and school; a solemn declaration to be
+signed that he would read a set portion of Holy Scripture every night
+for a year; and a request for half a crown; this, it was explained, was
+demanded partly to prove the earnestness of the applicant’s desire to
+become a member of the League, and partly to cover clerical expenses.
+Philip duly sent the papers and the money, and in return received a
+calendar worth about a penny, on which was set down the appointed
+passage to be read each day, and a sheet of paper on one side of which
+was a picture of the Good Shepherd and a lamb, and on the other,
+decoratively framed in red lines, a short prayer which had to be said
+before beginning to read.
+
+Every evening he undressed as quickly as possible in order to have time
+for his task before the gas was put out. He read industriously, as he
+read always, without criticism, stories of cruelty, deceit,
+ingratitude, dishonesty, and low cunning. Actions which would have
+excited his horror in the life about him, in the reading passed through
+his mind without comment, because they were committed under the direct
+inspiration of God. The method of the League was to alternate a book of
+the Old Testament with a book of the New, and one night Philip came
+across these words of Jesus Christ:
+
+If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is
+done to the fig-tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be
+thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.
+
+And all this, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall
+receive.
+
+They made no particular impression on him, but it happened that two or
+three days later, being Sunday, the Canon in residence chose them for
+the text of his sermon. Even if Philip had wanted to hear this it would
+have been impossible, for the boys of King’s School sit in the choir,
+and the pulpit stands at the corner of the transept so that the
+preacher’s back is almost turned to them. The distance also is so great
+that it needs a man with a fine voice and a knowledge of elocution to
+make himself heard in the choir; and according to long usage the Canons
+of Tercanbury are chosen for their learning rather than for any
+qualities which might be of use in a cathedral church. But the words of
+the text, perhaps because he had read them so short a while before,
+came clearly enough to Philip’s ears, and they seemed on a sudden to
+have a personal application. He thought about them through most of the
+sermon, and that night, on getting into bed, he turned over the pages
+of the Gospel and found once more the passage. Though he believed
+implicitly everything he saw in print, he had learned already that in
+the Bible things that said one thing quite clearly often mysteriously
+meant another. There was no one he liked to ask at school, so he kept
+the question he had in mind till the Christmas holidays, and then one
+day he made an opportunity. It was after supper and prayers were just
+finished. Mrs. Carey was counting the eggs that Mary Ann had brought in
+as usual and writing on each one the date. Philip stood at the table
+and pretended to turn listlessly the pages of the Bible.
+
+“I say, Uncle William, this passage here, does it really mean that?”
+
+He put his finger against it as though he had come across it
+accidentally.
+
+Mr. Carey looked up over his spectacles. He was holding The Blackstable
+Times in front of the fire. It had come in that evening damp from the
+press, and the Vicar always aired it for ten minutes before he began to
+read.
+
+“What passage is that?” he asked.
+
+“Why, this about if you have faith you can remove mountains.”
+
+“If it says so in the Bible it is so, Philip,” said Mrs. Carey gently,
+taking up the plate-basket.
+
+Philip looked at his uncle for an answer.
+
+“It’s a matter of faith.”
+
+“D’you mean to say that if you really believed you could move mountains
+you could?”
+
+“By the grace of God,” said the Vicar.
+
+“Now, say good-night to your uncle, Philip,” said Aunt Louisa. “You’re
+not wanting to move a mountain tonight, are you?”
+
+Philip allowed himself to be kissed on the forehead by his uncle and
+preceded Mrs. Carey upstairs. He had got the information he wanted. His
+little room was icy, and he shivered when he put on his nightshirt. But
+he always felt that his prayers were more pleasing to God when he said
+them under conditions of discomfort. The coldness of his hands and feet
+were an offering to the Almighty. And tonight he sank on his knees;
+buried his face in his hands, and prayed to God with all his might that
+He would make his club-foot whole. It was a very small thing beside the
+moving of mountains. He knew that God could do it if He wished, and his
+own faith was complete. Next morning, finishing his prayers with the
+same request, he fixed a date for the miracle.
+
+“Oh, God, in Thy loving mercy and goodness, if it be Thy will, please
+make my foot all right on the night before I go back to school.”
+
+He was glad to get his petition into a formula, and he repeated it
+later in the dining-room during the short pause which the Vicar always
+made after prayers, before he rose from his knees. He said it again in
+the evening and again, shivering in his nightshirt, before he got into
+bed. And he believed. For once he looked forward with eagerness to the
+end of the holidays. He laughed to himself as he thought of his uncle’s
+astonishment when he ran down the stairs three at a time; and after
+breakfast he and Aunt Louisa would have to hurry out and buy a new pair
+of boots. At school they would be astounded.
+
+“Hulloa, Carey, what have you done with your foot?”
+
+“Oh, it’s all right now,” he would answer casually, as though it were
+the most natural thing in the world.
+
+He would be able to play football. His heart leaped as he saw himself
+running, running, faster than any of the other boys. At the end of the
+Easter term there were the sports, and he would be able to go in for
+the races; he rather fancied himself over the hurdles. It would be
+splendid to be like everyone else, not to be stared at curiously by new
+boys who did not know about his deformity, nor at the baths in summer
+to need incredible precautions, while he was undressing, before he
+could hide his foot in the water.
+
+He prayed with all the power of his soul. No doubts assailed him. He
+was confident in the word of God. And the night before he was to go
+back to school he went up to bed tremulous with excitement. There was
+snow on the ground, and Aunt Louisa had allowed herself the
+unaccustomed luxury of a fire in her bed-room; but in Philip’s little
+room it was so cold that his fingers were numb, and he had great
+difficulty in undoing his collar. His teeth chattered. The idea came to
+him that he must do something more than usual to attract the attention
+of God, and he turned back the rug which was in front of his bed so
+that he could kneel on the bare boards; and then it struck him that his
+nightshirt was a softness that might displease his Maker, so he took it
+off and said his prayers naked. When he got into bed he was so cold
+that for some time he could not sleep, but when he did, it was so
+soundly that Mary Ann had to shake him when she brought in his hot
+water next morning. She talked to him while she drew the curtains, but
+he did not answer; he had remembered at once that this was the morning
+for the miracle. His heart was filled with joy and gratitude. His first
+instinct was to put down his hand and feel the foot which was whole
+now, but to do this seemed to doubt the goodness of God. He knew that
+his foot was well. But at last he made up his mind, and with the toes
+of his right foot he just touched his left. Then he passed his hand
+over it.
+
+He limped downstairs just as Mary Ann was going into the dining-room
+for prayers, and then he sat down to breakfast.
+
+“You’re very quiet this morning, Philip,” said Aunt Louisa presently.
+
+“He’s thinking of the good breakfast he’ll have at school to-morrow,”
+said the Vicar.
+
+When Philip answered, it was in a way that always irritated his uncle,
+with something that had nothing to do with the matter in hand. He
+called it a bad habit of wool-gathering.
+
+“Supposing you’d asked God to do something,” said Philip, “and really
+believed it was going to happen, like moving a mountain, I mean, and
+you had faith, and it didn’t happen, what would it mean?”
+
+“What a funny boy you are!” said Aunt Louisa. “You asked about moving
+mountains two or three weeks ago.”
+
+“It would just mean that you hadn’t got faith,” answered Uncle William.
+
+Philip accepted the explanation. If God had not cured him, it was
+because he did not really believe. And yet he did not see how he could
+believe more than he did. But perhaps he had not given God enough time.
+He had only asked Him for nineteen days. In a day or two he began his
+prayer again, and this time he fixed upon Easter. That was the day of
+His Son’s glorious resurrection, and God in His happiness might be
+mercifully inclined. But now Philip added other means of attaining his
+desire: he began to wish, when he saw a new moon or a dappled horse,
+and he looked out for shooting stars; during exeat they had a chicken
+at the vicarage, and he broke the lucky bone with Aunt Louisa and
+wished again, each time that his foot might be made whole. He was
+appealing unconsciously to gods older to his race than the God of
+Israel. And he bombarded the Almighty with his prayer, at odd times of
+the day, whenever it occurred to him, in identical words always, for it
+seemed to him important to make his request in the same terms. But
+presently the feeling came to him that this time also his faith would
+not be great enough. He could not resist the doubt that assailed him.
+He made his own experience into a general rule.
+
+“I suppose no one ever has faith enough,” he said.
+
+It was like the salt which his nurse used to tell him about: you could
+catch any bird by putting salt on his tail; and once he had taken a
+little bag of it into Kensington Gardens. But he could never get near
+enough to put the salt on a bird’s tail. Before Easter he had given up
+the struggle. He felt a dull resentment against his uncle for taking
+him in. The text which spoke of the moving of mountains was just one of
+those that said one thing and meant another. He thought his uncle had
+been playing a practical joke on him.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+The King’s School at Tercanbury, to which Philip went when he was
+thirteen, prided itself on its antiquity. It traced its origin to an
+abbey school, founded before the Conquest, where the rudiments of
+learning were taught by Augustine monks; and, like many another
+establishment of this sort, on the destruction of the monasteries it
+had been reorganised by the officers of King Henry VIII and thus
+acquired its name. Since then, pursuing its modest course, it had given
+to the sons of the local gentry and of the professional people of Kent
+an education sufficient to their needs. One or two men of letters,
+beginning with a poet, than whom only Shakespeare had a more splendid
+genius, and ending with a writer of prose whose view of life has
+affected profoundly the generation of which Philip was a member, had
+gone forth from its gates to achieve fame; it had produced one or two
+eminent lawyers, but eminent lawyers are common, and one or two
+soldiers of distinction; but during the three centuries since its
+separation from the monastic order it had trained especially men of the
+church, bishops, deans, canons, and above all country clergymen: there
+were boys in the school whose fathers, grandfathers,
+great-grandfathers, had been educated there and had all been rectors of
+parishes in the diocese of Tercanbury; and they came to it with their
+minds made up already to be ordained. But there were signs
+notwithstanding that even there changes were coming; for a few,
+repeating what they had heard at home, said that the Church was no
+longer what it used to be. It wasn’t so much the money; but the class
+of people who went in for it weren’t the same; and two or three boys
+knew curates whose fathers were tradesmen: they’d rather go out to the
+Colonies (in those days the Colonies were still the last hope of those
+who could get nothing to do in England) than be a curate under some
+chap who wasn’t a gentleman. At King’s School, as at Blackstable
+Vicarage, a tradesman was anyone who was not lucky enough to own land
+(and here a fine distinction was made between the gentleman farmer and
+the landowner), or did not follow one of the four professions to which
+it was possible for a gentleman to belong. Among the day-boys, of whom
+there were about a hundred and fifty, sons of the local gentry and of
+the men stationed at the depot, those whose fathers were engaged in
+business were made to feel the degradation of their state.
+
+The masters had no patience with modern ideas of education, which they
+read of sometimes in The Times or The Guardian, and hoped fervently
+that King’s School would remain true to its old traditions. The dead
+languages were taught with such thoroughness that an old boy seldom
+thought of Homer or Virgil in after life without a qualm of boredom;
+and though in the common room at dinner one or two bolder spirits
+suggested that mathematics were of increasing importance, the general
+feeling was that they were a less noble study than the classics.
+Neither German nor chemistry was taught, and French only by the
+form-masters; they could keep order better than a foreigner, and, since
+they knew the grammar as well as any Frenchman, it seemed unimportant
+that none of them could have got a cup of coffee in the restaurant at
+Boulogne unless the waiter had known a little English. Geography was
+taught chiefly by making boys draw maps, and this was a favourite
+occupation, especially when the country dealt with was mountainous: it
+was possible to waste a great deal of time in drawing the Andes or the
+Apennines. The masters, graduates of Oxford or Cambridge, were ordained
+and unmarried; if by chance they wished to marry they could only do so
+by accepting one of the smaller livings at the disposal of the Chapter;
+but for many years none of them had cared to leave the refined society
+of Tercanbury, which owing to the cavalry depot had a martial as well
+as an ecclesiastical tone, for the monotony of life in a country
+rectory; and they were now all men of middle age.
+
+The headmaster, on the other hand, was obliged to be married and he
+conducted the school till age began to tell upon him. When he retired
+he was rewarded with a much better living than any of the under-masters
+could hope for, and an honorary Canonry.
+
+But a year before Philip entered the school a great change had come
+over it. It had been obvious for some time that Dr. Fleming, who had
+been headmaster for the quarter of a century, was become too deaf to
+continue his work to the greater glory of God; and when one of the
+livings on the outskirts of the city fell vacant, with a stipend of six
+hundred a year, the Chapter offered it to him in such a manner as to
+imply that they thought it high time for him to retire. He could nurse
+his ailments comfortably on such an income. Two or three curates who
+had hoped for preferment told their wives it was scandalous to give a
+parish that needed a young, strong, and energetic man to an old fellow
+who knew nothing of parochial work, and had feathered his nest already;
+but the mutterings of the unbeneficed clergy do not reach the ears of a
+cathedral Chapter. And as for the parishioners they had nothing to say
+in the matter, and therefore nobody asked for their opinion. The
+Wesleyans and the Baptists both had chapels in the village.
+
+When Dr. Fleming was thus disposed of it became necessary to find a
+successor. It was contrary to the traditions of the school that one of
+the lower-masters should be chosen. The common-room was unanimous in
+desiring the election of Mr. Watson, headmaster of the preparatory
+school; he could hardly be described as already a master of King’s
+School, they had all known him for twenty years, and there was no
+danger that he would make a nuisance of himself. But the Chapter sprang
+a surprise on them. It chose a man called Perkins. At first nobody knew
+who Perkins was, and the name favourably impressed no one; but before
+the shock of it had passed away, it was realised that Perkins was the
+son of Perkins the linendraper. Dr. Fleming informed the masters just
+before dinner, and his manner showed his consternation. Such of them as
+were dining in, ate their meal almost in silence, and no reference was
+made to the matter till the servants had left the room. Then they set
+to. The names of those present on this occasion are unimportant, but
+they had been known to generations of school-boys as Sighs, Tar, Winks,
+Squirts, and Pat.
+
+They all knew Tom Perkins. The first thing about him was that he was
+not a gentleman. They remembered him quite well. He was a small, dark
+boy, with untidy black hair and large eyes. He looked like a gipsy. He
+had come to the school as a day-boy, with the best scholarship on their
+endowment, so that his education had cost him nothing. Of course he was
+brilliant. At every Speech-Day he was loaded with prizes. He was their
+show-boy, and they remembered now bitterly their fear that he would try
+to get some scholarship at one of the larger public schools and so pass
+out of their hands. Dr. Fleming had gone to the linendraper his
+father—they all remembered the shop, Perkins and Cooper, in St.
+Catherine’s Street—and said he hoped Tom would remain with them till he
+went to Oxford. The school was Perkins and Cooper’s best customer, and
+Mr. Perkins was only too glad to give the required assurance. Tom
+Perkins continued to triumph, he was the finest classical scholar that
+Dr. Fleming remembered, and on leaving the school took with him the
+most valuable scholarship they had to offer. He got another at Magdalen
+and settled down to a brilliant career at the University. The school
+magazine recorded the distinctions he achieved year after year, and
+when he got his double first Dr. Fleming himself wrote a few words of
+eulogy on the front page. It was with greater satisfaction that they
+welcomed his success, since Perkins and Cooper had fallen upon evil
+days: Cooper drank like a fish, and just before Tom Perkins took his
+degree the linendrapers filed their petition in bankruptcy.
+
+In due course Tom Perkins took Holy Orders and entered upon the
+profession for which he was so admirably suited. He had been an
+assistant master at Wellington and then at Rugby.
+
+But there was quite a difference between welcoming his success at other
+schools and serving under his leadership in their own. Tar had
+frequently given him lines, and Squirts had boxed his ears. They could
+not imagine how the Chapter had made such a mistake. No one could be
+expected to forget that he was the son of a bankrupt linendraper, and
+the alcoholism of Cooper seemed to increase the disgrace. It was
+understood that the Dean had supported his candidature with zeal, so
+the Dean would probably ask him to dinner; but would the pleasant
+little dinners in the precincts ever be the same when Tom Perkins sat
+at the table? And what about the depot? He really could not expect
+officers and gentlemen to receive him as one of themselves. It would do
+the school incalculable harm. Parents would be dissatisfied, and no one
+could be surprised if there were wholesale withdrawals. And then the
+indignity of calling him Mr. Perkins! The masters thought by way of
+protest of sending in their resignations in a body, but the uneasy fear
+that they would be accepted with equanimity restrained them.
+
+“The only thing is to prepare ourselves for changes,” said Sighs, who
+had conducted the fifth form for five and twenty years with
+unparalleled incompetence.
+
+And when they saw him they were not reassured. Dr. Fleming invited them
+to meet him at luncheon. He was now a man of thirty-two, tall and lean,
+but with the same wild and unkempt look they remembered on him as a
+boy. His clothes, ill-made and shabby, were put on untidily. His hair
+was as black and as long as ever, and he had plainly never learned to
+brush it; it fell over his forehead with every gesture, and he had a
+quick movement of the hand with which he pushed it back from his eyes.
+He had a black moustache and a beard which came high up on his face
+almost to the cheek-bones, He talked to the masters quite easily, as
+though he had parted from them a week or two before; he was evidently
+delighted to see them. He seemed unconscious of the strangeness of the
+position and appeared not to notice any oddness in being addressed as
+Mr. Perkins.
+
+When he bade them good-bye, one of the masters, for something to say,
+remarked that he was allowing himself plenty of time to catch his
+train.
+
+“I want to go round and have a look at the shop,” he answered
+cheerfully.
+
+There was a distinct embarrassment. They wondered that he could be so
+tactless, and to make it worse Dr. Fleming had not heard what he said.
+His wife shouted it in his ear.
+
+“He wants to go round and look at his father’s old shop.”
+
+Only Tom Perkins was unconscious of the humiliation which the whole
+party felt. He turned to Mrs. Fleming.
+
+“Who’s got it now, d’you know?”
+
+She could hardly answer. She was very angry.
+
+“It’s still a linendraper’s,” she said bitterly. “Grove is the name. We
+don’t deal there any more.”
+
+“I wonder if he’d let me go over the house.”
+
+“I expect he would if you explain who you are.”
+
+It was not till the end of dinner that evening that any reference was
+made in the common-room to the subject that was in all their minds.
+Then it was Sighs who asked:
+
+“Well, what did you think of our new head?” They thought of the
+conversation at luncheon. It was hardly a conversation; it was a
+monologue. Perkins had talked incessantly. He talked very quickly, with
+a flow of easy words and in a deep, resonant voice. He had a short, odd
+little laugh which showed his white teeth. They had followed him with
+difficulty, for his mind darted from subject to subject with a
+connection they did not always catch. He talked of pedagogics, and this
+was natural enough; but he had much to say of modern theories in
+Germany which they had never heard of and received with misgiving. He
+talked of the classics, but he had been to Greece, and he discoursed of
+archaeology; he had once spent a winter digging; they could not see how
+that helped a man to teach boys to pass examinations, He talked of
+politics. It sounded odd to them to hear him compare Lord Beaconsfield
+with Alcibiades. He talked of Mr. Gladstone and Home Rule. They
+realised that he was a Liberal. Their hearts sank. He talked of German
+philosophy and of French fiction. They could not think a man profound
+whose interests were so diverse.
+
+It was Winks who summed up the general impression and put it into a
+form they all felt conclusively damning. Winks was the master of the
+upper third, a weak-kneed man with drooping eye-lids, He was too tall
+for his strength, and his movements were slow and languid. He gave an
+impression of lassitude, and his nickname was eminently appropriate.
+
+“He’s very enthusiastic,” said Winks.
+
+Enthusiasm was ill-bred. Enthusiasm was ungentlemanly. They thought of
+the Salvation Army with its braying trumpets and its drums. Enthusiasm
+meant change. They had goose-flesh when they thought of all the
+pleasant old habits which stood in imminent danger. They hardly dared
+to look forward to the future.
+
+“He looks more of a gipsy than ever,” said one, after a pause.
+
+“I wonder if the Dean and Chapter knew that he was a Radical when they
+elected him,” another observed bitterly.
+
+But conversation halted. They were too much disturbed for words.
+
+When Tar and Sighs were walking together to the Chapter House on
+Speech-Day a week later, Tar, who had a bitter tongue, remarked to his
+colleague:
+
+“Well, we’ve seen a good many Speech-Days here, haven’t we? I wonder if
+we shall see another.”
+
+Sighs was more melancholy even than usual.
+
+“If anything worth having comes along in the way of a living I don’t
+mind when I retire.”
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+A year passed, and when Philip came to the school the old masters were
+all in their places; but a good many changes had taken place
+notwithstanding their stubborn resistance, none the less formidable
+because it was concealed under an apparent desire to fall in with the
+new head’s ideas. Though the form-masters still taught French to the
+lower school, another master had come, with a degree of doctor of
+philology from the University of Heidelberg and a record of three years
+spent in a French lycee, to teach French to the upper forms and German
+to anyone who cared to take it up instead of Greek. Another master was
+engaged to teach mathematics more systematically than had been found
+necessary hitherto. Neither of these was ordained. This was a real
+revolution, and when the pair arrived the older masters received them
+with distrust. A laboratory had been fitted up, army classes were
+instituted; they all said the character of the school was changing. And
+heaven only knew what further projects Mr. Perkins turned in that
+untidy head of his. The school was small as public schools go, there
+were not more than two hundred boarders; and it was difficult for it to
+grow larger, for it was huddled up against the Cathedral; the
+precincts, with the exception of a house in which some of the masters
+lodged, were occupied by the cathedral clergy; and there was no more
+room for building. But Mr. Perkins devised an elaborate scheme by which
+he might obtain sufficient space to make the school double its present
+size. He wanted to attract boys from London. He thought it would be
+good for them to be thrown in contact with the Kentish lads, and it
+would sharpen the country wits of these.
+
+“It’s against all our traditions,” said Sighs, when Mr. Perkins made
+the suggestion to him. “We’ve rather gone out of our way to avoid the
+contamination of boys from London.”
+
+“Oh, what nonsense!” said Mr. Perkins.
+
+No one had ever told the form-master before that he talked nonsense,
+and he was meditating an acid reply, in which perhaps he might insert a
+veiled reference to hosiery, when Mr. Perkins in his impetuous way
+attacked him outrageously.
+
+“That house in the precincts—if you’d only marry I’d get the Chapter to
+put another couple of stories on, and we’d make dormitories and
+studies, and your wife could help you.”
+
+The elderly clergyman gasped. Why should he marry? He was fifty-seven,
+a man couldn’t marry at fifty-seven. He couldn’t start looking after a
+house at his time of life. He didn’t want to marry. If the choice lay
+between that and the country living he would much sooner resign. All he
+wanted now was peace and quietness.
+
+“I’m not thinking of marrying,” he said.
+
+Mr. Perkins looked at him with his dark, bright eyes, and if there was
+a twinkle in them poor Sighs never saw it.
+
+“What a pity! Couldn’t you marry to oblige me? It would help me a great
+deal with the Dean and Chapter when I suggest rebuilding your house.”
+
+But Mr. Perkins’ most unpopular innovation was his system of taking
+occasionally another man’s form. He asked it as a favour, but after all
+it was a favour which could not be refused, and as Tar, otherwise Mr.
+Turner, said, it was undignified for all parties. He gave no warning,
+but after morning prayers would say to one of the masters:
+
+“I wonder if you’d mind taking the Sixth today at eleven. We’ll change
+over, shall we?”
+
+They did not know whether this was usual at other schools, but
+certainly it had never been done at Tercanbury. The results were
+curious. Mr. Turner, who was the first victim, broke the news to his
+form that the headmaster would take them for Latin that day, and on the
+pretence that they might like to ask him a question or two so that they
+should not make perfect fools of themselves, spent the last quarter of
+an hour of the history lesson in construing for them the passage of
+Livy which had been set for the day; but when he rejoined his class and
+looked at the paper on which Mr. Perkins had written the marks, a
+surprise awaited him; for the two boys at the top of the form seemed to
+have done very ill, while others who had never distinguished themselves
+before were given full marks. When he asked Eldridge, his cleverest
+boy, what was the meaning of this the answer came sullenly:
+
+“Mr. Perkins never gave us any construing to do. He asked me what I
+knew about General Gordon.”
+
+Mr. Turner looked at him in astonishment. The boys evidently felt they
+had been hardly used, and he could not help agreeing with their silent
+dissatisfaction. He could not see either what General Gordon had to do
+with Livy. He hazarded an inquiry afterwards.
+
+“Eldridge was dreadfully put out because you asked him what he knew
+about General Gordon,” he said to the headmaster, with an attempt at a
+chuckle.
+
+Mr. Perkins laughed.
+
+“I saw they’d got to the agrarian laws of Caius Gracchus, and I
+wondered if they knew anything about the agrarian troubles in Ireland.
+But all they knew about Ireland was that Dublin was on the Liffey. So I
+wondered if they’d ever heard of General Gordon.”
+
+Then the horrid fact was disclosed that the new head had a mania for
+general information. He had doubts about the utility of examinations on
+subjects which had been crammed for the occasion. He wanted common
+sense.
+
+Sighs grew more worried every month; he could not get the thought out
+of his head that Mr. Perkins would ask him to fix a day for his
+marriage; and he hated the attitude the head adopted towards classical
+literature. There was no doubt that he was a fine scholar, and he was
+engaged on a work which was quite in the right tradition: he was
+writing a treatise on the trees in Latin literature; but he talked of
+it flippantly, as though it were a pastime of no great importance, like
+billiards, which engaged his leisure but was not to be considered with
+seriousness. And Squirts, the master of the Middle Third, grew more
+ill-tempered every day.
+
+It was in his form that Philip was put on entering the school. The Rev.
+B. B. Gordon was a man by nature ill-suited to be a schoolmaster: he
+was impatient and choleric. With no one to call him to account, with
+only small boys to face him, he had long lost all power of
+self-control. He began his work in a rage and ended it in a passion. He
+was a man of middle height and of a corpulent figure; he had sandy
+hair, worn very short and now growing gray, and a small bristly
+moustache. His large face, with indistinct features and small blue
+eyes, was naturally red, but during his frequent attacks of anger it
+grew dark and purple. His nails were bitten to the quick, for while
+some trembling boy was construing he would sit at his desk shaking with
+the fury that consumed him, and gnaw his fingers. Stories, perhaps
+exaggerated, were told of his violence, and two years before there had
+been some excitement in the school when it was heard that one father
+was threatening a prosecution: he had boxed the ears of a boy named
+Walters with a book so violently that his hearing was affected and the
+boy had to be taken away from the school. The boy’s father lived in
+Tercanbury, and there had been much indignation in the city, the local
+paper had referred to the matter; but Mr. Walters was only a brewer, so
+the sympathy was divided. The rest of the boys, for reasons best known
+to themselves, though they loathed the master, took his side in the
+affair, and, to show their indignation that the school’s business had
+been dealt with outside, made things as uncomfortable as they could for
+Walters’ younger brother, who still remained. But Mr. Gordon had only
+escaped the country living by the skin of his teeth, and he had never
+hit a boy since. The right the masters possessed to cane boys on the
+hand was taken away from them, and Squirts could no longer emphasize
+his anger by beating his desk with the cane. He never did more now than
+take a boy by the shoulders and shake him. He still made a naughty or
+refractory lad stand with one arm stretched out for anything from ten
+minutes to half an hour, and he was as violent as before with his
+tongue.
+
+No master could have been more unfitted to teach things to so shy a boy
+as Philip. He had come to the school with fewer terrors than he had
+when first he went to Mr. Watson’s. He knew a good many boys who had
+been with him at the preparatory school. He felt more grownup, and
+instinctively realised that among the larger numbers his deformity
+would be less noticeable. But from the first day Mr. Gordon struck
+terror in his heart; and the master, quick to discern the boys who were
+frightened of him, seemed on that account to take a peculiar dislike to
+him. Philip had enjoyed his work, but now he began to look upon the
+hours passed in school with horror. Rather than risk an answer which
+might be wrong and excite a storm of abuse from the master, he would
+sit stupidly silent, and when it came towards his turn to stand up and
+construe he grew sick and white with apprehension. His happy moments
+were those when Mr. Perkins took the form. He was able to gratify the
+passion for general knowledge which beset the headmaster; he had read
+all sorts of strange books beyond his years, and often Mr. Perkins,
+when a question was going round the room, would stop at Philip with a
+smile that filled the boy with rapture, and say:
+
+“Now, Carey, you tell them.”
+
+The good marks he got on these occasions increased Mr. Gordon’s
+indignation. One day it came to Philip’s turn to translate, and the
+master sat there glaring at him and furiously biting his thumb. He was
+in a ferocious mood. Philip began to speak in a low voice.
+
+“Don’t mumble,” shouted the master.
+
+Something seemed to stick in Philip’s throat.
+
+“Go on. Go on. Go on.”
+
+Each time the words were screamed more loudly. The effect was to drive
+all he knew out of Philip’s head, and he looked at the printed page
+vacantly. Mr. Gordon began to breathe heavily.
+
+“If you don’t know why don’t you say so? Do you know it or not? Did you
+hear all this construed last time or not? Why don’t you speak? Speak,
+you blockhead, speak!”
+
+The master seized the arms of his chair and grasped them as though to
+prevent himself from falling upon Philip. They knew that in past days
+he often used to seize boys by the throat till they almost choked. The
+veins in his forehead stood out and his face grew dark and threatening.
+He was a man insane.
+
+Philip had known the passage perfectly the day before, but now he could
+remember nothing.
+
+“I don’t know it,” he gasped.
+
+“Why don’t you know it? Let’s take the words one by one. We’ll soon see
+if you don’t know it.”
+
+Philip stood silent, very white, trembling a little, with his head bent
+down on the book. The master’s breathing grew almost stertorous.
+
+“The headmaster says you’re clever. I don’t know how he sees it.
+General information.” He laughed savagely. “I don’t know what they put
+you in his form for, Blockhead.”
+
+He was pleased with the word, and he repeated it at the top of his
+voice.
+
+“Blockhead! Blockhead! Club-footed blockhead!”
+
+That relieved him a little. He saw Philip redden suddenly. He told him
+to fetch the Black Book. Philip put down his Caesar and went silently
+out. The Black Book was a sombre volume in which the names of boys were
+written with their misdeeds, and when a name was down three times it
+meant a caning. Philip went to the headmaster’s house and knocked at
+his study-door. Mr. Perkins was seated at his table.
+
+“May I have the Black Book, please, sir.”
+
+“There it is,” answered Mr. Perkins, indicating its place by a nod of
+his head. “What have you been doing that you shouldn’t?”
+
+“I don’t know, sir.”
+
+Mr. Perkins gave him a quick look, but without answering went on with
+his work. Philip took the book and went out. When the hour was up, a
+few minutes later, he brought it back.
+
+“Let me have a look at it,” said the headmaster. “I see Mr. Gordon has
+black-booked you for ‘gross impertinence.’ What was it?”
+
+“I don’t know, sir. Mr. Gordon said I was a club-footed blockhead.”
+
+Mr. Perkins looked at him again. He wondered whether there was sarcasm
+behind the boy’s reply, but he was still much too shaken. His face was
+white and his eyes had a look of terrified distress. Mr. Perkins got up
+and put the book down. As he did so he took up some photographs.
+
+“A friend of mine sent me some pictures of Athens this morning,” he
+said casually. “Look here, there’s the Akropolis.”
+
+He began explaining to Philip what he saw. The ruin grew vivid with his
+words. He showed him the theatre of Dionysus and explained in what
+order the people sat, and how beyond they could see the blue Aegean.
+And then suddenly he said:
+
+“I remember Mr. Gordon used to call me a gipsy counter-jumper when I
+was in his form.”
+
+And before Philip, his mind fixed on the photographs, had time to
+gather the meaning of the remark, Mr. Perkins was showing him a picture
+of Salamis, and with his finger, a finger of which the nail had a
+little black edge to it, was pointing out how the Greek ships were
+placed and how the Persian.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Philip passed the next two years with comfortable monotony. He was not
+bullied more than other boys of his size; and his deformity,
+withdrawing him from games, acquired for him an insignificance for
+which he was grateful. He was not popular, and he was very lonely. He
+spent a couple of terms with Winks in the Upper Third. Winks, with his
+weary manner and his drooping eyelids, looked infinitely bored. He did
+his duty, but he did it with an abstracted mind. He was kind, gentle,
+and foolish. He had a great belief in the honour of boys; he felt that
+the first thing to make them truthful was not to let it enter your head
+for a moment that it was possible for them to lie. “Ask much,” he
+quoted, “and much shall be given to you.” Life was easy in the Upper
+Third. You knew exactly what lines would come to your turn to construe,
+and with the crib that passed from hand to hand you could find out all
+you wanted in two minutes; you could hold a Latin Grammar open on your
+knees while questions were passing round; and Winks never noticed
+anything odd in the fact that the same incredible mistake was to be
+found in a dozen different exercises. He had no great faith in
+examinations, for he noticed that boys never did so well in them as in
+form: it was disappointing, but not significant. In due course they
+were moved up, having learned little but a cheerful effrontery in the
+distortion of truth, which was possibly of greater service to them in
+after life than an ability to read Latin at sight.
+
+Then they fell into the hands of Tar. His name was Turner; he was the
+most vivacious of the old masters, a short man with an immense belly, a
+black beard turning now to gray, and a swarthy skin. In his clerical
+dress there was indeed something in him to suggest the tar-barrel; and
+though on principle he gave five hundred lines to any boy on whose lips
+he overheard his nickname, at dinner-parties in the precincts he often
+made little jokes about it. He was the most worldly of the masters; he
+dined out more frequently than any of the others, and the society he
+kept was not so exclusively clerical. The boys looked upon him as
+rather a dog. He left off his clerical attire during the holidays and
+had been seen in Switzerland in gay tweeds. He liked a bottle of wine
+and a good dinner, and having once been seen at the Cafe Royal with a
+lady who was very probably a near relation, was thenceforward supposed
+by generations of schoolboys to indulge in orgies the circumstantial
+details of which pointed to an unbounded belief in human depravity.
+
+Mr. Turner reckoned that it took him a term to lick boys into shape
+after they had been in the Upper Third; and now and then he let fall a
+sly hint, which showed that he knew perfectly what went on in his
+colleague’s form. He took it good-humouredly. He looked upon boys as
+young ruffians who were more apt to be truthful if it was quite certain
+a lie would be found out, whose sense of honour was peculiar to
+themselves and did not apply to dealings with masters, and who were
+least likely to be troublesome when they learned that it did not pay.
+He was proud of his form and as eager at fifty-five that it should do
+better in examinations than any of the others as he had been when he
+first came to the school. He had the choler of the obese, easily roused
+and as easily calmed, and his boys soon discovered that there was much
+kindliness beneath the invective with which he constantly assailed
+them. He had no patience with fools, but was willing to take much
+trouble with boys whom he suspected of concealing intelligence behind
+their wilfulness. He was fond of inviting them to tea; and, though
+vowing they never got a look in with him at the cakes and muffins, for
+it was the fashion to believe that his corpulence pointed to a
+voracious appetite, and his voracious appetite to tapeworms, they
+accepted his invitations with real pleasure.
+
+Philip was now more comfortable, for space was so limited that there
+were only studies for boys in the upper school, and till then he had
+lived in the great hall in which they all ate and in which the lower
+forms did preparation in a promiscuity which was vaguely distasteful to
+him. Now and then it made him restless to be with people and he wanted
+urgently to be alone. He set out for solitary walks into the country.
+There was a little stream, with pollards on both sides of it, that ran
+through green fields, and it made him happy, he knew not why, to wander
+along its banks. When he was tired he lay face-downward on the grass
+and watched the eager scurrying of minnows and of tadpoles. It gave him
+a peculiar satisfaction to saunter round the precincts. On the green in
+the middle they practised at nets in the summer, but during the rest of
+the year it was quiet: boys used to wander round sometimes arm in arm,
+or a studious fellow with abstracted gaze walked slowly, repeating to
+himself something he had to learn by heart. There was a colony of rooks
+in the great elms, and they filled the air with melancholy cries. Along
+one side lay the Cathedral with its great central tower, and Philip,
+who knew as yet nothing of beauty, felt when he looked at it a
+troubling delight which he could not understand. When he had a study
+(it was a little square room looking on a slum, and four boys shared
+it), he bought a photograph of that view of the Cathedral, and pinned
+it up over his desk. And he found himself taking a new interest in what
+he saw from the window of the Fourth Form room. It looked on to old
+lawns, carefully tended, and fine trees with foliage dense and rich. It
+gave him an odd feeling in his heart, and he did not know if it was
+pain or pleasure. It was the first dawn of the aesthetic emotion. It
+accompanied other changes. His voice broke. It was no longer quite
+under his control, and queer sounds issued from his throat.
+
+Then he began to go to the classes which were held in the headmaster’s
+study, immediately after tea, to prepare boys for confirmation.
+Philip’s piety had not stood the test of time, and he had long since
+given up his nightly reading of the Bible; but now, under the influence
+of Mr. Perkins, with this new condition of the body which made him so
+restless, his old feelings revived, and he reproached himself bitterly
+for his backsliding. The fires of Hell burned fiercely before his
+mind’s eye. If he had died during that time when he was little better
+than an infidel he would have been lost; he believed implicitly in pain
+everlasting, he believed in it much more than in eternal happiness; and
+he shuddered at the dangers he had run.
+
+Since the day on which Mr. Perkins had spoken kindly to him, when he
+was smarting under the particular form of abuse which he could least
+bear, Philip had conceived for his headmaster a dog-like adoration. He
+racked his brains vainly for some way to please him. He treasured the
+smallest word of commendation which by chance fell from his lips. And
+when he came to the quiet little meetings in his house he was prepared
+to surrender himself entirely. He kept his eyes fixed on Mr. Perkins’
+shining eyes, and sat with mouth half open, his head a little thrown
+forward so as to miss no word. The ordinariness of the surroundings
+made the matters they dealt with extraordinarily moving. And often the
+master, seized himself by the wonder of his subject, would push back
+the book in front of him, and with his hands clasped together over his
+heart, as though to still the beating, would talk of the mysteries of
+their religion. Sometimes Philip did not understand, but he did not
+want to understand, he felt vaguely that it was enough to feel. It
+seemed to him then that the headmaster, with his black, straggling hair
+and his pale face, was like those prophets of Israel who feared not to
+take kings to task; and when he thought of the Redeemer he saw Him only
+with the same dark eyes and those wan cheeks.
+
+Mr. Perkins took this part of his work with great seriousness. There
+was never here any of that flashing humour which made the other masters
+suspect him of flippancy. Finding time for everything in his busy day,
+he was able at certain intervals to take separately for a quarter of an
+hour or twenty minutes the boys whom he was preparing for confirmation.
+He wanted to make them feel that this was the first consciously serious
+step in their lives; he tried to grope into the depths of their souls;
+he wanted to instil in them his own vehement devotion. In Philip,
+notwithstanding his shyness, he felt the possibility of a passion equal
+to his own. The boy’s temperament seemed to him essentially religious.
+One day he broke off suddenly from the subject on which he had been
+talking.
+
+“Have you thought at all what you’re going to be when you grow up?” he
+asked.
+
+“My uncle wants me to be ordained,” said Philip.
+
+“And you?”
+
+Philip looked away. He was ashamed to answer that he felt himself
+unworthy.
+
+“I don’t know any life that’s so full of happiness as ours. I wish I
+could make you feel what a wonderful privilege it is. One can serve God
+in every walk, but we stand nearer to Him. I don’t want to influence
+you, but if you made up your mind—oh, at once—you couldn’t help feeling
+that joy and relief which never desert one again.”
+
+Philip did not answer, but the headmaster read in his eyes that he
+realised already something of what he tried to indicate.
+
+“If you go on as you are now you’ll find yourself head of the school
+one of these days, and you ought to be pretty safe for a scholarship
+when you leave. Have you got anything of your own?”
+
+“My uncle says I shall have a hundred a year when I’m twenty-one.”
+
+“You’ll be rich. I had nothing.”
+
+The headmaster hesitated a moment, and then, idly drawing lines with a
+pencil on the blotting paper in front of him, went on.
+
+“I’m afraid your choice of professions will be rather limited. You
+naturally couldn’t go in for anything that required physical activity.”
+
+Philip reddened to the roots of his hair, as he always did when any
+reference was made to his club-foot. Mr. Perkins looked at him gravely.
+
+“I wonder if you’re not oversensitive about your misfortune. Has it
+ever struck you to thank God for it?”
+
+Philip looked up quickly. His lips tightened. He remembered how for
+months, trusting in what they told him, he had implored God to heal him
+as He had healed the Leper and made the Blind to see.
+
+“As long as you accept it rebelliously it can only cause you shame. But
+if you looked upon it as a cross that was given you to bear only
+because your shoulders were strong enough to bear it, a sign of God’s
+favour, then it would be a source of happiness to you instead of
+misery.”
+
+He saw that the boy hated to discuss the matter and he let him go.
+
+But Philip thought over all that the headmaster had said, and
+presently, his mind taken up entirely with the ceremony that was before
+him, a mystical rapture seized him. His spirit seemed to free itself
+from the bonds of the flesh and he seemed to be living a new life. He
+aspired to perfection with all the passion that was in him. He wanted
+to surrender himself entirely to the service of God, and he made up his
+mind definitely that he would be ordained. When the great day arrived,
+his soul deeply moved by all the preparation, by the books he had
+studied and above all by the overwhelming influence of the head, he
+could hardly contain himself for fear and joy. One thought had
+tormented him. He knew that he would have to walk alone through the
+chancel, and he dreaded showing his limp thus obviously, not only to
+the whole school, who were attending the service, but also to the
+strangers, people from the city or parents who had come to see their
+sons confirmed. But when the time came he felt suddenly that he could
+accept the humiliation joyfully; and as he limped up the chancel, very
+small and insignificant beneath the lofty vaulting of the Cathedral, he
+offered consciously his deformity as a sacrifice to the God who loved
+him.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+But Philip could not live long in the rarefied air of the hilltops.
+What had happened to him when first he was seized by the religious
+emotion happened to him now. Because he felt so keenly the beauty of
+faith, because the desire for self-sacrifice burned in his heart with
+such a gem-like glow, his strength seemed inadequate to his ambition.
+He was tired out by the violence of his passion. His soul was filled on
+a sudden with a singular aridity. He began to forget the presence of
+God which had seemed so surrounding; and his religious exercises, still
+very punctually performed, grew merely formal. At first he blamed
+himself for this falling away, and the fear of hell-fire urged him to
+renewed vehemence; but the passion was dead, and gradually other
+interests distracted his thoughts.
+
+Philip had few friends. His habit of reading isolated him: it became
+such a need that after being in company for some time he grew tired and
+restless; he was vain of the wider knowledge he had acquired from the
+perusal of so many books, his mind was alert, and he had not the skill
+to hide his contempt for his companions’ stupidity. They complained
+that he was conceited; and, since he excelled only in matters which to
+them were unimportant, they asked satirically what he had to be
+conceited about. He was developing a sense of humour, and found that he
+had a knack of saying bitter things, which caught people on the raw; he
+said them because they amused him, hardly realising how much they hurt,
+and was much offended when he found that his victims regarded him with
+active dislike. The humiliations he suffered when first he went to
+school had caused in him a shrinking from his fellows which he could
+never entirely overcome; he remained shy and silent. But though he did
+everything to alienate the sympathy of other boys he longed with all
+his heart for the popularity which to some was so easily accorded.
+These from his distance he admired extravagantly; and though he was
+inclined to be more sarcastic with them than with others, though he
+made little jokes at their expense, he would have given anything to
+change places with them. Indeed he would gladly have changed places
+with the dullest boy in the school who was whole of limb. He took to a
+singular habit. He would imagine that he was some boy whom he had a
+particular fancy for; he would throw his soul, as it were, into the
+other’s body, talk with his voice and laugh with his heart; he would
+imagine himself doing all the things the other did. It was so vivid
+that he seemed for a moment really to be no longer himself. In this way
+he enjoyed many intervals of fantastic happiness.
+
+At the beginning of the Christmas term which followed on his
+confirmation Philip found himself moved into another study. One of the
+boys who shared it was called Rose. He was in the same form as Philip,
+and Philip had always looked upon him with envious admiration. He was
+not good-looking; though his large hands and big bones suggested that
+he would be a tall man, he was clumsily made; but his eyes were
+charming, and when he laughed (he was constantly laughing) his face
+wrinkled all round them in a jolly way. He was neither clever nor
+stupid, but good enough at his work and better at games. He was a
+favourite with masters and boys, and he in his turn liked everyone.
+
+When Philip was put in the study he could not help seeing that the
+others, who had been together for three terms, welcomed him coldly. It
+made him nervous to feel himself an intruder; but he had learned to
+hide his feelings, and they found him quiet and unobtrusive. With Rose,
+because he was as little able as anyone else to resist his charm,
+Philip was even more than usually shy and abrupt; and whether on
+account of this, unconsciously bent upon exerting the fascination he
+knew was his only by the results, or whether from sheer kindness of
+heart, it was Rose who first took Philip into the circle. One day,
+quite suddenly, he asked Philip if he would walk to the football field
+with him. Philip flushed.
+
+“I can’t walk fast enough for you,” he said.
+
+“Rot. Come on.”
+
+And just before they were setting out some boy put his head in the
+study-door and asked Rose to go with him.
+
+“I can’t,” he answered. “I’ve already promised Carey.”
+
+“Don’t bother about me,” said Philip quickly. “I shan’t mind.”
+
+“Rot,” said Rose.
+
+He looked at Philip with those good-natured eyes of his and laughed.
+Philip felt a curious tremor in his heart.
+
+In a little while, their friendship growing with boyish rapidity, the
+pair were inseparable. Other fellows wondered at the sudden intimacy,
+and Rose was asked what he saw in Philip.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered. “He’s not half a bad chap really.”
+
+Soon they grew accustomed to the two walking into chapel arm in arm or
+strolling round the precincts in conversation; wherever one was the
+other could be found also, and, as though acknowledging his
+proprietorship, boys who wanted Rose would leave messages with Carey.
+Philip at first was reserved. He would not let himself yield entirely
+to the proud joy that filled him; but presently his distrust of the
+fates gave way before a wild happiness. He thought Rose the most
+wonderful fellow he had ever seen. His books now were insignificant; he
+could not bother about them when there was something infinitely more
+important to occupy him. Rose’s friends used to come in to tea in the
+study sometimes or sit about when there was nothing better to do—Rose
+liked a crowd and the chance of a rag—and they found that Philip was
+quite a decent fellow. Philip was happy.
+
+When the last day of term came he and Rose arranged by which train they
+should come back, so that they might meet at the station and have tea
+in the town before returning to school. Philip went home with a heavy
+heart. He thought of Rose all through the holidays, and his fancy was
+active with the things they would do together next term. He was bored
+at the vicarage, and when on the last day his uncle put him the usual
+question in the usual facetious tone:
+
+“Well, are you glad to be going back to school?”
+
+Philip answered joyfully.
+
+“Rather.”
+
+In order to be sure of meeting Rose at the station he took an earlier
+train than he usually did, and he waited about the platform for an
+hour. When the train came in from Faversham, where he knew Rose had to
+change, he ran along it excitedly. But Rose was not there. He got a
+porter to tell him when another train was due, and he waited; but again
+he was disappointed; and he was cold and hungry, so he walked, through
+side-streets and slums, by a short cut to the school. He found Rose in
+the study, with his feet on the chimney-piece, talking eighteen to the
+dozen with half a dozen boys who were sitting on whatever there was to
+sit on. He shook hands with Philip enthusiastically, but Philip’s face
+fell, for he realised that Rose had forgotten all about their
+appointment.
+
+“I say, why are you so late?” said Rose. “I thought you were never
+coming.”
+
+“You were at the station at half-past four,” said another boy. “I saw
+you when I came.”
+
+Philip blushed a little. He did not want Rose to know that he had been
+such a fool as to wait for him.
+
+“I had to see about a friend of my people’s,” he invented readily. “I
+was asked to see her off.”
+
+But his disappointment made him a little sulky. He sat in silence, and
+when spoken to answered in monosyllables. He was making up his mind to
+have it out with Rose when they were alone. But when the others had
+gone Rose at once came over and sat on the arm of the chair in which
+Philip was lounging.
+
+“I say, I’m jolly glad we’re in the same study this term. Ripping,
+isn’t it?”
+
+He seemed so genuinely pleased to see Philip that Philip’s annoyance
+vanished. They began as if they had not been separated for five minutes
+to talk eagerly of the thousand things that interested them.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+At first Philip had been too grateful for Rose’s friendship to make any
+demands on him. He took things as they came and enjoyed life. But
+presently he began to resent Rose’s universal amiability; he wanted a
+more exclusive attachment, and he claimed as a right what before he had
+accepted as a favour. He watched jealously Rose’s companionship with
+others; and though he knew it was unreasonable could not help sometimes
+saying bitter things to him. If Rose spent an hour playing the fool in
+another study, Philip would receive him when he returned to his own
+with a sullen frown. He would sulk for a day, and he suffered more
+because Rose either did not notice his ill-humour or deliberately
+ignored it. Not seldom Philip, knowing all the time how stupid he was,
+would force a quarrel, and they would not speak to one another for a
+couple of days. But Philip could not bear to be angry with him long,
+and even when convinced that he was in the right, would apologise
+humbly. Then for a week they would be as great friends as ever. But the
+best was over, and Philip could see that Rose often walked with him
+merely from old habit or from fear of his anger; they had not so much
+to say to one another as at first, and Rose was often bored. Philip
+felt that his lameness began to irritate him.
+
+Towards the end of the term two or three boys caught scarlet fever, and
+there was much talk of sending them all home in order to escape an
+epidemic; but the sufferers were isolated, and since no more were
+attacked it was supposed that the outbreak was stopped. One of the
+stricken was Philip. He remained in hospital through the Easter
+holidays, and at the beginning of the summer term was sent home to the
+vicarage to get a little fresh air. The Vicar, notwithstanding medical
+assurance that the boy was no longer infectious, received him with
+suspicion; he thought it very inconsiderate of the doctor to suggest
+that his nephew’s convalescence should be spent by the seaside, and
+consented to have him in the house only because there was nowhere else
+he could go.
+
+Philip went back to school at half-term. He had forgotten the quarrels
+he had had with Rose, but remembered only that he was his greatest
+friend. He knew that he had been silly. He made up his mind to be more
+reasonable. During his illness Rose had sent him in a couple of little
+notes, and he had ended each with the words: “Hurry up and come back.”
+Philip thought Rose must be looking forward as much to his return as he
+was himself to seeing Rose.
+
+He found that owing to the death from scarlet fever of one of the boys
+in the Sixth there had been some shifting in the studies and Rose was
+no longer in his. It was a bitter disappointment. But as soon as he
+arrived he burst into Rose’s study. Rose was sitting at his desk,
+working with a boy called Hunter, and turned round crossly as Philip
+came in.
+
+“Who the devil’s that?” he cried. And then, seeing Philip: “Oh, it’s
+you.”
+
+Philip stopped in embarrassment.
+
+“I thought I’d come in and see how you were.”
+
+“We were just working.”
+
+Hunter broke into the conversation.
+
+“When did you get back?”
+
+“Five minutes ago.”
+
+They sat and looked at him as though he was disturbing them. They
+evidently expected him to go quickly. Philip reddened.
+
+“I’ll be off. You might look in when you’ve done,” he said to Rose.
+
+“All right.”
+
+Philip closed the door behind him and limped back to his own study. He
+felt frightfully hurt. Rose, far from seeming glad to see him, had
+looked almost put out. They might never have been more than
+acquaintances. Though he waited in his study, not leaving it for a
+moment in case just then Rose should come, his friend never appeared;
+and next morning when he went in to prayers he saw Rose and Hunter
+singing along arm in arm. What he could not see for himself others told
+him. He had forgotten that three months is a long time in a schoolboy’s
+life, and though he had passed them in solitude Rose had lived in the
+world. Hunter had stepped into the vacant place. Philip found that Rose
+was quietly avoiding him. But he was not the boy to accept a situation
+without putting it into words; he waited till he was sure Rose was
+alone in his study and went in.
+
+“May I come in?” he asked.
+
+Rose looked at him with an embarrassment that made him angry with
+Philip.
+
+“Yes, if you want to.”
+
+“It’s very kind of you,” said Philip sarcastically.
+
+“What d’you want?”
+
+“I say, why have you been so rotten since I came back?”
+
+“Oh, don’t be an ass,” said Rose.
+
+“I don’t know what you see in Hunter.”
+
+“That’s my business.”
+
+Philip looked down. He could not bring himself to say what was in his
+heart. He was afraid of humiliating himself. Rose got up.
+
+“I’ve got to go to the Gym,” he said.
+
+When he was at the door Philip forced himself to speak.
+
+“I say, Rose, don’t be a perfect beast.”
+
+“Oh, go to hell.”
+
+Rose slammed the door behind him and left Philip alone. Philip shivered
+with rage. He went back to his study and turned the conversation over
+in his mind. He hated Rose now, he wanted to hurt him, he thought of
+biting things he might have said to him. He brooded over the end to
+their friendship and fancied that others were talking of it. In his
+sensitiveness he saw sneers and wonderings in other fellows’ manner
+when they were not bothering their heads with him at all. He imagined
+to himself what they were saying.
+
+“After all, it wasn’t likely to last long. I wonder he ever stuck Carey
+at all. Blighter!”
+
+To show his indifference he struck up a violent friendship with a boy
+called Sharp whom he hated and despised. He was a London boy, with a
+loutish air, a heavy fellow with the beginnings of a moustache on his
+lip and bushy eyebrows that joined one another across the bridge of his
+nose. He had soft hands and manners too suave for his years. He spoke
+with the suspicion of a cockney accent. He was one of those boys who
+are too slack to play games, and he exercised great ingenuity in making
+excuses to avoid such as were compulsory. He was regarded by boys and
+masters with a vague dislike, and it was from arrogance that Philip now
+sought his society. Sharp in a couple of terms was going to Germany for
+a year. He hated school, which he looked upon as an indignity to be
+endured till he was old enough to go out into the world. London was all
+he cared for, and he had many stories to tell of his doings there
+during the holidays. From his conversation—he spoke in a soft,
+deep-toned voice—there emerged the vague rumour of the London streets
+by night. Philip listened to him at once fascinated and repelled. With
+his vivid fancy he seemed to see the surging throng round the pit-door
+of theatres, and the glitter of cheap restaurants, bars where men, half
+drunk, sat on high stools talking with barmaids; and under the street
+lamps the mysterious passing of dark crowds bent upon pleasure. Sharp
+lent him cheap novels from Holywell Row, which Philip read in his
+cubicle with a sort of wonderful fear.
+
+Once Rose tried to effect a reconciliation. He was a good-natured
+fellow, who did not like having enemies.
+
+“I say, Carey, why are you being such a silly ass? It doesn’t do you
+any good cutting me and all that.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean,” answered Philip.
+
+“Well, I don’t see why you shouldn’t talk.”
+
+“You bore me,” said Philip.
+
+“Please yourself.”
+
+Rose shrugged his shoulders and left him. Philip was very white, as he
+always became when he was moved, and his heart beat violently. When
+Rose went away he felt suddenly sick with misery. He did not know why
+he had answered in that fashion. He would have given anything to be
+friends with Rose. He hated to have quarrelled with him, and now that
+he saw he had given him pain he was very sorry. But at the moment he
+had not been master of himself. It seemed that some devil had seized
+him, forcing him to say bitter things against his will, even though at
+the time he wanted to shake hands with Rose and meet him more than
+halfway. The desire to wound had been too strong for him. He had wanted
+to revenge himself for the pain and the humiliation he had endured. It
+was pride: it was folly too, for he knew that Rose would not care at
+all, while he would suffer bitterly. The thought came to him that he
+would go to Rose, and say:
+
+“I say, I’m sorry I was such a beast. I couldn’t help it. Let’s make it
+up.”
+
+But he knew he would never be able to do it. He was afraid that Rose
+would sneer at him. He was angry with himself, and when Sharp came in a
+little while afterwards he seized upon the first opportunity to quarrel
+with him. Philip had a fiendish instinct for discovering other people’s
+raw spots, and was able to say things that rankled because they were
+true. But Sharp had the last word.
+
+“I heard Rose talking about you to Mellor just now,” he said. “Mellor
+said: Why didn’t you kick him? It would teach him manners. And Rose
+said: I didn’t like to. Damned cripple.”
+
+Philip suddenly became scarlet. He could not answer, for there was a
+lump in his throat that almost choked him.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+Philip was moved into the Sixth, but he hated school now with all his
+heart, and, having lost his ambition, cared nothing whether he did ill
+or well. He awoke in the morning with a sinking heart because he must
+go through another day of drudgery. He was tired of having to do things
+because he was told; and the restrictions irked him, not because they
+were unreasonable, but because they were restrictions. He yearned for
+freedom. He was weary of repeating things that he knew already and of
+the hammering away, for the sake of a thick-witted fellow, at something
+that he understood from the beginning.
+
+With Mr. Perkins you could work or not as you chose. He was at once
+eager and abstracted. The Sixth Form room was in a part of the old
+abbey which had been restored, and it had a gothic window: Philip tried
+to cheat his boredom by drawing this over and over again; and sometimes
+out of his head he drew the great tower of the Cathedral or the gateway
+that led into the precincts. He had a knack for drawing. Aunt Louisa
+during her youth had painted in water colours, and she had several
+albums filled with sketches of churches, old bridges, and picturesque
+cottages. They were often shown at the vicarage tea-parties. She had
+once given Philip a paint-box as a Christmas present, and he had
+started by copying her pictures. He copied them better than anyone
+could have expected, and presently he did little pictures of his own.
+Mrs. Carey encouraged him. It was a good way to keep him out of
+mischief, and later on his sketches would be useful for bazaars. Two or
+three of them had been framed and hung in his bed-room.
+
+But one day, at the end of the morning’s work, Mr. Perkins stopped him
+as he was lounging out of the form-room.
+
+“I want to speak to you, Carey.”
+
+Philip waited. Mr. Perkins ran his lean fingers through his beard and
+looked at Philip. He seemed to be thinking over what he wanted to say.
+
+“What’s the matter with you, Carey?” he said abruptly.
+
+Philip, flushing, looked at him quickly. But knowing him well by now,
+without answering, he waited for him to go on.
+
+“I’ve been dissatisfied with you lately. You’ve been slack and
+inattentive. You seem to take no interest in your work. It’s been
+slovenly and bad.”
+
+“I’m very sorry, sir,” said Philip.
+
+“Is that all you have to say for yourself?”
+
+Philip looked down sulkily. How could he answer that he was bored to
+death?
+
+“You know, this term you’ll go down instead of up. I shan’t give you a
+very good report.”
+
+Philip wondered what he would say if he knew how the report was
+treated. It arrived at breakfast, Mr. Carey glanced at it
+indifferently, and passed it over to Philip.
+
+“There’s your report. You’d better see what it says,” he remarked, as
+he ran his fingers through the wrapper of a catalogue of second-hand
+books.
+
+Philip read it.
+
+“Is it good?” asked Aunt Louisa.
+
+“Not so good as I deserve,” answered Philip, with a smile, giving it to
+her.
+
+“I’ll read it afterwards when I’ve got my spectacles,” she said.
+
+But after breakfast Mary Ann came in to say the butcher was there, and
+she generally forgot.
+
+Mr. Perkins went on.
+
+“I’m disappointed with you. And I can’t understand. I know you can do
+things if you want to, but you don’t seem to want to any more. I was
+going to make you a monitor next term, but I think I’d better wait a
+bit.”
+
+Philip flushed. He did not like the thought of being passed over. He
+tightened his lips.
+
+“And there’s something else. You must begin thinking of your
+scholarship now. You won’t get anything unless you start working very
+seriously.”
+
+Philip was irritated by the lecture. He was angry with the headmaster,
+and angry with himself.
+
+“I don’t think I’m going up to Oxford,” he said.
+
+“Why not? I thought your idea was to be ordained.”
+
+“I’ve changed my mind.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+Philip did not answer. Mr. Perkins, holding himself oddly as he always
+did, like a figure in one of Perugino’s pictures, drew his fingers
+thoughtfully through his beard. He looked at Philip as though he were
+trying to understand and then abruptly told him he might go.
+
+Apparently he was not satisfied, for one evening, a week later, when
+Philip had to go into his study with some papers, he resumed the
+conversation; but this time he adopted a different method: he spoke to
+Philip not as a schoolmaster with a boy but as one human being with
+another. He did not seem to care now that Philip’s work was poor, that
+he ran small chance against keen rivals of carrying off the scholarship
+necessary for him to go to Oxford: the important matter was his changed
+intention about his life afterwards. Mr. Perkins set himself to revive
+his eagerness to be ordained. With infinite skill he worked on his
+feelings, and this was easier since he was himself genuinely moved.
+Philip’s change of mind caused him bitter distress, and he really
+thought he was throwing away his chance of happiness in life for he
+knew not what. His voice was very persuasive. And Philip, easily moved
+by the emotion of others, very emotional himself notwithstanding a
+placid exterior—his face, partly by nature but also from the habit of
+all these years at school, seldom except by his quick flushing showed
+what he felt—Philip was deeply touched by what the master said. He was
+very grateful to him for the interest he showed, and he was
+conscience-stricken by the grief which he felt his behaviour caused
+him. It was subtly flattering to know that with the whole school to
+think about Mr. Perkins should trouble with him, but at the same time
+something else in him, like another person standing at his elbow, clung
+desperately to two words.
+
+“I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.”
+
+He felt himself slipping. He was powerless against the weakness that
+seemed to well up in him; it was like the water that rises up in an
+empty bottle held over a full basin; and he set his teeth, saying the
+words over and over to himself.
+
+“I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.”
+
+At last Mr. Perkins put his hand on Philip’s shoulder.
+
+“I don’t want to influence you,” he said. “You must decide for
+yourself. Pray to Almighty God for help and guidance.”
+
+When Philip came out of the headmaster’s house there was a light rain
+falling. He went under the archway that led to the precincts, there was
+not a soul there, and the rooks were silent in the elms. He walked
+round slowly. He felt hot, and the rain did him good. He thought over
+all that Mr. Perkins had said, calmly now that he was withdrawn from
+the fervour of his personality, and he was thankful he had not given
+way.
+
+In the darkness he could but vaguely see the great mass of the
+Cathedral: he hated it now because of the irksomeness of the long
+services which he was forced to attend. The anthem was interminable,
+and you had to stand drearily while it was being sung; you could not
+hear the droning sermon, and your body twitched because you had to sit
+still when you wanted to move about. Then Philip thought of the two
+services every Sunday at Blackstable. The church was bare and cold, and
+there was a smell all about one of pomade and starched clothes. The
+curate preached once and his uncle preached once. As he grew up he had
+learned to know his uncle; Philip was downright and intolerant, and he
+could not understand that a man might sincerely say things as a
+clergyman which he never acted up to as a man. The deception outraged
+him. His uncle was a weak and selfish man, whose chief desire it was to
+be saved trouble.
+
+Mr. Perkins had spoken to him of the beauty of a life dedicated to the
+service of God. Philip knew what sort of lives the clergy led in the
+corner of East Anglia which was his home. There was the Vicar of
+Whitestone, a parish a little way from Blackstable: he was a bachelor
+and to give himself something to do had lately taken up farming: the
+local paper constantly reported the cases he had in the county court
+against this one and that, labourers he would not pay their wages to or
+tradesmen whom he accused of cheating him; scandal said he starved his
+cows, and there was much talk about some general action which should be
+taken against him. Then there was the Vicar of Ferne, a bearded, fine
+figure of a man: his wife had been forced to leave him because of his
+cruelty, and she had filled the neighbourhood with stories of his
+immorality. The Vicar of Surle, a tiny hamlet by the sea, was to be
+seen every evening in the public house a stone’s throw from his
+vicarage; and the churchwardens had been to Mr. Carey to ask his
+advice. There was not a soul for any of them to talk to except small
+farmers or fishermen; there were long winter evenings when the wind
+blew, whistling drearily through the leafless trees, and all around
+they saw nothing but the bare monotony of ploughed fields; and there
+was poverty, and there was lack of any work that seemed to matter;
+every kink in their characters had free play; there was nothing to
+restrain them; they grew narrow and eccentric: Philip knew all this,
+but in his young intolerance he did not offer it as an excuse. He
+shivered at the thought of leading such a life; he wanted to get out
+into the world.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Mr. Perkins soon saw that his words had had no effect on Philip, and
+for the rest of the term ignored him. He wrote a report which was
+vitriolic. When it arrived and Aunt Louisa asked Philip what it was
+like, he answered cheerfully.
+
+“Rotten.”
+
+“Is it?” said the Vicar. “I must look at it again.”
+
+“Do you think there’s any use in my staying on at Tercanbury? I should
+have thought it would be better if I went to Germany for a bit.”
+
+“What has put that in your head?” said Aunt Louisa.
+
+“Don’t you think it’s rather a good idea?”
+
+Sharp had already left King’s School and had written to Philip from
+Hanover. He was really starting life, and it made Philip more restless
+to think of it. He felt he could not bear another year of restraint.
+
+“But then you wouldn’t get a scholarship.”
+
+“I haven’t a chance of getting one anyhow. And besides, I don’t know
+that I particularly want to go to Oxford.”
+
+“But if you’re going to be ordained, Philip?” Aunt Louisa exclaimed in
+dismay.
+
+“I’ve given up that idea long ago.”
+
+Mrs. Carey looked at him with startled eyes, and then, used to
+self-restraint, she poured out another cup of tea for his uncle. They
+did not speak. In a moment Philip saw tears slowly falling down her
+cheeks. His heart was suddenly wrung because he caused her pain. In her
+tight black dress, made by the dressmaker down the street, with her
+wrinkled face and pale tired eyes, her gray hair still done in the
+frivolous ringlets of her youth, she was a ridiculous but strangely
+pathetic figure. Philip saw it for the first time.
+
+Afterwards, when the Vicar was shut up in his study with the curate, he
+put his arms round her waist.
+
+“I say, I’m sorry you’re upset, Aunt Louisa,” he said. “But it’s no
+good my being ordained if I haven’t a real vocation, is it?”
+
+“I’m so disappointed, Philip,” she moaned. “I’d set my heart on it. I
+thought you could be your uncle’s curate, and then when our time
+came—after all, we can’t last for ever, can we?—you might have taken
+his place.”
+
+Philip shivered. He was seized with panic. His heart beat like a pigeon
+in a trap beating with its wings. His aunt wept softly, her head upon
+his shoulder.
+
+“I wish you’d persuade Uncle William to let me leave Tercanbury. I’m so
+sick of it.”
+
+But the Vicar of Blackstable did not easily alter any arrangements he
+had made, and it had always been intended that Philip should stay at
+King’s School till he was eighteen, and should then go to Oxford. At
+all events he would not hear of Philip leaving then, for no notice had
+been given and the term’s fee would have to be paid in any case.
+
+“Then will you give notice for me to leave at Christmas?” said Philip,
+at the end of a long and often bitter conversation.
+
+“I’ll write to Mr. Perkins about it and see what he says.”
+
+“Oh, I wish to goodness I were twenty-one. It is awful to be at
+somebody else’s beck and call.”
+
+“Philip, you shouldn’t speak to your uncle like that,” said Mrs. Carey
+gently.
+
+“But don’t you see that Perkins will want me to stay? He gets so much a
+head for every chap in the school.”
+
+“Why don’t you want to go to Oxford?”
+
+“What’s the good if I’m not going into the Church?”
+
+“You can’t go into the Church: you’re in the Church already,” said the
+Vicar.
+
+“Ordained then,” replied Philip impatiently.
+
+“What are you going to be, Philip?” asked Mrs. Carey.
+
+“I don’t know. I’ve not made up my mind. But whatever I am, it’ll be
+useful to know foreign languages. I shall get far more out of a year in
+Germany than by staying on at that hole.”
+
+He would not say that he felt Oxford would be little better than a
+continuation of his life at school. He wished immensely to be his own
+master. Besides he would be known to a certain extent among old
+schoolfellows, and he wanted to get away from them all. He felt that
+his life at school had been a failure. He wanted to start fresh.
+
+It happened that his desire to go to Germany fell in with certain ideas
+which had been of late discussed at Blackstable. Sometimes friends came
+to stay with the doctor and brought news of the world outside; and the
+visitors spending August by the sea had their own way of looking at
+things. The Vicar had heard that there were people who did not think
+the old-fashioned education so useful nowadays as it had been in the
+past, and modern languages were gaining an importance which they had
+not had in his own youth. His own mind was divided, for a younger
+brother of his had been sent to Germany when he failed in some
+examination, thus creating a precedent but since he had there died of
+typhoid it was impossible to look upon the experiment as other than
+dangerous. The result of innumerable conversations was that Philip
+should go back to Tercanbury for another term, and then should leave.
+With this agreement Philip was not dissatisfied. But when he had been
+back a few days the headmaster spoke to him.
+
+“I’ve had a letter from your uncle. It appears you want to go to
+Germany, and he asks me what I think about it.”
+
+Philip was astounded. He was furious with his guardian for going back
+on his word.
+
+“I thought it was settled, sir,” he said.
+
+“Far from it. I’ve written to say I think it the greatest mistake to
+take you away.”
+
+Philip immediately sat down and wrote a violent letter to his uncle. He
+did not measure his language. He was so angry that he could not get to
+sleep till quite late that night, and he awoke in the early morning and
+began brooding over the way they had treated him. He waited impatiently
+for an answer. In two or three days it came. It was a mild, pained
+letter from Aunt Louisa, saying that he should not write such things to
+his uncle, who was very much distressed. He was unkind and unchristian.
+He must know they were only trying to do their best for him, and they
+were so much older than he that they must be better judges of what was
+good for him. Philip clenched his hands. He had heard that statement so
+often, and he could not see why it was true; they did not know the
+conditions as he did, why should they accept it as self-evident that
+their greater age gave them greater wisdom? The letter ended with the
+information that Mr. Carey had withdrawn the notice he had given.
+
+Philip nursed his wrath till the next half-holiday. They had them on
+Tuesdays and Thursdays, since on Saturday afternoons they had to go to
+a service in the Cathedral. He stopped behind when the rest of the
+Sixth went out.
+
+“May I go to Blackstable this afternoon, please, sir?” he asked.
+
+“No,” said the headmaster briefly.
+
+“I wanted to see my uncle about something very important.”
+
+“Didn’t you hear me say no?”
+
+Philip did not answer. He went out. He felt almost sick with
+humiliation, the humiliation of having to ask and the humiliation of
+the curt refusal. He hated the headmaster now. Philip writhed under
+that despotism which never vouchsafed a reason for the most tyrannous
+act. He was too angry to care what he did, and after dinner walked down
+to the station, by the back ways he knew so well, just in time to catch
+the train to Blackstable. He walked into the vicarage and found his
+uncle and aunt sitting in the dining-room.
+
+“Hulloa, where have you sprung from?” said the Vicar.
+
+It was very clear that he was not pleased to see him. He looked a
+little uneasy.
+
+“I thought I’d come and see you about my leaving. I want to know what
+you mean by promising me one thing when I was here, and doing something
+different a week after.”
+
+He was a little frightened at his own boldness, but he had made up his
+mind exactly what words to use, and, though his heart beat violently,
+he forced himself to say them.
+
+“Have you got leave to come here this afternoon?”
+
+“No. I asked Perkins and he refused. If you like to write and tell him
+I’ve been here you can get me into a really fine old row.”
+
+Mrs. Carey sat knitting with trembling hands. She was unused to scenes
+and they agitated her extremely.
+
+“It would serve you right if I told him,” said Mr. Carey.
+
+“If you like to be a perfect sneak you can. After writing to Perkins as
+you did you’re quite capable of it.”
+
+It was foolish of Philip to say that, because it gave the Vicar exactly
+the opportunity he wanted.
+
+“I’m not going to sit still while you say impertinent things to me,” he
+said with dignity.
+
+He got up and walked quickly out of the room into his study. Philip
+heard him shut the door and lock it.
+
+“Oh, I wish to God I were twenty-one. It is awful to be tied down like
+this.”
+
+Aunt Louisa began to cry quietly.
+
+“Oh, Philip, you oughtn’t to have spoken to your uncle like that. Do
+please go and tell him you’re sorry.”
+
+“I’m not in the least sorry. He’s taking a mean advantage. Of course
+it’s just waste of money keeping me on at school, but what does he
+care? It’s not his money. It was cruel to put me under the guardianship
+of people who know nothing about things.”
+
+“Philip.”
+
+Philip in his voluble anger stopped suddenly at the sound of her voice.
+It was heart-broken. He had not realised what bitter things he was
+saying.
+
+“Philip, how can you be so unkind? You know we are only trying to do
+our best for you, and we know that we have no experience; it isn’t as
+if we’d had any children of our own: that’s why we consulted Mr.
+Perkins.” Her voice broke. “I’ve tried to be like a mother to you. I’ve
+loved you as if you were my own son.”
+
+She was so small and frail, there was something so pathetic in her
+old-maidish air, that Philip was touched. A great lump came suddenly in
+his throat and his eyes filled with tears.
+
+“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be beastly.”
+
+He knelt down beside her and took her in his arms, and kissed her wet,
+withered cheeks. She sobbed bitterly, and he seemed to feel on a sudden
+the pity of that wasted life. She had never surrendered herself before
+to such a display of emotion.
+
+“I know I’ve not been what I wanted to be to you, Philip, but I didn’t
+know how. It’s been just as dreadful for me to have no children as for
+you to have no mother.”
+
+Philip forgot his anger and his own concerns, but thought only of
+consoling her, with broken words and clumsy little caresses. Then the
+clock struck, and he had to bolt off at once to catch the only train
+that would get him back to Tercanbury in time for call-over. As he sat
+in the corner of the railway carriage he saw that he had done nothing.
+He was angry with himself for his weakness. It was despicable to have
+allowed himself to be turned from his purpose by the pompous airs of
+the Vicar and the tears of his aunt. But as the result of he knew not
+what conversations between the couple another letter was written to the
+headmaster. Mr. Perkins read it with an impatient shrug of the
+shoulders. He showed it to Philip. It ran:
+
+Dear Mr. Perkins,
+
+Forgive me for troubling you again about my ward, but both his Aunt and
+I have been uneasy about him. He seems very anxious to leave school,
+and his Aunt thinks he is unhappy. It is very difficult for us to know
+what to do as we are not his parents. He does not seem to think he is
+doing very well and he feels it is wasting his money to stay on. I
+should be very much obliged if you would have a talk to him, and if he
+is still of the same mind perhaps it would be better if he left at
+Christmas as I originally intended.
+
+Yours very truly,
+  William Carey.
+
+Philip gave him back the letter. He felt a thrill of pride in his
+triumph. He had got his own way, and he was satisfied. His will had
+gained a victory over the wills of others.
+
+“It’s not much good my spending half an hour writing to your uncle if
+he changes his mind the next letter he gets from you,” said the
+headmaster irritably.
+
+Philip said nothing, and his face was perfectly placid; but he could
+not prevent the twinkle in his eyes. Mr. Perkins noticed it and broke
+into a little laugh.
+
+“You’ve rather scored, haven’t you?” he said.
+
+Then Philip smiled outright. He could not conceal his exultation.
+
+“Is it true that you’re very anxious to leave?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Are you unhappy here?”
+
+Philip blushed. He hated instinctively any attempt to get into the
+depths of his feelings.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know, sir.”
+
+Mr. Perkins, slowly dragging his fingers through his beard, looked at
+him thoughtfully. He seemed to speak almost to himself.
+
+“Of course schools are made for the average. The holes are all round,
+and whatever shape the pegs are they must wedge in somehow. One hasn’t
+time to bother about anything but the average.” Then suddenly he
+addressed himself to Philip: “Look here, I’ve got a suggestion to make
+to you. It’s getting on towards the end of the term now. Another term
+won’t kill you, and if you want to go to Germany you’d better go after
+Easter than after Christmas. It’ll be much pleasanter in the spring
+than in midwinter. If at the end of the next term you still want to go
+I’ll make no objection. What d’you say to that?”
+
+“Thank you very much, sir.”
+
+Philip was so glad to have gained the last three months that he did not
+mind the extra term. The school seemed less of a prison when he knew
+that before Easter he would be free from it for ever. His heart danced
+within him. That evening in chapel he looked round at the boys,
+standing according to their forms, each in his due place, and he
+chuckled with satisfaction at the thought that soon he would never see
+them again. It made him regard them almost with a friendly feeling. His
+eyes rested on Rose. Rose took his position as a monitor very
+seriously: he had quite an idea of being a good influence in the
+school; it was his turn to read the lesson that evening, and he read it
+very well. Philip smiled when he thought that he would be rid of him
+for ever, and it would not matter in six months whether Rose was tall
+and straight-limbed; and where would the importance be that he was a
+monitor and captain of the eleven? Philip looked at the masters in
+their gowns. Gordon was dead, he had died of apoplexy two years before,
+but all the rest were there. Philip knew now what a poor lot they were,
+except Turner perhaps, there was something of a man in him; and he
+writhed at the thought of the subjection in which they had held him. In
+six months they would not matter either. Their praise would mean
+nothing to him, and he would shrug his shoulders at their censure.
+
+Philip had learned not to express his emotions by outward signs, and
+shyness still tormented him, but he had often very high spirits; and
+then, though he limped about demurely, silent and reserved, it seemed
+to be hallooing in his heart. He seemed to himself to walk more
+lightly. All sorts of ideas danced through his head, fancies chased one
+another so furiously that he could not catch them; but their coming and
+their going filled him with exhilaration. Now, being happy, he was able
+to work, and during the remaining weeks of the term set himself to make
+up for his long neglect. His brain worked easily, and he took a keen
+pleasure in the activity of his intellect. He did very well in the
+examinations that closed the term. Mr. Perkins made only one remark: he
+was talking to him about an essay he had written, and, after the usual
+criticisms, said:
+
+“So you’ve made up your mind to stop playing the fool for a bit, have
+you?”
+
+He smiled at him with his shining teeth, and Philip, looking down, gave
+an embarrassed smile.
+
+The half dozen boys who expected to divide between them the various
+prizes which were given at the end of the summer term had ceased to
+look upon Philip as a serious rival, but now they began to regard him
+with some uneasiness. He told no one that he was leaving at Easter and
+so was in no sense a competitor, but left them to their anxieties. He
+knew that Rose flattered himself on his French, for he had spent two or
+three holidays in France; and he expected to get the Dean’s Prize for
+English essay; Philip got a good deal of satisfaction in watching his
+dismay when he saw how much better Philip was doing in these subjects
+than himself. Another fellow, Norton, could not go to Oxford unless he
+got one of the scholarships at the disposal of the school. He asked
+Philip if he was going in for them.
+
+“Have you any objection?” asked Philip.
+
+It entertained him to think that he held someone else’s future in his
+hand. There was something romantic in getting these various rewards
+actually in his grasp, and then leaving them to others because he
+disdained them. At last the breaking-up day came, and he went to Mr.
+Perkins to bid him good-bye.
+
+“You don’t mean to say you really want to leave?”
+
+ Philip’s face fell at the headmaster’s evident surprise.
+
+“You said you wouldn’t put any objection in the way, sir,” he answered.
+
+“I thought it was only a whim that I’d better humour. I know you’re
+obstinate and headstrong. What on earth d’you want to leave for now?
+You’ve only got another term in any case. You can get the Magdalen
+scholarship easily; you’ll get half the prizes we’ve got to give.”
+
+Philip looked at him sullenly. He felt that he had been tricked; but he
+had the promise, and Perkins would have to stand by it.
+
+“You’ll have a very pleasant time at Oxford. You needn’t decide at once
+what you’re going to do afterwards. I wonder if you realise how
+delightful the life is up there for anyone who has brains.”
+
+“I’ve made all my arrangements now to go to Germany, sir,” said Philip.
+
+“Are they arrangements that couldn’t possibly be altered?” asked Mr.
+Perkins, with his quizzical smile. “I shall be very sorry to lose you.
+In schools the rather stupid boys who work always do better than the
+clever boy who’s idle, but when the clever boy works—why then, he does
+what you’ve done this term.”
+
+Philip flushed darkly. He was unused to compliments, and no one had
+ever told him he was clever. The headmaster put his hand on Philip’s
+shoulder.
+
+“You know, driving things into the heads of thick-witted boys is dull
+work, but when now and then you have the chance of teaching a boy who
+comes half-way towards you, who understands almost before you’ve got
+the words out of your mouth, why, then teaching is the most
+exhilarating thing in the world.” Philip was melted by kindness; it had
+never occurred to him that it mattered really to Mr. Perkins whether he
+went or stayed. He was touched and immensely flattered. It would be
+pleasant to end up his school-days with glory and then go to Oxford: in
+a flash there appeared before him the life which he had heard described
+from boys who came back to play in the O.K.S. match or in letters from
+the University read out in one of the studies. But he was ashamed; he
+would look such a fool in his own eyes if he gave in now; his uncle
+would chuckle at the success of the headmaster’s ruse. It was rather a
+come-down from the dramatic surrender of all these prizes which were in
+his reach, because he disdained to take them, to the plain, ordinary
+winning of them. It only required a little more persuasion, just enough
+to save his self-respect, and Philip would have done anything that Mr.
+Perkins wished; but his face showed nothing of his conflicting
+emotions. It was placid and sullen.
+
+“I think I’d rather go, sir,” he said.
+
+Mr. Perkins, like many men who manage things by their personal
+influence, grew a little impatient when his power was not immediately
+manifest. He had a great deal of work to do, and could not waste more
+time on a boy who seemed to him insanely obstinate.
+
+“Very well, I promised to let you if you really wanted it, and I keep
+my promise. When do you go to Germany?”
+
+Philip’s heart beat violently. The battle was won, and he did not know
+whether he had not rather lost it.
+
+“At the beginning of May, sir,” he answered.
+
+“Well, you must come and see us when you get back.”
+
+He held out his hand. If he had given him one more chance Philip would
+have changed his mind, but he seemed to look upon the matter as
+settled. Philip walked out of the house. His school-days were over, and
+he was free; but the wild exultation to which he had looked forward at
+that moment was not there. He walked round the precincts slowly, and a
+profound depression seized him. He wished now that he had not been
+foolish. He did not want to go, but he knew he could never bring
+himself to go to the headmaster and tell him he would stay. That was a
+humiliation he could never put upon himself. He wondered whether he had
+done right. He was dissatisfied with himself and with all his
+circumstances. He asked himself dully whether whenever you got your way
+you wished afterwards that you hadn’t.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+Philip’s uncle had an old friend, called Miss Wilkinson, who lived in
+Berlin. She was the daughter of a clergyman, and it was with her
+father, the rector of a village in Lincolnshire, that Mr. Carey had
+spent his last curacy; on his death, forced to earn her living, she had
+taken various situations as a governess in France and Germany. She had
+kept up a correspondence with Mrs. Carey, and two or three times had
+spent her holidays at Blackstable Vicarage, paying as was usual with
+the Careys’ unfrequent guests a small sum for her keep. When it became
+clear that it was less trouble to yield to Philip’s wishes than to
+resist them, Mrs. Carey wrote to ask her for advice. Miss Wilkinson
+recommended Heidelberg as an excellent place to learn German in and the
+house of Frau Professor Erlin as a comfortable home. Philip might live
+there for thirty marks a week, and the Professor himself, a teacher at
+the local high school, would instruct him.
+
+Philip arrived in Heidelberg one morning in May. His things were put on
+a barrow and he followed the porter out of the station. The sky was
+bright blue, and the trees in the avenue through which they passed were
+thick with leaves; there was something in the air fresh to Philip, and
+mingled with the timidity he felt at entering on a new life, among
+strangers, was a great exhilaration. He was a little disconsolate that
+no one had come to meet him, and felt very shy when the porter left him
+at the front door of a big white house. An untidy lad let him in and
+took him into a drawing-room. It was filled with a large suite covered
+in green velvet, and in the middle was a round table. On this in water
+stood a bouquet of flowers tightly packed together in a paper frill
+like the bone of a mutton chop, and carefully spaced round it were
+books in leather bindings. There was a musty smell.
+
+Presently, with an odour of cooking, the Frau Professor came in, a
+short, very stout woman with tightly dressed hair and a red face; she
+had little eyes, sparkling like beads, and an effusive manner. She took
+both Philip’s hands and asked him about Miss Wilkinson, who had twice
+spent a few weeks with her. She spoke in German and in broken English.
+Philip could not make her understand that he did not know Miss
+Wilkinson. Then her two daughters appeared. They seemed hardly young to
+Philip, but perhaps they were not more than twenty-five: the elder,
+Thekla, was as short as her mother, with the same, rather shifty air,
+but with a pretty face and abundant dark hair; Anna, her younger
+sister, was tall and plain, but since she had a pleasant smile Philip
+immediately preferred her. After a few minutes of polite conversation
+the Frau Professor took Philip to his room and left him. It was in a
+turret, looking over the tops of the trees in the Anlage; and the bed
+was in an alcove, so that when you sat at the desk it had not the look
+of a bed-room at all. Philip unpacked his things and set out all his
+books. He was his own master at last.
+
+A bell summoned him to dinner at one o’clock, and he found the Frau
+Professor’s guests assembled in the drawing-room. He was introduced to
+her husband, a tall man of middle age with a large fair head, turning
+now to gray, and mild blue eyes. He spoke to Philip in correct, rather
+archaic English, having learned it from a study of the English
+classics, not from conversation; and it was odd to hear him use words
+colloquially which Philip had only met in the plays of Shakespeare.
+Frau Professor Erlin called her establishment a family and not a
+pension; but it would have required the subtlety of a metaphysician to
+find out exactly where the difference lay. When they sat down to dinner
+in a long dark apartment that led out of the drawing-room, Philip,
+feeling very shy, saw that there were sixteen people. The Frau
+Professor sat at one end and carved. The service was conducted, with a
+great clattering of plates, by the same clumsy lout who had opened the
+door for him; and though he was quick it happened that the first
+persons to be served had finished before the last had received their
+appointed portions. The Frau Professor insisted that nothing but German
+should be spoken, so that Philip, even if his bashfulness had permitted
+him to be talkative, was forced to hold his tongue. He looked at the
+people among whom he was to live. By the Frau Professor sat several old
+ladies, but Philip did not give them much of his attention. There were
+two young girls, both fair and one of them very pretty, whom Philip
+heard addressed as Fraulein Hedwig and Fraulein Cacilie. Fraulein
+Cacilie had a long pig-tail hanging down her back. They sat side by
+side and chattered to one another, with smothered laughter: now and
+then they glanced at Philip and one of them said something in an
+undertone; they both giggled, and Philip blushed awkwardly, feeling
+that they were making fun of him. Near them sat a Chinaman, with a
+yellow face and an expansive smile, who was studying Western conditions
+at the University. He spoke so quickly, with a queer accent, that the
+girls could not always understand him, and then they burst out
+laughing. He laughed too, good-humouredly, and his almond eyes almost
+closed as he did so. There were two or three American men, in black
+coats, rather yellow and dry of skin: they were theological students;
+Philip heard the twang of their New England accent through their bad
+German, and he glanced at them with suspicion; for he had been taught
+to look upon Americans as wild and desperate barbarians.
+
+Afterwards, when they had sat for a little on the stiff green velvet
+chairs of the drawing-room, Fraulein Anna asked Philip if he would like
+to go for a walk with them.
+
+Philip accepted the invitation. They were quite a party. There were the
+two daughters of the Frau Professor, the two other girls, one of the
+American students, and Philip. Philip walked by the side of Anna and
+Fraulein Hedwig. He was a little fluttered. He had never known any
+girls. At Blackstable there were only the farmers’ daughters and the
+girls of the local tradesmen. He knew them by name and by sight, but he
+was timid, and he thought they laughed at his deformity. He accepted
+willingly the difference which the Vicar and Mrs. Carey put between
+their own exalted rank and that of the farmers. The doctor had two
+daughters, but they were both much older than Philip and had been
+married to successive assistants while Philip was still a small boy. At
+school there had been two or three girls of more boldness than modesty
+whom some of the boys knew; and desperate stories, due in all
+probability to the masculine imagination, were told of intrigues with
+them; but Philip had always concealed under a lofty contempt the terror
+with which they filled him. His imagination and the books he had read
+had inspired in him a desire for the Byronic attitude; and he was torn
+between a morbid self-consciousness and a conviction that he owed it to
+himself to be gallant. He felt now that he should be bright and
+amusing, but his brain seemed empty and he could not for the life of
+him think of anything to say. Fraulein Anna, the Frau Professor’s
+daughter, addressed herself to him frequently from a sense of duty, but
+the other said little: she looked at him now and then with sparkling
+eyes, and sometimes to his confusion laughed outright. Philip felt that
+she thought him perfectly ridiculous. They walked along the side of a
+hill among pine-trees, and their pleasant odour caused Philip a keen
+delight. The day was warm and cloudless. At last they came to an
+eminence from which they saw the valley of the Rhine spread out before
+them under the sun. It was a vast stretch of country, sparkling with
+golden light, with cities in the distance; and through it meandered the
+silver ribband of the river. Wide spaces are rare in the corner of Kent
+which Philip knew, the sea offers the only broad horizon, and the
+immense distance he saw now gave him a peculiar, an indescribable
+thrill. He felt suddenly elated. Though he did not know it, it was the
+first time that he had experienced, quite undiluted with foreign
+emotions, the sense of beauty. They sat on a bench, the three of them,
+for the others had gone on, and while the girls talked in rapid German,
+Philip, indifferent to their proximity, feasted his eyes.
+
+“By Jove, I am happy,” he said to himself unconsciously.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+Philip thought occasionally of the King’s School at Tercanbury, and
+laughed to himself as he remembered what at some particular moment of
+the day they were doing. Now and then he dreamed that he was there
+still, and it gave him an extraordinary satisfaction, on awaking, to
+realise that he was in his little room in the turret. From his bed he
+could see the great cumulus clouds that hung in the blue sky. He
+revelled in his freedom. He could go to bed when he chose and get up
+when the fancy took him. There was no one to order him about. It struck
+him that he need not tell any more lies.
+
+It had been arranged that Professor Erlin should teach him Latin and
+German; a Frenchman came every day to give him lessons in French; and
+the Frau Professor had recommended for mathematics an Englishman who
+was taking a philological degree at the university. This was a man
+named Wharton. Philip went to him every morning. He lived in one room
+on the top floor of a shabby house. It was dirty and untidy, and it was
+filled with a pungent odour made up of many different stinks. He was
+generally in bed when Philip arrived at ten o’clock, and he jumped out,
+put on a filthy dressing-gown and felt slippers, and, while he gave
+instruction, ate his simple breakfast. He was a short man, stout from
+excessive beer drinking, with a heavy moustache and long, unkempt hair.
+He had been in Germany for five years and was become very Teutonic. He
+spoke with scorn of Cambridge where he had taken his degree and with
+horror of the life which awaited him when, having taken his doctorate
+in Heidelberg, he must return to England and a pedagogic career. He
+adored the life of the German university with its happy freedom and its
+jolly companionships. He was a member of a Burschenschaft, and promised
+to take Philip to a Kneipe. He was very poor and made no secret that
+the lessons he was giving Philip meant the difference between meat for
+his dinner and bread and cheese. Sometimes after a heavy night he had
+such a headache that he could not drink his coffee, and he gave his
+lesson with heaviness of spirit. For these occasions he kept a few
+bottles of beer under the bed, and one of these and a pipe would help
+him to bear the burden of life.
+
+“A hair of the dog that bit him,” he would say as he poured out the
+beer, carefully so that the foam should not make him wait too long to
+drink.
+
+Then he would talk to Philip of the university, the quarrels between
+rival corps, the duels, and the merits of this and that professor.
+Philip learnt more of life from him than of mathematics. Sometimes
+Wharton would sit back with a laugh and say:
+
+“Look here, we’ve not done anything today. You needn’t pay me for the
+lesson.”
+
+“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” said Philip.
+
+This was something new and very interesting, and he felt that it was of
+greater import than trigonometry, which he never could understand. It
+was like a window on life that he had a chance of peeping through, and
+he looked with a wildly beating heart.
+
+“No, you can keep your dirty money,” said Wharton.
+
+“But how about your dinner?” said Philip, with a smile, for he knew
+exactly how his master’s finances stood.
+
+Wharton had even asked him to pay him the two shillings which the
+lesson cost once a week rather than once a month, since it made things
+less complicated.
+
+“Oh, never mind my dinner. It won’t be the first time I’ve dined off a
+bottle of beer, and my mind’s never clearer than when I do.”
+
+He dived under the bed (the sheets were gray with want of washing), and
+fished out another bottle. Philip, who was young and did not know the
+good things of life, refused to share it with him, so he drank alone.
+
+“How long are you going to stay here?” asked Wharton.
+
+Both he and Philip had given up with relief the pretence of
+mathematics.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose about a year. Then my people want me to go
+to Oxford.”
+
+Wharton gave a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. It was a new
+experience for Philip to learn that there were persons who did not look
+upon that seat of learning with awe.
+
+“What d’you want to go there for? You’ll only be a glorified schoolboy.
+Why don’t you matriculate here? A year’s no good. Spend five years
+here. You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought
+and freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do
+what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody
+else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may
+think as you choose. They’re both very good things. I personally prefer
+freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you’re ground down
+by convention. You can’t think as you like and you can’t act as you
+like. That’s because it’s a democratic nation. I expect America’s
+worse.”
+
+He leaned back cautiously, for the chair on which he sat had a ricketty
+leg, and it was disconcerting when a rhetorical flourish was
+interrupted by a sudden fall to the floor.
+
+“I ought to go back to England this year, but if I can scrape together
+enough to keep body and soul on speaking terms I shall stay another
+twelve months. But then I shall have to go. And I must leave all
+this”—he waved his arm round the dirty garret, with its unmade bed, the
+clothes lying on the floor, a row of empty beer bottles against the
+wall, piles of unbound, ragged books in every corner—“for some
+provincial university where I shall try and get a chair of philology.
+And I shall play tennis and go to tea-parties.” He interrupted himself
+and gave Philip, very neatly dressed, with a clean collar on and his
+hair well-brushed, a quizzical look. “And, my God! I shall have to
+wash.”
+
+Philip reddened, feeling his own spruceness an intolerable reproach;
+for of late he had begun to pay some attention to his toilet, and he
+had come out from England with a pretty selection of ties.
+
+The summer came upon the country like a conqueror. Each day was
+beautiful. The sky had an arrogant blue which goaded the nerves like a
+spur. The green of the trees in the Anlage was violent and crude; and
+the houses, when the sun caught them, had a dazzling white which
+stimulated till it hurt. Sometimes on his way back from Wharton Philip
+would sit in the shade on one of the benches in the Anlage, enjoying
+the coolness and watching the patterns of light which the sun, shining
+through the leaves, made on the ground. His soul danced with delight as
+gaily as the sunbeams. He revelled in those moments of idleness stolen
+from his work. Sometimes he sauntered through the streets of the old
+town. He looked with awe at the students of the corps, their cheeks
+gashed and red, who swaggered about in their coloured caps. In the
+afternoons he wandered about the hills with the girls in the Frau
+Professor’s house, and sometimes they went up the river and had tea in
+a leafy beer-garden. In the evenings they walked round and round the
+Stadtgarten, listening to the band.
+
+Philip soon learned the various interests of the household. Fraulein
+Thekla, the professor’s elder daughter, was engaged to a man in England
+who had spent twelve months in the house to learn German, and their
+marriage was to take place at the end of the year. But the young man
+wrote that his father, an india-rubber merchant who lived in Slough,
+did not approve of the union, and Fraulein Thekla was often in tears.
+Sometimes she and her mother might be seen, with stern eyes and
+determined mouths, looking over the letters of the reluctant lover.
+Thekla painted in water colour, and occasionally she and Philip, with
+another of the girls to keep them company, would go out and paint
+little pictures. The pretty Fraulein Hedwig had amorous troubles too.
+She was the daughter of a merchant in Berlin and a dashing hussar had
+fallen in love with her, a von if you please: but his parents opposed a
+marriage with a person of her condition, and she had been sent to
+Heidelberg to forget him. She could never, never do this, and
+corresponded with him continually, and he was making every effort to
+induce an exasperating father to change his mind. She told all this to
+Philip with pretty sighs and becoming blushes, and showed him the
+photograph of the gay lieutenant. Philip liked her best of all the
+girls at the Frau Professor’s, and on their walks always tried to get
+by her side. He blushed a great deal when the others chaffed him for
+his obvious preference. He made the first declaration in his life to
+Fraulein Hedwig, but unfortunately it was an accident, and it happened
+in this manner. In the evenings when they did not go out, the young
+women sang little songs in the green velvet drawing-room, while
+Fraulein Anna, who always made herself useful, industriously
+accompanied. Fraulein Hedwig’s favourite song was called Ich liebe
+dich, I love you; and one evening after she had sung this, when Philip
+was standing with her on the balcony, looking at the stars, it occurred
+to him to make some remark about it. He began:
+
+“Ich liebe dich.”
+
+His German was halting, and he looked about for the word he wanted. The
+pause was infinitesimal, but before he could go on Fraulein Hedwig
+said:
+
+“Ach, Herr Carey, Sie mussen mir nicht du sagen—you mustn’t talk to me
+in the second person singular.”
+
+Philip felt himself grow hot all over, for he would never have dared to
+do anything so familiar, and he could think of nothing on earth to say.
+It would be ungallant to explain that he was not making an observation,
+but merely mentioning the title of a song.
+
+“Entschuldigen Sie,” he said. “I beg your pardon.”
+
+“It does not matter,” she whispered.
+
+She smiled pleasantly, quietly took his hand and pressed it, then
+turned back into the drawing-room.
+
+Next day he was so embarrassed that he could not speak to her, and in
+his shyness did all that was possible to avoid her. When he was asked
+to go for the usual walk he refused because, he said, he had work to
+do. But Fraulein Hedwig seized an opportunity to speak to him alone.
+
+“Why are you behaving in this way?” she said kindly. “You know, I’m not
+angry with you for what you said last night. You can’t help it if you
+love me. I’m flattered. But although I’m not exactly engaged to Hermann
+I can never love anyone else, and I look upon myself as his bride.”
+
+Philip blushed again, but he put on quite the expression of a rejected
+lover.
+
+“I hope you’ll be very happy,” he said.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+Professor Erlin gave Philip a lesson every day. He made out a list of
+books which Philip was to read till he was ready for the final
+achievement of Faust, and meanwhile, ingeniously enough, started him on
+a German translation of one of the plays by Shakespeare which Philip
+had studied at school. It was the period in Germany of Goethe’s highest
+fame. Notwithstanding his rather condescending attitude towards
+patriotism he had been adopted as the national poet, and seemed since
+the war of seventy to be one of the most significant glories of
+national unity. The enthusiastic seemed in the wildness of the
+Walpurgisnacht to hear the rattle of artillery at Gravelotte. But one
+mark of a writer’s greatness is that different minds can find in him
+different inspirations; and Professor Erlin, who hated the Prussians,
+gave his enthusiastic admiration to Goethe because his works, Olympian
+and sedate, offered the only refuge for a sane mind against the
+onslaughts of the present generation. There was a dramatist whose name
+of late had been much heard at Heidelberg, and the winter before one of
+his plays had been given at the theatre amid the cheers of adherents
+and the hisses of decent people. Philip heard discussions about it at
+the Frau Professor’s long table, and at these Professor Erlin lost his
+wonted calm: he beat the table with his fist, and drowned all
+opposition with the roar of his fine deep voice. It was nonsense and
+obscene nonsense. He forced himself to sit the play out, but he did not
+know whether he was more bored or nauseated. If that was what the
+theatre was coming to, then it was high time the police stepped in and
+closed the playhouses. He was no prude and could laugh as well as
+anyone at the witty immorality of a farce at the Palais Royal, but here
+was nothing but filth. With an emphatic gesture he held his nose and
+whistled through his teeth. It was the ruin of the family, the
+uprooting of morals, the destruction of Germany.
+
+“Aber, Adolf,” said the Frau Professor from the other end of the table.
+“Calm yourself.”
+
+He shook his fist at her. He was the mildest of creatures and ventured
+upon no action of his life without consulting her.
+
+“No, Helene, I tell you this,” he shouted. “I would sooner my daughters
+were lying dead at my feet than see them listening to the garbage of
+that shameless fellow.”
+
+The play was The Doll’s House and the author was Henrik Ibsen.
+
+Professor Erlin classed him with Richard Wagner, but of him he spoke
+not with anger but with good-humoured laughter. He was a charlatan but
+a successful charlatan, and in that was always something for the comic
+spirit to rejoice in.
+
+“Verruckter Kerl! A madman!” he said.
+
+He had seen Lohengrin and that passed muster. It was dull but no worse.
+But Siegfried! When he mentioned it Professor Erlin leaned his head on
+his hand and bellowed with laughter. Not a melody in it from beginning
+to end! He could imagine Richard Wagner sitting in his box and laughing
+till his sides ached at the sight of all the people who were taking it
+seriously. It was the greatest hoax of the nineteenth century. He
+lifted his glass of beer to his lips, threw back his head, and drank
+till the glass was empty. Then wiping his mouth with the back of his
+hand, he said:
+
+“I tell you young people that before the nineteenth century is out
+Wagner will be as dead as mutton. Wagner! I would give all his works
+for one opera by Donizetti.”
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+The oddest of Philip’s masters was his teacher of French. Monsieur
+Ducroz was a citizen of Geneva. He was a tall old man, with a sallow
+skin and hollow cheeks; his gray hair was thin and long. He wore shabby
+black clothes, with holes at the elbows of his coat and frayed
+trousers. His linen was very dirty. Philip had never seen him in a
+clean collar. He was a man of few words, who gave his lesson
+conscientiously but without enthusiasm, arriving as the clock struck
+and leaving on the minute. His charges were very small. He was
+taciturn, and what Philip learnt about him he learnt from others: it
+appeared that he had fought with Garibaldi against the Pope, but had
+left Italy in disgust when it was clear that all his efforts for
+freedom, by which he meant the establishment of a republic, tended to
+no more than an exchange of yokes; he had been expelled from Geneva for
+it was not known what political offences. Philip looked upon him with
+puzzled surprise; for he was very unlike his idea of the revolutionary:
+he spoke in a low voice and was extraordinarily polite; he never sat
+down till he was asked to; and when on rare occasions he met Philip in
+the street took off his hat with an elaborate gesture; he never
+laughed, he never even smiled. A more complete imagination than
+Philip’s might have pictured a youth of splendid hope, for he must have
+been entering upon manhood in 1848 when kings, remembering their
+brother of France, went about with an uneasy crick in their necks; and
+perhaps that passion for liberty which passed through Europe, sweeping
+before it what of absolutism and tyranny had reared its head during the
+reaction from the revolution of 1789, filled no breast with a hotter
+fire. One might fancy him, passionate with theories of human equality
+and human rights, discussing, arguing, fighting behind barricades in
+Paris, flying before the Austrian cavalry in Milan, imprisoned here,
+exiled from there, hoping on and upborne ever with the word which
+seemed so magical, the word Liberty; till at last, broken with disease
+and starvation, old, without means to keep body and soul together but
+such lessons as he could pick up from poor students, he found himself
+in that little neat town under the heel of a personal tyranny greater
+than any in Europe. Perhaps his taciturnity hid a contempt for the
+human race which had abandoned the great dreams of his youth and now
+wallowed in sluggish ease; or perhaps these thirty years of revolution
+had taught him that men are unfit for liberty, and he thought that he
+had spent his life in the pursuit of that which was not worth the
+finding. Or maybe he was tired out and waited only with indifference
+for the release of death.
+
+One day Philip, with the bluntness of his age, asked him if it was true
+he had been with Garibaldi. The old man did not seem to attach any
+importance to the question. He answered quite quietly in as low a voice
+as usual.
+
+“Oui, monsieur.”
+
+“They say you were in the Commune?”
+
+“Do they? Shall we get on with our work?”
+
+He held the book open and Philip, intimidated, began to translate the
+passage he had prepared.
+
+One day Monsieur Ducroz seemed to be in great pain. He had been
+scarcely able to drag himself up the many stairs to Philip’s room: and
+when he arrived sat down heavily, his sallow face drawn, with beads of
+sweat on his forehead, trying to recover himself.
+
+“I’m afraid you’re ill,” said Philip.
+
+“It’s of no consequence.”
+
+But Philip saw that he was suffering, and at the end of the hour asked
+whether he would not prefer to give no more lessons till he was better.
+
+“No,” said the old man, in his even low voice. “I prefer to go on while
+I am able.”
+
+Philip, morbidly nervous when he had to make any reference to money,
+reddened.
+
+“But it won’t make any difference to you,” he said. “I’ll pay for the
+lessons just the same. If you wouldn’t mind I’d like to give you the
+money for next week in advance.”
+
+Monsieur Ducroz charged eighteen pence an hour. Philip took a ten-mark
+piece out of his pocket and shyly put it on the table. He could not
+bring himself to offer it as if the old man were a beggar.
+
+“In that case I think I won’t come again till I’m better.” He took the
+coin and, without anything more than the elaborate bow with which he
+always took his leave, went out.
+
+“Bonjour, monsieur.”
+
+Philip was vaguely disappointed. Thinking he had done a generous thing,
+he had expected that Monsieur Ducroz would overwhelm him with
+expressions of gratitude. He was taken aback to find that the old
+teacher accepted the present as though it were his due. He was so
+young, he did not realise how much less is the sense of obligation in
+those who receive favours than in those who grant them. Monsieur Ducroz
+appeared again five or six days later. He tottered a little more and
+was very weak, but seemed to have overcome the severity of the attack.
+He was no more communicative than he had been before. He remained
+mysterious, aloof, and dirty. He made no reference to his illness till
+after the lesson: and then, just as he was leaving, at the door, which
+he held open, he paused. He hesitated, as though to speak were
+difficult.
+
+“If it hadn’t been for the money you gave me I should have starved. It
+was all I had to live on.”
+
+He made his solemn, obsequious bow, and went out. Philip felt a little
+lump in his throat. He seemed to realise in a fashion the hopeless
+bitterness of the old man’s struggle, and how hard life was for him
+when to himself it was so pleasant.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+Philip had spent three months in Heidelberg when one morning the Frau
+Professor told him that an Englishman named Hayward was coming to stay
+in the house, and the same evening at supper he saw a new face. For
+some days the family had lived in a state of excitement. First, as the
+result of heaven knows what scheming, by dint of humble prayers and
+veiled threats, the parents of the young Englishman to whom Fraulein
+Thekla was engaged had invited her to visit them in England, and she
+had set off with an album of water colours to show how accomplished she
+was and a bundle of letters to prove how deeply the young man had
+compromised himself. A week later Fraulein Hedwig with radiant smiles
+announced that the lieutenant of her affections was coming to
+Heidelberg with his father and mother. Exhausted by the importunity of
+their son and touched by the dowry which Fraulein Hedwig’s father
+offered, the lieutenant’s parents had consented to pass through
+Heidelberg to make the young woman’s acquaintance. The interview was
+satisfactory and Fraulein Hedwig had the satisfaction of showing her
+lover in the Stadtgarten to the whole of Frau Professor Erlin’s
+household. The silent old ladies who sat at the top of the table near
+the Frau Professor were in a flutter, and when Fraulein Hedwig said she
+was to go home at once for the formal engagement to take place, the
+Frau Professor, regardless of expense, said she would give a Maibowle.
+Professor Erlin prided himself on his skill in preparing this mild
+intoxicant, and after supper the large bowl of hock and soda, with
+scented herbs floating in it and wild strawberries, was placed with
+solemnity on the round table in the drawing-room. Fraulein Anna teased
+Philip about the departure of his lady-love, and he felt very
+uncomfortable and rather melancholy. Fraulein Hedwig sang several
+songs, Fraulein Anna played the Wedding March, and the Professor sang
+Die Wacht am Rhein. Amid all this jollification Philip paid little
+attention to the new arrival. They had sat opposite one another at
+supper, but Philip was chattering busily with Fraulein Hedwig, and the
+stranger, knowing no German, had eaten his food in silence. Philip,
+observing that he wore a pale blue tie, had on that account taken a
+sudden dislike to him. He was a man of twenty-six, very fair, with
+long, wavy hair through which he passed his hand frequently with a
+careless gesture. His eyes were large and blue, but the blue was very
+pale, and they looked rather tired already. He was clean-shaven, and
+his mouth, notwithstanding its thin lips, was well-shaped. Fraulein
+Anna took an interest in physiognomy, and she made Philip notice
+afterwards how finely shaped was his skull, and how weak was the lower
+part of his face. The head, she remarked, was the head of a thinker,
+but the jaw lacked character. Fraulein Anna, foredoomed to a spinster’s
+life, with her high cheek-bones and large misshapen nose, laid great
+stress upon character. While they talked of him he stood a little apart
+from the others, watching the noisy party with a good-humoured but
+faintly supercilious expression. He was tall and slim. He held himself
+with a deliberate grace. Weeks, one of the American students, seeing
+him alone, went up and began to talk to him. The pair were oddly
+contrasted: the American very neat in his black coat and
+pepper-and-salt trousers, thin and dried-up, with something of
+ecclesiastical unction already in his manner; and the Englishman in his
+loose tweed suit, large-limbed and slow of gesture.
+
+Philip did not speak to the newcomer till next day. They found
+themselves alone on the balcony of the drawing-room before dinner.
+Hayward addressed him.
+
+“You’re English, aren’t you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Is the food always as bad it was last night?”
+
+“It’s always about the same.”
+
+“Beastly, isn’t it?”
+
+“Beastly.”
+
+Philip had found nothing wrong with the food at all, and in fact had
+eaten it in large quantities with appetite and enjoyment, but he did
+not want to show himself a person of so little discrimination as to
+think a dinner good which another thought execrable.
+
+Fraulein Thekla’s visit to England made it necessary for her sister to
+do more in the house, and she could not often spare the time for long
+walks; and Fraulein Cacilie, with her long plait of fair hair and her
+little snub-nosed face, had of late shown a certain disinclination for
+society. Fraulein Hedwig was gone, and Weeks, the American who
+generally accompanied them on their rambles, had set out for a tour of
+South Germany. Philip was left a good deal to himself. Hayward sought
+his acquaintance; but Philip had an unfortunate trait: from shyness or
+from some atavistic inheritance of the cave-dweller, he always disliked
+people on first acquaintance; and it was not till he became used to
+them that he got over his first impression. It made him difficult of
+access. He received Hayward’s advances very shyly, and when Hayward
+asked him one day to go for a walk he accepted only because he could
+not think of a civil excuse. He made his usual apology, angry with
+himself for the flushing cheeks he could not control, and trying to
+carry it off with a laugh.
+
+“I’m afraid I can’t walk very fast.”
+
+“Good heavens, I don’t walk for a wager. I prefer to stroll. Don’t you
+remember the chapter in Marius where Pater talks of the gentle exercise
+of walking as the best incentive to conversation?”
+
+Philip was a good listener; though he often thought of clever things to
+say, it was seldom till after the opportunity to say them had passed;
+but Hayward was communicative; anyone more experienced than Philip
+might have thought he liked to hear himself talk. His supercilious
+attitude impressed Philip. He could not help admiring, and yet being
+awed by, a man who faintly despised so many things which Philip had
+looked upon as almost sacred. He cast down the fetish of exercise,
+damning with the contemptuous word pot-hunters all those who devoted
+themselves to its various forms; and Philip did not realise that he was
+merely putting up in its stead the other fetish of culture.
+
+They wandered up to the castle, and sat on the terrace that overlooked
+the town. It nestled in the valley along the pleasant Neckar with a
+comfortable friendliness. The smoke from the chimneys hung over it, a
+pale blue haze; and the tall roofs, the spires of the churches, gave it
+a pleasantly medieval air. There was a homeliness in it which warmed
+the heart. Hayward talked of Richard Feverel and Madame Bovary, of
+Verlaine, Dante, and Matthew Arnold. In those days Fitzgerald’s
+translation of Omar Khayyam was known only to the elect, and Hayward
+repeated it to Philip. He was very fond of reciting poetry, his own and
+that of others, which he did in a monotonous sing-song. By the time
+they reached home Philip’s distrust of Hayward was changed to
+enthusiastic admiration.
+
+They made a practice of walking together every afternoon, and Philip
+learned presently something of Hayward’s circumstances. He was the son
+of a country judge, on whose death some time before he had inherited
+three hundred a year. His record at Charterhouse was so brilliant that
+when he went to Cambridge the Master of Trinity Hall went out of his
+way to express his satisfaction that he was going to that college. He
+prepared himself for a distinguished career. He moved in the most
+intellectual circles: he read Browning with enthusiasm and turned up
+his well-shaped nose at Tennyson; he knew all the details of Shelley’s
+treatment of Harriet; he dabbled in the history of art (on the walls of
+his rooms were reproductions of pictures by G. F. Watts, Burne-Jones,
+and Botticelli); and he wrote not without distinction verses of a
+pessimistic character. His friends told one another that he was a man
+of excellent gifts, and he listened to them willingly when they
+prophesied his future eminence. In course of time he became an
+authority on art and literature. He came under the influence of
+Newman’s Apologia; the picturesqueness of the Roman Catholic faith
+appealed to his esthetic sensibility; and it was only the fear of his
+father’s wrath (a plain, blunt man of narrow ideas, who read Macaulay)
+which prevented him from ‘going over.’ When he only got a pass degree
+his friends were astonished; but he shrugged his shoulders and
+delicately insinuated that he was not the dupe of examiners. He made
+one feel that a first class was ever so slightly vulgar. He described
+one of the vivas with tolerant humour; some fellow in an outrageous
+collar was asking him questions in logic; it was infinitely tedious,
+and suddenly he noticed that he wore elastic-sided boots: it was
+grotesque and ridiculous; so he withdrew his mind and thought of the
+gothic beauty of the Chapel at King’s. But he had spent some delightful
+days at Cambridge; he had given better dinners than anyone he knew; and
+the conversation in his rooms had been often memorable. He quoted to
+Philip the exquisite epigram:
+
+“They told me, Herakleitus, they told me you were dead.”
+
+And now, when he related again the picturesque little anecdote about
+the examiner and his boots, he laughed.
+
+“Of course it was folly,” he said, “but it was a folly in which there
+was something fine.”
+
+Philip, with a little thrill, thought it magnificent.
+
+Then Hayward went to London to read for the Bar. He had charming rooms
+in Clement’s Inn, with panelled walls, and he tried to make them look
+like his old rooms at the Hall. He had ambitions that were vaguely
+political, he described himself as a Whig, and he was put up for a club
+which was of Liberal but gentlemanly flavour. His idea was to practise
+at the Bar (he chose the Chancery side as less brutal), and get a seat
+for some pleasant constituency as soon as the various promises made him
+were carried out; meanwhile he went a great deal to the opera, and made
+acquaintance with a small number of charming people who admired the
+things that he admired. He joined a dining-club of which the motto was,
+The Whole, The Good, and The Beautiful. He formed a platonic friendship
+with a lady some years older than himself, who lived in Kensington
+Square; and nearly every afternoon he drank tea with her by the light
+of shaded candles, and talked of George Meredith and Walter Pater. It
+was notorious that any fool could pass the examinations of the Bar
+Council, and he pursued his studies in a dilatory fashion. When he was
+ploughed for his final he looked upon it as a personal affront. At the
+same time the lady in Kensington Square told him that her husband was
+coming home from India on leave, and was a man, though worthy in every
+way, of a commonplace mind, who would not understand a young man’s
+frequent visits. Hayward felt that life was full of ugliness, his soul
+revolted from the thought of affronting again the cynicism of
+examiners, and he saw something rather splendid in kicking away the
+ball which lay at his feet. He was also a good deal in debt: it was
+difficult to live in London like a gentleman on three hundred a year;
+and his heart yearned for the Venice and Florence which John Ruskin had
+so magically described. He felt that he was unsuited to the vulgar
+bustle of the Bar, for he had discovered that it was not sufficient to
+put your name on a door to get briefs; and modern politics seemed to
+lack nobility. He felt himself a poet. He disposed of his rooms in
+Clement’s Inn and went to Italy. He had spent a winter in Florence and
+a winter in Rome, and now was passing his second summer abroad in
+Germany so that he might read Goethe in the original.
+
+Hayward had one gift which was very precious. He had a real feeling for
+literature, and he could impart his own passion with an admirable
+fluency. He could throw himself into sympathy with a writer and see all
+that was best in him, and then he could talk about him with
+understanding. Philip had read a great deal, but he had read without
+discrimination everything that he happened to come across, and it was
+very good for him now to meet someone who could guide his taste. He
+borrowed books from the small lending library which the town possessed
+and began reading all the wonderful things that Hayward spoke of. He
+did not read always with enjoyment but invariably with perseverance. He
+was eager for self-improvement. He felt himself very ignorant and very
+humble. By the end of August, when Weeks returned from South Germany,
+Philip was completely under Hayward’s influence. Hayward did not like
+Weeks. He deplored the American’s black coat and pepper-and-salt
+trousers, and spoke with a scornful shrug of his New England
+conscience. Philip listened complacently to the abuse of a man who had
+gone out of his way to be kind to him, but when Weeks in his turn made
+disagreeable remarks about Hayward he lost his temper.
+
+“Your new friend looks like a poet,” said Weeks, with a thin smile on
+his careworn, bitter mouth.
+
+“He is a poet.”
+
+“Did he tell you so? In America we should call him a pretty fair
+specimen of a waster.”
+
+“Well, we’re not in America,” said Philip frigidly.
+
+“How old is he? Twenty-five? And he does nothing but stay in pensions
+and write poetry.”
+
+“You don’t know him,” said Philip hotly.
+
+“Oh yes, I do: I’ve met a hundred and forty-seven of him.”
+
+Weeks’ eyes twinkled, but Philip, who did not understand American
+humour, pursed his lips and looked severe. Weeks to Philip seemed a man
+of middle age, but he was in point of fact little more than thirty. He
+had a long, thin body and the scholar’s stoop; his head was large and
+ugly; he had pale scanty hair and an earthy skin; his thin mouth and
+thin, long nose, and the great protuberance of his frontal bones, gave
+him an uncouth look. He was cold and precise in his manner, a bloodless
+man, without passion; but he had a curious vein of frivolity which
+disconcerted the serious-minded among whom his instincts naturally
+threw him. He was studying theology in Heidelberg, but the other
+theological students of his own nationality looked upon him with
+suspicion. He was very unorthodox, which frightened them; and his
+freakish humour excited their disapproval.
+
+“How can you have known a hundred and forty-seven of him?” asked Philip
+seriously.
+
+“I’ve met him in the Latin Quarter in Paris, and I’ve met him in
+pensions in Berlin and Munich. He lives in small hotels in Perugia and
+Assisi. He stands by the dozen before the Botticellis in Florence, and
+he sits on all the benches of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In Italy he
+drinks a little too much wine, and in Germany he drinks a great deal
+too much beer. He always admires the right thing whatever the right
+thing is, and one of these days he’s going to write a great work. Think
+of it, there are a hundred and forty-seven great works reposing in the
+bosoms of a hundred and forty-seven great men, and the tragic thing is
+that not one of those hundred and forty-seven great works will ever be
+written. And yet the world goes on.”
+
+Weeks spoke seriously, but his gray eyes twinkled a little at the end
+of his long speech, and Philip flushed when he saw that the American
+was making fun of him.
+
+“You do talk rot,” he said crossly.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Weeks had two little rooms at the back of Frau Erlin’s house, and one
+of them, arranged as a parlour, was comfortable enough for him to
+invite people to sit in. After supper, urged perhaps by the impish
+humour which was the despair of his friends in Cambridge, Mass., he
+often asked Philip and Hayward to come in for a chat. He received them
+with elaborate courtesy and insisted on their sitting in the only two
+comfortable chairs in the room. Though he did not drink himself, with a
+politeness of which Philip recognised the irony, he put a couple of
+bottles of beer at Hayward’s elbow, and he insisted on lighting matches
+whenever in the heat of argument Hayward’s pipe went out. At the
+beginning of their acquaintance Hayward, as a member of so celebrated a
+university, had adopted a patronising attitude towards Weeks, who was a
+graduate of Harvard; and when by chance the conversation turned upon
+the Greek tragedians, a subject upon which Hayward felt he spoke with
+authority, he had assumed the air that it was his part to give
+information rather than to exchange ideas. Weeks had listened politely,
+with smiling modesty, till Hayward finished; then he asked one or two
+insidious questions, so innocent in appearance that Hayward, not seeing
+into what a quandary they led him, answered blandly; Weeks made a
+courteous objection, then a correction of fact, after that a quotation
+from some little known Latin commentator, then a reference to a German
+authority; and the fact was disclosed that he was a scholar. With
+smiling ease, apologetically, Weeks tore to pieces all that Hayward had
+said; with elaborate civility he displayed the superficiality of his
+attainments. He mocked him with gentle irony. Philip could not help
+seeing that Hayward looked a perfect fool, and Hayward had not the
+sense to hold his tongue; in his irritation, his self-assurance
+undaunted, he attempted to argue: he made wild statements and Weeks
+amicably corrected them; he reasoned falsely and Weeks proved that he
+was absurd: Weeks confessed that he had taught Greek Literature at
+Harvard. Hayward gave a laugh of scorn.
+
+“I might have known it. Of course you read Greek like a schoolmaster,”
+he said. “I read it like a poet.”
+
+“And do you find it more poetic when you don’t quite know what it
+means? I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation
+improved the sense.”
+
+At last, having finished the beer, Hayward left Weeks’ room hot and
+dishevelled; with an angry gesture he said to Philip:
+
+“Of course the man’s a pedant. He has no real feeling for beauty.
+Accuracy is the virtue of clerks. It’s the spirit of the Greeks that we
+aim at. Weeks is like that fellow who went to hear Rubenstein and
+complained that he played false notes. False notes! What did they
+matter when he played divinely?”
+
+Philip, not knowing how many incompetent people have found solace in
+these false notes, was much impressed.
+
+Hayward could never resist the opportunity which Weeks offered him of
+regaining ground lost on a previous occasion, and Weeks was able with
+the greatest ease to draw him into a discussion. Though he could not
+help seeing how small his attainments were beside the American’s, his
+British pertinacity, his wounded vanity (perhaps they are the same
+thing), would not allow him to give up the struggle. Hayward seemed to
+take a delight in displaying his ignorance, self-satisfaction, and
+wrongheadedness. Whenever Hayward said something which was illogical,
+Weeks in a few words would show the falseness of his reasoning, pause
+for a moment to enjoy his triumph, and then hurry on to another subject
+as though Christian charity impelled him to spare the vanquished foe.
+Philip tried sometimes to put in something to help his friend, and
+Weeks gently crushed him, but so kindly, differently from the way in
+which he answered Hayward, that even Philip, outrageously sensitive,
+could not feel hurt. Now and then, losing his calm as he felt himself
+more and more foolish, Hayward became abusive, and only the American’s
+smiling politeness prevented the argument from degenerating into a
+quarrel. On these occasions when Hayward left Weeks’ room he muttered
+angrily:
+
+“Damned Yankee!”
+
+That settled it. It was a perfect answer to an argument which had
+seemed unanswerable.
+
+Though they began by discussing all manner of subjects in Weeks’ little
+room eventually the conversation always turned to religion: the
+theological student took a professional interest in it, and Hayward
+welcomed a subject in which hard facts need not disconcert him; when
+feeling is the gauge you can snap your angers at logic, and when your
+logic is weak that is very agreeable. Hayward found it difficult to
+explain his beliefs to Philip without a great flow of words; but it was
+clear (and this fell in with Philip’s idea of the natural order of
+things), that he had been brought up in the church by law established.
+Though he had now given up all idea of becoming a Roman Catholic, he
+still looked upon that communion with sympathy. He had much to say in
+its praise, and he compared favourably its gorgeous ceremonies with the
+simple services of the Church of England. He gave Philip Newman’s
+Apologia to read, and Philip, finding it very dull, nevertheless read
+it to the end.
+
+“Read it for its style, not for its matter,” said Hayward.
+
+He talked enthusiastically of the music at the Oratory, and said
+charming things about the connection between incense and the devotional
+spirit. Weeks listened to him with his frigid smile.
+
+“You think it proves the truth of Roman Catholicism that John Henry
+Newman wrote good English and that Cardinal Manning has a picturesque
+appearance?”
+
+Hayward hinted that he had gone through much trouble with his soul. For
+a year he had swum in a sea of darkness. He passed his fingers through
+his fair, waving hair and told them that he would not for five hundred
+pounds endure again those agonies of mind. Fortunately he had reached
+calm waters at last.
+
+“But what do you believe?” asked Philip, who was never satisfied with
+vague statements.
+
+“I believe in the Whole, the Good, and the Beautiful.”
+
+Hayward with his loose large limbs and the fine carriage of his head
+looked very handsome when he said this, and he said it with an air.
+
+“Is that how you would describe your religion in a census paper?” asked
+Weeks, in mild tones.
+
+“I hate the rigid definition: it’s so ugly, so obvious. If you like I
+will say that I believe in the church of the Duke of Wellington and Mr.
+Gladstone.”
+
+“That’s the Church of England,” said Philip.
+
+“Oh wise young man!” retorted Hayward, with a smile which made Philip
+blush, for he felt that in putting into plain words what the other had
+expressed in a paraphrase, he had been guilty of vulgarity. “I belong
+to the Church of England. But I love the gold and the silk which clothe
+the priest of Rome, and his celibacy, and the confessional, and
+purgatory: and in the darkness of an Italian cathedral, incense-laden
+and mysterious, I believe with all my heart in the miracle of the Mass.
+In Venice I have seen a fisherwoman come in, barefoot, throw down her
+basket of fish by her side, fall on her knees, and pray to the Madonna;
+and that I felt was the real faith, and I prayed and believed with her.
+But I believe also in Aphrodite and Apollo and the Great God Pan.”
+
+He had a charming voice, and he chose his words as he spoke; he uttered
+them almost rhythmically. He would have gone on, but Weeks opened a
+second bottle of beer.
+
+“Let me give you something to drink.”
+
+Hayward turned to Philip with the slightly condescending gesture which
+so impressed the youth.
+
+“Now are you satisfied?” he asked.
+
+Philip, somewhat bewildered, confessed that he was.
+
+“I’m disappointed that you didn’t add a little Buddhism,” said Weeks.
+“And I confess I have a sort of sympathy for Mahomet; I regret that you
+should have left him out in the cold.”
+
+Hayward laughed, for he was in a good humour with himself that evening,
+and the ring of his sentences still sounded pleasant in his ears. He
+emptied his glass.
+
+“I didn’t expect you to understand me,” he answered. “With your cold
+American intelligence you can only adopt the critical attitude. Emerson
+and all that sort of thing. But what is criticism? Criticism is purely
+destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up. You are
+a pedant, my dear fellow. The important thing is to construct: I am
+constructive; I am a poet.”
+
+Weeks looked at him with eyes which seemed at the same time to be quite
+grave and yet to be smiling brightly.
+
+“I think, if you don’t mind my saying so, you’re a little drunk.”
+
+“Nothing to speak of,” answered Hayward cheerfully. “And not enough for
+me to be unable to overwhelm you in argument. But come, I have
+unbosomed my soul; now tell us what your religion is.”
+
+Weeks put his head on one side so that he looked like a sparrow on a
+perch.
+
+“I’ve been trying to find that out for years. I think I’m a Unitarian.”
+
+“But that’s a dissenter,” said Philip.
+
+He could not imagine why they both burst into laughter, Hayward
+uproariously, and Weeks with a funny chuckle.
+
+“And in England dissenters aren’t gentlemen, are they?” asked Weeks.
+
+“Well, if you ask me point-blank, they’re not,” replied Philip rather
+crossly.
+
+He hated being laughed at, and they laughed again.
+
+“And will you tell me what a gentleman is?” asked Weeks.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know; everyone knows what it is.”
+
+“Are you a gentleman?”
+
+No doubt had ever crossed Philip’s mind on the subject, but he knew it
+was not a thing to state of oneself.
+
+“If a man tells you he’s a gentleman you can bet your boots he isn’t,”
+he retorted.
+
+“Am I a gentleman?”
+
+Philip’s truthfulness made it difficult for him to answer, but he was
+naturally polite.
+
+“Oh, well, you’re different,” he said. “You’re American, aren’t you?”
+
+“I suppose we may take it that only Englishmen are gentlemen,” said
+Weeks gravely.
+
+Philip did not contradict him.
+
+“Couldn’t you give me a few more particulars?” asked Weeks.
+
+Philip reddened, but, growing angry, did not care if he made himself
+ridiculous.
+
+“I can give you plenty.” He remembered his uncle’s saying that it took
+three generations to make a gentleman: it was a companion proverb to
+the silk purse and the sow’s ear. “First of all he’s the son of a
+gentleman, and he’s been to a public school, and to Oxford or
+Cambridge.”
+
+“Edinburgh wouldn’t do, I suppose?” asked Weeks.
+
+“And he talks English like a gentleman, and he wears the right sort of
+things, and if he’s a gentleman he can always tell if another chap’s a
+gentleman.”
+
+It seemed rather lame to Philip as he went on, but there it was: that
+was what he meant by the word, and everyone he had ever known had meant
+that too.
+
+“It is evident to me that I am not a gentleman,” said Weeks. “I don’t
+see why you should have been so surprised because I was a dissenter.”
+
+“I don’t quite know what a Unitarian is,” said Philip.
+
+Weeks in his odd way again put his head on one side: you almost
+expected him to twitter.
+
+“A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves in almost everything that
+anybody else believes, and he has a very lively sustaining faith in he
+doesn’t quite know what.”
+
+“I don’t see why you should make fun of me,” said Philip. “I really
+want to know.”
+
+“My dear friend, I’m not making fun of you. I have arrived at that
+definition after years of great labour and the most anxious,
+nerve-racking study.”
+
+When Philip and Hayward got up to go, Weeks handed Philip a little book
+in a paper cover.
+
+“I suppose you can read French pretty well by now. I wonder if this
+would amuse you.”
+
+Philip thanked him and, taking the book, looked at the title. It was
+Renan’s Vie de Jesus.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+It occurred neither to Hayward nor to Weeks that the conversations
+which helped them to pass an idle evening were being turned over
+afterwards in Philip’s active brain. It had never struck him before
+that religion was a matter upon which discussion was possible. To him
+it meant the Church of England, and not to believe in its tenets was a
+sign of wilfulness which could not fail of punishment here or
+hereafter. There was some doubt in his mind about the chastisement of
+unbelievers. It was possible that a merciful judge, reserving the
+flames of hell for the heathen—Mahommedans, Buddhists, and the
+rest—would spare Dissenters and Roman Catholics (though at the cost of
+how much humiliation when they were made to realise their error!), and
+it was also possible that He would be pitiful to those who had had no
+chance of learning the truth,—this was reasonable enough, though such
+were the activities of the Missionary Society there could not be many
+in this condition—but if the chance had been theirs and they had
+neglected it (in which category were obviously Roman Catholics and
+Dissenters), the punishment was sure and merited. It was clear that the
+miscreant was in a parlous state. Perhaps Philip had not been taught it
+in so many words, but certainly the impression had been given him that
+only members of the Church of England had any real hope of eternal
+happiness.
+
+One of the things that Philip had heard definitely stated was that the
+unbeliever was a wicked and a vicious man; but Weeks, though he
+believed in hardly anything that Philip believed, led a life of
+Christian purity. Philip had received little kindness in his life, and
+he was touched by the American’s desire to help him: once when a cold
+kept him in bed for three days, Weeks nursed him like a mother. There
+was neither vice nor wickedness in him, but only sincerity and
+loving-kindness. It was evidently possible to be virtuous and
+unbelieving.
+
+Also Philip had been given to understand that people adhered to other
+faiths only from obstinacy or self-interest: in their hearts they knew
+they were false; they deliberately sought to deceive others. Now, for
+the sake of his German he had been accustomed on Sunday mornings to
+attend the Lutheran service, but when Hayward arrived he began instead
+to go with him to Mass. He noticed that, whereas the Protestant church
+was nearly empty and the congregation had a listless air, the Jesuit on
+the other hand was crowded and the worshippers seemed to pray with all
+their hearts. They had not the look of hypocrites. He was surprised at
+the contrast; for he knew of course that the Lutherans, whose faith was
+closer to that of the Church of England, on that account were nearer
+the truth than the Roman Catholics. Most of the men—it was largely a
+masculine congregation—were South Germans; and he could not help saying
+to himself that if he had been born in South Germany he would certainly
+have been a Roman Catholic. He might just as well have been born in a
+Roman Catholic country as in England; and in England as well in a
+Wesleyan, Baptist, or Methodist family as in one that fortunately
+belonged to the church by law established. He was a little breathless
+at the danger he had run. Philip was on friendly terms with the little
+Chinaman who sat at table with him twice each day. His name was Sung.
+He was always smiling, affable, and polite. It seemed strange that he
+should frizzle in hell merely because he was a Chinaman; but if
+salvation was possible whatever a man’s faith was, there did not seem
+to be any particular advantage in belonging to the Church of England.
+
+Philip, more puzzled than he had ever been in his life, sounded Weeks.
+He had to be careful, for he was very sensitive to ridicule; and the
+acidulous humour with which the American treated the Church of England
+disconcerted him. Weeks only puzzled him more. He made Philip
+acknowledge that those South Germans whom he saw in the Jesuit church
+were every bit as firmly convinced of the truth of Roman Catholicism as
+he was of that of the Church of England, and from that he led him to
+admit that the Mahommedan and the Buddhist were convinced also of the
+truth of their respective religions. It looked as though knowing that
+you were right meant nothing; they all knew they were right. Weeks had
+no intention of undermining the boy’s faith, but he was deeply
+interested in religion, and found it an absorbing topic of
+conversation. He had described his own views accurately when he said
+that he very earnestly disbelieved in almost everything that other
+people believed. Once Philip asked him a question, which he had heard
+his uncle put when the conversation at the vicarage had fallen upon
+some mildly rationalistic work which was then exciting discussion in
+the newspapers.
+
+“But why should you be right and all those fellows like St. Anselm and
+St. Augustine be wrong?”
+
+“You mean that they were very clever and learned men, while you have
+grave doubts whether I am either?” asked Weeks.
+
+“Yes,” answered Philip uncertainly, for put in that way his question
+seemed impertinent.
+
+“St. Augustine believed that the earth was flat and that the sun turned
+round it.”
+
+“I don’t know what that proves.”
+
+“Why, it proves that you believe with your generation. Your saints
+lived in an age of faith, when it was practically impossible to
+disbelieve what to us is positively incredible.”
+
+“Then how d’you know that we have the truth now?”
+
+“I don’t.”
+
+Philip thought this over for a moment, then he said:
+
+“I don’t see why the things we believe absolutely now shouldn’t be just
+as wrong as what they believed in the past.”
+
+“Neither do I.”
+
+“Then how can you believe anything at all?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+Philip asked Weeks what he thought of Hayward’s religion.
+
+“Men have always formed gods in their own image,” said Weeks. “He
+believes in the picturesque.”
+
+Philip paused for a little while, then he said:
+
+“I don’t see why one should believe in God at all.”
+
+The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he realised that he had
+ceased to do so. It took his breath away like a plunge into cold water.
+He looked at Weeks with startled eyes. Suddenly he felt afraid. He left
+Weeks as quickly as he could. He wanted to be alone. It was the most
+startling experience that he had ever had. He tried to think it all
+out; it was very exciting, since his whole life seemed concerned (he
+thought his decision on this matter must profoundly affect its course)
+and a mistake might lead to eternal damnation; but the more he
+reflected the more convinced he was; and though during the next few
+weeks he read books, aids to scepticism, with eager interest it was
+only to confirm him in what he felt instinctively. The fact was that he
+had ceased to believe not for this reason or the other, but because he
+had not the religious temperament. Faith had been forced upon him from
+the outside. It was a matter of environment and example. A new
+environment and a new example gave him the opportunity to find himself.
+He put off the faith of his childhood quite simply, like a cloak that
+he no longer needed. At first life seemed strange and lonely without
+the belief which, though he never realised it, had been an unfailing
+support. He felt like a man who has leaned on a stick and finds himself
+forced suddenly to walk without assistance. It really seemed as though
+the days were colder and the nights more solitary. But he was upheld by
+the excitement; it seemed to make life a more thrilling adventure; and
+in a little while the stick which he had thrown aside, the cloak which
+had fallen from his shoulders, seemed an intolerable burden of which he
+had been eased. The religious exercises which for so many years had
+been forced upon him were part and parcel of religion to him. He
+thought of the collects and epistles which he had been made to learn by
+heart, and the long services at the Cathedral through which he had sat
+when every limb itched with the desire for movement; and he remembered
+those walks at night through muddy roads to the parish church at
+Blackstable, and the coldness of that bleak building; he sat with his
+feet like ice, his fingers numb and heavy, and all around was the
+sickly odour of pomatum. Oh, he had been so bored! His heart leaped
+when he saw he was free from all that.
+
+He was surprised at himself because he ceased to believe so easily,
+and, not knowing that he felt as he did on account of the subtle
+workings of his inmost nature, he ascribed the certainty he had reached
+to his own cleverness. He was unduly pleased with himself. With youth’s
+lack of sympathy for an attitude other than its own he despised not a
+little Weeks and Hayward because they were content with the vague
+emotion which they called God and would not take the further step which
+to himself seemed so obvious. One day he went alone up a certain hill
+so that he might see a view which, he knew not why, filled him always
+with wild exhilaration. It was autumn now, but often the days were
+cloudless still, and then the sky seemed to glow with a more splendid
+light: it was as though nature consciously sought to put a fuller
+vehemence into the remaining days of fair weather. He looked down upon
+the plain, a-quiver with the sun, stretching vastly before him: in the
+distance were the roofs of Mannheim and ever so far away the dimness of
+Worms. Here and there a more piercing glitter was the Rhine. The
+tremendous spaciousness of it was glowing with rich gold. Philip, as he
+stood there, his heart beating with sheer joy, thought how the tempter
+had stood with Jesus on a high mountain and shown him the kingdoms of
+the earth. To Philip, intoxicated with the beauty of the scene, it
+seemed that it was the whole world which was spread before him, and he
+was eager to step down and enjoy it. He was free from degrading fears
+and free from prejudice. He could go his way without the intolerable
+dread of hell-fire. Suddenly he realised that he had lost also that
+burden of responsibility which made every action of his life a matter
+of urgent consequence. He could breathe more freely in a lighter air.
+He was responsible only to himself for the things he did. Freedom! He
+was his own master at last. From old habit, unconsciously he thanked
+God that he no longer believed in Him.
+
+Drunk with pride in his intelligence and in his fearlessness, Philip
+entered deliberately upon a new life. But his loss of faith made less
+difference in his behaviour than he expected. Though he had thrown on
+one side the Christian dogmas it never occurred to him to criticise the
+Christian ethics; he accepted the Christian virtues, and indeed thought
+it fine to practise them for their own sake, without a thought of
+reward or punishment. There was small occasion for heroism in the Frau
+Professor’s house, but he was a little more exactly truthful than he
+had been, and he forced himself to be more than commonly attentive to
+the dull, elderly ladies who sometimes engaged him in conversation. The
+gentle oath, the violent adjective, which are typical of our language
+and which he had cultivated before as a sign of manliness, he now
+elaborately eschewed.
+
+Having settled the whole matter to his satisfaction he sought to put it
+out of his mind, but that was more easily said than done; and he could
+not prevent the regrets nor stifle the misgivings which sometimes
+tormented him. He was so young and had so few friends that immortality
+had no particular attractions for him, and he was able without trouble
+to give up belief in it; but there was one thing which made him
+wretched; he told himself that he was unreasonable, he tried to laugh
+himself out of such pathos; but the tears really came to his eyes when
+he thought that he would never see again the beautiful mother whose
+love for him had grown more precious as the years since her death
+passed on. And sometimes, as though the influence of innumerable
+ancestors, Godfearing and devout, were working in him unconsciously,
+there seized him a panic fear that perhaps after all it was all true,
+and there was, up there behind the blue sky, a jealous God who would
+punish in everlasting flames the atheist. At these times his reason
+could offer him no help, he imagined the anguish of a physical torment
+which would last endlessly, he felt quite sick with fear and burst into
+a violent sweat. At last he would say to himself desperately:
+
+“After all, it’s not my fault. I can’t force myself to believe. If
+there is a God after all and he punishes me because I honestly don’t
+believe in Him I can’t help it.”
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Winter set in. Weeks went to Berlin to attend the lectures of Paulssen,
+and Hayward began to think of going South. The local theatre opened its
+doors. Philip and Hayward went to it two or three times a week with the
+praiseworthy intention of improving their German, and Philip found it a
+more diverting manner of perfecting himself in the language than
+listening to sermons. They found themselves in the midst of a revival
+of the drama. Several of Ibsen’s plays were on the repertory for the
+winter; Sudermann’s Die Ehre was then a new play, and on its production
+in the quiet university town caused the greatest excitement; it was
+extravagantly praised and bitterly attacked; other dramatists followed
+with plays written under the modern influence, and Philip witnessed a
+series of works in which the vileness of mankind was displayed before
+him. He had never been to a play in his life till then (poor touring
+companies sometimes came to the Assembly Rooms at Blackstable, but the
+Vicar, partly on account of his profession, partly because he thought
+it would be vulgar, never went to see them) and the passion of the
+stage seized him. He felt a thrill the moment he got into the little,
+shabby, ill-lit theatre. Soon he came to know the peculiarities of the
+small company, and by the casting could tell at once what were the
+characteristics of the persons in the drama; but this made no
+difference to him. To him it was real life. It was a strange life, dark
+and tortured, in which men and women showed to remorseless eyes the
+evil that was in their hearts: a fair face concealed a depraved mind;
+the virtuous used virtue as a mask to hide their secret vice, the
+seeming-strong fainted within with their weakness; the honest were
+corrupt, the chaste were lewd. You seemed to dwell in a room where the
+night before an orgy had taken place: the windows had not been opened
+in the morning; the air was foul with the dregs of beer, and stale
+smoke, and flaring gas. There was no laughter. At most you sniggered at
+the hypocrite or the fool: the characters expressed themselves in cruel
+words that seemed wrung out of their hearts by shame and anguish.
+
+Philip was carried away by the sordid intensity of it. He seemed to see
+the world again in another fashion, and this world too he was anxious
+to know. After the play was over he went to a tavern and sat in the
+bright warmth with Hayward to eat a sandwich and drink a glass of beer.
+All round were little groups of students, talking and laughing; and
+here and there was a family, father and mother, a couple of sons and a
+girl; and sometimes the girl said a sharp thing, and the father leaned
+back in his chair and laughed, laughed heartily. It was very friendly
+and innocent. There was a pleasant homeliness in the scene, but for
+this Philip had no eyes. His thoughts ran on the play he had just come
+from.
