Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham (best novels to read txt) 📗

you and I, Betty.”

“Oh, don’t talk to me about your socialists, I’ve got no patience with them,” she cried. “It only means that another lot of lazy loafers will make a good thing out of the working classes. My motto is, leave me alone; I don’t want anyone interfering with me; I’ll make the best of a bad job, and the devil take the hindmost.”

“D’you call life a bad job?” said Athelny. “Never! We’ve had our ups and downs, we’ve had our struggles, we’ve always been poor, but it’s been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.”

“You do talk, Athelny,” she said, looking at him, not with anger but with scornful calm. “You’ve had the pleasant part of the children, I’ve had the bearing of them, and the bearing with them. I don’t say that I’m not fond of them, now they’re there, but if I had my time over again I’d remain single. Why, if I’d remained single I might have a little shop by now, and four or five hundred pounds in the bank, and a girl to do the rough work. Oh, I wouldn’t go over my life again, not for something.”

Philip thought of the countless millions to whom life is no more than unending labour, neither beautiful nor ugly, but just to be accepted in the same spirit as one accepts the changes of the seasons. Fury seized him because it all seemed useless. He could not reconcile himself to the belief that life had no meaning and yet everything he saw, all his thoughts, added to the force of his conviction. But though fury seized him it was a joyful fury. life was not so horrible if it was meaningless, and he faced it with a strange sense of power.

CIX

The autumn passed into winter. Philip had left his address with Mrs. Foster, his uncle’s housekeeper, so that she might communicate with him, but still went once a week to the hospital on the chance of there being a letter. One evening he saw his name on an envelope in a handwriting he had hoped never to see again. It gave him a queer feeling. For a little while he could not bring himself to take it. It brought back a host of hateful memories. But at length, impatient with himself, he ripped open the envelope.

7 William Street, Fitzroy Square.

Dear Phil,

Can I see you for a minute or two as soon as possible. I am in awful trouble and don’t know what to do. It’s not money.

Yours truly, Mildred.

 

He tore the letter into little bits and going out into the street scattered them in the darkness.

“I’ll see her damned,” he muttered.

A feeling of disgust surged up in him at the thought of seeing her again. He did not care if she was in distress, it served her right whatever it was, he thought of her with hatred, and the love he had had for her aroused his loathing. His recollections filled him with nausea, and as he walked across the Thames he drew himself aside in an instinctive withdrawal from his thought of her. He went to bed, but he could not sleep; he wondered what was the matter with her, and he could not get out of his head the fear that she was ill and hungry; she would not have written to him unless she were desperate. He was angry with himself for his weakness, but he knew that he would have no peace unless he saw her. Next morning he wrote a letter-card and posted it on his way to the shop. He made it as stiff as he could and said merely that he was sorry she was in difficulties and would come to the address she had given at seven o’clock that evening.

It was that of a shabby lodging-house in a sordid street; and when, sick at the thought of seeing her, he asked whether she was in, a wild hope seized him that she had left. It looked the sort of place people moved in and out of frequently. He had not thought of looking at the postmark on her letter and did not know how many days it had lain in the rack. The woman who answered the bell did not reply to his inquiry, but silently preceded him along the passage and knocked on a door at the back.

“Mrs. Miller, a gentleman to see you,” she called.

The door was slightly opened, and Mildred looked out suspiciously.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Come in.”

He walked in and she closed the door. It was a very small bedroom, untidy as was every place she lived in; there was a pair of shoes on the floor, lying apart from one another and uncleaned; a hat was on the chest of drawers, with false curls beside it; and there was a blouse on the table. Philip looked for somewhere to put his hat. The hooks behind the door were laden with skirts, and he noticed that they were muddy at the hem.

“Sit down, won’t you?” she said. Then she gave a little awkward laugh. “I suppose you were surprised to hear from me again.”

“You’re awfully hoarse,” he answered. “Have you got a sore throat?”

“Yes, I have had for some time.”

He did not say anything. He waited for her to explain why she wanted to see him. The look of the room told him clearly enough that she had gone back to the life from which he had taken her. He wondered what had happened to the baby; there was a photograph of it on the chimney-piece, but no sign in the room that a child was ever there. Mildred was holding her handkerchief. She made it into a little ball, and passed it from hand to hand. He saw that she was very nervous. She was staring at the fire, and he could look at her without meeting her eyes. She was much thinner than when she had left him; and the skin, yellow and dryish, was drawn more tightly over her cheekbones. She had dyed her hair and it was now flaxen: it altered her a good deal, and made her look more vulgar.

