Of Human Bondage
“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