Of Human Bondage
“I love you, Philip. I want to make up for all the harm I did you. I
can’t go on like this, it’s not in human nature.”
He slipped out of the chair and left her in it.
“I’m very sorry, but it’s too late.”
She gave a heart-rending sob.
“But why? How can you be so cruel?”
“I suppose it’s because I loved you too much. I wore the passion out.
The thought of anything of that sort horrifies me. I can’t look at you
now without thinking of Emil and Griffiths. One can’t help those
things, I suppose it’s just nerves.”
She seized his hand and covered it with kisses.
“Don’t,” he cried.
She sank back into the chair.
“I can’t go on like this. If you won’t love me, I’d rather go away.”
“Don’t be foolish, you haven’t anywhere to go. You can stay here as
long as you like, but it must be on the definite understanding that
we’re friends and nothing more.”
Then she dropped suddenly the vehemence of passion and gave a soft,
insinuating laugh. She sidled up to Philip and put her arms round him.
She made her voice low and wheedling.
“Don’t be such an old silly. I believe you’re nervous. You don’t know
how nice I can be.”
She put her face against his and rubbed his cheek with hers. To Philip
her smile was an abominable leer, and the suggestive glitter of her
eyes filled him with horror. He drew back instinctively.
“I won’t,” he said.
But she would not let him go. She sought his mouth with her lips. He
took her hands and tore them roughly apart and pushed her away.
“You disgust me,” he said.
“Me?”
She steadied herself with one hand on the chimney-piece. She looked at
him for an instant, and two red spots suddenly appeared on her cheeks.
She gave a shrill, angry laugh.
“I disgust YOU.”
She paused and drew in her breath sharply. Then she burst into a
furious torrent of abuse. She shouted at the top of her voice. She
called him every foul name she could think of. She used language so
obscene that Philip was astounded; she was always so anxious to be
refined, so shocked by coarseness, that it had never occurred to him
that she knew the words she used now. She came up to him and thrust her
face in his. It was distorted with passion, and in her tumultuous
speech the spittle dribbled over her lips.
“I never cared for you, not once, I was making a fool of you always,
you bored me, you bored me stiff, and I hated you, I would never have
let you touch me only for the money, and it used to make me sick when I
had to let you kiss me. We laughed at you, Griffiths and me, we laughed
because you was such a mug. A mug! A mug!”
Then she burst again into abominable invective. She accused him of
every mean fault; she said he was stingy, she said he was dull, she
said he was vain, selfish; she cast virulent ridicule on everything
upon which he was most sensitive. And at last she turned to go. She
kept on, with hysterical violence, shouting at him an opprobrious,
filthy epithet. She seized the handle of the door and flung it open.
Then she turned round and hurled at him the injury which she knew was
the only one that really touched him. She threw into the word all the
malice and all the venom of which she was capable. She flung it at him
as though it were a blow.
“Cripple!”
XCVII
Philip awoke with a start next morning, conscious that it was late, and
looking at his watch found it was nine o’clock. He jumped out of bed
and went into the kitchen to get himself some hot water to shave with.
There was no sign of Mildred, and the things which she had used for her
supper the night before still lay in the sink unwashed. He knocked at
her door.
“Wake up, Mildred. It’s awfully late.”
She did not answer, even after a second louder knocking, and he
concluded that she was sulking. He was in too great a hurry to bother
about that. He put some water on to boil and jumped into his bath which
was always poured out the night before in order to take the chill off.
He presumed that Mildred would cook his breakfast while he was dressing
and leave it in the sitting-room. She had done that two or three times
when she was out of temper. But he heard no sound of her moving, and
realised that if he wanted anything to eat he would have to get it
himself. He was irritated that she should play him such a trick on a
morning when he had over-slept himself. There was still no sign of her
when he was ready, but he heard her moving about her room. She was
evidently getting up. He made himself some tea and cut himself a couple
of pieces of bread and butter, which he ate while he was putting on his
boots, then bolted downstairs and along the street into the main road
to catch his tram. While his eyes sought out the newspaper shops to see
the war news on the placards, he thought of the scene of the night
before: now that it was over and he had slept on it, he could not help
thinking it grotesque; he supposed he had been ridiculous, but he was
not master of his feelings; at the time they had been overwhelming. He
was angry with Mildred because she had forced him into that absurd
position, and then with renewed astonishment he thought of her outburst
and the filthy language she had used. He could not help flushing when
he remembered her final jibe; but he shrugged his shoulders
contemptuously. He had long known that when his fellows were angry with
him they never failed to taunt him with his deformity. He had seen men
at the hospital imitate his walk, not before him as they used at
school, but when they thought he was not looking. He knew now that they
did it from no wilful unkindness, but because man is naturally an
imitative animal, and because it was an easy way to make people laugh:
he knew it, but he could never resign himself to it.
He was glad to throw himself into his work. The ward seemed pleasant
and friendly when he entered it. The sister greeted him with a quick,
business-like smile.