+
+“You do feel it’s life, don’t you?” he said excitedly. “You know, I
+don’t think I can stay here much longer. I want to get to London so
+that I can really begin. I want to have experiences. I’m so tired of
+preparing for life: I want to live it now.”
+
+Sometimes Hayward left Philip to go home by himself. He would never
+exactly reply to Philip’s eager questioning, but with a merry, rather
+stupid laugh, hinted at a romantic amour; he quoted a few lines of
+Rossetti, and once showed Philip a sonnet in which passion and purple,
+pessimism and pathos, were packed together on the subject of a young
+lady called Trude. Hayward surrounded his sordid and vulgar little
+adventures with a glow of poetry, and thought he touched hands with
+Pericles and Pheidias because to describe the object of his attentions
+he used the word hetaira instead of one of those, more blunt and apt,
+provided by the English language. Philip in the daytime had been led by
+curiosity to pass through the little street near the old bridge, with
+its neat white houses and green shutters, in which according to Hayward
+the Fraulein Trude lived; but the women, with brutal faces and painted
+cheeks, who came out of their doors and cried out to him, filled him
+with fear; and he fled in horror from the rough hands that sought to
+detain him. He yearned above all things for experience and felt himself
+ridiculous because at his age he had not enjoyed that which all fiction
+taught him was the most important thing in life; but he had the
+unfortunate gift of seeing things as they were, and the reality which
+was offered him differed too terribly from the ideal of his dreams.
+
+He did not know how wide a country, arid and precipitous, must be
+crossed before the traveller through life comes to an acceptance of
+reality. It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those
+who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are
+full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and
+each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and
+wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the
+books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the
+conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a
+rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must
+discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been
+told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven
+into the body on the cross of life. The strange thing is that each one
+who has gone through that bitter disillusionment adds to it in his
+turn, unconsciously, by the power within him which is stronger than
+himself. The companionship of Hayward was the worst possible thing for
+Philip. He was a man who saw nothing for himself, but only through a
+literary atmosphere, and he was dangerous because he had deceived
+himself into sincerity. He honestly mistook his sensuality for romantic
+emotion, his vacillation for the artistic temperament, and his idleness
+for philosophic calm. His mind, vulgar in its effort at refinement, saw
+everything a little larger than life size, with the outlines blurred,
+in a golden mist of sentimentality. He lied and never knew that he
+lied, and when it was pointed out to him said that lies were beautiful.
+He was an idealist.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Philip was restless and dissatisfied. Hayward’s poetic allusions
+troubled his imagination, and his soul yearned for romance. At least
+that was how he put it to himself.
+
+And it happened that an incident was taking place in Frau Erlin’s house
+which increased Philip’s preoccupation with the matter of sex. Two or
+three times on his walks among the hills he had met Fraulein Cacilie
+wandering by herself. He had passed her with a bow, and a few yards
+further on had seen the Chinaman. He thought nothing of it; but one
+evening on his way home, when night had already fallen, he passed two
+people walking very close together. Hearing his footstep, they
+separated quickly, and though he could not see well in the darkness he
+was almost certain they were Cacilie and Herr Sung. Their rapid
+movement apart suggested that they had been walking arm in arm. Philip
+was puzzled and surprised. He had never paid much attention to Fraulein
+Cacilie. She was a plain girl, with a square face and blunt features.
+She could not have been more than sixteen, since she still wore her
+long fair hair in a plait. That evening at supper he looked at her
+curiously; and, though of late she had talked little at meals, she
+addressed him.
+
+“Where did you go for your walk today, Herr Carey?” she asked.
+
+“Oh, I walked up towards the Konigstuhl.”
+
+“I didn’t go out,” she volunteered. “I had a headache.”
+
+The Chinaman, who sat next to her, turned round.
+
+“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I hope it’s better now.”
+
+Fraulein Cacilie was evidently uneasy, for she spoke again to Philip.
+
+“Did you meet many people on the way?”
+
+Philip could not help reddening when he told a downright lie.
+
+“No. I don’t think I saw a living soul.”
+
+He fancied that a look of relief passed across her eyes.
+
+Soon, however, there could be no doubt that there was something between
+the pair, and other people in the Frau Professor’s house saw them
+lurking in dark places. The elderly ladies who sat at the head of the
+table began to discuss what was now a scandal. The Frau Professor was
+angry and harassed. She had done her best to see nothing. The winter
+was at hand, and it was not as easy a matter then as in the summer to
+keep her house full. Herr Sung was a good customer: he had two rooms on
+the ground floor, and he drank a bottle of Moselle at each meal. The
+Frau Professor charged him three marks a bottle and made a good profit.
+None of her other guests drank wine, and some of them did not even
+drink beer. Neither did she wish to lose Fraulein Cacilie, whose
+parents were in business in South America and paid well for the Frau
+Professor’s motherly care; and she knew that if she wrote to the girl’s
+uncle, who lived in Berlin, he would immediately take her away. The
+Frau Professor contented herself with giving them both severe looks at
+table and, though she dared not be rude to the Chinaman, got a certain
+satisfaction out of incivility to Cacilie. But the three elderly ladies
+were not content. Two were widows, and one, a Dutchwoman, was a
+spinster of masculine appearance; they paid the smallest possible sum
+for their pension, and gave a good deal of trouble, but they were
+permanent and therefore had to be put up with. They went to the Frau
+Professor and said that something must be done; it was disgraceful, and
+the house was ceasing to be respectable. The Frau Professor tried
+obstinacy, anger, tears, but the three old ladies routed her, and with
+a sudden assumption of virtuous indignation she said that she would put
+a stop to the whole thing.
+
+After luncheon she took Cacilie into her bed-room and began to talk
+very seriously to her; but to her amazement the girl adopted a brazen
+attitude; she proposed to go about as she liked; and if she chose to
+walk with the Chinaman she could not see it was anybody’s business but
+her own. The Frau Professor threatened to write to her uncle.
+
+“Then Onkel Heinrich will put me in a family in Berlin for the winter,
+and that will be much nicer for me. And Herr Sung will come to Berlin
+too.”
+
+The Frau Professor began to cry. The tears rolled down her coarse, red,
+fat cheeks; and Cacilie laughed at her.
+
+“That will mean three rooms empty all through the winter,” she said.
+
+Then the Frau Professor tried another plan. She appealed to Fraulein
+Cacilie’s better nature: she was kind, sensible, tolerant; she treated
+her no longer as a child, but as a grown woman. She said that it
+wouldn’t be so dreadful, but a Chinaman, with his yellow skin and flat
+nose, and his little pig’s eyes! That’s what made it so horrible. It
+filled one with disgust to think of it.
+
+“Bitte, bitte,” said Cacilie, with a rapid intake of the breath. “I
+won’t listen to anything against him.”
+
+“But it’s not serious?” gasped Frau Erlin.
+
+“I love him. I love him. I love him.”
+
+“Gott im Himmel!”
+
+The Frau Professor stared at her with horrified surprise; she had
+thought it was no more than naughtiness on the child’s part, and
+innocent, folly. but the passion in her voice revealed everything.
+Cacilie looked at her for a moment with flaming eyes, and then with a
+shrug of her shoulders went out of the room.
+
+Frau Erlin kept the details of the interview to herself, and a day or
+two later altered the arrangement of the table. She asked Herr Sung if
+he would not come and sit at her end, and he with his unfailing
+politeness accepted with alacrity. Cacilie took the change
+indifferently. But as if the discovery that the relations between them
+were known to the whole household made them more shameless, they made
+no secret now of their walks together, and every afternoon quite openly
+set out to wander about the hills. It was plain that they did not care
+what was said of them. At last even the placidity of Professor Erlin
+was moved, and he insisted that his wife should speak to the Chinaman.
+She took him aside in his turn and expostulated; he was ruining the
+girl’s reputation, he was doing harm to the house, he must see how
+wrong and wicked his conduct was; but she was met with smiling denials;
+Herr Sung did not know what she was talking about, he was not paying
+any attention to Fraulein Cacilie, he never walked with her; it was all
+untrue, every word of it.
+
+“Ach, Herr Sung, how can you say such things? You’ve been seen again
+and again.”
+
+“No, you’re mistaken. It’s untrue.”
+
+He looked at her with an unceasing smile, which showed his even, little
+white teeth. He was quite calm. He denied everything. He denied with
+bland effrontery. At last the Frau Professor lost her temper and said
+the girl had confessed she loved him. He was not moved. He continued to
+smile.
+
+“Nonsense! Nonsense! It’s all untrue.”
+
+She could get nothing out of him. The weather grew very bad; there was
+snow and frost, and then a thaw with a long succession of cheerless
+days, on which walking was a poor amusement. One evening when Philip
+had just finished his German lesson with the Herr Professor and was
+standing for a moment in the drawing-room, talking to Frau Erlin, Anna
+came quickly in.
+
+“Mamma, where is Cacilie?” she said.
+
+“I suppose she’s in her room.”
+
+“There’s no light in it.”
+
+The Frau Professor gave an exclamation, and she looked at her daughter
+in dismay. The thought which was in Anna’s head had flashed across
+hers.
+
+“Ring for Emil,” she said hoarsely.
+
+This was the stupid lout who waited at table and did most of the
+housework. He came in.
+
+“Emil, go down to Herr Sung’s room and enter without knocking. If
+anyone is there say you came in to see about the stove.”
+
+No sign of astonishment appeared on Emil’s phlegmatic face.
+
+He went slowly downstairs. The Frau Professor and Anna left the door
+open and listened. Presently they heard Emil come up again, and they
+called him.
+
+“Was anyone there?” asked the Frau Professor.
+
+“Yes, Herr Sung was there.”
+
+“Was he alone?”
+
+The beginning of a cunning smile narrowed his mouth.
+
+“No, Fraulein Cacilie was there.”
+
+“Oh, it’s disgraceful,” cried the Frau Professor.
+
+Now he smiled broadly.
+
+“Fraulein Cacilie is there every evening. She spends hours at a time
+there.”
+
+Frau Professor began to wring her hands.
+
+“Oh, how abominable! But why didn’t you tell me?”
+
+“It was no business of mine,” he answered, slowly shrugging his
+shoulders.
+
+“I suppose they paid you well. Go away. Go.”
+
+He lurched clumsily to the door.
+
+“They must go away, mamma,” said Anna.
+
+“And who is going to pay the rent? And the taxes are falling due. It’s
+all very well for you to say they must go away. If they go away I can’t
+pay the bills.” She turned to Philip, with tears streaming down her
+face. “Ach, Herr Carey, you will not say what you have heard. If
+Fraulein Forster—” this was the Dutch spinster—“if Fraulein Forster
+knew she would leave at once. And if they all go we must close the
+house. I cannot afford to keep it.”
+
+“Of course I won’t say anything.”
+
+“If she stays, I will not speak to her,” said Anna.
+
+That evening at supper Fraulein Cacilie, redder than usual, with a look
+of obstinacy on her face, took her place punctually; but Herr Sung did
+not appear, and for a while Philip thought he was going to shirk the
+ordeal. At last he came, very smiling, his little eyes dancing with the
+apologies he made for his late arrival. He insisted as usual on pouring
+out the Frau Professor a glass of his Moselle, and he offered a glass
+to Fraulein Forster. The room was very hot, for the stove had been
+alight all day and the windows were seldom opened. Emil blundered
+about, but succeeded somehow in serving everyone quickly and with
+order. The three old ladies sat in silence, visibly disapproving: the
+Frau Professor had scarcely recovered from her tears; her husband was
+silent and oppressed. Conversation languished. It seemed to Philip that
+there was something dreadful in that gathering which he had sat with so
+often; they looked different under the light of the two hanging lamps
+from what they had ever looked before; he was vaguely uneasy. Once he
+caught Cacilie’s eye, and he thought she looked at him with hatred and
+contempt. The room was stifling. It was as though the beastly passion
+of that pair troubled them all; there was a feeling of Oriental
+depravity; a faint savour of joss-sticks, a mystery of hidden vices,
+seemed to make their breath heavy. Philip could feel the beating of the
+arteries in his forehead. He could not understand what strange emotion
+distracted him; he seemed to feel something infinitely attractive, and
+yet he was repelled and horrified.
+
+For several days things went on. The air was sickly with the unnatural
+passion which all felt about them, and the nerves of the little
+household seemed to grow exasperated. Only Herr Sung remained
+unaffected; he was no less smiling, affable, and polite than he had
+been before: one could not tell whether his manner was a triumph of
+civilisation or an expression of contempt on the part of the Oriental
+for the vanquished West. Cacilie was flaunting and cynical. At last
+even the Frau Professor could bear the position no longer. Suddenly
+panic seized her; for Professor Erlin with brutal frankness had
+suggested the possible consequences of an intrigue which was now
+manifest to everyone, and she saw her good name in Heidelberg and the
+repute of her house ruined by a scandal which could not possibly be
+hidden. For some reason, blinded perhaps by her interests, this
+possibility had never occurred to her; and now, her wits muddled by a
+terrible fear, she could hardly be prevented from turning the girl out
+of the house at once. It was due to Anna’s good sense that a cautious
+letter was written to the uncle in Berlin suggesting that Cacilie
+should be taken away.
+
+But having made up her mind to lose the two lodgers, the Frau Professor
+could not resist the satisfaction of giving rein to the ill-temper she
+had curbed so long. She was free now to say anything she liked to
+Cacilie.
+
+“I have written to your uncle, Cacilie, to take you away. I cannot have
+you in my house any longer.”
+
+Her little round eyes sparkled when she noticed the sudden whiteness of
+the girl’s face.
+
+“You’re shameless. Shameless,” she went on.
+
+She called her foul names.
+
+“What did you say to my uncle Heinrich, Frau Professor?” the girl
+asked, suddenly falling from her attitude of flaunting independence.
+
+“Oh, he’ll tell you himself. I expect to get a letter from him
+tomorrow.”
+
+Next day, in order to make the humiliation more public, at supper she
+called down the table to Cacilie.
+
+“I have had a letter from your uncle, Cacilie. You are to pack your
+things tonight, and we will put you in the train tomorrow morning. He
+will meet you himself in Berlin at the Central Bahnhof.”
+
+“Very good, Frau Professor.”
+
+Herr Sung smiled in the Frau Professor’s eyes, and notwithstanding her
+protests insisted on pouring out a glass of wine for her. The Frau
+Professor ate her supper with a good appetite. But she had triumphed
+unwisely. Just before going to bed she called the servant.
+
+“Emil, if Fraulein Cacilie’s box is ready you had better take it
+downstairs tonight. The porter will fetch it before breakfast.”
+
+The servant went away and in a moment came back.
+
+“Fraulein Cacilie is not in her room, and her bag has gone.”
+
+With a cry the Frau Professor hurried along: the box was on the floor,
+strapped and locked; but there was no bag, and neither hat nor cloak.
+The dressing-table was empty. Breathing heavily, the Frau Professor ran
+downstairs to the Chinaman’s rooms, she had not moved so quickly for
+twenty years, and Emil called out after her to beware she did not fall;
+she did not trouble to knock, but burst in. The rooms were empty. The
+luggage had gone, and the door into the garden, still open, showed how
+it had been got away. In an envelope on the table were notes for the
+money due on the month’s board and an approximate sum for extras.
+Groaning, suddenly overcome by her haste, the Frau Professor sank
+obesely on to a sofa. There could be no doubt. The pair had gone off
+together. Emil remained stolid and unmoved.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+Hayward, after saying for a month that he was going South next day and
+delaying from week to week out of inability to make up his mind to the
+bother of packing and the tedium of a journey, had at last been driven
+off just before Christmas by the preparations for that festival. He
+could not support the thought of a Teutonic merry-making. It gave him
+goose-flesh to think of the season’s aggressive cheerfulness, and in
+his desire to avoid the obvious he determined to travel on Christmas
+Eve.
+
+Philip was not sorry to see him off, for he was a downright person and
+it irritated him that anybody should not know his own mind. Though much
+under Hayward’s influence, he would not grant that indecision pointed
+to a charming sensitiveness; and he resented the shadow of a sneer with
+which Hayward looked upon his straight ways. They corresponded. Hayward
+was an admirable letter-writer, and knowing his talent took pains with
+his letters. His temperament was receptive to the beautiful influences
+with which he came in contact, and he was able in his letters from Rome
+to put a subtle fragrance of Italy. He thought the city of the ancient
+Romans a little vulgar, finding distinction only in the decadence of
+the Empire; but the Rome of the Popes appealed to his sympathy, and in
+his chosen words, quite exquisitely, there appeared a rococo beauty. He
+wrote of old church music and the Alban Hills, and of the languor of
+incense and the charm of the streets by night, in the rain, when the
+pavements shone and the light of the street lamps was mysterious.
+Perhaps he repeated these admirable letters to various friends. He did
+not know what a troubling effect they had upon Philip; they seemed to
+make his life very humdrum. With the spring Hayward grew dithyrambic.
+He proposed that Philip should come down to Italy. He was wasting his
+time at Heidelberg. The Germans were gross and life there was common;
+how could the soul come to her own in that prim landscape? In Tuscany
+the spring was scattering flowers through the land, and Philip was
+nineteen; let him come and they could wander through the mountain towns
+of Umbria. Their names sang in Philip’s heart. And Cacilie too, with
+her lover, had gone to Italy. When he thought of them Philip was seized
+with a restlessness he could not account for. He cursed his fate
+because he had no money to travel, and he knew his uncle would not send
+him more than the fifteen pounds a month which had been agreed upon. He
+had not managed his allowance very well. His pension and the price of
+his lessons left him very little over, and he had found going about
+with Hayward expensive. Hayward had often suggested excursions, a visit
+to the play, or a bottle of wine, when Philip had come to the end of
+his month’s money; and with the folly of his age he had been unwilling
+to confess he could not afford an extravagance.
+
+Luckily Hayward’s letters came seldom, and in the intervals Philip
+settled down again to his industrious life. He had matriculated at the
+university and attended one or two courses of lectures. Kuno Fischer
+was then at the height of his fame and during the winter had been
+lecturing brilliantly on Schopenhauer. It was Philip’s introduction to
+philosophy. He had a practical mind and moved uneasily amid the
+abstract; but he found an unexpected fascination in listening to
+metaphysical disquisitions; they made him breathless; it was a little
+like watching a tight-rope dancer doing perilous feats over an abyss;
+but it was very exciting. The pessimism of the subject attracted his
+youth; and he believed that the world he was about to enter was a place
+of pitiless woe and of darkness. That made him none the less eager to
+enter it; and when, in due course, Mrs. Carey, acting as the
+correspondent for his guardian’s views, suggested that it was time for
+him to come back to England, he agreed with enthusiasm. He must make up
+his mind now what he meant to do. If he left Heidelberg at the end of
+July they could talk things over during August, and it would be a good
+time to make arrangements.
+
+The date of his departure was settled, and Mrs. Carey wrote to him
+again. She reminded him of Miss Wilkinson, through whose kindness he
+had gone to Frau Erlin’s house at Heidelberg, and told him that she had
+arranged to spend a few weeks with them at Blackstable. She would be
+crossing from Flushing on such and such a day, and if he travelled at
+the same time he could look after her and come on to Blackstable in her
+company. Philip’s shyness immediately made him write to say that he
+could not leave till a day or two afterwards. He pictured himself
+looking out for Miss Wilkinson, the embarrassment of going up to her
+and asking if it were she (and he might so easily address the wrong
+person and be snubbed), and then the difficulty of knowing whether in
+the train he ought to talk to her or whether he could ignore her and
+read his book.
+
+At last he left Heidelberg. For three months he had been thinking of
+nothing but the future; and he went without regret. He never knew that
+he had been happy there. Fraulein Anna gave him a copy of Der Trompeter
+von Sackingen and in return he presented her with a volume of William
+Morris. Very wisely neither of them ever read the other’s present.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+Philip was surprised when he saw his uncle and aunt. He had never
+noticed before that they were quite old people. The Vicar received him
+with his usual, not unamiable indifference. He was a little stouter, a
+little balder, a little grayer. Philip saw how insignificant he was.
+His face was weak and self-indulgent. Aunt Louisa took him in her arms
+and kissed him; and tears of happiness flowed down her cheeks. Philip
+was touched and embarrassed; he had not known with what a hungry love
+she cared for him.
+
+“Oh, the time has seemed long since you’ve been away, Philip,” she
+cried.
+
+She stroked his hands and looked into his face with glad eyes.
+
+“You’ve grown. You’re quite a man now.”
+
+There was a very small moustache on his upper lip. He had bought a
+razor and now and then with infinite care shaved the down off his
+smooth chin.
+
+“We’ve been so lonely without you.” And then shyly, with a little break
+in her voice, she asked: “You are glad to come back to your home,
+aren’t you?”
+
+“Yes, rather.”
+
+She was so thin that she seemed almost transparent, the arms she put
+round his neck were frail bones that reminded you of chicken bones, and
+her faded face was oh! so wrinkled. The gray curls which she still wore
+in the fashion of her youth gave her a queer, pathetic look; and her
+little withered body was like an autumn leaf, you felt it might be
+blown away by the first sharp wind. Philip realised that they had done
+with life, these two quiet little people: they belonged to a past
+generation, and they were waiting there patiently, rather stupidly, for
+death; and he, in his vigour and his youth, thirsting for excitement
+and adventure, was appalled at the waste. They had done nothing, and
+when they went it would be just as if they had never been. He felt a
+great pity for Aunt Louisa, and he loved her suddenly because she loved
+him.
+
+Then Miss Wilkinson, who had kept discreetly out of the way till the
+Careys had had a chance of welcoming their nephew, came into the room.
+
+“This is Miss Wilkinson, Philip,” said Mrs. Carey.
+
+“The prodigal has returned,” she said, holding out her hand. “I have
+brought a rose for the prodigal’s buttonhole.”
+
+With a gay smile she pinned to Philip’s coat the flower she had just
+picked in the garden. He blushed and felt foolish. He knew that Miss
+Wilkinson was the daughter of his Uncle William’s last rector, and he
+had a wide acquaintance with the daughters of clergymen. They wore
+ill-cut clothes and stout boots. They were generally dressed in black,
+for in Philip’s early years at Blackstable homespuns had not reached
+East Anglia, and the ladies of the clergy did not favour colours. Their
+hair was done very untidily, and they smelt aggressively of starched
+linen. They considered the feminine graces unbecoming and looked the
+same whether they were old or young. They bore their religion
+arrogantly. The closeness of their connection with the church made them
+adopt a slightly dictatorial attitude to the rest of mankind.
+
+Miss Wilkinson was very different. She wore a white muslin gown stamped
+with gay little bunches of flowers, and pointed, high-heeled shoes,
+with open-work stockings. To Philip’s inexperience it seemed that she
+was wonderfully dressed; he did not see that her frock was cheap and
+showy. Her hair was elaborately dressed, with a neat curl in the middle
+of the forehead: it was very black, shiny and hard, and it looked as
+though it could never be in the least disarranged. She had large black
+eyes and her nose was slightly aquiline; in profile she had somewhat
+the look of a bird of prey, but full face she was prepossessing. She
+smiled a great deal, but her mouth was large and when she smiled she
+tried to hide her teeth, which were big and rather yellow. But what
+embarrassed Philip most was that she was heavily powdered: he had very
+strict views on feminine behaviour and did not think a lady ever
+powdered; but of course Miss Wilkinson was a lady because she was a
+clergyman’s daughter, and a clergyman was a gentleman.
+
+Philip made up his mind to dislike her thoroughly. She spoke with a
+slight French accent; and he did not know why she should, since she had
+been born and bred in the heart of England. He thought her smile
+affected, and the coy sprightliness of her manner irritated him. For
+two or three days he remained silent and hostile, but Miss Wilkinson
+apparently did not notice it. She was very affable. She addressed her
+conversation almost exclusively to him, and there was something
+flattering in the way she appealed constantly to his sane judgment. She
+made him laugh too, and Philip could never resist people who amused
+him: he had a gift now and then of saying neat things; and it was
+pleasant to have an appreciative listener. Neither the Vicar nor Mrs.
+Carey had a sense of humour, and they never laughed at anything he
+said. As he grew used to Miss Wilkinson, and his shyness left him, he
+began to like her better; he found the French accent picturesque; and
+at a garden party which the doctor gave she was very much better
+dressed than anyone else. She wore a blue foulard with large white
+spots, and Philip was tickled at the sensation it caused.
+
+“I’m certain they think you’re no better than you should be,” he told
+her, laughing.
+
+“It’s the dream of my life to be taken for an abandoned hussy,” she
+answered.
+
+One day when Miss Wilkinson was in her room he asked Aunt Louisa how
+old she was.
+
+“Oh, my dear, you should never ask a lady’s age; but she’s certainly
+too old for you to marry.”
+
+The Vicar gave his slow, obese smile.
+
+“She’s no chicken, Louisa,” he said. “She was nearly grown up when we
+were in Lincolnshire, and that was twenty years ago. She wore a pigtail
+hanging down her back.”
+
+“She may not have been more than ten,” said Philip.
+
+“She was older than that,” said Aunt Louisa.
+
+“I think she was near twenty,” said the Vicar.
+
+“Oh no, William. Sixteen or seventeen at the outside.”
+
+“That would make her well over thirty,” said Philip.
+
+At that moment Miss Wilkinson tripped downstairs, singing a song by
+Benjamin Goddard. She had put her hat on, for she and Philip were going
+for a walk, and she held out her hand for him to button her glove. He
+did it awkwardly. He felt embarrassed but gallant. Conversation went
+easily between them now, and as they strolled along they talked of all
+manner of things. She told Philip about Berlin, and he told her of his
+year in Heidelberg. As he spoke, things which had appeared of no
+importance gained a new interest: he described the people at Frau
+Erlin’s house; and to the conversations between Hayward and Weeks,
+which at the time seemed so significant, he gave a little twist, so
+that they looked absurd. He was flattered at Miss Wilkinson’s laughter.
+
+“I’m quite frightened of you,” she said. “You’re so sarcastic.”
+
+Then she asked him playfully whether he had not had any love affairs at
+Heidelberg. Without thinking, he frankly answered that he had not; but
+she refused to believe him.
+
+“How secretive you are!” she said. “At your age is it likely?”
+
+He blushed and laughed.
+
+“You want to know too much,” he said.
+
+“Ah, I thought so,” she laughed triumphantly. “Look at him blushing.”
+
+He was pleased that she should think he had been a sad dog, and he
+changed the conversation so as to make her believe he had all sorts of
+romantic things to conceal. He was angry with himself that he had not.
+There had been no opportunity.
+
+Miss Wilkinson was dissatisfied with her lot. She resented having to
+earn her living and told Philip a long story of an uncle of her
+mother’s, who had been expected to leave her a fortune but had married
+his cook and changed his will. She hinted at the luxury of her home and
+compared her life in Lincolnshire, with horses to ride and carriages to
+drive in, with the mean dependence of her present state. Philip was a
+little puzzled when he mentioned this afterwards to Aunt Louisa, and
+she told him that when she knew the Wilkinsons they had never had
+anything more than a pony and a dog-cart; Aunt Louisa had heard of the
+rich uncle, but as he was married and had children before Emily was
+born she could never have had much hope of inheriting his fortune. Miss
+Wilkinson had little good to say of Berlin, where she was now in a
+situation. She complained of the vulgarity of German life, and compared
+it bitterly with the brilliance of Paris, where she had spent a number
+of years. She did not say how many. She had been governess in the
+family of a fashionable portrait-painter, who had married a Jewish wife
+of means, and in their house she had met many distinguished people. She
+dazzled Philip with their names. Actors from the Comedie Francaise had
+come to the house frequently, and Coquelin, sitting next her at dinner,
+had told her he had never met a foreigner who spoke such perfect
+French. Alphonse Daudet had come also, and he had given her a copy of
+Sappho: he had promised to write her name in it, but she had forgotten
+to remind him. She treasured the volume none the less and she would
+lend it to Philip. Then there was Maupassant. Miss Wilkinson with a
+rippling laugh looked at Philip knowingly. What a man, but what a
+writer! Hayward had talked of Maupassant, and his reputation was not
+unknown to Philip.
+
+“Did he make love to you?” he asked.
+
+The words seemed to stick funnily in his throat, but he asked them
+nevertheless. He liked Miss Wilkinson very much now, and was thrilled
+by her conversation, but he could not imagine anyone making love to
+her.
+
+“What a question!” she cried. “Poor Guy, he made love to every woman he
+met. It was a habit that he could not break himself of.”
+
+She sighed a little, and seemed to look back tenderly on the past.
+
+“He was a charming man,” she murmured.
+
+A greater experience than Philip’s would have guessed from these words
+the probabilities of the encounter: the distinguished writer invited to
+luncheon en famille, the governess coming in sedately with the two tall
+girls she was teaching; the introduction:
+
+“Notre Miss Anglaise.”
+
+“Mademoiselle.”
+
+And the luncheon during which the Miss Anglaise sat silent while the
+distinguished writer talked to his host and hostess.
+
+But to Philip her words called up much more romantic fancies.
+
+“Do tell me all about him,” he said excitedly.
+
+“There’s nothing to tell,” she said truthfully, but in such a manner as
+to convey that three volumes would scarcely have contained the lurid
+facts. “You mustn’t be curious.”
+
+She began to talk of Paris. She loved the boulevards and the Bois.
+There was grace in every street, and the trees in the Champs Elysees
+had a distinction which trees had not elsewhere. They were sitting on a
+stile now by the high-road, and Miss Wilkinson looked with disdain upon
+the stately elms in front of them. And the theatres: the plays were
+brilliant, and the acting was incomparable. She often went with Madame
+Foyot, the mother of the girls she was educating, when she was trying
+on clothes.
+
+“Oh, what a misery to be poor!” she cried. “These beautiful things,
+it’s only in Paris they know how to dress, and not to be able to afford
+them! Poor Madame Foyot, she had no figure. Sometimes the dressmaker
+used to whisper to me: ‘Ah, Mademoiselle, if she only had your
+figure.’”
+
+Philip noticed then that Miss Wilkinson had a robust form and was proud
+of it.
+
+“Men are so stupid in England. They only think of the face. The French,
+who are a nation of lovers, know how much more important the figure
+is.”
+
+Philip had never thought of such things before, but he observed now
+that Miss Wilkinson’s ankles were thick and ungainly. He withdrew his
+eyes quickly.
+
+“You should go to France. Why don’t you go to Paris for a year? You
+would learn French, and it would—deniaiser you.”
+
+“What is that?” asked Philip.
+
+She laughed slyly.
+
+“You must look it out in the dictionary. Englishmen do not know how to
+treat women. They are so shy. Shyness is ridiculous in a man. They
+don’t know how to make love. They can’t even tell a woman she is
+charming without looking foolish.”
+
+Philip felt himself absurd. Miss Wilkinson evidently expected him to
+behave very differently; and he would have been delighted to say
+gallant and witty things, but they never occurred to him; and when they
+did he was too much afraid of making a fool of himself to say them.
+
+“Oh, I love Paris,” sighed Miss Wilkinson. “But I had to go to Berlin.
+I was with the Foyots till the girls married, and then I could get
+nothing to do, and I had the chance of this post in Berlin. They’re
+relations of Madame Foyot, and I accepted. I had a tiny apartment in
+the Rue Breda, on the cinquieme: it wasn’t at all respectable. You know
+about the Rue Breda—ces dames, you know.”
+
+Philip nodded, not knowing at all what she meant, but vaguely
+suspecting, and anxious she should not think him too ignorant.
+
+“But I didn’t care. Je suis libre, n’est-ce pas?” She was very fond of
+speaking French, which indeed she spoke well. “Once I had such a
+curious adventure there.”
+
+She paused a little and Philip pressed her to tell it.
+
+“You wouldn’t tell me yours in Heidelberg,” she said.
+
+“They were so unadventurous,” he retorted.
+
+“I don’t know what Mrs. Carey would say if she knew the sort of things
+we talk about together.”
+
+“You don’t imagine I shall tell her.”
+
+“Will you promise?”
+
+When he had done this, she told him how an art-student who had a room
+on the floor above her—but she interrupted herself.
+
+“Why don’t you go in for art? You paint so prettily.”
+
+“Not well enough for that.”
+
+“That is for others to judge. Je m’y connais, and I believe you have
+the making of a great artist.”
+
+“Can’t you see Uncle William’s face if I suddenly told him I wanted to
+go to Paris and study art?”
+
+“You’re your own master, aren’t you?”
+
+“You’re trying to put me off. Please go on with the story.” Miss
+Wilkinson, with a little laugh, went on. The art-student had passed her
+several times on the stairs, and she had paid no particular attention.
+She saw that he had fine eyes, and he took off his hat very politely.
+And one day she found a letter slipped under her door. It was from him.
+He told her that he had adored her for months, and that he waited about
+the stairs for her to pass. Oh, it was a charming letter! Of course she
+did not reply, but what woman could help being flattered? And next day
+there was another letter! It was wonderful, passionate, and touching.
+When next she met him on the stairs she did not know which way to look.
+And every day the letters came, and now he begged her to see him. He
+said he would come in the evening, vers neuf heures, and she did not
+know what to do. Of course it was impossible, and he might ring and
+ring, but she would never open the door; and then while she was waiting
+for the tinkling of the bell, all nerves, suddenly he stood before her.
+She had forgotten to shut the door when she came in.
+
+“C’etait une fatalite.”
+
+“And what happened then?” asked Philip.
+
+“That is the end of the story,” she replied, with a ripple of laughter.
+
+Philip was silent for a moment. His heart beat quickly, and strange
+emotions seemed to be hustling one another in his heart. He saw the
+dark staircase and the chance meetings, and he admired the boldness of
+the letters—oh, he would never have dared to do that—and then the
+silent, almost mysterious entrance. It seemed to him the very soul of
+romance.
+
+“What was he like?”
+
+“Oh, he was handsome. Charmant garcon.”
+
+“Do you know him still?”
+
+Philip felt a slight feeling of irritation as he asked this.
+
+“He treated me abominably. Men are always the same. You’re heartless,
+all of you.”
+
+“I don’t know about that,” said Philip, not without embarrassment.
+
+“Let us go home,” said Miss Wilkinson.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+Philip could not get Miss Wilkinson’s story out of his head. It was
+clear enough what she meant even though she cut it short, and he was a
+little shocked. That sort of thing was all very well for married women,
+he had read enough French novels to know that in France it was indeed
+the rule, but Miss Wilkinson was English and unmarried; her father was
+a clergyman. Then it struck him that the art-student probably was
+neither the first nor the last of her lovers, and he gasped: he had
+never looked upon Miss Wilkinson like that; it seemed incredible that
+anyone should make love to her. In his ingenuousness he doubted her
+story as little as he doubted what he read in books, and he was angry
+that such wonderful things never happened to him. It was humiliating
+that if Miss Wilkinson insisted upon his telling her of his adventures
+in Heidelberg he would have nothing to tell. It was true that he had
+some power of invention, but he was not sure whether he could persuade
+her that he was steeped in vice; women were full of intuition, he had
+read that, and she might easily discover that he was fibbing. He
+blushed scarlet as he thought of her laughing up her sleeve.
+
+Miss Wilkinson played the piano and sang in a rather tired voice; but
+her songs, Massenet, Benjamin Goddard, and Augusta Holmes, were new to
+Philip; and together they spent many hours at the piano. One day she
+wondered if he had a voice and insisted on trying it. She told him he
+had a pleasant baritone and offered to give him lessons. At first with
+his usual bashfulness he refused, but she insisted, and then every
+morning at a convenient time after breakfast she gave him an hour’s
+lesson. She had a natural gift for teaching, and it was clear that she
+was an excellent governess. She had method and firmness. Though her
+French accent was so much part of her that it remained, all the
+mellifluousness of her manner left her when she was engaged in
+teaching. She put up with no nonsense. Her voice became a little
+peremptory, and instinctively she suppressed inattention and corrected
+slovenliness. She knew what she was about and put Philip to scales and
+exercises.
+
+When the lesson was over she resumed without effort her seductive
+smiles, her voice became again soft and winning, but Philip could not
+so easily put away the pupil as she the pedagogue; and this impression
+convicted with the feelings her stories had aroused in him. He looked
+at her more narrowly. He liked her much better in the evening than in
+the morning. In the morning she was rather lined and the skin of her
+neck was just a little rough. He wished she would hide it, but the
+weather was very warm just then and she wore blouses which were cut
+low. She was very fond of white; in the morning it did not suit her. At
+night she often looked very attractive, she put on a gown which was
+almost a dinner dress, and she wore a chain of garnets round her neck;
+the lace about her bosom and at her elbows gave her a pleasant
+softness, and the scent she wore (at Blackstable no one used anything
+but Eau de Cologne, and that only on Sundays or when suffering from a
+sick headache) was troubling and exotic. She really looked very young
+then.
+
+Philip was much exercised over her age. He added twenty and seventeen
+together, and could not bring them to a satisfactory total. He asked
+Aunt Louisa more than once why she thought Miss Wilkinson was
+thirty-seven: she didn’t look more than thirty, and everyone knew that
+foreigners aged more rapidly than English women; Miss Wilkinson had
+lived so long abroad that she might almost be called a foreigner. He
+personally wouldn’t have thought her more than twenty-six.
+
+“She’s more than that,” said Aunt Louisa.
+
+Philip did not believe in the accuracy of the Careys’ statements. All
+they distinctly remembered was that Miss Wilkinson had not got her hair
+up the last time they saw her in Lincolnshire. Well, she might have
+been twelve then: it was so long ago and the Vicar was always so
+unreliable. They said it was twenty years ago, but people used round
+figures, and it was just as likely to be eighteen years, or seventeen.
+Seventeen and twelve were only twenty-nine, and hang it all, that
+wasn’t old, was it? Cleopatra was forty-eight when Antony threw away
+the world for her sake.
+
+It was a fine summer. Day after day was hot and cloudless; but the heat
+was tempered by the neighbourhood of the sea, and there was a pleasant
+exhilaration in the air, so that one was excited and not oppressed by
+the August sunshine. There was a pond in the garden in which a fountain
+played; water lilies grew in it and gold fish sunned themselves on the
+surface. Philip and Miss Wilkinson used to take rugs and cushions there
+after dinner and lie on the lawn in the shade of a tall hedge of roses.
+They talked and read all the afternoon. They smoked cigarettes, which
+the Vicar did not allow in the house; he thought smoking a disgusting
+habit, and used frequently to say that it was disgraceful for anyone to
+grow a slave to a habit. He forgot that he was himself a slave to
+afternoon tea.
+
+One day Miss Wilkinson gave Philip La Vie de Boheme. She had found it
+by accident when she was rummaging among the books in the Vicar’s
+study. It had been bought in a lot with something Mr. Carey wanted and
+had remained undiscovered for ten years.
+
+Philip began to read Murger’s fascinating, ill-written, absurd
+masterpiece, and fell at once under its spell. His soul danced with joy
+at that picture of starvation which is so good-humoured, of squalor
+which is so picturesque, of sordid love which is so romantic, of bathos
+which is so moving. Rodolphe and Mimi, Musette and Schaunard! They
+wander through the gray streets of the Latin Quarter, finding refuge
+now in one attic, now in another, in their quaint costumes of Louis
+Philippe, with their tears and their smiles, happy-go-lucky and
+reckless. Who can resist them? It is only when you return to the book
+with a sounder judgment that you find how gross their pleasures were,
+how vulgar their minds; and you feel the utter worthlessness, as
+artists and as human beings, of that gay procession. Philip was
+enraptured.
+
+“Don’t you wish you were going to Paris instead of London?” asked Miss
+Wilkinson, smiling at his enthusiasm.
+
+“It’s too late now even if I did,” he answered.
+
+During the fortnight he had been back from Germany there had been much
+discussion between himself and his uncle about his future. He had
+refused definitely to go to Oxford, and now that there was no chance of
+his getting scholarships even Mr. Carey came to the conclusion that he
+could not afford it. His entire fortune had consisted of only two
+thousand pounds, and though it had been invested in mortgages at five
+per cent, he had not been able to live on the interest. It was now a
+little reduced. It would be absurd to spend two hundred a year, the
+least he could live on at a university, for three years at Oxford which
+would lead him no nearer to earning his living. He was anxious to go
+straight to London. Mrs. Carey thought there were only four professions
+for a gentleman, the Army, the Navy, the Law, and the Church. She had
+added medicine because her brother-in-law practised it, but did not
+forget that in her young days no one ever considered the doctor a
+gentleman. The first two were out of the question, and Philip was firm
+in his refusal to be ordained. Only the law remained. The local doctor
+had suggested that many gentlemen now went in for engineering, but Mrs.
+Carey opposed the idea at once.
+
+“I shouldn’t like Philip to go into trade,” she said.
+
+“No, he must have a profession,” answered the Vicar.
+
+“Why not make him a doctor like his father?”
+
+“I should hate it,” said Philip.
+
+Mrs. Carey was not sorry. The Bar seemed out of the question, since he
+was not going to Oxford, for the Careys were under the impression that
+a degree was still necessary for success in that calling; and finally
+it was suggested that he should become articled to a solicitor. They
+wrote to the family lawyer, Albert Nixon, who was co-executor with the
+Vicar of Blackstable for the late Henry Carey’s estate, and asked him
+whether he would take Philip. In a day or two the answer came back that
+he had not a vacancy, and was very much opposed to the whole scheme;
+the profession was greatly overcrowded, and without capital or
+connections a man had small chance of becoming more than a managing
+clerk; he suggested, however, that Philip should become a chartered
+accountant. Neither the Vicar nor his wife knew in the least what this
+was, and Philip had never heard of anyone being a chartered accountant;
+but another letter from the solicitor explained that the growth of
+modern businesses and the increase of companies had led to the
+formation of many firms of accountants to examine the books and put
+into the financial affairs of their clients an order which
+old-fashioned methods had lacked. Some years before a Royal Charter had
+been obtained, and the profession was becoming every year more
+respectable, lucrative, and important. The chartered accountants whom
+Albert Nixon had employed for thirty years happened to have a vacancy
+for an articled pupil, and would take Philip for a fee of three hundred
+pounds. Half of this would be returned during the five years the
+articles lasted in the form of salary. The prospect was not exciting,
+but Philip felt that he must decide on something, and the thought of
+living in London over-balanced the slight shrinking he felt. The Vicar
+of Blackstable wrote to ask Mr. Nixon whether it was a profession
+suited to a gentleman; and Mr. Nixon replied that, since the Charter,
+men were going into it who had been to public schools and a university;
+moreover, if Philip disliked the work and after a year wished to leave,
+Herbert Carter, for that was the accountant’s name, would return half
+the money paid for the articles. This settled it, and it was arranged
+that Philip should start work on the fifteenth of September.
+
+“I have a full month before me,” said Philip.
+
+“And then you go to freedom and I to bondage,” returned Miss Wilkinson.
+
+Her holidays were to last six weeks, and she would be leaving
+Blackstable only a day or two before Philip.
+
+“I wonder if we shall ever meet again,” she said.
+
+“I don’t know why not.”
+
+“Oh, don’t speak in that practical way. I never knew anyone so
+unsentimental.”
+
+Philip reddened. He was afraid that Miss Wilkinson would think him a
+milksop: after all she was a young woman, sometimes quite pretty, and
+he was getting on for twenty; it was absurd that they should talk of
+nothing but art and literature. He ought to make love to her. They had
+talked a good deal of love. There was the art-student in the Rue Breda,
+and then there was the painter in whose family she had lived so long in
+Paris: he had asked her to sit for him, and had started to make love to
+her so violently that she was forced to invent excuses not to sit to
+him again. It was clear enough that Miss Wilkinson was used to
+attentions of that sort. She looked very nice now in a large straw hat:
+it was hot that afternoon, the hottest day they had had, and beads of
+sweat stood in a line on her upper lip. He called to mind Fraulein
+Cacilie and Herr Sung. He had never thought of Cacilie in an amorous
+way, she was exceedingly plain; but now, looking back, the affair
+seemed very romantic. He had a chance of romance too. Miss Wilkinson
+was practically French, and that added zest to a possible adventure.
+When he thought of it at night in bed, or when he sat by himself in the
+garden reading a book, he was thrilled by it; but when he saw Miss
+Wilkinson it seemed less picturesque.
+
+At all events, after what she had told him, she would not be surprised
+if he made love to her. He had a feeling that she must think it odd of
+him to make no sign: perhaps it was only his fancy, but once or twice
+in the last day or two he had imagined that there was a suspicion of
+contempt in her eyes.
+
+“A penny for your thoughts,” said Miss Wilkinson, looking at him with a
+smile.
+
+“I’m not going to tell you,” he answered.
+
+He was thinking that he ought to kiss her there and then. He wondered
+if she expected him to do it; but after all he didn’t see how he could
+without any preliminary business at all. She would just think him mad,
+or she might slap his face; and perhaps she would complain to his
+uncle. He wondered how Herr Sung had started with Fraulein Cacilie. It
+would be beastly if she told his uncle: he knew what his uncle was, he
+would tell the doctor and Josiah Graves; and he would look a perfect
+fool. Aunt Louisa kept on saying that Miss Wilkinson was thirty-seven
+if she was a day; he shuddered at the thought of the ridicule he would
+be exposed to; they would say she was old enough to be his mother.
+
+“Twopence for your thoughts,” smiled Miss Wilkinson.
+
+“I was thinking about you,” he answered boldly.
+
+That at all events committed him to nothing.
+
+“What were you thinking?”
+
+“Ah, now you want to know too much.”
+
+“Naughty boy!” said Miss Wilkinson.
+
+There it was again! Whenever he had succeeded in working himself up she
+said something which reminded him of the governess. She called him
+playfully a naughty boy when he did not sing his exercises to her
+satisfaction. This time he grew quite sulky.
+
+“I wish you wouldn’t treat me as if I were a child.”
+
+“Are you cross?”
+
+“Very.”
+
+“I didn’t mean to.”
+
+She put out her hand and he took it. Once or twice lately when they
+shook hands at night he had fancied she slightly pressed his hand, but
+this time there was no doubt about it.
+
+He did not quite know what he ought to say next. Here at last was his
+chance of an adventure, and he would be a fool not to take it; but it
+was a little ordinary, and he had expected more glamour. He had read
+many descriptions of love, and he felt in himself none of that uprush
+of emotion which novelists described; he was not carried off his feet
+in wave upon wave of passion; nor was Miss Wilkinson the ideal: he had
+often pictured to himself the great violet eyes and the alabaster skin
+of some lovely girl, and he had thought of himself burying his face in
+the rippling masses of her auburn hair. He could not imagine himself
+burying his face in Miss Wilkinson’s hair, it always struck him as a
+little sticky. All the same it would be very satisfactory to have an
+intrigue, and he thrilled with the legitimate pride he would enjoy in
+his conquest. He owed it to himself to seduce her. He made up his mind
+to kiss Miss Wilkinson; not then, but in the evening; it would be
+easier in the dark, and after he had kissed her the rest would follow.
+He would kiss her that very evening. He swore an oath to that effect.
+
+He laid his plans. After supper he suggested that they should take a
+stroll in the garden. Miss Wilkinson accepted, and they sauntered side
+by side. Philip was very nervous. He did not know why, but the
+conversation would not lead in the right direction; he had decided that
+the first thing to do was to put his arm round her waist; but he could
+not suddenly put his arm round her waist when she was talking of the
+regatta which was to be held next week. He led her artfully into the
+darkest parts of the garden, but having arrived there his courage
+failed him. They sat on a bench, and he had really made up his mind
+that here was his opportunity when Miss Wilkinson said she was sure
+there were earwigs and insisted on moving. They walked round the garden
+once more, and Philip promised himself he would take the plunge before
+they arrived at that bench again; but as they passed the house, they
+saw Mrs. Carey standing at the door.
+
+“Hadn’t you young people better come in? I’m sure the night air isn’t
+good for you.”
+
+“Perhaps we had better go in,” said Philip. “I don’t want you to catch
+cold.”
+
+He said it with a sigh of relief. He could attempt nothing more that
+night. But afterwards, when he was alone in his room, he was furious
+with himself. He had been a perfect fool. He was certain that Miss
+Wilkinson expected him to kiss her, otherwise she wouldn’t have come
+into the garden. She was always saying that only Frenchmen knew how to
+treat women. Philip had read French novels. If he had been a Frenchman
+he would have seized her in his arms and told her passionately that he
+adored her; he would have pressed his lips on her nuque. He did not
+know why Frenchmen always kissed ladies on the nuque. He did not
+himself see anything so very attractive in the nape of the neck. Of
+course it was much easier for Frenchmen to do these things; the
+language was such an aid; Philip could never help feeling that to say
+passionate things in English sounded a little absurd. He wished now
+that he had never undertaken the siege of Miss Wilkinson’s virtue; the
+first fortnight had been so jolly, and now he was wretched; but he was
+determined not to give in, he would never respect himself again if he
+did, and he made up his mind irrevocably that the next night he would
+kiss her without fail.
+
+Next day when he got up he saw it was raining, and his first thought
+was that they would not be able to go into the garden that evening. He
+was in high spirits at breakfast. Miss Wilkinson sent Mary Ann in to
+say that she had a headache and would remain in bed. She did not come
+down till tea-time, when she appeared in a becoming wrapper and a pale
+face; but she was quite recovered by supper, and the meal was very
+cheerful. After prayers she said she would go straight to bed, and she
+kissed Mrs. Carey. Then she turned to Philip.
+
+“Good gracious!” she cried. “I was just going to kiss you too.”
+
+“Why don’t you?” he said.
+
+She laughed and held out her hand. She distinctly pressed his.
+
+The following day there was not a cloud in the sky, and the garden was
+sweet and fresh after the rain. Philip went down to the beach to bathe
+and when he came home ate a magnificent dinner. They were having a
+tennis party at the vicarage in the afternoon and Miss Wilkinson put on
+her best dress. She certainly knew how to wear her clothes, and Philip
+could not help noticing how elegant she looked beside the curate’s wife
+and the doctor’s married daughter. There were two roses in her
+waistband. She sat in a garden chair by the side of the lawn, holding a
+red parasol over herself, and the light on her face was very becoming.
+Philip was fond of tennis. He served well and as he ran clumsily played
+close to the net: notwithstanding his club-foot he was quick, and it
+was difficult to get a ball past him. He was pleased because he won all
+his sets. At tea he lay down at Miss Wilkinson’s feet, hot and panting.
+
+“Flannels suit you,” she said. “You look very nice this afternoon.”
+
+He blushed with delight.
+
+“I can honestly return the compliment. You look perfectly ravishing.”
+
+She smiled and gave him a long look with her black eyes.
+
+After supper he insisted that she should come out.
+
+“Haven’t you had enough exercise for one day?”
+
+“It’ll be lovely in the garden tonight. The stars are all out.”
+
+He was in high spirits.
+
+“D’you know, Mrs. Carey has been scolding me on your account?” said
+Miss Wilkinson, when they were sauntering through the kitchen garden.
+“She says I mustn’t flirt with you.”
+
+“Have you been flirting with me? I hadn’t noticed it.”
+
+“She was only joking.”
+
+“It was very unkind of you to refuse to kiss me last night.”
+
+“If you saw the look your uncle gave me when I said what I did!”
+
+“Was that all that prevented you?”
+
+“I prefer to kiss people without witnesses.”
+
+“There are no witnesses now.”
+
+Philip put his arm round her waist and kissed her lips. She only
+laughed a little and made no attempt to withdraw. It had come quite
+naturally. Philip was very proud of himself. He said he would, and he
+had. It was the easiest thing in the world. He wished he had done it
+before. He did it again.
+
+“Oh, you mustn’t,” she said.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because I like it,” she laughed.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+Next day after dinner they took their rugs and cushions to the
+fountain, and their books; but they did not read. Miss Wilkinson made
+herself comfortable and she opened the red sun-shade. Philip was not at
+all shy now, but at first she would not let him kiss her.
+
+“It was very wrong of me last night,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep, I
+felt I’d done so wrong.”
+
+“What nonsense!” he cried. “I’m sure you slept like a top.”
+
+“What do you think your uncle would say if he knew?”
+
+“There’s no reason why he should know.”
+
+He leaned over her, and his heart went pit-a-pat.
+
+“Why d’you want to kiss me?”
+
+He knew he ought to reply: “Because I love you.” But he could not bring
+himself to say it.
+
+“Why do you think?” he asked instead.
+
+She looked at him with smiling eyes and touched his face with the tips
+of her fingers.
+
+“How smooth your face is,” she murmured.
+
+“I want shaving awfully,” he said.
+
+It was astonishing how difficult he found it to make romantic speeches.
+He found that silence helped him much more than words. He could look
+inexpressible things. Miss Wilkinson sighed.
+
+“Do you like me at all?”
+
+“Yes, awfully.”
+
+When he tried to kiss her again she did not resist. He pretended to be
+much more passionate than he really was, and he succeeded in playing a
+part which looked very well in his own eyes.
+
+“I’m beginning to be rather frightened of you,” said Miss Wilkinson.
+
+“You’ll come out after supper, won’t you?” he begged.
+
+“Not unless you promise to behave yourself.”
+
+“I’ll promise anything.”
+
+He was catching fire from the flame he was partly simulating, and at
+tea-time he was obstreperously merry. Miss Wilkinson looked at him
+nervously.
+
+“You mustn’t have those shining eyes,” she said to him afterwards.
+“What will your Aunt Louisa think?”
+
+“I don’t care what she thinks.”
+
+Miss Wilkinson gave a little laugh of pleasure. They had no sooner
+finished supper than he said to her:
+
+“Are you going to keep me company while I smoke a cigarette?”
+
+“Why don’t you let Miss Wilkinson rest?” said Mrs. Carey. “You must
+remember she’s not as young as you.”
+
+“Oh, I’d like to go out, Mrs. Carey,” she said, rather acidly.
+
+“After dinner walk a mile, after supper rest a while,” said the Vicar.
+
+“Your aunt is very nice, but she gets on my nerves sometimes,” said
+Miss Wilkinson, as soon as they closed the side-door behind them.
+
+Philip threw away the cigarette he had just lighted, and flung his arms
+round her. She tried to push him away.
+
+“You promised you’d be good, Philip.”
+
+“You didn’t think I was going to keep a promise like that?”
+
+“Not so near the house, Philip,” she said. “Supposing someone should
+come out suddenly?”
+
+He led her to the kitchen garden where no one was likely to come, and
+this time Miss Wilkinson did not think of earwigs. He kissed her
+passionately. It was one of the things that puzzled him that he did not
+like her at all in the morning, and only moderately in the afternoon,
+but at night the touch of her hand thrilled him. He said things that he
+would never have thought himself capable of saying; he could certainly
+never have said them in the broad light of day; and he listened to
+himself with wonder and satisfaction.
+
+“How beautifully you make love,” she said.
+
+That was what he thought himself.
+
+“Oh, if I could only say all the things that burn my heart!” he
+murmured passionately.
+
+It was splendid. It was the most thrilling game he had ever played; and
+the wonderful thing was that he felt almost all he said. It was only
+that he exaggerated a little. He was tremendously interested and
+excited in the effect he could see it had on her. It was obviously with
+an effort that at last she suggested going in.
+
+“Oh, don’t go yet,” he cried.
+
+“I must,” she muttered. “I’m frightened.”
+
+He had a sudden intuition what was the right thing to do then.
+
+“I can’t go in yet. I shall stay here and think. My cheeks are burning.
+I want the night-air. Good-night.”
+
+He held out his hand seriously, and she took it in silence. He thought
+she stifled a sob. Oh, it was magnificent! When, after a decent
+interval during which he had been rather bored in the dark garden by
+himself, he went in he found that Miss Wilkinson had already gone to
+bed.
+
+After that things were different between them. The next day and the day
+after Philip showed himself an eager lover. He was deliciously
+flattered to discover that Miss Wilkinson was in love with him: she
+told him so in English, and she told him so in French. She paid him
+compliments. No one had ever informed him before that his eyes were
+charming and that he had a sensual mouth. He had never bothered much
+about his personal appearance, but now, when occasion presented, he
+looked at himself in the glass with satisfaction. When he kissed her it
+was wonderful to feel the passion that seemed to thrill her soul. He
+kissed her a good deal, for he found it easier to do that than to say
+the things he instinctively felt she expected of him. It still made him
+feel a fool to say he worshipped her. He wished there were someone to
+whom he could boast a little, and he would willingly have discussed
+minute points of his conduct. Sometimes she said things that were
+enigmatic, and he was puzzled. He wished Hayward had been there so that
+he could ask him what he thought she meant, and what he had better do
+next. He could not make up his mind whether he ought to rush things or
+let them take their time. There were only three weeks more.
+
+“I can’t bear to think of that,” she said. “It breaks my heart. And
+then perhaps we shall never see one another again.”
+
+“If you cared for me at all, you wouldn’t be so unkind to me,” he
+whispered.
+
+“Oh, why can’t you be content to let it go on as it is? Men are always
+the same. They’re never satisfied.”
+
+And when he pressed her, she said:
+
+“But don’t you see it’s impossible. How can we here?”
+
+He proposed all sorts of schemes, but she would not have anything to do
+with them.
+
+“I daren’t take the risk. It would be too dreadful if your aunt found
+out.”
+
+A day or two later he had an idea which seemed brilliant.
+
+“Look here, if you had a headache on Sunday evening and offered to stay
+at home and look after the house, Aunt Louisa would go to church.”
+
+Generally Mrs. Carey remained in on Sunday evening in order to allow
+Mary Ann to go to church, but she would welcome the opportunity of
+attending evensong.
+
+Philip had not found it necessary to impart to his relations the change
+in his views on Christianity which had occurred in Germany; they could
+not be expected to understand; and it seemed less trouble to go to
+church quietly. But he only went in the morning. He regarded this as a
+graceful concession to the prejudices of society and his refusal to go
+a second time as an adequate assertion of free thought.
+
+When he made the suggestion, Miss Wilkinson did not speak for a moment,
+then shook her head.
+
+“No, I won’t,” she said.
+
+But on Sunday at tea-time she surprised Philip. “I don’t think I’ll
+come to church this evening,” she said suddenly. “I’ve really got a
+dreadful headache.”
+
+Mrs. Carey, much concerned, insisted on giving her some ‘drops’ which
+she was herself in the habit of using. Miss Wilkinson thanked her, and
+immediately after tea announced that she would go to her room and lie
+down.
+
+“Are you sure there’s nothing you’ll want?” asked Mrs. Carey anxiously.
+
+“Quite sure, thank you.”
+
+“Because, if there isn’t, I think I’ll go to church. I don’t often have
+the chance of going in the evening.”
+
+“Oh yes, do go.”
+
+“I shall be in,” said Philip. “If Miss Wilkinson wants anything, she
+can always call me.”
+
+“You’d better leave the drawing-room door open, Philip, so that if Miss
+Wilkinson rings, you’ll hear.”
+
+“Certainly,” said Philip.
+
+So after six o’clock Philip was left alone in the house with Miss
+Wilkinson. He felt sick with apprehension. He wished with all his heart
+that he had not suggested the plan; but it was too late now; he must
+take the opportunity which he had made. What would Miss Wilkinson think
+of him if he did not! He went into the hall and listened. There was not
+a sound. He wondered if Miss Wilkinson really had a headache. Perhaps
+she had forgotten his suggestion. His heart beat painfully. He crept up
+the stairs as softly as he could, and he stopped with a start when they
+creaked. He stood outside Miss Wilkinson’s room and listened; he put
+his hand on the knob of the door-handle. He waited. It seemed to him
+that he waited for at least five minutes, trying to make up his mind;
+and his hand trembled. He would willingly have bolted, but he was
+afraid of the remorse which he knew would seize him. It was like
+getting on the highest diving-board in a swimming-bath; it looked
+nothing from below, but when you got up there and stared down at the
+water your heart sank; and the only thing that forced you to dive was
+the shame of coming down meekly by the steps you had climbed up. Philip
+screwed up his courage. He turned the handle softly and walked in. He
+seemed to himself to be trembling like a leaf.
+
+Miss Wilkinson was standing at the dressing-table with her back to the
+door, and she turned round quickly when she heard it open.
+
+“Oh, it’s you. What d’you want?”
+
+She had taken off her skirt and blouse, and was standing in her
+petticoat. It was short and only came down to the top of her boots; the
+upper part of it was black, of some shiny material, and there was a red
+flounce. She wore a camisole of white calico with short arms. She
+looked grotesque. Philip’s heart sank as he stared at her; she had
+never seemed so unattractive; but it was too late now. He closed the
+door behind him and locked it.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+Philip woke early next morning. His sleep had been restless; but when
+he stretched his legs and looked at the sunshine that slid through the
+Venetian blinds, making patterns on the floor, he sighed with
+satisfaction. He was delighted with himself. He began to think of Miss
+Wilkinson. She had asked him to call her Emily, but, he knew not why,
+he could not; he always thought of her as Miss Wilkinson. Since she
+chid him for so addressing her, he avoided using her name at all.
+During his childhood he had often heard a sister of Aunt Louisa, the
+widow of a naval officer, spoken of as Aunt Emily. It made him
+uncomfortable to call Miss Wilkinson by that name, nor could he think
+of any that would have suited her better. She had begun as Miss
+Wilkinson, and it seemed inseparable from his impression of her. He
+frowned a little: somehow or other he saw her now at her worst; he
+could not forget his dismay when she turned round and he saw her in her
+camisole and the short petticoat; he remembered the slight roughness of
+her skin and the sharp, long lines on the side of the neck. His triumph
+was short-lived. He reckoned out her age again, and he did not see how
+she could be less than forty. It made the affair ridiculous. She was
+plain and old. His quick fancy showed her to him, wrinkled, haggard,
+made-up, in those frocks which were too showy for her position and too
+young for her years. He shuddered; he felt suddenly that he never
+wanted to see her again; he could not bear the thought of kissing her.
+He was horrified with himself. Was that love?
+
+He took as long as he could over dressing in order to put back the
+moment of seeing her, and when at last he went into the dining-room it
+was with a sinking heart. Prayers were over, and they were sitting down
+at breakfast.
+
+“Lazybones,” Miss Wilkinson cried gaily.
+
+He looked at her and gave a little gasp of relief. She was sitting with
+her back to the window. She was really quite nice. He wondered why he
+had thought such things about her. His self-satisfaction returned to
+him.
+
+He was taken aback by the change in her. She told him in a voice
+thrilling with emotion immediately after breakfast that she loved him;
+and when a little later they went into the drawing-room for his singing
+lesson and she sat down on the music-stool she put up her face in the
+middle of a scale and said:
+
+“Embrasse-moi.”
+
+When he bent down she flung her arms round his neck. It was slightly
+uncomfortable, for she held him in such a position that he felt rather
+choked.
+
+“Ah, je t’aime. Je t’aime. Je t’aime,” she cried, with her
+extravagantly French accent.
+
+Philip wished she would speak English.
+
+“I say, I don’t know if it’s struck you that the gardener’s quite
+likely to pass the window any minute.”
+
+“Ah, je m’en fiche du jardinier. Je m’en refiche, et je m’en
+contrefiche.”
+
+Philip thought it was very like a French novel, and he did not know why
+it slightly irritated him.
+
+At last he said:
+
+“Well, I think I’ll tootle along to the beach and have a dip.”
+
+“Oh, you’re not going to leave me this morning—of all mornings?” Philip
+did not quite know why he should not, but it did not matter.
+
+“Would you like me to stay?” he smiled.
+
+“Oh, you darling! But no, go. Go. I want to think of you mastering the
+salt sea waves, bathing your limbs in the broad ocean.”
+
+He got his hat and sauntered off.
+
+“What rot women talk!” he thought to himself.
+
+But he was pleased and happy and flattered. She was evidently
+frightfully gone on him. As he limped along the high street of
+Blackstable he looked with a tinge of superciliousness at the people he
+passed. He knew a good many to nod to, and as he gave them a smile of
+recognition he thought to himself, if they only knew! He did want
+someone to know very badly. He thought he would write to Hayward, and
+in his mind composed the letter. He would talk of the garden and the
+roses, and the little French governess, like an exotic flower amongst
+them, scented and perverse: he would say she was French, because—well,
+she had lived in France so long that she almost was, and besides it
+would be shabby to give the whole thing away too exactly, don’t you
+know; and he would tell Hayward how he had seen her first in her pretty
+muslin dress and of the flower she had given him. He made a delicate
+idyl of it: the sunshine and the sea gave it passion and magic, and the
+stars added poetry, and the old vicarage garden was a fit and exquisite
+setting. There was something Meredithian about it: it was not quite
+Lucy Feverel and not quite Clara Middleton; but it was inexpressibly
+charming. Philip’s heart beat quickly. He was so delighted with his
+fancies that he began thinking of them again as soon as he crawled
+back, dripping and cold, into his bathing-machine. He thought of the
+object of his affections. She had the most adorable little nose and
+large brown eyes—he would describe her to Hayward—and masses of soft
+brown hair, the sort of hair it was delicious to bury your face in, and
+a skin which was like ivory and sunshine, and her cheek was like a red,
+red rose. How old was she? Eighteen perhaps, and he called her Musette.
+Her laughter was like a rippling brook, and her voice was so soft, so
+low, it was the sweetest music he had ever heard.
+
+“What ARE you thinking about?”
+
+Philip stopped suddenly. He was walking slowly home.
+
+“I’ve been waving at you for the last quarter of a mile. You ARE
+absent-minded.”
+
+Miss Wilkinson was standing in front of him, laughing at his surprise.
+
+“I thought I’d come and meet you.”
+
+“That’s awfully nice of you,” he said.
+
+“Did I startle you?”
+
+“You did a bit,” he admitted.
+
+He wrote his letter to Hayward all the same. There were eight pages of
+it.
+
+The fortnight that remained passed quickly, and though each evening,
+when they went into the garden after supper, Miss Wilkinson remarked
+that one day more had gone, Philip was in too cheerful spirits to let
+the thought depress him. One night Miss Wilkinson suggested that it
+would be delightful if she could exchange her situation in Berlin for
+one in London. Then they could see one another constantly. Philip said
+it would be very jolly, but the prospect aroused no enthusiasm in him;
+he was looking forward to a wonderful life in London, and he preferred
+not to be hampered. He spoke a little too freely of all he meant to do,
+and allowed Miss Wilkinson to see that already he was longing to be
+off.
+
+“You wouldn’t talk like that if you loved me,” she cried.
+
+He was taken aback and remained silent.
+
+“What a fool I’ve been,” she muttered.
+
+To his surprise he saw that she was crying. He had a tender heart, and
+hated to see anyone miserable.
+
+“Oh, I’m awfully sorry. What have I done? Don’t cry.”
+
+“Oh, Philip, don’t leave me. You don’t know what you mean to me. I have
+such a wretched life, and you’ve made me so happy.”
+
+He kissed her silently. There really was anguish in her tone, and he
+was frightened. It had never occurred to him that she meant what she
+said quite, quite seriously.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry. You know I’m frightfully fond of you. I wish you
+would come to London.”
+
+“You know I can’t. Places are almost impossible to get, and I hate
+English life.”
+
+Almost unconscious that he was acting a part, moved by her distress, he
+pressed her more and more. Her tears vaguely flattered him, and he
+kissed her with real passion.
+
+But a day or two later she made a real scene. There was a tennis-party
+at the vicarage, and two girls came, daughters of a retired major in an
+Indian regiment who had lately settled in Blackstable. They were very
+pretty, one was Philip’s age and the other was a year or two younger.
+Being used to the society of young men (they were full of stories of
+hill-stations in India, and at that time the stories of Rudyard Kipling
+were in every hand) they began to chaff Philip gaily; and he, pleased
+with the novelty—the young ladies at Blackstable treated the Vicar’s
+nephew with a certain seriousness—was gay and jolly. Some devil within
+him prompted him to start a violent flirtation with them both, and as
+he was the only young man there, they were quite willing to meet him
+half-way. It happened that they played tennis quite well and Philip was
+tired of pat-ball with Miss Wilkinson (she had only begun to play when
+she came to Blackstable), so when he arranged the sets after tea he
+suggested that Miss Wilkinson should play against the curate’s wife,
+with the curate as her partner; and he would play later with the
+new-comers. He sat down by the elder Miss O’Connor and said to her in
+an undertone:
+
+“We’ll get the duffers out of the way first, and then we’ll have a
+jolly set afterwards.”
+
+Apparently Miss Wilkinson overheard him, for she threw down her racket,
+and, saying she had a headache, went away. It was plain to everyone
+that she was offended. Philip was annoyed that she should make the fact
+public. The set was arranged without her, but presently Mrs. Carey
+called him.
+
+“Philip, you’ve hurt Emily’s feelings. She’s gone to her room and she’s
+crying.”
+
+“What about?”
+
+“Oh, something about a duffer’s set. Do go to her, and say you didn’t
+mean to be unkind, there’s a good boy.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+He knocked at Miss Wilkinson’s door, but receiving no answer went in.
+He found her lying face downwards on her bed, weeping. He touched her
+on the shoulder.
+
+“I say, what on earth’s the matter?”
+
+“Leave me alone. I never want to speak to you again.”
+
+“What have I done? I’m awfully sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings. I
+didn’t mean to. I say, do get up.”
+
+“Oh, I’m so unhappy. How could you be cruel to me? You know I hate that
+stupid game. I only play because I want to play with you.”
+
+She got up and walked towards the dressing-table, but after a quick
+look in the glass sank into a chair. She made her handkerchief into a
+ball and dabbed her eyes with it.
+
+“I’ve given you the greatest thing a woman can give a man—oh, what a
+fool I was—and you have no gratitude. You must be quite heartless. How
+could you be so cruel as to torment me by flirting with those vulgar
+girls. We’ve only got just over a week. Can’t you even give me that?”
+
+Philip stood over her rather sulkily. He thought her behaviour
+childish. He was vexed with her for having shown her ill-temper before
+strangers.
+
+“But you know I don’t care twopence about either of the O’Connors. Why
+on earth should you think I do?”
+
+Miss Wilkinson put away her handkerchief. Her tears had made marks on
+her powdered face, and her hair was somewhat disarranged. Her white
+dress did not suit her very well just then. She looked at Philip with
+hungry, passionate eyes.
+
+“Because you’re twenty and so’s she,” she said hoarsely. “And I’m old.”
+
+Philip reddened and looked away. The anguish of her tone made him feel
+strangely uneasy. He wished with all his heart that he had never had
+anything to do with Miss Wilkinson.
+
+“I don’t want to make you unhappy,” he said awkwardly. “You’d better go
+down and look after your friends. They’ll wonder what has become of
+you.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+He was glad to leave her.
+
+The quarrel was quickly followed by a reconciliation, but the few days
+that remained were sometimes irksome to Philip. He wanted to talk of
+nothing but the future, and the future invariably reduced Miss
+Wilkinson to tears. At first her weeping affected him, and feeling
+himself a beast he redoubled his protestations of undying passion; but
+now it irritated him: it would have been all very well if she had been
+a girl, but it was silly of a grown-up woman to cry so much. She never
+ceased reminding him that he was under a debt of gratitude to her which
+he could never repay. He was willing to acknowledge this since she made
+a point of it, but he did not really know why he should be any more
+grateful to her than she to him. He was expected to show his sense of
+obligation in ways which were rather a nuisance: he had been a good
+deal used to solitude, and it was a necessity to him sometimes; but
+Miss Wilkinson looked upon it as an unkindness if he was not always at
+her beck and call. The Miss O’Connors asked them both to tea, and
+Philip would have liked to go, but Miss Wilkinson said she only had
+five days more and wanted him entirely to herself. It was flattering,
+but a bore. Miss Wilkinson told him stories of the exquisite delicacy
+of Frenchmen when they stood in the same relation to fair ladies as he
+to Miss Wilkinson. She praised their courtesy, their passion for
+self-sacrifice, their perfect tact. Miss Wilkinson seemed to want a
+great deal.
+
+Philip listened to her enumeration of the qualities which must be
+possessed by the perfect lover, and he could not help feeling a certain
+satisfaction that she lived in Berlin.
+
+“You will write to me, won’t you? Write to me every day. I want to know
+everything you’re doing. You must keep nothing from me.”
+
+“I shall be awfully, busy” he answered. “I’ll write as often as I can.”
+
+She flung her arms passionately round his neck. He was embarrassed
+sometimes by the demonstrations of her affection. He would have
+preferred her to be more passive. It shocked him a little that she
+should give him so marked a lead: it did not tally altogether with his
+prepossessions about the modesty of the feminine temperament.
+
+At length the day came on which Miss Wilkinson was to go, and she came
+down to breakfast, pale and subdued, in a serviceable travelling dress
+of black and white check. She looked a very competent governess. Philip
+was silent too, for he did not quite know what to say that would fit
+the circumstance; and he was terribly afraid that, if he said something
+flippant, Miss Wilkinson would break down before his uncle and make a
+scene. They had said their last good-bye to one another in the garden
+the night before, and Philip was relieved that there was now no
+opportunity for them to be alone. He remained in the dining-room after
+breakfast in case Miss Wilkinson should insist on kissing him on the
+stairs. He did not want Mary Ann, now a woman hard upon middle age with
+a sharp tongue, to catch them in a compromising position. Mary Ann did
+not like Miss Wilkinson and called her an old cat. Aunt Louisa was not
+very well and could not come to the station, but the Vicar and Philip
+saw her off. Just as the train was leaving she leaned out and kissed
+Mr. Carey.
+
+“I must kiss you too, Philip,” she said.
+
+“All right,” he said, blushing.
+
+He stood up on the step and she kissed him quickly. The train started,
+and Miss Wilkinson sank into the corner of her carriage and wept
+disconsolately. Philip, as he walked back to the vicarage, felt a
+distinct sensation of relief.
+
+“Well, did you see her safely off?” asked Aunt Louisa, when they got
+in.
+
+“Yes, she seemed rather weepy. She insisted on kissing me and Philip.”
+
+“Oh, well, at her age it’s not dangerous.” Mrs. Carey pointed to the
+sideboard. “There’s a letter for you, Philip. It came by the second
+post.”
+
+It was from Hayward and ran as follows:
+
+My dear boy,
+
+I answer your letter at once. I ventured to read it to a great friend
+of mine, a charming woman whose help and sympathy have been very
+precious to me, a woman withal with a real feeling for art and
+literature; and we agreed that it was charming. You wrote from your
+heart and you do not know the delightful naivete which is in every
+line. And because you love you write like a poet. Ah, dear boy, that is
+the real thing: I felt the glow of your young passion, and your prose
+was musical from the sincerity of your emotion. You must be happy! I
+wish I could have been present unseen in that enchanted garden while
+you wandered hand in hand, like Daphnis and Chloe, amid the flowers. I
+can see you, my Daphnis, with the light of young love in your eyes,
+tender, enraptured, and ardent; while Chloe in your arms, so young and
+soft and fresh, vowing she would ne’er consent—consented. Roses and
+violets and honeysuckle! Oh, my friend, I envy you. It is so good to
+think that your first love should have been pure poetry. Treasure the
+moments, for the immortal gods have given you the Greatest Gift of All,
+and it will be a sweet, sad memory till your dying day. You will never
+again enjoy that careless rapture. First love is best love; and she is
+beautiful and you are young, and all the world is yours. I felt my
+pulse go faster when with your adorable simplicity you told me that you
+buried your face in her long hair. I am sure that it is that exquisite
+chestnut which seems just touched with gold. I would have you sit under
+a leafy tree side by side, and read together Romeo and Juliet; and then
+I would have you fall on your knees and on my behalf kiss the ground on
+which her foot has left its imprint; then tell her it is the homage of
+a poet to her radiant youth and to your love for her.
+Yours always,
+G. Etheridge Hayward.
+
+“What damned rot!” said Philip, when he finished the letter.
+
+Miss Wilkinson oddly enough had suggested that they should read Romeo
+and Juliet together; but Philip had firmly declined. Then, as he put
+the letter in his pocket, he felt a queer little pang of bitterness
+because reality seemed so different from the ideal.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+A few days later Philip went to London. The curate had recommended
+rooms in Barnes, and these Philip engaged by letter at fourteen
+shillings a week. He reached them in the evening; and the landlady, a
+funny little old woman with a shrivelled body and a deeply wrinkled
+face, had prepared high tea for him. Most of the sitting-room was taken
+up by the sideboard and a square table; against one wall was a sofa
+covered with horsehair, and by the fireplace an arm-chair to match:
+there was a white antimacassar over the back of it, and on the seat,
+because the springs were broken, a hard cushion.
+
+After having his tea he unpacked and arranged his books, then he sat
+down and tried to read; but he was depressed. The silence in the street
+made him slightly uncomfortable, and he felt very much alone.
+
+Next day he got up early. He put on his tail-coat and the tall hat
+which he had worn at school; but it was very shabby, and he made up his
+mind to stop at the Stores on his way to the office and buy a new one.
+When he had done this he found himself in plenty of time and so walked
+along the Strand. The office of Messrs. Herbert Carter & Co. was in a
+little street off Chancery Lane, and he had to ask his way two or three
+times. He felt that people were staring at him a great deal, and once
+he took off his hat to see whether by chance the label had been left
+on. When he arrived he knocked at the door; but no one answered, and
+looking at his watch he found it was barely half past nine; he supposed
+he was too early. He went away and ten minutes later returned to find
+an office-boy, with a long nose, pimply face, and a Scotch accent,
+opening the door. Philip asked for Mr. Herbert Carter. He had not come
+yet.
+
+“When will he be here?”
+
+“Between ten and half past.”
+
+“I’d better wait,” said Philip.
+
+“What are you wanting?” asked the office-boy.
+
+Philip was nervous, but tried to hide the fact by a jocose manner.
+
+“Well, I’m going to work here if you have no objection.”
+
+“Oh, you’re the new articled clerk? You’d better come in. Mr.
+Goodworthy’ll be here in a while.”
+
+Philip walked in, and as he did so saw the office-boy—he was about the
+same age as Philip and called himself a junior clerk—look at his foot.
+He flushed and, sitting down, hid it behind the other. He looked round
+the room. It was dark and very dingy. It was lit by a skylight. There
+were three rows of desks in it and against them high stools. Over the
+chimney-piece was a dirty engraving of a prize-fight. Presently a clerk
+came in and then another; they glanced at Philip and in an undertone
+asked the office-boy (Philip found his name was Macdougal) who he was.
+A whistle blew, and Macdougal got up.
+
+“Mr. Goodworthy’s come. He’s the managing clerk. Shall I tell him
+you’re here?”
+
+“Yes, please,” said Philip.
+
+The office-boy went out and in a moment returned.
+
+“Will you come this way?”
+
+Philip followed him across the passage and was shown into a room, small
+and barely furnished, in which a little, thin man was standing with his
+back to the fireplace. He was much below the middle height, but his
+large head, which seemed to hang loosely on his body, gave him an odd
+ungainliness. His features were wide and flattened, and he had
+prominent, pale eyes; his thin hair was sandy; he wore whiskers that
+grew unevenly on his face, and in places where you would have expected
+the hair to grow thickly there was no hair at all. His skin was pasty
+and yellow. He held out his hand to Philip, and when he smiled showed
+badly decayed teeth. He spoke with a patronising and at the same time a
+timid air, as though he sought to assume an importance which he did not
+feel. He said he hoped Philip would like the work; there was a good
+deal of drudgery about it, but when you got used to it, it was
+interesting; and one made money, that was the chief thing, wasn’t it?
+He laughed with his odd mixture of superiority and shyness.
+
+“Mr. Carter will be here presently,” he said. “He’s a little late on
+Monday mornings sometimes. I’ll call you when he comes. In the meantime
+I must give you something to do. Do you know anything about
+book-keeping or accounts?”
+
+“I’m afraid not,” answered Philip.
+
+“I didn’t suppose you would. They don’t teach you things at school that
+are much use in business, I’m afraid.” He considered for a moment. “I
+think I can find you something to do.”
+
+He went into the next room and after a little while came out with a
+large cardboard box. It contained a vast number of letters in great
+disorder, and he told Philip to sort them out and arrange them
+alphabetically according to the names of the writers.
+
+“I’ll take you to the room in which the articled clerk generally sits.
+There’s a very nice fellow in it. His name is Watson. He’s a son of
+Watson, Crag, and Thompson—you know—the brewers. He’s spending a year
+with us to learn business.”
+
+Mr. Goodworthy led Philip through the dingy office, where now six or
+eight clerks were working, into a narrow room behind. It had been made
+into a separate apartment by a glass partition, and here they found
+Watson sitting back in a chair, reading The Sportsman. He was a large,
+stout young man, elegantly dressed, and he looked up as Mr. Goodworthy
+entered. He asserted his position by calling the managing clerk
+Goodworthy. The managing clerk objected to the familiarity, and
+pointedly called him Mr. Watson, but Watson, instead of seeing that it
+was a rebuke, accepted the title as a tribute to his gentlemanliness.
+
+“I see they’ve scratched Rigoletto,” he said to Philip, as soon as they
+were left alone.
+
+“Have they?” said Philip, who knew nothing about horse-racing.
+
+He looked with awe upon Watson’s beautiful clothes. His tail-coat
+fitted him perfectly, and there was a valuable pin artfully stuck in
+the middle of an enormous tie. On the chimney-piece rested his tall
+hat; it was saucy and bell-shaped and shiny. Philip felt himself very
+shabby. Watson began to talk of hunting—it was such an infernal bore
+having to waste one’s time in an infernal office, he would only be able
+to hunt on Saturdays—and shooting: he had ripping invitations all over
+the country and of course he had to refuse them. It was infernal luck,
+but he wasn’t going to put up with it long; he was only in this
+internal hole for a year, and then he was going into the business, and
+he would hunt four days a week and get all the shooting there was.
+
+“You’ve got five years of it, haven’t you?” he said, waving his arm
+round the tiny room.
+
+“I suppose so,” said Philip.
+
+“I daresay I shall see something of you. Carter does our accounts, you
+know.”
+
+Philip was somewhat overpowered by the young gentleman’s condescension.
+At Blackstable they had always looked upon brewing with civil contempt,
+the Vicar made little jokes about the beerage, and it was a surprising
+experience for Philip to discover that Watson was such an important and
+magnificent fellow. He had been to Winchester and to Oxford, and his
+conversation impressed the fact upon one with frequency. When he
+discovered the details of Philip’s education his manner became more
+patronising still.
+
+“Of course, if one doesn’t go to a public school those sort of schools
+are the next best thing, aren’t they?”
+
+Philip asked about the other men in the office.
+
+“Oh, I don’t bother about them much, you know,” said Watson. “Carter’s
+not a bad sort. We have him to dine now and then. All the rest are
+awful bounders.”
+
+Presently Watson applied himself to some work he had in hand, and
+Philip set about sorting his letters. Then Mr. Goodworthy came in to
+say that Mr. Carter had arrived. He took Philip into a large room next
+door to his own. There was a big desk in it, and a couple of big
+arm-chairs; a Turkey carpet adorned the floor, and the walls were
+decorated with sporting prints. Mr. Carter was sitting at the desk and
+got up to shake hands with Philip. He was dressed in a long frock coat.
+He looked like a military man; his moustache was waxed, his gray hair
+was short and neat, he held himself upright, he talked in a breezy way,
+he lived at Enfield. He was very keen on games and the good of the
+country. He was an officer in the Hertfordshire Yeomanry and chairman
+of the Conservative Association. When he was told that a local magnate
+had said no one would take him for a City man, he felt that he had not
+lived in vain. He talked to Philip in a pleasant, off-hand fashion. Mr.
+Goodworthy would look after him. Watson was a nice fellow, perfect
+gentleman, good sportsman—did Philip hunt? Pity, THE sport for
+gentlemen. Didn’t have much chance of hunting now, had to leave that to
+his son. His son was at Cambridge, he’d sent him to Rugby, fine school
+Rugby, nice class of boys there, in a couple of years his son would be
+articled, that would be nice for Philip, he’d like his son, thorough
+sportsman. He hoped Philip would get on well and like the work, he
+mustn’t miss his lectures, they were getting up the tone of the
+profession, they wanted gentlemen in it. Well, well, Mr. Goodworthy was
+there. If he wanted to know anything Mr. Goodworthy would tell him.
+What was his handwriting like? Ah well, Mr. Goodworthy would see about
+that.
+
+Philip was overwhelmed by so much gentlemanliness: in East Anglia they
+knew who were gentlemen and who weren’t, but the gentlemen didn’t talk
+about it.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+At first the novelty of the work kept Philip interested. Mr. Carter
+dictated letters to him, and he had to make fair copies of statements
+of accounts.
+
+Mr. Carter preferred to conduct the office on gentlemanly lines; he
+would have nothing to do with typewriting and looked upon shorthand
+with disfavour: the office-boy knew shorthand, but it was only Mr.
+Goodworthy who made use of his accomplishment. Now and then Philip with
+one of the more experienced clerks went out to audit the accounts of
+some firm: he came to know which of the clients must be treated with
+respect and which were in low water. Now and then long lists of figures
+were given him to add up. He attended lectures for his first
+examination. Mr. Goodworthy repeated to him that the work was dull at
+first, but he would grow used to it. Philip left the office at six and
+walked across the river to Waterloo. His supper was waiting for him
+when he reached his lodgings and he spent the evening reading. On
+Saturday afternoons he went to the National Gallery. Hayward had
+recommended to him a guide which had been compiled out of Ruskin’s
+works, and with this in hand he went industriously through room after
+room: he read carefully what the critic had said about a picture and
+then in a determined fashion set himself to see the same things in it.
+His Sundays were difficult to get through. He knew no one in London and
+spent them by himself. Mr. Nixon, the solicitor, asked him to spend a
+Sunday at Hampstead, and Philip passed a happy day with a set of
+exuberant strangers; he ate and drank a great deal, took a walk on the
+heath, and came away with a general invitation to come again whenever
+he liked; but he was morbidly afraid of being in the way, so waited for
+a formal invitation. Naturally enough it never came, for with numbers
+of friends of their own the Nixons did not think of the lonely, silent
+boy whose claim upon their hospitality was so small. So on Sundays he
+got up late and took a walk along the tow-path. At Barnes the river is
+muddy, dingy, and tidal; it has neither the graceful charm of the
+Thames above the locks nor the romance of the crowded stream below
+London Bridge. In the afternoon he walked about the common; and that is
+gray and dingy too; it is neither country nor town; the gorse is
+stunted; and all about is the litter of civilisation. He went to a play
+every Saturday night and stood cheerfully for an hour or more at the
+gallery-door. It was not worth while to go back to Barnes for the
+interval between the closing of the Museum and his meal in an A. B. C.
+shop, and the time hung heavily on his hands. He strolled up Bond
+Street or through the Burlington Arcade, and when he was tired went and
+sat down in the Park or in wet weather in the public library in St.
+Martin’s Lane. He looked at the people walking about and envied them
+because they had friends; sometimes his envy turned to hatred because
+they were happy and he was miserable. He had never imagined that it was
+possible to be so lonely in a great city. Sometimes when he was
+standing at the gallery-door the man next to him would attempt a
+conversation; but Philip had the country boy’s suspicion of strangers
+and answered in such a way as to prevent any further acquaintance.
+After the play was over, obliged to keep to himself all he thought
+about it, he hurried across the bridge to Waterloo. When he got back to
+his rooms, in which for economy no fire had been lit, his heart sank.
+It was horribly cheerless. He began to loathe his lodgings and the long
+solitary evenings he spent in them. Sometimes he felt so lonely that he
+could not read, and then he sat looking into the fire hour after hour
+in bitter wretchedness.
+
+He had spent three months in London now, and except for that one Sunday
+at Hampstead had never talked to anyone but his fellow-clerks. One
+evening Watson asked him to dinner at a restaurant and they went to a
+music-hall together; but he felt shy and uncomfortable. Watson talked
+all the time of things he did not care about, and while he looked upon
+Watson as a Philistine he could not help admiring him. He was angry
+because Watson obviously set no store on his culture, and with his way
+of taking himself at the estimate at which he saw others held him he
+began to despise the acquirements which till then had seemed to him not
+unimportant. He felt for the first time the humiliation of poverty. His
+uncle sent him fourteen pounds a month and he had had to buy a good
+many clothes. His evening suit cost him five guineas. He had not dared
+tell Watson that it was bought in the Strand. Watson said there was
+only one tailor in London.
+
+“I suppose you don’t dance,” said Watson, one day, with a glance at
+Philip’s club-foot.
+
+“No,” said Philip.
+
+“Pity. I’ve been asked to bring some dancing men to a ball. I could
+have introduced you to some jolly girls.”
+
+Once or twice, hating the thought of going back to Barnes, Philip had
+remained in town, and late in the evening wandered through the West End
+till he found some house at which there was a party. He stood among the
+little group of shabby people, behind the footmen, watching the guests
+arrive, and he listened to the music that floated through the window.
+Sometimes, notwithstanding the cold, a couple came on to the balcony
+and stood for a moment to get some fresh air; and Philip, imagining
+that they were in love with one another, turned away and limped along
+the street with a heavy hurt. He would never be able to stand in that
+man’s place. He felt that no woman could ever really look upon him
+without distaste for his deformity.
+
+That reminded him of Miss Wilkinson. He thought of her without
+satisfaction. Before parting they had made an arrangement that she
+should write to Charing Cross Post Office till he was able to send her
+an address, and when he went there he found three letters from her. She
+wrote on blue paper with violet ink, and she wrote in French. Philip
+wondered why she could not write in English like a sensible woman, and
+her passionate expressions, because they reminded him of a French
+novel, left him cold. She upbraided him for not having written, and
+when he answered he excused himself by saying that he had been busy. He
+did not quite know how to start the letter. He could not bring himself
+to use dearest or darling, and he hated to address her as Emily, so
+finally he began with the word dear. It looked odd, standing by itself,
+and rather silly, but he made it do. It was the first love letter he
+had ever written, and he was conscious of its tameness; he felt that he
+should say all sorts of vehement things, how he thought of her every
+minute of the day and how he longed to kiss her beautiful hands and how
+he trembled at the thought of her red lips, but some inexplicable
+modesty prevented him; and instead he told her of his new rooms and his
+office. The answer came by return of post, angry, heart-broken,
+reproachful: how could he be so cold? Did he not know that she hung on
+his letters? She had given him all that a woman could give, and this
+was her reward. Was he tired of her already? Then, because he did not
+reply for several days, Miss Wilkinson bombarded him with letters. She
+could not bear his unkindness, she waited for the post, and it never
+brought her his letter, she cried herself to sleep night after night,
+she was looking so ill that everyone remarked on it: if he did not love
+her why did he not say so? She added that she could not live without
+him, and the only thing was for her to commit suicide. She told him he
+was cold and selfish and ungrateful. It was all in French, and Philip
+knew that she wrote in that language to show off, but he was worried
+all the same. He did not want to make her unhappy. In a little while
+she wrote that she could not bear the separation any longer, she would
+arrange to come over to London for Christmas. Philip wrote back that he
+would like nothing better, only he had already an engagement to spend
+Christmas with friends in the country, and he did not see how he could
+break it. She answered that she did not wish to force herself on him,
+it was quite evident that he did not wish to see her; she was deeply
+hurt, and she never thought he would repay with such cruelty all her
+kindness. Her letter was touching, and Philip thought he saw marks of
+her tears on the paper; he wrote an impulsive reply saying that he was
+dreadfully sorry and imploring her to come; but it was with relief that
+he received her answer in which she said that she found it would be
+impossible for her to get away. Presently when her letters came his
+heart sank: he delayed opening them, for he knew what they would
+contain, angry reproaches and pathetic appeals; they would make him
+feel a perfect beast, and yet he did not see with what he had to blame
+himself. He put off his answer from day to day, and then another letter
+would come, saying she was ill and lonely and miserable.
+
+“I wish to God I’d never had anything to do with her,” he said.
+
+He admired Watson because he arranged these things so easily. The young
+man had been engaged in an intrigue with a girl who played in touring
+companies, and his account of the affair filled Philip with envious
+amazement. But after a time Watson’s young affections changed, and one
+day he described the rupture to Philip.
+
+“I thought it was no good making any bones about it so I just told her
+I’d had enough of her,” he said.
+
+“Didn’t she make an awful scene?” asked Philip.
+
+“The usual thing, you know, but I told her it was no good trying on
+that sort of thing with me.”
+
+“Did she cry?”
+
+“She began to, but I can’t stand women when they cry, so I said she’d
+better hook it.”
+
+Philip’s sense of humour was growing keener with advancing years.
+
+“And did she hook it?” he asked smiling.
+
+“Well, there wasn’t anything else for her to do, was there?”
+
+Meanwhile the Christmas holidays approached. Mrs. Carey had been ill
+all through November, and the doctor suggested that she and the Vicar
+should go to Cornwall for a couple of weeks round Christmas so that she
+should get back her strength. The result was that Philip had nowhere to
+go, and he spent Christmas Day in his lodgings. Under Hayward’s
+influence he had persuaded himself that the festivities that attend
+this season were vulgar and barbaric, and he made up his mind that he
+would take no notice of the day; but when it came, the jollity of all
+around affected him strangely. His landlady and her husband were
+spending the day with a married daughter, and to save trouble Philip
+announced that he would take his meals out. He went up to London
+towards mid-day and ate a slice of turkey and some Christmas pudding by
+himself at Gatti’s, and since he had nothing to do afterwards went to
+Westminster Abbey for the afternoon service. The streets were almost
+empty, and the people who went along had a preoccupied look; they did
+not saunter but walked with some definite goal in view, and hardly
+anyone was alone. To Philip they all seemed happy. He felt himself more
+solitary than he had ever done in his life. His intention had been to
+kill the day somehow in the streets and then dine at a restaurant, but
+he could not face again the sight of cheerful people, talking,
+laughing, and making merry; so he went back to Waterloo, and on his way
+through the Westminster Bridge Road bought some ham and a couple of
+mince pies and went back to Barnes. He ate his food in his lonely
+little room and spent the evening with a book. His depression was
+almost intolerable.
+
+When he was back at the office it made him very sore to listen to
+Watson’s account of the short holiday. They had had some jolly girls
+staying with them, and after dinner they had cleared out the
+drawing-room and had a dance.
+
+“I didn’t get to bed till three and I don’t know how I got there then.
+By George, I was squiffy.”
+
+At last Philip asked desperately:
+
+“How does one get to know people in London?”
+
+Watson looked at him with surprise and with a slightly contemptuous
+amusement.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know, one just knows them. If you go to dances you soon
+get to know as many people as you can do with.”
+
+Philip hated Watson, and yet he would have given anything to change
+places with him. The old feeling that he had had at school came back to
+him, and he tried to throw himself into the other’s skin, imagining
+what life would be if he were Watson.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+At the end of the year there was a great deal to do. Philip went to
+various places with a clerk named Thompson and spent the day
+monotonously calling out items of expenditure, which the other checked;
+and sometimes he was given long pages of figures to add up. He had
+never had a head for figures, and he could only do this slowly.
+Thompson grew irritated at his mistakes. His fellow-clerk was a long,
+lean man of forty, sallow, with black hair and a ragged moustache; he
+had hollow cheeks and deep lines on each side of his nose. He took a
+dislike to Philip because he was an articled clerk. Because he could
+put down three hundred guineas and keep himself for five years Philip
+had the chance of a career; while he, with his experience and ability,
+had no possibility of ever being more than a clerk at thirty-five
+shillings a week. He was a cross-grained man, oppressed by a large
+family, and he resented the superciliousness which he fancied he saw in
+Philip. He sneered at Philip because he was better educated than
+himself, and he mocked at Philip’s pronunciation; he could not forgive
+him because he spoke without a cockney accent, and when he talked to
+him sarcastically exaggerated his aitches. At first his manner was
+merely gruff and repellent, but as he discovered that Philip had no
+gift for accountancy he took pleasure in humiliating him; his attacks
+were gross and silly, but they wounded Philip, and in self-defence he
+assumed an attitude of superiority which he did not feel.
+
+“Had a bath this morning?” Thompson said when Philip came to the office
+late, for his early punctuality had not lasted.
+
+“Yes, haven’t you?”
+
+“No, I’m not a gentleman, I’m only a clerk. I have a bath on Saturday
+night.”
+
+“I suppose that’s why you’re more than usually disagreeable on Monday.”
+
+“Will you condescend to do a few sums in simple addition today? I’m
+afraid it’s asking a great deal from a gentleman who knows Latin and
+Greek.”
+
+“Your attempts at sarcasm are not very happy.”
+
+But Philip could not conceal from himself that the other clerks,
+ill-paid and uncouth, were more useful than himself. Once or twice Mr.
+Goodworthy grew impatient with him.
+
+“You really ought to be able to do better than this by now,” he said.
+“You’re not even as smart as the office-boy.”
+
+Philip listened sulkily. He did not like being blamed, and it
+humiliated him, when, having been given accounts to make fair copies
+of, Mr. Goodworthy was not satisfied and gave them to another clerk to
+do. At first the work had been tolerable from its novelty, but now it
+grew irksome; and when he discovered that he had no aptitude for it, he
+began to hate it. Often, when he should have been doing something that
+was given him, he wasted his time drawing little pictures on the office
+note-paper. He made sketches of Watson in every conceivable attitude,
+and Watson was impressed by his talent. It occurred to him to take the
+drawings home, and he came back next day with the praises of his
+family.
+
+“I wonder you didn’t become a painter,” he said. “Only of course
+there’s no money in it.”
+
+It chanced that Mr. Carter two or three days later was dining with the
+Watsons, and the sketches were shown him. The following morning he sent
+for Philip. Philip saw him seldom and stood in some awe of him.
+
+“Look here, young fellow, I don’t care what you do out of office-hours,
+but I’ve seen those sketches of yours and they’re on office-paper, and
+Mr. Goodworthy tells me you’re slack. You won’t do any good as a
+chartered accountant unless you look alive. It’s a fine profession, and
+we’re getting a very good class of men in it, but it’s a profession in
+which you have to…” he looked for the termination of his phrase, but
+could not find exactly what he wanted, so finished rather tamely, “in
+which you have to look alive.”
+
+Perhaps Philip would have settled down but for the agreement that if he
+did not like the work he could leave after a year, and get back half
+the money paid for his articles. He felt that he was fit for something
+better than to add up accounts, and it was humiliating that he did so
+ill something which seemed contemptible. The vulgar scenes with
+Thompson got on his nerves. In March Watson ended his year at the
+office and Philip, though he did not care for him, saw him go with
+regret. The fact that the other clerks disliked them equally, because
+they belonged to a class a little higher than their own, was a bond of
+union. When Philip thought that he must spend over four years more with
+that dreary set of fellows his heart sank. He had expected wonderful
+things from London and it had given him nothing. He hated it now. He
+did not know a soul, and he had no idea how he was to get to know
+anyone. He was tired of going everywhere by himself. He began to feel
+that he could not stand much more of such a life. He would lie in bed
+at night and think of the joy of never seeing again that dingy office
+or any of the men in it, and of getting away from those drab lodgings.
+
+A great disappointment befell him in the spring. Hayward had announced
+his intention of coming to London for the season, and Philip had looked
+forward very much to seeing him again. He had read so much lately and
+thought so much that his mind was full of ideas which he wanted to
+discuss, and he knew nobody who was willing to interest himself in
+abstract things. He was quite excited at the thought of talking his
+fill with someone, and he was wretched when Hayward wrote to say that
+the spring was lovelier than ever he had known it in Italy, and he
+could not bear to tear himself away. He went on to ask why Philip did
+not come. What was the use of squandering the days of his youth in an
+office when the world was beautiful? The letter proceeded.
+
+ I wonder you can bear it. I think of Fleet Street and Lincoln’s Inn
+ now with a shudder of disgust. There are only two things in the world
+ that make life worth living, love and art. I cannot imagine you
+ sitting in an office over a ledger, and do you wear a tall hat and an
+ umbrella and a little black bag? My feeling is that one should look
+ upon life as an adventure, one should burn with the hard, gem-like
+ flame, and one should take risks, one should expose oneself to danger.
+ Why do you not go to Paris and study art? I always thought you had
+ talent.
+
+The suggestion fell in with the possibility that Philip for some time
+had been vaguely turning over in his mind. It startled him at first,
+but he could not help thinking of it, and in the constant rumination
+over it he found his only escape from the wretchedness of his present
+state. They all thought he had talent; at Heidelberg they had admired
+his water colours, Miss Wilkinson had told him over and over again that
+they were chasing; even strangers like the Watsons had been struck by
+his sketches. La Vie de Boheme had made a deep impression on him. He
+had brought it to London and when he was most depressed he had only to
+read a few pages to be transported into those chasing attics where
+Rodolphe and the rest of them danced and loved and sang. He began to
+think of Paris as before he had thought of London, but he had no fear
+of a second disillusion; he yearned for romance and beauty and love,
+and Paris seemed to offer them all. He had a passion for pictures, and
+why should he not be able to paint as well as anybody else? He wrote to
+Miss Wilkinson and asked her how much she thought he could live on in
+Paris. She told him that he could manage easily on eighty pounds a
+year, and she enthusiastically approved of his project. She told him he
+was too good to be wasted in an office. Who would be a clerk when he
+might be a great artist, she asked dramatically, and she besought
+Philip to believe in himself: that was the great thing. But Philip had
+a cautious nature. It was all very well for Hayward to talk of taking
+risks, he had three hundred a year in gilt-edged securities; Philip’s
+entire fortune amounted to no more than eighteen-hundred pounds. He
+hesitated.
+
+Then it chanced that one day Mr. Goodworthy asked him suddenly if he
+would like to go to Paris. The firm did the accounts for a hotel in the
+Faubourg St. Honore, which was owned by an English company, and twice a
+year Mr. Goodworthy and a clerk went over. The clerk who generally went
+happened to be ill, and a press of work prevented any of the others
+from getting away. Mr. Goodworthy thought of Philip because he could
+best be spared, and his articles gave him some claim upon a job which
+was one of the pleasures of the business. Philip was delighted.
+
+“You’ll ’ave to work all day,” said Mr. Goodworthy, “but we get our
+evenings to ourselves, and Paris is Paris.” He smiled in a knowing way.
+“They do us very well at the hotel, and they give us all our meals, so
+it don’t cost one anything. That’s the way I like going to Paris, at
+other people’s expense.”
+
+When they arrived at Calais and Philip saw the crowd of gesticulating
+porters his heart leaped.
+
+“This is the real thing,” he said to himself.
+
+He was all eyes as the train sped through the country; he adored the
+sand dunes, their colour seemed to him more lovely than anything he had
+ever seen; and he was enchanted with the canals and the long lines of
+poplars. When they got out of the Gare du Nord, and trundled along the
+cobbled streets in a ramshackle, noisy cab, it seemed to him that he
+was breathing a new air so intoxicating that he could hardly restrain
+himself from shouting aloud. They were met at the door of the hotel by
+the manager, a stout, pleasant man, who spoke tolerable English; Mr.
+Goodworthy was an old friend and he greeted them effusively; they dined
+in his private room with his wife, and to Philip it seemed that he had
+never eaten anything so delicious as the beefsteak aux pommes, nor
+drunk such nectar as the vin ordinaire, which were set before them.
+
+To Mr. Goodworthy, a respectable householder with excellent principles,
+the capital of France was a paradise of the joyously obscene. He asked
+the manager next morning what there was to be seen that was ‘thick.’ He
+thoroughly enjoyed these visits of his to Paris; he said they kept you
+from growing rusty. In the evenings, after their work was over and they
+had dined, he took Philip to the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergeres.
+His little eyes twinkled and his face wore a sly, sensual smile as he
+sought out the pornographic. He went into all the haunts which were
+specially arranged for the foreigner, and afterwards said that a nation
+could come to no good which permitted that sort of thing. He nudged
+Philip when at some revue a woman appeared with practically nothing on,
+and pointed out to him the most strapping of the courtesans who walked
+about the hall. It was a vulgar Paris that he showed Philip, but Philip
+saw it with eyes blinded with illusion. In the early morning he would
+rush out of the hotel and go to the Champs Elysees, and stand at the
+Place de la Concorde. It was June, and Paris was silvery with the
+delicacy of the air. Philip felt his heart go out to the people. Here
+he thought at last was romance.
+
+They spent the inside of a week there, leaving on Sunday, and when
+Philip late at night reached his dingy rooms in Barnes his mind was
+made up; he would surrender his articles, and go to Paris to study art;
+but so that no one should think him unreasonable he determined to stay
+at the office till his year was up. He was to have his holiday during
+the last fortnight in August, and when he went away he would tell
+Herbert Carter that he had no intention of returning. But though Philip
+could force himself to go to the office every day he could not even
+pretend to show any interest in the work. His mind was occupied with
+the future. After the middle of July there was nothing much to do and
+he escaped a good deal by pretending he had to go to lectures for his
+first examination. The time he got in this way he spent in the National
+Gallery. He read books about Paris and books about painting. He was
+steeped in Ruskin. He read many of Vasari’s lives of the painters. He
+liked that story of Correggio, and he fancied himself standing before
+some great masterpiece and crying: Anch’ io son’ pittore. His
+hesitation had left him now, and he was convinced that he had in him
+the makings of a great painter.
+
+“After all, I can only try,” he said to himself. “The great thing in
+life is to take risks.”
+
+At last came the middle of August. Mr. Carter was spending the month in
+Scotland, and the managing clerk was in charge of the office. Mr.
+Goodworthy had seemed pleasantly disposed to Philip since their trip to
+Paris, and now that Philip knew he was so soon to be free, he could
+look upon the funny little man with tolerance.
+
+“You’re going for your holiday tomorrow, Carey?” he said to him in the
+evening.
+
+All day Philip had been telling himself that this was the last time he
+would ever sit in that hateful office.
+
+“Yes, this is the end of my year.”
+
+“I’m afraid you’ve not done very well. Mr. Carter’s very dissatisfied
+with you.”
+
+“Not nearly so dissatisfied as I am with Mr. Carter,” returned Philip
+cheerfully.
+
+“I don’t think you should speak like that, Carey.”
+
+“I’m not coming back. I made the arrangement that if I didn’t like
+accountancy Mr. Carter would return me half the money I paid for my
+articles and I could chuck it at the end of a year.”
+
+“You shouldn’t come to such a decision hastily.”
+
+“For ten months I’ve loathed it all, I’ve loathed the work, I’ve
+loathed the office, I loathe London. I’d rather sweep a crossing than
+spend my days here.”
+
+“Well, I must say, I don’t think you’re very fitted for accountancy.”
+
+“Good-bye,” said Philip, holding out his hand. “I want to thank you for
+your kindness to me. I’m sorry if I’ve been troublesome. I knew almost
+from the beginning I was no good.”
+
+“Well, if you really do make up your mind it is good-bye. I don’t know
+what you’re going to do, but if you’re in the neighbourhood at any time
+come in and see us.”
+
+Philip gave a little laugh.
+
+“I’m afraid it sounds very rude, but I hope from the bottom of my heart
+that I shall never set eyes on any of you again.”
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+The Vicar of Blackstable would have nothing to do with the scheme which
+Philip laid before him. He had a great idea that one should stick to
+whatever one had begun. Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress
+on not changing one’s mind.
+
+“You chose to be an accountant of your own free will,” he said.
+
+“I just took that because it was the only chance I saw of getting up to
+town. I hate London, I hate the work, and nothing will induce me to go
+back to it.”
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Carey were frankly shocked at Philip’s idea of being an
+artist. He should not forget, they said, that his father and mother
+were gentlefolk, and painting wasn’t a serious profession; it was
+Bohemian, disreputable, immoral. And then Paris!
+
+“So long as I have anything to say in the matter, I shall not allow you
+to live in Paris,” said the Vicar firmly.
+
+It was a sink of iniquity. The scarlet woman and she of Babylon
+flaunted their vileness there; the cities of the plain were not more
+wicked.
+
+“You’ve been brought up like a gentleman and Christian, and I should be
+false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I
+allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.”
+
+“Well, I know I’m not a Christian and I’m beginning to doubt whether
+I’m a gentleman,” said Philip.
+
+The dispute grew more violent. There was another year before Philip
+took possession of his small inheritance, and during that time Mr.
+Carey proposed only to give him an allowance if he remained at the
+office. It was clear to Philip that if he meant not to continue with
+accountancy he must leave it while he could still get back half the
+money that had been paid for his articles. The Vicar would not listen.
+Philip, losing all reserve, said things to wound and irritate.
+
+“You’ve got no right to waste my money,” he said at last. “After all
+it’s my money, isn’t it? I’m not a child. You can’t prevent me from
+going to Paris if I make up my mind to. You can’t force me to go back
+to London.”
+
+“All I can do is to refuse you money unless you do what I think fit.”
+
+“Well, I don’t care, I’ve made up my mind to go to Paris. I shall sell
+my clothes, and my books, and my father’s jewellery.”
+
+Aunt Louisa sat by in silence, anxious and unhappy. She saw that Philip
+was beside himself, and anything she said then would but increase his
+anger. Finally the Vicar announced that he wished to hear nothing more
+about it and with dignity left the room. For the next three days
+neither Philip nor he spoke to one another. Philip wrote to Hayward for
+information about Paris, and made up his mind to set out as soon as he
+got a reply. Mrs. Carey turned the matter over in her mind incessantly;
+she felt that Philip included her in the hatred he bore her husband,
+and the thought tortured her. She loved him with all her heart. At
+length she spoke to him; she listened attentively while he poured out
+all his disillusionment of London and his eager ambition for the
+future.
+
+“I may be no good, but at least let me have a try. I can’t be a worse
+failure than I was in that beastly office. And I feel that I can paint.
+I know I’ve got it in me.”
+
+She was not so sure as her husband that they did right in thwarting so
+strong an inclination. She had read of great painters whose parents had
+opposed their wish to study, the event had shown with what folly; and
+after all it was just as possible for a painter to lead a virtuous life
+to the glory of God as for a chartered accountant.
+
+“I’m so afraid of your going to Paris,” she said piteously. “It
+wouldn’t be so bad if you studied in London.”
+
+“If I’m going in for painting I must do it thoroughly, and it’s only in
+Paris that you can get the real thing.”
+
+At his suggestion Mrs. Carey wrote to the solicitor, saying that Philip
+was discontented with his work in London, and asking what he thought of
+a change. Mr. Nixon answered as follows:
+
+Dear Mrs. Carey,
+
+I have seen Mr. Herbert Carter, and I am afraid I must tell you that
+Philip has not done so well as one could have wished. If he is very
+strongly set against the work, perhaps it is better that he should take
+the opportunity there is now to break his articles. I am naturally very
+disappointed, but as you know you can take a horse to the water, but
+you can’t make him drink.
+
+Yours very sincerely,
+  Albert Nixon.
+
+The letter was shown to the Vicar, but served only to increase his
+obstinacy. He was willing enough that Philip should take up some other
+profession, he suggested his father’s calling, medicine, but nothing
+would induce him to pay an allowance if Philip went to Paris.
+
+“It’s a mere excuse for self-indulgence and sensuality,” he said.
+
+“I’m interested to hear you blame self-indulgence in others,” retorted
+Philip acidly.
+
+But by this time an answer had come from Hayward, giving the name of a
+hotel where Philip could get a room for thirty francs a month and
+enclosing a note of introduction to the massiere of a school. Philip
+read the letter to Mrs. Carey and told her he proposed to start on the
+first of September.
+
+“But you haven’t got any money?” she said.
+
+“I’m going into Tercanbury this afternoon to sell the jewellery.”
+
+He had inherited from his father a gold watch and chain, two or three
+rings, some links, and two pins. One of them was a pearl and might
+fetch a considerable sum.
+
+“It’s a very different thing, what a thing’s worth and what it’ll
+fetch,” said Aunt Louisa.
+
+Philip smiled, for this was one of his uncle’s stock phrases.
+
+“I know, but at the worst I think I can get a hundred pounds on the
+lot, and that’ll keep me till I’m twenty-one.”
+
+Mrs. Carey did not answer, but she went upstairs, put on her little
+black bonnet, and went to the bank. In an hour she came back. She went
+to Philip, who was reading in the drawing-room, and handed him an
+envelope.
+
+“What’s this?” he asked.
+
+“It’s a little present for you,” she answered, smiling shyly.
+
+He opened it and found eleven five-pound notes and a little paper sack
+bulging with sovereigns.
+
+“I couldn’t bear to let you sell your father’s jewellery. It’s the
+money I had in the bank. It comes to very nearly a hundred pounds.”
+
+Philip blushed, and, he knew not why, tears suddenly filled his eyes.
+
+“Oh, my dear, I can’t take it,” he said. “It’s most awfully good of
+you, but I couldn’t bear to take it.”
+
+When Mrs. Carey was married she had three hundred pounds, and this
+money, carefully watched, had been used by her to meet any unforeseen
+expense, any urgent charity, or to buy Christmas and birthday presents
+for her husband and for Philip. In the course of years it had
+diminished sadly, but it was still with the Vicar a subject for
+jesting. He talked of his wife as a rich woman and he constantly spoke
+of the ‘nest egg.’
+
+“Oh, please take it, Philip. I’m so sorry I’ve been extravagant, and
+there’s only that left. But it’ll make me so happy if you’ll accept
+it.”
+
+“But you’ll want it,” said Philip.
+
+“No, I don’t think I shall. I was keeping it in case your uncle died
+before me. I thought it would be useful to have a little something I
+could get at immediately if I wanted it, but I don’t think I shall live
+very much longer now.”
+
+“Oh, my dear, don’t say that. Why, of course you’re going to live for
+ever. I can’t possibly spare you.”
+
+“Oh, I’m not sorry.” Her voice broke and she hid her eyes, but in a
+moment, drying them, she smiled bravely. “At first, I used to pray to
+God that He might not take me first, because I didn’t want your uncle
+to be left alone, I didn’t want him to have all the suffering, but now
+I know that it wouldn’t mean so much to your uncle as it would mean to
+me. He wants to live more than I do, I’ve never been the wife he
+wanted, and I daresay he’d marry again if anything happened to me. So I
+should like to go first. You don’t think it’s selfish of me, Philip, do
+you? But I couldn’t bear it if he went.”
+
+Philip kissed her wrinkled, thin cheek. He did not know why the sight
+he had of that overwhelming love made him feel strangely ashamed. It
+was incomprehensible that she should care so much for a man who was so
+indifferent, so selfish, so grossly self-indulgent; and he divined
+dimly that in her heart she knew his indifference and his selfishness,
+knew them and loved him humbly all the same.
+
+“You will take the money, Philip?” she said, gently stroking his hand.
+“I know you can do without it, but it’ll give me so much happiness.
+I’ve always wanted to do something for you. You see, I never had a
+child of my own, and I’ve loved you as if you were my son. When you
+were a little boy, though I knew it was wicked, I used to wish almost
+that you might be ill, so that I could nurse you day and night. But you
+were only ill once and then it was at school. I should so like to help
+you. It’s the only chance I shall ever have. And perhaps some day when
+you’re a great artist you won’t forget me, but you’ll remember that I
+gave you your start.”
+
+“It’s very good of you,” said Philip. “I’m very grateful.” A smile came
+into her tired eyes, a smile of pure happiness.
+
+“Oh, I’m so glad.”
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+
+A few days later Mrs. Carey went to the station to see Philip off. She
+stood at the door of the carriage, trying to keep back her tears.
+Philip was restless and eager. He wanted to be gone.
+
+“Kiss me once more,” she said.
+
+He leaned out of the window and kissed her. The train started, and she
+stood on the wooden platform of the little station, waving her
+handkerchief till it was out of sight. Her heart was dreadfully heavy,
+and the few hundred yards to the vicarage seemed very, very long. It
+was natural enough that he should be eager to go, she thought, he was a
+boy and the future beckoned to him; but she—she clenched her teeth so
+that she should not cry. She uttered a little inward prayer that God
+would guard him, and keep him out of temptation, and give him happiness
+and good fortune.
+
+But Philip ceased to think of her a moment after he had settled down in
+his carriage. He thought only of the future. He had written to Mrs.
+Otter, the massiere to whom Hayward had given him an introduction, and
+had in his pocket an invitation to tea on the following day. When he
+arrived in Paris he had his luggage put on a cab and trundled off
+slowly through the gay streets, over the bridge, and along the narrow
+ways of the Latin Quarter. He had taken a room at the Hotel des Deux
+Ecoles, which was in a shabby street off the Boulevard du Montparnasse;
+it was convenient for Amitrano’s School at which he was going to work.
+A waiter took his box up five flights of stairs, and Philip was shown
+into a tiny room, fusty from unopened windows, the greater part of
+which was taken up by a large wooden bed with a canopy over it of red
+rep; there were heavy curtains on the windows of the same dingy
+material; the chest of drawers served also as a washing-stand; and
+there was a massive wardrobe of the style which is connected with the
+good King Louis Philippe. The wall-paper was discoloured with age; it
+was dark gray, and there could be vaguely seen on it garlands of brown
+leaves. To Philip the room seemed quaint and charming.
+
+Though it was late he felt too excited to sleep and, going out, made
+his way into the boulevard and walked towards the light. This led him
+to the station; and the square in front of it, vivid with arc-lamps,
+noisy with the yellow trams that seemed to cross it in all directions,
+made him laugh aloud with joy. There were cafes all round, and by
+chance, thirsty and eager to get a nearer sight of the crowd, Philip
+installed himself at a little table outside the Cafe de Versailles.
+Every other table was taken, for it was a fine night; and Philip looked
+curiously at the people, here little family groups, there a knot of men
+with odd-shaped hats and beards talking loudly and gesticulating; next
+to him were two men who looked like painters with women who Philip
+hoped were not their lawful wives; behind him he heard Americans loudly
+arguing on art. His soul was thrilled. He sat till very late, tired out
+but too happy to move, and when at last he went to bed he was wide
+awake; he listened to the manifold noise of Paris.
+
+Next day about tea-time he made his way to the Lion de Belfort, and in
+a new street that led out of the Boulevard Raspail found Mrs. Otter.
+She was an insignificant woman of thirty, with a provincial air and a
+deliberately lady-like manner; she introduced him to her mother. He
+discovered presently that she had been studying in Paris for three
+years and later that she was separated from her husband. She had in her
+small drawing-room one or two portraits which she had painted, and to
+Philip’s inexperience they seemed extremely accomplished.
+
+“I wonder if I shall ever be able to paint as well as that,” he said to
+her.
+
+“Oh, I expect so,” she replied, not without self-satisfaction. “You
+can’t expect to do everything all at once, of course.”
+
+She was very kind. She gave him the address of a shop where he could
+get a portfolio, drawing-paper, and charcoal.
+
+“I shall be going to Amitrano’s about nine tomorrow, and if you’ll be
+there then I’ll see that you get a good place and all that sort of
+thing.”
+
+She asked him what he wanted to do, and Philip felt that he should not
+let her see how vague he was about the whole matter.
+
+“Well, first I want to learn to draw,” he said.
+
+“I’m so glad to hear you say that. People always want to do things in
+such a hurry. I never touched oils till I’d been here for two years,
+and look at the result.”
+
+She gave a glance at the portrait of her mother, a sticky piece of
+painting that hung over the piano.
+
+“And if I were you, I would be very careful about the people you get to
+know. I wouldn’t mix myself up with any foreigners. I’m very careful
+myself.”
+
+Philip thanked her for the suggestion, but it seemed to him odd. He did
+not know that he particularly wanted to be careful.
+
+“We live just as we would if we were in England,” said Mrs. Otter’s
+mother, who till then had spoken little. “When we came here we brought
+all our own furniture over.”
+
+Philip looked round the room. It was filled with a massive suite, and
+at the window were the same sort of white lace curtains which Aunt
+Louisa put up at the vicarage in summer. The piano was draped in
+Liberty silk and so was the chimney-piece. Mrs. Otter followed his
+wandering eye.
+
+“In the evening when we close the shutters one might really feel one
+was in England.”
+
+“And we have our meals just as if we were at home,” added her mother.
+“A meat breakfast in the morning and dinner in the middle of the day.”
+
+When he left Mrs. Otter Philip went to buy drawing materials; and next
+morning at the stroke of nine, trying to seem self-assured, he
+presented himself at the school. Mrs. Otter was already there, and she
+came forward with a friendly smile. He had been anxious about the
+reception he would have as a nouveau, for he had read a good deal of
+the rough joking to which a newcomer was exposed at some of the
+studios; but Mrs. Otter had reassured him.
+
+“Oh, there’s nothing like that here,” she said. “You see, about half
+our students are ladies, and they set a tone to the place.”
+
+The studio was large and bare, with gray walls, on which were pinned
+the studies that had received prizes. A model was sitting in a chair
+with a loose wrap thrown over her, and about a dozen men and women were
+standing about, some talking and others still working on their sketch.
+It was the first rest of the model.
+
+“You’d better not try anything too difficult at first,” said Mrs.
+Otter. “Put your easel here. You’ll find that’s the easiest pose.”
+
+Philip placed an easel where she indicated, and Mrs. Otter introduced
+him to a young woman who sat next to him.
+
+“Mr. Carey—Miss Price. Mr. Carey’s never studied before, you won’t mind
+helping him a little just at first will you?” Then she turned to the
+model. “La Pose.”
+
+The model threw aside the paper she had been reading, La Petite
+Republique, and sulkily, throwing off her gown, got on to the stand.
+She stood, squarely on both feet with her hands clasped behind her
+head.
+
+“It’s a stupid pose,” said Miss Price. “I can’t imagine why they chose
+it.”
+
+When Philip entered, the people in the studio had looked at him
+curiously, and the model gave him an indifferent glance, but now they
+ceased to pay attention to him. Philip, with his beautiful sheet of
+paper in front of him, stared awkwardly at the model. He did not know
+how to begin. He had never seen a naked woman before. She was not young
+and her breasts were shrivelled. She had colourless, fair hair that
+fell over her forehead untidily, and her face was covered with large
+freckles. He glanced at Miss Price’s work. She had only been working on
+it two days, and it looked as though she had had trouble; her paper was
+in a mess from constant rubbing out, and to Philip’s eyes the figure
+looked strangely distorted.
+
+“I should have thought I could do as well as that,” he said to himself.
+
+He began on the head, thinking that he would work slowly downwards,
+but, he could not understand why, he found it infinitely more difficult
+to draw a head from the model than to draw one from his imagination. He
+got into difficulties. He glanced at Miss Price. She was working with
+vehement gravity. Her brow was wrinkled with eagerness, and there was
+an anxious look in her eyes. It was hot in the studio, and drops of
+sweat stood on her forehead. She was a girl of twenty-six, with a great
+deal of dull gold hair; it was handsome hair, but it was carelessly
+done, dragged back from her forehead and tied in a hurried knot. She
+had a large face, with broad, flat features and small eyes; her skin
+was pasty, with a singular unhealthiness of tone, and there was no
+colour in the cheeks. She had an unwashed air and you could not help
+wondering if she slept in her clothes. She was serious and silent. When
+the next pause came, she stepped back to look at her work.
+
+“I don’t know why I’m having so much bother,” she said. “But I mean to
+get it right.” She turned to Philip. “How are you getting on?”
+
+“Not at all,” he answered, with a rueful smile.
+
+She looked at what he had done.
+
+“You can’t expect to do anything that way. You must take measurements.
+And you must square out your paper.”
+
+She showed him rapidly how to set about the business. Philip was
+impressed by her earnestness, but repelled by her want of charm. He was
+grateful for the hints she gave him and set to work again. Meanwhile
+other people had come in, mostly men, for the women always arrived
+first, and the studio for the time of year (it was early yet) was
+fairly full. Presently there came in a young man with thin, black hair,
+an enormous nose, and a face so long that it reminded you of a horse.
+He sat down next to Philip and nodded across him to Miss Price.
+
+“You’re very late,” she said. “Are you only just up?”
+
+“It was such a splendid day, I thought I’d lie in bed and think how
+beautiful it was out.”
+
+Philip smiled, but Miss Price took the remark seriously.
+
+“That seems a funny thing to do, I should have thought it would be more
+to the point to get up and enjoy it.”
+
+“The way of the humorist is very hard,” said the young man gravely.
+
+He did not seem inclined to work. He looked at his canvas; he was
+working in colour, and had sketched in the day before the model who was
+posing. He turned to Philip.
+
+“Have you just come out from England?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“How did you find your way to Amitrano’s?”
+
+“It was the only school I knew of.”
+
+“I hope you haven’t come with the idea that you will learn anything
+here which will be of the smallest use to you.”
+
+“It’s the best school in Paris,” said Miss Price. “It’s the only one
+where they take art seriously.”
+
+“Should art be taken seriously?” the young man asked; and since Miss
+Price replied only with a scornful shrug, he added: “But the point is,
+all schools are bad. They are academical, obviously. Why this is less
+injurious than most is that the teaching is more incompetent than
+elsewhere. Because you learn nothing….”
+
+“But why d’you come here then?” interrupted Philip.
+
+“I see the better course, but do not follow it. Miss Price, who is
+cultured, will remember the Latin of that.”
+
+“I wish you would leave me out of your conversation, Mr. Clutton,” said
+Miss Price brusquely.
+
+“The only way to learn to paint,” he went on, imperturbable, “is to
+take a studio, hire a model, and just fight it out for yourself.”
+
+“That seems a simple thing to do,” said Philip.
+
+“It only needs money,” replied Clutton.
+
+He began to paint, and Philip looked at him from the corner of his eye.
+He was long and desperately thin; his huge bones seemed to protrude
+from his body; his elbows were so sharp that they appeared to jut out
+through the arms of his shabby coat. His trousers were frayed at the
+bottom, and on each of his boots was a clumsy patch. Miss Price got up
+and went over to Philip’s easel.
+
+“If Mr. Clutton will hold his tongue for a moment, I’ll just help you a
+little,” she said.
+
+“Miss Price dislikes me because I have humour,” said Clutton, looking
+meditatively at his canvas, “but she detests me because I have genius.”
+
+He spoke with solemnity, and his colossal, misshapen nose made what he
+said very quaint. Philip was obliged to laugh, but Miss Price grew
+darkly red with anger.
+
+“You’re the only person who has ever accused you of genius.”
+
+“Also I am the only person whose opinion is of the least value to me.”
+
+Miss Price began to criticise what Philip had done. She talked glibly
+of anatomy and construction, planes and lines, and of much else which
+Philip did not understand. She had been at the studio a long time and
+knew the main points which the masters insisted upon, but though she
+could show what was wrong with Philip’s work she could not tell him how
+to put it right.
+
+“It’s awfully kind of you to take so much trouble with me,” said
+Philip.
+
+“Oh, it’s nothing,” she answered, flushing awkwardly. “People did the
+same for me when I first came, I’d do it for anyone.”
+
+“Miss Price wants to indicate that she is giving you the advantage of
+her knowledge from a sense of duty rather than on account of any charms
+of your person,” said Clutton.
+
+Miss Price gave him a furious look, and went back to her own drawing.
+The clock struck twelve, and the model with a cry of relief stepped
+down from the stand.
+
+Miss Price gathered up her things.
+
+“Some of us go to Gravier’s for lunch,” she said to Philip, with a look
+at Clutton. “I always go home myself.”
+
+“I’ll take you to Gravier’s if you like,” said Clutton.
+
+Philip thanked him and made ready to go. On his way out Mrs. Otter
+asked him how he had been getting on.
+
+“Did Fanny Price help you?” she asked. “I put you there because I know
+she can do it if she likes. She’s a disagreeable, ill-natured girl, and
+she can’t draw herself at all, but she knows the ropes, and she can be
+useful to a newcomer if she cares to take the trouble.”
+
+On the way down the street Clutton said to him:
+
+“You’ve made an impression on Fanny Price. You’d better look out.”
+
+Philip laughed. He had never seen anyone on whom he wished less to make
+an impression. They came to the cheap little restaurant at which
+several of the students ate, and Clutton sat down at a table at which
+three or four men were already seated. For a franc, they got an egg, a
+plate of meat, cheese, and a small bottle of wine. Coffee was extra.
+They sat on the pavement, and yellow trams passed up and down the
+boulevard with a ceaseless ringing of bells.
+
+“By the way, what’s your name?” said Clutton, as they took their seats.
+
+“Carey.”
+
+“Allow me to introduce an old and trusted friend, Carey by name,” said
+Clutton gravely. “Mr. Flanagan, Mr. Lawson.”
+
+They laughed and went on with their conversation. They talked of a
+thousand things, and they all talked at once. No one paid the smallest
+attention to anyone else. They talked of the places they had been to in
+the summer, of studios, of the various schools; they mentioned names
+which were unfamiliar to Philip, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas.
+Philip listened with all his ears, and though he felt a little out of
+it, his heart leaped with exultation. The time flew. When Clutton got
+up he said:
+
+“I expect you’ll find me here this evening if you care to come. You’ll
+find this about the best place for getting dyspepsia at the lowest cost
+in the Quarter.”
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+Philip walked down the Boulevard du Montparnasse. It was not at all
+like the Paris he had seen in the spring during his visit to do the
+accounts of the Hotel St. Georges—he thought already of that part of
+his life with a shudder—but reminded him of what he thought a
+provincial town must be. There was an easy-going air about it, and a
+sunny spaciousness which invited the mind to day-dreaming. The trimness
+of the trees, the vivid whiteness of the houses, the breadth, were very
+agreeable; and he felt himself already thoroughly at home. He sauntered
+along, staring at the people; there seemed an elegance about the most
+ordinary, workmen with their broad red sashes and their wide trousers,
+little soldiers in dingy, charming uniforms. He came presently to the
+Avenue de l’Observatoire, and he gave a sigh of pleasure at the
+magnificent, yet so graceful, vista. He came to the gardens of the
+Luxembourg: children were playing, nurses with long ribbons walked
+slowly two by two, busy men passed through with satchels under their
+arms, youths strangely dressed. The scene was formal and dainty; nature
+was arranged and ordered, but so exquisitely, that nature unordered and
+unarranged seemed barbaric. Philip was enchanted. It excited him to
+stand on that spot of which he had read so much; it was classic ground
+to him; and he felt the awe and the delight which some old don might
+feel when for the first time he looked on the smiling plain of Sparta.
+
+As he wandered he chanced to see Miss Price sitting by herself on a
+bench. He hesitated, for he did not at that moment want to see anyone,
+and her uncouth way seemed out of place amid the happiness he felt
+around him; but he had divined her sensitiveness to affront, and since
+she had seen him thought it would be polite to speak to her.
+
+“What are you doing here?” she said, as he came up.
+
+“Enjoying myself. Aren’t you?”
+
+“Oh, I come here every day from four to five. I don’t think one does
+any good if one works straight through.”
+
+“May I sit down for a minute?” he said.
+
+“If you want to.”
+
+“That doesn’t sound very cordial,” he laughed.
+
+“I’m not much of a one for saying pretty things.”
+
+Philip, a little disconcerted, was silent as he lit a cigarette.
+
+“Did Clutton say anything about my work?” she asked suddenly.
+
+“No, I don’t think he did,” said Philip.
+
+“He’s no good, you know. He thinks he’s a genius, but he isn’t. He’s
+too lazy, for one thing. Genius is an infinite capacity for taking
+pains. The only thing is to peg away. If one only makes up one’s mind
+badly enough to do a thing one can’t help doing it.”
+
+She spoke with a passionate strenuousness which was rather striking.
+She wore a sailor hat of black straw, a white blouse which was not
+quite clean, and a brown skirt. She had no gloves on, and her hands
+wanted washing. She was so unattractive that Philip wished he had not
+begun to talk to her. He could not make out whether she wanted him to
+stay or go.
+
+“I’ll do anything I can for you,” she said all at once, without
+reference to anything that had gone before. “I know how hard it is.”
+
+“Thank you very much,” said Philip, then in a moment: “Won’t you come
+and have tea with me somewhere?”
+
+She looked at him quickly and flushed. When she reddened her pasty skin
+acquired a curiously mottled look, like strawberries and cream that had
+gone bad.
+
+“No, thanks. What d’you think I want tea for? I’ve only just had
+lunch.”
+
+“I thought it would pass the time,” said Philip.
+
+“If you find it long you needn’t bother about me, you know. I don’t
+mind being left alone.”
+
+At that moment two men passed, in brown velveteens, enormous trousers,
+and basque caps. They were young, but both wore beards.
+
+“I say, are those art-students?” said Philip. “They might have stepped
+out of the Vie de Boheme.”
+
+“They’re Americans,” said Miss Price scornfully. “Frenchmen haven’t
+worn things like that for thirty years, but the Americans from the Far
+West buy those clothes and have themselves photographed the day after
+they arrive in Paris. That’s about as near to art as they ever get. But
+it doesn’t matter to them, they’ve all got money.”
+
+Philip liked the daring picturesqueness of the Americans’ costume; he
+thought it showed the romantic spirit. Miss Price asked him the time.
+
+“I must be getting along to the studio,” she said. “Are you going to
+the sketch classes?”
+
+Philip did not know anything about them, and she told him that from
+five to six every evening a model sat, from whom anyone who liked could
+go and draw at the cost of fifty centimes. They had a different model
+every day, and it was very good practice.
+
+“I don’t suppose you’re good enough yet for that. You’d better wait a
+bit.”
+
+“I don’t see why I shouldn’t try. I haven’t got anything else to do.”
+
+They got up and walked to the studio. Philip could not tell from her
+manner whether Miss Price wished him to walk with her or preferred to
+walk alone. He remained from sheer embarrassment, not knowing how to
+leave her; but she would not talk; she answered his questions in an
+ungracious manner.
+
+A man was standing at the studio door with a large dish into which each
+person as he went in dropped his half franc. The studio was much fuller
+than it had been in the morning, and there was not the preponderance of
+English and Americans; nor were women there in so large a proportion.
+Philip felt the assemblage was more the sort of thing he had expected.
+It was very warm, and the air quickly grew fetid. It was an old man who
+sat this time, with a vast gray beard, and Philip tried to put into
+practice the little he had learned in the morning; but he made a poor
+job of it; he realised that he could not draw nearly as well as he
+thought. He glanced enviously at one or two sketches of men who sat
+near him, and wondered whether he would ever be able to use the
+charcoal with that mastery. The hour passed quickly. Not wishing to
+press himself upon Miss Price he sat down at some distance from her,
+and at the end, as he passed her on his way out, she asked him
+brusquely how he had got on.
+
+“Not very well,” he smiled.
+
+“If you’d condescended to come and sit near me I could have given you
+some hints. I suppose you thought yourself too grand.”
+
+“No, it wasn’t that. I was afraid you’d think me a nuisance.”
+
+“When I do that I’ll tell you sharp enough.”
+
+Philip saw that in her uncouth way she was offering him help.
+
+“Well, tomorrow I’ll just force myself upon you.”
+
+“I don’t mind,” she answered.
+
+Philip went out and wondered what he should do with himself till
+dinner. He was eager to do something characteristic. Absinthe! of
+course it was indicated, and so, sauntering towards the station, he
+seated himself outside a cafe and ordered it. He drank with nausea and
+satisfaction. He found the taste disgusting, but the moral effect
+magnificent; he felt every inch an art-student; and since he drank on
+an empty stomach his spirits presently grew very high. He watched the
+crowds, and felt all men were his brothers. He was happy. When he
+reached Gravier’s the table at which Clutton sat was full, but as soon
+as he saw Philip limping along he called out to him. They made room.
+The dinner was frugal, a plate of soup, a dish of meat, fruit, cheese,
+and half a bottle of wine; but Philip paid no attention to what he ate.
+He took note of the men at the table. Flanagan was there again: he was
+an American, a short, snub-nosed youth with a jolly face and a laughing
+mouth. He wore a Norfolk jacket of bold pattern, a blue stock round his
+neck, and a tweed cap of fantastic shape. At that time impressionism
+reigned in the Latin Quarter, but its victory over the older schools
+was still recent; and Carolus-Duran, Bouguereau, and their like were
+set up against Manet, Monet, and Degas. To appreciate these was still a
+sign of grace. Whistler was an influence strong with the English and
+his compatriots, and the discerning collected Japanese prints. The old
+masters were tested by new standards. The esteem in which Raphael had
+been for centuries held was a matter of derision to wise young men.
+They offered to give all his works for Velasquez’ head of Philip IV in
+the National Gallery. Philip found that a discussion on art was raging.
+Lawson, whom he had met at luncheon, sat opposite to him. He was a thin
+youth with a freckled face and red hair. He had very bright green eyes.
+As Philip sat down he fixed them on him and remarked suddenly:
+
+“Raphael was only tolerable when he painted other people’s pictures.
+When he painted Peruginos or Pinturichios he was charming; when he
+painted Raphaels he was,” with a scornful shrug, “Raphael.”
+
+Lawson spoke so aggressively that Philip was taken aback, but he was
+not obliged to answer because Flanagan broke in impatiently.
+
+“Oh, to hell with art!” he cried. “Let’s get ginny.”
+
+“You were ginny last night, Flanagan,” said Lawson.
+
+“Nothing to what I mean to be tonight,” he answered. “Fancy being in
+Pa-ris and thinking of nothing but art all the time.” He spoke with a
+broad Western accent. “My, it is good to be alive.” He gathered himself
+together and then banged his fist on the table. “To hell with art, I
+say.”
+
+“You not only say it, but you say it with tiresome iteration,” said
+Clutton severely.
+
+There was another American at the table. He was dressed like those fine
+fellows whom Philip had seen that afternoon in the Luxembourg. He had a
+handsome face, thin, ascetic, with dark eyes; he wore his fantastic
+garb with the dashing air of a buccaneer. He had a vast quantity of
+dark hair which fell constantly over his eyes, and his most frequent
+gesture was to throw back his head dramatically to get some long wisp
+out of the way. He began to talk of the Olympia by Manet, which then
+hung in the Luxembourg.
+
+“I stood in front of it for an hour today, and I tell you it’s not a
+good picture.”
+
+Lawson put down his knife and fork. His green eyes flashed fire, he
+gasped with rage; but he could be seen imposing calm upon himself.
+
+“It’s very interesting to hear the mind of the untutored savage,” he
+said. “Will you tell us why it isn’t a good picture?”
+
+Before the American could answer someone else broke in vehemently.
+
+“D’you mean to say you can look at the painting of that flesh and say
+it’s not good?”
+
+“I don’t say that. I think the right breast is very well painted.”
+
+“The right breast be damned,” shouted Lawson. “The whole thing’s a
+miracle of painting.”
+
+He began to describe in detail the beauties of the picture, but at this
+table at Gravier’s they who spoke at length spoke for their own
+edification. No one listened to him. The American interrupted angrily.
+
+“You don’t mean to say you think the head’s good?”
+
+Lawson, white with passion now, began to defend the head; but Clutton,
+who had been sitting in silence with a look on his face of
+good-humoured scorn, broke in.
+
+“Give him the head. We don’t want the head. It doesn’t affect the
+picture.”
+
+“All right, I’ll give you the head,” cried Lawson. “Take the head and
+be damned to you.”
+
+“What about the black line?” cried the American, triumphantly pushing
+back a wisp of hair which nearly fell in his soup. “You don’t see a
+black line round objects in nature.”
+
+“Oh, God, send down fire from heaven to consume the blasphemer,” said
+Lawson. “What has nature got to do with it? No one knows what’s in
+nature and what isn’t! The world sees nature through the eyes of the
+artist. Why, for centuries it saw horses jumping a fence with all their
+legs extended, and by Heaven, sir, they were extended. It saw shadows
+black until Monet discovered they were coloured, and by Heaven, sir,
+they were black. If we choose to surround objects with a black line,
+the world will see the black line, and there will be a black line; and
+if we paint grass red and cows blue, it’ll see them red and blue, and,
+by Heaven, they will be red and blue.”
+
+“To hell with art,” murmured Flanagan. “I want to get ginny.”
+
+Lawson took no notice of the interruption.
+
+“Now look here, when Olympia was shown at the Salon, Zola—amid the
+jeers of the Philistines and the hisses of the pompiers, the
+academicians, and the public, Zola said: ‘I look forward to the day
+when Manet’s picture will hang in the Louvre opposite the Odalisque of
+Ingres, and it will not be the Odalisque which will gain by
+comparison.’ It’ll be there. Every day I see the time grow nearer. In
+ten years the Olympia will be in the Louvre.”
+
+“Never,” shouted the American, using both hands now with a sudden
+desperate attempt to get his hair once for all out of the way. “In ten
+years that picture will be dead. It’s only a fashion of the moment. No
+picture can live that hasn’t got something which that picture misses by
+a million miles.”
+
+“And what is that?”
+
+“Great art can’t exist without a moral element.”
+
+“Oh God!” cried Lawson furiously. “I knew it was that. He wants
+morality.” He joined his hands and held them towards heaven in
+supplication. “Oh, Christopher Columbus, Christopher Columbus, what did
+you do when you discovered America?”
+
+“Ruskin says…”
+
+But before he could add another word, Clutton rapped with the handle of
+his knife imperiously on the table.
+
+“Gentlemen,” he said in a stern voice, and his huge nose positively
+wrinkled with passion, “a name has been mentioned which I never thought
+to hear again in decent society. Freedom of speech is all very well,
+but we must observe the limits of common propriety. You may talk of
+Bouguereau if you will: there is a cheerful disgustingness in the sound
+which excites laughter; but let us not sully our chaste lips with the
+names of J. Ruskin, G. F. Watts, or E. B. Jones.”
+
+“Who was Ruskin anyway?” asked Flanagan.
+
+“He was one of the Great Victorians. He was a master of English style.”
+
+“Ruskin’s style—a thing of shreds and purple patches,” said Lawson.
+“Besides, damn the Great Victorians. Whenever I open a paper and see
+Death of a Great Victorian, I thank Heaven there’s one more of them
+gone. Their only talent was longevity, and no artist should be allowed
+to live after he’s forty; by then a man has done his best work, all he
+does after that is repetition. Don’t you think it was the greatest luck
+in the world for them that Keats, Shelley, Bonnington, and Byron died
+early? What a genius we should think Swinburne if he had perished on
+the day the first series of Poems and Ballads was published!”
+
+The suggestion pleased, for no one at the table was more than
+twenty-four, and they threw themselves upon it with gusto. They were
+unanimous for once. They elaborated. Someone proposed a vast bonfire
+made out of the works of the Forty Academicians into which the Great
+Victorians might be hurled on their fortieth birthday. The idea was
+received with acclamation. Carlyle and Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning, G.
+F. Watts, E. B. Jones, Dickens, Thackeray, they were hurried into the
+flames; Mr. Gladstone, John Bright, and Cobden; there was a moment’s
+discussion about George Meredith, but Matthew Arnold and Emerson were
+given up cheerfully. At last came Walter Pater.
+
+“Not Walter Pater,” murmured Philip.
+
+Lawson stared at him for a moment with his green eyes and then nodded.
+
+“You’re quite right, Walter Pater is the only justification for Mona
+Lisa. D’you know Cronshaw? He used to know Pater.”
+
+“Who’s Cronshaw?” asked Philip.
+
+“Cronshaw’s a poet. He lives here. Let’s go to the Lilas.”
+
+La Closerie des Lilas was a cafe to which they often went in the
+evening after dinner, and here Cronshaw was invariably to be found
+between the hours of nine at night and two in the morning. But Flanagan
+had had enough of intellectual conversation for one evening, and when
+Lawson made his suggestion, turned to Philip.
