Of Human Bondage
be with her, amused and interested by her conversation. She restored
his belief in himself and put healing ointments, as it were, on all the
bruises of his soul. He was immensely flattered that she cared for him.
He admired her courage, her optimism, her impudent defiance of fate;
she had a little philosophy of her own, ingenuous and practical.
“You know, I don’t believe in churches and parsons and all that,” she
said, “but I believe in God, and I don’t believe He minds much about
what you do as long as you keep your end up and help a lame dog over a
stile when you can. And I think people on the whole are very nice, and
I’m sorry for those who aren’t.”
“And what about afterwards?” asked Philip.
“Oh, well, I don’t know for certain, you know,” she smiled, “but I hope
for the best. And anyhow there’ll be no rent to pay and no novelettes
to write.”
She had a feminine gift for delicate flattery. She thought that Philip
did a brave thing when he left Paris because he was conscious he could
not be a great artist; and he was enchanted when she expressed
enthusiastic admiration for him. He had never been quite certain
whether this action indicated courage or infirmity of purpose. It was
delightful to realise that she considered it heroic. She ventured to
tackle him on a subject which his friends instinctively avoided.
“It’s very silly of you to be so sensitive about your club-foot,” she
said. She saw him blush darkly, but went on. “You know, people don’t
think about it nearly as much as you do. They notice it the first time
they see you, and then they forget about it.”
He would not answer.
“You’re not angry with me, are you?”
“No.”
She put her arm round his neck.
“You know, I only speak about it because I love you. I don’t want it to
make you unhappy.”
“I think you can say anything you choose to me,” he answered, smiling.
“I wish I could do something to show you how grateful I am to you.”
She took him in hand in other ways. She would not let him be bearish
and laughed at him when he was out of temper. She made him more urbane.
“You can make me do anything you like,” he said to her once.
“D’you mind?”
“No, I want to do what you like.”
He had the sense to realise his happiness. It seemed to him that she
gave him all that a wife could, and he preserved his freedom; she was
the most charming friend he had ever had, with a sympathy that he had
never found in a man. The sexual relationship was no more than the
strongest link in their friendship. It completed it, but was not
essential. And because Philip’s appetites were satisfied, he became
more equable and easier to live with. He felt in complete possession of
himself. He thought sometimes of the winter, during which he had been
obsessed by a hideous passion, and he was filled with loathing for
Mildred and with horror of himself.
His examinations were approaching, and Norah was as interested in them
as he. He was flattered and touched by her eagerness. She made him
promise to come at once and tell her the results. He passed the three
parts this time without mishap, and when he went to tell her she burst
into tears.
“Oh, I’m so glad, I was so anxious.”
“You silly little thing,” he laughed, but he was choking.
No one could help being pleased with the way she took it.
“And what are you going to do now?” she asked.
“I can take a holiday with a clear conscience. I have no work to do
till the winter session begins in October.”
“I suppose you’ll go down to your uncle’s at Blackstable?”
“You suppose quite wrong. I’m going to stay in London and play with
you.”
“I’d rather you went away.”
“Why? Are you tired of me?”
She laughed and put her hands on his shoulders.
“Because you’ve been working hard, and you look utterly washed out. You
want some fresh air and a rest. Please go.”
He did not answer for a moment. He looked at her with loving eyes.
“You know, I’d never believe it of anyone but you. You’re only thinking
of my good. I wonder what you see in me.”
“Will you give me a good character with my month’s notice?” she laughed
gaily.
“I’ll say that you’re thoughtful and kind, and you’re not exacting; you
never worry, you’re not troublesome, and you’re easy to please.”
“All that’s nonsense,” she said, “but I’ll tell you one thing: I’m one
of the few persons I ever met who are able to learn from experience.”
LXVII
Philip looked forward to his return to London with impatience. During
the two months he spent at Blackstable Norah wrote to him frequently,
long letters in a bold, large hand, in which with cheerful humour she
described the little events of the daily round, the domestic troubles
of her landlady, rich food for laughter, the comic vexations of her
rehearsals—she was walking on in an important spectacle at one of the
London theatres—and her odd adventures with the publishers of
novelettes. Philip read a great deal, bathed, played tennis, and
sailed. At the beginning of October he settled down in London to work
for the Second Conjoint examination. He was eager to pass it, since
that ended the drudgery of the curriculum; after it was done with the
student became an out-patients’ clerk, and was brought in contact with
men and women as well as with text-books. Philip saw Norah every day.
Lawson had been spending the summer at Poole, and had a number of
sketches to show of the harbour and of the beach. He had a couple of
commissions for portraits and proposed to stay in London till the bad
light drove him away. Hayward, in London too, intended to spend the
winter abroad, but remained week after week from sheer inability to
make up his mind to go. Hayward had run to fat during the last two or
three years—it was five years since Philip first met him in
Heidelberg—and he was prematurely bald. He was very sensitive about it
and wore his hair long to conceal the unsightly patch on the crown of
his head. His only consolation was that his brow was now very noble.
