Of Human Bondage
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