Of Human Bondage
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