Of human bondage

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OF HUMAN
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OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 1

The day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and
there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman
servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and
drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house op-
posite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's
bed.

"Wake up, Philip," she said.

She pulled down the bed-clothes, took him in her arms, and
carried him downstairs. He was only half awake.

"Your mother wants you," she said.

She opened the door of a room on the floor below and took
the child over to a bed in which a woman was lying. It was his
mother. She stretched out her arms, and the child nestled by
her side. He did not ask why he had been awakened. The
woman kissed, his eyes, and with thin, small hands felt the
warm body through his white flannel nightgown. She pressed
him closer to herself.

"Are you sleepy, darling?" she said.

Her voice was so weak that it seemed to come already from
a great distance. The child did not answer, but smiled com.
fortably. He was very ha:ppy in the large, warm bed, with
those soft arms about him.. He tried to make himself smaller
still as he cuddled up against his mother, and he kissed her
sleepily. In a mom^t he closed his eyes and was fast asleep.
The doctor came forwards and stood by the bed-side.

"Oh, don't take him away yet," she moaned.

The doctor, without answering, looked at her graVely.
Knowing she would not be allowed to keep the child much
longer, the woman kissed him again; and she passed her

3

4 OF HUMAN BONDAGE j

hand down his body till she came to his feet; she held the
' right foot in her hanxl and felt the iive small toes; and then
slowly passed her hand over the left one. She gave a sob.

"What's the matter.?" said the doctor. "You're tired."

She shook her head, unable to speak, and the tears rolled
down her cheeks. The doctor bent down.

"Let me take hirn."

She was too weak to resist his wish, and she gave the child
up. The doctor handed him back to his nurse.

"You'd better put him back in his own bed."

"Very well, sir."

The- little boy, still sleeping, was taken away. His rnother
sobbed now broken-heartedly.

"Whdt will happen to him, poor child.?"

The monthly nurse tried to quiet her, and presently, frorn
exhaustion, the crying ceased. The doctor walked to a table
on the other side of the room, upon which, under a towel, lay
the body of a still-born child. He lifted the towel and looked.'
He was hidden from the bed by a screen but the woman
guessed what he was doing.

"Was it a girl or a boy.?" she whispered to the nurse.

"Another boy."

The woman did not answer. In a moment the child's nurse
■came back. She approached the bed.

"Master Philip never woke up," she said.

There was a pause. Then the doctor felt his patient's pulse :
once more. *^

"I don't think there's anything I can do just now," he said.
"Til call again after breakfast."

"I'll show you out, sir," said the child's nurse.

They walked downstairs in silence. In«the hall the doctor
stopped.

"You've sent for Mrs. Carey's brother-in-law, haven't you?"

"Yes, sir." _ ■

"D'you know at what time he'll be here.?"

"No, sir, I'm expecting a telegram."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 5

"What about the Httle boy? I should think he'd be better out
of the'way."

"Miss Watkin said she'd take him, sir."

"Who's she?"

"She's his godmother, sir. D'you think Mrs. Carey will get
over it, sir?"

The doctor shook his head.

Chapter 2

It was a week later. Philip was sitting on the floor in the
; drawing-room at Miss Watkin 's house in Onslow Gardens.
He was an onjy child and used to amusing himself. The room
was filled with massive furniture, and on each of the sofas
were three big cushions. There was a cushion too in each arm-
chair. All these he had taken and, with the help of gilt rout
chairs, light and easy to move, had made an elaborate cave ii*
which he could hide himself from the Red Indians who were
lurking behind the curtains. He put his ear to the floor and
listened to the herd of buffaloes that raced across the prairie.
Presently, hearing the door open, he held his breath so that he
, might not be discovered; but a violent hand pulled away s-
chair and the cushions fell down.

"You naughty boy, Miss Watkin will be cross with you."

"Hulloa, Emma!" he said.

The nurse bent down and kissed him, then began to shake,
out the cushions, and put them back in their places.

"Am I to come home?" he asked.

"Yes, I've come to fetch you."

"You've got a new dress on."

It was in eighteen-eighty-five, and she wore a bustle. Her
gown was of black velvet, with tight sleeves and sloping

6 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

shoulders, and the skirt had t^lree large flounces. She wore a
black bonnet with velvet strings. She hesitated" The question
she had expected did not come^ and so she could not give the
answer she had prepared.

"Aren't you going to ask how your mamma is?" she said at
length.

"Oh, I forgot. How is mamma.?"

Now she was ready.

"Your mamma is quite well and happy."

"Oh, I am glad."

"Your mamma's gone away. You won't ever see her any
more."

Philip did not know' what she meant.

"Why not.?"

"Your mamma's in heaven."

She began to cry, and Philip, though he did not quite under-
stand, cried too. Emma was a tall, big-boned woman, with
fair hair and large features. She came from Devonshire and,
notwithstanding her many years of service in London, had
never lost the breadth of her accent. Her tears increased her
emotion, and she pressed the little boy to her heart. She felt,
vaguely the pity of that child deprived of the only love in thi^
world that is quite unselfish. It seemed dreadful that he must
be handed over to strangers. But in a little while she pulle4
herself together. ' '

"Your Uncle William is waiting in to see you," she said.
"Go and say good-bye to Miss Watkin, and we'll go home."

"I don't want to say good-bye," he answered, instinctively
anxious to hide his tears.

"Very well, run upstairs and get your hat."

He fetched it, and when he came down Emma was waiting
for him in the hall. He heard the sound of voices in the study
behind the dining-room. He paused. He knew that Miss Wat-
kin and her sister were talking to friends, and it seemed to
him— he was nine years old — that if he went in they would
be sorry for him.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I think I'll go and say good-bye to Miss Watkin."

"I think you'd better," said- Emma.

"Go in and tell them I'm coming," he said.

He wished to make the most of his opportunity. Emma
knocked at th^ door and walked in. He heard her speak.

"Master Philip wants to say good-bye to you, miss."

There was a sudden hush of the conversation, and Philip
limped in. Henrietta Watkin was a stout woman, with a red
face and dyed hair. In those days to dye the hair excited com-
ment, and Philip had heard much gossip at home when his
godmother's changed colour. She lived with an elder sister,
who had resigned herself contentedly to old age. Two ladies,
whorn Philip did not know, were calling, and they looked at
him curiously.

"My poor child," said Miss Watkin, opening her arms.

She began to cry. Philip understood now why she had not
been in to luncheon and why she wore a black dress. She
could not speak.

"I've got to go home," said Philip, at last:

He disengaged himself from Miss Watkin's arms, and she
kissed him again. Then he went to her sister and bade her
good-bye too. One of the strange ladies asked if she might
kiss him, and he gravely gave her permission. Though crying,
he keenly enjoyed the sensation he was causing: he would
havebe^^ "p-'tad~rff'SCav"aTittlel.onger to be made niuch of, but
felt they expected him to gojso he sai3:tSt Emma was waiting
for him._He went out of the room. Emma had gone down-
stairs to speak with a friend in the basement, and he waited
for her on the landing. He heard Henrietta Watkin's voice.

"His mother was my gj-eatest friend. I can't bear to think
that she's dead."

' "You oughtn't to have gone to the funeral, Henrietta," said
her sister. "I knew it would upset you."

Then one of the strangers spoke.

"Poor little boy, it's dreadful to think of him quite alone in
the world. I see he limps."

8 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Yes, he's got a club-foot. It was such a grie| to his-mother."
Then Emma came back. They called a haiisom, and she' told
the driver where to go.

Chapter 3

When they reached the house Mrs. Carey had died in-^it was
in a dreary,- respectable street between Notting Hill Gate and
High Street, Kensington— Emma led Philip into the drawing-
room. His uncle was writing letters of thanks for the wreaths
which had been sent. One of them, which had arrived too
late for the funeral, lay in its cardboard box on the hall-table.

"Here's Master Philip," said Emma.

Mr. Carey stood up slowly and shook hands with the little
boy. Then on second thoughts he bent down and kissed his
forehead. He was a man of somewhat less than average heightj
inclined to corpulence, with his hair, worn long, arranged
over the scalp so as to conceal his baldness. He was clean-,
shaven. His features were regular, and it was possible to
imagine that in his youth he had been good-looking. On his
watch-chain he wore a gold cross.

"You're going to live with me now, PhiUp," said Mr. Carey.
"Shall you like that?"

Two years before PhiHp had been sent down to stay at the
vicarage after an attack of chicken-pox; but there remained
with him a recollection of an attic and a large garden rather
than of his uncle and aunt.

"Yes."

"You must look upon me and your Aunt Louisa as your
father and mother."

The child's mouth trembled a little, he reddened, but did
not answer.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 9

"Your dear mother left you in my charge."

Mr. Carey had no great ease in expressing himself. When
the news came that his sister-in-law was dying, he set off at
once for London, but on the way thought of nothing but the
disturbance, in his Jifc that WouIcTSecaused if her death
forced him to undertake the care of her son. He was well over
fifty, and his wife, to whom he had been married for thirty
years, was childless; he did not look forward with any pleasure
to the presence of a small boy who might be noisy and rough.
He had never much liked his sister-in-law.

"I'm going to take you down to Blackstable tomorrow," he
'Said.

"With Emma.?"

The child put his hand in hers, and she pressed it.

"I'm afraid Emma must go away," said Mr. Carey.

"But I want Emma to come with me."
■ Philip began to cry, and the nurse could not help crying too.
Mr. Carey looked at them helplessly.

"I think you'd better leave me alone with Master Philip for
a moment."
; "Very good, sir."

Though Philip clung to her, she released herself gently. Mr.
Carey took the boy on his knee and put his arm round him.

"You mustn't cry," he said. "You're too, old to have a nurse
now. We must see about sending you to school."

"I want Emma to come with me," the child repeated. ,

"It costs too inuch money, Philip. Your father didn't leave
very much, and I don't know what's become of it. You must
look at every penny you spend."

Mr. Carey had called the day before on the family solicitor.
Philip's father was a surgeon in good practice, and his hospital
appointments suggested an established position; so that it was
• a surprise on his sudden death from blood-poisoning to find
that he had left his widow little more than his life insurance
and what could be got for the lease of their house in Bruton
Street. This was six months ago; and Mrs. Carey, already in

10 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

delicate health, finding herself with child, had lost her head
and accepted for the lease the first offer that was made. She
stored her furniture, and, at a rent which the parson thought
outrageous, took a furnished house for a year, so that she
might suffer from no inconvenience till her child was born.
But she had never been used to the management of money, and
was unable to adapt her expenditure to her' altered circum-
stances. The little she had slipped through her fingers in one
way and another, so that now, when all expenses were paid,
not much more than two thousand pounds remained to sup-
port the boy till he was able to earn his own living. It was
impossible to explain all this to Philip and he was sobbing still.

"You'd better go to Errinia," Mr. Carey said, feeling that she
^could console the child better than anyone.

