Of Human Bondage (55 page)

  His mood changed suddenly from anger to despair, and
his voice trembled when he spoke.

  "I say, don't be beastly with me, Mildred. You know
I'm awfully fond of you. I think I love you with all my heart.
Won't you change your mind? I was looking forward to this evening
so awfully. You see, he hasn't come, and he can't care twopence
about you really. Won't you dine with me? I'll get some more
tickets, and we'll go anywhere you like."

  "I tell you I won't. It's no good you talking. I've
made up my mind, and when I make up my mind I keep to it."

  He looked at her for a moment. His heart was torn
with anguish. People were hurrying past them on the pavement, and
cabs and omnibuses rolled by noisily. He saw that Mildred's eyes
were wandering. She was afraid of missing Miller in the crowd.

  "I can't go on like this," groaned Philip. "it's too
degrading. if I go now I go for good. Unless you'll come with me
tonight you'll never see me again."

  "You seem to think that'll be an awful thing for me.
All I say is, good riddance to bad rubbish."

  "Then good-bye."

  He nodded and limped away slowly, for he hoped with
all his heart that she would call him back. At the next lamp-post
he stopped and looked over his shoulder. He thought she might
beckon to him – he was willing to forget everything, he was ready
for any humiliation – but she had turned away, and apparently had
ceased to trouble about him. He realised that she was glad to be
quit of him.

  Philip passed the evening wretchedly. He had told
his landlady that he would not be in, so there was nothing for him
to eat, and he had to go to Gatti's for dinner. Afterwards he went
back to his rooms, but Griffiths on the floor above him was having
a party, and the noisy merriment made his own misery more hard to
bear. He went to a music-hall, but it was Saturday night and there
was standing-room only: after half an hour of boredom his legs grew
tired and he went home. He tried to read, but he could not fix his
attention; and yet it was necessary that he should work hard. His
examination in biology was in little more than a fortnight, and,
though it was easy, he had neglected his lectures of late and was
conscious that he knew nothing. It was only a viva, however, and he
felt sure that in a fortnight he could find out enough about the
subject to scrape through. He had confidence in his intelligence.
He threw aside his book and gave himself up to thinking
deliberately of the matter which was in his mind all the time.

  He reproached himself bitterly for his behaviour
that evening. Why had he given her the alternative that she must
dine with him or else never see him again? Of course she refused.
He should have allowed for her pride. He had burnt his ships behind
him. It would not be so hard to bear if he thought that she was
suffering now, but he knew her too well: she was perfectly
indifferent to him. If he hadn't been a fool he would have
pretended to believe her story; he ought to have had the strength
to conceal his disappointment and the self-control to master his
temper. He could not tell why he loved her. He had read of the
idealisation that takes place in love, but he saw her exactly as
she was. She was not amusing or clever, her mind was common; she
had a vulgar shrewdness which revolted him, she had no gentleness
nor softness. As she would have put it herself, she was on the
make. What aroused her admiration was a clever trick played on an
unsuspecting person; to `do' somebody always gave her satisfaction.
Philip laughed savagely as he thought of her gentility and the
refinement with which she ate her food; she could not bear a coarse
word, so far as her limited vocabulary reached she had a passion
for euphemisms, and she scented indecency everywhere; she never
spoke of trousers but referred to them as nether garments; she
thought it slightly indelicate to blow her nose and did it in a
deprecating way. She was dreadfully anaemic and suffered from the
dyspepsia which accompanies that ailing. Philip was repelled by her
flat breast and narrow hips, and he hated the vulgar way in which
she did her hair. He loathed and despised himself for loving
her.

  The fact remained that he was helpless. He felt just
as he had felt sometimes in the hands of a bigger boy at school. He
had struggled against the superior strength till his own strength
was gone, and he was rendered quite powerless – he remembered the
peculiar languor he had felt in his limbs, almost as though he were
paralysed – so that he could not help himself at all. He might have
been dead. He felt just that same weakness now. He loved the woman
so that he knew he had never loved before. He did not mind her
faults of person or of character, he thought he loved them too: at
all events they meant nothing to him. It did not seem himself that
was concerned; he felt that he had been seized by some strange
force that moved him against his will, contrary to his interests;
and because he had a passion for freedom he hated the chains which
bound him. He laughed at himself when he thought how often he had
longed to experience the overwhelming passion. He cursed himself
because he had given way to it. He thought of the beginnings;
nothing of all this would have happened if he had not gone into the
shop with Dunsford. The whole thing was his own fault. Except for
his ridiculous vanity he would never have troubled himself with the
ill-mannered slut.

  At all events the occurrences of that evening had
finished the whole affair. Unless he was lost to all sense of shame
he could not go back. He wanted passionately to get rid of the love
that obsessed him; it was degrading and hateful. He must prevent
himself from thinking of her. In a little while the anguish he
suffered must grow less. His mind went back to the past. He
wondered whether Emily Wilkinson and Fanny Price had endured on his
account anything like the torment that he suffered now. He felt a
pang of remorse.

  "I didn't know then what it was like," he said to
himself.

