Of Human Bondage
himself. He told himself that deep down in his heart was mortified
pride; his passion had begun in wounded vanity, and it was this at
bottom which caused now a great part of his wretchedness. He despised
himself as much as he despised her. Then he made plans for the future,
the same plans over and over again, interrupted by recollections of
kisses on her soft pale cheek and by the sound of her voice with its
trailing accent; he had a great deal of work to do, since in the summer
he was taking chemistry as well as the two examinations he had failed
in. He had separated himself from his friends at the hospital, but now
he wanted companionship. There was one happy occurrence: Hayward a
fortnight before had written to say that he was passing through London
and had asked him to dinner; but Philip, unwilling to be bothered, had
refused. He was coming back for the season, and Philip made up his mind
to write to him.
He was thankful when eight o’clock struck and he could get up. He was
pale and weary. But when he had bathed, dressed, and had breakfast, he
felt himself joined up again with the world at large; and his pain was
a little easier to bear. He did not feel like going to lectures that
morning, but went instead to the Army and Navy Stores to buy Mildred a
wedding-present. After much wavering he settled on a dressing-bag. It
cost twenty pounds, which was much more than he could afford, but it
was showy and vulgar: he knew she would be aware exactly how much it
cost; he got a melancholy satisfaction in choosing a gift which would
give her pleasure and at the same time indicate for himself the
contempt he had for her.
Philip had looked forward with apprehension to the day on which Mildred
was to be married; he was expecting an intolerable anguish; and it was
with relief that he got a letter from Hayward on Saturday morning to
say that he was coming up early on that very day and would fetch Philip
to help him to find rooms. Philip, anxious to be distracted, looked up
a time-table and discovered the only train Hayward was likely to come
by; he went to meet him, and the reunion of the friends was
enthusiastic. They left the luggage at the station, and set off gaily.
Hayward characteristically proposed that first of all they should go
for an hour to the National Gallery; he had not seen pictures for some
time, and he stated that it needed a glimpse to set him in tune with
life. Philip for months had had no one with whom he could talk of art
and books. Since the Paris days Hayward had immersed himself in the
modern French versifiers, and, such a plethora of poets is there in
France, he had several new geniuses to tell Philip about. They walked
through the gallery pointing out to one another their favourite
pictures; one subject led to another; they talked excitedly. The sun
was shining and the air was warm.
“Let’s go and sit in the Park,” said Hayward. “We’ll look for rooms
after luncheon.”
The spring was pleasant there. It was a day upon which one felt it good
merely to live. The young green of the trees was exquisite against the
sky; and the sky, pale and blue, was dappled with little white clouds.
At the end of the ornamental water was the gray mass of the Horse
Guards. The ordered elegance of the scene had the charm of an
eighteenth-century picture. It reminded you not of Watteau, whose
landscapes are so idyllic that they recall only the woodland glens seen
in dreams, but of the more prosaic Jean-Baptiste Pater. Philip’s heart
was filled with lightness. He realised, what he had only read before,
that art (for there was art in the manner in which he looked upon
nature) might liberate the soul from pain.
They went to an Italian restaurant for luncheon and ordered themselves
a fiaschetto of Chianti. Lingering over the meal they talked on. They
reminded one another of the people they had known at Heidelberg, they
spoke of Philip’s friends in Paris, they talked of books, pictures,
morals, life; and suddenly Philip heard a clock strike three. He
remembered that by this time Mildred was married. He felt a sort of
stitch in his heart, and for a minute or two he could not hear what
Hayward was saying. But he filled his glass with Chianti. He was
unaccustomed to alcohol and it had gone to his head. For the time at
all events he was free from care. His quick brain had lain idle for so
many months that he was intoxicated now with conversation. He was
thankful to have someone to talk to who would interest himself in the
things that interested him.
“I say don’t let’s waste this beautiful day in looking for rooms. I’ll
put you up tonight. You can look for rooms tomorrow or Monday.”
“All right. What shall we do?” answered Hayward.
“Let’s get on a penny steamboat and go down to Greenwich.”
The idea appealed to Hayward, and they jumped into a cab which took
them to Westminster Bridge. They got on the steamboat just as she was
starting. Presently Philip, a smile on his lips, spoke.
“I remember when first I went to Paris, Clutton, I think it was, gave a
long discourse on the subject that beauty is put into things by
painters and poets. They create beauty. In themselves there is nothing
to choose between the Campanile of Giotto and a factory chimney. And
then beautiful things grow rich with the emotion that they have aroused
in succeeding generations. That is why old things are more beautiful
than modern. The Ode on a Grecian Urn is more lovely now than when it
was written, because for a hundred years lovers have read it and the
sick at heart taken comfort in its lines.”
Philip left Hayward to infer what in the passing scene had suggested
these words to him, and it was a delight to know that he could safely
leave the inference. It was in sudden reaction from the life he had
been leading for so long that he was now deeply affected. The delicate
iridescence of the London air gave the softness of a pastel to the gray
stone of the buildings; and in the wharfs and storehouses there was the
severity of grace of a Japanese print. They went further down; and the
splendid channel, a symbol of the great empire, broadened, and it was
crowded with traffic; Philip thought of the painters and the poets who
had made all these things so beautiful, and his heart was filled with
gratitude. They came to the Pool of London, and who can describe its
majesty? The imagination thrills, and Heaven knows what figures people
still its broad stream, Doctor Johnson with Boswell by his side, an old
Pepys going on board a man-o’-war: the pageant of English history, and
romance, and high adventure. Philip turned to Hayward with shining
eyes.
“Dear Charles Dickens,” he murmured, smiling a little at his own
emotion.
“Aren’t you rather sorry you chucked painting?” asked Hayward.
“No.”
“I suppose you like doctoring?”
“No, I hate it, but there was nothing else to do. The drudgery of the
first two years is awful, and unfortunately I haven’t got the
scientific temperament.”
“Well, you can’t go on changing professions.”
“Oh, no. I’m going to stick to this. I think I shall like it better
when I get into the wards. I have an idea that I’m more interested in
people than in anything else in the world. And as far as I can see,
it’s the only profession in which you have your freedom. You carry your
knowledge in your head; with a box of instruments and a few drugs you
can make your living anywhere.”
“Aren’t you going to take a practice then?”
“Not for a good long time at any rate,” Philip answered. “As soon as
I’ve got through my hospital appointments I shall get a ship; I want to
go to the East—the Malay Archipelago, Siam, China, and all that sort of
thing—and then I shall take odd jobs. Something always comes along,
cholera duty in India and things like that. I want to go from place to
place. I want to see the world. The only way a poor man can do that is
by going in for the medical.”
They came to Greenwich then. The noble building of Inigo Jones faced
the river grandly.
“I say, look, that must be the place where Poor Jack dived into the mud
for pennies,” said Philip.
They wandered in the park. Ragged children were playing in it, and it
was noisy with their cries: here and there old seamen were basking in
the sun. There was an air of a hundred years ago.
“It seems a pity you wasted two years in Paris,” said Hayward.
“Waste? Look at the movement of that child, look at the pattern which
the sun makes on the ground, shining through the trees, look at that
sky—why, I should never have seen that sky if I hadn’t been to Paris.”
Hayward thought that Philip choked a sob, and he looked at him with
astonishment.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry to be so damned emotional, but for six months I’ve
been starved for beauty.”
“You used to be so matter of fact. It’s very interesting to hear you
say that.”
“Damn it all, I don’t want to be interesting,” laughed Philip. “Let’s
go and have a stodgy tea.”
LXV
Hayward’s visit did Philip a great deal of good. Each day his thoughts
dwelt less on Mildred. He looked back upon the past with disgust. He
could not understand how he had submitted to the dishonour of such a
love; and when he thought of Mildred it was with angry hatred, because
she had submitted him to so much humiliation. His imagination presented
her to him now with her defects of person and manner exaggerated, so
that he shuddered at the thought of having been connected with her.
“It just shows how damned weak I am,” he said to himself. The adventure
was like a blunder that one had committed at a party so horrible that
one felt nothing could be done to excuse it: the only remedy was to
forget. His horror at the degradation he had suffered helped him. He
was like a snake casting its skin and he looked upon the old covering
with nausea. He exulted in the possession of himself once more; he
realised how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was
absorbed in that madness which they called love; he had had enough of
it; he did not want to be in love any more if love was that. Philip
told Hayward something of what he had gone through.
“Wasn’t it Sophocles,” he asked, “who prayed for the time when he would
be delivered from the wild beast of passion that devoured his
heart-strings?”
Philip seemed really to be born again. He breathed the circumambient
air as though he had never breathed it before, and he took a child’s
pleasure in all the facts of the world. He called his period of
insanity six months’ hard labour.
Hayward had only been settled in London a few days when Philip received
from Blackstable, where it had been sent, a card for a private view at
some picture gallery. He took Hayward, and, on looking at the
catalogue, saw that Lawson had a picture in it.
“I suppose he sent the card,” said Philip. “Let’s go and find him, he’s
sure to be in front of his picture.”
This, a profile of Ruth Chalice, was tucked away in a corner, and
Lawson was not far from it. He looked a little lost, in his large soft
hat and loose, pale clothes, amongst the fashionable throng that had
gathered for the private view. He greeted Philip with enthusiasm, and
with his usual volubility told him that he had come to live in London,
Ruth Chalice was a hussy, he had taken a studio, Paris was played out,
he had a commission for a portrait, and they’d better dine together and
have a good old talk. Philip reminded him of his acquaintance with
Hayward, and was entertained to see that Lawson was slightly awed by
Hayward’s elegant clothes and grand manner. They sat upon him better
than they had done in the shabby little studio which Lawson and Philip
had shared.
At dinner Lawson went on with his news. Flanagan had gone back to