Of Human Bondage
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