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

“I thought him a very nice civil-spoken young fellow,” said Mrs. Athelny, “and I think he’s just the sort to make any girl happy.”

Sally did not reply for a minute or two, and Philip looked at her curiously: it might be thought that she was meditating upon what her mother had said, and on the other hand she might be thinking of the man in the moon.

“Why don’t you answer when you’re spoken to, Sally?” remarked her mother, a little irritably.

“I thought he was a silly.”

“Aren’t you going to have him then?”

“No, I’m not.”

“I don’t know how much more you want,” said Mrs. Athelny, and it was quite clear now that she was put out. “He’s a very decent young fellow and he can afford to give you a thorough good home. We’ve got quite enough to feed here without you. If you get a chance like that it’s wicked not to take it. And I daresay you’d be able to have a girl to do the rough work.”

Philip had never before heard Mrs. Athelny refer so directly to the difficulties of her life. He saw how important it was that each child should be provided for.

“It’s no good your carrying on, mother,” said Sally in her quiet way. “I’m not going to marry him.”

“I think you’re a very hardhearted, cruel, selfish girl.”

“If you want me to earn my own living, mother, I can always go into service.”

“Don’t be so silly, you know your father would never let you do that.”

Philip caught Sally’s eye, and he thought there was in it a glimmer of amusement. He wondered what there had been in the conversation to touch her sense of humour. She was an odd girl.

During his last year at St. Luke’s Philip had to work hard. He was contented with life. He found it very comfortable to be heart-free and to have enough money for his needs. He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it. He knew that the lack made a man petty, mean, grasping; it distorted his character and caused him to view the world from a vulgar angle; when you had to consider every penny, money became of grotesque importance: you needed a competency to rate it at its proper value. He lived a solitary life, seeing no one except the Athelnys, but he was not lonely; he busied himself with plans for the future, and sometimes he thought of the past. His recollection dwelt now and then on old friends, but he made no effort to see them. He would have liked to know what was become of Norah Nesbit; she was Norah something else now, but he could not remember the name of the man she was going to marry; he was glad to have known her: she was a good and a brave soul. One evening about half past eleven he saw Lawson, walking along Piccadilly; he was in evening clothes and might be supposed to be coming back from a theatre. Philip gave way to a sudden impulse and quickly turned down a side street. He had not seen him for two years and felt that he could not now take up again the interrupted friendship. He and Lawson had nothing more to say to one another. Philip was no longer interested in art; it seemed to him that he was able to enjoy beauty with greater force than when he was a boy; but art appeared to him unimportant. He was occupied with the forming of a pattern out of the manifold chaos of life, and the materials with which he worked seemed to make preoccupation with pigments and words very trivial. Lawson had served his turn. Philip’s friendship with him had been a motive in the design he was elaborating: it was merely sentimental to ignore the fact that the painter was of no further interest to him.

Sometimes Philip thought of Mildred. He avoided deliberately the streets in which there was a chance of seeing her; but occasionally some feeling, perhaps curiosity, perhaps something deeper which he would not acknowledge, made him wander about Piccadilly and Regent Street during the hours when she might be expected to be there. He did not know then whether he wished to see her or dreaded it. Once he saw a back which reminded him of hers, and for a moment he thought it was she; it gave him a curious sensation: it was a strange sharp pain in his heart, there was fear in it and a sickening dismay; and when he hurried on and found that he was mistaken he did not know whether it was relief that he experienced or disappointment.

At the beginning of August Philip passed his surgery, his last examination, and received his diploma. It was seven years since he had entered St. Luke’s Hospital. He was nearly thirty. He walked down the stairs of the Royal College of Surgeons with the roll in his hand which qualified him to practice, and his heart beat with satisfaction.

“Now I’m really going to begin life,” he thought.

Next day he went to the secretary’s office to put his name down for one of the hospital appointments. The secretary was a pleasant little man with a black beard, whom Philip had always found very affable. He congratulated him on his success, and then said:

“I suppose you wouldn’t like to do a locum for a month on the South coast? Three guineas a week with board and lodging.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” said Philip.

“It’s at Farnley, in Dorsetshire. Doctor South. You’d have to go down at once; his assistant has developed mumps. I believe it’s a very pleasant place.”

There was something in the secretary’s manner that puzzled Philip. It was a little doubtful.

“What’s the crab in it?” he asked.

The secretary hesitated a moment and laughed in a conciliating fashion.

“Well, the fact is, I understand he’s rather a crusty, funny old fellow. The agencies won’t