Of Human Bondage (85 page)

  "Now then, children, tea's ready," she said.

  Jane slipped off Philip's knees, and they all went
back to the kitchen. Sally began to lay the cloth on the long
Spanish table.

  "Mother says, shall she come and have tea with you?"
she asked. "I can give the children their tea."

  "Tell your mother that we shall be proud and
honoured if she will favour us with her company," said Athelny.

  It seemed to Philip that he could never say anything
without an oratorical flourish.

  "Then I'll lay for her," said Sally.

  She came back again in a moment with a tray on which
were a cottage loaf, a slab of butter, and a jar of strawberry jam.
While she placed the things on the table her father chaffed her. He
said it was quite time she was walking out; he told Philip that she
was very proud, and would have nothing to do with aspirants to that
honour who lined up at the door, two by two, outside the Sunday
school and craved the honour of escorting her home.

  "You do talk, father," said Sally, with her slow,
good-natured smile.

  "You wouldn't think to look at her that a tailor's
assistant has enlisted in the army because she would not say how
d'you do to him and an electrical engineer, an electrical engineer,
mind you, has taken to drink because she refused to share her
hymn-book with him in church. I shudder to think what will happen
when she puts her hair up."

  "Mother'll bring the tea along herself," said
Sally.

  "Sally never pays any attention to me," laughed
Athelny, looking at her with fond, proud eyes. "She goes about her
business indifferent to wars, revolutions, and cataclysms. What a
wife she'll make to an honest man!"

  Mrs. Athelny brought in the tea. She sat down and
proceeded to cut bread and butter. It amused Philip to see that she
treated her husband as though he were a child. She spread jam for
him and cut up the bread and butter into convenient slices for him
to eat. She had taken off her hat; and in her Sunday dress, which
seemed a little tight for her, she looked like one of the farmers'
wives whom Philip used to call on sometimes with his uncle when he
was a small boy. Then he knew why the sound of her voice was
familiar to him. She spoke just like the people round
Blackstable.

  "What part of the country d'you come from?" he asked
her.

  "I'm a Kentish woman. I come from Ferne."

  "I thought as much. My uncle's Vicar of
Blackstable."

  "That's a funny thing now," she said. "I was
wondering in Church just now whether you was any connection of Mr.
Carey. Many's the time I've seen 'im. A cousin of mine married Mr.
Barker of Roxley Farm, over by Blackstable Church, and I used to go
and stay there often when I was a girl. Isn't that a funny thing
now?"

  She looked at him with a new interest, and a
brightness came into her faded eyes. She asked him whether he knew
Ferne. It was a pretty village about ten miles across country from
Blackstable, and the Vicar had come over sometimes to Blackstable
for the harvest thanksgiving. She mentioned names of various
farmers in the neighbourhood. She was delighted to talk again of
the country in which her youth was spent, and it was a pleasure to
her to recall scenes and people that had remained in her memory
with the tenacity peculiar to her class. It gave Philip a queer
sensation too. A breath of the country-side seemed to be wafted
into that panelled room in the middle of London. He seemed to see
the fat Kentish fields with their stately elms; and his nostrils
dilated with the scent of the air; it is laden with the salt of the
North Sea, and that makes it keen and sharp.

  Philip did not leave the Athelnys' till ten o'clock.
The children came in to say good-night at eight and quite naturally
put up their faces for Philip to kiss. His heart went out to them.
Sally only held out her hand.

  "Sally never kisses gentlemen till she's seen them
twice," said her father.

  "You must ask me again then," said Philip.

  "You mustn't take any notice of what father says,"
remarked Sally, with a smile.

  "She's a most self-possessed young woman," added her
parent.

  They had supper of bread and cheese and beer, while
Mrs. Athelny was putting the children to bed; and when Philip went
into the kitchen to bid her good-night (she had been sitting there,
resting herself and reading The Weekly Despatch) she invited him
cordially to come again.

