Of Human Bondage (90 page)

  In due course Philip was put on accident duty. The
dressers took this in turn; it lasted three days, during which they
lived in hospital and ate their meals in the common-room; they had
a room on the ground floor near the casualty ward, with a bed that
shut up during the day into a cupboard. The dresser on duty had to
be at hand day and night to see to any casualty that came in. You
were on the move all the time, and not more than an hour or two
passed during the night without the clanging of the bell just above
your head which made you leap out of bed instinctively. Saturday
night was of course the busiest time and the closing of the
public-houses the busiest hour. Men would be brought in by the
police dead drunk and it would be necessary to administer a
stomach-pump; women, rather the worse for liquor themselves, would
come in with a wound on the head or a bleeding nose which their
husbands had given them: some would vow to have the law on him, and
others, ashamed, would declare that it had been an accident. What
the dresser could manage himself he did, but if there was anything
important he sent for the house-surgeon: he did this with care,
since the house-surgeon was not vastly pleased to be dragged down
five flights of stairs for nothing. The cases ranged from a cut
finger to a cut throat. Boys came in with hands mangled by some
machine, men were brought who had been knocked down by a cab, and
children who had broken a limb while playing: now and then
attempted suicides were carried in by the police: Philip saw a
ghastly, wild-eyed man with a great gash from ear to ear, and he
was in the ward for weeks afterwards in charge of a constable,
silent, angry because he was alive, and sullen; he made no secret
of the fact that he would try again to kill himself as soon as he
was released. The wards were crowded, and the house-surgeon was
faced with a dilemma when patients were brought in by the police:
if they were sent on to the station and died there disagreeable
things were said in the papers; and it was very difficult sometimes
to tell if a man was dying or drunk. Philip did not go to bed till
he was tired out, so that he should not have the bother of getting
up again in an hour; and he sat in the casualty ward talking in the
intervals of work with the night-nurse. She was a gray-haired woman
of masculine appearance, who had been night-nurse in the casualty
department for twenty years. She liked the work because she was her
own mistress and had no sister to bother her. Her movements were
slow, but she was immensely capable and she never failed in an
emergency. The dressers, often inexperienced or nervous, found her
a tower of strength. She had seen thousands of them, and they made
no impression upon her: she always called them Mr. Brown; and when
they expostulated and told her their real names, she merely nodded
and went on calling them Mr. Brown. It interested Philip to sit
with her in the bare room, with its two horse-hair couches and the
flaring gas, and listen to her. She had long ceased to look upon
the people who came in as human beings; they were drunks, or broken
arms, or cut throats. She took the vice and misery and cruelty of
the world as a matter of course; she found nothing to praise or
blame in human actions: she accepted. She had a certain grim
humour.

  "I remember one suicide," she said to Philip, "who
threw himself into the Thames. They fished him out and brought him
here, and ten days later he developed typhoid fever from swallowing
Thames water."

  "Did he die?"

  "Yes, he did all right. I could never make up my
mind if it was suicide or not.... They're a funny lot, suicides. I
remember one man who couldn't get any work to do and his wife died,
so he pawned his clothes and bought a revolver; but he made a mess
of it, he only shot out an eye and he got all right. And then, if
you please, with an eye gone and a piece of his face blow away, he
came to the conclusion that the world wasn't such a bad place after
all, and he lived happily ever afterwards. Thing I've always
noticed, people don't commit suicide for love, as you'd expect,
that's just a fancy of novelists; they commit suicide because they
haven't got any money. I wonder why that is."

  "I suppose money's more important than love,"
suggested Philip.