+
+“Oh gee, let’s go where there are girls,” he said. “Come to the Gaite
+Montparnasse, and we’ll get ginny.”
+
+“I’d rather go and see Cronshaw and keep sober,” laughed Philip.
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+There was a general disturbance. Flanagan and two or three more went on
+to the music-hall, while Philip walked slowly with Clutton and Lawson
+to the Closerie des Lilas.
+
+“You must go to the Gaite Montparnasse,” said Lawson to him. “It’s one
+of the loveliest things in Paris. I’m going to paint it one of these
+days.”
+
+Philip, influenced by Hayward, looked upon music-halls with scornful
+eyes, but he had reached Paris at a time when their artistic
+possibilities were just discovered. The peculiarities of lighting, the
+masses of dingy red and tarnished gold, the heaviness of the shadows
+and the decorative lines, offered a new theme; and half the studios in
+the Quarter contained sketches made in one or other of the local
+theatres. Men of letters, following in the painters’ wake, conspired
+suddenly to find artistic value in the turns; and red-nosed comedians
+were lauded to the skies for their sense of character; fat female
+singers, who had bawled obscurely for twenty years, were discovered to
+possess inimitable drollery; there were those who found an aesthetic
+delight in performing dogs; while others exhausted their vocabulary to
+extol the distinction of conjurers and trick-cyclists. The crowd too,
+under another influence, was become an object of sympathetic interest.
+With Hayward, Philip had disdained humanity in the mass; he adopted the
+attitude of one who wraps himself in solitariness and watches with
+disgust the antics of the vulgar; but Clutton and Lawson talked of the
+multitude with enthusiasm. They described the seething throng that
+filled the various fairs of Paris, the sea of faces, half seen in the
+glare of acetylene, half hidden in the darkness, and the blare of
+trumpets, the hooting of whistles, the hum of voices. What they said
+was new and strange to Philip. They told him about Cronshaw.
+
+“Have you ever read any of his work?”
+
+“No,” said Philip.
+
+“It came out in The Yellow Book.”
+
+They looked upon him, as painters often do writers, with contempt
+because he was a layman, with tolerance because he practised an art,
+and with awe because he used a medium in which themselves felt
+ill-at-ease.
+
+“He’s an extraordinary fellow. You’ll find him a bit disappointing at
+first, he only comes out at his best when he’s drunk.”
+
+“And the nuisance is,” added Clutton, “that it takes him a devil of a
+time to get drunk.”
+
+When they arrived at the cafe Lawson told Philip that they would have
+to go in. There was hardly a bite in the autumn air, but Cronshaw had a
+morbid fear of draughts and even in the warmest weather sat inside.
+
+“He knows everyone worth knowing,” Lawson explained. “He knew Pater and
+Oscar Wilde, and he knows Mallarme and all those fellows.”
+
+The object of their search sat in the most sheltered corner of the
+cafe, with his coat on and the collar turned up. He wore his hat
+pressed well down on his forehead so that he should avoid cold air. He
+was a big man, stout but not obese, with a round face, a small
+moustache, and little, rather stupid eyes. His head did not seem quite
+big enough for his body. It looked like a pea uneasily poised on an
+egg. He was playing dominoes with a Frenchman, and greeted the
+new-comers with a quiet smile; he did not speak, but as if to make room
+for them pushed away the little pile of saucers on the table which
+indicated the number of drinks he had already consumed. He nodded to
+Philip when he was introduced to him, and went on with the game.
+Philip’s knowledge of the language was small, but he knew enough to
+tell that Cronshaw, although he had lived in Paris for several years,
+spoke French execrably.
+
+At last he leaned back with a smile of triumph.
+
+“Je vous ai battu,” he said, with an abominable accent. “Garcong!”
+
+He called the waiter and turned to Philip.
+
+“Just out from England? See any cricket?”
+
+Philip was a little confused at the unexpected question.
+
+“Cronshaw knows the averages of every first-class cricketer for the
+last twenty years,” said Lawson, smiling.
+
+The Frenchman left them for friends at another table, and Cronshaw,
+with the lazy enunciation which was one of his peculiarities, began to
+discourse on the relative merits of Kent and Lancashire. He told them
+of the last test match he had seen and described the course of the game
+wicket by wicket.
+
+“That’s the only thing I miss in Paris,” he said, as he finished the
+bock which the waiter had brought. “You don’t get any cricket.”
+
+Philip was disappointed, and Lawson, pardonably anxious to show off one
+of the celebrities of the Quarter, grew impatient. Cronshaw was taking
+his time to wake up that evening, though the saucers at his side
+indicated that he had at least made an honest attempt to get drunk.
+Clutton watched the scene with amusement. He fancied there was
+something of affectation in Cronshaw’s minute knowledge of cricket; he
+liked to tantalise people by talking to them of things that obviously
+bored them; Clutton threw in a question.
+
+“Have you seen Mallarme lately?”
+
+Cronshaw looked at him slowly, as if he were turning the inquiry over
+in his mind, and before he answered rapped on the marble table with one
+of the saucers.
+
+“Bring my bottle of whiskey,” he called out. He turned again to Philip.
+“I keep my own bottle of whiskey. I can’t afford to pay fifty centimes
+for every thimbleful.”
+
+The waiter brought the bottle, and Cronshaw held it up to the light.
+
+“They’ve been drinking it. Waiter, who’s been helping himself to my
+whiskey?”
+
+“Mais personne, Monsieur Cronshaw.”
+
+“I made a mark on it last night, and look at it.”
+
+“Monsieur made a mark, but he kept on drinking after that. At that rate
+Monsieur wastes his time in making marks.”
+
+The waiter was a jovial fellow and knew Cronshaw intimately. Cronshaw
+gazed at him.
+
+“If you give me your word of honour as a nobleman and a gentleman that
+nobody but I has been drinking my whiskey, I’ll accept your statement.”
+
+This remark, translated literally into the crudest French, sounded very
+funny, and the lady at the comptoir could not help laughing.
+
+“Il est impayable,” she murmured.
+
+Cronshaw, hearing her, turned a sheepish eye upon her; she was stout,
+matronly, and middle-aged; and solemnly kissed his hand to her. She
+shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“Fear not, madam,” he said heavily. “I have passed the age when I am
+tempted by forty-five and gratitude.”
+
+He poured himself out some whiskey and water, and slowly drank it. He
+wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
+
+“He talked very well.”
+
+Lawson and Clutton knew that Cronshaw’s remark was an answer to the
+question about Mallarme. Cronshaw often went to the gatherings on
+Tuesday evenings when the poet received men of letters and painters,
+and discoursed with subtle oratory on any subject that was suggested to
+him. Cronshaw had evidently been there lately.
+
+“He talked very well, but he talked nonsense. He talked about art as
+though it were the most important thing in the world.”
+
+“If it isn’t, what are we here for?” asked Philip.
+
+“What you’re here for I don’t know. It is no business of mine. But art
+is a luxury. Men attach importance only to self-preservation and the
+propagation of their species. It is only when these instincts are
+satisfied that they consent to occupy themselves with the entertainment
+which is provided for them by writers, painters, and poets.”
+
+Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty
+years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or
+whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.
+
+Then he said: “I wrote a poem yesterday.”
+
+Without being asked he began to recite it, very slowly, marking the
+rhythm with an extended forefinger. It was possibly a very fine poem,
+but at that moment a young woman came in. She had scarlet lips, and it
+was plain that the vivid colour of her cheeks was not due to the
+vulgarity of nature; she had blackened her eyelashes and eyebrows, and
+painted both eyelids a bold blue, which was continued to a triangle at
+the corner of the eyes. It was fantastic and amusing. Her dark hair was
+done over her ears in the fashion made popular by Mlle. Cleo de Merode.
+Philip’s eyes wandered to her, and Cronshaw, having finished the
+recitation of his verses, smiled upon him indulgently.
+
+“You were not listening,” he said.
+
+“Oh yes, I was.”
+
+“I do not blame you, for you have given an apt illustration of the
+statement I just made. What is art beside love? I respect and applaud
+your indifference to fine poetry when you can contemplate the
+meretricious charms of this young person.”
+
+She passed by the table at which they were sitting, and he took her
+arm.
+
+“Come and sit by my side, dear child, and let us play the divine comedy
+of love.”
+
+“Fichez-moi la paix,” she said, and pushing him on one side continued
+her perambulation.
+
+“Art,” he continued, with a wave of the hand, “is merely the refuge
+which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food
+and women, to escape the tediousness of life.”
+
+Cronshaw filled his glass again, and began to talk at length. He spoke
+with rotund delivery. He chose his words carefully. He mingled wisdom
+and nonsense in the most astounding manner, gravely making fun of his
+hearers at one moment, and at the next playfully giving them sound
+advice. He talked of art, and literature, and life. He was by turns
+devout and obscene, merry and lachrymose. He grew remarkably drunk, and
+then he began to recite poetry, his own and Milton’s, his own and
+Shelley’s, his own and Kit Marlowe’s.
+
+At last Lawson, exhausted, got up to go home.
+
+“I shall go too,” said Philip.
+
+Clutton, the most silent of them all, remained behind listening, with a
+sardonic smile on his lips, to Cronshaw’s maunderings. Lawson
+accompanied Philip to his hotel and then bade him good-night. But when
+Philip got to bed he could not sleep. All these new ideas that had been
+flung before him carelessly seethed in his brain. He was tremendously
+excited. He felt in himself great powers. He had never before been so
+self-confident.
+
+“I know I shall be a great artist,” he said to himself. “I feel it in
+me.”
+
+A thrill passed through him as another thought came, but even to
+himself he would not put it into words:
+
+“By George, I believe I’ve got genius.”
+
+He was in fact very drunk, but as he had not taken more than one glass
+of beer, it could have been due only to a more dangerous intoxicant
+than alcohol.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+
+On Tuesdays and Fridays masters spent the morning at Amitrano’s,
+criticising the work done. In France the painter earns little unless he
+paints portraits and is patronised by rich Americans; and men of
+reputation are glad to increase their incomes by spending two or three
+hours once a week at one of the numerous studios where art is taught.
+Tuesday was the day upon which Michel Rollin came to Amitrano’s. He was
+an elderly man, with a white beard and a florid complexion, who had
+painted a number of decorations for the State, but these were an object
+of derision to the students he instructed: he was a disciple of Ingres,
+impervious to the progress of art and angrily impatient with that tas
+de farceurs whose names were Manet, Degas, Monet, and Sisley; but he
+was an excellent teacher, helpful, polite, and encouraging. Foinet, on
+the other hand, who visited the studio on Fridays, was a difficult man
+to get on with. He was a small, shrivelled person, with bad teeth and a
+bilious air, an untidy gray beard, and savage eyes; his voice was high
+and his tone sarcastic. He had had pictures bought by the Luxembourg,
+and at twenty-five looked forward to a great career; but his talent was
+due to youth rather than to personality, and for twenty years he had
+done nothing but repeat the landscape which had brought him his early
+success. When he was reproached with monotony, he answered:
+
+“Corot only painted one thing. Why shouldn’t I?”
+
+He was envious of everyone else’s success, and had a peculiar, personal
+loathing of the impressionists; for he looked upon his own failure as
+due to the mad fashion which had attracted the public, sale bete, to
+their works. The genial disdain of Michel Rollin, who called them
+impostors, was answered by him with vituperation, of which crapule and
+canaille were the least violent items; he amused himself with abuse of
+their private lives, and with sardonic humour, with blasphemous and
+obscene detail, attacked the legitimacy of their births and the purity
+of their conjugal relations: he used an Oriental imagery and an
+Oriental emphasis to accentuate his ribald scorn. Nor did he conceal
+his contempt for the students whose work he examined. By them he was
+hated and feared; the women by his brutal sarcasm he reduced often to
+tears, which again aroused his ridicule; and he remained at the studio,
+notwithstanding the protests of those who suffered too bitterly from
+his attacks, because there could be no doubt that he was one of the
+best masters in Paris. Sometimes the old model who kept the school
+ventured to remonstrate with him, but his expostulations quickly gave
+way before the violent insolence of the painter to abject apologies.
+
+It was Foinet with whom Philip first came in contact. He was already in
+the studio when Philip arrived. He went round from easel to easel, with
+Mrs. Otter, the massiere, by his side to interpret his remarks for the
+benefit of those who could not understand French. Fanny Price, sitting
+next to Philip, was working feverishly. Her face was sallow with
+nervousness, and every now and then she stopped to wipe her hands on
+her blouse; for they were hot with anxiety. Suddenly she turned to
+Philip with an anxious look, which she tried to hide by a sullen frown.
+
+“D’you think it’s good?” she asked, nodding at her drawing.
+
+Philip got up and looked at it. He was astounded; he felt she must have
+no eye at all; the thing was hopelessly out of drawing.
+
+“I wish I could draw half as well myself,” he answered.
+
+“You can’t expect to, you’ve only just come. It’s a bit too much to
+expect that you should draw as well as I do. I’ve been here two years.”
+
+Fanny Price puzzled Philip. Her conceit was stupendous. Philip had
+already discovered that everyone in the studio cordially disliked her;
+and it was no wonder, for she seemed to go out of her way to wound
+people.
+
+“I complained to Mrs. Otter about Foinet,” she said now. “The last two
+weeks he hasn’t looked at my drawings. He spends about half an hour on
+Mrs. Otter because she’s the massiere. After all I pay as much as
+anybody else, and I suppose my money’s as good as theirs. I don’t see
+why I shouldn’t get as much attention as anybody else.”
+
+She took up her charcoal again, but in a moment put it down with a
+groan.
+
+“I can’t do any more now. I’m so frightfully nervous.”
+
+She looked at Foinet, who was coming towards them with Mrs. Otter. Mrs.
+Otter, meek, mediocre, and self-satisfied, wore an air of importance.
+Foinet sat down at the easel of an untidy little Englishwoman called
+Ruth Chalice. She had the fine black eyes, languid but passionate, the
+thin face, ascetic but sensual, the skin like old ivory, which under
+the influence of Burne-Jones were cultivated at that time by young
+ladies in Chelsea. Foinet seemed in a pleasant mood; he did not say
+much to her, but with quick, determined strokes of her charcoal pointed
+out her errors. Miss Chalice beamed with pleasure when he rose. He came
+to Clutton, and by this time Philip was nervous too but Mrs. Otter had
+promised to make things easy for him. Foinet stood for a moment in
+front of Clutton’s work, biting his thumb silently, then
+absent-mindedly spat out upon the canvas the little piece of skin which
+he had bitten off.
+
+“That’s a fine line,” he said at last, indicating with his thumb what
+pleased him. “You’re beginning to learn to draw.”
+
+Clutton did not answer, but looked at the master with his usual air of
+sardonic indifference to the world’s opinion.
+
+“I’m beginning to think you have at least a trace of talent.”
+
+Mrs. Otter, who did not like Clutton, pursed her lips. She did not see
+anything out of the way in his work. Foinet sat down and went into
+technical details. Mrs. Otter grew rather tired of standing. Clutton
+did not say anything, but nodded now and then, and Foinet felt with
+satisfaction that he grasped what he said and the reasons of it; most
+of them listened to him, but it was clear they never understood. Then
+Foinet got up and came to Philip.
+
+“He only arrived two days ago,” Mrs. Otter hurried to explain. “He’s a
+beginner. He’s never studied before.”
+
+“Ca se voit,” the master said. “One sees that.”
+
+He passed on, and Mrs. Otter murmured to him:
+
+“This is the young lady I told you about.”
+
+He looked at her as though she were some repulsive animal, and his
+voice grew more rasping.
+
+“It appears that you do not think I pay enough attention to you. You
+have been complaining to the massiere. Well, show me this work to which
+you wish me to give attention.”
+
+Fanny Price coloured. The blood under her unhealthy skin seemed to be
+of a strange purple. Without answering she pointed to the drawing on
+which she had been at work since the beginning of the week. Foinet sat
+down.
+
+“Well, what do you wish me to say to you? Do you wish me to tell you it
+is good? It isn’t. Do you wish me to tell you it is well drawn? It
+isn’t. Do you wish me to say it has merit? It hasn’t. Do you wish me to
+show you what is wrong with it? It is all wrong. Do you wish me to tell
+you what to do with it? Tear it up. Are you satisfied now?”
+
+Miss Price became very white. She was furious because he had said all
+this before Mrs. Otter. Though she had been in France so long and could
+understand French well enough, she could hardly speak two words.
+
+“He’s got no right to treat me like that. My money’s as good as anyone
+else’s. I pay him to teach me. That’s not teaching me.”
+
+“What does she say? What does she say?” asked Foinet.
+
+Mrs. Otter hesitated to translate, and Miss Price repeated in execrable
+French.
+
+“Je vous paye pour m’apprendre.”
+
+His eyes flashed with rage, he raised his voice and shook his fist.
+
+“Mais, nom de Dieu, I can’t teach you. I could more easily teach a
+camel.” He turned to Mrs. Otter. “Ask her, does she do this for
+amusement, or does she expect to earn money by it?”
+
+“I’m going to earn my living as an artist,” Miss Price answered.
+
+“Then it is my duty to tell you that you are wasting your time. It
+would not matter that you have no talent, talent does not run about the
+streets in these days, but you have not the beginning of an aptitude.
+How long have you been here? A child of five after two lessons would
+draw better than you do. I only say one thing to you, give up this
+hopeless attempt. You’re more likely to earn your living as a bonne a
+tout faire than as a painter. Look.”
+
+He seized a piece of charcoal, and it broke as he applied it to the
+paper. He cursed, and with the stump drew great firm lines. He drew
+rapidly and spoke at the same time, spitting out the words with venom.
+
+“Look, those arms are not the same length. That knee, it’s grotesque. I
+tell you a child of five. You see, she’s not standing on her legs. That
+foot!”
+
+With each word the angry pencil made a mark, and in a moment the
+drawing upon which Fanny Price had spent so much time and eager trouble
+was unrecognisable, a confusion of lines and smudges. At last he flung
+down the charcoal and stood up.
+
+“Take my advice, Mademoiselle, try dressmaking.” He looked at his
+watch. “It’s twelve. A la semaine prochaine, messieurs.”
+
+Miss Price gathered up her things slowly. Philip waited behind after
+the others to say to her something consolatory. He could think of
+nothing but:
+
+“I say, I’m awfully sorry. What a beast that man is!”
+
+She turned on him savagely.
+
+“Is that what you’re waiting about for? When I want your sympathy I’ll
+ask for it. Please get out of my way.”
+
+She walked past him, out of the studio, and Philip, with a shrug of the
+shoulders, limped along to Gravier’s for luncheon.
+
+“It served her right,” said Lawson, when Philip told him what had
+happened. “Ill-tempered slut.”
+
+Lawson was very sensitive to criticism and, in order to avoid it, never
+went to the studio when Foinet was coming.
+
+“I don’t want other people’s opinion of my work,” he said. “I know
+myself if it’s good or bad.”
+
+“You mean you don’t want other people’s bad opinion of your work,”
+answered Clutton dryly.
+
+In the afternoon Philip thought he would go to the Luxembourg to see
+the pictures, and walking through the garden he saw Fanny Price sitting
+in her accustomed seat. He was sore at the rudeness with which she had
+met his well-meant attempt to say something pleasant, and passed as
+though he had not caught sight of her. But she got up at once and came
+towards him.
+
+“Are you trying to cut me?” she said.
+
+“No, of course not. I thought perhaps you didn’t want to be spoken to.”
+
+“Where are you going?”
+
+“I wanted to have a look at the Manet, I’ve heard so much about it.”
+
+“Would you like me to come with you? I know the Luxembourg rather well.
+I could show you one or two good things.”
+
+He understood that, unable to bring herself to apologise directly, she
+made this offer as amends.
+
+“It’s awfully kind of you. I should like it very much.”
+
+“You needn’t say yes if you’d rather go alone,” she said suspiciously.
+
+“I wouldn’t.”
+
+They walked towards the gallery. Caillebotte’s collection had lately
+been placed on view, and the student for the first time had the
+opportunity to examine at his ease the works of the impressionists.
+Till then it had been possible to see them only at Durand-Ruel’s shop
+in the Rue Lafitte (and the dealer, unlike his fellows in England, who
+adopt towards the painter an attitude of superiority, was always
+pleased to show the shabbiest student whatever he wanted to see), or at
+his private house, to which it was not difficult to get a card of
+admission on Tuesdays, and where you might see pictures of world-wide
+reputation. Miss Price led Philip straight up to Manet’s Olympia. He
+looked at it in astonished silence.
+
+“Do you like it?” asked Miss Price.
+
+“I don’t know,” he answered helplessly.
+
+“You can take it from me that it’s the best thing in the gallery except
+perhaps Whistler’s portrait of his mother.”
+
+She gave him a certain time to contemplate the masterpiece and then
+took him to a picture representing a railway-station.
+
+“Look, here’s a Monet,” she said. “It’s the Gare St. Lazare.”
+
+“But the railway lines aren’t parallel,” said Philip.
+
+“What does that matter?” she asked, with a haughty air.
+
+Philip felt ashamed of himself. Fanny Price had picked up the glib
+chatter of the studios and had no difficulty in impressing Philip with
+the extent of her knowledge. She proceeded to explain the pictures to
+him, superciliously but not without insight, and showed him what the
+painters had attempted and what he must look for. She talked with much
+gesticulation of the thumb, and Philip, to whom all she said was new,
+listened with profound but bewildered interest. Till now he had
+worshipped Watts and Burne-Jones. The pretty colour of the first, the
+affected drawing of the second, had entirely satisfied his aesthetic
+sensibilities. Their vague idealism, the suspicion of a philosophical
+idea which underlay the titles they gave their pictures, accorded very
+well with the functions of art as from his diligent perusal of Ruskin
+he understood it; but here was something quite different: here was no
+moral appeal; and the contemplation of these works could help no one to
+lead a purer and a higher life. He was puzzled.
+
+At last he said: “You know, I’m simply dead. I don’t think I can absorb
+anything more profitably. Let’s go and sit down on one of the benches.”
+
+“It’s better not to take too much art at a time,” Miss Price answered.
+
+When they got outside he thanked her warmly for the trouble she had
+taken.
+
+“Oh, that’s all right,” she said, a little ungraciously. “I do it
+because I enjoy it. We’ll go to the Louvre tomorrow if you like, and
+then I’ll take you to Durand-Ruel’s.”
+
+“You’re really awfully good to me.”
+
+“You don’t think me such a beast as the most of them do.”
+
+“I don’t,” he smiled.
+
+“They think they’ll drive me away from the studio; but they won’t; I
+shall stay there just exactly as long as it suits me. All that this
+morning, it was Lucy Otter’s doing, I know it was. She always has hated
+me. She thought after that I’d take myself off. I daresay she’d like me
+to go. She’s afraid I know too much about her.”
+
+Miss Price told him a long, involved story, which made out that Mrs.
+Otter, a humdrum and respectable little person, had scabrous intrigues.
+Then she talked of Ruth Chalice, the girl whom Foinet had praised that
+morning.
+
+“She’s been with every one of the fellows at the studio. She’s nothing
+better than a street-walker. And she’s dirty. She hasn’t had a bath for
+a month. I know it for a fact.”
+
+Philip listened uncomfortably. He had heard already that various
+rumours were in circulation about Miss Chalice; but it was ridiculous
+to suppose that Mrs. Otter, living with her mother, was anything but
+rigidly virtuous. The woman walking by his side with her malignant
+lying positively horrified him.
+
+“I don’t care what they say. I shall go on just the same. I know I’ve
+got it in me. I feel I’m an artist. I’d sooner kill myself than give it
+up. Oh, I shan’t be the first they’ve all laughed at in the schools and
+then he’s turned out the only genius of the lot. Art’s the only thing I
+care for, I’m willing to give my whole life to it. It’s only a question
+of sticking to it and pegging away.”
+
+She found discreditable motives for everyone who would not take her at
+her own estimate of herself. She detested Clutton. She told Philip that
+his friend had no talent really; it was just flashy and superficial; he
+couldn’t compose a figure to save his life. And Lawson:
+
+“Little beast, with his red hair and his freckles. He’s so afraid of
+Foinet that he won’t let him see his work. After all, I don’t funk it,
+do I? I don’t care what Foinet says to me, I know I’m a real artist.”
+
+They reached the street in which she lived, and with a sigh of relief
+Philip left her.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+But notwithstanding when Miss Price on the following Sunday offered to
+take him to the Louvre Philip accepted. She showed him Mona Lisa. He
+looked at it with a slight feeling of disappointment, but he had read
+till he knew by heart the jewelled words with which Walter Pater has
+added beauty to the most famous picture in the world; and these now he
+repeated to Miss Price.
+
+“That’s all literature,” she said, a little contemptuously. “You must
+get away from that.”
+
+She showed him the Rembrandts, and she said many appropriate things
+about them. She stood in front of the Disciples at Emmaus.
+
+“When you feel the beauty of that,” she said, “you’ll know something
+about painting.”
+
+She showed him the Odalisque and La Source of Ingres. Fanny Price was a
+peremptory guide, she would not let him look at the things he wished,
+and attempted to force his admiration for all she admired. She was
+desperately in earnest with her study of art, and when Philip, passing
+in the Long Gallery a window that looked out on the Tuileries, gay,
+sunny, and urbane, like a picture by Raffaelli, exclaimed:
+
+“I say, how jolly! Do let’s stop here a minute.”
+
+She said, indifferently: “Yes, it’s all right. But we’ve come here to
+look at pictures.”
+
+The autumn air, blithe and vivacious, elated Philip; and when towards
+mid-day they stood in the great court-yard of the Louvre, he felt
+inclined to cry like Flanagan: To hell with art.
+
+“I say, do let’s go to one of those restaurants in the Boul’ Mich’ and
+have a snack together, shall we?” he suggested.
+
+Miss Price gave him a suspicious look.
+
+“I’ve got my lunch waiting for me at home,” she answered.
+
+“That doesn’t matter. You can eat it tomorrow. Do let me stand you a
+lunch.”
+
+“I don’t know why you want to.”
+
+“It would give me pleasure,” he replied, smiling.
+
+They crossed the river, and at the corner of the Boulevard St. Michel
+there was a restaurant.
+
+“Let’s go in there.”
+
+“No, I won’t go there, it looks too expensive.”
+
+She walked on firmly, and Philip was obliged to follow. A few steps
+brought them to a smaller restaurant, where a dozen people were already
+lunching on the pavement under an awning; on the window was announced
+in large white letters: Dejeuner 1.25, vin compris.
+
+“We couldn’t have anything cheaper than this, and it looks quite all
+right.”
+
+They sat down at a vacant table and waited for the omelette which was
+the first article on the bill of fare. Philip gazed with delight upon
+the passers-by. His heart went out to them. He was tired but very
+happy.
+
+“I say, look at that man in the blouse. Isn’t he ripping!”
+
+He glanced at Miss Price, and to his astonishment saw that she was
+looking down at her plate, regardless of the passing spectacle, and two
+heavy tears were rolling down her cheeks.
+
+“What on earth’s the matter?” he exclaimed.
+
+“If you say anything to me I shall get up and go at once,” she
+answered.
+
+He was entirely puzzled, but fortunately at that moment the omelette
+came. He divided it in two and they began to eat. Philip did his best
+to talk of indifferent things, and it seemed as though Miss Price were
+making an effort on her side to be agreeable; but the luncheon was not
+altogether a success. Philip was squeamish, and the way in which Miss
+Price ate took his appetite away. She ate noisily, greedily, a little
+like a wild beast in a menagerie, and after she had finished each
+course rubbed the plate with pieces of bread till it was white and
+shining, as if she did not wish to lose a single drop of gravy. They
+had Camembert cheese, and it disgusted Philip to see that she ate rind
+and all of the portion that was given her. She could not have eaten
+more ravenously if she were starving.
+
+Miss Price was unaccountable, and having parted from her on one day
+with friendliness he could never tell whether on the next she would not
+be sulky and uncivil; but he learned a good deal from her: though she
+could not draw well herself, she knew all that could be taught, and her
+constant suggestions helped his progress. Mrs. Otter was useful to him
+too, and sometimes Miss Chalice criticised his work; he learned from
+the glib loquacity of Lawson and from the example of Clutton. But Fanny
+Price hated him to take suggestions from anyone but herself, and when
+he asked her help after someone else had been talking to him she would
+refuse with brutal rudeness. The other fellows, Lawson, Clutton,
+Flanagan, chaffed him about her.
+
+“You be careful, my lad,” they said, “she’s in love with you.”
+
+“Oh, what nonsense,” he laughed.
+
+The thought that Miss Price could be in love with anyone was
+preposterous. It made him shudder when he thought of her uncomeliness,
+the bedraggled hair and the dirty hands, the brown dress she always
+wore, stained and ragged at the hem: he supposed she was hard up, they
+were all hard up, but she might at least be clean; and it was surely
+possible with a needle and thread to make her skirt tidy.
+
+Philip began to sort his impressions of the people he was thrown in
+contact with. He was not so ingenuous as in those days which now seemed
+so long ago at Heidelberg, and, beginning to take a more deliberate
+interest in humanity, he was inclined to examine and to criticise. He
+found it difficult to know Clutton any better after seeing him every
+day for three months than on the first day of their acquaintance. The
+general impression at the studio was that he was able; it was supposed
+that he would do great things, and he shared the general opinion; but
+what exactly he was going to do neither he nor anybody else quite knew.
+He had worked at several studios before Amitrano’s, at Julian’s, the
+Beaux Arts, and MacPherson’s, and was remaining longer at Amitrano’s
+than anywhere because he found himself more left alone. He was not fond
+of showing his work, and unlike most of the young men who were studying
+art neither sought nor gave advice. It was said that in the little
+studio in the Rue Campagne Premiere, which served him for work-room and
+bed-room, he had wonderful pictures which would make his reputation if
+only he could be induced to exhibit them. He could not afford a model
+but painted still life, and Lawson constantly talked of a plate of
+apples which he declared was a masterpiece. He was fastidious, and,
+aiming at something he did not quite fully grasp, was constantly
+dissatisfied with his work as a whole: perhaps a part would please him,
+the forearm or the leg and foot of a figure, a glass or a cup in a
+still-life; and he would cut this out and keep it, destroying the rest
+of the canvas; so that when people invited themselves to see his work
+he could truthfully answer that he had not a single picture to show. In
+Brittany he had come across a painter whom nobody else had heard of, a
+queer fellow who had been a stockbroker and taken up painting at
+middle-age, and he was greatly influenced by his work. He was turning
+his back on the impressionists and working out for himself painfully an
+individual way not only of painting but of seeing. Philip felt in him
+something strangely original.
+
+At Gravier’s where they ate, and in the evening at the Versailles or at
+the Closerie des Lilas Clutton was inclined to taciturnity. He sat
+quietly, with a sardonic expression on his gaunt face, and spoke only
+when the opportunity occurred to throw in a witticism. He liked a butt
+and was most cheerful when someone was there on whom he could exercise
+his sarcasm. He seldom talked of anything but painting, and then only
+with the one or two persons whom he thought worth while. Philip
+wondered whether there was in him really anything: his reticence, the
+haggard look of him, the pungent humour, seemed to suggest personality,
+but might be no more than an effective mask which covered nothing.
+
+With Lawson on the other hand Philip soon grew intimate. He had a
+variety of interests which made him an agreeable companion. He read
+more than most of the students and though his income was small, loved
+to buy books. He lent them willingly; and Philip became acquainted with
+Flaubert and Balzac, with Verlaine, Heredia, and Villiers de l’Isle
+Adam. They went to plays together and sometimes to the gallery of the
+Opera Comique. There was the Odeon quite near them, and Philip soon
+shared his friend’s passion for the tragedians of Louis XIV and the
+sonorous Alexandrine. In the Rue Taitbout were the Concerts Rouge,
+where for seventy-five centimes they could hear excellent music and get
+into the bargain something which it was quite possible to drink: the
+seats were uncomfortable, the place was crowded, the air thick with
+caporal horrible to breathe, but in their young enthusiasm they were
+indifferent. Sometimes they went to the Bal Bullier. On these occasions
+Flanagan accompanied them. His excitability and his roisterous
+enthusiasm made them laugh. He was an excellent dancer, and before they
+had been ten minutes in the room he was prancing round with some little
+shop-girl whose acquaintance he had just made.
+
+The desire of all of them was to have a mistress. It was part of the
+paraphernalia of the art-student in Paris. It gave consideration in the
+eyes of one’s fellows. It was something to boast about. But the
+difficulty was that they had scarcely enough money to keep themselves,
+and though they argued that French-women were so clever it cost no more
+to keep two then one, they found it difficult to meet young women who
+were willing to take that view of the circumstances. They had to
+content themselves for the most part with envying and abusing the
+ladies who received protection from painters of more settled
+respectability than their own. It was extraordinary how difficult these
+things were in Paris. Lawson would become acquainted with some young
+thing and make an appointment; for twenty-four hours he would be all in
+a flutter and describe the charmer at length to everyone he met; but
+she never by any chance turned up at the time fixed. He would come to
+Gravier’s very late, ill-tempered, and exclaim:
+
+“Confound it, another rabbit! I don’t know why it is they don’t like
+me. I suppose it’s because I don’t speak French well, or my red hair.
+It’s too sickening to have spent over a year in Paris without getting
+hold of anyone.”
+
+“You don’t go the right way to work,” said Flanagan.
+
+He had a long and enviable list of triumphs to narrate, and though they
+took leave not to believe all he said, evidence forced them to
+acknowledge that he did not altogether lie. But he sought no permanent
+arrangement. He only had two years in Paris: he had persuaded his
+people to let him come and study art instead of going to college; but
+at the end of that period he was to return to Seattle and go into his
+father’s business. He had made up his mind to get as much fun as
+possible into the time, and demanded variety rather than duration in
+his love affairs.
+
+“I don’t know how you get hold of them,” said Lawson furiously.
+
+“There’s no difficulty about that, sonny,” answered Flanagan. “You just
+go right in. The difficulty is to get rid of them. That’s where you
+want tact.”
+
+Philip was too much occupied with his work, the books he was reading,
+the plays he saw, the conversation he listened to, to trouble himself
+with the desire for female society. He thought there would be plenty of
+time for that when he could speak French more glibly.
+
+It was more than a year now since he had seen Miss Wilkinson, and
+during his first weeks in Paris he had been too busy to answer a letter
+she had written to him just before he left Blackstable. When another
+came, knowing it would be full of reproaches and not being just then in
+the mood for them, he put it aside, intending to open it later; but he
+forgot and did not run across it till a month afterwards, when he was
+turning out a drawer to find some socks that had no holes in them. He
+looked at the unopened letter with dismay. He was afraid that Miss
+Wilkinson had suffered a good deal, and it made him feel a brute; but
+she had probably got over the suffering by now, at all events the worst
+of it. It suggested itself to him that women were often very emphatic
+in their expressions. These did not mean so much as when men used them.
+He had quite made up his mind that nothing would induce him ever to see
+her again. He had not written for so long that it seemed hardly worth
+while to write now. He made up his mind not to read the letter.
+
+“I daresay she won’t write again,” he said to himself. “She can’t help
+seeing the thing’s over. After all, she was old enough to be my mother;
+she ought to have known better.”
+
+For an hour or two he felt a little uncomfortable. His attitude was
+obviously the right one, but he could not help a feeling of
+dissatisfaction with the whole business. Miss Wilkinson, however, did
+not write again; nor did she, as he absurdly feared, suddenly appear in
+Paris to make him ridiculous before his friends. In a little while he
+clean forgot her.
+
+Meanwhile he definitely forsook his old gods. The amazement with which
+at first he had looked upon the works of the impressionists, changed to
+admiration; and presently he found himself talking as emphatically as
+the rest on the merits of Manet, Monet, and Degas. He bought a
+photograph of a drawing by Ingres of the Odalisque and a photograph of
+the Olympia. They were pinned side by side over his washing-stand so
+that he could contemplate their beauty while he shaved. He knew now
+quite positively that there had been no painting of landscape before
+Monet; and he felt a real thrill when he stood in front of Rembrandt’s
+Disciples at Emmaus or Velasquez’ Lady with the Flea-bitten Nose. That
+was not her real name, but by that she was distinguished at Gravier’s
+to emphasise the picture’s beauty notwithstanding the somewhat
+revolting peculiarity of the sitter’s appearance. With Ruskin,
+Burne-Jones, and Watts, he had put aside his bowler hat and the neat
+blue tie with white spots which he had worn on coming to Paris; and now
+disported himself in a soft, broad-brimmed hat, a flowing black cravat,
+and a cape of romantic cut. He walked along the Boulevard du
+Montparnasse as though he had known it all his life, and by virtuous
+perseverance he had learnt to drink absinthe without distaste. He was
+letting his hair grow, and it was only because Nature is unkind and has
+no regard for the immortal longings of youth that he did not attempt a
+beard.
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+Philip soon realised that the spirit which informed his friends was
+Cronshaw’s. It was from him that Lawson got his paradoxes; and even
+Clutton, who strained after individuality, expressed himself in the
+terms he had insensibly acquired from the older man. It was his ideas
+that they bandied about at table, and on his authority they formed
+their judgments. They made up for the respect with which unconsciously
+they treated him by laughing at his foibles and lamenting his vices.
+
+“Of course, poor old Cronshaw will never do any good,” they said. “He’s
+quite hopeless.”
+
+They prided themselves on being alone in appreciating his genius; and
+though, with the contempt of youth for the follies of middle-age, they
+patronised him among themselves, they did not fail to look upon it as a
+feather in their caps if he had chosen a time when only one was there
+to be particularly wonderful. Cronshaw never came to Gravier’s. For the
+last four years he had lived in squalid conditions with a woman whom
+only Lawson had once seen, in a tiny apartment on the sixth floor of
+one of the most dilapidated houses on the Quai des Grands Augustins:
+Lawson described with gusto the filth, the untidiness, the litter.
+
+“And the stink nearly blew your head off.”
+
+“Not at dinner, Lawson,” expostulated one of the others.
+
+But he would not deny himself the pleasure of giving picturesque
+details of the odours which met his nostril. With a fierce delight in
+his own realism he described the woman who had opened the door for him.
+She was dark, small, and fat, quite young, with black hair that seemed
+always on the point of coming down. She wore a slatternly blouse and no
+corsets. With her red cheeks, large sensual mouth, and shining, lewd
+eyes, she reminded you of the Bohemienne in the Louvre by Franz Hals.
+She had a flaunting vulgarity which amused and yet horrified. A
+scrubby, unwashed baby was playing on the floor. It was known that the
+slut deceived Cronshaw with the most worthless ragamuffins of the
+Quarter, and it was a mystery to the ingenuous youths who absorbed his
+wisdom over a cafe table that Cronshaw with his keen intellect and his
+passion for beauty could ally himself to such a creature. But he seemed
+to revel in the coarseness of her language and would often report some
+phrase which reeked of the gutter. He referred to her ironically as la
+fille de mon concierge. Cronshaw was very poor. He earned a bare
+subsistence by writing on the exhibitions of pictures for one or two
+English papers, and he did a certain amount of translating. He had been
+on the staff of an English paper in Paris, but had been dismissed for
+drunkenness; he still however did odd jobs for it, describing sales at
+the Hotel Drouot or the revues at music-halls. The life of Paris had
+got into his bones, and he would not change it, notwithstanding its
+squalor, drudgery, and hardship, for any other in the world. He
+remained there all through the year, even in summer when everyone he
+knew was away, and felt himself only at ease within a mile of the
+Boulevard St. Michel. But the curious thing was that he had never
+learnt to speak French passably, and he kept in his shabby clothes
+bought at La Belle Jardiniere an ineradicably English appearance.
+
+He was a man who would have made a success of life a century and a half
+ago when conversation was a passport to good company and inebriety no
+bar.
+
+“I ought to have lived in the eighteen hundreds,” he said himself.
+“What I want is a patron. I should have published my poems by
+subscription and dedicated them to a nobleman. I long to compose rhymed
+couplets upon the poodle of a countess. My soul yearns for the love of
+chamber-maids and the conversation of bishops.”
+
+He quoted the romantic Rolla,
+
+“Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux.”
+
+He liked new faces, and he took a fancy to Philip, who seemed to
+achieve the difficult feat of talking just enough to suggest
+conversation and not too much to prevent monologue. Philip was
+captivated. He did not realise that little that Cronshaw said was new.
+His personality in conversation had a curious power. He had a beautiful
+and a sonorous voice, and a manner of putting things which was
+irresistible to youth. All he said seemed to excite thought, and often
+on the way home Lawson and Philip would walk to and from one another’s
+hotels, discussing some point which a chance word of Cronshaw had
+suggested. It was disconcerting to Philip, who had a youthful eagerness
+for results, that Cronshaw’s poetry hardly came up to expectation. It
+had never been published in a volume, but most of it had appeared in
+periodicals; and after a good deal of persuasion Cronshaw brought down
+a bundle of pages torn out of The Yellow Book, The Saturday Review, and
+other journals, on each of which was a poem. Philip was taken aback to
+find that most of them reminded him either of Henley or of Swinburne.
+It needed the splendour of Cronshaw’s delivery to make them personal.
+He expressed his disappointment to Lawson, who carelessly repeated his
+words; and next time Philip went to the Closerie des Lilas the poet
+turned to him with his sleek smile:
+
+“I hear you don’t think much of my verses.”
+
+Philip was embarrassed.
+
+“I don’t know about that,” he answered. “I enjoyed reading them very
+much.”
+
+“Do not attempt to spare my feelings,” returned Cronshaw, with a wave
+of his fat hand. “I do not attach any exaggerated importance to my
+poetical works. Life is there to be lived rather than to be written
+about. My aim is to search out the manifold experience that it offers,
+wringing from each moment what of emotion it presents. I look upon my
+writing as a graceful accomplishment which does not absorb but rather
+adds pleasure to existence. And as for posterity—damn posterity.”
+
+Philip smiled, for it leaped to one’s eyes that the artist in life had
+produced no more than a wretched daub. Cronshaw looked at him
+meditatively and filled his glass. He sent the waiter for a packet of
+cigarettes.
+
+“You are amused because I talk in this fashion and you know that I am
+poor and live in an attic with a vulgar trollop who deceives me with
+hair-dressers and garcons de cafe; I translate wretched books for the
+British public, and write articles upon contemptible pictures which
+deserve not even to be abused. But pray tell me what is the meaning of
+life?”
+
+“I say, that’s rather a difficult question. Won’t you give the answer
+yourself?”
+
+“No, because it’s worthless unless you yourself discover it. But what
+do you suppose you are in the world for?”
+
+Philip had never asked himself, and he thought for a moment before
+replying.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know: I suppose to do one’s duty, and make the best
+possible use of one’s faculties, and avoid hurting other people.”
+
+“In short, to do unto others as you would they should do unto you?”
+
+“I suppose so.”
+
+“Christianity.”
+
+“No, it isn’t,” said Philip indignantly. “It has nothing to do with
+Christianity. It’s just abstract morality.”
+
+“But there’s no such thing as abstract morality.”
+
+“In that case, supposing under the influence of liquor you left your
+purse behind when you leave here and I picked it up, why do you imagine
+that I should return it to you? It’s not the fear of the police.”
+
+“It’s the dread of hell if you sin and the hope of Heaven if you are
+virtuous.”
+
+“But I believe in neither.”
+
+“That may be. Neither did Kant when he devised the Categorical
+Imperative. You have thrown aside a creed, but you have preserved the
+ethic which was based upon it. To all intents you are a Christian
+still, and if there is a God in Heaven you will undoubtedly receive
+your reward. The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches
+make out. If you keep His laws I don’t think He can care a packet of
+pins whether you believe in Him or not.”
+
+“But if I left my purse behind you would certainly return it to me,”
+said Philip.
+
+“Not from motives of abstract morality, but only from fear of the
+police.”
+
+“It’s a thousand to one that the police would never find out.”
+
+“My ancestors have lived in a civilised state so long that the fear of
+the police has eaten into my bones. The daughter of my concierge would
+not hesitate for a moment. You answer that she belongs to the criminal
+classes; not at all, she is merely devoid of vulgar prejudice.”
+
+“But then that does away with honour and virtue and goodness and
+decency and everything,” said Philip.
+
+“Have you ever committed a sin?”
+
+“I don’t know, I suppose so,” answered Philip.
+
+“You speak with the lips of a dissenting minister. I have never
+committed a sin.”
+
+Cronshaw in his shabby great-coat, with the collar turned up, and his
+hat well down on his head, with his red fat face and his little
+gleaming eyes, looked extraordinarily comic; but Philip was too much in
+earnest to laugh.
+
+“Have you never done anything you regret?”
+
+“How can I regret when what I did was inevitable?” asked Cronshaw in
+return.
+
+“But that’s fatalism.”
+
+“The illusion which man has that his will is free is so deeply rooted
+that I am ready to accept it. I act as though I were a free agent. But
+when an action is performed it is clear that all the forces of the
+universe from all eternity conspired to cause it, and nothing I could
+do could have prevented it. It was inevitable. If it was good I can
+claim no merit; if it was bad I can accept no censure.”
+
+“My brain reels,” said Philip.
+
+“Have some whiskey,” returned Cronshaw, passing over the bottle.
+“There’s nothing like it for clearing the head. You must expect to be
+thick-witted if you insist upon drinking beer.”
+
+Philip shook his head, and Cronshaw proceeded:
+
+“You’re not a bad fellow, but you won’t drink. Sobriety disturbs
+conversation. But when I speak of good and bad…” Philip saw he was
+taking up the thread of his discourse, “I speak conventionally. I
+attach no meaning to those words. I refuse to make a hierarchy of human
+actions and ascribe worthiness to some and ill-repute to others. The
+terms vice and virtue have no signification for me. I do not confer
+praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the
+centre of the world.”
+
+“But there are one or two other people in the world,” objected Philip.
+
+“I speak only for myself. I know them only as they limit my activities.
+Round each of them too the world turns, and each one for himself is the
+centre of the universe. My right over them extends only as far as my
+power. What I can do is the only limit of what I may do. Because we are
+gregarious we live in society, and society holds together by means of
+force, force of arms (that is the policeman) and force of public
+opinion (that is Mrs. Grundy). You have society on one hand and the
+individual on the other: each is an organism striving for
+self-preservation. It is might against might. I stand alone, bound to
+accept society and not unwilling, since in return for the taxes I pay
+it protects me, a weakling, against the tyranny of another stronger
+than I am; but I submit to its laws because I must; I do not
+acknowledge their justice: I do not know justice, I only know power.
+And when I have paid for the policeman who protects me and, if I live
+in a country where conscription is in force, served in the army which
+guards my house and land from the invader, I am quits with society: for
+the rest I counter its might with my wiliness. It makes laws for its
+self-preservation, and if I break them it imprisons or kills me: it has
+the might to do so and therefore the right. If I break the laws I will
+accept the vengeance of the state, but I will not regard it as
+punishment nor shall I feel myself convicted of wrong-doing. Society
+tempts me to its service by honours and riches and the good opinion of
+my fellows; but I am indifferent to their good opinion, I despise
+honours and I can do very well without riches.”
+
+“But if everyone thought like you things would go to pieces at once.”
+
+“I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with myself. I
+take advantage of the fact that the majority of mankind are led by
+certain rewards to do things which directly or indirectly tend to my
+convenience.”
+
+“It seems to me an awfully selfish way of looking at things,” said
+Philip.
+
+“But are you under the impression that men ever do anything except for
+selfish reasons?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“It is impossible that they should. You will find as you grow older
+that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to
+live in is to recognise the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You
+demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that
+they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you
+are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you
+will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you
+will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in
+life—their pleasure.”
+
+“No, no, no!” cried Philip.
+
+Cronshaw chuckled.
+
+“You rear like a frightened colt, because I use a word to which your
+Christianity ascribes a deprecatory meaning. You have a hierarchy of
+values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a
+little thrill of self-satisfaction, of duty, charity, and truthfulness.
+You think pleasure is only of the senses; the wretched slaves who
+manufactured your morality despised a satisfaction which they had small
+means of enjoying. You would not be so frightened if I had spoken of
+happiness instead of pleasure: it sounds less shocking, and your mind
+wanders from the sty of Epicurus to his garden. But I will speak of
+pleasure, for I see that men aim at that, and I do not know that they
+aim at happiness. It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every
+one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for
+him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought
+virtuous: if he finds pleasure in giving alms he is charitable; if he
+finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure
+in working for society he is public-spirited; but it is for your
+private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is
+for my private pleasure that I drink another whiskey and soda. I, less
+of a humbug than you, neither applaud myself for my pleasure nor demand
+your admiration.”
+
+“But have you never known people do things they didn’t want to instead
+of things they did?”
+
+“No. You put your question foolishly. What you mean is that people
+accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure. The
+objection is as foolish as your manner of putting it. It is clear that
+men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but
+only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the
+pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation
+of the rule. You are puzzled because you cannot get over the idea that
+pleasures are only of the senses; but, child, a man who dies for his
+country dies because he likes it as surely as a man eats pickled
+cabbage because he likes it. It is a law of creation. If it were
+possible for men to prefer pain to pleasure the human race would have
+long since become extinct.”
+
+“But if all that is true,” cried Philip, “what is the use of anything?
+If you take away duty and goodness and beauty why are we brought into
+the world?”
+
+“Here comes the gorgeous East to suggest an answer,” smiled Cronshaw.
+
+He pointed to two persons who at that moment opened the door of the
+cafe, and, with a blast of cold air, entered. They were Levantines,
+itinerant vendors of cheap rugs, and each bore on his arm a bundle. It
+was Sunday evening, and the cafe was very full. They passed among the
+tables, and in that atmosphere heavy and discoloured with tobacco
+smoke, rank with humanity, they seemed to bring an air of mystery. They
+were clad in European, shabby clothes, their thin great-coats were
+threadbare, but each wore a tarbouch. Their faces were gray with cold.
+One was of middle age, with a black beard, but the other was a youth of
+eighteen, with a face deeply scarred by smallpox and with one eye only.
+They passed by Cronshaw and Philip.
+
+“Allah is great, and Mahomet is his prophet,” said Cronshaw
+impressively.
+
+The elder advanced with a cringing smile, like a mongrel used to blows.
+With a sidelong glance at the door and a quick surreptitious movement
+he showed a pornographic picture.
+
+“Are you Masr-ed-Deen, the merchant of Alexandria, or is it from far
+Bagdad that you bring your goods, O, my uncle; and yonder one-eyed
+youth, do I see in him one of the three kings of whom Scheherazade told
+stories to her lord?”
+
+The pedlar’s smile grew more ingratiating, though he understood no word
+of what Cronshaw said, and like a conjurer he produced a sandalwood
+box.
+
+“Nay, show us the priceless web of Eastern looms,” quoth Cronshaw. “For
+I would point a moral and adorn a tale.”
+
+The Levantine unfolded a table-cloth, red and yellow, vulgar, hideous,
+and grotesque.
+
+“Thirty-five francs,” he said.
+
+“O, my uncle, this cloth knew not the weavers of Samarkand, and those
+colours were never made in the vats of Bokhara.”
+
+“Twenty-five francs,” smiled the pedlar obsequiously.
+
+“Ultima Thule was the place of its manufacture, even Birmingham the
+place of my birth.”
+
+“Fifteen francs,” cringed the bearded man.
+
+“Get thee gone, fellow,” said Cronshaw. “May wild asses defile the
+grave of thy maternal grandmother.”
+
+Imperturbably, but smiling no more, the Levantine passed with his wares
+to another table. Cronshaw turned to Philip.
+
+“Have you ever been to the Cluny, the museum? There you will see
+Persian carpets of the most exquisite hue and of a pattern the
+beautiful intricacy of which delights and amazes the eye. In them you
+will see the mystery and the sensual beauty of the East, the roses of
+Hafiz and the wine-cup of Omar; but presently you will see more. You
+were asking just now what was the meaning of life. Go and look at those
+Persian carpets, and one of these days the answer will come to you.”
+
+“You are cryptic,” said Philip.
+
+“I am drunk,” answered Cronshaw.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+Philip did not find living in Paris as cheap as he had been led to
+believe and by February had spent most of the money with which he
+started. He was too proud to appeal to his guardian, nor did he wish
+Aunt Louisa to know that his circumstances were straitened, since he
+was certain she would make an effort to send him something from her own
+pocket, and he knew how little she could afford to. In three months he
+would attain his majority and come into possession of his small
+fortune. He tided over the interval by selling the few trinkets which
+he had inherited from his father.
+
+At about this time Lawson suggested that they should take a small
+studio which was vacant in one of the streets that led out of the
+Boulevard Raspail. It was very cheap. It had a room attached, which
+they could use as a bed-room; and since Philip was at the school every
+morning Lawson could have the undisturbed use of the studio then;
+Lawson, after wandering from school to school, had come to the
+conclusion that he could work best alone, and proposed to get a model
+in three or four days a week. At first Philip hesitated on account of
+the expense, but they reckoned it out; and it seemed (they were so
+anxious to have a studio of their own that they calculated
+pragmatically) that the cost would not be much greater than that of
+living in a hotel. Though the rent and the cleaning by the concierge
+would come to a little more, they would save on the petit dejeuner,
+which they could make themselves. A year or two earlier Philip would
+have refused to share a room with anyone, since he was so sensitive
+about his deformed foot, but his morbid way of looking at it was
+growing less marked: in Paris it did not seem to matter so much, and,
+though he never by any chance forgot it himself, he ceased to feel that
+other people were constantly noticing it.
+
+They moved in, bought a couple of beds, a washing-stand, a few chairs,
+and felt for the first time the thrill of possession. They were so
+excited that the first night they went to bed in what they could call a
+home they lay awake talking till three in the morning; and next day
+found lighting the fire and making their own coffee, which they had in
+pyjamas, such a jolly business that Philip did not get to Amitrano’s
+till nearly eleven. He was in excellent spirits. He nodded to Fanny
+Price.
+
+“How are you getting on?” he asked cheerily.
+
+“What does that matter to you?” she asked in reply.
+
+Philip could not help laughing.
+
+“Don’t jump down my throat. I was only trying to make myself polite.”
+
+“I don’t want your politeness.”
+
+“D’you think it’s worth while quarrelling with me too?” asked Philip
+mildly. “There are so few people you’re on speaking terms with, as it
+is.”
+
+“That’s my business, isn’t it?”
+
+“Quite.”
+
+He began to work, vaguely wondering why Fanny Price made herself so
+disagreeable. He had come to the conclusion that he thoroughly disliked
+her. Everyone did. People were only civil to her at all from fear of
+the malice of her tongue; for to their faces and behind their backs she
+said abominable things. But Philip was feeling so happy that he did not
+want even Miss Price to bear ill-feeling towards him. He used the
+artifice which had often before succeeded in banishing her ill-humour.
+
+“I say, I wish you’d come and look at my drawing. I’ve got in an awful
+mess.”
+
+“Thank you very much, but I’ve got something better to do with my
+time.”
+
+Philip stared at her in surprise, for the one thing she could be
+counted upon to do with alacrity was to give advice. She went on
+quickly in a low voice, savage with fury.
+
+“Now that Lawson’s gone you think you’ll put up with me. Thank you very
+much. Go and find somebody else to help you. I don’t want anybody
+else’s leavings.”
+
+Lawson had the pedagogic instinct; whenever he found anything out he
+was eager to impart it; and because he taught with delight he talked
+with profit. Philip, without thinking anything about it, had got into
+the habit of sitting by his side; it never occurred to him that Fanny
+Price was consumed with jealousy, and watched his acceptance of someone
+else’s tuition with ever-increasing anger.
+
+“You were very glad to put up with me when you knew nobody here,” she
+said bitterly, “and as soon as you made friends with other people you
+threw me aside, like an old glove”—she repeated the stale metaphor with
+satisfaction—“like an old glove. All right, I don’t care, but I’m not
+going to be made a fool of another time.”
+
+There was a suspicion of truth in what she said, and it made Philip
+angry enough to answer what first came into his head.
+
+“Hang it all, I only asked your advice because I saw it pleased you.”
+
+She gave a gasp and threw him a sudden look of anguish. Then two tears
+rolled down her cheeks. She looked frowsy and grotesque. Philip, not
+knowing what on earth this new attitude implied, went back to his work.
+He was uneasy and conscience-stricken; but he would not go to her and
+say he was sorry if he had caused her pain, because he was afraid she
+would take the opportunity to snub him. For two or three weeks she did
+not speak to him, and, after Philip had got over the discomfort of
+being cut by her, he was somewhat relieved to be free from so difficult
+a friendship. He had been a little disconcerted by the air of
+proprietorship she assumed over him. She was an extraordinary woman.
+She came every day to the studio at eight o’clock, and was ready to
+start working when the model was in position; she worked steadily,
+talking to no one, struggling hour after hour with difficulties she
+could not overcome, and remained till the clock struck twelve. Her work
+was hopeless. There was not in it the smallest approach even to the
+mediocre achievement at which most of the young persons were able after
+some months to arrive. She wore every day the same ugly brown dress,
+with the mud of the last wet day still caked on the hem and with the
+raggedness, which Philip had noticed the first time he saw her, still
+unmended.
+
+But one day she came up to him, and with a scarlet face asked whether
+she might speak to him afterwards.
+
+“Of course, as much as you like,” smiled Philip. “I’ll wait behind at
+twelve.”
+
+He went to her when the day’s work was over.
+
+“Will you walk a little bit with me?” she said, looking away from him
+with embarrassment.
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+They walked for two or three minutes in silence.
+
+“D’you remember what you said to me the other day?” she asked then on a
+sudden.
+
+“Oh, I say, don’t let’s quarrel,” said Philip. “It really isn’t worth
+while.”
+
+She gave a quick, painful inspiration.
+
+“I don’t want to quarrel with you. You’re the only friend I had in
+Paris. I thought you rather liked me. I felt there was something
+between us. I was drawn towards you—you know what I mean, your
+club-foot.”
+
+Philip reddened and instinctively tried to walk without a limp. He did
+not like anyone to mention the deformity. He knew what Fanny Price
+meant. She was ugly and uncouth, and because he was deformed there was
+between them a certain sympathy. He was very angry with her, but he
+forced himself not to speak.
+
+“You said you only asked my advice to please me. Don’t you think my
+work’s any good?”
+
+“I’ve only seen your drawing at Amitrano’s. It’s awfully hard to judge
+from that.”
+
+“I was wondering if you’d come and look at my other work. I’ve never
+asked anyone else to look at it. I should like to show it to you.”
+
+“It’s awfully kind of you. I’d like to see it very much.”
+
+“I live quite near here,” she said apologetically. “It’ll only take you
+ten minutes.”
+
+“Oh, that’s all right,” he said.
+
+They were walking along the boulevard, and she turned down a side
+street, then led him into another, poorer still, with cheap shops on
+the ground floor, and at last stopped. They climbed flight after flight
+of stairs. She unlocked a door, and they went into a tiny attic with a
+sloping roof and a small window. This was closed and the room had a
+musty smell. Though it was very cold there was no fire and no sign that
+there had been one. The bed was unmade. A chair, a chest of drawers
+which served also as a wash-stand, and a cheap easel, were all the
+furniture. The place would have been squalid enough in any case, but
+the litter, the untidiness, made the impression revolting. On the
+chimney-piece, scattered over with paints and brushes, were a cup, a
+dirty plate, and a tea-pot.
+
+“If you’ll stand over there I’ll put them on the chair so that you can
+see them better.”
+
+She showed him twenty small canvases, about eighteen by twelve. She
+placed them on the chair, one after the other, watching his face; he
+nodded as he looked at each one.
+
+“You do like them, don’t you?” she said anxiously, after a bit.
+
+“I just want to look at them all first,” he answered. “I’ll talk
+afterwards.”
+
+He was collecting himself. He was panic-stricken. He did not know what
+to say. It was not only that they were ill-drawn, or that the colour
+was put on amateurishly by someone who had no eye for it; but there was
+no attempt at getting the values, and the perspective was grotesque. It
+looked like the work of a child of five, but a child would have had
+some naivete and might at least have made an attempt to put down what
+he saw; but here was the work of a vulgar mind chock full of
+recollections of vulgar pictures. Philip remembered that she had talked
+enthusiastically about Monet and the Impressionists, but here were only
+the worst traditions of the Royal Academy.
+
+“There,” she said at last, “that’s the lot.”
+
+Philip was no more truthful than anybody else, but he had a great
+difficulty in telling a thundering, deliberate lie, and he blushed
+furiously when he answered:
+
+“I think they’re most awfully good.”
+
+A faint colour came into her unhealthy cheeks, and she smiled a little.
+
+“You needn’t say so if you don’t think so, you know. I want the truth.”
+
+“But I do think so.”
+
+“Haven’t you got any criticism to offer? There must be some you don’t
+like as well as others.”
+
+Philip looked round helplessly. He saw a landscape, the typical
+picturesque ‘bit’ of the amateur, an old bridge, a creeper-clad
+cottage, and a leafy bank.
+
+“Of course I don’t pretend to know anything about it,” he said. “But I
+wasn’t quite sure about the values of that.”
+
+She flushed darkly and taking up the picture quickly turned its back to
+him.
+
+“I don’t know why you should have chosen that one to sneer at. It’s the
+best thing I’ve ever done. I’m sure my values are all right. That’s a
+thing you can’t teach anyone, you either understand values or you
+don’t.”
+
+“I think they’re all most awfully good,” repeated Philip.
+
+She looked at them with an air of self-satisfaction.
+
+“I don’t think they’re anything to be ashamed of.”
+
+Philip looked at his watch.
+
+“I say, it’s getting late. Won’t you let me give you a little lunch?”
+
+“I’ve got my lunch waiting for me here.”
+
+Philip saw no sign of it, but supposed perhaps the concierge would
+bring it up when he was gone. He was in a hurry to get away. The
+mustiness of the room made his head ache.
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+
+In March there was all the excitement of sending in to the Salon.
+Clutton, characteristically, had nothing ready, and he was very
+scornful of the two heads that Lawson sent; they were obviously the
+work of a student, straight-forward portraits of models, but they had a
+certain force; Clutton, aiming at perfection, had no patience with
+efforts which betrayed hesitancy, and with a shrug of the shoulders
+told Lawson it was an impertinence to exhibit stuff which should never
+have been allowed out of his studio; he was not less contemptuous when
+the two heads were accepted. Flanagan tried his luck too, but his
+picture was refused. Mrs. Otter sent a blameless Portrait de ma Mere,
+accomplished and second-rate; and was hung in a very good place.
+
+Hayward, whom Philip had not seen since he left Heidelberg, arrived in
+Paris to spend a few days in time to come to the party which Lawson and
+Philip were giving in their studio to celebrate the hanging of Lawson’s
+pictures. Philip had been eager to see Hayward again, but when at last
+they met, he experienced some disappointment. Hayward had altered a
+little in appearance: his fine hair was thinner, and with the rapid
+wilting of the very fair, he was becoming wizened and colourless; his
+blue eyes were paler than they had been, and there was a muzziness
+about his features. On the other hand, in mind he did not seem to have
+changed at all, and the culture which had impressed Philip at eighteen
+aroused somewhat the contempt of Philip at twenty-one. He had altered a
+good deal himself, and regarding with scorn all his old opinions of
+art, life, and letters, had no patience with anyone who still held
+them. He was scarcely conscious of the fact that he wanted to show off
+before Hayward, but when he took him round the galleries he poured out
+to him all the revolutionary opinions which himself had so recently
+adopted. He took him to Manet’s Olympia and said dramatically:
+
+“I would give all the old masters except Velasquez, Rembrandt, and
+Vermeer for that one picture.”
+
+“Who was Vermeer?” asked Hayward.
+
+“Oh, my dear fellow, don’t you know Vermeer? You’re not civilised. You
+mustn’t live a moment longer without making his acquaintance. He’s the
+one old master who painted like a modern.”
+
+He dragged Hayward out of the Luxembourg and hurried him off to the
+Louvre.
+
+“But aren’t there any more pictures here?” asked Hayward, with the
+tourist’s passion for thoroughness.
+
+“Nothing of the least consequence. You can come and look at them by
+yourself with your Baedeker.”
+
+When they arrived at the Louvre Philip led his friend down the Long
+Gallery.
+
+“I should like to see The Gioconda,” said Hayward.
+
+“Oh, my dear fellow, it’s only literature,” answered Philip.
+
+At last, in a small room, Philip stopped before The Lacemaker of
+Vermeer van Delft.
+
+“There, that’s the best picture in the Louvre. It’s exactly like a
+Manet.”
+
+With an expressive, eloquent thumb Philip expatiated on the charming
+work. He used the jargon of the studios with overpowering effect.
+
+“I don’t know that I see anything so wonderful as all that in it,” said
+Hayward.
+
+“Of course it’s a painter’s picture,” said Philip. “I can quite believe
+the layman would see nothing much in it.”
+
+“The what?” said Hayward.
+
+“The layman.”
+
+Like most people who cultivate an interest in the arts, Hayward was
+extremely anxious to be right. He was dogmatic with those who did not
+venture to assert themselves, but with the self-assertive he was very
+modest. He was impressed by Philip’s assurance, and accepted meekly
+Philip’s implied suggestion that the painter’s arrogant claim to be the
+sole possible judge of painting has anything but its impertinence to
+recommend it.
+
+A day or two later Philip and Lawson gave their party. Cronshaw, making
+an exception in their favour, agreed to eat their food; and Miss
+Chalice offered to come and cook for them. She took no interest in her
+own sex and declined the suggestion that other girls should be asked
+for her sake. Clutton, Flanagan, Potter, and two others made up the
+party. Furniture was scarce, so the model stand was used as a table,
+and the guests were to sit on portmanteaux if they liked, and if they
+didn’t on the floor. The feast consisted of a pot-au-feu, which Miss
+Chalice had made, of a leg of mutton roasted round the corner and
+brought round hot and savoury (Miss Chalice had cooked the potatoes,
+and the studio was redolent of the carrots she had fried; fried carrots
+were her specialty); and this was to be followed by poires flambees,
+pears with burning brandy, which Cronshaw had volunteered to make. The
+meal was to finish with an enormous fromage de Brie, which stood near
+the window and added fragrant odours to all the others which filled the
+studio. Cronshaw sat in the place of honour on a Gladstone bag, with
+his legs curled under him like a Turkish bashaw, beaming good-naturedly
+on the young people who surrounded him. From force of habit, though the
+small studio with the stove lit was very hot, he kept on his
+great-coat, with the collar turned up, and his bowler hat: he looked
+with satisfaction on the four large fiaschi of Chianti which stood in
+front of him in a row, two on each side of a bottle of whiskey; he said
+it reminded him of a slim fair Circassian guarded by four corpulent
+eunuchs. Hayward in order to put the rest of them at their ease had
+clothed himself in a tweed suit and a Trinity Hall tie. He looked
+grotesquely British. The others were elaborately polite to him, and
+during the soup they talked of the weather and the political situation.
+There was a pause while they waited for the leg of mutton, and Miss
+Chalice lit a cigarette.
+
+“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,” she said suddenly.
+
+With an elegant gesture she untied a ribbon so that her tresses fell
+over her shoulders. She shook her head.
+
+“I always feel more comfortable with my hair down.”
+
+With her large brown eyes, thin, ascetic face, her pale skin, and broad
+forehead, she might have stepped out of a picture by Burne-Jones. She
+had long, beautiful hands, with fingers deeply stained by nicotine. She
+wore sweeping draperies, mauve and green. There was about her the
+romantic air of High Street, Kensington. She was wantonly aesthetic;
+but she was an excellent creature, kind and good natured; and her
+affectations were but skin-deep. There was a knock at the door, and
+they all gave a shout of exultation. Miss Chalice rose and opened. She
+took the leg of mutton and held it high above her, as though it were
+the head of John the Baptist on a platter; and, the cigarette still in
+her mouth, advanced with solemn, hieratic steps.
+
+“Hail, daughter of Herodias,” cried Cronshaw.
+
+The mutton was eaten with gusto, and it did one good to see what a
+hearty appetite the pale-faced lady had. Clutton and Potter sat on each
+side of her, and everyone knew that neither had found her unduly coy.
+She grew tired of most people in six weeks, but she knew exactly how to
+treat afterwards the gentlemen who had laid their young hearts at her
+feet. She bore them no ill-will, though having loved them she had
+ceased to do so, and treated them with friendliness but without
+familiarity. Now and then she looked at Lawson with melancholy eyes.
+The poires flambees were a great success, partly because of the brandy,
+and partly because Miss Chalice insisted that they should be eaten with
+the cheese.
+
+“I don’t know whether it’s perfectly delicious, or whether I’m just
+going to vomit,” she said, after she had thoroughly tried the mixture.
+
+Coffee and cognac followed with sufficient speed to prevent any
+untoward consequence, and they settled down to smoke in comfort. Ruth
+Chalice, who could do nothing that was not deliberately artistic,
+arranged herself in a graceful attitude by Cronshaw and just rested her
+exquisite head on his shoulder. She looked into the dark abyss of time
+with brooding eyes, and now and then with a long meditative glance at
+Lawson she sighed deeply.
+
+Then came the summer, and restlessness seized these young people. The
+blue skies lured them to the sea, and the pleasant breeze sighing
+through the leaves of the plane-trees on the boulevard drew them
+towards the country. Everyone made plans for leaving Paris; they
+discussed what was the most suitable size for the canvases they meant
+to take; they laid in stores of panels for sketching; they argued about
+the merits of various places in Brittany. Flanagan and Potter went to
+Concarneau; Mrs. Otter and her mother, with a natural instinct for the
+obvious, went to Pont-Aven; Philip and Lawson made up their minds to go
+to the forest of Fontainebleau, and Miss Chalice knew of a very good
+hotel at Moret where there was lots of stuff to paint; it was near
+Paris, and neither Philip nor Lawson was indifferent to the railway
+fare. Ruth Chalice would be there, and Lawson had an idea for a
+portrait of her in the open air. Just then the Salon was full of
+portraits of people in gardens, in sunlight, with blinking eyes and
+green reflections of sunlit leaves on their faces. They asked Clutton
+to go with them, but he preferred spending the summer by himself. He
+had just discovered Cezanne, and was eager to go to Provence; he wanted
+heavy skies from which the hot blue seemed to drip like beads of sweat,
+and broad white dusty roads, and pale roofs out of which the sun had
+burnt the colour, and olive trees gray with heat.
+
+The day before they were to start, after the morning class, Philip,
+putting his things together, spoke to Fanny Price.
+
+“I’m off tomorrow,” he said cheerfully.
+
+“Off where?” she said quickly. “You’re not going away?” Her face fell.
+
+“I’m going away for the summer. Aren’t you?”
+
+“No, I’m staying in Paris. I thought you were going to stay too. I was
+looking forward….”
+
+She stopped and shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“But won’t it be frightfully hot here? It’s awfully bad for you.”
+
+“Much you care if it’s bad for me. Where are you going?”
+
+“Moret.”
+
+“Chalice is going there. You’re not going with her?”
+
+“Lawson and I are going. And she’s going there too. I don’t know that
+we’re actually going together.”
+
+She gave a low guttural sound, and her large face grew dark and red.
+
+“How filthy! I thought you were a decent fellow. You were about the
+only one here. She’s been with Clutton and Potter and Flanagan, even
+with old Foinet—that’s why he takes so much trouble about her—and now
+two of you, you and Lawson. It makes me sick.”
+
+“Oh, what nonsense! She’s a very decent sort. One treats her just as if
+she were a man.”
+
+“Oh, don’t speak to me, don’t speak to me.”
+
+“But what can it matter to you?” asked Philip. “It’s really no business
+of yours where I spend my summer.”
+
+“I was looking forward to it so much,” she gasped, speaking it seemed
+almost to herself. “I didn’t think you had the money to go away, and
+there wouldn’t have been anyone else here, and we could have worked
+together, and we’d have gone to see things.” Then her thoughts flung
+back to Ruth Chalice. “The filthy beast,” she cried. “She isn’t fit to
+speak to.”
+
+Philip looked at her with a sinking heart. He was not a man to think
+girls were in love with him; he was too conscious of his deformity, and
+he felt awkward and clumsy with women; but he did not know what else
+this outburst could mean. Fanny Price, in the dirty brown dress, with
+her hair falling over her face, sloppy, untidy, stood before him; and
+tears of anger rolled down her cheeks. She was repellent. Philip
+glanced at the door, instinctively hoping that someone would come in
+and put an end to the scene.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry,” he said.
+
+“You’re just the same as all of them. You take all you can get, and you
+don’t even say thank you. I’ve taught you everything you know. No one
+else would take any trouble with you. Has Foinet ever bothered about
+you? And I can tell you this—you can work here for a thousand years and
+you’ll never do any good. You haven’t got any talent. You haven’t got
+any originality. And it’s not only me—they all say it. You’ll never be
+a painter as long as you live.”
+
+“That is no business of yours either, is it?” said Philip, flushing.
+
+“Oh, you think it’s only my temper. Ask Clutton, ask Lawson, ask
+Chalice. Never, never, never. You haven’t got it in you.”
+
+Philip shrugged his shoulders and walked out. She shouted after him.
+
+“Never, never, never.”
+
+Moret was in those days an old-fashioned town of one street at the edge
+of the forest of Fontainebleau, and the Ecu d’Or was a hotel which
+still had about it the decrepit air of the Ancien Regime. It faced the
+winding river, the Loing; and Miss Chalice had a room with a little
+terrace overlooking it, with a charming view of the old bridge and its
+fortified gateway. They sat here in the evenings after dinner, drinking
+coffee, smoking, and discussing art. There ran into the river, a little
+way off, a narrow canal bordered by poplars, and along the banks of
+this after their day’s work they often wandered. They spent all day
+painting. Like most of their generation they were obsessed by the fear
+of the picturesque, and they turned their backs on the obvious beauty
+of the town to seek subjects which were devoid of a prettiness they
+despised. Sisley and Monet had painted the canal with its poplars, and
+they felt a desire to try their hands at what was so typical of France;
+but they were frightened of its formal beauty, and set themselves
+deliberately to avoid it. Miss Chalice, who had a clever dexterity
+which impressed Lawson notwithstanding his contempt for feminine art,
+started a picture in which she tried to circumvent the commonplace by
+leaving out the tops of the trees; and Lawson had the brilliant idea of
+putting in his foreground a large blue advertisement of chocolat Menier
+in order to emphasise his abhorrence of the chocolate box.
+
+Philip began now to paint in oils. He experienced a thrill of delight
+when first he used that grateful medium. He went out with Lawson in the
+morning with his little box and sat by him painting a panel; it gave
+him so much satisfaction that he did not realise he was doing no more
+than copy; he was so much under his friend’s influence that he saw only
+with his eyes. Lawson painted very low in tone, and they both saw the
+emerald of the grass like dark velvet, while the brilliance of the sky
+turned in their hands to a brooding ultramarine. Through July they had
+one fine day after another; it was very hot; and the heat, searing
+Philip’s heart, filled him with languor; he could not work; his mind
+was eager with a thousand thoughts. Often he spent the mornings by the
+side of the canal in the shade of the poplars, reading a few lines and
+then dreaming for half an hour. Sometimes he hired a rickety bicycle
+and rode along the dusty road that led to the forest, and then lay down
+in a clearing. His head was full of romantic fancies. The ladies of
+Watteau, gay and insouciant, seemed to wander with their cavaliers
+among the great trees, whispering to one another careless, charming
+things, and yet somehow oppressed by a nameless fear.
+
+They were alone in the hotel but for a fat Frenchwoman of middle age, a
+Rabelaisian figure with a broad, obscene laugh. She spent the day by
+the river patiently fishing for fish she never caught, and Philip
+sometimes went down and talked to her. He found out that she had
+belonged to a profession whose most notorious member for our generation
+was Mrs. Warren, and having made a competence she now lived the quiet
+life of the bourgeoise. She told Philip lewd stories.
+
+“You must go to Seville,” she said—she spoke a little broken English.
+“The most beautiful women in the world.”
+
+She leered and nodded her head. Her triple chin, her large belly, shook
+with inward laughter.
+
+It grew so hot that it was almost impossible to sleep at night. The
+heat seemed to linger under the trees as though it were a material
+thing. They did not wish to leave the starlit night, and the three of
+them would sit on the terrace of Ruth Chalice’s room, silent, hour
+after hour, too tired to talk any more, but in voluptuous enjoyment of
+the stillness. They listened to the murmur of the river. The church
+clock struck one and two and sometimes three before they could drag
+themselves to bed. Suddenly Philip became aware that Ruth Chalice and
+Lawson were lovers. He divined it in the way the girl looked at the
+young painter, and in his air of possession; and as Philip sat with
+them he felt a kind of effluence surrounding them, as though the air
+were heavy with something strange. The revelation was a shock. He had
+looked upon Miss Chalice as a very good fellow and he liked to talk to
+her, but it had never seemed to him possible to enter into a closer
+relationship. One Sunday they had all gone with a tea-basket into the
+forest, and when they came to a glade which was suitably sylvan, Miss
+Chalice, because it was idyllic, insisted on taking off her shoes and
+stockings. It would have been very charming only her feet were rather
+large and she had on both a large corn on the third toe. Philip felt it
+made her proceeding a little ridiculous. But now he looked upon her
+quite differently; there was something softly feminine in her large
+eyes and her olive skin; he felt himself a fool not to have seen that
+she was attractive. He thought he detected in her a touch of contempt
+for him, because he had not had the sense to see that she was there, in
+his way, and in Lawson a suspicion of superiority. He was envious of
+Lawson, and he was jealous, not of the individual concerned, but of his
+love. He wished that he was standing in his shoes and feeling with his
+heart. He was troubled, and the fear seized him that love would pass
+him by. He wanted a passion to seize him, he wanted to be swept off his
+feet and borne powerless in a mighty rush he cared not whither. Miss
+Chalice and Lawson seemed to him now somehow different, and the
+constant companionship with them made him restless. He was dissatisfied
+with himself. Life was not giving him what he wanted, and he had an
+uneasy feeling that he was losing his time.
+
+The stout Frenchwoman soon guessed what the relations were between the
+couple, and talked of the matter to Philip with the utmost frankness.
+
+“And you,” she said, with the tolerant smile of one who had fattened on
+the lust of her fellows, “have you got a petite amie?”
+
+“No,” said Philip, blushing.
+
+“And why not? C’est de votre age.”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. He had a volume of Verlaine in his hands,
+and he wandered off. He tried to read, but his passion was too strong.
+He thought of the stray amours to which he had been introduced by
+Flanagan, the sly visits to houses in a cul-de-sac, with the
+drawing-room in Utrecht velvet, and the mercenary graces of painted
+women. He shuddered. He threw himself on the grass, stretching his
+limbs like a young animal freshly awaked from sleep; and the rippling
+water, the poplars gently tremulous in the faint breeze, the blue sky,
+were almost more than he could bear. He was in love with love. In his
+fancy he felt the kiss of warm lips on his, and around his neck the
+touch of soft hands. He imagined himself in the arms of Ruth Chalice,
+he thought of her dark eyes and the wonderful texture of her skin; he
+was mad to have let such a wonderful adventure slip through his
+fingers. And if Lawson had done it why should not he? But this was only
+when he did not see her, when he lay awake at night or dreamed idly by
+the side of the canal; when he saw her he felt suddenly quite
+different; he had no desire to take her in his arms, and he could not
+imagine himself kissing her. It was very curious. Away from her he
+thought her beautiful, remembering only her magnificent eyes and the
+creamy pallor of her face; but when he was with her he saw only that
+she was flat-chested and that her teeth were slightly decayed; he could
+not forget the corns on her toes. He could not understand himself.
+Would he always love only in absence and be prevented from enjoying
+anything when he had the chance by that deformity of vision which
+seemed to exaggerate the revolting?
+
+He was not sorry when a change in the weather, announcing the definite
+end of the long summer, drove them all back to Paris.
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+
+When Philip returned to Amitrano’s he found that Fanny Price was no
+longer working there. She had given up the key of her locker. He asked
+Mrs. Otter whether she knew what had become of her; and Mrs. Otter,
+with a shrug of the shoulders, answered that she had probably gone back
+to England. Philip was relieved. He was profoundly bored by her
+ill-temper. Moreover she insisted on advising him about his work,
+looked upon it as a slight when he did not follow her precepts, and
+would not understand that he felt himself no longer the duffer he had
+been at first. Soon he forgot all about her. He was working in oils now
+and he was full of enthusiasm. He hoped to have something done of
+sufficient importance to send to the following year’s Salon. Lawson was
+painting a portrait of Miss Chalice. She was very paintable, and all
+the young men who had fallen victims to her charm had made portraits of
+her. A natural indolence, joined with a passion for picturesque
+attitude, made her an excellent sitter; and she had enough technical
+knowledge to offer useful criticisms. Since her passion for art was
+chiefly a passion to live the life of artists, she was quite content to
+neglect her own work. She liked the warmth of the studio, and the
+opportunity to smoke innumerable cigarettes; and she spoke in a low,
+pleasant voice of the love of art and the art of love. She made no
+clear distinction between the two.
+
+Lawson was painting with infinite labour, working till he could hardly
+stand for days and then scraping out all he had done. He would have
+exhausted the patience of anyone but Ruth Chalice. At last he got into
+a hopeless muddle.
+
+“The only thing is to take a new canvas and start fresh,” he said. “I
+know exactly what I want now, and it won’t take me long.”
+
+Philip was present at the time, and Miss Chalice said to him:
+
+“Why don’t you paint me too? You’ll be able to learn a lot by watching
+Mr. Lawson.”
+
+It was one of Miss Chalice’s delicacies that she always addressed her
+lovers by their surnames.
+
+“I should like it awfully if Lawson wouldn’t mind.”
+
+“I don’t care a damn,” said Lawson.
+
+It was the first time that Philip set about a portrait, and he began
+with trepidation but also with pride. He sat by Lawson and painted as
+he saw him paint. He profited by the example and by the advice which
+both Lawson and Miss Chalice freely gave him. At last Lawson finished
+and invited Clutton in to criticise. Clutton had only just come back to
+Paris. From Provence he had drifted down to Spain, eager to see
+Velasquez at Madrid, and thence he had gone to Toledo. He stayed there
+three months, and he was returned with a name new to the young men: he
+had wonderful things to say of a painter called El Greco, who it
+appeared could only be studied in Toledo.
+
+“Oh yes, I know about him,” said Lawson, “he’s the old master whose
+distinction it is that he painted as badly as the moderns.”
+
+Clutton, more taciturn than ever, did not answer, but he looked at
+Lawson with a sardonic air.
+
+“Are you going to show us the stuff you’ve brought back from Spain?”
+asked Philip.
+
+“I didn’t paint in Spain, I was too busy.”
+
+“What did you do then?”
+
+“I thought things out. I believe I’m through with the Impressionists;
+I’ve got an idea they’ll seem very thin and superficial in a few years.
+I want to make a clean sweep of everything I’ve learnt and start fresh.
+When I came back I destroyed everything I’d painted. I’ve got nothing
+in my studio now but an easel, my paints, and some clean canvases.”
+
+“What are you going to do?”
+
+“I don’t know yet. I’ve only got an inkling of what I want.”
+
+He spoke slowly, in a curious manner, as though he were straining to
+hear something which was only just audible. There seemed to be a
+mysterious force in him which he himself did not understand, but which
+was struggling obscurely to find an outlet. His strength impressed you.
+Lawson dreaded the criticism he asked for and had discounted the blame
+he thought he might get by affecting a contempt for any opinion of
+Clutton’s; but Philip knew there was nothing which would give him more
+pleasure than Clutton’s praise. Clutton looked at the portrait for some
+time in silence, then glanced at Philip’s picture, which was standing
+on an easel.
+
+“What’s that?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, I had a shot at a portrait too.”
+
+“The sedulous ape,” he murmured.
+
+He turned away again to Lawson’s canvas. Philip reddened but did not
+speak.
+
+“Well, what d’you think of it?” asked Lawson at length.
+
+“The modelling’s jolly good,” said Clutton. “And I think it’s very well
+drawn.”
+
+“D’you think the values are all right?”
+
+“Quite.”
+
+Lawson smiled with delight. He shook himself in his clothes like a wet
+dog.
+
+“I say, I’m jolly glad you like it.”
+
+“I don’t. I don’t think it’s of the smallest importance.”
+
+Lawson’s face fell, and he stared at Clutton with astonishment: he had
+no notion what he meant, Clutton had no gift of expression in words,
+and he spoke as though it were an effort. What he had to say was
+confused, halting, and verbose; but Philip knew the words which served
+as the text of his rambling discourse. Clutton, who never read, had
+heard them first from Cronshaw; and though they had made small
+impression, they had remained in his memory; and lately, emerging on a
+sudden, had acquired the character of a revelation: a good painter had
+two chief objects to paint, namely, man and the intention of his soul.
+The Impressionists had been occupied with other problems, they had
+painted man admirably, but they had troubled themselves as little as
+the English portrait painters of the eighteenth century with the
+intention of his soul.
+
+“But when you try to get that you become literary,” said Lawson,
+interrupting. “Let me paint the man like Manet, and the intention of
+his soul can go to the devil.”
+
+“That would be all very well if you could beat Manet at his own game,
+but you can’t get anywhere near him. You can’t feed yourself on the day
+before yesterday, it’s ground which has been swept dry. You must go
+back. It’s when I saw the Grecos that I felt one could get something
+more out of portraits than we knew before.”
+
+“It’s just going back to Ruskin,” cried Lawson.
+
+“No—you see, he went for morality: I don’t care a damn for morality:
+teaching doesn’t come in, ethics and all that, but passion and emotion.
+The greatest portrait painters have painted both, man and the intention
+of his soul; Rembrandt and El Greco; it’s only the second-raters who’ve
+only painted man. A lily of the valley would be lovely even if it
+didn’t smell, but it’s more lovely because it has perfume. That
+picture”—he pointed to Lawson’s portrait—“well, the drawing’s all right
+and so’s the modelling all right, but just conventional; it ought to be
+drawn and modelled so that you know the girl’s a lousy slut.
+Correctness is all very well: El Greco made his people eight feet high
+because he wanted to express something he couldn’t get any other way.”
+
+“Damn El Greco,” said Lawson, “what’s the good of jawing about a man
+when we haven’t a chance of seeing any of his work?”
+
+Clutton shrugged his shoulders, smoked a cigarette in silence, and went
+away. Philip and Lawson looked at one another.
+
+“There’s something in what he says,” said Philip.
+
+Lawson stared ill-temperedly at his picture.
+
+“How the devil is one to get the intention of the soul except by
+painting exactly what one sees?”
+
+About this time Philip made a new friend. On Monday morning models
+assembled at the school in order that one might be chosen for the week,
+and one day a young man was taken who was plainly not a model by
+profession. Philip’s attention was attracted by the manner in which he
+held himself: when he got on to the stand he stood firmly on both feet,
+square, with clenched hands, and with his head defiantly thrown
+forward; the attitude emphasised his fine figure; there was no fat on
+him, and his muscles stood out as though they were of iron. His head,
+close-cropped, was well-shaped, and he wore a short beard; he had
+large, dark eyes and heavy eyebrows. He held the pose hour after hour
+without appearance of fatigue. There was in his mien a mixture of shame
+and of determination. His air of passionate energy excited Philip’s
+romantic imagination, and when, the sitting ended, he saw him in his
+clothes, it seemed to him that he wore them as though he were a king in
+rags. He was uncommunicative, but in a day or two Mrs. Otter told
+Philip that the model was a Spaniard and that he had never sat before.
+
+“I suppose he was starving,” said Philip.
+
+“Have you noticed his clothes? They’re quite neat and decent, aren’t
+they?”
+
+It chanced that Potter, one of the Americans who worked at Amitrano’s,
+was going to Italy for a couple of months, and offered his studio to
+Philip. Philip was pleased. He was growing a little impatient of
+Lawson’s peremptory advice and wanted to be by himself. At the end of
+the week he went up to the model and on the pretence that his drawing
+was not finished asked whether he would come and sit to him one day.
+
+“I’m not a model,” the Spaniard answered. “I have other things to do
+next week.”
+
+“Come and have luncheon with me now, and we’ll talk about it,” said
+Philip, and as the other hesitated, he added with a smile: “It won’t
+hurt you to lunch with me.”
+
+With a shrug of the shoulders the model consented, and they went off to
+a cremerie. The Spaniard spoke broken French, fluent but difficult to
+follow, and Philip managed to get on well enough with him. He found out
+that he was a writer. He had come to Paris to write novels and kept
+himself meanwhile by all the expedients possible to a penniless man; he
+gave lessons, he did any translations he could get hold of, chiefly
+business documents, and at last had been driven to make money by his
+fine figure. Sitting was well paid, and what he had earned during the
+last week was enough to keep him for two more; he told Philip, amazed,
+that he could live easily on two francs a day; but it filled him with
+shame that he was obliged to show his body for money, and he looked
+upon sitting as a degradation which only hunger could excuse. Philip
+explained that he did not want him to sit for the figure, but only for
+the head; he wished to do a portrait of him which he might send to the
+next Salon.
+
+“But why should you want to paint me?” asked the Spaniard.
+
+Philip answered that the head interested him, he thought he could do a
+good portrait.
+
+“I can’t afford the time. I grudge every minute that I have to rob from
+my writing.”
+
+“But it would only be in the afternoon. I work at the school in the
+morning. After all, it’s better to sit to me than to do translations of
+legal documents.”
+
+There were legends in the Latin quarter of a time when students of
+different countries lived together intimately, but this was long since
+passed, and now the various nations were almost as much separated as in
+an Oriental city. At Julian’s and at the Beaux Arts a French student
+was looked upon with disfavour by his fellow-countrymen when he
+consorted with foreigners, and it was difficult for an Englishman to
+know more than quite superficially any native inhabitants of the city
+in which he dwelt. Indeed, many of the students after living in Paris
+for five years knew no more French than served them in shops and lived
+as English a life as though they were working in South Kensington.
+
+Philip, with his passion for the romantic, welcomed the opportunity to
+get in touch with a Spaniard; he used all his persuasiveness to
+overcome the man’s reluctance.
+
+“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said the Spaniard at last. “I’ll sit to
+you, but not for money, for my own pleasure.”
+
+Philip expostulated, but the other was firm, and at length they
+arranged that he should come on the following Monday at one o’clock. He
+gave Philip a card on which was printed his name: Miguel Ajuria.
+
+Miguel sat regularly, and though he refused to accept payment he
+borrowed fifty francs from Philip every now and then: it was a little
+more expensive than if Philip had paid for the sittings in the usual
+way; but gave the Spaniard a satisfactory feeling that he was not
+earning his living in a degrading manner. His nationality made Philip
+regard him as a representative of romance, and he asked him about
+Seville and Granada, Velasquez and Calderon. But Miguel had no patience
+with the grandeur of his country. For him, as for so many of his
+compatriots, France was the only country for a man of intelligence and
+Paris the centre of the world.
+
+“Spain is dead,” he cried. “It has no writers, it has no art, it has
+nothing.”
+
+Little by little, with the exuberant rhetoric of his race, he revealed
+his ambitions. He was writing a novel which he hoped would make his
+name. He was under the influence of Zola, and he had set his scene in
+Paris. He told Philip the story at length. To Philip it seemed crude
+and stupid; the naive obscenity—c’est la vie, mon cher, c’est la vie,
+he cried—the naive obscenity served only to emphasise the
+conventionality of the anecdote. He had written for two years, amid
+incredible hardships, denying himself all the pleasures of life which
+had attracted him to Paris, fighting with starvation for art’s sake,
+determined that nothing should hinder his great achievement. The effort
+was heroic.
+
+“But why don’t you write about Spain?” cried Philip. “It would be so
+much more interesting. You know the life.”
+
+“But Paris is the only place worth writing about. Paris is life.”
+
+One day he brought part of the manuscript, and in his bad French,
+translating excitedly as he went along so that Philip could scarcely
+understand, he read passages. It was lamentable. Philip, puzzled,
+looked at the picture he was painting: the mind behind that broad brow
+was trivial; and the flashing, passionate eyes saw nothing in life but
+the obvious. Philip was not satisfied with his portrait, and at the end
+of a sitting he nearly always scraped out what he had done. It was all
+very well to aim at the intention of the soul: who could tell what that
+was when people seemed a mass of contradictions? He liked Miguel, and
+it distressed him to realise that his magnificent struggle was futile:
+he had everything to make a good writer but talent. Philip looked at
+his own work. How could you tell whether there was anything in it or
+whether you were wasting your time? It was clear that the will to
+achieve could not help you and confidence in yourself meant nothing.
+Philip thought of Fanny Price; she had a vehement belief in her talent;
+her strength of will was extraordinary.
+
+“If I thought I wasn’t going to be really good, I’d rather give up
+painting,” said Philip. “I don’t see any use in being a second-rate
+painter.”
+
+Then one morning when he was going out, the concierge called out to him
+that there was a letter. Nobody wrote to him but his Aunt Louisa and
+sometimes Hayward, and this was a handwriting he did not know. The
+letter was as follows:
+
+Please come at once when you get this. I couldn’t put up with it any
+more. Please come yourself. I can’t bear the thought that anyone else
+should touch me. I want you to have everything.
+
+F. Price
+
+I have not had anything to eat for three days.
+
+Philip felt on a sudden sick with fear. He hurried to the house in
+which she lived. He was astonished that she was in Paris at all. He had
+not seen her for months and imagined she had long since returned to
+England. When he arrived he asked the concierge whether she was in.
+
+“Yes, I’ve not seen her go out for two days.”
+
+Philip ran upstairs and knocked at the door. There was no reply. He
+called her name. The door was locked, and on bending down he found the
+key was in the lock.
+
+“Oh, my God, I hope she hasn’t done something awful,” he cried aloud.
+
+He ran down and told the porter that she was certainly in the room. He
+had had a letter from her and feared a terrible accident. He suggested
+breaking open the door. The porter, who had been sullen and disinclined
+to listen, became alarmed; he could not take the responsibility of
+breaking into the room; they must go for the commissaire de police.
+They walked together to the bureau, and then they fetched a locksmith.
+Philip found that Miss Price had not paid the last quarter’s rent: on
+New Year’s Day she had not given the concierge the present which
+old-established custom led him to regard as a right. The four of them
+went upstairs, and they knocked again at the door. There was no reply.
+The locksmith set to work, and at last they entered the room. Philip
+gave a cry and instinctively covered his eyes with his hands. The
+wretched woman was hanging with a rope round her neck, which she had
+tied to a hook in the ceiling fixed by some previous tenant to hold up
+the curtains of the bed. She had moved her own little bed out of the
+way and had stood on a chair, which had been kicked away. It was lying
+on its side on the floor. They cut her down. The body was quite cold.
+
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+
+The story which Philip made out in one way and another was terrible.
+One of the grievances of the women-students was that Fanny Price would
+never share their gay meals in restaurants, and the reason was obvious:
+she had been oppressed by dire poverty. He remembered the luncheon they
+had eaten together when first he came to Paris and the ghoulish
+appetite which had disgusted him: he realised now that she ate in that
+manner because she was ravenous. The concierge told him what her food
+had consisted of. A bottle of milk was left for her every day and she
+brought in her own loaf of bread; she ate half the loaf and drank half
+the milk at mid-day when she came back from the school, and consumed
+the rest in the evening. It was the same day after day. Philip thought
+with anguish of what she must have endured. She had never given anyone
+to understand that she was poorer than the rest, but it was clear that
+her money had been coming to an end, and at last she could not afford
+to come any more to the studio. The little room was almost bare of
+furniture, and there were no other clothes than the shabby brown dress
+she had always worn. Philip searched among her things for the address
+of some friend with whom he could communicate. He found a piece of
+paper on which his own name was written a score of times. It gave him a
+peculiar shock. He supposed it was true that she had loved him; he
+thought of the emaciated body, in the brown dress, hanging from the
+nail in the ceiling; and he shuddered. But if she had cared for him why
+did she not let him help her? He would so gladly have done all he
+could. He felt remorseful because he had refused to see that she looked
+upon him with any particular feeling, and now these words in her letter
+were infinitely pathetic: I can’t bear the thought that anyone else
+should touch me. She had died of starvation.
+
+Philip found at length a letter signed: your loving brother, Albert. It
+was two or three weeks old, dated from some road in Surbiton, and
+refused a loan of five pounds. The writer had his wife and family to
+think of, he didn’t feel justified in lending money, and his advice was
+that Fanny should come back to London and try to get a situation.
+Philip telegraphed to Albert Price, and in a little while an answer
+came:
+
+“Deeply distressed. Very awkward to leave my business. Is presence
+essential. Price.”
+
+Philip wired a succinct affirmative, and next morning a stranger
+presented himself at the studio.
+
+“My name’s Price,” he said, when Philip opened the door.
+
+He was a commonish man in black with a band round his bowler hat; he
+had something of Fanny’s clumsy look; he wore a stubbly moustache, and
+had a cockney accent. Philip asked him to come in. He cast sidelong
+glances round the studio while Philip gave him details of the accident
+and told him what he had done.
+
+“I needn’t see her, need I?” asked Albert Price. “My nerves aren’t very
+strong, and it takes very little to upset me.”
+
+He began to talk freely. He was a rubber-merchant, and he had a wife
+and three children. Fanny was a governess, and he couldn’t make out why
+she hadn’t stuck to that instead of coming to Paris.
+
+“Me and Mrs. Price told her Paris was no place for a girl. And there’s
+no money in art—never ’as been.”
+
+It was plain enough that he had not been on friendly terms with his
+sister, and he resented her suicide as a last injury that she had done
+him. He did not like the idea that she had been forced to it by
+poverty; that seemed to reflect on the family. The idea struck him that
+possibly there was a more respectable reason for her act.
+
+“I suppose she ’adn’t any trouble with a man, ’ad she? You know what I
+mean, Paris and all that. She might ’ave done it so as not to disgrace
+herself.”
+
+Philip felt himself reddening and cursed his weakness. Price’s keen
+little eyes seemed to suspect him of an intrigue.
+
+“I believe your sister to have been perfectly virtuous,” he answered
+acidly. “She killed herself because she was starving.”
+
+“Well, it’s very ’ard on her family, Mr. Carey. She only ’ad to write
+to me. I wouldn’t have let my sister want.”
+
+Philip had found the brother’s address only by reading the letter in
+which he refused a loan; but he shrugged his shoulders: there was no
+use in recrimination. He hated the little man and wanted to have done
+with him as soon as possible. Albert Price also wished to get through
+the necessary business quickly so that he could get back to London.
+They went to the tiny room in which poor Fanny had lived. Albert Price
+looked at the pictures and the furniture.
+
+“I don’t pretend to know much about art,” he said. “I suppose these
+pictures would fetch something, would they?”
+
+“Nothing,” said Philip.
+
+“The furniture’s not worth ten shillings.”
+
+Albert Price knew no French and Philip had to do everything. It seemed
+that it was an interminable process to get the poor body safely hidden
+away under ground: papers had to be obtained in one place and signed in
+another; officials had to be seen. For three days Philip was occupied
+from morning till night. At last he and Albert Price followed the
+hearse to the cemetery at Montparnasse.
+
+“I want to do the thing decent,” said Albert Price, “but there’s no use
+wasting money.”
+
+The short ceremony was infinitely dreadful in the cold gray morning.
+Half a dozen people who had worked with Fanny Price at the studio came
+to the funeral, Mrs. Otter because she was massiere and thought it her
+duty, Ruth Chalice because she had a kind heart, Lawson, Clutton, and
+Flanagan. They had all disliked her during her life. Philip, looking
+across the cemetery crowded on all sides with monuments, some poor and
+simple, others vulgar, pretentious, and ugly, shuddered. It was
+horribly sordid. When they came out Albert Price asked Philip to lunch
+with him. Philip loathed him now and he was tired; he had not been
+sleeping well, for he dreamed constantly of Fanny Price in the torn
+brown dress, hanging from the nail in the ceiling; but he could not
+think of an excuse.
+
+“You take me somewhere where we can get a regular slap-up lunch. All
+this is the very worst thing for my nerves.”
+
+“Lavenue’s is about the best place round here,” answered Philip.
+
+Albert Price settled himself on a velvet seat with a sigh of relief. He
+ordered a substantial luncheon and a bottle of wine.
+
+“Well, I’m glad that’s over,” he said.
+
+He threw out a few artful questions, and Philip discovered that he was
+eager to hear about the painter’s life in Paris. He represented it to
+himself as deplorable, but he was anxious for details of the orgies
+which his fancy suggested to him. With sly winks and discreet
+sniggering he conveyed that he knew very well that there was a great
+deal more than Philip confessed. He was a man of the world, and he knew
+a thing or two. He asked Philip whether he had ever been to any of
+those places in Montmartre which are celebrated from Temple Bar to the
+Royal Exchange. He would like to say he had been to the Moulin Rouge.
+The luncheon was very good and the wine excellent. Albert Price
+expanded as the processes of digestion went satisfactorily forwards.
+
+“Let’s ’ave a little brandy,” he said when the coffee was brought, “and
+blow the expense.”
+
+He rubbed his hands.
+
+“You know, I’ve got ’alf a mind to stay over tonight and go back
+tomorrow. What d’you say to spending the evening together?”
+
+“If you mean you want me to take you round Montmartre tonight, I’ll see
+you damned,” said Philip.
+
+“I suppose it wouldn’t be quite the thing.”
+
+The answer was made so seriously that Philip was tickled.
+
+“Besides it would be rotten for your nerves,” he said gravely.
+
+Albert Price concluded that he had better go back to London by the four
+o’clock train, and presently he took leave of Philip.
+
+“Well, good-bye, old man,” he said. “I tell you what, I’ll try and come
+over to Paris again one of these days and I’ll look you up. And then we
+won’t ’alf go on the razzle.”
+
+Philip was too restless to work that afternoon, so he jumped on a bus
+and crossed the river to see whether there were any pictures on view at
+Durand-Ruel’s. After that he strolled along the boulevard. It was cold
+and wind-swept. People hurried by wrapped up in their coats, shrunk
+together in an effort to keep out of the cold, and their faces were
+pinched and careworn. It was icy underground in the cemetery at
+Montparnasse among all those white tombstones. Philip felt lonely in
+the world and strangely homesick. He wanted company. At that hour
+Cronshaw would be working, and Clutton never welcomed visitors; Lawson
+was painting another portrait of Ruth Chalice and would not care to be
+disturbed. He made up his mind to go and see Flanagan. He found him
+painting, but delighted to throw up his work and talk. The studio was
+comfortable, for the American had more money than most of them, and
+warm; Flanagan set about making tea. Philip looked at the two heads
+that he was sending to the Salon.
+
+“It’s awful cheek my sending anything,” said Flanagan, “but I don’t
+care, I’m going to send. D’you think they’re rotten?”
+
+“Not so rotten as I should have expected,” said Philip.
+
+They showed in fact an astounding cleverness. The difficulties had been
+avoided with skill, and there was a dash about the way in which the
+paint was put on which was surprising and even attractive. Flanagan,
+without knowledge or technique, painted with the loose brush of a man
+who has spent a lifetime in the practice of the art.
+
+“If one were forbidden to look at any picture for more than thirty
+seconds you’d be a great master, Flanagan,” smiled Philip.
+
+These young people were not in the habit of spoiling one another with
+excessive flattery.
+
+“We haven’t got time in America to spend more than thirty seconds in
+looking at any picture,” laughed the other.
+
+Flanagan, though he was the most scatter-brained person in the world,
+had a tenderness of heart which was unexpected and charming. Whenever
+anyone was ill he installed himself as sick-nurse. His gaiety was
+better than any medicine. Like many of his countrymen he had not the
+English dread of sentimentality which keeps so tight a hold on emotion;
+and, finding nothing absurd in the show of feeling, could offer an
+exuberant sympathy which was often grateful to his friends in distress.
+He saw that Philip was depressed by what he had gone through and with
+unaffected kindliness set himself boisterously to cheer him up. He
+exaggerated the Americanisms which he knew always made the Englishmen
+laugh and poured out a breathless stream of conversation, whimsical,
+high-spirited, and jolly. In due course they went out to dinner and
+afterwards to the Gaite Montparnasse, which was Flanagan’s favourite
+place of amusement. By the end of the evening he was in his most
+extravagant humour. He had drunk a good deal, but any inebriety from
+which he suffered was due much more to his own vivacity than to
+alcohol. He proposed that they should go to the Bal Bullier, and
+Philip, feeling too tired to go to bed, willingly enough consented.
+They sat down at a table on the platform at the side, raised a little
+from the level of the floor so that they could watch the dancing, and
+drank a bock. Presently Flanagan saw a friend and with a wild shout
+leaped over the barrier on to the space where they were dancing. Philip
+watched the people. Bullier was not the resort of fashion. It was
+Thursday night and the place was crowded. There were a number of
+students of the various faculties, but most of the men were clerks or
+assistants in shops; they wore their everyday clothes, ready-made
+tweeds or queer tail-coats, and their hats, for they had brought them
+in with them, and when they danced there was no place to put them but
+their heads. Some of the women looked like servant-girls, and some were
+painted hussies, but for the most part they were shop-girls. They were
+poorly-dressed in cheap imitation of the fashions on the other side of
+the river. The hussies were got up to resemble the music-hall artiste
+or the dancer who enjoyed notoriety at the moment; their eyes were
+heavy with black and their cheeks impudently scarlet. The hall was lit
+by great white lights, low down, which emphasised the shadows on the
+faces; all the lines seemed to harden under it, and the colours were
+most crude. It was a sordid scene. Philip leaned over the rail, staring
+down, and he ceased to hear the music. They danced furiously. They
+danced round the room, slowly, talking very little, with all their
+attention given to the dance. The room was hot, and their faces shone
+with sweat. It seemed to Philip that they had thrown off the guard
+which people wear on their expression, the homage to convention, and he
+saw them now as they really were. In that moment of abandon they were
+strangely animal: some were foxy and some were wolf-like; and others
+had the long, foolish face of sheep. Their skins were sallow from the
+unhealthy life they led and the poor food they ate. Their features were
+blunted by mean interests, and their little eyes were shifty and
+cunning. There was nothing of nobility in their bearing, and you felt
+that for all of them life was a long succession of petty concerns and
+sordid thoughts. The air was heavy with the musty smell of humanity.
+But they danced furiously as though impelled by some strange power
+within them, and it seemed to Philip that they were driven forward by a
+rage for enjoyment. They were seeking desperately to escape from a
+world of horror. The desire for pleasure which Cronshaw said was the
+only motive of human action urged them blindly on, and the very
+vehemence of the desire seemed to rob it of all pleasure. They were
+hurried on by a great wind, helplessly, they knew not why and they knew
+not whither. Fate seemed to tower above them, and they danced as though
+everlasting darkness were beneath their feet. Their silence was vaguely
+alarming. It was as if life terrified them and robbed them of power of
+speech so that the shriek which was in their hearts died at their
+throats. Their eyes were haggard and grim; and notwithstanding the
+beastly lust that disfigured them, and the meanness of their faces, and
+the cruelty, notwithstanding the stupidness which was worst of all, the
+anguish of those fixed eyes made all that crowd terrible and pathetic.
+Philip loathed them, and yet his heart ached with the infinite pity
+which filled him.
+
+He took his coat from the cloak-room and went out into the bitter
+coldness of the night.
+
+
+
+
+L
+
+
+Philip could not get the unhappy event out of his head. What troubled
+him most was the uselessness of Fanny’s effort. No one could have
+worked harder than she, nor with more sincerity; she believed in
+herself with all her heart; but it was plain that self-confidence meant
+very little, all his friends had it, Miguel Ajuria among the rest; and
+Philip was shocked by the contrast between the Spaniard’s heroic
+endeavour and the triviality of the thing he attempted. The unhappiness
+of Philip’s life at school had called up in him the power of
+self-analysis; and this vice, as subtle as drug-taking, had taken
+possession of him so that he had now a peculiar keenness in the
+dissection of his feelings. He could not help seeing that art affected
+him differently from others. A fine picture gave Lawson an immediate
+thrill. His appreciation was instinctive. Even Flanagan felt certain
+things which Philip was obliged to think out. His own appreciation was
+intellectual. He could not help thinking that if he had in him the
+artistic temperament (he hated the phrase, but could discover no other)
+he would feel beauty in the emotional, unreasoning way in which they
+did. He began to wonder whether he had anything more than a superficial
+cleverness of the hand which enabled him to copy objects with accuracy.
+That was nothing. He had learned to despise technical dexterity. The
+important thing was to feel in terms of paint. Lawson painted in a
+certain way because it was his nature to, and through the imitativeness
+of a student sensitive to every influence, there pierced individuality.
+Philip looked at his own portrait of Ruth Chalice, and now that three
+months had passed he realised that it was no more than a servile copy
+of Lawson. He felt himself barren. He painted with the brain, and he
+could not help knowing that the only painting worth anything was done
+with the heart.
+
+He had very little money, barely sixteen hundred pounds, and it would
+be necessary for him to practise the severest economy. He could not
+count on earning anything for ten years. The history of painting was
+full of artists who had earned nothing at all. He must resign himself
+to penury; and it was worth while if he produced work which was
+immortal; but he had a terrible fear that he would never be more than
+second-rate. Was it worth while for that to give up one’s youth, and
+the gaiety of life, and the manifold chances of being? He knew the
+existence of foreign painters in Paris enough to see that the lives
+they led were narrowly provincial. He knew some who had dragged along
+for twenty years in the pursuit of a fame which always escaped them
+till they sunk into sordidness and alcoholism. Fanny’s suicide had
+aroused memories, and Philip heard ghastly stories of the way in which
+one person or another had escaped from despair. He remembered the
+scornful advice which the master had given poor Fanny: it would have
+been well for her if she had taken it and given up an attempt which was
+hopeless.
+
+Philip finished his portrait of Miguel Ajuria and made up his mind to
+send it to the Salon. Flanagan was sending two pictures, and he thought
+he could paint as well as Flanagan. He had worked so hard on the
+portrait that he could not help feeling it must have merit. It was true
+that when he looked at it he felt that there was something wrong,
+though he could not tell what; but when he was away from it his spirits
+went up and he was not dissatisfied. He sent it to the Salon and it was
+refused. He did not mind much, since he had done all he could to
+persuade himself that there was little chance that it would be taken,
+till Flanagan a few days later rushed in to tell Lawson and Philip that
+one of his pictures was accepted. With a blank face Philip offered his
+congratulations, and Flanagan was so busy congratulating himself that
+he did not catch the note of irony which Philip could not prevent from
+coming into his voice. Lawson, quicker-witted, observed it and looked
+at Philip curiously. His own picture was all right, he knew that a day
+or two before, and he was vaguely resentful of Philip’s attitude. But
+he was surprised at the sudden question which Philip put him as soon as
+the American was gone.
+
+“If you were in my place would you chuck the whole thing?”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I wonder if it’s worth while being a second-rate painter. You see, in
+other things, if you’re a doctor or if you’re in business, it doesn’t
+matter so much if you’re mediocre. You make a living and you get along.
+But what is the good of turning out second-rate pictures?”
+
+Lawson was fond of Philip and, as soon as he thought he was seriously
+distressed by the refusal of his picture, he set himself to console
+him. It was notorious that the Salon had refused pictures which were
+afterwards famous; it was the first time Philip had sent, and he must
+expect a rebuff; Flanagan’s success was explicable, his picture was
+showy and superficial: it was just the sort of thing a languid jury
+would see merit in. Philip grew impatient; it was humiliating that
+Lawson should think him capable of being seriously disturbed by so
+trivial a calamity and would not realise that his dejection was due to
+a deep-seated distrust of his powers.
+
+Of late Clutton had withdrawn himself somewhat from the group who took
+their meals at Gravier’s, and lived very much by himself. Flanagan said
+he was in love with a girl, but Clutton’s austere countenance did not
+suggest passion; and Philip thought it more probable that he separated
+himself from his friends so that he might grow clear with the new ideas
+which were in him. But that evening, when the others had left the
+restaurant to go to a play and Philip was sitting alone, Clutton came
+in and ordered dinner. They began to talk, and finding Clutton more
+loquacious and less sardonic than usual, Philip determined to take
+advantage of his good humour.
+
+“I say I wish you’d come and look at my picture,” he said. “I’d like to
+know what you think of it.”
+
+“No, I won’t do that.”
+
+“Why not?” asked Philip, reddening.
+
+The request was one which they all made of one another, and no one ever
+thought of refusing. Clutton shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise. Besides,
+what’s the good of criticism? What does it matter if your picture is
+good or bad?”
+
+“It matters to me.”
+
+“No. The only reason that one paints is that one can’t help it. It’s a
+function like any of the other functions of the body, only
+comparatively few people have got it. One paints for oneself: otherwise
+one would commit suicide. Just think of it, you spend God knows how
+long trying to get something on to canvas, putting the sweat of your
+soul into it, and what is the result? Ten to one it will be refused at
+the Salon; if it’s accepted, people glance at it for ten seconds as
+they pass; if you’re lucky some ignorant fool will buy it and put it on
+his walls and look at it as little as he looks at his dining-room
+table. Criticism has nothing to do with the artist. It judges
+objectively, but the objective doesn’t concern the artist.”
+
+Clutton put his hands over his eyes so that he might concentrate his
+mind on what he wanted to say.
+
+“The artist gets a peculiar sensation from something he sees, and is
+impelled to express it and, he doesn’t know why, he can only express
+his feeling by lines and colours. It’s like a musician; he’ll read a
+line or two, and a certain combination of notes presents itself to him:
+he doesn’t know why such and such words call forth in him such and such
+notes; they just do. And I’ll tell you another reason why criticism is
+meaningless: a great painter forces the world to see nature as he sees
+it; but in the next generation another painter sees the world in
+another way, and then the public judges him not by himself but by his
+predecessor. So the Barbizon people taught our fathers to look at trees
+in a certain manner, and when Monet came along and painted differently,
+people said: But trees aren’t like that. It never struck them that
+trees are exactly how a painter chooses to see them. We paint from
+within outwards—if we force our vision on the world it calls us great
+painters; if we don’t it ignores us; but we are the same. We don’t
+attach any meaning to greatness or to smallness. What happens to our
+work afterwards is unimportant; we have got all we could out of it
+while we were doing it.”
+
+There was a pause while Clutton with voracious appetite devoured the
+food that was set before him. Philip, smoking a cheap cigar, observed
+him closely. The ruggedness of the head, which looked as though it were
+carved from a stone refractory to the sculptor’s chisel, the rough mane
+of dark hair, the great nose, and the massive bones of the jaw,
+suggested a man of strength; and yet Philip wondered whether perhaps
+the mask concealed a strange weakness. Clutton’s refusal to show his
+work might be sheer vanity: he could not bear the thought of anyone’s
+criticism, and he would not expose himself to the chance of a refusal
+from the Salon; he wanted to be received as a master and would not risk
+comparisons with other work which might force him to diminish his own
+opinion of himself. During the eighteen months Philip had known him
+Clutton had grown more harsh and bitter; though he would not come out
+into the open and compete with his fellows, he was indignant with the
+facile success of those who did. He had no patience with Lawson, and
+the pair were no longer on the intimate terms upon which they had been
+when Philip first knew them.
+
+“Lawson’s all right,” he said contemptuously, “he’ll go back to
+England, become a fashionable portrait painter, earn ten thousand a
+year and be an A. R. A. before he’s forty. Portraits done by hand for
+the nobility and gentry!”
+
+Philip, too, looked into the future, and he saw Clutton in twenty
+years, bitter, lonely, savage, and unknown; still in Paris, for the
+life there had got into his bones, ruling a small cenacle with a savage
+tongue, at war with himself and the world, producing little in his
+increasing passion for a perfection he could not reach; and perhaps
+sinking at last into drunkenness. Of late Philip had been captivated by
+an idea that since one had only one life it was important to make a
+success of it, but he did not count success by the acquiring of money
+or the achieving of fame; he did not quite know yet what he meant by
+it, perhaps variety of experience and the making the most of his
+abilities. It was plain anyway that the life which Clutton seemed
+destined to was failure. Its only justification would be the painting
+of imperishable masterpieces. He recollected Cronshaw’s whimsical
+metaphor of the Persian carpet; he had thought of it often; but
+Cronshaw with his faun-like humour had refused to make his meaning
+clear: he repeated that it had none unless one discovered it for
+oneself. It was this desire to make a success of life which was at the
+bottom of Philip’s uncertainty about continuing his artistic career.
+But Clutton began to talk again.
+
+“D’you remember my telling you about that chap I met in Brittany? I saw
+him the other day here. He’s just off to Tahiti. He was broke to the
+world. He was a brasseur d’affaires, a stockbroker I suppose you call
+it in English; and he had a wife and family, and he was earning a large
+income. He chucked it all to become a painter. He just went off and
+settled down in Brittany and began to paint. He hadn’t got any money
+and did the next best thing to starving.”
+
+“And what about his wife and family?” asked Philip.
+
+“Oh, he dropped them. He left them to starve on their own account.”
+
+“It sounds a pretty low-down thing to do.”
+
+“Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up
+being an artist. They’ve got nothing to do with one another. You hear
+of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother—well, it shows
+they’re excellent sons, but it’s no excuse for bad work. They’re only
+tradesmen. An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse. There’s
+a writer I know over here who told me that his wife died in childbirth.
+He was in love with her and he was mad with grief, but as he sat at the
+bedside watching her die he found himself making mental notes of how
+she looked and what she said and the things he was feeling.
+Gentlemanly, wasn’t it?”
+
+“But is your friend a good painter?” asked Philip.
+
+“No, not yet, he paints just like Pissarro. He hasn’t found himself,
+but he’s got a sense of colour and a sense of decoration. But that
+isn’t the question. It’s the feeling, and that he’s got. He’s behaved
+like a perfect cad to his wife and children, he’s always behaving like
+a perfect cad; the way he treats the people who’ve helped him—and
+sometimes he’s been saved from starvation merely by the kindness of his
+friends—is simply beastly. He just happens to be a great artist.”
+
+Philip pondered over the man who was willing to sacrifice everything,
+comfort, home, money, love, honour, duty, for the sake of getting on to
+canvas with paint the emotion which the world gave him. It was
+magnificent, and yet his courage failed him.
+
+Thinking of Cronshaw recalled to him the fact that he had not seen him
+for a week, and so, when Clutton left him, he wandered along to the
+cafe in which he was certain to find the writer. During the first few
+months of his stay in Paris Philip had accepted as gospel all that
+Cronshaw said, but Philip had a practical outlook and he grew impatient
+with the theories which resulted in no action. Cronshaw’s slim bundle
+of poetry did not seem a substantial result for a life which was
+sordid. Philip could not wrench out of his nature the instincts of the
+middle-class from which he came; and the penury, the hack work which
+Cronshaw did to keep body and soul together, the monotony of existence
+between the slovenly attic and the cafe table, jarred with his
+respectability. Cronshaw was astute enough to know that the young man
+disapproved of him, and he attacked his philistinism with an irony
+which was sometimes playful but often very keen.
+
+“You’re a tradesman,” he told Philip, “you want to invest life in
+consols so that it shall bring you in a safe three per cent. I’m a
+spendthrift, I run through my capital. I shall spend my last penny with
+my last heartbeat.”
+
+The metaphor irritated Philip, because it assumed for the speaker a
+romantic attitude and cast a slur upon the position which Philip
+instinctively felt had more to say for it than he could think of at the
+moment.
+
+But this evening Philip, undecided, wanted to talk about himself.
+Fortunately it was late already and Cronshaw’s pile of saucers on the
+table, each indicating a drink, suggested that he was prepared to take
+an independent view of things in general.
+
+“I wonder if you’d give me some advice,” said Philip suddenly.
+
+“You won’t take it, will you?”
+
+Philip shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
+
+“I don’t believe I shall ever do much good as a painter. I don’t see
+any use in being second-rate. I’m thinking of chucking it.”
+
+“Why shouldn’t you?”
+
+Philip hesitated for an instant.
+
+“I suppose I like the life.”
+
+A change came over Cronshaw’s placid, round face. The corners of the
+mouth were suddenly depressed, the eyes sunk dully in their orbits; he
+seemed to become strangely bowed and old.
+
+“This?” he cried, looking round the cafe in which they sat. His voice
+really trembled a little.
+
+“If you can get out of it, do while there’s time.”
+
+Philip stared at him with astonishment, but the sight of emotion always
+made him feel shy, and he dropped his eyes. He knew that he was looking
+upon the tragedy of failure. There was silence. Philip thought that
+Cronshaw was looking upon his own life; and perhaps he considered his
+youth with its bright hopes and the disappointments which wore out the
+radiancy; the wretched monotony of pleasure, and the black future.
+Philip’s eyes rested on the little pile of saucers, and he knew that
+Cronshaw’s were on them too.
+
+
+
+
+LI
+
+
+Two months passed.
+
+It seemed to Philip, brooding over these matters, that in the true
+painters, writers, musicians, there was a power which drove them to
+such complete absorption in their work as to make it inevitable for
+them to subordinate life to art. Succumbing to an influence they never
+realised, they were merely dupes of the instinct that possessed them,
+and life slipped through their fingers unlived. But he had a feeling
+that life was to be lived rather than portrayed, and he wanted to
+search out the various experiences of it and wring from each moment all
+the emotion that it offered. He made up his mind at length to take a
+certain step and abide by the result, and, having made up his mind, he
+determined to take the step at once. Luckily enough the next morning
+was one of Foinet’s days, and he resolved to ask him point-blank
+whether it was worth his while to go on with the study of art. He had
+never forgotten the master’s brutal advice to Fanny Price. It had been
+sound. Philip could never get Fanny entirely out of his head. The
+studio seemed strange without her, and now and then the gesture of one
+of the women working there or the tone of a voice would give him a
+sudden start, reminding him of her: her presence was more noticable now
+she was dead than it had ever been during her life; and he often
+dreamed of her at night, waking with a cry of terror. It was horrible
+to think of all the suffering she must have endured.
+
+Philip knew that on the days Foinet came to the studio he lunched at a
+little restaurant in the Rue d’Odessa, and he hurried his own meal so
+that he could go and wait outside till the painter came out. Philip
+walked up and down the crowded street and at last saw Monsieur Foinet
+walking, with bent head, towards him; Philip was very nervous, but he
+forced himself to go up to him.
+
+“Pardon, monsieur, I should like to speak to you for one moment.”
+
+Foinet gave him a rapid glance, recognised him, but did not smile a
+greeting.
+
+“Speak,” he said.
+
+“I’ve been working here nearly two years now under you. I wanted to ask
+you to tell me frankly if you think it worth while for me to continue.”
+
+Philip’s voice was trembling a little. Foinet walked on without looking
+up. Philip, watching his face, saw no trace of expression upon it.
+
+“I don’t understand.”
+
+“I’m very poor. If I have no talent I would sooner do something else.”
+
+“Don’t you know if you have talent?”
+
+“All my friends know they have talent, but I am aware some of them are
+mistaken.”
+
+Foinet’s bitter mouth outlined the shadow of a smile, and he asked:
+
+“Do you live near here?”
+
+Philip told him where his studio was. Foinet turned round.
+
+“Let us go there? You shall show me your work.”
+
+“Now?” cried Philip.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+Philip had nothing to say. He walked silently by the master’s side. He
+felt horribly sick. It had never struck him that Foinet would wish to
+see his things there and then; he meant, so that he might have time to
+prepare himself, to ask him if he would mind coming at some future date
+or whether he might bring them to Foinet’s studio. He was trembling
+with anxiety. In his heart he hoped that Foinet would look at his
+picture, and that rare smile would come into his face, and he would
+shake Philip’s hand and say: “Pas mal. Go on, my lad. You have talent,
+real talent.” Philip’s heart swelled at the thought. It was such a
+relief, such a joy! Now he could go on with courage; and what did
+hardship matter, privation, and disappointment, if he arrived at last?
+He had worked very hard, it would be too cruel if all that industry
+were futile. And then with a start he remembered that he had heard
+Fanny Price say just that. They arrived at the house, and Philip was
+seized with fear. If he had dared he would have asked Foinet to go
+away. He did not want to know the truth. They went in and the concierge
+handed him a letter as they passed. He glanced at the envelope and
+recognised his uncle’s handwriting. Foinet followed him up the stairs.
+Philip could think of nothing to say; Foinet was mute, and the silence
+got on his nerves. The professor sat down; and Philip without a word
+placed before him the picture which the Salon had rejected; Foinet
+nodded but did not speak; then Philip showed him the two portraits he
+had made of Ruth Chalice, two or three landscapes which he had painted
+at Moret, and a number of sketches.
+
+“That’s all,” he said presently, with a nervous laugh.
+
+Monsieur Foinet rolled himself a cigarette and lit it.
+
+“You have very little private means?” he asked at last.
+
+“Very little,” answered Philip, with a sudden feeling of cold at his
+heart. “Not enough to live on.”
+
+“There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one’s
+means of livelihood. I have nothing but contempt for the people who
+despise money. They are hypocrites or fools. Money is like a sixth
+sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
+Without an adequate income half the possibilities of life are shut off.
+The only thing to be careful about is that you do not pay more than a
+shilling for the shilling you earn. You will hear people say that
+poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron
+of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It
+exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into
+your soul like a cancer. It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough
+to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank,
+and independent. I pity with all my heart the artist, whether he writes
+or paints, who is entirely dependent for subsistence upon his art.”
+
+Philip quietly put away the various things which he had shown.
+
+“I’m afraid that sounds as if you didn’t think I had much chance.”
+
+Monsieur Foinet slightly shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“You have a certain manual dexterity. With hard work and perseverance
+there is no reason why you should not become a careful, not incompetent
+painter. You would find hundreds who painted worse than you, hundreds
+who painted as well. I see no talent in anything you have shown me. I
+see industry and intelligence. You will never be anything but
+mediocre.”
+
+Philip obliged himself to answer quite steadily.
+
+“I’m very grateful to you for having taken so much trouble. I can’t
+thank you enough.”
+
+Monsieur Foinet got up and made as if to go, but he changed his mind
+and, stopping, put his hand on Philip’s shoulder.
+
+“But if you were to ask me my advice, I should say: take your courage
+in both hands and try your luck at something else. It sounds very hard,
+but let me tell you this: I would give all I have in the world if
+someone had given me that advice when I was your age and I had taken
+it.”
+
+Philip looked up at him with surprise. The master forced his lips into
+a smile, but his eyes remained grave and sad.
+
+“It is cruel to discover one’s mediocrity only when it is too late. It
+does not improve the temper.”
+
+He gave a little laugh as he said the last words and quickly walked out
+of the room.
+
+Philip mechanically took up the letter from his uncle. The sight of his
+handwriting made him anxious, for it was his aunt who always wrote to
+him. She had been ill for the last three months, and he had offered to
+go over to England and see her; but she, fearing it would interfere
+with his work, had refused. She did not want him to put himself to
+inconvenience; she said she would wait till August and then she hoped
+he would come and stay at the vicarage for two or three weeks. If by
+any chance she grew worse she would let him know, since she did not
+wish to die without seeing him again. If his uncle wrote to him it must
+be because she was too ill to hold a pen. Philip opened the letter. It
+ran as follows:
+
+My dear Philip,
+
+I regret to inform you that your dear Aunt departed this life early
+this morning. She died very suddenly, but quite peacefully. The change
+for the worse was so rapid that we had no time to send for you. She was
+fully prepared for the end and entered into rest with the complete
+assurance of a blessed resurrection and with resignation to the divine
+will of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Your Aunt would have liked you
+to be present at the funeral so I trust you will come as soon as you
+can. There is naturally a great deal of work thrown upon my shoulders
+and I am very much upset. I trust that you will be able to do
+everything for me. Your affectionate uncle,
+William Carey.
+
+
+
+
+LII
+
+
+Next day Philip arrived at Blackstable. Since the death of his mother
+he had never lost anyone closely connected with him; his aunt’s death
+shocked him and filled him also with a curious fear; he felt for the
+first time his own mortality. He could not realise what life would be
+for his uncle without the constant companionship of the woman who had
+loved and tended him for forty years. He expected to find him broken
+down with hopeless grief. He dreaded the first meeting; he knew that he
+could say nothing which would be of use. He rehearsed to himself a
+number of apposite speeches.
+
+He entered the vicarage by the side-door and went into the dining-room.
+Uncle William was reading the paper.
+
+“Your train was late,” he said, looking up.
+
+Philip was prepared to give way to his emotion, but the matter-of-fact
+reception startled him. His uncle, subdued but calm, handed him the
+paper.
+
+“There’s a very nice little paragraph about her in The Blackstable
+Times,” he said.
+
+Philip read it mechanically.
+
+“Would you like to come up and see her?”
+
+Philip nodded and together they walked upstairs. Aunt Louisa was lying
+in the middle of the large bed, with flowers all round her.
+
+“Would you like to say a short prayer?” said the Vicar.
+
+He sank on his knees, and because it was expected of him Philip
+followed his example. He looked at the little shrivelled face. He was
+only conscious of one emotion: what a wasted life! In a minute Mr.
+Carey gave a cough, and stood up. He pointed to a wreath at the foot of
+the bed.
+
+“That’s from the Squire,” he said. He spoke in a low voice as though he
+were in church, but one felt that, as a clergyman, he found himself
+quite at home. “I expect tea is ready.”
+
+They went down again to the dining-room. The drawn blinds gave a
+lugubrious aspect. The Vicar sat at the end of the table at which his
+wife had always sat and poured out the tea with ceremony. Philip could
+not help feeling that neither of them should have been able to eat
+anything, but when he saw that his uncle’s appetite was unimpaired he
+fell to with his usual heartiness. They did not speak for a while.
+Philip set himself to eat an excellent cake with the air of grief which
+he felt was decent.
+
+“Things have changed a great deal since I was a curate,” said the Vicar
+presently. “In my young days the mourners used always to be given a
+pair of black gloves and a piece of black silk for their hats. Poor
+Louisa used to make the silk into dresses. She always said that twelve
+funerals gave her a new dress.”
+
+Then he told Philip who had sent wreaths; there were twenty-four of
+them already; when Mrs. Rawlingson, wife of the Vicar at Ferne, had
+died she had had thirty-two; but probably a good many more would come
+the next day; the funeral would start at eleven o’clock from the
+vicarage, and they should beat Mrs. Rawlingson easily. Louisa never
+liked Mrs. Rawlingson.
+
+“I shall take the funeral myself. I promised Louisa I would never let
+anyone else bury her.”
+
+Philip looked at his uncle with disapproval when he took a second piece
+of cake. Under the circumstances he could not help thinking it greedy.
+
+“Mary Ann certainly makes capital cakes. I’m afraid no one else will
+make such good ones.”
+
+“She’s not going?” cried Philip, with astonishment.
+
+Mary Ann had been at the vicarage ever since he could remember. She
+never forgot his birthday, but made a point always of sending him a
+trifle, absurd but touching. He had a real affection for her.
+
+“Yes,” answered Mr. Carey. “I didn’t think it would do to have a single
+woman in the house.”
+
+“But, good heavens, she must be over forty.”
+
+“Yes, I think she is. But she’s been rather troublesome lately, she’s
+been inclined to take too much on herself, and I thought this was a
+very good opportunity to give her notice.”
+
+“It’s certainly one which isn’t likely to recur,” said Philip.
+
+He took out a cigarette, but his uncle prevented him from lighting it.
+
+“Not till after the funeral, Philip,” he said gently.
+
+“All right,” said Philip.
+
+“It wouldn’t be quite respectful to smoke in the house so long as your
+poor Aunt Louisa is upstairs.”
+
+Josiah Graves, churchwarden and manager of the bank, came back to
+dinner at the vicarage after the funeral. The blinds had been drawn up,
+and Philip, against his will, felt a curious sensation of relief. The
+body in the house had made him uncomfortable: in life the poor woman
+had been all that was kind and gentle; and yet, when she lay upstairs
+in her bed-room, cold and stark, it seemed as though she cast upon the
+survivors a baleful influence. The thought horrified Philip.
+
+He found himself alone for a minute or two in the dining-room with the
+churchwarden.
+
+“I hope you’ll be able to stay with your uncle a while,” he said. “I
+don’t think he ought to be left alone just yet.”
+
+“I haven’t made any plans,” answered Philip. “If he wants me I shall be
+very pleased to stay.”
+
+By way of cheering the bereaved husband the churchwarden during dinner
+talked of a recent fire at Blackstable which had partly destroyed the
+Wesleyan chapel.
+
+“I hear they weren’t insured,” he said, with a little smile.
+
+“That won’t make any difference,” said the Vicar. “They’ll get as much
+money as they want to rebuild. Chapel people are always ready to give
+money.”
+
+“I see that Holden sent a wreath.”
+
+Holden was the dissenting minister, and, though for Christ’s sake who
+died for both of them, Mr. Carey nodded to him in the street, he did
+not speak to him.
+
+“I think it was very pushing,” he remarked. “There were forty-one
+wreaths. Yours was beautiful. Philip and I admired it very much.”
+
+“Don’t mention it,” said the banker.
+
+He had noticed with satisfaction that it was larger than anyone’s else.
+It had looked very well. They began to discuss the people who attended
+the funeral. Shops had been closed for it, and the churchwarden took
+out of his pocket the notice which had been printed: “Owing to the
+funeral of Mrs. Carey this establishment will not be opened till one
+o’clock.”
+
+“It was my idea,” he said.
+
+“I think it was very nice of them to close,” said the Vicar. “Poor
+Louisa would have appreciated that.”
+
+Philip ate his dinner. Mary Ann had treated the day as Sunday, and they
+had roast chicken and a gooseberry tart.
+
+“I suppose you haven’t thought about a tombstone yet?” said the
+churchwarden.
+
+“Yes, I have. I thought of a plain stone cross. Louisa was always
+against ostentation.”
+
+“I don’t think one can do much better than a cross. If you’re thinking
+of a text, what do you say to: With Christ, which is far better?”
+
+The Vicar pursed his lips. It was just like Bismarck to try and settle
+everything himself. He did not like that text; it seemed to cast an
+aspersion on himself.
+
+“I don’t think I should put that. I much prefer: The Lord has given and
+the Lord has taken away.”
+
+“Oh, do you? That always seems to me a little indifferent.”
+
+The Vicar answered with some acidity, and Mr. Graves replied in a tone
+which the widower thought too authoritative for the occasion. Things
+were going rather far if he could not choose his own text for his own
+wife’s tombstone. There was a pause, and then the conversation drifted
+to parish matters. Philip went into the garden to smoke his pipe. He
+sat on a bench, and suddenly began to laugh hysterically.
+
+A few days later his uncle expressed the hope that he would spend the
+next few weeks at Blackstable.
+
+“Yes, that will suit me very well,” said Philip.
+
+“I suppose it’ll do if you go back to Paris in September.”
+
+Philip did not reply. He had thought much of what Foinet said to him,
+but he was still so undecided that he did not wish to speak of the
+future. There would be something fine in giving up art because he was
+convinced that he could not excel; but unfortunately it would seem so
+only to himself: to others it would be an admission of defeat, and he
+did not want to confess that he was beaten. He was an obstinate fellow,
+and the suspicion that his talent did not lie in one direction made him
+inclined to force circumstances and aim notwithstanding precisely in
+that direction. He could not bear that his friends should laugh at him.
+This might have prevented him from ever taking the definite step of
+abandoning the study of painting, but the different environment made
+him on a sudden see things differently. Like many another he discovered
+that crossing the Channel makes things which had seemed important
+singularly futile. The life which had been so charming that he could
+not bear to leave it now seemed inept; he was seized with a distaste
+for the cafes, the restaurants with their ill-cooked food, the shabby
+way in which they all lived. He did not care any more what his friends
+thought about him: Cronshaw with his rhetoric, Mrs. Otter with her
+respectability, Ruth Chalice with her affectations, Lawson and Clutton
+with their quarrels; he felt a revulsion from them all. He wrote to
+Lawson and asked him to send over all his belongings. A week later they
+arrived. When he unpacked his canvases he found himself able to examine
+his work without emotion. He noticed the fact with interest. His uncle
+was anxious to see his pictures. Though he had so greatly disapproved
+of Philip’s desire to go to Paris, he accepted the situation now with
+equanimity. He was interested in the life of students and constantly
+put Philip questions about it. He was in fact a little proud of him
+because he was a painter, and when people were present made attempts to
+draw him out. He looked eagerly at the studies of models which Philip
+showed him. Philip set before him his portrait of Miguel Ajuria.
+
+“Why did you paint him?” asked Mr. Carey.
+
+“Oh, I wanted a model, and his head interested me.”
+
+“As you haven’t got anything to do here I wonder you don’t paint me.”
+
+“It would bore you to sit.”
+
+“I think I should like it.”
+
+“We must see about it.”
+
+Philip was amused at his uncle’s vanity. It was clear that he was dying
+to have his portrait painted. To get something for nothing was a chance
+not to be missed. For two or three days he threw out little hints. He
+reproached Philip for laziness, asked him when he was going to start
+work, and finally began telling everyone he met that Philip was going
+to paint him. At last there came a rainy day, and after breakfast Mr.
+Carey said to Philip:
+
+“Now, what d’you say to starting on my portrait this morning?” Philip
+put down the book he was reading and leaned back in his chair.
+
+“I’ve given up painting,” he said.
+
+“Why?” asked his uncle in astonishment.
+
+“I don’t think there’s much object in being a second-rate painter, and
+I came to the conclusion that I should never be anything else.”
+
+“You surprise me. Before you went to Paris you were quite certain that
+you were a genius.”
+
+“I was mistaken,” said Philip.
+
+“I should have thought now you’d taken up a profession you’d have the
+pride to stick to it. It seems to me that what you lack is
+perseverance.”
+
+Philip was a little annoyed that his uncle did not even see how truly
+heroic his determination was.
+
+“‘A rolling stone gathers no moss,’” proceeded the clergyman. Philip
+hated that proverb above all, and it seemed to him perfectly
+meaningless. His uncle had repeated it often during the arguments which
+had preceded his departure from business. Apparently it recalled that
+occasion to his guardian.
+
+“You’re no longer a boy, you know; you must begin to think of settling
+down. First you insist on becoming a chartered accountant, and then you
+get tired of that and you want to become a painter. And now if you
+please you change your mind again. It points to…”
+
+He hesitated for a moment to consider what defects of character exactly
+it indicated, and Philip finished the sentence.
+
+“Irresolution, incompetence, want of foresight, and lack of
+determination.”
+
+The Vicar looked up at his nephew quickly to see whether he was
+laughing at him. Philip’s face was serious, but there was a twinkle in
+his eyes which irritated him. Philip should really be getting more
+serious. He felt it right to give him a rap over the knuckles.
+
+“Your money matters have nothing to do with me now. You’re your own
+master; but I think you should remember that your money won’t last for
+ever, and the unlucky deformity you have doesn’t exactly make it easier
+for you to earn your living.”
+
+Philip knew by now that whenever anyone was angry with him his first
+thought was to say something about his club-foot. His estimate of the
+human race was determined by the fact that scarcely anyone failed to
+resist the temptation. But he had trained himself not to show any sign
+that the reminder wounded him. He had even acquired control over the
+blushing which in his boyhood had been one of his torments.
+
+“As you justly remark,” he answered, “my money matters have nothing to
+do with you and I am my own master.”
+
+“At all events you will do me the justice to acknowledge that I was
+justified in my opposition when you made up your mind to become an
+art-student.”
+
+“I don’t know so much about that. I daresay one profits more by the
+mistakes one makes off one’s own bat than by doing the right thing on
+somebody’s else advice. I’ve had my fling, and I don’t mind settling
+down now.”
+
+“What at?”
+
+Philip was not prepared for the question, since in fact he had not made
+up his mind. He had thought of a dozen callings.
+
+“The most suitable thing you could do is to enter your father’s
+profession and become a doctor.”
+
+“Oddly enough that is precisely what I intend.”
+
+He had thought of doctoring among other things, chiefly because it was
+an occupation which seemed to give a good deal of personal freedom, and
+his experience of life in an office had made him determine never to
+have anything more to do with one; his answer to the Vicar slipped out
+almost unawares, because it was in the nature of a repartee. It amused
+him to make up his mind in that accidental way, and he resolved then
+and there to enter his father’s old hospital in the autumn.
+
+“Then your two years in Paris may be regarded as so much wasted time?”
+
+“I don’t know about that. I had a very jolly two years, and I learned
+one or two useful things.”
+
+“What?”
+
+Philip reflected for an instant, and his answer was not devoid of a
+gentle desire to annoy.
+
+“I learned to look at hands, which I’d never looked at before. And
+instead of just looking at houses and trees I learned to look at houses
+and trees against the sky. And I learned also that shadows are not
+black but coloured.”
+
+“I suppose you think you’re very clever. I think your flippancy is
+quite inane.”
+
+
+
+
+LIII
+
+
+Taking the paper with him Mr. Carey retired to his study. Philip
+changed his chair for that in which his uncle had been sitting (it was
+the only comfortable one in the room), and looked out of the window at
+the pouring rain. Even in that sad weather there was something restful
+about the green fields that stretched to the horizon. There was an
+intimate charm in the landscape which he did not remember ever to have
+noticed before. Two years in France had opened his eyes to the beauty
+of his own countryside.
+
+He thought with a smile of his uncle’s remark. It was lucky that the
+turn of his mind tended to flippancy. He had begun to realise what a
+great loss he had sustained in the death of his father and mother. That
+was one of the differences in his life which prevented him from seeing
+things in the same way as other people. The love of parents for their
+children is the only emotion which is quite disinterested. Among
+strangers he had grown up as best he could, but he had seldom been used
+with patience or forbearance. He prided himself on his self-control. It
+had been whipped into him by the mockery of his fellows. Then they
+called him cynical and callous. He had acquired calmness of demeanour
+and under most circumstances an unruffled exterior, so that now he
+could not show his feelings. People told him he was unemotional; but he
+knew that he was at the mercy of his emotions: an accidental kindness
+touched him so much that sometimes he did not venture to speak in order
+not to betray the unsteadiness of his voice. He remembered the
+bitterness of his life at school, the humiliation which he had endured,
+the banter which had made him morbidly afraid of making himself
+ridiculous; and he remembered the loneliness he had felt since, faced
+with the world, the disillusion and the disappointment caused by the
+difference between what it promised to his active imagination and what
+it gave. But notwithstanding he was able to look at himself from the
+outside and smile with amusement.
+
+“By Jove, if I weren’t flippant, I should hang myself,” he thought
+cheerfully.
+
+His mind went back to the answer he had given his uncle when he asked
+him what he had learnt in Paris. He had learnt a good deal more than he
+told him. A conversation with Cronshaw had stuck in his memory, and one
+phrase he had used, a commonplace one enough, had set his brain
+working.
+
+“My dear fellow,” Cronshaw said, “there’s no such thing as abstract
+morality.”
