Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham (best fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

Needing no pressing, he gave a long poem of tragic character, in which he rolled his eyes, put his hand on his chest, and acted as though he were in great agony. The point, that he had eaten cucumber for supper, was divulged in the last line and was greeted with laughter, a little forced because everyone knew the poem well, but loud and long. Miss Bennett did not sing, play, or recite.

“Oh no, she ’as a little game of her own,” said Mrs. Hodges.

“Now, don’t you begin chaffing me. The fact is I know quite a lot about palmistry and second sight.”

“Oh, do tell my ’and, Miss Bennett,” cried the girls in her department, eager to please her.

“I don’t like telling ’ands, I don’t really. I’ve told people such terrible things and they’ve all come true, it makes one superstitious like.”

“Oh, Miss Bennett, just for once.”

A little crowd collected round her, and, amid screams of embarrassment, giggles, blushings, and cries of dismay or admiration, she talked mysteriously of fair and dark men, of money in a letter, and of journeys, till the sweat stood in heavy beads on her painted face.

“Look at me,” she said. “I’m all of a perspiration.”

Supper was at nine. There were cakes, buns, sandwiches, tea and coffee, all free; but if you wanted mineral water you had to pay for it. Gallantry often led young men to offer the ladies ginger beer, but common decency made them refuse. Miss Bennett was very fond of ginger beer, and she drank two and sometimes three bottles during the evening; but she insisted on paying for them herself. The men liked her for that.

“She’s a rum old bird,” they said, “but mind you, she’s not a bad sort, she’s not like what some are.”

After supper progressive whist was played. This was very noisy, and there was a great deal of laughing and shouting, as people moved from table to table. Miss Bennett grew hotter and hotter.

“Look at me,” she said. “I’m all of a perspiration.”

In due course one of the more dashing of the young men remarked that if they wanted to dance they’d better begin. The girl who had played the accompaniments sat at the piano and placed a decided foot on the loud pedal. She played a dreamy waltz, marking the time with the bass, while with the right hand she “tiddled” in alternate octaves. By way of a change she crossed her hands and played the air in the bass.

“She does play well, doesn’t she?” Mrs. Hodges remarked to Philip. “And what’s more she’s never ’ad a lesson in ’er life; it’s all ear.”

Miss Bennett liked dancing and poetry better than anything in the world. She danced well, but very, very slowly, and an expression came into her eyes as though her thoughts were far, far away. She talked breathlessly of the floor and the heat and the supper. She said that the Portman Rooms had the best floor in London and she always liked the dances there; they were very select, and she couldn’t bear dancing with all sorts of men you didn’t know anything about; why, you might be exposing yourself to you didn’t know what all. Nearly all the people danced very well, and they enjoyed themselves. Sweat poured down their faces, and the very high collars of the young men grew limp.

Philip looked on, and a greater depression seized him than he remembered to have felt for a long time. He felt intolerably alone. He did not go, because he was afraid to seem supercilious, and he talked with the girls and laughed, but in his heart was unhappiness. Miss Bennett asked him if he had a girl.

“No,” he smiled.

“Oh, well, there’s plenty to choose from here. And they’re very nice respectable girls, some of them. I expect you’ll have a girl before you’ve been here long.”

She looked at him very archly.

“Meet ’em ’alf-way,” said Mrs. Hodges. “That’s what I tell him.”

It was nearly eleven o’clock, and the party broke up. Philip could not get to sleep. Like the others he kept his aching feet outside the bedclothes. He tried with all his might not to think of the life he was leading. The soldier was snoring quietly.

CV

The wages were paid once a month by the secretary. On payday each batch of assistants, coming down from tea, went into the passage and joined the long line of people waiting orderly like the audience in a queue outside a gallery door. One by one they entered the office. The secretary sat at a desk with wooden bowls of money in front of him, and he asked the employe’s name; he referred to a book, quickly, after a suspicious glance at the assistant, said aloud the sum due, and taking money out of the bowl counted it into his hand.

“Thank you,” he said. “Next.”

“Thank you,” was the reply.

The assistant passed on to the second secretary and before leaving the room paid him four shillings for washing money, two shillings for the club, and any fines that he might have incurred. With what he had left he went back into his department and there waited till it was time to go. Most of the men in Philip’s house were in debt with the woman who sold the sandwiches they generally ate for supper. She was a funny old thing, very fat, with a broad, red face, and black hair plastered neatly on each side of the forehead in the fashion shown in early pictures of Queen Victoria. She always wore a little black bonnet and a white apron; her sleeves were tucked up to the elbow; she cut the sandwiches with large, dirty, greasy hands; and there was grease on her bodice, grease on her apron, grease on her skirt. She was called Mrs. Fletcher, but everyone addressed her as “Ma”; she was really fond of the shop assistants, whom she called her boys; she never minded giving credit towards the end