Of Human Bondage (107 page)

  But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to
mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had
suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate
and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with
gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain,
because it added to the richness of the design. He sought for
beauty consciously, and he remembered how even as a boy he had
taken pleasure in the Gothic cathedral as one saw it from the
precincts; he went there and looked at the massive pile, gray under
the cloudy sky, with the central tower that rose like the praise of
men to their God; but the boys were batting at the nets, and they
were lissom and strong and active; he could not help hearing their
shouts and laughter. The cry of youth was insistent, and he saw the
beautiful thing before him only with his eyes.

  At the beginning of the last week in August Philip
entered upon his duties in the `district.' They were arduous, for
he had to attend on an average three confinements a day. The
patient had obtained a `card' from the hospital some time before;
and when her time came it was taken to the porter by a messenger,
generally a little girl, who was then sent across the road to the
house in which Philip lodged. At night the porter, who had a
latch-key, himself came over and awoke Philip. It was mysterious
then to get up in the darkness and walk through the deserted
streets of the South Side. At those hours it was generally the
husband who brought the card. If there had been a number of babies
before he took it for the most part with surly indifference, but if
newly married he was nervous and then sometimes strove to allay his
anxiety by getting drunk. Often there was a mile or more to walk,
during which Philip and the messenger discussed the conditions of
labour and the cost of living; Philip learnt about the various
trades which were practised on that side of the river. He inspired
confidence in the people among whom he was thrown, and during the
long hours that he waited in a stuffy room, the woman in labour
lying on a large bed that took up half of it, her mother and the
midwife talked to him as naturally as they talked to one another.
The circumstances in which he had lived during the last two years
had taught him several things about the life of the very poor,
which it amused them to find he knew; and they were impressed
because he was not deceived by their little subterfuges. He was
kind, and he had gentle hands, and he did not lose his temper. They
were pleased because he was not above drinking a cup of tea with
them, and when the dawn came and they were still waiting they
offered him a slice of bread and dripping; he was not squeamish and
could eat most things now with a good appetite. Some of the houses
he went to, in filthy courts off a dingy street, huddled against
one another without light or air, were merely squalid; but others,
unexpectedly, though dilapidated, with worm-eaten floors and
leaking roofs, had the grand air: you found in them oak balusters
exquisitely carved, and the walls had still their panelling. These
were thickly inhabited. One family lived in each room, and in the
daytime there was the incessant noise of children playing in the
court. The old walls were the breeding-place of vermin; the air was
so foul that often, feeling sick, Philip had to light his pipe. The
people who dwelt here lived from hand to mouth. Babies were
unwelcome, the man received them with surly anger, the mother with
despair; it was one more mouth to feed, and there was little enough
wherewith to feed those already there. Philip often discerned the
wish that the child might be born dead or might die quickly. He
delivered one woman of twins (a source of humour to the facetious)
and when she was told she burst into a long, shrill wail of misery.
Her mother said outright:

  "I don't know how they're going to feed 'em."

  "Maybe the Lord'll see fit to take 'em to 'imself,"
said the midwife.

  Philip caught sight of the husband's face as he
looked at the tiny pair lying side by side, and there was a
ferocious sullenness in it which startled him. He felt in the
family assembled there a hideous resentment against those poor
atoms who had come into the world unwished for; and he had a
suspicion that if he did not speak firmly an `accident' would
occur. Accidents occurred often; mothers `overlay' their babies,
and perhaps errors of diet were not always the result of
carelessness.

  "I shall come every day," he said. "I warn you that
if anything happens to them there'll have to be an inquest."

  The father made no reply, but he gave Philip a
scowl. There was murder in his soul.

  "Bless their little 'earts," said the grandmother,
"what should 'appen to them?"

  The great difficulty was to keep the mothers in bed
for ten days, which was the minimum upon which the hospital
practice insisted. It was awkward to look after the family, no one
would see to the children without payment, and the husband tumbled
because his tea was not right when he came home tired from his work
and hungry. Philip had heard that the poor helped one another, but
woman after woman complained to him that she could not get anyone
in to clean up and see to the children's dinner without paying for
the service, and she could not afford to pay. By listening to the
women as they talked and by chance remarks from which he could
deduce much that was left unsaid, Philip learned how little there
was in common between the poor and the classes above them. They did
not envy their betters, for the life was too different, and they
had an ideal of ease which made the existence of the middle-classes
seem formal and stiff; moreover, they had a certain contempt for
them because they were soft and did not work with their hands. The
proud merely wished to be left alone, but the majority looked upon
the well-to-do as people to be exploited; they knew what to say in
order to get such advantages as the charitable put at their
disposal, and they accepted benefits as a right which came to them
from the folly of their superiors and their own astuteness. They
bore the curate with contemptuous indifference, but the district
visitor excited their bitter hatred. She came in and opened your
windows without so much as a by your leave or with your leave, `and
me with my bronchitis, enough to give me my death of cold;' she
poked her nose into corners, and if she didn't say the place was
dirty you saw what she thought right enough, `an' it's all very
well for them as 'as servants, but I'd like to see what she'd make
of 'er room if she 'ad four children, and 'ad to do the cookin',
and mend their clothes, and wash them.'

  Philip discovered that the greatest tragedy of life
to these people was not separation or death, that was natural and
the grief of it could be assuaged with tears, but loss of work. He
saw a man come home one afternoon, three days after his wife's
confinement, and tell her he had been dismissed; he was a builder
and at that time work was slack; he stated the fact, and sat down
to his tea.