+
+When Philip ceased to believe in Christianity he felt that a great
+weight was taken from his shoulders; casting off the responsibility
+which weighed down every action, when every action was infinitely
+important for the welfare of his immortal soul, he experienced a vivid
+sense of liberty. But he knew now that this was an illusion. When he
+put away the religion in which he had been brought up, he had kept
+unimpaired the morality which was part and parcel of it. He made up his
+mind therefore to think things out for himself. He determined to be
+swayed by no prejudices. He swept away the virtues and the vices, the
+established laws of good and evil, with the idea of finding out the
+rules of life for himself. He did not know whether rules were necessary
+at all. That was one of the things he wanted to discover. Clearly much
+that seemed valid seemed so only because he had been taught it from his
+earliest youth. He had read a number of books, but they did not help
+him much, for they were based on the morality of Christianity; and even
+the writers who emphasised the fact that they did not believe in it
+were never satisfied till they had framed a system of ethics in
+accordance with that of the Sermon on the Mount. It seemed hardly worth
+while to read a long volume in order to learn that you ought to behave
+exactly like everybody else. Philip wanted to find out how he ought to
+behave, and he thought he could prevent himself from being influenced
+by the opinions that surrounded him. But meanwhile he had to go on
+living, and, until he formed a theory of conduct, he made himself a
+provisional rule.
+
+“Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the
+corner.”
+
+He thought the best thing he had gained in Paris was a complete liberty
+of spirit, and he felt himself at last absolutely free. In a desultory
+way he had read a good deal of philosophy, and he looked forward with
+delight to the leisure of the next few months. He began to read at
+haphazard. He entered upon each system with a little thrill of
+excitement, expecting to find in each some guide by which he could rule
+his conduct; he felt himself like a traveller in unknown countries and
+as he pushed forward the enterprise fascinated him; he read
+emotionally, as other men read pure literature, and his heart leaped as
+he discovered in noble words what himself had obscurely felt. His mind
+was concrete and moved with difficulty in regions of the abstract; but,
+even when he could not follow the reasoning, it gave him a curious
+pleasure to follow the tortuosities of thoughts that threaded their
+nimble way on the edge of the incomprehensible. Sometimes great
+philosophers seemed to have nothing to say to him, but at others he
+recognised a mind with which he felt himself at home. He was like the
+explorer in Central Africa who comes suddenly upon wide uplands, with
+great trees in them and stretches of meadow, so that he might fancy
+himself in an English park. He delighted in the robust common sense of
+Thomas Hobbes; Spinoza filled him with awe, he had never before come in
+contact with a mind so noble, so unapproachable and austere; it
+reminded him of that statue by Rodin, L’Age d’Airain, which he
+passionately admired; and then there was Hume: the scepticism of that
+charming philosopher touched a kindred note in Philip; and, revelling
+in the lucid style which seemed able to put complicated thought into
+simple words, musical and measured, he read as he might have read a
+novel, a smile of pleasure on his lips. But in none could he find
+exactly what he wanted. He had read somewhere that every man was born a
+Platonist, an Aristotelian, a Stoic, or an Epicurean; and the history
+of George Henry Lewes (besides telling you that philosophy was all
+moonshine) was there to show that the thought of each philosopher was
+inseparably connected with the man he was. When you knew that you could
+guess to a great extent the philosophy he wrote. It looked as though
+you did not act in a certain way because you thought in a certain way,
+but rather that you thought in a certain way because you were made in a
+certain way. Truth had nothing to do with it. There was no such thing
+as truth. Each man was his own philosopher, and the elaborate systems
+which the great men of the past had composed were only valid for the
+writers.
+
+The thing then was to discover what one was and one’s system of
+philosophy would devise itself. It seemed to Philip that there were
+three things to find out: man’s relation to the world he lives in,
+man’s relation with the men among whom he lives, and finally man’s
+relation to himself. He made an elaborate plan of study.
+
+The advantage of living abroad is that, coming in contact with the
+manners and customs of the people among whom you live, you observe them
+from the outside and see that they have not the necessity which those
+who practise them believe. You cannot fail to discover that the beliefs
+which to you are self-evident to the foreigner are absurd. The year in
+Germany, the long stay in Paris, had prepared Philip to receive the
+sceptical teaching which came to him now with such a feeling of relief.
+He saw that nothing was good and nothing was evil; things were merely
+adapted to an end. He read The Origin of Species. It seemed to offer an
+explanation of much that troubled him. He was like an explorer now who
+has reasoned that certain natural features must present themselves,
+and, beating up a broad river, finds here the tributary that he
+expected, there the fertile, populated plains, and further on the
+mountains. When some great discovery is made the world is surprised
+afterwards that it was not accepted at once, and even on those who
+acknowledge its truth the effect is unimportant. The first readers of
+The Origin of Species accepted it with their reason; but their
+emotions, which are the ground of conduct, were untouched. Philip was
+born a generation after this great book was published, and much that
+horrified its contemporaries had passed into the feeling of the time,
+so that he was able to accept it with a joyful heart. He was intensely
+moved by the grandeur of the struggle for life, and the ethical rule
+which it suggested seemed to fit in with his predispositions. He said
+to himself that might was right. Society stood on one side, an organism
+with its own laws of growth and self-preservation, while the individual
+stood on the other. The actions which were to the advantage of society
+it termed virtuous and those which were not it called vicious. Good and
+evil meant nothing more than that. Sin was a prejudice from which the
+free man should rid himself. Society had three arms in its contest with
+the individual, laws, public opinion, and conscience: the first two
+could be met by guile, guile is the only weapon of the weak against the
+strong: common opinion put the matter well when it stated that sin
+consisted in being found out; but conscience was the traitor within the
+gates; it fought in each heart the battle of society, and caused the
+individual to throw himself, a wanton sacrifice, to the prosperity of
+his enemy. For it was clear that the two were irreconcilable, the state
+and the individual conscious of himself. THAT uses the individual for
+its own ends, trampling upon him if he thwarts it, rewarding him with
+medals, pensions, honours, when he serves it faithfully; THIS, strong
+only in his independence, threads his way through the state, for
+convenience’ sake, paying in money or service for certain benefits, but
+with no sense of obligation; and, indifferent to the rewards, asks only
+to be left alone. He is the independent traveller, who uses Cook’s
+tickets because they save trouble, but looks with good-humoured
+contempt on the personally conducted parties. The free man can do no
+wrong. He does everything he likes—if he can. His power is the only
+measure of his morality. He recognises the laws of the state and he can
+break them without sense of sin, but if he is punished he accepts the
+punishment without rancour. Society has the power.
+
+But if for the individual there was no right and no wrong, then it
+seemed to Philip that conscience lost its power. It was with a cry of
+triumph that he seized the knave and flung him from his breast. But he
+was no nearer to the meaning of life than he had been before. Why the
+world was there and what men had come into existence for at all was as
+inexplicable as ever. Surely there must be some reason. He thought of
+Cronshaw’s parable of the Persian carpet. He offered it as a solution
+of the riddle, and mysteriously he stated that it was no answer at all
+unless you found it out for yourself.
+
+“I wonder what the devil he meant,” Philip smiled.
+
+And so, on the last day of September, eager to put into practice all
+these new theories of life, Philip, with sixteen hundred pounds and his
+club-foot, set out for the second time to London to make his third
+start in life.
+
+
+
+
+LIV
+
+
+The examination Philip had passed before he was articled to a chartered
+accountant was sufficient qualification for him to enter a medical
+school. He chose St. Luke’s because his father had been a student
+there, and before the end of the summer session had gone up to London
+for a day in order to see the secretary. He got a list of rooms from
+him, and took lodgings in a dingy house which had the advantage of
+being within two minutes’ walk of the hospital.
+
+“You’ll have to arrange about a part to dissect,” the secretary told
+him. “You’d better start on a leg; they generally do; they seem to
+think it easier.”
+
+Philip found that his first lecture was in anatomy, at eleven, and
+about half past ten he limped across the road, and a little nervously
+made his way to the Medical School. Just inside the door a number of
+notices were pinned up, lists of lectures, football fixtures, and the
+like; and these he looked at idly, trying to seem at his ease. Young
+men and boys dribbled in and looked for letters in the rack, chatted
+with one another, and passed downstairs to the basement, in which was
+the student’s reading-room. Philip saw several fellows with a
+desultory, timid look dawdling around, and surmised that, like himself,
+they were there for the first time. When he had exhausted the notices
+he saw a glass door which led into what was apparently a museum, and
+having still twenty minutes to spare he walked in. It was a collection
+of pathological specimens. Presently a boy of about eighteen came up to
+him.
+
+“I say, are you first year?” he said.
+
+“Yes,” answered Philip.
+
+“Where’s the lecture room, d’you know? It’s getting on for eleven.”
+
+“We’d better try to find it.”
+
+They walked out of the museum into a long, dark corridor, with the
+walls painted in two shades of red, and other youths walking along
+suggested the way to them. They came to a door marked Anatomy Theatre.
+Philip found that there were a good many people already there. The
+seats were arranged in tiers, and just as Philip entered an attendant
+came in, put a glass of water on the table in the well of the
+lecture-room and then brought in a pelvis and two thigh-bones, right
+and left. More men entered and took their seats and by eleven the
+theatre was fairly full. There were about sixty students. For the most
+part they were a good deal younger than Philip, smooth-faced boys of
+eighteen, but there were a few who were older than he: he noticed one
+tall man, with a fierce red moustache, who might have been thirty;
+another little fellow with black hair, only a year or two younger; and
+there was one man with spectacles and a beard which was quite gray.
+
+The lecturer came in, Mr. Cameron, a handsome man with white hair and
+clean-cut features. He called out the long list of names. Then he made
+a little speech. He spoke in a pleasant voice, with well-chosen words,
+and he seemed to take a discreet pleasure in their careful arrangement.
+He suggested one or two books which they might buy and advised the
+purchase of a skeleton. He spoke of anatomy with enthusiasm: it was
+essential to the study of surgery; a knowledge of it added to the
+appreciation of art. Philip pricked up his ears. He heard later that
+Mr. Cameron lectured also to the students at the Royal Academy. He had
+lived many years in Japan, with a post at the University of Tokyo, and
+he flattered himself on his appreciation of the beautiful.
+
+“You will have to learn many tedious things,” he finished, with an
+indulgent smile, “which you will forget the moment you have passed your
+final examination, but in anatomy it is better to have learned and lost
+than never to have learned at all.”
+
+He took up the pelvis which was lying on the table and began to
+describe it. He spoke well and clearly.
+
+At the end of the lecture the boy who had spoken to Philip in the
+pathological museum and sat next to him in the theatre suggested that
+they should go to the dissecting-room. Philip and he walked along the
+corridor again, and an attendant told them where it was. As soon as
+they entered Philip understood what the acrid smell was which he had
+noticed in the passage. He lit a pipe. The attendant gave a short
+laugh.
+
+“You’ll soon get used to the smell. I don’t notice it myself.”
+
+He asked Philip’s name and looked at a list on the board.
+
+“You’ve got a leg—number four.”
+
+Philip saw that another name was bracketed with his own.
+
+“What’s the meaning of that?” he asked.
+
+“We’re very short of bodies just now. We’ve had to put two on each
+part.”
+
+The dissecting-room was a large apartment painted like the corridors,
+the upper part a rich salmon and the dado a dark terra-cotta. At
+regular intervals down the long sides of the room, at right angles with
+the wall, were iron slabs, grooved like meat-dishes; and on each lay a
+body. Most of them were men. They were very dark from the preservative
+in which they had been kept, and the skin had almost the look of
+leather. They were extremely emaciated. The attendant took Philip up to
+one of the slabs. A youth was standing by it.
+
+“Is your name Carey?” he asked.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Oh, then we’ve got this leg together. It’s lucky it’s a man, isn’t
+it?”
+
+“Why?” asked Philip.
+
+“They generally always like a male better,” said the attendant. “A
+female’s liable to have a lot of fat about her.”
+
+Philip looked at the body. The arms and legs were so thin that there
+was no shape in them, and the ribs stood out so that the skin over them
+was tense. A man of about forty-five with a thin, gray beard, and on
+his skull scanty, colourless hair: the eyes were closed and the lower
+jaw sunken. Philip could not feel that this had ever been a man, and
+yet in the row of them there was something terrible and ghastly.
+
+“I thought I’d start at two,” said the young man who was dissecting
+with Philip.
+
+“All right, I’ll be here then.”
+
+He had bought the day before the case of instruments which was needful,
+and now he was given a locker. He looked at the boy who had accompanied
+him into the dissecting-room and saw that he was white.
+
+“Make you feel rotten?” Philip asked him.
+
+“I’ve never seen anyone dead before.”
+
+They walked along the corridor till they came to the entrance of the
+school. Philip remembered Fanny Price. She was the first dead person he
+had ever seen, and he remembered how strangely it had affected him.
+There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they
+did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think
+that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and
+laughed. There was something horrible about the dead, and you could
+imagine that they might cast an evil influence on the living.
+
+“What d’you say to having something to eat?” said his new friend to
+Philip.
+
+They went down into the basement, where there was a dark room fitted up
+as a restaurant, and here the students were able to get the same sort
+of fare as they might have at an aerated bread shop. While they ate
+(Philip had a scone and butter and a cup of chocolate), he discovered
+that his companion was called Dunsford. He was a fresh-complexioned
+lad, with pleasant blue eyes and curly, dark hair, large-limbed, slow
+of speech and movement. He had just come from Clifton.
+
+“Are you taking the Conjoint?” he asked Philip.
+
+“Yes, I want to get qualified as soon as I can.”
+
+“I’m taking it too, but I shall take the F. R. C. S. afterwards. I’m
+going in for surgery.”
+
+Most of the students took the curriculum of the Conjoint Board of the
+College of Surgeons and the College of Physicians; but the more
+ambitious or the more industrious added to this the longer studies
+which led to a degree from the University of London. When Philip went
+to St. Luke’s changes had recently been made in the regulations, and
+the course took five years instead of four as it had done for those who
+registered before the autumn of 1892. Dunsford was well up in his plans
+and told Philip the usual course of events. The “first conjoint”
+examination consisted of biology, anatomy, and chemistry; but it could
+be taken in sections, and most fellows took their biology three months
+after entering the school. This science had been recently added to the
+list of subjects upon which the student was obliged to inform himself,
+but the amount of knowledge required was very small.
+
+When Philip went back to the dissecting-room, he was a few minutes
+late, since he had forgotten to buy the loose sleeves which they wore
+to protect their shirts, and he found a number of men already working.
+His partner had started on the minute and was busy dissecting out
+cutaneous nerves. Two others were engaged on the second leg, and more
+were occupied with the arms.
+
+“You don’t mind my having started?”
+
+“That’s all right, fire away,” said Philip.
+
+He took the book, open at a diagram of the dissected part, and looked
+at what they had to find.
+
+“You’re rather a dab at this,” said Philip.
+
+“Oh, I’ve done a good deal of dissecting before, animals, you know, for
+the Pre Sci.”
+
+There was a certain amount of conversation over the dissecting-table,
+partly about the work, partly about the prospects of the football
+season, the demonstrators, and the lectures. Philip felt himself a
+great deal older than the others. They were raw schoolboys. But age is
+a matter of knowledge rather than of years; and Newson, the active
+young man who was dissecting with him, was very much at home with his
+subject. He was perhaps not sorry to show off, and he explained very
+fully to Philip what he was about. Philip, notwithstanding his hidden
+stores of wisdom, listened meekly. Then Philip took up the scalpel and
+the tweezers and began working while the other looked on.
+
+“Ripping to have him so thin,” said Newson, wiping his hands. “The
+blighter can’t have had anything to eat for a month.”
+
+“I wonder what he died of,” murmured Philip.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know, any old thing, starvation chiefly, I suppose…. I
+say, look out, don’t cut that artery.”
+
+“It’s all very fine to say, don’t cut that artery,” remarked one of the
+men working on the opposite leg. “Silly old fool’s got an artery in the
+wrong place.”
+
+“Arteries always are in the wrong place,” said Newson. “The normal’s
+the one thing you practically never get. That’s why it’s called the
+normal.”
+
+“Don’t say things like that,” said Philip, “or I shall cut myself.”
+
+“If you cut yourself,” answered Newson, full of information, “wash it
+at once with antiseptic. It’s the one thing you’ve got to be careful
+about. There was a chap here last year who gave himself only a prick,
+and he didn’t bother about it, and he got septicaemia.”
+
+“Did he get all right?”
+
+“Oh, no, he died in a week. I went and had a look at him in the P. M.
+room.”
+
+Philip’s back ached by the time it was proper to have tea, and his
+luncheon had been so light that he was quite ready for it. His hands
+smelt of that peculiar odour which he had first noticed that morning in
+the corridor. He thought his muffin tasted of it too.
+
+“Oh, you’ll get used to that,” said Newson. “When you don’t have the
+good old dissecting-room stink about, you feel quite lonely.”
+
+“I’m not going to let it spoil my appetite,” said Philip, as he
+followed up the muffin with a piece of cake.
+
+
+
+
+LV
+
+
+Philip’s ideas of the life of medical students, like those of the
+public at large, were founded on the pictures which Charles Dickens
+drew in the middle of the nineteenth century. He soon discovered that
+Bob Sawyer, if he ever existed, was no longer at all like the medical
+student of the present.
+
+It is a mixed lot which enters upon the medical profession, and
+naturally there are some who are lazy and reckless. They think it is an
+easy life, idle away a couple of years; and then, because their funds
+come to an end or because angry parents refuse any longer to support
+them, drift away from the hospital. Others find the examinations too
+hard for them; one failure after another robs them of their nerve; and,
+panic-stricken, they forget as soon as they come into the forbidding
+buildings of the Conjoint Board the knowledge which before they had so
+pat. They remain year after year, objects of good-humoured scorn to
+younger men: some of them crawl through the examination of the
+Apothecaries Hall; others become non-qualified assistants, a precarious
+position in which they are at the mercy of their employer; their lot is
+poverty, drunkenness, and Heaven only knows their end. But for the most
+part medical students are industrious young men of the middle-class
+with a sufficient allowance to live in the respectable fashion they
+have been used to; many are the sons of doctors who have already
+something of the professional manner; their career is mapped out: as
+soon as they are qualified they propose to apply for a hospital
+appointment, after holding which (and perhaps a trip to the Far East as
+a ship’s doctor), they will join their father and spend the rest of
+their days in a country practice. One or two are marked out as
+exceptionally brilliant: they will take the various prizes and
+scholarships which are open each year to the deserving, get one
+appointment after another at the hospital, go on the staff, take a
+consulting-room in Harley Street, and, specialising in one subject or
+another, become prosperous, eminent, and titled.
+
+The medical profession is the only one which a man may enter at any age
+with some chance of making a living. Among the men of Philip’s year
+were three or four who were past their first youth: one had been in the
+Navy, from which according to report he had been dismissed for
+drunkenness; he was a man of thirty, with a red face, a brusque manner,
+and a loud voice. Another was a married man with two children, who had
+lost money through a defaulting solicitor; he had a bowed look as if
+the world were too much for him; he went about his work silently, and
+it was plain that he found it difficult at his age to commit facts to
+memory. His mind worked slowly. His effort at application was painful
+to see.
+
+Philip made himself at home in his tiny rooms. He arranged his books
+and hung on the walls such pictures and sketches as he possessed. Above
+him, on the drawing-room floor, lived a fifth-year man called
+Griffiths; but Philip saw little of him, partly because he was occupied
+chiefly in the wards and partly because he had been to Oxford. Such of
+the students as had been to a university kept a good deal together:
+they used a variety of means natural to the young in order to impress
+upon the less fortunate a proper sense of their inferiority; the rest
+of the students found their Olympian serenity rather hard to bear.
+Griffiths was a tall fellow, with a quantity of curly red hair and blue
+eyes, a white skin and a very red mouth; he was one of those fortunate
+people whom everybody liked, for he had high spirits and a constant
+gaiety. He strummed a little on the piano and sang comic songs with
+gusto; and evening after evening, while Philip was reading in his
+solitary room, he heard the shouts and the uproarious laughter of
+Griffiths’ friends above him. He thought of those delightful evenings
+in Paris when they would sit in the studio, Lawson and he, Flanagan and
+Clutton, and talk of art and morals, the love-affairs of the present,
+and the fame of the future. He felt sick at heart. He found that it was
+easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results. The
+worst of it was that the work seemed to him very tedious. He had got
+out of the habit of being asked questions by demonstrators. His
+attention wandered at lectures. Anatomy was a dreary science, a mere
+matter of learning by heart an enormous number of facts; dissection
+bored him; he did not see the use of dissecting out laboriously nerves
+and arteries when with much less trouble you could see in the diagrams
+of a book or in the specimens of the pathological museum exactly where
+they were.
+
+He made friends by chance, but not intimate friends, for he seemed to
+have nothing in particular to say to his companions. When he tried to
+interest himself in their concerns, he felt that they found him
+patronising. He was not of those who can talk of what moves them
+without caring whether it bores or not the people they talk to. One
+man, hearing that he had studied art in Paris, and fancying himself on
+his taste, tried to discuss art with him; but Philip was impatient of
+views which did not agree with his own; and, finding quickly that the
+other’s ideas were conventional, grew monosyllabic. Philip desired
+popularity but could bring himself to make no advances to others. A
+fear of rebuff prevented him from affability, and he concealed his
+shyness, which was still intense, under a frigid taciturnity. He was
+going through the same experience as he had done at school, but here
+the freedom of the medical students’ life made it possible for him to
+live a good deal by himself.
+
+It was through no effort of his that he became friendly with Dunsford,
+the fresh-complexioned, heavy lad whose acquaintance he had made at the
+beginning of the session. Dunsford attached himself to Philip merely
+because he was the first person he had known at St. Luke’s. He had no
+friends in London, and on Saturday nights he and Philip got into the
+habit of going together to the pit of a music-hall or the gallery of a
+theatre. He was stupid, but he was good-humoured and never took
+offence; he always said the obvious thing, but when Philip laughed at
+him merely smiled. He had a very sweet smile. Though Philip made him
+his butt, he liked him; he was amused by his candour and delighted with
+his agreeable nature: Dunsford had the charm which himself was acutely
+conscious of not possessing.
+
+They often went to have tea at a shop in Parliament Street, because
+Dunsford admired one of the young women who waited. Philip did not find
+anything attractive in her. She was tall and thin, with narrow hips and
+the chest of a boy.
+
+“No one would look at her in Paris,” said Philip scornfully.
+
+“She’s got a ripping face,” said Dunsford.
+
+“What DOES the face matter?”
+
+She had the small regular features, the blue eyes, and the broad low
+brow, which the Victorian painters, Lord Leighton, Alma Tadema, and a
+hundred others, induced the world they lived in to accept as a type of
+Greek beauty. She seemed to have a great deal of hair: it was arranged
+with peculiar elaboration and done over the forehead in what she called
+an Alexandra fringe. She was very anaemic. Her thin lips were pale, and
+her skin was delicate, of a faint green colour, without a touch of red
+even in the cheeks. She had very good teeth. She took great pains to
+prevent her work from spoiling her hands, and they were small, thin,
+and white. She went about her duties with a bored look.
+
+Dunsford, very shy with women, had never succeeded in getting into
+conversation with her; and he urged Philip to help him.
+
+“All I want is a lead,” he said, “and then I can manage for myself.”
+
+Philip, to please him, made one or two remarks, but she answered with
+monosyllables. She had taken their measure. They were boys, and she
+surmised they were students. She had no use for them. Dunsford noticed
+that a man with sandy hair and a bristly moustache, who looked like a
+German, was favoured with her attention whenever he came into the shop;
+and then it was only by calling her two or three times that they could
+induce her to take their order. She used the clients whom she did not
+know with frigid insolence, and when she was talking to a friend was
+perfectly indifferent to the calls of the hurried. She had the art of
+treating women who desired refreshment with just that degree of
+impertinence which irritated them without affording them an opportunity
+of complaining to the management. One day Dunsford told him her name
+was Mildred. He had heard one of the other girls in the shop address
+her.
+
+“What an odious name,” said Philip.
+
+“Why?” asked Dunsford.
+
+“I like it.”
+
+“It’s so pretentious.”
+
+It chanced that on this day the German was not there, and, when she
+brought the tea, Philip, smiling, remarked:
+
+“Your friend’s not here today.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean,” she said coldly.
+
+“I was referring to the nobleman with the sandy moustache. Has he left
+you for another?”
+
+“Some people would do better to mind their own business,” she retorted.
+
+She left them, and, since for a minute or two there was no one to
+attend to, sat down and looked at the evening paper which a customer
+had left behind him.
+
+“You are a fool to put her back up,” said Dunsford.
+
+“I’m really quite indifferent to the attitude of her vertebrae,”
+replied Philip.
+
+But he was piqued. It irritated him that when he tried to be agreeable
+with a woman she should take offence. When he asked for the bill, he
+hazarded a remark which he meant to lead further.
+
+“Are we no longer on speaking terms?” he smiled.
+
+“I’m here to take orders and to wait on customers. I’ve got nothing to
+say to them, and I don’t want them to say anything to me.”
+
+She put down the slip of paper on which she had marked the sum they had
+to pay, and walked back to the table at which she had been sitting.
+Philip flushed with anger.
+
+“That’s one in the eye for you, Carey,” said Dunsford, when they got
+outside.
+
+“Ill-mannered slut,” said Philip. “I shan’t go there again.”
+
+His influence with Dunsford was strong enough to get him to take their
+tea elsewhere, and Dunsford soon found another young woman to flirt
+with. But the snub which the waitress had inflicted on him rankled. If
+she had treated him with civility he would have been perfectly
+indifferent to her; but it was obvious that she disliked him rather
+than otherwise, and his pride was wounded. He could not suppress a
+desire to be even with her. He was impatient with himself because he
+had so petty a feeling, but three or four days’ firmness, during which
+he would not go to the shop, did not help him to surmount it; and he
+came to the conclusion that it would be least trouble to see her.
+Having done so he would certainly cease to think of her. Pretexting an
+appointment one afternoon, for he was not a little ashamed of his
+weakness, he left Dunsford and went straight to the shop which he had
+vowed never again to enter. He saw the waitress the moment he came in
+and sat down at one of her tables. He expected her to make some
+reference to the fact that he had not been there for a week, but when
+she came up for his order she said nothing. He had heard her say to
+other customers:
+
+“You’re quite a stranger.”
+
+She gave no sign that she had ever seen him before. In order to see
+whether she had really forgotten him, when she brought his tea, he
+asked:
+
+“Have you seen my friend tonight?”
+
+“No, he’s not been in here for some days.”
+
+He wanted to use this as the beginning of a conversation, but he was
+strangely nervous and could think of nothing to say. She gave him no
+opportunity, but at once went away. He had no chance of saying anything
+till he asked for his bill.
+
+“Filthy weather, isn’t it?” he said.
+
+It was mortifying that he had been forced to prepare such a phrase as
+that. He could not make out why she filled him with such embarrassment.
+
+“It don’t make much difference to me what the weather is, having to be
+in here all day.”
+
+There was an insolence in her tone that peculiarly irritated him. A
+sarcasm rose to his lips, but he forced himself to be silent.
+
+“I wish to God she’d say something really cheeky,” he raged to himself,
+“so that I could report her and get her sacked. It would serve her
+damned well right.”
+
+
+
+
+LVI
+
+
+He could not get her out of his mind. He laughed angrily at his own
+foolishness: it was absurd to care what an anaemic little waitress said
+to him; but he was strangely humiliated. Though no one knew of the
+humiliation but Dunsford, and he had certainly forgotten, Philip felt
+that he could have no peace till he had wiped it out. He thought over
+what he had better do. He made up his mind that he would go to the shop
+every day; it was obvious that he had made a disagreeable impression on
+her, but he thought he had the wits to eradicate it; he would take care
+not to say anything at which the most susceptible person could be
+offended. All this he did, but it had no effect. When he went in and
+said good-evening she answered with the same words, but when once he
+omitted to say it in order to see whether she would say it first, she
+said nothing at all. He murmured in his heart an expression which
+though frequently applicable to members of the female sex is not often
+used of them in polite society; but with an unmoved face he ordered his
+tea. He made up his mind not to speak a word, and left the shop without
+his usual good-night. He promised himself that he would not go any
+more, but the next day at tea-time he grew restless. He tried to think
+of other things, but he had no command over his thoughts. At last he
+said desperately:
+
+“After all there’s no reason why I shouldn’t go if I want to.”
+
+The struggle with himself had taken a long time, and it was getting on
+for seven when he entered the shop.
+
+“I thought you weren’t coming,” the girl said to him, when he sat down.
+
+His heart leaped in his bosom and he felt himself reddening. “I was
+detained. I couldn’t come before.”
+
+“Cutting up people, I suppose?”
+
+“Not so bad as that.”
+
+“You are a stoodent, aren’t you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+But that seemed to satisfy her curiosity. She went away and, since at
+that late hour there was nobody else at her tables, she immersed
+herself in a novelette. This was before the time of the sixpenny
+reprints. There was a regular supply of inexpensive fiction written to
+order by poor hacks for the consumption of the illiterate. Philip was
+elated; she had addressed him of her own accord; he saw the time
+approaching when his turn would come and he would tell her exactly what
+he thought of her. It would be a great comfort to express the immensity
+of his contempt. He looked at her. It was true that her profile was
+beautiful; it was extraordinary how English girls of that class had so
+often a perfection of outline which took your breath away, but it was
+as cold as marble; and the faint green of her delicate skin gave an
+impression of unhealthiness. All the waitresses were dressed alike, in
+plain black dresses, with a white apron, cuffs, and a small cap. On a
+half sheet of paper that he had in his pocket Philip made a sketch of
+her as she sat leaning over her book (she outlined the words with her
+lips as she read), and left it on the table when he went away. It was
+an inspiration, for next day, when he came in, she smiled at him.
+
+“I didn’t know you could draw,” she said.
+
+“I was an art-student in Paris for two years.”
+
+“I showed that drawing you left be’ind you last night to the manageress
+and she WAS struck with it. Was it meant to be me?”
+
+“It was,” said Philip.
+
+When she went for his tea, one of the other girls came up to him.
+
+“I saw that picture you done of Miss Rogers. It was the very image of
+her,” she said.
+
+That was the first time he had heard her name, and when he wanted his
+bill he called her by it.
+
+“I see you know my name,” she said, when she came.
+
+“Your friend mentioned it when she said something to me about that
+drawing.”
+
+“She wants you to do one of her. Don’t you do it. If you once begin
+you’ll have to go on, and they’ll all be wanting you to do them.” Then
+without a pause, with peculiar inconsequence, she said: “Where’s that
+young fellow that used to come with you? Has he gone away?”
+
+“Fancy your remembering him,” said Philip.
+
+“He was a nice-looking young fellow.”
+
+Philip felt quite a peculiar sensation in his heart. He did not know
+what it was. Dunsford had jolly curling hair, a fresh complexion, and a
+beautiful smile. Philip thought of these advantages with envy.
+
+“Oh, he’s in love,” said he, with a little laugh.
+
+Philip repeated every word of the conversation to himself as he limped
+home. She was quite friendly with him now. When opportunity arose he
+would offer to make a more finished sketch of her, he was sure she
+would like that; her face was interesting, the profile was lovely, and
+there was something curiously fascinating about the chlorotic colour.
+He tried to think what it was like; at first he thought of pea soup;
+but, driving away that idea angrily, he thought of the petals of a
+yellow rosebud when you tore it to pieces before it had burst. He had
+no ill-feeling towards her now.
+
+“She’s not a bad sort,” he murmured.
+
+It was silly of him to take offence at what she had said; it was
+doubtless his own fault; she had not meant to make herself
+disagreeable: he ought to be accustomed by now to making at first sight
+a bad impression on people. He was flattered at the success of his
+drawing; she looked upon him with more interest now that she was aware
+of this small talent. He was restless next day. He thought of going to
+lunch at the tea-shop, but he was certain there would be many people
+there then, and Mildred would not be able to talk to him. He had
+managed before this to get out of having tea with Dunsford, and,
+punctually at half past four (he had looked at his watch a dozen
+times), he went into the shop.
+
+Mildred had her back turned to him. She was sitting down, talking to
+the German whom Philip had seen there every day till a fortnight ago
+and since then had not seen at all. She was laughing at what he said.
+Philip thought she had a common laugh, and it made him shudder. He
+called her, but she took no notice; he called her again; then, growing
+angry, for he was impatient, he rapped the table loudly with his stick.
+She approached sulkily.
+
+“How d’you do?” he said.
+
+“You seem to be in a great hurry.”
+
+She looked down at him with the insolent manner which he knew so well.
+
+“I say, what’s the matter with you?” he asked.
+
+“If you’ll kindly give your order I’ll get what you want. I can’t stand
+talking all night.”
+
+“Tea and toasted bun, please,” Philip answered briefly.
+
+He was furious with her. He had The Star with him and read it
+elaborately when she brought the tea.
+
+“If you’ll give me my bill now I needn’t trouble you again,” he said
+icily.
+
+She wrote out the slip, placed it on the table, and went back to the
+German. Soon she was talking to him with animation. He was a man of
+middle height, with the round head of his nation and a sallow face; his
+moustache was large and bristling; he had on a tail-coat and gray
+trousers, and he wore a massive gold watch-chain. Philip thought the
+other girls looked from him to the pair at the table and exchanged
+significant glances. He felt certain they were laughing at him, and his
+blood boiled. He detested Mildred now with all his heart. He knew that
+the best thing he could do was to cease coming to the tea-shop, but he
+could not bear to think that he had been worsted in the affair, and he
+devised a plan to show her that he despised her. Next day he sat down
+at another table and ordered his tea from another waitress. Mildred’s
+friend was there again and she was talking to him. She paid no
+attention to Philip, and so when he went out he chose a moment when she
+had to cross his path: as he passed he looked at her as though he had
+never seen her before. He repeated this for three or four days. He
+expected that presently she would take the opportunity to say something
+to him; he thought she would ask why he never came to one of her tables
+now, and he had prepared an answer charged with all the loathing he
+felt for her. He knew it was absurd to trouble, but he could not help
+himself. She had beaten him again. The German suddenly disappeared, but
+Philip still sat at other tables. She paid no attention to him.
+Suddenly he realised that what he did was a matter of complete
+indifference to her; he could go on in that way till doomsday, and it
+would have no effect.
+
+“I’ve not finished yet,” he said to himself.
+
+The day after he sat down in his old seat, and when she came up said
+good-evening as though he had not ignored her for a week. His face was
+placid, but he could not prevent the mad beating of his heart. At that
+time the musical comedy had lately leaped into public favour, and he
+was sure that Mildred would be delighted to go to one.
+
+“I say,” he said suddenly, “I wonder if you’d dine with me one night
+and come to The Belle of New York. I’ll get a couple of stalls.”
+
+He added the last sentence in order to tempt her. He knew that when the
+girls went to the play it was either in the pit, or, if some man took
+them, seldom to more expensive seats than the upper circle. Mildred’s
+pale face showed no change of expression.
+
+“I don’t mind,” she said.
+
+“When will you come?”
+
+“I get off early on Thursdays.”
+
+They made arrangements. Mildred lived with an aunt at Herne Hill. The
+play began at eight so they must dine at seven. She proposed that he
+should meet her in the second-class waiting-room at Victoria Station.
+She showed no pleasure, but accepted the invitation as though she
+conferred a favour. Philip was vaguely irritated.
+
+
+
+
+LVII
+
+
+Philip arrived at Victoria Station nearly half an hour before the time
+which Mildred had appointed, and sat down in the second-class
+waiting-room. He waited and she did not come. He began to grow anxious,
+and walked into the station watching the incoming suburban trains; the
+hour which she had fixed passed, and still there was no sign of her.
+Philip was impatient. He went into the other waiting-rooms and looked
+at the people sitting in them. Suddenly his heart gave a great thud.
+
+“There you are. I thought you were never coming.”
+
+“I like that after keeping me waiting all this time. I had half a mind
+to go back home again.”
+
+“But you said you’d come to the second-class waiting-room.”
+
+“I didn’t say any such thing. It isn’t exactly likely I’d sit in the
+second-class room when I could sit in the first is it?”
+
+Though Philip was sure he had not made a mistake, he said nothing, and
+they got into a cab.
+
+“Where are we dining?” she asked.
+
+“I thought of the Adelphi Restaurant. Will that suit you?”
+
+“I don’t mind where we dine.”
+
+She spoke ungraciously. She was put out by being kept waiting and
+answered Philip’s attempt at conversation with monosyllables. She wore
+a long cloak of some rough, dark material and a crochet shawl over her
+head. They reached the restaurant and sat down at a table. She looked
+round with satisfaction. The red shades to the candles on the tables,
+the gold of the decorations, the looking-glasses, lent the room a
+sumptuous air.
+
+“I’ve never been here before.”
+
+She gave Philip a smile. She had taken off her cloak; and he saw that
+she wore a pale blue dress, cut square at the neck; and her hair was
+more elaborately arranged than ever. He had ordered champagne and when
+it came her eyes sparkled.
+
+“You are going it,” she said.
+
+“Because I’ve ordered fiz?” he asked carelessly, as though he never
+drank anything else.
+
+“I WAS surprised when you asked me to do a theatre with you.”
+Conversation did not go very easily, for she did not seem to have much
+to say; and Philip was nervously conscious that he was not amusing her.
+She listened carelessly to his remarks, with her eyes on other diners,
+and made no pretence that she was interested in him. He made one or two
+little jokes, but she took them quite seriously. The only sign of
+vivacity he got was when he spoke of the other girls in the shop; she
+could not bear the manageress and told him all her misdeeds at length.
+
+“I can’t stick her at any price and all the air she gives herself.
+Sometimes I’ve got more than half a mind to tell her something she
+doesn’t think I know anything about.”
+
+“What is that?” asked Philip.
+
+“Well, I happen to know that she’s not above going to Eastbourne with a
+man for the week-end now and again. One of the girls has a married
+sister who goes there with her husband, and she’s seen her. She was
+staying at the same boarding-house, and she ’ad a wedding-ring on, and
+I know for one she’s not married.”
+
+Philip filled her glass, hoping that champagne would make her more
+affable; he was anxious that his little jaunt should be a success. He
+noticed that she held her knife as though it were a pen-holder, and
+when she drank protruded her little finger. He started several topics
+of conversation, but he could get little out of her, and he remembered
+with irritation that he had seen her talking nineteen to the dozen and
+laughing with the German. They finished dinner and went to the play.
+Philip was a very cultured young man, and he looked upon musical comedy
+with scorn. He thought the jokes vulgar and the melodies obvious; it
+seemed to him that they did these things much better in France; but
+Mildred enjoyed herself thoroughly; she laughed till her sides ached,
+looking at Philip now and then when something tickled her to exchange a
+glance of pleasure; and she applauded rapturously.
+
+“This is the seventh time I’ve been,” she said, after the first act,
+“and I don’t mind if I come seven times more.”
+
+She was much interested in the women who surrounded them in the stalls.
+She pointed out to Philip those who were painted and those who wore
+false hair.
+
+“It is horrible, these West-end people,” she said. “I don’t know how
+they can do it.” She put her hand to her hair. “Mine’s all my own,
+every bit of it.”
+
+She found no one to admire, and whenever she spoke of anyone it was to
+say something disagreeable. It made Philip uneasy. He supposed that
+next day she would tell the girls in the shop that he had taken her out
+and that he had bored her to death. He disliked her, and yet, he knew
+not why, he wanted to be with her. On the way home he asked:
+
+“I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself?”
+
+“Rather.”
+
+“Will you come out with me again one evening?”
+
+“I don’t mind.”
+
+He could never get beyond such expressions as that. Her indifference
+maddened him.
+
+“That sounds as if you didn’t much care if you came or not.”
+
+“Oh, if you don’t take me out some other fellow will. I need never want
+for men who’ll take me to the theatre.”
+
+Philip was silent. They came to the station, and he went to the
+booking-office.
+
+“I’ve got my season,” she said.
+
+“I thought I’d take you home as it’s rather late, if you don’t mind.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t mind if it gives you any pleasure.”
+
+He took a single first for her and a return for himself.
+
+“Well, you’re not mean, I will say that for you,” she said, when he
+opened the carriage-door.
+
+Philip did not know whether he was pleased or sorry when other people
+entered and it was impossible to speak. They got out at Herne Hill, and
+he accompanied her to the corner of the road in which she lived.
+
+“I’ll say good-night to you here,” she said, holding out her hand.
+“You’d better not come up to the door. I know what people are, and I
+don’t want to have anybody talking.”
+
+She said good-night and walked quickly away. He could see the white
+shawl in the darkness. He thought she might turn round, but she did
+not. Philip saw which house she went into, and in a moment he walked
+along to look at it. It was a trim, common little house of yellow
+brick, exactly like all the other little houses in the street. He stood
+outside for a few minutes, and presently the window on the top floor
+was darkened. Philip strolled slowly back to the station. The evening
+had been unsatisfactory. He felt irritated, restless, and miserable.
+
+When he lay in bed he seemed still to see her sitting in the corner of
+the railway carriage, with the white crochet shawl over her head. He
+did not know how he was to get through the hours that must pass before
+his eyes rested on her again. He thought drowsily of her thin face,
+with its delicate features, and the greenish pallor of her skin. He was
+not happy with her, but he was unhappy away from her. He wanted to sit
+by her side and look at her, he wanted to touch her, he wanted… the
+thought came to him and he did not finish it, suddenly he grew wide
+awake… he wanted to kiss the thin, pale mouth with its narrow lips. The
+truth came to him at last. He was in love with her. It was incredible.
+
+He had often thought of falling in love, and there was one scene which
+he had pictured to himself over and over again. He saw himself coming
+into a ball-room; his eyes fell on a little group of men and women
+talking; and one of the women turned round. Her eyes fell upon him, and
+he knew that the gasp in his throat was in her throat too. He stood
+quite still. She was tall and dark and beautiful with eyes like the
+night; she was dressed in white, and in her black hair shone diamonds;
+they stared at one another, forgetting that people surrounded them. He
+went straight up to her, and she moved a little towards him. Both felt
+that the formality of introduction was out of place. He spoke to her.
+
+“I’ve been looking for you all my life,” he said.
+
+“You’ve come at last,” she murmured.
+
+“Will you dance with me?”
+
+She surrendered herself to his outstretched hands and they danced.
+(Philip always pretended that he was not lame.) She danced divinely.
+
+“I’ve never danced with anyone who danced like you,” she said.
+
+She tore up her programme, and they danced together the whole evening.
+
+“I’m so thankful that I waited for you,” he said to her. “I knew that
+in the end I must meet you.”
+
+People in the ball-room stared. They did not care. They did not wish to
+hide their passion. At last they went into the garden. He flung a light
+cloak over her shoulders and put her in a waiting cab. They caught the
+midnight train to Paris; and they sped through the silent, star-lit
+night into the unknown.
+
+He thought of this old fancy of his, and it seemed impossible that he
+should be in love with Mildred Rogers. Her name was grotesque. He did
+not think her pretty; he hated the thinness of her, only that evening
+he had noticed how the bones of her chest stood out in evening-dress;
+he went over her features one by one; he did not like her mouth, and
+the unhealthiness of her colour vaguely repelled him. She was common.
+Her phrases, so bald and few, constantly repeated, showed the emptiness
+of her mind; he recalled her vulgar little laugh at the jokes of the
+musical comedy; and he remembered the little finger carefully extended
+when she held her glass to her mouth; her manners like her
+conversation, were odiously genteel. He remembered her insolence;
+sometimes he had felt inclined to box her ears; and suddenly, he knew
+not why, perhaps it was the thought of hitting her or the recollection
+of her tiny, beautiful ears, he was seized by an uprush of emotion. He
+yearned for her. He thought of taking her in his arms, the thin,
+fragile body, and kissing her pale mouth: he wanted to pass his fingers
+down the slightly greenish cheeks. He wanted her.
+
+He had thought of love as a rapture which seized one so that all the
+world seemed spring-like, he had looked forward to an ecstatic
+happiness; but this was not happiness; it was a hunger of the soul, it
+was a painful yearning, it was a bitter anguish, he had never known
+before. He tried to think when it had first come to him. He did not
+know. He only remembered that each time he had gone into the shop,
+after the first two or three times, it had been with a little feeling
+in the heart that was pain; and he remembered that when she spoke to
+him he felt curiously breathless. When she left him it was
+wretchedness, and when she came to him again it was despair.
+
+He stretched himself in his bed as a dog stretches himself. He wondered
+how he was going to endure that ceaseless aching of his soul.
+
+
+
+
+LVIII
+
+
+Philip woke early next morning, and his first thought was of Mildred.
+It struck him that he might meet her at Victoria Station and walk with
+her to the shop. He shaved quickly, scrambled into his clothes, and
+took a bus to the station. He was there by twenty to eight and watched
+the incoming trains. Crowds poured out of them, clerks and shop-people
+at that early hour, and thronged up the platform: they hurried along,
+sometimes in pairs, here and there a group of girls, but more often
+alone. They were white, most of them, ugly in the early morning, and
+they had an abstracted look; the younger ones walked lightly, as though
+the cement of the platform were pleasant to tread, but the others went
+as though impelled by a machine: their faces were set in an anxious
+frown.
+
+At last Philip saw Mildred, and he went up to her eagerly.
+
+“Good-morning,” he said. “I thought I’d come and see how you were after
+last night.”
+
+She wore an old brown ulster and a sailor hat. It was very clear that
+she was not pleased to see him.
+
+“Oh, I’m all right. I haven’t got much time to waste.”
+
+“D’you mind if I walk down Victoria Street with you?”
+
+“I’m none too early. I shall have to walk fast,” she answered, looking
+down at Philip’s club-foot.
+
+He turned scarlet.
+
+“I beg your pardon. I won’t detain you.”
+
+“You can please yourself.”
+
+She went on, and he with a sinking heart made his way home to
+breakfast. He hated her. He knew he was a fool to bother about her; she
+was not the sort of woman who would ever care two straws for him, and
+she must look upon his deformity with distaste. He made up his mind
+that he would not go in to tea that afternoon, but, hating himself, he
+went. She nodded to him as he came in and smiled.
+
+“I expect I was rather short with you this morning,” she said. “You
+see, I didn’t expect you, and it came like a surprise.”
+
+“Oh, it doesn’t matter at all.”
+
+He felt that a great weight had suddenly been lifted from him. He was
+infinitely grateful for one word of kindness.
+
+“Why don’t you sit down?” he asked. “Nobody’s wanting you just now.”
+
+“I don’t mind if I do.”
+
+He looked at her, but could think of nothing to say; he racked his
+brains anxiously, seeking for a remark which should keep her by him; he
+wanted to tell her how much she meant to him; but he did not know how
+to make love now that he loved in earnest.
+
+“Where’s your friend with the fair moustache? I haven’t seen him
+lately.”
+
+“Oh, he’s gone back to Birmingham. He’s in business there. He only
+comes up to London every now and again.”
+
+“Is he in love with you?”
+
+“You’d better ask him,” she said, with a laugh. “I don’t know what it’s
+got to do with you if he is.”
+
+A bitter answer leaped to his tongue, but he was learning
+self-restraint.
+
+“I wonder why you say things like that,” was all he permitted himself
+to say.
+
+She looked at him with those indifferent eyes of hers.
+
+“It looks as if you didn’t set much store on me,” he added.
+
+“Why should I?”
+
+“No reason at all.”
+
+He reached over for his paper.
+
+“You are quick-tempered,” she said, when she saw the gesture. “You do
+take offence easily.”
+
+He smiled and looked at her appealingly.
+
+“Will you do something for me?” he asked.
+
+“That depends what it is.”
+
+“Let me walk back to the station with you tonight.”
+
+“I don’t mind.”
+
+He went out after tea and went back to his rooms, but at eight o’clock,
+when the shop closed, he was waiting outside.
+
+“You are a caution,” she said, when she came out. “I don’t understand
+you.”
+
+“I shouldn’t have thought it was very difficult,” he answered bitterly.
+
+“Did any of the girls see you waiting for me?”
+
+“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
+
+“They all laugh at you, you know. They say you’re spoony on me.”
+
+“Much you care,” he muttered.
+
+“Now then, quarrelsome.”
+
+At the station he took a ticket and said he was going to accompany her
+home.
+
+“You don’t seem to have much to do with your time,” she said.
+
+“I suppose I can waste it in my own way.”
+
+They seemed to be always on the verge of a quarrel. The fact was that
+he hated himself for loving her. She seemed to be constantly
+humiliating him, and for each snub that he endured he owed her a
+grudge. But she was in a friendly mood that evening, and talkative: she
+told him that her parents were dead; she gave him to understand that
+she did not have to earn her living, but worked for amusement.
+
+“My aunt doesn’t like my going to business. I can have the best of
+everything at home. I don’t want you to think I work because I need
+to.” Philip knew that she was not speaking the truth. The gentility of
+her class made her use this pretence to avoid the stigma attached to
+earning her living.
+
+“My family’s very well-connected,” she said.
+
+Philip smiled faintly, and she noticed it.
+
+“What are you laughing at?” she said quickly. “Don’t you believe I’m
+telling you the truth?”
+
+“Of course I do,” he answered.
+
+She looked at him suspiciously, but in a moment could not resist the
+temptation to impress him with the splendour of her early days.
+
+“My father always kept a dog-cart, and we had three servants. We had a
+cook and a housemaid and an odd man. We used to grow beautiful roses.
+People used to stop at the gate and ask who the house belonged to, the
+roses were so beautiful. Of course it isn’t very nice for me having to
+mix with them girls in the shop, it’s not the class of person I’ve been
+used to, and sometimes I really think I’ll give up business on that
+account. It’s not the work I mind, don’t think that; but it’s the class
+of people I have to mix with.”
+
+They were sitting opposite one another in the train, and Philip,
+listening sympathetically to what she said, was quite happy. He was
+amused at her naivete and slightly touched. There was a very faint
+colour in her cheeks. He was thinking that it would be delightful to
+kiss the tip of her chin.
+
+“The moment you come into the shop I saw you was a gentleman in every
+sense of the word. Was your father a professional man?”
+
+“He was a doctor.”
+
+“You can always tell a professional man. There’s something about them,
+I don’t know what it is, but I know at once.”
+
+They walked along from the station together.
+
+“I say, I want you to come and see another play with me,” he said.
+
+“I don’t mind,” she said.
+
+“You might go so far as to say you’d like to.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“It doesn’t matter. Let’s fix a day. Would Saturday night suit you?”
+
+“Yes, that’ll do.”
+
+They made further arrangements, and then found themselves at the corner
+of the road in which she lived. She gave him her hand, and he held it.
+
+“I say, I do so awfully want to call you Mildred.”
+
+“You may if you like, I don’t care.”
+
+“And you’ll call me Philip, won’t you?”
+
+“I will if I can think of it. It seems more natural to call you Mr.
+Carey.”
+
+He drew her slightly towards him, but she leaned back.
+
+“What are you doing?”
+
+“Won’t you kiss me good-night?” he whispered.
+
+“Impudence!” she said.
+
+She snatched away her hand and hurried towards her house.
+
+Philip bought tickets for Saturday night. It was not one of the days on
+which she got off early and therefore she would have no time to go home
+and change; but she meant to bring a frock up with her in the morning
+and hurry into her clothes at the shop. If the manageress was in a good
+temper she would let her go at seven. Philip had agreed to wait outside
+from a quarter past seven onwards. He looked forward to the occasion
+with painful eagerness, for in the cab on the way from the theatre to
+the station he thought she would let him kiss her. The vehicle gave
+every facility for a man to put his arm round a girl’s waist (an
+advantage which the hansom had over the taxi of the present day), and
+the delight of that was worth the cost of the evening’s entertainment.
+
+But on Saturday afternoon when he went in to have tea, in order to
+confirm the arrangements, he met the man with the fair moustache coming
+out of the shop. He knew by now that he was called Miller. He was a
+naturalized German, who had anglicised his name, and he had lived many
+years in England. Philip had heard him speak, and, though his English
+was fluent and natural, it had not quite the intonation of the native.
+Philip knew that he was flirting with Mildred, and he was horribly
+jealous of him; but he took comfort in the coldness of her temperament,
+which otherwise distressed him; and, thinking her incapable of passion,
+he looked upon his rival as no better off than himself. But his heart
+sank now, for his first thought was that Miller’s sudden appearance
+might interfere with the jaunt which he had so looked forward to. He
+entered, sick with apprehension. The waitress came up to him, took his
+order for tea, and presently brought it.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry,” she said, with an expression on her face of real
+distress. “I shan’t be able to come tonight after all.”
+
+“Why?” said Philip.
+
+“Don’t look so stern about it,” she laughed. “It’s not my fault. My
+aunt was taken ill last night, and it’s the girl’s night out so I must
+go and sit with her. She can’t be left alone, can she?”
+
+“It doesn’t matter. I’ll see you home instead.”
+
+“But you’ve got the tickets. It would be a pity to waste them.”
+
+He took them out of his pocket and deliberately tore them up.
+
+“What are you doing that for?”
+
+“You don’t suppose I want to go and see a rotten musical comedy by
+myself, do you? I only took seats there for your sake.”
+
+“You can’t see me home if that’s what you mean?”
+
+“You’ve made other arrangements.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean by that. You’re just as selfish as all the
+rest of them. You only think of yourself. It’s not my fault if my
+aunt’s queer.”
+
+She quickly wrote out his bill and left him. Philip knew very little
+about women, or he would have been aware that one should accept their
+most transparent lies. He made up his mind that he would watch the shop
+and see for certain whether Mildred went out with the German. He had an
+unhappy passion for certainty. At seven he stationed himself on the
+opposite pavement. He looked about for Miller, but did not see him. In
+ten minutes she came out, she had on the cloak and shawl which she had
+worn when he took her to the Shaftesbury Theatre. It was obvious that
+she was not going home. She saw him before he had time to move away,
+started a little, and then came straight up to him.
+
+“What are you doing here?” she said.
+
+“Taking the air,” he answered.
+
+“You’re spying on me, you dirty little cad. I thought you was a
+gentleman.”
+
+“Did you think a gentleman would be likely to take any interest in
+you?” he murmured.
+
+There was a devil within him which forced him to make matters worse. He
+wanted to hurt her as much as she was hurting him.
+
+“I suppose I can change my mind if I like. I’m not obliged to come out
+with you. I tell you I’m going home, and I won’t be followed or spied
+upon.”
+
+“Have you seen Miller today?”
+
+“That’s no business of yours. In point of fact I haven’t, so you’re
+wrong again.”
+
+“I saw him this afternoon. He’d just come out of the shop when I went
+in.”
+
+“Well, what if he did? I can go out with him if I want to, can’t I? I
+don’t know what you’ve got to say to it.”
+
+“He’s keeping you waiting, isn’t he?”
+
+“Well, I’d rather wait for him than have you wait for me. Put that in
+your pipe and smoke it. And now p’raps you’ll go off home and mind your
+own business in future.”
+
+His mood changed suddenly from anger to despair, and his voice trembled
+when he spoke.
+
+“I say, don’t be beastly with me, Mildred. You know I’m awfully fond of
+you. I think I love you with all my heart. Won’t you change your mind?
+I was looking forward to this evening so awfully. You see, he hasn’t
+come, and he can’t care twopence about you really. Won’t you dine with
+me? I’ll get some more tickets, and we’ll go anywhere you like.”
+
+“I tell you I won’t. It’s no good you talking. I’ve made up my mind,
+and when I make up my mind I keep to it.”
+
+He looked at her for a moment. His heart was torn with anguish. People
+were hurrying past them on the pavement, and cabs and omnibuses rolled
+by noisily. He saw that Mildred’s eyes were wandering. She was afraid
+of missing Miller in the crowd.
+
+“I can’t go on like this,” groaned Philip. “It’s too degrading. If I go
+now I go for good. Unless you’ll come with me tonight you’ll never see
+me again.”
+
+“You seem to think that’ll be an awful thing for me. All I say is, good
+riddance to bad rubbish.”
+
+“Then good-bye.”
+
+He nodded and limped away slowly, for he hoped with all his heart that
+she would call him back. At the next lamp-post he stopped and looked
+over his shoulder. He thought she might beckon to him—he was willing to
+forget everything, he was ready for any humiliation—but she had turned
+away, and apparently had ceased to trouble about him. He realised that
+she was glad to be quit of him.
+
+
+
+
+LIX
+
+
+Philip passed the evening wretchedly. He had told his landlady that he
+would not be in, so there was nothing for him to eat, and he had to go
+to Gatti’s for dinner. Afterwards he went back to his rooms, but
+Griffiths on the floor above him was having a party, and the noisy
+merriment made his own misery more hard to bear. He went to a
+music-hall, but it was Saturday night and there was standing-room only:
+after half an hour of boredom his legs grew tired and he went home. He
+tried to read, but he could not fix his attention; and yet it was
+necessary that he should work hard. His examination in biology was in
+little more than a fortnight, and, though it was easy, he had neglected
+his lectures of late and was conscious that he knew nothing. It was
+only a viva, however, and he felt sure that in a fortnight he could
+find out enough about the subject to scrape through. He had confidence
+in his intelligence. He threw aside his book and gave himself up to
+thinking deliberately of the matter which was in his mind all the time.
+
+He reproached himself bitterly for his behaviour that evening. Why had
+he given her the alternative that she must dine with him or else never
+see him again? Of course she refused. He should have allowed for her
+pride. He had burnt his ships behind him. It would not be so hard to
+bear if he thought that she was suffering now, but he knew her too
+well: she was perfectly indifferent to him. If he hadn’t been a fool he
+would have pretended to believe her story; he ought to have had the
+strength to conceal his disappointment and the self-control to master
+his temper. He could not tell why he loved her. He had read of the
+idealisation that takes place in love, but he saw her exactly as she
+was. She was not amusing or clever, her mind was common; she had a
+vulgar shrewdness which revolted him, she had no gentleness nor
+softness. As she would have put it herself, she was on the make. What
+aroused her admiration was a clever trick played on an unsuspecting
+person; to ‘do’ somebody always gave her satisfaction. Philip laughed
+savagely as he thought of her gentility and the refinement with which
+she ate her food; she could not bear a coarse word, so far as her
+limited vocabulary reached she had a passion for euphemisms, and she
+scented indecency everywhere; she never spoke of trousers but referred
+to them as nether garments; she thought it slightly indelicate to blow
+her nose and did it in a deprecating way. She was dreadfully anaemic
+and suffered from the dyspepsia which accompanies that ailing. Philip
+was repelled by her flat breast and narrow hips, and he hated the
+vulgar way in which she did her hair. He loathed and despised himself
+for loving her.
+
+The fact remained that he was helpless. He felt just as he had felt
+sometimes in the hands of a bigger boy at school. He had struggled
+against the superior strength till his own strength was gone, and he
+was rendered quite powerless—he remembered the peculiar languor he had
+felt in his limbs, almost as though he were paralysed—so that he could
+not help himself at all. He might have been dead. He felt just that
+same weakness now. He loved the woman so that he knew he had never
+loved before. He did not mind her faults of person or of character, he
+thought he loved them too: at all events they meant nothing to him. It
+did not seem himself that was concerned; he felt that he had been
+seized by some strange force that moved him against his will, contrary
+to his interests; and because he had a passion for freedom he hated the
+chains which bound him. He laughed at himself when he thought how often
+he had longed to experience the overwhelming passion. He cursed himself
+because he had given way to it. He thought of the beginnings; nothing
+of all this would have happened if he had not gone into the shop with
+Dunsford. The whole thing was his own fault. Except for his ridiculous
+vanity he would never have troubled himself with the ill-mannered slut.
+
+At all events the occurrences of that evening had finished the whole
+affair. Unless he was lost to all sense of shame he could not go back.
+He wanted passionately to get rid of the love that obsessed him; it was
+degrading and hateful. He must prevent himself from thinking of her. In
+a little while the anguish he suffered must grow less. His mind went
+back to the past. He wondered whether Emily Wilkinson and Fanny Price
+had endured on his account anything like the torment that he suffered
+now. He felt a pang of remorse.
+
+“I didn’t know then what it was like,” he said to himself.
+
+He slept very badly. The next day was Sunday, and he worked at his
+biology. He sat with the book in front of him, forming the words with
+his lips in order to fix his attention, but he could remember nothing.
+He found his thoughts going back to Mildred every minute, and he
+repeated to himself the exact words of the quarrel they had had. He had
+to force himself back to his book. He went out for a walk. The streets
+on the South side of the river were dingy enough on week-days, but
+there was an energy, a coming and going, which gave them a sordid
+vivacity; but on Sundays, with no shops open, no carts in the roadway,
+silent and depressed, they were indescribably dreary. Philip thought
+that day would never end. But he was so tired that he slept heavily,
+and when Monday came he entered upon life with determination. Christmas
+was approaching, and a good many of the students had gone into the
+country for the short holiday between the two parts of the winter
+session; but Philip had refused his uncle’s invitation to go down to
+Blackstable. He had given the approaching examination as his excuse,
+but in point of fact he had been unwilling to leave London and Mildred.
+He had neglected his work so much that now he had only a fortnight to
+learn what the curriculum allowed three months for. He set to work
+seriously. He found it easier each day not to think of Mildred. He
+congratulated himself on his force of character. The pain he suffered
+was no longer anguish, but a sort of soreness, like what one might be
+expected to feel if one had been thrown off a horse and, though no
+bones were broken, were bruised all over and shaken. Philip found that
+he was able to observe with curiosity the condition he had been in
+during the last few weeks. He analysed his feelings with interest. He
+was a little amused at himself. One thing that struck him was how
+little under those circumstances it mattered what one thought; the
+system of personal philosophy, which had given him great satisfaction
+to devise, had not served him. He was puzzled by this.
+
+But sometimes in the street he would see a girl who looked so like
+Mildred that his heart seemed to stop beating. Then he could not help
+himself, he hurried on to catch her up, eager and anxious, only to find
+that it was a total stranger. Men came back from the country, and he
+went with Dunsford to have tea at an A. B. C. shop. The well-known
+uniform made him so miserable that he could not speak. The thought came
+to him that perhaps she had been transferred to another establishment
+of the firm for which she worked, and he might suddenly find himself
+face to face with her. The idea filled him with panic, so that he
+feared Dunsford would see that something was the matter with him: he
+could not think of anything to say; he pretended to listen to what
+Dunsford was talking about; the conversation maddened him; and it was
+all he could do to prevent himself from crying out to Dunsford for
+Heaven’s sake to hold his tongue.
+
+Then came the day of his examination. Philip, when his turn arrived,
+went forward to the examiner’s table with the utmost confidence. He
+answered three or four questions. Then they showed him various
+specimens; he had been to very few lectures and, as soon as he was
+asked about things which he could not learn from books, he was floored.
+He did what he could to hide his ignorance, the examiner did not
+insist, and soon his ten minutes were over. He felt certain he had
+passed; but next day, when he went up to the examination buildings to
+see the result posted on the door, he was astounded not to find his
+number among those who had satisfied the examiners. In amazement he
+read the list three times. Dunsford was with him.
+
+“I say, I’m awfully sorry you’re ploughed,” he said.
+
+He had just inquired Philip’s number. Philip turned and saw by his
+radiant face that Dunsford had passed.
+
+“Oh, it doesn’t matter a bit,” said Philip. “I’m jolly glad you’re all
+right. I shall go up again in July.”
+
+He was very anxious to pretend he did not mind, and on their way back
+along The Embankment insisted on talking of indifferent things.
+Dunsford good-naturedly wanted to discuss the causes of Philip’s
+failure, but Philip was obstinately casual. He was horribly mortified;
+and the fact that Dunsford, whom he looked upon as a very pleasant but
+quite stupid fellow, had passed made his own rebuff harder to bear. He
+had always been proud of his intelligence, and now he asked himself
+desperately whether he was not mistaken in the opinion he held of
+himself. In the three months of the winter session the students who had
+joined in October had already shaken down into groups, and it was clear
+which were brilliant, which were clever or industrious, and which were
+‘rotters.’ Philip was conscious that his failure was a surprise to no
+one but himself. It was tea-time, and he knew that a lot of men would
+be having tea in the basement of the Medical School: those who had
+passed the examination would be exultant, those who disliked him would
+look at him with satisfaction, and the poor devils who had failed would
+sympathise with him in order to receive sympathy. His instinct was not
+to go near the hospital for a week, when the affair would be no more
+thought of, but, because he hated so much to go just then, he went: he
+wanted to inflict suffering upon himself. He forgot for the moment his
+maxim of life to follow his inclinations with due regard for the
+policeman round the corner; or, if he acted in accordance with it,
+there must have been some strange morbidity in his nature which made
+him take a grim pleasure in self-torture.
+
+But later on, when he had endured the ordeal to which he forced
+himself, going out into the night after the noisy conversation in the
+smoking-room, he was seized with a feeling of utter loneliness. He
+seemed to himself absurd and futile. He had an urgent need of
+consolation, and the temptation to see Mildred was irresistible. He
+thought bitterly that there was small chance of consolation from her;
+but he wanted to see her even if he did not speak to her; after all,
+she was a waitress and would be obliged to serve him. She was the only
+person in the world he cared for. There was no use in hiding that fact
+from himself. Of course it would be humiliating to go back to the shop
+as though nothing had happened, but he had not much self-respect left.
+Though he would not confess it to himself, he had hoped each day that
+she would write to him; she knew that a letter addressed to the
+hospital would find him; but she had not written: it was evident that
+she cared nothing if she saw him again or not. And he kept on repeating
+to himself:
+
+“I must see her. I must see her.”
+
+The desire was so great that he could not give the time necessary to
+walk, but jumped in a cab. He was too thrifty to use one when it could
+possibly be avoided. He stood outside the shop for a minute or two. The
+thought came to him that perhaps she had left, and in terror he walked
+in quickly. He saw her at once. He sat down and she came up to him.
+
+“A cup of tea and a muffin, please,” he ordered.
+
+He could hardly speak. He was afraid for a moment that he was going to
+cry.
+
+“I almost thought you was dead,” she said.
+
+She was smiling. Smiling! She seemed to have forgotten completely that
+last scene which Philip had repeated to himself a hundred times.
+
+“I thought if you’d wanted to see me you’d write,” he answered.
+
+“I’ve got too much to do to think about writing letters.”
+
+It seemed impossible for her to say a gracious thing. Philip cursed the
+fate which chained him to such a woman. She went away to fetch his tea.
+
+“Would you like me to sit down for a minute or two?” she said, when she
+brought it.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Where have you been all this time?”
+
+“I’ve been in London.”
+
+“I thought you’d gone away for the holidays. Why haven’t you been in
+then?”
+
+Philip looked at her with haggard, passionate eyes.
+
+“Don’t you remember that I said I’d never see you again?”
+
+“What are you doing now then?”
+
+She seemed anxious to make him drink up the cup of his humiliation; but
+he knew her well enough to know that she spoke at random; she hurt him
+frightfully, and never even tried to. He did not answer.
+
+“It was a nasty trick you played on me, spying on me like that. I
+always thought you was a gentleman in every sense of the word.”
+
+“Don’t be beastly to me, Mildred. I can’t bear it.”
+
+“You are a funny feller. I can’t make you out.”
+
+“It’s very simple. I’m such a blasted fool as to love you with all my
+heart and soul, and I know that you don’t care twopence for me.”
+
+“If you had been a gentleman I think you’d have come next day and
+begged my pardon.”
+
+She had no mercy. He looked at her neck and thought how he would like
+to jab it with the knife he had for his muffin. He knew enough anatomy
+to make pretty certain of getting the carotid artery. And at the same
+time he wanted to cover her pale, thin face with kisses.
+
+“If I could only make you understand how frightfully I’m in love with
+you.”
+
+“You haven’t begged my pardon yet.”
+
+He grew very white. She felt that she had done nothing wrong on that
+occasion. She wanted him now to humble himself. He was very proud. For
+one instant he felt inclined to tell her to go to hell, but he dared
+not. His passion made him abject. He was willing to submit to anything
+rather than not see her.
+
+“I’m very sorry, Mildred. I beg your pardon.”
+
+He had to force the words out. It was a horrible effort.
+
+“Now you’ve said that I don’t mind telling you that I wish I had come
+out with you that evening. I thought Miller was a gentleman, but I’ve
+discovered my mistake now. I soon sent him about his business.”
+
+Philip gave a little gasp.
+
+“Mildred, won’t you come out with me tonight? Let’s go and dine
+somewhere.”
+
+“Oh, I can’t. My aunt’ll be expecting me home.”
+
+“I’ll send her a wire. You can say you’ve been detained in the shop;
+she won’t know any better. Oh, do come, for God’s sake. I haven’t seen
+you for so long, and I want to talk to you.”
+
+She looked down at her clothes.
+
+“Never mind about that. We’ll go somewhere where it doesn’t matter how
+you’re dressed. And we’ll go to a music-hall afterwards. Please say
+yes. It would give me so much pleasure.”
+
+She hesitated a moment; he looked at her with pitifully appealing eyes.
+
+“Well, I don’t mind if I do. I haven’t been out anywhere since I don’t
+know how long.”
+
+It was with the greatest difficulty he could prevent himself from
+seizing her hand there and then to cover it with kisses.
+
+
+
+
+LX
+
+
+They dined in Soho. Philip was tremulous with joy. It was not one of
+the more crowded of those cheap restaurants where the respectable and
+needy dine in the belief that it is bohemian and the assurance that it
+is economical. It was a humble establishment, kept by a good man from
+Rouen and his wife, that Philip had discovered by accident. He had been
+attracted by the Gallic look of the window, in which was generally an
+uncooked steak on one plate and on each side two dishes of raw
+vegetables. There was one seedy French waiter, who was attempting to
+learn English in a house where he never heard anything but French; and
+the customers were a few ladies of easy virtue, a menage or two, who
+had their own napkins reserved for them, and a few queer men who came
+in for hurried, scanty meals.
+
+Here Mildred and Philip were able to get a table to themselves. Philip
+sent the waiter for a bottle of Burgundy from the neighbouring tavern,
+and they had a potage aux herbes, a steak from the window aux pommes,
+and an omelette au kirsch. There was really an air of romance in the
+meal and in the place. Mildred, at first a little reserved in her
+appreciation—“I never quite trust these foreign places, you never know
+what there is in these messed up dishes”—was insensibly moved by it.
+
+“I like this place, Philip,” she said. “You feel you can put your
+elbows on the table, don’t you?”
+
+A tall fellow came in, with a mane of gray hair and a ragged thin
+beard. He wore a dilapidated cloak and a wide-awake hat. He nodded to
+Philip, who had met him there before.
+
+“He looks like an anarchist,” said Mildred.
+
+“He is, one of the most dangerous in Europe. He’s been in every prison
+on the Continent and has assassinated more persons than any gentleman
+unhung. He always goes about with a bomb in his pocket, and of course
+it makes conversation a little difficult because if you don’t agree
+with him he lays it on the table in a marked manner.”
+
+She looked at the man with horror and surprise, and then glanced
+suspiciously at Philip. She saw that his eyes were laughing. She
+frowned a little.
+
+“You’re getting at me.”
+
+He gave a little shout of joy. He was so happy. But Mildred didn’t like
+being laughed at.
+
+“I don’t see anything funny in telling lies.”
+
+“Don’t be cross.”
+
+He took her hand, which was lying on the table, and pressed it gently.
+
+“You are lovely, and I could kiss the ground you walk on,” he said.
+
+The greenish pallor of her skin intoxicated him, and her thin white
+lips had an extraordinary fascination. Her anaemia made her rather
+short of breath, and she held her mouth slightly open. It seemed to add
+somehow to the attractiveness of her face.
+
+“You do like me a bit, don’t you?” he asked.
+
+“Well, if I didn’t I suppose I shouldn’t be here, should I? You’re a
+gentleman in every sense of the word, I will say that for you.”
+
+They had finished their dinner and were drinking coffee. Philip,
+throwing economy to the winds, smoked a three-penny cigar.
+
+“You can’t imagine what a pleasure it is to me just to sit opposite and
+look at you. I’ve yearned for you. I was sick for a sight of you.”
+
+Mildred smiled a little and faintly flushed. She was not then suffering
+from the dyspepsia which generally attacked her immediately after a
+meal. She felt more kindly disposed to Philip than ever before, and the
+unaccustomed tenderness in her eyes filled him with joy. He knew
+instinctively that it was madness to give himself into her hands; his
+only chance was to treat her casually and never allow her to see the
+untamed passions that seethed in his breast; she would only take
+advantage of his weakness; but he could not be prudent now: he told her
+all the agony he had endured during the separation from her; he told
+her of his struggles with himself, how he had tried to get over his
+passion, thought he had succeeded, and how he found out that it was as
+strong as ever. He knew that he had never really wanted to get over it.
+He loved her so much that he did not mind suffering. He bared his heart
+to her. He showed her proudly all his weakness.
+
+Nothing would have pleased him more than to sit on in the cosy, shabby
+restaurant, but he knew that Mildred wanted entertainment. She was
+restless and, wherever she was, wanted after a while to go somewhere
+else. He dared not bore her.
+
+“I say, how about going to a music-hall?” he said.
+
+He thought rapidly that if she cared for him at all she would say she
+preferred to stay there.
+
+“I was just thinking we ought to be going if we are going,” she
+answered.
+
+“Come on then.”
+
+Philip waited impatiently for the end of the performance. He had made
+up his mind exactly what to do, and when they got into the cab he
+passed his arm, as though almost by accident, round her waist. But he
+drew it back quickly with a little cry. He had pricked himself. She
+laughed.
+
+“There, that comes of putting your arm where it’s got no business to
+be,” she said. “I always know when men try and put their arm round my
+waist. That pin always catches them.”
+
+“I’ll be more careful.”
+
+He put his arm round again. She made no objection.
+
+“I’m so comfortable,” he sighed blissfully.
+
+“So long as you’re happy,” she retorted.
+
+They drove down St. James’ Street into the Park, and Philip quickly
+kissed her. He was strangely afraid of her, and it required all his
+courage. She turned her lips to him without speaking. She neither
+seemed to mind nor to like it.
+
+“If you only knew how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he murmured.
+
+He tried to kiss her again, but she turned her head away.
+
+“Once is enough,” she said.
+
+On the chance of kissing her a second time he travelled down to Herne
+Hill with her, and at the end of the road in which she lived he asked
+her:
+
+“Won’t you give me another kiss?”
+
+She looked at him indifferently and then glanced up the road to see
+that no one was in sight.
+
+“I don’t mind.”
+
+He seized her in his arms and kissed her passionately, but she pushed
+him away.
+
+“Mind my hat, silly. You are clumsy,” she said.
+
+
+
+
+LXI
+
+
+He saw her then every day. He began going to lunch at the shop, but
+Mildred stopped him: she said it made the girls talk; so he had to
+content himself with tea; but he always waited about to walk with her
+to the station; and once or twice a week they dined together. He gave
+her little presents, a gold bangle, gloves, handkerchiefs, and the
+like. He was spending more than he could afford, but he could not help
+it: it was only when he gave her anything that she showed any
+affection. She knew the price of everything, and her gratitude was in
+exact proportion with the value of his gift. He did not care. He was
+too happy when she volunteered to kiss him to mind by what means he got
+her demonstrativeness. He discovered that she found Sundays at home
+tedious, so he went down to Herne Hill in the morning, met her at the
+end of the road, and went to church with her.
+
+“I always like to go to church once,” she said. “It looks well, doesn’t
+it?”
+
+Then she went back to dinner, he got a scrappy meal at a hotel, and in
+the afternoon they took a walk in Brockwell Park. They had nothing much
+to say to one another, and Philip, desperately afraid she was bored
+(she was very easily bored), racked his brain for topics of
+conversation. He realised that these walks amused neither of them, but
+he could not bear to leave her, and did all he could to lengthen them
+till she became tired and out of temper. He knew that she did not care
+for him, and he tried to force a love which his reason told him was not
+in her nature: she was cold. He had no claim on her, but he could not
+help being exacting. Now that they were more intimate he found it less
+easy to control his temper; he was often irritable and could not help
+saying bitter things. Often they quarrelled, and she would not speak to
+him for a while; but this always reduced him to subjection, and he
+crawled before her. He was angry with himself for showing so little
+dignity. He grew furiously jealous if he saw her speaking to any other
+man in the shop, and when he was jealous he seemed to be beside
+himself. He would deliberately insult her, leave the shop and spend
+afterwards a sleepless night tossing on his bed, by turns angry and
+remorseful. Next day he would go to the shop and appeal for
+forgiveness.
+
+“Don’t be angry with me,” he said. “I’m so awfully fond of you that I
+can’t help myself.”
+
+“One of these days you’ll go too far,” she answered.
+
+He was anxious to come to her home in order that the greater intimacy
+should give him an advantage over the stray acquaintances she made
+during her working-hours; but she would not let him.
+
+“My aunt would think it so funny,” she said.
+
+He suspected that her refusal was due only to a disinclination to let
+him see her aunt. Mildred had represented her as the widow of a
+professional man (that was her formula of distinction), and was
+uneasily conscious that the good woman could hardly be called
+distinguished. Philip imagined that she was in point of fact the widow
+of a small tradesman. He knew that Mildred was a snob. But he found no
+means by which he could indicate to her that he did not mind how common
+the aunt was.
+
+Their worst quarrel took place one evening at dinner when she told him
+that a man had asked her to go to a play with him. Philip turned pale,
+and his face grew hard and stern.
+
+“You’re not going?” he said.
+
+“Why shouldn’t I? He’s a very nice gentlemanly fellow.”
+
+“I’ll take you anywhere you like.”
+
+“But that isn’t the same thing. I can’t always go about with you.
+Besides he’s asked me to fix my own day, and I’ll just go one evening
+when I’m not going out with you. It won’t make any difference to you.”
+
+“If you had any sense of decency, if you had any gratitude, you
+wouldn’t dream of going.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean by gratitude. If you’re referring to the
+things you’ve given me you can have them back. I don’t want them.”
+
+Her voice had the shrewish tone it sometimes got.
+
+“It’s not very lively, always going about with you. It’s always do you
+love me, do you love me, till I just get about sick of it.”
+
+He knew it was madness to go on asking her that, but he could not help
+himself.
+
+“Oh, I like you all right,” she would answer.
+
+“Is that all? I love you with all my heart.”
+
+“I’m not that sort, I’m not one to say much.”
+
+“If you knew how happy just one word would make me!”
+
+“Well, what I always say is, people must take me as they find me, and
+if they don’t like it they can lump it.”
+
+But sometimes she expressed herself more plainly still, and, when he
+asked the question, answered:
+
+“Oh, don’t go on at that again.”
+
+Then he became sulky and silent. He hated her.
+
+And now he said:
+
+“Oh, well, if you feel like that about it I wonder you condescend to
+come out with me at all.”
+
+“It’s not my seeking, you can be very sure of that, you just force me
+to.”
+
+His pride was bitterly hurt, and he answered madly.
+
+“You think I’m just good enough to stand you dinners and theatres when
+there’s no one else to do it, and when someone else turns up I can go
+to hell. Thank you, I’m about sick of being made a convenience.”
+
+“I’m not going to be talked to like that by anyone. I’ll just show you
+how much I want your dirty dinner.”
+
+She got up, put on her jacket, and walked quickly out of the
+restaurant. Philip sat on. He determined he would not move, but ten
+minutes afterwards he jumped in a cab and followed her. He guessed that
+she would take a ’bus to Victoria, so that they would arrive about the
+same time. He saw her on the platform, escaped her notice, and went
+down to Herne Hill in the same train. He did not want to speak to her
+till she was on the way home and could not escape him.
+
+As soon as she had turned out of the main street, brightly lit and
+noisy with traffic, he caught her up.
+
+“Mildred,” he called.
+
+She walked on and would neither look at him nor answer. He repeated her
+name. Then she stopped and faced him.
+
+“What d’you want? I saw you hanging about Victoria. Why don’t you leave
+me alone?”
+
+“I’m awfully sorry. Won’t you make it up?”
+
+“No, I’m sick of your temper and your jealousy. I don’t care for you, I
+never have cared for you, and I never shall care for you. I don’t want
+to have anything more to do with you.”
+
+She walked on quickly, and he had to hurry to keep up with her.
+
+“You never make allowances for me,” he said. “It’s all very well to be
+jolly and amiable when you’re indifferent to anyone. It’s very hard
+when you’re as much in love as I am. Have mercy on me. I don’t mind
+that you don’t care for me. After all you can’t help it. I only want
+you to let me love you.”
+
+She walked on, refusing to speak, and Philip saw with agony that they
+had only a few hundred yards to go before they reached her house. He
+abased himself. He poured out an incoherent story of love and
+penitence.
+
+“If you’ll only forgive me this time I promise you you’ll never have to
+complain of me in future. You can go out with whoever you choose. I’ll
+be only too glad if you’ll come with me when you’ve got nothing better
+to do.”
+
+She stopped again, for they had reached the corner at which he always
+left her.
+
+“Now you can take yourself off. I won’t have you coming up to the
+door.”
+
+“I won’t go till you say you’ll forgive me.”
+
+“I’m sick and tired of the whole thing.”
+
+He hesitated a moment, for he had an instinct that he could say
+something that would move her. It made him feel almost sick to utter
+the words.
+
+“It is cruel, I have so much to put up with. You don’t know what it is
+to be a cripple. Of course you don’t like me. I can’t expect you to.”
+
+“Philip, I didn’t mean that,” she answered quickly, with a sudden break
+of pity in her voice. “You know it’s not true.”
+
+He was beginning to act now, and his voice was husky and low.
+
+“Oh, I’ve felt it,” he said.
+
+She took his hand and looked at him, and her own eyes were filled with
+tears.
+
+“I promise you it never made any difference to me. I never thought
+about it after the first day or two.”
+
+He kept a gloomy, tragic silence. He wanted her to think he was
+overcome with emotion.
+
+“You know I like you awfully, Philip. Only you are so trying sometimes.
+Let’s make it up.”
+
+She put up her lips to his, and with a sigh of relief he kissed her.
+
+“Now are you happy again?” she asked.
+
+“Madly.”
+
+She bade him good-night and hurried down the road. Next day he took her
+in a little watch with a brooch to pin on her dress. She had been
+hankering for it.
+
+But three or four days later, when she brought him his tea, Mildred
+said to him:
+
+“You remember what you promised the other night? You mean to keep that,
+don’t you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He knew exactly what she meant and was prepared for her next words.
+
+“Because I’m going out with that gentleman I told you about tonight.”
+
+“All right. I hope you’ll enjoy yourself.”
+
+“You don’t mind, do you?”
+
+He had himself now under excellent control.
+
+“I don’t like it,” he smiled, “but I’m not going to make myself more
+disagreeable than I can help.”
+
+She was excited over the outing and talked about it willingly. Philip
+wondered whether she did so in order to pain him or merely because she
+was callous. He was in the habit of condoning her cruelty by the
+thought of her stupidity. She had not the brains to see when she was
+wounding him.
+
+“It’s not much fun to be in love with a girl who has no imagination and
+no sense of humour,” he thought, as he listened.
+
+But the want of these things excused her. He felt that if he had not
+realised this he could never forgive her for the pain she caused him.
+
+“He’s got seats for the Tivoli,” she said. “He gave me my choice and I
+chose that. And we’re going to dine at the Cafe Royal. He says it’s the
+most expensive place in London.”
+
+“He’s a gentleman in every sense of the word,” thought Philip, but he
+clenched his teeth to prevent himself from uttering a syllable.
+
+Philip went to the Tivoli and saw Mildred with her companion, a
+smooth-faced young man with sleek hair and the spruce look of a
+commercial traveller, sitting in the second row of the stalls. Mildred
+wore a black picture hat with ostrich feathers in it, which became her
+well. She was listening to her host with that quiet smile which Philip
+knew; she had no vivacity of expression, and it required broad farce to
+excite her laughter; but Philip could see that she was interested and
+amused. He thought to himself bitterly that her companion, flashy and
+jovial, exactly suited her. Her sluggish temperament made her
+appreciate noisy people. Philip had a passion for discussion, but no
+talent for small-talk. He admired the easy drollery of which some of
+his friends were masters, Lawson for instance, and his sense of
+inferiority made him shy and awkward. The things which interested him
+bored Mildred. She expected men to talk about football and racing, and
+he knew nothing of either. He did not know the catchwords which only
+need be said to excite a laugh.
+
+Printed matter had always been a fetish to Philip, and now, in order to
+make himself more interesting, he read industriously The Sporting
+Times.
+
+
+
+
+LXII
+
+
+Philip did not surrender himself willingly to the passion that consumed
+him. He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it
+must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager
+longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful
+existence on his life’s blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely
+that he could take pleasure in nothing else. He had been used to
+delight in the grace of St. James’ Park, and often he sat and looked at
+the branches of a tree silhouetted against the sky, it was like a
+Japanese print; and he found a continual magic in the beautiful Thames
+with its barges and its wharfs; the changing sky of London had filled
+his soul with pleasant fancies. But now beauty meant nothing to him. He
+was bored and restless when he was not with Mildred. Sometimes he
+thought he would console his sorrow by looking at pictures, but he
+walked through the National Gallery like a sight-seer; and no picture
+called up in him a thrill of emotion. He wondered if he could ever care
+again for all the things he had loved. He had been devoted to reading,
+but now books were meaningless; and he spent his spare hours in the
+smoking-room of the hospital club, turning over innumerable
+periodicals. This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the
+subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for
+freedom.
+
+Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped,
+for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while,
+as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that
+he was not cured yet. Though he yearned for Mildred so madly he
+despised her. He thought to himself that there could be no greater
+torture in the world than at the same time to love and to contemn.
+
+Philip, burrowing as was his habit into the state of his feelings,
+discussing with himself continually his condition, came to the
+conclusion that he could only cure himself of his degrading passion by
+making Mildred his mistress. It was sexual hunger that he suffered
+from, and if he could satisfy this he might free himself from the
+intolerable chains that bound him. He knew that Mildred did not care
+for him at all in that way. When he kissed her passionately she
+withdrew herself from him with instinctive distaste. She had no
+sensuality. Sometimes he had tried to make her jealous by talking of
+adventures in Paris, but they did not interest her; once or twice he
+had sat at other tables in the tea-shop and affected to flirt with the
+waitress who attended them, but she was entirely indifferent. He could
+see that it was no pretence on her part.
+
+“You didn’t mind my not sitting at one of your tables this afternoon?”
+he asked once, when he was walking to the station with her. “Yours
+seemed to be all full.”
+
+This was not a fact, but she did not contradict him. Even if his
+desertion meant nothing to her he would have been grateful if she had
+pretended it did. A reproach would have been balm to his soul.
+
+“I think it’s silly of you to sit at the same table every day. You
+ought to give the other girls a turn now and again.”
+
+But the more he thought of it the more he was convinced that complete
+surrender on her part was his only way to freedom. He was like a knight
+of old, metamorphosed by magic spells, who sought the potions which
+should restore him to his fair and proper form. Philip had only one
+hope. Mildred greatly desired to go to Paris. To her, as to most
+English people, it was the centre of gaiety and fashion: she had heard
+of the Magasin du Louvre, where you could get the very latest thing for
+about half the price you had to pay in London; a friend of hers had
+passed her honeymoon in Paris and had spent all day at the Louvre; and
+she and her husband, my dear, they never went to bed till six in the
+morning all the time they were there; the Moulin Rouge and I don’t know
+what all. Philip did not care that if she yielded to his desires it
+would only be the unwilling price she paid for the gratification of her
+wish. He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had
+even had a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her. He had plied her with
+liquor in the hope of exciting her, but she had no taste for wine; and
+though she liked him to order champagne because it looked well, she
+never drank more than half a glass. She liked to leave untouched a
+large glass filled to the brim.
+
+“It shows the waiters who you are,” she said.
+
+Philip chose an opportunity when she seemed more than usually friendly.
+He had an examination in anatomy at the end of March. Easter, which
+came a week later, would give Mildred three whole days holiday.
+
+“I say, why don’t you come over to Paris then?” he suggested. “We’d
+have such a ripping time.”
+
+“How could you? It would cost no end of money.”
+
+Philip had thought of that. It would cost at least five-and-twenty
+pounds. It was a large sum to him. He was willing to spend his last
+penny on her.
+
+“What does that matter? Say you’ll come, darling.”
+
+“What next, I should like to know. I can’t see myself going away with a
+man that I wasn’t married to. You oughtn’t to suggest such a thing.”
+
+“What does it matter?”
+
+He enlarged on the glories of the Rue de la Paix and the garish
+splendour of the Folies Bergeres. He described the Louvre and the Bon
+Marche. He told her about the Cabaret du Neant, the Abbaye, and the
+various haunts to which foreigners go. He painted in glowing colours
+the side of Paris which he despised. He pressed her to come with him.
+
+“You know, you say you love me, but if you really loved me you’d want
+to marry me. You’ve never asked me to marry you.”
+
+“You know I can’t afford it. After all, I’m in my first year, I shan’t
+earn a penny for six years.”
+
+“Oh, I’m not blaming you. I wouldn’t marry you if you went down on your
+bended knees to me.”
+
+He had thought of marriage more than once, but it was a step from which
+he shrank. In Paris he had come by the opinion that marriage was a
+ridiculous institution of the philistines. He knew also that a
+permanent tie would ruin him. He had middle-class instincts, and it
+seemed a dreadful thing to him to marry a waitress. A common wife would
+prevent him from getting a decent practice. Besides, he had only just
+enough money to last him till he was qualified; he could not keep a
+wife even if they arranged not to have children. He thought of Cronshaw
+bound to a vulgar slattern, and he shuddered with dismay. He foresaw
+what Mildred, with her genteel ideas and her mean mind, would become:
+it was impossible for him to marry her. But he decided only with his
+reason; he felt that he must have her whatever happened; and if he
+could not get her without marrying her he would do that; the future
+could look after itself. It might end in disaster; he did not care.
+When he got hold of an idea it obsessed him, he could think of nothing
+else, and he had a more than common power to persuade himself of the
+reasonableness of what he wished to do. He found himself overthrowing
+all the sensible arguments which had occurred to him against marriage.
+Each day he found that he was more passionately devoted to her; and his
+unsatisfied love became angry and resentful.
+
+“By George, if I marry her I’ll make her pay for all the suffering I’ve
+endured,” he said to himself.
+
+At last he could bear the agony no longer. After dinner one evening in
+the little restaurant in Soho, to which now they often went, he spoke
+to her.
+
+“I say, did you mean it the other day that you wouldn’t marry me if I
+asked you?”
+
+“Yes, why not?”
+
+“Because I can’t live without you. I want you with me always. I’ve
+tried to get over it and I can’t. I never shall now. I want you to
+marry me.”
+
+She had read too many novelettes not to know how to take such an offer.
+
+“I’m sure I’m very grateful to you, Philip. I’m very much flattered at
+your proposal.”
+
+“Oh, don’t talk rot. You will marry me, won’t you?”
+
+“D’you think we should be happy?”
+
+“No. But what does that matter?”
+
+The words were wrung out of him almost against his will. They surprised
+her.
+
+“Well, you are a funny chap. Why d’you want to marry me then? The other
+day you said you couldn’t afford it.”
+
+“I think I’ve got about fourteen hundred pounds left. Two can live just
+as cheaply as one. That’ll keep us till I’m qualified and have got
+through with my hospital appointments, and then I can get an
+assistantship.”
+
+“It means you wouldn’t be able to earn anything for six years. We
+should have about four pounds a week to live on till then, shouldn’t
+we?”
+
+“Not much more than three. There are all my fees to pay.”
+
+“And what would you get as an assistant?”
+
+“Three pounds a week.”
+
+“D’you mean to say you have to work all that time and spend a small
+fortune just to earn three pounds a week at the end of it? I don’t see
+that I should be any better off than I am now.”
+
+He was silent for a moment.
+
+“D’you mean to say you won’t marry me?” he asked hoarsely. “Does my
+great love mean nothing to you at all?”
+
+“One has to think of oneself in those things, don’t one? I shouldn’t
+mind marrying, but I don’t want to marry if I’m going to be no better
+off than what I am now. I don’t see the use of it.”
+
+“If you cared for me you wouldn’t think of all that.”
+
+“P’raps not.”
+
+He was silent. He drank a glass of wine in order to get rid of the
+choking in his throat.
+
+“Look at that girl who’s just going out,” said Mildred. “She got them
+furs at the Bon Marche at Brixton. I saw them in the window last time I
+went down there.”
+
+Philip smiled grimly.
+
+“What are you laughing at?” she asked. “It’s true. And I said to my
+aunt at the time, I wouldn’t buy anything that had been in the window
+like that, for everyone to know how much you paid for it.”
+
+“I can’t understand you. You make me frightfully unhappy, and in the
+next breath you talk rot that has nothing to do with what we’re
+speaking about.”
+
+“You are nasty to me,” she answered, aggrieved. “I can’t help noticing
+those furs, because I said to my aunt…”
+
+“I don’t care a damn what you said to your aunt,” he interrupted
+impatiently.
+
+“I wish you wouldn’t use bad language when you speak to me Philip. You
+know I don’t like it.”
+
+Philip smiled a little, but his eyes were wild. He was silent for a
+while. He looked at her sullenly. He hated, despised, and loved her.
+
+“If I had an ounce of sense I’d never see you again,” he said at last.
+“If you only knew how heartily I despise myself for loving you!”
+
+“That’s not a very nice thing to say to me,” she replied sulkily.
+
+“It isn’t,” he laughed. “Let’s go to the Pavilion.”
+
+“That’s what’s so funny in you, you start laughing just when one
+doesn’t expect you to. And if I make you that unhappy why d’you want to
+take me to the Pavilion? I’m quite ready to go home.”
+
+“Merely because I’m less unhappy with you than away from you.”
+
+“I should like to know what you really think of me.”
+
+He laughed outright.
+
+“My dear, if you did you’d never speak to me again.”
+
+
+
+
+LXIII
+
+
+Philip did not pass the examination in anatomy at the end of March. He
+and Dunsford had worked at the subject together on Philip’s skeleton,
+asking each other questions till both knew by heart every attachment
+and the meaning of every nodule and groove on the human bones; but in
+the examination room Philip was seized with panic, and failed to give
+right answers to questions from a sudden fear that they might be wrong.
+He knew he was ploughed and did not even trouble to go up to the
+building next day to see whether his number was up. The second failure
+put him definitely among the incompetent and idle men of his year.
+
+He did not care much. He had other things to think of. He told himself
+that Mildred must have senses like anybody else, it was only a question
+of awakening them; he had theories about woman, the rip at heart, and
+thought that there must come a time with everyone when she would yield
+to persistence. It was a question of watching for the opportunity,
+keeping his temper, wearing her down with small attentions, taking
+advantage of the physical exhaustion which opened the heart to
+tenderness, making himself a refuge from the petty vexations of her
+work. He talked to her of the relations between his friends in Paris
+and the fair ladies they admired. The life he described had a charm, an
+easy gaiety, in which was no grossness. Weaving into his own
+recollections the adventures of Mimi and Rodolphe, of Musette and the
+rest of them, he poured into Mildred’s ears a story of poverty made
+picturesque by song and laughter, of lawless love made romantic by
+beauty and youth. He never attacked her prejudices directly, but sought
+to combat them by the suggestion that they were suburban. He never let
+himself be disturbed by her inattention, nor irritated by her
+indifference. He thought he had bored her. By an effort he made himself
+affable and entertaining; he never let himself be angry, he never asked
+for anything, he never complained, he never scolded. When she made
+engagements and broke them, he met her next day with a smiling face;
+when she excused herself, he said it did not matter. He never let her
+see that she pained him. He understood that his passionate grief had
+wearied her, and he took care to hide every sentiment which could be in
+the least degree troublesome. He was heroic.
+
+Though she never mentioned the change, for she did not take any
+conscious notice of it, it affected her nevertheless: she became more
+confidential with him; she took her little grievances to him, and she
+always had some grievance against the manageress of the shop, one of
+her fellow waitresses, or her aunt; she was talkative enough now, and
+though she never said anything that was not trivial Philip was never
+tired of listening to her.
+
+“I like you when you don’t want to make love to me,” she told him once.
+
+“That’s flattering for me,” he laughed.
+
+She did not realise how her words made his heart sink nor what an
+effort it needed for him to answer so lightly.
+
+“Oh, I don’t mind your kissing me now and then. It doesn’t hurt me and
+it gives you pleasure.”
+
+Occasionally she went so far as to ask him to take her out to dinner,
+and the offer, coming from her, filled him with rapture.
+
+“I wouldn’t do it to anyone else,” she said, by way of apology. “But I
+know I can with you.”
+
+“You couldn’t give me greater pleasure,” he smiled.
+
+She asked him to give her something to eat one evening towards the end
+of April.
+
+“All right,” he said. “Where would you like to go afterwards?”
+
+“Oh, don’t let’s go anywhere. Let’s just sit and talk. You don’t mind,
+do you?”
+
+“Rather not.”
+
+He thought she must be beginning to care for him. Three months before
+the thought of an evening spent in conversation would have bored her to
+death. It was a fine day, and the spring added to Philip’s high
+spirits. He was content with very little now.
+
+“I say, won’t it be ripping when the summer comes along,” he said, as
+they drove along on the top of a ’bus to Soho—she had herself suggested
+that they should not be so extravagant as to go by cab. “We shall be
+able to spend every Sunday on the river. We’ll take our luncheon in a
+basket.”
+
+She smiled slightly, and he was encouraged to take her hand. She did
+not withdraw it.
+
+“I really think you’re beginning to like me a bit,” he smiled.
+
+“You ARE silly, you know I like you, or else I shouldn’t be here,
+should I?”
+
+They were old customers at the little restaurant in Soho by now, and
+the patronne gave them a smile as they came in. The waiter was
+obsequious.
+
+“Let me order the dinner tonight,” said Mildred.
+
+Philip, thinking her more enchanting than ever, gave her the menu, and
+she chose her favourite dishes. The range was small, and they had eaten
+many times all that the restaurant could provide. Philip was gay. He
+looked into her eyes, and he dwelt on every perfection of her pale
+cheek. When they had finished Mildred by way of exception took a
+cigarette. She smoked very seldom.
+
+“I don’t like to see a lady smoking,” she said.
+
+She hesitated a moment and then spoke.
+
+“Were you surprised, my asking you to take me out and give me a bit of
+dinner tonight?”
+
+“I was delighted.”
+
+“I’ve got something to say to you, Philip.”
+
+He looked at her quickly, his heart sank, but he had trained himself
+well.
+
+“Well, fire away,” he said, smiling.
+
+“You’re not going to be silly about it, are you? The fact is I’m going
+to get married.”
+
+“Are you?” said Philip.
+
+He could think of nothing else to say. He had considered the
+possibility often and had imagined to himself what he would do and say.
+He had suffered agonies when he thought of the despair he would suffer,
+he had thought of suicide, of the mad passion of anger that would seize
+him; but perhaps he had too completely anticipated the emotion he would
+experience, so that now he felt merely exhausted. He felt as one does
+in a serious illness when the vitality is so low that one is
+indifferent to the issue and wants only to be left alone.
+
+“You see, I’m getting on,” she said. “I’m twenty-four and it’s time I
+settled down.”
+
+He was silent. He looked at the patronne sitting behind the counter,
+and his eye dwelt on a red feather one of the diners wore in her hat.
+Mildred was nettled.
+
+“You might congratulate me,” she said.
+
+“I might, mightn’t I? I can hardly believe it’s true. I’ve dreamt it so
+often. It rather tickles me that I should have been so jolly glad that
+you asked me to take you out to dinner. Whom are you going to marry?”
+
+“Miller,” she answered, with a slight blush.
+
+“Miller?” cried Philip, astounded. “But you’ve not seen him for
+months.”
+
+“He came in to lunch one day last week and asked me then. He’s earning
+very good money. He makes seven pounds a week now and he’s got
+prospects.”
+
+Philip was silent again. He remembered that she had always liked
+Miller; he amused her; there was in his foreign birth an exotic charm
+which she felt unconsciously.
+
+“I suppose it was inevitable,” he said at last. “You were bound to
+accept the highest bidder. When are you going to marry?”
+
+“On Saturday next. I have given notice.”
+
+Philip felt a sudden pang.
+
+“As soon as that?”
+
+“We’re going to be married at a registry office. Emil prefers it.”
+
+Philip felt dreadfully tired. He wanted to get away from her. He
+thought he would go straight to bed. He called for the bill.
+
+“I’ll put you in a cab and send you down to Victoria. I daresay you
+won’t have to wait long for a train.”
+
+“Won’t you come with me?”
+
+“I think I’d rather not if you don’t mind.”
+
+“It’s just as you please,” she answered haughtily. “I suppose I shall
+see you at tea-time tomorrow?”
+
+“No, I think we’d better make a full stop now. I don’t see why I should
+go on making myself unhappy. I’ve paid the cab.”
+
+He nodded to her and forced a smile on his lips, then jumped on a ’bus
+and made his way home. He smoked a pipe before he went to bed, but he
+could hardly keep his eyes open. He suffered no pain. He fell into a
+heavy sleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow.
+
+
+
+
+LXIV
+
+
+But about three in the morning Philip awoke and could not sleep again.
+He began to think of Mildred. He tried not to, but could not help
+himself. He repeated to himself the same thing time after time till his
+brain reeled. It was inevitable that she should marry: life was hard
+for a girl who had to earn her own living; and if she found someone who
+could give her a comfortable home she should not be blamed if she
+accepted. Philip acknowledged that from her point of view it would have
+been madness to marry him: only love could have made such poverty
+bearable, and she did not love him. It was no fault of hers; it was a
+fact that must be accepted like any other. Philip tried to reason with
+himself. He told himself that deep down in his heart was mortified
+pride; his passion had begun in wounded vanity, and it was this at
+bottom which caused now a great part of his wretchedness. He despised
+himself as much as he despised her. Then he made plans for the future,
+the same plans over and over again, interrupted by recollections of
+kisses on her soft pale cheek and by the sound of her voice with its
+trailing accent; he had a great deal of work to do, since in the summer
+he was taking chemistry as well as the two examinations he had failed
+in. He had separated himself from his friends at the hospital, but now
+he wanted companionship. There was one happy occurrence: Hayward a
+fortnight before had written to say that he was passing through London
+and had asked him to dinner; but Philip, unwilling to be bothered, had
+refused. He was coming back for the season, and Philip made up his mind
+to write to him.
+
+He was thankful when eight o’clock struck and he could get up. He was
+pale and weary. But when he had bathed, dressed, and had breakfast, he
+felt himself joined up again with the world at large; and his pain was
+a little easier to bear. He did not feel like going to lectures that
+morning, but went instead to the Army and Navy Stores to buy Mildred a
+wedding-present. After much wavering he settled on a dressing-bag. It
+cost twenty pounds, which was much more than he could afford, but it
+was showy and vulgar: he knew she would be aware exactly how much it
+cost; he got a melancholy satisfaction in choosing a gift which would
+give her pleasure and at the same time indicate for himself the
+contempt he had for her.
+
+Philip had looked forward with apprehension to the day on which Mildred
+was to be married; he was expecting an intolerable anguish; and it was
+with relief that he got a letter from Hayward on Saturday morning to
+say that he was coming up early on that very day and would fetch Philip
+to help him to find rooms. Philip, anxious to be distracted, looked up
+a time-table and discovered the only train Hayward was likely to come
+by; he went to meet him, and the reunion of the friends was
+enthusiastic. They left the luggage at the station, and set off gaily.
+Hayward characteristically proposed that first of all they should go
+for an hour to the National Gallery; he had not seen pictures for some
+time, and he stated that it needed a glimpse to set him in tune with
+life. Philip for months had had no one with whom he could talk of art
+and books. Since the Paris days Hayward had immersed himself in the
+modern French versifiers, and, such a plethora of poets is there in
+France, he had several new geniuses to tell Philip about. They walked
+through the gallery pointing out to one another their favourite
+pictures; one subject led to another; they talked excitedly. The sun
+was shining and the air was warm.
+
+“Let’s go and sit in the Park,” said Hayward. “We’ll look for rooms
+after luncheon.”
+
+The spring was pleasant there. It was a day upon which one felt it good
+merely to live. The young green of the trees was exquisite against the
+sky; and the sky, pale and blue, was dappled with little white clouds.
+At the end of the ornamental water was the gray mass of the Horse
+Guards. The ordered elegance of the scene had the charm of an
+eighteenth-century picture. It reminded you not of Watteau, whose
+landscapes are so idyllic that they recall only the woodland glens seen
+in dreams, but of the more prosaic Jean-Baptiste Pater. Philip’s heart
+was filled with lightness. He realised, what he had only read before,
+that art (for there was art in the manner in which he looked upon
+nature) might liberate the soul from pain.
+
+They went to an Italian restaurant for luncheon and ordered themselves
+a fiaschetto of Chianti. Lingering over the meal they talked on. They
+reminded one another of the people they had known at Heidelberg, they
+spoke of Philip’s friends in Paris, they talked of books, pictures,
+morals, life; and suddenly Philip heard a clock strike three. He
+remembered that by this time Mildred was married. He felt a sort of
+stitch in his heart, and for a minute or two he could not hear what
+Hayward was saying. But he filled his glass with Chianti. He was
+unaccustomed to alcohol and it had gone to his head. For the time at
+all events he was free from care. His quick brain had lain idle for so
+many months that he was intoxicated now with conversation. He was
+thankful to have someone to talk to who would interest himself in the
+things that interested him.
+
+“I say don’t let’s waste this beautiful day in looking for rooms. I’ll
+put you up tonight. You can look for rooms tomorrow or Monday.”
+
+“All right. What shall we do?” answered Hayward.
+
+“Let’s get on a penny steamboat and go down to Greenwich.”
+
+The idea appealed to Hayward, and they jumped into a cab which took
+them to Westminster Bridge. They got on the steamboat just as she was
+starting. Presently Philip, a smile on his lips, spoke.
+
+“I remember when first I went to Paris, Clutton, I think it was, gave a
+long discourse on the subject that beauty is put into things by
+painters and poets. They create beauty. In themselves there is nothing
+to choose between the Campanile of Giotto and a factory chimney. And
+then beautiful things grow rich with the emotion that they have aroused
+in succeeding generations. That is why old things are more beautiful
+than modern. The Ode on a Grecian Urn is more lovely now than when it
+was written, because for a hundred years lovers have read it and the
+sick at heart taken comfort in its lines.”
+
+Philip left Hayward to infer what in the passing scene had suggested
+these words to him, and it was a delight to know that he could safely
+leave the inference. It was in sudden reaction from the life he had
+been leading for so long that he was now deeply affected. The delicate
+iridescence of the London air gave the softness of a pastel to the gray
+stone of the buildings; and in the wharfs and storehouses there was the
+severity of grace of a Japanese print. They went further down; and the
+splendid channel, a symbol of the great empire, broadened, and it was
+crowded with traffic; Philip thought of the painters and the poets who
+had made all these things so beautiful, and his heart was filled with
+gratitude. They came to the Pool of London, and who can describe its
+majesty? The imagination thrills, and Heaven knows what figures people
+still its broad stream, Doctor Johnson with Boswell by his side, an old
+Pepys going on board a man-o’-war: the pageant of English history, and
+romance, and high adventure. Philip turned to Hayward with shining
+eyes.
+
+“Dear Charles Dickens,” he murmured, smiling a little at his own
+emotion.
+
+“Aren’t you rather sorry you chucked painting?” asked Hayward.
+
+“No.”
+
+“I suppose you like doctoring?”
+
+“No, I hate it, but there was nothing else to do. The drudgery of the
+first two years is awful, and unfortunately I haven’t got the
+scientific temperament.”
+
+“Well, you can’t go on changing professions.”
+
+“Oh, no. I’m going to stick to this. I think I shall like it better
+when I get into the wards. I have an idea that I’m more interested in
+people than in anything else in the world. And as far as I can see,
+it’s the only profession in which you have your freedom. You carry your
+knowledge in your head; with a box of instruments and a few drugs you
+can make your living anywhere.”
+
+“Aren’t you going to take a practice then?”
+
+“Not for a good long time at any rate,” Philip answered. “As soon as
+I’ve got through my hospital appointments I shall get a ship; I want to
+go to the East—the Malay Archipelago, Siam, China, and all that sort of
+thing—and then I shall take odd jobs. Something always comes along,
+cholera duty in India and things like that. I want to go from place to
+place. I want to see the world. The only way a poor man can do that is
+by going in for the medical.”
+
+They came to Greenwich then. The noble building of Inigo Jones faced
+the river grandly.
+
+“I say, look, that must be the place where Poor Jack dived into the mud
+for pennies,” said Philip.
+
+They wandered in the park. Ragged children were playing in it, and it
+was noisy with their cries: here and there old seamen were basking in
+the sun. There was an air of a hundred years ago.
+
+“It seems a pity you wasted two years in Paris,” said Hayward.
+
+“Waste? Look at the movement of that child, look at the pattern which
+the sun makes on the ground, shining through the trees, look at that
+sky—why, I should never have seen that sky if I hadn’t been to Paris.”
+
+Hayward thought that Philip choked a sob, and he looked at him with
+astonishment.
+
+“What’s the matter with you?”
+
+“Nothing. I’m sorry to be so damned emotional, but for six months I’ve
+been starved for beauty.”
+
+“You used to be so matter of fact. It’s very interesting to hear you
+say that.”
+
+“Damn it all, I don’t want to be interesting,” laughed Philip. “Let’s
+go and have a stodgy tea.”
+
+
+
+
+LXV
+
+
+Hayward’s visit did Philip a great deal of good. Each day his thoughts
+dwelt less on Mildred. He looked back upon the past with disgust. He
+could not understand how he had submitted to the dishonour of such a
+love; and when he thought of Mildred it was with angry hatred, because
+she had submitted him to so much humiliation. His imagination presented
+her to him now with her defects of person and manner exaggerated, so
+that he shuddered at the thought of having been connected with her.
+
+“It just shows how damned weak I am,” he said to himself. The adventure
+was like a blunder that one had committed at a party so horrible that
+one felt nothing could be done to excuse it: the only remedy was to
+forget. His horror at the degradation he had suffered helped him. He
+was like a snake casting its skin and he looked upon the old covering
+with nausea. He exulted in the possession of himself once more; he
+realised how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was
+absorbed in that madness which they called love; he had had enough of
+it; he did not want to be in love any more if love was that. Philip
+told Hayward something of what he had gone through.
+
+“Wasn’t it Sophocles,” he asked, “who prayed for the time when he would
+be delivered from the wild beast of passion that devoured his
+heart-strings?”
+
+Philip seemed really to be born again. He breathed the circumambient
+air as though he had never breathed it before, and he took a child’s
+pleasure in all the facts of the world. He called his period of
+insanity six months’ hard labour.
+
+Hayward had only been settled in London a few days when Philip received
+from Blackstable, where it had been sent, a card for a private view at
+some picture gallery. He took Hayward, and, on looking at the
+catalogue, saw that Lawson had a picture in it.
+
+“I suppose he sent the card,” said Philip. “Let’s go and find him, he’s
+sure to be in front of his picture.”
+
+This, a profile of Ruth Chalice, was tucked away in a corner, and
+Lawson was not far from it. He looked a little lost, in his large soft
+hat and loose, pale clothes, amongst the fashionable throng that had
+gathered for the private view. He greeted Philip with enthusiasm, and
+with his usual volubility told him that he had come to live in London,
+Ruth Chalice was a hussy, he had taken a studio, Paris was played out,
+he had a commission for a portrait, and they’d better dine together and
+have a good old talk. Philip reminded him of his acquaintance with
+Hayward, and was entertained to see that Lawson was slightly awed by
+Hayward’s elegant clothes and grand manner. They sat upon him better
+than they had done in the shabby little studio which Lawson and Philip
+had shared.
+
+At dinner Lawson went on with his news. Flanagan had gone back to
+America. Clutton had disappeared. He had come to the conclusion that a
+man had no chance of doing anything so long as he was in contact with
+art and artists: the only thing was to get right away. To make the step
+easier he had quarrelled with all his friends in Paris. He developed a
+talent for telling them home truths, which made them bear with
+fortitude his declaration that he had done with that city and was
+settling in Gerona, a little town in the north of Spain which had
+attracted him when he saw it from the train on his way to Barcelona. He
+was living there now alone.
+
+“I wonder if he’ll ever do any good,” said Philip.
+
+He was interested in the human side of that struggle to express
+something which was so obscure in the man’s mind that he was become
+morbid and querulous. Philip felt vaguely that he was himself in the
+same case, but with him it was the conduct of his life as a whole that
+perplexed him. That was his means of self-expression, and what he must
+do with it was not clear. But he had no time to continue with this
+train of thought, for Lawson poured out a frank recital of his affair
+with Ruth Chalice. She had left him for a young student who had just
+come from England, and was behaving in a scandalous fashion. Lawson
+really thought someone ought to step in and save the young man. She
+would ruin him. Philip gathered that Lawson’s chief grievance was that
+the rupture had come in the middle of a portrait he was painting.
+
+“Women have no real feeling for art,” he said. “They only pretend they
+have.” But he finished philosophically enough: “However, I got four
+portraits out of her, and I’m not sure if the last I was working on
+would ever have been a success.”
+
+Philip envied the easy way in which the painter managed his love
+affairs. He had passed eighteen months pleasantly enough, had got an
+excellent model for nothing, and had parted from her at the end with no
+great pang.
+
+“And what about Cronshaw?” asked Philip.
+
+“Oh, he’s done for,” answered Lawson, with the cheerful callousness of
+his youth. “He’ll be dead in six months. He got pneumonia last winter.
+He was in the English hospital for seven weeks, and when he came out
+they told him his only chance was to give up liquor.”
+
+“Poor devil,” smiled the abstemious Philip.
+
+“He kept off for a bit. He used to go to the Lilas all the same, he
+couldn’t keep away from that, but he used to drink hot milk, avec de la
+fleur d’oranger, and he was damned dull.”
+
+“I take it you did not conceal the fact from him.”
+
+“Oh, he knew it himself. A little while ago he started on whiskey
+again. He said he was too old to turn over any new leaves. He would
+rather be happy for six months and die at the end of it than linger on
+for five years. And then I think he’s been awfully hard up lately. You
+see, he didn’t earn anything while he was ill, and the slut he lives
+with has been giving him a rotten time.”
+
+“I remember, the first time I saw him I admired him awfully,” said
+Philip. “I thought he was wonderful. It is sickening that vulgar,
+middle-class virtue should pay.”
+
+“Of course he was a rotter. He was bound to end in the gutter sooner or
+later,” said Lawson.
+
+Philip was hurt because Lawson would not see the pity of it. Of course
+it was cause and effect, but in the necessity with which one follows
+the other lay all tragedy of life.
+
+“Oh, I’d forgotten,” said Lawson. “Just after you left he sent round a
+present for you. I thought you’d be coming back and I didn’t bother
+about it, and then I didn’t think it worth sending on; but it’ll come
+over to London with the rest of my things, and you can come to my
+studio one day and fetch it away if you want it.”
+
+“You haven’t told me what it is yet.”
+
+“Oh, it’s only a ragged little bit of carpet. I shouldn’t think it’s
+worth anything. I asked him one day what the devil he’d sent the filthy
+thing for. He told me he’d seen it in a shop in the Rue de Rennes and
+bought it for fifteen francs. It appears to be a Persian rug. He said
+you’d asked him the meaning of life and that was the answer. But he was
+very drunk.”
+
+Philip laughed.
+
+“Oh yes, I know. I’ll take it. It was a favourite wheeze of his. He
+said I must find out for myself, or else the answer meant nothing.”
+
+
+
+
+LXVI
+
+
+Philip worked well and easily; he had a good deal to do, since he was
+taking in July the three parts of the First Conjoint examination, two
+of which he had failed in before; but he found life pleasant. He made a
+new friend. Lawson, on the lookout for models, had discovered a girl
+who was understudying at one of the theatres, and in order to induce
+her to sit to him arranged a little luncheon-party one Sunday. She
+brought a chaperon with her; and to her Philip, asked to make a fourth,
+was instructed to confine his attentions. He found this easy, since she
+turned out to be an agreeable chatterbox with an amusing tongue. She
+asked Philip to go and see her; she had rooms in Vincent Square, and
+was always in to tea at five o’clock; he went, was delighted with his
+welcome, and went again. Mrs. Nesbit was not more than twenty-five,
+very small, with a pleasant, ugly face; she had very bright eyes, high
+cheekbones, and a large mouth: the excessive contrasts of her colouring
+reminded one of a portrait by one of the modern French painters; her
+skin was very white, her cheeks were very red, her thick eyebrows, her
+hair, were very black. The effect was odd, a little unnatural, but far
+from unpleasing. She was separated from her husband and earned her
+living and her child’s by writing penny novelettes. There were one or
+two publishers who made a specialty of that sort of thing, and she had
+as much work as she could do. It was ill-paid, she received fifteen
+pounds for a story of thirty thousand words; but she was satisfied.
+
+“After all, it only costs the reader twopence,” she said, “and they
+like the same thing over and over again. I just change the names and
+that’s all. When I’m bored I think of the washing and the rent and
+clothes for baby, and I go on again.”
+
+Besides, she walked on at various theatres where they wanted supers and
+earned by this when in work from sixteen shillings to a guinea a week.
+At the end of her day she was so tired that she slept like a top. She
+made the best of her difficult lot. Her keen sense of humour enabled
+her to get amusement out of every vexatious circumstance. Sometimes
+things went wrong, and she found herself with no money at all; then her
+trifling possessions found their way to a pawnshop in the Vauxhall
+Bridge Road, and she ate bread and butter till things grew brighter.
+She never lost her cheerfulness.
+
+Philip was interested in her shiftless life, and she made him laugh
+with the fantastic narration of her struggles. He asked her why she did
+not try her hand at literary work of a better sort, but she knew that
+she had no talent, and the abominable stuff she turned out by the
+thousand words was not only tolerably paid, but was the best she could
+do. She had nothing to look forward to but a continuation of the life
+she led. She seemed to have no relations, and her friends were as poor
+as herself.
+
+“I don’t think of the future,” she said. “As long as I have enough
+money for three weeks’ rent and a pound or two over for food I never
+bother. Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as
+well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something
+always happens.”
+
+Soon Philip grew in the habit of going in to tea with her every day,
+and so that his visits might not embarrass her he took in a cake or a
+pound of butter or some tea. They started to call one another by their
+Christian names. Feminine sympathy was new to him, and he delighted in
+someone who gave a willing ear to all his troubles. The hours went
+quickly. He did not hide his admiration for her. She was a delightful
+companion. He could not help comparing her with Mildred; and he
+contrasted with the one’s obstinate stupidity, which refused interest
+to everything she did not know, the other’s quick appreciation and
+ready intelligence. His heart sank when he thought that he might have
+been tied for life to such a woman as Mildred. One evening he told
+Norah the whole story of his love. It was not one to give him much
+reason for self-esteem, and it was very pleasant to receive such
+charming sympathy.
+
+“I think you’re well out of it,” she said, when he had finished.
+
+She had a funny way at times of holding her head on one side like an
+Aberdeen puppy. She was sitting in an upright chair, sewing, for she
+had no time to do nothing, and Philip had made himself comfortable at
+her feet.
+
+“I can’t tell you how heartily thankful I am it’s all over,” he sighed.
+
+“Poor thing, you must have had a rotten time,” she murmured, and by way
+of showing her sympathy put her hand on his shoulder.
+
+He took it and kissed it, but she withdrew it quickly.
+
+“Why did you do that?” she asked, with a blush.
+
+“Have you any objection?”
+
+She looked at him for a moment with twinkling eyes, and she smiled.
+
+“No,” she said.
+
+He got up on his knees and faced her. She looked into his eyes
+steadily, and her large mouth trembled with a smile.
+
+“Well?” she said.
+
+“You know, you are a ripper. I’m so grateful to you for being nice to
+me. I like you so much.”
+
+“Don’t be idiotic,” she said.
+
+Philip took hold of her elbows and drew her towards him. She made no
+resistance, but bent forward a little, and he kissed her red lips.
+
+“Why did you do that?” she asked again.
+
+“Because it’s comfortable.”
+
+She did not answer, but a tender look came into her eyes, and she
+passed her hand softly over his hair.
+
+“You know, it’s awfully silly of you to behave like this. We were such
+good friends. It would be so jolly to leave it at that.”
+
+“If you really want to appeal to my better nature,” replied Philip,
+“you’ll do well not to stroke my cheek while you’re doing it.”
+
+She gave a little chuckle, but she did not stop.
+
+“It’s very wrong of me, isn’t it?” she said.
+
+Philip, surprised and a little amused, looked into her eyes, and as he
+looked he saw them soften and grow liquid, and there was an expression
+in them that enchanted him. His heart was suddenly stirred, and tears
+came to his eyes.
+
+“Norah, you’re not fond of me, are you?” he asked, incredulously.
+
+“You clever boy, you ask such stupid questions.”
+
+“Oh, my dear, it never struck me that you could be.”
+
+He flung his arms round her and kissed her, while she, laughing,
+blushing, and crying, surrendered herself willingly to his embrace.
+
+Presently he released her and sitting back on his heels looked at her
+curiously.
+
+“Well, I’m blowed!” he said.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I’m so surprised.”
+
+“And pleased?”
+
+“Delighted,” he cried with all his heart, “and so proud and so happy
+and so grateful.”
+
+He took her hands and covered them with kisses. This was the beginning
+for Philip of a happiness which seemed both solid and durable. They
+became lovers but remained friends. There was in Norah a maternal
+instinct which received satisfaction in her love for Philip; she wanted
+someone to pet, and scold, and make a fuss of; she had a domestic
+temperament and found pleasure in looking after his health and his
+linen. She pitied his deformity, over which he was so sensitive, and
+her pity expressed itself instinctively in tenderness. She was young,
+strong, and healthy, and it seemed quite natural to her to give her
+love. She had high spirits and a merry soul. She liked Philip because
+he laughed with her at all the amusing things in life that caught her
+fancy, and above all she liked him because he was he.
+
+When she told him this he answered gaily:
+
+“Nonsense. You like me because I’m a silent person and never want to
+get a word in.”
+
+Philip did not love her at all. He was extremely fond of her, glad to
+be with her, amused and interested by her conversation. She restored
+his belief in himself and put healing ointments, as it were, on all the
+bruises of his soul. He was immensely flattered that she cared for him.
+He admired her courage, her optimism, her impudent defiance of fate;
+she had a little philosophy of her own, ingenuous and practical.
+
+“You know, I don’t believe in churches and parsons and all that,” she
+said, “but I believe in God, and I don’t believe He minds much about
+what you do as long as you keep your end up and help a lame dog over a
+stile when you can. And I think people on the whole are very nice, and
+I’m sorry for those who aren’t.”
+
+“And what about afterwards?” asked Philip.
+
+“Oh, well, I don’t know for certain, you know,” she smiled, “but I hope
+for the best. And anyhow there’ll be no rent to pay and no novelettes
+to write.”
+
+She had a feminine gift for delicate flattery. She thought that Philip
+did a brave thing when he left Paris because he was conscious he could
+not be a great artist; and he was enchanted when she expressed
+enthusiastic admiration for him. He had never been quite certain
+whether this action indicated courage or infirmity of purpose. It was
+delightful to realise that she considered it heroic. She ventured to
+tackle him on a subject which his friends instinctively avoided.
+
+“It’s very silly of you to be so sensitive about your club-foot,” she
+said. She saw him blush darkly, but went on. “You know, people don’t
+think about it nearly as much as you do. They notice it the first time
+they see you, and then they forget about it.”
+
+He would not answer.
+
+“You’re not angry with me, are you?”
+
+“No.”
+
+She put her arm round his neck.
+
+“You know, I only speak about it because I love you. I don’t want it to
+make you unhappy.”
+
+“I think you can say anything you choose to me,” he answered, smiling.
+“I wish I could do something to show you how grateful I am to you.”
+
+She took him in hand in other ways. She would not let him be bearish
+and laughed at him when he was out of temper. She made him more urbane.
+
+“You can make me do anything you like,” he said to her once.
+
+“D’you mind?”
+
+“No, I want to do what you like.”
+
+He had the sense to realise his happiness. It seemed to him that she
+gave him all that a wife could, and he preserved his freedom; she was
+the most charming friend he had ever had, with a sympathy that he had
+never found in a man. The sexual relationship was no more than the
+strongest link in their friendship. It completed it, but was not
+essential. And because Philip’s appetites were satisfied, he became
+more equable and easier to live with. He felt in complete possession of
+himself. He thought sometimes of the winter, during which he had been
+obsessed by a hideous passion, and he was filled with loathing for
+Mildred and with horror of himself.
+
+His examinations were approaching, and Norah was as interested in them
+as he. He was flattered and touched by her eagerness. She made him
+promise to come at once and tell her the results. He passed the three
+parts this time without mishap, and when he went to tell her she burst
+into tears.
+
+“Oh, I’m so glad, I was so anxious.”
+
+“You silly little thing,” he laughed, but he was choking.
+
+No one could help being pleased with the way she took it.
+
+“And what are you going to do now?” she asked.
+
+“I can take a holiday with a clear conscience. I have no work to do
+till the winter session begins in October.”
+
+“I suppose you’ll go down to your uncle’s at Blackstable?”
+
+“You suppose quite wrong. I’m going to stay in London and play with
+you.”
+
+“I’d rather you went away.”
+
+“Why? Are you tired of me?”
+
+She laughed and put her hands on his shoulders.
+
+“Because you’ve been working hard, and you look utterly washed out. You
+want some fresh air and a rest. Please go.”
+
+He did not answer for a moment. He looked at her with loving eyes.
+
+“You know, I’d never believe it of anyone but you. You’re only thinking
+of my good. I wonder what you see in me.”
+
+“Will you give me a good character with my month’s notice?” she laughed
+gaily.
+
+“I’ll say that you’re thoughtful and kind, and you’re not exacting; you
+never worry, you’re not troublesome, and you’re easy to please.”
+
+“All that’s nonsense,” she said, “but I’ll tell you one thing: I’m one
+of the few persons I ever met who are able to learn from experience.”
+
+
+
+
+LXVII
+
+
+Philip looked forward to his return to London with impatience. During
+the two months he spent at Blackstable Norah wrote to him frequently,
+long letters in a bold, large hand, in which with cheerful humour she
+described the little events of the daily round, the domestic troubles
+of her landlady, rich food for laughter, the comic vexations of her
+rehearsals—she was walking on in an important spectacle at one of the
+London theatres—and her odd adventures with the publishers of
+novelettes. Philip read a great deal, bathed, played tennis, and
+sailed. At the beginning of October he settled down in London to work
+for the Second Conjoint examination. He was eager to pass it, since
+that ended the drudgery of the curriculum; after it was done with the
+student became an out-patients’ clerk, and was brought in contact with
+men and women as well as with text-books. Philip saw Norah every day.
+
+Lawson had been spending the summer at Poole, and had a number of
+sketches to show of the harbour and of the beach. He had a couple of
+commissions for portraits and proposed to stay in London till the bad
+light drove him away. Hayward, in London too, intended to spend the
+winter abroad, but remained week after week from sheer inability to
+make up his mind to go. Hayward had run to fat during the last two or
+three years—it was five years since Philip first met him in
+Heidelberg—and he was prematurely bald. He was very sensitive about it
+and wore his hair long to conceal the unsightly patch on the crown of
+his head. His only consolation was that his brow was now very noble.
+His blue eyes had lost their colour; they had a listless droop; and his
+mouth, losing the fulness of youth, was weak and pale. He still talked
+vaguely of the things he was going to do in the future, but with less
+conviction; and he was conscious that his friends no longer believed in
+him: when he had drank two or three glasses of whiskey he was inclined
+to be elegiac.
+
+“I’m a failure,” he murmured, “I’m unfit for the brutality of the
+struggle of life. All I can do is to stand aside and let the vulgar
+throng hustle by in their pursuit of the good things.”
+
+He gave you the impression that to fail was a more delicate, a more
+exquisite thing, than to succeed. He insinuated that his aloofness was
+due to distaste for all that was common and low. He talked beautifully
+of Plato.
+
+“I should have thought you’d got through with Plato by now,” said
+Philip impatiently.
+
+“Would you?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
+
+He was not inclined to pursue the subject. He had discovered of late
+the effective dignity of silence.
+
+“I don’t see the use of reading the same thing over and over again,”
+said Philip. “That’s only a laborious form of idleness.”
+
+“But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind that
+you can understand the most profound writer at a first reading?”
+
+“I don’t want to understand him, I’m not a critic. I’m not interested
+in him for his sake but for mine.”
+
+“Why d’you read then?”
+
+“Partly for pleasure, because it’s a habit and I’m just as
+uncomfortable if I don’t read as if I don’t smoke, and partly to know
+myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now
+and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a
+meaning for ME, and it becomes part of me; I’ve got out of the book all
+that’s any use to me, and I can’t get anything more if I read it a
+dozen times. You see, it seems to me, one’s like a closed bud, and most
+of what one reads and does has no effect at all; but there are certain
+things that have a peculiar significance for one, and they open a
+petal; and the petals open one by one; and at last the flower is
+there.”
+
+Philip was not satisfied with his metaphor, but he did not know how
+else to explain a thing which he felt and yet was not clear about.
+
+“You want to do things, you want to become things,” said Hayward, with
+a shrug of the shoulders. “It’s so vulgar.”
+
+Philip knew Hayward very well by now. He was weak and vain, so vain
+that you had to be on the watch constantly not to hurt his feelings; he
+mingled idleness and idealism so that he could not separate them. At
+Lawson’s studio one day he met a journalist, who was charmed by his
+conversation, and a week later the editor of a paper wrote to suggest
+that he should do some criticism for him. For forty-eight hours Hayward
+lived in an agony of indecision. He had talked of getting occupation of
+this sort so long that he had not the face to refuse outright, but the
+thought of doing anything filled him with panic. At last he declined
+the offer and breathed freely.
+
+“It would have interfered with my work,” he told Philip.
+
+“What work?” asked Philip brutally.
+
+“My inner life,” he answered.
+
+Then he went on to say beautiful things about Amiel, the professor of
+Geneva, whose brilliancy promised achievement which was never
+fulfilled; till at his death the reason of his failure and the excuse
+were at once manifest in the minute, wonderful journal which was found
+among his papers. Hayward smiled enigmatically.
+
+But Hayward could still talk delightfully about books; his taste was
+exquisite and his discrimination elegant; and he had a constant
+interest in ideas, which made him an entertaining companion. They meant
+nothing to him really, since they never had any effect on him; but he
+treated them as he might have pieces of china in an auction-room,
+handling them with pleasure in their shape and their glaze, pricing
+them in his mind; and then, putting them back into their case, thought
+of them no more.
+
+And it was Hayward who made a momentous discovery. One evening, after
+due preparation, he took Philip and Lawson to a tavern situated in Beak
+Street, remarkable not only in itself and for its history—it had
+memories of eighteenth-century glories which excited the romantic
+imagination—but for its snuff, which was the best in London, and above
+all for its punch. Hayward led them into a large, long room, dingily
+magnificent, with huge pictures on the walls of nude women: they were
+vast allegories of the school of Haydon; but smoke, gas, and the London
+atmosphere had given them a richness which made them look like old
+masters. The dark panelling, the massive, tarnished gold of the
+cornice, the mahogany tables, gave the room an air of sumptuous
+comfort, and the leather-covered seats along the wall were soft and
+easy. There was a ram’s head on a table opposite the door, and this
+contained the celebrated snuff. They ordered punch. They drank it. It
+was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the
+excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this
+narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous terms, jewelled,
+exotic phrases rise to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and
+cleared the head; it filled the soul with well-being; it disposed the
+mind at once to utter wit and to appreciate the wit of others; it had
+the vagueness of music and the precision of mathematics. Only one of
+its qualities was comparable to anything else: it had the warmth of a
+good heart; but its taste, its smell, its feel, were not to be
+described in words. Charles Lamb, with his infinite tact, attempting
+to, might have drawn charming pictures of the life of his day; Lord
+Byron in a stanza of Don Juan, aiming at the impossible, might have
+achieved the sublime; Oscar Wilde, heaping jewels of Ispahan upon
+brocades of Byzantium, might have created a troubling beauty.
+Considering it, the mind reeled under visions of the feasts of
+Elagabalus; and the subtle harmonies of Debussy mingled with the musty,
+fragrant romance of chests in which have been kept old clothes, ruffs,
+hose, doublets, of a forgotten generation, and the wan odour of lilies
+of the valley and the savour of Cheddar cheese.
+
+Hayward discovered the tavern at which this priceless beverage was to
+be obtained by meeting in the street a man called Macalister who had
+been at Cambridge with him. He was a stockbroker and a philosopher. He
+was accustomed to go to the tavern once a week; and soon Philip,
+Lawson, and Hayward got into the habit of meeting there every Tuesday
+evening: change of manners made it now little frequented, which was an
+advantage to persons who took pleasure in conversation. Macalister was
+a big-boned fellow, much too short for his width, with a large, fleshy
+face and a soft voice. He was a student of Kant and judged everything
+from the standpoint of pure reason. He was fond of expounding his
+doctrines. Philip listened with excited interest. He had long come to
+the conclusion that nothing amused him more than metaphysics, but he
+was not so sure of their efficacy in the affairs of life. The neat
+little system which he had formed as the result of his meditations at
+Blackstable had not been of conspicuous use during his infatuation for
+Mildred. He could not be positive that reason was much help in the
+conduct of life. It seemed to him that life lived itself. He remembered
+very vividly the violence of the emotion which had possessed him and
+his inability, as if he were tied down to the ground with ropes, to
+react against it. He read many wise things in books, but he could only
+judge from his own experience (he did not know whether he was different
+from other people); he did not calculate the pros and cons of an
+action, the benefits which must befall him if he did it, the harm which
+might result from the omission; but his whole being was urged on
+irresistibly. He did not act with a part of himself but altogether. The
+power that possessed him seemed to have nothing to do with reason: all
+that reason did was to point out the methods of obtaining what his
+whole soul was striving for.
+
+Macalister reminded him of the Categorical Imperative.
+
+“Act so that every action of yours should be capable of becoming a
+universal rule of action for all men.”
+
+“That seems to me perfect nonsense,” said Philip.
+
+“You’re a bold man to say that of anything stated by Immanuel Kant,”
+retorted Macalister.
+
+“Why? Reverence for what somebody said is a stultifying quality:
+there’s a damned sight too much reverence in the world. Kant thought
+things not because they were true, but because he was Kant.”
+
+“Well, what is your objection to the Categorical Imperative?” (They
+talked as though the fate of empires were in the balance.)
+
+“It suggests that one can choose one’s course by an effort of will. And
+it suggests that reason is the surest guide. Why should its dictates be
+any better than those of passion? They’re different. That’s all.”
+
+“You seem to be a contented slave of your passions.”
+
+“A slave because I can’t help myself, but not a contented one,” laughed
+Philip.
+
+While he spoke he thought of that hot madness which had driven him in
+pursuit of Mildred. He remembered how he had chafed against it and how
+he had felt the degradation of it.
+
+“Thank God, I’m free from all that now,” he thought.
+
+And yet even as he said it he was not quite sure whether he spoke
+sincerely. When he was under the influence of passion he had felt a
+singular vigour, and his mind had worked with unwonted force. He was
+more alive, there was an excitement in sheer being, an eager vehemence
+of soul, which made life now a trifle dull. For all the misery he had
+endured there was a compensation in that sense of rushing, overwhelming
+existence.
+
+But Philip’s unlucky words engaged him in a discussion on the freedom
+of the will, and Macalister, with his well-stored memory, brought out
+argument after argument. He had a mind that delighted in dialectics,
+and he forced Philip to contradict himself; he pushed him into corners
+from which he could only escape by damaging concessions; he tripped him
+up with logic and battered him with authorities.
+
+At last Philip said:
+
+“Well, I can’t say anything about other people. I can only speak for
+myself. The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I can’t
+get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. But it is an
+illusion which is one of the strongest motives of my actions. Before I
+do anything I feel that I have choice, and that influences what I do;
+but afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe that it was
+inevitable from all eternity.”
+
+“What do you deduce from that?” asked Hayward.
+
+“Why, merely the futility of regret. It’s no good crying over spilt
+milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.”
+
+
+
+
+LXVIII
+
+
+One morning Philip on getting up felt his head swim, and going back to
+bed suddenly discovered he was ill. All his limbs ached and he shivered
+with cold. When the landlady brought in his breakfast he called to her
+through the open door that he was not well, and asked for a cup of tea
+and a piece of toast. A few minutes later there was a knock at his
+door, and Griffiths came in. They had lived in the same house for over
+a year, but had never done more than nod to one another in the passage.
+
+“I say, I hear you’re seedy,” said Griffiths. “I thought I’d come in
+and see what was the matter with you.”
+
+Philip, blushing he knew not why, made light of the whole thing. He
+would be all right in an hour or two.
+
+“Well, you’d better let me take your temperature,” said Griffiths.
+
+“It’s quite unnecessary,” answered Philip irritably.
+
+“Come on.”
+
+Philip put the thermometer in his mouth. Griffiths sat on the side of
+the bed and chatted brightly for a moment, then he took it out and
+looked at it.
+
+“Now, look here, old man, you must stay in bed, and I’ll bring old
+Deacon in to have a look at you.”
+
+“Nonsense,” said Philip. “There’s nothing the matter. I wish you
+wouldn’t bother about me.”
+
+“But it isn’t any bother. You’ve got a temperature and you must stay in
+bed. You will, won’t you?”
+
+There was a peculiar charm in his manner, a mingling of gravity and
+kindliness, which was infinitely attractive.
+
+“You’ve got a wonderful bed-side manner,” Philip murmured, closing his
+eyes with a smile.
+
+Griffiths shook out his pillow for him, deftly smoothed down the
+bedclothes, and tucked him up. He went into Philip’s sitting-room to
+look for a siphon, could not find one, and fetched it from his own
+room. He drew down the blind.
+
+“Now, go to sleep and I’ll bring the old man round as soon as he’s done
+the wards.”
+
+It seemed hours before anyone came to Philip. His head felt as if it
+would split, anguish rent his limbs, and he was afraid he was going to
+cry. Then there was a knock at the door and Griffiths, healthy, strong,
+and cheerful, came in.
+
+“Here’s Doctor Deacon,” he said.
+
+The physician stepped forward, an elderly man with a bland manner, whom
+Philip knew only by sight. A few questions, a brief examination, and
+the diagnosis.
+
+“What d’you make it?” he asked Griffiths, smiling.
+
+“Influenza.”
+
+“Quite right.”
+
+Doctor Deacon looked round the dingy lodging-house room.
+
+“Wouldn’t you like to go to the hospital? They’ll put you in a private
+ward, and you can be better looked after than you can here.”
+
+“I’d rather stay where I am,” said Philip.
+
+He did not want to be disturbed, and he was always shy of new
+surroundings. He did not fancy nurses fussing about him, and the dreary
+cleanliness of the hospital.
+
+“I can look after him, sir,” said Griffiths at once.
+
+“Oh, very well.”
+
+He wrote a prescription, gave instructions, and left.
+
+“Now you’ve got to do exactly as I tell you,” said Griffiths. “I’m
+day-nurse and night-nurse all in one.”
+
+“It’s very kind of you, but I shan’t want anything,” said Philip.
+
+Griffiths put his hand on Philip’s forehead, a large cool, dry hand,
+and the touch seemed to him good.
+
+“I’m just going to take this round to the dispensary to have it made
+up, and then I’ll come back.”
+
+In a little while he brought the medicine and gave Philip a dose. Then
+he went upstairs to fetch his books.
+
+“You won’t mind my working in your room this afternoon, will you?” he
+said, when he came down. “I’ll leave the door open so that you can give
+me a shout if you want anything.”
+
+Later in the day Philip, awaking from an uneasy doze, heard voices in
+his sitting-room. A friend had come in to see Griffiths.
+
+“I say, you’d better not come in tonight,” he heard Griffiths saying.
+
+And then a minute or two afterwards someone else entered the room and
+expressed his surprise at finding Griffiths there. Philip heard him
+explain.
+
+“I’m looking after a second year’s man who’s got these rooms. The
+wretched blighter’s down with influenza. No whist tonight, old man.”
+
+Presently Griffiths was left alone and Philip called him.
+
+“I say, you’re not putting off a party tonight, are you?” he asked.
+
+“Not on your account. I must work at my surgery.”
+
+“Don’t put it off. I shall be all right. You needn’t bother about me.”
+
+“That’s all right.”
+
+Philip grew worse. As the night came on he became slightly delirious,
+but towards morning he awoke from a restless sleep. He saw Griffiths
+get out of an arm-chair, go down on his knees, and with his fingers put
+piece after piece of coal on the fire. He was in pyjamas and a
+dressing-gown.
+
+“What are you doing here?” he asked.
+
+“Did I wake you up? I tried to make up the fire without making a row.”
+
+“Why aren’t you in bed? What’s the time?”
+
+“About five. I thought I’d better sit up with you tonight. I brought an
+arm-chair in as I thought if I put a mattress down I should sleep so
+soundly that I shouldn’t hear you if you wanted anything.”
+
+“I wish you wouldn’t be so good to me,” groaned Philip. “Suppose you
+catch it?”
+
+“Then you shall nurse me, old man,” said Griffiths, with a laugh.
+
+In the morning Griffiths drew up the blind. He looked pale and tired
+after his night’s watch, but was full of spirits.
+
+“Now, I’m going to wash you,” he said to Philip cheerfully.
+
+“I can wash myself,” said Philip, ashamed.
+
+“Nonsense. If you were in the small ward a nurse would wash you, and I
+can do it just as well as a nurse.”
+
+Philip, too weak and wretched to resist, allowed Griffiths to wash his
+hands and face, his feet, his chest and back. He did it with charming
+tenderness, carrying on meanwhile a stream of friendly chatter; then he
+changed the sheet just as they did at the hospital, shook out the
+pillow, and arranged the bed-clothes.
+
+“I should like Sister Arthur to see me. It would make her sit up.
+Deacon’s coming in to see you early.”
+
+“I can’t imagine why you should be so good to me,” said Philip.
+
+“It’s good practice for me. It’s rather a lark having a patient.”
+
+Griffiths gave him his breakfast and went off to get dressed and have
+something to eat. A few minutes before ten he came back with a bunch of
+grapes and a few flowers.
+
+“You are awfully kind,” said Philip.
+
+He was in bed for five days.
+
+Norah and Griffiths nursed him between them. Though Griffiths was the
+same age as Philip he adopted towards him a humorous, motherly
+attitude. He was a thoughtful fellow, gentle and encouraging; but his
+greatest quality was a vitality which seemed to give health to everyone
+with whom he came in contact. Philip was unused to the petting which
+most people enjoy from mothers or sisters and he was deeply touched by
+the feminine tenderness of this strong young man. Philip grew better.
