Of Human Bondage
for a coat of tar.”
“If you feel happy and comfortable I don’t mind a bit about the
expense,” said Philip.
She accepted all that Philip did for her as if it were the most natural
thing in the world, and on his side he loved to spend money on her:
each five-pound note he gave her caused him a little thrill of
happiness and pride; he gave her a good many, for she was not
economical.
“I don’t know where the money goes to,” she said herself, “it seems to
slip through my fingers like water.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Philip. “I’m so glad to be able to do
anything I can for you.”
She could not sew well and so did not make the necessary things for the
baby; she told Philip it was much cheaper in the end to buy them.
Philip had lately sold one of the mortgages in which his money had been
put; and now, with five hundred pounds in the bank waiting to be
invested in something that could be more easily realised, he felt
himself uncommonly well-to-do. They talked often of the future. Philip
was anxious that Mildred should keep the child with her, but she
refused: she had her living to earn, and it would be more easy to do
this if she had not also to look after a baby. Her plan was to get back
into one of the shops of the company for which she had worked before,
and the child could be put with some decent woman in the country.
“I can find someone who’ll look after it well for seven and sixpence a
week. It’ll be better for the baby and better for me.”
It seemed callous to Philip, but when he tried to reason with her she
pretended to think he was concerned with the expense.
“You needn’t worry about that,” she said. “I shan’t ask YOU to pay for
it.”
“You know I don’t care how much I pay.”
At the bottom of her heart was the hope that the child would be
still-born. She did no more than hint it, but Philip saw that the
thought was there. He was shocked at first; and then, reasoning with
himself, he was obliged to confess that for all concerned such an event
was to be desired.
“It’s all very fine to say this and that,” Mildred remarked
querulously, “but it’s jolly difficult for a girl to earn her living by
herself; it doesn’t make it any easier when she’s got a baby.”
“Fortunately you’ve got me to fall back on,” smiled Philip, taking her
hand.
“You’ve been good to me, Philip.”
“Oh, what rot!”
“You can’t say I didn’t offer anything in return for what you’ve done.”
“Good heavens, I don’t want a return. If I’ve done anything for you,
I’ve done it because I love you. You owe me nothing. I don’t want you
to do anything unless you love me.”
He was a little horrified by her feeling that her body was a commodity
which she could deliver indifferently as an acknowledgment for services
rendered.
“But I do want to, Philip. You’ve been so good to me.”
“Well, it won’t hurt for waiting. When you’re all right again we’ll go
for our little honeymoon.”
“You are naughty,” she said, smiling.
Mildred expected to be confined early in March, and as soon as she was
well enough she was to go to the seaside for a fortnight: that would
give Philip a chance to work without interruption for his examination;
after that came the Easter holidays, and they had arranged to go to
Paris together. Philip talked endlessly of the things they would do.
Paris was delightful then. They would take a room in a little hotel he
knew in the Latin Quarter, and they would eat in all sorts of charming
little restaurants; they would go to the play, and he would take her to
music halls. It would amuse her to meet his friends. He had talked to
her about Cronshaw, she would see him; and there was Lawson, he had
gone to Paris for a couple of months; and they would go to the Bal
Bullier; there were excursions; they would make trips to Versailles,
Chartres, Fontainebleau.
“It’ll cost a lot of money,” she said.
“Oh, damn the expense. Think how I’ve been looking forward to it. Don’t
you know what it means to me? I’ve never loved anyone but you. I never
shall.”
She listened to his enthusiasm with smiling eyes. He thought he saw in
them a new tenderness, and he was grateful to her. She was much gentler
than she used to be. There was in her no longer the superciliousness
which had irritated him. She was so accustomed to him now that she took
no pains to keep up before him any pretences. She no longer troubled to
do her hair with the old elaboration, but just tied it in a knot; and
she left off the vast fringe which she generally wore: the more
careless style suited her. Her face was so thin that it made her eyes
seem very large; there were heavy lines under them, and the pallor of
her cheeks made their colour more profound. She had a wistful look
which was infinitely pathetic. There seemed to Philip to be in her
something of the Madonna. He wished they could continue in that same
way always. He was happier than he had ever been in his life.
He used to leave her at ten o’clock every night, for she liked to go to
bed early, and he was obliged to put in another couple of hours’ work
to make up for the lost evening. He generally brushed her hair for her
before he went. He had made a ritual of the kisses he gave her when he
bade her good-night; first he kissed the palms of her hands (how thin
the fingers were, the nails were beautiful, for she spent much time in
manicuring them,) then he kissed her closed eyes, first the right one
and then the left, and at last he kissed her lips. He went home with a
heart overflowing with love. He longed for an opportunity to gratify
the desire for self-sacrifice which consumed him.
Presently the time came for her to move to the nursing-home where she
was to be confined. Philip was then able to visit her only in the
afternoons. Mildred changed her story and represented herself as the
wife of a soldier who had gone to India to join his regiment, and
Philip was introduced to the mistress of the establishment as her
brother-in-law.
