Of Human Bondage (75 page)

  But when next day, about tea-time, an hour at which
he was pretty certain to find Norah at home, he knocked at her door
his courage suddenly failed him. Was it possible for her to forgive
him? It would be abominable of him to force himself on her
presence. The door was opened by a maid new since he had been in
the habit of calling every day, and he inquired if Mrs. Nesbit was
in.

  "Will you ask her if she could see Mr. Carey?" he
said. "I'll wait here."

  The maid ran upstairs and in a moment clattered down
again.

  "Will you step up, please, sir. Second floor
front."

  "I know," said Philip, with a slight smile.

  He went with a fluttering heart. He knocked at the
door.

  "Come in," said the well-known, cheerful voice.

  It seemed to say come in to a new life of peace and
happiness. When he entered Norah stepped forward to greet him. She
shook hands with him as if they had parted the day before. A man
stood up.

  "Mr. Carey – Mr. Kingsford."

  Philip, bitterly disappointed at not finding her
alone, sat down and took stock of the stranger. He had never heard
her mention his name, but he seemed to Philip to occupy his chair
as though he were very much at home. He was a man of forty,
clean-shaven, with long fair hair very neatly plastered down, and
the reddish skin and pale, tired eyes which fair men get when their
youth is passed. He had a large nose, a large mouth; the bones of
his face were prominent, and he was heavily made; he was a man of
more than average height, and broad-shouldered.

  "I was wondering what had become of you," said
Norah, in her sprightly manner. "I met Mr. Lawson the other day –
did he tell you? – and I informed him that it was really high time
you came to see me again."

  Philip could see no shadow of embarrassment in her
countenance, and he admired the use with which she carried off an
encounter of which himself felt the intense awkwardness. She gave
him tea. She was about to put sugar in it when he stopped her.

  "How stupid of me!" she cried. "I forgot."

  He did not believe that. She must remember quite
well that he never took sugar in his tea. He accepted the incident
as a sign that her nonchalance was affected.

  The conversation which Philip had interrupted went
on, and presently he began to feel a little in the way. Kingsford
took no particular notice of him. He talked fluently and well, not
without humour, but with a slightly dogmatic manner: he was a
journalist, it appeared, and had something amusing to say on every
topic that was touched upon; but it exasperated Philip to find
himself edged out of the conversation. He was determined to stay
the visitor out. He wondered if he admired Norah. In the old days
they had often talked of the men who wanted to flirt with her and
had laughed at them together. Philip tried to bring back the
conversation to matters which only he and Norah knew about, but
each time the journalist broke in and succeeded in drawing it away
to a subject upon which Philip was forced to be silent. He grew
faintly angry with Norah, for she must see he was being made
ridiculous; but perhaps she was inflicting this upon him as a
punishment, and with this thought he regained his good humour. At
last, however, the clock struck six, and Kingsford got up.

  "I must go," he said.

  Norah shook hands with him, and accompanied him to
the landing. She shut the door behind her and stood outside for a
couple of minutes. Philip wondered what they were talking
about.

  "Who is Mr. Kingsford?" he asked cheerfully, when
she returned.

  "Oh, he's the editor of one of Harmsworth's
Magazines. He's been taking a good deal of my work lately."

  "I thought he was never going."

  "I'm glad you stayed. I wanted to have a talk with
you." She curled herself into the large arm-chair, feet and all, in
a way her small size made possible, and lit a cigarette. He smiled
when he saw her assume the attitude which had always amused
him.

  "You look just like a cat."

  She gave him a flash of her dark, fine eyes.

  "I really ought to break myself of the habit. It's
absurd to behave like a child when you're my age, but I'm
comfortable with my legs under me."

  "It's awfully jolly to be sitting in this room
again," said Philip happily. "You don't know how I've missed
it."

  "Why on earth didn't you come before?" she asked
gaily.

  "I was afraid to," he said, reddening.

  She gave him a look full of kindness. Her lips
outlined a charming smile.

  "You needn't have been."

  He hesitated for a moment. His heart beat
quickly.

  "D'you remember the last time we met? I treated you
awfully badly – I'm dreadfully ashamed of myself."

  She looked at him steadily. She did not answer. He
was losing his head; he seemed to have come on an errand of which
he was only now realising the outrageousness. She did not help him,
and he could only blurt out bluntly.

  "Can you ever forgive me?"

  Then impetuously he told her that Mildred had left
him and that his unhappiness had been so great that he almost
killed himself. He told her of all that had happened between them,
of the birth of the child, and of the meeting with Griffiths, of
his folly and his trust and his immense deception. He told her how
often he had thought of her kindness and of her love, and how
bitterly he had regretted throwing it away: he had only been happy
when he was with her, and he knew now how great was her worth. His
voice was hoarse with emotion. Sometimes he was so ashamed of what
he was saying that he spoke with his eyes fixed on the ground. His
face was distorted with pain, and yet he felt it a strange relief
to speak. At last he finished. He flung himself back in his chair,
exhausted, and waited. He had concealed nothing, and even, in his
self-abasement, he had striven to make himself more despicable than
he had really been. He was surprised that she did not speak, and at
last he raised his eyes. She was not looking at him. Her face was
quite white, and she seemed to be lost in thought.