“I was relieved to get your letter, I can tell you,” she said at last. “I thought p’raps you weren’t at the ‘ospital any more.”

Philip did not speak.

“I suppose you’re qualified by now, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“How’s that?”

“I’m no longer at the hospital. I had to give it up eighteen months ago.”

“You are changeable. You don’t seem as if you could stick to anything.”

Philip was silent for another moment, and when he went on it was with coldness.

“I lost the little money I had in an unlucky speculation and I couldn’t afford to go on with the medical. I had to earn my living as best I could.”

“What are you doing then?”

“I’m in a shop.”

“Oh!”

She gave him a quick glance and turned her eyes away at once. He thought that she reddened. She dabbed her palms nervously with the handkerchief.

“You’ve not forgotten all your doctoring, have you?” She jerked the words out quite oddly.

“Not entirely.”

“Because that’s why I wanted to see you.” Her voice sank to a hoarse whisper. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“Why don’t you go to a hospital?”

“I don’t like to do that, and have all the stoodents staring at me, and I’m afraid they’d want to keep me.”

“What are you complaining of?” asked Philip coldly, with the stereotyped phrase used in the out-patients’ room.

“Well, I’ve come out in a rash, and I can’t get rid of it.”

Philip felt a twinge of horror in his heart. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Let me look at your throat?”

He took her over to the window and made such examination as he could. Suddenly he caught sight of her eyes. There was deadly fear in them. It was horrible to see. She was terrified. She wanted him to reassure her; she looked at him pleadingly, not daring to ask for words of comfort but with all her nerves astrung to receive them: he had none to offer her.

“I’m afraid you’re very ill indeed,” he said.

“What d’you think it is?”

When he told her she grew deathly pale, and her lips even turned, yellow. she began to cry, hopelessly, quietly at first and then with choking sobs.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he said at last. “But I had to tell you.”

“I may just as well kill myself and have done with it.”

He took no notice of the threat.

“Have you got any money?” he asked.

“Six or seven pounds.”

“You must give up this life, you know. Don’t you think you could find some work to do? I’m afraid I can’t help you much. I only get twelve bob a week.”

“What is there I can do now?” she cried impatiently.

“Damn it all, you MUST try to get something.”

He spoke to her very gravely, telling her of her own danger and the danger to which she exposed others, and she listened sullenly. He tried to console her. At last he brought her to a sulky acquiescence in which she promised to do all he advised. He wrote a prescription, which he said he would leave at the nearest chemist’s, and he impressed upon her the necessity of taking her medicine with the utmost regularity. Getting up to go, he held out his hand.

“Don’t be downhearted, you’ll soon get over your throat.”

But as he went her face became suddenly distorted, and she caught hold of his coat.

“Oh, don’t leave me,” she cried hoarsely. “I’m so afraid, don’t leave me alone yet. Phil, please. There’s no one else I can go to, you’re the only friend I’ve ever had.”

He felt the terror of her soul, and it was strangely like that terror he had seen in his uncle’s eyes when he feared that he might die. Philip looked down. Twice that woman had come into his life and made him wretched; she had no claim upon him; and yet, he knew not why, deep in his heart was a strange aching; it was that which, when he received her letter, had left him no peace till he obeyed her summons.

“I suppose I shall never really quite get over it,” he said to himself.

What perplexed him was that he felt a curious physical distaste, which made it uncomfortable for him to be near her.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Let’s go out and dine together. I’ll pay.”

He hesitated. He felt that she was creeping back again into his life when he thought she was gone out of it for ever. She watched him with sickening anxiety.

“Oh, I know I’ve treated you shocking, but don’t leave me alone now. You’ve had your revenge. If you leave me by myself now I don’t know what I shall do.”

“All right, I don’t mind,” he said, “but we shall have to do it on the cheap, I haven’t got money to throw away these days.”

She sat down and put her shoes on, then changed her skirt and put on a hat; and they walked out together till they found a restaurant in the Tottenham Court Road. Philip had got out of the habit of eating at those hours, and Mildred’s throat was so sore that she could not swallow. They had a little cold ham and Philip drank a glass of beer. They sat opposite one another, as they had so often sat before; he wondered if she remembered; they had nothing to say to one another and would have sat