Of Human Bondage
The whole of Philip’s belongings would not have sold for thirty pounds,
but most of them were old friends, and he was a domestic creature,
attached to all those odds and ends because they were his; he had been
proud of his little home, and on so little money had made it pretty and
characteristic. He sank down now in despair. He asked himself how she
could have been so cruel. A sudden fear got him on his feet again and
into the passage, where stood a cupboard in which he kept his clothes.
He opened it and gave a sigh of relief. She had apparently forgotten it
and none of his things was touched.
He went back into the sitting-room and, surveying the scene, wondered
what to do; he had not the heart to begin trying to set things
straight; besides there was no food in the house, and he was hungry. He
went out and got himself something to eat. When he came in he was
cooler. A little pang seized him as he thought of the child, and he
wondered whether she would miss him, at first perhaps, but in a week
she would have forgotten him; and he was thankful to be rid of Mildred.
He did not think of her with wrath, but with an overwhelming sense of
boredom.
“I hope to God I never see her again,” he said aloud.
The only thing now was to leave the rooms, and he made up his mind to
give notice the next morning. He could not afford to make good the
damage done, and he had so little money left that he must find cheaper
lodgings still. He would be glad to get out of them. The expense had
worried him, and now the recollection of Mildred would be in them
always. Philip was impatient and could never rest till he had put in
action the plan which he had in mind; so on the following afternoon he
got in a dealer in second-hand furniture who offered him three pounds
for all his goods damaged and undamaged; and two days later he moved
into the house opposite the hospital in which he had had rooms when
first he became a medical student. The landlady was a very decent
woman. He took a bed-room at the top, which she let him have for six
shillings a week; it was small and shabby and looked on the yard of the
house that backed on to it, but he had nothing now except his clothes
and a box of books, and he was glad to lodge so cheaply.
XCVIII
And now it happened that the fortunes of Philip Carey, of no
consequence to any but himself, were affected by the events through
which his country was passing. History was being made, and the process
was so significant that it seemed absurd it should touch the life of an
obscure medical student. Battle after battle, Magersfontein, Colenso,
Spion Kop, lost on the playing fields of Eton, had humiliated the
nation and dealt the death-blow to the prestige of the aristocracy and
gentry who till then had found no one seriously to oppose their
assertion that they possessed a natural instinct of government. The old
order was being swept away: history was being made indeed. Then the
colossus put forth his strength, and, blundering again, at last
blundered into the semblance of victory. Cronje surrendered at
Paardeberg, Ladysmith was relieved, and at the beginning of March Lord
Roberts marched into Bloemfontein.
It was two or three days after the news of this reached London that
Macalister came into the tavern in Beak Street and announced joyfully
that things were looking brighter on the Stock Exchange. Peace was in
sight, Roberts would march into Pretoria within a few weeks, and shares
were going up already. There was bound to be a boom.
“Now’s the time to come in,” he told Philip. “It’s no good waiting till
the public gets on to it. It’s now or never.”
He had inside information. The manager of a mine in South Africa had
cabled to the senior partner of his firm that the plant was uninjured.
They would start working again as soon as possible. It wasn’t a
speculation, it was an investment. To show how good a thing the senior
partner thought it Macalister told Philip that he had bought five
hundred shares for both his sisters: he never put them into anything
that wasn’t as safe as the Bank of England.
“I’m going to put my shirt on it myself,” he said.
The shares were two and an eighth to a quarter. He advised Philip not
to be greedy, but to be satisfied with a ten-shilling rise. He was
buying three hundred for himself and suggested that Philip should do
the same. He would hold them and sell when he thought fit. Philip had
great faith in him, partly because he was a Scotsman and therefore by
nature cautious, and partly because he had been right before. He jumped
at the suggestion.
“I daresay we shall be able to sell before the account,” said
Macalister, “but if not, I’ll arrange to carry them over for you.”
It seemed a capital system to Philip. You held on till you got your
profit, and you never even had to put your hand in your pocket. He
began to watch the Stock Exchange columns of the paper with new
interest. Next day everything was up a little, and Macalister wrote to
say that he had had to pay two and a quarter for the shares. He said
that the market was firm. But in a day or two there was a set-back. The
news that came from South Africa was less reassuring, and Philip with
anxiety saw that his shares had fallen to two; but Macalister was
optimistic, the Boers couldn’t hold out much longer, and he was willing
to bet a top-hat that Roberts would march into Johannesburg before the
middle of April. At the account Philip had to pay out nearly forty
pounds. It worried him considerably, but he felt that the only course
was to hold on: in his circumstances the loss was too great for him to
pocket. For two or three weeks nothing happened; the Boers would not
understand that they were beaten and nothing remained for them but to
surrender: in fact they had one or two small successes, and Philip’s
shares fell half a crown more. It became evident that the war was not
finished. There was a lot of selling. When Macalister saw Philip he was
pessimistic.