Without a word Philip slipped off his uncle's knee, but Mr.
Carey stopped hirtl.

"We must go tomorrow, because on Saturday I've got to
prepare my sermon, and you must tell Emma to get your
things ready today. You can bring all your toys. And if you
want anything to remember your father and mother by you
can take one thing for each of them. Everything else is going
to be sold."

The boy slipped out of the room. Mr. Carey was unused to
work, and he turned to his correspondence with resentment.
On one side of the desk was a bundle of bills, and these filled,
him with irritation. One especially seemed preposterous. Im-
mediately after Mrs. Carey's death Emma had ordered from
the florist masses of white flowfcrs for the room in which the
dead woman lay. It was sheer waste of money. Emma took far
too much upon herself. Even if there had been no financial
necessity, he would have dismissed her. *

But Philip went to her, and hid his face in her bosom, and
wept as though his heart would break. And she, feeling that
he was almost her own son — she had taken him when he was
a month old — consoled him with soft words. She promised
■tbiat she would come and see him sometimes, and that she

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 11

would never forget him; and she told him about the. country
he was going to and about her own home in Devonshire —
her father kept a turnpike on the highroad that led to Exeter,
and there were pigs in the sty, and there was a cow, and the
cow had just had a caK— till Philip forgot his tears and grew
excited at the thought of his approaching journey. Presently
she put him down, for there was much to be done, and he
helped her to lay out his clothes on the bed. She sent him into,
the nursery to gather up his toys, and in a little while he was,
playing happily.

But at last he grew tired of being alone and went back to
the bed-room, in which Emma was now putting his things,
into a big tin box; he remembered then that his uncle had
said he might take something to remember his father and
mother by. He told Emma and asked her what he should take,.
"You'd better go into the drawing-room and see what you
fancy."
"Uncle William's there."

"Never mind that. They're your own things now."
Philip went downstairs 'slowly and found the door open.
Mr. Carey had left the room. Philip walked slowly round.
They had been in the house so short a time that there was little
in it that had a particular interest to him. It was a stranger's
toom, and Philip saw nothing that struck his fancy. But he
knew which were his mother's things and which belonged
to the landlord, and presently fixed on a little clock that he
had once heard his mother say she liked. With this he walked
again rather disconsolately upstairs. Outside the door of his
mother's bed-room he stopped and listened. Though no one
had told him not to go in, he had a feeling that it,would be
wrong to do so; he was a little frightened, and his heart beat
Uncomfortably; but at the same time something. impelled him
to turn the handle. He turned it very gently, as if to prevent
anyone within from hearing, and then slowly pushed the door
open. He stood on the threshold for a moment before he had
Uie courage to enter. He was not frightened now, but it

12 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

seemed strange. He closed the door behind him. The blinds
were drawn, and the room, in the cold light of a January
afternoon, was dark. On the dressing-table were Mrs. Carey's
brushes and the hand mirror. In a Uttle tray were hairpins..
There was a photograph of himself on the chimney-piece and
one of his father. He had often been in the room when his
jnotjier was not in it, but now it seemed different. There was
something curious in the look of the chairs. The bed was made
as though someone were going" to sleep in it that night, and in
.a case on the pillow was a night-dress.

Philip opened a large cupboard filled with dresses and
Stepping in, took as many of them as he could in his arrAs and
.buried his face in them. They smelt of the scent his mother
used. Then he'pulled open the drawers, filled with his mother's
things, and looked at them: there were lavender bags among
the linen, and their scent was fresh and pleasant. The strange-
ness of the room left it, and it seemed to him that his mother
had just gone out for a walk. She would be in presently and
would come upstairs to have nursery tea with him. And he
seemed to feel her kiss on his lips.

It was not true that he would never see her again. It was
net true sirftply because it was impossible. He climbed up on
the bed and put his head on the pillow. He lay there quite still.

Chapter 4

Philip parted from Emma with tears, but the journey to
Blackstable amused him,, and, when they arrived, he was
resigned and cheerful. Blackstable was sixty miles from Lon»
don. Giving their luggage to a porter, Mr. Carey set out to'
walk with Philip to the vicarage; it took them httle more thatt

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 13

five minutes, and, when they reached it, PhiHp suddenly
remembered the gate. It was red and five-barred: it swung
both ways on easy hinges; and it was possible, though for-
bidden, to swing backwards and forwards on it. They walked
through the garden to the front-door. This was only used by
visitors and on Sundays, and on special occasions, as when the
yi£ar^went up to London or came back. The traffic of the
house took place through a side-door, and there was a back
door as well for the gardener and for beggars and tramps. It
was a fairly large house of yellow brick, with a red roof, built
about five and twenty years before in an ecclesiastical style.
The front-door was like a church porch, and the drawing-
room windows were gothic.

Mrs. Carey, knowing by what train they were coming,
waited in the drawing-room and listened for the click of the
gate. When she heard it she went to the door.

"There's Aunt Louisa," said Mr. Carey, when he saw her.
"Run and give her a kiss."

Philip started to run, awkwardly, trailing his club-foot, and
then stopped. Mrs. Carey was a little, shrivelled woman of
the same age as her husband, with a face extraordinarily filled
with deep wrinkles, and pale blue -eyes. Her gray hair was
arranged in ringlets according to the fashion of her youth,
She wore a black dress, and her only ornament was a gold
chain, from which hung a cross. She had a shy, manner and
a gentle voice.

"Did you walk, William.?" she said, almost reproachfully,
as she kissed her husband.

"I didn't think of it," he answered, with a glance at his
nephew.

"It didn't hurt you to walk, PhiUp, did it.?" she asked the
child.

"No. I always walk."

He was a little surprised at their conversation. Aunt Louisa
told him to come in, and they entered the hall. It was paved
with red and yellow tiles, on which alternately were a Greek

14 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Cross and the.Lamb of God. An imposing staircase led out o£
the hall. It was of poUshed pine, with a peculiar smell, and
had been put in because fortunately, tvhen the church was
reseated, enough wood remained over, 'the balusters were
decorated with emblems of the. Four EvangeUsts,

"I've had the ^stove lighted as I thought you'd be cold after
your journey," said Mrs. Carey.

It was a large black stove that stood in the hall and was
only lighted if the weather was very bad and the Vicar had
a cold. It was not lighted if Mrs. Carey had a cold. Coal was
expehsive. Besides, Mary Ann, the maid, didn't like fires all
over the place. If they Wanted all them fires they must keep
a second girl. In the .winter Mr. and Mrs. Carey lived in the
dining-room so that one fire should do, and in the summer
they could not get out of the habit, so the drawing-room was
used only by Mr. Carey on Sunday afternoons for his nap. But
every Saturday he had a fire in' the study so that he could
\vrite his sermon.

Aunt Louisa took Philip upstairs and showed him into a
tiny bed-room that looked out on the drive. Immediately in
front of the window was a large tree, which Philip^ remem-
bered now because the branches were so low that it was pos-
sible to climb quite high up it.

"A small room for a small boy," said Mrs. Carey. "You
won't be frightened at sleeping alone.?" ^

"Oh, no."

On his first visit to the vicarage he had come with his nurse,
and Mrs. Carey had had little to do with him. She looked at
him now with some uncertainty.

"Can you wash your own hands, or shall I wash them for
you.?" , -

"I can wash myself," he answered firmly.

"Well, I shall look at them when you come down to tea,"
said Mrs. Carey.

She knew nothing about children. After it was settled that
Philip should come down to Blackstable, Mrs. Carey had

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 15"

thought much how she should treat him; she was anxious to
dojier duty;J?ut now he was there she found herself fust as
shy of him as he was of her. She hoped he would not be noisy
and rough, because her husband did not like rough and noisy
boys. Mrs. Carey made an excuse to leave Philip alone, but in
a moment came back and knocked at the door; she .asked him,
without coming in, if he could pour out the water himself.
Then she went downstairs and rang the bell for tea.

The dining-room, large and well-proportioned, had win-
dows on two sides of it, with heavy curtains of red rep; there
was a big table in the middle; and at one end an imposing
mahogany sideboard with a looking-glass iii it. In one cornei
stood a harmonium. On each side of the fireplace were chairi
covered in stamped leather, each with an antimacassar; one
had arms and was called the husband, and the other had none
and was called the wife. Mrs. Carey never sat in the arm-chair:
she said she preferred a chair that was not too comfortable;
there was always a lot to do, and if her chair had had arms she
might not be so ready to leave it.

Mr. Carey was making up the fire when Philip came in,
and he pointed out to his nephew that there were two pokers.
One was large and bright and polished and unused, and was
called the Vicar; and the other, which was much smaller and
had evidently passed through many fires, was called the
Curate.

"What are we waiting for?" said Mr. Carey.

"I told Mary Ann to make you an egg. I thought you'd b«
hungry after your journey."

Mrs. Carey thought the journey from London to Black-
stable very tiring. She seldom travelled herself, for the living
was only three hundred a year, and, when her husband
wanted a holiday, since there was not money for two, he went
by himself. He was very fond of Church Congresses and usu-
ally managed to go up to London once a year; and once he
had been to Paris for the exhibition, and two or three times
to Switzerland. Mary Ann brought in the egg, and they sat

16 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

-down. The chair was much too low for Philip, and for a
moment neither Mr. Garey nor his wife knew what to do.

"I'll put some books under him," said Mary Ann.

She took from the top of the harmonium the large Bible
and the prayer-book from which the Vicar was accustomed
to read prayers, and put them on Philip's chair.

"Oh, WilUam, he can't sit on the Bible," said Mrs. Carey, in
a shocked tone. "Couldn't you get him some books out of the
" study?"'

Mr. Carey considered the question for an instant.

"I don't think it matters this once if you put the prayer-
book on the top, Mary Ann," he said. "The book of Common
Prayer is the composition of men like ourselves. It has no
claiifi to divine authorship."

"I hadn't thought of that, William," said Aunt Louisa.

PhiUp perched himself on the books, and the Vicar, having
said grace, cut the top off his egg.

"There," he said, handing it to Philip, "you can eat my top
if you like."
/ Philip would have, liked an egg to himself, but he was not
^ offered one, so took what he could.

"How have the chickens been laying since I went awayj""
asked the Vicar.

"Oh, they've been dreadful, only one or two a day."

"How did you like that top, Philip.?" asked his uncle.

"Very much, thank you."

"You shall have another one on Sunday afternoon."