  "There's always a good dinner on Sundays so long as
Athelny's in work," she said, "and it's a charity to come and talk
to him."

  On the following Saturday Philip received a postcard
from Athelny saying that they were expecting him to dinner next
day; but fearing their means were not such that Mr. Athelny would
desire him to accept, Philip wrote back that he would only come to
tea. He bought a large plum cake so that his entertainment should
cost nothing. He found the whole family glad to see him, and the
cake completed his conquest of the children. He insisted that they
should all have tea together in the kitchen, and the meal was noisy
and hilarious.

  Soon Philip got into the habit of going to Athelny's
every Sunday. He became a great favourite with the children,
because he was simple and unaffected and because it was so plain
that he was fond of them. As soon as they heard his ring at the
door one of them popped a head out of window to make sure it was
he, and then they all rushed downstairs tumultuously to let him in.
They flung themselves into his arms. At tea they fought for the
privilege of sitting next to him. Soon they began to call him Uncle
Philip.

  Athelny was very communicative, and little by little
Philip learned the various stages of his life. He had followed many
occupations, and it occurred to Philip that he managed to make a
mess of everything he attempted. He had been on a tea plantation in
Ceylon and a traveller in America for Italian wines; his
secretaryship of the water company in Toledo had lasted longer than
any of his employments; he had been a journalist and for some time
had worked as police-court reporter for an evening paper; he had
been sub-editor of a paper in the Midlands and editor of another on
the Riviera. From all his occupations he had gathered amusing
anecdotes, which he told with a keen pleasure in his own powers of
entertainment. He had read a great deal, chiefly delighting in
books which were unusual; and he poured forth his stores of
abstruse knowledge with child-like enjoyment of the amazement of
his hearers. Three or four years before abject poverty had driven
him to take the job of press-representative to a large firm of
drapers; and though he felt the work unworthy his abilities, which
he rated highly, the firmness of his wife and the needs of his
family had made him stick to it.

  XC

  When he left the Athelnys' Philip walked down
Chancery Lane and along the Strand to get a 'bus at the top of
Parliament Street. One Sunday, when he had known them about six
weeks, he did this as usual, but he found the Kennington 'bus full.
It was June, but it had rained during the day and the night was raw
and cold. He walked up to Piccadilly Circus in order to get a seat;
the 'bus waited at the fountain, and when it arrived there seldom
had more than two or three people in it. This service ran every
quarter of an hour, and he had some time to wait. He looked idly at
the crowd. The public-houses were closing, and there were many
people about. His mind was busy with the ideas Athelny had the
charming gift of suggesting.

  Suddenly his heart stood still. He saw Mildred. He
had not thought of her for weeks. She was crossing over from the
corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and stopped at the shelter till a
string of cabs passed by. She was watching her opportunity and had
no eyes for anything else. She wore a large black straw hat with a
mass of feathers on it and a black silk dress; at that time it was
fashionable for women to wear trains; the road was clear, and
Mildred crossed, her skirt trailing on the ground, and walked down
Piccadilly. Philip, his heart beating excitedly, followed her. He
did not wish to speak to her, but he wondered where she was going
at that hour; he wanted to get a look at her face. She walked
slowly along and turned down Air Street and so got through into
Regent Street. She walked up again towards the Circus. Philip was
puzzled. He could not make out what she was doing. Perhaps she was
waiting for somebody, and he felt a great curiosity to know who it
was. She overtook a short man in a bowler hat, who was strolling
very slowly in the same direction as herself; she gave him a
sidelong glance as she passed. She walked a few steps more till she
came to Swan and Edgar's, then stopped and waited, facing the road.
When the man came up she smiled. The man stared at her for a
moment, turned away his head, and sauntered on. Then Philip
understood.

  He was overwhelmed with horror. For a moment he felt
such a weakness in his legs that he could hardly stand; then he
walked after her quickly; he touched her on the arm.

  "Mildred."

  She turned round with a violent start. He thought
that she reddened, but in the obscurity he could not see very well.
For a while they stood and looked at one another without speaking.
At last she said:

  "Fancy seeing you!"