  Money was in any case occupying Philip's thoughts a
good deal just then. He discovered the little truth there was in
the airy saying which himself had repeated, that two could live as
cheaply as one, and his expenses were beginning to worry him.
Mildred was not a good manager, and it cost them as much to live as
if they had eaten in restaurants; the child needed clothes, and
Mildred boots, an umbrella, and other small things which it was
impossible for her to do without. When they returned from Brighton
she had announced her intention of getting a job, but she took no
definite steps, and presently a bad cold laid her up for a
fortnight. When she was well she answered one or two
advertisements, but nothing came of it: either she arrived too late
and the vacant place was filled, or the work was more than she felt
strong enough to do. Once she got an offer, but the wages were only
fourteen shillings a week, and she thought she was worth more than
that.

  "It's no good letting oneself be put upon," she
remarked. "People don't respect you if you let yourself go too
cheap."

  "I don't think fourteen shillings is so bad,"
answered Philip, drily.

  He could not help thinking how useful it would be
towards the expenses of the household, and Mildred was already
beginning to hint that she did not get a place because she had not
got a decent dress to interview employers in. He gave her the
dress, and she made one or two more attempts, but Philip came to
the conclusion that they were not serious. She did not want to
work. The only way he knew to make money was on the Stock Exchange,
and he was very anxious to repeat the lucky experiment of the
summer; but war had broken out with the Transvaal and nothing was
doing in South Africans. Macalister told him that Redvers Buller
would march into Pretoria in a month and then everything would
boom. The only thing was to wait patiently. What they wanted was a
British reverse to knock things down a bit, and then it might be
worth while buying. Philip began reading assiduously the `city
chat' of his favourite newspaper. He was worried and irritable.
Once or twice he spoke sharply to Mildred, and since she was
neither tactful nor patient she answered with temper, and they
quarrelled. Philip always expressed his regret for what he had
said, but Mildred had not a forgiving nature, and she would sulk
for a couple of days. She got on his nerves in all sorts of ways;
by the manner in which she ate, and by the untidiness which made
her leave articles of clothing about their sitting-room: Philip was
excited by the war and devoured the papers, morning and evening;
but she took no interest in anything that happened. She had made
the acquaintance of two or three people who lived in the street,
and one of them had asked if she would like the curate to call on
her. She wore a wedding-ring and called herself Mrs. Carey. On
Philip's walls were two or three of the drawings which he had made
in Paris, nudes, two of women and one of Miguel Ajuria, standing
very square on his feet, with clenched fists. Philip kept them
because they were the best things he had done, and they reminded
him of happy days. Mildred had long looked at them with
disfavour.

  "I wish you'd take those drawings down, Philip," she
said to him at last. "Mrs. Foreman, of number thirteen, came in
yesterday afternoon, and I didn't know which way to look. I saw her
staring at them."

  "What's the matter with them?"

  "They're indecent. Disgusting, that's what I call
it, to have drawings of naked people about. And it isn't nice for
baby either. She's beginning to notice things now."

  "How can you be so vulgar?"

  "Vulgar? Modest, I call it. I've never said
anything, but d'you think I like having to look at those naked
people all day long."

  "Have you no sense of humour at all, Mildred?" he
asked frigidly.

  "I don't know what sense of humour's got to do with
it. I've got a good mind to take them down myself. If you want to
know what I think about them, I think they're disgusting."

  "I don't want to know what you think about them, and
I forbid you to touch them."

  When Mildred was cross with him she punished him
through the baby. The little girl was as fond of Philip as he was
of her, and it was her great pleasure every morning to crawl into
his room (she was getting on for two now and could walk pretty
well), and be taken up into his bed. When Mildred stopped this the
poor child would cry bitterly. To Philip's remonstrances she
replied:

  "I don't want her to get into habits."

  And if then he said anything more she said:

  "It's nothing to do with you what I do with my
child. To hear you talk one would think you was her father. I'm her
mother, and I ought to know what's good for her, oughtn't I?"