Mr. Carey always had a boiled egg at tea on Sunday so that
he might be fortified for the evening service.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 17

Chapter 5

Philip came gradually to know the people he was to live with,
and by fragments of conversation, some of it not meant for his
ears, learned a good deal both about himself and about his dead
parents. Philip's father had been much younger than the
Vicar of Blackstable. After a brilliant career at St. Luke's Hos-
pital he was put on the staff, and presently began to earn
money in considerable sums. He spent it freely. When the
parson set about restoring his. church and asked his brother
for a subscription, he was surprised by receiving a couple of
hundred pounds: Mr. Carey, thrifty by inclination and eco-
nomical by necessity, accepted it with mingled feelings; he was
envious of his brother because he could afEord to give so
much, pleased fo_r the sak^ of his church, and vaguely irritated
by a generosity which seemed almost ostentatious. Then Henry
Carey married a patient, a beautiful girl but penniless, an or-
phan with no near relations, but of good family; and there
was an array of fine friends at the wedding. The parson, on his
visits to her when he came to London, held himself with re-
serve. He felt shy with her and in .his, heart he resented byr
great beauty: she dressed more magnificently than became the
wife of a hardworking surgeon; and the charming furniture
of her house, the flowers among which she lived even in win-
ter, suggested an extravagance which he deplored. He heard
her, talk of entertainments she was going to; and, as he told
his wife on getting hoine again, it was impossible to accept
hospitality without making some return. He -had seen grapes
in the dining-room that must have cost at least eight shillings
a pound; and at luncheon he had been given asparagus two
months before it was ready in the vicarage garden. Now all

18 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

tie had anticipated was come to pass : the Vicar felt the satis;
faction of the prophet; who saw fire, and brimstone consume
the city which would not mend its way to his warning. Poor
Philip was practically penniless, and what was the good of
his mother's fine friends now? He heard that his father's
extravagance was really criminal, and it was a mercy that
Providence had seen fit to take his dear mother to itself: she
had no more idea of money than a child.

When Philip had been a week at Blackstable an incident
happened which seemed to irritate his uncle very much. One
morning he found on the breakfast table a small packet which
had been sent on by post from the late Mrs. Carey's house in
London. It was addressed to her. When the parson opened it
he found a dozen photographs of Mrs. Carey. They showed
the head and shoulders only, and her hair was more plainly
dont than usual, low on the forehead, which gave her; an un-
usual look; the face was thin and worn, but no illness could
impair the beauty of her features. There was in the large dark
eyes a sadness which Philip did not remember. The first sight
of the dead woman gave Mr. Carey a little shock, but this
was quickly followe(| .by perplexity. The photographs seemed
quite recent, and he could not imagine who had ordered them.

"D'you know anything about these, Philip?" he asked.

"I rerhember mamrha said she'd been taken," he answered.
"Miss Watkin scolded her. . . . She said: I wanted the boy
to have something to remember me by when, he grows up."

Mr. Carey looked at Philip for an instant. The child spoke
in a clear treble. He recalled the words, but they meant noth-
ing to him.

"You'd better take one of the, photographs and keep it %
your room," said Mr. Carey. "I'll put the others away."

He sent one to Miss Watkin, and she wrote and explained
how they came to be taken.

One day Mrs. Carey was lying in bed, but she was feeling a
little better than usual, and the doctor in the morning had
seemed hopeful; Emma had taken the child out, and the maids

OF HUMA.N BONDAGE 19

were downstairs in the basement; suddenly Mrs. Carey felt
desperately alone in the world. A great fear seized her that
she would not recover from the confinement which she was
expecting in a fortnight. Her son was nine years old. How
could he be expected to remember her? She could not bear
to think that he would grow up and forget, forget her utterly;
and she had loved him so passionately, because he was weakly
and defof meHp'aii3~'because" he "was" her _„chitd. "SHenad no
phdEograpKs oFherself taken since her marriage, and that was
ten years before. She wanted her son to know what she looked
like at the end. He could not forget her then, not forget
utterly. She knew that if she called her maid and told her she
wanted to get up, the maid would prevent her, and perhaps
send for the doctor, and she had not the strength now to
struggle or argue. She got out of bed and began to dress her-
self. She had been on her back so long that her legs gave way
beneath her, and then the soles of her feet tingled so that she
could hardly bear to put them to the ground. But she went
on. She was unused to doing her own hair and, when she
raised her arms and began to brush it, she felt faint. She could
never do it as her maid did. It was beautiful hair, very fine,
and of a deep rich gold. Her eyebrows were straight and dark.
She put on a black skirt, but chose the bodice of the evening
dress which she Uked best: it was of a white damask which
was , fashionable in those days. She looked at herself in the
glass. Her face was very pale, but her skin was clear: she had
never had much colour, and this had always made the redness
of her beautiful mouth emphatic. She could not restrain a sob.
But she could not afford to be sorry for herself; she was feeling
already desperately tired; and she put on the furs which
Henry had given her the Christmas before — she had been so
proud of them and so happy then— arid slipped downstairs
with beating heart. She got safely out of the house and drove
to a ^photographer. She paid for a dOzen photographs. She
was ' obhged to ask for a glass of water in the middle of the
sitting; and the assistant, seeing she was ill, suggested that she

20 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

should come another day, but she insisted on staying till the
end. At last it was finished, and she drove back again to the
dingy little house in Kensington which she hated with all her
heart. It was a horrible house to die in.

She found the front door open, and when she drove up
the maid and Emma ran down the steps to help her. They
had been frightened when they found her room empty. At
first they thought she must have gone to Miss Watkin, and the
cook was sent round. Miss Watkin came back with her and
was waiting anxiously in the drawing-room. She came down-
stairs now full of anxiety and reproaches; but the exertion
had been more than Mrs. Carey was fit for, and when the
occasion for firmness no longer existed she gave way. She fell
heavily into Emma's arms and was carried upstairs. She re-
mained unconscious for a time that seiemed incredibly long
to those that watched her, and the doctor, hurriedly sent for,
did not come. It was next day, when she was a little better,
that Miss Watkin got some explanation out of her. Philip was
playing on the floor of his mother's bed-room, and neither of
the ladies paid attention to him. He only understood vaguely
what they were talking about, and he could not have said why
those words remained in his memory.

"I wanted the boy to have something to remember me by
when he grows up."

"I can't make out why she ordered a dozen," said Mr. Carey.
"Two would have done."

Chapter 6

One day was very like another at the vicarage.

Soon after breakfast Mary Ann brought in The Times. Mr.
Carey shared it with two neighbours. He had it from ten tiU

OF , HUMAN BONDAGE 21

one, when the gardener took it over to Mr. EUis at the Limes,
with whom it remained till seven; then it was taken to Miss
Brooks at the Manor House, who, since she got it late, had
the advantage of keeping it. In summer Mrs. Carey, when she
was making jam, often asked her for a copy to cover the pots
with. When the Vicar settled down to his paper his wife put
on her bonnet and went out to do the shopping. Philip ac-
companied her. Blackstable was a fishing village. It consisted
of a high street in which were the shops, the bank, the doctor's
house, and the houses of., two or three coalship owners; round
the little harbour were shabby streets in which Uved fishermen
and poor people; but since they went to chapel they were of
no account. When Mrs. Carey passed the dissenting ministers
in the street she stepped over to the other side to avoid meet-
ing them, but if there was not time for this fixed her eyes on
the pavement. It was a scandal to which the Vicar had never
resigned himself that there were three chapels in the High
Street: he could not help feeling that the law should have
stepped in to prevent their erection. Shopping in Blackstable
was not a simple matter; for dissent, helped by the fact that
the parish church was two miles from the town, was very
common; and it was necessary to deal only with churchgoers;
Mfs. Carey knevv perfectly that the vicarage custom might
make all the difference to a tradesman's faith. There were two
butchers who went to church, and they would not understand
that the Vicar could not deal with both of them at once; nor
were they satisfied with his simple plan of going for si?c
months to one and for six months to the other. The butcher
who was not sending meat to the vicarage constantly threat-
ened not to come to church, and the Vicar was sometimes
obliged to make a threat: it was very wrong of him not to
come to church, but if he carried iniquity further and actually
went to chapel, then of course, excellent as his meat was, Mr.
Carey would be forced to leave him for ever. Mrs. Carey often
stopped at the bank to deliver a message to Josiah Graves, the
itaanager, who was choir-master, treasurer, and churchwarden.

22 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

He. was a tall, thin man with a sallow face and a long nose;
his hair was very white, and to Philip he seemed extremely
eld. He kept the parish accounts, arranged the treats for the
choir and the schools; though there was no organ in the parish'
church, it was generally considered (in Blackstable) that the
choir he led was the best in Kent; and when there was any'
ceremony, such as a visit ,from the Bishop for confirmation or
from the Rural Dean to preach at the Harvest Thanksgiving,
he made the necessary preparations. But he had no hesitation in
doing all manner of things without more than a perfunctory
consultation with the Vicar, and the Vicar, though always
ready to be saved trouble," much resented the churchwarden's
managing ways. He reajly seemed to look upon himself as the
most important person in the parish. Mr. Carey constantly told
His wife that if Josiah Graves did not take care he would give
him a good rap over the knuckles one day; but Mrs. Carey
advised h,im to bear with Josiah Graves : he meant wellj and
it was not his fault if he ,was not quite a gentleman. The
Vicar, finding his comfort in the practice of a Christiap virtue,
exercised forbearance; but he revenged himself by calling the
churchwarden Bismarck behind his back.

Once there had been a serious quarrel between the pair,
and Mrs. Carey still thought of that anxious time with dis-
may. The Conservative candidate had announced his in-
tention of addressing a meeting at Blackstable; and Josiah
Graves, having arranged that it should take place in the
Mission Hall, went to Mr. Carey and told him that he hoped
he would say a few words. It appeared that the candidate
had asked Josiah Graves to take the chair. This was more than
Mr. Carey could put up with. He had firm views upon the
respect which was due to the cloth, and it was ridiculous for
a churchwarden to take the chair at a meeting when the Vicar
was there. He reminded Josiah Graves that parson meant
person, that is, the vicar was the person of the parish. Josiah,
Graves answered that he was the first to recognise the dignity
of the church, but this wasf a matter of politics, and in his

I OF HUMAN BONDAGE 23

turn he reminded the Vicar that their Blessed Saviour had
enjoined upon them to render unto Caesar the things that were
Caesar's. To this Mr. Carey, repUed that the devil could quote
scripture to his purpose, himself had sole authority over the
Mission Hall, and if he vcere not asked to be chairman he
would refuse the use of it for a political meeting. Josiah
Graves told Mr. Carey that he might do as he chose, and for
his part he thought the Wesleyan Chapel would be an equally
suitable place. Then Mr. Carey said that if Josiah Graves set
foot in what was little better than a heathen temple he was
not fit to be churchwarden in a Christian parish. Josiah Graves
thereupon resigned all his offices, and that very evening sent
to the church for his cassock and surplice. His sister. Miss
Graves, who kept house for him, gave up her secretaryship of
the Maternity Club, which provided the pregnant poor with
flannel, baby linen, coals, and five shillings. Mr. Carey said he
was at last master in his own house. But soon he found that
he was obliged to see to all sorts of things that he knew
nothing about; and Josiah Graves, after the first moment of
irritation, discovered that he had lost his chief interest in life.
Mrs. Carey and Miss Graves were much distressed by the
quarrel; they met after a discreet exchange of letters, and
made up their minds to put the matter right: they talked,
one to her husband, the other to her brother, from morning
till night; and since they were persuading these gentlemen, to
do what in their hearts they wanted, after three weeks of
anxiety a reconciHation was effected. It was to both their inter-
ests, but they ascribed it to a common love for their Redeemer.
>The meeting was held at the Mission Hall, and the doctor
was asked to be chairman. Mr. Carey and Josiah Graves both
made speeches.