“I’m not sure if the best thing wouldn’t be to cut the loss. I’ve been
paying out about as much as I want to in differences.”
Philip was sick with anxiety. He could not sleep at night; he bolted
his breakfast, reduced now to tea and bread and butter, in order to get
over to the club reading-room and see the paper; sometimes the news was
bad, and sometimes there was no news at all, but when the shares moved
it was to go down. He did not know what to do. If he sold now he would
lose altogether hard on three hundred and fifty pounds; and that would
leave him only eighty pounds to go on with. He wished with all his
heart that he had never been such a fool as to dabble on the Stock
Exchange, but the only thing was to hold on; something decisive might
happen any day and the shares would go up; he did not hope now for a
profit, but he wanted to make good his loss. It was his only chance of
finishing his course at the hospital. The Summer session was beginning
in May, and at the end of it he meant to take the examination in
midwifery. Then he would only have a year more; he reckoned it out
carefully and came to the conclusion that he could manage it, fees and
all, on a hundred and fifty pounds; but that was the least it could
possibly be done on.
Early in April he went to the tavern in Beak Street anxious to see
Macalister. It eased him a little to discuss the situation with him;
and to realise that numerous people beside himself were suffering from
loss of money made his own trouble a little less intolerable. But when
Philip arrived no one was there but Hayward, and no sooner had Philip
seated himself than he said:
“I’m sailing for the Cape on Sunday.”
“Are you!” exclaimed Philip.
Hayward was the last person he would have expected to do anything of
the kind. At the hospital men were going out now in numbers; the
Government was glad to get anyone who was qualified; and others, going
out as troopers, wrote home that they had been put on hospital work as
soon as it was learned that they were medical students. A wave of
patriotic feeling had swept over the country, and volunteers were
coming from all ranks of society.
“What are you going as?” asked Philip.
“Oh, in the Dorset Yeomanry. I’m going as a trooper.”
Philip had known Hayward for eight years. The youthful intimacy which
had come from Philip’s enthusiastic admiration for the man who could
tell him of art and literature had long since vanished; but habit had
taken its place; and when Hayward was in London they saw one another
once or twice a week. He still talked about books with a delicate
appreciation. Philip was not yet tolerant, and sometimes Hayward’s
conversation irritated him. He no longer believed implicitly that
nothing in the world was of consequence but art. He resented Hayward’s
contempt for action and success. Philip, stirring his punch, thought of
his early friendship and his ardent expectation that Hayward would do
great things; it was long since he had lost all such illusions, and he
knew now that Hayward would never do anything but talk. He found his
three hundred a year more difficult to live on now that he was
thirty-five than he had when he was a young man; and his clothes,
though still made by a good tailor, were worn a good deal longer than
at one time he would have thought possible. He was too stout and no
artful arrangement of his fair hair could conceal the fact that he was
bald. His blue eyes were dull and pale. It was not hard to guess that
he drank too much.
“What on earth made you think of going out to the Cape?” asked Philip.
“Oh, I don’t know, I thought I ought to.”
Philip was silent. He felt rather silly. He understood that Hayward was
being driven by an uneasiness in his soul which he could not account
for. Some power within him made it seem necessary to go and fight for
his country. It was strange, since he considered patriotism no more
than a prejudice, and, flattering himself on his cosmopolitanism, he
had looked upon England as a place of exile. His countrymen in the mass
wounded his susceptibilities. Philip wondered what it was that made
people do things which were so contrary to all their theories of life.
It would have been reasonable for Hayward to stand aside and watch with
a smile while the barbarians slaughtered one another. It looked as
though men were puppets in the hands of an unknown force, which drove
them to do this and that; and sometimes they used their reason to
justify their actions; and when this was impossible they did the
actions in despite of reason.
“People are very extraordinary,” said Philip. “I should never have
expected you to go out as a trooper.”
Hayward smiled, slightly embarrassed, and said nothing.
“I was examined yesterday,” he remarked at last. “It was worth while
undergoing the gene of it to know that one was perfectly fit.”
Philip noticed that he still used a French word in an affected way when
an English one would have served. But just then Macalister came in.
“I wanted to see you, Carey,” he said. “My people don’t feel inclined
to hold those shares any more, the market’s in such an awful state, and
they want you to take them up.”
Philip’s heart sank. He knew that was impossible. It meant that he must
accept the loss. His pride made him answer calmly.
“I don’t know that I think that’s worth while. You’d better sell them.”
“It’s all very fine to say that, I’m not sure if I can. The market’s
stagnant, there are no buyers.”
“But they’re marked down at one and an eighth.”
“Oh yes, but that doesn’t mean anything. You can’t get that for them.”
Philip did not say anything for a moment. He was trying to collect
himself.
“D’you mean to say they’re worth nothing at all?”
“Oh, I don’t say that. Of course they’re worth something, but you see,
nobody’s buying them now.”