Of Human Bondage (58 page)

  Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing;
his soul leaped, for he thought he was free; he loved no longer;
but in a little while, as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in
his heart, and he knew that he was not cured yet. Though he yearned
for Mildred so madly he despised her. He thought to himself that
there could be no greater torture in the world than at the same
time to love and to contemn.

  Philip, burrowing as was his habit into the state of
his feelings, discussing with himself continually his condition,
came to the conclusion that he could only cure himself of his
degrading passion by making Mildred his mistress. It was sexual
hunger that he suffered from, and if he could satisfy this he might
free himself from the intolerable chains that bound him. He knew
that Mildred did not care for him at all in that way. When he
kissed her passionately she withdrew herself from him with
instinctive distaste. She had no sensuality. Sometimes he had tried
to make her jealous by talking of adventures in Paris, but they did
not interest her; once or twice he had sat at other tables in the
tea-shop and affected to flirt with the waitress who attended them,
but she was entirely indifferent. He could see that it was no
pretence on her part.

  "You didn't mind my not sitting at one of your
tables this afternoon?" he asked once, when he was walking to the
station with her. "Yours seemed to be all full."

  This was not a fact, but she did not contradict him.
Even if his desertion meant nothing to her he would have been
grateful if she had pretended it did. A reproach would have been
balm to his soul.

  "I think it's silly of you to sit at the same table
every day. You ought to give the other girls a turn now and
again."

  But the more he thought of it the more he was
convinced that complete surrender on her part was his only way to
freedom. He was like a knight of old, metamorphosed by magic
spells, who sought the potions which should restore him to his fair
and proper form. Philip had only one hope. Mildred greatly desired
to go to Paris. To her, as to most English people, it was the
centre of gaiety and fashion: she had heard of the Magasin du
Louvre, where you could get the very latest thing for about half
the price you had to pay in London; a friend of hers had passed her
honeymoon in Paris and had spent all day at the Louvre; and she and
her husband, my dear, they never went to bed till six in the
morning all the time they were there; the Moulin Rouge and I don't
know what all. Philip did not care that if she yielded to his
desires it would only be the unwilling price she paid for the
gratification of her wish. He did not care upon what terms he
satisfied his passion. He had even had a mad, melodramatic idea to
drug her. He had plied her with liquor in the hope of exciting her,
but she had no taste for wine; and though she liked him to order
champagne because it looked well, she never drank more than half a
glass. She liked to leave untouched a large glass filled to the
brim.

  "It shows the waiters who you are," she said.

  Philip chose an opportunity when she seemed more
than usually friendly. He had an examination in anatomy at the end
of March. Easter, which came a week later, would give Mildred three
whole days holiday.

  "I say, why don't you come over to Paris then?" he
suggested. "We'd have such a ripping time."

  "How could you? It would cost no end of money."

  Philip had thought of that. It would cost at least
five-and-twenty pounds. It was a large sum to him. He was willing
to spend his last penny on her.

  "What does that matter? Say you'll come,
darling."

  "What next, I should like to know. I can't see
myself going away with a man that I wasn't married to. You oughtn't
to suggest such a thing."

  "What does it matter?"

  He enlarged on the glories of the Rue de la Paix and
the garish splendour of the Folies Bergeres. He described the
Louvre and the Bon Marche. He told her about the Cabaret du Neant,
the Abbaye, and the various haunts to which foreigners go. He
painted in glowing colours the side of Paris which he despised. He
pressed her to come with him.

  "You know, you say you love me, but if you really
loved me you'd want to marry me. You've never asked me to marry
you."

  "You know I can't afford it. After all, I'm in my
first year, I shan't earn a penny for six years."

  "Oh, I'm not blaming you. I wouldn't marry you if
you went down on your bended knees to me."

  He had thought of marriage more than once, but it
was a step from which he shrank. In Paris he had come by the
opinion that marriage was a ridiculous institution of the
philistines. He knew also that a permanent tie would ruin him. He
had middle-class instincts, and it seemed a dreadful thing to him
to marry a waitress. A common wife would prevent him from getting a
decent practice. Besides, he had only just enough money to last him
till he was qualified; he could not keep a wife even if they
arranged not to have children. He thought of Cronshaw bound to a
vulgar slattern, and he shuddered with dismay . He foresaw what
Mildred, with her genteel ideas and her mean mind, would become: it
was impossible for him to marry her. But he decided only with his
reason; he felt that he must have her whatever happened; and if he
could not get her without marrying her he would do that; the future
could look after itself. It might end in disaster; he did not care.
When he got hold of an idea it obsessed him, he could think of
nothing else, and he had a more than common power to persuade
himself of the reasonableness of what he wished to do. He found
himself overthrowing all the sensible arguments which had occurred
to him against marriage. Each day he found that he was more
passionately devoted to her; and his unsatisfied love became angry
and resentful.

  "By George, if I marry her I'll make her pay for all
the suffering I've endured," he said to himself.

  At last he could bear the agony no longer. After
dinner one evening in the little restaurant in Soho, to which now
they often went, he spoke to her.