When Mrs. Carey had finished her business with the banker,
she generally went upstairs to haye a Httle chat with his sister;
and while the ladies talked of parish matters, the curate or
the new bonnet of Mrs. Wilson— Mr. Wilson was the richest
man in Blackstable, he was thought to have at least five hun-

24 , OF HUMAN BON^DAGE

dred a year, and he had married his cook — ^PhiUp sat demurely
in the stifE parlour, used only to receive visitors, and busied:
himself with the restless movements of goldfish in a bowl. The
windows were never opened except to air the room for
a few minutes in the morning, and it had a stuffy smell
which seemed to Philip to have a mysterious connection with
banking.

Then Mrs. Carey remembered that she had to go to the
grocer, and they continued their way. When the shopping was
done they often went down a side street of little houses, mostly
of wood, in which fishermen dwelt (and here and there a
fisherman sat on his doorstep mending his nets, and nets,
hung to dry upon the doors), till they came to a small beach,,
shut in on each side by warehouses, but with a view of the
sea. Mrs. Carey stjood for a few minutes and looked at it, it was
turbid and yellow, [and who knows what thoughts passed
through her mind?] while Philip searched for flat stones to
play ducks and drakes. Then they walked slowly back. They
looked into the post ofEce to get the right time, nodded to
Mrs. Wigram the doctor's wife, who sat at her window sew-
ing, and so got home.

Dinner was at one o'clock; and on Monday, Tuesday, and
Wednesday it consisted of beef, roast, hashed, and minced,,
and on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of mutton. On Sun-
day they ate one of their own chickens. In the afternoon
Philip did his lessons. He was taught Latin and mathematics,
by his uncle who knew neither, and French and the piano by
his aunt. Of French she was ignorant, but she knew the pianO'
well enough to accompany the old-fashioned songs she had
sung for thirty years. Uncle WilUam used to tell Phihp that
when he was a curate his wife had known twelve songs by
heart, which she could sing at a moment's notice whenever
she was asked. She often sang still when there was a tea-party,
at the vicarage. There were few people whom the Careysl
cared to ask there, and their parties consisted always of the
curate, Josiah Graves with his sister, Dr. Wigram and his wife.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 25

After tea Miss Graves played one or two of Mendelssohn's
Songs without Words, and Mrs. Carey sang When the Swal-
lows Homeward Fly, or Trot, Trot, My Pony.

But the' Careys did not give tea-parties often; the prepa-
rations upset them, and when their guests were gone they felt
themselves exhausted. They preferred to have tea by them-
selves, and after tea they played backgammon. Mrs. Carey
arranged that her husband should win, because he did not
like losing. They had cold supper at eight. It was a scrappy
meal because Mary Ann resented getting anything ready after
tea, and Mrs. Carey helped to clear away. Mrs. Carey seldom
ate more than bread and butter, with a little stewed fruit to
follow, but the Vicar had a slice of cold meat. Immediately
after supper Mrs. Carey rang the bell for prayers, and then
Philip went to bed. He rebelled against being undressed by
Mary Ann and after a while succeeded in establishing \ his
right to dress and undress himself. At nine o'clock Mary Ann
brought in the eggs and the plate. Mrs. Carey wrote the date
on each egg and put the number down in a book. She then
took the plate-basket on her arm and went upstairs. Mr. Carey
continued to read one of his old books, but as the clock struck
ten he got up, put out the lamps, and followed his wife to bed.

,When Philip arrived there was some difficulty in deciding
on which evening he should have his bath. It was never easy
to get plenty of hot water, since the kitchen boiler did not
work, and it was impossible for two persons to have a bath
on the same day. The only man who had a bathroom in Black-
stable was Mr. Wilson, and it was thoughit , ostentatious of
him. 'Mary Ann had her bath in the kitchen on Monday night,
because she liked to begin the week clean. Uncle WiUiam
could not have his on Saturday, because he had a heavy day
before him and he was always a little tired after a bath, so he
had it on Friday. Mrs. Carey had hers on Thursday for the
same reason. It looked as though Saturday were naturally indi-
cated for Philip, but Mary Ann said she couldn't keep the fire
up on Saturday night: what with all the cooking on Siuidayi

2« OF HUMAN BONDAGE

having to make pastry and she didn't know what all, she did
not feel up to giving the boy his bath on Saturday night; and
it was quite clear that he could not bath himself. Mrs. Carey
was shy about bathing a boy, and of course the- Vicar had his
sermon. But the Vicar insisted that Philip should be clean and
sweet for the Lord's Day. Mary Ann said she would rather go
than be put upon — and after eighteen years she didn't expect
to have more work given her, and they might show some
consideration — and Philip said he didn't want anyone to bath
him, but could very well bath himself. This settled it. Mary
Ann said she was quite sure he wouldn't bath himself prop-
erly, and rathdr than he should go dirty — and not because he
was going into the presence of the Lord, but because she
couldn't abide a boy who wasn't properly washed — she'd work
herself to the bone even if it was Saturday night.

Chapter 7

Sunday was a day crowded with incident. Mr. Carey was ac-
customed to say that he was the only man in his parish who
worked seven days a week.

The household got up half an hour earlier than usual. No
lying abed for a poor parson on the' day of rest, Mr. Carey
remarked as Mary Ann knocked at the door punctually at
eight. It took Mrs. Carey longer to dress, and she got dowa^
to breakfast at nine, a little breathless, only just before her
husband. Mr. Carey's boots stood in front of the lire to warm.
Prayers were longer than iisual, and the breakfast more sub-
stantial. After breakfast the Vicar cut thin slices of bread for
the communion, and Philip was privileged to cut off the crust.
He was sent to the study to fetch a marble paperweight, with-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 27

which Mr. Carey pressed the bread till it was thin and pulpy,
and then it was cut into small squares. The amount was regu-
lated by the weather. On a very bad day few people came to
church, and on a very fine one, though many 'came, few stayed
for communion. There were most when it was dry enough to
nlake the walk to church pleasant, but not so fine that people
wanted to hurry away. 1

Then Mrs. Carey brought the communion plate out of the
safe, which stood in the pantry, and the Vica;- poUshed it with
a chamois leather. At ten the fly drove up, and Mr. Carey got
into his boots. Mrs. Carey took several minutes to put on her
bonnet, during which the Vicar, in a voluniinous cloak, stood
in the hall with just such an expression on his face as would
have become an early Christian about to be led into the arena.
It was extraordinary that after thirty years of marriage his
wife could not be ready in time on Sunday motning. At last
she came in black satin; the Vicar did not like colours in. a
clergyman's wife at any time, but on Sundays he was de-
termined that she should wear black; now and then, in con-
spiracy with Miss Graves, she ventured a white feather or a
pink rose in her bonnet, but the Vicar insisted that it should
disappear; he said he would not go to church with the scarlet
woman : Mrs. Carey sighed as a woman but obeyed, as a wife.
They were^'Sbcmrto' step into the carriage when the Vicar
remembered that no one had given him his egg. They knew
that he must have an egg for his voice, there were two women
in the house, and no one had the least regard for his comfort.
Mrs. Carey scolded Mary Ann, and Mary Ann answered that
she' could not think of everything. She hurried away to fetch
an egg, and Mrs. Carey beat it up in a glass of sherry. The
Vicar swallowed it at a gulp. The communion plate was
stowed in the carriage, and they set off.

The' fly came from The Red Lion and had a pecuUar smell
of stale straw. They drove with both windows closed so that
the Vicar should not catch cold. The sexton was waiting at
the porch to take the communion plate, and while the Vicar

28 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

went to the vestry Mrs. Carey and Philip settled themselves
in the vicarage pew. Mrs. Carey placed in front of her the six-
penny bit she was accustomed to put in the plate, and gave
Philip threepence for the same purpose. The church filled up
gradually and the service iegan.

Philip grew bored during the sermon, but if he fidgetted
Mrs. Carey put a gentle hand on his arm and looked at him
reproachfully. He regained interest when the final hymn was
sung and Mr. Graves passed round with the plate.

When everyone had gone Mrs. Carey went into Miss
Graves' pew to have a few words with her while they were
waiting for the gentlemen, and Philip went to ihc vestry. His
uncle, the curate, and Mr. Graves were still in their surplices.
Mr. Carey gave him the remains of the consecrated bread and
told him he might eat it. He had been accustomed to eat it
himself, as it seemed blasphemous to throw it away, but
Philip's keen appetite relieved him from the duty. Then they
counted the money. It consisted of pennies, sixpences and
threepenny bits. There were always two single shillings, one
put in the plate by the Vicar and the other by Mr. Graves;
and sometimes there was a florin. Mr. Graves told the Vicar
who had given this. It was always a stranger to Blackstable,
and Mr. Carey wondered vvho he was. But Miss .Graves had
observed the rash act and was able to tell Mrs. Carey that the
stranger came from London, was married and had children.
During the drive horne Mrs. Carey passed the information on,
and the Vicar made up his mind to call on him and ask for
a subscription to the Additional Curates Society. Mr. Carey
asked if Philip had behaved properly; and Mrs. Carey re-
marked that Mrs. Wigram had a new mantle^ Mr. Cox was
not in church, and somebody thought that Miss Phillips was
engaged. When they reached the vicarage they all felt that
they deserved a substantial dinner. ■

When this was over Mrs. Carey went to her room- to rest,
and Mr. Carey lay down on the sofa in the drawing-room for
forty winks.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 29

They had tea at five, and the Vicar ate an egg to support '
himself for evensong. Mrs. Carey did not go to this so that
Majry Ann might, but she read the service through and the
hymns. Mr. Carey walked to church in the evening, and Philip
limped along by his side. The walk through the darkness
along the country road strangely impressed him, and the
church with all its lights in the distance, coming gradually
nearer, seemed very friendly. At first he was shy with his
uncle, but little by Httle grew used to him, and lie would slip
his hand in his uncle's and walk more easily for the feeUng
ofprotesfliQtti ™ --«-».--,

They had supper when they got home. Mr. Carey's slippeays
were waiting for him on a footstool in front of the fire.-^pany
by their side Philip's, one the shoe of a small boy, thfome up
misshapen and odd. He was dreadfully tired when nissed his
up to bed, and he did not resist when Mary Ann i^in the celi-
him. She kissed him after she tucked him up, and lection the
to iove her. ilue letters:

■ threatened

ilackstable.

rraves said

^<-ij ^ o " the altar.

