Of Human Bondage
He hesitated a moment, for he had an instinct that he could say
something that would move her. It made him feel almost sick to utter
the words.
“It is cruel, I have so much to put up with. You don’t know what it is
to be a cripple. Of course you don’t like me. I can’t expect you to.”
“Philip, I didn’t mean that,” she answered quickly, with a sudden break
of pity in her voice. “You know it’s not true.”
He was beginning to act now, and his voice was husky and low.
“Oh, I’ve felt it,” he said.
She took his hand and looked at him, and her own eyes were filled with
tears.
“I promise you it never made any difference to me. I never thought
about it after the first day or two.”
He kept a gloomy, tragic silence. He wanted her to think he was
overcome with emotion.
“You know I like you awfully, Philip. Only you are so trying sometimes.
Let’s make it up.”
She put up her lips to his, and with a sigh of relief he kissed her.
“Now are you happy again?” she asked.
“Madly.”
She bade him good-night and hurried down the road. Next day he took her
in a little watch with a brooch to pin on her dress. She had been
hankering for it.
But three or four days later, when she brought him his tea, Mildred
said to him:
“You remember what you promised the other night? You mean to keep that,
don’t you?”
“Yes.”
He knew exactly what she meant and was prepared for her next words.
“Because I’m going out with that gentleman I told you about tonight.”
“All right. I hope you’ll enjoy yourself.”
“You don’t mind, do you?”
He had himself now under excellent control.
“I don’t like it,” he smiled, “but I’m not going to make myself more
disagreeable than I can help.”
She was excited over the outing and talked about it willingly. Philip
wondered whether she did so in order to pain him or merely because she
was callous. He was in the habit of condoning her cruelty by the
thought of her stupidity. She had not the brains to see when she was
wounding him.
“It’s not much fun to be in love with a girl who has no imagination and
no sense of humour,” he thought, as he listened.
But the want of these things excused her. He felt that if he had not
realised this he could never forgive her for the pain she caused him.
“He’s got seats for the Tivoli,” she said. “He gave me my choice and I
chose that. And we’re going to dine at the Cafe Royal. He says it’s the
most expensive place in London.”
“He’s a gentleman in every sense of the word,” thought Philip, but he
clenched his teeth to prevent himself from uttering a syllable.
Philip went to the Tivoli and saw Mildred with her companion, a
smooth-faced young man with sleek hair and the spruce look of a
commercial traveller, sitting in the second row of the stalls. Mildred
wore a black picture hat with ostrich feathers in it, which became her
well. She was listening to her host with that quiet smile which Philip
knew; she had no vivacity of expression, and it required broad farce to
excite her laughter; but Philip could see that she was interested and
amused. He thought to himself bitterly that her companion, flashy and
jovial, exactly suited her. Her sluggish temperament made her
appreciate noisy people. Philip had a passion for discussion, but no
talent for small-talk. He admired the easy drollery of which some of
his friends were masters, Lawson for instance, and his sense of
inferiority made him shy and awkward. The things which interested him
bored Mildred. She expected men to talk about football and racing, and
he knew nothing of either. He did not know the catchwords which only
need be said to excite a laugh.
Printed matter had always been a fetish to Philip, and now, in order to
make himself more interesting, he read industriously The Sporting
Times.
LXII
Philip did not surrender himself willingly to the passion that consumed
him. He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it
must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager
longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful
existence on his life’s blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely
that he could take pleasure in nothing else. He had been used to
delight in the grace of St. James’ Park, and often he sat and looked at
the branches of a tree silhouetted against the sky, it was like a
Japanese print; and he found a continual magic in the beautiful Thames
with its barges and its wharfs; the changing sky of London had filled
his soul with pleasant fancies. But now beauty meant nothing to him. He
was bored and restless when he was not with Mildred. Sometimes he
thought he would console his sorrow by looking at pictures, but he
walked through the National Gallery like a sight-seer; and no picture
called up in him a thrill of emotion. He wondered if he could ever care
again for all the things he had loved. He had been devoted to reading,
but now books were meaningless; and he spent his spare hours in the
smoking-room of the hospital club, turning over innumerable
periodicals. This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the
subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for
freedom.
Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped,
for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while,
as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that
he was not cured yet. Though he yearned for Mildred so madly he
despised her. He thought to himself that there could be no greater
torture in the world than at the same time to love and to contemn.
Philip, burrowing as was his habit into the state of his feelings,
discussing with himself continually his condition, came to the
conclusion that he could only cure himself of his degrading passion by
making Mildred his mistress. It was sexual hunger that he suffered
from, and if he could satisfy this he might free himself from the
intolerable chains that bound him. He knew that Mildred did not care
for him at all in that way. When he kissed her passionately she
withdrew herself from him with instinctive distaste. She had no
sensuality. Sometimes he had tried to make her jealous by talking of
adventures in Paris, but they did not interest her; once or twice he
had sat at other tables in the tea-shop and affected to flirt with the
waitress who attended them, but she was entirely indifferent. He could
see that it was no pretence on her part.
“You didn’t mind my not sitting at one of your tables this afternoon?”
he asked once, when he was walking to the station with her. “Yours
seemed to be all full.”
This was not a fact, but she did not contradict him. Even if his
desertion meant nothing to her he would have been grateful if she had
pretended it did. A reproach would have been balm to his soul.
“I think it’s silly of you to sit at the same table every day. You
ought to give the other girls a turn now and again.”
But the more he thought of it the more he was convinced that complete
surrender on her part was his only way to freedom. He was like a knight
of old, metamorphosed by magic spells, who sought the potions which
should restore him to his fair and proper form. Philip had only one
hope. Mildred greatly desired to go to Paris. To her, as to most
English people, it was the centre of gaiety and fashion: she had heard
of the Magasin du Louvre, where you could get the very latest thing for
about half the price you had to pay in London; a friend of hers had
passed her honeymoon in Paris and had spent all day at the Louvre; and
she and her husband, my dear, they never went to bed till six in the
morning all the time they were there; the Moulin Rouge and I don’t know
what all. Philip did not care that if she yielded to his desires it
would only be the unwilling price she paid for the gratification of her
wish. He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had
even had a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her. He had plied her with
liquor in the hope of exciting her, but she had no taste for wine; and
though she liked him to order champagne because it looked well, she
never drank more than half a glass. She liked to leave untouched a
large glass filled to the brim.
“It shows the waiters who you are,” she said.
Philip chose an opportunity when she seemed more than usually friendly.
He had an examination in anatomy at the end of March. Easter, which
came a week later, would give Mildred three whole days holiday.
“I say, why don’t you come over to Paris then?” he suggested. “We’d
have such a ripping time.”
“How could you? It would cost no end of money.”
Philip had thought of that. It would cost at least five-and-twenty
pounds. It was a large sum to him. He was willing to spend his last
penny on her.
“What does that matter? Say you’ll come, darling.”
“What next, I should like to know. I can’t see myself going away with a
man that I wasn’t married to. You oughtn’t to suggest such a thing.”
“What does it matter?”
He enlarged on the glories of the Rue de la Paix and the garish
splendour of the Folies Bergeres. He described the Louvre and the Bon
Marche. He told her about the Cabaret du Neant, the Abbaye, and the
various haunts to which foreigners go. He painted in glowing colours
the side of Paris which he despised. He pressed her to come with him.
“You know, you say you love me, but if you really loved me you’d want
to marry me. You’ve never asked me to marry you.”
“You know I can’t afford it. After all, I’m in my first year, I shan’t
earn a penny for six years.”
“Oh, I’m not blaming you. I wouldn’t marry you if you went down on your
bended knees to me.”
He had thought of marriage more than once, but it was a step from which
he shrank. In Paris he had come by the opinion that marriage was a
ridiculous institution of the philistines. He knew also that a
permanent tie would ruin him. He had middle-class instincts, and it
seemed a dreadful thing to him to marry a waitress. A common wife would
prevent him from getting a decent practice. Besides, he had only just
enough money to last him till he was qualified; he could not keep a
wife even if they arranged not to have children. He thought of Cronshaw
bound to a vulgar slattern, and he shuddered with dismay. He foresaw
what Mildred, with her genteel ideas and her mean mind, would become:
it was impossible for him to marry her. But he decided only with his
reason; he felt that he must have her whatever happened; and if he
could not get her without marrying her he would do that; the future
could look after itself. It might end in disaster; he did not care.
When he got hold of an idea it obsessed him, he could think of nothing
else, and he had a more than common power to persuade himself of the
reasonableness of what he wished to do. He found himself overthrowing
all the sensible arguments which had occurred to him against marriage.
Each day he found that he was more passionately devoted to her; and his
unsatisfied love became angry and resentful.
“By George, if I marry her I’ll make her pay for all the suffering I’ve
endured,” he said to himself.
At last he could bear the agony no longer. After dinner one evening in
the little restaurant in Soho, to which now they often went, he spoke
to her.
“I say, did you mean it the other day that you wouldn’t marry me if I
asked you?”
“Yes, why not?”
“Because I can’t live without you. I want you with me always. I’ve
tried to get over it and I can’t. I never shall now. I want you to
marry me.”
She had read too many novelettes not to know how to take such an offer.
“I’m sure I’m very grateful to you, Philip. I’m very much flattered at
your proposal.”
“Oh, don’t talk rot. You will marry me, won’t you?”
“D’you think we should be happy?”