+Then Griffiths, sitting idly in Philip’s room, amused him with gay
+stories of amorous adventure. He was a flirtatious creature, capable of
+carrying on three or four affairs at a time; and his account of the
+devices he was forced to in order to keep out of difficulties made
+excellent hearing. He had a gift for throwing a romantic glamour over
+everything that happened to him. He was crippled with debts, everything
+he had of any value was pawned, but he managed always to be cheerful,
+extravagant, and generous. He was the adventurer by nature. He loved
+people of doubtful occupations and shifty purposes; and his
+acquaintance among the riff-raff that frequents the bars of London was
+enormous. Loose women, treating him as a friend, told him the troubles,
+difficulties, and successes of their lives; and card-sharpers,
+respecting his impecuniosity, stood him dinners and lent him five-pound
+notes. He was ploughed in his examinations time after time; but he bore
+this cheerfully, and submitted with such a charming grace to the
+parental expostulations that his father, a doctor in practice at Leeds,
+had not the heart to be seriously angry with him.
+
+“I’m an awful fool at books,” he said cheerfully, “but I CAN’T work.”
+
+Life was much too jolly. But it was clear that when he had got through
+the exuberance of his youth, and was at last qualified, he would be a
+tremendous success in practice. He would cure people by the sheer charm
+of his manner.
+
+Philip worshipped him as at school he had worshipped boys who were tall
+and straight and high of spirits. By the time he was well they were
+fast friends, and it was a peculiar satisfaction to Philip that
+Griffiths seemed to enjoy sitting in his little parlour, wasting
+Philip’s time with his amusing chatter and smoking innumerable
+cigarettes. Philip took him sometimes to the tavern off Regent Street.
+Hayward found him stupid, but Lawson recognised his charm and was eager
+to paint him; he was a picturesque figure with his blue eyes, white
+skin, and curly hair. Often they discussed things he knew nothing
+about, and then he sat quietly, with a good-natured smile on his
+handsome face, feeling quite rightly that his presence was sufficient
+contribution to the entertainment of the company. When he discovered
+that Macalister was a stockbroker he was eager for tips; and
+Macalister, with his grave smile, told him what fortunes he could have
+made if he had bought certain stock at certain times. It made Philip’s
+mouth water, for in one way and another he was spending more than he
+had expected, and it would have suited him very well to make a little
+money by the easy method Macalister suggested.
+
+“Next time I hear of a really good thing I’ll let you know,” said the
+stockbroker. “They do come along sometimes. It’s only a matter of
+biding one’s time.”
+
+Philip could not help thinking how delightful it would be to make fifty
+pounds, so that he could give Norah the furs she so badly needed for
+the winter. He looked at the shops in Regent Street and picked out the
+articles he could buy for the money. She deserved everything. She made
+his life very happy.
+
+
+
+
+LXIX
+
+
+One afternoon, when he went back to his rooms from the hospital to wash
+and tidy himself before going to tea as usual with Norah, as he let
+himself in with his latch-key, his landlady opened the door for him.
+
+“There’s a lady waiting to see you,” she said.
+
+“Me?” exclaimed Philip.
+
+He was surprised. It would only be Norah, and he had no idea what had
+brought her.
+
+“I shouldn’t ’ave let her in, only she’s been three times, and she
+seemed that upset at not finding you, so I told her she could wait.”
+
+He pushed past the explaining landlady and burst into the room. His
+heart turned sick. It was Mildred. She was sitting down, but got up
+hurriedly as he came in. She did not move towards him nor speak. He was
+so surprised that he did not know what he was saying.
+
+“What the hell d’you want?” he asked.
+
+She did not answer, but began to cry. She did not put her hands to her
+eyes, but kept them hanging by the side of her body. She looked like a
+housemaid applying for a situation. There was a dreadful humility in
+her bearing. Philip did not know what feelings came over him. He had a
+sudden impulse to turn round and escape from the room.
+
+“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he said at last.
+
+“I wish I was dead,” she moaned.
+
+Philip left her standing where she was. He could only think at the
+moment of steadying himself. His knees were shaking. He looked at her,
+and he groaned in despair.
+
+“What’s the matter?” he said.
+
+“He’s left me—Emil.”
+
+Philip’s heart bounded. He knew then that he loved her as passionately
+as ever. He had never ceased to love her. She was standing before him
+humble and unresisting. He wished to take her in his arms and cover her
+tear-stained face with kisses. Oh, how long the separation had been! He
+did not know how he could have endured it.
+
+“You’d better sit down. Let me give you a drink.”
+
+He drew the chair near the fire and she sat in it. He mixed her whiskey
+and soda, and, sobbing still, she drank it. She looked at him with
+great, mournful eyes. There were large black lines under them. She was
+thinner and whiter than when last he had seen her.
+
+“I wish I’d married you when you asked me,” she said.
+
+Philip did not know why the remark seemed to swell his heart. He could
+not keep the distance from her which he had forced upon himself. He put
+his hand on her shoulder.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry you’re in trouble.”
+
+She leaned her head against his bosom and burst into hysterical crying.
+Her hat was in the way and she took it off. He had never dreamt that
+she was capable of crying like that. He kissed her again and again. It
+seemed to ease her a little.
+
+“You were always good to me, Philip,” she said. “That’s why I knew I
+could come to you.”
+
+“Tell me what’s happened.”
+
+“Oh, I can’t, I can’t,” she cried out, breaking away from him.
+
+He sank down on his knees beside her and put his cheek against hers.
+
+“Don’t you know that there’s nothing you can’t tell me? I can never
+blame you for anything.”
+
+She told him the story little by little, and sometimes she sobbed so
+much that he could hardly understand.
+
+“Last Monday week he went up to Birmingham, and he promised to be back
+on Thursday, and he never came, and he didn’t come on the Friday, so I
+wrote to ask what was the matter, and he never answered the letter. And
+I wrote and said that if I didn’t hear from him by return I’d go up to
+Birmingham, and this morning I got a solicitor’s letter to say I had no
+claim on him, and if I molested him he’d seek the protection of the
+law.”
+
+“But it’s absurd,” cried Philip. “A man can’t treat his wife like that.
+Had you had a row?”
+
+“Oh, yes, we’d had a quarrel on the Sunday, and he said he was sick of
+me, but he’d said it before, and he’d come back all right. I didn’t
+think he meant it. He was frightened, because I told him a baby was
+coming. I kept it from him as long as I could. Then I had to tell him.
+He said it was my fault, and I ought to have known better. If you’d
+only heard the things he said to me! But I found out precious quick
+that he wasn’t a gentleman. He left me without a penny. He hadn’t paid
+the rent, and I hadn’t got the money to pay it, and the woman who kept
+the house said such things to me—well, I might have been a thief the
+way she talked.”
+
+“I thought you were going to take a flat.”
+
+“That’s what he said, but we just took furnished apartments in
+Highbury. He was that mean. He said I was extravagant, he didn’t give
+me anything to be extravagant with.”
+
+She had an extraordinary way of mixing the trivial with the important.
+Philip was puzzled. The whole thing was incomprehensible.
+
+“No man could be such a blackguard.”
+
+“You don’t know him. I wouldn’t go back to him now not if he was to
+come and ask me on his bended knees. I was a fool ever to think of him.
+And he wasn’t earning the money he said he was. The lies he told me!”
+
+Philip thought for a minute or two. He was so deeply moved by her
+distress that he could not think of himself.
+
+“Would you like me to go to Birmingham? I could see him and try to make
+things up.”
+
+“Oh, there’s no chance of that. He’ll never come back now, I know him.”
+
+“But he must provide for you. He can’t get out of that. I don’t know
+anything about these things, you’d better go and see a solicitor.”
+
+“How can I? I haven’t got the money.”
+
+“I’ll pay all that. I’ll write a note to my own solicitor, the
+sportsman who was my father’s executor. Would you like me to come with
+you now? I expect he’ll still be at his office.”
+
+“No, give me a letter to him. I’ll go alone.”
+
+She was a little calmer now. He sat down and wrote a note. Then he
+remembered that she had no money. He had fortunately changed a cheque
+the day before and was able to give her five pounds.
+
+“You are good to me, Philip,” she said.
+
+“I’m so happy to be able to do something for you.”
+
+“Are you fond of me still?”
+
+“Just as fond as ever.”
+
+She put up her lips and he kissed her. There was a surrender in the
+action which he had never seen in her before. It was worth all the
+agony he had suffered.
+
+She went away and he found that she had been there for two hours. He
+was extraordinarily happy.
+
+“Poor thing, poor thing,” he murmured to himself, his heart glowing
+with a greater love than he had ever felt before.
+
+He never thought of Norah at all till about eight o’clock a telegram
+came. He knew before opening it that it was from her.
+
+Is anything the matter? Norah.
+
+He did not know what to do nor what to answer. He could fetch her after
+the play, in which she was walking on, was over and stroll home with
+her as he sometimes did; but his whole soul revolted against the idea
+of seeing her that evening. He thought of writing to her, but he could
+not bring himself to address her as usual, dearest Norah. He made up
+his mind to telegraph.
+
+Sorry. Could not get away, Philip.
+
+He visualised her. He was slightly repelled by the ugly little face,
+with its high cheekbones and the crude colour. There was a coarseness
+in her skin which gave him goose-flesh. He knew that his telegram must
+be followed by some action on his part, but at all events it postponed
+it.
+
+Next day he wired again.
+
+Regret, unable to come. Will write.
+
+Mildred had suggested coming at four in the afternoon, and he would not
+tell her that the hour was inconvenient. After all she came first. He
+waited for her impatiently. He watched for her at the window and opened
+the front-door himself.
+
+“Well? Did you see Nixon?”
+
+“Yes,” she answered. “He said it wasn’t any good. Nothing’s to be done.
+I must just grin and bear it.”
+
+“But that’s impossible,” cried Philip.
+
+She sat down wearily.
+
+“Did he give any reasons?” he asked.
+
+She gave him a crumpled letter.
+
+“There’s your letter, Philip. I never took it. I couldn’t tell you
+yesterday, I really couldn’t. Emil didn’t marry me. He couldn’t. He had
+a wife already and three children.”
+
+Philip felt a sudden pang of jealousy and anguish. It was almost more
+than he could bear.
+
+“That’s why I couldn’t go back to my aunt. There’s no one I can go to
+but you.”
+
+“What made you go away with him?” Philip asked, in a low voice which he
+struggled to make firm.
+
+“I don’t know. I didn’t know he was a married man at first, and when he
+told me I gave him a piece of my mind. And then I didn’t see him for
+months, and when he came to the shop again and asked me I don’t know
+what came over me. I felt as if I couldn’t help it. I had to go with
+him.”
+
+“Were you in love with him?”
+
+“I don’t know. I couldn’t hardly help laughing at the things he said.
+And there was something about him—he said I’d never regret it, he
+promised to give me seven pounds a week—he said he was earning fifteen,
+and it was all a lie, he wasn’t. And then I was sick of going to the
+shop every morning, and I wasn’t getting on very well with my aunt; she
+wanted to treat me as a servant instead of a relation, said I ought to
+do my own room, and if I didn’t do it nobody was going to do it for me.
+Oh, I wish I hadn’t. But when he came to the shop and asked me I felt I
+couldn’t help it.”
+
+Philip moved away from her. He sat down at the table and buried his
+face in his hands. He felt dreadfully humiliated.
+
+“You’re not angry with me, Philip?” she asked piteously.
+
+“No,” he answered, looking up but away from her, “only I’m awfully
+hurt.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“You see, I was so dreadfully in love with you. I did everything I
+could to make you care for me. I thought you were incapable of loving
+anyone. It’s so horrible to know that you were willing to sacrifice
+everything for that bounder. I wonder what you saw in him.”
+
+“I’m awfully sorry, Philip. I regretted it bitterly afterwards, I
+promise you that.”
+
+He thought of Emil Miller, with his pasty, unhealthy look, his shifty
+blue eyes, and the vulgar smartness of his appearance; he always wore
+bright red knitted waistcoats. Philip sighed. She got up and went to
+him. She put her arm round his neck.
+
+“I shall never forget that you offered to marry me, Philip.”
+
+He took her hand and looked up at her. She bent down and kissed him.
+
+“Philip, if you want me still I’ll do anything you like now. I know
+you’re a gentleman in every sense of the word.”
+
+His heart stood still. Her words made him feel slightly sick.
+
+“It’s awfully good of you, but I couldn’t.”
+
+“Don’t you care for me any more?”
+
+“Yes, I love you with all my heart.”
+
+“Then why shouldn’t we have a good time while we’ve got the chance? You
+see, it can’t matter now.”
+
+He released himself from her.
+
+“You don’t understand. I’ve been sick with love for you ever since I
+saw you, but now—that man. I’ve unfortunately got a vivid imagination.
+The thought of it simply disgusts me.”
+
+“You are funny,” she said.
+
+He took her hand again and smiled at her.
+
+“You mustn’t think I’m not grateful. I can never thank you enough, but
+you see, it’s just stronger than I am.”
+
+“You are a good friend, Philip.”
+
+They went on talking, and soon they had returned to the familiar
+companionship of old days. It grew late. Philip suggested that they
+should dine together and go to a music-hall. She wanted some
+persuasion, for she had an idea of acting up to her situation, and felt
+instinctively that it did not accord with her distressed condition to
+go to a place of entertainment. At last Philip asked her to go simply
+to please him, and when she could look upon it as an act of
+self-sacrifice she accepted. She had a new thoughtfulness which
+delighted Philip. She asked him to take her to the little restaurant in
+Soho to which they had so often been; he was infinitely grateful to
+her, because her suggestion showed that happy memories were attached to
+it. She grew much more cheerful as dinner proceeded. The Burgundy from
+the public house at the corner warmed her heart, and she forgot that
+she ought to preserve a dolorous countenance. Philip thought it safe to
+speak to her of the future.
+
+“I suppose you haven’t got a brass farthing, have you?” he asked, when
+an opportunity presented itself.
+
+“Only what you gave me yesterday, and I had to give the landlady three
+pounds of that.”
+
+“Well, I’d better give you a tenner to go on with. I’ll go and see my
+solicitor and get him to write to Miller. We can make him pay up
+something, I’m sure. If we can get a hundred pounds out of him it’ll
+carry you on till after the baby comes.”
+
+“I wouldn’t take a penny from him. I’d rather starve.”
+
+“But it’s monstrous that he should leave you in the lurch like this.”
+
+“I’ve got my pride to consider.”
+
+It was a little awkward for Philip. He needed rigid economy to make his
+own money last till he was qualified, and he must have something over
+to keep him during the year he intended to spend as house physician and
+house surgeon either at his own or at some other hospital. But Mildred
+had told him various stories of Emil’s meanness, and he was afraid to
+remonstrate with her in case she accused him too of want of generosity.
+
+“I wouldn’t take a penny piece from him. I’d sooner beg my bread. I’d
+have seen about getting some work to do long before now, only it
+wouldn’t be good for me in the state I’m in. You have to think of your
+health, don’t you?”
+
+“You needn’t bother about the present,” said Philip. “I can let you
+have all you want till you’re fit to work again.”
+
+“I knew I could depend on you. I told Emil he needn’t think I hadn’t
+got somebody to go to. I told him you was a gentleman in every sense of
+the word.”
+
+By degrees Philip learned how the separation had come about. It
+appeared that the fellow’s wife had discovered the adventure he was
+engaged in during his periodical visits to London, and had gone to the
+head of the firm that employed him. She threatened to divorce him, and
+they announced that they would dismiss him if she did. He was
+passionately devoted to his children and could not bear the thought of
+being separated from them. When he had to choose between his wife and
+his mistress he chose his wife. He had been always anxious that there
+should be no child to make the entanglement more complicated; and when
+Mildred, unable longer to conceal its approach, informed him of the
+fact, he was seized with panic. He picked a quarrel and left her
+without more ado.
+
+“When d’you expect to be confined?” asked Philip.
+
+“At the beginning of March.”
+
+“Three months.”
+
+It was necessary to discuss plans. Mildred declared she would not
+remain in the rooms at Highbury, and Philip thought it more convenient
+too that she should be nearer to him. He promised to look for something
+next day. She suggested the Vauxhall Bridge Road as a likely
+neighbourhood.
+
+“And it would be near for afterwards,” she said.
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“Well, I should only be able to stay there about two months or a little
+more, and then I should have to go into a house. I know a very
+respectable place, where they have a most superior class of people, and
+they take you for four guineas a week and no extras. Of course the
+doctor’s extra, but that’s all. A friend of mine went there, and the
+lady who keeps it is a thorough lady. I mean to tell her that my
+husband’s an officer in India and I’ve come to London for my baby,
+because it’s better for my health.”
+
+It seemed extraordinary to Philip to hear her talking in this way. With
+her delicate little features and her pale face she looked cold and
+maidenly. When he thought of the passions that burnt within her, so
+unexpected, his heart was strangely troubled. His pulse beat quickly.
+
+
+
+
+LXX
+
+
+Philip expected to find a letter from Norah when he got back to his
+rooms, but there was nothing; nor did he receive one the following
+morning. The silence irritated and at the same time alarmed him. They
+had seen one another every day he had been in London since the previous
+June; and it must seem odd to her that he should let two days go by
+without visiting her or offering a reason for his absence; he wondered
+whether by an unlucky chance she had seen him with Mildred. He could
+not bear to think that she was hurt or unhappy, and he made up his mind
+to call on her that afternoon. He was almost inclined to reproach her
+because he had allowed himself to get on such intimate terms with her.
+The thought of continuing them filled him with disgust.
+
+He found two rooms for Mildred on the second floor of a house in the
+Vauxhall Bridge Road. They were noisy, but he knew that she liked the
+rattle of traffic under her windows.
+
+“I don’t like a dead and alive street where you don’t see a soul pass
+all day,” she said. “Give me a bit of life.”
+
+Then he forced himself to go to Vincent Square. He was sick with
+apprehension when he rang the bell. He had an uneasy sense that he was
+treating Norah badly; he dreaded reproaches; he knew she had a quick
+temper, and he hated scenes: perhaps the best way would be to tell her
+frankly that Mildred had come back to him and his love for her was as
+violent as it had ever been; he was very sorry, but he had nothing to
+offer Norah any more. Then he thought of her anguish, for he knew she
+loved him; it had flattered him before, and he was immensely grateful;
+but now it was horrible. She had not deserved that he should inflict
+pain upon her. He asked himself how she would greet him now, and as he
+walked up the stairs all possible forms of her behaviour flashed across
+his mind. He knocked at the door. He felt that he was pale, and
+wondered how to conceal his nervousness.
+
+She was writing away industriously, but she sprang to her feet as he
+entered.
+
+“I recognised your step,” she cried. “Where have you been hiding
+yourself, you naughty boy?”
+
+She came towards him joyfully and put her arms round his neck. She was
+delighted to see him. He kissed her, and then, to give himself
+countenance, said he was dying for tea. She bustled the fire to make
+the kettle boil.
+
+“I’ve been awfully busy,” he said lamely.
+
+She began to chatter in her bright way, telling him of a new commission
+she had to provide a novelette for a firm which had not hitherto
+employed her. She was to get fifteen guineas for it.
+
+“It’s money from the clouds. I’ll tell you what we’ll do, we’ll stand
+ourselves a little jaunt. Let’s go and spend a day at Oxford, shall we?
+I’d love to see the colleges.”
+
+He looked at her to see whether there was any shadow of reproach in her
+eyes; but they were as frank and merry as ever: she was overjoyed to
+see him. His heart sank. He could not tell her the brutal truth. She
+made some toast for him, and cut it into little pieces, and gave it him
+as though he were a child.
+
+“Is the brute fed?” she asked.
+
+He nodded, smiling; and she lit a cigarette for him. Then, as she loved
+to do, she came and sat on his knees. She was very light. She leaned
+back in his arms with a sigh of delicious happiness.
+
+“Say something nice to me,” she murmured.
+
+“What shall I say?”
+
+“You might by an effort of imagination say that you rather liked me.”
+
+“You know I do that.”
+
+He had not the heart to tell her then. He would give her peace at all
+events for that day, and perhaps he might write to her. That would be
+easier. He could not bear to think of her crying. She made him kiss
+her, and as he kissed her he thought of Mildred and Mildred’s pale,
+thin lips. The recollection of Mildred remained with him all the time,
+like an incorporated form, but more substantial than a shadow; and the
+sight continually distracted his attention.
+
+“You’re very quiet today,” Norah said.
+
+Her loquacity was a standing joke between them, and he answered:
+
+“You never let me get a word in, and I’ve got out of the habit of
+talking.”
+
+“But you’re not listening, and that’s bad manners.”
+
+He reddened a little, wondering whether she had some inkling of his
+secret; he turned away his eyes uneasily. The weight of her irked him
+this afternoon, and he did not want her to touch him.
+
+“My foot’s gone to sleep,” he said.
+
+“I’m so sorry,” she cried, jumping up. “I shall have to bant if I can’t
+break myself of this habit of sitting on gentlemen’s knees.”
+
+He went through an elaborate form of stamping his foot and walking
+about. Then he stood in front of the fire so that she should not resume
+her position. While she talked he thought that she was worth ten of
+Mildred; she amused him much more and was jollier to talk to; she was
+cleverer, and she had a much nicer nature. She was a good, brave,
+honest little woman; and Mildred, he thought bitterly, deserved none of
+these epithets. If he had any sense he would stick to Norah, she would
+make him much happier than he would ever be with Mildred: after all she
+loved him, and Mildred was only grateful for his help. But when all was
+said the important thing was to love rather than to be loved; and he
+yearned for Mildred with his whole soul. He would sooner have ten
+minutes with her than a whole afternoon with Norah, he prized one kiss
+of her cold lips more than all Norah could give him.
+
+“I can’t help myself,” he thought. “I’ve just got her in my bones.”
+
+He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and
+grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with the one than
+happiness with the other.
+
+When he got up to go Norah said casually:
+
+“Well, I shall see you tomorrow, shan’t I?”
+
+“Yes,” he answered.
+
+He knew that he would not be able to come, since he was going to help
+Mildred with her moving, but he had not the courage to say so. He made
+up his mind that he would send a wire. Mildred saw the rooms in the
+morning, was satisfied with them, and after luncheon Philip went up
+with her to Highbury. She had a trunk for her clothes and another for
+the various odds and ends, cushions, lampshades, photograph frames,
+with which she had tried to give the apartments a home-like air; she
+had two or three large cardboard boxes besides, but in all there was no
+more than could be put on the roof of a four-wheeler. As they drove
+through Victoria Street Philip sat well back in the cab in case Norah
+should happen to be passing. He had not had an opportunity to telegraph
+and could not do so from the post office in the Vauxhall Bridge Road,
+since she would wonder what he was doing in that neighbourhood; and if
+he was there he could have no excuse for not going into the
+neighbouring square where she lived. He made up his mind that he had
+better go in and see her for half an hour; but the necessity irritated
+him: he was angry with Norah, because she forced him to vulgar and
+degrading shifts. But he was happy to be with Mildred. It amused him to
+help her with the unpacking; and he experienced a charming sense of
+possession in installing her in these lodgings which he had found and
+was paying for. He would not let her exert herself. It was a pleasure
+to do things for her, and she had no desire to do what somebody else
+seemed desirous to do for her. He unpacked her clothes and put them
+away. She was not proposing to go out again, so he got her slippers and
+took off her boots. It delighted him to perform menial offices.
+
+“You do spoil me,” she said, running her fingers affectionately through
+his hair, while he was on his knees unbuttoning her boots.
+
+He took her hands and kissed them.
+
+“It is nipping to have you here.”
+
+He arranged the cushions and the photograph frames. She had several
+jars of green earthenware.
+
+“I’ll get you some flowers for them,” he said.
+
+He looked round at his work proudly.
+
+“As I’m not going out any more I think I’ll get into a tea-gown,” she
+said. “Undo me behind, will you?”
+
+She turned round as unconcernedly as though he were a woman. His sex
+meant nothing to her. But his heart was filled with gratitude for the
+intimacy her request showed. He undid the hooks and eyes with clumsy
+fingers.
+
+“That first day I came into the shop I never thought I’d be doing this
+for you now,” he said, with a laugh which he forced.
+
+“Somebody must do it,” she answered.
+
+She went into the bed-room and slipped into a pale blue tea-gown
+decorated with a great deal of cheap lace. Then Philip settled her on a
+sofa and made tea for her.
+
+“I’m afraid I can’t stay and have it with you,” he said regretfully.
+“I’ve got a beastly appointment. But I shall be back in half an hour.”
+
+He wondered what he should say if she asked him what the appointment
+was, but she showed no curiosity. He had ordered dinner for the two of
+them when he took the rooms, and proposed to spend the evening with her
+quietly. He was in such a hurry to get back that he took a tram along
+the Vauxhall Bridge Road. He thought he had better break the fact to
+Norah at once that he could not stay more than a few minutes.
+
+“I say, I’ve got only just time to say how d’you do,” he said, as soon
+as he got into her rooms. “I’m frightfully busy.”
+
+Her face fell.
+
+“Why, what’s the matter?”
+
+It exasperated him that she should force him to tell lies, and he knew
+that he reddened when he answered that there was a demonstration at the
+hospital which he was bound to go to. He fancied that she looked as
+though she did not believe him, and this irritated him all the more.
+
+“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “I shall have you all
+tomorrow.”
+
+He looked at her blankly. It was Sunday, and he had been looking
+forward to spending the day with Mildred. He told himself that he must
+do that in common decency; he could not leave her by herself in a
+strange house.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry, I’m engaged tomorrow.”
+
+He knew this was the beginning of a scene which he would have given
+anything to avoid. The colour on Norah’s cheeks grew brighter.
+
+“But I’ve asked the Gordons to lunch”—they were an actor and his wife
+who were touring the provinces and in London for Sunday—“I told you
+about it a week ago.”
+
+“I’m awfully sorry, I forgot.” He hesitated. “I’m afraid I can’t
+possibly come. Isn’t there somebody else you can get?”
+
+“What are you doing tomorrow then?”
+
+“I wish you wouldn’t cross-examine me.”
+
+“Don’t you want to tell me?”
+
+“I don’t in the least mind telling you, but it’s rather annoying to be
+forced to account for all one’s movements.”
+
+Norah suddenly changed. With an effort of self-control she got the
+better of her temper, and going up to him took his hands.
+
+“Don’t disappoint me tomorrow, Philip, I’ve been looking forward so
+much to spending the day with you. The Gordons want to see you, and
+we’ll have such a jolly time.”
+
+“I’d love to if I could.”
+
+“I’m not very exacting, am I? I don’t often ask you to do anything
+that’s a bother. Won’t you get out of your horrid engagement—just this
+once?”
+
+“I’m awfully sorry, I don’t see how I can,” he replied sullenly.
+
+“Tell me what it is,” she said coaxingly.
+
+He had had time to invent something. “Griffiths’ two sisters are up for
+the week-end and we’re taking them out.”
+
+“Is that all?” she said joyfully. “Griffiths can so easily get another
+man.”
+
+He wished he had thought of something more urgent than that. It was a
+clumsy lie.
+
+“No, I’m awfully sorry, I can’t—I’ve promised and I mean to keep my
+promise.”
+
+“But you promised me too. Surely I come first.”
+
+“I wish you wouldn’t persist,” he said.
+
+She flared up.
+
+“You won’t come because you don’t want to. I don’t know what you’ve
+been doing the last few days, you’ve been quite different.”
+
+He looked at his watch.
+
+“I’m afraid I’ll have to be going,” he said.
+
+“You won’t come tomorrow?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“In that case you needn’t trouble to come again,” she cried, losing her
+temper for good.
+
+“That’s just as you like,” he answered.
+
+“Don’t let me detain you any longer,” she added ironically.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and walked out. He was relieved that it had
+gone no worse. There had been no tears. As he walked along he
+congratulated himself on getting out of the affair so easily. He went
+into Victoria Street and bought a few flowers to take in to Mildred.
+
+The little dinner was a great success. Philip had sent in a small pot
+of caviare, which he knew she was very fond of, and the landlady
+brought them up some cutlets with vegetables and a sweet. Philip had
+ordered Burgundy, which was her favourite wine. With the curtains
+drawn, a bright fire, and one of Mildred’s shades on the lamp, the room
+was cosy.
+
+“It’s really just like home,” smiled Philip.
+
+“I might be worse off, mightn’t I?” she answered.
+
+When they finished, Philip drew two arm-chairs in front of the fire,
+and they sat down. He smoked his pipe comfortably. He felt happy and
+generous.
+
+“What would you like to do tomorrow?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, I’m going to Tulse Hill. You remember the manageress at the shop,
+well, she’s married now, and she’s asked me to go and spend the day
+with her. Of course she thinks I’m married too.”
+
+Philip’s heart sank.
+
+“But I refused an invitation so that I might spend Sunday with you.”
+
+He thought that if she loved him she would say that in that case she
+would stay with him. He knew very well that Norah would not have
+hesitated.
+
+“Well, you were a silly to do that. I’ve promised to go for three weeks
+and more.”
+
+“But how can you go alone?”
+
+“Oh, I shall say that Emil’s away on business. Her husband’s in the
+glove trade, and he’s a very superior fellow.”
+
+Philip was silent, and bitter feelings passed through his heart. She
+gave him a sidelong glance.
+
+“You don’t grudge me a little pleasure, Philip? You see, it’s the last
+time I shall be able to go anywhere for I don’t know how long, and I
+had promised.”
+
+He took her hand and smiled.
+
+“No, darling, I want you to have the best time you can. I only want you
+to be happy.”
+
+There was a little book bound in blue paper lying open, face downwards,
+on the sofa, and Philip idly took it up. It was a twopenny novelette,
+and the author was Courtenay Paget. That was the name under which Norah
+wrote.
+
+“I do like his books,” said Mildred. “I read them all. They’re so
+refined.”
+
+He remembered what Norah had said of herself.
+
+“I have an immense popularity among kitchen-maids. They think me so
+genteel.”
+
+
+
+
+LXXI
+
+
+Philip, in return for Griffiths’ confidences, had told him the details
+of his own complicated amours, and on Sunday morning, after breakfast
+when they sat by the fire in their dressing-gowns and smoked, he
+recounted the scene of the previous day. Griffiths congratulated him
+because he had got out of his difficulties so easily.
+
+“It’s the simplest thing in the world to have an affair with a woman,”
+he remarked sententiously, “but it’s a devil of a nuisance to get out
+of it.”
+
+Philip felt a little inclined to pat himself on the back for his skill
+in managing the business. At all events he was immensely relieved. He
+thought of Mildred enjoying herself in Tulse Hill, and he found in
+himself a real satisfaction because she was happy. It was an act of
+self-sacrifice on his part that he did not grudge her pleasure even
+though paid for by his own disappointment, and it filled his heart with
+a comfortable glow.
+
+But on Monday morning he found on his table a letter from Norah. She
+wrote:
+
+Dearest,
+
+I’m sorry I was cross on Saturday. Forgive me and come to tea in the
+afternoon as usual. I love you.
+
+Your Norah.
+
+His heart sank, and he did not know what to do. He took the note to
+Griffiths and showed it to him.
+
+“You’d better leave it unanswered,” said he.
+
+“Oh, I can’t,” cried Philip. “I should be miserable if I thought of her
+waiting and waiting. You don’t know what it is to be sick for the
+postman’s knock. I do, and I can’t expose anybody else to that
+torture.”
+
+“My dear fellow, one can’t break that sort of affair off without
+somebody suffering. You must just set your teeth to that. One thing is,
+it doesn’t last very long.”
+
+Philip felt that Norah had not deserved that he should make her suffer;
+and what did Griffiths know about the degrees of anguish she was
+capable of? He remembered his own pain when Mildred had told him she
+was going to be married. He did not want anyone to experience what he
+had experienced then.
+
+“If you’re so anxious not to give her pain, go back to her,” said
+Griffiths.
+
+“I can’t do that.”
+
+He got up and walked up and down the room nervously. He was angry with
+Norah because she had not let the matter rest. She must have seen that
+he had no more love to give her. They said women were so quick at
+seeing those things.
+
+“You might help me,” he said to Griffiths.
+
+“My dear fellow, don’t make such a fuss about it. People do get over
+these things, you know. She probably isn’t so wrapped up in you as you
+think, either. One’s always rather apt to exaggerate the passion one’s
+inspired other people with.”
+
+He paused and looked at Philip with amusement.
+
+“Look here, there’s only one thing you can do. Write to her, and tell
+her the thing’s over. Put it so that there can be no mistake about it.
+It’ll hurt her, but it’ll hurt her less if you do the thing brutally
+than if you try half-hearted ways.”
+
+Philip sat down and wrote the following letter:
+
+My dear Norah,
+
+I am sorry to make you unhappy, but I think we had better let things
+remain where we left them on Saturday. I don’t think there’s any use in
+letting these things drag on when they’ve ceased to be amusing. You
+told me to go and I went. I do not propose to come back. Good-bye.
+Philip Carey.
+
+He showed the letter to Griffiths and asked him what he thought of it.
+Griffiths read it and looked at Philip with twinkling eyes. He did not
+say what he felt.
+
+“I think that’ll do the trick,” he said.
+
+Philip went out and posted it. He passed an uncomfortable morning, for
+he imagined with great detail what Norah would feel when she received
+his letter. He tortured himself with the thought of her tears. But at
+the same time he was relieved. Imagined grief was more easy to bear
+than grief seen, and he was free now to love Mildred with all his soul.
+His heart leaped at the thought of going to see her that afternoon,
+when his day’s work at the hospital was over.
+
+When as usual he went back to his rooms to tidy himself, he had no
+sooner put the latch-key in his door than he heard a voice behind him.
+
+“May I come in? I’ve been waiting for you for half an hour.”
+
+It was Norah. He felt himself blush to the roots of his hair. She spoke
+gaily. There was no trace of resentment in her voice and nothing to
+indicate that there was a rupture between them. He felt himself
+cornered. He was sick with fear, but he did his best to smile.
+
+“Yes, do,” he said.
+
+He opened the door, and she preceded him into his sitting-room. He was
+nervous and, to give himself countenance, offered her a cigarette and
+lit one for himself. She looked at him brightly.
+
+“Why did you write me such a horrid letter, you naughty boy? If I’d
+taken it seriously it would have made me perfectly wretched.”
+
+“It was meant seriously,” he answered gravely.
+
+“Don’t be so silly. I lost my temper the other day, and I wrote and
+apologised. You weren’t satisfied, so I’ve come here to apologise
+again. After all, you’re your own master and I have no claims upon you.
+I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to.”
+
+She got up from the chair in which she was sitting and went towards him
+impulsively, with outstretched hands.
+
+“Let’s make friends again, Philip. I’m so sorry if I offended you.”
+
+He could not prevent her from taking his hands, but he could not look
+at her.
+
+“I’m afraid it’s too late,” he said.
+
+She let herself down on the floor by his side and clasped his knees.
+
+“Philip, don’t be silly. I’m quick-tempered too and I can understand
+that I hurt you, but it’s so stupid to sulk over it. What’s the good of
+making us both unhappy? It’s been so jolly, our friendship.” She passed
+her fingers slowly over his hand. “I love you, Philip.”
+
+He got up, disengaging himself from her, and went to the other side of
+the room.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry, I can’t do anything. The whole thing’s over.”
+
+“D’you mean to say you don’t love me any more?”
+
+“I’m afraid so.”
+
+“You were just looking for an opportunity to throw me over and you took
+that one?”
+
+He did not answer. She looked at him steadily for a time which seemed
+intolerable. She was sitting on the floor where he had left her,
+leaning against the arm-chair. She began to cry quite silently, without
+trying to hide her face, and the large tears rolled down her cheeks one
+after the other. She did not sob. It was horribly painful to see her.
+Philip turned away.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry to hurt you. It’s not my fault if I don’t love you.”
+
+She did not answer. She merely sat there, as though she were
+overwhelmed, and the tears flowed down her cheeks. It would have been
+easier to bear if she had reproached him. He had thought her temper
+would get the better of her, and he was prepared for that. At the back
+of his mind was a feeling that a real quarrel, in which each said to
+the other cruel things, would in some way be a justification of his
+behaviour. The time passed. At last he grew frightened by her silent
+crying; he went into his bed-room and got a glass of water; he leaned
+over her.
+
+“Won’t you drink a little? It’ll relieve you.”
+
+She put her lips listlessly to the glass and drank two or three
+mouthfuls. Then in an exhausted whisper she asked him for a
+handkerchief. She dried her eyes.
+
+“Of course I knew you never loved me as much as I loved you,” she
+moaned.
+
+“I’m afraid that’s always the case,” he said. “There’s always one who
+loves and one who lets himself be loved.”
+
+He thought of Mildred, and a bitter pain traversed his heart. Norah did
+not answer for a long time.
+
+“I’d been so miserably unhappy, and my life was so hateful,” she said
+at last.
+
+She did not speak to him, but to herself. He had never heard her before
+complain of the life she had led with her husband or of her poverty. He
+had always admired the bold front she displayed to the world.
+
+“And then you came along and you were so good to me. And I admired you
+because you were clever and it was so heavenly to have someone I could
+put my trust in. I loved you. I never thought it could come to an end.
+And without any fault of mine at all.”
+
+Her tears began to flow again, but now she was more mistress of
+herself, and she hid her face in Philip’s handkerchief. She tried hard
+to control herself.
+
+“Give me some more water,” she said.
+
+She wiped her eyes.
+
+“I’m sorry to make such a fool of myself. I was so unprepared.”
+
+“I’m awfully sorry, Norah. I want you to know that I’m very grateful
+for all you’ve done for me.”
+
+He wondered what it was she saw in him.
+
+“Oh, it’s always the same,” she sighed, “if you want men to behave well
+to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they
+make you suffer for it.”
+
+She got up from the floor and said she must go. She gave Philip a long,
+steady look. Then she sighed.
+
+“It’s so inexplicable. What does it all mean?”
+
+Philip took a sudden determination.
+
+“I think I’d better tell you, I don’t want you to think too badly of
+me, I want you to see that I can’t help myself. Mildred’s come back.”
+
+The colour came to her face.
+
+“Why didn’t you tell me at once? I deserved that surely.”
+
+“I was afraid to.”
+
+She looked at herself in the glass and set her hat straight.
+
+“Will you call me a cab,” she said. “I don’t feel I can walk.”
+
+He went to the door and stopped a passing hansom; but when she followed
+him into the street he was startled to see how white she was. There was
+a heaviness in her movements as though she had suddenly grown older.
+She looked so ill that he had not the heart to let her go alone.
+
+“I’ll drive back with you if you don’t mind.”
+
+She did not answer, and he got into the cab. They drove along in
+silence over the bridge, through shabby streets in which children, with
+shrill cries, played in the road. When they arrived at her door she did
+not immediately get out. It seemed as though she could not summon
+enough strength to her legs to move.
+
+“I hope you’ll forgive me, Norah,” he said.
+
+She turned her eyes towards him, and he saw that they were bright again
+with tears, but she forced a smile to her lips.
+
+“Poor fellow, you’re quite worried about me. You mustn’t bother. I
+don’t blame you. I shall get over it all right.”
+
+Lightly and quickly she stroked his face to show him that she bore no
+ill-feeling, the gesture was scarcely more than suggested; then she
+jumped out of the cab and let herself into her house.
+
+Philip paid the hansom and walked to Mildred’s lodgings. There was a
+curious heaviness in his heart. He was inclined to reproach himself.
+But why? He did not know what else he could have done. Passing a
+fruiterer’s, he remembered that Mildred was fond of grapes. He was so
+grateful that he could show his love for her by recollecting every whim
+she had.
+
+
+
+
+LXXII
+
+
+For the next three months Philip went every day to see Mildred. He took
+his books with him and after tea worked, while Mildred lay on the sofa
+reading novels. Sometimes he would look up and watch her for a minute.
+A happy smile crossed his lips. She would feel his eyes upon her.
+
+“Don’t waste your time looking at me, silly. Go on with your work,” she
+said.
+
+“Tyrant,” he answered gaily.
+
+He put aside his book when the landlady came in to lay the cloth for
+dinner, and in his high spirits he exchanged chaff with her. She was a
+little cockney, of middle age, with an amusing humour and a quick
+tongue. Mildred had become great friends with her and had given her an
+elaborate but mendacious account of the circumstances which had brought
+her to the pass she was in. The good-hearted little woman was touched
+and found no trouble too great to make Mildred comfortable. Mildred’s
+sense of propriety had suggested that Philip should pass himself off as
+her brother. They dined together, and Philip was delighted when he had
+ordered something which tempted Mildred’s capricious appetite. It
+enchanted him to see her sitting opposite him, and every now and then
+from sheer joy he took her hand and pressed it. After dinner she sat in
+the arm-chair by the fire, and he settled himself down on the floor
+beside her, leaning against her knees, and smoked. Often they did not
+talk at all, and sometimes Philip noticed that she had fallen into a
+doze. He dared not move then in case he woke her, and he sat very
+quietly, looking lazily into the fire and enjoying his happiness.
+
+“Had a nice little nap?” he smiled, when she woke.
+
+“I’ve not been sleeping,” she answered. “I only just closed my eyes.”
+
+She would never acknowledge that she had been asleep. She had a
+phlegmatic temperament, and her condition did not seriously
+inconvenience her. She took a lot of trouble about her health and
+accepted the advice of anyone who chose to offer it. She went for a
+‘constitutional’ every morning that it was fine and remained out a
+definite time. When it was not too cold she sat in St. James’ Park. But
+the rest of the day she spent quite happily on her sofa, reading one
+novel after another or chatting with the landlady; she had an
+inexhaustible interest in gossip, and told Philip with abundant detail
+the history of the landlady, of the lodgers on the drawing-room floor,
+and of the people who lived in the next house on either side. Now and
+then she was seized with panic; she poured out her fears to Philip
+about the pain of the confinement and was in terror lest she should
+die; she gave him a full account of the confinements of the landlady
+and of the lady on the drawing-room floor (Mildred did not know her;
+“I’m one to keep myself to myself,” she said, “I’m not one to go about
+with anybody.”) and she narrated details with a queer mixture of horror
+and gusto; but for the most part she looked forward to the occurrence
+with equanimity.
+
+“After all, I’m not the first one to have a baby, am I? And the doctor
+says I shan’t have any trouble. You see, it isn’t as if I wasn’t well
+made.”
+
+Mrs. Owen, the owner of the house she was going to when her time came,
+had recommended a doctor, and Mildred saw him once a week. He was to
+charge fifteen guineas.
+
+“Of course I could have got it done cheaper, but Mrs. Owen strongly
+recommended him, and I thought it wasn’t worth while to spoil the ship
+for a coat of tar.”
+
+“If you feel happy and comfortable I don’t mind a bit about the
+expense,” said Philip.
+
+She accepted all that Philip did for her as if it were the most natural
+thing in the world, and on his side he loved to spend money on her:
+each five-pound note he gave her caused him a little thrill of
+happiness and pride; he gave her a good many, for she was not
+economical.
+
+“I don’t know where the money goes to,” she said herself, “it seems to
+slip through my fingers like water.”
+
+“It doesn’t matter,” said Philip. “I’m so glad to be able to do
+anything I can for you.”
+
+She could not sew well and so did not make the necessary things for the
+baby; she told Philip it was much cheaper in the end to buy them.
+Philip had lately sold one of the mortgages in which his money had been
+put; and now, with five hundred pounds in the bank waiting to be
+invested in something that could be more easily realised, he felt
+himself uncommonly well-to-do. They talked often of the future. Philip
+was anxious that Mildred should keep the child with her, but she
+refused: she had her living to earn, and it would be more easy to do
+this if she had not also to look after a baby. Her plan was to get back
+into one of the shops of the company for which she had worked before,
+and the child could be put with some decent woman in the country.
+
+“I can find someone who’ll look after it well for seven and sixpence a
+week. It’ll be better for the baby and better for me.”
+
+It seemed callous to Philip, but when he tried to reason with her she
+pretended to think he was concerned with the expense.
+
+“You needn’t worry about that,” she said. “I shan’t ask YOU to pay for
+it.”
+
+“You know I don’t care how much I pay.”
+
+At the bottom of her heart was the hope that the child would be
+still-born. She did no more than hint it, but Philip saw that the
+thought was there. He was shocked at first; and then, reasoning with
+himself, he was obliged to confess that for all concerned such an event
+was to be desired.
+
+“It’s all very fine to say this and that,” Mildred remarked
+querulously, “but it’s jolly difficult for a girl to earn her living by
+herself; it doesn’t make it any easier when she’s got a baby.”
+
+“Fortunately you’ve got me to fall back on,” smiled Philip, taking her
+hand.
+
+“You’ve been good to me, Philip.”
+
+“Oh, what rot!”
+
+“You can’t say I didn’t offer anything in return for what you’ve done.”
+
+“Good heavens, I don’t want a return. If I’ve done anything for you,
+I’ve done it because I love you. You owe me nothing. I don’t want you
+to do anything unless you love me.”
+
+He was a little horrified by her feeling that her body was a commodity
+which she could deliver indifferently as an acknowledgment for services
+rendered.
+
+“But I do want to, Philip. You’ve been so good to me.”
+
+“Well, it won’t hurt for waiting. When you’re all right again we’ll go
+for our little honeymoon.”
+
+“You are naughty,” she said, smiling.
+
+Mildred expected to be confined early in March, and as soon as she was
+well enough she was to go to the seaside for a fortnight: that would
+give Philip a chance to work without interruption for his examination;
+after that came the Easter holidays, and they had arranged to go to
+Paris together. Philip talked endlessly of the things they would do.
+Paris was delightful then. They would take a room in a little hotel he
+knew in the Latin Quarter, and they would eat in all sorts of charming
+little restaurants; they would go to the play, and he would take her to
+music halls. It would amuse her to meet his friends. He had talked to
+her about Cronshaw, she would see him; and there was Lawson, he had
+gone to Paris for a couple of months; and they would go to the Bal
+Bullier; there were excursions; they would make trips to Versailles,
+Chartres, Fontainebleau.
+
+“It’ll cost a lot of money,” she said.
+
+“Oh, damn the expense. Think how I’ve been looking forward to it. Don’t
+you know what it means to me? I’ve never loved anyone but you. I never
+shall.”
+
+She listened to his enthusiasm with smiling eyes. He thought he saw in
+them a new tenderness, and he was grateful to her. She was much gentler
+than she used to be. There was in her no longer the superciliousness
+which had irritated him. She was so accustomed to him now that she took
+no pains to keep up before him any pretences. She no longer troubled to
+do her hair with the old elaboration, but just tied it in a knot; and
+she left off the vast fringe which she generally wore: the more
+careless style suited her. Her face was so thin that it made her eyes
+seem very large; there were heavy lines under them, and the pallor of
+her cheeks made their colour more profound. She had a wistful look
+which was infinitely pathetic. There seemed to Philip to be in her
+something of the Madonna. He wished they could continue in that same
+way always. He was happier than he had ever been in his life.
+
+He used to leave her at ten o’clock every night, for she liked to go to
+bed early, and he was obliged to put in another couple of hours’ work
+to make up for the lost evening. He generally brushed her hair for her
+before he went. He had made a ritual of the kisses he gave her when he
+bade her good-night; first he kissed the palms of her hands (how thin
+the fingers were, the nails were beautiful, for she spent much time in
+manicuring them,) then he kissed her closed eyes, first the right one
+and then the left, and at last he kissed her lips. He went home with a
+heart overflowing with love. He longed for an opportunity to gratify
+the desire for self-sacrifice which consumed him.
+
+Presently the time came for her to move to the nursing-home where she
+was to be confined. Philip was then able to visit her only in the
+afternoons. Mildred changed her story and represented herself as the
+wife of a soldier who had gone to India to join his regiment, and
+Philip was introduced to the mistress of the establishment as her
+brother-in-law.
+
+“I have to be rather careful what I say,” she told him, “as there’s
+another lady here whose husband’s in the Indian Civil.”
+
+“I wouldn’t let that disturb me if I were you,” said Philip. “I’m
+convinced that her husband and yours went out on the same boat.”
+
+“What boat?” she asked innocently.
+
+“The Flying Dutchman.”
+
+Mildred was safely delivered of a daughter, and when Philip was allowed
+to see her the child was lying by her side. Mildred was very weak, but
+relieved that everything was over. She showed him the baby, and herself
+looked at it curiously.
+
+“It’s a funny-looking little thing, isn’t it? I can’t believe it’s
+mine.”
+
+It was red and wrinkled and odd. Philip smiled when he looked at it. He
+did not quite know what to say; and it embarrassed him because the
+nurse who owned the house was standing by his side; and he felt by the
+way she was looking at him that, disbelieving Mildred’s complicated
+story, she thought he was the father.
+
+“What are you going to call her?” asked Philip.
+
+“I can’t make up my mind if I shall call her Madeleine or Cecilia.”
+
+The nurse left them alone for a few minutes, and Philip bent down and
+kissed Mildred on the mouth.
+
+“I’m so glad it’s all over happily, darling.”
+
+She put her thin arms round his neck.
+
+“You have been a brick to me, Phil dear.”
+
+“Now I feel that you’re mine at last. I’ve waited so long for you, my
+dear.”
+
+They heard the nurse at the door, and Philip hurriedly got up. The
+nurse entered. There was a slight smile on her lips.
+
+
+
+
+LXXIII
+
+
+Three weeks later Philip saw Mildred and her baby off to Brighton. She
+had made a quick recovery and looked better than he had ever seen her.
+She was going to a boarding-house where she had spent a couple of
+weekends with Emil Miller, and had written to say that her husband was
+obliged to go to Germany on business and she was coming down with her
+baby. She got pleasure out of the stories she invented, and she showed
+a certain fertility of invention in the working out of the details.
+Mildred proposed to find in Brighton some woman who would be willing to
+take charge of the baby. Philip was startled at the callousness with
+which she insisted on getting rid of it so soon, but she argued with
+common sense that the poor child had much better be put somewhere
+before it grew used to her. Philip had expected the maternal instinct
+to make itself felt when she had had the baby two or three weeks and
+had counted on this to help him persuade her to keep it; but nothing of
+the sort occurred. Mildred was not unkind to her baby; she did all that
+was necessary; it amused her sometimes, and she talked about it a good
+deal; but at heart she was indifferent to it. She could not look upon
+it as part of herself. She fancied it resembled its father already. She
+was continually wondering how she would manage when it grew older; and
+she was exasperated with herself for being such a fool as to have it at
+all.
+
+“If I’d only known then all I do now,” she said.
+
+She laughed at Philip, because he was anxious about its welfare.
+
+“You couldn’t make more fuss if you was the father,” she said. “I’d
+like to see Emil getting into such a stew about it.”
+
+Philip’s mind was full of the stories he had heard of baby-farming and
+the ghouls who ill-treat the wretched children that selfish, cruel
+parents have put in their charge.
+
+“Don’t be so silly,” said Mildred. “That’s when you give a woman a sum
+down to look after a baby. But when you’re going to pay so much a week
+it’s to their interest to look after it well.”
+
+Philip insisted that Mildred should place the child with people who had
+no children of their own and would promise to take no other.
+
+“Don’t haggle about the price,” he said. “I’d rather pay half a guinea
+a week than run any risk of the kid being starved or beaten.”
+
+“You’re a funny old thing, Philip,” she laughed.
+
+To him there was something very touching in the child’s helplessness.
+It was small, ugly, and querulous. Its birth had been looked forward to
+with shame and anguish. Nobody wanted it. It was dependent on him, a
+stranger, for food, shelter, and clothes to cover its nakedness.
+
+As the train started he kissed Mildred. He would have kissed the baby
+too, but he was afraid she would laugh at him.
+
+“You will write to me, darling, won’t you? And I shall look forward to
+your coming back with oh! such impatience.”
+
+“Mind you get through your exam.”
+
+He had been working for it industriously, and now with only ten days
+before him he made a final effort. He was very anxious to pass, first
+to save himself time and expense, for money had been slipping through
+his fingers during the last four months with incredible speed; and then
+because this examination marked the end of the drudgery: after that the
+student had to do with medicine, midwifery, and surgery, the interest
+of which was more vivid than the anatomy and physiology with which he
+had been hitherto concerned. Philip looked forward with interest to the
+rest of the curriculum. Nor did he want to have to confess to Mildred
+that he had failed: though the examination was difficult and the
+majority of candidates were ploughed at the first attempt, he knew that
+she would think less well of him if he did not succeed; she had a
+peculiarly humiliating way of showing what she thought.
+
+Mildred sent him a postcard to announce her safe arrival, and he
+snatched half an hour every day to write a long letter to her. He had
+always a certain shyness in expressing himself by word of mouth, but he
+found he could tell her, pen in hand, all sorts of things which it
+would have made him feel ridiculous to say. Profiting by the discovery
+he poured out to her his whole heart. He had never been able to tell
+her before how his adoration filled every part of him so that all his
+actions, all his thoughts, were touched with it. He wrote to her of the
+future, the happiness that lay before him, and the gratitude which he
+owed her. He asked himself (he had often asked himself before but had
+never put it into words) what it was in her that filled him with such
+extravagant delight; he did not know; he knew only that when she was
+with him he was happy, and when she was away from him the world was on
+a sudden cold and gray; he knew only that when he thought of her his
+heart seemed to grow big in his body so that it was difficult to
+breathe (as if it pressed against his lungs) and it throbbed, so that
+the delight of her presence was almost pain; his knees shook, and he
+felt strangely weak as though, not having eaten, he were tremulous from
+want of food. He looked forward eagerly to her answers. He did not
+expect her to write often, for he knew that letter-writing came
+difficultly to her; and he was quite content with the clumsy little
+note that arrived in reply to four of his. She spoke of the
+boarding-house in which she had taken a room, of the weather and the
+baby, told him she had been for a walk on the front with a lady-friend
+whom she had met in the boarding-house and who had taken such a fancy
+to baby, she was going to the theatre on Saturday night, and Brighton
+was filling up. It touched Philip because it was so matter-of-fact. The
+crabbed style, the formality of the matter, gave him a queer desire to
+laugh and to take her in his arms and kiss her.
+
+He went into the examination with happy confidence. There was nothing
+in either of the papers that gave him trouble. He knew that he had done
+well, and though the second part of the examination was viva voce and
+he was more nervous, he managed to answer the questions adequately. He
+sent a triumphant telegram to Mildred when the result was announced.
+
+When he got back to his rooms Philip found a letter from her, saying
+that she thought it would be better for her to stay another week in
+Brighton. She had found a woman who would be glad to take the baby for
+seven shillings a week, but she wanted to make inquiries about her, and
+she was herself benefiting so much by the sea-air that she was sure a
+few days more would do her no end of good. She hated asking Philip for
+money, but would he send some by return, as she had had to buy herself
+a new hat, she couldn’t go about with her lady-friend always in the
+same hat, and her lady-friend was so dressy. Philip had a moment of
+bitter disappointment. It took away all his pleasure at getting through
+his examination.
+
+“If she loved me one quarter as much as I love her she couldn’t bear to
+stay away a day longer than necessary.”
+
+He put the thought away from him quickly; it was pure selfishness; of
+course her health was more important than anything else. But he had
+nothing to do now; he might spend the week with her in Brighton, and
+they could be together all day. His heart leaped at the thought. It
+would be amusing to appear before Mildred suddenly with the information
+that he had taken a room in the boarding-house. He looked out trains.
+But he paused. He was not certain that she would be pleased to see him;
+she had made friends in Brighton; he was quiet, and she liked
+boisterous joviality; he realised that she amused herself more with
+other people than with him. It would torture him if he felt for an
+instant that he was in the way. He was afraid to risk it. He dared not
+even write and suggest that, with nothing to keep him in town, he would
+like to spend the week where he could see her every day. She knew he
+had nothing to do; if she wanted him to come she would have asked him
+to. He dared not risk the anguish he would suffer if he proposed to
+come and she made excuses to prevent him.
+
+He wrote to her next day, sent her a five-pound note, and at the end of
+his letter said that if she were very nice and cared to see him for the
+week-end he would be glad to run down; but she was by no means to alter
+any plans she had made. He awaited her answer with impatience. In it
+she said that if she had only known before she could have arranged it,
+but she had promised to go to a music-hall on the Saturday night;
+besides, it would make the people at the boarding-house talk if he
+stayed there. Why did he not come on Sunday morning and spend the day?
+They could lunch at the Metropole, and she would take him afterwards to
+see the very superior lady-like person who was going to take the baby.
+
+Sunday. He blessed the day because it was fine. As the train approached
+Brighton the sun poured through the carriage window. Mildred was
+waiting for him on the platform.
+
+“How jolly of you to come and meet me!” he cried, as he seized her
+hands.
+
+“You expected me, didn’t you?”
+
+“I hoped you would. I say, how well you’re looking.”
+
+“It’s done me a rare lot of good, but I think I’m wise to stay here as
+long as I can. And there are a very nice class of people at the
+boarding-house. I wanted cheering up after seeing nobody all these
+months. It was dull sometimes.”
+
+She looked very smart in her new hat, a large black straw with a great
+many inexpensive flowers on it; and round her neck floated a long boa
+of imitation swansdown. She was still very thin, and she stooped a
+little when she walked (she had always done that,) but her eyes did not
+seem so large; and though she never had any colour, her skin had lost
+the earthy look it had. They walked down to the sea. Philip,
+remembering he had not walked with her for months, grew suddenly
+conscious of his limp and walked stiffly in the attempt to conceal it.
+
+“Are you glad to see me?” he asked, love dancing madly in his heart.
+
+“Of course I am. You needn’t ask that.”
+
+“By the way, Griffiths sends you his love.”
+
+“What cheek!”
+
+He had talked to her a great deal of Griffiths. He had told her how
+flirtatious he was and had amused her often with the narration of some
+adventure which Griffiths under the seal of secrecy had imparted to
+him. Mildred had listened, with some pretence of disgust sometimes, but
+generally with curiosity; and Philip, admiringly, had enlarged upon his
+friend’s good looks and charm.
+
+“I’m sure you’ll like him just as much as I do. He’s so jolly and
+amusing, and he’s such an awfully good sort.”
+
+Philip told her how, when they were perfect strangers, Griffiths had
+nursed him through an illness; and in the telling Griffiths’
+self-sacrifice lost nothing.
+
+“You can’t help liking him,” said Philip.
+
+“I don’t like good-looking men,” said Mildred. “They’re too conceited
+for me.”
+
+“He wants to know you. I’ve talked to him about you an awful lot.”
+
+“What have you said?” asked Mildred.
+
+Philip had no one but Griffiths to talk to of his love for Mildred, and
+little by little had told him the whole story of his connection with
+her. He described her to him fifty times. He dwelt amorously on every
+detail of her appearance, and Griffiths knew exactly how her thin hands
+were shaped and how white her face was, and he laughed at Philip when
+he talked of the charm of her pale, thin lips.
+
+“By Jove, I’m glad I don’t take things so badly as that,” he said.
+“Life wouldn’t be worth living.”
+
+Philip smiled. Griffiths did not know the delight of being so madly in
+love that it was like meat and wine and the air one breathed and
+whatever else was essential to existence. Griffiths knew that Philip
+had looked after the girl while she was having her baby and was now
+going away with her.
+
+“Well, I must say you’ve deserved to get something,” he remarked. “It
+must have cost you a pretty penny. It’s lucky you can afford it.”
+
+“I can’t,” said Philip. “But what do I care!”
+
+Since it was early for luncheon, Philip and Mildred sat in one of the
+shelters on the parade, sunning themselves, and watched the people
+pass. There were the Brighton shop-boys who walked in twos and threes,
+swinging their canes, and there were the Brighton shop-girls who
+tripped along in giggling bunches. They could tell the people who had
+come down from London for the day; the keen air gave a fillip to their
+weariness. There were many Jews, stout ladies in tight satin dresses
+and diamonds, little corpulent men with a gesticulative manner. There
+were middle-aged gentlemen spending a week-end in one of the large
+hotels, carefully dressed; and they walked industriously after too
+substantial a breakfast to give themselves an appetite for too
+substantial a luncheon: they exchanged the time of day with friends and
+talked of Dr. Brighton or London-by-the-Sea. Here and there a
+well-known actor passed, elaborately unconscious of the attention he
+excited: sometimes he wore patent leather boots, a coat with an
+astrakhan collar, and carried a silver-knobbed stick; and sometimes,
+looking as though he had come from a day’s shooting, he strolled in
+knickerbockers, and ulster of Harris tweed, and a tweed hat on the back
+of his head. The sun shone on the blue sea, and the blue sea was trim
+and neat.
+
+After luncheon they went to Hove to see the woman who was to take
+charge of the baby. She lived in a small house in a back street, but it
+was clean and tidy. Her name was Mrs. Harding. She was an elderly,
+stout person, with gray hair and a red, fleshy face. She looked
+motherly in her cap, and Philip thought she seemed kind.
+
+“Won’t you find it an awful nuisance to look after a baby?” he asked
+her.
+
+She explained that her husband was a curate, a good deal older than
+herself, who had difficulty in getting permanent work since vicars
+wanted young men to assist them; he earned a little now and then by
+doing locums when someone took a holiday or fell ill, and a charitable
+institution gave them a small pension; but her life was lonely, it
+would be something to do to look after a child, and the few shillings a
+week paid for it would help her to keep things going. She promised that
+it should be well fed.
+
+“Quite the lady, isn’t she?” said Mildred, when they went away.
+
+They went back to have tea at the Metropole. Mildred liked the crowd
+and the band. Philip was tired of talking, and he watched her face as
+she looked with keen eyes at the dresses of the women who came in. She
+had a peculiar sharpness for reckoning up what things cost, and now and
+then she leaned over to him and whispered the result of her
+meditations.
+
+“D’you see that aigrette there? That cost every bit of seven guineas.”
+
+Or: “Look at that ermine, Philip. That’s rabbit, that is—that’s not
+ermine.” She laughed triumphantly. “I’d know it a mile off.”
+
+Philip smiled happily. He was glad to see her pleasure, and the
+ingenuousness of her conversation amused and touched him. The band
+played sentimental music.
+
+After dinner they walked down to the station, and Philip took her arm.
+He told her what arrangements he had made for their journey to France.
+She was to come up to London at the end of the week, but she told him
+that she could not go away till the Saturday of the week after that. He
+had already engaged a room in a hotel in Paris. He was looking forward
+eagerly to taking the tickets.
+
+“You won’t mind going second-class, will you? We mustn’t be
+extravagant, and it’ll be all the better if we can do ourselves pretty
+well when we get there.”
+
+He had talked to her a hundred times of the Quarter. They would wander
+through its pleasant old streets, and they would sit idly in the
+charming gardens of the Luxembourg. If the weather was fine perhaps,
+when they had had enough of Paris, they might go to Fontainebleau. The
+trees would be just bursting into leaf. The green of the forest in
+spring was more beautiful than anything he knew; it was like a song,
+and it was like the happy pain of love. Mildred listened quietly. He
+turned to her and tried to look deep into her eyes.
+
+“You do want to come, don’t you?” he said.
+
+“Of course I do,” she smiled.
+
+“You don’t know how I’m looking forward to it. I don’t know how I shall
+get through the next days. I’m so afraid something will happen to
+prevent it. It maddens me sometimes that I can’t tell you how much I
+love you. And at last, at last…”
+
+He broke off. They reached the station, but they had dawdled on the
+way, and Philip had barely time to say good-night. He kissed her
+quickly and ran towards the wicket as fast as he could. She stood where
+he left her. He was strangely grotesque when he ran.
+
+
+
+
+LXXIV
+
+
+The following Saturday Mildred returned, and that evening Philip kept
+her to himself. He took seats for the play, and they drank champagne at
+dinner. It was her first gaiety in London for so long that she enjoyed
+everything ingenuously. She cuddled up to Philip when they drove from
+the theatre to the room he had taken for her in Pimlico.
+
+“I really believe you’re quite glad to see me,” he said.
+
+She did not answer, but gently pressed his hand. Demonstrations of
+affection were so rare with her that Philip was enchanted.
+
+“I’ve asked Griffiths to dine with us tomorrow,” he told her.
+
+“Oh, I’m glad you’ve done that. I wanted to meet him.”
+
+There was no place of entertainment to take her to on Sunday night, and
+Philip was afraid she would be bored if she were alone with him all
+day. Griffiths was amusing; he would help them to get through the
+evening; and Philip was so fond of them both that he wanted them to
+know and to like one another. He left Mildred with the words:
+
+“Only six days more.”
+
+They had arranged to dine in the gallery at Romano’s on Sunday, because
+the dinner was excellent and looked as though it cost a good deal more
+than it did. Philip and Mildred arrived first and had to wait some time
+for Griffiths.
+
+“He’s an unpunctual devil,” said Philip. “He’s probably making love to
+one of his numerous flames.”
+
+But presently he appeared. He was a handsome creature, tall and thin;
+his head was placed well on the body, it gave him a conquering air
+which was attractive; and his curly hair, his bold, friendly blue eyes,
+his red mouth, were charming. Philip saw Mildred look at him with
+appreciation, and he felt a curious satisfaction. Griffiths greeted
+them with a smile.
+
+“I’ve heard a great deal about you,” he said to Mildred, as he took her
+hand.
+
+“Not so much as I’ve heard about you,” she answered.
+
+“Nor so bad,” said Philip.
+
+“Has he been blackening my character?”
+
+Griffiths laughed, and Philip saw that Mildred noticed how white and
+regular his teeth were and how pleasant his smile.
+
+“You ought to feel like old friends,” said Philip. “I’ve talked so much
+about you to one another.”
+
+Griffiths was in the best possible humour, for, having at length passed
+his final examination, he was qualified, and he had just been appointed
+house-surgeon at a hospital in the North of London. He was taking up
+his duties at the beginning of May and meanwhile was going home for a
+holiday; this was his last week in town, and he was determined to get
+as much enjoyment into it as he could. He began to talk the gay
+nonsense which Philip admired because he could not copy it. There was
+nothing much in what he said, but his vivacity gave it point. There
+flowed from him a force of life which affected everyone who knew him;
+it was almost as sensible as bodily warmth. Mildred was more lively
+than Philip had ever known her, and he was delighted to see that his
+little party was a success. She was amusing herself enormously. She
+laughed louder and louder. She quite forgot the genteel reserve which
+had become second nature to her.
+
+Presently Griffiths said:
+
+“I say, it’s dreadfully difficult for me to call you Mrs. Miller.
+Philip never calls you anything but Mildred.”
+
+“I daresay she won’t scratch your eyes out if you call her that too,”
+laughed Philip.
+
+“Then she must call me Harry.”
+
+Philip sat silent while they chattered away and thought how good it was
+to see people happy. Now and then Griffiths teased him a little,
+kindly, because he was always so serious.
+
+“I believe he’s quite fond of you, Philip,” smiled Mildred.
+
+“He isn’t a bad old thing,” answered Griffiths, and taking Philip’s
+hand he shook it gaily.
+
+It seemed an added charm in Griffiths that he liked Philip. They were
+all sober people, and the wine they had drunk went to their heads.
+Griffiths became more talkative and so boisterous that Philip, amused,
+had to beg him to be quiet. He had a gift for story-telling, and his
+adventures lost nothing of their romance and their laughter in his
+narration. He played in all of them a gallant, humorous part. Mildred,
+her eyes shining with excitement, urged him on. He poured out anecdote
+after anecdote. When the lights began to be turned out she was
+astonished.
+
+“My word, the evening has gone quickly. I thought it wasn’t more than
+half past nine.”
+
+They got up to go and when she said good-bye, she added:
+
+“I’m coming to have tea at Philip’s room tomorrow. You might look in if
+you can.”
+
+“All right,” he smiled.
+
+On the way back to Pimlico Mildred talked of nothing but Griffiths. She
+was taken with his good looks, his well-cut clothes, his voice, his
+gaiety.
+
+“I am glad you like him,” said Philip. “D’you remember you were rather
+sniffy about meeting him?”
+
+“I think it’s so nice of him to be so fond of you, Philip. He is a nice
+friend for you to have.”
+
+She put up her face to Philip for him to kiss her. It was a thing she
+did rarely.
+
+“I have enjoyed myself this evening, Philip. Thank you so much.”
+
+“Don’t be so absurd,” he laughed, touched by her appreciation so that
+he felt the moisture come to his eyes.
+
+She opened her door and just before she went in, turned again to
+Philip.
+
+“Tell Harry I’m madly in love with him,” she said.
+
+“All right,” he laughed. “Good-night.”
+
+Next day, when they were having tea, Griffiths came in. He sank lazily
+into an arm-chair. There was something strangely sensual in the slow
+movements of his large limbs. Philip remained silent, while the others
+chattered away, but he was enjoying himself. He admired them both so
+much that it seemed natural enough for them to admire one another. He
+did not care if Griffiths absorbed Mildred’s attention, he would have
+her to himself during the evening: he had something of the attitude of
+a loving husband, confident in his wife’s affection, who looks on with
+amusement while she flirts harmlessly with a stranger. But at half past
+seven he looked at his watch and said:
+
+“It’s about time we went out to dinner, Mildred.”
+
+There was a moment’s pause, and Griffiths seemed to be considering.
+
+“Well, I’ll be getting along,” he said at last. “I didn’t know it was
+so late.”
+
+“Are you doing anything tonight?” asked Mildred.
+
+“No.”
+
+There was another silence. Philip felt slightly irritated.
+
+“I’ll just go and have a wash,” he said, and to Mildred he added:
+“Would you like to wash your hands?”
+
+She did not answer him.
+
+“Why don’t you come and dine with us?” she said to Griffiths.
+
+He looked at Philip and saw him staring at him sombrely.
+
+“I dined with you last night,” he laughed. “I should be in the way.”
+
+“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” insisted Mildred. “Make him come, Philip. He
+won’t be in the way, will he?”
+
+“Let him come by all means if he’d like to.”
+
+“All right, then,” said Griffiths promptly. “I’ll just go upstairs and
+tidy myself.”
+
+The moment he left the room Philip turned to Mildred angrily.
+
+“Why on earth did you ask him to dine with us?”
+
+“I couldn’t help myself. It would have looked so funny to say nothing
+when he said he wasn’t doing anything.”
+
+“Oh, what rot! And why the hell did you ask him if he was doing
+anything?”
+
+Mildred’s pale lips tightened a little.
+
+“I want a little amusement sometimes. I get tired always being alone
+with you.”
+
+They heard Griffiths coming heavily down the stairs, and Philip went
+into his bed-room to wash. They dined in the neighbourhood in an
+Italian restaurant. Philip was cross and silent, but he quickly
+realised that he was showing to disadvantage in comparison with
+Griffiths, and he forced himself to hide his annoyance. He drank a good
+deal of wine to destroy the pain that was gnawing at his heart, and he
+set himself to talk. Mildred, as though remorseful for what she had
+said, did all she could to make herself pleasant to him. She was kindly
+and affectionate. Presently Philip began to think he had been a fool to
+surrender to a feeling of jealousy. After dinner when they got into a
+hansom to drive to a music-hall Mildred, sitting between the two men,
+of her own accord gave him her hand. His anger vanished. Suddenly, he
+knew not how, he grew conscious that Griffiths was holding her other
+hand. The pain seized him again violently, it was a real physical pain,
+and he asked himself, panic-stricken, what he might have asked himself
+before, whether Mildred and Griffiths were in love with one another. He
+could not see anything of the performance on account of the mist of
+suspicion, anger, dismay, and wretchedness which seemed to be before
+his eyes; but he forced himself to conceal the fact that anything was
+the matter; he went on talking and laughing. Then a strange desire to
+torture himself seized him, and he got up, saying he wanted to go and
+drink something. Mildred and Griffiths had never been alone together
+for a moment. He wanted to leave them by themselves.
+
+“I’ll come too,” said Griffiths. “I’ve got rather a thirst on.”
+
+“Oh, nonsense, you stay and talk to Mildred.”
+
+Philip did not know why he said that. He was throwing them together now
+to make the pain he suffered more intolerable. He did not go to the
+bar, but up into the balcony, from where he could watch them and not be
+seen. They had ceased to look at the stage and were smiling into one
+another’s eyes. Griffiths was talking with his usual happy fluency and
+Mildred seemed to hang on his lips. Philip’s head began to ache
+frightfully. He stood there motionless. He knew he would be in the way
+if he went back. They were enjoying themselves without him, and he was
+suffering, suffering. Time passed, and now he had an extraordinary
+shyness about rejoining them. He knew they had not thought of him at
+all, and he reflected bitterly that he had paid for the dinner and
+their seats in the music-hall. What a fool they were making of him! He
+was hot with shame. He could see how happy they were without him. His
+instinct was to leave them to themselves and go home, but he had not
+his hat and coat, and it would necessitate endless explanations. He
+went back. He felt a shadow of annoyance in Mildred’s eyes when she saw
+him, and his heart sank.
+
+“You’ve been a devil of a time,” said Griffiths, with a smile of
+welcome.
+
+“I met some men I knew. I’ve been talking to them, and I couldn’t get
+away. I thought you’d be all right together.”
+
+“I’ve been enjoying myself thoroughly,” said Griffiths. “I don’t know
+about Mildred.”
+
+She gave a little laugh of happy complacency. There was a vulgar sound
+in the ring of it that horrified Philip. He suggested that they should
+go.
+
+“Come on,” said Griffiths, “we’ll both drive you home.”
+
+Philip suspected that she had suggested that arrangement so that she
+might not be left alone with him. In the cab he did not take her hand
+nor did she offer it, and he knew all the time that she was holding
+Griffiths’. His chief thought was that it was all so horribly vulgar.
+As they drove along he asked himself what plans they had made to meet
+without his knowledge, he cursed himself for having left them alone, he
+had actually gone out of his way to enable them to arrange things.
+
+“Let’s keep the cab,” said Philip, when they reached the house in which
+Mildred was lodging. “I’m too tired to walk home.”
+
+On the way back Griffiths talked gaily and seemed indifferent to the
+fact that Philip answered in monosyllables. Philip felt he must notice
+that something was the matter. Philip’s silence at last grew too
+significant to struggle against, and Griffiths, suddenly nervous,
+ceased talking. Philip wanted to say something, but he was so shy he
+could hardly bring himself to, and yet the time was passing and the
+opportunity would be lost. It was best to get at the truth at once. He
+forced himself to speak.
+
+“Are you in love with Mildred?” he asked suddenly.
+
+“I?” Griffiths laughed. “Is that what you’ve been so funny about this
+evening? Of course not, my dear old man.”
+
+He tried to slip his hand through Philip’s arm, but Philip drew himself
+away. He knew Griffiths was lying. He could not bring himself to force
+Griffiths to tell him that he had not been holding the girl’s hand. He
+suddenly felt very weak and broken.
+
+“It doesn’t matter to you, Harry,” he said. “You’ve got so many
+women—don’t take her away from me. It means my whole life. I’ve been so
+awfully wretched.”
+
+His voice broke, and he could not prevent the sob that was torn from
+him. He was horribly ashamed of himself.
+
+“My dear old boy, you know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. I’m far
+too fond of you for that. I was only playing the fool. If I’d known you
+were going to take it like that I’d have been more careful.”
+
+“Is that true?” asked Philip.
+
+“I don’t care a twopenny damn for her. I give you my word of honour.”
+
+Philip gave a sigh of relief. The cab stopped at their door.
+
+
+
+
+LXXV
+
+
+Next day Philip was in a good temper. He was very anxious not to bore
+Mildred with too much of his society, and so had arranged that he
+should not see her till dinner-time. She was ready when he fetched her,
+and he chaffed her for her unwonted punctuality. She was wearing a new
+dress he had given her. He remarked on its smartness.
+
+“It’ll have to go back and be altered,” she said. “The skirt hangs all
+wrong.”
+
+“You’ll have to make the dressmaker hurry up if you want to take it to
+Paris with you.”
+
+“It’ll be ready in time for that.”
+
+“Only three more whole days. We’ll go over by the eleven o’clock, shall
+we?”
+
+“If you like.”
+
+He would have her for nearly a month entirely to himself. His eyes
+rested on her with hungry adoration. He was able to laugh a little at
+his own passion.
+
+“I wonder what it is I see in you,” he smiled.
+
+“That’s a nice thing to say,” she answered.
+
+Her body was so thin that one could almost see her skeleton. Her chest
+was as flat as a boy’s. Her mouth, with its narrow pale lips, was ugly,
+and her skin was faintly green.
+
+“I shall give you Blaud’s Pills in quantities when we’re away,” said
+Philip, laughing. “I’m going to bring you back fat and rosy.”
+
+“I don’t want to get fat,” she said.
+
+She did not speak of Griffiths, and presently while they were dining
+Philip half in malice, for he felt sure of himself and his power over
+her, said:
+
+“It seems to me you were having a great flirtation with Harry last
+night?”
+
+“I told you I was in love with him,” she laughed.
+
+“I’m glad to know that he’s not in love with you.”
+
+“How d’you know?”
+
+“I asked him.”
+
+She hesitated a moment, looking at Philip, and a curious gleam came
+into her eyes.
+
+“Would you like to read a letter I had from him this morning?”
+
+She handed him an envelope and Philip recognised Griffiths’ bold,
+legible writing. There were eight pages. It was well written, frank and
+charming; it was the letter of a man who was used to making love to
+women. He told Mildred that he loved her passionately, he had fallen in
+love with her the first moment he saw her; he did not want to love her,
+for he knew how fond Philip was of her, but he could not help himself.
+Philip was such a dear, and he was very much ashamed of himself, but it
+was not his fault, he was just carried away. He paid her delightful
+compliments. Finally he thanked her for consenting to lunch with him
+next day and said he was dreadfully impatient to see her. Philip
+noticed that the letter was dated the night before; Griffiths must have
+written it after leaving Philip, and had taken the trouble to go out
+and post it when Philip thought he was in bed.
+
+He read it with a sickening palpitation of his heart, but gave no
+outward sign of surprise. He handed it back to Mildred with a smile,
+calmly.
+
+“Did you enjoy your lunch?”
+
+“Rather,” she said emphatically.
+
+He felt that his hands were trembling, so he put them under the table.
+
+“You mustn’t take Griffiths too seriously. He’s just a butterfly, you
+know.”
+
+She took the letter and looked at it again.
+
+“I can’t help it either,” she said, in a voice which she tried to make
+nonchalant. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”
+
+“It’s a little awkward for me, isn’t it?” said Philip.
+
+She gave him a quick look.
+
+“You’re taking it pretty calmly, I must say.”
+
+“What do you expect me to do? Do you want me to tear out my hair in
+handfuls?”
+
+“I knew you’d be angry with me.”
+
+“The funny thing is, I’m not at all. I ought to have known this would
+happen. I was a fool to bring you together. I know perfectly well that
+he’s got every advantage over me; he’s much jollier, and he’s very
+handsome, he’s more amusing, he can talk to you about the things that
+interest you.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean by that. If I’m not clever I can’t help it,
+but I’m not the fool you think I am, not by a long way, I can tell you.
+You’re a bit too superior for me, my young friend.”
+
+“D’you want to quarrel with me?” he asked mildly.
+
+“No, but I don’t see why you should treat me as if I was I don’t know
+what.”
+
+“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. I just wanted to talk things
+over quietly. We don’t want to make a mess of them if we can help it. I
+saw you were attracted by him and it seemed to me very natural. The
+only thing that really hurts me is that he should have encouraged you.
+He knew how awfully keen I was on you. I think it’s rather shabby of
+him to have written that letter to you five minutes after he told me he
+didn’t care twopence about you.”
+
+“If you think you’re going to make me like him any the less by saying
+nasty things about him, you’re mistaken.”
+
+Philip was silent for a moment. He did not know what words he could use
+to make her see his point of view. He wanted to speak coolly and
+deliberately, but he was in such a turmoil of emotion that he could not
+clear his thoughts.
+
+“It’s not worth while sacrificing everything for an infatuation that
+you know can’t last. After all, he doesn’t care for anyone more than
+ten days, and you’re rather cold; that sort of thing doesn’t mean very
+much to you.”
+
+“That’s what you think.”
+
+She made it more difficult for him by adopting a cantankerous tone.
+
+“If you’re in love with him you can’t help it. I’ll just bear it as
+best I can. We get on very well together, you and I, and I’ve not
+behaved badly to you, have I? I’ve always known that you’re not in love
+with me, but you like me all right, and when we get over to Paris
+you’ll forget about Griffiths. If you make up your mind to put him out
+of your thoughts you won’t find it so hard as all that, and I’ve
+deserved that you should do something for me.”
+
+She did not answer, and they went on eating their dinner. When the
+silence grew oppressive Philip began to talk of indifferent things. He
+pretended not to notice that Mildred was inattentive. Her answers were
+perfunctory, and she volunteered no remarks of her own. At last she
+interrupted abruptly what he was saying:
+
+“Philip, I’m afraid I shan’t be able to go away on Saturday. The doctor
+says I oughtn’t to.”
+
+He knew this was not true, but he answered:
+
+“When will you be able to come away?”
+
+She glanced at him, saw that his face was white and rigid, and looked
+nervously away. She was at that moment a little afraid of him.
+
+“I may as well tell you and have done with it, I can’t come away with
+you at all.”
+
+“I thought you were driving at that. It’s too late to change your mind
+now. I’ve got the tickets and everything.”
+
+“You said you didn’t wish me to go unless I wanted it too, and I
+don’t.”
+
+“I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going to have any more tricks played
+with me. You must come.”
+
+“I like you very much, Philip, as a friend. But I can’t bear to think
+of anything else. I don’t like you that way. I couldn’t, Philip.”
+
+“You were quite willing to a week ago.”
+
+“It was different then.”
+
+“You hadn’t met Griffiths?”
+
+“You said yourself I couldn’t help it if I’m in love with him.”
+
+Her face was set into a sulky look, and she kept her eyes fixed on her
+plate. Philip was white with rage. He would have liked to hit her in
+the face with his clenched fist, and in fancy he saw how she would look
+with a black eye. There were two lads of eighteen dining at a table
+near them, and now and then they looked at Mildred; he wondered if they
+envied him dining with a pretty girl; perhaps they were wishing they
+stood in his shoes. It was Mildred who broke the silence.
+
+“What’s the good of our going away together? I’d be thinking of him all
+the time. It wouldn’t be much fun for you.”
+
+“That’s my business,” he answered.
+
+She thought over all his reply implicated, and she reddened.
+
+“But that’s just beastly.”
+
+“What of it?”
+
+“I thought you were a gentleman in every sense of the word.”
+
+“You were mistaken.”
+
+His reply entertained him, and he laughed as he said it.
+
+“For God’s sake don’t laugh,” she cried. “I can’t come away with you,
+Philip. I’m awfully sorry. I know I haven’t behaved well to you, but
+one can’t force themselves.”
+
+“Have you forgotten that when you were in trouble I did everything for
+you? I planked out the money to keep you till your baby was born, I
+paid for your doctor and everything, I paid for you to go to Brighton,
+and I’m paying for the keep of your baby, I’m paying for your clothes,
+I’m paying for every stitch you’ve got on now.”
+
+“If you was a gentleman you wouldn’t throw what you’ve done for me in
+my face.”
+
+“Oh, for goodness’ sake, shut up. What d’you suppose I care if I’m a
+gentleman or not? If I were a gentleman I shouldn’t waste my time with
+a vulgar slut like you. I don’t care a damn if you like me or not. I’m
+sick of being made a blasted fool of. You’re jolly well coming to Paris
+with me on Saturday or you can take the consequences.”
+
+Her cheeks were red with anger, and when she answered her voice had the
+hard commonness which she concealed generally by a genteel enunciation.
+
+“I never liked you, not from the beginning, but you forced yourself on
+me, I always hated it when you kissed me. I wouldn’t let you touch me
+now not if I was starving.”
+
+Philip tried to swallow the food on his plate, but the muscles of his
+throat refused to act. He gulped down something to drink and lit a
+cigarette. He was trembling in every part. He did not speak. He waited
+for her to move, but she sat in silence, staring at the white
+tablecloth. If they had been alone he would have flung his arms round
+her and kissed her passionately; he fancied the throwing back of her
+long white throat as he pressed upon her mouth with his lips. They
+passed an hour without speaking, and at last Philip thought the waiter
+began to stare at them curiously. He called for the bill.
+
+“Shall we go?” he said then, in an even tone.
+
+She did not reply, but gathered together her bag and her gloves. She
+put on her coat.
+
+“When are you seeing Griffiths again?”
+
+“Tomorrow,” she answered indifferently.
+
+“You’d better talk it over with him.”
+
+She opened her bag mechanically and saw a piece of paper in it. She
+took it out.
+
+“Here’s the bill for this dress,” she said hesitatingly.
+
+“What of it?”
+
+“I promised I’d give her the money tomorrow.”
+
+“Did you?”
+
+“Does that mean you won’t pay for it after having told me I could get
+it?”
+
+“It does.”
+
+“I’ll ask Harry,” she said, flushing quickly.
+
+“He’ll be glad to help you. He owes me seven pounds at the moment, and
+he pawned his microscope last week, because he was so broke.”
+
+“You needn’t think you can frighten me by that. I’m quite capable of
+earning my own living.”
+
+“It’s the best thing you can do. I don’t propose to give you a farthing
+more.”
+
+She thought of her rent due on Saturday and the baby’s keep, but did
+not say anything. They left the restaurant, and in the street Philip
+asked her:
+
+“Shall I call a cab for you? I’m going to take a little stroll.”
+
+“I haven’t got any money. I had to pay a bill this afternoon.”
+
+“It won’t hurt you to walk. If you want to see me tomorrow I shall be
+in about tea-time.”
+
+He took off his hat and sauntered away. He looked round in a moment and
+saw that she was standing helplessly where he had left her, looking at
+the traffic. He went back and with a laugh pressed a coin into her
+hand.
+
+“Here’s two bob for you to get home with.”
+
+Before she could speak he hurried away.
+
+
+
+
+LXXVI
+
+
+Next day, in the afternoon, Philip sat in his room and wondered whether
+Mildred would come. He had slept badly. He had spent the morning in the
+club of the Medical School, reading one newspaper after another. It was
+the vacation and few students he knew were in London, but he found one
+or two people to talk to, he played a game of chess, and so wore out
+the tedious hours. After luncheon he felt so tired, his head was aching
+so, that he went back to his lodgings and lay down; he tried to read a
+novel. He had not seen Griffiths. He was not in when Philip returned
+the night before; he heard him come back, but he did not as usual look
+into Philip’s room to see if he was asleep; and in the morning Philip
+heard him go out early. It was clear that he wanted to avoid him.
+Suddenly there was a light tap at his door. Philip sprang to his feet
+and opened it. Mildred stood on the threshold. She did not move.
+
+“Come in,” said Philip.
+
+He closed the door after her. She sat down. She hesitated to begin.
+
+“Thank you for giving me that two shillings last night,” she said.
+
+“Oh, that’s all right.”
+
+She gave him a faint smile. It reminded Philip of the timid,
+ingratiating look of a puppy that has been beaten for naughtiness and
+wants to reconcile himself with his master.
+
+“I’ve been lunching with Harry,” she said.
+
+“Have you?”
+
+“If you still want me to go away with you on Saturday, Philip, I’ll
+come.”
+
+A quick thrill of triumph shot through his heart, but it was a
+sensation that only lasted an instant; it was followed by a suspicion.
+
+“Because of the money?” he asked.
+
+“Partly,” she answered simply. “Harry can’t do anything. He owes five
+weeks here, and he owes you seven pounds, and his tailor’s pressing him
+for money. He’d pawn anything he could, but he’s pawned everything
+already. I had a job to put the woman off about my new dress, and on
+Saturday there’s the book at my lodgings, and I can’t get work in five
+minutes. It always means waiting some little time till there’s a
+vacancy.”
+
+She said all this in an even, querulous tone, as though she were
+recounting the injustices of fate, which had to be borne as part of the
+natural order of things. Philip did not answer. He knew what she told
+him well enough.
+
+“You said partly,” he observed at last.
+
+“Well, Harry says you’ve been a brick to both of us. You’ve been a real
+good friend to him, he says, and you’ve done for me what p’raps no
+other man would have done. We must do the straight thing, he says. And
+he said what you said about him, that he’s fickle by nature, he’s not
+like you, and I should be a fool to throw you away for him. He won’t
+last and you will, he says so himself.”
+
+“D’you WANT to come away with me?” asked Philip.
+
+“I don’t mind.”
+
+He looked at her, and the corners of his mouth turned down in an
+expression of misery. He had triumphed indeed, and he was going to have
+his way. He gave a little laugh of derision at his own humiliation. She
+looked at him quickly, but did not speak.
+
+“I’ve looked forward with all my soul to going away with you, and I
+thought at last, after all that wretchedness, I was going to be happy…”
+
+He did not finish what he was going to say. And then on a sudden,
+without warning, Mildred broke into a storm of tears. She was sitting
+in the chair in which Norah had sat and wept, and like her she hid her
+face on the back of it, towards the side where there was a little bump
+formed by the sagging in the middle, where the head had rested.
+
+“I’m not lucky with women,” thought Philip.
+
+Her thin body was shaken with sobs. Philip had never seen a woman cry
+with such an utter abandonment. It was horribly painful, and his heart
+was torn. Without realising what he did, he went up to her and put his
+arms round her; she did not resist, but in her wretchedness surrendered
+herself to his comforting. He whispered to her little words of solace.
+He scarcely knew what he was saying, he bent over her and kissed her
+repeatedly.
+
+“Are you awfully unhappy?” he said at last.
+
+“I wish I was dead,” she moaned. “I wish I’d died when the baby come.”
+
+Her hat was in her way, and Philip took it off for her. He placed her
+head more comfortably in the chair, and then he went and sat down at
+the table and looked at her.
+
+“It is awful, love, isn’t it?” he said. “Fancy anyone wanting to be in
+love.”
+
+Presently the violence of her sobbing diminished and she sat in the
+chair, exhausted, with her head thrown back and her arms hanging by her
+side. She had the grotesque look of one of those painters’ dummies used
+to hang draperies on.
+
+“I didn’t know you loved him so much as all that,” said Philip.
+
+He understood Griffiths’ love well enough, for he put himself in
+Griffiths’ place and saw with his eyes, touched with his hands; he was
+able to think himself in Griffiths’ body, and he kissed her with his
+lips, smiled at her with his smiling blue eyes. It was her emotion that
+surprised him. He had never thought her capable of passion, and this
+was passion: there was no mistaking it. Something seemed to give way in
+his heart; it really felt to him as though something were breaking, and
+he felt strangely weak.
+
+“I don’t want to make you unhappy. You needn’t come away with me if you
+don’t want to. I’ll give you the money all the same.”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“No, I said I’d come, and I’ll come.”
+
+“What’s the good, if you’re sick with love for him?”
+
+“Yes, that’s the word. I’m sick with love. I know it won’t last, just
+as well as he does, but just now…”
+
+She paused and shut her eyes as though she were going to faint. A
+strange idea came to Philip, and he spoke it as it came, without
+stopping to think it out.
+
+“Why don’t you go away with him?”
+
+“How can I? You know we haven’t got the money.”
+
+“I’ll give you the money.”
+
+“You?”
+
+She sat up and looked at him. Her eyes began to shine, and the colour
+came into her cheeks.
+
+“Perhaps the best thing would be to get it over, and then you’d come
+back to me.”
+
+Now that he had made the suggestion he was sick with anguish, and yet
+the torture of it gave him a strange, subtle sensation. She stared at
+him with open eyes.
+
+“Oh, how could we, on your money? Harry wouldn’t think of it.”
+
+“Oh yes, he would, if you persuaded him.”
+
+Her objections made him insist, and yet he wanted her with all his
+heart to refuse vehemently.
+
+“I’ll give you a fiver, and you can go away from Saturday to Monday.
+You could easily do that. On Monday he’s going home till he takes up
+his appointment at the North London.”
+
+“Oh, Philip, do you mean that?” she cried, clasping her hands. “If you
+could only let us go—I would love you so much afterwards, I’d do
+anything for you. I’m sure I shall get over it if you’ll only do that.
+Would you really give us the money?”
+
+“Yes,” he said.
+
+She was entirely changed now. She began to laugh. He could see that she
+was insanely happy. She got up and knelt down by Philip’s side, taking
+his hands.
+
+“You are a brick, Philip. You’re the best fellow I’ve ever known. Won’t
+you be angry with me afterwards?”
+
+He shook his head, smiling, but with what agony in his heart!
+
+“May I go and tell Harry now? And can I say to him that you don’t mind?
+He won’t consent unless you promise it doesn’t matter. Oh, you don’t
+know how I love him! And afterwards I’ll do anything you like. I’ll
+come over to Paris with you or anywhere on Monday.”
+
+She got up and put on her hat.
+
+“Where are you going?”
+
+“I’m going to ask him if he’ll take me.”
+
+“Already?”
+
+“D’you want me to stay? I’ll stay if you like.”
+
+She sat down, but he gave a little laugh.
+
+“No, it doesn’t matter, you’d better go at once. There’s only one
+thing: I can’t bear to see Griffiths just now, it would hurt me too
+awfully. Say I have no ill-feeling towards him or anything like that,
+but ask him to keep out of my way.”
+
+“All right.” She sprang up and put on her gloves. “I’ll let you know
+what he says.”
+
+“You’d better dine with me tonight.”
+
+“Very well.”
+
+She put up her face for him to kiss her, and when he pressed his lips
+to hers she threw her arms round his neck.
+
+“You are a darling, Philip.”
+
+She sent him a note a couple of hours later to say that she had a
+headache and could not dine with him. Philip had almost expected it. He
+knew that she was dining with Griffiths. He was horribly jealous, but
+the sudden passion which had seized the pair of them seemed like
+something that had come from the outside, as though a god had visited
+them with it, and he felt himself helpless. It seemed so natural that
+they should love one another. He saw all the advantages that Griffiths
+had over himself and confessed that in Mildred’s place he would have
+done as Mildred did. What hurt him most was Griffiths’ treachery; they
+had been such good friends, and Griffiths knew how passionately devoted
+he was to Mildred: he might have spared him.
+
+He did not see Mildred again till Friday; he was sick for a sight of
+her by then; but when she came and he realised that he had gone out of
+her thoughts entirely, for they were engrossed in Griffiths, he
+suddenly hated her. He saw now why she and Griffiths loved one another,
+Griffiths was stupid, oh so stupid! he had known that all along, but
+had shut his eyes to it, stupid and empty-headed: that charm of his
+concealed an utter selfishness; he was willing to sacrifice anyone to
+his appetites. And how inane was the life he led, lounging about bars
+and drinking in music halls, wandering from one light amour to another!
+He never read a book, he was blind to everything that was not frivolous
+and vulgar; he had never a thought that was fine: the word most common
+on his lips was smart; that was his highest praise for man or woman.
+Smart! It was no wonder he pleased Mildred. They suited one another.
+
+Philip talked to Mildred of things that mattered to neither of them. He
+knew she wanted to speak of Griffiths, but he gave her no opportunity.
+He did not refer to the fact that two evenings before she had put off
+dining with him on a trivial excuse. He was casual with her, trying to
+make her think he was suddenly grown indifferent; and he exercised
+peculiar skill in saying little things which he knew would wound her;
+but which were so indefinite, so delicately cruel, that she could not
+take exception to them. At last she got up.
+
+“I think I must be going off now,” she said.
+
+“I daresay you’ve got a lot to do,” he answered.
+
+She held out her hand, he took it, said good-bye, and opened the door
+for her. He knew what she wanted to speak about, and he knew also that
+his cold, ironical air intimidated her. Often his shyness made him seem
+so frigid that unintentionally he frightened people, and, having
+discovered this, he was able when occasion arose to assume the same
+manner.
+
+“You haven’t forgotten what you promised?” she said at last, as he held
+open the door.
+
+“What is that?”
+
+“About the money.”
+
+“How much d’you want?”
+
+He spoke with an icy deliberation which made his words peculiarly
+offensive. Mildred flushed. He knew she hated him at that moment, and
+he wondered at the self-control by which she prevented herself from
+flying out at him. He wanted to make her suffer.
+
+“There’s the dress and the book tomorrow. That’s all. Harry won’t come,
+so we shan’t want money for that.”
+
+Philip’s heart gave a great thud against his ribs, and he let the door
+handle go. The door swung to.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“He says we couldn’t, not on your money.”
+
+A devil seized Philip, a devil of self-torture which was always lurking
+within him, and, though with all his soul he wished that Griffiths and
+Mildred should not go away together, he could not help himself; he set
+himself to persuade Griffiths through her.
+
+“I don’t see why not, if I’m willing,” he said.
+
+“That’s what I told him.”
+
+“I should have thought if he really wanted to go he wouldn’t hesitate.”
+
+“Oh, it’s not that, he wants to all right. He’d go at once if he had
+the money.”
+
+“If he’s squeamish about it I’ll give YOU the money.”
+
+“I said you’d lend it if he liked, and we’d pay it back as soon as we
+could.”
+
+“It’s rather a change for you going on your knees to get a man to take
+you away for a week-end.”
+
+“It is rather, isn’t it?” she said, with a shameless little laugh. It
+sent a cold shudder down Philip’s spine.
+
+“What are you going to do then?” he asked.
+
+“Nothing. He’s going home tomorrow. He must.”
+
+That would be Philip’s salvation. With Griffiths out of the way he
+could get Mildred back. She knew no one in London, she would be thrown
+on to his society, and when they were alone together he could soon make
+her forget this infatuation. If he said nothing more he was safe. But
+he had a fiendish desire to break down their scruples, he wanted to
+know how abominably they could behave towards him; if he tempted them a
+little more they would yield, and he took a fierce joy at the thought
+of their dishonour. Though every word he spoke tortured him, he found
+in the torture a horrible delight.
+
+“It looks as if it were now or never.”
+
+“That’s what I told him,” she said.
+
+There was a passionate note in her voice which struck Philip. He was
+biting his nails in his nervousness.
+
+“Where were you thinking of going?”
+
+“Oh, to Oxford. He was at the ’Varsity there, you know. He said he’d
+show me the colleges.”
+
+Philip remembered that once he had suggested going to Oxford for the
+day, and she had expressed firmly the boredom she felt at the thought
+of sights.
+
+“And it looks as if you’d have fine weather. It ought to be very jolly
+there just now.”
+
+“I’ve done all I could to persuade him.”
+
+“Why don’t you have another try?”
+
+“Shall I say you want us to go?”
+
+“I don’t think you must go as far as that,” said Philip.
+
+She paused for a minute or two, looking at him. Philip forced himself
+to look at her in a friendly way. He hated her, he despised her, he
+loved her with all his heart.
+
+“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll go and see if he can’t arrange it.
+And then, if he says yes, I’ll come and fetch the money tomorrow. When
+shall you be in?”
+
+“I’ll come back here after luncheon and wait.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+“I’ll give you the money for your dress and your room now.”
+
+He went to his desk and took out what money he had. The dress was six
+guineas; there was besides her rent and her food, and the baby’s keep
+for a week. He gave her eight pounds ten.
+
+“Thanks very much,” she said.
+
+She left him.
+
+
+
+
+LXXVII
+
+
+After lunching in the basement of the Medical School Philip went back
+to his rooms. It was Saturday afternoon, and the landlady was cleaning
+the stairs.
+
+“Is Mr. Griffiths in?” he asked.
+
+“No, sir. He went away this morning, soon after you went out.”
+
+“Isn’t he coming back?”
+
+“I don’t think so, sir. He’s taken his luggage.”
+
+Philip wondered what this could mean. He took a book and began to read.
+It was Burton’s Journey to Meccah, which he had just got out of the
+Westminster Public Library; and he read the first page, but could make
+no sense of it, for his mind was elsewhere; he was listening all the
+time for a ring at the bell. He dared not hope that Griffiths had gone
+away already, without Mildred, to his home in Cumberland. Mildred would
+be coming presently for the money. He set his teeth and read on; he
+tried desperately to concentrate his attention; the sentences etched
+themselves in his brain by the force of his effort, but they were
+distorted by the agony he was enduring. He wished with all his heart
+that he had not made the horrible proposition to give them money; but
+now that he had made it he lacked the strength to go back on it, not on
+Mildred’s account, but on his own. There was a morbid obstinacy in him
+which forced him to do the thing he had determined. He discovered that
+the three pages he had read had made no impression on him at all; and
+he went back and started from the beginning: he found himself reading
+one sentence over and over again; and now it weaved itself in with his
+thoughts, horribly, like some formula in a nightmare. One thing he
+could do was to go out and keep away till midnight; they could not go
+then; and he saw them calling at the house every hour to ask if he was
+in. He enjoyed the thought of their disappointment. He repeated that
+sentence to himself mechanically. But he could not do that. Let them
+come and take the money, and he would know then to what depths of
+infamy it was possible for men to descend. He could not read any more
+now. He simply could not see the words. He leaned back in his chair,
+closing his eyes, and, numb with misery, waited for Mildred.
+
+The landlady came in.
+
+“Will you see Mrs. Miller, sir?”
+
+“Show her in.”
+
+Philip pulled himself together to receive her without any sign of what
+he was feeling. He had an impulse to throw himself on his knees and
+seize her hands and beg her not to go; but he knew there was no way of
+moving her; she would tell Griffiths what he had said and how he acted.
+He was ashamed.
+
+“Well, how about the little jaunt?” he said gaily.
+
+“We’re going. Harry’s outside. I told him you didn’t want to see him,
+so he’s kept out of your way. But he wants to know if he can come in
+just for a minute to say good-bye to you.”
+
+“No, I won’t see him,” said Philip.
+
+He could see she did not care if he saw Griffiths or not. Now that she
+was there he wanted her to go quickly.
+
+“Look here, here’s the fiver. I’d like you to go now.”
+
+She took it and thanked him. She turned to leave the room.
+
+“When are you coming back?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, on Monday. Harry must go home then.”
+
+He knew what he was going to say was humiliating, but he was broken
+down with jealousy and desire.
+
+“Then I shall see you, shan’t I?”
+
+He could not help the note of appeal in his voice.
+
+“Of course. I’ll let you know the moment I’m back.”
+
+He shook hands with her. Through the curtains he watched her jump into
+a four-wheeler that stood at the door. It rolled away. Then he threw
+himself on his bed and hid his face in his hands. He felt tears coming
+to his eyes, and he was angry with himself; he clenched his hands and
+screwed up his body to prevent them; but he could not; and great
+painful sobs were forced from him.
+
+He got up at last, exhausted and ashamed, and washed his face. He mixed
+himself a strong whiskey and soda. It made him feel a little better.
+Then he caught sight of the tickets to Paris, which were on the
+chimney-piece, and, seizing them, with an impulse of rage he flung them
+in the fire. He knew he could have got the money back on them, but it
+relieved him to destroy them. Then he went out in search of someone to
+be with. The club was empty. He felt he would go mad unless he found
+someone to talk to; but Lawson was abroad; he went on to Hayward’s
+rooms: the maid who opened the door told him that he had gone down to
+Brighton for the week-end. Then Philip went to a gallery and found it
+was just closing. He did not know what to do. He was distracted. And he
+thought of Griffiths and Mildred going to Oxford, sitting opposite one
+another in the train, happy. He went back to his rooms, but they filled
+him with horror, he had been so wretched in them; he tried once more to
+read Burton’s book, but, as he read, he told himself again and again
+what a fool he had been; it was he who had made the suggestion that
+they should go away, he had offered the money, he had forced it upon
+them; he might have known what would happen when he introduced
+Griffiths to Mildred; his own vehement passion was enough to arouse the
+other’s desire. By this time they had reached Oxford. They would put up
+in one of the lodging-houses in John Street; Philip had never been to
+Oxford, but Griffiths had talked to him about it so much that he knew
+exactly where they would go; and they would dine at the Clarendon:
+Griffiths had been in the habit of dining there when he went on the
+spree. Philip got himself something to eat in a restaurant near Charing
+Cross; he had made up his mind to go to a play, and afterwards he
+fought his way into the pit of a theatre at which one of Oscar Wilde’s
+pieces was being performed. He wondered if Mildred and Griffiths would
+go to a play that evening: they must kill the evening somehow; they
+were too stupid, both of them to content themselves with conversation:
+he got a fierce delight in reminding himself of the vulgarity of their
+minds which suited them so exactly to one another. He watched the play
+with an abstracted mind, trying to give himself gaiety by drinking
+whiskey in each interval; he was unused to alcohol, and it affected him
+quickly, but his drunkenness was savage and morose. When the play was
+over he had another drink. He could not go to bed, he knew he would not
+sleep, and he dreaded the pictures which his vivid imagination would
+place before him. He tried not to think of them. He knew he had drunk
+too much. Now he was seized with a desire to do horrible, sordid
+things; he wanted to roll himself in gutters; his whole being yearned
+for beastliness; he wanted to grovel.
+
+He walked up Piccadilly, dragging his club-foot, sombrely drunk, with
+rage and misery clawing at his heart. He was stopped by a painted
+harlot, who put her hand on his arm; he pushed her violently away with
+brutal words. He walked on a few steps and then stopped. She would do
+as well as another. He was sorry he had spoken so roughly to her. He
+went up to her.
+
+“I say,” he began.
+
+“Go to hell,” she said.
+
+Philip laughed.
+
+“I merely wanted to ask if you’d do me the honour of supping with me
+tonight.”
+
+She looked at him with amazement, and hesitated for a while. She saw he
+was drunk.
+
+“I don’t mind.”
+
+He was amused that she should use a phrase he had heard so often on
+Mildred’s lips. He took her to one of the restaurants he had been in
+the habit of going to with Mildred. He noticed as they walked along
+that she looked down at his limb.
+
+“I’ve got a club-foot,” he said. “Have you any objection?”
+
+“You are a cure,” she laughed.
+
+When he got home his bones were aching, and in his head there was a
+hammering that made him nearly scream. He took another whiskey and soda
+to steady himself, and going to bed sank into a dreamless sleep till
+mid-day.
+
+
+
+
+LXXVIII
+
+
+At last Monday came, and Philip thought his long torture was over.
+Looking out the trains he found that the latest by which Griffiths
+could reach home that night left Oxford soon after one, and he supposed
+that Mildred would take one which started a few minutes later to bring
+her to London. His desire was to go and meet it, but he thought Mildred
+would like to be left alone for a day; perhaps she would drop him a
+line in the evening to say she was back, and if not he would call at
+her lodgings next morning: his spirit was cowed. He felt a bitter
+hatred for Griffiths, but for Mildred, notwithstanding all that had
+passed, only a heart-rending desire. He was glad now that Hayward was
+not in London on Saturday afternoon when, distraught, he went in search
+of human comfort: he could not have prevented himself from telling him
+everything, and Hayward would have been astonished at his weakness. He
+would despise him, and perhaps be shocked or disgusted that he could
+envisage the possibility of making Mildred his mistress after she had
+given herself to another man. What did he care if it was shocking or
+disgusting? He was ready for any compromise, prepared for more
+degrading humiliations still, if he could only gratify his desire.
+
+Towards the evening his steps took him against his will to the house in
+which she lived, and he looked up at her window. It was dark. He did
+not venture to ask if she was back. He was confident in her promise.
+But there was no letter from her in the morning, and, when about
+mid-day he called, the maid told him she had not arrived. He could not
+understand it. He knew that Griffiths would have been obliged to go
+home the day before, for he was to be best man at a wedding, and
+Mildred had no money. He turned over in his mind every possible thing
+that might have happened. He went again in the afternoon and left a
+note, asking her to dine with him that evening as calmly as though the
+events of the last fortnight had not happened. He mentioned the place
+and time at which they were to meet, and hoping against hope kept the
+appointment: though he waited for an hour she did not come. On
+Wednesday morning he was ashamed to ask at the house and sent a
+messenger-boy with a letter and instructions to bring back a reply; but
+in an hour the boy came back with Philip’s letter unopened and the
+answer that the lady had not returned from the country. Philip was
+beside himself. The last deception was more than he could bear. He
+repeated to himself over and over again that he loathed Mildred, and,
+ascribing to Griffiths this new disappointment, he hated him so much
+that he knew what was the delight of murder: he walked about
+considering what a joy it would be to come upon him on a dark night and
+stick a knife into his throat, just about the carotid artery, and leave
+him to die in the street like a dog. Philip was out of his senses with
+grief and rage. He did not like whiskey, but he drank to stupefy
+himself. He went to bed drunk on the Tuesday and on the Wednesday
+night.
+
+On Thursday morning he got up very late and dragged himself, blear-eyed
+and sallow, into his sitting-room to see if there were any letters. A
+curious feeling shot through his heart when he recognised the
+handwriting of Griffiths.
+
+Dear old man:
+
+I hardly know how to write to you and yet I feel I must write. I hope
+you’re not awfully angry with me. I know I oughtn’t to have gone away
+with Milly, but I simply couldn’t help myself. She simply carried me
+off my feet and I would have done anything to get her. When she told me
+you had offered us the money to go I simply couldn’t resist. And now
+it’s all over I’m awfully ashamed of myself and I wish I hadn’t been
+such a fool. I wish you’d write and say you’re not angry with me, and I
+want you to let me come and see you. I was awfully hurt at your telling
+Milly you didn’t want to see me. Do write me a line, there’s a good
+chap, and tell me you forgive me. It’ll ease my conscience. I thought
+you wouldn’t mind or you wouldn’t have offered the money. But I know I
+oughtn’t to have taken it. I came home on Monday and Milly wanted to
+stay a couple of days at Oxford by herself. She’s going back to London
+on Wednesday, so by the time you receive this letter you will have seen
+her and I hope everything will go off all right. Do write and say you
+forgive me. Please write at once.
+Yours ever,
+Harry.
+
+Philip tore up the letter furiously. He did not mean to answer it. He
+despised Griffiths for his apologies, he had no patience with his
+prickings of conscience: one could do a dastardly thing if one chose,
+but it was contemptible to regret it afterwards. He thought the letter
+cowardly and hypocritical. He was disgusted at its sentimentality.
+
+“It would be very easy if you could do a beastly thing,” he muttered to
+himself, “and then say you were sorry, and that put it all right
+again.”
+
+He hoped with all his heart he would have the chance one day to do
+Griffiths a bad turn.
+
+But at all events he knew that Mildred was in town. He dressed
+hurriedly, not waiting to shave, drank a cup of tea, and took a cab to
+her rooms. The cab seemed to crawl. He was painfully anxious to see
+her, and unconsciously he uttered a prayer to the God he did not
+believe in to make her receive him kindly. He only wanted to forget.
+With beating heart he rang the bell. He forgot all his suffering in the
+passionate desire to enfold her once more in his arms.
+
+“Is Mrs. Miller in?” he asked joyously.
+
+“She’s gone,” the maid answered.
+
+He looked at her blankly.
+
+“She came about an hour ago and took away her things.”
+
+For a moment he did not know what to say.
+
+“Did you give her my letter? Did she say where she was going?”
+
+Then he understood that Mildred had deceived him again. She was not
+coming back to him. He made an effort to save his face.
+
+“Oh, well, I daresay I shall hear from her. She may have sent a letter
+to another address.”
+
+He turned away and went back hopeless to his rooms. He might have known
+that she would do this; she had never cared for him, she had made a
+fool of him from the beginning; she had no pity, she had no kindness,
+she had no charity. The only thing was to accept the inevitable. The
+pain he was suffering was horrible, he would sooner be dead than endure
+it; and the thought came to him that it would be better to finish with
+the whole thing: he might throw himself in the river or put his neck on
+a railway line; but he had no sooner set the thought into words than he
+rebelled against it. His reason told him that he would get over his
+unhappiness in time; if he tried with all his might he could forget
+her; and it would be grotesque to kill himself on account of a vulgar
+slut. He had only one life, and it was madness to fling it away. He
+FELT that he would never overcome his passion, but he KNEW that after
+all it was only a matter of time.
+
+He would not stay in London. There everything reminded him of his
+unhappiness. He telegraphed to his uncle that he was coming to
+Blackstable, and, hurrying to pack, took the first train he could. He
+wanted to get away from the sordid rooms in which he had endured so
+much suffering. He wanted to breathe clean air. He was disgusted with
+himself. He felt that he was a little mad.
+
+Since he was grown up Philip had been given the best spare room at the
+vicarage. It was a corner-room and in front of one window was an old
+tree which blocked the view, but from the other you saw, beyond the
+garden and the vicarage field, broad meadows. Philip remembered the
+wall-paper from his earliest years. On the walls were quaint water
+colours of the early Victorian period by a friend of the Vicar’s youth.
+They had a faded charm. The dressing-table was surrounded by stiff
+muslin. There was an old tall-boy to put your clothes in. Philip gave a
+sigh of pleasure; he had never realised that all those things meant
+anything to him at all. At the vicarage life went on as it had always
+done. No piece of furniture had been moved from one place to another;
+the Vicar ate the same things, said the same things, went for the same
+walk every day; he had grown a little fatter, a little more silent, a
+little more narrow. He had become accustomed to living without his wife
+and missed her very little. He bickered still with Josiah Graves.
+Philip went to see the churchwarden. He was a little thinner, a little
+whiter, a little more austere; he was autocratic still and still
+disapproved of candles on the altar. The shops had still a pleasant
+quaintness; and Philip stood in front of that in which things useful to
+seamen were sold, sea-boots and tarpaulins and tackle, and remembered
+that he had felt there in his childhood the thrill of the sea and the
+adventurous magic of the unknown.
+
+He could not help his heart beating at each double knock of the postman
+in case there might be a letter from Mildred sent on by his landlady in
+London; but he knew that there would be none. Now that he could think
+it out more calmly he understood that in trying to force Mildred to
+love him he had been attempting the impossible. He did not know what it
+was that passed from a man to a woman, from a woman to a man, and made
+one of them a slave: it was convenient to call it the sexual instinct;
+but if it was no more than that, he did not understand why it should
+occasion so vehement an attraction to one person rather than another.
+It was irresistible: the mind could not battle with it; friendship,
+gratitude, interest, had no power beside it. Because he had not
+attracted Mildred sexually, nothing that he did had any effect upon
+her. The idea revolted him; it made human nature beastly; and he felt
+suddenly that the hearts of men were full of dark places. Because
+Mildred was indifferent to him he had thought her sexless; her anaemic
+appearance and thin lips, the body with its narrow hips and flat chest,
+the languor of her manner, carried out his supposition; and yet she was
+capable of sudden passions which made her willing to risk everything to
+gratify them. He had never understood her adventure with Emil Miller:
+it had seemed so unlike her, and she had never been able to explain it;
+but now that he had seen her with Griffiths he knew that just the same
+thing had happened then: she had been carried off her feet by an
+ungovernable desire. He tried to think out what those two men had which
+so strangely attracted her. They both had a vulgar facetiousness which
+tickled her simple sense of humour, and a certain coarseness of nature;
+but what took her perhaps was the blatant sexuality which was their
+most marked characteristic. She had a genteel refinement which
+shuddered at the facts of life, she looked upon the bodily functions as
+indecent, she had all sorts of euphemisms for common objects, she
+always chose an elaborate word as more becoming than a simple one: the
+brutality of these men was like a whip on her thin white shoulders, and
+she shuddered with voluptuous pain.
+
+One thing Philip had made up his mind about. He would not go back to
+the lodgings in which he had suffered. He wrote to his landlady and
+gave her notice. He wanted to have his own things about him. He
+determined to take unfurnished rooms: it would be pleasant and cheaper;
+and this was an urgent consideration, for during the last year and a
+half he had spent nearly seven hundred pounds. He must make up for it
+now by the most rigid economy. Now and then he thought of the future
+with panic; he had been a fool to spend so much money on Mildred; but
+he knew that if it were to come again he would act in the same way. It
+amused him sometimes to consider that his friends, because he had a
+face which did not express his feelings very vividly and a rather slow
+way of moving, looked upon him as strong-minded, deliberate, and cool.
+They thought him reasonable and praised his common sense; but he knew
+that his placid expression was no more than a mask, assumed
+unconsciously, which acted like the protective colouring of
+butterflies; and himself was astonished at the weakness of his will. It
+seemed to him that he was swayed by every light emotion, as though he
+were a leaf in the wind, and when passion seized him he was powerless.
+He had no self-control. He merely seemed to possess it because he was
+indifferent to many of the things which moved other people.
+
+He considered with some irony the philosophy which he had developed for
+himself, for it had not been of much use to him in the conjuncture he
+had passed through; and he wondered whether thought really helped a man
+in any of the critical affairs of life: it seemed to him rather that he
+was swayed by some power alien to and yet within himself, which urged
+him like that great wind of Hell which drove Paolo and Francesca
+ceaselessly on. He thought of what he was going to do and, when the
+time came to act, he was powerless in the grasp of instincts, emotions,
+he knew not what. He acted as though he were a machine driven by the
+two forces of his environment and his personality; his reason was
+someone looking on, observing the facts but powerless to interfere: it
+was like those gods of Epicurus, who saw the doings of men from their
+empyrean heights and had no might to alter one smallest particle of
+what occurred.
+
+
+
+
+LXXIX
+
+
+Philip went up to London a couple of days before the session began in
+order to find himself rooms. He hunted about the streets that led out
+of the Westminster Bridge Road, but their dinginess was distasteful to
+him; and at last he found one in Kennington which had a quiet and
+old-world air. It reminded one a little of the London which Thackeray
+knew on that side of the river, and in the Kennington Road, through
+which the great barouche of the Newcomes must have passed as it drove
+the family to the West of London, the plane-trees were bursting into
+leaf. The houses in the street which Philip fixed upon were
+two-storied, and in most of the windows was a notice to state that
+lodgings were to let. He knocked at one which announced that the
+lodgings were unfurnished, and was shown by an austere, silent woman
+four very small rooms, in one of which there was a kitchen range and a
+sink. The rent was nine shillings a week. Philip did not want so many
+rooms, but the rent was low and he wished to settle down at once. He
+asked the landlady if she could keep the place clean for him and cook
+his breakfast, but she replied that she had enough work to do without
+that; and he was pleased rather than otherwise because she intimated
+that she wished to have nothing more to do with him than to receive his
+rent. She told him that, if he inquired at the grocer’s round the
+corner, which was also a post office, he might hear of a woman who
+would ‘do’ for him.
+
+Philip had a little furniture which he had gathered as he went along,
+an arm-chair that he had bought in Paris, and a table, a few drawings,
+and the small Persian rug which Cronshaw had given him. His uncle had
+offered a fold-up bed for which, now that he no longer let his house in
+August, he had no further use; and by spending another ten pounds
+Philip bought himself whatever else was essential. He spent ten
+shillings on putting a corn-coloured paper in the room he was making
+his parlour; and he hung on the walls a sketch which Lawson had given
+him of the Quai des Grands Augustins, and the photograph of the
+Odalisque by Ingres and Manet’s Olympia which in Paris had been the
+objects of his contemplation while he shaved. To remind himself that he
+too had once been engaged in the practice of art, he put up a charcoal
+drawing of the young Spaniard Miguel Ajuria: it was the best thing he
+had ever done, a nude standing with clenched hands, his feet gripping
+the floor with a peculiar force, and on his face that air of
+determination which had been so impressive; and though Philip after the
+long interval saw very well the defects of his work its associations
+made him look upon it with tolerance. He wondered what had happened to
+Miguel. There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who
+have no talent. Perhaps, worn out by exposure, starvation, disease, he
+had found an end in some hospital, or in an access of despair had
+sought death in the turbid Seine; but perhaps with his Southern
+instability he had given up the struggle of his own accord, and now, a
+clerk in some office in Madrid, turned his fervent rhetoric to politics
+and bull-fighting.
+
+Philip asked Lawson and Hayward to come and see his new rooms, and they
+came, one with a bottle of whiskey, the other with a pate de foie gras;
+and he was delighted when they praised his taste. He would have invited
+the Scotch stockbroker too, but he had only three chairs, and thus
+could entertain only a definite number of guests. Lawson was aware that
+through him Philip had become very friendly with Norah Nesbit and now
+remarked that he had run across her a few days before.
+
+“She was asking how you were.”
+
+Philip flushed at the mention of her name (he could not get himself out
+of the awkward habit of reddening when he was embarrassed), and Lawson
+looked at him quizzically. Lawson, who now spent most of the year in
+London, had so far surrendered to his environment as to wear his hair
+short and to dress himself in a neat serge suit and a bowler hat.
+
+“I gather that all is over between you,” he said.
+
+“I’ve not seen her for months.”
+
+“She was looking rather nice. She had a very smart hat on with a lot of
+white ostrich feathers on it. She must be doing pretty well.”
+
+Philip changed the conversation, but he kept thinking of her, and after
+an interval, when the three of them were talking of something else, he
+asked suddenly:
+
+“Did you gather that Norah was angry with me?”
+
+“Not a bit. She talked very nicely of you.”
+
+“I’ve got half a mind to go and see her.”
+
+“She won’t eat you.”
+
+Philip had thought of Norah often. When Mildred left him his first
+thought was of her, and he told himself bitterly that she would never
+have treated him so. His impulse was to go to her; he could depend on
+her pity; but he was ashamed: she had been good to him always, and he
+had treated her abominably.
+
+“If I’d only had the sense to stick to her!” he said to himself,
+afterwards, when Lawson and Hayward had gone and he was smoking a last
+pipe before going to bed.
+
+He remembered the pleasant hours they had spent together in the cosy
+sitting-room in Vincent Square, their visits to galleries and to the
+play, and the charming evenings of intimate conversation. He
+recollected her solicitude for his welfare and her interest in all that
+concerned him. She had loved him with a love that was kind and lasting,
+there was more than sensuality in it, it was almost maternal; he had
+always known that it was a precious thing for which with all his soul
+he should thank the gods. He made up his mind to throw himself on her
+mercy. She must have suffered horribly, but he felt she had the
+greatness of heart to forgive him: she was incapable of malice. Should
+he write to her? No. He would break in on her suddenly and cast himself
+at her feet—he knew that when the time came he would feel too shy to
+perform such a dramatic gesture, but that was how he liked to think of
+it—and tell her that if she would take him back she might rely on him
+for ever. He was cured of the hateful disease from which he had
+suffered, he knew her worth, and now she might trust him. His
+imagination leaped forward to the future. He pictured himself rowing
+with her on the river on Sundays; he would take her to Greenwich, he
+had never forgotten that delightful excursion with Hayward, and the
+beauty of the Port of London remained a permanent treasure in his
+recollection; and on the warm summer afternoons they would sit in the
+Park together and talk: he laughed to himself as he remembered her gay
+chatter, which poured out like a brook bubbling over little stones,
+amusing, flippant, and full of character. The agony he had suffered
+would pass from his mind like a bad dream.
+
+But when next day, about tea-time, an hour at which he was pretty
+certain to find Norah at home, he knocked at her door his courage
+suddenly failed him. Was it possible for her to forgive him? It would
+be abominable of him to force himself on her presence. The door was
+opened by a maid new since he had been in the habit of calling every
+day, and he inquired if Mrs. Nesbit was in.
+
+“Will you ask her if she could see Mr. Carey?” he said. “I’ll wait
+here.”
+
+The maid ran upstairs and in a moment clattered down again.
+
+“Will you step up, please, sir. Second floor front.”
+
+“I know,” said Philip, with a slight smile.
+
+He went with a fluttering heart. He knocked at the door.
+
+“Come in,” said the well-known, cheerful voice.
+
+It seemed to say come in to a new life of peace and happiness. When he
+entered Norah stepped forward to greet him. She shook hands with him as
+if they had parted the day before. A man stood up.
+
+“Mr. Carey—Mr. Kingsford.”
+
+Philip, bitterly disappointed at not finding her alone, sat down and
+took stock of the stranger. He had never heard her mention his name,
+but he seemed to Philip to occupy his chair as though he were very much
+at home. He was a man of forty, clean-shaven, with long fair hair very
+neatly plastered down, and the reddish skin and pale, tired eyes which
+fair men get when their youth is passed. He had a large nose, a large
+mouth; the bones of his face were prominent, and he was heavily made;
+he was a man of more than average height, and broad-shouldered.
+
+“I was wondering what had become of you,” said Norah, in her sprightly
+manner. “I met Mr. Lawson the other day—did he tell you?—and I informed
+him that it was really high time you came to see me again.”
+
+Philip could see no shadow of embarrassment in her countenance, and he
+admired the use with which she carried off an encounter of which
+himself felt the intense awkwardness. She gave him tea. She was about
+to put sugar in it when he stopped her.
+
+“How stupid of me!” she cried. “I forgot.”
+
+He did not believe that. She must remember quite well that he never
+took sugar in his tea. He accepted the incident as a sign that her
+nonchalance was affected.
+
+The conversation which Philip had interrupted went on, and presently he
+began to feel a little in the way. Kingsford took no particular notice
+of him. He talked fluently and well, not without humour, but with a
+slightly dogmatic manner: he was a journalist, it appeared, and had
+something amusing to say on every topic that was touched upon; but it
+exasperated Philip to find himself edged out of the conversation. He
+was determined to stay the visitor out. He wondered if he admired
+Norah. In the old days they had often talked of the men who wanted to
+flirt with her and had laughed at them together. Philip tried to bring
+back the conversation to matters which only he and Norah knew about,
+but each time the journalist broke in and succeeded in drawing it away
+to a subject upon which Philip was forced to be silent. He grew faintly
+angry with Norah, for she must see he was being made ridiculous; but
+perhaps she was inflicting this upon him as a punishment, and with this
+thought he regained his good humour. At last, however, the clock struck
+six, and Kingsford got up.
+
+“I must go,” he said.
+
+Norah shook hands with him, and accompanied him to the landing. She
+shut the door behind her and stood outside for a couple of minutes.
+Philip wondered what they were talking about.
+
+“Who is Mr. Kingsford?” he asked cheerfully, when she returned.
+
+“Oh, he’s the editor of one of Harmsworth’s Magazines. He’s been taking
+a good deal of my work lately.”
+
+“I thought he was never going.”
+
+“I’m glad you stayed. I wanted to have a talk with you.” She curled
+herself into the large arm-chair, feet and all, in a way her small size
+made possible, and lit a cigarette. He smiled when he saw her assume
+the attitude which had always amused him.
+
+“You look just like a cat.”
+
+She gave him a flash of her dark, fine eyes.
+
+“I really ought to break myself of the habit. It’s absurd to behave
+like a child when you’re my age, but I’m comfortable with my legs under
+me.”
+
+“It’s awfully jolly to be sitting in this room again,” said Philip
+happily. “You don’t know how I’ve missed it.”
+
+“Why on earth didn’t you come before?” she asked gaily.
+
+“I was afraid to,” he said, reddening.
+
+She gave him a look full of kindness. Her lips outlined a charming
+smile.
+
+“You needn’t have been.”
+
+He hesitated for a moment. His heart beat quickly.
+
+“D’you remember the last time we met? I treated you awfully badly—I’m
+dreadfully ashamed of myself.”
+
+She looked at him steadily. She did not answer. He was losing his head;
+he seemed to have come on an errand of which he was only now realising
+the outrageousness. She did not help him, and he could only blurt out
+bluntly.
+
+“Can you ever forgive me?”
+
+Then impetuously he told her that Mildred had left him and that his
+unhappiness had been so great that he almost killed himself. He told
+her of all that had happened between them, of the birth of the child,
+and of the meeting with Griffiths, of his folly and his trust and his
+immense deception. He told her how often he had thought of her kindness
+and of her love, and how bitterly he had regretted throwing it away: he
+had only been happy when he was with her, and he knew now how great was
+her worth. His voice was hoarse with emotion. Sometimes he was so
+ashamed of what he was saying that he spoke with his eyes fixed on the
+ground. His face was distorted with pain, and yet he felt it a strange
+relief to speak. At last he finished. He flung himself back in his
+chair, exhausted, and waited. He had concealed nothing, and even, in
+his self-abasement, he had striven to make himself more despicable than
+he had really been. He was surprised that she did not speak, and at
+last he raised his eyes. She was not looking at him. Her face was quite
+white, and she seemed to be lost in thought.
+
+“Haven’t you got anything to say to me?”
+
+She started and reddened.
+
+“I’m afraid you’ve had a rotten time,” she said. “I’m dreadfully
+sorry.”
+
+She seemed about to go on, but she stopped, and again he waited. At
+length she seemed to force herself to speak.
+
+“I’m engaged to be married to Mr. Kingsford.”
+
+“Why didn’t you tell me at once?” he cried. “You needn’t have allowed
+me to humiliate myself before you.”
+
+“I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop you…. I met him soon after you”—she seemed
+to search for an expression that should not wound him—“told me your
+friend had come back. I was very wretched for a bit, he was extremely
+kind to me. He knew someone had made me suffer, of course he doesn’t
+know it was you, and I don’t know what I should have done without him.
+And suddenly I felt I couldn’t go on working, working, working; I was
+so tired, I felt so ill. I told him about my husband. He offered to
+give me the money to get my divorce if I would marry him as soon as I
+could. He had a very good job, and it wouldn’t be necessary for me to
+do anything unless I wanted to. He was so fond of me and so anxious to
+take care of me. I was awfully touched. And now I’m very, very fond of
+him.”
+
+“Have you got your divorce then?” asked Philip.
+
+“I’ve got the decree nisi. It’ll be made absolute in July, and then we
+are going to be married at once.”
+
+For some time Philip did not say anything.
+
+“I wish I hadn’t made such a fool of myself,” he muttered at length.
+
+He was thinking of his long, humiliating confession. She looked at him
+curiously.
+
+“You were never really in love with me,” she said.
+
+“It’s not very pleasant being in love.”
+
+But he was always able to recover himself quickly, and, getting up now
+and holding out his hand, he said:
+
+“I hope you’ll be very happy. After all, it’s the best thing that could
+have happened to you.”
+
+She looked a little wistfully at him as she took his hand and held it.
+
+“You’ll come and see me again, won’t you?” she asked.
+
+“No,” he said, shaking his head. “It would make me too envious to see
+you happy.”
+
+He walked slowly away from her house. After all she was right when she
+said he had never loved her. He was disappointed, irritated even, but
+his vanity was more affected than his heart. He knew that himself. And
+presently he grew conscious that the gods had played a very good
+practical joke on him, and he laughed at himself mirthlessly. It is not
+very comfortable to have the gift of being amused at one’s own
+absurdity.
+
+
+
+
+LXXX
+
+
+For the next three months Philip worked on subjects which were new to
+him. The unwieldy crowd which had entered the Medical School nearly two
+years before had thinned out: some had left the hospital, finding the
+examinations more difficult to pass than they expected, some had been
+taken away by parents who had not foreseen the expense of life in
+London, and some had drifted away to other callings. One youth whom
+Philip knew had devised an ingenious plan to make money; he had bought
+things at sales and pawned them, but presently found it more profitable
+to pawn goods bought on credit; and it had caused a little excitement
+at the hospital when someone pointed out his name in police-court
+proceedings. There had been a remand, then assurances on the part of a
+harassed father, and the young man had gone out to bear the White Man’s
+Burden overseas. The imagination of another, a lad who had never before
+been in a town at all, fell to the glamour of music-halls and bar
+parlours; he spent his time among racing-men, tipsters, and trainers,
+and now was become a book-maker’s clerk. Philip had seen him once in a
+bar near Piccadilly Circus in a tight-waisted coat and a brown hat with
+a broad, flat brim. A third, with a gift for singing and mimicry, who
+had achieved success at the smoking concerts of the Medical School by
+his imitation of notorious comedians, had abandoned the hospital for
+the chorus of a musical comedy. Still another, and he interested Philip
+because his uncouth manner and interjectional speech did not suggest
+that he was capable of any deep emotion, had felt himself stifle among
+the houses of London. He grew haggard in shut-in spaces, and the soul
+he knew not he possessed struggled like a sparrow held in the hand,
+with little frightened gasps and a quick palpitation of the heart: he
+yearned for the broad skies and the open, desolate places among which
+his childhood had been spent; and he walked off one day, without a word
+to anybody, between one lecture and another; and the next thing his
+friends heard was that he had thrown up medicine and was working on a
+farm.
+
+Philip attended now lectures on medicine and on surgery. On certain
+mornings in the week he practised bandaging on out-patients glad to
+earn a little money, and he was taught auscultation and how to use the
+stethoscope. He learned dispensing. He was taking the examination in
+Materia Medica in July, and it amused him to play with various drugs,
+concocting mixtures, rolling pills, and making ointments. He seized
+avidly upon anything from which he could extract a suggestion of human
+interest.
+
+He saw Griffiths once in the distance, but, not to have the pain of
+cutting him dead, avoided him. Philip had felt a certain
+self-consciousness with Griffiths’ friends, some of whom were now
+friends of his, when he realised they knew of his quarrel with
+Griffiths and surmised they were aware of the reason. One of them, a
+very tall fellow, with a small head and a languid air, a youth called
+Ramsden, who was one of Griffiths’ most faithful admirers, copied his
+ties, his boots, his manner of talking and his gestures, told Philip
+that Griffiths was very much hurt because Philip had not answered his
+letter. He wanted to be reconciled with him.
+
+“Has he asked you to give me the message?” asked Philip.
+
+“Oh, no. I’m saying this entirely on my own,” said Ramsden. “He’s
+awfully sorry for what he did, and he says you always behaved like a
+perfect brick to him. I know he’d be glad to make it up. He doesn’t
+come to the hospital because he’s afraid of meeting you, and he thinks
+you’d cut him.”
+
+“I should.”
+
+“It makes him feel rather wretched, you know.”
+
+“I can bear the trifling inconvenience that he feels with a good deal
+of fortitude,” said Philip.
+
+“He’ll do anything he can to make it up.”
+
+“How childish and hysterical! Why should he care? I’m a very
+insignificant person, and he can do very well without my company. I’m
+not interested in him any more.”
+
+Ramsden thought Philip hard and cold. He paused for a moment or two,
+looking about him in a perplexed way.
+
+“Harry wishes to God he’d never had anything to do with the woman.”
+
+“Does he?” asked Philip.
+
+He spoke with an indifference which he was satisfied with. No one could
+have guessed how violently his heart was beating. He waited impatiently
+for Ramsden to go on.
+
+“I suppose you’ve quite got over it now, haven’t you?”
+
+“I?” said Philip. “Quite.”
+
+Little by little he discovered the history of Mildred’s relations with
+Griffiths. He listened with a smile on his lips, feigning an equanimity
+which quite deceived the dull-witted boy who talked to him. The
+week-end she spent with Griffiths at Oxford inflamed rather than
+extinguished her sudden passion; and when Griffiths went home, with a
+feeling that was unexpected in her she determined to stay in Oxford by
+herself for a couple of days, because she had been so happy in it. She
+felt that nothing could induce her to go back to Philip. He revolted
+her. Griffiths was taken aback at the fire he had aroused, for he had
+found his two days with her in the country somewhat tedious; and he had
+no desire to turn an amusing episode into a tiresome affair. She made
+him promise to write to her, and, being an honest, decent fellow, with
+natural politeness and a desire to make himself pleasant to everybody,
+when he got home he wrote her a long and charming letter. She answered
+it with reams of passion, clumsy, for she had no gift of expression,
+ill-written, and vulgar; the letter bored him, and when it was followed
+next day by another, and the day after by a third, he began to think
+her love no longer flattering but alarming. He did not answer; and she
+bombarded him with telegrams, asking him if he were ill and had
+received her letters; she said his silence made her dreadfully anxious.
+He was forced to write, but he sought to make his reply as casual as
+was possible without being offensive: he begged her not to wire, since
+it was difficult to explain telegrams to his mother, an old-fashioned
+person for whom a telegram was still an event to excite tremor. She
+answered by return of post that she must see him and announced her
+intention to pawn things (she had the dressing-case which Philip had
+given her as a wedding-present and could raise eight pounds on that) in
+order to come up and stay at the market town four miles from which was
+the village in which his father practised. This frightened Griffiths;
+and he, this time, made use of the telegraph wires to tell her that she
+must do nothing of the kind. He promised to let her know the moment he
+came up to London, and, when he did, found that she had already been
+asking for him at the hospital at which he had an appointment. He did
+not like this, and, on seeing her, told Mildred that she was not to
+come there on any pretext; and now, after an absence of three weeks, he
+found that she bored him quite decidedly; he wondered why he had ever
+troubled about her, and made up his mind to break with her as soon as
+he could. He was a person who dreaded quarrels, nor did he want to give
+pain; but at the same time he had other things to do, and he was quite
+determined not to let Mildred bother him. When he met her he was
+pleasant, cheerful, amusing, affectionate; he invented convincing
+excuses for the interval since last he had seen her; but he did
+everything he could to avoid her. When she forced him to make
+appointments he sent telegrams to her at the last moment to put himself
+off; and his landlady (the first three months of his appointment he was
+spending in rooms) had orders to say he was out when Mildred called.
+She would waylay him in the street and, knowing she had been waiting
+about for him to come out of the hospital for a couple of hours, he
+would give her a few charming, friendly words and bolt off with the
+excuse that he had a business engagement. He grew very skilful in
+slipping out of the hospital unseen. Once, when he went back to his
+lodgings at midnight, he saw a woman standing at the area railings and
+suspecting who it was went to beg a shake-down in Ramsden’s rooms; next
+day the landlady told him that Mildred had sat crying on the doorsteps
+for hours, and she had been obliged to tell her at last that if she did
+not go away she would send for a policeman.
+
+“I tell you, my boy,” said Ramsden, “you’re jolly well out of it. Harry
+says that if he’d suspected for half a second she was going to make
+such a blooming nuisance of herself he’d have seen himself damned
+before he had anything to do with her.”
+
+Philip thought of her sitting on that doorstep through the long hours
+of the night. He saw her face as she looked up dully at the landlady
+who sent her away.
+
+“I wonder what she’s doing now.”
+
+“Oh, she’s got a job somewhere, thank God. That keeps her busy all
+day.”
+
+The last thing he heard, just before the end of the summer session, was
+that Griffiths, urbanity had given way at length under the exasperation
+of the constant persecution. He had told Mildred that he was sick of
+being pestered, and she had better take herself off and not bother him
+again.
+
+“It was the only thing he could do,” said Ramsden. “It was getting a
+bit too thick.”
+
+“Is it all over then?” asked Philip.
+
+“Oh, he hasn’t seen her for ten days. You know, Harry’s wonderful at
+dropping people. This is about the toughest nut he’s ever had to crack,
+but he’s cracked it all right.”
+
+Then Philip heard nothing more of her at all. She vanished into the
+vast anonymous mass of the population of London.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXI
+
+
+At the beginning of the winter session Philip became an out-patients’
+clerk. There were three assistant-physicians who took out-patients, two
+days a week each, and Philip put his name down for Dr. Tyrell. He was
+popular with the students, and there was some competition to be his
+clerk. Dr. Tyrell was a tall, thin man of thirty-five, with a very
+small head, red hair cut short, and prominent blue eyes: his face was
+bright scarlet. He talked well in a pleasant voice, was fond of a
+little joke, and treated the world lightly. He was a successful man,
+with a large consulting practice and a knighthood in prospect. From
+commerce with students and poor people he had the patronising air, and
+from dealing always with the sick he had the healthy man’s jovial
+condescension, which some consultants achieve as the professional
+manner. He made the patient feel like a boy confronted by a jolly
+schoolmaster; his illness was an absurd piece of naughtiness which
+amused rather than irritated.
+
+The student was supposed to attend in the out-patients’ room every day,
+see cases, and pick up what information he could; but on the days on
+which he clerked his duties were a little more definite. At that time
+the out-patients’ department at St. Luke’s consisted of three rooms,
+leading into one another, and a large, dark waiting-room with massive
+pillars of masonry and long benches. Here the patients waited after
+having been given their ‘letters’ at mid-day; and the long rows of
+them, bottles and gallipots in hand, some tattered and dirty, others
+decent enough, sitting in the dimness, men and women of all ages,
+children, gave one an impression which was weird and horrible. They
+suggested the grim drawings of Daumier. All the rooms were painted
+alike, in salmon-colour with a high dado of maroon; and there was in
+them an odour of disinfectants, mingling as the afternoon wore on with
+the crude stench of humanity. The first room was the largest and in the
+middle of it were a table and an office chair for the physician; on
+each side of this were two smaller tables, a little lower: at one of
+these sat the house-physician and at the other the clerk who took the
+‘book’ for the day. This was a large volume in which were written down
+the name, age, sex, profession, of the patient and the diagnosis of his
+disease.
+
+At half past one the house-physician came in, rang the bell, and told
+the porter to send in the old patients. There were always a good many
+of these, and it was necessary to get through as many of them as
+possible before Dr. Tyrell came at two. The H.P. with whom Philip came
+in contact was a dapper little man, excessively conscious of his
+importance: he treated the clerks with condescension and patently
+resented the familiarity of older students who had been his
+contemporaries and did not use him with the respect he felt his present
+position demanded. He set about the cases. A clerk helped him. The
+patients streamed in. The men came first. Chronic bronchitis, “a nasty
+’acking cough,” was what they chiefly suffered from; one went to the
+H.P. and the other to the clerk, handing in their letters: if they were
+going on well the words Rep 14 were written on them, and they went to
+the dispensary with their bottles or gallipots in order to have
+medicine given them for fourteen days more. Some old stagers held back
+so that they might be seen by the physician himself, but they seldom
+succeeded in this; and only three or four, whose condition seemed to
+demand his attention, were kept.
+
+Dr. Tyrell came in with quick movements and a breezy manner. He
+reminded one slightly of a clown leaping into the arena of a circus
+with the cry: Here we are again. His air seemed to indicate: What’s all
+this nonsense about being ill? I’ll soon put that right. He took his
+seat, asked if there were any old patients for him to see, rapidly
+passed them in review, looking at them with shrewd eyes as he discussed
+their symptoms, cracked a joke (at which all the clerks laughed
+heartily) with the H.P., who laughed heartily too but with an air as if
+he thought it was rather impudent for the clerks to laugh, remarked
+that it was a fine day or a hot one, and rang the bell for the porter
+to show in the new patients.
+
+They came in one by one and walked up to the table at which sat Dr.
+Tyrell. They were old men and young men and middle-aged men, mostly of
+the labouring class, dock labourers, draymen, factory hands, barmen;
+but some, neatly dressed, were of a station which was obviously
+superior, shop-assistants, clerks, and the like. Dr. Tyrell looked at
+these with suspicion. Sometimes they put on shabby clothes in order to
+pretend they were poor; but he had a keen eye to prevent what he
+regarded as fraud and sometimes refused to see people who, he thought,
+could well pay for medical attendance. Women were the worst offenders
+and they managed the thing more clumsily. They would wear a cloak and a
+skirt which were almost in rags, and neglect to take the rings off
+their fingers.
+
+“If you can afford to wear jewellery you can afford a doctor. A
+hospital is a charitable institution,” said Dr. Tyrell.
+
+He handed back the letter and called for the next case.
+
+“But I’ve got my letter.”
+
+“I don’t care a hang about your letter; you get out. You’ve got no
+business to come and steal the time which is wanted by the really
+poor.”
+
+The patient retired sulkily, with an angry scowl.
+
+“She’ll probably write a letter to the papers on the gross
+mismanagement of the London hospitals,” said Dr. Tyrell, with a smile,
+as he took the next paper and gave the patient one of his shrewd
+glances.
+
+Most of them were under the impression that the hospital was an
+institution of the state, for which they paid out of the rates, and
+took the attendance they received as a right they could claim. They
+imagined the physician who gave them his time was heavily paid.