“You’re very late, Mr. Carey.”
“I was out on the loose last night.”
“You look it.”
“Thank you.”
Laughing, he went to the first of his cases, a boy with tuberculous
ulcers, and removed his bandages. The boy was pleased to see him, and
Philip chaffed him as he put a clean dressing on the wound. Philip was
a favourite with the patients; he treated them good-humouredly; and he
had gentle, sensitive hands which did not hurt them: some of the
dressers were a little rough and happy-go-lucky in their methods. He
lunched with his friends in the club-room, a frugal meal consisting of
a scone and butter, with a cup of cocoa, and they talked of the war.
Several men were going out, but the authorities were particular and
refused everyone who had not had a hospital appointment. Someone
suggested that, if the war went on, in a while they would be glad to
take anyone who was qualified; but the general opinion was that it
would be over in a month. Now that Roberts was there things would get
all right in no time. This was Macalister’s opinion too, and he had
told Philip that they must watch their chance and buy just before peace
was declared. There would be a boom then, and they might all make a bit
of money. Philip had left with Macalister instructions to buy him stock
whenever the opportunity presented itself. His appetite had been
whetted by the thirty pounds he had made in the summer, and he wanted
now to make a couple of hundred.
He finished his day’s work and got on a tram to go back to Kennington.
He wondered how Mildred would behave that evening. It was a nuisance to
think that she would probably be surly and refuse to answer his
questions. It was a warm evening for the time of year, and even in
those gray streets of South London there was the languor of February;
nature is restless then after the long winter months, growing things
awake from their sleep, and there is a rustle in the earth, a
forerunner of spring, as it resumes its eternal activities. Philip
would have liked to drive on further, it was distasteful to him to go
back to his rooms, and he wanted the air; but the desire to see the
child clutched suddenly at his heartstrings, and he smiled to himself
as he thought of her toddling towards him with a crow of delight. He
was surprised, when he reached the house and looked up mechanically at
the windows, to see that there was no light. He went upstairs and
knocked, but got no answer. When Mildred went out she left the key
under the mat and he found it there now. He let himself in and going
into the sitting-room struck a match. Something had happened, he did
not at once know what; he turned the gas on full and lit it; the room
was suddenly filled with the glare and he looked round. He gasped. The
whole place was wrecked. Everything in it had been wilfully destroyed.
Anger seized him, and he rushed into Mildred’s room. It was dark and
empty. When he had got a light he saw that she had taken away all her
things and the baby’s (he had noticed on entering that the go-cart was
not in its usual place on the landing, but thought Mildred had taken
the baby out;) and all the things on the washing-stand had been broken,
a knife had been drawn cross-ways through the seats of the two chairs,
the pillow had been slit open, there were large gashes in the sheets
and the counterpane, the looking-glass appeared to have been broken
with a hammer. Philip was bewildered. He went into his own room, and
here too everything was in confusion. The basin and the ewer had been
smashed, the looking-glass was in fragments, and the sheets were in
ribands. Mildred had made a slit large enough to put her hand into the
pillow and had scattered the feathers about the room. She had jabbed a
knife into the blankets. On the dressing-table were photographs of
Philip’s mother, the frames had been smashed and the glass shivered.
Philip went into the tiny kitchen. Everything that was breakable was
broken, glasses, pudding-basins, plates, dishes.
It took Philip’s breath away. Mildred had left no letter, nothing but
this ruin to mark her anger, and he could imagine the set face with
which she had gone about her work. He went back into the sitting-room
and looked about him. He was so astonished that he no longer felt
angry. He looked curiously at the kitchen-knife and the coal-hammer,
which were lying on the table where she had left them. Then his eye
caught a large carving-knife in the fireplace which had been broken. It
must have taken her a long time to do so much damage. Lawson’s portrait
of him had been cut cross-ways and gaped hideously. His own drawings
had been ripped in pieces; and the photographs, Manet’s Olympia and the
Odalisque of Ingres, the portrait of Philip IV, had been smashed with
great blows of the coal-hammer. There were gashes in the table-cloth
and in the curtains and in the two arm-chairs. They were quite ruined.
On one wall over the table which Philip used as his desk was the little
bit of Persian rug which Cronshaw had given him. Mildred had always
hated it.
“If it’s a rug it ought to go on the floor,” she said, “and it’s a
dirty stinking bit of stuff, that’s all it is.”
It made her furious because Philip told her it contained the answer to
a great riddle. She thought he was making fun of her. She had drawn the
knife right through it three times, it must have required some
strength, and it hung now in tatters. Philip had two or three blue and
white plates, of no value, but he had bought them one by one for very
small sums and liked them for their associations. They littered the
floor in fragments. There were long gashes on the backs of his books,
and she had taken the trouble to tear pages out of the unbound French
ones. The little ornaments on the chimney-piece lay on the hearth in
bits. Everything that it had been possible to destroy with a knife or a
hammer was destroyed.