Chapter 8 i^Htabiy.

' lied the
ich he
Philip had led always the solitary life of an only child, alted
his loneliness at the vicarage was no greater, than it had beena
when his mother Uved. He made friends with Mary Ann. She
was a chubby little person of thirty-five, the daughter of a
fisherman, and had come to the vicarage at eighteen; it was
her first place and she had no intention of leaving it; but she
held a possible marriage as a rod over the timid heads of her
master and mistress. Her father and mother lived in a little
house off Harbour Street, and she went to see them on her
evenings out. Her stories of the sea touched Philip's imagi-
nation, and the narrow alleys round the harbour grew rich

30 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

with the romance which his, young fancy lent them. One

evening he asked whether he might go home with her; but

his, aunt was afraid that he might catch something, and his

uncle said that evil .communications corrupted good manners.

He- disliked the fisher folk, who vyere rough, uncouth, and

went Ja.jjia£el. But Philip was more comfortable in the

kitchen than in the dining-room, and, whenever he could, he

took his toys and played there. His aunt was not sorry. She

did not like disorder, and though she recognised that boys

must be expected to be untidy she preferred that he should

make a mess in the kitchen. If he fidgetted his uncle was apt

1 grow restless and say it was high time he went to school.

^ ^ Carey thought Philip very young for this, and her heart

. j out to the niotherless child; but her atteinpts to gain

1 . , jrdon were awkward, and the bjjy, feeling shy, received

p..,. , ' onstrations with so much sullenness that she was

^ , Sometimes she heard his shrill voice raised in

, a the kitchen, but when she went in, he grew sud-

. ,ht, and he flushed darkly when Mary Ann explained

" 1 Mrs. Carey could not see anything amusing in what

1 1 J, and she smiled with constraint.

, ^ jms happier with Mary Ann than with us, WiUiam,"

1 , when she returned to her sewing.

OL)servf

; can see he's been very badly brought up. He wants

Dy °l into shape."
.^"n the second Sunday after Philip arrived an unlucky inci-
, ydent occurred. Mr. Carey had retired as usual after dinner for
A a little snooze in the drawing-room, but he was in an irritable
j mood and' could not sleep. Josiah Graves that morning had
/ objected strongly to some candlesticks with which the Vicar
had adorned the altar. He had bought them second-hand in
Tercanbury, and he thought they looked very well. But Josiah
Graves said they were popish. This was a taunt that always
aroused the Vicar. He had been at Oxford during the move-
ment which ended in the secession from the Establishecl
Church of Edward Manning, and he felt a certain sympathy

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 31

for the Church o£ Rome. He would willingly have made'the
service rnore ornate than had been usual in the low<hurch
parish of Blackstable, and in his secret soul he yearned ioi
processions and lighted candles. He drew the line at incense.
He- hated the .word protestant. He called himself a Catholic.
He was accustorried to say that Papists required an epithet,
they were Roman Catholic; but the Church of England was
Cathohc in the best, the fullest, and the noblest sense of the
term. He was pleased to think that his shaven face gave him
the look of a priest, and in his youth he had possessed an
ascetic air which added to the impression. He often related
that on one of his holidays in Boulogne, one of those holidays
upon which his wife for economy's sake did not accompany
him, when he was sitting in a church, the cure had come up
to him and invited him to preach a sermon. He dismissed his
Curates when they mairried, having decided views on the celi-
bacy of the unbeneficed clergy. But when at an election the
Liberals had written on his garden fence in large blue letters :-
This way to Rome, he had been very angry, and threatentd
to prosecute the leaders of the Liberal party in Blackstable.
He made up his mind now that nothing Josiah Graves said
would induce him to remove the caiidlesticks from the altar,
and he muttered Bismarck to himself once or twice irritably.

Suddenly he heard an unexpected noise. He pulled the
handkerchief off his face, got up from the sofa on which he
was lying, and went into the dining-room. Philip was seated
on the table with all his bricks around him. He had built a
monstrous castle, and some defect in the foundation had just
brought the structure down in noisy ruin.

"What are you doing with those bricks, Philip ? You know
you're not allowed to play games on Sunday."

Philip stared at him for a moment with frightened eyes,
and, as his habit was, flushed deeply.

"I always used to play at home," he answered.

"I'm sure your dear mamma never allowed you to do such
a wicked thing as that."

32 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Philip did not know it was wicked; but if it was, he did
not wish it to be supposed that his mother- had consented to
it. He hung his head and did not answer.

"Don't you know it's very, very wicked to play on Sunday.?
What d'you suppose it's called the day of rest for? You're
going to church. tonight, and how can you face your Maker
when you've been breaking one of His laws in the afternoon.''"

Mr. Carey told him to put the bricks away at once, and
stood over him while Philip did so.

"You're a very naughty boy," he repeated. "Think of the
grief you're causing your poor mother in heaven."

Philip ielt inchned, to cry, but he h^^*^ ^" instinctive -disjncli-
nation to letting other people see his tears, and iie clenched
his teeth to prevent the sobs from escaping. Mr. Carey sat
down in his arm-chair and began to turn over the pages of
a book. Philip stood at the window. The vicarage was set back
from the highroad to Tercanbury, and from the dining-room
one saw a semicircular strip of lawn and then as far as the
horizon green fields. SheepI were grazing in them. The sky
was foirlorn and gray. Philip felt infinitely unhappy.

Presently Mary Ann came in to lay the tea, and Aunt Louisa
descended the stairs.

"Have you had a nice little nap, William?" she asked.

"No," he answered. "Philip made so much noise that I
touldn't sleep a wink."

This was not quite accurate, for he had been kept awake
by his own thoughts; and Philip, listening sullenly, reflected
that he had only made a- noise once, and there was no reason
why his uncle should not have slept before or after. When
Mrs. Carey asked for an explanation the Vicar narrated the
facts.

"He hasn't even said he was sorry^" he finished.

"Oh, Phihp, I'm sure you're sorry," said Mrs. Carey, anxious '
that the child should not seem wickeder to his uncle than
need be.

Philip did not reply. He went on munching his bread and

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 33

butter. He did not know what power it was in him that'
prevented him from making any expression of regret. He felt
his ears tingling, he was a little inclined to cry, but no word
would issue from his lips.

"You needn't make it worse by sulking," said Mr. Carey.

Tea was finished in silence. Mrs. Carey looked at Philip sur-
reptitiously now and then, but the Vicar elaborately ignored
him. When Philip saw his uncle go upstairs to get ready for
church he went into the hall arid got his hat and coat, but
when the Vicar came downstairs and saw him, he said:

"I don't wish you to go to church tonight, Philip. I dpn't
think you're in a proper frame of mind to enter the House
of God.'^

Philip did not say a word. He felt it was a deep humiliation
that was placed upon him, and his cheeks reddened. He stood
silently watching his uncle put on his broad hat and his vor
luminous cloak. Mrs. Carey as usual went to, the door to see
him off. Then she turned to Philip.

"Never mind, Philip, you won't be a naughty boy next Sun-
day, will you, and then your uncle will take you to church
with him in the evening."

She took off his hat and coat, and led him into the dining-
room. ,

"Shall you and I read the, service together, Philip, arid we'll
sing the hymns at the harmonium. Would you like that?"

Philip shook his head decidedly. Mrs. Carey was taken
aback. If he would not read the evening service with her she
did not know what to do with him.

"Then what would you like to do until your uncle comes
back?" she asked helplessly. '

Philip broke his silence at last.

"I want to be left alone," he said.

"Philip, how can you say anything so unkind ? Don't you
know that your uncle and I only want your good? Don't you
love me at all?"

"I hate: you. I wish you was dead."

34 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Mrs. Carey gasped. He said ^hc words so savagely that it
gave her quite a start. She had nothing to say. She sat down
in her husband's chair; and as she thought of her desire to
love the friendless, c;:ippled boy and her eager wish that he
should love her — she was a barren woman and, even though
it was clearly God's will that she should be childless, she could
scarcely bear to look at little children sometimes, her heart
ached so — the tears rose to her eyes and one by one, slowly,
rolled down her cheeks. Philip watched her in amazement.
She took out her handkerchief, and now she cried without
1-estraint. Suddenly Philip realised that she was_cryiflgj2£^use
of_what hejiad <iai.^, !^n^ he was sorry. He went up to her
sjlently aiiJTtisspd her. Jf was the first kiss he RaJever given
her without being asked. And the poOr lady, so small in her
black satin, shrivelled up and sallow, with her funny cork-
screw curls, took the little boy on her lap and put her arms
around him and wept as though her heart would break. But
her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the
strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now y^ith
a iiew love because he had made her sufferT"""'

Chapter 9

On the following Sunday, when the Vicar was making his
preparations to go into the drawing-room for his nap— all the
actions of his Kfe were conducted with ceremony— and Mrs.
Carey was about to go upstairs, Philip asked:

"What shall I do if I'm not allowed to play?"

"Can't you sit still for once and be quiet?"

"I can't sit still till tea-time."

Mr. Carey looked out 'of the window, but it was cold and

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 35

raw, and he could not suggest that PhiUp should go into the
garden.

"I know what you can do. You can learn by heart the collect
for the day."

He took the prayer-book which was used for prayers from
the harmonium, and turned the pages till he came to the place
he wanted.

"It's not a long one. If you can say it without a mistake
when I come in to tea you shall have the top of my egg."

Mrs. Carey drew up Philip's chair to the dining-room table '
— they had bought him aliigh chair by now — and placed the
book in front of him.

"The devil finds work for idle hands to do," said Mr. Carey.

He put some more coals on the fire so that there should be
a cheerful blaze when he came in to tea, and went into the
drawing-room. He loosened his collar, arranged the cushions,
and settled himself comfortably on the sofa. But thinking the
drawing-room a little chilly, Mrs. Carey brought him a rug
from the hall; she put it over his legs and tucked it round his
feet. She drew the bhnds so that the light should not offend
his eyes, and since he had closed them already went out of the
room on tiptoe. The Vicar Was at peace with himself today,
gnd in ten minutes he was asleep. He snored softly.

It was the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, and the collect
began with the words: O God, whose blessed Son was mani-
fested that he might destroy the wor\s of the devil, and-ma\e
us the sons of God, and heirs of Eternal life. Philip read it
through. He could make ho sense of it. He began saying the
words aloud to himself, but many of them were unknown to
him, and the construction of the sentences was strange. He
could not get more than two lines in his head. And his at-
tention was constantly wandering: there were fruit trees
trained on the walls of the vicarage, and a long twig beat now
and then against the windowpane; sheep grazed stolidly in
the field beyond the garden. It seemed as though there were
knots inside his brain. Then panic seized him that he wouW

?6 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

091 know the words by tea-time, and he kept on whispering
them to himself quickly; he did not try to understand, but
njcrely to get. them parrot-like into his memory.