+
+Dr. Tyrell gave each of his clerks a case to examine. The clerk took
+the patient into one of the inner rooms; they were smaller, and each
+had a couch in it covered with black horse-hair: he asked his patient a
+variety of questions, examined his lungs, his heart, and his liver,
+made notes of fact on the hospital letter, formed in his own mind some
+idea of the diagnosis, and then waited for Dr. Tyrell to come in. This
+he did, followed by a small crowd of students, when he had finished the
+men, and the clerk read out what he had learned. The physician asked
+him one or two questions, and examined the patient himself. If there
+was anything interesting to hear students applied their stethoscope:
+you would see a man with two or three to the chest, and two perhaps to
+his back, while others waited impatiently to listen. The patient stood
+among them a little embarrassed, but not altogether displeased to find
+himself the centre of attention: he listened confusedly while Dr.
+Tyrell discoursed glibly on the case. Two or three students listened
+again to recognise the murmur or the crepitation which the physician
+described, and then the man was told to put on his clothes.
+
+When the various cases had been examined Dr. Tyrell went back into the
+large room and sat down again at his desk. He asked any student who
+happened to be standing near him what he would prescribe for a patient
+he had just seen. The student mentioned one or two drugs.
+
+“Would you?” said Dr. Tyrell. “Well, that’s original at all events. I
+don’t think we’ll be rash.”
+
+This always made the students laugh, and with a twinkle of amusement at
+his own bright humour the physician prescribed some other drug than
+that which the student had suggested. When there were two cases of
+exactly the same sort and the student proposed the treatment which the
+physician had ordered for the first, Dr. Tyrell exercised considerable
+ingenuity in thinking of something else. Sometimes, knowing that in the
+dispensary they were worked off their legs and preferred to give the
+medicines which they had all ready, the good hospital mixtures which
+had been found by the experience of years to answer their purpose so
+well, he amused himself by writing an elaborate prescription.
+
+“We’ll give the dispenser something to do. If we go on prescribing
+mist: alb: he’ll lose his cunning.”
+
+The students laughed, and the doctor gave them a circular glance of
+enjoyment in his joke. Then he touched the bell and, when the porter
+poked his head in, said:
+
+“Old women, please.”
+
+He leaned back in his chair, chatting with the H.P. while the porter
+herded along the old patients. They came in, strings of anaemic girls,
+with large fringes and pallid lips, who could not digest their bad,
+insufficient food; old ladies, fat and thin, aged prematurely by
+frequent confinements, with winter coughs; women with this, that, and
+the other, the matter with them. Dr. Tyrell and his house-physician got
+through them quickly. Time was getting on, and the air in the small
+room was growing more sickly. The physician looked at his watch.
+
+“Are there many new women today?” he asked.
+
+“A good few, I think,” said the H.P.
+
+“We’d better have them in. You can go on with the old ones.”
+
+They entered. With the men the most common ailments were due to the
+excessive use of alcohol, but with the women they were due to defective
+nourishment. By about six o’clock they were finished. Philip, exhausted
+by standing all the time, by the bad air, and by the attention he had
+given, strolled over with his fellow-clerks to the Medical School to
+have tea. He found the work of absorbing interest. There was humanity
+there in the rough, the materials the artist worked on; and Philip felt
+a curious thrill when it occurred to him that he was in the position of
+the artist and the patients were like clay in his hands. He remembered
+with an amused shrug of the shoulders his life in Paris, absorbed in
+colour, tone, values, Heaven knows what, with the aim of producing
+beautiful things: the directness of contact with men and women gave a
+thrill of power which he had never known. He found an endless
+excitement in looking at their faces and hearing them speak; they came
+in each with his peculiarity, some shuffling uncouthly, some with a
+little trip, others with heavy, slow tread, some shyly. Often you could
+guess their trades by the look of them. You learnt in what way to put
+your questions so that they should be understood, you discovered on
+what subjects nearly all lied, and by what inquiries you could extort
+the truth notwithstanding. You saw the different way people took the
+same things. The diagnosis of dangerous illness would be accepted by
+one with a laugh and a joke, by another with dumb despair. Philip found
+that he was less shy with these people than he had ever been with
+others; he felt not exactly sympathy, for sympathy suggests
+condescension; but he felt at home with them. He found that he was able
+to put them at their ease, and, when he had been given a case to find
+out what he could about it, it seemed to him that the patient delivered
+himself into his hands with a peculiar confidence.
+
+“Perhaps,” he thought to himself, with a smile, “perhaps I’m cut out to
+be a doctor. It would be rather a lark if I’d hit upon the one thing
+I’m fit for.”
+
+It seemed to Philip that he alone of the clerks saw the dramatic
+interest of those afternoons. To the others men and women were only
+cases, good if they were complicated, tiresome if obvious; they heard
+murmurs and were astonished at abnormal livers; an unexpected sound in
+the lungs gave them something to talk about. But to Philip there was
+much more. He found an interest in just looking at them, in the shape
+of their heads and their hands, in the look of their eyes and the
+length of their noses. You saw in that room human nature taken by
+surprise, and often the mask of custom was torn off rudely, showing you
+the soul all raw. Sometimes you saw an untaught stoicism which was
+profoundly moving. Once Philip saw a man, rough and illiterate, told
+his case was hopeless; and, self-controlled himself, he wondered at the
+splendid instinct which forced the fellow to keep a stiff upper-lip
+before strangers. But was it possible for him to be brave when he was
+by himself, face to face with his soul, or would he then surrender to
+despair? Sometimes there was tragedy. Once a young woman brought her
+sister to be examined, a girl of eighteen, with delicate features and
+large blue eyes, fair hair that sparkled with gold when a ray of autumn
+sunshine touched it for a moment, and a skin of amazing beauty. The
+students’ eyes went to her with little smiles. They did not often see a
+pretty girl in these dingy rooms. The elder woman gave the family
+history, father and mother had died of phthisis, a brother and a
+sister, these two were the only ones left. The girl had been coughing
+lately and losing weight. She took off her blouse and the skin of her
+neck was like milk. Dr. Tyrell examined her quietly, with his usual
+rapid method; he told two or three of his clerks to apply their
+stethoscopes to a place he indicated with his finger; and then she was
+allowed to dress. The sister was standing a little apart and she spoke
+to him in a low voice, so that the girl should not hear. Her voice
+trembled with fear.
+
+“She hasn’t got it, doctor, has she?”
+
+“I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it.”
+
+“She was the last one. When she goes I shan’t have anybody.”
+
+She began to cry, while the doctor looked at her gravely; he thought
+she too had the type; she would not make old bones either. The girl
+turned round and saw her sister’s tears. She understood what they
+meant. The colour fled from her lovely face and tears fell down her
+cheeks. The two stood for a minute or two, crying silently, and then
+the older, forgetting the indifferent crowd that watched them, went up
+to her, took her in her arms, and rocked her gently to and fro as if
+she were a baby.
+
+When they were gone a student asked:
+
+“How long d’you think she’ll last, sir?”
+
+Dr. Tyrell shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Her brother and sister died within three months of the first symptoms.
+She’ll do the same. If they were rich one might do something. You can’t
+tell these people to go to St. Moritz. Nothing can be done for them.”
+
+Once a man who was strong and in all the power of his manhood came
+because a persistent aching troubled him and his club-doctor did not
+seem to do him any good; and the verdict for him too was death, not the
+inevitable death that horrified and yet was tolerable because science
+was helpless before it, but the death which was inevitable because the
+man was a little wheel in the great machine of a complex civilisation,
+and had as little power of changing the circumstances as an automaton.
+Complete rest was his only chance. The physician did not ask
+impossibilities.
+
+“You ought to get some very much lighter job.”
+
+“There ain’t no light jobs in my business.”
+
+“Well, if you go on like this you’ll kill yourself. You’re very ill.”
+
+“D’you mean to say I’m going to die?”
+
+“I shouldn’t like to say that, but you’re certainly unfit for hard
+work.”
+
+“If I don’t work who’s to keep the wife and the kids?”
+
+Dr. Tyrell shrugged his shoulders. The dilemma had been presented to
+him a hundred times. Time was pressing and there were many patients to
+be seen.
+
+“Well, I’ll give you some medicine and you can come back in a week and
+tell me how you’re getting on.”
+
+The man took his letter with the useless prescription written upon it
+and walked out. The doctor might say what he liked. He did not feel so
+bad that he could not go on working. He had a good job and he could not
+afford to throw it away.
+
+“I give him a year,” said Dr. Tyrell.
+
+Sometimes there was comedy. Now and then came a flash of cockney
+humour, now and then some old lady, a character such as Charles Dickens
+might have drawn, would amuse them by her garrulous oddities. Once a
+woman came who was a member of the ballet at a famous music-hall. She
+looked fifty, but gave her age as twenty-eight. She was outrageously
+painted and ogled the students impudently with large black eyes; her
+smiles were grossly alluring. She had abundant self-confidence and
+treated Dr. Tyrell, vastly amused, with the easy familiarity with which
+she might have used an intoxicated admirer. She had chronic bronchitis,
+and told him it hindered her in the exercise of her profession.
+
+“I don’t know why I should ’ave such a thing, upon my word I don’t.
+I’ve never ’ad a day’s illness in my life. You’ve only got to look at
+me to know that.”
+
+She rolled her eyes round the young men, with a long sweep of her
+painted eyelashes, and flashed her yellow teeth at them. She spoke with
+a cockney accent, but with an affectation of refinement which made
+every word a feast of fun.
+
+“It’s what they call a winter cough,” answered Dr. Tyrell gravely. “A
+great many middle-aged women have it.”
+
+“Well, I never! That is a nice thing to say to a lady. No one ever
+called me middle-aged before.”
+
+She opened her eyes very wide and cocked her head on one side, looking
+at him with indescribable archness.
+
+“That is the disadvantage of our profession,” said he. “It forces us
+sometimes to be ungallant.”
+
+She took the prescription and gave him one last, luscious smile.
+
+“You will come and see me dance, dearie, won’t you?”
+
+“I will indeed.”
+
+He rang the bell for the next case.
+
+“I am glad you gentlemen were here to protect me.”
+
+But on the whole the impression was neither of tragedy nor of comedy.
+There was no describing it. It was manifold and various; there were
+tears and laughter, happiness and woe; it was tedious and interesting
+and indifferent; it was as you saw it: it was tumultuous and
+passionate; it was grave; it was sad and comic; it was trivial; it was
+simple and complex; joy was there and despair; the love of mothers for
+their children, and of men for women; lust trailed itself through the
+rooms with leaden feet, punishing the guilty and the innocent, helpless
+wives and wretched children; drink seized men and women and cost its
+inevitable price; death sighed in these rooms; and the beginning of
+life, filling some poor girl with terror and shame, was diagnosed
+there. There was neither good nor bad there. There were just facts. It
+was life.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXII
+
+
+Towards the end of the year, when Philip was bringing to a close his
+three months as clerk in the out-patients’ department, he received a
+letter from Lawson, who was in Paris.
+
+Dear Philip,
+
+Cronshaw is in London and would be glad to see you. He is living at 43
+Hyde Street, Soho. I don’t know where it is, but I daresay you will be
+able to find out. Be a brick and look after him a bit. He is very down
+on his luck. He will tell you what he is doing. Things are going on
+here very much as usual. Nothing seems to have changed since you were
+here. Clutton is back, but he has become quite impossible. He has
+quarrelled with everybody. As far as I can make out he hasn’t got a
+cent, he lives in a little studio right away beyond the Jardin des
+Plantes, but he won’t let anybody see his work. He doesn’t show
+anywhere, so one doesn’t know what he is doing. He may be a genius, but
+on the other hand he may be off his head. By the way, I ran against
+Flanagan the other day. He was showing Mrs. Flanagan round the Quarter.
+He has chucked art and is now in popper’s business. He seems to be
+rolling. Mrs. Flanagan is very pretty and I’m trying to work a
+portrait. How much would you ask if you were me? I don’t want to
+frighten them, and then on the other hand I don’t want to be such an
+ass as to ask L150 if they’re quite willing to give L300.
+
+                                              Yours ever,
+                                                   Frederick Lawson.
+
+Philip wrote to Cronshaw and received in reply the following letter. It
+was written on a half-sheet of common note-paper, and the flimsy
+envelope was dirtier than was justified by its passage through the
+post.
+
+Dear Carey,
+
+Of course I remember you very well. I have an idea that I had some part
+in rescuing you from the Slough of Despond in which myself am
+hopelessly immersed. I shall be glad to see you. I am a stranger in a
+strange city and I am buffeted by the philistines. It will be pleasant
+to talk of Paris. I do not ask you to come and see me, since my lodging
+is not of a magnificence fit for the reception of an eminent member of
+Monsieur Purgon’s profession, but you will find me eating modestly any
+evening between seven and eight at a restaurant yclept Au Bon Plaisir
+in Dean Street.
+
+                                          Your sincere
+                                                  J. Cronshaw.
+
+Philip went the day he received this letter. The restaurant, consisting
+of one small room, was of the poorest class, and Cronshaw seemed to be
+its only customer. He was sitting in the corner, well away from
+draughts, wearing the same shabby great-coat which Philip had never
+seen him without, with his old bowler on his head.
+
+“I eat here because I can be alone,” he said. “They are not doing well;
+the only people who come are a few trollops and one or two waiters out
+of a job; they are giving up business, and the food is execrable. But
+the ruin of their fortunes is my advantage.”
+
+Cronshaw had before him a glass of absinthe. It was nearly three years
+since they had met, and Philip was shocked by the change in his
+appearance. He had been rather corpulent, but now he had a dried-up,
+yellow look: the skin of his neck was loose and winkled; his clothes
+hung about him as though they had been bought for someone else; and his
+collar, three or four sizes too large, added to the slatternliness of
+his appearance. His hands trembled continually. Philip remembered the
+handwriting which scrawled over the page with shapeless, haphazard
+letters. Cronshaw was evidently very ill.
+
+“I eat little these days,” he said. “I’m very sick in the morning. I’m
+just having some soup for my dinner, and then I shall have a bit of
+cheese.”
+
+Philip’s glance unconsciously went to the absinthe, and Cronshaw,
+seeing it, gave him the quizzical look with which he reproved the
+admonitions of common sense.
+
+“You have diagnosed my case, and you think it’s very wrong of me to
+drink absinthe.”
+
+“You’ve evidently got cirrhosis of the liver,” said Philip.
+
+“Evidently.”
+
+He looked at Philip in the way which had formerly had the power of
+making him feel incredibly narrow. It seemed to point out that what he
+was thinking was distressingly obvious; and when you have agreed with
+the obvious what more is there to say? Philip changed the topic.
+
+“When are you going back to Paris?”
+
+“I’m not going back to Paris. I’m going to die.”
+
+The very naturalness with which he said this startled Philip. He
+thought of half a dozen things to say, but they seemed futile. He knew
+that Cronshaw was a dying man.
+
+“Are you going to settle in London then?” he asked lamely.
+
+“What is London to me? I am a fish out of water. I walk through the
+crowded streets, men jostle me, and I seem to walk in a dead city. I
+felt that I couldn’t die in Paris. I wanted to die among my own people.
+I don’t know what hidden instinct drew me back at the last.”
+
+Philip knew of the woman Cronshaw had lived with and the two
+draggle-tailed children, but Cronshaw had never mentioned them to him,
+and he did not like to speak of them. He wondered what had happened to
+them.
+
+“I don’t know why you talk of dying,” he said.
+
+“I had pneumonia a couple of winters ago, and they told me then it was
+a miracle that I came through. It appears I’m extremely liable to it,
+and another bout will kill me.”
+
+“Oh, what nonsense! You’re not so bad as all that. You’ve only got to
+take precautions. Why don’t you give up drinking?”
+
+“Because I don’t choose. It doesn’t matter what a man does if he’s
+ready to take the consequences. Well, I’m ready to take the
+consequences. You talk glibly of giving up drinking, but it’s the only
+thing I’ve got left now. What do you think life would be to me without
+it? Can you understand the happiness I get out of my absinthe? I yearn
+for it; and when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel
+my soul swimming in ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a
+puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual
+pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man
+blessed with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul. I
+have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay.”
+
+Philip looked at him for a while steadily.
+
+“Aren’t you afraid?”
+
+For a moment Cronshaw did not answer. He seemed to consider his reply.
+
+“Sometimes, when I’m alone.” He looked at Philip. “You think that’s a
+condemnation? You’re wrong. I’m not afraid of my fear. It’s folly, the
+Christian argument that you should live always in view of your death.
+The only way to live is to forget that you’re going to die. Death is
+unimportant. The fear of it should never influence a single action of
+the wise man. I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know
+that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to
+keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to
+such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased,
+poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.”
+
+“D’you remember that Persian carpet you gave me?” asked Philip.
+
+Cronshaw smiled his old, slow smile of past days.
+
+“I told you that it would give you an answer to your question when you
+asked me what was the meaning of life. Well, have you discovered the
+answer?”
+
+“No,” smiled Philip. “Won’t you tell it me?”
+
+“No, no, I can’t do that. The answer is meaningless unless you discover
+it for yourself.”
+
+
+
+
+LXXXIII
+
+
+Cronshaw was publishing his poems. His friends had been urging him to
+do this for years, but his laziness made it impossible for him to take
+the necessary steps. He had always answered their exhortations by
+telling them that the love of poetry was dead in England. You brought
+out a book which had cost you years of thought and labour; it was given
+two or three contemptuous lines among a batch of similar volumes,
+twenty or thirty copies were sold, and the rest of the edition was
+pulped. He had long since worn out the desire for fame. That was an
+illusion like all else. But one of his friends had taken the matter
+into his own hands. This was a man of letters, named Leonard Upjohn,
+whom Philip had met once or twice with Cronshaw in the cafes of the
+Quarter. He had a considerable reputation in England as a critic and
+was the accredited exponent in this country of modern French
+literature. He had lived a good deal in France among the men who made
+the Mercure de France the liveliest review of the day, and by the
+simple process of expressing in English their point of view he had
+acquired in England a reputation for originality. Philip had read some
+of his articles. He had formed a style for himself by a close imitation
+of Sir Thomas Browne; he used elaborate sentences, carefully balanced,
+and obsolete, resplendent words: it gave his writing an appearance of
+individuality. Leonard Upjohn had induced Cronshaw to give him all his
+poems and found that there were enough to make a volume of reasonable
+size. He promised to use his influence with publishers. Cronshaw was in
+want of money. Since his illness he had found it more difficult than
+ever to work steadily; he made barely enough to keep himself in liquor;
+and when Upjohn wrote to him that this publisher and the other, though
+admiring the poems, thought it not worth while to publish them,
+Cronshaw began to grow interested. He wrote impressing upon Upjohn his
+great need and urging him to make more strenuous efforts. Now that he
+was going to die he wanted to leave behind him a published book, and at
+the back of his mind was the feeling that he had produced great poetry.
+He expected to burst upon the world like a new star. There was
+something fine in keeping to himself these treasures of beauty all his
+life and giving them to the world disdainfully when, he and the world
+parting company, he had no further use for them.
+
+His decision to come to England was caused directly by an announcement
+from Leonard Upjohn that a publisher had consented to print the poems.
+By a miracle of persuasion Upjohn had persuaded him to give ten pounds
+in advance of royalties.
+
+“In advance of royalties, mind you,” said Cronshaw to Philip. “Milton
+only got ten pounds down.”
+
+Upjohn had promised to write a signed article about them, and he would
+ask his friends who reviewed to do their best. Cronshaw pretended to
+treat the matter with detachment, but it was easy to see that he was
+delighted with the thought of the stir he would make.
+
+One day Philip went to dine by arrangement at the wretched eating-house
+at which Cronshaw insisted on taking his meals, but Cronshaw did not
+appear. Philip learned that he had not been there for three days. He
+got himself something to eat and went round to the address from which
+Cronshaw had first written to him. He had some difficulty in finding
+Hyde Street. It was a street of dingy houses huddled together; many of
+the windows had been broken and were clumsily repaired with strips of
+French newspaper; the doors had not been painted for years; there were
+shabby little shops on the ground floor, laundries, cobblers,
+stationers. Ragged children played in the road, and an old barrel-organ
+was grinding out a vulgar tune. Philip knocked at the door of
+Cronshaw’s house (there was a shop of cheap sweetstuffs at the bottom),
+and it was opened by an elderly Frenchwoman in a dirty apron. Philip
+asked her if Cronshaw was in.
+
+“Ah, yes, there is an Englishman who lives at the top, at the back. I
+don’t know if he’s in. If you want him you had better go up and see.”
+
+The staircase was lit by one jet of gas. There was a revolting odour in
+the house. When Philip was passing up a woman came out of a room on the
+first floor, looked at him suspiciously, but made no remark. There were
+three doors on the top landing. Philip knocked at one, and knocked
+again; there was no reply; he tried the handle, but the door was
+locked. He knocked at another door, got no answer, and tried the door
+again. It opened. The room was dark.
+
+“Who’s that?”
+
+He recognised Cronshaw’s voice.
+
+“Carey. Can I come in?”
+
+He received no answer. He walked in. The window was closed and the
+stink was overpowering. There was a certain amount of light from the
+arc-lamp in the street, and he saw that it was a small room with two
+beds in it, end to end; there was a washing-stand and one chair, but
+they left little space for anyone to move in. Cronshaw was in the bed
+nearest the window. He made no movement, but gave a low chuckle.
+
+“Why don’t you light the candle?” he said then.
+
+Philip struck a match and discovered that there was a candlestick on
+the floor beside the bed. He lit it and put it on the washing-stand.
+Cronshaw was lying on his back immobile; he looked very odd in his
+nightshirt; and his baldness was disconcerting. His face was earthy and
+death-like.
+
+“I say, old man, you look awfully ill. Is there anyone to look after
+you here?”
+
+“George brings me in a bottle of milk in the morning before he goes to
+his work.”
+
+“Who’s George?”
+
+“I call him George because his name is Adolphe. He shares this palatial
+apartment with me.”
+
+Philip noticed then that the second bed had not been made since it was
+slept in. The pillow was black where the head had rested.
+
+“You don’t mean to say you’re sharing this room with somebody else?” he
+cried.
+
+“Why not? Lodging costs money in Soho. George is a waiter, he goes out
+at eight in the morning and does not come in till closing time, so he
+isn’t in my way at all. We neither of us sleep well, and he helps to
+pass away the hours of the night by telling me stories of his life.
+He’s a Swiss, and I’ve always had a taste for waiters. They see life
+from an entertaining angle.”
+
+“How long have you been in bed?”
+
+“Three days.”
+
+“D’you mean to say you’ve had nothing but a bottle of milk for the last
+three days? Why on earth didn’t you send me a line? I can’t bear to
+think of you lying here all day long without a soul to attend to you.”
+
+Cronshaw gave a little laugh.
+
+“Look at your face. Why, dear boy, I really believe you’re distressed.
+You nice fellow.”
+
+Philip blushed. He had not suspected that his face showed the dismay he
+felt at the sight of that horrible room and the wretched circumstances
+of the poor poet. Cronshaw, watching Philip, went on with a gentle
+smile.
+
+“I’ve been quite happy. Look, here are my proofs. Remember that I am
+indifferent to discomforts which would harass other folk. What do the
+circumstances of life matter if your dreams make you lord paramount of
+time and space?”
+
+The proofs were lying on his bed, and as he lay in the darkness he had
+been able to place his hands on them. He showed them to Philip and his
+eyes glowed. He turned over the pages, rejoicing in the clear type; he
+read out a stanza.
+
+“They don’t look bad, do they?”
+
+Philip had an idea. It would involve him in a little expense and he
+could not afford even the smallest increase of expenditure; but on the
+other hand this was a case where it revolted him to think of economy.
+
+“I say, I can’t bear the thought of your remaining here. I’ve got an
+extra room, it’s empty at present, but I can easily get someone to lend
+me a bed. Won’t you come and live with me for a while? It’ll save you
+the rent of this.”
+
+“Oh, my dear boy, you’d insist on my keeping my window open.”
+
+“You shall have every window in the place sealed if you like.”
+
+“I shall be all right tomorrow. I could have got up today, only I felt
+lazy.”
+
+“Then you can very easily make the move. And then if you don’t feel
+well at any time you can just go to bed, and I shall be there to look
+after you.”
+
+“If it’ll please you I’ll come,” said Cronshaw, with his torpid not
+unpleasant smile.
+
+“That’ll be ripping.”
+
+They settled that Philip should fetch Cronshaw next day, and Philip
+snatched an hour from his busy morning to arrange the change. He found
+Cronshaw dressed, sitting in his hat and great-coat on the bed, with a
+small, shabby portmanteau, containing his clothes and books, already
+packed: it was on the floor by his feet, and he looked as if he were
+sitting in the waiting-room of a station. Philip laughed at the sight
+of him. They went over to Kennington in a four-wheeler, of which the
+windows were carefully closed, and Philip installed his guest in his
+own room. He had gone out early in the morning and bought for himself a
+second-hand bedstead, a cheap chest of drawers, and a looking-glass.
+Cronshaw settled down at once to correct his proofs. He was much
+better.
+
+Philip found him, except for the irritability which was a symptom of
+his disease, an easy guest. He had a lecture at nine in the morning, so
+did not see Cronshaw till the night. Once or twice Philip persuaded him
+to share the scrappy meal he prepared for himself in the evening, but
+Cronshaw was too restless to stay in, and preferred generally to get
+himself something to eat in one or other of the cheapest restaurants in
+Soho. Philip asked him to see Dr. Tyrell, but he stoutly refused; he
+knew a doctor would tell him to stop drinking, and this he was resolved
+not to do. He always felt horribly ill in the morning, but his absinthe
+at mid-day put him on his feet again, and by the time he came home, at
+midnight, he was able to talk with the brilliancy which had astonished
+Philip when first he made his acquaintance. His proofs were corrected;
+and the volume was to come out among the publications of the early
+spring, when the public might be supposed to have recovered from the
+avalanche of Christmas books.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXIV
+
+
+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 exuberant joviality, 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.
+
+“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.
+
+“It’s only for the looks of the thing, you know,” he said to Philip. “I
+don’t find it no trouble.”
+
+“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.
+
+“I suppose you’ve got talipes equinus?” he said, turning suddenly to
+Philip.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+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 admirable perspicacity 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.
+
+“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.
+
+“Not a bit,” he said.
+
+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.
+
+“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:
+
+“Yes, that’s what I thought. I see you’ve had an operation. When you
+were a child, I suppose?”
+
+He went on with his fluent explanations. The students leaned over and
+looked at the foot. Two or three examined it minutely when Jacobs let
+it go.
+
+“When you’ve quite done,” said Philip, with a smile, ironically.
+
+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.
+
+“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.
+
+“It’s dreadful to think of that great poet alone. Why, he might die
+without a soul at hand.”
+
+“I think he very probably will,” said Philip.
+
+“How can you be so callous!”
+
+“Why don’t you come and do your work here every day, and then you’d be
+near if he wanted anything?” asked Philip drily.
+
+“I? My dear fellow, I can only work in the surroundings I’m used to,
+and besides I go out so much.”
+
+Upjohn was also a little put out because Philip had brought Cronshaw to
+his own rooms.
+
+“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 sordid attic. 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.
+
+“The fact is that Carey has no sense of beauty,” he smiled. “He has a
+middle-class mind.”
+
+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.”
+
+“It’s a rare and exquisite privilege which I can ill afford,” said
+Philip.
+
+Whenever there was any question of money, Leonard Upjohn assumed a
+slightly disdainful expression. His sensitive temperament was offended
+by the reference.
+
+“There’s something fine in Cronshaw’s attitude, and you disturb it by
+your importunity. You should make allowances for the delicate
+imaginings which you cannot feel.”
+
+Philip’s face darkened.
+
+“Let us go in to Cronshaw,” he said frigidly.
+
+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.
+
+“Upjohn tells me you’ve been complaining to him because I’ve urged you
+to have a doctor,” he said. “I want you to have a doctor, because you
+may die any day, and if you hadn’t been seen by anyone I shouldn’t be
+able to get a certificate. There’d have to be an inquest and I should
+be blamed for not calling a doctor in.”
+
+“I hadn’t thought of that. I thought you wanted me to see a doctor for
+my sake and not for your own. I’ll see a doctor whenever you like.”
+
+Philip did not answer, but gave an almost imperceptible shrug of the
+shoulders. Cronshaw, watching him, gave a little chuckle.
+
+“Don’t look so angry, my dear. I know very well you want to do
+everything you can for me. Let’s see your doctor, perhaps he can do
+something for me, and at any rate it’ll comfort you.” He turned his
+eyes to Upjohn. “You’re a damned fool, Leonard. Why d’you want to worry
+the boy? He has quite enough to do to put up with me. You’ll do nothing
+more for me than write a pretty article about me after my death. I know
+you.”
+
+Next day Philip went to Dr. Tyrell. He felt that he was the sort of man
+to be interested by the story, and as soon as Tyrell was free of his
+day’s work he accompanied Philip to Kennington. He could only agree
+with what Philip had told him. The case was hopeless.
+
+“I’ll take him into the hospital if you like,” he said. “He can have a
+small ward.”
+
+“Nothing would induce him to come.”
+
+“You know, he may die any minute, or else he may get another attack of
+pneumonia.”
+
+Philip nodded. Dr. Tyrell made one or two suggestions, and promised to
+come again whenever Philip wanted him to. He left his address. When
+Philip went back to Cronshaw he found him quietly reading. He did not
+trouble to inquire what the doctor had said.
+
+“Are you satisfied now, dear boy?” he asked.
+
+“I suppose nothing will induce you to do any of the things Tyrell
+advised?”
+
+“Nothing,” smiled Cronshaw.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXV
+
+
+About a fortnight after this Philip, going home one evening after his
+day’s work at the hospital, knocked at the door of Cronshaw’s room. He
+got no answer and walked in. Cronshaw was lying huddled up on one side,
+and Philip went up to the bed. He did not know whether Cronshaw was
+asleep or merely lay there in one of his uncontrollable fits of
+irritability. He was surprised to see that his mouth was open. He
+touched his shoulder. Philip gave a cry of dismay. He slipped his hand
+under Cronshaw’s shirt and felt his heart; he did not know what to do;
+helplessly, because he had heard of this being done, he held a
+looking-glass in front of his mouth. It startled him to be alone with
+Cronshaw. He had his hat and coat still on, and he ran down the stairs
+into the street; he hailed a cab and drove to Harley Street. Dr. Tyrell
+was in.
+
+“I say, would you mind coming at once? I think Cronshaw’s dead.”
+
+“If he is it’s not much good my coming, is it?”
+
+“I should be awfully grateful if you would. I’ve got a cab at the door.
+It’ll only take half an hour.”
+
+Tyrell put on his hat. In the cab he asked him one or two questions.
+
+“He seemed no worse than usual when I left this morning,” said Philip.
+“It gave me an awful shock when I went in just now. And the thought of
+his dying all alone…. D’you think he knew he was going to die?”
+
+Philip remembered what Cronshaw had said. He wondered whether at that
+last moment he had been seized with the terror of death. Philip
+imagined himself in such a plight, knowing it was inevitable and with
+no one, not a soul, to give an encouraging word when the fear seized
+him.
+
+“You’re rather upset,” said Dr. Tyrell.
+
+He looked at him with his bright blue eyes. They were not
+unsympathetic. When he saw Cronshaw, he said:
+
+“He must have been dead for some hours. I should think he died in his
+sleep. They do sometimes.”
+
+The body looked shrunk and ignoble. It was not like anything human. Dr.
+Tyrell looked at it dispassionately. With a mechanical gesture he took
+out his watch.
+
+“Well, I must be getting along. I’ll send the certificate round. I
+suppose you’ll communicate with the relatives.”
+
+“I don’t think there are any,” said Philip.
+
+“How about the funeral?”
+
+“Oh, I’ll see to that.”
+
+Dr. Tyrell gave Philip a glance. He wondered whether he ought to offer
+a couple of sovereigns towards it. He knew nothing of Philip’s
+circumstances; perhaps he could well afford the expense; Philip might
+think it impertinent if he made any suggestion.
+
+“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do,” he said.
+
+Philip and he went out together, parting on the doorstep, and Philip
+went to a telegraph office in order to send a message to Leonard
+Upjohn. Then he went to an undertaker whose shop he passed every day on
+his way to the hospital. His attention had been drawn to it often by
+the three words in silver lettering on a black cloth, which, with two
+model coffins, adorned the window: Economy, Celerity, Propriety. They
+had always diverted him. The undertaker was a little fat Jew with curly
+black hair, long and greasy, in black, with a large diamond ring on a
+podgy finger. He received Philip with a peculiar manner formed by the
+mingling of his natural blatancy with the subdued air proper to his
+calling. He quickly saw that Philip was very helpless and promised to
+send round a woman at once to perform the needful offices. His
+suggestions for the funeral were very magnificent; and Philip felt
+ashamed of himself when the undertaker seemed to think his objections
+mean. It was horrible to haggle on such a matter, and finally Philip
+consented to an expensiveness which he could ill afford.
+
+“I quite understand, sir,” said the undertaker, “you don’t want any
+show and that—I’m not a believer in ostentation myself, mind you—but
+you want it done gentlemanly-like. You leave it to me, I’ll do it as
+cheap as it can be done, ’aving regard to what’s right and proper. I
+can’t say more than that, can I?”
+
+Philip went home to eat his supper, and while he ate the woman came
+along to lay out the corpse. Presently a telegram arrived from Leonard
+Upjohn.
+
+Shocked and grieved beyond measure. Regret cannot come tonight. Dining
+out. With you early tomorrow. Deepest sympathy. Upjohn.
+
+In a little while the woman knocked at the door of the sitting-room.
+
+“I’ve done now, sir. Will you come and look at ’im and see it’s all
+right?”
+
+Philip followed her. Cronshaw was lying on his back, with his eyes
+closed and his hands folded piously across his chest.
+
+“You ought by rights to ’ave a few flowers, sir.”
+
+“I’ll get some tomorrow.”
+
+She gave the body a glance of satisfaction. She had performed her job,
+and now she rolled down her sleeves, took off her apron, and put on her
+bonnet. Philip asked her how much he owed her.
+
+“Well, sir, some give me two and sixpence and some give me five
+shillings.”
+
+Philip was ashamed to give her less than the larger sum. She thanked
+him with just so much effusiveness as was seemly in presence of the
+grief he might be supposed to feel, and left him. Philip went back into
+his sitting-room, cleared away the remains of his supper, and sat down
+to read Walsham’s Surgery. He found it difficult. He felt singularly
+nervous. When there was a sound on the stairs he jumped, and his heart
+beat violently. That thing in the adjoining room, which had been a man
+and now was nothing, frightened him. The silence seemed alive, as if
+some mysterious movement were taking place within it; the presence of
+death weighed upon these rooms, unearthly and terrifying: Philip felt a
+sudden horror for what had once been his friend. He tried to force
+himself to read, but presently pushed away his book in despair. What
+troubled him was the absolute futility of the life which had just
+ended. It did not matter if Cronshaw was alive or dead. It would have
+been just as well if he had never lived. Philip thought of Cronshaw
+young; and it needed an effort of imagination to picture him slender,
+with a springing step, and with hair on his head, buoyant and hopeful.
+Philip’s rule of life, to follow one’s instincts with due regard to the
+policeman round the corner, had not acted very well there: it was
+because Cronshaw had done this that he had made such a lamentable
+failure of existence. It seemed that the instincts could not be
+trusted. Philip was puzzled, and he asked himself what rule of life was
+there, if that one was useless, and why people acted in one way rather
+than in another. They acted according to their emotions, but their
+emotions might be good or bad; it seemed just a chance whether they led
+to triumph or disaster. Life seemed an inextricable confusion. Men
+hurried hither and thither, urged by forces they knew not; and the
+purpose of it all escaped them; they seemed to hurry just for
+hurrying’s sake.
+
+Next morning Leonard Upjohn appeared with a small wreath of laurel. He
+was pleased with his idea of crowning the dead poet with this; and
+attempted, notwithstanding Philip’s disapproving silence, to fix it on
+the bald head; but the wreath fitted grotesquely. It looked like the
+brim of a hat worn by a low comedian in a music-hall.
+
+“I’ll put it over his heart instead,” said Upjohn.
+
+“You’ve put it on his stomach,” remarked Philip.
+
+Upjohn gave a thin smile.
+
+“Only a poet knows where lies a poet’s heart,” he answered.
+
+They went back into the sitting-room, and Philip told him what
+arrangements he had made for the funeral.
+
+“I hoped you’ve spared no expense. I should like the hearse to be
+followed by a long string of empty coaches, and I should like the
+horses to wear tall nodding plumes, and there should be a vast number
+of mutes with long streamers on their hats. I like the thought of all
+those empty coaches.”
+
+“As the cost of the funeral will apparently fall on me and I’m not over
+flush just now, I’ve tried to make it as moderate as possible.”
+
+“But, my dear fellow, in that case, why didn’t you get him a pauper’s
+funeral? There would have been something poetic in that. You have an
+unerring instinct for mediocrity.”
+
+Philip flushed a little, but did not answer; and next day he and Upjohn
+followed the hearse in the one carriage which Philip had ordered.
+Lawson, unable to come, had sent a wreath; and Philip, so that the
+coffin should not seem too neglected, had bought a couple. On the way
+back the coachman whipped up his horses. Philip was dog-tired and
+presently went to sleep. He was awakened by Upjohn’s voice.
+
+“It’s rather lucky the poems haven’t come out yet. I think we’d better
+hold them back a bit and I’ll write a preface. I began thinking of it
+during the drive to the cemetery. I believe I can do something rather
+good. Anyhow I’ll start with an article in The Saturday.”
+
+Philip did not reply, and there was silence between them. At last
+Upjohn said:
+
+“I daresay I’d be wiser not to whittle away my copy. I think I’ll do an
+article for one of the reviews, and then I can just print it afterwards
+as a preface.”
+
+Philip kept his eye on the monthlies, and a few weeks later it
+appeared. The article made something of a stir, and extracts from it
+were printed in many of the papers. It was a very good article, vaguely
+biographical, for no one knew much of Cronshaw’s early life, but
+delicate, tender, and picturesque. Leonard Upjohn in his intricate
+style drew graceful little pictures of Cronshaw in the Latin Quarter,
+talking, writing poetry: Cronshaw became a picturesque figure, an
+English Verlaine; and Leonard Upjohn’s coloured phrases took on a
+tremulous dignity, a more pathetic grandiloquence, as he described the
+sordid end, the shabby little room in Soho; and, with a reticence which
+was wholly charming and suggested a much greater generosity than
+modesty allowed him to state, the efforts he made to transport the Poet
+to some cottage embowered with honeysuckle amid a flowering orchard.
+And the lack of sympathy, well-meaning but so tactless, which had taken
+the poet instead to the vulgar respectability of Kennington! Leonard
+Upjohn described Kennington with that restrained humour which a strict
+adherence to the vocabulary of Sir Thomas Browne necessitated. With
+delicate sarcasm he narrated the last weeks, the patience with which
+Cronshaw bore the well-meaning clumsiness of the young student who had
+appointed himself his nurse, and the pitifulness of that divine
+vagabond in those hopelessly middle-class surroundings. Beauty from
+ashes, he quoted from Isaiah. It was a triumph of irony for that
+outcast poet to die amid the trappings of vulgar respectability; it
+reminded Leonard Upjohn of Christ among the Pharisees, and the analogy
+gave him opportunity for an exquisite passage. And then he told how a
+friend—his good taste did not suffer him more than to hint subtly who
+the friend was with such gracious fancies—had laid a laurel wreath on
+the dead poet’s heart; and the beautiful dead hands had seemed to rest
+with a voluptuous passion upon Apollo’s leaves, fragrant with the
+fragrance of art, and more green than jade brought by swart mariners
+from the manifold, inexplicable China. And, an admirable contrast, the
+article ended with a description of the middle-class, ordinary, prosaic
+funeral of him who should have been buried like a prince or like a
+pauper. It was the crowning buffet, the final victory of Philistia over
+art, beauty, and immaterial things.
+
+Leonard Upjohn had never written anything better. It was a miracle of
+charm, grace, and pity. He printed all Cronshaw’s best poems in the
+course of the article, so that when the volume appeared much of its
+point was gone; but he advanced his own position a good deal. He was
+thenceforth a critic to be reckoned with. He had seemed before a little
+aloof; but there was a warm humanity about this article which was
+infinitely attractive.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXVI
+
+
+In the spring Philip, having finished his dressing in the out-patients’
+department, became an in-patients’ clerk. This appointment lasted six
+months. The clerk spent every morning in the wards, first in the men’s,
+then in the women’s, with the house-physician; he wrote up cases, made
+tests, and passed the time of day with the nurses. On two afternoons a
+week the physician in charge went round with a little knot of students,
+examined the cases, and dispensed information. The work had not the
+excitement, the constant change, the intimate contact with reality, of
+the work in the out-patients’ department; but Philip picked up a good
+deal of knowledge. He got on very well with the patients, and he was a
+little flattered at the pleasure they showed in his attendance on them.
+He was not conscious of any deep sympathy in their sufferings, but he
+liked them; and because he put on no airs he was more popular with them
+than others of the clerks. He was pleasant, encouraging, and friendly.
+Like everyone connected with hospitals he found that male patients were
+more easy to get on with than female. The women were often querulous
+and ill-tempered. They complained bitterly of the hard-worked nurses,
+who did not show them the attention they thought their right; and they
+were troublesome, ungrateful, and rude.
+
+Presently Philip was fortunate enough to make a friend. One morning the
+house-physician gave him a new case, a man; and, seating himself at the
+bedside, Philip proceeded to write down particulars on the ‘letter.’ He
+noticed on looking at this that the patient was described as a
+journalist: his name was Thorpe Athelny, an unusual one for a hospital
+patient, and his age was forty-eight. He was suffering from a sharp
+attack of jaundice, and had been taken into the ward on account of
+obscure symptoms which it seemed necessary to watch. He answered the
+various questions which it was Philip’s duty to ask him in a pleasant,
+educated voice. Since he was lying in bed it was difficult to tell if
+he was short or tall, but his small head and small hands suggested that
+he was a man of less than average height. Philip had the habit of
+looking at people’s hands, and Athelny’s astonished him: they were very
+small, with long, tapering fingers and beautiful, rosy finger-nails;
+they were very smooth and except for the jaundice would have been of a
+surprising whiteness. The patient kept them outside the bed-clothes,
+one of them slightly spread out, the second and third fingers together,
+and, while he spoke to Philip, seemed to contemplate them with
+satisfaction. With a twinkle in his eyes Philip glanced at the man’s
+face. Notwithstanding the yellowness it was distinguished; he had blue
+eyes, a nose of an imposing boldness, hooked, aggressive but not
+clumsy, and a small beard, pointed and gray: he was rather bald, but
+his hair had evidently been quite fine, curling prettily, and he still
+wore it long.
+
+“I see you’re a journalist,” said Philip. “What papers d’you write
+for?”
+
+“I write for all the papers. You cannot open a paper without seeing
+some of my writing.” There was one by the side of the bed and reaching
+for it he pointed out an advertisement. In large letters was the name
+of a firm well-known to Philip, Lynn and Sedley, Regent Street, London;
+and below, in type smaller but still of some magnitude, was the
+dogmatic statement: Procrastination is the Thief of Time. Then a
+question, startling because of its reasonableness: Why not order today?
+There was a repetition, in large letters, like the hammering of
+conscience on a murderer’s heart: Why not? Then, boldly: Thousands of
+pairs of gloves from the leading markets of the world at astounding
+prices. Thousands of pairs of stockings from the most reliable
+manufacturers of the universe at sensational reductions. Finally the
+question recurred, but flung now like a challenging gauntlet in the
+lists: Why not order today?
+
+“I’m the press representative of Lynn and Sedley.” He gave a little
+wave of his beautiful hand. “To what base uses…”
+
+Philip went on asking the regulation questions, some a mere matter of
+routine, others artfully devised to lead the patient to discover things
+which he might be expected to desire to conceal.
+
+“Have you ever lived abroad?” asked Philip.
+
+“I was in Spain for eleven years.”
+
+“What were you doing there?”
+
+“I was secretary of the English water company at Toledo.”
+
+Philip remembered that Clutton had spent some months in Toledo, and the
+journalist’s answer made him look at him with more interest; but he
+felt it would be improper to show this: it was necessary to preserve
+the distance between the hospital patient and the staff. When he had
+finished his examination he went on to other beds.
+
+Thorpe Athelny’s illness was not grave, and, though remaining very
+yellow, he soon felt much better: he stayed in bed only because the
+physician thought he should be kept under observation till certain
+reactions became normal. One day, on entering the ward, Philip noticed
+that Athelny, pencil in hand, was reading a book. He put it down when
+Philip came to his bed.
+
+“May I see what you’re reading?” asked Philip, who could never pass a
+book without looking at it.
+
+Philip took it up and saw that it was a volume of Spanish verse, the
+poems of San Juan de la Cruz, and as he opened it a sheet of paper fell
+out. Philip picked it up and noticed that verse was written upon it.
+
+“You’re not going to tell me you’ve been occupying your leisure in
+writing poetry? That’s a most improper proceeding in a hospital
+patient.”
+
+“I was trying to do some translations. D’you know Spanish?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Well, you know all about San Juan de la Cruz, don’t you?”
+
+“I don’t indeed.”
+
+“He was one of the Spanish mystics. He’s one of the best poets they’ve
+ever had. I thought it would be worth while translating him into
+English.”
+
+“May I look at your translation?”
+
+“It’s very rough,” said Athelny, but he gave it to Philip with an
+alacrity which suggested that he was eager for him to read it.
+
+It was written in pencil, in a fine but very peculiar handwriting,
+which was hard to read: it was just like black letter.
+
+“Doesn’t it take you an awful time to write like that? It’s wonderful.”
+
+“I don’t know why handwriting shouldn’t be beautiful.” Philip read the
+first verse:
+
+             In an obscure night
+             With anxious love inflamed
+             O happy lot!
+             Forth unobserved I went,
+             My house being now at rest…
+
+Philip looked curiously at Thorpe Athelny. He did not know whether he
+felt a little shy with him or was attracted by him. He was conscious
+that his manner had been slightly patronising, and he flushed as it
+struck him that Athelny might have thought him ridiculous.
+
+“What an unusual name you’ve got,” he remarked, for something to say.
+
+“It’s a very old Yorkshire name. Once it took the head of my family a
+day’s hard riding to make the circuit of his estates, but the mighty
+are fallen. Fast women and slow horses.”
+
+He was short-sighted and when he spoke looked at you with a peculiar
+intensity. He took up his volume of poetry.
+
+“You should read Spanish,” he said. “It is a noble tongue. It has not
+the mellifluousness of Italian, Italian is the language of tenors and
+organ-grinders, but it has grandeur: it does not ripple like a brook in
+a garden, but it surges tumultuous like a mighty river in flood.”
+
+His grandiloquence amused Philip, but he was sensitive to rhetoric; and
+he listened with pleasure while Athelny, with picturesque expressions
+and the fire of a real enthusiasm, described to him the rich delight of
+reading Don Quixote in the original and the music, romantic, limpid,
+passionate, of the enchanting Calderon.
+
+“I must get on with my work,” said Philip presently.
+
+“Oh, forgive me, I forgot. I will tell my wife to bring me a photograph
+of Toledo, and I will show it you. Come and talk to me when you have
+the chance. You don’t know what a pleasure it gives me.”
+
+During the next few days, in moments snatched whenever there was
+opportunity, Philip’s acquaintance with the journalist increased.
+Thorpe Athelny was a good talker. He did not say brilliant things, but
+he talked inspiringly, with an eager vividness which fired the
+imagination; Philip, living so much in a world of make-believe, found
+his fancy teeming with new pictures. Athelny had very good manners. He
+knew much more than Philip, both of the world and of books; he was a
+much older man; and the readiness of his conversation gave him a
+certain superiority; but he was in the hospital a recipient of charity,
+subject to strict rules; and he held himself between the two positions
+with ease and humour. Once Philip asked him why he had come to the
+hospital.
+
+“Oh, my principle is to profit by all the benefits that society
+provides. I take advantage of the age I live in. When I’m ill I get
+myself patched up in a hospital and I have no false shame, and I send
+my children to be educated at the board-school.”
+
+“Do you really?” said Philip.
+
+“And a capital education they get too, much better than I got at
+Winchester. How else do you think I could educate them at all? I’ve got
+nine. You must come and see them all when I get home again. Will you?”
+
+“I’d like to very much,” said Philip.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXVII
+
+
+Ten days later Thorpe Athelny was well enough to leave the hospital. He
+gave Philip his address, and Philip promised to dine with him at one
+o’clock on the following Sunday. Athelny had told him that he lived in
+a house built by Inigo Jones; he had raved, as he raved over
+everything, over the balustrade of old oak; and when he came down to
+open the door for Philip he made him at once admire the elegant carving
+of the lintel. It was a shabby house, badly needing a coat of paint,
+but with the dignity of its period, in a little street between Chancery
+Lane and Holborn, which had once been fashionable but was now little
+better than a slum: there was a plan to pull it down in order to put up
+handsome offices; meanwhile the rents were small, and Athelny was able
+to get the two upper floors at a price which suited his income. Philip
+had not seen him up before and was surprised at his small size; he was
+not more than five feet and five inches high. He was dressed
+fantastically in blue linen trousers of the sort worn by working men in
+France, and a very old brown velvet coat; he wore a bright red sash
+round his waist, a low collar, and for tie a flowing bow of the kind
+used by the comic Frenchman in the pages of Punch. He greeted Philip
+with enthusiasm. He began talking at once of the house and passed his
+hand lovingly over the balusters.
+
+“Look at it, feel it, it’s like silk. What a miracle of grace! And in
+five years the house-breaker will sell it for firewood.”
+
+He insisted on taking Philip into a room on the first floor, where a
+man in shirt sleeves, a blousy woman, and three children were having
+their Sunday dinner.
+
+“I’ve just brought this gentleman in to show him your ceiling. Did you
+ever see anything so wonderful? How are you, Mrs. Hodgson? This is Mr.
+Carey, who looked after me when I was in the hospital.”
+
+“Come in, sir,” said the man. “Any friend of Mr. Athelny’s is welcome.
+Mr. Athelny shows the ceiling to all his friends. And it don’t matter
+what we’re doing, if we’re in bed or if I’m ’aving a wash, in ’e
+comes.”
+
+Philip could see that they looked upon Athelny as a little queer; but
+they liked him none the less and they listened open-mouthed while he
+discoursed with his impetuous fluency on the beauty of the
+seventeenth-century ceiling.
+
+“What a crime to pull this down, eh, Hodgson? You’re an influential
+citizen, why don’t you write to the papers and protest?”
+
+The man in shirt sleeves gave a laugh and said to Philip:
+
+“Mr. Athelny will ’ave his little joke. They do say these ’ouses are
+that insanitory, it’s not safe to live in them.”
+
+“Sanitation be damned, give me art,” cried Athelny. “I’ve got nine
+children and they thrive on bad drains. No, no, I’m not going to take
+any risk. None of your new-fangled notions for me! When I move from
+here I’m going to make sure the drains are bad before I take anything.”
+
+There was a knock at the door, and a little fair-haired girl opened it.
+
+“Daddy, mummy says, do stop talking and come and eat your dinner.”
+
+“This is my third daughter,” said Athelny, pointing to her with a
+dramatic forefinger. “She is called Maria del Pilar, but she answers
+more willingly to the name of Jane. Jane, your nose wants blowing.”
+
+“I haven’t got a hanky, daddy.”
+
+“Tut, tut, child,” he answered, as he produced a vast, brilliant
+bandanna, “what do you suppose the Almighty gave you fingers for?”
+
+They went upstairs, and Philip was taken into a room with walls
+panelled in dark oak. In the middle was a narrow table of teak on
+trestle legs, with two supporting bars of iron, of the kind called in
+Spain mesa de hieraje. They were to dine there, for two places were
+laid, and there were two large arm-chairs, with broad flat arms of oak
+and leathern backs, and leathern seats. They were severe, elegant, and
+uncomfortable. The only other piece of furniture was a bargueno,
+elaborately ornamented with gilt iron-work, on a stand of
+ecclesiastical design roughly but very finely carved. There stood on
+this two or three lustre plates, much broken but rich in colour; and on
+the walls were old masters of the Spanish school in beautiful though
+dilapidated frames: though gruesome in subject, ruined by age and bad
+treatment, and second-rate in their conception, they had a glow of
+passion. There was nothing in the room of any value, but the effect was
+lovely. It was magnificent and yet austere. Philip felt that it offered
+the very spirit of old Spain. Athelny was in the middle of showing him
+the inside of the bargueno, with its beautiful ornamentation and secret
+drawers, when a tall girl, with two plaits of bright brown hair hanging
+down her back, came in.
+
+“Mother says dinner’s ready and waiting and I’m to bring it in as soon
+as you sit down.”
+
+“Come and shake hands with Mr. Carey, Sally.” He turned to Philip.
+“Isn’t she enormous? She’s my eldest. How old are you, Sally?”
+
+“Fifteen, father, come next June.”
+
+“I christened her Maria del Sol, because she was my first child and I
+dedicated her to the glorious sun of Castile; but her mother calls her
+Sally and her brother Pudding-Face.”
+
+The girl smiled shyly, she had even, white teeth, and blushed. She was
+well set-up, tall for her age, with pleasant gray eyes and a broad
+forehead. She had red cheeks.
+
+“Go and tell your mother to come in and shake hands with Mr. Carey
+before he sits down.”
+
+“Mother says she’ll come in after dinner. She hasn’t washed herself
+yet.”
+
+“Then we’ll go in and see her ourselves. He mustn’t eat the Yorkshire
+pudding till he’s shaken the hand that made it.”
+
+Philip followed his host into the kitchen. It was small and much
+overcrowded. There had been a lot of noise, but it stopped as soon as
+the stranger entered. There was a large table in the middle and round
+it, eager for dinner, were seated Athelny’s children. A woman was
+standing at the oven, taking out baked potatoes one by one.
+
+“Here’s Mr. Carey, Betty,” said Athelny.
+
+“Fancy bringing him in here. What will he think?”
+
+She wore a dirty apron, and the sleeves of her cotton dress were turned
+up above her elbows; she had curling pins in her hair. Mrs. Athelny was
+a large woman, a good three inches taller than her husband, fair, with
+blue eyes and a kindly expression; she had been a handsome creature,
+but advancing years and the bearing of many children had made her fat
+and blousy; her blue eyes had become pale, her skin was coarse and red,
+the colour had gone out of her hair. She straightened herself, wiped
+her hand on her apron, and held it out.
+
+“You’re welcome, sir,” she said, in a slow voice, with an accent that
+seemed oddly familiar to Philip. “Athelny said you was very kind to him
+in the ’orspital.”
+
+“Now you must be introduced to the live stock,” said Athelny. “That is
+Thorpe,” he pointed to a chubby boy with curly hair, “he is my eldest
+son, heir to the title, estates, and responsibilities of the family.
+There is Athelstan, Harold, Edward.” He pointed with his forefinger to
+three smaller boys, all rosy, healthy, and smiling, though when they
+felt Philip’s smiling eyes upon them they looked shyly down at their
+plates. “Now the girls in order: Maria del Sol…”
+
+“Pudding-Face,” said one of the small boys.
+
+“Your sense of humour is rudimentary, my son. Maria de los Mercedes,
+Maria del Pilar, Maria de la Concepcion, Maria del Rosario.”
+
+“I call them Sally, Molly, Connie, Rosie, and Jane,” said Mrs. Athelny.
+“Now, Athelny, you go into your own room and I’ll send you your dinner.
+I’ll let the children come in afterwards for a bit when I’ve washed
+them.”
+
+“My dear, if I’d had the naming of you I should have called you Maria
+of the Soapsuds. You’re always torturing these wretched brats with
+soap.”
+
+“You go first, Mr. Carey, or I shall never get him to sit down and eat
+his dinner.”
+
+Athelny and Philip installed themselves in the great monkish chairs,
+and Sally brought them in two plates of beef, Yorkshire pudding, baked
+potatoes, and cabbage. Athelny took sixpence out of his pocket and sent
+her for a jug of beer.
+
+“I hope you didn’t have the table laid here on my account,” said
+Philip. “I should have been quite happy to eat with the children.”
+
+“Oh no, I always have my meals by myself. I like these antique customs.
+I don’t think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins
+conversation and I’m sure it’s very bad for them. It puts ideas in
+their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have
+ideas.”
+
+Both host and guest ate with a hearty appetite.
+
+“Did you ever taste such Yorkshire pudding? No one can make it like my
+wife. That’s the advantage of not marrying a lady. You noticed she
+wasn’t a lady, didn’t you?”
+
+It was an awkward question, and Philip did not know how to answer it.
+
+“I never thought about it,” he said lamely.
+
+Athelny laughed. He had a peculiarly joyous laugh.
+
+“No, she’s not a lady, nor anything like it. Her father was a farmer,
+and she’s never bothered about aitches in her life. We’ve had twelve
+children and nine of them are alive. I tell her it’s about time she
+stopped, but she’s an obstinate woman, she’s got into the habit of it
+now, and I don’t believe she’ll be satisfied till she’s had twenty.”
+
+At that moment Sally came in with the beer, and, having poured out a
+glass for Philip, went to the other side of the table to pour some out
+for her father. He put his hand round her waist.
+
+“Did you ever see such a handsome, strapping girl? Only fifteen and she
+might be twenty. Look at her cheeks. She’s never had a day’s illness in
+her life. It’ll be a lucky man who marries her, won’t it, Sally?”
+
+Sally listened to all this with a slight, slow smile, not much
+embarrassed, for she was accustomed to her father’s outbursts, but with
+an easy modesty which was very attractive.
+
+“Don’t let your dinner get cold, father,” she said, drawing herself
+away from his arm. “You’ll call when you’re ready for your pudding,
+won’t you?”
+
+They were left alone, and Athelny lifted the pewter tankard to his
+lips. He drank long and deep.
+
+“My word, is there anything better than English beer?” he said. “Let us
+thank God for simple pleasures, roast beef and rice pudding, a good
+appetite and beer. I was married to a lady once. My God! Don’t marry a
+lady, my boy.”
+
+Philip laughed. He was exhilarated by the scene, the funny little man
+in his odd clothes, the panelled room and the Spanish furniture, the
+English fare: the whole thing had an exquisite incongruity.
+
+“You laugh, my boy, you can’t imagine marrying beneath you. You want a
+wife who’s an intellectual equal. Your head is crammed full of ideas of
+comradeship. Stuff and nonsense, my boy! A man doesn’t want to talk
+politics to his wife, and what do you think I care for Betty’s views
+upon the Differential Calculus? A man wants a wife who can cook his
+dinner and look after his children. I’ve tried both and I know. Let’s
+have the pudding in.”
+
+He clapped his hands and presently Sally came. When she took away the
+plates, Philip wanted to get up and help her, but Athelny stopped him.
+
+“Let her alone, my boy. She doesn’t want you to fuss about, do you,
+Sally? And she won’t think it rude of you to sit still while she waits
+upon you. She don’t care a damn for chivalry, do you, Sally?”
+
+“No, father,” answered Sally demurely.
+
+“Do you know what I’m talking about, Sally?”
+
+“No, father. But you know mother doesn’t like you to swear.”
+
+Athelny laughed boisterously. Sally brought them plates of rice
+pudding, rich, creamy, and luscious. Athelny attacked his with gusto.
+
+“One of the rules of this house is that Sunday dinner should never
+alter. It is a ritual. Roast beef and rice pudding for fifty Sundays in
+the year. On Easter Sunday lamb and green peas, and at Michaelmas roast
+goose and apple sauce. Thus we preserve the traditions of our people.
+When Sally marries she will forget many of the wise things I have
+taught her, but she will never forget that if you want to be good and
+happy you must eat on Sundays roast beef and rice pudding.”
+
+“You’ll call when you’re ready for cheese,” said Sally impassively.
+
+“D’you know the legend of the halcyon?” said Athelny: Philip was
+growing used to his rapid leaping from one subject to another. “When
+the kingfisher, flying over the sea, is exhausted, his mate places
+herself beneath him and bears him along upon her stronger wings. That
+is what a man wants in a wife, the halcyon. I lived with my first wife
+for three years. She was a lady, she had fifteen hundred a year, and we
+used to give nice little dinner parties in our little red brick house
+in Kensington. She was a charming woman; they all said so, the
+barristers and their wives who dined with us, and the literary
+stockbrokers, and the budding politicians; oh, she was a charming
+woman. She made me go to church in a silk hat and a frock coat, she
+took me to classical concerts, and she was very fond of lectures on
+Sunday afternoon; and she sat down to breakfast every morning at
+eight-thirty, and if I was late breakfast was cold; and she read the
+right books, admired the right pictures, and adored the right music. My
+God, how that woman bored me! She is charming still, and she lives in
+the little red brick house in Kensington, with Morris papers and
+Whistler’s etchings on the walls, and gives the same nice little dinner
+parties, with veal creams and ices from Gunter’s, as she did twenty
+years ago.”
+
+Philip did not ask by what means the ill-matched couple had separated,
+but Athelny told him.
+
+“Betty’s not my wife, you know; my wife wouldn’t divorce me. The
+children are bastards, every jack one of them, and are they any the
+worse for that? Betty was one of the maids in the little red brick
+house in Kensington. Four or five years ago I was on my uppers, and I
+had seven children, and I went to my wife and asked her to help me. She
+said she’d make me an allowance if I’d give Betty up and go abroad. Can
+you see me giving Betty up? We starved for a while instead. My wife
+said I loved the gutter. I’ve degenerated; I’ve come down in the world;
+I earn three pounds a week as press agent to a linendraper, and every
+day I thank God that I’m not in the little red brick house in
+Kensington.”
+
+Sally brought in Cheddar cheese, and Athelny went on with his fluent
+conversation.
+
+“It’s the greatest mistake in the world to think that one needs money
+to bring up a family. You need money to make them gentlemen and ladies,
+but I don’t want my children to be ladies and gentlemen. Sally’s going
+to earn her living in another year. She’s to be apprenticed to a
+dressmaker, aren’t you, Sally? And the boys are going to serve their
+country. I want them all to go into the Navy; it’s a jolly life and a
+healthy life, good food, good pay, and a pension to end their days on.”
+
+Philip lit his pipe. Athelny smoked cigarettes of Havana tobacco, which
+he rolled himself. Sally cleared away. Philip was reserved, and it
+embarrassed him to be the recipient of so many confidences. Athelny,
+with his powerful voice in the diminutive body, with his bombast, with
+his foreign look, with his emphasis, was an astonishing creature. He
+reminded Philip a good deal of Cronshaw. He appeared to have the same
+independence of thought, the same bohemianism, but he had an infinitely
+more vivacious temperament; his mind was coarser, and he had not that
+interest in the abstract which made Cronshaw’s conversation so
+captivating. Athelny was very proud of the county family to which he
+belonged; he showed Philip photographs of an Elizabethan mansion, and
+told him:
+
+“The Athelnys have lived there for seven centuries, my boy. Ah, if you
+saw the chimney-pieces and the ceilings!”
+
+There was a cupboard in the wainscoting and from this he took a family
+tree. He showed it to Philip with child-like satisfaction. It was
+indeed imposing.
+
+“You see how the family names recur, Thorpe, Athelstan, Harold, Edward;
+I’ve used the family names for my sons. And the girls, you see, I’ve
+given Spanish names to.”
+
+An uneasy feeling came to Philip that possibly the whole story was an
+elaborate imposture, not told with any base motive, but merely from a
+wish to impress, startle, and amaze. Athelny had told him that he was
+at Winchester; but Philip, sensitive to differences of manner, did not
+feel that his host had the characteristics of a man educated at a great
+public school. While he pointed out the great alliances which his
+ancestors had formed, Philip amused himself by wondering whether
+Athelny was not the son of some tradesman in Winchester, auctioneer or
+coal-merchant, and whether a similarity of surname was not his only
+connection with the ancient family whose tree he was displaying.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXVIII
+
+
+There was a knock at the door and a troop of children came in. They
+were clean and tidy, now. Their faces shone with soap, and their hair
+was plastered down; they were going to Sunday school under Sally’s
+charge. Athelny joked with them in his dramatic, exuberant fashion, and
+you could see that he was devoted to them all. His pride in their good
+health and their good looks was touching. Philip felt that they were a
+little shy in his presence, and when their father sent them off they
+fled from the room in evident relief. In a few minutes Mrs. Athelny
+appeared. She had taken her hair out of the curling pins and now wore
+an elaborate fringe. She had on a plain black dress, a hat with cheap
+flowers, and was forcing her hands, red and coarse from much work, into
+black kid gloves.
+
+“I’m going to church, Athelny,” she said. “There’s nothing you’ll be
+wanting, is there?”
+
+“Only your prayers, my Betty.”
+
+“They won’t do you much good, you’re too far gone for that,” she
+smiled. Then, turning to Philip, she drawled: “I can’t get him to go to
+church. He’s no better than an atheist.”
+
+“Doesn’t she look like Rubens’ second wife?” cried Athelny. “Wouldn’t
+she look splendid in a seventeenth-century costume? That’s the sort of
+wife to marry, my boy. Look at her.”
+
+“I believe you’d talk the hind leg off a donkey, Athelny,” she answered
+calmly.
+
+She succeeded in buttoning her gloves, but before she went she turned
+to Philip with a kindly, slightly embarrassed smile.
+
+“You’ll stay to tea, won’t you? Athelny likes someone to talk to, and
+it’s not often he gets anybody who’s clever enough.”
+
+“Of course he’ll stay to tea,” said Athelny. Then when his wife had
+gone: “I make a point of the children going to Sunday school, and I
+like Betty to go to church. I think women ought to be religious. I
+don’t believe myself, but I like women and children to.”
+
+Philip, strait-laced in matters of truth, was a little shocked by this
+airy attitude.
+
+“But how can you look on while your children are being taught things
+which you don’t think are true?”
+
+“If they’re beautiful I don’t much mind if they’re not true. It’s
+asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as
+to your sense of the aesthetic. I wanted Betty to become a Roman
+Catholic, I should have liked to see her converted in a crown of paper
+flowers, but she’s hopelessly Protestant. Besides, religion is a matter
+of temperament; you will believe anything if you have the religious
+turn of mind, and if you haven’t it doesn’t matter what beliefs were
+instilled into you, you will grow out of them. Perhaps religion is the
+best school of morality. It is like one of those drugs you gentlemen
+use in medicine which carries another in solution: it is of no efficacy
+in itself, but enables the other to be absorbed. You take your morality
+because it is combined with religion; you lose the religion and the
+morality stays behind. A man is more likely to be a good man if he has
+learned goodness through the love of God than through a perusal of
+Herbert Spencer.”
+
+This was contrary to all Philip’s ideas. He still looked upon
+Christianity as a degrading bondage that must be cast away at any cost;
+it was connected subconsciously in his mind with the dreary services in
+the cathedral at Tercanbury, and the long hours of boredom in the cold
+church at Blackstable; and the morality of which Athelny spoke was to
+him no more than a part of the religion which a halting intelligence
+preserved, when it had laid aside the beliefs which alone made it
+reasonable. But while he was meditating a reply Athelny, more
+interested in hearing himself speak than in discussion, broke into a
+tirade upon Roman Catholicism. For him it was an essential part of
+Spain; and Spain meant much to him, because he had escaped to it from
+the conventionality which during his married life he had found so
+irksome. With large gestures and in the emphatic tone which made what
+he said so striking, Athelny described to Philip the Spanish cathedrals
+with their vast dark spaces, the massive gold of the altar-pieces, and
+the sumptuous iron-work, gilt and faded, the air laden with incense,
+the silence: Philip almost saw the Canons in their short surplices of
+lawn, the acolytes in red, passing from the sacristy to the choir; he
+almost heard the monotonous chanting of vespers. The names which
+Athelny mentioned, Avila, Tarragona, Saragossa, Segovia, Cordova, were
+like trumpets in his heart. He seemed to see the great gray piles of
+granite set in old Spanish towns amid a landscape tawny, wild, and
+windswept.
+
+“I’ve always thought I should love to go to Seville,” he said casually,
+when Athelny, with one hand dramatically uplifted, paused for a moment.
+
+“Seville!” cried Athelny. “No, no, don’t go there. Seville: it brings
+to the mind girls dancing with castanets, singing in gardens by the
+Guadalquivir, bull-fights, orange-blossom, mantillas, mantones de
+Manila. It is the Spain of comic opera and Montmartre. Its facile charm
+can offer permanent entertainment only to an intelligence which is
+superficial. Theophile Gautier got out of Seville all that it has to
+offer. We who come after him can only repeat his sensations. He put
+large fat hands on the obvious and there is nothing but the obvious
+there; and it is all finger-marked and frayed. Murillo is its painter.”
+
+Athelny got up from his chair, walked over to the Spanish cabinet, let
+down the front with its great gilt hinges and gorgeous lock, and
+displayed a series of little drawers. He took out a bundle of
+photographs.
+
+“Do you know El Greco?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, I remember one of the men in Paris was awfully impressed by him.”
+
+“El Greco was the painter of Toledo. Betty couldn’t find the photograph
+I wanted to show you. It’s a picture that El Greco painted of the city
+he loved, and it’s truer than any photograph. Come and sit at the
+table.”
+
+Philip dragged his chair forward, and Athelny set the photograph before
+him. He looked at it curiously, for a long time, in silence. He
+stretched out his hand for other photographs, and Athelny passed them
+to him. He had never before seen the work of that enigmatic master; and
+at the first glance he was bothered by the arbitrary drawing: the
+figures were extraordinarily elongated; the heads were very small; the
+attitudes were extravagant. This was not realism, and yet, and yet even
+in the photographs you had the impression of a troubling reality.
+Athelny was describing eagerly, with vivid phrases, but Philip only
+heard vaguely what he said. He was puzzled. He was curiously moved.
+These pictures seemed to offer some meaning to him, but he did not know
+what the meaning was. There were portraits of men with large,
+melancholy eyes which seemed to say you knew not what; there were long
+monks in the Franciscan habit or in the Dominican, with distraught
+faces, making gestures whose sense escaped you; there was an Assumption
+of the Virgin; there was a Crucifixion in which the painter by some
+magic of feeling had been able to suggest that the flesh of Christ’s
+dead body was not human flesh only but divine; and there was an
+Ascension in which the Saviour seemed to surge up towards the empyrean
+and yet to stand upon the air as steadily as though it were solid
+ground: the uplifted arms of the Apostles, the sweep of their
+draperies, their ecstatic gestures, gave an impression of exultation
+and of holy joy. The background of nearly all was the sky by night, the
+dark night of the soul, with wild clouds swept by strange winds of hell
+and lit luridly by an uneasy moon.
+
+“I’ve seen that sky in Toledo over and over again,” said Athelny. “I
+have an idea that when first El Greco came to the city it was by such a
+night, and it made so vehement an impression upon him that he could
+never get away from it.”
+
+Philip remembered how Clutton had been affected by this strange master,
+whose work he now saw for the first time. He thought that Clutton was
+the most interesting of all the people he had known in Paris. His
+sardonic manner, his hostile aloofness, had made it difficult to know
+him; but it seemed to Philip, looking back, that there had been in him
+a tragic force, which sought vainly to express itself in painting. He
+was a man of unusual character, mystical after the fashion of a time
+that had no leaning to mysticism, who was impatient with life because
+he found himself unable to say the things which the obscure impulses of
+his heart suggested. His intellect was not fashioned to the uses of the
+spirit. It was not surprising that he felt a deep sympathy with the
+Greek who had devised a new technique to express the yearnings of his
+soul. Philip looked again at the series of portraits of Spanish
+gentlemen, with ruffles and pointed beards, their faces pale against
+the sober black of their clothes and the darkness of the background. El
+Greco was the painter of the soul; and these gentlemen, wan and wasted,
+not by exhaustion but by restraint, with their tortured minds, seem to
+walk unaware of the beauty of the world; for their eyes look only in
+their hearts, and they are dazzled by the glory of the unseen. No
+painter has shown more pitilessly that the world is but a place of
+passage. The souls of the men he painted speak their strange longings
+through their eyes: their senses are miraculously acute, not for sounds
+and odours and colour, but for the very subtle sensations of the soul.
+The noble walks with the monkish heart within him, and his eyes see
+things which saints in their cells see too, and he is unastounded. His
+lips are not lips that smile.
+
+Philip, silent still, returned to the photograph of Toledo, which
+seemed to him the most arresting picture of them all. He could not take
+his eyes off it. He felt strangely that he was on the threshold of some
+new discovery in life. He was tremulous with a sense of adventure. He
+thought for an instant of the love that had consumed him: love seemed
+very trivial beside the excitement which now leaped in his heart. The
+picture he looked at was a long one, with houses crowded upon a hill;
+in one corner a boy was holding a large map of the town; in another was
+a classical figure representing the river Tagus; and in the sky was the
+Virgin surrounded by angels. It was a landscape alien to all Philip’s
+notion, for he had lived in circles that worshipped exact realism; and
+yet here again, strangely to himself, he felt a reality greater than
+any achieved by the masters in whose steps humbly he had sought to
+walk. He heard Athelny say that the representation was so precise that
+when the citizens of Toledo came to look at the picture they recognised
+their houses. The painter had painted exactly what he saw but he had
+seen with the eyes of the spirit. There was something unearthly in that
+city of pale gray. It was a city of the soul seen by a wan light that
+was neither that of night nor day. It stood on a green hill, but of a
+green not of this world, and it was surrounded by massive walls and
+bastions to be stormed by no machines or engines of man’s invention,
+but by prayer and fasting, by contrite sighs and by mortifications of
+the flesh. It was a stronghold of God. Those gray houses were made of
+no stone known to masons, there was something terrifying in their
+aspect, and you did not know what men might live in them. You might
+walk through the streets and be unamazed to find them all deserted, and
+yet not empty; for you felt a presence invisible and yet manifest to
+every inner sense. It was a mystical city in which the imagination
+faltered like one who steps out of the light into darkness; the soul
+walked naked to and fro, knowing the unknowable, and conscious
+strangely of experience, intimate but inexpressible, of the absolute.
+And without surprise, in that blue sky, real with a reality that not
+the eye but the soul confesses, with its rack of light clouds driven by
+strange breezes, like the cries and the sighs of lost souls, you saw
+the Blessed Virgin with a gown of red and a cloak of blue, surrounded
+by winged angels. Philip felt that the inhabitants of that city would
+have seen the apparition without astonishment, reverent and thankful,
+and have gone their ways.
+
+Athelny spoke of the mystical writers of Spain, of Teresa de Avila, San
+Juan de la Cruz, Fray Luis de Leon; in all of them was that passion for
+the unseen which Philip felt in the pictures of El Greco: they seemed
+to have the power to touch the incorporeal and see the invisible. They
+were Spaniards of their age, in whom were tremulous all the mighty
+exploits of a great nation: their fancies were rich with the glories of
+America and the green islands of the Caribbean Sea; in their veins was
+the power that had come from age-long battling with the Moor; they were
+proud, for they were masters of the world; and they felt in themselves
+the wide distances, the tawny wastes, the snow-capped mountains of
+Castile, the sunshine and the blue sky, and the flowering plains of
+Andalusia. Life was passionate and manifold, and because it offered so
+much they felt a restless yearning for something more; because they
+were human they were unsatisfied; and they threw this eager vitality of
+theirs into a vehement striving after the ineffable. Athelny was not
+displeased to find someone to whom he could read the translations with
+which for some time he had amused his leisure; and in his fine,
+vibrating voice he recited the canticle of the Soul and Christ her
+lover, the lovely poem which begins with the words en una noche oscura,
+and the noche serena of Fray Luis de Leon. He had translated them quite
+simply, not without skill, and he had found words which at all events
+suggested the rough-hewn grandeur of the original. The pictures of El
+Greco explained them, and they explained the pictures.
+
+Philip had cultivated a certain disdain for idealism. He had always had
+a passion for life, and the idealism he had come across seemed to him
+for the most part a cowardly shrinking from it. The idealist withdrew
+himself, because he could not suffer the jostling of the human crowd;
+he had not the strength to fight and so called the battle vulgar; he
+was vain, and since his fellows would not take him at his own estimate,
+consoled himself with despising his fellows. For Philip his type was
+Hayward, fair, languid, too fat now and rather bald, still cherishing
+the remains of his good looks and still delicately proposing to do
+exquisite things in the uncertain future; and at the back of this were
+whiskey and vulgar amours of the street. It was in reaction from what
+Hayward represented that Philip clamoured for life as it stood;
+sordidness, vice, deformity, did not offend him; he declared that he
+wanted man in his nakedness; and he rubbed his hands when an instance
+came before him of meanness, cruelty, selfishness, or lust: that was
+the real thing. In Paris he had learned that there was neither ugliness
+nor beauty, but only truth: the search after beauty was sentimental.
+Had he not painted an advertisement of chocolat Menier in a landscape
+in order to escape from the tyranny of prettiness?
+
+But here he seemed to divine something new. He had been coming to it,
+all hesitating, for some time, but only now was conscious of the fact;
+he felt himself on the brink of a discovery. He felt vaguely that here
+was something better than the realism which he had adored; but
+certainly it was not the bloodless idealism which stepped aside from
+life in weakness; it was too strong; it was virile; it accepted life in
+all its vivacity, ugliness and beauty, squalor and heroism; it was
+realism still; but it was realism carried to some higher pitch, in
+which facts were transformed by the more vivid light in which they were
+seen. He seemed to see things more profoundly through the grave eyes of
+those dead noblemen of Castile; and the gestures of the saints, which
+at first had seemed wild and distorted, appeared to have some
+mysterious significance. But he could not tell what that significance
+was. It was like a message which it was very important for him to
+receive, but it was given him in an unknown tongue, and he could not
+understand. He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it
+seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague.
+He was profoundly troubled. He saw what looked like the truth as by
+flashes of lightning on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain
+range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance,
+but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control
+might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he
+seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as
+rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered realms and
+explored unknown lands.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXIX
+
+
+The conversation between Philip and Athelny was broken into by a
+clatter up the stairs. Athelny opened the door for the children coming
+back from Sunday school, and with laughter and shouting they came in.
+Gaily he asked them what they had learned. Sally appeared for a moment,
+with instructions from her mother that father was to amuse the children
+while she got tea ready; and Athelny began to tell them one of Hans
+Andersen’s stories. They were not shy children, and they quickly came
+to the conclusion that Philip was not formidable. Jane came and stood
+by him and presently settled herself on his knees. It was the first
+time that Philip in his lonely life had been present in a family
+circle: his eyes smiled as they rested on the fair children engrossed
+in the fairy tale. The life of his new friend, eccentric as it appeared
+at first glance, seemed now to have the beauty of perfect naturalness.
+Sally came in once more.
+
+“Now then, children, tea’s ready,” she said.
+
+Jane slipped off Philip’s knees, and they all went back to the kitchen.
+Sally began to lay the cloth on the long Spanish table.
+
+“Mother says, shall she come and have tea with you?” she asked. “I can
+give the children their tea.”
+
+“Tell your mother that we shall be proud and honoured if she will
+favour us with her company,” said Athelny.
+
+It seemed to Philip that he could never say anything without an
+oratorical flourish.
+
+“Then I’ll lay for her,” said Sally.
+
+She came back again in a moment with a tray on which were a cottage
+loaf, a slab of butter, and a jar of strawberry jam. While she placed
+the things on the table her father chaffed her. He said it was quite
+time she was walking out; he told Philip that she was very proud, and
+would have nothing to do with aspirants to that honour who lined up at
+the door, two by two, outside the Sunday school and craved the honour
+of escorting her home.
+
+“You do talk, father,” said Sally, with her slow, good-natured smile.
+
+“You wouldn’t think to look at her that a tailor’s assistant has
+enlisted in the army because she would not say how d’you do to him and
+an electrical engineer, an electrical engineer, mind you, has taken to
+drink because she refused to share her hymn-book with him in church. I
+shudder to think what will happen when she puts her hair up.”
+
+“Mother’ll bring the tea along herself,” said Sally.
+
+“Sally never pays any attention to me,” laughed Athelny, looking at her
+with fond, proud eyes. “She goes about her business indifferent to
+wars, revolutions, and cataclysms. What a wife she’ll make to an honest
+man!”
+
+Mrs. Athelny brought in the tea. She sat down and proceeded to cut
+bread and butter. It amused Philip to see that she treated her husband
+as though he were a child. She spread jam for him and cut up the bread
+and butter into convenient slices for him to eat. She had taken off her
+hat; and in her Sunday dress, which seemed a little tight for her, she
+looked like one of the farmers’ wives whom Philip used to call on
+sometimes with his uncle when he was a small boy. Then he knew why the
+sound of her voice was familiar to him. She spoke just like the people
+round Blackstable.
+
+“What part of the country d’you come from?” he asked her.
+
+“I’m a Kentish woman. I come from Ferne.”
+
+“I thought as much. My uncle’s Vicar of Blackstable.”
+
+“That’s a funny thing now,” she said. “I was wondering in Church just
+now whether you was any connection of Mr. Carey. Many’s the time I’ve
+seen ’im. A cousin of mine married Mr. Barker of Roxley Farm, over by
+Blackstable Church, and I used to go and stay there often when I was a
+girl. Isn’t that a funny thing now?”
+
+She looked at him with a new interest, and a brightness came into her
+faded eyes. She asked him whether he knew Ferne. It was a pretty
+village about ten miles across country from Blackstable, and the Vicar
+had come over sometimes to Blackstable for the harvest thanksgiving.
+She mentioned names of various farmers in the neighbourhood. She was
+delighted to talk again of the country in which her youth was spent,
+and it was a pleasure to her to recall scenes and people that had
+remained in her memory with the tenacity peculiar to her class. It gave
+Philip a queer sensation too. A breath of the country-side seemed to be
+wafted into that panelled room in the middle of London. He seemed to
+see the fat Kentish fields with their stately elms; and his nostrils
+dilated with the scent of the air; it is laden with the salt of the
+North Sea, and that makes it keen and sharp.
+
+Philip did not leave the Athelnys’ till ten o’clock. The children came
+in to say good-night at eight and quite naturally put up their faces
+for Philip to kiss. His heart went out to them. Sally only held out her
+hand.
+
+“Sally never kisses gentlemen till she’s seen them twice,” said her
+father.
+
+“You must ask me again then,” said Philip.
+
+“You mustn’t take any notice of what father says,” remarked Sally, with
+a smile.
+
+“She’s a most self-possessed young woman,” added her parent.
+
+They had supper of bread and cheese and beer, while Mrs. Athelny was
+putting the children to bed; and when Philip went into the kitchen to
+bid her good-night (she had been sitting there, resting herself and
+reading The Weekly Despatch) she invited him cordially to come again.
+
+“There’s always a good dinner on Sundays so long as Athelny’s in work,”
+she said, “and it’s a charity to come and talk to him.”
+
+On the following Saturday Philip received a postcard from Athelny
+saying that they were expecting him to dinner next day; but fearing
+their means were not such that Mr. Athelny would desire him to accept,
+Philip wrote back that he would only come to tea. He bought a large
+plum cake so that his entertainment should cost nothing. He found the
+whole family glad to see him, and the cake completed his conquest of
+the children. He insisted that they should all have tea together in the
+kitchen, and the meal was noisy and hilarious.
+
+Soon Philip got into the habit of going to Athelny’s every Sunday. He
+became a great favourite with the children, because he was simple and
+unaffected and because it was so plain that he was fond of them. As
+soon as they heard his ring at the door one of them popped a head out
+of window to make sure it was he, and then they all rushed downstairs
+tumultuously to let him in. They flung themselves into his arms. At tea
+they fought for the privilege of sitting next to him. Soon they began
+to call him Uncle Philip.
+
+Athelny was very communicative, and little by little Philip learned the
+various stages of his life. He had followed many occupations, and it
+occurred to Philip that he managed to make a mess of everything he
+attempted. He had been on a tea plantation in Ceylon and a traveller in
+America for Italian wines; his secretaryship of the water company in
+Toledo had lasted longer than any of his employments; he had been a
+journalist and for some time had worked as police-court reporter for an
+evening paper; he had been sub-editor of a paper in the Midlands and
+editor of another on the Riviera. From all his occupations he had
+gathered amusing anecdotes, which he told with a keen pleasure in his
+own powers of entertainment. He had read a great deal, chiefly
+delighting in books which were unusual; and he poured forth his stores
+of abstruse knowledge with child-like enjoyment of the amazement of his
+hearers. Three or four years before abject poverty had driven him to
+take the job of press-representative to a large firm of drapers; and
+though he felt the work unworthy his abilities, which he rated highly,
+the firmness of his wife and the needs of his family had made him stick
+to it.
+
+
+
+
+XC
+
+
+When he left the Athelnys’ Philip walked down Chancery Lane and along
+the Strand to get a ’bus at the top of Parliament Street. One Sunday,
+when he had known them about six weeks, he did this as usual, but he
+found the Kennington ’bus full. It was June, but it had rained during
+the day and the night was raw and cold. He walked up to Piccadilly
+Circus in order to get a seat; the ’bus waited at the fountain, and
+when it arrived there seldom had more than two or three people in it.
+This service ran every quarter of an hour, and he had some time to
+wait. He looked idly at the crowd. The public-houses were closing, and
+there were many people about. His mind was busy with the ideas Athelny
+had the charming gift of suggesting.
+
+Suddenly his heart stood still. He saw Mildred. He had not thought of
+her for weeks. She was crossing over from the corner of Shaftesbury
+Avenue and stopped at the shelter till a string of cabs passed by. She
+was watching her opportunity and had no eyes for anything else. She
+wore a large black straw hat with a mass of feathers on it and a black
+silk dress; at that time it was fashionable for women to wear trains;
+the road was clear, and Mildred crossed, her skirt trailing on the
+ground, and walked down Piccadilly. Philip, his heart beating
+excitedly, followed her. He did not wish to speak to her, but he
+wondered where she was going at that hour; he wanted to get a look at
+her face. She walked slowly along and turned down Air Street and so got
+through into Regent Street. She walked up again towards the Circus.
+Philip was puzzled. He could not make out what she was doing. Perhaps
+she was waiting for somebody, and he felt a great curiosity to know who
+it was. She overtook a short man in a bowler hat, who was strolling
+very slowly in the same direction as herself; she gave him a sidelong
+glance as she passed. She walked a few steps more till she came to Swan
+and Edgar’s, then stopped and waited, facing the road. When the man
+came up she smiled. The man stared at her for a moment, turned away his
+head, and sauntered on. Then Philip understood.
+
+He was overwhelmed with horror. For a moment he felt such a weakness in
+his legs that he could hardly stand; then he walked after her quickly;
+he touched her on the arm.
+
+“Mildred.”
+
+She turned round with a violent start. He thought that she reddened,
+but in the obscurity he could not see very well. For a while they stood
+and looked at one another without speaking. At last she said:
+
+“Fancy seeing you!”
+
+He did not know what to answer; he was horribly shaken; and the phrases
+that chased one another through his brain seemed incredibly
+melodramatic.
+
+“It’s awful,” he gasped, almost to himself.
+
+She did not say anything more, she turned away from him, and looked
+down at the pavement. He felt that his face was distorted with misery.
+
+“Isn’t there anywhere we can go and talk?”
+
+“I don’t want to talk,” she said sullenly. “Leave me alone, can’t you?”
+
+The thought struck him that perhaps she was in urgent need of money and
+could not afford to go away at that hour.
+
+“I’ve got a couple of sovereigns on me if you’re hard up,” he blurted
+out.
+
+“I don’t know what you mean. I was just walking along here on my way
+back to my lodgings. I expected to meet one of the girls from where I
+work.”
+
+“For God’s sake don’t lie now,” he said.
+
+Then he saw that she was crying, and he repeated his question.
+
+“Can’t we go and talk somewhere? Can’t I come back to your rooms?”
+
+“No, you can’t do that,” she sobbed. “I’m not allowed to take gentlemen
+in there. If you like I’ll meet you tomorrow.”
+
+He felt certain that she would not keep an appointment. He was not
+going to let her go.
+
+“No. You must take me somewhere now.”
+
+“Well, there is a room I know, but they’ll charge six shillings for
+it.”
+
+“I don’t mind that. Where is it?”
+
+She gave him the address, and he called a cab. They drove to a shabby
+street beyond the British Museum in the neighbourhood of the Gray’s Inn
+Road, and she stopped the cab at the corner.
+
+“They don’t like you to drive up to the door,” she said.
+
+They were the first words either of them had spoken since getting into
+the cab. They walked a few yards and Mildred knocked three times,
+sharply, at a door. Philip noticed in the fanlight a cardboard on which
+was an announcement that apartments were to let. The door was opened
+quietly, and an elderly, tall woman let them in. She gave Philip a
+stare and then spoke to Mildred in an undertone. Mildred led Philip
+along a passage to a room at the back. It was quite dark; she asked him
+for a match, and lit the gas; there was no globe, and the gas flared
+shrilly. Philip saw that he was in a dingy little bed-room with a suite
+of furniture, painted to look like pine much too large for it; the lace
+curtains were very dirty; the grate was hidden by a large paper fan.
+Mildred sank on the chair which stood by the side of the chimney-piece.
+Philip sat on the edge of the bed. He felt ashamed. He saw now that
+Mildred’s cheeks were thick with rouge, her eyebrows were blackened;
+but she looked thin and ill, and the red on her cheeks exaggerated the
+greenish pallor of her skin. She stared at the paper fan in a listless
+fashion. Philip could not think what to say, and he had a choking in
+his throat as if he were going to cry. He covered his eyes with his
+hands.
+
+“My God, it is awful,” he groaned.
+
+“I don’t know what you’ve got to fuss about. I should have thought
+you’d have been rather pleased.”
+
+Philip did not answer, and in a moment she broke into a sob.
+
+“You don’t think I do it because I like it, do you?”
+
+“Oh, my dear,” he cried. “I’m so sorry, I’m so awfully sorry.”
+
+“That’ll do me a fat lot of good.”
+
+Again Philip found nothing to say. He was desperately afraid of saying
+anything which she might take for a reproach or a sneer.
+
+“Where’s the baby?” he asked at last.
+
+“I’ve got her with me in London. I hadn’t got the money to keep her on
+at Brighton, so I had to take her. I’ve got a room up Highbury way. I
+told them I was on the stage. It’s a long way to have to come down to
+the West End every day, but it’s a rare job to find anyone who’ll let
+to ladies at all.”
+
+“Wouldn’t they take you back at the shop?”
+
+“I couldn’t get any work to do anywhere. I walked my legs off looking
+for work. I did get a job once, but I was off for a week because I was
+queer, and when I went back they said they didn’t want me any more. You
+can’t blame them either, can you? Them places, they can’t afford to
+have girls that aren’t strong.”
+
+“You don’t look very well now,” said Philip.
+
+“I wasn’t fit to come out tonight, but I couldn’t help myself, I wanted
+the money. I wrote to Emil and told him I was broke, but he never even
+answered the letter.”
+
+“You might have written to me.”
+
+“I didn’t like to, not after what happened, and I didn’t want you to
+know I was in difficulties. I shouldn’t have been surprised if you’d
+just told me I’d only got what I deserved.”
+
+“You don’t know me very well, do you, even now?”
+
+For a moment he remembered all the anguish he had suffered on her
+account, and he was sick with the recollection of his pain. But it was
+no more than recollection. When he looked at her he knew that he no
+longer loved her. He was very sorry for her, but he was glad to be
+free. Watching her gravely, he asked himself why he had been so
+besotted with passion for her.
+
+“You’re a gentleman in every sense of the word,” she said. “You’re the
+only one I’ve ever met.” She paused for a minute and then flushed. “I
+hate asking you, Philip, but can you spare me anything?”
+
+“It’s lucky I’ve got some money on me. I’m afraid I’ve only got two
+pounds.”
+
+He gave her the sovereigns.
+
+“I’ll pay you back, Philip.”
+
+“Oh, that’s all right,” he smiled. “You needn’t worry.”
+
+He had said nothing that he wanted to say. They had talked as if the
+whole thing were natural; and it looked as though she would go now,
+back to the horror of her life, and he would be able to do nothing to
+prevent it. She had got up to take the money, and they were both
+standing.
+
+“Am I keeping you?” she asked. “I suppose you want to be getting home.”
+
+“No, I’m in no hurry,” he answered.
+
+“I’m glad to have a chance of sitting down.”
+
+Those words, with all they implied, tore his heart, and it was
+dreadfully painful to see the weary way in which she sank back into the
+chair. The silence lasted so long that Philip in his embarrassment lit
+a cigarette.
+
+“It’s very good of you not to have said anything disagreeable to me,
+Philip. I thought you might say I didn’t know what all.”
+
+He saw that she was crying again. He remembered how she had come to him
+when Emil Miller had deserted her and how she had wept. The
+recollection of her suffering and of his own humiliation seemed to
+render more overwhelming the compassion he felt now.
+
+“If I could only get out of it!” she moaned. “I hate it so. I’m unfit
+for the life, I’m not the sort of girl for that. I’d do anything to get
+away from it, I’d be a servant if I could. Oh, I wish I was dead.”
+
+And in pity for herself she broke down now completely. She sobbed
+hysterically, and her thin body was shaken.
+
+“Oh, you don’t know what it is. Nobody knows till they’ve done it.”
+
+Philip could not bear to see her cry. He was tortured by the horror of
+her position.
+
+“Poor child,” he whispered. “Poor child.”
+
+He was deeply moved. Suddenly he had an inspiration. It filled him with
+a perfect ecstasy of happiness.
+
+“Look here, if you want to get away from it, I’ve got an idea. I’m
+frightfully hard up just now, I’ve got to be as economical as I can;
+but I’ve got a sort of little flat now in Kennington and I’ve got a
+spare room. If you like you and the baby can come and live there. I pay
+a woman three and sixpence a week to keep the place clean and to do a
+little cooking for me. You could do that and your food wouldn’t come to
+much more than the money I should save on her. It doesn’t cost any more
+to feed two than one, and I don’t suppose the baby eats much.”
+
+She stopped crying and looked at him.
+
+“D’you mean to say that you could take me back after all that’s
+happened?”
+
+Philip flushed a little in embarrassment at what he had to say.
+
+“I don’t want you to mistake me. I’m just giving you a room which
+doesn’t cost me anything and your food. I don’t expect anything more
+from you than that you should do exactly the same as the woman I have
+in does. Except for that I don’t want anything from you at all. I
+daresay you can cook well enough for that.”
+
+She sprang to her feet and was about to come towards him.
+
+“You are good to me, Philip.”
+
+“No, please stop where you are,” he said hurriedly, putting out his
+hand as though to push her away.
+
+He did not know why it was, but he could not bear the thought that she
+should touch him.
+
+“I don’t want to be anything more than a friend to you.”
+
+“You are good to me,” she repeated. “You are good to me.”
+
+“Does that mean you’ll come?”
+
+“Oh, yes, I’d do anything to get away from this. You’ll never regret
+what you’ve done, Philip, never. When can I come, Philip?”
+
+“You’d better come tomorrow.”
+
+Suddenly she burst into tears again.
+
+“What on earth are you crying for now?” he smiled.
+
+“I’m so grateful to you. I don’t know how I can ever make it up to
+you?”
+
+“Oh, that’s all right. You’d better go home now.”
+
+He wrote out the address and told her that if she came at half past
+five he would be ready for her. It was so late that he had to walk
+home, but it did not seem a long way, for he was intoxicated with
+delight; he seemed to walk on air.
+
+
+
+
+XCI
+
+
+Next day he got up early to make the room ready for Mildred. He told
+the woman who had looked after him that he would not want her any more.
+Mildred came about six, and Philip, who was watching from the window,
+went down to let her in and help her to bring up the luggage: it
+consisted now of no more than three large parcels wrapped in brown
+paper, for she had been obliged to sell everything that was not
+absolutely needful. She wore the same black silk dress she had worn the
+night before, and, though she had now no rouge on her cheeks, there was
+still about her eyes the black which remained after a perfunctory wash
+in the morning: it made her look very ill. She was a pathetic figure as
+she stepped out of the cab with the baby in her arms. She seemed a
+little shy, and they found nothing but commonplace things to say to one
+another.
+
+“So you’ve got here all right.”
+
+“I’ve never lived in this part of London before.”
+
+Philip showed her the room. It was that in which Cronshaw had died.
+Philip, though he thought it absurd, had never liked the idea of going
+back to it; and since Cronshaw’s death he had remained in the little
+room, sleeping on a fold-up bed, into which he had first moved in order
+to make his friend comfortable. The baby was sleeping placidly.
+
+“You don’t recognise her, I expect,” said Mildred.
+
+“I’ve not seen her since we took her down to Brighton.”
+
+“Where shall I put her? She’s so heavy I can’t carry her very long.”
+
+“I’m afraid I haven’t got a cradle,” said Philip, with a nervous laugh.
+
+“Oh, she’ll sleep with me. She always does.”
+
+Mildred put the baby in an arm-chair and looked round the room. She
+recognised most of the things which she had known in his old diggings.
+Only one thing was new, a head and shoulders of Philip which Lawson had
+painted at the end of the preceding summer; it hung over the
+chimney-piece; Mildred looked at it critically.
+
+“In some ways I like it and in some ways I don’t. I think you’re better
+looking than that.”
+
+“Things are looking up,” laughed Philip. “You’ve never told me I was
+good-looking before.”
+
+“I’m not one to worry myself about a man’s looks. I don’t like
+good-looking men. They’re too conceited for me.”
+
+Her eyes travelled round the room in an instinctive search for a
+looking-glass, but there was none; she put up her hand and patted her
+large fringe.
+
+“What’ll the other people in the house say to my being here?” she asked
+suddenly.
+
+“Oh, there’s only a man and his wife living here. He’s out all day, and
+I never see her except on Saturday to pay my rent. They keep entirely
+to themselves. I’ve not spoken two words to either of them since I
+came.”
+
+Mildred went into the bedroom to undo her things and put them away.
+Philip tried to read, but his spirits were too high: he leaned back in
+his chair, smoking a cigarette, and with smiling eyes looked at the
+sleeping child. He felt very happy. He was quite sure that he was not
+at all in love with Mildred. He was surprised that the old feeling had
+left him so completely; he discerned in himself a faint physical
+repulsion from her; and he thought that if he touched her it would give
+him goose-flesh. He could not understand himself. Presently, knocking
+at the door, she came in again.
+
+“I say, you needn’t knock,” he said. “Have you made the tour of the
+mansion?”
+
+“It’s the smallest kitchen I’ve ever seen.”
+
+“You’ll find it large enough to cook our sumptuous repasts,” he
+retorted lightly.
+
+“I see there’s nothing in. I’d better go out and get something.”
+
+“Yes, but I venture to remind you that we must be devilish economical.”
+
+“What shall I get for supper?”
+
+“You’d better get what you think you can cook,” laughed Philip.
+
+He gave her some money and she went out. She came in half an hour later
+and put her purchases on the table. She was out of breath from climbing
+the stairs.
+
+“I say, you are anaemic,” said Philip. “I’ll have to dose you with
+Blaud’s Pills.”
+
+“It took me some time to find the shops. I bought some liver. That’s
+tasty, isn’t it? And you can’t eat much of it, so it’s more economical
+than butcher’s meat.”
+
+There was a gas stove in the kitchen, and when she had put the liver
+on, Mildred came into the sitting-room to lay the cloth.
+
+“Why are you only laying one place?” asked Philip. “Aren’t you going to
+eat anything?”
+
+Mildred flushed.
+
+“I thought you mightn’t like me to have my meals with you.”
+
+“Why on earth not?”
+
+“Well, I’m only a servant, aren’t I?”
+
+“Don’t be an ass. How can you be so silly?”
+
+He smiled, but her humility gave him a curious twist in his heart. Poor
+thing! He remembered what she had been when first he knew her. He
+hesitated for an instant.
+
+“Don’t think I’m conferring any benefit on you,” he said. “It’s simply
+a business arrangement, I’m giving you board and lodging in return for
+your work. You don’t owe me anything. And there’s nothing humiliating
+to you in it.”
+
+She did not answer, but tears rolled heavily down her cheeks. Philip
+knew from his experience at the hospital that women of her class looked
+upon service as degrading: he could not help feeling a little impatient
+with her; but he blamed himself, for it was clear that she was tired
+and ill. He got up and helped her to lay another place at the table.
+The baby was awake now, and Mildred had prepared some Mellin’s Food for
+it. The liver and bacon were ready and they sat down. For economy’s
+sake Philip had given up drinking anything but water, but he had in the
+house a half a bottle of whiskey, and he thought a little would do
+Mildred good. He did his best to make the supper pass cheerfully, but
+Mildred was subdued and exhausted. When they had finished she got up to
+put the baby to bed.
+
+“I think you’ll do well to turn in early yourself,” said Philip. “You
+look absolute done up.”
+
+“I think I will after I’ve washed up.”
+
+Philip lit his pipe and began to read. It was pleasant to hear somebody
+moving about in the next room. Sometimes his loneliness had oppressed
+him. Mildred came in to clear the table, and he heard the clatter of
+plates as she washed up. Philip smiled as he thought how characteristic
+it was of her that she should do all that in a black silk dress. But he
+had work to do, and he brought his book up to the table. He was reading
+Osler’s Medicine, which had recently taken the place in the students’
+favour of Taylor’s work, for many years the text-book most in use.
+Presently Mildred came in, rolling down her sleeves. Philip gave her a
+casual glance, but did not move; the occasion was curious, and he felt
+a little nervous. He feared that Mildred might imagine he was going to
+make a nuisance of himself, and he did not quite know how without
+brutality to reassure her.
+
+“By the way, I’ve got a lecture at nine, so I should want breakfast at
+a quarter past eight. Can you manage that?”
+
+“Oh, yes. Why, when I was in Parliament Street I used to catch the
+eight-twelve from Herne Hill every morning.”
+
+“I hope you’ll find your room comfortable. You’ll be a different woman
+tomorrow after a long night in bed.”
+
+“I suppose you work till late?”
+
+“I generally work till about eleven or half-past.”
+
+“I’ll say good-night then.”
+
+“Good-night.”
+
+The table was between them. He did not offer to shake hands with her.
+She shut the door quietly. He heard her moving about in the bed-room,
+and in a little while he heard the creaking of the bed as she got in.
+
+
+
+
+XCII
+
+
+The following day was Tuesday. Philip as usual hurried through his
+breakfast and dashed off to get to his lecture at nine. He had only
+time to exchange a few words with Mildred. When he came back in the
+evening he found her seated at the window, darning his socks.
+
+“I say, you are industrious,” he smiled. “What have you been doing with
+yourself all day?”
+
+“Oh, I gave the place a good cleaning and then I took baby out for a
+little.”
+
+She was wearing an old black dress, the same as she had worn as uniform
+when she served in the tea-shop; it was shabby, but she looked better
+in it than in the silk of the day before. The baby was sitting on the
+floor. She looked up at Philip with large, mysterious eyes and broke
+into a laugh when he sat down beside her and began playing with her
+bare toes. The afternoon sun came into the room and shed a mellow
+light.
+
+“It’s rather jolly to come back and find someone about the place. A
+woman and a baby make very good decoration in a room.”
+
+He had gone to the hospital dispensary and got a bottle of Blaud’s
+Pills, He gave them to Mildred and told her she must take them after
+each meal. It was a remedy she was used to, for she had taken it off
+and on ever since she was sixteen.
+
+“I’m sure Lawson would love that green skin of yours,” said Philip.
+“He’d say it was so paintable, but I’m terribly matter of fact
+nowadays, and I shan’t be happy till you’re as pink and white as a
+milkmaid.”
+
+“I feel better already.”
+
+After a frugal supper Philip filled his pouch with tobacco and put on
+his hat. It was on Tuesdays that he generally went to the tavern in
+Beak Street, and he was glad that this day came so soon after Mildred’s
+arrival, for he wanted to make his relations with her perfectly clear.
+
+“Are you going out?” she said.
+
+“Yes, on Tuesdays I give myself a night off. I shall see you tomorrow.
+Good-night.”
+
+Philip always went to the tavern with a sense of pleasure. Macalister,
+the philosophic stockbroker, was generally there and glad to argue upon
+any subject under the sun; Hayward came regularly when he was in
+London; and though he and Macalister disliked one another they
+continued out of habit to meet on that one evening in the week.
+Macalister thought Hayward a poor creature, and sneered at his
+delicacies of sentiment: he asked satirically about Hayward’s literary
+work and received with scornful smiles his vague suggestions of future
+masterpieces; their arguments were often heated; but the punch was
+good, and they were both fond of it; towards the end of the evening
+they generally composed their differences and thought each other
+capital fellows. This evening Philip found them both there, and Lawson
+also; Lawson came more seldom now that he was beginning to know people
+in London and went out to dinner a good deal. They were all on
+excellent terms with themselves, for Macalister had given them a good
+thing on the Stock Exchange, and Hayward and Lawson had made fifty
+pounds apiece. It was a great thing for Lawson, who was extravagant and
+earned little money: he had arrived at that stage of the
+portrait-painter’s career when he was noticed a good deal by the
+critics and found a number of aristocratic ladies who were willing to
+allow him to paint them for nothing (it advertised them both, and gave
+the great ladies quite an air of patronesses of the arts); but he very
+seldom got hold of the solid philistine who was ready to pay good money
+for a portrait of his wife. Lawson was brimming over with satisfaction.
+
+“It’s the most ripping way of making money that I’ve ever struck,” he
+cried. “I didn’t have to put my hand in my pocket for sixpence.”
+
+“You lost something by not being here last Tuesday, young man,” said
+Macalister to Philip.
+
+“My God, why didn’t you write to me?” said Philip. “If you only knew
+how useful a hundred pounds would be to me.”
+
+“Oh, there wasn’t time for that. One has to be on the spot. I heard of
+a good thing last Tuesday, and I asked these fellows if they’d like to
+have a flutter, I bought them a thousand shares on Wednesday morning,
+and there was a rise in the afternoon so I sold them at once. I made
+fifty pounds for each of them and a couple of hundred for myself.”
+
+Philip was sick with envy. He had recently sold the last mortgage in
+which his small fortune had been invested and now had only six hundred
+pounds left. He was panic-stricken sometimes when he thought of the
+future. He had still to keep himself for two years before he could be
+qualified, and then he meant to try for hospital appointments, so that
+he could not expect to earn anything for three years at least. With the
+most rigid economy he would not have more than a hundred pounds left
+then. It was very little to have as a stand-by in case he was ill and
+could not earn money or found himself at any time without work. A lucky
+gamble would make all the difference to him.
+
+“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter,” said Macalister. “Something is sure to
+turn up soon. There’ll be a boom in South Africans again one of these
+days, and then I’ll see what I can do for you.”
+
+Macalister was in the Kaffir market and often told them stories of the
+sudden fortunes that had been made in the great boom of a year or two
+back.
+
+“Well, don’t forget next time.”
+
+They sat on talking till nearly midnight, and Philip, who lived
+furthest off, was the first to go. If he did not catch the last tram he
+had to walk, and that made him very late. As it was he did not reach
+home till nearly half past twelve. When he got upstairs he was
+surprised to find Mildred still sitting in his arm-chair.
+
+“Why on earth aren’t you in bed?” he cried.
+
+“I wasn’t sleepy.”
+
+“You ought to go to bed all the same. It would rest you.”
+
+She did not move. He noticed that since supper she had changed into her
+black silk dress.
+
+“I thought I’d rather wait up for you in case you wanted anything.”
+
+ She looked at him, and the shadow of a smile played upon her thin pale
+ lips. Philip was not sure whether he understood or not. He was
+ slightly embarrassed, but assumed a cheerful, matter-of-fact air.
+
+“It’s very nice of you, but it’s very naughty also. Run off to bed as
+fast as you can, or you won’t be able to get up tomorrow morning.”
+
+“I don’t feel like going to bed.”
+
+“Nonsense,” he said coldly.
+
+She got up, a little sulkily, and went into her room. He smiled when he
+heard her lock the door loudly.
+
+The next few days passed without incident. Mildred settled down in her
+new surroundings. When Philip hurried off after breakfast she had the
+whole morning to do the housework. They ate very simply, but she liked
+to take a long time to buy the few things they needed; she could not be
+bothered to cook anything for her dinner, but made herself some cocoa
+and ate bread and butter; then she took the baby out in the gocart, and
+when she came in spent the rest of the afternoon in idleness. She was
+tired out, and it suited her to do so little. She made friends with
+Philip’s forbidding landlady over the rent, which he left with Mildred
+to pay, and within a week was able to tell him more about his
+neighbours than he had learned in a year.
+
+“She’s a very nice woman,” said Mildred. “Quite the lady. I told her we
+was married.”
+
+“D’you think that was necessary?”
+
+“Well, I had to tell her something. It looks so funny me being here and
+not married to you. I didn’t know what she’d think of me.”
+
+“I don’t suppose she believed you for a moment.”
+
+“That she did, I lay. I told her we’d been married two years—I had to
+say that, you know, because of baby—only your people wouldn’t hear of
+it, because you was only a student”—she pronounced it stoodent—“and so
+we had to keep it a secret, but they’d given way now and we were all
+going down to stay with them in the summer.”
+
+“You’re a past mistress of the cock-and-bull story,” said Philip.
+
+He was vaguely irritated that Mildred still had this passion for
+telling fibs. In the last two years she had learnt nothing. But he
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“When all’s said and done,” he reflected, “she hasn’t had much chance.”
+
+It was a beautiful evening, warm and cloudless, and the people of South
+London seemed to have poured out into the streets. There was that
+restlessness in the air which seizes the cockney sometimes when a turn
+in the weather calls him into the open. After Mildred had cleared away
+the supper she went and stood at the window. The street noises came up
+to them, noises of people calling to one another, of the passing
+traffic, of a barrel-organ in the distance.
+
+“I suppose you must work tonight, Philip?” she asked him, with a
+wistful expression.
+
+“I ought, but I don’t know that I must. Why, d’you want me to do
+anything else?”
+
+“I’d like to go out for a bit. Couldn’t we take a ride on the top of a
+tram?”
+
+“If you like.”
+
+“I’ll just go and put on my hat,” she said joyfully.
+
+The night made it almost impossible to stay indoors. The baby was
+asleep and could be safely left; Mildred said she had always left it
+alone at night when she went out; it never woke. She was in high
+spirits when she came back with her hat on. She had taken the
+opportunity to put on a little rouge. Philip thought it was excitement
+which had brought a faint colour to her pale cheeks; he was touched by
+her child-like delight, and reproached himself for the austerity with
+which he had treated her. She laughed when she got out into the air.
+The first tram they saw was going towards Westminster Bridge and they
+got on it. Philip smoked his pipe, and they looked at the crowded
+street. The shops were open, gaily lit, and people were doing their
+shopping for the next day. They passed a music-hall called the
+Canterbury and Mildred cried out:
+
+“Oh, Philip, do let’s go there. I haven’t been to a music-hall for
+months.”
+
+“We can’t afford stalls, you know.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t mind, I shall be quite happy in the gallery.”
+
+They got down and walked back a hundred yards till they came to the
+doors. They got capital seats for sixpence each, high up but not in the
+gallery, and the night was so fine that there was plenty of room.
+Mildred’s eyes glistened. She enjoyed herself thoroughly. There was a
+simple-mindedness in her which touched Philip. She was a puzzle to him.
+Certain things in her still pleased him, and he thought that there was
+a lot in her which was very good: she had been badly brought up, and
+her life was hard; he had blamed her for much that she could not help;
+and it was his own fault if he had asked virtues from her which it was
+not in her power to give. Under different circumstances she might have
+been a charming girl. She was extraordinarily unfit for the battle of
+life. As he watched her now in profile, her mouth slightly open and
+that delicate flush on her cheeks, he thought she looked strangely
+virginal. He felt an overwhelming compassion for her, and with all his
+heart he forgave her for the misery she had caused him. The smoky
+atmosphere made Philip’s eyes ache, but when he suggested going she
+turned to him with beseeching face and asked him to stay till the end.
+He smiled and consented. She took his hand and held it for the rest of
+the performance. When they streamed out with the audience into the
+crowded street she did not want to go home; they wandered up the
+Westminster Bridge Road, looking at the people.
+
+“I’ve not had such a good time as this for months,” she said.
+
+Philip’s heart was full, and he was thankful to the fates because he
+had carried out his sudden impulse to take Mildred and her baby into
+his flat. It was very pleasant to see her happy gratitude. At last she
+grew tired and they jumped on a tram to go home; it was late now, and
+when they got down and turned into their own street there was no one
+about. Mildred slipped her arm through his.
+
+“It’s just like old times, Phil,” she said.
+
+She had never called him Phil before, that was what Griffiths called
+him; and even now it gave him a curious pang. He remembered how much he
+had wanted to die then; his pain had been so great that he had thought
+quite seriously of committing suicide. It all seemed very long ago. He
+smiled at his past self. Now he felt nothing for Mildred but infinite
+pity. They reached the house, and when they got into the sitting-room
+Philip lit the gas.
+
+“Is the baby all right?” he asked.
+
+“I’ll just go in and see.”
+
+When she came back it was to say that it had not stirred since she left
+it. It was a wonderful child. Philip held out his hand.
+
+“Well, good-night.”
+
+“D’you want to go to bed already?”
+
+“It’s nearly one. I’m not used to late hours these days,” said Philip.
+
+She took his hand and holding it looked into his eyes with a little
+smile.
+
+“Phil, the other night in that room, when you asked me to come and stay
+here, I didn’t mean what you thought I meant, when you said you didn’t
+want me to be anything to you except just to cook and that sort of
+thing.”
+
+“Didn’t you?” answered Philip, withdrawing his hand. “I did.”
+
+“Don’t be such an old silly,” she laughed.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“I meant it quite seriously. I shouldn’t have asked you to stay here on
+any other condition.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“I feel I couldn’t. I can’t explain it, but it would spoil it all.”
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“Oh, very well, it’s just as you choose. I’m not one to go down on my
+hands and knees for that, and chance it.”
+
+She went out, slamming the door behind her.
+
+
+
+
+XCIII
+
+
+Next morning Mildred was sulky and taciturn. She remained in her room
+till it was time to get the dinner ready. She was a bad cook and could
+do little more than chops and steaks; and she did not know how to use
+up odds and ends, so that Philip was obliged to spend more money than
+he had expected. When she served up she sat down opposite Philip, but
+would eat nothing; he remarked on it; she said she had a bad headache
+and was not hungry. He was glad that he had somewhere to spend the rest
+of the day; the Athelnys were cheerful and friendly. It was a
+delightful and an unexpected thing to realise that everyone in that
+household looked forward with pleasure to his visit. Mildred had gone
+to bed when he came back, but next day she was still silent. At supper
+she sat with a haughty expression on her face and a little frown
+between her eyes. It made Philip impatient, but he told himself that he
+must be considerate to her; he was bound to make allowance.
+
+“You’re very silent,” he said, with a pleasant smile.
+
+“I’m paid to cook and clean, I didn’t know I was expected to talk as
+well.”
+
+He thought it an ungracious answer, but if they were going to live
+together he must do all he could to make things go easily.
+
+“I’m afraid you’re cross with me about the other night,” he said.
+
+It was an awkward thing to speak about, but apparently it was necessary
+to discuss it.
+
+“I don’t know what you mean,” she answered.
+
+“Please don’t be angry with me. I should never have asked you to come
+and live here if I’d not meant our relations to be merely friendly. I
+suggested it because I thought you wanted a home and you would have a
+chance of looking about for something to do.”
+
+“Oh, don’t think I care.”
+
+“I don’t for a moment,” he hastened to say. “You mustn’t think I’m
+ungrateful. I realise that you only proposed it for my sake. It’s just
+a feeling I have, and I can’t help it, it would make the whole thing
+ugly and horrid.”
+
+“You are funny,” she said, looking at him curiously. “I can’t make you
+out.”
+
+She was not angry with him now, but puzzled; she had no idea what he
+meant: she accepted the situation, she had indeed a vague feeling that
+he was behaving in a very noble fashion and that she ought to admire
+it; but also she felt inclined to laugh at him and perhaps even to
+despise him a little.
+
+“He’s a rum customer,” she thought.
+
+Life went smoothly enough with them. Philip spent all day at the
+hospital and worked at home in the evening except when he went to the
+Athelnys’ or to the tavern in Beak Street. Once the physician for whom
+he clerked asked him to a solemn dinner, and two or three times he went
+to parties given by fellow-students. Mildred accepted the monotony of
+her life. If she minded that Philip left her sometimes by herself in
+the evening she never mentioned it. Occasionally he took her to a music
+hall. He carried out his intention that the only tie between them
+should be the domestic service she did in return for board and lodging.
+She had made up her mind that it was no use trying to get work that
+summer, and with Philip’s approval determined to stay where she was
+till the autumn. She thought it would be easy to get something to do
+then.
+
+“As far as I’m concerned you can stay on here when you’ve got a job if
+it’s convenient. The room’s there, and the woman who did for me before
+can come in to look after the baby.”
+
+He grew very much attached to Mildred’s child. He had a naturally
+affectionate disposition, which had had little opportunity to display
+itself. Mildred was not unkind to the little girl. She looked after her
+very well and once when she had a bad cold proved herself a devoted
+nurse; but the child bored her, and she spoke to her sharply when she
+bothered; she was fond of her, but had not the maternal passion which
+might have induced her to forget herself. Mildred had no
+demonstrativeness, and she found the manifestations of affection
+ridiculous. When Philip sat with the baby on his knees, playing with it
+and kissing it, she laughed at him.
+
+“You couldn’t make more fuss of her if you was her father,” she said.
+“You’re perfectly silly with the child.”
+
+Philip flushed, for he hated to be laughed at. It was absurd to be so
+devoted to another man’s baby, and he was a little ashamed of the
+overflowing of his heart. But the child, feeling Philip’s attachment,
+would put her face against his or nestle in his arms.
+
+“It’s all very fine for you,” said Mildred. “You don’t have any of the
+disagreeable part of it. How would you like being kept awake for an
+hour in the middle of the night because her ladyship wouldn’t go to
+sleep?”
+
+Philip remembered all sorts of things of his childhood which he thought
+he had long forgotten. He took hold of the baby’s toes.
+
+“This little pig went to market, this little pig stayed at home.”
+
+When he came home in the evening and entered the sitting-room his first
+glance was for the baby sprawling on the floor, and it gave him a
+little thrill of delight to hear the child’s crow of pleasure at seeing
+him. Mildred taught her to call him daddy, and when the child did this
+for the first time of her own accord, laughed immoderately.
+
+“I wonder if you’re that stuck on baby because she’s mine,” asked
+Mildred, “or if you’d be the same with anybody’s baby.”
+
+“I’ve never known anybody else’s baby, so I can’t say,” said Philip.
+
+Towards the end of his second term as in-patients’ clerk a piece of
+good fortune befell Philip. It was the middle of July. He went one
+Tuesday evening to the tavern in Beak Street and found nobody there but
+Macalister. They sat together, chatting about their absent friends, and
+after a while Macalister said to him:
+
+“Oh, by the way, I heard of a rather good thing today, New
+Kleinfonteins; it’s a gold mine in Rhodesia. If you’d like to have a
+flutter you might make a bit.”
+
+Philip had been waiting anxiously for such an opportunity, but now that
+it came he hesitated. He was desperately afraid of losing money. He had
+little of the gambler’s spirit.
+
+“I’d love to, but I don’t know if I dare risk it. How much could I lose
+if things went wrong?”
+
+“I shouldn’t have spoken of it, only you seemed so keen about it,”
+Macalister answered coldly.
+
+Philip felt that Macalister looked upon him as rather a donkey.
+
+“I’m awfully keen on making a bit,” he laughed.
+
+“You can’t make money unless you’re prepared to risk money.”
+
+Macalister began to talk of other things and Philip, while he was
+answering him, kept thinking that if the venture turned out well the
+stockbroker would be very facetious at his expense next time they met.
+Macalister had a sarcastic tongue.
+
+“I think I will have a flutter if you don’t mind,” said Philip
+anxiously.
+
+“All right. I’ll buy you two hundred and fifty shares and if I see a
+half-crown rise I’ll sell them at once.”
+
+Philip quickly reckoned out how much that would amount to, and his
+mouth watered; thirty pounds would be a godsend just then, and he
+thought the fates owed him something. He told Mildred what he had done
+when he saw her at breakfast next morning. She thought him very silly.
+
+“I never knew anyone who made money on the Stock Exchange,” she said.
+“That’s what Emil always said, you can’t expect to make money on the
+Stock Exchange, he said.”
+
+Philip bought an evening paper on his way home and turned at once to
+the money columns. He knew nothing about these things and had
+difficulty in finding the stock which Macalister had spoken of. He saw
+they had advanced a quarter. His heart leaped, and then he felt sick
+with apprehension in case Macalister had forgotten or for some reason
+had not bought. Macalister had promised to telegraph. Philip could not
+wait to take a tram home. He jumped into a cab. It was an unwonted
+extravagance.
+
+“Is there a telegram for me?” he said, as he burst in.
+
+“No,” said Mildred.
+
+His face fell, and in bitter disappointment he sank heavily into a
+chair.
+
+“Then he didn’t buy them for me after all. Curse him,” he added
+violently. “What cruel luck! And I’ve been thinking all day of what I’d
+do with the money.”
+
+“Why, what were you going to do?” she asked.
+
+“What’s the good of thinking about that now? Oh, I wanted the money so
+badly.”
+
+She gave a laugh and handed him a telegram.
+
+“I was only having a joke with you. I opened it.”
+
+He tore it out of her hands. Macalister had bought him two hundred and
+fifty shares and sold them at the half-crown profit he had suggested.
+The commission note was to follow next day. For one moment Philip was
+furious with Mildred for her cruel jest, but then he could only think
+of his joy.
+
+“It makes such a difference to me,” he cried. “I’ll stand you a new
+dress if you like.”
+
+“I want it badly enough,” she answered.
+
+“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to be operated upon at
+the end of July.”
+
+“Why, have you got something the matter with you?” she interrupted.
+
+It struck her that an illness she did not know might explain what had
+so much puzzled her. He flushed, for he hated to refer to his
+deformity.
+
+“No, but they think they can do something to my foot. I couldn’t spare
+the time before, but now it doesn’t matter so much. I shall start my
+dressing in October instead of next month. I shall only be in hospital
+a few weeks and then we can go away to the seaside for the rest of the
+summer. It’ll do us all good, you and the baby and me.”
+
+“Oh, let’s go to Brighton, Philip, I like Brighton, you get such a nice
+class of people there.” Philip had vaguely thought of some little
+fishing village in Cornwall, but as she spoke it occurred to him that
+Mildred would be bored to death there.
+
+“I don’t mind where we go as long as I get the sea.”
+
+He did not know why, but he had suddenly an irresistible longing for
+the sea. He wanted to bathe, and he thought with delight of splashing
+about in the salt water. He was a good swimmer, and nothing exhilarated
+him like a rough sea.
+
+“I say, it will be jolly,” he cried.
+
+“It’ll be like a honeymoon, won’t it?” she said. “How much can I have
+for my new dress, Phil?”
+
+
+
+
+XCIV
+
+
+Philip asked Mr. Jacobs, the assistant-surgeon for whom he had dressed,
+to do the operation. Jacobs accepted with pleasure, since he was
+interested just then in neglected talipes and was getting together
+materials for a paper. He warned Philip that he could not make his foot
+like the other, but he thought he could do a good deal; and though he
+would always limp he would be able to wear a boot less unsightly than
+that which he had been accustomed to. Philip remembered how he had
+prayed to a God who was able to remove mountains for him who had faith,
+and he smiled bitterly.
+
+“I don’t expect a miracle,” he answered.
+
+“I think you’re wise to let me try what I can do. You’ll find a
+club-foot rather a handicap in practice. The layman is full of fads,
+and he doesn’t like his doctor to have anything the matter with him.”
+
+Philip went into a ‘small ward’, which was a room on the landing,
+outside each ward, reserved for special cases. He remained there a
+month, for the surgeon would not let him go till he could walk; and,
+bearing the operation very well, he had a pleasant enough time. Lawson
+and Athelny came to see him, and one day Mrs. Athelny brought two of
+her children; students whom he knew looked in now and again to have a
+chat; Mildred came twice a week. Everyone was very kind to him, and
+Philip, always surprised when anyone took trouble with him, was touched
+and grateful. He enjoyed the relief from care; he need not worry there
+about the future, neither whether his money would last out nor whether
+he would pass his final examinations; and he could read to his heart’s
+content. He had not been able to read much of late, since Mildred
+disturbed him: she would make an aimless remark when he was trying to
+concentrate his attention, and would not be satisfied unless he
+answered; whenever he was comfortably settled down with a book she
+would want something done and would come to him with a cork she could
+not draw or a hammer to drive in a nail.
+
+They settled to go to Brighton in August. Philip wanted to take
+lodgings, but Mildred said that she would have to do housekeeping, and
+it would only be a holiday for her if they went to a boarding-house.
+
+“I have to see about the food every day at home, I get that sick of it
+I want a thorough change.”
+
+Philip agreed, and it happened that Mildred knew of a boarding-house at
+Kemp Town where they would not be charged more than twenty-five
+shillings a week each. She arranged with Philip to write about rooms,
+but when he got back to Kennington he found that she had done nothing.
+He was irritated.
+
+“I shouldn’t have thought you had so much to do as all that,” he said.
+
+“Well, I can’t think of everything. It’s not my fault if I forget, is
+it?”
+
+Philip was so anxious to get to the sea that he would not wait to
+communicate with the mistress of the boarding-house.
+
+“We’ll leave the luggage at the station and go to the house and see if
+they’ve got rooms, and if they have we can just send an outside porter
+for our traps.”
+
+“You can please yourself,” said Mildred stiffly.
+
+She did not like being reproached, and, retiring huffily into a haughty
+silence, she sat by listlessly while Philip made the preparations for
+their departure. The little flat was hot and stuffy under the August
+sun, and from the road beat up a malodorous sultriness. As he lay in
+his bed in the small ward with its red, distempered walls he had longed
+for fresh air and the splashing of the sea against his breast. He felt
+he would go mad if he had to spend another night in London. Mildred
+recovered her good temper when she saw the streets of Brighton crowded
+with people making holiday, and they were both in high spirits as they
+drove out to Kemp Town. Philip stroked the baby’s cheek.
+
+“We shall get a very different colour into them when we’ve been down
+here a few days,” he said, smiling.
+
+They arrived at the boarding-house and dismissed the cab. An untidy
+maid opened the door and, when Philip asked if they had rooms, said she
+would inquire. She fetched her mistress. A middle-aged woman, stout and
+business-like, came downstairs, gave them the scrutinising glance of
+her profession, and asked what accommodation they required.
+
+“Two single rooms, and if you’ve got such a thing we’d rather like a
+cot in one of them.”
+
+“I’m afraid I haven’t got that. I’ve got one nice large double room,
+and I could let you have a cot.”
+
+“I don’t think that would do,” said Philip.
+
+“I could give you another room next week. Brighton’s very full just
+now, and people have to take what they can get.”
+
+“If it were only for a few days, Philip, I think we might be able to
+manage,” said Mildred.
+
+“I think two rooms would be more convenient. Can you recommend any
+other place where they take boarders?”
+
+“I can, but I don’t suppose they’d have room any more than I have.”
+
+“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving me the address.”
+
+The house the stout woman suggested was in the next street, and they
+walked towards it. Philip could walk quite well, though he had to lean
+on a stick, and he was rather weak. Mildred carried the baby. They went
+for a little in silence, and then he saw she was crying. It annoyed
+him, and he took no notice, but she forced his attention.
+
+“Lend me a hanky, will you? I can’t get at mine with baby,” she said in
+a voice strangled with sobs, turning her head away from him.
+
+He gave her his handkerchief, but said nothing. She dried her eyes, and
+as he did not speak, went on.
+
+“I might be poisonous.”
+
+“Please don’t make a scene in the street,” he said.
+
+“It’ll look so funny insisting on separate rooms like that. What’ll
+they think of us?”
+
+“If they knew the circumstances I imagine they’d think us surprisingly
+moral,” said Philip.
+
+She gave him a sidelong glance.
+
+“You’re not going to give it away that we’re not married?” she asked
+quickly.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Why won’t you live with me as if we were married then?”
+
+“My dear, I can’t explain. I don’t want to humiliate you, but I simply
+can’t. I daresay it’s very silly and unreasonable, but it’s stronger
+than I am. I loved you so much that now…” he broke off. “After all,
+there’s no accounting for that sort of thing.”
+
+“A fat lot you must have loved me!” she exclaimed.
+
+The boarding-house to which they had been directed was kept by a
+bustling maiden lady, with shrewd eyes and voluble speech. They could
+have one double room for twenty-five shillings a week each, and five
+shillings extra for the baby, or they could have two single rooms for a
+pound a week more.
+
+“I have to charge that much more,” the woman explained apologetically,
+“because if I’m pushed to it I can put two beds even in the single
+rooms.”
+
+“I daresay that won’t ruin us. What do you think, Mildred?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t mind. Anything’s good enough for me,” she answered.
+
+Philip passed off her sulky reply with a laugh, and, the landlady
+having arranged to send for their luggage, they sat down to rest
+themselves. Philip’s foot was hurting him a little, and he was glad to
+put it up on a chair.
+
+“I suppose you don’t mind my sitting in the same room with you,” said
+Mildred aggressively.
+
+“Don’t let’s quarrel, Mildred,” he said gently.
+
+“I didn’t know you was so well off you could afford to throw away a
+pound a week.”
+
+“Don’t be angry with me. I assure you it’s the only way we can live
+together at all.”
+
+“I suppose you despise me, that’s it.”
+
+“Of course I don’t. Why should I?”
+
+“It’s so unnatural.”
+
+“Is it? You’re not in love with me, are you?”
+
+“Me? Who d’you take me for?”
+
+“It’s not as if you were a very passionate woman, you’re not that.”
+
+“It’s so humiliating,” she said sulkily.
+
+“Oh, I wouldn’t fuss about that if I were you.”
+
+There were about a dozen people in the boarding-house. They ate in a
+narrow, dark room at a long table, at the head of which the landlady
+sat and carved. The food was bad. The landlady called it French
+cooking, by which she meant that the poor quality of the materials was
+disguised by ill-made sauces: plaice masqueraded as sole and New
+Zealand mutton as lamb. The kitchen was small and inconvenient, so that
+everything was served up lukewarm. The people were dull and
+pretentious; old ladies with elderly maiden daughters; funny old
+bachelors with mincing ways; pale-faced, middle-aged clerks with wives,
+who talked of their married daughters and their sons who were in a very
+good position in the Colonies. At table they discussed Miss Corelli’s
+latest novel; some of them liked Lord Leighton better than Mr.
+Alma-Tadema, and some of them liked Mr. Alma-Tadema better than Lord
+Leighton. Mildred soon told the ladies of her romantic marriage with
+Philip; and he found himself an object of interest because his family,
+county people in a very good position, had cut him off with a shilling
+because he married while he was only a stoodent; and Mildred’s father,
+who had a large place down Devonshire way, wouldn’t do anything for
+them because she had married Philip. That was why they had come to a
+boarding-house and had not a nurse for the baby; but they had to have
+two rooms because they were both used to a good deal of accommodation
+and they didn’t care to be cramped. The other visitors also had
+explanations of their presence: one of the single gentlemen generally
+went to the Metropole for his holiday, but he liked cheerful company
+and you couldn’t get that at one of those expensive hotels; and the old
+lady with the middle-aged daughter was having her beautiful house in
+London done up and she said to her daughter: “Gwennie, my dear, we must
+have a cheap holiday this year,” and so they had come there, though of
+course it wasn’t at all the kind of thing they were used to. Mildred
+found them all very superior, and she hated a lot of common, rough
+people. She liked gentlemen to be gentlemen in every sense of the word.
+
+“When people are gentlemen and ladies,” she said, “I like them to be
+gentlemen and ladies.”
+
+The remark seemed cryptic to Philip, but when he heard her say it two
+or three times to different persons, and found that it aroused hearty
+agreement, he came to the conclusion that it was only obscure to his
+own intelligence. It was the first time that Philip and Mildred had
+been thrown entirely together. In London he did not see her all day,
+and when he came home the household affairs, the baby, the neighbours,
+gave them something to talk about till he settled down to work. Now he
+spent the whole day with her. After breakfast they went down to the
+beach; the morning went easily enough with a bathe and a stroll along
+the front; the evening, which they spent on the pier, having put the
+baby to bed, was tolerable, for there was music to listen to and a
+constant stream of people to look at; (Philip amused himself by
+imagining who they were and weaving little stories about them; he had
+got into the habit of answering Mildred’s remarks with his mouth only
+so that his thoughts remained undisturbed;) but the afternoons were
+long and dreary. They sat on the beach. Mildred said they must get all
+the benefit they could out of Doctor Brighton, and he could not read
+because Mildred made observations frequently about things in general.
+If he paid no attention she complained.
+
+“Oh, leave that silly old book alone. It can’t be good for you always
+reading. You’ll addle your brain, that’s what you’ll do, Philip.”
+
+“Oh, rot!” he answered.
+
+“Besides, it’s so unsociable.”
+
+He discovered that it was difficult to talk to her. She had not even
+the power of attending to what she was herself saying, so that a dog
+running in front of her or the passing of a man in a loud blazer would
+call forth a remark and then she would forget what she had been
+speaking of. She had a bad memory for names, and it irritated her not
+to be able to think of them, so that she would pause in the middle of
+some story to rack her brains. Sometimes she had to give it up, but it
+often occurred to her afterwards, and when Philip was talking of
+something she would interrupt him.
+
+“Collins, that was it. I knew it would come back to me some time.
+Collins, that’s the name I couldn’t remember.”
+
+It exasperated him because it showed that she was not listening to
+anything he said, and yet, if he was silent, she reproached him for
+sulkiness. Her mind was of an order that could not deal for five
+minutes with the abstract, and when Philip gave way to his taste for
+generalising she very quickly showed that she was bored. Mildred dreamt
+a great deal, and she had an accurate memory for her dreams, which she
+would relate every day with prolixity.
+
+One morning he received a long letter from Thorpe Athelny. He was
+taking his holiday in the theatrical way, in which there was much sound
+sense, which characterised him. He had done the same thing for ten
+years. He took his whole family to a hop-field in Kent, not far from
+Mrs. Athelny’s home, and they spent three weeks hopping. It kept them
+in the open air, earned them money, much to Mrs. Athelny’s
+satisfaction, and renewed their contact with mother earth. It was upon
+this that Athelny laid stress. The sojourn in the fields gave them a
+new strength; it was like a magic ceremony, by which they renewed their
+youth and the power of their limbs and the sweetness of the spirit:
+Philip had heard him say many fantastic, rhetorical, and picturesque
+things on the subject. Now Athelny invited him to come over for a day,
+he had certain meditations on Shakespeare and the musical glasses which
+he desired to impart, and the children were clamouring for a sight of
+Uncle Philip. Philip read the letter again in the afternoon when he was
+sitting with Mildred on the beach. He thought of Mrs. Athelny, cheerful
+mother of many children, with her kindly hospitality and her good
+humour; of Sally, grave for her years, with funny little maternal ways
+and an air of authority, with her long plait of fair hair and her broad
+forehead; and then in a bunch of all the others, merry, boisterous,
+healthy, and handsome. His heart went out to them. There was one
+quality which they had that he did not remember to have noticed in
+people before, and that was goodness. It had not occurred to him till
+now, but it was evidently the beauty of their goodness which attracted
+him. In theory he did not believe in it: if morality were no more than
+a matter of convenience good and evil had no meaning. He did not like
+to be illogical, but here was simple goodness, natural and without
+effort, and he thought it beautiful. Meditating, he slowly tore the
+letter into little pieces; he did not see how he could go without
+Mildred, and he did not want to go with her.
+
+It was very hot, the sky was cloudless, and they had been driven to a
+shady corner. The baby was gravely playing with stones on the beach,
+and now and then she crawled up to Philip and gave him one to hold,
+then took it away again and placed it carefully down. She was playing a
+mysterious and complicated game known only to herself. Mildred was
+asleep. She lay with her head thrown back and her mouth slightly open;
+her legs were stretched out, and her boots protruded from her
+petticoats in a grotesque fashion. His eyes had been resting on her
+vaguely, but now he looked at her with peculiar attention. He
+remembered how passionately he had loved her, and he wondered why now
+he was entirely indifferent to her. The change in him filled him with
+dull pain. It seemed to him that all he had suffered had been sheer
+waste. The touch of her hand had filled him with ecstasy; he had
+desired to enter into her soul so that he could share every thought
+with her and every feeling; he had suffered acutely because, when
+silence had fallen between them, a remark of hers showed how far their
+thoughts had travelled apart, and he had rebelled against the
+unsurmountable wall which seemed to divide every personality from every
+other. He found it strangely tragic that he had loved her so madly and
+now loved her not at all. Sometimes he hated her. She was incapable of
+learning, and the experience of life had taught her nothing. She was as
+unmannerly as she had always been. It revolted Philip to hear the
+insolence with which she treated the hard-worked servant at the
+boarding-house.
+
+Presently he considered his own plans. At the end of his fourth year he
+would be able to take his examination in midwifery, and a year more
+would see him qualified. Then he might manage a journey to Spain. He
+wanted to see the pictures which he knew only from photographs; he felt
+deeply that El Greco held a secret of peculiar moment to him; and he
+fancied that in Toledo he would surely find it out. He did not wish to
+do things grandly, and on a hundred pounds he might live for six months
+in Spain: if Macalister put him on to another good thing he could make
+that easily. His heart warmed at the thought of those old beautiful
+cities, and the tawny plains of Castile. He was convinced that more
+might be got out of life than offered itself at present, and he thought
+that in Spain he could live with greater intensity: it might be
+possible to practise in one of those old cities, there were a good many
+foreigners, passing or resident, and he should be able to pick up a
+living. But that would be much later; first he must get one or two
+hospital appointments; they gave experience and made it easy to get
+jobs afterwards. He wished to get a berth as ship’s doctor on one of
+the large tramps that took things leisurely enough for a man to see
+something of the places at which they stopped. He wanted to go to the
+East; and his fancy was rich with pictures of Bangkok and Shanghai, and
+the ports of Japan: he pictured to himself palm-trees and skies blue
+and hot, dark-skinned people, pagodas; the scents of the Orient
+intoxicated his nostrils. His heart beat with passionate desire for the
+beauty and the strangeness of the world.
+
+Mildred awoke.
+
+“I do believe I’ve been asleep,” she said. “Now then, you naughty girl,
+what have you been doing to yourself? Her dress was clean yesterday and
+just look at it now, Philip.”
+
+
+
+
+XCV
+
+
+When they returned to London Philip began his dressing in the surgical
+wards. He was not so much interested in surgery as in medicine, which,
+a more empirical science, offered greater scope to the imagination. The
+work was a little harder than the corresponding work on the medical
+side. There was a lecture from nine till ten, when he went into the
+wards; there wounds had to be dressed, stitches taken out, bandages
+renewed: Philip prided himself a little on his skill in bandaging, and
+it amused him to wring a word of approval from a nurse. On certain
+afternoons in the week there were operations; and he stood in the well
+of the theatre, in a white jacket, ready to hand the operating surgeon
+any instrument he wanted or to sponge the blood away so that he could
+see what he was about. When some rare operation was to be performed the
+theatre would fill up, but generally there were not more than half a
+dozen students present, and then the proceedings had a cosiness which
+Philip enjoyed. At that time the world at large seemed to have a
+passion for appendicitis, and a good many cases came to the operating
+theatre for this complaint: the surgeon for whom Philip dressed was in
+friendly rivalry with a colleague as to which could remove an appendix
+in the shortest time and with the smallest incision.
+
+In due course Philip was put on accident duty. The dressers took this
+in turn; it lasted three days, during which they lived in hospital and
+ate their meals in the common-room; they had a room on the ground floor
+near the casualty ward, with a bed that shut up during the day into a
+cupboard. The dresser on duty had to be at hand day and night to see to
+any casualty that came in. You were on the move all the time, and not
+more than an hour or two passed during the night without the clanging
+of the bell just above your head which made you leap out of bed
+instinctively. Saturday night was of course the busiest time and the
+closing of the public-houses the busiest hour. Men would be brought in
+by the police dead drunk and it would be necessary to administer a
+stomach-pump; women, rather the worse for liquor themselves, would come
+in with a wound on the head or a bleeding nose which their husbands had
+given them: some would vow to have the law on him, and others, ashamed,
+would declare that it had been an accident. What the dresser could
+manage himself he did, but if there was anything important he sent for
+the house-surgeon: he did this with care, since the house-surgeon was
+not vastly pleased to be dragged down five flights of stairs for
+nothing. The cases ranged from a cut finger to a cut throat. Boys came
+in with hands mangled by some machine, men were brought who had been
+knocked down by a cab, and children who had broken a limb while
+playing: now and then attempted suicides were carried in by the police:
+Philip saw a ghastly, wild-eyed man with a great gash from ear to ear,
+and he was in the ward for weeks afterwards in charge of a constable,
+silent, angry because he was alive, and sullen; he made no secret of
+the fact that he would try again to kill himself as soon as he was
+released. The wards were crowded, and the house-surgeon was faced with
+a dilemma when patients were brought in by the police: if they were
+sent on to the station and died there disagreeable things were said in
+the papers; and it was very difficult sometimes to tell if a man was
+dying or drunk. Philip did not go to bed till he was tired out, so that
+he should not have the bother of getting up again in an hour; and he
+sat in the casualty ward talking in the intervals of work with the
+night-nurse. She was a gray-haired woman of masculine appearance, who
+had been night-nurse in the casualty department for twenty years. She
+liked the work because she was her own mistress and had no sister to
+bother her. Her movements were slow, but she was immensely capable and
+she never failed in an emergency. The dressers, often inexperienced or
+nervous, found her a tower of strength. She had seen thousands of them,
+and they made no impression upon her: she always called them Mr. Brown;
+and when they expostulated and told her their real names, she merely
+nodded and went on calling them Mr. Brown. It interested Philip to sit
+with her in the bare room, with its two horse-hair couches and the
+flaring gas, and listen to her. She had long ceased to look upon the
+people who came in as human beings; they were drunks, or broken arms,
+or cut throats. She took the vice and misery and cruelty of the world
+as a matter of course; she found nothing to praise or blame in human
+actions: she accepted. She had a certain grim humour.
+
+“I remember one suicide,” she said to Philip, “who threw himself into
+the Thames. They fished him out and brought him here, and ten days
+later he developed typhoid fever from swallowing Thames water.”
+
+“Did he die?”
+
+“Yes, he did all right. I could never make up my mind if it was suicide
+or not…. They’re a funny lot, suicides. I remember one man who couldn’t
+get any work to do and his wife died, so he pawned his clothes and
+bought a revolver; but he made a mess of it, he only shot out an eye
+and he got all right. And then, if you please, with an eye gone and a
+piece of his face blow away, he came to the conclusion that the world
+wasn’t such a bad place after all, and he lived happily ever
+afterwards. Thing I’ve always noticed, people don’t commit suicide for
+love, as you’d expect, that’s just a fancy of novelists; they commit
+suicide because they haven’t got any money. I wonder why that is.”