  He did not know what to answer; he was horribly
shaken; and the phrases that chased one another through his brain
seemed incredibly melodramatic.

  "It's awful," he gasped, almost to himself.

  She did not say anything more, she turned away from
him, and looked down at the pavement. He felt that his face was
distorted with misery.

  "Isn't there anywhere we can go and talk?"

  "I don't want to talk," she said sullenly. "Leave me
alone, can't you?"

  The thought struck him that perhaps she was in
urgent need of money and could not afford to go away at that
hour.

  "I've got a couple of sovereigns on me if you're
hard up," he blurted out.

  "I don't know what you mean. I was just walking
along here on my way back to my lodgings. I expected to meet one of
the girls from where I work."

  "For God's sake don't lie now," he said.

  Then he saw that she was crying, and he repeated his
question.

  "Can't we go and talk somewhere? Can't I come back
to your rooms?"

  "No, you can't do that," she sobbed. "I'm not
allowed to take gentlemen in there. If you like I'll met you
tomorrow."

  He felt certain that she would not keep an
appointment. He was not going to let her go.

  "No. You must take me somewhere now."

  "Well, there is a room I know, but they'll charge
six shillings for it."

  "I don't mind that. Where is it?"

  She gave him the address, and he called a cab. They
drove to a shabby street beyond the British Museum in the
neighbourhood of the Gray's Inn Road, and she stopped the cab at
the corner.

  "They don't like you to drive up to the door," she
said.

  They were the first words either of them had spoken
since getting into the cab. They walked a few yards and Mildred
knocked three times, sharply, at a door. Philip noticed in the
fanlight a cardboard on which was an announcement that apartments
were to let. The door was opened quietly, and an elderly, tall
woman let them in. She gave Philip a stare and then spoke to
Mildred in an undertone. Mildred led Philip along a passage to a
room at the back. It was quite dark; she asked him for a match, and
lit the gas; there was no globe, and the gas flared shrilly. Philip
saw that he was in a dingy little bed-room with a suite of
furniture, painted to look like pine much too large for it; the
lace curtains were very dirty; the grate was hidden by a large
paper fan. Mildred sank on the chair which stood by the side of the
chimney-piece. Philip sat on the edge of the bed. He felt ashamed.
He saw now that Mildred's cheeks were thick with rouge, her
eyebrows were blackened; but she looked thin and ill, and the red
on her cheeks exaggerated the greenish pallor of her skin. She
stared at the paper fan in a listless fashion. Philip could not
think what to say, and he had a choking in his throat as if he were
going to cry. He covered his eyes with his hands.

  "My God, it is awful," he groaned.

  "I don't know what you've got to fuss about. I
should have thought you'd have been rather pleased."

  Philip did not answer, and in a moment she broke
into a sob.

  "You don't think I do it because I like it, do
you?"

  "Oh, my dear," he cried. "I'm so sorry, I'm so
awfully sorry."

  "That'll do me a fat lot of good."

  Again Philip found nothing to say. He was
desperately afraid of saying anything which she might take for a
reproach or a sneer.

  "Where's the baby?" he asked at last.

  "I've got her with me in London. I hadn't got the
money to keep her on at Brighton, so I had to take her. I've got a
room up Highbury way. I told them I was on the stage. It's a long
way to have to come down to the West End every day, but it's a rare
job to find anyone who'll let to ladies at all."

  "Wouldn't they take you back at the shop?"

  "I couldn't get any work to do anywhere. I walked my
legs off looking for work. I did get a job once, but I was off for
a week because I was queer, and when I went back they said they
didn't want me any more. You can't blame them either, can you? Them
places, they can't afford to have girls that aren't strong."

  "You don't look very well now," said Philip.

  "I wasn't fit to come out tonight, but I couldn't
help myself, I wanted the money. I wrote to Emil and told him I was
broke, but he never even answered the letter."

  "You might have written to me."