Mrs. Carey could not sleep that afternoon, and by four
o'clock she was so wide awake' that she came downstairs. She
thought she would hear Philip his collect so that he should
niake no mistakes when he said it to his uncle. His uncle then
would be pleased; he would see that the boy's heart was in
the right place. But when Mrs. Carey came to the dining-room
and was about to go in, she heard a sound that made her stop
suddenly. Her heart gave a little jump. She turned away and
quietly sUpped out of the front-door. She walked round the
house till she came to the dining;room window and then
cautiously looked in. Philip was still" sitting on the chair she
had put him in, but his head was ori the table buried in
his arms, and he was sobbing desperately. She saw the con-
vulsive movement of his shoulders. Mrs. Carey was frightened.
A thing that had always struck her about the child was that he
seemed so collected. She had never seen him cry. And now she
re;alised thathis calmness-was snmc ipffinrtivc shame of show-
ing his feelirigs: he hid himself to weep.

Without thinking that her husbancT disliked being awak-
£ned suddenly, she burst into the drawing-room.

"William, William," she said. "The boy's' crying as though
his heart would break."

Mr. Carey sat up arid disentangled himself from the rug
'about his legs.

"What's he got to cry about?"

"I don't know. . . . Oh, William, we can't let the boy be
unhappy. D'you think it's our fault? If we'd had children we'd
have known what to do."

Mr. Carey looked at her, in , perplexity. He felt extraor-
dinarily helpless.

"He can't be crying because I gave him the collect to learn.
It's not more than ten lines."

"Don't you. think I might take him some picture books to

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 37

look at, William? There are some of the Holy Land. There
couldn't be anything wrong in that."

"Very well, I don't mind."

Mrs. Carey went into the study. To collect books was Mr.
Carey's orily passion, and he never went into Tercanbury
without spending an hour or two in the second-hand shop;
he always brought back four or five musty volumes. He never
read them, for he had long lost the habit of reading, but he
liked to turn the pages, look at the illustrations if they were
illustrated, and mend the bindings. He welcomed wet days
because on them he could stay at home without pangs of con-
science and spend the afternoon with white of egg and a glue-
pot, patching up the Russia leather of some battered quarto.
He had many volumes of old travels, with steel engravings,
and Mrs. Carey quickly found two which described Palestine.
She coughed elaborately at the door so that Philip should have
time to compose himself, she felt that he would be humiliated
if she came upon him in the midst of his tears, then she rattled
the door handle. When she went in PhiHp was poring over the
prayer-book, hiding his eyes with his hands so that she might
not see he had been crying.

"Do you know the collect yet?" she said.

He did not answer for a moment, and she felt that he did
not trust his voice. She was oddly embarrassed.

"I can't learn it by heart," he said at last, with a gasp.

"Oh, well, never mind," she said. "You needn't. I've got
sonie picture books for you to look at. Come and sit on my
lap, and we'll look at them together."

Philip slipped off his chair and limped over to her. He
looked down so ithat she should not see his eyes. She put her
arms round him.

"Look," she said, "that's the place where our Blessed Lord
was born."

She showed him an Eastern town vvith flat roofs and
cupolas and minarets. In the foreground was a group of
palin-trees, and under them were resting two Arabs and some

38 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

camels. Philip passed his hand over the picture as if he
wanted to feel the houses and the loose habiliments of the
flpmads.

"Read what it says," he asked.

Mrs. Carey in her even voice read the opposite page. It was
a romantic narrative of some Eastern traveller of the thirties,
pompous maybe, but fragrant with the emotion with which
the East came to the generation that followed Byron and
Chateaubriand. In a moment or two Philip interrupted her.'

"I want to see another picture."

When Mary Ann came in and Mrs. Carey rose to help her
lay the cloth, Philip took the book in his hands and hurried
through the illustrations. It was with difficulty that his aunt
induced him to put the book down for tea. He had forgotten
his horrible struggle to get the collect by heart; he had for-
gotten his tears. Next day it was raining, and he asked for the
book again. Mrs. Carey gave it him joyfully. Talking over his
future with her husband she had found that both desired hifn
to take orders, and this eagerness for the book which described
places hallowed by the presence of Jesus seemed a good sign. It
looked as though the boy's mind addressed itself naturally
to holy things. But in a day or two he asked for more books.
Mr. Carey took him into his study, showed him the shelf in
which he kept illustrated works, and chose for him one that
dealt with Rome. Philip took it greedily. The pictures led him
to a new amusement. He began to read the gage before and the
page after each engraving to find out what it was about, and
soon he lost all interest in his toys.

Then, when no one was near, he took out books for himself;
and perhaps because the first impression on' his mind was
made by an Eastern town, he found his chief amusement in
those which described the, Levant. His heart beat with ex-
citement at the pictures of mosques and rich palaces; but there
was one, in a boolc on Constantinople, which peculiarly
stirred his imagination. It was called the Hall of the Thousand
Columns. It was a Byzantine cistern, which the popular fancy

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 39

had endowed with fantastic vastness; and the legend which he
read told that a boat was always moored at the entrance to
tempt the unwary, but no traveller venturing into the dark-
ness had ever been seen again. And Philip wondered whether
the boat went on for ever through one pillared alley after an-
other or came at last to some strange mansion.

One day a good fortune befell him, for he hit upon Lane's
translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night. He was
captured first by the illustrations, and then he began to
read, to start with, the stories that dealt with magic, and then
the others; and those he liked he read again and again. He
could think of nothing else. He forgot the life about him.
He had to be called two or three timesbdcure he wouHconie
to his dinner. Insensibly he formed the mos't delightful habit
in the world, the habit of reading: he dLd not know that jJaus^
he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of
life; he did not know cither that he was creating for himself
an unreal world which would make the real world of everyl
day a source of Jjitter disappointment. Presently he began tfj
read other things. His brain was precocious. His, uncle anig
aunt, seeing that he occupied himself and neither worried nor
made a noise, ceased to trouble themselves about him. Mr.
Carey had so many books that he did not know them, and as
he read little he forgot the odd lots he had bought at one time
and another because they were cheap. Haphazard among the
sermons and homilies, the travels, the lives of the Saints, the
Fathers, the histories of the church, were old-fashioned novels;
and these Philip at last discovered. He chose them by their
titles, and the first he read was The Lancashire Witches, and
then he read The Admirable Crichton, and then many more.
Whenever he started a book with two solitary travellers rid-
ing along the brink of a desperate ravine he knew he was safe.
The summer was come now, and the gardener, an old sailor,
made him a hammock and fixed it up for him in the branches
of a weeping willow. And here for long hours he lay, hidden
from anyone who might come to the vicarage, reading, reading

40 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

passionately. Time passed and it was July; August came: on
Sundays, the church was crowded with strangers, and the col-
lection at the offertory often amounted to two pounds. ^J^either
the Vicar nor Mrs. Carey went out of the garden much during
this period; for they disliked strange faces, and they looked
upon the visitors from London with aversion. The house oppo-
site was taken for six weeks by a gentleman who had two
little boys, and he sent in to ask if Philip would like to go and
play with them; but Mrs. Carey returned a polite refusal. She
was afraid that Philip would be corrupted by little boys from
Londpn. He was going to be a clergyman, and it was necessary
that he should be preserved from contamination. She liked to
see in him an infant Samuel.

Chapter 10

The Careys made up their minds to send Philip to King's
School at Tercanbury. The neighbouring clergy sent their sons
there. It was united by long tradition to the Cathedral: its
headmaster was an honorary Canon, and a past headmaster
was the Archdeacon. Boys were encouraged there to aspire
to Holy Orders, and the education was such as might prepare
an honest lad to spend his life in God's service. A preparato];y
school was attached to it, and to this it was arranged that
Philip should go. Mr. Carey took him into Tercanbury one
Thursday afternoon towards the end of September. All day
Philip had been excited and rather frightened. He knew little
of school life but what he had read in the stories of The Boy's
Own Paper. He had also read Eric, or Little by Little.

When they got out of the train at Tercanbury, Philip felt
sick with apprehension, and during the drive in to the town

OF HUMAN BONDA-GE 41

sat pale and silent. The high brick wall in front of the school
gave it the look of a prison. There was a Httle door in it, which
opened on their ringing; and a clumsy, untidy man came out
and fetched Philip's tin trunk and his play-box. They were
shown into the drawing-room; it was filled with massive, ugly
furniture, and the chairs of the suite were placed round the
walls with a forbidding rigidity. They waited for the head-
master.

"What's Mr. Watson like?" asked Philip, after' a while. ,

"You'll see for yourself."

There was another pause. Mr. Carey wondered why the
headmaster did not come. Presently Philip made an effort and
spoke again. .

"Tell him I've got a club-foot," he said.

Before Mr. Cai;ey could speak the door burst open and Mr.
Watson swept into the room. To Philip he seemed gigantic-
He was a man of over six^ feet high, and broad, with enormous
hands and a great red beard; he talked loudly in a jovial man-
ner; but his aggressive cheerfulness struck terror in Philip's
heart. He shook hands with Mr. Carey, and then took Philip's
small hand in his.

"Well, young fellow, are you glad to come to school?" he
shouted. '

Philip reddened and found no word to answer.

"How old are you?"

■^Nine," said Philip.

"You must say sir," said his uncle.

"I ejcpect you've got a good lot to learn," the headmaster
bellowed cheerily.

To give, the boy confidence he began to tickle him , with
rough fingers. Philip, feeling shy and uncomfortable, squirmed
under his touch. /

"I've put him in the small dormitory for the present. . . .
You'll like that, won't you?" he added to Philip. "Only eight
of you in there. You won't feel io strange."

Then the door opened, and Mrs. Watson came in. She was

42 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

a dark woman with black hair, neatly -parted in the middle.
She had curiously thick lips and a small round nose. Her eyes
were large and black. There was a singular coldness in her
appearance. She seldom spoke and smiled more seldom still.
Her husband introduced Mr. Carey to her, and then gave
Philip a friendly push towards her.

"This is a new boy, Helen. His name's Carey.''
'^ Without a word she shook hands with Philip and then sat
down, not 'speaking, while the headmaster asked Mr. Carey
bow much Philip knew and what books he had been-working
with. The Vicar of Blackstable Was a little embarrassed by Mr.
Watson's boisterous heartiness, and in a moment or two got
up.

"I think I'd better leave Philip with you now."

"That's all right," said Mr. Watson. "He'lLbe safe with me.
He'll get on like a house on fire. Won't you, young fellow.''"

Without waiting for an answer from Philip the big man
burst into a great bellow of laughter. Mr. Carey kissed Philip
on the forehead and went away.

"Come along, young fellow," shouted Mr. Watson. "I'll show
you the school-room."

He swept out of the drawing-room with giant strides, and
Philip hurriedly limped behind him. He was taken into a
long, bare room with two tables that ran along its whole
length; on each side of them were woodeii forms.