+
+“I suppose money’s more important than love,” suggested Philip.
+
+Money was in any case occupying Philip’s thoughts a good deal just
+then. He discovered the little truth there was in the airy saying which
+himself had repeated, that two could live as cheaply as one, and his
+expenses were beginning to worry him. Mildred was not a good manager,
+and it cost them as much to live as if they had eaten in restaurants;
+the child needed clothes, and Mildred boots, an umbrella, and other
+small things which it was impossible for her to do without. When they
+returned from Brighton she had announced her intention of getting a
+job, but she took no definite steps, and presently a bad cold laid her
+up for a fortnight. When she was well she answered one or two
+advertisements, but nothing came of it: either she arrived too late and
+the vacant place was filled, or the work was more than she felt strong
+enough to do. Once she got an offer, but the wages were only fourteen
+shillings a week, and she thought she was worth more than that.
+
+“It’s no good letting oneself be put upon,” she remarked. “People don’t
+respect you if you let yourself go too cheap.”
+
+“I don’t think fourteen shillings is so bad,” answered Philip, drily.
+
+He could not help thinking how useful it would be towards the expenses
+of the household, and Mildred was already beginning to hint that she
+did not get a place because she had not got a decent dress to interview
+employers in. He gave her the dress, and she made one or two more
+attempts, but Philip came to the conclusion that they were not serious.
+She did not want to work. The only way he knew to make money was on the
+Stock Exchange, and he was very anxious to repeat the lucky experiment
+of the summer; but war had broken out with the Transvaal and nothing
+was doing in South Africans. Macalister told him that Redvers Buller
+would march into Pretoria in a month and then everything would boom.
+The only thing was to wait patiently. What they wanted was a British
+reverse to knock things down a bit, and then it might be worth while
+buying. Philip began reading assiduously the ‘city chat’ of his
+favourite newspaper. He was worried and irritable. Once or twice he
+spoke sharply to Mildred, and since she was neither tactful nor patient
+she answered with temper, and they quarrelled. Philip always expressed
+his regret for what he had said, but Mildred had not a forgiving
+nature, and she would sulk for a couple of days. She got on his nerves
+in all sorts of ways; by the manner in which she ate, and by the
+untidiness which made her leave articles of clothing about their
+sitting-room: Philip was excited by the war and devoured the papers,
+morning and evening; but she took no interest in anything that
+happened. She had made the acquaintance of two or three people who
+lived in the street, and one of them had asked if she would like the
+curate to call on her. She wore a wedding-ring and called herself Mrs.
+Carey. On Philip’s walls were two or three of the drawings which he had
+made in Paris, nudes, two of women and one of Miguel Ajuria, standing
+very square on his feet, with clenched fists. Philip kept them because
+they were the best things he had done, and they reminded him of happy
+days. Mildred had long looked at them with disfavour.
+
+“I wish you’d take those drawings down, Philip,” she said to him at
+last. “Mrs. Foreman, of number thirteen, came in yesterday afternoon,
+and I didn’t know which way to look. I saw her staring at them.”
+
+“What’s the matter with them?”
+
+“They’re indecent. Disgusting, that’s what I call it, to have drawings
+of naked people about. And it isn’t nice for baby either. She’s
+beginning to notice things now.”
+
+“How can you be so vulgar?”
+
+“Vulgar? Modest, I call it. I’ve never said anything, but d’you think I
+like having to look at those naked people all day long.”
+
+“Have you no sense of humour at all, Mildred?” he asked frigidly.
+
+“I don’t know what sense of humour’s got to do with it. I’ve got a good
+mind to take them down myself. If you want to know what I think about
+them, I think they’re disgusting.”
+
+“I don’t want to know what you think about them, and I forbid you to
+touch them.”
+
+When Mildred was cross with him she punished him through the baby. The
+little girl was as fond of Philip as he was of her, and it was her
+great pleasure every morning to crawl into his room (she was getting on
+for two now and could walk pretty well), and be taken up into his bed.
+When Mildred stopped this the poor child would cry bitterly. To
+Philip’s remonstrances she replied:
+
+“I don’t want her to get into habits.”
+
+And if then he said anything more she said:
+
+“It’s nothing to do with you what I do with my child. To hear you talk
+one would think you was her father. I’m her mother, and I ought to know
+what’s good for her, oughtn’t I?”
+
+Philip was exasperated by Mildred’s stupidity; but he was so
+indifferent to her now that it was only at times she made him angry. He
+grew used to having her about. Christmas came, and with it a couple of
+days holiday for Philip. He brought some holly in and decorated the
+flat, and on Christmas Day he gave small presents to Mildred and the
+baby. There were only two of them so they could not have a turkey, but
+Mildred roasted a chicken and boiled a Christmas pudding which she had
+bought at a local grocer’s. They stood themselves a bottle of wine.
+When they had dined Philip sat in his arm-chair by the fire, smoking
+his pipe; and the unaccustomed wine had made him forget for a while the
+anxiety about money which was so constantly with him. He felt happy and
+comfortable. Presently Mildred came in to tell him that the baby wanted
+him to kiss her good-night, and with a smile he went into Mildred’s
+bed-room. Then, telling the child to go to sleep, he turned down the
+gas and, leaving the door open in case she cried, went back into the
+sitting-room.
+
+“Where are you going to sit?” he asked Mildred.
+
+“You sit in your chair. I’m going to sit on the floor.”
+
+When he sat down she settled herself in front of the fire and leaned
+against his knees. He could not help remembering that this was how they
+had sat together in her rooms in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, but the
+positions had been reversed; it was he who had sat on the floor and
+leaned his head against her knee. How passionately he had loved her
+then! Now he felt for her a tenderness he had not known for a long
+time. He seemed still to feel twined round his neck the baby’s soft
+little arms.
+
+“Are you comfy?” he asked.
+
+She looked up at him, gave a slight smile, and nodded. They gazed into
+the fire dreamily, without speaking to one another. At last she turned
+round and stared at him curiously.
+
+“D’you know that you haven’t kissed me once since I came here?” she
+said suddenly.
+
+“D’you want me to?” he smiled.
+
+“I suppose you don’t care for me in that way any more?”
+
+“I’m very fond of you.”
+
+“You’re much fonder of baby.”
+
+He did not answer, and she laid her cheek against his hand.
+
+“You’re not angry with me any more?” she asked presently, with her eyes
+cast down.
+
+“Why on earth should I be?”
+
+“I’ve never cared for you as I do now. It’s only since I passed through
+the fire that I’ve learnt to love you.” It chilled Philip to hear her
+make use of the sort of phrase she read in the penny novelettes which
+she devoured. Then he wondered whether what she said had any meaning
+for her: perhaps she knew no other way to express her genuine feelings
+than the stilted language of The Family Herald.
+
+“It seems so funny our living together like this.”
+
+He did not reply for quite a long time, and silence fell upon them
+again; but at last he spoke and seemed conscious of no interval.
+
+“You mustn’t be angry with me. One can’t help these things. I remember
+that I thought you wicked and cruel because you did this, that, and the
+other; but it was very silly of me. You didn’t love me, and it was
+absurd to blame you for that. I thought I could make you love me, but I
+know now that was impossible. I don’t know what it is that makes
+someone love you, but whatever it is, it’s the only thing that matters,
+and if it isn’t there you won’t create it by kindness, or generosity,
+or anything of that sort.”
+
+“I should have thought if you’d loved me really you’d have loved me
+still.”
+
+“I should have thought so too. I remember how I used to think that it
+would last for ever, I felt I would rather die than be without you, and
+I used to long for the time when you would be faded and wrinkled so
+that nobody cared for you any more and I should have you all to
+myself.”
+
+She did not answer, and presently she got up and said she was going to
+bed. She gave a timid little smile.
+
+“It’s Christmas Day, Philip, won’t you kiss me good-night?”
+
+He gave a laugh, blushed slightly, and kissed her. She went to her
+bed-room and he began to read.
+
+
+
+
+XCVI
+
+
+The climax came two or three weeks later. Mildred was driven by
+Philip’s behaviour to a pitch of strange exasperation. There were many
+different emotions in her soul, and she passed from mood to mood with
+facility. She spent a great deal of time alone and brooded over her
+position. She did not put all her feelings into words, she did not even
+know what they were, but certain things stood out in her mind, and she
+thought of them over and over again. She had never understood Philip,
+nor had very much liked him; but she was pleased to have him about her
+because she thought he was a gentleman. She was impressed because his
+father had been a doctor and his uncle was a clergyman. She despised
+him a little because she had made such a fool of him, and at the same
+time was never quite comfortable in his presence; she could not let
+herself go, and she felt that he was criticising her manners.
+
+When she first came to live in the little rooms in Kennington she was
+tired out and ashamed. She was glad to be left alone. It was a comfort
+to think that there was no rent to pay; she need not go out in all
+weathers, and she could lie quietly in bed if she did not feel well.
+She had hated the life she led. It was horrible to have to be affable
+and subservient; and even now when it crossed her mind she cried with
+pity for herself as she thought of the roughness of men and their
+brutal language. But it crossed her mind very seldom. She was grateful
+to Philip for coming to her rescue, and when she remembered how
+honestly he had loved her and how badly she had treated him, she felt a
+pang of remorse. It was easy to make it up to him. It meant very little
+to her. She was surprised when he refused her suggestion, but she
+shrugged her shoulders: let him put on airs if he liked, she did not
+care, he would be anxious enough in a little while, and then it would
+be her turn to refuse; if he thought it was any deprivation to her he
+was very much mistaken. She had no doubt of her power over him. He was
+peculiar, but she knew him through and through. He had so often
+quarrelled with her and sworn he would never see her again, and then in
+a little while he had come on his knees begging to be forgiven. It gave
+her a thrill to think how he had cringed before her. He would have been
+glad to lie down on the ground for her to walk on him. She had seen him
+cry. She knew exactly how to treat him, pay no attention to him, just
+pretend you didn’t notice his tempers, leave him severely alone, and in
+a little while he was sure to grovel. She laughed a little to herself,
+good-humouredly, when she thought how he had come and eaten dirt before
+her. She had had her fling now. She knew what men were and did not want
+to have anything more to do with them. She was quite ready to settle
+down with Philip. When all was said, he was a gentleman in every sense
+of the word, and that was something not to be sneezed at, wasn’t it?
+Anyhow she was in no hurry, and she was not going to take the first
+step. She was glad to see how fond he was growing of the baby, though
+it tickled her a good deal; it was comic that he should set so much
+store on another man’s child. He was peculiar and no mistake.
+
+But one or two things surprised her. She had been used to his
+subservience: he was only too glad to do anything for her in the old
+days, she was accustomed to see him cast down by a cross word and in
+ecstasy at a kind one; he was different now, and she said to herself
+that he had not improved in the last year. It never struck her for a
+moment that there could be any change in his feelings, and she thought
+it was only acting when he paid no heed to her bad temper. He wanted to
+read sometimes and told her to stop talking: she did not know whether
+to flare up or to sulk, and was so puzzled that she did neither. Then
+came the conversation in which he told her that he intended their
+relations to be platonic, and, remembering an incident of their common
+past, it occurred to her that he dreaded the possibility of her being
+pregnant. She took pains to reassure him. It made no difference. She
+was the sort of woman who was unable to realise that a man might not
+have her own obsession with sex; her relations with men had been purely
+on those lines; and she could not understand that they ever had other
+interests. The thought struck her that Philip was in love with somebody
+else, and she watched him, suspecting nurses at the hospital or people
+he met out; but artful questions led her to the conclusion that there
+was no one dangerous in the Athelny household; and it forced itself
+upon her also that Philip, like most medical students, was unconscious
+of the sex of the nurses with whom his work threw him in contact. They
+were associated in his mind with a faint odour of iodoform. Philip
+received no letters, and there was no girl’s photograph among his
+belongings. If he was in love with someone, he was very clever at
+hiding it; and he answered all Mildred’s questions with frankness and
+apparently without suspicion that there was any motive in them.
+
+“I don’t believe he’s in love with anybody else,” she said to herself
+at last.
+
+It was a relief, for in that case he was certainly still in love with
+her; but it made his behaviour very puzzling. If he was going to treat
+her like that why did he ask her to come and live at the flat? It was
+unnatural. Mildred was not a woman who conceived the possibility of
+compassion, generosity, or kindness. Her only conclusion was that
+Philip was queer. She took it into her head that the reasons for his
+conduct were chivalrous; and, her imagination filled with the
+extravagances of cheap fiction, she pictured to herself all sorts of
+romantic explanations for his delicacy. Her fancy ran riot with bitter
+misunderstandings, purifications by fire, snow-white souls, and death
+in the cruel cold of a Christmas night. She made up her mind that when
+they went to Brighton she would put an end to all his nonsense; they
+would be alone there, everyone would think them husband and wife, and
+there would be the pier and the band. When she found that nothing would
+induce Philip to share the same room with her, when he spoke to her
+about it with a tone in his voice she had never heard before, she
+suddenly realised that he did not want her. She was astounded. She
+remembered all he had said in the past and how desperately he had loved
+her. She felt humiliated and angry, but she had a sort of native
+insolence which carried her through. He needn’t think she was in love
+with him, because she wasn’t. She hated him sometimes, and she longed
+to humble him; but she found herself singularly powerless; she did not
+know which way to handle him. She began to be a little nervous with
+him. Once or twice she cried. Once or twice she set herself to be
+particularly nice to him; but when she took his arm while they walked
+along the front at night he made some excuse in a while to release
+himself, as though it were unpleasant for him to be touched by her. She
+could not make it out. The only hold she had over him was through the
+baby, of whom he seemed to grow fonder and fonder: she could make him
+white with anger by giving the child a slap or a push; and the only
+time the old, tender smile came back into his eyes was when she stood
+with the baby in her arms. She noticed it when she was being
+photographed like that by a man on the beach, and afterwards she often
+stood in the same way for Philip to look at her.
+
+When they got back to London Mildred began looking for the work she had
+asserted was so easy to find; she wanted now to be independent of
+Philip; and she thought of the satisfaction with which she would
+announce to him that she was going into rooms and would take the child
+with her. But her heart failed her when she came into closer contact
+with the possibility. She had grown unused to the long hours, she did
+not want to be at the beck and call of a manageress, and her dignity
+revolted at the thought of wearing once more a uniform. She had made
+out to such of the neighbours as she knew that they were comfortably
+off: it would be a come-down if they heard that she had to go out and
+work. Her natural indolence asserted itself. She did not want to leave
+Philip, and so long as he was willing to provide for her, she did not
+see why she should. There was no money to throw away, but she got her
+board and lodging, and he might get better off. His uncle was an old
+man and might die any day, he would come into a little then, and even
+as things were, it was better than slaving from morning till night for
+a few shillings a week. Her efforts relaxed; she kept on reading the
+advertisement columns of the daily paper merely to show that she wanted
+to do something if anything that was worth her while presented itself.
+But panic seized her, and she was afraid that Philip would grow tired
+of supporting her. She had no hold over him at all now, and she fancied
+that he only allowed her to stay there because he was fond of the baby.
+She brooded over it all, and she thought to herself angrily that she
+would make him pay for all this some day. She could not reconcile
+herself to the fact that he no longer cared for her. She would make
+him. She suffered from pique, and sometimes in a curious fashion she
+desired Philip. He was so cold now that it exasperated her. She thought
+of him in that way incessantly. She thought that he was treating her
+very badly, and she did not know what she had done to deserve it. She
+kept on saying to herself that it was unnatural they should live like
+that. Then she thought that if things were different and she were going
+to have a baby, he would be sure to marry her. He was funny, but he was
+a gentleman in every sense of the word, no one could deny that. At last
+it became an obsession with her, and she made up her mind to force a
+change in their relations. He never even kissed her now, and she wanted
+him to: she remembered how ardently he had been used to press her lips.
+It gave her a curious feeling to think of it. She often looked at his
+mouth.
+
+One evening, at the beginning of February, Philip told her that he was
+dining with Lawson, who was giving a party in his studio to celebrate
+his birthday; and he would not be in till late; Lawson had bought a
+couple of bottles of the punch they favoured from the tavern in Beak
+Street, and they proposed to have a merry evening. Mildred asked if
+there were going to be women there, but Philip told her there were not;
+only men had been invited; and they were just going to sit and talk and
+smoke: Mildred did not think it sounded very amusing; if she were a
+painter she would have half a dozen models about. She went to bed, but
+could not sleep, and presently an idea struck her; she got up and fixed
+the catch on the wicket at the landing, so that Philip could not get
+in. He came back about one, and she heard him curse when he found that
+the wicket was closed. She got out of bed and opened.
+
+“Why on earth did you shut yourself in? I’m sorry I’ve dragged you out
+of bed.”
+
+“I left it open on purpose, I can’t think how it came to be shut.”
+
+“Hurry up and get back to bed, or you’ll catch cold.”
+
+He walked into the sitting-room and turned up the gas. She followed him
+in. She went up to the fire.
+
+“I want to warm my feet a bit. They’re like ice.”
+
+He sat down and began to take off his boots. His eyes were shining and
+his cheeks were flushed. She thought he had been drinking.
+
+“Have you been enjoying yourself?” she asked, with a smile.
+
+“Yes, I’ve had a ripping time.”
+
+Philip was quite sober, but he had been talking and laughing, and he
+was excited still. An evening of that sort reminded him of the old days
+in Paris. He was in high spirits. He took his pipe out of his pocket
+and filled it.
+
+“Aren’t you going to bed?” she asked.
+
+“Not yet, I’m not a bit sleepy. Lawson was in great form. He talked
+sixteen to the dozen from the moment I got there till the moment I
+left.”
+
+“What did you talk about?”
+
+“Heaven knows! Of every subject under the sun. You should have seen us
+all shouting at the tops of our voices and nobody listening.”
+
+Philip laughed with pleasure at the recollection, and Mildred laughed
+too. She was pretty sure he had drunk more than was good for him. That
+was exactly what she had expected. She knew men.
+
+“Can I sit down?” she said.
+
+Before he could answer she settled herself on his knees.
+
+“If you’re not going to bed you’d better go and put on a
+dressing-gown.”
+
+“Oh, I’m all right as I am.” Then putting her arms round his neck, she
+placed her face against his and said: “Why are you so horrid to me,
+Phil?”
+
+He tried to get up, but she would not let him.
+
+“I do love you, Philip,” she said.
+
+“Don’t talk damned rot.”
+
+“It isn’t, it’s true. I can’t live without you. I want you.”
+
+He released himself from her arms.
+
+“Please get up. You’re making a fool of yourself and you’re making me
+feel a perfect idiot.”
+
+“I love you, Philip. I want to make up for all the harm I did you. I
+can’t go on like this, it’s not in human nature.”
+
+He slipped out of the chair and left her in it.
+
+“I’m very sorry, but it’s too late.”
+
+She gave a heart-rending sob.
+
+“But why? How can you be so cruel?”
+
+“I suppose it’s because I loved you too much. I wore the passion out.
+The thought of anything of that sort horrifies me. I can’t look at you
+now without thinking of Emil and Griffiths. One can’t help those
+things, I suppose it’s just nerves.”
+
+She seized his hand and covered it with kisses.
+
+“Don’t,” he cried.
+
+She sank back into the chair.
+
+“I can’t go on like this. If you won’t love me, I’d rather go away.”
+
+“Don’t be foolish, you haven’t anywhere to go. You can stay here as
+long as you like, but it must be on the definite understanding that
+we’re friends and nothing more.”
+
+Then she dropped suddenly the vehemence of passion and gave a soft,
+insinuating laugh. She sidled up to Philip and put her arms round him.
+She made her voice low and wheedling.
+
+“Don’t be such an old silly. I believe you’re nervous. You don’t know
+how nice I can be.”
+
+She put her face against his and rubbed his cheek with hers. To Philip
+her smile was an abominable leer, and the suggestive glitter of her
+eyes filled him with horror. He drew back instinctively.
+
+“I won’t,” he said.
+
+But she would not let him go. She sought his mouth with her lips. He
+took her hands and tore them roughly apart and pushed her away.
+
+“You disgust me,” he said.
+
+“Me?”
+
+She steadied herself with one hand on the chimney-piece. She looked at
+him for an instant, and two red spots suddenly appeared on her cheeks.
+She gave a shrill, angry laugh.
+
+“I disgust YOU.”
+
+She paused and drew in her breath sharply. Then she burst into a
+furious torrent of abuse. She shouted at the top of her voice. She
+called him every foul name she could think of. She used language so
+obscene that Philip was astounded; she was always so anxious to be
+refined, so shocked by coarseness, that it had never occurred to him
+that she knew the words she used now. She came up to him and thrust her
+face in his. It was distorted with passion, and in her tumultuous
+speech the spittle dribbled over her lips.
+
+“I never cared for you, not once, I was making a fool of you always,
+you bored me, you bored me stiff, and I hated you, I would never have
+let you touch me only for the money, and it used to make me sick when I
+had to let you kiss me. We laughed at you, Griffiths and me, we laughed
+because you was such a mug. A mug! A mug!”
+
+Then she burst again into abominable invective. She accused him of
+every mean fault; she said he was stingy, she said he was dull, she
+said he was vain, selfish; she cast virulent ridicule on everything
+upon which he was most sensitive. And at last she turned to go. She
+kept on, with hysterical violence, shouting at him an opprobrious,
+filthy epithet. She seized the handle of the door and flung it open.
+Then she turned round and hurled at him the injury which she knew was
+the only one that really touched him. She threw into the word all the
+malice and all the venom of which she was capable. She flung it at him
+as though it were a blow.
+
+“Cripple!”
+
+
+
+
+XCVII
+
+
+Philip awoke with a start next morning, conscious that it was late, and
+looking at his watch found it was nine o’clock. He jumped out of bed
+and went into the kitchen to get himself some hot water to shave with.
+There was no sign of Mildred, and the things which she had used for her
+supper the night before still lay in the sink unwashed. He knocked at
+her door.
+
+“Wake up, Mildred. It’s awfully late.”
+
+She did not answer, even after a second louder knocking, and he
+concluded that she was sulking. He was in too great a hurry to bother
+about that. He put some water on to boil and jumped into his bath which
+was always poured out the night before in order to take the chill off.
+He presumed that Mildred would cook his breakfast while he was dressing
+and leave it in the sitting-room. She had done that two or three times
+when she was out of temper. But he heard no sound of her moving, and
+realised that if he wanted anything to eat he would have to get it
+himself. He was irritated that she should play him such a trick on a
+morning when he had over-slept himself. There was still no sign of her
+when he was ready, but he heard her moving about her room. She was
+evidently getting up. He made himself some tea and cut himself a couple
+of pieces of bread and butter, which he ate while he was putting on his
+boots, then bolted downstairs and along the street into the main road
+to catch his tram. While his eyes sought out the newspaper shops to see
+the war news on the placards, he thought of the scene of the night
+before: now that it was over and he had slept on it, he could not help
+thinking it grotesque; he supposed he had been ridiculous, but he was
+not master of his feelings; at the time they had been overwhelming. He
+was angry with Mildred because she had forced him into that absurd
+position, and then with renewed astonishment he thought of her outburst
+and the filthy language she had used. He could not help flushing when
+he remembered her final jibe; but he shrugged his shoulders
+contemptuously. He had long known that when his fellows were angry with
+him they never failed to taunt him with his deformity. He had seen men
+at the hospital imitate his walk, not before him as they used at
+school, but when they thought he was not looking. He knew now that they
+did it from no wilful unkindness, but because man is naturally an
+imitative animal, and because it was an easy way to make people laugh:
+he knew it, but he could never resign himself to it.
+
+He was glad to throw himself into his work. The ward seemed pleasant
+and friendly when he entered it. The sister greeted him with a quick,
+business-like smile.
+
+“You’re very late, Mr. Carey.”
+
+“I was out on the loose last night.”
+
+“You look it.”
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+Laughing, he went to the first of his cases, a boy with tuberculous
+ulcers, and removed his bandages. The boy was pleased to see him, and
+Philip chaffed him as he put a clean dressing on the wound. Philip was
+a favourite with the patients; he treated them good-humouredly; and he
+had gentle, sensitive hands which did not hurt them: some of the
+dressers were a little rough and happy-go-lucky in their methods. He
+lunched with his friends in the club-room, a frugal meal consisting of
+a scone and butter, with a cup of cocoa, and they talked of the war.
+Several men were going out, but the authorities were particular and
+refused everyone who had not had a hospital appointment. Someone
+suggested that, if the war went on, in a while they would be glad to
+take anyone who was qualified; but the general opinion was that it
+would be over in a month. Now that Roberts was there things would get
+all right in no time. This was Macalister’s opinion too, and he had
+told Philip that they must watch their chance and buy just before peace
+was declared. There would be a boom then, and they might all make a bit
+of money. Philip had left with Macalister instructions to buy him stock
+whenever the opportunity presented itself. His appetite had been
+whetted by the thirty pounds he had made in the summer, and he wanted
+now to make a couple of hundred.
+
+He finished his day’s work and got on a tram to go back to Kennington.
+He wondered how Mildred would behave that evening. It was a nuisance to
+think that she would probably be surly and refuse to answer his
+questions. It was a warm evening for the time of year, and even in
+those gray streets of South London there was the languor of February;
+nature is restless then after the long winter months, growing things
+awake from their sleep, and there is a rustle in the earth, a
+forerunner of spring, as it resumes its eternal activities. Philip
+would have liked to drive on further, it was distasteful to him to go
+back to his rooms, and he wanted the air; but the desire to see the
+child clutched suddenly at his heartstrings, and he smiled to himself
+as he thought of her toddling towards him with a crow of delight. He
+was surprised, when he reached the house and looked up mechanically at
+the windows, to see that there was no light. He went upstairs and
+knocked, but got no answer. When Mildred went out she left the key
+under the mat and he found it there now. He let himself in and going
+into the sitting-room struck a match. Something had happened, he did
+not at once know what; he turned the gas on full and lit it; the room
+was suddenly filled with the glare and he looked round. He gasped. The
+whole place was wrecked. Everything in it had been wilfully destroyed.
+Anger seized him, and he rushed into Mildred’s room. It was dark and
+empty. When he had got a light he saw that she had taken away all her
+things and the baby’s (he had noticed on entering that the go-cart was
+not in its usual place on the landing, but thought Mildred had taken
+the baby out;) and all the things on the washing-stand had been broken,
+a knife had been drawn cross-ways through the seats of the two chairs,
+the pillow had been slit open, there were large gashes in the sheets
+and the counterpane, the looking-glass appeared to have been broken
+with a hammer. Philip was bewildered. He went into his own room, and
+here too everything was in confusion. The basin and the ewer had been
+smashed, the looking-glass was in fragments, and the sheets were in
+ribands. Mildred had made a slit large enough to put her hand into the
+pillow and had scattered the feathers about the room. She had jabbed a
+knife into the blankets. On the dressing-table were photographs of
+Philip’s mother, the frames had been smashed and the glass shivered.
+Philip went into the tiny kitchen. Everything that was breakable was
+broken, glasses, pudding-basins, plates, dishes.
+
+It took Philip’s breath away. Mildred had left no letter, nothing but
+this ruin to mark her anger, and he could imagine the set face with
+which she had gone about her work. He went back into the sitting-room
+and looked about him. He was so astonished that he no longer felt
+angry. He looked curiously at the kitchen-knife and the coal-hammer,
+which were lying on the table where she had left them. Then his eye
+caught a large carving-knife in the fireplace which had been broken. It
+must have taken her a long time to do so much damage. Lawson’s portrait
+of him had been cut cross-ways and gaped hideously. His own drawings
+had been ripped in pieces; and the photographs, Manet’s Olympia and the
+Odalisque of Ingres, the portrait of Philip IV, had been smashed with
+great blows of the coal-hammer. There were gashes in the table-cloth
+and in the curtains and in the two arm-chairs. They were quite ruined.
+On one wall over the table which Philip used as his desk was the little
+bit of Persian rug which Cronshaw had given him. Mildred had always
+hated it.
+
+“If it’s a rug it ought to go on the floor,” she said, “and it’s a
+dirty stinking bit of stuff, that’s all it is.”
+
+It made her furious because Philip told her it contained the answer to
+a great riddle. She thought he was making fun of her. She had drawn the
+knife right through it three times, it must have required some
+strength, and it hung now in tatters. Philip had two or three blue and
+white plates, of no value, but he had bought them one by one for very
+small sums and liked them for their associations. They littered the
+floor in fragments. There were long gashes on the backs of his books,
+and she had taken the trouble to tear pages out of the unbound French
+ones. The little ornaments on the chimney-piece lay on the hearth in
+bits. Everything that it had been possible to destroy with a knife or a
+hammer was destroyed.
+
+The whole of Philip’s belongings would not have sold for thirty pounds,
+but most of them were old friends, and he was a domestic creature,
+attached to all those odds and ends because they were his; he had been
+proud of his little home, and on so little money had made it pretty and
+characteristic. He sank down now in despair. He asked himself how she
+could have been so cruel. A sudden fear got him on his feet again and
+into the passage, where stood a cupboard in which he kept his clothes.
+He opened it and gave a sigh of relief. She had apparently forgotten it
+and none of his things was touched.
+
+He went back into the sitting-room and, surveying the scene, wondered
+what to do; he had not the heart to begin trying to set things
+straight; besides there was no food in the house, and he was hungry. He
+went out and got himself something to eat. When he came in he was
+cooler. A little pang seized him as he thought of the child, and he
+wondered whether she would miss him, at first perhaps, but in a week
+she would have forgotten him; and he was thankful to be rid of Mildred.
+He did not think of her with wrath, but with an overwhelming sense of
+boredom.
+
+“I hope to God I never see her again,” he said aloud.
+
+The only thing now was to leave the rooms, and he made up his mind to
+give notice the next morning. He could not afford to make good the
+damage done, and he had so little money left that he must find cheaper
+lodgings still. He would be glad to get out of them. The expense had
+worried him, and now the recollection of Mildred would be in them
+always. Philip was impatient and could never rest till he had put in
+action the plan which he had in mind; so on the following afternoon he
+got in a dealer in second-hand furniture who offered him three pounds
+for all his goods damaged and undamaged; and two days later he moved
+into the house opposite the hospital in which he had had rooms when
+first he became a medical student. The landlady was a very decent
+woman. He took a bed-room at the top, which she let him have for six
+shillings a week; it was small and shabby and looked on the yard of the
+house that backed on to it, but he had nothing now except his clothes
+and a box of books, and he was glad to lodge so cheaply.
+
+
+
+
+XCVIII
+
+
+And now it happened that the fortunes of Philip Carey, of no
+consequence to any but himself, were affected by the events through
+which his country was passing. History was being made, and the process
+was so significant that it seemed absurd it should touch the life of an
+obscure medical student. Battle after battle, Magersfontein, Colenso,
+Spion Kop, lost on the playing fields of Eton, had humiliated the
+nation and dealt the death-blow to the prestige of the aristocracy and
+gentry who till then had found no one seriously to oppose their
+assertion that they possessed a natural instinct of government. The old
+order was being swept away: history was being made indeed. Then the
+colossus put forth his strength, and, blundering again, at last
+blundered into the semblance of victory. Cronje surrendered at
+Paardeberg, Ladysmith was relieved, and at the beginning of March Lord
+Roberts marched into Bloemfontein.
+
+It was two or three days after the news of this reached London that
+Macalister came into the tavern in Beak Street and announced joyfully
+that things were looking brighter on the Stock Exchange. Peace was in
+sight, Roberts would march into Pretoria within a few weeks, and shares
+were going up already. There was bound to be a boom.
+
+“Now’s the time to come in,” he told Philip. “It’s no good waiting till
+the public gets on to it. It’s now or never.”
+
+He had inside information. The manager of a mine in South Africa had
+cabled to the senior partner of his firm that the plant was uninjured.
+They would start working again as soon as possible. It wasn’t a
+speculation, it was an investment. To show how good a thing the senior
+partner thought it Macalister told Philip that he had bought five
+hundred shares for both his sisters: he never put them into anything
+that wasn’t as safe as the Bank of England.
+
+“I’m going to put my shirt on it myself,” he said.
+
+The shares were two and an eighth to a quarter. He advised Philip not
+to be greedy, but to be satisfied with a ten-shilling rise. He was
+buying three hundred for himself and suggested that Philip should do
+the same. He would hold them and sell when he thought fit. Philip had
+great faith in him, partly because he was a Scotsman and therefore by
+nature cautious, and partly because he had been right before. He jumped
+at the suggestion.
+
+“I daresay we shall be able to sell before the account,” said
+Macalister, “but if not, I’ll arrange to carry them over for you.”
+
+It seemed a capital system to Philip. You held on till you got your
+profit, and you never even had to put your hand in your pocket. He
+began to watch the Stock Exchange columns of the paper with new
+interest. Next day everything was up a little, and Macalister wrote to
+say that he had had to pay two and a quarter for the shares. He said
+that the market was firm. But in a day or two there was a set-back. The
+news that came from South Africa was less reassuring, and Philip with
+anxiety saw that his shares had fallen to two; but Macalister was
+optimistic, the Boers couldn’t hold out much longer, and he was willing
+to bet a top-hat that Roberts would march into Johannesburg before the
+middle of April. At the account Philip had to pay out nearly forty
+pounds. It worried him considerably, but he felt that the only course
+was to hold on: in his circumstances the loss was too great for him to
+pocket. For two or three weeks nothing happened; the Boers would not
+understand that they were beaten and nothing remained for them but to
+surrender: in fact they had one or two small successes, and Philip’s
+shares fell half a crown more. It became evident that the war was not
+finished. There was a lot of selling. When Macalister saw Philip he was
+pessimistic.
+
+“I’m not sure if the best thing wouldn’t be to cut the loss. I’ve been
+paying out about as much as I want to in differences.”
+
+Philip was sick with anxiety. He could not sleep at night; he bolted
+his breakfast, reduced now to tea and bread and butter, in order to get
+over to the club reading-room and see the paper; sometimes the news was
+bad, and sometimes there was no news at all, but when the shares moved
+it was to go down. He did not know what to do. If he sold now he would
+lose altogether hard on three hundred and fifty pounds; and that would
+leave him only eighty pounds to go on with. He wished with all his
+heart that he had never been such a fool as to dabble on the Stock
+Exchange, but the only thing was to hold on; something decisive might
+happen any day and the shares would go up; he did not hope now for a
+profit, but he wanted to make good his loss. It was his only chance of
+finishing his course at the hospital. The Summer session was beginning
+in May, and at the end of it he meant to take the examination in
+midwifery. Then he would only have a year more; he reckoned it out
+carefully and came to the conclusion that he could manage it, fees and
+all, on a hundred and fifty pounds; but that was the least it could
+possibly be done on.
+
+Early in April he went to the tavern in Beak Street anxious to see
+Macalister. It eased him a little to discuss the situation with him;
+and to realise that numerous people beside himself were suffering from
+loss of money made his own trouble a little less intolerable. But when
+Philip arrived no one was there but Hayward, and no sooner had Philip
+seated himself than he said:
+
+“I’m sailing for the Cape on Sunday.”
+
+“Are you!” exclaimed Philip.
+
+Hayward was the last person he would have expected to do anything of
+the kind. At the hospital men were going out now in numbers; the
+Government was glad to get anyone who was qualified; and others, going
+out as troopers, wrote home that they had been put on hospital work as
+soon as it was learned that they were medical students. A wave of
+patriotic feeling had swept over the country, and volunteers were
+coming from all ranks of society.
+
+“What are you going as?” asked Philip.
+
+“Oh, in the Dorset Yeomanry. I’m going as a trooper.”
+
+Philip had known Hayward for eight years. The youthful intimacy which
+had come from Philip’s enthusiastic admiration for the man who could
+tell him of art and literature had long since vanished; but habit had
+taken its place; and when Hayward was in London they saw one another
+once or twice a week. He still talked about books with a delicate
+appreciation. Philip was not yet tolerant, and sometimes Hayward’s
+conversation irritated him. He no longer believed implicitly that
+nothing in the world was of consequence but art. He resented Hayward’s
+contempt for action and success. Philip, stirring his punch, thought of
+his early friendship and his ardent expectation that Hayward would do
+great things; it was long since he had lost all such illusions, and he
+knew now that Hayward would never do anything but talk. He found his
+three hundred a year more difficult to live on now that he was
+thirty-five than he had when he was a young man; and his clothes,
+though still made by a good tailor, were worn a good deal longer than
+at one time he would have thought possible. He was too stout and no
+artful arrangement of his fair hair could conceal the fact that he was
+bald. His blue eyes were dull and pale. It was not hard to guess that
+he drank too much.
+
+“What on earth made you think of going out to the Cape?” asked Philip.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know, I thought I ought to.”
+
+Philip was silent. He felt rather silly. He understood that Hayward was
+being driven by an uneasiness in his soul which he could not account
+for. Some power within him made it seem necessary to go and fight for
+his country. It was strange, since he considered patriotism no more
+than a prejudice, and, flattering himself on his cosmopolitanism, he
+had looked upon England as a place of exile. His countrymen in the mass
+wounded his susceptibilities. Philip wondered what it was that made
+people do things which were so contrary to all their theories of life.
+It would have been reasonable for Hayward to stand aside and watch with
+a smile while the barbarians slaughtered one another. It looked as
+though men were puppets in the hands of an unknown force, which drove
+them to do this and that; and sometimes they used their reason to
+justify their actions; and when this was impossible they did the
+actions in despite of reason.
+
+“People are very extraordinary,” said Philip. “I should never have
+expected you to go out as a trooper.”
+
+Hayward smiled, slightly embarrassed, and said nothing.
+
+“I was examined yesterday,” he remarked at last. “It was worth while
+undergoing the gene of it to know that one was perfectly fit.”
+
+Philip noticed that he still used a French word in an affected way when
+an English one would have served. But just then Macalister came in.
+
+“I wanted to see you, Carey,” he said. “My people don’t feel inclined
+to hold those shares any more, the market’s in such an awful state, and
+they want you to take them up.”
+
+Philip’s heart sank. He knew that was impossible. It meant that he must
+accept the loss. His pride made him answer calmly.
+
+“I don’t know that I think that’s worth while. You’d better sell them.”
+
+“It’s all very fine to say that, I’m not sure if I can. The market’s
+stagnant, there are no buyers.”
+
+“But they’re marked down at one and an eighth.”
+
+“Oh yes, but that doesn’t mean anything. You can’t get that for them.”
+
+Philip did not say anything for a moment. He was trying to collect
+himself.
+
+“D’you mean to say they’re worth nothing at all?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t say that. Of course they’re worth something, but you see,
+nobody’s buying them now.”
+
+“Then you must just sell them for what you can get.”
+
+Macalister looked at Philip narrowly. He wondered whether he was very
+hard hit.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry, old man, but we’re all in the same boat. No one
+thought the war was going to hang on this way. I put you into them, but
+I was in myself too.”
+
+“It doesn’t matter at all,” said Philip. “One has to take one’s
+chance.”
+
+He moved back to the table from which he had got up to talk to
+Macalister. He was dumfounded; his head suddenly began to ache
+furiously; but he did not want them to think him unmanly. He sat on for
+an hour. He laughed feverishly at everything they said. At last he got
+up to go.
+
+“You take it pretty coolly,” said Macalister, shaking hands with him.
+“I don’t suppose anyone likes losing between three and four hundred
+pounds.”
+
+When Philip got back to his shabby little room he flung himself on his
+bed, and gave himself over to his despair. He kept on regretting his
+folly bitterly; and though he told himself that it was absurd to regret
+for what had happened was inevitable just because it had happened, he
+could not help himself. He was utterly miserable. He could not sleep.
+He remembered all the ways he had wasted money during the last few
+years. His head ached dreadfully.
+
+The following evening there came by the last post the statement of his
+account. He examined his pass-book. He found that when he had paid
+everything he would have seven pounds left. Seven pounds! He was
+thankful he had been able to pay. It would have been horrible to be
+obliged to confess to Macalister that he had not the money. He was
+dressing in the eye-department during the summer session, and he had
+bought an ophthalmoscope off a student who had one to sell. He had not
+paid for this, but he lacked the courage to tell the student that he
+wanted to go back on his bargain. Also he had to buy certain books. He
+had about five pounds to go on with. It lasted him six weeks; then he
+wrote to his uncle a letter which he thought very business-like; he
+said that owing to the war he had had grave losses and could not go on
+with his studies unless his uncle came to his help. He suggested that
+the Vicar should lend him a hundred and fifty pounds paid over the next
+eighteen months in monthly instalments; he would pay interest on this
+and promised to refund the capital by degrees when he began to earn
+money. He would be qualified in a year and a half at the latest, and he
+could be pretty sure then of getting an assistantship at three pounds a
+week. His uncle wrote back that he could do nothing. It was not fair to
+ask him to sell out when everything was at its worst, and the little he
+had he felt that his duty to himself made it necessary for him to keep
+in case of illness. He ended the letter with a little homily. He had
+warned Philip time after time, and Philip had never paid any attention
+to him; he could not honestly say he was surprised; he had long
+expected that this would be the end of Philip’s extravagance and want
+of balance. Philip grew hot and cold when he read this. It had never
+occurred to him that his uncle would refuse, and he burst into furious
+anger; but this was succeeded by utter blankness: if his uncle would
+not help him he could not go on at the hospital. Panic seized him and,
+putting aside his pride, he wrote again to the Vicar of Blackstable,
+placing the case before him more urgently; but perhaps he did not
+explain himself properly and his uncle did not realise in what
+desperate straits he was, for he answered that he could not change his
+mind; Philip was twenty-five and really ought to be earning his living.
+When he died Philip would come into a little, but till then he refused
+to give him a penny. Philip felt in the letter the satisfaction of a
+man who for many years had disapproved of his courses and now saw
+himself justified.
+
+
+
+
+XCIX
+
+
+Philip began to pawn his clothes. He reduced his expenses by eating
+only one meal a day beside his breakfast; and he ate it, bread and
+butter and cocoa, at four so that it should last him till next morning.
+He was so hungry by nine o’clock that he had to go to bed. He thought
+of borrowing money from Lawson, but the fear of a refusal held him
+back; at last he asked him for five pounds. Lawson lent it with
+pleasure, but, as he did so, said:
+
+“You’ll let me have it back in a week or so, won’t you? I’ve got to pay
+my framer, and I’m awfully broke just now.”
+
+Philip knew he would not be able to return it, and the thought of what
+Lawson would think made him so ashamed that in a couple of days he took
+the money back untouched. Lawson was just going out to luncheon and
+asked Philip to come too. Philip could hardly eat, he was so glad to
+get some solid food. On Sunday he was sure of a good dinner from
+Athelny. He hesitated to tell the Athelnys what had happened to him:
+they had always looked upon him as comparatively well-to-do, and he had
+a dread that they would think less well of him if they knew he was
+penniless.
+
+Though he had always been poor, the possibility of not having enough to
+eat had never occurred to him; it was not the sort of thing that
+happened to the people among whom he lived; and he was as ashamed as if
+he had some disgraceful disease. The situation in which he found
+himself was quite outside the range of his experience. He was so taken
+aback that he did not know what else to do than to go on at the
+hospital; he had a vague hope that something would turn up; he could
+not quite believe that what was happening to him was true; and he
+remembered how during his first term at school he had often thought his
+life was a dream from which he would awake to find himself once more at
+home. But very soon he foresaw that in a week or so he would have no
+money at all. He must set about trying to earn something at once. If he
+had been qualified, even with a club-foot, he could have gone out to
+the Cape, since the demand for medical men was now great. Except for
+his deformity he might have enlisted in one of the yeomanry regiments
+which were constantly being sent out. He went to the secretary of the
+Medical School and asked if he could give him the coaching of some
+backward student; but the secretary held out no hope of getting him
+anything of the sort. Philip read the advertisement columns of the
+medical papers, and he applied for the post of unqualified assistant to
+a man who had a dispensary in the Fulham Road. When he went to see him,
+he saw the doctor glance at his club-foot; and on hearing that Philip
+was only in his fourth year at the hospital he said at once that his
+experience was insufficient: Philip understood that this was only an
+excuse; the man would not have an assistant who might not be as active
+as he wanted. Philip turned his attention to other means of earning
+money. He knew French and German and thought there might be some chance
+of finding a job as correspondence clerk; it made his heart sink, but
+he set his teeth; there was nothing else to do. Though too shy to
+answer the advertisements which demanded a personal application, he
+replied to those which asked for letters; but he had no experience to
+state and no recommendations: he was conscious that neither his German
+nor his French was commercial; he was ignorant of the terms used in
+business; he knew neither shorthand nor typewriting. He could not help
+recognising that his case was hopeless. He thought of writing to the
+solicitor who had been his father’s executor, but he could not bring
+himself to, for it was contrary to his express advice that he had sold
+the mortgages in which his money had been invested. He knew from his
+uncle that Mr. Nixon thoroughly disapproved of him. He had gathered
+from Philip’s year in the accountant’s office that he was idle and
+incompetent.
+
+“I’d sooner starve,” Philip muttered to himself.
+
+Once or twice the possibility of suicide presented itself to him; it
+would be easy to get something from the hospital dispensary, and it was
+a comfort to think that if the worst came to the worst he had at hand
+means of making a painless end of himself; but it was not a course that
+he considered seriously. When Mildred had left him to go with Griffiths
+his anguish had been so great that he wanted to die in order to get rid
+of the pain. He did not feel like that now. He remembered that the
+Casualty Sister had told him how people oftener did away with
+themselves for want of money than for want of love; and he chuckled
+when he thought that he was an exception. He wished only that he could
+talk his worries over with somebody, but he could not bring himself to
+confess them. He was ashamed. He went on looking for work. He left his
+rent unpaid for three weeks, explaining to his landlady that he would
+get money at the end of the month; she did not say anything, but pursed
+her lips and looked grim. When the end of the month came and she asked
+if it would be convenient for him to pay something on account, it made
+him feel very sick to say that he could not; he told her he would write
+to his uncle and was sure to be able to settle his bill on the
+following Saturday.
+
+“Well, I ’ope you will, Mr. Carey, because I ’ave my rent to pay, and I
+can’t afford to let accounts run on.” She did not speak with anger, but
+with determination that was rather frightening. She paused for a moment
+and then said: “If you don’t pay next Saturday, I shall ’ave to
+complain to the secretary of the ’ospital.”
+
+“Oh yes, that’ll be all right.”
+
+She looked at him for a little and glanced round the bare room. When
+she spoke it was without any emphasis, as though it were quite a
+natural thing to say.
+
+“I’ve got a nice ’ot joint downstairs, and if you like to come down to
+the kitchen you’re welcome to a bit of dinner.”
+
+Philip felt himself redden to the soles of his feet, and a sob caught
+at his throat.
+
+“Thank you very much, Mrs. Higgins, but I’m not at all hungry.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+When she left the room Philip threw himself on his bed. He had to
+clench his fists in order to prevent himself from crying.
+
+
+
+
+C
+
+
+Saturday. It was the day on which he had promised to pay his landlady.
+He had been expecting something to turn up all through the week. He had
+found no work. He had never been driven to extremities before, and he
+was so dazed that he did not know what to do. He had at the back of his
+mind a feeling that the whole thing was a preposterous joke. He had no
+more than a few coppers left, he had sold all the clothes he could do
+without; he had some books and one or two odds and ends upon which he
+might have got a shilling or two, but the landlady was keeping an eye
+on his comings and goings: he was afraid she would stop him if he took
+anything more from his room. The only thing was to tell her that he
+could not pay his bill. He had not the courage. It was the middle of
+June. The night was fine and warm. He made up his mind to stay out. He
+walked slowly along the Chelsea Embankment, because the river was
+restful and quiet, till he was tired, and then sat on a bench and
+dozed. He did not know how long he slept; he awoke with a start,
+dreaming that he was being shaken by a policeman and told to move on;
+but when he opened his eyes he found himself alone. He walked on, he
+did not know why, and at last came to Chiswick, where he slept again.
+Presently the hardness of the bench roused him. The night seemed very
+long. He shivered. He was seized with a sense of his misery; and he did
+not know what on earth to do: he was ashamed at having slept on the
+Embankment; it seemed peculiarly humiliating, and he felt his cheeks
+flush in the darkness. He remembered stories he had heard of those who
+did and how among them were officers, clergymen, and men who had been
+to universities: he wondered if he would become one of them, standing
+in a line to get soup from a charitable institution. It would be much
+better to commit suicide. He could not go on like that: Lawson would
+help him when he knew what straits he was in; it was absurd to let his
+pride prevent him from asking for assistance. He wondered why he had
+come such a cropper. He had always tried to do what he thought best,
+and everything had gone wrong. He had helped people when he could, he
+did not think he had been more selfish than anyone else, it seemed
+horribly unjust that he should be reduced to such a pass.
+
+But it was no good thinking about it. He walked on. It was now light:
+the river was beautiful in the silence, and there was something
+mysterious in the early day; it was going to be very fine, and the sky,
+pale in the dawn, was cloudless. He felt very tired, and hunger was
+gnawing at his entrails, but he could not sit still; he was constantly
+afraid of being spoken to by a policeman. He dreaded the mortification
+of that. He felt dirty and wished he could have a wash. At last he
+found himself at Hampton Court. He felt that if he did not have
+something to eat he would cry. He chose a cheap eating-house and went
+in; there was a smell of hot things, and it made him feel slightly
+sick: he meant to eat something nourishing enough to keep up for the
+rest of the day, but his stomach revolted at the sight of food. He had
+a cup of tea and some bread and butter. He remembered then that it was
+Sunday and he could go to the Athelnys; he thought of the roast beef
+and the Yorkshire pudding they would eat; but he was fearfully tired
+and could not face the happy, noisy family. He was feeling morose and
+wretched. He wanted to be left alone. He made up his mind that he would
+go into the gardens of the palace and lie down. His bones ached.
+Perhaps he would find a pump so that he could wash his hands and face
+and drink something; he was very thirsty; and now that he was no longer
+hungry he thought with pleasure of the flowers and the lawns and the
+great leafy trees. He felt that there he could think out better what he
+must do. He lay on the grass, in the shade, and lit his pipe. For
+economy’s sake he had for a long time confined himself to two pipes a
+day; he was thankful now that his pouch was full. He did not know what
+people did when they had no money. Presently he fell asleep. When he
+awoke it was nearly mid-day, and he thought that soon he must be
+setting out for London so as to be there in the early morning and
+answer any advertisements which seemed to promise. He thought of his
+uncle, who had told him that he would leave him at his death the little
+he had; Philip did not in the least know how much this was: it could
+not be more than a few hundred pounds. He wondered whether he could
+raise money on the reversion. Not without the old man’s consent, and
+that he would never give.
+
+“The only thing I can do is to hang on somehow till he dies.”
+
+Philip reckoned his age. The Vicar of Blackstable was well over
+seventy. He had chronic bronchitis, but many old men had that and lived
+on indefinitely. Meanwhile something must turn up; Philip could not get
+away from the feeling that his position was altogether abnormal; people
+in his particular station did not starve. It was because he could not
+bring himself to believe in the reality of his experience that he did
+not give way to utter despair. He made up his mind to borrow half a
+sovereign from Lawson. He stayed in the garden all day and smoked when
+he felt very hungry; he did not mean to eat anything until he was
+setting out again for London: it was a long way and he must keep up his
+strength for that. He started when the day began to grow cooler, and
+slept on benches when he was tired. No one disturbed him. He had a wash
+and brush up, and a shave at Victoria, some tea and bread and butter,
+and while he was eating this read the advertisement columns of the
+morning paper. As he looked down them his eye fell upon an announcement
+asking for a salesman in the ‘furnishing drapery’ department of some
+well-known stores. He had a curious little sinking of the heart, for
+with his middle-class prejudices it seemed dreadful to go into a shop;
+but he shrugged his shoulders, after all what did it matter? and he
+made up his mind to have a shot at it. He had a queer feeling that by
+accepting every humiliation, by going out to meet it even, he was
+forcing the hand of fate. When he presented himself, feeling horribly
+shy, in the department at nine o’clock he found that many others were
+there before him. They were of all ages, from boys of sixteen to men of
+forty; some were talking to one another in undertones, but most were
+silent; and when he took up his place those around him gave him a look
+of hostility. He heard one man say:
+
+“The only thing I look forward to is getting my refusal soon enough to
+give me time to look elsewhere.”
+
+The man, standing next him, glanced at Philip and asked:
+
+“Had any experience?”
+
+“No,” said Philip.
+
+He paused a moment and then made a remark: “Even the smaller houses
+won’t see you without appointment after lunch.”
+
+Philip looked at the assistants. Some were draping chintzes and
+cretonnes, and others, his neighbour told him were preparing country
+orders that had come in by post. At about a quarter past nine the buyer
+arrived. He heard one of the men who were waiting say to another that
+it was Mr. Gibbons. He was middle-aged, short and corpulent, with a
+black beard and dark, greasy hair. He had brisk movements and a clever
+face. He wore a silk hat and a frock coat, the lapel of which was
+adorned with a white geranium surrounded by leaves. He went into his
+office, leaving the door open; it was very small and contained only an
+American roll-desk in the corner, a bookcase, and a cupboard. The men
+standing outside watched him mechanically take the geranium out of his
+coat and put it in an ink-pot filled with water. It was against the
+rules to wear flowers in business.
+
+During the day the department men who wanted to keep in with the
+governor admired the flower.
+
+“I’ve never seen better,” they said, “you didn’t grow it yourself?”
+
+“Yes I did,” he smiled, and a gleam of pride filled his intelligent
+eyes.
+
+He took off his hat and changed his coat, glanced at the letters and
+then at the men who were waiting to see him. He made a slight sign with
+one finger, and the first in the queue stepped into the office. They
+filed past him one by one and answered his questions. He put them very
+briefly, keeping his eyes fixed on the applicant’s face.
+
+“Age? Experience? Why did you leave your job?”
+
+He listened to the replies without expression. When it came to Philip’s
+turn he fancied that Mr. Gibbons stared at him curiously. Philip’s
+clothes were neat and tolerably cut. He looked a little different from
+the others.
+
+“Experience?”
+
+“I’m afraid I haven’t any,” said Philip.
+
+“No good.”
+
+Philip walked out of the office. The ordeal had been so much less
+painful than he expected that he felt no particular disappointment. He
+could hardly hope to succeed in getting a place the first time he
+tried. He had kept the newspaper and now looked at the advertisements
+again: a shop in Holborn needed a salesman too, and he went there; but
+when he arrived he found that someone had already been engaged. If he
+wanted to get anything to eat that day he must go to Lawson’s studio
+before he went out to luncheon, so he made his way along the Brompton
+Road to Yeoman’s Row.
+
+“I say, I’m rather broke till the end of the month,” he said as soon as
+he found an opportunity. “I wish you’d lend me half a sovereign, will
+you?”
+
+It was incredible the difficulty he found in asking for money; and he
+remembered the casual way, as though almost they were conferring a
+favour, men at the hospital had extracted small sums out of him which
+they had no intention of repaying.
+
+“Like a shot,” said Lawson.
+
+But when he put his hand in his pocket he found that he had only eight
+shillings. Philip’s heart sank.
+
+“Oh well, lend me five bob, will you?” he said lightly.
+
+“Here you are.”
+
+Philip went to the public baths in Westminster and spent sixpence on a
+bath. Then he got himself something to eat. He did not know what to do
+with himself in the afternoon. He would not go back to the hospital in
+case anyone should ask him questions, and besides, he had nothing to do
+there now; they would wonder in the two or three departments he had
+worked in why he did not come, but they must think what they chose, it
+did not matter: he would not be the first student who had dropped out
+without warning. He went to the free library, and looked at the papers
+till they wearied him, then he took out Stevenson’s New Arabian Nights;
+but he found he could not read: the words meant nothing to him, and he
+continued to brood over his helplessness. He kept on thinking the same
+things all the time, and the fixity of his thoughts made his head ache.
+At last, craving for fresh air, he went into the Green Park and lay
+down on the grass. He thought miserably of his deformity, which made it
+impossible for him to go to the war. He went to sleep and dreamt that
+he was suddenly sound of foot and out at the Cape in a regiment of
+Yeomanry; the pictures he had looked at in the illustrated papers gave
+materials for his fancy; and he saw himself on the Veldt, in khaki,
+sitting with other men round a fire at night. When he awoke he found
+that it was still quite light, and presently he heard Big Ben strike
+seven. He had twelve hours to get through with nothing to do. He
+dreaded the interminable night. The sky was overcast and he feared it
+would rain; he would have to go to a lodging-house where he could get a
+bed; he had seen them advertised on lamps outside houses in Lambeth:
+Good Beds sixpence; he had never been inside one, and dreaded the foul
+smell and the vermin. He made up his mind to stay in the open air if he
+possibly could. He remained in the park till it was closed and then
+began to walk about. He was very tired. The thought came to him that an
+accident would be a piece of luck, so that he could be taken to a
+hospital and lie there, in a clean bed, for weeks. At midnight he was
+so hungry that he could not go without food any more, so he went to a
+coffee stall at Hyde Park Corner and ate a couple of potatoes and had a
+cup of coffee. Then he walked again. He felt too restless to sleep, and
+he had a horrible dread of being moved on by the police. He noted that
+he was beginning to look upon the constable from quite a new angle.
+This was the third night he had spent out. Now and then he sat on the
+benches in Piccadilly and towards morning he strolled down to The
+Embankment. He listened to the striking of Big Ben, marking every
+quarter of an hour, and reckoned out how long it left till the city
+woke again. In the morning he spent a few coppers on making himself
+neat and clean, bought a paper to read the advertisements, and set out
+once more on the search for work.
+
+He went on in this way for several days. He had very little food and
+began to feel weak and ill, so that he had hardly enough energy to go
+on looking for the work which seemed so desperately hard to find. He
+was growing used now to the long waiting at the back of a shop on the
+chance that he would be taken on, and the curt dismissal. He walked to
+all parts of London in answer to the advertisements, and he came to
+know by sight men who applied as fruitlessly as himself. One or two
+tried to make friends with him, but he was too tired and too wretched
+to accept their advances. He did not go any more to Lawson, because he
+owed him five shillings. He began to be too dazed to think clearly and
+ceased very much to care what would happen to him. He cried a good
+deal. At first he was very angry with himself for this and ashamed, but
+he found it relieved him, and somehow made him feel less hungry. In the
+very early morning he suffered a good deal from cold. One night he went
+into his room to change his linen; he slipped in about three, when he
+was quite sure everyone would be asleep, and out again at five; he lay
+on the bed and its softness was enchanting; all his bones ached, and as
+he lay he revelled in the pleasure of it; it was so delicious that he
+did not want to go to sleep. He was growing used to want of food and
+did not feel very hungry, but only weak. Constantly now at the back of
+his mind was the thought of doing away with himself, but he used all
+the strength he had not to dwell on it, because he was afraid the
+temptation would get hold of him so that he would not be able to help
+himself. He kept on saying to himself that it would be absurd to commit
+suicide, since something must happen soon; he could not get over the
+impression that his situation was too preposterous to be taken quite
+seriously; it was like an illness which must be endured but from which
+he was bound to recover. Every night he swore that nothing would induce
+him to put up with such another and determined next morning to write to
+his uncle, or to Mr. Nixon, the solicitor, or to Lawson; but when the
+time came he could not bring himself to make the humiliating confession
+of his utter failure. He did not know how Lawson would take it. In
+their friendship Lawson had been scatter-brained and he had prided
+himself on his common sense. He would have to tell the whole history of
+his folly. He had an uneasy feeling that Lawson, after helping him,
+would turn the cold shoulder on him. His uncle and the solicitor would
+of course do something for him, but he dreaded their reproaches. He did
+not want anyone to reproach him: he clenched his teeth and repeated
+that what had happened was inevitable just because it had happened.
+Regret was absurd.
+
+The days were unending, and the five shillings Lawson had lent him
+would not last much longer. Philip longed for Sunday to come so that he
+could go to Athelny’s. He did not know what prevented him from going
+there sooner, except perhaps that he wanted so badly to get through on
+his own; for Athelny, who had been in straits as desperate, was the
+only person who could do anything for him. Perhaps after dinner he
+could bring himself to tell Athelny that he was in difficulties. Philip
+repeated to himself over and over again what he should say to him. He
+was dreadfully afraid that Athelny would put him off with airy phrases:
+that would be so horrible that he wanted to delay as long as possible
+the putting of him to the test. Philip had lost all confidence in his
+fellows.
+
+Saturday night was cold and raw. Philip suffered horribly. From midday
+on Saturday till he dragged himself wearily to Athelny’s house he ate
+nothing. He spent his last twopence on Sunday morning on a wash and a
+brush up in the lavatory at Charing Cross.
+
+
+
+
+CI
+
+
+When Philip rang a head was put out of the window, and in a minute he
+heard a noisy clatter on the stairs as the children ran down to let him
+in. It was a pale, anxious, thin face that he bent down for them to
+kiss. He was so moved by their exuberant affection that, to give
+himself time to recover, he made excuses to linger on the stairs. He
+was in a hysterical state and almost anything was enough to make him
+cry. They asked him why he had not come on the previous Sunday, and he
+told them he had been ill; they wanted to know what was the matter with
+him; and Philip, to amuse them, suggested a mysterious ailment, the
+name of which, double-barrelled and barbarous with its mixture of Greek
+and Latin (medical nomenclature bristled with such), made them shriek
+with delight. They dragged Philip into the parlour and made him repeat
+it for their father’s edification. Athelny got up and shook hands with
+him. He stared at Philip, but with his round, bulging eyes he always
+seemed to stare, Philip did not know why on this occasion it made him
+self-conscious.
+
+“We missed you last Sunday,” he said.
+
+Philip could never tell lies without embarrassment, and he was scarlet
+when he finished his explanation for not coming. Then Mrs. Athelny
+entered and shook hands with him.
+
+“I hope you’re better, Mr. Carey,” she said.
+
+He did not know why she imagined that anything had been the matter with
+him, for the kitchen door was closed when he came up with the children,
+and they had not left him.
+
+“Dinner won’t be ready for another ten minutes,” she said, in her slow
+drawl. “Won’t you have an egg beaten up in a glass of milk while you’re
+waiting?”
+
+There was a look of concern on her face which made Philip
+uncomfortable. He forced a laugh and answered that he was not at all
+hungry. Sally came in to lay the table, and Philip began to chaff her.
+It was the family joke that she would be as fat as an aunt of Mrs.
+Athelny, called Aunt Elizabeth, whom the children had never seen but
+regarded as the type of obscene corpulence.
+
+“I say, what HAS happened since I saw you last, Sally?” Philip began.
+
+“Nothing that I know of.”
+
+“I believe you’ve been putting on weight.”
+
+“I’m sure you haven’t,” she retorted. “You’re a perfect skeleton.”
+
+Philip reddened.
+
+“That’s a tu quoque, Sally,” cried her father. “You will be fined one
+golden hair of your head. Jane, fetch the shears.”
+
+“Well, he is thin, father,” remonstrated Sally. “He’s just skin and
+bone.”
+
+“That’s not the question, child. He is at perfect liberty to be thin,
+but your obesity is contrary to decorum.”
+
+As he spoke he put his arm proudly round her waist and looked at her
+with admiring eyes.
+
+“Let me get on with the table, father. If I am comfortable there are
+some who don’t seem to mind it.”
+
+“The hussy!” cried Athelny, with a dramatic wave of the hand. “She
+taunts me with the notorious fact that Joseph, a son of Levi who sells
+jewels in Holborn, has made her an offer of marriage.”
+
+“Have you accepted him, Sally?” asked Philip.
+
+“Don’t you know father better than that by this time? There’s not a
+word of truth in it.”
+
+“Well, if he hasn’t made you an offer of marriage,” cried Athelny, “by
+Saint George and Merry England, I will seize him by the nose and demand
+of him immediately what are his intentions.”
+
+“Sit down, father, dinner’s ready. Now then, you children, get along
+with you and wash your hands all of you, and don’t shirk it, because I
+mean to look at them before you have a scrap of dinner, so there.”
+
+Philip thought he was ravenous till he began to eat, but then
+discovered that his stomach turned against food, and he could eat
+hardly at all. His brain was weary; and he did not notice that Athelny,
+contrary to his habit, spoke very little. Philip was relieved to be
+sitting in a comfortable house, but every now and then he could not
+prevent himself from glancing out of the window. The day was
+tempestuous. The fine weather had broken; and it was cold, and there
+was a bitter wind; now and again gusts of rain drove against the
+window. Philip wondered what he should do that night. The Athelnys went
+to bed early, and he could not stay where he was after ten o’clock. His
+heart sank at the thought of going out into the bleak darkness. It
+seemed more terrible now that he was with his friends than when he was
+outside and alone. He kept on saying to himself that there were plenty
+more who would be spending the night out of doors. He strove to
+distract his mind by talking, but in the middle of his words a spatter
+of rain against the window would make him start.
+
+“It’s like March weather,” said Athelny. “Not the sort of day one would
+like to be crossing the Channel.”
+
+Presently they finished, and Sally came in and cleared away.
+
+“Would you like a twopenny stinker?” said Athelny, handing him a cigar.
+
+Philip took it and inhaled the smoke with delight. It soothed him
+extraordinarily. When Sally had finished Athelny told her to shut the
+door after her.
+
+“Now we shan’t be disturbed,” he said, turning to Philip. “I’ve
+arranged with Betty not to let the children come in till I call them.”
+
+Philip gave him a startled look, but before he could take in the
+meaning of his words, Athelny, fixing his glasses on his nose with the
+gesture habitual to him, went on.
+
+“I wrote to you last Sunday to ask if anything was the matter with you,
+and as you didn’t answer I went to your rooms on Wednesday.”
+
+Philip turned his head away and did not answer. His heart began to beat
+violently. Athelny did not speak, and presently the silence seemed
+intolerable to Philip. He could not think of a single word to say.
+
+“Your landlady told me you hadn’t been in since Saturday night, and she
+said you owed her for the last month. Where have you been sleeping all
+this week?”
+
+It made Philip sick to answer. He stared out of the window.
+
+“Nowhere.”
+
+“I tried to find you.”
+
+“Why?” asked Philip.
+
+“Betty and I have been just as broke in our day, only we had babies to
+look after. Why didn’t you come here?”
+
+“I couldn’t.”
+
+Philip was afraid he was going to cry. He felt very weak. He shut his
+eyes and frowned, trying to control himself. He felt a sudden flash of
+anger with Athelny because he would not leave him alone; but he was
+broken; and presently, his eyes still closed, slowly in order to keep
+his voice steady, he told him the story of his adventures during the
+last few weeks. As he spoke it seemed to him that he had behaved
+inanely, and it made it still harder to tell. He felt that Athelny
+would think him an utter fool.
+
+“Now you’re coming to live with us till you find something to do,” said
+Athelny, when he had finished.
+
+Philip flushed, he knew not why.
+
+“Oh, it’s awfully kind of you, but I don’t think I’ll do that.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+Philip did not answer. He had refused instinctively from fear that he
+would be a bother, and he had a natural bashfulness of accepting
+favours. He knew besides that the Athelnys lived from hand to mouth,
+and with their large family had neither space nor money to entertain a
+stranger.
+
+“Of course you must come here,” said Athelny. “Thorpe will tuck in with
+one of his brothers and you can sleep in his bed. You don’t suppose
+your food’s going to make any difference to us.”
+
+Philip was afraid to speak, and Athelny, going to the door, called his
+wife.
+
+“Betty,” he said, when she came in, “Mr. Carey’s coming to live with
+us.”
+
+“Oh, that is nice,” she said. “I’ll go and get the bed ready.”
+
+She spoke in such a hearty, friendly tone, taking everything for
+granted, that Philip was deeply touched. He never expected people to be
+kind to him, and when they were it surprised and moved him. Now he
+could not prevent two large tears from rolling down his cheeks. The
+Athelnys discussed the arrangements and pretended not to notice to what
+a state his weakness had brought him. When Mrs. Athelny left them
+Philip leaned back in his chair, and looking out of the window laughed
+a little.
+
+“It’s not a very nice night to be out, is it?”
+
+
+
+
+CII
+
+
+Athelny told Philip that he could easily get him something to do in the
+large firm of linendrapers in which himself worked. Several of the
+assistants had gone to the war, and Lynn and Sedley with patriotic zeal
+had promised to keep their places open for them. They put the work of
+the heroes on those who remained, and since they did not increase the
+wages of these were able at once to exhibit public spirit and effect an
+economy; but the war continued and trade was less depressed; the
+holidays were coming, when numbers of the staff went away for a
+fortnight at a time: they were bound to engage more assistants.
+Philip’s experience had made him doubtful whether even then they would
+engage him; but Athelny, representing himself as a person of
+consequence in the firm, insisted that the manager could refuse him
+nothing. Philip, with his training in Paris, would be very useful; it
+was only a matter of waiting a little and he was bound to get a
+well-paid job to design costumes and draw posters. Philip made a poster
+for the summer sale and Athelny took it away. Two days later he brought
+it back, saying that the manager admired it very much and regretted
+with all his heart that there was no vacancy just then in that
+department. Philip asked whether there was nothing else he could do.
+
+“I’m afraid not.”
+
+“Are you quite sure?”
+
+“Well, the fact is they’re advertising for a shop-walker tomorrow,”
+said Athelny, looking at him doubtfully through his glasses.
+
+“D’you think I stand any chance of getting it?”
+
+Athelny was a little confused; he had led Philip to expect something
+much more splendid; on the other hand he was too poor to go on
+providing him indefinitely with board and lodging.
+
+“You might take it while you wait for something better. You always
+stand a better chance if you’re engaged by the firm already.”
+
+“I’m not proud, you know,” smiled Philip.
+
+“If you decide on that you must be there at a quarter to nine tomorrow
+morning.”
+
+Notwithstanding the war there was evidently much difficulty in finding
+work, for when Philip went to the shop many men were waiting already.
+He recognised some whom he had seen in his own searching, and there was
+one whom he had noticed lying about the park in the afternoon. To
+Philip now that suggested that he was as homeless as himself and passed
+the night out of doors. The men were of all sorts, old and young, tall
+and short; but every one had tried to make himself smart for the
+interview with the manager: they had carefully brushed hair and
+scrupulously clean hands. They waited in a passage which Philip learnt
+afterwards led up to the dining-hall and the work rooms; it was broken
+every few yards by five or six steps. Though there was electric light
+in the shop here was only gas, with wire cages over it for protection,
+and it flared noisily. Philip arrived punctually, but it was nearly ten
+o’clock when he was admitted into the office. It was three-cornered,
+like a cut of cheese lying on its side: on the walls were pictures of
+women in corsets, and two poster-proofs, one of a man in pyjamas, green
+and white in large stripes, and the other of a ship in full sail
+ploughing an azure sea: on the sail was printed in large letters ‘great
+white sale.’ The widest side of the office was the back of one of the
+shop-windows, which was being dressed at the time, and an assistant
+went to and fro during the interview. The manager was reading a letter.
+He was a florid man, with sandy hair and a large sandy moustache; from
+the middle of his watch-chain hung a bunch of football medals. He sat
+in his shirt sleeves at a large desk with a telephone by his side;
+before him were the day’s advertisements, Athelny’s work, and cuttings
+from newspapers pasted on a card. He gave Philip a glance but did not
+speak to him; he dictated a letter to the typist, a girl who sat at a
+small table in one corner; then he asked Philip his name, age, and what
+experience he had had. He spoke with a cockney twang in a high,
+metallic voice which he seemed not able always to control; Philip
+noticed that his upper teeth were large and protruding; they gave you
+the impression that they were loose and would come out if you gave them
+a sharp tug.
+
+“I think Mr. Athelny has spoken to you about me,” said Philip.
+
+“Oh, you are the young feller who did that poster?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“No good to us, you know, not a bit of good.”
+
+He looked Philip up and down. He seemed to notice that Philip was in
+some way different from the men who had preceded him.
+
+“You’d ’ave to get a frock coat, you know. I suppose you ’aven’t got
+one. You seem a respectable young feller. I suppose you found art
+didn’t pay.”
+
+Philip could not tell whether he meant to engage him or not. He threw
+remarks at him in a hostile way.
+
+“Where’s your home?”
+
+“My father and mother died when I was a child.”
+
+“I like to give young fellers a chance. Many’s the one I’ve given their
+chance to and they’re managers of departments now. And they’re grateful
+to me, I’ll say that for them. They know what I done for them. Start at
+the bottom of the ladder, that’s the only way to learn the business,
+and then if you stick to it there’s no knowing what it can lead to. If
+you suit, one of these days you may find yourself in a position like
+what mine is. Bear that in mind, young feller.”
+
+“I’m very anxious to do my best, sir,” said Philip.
+
+He knew that he must put in the sir whenever he could, but it sounded
+odd to him, and he was afraid of overdoing it. The manager liked
+talking. It gave him a happy consciousness of his own importance, and
+he did not give Philip his decision till he had used a great many
+words.
+
+“Well, I daresay you’ll do,” he said at last, in a pompous way. “Anyhow
+I don’t mind giving you a trial.”
+
+“Thank you very much, sir.”
+
+“You can start at once. I’ll give you six shillings a week and your
+keep. Everything found, you know; the six shillings is only pocket
+money, to do what you like with, paid monthly. Start on Monday. I
+suppose you’ve got no cause of complaint with that.”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Harrington Street, d’you know where that is, Shaftesbury Avenue.
+That’s where you sleep. Number ten, it is. You can sleep there on
+Sunday night, if you like; that’s just as you please, or you can send
+your box there on Monday.” The manager nodded: “Good-morning.”
+
+
+
+
+CIII
+
+
+Mrs. Athelny lent Philip money to pay his landlady enough of her bill
+to let him take his things away. For five shillings and the pawn-ticket
+on a suit he was able to get from a pawnbroker a frock coat which
+fitted him fairly well. He redeemed the rest of his clothes. He sent
+his box to Harrington Street by Carter Patterson and on Monday morning
+went with Athelny to the shop. Athelny introduced him to the buyer of
+the costumes and left him. The buyer was a pleasant, fussy little man
+of thirty, named Sampson; he shook hands with Philip, and, in order to
+show his own accomplishment of which he was very proud, asked him if he
+spoke French. He was surprised when Philip told him he did.
+
+“Any other language?”
+
+“I speak German.”
+
+“Oh! I go over to Paris myself occasionally. Parlez-vous francais? Ever
+been to Maxim’s?”
+
+Philip was stationed at the top of the stairs in the ‘costumes.’ His
+work consisted in directing people to the various departments. There
+seemed a great many of them as Mr. Sampson tripped them off his tongue.
+Suddenly he noticed that Philip limped.
+
+“What’s the matter with your leg?” he asked.
+
+“I’ve got a club-foot,” said Philip. “But it doesn’t prevent my walking
+or anything like that.”
+
+The buyer looked at it for a moment doubtfully, and Philip surmised
+that he was wondering why the manager had engaged him. Philip knew that
+he had not noticed there was anything the matter with him.
+
+“I don’t expect you to get them all correct the first day. If you’re in
+any doubt all you’ve got to do is to ask one of the young ladies.”
+
+Mr. Sampson turned away; and Philip, trying to remember where this or
+the other department was, watched anxiously for the customer in search
+of information. At one o’clock he went up to dinner. The dining-room,
+on the top floor of the vast building, was large, long, and well lit;
+but all the windows were shut to keep out the dust, and there was a
+horrid smell of cooking. There were long tables covered with cloths,
+with big glass bottles of water at intervals, and down the centre salt
+cellars and bottles of vinegar. The assistants crowded in noisily, and
+sat down on forms still warm from those who had dined at twelve-thirty.
+
+“No pickles,” remarked the man next to Philip.
+
+He was a tall thin young man, with a hooked nose and a pasty face; he
+had a long head, unevenly shaped as though the skull had been pushed in
+here and there oddly, and on his forehead and neck were large acne
+spots red and inflamed. His name was Harris. Philip discovered that on
+some days there were large soup-plates down the table full of mixed
+pickles. They were very popular. There were no knives and forks, but in
+a minute a large fat boy in a white coat came in with a couple of
+handfuls of them and threw them loudly on the middle of the table. Each
+man took what he wanted; they were warm and greasy from recent washing
+in dirty water. Plates of meat swimming in gravy were handed round by
+boys in white jackets, and as they flung each plate down with the quick
+gesture of a prestidigitator the gravy slopped over on to the
+table-cloth. Then they brought large dishes of cabbages and potatoes;
+the sight of them turned Philip’s stomach; he noticed that everyone
+poured quantities of vinegar over them. The noise was awful. They
+talked and laughed and shouted, and there was the clatter of knives and
+forks, and strange sounds of eating. Philip was glad to get back into
+the department. He was beginning to remember where each one was, and
+had less often to ask one of the assistants, when somebody wanted to
+know the way.
+
+“First to the right. Second on the left, madam.”
+
+One or two of the girls spoke to him, just a word when things were
+slack, and he felt they were taking his measure. At five he was sent up
+again to the dining-room for tea. He was glad to sit down. There were
+large slices of bread heavily spread with butter; and many had pots of
+jam, which were kept in the ‘store’ and had their names written on.
+
+Philip was exhausted when work stopped at half past six. Harris, the
+man he had sat next to at dinner, offered to take him over to
+Harrington Street to show him where he was to sleep. He told Philip
+there was a spare bed in his room, and, as the other rooms were full,
+he expected Philip would be put there. The house in Harrington Street
+had been a bootmaker’s; and the shop was used as a bed-room; but it was
+very dark, since the window had been boarded three parts up, and as
+this did not open the only ventilation came from a small skylight at
+the far end. There was a musty smell, and Philip was thankful that he
+would not have to sleep there. Harris took him up to the sitting-room,
+which was on the first floor; it had an old piano in it with a keyboard
+that looked like a row of decayed teeth; and on the table in a
+cigar-box without a lid was a set of dominoes; old numbers of The
+Strand Magazine and of The Graphic were lying about. The other rooms
+were used as bed-rooms. That in which Philip was to sleep was at the
+top of the house. There were six beds in it, and a trunk or a box stood
+by the side of each. The only furniture was a chest of drawers: it had
+four large drawers and two small ones, and Philip as the new-comer had
+one of these; there were keys to them, but as they were all alike they
+were not of much use, and Harris advised him to keep his valuables in
+his trunk. There was a looking-glass on the chimney-piece. Harris
+showed Philip the lavatory, which was a fairly large room with eight
+basins in a row, and here all the inmates did their washing. It led
+into another room in which were two baths, discoloured, the woodwork
+stained with soap; and in them were dark rings at various intervals
+which indicated the water marks of different baths.
+
+When Harris and Philip went back to their bed-room they found a tall
+man changing his clothes and a boy of sixteen whistling as loud as he
+could while he brushed his hair. In a minute or two without saying a
+word to anybody the tall man went out. Harris winked at the boy, and
+the boy, whistling still, winked back. Harris told Philip that the man
+was called Prior; he had been in the army and now served in the silks;
+he kept pretty much to himself, and he went off every night, just like
+that, without so much as a good-evening, to see his girl. Harris went
+out too, and only the boy remained to watch Philip curiously while he
+unpacked his things. His name was Bell and he was serving his time for
+nothing in the haberdashery. He was much interested in Philip’s evening
+clothes. He told him about the other men in the room and asked him
+every sort of question about himself. He was a cheerful youth, and in
+the intervals of conversation sang in a half-broken voice snatches of
+music-hall songs. When Philip had finished he went out to walk about
+the streets and look at the crowd; occasionally he stopped outside the
+doors of restaurants and watched the people going in; he felt hungry,
+so he bought a bath bun and ate it while he strolled along. He had been
+given a latch-key by the prefect, the man who turned out the gas at a
+quarter past eleven, but afraid of being locked out he returned in good
+time; he had learned already the system of fines: you had to pay a
+shilling if you came in after eleven, and half a crown after a quarter
+past, and you were reported besides: if it happened three times you
+were dismissed.
+
+All but the soldier were in when Philip arrived and two were already in
+bed. Philip was greeted with cries.
+
+“Oh, Clarence! Naughty boy!”
+
+He discovered that Bell had dressed up the bolster in his evening
+clothes. The boy was delighted with his joke.
+
+“You must wear them at the social evening, Clarence.”
+
+“He’ll catch the belle of Lynn’s, if he’s not careful.”
+
+Philip had already heard of the social evenings, for the money stopped
+from the wages to pay for them was one of the grievances of the staff.
+It was only two shillings a month, and it covered medical attendance
+and the use of a library of worn novels; but as four shillings a month
+besides was stopped for washing, Philip discovered that a quarter of
+his six shillings a week would never be paid to him.
+
+Most of the men were eating thick slices of fat bacon between a roll of
+bread cut in two. These sandwiches, the assistants’ usual supper, were
+supplied by a small shop a few doors off at twopence each. The soldier
+rolled in; silently, rapidly, took off his clothes and threw himself
+into bed. At ten minutes past eleven the gas gave a big jump and five
+minutes later went out. The soldier went to sleep, but the others
+crowded round the big window in their pyjamas and night-shirts and,
+throwing remains of their sandwiches at the women who passed in the
+street below, shouted to them facetious remarks. The house opposite,
+six storeys high, was a workshop for Jewish tailors who left off work
+at eleven; the rooms were brightly lit and there were no blinds to the
+windows. The sweater’s daughter—the family consisted of father, mother,
+two small boys, and a girl of twenty—went round the house to put out
+the lights when work was over, and sometimes she allowed herself to be
+made love to by one of the tailors. The shop assistants in Philip’s
+room got a lot of amusement out of watching the manoeuvres of one man
+or another to stay behind, and they made small bets on which would
+succeed. At midnight the people were turned out of the Harrington Arms
+at the end of the street, and soon after they all went to bed: Bell,
+who slept nearest the door, made his way across the room by jumping
+from bed to bed, and even when he got to his own would not stop
+talking. At last everything was silent but for the steady snoring of
+the soldier, and Philip went to sleep.
+
+He was awaked at seven by the loud ringing of a bell, and by a quarter
+to eight they were all dressed and hurrying downstairs in their
+stockinged feet to pick out their boots. They laced them as they ran
+along to the shop in Oxford Street for breakfast. If they were a minute
+later than eight they got none, nor, once in, were they allowed out to
+get themselves anything to eat. Sometimes, if they knew they could not
+get into the building in time, they stopped at the little shop near
+their quarters and bought a couple of buns; but this cost money, and
+most went without food till dinner. Philip ate some bread and butter,
+drank a cup of tea, and at half past eight began his day’s work again.
+
+“First to the right. Second on the left, madam.”
+
+Soon he began to answer the questions quite mechanically. The work was
+monotonous and very tiring. After a few days his feet hurt him so that
+he could hardly stand: the thick soft carpets made them burn, and at
+night his socks were painful to remove. It was a common complaint, and
+his fellow ‘floormen’ told him that socks and boots just rotted away
+from the continual sweating. All the men in his room suffered in the
+same fashion, and they relieved the pain by sleeping with their feet
+outside the bed-clothes. At first Philip could not walk at all and was
+obliged to spend a good many of his evenings in the sitting-room at
+Harrington Street with his feet in a pail of cold water. His companion
+on these occasions was Bell, the lad in the haberdashery, who stayed in
+often to arrange the stamps he collected. As he fastened them with
+little pieces of stamp-paper he whistled monotonously.
+
+
+
+
+CIV
+
+
+The social evenings took place on alternate Mondays. There was one at
+the beginning of Philip’s second week at Lynn’s. He arranged to go with
+one of the women in his department.
+
+“Meet ’em ’alf-way,” she said, “same as I do.”
+
+This was Mrs. Hodges, a little woman of five-and-forty, with badly dyed
+hair; she had a yellow face with a network of small red veins all over
+it, and yellow whites to her pale blue eyes. She took a fancy to Philip
+and called him by his Christian name before he had been in the shop a
+week.
+
+“We’ve both known what it is to come down,” she said.
+
+She told Philip that her real name was not Hodges, but she always
+referred to “me ’usband Misterodges;” he was a barrister and he treated
+her simply shocking, so she left him as she preferred to be independent
+like; but she had known what it was to drive in her own carriage,
+dear—she called everyone dear—and they always had late dinner at home.
+She used to pick her teeth with the pin of an enormous silver brooch.
+It was in the form of a whip and a hunting-crop crossed, with two spurs
+in the middle. Philip was ill at ease in his new surroundings, and the
+girls in the shop called him ‘sidey.’ One addressed him as Phil, and he
+did not answer because he had not the least idea that she was speaking
+to him; so she tossed her head, saying he was a ‘stuck-up thing,’ and
+next time with ironical emphasis called him Mister Carey. She was a
+Miss Jewell, and she was going to marry a doctor. The other girls had
+never seen him, but they said he must be a gentleman as he gave her
+such lovely presents.
+
+“Never you mind what they say, dear,” said Mrs. Hodges. “I’ve ’ad to go
+through it same as you ’ave. They don’t know any better, poor things.
+You take my word for it, they’ll like you all right if you ’old your
+own same as I ’ave.”
+
+The social evening was held in the restaurant in the basement. The
+tables were put on one side so that there might be room for dancing,
+and smaller ones were set out for progressive whist.
+
+“The ’eads ’ave to get there early,” said Mrs. Hodges.
+
+She introduced him to Miss Bennett, who was the belle of Lynn’s. She
+was the buyer in the ‘Petticoats,’ and when Philip entered was engaged
+in conversation with the buyer in the ‘Gentlemen’s Hosiery;’ Miss
+Bennett was a woman of massive proportions, with a very large red face
+heavily powdered and a bust of imposing dimensions; her flaxen hair was
+arranged with elaboration. She was overdressed, but not badly dressed,
+in black with a high collar, and she wore black glace gloves, in which
+she played cards; she had several heavy gold chains round her neck,
+bangles on her wrists, and circular photograph pendants, one being of
+Queen Alexandra; she carried a black satin bag and chewed Sen-sens.
+
+“Please to meet you, Mr. Carey,” she said. “This is your first visit to
+our social evenings, ain’t it? I expect you feel a bit shy, but there’s
+no cause to, I promise you that.”
+
+She did her best to make people feel at home. She slapped them on the
+shoulders and laughed a great deal.
+
+“Ain’t I a pickle?” she cried, turning to Philip. “What must you think
+of me? But I can’t ’elp meself.”
+
+Those who were going to take part in the social evening came in, the
+younger members of the staff mostly, boys who had not girls of their
+own, and girls who had not yet found anyone to walk with. Several of
+the young gentlemen wore lounge suits with white evening ties and red
+silk handkerchiefs; they were going to perform, and they had a busy,
+abstracted air; some were self-confident, but others were nervous, and
+they watched their public with an anxious eye. Presently a girl with a
+great deal of hair sat at the piano and ran her hands noisily across
+the keyboard. When the audience had settled itself she looked round and
+gave the name of her piece.
+
+“A Drive in Russia.”
+
+There was a round of clapping during which she deftly fixed bells to
+her wrists. She smiled a little and immediately burst into energetic
+melody. There was a great deal more clapping when she finished, and
+when this was over, as an encore, she gave a piece which imitated the
+sea; there were little trills to represent the lapping waves and
+thundering chords, with the loud pedal down, to suggest a storm. After
+this a gentleman sang a song called Bid me Good-bye, and as an encore
+obliged with Sing me to Sleep. The audience measured their enthusiasm
+with a nice discrimination. Everyone was applauded till he gave an
+encore, and so that there might be no jealousy no one was applauded
+more than anyone else. Miss Bennett sailed up to Philip.
+
+“I’m sure you play or sing, Mr. Carey,” she said archly. “I can see it
+in your face.”
+
+“I’m afraid I don’t.”
+
+“Don’t you even recite?”
+
+“I have no parlour tricks.”
+
+The buyer in the ‘gentleman’s hosiery’ was a well-known reciter, and he
+was called upon loudly to perform by all the assistants in his
+department. Needing no pressing, he gave a long poem of tragic
+character, in which he rolled his eyes, put his hand on his chest, and
+acted as though he were in great agony. The point, that he had eaten
+cucumber for supper, was divulged in the last line and was greeted with
+laughter, a little forced because everyone knew the poem well, but loud
+and long. Miss Bennett did not sing, play, or recite.
+
+“Oh no, she ’as a little game of her own,” said Mrs. Hodges.
+
+“Now, don’t you begin chaffing me. The fact is I know quite a lot about
+palmistry and second sight.”
+
+“Oh, do tell my ’and, Miss Bennett,” cried the girls in her department,
+eager to please her.
+
+“I don’t like telling ’ands, I don’t really. I’ve told people such
+terrible things and they’ve all come true, it makes one superstitious
+like.”
+
+“Oh, Miss Bennett, just for once.”
+
+A little crowd collected round her, and, amid screams of embarrassment,
+giggles, blushings, and cries of dismay or admiration, she talked
+mysteriously of fair and dark men, of money in a letter, and of
+journeys, till the sweat stood in heavy beads on her painted face.
+
+“Look at me,” she said. “I’m all of a perspiration.”
+
+Supper was at nine. There were cakes, buns, sandwiches, tea and coffee,
+all free; but if you wanted mineral water you had to pay for it.
+Gallantry often led young men to offer the ladies ginger beer, but
+common decency made them refuse. Miss Bennett was very fond of ginger
+beer, and she drank two and sometimes three bottles during the evening;
+but she insisted on paying for them herself. The men liked her for
+that.
+
+“She’s a rum old bird,” they said, “but mind you, she’s not a bad sort,
+she’s not like what some are.”
+
+After supper progressive whist was played. This was very noisy, and
+there was a great deal of laughing and shouting, as people moved from
+table to table. Miss Bennett grew hotter and hotter.
+
+“Look at me,” she said. “I’m all of a perspiration.”
+
+In due course one of the more dashing of the young men remarked that if
+they wanted to dance they’d better begin. The girl who had played the
+accompaniments sat at the piano and placed a decided foot on the loud
+pedal. She played a dreamy waltz, marking the time with the bass, while
+with the right hand she ‘tiddled’ in alternate octaves. By way of a
+change she crossed her hands and played the air in the bass.
+
+“She does play well, doesn’t she?” Mrs. Hodges remarked to Philip. “And
+what’s more she’s never ’ad a lesson in ’er life; it’s all ear.”
+
+Miss Bennett liked dancing and poetry better than anything in the
+world. She danced well, but very, very slowly, and an expression came
+into her eyes as though her thoughts were far, far away. She talked
+breathlessly of the floor and the heat and the supper. She said that
+the Portman Rooms had the best floor in London and she always liked the
+dances there; they were very select, and she couldn’t bear dancing with
+all sorts of men you didn’t know anything about; why, you might be
+exposing yourself to you didn’t know what all. Nearly all the people
+danced very well, and they enjoyed themselves. Sweat poured down their
+faces, and the very high collars of the young men grew limp.
+
+Philip looked on, and a greater depression seized him than he
+remembered to have felt for a long time. He felt intolerably alone. He
+did not go, because he was afraid to seem supercilious, and he talked
+with the girls and laughed, but in his heart was unhappiness. Miss
+Bennett asked him if he had a girl.
+
+“No,” he smiled.
+
+“Oh, well, there’s plenty to choose from here. And they’re very nice
+respectable girls, some of them. I expect you’ll have a girl before
+you’ve been here long.”
+
+She looked at him very archly.
+
+“Meet ’em ’alf-way,” said Mrs. Hodges. “That’s what I tell him.”
+
+It was nearly eleven o’clock, and the party broke up. Philip could not
+get to sleep. Like the others he kept his aching feet outside the
+bed-clothes. He tried with all his might not to think of the life he
+was leading. The soldier was snoring quietly.
+
+
+
+
+CV
+
+
+The wages were paid once a month by the secretary. On pay-day each
+batch of assistants, coming down from tea, went into the passage and
+joined the long line of people waiting orderly like the audience in a
+queue outside a gallery door. One by one they entered the office. The
+secretary sat at a desk with wooden bowls of money in front of him, and
+he asked the employe’s name; he referred to a book, quickly, after a
+suspicious glance at the assistant, said aloud the sum due, and taking
+money out of the bowl counted it into his hand.
+
+“Thank you,” he said. “Next.”
+
+“Thank you,” was the reply.
+
+The assistant passed on to the second secretary and before leaving the
+room paid him four shillings for washing money, two shillings for the
+club, and any fines that he might have incurred. With what he had left
+he went back into his department and there waited till it was time to
+go. Most of the men in Philip’s house were in debt with the woman who
+sold the sandwiches they generally ate for supper. She was a funny old
+thing, very fat, with a broad, red face, and black hair plastered
+neatly on each side of the forehead in the fashion shown in early
+pictures of Queen Victoria. She always wore a little black bonnet and a
+white apron; her sleeves were tucked up to the elbow; she cut the
+sandwiches with large, dirty, greasy hands; and there was grease on her
+bodice, grease on her apron, grease on her skirt. She was called Mrs.
+Fletcher, but everyone addressed her as ‘Ma’; she was really fond of
+the shop assistants, whom she called her boys; she never minded giving
+credit towards the end of the month, and it was known that now and then
+she had lent someone or other a few shillings when he was in straits.
+She was a good woman. When they were leaving or when they came back
+from the holidays, the boys kissed her fat red cheek; and more than
+one, dismissed and unable to find another job, had got for nothing food
+to keep body and soul together. The boys were sensible of her large
+heart and repaid her with genuine affection. There was a story they
+liked to tell of a man who had done well for himself at Bradford, and
+had five shops of his own, and had come back after fifteen years and
+visited Ma Fletcher and given her a gold watch.
+
+Philip found himself with eighteen shillings left out of his month’s
+pay. It was the first money he had ever earned in his life. It gave him
+none of the pride which might have been expected, but merely a feeling
+of dismay. The smallness of the sum emphasised the hopelessness of his
+position. He took fifteen shillings to Mrs. Athelny to pay back part of
+what he owed her, but she would not take more than half a sovereign.
+
+“D’you know, at that rate it’ll take me eight months to settle up with
+you.”
+
+“As long as Athelny’s in work I can afford to wait, and who knows,
+p’raps they’ll give you a rise.”
+
+Athelny kept on saying that he would speak to the manager about Philip,
+it was absurd that no use should be made of his talents; but he did
+nothing, and Philip soon came to the conclusion that the press-agent
+was not a person of so much importance in the manager’s eyes as in his
+own. Occasionally he saw Athelny in the shop. His flamboyance was
+extinguished; and in neat, commonplace, shabby clothes he hurried, a
+subdued, unassuming little man, through the departments as though
+anxious to escape notice.
+
+“When I think of how I’m wasted there,” he said at home, “I’m almost
+tempted to give in my notice. There’s no scope for a man like me. I’m
+stunted, I’m starved.”
+
+Mrs. Athelny, quietly sewing, took no notice of his complaints. Her
+mouth tightened a little.
+
+“It’s very hard to get jobs in these times. It’s regular and it’s safe;
+I expect you’ll stay there as long as you give satisfaction.”
+
+It was evident that Athelny would. It was interesting to see the
+ascendency which the uneducated woman, bound to him by no legal tie,
+had acquired over the brilliant, unstable man. Mrs. Athelny treated
+Philip with motherly kindness now that he was in a different position,
+and he was touched by her anxiety that he should make a good meal. It
+was the solace of his life (and when he grew used to it, the monotony
+of it was what chiefly appalled him) that he could go every Sunday to
+that friendly house. It was a joy to sit in the stately Spanish chairs
+and discuss all manner of things with Athelny. Though his condition
+seemed so desperate he never left him to go back to Harrington Street
+without a feeling of exultation. At first Philip, in order not to
+forget what he had learned, tried to go on reading his medical books,
+but he found it useless; he could not fix his attention on them after
+the exhausting work of the day; and it seemed hopeless to continue
+working when he did not know in how long he would be able to go back to
+the hospital. He dreamed constantly that he was in the wards. The
+awakening was painful. The sensation of other people sleeping in the
+room was inexpressibly irksome to him; he had been used to solitude,
+and to be with others always, never to be by himself for an instant was
+at these moments horrible to him. It was then that he found it most
+difficult to combat his despair. He saw himself going on with that
+life, first to the right, second on the left, madam, indefinitely; and
+having to be thankful if he was not sent away: the men who had gone to
+the war would be coming home soon, the firm had guaranteed to take them
+back, and this must mean that others would be sacked; he would have to
+stir himself even to keep the wretched post he had.
+
+There was only one thing to free him and that was the death of his
+uncle. He would get a few hundred pounds then, and on this he could
+finish his course at the hospital. Philip began to wish with all his
+might for the old man’s death. He reckoned out how long he could
+possibly live: he was well over seventy, Philip did not know his exact
+age, but he must be at least seventy-five; he suffered from chronic
+bronchitis and every winter had a bad cough. Though he knew them by
+heart Philip read over and over again the details in his text-book of
+medicine of chronic bronchitis in the old. A severe winter might be too
+much for the old man. With all his heart Philip longed for cold and
+rain. He thought of it constantly, so that it became a monomania. Uncle
+William was affected by the great heat too, and in August they had
+three weeks of sweltering weather. Philip imagined to himself that one
+day perhaps a telegram would come saying that the Vicar had died
+suddenly, and he pictured to himself his unutterable relief. As he
+stood at the top of the stairs and directed people to the departments
+they wanted, he occupied his mind with thinking incessantly what he
+would do with the money. He did not know how much it would be, perhaps
+no more than five hundred pounds, but even that would be enough. He
+would leave the shop at once, he would not bother to give notice, he
+would pack his box and go without saying a word to anybody; and then he
+would return to the hospital. That was the first thing. Would he have
+forgotten much? In six months he could get it all back, and then he
+would take his three examinations as soon as he could, midwifery first,
+then medicine and surgery. The awful fear seized him that his uncle,
+notwithstanding his promises, might leave everything he had to the
+parish or the church. The thought made Philip sick. He could not be so
+cruel. But if that happened Philip was quite determined what to do, he
+would not go on in that way indefinitely; his life was only tolerable
+because he could look forward to something better. If he had no hope he
+would have no fear. The only brave thing to do then would be to commit
+suicide, and, thinking this over too, Philip decided minutely what
+painless drug he would take and how he would get hold of it. It
+encouraged him to think that, if things became unendurable, he had at
+all events a way out.
+
+“Second to the right, madam, and down the stairs. First on the left and
+straight through. Mr. Philips, forward please.”
+
+Once a month, for a week, Philip was ‘on duty.’ He had to go to the
+department at seven in the morning and keep an eye on the sweepers.
+When they finished he had to take the sheets off the cases and the
+models. Then, in the evening when the assistants left, he had to put
+back the sheets on the models and the cases and ‘gang’ the sweepers
+again. It was a dusty, dirty job. He was not allowed to read or write
+or smoke, but just had to walk about, and the time hung heavily on his
+hands. When he went off at half past nine he had supper given him, and
+this was the only consolation; for tea at five o’clock had left him
+with a healthy appetite, and the bread and cheese, the abundant cocoa
+which the firm provided, were welcome.
+
+One day when Philip had been at Lynn’s for three months, Mr. Sampson,
+the buyer, came into the department, fuming with anger. The manager,
+happening to notice the costume window as he came in, had sent for the
+buyer and made satirical remarks upon the colour scheme. Forced to
+submit in silence to his superior’s sarcasm, Mr. Sampson took it out of
+the assistants; and he rated the wretched fellow whose duty it was to
+dress the window.
+
+“If you want a thing well done you must do it yourself,” Mr. Sampson
+stormed. “I’ve always said it and I always shall. One can’t leave
+anything to you chaps. Intelligent you call yourselves, do you?
+Intelligent!”
+
+He threw the word at the assistants as though it were the bitterest
+term of reproach.
+
+“Don’t you know that if you put an electric blue in the window it’ll
+kill all the other blues?”
+
+He looked round the department ferociously, and his eye fell upon
+Philip.
+
+“You’ll dress the window next Friday, Carey. Let’s see what you can
+make of it.”
+
+He went into his office, muttering angrily. Philip’s heart sank. When
+Friday morning came he went into the window with a sickening sense of
+shame. His cheeks were burning. It was horrible to display himself to
+the passers-by, and though he told himself it was foolish to give way
+to such a feeling he turned his back to the street. There was not much
+chance that any of the students at the hospital would pass along Oxford
+Street at that hour, and he knew hardly anyone else in London; but as
+Philip worked, with a huge lump in his throat, he fancied that on
+turning round he would catch the eye of some man he knew. He made all
+the haste he could. By the simple observation that all reds went
+together, and by spacing the costumes more than was usual, Philip got a
+very good effect; and when the buyer went into the street to look at
+the result he was obviously pleased.
+
+“I knew I shouldn’t go far wrong in putting you on the window. The fact
+is, you and me are gentlemen, mind you I wouldn’t say this in the
+department, but you and me are gentlemen, and that always tells. It’s
+no good your telling me it doesn’t tell, because I know it does tell.”
+
+Philip was put on the job regularly, but he could not accustom himself
+to the publicity; and he dreaded Friday morning, on which the window
+was dressed, with a terror that made him awake at five o’clock and lie
+sleepless with sickness in his heart. The girls in the department
+noticed his shamefaced way, and they very soon discovered his trick of
+standing with his back to the street. They laughed at him and called
+him ‘sidey.’
+
+“I suppose you’re afraid your aunt’ll come along and cut you out of her
+will.”
+
+On the whole he got on well enough with the girls. They thought him a
+little queer; but his club-foot seemed to excuse his not being like the
+rest, and they found in due course that he was good-natured. He never
+minded helping anyone, and he was polite and even tempered.
+
+“You can see he’s a gentleman,” they said.
+
+“Very reserved, isn’t he?” said one young woman, to whose passionate
+enthusiasm for the theatre he had listened unmoved.
+
+Most of them had ‘fellers,’ and those who hadn’t said they had rather
+than have it supposed that no one had an inclination for them. One or
+two showed signs of being willing to start a flirtation with Philip,
+and he watched their manoeuvres with grave amusement. He had had enough
+of love-making for some time; and he was nearly always tired and often
+hungry.
+
+
+
+
+CVI
+
+
+Philip avoided the places he had known in happier times. The little
+gatherings at the tavern in Beak Street were broken up: Macalister,
+having let down his friends, no longer went there, and Hayward was at
+the Cape. Only Lawson remained; and Philip, feeling that now the
+painter and he had nothing in common, did not wish to see him; but one
+Saturday afternoon, after dinner, having changed his clothes he walked
+down Regent Street to go to the free library in St. Martin’s Lane,
+meaning to spend the afternoon there, and suddenly found himself face
+to face with him. His first instinct was to pass on without a word, but
+Lawson did not give him the opportunity.
+
+“Where on earth have you been all this time?” he cried.
+
+“I?” said Philip.
+
+“I wrote you and asked you to come to the studio for a beano and you
+never even answered.”
+
+“I didn’t get your letter.”
+
+“No, I know. I went to the hospital to ask for you, and I saw my letter
+in the rack. Have you chucked the Medical?”
+
+Philip hesitated for a moment. He was ashamed to tell the truth, but
+the shame he felt angered him, and he forced himself to speak. He could
+not help reddening.
+
+“Yes, I lost the little money I had. I couldn’t afford to go on with
+it.”
+
+“I say, I’m awfully sorry. What are you doing?”
+
+“I’m a shop-walker.”
+
+The words choked Philip, but he was determined not to shirk the truth.
+He kept his eyes on Lawson and saw his embarrassment. Philip smiled
+savagely.
+
+“If you went into Lynn and Sedley, and made your way into the ‘made
+robes’ department, you would see me in a frock coat, walking about with
+a degage air and directing ladies who want to buy petticoats or
+stockings. First to the right, madam, and second on the left.”
+
+Lawson, seeing that Philip was making a jest of it, laughed awkwardly.
+He did not know what to say. The picture that Philip called up
+horrified him, but he was afraid to show his sympathy.
+
+“That’s a bit of a change for you,” he said.
+
+His words seemed absurd to him, and immediately he wished he had not
+said them. Philip flushed darkly.
+
+“A bit,” he said. “By the way, I owe you five bob.”
+
+He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out some silver.
+
+“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I’d forgotten all about it.”
+
+“Go on, take it.”
+
+Lawson received the money silently. They stood in the middle of the
+pavement, and people jostled them as they passed. There was a sardonic
+twinkle in Philip’s eyes, which made the painter intensely
+uncomfortable, and he could not tell that Philip’s heart was heavy with
+despair. Lawson wanted dreadfully to do something, but he did not know
+what to do.
+
+“I say, won’t you come to the studio and have a talk?”
+
+“No,” said Philip.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“There’s nothing to talk about.”
+
+He saw the pain come into Lawson’s eyes, he could not help it, he was
+sorry, but he had to think of himself; he could not bear the thought of
+discussing his situation, he could endure it only by determining
+resolutely not to think about it. He was afraid of his weakness if once
+he began to open his heart. Moreover, he took irresistible dislikes to
+the places where he had been miserable: he remembered the humiliation
+he had endured when he had waited in that studio, ravenous with hunger,
+for Lawson to offer him a meal, and the last occasion when he had taken
+the five shillings off him. He hated the sight of Lawson, because he
+recalled those days of utter abasement.
+
+“Then look here, come and dine with me one night. Choose your own
+evening.”
+
+Philip was touched with the painter’s kindness. All sorts of people
+were strangely kind to him, he thought.
+
+“It’s awfully good of you, old man, but I’d rather not.” He held out
+his hand. “Good-bye.”
+
+Lawson, troubled by a behaviour which seemed inexplicable, took his
+hand, and Philip quickly limped away. His heart was heavy; and, as was
+usual with him, he began to reproach himself for what he had done: he
+did not know what madness of pride had made him refuse the offered
+friendship. But he heard someone running behind him and presently
+Lawson’s voice calling him; he stopped and suddenly the feeling of
+hostility got the better of him; he presented to Lawson a cold, set
+face.
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“I suppose you heard about Hayward, didn’t you?”
+
+“I know he went to the Cape.”
+
+“He died, you know, soon after landing.”
+
+For a moment Philip did not answer. He could hardly believe his ears.
+
+“How?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, enteric. Hard luck, wasn’t it? I thought you mightn’t know. Gave
+me a bit of a turn when I heard it.”
+
+Lawson nodded quickly and walked away. Philip felt a shiver pass
+through his heart. He had never before lost a friend of his own age,
+for the death of Cronshaw, a man so much older than himself, had seemed
+to come in the normal course of things. The news gave him a peculiar
+shock. It reminded him of his own mortality, for like everyone else
+Philip, knowing perfectly that all men must die, had no intimate
+feeling that the same must apply to himself; and Hayward’s death,
+though he had long ceased to have any warm feeling for him, affected
+him deeply. He remembered on a sudden all the good talks they had had,
+and it pained him to think that they would never talk with one another
+again; he remembered their first meeting and the pleasant months they
+had spent together in Heidelberg. Philip’s heart sank as he thought of
+the lost years. He walked on mechanically, not noticing where he went,
+and realised suddenly, with a movement of irritation, that instead of
+turning down the Haymarket he had sauntered along Shaftesbury Avenue.
+It bored him to retrace his steps; and besides, with that news, he did
+not want to read, he wanted to sit alone and think. He made up his mind
+to go to the British Museum. Solitude was now his only luxury. Since he
+had been at Lynn’s he had often gone there and sat in front of the
+groups from the Parthenon; and, not deliberately thinking, had allowed
+their divine masses to rest his troubled soul. But this afternoon they
+had nothing to say to him, and after a few minutes, impatiently, he
+wandered out of the room. There were too many people, provincials with
+foolish faces, foreigners poring over guide-books; their hideousness
+besmirched the everlasting masterpieces, their restlessness troubled
+the god’s immortal repose. He went into another room and here there was
+hardly anyone. Philip sat down wearily. His nerves were on edge. He
+could not get the people out of his mind. Sometimes at Lynn’s they
+affected him in the same way, and he looked at them file past him with
+horror; they were so ugly and there was such meanness in their faces,
+it was terrifying; their features were distorted with paltry desires,
+and you felt they were strange to any ideas of beauty. They had furtive
+eyes and weak chins. There was no wickedness in them, but only
+pettiness and vulgarity. Their humour was a low facetiousness.
+Sometimes he found himself looking at them to see what animal they
+resembled (he tried not to, for it quickly became an obsession,) and he
+saw in them all the sheep or the horse or the fox or the goat. Human
+beings filled him with disgust.
+
+But presently the influence of the place descended upon him. He felt
+quieter. He began to look absently at the tombstones with which the
+room was lined. They were the work of Athenian stone masons of the
+fourth and fifth centuries before Christ, and they were very simple,
+work of no great talent but with the exquisite spirit of Athens upon
+them; time had mellowed the marble to the colour of honey, so that
+unconsciously one thought of the bees of Hymettus, and softened their
+outlines. Some represented a nude figure, seated on a bench, some the
+departure of the dead from those who loved him, and some the dead
+clasping hands with one who remained behind. On all was the tragic word
+farewell; that and nothing more. Their simplicity was infinitely
+touching. Friend parted from friend, the son from his mother, and the
+restraint made the survivor’s grief more poignant. It was so long, long
+ago, and century upon century had passed over that unhappiness; for two
+thousand years those who wept had been dust as those they wept for. Yet
+the woe was alive still, and it filled Philip’s heart so that he felt
+compassion spring up in it, and he said:
+
+“Poor things, poor things.”
+
+And it came to him that the gaping sight-seers and the fat strangers
+with their guide-books, and all those mean, common people who thronged
+the shop, with their trivial desires and vulgar cares, were mortal and
+must die. They too loved and must part from those they loved, the son
+from his mother, the wife from her husband; and perhaps it was more
+tragic because their lives were ugly and sordid, and they knew nothing
+that gave beauty to the world. There was one stone which was very
+beautiful, a bas relief of two young men holding each other’s hand; and
+the reticence of line, the simplicity, made one like to think that the
+sculptor here had been touched with a genuine emotion. It was an
+exquisite memorial to that than which the world offers but one thing
+more precious, to a friendship; and as Philip looked at it, he felt the
+tears come to his eyes. He thought of Hayward and his eager admiration
+for him when first they met, and how disillusion had come and then
+indifference, till nothing held them together but habit and old
+memories. It was one of the queer things of life that you saw a person
+every day for months and were so intimate with him that you could not
+imagine existence without him; then separation came, and everything
+went on in the same way, and the companion who had seemed essential
+proved unnecessary. Your life proceeded and you did not even miss him.
+Philip thought of those early days in Heidelberg when Hayward, capable
+of great things, had been full of enthusiasm for the future, and how,
+little by little, achieving nothing, he had resigned himself to
+failure. Now he was dead. His death had been as futile as his life. He
+died ingloriously, of a stupid disease, failing once more, even at the
+end, to accomplish anything. It was just the same now as if he had
+never lived.
+
+Philip asked himself desperately what was the use of living at all. It
+all seemed inane. It was the same with Cronshaw: it was quite
+unimportant that he had lived; he was dead and forgotten, his book of
+poems sold in remainder by second-hand booksellers; his life seemed to
+have served nothing except to give a pushing journalist occasion to
+write an article in a review. And Philip cried out in his soul:
+
+“What is the use of it?”
+
+The effort was so incommensurate with the result. The bright hopes of
+youth had to be paid for at such a bitter price of disillusionment.
+Pain and disease and unhappiness weighed down the scale so heavily.
+What did it all mean? He thought of his own life, the high hopes with
+which he had entered upon it, the limitations which his body forced
+upon him, his friendlessness, and the lack of affection which had
+surrounded his youth. He did not know that he had ever done anything
+but what seemed best to do, and what a cropper he had come! Other men,
+with no more advantages than he, succeeded, and others again, with many
+more, failed. It seemed pure chance. The rain fell alike upon the just
+and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.
+
+Thinking of Cronshaw, Philip remembered the Persian rug which he had
+given him, telling him that it offered an answer to his question upon
+the meaning of life; and suddenly the answer occurred to him: he
+chuckled: now that he had it, it was like one of the puzzles which you
+worry over till you are shown the solution and then cannot imagine how
+it could ever have escaped you. The answer was obvious. Life had no
+meaning. On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space,
+living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were
+part of the planet’s history; and as there had been a beginning of life
+upon it so, under the influence of other conditions, there would be an
+end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as
+the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment.
+Philip remembered the story of the Eastern King who, desiring to know
+the history of man, was brought by a sage five hundred volumes; busy
+with affairs of state, he bade him go and condense it; in twenty years
+the sage returned and his history now was in no more than fifty
+volumes, but the King, too old then to read so many ponderous tomes,
+bade him go and shorten it once more; twenty years passed again and the
+sage, old and gray, brought a single book in which was the knowledge
+the King had sought; but the King lay on his death-bed, and he had no
+time to read even that; and then the sage gave him the history of man
+in a single line; it was this: he was born, he suffered, and he died.
+There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was
+immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased
+to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip
+exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief
+in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last
+burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he
+was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt
+himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to
+persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of
+its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was
+unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most
+inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a
+brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty
+because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness.
+Thoughts came tumbling over one another in Philip’s eager fancy, and he
+took long breaths of joyous satisfaction. He felt inclined to leap and
+sing. He had not been so happy for months.
+
+“Oh, life,” he cried in his heart, “Oh life, where is thy sting?”
+
+For the same uprush of fancy which had shown him with all the force of
+mathematical demonstration that life had no meaning, brought with it
+another idea; and that was why Cronshaw, he imagined, had given him the
+Persian rug. As the weaver elaborated his pattern for no end but the
+pleasure of his aesthetic sense, so might a man live his life, or if
+one was forced to believe that his actions were outside his choosing,
+so might a man look at his life, that it made a pattern. There was as
+little need to do this as there was use. It was merely something he did
+for his own pleasure. Out of the manifold events of his life, his
+deeds, his feelings, his thoughts, he might make a design, regular,
+elaborate, complicated, or beautiful; and though it might be no more
+than an illusion that he had the power of selection, though it might be
+no more than a fantastic legerdemain in which appearances were
+interwoven with moonbeams, that did not matter: it seemed, and so to
+him it was. In the vast warp of life (a river arising from no spring
+and flowing endlessly to no sea), with the background to his fancies
+that there was no meaning and that nothing was important, a man might
+get a personal satisfaction in selecting the various strands that
+worked out the pattern. There was one pattern, the most obvious,
+perfect, and beautiful, in which a man was born, grew to manhood,
+married, produced children, toiled for his bread, and died; but there
+were others, intricate and wonderful, in which happiness did not enter
+and in which success was not attempted; and in them might be discovered
+a more troubling grace. Some lives, and Hayward’s was among them, the
+blind indifference of chance cut off while the design was still
+imperfect; and then the solace was comfortable that it did not matter;
+other lives, such as Cronshaw’s, offered a pattern which was difficult
+to follow, the point of view had to be shifted and old standards had to
+be altered before one could understand that such a life was its own
+justification. Philip thought that in throwing over the desire for
+happiness he was casting aside the last of his illusions. His life had
+seemed horrible when it was measured by its happiness, but now he
+seemed to gather strength as he realised that it might be measured by
+something else. Happiness mattered as little as pain. They came in,
+both of them, as all the other details of his life came in, to the
+elaboration of the design. He seemed for an instant to stand above the
+accidents of his existence, and he felt that they could not affect him
+again as they had done before. Whatever happened to him now would be
+one more motive to add to the complexity of the pattern, and when the
+end approached he would rejoice in its completion. It would be a work
+of art, and it would be none the less beautiful because he alone knew
+of its existence, and with his death it would at once cease to be.
+
+Philip was happy.
+
+
+
+
+CVII
+
+
+Mr. Sampson, the buyer, took a fancy to Philip. Mr. Sampson was very
+dashing, and the girls in his department said they would not be
+surprised if he married one of the rich customers. He lived out of town
+and often impressed the assistants by putting on his evening clothes in
+the office. Sometimes he would be seen by those on sweeping duty coming
+in next morning still dressed, and they would wink gravely to one
+another while he went into his office and changed into a frock coat. On
+these occasions, having slipped out for a hurried breakfast, he also
+would wink at Philip as he walked up the stairs on his way back and rub
+his hands.
+
+“What a night! What a night!” he said. “My word!”
+
+He told Philip that he was the only gentleman there, and he and Philip
+were the only fellows who knew what life was. Having said this, he
+changed his manner suddenly, called Philip Mr. Carey instead of old
+boy, assumed the importance due to his position as buyer, and put
+Philip back into his place of shop-walker.
+
+Lynn and Sedley received fashion papers from Paris once a week and
+adapted the costumes illustrated in them to the needs of their
+customers. Their clientele was peculiar. The most substantial part
+consisted of women from the smaller manufacturing towns, who were too
+elegant to have their frocks made locally and not sufficiently
+acquainted with London to discover good dressmakers within their means.
+Beside these, incongruously, was a large number of music-hall artistes.
+This was a connection that Mr. Sampson had worked up for himself and
+took great pride in. They had begun by getting their stage-costumes at
+Lynn’s, and he had induced many of them to get their other clothes
+there as well.
+
+“As good as Paquin and half the price,” he said.
+
+He had a persuasive, hail-fellow well-met air with him which appealed
+to customers of this sort, and they said to one another:
+
+“What’s the good of throwing money away when you can get a coat and
+skirt at Lynn’s that nobody knows don’t come from Paris?”
+
+Mr. Sampson was very proud of his friendship with the popular
+favourites whose frocks he made, and when he went out to dinner at two
+o’clock on Sunday with Miss Victoria Virgo—“she was wearing that powder
+blue we made her and I lay she didn’t let on it come from us, I ’ad to
+tell her meself that if I ’adn’t designed it with my own ’ands I’d have
+said it must come from Paquin”—at her beautiful house in Tulse Hill, he
+regaled the department next day with abundant details. Philip had never
+paid much attention to women’s clothes, but in course of time he began,
+a little amused at himself, to take a technical interest in them. He
+had an eye for colour which was more highly trained than that of anyone
+in the department, and he had kept from his student days in Paris some
+knowledge of line. Mr. Sampson, an ignorant man conscious of his
+incompetence, but with a shrewdness that enabled him to combine other
+people’s suggestions, constantly asked the opinion of the assistants in
+his department in making up new designs; and he had the quickness to
+see that Philip’s criticisms were valuable. But he was very jealous,
+and would never allow that he took anyone’s advice. When he had altered
+some drawing in accordance with Philip’s suggestion, he always finished
+up by saying:
+
+“Well, it comes round to my own idea in the end.”
+
+One day, when Philip had been at the shop for five months, Miss Alice
+Antonia, the well-known serio-comic, came in and asked to see Mr.
+Sampson. She was a large woman, with flaxen hair, and a boldly painted
+face, a metallic voice, and the breezy manner of a comedienne
+accustomed to be on friendly terms with the gallery boys of provincial
+music-halls. She had a new song and wished Mr. Sampson to design a
+costume for her.
+
+“I want something striking,” she said. “I don’t want any old thing you
+know. I want something different from what anybody else has.”
+
+Mr. Sampson, bland and familiar, said he was quite certain they could
+get her the very thing she required. He showed her sketches.
+
+“I know there’s nothing here that would do, but I just want to show you
+the kind of thing I would suggest.”
+
+“Oh no, that’s not the sort of thing at all,” she said, as she glanced
+at them impatiently. “What I want is something that’ll just hit ’em in
+the jaw and make their front teeth rattle.”
+
+“Yes, I quite understand, Miss Antonia,” said the buyer, with a bland
+smile, but his eyes grew blank and stupid.
+
+“I expect I shall ’ave to pop over to Paris for it in the end.”
+
+“Oh, I think we can give you satisfaction, Miss Antonia. What you can
+get in Paris you can get here.”
+
+When she had swept out of the department Mr. Sampson, a little worried,
+discussed the matter with Mrs. Hodges.
+
+“She’s a caution and no mistake,” said Mrs. Hodges.
+
+“Alice, where art thou?” remarked the buyer, irritably, and thought he
+had scored a point against her.
+
+His ideas of music-hall costumes had never gone beyond short skirts, a
+swirl of lace, and glittering sequins; but Miss Antonia had expressed
+herself on that subject in no uncertain terms.
+
+“Oh, my aunt!” she said.
+
+And the invocation was uttered in such a tone as to indicate a rooted
+antipathy to anything so commonplace, even if she had not added that
+sequins gave her the sick. Mr. Sampson ‘got out’ one or two ideas, but
+Mrs. Hodges told him frankly she did not think they would do. It was
+she who gave Philip the suggestion:
+
+“Can you draw, Phil? Why don’t you try your ‘and and see what you can
+do?”
+
+Philip bought a cheap box of water colours, and in the evening while
+Bell, the noisy lad of sixteen, whistling three notes, busied himself
+with his stamps, he made one or two sketches. He remembered some of the
+costumes he had seen in Paris, and he adapted one of them, getting his
+effect from a combination of violent, unusual colours. The result
+amused him and next morning he showed it to Mrs. Hodges. She was
+somewhat astonished, but took it at once to the buyer.
+
+“It’s unusual,” he said, “there’s no denying that.”
+
+It puzzled him, and at the same time his trained eye saw that it would
+make up admirably. To save his face he began making suggestions for
+altering it, but Mrs. Hodges, with more sense, advised him to show it
+to Miss Antonia as it was.
+
+“It’s neck or nothing with her, and she may take a fancy to it.”
+
+“It’s a good deal more nothing than neck,” said Mr. Sampson, looking at
+the decolletage. “He can draw, can’t he? Fancy ’im keeping it dark all
+this time.”
+
+When Miss Antonia was announced, the buyer placed the design on the
+table in such a position that it must catch her eye the moment she was
+shown into his office. She pounced on it at once.
+
+“What’s that?” she said. “Why can’t I ’ave that?”
+
+“That’s just an idea we got out for you,” said Mr. Sampson casually.
+“D’you like it?”
+
+“Do I like it!” she said. “Give me ’alf a pint with a little drop of
+gin in it.”
+
+“Ah, you see, you don’t have to go to Paris. You’ve only got to say
+what you want and there you are.”
+
+The work was put in hand at once, and Philip felt quite a thrill of
+satisfaction when he saw the costume completed. The buyer and Mrs.
+Hodges took all the credit of it; but he did not care, and when he went
+with them to the Tivoli to see Miss Antonia wear it for the first time
+he was filled with elation. In answer to her questions he at last told
+Mrs. Hodges how he had learnt to draw—fearing that the people he lived
+with would think he wanted to put on airs, he had always taken the
+greatest care to say nothing about his past occupations—and she
+repeated the information to Mr. Sampson. The buyer said nothing to him
+on the subject, but began to treat him a little more deferentially and
+presently gave him designs to do for two of the country customers. They
+met with satisfaction. Then he began to speak to his clients of a
+“clever young feller, Paris art-student, you know,” who worked for him;
+and soon Philip, ensconced behind a screen, in his shirt sleeves, was
+drawing from morning till night. Sometimes he was so busy that he had
+to dine at three with the ‘stragglers.’ He liked it, because there were
+few of them and they were all too tired to talk; the food also was
+better, for it consisted of what was left over from the buyers’ table.
+Philip’s rise from shop-walker to designer of costumes had a great
+effect on the department. He realised that he was an object of envy.
+Harris, the assistant with the queer-shaped head, who was the first
+person he had known at the shop and had attached himself to Philip,
+could not conceal his bitterness.
+
+“Some people ’ave all the luck,” he said. “You’ll be a buyer yourself
+one of these days, and we shall all be calling you sir.”
+
+He told Philip that he should demand higher wages, for notwithstanding
+the difficult work he was now engaged in, he received no more than the
+six shillings a week with which he started. But it was a ticklish
+matter to ask for a rise. The manager had a sardonic way of dealing
+with such applicants.
+
+“Think you’re worth more, do you? How much d’you think you’re worth,
+eh?”
+
+The assistant, with his heart in his mouth, would suggest that he
+thought he ought to have another two shillings a week.
+
+“Oh, very well, if you think you’re worth it. You can ’ave it.” Then he
+paused and sometimes, with a steely eye, added: “And you can ’ave your
+notice too.”
+
+It was no use then to withdraw your request, you had to go. The
+manager’s idea was that assistants who were dissatisfied did not work
+properly, and if they were not worth a rise it was better to sack them
+at once. The result was that they never asked for one unless they were
+prepared to leave. Philip hesitated. He was a little suspicious of the
+men in his room who told him that the buyer could not do without him.
+They were decent fellows, but their sense of humour was primitive, and
+it would have seemed funny to them if they had persuaded Philip to ask
+for more wages and he were sacked. He could not forget the
+mortification he had suffered in looking for work, he did not wish to
+expose himself to that again, and he knew there was small chance of his
+getting elsewhere a post as designer: there were hundreds of people
+about who could draw as well as he. But he wanted money very badly; his
+clothes were worn out, and the heavy carpets rotted his socks and
+boots; he had almost persuaded himself to take the venturesome step
+when one morning, passing up from breakfast in the basement through the
+passage that led to the manager’s office, he saw a queue of men waiting
+in answer to an advertisement. There were about a hundred of them, and
+whichever was engaged would be offered his keep and the same six
+shillings a week that Philip had. He saw some of them cast envious
+glances at him because he had employment. It made him shudder. He dared
+not risk it.
+
+
+
+
+CVIII
+
+
+The winter passed. Now and then Philip went to the hospital, slinking
+in when it was late and there was little chance of meeting anyone he
+knew, to see whether there were letters for him. At Easter he received
+one from his uncle. He was surprised to hear from him, for the Vicar of
+Blackstable had never written him more than half a dozen letters in his
+whole life, and they were on business matters.
+
+Dear Philip,
+
+If you are thinking of taking a holiday soon and care to come down here
+I shall be pleased to see you. I was very ill with my bronchitis in the
+winter and Doctor Wigram never expected me to pull through. I have a
+wonderful constitution and I made, thank God, a marvellous recovery.
+Yours affectionately,
+William Carey.
+
+The letter made Philip angry. How did his uncle think he was living? He
+did not even trouble to inquire. He might have starved for all the old
+man cared. But as he walked home something struck him; he stopped under
+a lamp-post and read the letter again; the handwriting had no longer
+the business-like firmness which had characterised it; it was larger
+and wavering: perhaps the illness had shaken him more than he was
+willing to confess, and he sought in that formal note to express a
+yearning to see the only relation he had in the world. Philip wrote
+back that he could come down to Blackstable for a fortnight in July.
+The invitation was convenient, for he had not known what to do, with
+his brief holiday. The Athelnys went hopping in September, but he could
+not then be spared, since during that month the autumn models were
+prepared. The rule of Lynn’s was that everyone must take a fortnight
+whether he wanted it or not; and during that time, if he had nowhere to
+go, the assistant might sleep in his room, but he was not allowed food.
+A number had no friends within reasonable distance of London, and to
+these the holiday was an awkward interval when they had to provide food
+out of their small wages and, with the whole day on their hands, had
+nothing to spend. Philip had not been out of London since his visit to
+Brighton with Mildred, now two years before, and he longed for fresh
+air and the silence of the sea. He thought of it with such a passionate
+desire, all through May and June, that, when at length the time came
+for him to go, he was listless.
+
+On his last evening, when he talked with the buyer of one or two jobs
+he had to leave over, Mr. Sampson suddenly said to him:
+
+“What wages have you been getting?”
+
+“Six shillings.”
+
+“I don’t think it’s enough. I’ll see that you’re put up to twelve when
+you come back.”
+
+“Thank you very much,” smiled Philip. “I’m beginning to want some new
+clothes badly.”
+
+“If you stick to your work and don’t go larking about with the girls
+like what some of them do, I’ll look after you, Carey. Mind you, you’ve
+got a lot to learn, but you’re promising, I’ll say that for you, you’re
+promising, and I’ll see that you get a pound a week as soon as you
+deserve it.”
+
+Philip wondered how long he would have to wait for that. Two years?
+
+He was startled at the change in his uncle. When last he had seen him
+he was a stout man, who held himself upright, clean-shaven, with a
+round, sensual face; but he had fallen in strangely, his skin was
+yellow; there were great bags under the eyes, and he was bent and old.
+He had grown a beard during his last illness, and he walked very
+slowly.
+
+“I’m not at my best today,” he said when Philip, having just arrived,
+was sitting with him in the dining-room. “The heat upsets me.”
+
+Philip, asking after the affairs of the parish, looked at him and
+wondered how much longer he could last. A hot summer would finish him;
+Philip noticed how thin his hands were; they trembled. It meant so much
+to Philip. If he died that summer he could go back to the hospital at
+the beginning of the winter session; his heart leaped at the thought of
+returning no more to Lynn’s. At dinner the Vicar sat humped up on his
+chair, and the housekeeper who had been with him since his wife’s death
+said:
+
+“Shall Mr. Philip carve, sir?”
+
+The old man, who had been about to do so from disinclination to confess
+his weakness, seemed glad at the first suggestion to relinquish the
+attempt.
+
+“You’ve got a very good appetite,” said Philip.
+
+“Oh yes, I always eat well. But I’m thinner than when you were here
+last. I’m glad to be thinner, I didn’t like being so fat. Dr. Wigram
+thinks I’m all the better for being thinner than I was.”
+
+When dinner was over the housekeeper brought him some medicine.
+
+“Show the prescription to Master Philip,” he said. “He’s a doctor too.
+I’d like him to see that he thinks it’s all right. I told Dr. Wigram
+that now you’re studying to be a doctor he ought to make a reduction in
+his charges. It’s dreadful the bills I’ve had to pay. He came every day
+for two months, and he charges five shillings a visit. It’s a lot of
+money, isn’t it? He comes twice a week still. I’m going to tell him he
+needn’t come any more. I’ll send for him if I want him.”
+
+He looked at Philip eagerly while he read the prescriptions. They were
+narcotics. There were two of them, and one was a medicine which the
+Vicar explained he was to use only if his neuritis grew unendurable.
+
+“I’m very careful,” he said. “I don’t want to get into the opium
+habit.”
+
+He did not mention his nephew’s affairs. Philip fancied that it was by
+way of precaution, in case he asked for money, that his uncle kept
+dwelling on the financial calls upon him. He had spent so much on the
+doctor and so much more on the chemist, while he was ill they had had
+to have a fire every day in his bed-room, and now on Sunday he needed a
+carriage to go to church in the evening as well as in the morning.
+Philip felt angrily inclined to say he need not be afraid, he was not
+going to borrow from him, but he held his tongue. It seemed to him that
+everything had left the old man now but two things, pleasure in his
+food and a grasping desire for money. It was a hideous old age.
+
+In the afternoon Dr. Wigram came, and after the visit Philip walked
+with him to the garden gate.
+
+“How d’you think he is?” said Philip.
+
+Dr. Wigram was more anxious not to do wrong than to do right, and he
+never hazarded a definite opinion if he could help it. He had practised
+at Blackstable for five-and-thirty years. He had the reputation of
+being very safe, and many of his patients thought it much better that a
+doctor should be safe than clever. There was a new man at
+Blackstable—he had been settled there for ten years, but they still
+looked upon him as an interloper—and he was said to be very clever; but
+he had not much practice among the better people, because no one really
+knew anything about him.
+
+“Oh, he’s as well as can be expected,” said Dr. Wigram in answer to
+Philip’s inquiry.
+
+“Has he got anything seriously the matter with him?”
+
+“Well, Philip, your uncle is no longer a young man,” said the doctor
+with a cautious little smile, which suggested that after all the Vicar
+of Blackstable was not an old man either.
+
+“He seems to think his heart’s in a bad way.”
+
+“I’m not satisfied with his heart,” hazarded the doctor, “I think he
+should be careful, very careful.”
+
+On the tip of Philip’s tongue was the question: how much longer can he
+live? He was afraid it would shock. In these matters a periphrase was
+demanded by the decorum of life, but, as he asked another question
+instead, it flashed through him that the doctor must be accustomed to
+the impatience of a sick man’s relatives. He must see through their
+sympathetic expressions. Philip, with a faint smile at his own
+hypocrisy, cast down his eyes.
+
+“I suppose he’s in no immediate danger?”
+
+This was the kind of question the doctor hated. If you said a patient
+couldn’t live another month the family prepared itself for a
+bereavement, and if then the patient lived on they visited the medical
+attendant with the resentment they felt at having tormented themselves
+before it was necessary. On the other hand, if you said the patient
+might live a year and he died in a week the family said you did not
+know your business. They thought of all the affection they would have
+lavished on the defunct if they had known the end was so near. Dr.
+Wigram made the gesture of washing his hands.
+
+“I don’t think there’s any grave risk so long as he—remains as he is,”
+he ventured at last. “But on the other hand, we mustn’t forget that
+he’s no longer a young man, and well, the machine is wearing out. If he
+gets over the hot weather I don’t see why he shouldn’t get on very
+comfortably till the winter, and then if the winter does not bother him
+too much, well, I don’t see why anything should happen.”
+
+Philip went back to the dining-room where his uncle was sitting. With
+his skull-cap and a crochet shawl over his shoulders he looked
+grotesque. His eyes had been fixed on the door, and they rested on
+Philip’s face as he entered. Philip saw that his uncle had been waiting
+anxiously for his return.
+
+“Well, what did he say about me?”
+
+Philip understood suddenly that the old man was frightened of dying. It
+made Philip a little ashamed, so that he looked away involuntarily. He
+was always embarrassed by the weakness of human nature.
+
+“He says he thinks you’re much better,” said Philip.
+
+A gleam of delight came into his uncle’s eyes.
+
+“I’ve got a wonderful constitution,” he said. “What else did he say?”
+he added suspiciously.
+
+Philip smiled.
+
+“He said that if you take care of yourself there’s no reason why you
+shouldn’t live to be a hundred.”
+
+“I don’t know that I can expect to do that, but I don’t see why I
+shouldn’t see eighty. My mother lived till she was eighty-four.”
+
+There was a little table by the side of Mr. Carey’s chair, and on it
+were a Bible and the large volume of the Common Prayer from which for
+so many years he had been accustomed to read to his household. He
+stretched out now his shaking hand and took his Bible.
+
+“Those old patriarchs lived to a jolly good old age, didn’t they?” he
+said, with a queer little laugh in which Philip read a sort of timid
+appeal.
+
+The old man clung to life. Yet he believed implicitly all that his
+religion taught him. He had no doubt in the immortality of the soul,
+and he felt that he had conducted himself well enough, according to his
+capacities, to make it very likely that he would go to heaven. In his
+long career to how many dying persons must he have administered the
+consolations of religion! Perhaps he was like the doctor who could get
+no benefit from his own prescriptions. Philip was puzzled and shocked
+by that eager cleaving to the earth. He wondered what nameless horror
+was at the back of the old man’s mind. He would have liked to probe
+into his soul so that he might see in its nakedness the dreadful dismay
+of the unknown which he suspected.
+
+The fortnight passed quickly and Philip returned to London. He passed a
+sweltering August behind his screen in the costumes department, drawing
+in his shirt sleeves. The assistants in relays went for their holidays.
+In the evening Philip generally went into Hyde Park and listened to the
+band. Growing more accustomed to his work it tired him less, and his
+mind, recovering from its long stagnation, sought for fresh activity.
+His whole desire now was set on his uncle’s death. He kept on dreaming
+the same dream: a telegram was handed to him one morning, early, which
+announced the Vicar’s sudden demise, and freedom was in his grasp. When
+he awoke and found it was nothing but a dream he was filled with sombre
+rage. He occupied himself, now that the event seemed likely to happen
+at any time, with elaborate plans for the future. In these he passed
+rapidly over the year which he must spend before it was possible for
+him to be qualified and dwelt on the journey to Spain on which his
+heart was set. He read books about that country, which he borrowed from
+the free library, and already he knew from photographs exactly what
+each city looked like. He saw himself lingering in Cordova on the
+bridge that spanned the Gaudalquivir; he wandered through tortuous
+streets in Toledo and sat in churches where he wrung from El Greco the
+secret which he felt the mysterious painter held for him. Athelny
+entered into his humour, and on Sunday afternoons they made out
+elaborate itineraries so that Philip should miss nothing that was
+noteworthy. To cheat his impatience Philip began to teach himself
+Spanish, and in the deserted sitting-room in Harrington Street he spent
+an hour every evening doing Spanish exercises and puzzling out with an
+English translation by his side the magnificent phrases of Don Quixote.
+Athelny gave him a lesson once a week, and Philip learned a few
+sentences to help him on his journey. Mrs. Athelny laughed at them.
+
+“You two and your Spanish!” she said. “Why don’t you do something
+useful?”
+
+But Sally, who was growing up and was to put up her hair at Christmas,
+stood by sometimes and listened in her grave way while her father and
+Philip exchanged remarks in a language she did not understand. She
+thought her father the most wonderful man who had ever existed, and she
+expressed her opinion of Philip only through her father’s
+commendations.
+
+“Father thinks a rare lot of your Uncle Philip,” she remarked to her
+brothers and sisters.
+
+Thorpe, the eldest boy, was old enough to go on the Arethusa, and
+Athelny regaled his family with magnificent descriptions of the
+appearance the lad would make when he came back in uniform for his
+holidays. As soon as Sally was seventeen she was to be apprenticed to a
+dressmaker. Athelny in his rhetorical way talked of the birds, strong
+enough to fly now, who were leaving the parental nest, and with tears
+in his eyes told them that the nest would be there still if ever they
+wished to return to it. A shakedown and a dinner would always be
+theirs, and the heart of a father would never be closed to the troubles
+of his children.
+
+“You do talk, Athelny,” said his wife. “I don’t know what trouble
+they’re likely to get into so long as they’re steady. So long as you’re
+honest and not afraid of work you’ll never be out of a job, that’s what
+I think, and I can tell you I shan’t be sorry when I see the last of
+them earning their own living.”
+
+Child-bearing, hard work, and constant anxiety were beginning to tell
+on Mrs. Athelny; and sometimes her back ached in the evening so that
+she had to sit down and rest herself. Her ideal of happiness was to
+have a girl to do the rough work so that she need not herself get up
+before seven. Athelny waved his beautiful white hand.
+
+“Ah, my Betty, we’ve deserved well of the state, you and I. We’ve
+reared nine healthy children, and the boys shall serve their king; the
+girls shall cook and sew and in their turn breed healthy children.” He
+turned to Sally, and to comfort her for the anti-climax of the contrast
+added grandiloquently: “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
+
+Athelny had lately added socialism to the other contradictory theories
+he vehemently believed in, and he stated now:
+
+“In a socialist state we should be richly pensioned, you and I, Betty.”
+
+“Oh, don’t talk to me about your socialists, I’ve got no patience with
+them,” she cried. “It only means that another lot of lazy loafers will
+make a good thing out of the working classes. My motto is, leave me
+alone; I don’t want anyone interfering with me; I’ll make the best of a
+bad job, and the devil take the hindmost.”
+
+“D’you call life a bad job?” said Athelny. “Never! We’ve had our ups
+and downs, we’ve had our struggles, we’ve always been poor, but it’s
+been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at
+my children.”
+
+“You do talk, Athelny,” she said, looking at him, not with anger but
+with scornful calm. “You’ve had the pleasant part of the children, I’ve
+had the bearing of them, and the bearing with them. I don’t say that
+I’m not fond of them, now they’re there, but if I had my time over
+again I’d remain single. Why, if I’d remained single I might have a
+little shop by now, and four or five hundred pounds in the bank, and a
+girl to do the rough work. Oh, I wouldn’t go over my life again, not
+for something.”
+
+Philip thought of the countless millions to whom life is no more than
+unending labour, neither beautiful nor ugly, but just to be accepted in
+the same spirit as one accepts the changes of the seasons. Fury seized
+him because it all seemed useless. He could not reconcile himself to
+the belief that life had no meaning and yet everything he saw, all his
+thoughts, added to the force of his conviction. But though fury seized
+him it was a joyful fury. Life was not so horrible if it was
+meaningless, and he faced it with a strange sense of power.
+
+
+
+
+CIX
+
+
+The autumn passed into winter. Philip had left his address with Mrs.
+Foster, his uncle’s housekeeper, so that she might communicate with
+him, but still went once a week to the hospital on the chance of there
+being a letter. One evening he saw his name on an envelope in a
+handwriting he had hoped never to see again. It gave him a queer
+feeling. For a little while he could not bring himself to take it. It
+brought back a host of hateful memories. But at length, impatient with
+himself, he ripped open the envelope.
+
+7 William Street, Fitzroy Square.
+
+Dear Phil,
+
+Can I see you for a minute or two as soon as possible. I am in awful
+trouble and don’t know what to do. It’s not money.
+
+                                                 Yours truly,
+                                                         Mildred.
+
+He tore the letter into little bits and going out into the street
+scattered them in the darkness.
+
+“I’ll see her damned,” he muttered.
+
+A feeling of disgust surged up in him at the thought of seeing her
+again. He did not care if she was in distress, it served her right
+whatever it was, he thought of her with hatred, and the love he had had
+for her aroused his loathing. His recollections filled him with nausea,
+and as he walked across the Thames he drew himself aside in an
+instinctive withdrawal from his thought of her. He went to bed, but he
+could not sleep; he wondered what was the matter with her, and he could
+not get out of his head the fear that she was ill and hungry; she would
+not have written to him unless she were desperate. He was angry with
+himself for his weakness, but he knew that he would have no peace
+unless he saw her. Next morning he wrote a letter-card and posted it on
+his way to the shop. He made it as stiff as he could and said merely
+that he was sorry she was in difficulties and would come to the address
+she had given at seven o’clock that evening.
+
+It was that of a shabby lodging-house in a sordid street; and when,
+sick at the thought of seeing her, he asked whether she was in, a wild
+hope seized him that she had left. It looked the sort of place people
+moved in and out of frequently. He had not thought of looking at the
+postmark on her letter and did not know how many days it had lain in
+the rack. The woman who answered the bell did not reply to his inquiry,
+but silently preceded him along the passage and knocked on a door at
+the back.
+
+“Mrs. Miller, a gentleman to see you,” she called.
+
+The door was slightly opened, and Mildred looked out suspiciously.
+
+“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Come in.”
+
+He walked in and she closed the door. It was a very small bed-room,
+untidy as was every place she lived in; there was a pair of shoes on
+the floor, lying apart from one another and uncleaned; a hat was on the
+chest of drawers, with false curls beside it; and there was a blouse on
+the table. Philip looked for somewhere to put his hat. The hooks behind
+the door were laden with skirts, and he noticed that they were muddy at
+the hem.
+
+“Sit down, won’t you?” she said. Then she gave a little awkward laugh.
+“I suppose you were surprised to hear from me again.”
+
+“You’re awfully hoarse,” he answered. “Have you got a sore throat?”
+
+“Yes, I have had for some time.”
+
+He did not say anything. He waited for her to explain why she wanted to
+see him. The look of the room told him clearly enough that she had gone
+back to the life from which he had taken her. He wondered what had
+happened to the baby; there was a photograph of it on the
+chimney-piece, but no sign in the room that a child was ever there.
+Mildred was holding her handkerchief. She made it into a little ball,
+and passed it from hand to hand. He saw that she was very nervous. She
+was staring at the fire, and he could look at her without meeting her
+eyes. She was much thinner than when she had left him; and the skin,
+yellow and dryish, was drawn more tightly over her cheekbones. She had
+dyed her hair and it was now flaxen: it altered her a good deal, and
+made her look more vulgar.
