Of Human Bondage
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