•"Nobody much here yet," said Mr. Watson. "I'll just show
you the play-ground, and then I'll leave you to shift for your-
self."

Mr. Watson led the way. Philip found himself in a large
play-ground with high brick walls on three sides of it. Onthe
fourth side was an iron railing through which you saw a vast
lawn and beyond this some of the buildings of King's School.
One small boy was wandering disconsolately, kicking up the
gravel as he walked.

"HuUoa, Venning," shouted Mr. Watson. "When did you
f urn up .?"

OF HUMAN BONDAGE

The small boy came forward and shook hands. _

"Here's a new boy. He's older and bigger than you, so don't
yoii bully himl"

The headmaster glared amicably at the two children, filling
them with fear by the roar of his voice, and then with a guf-. "
faw left them.

"What's your name?"

"Carey."

"What's your father.?"

"He's dead."

"Oh! Does your mother wash.?"

"My mother's dead, too."

Philip thought this answer would cause the boy a certain-
awkv^ardhess, but Venning was not to be turned from hii'
facetiousness for so little.

"Well, did she wash.?" he went on.

"Yes," said Philip indignantly.

"She was a washerwoman then.?"

"No, she wasn't."

"Then she didn't wash."

The little boy crowed with delight at the success of his
dialectic. Then he caught sight of Philip's feet.

"What's the matter with your foot.?"

Philip instinctively tried to withdraw it from sight. He hid
it behind the one which was whole.

"I've got a club-foot," he answered.

"How did you get it.?"

"I've always had it."

"Let's have a look."

"No;'

"Don't then."

The little boy accompanied the words with a sharp kick on
Philip's shin, which Philip did not expect and thus could not
guard against. The pain was so great that it. made him ,gasp,
but greater than the pain was the surprise. He did not know
why Venning kicked him. He had not the presence of mind

,OF HUMAN BONDAGE

CO give him a black eye. Besides, the boy was smaller than he,
and he had read in The Boy's Own Paper that it was a mean
thing to hit anyone smaller than yourself. While Philip was
nursing his sfhin a third boy appeared, and his tormentor left
•him. In a little while he noticed that the pair were talking
about him, and he felt they were looking at his feet. He greV^
hot and uncomfortable.

But others arrived, a dozen together, and then more, and
they began to talk about their doings during the holidays,
where they had been, and what wonderful cricket they had
played. A few new boys appeared, and with these presently
PhiUp found himself talking. Hq was shy and nervous. He
>was anxjjpus fn-rmlrPihimniplf plpinnt. hnf he rmild not think
of anything to say. He was asked a great many questions and
answered them all quite willingly. One boy asked him whetho-
he could play cricket.
"No," answered Philip. "I've got a club-foot."
The boy looked down quickly and reddened. Philip saw
that he felt he had asked an unseemly question. He was too
shy to apologise and looked at PhiUp awkwardly.

Chapter 11

Next morning when the clanging of a bell awoke Philip he
looked round his cubicle in astonishment. Then a voice sang
out, and he remembered where he was.
, "Are you awake. Singer?"

The partitions of the cubicle were of polished pitch-pine, and
there was a green curtain in front. In those days there was little
thought of ventilation, and the windows were closed except
when the dormitory was aired in the morning.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 45

Philip got up and knelt down to say his prayers. It was a
cold morning, and he shivered a little; but he had been taught
by his uncle that his prayers were more acceptable to God if
he said them in his nightshirt than if he waited till he was
dressed. This did not surprise him, for he was beginning to
realise that he was the creature of a God .who appreciated the
discomtort of his worsEippet's. I'hen "he washed, tliere were
two baths for the fifty boarders, and each boy had. a bath once
a week. The rest of his washing was done in a small basin on a
w^sh-stand, which, with the bed and a chair, made up the fur-
niture of each ciibicle. The boys chatted gaily while they
dressed. Philip was all ears. Then another bell sounded, and
they ran downstairs. They took their seats on the forms on
each side of the two long tables in the school-room; and Mr.
Watson, followed by his wife and the servants, came in and
sat down. Mr. Watson read prayers in an impressive manner,
and the supplications thundered out in his loud voice a?
though they were threats personally addressed to each boy.
Philip listened with anxiety. Then Mr. Watson read a chaptei'
frorn the Bible, and the servants trooped out. In a moment the
untidy youth brought in two large pots of tea and on a second
journey immense dishes of bread and butter.

Philip had a squeamish appetite, and the thick slabs of
poor butter on the bread turned his stomach, but he saw other
boys scraping it off and followed their example. They all had
potted meats and such Hke, which they had brought in theif
play-boxes; and some had 'extras,' eggs or bacon, upon which
Mr. Watson ijiadc a profit. "When he had asked Mr. Carey
whether Philip was to have these, Mr. Carey replied that he
did not think boys should be spoilt. Mr. Watson quite agreed
with him — he considered nothing wals better than bread and
butter for growing lads— but some parents, unduly pampering
. their offspring, insisted on it.

Philip noticed that 'extras' gave boys a certain consideration
and made up his mind, when he wrote to Aunt Louisa, to ask
for them.

46 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

After breakfast the boys wandered out into the play-
ground. Here the day-boys were gradually assembling. They
were sons of the local clergy, of the officers at the Depot, and
of such manufacturers or men of business as the old town
possessed. Presently a bell rang, and they all trooped into
school. This consisted of a large, long room at opposite ends
df which two under-masters conducted the second and third
forms, and of a smaller one, leading out of it, used by Mr.
Watson, who taught the first form. To attach the preparatory
to the senior school these three classes were known officially,
on speech days and in reports, as upper, middle, and lower
second. Philip was put in the last. The master, a red-faced
man with a pleasant voice, was called Rice; he had a jolly
manner with boys, and the time passed quickly. Philip was sur-
prised when it was a quarter to eleven and they were let out
for ten minutes' rest.

The whole school rushed noisily into the play-ground. The
new boys were told to go into the middle, while the others
stationed themselves along opposite walls. They began to play
Pig in the Middle. The old boys ran from wall to wall while
the new boys tried to catch them : when one was seized and the
mystic words said — one, two, three, and a pig for me — he^be-
came a prisoner and, turning sides, helped to catch those who
were still free. Philip saw a boy running past and tried to catch
him, but his limp gave him no chance; and the runners, taking
their opportunity, made straight for the ground Re covered.
Then one of -them had the brilliant idea of imitating Philip's
clumsy run. Other boys saw it and began to laugh; then they
all copied the 'first; and they ran round Philip, limping gro-
tesquely, screaming in their treble voices with shrill laughter.
. They lost their heads with the delight of their new amuse-
ment, and choked with helpless merriment. One of them
tripped Philip up and he fell, heavily as he always fell, and cut;
his knee, They laughed all the louder when he got up. A boy
pushed him from behind, arid he would have fallen again if
smother had not caught him. The game was forgotten in the

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 47

entertainment of Philip's deformity. One of them invented an
odd, rolHng Hmp that struck the re^t as supremely ridiculous,
and several of the boys lay down oii the ground and rolled
about in laughter: Philip v/as completely scared. He could
not make Gut vyhy they were laughin^_ at him. His heart beat
so that he could hardly breathe, and he was more frightened
than he had ever been in his life. He stood still stupidly while
the boys ran round him, mimicking and laughing; they
shouted to him to try and catch them; but he did not move.
He did not want them to see him run any more. He was iwing_
all his strength to. prevent himself from crymg.
""Suddenly the bell rang, and they all troopedback to school.
Philip's knee was bleeding, and he was dusty and dishevelled.
For some rninutes Mr. Rice could not control his form. ,They
were extited still by the strange novelty, and Philip saw one or
two of them furtively looking down at his feet. He tucked
them under the bench.

In the afternoon they went up to play football, but Mr.
Watson stopped Philip *on the way out after dinner.

"I suppose you can't play football, Carey?" he asked him.

Philip blushed self-consciously.

"No, sir."

"Very well. You'd better go up to the field. You can walk
as far as that, can't you?"

Philip had no idea where the fidd was, but he answered all
the same. ■'

"Yes, sir."

The boys went in charge of Mr. Rice, who glanced at Philip
and, seeing he had not changed, asked why he was not going
to play.

"Mr. Watson said I needn't, sir," said Philip.

"Why?"

There were boys all round him, looking at him curiously,
and a feeling of shame came over Philip. He looked down
without answering. Others gave the reply.

"He's got a club-foot, sir."

48 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Oh, I see."

Mr. Rice was quite young; he had only taken his degree a
year before; and he was suddenly embarrassed. His instinct
was to beg the boy's pardon, but he was too shy to do so. He
made his voice gruff and loud.

"Now then, you boys, what are you waiting about for? Get.
on with you."

Some of them had already started and those that were left
now set oif, in groups of two or three.

"You'd better come along with me, Carey," said the master.
"You don't know the way, do you?"

Philip guessed the kindness, and a sob came to his throat.

"I can't go very fast, sir."
.^'Then I'll go very slow." said the master, with a smile.

Philip's heart went out to the red-faced, commonplace young
man who said a gentle word to him. He suddenly felt less,
unhappy.

~ But at night when they went up to bed and were undressing,
the boy who was called Singer came out of his cubicle and put
his head in Philip's.

"I say, let's look at your foot," he said.

"No," answered'Philip.

He jumped into bed quickly.

"Don't say no to me," said Singer. "Come on. Mason."

The boy in the next cubicle was looking round the corner,
and at the words he slipped in. They made for Philip and
tried to tear the bed-clothes off him, but he held them tightly.

"Why can't you leave me alone?" he cried.-

Slngef seized a brush and with the back of it beat Philip's
hands clenched on the blanket. Philip cried out.

"Why don't you show us your foot quietly?"

"I won't."

In desperation Philip clenched his fist and hit the boy' who
tormented him, but he was at a disadvantage, and the boy
leized his arm. He began to turn it.

"Oh, don't, don't," said Philip. "You'll break my arm."

I
OF HUMAN BONDAGE 49

"Stop still then and put out your foot."

Philip gave a sob and a gasp. The boy gave the arm another
wrench. The pain was unendurable.

"All right. I'll do it,'- said Philip.

He put out his foot. Singer still kept his hand on Philip's
wrist. He looked curiously at the deformity,

"Isn't it beastly.?" said Mason.

Another came in and looked tool

"Ugh," he said, in disgust.

"My ,word, it is rum," said Singer, making a face. "Is it
■ hard.?"

He touched it with the tip of his forefinger, cautiously, as
though it were something that had a hfe of its own. Suddenly
'they heard Mr. Watson's heavy tread on the stairs. They threw
the clothes back on Philip and dashed like rabbits into theii
cubicles. Mr. Watson came into the dormitory. Raising him-
self on tiptoe he could see over the rod that bore the green
curtain, and he looked into two. or three of the cubicles. The
little boys were safely in bed. He put out the light and went
out.