+
+“I was relieved to get your letter, I can tell you,” she said at last.
+“I thought p’raps you weren’t at the ’ospital any more.”
+
+Philip did not speak.
+
+“I suppose you’re qualified by now, aren’t you?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“How’s that?”
+
+“I’m no longer at the hospital. I had to give it up eighteen months
+ago.”
+
+“You are changeable. You don’t seem as if you could stick to anything.”
+
+Philip was silent for another moment, and when he went on it was with
+coldness.
+
+“I lost the little money I had in an unlucky speculation and I couldn’t
+afford to go on with the medical. I had to earn my living as best I
+could.”
+
+“What are you doing then?”
+
+“I’m in a shop.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+She gave him a quick glance and turned her eyes away at once. He
+thought that she reddened. She dabbed her palms nervously with the
+handkerchief.
+
+“You’ve not forgotten all your doctoring, have you?” She jerked the
+words out quite oddly.
+
+“Not entirely.”
+
+“Because that’s why I wanted to see you.” Her voice sank to a hoarse
+whisper. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
+
+“Why don’t you go to a hospital?”
+
+“I don’t like to do that, and have all the stoodents staring at me, and
+I’m afraid they’d want to keep me.”
+
+“What are you complaining of?” asked Philip coldly, with the
+stereotyped phrase used in the out-patients’ room.
+
+“Well, I’ve come out in a rash, and I can’t get rid of it.”
+
+Philip felt a twinge of horror in his heart. Sweat broke out on his
+forehead.
+
+“Let me look at your throat?”
+
+He took her over to the window and made such examination as he could.
+Suddenly he caught sight of her eyes. There was deadly fear in them. It
+was horrible to see. She was terrified. She wanted him to reassure her;
+she looked at him pleadingly, not daring to ask for words of comfort
+but with all her nerves astrung to receive them: he had none to offer
+her.
+
+“I’m afraid you’re very ill indeed,” he said.
+
+“What d’you think it is?”
+
+When he told her she grew deathly pale, and her lips even turned,
+yellow. she began to cry, hopelessly, quietly at first and then with
+choking sobs.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry,” he said at last. “But I had to tell you.”
+
+“I may just as well kill myself and have done with it.”
+
+He took no notice of the threat.
+
+“Have you got any money?” he asked.
+
+“Six or seven pounds.”
+
+“You must give up this life, you know. Don’t you think you could find
+some work to do? I’m afraid I can’t help you much. I only get twelve
+bob a week.”
+
+“What is there I can do now?” she cried impatiently.
+
+“Damn it all, you MUST try to get something.”
+
+He spoke to her very gravely, telling her of her own danger and the
+danger to which she exposed others, and she listened sullenly. He tried
+to console her. At last he brought her to a sulky acquiescence in which
+she promised to do all he advised. He wrote a prescription, which he
+said he would leave at the nearest chemist’s, and he impressed upon her
+the necessity of taking her medicine with the utmost regularity.
+Getting up to go, he held out his hand.
+
+“Don’t be downhearted, you’ll soon get over your throat.”
+
+But as he went her face became suddenly distorted, and she caught hold
+of his coat.
+
+“Oh, don’t leave me,” she cried hoarsely. “I’m so afraid, don’t leave
+me alone yet. Phil, please. There’s no one else I can go to, you’re the
+only friend I’ve ever had.”
+
+He felt the terror of her soul, and it was strangely like that terror
+he had seen in his uncle’s eyes when he feared that he might die.
+Philip looked down. Twice that woman had come into his life and made
+him wretched; she had no claim upon him; and yet, he knew not why, deep
+in his heart was a strange aching; it was that which, when he received
+her letter, had left him no peace till he obeyed her summons.
+
+“I suppose I shall never really quite get over it,” he said to himself.
+
+What perplexed him was that he felt a curious physical distaste, which
+made it uncomfortable for him to be near her.
+
+“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
+
+“Let’s go out and dine together. I’ll pay.”
+
+He hesitated. He felt that she was creeping back again into his life
+when he thought she was gone out of it for ever. She watched him with
+sickening anxiety.
+
+“Oh, I know I’ve treated you shocking, but don’t leave me alone now.
+You’ve had your revenge. If you leave me by myself now I don’t know
+what I shall do.”
+
+“All right, I don’t mind,” he said, “but we shall have to do it on the
+cheap, I haven’t got money to throw away these days.”
+
+She sat down and put her shoes on, then changed her skirt and put on a
+hat; and they walked out together till they found a restaurant in the
+Tottenham Court Road. Philip had got out of the habit of eating at
+those hours, and Mildred’s throat was so sore that she could not
+swallow. They had a little cold ham and Philip drank a glass of beer.
+They sat opposite one another, as they had so often sat before; he
+wondered if she remembered; they had nothing to say to one another and
+would have sat in silence if Philip had not forced himself to talk. In
+the bright light of the restaurant, with its vulgar looking-glasses
+that reflected in an endless series, she looked old and haggard. Philip
+was anxious to know about the child, but he had not the courage to ask.
+At last she said:
+
+“You know baby died last summer.”
+
+“Oh!” he said.
+
+“You might say you’re sorry.”
+
+“I’m not,” he answered, “I’m very glad.”
+
+She glanced at him and, understanding what he meant, looked away
+
+“You were rare stuck on it at one time, weren’t you? I always thought
+it funny like how you could see so much in another man’s child.”
+
+When they had finished eating they called at the chemist’s for the
+medicine Philip had ordered, and going back to the shabby room he made
+her take a dose. Then they sat together till it was time for Philip to
+go back to Harrington Street. He was hideously bored.
+
+Philip went to see her every day. She took the medicine he had
+prescribed and followed his directions, and soon the results were so
+apparent that she gained the greatest confidence in Philip’s skill. As
+she grew better she grew less despondent. She talked more freely.
+
+“As soon as I can get a job I shall be all right,” she said. “I’ve had
+my lesson now and I mean to profit by it. No more racketing about for
+yours truly.”
+
+Each time he saw her, Philip asked whether she had found work. She told
+him not to worry, she would find something to do as soon as she wanted
+it; she had several strings to her bow; it was all the better not to do
+anything for a week or two. He could not deny this, but at the end of
+that time he became more insistent. She laughed at him, she was much
+more cheerful now, and said he was a fussy old thing. She told him long
+stories of the manageresses she interviewed, for her idea was to get
+work at some eating-house; what they said and what she answered.
+Nothing definite was fixed, but she was sure to settle something at the
+beginning of the following week: there was no use hurrying, and it
+would be a mistake to take something unsuitable.
+
+“It’s absurd to talk like that,” he said impatiently. “You must take
+anything you can get. I can’t help you, and your money won’t last for
+ever.”
+
+“Oh, well, I’ve not come to the end of it yet and chance it.”
+
+He looked at her sharply. It was three weeks since his first visit, and
+she had then less than seven pounds. Suspicion seized him. He
+remembered some of the things she had said. He put two and two
+together. He wondered whether she had made any attempt to find work.
+Perhaps she had been lying to him all the time. It was very strange
+that her money should have lasted so long.
+
+“What is your rent here?”
+
+“Oh, the landlady’s very nice, different from what some of them are;
+she’s quite willing to wait till it’s convenient for me to pay.”
+
+He was silent. What he suspected was so horrible that he hesitated. It
+was no use to ask her, she would deny everything; if he wanted to know
+he must find out for himself. He was in the habit of leaving her every
+evening at eight, and when the clock struck he got up; but instead of
+going back to Harrington Street he stationed himself at the corner of
+Fitzroy Square so that he could see anyone who came along William
+Street. It seemed to him that he waited an interminable time, and he
+was on the point of going away, thinking his surmise had been mistaken,
+when the door of No. 7 opened and Mildred came out. He fell back into
+the darkness and watched her walk towards him. She had on the hat with
+a quantity of feathers on it which he had seen in her room, and she
+wore a dress he recognized, too showy for the street and unsuitable to
+the time of year. He followed her slowly till she came into the
+Tottenham Court Road, where she slackened her pace; at the corner of
+Oxford Street she stopped, looked round, and crossed over to a
+music-hall. He went up to her and touched her on the arm. He saw that
+she had rouged her cheeks and painted her lips.
+
+“Where are you going, Mildred?”
+
+She started at the sound of his voice and reddened as she always did
+when she was caught in a lie; then the flash of anger which he knew so
+well came into her eyes as she instinctively sought to defend herself
+by abuse. But she did not say the words which were on the tip of her
+tongue.
+
+“Oh, I was only going to see the show. It gives me the hump sitting
+every night by myself.”
+
+He did not pretend to believe her.
+
+“You mustn’t. Good heavens, I’ve told you fifty times how dangerous it
+is. You must stop this sort of thing at once.”
+
+“Oh, hold your jaw,” she cried roughly. “How d’you suppose I’m going to
+live?”
+
+He took hold of her arm and without thinking what he was doing tried to
+drag her away.
+
+“For God’s sake come along. Let me take you home. You don’t know what
+you’re doing. It’s criminal.”
+
+“What do I care? Let them take their chance. Men haven’t been so good
+to me that I need bother my head about them.”
+
+She pushed him away and walking up to the box-office put down her
+money. Philip had threepence in his pocket. He could not follow. He
+turned away and walked slowly down Oxford Street.
+
+“I can’t do anything more,” he said to himself.
+
+That was the end. He did not see her again.
+
+
+
+
+CX
+
+
+Christmas that year falling on Thursday, the shop was to close for four
+days: Philip wrote to his uncle asking whether it would be convenient
+for him to spend the holidays at the vicarage. He received an answer
+from Mrs. Foster, saying that Mr. Carey was not well enough to write
+himself, but wished to see his nephew and would be glad if he came
+down. She met Philip at the door, and when she shook hands with him,
+said:
+
+“You’ll find him changed since you was here last, sir; but you’ll
+pretend you don’t notice anything, won’t you, sir? He’s that nervous
+about himself.”
+
+Philip nodded, and she led him into the dining-room.
+
+“Here’s Mr. Philip, sir.”
+
+The Vicar of Blackstable was a dying man. There was no mistaking that
+when you looked at the hollow cheeks and the shrunken body. He sat
+huddled in the arm-chair, with his head strangely thrown back, and a
+shawl over his shoulders. He could not walk now without the help of
+sticks, and his hands trembled so that he could only feed himself with
+difficulty.
+
+“He can’t last long now,” thought Philip, as he looked at him.
+
+“How d’you think I’m looking?” asked the Vicar. “D’you think I’ve
+changed since you were here last?”
+
+“I think you look stronger than you did last summer.”
+
+“It was the heat. That always upsets me.”
+
+Mr. Carey’s history of the last few months consisted in the number of
+weeks he had spent in his bed-room and the number of weeks he had spent
+downstairs. He had a hand-bell by his side and while he talked he rang
+it for Mrs. Foster, who sat in the next room ready to attend to his
+wants, to ask on what day of the month he had first left his room.
+
+“On the seventh of November, sir.”
+
+Mr. Carey looked at Philip to see how he took the information.
+
+“But I eat well still, don’t I, Mrs. Foster?”
+
+“Yes, sir, you’ve got a wonderful appetite.”
+
+“I don’t seem to put on flesh though.”
+
+Nothing interested him now but his health. He was set upon one thing
+indomitably and that was living, just living, notwithstanding the
+monotony of his life and the constant pain which allowed him to sleep
+only when he was under the influence of morphia.
+
+“It’s terrible, the amount of money I have to spend on doctor’s bills.”
+He tinkled his bell again. “Mrs. Foster, show Master Philip the
+chemist’s bill.”
+
+Patiently she took it off the chimney-piece and handed it to Philip.
+
+“That’s only one month. I was wondering if as you’re doctoring yourself
+you couldn’t get me the drugs cheaper. I thought of getting them down
+from the stores, but then there’s the postage.”
+
+Though apparently taking so little interest in him that he did not
+trouble to inquire what Phil was doing, he seemed glad to have him
+there. He asked how long he could stay, and when Philip told him he
+must leave on Tuesday morning, expressed a wish that the visit might
+have been longer. He told him minutely all his symptoms and repeated
+what the doctor had said of him. He broke off to ring his bell, and
+when Mrs. Foster came in, said:
+
+“Oh, I wasn’t sure if you were there. I only rang to see if you were.”
+
+When she had gone he explained to Philip that it made him uneasy if he
+was not certain that Mrs. Foster was within earshot; she knew exactly
+what to do with him if anything happened. Philip, seeing that she was
+tired and that her eyes were heavy from want of sleep, suggested that
+he was working her too hard.
+
+“Oh, nonsense,” said the Vicar, “she’s as strong as a horse.” And when
+next she came in to give him his medicine he said to her:
+
+“Master Philip says you’ve got too much to do, Mrs. Foster. You like
+looking after me, don’t you?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t mind, sir. I want to do everything I can.”
+
+Presently the medicine took effect and Mr. Carey fell asleep. Philip
+went into the kitchen and asked Mrs. Foster whether she could stand the
+work. He saw that for some months she had had little peace.
+
+“Well, sir, what can I do?” she answered. “The poor old gentleman’s so
+dependent on me, and, although he is troublesome sometimes, you can’t
+help liking him, can you? I’ve been here so many years now, I don’t
+know what I shall do when he comes to go.”
+
+Philip saw that she was really fond of the old man. She washed and
+dressed him, gave him his food, and was up half a dozen times in the
+night; for she slept in the next room to his and whenever he awoke he
+tinkled his little bell till she came in. He might die at any moment,
+but he might live for months. It was wonderful that she should look
+after a stranger with such patient tenderness, and it was tragic and
+pitiful that she should be alone in the world to care for him.
+
+It seemed to Philip that the religion which his uncle had preached all
+his life was now of no more than formal importance to him: every Sunday
+the curate came and administered to him Holy Communion, and he often
+read his Bible; but it was clear that he looked upon death with horror.
+He believed that it was the gateway to life everlasting, but he did not
+want to enter upon that life. In constant pain, chained to his chair
+and having given up the hope of ever getting out into the open again,
+like a child in the hands of a woman to whom he paid wages, he clung to
+the world he knew.
+
+In Philip’s head was a question he could not ask, because he was aware
+that his uncle would never give any but a conventional answer: he
+wondered whether at the very end, now that the machine was painfully
+wearing itself out, the clergyman still believed in immortality;
+perhaps at the bottom of his soul, not allowed to shape itself into
+words in case it became urgent, was the conviction that there was no
+God and after this life nothing.
+
+On the evening of Boxing Day Philip sat in the dining-room with his
+uncle. He had to start very early next morning in order to get to the
+shop by nine, and he was to say good-night to Mr. Carey then. The Vicar
+of Blackstable was dozing and Philip, lying on the sofa by the window,
+let his book fall on his knees and looked idly round the room. He asked
+himself how much the furniture would fetch. He had walked round the
+house and looked at the things he had known from his childhood; there
+were a few pieces of china which might go for a decent price and Philip
+wondered if it would be worth while to take them up to London; but the
+furniture was of the Victorian order, of mahogany, solid and ugly; it
+would go for nothing at an auction. There were three or four thousand
+books, but everyone knew how badly they sold, and it was not probable
+that they would fetch more than a hundred pounds. Philip did not know
+how much his uncle would leave, and he reckoned out for the hundredth
+time what was the least sum upon which he could finish the curriculum
+at the hospital, take his degree, and live during the time he wished to
+spend on hospital appointments. He looked at the old man, sleeping
+restlessly: there was no humanity left in that shrivelled face; it was
+the face of some queer animal. Philip thought how easy it would be to
+finish that useless life. He had thought it each evening when Mrs.
+Foster prepared for his uncle the medicine which was to give him an
+easy night. There were two bottles: one contained a drug which he took
+regularly, and the other an opiate if the pain grew unendurable. This
+was poured out for him and left by his bed-side. He generally took it
+at three or four in the morning. It would be a simple thing to double
+the dose; he would die in the night, and no one would suspect anything;
+for that was how Doctor Wigram expected him to die. The end would be
+painless. Philip clenched his hands as he thought of the money he
+wanted so badly. A few more months of that wretched life could matter
+nothing to the old man, but the few more months meant everything to
+him: he was getting to the end of his endurance, and when he thought of
+going back to work in the morning he shuddered with horror. His heart
+beat quickly at the thought which obsessed him, and though he made an
+effort to put it out of his mind he could not. It would be so easy, so
+desperately easy. He had no feeling for the old man, he had never liked
+him; he had been selfish all his life, selfish to his wife who adored
+him, indifferent to the boy who had been put in his charge; he was not
+a cruel man, but a stupid, hard man, eaten up with a small sensuality.
+It would be easy, desperately easy. Philip did not dare. He was afraid
+of remorse; it would be no good having the money if he regretted all
+his life what he had done. Though he had told himself so often that
+regret was futile, there were certain things that came back to him
+occasionally and worried him. He wished they were not on his
+conscience.
+
+His uncle opened his eyes; Philip was glad, for he looked a little more
+human then. He was frankly horrified at the idea that had come to him,
+it was murder that he was meditating; and he wondered if other people
+had such thoughts or whether he was abnormal and depraved. He supposed
+he could not have done it when it came to the point, but there the
+thought was, constantly recurring: if he held his hand it was from
+fear. His uncle spoke.
+
+“You’re not looking forward to my death, Philip?” Philip felt his heart
+beat against his chest.
+
+“Good heavens, no.”
+
+“That’s a good boy. I shouldn’t like you to do that. You’ll get a
+little bit of money when I pass away, but you mustn’t look forward to
+it. It wouldn’t profit you if you did.”
+
+He spoke in a low voice, and there was a curious anxiety in his tone.
+It sent a pang into Philip’s heart. He wondered what strange insight
+might have led the old man to surmise what strange desires were in
+Philip’s mind.
+
+“I hope you’ll live for another twenty years,” he said.
+
+“Oh, well, I can’t expect to do that, but if I take care of myself I
+don’t see why I shouldn’t last another three or four.”
+
+He was silent for a while, and Philip found nothing to say. Then, as if
+he had been thinking it all over, the old man spoke again.
+
+“Everyone has the right to live as long as he can.”
+
+Philip wanted to distract his mind.
+
+“By the way, I suppose you never hear from Miss Wilkinson now?”
+
+“Yes, I had a letter some time this year. She’s married, you know.”
+
+“Really?”
+
+“Yes, she married a widower. I believe they’re quite comfortable.”
+
+
+
+
+CXI
+
+
+Next day Philip began work again, but the end which he expected within
+a few weeks did not come. The weeks passed into months. The winter wore
+away, and in the parks the trees burst into bud and into leaf. A
+terrible lassitude settled upon Philip. Time was passing, though it
+went with such heavy feet, and he thought that his youth was going and
+soon he would have lost it and nothing would have been accomplished.
+His work seemed more aimless now that there was the certainty of his
+leaving it. He became skilful in the designing of costumes, and though
+he had no inventive faculty acquired quickness in the adaptation of
+French fashions to the English market. Sometimes he was not displeased
+with his drawings, but they always bungled them in the execution. He
+was amused to notice that he suffered from a lively irritation when his
+ideas were not adequately carried out. He had to walk warily. Whenever
+he suggested something original Mr. Sampson turned it down: their
+customers did not want anything outre, it was a very respectable class
+of business, and when you had a connection of that sort it wasn’t worth
+while taking liberties with it. Once or twice he spoke sharply to
+Philip; he thought the young man was getting a bit above himself,
+because Philip’s ideas did not always coincide with his own.
+
+“You jolly well take care, my fine young fellow, or one of these days
+you’ll find yourself in the street.”
+
+Philip longed to give him a punch on the nose, but he restrained
+himself. After all it could not possibly last much longer, and then he
+would be done with all these people for ever. Sometimes in comic
+desperation he cried out that his uncle must be made of iron. What a
+constitution! The ills he suffered from would have killed any decent
+person twelve months before. When at last the news came that the Vicar
+was dying Philip, who had been thinking of other things, was taken by
+surprise. It was in July, and in another fortnight he was to have gone
+for his holiday. He received a letter from Mrs. Foster to say the
+doctor did not give Mr. Carey many days to live, and if Philip wished
+to see him again he must come at once. Philip went to the buyer and
+told him he wanted to leave. Mr. Sampson was a decent fellow, and when
+he knew the circumstances made no difficulties. Philip said good-bye to
+the people in his department; the reason of his leaving had spread
+among them in an exaggerated form, and they thought he had come into a
+fortune. Mrs. Hodges had tears in her eyes when she shook hands with
+him.
+
+“I suppose we shan’t often see you again,” she said.
+
+“I’m glad to get away from Lynn’s,” he answered.
+
+It was strange, but he was actually sorry to leave these people whom he
+thought he had loathed, and when he drove away from the house in
+Harrington Street it was with no exultation. He had so anticipated the
+emotions he would experience on this occasion that now he felt nothing:
+he was as unconcerned as though he were going for a few days’ holiday.
+
+“I’ve got a rotten nature,” he said to himself. “I look forward to
+things awfully, and then when they come I’m always disappointed.”
+
+He reached Blackstable early in the afternoon. Mrs. Foster met him at
+the door, and her face told him that his uncle was not yet dead.
+
+“He’s a little better today,” she said. “He’s got a wonderful
+constitution.”
+
+She led him into the bed-room where Mr. Carey lay on his back. He gave
+Philip a slight smile, in which was a trace of satisfied cunning at
+having circumvented his enemy once more.
+
+“I thought it was all up with me yesterday,” he said, in an exhausted
+voice. “They’d all given me up, hadn’t you, Mrs. Foster?”
+
+“You’ve got a wonderful constitution, there’s no denying that.”
+
+“There’s life in the old dog yet.”
+
+Mrs. Foster said that the Vicar must not talk, it would tire him; she
+treated him like a child, with kindly despotism; and there was
+something childish in the old man’s satisfaction at having cheated all
+their expectations. It struck him at once that Philip had been sent
+for, and he was amused that he had been brought on a fool’s errand. If
+he could only avoid another of his heart attacks he would get well
+enough in a week or two; and he had had the attacks several times
+before; he always felt as if he were going to die, but he never did.
+They all talked of his constitution, but they none of them knew how
+strong it was.
+
+“Are you going to stay a day or two?” He asked Philip, pretending to
+believe he had come down for a holiday.
+
+“I was thinking of it,” Philip answered cheerfully.
+
+“A breath of sea-air will do you good.”
+
+Presently Dr. Wigram came, and after he had seen the Vicar talked with
+Philip. He adopted an appropriate manner.
+
+“I’m afraid it is the end this time, Philip,” he said. “It’ll be a
+great loss to all of us. I’ve known him for five-and-thirty years.”
+
+“He seems well enough now,” said Philip.
+
+“I’m keeping him alive on drugs, but it can’t last. It was dreadful
+these last two days, I thought he was dead half a dozen times.”
+
+The doctor was silent for a minute or two, but at the gate he said
+suddenly to Philip:
+
+“Has Mrs. Foster said anything to you?”
+
+“What d’you mean?”
+
+“They’re very superstitious, these people: she’s got hold of an idea
+that he’s got something on his mind, and he can’t die till he gets rid
+of it; and he can’t bring himself to confess it.”
+
+Philip did not answer, and the doctor went on.
+
+“Of course it’s nonsense. He’s led a very good life, he’s done his
+duty, he’s been a good parish priest, and I’m sure we shall all miss
+him; he can’t have anything to reproach himself with. I very much doubt
+whether the next vicar will suit us half so well.”
+
+For several days Mr. Carey continued without change. His appetite which
+had been excellent left him, and he could eat little. Dr. Wigram did
+not hesitate now to still the pain of the neuritis which tormented him;
+and that, with the constant shaking of his palsied limbs, was gradually
+exhausting him. His mind remained clear. Philip and Mrs. Foster nursed
+him between them. She was so tired by the many months during which she
+had been attentive to all his wants that Philip insisted on sitting up
+with the patient so that she might have her night’s rest. He passed the
+long hours in an arm-chair so that he should not sleep soundly, and
+read by the light of shaded candles The Thousand and One Nights. He had
+not read them since he was a little boy, and they brought back his
+childhood to him. Sometimes he sat and listened to the silence of the
+night. When the effects of the opiate wore off Mr. Carey grew restless
+and kept him constantly busy.
+
+At last, early one morning, when the birds were chattering noisily in
+the trees, he heard his name called. He went up to the bed. Mr. Carey
+was lying on his back, with his eyes looking at the ceiling; he did not
+turn them on Philip. Philip saw that sweat was on his forehead, and he
+took a towel and wiped it.
+
+“Is that you, Philip?” the old man asked.
+
+Philip was startled because the voice was suddenly changed. It was
+hoarse and low. So would a man speak if he was cold with fear.
+
+“Yes, d’you want anything?”
+
+There was a pause, and still the unseeing eyes stared at the ceiling.
+Then a twitch passed over the face.
+
+“I think I’m going to die,” he said.
+
+“Oh, what nonsense!” cried Philip. “You’re not going to die for years.”
+
+Two tears were wrung from the old man’s eyes. They moved Philip
+horribly. His uncle had never betrayed any particular emotion in the
+affairs of life; and it was dreadful to see them now, for they
+signified a terror that was unspeakable.
+
+“Send for Mr. Simmonds,” he said. “I want to take the Communion.”
+
+Mr. Simmonds was the curate.
+
+“Now?” asked Philip.
+
+“Soon, or else it’ll be too late.”
+
+Philip went to awake Mrs. Foster, but it was later than he thought and
+she was up already. He told her to send the gardener with a message,
+and he went back to his uncle’s room.
+
+“Have you sent for Mr. Simmonds?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+There was a silence. Philip sat by the bed-side, and occasionally wiped
+the sweating forehead.
+
+“Let me hold your hand, Philip,” the old man said at last.
+
+Philip gave him his hand and he clung to it as to life, for comfort in
+his extremity. Perhaps he had never really loved anyone in all his
+days, but now he turned instinctively to a human being. His hand was
+wet and cold. It grasped Philip’s with feeble, despairing energy. The
+old man was fighting with the fear of death. And Philip thought that
+all must go through that. Oh, how monstrous it was, and they could
+believe in a God that allowed his creatures to suffer such a cruel
+torture! He had never cared for his uncle, and for two years he had
+longed every day for his death; but now he could not overcome the
+compassion that filled his heart. What a price it was to pay for being
+other than the beasts!
+
+They remained in silence broken only once by a low inquiry from Mr.
+Carey.
+
+“Hasn’t he come yet?”
+
+At last the housekeeper came in softly to say that Mr. Simmonds was
+there. He carried a bag in which were his surplice and his hood. Mrs.
+Foster brought the communion plate. Mr. Simmonds shook hands silently
+with Philip, and then with professional gravity went to the sick man’s
+side. Philip and the maid went out of the room.
+
+Philip walked round the garden all fresh and dewy in the morning. The
+birds were singing gaily. The sky was blue, but the air, salt-laden,
+was sweet and cool. The roses were in full bloom. The green of the
+trees, the green of the lawns, was eager and brilliant. Philip walked,
+and as he walked he thought of the mystery which was proceeding in that
+bedroom. It gave him a peculiar emotion. Presently Mrs. Foster came out
+to him and said that his uncle wished to see him. The curate was
+putting his things back into the black bag. The sick man turned his
+head a little and greeted him with a smile. Philip was astonished, for
+there was a change in him, an extraordinary change; his eyes had no
+longer the terror-stricken look, and the pinching of his face had gone:
+he looked happy and serene.
+
+“I’m quite prepared now,” he said, and his voice had a different tone
+in it. “When the Lord sees fit to call me I am ready to give my soul
+into his hands.”
+
+Philip did not speak. He could see that his uncle was sincere. It was
+almost a miracle. He had taken the body and blood of his Savior, and
+they had given him strength so that he no longer feared the inevitable
+passage into the night. He knew he was going to die: he was resigned.
+He only said one thing more:
+
+“I shall rejoin my dear wife.”
+
+It startled Philip. He remembered with what a callous selfishness his
+uncle had treated her, how obtuse he had been to her humble, devoted
+love. The curate, deeply moved, went away and Mrs. Foster, weeping,
+accompanied him to the door. Mr. Carey, exhausted by his effort, fell
+into a light doze, and Philip sat down by the bed and waited for the
+end. The morning wore on, and the old man’s breathing grew stertorous.
+The doctor came and said he was dying. He was unconscious and he pecked
+feebly at the sheets; he was restless and he cried out. Dr. Wigram gave
+him a hypodermic injection.
+
+“It can’t do any good now, he may die at any moment.”
+
+The doctor looked at his watch and then at the patient. Philip saw that
+it was one o’clock. Dr. Wigram was thinking of his dinner.
+
+“It’s no use your waiting,” he said.
+
+“There’s nothing I can do,” said the doctor.
+
+When he was gone Mrs. Foster asked Philip if he would go to the
+carpenter, who was also the undertaker, and tell him to send up a woman
+to lay out the body.
+
+“You want a little fresh air,” she said, “it’ll do you good.”
+
+The undertaker lived half a mile away. When Philip gave him his
+message, he said:
+
+“When did the poor old gentleman die?”
+
+Philip hesitated. It occurred to him that it would seem brutal to fetch
+a woman to wash the body while his uncle still lived, and he wondered
+why Mrs. Foster had asked him to come. They would think he was in a
+great hurry to kill the old man off. He thought the undertaker looked
+at him oddly. He repeated the question. It irritated Philip. It was no
+business of his.
+
+“When did the Vicar pass away?”
+
+Philip’s first impulse was to say that it had just happened, but then
+it would seem inexplicable if the sick man lingered for several hours.
+He reddened and answered awkwardly.
+
+“Oh, he isn’t exactly dead yet.”
+
+The undertaker looked at him in perplexity, and he hurried to explain.
+
+“Mrs. Foster is all alone and she wants a woman there. You understood,
+don’t you? He may be dead by now.”
+
+The undertaker nodded.
+
+“Oh, yes, I see. I’ll send someone up at once.”
+
+When Philip got back to the vicarage he went up to the bed-room. Mrs.
+Foster rose from her chair by the bed-side.
+
+“He’s just as he was when you left,” she said.
+
+She went down to get herself something to eat, and Philip watched
+curiously the process of death. There was nothing human now in the
+unconscious being that struggled feebly. Sometimes a muttered
+ejaculation issued from the loose mouth. The sun beat down hotly from a
+cloudless sky, but the trees in the garden were pleasant and cool. It
+was a lovely day. A bluebottle buzzed against the windowpane. Suddenly
+there was a loud rattle, it made Philip start, it was horribly
+frightening; a movement passed through the limbs and the old man was
+dead. The machine had run down. The bluebottle buzzed, buzzed noisily
+against the windowpane.
+
+
+
+
+CXII
+
+
+Josiah Graves in his masterful way made arrangements, becoming but
+economical, for the funeral; and when it was over came back to the
+vicarage with Philip. The will was in his charge, and with a due sense
+of the fitness of things he read it to Philip over an early cup of tea.
+It was written on half a sheet of paper and left everything Mr. Carey
+had to his nephew. There was the furniture, about eighty pounds at the
+bank, twenty shares in the A. B. C. company, a few in Allsop’s brewery,
+some in the Oxford music-hall, and a few more in a London restaurant.
+They had been bought under Mr. Graves’ direction, and he told Philip
+with satisfaction:
+
+“You see, people must eat, they will drink, and they want amusement.
+You’re always safe if you put your money in what the public thinks
+necessities.”
+
+His words showed a nice discrimination between the grossness of the
+vulgar, which he deplored but accepted, and the finer taste of the
+elect. Altogether in investments there was about five hundred pounds;
+and to that must be added the balance at the bank and what the
+furniture would fetch. It was riches to Philip. He was not happy but
+infinitely relieved.
+
+Mr. Graves left him, after they had discussed the auction which must be
+held as soon as possible, and Philip sat himself down to go through the
+papers of the deceased. The Rev. William Carey had prided himself on
+never destroying anything, and there were piles of correspondence
+dating back for fifty years and bundles upon bundles of neatly docketed
+bills. He had kept not only letters addressed to him, but letters which
+himself had written. There was a yellow packet of letters which he had
+written to his father in the forties, when as an Oxford undergraduate
+he had gone to Germany for the long vacation. Philip read them idly. It
+was a different William Carey from the William Carey he had known, and
+yet there were traces in the boy which might to an acute observer have
+suggested the man. The letters were formal and a little stilted. He
+showed himself strenuous to see all that was noteworthy, and he
+described with a fine enthusiasm the castles of the Rhine. The falls of
+Schaffhausen made him ‘offer reverent thanks to the all-powerful
+Creator of the universe, whose works were wondrous and beautiful,’ and
+he could not help thinking that they who lived in sight of ‘this
+handiwork of their blessed Maker must be moved by the contemplation to
+lead pure and holy lives.’ Among some bills Philip found a miniature
+which had been painted of William Carey soon after he was ordained. It
+represented a thin young curate, with long hair that fell over his head
+in natural curls, with dark eyes, large and dreamy, and a pale ascetic
+face. Philip remembered the chuckle with which his uncle used to tell
+of the dozens of slippers which were worked for him by adoring ladies.
+
+The rest of the afternoon and all the evening Philip toiled through the
+innumerable correspondence. He glanced at the address and at the
+signature, then tore the letter in two and threw it into the
+washing-basket by his side. Suddenly he came upon one signed Helen. He
+did not know the writing. It was thin, angular, and old-fashioned. It
+began: my dear William, and ended: your affectionate sister. Then it
+struck him that it was from his own mother. He had never seen a letter
+of hers before, and her handwriting was strange to him. It was about
+himself.
+
+My dear William,
+
+Stephen wrote to you to thank you for your congratulations on the birth
+of our son and your kind wishes to myself. Thank God we are both well
+and I am deeply thankful for the great mercy which has been shown me.
+Now that I can hold a pen I want to tell you and dear Louisa myself how
+truly grateful I am to you both for all your kindness to me now and
+always since my marriage. I am going to ask you to do me a great
+favour. Both Stephen and I wish you to be the boy’s godfather, and we
+hope that you will consent. I know I am not asking a small thing, for I
+am sure you will take the responsibilities of the position very
+seriously, but I am especially anxious that you should undertake this
+office because you are a clergyman as well as the boy’s uncle. I am
+very anxious for the boy’s welfare and I pray God night and day that he
+may grow into a good, honest, and Christian man. With you to guide him
+I hope that he will become a soldier in Christ’s Faith and be all the
+days of his life God-fearing, humble, and pious.
+
+                                      Your affectionate sister,
+                                                               Helen.
+
+Philip pushed the letter away and, leaning forward, rested his face on
+his hands. It deeply touched and at the same time surprised him. He was
+astonished at its religious tone, which seemed to him neither mawkish
+nor sentimental. He knew nothing of his mother, dead now for nearly
+twenty years, but that she was beautiful, and it was strange to learn
+that she was simple and pious. He had never thought of that side of
+her. He read again what she said about him, what she expected and
+thought about him; he had turned out very differently; he looked at
+himself for a moment; perhaps it was better that she was dead. Then a
+sudden impulse caused him to tear up the letter; its tenderness and
+simplicity made it seem peculiarly private; he had a queer feeling that
+there was something indecent in his reading what exposed his mother’s
+gentle soul. He went on with the Vicar’s dreary correspondence.
+
+A few days later he went up to London, and for the first time for two
+years entered by day the hall of St. Luke’s Hospital. He went to see
+the secretary of the Medical School; he was surprised to see him and
+asked Philip curiously what he had been doing. Philip’s experiences had
+given him a certain confidence in himself and a different outlook upon
+many things: such a question would have embarrassed him before; but now
+he answered coolly, with a deliberate vagueness which prevented further
+inquiry, that private affairs had obliged him to make a break in the
+curriculum; he was now anxious to qualify as soon as possible. The
+first examination he could take was in midwifery and the diseases of
+women, and he put his name down to be a clerk in the ward devoted to
+feminine ailments; since it was holiday time there happened to be no
+difficulty in getting a post as obstetric clerk; he arranged to
+undertake that duty during the last week of August and the first two of
+September. After this interview Philip walked through the Medical
+School, more or less deserted, for the examinations at the end of the
+summer session were all over; and he wandered along the terrace by the
+river-side. His heart was full. He thought that now he could begin a
+new life, and he would put behind him all the errors, follies, and
+miseries of the past. The flowing river suggested that everything
+passed, was passing always, and nothing mattered; the future was before
+him rich with possibilities.
+
+He went back to Blackstable and busied himself with the settling up of
+his uncle’s estate. The auction was fixed for the middle of August,
+when the presence of visitors for the summer holidays would make it
+possible to get better prices. Catalogues were made out and sent to the
+various dealers in second-hand books at Tercanbury, Maidstone, and
+Ashford.
+
+One afternoon Philip took it into his head to go over to Tercanbury and
+see his old school. He had not been there since the day when, with
+relief in his heart, he had left it with the feeling that thenceforward
+he was his own master. It was strange to wander through the narrow
+streets of Tercanbury which he had known so well for so many years. He
+looked at the old shops, still there, still selling the same things;
+the booksellers with school-books, pious works, and the latest novels
+in one window and photographs of the Cathedral and of the city in the
+other; the games shop, with its cricket bats, fishing tackle, tennis
+rackets, and footballs; the tailor from whom he had got clothes all
+through his boyhood; and the fishmonger where his uncle whenever he
+came to Tercanbury bought fish. He wandered along the sordid street in
+which, behind a high wall, lay the red brick house which was the
+preparatory school. Further on was the gateway that led into King’s
+School, and he stood in the quadrangle round which were the various
+buildings. It was just four and the boys were hurrying out of school.
+He saw the masters in their gowns and mortar-boards, and they were
+strange to him. It was more than ten years since he had left and many
+changes had taken place. He saw the headmaster; he walked slowly down
+from the schoolhouse to his own, talking to a big boy who Philip
+supposed was in the sixth; he was little changed, tall, cadaverous,
+romantic as Philip remembered him, with the same wild eyes; but the
+black beard was streaked with gray now and the dark, sallow face was
+more deeply lined. Philip had an impulse to go up and speak to him, but
+he was afraid he would have forgotten him, and he hated the thought of
+explaining who he was.
+
+Boys lingered talking to one another, and presently some who had
+hurried to change came out to play fives; others straggled out in twos
+and threes and went out of the gateway, Philip knew they were going up
+to the cricket ground; others again went into the precincts to bat at
+the nets. Philip stood among them a stranger; one or two gave him an
+indifferent glance; but visitors, attracted by the Norman staircase,
+were not rare and excited little attention. Philip looked at them
+curiously. He thought with melancholy of the distance that separated
+him from them, and he thought bitterly how much he had wanted to do and
+how little done. It seemed to him that all those years, vanished beyond
+recall, had been utterly wasted. The boys, fresh and buoyant, were
+doing the same things that he had done, it seemed that not a day had
+passed since he left the school, and yet in that place where at least
+by name he had known everybody now he knew not a soul. In a few years
+these too, others taking their place, would stand alien as he stood;
+but the reflection brought him no solace; it merely impressed upon him
+the futility of human existence. Each generation repeated the trivial
+round. He wondered what had become of the boys who were his companions:
+they were nearly thirty now; some would be dead, but others were
+married and had children; they were soldiers and parsons, doctors,
+lawyers; they were staid men who were beginning to put youth behind
+them. Had any of them made such a hash of life as he? He thought of the
+boy he had been devoted to; it was funny, he could not recall his name;
+he remembered exactly what he looked like, he had been his greatest
+friend; but his name would not come back to him. He looked back with
+amusement on the jealous emotions he had suffered on his account. It
+was irritating not to recollect his name. He longed to be a boy again,
+like those he saw sauntering through the quadrangle, so that, avoiding
+his mistakes, he might start fresh and make something more out of life.
+He felt an intolerable loneliness. He almost regretted the penury which
+he had suffered during the last two years, since the desperate struggle
+merely to keep body and soul together had deadened the pain of living.
+In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy daily bread: it was not a
+curse upon mankind, but the balm which reconciled it to existence.
+
+But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of
+the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than
+part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself
+strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and
+excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the
+design. He sought for beauty consciously, and he remembered how even as
+a boy he had taken pleasure in the Gothic cathedral as one saw it from
+the precincts; he went there and looked at the massive pile, gray under
+the cloudy sky, with the central tower that rose like the praise of men
+to their God; but the boys were batting at the nets, and they were
+lissom and strong and active; he could not help hearing their shouts
+and laughter. The cry of youth was insistent, and he saw the beautiful
+thing before him only with his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CXIII
+
+
+At the beginning of the last week in August Philip entered upon his
+duties in the ‘district.’ They were arduous, for he had to attend on an
+average three confinements a day. The patient had obtained a ‘card’
+from the hospital some time before; and when her time came it was taken
+to the porter by a messenger, generally a little girl, who was then
+sent across the road to the house in which Philip lodged. At night the
+porter, who had a latch-key, himself came over and awoke Philip. It was
+mysterious then to get up in the darkness and walk through the deserted
+streets of the South Side. At those hours it was generally the husband
+who brought the card. If there had been a number of babies before he
+took it for the most part with surly indifference, but if newly married
+he was nervous and then sometimes strove to allay his anxiety by
+getting drunk. Often there was a mile or more to walk, during which
+Philip and the messenger discussed the conditions of labour and the
+cost of living; Philip learnt about the various trades which were
+practised on that side of the river. He inspired confidence in the
+people among whom he was thrown, and during the long hours that he
+waited in a stuffy room, the woman in labour lying on a large bed that
+took up half of it, her mother and the midwife talked to him as
+naturally as they talked to one another. The circumstances in which he
+had lived during the last two years had taught him several things about
+the life of the very poor, which it amused them to find he knew; and
+they were impressed because he was not deceived by their little
+subterfuges. He was kind, and he had gentle hands, and he did not lose
+his temper. They were pleased because he was not above drinking a cup
+of tea with them, and when the dawn came and they were still waiting
+they offered him a slice of bread and dripping; he was not squeamish
+and could eat most things now with a good appetite. Some of the houses
+he went to, in filthy courts off a dingy street, huddled against one
+another without light or air, were merely squalid; but others,
+unexpectedly, though dilapidated, with worm-eaten floors and leaking
+roofs, had the grand air: you found in them oak balusters exquisitely
+carved, and the walls had still their panelling. These were thickly
+inhabited. One family lived in each room, and in the daytime there was
+the incessant noise of children playing in the court. The old walls
+were the breeding-place of vermin; the air was so foul that often,
+feeling sick, Philip had to light his pipe. The people who dwelt here
+lived from hand to mouth. Babies were unwelcome, the man received them
+with surly anger, the mother with despair; it was one more mouth to
+feed, and there was little enough wherewith to feed those already
+there. Philip often discerned the wish that the child might be born
+dead or might die quickly. He delivered one woman of twins (a source of
+humour to the facetious) and when she was told she burst into a long,
+shrill wail of misery. Her mother said outright:
+
+“I don’t know how they’re going to feed ’em.”
+
+“Maybe the Lord’ll see fit to take ’em to ’imself,” said the midwife.
+
+Philip caught sight of the husband’s face as he looked at the tiny pair
+lying side by side, and there was a ferocious sullenness in it which
+startled him. He felt in the family assembled there a hideous
+resentment against those poor atoms who had come into the world
+unwished for; and he had a suspicion that if he did not speak firmly an
+‘accident’ would occur. Accidents occurred often; mothers ‘overlay’
+their babies, and perhaps errors of diet were not always the result of
+carelessness.
+
+“I shall come every day,” he said. “I warn you that if anything happens
+to them there’ll have to be an inquest.”
+
+The father made no reply, but he gave Philip a scowl. There was murder
+in his soul.
+
+“Bless their little ’earts,” said the grandmother, “what should ’appen
+to them?”
+
+The great difficulty was to keep the mothers in bed for ten days, which
+was the minimum upon which the hospital practice insisted. It was
+awkward to look after the family, no one would see to the children
+without payment, and the husband tumbled because his tea was not right
+when he came home tired from his work and hungry. Philip had heard that
+the poor helped one another, but woman after woman complained to him
+that she could not get anyone in to clean up and see to the children’s
+dinner without paying for the service, and she could not afford to pay.
+By listening to the women as they talked and by chance remarks from
+which he could deduce much that was left unsaid, Philip learned how
+little there was in common between the poor and the classes above them.
+They did not envy their betters, for the life was too different, and
+they had an ideal of ease which made the existence of the
+middle-classes seem formal and stiff; moreover, they had a certain
+contempt for them because they were soft and did not work with their
+hands. The proud merely wished to be left alone, but the majority
+looked upon the well-to-do as people to be exploited; they knew what to
+say in order to get such advantages as the charitable put at their
+disposal, and they accepted benefits as a right which came to them from
+the folly of their superiors and their own astuteness. They bore the
+curate with contemptuous indifference, but the district visitor excited
+their bitter hatred. She came in and opened your windows without so
+much as a by your leave or with your leave, ’and me with my bronchitis,
+enough to give me my death of cold;’ she poked her nose into corners,
+and if she didn’t say the place was dirty you saw what she thought
+right enough, ‘an’ it’s all very well for them as ‘as servants, but I’d
+like to see what she’d make of ’er room if she ’ad four children, and
+’ad to do the cookin’, and mend their clothes, and wash them.’
+
+Philip discovered that the greatest tragedy of life to these people was
+not separation or death, that was natural and the grief of it could be
+assuaged with tears, but loss of work. He saw a man come home one
+afternoon, three days after his wife’s confinement, and tell her he had
+been dismissed; he was a builder and at that time work was slack; he
+stated the fact, and sat down to his tea.
+
+“Oh, Jim,” she said.
+
+The man ate stolidly some mess which had been stewing in a sauce-pan
+against his coming; he stared at his plate; his wife looked at him two
+or three times, with little startled glances, and then quite silently
+began to cry. The builder was an uncouth little fellow with a rough,
+weather-beaten face and a long white scar on his forehead; he had
+large, stubbly hands. Presently he pushed aside his plate as if he must
+give up the effort to force himself to eat, and turned a fixed gaze out
+of the window. The room was at the top of the house, at the back, and
+one saw nothing but sullen clouds. The silence seemed heavy with
+despair. Philip felt that there was nothing to be said, he could only
+go; and as he walked away wearily, for he had been up most of the
+night, his heart was filled with rage against the cruelty of the world.
+He knew the hopelessness of the search for work and the desolation
+which is harder to bear than hunger. He was thankful not to have to
+believe in God, for then such a condition of things would be
+intolerable; one could reconcile oneself to existence only because it
+was meaningless.
+
+It seemed to Philip that the people who spent their time in helping the
+poorer classes erred because they sought to remedy things which would
+harass them if themselves had to endure them without thinking that they
+did not in the least disturb those who were used to them. The poor did
+not want large airy rooms; they suffered from cold, for their food was
+not nourishing and their circulation bad; space gave them a feeling of
+chilliness, and they wanted to burn as little coal as need be; there
+was no hardship for several to sleep in one room, they preferred it;
+they were never alone for a moment, from the time they were born to the
+time they died, and loneliness oppressed them; they enjoyed the
+promiscuity in which they dwelt, and the constant noise of their
+surroundings pressed upon their ears unnoticed. They did not feel the
+need of taking a bath constantly, and Philip often heard them speak
+with indignation of the necessity to do so with which they were faced
+on entering the hospital: it was both an affront and a discomfort. They
+wanted chiefly to be left alone; then if the man was in regular work
+life went easily and was not without its pleasures: there was plenty of
+time for gossip, after the day’s work a glass of beer was very good to
+drink, the streets were a constant source of entertainment, if you
+wanted to read there was Reynolds’ or The News of the World; ‘but
+there, you couldn’t make out ’ow the time did fly, the truth was and
+that’s a fact, you was a rare one for reading when you was a girl, but
+what with one thing and another you didn’t get no time now not even to
+read the paper.’
+
+The usual practice was to pay three visits after a confinement, and one
+Sunday Philip went to see a patient at the dinner hour. She was up for
+the first time.
+
+“I couldn’t stay in bed no longer, I really couldn’t. I’m not one for
+idling, and it gives me the fidgets to be there and do nothing all day
+long, so I said to ’Erb, I’m just going to get up and cook your dinner
+for you.”
+
+’Erb was sitting at table with his knife and fork already in his hands.
+He was a young man, with an open face and blue eyes. He was earning
+good money, and as things went the couple were in easy circumstances.
+They had only been married a few months, and were both delighted with
+the rosy boy who lay in the cradle at the foot of the bed. There was a
+savoury smell of beefsteak in the room and Philip’s eyes turned to the
+range.
+
+“I was just going to dish up this minute,” said the woman.
+
+“Fire away,” said Philip. “I’ll just have a look at the son and heir
+and then I’ll take myself off.”
+
+Husband and wife laughed at Philip’s expression, and ’Erb getting up
+went over with Philip to the cradle. He looked at his baby proudly.
+
+“There doesn’t seem much wrong with him, does there?” said Philip.
+
+He took up his hat, and by this time ’Erb’s wife had dished up the
+beefsteak and put on the table a plate of green peas.
+
+“You’re going to have a nice dinner,” smiled Philip.
+
+“He’s only in of a Sunday and I like to ’ave something special for him,
+so as he shall miss his ’ome when he’s out at work.”
+
+“I suppose you’d be above sittin’ down and ’avin’ a bit of dinner with
+us?” said ’Erb.
+
+“Oh, ’Erb,” said his wife, in a shocked tone.
+
+“Not if you ask me,” answered Philip, with his attractive smile.
+
+“Well, that’s what I call friendly, I knew ’e wouldn’t take offence,
+Polly. Just get another plate, my girl.”
+
+Polly was flustered, and she thought ’Erb a regular caution, you never
+knew what ideas ’e’d get in ’is ’ead next; but she got a plate and
+wiped it quickly with her apron, then took a new knife and fork from
+the chest of drawers, where her best cutlery rested among her best
+clothes. There was a jug of stout on the table, and ’Erb poured Philip
+out a glass. He wanted to give him the lion’s share of the beefsteak,
+but Philip insisted that they should share alike. It was a sunny room
+with two windows that reached to the floor; it had been the parlour of
+a house which at one time was if not fashionable at least respectable:
+it might have been inhabited fifty years before by a well-to-do
+tradesman or an officer on half pay. ’Erb had been a football player
+before he married, and there were photographs on the wall of various
+teams in self-conscious attitudes, with neatly plastered hair, the
+captain seated proudly in the middle holding a cup. There were other
+signs of prosperity: photographs of the relations of ’Erb and his wife
+in Sunday clothes; on the chimney-piece an elaborate arrangement of
+shells stuck on a miniature rock; and on each side mugs, ‘A present
+from Southend’ in Gothic letters, with pictures of a pier and a parade
+on them. ’Erb was something of a character; he was a non-union man and
+expressed himself with indignation at the efforts of the union to force
+him to join. The union wasn’t no good to him, he never found no
+difficulty in getting work, and there was good wages for anyone as ’ad
+a head on his shoulders and wasn’t above puttin’ ’is ’and to anything
+as come ’is way. Polly was timorous. If she was ’im she’d join the
+union, the last time there was a strike she was expectin’ ’im to be
+brought back in an ambulance every time he went out. She turned to
+Philip.
+
+“He’s that obstinate, there’s no doing anything with ’im.”
+
+“Well, what I say is, it’s a free country, and I won’t be dictated to.”
+
+“It’s no good saying it’s a free country,” said Polly, “that won’t
+prevent ’em bashin’ your ’ead in if they get the chanst.”
+
+When they had finished Philip passed his pouch over to ’Erb and they
+lit their pipes; then he got up, for a ‘call’ might be waiting for him
+at his rooms, and shook hands. He saw that it had given them pleasure
+that he shared their meal, and they saw that he had thoroughly enjoyed
+it.
+
+“Well, good-bye, sir,” said ’Erb, “and I ’ope we shall ’ave as nice a
+doctor next time the missus disgraces ’erself.”
+
+“Go on with you, ’Erb,” she retorted. “’Ow d’you know there’s going to
+be a next time?”
+
+
+
+
+CXIV
+
+
+The three weeks which the appointment lasted drew to an end. Philip had
+attended sixty-two cases, and he was tired out. When he came home about
+ten o’clock on his last night he hoped with all his heart that he would
+not be called out again. He had not had a whole night’s rest for ten
+days. The case which he had just come from was horrible. He had been
+fetched by a huge, burly man, the worse for liquor, and taken to a room
+in an evil-smelling court, which was filthier than any he had seen: it
+was a tiny attic; most of the space was taken up by a wooden bed, with
+a canopy of dirty red hangings, and the ceiling was so low that Philip
+could touch it with the tips of his fingers; with the solitary candle
+that afforded what light there was he went over it, frizzling up the
+bugs that crawled upon it. The woman was a blowsy creature of middle
+age, who had had a long succession of still-born children. It was a
+story that Philip was not unaccustomed to: the husband had been a
+soldier in India; the legislation forced upon that country by the
+prudery of the English public had given a free run to the most
+distressing of all diseases; the innocent suffered. Yawning, Philip
+undressed and took a bath, then shook his clothes over the water and
+watched the animals that fell out wriggling. He was just going to get
+into bed when there was a knock at the door, and the hospital porter
+brought him a card.
+
+“Curse you,” said Philip. “You’re the last person I wanted to see
+tonight. Who’s brought it?”
+
+“I think it’s the ’usband, sir. Shall I tell him to wait?”
+
+Philip looked at the address, saw that the street was familiar to him,
+and told the porter that he would find his own way. He dressed himself
+and in five minutes, with his black bag in his hand, stepped into the
+street. A man, whom he could not see in the darkness, came up to him,
+and said he was the husband.
+
+“I thought I’d better wait, sir,” he said. “It’s a pretty rough
+neighbour’ood, and them not knowing who you was.”
+
+Philip laughed.
+
+“Bless your heart, they all know the doctor, I’ve been in some damned
+sight rougher places than Waver Street.”
+
+It was quite true. The black bag was a passport through wretched alleys
+and down foul-smelling courts into which a policeman was not ready to
+venture by himself. Once or twice a little group of men had looked at
+Philip curiously as he passed; he heard a mutter of observations and
+then one say:
+
+“It’s the ’orspital doctor.”
+
+As he went by one or two of them said: “Good-night, sir.”
+
+“We shall ’ave to step out if you don’t mind, sir,” said the man who
+accompanied him now. “They told me there was no time to lose.”
+
+“Why did you leave it so late?” asked Philip, as he quickened his pace.
+
+He glanced at the fellow as they passed a lamp-post.
+
+“You look awfully young,” he said.
+
+“I’m turned eighteen, sir.”
+
+He was fair, and he had not a hair on his face, he looked no more than
+a boy; he was short, but thick set.
+
+“You’re young to be married,” said Philip.
+
+“We ’ad to.”
+
+“How much d’you earn?”
+
+“Sixteen, sir.”
+
+Sixteen shillings a week was not much to keep a wife and child on. The
+room the couple lived in showed that their poverty was extreme. It was
+a fair size, but it looked quite large, since there was hardly any
+furniture in it; there was no carpet on the floor; there were no
+pictures on the walls; and most rooms had something, photographs or
+supplements in cheap frames from the Christmas numbers of the
+illustrated papers. The patient lay on a little iron bed of the
+cheapest sort. It startled Philip to see how young she was.
+
+“By Jove, she can’t be more than sixteen,” he said to the woman who had
+come in to ‘see her through.’
+
+She had given her age as eighteen on the card, but when they were very
+young they often put on a year or two. Also she was pretty, which was
+rare in those classes in which the constitution has been undermined by
+bad food, bad air, and unhealthy occupations; she had delicate features
+and large blue eyes, and a mass of dark hair done in the elaborate
+fashion of the coster girl. She and her husband were very nervous.
+
+“You’d better wait outside, so as to be at hand if I want you,” Philip
+said to him.
+
+Now that he saw him better Philip was surprised again at his boyish
+air: you felt that he should be larking in the street with the other
+lads instead of waiting anxiously for the birth of a child. The hours
+passed, and it was not till nearly two that the baby was born.
+Everything seemed to be going satisfactorily; the husband was called
+in, and it touched Philip to see the awkward, shy way in which he
+kissed his wife; Philip packed up his things. Before going he felt once
+more his patient’s pulse.
+
+“Hulloa!” he said.
+
+He looked at her quickly: something had happened. In cases of emergency
+the S. O. C.—senior obstetric clerk—had to be sent for; he was a
+qualified man, and the ‘district’ was in his charge. Philip scribbled a
+note, and giving it to the husband, told him to run with it to the
+hospital; he bade him hurry, for his wife was in a dangerous state. The
+man set off. Philip waited anxiously; he knew the woman was bleeding to
+death; he was afraid she would die before his chief arrived; he took
+what steps he could. He hoped fervently that the S. O. C. would not
+have been called elsewhere. The minutes were interminable. He came at
+last, and, while he examined the patient, in a low voice asked Philip
+questions. Philip saw by his face that he thought the case very grave.
+His name was Chandler. He was a tall man of few words, with a long nose
+and a thin face much lined for his age. He shook his head.
+
+“It was hopeless from the beginning. Where’s the husband?”
+
+“I told him to wait on the stairs,” said Philip.
+
+“You’d better bring him in.”
+
+Philip opened the door and called him. He was sitting in the dark on
+the first step of the flight that led to the next floor. He came up to
+the bed.
+
+“What’s the matter?” he asked.
+
+“Why, there’s internal bleeding. It’s impossible to stop it.” The S. O.
+C. hesitated a moment, and because it was a painful thing to say he
+forced his voice to become brusque. “She’s dying.”
+
+The man did not say a word; he stopped quite still, looking at his
+wife, who lay, pale and unconscious, on the bed. It was the midwife who
+spoke.
+
+“The gentlemen ’ave done all they could, ’Arry,” she said. “I saw what
+was comin’ from the first.”
+
+“Shut up,” said Chandler.
+
+There were no curtains on the windows, and gradually the night seemed
+to lighten; it was not yet the dawn, but the dawn was at hand. Chandler
+was keeping the woman alive by all the means in his power, but life was
+slipping away from her, and suddenly she died. The boy who was her
+husband stood at the end of the cheap iron bed with his hands resting
+on the rail; he did not speak; but he looked very pale and once or
+twice Chandler gave him an uneasy glance, thinking he was going to
+faint: his lips were gray. The midwife sobbed noisily, but he took no
+notice of her. His eyes were fixed upon his wife, and in them was an
+utter bewilderment. He reminded you of a dog whipped for something he
+did not know was wrong. When Chandler and Philip had gathered together
+their things Chandler turned to the husband.
+
+“You’d better lie down for a bit. I expect you’re about done up.”
+
+“There’s nowhere for me to lie down, sir,” he answered, and there was
+in his voice a humbleness which was very distressing.
+
+“Don’t you know anyone in the house who’ll give you a shakedown?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“They only moved in last week,” said the midwife. “They don’t know
+nobody yet.”
+
+Chandler hesitated a moment awkwardly, then he went up to the man and
+said:
+
+“I’m very sorry this has happened.”
+
+He held out his hand and the man, with an instinctive glance at his own
+to see if it was clean, shook it.
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+Philip shook hands with him too. Chandler told the midwife to come and
+fetch the certificate in the morning. They left the house and walked
+along together in silence.
+
+“It upsets one a bit at first, doesn’t it?” said Chandler at last.
+
+“A bit,” answered Philip.
+
+“If you like I’ll tell the porter not to bring you any more calls
+tonight.”
+
+“I’m off duty at eight in the morning in any case.”
+
+“How many cases have you had?”
+
+“Sixty-three.”
+
+“Good. You’ll get your certificate then.”
+
+They arrived at the hospital, and the S. O. C. went in to see if anyone
+wanted him. Philip walked on. It had been very hot all the day before,
+and even now in the early morning there was a balminess in the air. The
+street was very still. Philip did not feel inclined to go to bed. It
+was the end of his work and he need not hurry. He strolled along, glad
+of the fresh air and the silence; he thought that he would go on to the
+bridge and look at day break on the river. A policeman at the corner
+bade him good-morning. He knew who Philip was from his bag.
+
+“Out late tonight, sir,” he said.
+
+Philip nodded and passed. He leaned against the parapet and looked
+towards the morning. At that hour the great city was like a city of the
+dead. The sky was cloudless, but the stars were dim at the approach of
+day; there was a light mist on the river, and the great buildings on
+the north side were like palaces in an enchanted island. A group of
+barges was moored in midstream. It was all of an unearthly violet,
+troubling somehow and awe-inspiring; but quickly everything grew pale,
+and cold, and gray. Then the sun rose, a ray of yellow gold stole
+across the sky, and the sky was iridescent. Philip could not get out of
+his eyes the dead girl lying on the bed, wan and white, and the boy who
+stood at the end of it like a stricken beast. The bareness of the
+squalid room made the pain of it more poignant. It was cruel that a
+stupid chance should have cut off her life when she was just entering
+upon it; but in the very moment of saying this to himself, Philip
+thought of the life which had been in store for her, the bearing of
+children, the dreary fight with poverty, the youth broken by toil and
+deprivation into a slatternly middle age—he saw the pretty face grow
+thin and white, the hair grow scanty, the pretty hands, worn down
+brutally by work, become like the claws of an old animal—then, when the
+man was past his prime, the difficulty of getting jobs, the small wages
+he had to take; and the inevitable, abject penury of the end: she might
+be energetic, thrifty, industrious, it would not have saved her; in the
+end was the workhouse or subsistence on the charity of her children.
+Who could pity her because she had died when life offered so little?
+
+But pity was inane. Philip felt it was not that which these people
+needed. They did not pity themselves. They accepted their fate. It was
+the natural order of things. Otherwise, good heavens! otherwise they
+would swarm over the river in their multitude to the side where those
+great buildings were, secure and stately, and they would pillage, burn,
+and sack. But the day, tender and pale, had broken now, and the mist
+was tenuous; it bathed everything in a soft radiance; and the Thames
+was gray, rosy, and green; gray like mother-of-pearl and green like the
+heart of a yellow rose. The wharfs and store-houses of the Surrey Side
+were massed in disorderly loveliness. The scene was so exquisite that
+Philip’s heart beat passionately. He was overwhelmed by the beauty of
+the world. Beside that nothing seemed to matter.
+
+
+
+
+CXV
+
+
+Philip spent the few weeks that remained before the beginning of the
+winter session in the out-patients’ department, and in October settled
+down to regular work. He had been away from the hospital for so long
+that he found himself very largely among new people; the men of
+different years had little to do with one another, and his
+contemporaries were now mostly qualified: some had left to take up
+assistantships or posts in country hospitals and infirmaries, and some
+held appointments at St. Luke’s. The two years during which his mind
+had lain fallow had refreshed him, he fancied, and he was able now to
+work with energy.
+
+The Athelnys were delighted with his change of fortune. He had kept
+aside a few things from the sale of his uncle’s effects and gave them
+all presents. He gave Sally a gold chain that had belonged to his aunt.
+She was now grown up. She was apprenticed to a dressmaker and set out
+every morning at eight to work all day in a shop in Regent Street.
+Sally had frank blue eyes, a broad brow, and plentiful shining hair;
+she was buxom, with broad hips and full breasts; and her father, who
+was fond of discussing her appearance, warned her constantly that she
+must not grow fat. She attracted because she was healthy, animal, and
+feminine. She had many admirers, but they left her unmoved; she gave
+one the impression that she looked upon love-making as nonsense; and it
+was easy to imagine that young men found her unapproachable. Sally was
+old for her years: she had been used to help her mother in the
+household work and in the care of the children, so that she had
+acquired a managing air, which made her mother say that Sally was a bit
+too fond of having things her own way. She did not speak very much, but
+as she grew older she seemed to be acquiring a quiet sense of humour,
+and sometimes uttered a remark which suggested that beneath her
+impassive exterior she was quietly bubbling with amusement at her
+fellow-creatures. Philip found that with her he never got on the terms
+of affectionate intimacy upon which he was with the rest of Athelny’s
+huge family. Now and then her indifference slightly irritated him.
+There was something enigmatic in her.
+
+When Philip gave her the necklace Athelny in his boisterous way
+insisted that she must kiss him; but Sally reddened and drew back.
+
+“No, I’m not going to,” she said.
+
+“Ungrateful hussy!” cried Athelny. “Why not?”
+
+“I don’t like being kissed by men,” she said.
+
+Philip saw her embarrassment, and, amused, turned Athelny’s attention
+to something else. That was never a very difficult thing to do. But
+evidently her mother spoke of the matter later, for next time Philip
+came she took the opportunity when they were alone for a couple of
+minutes to refer to it.
+
+“You didn’t think it disagreeable of me last week when I wouldn’t kiss
+you?”
+
+“Not a bit,” he laughed.
+
+“It’s not because I wasn’t grateful.” She blushed a little as she
+uttered the formal phrase which she had prepared. “I shall always value
+the necklace, and it was very kind of you to give it me.”
+
+Philip found it always a little difficult to talk to her. She did all
+that she had to do very competently, but seemed to feel no need of
+conversation; yet there was nothing unsociable in her. One Sunday
+afternoon when Athelny and his wife had gone out together, and Philip,
+treated as one of the family, sat reading in the parlour, Sally came in
+and sat by the window to sew. The girls’ clothes were made at home and
+Sally could not afford to spend Sundays in idleness. Philip thought she
+wished to talk and put down his book.
+
+“Go on reading,” she said. “I only thought as you were alone I’d come
+and sit with you.”
+
+“You’re the most silent person I’ve ever struck,” said Philip.
+
+“We don’t want another one who’s talkative in this house,” she said.
+
+There was no irony in her tone: she was merely stating a fact. But it
+suggested to Philip that she measured her father, alas, no longer the
+hero he was to her childhood, and in her mind joined together his
+entertaining conversation and the thriftlessness which often brought
+difficulties into their life; she compared his rhetoric with her
+mother’s practical common sense; and though the liveliness of her
+father amused her she was perhaps sometimes a little impatient with it.
+Philip looked at her as she bent over her work; she was healthy,
+strong, and normal; it must be odd to see her among the other girls in
+the shop with their flat chests and anaemic faces. Mildred suffered
+from anaemia.
+
+After a time it appeared that Sally had a suitor. She went out
+occasionally with friends she had made in the work-room, and had met a
+young man, an electrical engineer in a very good way of business, who
+was a most eligible person. One day she told her mother that he had
+asked her to marry him.
+
+“What did you say?” said her mother.
+
+“Oh, I told him I wasn’t over-anxious to marry anyone just yet awhile.”
+She paused a little as was her habit between observations. “He took on
+so that I said he might come to tea on Sunday.”
+
+It was an occasion that thoroughly appealed to Athelny. He rehearsed
+all the afternoon how he should play the heavy father for the young
+man’s edification till he reduced his children to helpless giggling.
+Just before he was due Athelny routed out an Egyptian tarboosh and
+insisted on putting it on.
+
+“Go on with you, Athelny,” said his wife, who was in her best, which
+was of black velvet, and, since she was growing stouter every year,
+very tight for her. “You’ll spoil the girl’s chances.”
+
+She tried to pull it off, but the little man skipped nimbly out of her
+way.
+
+“Unhand me, woman. Nothing will induce me to take it off. This young
+man must be shown at once that it is no ordinary family he is preparing
+to enter.”
+
+“Let him keep it on, mother,” said Sally, in her even, indifferent
+fashion. “If Mr. Donaldson doesn’t take it the way it’s meant he can
+take himself off, and good riddance.”
+
+Philip thought it was a severe ordeal that the young man was being
+exposed to, since Athelny, in his brown velvet jacket, flowing black
+tie, and red tarboosh, was a startling spectacle for an innocent
+electrical engineer. When he came he was greeted by his host with the
+proud courtesy of a Spanish grandee and by Mrs. Athelny in an
+altogether homely and natural fashion. They sat down at the old
+ironing-table in the high-backed monkish chairs, and Mrs. Athelny
+poured tea out of a lustre teapot which gave a note of England and the
+country-side to the festivity. She had made little cakes with her own
+hand, and on the table was home-made jam. It was a farm-house tea, and
+to Philip very quaint and charming in that Jacobean house. Athelny for
+some fantastic reason took it into his head to discourse upon Byzantine
+history; he had been reading the later volumes of the Decline and Fall;
+and, his forefinger dramatically extended, he poured into the
+astonished ears of the suitor scandalous stories about Theodora and
+Irene. He addressed himself directly to his guest with a torrent of
+rhodomontade; and the young man, reduced to helpless silence and shy,
+nodded his head at intervals to show that he took an intelligent
+interest. Mrs. Athelny paid no attention to Thorpe’s conversation, but
+interrupted now and then to offer the young man more tea or to press
+upon him cake and jam. Philip watched Sally; she sat with downcast
+eyes, calm, silent, and observant; and her long eye-lashes cast a
+pretty shadow on her cheek. You could not tell whether she was amused
+at the scene or if she cared for the young man. She was inscrutable.
+But one thing was certain: the electrical engineer was good-looking,
+fair and clean-shaven, with pleasant, regular features, and an honest
+face; he was tall and well-made. Philip could not help thinking he
+would make an excellent mate for her, and he felt a pang of envy for
+the happiness which he fancied was in store for them.
+
+Presently the suitor said he thought it was about time he was getting
+along. Sally rose to her feet without a word and accompanied him to the
+door. When she came back her father burst out:
+
+“Well, Sally, we think your young man very nice. We are prepared to
+welcome him into our family. Let the banns be called and I will compose
+a nuptial song.”
+
+Sally set about clearing away the tea-things. She did not answer.
+Suddenly she shot a swift glance at Philip.
+
+“What did you think of him, Mr. Philip?”
+
+She had always refused to call him Uncle Phil as the other children
+did, and would not call him Philip.
+
+“I think you’d make an awfully handsome pair.”
+
+She looked at him quickly once more, and then with a slight blush went
+on with her business.
+
+“I thought him a very nice civil-spoken young fellow,” said Mrs.
+Athelny, “and I think he’s just the sort to make any girl happy.”
+
+Sally did not reply for a minute or two, and Philip looked at her
+curiously: it might be thought that she was meditating upon what her
+mother had said, and on the other hand she might be thinking of the man
+in the moon.
+
+“Why don’t you answer when you’re spoken to, Sally?” remarked her
+mother, a little irritably.
+
+“I thought he was a silly.”
+
+“Aren’t you going to have him then?”
+
+“No, I’m not.”
+
+“I don’t know how much more you want,” said Mrs. Athelny, and it was
+quite clear now that she was put out. “He’s a very decent young fellow
+and he can afford to give you a thorough good home. We’ve got quite
+enough to feed here without you. If you get a chance like that it’s
+wicked not to take it. And I daresay you’d be able to have a girl to do
+the rough work.”
+
+Philip had never before heard Mrs. Athelny refer so directly to the
+difficulties of her life. He saw how important it was that each child
+should be provided for.
+
+“It’s no good your carrying on, mother,” said Sally in her quiet way.
+“I’m not going to marry him.”
+
+“I think you’re a very hard-hearted, cruel, selfish girl.”
+
+“If you want me to earn my own living, mother, I can always go into
+service.”
+
+“Don’t be so silly, you know your father would never let you do that.”
+
+Philip caught Sally’s eye, and he thought there was in it a glimmer of
+amusement. He wondered what there had been in the conversation to touch
+her sense of humour. She was an odd girl.
+
+
+
+
+CXVI
+
+
+During his last year at St. Luke’s Philip had to work hard. He was
+contented with life. He found it very comfortable to be heart-free and
+to have enough money for his needs. He had heard people speak
+contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do
+without it. He knew that the lack made a man petty, mean, grasping; it
+distorted his character and caused him to view the world from a vulgar
+angle; when you had to consider every penny, money became of grotesque
+importance: you needed a competency to rate it at its proper value. He
+lived a solitary life, seeing no one except the Athelnys, but he was
+not lonely; he busied himself with plans for the future, and sometimes
+he thought of the past. His recollection dwelt now and then on old
+friends, but he made no effort to see them. He would have liked to know
+what was become of Norah Nesbit; she was Norah something else now, but
+he could not remember the name of the man she was going to marry; he
+was glad to have known her: she was a good and a brave soul. One
+evening about half past eleven he saw Lawson, walking along Piccadilly;
+he was in evening clothes and might be supposed to be coming back from
+a theatre. Philip gave way to a sudden impulse and quickly turned down
+a side street. He had not seen him for two years and felt that he could
+not now take up again the interrupted friendship. He and Lawson had
+nothing more to say to one another. Philip was no longer interested in
+art; it seemed to him that he was able to enjoy beauty with greater
+force than when he was a boy; but art appeared to him unimportant. He
+was occupied with the forming of a pattern out of the manifold chaos of
+life, and the materials with which he worked seemed to make
+preoccupation with pigments and words very trivial. Lawson had served
+his turn. Philip’s friendship with him had been a motive in the design
+he was elaborating: it was merely sentimental to ignore the fact that
+the painter was of no further interest to him.
+
+Sometimes Philip thought of Mildred. He avoided deliberately the
+streets in which there was a chance of seeing her; but occasionally
+some feeling, perhaps curiosity, perhaps something deeper which he
+would not acknowledge, made him wander about Piccadilly and Regent
+Street during the hours when she might be expected to be there. He did
+not know then whether he wished to see her or dreaded it. Once he saw a
+back which reminded him of hers, and for a moment he thought it was
+she; it gave him a curious sensation: it was a strange sharp pain in
+his heart, there was fear in it and a sickening dismay; and when he
+hurried on and found that he was mistaken he did not know whether it
+was relief that he experienced or disappointment.
+
+At the beginning of August Philip passed his surgery, his last
+examination, and received his diploma. It was seven years since he had
+entered St. Luke’s Hospital. He was nearly thirty. He walked down the
+stairs of the Royal College of Surgeons with the roll in his hand which
+qualified him to practice, and his heart beat with satisfaction.
+
+“Now I’m really going to begin life,” he thought.
+
+Next day he went to the secretary’s office to put his name down for one
+of the hospital appointments. The secretary was a pleasant little man
+with a black beard, whom Philip had always found very affable. He
+congratulated him on his success, and then said:
+
+“I suppose you wouldn’t like to do a locum for a month on the South
+coast? Three guineas a week with board and lodging.”
+
+“I wouldn’t mind,” said Philip.
+
+“It’s at Farnley, in Dorsetshire. Doctor South. You’d have to go down
+at once; his assistant has developed mumps. I believe it’s a very
+pleasant place.”
+
+There was something in the secretary’s manner that puzzled Philip. It
+was a little doubtful.
+
+“What’s the crab in it?” he asked.
+
+The secretary hesitated a moment and laughed in a conciliating fashion.
+
+“Well, the fact is, I understand he’s rather a crusty, funny old
+fellow. The agencies won’t send him anyone any more. He speaks his mind
+very openly, and men don’t like it.”
+
+“But d’you think he’ll be satisfied with a man who’s only just
+qualified? After all I have no experience.”
+
+“He ought to be glad to get you,” said the secretary diplomatically.
+
+Philip thought for a moment. He had nothing to do for the next few
+weeks, and he was glad of the chance to earn a bit of money. He could
+put it aside for the holiday in Spain which he had promised himself
+when he had finished his appointment at St. Luke’s or, if they would
+not give him anything there, at some other hospital.
+
+“All right. I’ll go.”
+
+“The only thing is, you must go this afternoon. Will that suit you? If
+so, I’ll send a wire at once.”
+
+Philip would have liked a few days to himself; but he had seen the
+Athelnys the night before (he had gone at once to take them his good
+news) and there was really no reason why he should not start
+immediately. He had little luggage to pack. Soon after seven that
+evening he got out of the station at Farnley and took a cab to Doctor
+South’s. It was a broad low stucco house, with a Virginia creeper
+growing over it. He was shown into the consulting-room. An old man was
+writing at a desk. He looked up as the maid ushered Philip in. He did
+not get up, and he did not speak; he merely stared at Philip. Philip
+was taken aback.
+
+“I think you’re expecting me,” he said. “The secretary of St. Luke’s
+wired to you this morning.”
+
+“I kept dinner back for half an hour. D’you want to wash?”
+
+“I do,” said Philip.
+
+Doctor South amused him by his odd manner. He got up now, and Philip
+saw that he was a man of middle height, thin, with white hair cut very
+short and a long mouth closed so tightly that he seemed to have no lips
+at all; he was clean-shaven but for small white whiskers, and they
+increased the squareness of face which his firm jaw gave him. He wore a
+brown tweed suit and a white stock. His clothes hung loosely about him
+as though they had been made for a much larger man. He looked like a
+respectable farmer of the middle of the nineteenth century. He opened
+the door.
+
+“There is the dining-room,” he said, pointing to the door opposite.
+“Your bed-room is the first door you come to when you get on the
+landing. Come downstairs when you’re ready.”
+
+During dinner Philip knew that Doctor South was examining him, but he
+spoke little, and Philip felt that he did not want to hear his
+assistant talk.
+
+“When were you qualified?” he asked suddenly.
+
+“Yesterday.”
+
+“Were you at a university?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Last year when my assistant took a holiday they sent me a ’Varsity
+man. I told ’em not to do it again. Too damned gentlemanly for me.”
+
+There was another pause. The dinner was very simple and very good.
+Philip preserved a sedate exterior, but in his heart he was bubbling
+over with excitement. He was immensely elated at being engaged as a
+locum; it made him feel extremely grown up; he had an insane desire to
+laugh at nothing in particular; and the more he thought of his
+professional dignity the more he was inclined to chuckle.
+
+But Doctor South broke suddenly into his thoughts. “How old are you?”
+
+“Getting on for thirty.”
+
+“How is it you’re only just qualified?”
+
+“I didn’t go in for the medical till I was nearly twenty-three, and I
+had to give it up for two years in the middle.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Poverty.”
+
+Doctor South gave him an odd look and relapsed into silence. At the end
+of dinner he got up from the table.
+
+“D’you know what sort of a practice this is?”
+
+“No,” answered Philip.
+
+“Mostly fishermen and their families. I have the Union and the Seamen’s
+Hospital. I used to be alone here, but since they tried to make this
+into a fashionable sea-side resort a man has set up on the cliff, and
+the well-to-do people go to him. I only have those who can’t afford to
+pay for a doctor at all.”
+
+Philip saw that the rivalry was a sore point with the old man.
+
+“You know that I have no experience,” said Philip.
+
+“You none of you know anything.”
+
+He walked out of the room without another word and left Philip by
+himself. When the maid came in to clear away she told Philip that
+Doctor South saw patients from six till seven. Work for that night was
+over. Philip fetched a book from his room, lit his pipe, and settled
+himself down to read. It was a great comfort, since he had read nothing
+but medical books for the last few months. At ten o’clock Doctor South
+came in and looked at him. Philip hated not to have his feet up, and he
+had dragged up a chair for them.
+
+“You seem able to make yourself pretty comfortable,” said Doctor South,
+with a grimness which would have disturbed Philip if he had not been in
+such high spirits.
+
+Philip’s eyes twinkled as he answered.
+
+“Have you any objection?”
+
+Doctor South gave him a look, but did not reply directly.
+
+“What’s that you’re reading?”
+
+“Peregrine Pickle. Smollett.”
+
+“I happen to know that Smollett wrote Peregrine Pickle.”
+
+“I beg your pardon. Medical men aren’t much interested in literature,
+are they?”
+
+Philip had put the book down on the table, and Doctor South took it up.
+It was a volume of an edition which had belonged to the Vicar of
+Blackstable. It was a thin book bound in faded morocco, with a
+copperplate engraving as a frontispiece; the pages were musty with age
+and stained with mould. Philip, without meaning to, started forward a
+little as Doctor South took the volume in his hands, and a slight smile
+came into his eyes. Very little escaped the old doctor.
+
+“Do I amuse you?” he asked icily.
+
+“I see you’re fond of books. You can always tell by the way people
+handle them.”
+
+ Doctor South put down the novel immediately.
+
+“Breakfast at eight-thirty,” he said and left the room.
+
+“What a funny old fellow!” thought Philip.
+
+He soon discovered why Doctor South’s assistants found it difficult to
+get on with him. In the first place, he set his face firmly against all
+the discoveries of the last thirty years: he had no patience with the
+drugs which became modish, were thought to work marvellous cures, and
+in a few years were discarded; he had stock mixtures which he had
+brought from St. Luke’s where he had been a student, and had used all
+his life; he found them just as efficacious as anything that had come
+into fashion since. Philip was startled at Doctor South’s suspicion of
+asepsis; he had accepted it in deference to universal opinion; but he
+used the precautions which Philip had known insisted upon so
+scrupulously at the hospital with the disdainful tolerance of a man
+playing at soldiers with children.
+
+“I’ve seen antiseptics come along and sweep everything before them, and
+then I’ve seen asepsis take their place. Bunkum!”
+
+The young men who were sent down to him knew only hospital practice;
+and they came with the unconcealed scorn for the General Practitioner
+which they had absorbed in the air at the hospital; but they had seen
+only the complicated cases which appeared in the wards; they knew how
+to treat an obscure disease of the suprarenal bodies, but were helpless
+when consulted for a cold in the head. Their knowledge was theoretical
+and their self-assurance unbounded. Doctor South watched them with
+tightened lips; he took a savage pleasure in showing them how great was
+their ignorance and how unjustified their conceit. It was a poor
+practice, of fishing folk, and the doctor made up his own
+prescriptions. Doctor South asked his assistant how he expected to make
+both ends meet if he gave a fisherman with a stomach-ache a mixture
+consisting of half a dozen expensive drugs. He complained too that the
+young medical men were uneducated: their reading consisted of The
+Sporting Times and The British Medical Journal; they could neither
+write a legible hand nor spell correctly. For two or three days Doctor
+South watched Philip closely, ready to fall on him with acid sarcasm if
+he gave him the opportunity; and Philip, aware of this, went about his
+work with a quiet sense of amusement. He was pleased with the change of
+occupation. He liked the feeling of independence and of responsibility.
+All sorts of people came to the consulting-room. He was gratified
+because he seemed able to inspire his patients with confidence; and it
+was entertaining to watch the process of cure which at a hospital
+necessarily could be watched only at distant intervals. His rounds took
+him into low-roofed cottages in which were fishing tackle and sails and
+here and there mementoes of deep-sea travelling, a lacquer box from
+Japan, spears and oars from Melanesia, or daggers from the bazaars of
+Stamboul; there was an air of romance in the stuffy little rooms, and
+the salt of the sea gave them a bitter freshness. Philip liked to talk
+to the sailor-men, and when they found that he was not supercilious
+they told him long yarns of the distant journeys of their youth.
+
+Once or twice he made a mistake in diagnosis: (he had never seen a case
+of measles before, and when he was confronted with the rash took it for
+an obscure disease of the skin;) and once or twice his ideas of
+treatment differed from Doctor South’s. The first time this happened
+Doctor South attacked him with savage irony; but Philip took it with
+good humour; he had some gift for repartee, and he made one or two
+answers which caused Doctor South to stop and look at him curiously.
+Philip’s face was grave, but his eyes were twinkling. The old gentleman
+could not avoid the impression that Philip was chaffing him. He was
+used to being disliked and feared by his assistants, and this was a new
+experience. He had half a mind to fly into a passion and pack Philip
+off by the next train, he had done that before with his assistants; but
+he had an uneasy feeling that Philip then would simply laugh at him
+outright; and suddenly he felt amused. His mouth formed itself into a
+smile against his will, and he turned away. In a little while he grew
+conscious that Philip was amusing himself systematically at his
+expense. He was taken aback at first and then diverted.
+
+“Damn his impudence,” he chuckled to himself. “Damn his impudence.”
+
+
+
+
+CXVII
+
+
+Philip had written to Athelny to tell him that he was doing a locum in
+Dorsetshire and in due course received an answer from him. It was
+written in the formal manner he affected, studded with pompous epithets
+as a Persian diadem was studded with precious stones; and in the
+beautiful hand, like black letter and as difficult to read, upon which
+he prided himself. He suggested that Philip should join him and his
+family in the Kentish hop-field to which he went every year; and to
+persuade him said various beautiful and complicated things about
+Philip’s soul and the winding tendrils of the hops. Philip replied at
+once that he would come on the first day he was free. Though not born
+there, he had a peculiar affection for the Isle of Thanet, and he was
+fired with enthusiasm at the thought of spending a fortnight so close
+to the earth and amid conditions which needed only a blue sky to be as
+idyllic as the olive groves of Arcady.
+
+The four weeks of his engagement at Farnley passed quickly. On the
+cliff a new town was springing up, with red brick villas round golf
+links, and a large hotel had recently been opened to cater for the
+summer visitors; but Philip went there seldom. Down below, by the
+harbour, the little stone houses of a past century were clustered in a
+delightful confusion, and the narrow streets, climbing down steeply,
+had an air of antiquity which appealed to the imagination. By the
+water’s edge were neat cottages with trim, tiny gardens in front of
+them; they were inhabited by retired captains in the merchant service,
+and by mothers or widows of men who had gained their living by the sea;
+and they had an appearance which was quaint and peaceful. In the little
+harbour came tramps from Spain and the Levant, ships of small tonnage;
+and now and then a windjammer was borne in by the winds of romance. It
+reminded Philip of the dirty little harbour with its colliers at
+Blackstable, and he thought that there he had first acquired the
+desire, which was now an obsession, for Eastern lands and sunlit
+islands in a tropic sea. But here you felt yourself closer to the wide,
+deep ocean than on the shore of that North Sea which seemed always
+circumscribed; here you could draw a long breath as you looked out upon
+the even vastness; and the west wind, the dear soft salt wind of
+England, uplifted the heart and at the same time melted it to
+tenderness.
+
+One evening, when Philip had reached his last week with Doctor South, a
+child came to the surgery door while the old doctor and Philip were
+making up prescriptions. It was a little ragged girl with a dirty face
+and bare feet. Philip opened the door.
+
+“Please, sir, will you come to Mrs. Fletcher’s in Ivy Lane at once?”
+
+“What’s the matter with Mrs. Fletcher?” called out Doctor South in his
+rasping voice.
+
+The child took no notice of him, but addressed herself again to Philip.
+
+“Please, sir, her little boy’s had an accident and will you come at
+once?”
+
+“Tell Mrs. Fletcher I’m coming,” called out Doctor South.
+
+The little girl hesitated for a moment, and putting a dirty finger in a
+dirty mouth stood still and looked at Philip.
+
+“What’s the matter, Kid?” said Philip, smiling.
+
+“Please, sir, Mrs. Fletcher says, will the new doctor come?” There was
+a sound in the dispensary and Doctor South came out into the passage.
+
+“Isn’t Mrs. Fletcher satisfied with me?” he barked. “I’ve attended Mrs.
+Fletcher since she was born. Why aren’t I good enough to attend her
+filthy brat?”
+
+The little girl looked for a moment as though she were going to cry,
+then she thought better of it; she put out her tongue deliberately at
+Doctor South, and, before he could recover from his astonishment,
+bolted off as fast as she could run. Philip saw that the old gentleman
+was annoyed.
+
+“You look rather fagged, and it’s a goodish way to Ivy Lane,” he said,
+by way of giving him an excuse not to go himself.
+
+Doctor South gave a low snarl.
+
+“It’s a damned sight nearer for a man who’s got the use of both legs
+than for a man who’s only got one and a half.”
+
+Philip reddened and stood silent for a while.
+
+“Do you wish me to go or will you go yourself?” he said at last
+frigidly.
+
+“What’s the good of my going? They want you.”
+
+Philip took up his hat and went to see the patient. It was hard upon
+eight o’clock when he came back. Doctor South was standing in the
+dining-room with his back to the fireplace.
+
+“You’ve been a long time,” he said.
+
+“I’m sorry. Why didn’t you start dinner?”
+
+“Because I chose to wait. Have you been all this while at Mrs.
+Fletcher’s?”
+
+“No, I’m afraid I haven’t. I stopped to look at the sunset on my way
+back, and I didn’t think of the time.”
+
+Doctor South did not reply, and the servant brought in some grilled
+sprats. Philip ate them with an excellent appetite. Suddenly Doctor
+South shot a question at him.
+
+“Why did you look at the sunset?”
+
+Philip answered with his mouth full.
+
+“Because I was happy.”
+
+Doctor South gave him an odd look, and the shadow of a smile flickered
+across his old, tired face. They ate the rest of the dinner in silence;
+but when the maid had given them the port and left the room, the old
+man leaned back and fixed his sharp eyes on Philip.
+
+“It stung you up a bit when I spoke of your game leg, young fellow?” he
+said.
+
+“People always do, directly or indirectly, when they get angry with
+me.”
+
+“I suppose they know it’s your weak point.”
+
+Philip faced him and looked at him steadily.
+
+“Are you very glad to have discovered it?”
+
+The doctor did not answer, but he gave a chuckle of bitter mirth. They
+sat for a while staring at one another. Then Doctor South surprised
+Philip extremely.
+
+“Why don’t you stay here and I’ll get rid of that damned fool with his
+mumps?”
+
+“It’s very kind of you, but I hope to get an appointment at the
+hospital in the autumn. It’ll help me so much in getting other work
+later.”
+
+“I’m offering you a partnership,” said Doctor South grumpily.
+
+“Why?” asked Philip, with surprise.
+
+“They seem to like you down here.”
+
+“I didn’t think that was a fact which altogether met with your
+approval,” Philip said drily.
+
+“D’you suppose that after forty years’ practice I care a twopenny damn
+whether people prefer my assistant to me? No, my friend. There’s no
+sentiment between my patients and me. I don’t expect gratitude from
+them, I expect them to pay my fees. Well, what d’you say to it?”
+
+Philip made no reply, not because he was thinking over the proposal,
+but because he was astonished. It was evidently very unusual for
+someone to offer a partnership to a newly qualified man; and he
+realised with wonder that, although nothing would induce him to say so,
+Doctor South had taken a fancy to him. He thought how amused the
+secretary at St. Luke’s would be when he told him.
+
+“The practice brings in about seven hundred a year. We can reckon out
+how much your share would be worth, and you can pay me off by degrees.
+And when I die you can succeed me. I think that’s better than knocking
+about hospitals for two or three years, and then taking assistantships
+until you can afford to set up for yourself.”
+
+Philip knew it was a chance that most people in his profession would
+jump at; the profession was over-crowded, and half the men he knew
+would be thankful to accept the certainty of even so modest a
+competence as that.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry, but I can’t,” he said. “It means giving up
+everything I’ve aimed at for years. In one way and another I’ve had a
+roughish time, but I always had that one hope before me, to get
+qualified so that I might travel; and now, when I wake in the morning,
+my bones simply ache to get off, I don’t mind where particularly, but
+just away, to places I’ve never been to.”
+
+Now the goal seemed very near. He would have finished his appointment
+at St. Luke’s by the middle of the following year, and then he would go
+to Spain; he could afford to spend several months there, rambling up
+and down the land which stood to him for romance; after that he would
+get a ship and go to the East. Life was before him and time of no
+account. He could wander, for years if he chose, in unfrequented
+places, amid strange peoples, where life was led in strange ways. He
+did not know what he sought or what his journeys would bring him; but
+he had a feeling that he would learn something new about life and gain
+some clue to the mystery that he had solved only to find more
+mysterious. And even if he found nothing he would allay the unrest
+which gnawed at his heart. But Doctor South was showing him a great
+kindness, and it seemed ungrateful to refuse his offer for no adequate
+reason; so in his shy way, trying to appear as matter of fact as
+possible, he made some attempt to explain why it was so important to
+him to carry out the plans he had cherished so passionately.
+
+Doctor South listened quietly, and a gentle look came into his shrewd
+old eyes. It seemed to Philip an added kindness that he did not press
+him to accept his offer. Benevolence is often very peremptory. He
+appeared to look upon Philip’s reasons as sound. Dropping the subject,
+he began to talk of his own youth; he had been in the Royal Navy, and
+it was his long connection with the sea that, when he retired, had made
+him settle at Farnley. He told Philip of old days in the Pacific and of
+wild adventures in China. He had taken part in an expedition against
+the head-hunters of Borneo and had known Samoa when it was still an
+independent state. He had touched at coral islands. Philip listened to
+him entranced. Little by little he told Philip about himself. Doctor
+South was a widower, his wife had died thirty years before, and his
+daughter had married a farmer in Rhodesia; he had quarrelled with him,
+and she had not come to England for ten years. It was just as if he had
+never had wife or child. He was very lonely. His gruffness was little
+more than a protection which he wore to hide a complete
+disillusionment; and to Philip it seemed tragic to see him just waiting
+for death, not impatiently, but rather with loathing for it, hating old
+age and unable to resign himself to its limitations, and yet with the
+feeling that death was the only solution of the bitterness of his life.
+Philip crossed his path, and the natural affection which long
+separation from his daughter had killed—she had taken her husband’s
+part in the quarrel and her children he had never seen—settled itself
+upon Philip. At first it made him angry, he told himself it was a sign
+of dotage; but there was something in Philip that attracted him, and he
+found himself smiling at him he knew not why. Philip did not bore him.
+Once or twice he put his hand on his shoulder: it was as near a caress
+as he had got since his daughter left England so many years before.
+When the time came for Philip to go Doctor South accompanied him to the
+station: he found himself unaccountably depressed.
+
+“I’ve had a ripping time here,” said Philip. “You’ve been awfully kind
+to me.”
+
+“I suppose you’re very glad to go?”
+
+“I’ve enjoyed myself here.”
+
+“But you want to get out into the world? Ah, you have youth.” He
+hesitated a moment. “I want you to remember that if you change your
+mind my offer still stands.”
+
+“That’s awfully kind of you.”
+
+Philip shook hands with him out of the carriage window, and the train
+steamed out of the station. Philip thought of the fortnight he was
+going to spend in the hop-field: he was happy at the idea of seeing his
+friends again, and he rejoiced because the day was fine. But Doctor
+South walked slowly back to his empty house. He felt very old and very
+lonely.
+
+
+
+
+CXVIII
+
+
+It was late in the evening when Philip arrived at Ferne. It was Mrs.
+Athelny’s native village, and she had been accustomed from her
+childhood to pick in the hop-field to which with her husband and her
+children she still went every year. Like many Kentish folk her family
+had gone out regularly, glad to earn a little money, but especially
+regarding the annual outing, looked forward to for months, as the best
+of holidays. The work was not hard, it was done in common, in the open
+air, and for the children it was a long, delightful picnic; here the
+young men met the maidens; in the long evenings when work was over they
+wandered about the lanes, making love; and the hopping season was
+generally followed by weddings. They went out in carts with bedding,
+pots and pans, chairs and tables; and Ferne while the hopping lasted
+was deserted. They were very exclusive and would have resented the
+intrusion of foreigners, as they called the people who came from
+London; they looked down upon them and feared them too; they were a
+rough lot, and the respectable country folk did not want to mix with
+them. In the old days the hoppers slept in barns, but ten years ago a
+row of huts had been erected at the side of a meadow; and the Athelnys,
+like many others, had the same hut every year.
+
+Athelny met Philip at the station in a cart he had borrowed from the
+public-house at which he had got a room for Philip. It was a quarter of
+a mile from the hop-field. They left his bag there and walked over to
+the meadow in which were the huts. They were nothing more than a long,
+low shed, divided into little rooms about twelve feet square. In front
+of each was a fire of sticks, round which a family was grouped, eagerly
+watching the cooking of supper. The sea-air and the sun had browned
+already the faces of Athelny’s children. Mrs. Athelny seemed a
+different woman in her sun-bonnet: you felt that the long years in the
+city had made no real difference to her; she was the country woman born
+and bred, and you could see how much at home she found herself in the
+country. She was frying bacon and at the same time keeping an eye on
+the younger children, but she had a hearty handshake and a jolly smile
+for Philip. Athelny was enthusiastic over the delights of a rural
+existence.
+
+“We’re starved for sun and light in the cities we live in. It isn’t
+life, it’s a long imprisonment. Let us sell all we have, Betty, and
+take a farm in the country.”
+
+“I can see you in the country,” she answered with good-humoured scorn.
+“Why, the first rainy day we had in the winter you’d be crying for
+London.” She turned to Philip. “Athelny’s always like this when we come
+down here. Country, I like that! Why, he don’t know a swede from a
+mangel-wurzel.”
+
+“Daddy was lazy today,” remarked Jane, with the frankness which
+characterized her, “he didn’t fill one bin.”
+
+“I’m getting into practice, child, and tomorrow I shall fill more bins
+than all of you put together.”
+
+“Come and eat your supper, children,” said Mrs. Athelny. “Where’s
+Sally?”
+
+“Here I am, mother.”
+
+She stepped out of their little hut, and the flames of the wood fire
+leaped up and cast sharp colour upon her face. Of late Philip had only
+seen her in the trim frocks she had taken to since she was at the
+dressmaker’s, and there was something very charming in the print dress
+she wore now, loose and easy to work in; the sleeves were tucked up and
+showed her strong, round arms. She too had a sun-bonnet.
+
+“You look like a milkmaid in a fairy story,” said Philip, as he shook
+hands with her.
+
+“She’s the belle of the hop-fields,” said Athelny. “My word, if the
+Squire’s son sees you he’ll make you an offer of marriage before you
+can say Jack Robinson.”
+
+“The Squire hasn’t got a son, father,” said Sally.
+
+She looked about for a place to sit down in, and Philip made room for
+her beside him. She looked wonderful in the night lit by wood fires.
+She was like some rural goddess, and you thought of those fresh, strong
+girls whom old Herrick had praised in exquisite numbers. The supper was
+simple, bread and butter, crisp bacon, tea for the children, and beer
+for Mr. and Mrs. Athelny and Philip. Athelny, eating hungrily, praised
+loudly all he ate. He flung words of scorn at Lucullus and piled
+invectives upon Brillat-Savarin.
+
+“There’s one thing one can say for you, Athelny,” said his wife, “you
+do enjoy your food and no mistake!”
+
+“Cooked by your hand, my Betty,” he said, stretching out an eloquent
+forefinger.
+
+Philip felt himself very comfortable. He looked happily at the line of
+fires, with people grouped about them, and the colour of the flames
+against the night; at the end of the meadow was a line of great elms,
+and above the starry sky. The children talked and laughed, and Athelny,
+a child among them, made them roar by his tricks and fancies.
+
+“They think a rare lot of Athelny down here,” said his wife. “Why, Mrs.
+Bridges said to me, I don’t know what we should do without Mr. Athelny
+now, she said. He’s always up to something, he’s more like a schoolboy
+than the father of a family.”
+
+Sally sat in silence, but she attended to Philip’s wants in a
+thoughtful fashion that charmed him. It was pleasant to have her beside
+him, and now and then he glanced at her sunburned, healthy face. Once
+he caught her eyes, and she smiled quietly. When supper was over Jane
+and a small brother were sent down to a brook that ran at the bottom of
+the meadow to fetch a pail of water for washing up.
+
+“You children, show your Uncle Philip where we sleep, and then you must
+be thinking of going to bed.”
+
+Small hands seized Philip, and he was dragged towards the hut. He went
+in and struck a match. There was no furniture in it; and beside a tin
+box, in which clothes were kept, there was nothing but the beds; there
+were three of them, one against each wall. Athelny followed Philip in
+and showed them proudly.
+
+“That’s the stuff to sleep on,” he cried. “None of your
+spring-mattresses and swansdown. I never sleep so soundly anywhere as
+here. YOU will sleep between sheets. My dear fellow, I pity you from
+the bottom of my soul.”
+
+The beds consisted of a thick layer of hopvine, on the top of which was
+a coating of straw, and this was covered with a blanket. After a day in
+the open air, with the aromatic scent of the hops all round them, the
+happy pickers slept like tops. By nine o’clock all was quiet in the
+meadow and everyone in bed but one or two men who still lingered in the
+public-house and would not come back till it was closed at ten. Athelny
+walked there with Philip. But before he went Mrs. Athelny said to him:
+
+“We breakfast about a quarter to six, but I daresay you won’t want to
+get up as early as that. You see, we have to set to work at six.”
+
+“Of course he must get up early,” cried Athelny, “and he must work like
+the rest of us. He’s got to earn his board. No work, no dinner, my
+lad.”
+
+“The children go down to bathe before breakfast, and they can give you
+a call on their way back. They pass The Jolly Sailor.”
+
+“If they’ll wake me I’ll come and bathe with them,” said Philip.
+
+Jane and Harold and Edward shouted with delight at the prospect, and
+next morning Philip was awakened out of a sound sleep by their bursting
+into his room. The boys jumped on his bed, and he had to chase them out
+with his slippers. He put on a coat and a pair of trousers and went
+down. The day had only just broken, and there was a nip in the air; but
+the sky was cloudless, and the sun was shining yellow. Sally, holding
+Connie’s hand, was standing in the middle of the road, with a towel and
+a bathing-dress over her arm. He saw now that her sun-bonnet was of the
+colour of lavender, and against it her face, red and brown, was like an
+apple. She greeted him with her slow, sweet smile, and he noticed
+suddenly that her teeth were small and regular and very white. He
+wondered why they had never caught his attention before.
+
+“I was for letting you sleep on,” she said, “but they would go up and
+wake you. I said you didn’t really want to come.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I did.”
+
+They walked down the road and then cut across the marshes. That way it
+was under a mile to the sea. The water looked cold and gray, and Philip
+shivered at the sight of it; but the others tore off their clothes and
+ran in shouting. Sally did everything a little slowly, and she did not
+come into the water till all the rest were splashing round Philip.
+Swimming was his only accomplishment; he felt at home in the water; and
+soon he had them all imitating him as he played at being a porpoise,
+and a drowning man, and a fat lady afraid of wetting her hair. The
+bathe was uproarious, and it was necessary for Sally to be very severe
+to induce them all to come out.
+
+“You’re as bad as any of them,” she said to Philip, in her grave,
+maternal way, which was at once comic and touching. “They’re not
+anything like so naughty when you’re not here.”
+
+They walked back, Sally with her bright hair streaming over one
+shoulder and her sun-bonnet in her hand, but when they got to the huts
+Mrs. Athelny had already started for the hop-garden. Athleny, in a pair
+of the oldest trousers anyone had ever worn, his jacket buttoned up to
+show he had no shirt on, and in a wide-brimmed soft hat, was frying
+kippers over a fire of sticks. He was delighted with himself: he looked
+every inch a brigand. As soon as he saw the party he began to shout the
+witches’ chorus from Macbeth over the odorous kippers.
+
+“You mustn’t dawdle over your breakfast or mother will be angry,” he
+said, when they came up.
+
+And in a few minutes, Harold and Jane with pieces of bread and butter
+in their hands, they sauntered through the meadow into the hop-field.
+They were the last to leave. A hop-garden was one of the sights
+connected with Philip’s boyhood and the oast-houses to him the most
+typical feature of the Kentish scene. It was with no sense of
+strangeness, but as though he were at home, that Philip followed Sally
+through the long lines of the hops. The sun was bright now and cast a
+sharp shadow. Philip feasted his eyes on the richness of the green
+leaves. The hops were yellowing, and to him they had the beauty and the
+passion which poets in Sicily have found in the purple grape. As they
+walked along Philip felt himself overwhelmed by the rich luxuriance. A
+sweet scent arose from the fat Kentish soil, and the fitful September
+breeze was heavy with the goodly perfume of the hops. Athelstan felt
+the exhilaration instinctively, for he lifted up his voice and sang; it
+was the cracked voice of the boy of fifteen, and Sally turned round.
+
+“You be quiet, Athelstan, or we shall have a thunderstorm.”
+
+In a moment they heard the hum of voices, and in a moment more came
+upon the pickers. They were all hard at work, talking and laughing as
+they picked. They sat on chairs, on stools, on boxes, with their
+baskets by their sides, and some stood by the bin throwing the hops
+they picked straight into it. There were a lot of children about and a
+good many babies, some in makeshift cradles, some tucked up in a rug on
+the soft brown dry earth. The children picked a little and played a
+great deal. The women worked busily, they had been pickers from
+childhood, and they could pick twice as fast as foreigners from London.
+They boasted about the number of bushels they had picked in a day, but
+they complained you could not make money now as in former times: then
+they paid you a shilling for five bushels, but now the rate was eight
+and even nine bushels to the shilling. In the old days a good picker
+could earn enough in the season to keep her for the rest of the year,
+but now there was nothing in it; you got a holiday for nothing, and
+that was about all. Mrs. Hill had bought herself a pianner out of what
+she made picking, so she said, but she was very near, one wouldn’t like
+to be near like that, and most people thought it was only what she
+said, if the truth was known perhaps it would be found that she had put
+a bit of money from the savings bank towards it.
+
+The hoppers were divided into bin companies of ten pickers, not
+counting children, and Athelny loudly boasted of the day when he would
+have a company consisting entirely of his own family. Each company had
+a bin-man, whose duty it was to supply it with strings of hops at their
+bins (the bin was a large sack on a wooden frame, about seven feet
+high, and long rows of them were placed between the rows of hops;) and
+it was to this position that Athelny aspired when his family was old
+enough to form a company. Meanwhile he worked rather by encouraging
+others than by exertions of his own. He sauntered up to Mrs. Athelny,
+who had been busy for half an hour and had already emptied a basket
+into the bin, and with his cigarette between his lips began to pick. He
+asserted that he was going to pick more than anyone that day, but
+mother; of course no one could pick so much as mother; that reminded
+him of the trials which Aphrodite put upon the curious Psyche, and he
+began to tell his children the story of her love for the unseen
+bridegroom. He told it very well. It seemed to Philip, listening with a
+smile on his lips, that the old tale fitted in with the scene. The sky
+was very blue now, and he thought it could not be more lovely even in
+Greece. The children with their fair hair and rosy cheeks, strong,
+healthy, and vivacious; the delicate form of the hops; the challenging
+emerald of the leaves, like a blare of trumpets; the magic of the green
+alley, narrowing to a point as you looked down the row, with the
+pickers in their sun-bonnets: perhaps there was more of the Greek
+spirit there than you could find in the books of professors or in
+museums. He was thankful for the beauty of England. He thought of the
+winding white roads and the hedgerows, the green meadows with their
+elm-trees, the delicate line of the hills and the copses that crowned
+them, the flatness of the marshes, and the melancholy of the North Sea.
+He was very glad that he felt its loveliness. But presently Athelny
+grew restless and announced that he would go and ask how Robert Kemp’s
+mother was. He knew everyone in the garden and called them all by their
+Christian names; he knew their family histories and all that had
+happened to them from birth. With harmless vanity he played the fine
+gentleman among them, and there was a touch of condescension in his
+familiarity. Philip would not go with him.
+
+“I’m going to earn my dinner,” he said.
+
+“Quite right, my boy,” answered Athelny, with a wave of the hand, as he
+strolled away. “No work, no dinner.”
+
+
+
+
+CXIX
+
+
+Philip had not a basket of his own, but sat with Sally. Jane thought it
+monstrous that he should help her elder sister rather than herself, and
+he had to promise to pick for her when Sally’s basket was full. Sally
+was almost as quick as her mother.
+
+“Won’t it hurt your hands for sewing?” asked Philip.
+
+“Oh, no, it wants soft hands. That’s why women pick better than men. If
+your hands are hard and your fingers all stiff with a lot of rough work
+you can’t pick near so well.”
+
+He liked to see her deft movements, and she watched him too now and
+then with that maternal spirit of hers which was so amusing and yet so
+charming. He was clumsy at first, and she laughed at him. When she bent
+over and showed him how best to deal with a whole line their hands met.
+He was surprised to see her blush. He could not persuade himself that
+she was a woman; because he had known her as a flapper, he could not
+help looking upon her as a child still; yet the number of her admirers
+showed that she was a child no longer; and though they had only been
+down a few days one of Sally’s cousins was already so attentive that
+she had to endure a lot of chaffing. His name was Peter Gann, and he
+was the son of Mrs. Athelny’s sister, who had married a farmer near
+Ferne. Everyone knew why he found it necessary to walk through the
+hop-field every day.
+
+A call-off by the sounding of a horn was made for breakfast at eight,
+and though Mrs. Athelny told them they had not deserved it, they ate it
+very heartily. They set to work again and worked till twelve, when the
+horn sounded once more for dinner. At intervals the measurer went his
+round from bin to bin, accompanied by the booker, who entered first in
+his own book and then in the hopper’s the number of bushels picked. As
+each bin was filled it was measured out in bushel baskets into a huge
+bag called a poke; and this the measurer and the pole-puller carried
+off between them and put on the waggon. Athelny came back now and then
+with stories of how much Mrs. Heath or Mrs. Jones had picked, and he
+conjured his family to beat her: he was always wanting to make records,
+and sometimes in his enthusiasm picked steadily for an hour. His chief
+amusement in it, however, was that it showed the beauty of his graceful
+hands, of which he was excessively proud. He spent much time manicuring
+them. He told Philip, as he stretched out his tapering fingers, that
+the Spanish grandees had always slept in oiled gloves to preserve their
+whiteness. The hand that wrung the throat of Europe, he remarked
+dramatically, was as shapely and exquisite as a woman’s; and he looked
+at his own, as he delicately picked the hops, and sighed with
+self-satisfaction. When he grew tired of this he rolled himself a
+cigarette and discoursed to Philip of art and literature. In the
+afternoon it grew very hot. Work did not proceed so actively and
+conversation halted. The incessant chatter of the morning dwindled now
+to desultory remarks. Tiny beads of sweat stood on Sally’s upper lip,
+and as she worked her lips were slightly parted. She was like a rosebud
+bursting into flower.
+
+Calling-off time depended on the state of the oast-house. Sometimes it
+was filled early, and as many hops had been picked by three or four as
+could be dried during the night. Then work was stopped. But generally
+the last measuring of the day began at five. As each company had its
+bin measured it gathered up its things and, chatting again now that
+work was over, sauntered out of the garden. The women went back to the
+huts to clean up and prepare the supper, while a good many of the men
+strolled down the road to the public-house. A glass of beer was very
+pleasant after the day’s work.
+
+The Athelnys’ bin was the last to be dealt with. When the measurer came
+Mrs. Athelny, with a sigh of relief, stood up and stretched her arms:
+she had been sitting in the same position for many hours and was stiff.
+
+“Now, let’s go to The Jolly Sailor,” said Athelny. “The rites of the
+day must be duly performed, and there is none more sacred than that.”
+
+“Take a jug with you, Athelny,” said his wife, “and bring back a pint
+and a half for supper.”
+
+She gave him the money, copper by copper. The bar-parlour was already
+well filled. It had a sanded floor, benches round it, and yellow
+pictures of Victorian prize-fighters on the walls. The licencee knew
+all his customers by name, and he leaned over his bar smiling benignly
+at two young men who were throwing rings on a stick that stood up from
+the floor: their failure was greeted with a good deal of hearty chaff
+from the rest of the company. Room was made for the new arrivals.
+Philip found himself sitting between an old labourer in corduroys, with
+string tied under his knees, and a shiny-faced lad of seventeen with a
+love-lock neatly plastered on his red forehead. Athelny insisted on
+trying his hand at the throwing of rings. He backed himself for half a
+pint and won it. As he drank the loser’s health he said:
+
+“I would sooner have won this than won the Derby, my boy.”
+
+He was an outlandish figure, with his wide-brimmed hat and pointed
+beard, among those country folk, and it was easy to see that they
+thought him very queer; but his spirits were so high, his enthusiasm so
+contagious, that it was impossible not to like him. Conversation went
+easily. A certain number of pleasantries were exchanged in the broad,
+slow accent of the Isle of Thanet, and there was uproarious laughter at
+the sallies of the local wag. A pleasant gathering! It would have been
+a hard-hearted person who did not feel a glow of satisfaction in his
+fellows. Philip’s eyes wandered out of the window where it was bright
+and sunny still; there were little white curtains in it tied up with
+red ribbon like those of a cottage window, and on the sill were pots of
+geraniums. In due course one by one the idlers got up and sauntered
+back to the meadow where supper was cooking.
+
+“I expect you’ll be ready for your bed,” said Mrs. Athelny to Philip.
+“You’re not used to getting up at five and staying in the open air all
+day.”
+
+“You’re coming to bathe with us, Uncle Phil, aren’t you?” the boys
+cried.
+
+“Rather.”
+
+He was tired and happy. After supper, balancing himself against the
+wall of the hut on a chair without a back, he smoked his pipe and
+looked at the night. Sally was busy. She passed in and out of the hut,
+and he lazily watched her methodical actions. Her walk attracted his
+notice; it was not particularly graceful, but it was easy and assured;
+she swung her legs from the hips, and her feet seemed to tread the
+earth with decision. Athelny had gone off to gossip with one of the
+neighbours, and presently Philip heard his wife address the world in
+general.
+
+“There now, I’m out of tea and I wanted Athelny to go down to Mrs.
+Black’s and get some.” A pause, and then her voice was raised: “Sally,
+just run down to Mrs. Black’s and get me half a pound of tea, will you?
+I’ve run quite out of it.”
+
+“All right, mother.”
+
+Mrs. Black had a cottage about half a mile along the road, and she
+combined the office of postmistress with that of universal provider.
+Sally came out of the hut, turning down her sleeves.
+
+“Shall I come with you, Sally?” asked Philip.
+
+“Don’t you trouble. I’m not afraid to go alone.”
+
+“I didn’t think you were; but it’s getting near my bedtime, and I was
+just thinking I’d like to stretch my legs.”
+
+Sally did not answer, and they set out together. The road was white and
+silent. There was not a sound in the summer night. They did not speak
+much.
+
+“It’s quite hot even now, isn’t it?” said Philip.
+
+“I think it’s wonderful for the time of year.”
+
+But their silence did not seem awkward. They found it was pleasant to
+walk side by side and felt no need of words. Suddenly at a stile in the
+hedgerow they heard a low murmur of voices, and in the darkness they
+saw the outline of two people. They were sitting very close to one
+another and did not move as Philip and Sally passed.
+
+“I wonder who that was,” said Sally.
+
+“They looked happy enough, didn’t they?”
+
+“I expect they took us for lovers too.”
+
+They saw the light of the cottage in front of them, and in a minute
+went into the little shop. The glare dazzled them for a moment.
+
+“You are late,” said Mrs. Black. “I was just going to shut up.” She
+looked at the clock. “Getting on for nine.”
+
+Sally asked for her half pound of tea (Mrs. Athelny could never bring
+herself to buy more than half a pound at a time), and they set off up
+the road again. Now and then some beast of the night made a short,
+sharp sound, but it seemed only to make the silence more marked.
+
+“I believe if you stood still you could hear the sea,” said Sally.
+
+They strained their ears, and their fancy presented them with a faint
+sound of little waves lapping up against the shingle. When they passed
+the stile again the lovers were still there, but now they were not
+speaking; they were in one another’s arms, and the man’s lips were
+pressed against the girl’s.
+
+“They seem busy,” said Sally.
+
+They turned a corner, and a breath of warm wind beat for a moment
+against their faces. The earth gave forth its freshness. There was
+something strange in the tremulous night, and something, you knew not
+what, seemed to be waiting; the silence was on a sudden pregnant with
+meaning. Philip had a queer feeling in his heart, it seemed very full,
+it seemed to melt (the hackneyed phrases expressed precisely the
+curious sensation), he felt happy and anxious and expectant. To his
+memory came back those lines in which Jessica and Lorenzo murmur
+melodious words to one another, capping each other’s utterance; but
+passion shines bright and clear through the conceits that amuse them.
+He did not know what there was in the air that made his senses so
+strangely alert; it seemed to him that he was pure soul to enjoy the
+scents and the sounds and the savours of the earth. He had never felt
+such an exquisite capacity for beauty. He was afraid that Sally by
+speaking would break the spell, but she said never a word, and he
+wanted to hear the sound of her voice. Its low richness was the voice
+of the country night itself.
+
+They arrived at the field through which she had to walk to get back to
+the huts. Philip went in to hold the gate open for her.
+
+“Well, here I think I’ll say good-night.”
+
+“Thank you for coming all that way with me.”
+
+She gave him her hand, and as he took it, he said:
+
+“If you were very nice you’d kiss me good-night like the rest of the
+family.”
+
+“I don’t mind,” she said.
+
+Philip had spoken in jest. He merely wanted to kiss her, because he was
+happy and he liked her and the night was so lovely.
+
+“Good-night then,” he said, with a little laugh, drawing her towards
+him.
+
+She gave him her lips; they were warm and full and soft; he lingered a
+little, they were like a flower; then, he knew not how, without meaning
+it, he flung his arms round her. She yielded quite silently. Her body
+was firm and strong. He felt her heart beat against his. Then he lost
+his head. His senses overwhelmed him like a flood of rushing waters. He
+drew her into the darker shadow of the hedge.
+
+
+
+
+CXX
+
+
+Philip slept like a log and awoke with a start to find Harold tickling
+his face with a feather. There was a shout of delight when he opened
+his eyes. He was drunken with sleep.
+
+“Come on, lazybones,” said Jane. “Sally says she won’t wait for you
+unless you hurry up.”
+
+Then he remembered what had happened. His heart sank, and, half out of
+bed already, he stopped; he did not know how he was going to face her;
+he was overwhelmed with a sudden rush of self-reproach, and bitterly,
+bitterly, he regretted what he had done. What would she say to him that
+morning? He dreaded meeting her, and he asked himself how he could have
+been such a fool. But the children gave him no time; Edward took his
+bathing-drawers and his towel, Athelstan tore the bed-clothes away; and
+in three minutes they all clattered down into the road. Sally gave him
+a smile. It was as sweet and innocent as it had ever been.
+
+“You do take a time to dress yourself,” she said. “I thought you was
+never coming.”
+
+There was not a particle of difference in her manner. He had expected
+some change, subtle or abrupt; he fancied that there would be shame in
+the way she treated him, or anger, or perhaps some increase of
+familiarity; but there was nothing. She was exactly the same as before.
+They walked towards the sea all together, talking and laughing; and
+Sally was quiet, but she was always that, reserved, but he had never
+seen her otherwise, and gentle. She neither sought conversation with
+him nor avoided it. Philip was astounded. He had expected the incident
+of the night before to have caused some revolution in her, but it was
+just as though nothing had happened; it might have been a dream; and as
+he walked along, a little girl holding on to one hand and a little boy
+to the other, while he chatted as unconcernedly as he could, he sought
+for an explanation. He wondered whether Sally meant the affair to be
+forgotten. Perhaps her senses had run away with her just as his had,
+and, treating what had occurred as an accident due to unusual
+circumstances, it might be that she had decided to put the matter out
+of her mind. It was ascribing to her a power of thought and a mature
+wisdom which fitted neither with her age nor with her character. But he
+realised that he knew nothing of her. There had been in her always
+something enigmatic.
+
+They played leap-frog in the water, and the bathe was as uproarious as
+on the previous day. Sally mothered them all, keeping a watchful eye on
+them, and calling to them when they went out too far. She swam staidly
+backwards and forwards while the others got up to their larks, and now
+and then turned on her back to float. Presently she went out and began
+drying herself; she called to the others more or less peremptorily, and
+at last only Philip was left in the water. He took the opportunity to
+have a good hard swim. He was more used to the cold water this second
+morning, and he revelled in its salt freshness; it rejoiced him to use
+his limbs freely, and he covered the water with long, firm strokes. But
+Sally, with a towel round her, went down to the water’s edge.
+
+“You’re to come out this minute, Philip,” she called, as though he were
+a small boy under her charge.
+
+And when, smiling with amusement at her authoritative way, he came
+towards her, she upbraided him.
+
+“It is naughty of you to stay in so long. Your lips are quite blue, and
+just look at your teeth, they’re chattering.”
+
+“All right. I’ll come out.”
+
+She had never talked to him in that manner before. It was as though
+what had happened gave her a sort of right over him, and she looked
+upon him as a child to be cared for. In a few minutes they were
+dressed, and they started to walk back. Sally noticed his hands.
+
+“Just look, they’re quite blue.”
+
+“Oh, that’s all right. It’s only the circulation. I shall get the blood
+back in a minute.”
+
+“Give them to me.”
+
+She took his hands in hers and rubbed them, first one and then the
+other, till the colour returned. Philip, touched and puzzled, watched
+her. He could not say anything to her on account of the children, and
+he did not meet her eyes; but he was sure they did not avoid his
+purposely, it just happened that they did not meet. And during the day
+there was nothing in her behaviour to suggest a consciousness in her
+that anything had passed between them. Perhaps she was a little more
+talkative than usual. When they were all sitting again in the hop-field
+she told her mother how naughty Philip had been in not coming out of
+the water till he was blue with cold. It was incredible, and yet it
+seemed that the only effect of the incident of the night before was to
+arouse in her a feeling of protection towards him: she had the same
+instinctive desire to mother him as she had with regard to her brothers
+and sisters.
+
+It was not till the evening that he found himself alone with her. She
+was cooking the supper, and Philip was sitting on the grass by the side
+of the fire. Mrs. Athelny had gone down to the village to do some
+shopping, and the children were scattered in various pursuits of their
+own. Philip hesitated to speak. He was very nervous. Sally attended to
+her business with serene competence and she accepted placidly the
+silence which to him was so embarrassing. He did not know how to begin.
+Sally seldom spoke unless she was spoken to or had something particular
+to say. At last he could not bear it any longer.
+
+“You’re not angry with me, Sally?” he blurted out suddenly.
+
+She raised her eyes quietly and looked at him without emotion.
+
+“Me? No. Why should I be?”
+
+He was taken aback and did not reply. She took the lid off the pot,
+stirred the contents, and put it on again. A savoury smell spread over
+the air. She looked at him once more, with a quiet smile which barely
+separated her lips; it was more a smile of the eyes.
+
+“I always liked you,” she said.
+
+His heart gave a great thump against his ribs, and he felt the blood
+rushing to his cheeks. He forced a faint laugh.
+
+“I didn’t know that.”
+
+“That’s because you’re a silly.”
+
+“I don’t know why you liked me.”
+
+“I don’t either.” She put a little more wood on the fire. “I knew I
+liked you that day you came when you’d been sleeping out and hadn’t had
+anything to eat, d’you remember? And me and mother, we got Thorpy’s bed
+ready for you.”
+
+He flushed again, for he did not know that she was aware of that
+incident. He remembered it himself with horror and shame.
+
+“That’s why I wouldn’t have anything to do with the others. You
+remember that young fellow mother wanted me to have? I let him come to
+tea because he bothered so, but I knew I’d say no.”
+
+Philip was so surprised that he found nothing to say. There was a queer
+feeling in his heart; he did not know what it was, unless it was
+happiness. Sally stirred the pot once more.
+
+“I wish those children would make haste and come. I don’t know where
+they’ve got to. Supper’s ready now.”
+
+“Shall I go and see if I can find them?” said Philip.
+
+It was a relief to talk about practical things.
+
+“Well, it wouldn’t be a bad idea, I must say…. There’s mother coming.”
+
+Then, as he got up, she looked at him without embarrassment.
+
+“Shall I come for a walk with you tonight when I’ve put the children to
+bed?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, you wait for me down by the stile, and I’ll come when I’m
+ready.”
+
+He waited under the stars, sitting on the stile, and the hedges with
+their ripening blackberries were high on each side of him. From the
+earth rose rich scents of the night, and the air was soft and still.
+His heart was beating madly. He could not understand anything of what
+happened to him. He associated passion with cries and tears and
+vehemence, and there was nothing of this in Sally; but he did not know
+what else but passion could have caused her to give herself. But
+passion for him? He would not have been surprised if she had fallen to
+her cousin, Peter Gann, tall, spare, and straight, with his sunburned
+face and long, easy stride. Philip wondered what she saw in him. He did
+not know if she loved him as he reckoned love. And yet? He was
+convinced of her purity. He had a vague inkling that many things had
+combined, things that she felt though was unconscious of, the
+intoxication of the air and the hops and the night, the healthy
+instincts of the natural woman, a tenderness that overflowed, and an
+affection that had in it something maternal and something sisterly; and
+she gave all she had to give because her heart was full of charity.
+
+He heard a step on the road, and a figure came out of the darkness.
+
+“Sally,” he murmured.
+
+She stopped and came to the stile, and with her came sweet, clean
+odours of the country-side. She seemed to carry with her scents of the
+new-mown hay, and the savour of ripe hops, and the freshness of young
+grass. Her lips were soft and full against his, and her lovely, strong
+body was firm within his arms.
+
+“Milk and honey,” he said. “You’re like milk and honey.”
+
+He made her close her eyes and kissed her eyelids, first one and then
+the other. Her arm, strong and muscular, was bare to the elbow; he
+passed his hand over it and wondered at its beauty; it gleamed in the
+darkness; she had the skin that Rubens painted, astonishingly fair and
+transparent, and on one side were little golden hairs. It was the arm
+of a Saxon goddess; but no immortal had that exquisite, homely
+naturalness; and Philip thought of a cottage garden with the dear
+flowers which bloom in all men’s hearts, of the hollyhock and the red
+and white rose which is called York and Lancaster, and of
+love—in-a-mist and Sweet William, and honeysuckle, larkspur, and London
+Pride.
+
+“How can you care for me?” he said. “I’m insignificant and crippled and
+ordinary and ugly.”
+
+She took his face in both her hands and kissed his lips.
+
+“You’re an old silly, that’s what you are,” she said.
+
+
+
+
+CXXI
+
+
+When the hops were picked, Philip with the news in his pocket that he
+had got the appointment as assistant house-physician at St. Luke’s,
+accompanied the Athelnys back to London. He took modest rooms in
+Westminster and at the beginning of October entered upon his duties.
+The work was interesting and varied; every day he learned something
+new; he felt himself of some consequence; and he saw a good deal of
+Sally. He found life uncommonly pleasant. He was free about six, except
+on the days on which he had out-patients, and then he went to the shop
+at which Sally worked to meet her when she came out. There were several
+young men, who hung about opposite the ‘trade entrance’ or a little
+further along, at the first corner; and the girls, coming out two and
+two or in little groups, nudged one another and giggled as they
+recognised them. Sally in her plain black dress looked very different
+from the country lass who had picked hops side by side with him. She
+walked away from the shop quickly, but she slackened her pace when they
+met, and greeted him with her quiet smile. They walked together through
+the busy street. He talked to her of his work at the hospital, and she
+told him what she had been doing in the shop that day. He came to know
+the names of the girls she worked with. He found that Sally had a
+restrained, but keen, sense of the ridiculous, and she made remarks
+about the girls or the men who were set over them which amused him by
+their unexpected drollery. She had a way of saying a thing which was
+very characteristic, quite gravely, as though there were nothing funny
+in it at all, and yet it was so sharp-sighted that Philip broke into
+delighted laughter. Then she would give him a little glance in which
+the smiling eyes showed she was not unaware of her own humour. They met
+with a handshake and parted as formally. Once Philip asked her to come
+and have tea with him in his rooms, but she refused.
+
+“No, I won’t do that. It would look funny.”
+
+Never a word of love passed between them. She seemed not to desire
+anything more than the companionship of those walks. Yet Philip was
+positive that she was glad to be with him. She puzzled him as much as
+she had done at the beginning. He did not begin to understand her
+conduct; but the more he knew her the fonder he grew of her; she was
+competent and self controlled, and there was a charming honesty in her:
+you felt that you could rely upon her in every circumstance.
+
+“You are an awfully good sort,” he said to her once a propos of nothing
+at all.
+
+“I expect I’m just the same as everyone else,” she answered.
+
+He knew that he did not love her. It was a great affection that he felt
+for her, and he liked her company; it was curiously soothing; and he
+had a feeling for her which seemed to him ridiculous to entertain
+towards a shop-girl of nineteen: he respected her. And he admired her
+magnificent healthiness. She was a splendid animal, without defect; and
+physical perfection filled him always with admiring awe. She made him
+feel unworthy.
+
+Then, one day, about three weeks after they had come back to London as
+they walked together, he noticed that she was unusually silent. The
+serenity of her expression was altered by a slight line between the
+eyebrows: it was the beginning of a frown.
+
+“What’s the matter, Sally?” he asked.
+
+She did not look at him, but straight in front of her, and her colour
+darkened.
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+He understood at once what she meant. His heart gave a sudden, quick
+beat, and he felt the colour leave his cheeks.
+
+“What d’you mean? Are you afraid that… ?”
+
+He stopped. He could not go on. The possibility that anything of the
+sort could happen had never crossed his mind. Then he saw that her lips
+were trembling, and she was trying not to cry.
+
+“I’m not certain yet. Perhaps it’ll be all right.”
+
+They walked on in silence till they came to the corner of Chancery
+Lane, where he always left her. She held out her hand and smiled.
+
+“Don’t worry about it yet. Let’s hope for the best.”
+
+He walked away with a tumult of thoughts in his head. What a fool he
+had been! That was the first thing that struck him, an abject,
+miserable fool, and he repeated it to himself a dozen times in a rush
+of angry feeling. He despised himself. How could he have got into such
+a mess? But at the same time, for his thoughts chased one another
+through his brain and yet seemed to stand together, in a hopeless
+confusion, like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle seen in a nightmare, he
+asked himself what he was going to do. Everything was so clear before
+him, all he had aimed at so long within reach at last, and now his
+inconceivable stupidity had erected this new obstacle. Philip had never
+been able to surmount what he acknowledged was a defect in his resolute
+desire for a well ordered life, and that was his passion for living in
+the future; and no sooner was he settled in his work at the hospital
+than he had busied himself with arrangements for his travels. In the
+past he had often tried not to think too circumstantially of his plans
+for the future, it was only discouraging; but now that his goal was so
+near he saw no harm in giving away to a longing that was so difficult
+to resist. First of all he meant to go to Spain. That was the land of
+his heart; and by now he was imbued with its spirit, its romance and
+colour and history and grandeur; he felt that it had a message for him
+in particular which no other country could give. He knew the fine old
+cities already as though he had trodden their tortuous streets from
+childhood. Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Leon, Tarragona, Burgos. The great
+painters of Spain were the painters of his soul, and his pulse beat
+quickly as he pictured his ecstasy on standing face to face with those
+works which were more significant than any others to his own tortured,
+restless heart. He had read the great poets, more characteristic of
+their race than the poets of other lands; for they seemed to have drawn
+their inspiration not at all from the general currents of the world’s
+literature but directly from the torrid, scented plains and the bleak
+mountains of their country. A few short months now, and he would hear
+with his own ears all around him the language which seemed most apt for
+grandeur of soul and passion. His fine taste had given him an inkling
+that Andalusia was too soft and sensuous, a little vulgar even, to
+satisfy his ardour; and his imagination dwelt more willingly among the
+wind-swept distances of Castile and the rugged magnificence of Aragon
+and Leon. He did not know quite what those unknown contacts would give
+him, but he felt that he would gather from them a strength and a
+purpose which would make him more capable of affronting and
+comprehending the manifold wonders of places more distant and more
+strange.
+
+For this was only a beginning. He had got into communication with the
+various companies which took surgeons out on their ships, and knew
+exactly what were their routes, and from men who had been on them what
+were the advantages and disadvantages of each line. He put aside the
+Orient and the P. & O. It was difficult to get a berth with them; and
+besides their passenger traffic allowed the medical officer little
+freedom; but there were other services which sent large tramps on
+leisurely expeditions to the East, stopping at all sorts of ports for
+various periods, from a day or two to a fortnight, so that you had
+plenty of time, and it was often possible to make a trip inland. The
+pay was poor and the food no more than adequate, so that there was not
+much demand for the posts, and a man with a London degree was pretty
+sure to get one if he applied. Since there were no passengers other
+than a casual man or so, shipping on business from some out-of-the-way
+port to another, the life on board was friendly and pleasant. Philip
+knew by heart the list of places at which they touched; and each one
+called up in him visions of tropical sunshine, and magic colour, and of
+a teeming, mysterious, intense life. Life! That was what he wanted. At
+last he would come to close quarters with Life. And perhaps, from Tokyo
+or Shanghai it would be possible to tranship into some other line and
+drip down to the islands of the South Pacific. A doctor was useful
+anywhere. There might be an opportunity to go up country in Burmah, and
+what rich jungles in Sumatra or Borneo might he not visit? He was young
+still and time was no object to him. He had no ties in England, no
+friends; he could go up and down the world for years, learning the
+beauty and the wonder and the variedness of life.
+
+Now this thing had come. He put aside the possibility that Sally was
+mistaken; he felt strangely certain that she was right; after all, it
+was so likely; anyone could see that Nature had built her to be the
+mother of children. He knew what he ought to do. He ought not to let
+the incident divert him a hair’s breadth from his path. He thought of
+Griffiths; he could easily imagine with what indifference that young
+man would have received such a piece of news; he would have thought it
+an awful nuisance and would at once have taken to his heels, like a
+wise fellow; he would have left the girl to deal with her troubles as
+best she could. Philip told himself that if this had happened it was
+because it was inevitable. He was no more to blame than Sally; she was
+a girl who knew the world and the facts of life, and she had taken the
+risk with her eyes open. It would be madness to allow such an accident
+to disturb the whole pattern of his life. He was one of the few people
+who was acutely conscious of the transitoriness of life, and how
+necessary it was to make the most of it. He would do what he could for
+Sally; he could afford to give her a sufficient sum of money. A strong
+man would never allow himself to be turned from his purpose.
+
+Philip said all this to himself, but he knew he could not do it. He
+simply could not. He knew himself.
+
+“I’m so damned weak,” he muttered despairingly.
+
+She had trusted him and been kind to him. He simply could not do a
+thing which, notwithstanding all his reason, he felt was horrible. He
+knew he would have no peace on his travels if he had the thought
+constantly with him that she was wretched. Besides, there were her
+father and mother: they had always treated him well; it was not
+possible to repay them with ingratitude. The only thing was to marry
+Sally as quickly as possible. He would write to Doctor South, tell him
+he was going to be married at once, and say that if his offer still
+held he was willing to accept it. That sort of practice, among poor
+people, was the only one possible for him; there his deformity did not
+matter, and they would not sneer at the simple manners of his wife. It
+was curious to think of her as his wife, it gave him a queer, soft
+feeling; and a wave of emotion spread over him as he thought of the
+child which was his. He had little doubt that Doctor South would be
+glad to have him, and he pictured to himself the life he would lead
+with Sally in the fishing village. They would have a little house
+within sight of the sea, and he would watch the mighty ships passing to
+the lands he would never know. Perhaps that was the wisest thing.
+Cronshaw had told him that the facts of life mattered nothing to him
+who by the power of fancy held in fee the twin realms of space and
+time. It was true. Forever wilt thou love and she be fair!
+
+His wedding present to his wife would be all his high hopes.
+Self-sacrifice! Philip was uplifted by its beauty, and all through the
+evening he thought of it. He was so excited that he could not read. He
+seemed to be driven out of his rooms into the streets, and he walked up
+and down Birdcage Walk, his heart throbbing with joy. He could hardly
+bear his impatience. He wanted to see Sally’s happiness when he made
+her his offer, and if it had not been so late he would have gone to her
+there and then. He pictured to himself the long evenings he would spend
+with Sally in the cosy sitting-room, the blinds undrawn so that they
+could watch the sea; he with his books, while she bent over her work,
+and the shaded lamp made her sweet face more fair. They would talk over
+the growing child, and when she turned her eyes to his there was in
+them the light of love. And the fishermen and their wives who were his
+patients would come to feel a great affection for them, and they in
+their turn would enter into the pleasures and pains of those simple
+lives. But his thoughts returned to the son who would be his and hers.
+Already he felt in himself a passionate devotion to it. He thought of
+passing his hands over his little perfect limbs, he knew he would be
+beautiful; and he would make over to him all his dreams of a rich and
+varied life. And thinking over the long pilgrimage of his past he
+accepted it joyfully. He accepted the deformity which had made life so
+hard for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but now he saw
+also that by reason of it he had acquired that power of introspection
+which had given him so much delight. Without it he would never have had
+his keen appreciation of beauty, his passion for art and literature,
+and his interest in the varied spectacle of life. The ridicule and the
+contempt which had so often been heaped upon him had turned his mind
+inward and called forth those flowers which he felt would never lose
+their fragrance. Then he saw that the normal was the rarest thing in
+the world. Everyone had some defect, of body or of mind: he thought of
+all the people he had known (the whole world was like a sick-house, and
+there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long procession, deformed
+in body and warped in mind, some with illness of the flesh, weak hearts
+or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit, languor of will, or
+a craving for liquor. At this moment he could feel a holy compassion
+for them all. They were the helpless instruments of blind chance. He
+could pardon Griffiths for his treachery and Mildred for the pain she
+had caused him. They could not help themselves. The only reasonable
+thing was to accept the good of men and be patient with their faults.
+The words of the dying God crossed his memory:
+
+Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
+
+
+
+
+CXXII
+
+
+He had arranged to meet Sally on Saturday in the National Gallery. She
+was to come there as soon as she was released from the shop and had
+agreed to lunch with him. Two days had passed since he had seen her,
+and his exultation had not left him for a moment. It was because he
+rejoiced in the feeling that he had not attempted to see her. He had
+repeated to himself exactly what he would say to her and how he should
+say it. Now his impatience was unbearable. He had written to Doctor
+South and had in his pocket a telegram from him received that morning:
+“Sacking the mumpish fool. When will you come?” Philip walked along
+Parliament Street. It was a fine day, and there was a bright, frosty
+sun which made the light dance in the street. It was crowded. There was
+a tenuous mist in the distance, and it softened exquisitely the noble
+lines of the buildings. He crossed Trafalgar Square. Suddenly his heart
+gave a sort of twist in his body; he saw a woman in front of him who he
+thought was Mildred. She had the same figure, and she walked with that
+slight dragging of the feet which was so characteristic of her. Without
+thinking, but with a beating heart, he hurried till he came alongside,
+and then, when the woman turned, he saw it was someone unknown to him.
+It was the face of a much older person, with a lined, yellow skin. He
+slackened his pace. He was infinitely relieved, but it was not only
+relief that he felt; it was disappointment too; he was seized with
+horror of himself. Would he never be free from that passion? At the
+bottom of his heart, notwithstanding everything, he felt that a
+strange, desperate thirst for that vile woman would always linger. That
+love had caused him so much suffering that he knew he would never,
+never quite be free of it. Only death could finally assuage his desire.
+
+But he wrenched the pang from his heart. He thought of Sally, with her
+kind blue eyes; and his lips unconsciously formed themselves into a
+smile. He walked up the steps of the National Gallery and sat down in
+the first room, so that he should see her the moment she came in. It
+always comforted him to get among pictures. He looked at none in
+particular, but allowed the magnificence of their colour, the beauty of
+their lines, to work upon his soul. His imagination was busy with
+Sally. It would be pleasant to take her away from that London in which
+she seemed an unusual figure, like a cornflower in a shop among orchids
+and azaleas; he had learned in the Kentish hop-field that she did not
+belong to the town; and he was sure that she would blossom under the
+soft skies of Dorset to a rarer beauty. She came in, and he got up to
+meet her. She was in black, with white cuffs at her wrists and a lawn
+collar round her neck. They shook hands.
+
+“Have you been waiting long?”
+
+“No. Ten minutes. Are you hungry?”
+
+“Not very.”
+
+“Let’s sit here for a bit, shall we?”
+
+“If you like.”
+
+They sat quietly, side by side, without speaking. Philip enjoyed having
+her near him. He was warmed by her radiant health. A glow of life
+seemed like an aureole to shine about her.
+
+“Well, how have you been?” he said at last, with a little smile.
+
+“Oh, it’s all right. It was a false alarm.”
+
+“Was it?”
+
+“Aren’t you glad?”
+
+An extraordinary sensation filled him. He had felt certain that Sally’s
+suspicion was well-founded; it had never occurred to him for an instant
+that there was a possibility of error. All his plans were suddenly
+overthrown, and the existence, so elaborately pictured, was no more
+than a dream which would never be realised. He was free once more.
+Free! He need give up none of his projects, and life still was in his
+hands for him to do what he liked with. He felt no exhilaration, but
+only dismay. His heart sank. The future stretched out before him in
+desolate emptiness. It was as though he had sailed for many years over
+a great waste of waters, with peril and privation, and at last had come
+upon a fair haven, but as he was about to enter, some contrary wind had
+arisen and drove him out again into the open sea; and because he had
+let his mind dwell on these soft meads and pleasant woods of the land,
+the vast deserts of the ocean filled him with anguish. He could not
+confront again the loneliness and the tempest. Sally looked at him with
+her clear eyes.
+
+“Aren’t you glad?” she asked again. “I thought you’d be as pleased as
+Punch.”
+
+He met her gaze haggardly. “I’m not sure,” he muttered.
+
+“You are funny. Most men would.”
+
+He realised that he had deceived himself; it was no self-sacrifice that
+had driven him to think of marrying, but the desire for a wife and a
+home and love; and now that it all seemed to slip through his fingers
+he was seized with despair. He wanted all that more than anything in
+the world. What did he care for Spain and its cities, Cordova, Toledo,
+Leon; what to him were the pagodas of Burmah and the lagoons of South
+Sea Islands? America was here and now. It seemed to him that all his
+life he had followed the ideals that other people, by their words or
+their writings, had instilled into him, and never the desires of his
+own heart. Always his course had been swayed by what he thought he
+should do and never by what he wanted with his whole soul to do. He put
+all that aside now with a gesture of impatience. He had lived always in
+the future, and the present always, always had slipped through his
+fingers. His ideals? He thought of his desire to make a design,
+intricate and beautiful, out of the myriad, meaningless facts of life:
+had he not seen also that the simplest pattern, that in which a man was
+born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most
+perfect? It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept
+defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.
+
+He glanced quickly at Sally, he wondered what she was thinking, and
+then looked away again.
+
+“I was going to ask you to marry me,” he said.
+
+“I thought p’raps you might, but I shouldn’t have liked to stand in
+your way.”
+
+“You wouldn’t have done that.”
+
+“How about your travels, Spain and all that?”
+
+“How d’you know I want to travel?”
+
+“I ought to know something about it. I’ve heard you and Dad talk about
+it till you were blue in the face.”
+
+“I don’t care a damn about all that.” He paused for an instant and then
+spoke in a low, hoarse whisper. “I don’t want to leave you! I can’t
+leave you.”
+
+She did not answer. He could not tell what she thought.
+
+“I wonder if you’ll marry me, Sally.”
+
+She did not move and there was no flicker of emotion on her face, but
+she did not look at him when she answered.
+
+“If you like.”
+
+“Don’t you want to?”
+
+“Oh, of course I’d like to have a house of my own, and it’s about time
+I was settling down.”
+
+He smiled a little. He knew her pretty well by now, and her manner did
+not surprise him.
+
+“But don’t you want to marry ME?”
+
+“There’s no one else I would marry.”
+
+“Then that settles it.”
+
+“Mother and Dad will be surprised, won’t they?”
+
+“I’m so happy.”
+
+“I want my lunch,” she said.
+
+“Dear!”
+
+He smiled and took her hand and pressed it. They got up and walked out
+of the gallery. They stood for a moment at the balustrade and looked at
+Trafalgar Square. Cabs and omnibuses hurried to and fro, and crowds
+passed, hastening in every direction, and the sun was shining.
+
+
+
+
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