“I have to be rather careful what I say,” she told him, “as there’s
another lady here whose husband’s in the Indian Civil.”
“I wouldn’t let that disturb me if I were you,” said Philip. “I’m
convinced that her husband and yours went out on the same boat.”
“What boat?” she asked innocently.
“The Flying Dutchman.”
Mildred was safely delivered of a daughter, and when Philip was allowed
to see her the child was lying by her side. Mildred was very weak, but
relieved that everything was over. She showed him the baby, and herself
looked at it curiously.
“It’s a funny-looking little thing, isn’t it? I can’t believe it’s
mine.”
It was red and wrinkled and odd. Philip smiled when he looked at it. He
did not quite know what to say; and it embarrassed him because the
nurse who owned the house was standing by his side; and he felt by the
way she was looking at him that, disbelieving Mildred’s complicated
story, she thought he was the father.
“What are you going to call her?” asked Philip.
“I can’t make up my mind if I shall call her Madeleine or Cecilia.”
The nurse left them alone for a few minutes, and Philip bent down and
kissed Mildred on the mouth.
“I’m so glad it’s all over happily, darling.”
She put her thin arms round his neck.
“You have been a brick to me, Phil dear.”
“Now I feel that you’re mine at last. I’ve waited so long for you, my
dear.”
They heard the nurse at the door, and Philip hurriedly got up. The
nurse entered. There was a slight smile on her lips.
LXXIII
Three weeks later Philip saw Mildred and her baby off to Brighton. She
had made a quick recovery and looked better than he had ever seen her.
She was going to a boarding-house where she had spent a couple of
weekends with Emil Miller, and had written to say that her husband was
obliged to go to Germany on business and she was coming down with her
baby. She got pleasure out of the stories she invented, and she showed
a certain fertility of invention in the working out of the details.
Mildred proposed to find in Brighton some woman who would be willing to
take charge of the baby. Philip was startled at the callousness with
which she insisted on getting rid of it so soon, but she argued with
common sense that the poor child had much better be put somewhere
before it grew used to her. Philip had expected the maternal instinct
to make itself felt when she had had the baby two or three weeks and
had counted on this to help him persuade her to keep it; but nothing of
the sort occurred. Mildred was not unkind to her baby; she did all that
was necessary; it amused her sometimes, and she talked about it a good
deal; but at heart she was indifferent to it. She could not look upon
it as part of herself. She fancied it resembled its father already. She
was continually wondering how she would manage when it grew older; and
she was exasperated with herself for being such a fool as to have it at
all.
“If I’d only known then all I do now,” she said.
She laughed at Philip, because he was anxious about its welfare.
“You couldn’t make more fuss if you was the father,” she said. “I’d
like to see Emil getting into such a stew about it.”
Philip’s mind was full of the stories he had heard of baby-farming and
the ghouls who ill-treat the wretched children that selfish, cruel
parents have put in their charge.
“Don’t be so silly,” said Mildred. “That’s when you give a woman a sum
down to look after a baby. But when you’re going to pay so much a week
it’s to their interest to look after it well.”
Philip insisted that Mildred should place the child with people who had
no children of their own and would promise to take no other.
“Don’t haggle about the price,” he said. “I’d rather pay half a guinea
a week than run any risk of the kid being starved or beaten.”
“You’re a funny old thing, Philip,” she laughed.
To him there was something very touching in the child’s helplessness.
It was small, ugly, and querulous. Its birth had been looked forward to
with shame and anguish. Nobody wanted it. It was dependent on him, a
stranger, for food, shelter, and clothes to cover its nakedness.
As the train started he kissed Mildred. He would have kissed the baby
too, but he was afraid she would laugh at him.
“You will write to me, darling, won’t you? And I shall look forward to
your coming back with oh! such impatience.”
“Mind you get through your exam.”
He had been working for it industriously, and now with only ten days
before him he made a final effort. He was very anxious to pass, first
to save himself time and expense, for money had been slipping through
his fingers during the last four months with incredible speed; and then
because this examination marked the end of the drudgery: after that the
student had to do with medicine, midwifery, and surgery, the interest
of which was more vivid than the anatomy and physiology with which he
had been hitherto concerned. Philip looked forward with interest to the
rest of the curriculum. Nor did he want to have to confess to Mildred
that he had failed: though the examination was difficult and the
majority of candidates were ploughed at the first attempt, he knew that
she would think less well of him if he did not succeed; she had a
peculiarly humiliating way of showing what she thought.
Mildred sent him a postcard to announce her safe arrival, and he
snatched half an hour every day to write a long letter to her. He had
always a certain shyness in expressing himself by word of mouth, but he
found he could tell her, pen in hand, all sorts of things which it
would have made him feel ridiculous to say. Profiting by the discovery
he poured out to her his whole heart. He had never been able to tell
her before how his adoration filled every part of him so that all his