  "I say, did you mean it the other day that you
wouldn't marry me if I asked you?"

  "Yes, why not?"

  "Because I can't live without you. I want you with
me always. I've tried to get over it and I can't. I never shall
now. I want you to marry me."

  She had read too many novelettes not to know how to
take such an offer.

  "I'm sure I'm very grateful to you, Philip. I'm very
much flattered at your proposal."

  "Oh, don't talk rot. You will marry me, won't
you?"

  "D'you think we should be happy?"

  "No. But what does that matter?"

  The words were wrung out of him almost against his
will. They surprised her.

  "Well, you are a funny chap. Why d'you want to marry
me then? The other day you said you couldn't afford it."

  "I think I've got about fourteen hundred pounds
left. Two can live just as cheaply as one. That'll keep us till I'm
qualified and have got through with my hospital appointments, and
then I can get an assistantship."

  "It means you wouldn't be able to earn anything for
six years. We should have about four pounds a week to live on till
then, shouldn't we?"

  "Not much more than three. There are all my fees to
pay."

  "And what would you get as an assistant?"

  "Three pounds a week."

  "D'you mean to say you have to work all that time
and spend a small fortune just to earn three pounds a week at the
end of it? I don't see that I should be any better off than I am
now."

  He was silent for a moment.

  "D'you mean to say you won't marry me?" he asked
hoarsely. "Does my great love mean nothing to you at all?"

  "One has to think of oneself in those things, don't
one? I shouldn't mind marrying, but I don't want to marry if I'm
going to be no better off than what I am now. I don't see the use
of it."

  "If you cared for me you wouldn't think of all
that."

  "P'raps not."

  He was silent. He drank a glass of wine in order to
get rid of the choking in his throat.

  "Look at that girl who's just going out," said
Mildred. "She got them furs at the Bon Marche at Brixton. I saw
them in the window last time I went down there."

  Philip smiled grimly.

  "What are you laughing at?" she asked. "It's true.
And I said to my aunt at the time, I wouldn't buy anything that had
been in the window like that, for everyone to know how much you
paid for it."

  "I can't understand you. You make me frightfully
unhappy, and in the next breath you talk rot that has nothing to do
with what we're speaking about."

  "You are nasty to me," she answered, aggrieved. "I
can't help noticing those furs, because I said to my aunt..."

  "I don't care a damn what you said to your aunt," he
interrupted impatiently.

  "I wish you wouldn't use bad language when you speak
to me Philip. You know I don't like it."

  Philip smiled a little, but his eyes were wild. He
was silent for a while. He looked at her sullenly. He hated,
despised, and loved her.

  "If I had an ounce of sense I'd never see you
again," he said at last. "If you only knew how heartily I despise
myself for loving you!"

  "That's not a very nice thing to say to me," she
replied sulkily.

  "It isn't," he laughed. "Let's go to the
Pavilion."

  "That's what's so funny in you, you start laughing
just when one doesn't expect you to. And if I make you that unhappy
why d'you want to take me to the Pavilion? I'm quite ready to go
home."

  "Merely because I'm less unhappy with you than away
from you."

  "I should like to know what you really think of
me."

  He laughed outright.

  "My dear, if you did you'd never speak to me
again."

  Philip did not pass the examination in anatomy at
the end of March. He and Dunsford had worked at the subject
together on Philip's skeleton, asking each other questions till
both knew by heart every attachment and the meaning of every nodule
and groove on the human bones; but in the examination room Philip
was seized with panic, and failed to give right answers to
questions from a sudden fear that they might be wrong. He knew he
was ploughed and did not even trouble to go up to the building next
day to see whether his number was up. The second failure put him
definitely among the incompetent and idle men of his year.

  He did not care much. He had other things to think
of. He told himself that Mildred must have senses like anybody
else, it was only a question of awakening them; he had theories
about woman, the rip at heart, and thought that there must come a
time with everyone when she would yield to persistence. It was a
question of watching for the opportunity, keeping his temper,
wearing her down with small attentions, taking advantage of the
physical exhaustion which opened the heart to tenderness, making
himself a refuge from the petty vexations of her work. He talked to
her of the relations between his friends in Paris and the fair
ladies they admired. The life he described had a charm, an easy
gaiety, in which was no grossness. Weaving into his own
recollections the adventures of Mimi and Rodolphe, of Musette and
the rest of them, he poured into Mildred's ears a story of poverty
made picturesque by song and laughter, of lawless love made
romantic by beauty and youth. He never attacked her prejudices
directly, but sought to combat them by the suggestion that they
were suburban. He never let himself be disturbed by her
inattention, nor irritated by her indifference. He thought he had
bored her. By an effort he made himself affable and entertaining;
he never let himself be angry, he never asked for anything, he
never complained, he never scolded. When she made engagements and
broke them, he met her next day with a smiling face; when she
excused herself, he said it did not matter. He never let her see
that she pained him. He understood that his passionate grief had
wearied her, and he took care to hide every sentiment which could
be in the least degree troublesome. He was heroic.