  Philip was exasperated by Mildred's stupidity; but
he was so indifferent to her now that it was only at times she made
him angry. He grew used to having her about. Christmas came, and
with it a couple of days holiday for Philip. He brought some holly
in and decorated the flat, and on Christmas Day he gave small
presents to Mildred and the baby. There were only two of them so
they could not have a turkey, but Mildred roasted a chicken and
boiled a Christmas pudding which she had bought at a local
grocer's. They stood themselves a bottle of wine. When they had
dined Philip sat in his arm-chair by the fire, smoking his pipe;
and the unaccustomed wine had made him forget for a while the
anxiety about money which was so constantly with him. He felt happy
and comfortable. Presently Mildred came in to tell him that the
baby wanted him to kiss her good-night, and with a smile he went
into Mildred's bed-room. Then, telling the child to go to sleep, he
turned down the gas and, leaving the door open in case she cried,
went back into the sitting-room.

  "Where are you going to sit?" he asked Mildred.

  "You sit in your chair. I'm going to sit on the
floor."

  When he sat down she settled herself in front of the
fire and leaned against his knees. He could not help remembering
that this was how they had sat together in her rooms in the
Vauxhall Bridge Road, but the positions had been reversed; it was
he who had sat on the floor and leaned his head against her knee.
How passionately he had loved her then! Now he felt for her a
tenderness he had not known for a long time. He seemed still to
feel twined round his neck the baby's soft little arms.

  "Are you comfy?" he asked.

  She looked up at him, gave a slight smile, and
nodded. They gazed into the fire dreamily, without speaking to one
another. At last she turned round and stared at him curiously.

  "D'you know that you haven't kissed me once since I
came here?" she said suddenly.

  "D'you want me to?" he smiled.

  "I suppose you don't care for me in that way any
more?"

  "I'm very fond of you."

  "You're much fonder of baby."

  He did not answer, and she laid her cheek against
his hand.

  "You're not angry with me any more?" she asked
presently, with her eyes cast down.

  "Why on earth should I be?"

  "I've never cared for you as I do now. It's only
since I passed through the fire that I've learnt to love you." It
chilled Philip to hear her make use of the sort of phrase she read
in the penny novelettes which she devoured. Then he wondered
whether what she said had any meaning for her: perhaps she knew no
other way to express her genuine feelings than the stilted language
of The Family Herald.

  "It seems so funny our living together like
this."

  He did not reply for quite a long time, and silence
fell upon them again; but at last he spoke and seemed conscious of
no interval.

  "You mustn't be angry with me. One can't help these
things. I remember that I thought you wicked and cruel because you
did this, that, and the other; but it was very silly of me. You
didn't love me, and it was absurd to blame you for that. I thought
I could make you love me, but I know now that was impossible. I
don't know what it is that makes someone love you, but whatever it
is, it's the only thing that matters, and if it isn't there you
won't create it by kindness, or generosity, or anything of that
sort."

  "I should have thought if you'd loved me really
you'd have loved me still."

  "I should have thought so too. I remember how I used
to think that it would last for ever, I felt I would rather die
than be without you, and I used to long for the time when you would
be faded and wrinkled so that nobody cared for you any more and I
should have you all to myself."

  She did not answer, and presently she got up and
said she was going to bed. She gave a timid little smile.

  "It's Christmas Day, Philip, won't you kiss me
good-night?"

  He gave a laugh, blushed slightly, and kissed her.
She went to her bed-room and he began to read.

  XCVI

  The climax came two or three weeks later. Mildred
was driven by Philip's behaviour to a pitch of strange
exasperation. There were many different emotions in her soul, and
she passed from mood to mood with facility. She spent a great deal
of time alone and brooded over her position. She did not put all
her feelings into words, she did not even know what they were, but
certain things stood out in her mind, and she thought of them over
and over again. She had never understood Philip, nor had very much
liked him; but she was pleased to have him about her because she
thought he was a gentleman. She was impressed because his father
had been a doctor and his uncle was a clergyman. She despised him a
little because she had made such a fool of him, and at the same
time was never quite comfortable in his presence; she could not let
herself go, and she felt that he was criticising her manners.