His blue eyes had lost their colour; they had a listless droop; and his
mouth, losing the fulness of youth, was weak and pale. He still talked
vaguely of the things he was going to do in the future, but with less
conviction; and he was conscious that his friends no longer believed in
him: when he had drank two or three glasses of whiskey he was inclined
to be elegiac.
“I’m a failure,” he murmured, “I’m unfit for the brutality of the
struggle of life. All I can do is to stand aside and let the vulgar
throng hustle by in their pursuit of the good things.”
He gave you the impression that to fail was a more delicate, a more
exquisite thing, than to succeed. He insinuated that his aloofness was
due to distaste for all that was common and low. He talked beautifully
of Plato.
“I should have thought you’d got through with Plato by now,” said
Philip impatiently.
“Would you?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
He was not inclined to pursue the subject. He had discovered of late
the effective dignity of silence.
“I don’t see the use of reading the same thing over and over again,”
said Philip. “That’s only a laborious form of idleness.”
“But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind that
you can understand the most profound writer at a first reading?”
“I don’t want to understand him, I’m not a critic. I’m not interested
in him for his sake but for mine.”
“Why d’you read then?”
“Partly for pleasure, because it’s a habit and I’m just as
uncomfortable if I don’t read as if I don’t smoke, and partly to know
myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now
and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a
meaning for ME, and it becomes part of me; I’ve got out of the book all
that’s any use to me, and I can’t get anything more if I read it a
dozen times. You see, it seems to me, one’s like a closed bud, and most
of what one reads and does has no effect at all; but there are certain
things that have a peculiar significance for one, and they open a
petal; and the petals open one by one; and at last the flower is
there.”
Philip was not satisfied with his metaphor, but he did not know how
else to explain a thing which he felt and yet was not clear about.
“You want to do things, you want to become things,” said Hayward, with
a shrug of the shoulders. “It’s so vulgar.”
Philip knew Hayward very well by now. He was weak and vain, so vain
that you had to be on the watch constantly not to hurt his feelings; he
mingled idleness and idealism so that he could not separate them. At
Lawson’s studio one day he met a journalist, who was charmed by his
conversation, and a week later the editor of a paper wrote to suggest
that he should do some criticism for him. For forty-eight hours Hayward
lived in an agony of indecision. He had talked of getting occupation of
this sort so long that he had not the face to refuse outright, but the
thought of doing anything filled him with panic. At last he declined
the offer and breathed freely.
“It would have interfered with my work,” he told Philip.
“What work?” asked Philip brutally.
“My inner life,” he answered.
Then he went on to say beautiful things about Amiel, the professor of
Geneva, whose brilliancy promised achievement which was never
fulfilled; till at his death the reason of his failure and the excuse
were at once manifest in the minute, wonderful journal which was found
among his papers. Hayward smiled enigmatically.
But Hayward could still talk delightfully about books; his taste was
exquisite and his discrimination elegant; and he had a constant
interest in ideas, which made him an entertaining companion. They meant
nothing to him really, since they never had any effect on him; but he
treated them as he might have pieces of china in an auction-room,
handling them with pleasure in their shape and their glaze, pricing
them in his mind; and then, putting them back into their case, thought
of them no more.
And it was Hayward who made a momentous discovery. One evening, after
due preparation, he took Philip and Lawson to a tavern situated in Beak
Street, remarkable not only in itself and for its history—it had
memories of eighteenth-century glories which excited the romantic
imagination—but for its snuff, which was the best in London, and above
all for its punch. Hayward led them into a large, long room, dingily
magnificent, with huge pictures on the walls of nude women: they were
vast allegories of the school of Haydon; but smoke, gas, and the London
atmosphere had given them a richness which made them look like old
masters. The dark panelling, the massive, tarnished gold of the
cornice, the mahogany tables, gave the room an air of sumptuous
comfort, and the leather-covered seats along the wall were soft and
easy. There was a ram’s head on a table opposite the door, and this
contained the celebrated snuff. They ordered punch. They drank it. It
was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the
excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this
narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous terms, jewelled,
exotic phrases rise to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and
cleared the head; it filled the soul with well-being; it disposed the
mind at once to utter wit and to appreciate the wit of others; it had
the vagueness of music and the precision of mathematics. Only one of
its qualities was comparable to anything else: it had the warmth of a
good heart; but its taste, its smell, its feel, were not to be
described in words. Charles Lamb, with his infinite tact, attempting
to, might have drawn charming pictures of the life of his day; Lord
Byron in a stanza of Don Juan, aiming at the impossible, might have
achieved the sublime; Oscar Wilde, heaping jewels of Ispahan upon