  "Oh, Jim," she said.

  The man ate stolidly some mess which had been
stewing in a sauce-pan against his coming; he stared at his plate;
his wife looked at him two or three times, with little startled
glances, and then quite silently began to cry. The builder was an
uncouth little fellow with a rough, weather-beaten face and a long
white scar on his forehead; he had large, stubbly hands. Presently
he pushed aside his plate as if he must give up the effort to force
himself to eat, and turned a fixed gaze out of the window. The room
was at the top of the house, at the back, and one saw nothing but
sullen clouds. The silence seemed heavy with despair. Philip felt
that there was nothing to be said, he could only go; and as he
walked away wearily, for he had been up most of the night, his
heart was filled with rage against the cruelty of the world. He
knew the hopelessness of the search for work and the desolation
which is harder to bear than hunger. He was thankful not to have to
believe in God, for then such a condition of things would be
intolerable; one could reconcile oneself to existence only because
it was meaningless.

  It seemed to Philip that the people who spent their
time in helping the poorer classes erred because they sought to
remedy things which would harass them if themselves had to endure
them without thinking that they did not in the least disturb those
who were used to them. The poor did not want large airy rooms; they
suffered from cold, for their food was not nourishing and their
circulation bad; space gave them a feeling of chilliness, and they
wanted to burn as little coal as need be; there was no hardship for
several to sleep in one room, they preferred it; they were never
alone for a moment, from the time they were born to the time they
died, and loneliness oppressed them; they enjoyed the promiscuity
in which they dwelt, and the constant noise of their surroundings
pressed upon their ears unnoticed. They did not feel the need of
taking a bath constantly, and Philip often heard them speak with
indignation of the necessity to do so with which they were faced on
entering the hospital: it was both an affront and a discomfort.
They wanted chiefly to be left alone; then if the man was in
regular work life went easily and was not without its pleasures:
there was plenty of time for gossip, after the day's work a glass
of beer was very good to drink, the streets were a constant source
of entertainment, if you wanted to read there was Reynolds' or The
News of the World; `but there, you couldn't make out 'ow the time
did fly, the truth was and that's a fact, you was a rare one for
reading when you was a girl, but what with one thing and another
you didn't get no time now not even to read the paper.'

  The usual practice was to pay three visits after a
confinement, and one Sunday Philip went to see a patient at the
dinner hour. She was up for the first time.

  "I couldn't stay in bed no longer, I really
couldn't. I'm not one for idling, and it gives me the fidgets to be
there and do nothing all day long, so I said to 'Erb, I'm just
going to get up and cook your dinner for you."

  'Erb was sitting at table with his knife and fork
already in his hands. He was a young man, with an open face and
blue eyes. He was earning good money, and as things went the couple
were in easy circumstances. They had only been married a few
months, and were both delighted with the rosy boy who lay in the
cradle at the foot of the bed. There was a savoury smell of
beefsteak in the room and Philip's eyes turned to the range.

  "I was just going to dish up this minute," said the
woman.

  "Fire away," said Philip. "I'll just have a look at
the son and heir and then I'll take myself off."

  Husband and wife laughed at Philip's expression, and
'Erb getting up went over with Philip to the cradle. He looked at
his baby proudly.

  "There doesn't seem much wrong with him, does
there?" said Philip.

  He took up his hat, and by this time 'Erb's wife had
dished up the beefsteak and put on the table a plate of green
peas.

  "You're going to have a nice dinner," smiled
Philip.

  "He's only in of a Sunday and I like to 'ave
something special for him, so as he shall miss his 'ome when he's
out at work."

  "I suppose you'd be above sittin' down and 'avin' a
bit of dinner with us?" said 'Erb.

  "Oh, 'Erb," said his wife, in a shocked tone.

  "Not if you ask me," answered Philip, with his
attractive smile.

  "Well, that's what I call friendly, I knew 'e
wouldn't take offence, Polly. Just get another plate, my girl."

  Polly was flustered, and she thought 'Erb a regular
caution, you never knew what ideas 'e'd get in 'is 'ead next; but
she got a plate and wiped it quickly with her apron, then took a
new knife and fork from the chest of drawers, where her best
cutlery rested among her best clothes. There was a jug of stout on
the table, and 'Erb poured Philip out a glass. He wanted to give
him the lion's share of the beefsteak, but Philip insisted that
they should share alike. It was a sunny room with two windows that
reached to the floor; it had been the parlour of a house which at
one time was if not fashionable at least respectable: it might have
been inhabited fifty years before by a well-to-do tradesman or an
officer on half pay. 'Erb had been a football player before he
married, and there were photographs on the wall of various teams in
self-conscious attitudes, with neatly plastered hair, the captain
seated proudly in the middle holding a cup. There were other signs
of prosperity: photographs of the relations of 'Erb and his wife in
Sunday clothes; on the chimney-piece an elaborate arrangement of
shells stuck on a miniature rock; and on each side mugs, `A present
from Southend' in Gothic letters, with pictures of a pier and a
parade on them. 'Erb was something of a character; he was a
non-union man and expressed himself with indignation at the efforts
of the union to force him to join. The union wasn't no good to him,
he never found no difficulty in getting work, and there was good
wages for anyone as 'ad a head on his shoulders and wasn't above
puttin' 'is 'and to anything as come 'is way. Polly was timorous.
If she was 'im she'd join the union, the last time there was a
strike she was expectin' 'im to be brought back in an ambulance
every time he went out. She turned to Philip.