  He slept very badly. The next day was Sunday, and he
worked at his biology. He sat with the book in front of him,
forming the words with his lips in order to fix his attention, but
he could remember nothing. He found his thoughts going back to
Mildred every minute, and he repeated to himself the exact words of
the quarrel they had had. He had to force himself back to his book.
He went out for a walk. The streets on the South side of the river
were dingy enough on week-days, but there was an energy, a coming
and going, which gave them a sordid vivacity; but on Sundays, with
no shops open, no carts in the roadway, silent and depressed, they
were indescribably dreary. Philip thought that day would never end.
But he was so tired that he slept heavily, and when Monday came he
entered upon life with determination. Christmas was approaching,
and a good many of the students had gone into the country for the
short holiday between the two parts of the winter session; but
Philip had refused his uncle's invitation to go down to
Blackstable. He had given the approaching examination as his
excuse, but in point of fact he had been unwilling to leave London
and Mildred. He had neglected his work so much that now he had only
a fortnight to learn what the curriculum allowed three months for.
He set to work seriously. He found it easier each day not to think
of Mildred. He congratulated himself on his force of character. The
pain he suffered was no longer anguish, but a sort of soreness,
like what one might be expected to feel if one had been thrown off
a horse and, though no bones were broken, were bruised all over and
shaken. Philip found that he was able to observe with curiosity the
condition he had been in during the last few weeks. He analysed his
feelings with interest. He was a little amused at himself. One
thing that struck him was how little under those circumstances it
mattered what one thought; the system of personal philosophy, which
had given him great satisfaction to devise, had not served him. He
was puzzled by this.

  But sometimes in the street he would see a girl who
looked so like Mildred that his heart seemed to stop beating. Then
he could not help himself, he hurried on to catch her up, eager and
anxious, only to find that it was a total stranger. Men came back
from the country, and he went with Dunsford to have tea at an A. B.
C. shop. The well-known uniform made him so miserable that he could
not speak. The thought came to him that perhaps she had been
transferred to another establishment of the firm for which she
worked, and he might suddenly find himself face to face with her.
The idea filled him with panic, so that he feared Dunsford would
see that something was the matter with him: he could not think of
anything to say; he pretended to listen to what Dunsford was
talking about; the conversation maddened him; and it was all he
could do to prevent himself from crying out to Dunsford for
Heaven's sake to hold his tongue.

  Then came the day of his examination. Philip, when
his turn arrived, went forward to the examiner's table with the
utmost confidence. He answered three or four questions. Then they
showed him various specimens; he had been to very few lectures and,
as soon as he was asked about things which he could not learn from
books, he was floored. He did what he could to hide his ignorance,
the examiner did not insist, and soon his ten minutes were over. He
felt certain he had passed; but next day, when he went up to the
examination buildings to see the result posted on the door, he was
astounded not to find his number among those who had satisfied the
examiners. In amazement he read the list three times. Dunsford was
with him.

  "I say, I'm awfully sorry you're ploughed," he
said.

  He had just inquired Philip's number. Philip turned
and saw by his radiant face that Dunsford had passed.

  "Oh, it doesn't matter a bit," said Philip. "I'm
jolly glad you're all right. I shall go up again in July."

  He was very anxious to pretend he did not mind, and
on their way back along The Embankment insisted on talking of
indifferent things. Dunsford good-naturedly wanted to discuss the
causes of Philip's failure, but Philip was obstinately casual. He
was horribly mortified; and the fact that Dunsford, whom he looked
upon as a very pleasant but quite stupid fellow, had passed made
his own rebuff harder to bear. He had always been proud of his
intelligence, and now he asked himself desperately whether he was
not mistaken in the opinion he held of himself. In the three months
of the winter session the students who had joined in October had
already shaken down into groups, and it was clear which were
brilliant, which were clever or industrious, and which were
`rotters.' Philip was conscious that his failure was a surprise to
no one but himself. It was tea-time, and he knew that a lot of men
would be having tea in the basement of the Medical School: those
who had passed the examination would be exultant, those who
disliked him would look at him with satisfaction, and the poor
devils who had failed would sympathise with him in order to receive
sympathy. His instinct was not to go near the hospital for a week,
when the affair would be no more thought of, but, because he hated
so much to go just then, he went: he wanted to inflict suffering
upon himself. He forgot for the moment his maxim of life to follow
his inclinations with due regard for the policeman round the
corner; or, if he acted in accordance with it, there must have been
some strange morbidity in his nature which made him take a grim
pleasure in self-torture.

  But later on, when he had endured the ordeal to
which he forced himself, going out into the night after the noisy
conversation in the smoking-room, he was seized with a feeling of
utter loneliness. He seemed to himself absurd and futile. He had an
urgent need of consolation, and the temptation to see Mildred was
irresistible. He thought bitterly that there was small chance of
consolation from her; but he wanted to see her even if he did not
speak to her; after all, she was a waitress and would be obliged to
serve him. She was the only person in the world he cared for. There
was no use in hiding that fact from himself. Of course it would be
humiliating to go back to the shop as though nothing had happened,
but he had not much self-respect left. Though he would not confess
it to himself, he had hoped each day that she would write to him;
she knew that a letter addressed to the hospital would find him;
but she had not written: it was evident that she cared nothing if
she saw him again or not. And he kept on repeating to himself: