Of Human Bondage
“Then I’ll lay for her,” said Sally.
She came back again in a moment with a tray on which were a cottage
loaf, a slab of butter, and a jar of strawberry jam. While she placed
the things on the table her father chaffed her. He said it was quite
time she was walking out; he told Philip that she was very proud, and
would have nothing to do with aspirants to that honour who lined up at
the door, two by two, outside the Sunday school and craved the honour
of escorting her home.
“You do talk, father,” said Sally, with her slow, good-natured smile.
“You wouldn’t think to look at her that a tailor’s assistant has
enlisted in the army because she would not say how d’you do to him and
an electrical engineer, an electrical engineer, mind you, has taken to
drink because she refused to share her hymn-book with him in church. I
shudder to think what will happen when she puts her hair up.”
“Mother’ll bring the tea along herself,” said Sally.
“Sally never pays any attention to me,” laughed Athelny, looking at her
with fond, proud eyes. “She goes about her business indifferent to
wars, revolutions, and cataclysms. What a wife she’ll make to an honest
man!”
Mrs. Athelny brought in the tea. She sat down and proceeded to cut
bread and butter. It amused Philip to see that she treated her husband
as though he were a child. She spread jam for him and cut up the bread
and butter into convenient slices for him to eat. She had taken off her
hat; and in her Sunday dress, which seemed a little tight for her, she
looked like one of the farmers’ wives whom Philip used to call on
sometimes with his uncle when he was a small boy. Then he knew why the
sound of her voice was familiar to him. She spoke just like the people
round Blackstable.
“What part of the country d’you come from?” he asked her.
“I’m a Kentish woman. I come from Ferne.”
“I thought as much. My uncle’s Vicar of Blackstable.”
“That’s a funny thing now,” she said. “I was wondering in Church just
now whether you was any connection of Mr. Carey. Many’s the time I’ve
seen ’im. A cousin of mine married Mr. Barker of Roxley Farm, over by
Blackstable Church, and I used to go and stay there often when I was a
girl. Isn’t that a funny thing now?”
She looked at him with a new interest, and a brightness came into her
faded eyes. She asked him whether he knew Ferne. It was a pretty
village about ten miles across country from Blackstable, and the Vicar
had come over sometimes to Blackstable for the harvest thanksgiving.
She mentioned names of various farmers in the neighbourhood. She was
delighted to talk again of the country in which her youth was spent,
and it was a pleasure to her to recall scenes and people that had
remained in her memory with the tenacity peculiar to her class. It gave
Philip a queer sensation too. A breath of the country-side seemed to be
wafted into that panelled room in the middle of London. He seemed to
see the fat Kentish fields with their stately elms; and his nostrils
dilated with the scent of the air; it is laden with the salt of the
North Sea, and that makes it keen and sharp.
Philip did not leave the Athelnys’ till ten o’clock. The children came
in to say good-night at eight and quite naturally put up their faces
for Philip to kiss. His heart went out to them. Sally only held out her
hand.
“Sally never kisses gentlemen till she’s seen them twice,” said her
father.
“You must ask me again then,” said Philip.
“You mustn’t take any notice of what father says,” remarked Sally, with
a smile.
“She’s a most self-possessed young woman,” added her parent.
They had supper of bread and cheese and beer, while Mrs. Athelny was
putting the children to bed; and when Philip went into the kitchen to
bid her good-night (she had been sitting there, resting herself and
reading The Weekly Despatch) she invited him cordially to come again.
“There’s always a good dinner on Sundays so long as Athelny’s in work,”
she said, “and it’s a charity to come and talk to him.”
On the following Saturday Philip received a postcard from Athelny
saying that they were expecting him to dinner next day; but fearing
their means were not such that Mr. Athelny would desire him to accept,
Philip wrote back that he would only come to tea. He bought a large
plum cake so that his entertainment should cost nothing. He found the
whole family glad to see him, and the cake completed his conquest of
the children. He insisted that they should all have tea together in the
kitchen, and the meal was noisy and hilarious.
Soon Philip got into the habit of going to Athelny’s every Sunday. He
became a great favourite with the children, because he was simple and
unaffected and because it was so plain that he was fond of them. As
soon as they heard his ring at the door one of them popped a head out
of window to make sure it was he, and then they all rushed downstairs
tumultuously to let him in. They flung themselves into his arms. At tea
they fought for the privilege of sitting next to him. Soon they began
to call him Uncle Philip.
Athelny was very communicative, and little by little Philip learned the
various stages of his life. He had followed many occupations, and it
occurred to Philip that he managed to make a mess of everything he
attempted. He had been on a tea plantation in Ceylon and a traveller in
America for Italian wines; his secretaryship of the water company in
Toledo had lasted longer than any of his employments; he had been a
journalist and for some time had worked as police-court reporter for an
evening paper; he had been sub-editor of a paper in the Midlands and
editor of another on the Riviera. From all his occupations he had
gathered amusing anecdotes, which he told with a keen pleasure in his
own powers of entertainment. He had read a great deal, chiefly
delighting in books which were unusual; and he poured forth his stores
of abstruse knowledge with child-like enjoyment of the amazement of his
hearers. Three or four years before abject poverty had driven him to
take the job of press-representative to a large firm of drapers; and
though he felt the work unworthy his abilities, which he rated highly,
the firmness of his wife and the needs of his family had made him stick
to it.
XC
When he left the Athelnys’ Philip walked down Chancery Lane and along
the Strand to get a ’bus at the top of Parliament Street. One Sunday,
when he had known them about six weeks, he did this as usual, but he
found the Kennington ’bus full. It was June, but it had rained during
the day and the night was raw and cold. He walked up to Piccadilly
Circus in order to get a seat; the ’bus waited at the fountain, and
when it arrived there seldom had more than two or three people in it.
This service ran every quarter of an hour, and he had some time to
wait. He looked idly at the crowd. The public-houses were closing, and
there were many people about. His mind was busy with the ideas Athelny
had the charming gift of suggesting.
Suddenly his heart stood still. He saw Mildred. He had not thought of
her for weeks. She was crossing over from the corner of Shaftesbury
Avenue and stopped at the shelter till a string of cabs passed by. She
was watching her opportunity and had no eyes for anything else. She
wore a large black straw hat with a mass of feathers on it and a black
silk dress; at that time it was fashionable for women to wear trains;
the road was clear, and Mildred crossed, her skirt trailing on the
ground, and walked down Piccadilly. Philip, his heart beating
excitedly, followed her. He did not wish to speak to her, but he
wondered where she was going at that hour; he wanted to get a look at
her face. She walked slowly along and turned down Air Street and so got
through into Regent Street. She walked up again towards the Circus.
Philip was puzzled. He could not make out what she was doing. Perhaps
she was waiting for somebody, and he felt a great curiosity to know who
it was. She overtook a short man in a bowler hat, who was strolling
very slowly in the same direction as herself; she gave him a sidelong
glance as she passed. She walked a few steps more till she came to Swan
and Edgar’s, then stopped and waited, facing the road. When the man
came up she smiled. The man stared at her for a moment, turned away his
head, and sauntered on. Then Philip understood.
He was overwhelmed with horror. For a moment he felt such a weakness in
his legs that he could hardly stand; then he walked after her quickly;
he touched her on the arm.
“Mildred.”
She turned round with a violent start. He thought that she reddened,
but in the obscurity he could not see very well. For a while they stood
and looked at one another without speaking. At last she said:
“Fancy seeing you!”
He did not know what to answer; he was horribly shaken; and the phrases
that chased one another through his brain seemed incredibly
melodramatic.
“It’s awful,” he gasped, almost to himself.
She did not say anything more, she turned away from him, and looked
down at the pavement. He felt that his face was distorted with misery.
“Isn’t there anywhere we can go and talk?”
“I don’t want to talk,” she said sullenly. “Leave me alone, can’t you?”
The thought struck him that perhaps she was in urgent need of money and
could not afford to go away at that hour.
“I’ve got a couple of sovereigns on me if you’re hard up,” he blurted
out.
“I don’t know what you mean. I was just walking along here on my way
back to my lodgings. I expected to meet one of the girls from where I
work.”
“For God’s sake don’t lie now,” he said.
Then he saw that she was crying, and he repeated his question.
“Can’t we go and talk somewhere? Can’t I come back to your rooms?”
“No, you can’t do that,” she sobbed. “I’m not allowed to take gentlemen
in there. If you like I’ll meet you tomorrow.”
He felt certain that she would not keep an appointment. He was not
going to let her go.
“No. You must take me somewhere now.”
“Well, there is a room I know, but they’ll charge six shillings for
it.”
“I don’t mind that. Where is it?”
She gave him the address, and he called a cab. They drove to a shabby
street beyond the British Museum in the neighbourhood of the Gray’s Inn
Road, and she stopped the cab at the corner.
“They don’t like you to drive up to the door,” she said.
They were the first words either of them had spoken since getting into
the cab. They walked a few yards and Mildred knocked three times,
sharply, at a door. Philip noticed in the fanlight a cardboard on which
was an announcement that apartments were to let. The door was opened
quietly, and an elderly, tall woman let them in. She gave Philip a
stare and then spoke to Mildred in an undertone. Mildred led Philip
along a passage to a room at the back. It was quite dark; she asked him
for a match, and lit the gas; there was no globe, and the gas flared
shrilly. Philip saw that he was in a dingy little bed-room with a suite
of furniture, painted to look like pine much too large for it; the lace
curtains were very dirty; the grate was hidden by a large paper fan.
Mildred sank on the chair which stood by the side of the chimney-piece.
Philip sat on the edge of the bed. He felt ashamed. He saw now that
Mildred’s cheeks were thick with rouge, her eyebrows were blackened;
but she looked thin and ill, and the red on her cheeks exaggerated the
greenish pallor of her skin. She stared at the paper fan in a listless
fashion. Philip could not think what to say, and he had a choking in
his throat as if he were going to cry. He covered his eyes with his
hands.
“My God, it is awful,” he groaned.
“I don’t know what you’ve got to fuss about. I should have thought
you’d have been rather pleased.”