  "Haven't you got anything to say to me?"

  She started and reddened.

  "I'm afraid you've had a rotten time," she said.
"I'm dreadfully sorry."

  She seemed about to go on, but she stopped, and
again he waited. At length she seemed to force herself to
speak.

  "I'm engaged to be married to Mr. Kingsford."

  "Why didn't you tell me at once?" he cried. "You
needn't have allowed me to humiliate myself before you."

  "I'm sorry, I couldn't stop you.... I met him soon
after you" – she seemed to search for an expression that should not
wound him – "told me your friend had come back. I was very wretched
for a bit, he was extremely kind to me. He knew someone had made me
suffer, of course he doesn't know it was you, and I don't know what
I should have done without him. And suddenly I felt I couldn't go
on working, working, working; I was so tired, I felt so ill. I told
him about my husband. He offered to give me the money to get my
divorce if I would marry him as soon as I could. He had a very good
job, and it wouldn't be necessary for me to do anything unless I
wanted to. He was so fond of me and so anxious to take care of me.
I was awfully touched. And now I'm very, very fond of him."

  "Have you got your divorce then?" asked Philip.

  "I've got the decree nisi. It'll be made absolute in
July, and then we are going to be married at once."

  For some time Philip did not say anything.

  "I wish I hadn't made such a fool of myself," he
muttered at length.

  He was thinking of his long, humiliating confession.
She looked at him curiously.

  "You were never really in love with me," she
said.

  "It's not very pleasant being in love."

  But he was always able to recover himself quickly,
and, getting up now and holding out his hand, he said:

  "I hope you'll be very happy. After all, it's the
best thing that could have happened to you."

  She looked a little wistfully at him as she took his
hand and held it.

  "You'll come and see me again, won't you?" she
asked.

  "No," he said, shaking his head. "It would make me
too envious to see you happy."

  He walked slowly away from her house. After all she
was right when she said he had never loved her. He was
disappointed, irritated even, but his vanity was more affected than
his heart. He knew that himself. And presently he grew conscious
that the gods had played a very good practical joke on him, and he
laughed at himself mirthlessly. It is not very comfortable to have
the gift of being amused at one's own absurdity.

  For the next three months Philip worked on subjects
which were new to him. The unwieldy crowd which had entered the
Medical School nearly two years before had thinned out: some had
left the hospital, finding the examinations more difficult to pass
than they expected, some had been taken away by parents who had not
foreseen the expense of life in London, and some had drifted away
to other callings. One youth whom Philip knew had devised an
ingenious plan to make money; he had bought things at sales and
pawned them, but presently found it more profitable to pawn goods
bought on credit; and it had caused a little excitement at the
hospital when someone pointed out his name in police-court
proceedings. There had been a remand, then assurances on the part
of a harassed father, and the young man had gone out to bear the
White Man's Burden overseas. The imagination of another, a lad who
had never before been in a town at all, fell to the glamour of
music-halls and bar parlours; he spent his time among racing-men,
tipsters, and trainers, and now was become a book-maker's clerk.
Philip had seen him once in a bar near Piccadilly Circus in a
tight-waisted coat and a brown hat with a broad, flat brim. A
third, with a gift for singing and mimicry, who had achieved
success at the smoking concerts of the Medical School by his
imitation of notorious comedians, had abandoned the hospital for
the chorus of a musical comedy. Still another, and he interested
Philip because his uncouth manner and interjectional speech did not
suggest that he was capable of any deep emotion, had felt himself
stifle among the houses of London. He grew haggard in shut-in
spaces, and the soul he knew not he possessed struggled like a
sparrow held in the hand, with little frightened gasps and a quick
palpitation of the heart: he yearned for the broad skies and the
open, desolate places among which his childhood had been spent; and
he walked off one day, without a word to anybody, between one
lecture and another; and the next thing his friends heard was that
he had thrown up medicine and was working on a farm.

  Philip attended now lectures on medicine and on
surgery. On certain mornings in the week he practised bandaging on
out-patients glad to earn a little money, and he was taught
auscultation and how to use the stethoscope. He learned dispensing.
He was taking the examination in Materia Medica in July, and it
amused him to play with various drugs, concocting mixtures, rolling
pills, and making ointments. He seized avidly upon anything from
which he could extract a suggestion of human interest.

  He saw Griffiths once in the distance, but, not to
have the pain of cutting him dead, avoided him. Philip had felt a
certain self-consciousness with Griffiths' friends, some of whom
were now friends of his, when he realised they knew of his quarrel
with Griffiths and surmised they were aware of the reason. One of
them, a very tall fellow, with a small head and a languid air, a
youth called Ramsden, who was one of Griffiths' most faithful
admirers, copied his ties, his boots, his manner of talking and his
gestures, told Philip that Griffiths was very much hurt because
Philip had not answered his letter. He wanted to be reconciled with
him.