Singer called out to Philip, but he did not answer. He had
got his teeth. in ihe. pillow so that his sobbjng should be in"
audible. He was not crying for the pain they hSTauseThim,
nor for the humiliation he had suffered when they looked at
his foot, but wiA rage at ,|iimsel£; jpffauge. unable to stand the
torture, he had^,p„qjt„Qut Ju,g.^,^SUiLbisj^^

And then he felt the misery of his life. It seemed to his
childish mind that this unhappiness must go on for ever. For
no particular reason he remembered that cold morning when
Emma had taken him out of bed and put him beside his
mother. He had not thought of it once since it happened, but
now he seemed to feel the warmth of his mother's body against
his and her arms around hirn. Suddenly it seemed to him that
his life was a dream, his mother's death, and the life at the
vicarage, and these two wretched days at school, and he would
awake in the morning and be back again at home. His rears

50 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

dried as he thought of it. He was too unhappy, it must be
nothing but a dream, and his mother was alive, and Emma
would fome up presently and go to bed. He fell asleep.

-But when he awoke next morning it was to the clanging or
a bell, and the first thing his eyes saw was the green curtain,
of his cubicle;

Chapter 12

A.S TIME went on Philip's deformity ceased to interest. It was
accepted like one boy's red hair and another's unreasonable
corpulence. But meanwhile he -had-grown -horribly . sensitive.
He never ran if he could help it, because he knew it made his
limp more conspicuous, and he adopted a peculiar walk. He
stood still as much as he could, with his club-foot behind the
other, so that it should not attract notice, and he was con-
stantly on the look out for any reference to it. Because he could
not join in the games which other boys played, their life
remained strange to him; he only interested himself from the
outside in their doings; and at seeffled-to-hi-m- t-haLthere was
a barrier between them and him. Sometimes they seemed to
think thaT if was his fault' if'he could not play football, and he
was unable to make them understand. He was left a good deal
to himself. He had been incUned to talkativeness, but gradu-
ally he became silent. He began to think of the difference be-
tween himself and_others.

The biggest boy in his dormitory, Singer, took a dislike to
him, and Philip, small for his age, had to put up with a good
deal of hard treatment. About half-way through the term a
mania ran through the school for a game called Nibs. It was
a game for two, played on a table or a form with steel pens'.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 51

You had to push your nib with the fingernail so as to get the
point of it over your opponent's, while he manoeuvred to pre-
vent this and to get the point of his nib over the back of yours;
when this result was achieved you breathed on the ball of your
thumb, pressed it hard on the two nibs, and if you were able
then to lift them without dropping either, both nibs became
yours. Soon nothing was seen but boys playing this game, and
the more skilful acquired vast stores of nibs. But in a little
while Mr. Watson made up his mind that it was a form of
gambling, forbade the game, and confiscated all the nibs in
the boys' possession. Philip had been very adroit, and it was
with a heavy heart that he gave up his winnings; but his
fingers itched to "play still, and a few days later, on his way to
the football field, he went into a shop and bought a penny-
worth of J pens. He carried them loose in his pocket and en-
joyed feeling them. Presently Singer found out that he had
them. Singer had given up his nibs too, but he had kept back
a very large one, called a Jumbo, which was almost uncon-
querable, and he could not resist the opportunity of getting
Philip's Js out of him. Though Philip knew that he was at a dis-
advantage with his small nibs, he had an adventurous disposi-
tioaand was willing to take the risk; besides, he was aware that
Singer would not allow him to refuse. He had not played for
a week and sat down to the game now with a thrill of excite-
ment. He lost two of his small nibs quickly, and Singer was
jubilant, but the third time by some chance the Jumbo slipped
round and Philip was able to push his J across it. He crovved
with triumph. At that moment Mr. Watson came in.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

He looked from Singer to Philip, but neither answered.
■ "Don't you know that Pve forbidden you to play that idiotic
game?"

PhiHp's heart beat fast. He knew what was coming and
was dreadfully frightened, but in his fright there was a certain
-exultation. He had never been swished. Of course it would
hurt, but it was something to boast about afterwards.

J2 , OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Come into my study."

The headmaster turned, and they followed him side by side.
Singer whispered to Philip :

"We're in for it."

Mr. Watson pointed to Singer,

"Bend over," he said.

Philip, very vvhite, saw the boy quiver at each stroke, and
after the third he heard him cry out. Three more followed.

"That'll do. Get up."

Singer stood up. The tears were streaming down his face-
Philip- stepped 'forward. Mr. Watson looked at him for a
moment.

"I'm not going to cane you. You're a new 'boy. And I can't
hit a cripple. Go away, both of you, and don't be naughty
again."

When they got back into the school-room a group of boys,
who had learned in some mysterious way what was happen'-
ing, were waiting for them. They set upon Singer at once with
eager questions. Singer faced them, his face red with the pain
and marks of tears still on his cheeks. He pointed with his
head at Philip, who was standing a little behind him.

"He got off because he's a cripple," he said angrily.

Phihp stood silent and flushed. He felt that they looked at
him with contempt.

"How many did you get?" one boy asked Singer.

But he did not answer. He was angry because he had been
hurt.

"Don't ask me to play Nibs with you again," he said to
Philip. "It's jolly nice for you. Yoii don't risk anything."

"I didn't ask you."

"Didn't you!"

He quickly put out his foot and tripped Philip up. Philip
was always rather unsteady on his feet, and he fell heavily to
the ground.

"Cripple," said Singer.

For the rest of the term he tormented Philip cruelly, and

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 53

though Philip tried to Keep out of his way, the school was so
small that it was impossible; he tried being friendly and jolly .
with him; he abased himself so far as to buy him a knife; but
though Singer took the knife he was not placated. Once or
twice, driven beyond endurance, he hit and kicked the bigger
boy, but Singer was so much stronger that Philip was help-
less, and he was always forced after more or less tortute to beg;
his pardon. It was that which rankled with Philip: he coula,
not bear the humiliation of- apologies, which were wrung ftom
him by pain greater than he could bear. And what made it
worse was that there seemed no end to his wretchedness;
Stinger was only eleven and \yould not go to the upper school
till he was thirteen. Philip realized that he must live two years
with a tormentor from whom there was no escape. He was
only happy while he was working and when he got into bed.
And often there recurred to him then that queer feeling that
his life with all its misery was nothing but a dream, and that
he would awake in the morning in his own little bed in
London.

Chapter 13

Two years passed, and Philip was nearly twelve. He was in the
first form, within two or three places of the top, and after
Christmas when several boys would be leaving for the senior
school he would be head boy. He had already quite a collec-
tion of prizes, worthless books on bad paper, but in gorgeous
bindings decorated with the arms of the school: his position
had freed him from bullying, and he was not unhappy. His
fellows forgave him his success because of his deformity.

"After all, it's jolly easy for him to get prizes," they said,
"there's nothing he can do but swat."

(^ OF HUMAN BONDAGE

He had lost his early terror of Mr. Watson. He had grown
used to the, loud voice, and when the headmaster's heavy hand
was laid on his shoulder Philip discerned vaguely the intention
of a caress. He had the good memory which is more useful
for scholastic achievements than mental power, and he knew
Mr. Watson expected him to leave the preparatory school with
a scholarship.

But he had grown very self-conscious. The new-born child
does not realise that his body is more a part of himself thari
surrounding objects, and will play with his toes without any
feeling that they belong to him more than the rattle by his
side; and it is only by degrees, through pain, that he under-
stands the fact of the body. And experiences of the same kind
are necessary for the individual to become conscious of him-
self; but here there is the difference that, although everyone
becomes equally conscious of his body as a separate and com-
plete organism, everyone does not become equally conscious
of himself as a complete and separate personality. The feeling
of apartness from others comes to most with puberty,, but it is
not always developed to such a degree as to make the differ-
ence between the individual and his fellows noticeable to the
individual. It is such as he, as little conscious of himself as the
bee in a hiye,^jffi|^Q^eIthe lucky in life, for'tKey have the best
chance^^of_hagjii|],ess : their activities are shared by all, and
their pleasures are only pleasures because they are enjoyed in
common; you will see therri on Whit-Monday dancing on
Hampstead Heath, shouting at a football match, or from
club windows in Pall Mall cheering a royal procession. It is
because of them that man has been called a social animal.

Philip passed from the innocence of childhood to bitter
.consciousness of himself by the ridicule which his club-
foot had excited. The circumstances of his case were so pecu-
liar that he could not apply to them the ready-made rules
which acted well enough in ordinary affairs, and he was
forced to think for himself. The many books he had read filled
his mind with ideas which, because he only half understood

OI; HUMAN BONDAGE 55

them, gave more scope to his imagination. Beneath his painful
shyness something was^ growing- up within'Em^ and obscurely
he realised.^ personahtv. But at trmes it gave him oddlur-
prises; he did things, heknew not why, and afterwards when
he thought of them found himself all at sea.

There was a boy called Luard between ^yhom and PhiUp
a friendship had arisen, and one day, when they were playing
together in the school-room, Luard began to perform some
trick with an ebony pen-holder of Philip's.

"Don't play the giddy ox," said Philip. "You'll only break
it."
"I shan't." ,

But no sooner were the words out of the boy's mouth than
the pen-holder snapped in two. Luard looked at Phihp with
dismay.
"Oh,J say, I'm awfully sorry."

The tears rolled down PhiUp's cheeks, but he did not
answer.

"I say, what's the matter?" said Luard, with surprise. "I'll
get you another one exactly the same."

"It's not about the pen-holder I care," said Philip, in a trem-
bling voice, "only it was given me by my mater, just before
she died."
"I say, I'm awfully sorry, Carey."
"It doesn't matter. It wasn't your fault."
Philip took the two pieces of the pen-holder and looked at
them. He tried to restrain his sobs, He felt utterly miserable.
And yet he could not tell why, for he knew quite well that he
had bought the pen-holder during his last holidays at Black-
stable for one and twopence. He did not know in the least
what, had made him invent that pathetic story, but he was
quite as unhappy as though it had been true. The pious atmos-
phere of the vicarage and the religious tone of the school had
made Philip's conscience very sensitive; he absorbed insensibly
the feeling about him that the Tempter was ever on the watch
to gain his immortal soul; and though he was not more truth-/

56 OF .HUMAN BONDAGE

ful than most boys he never told a lie without suffering from
remorse. When he thought over this incident he w^as very
much distressed, and made up his' mind that he must go to
Luard and tell him that the story was an invention. Though
he dreaded humiliation more than anything in the world, he
hugged himself for two or three days at the thought of the
agonising joy of humiliating himself to the Glory of God. But
he never got any further. He satisfied his conscience ■ by the
more comfortable method of expressing his repentance only
to the Almighty. But he could not understand why he should
have been so genuinely affected by the story he was making
up. The tears that flowed down his grubby cheeks were real
tears. Then by some accident of association there occurred to
him that scehe when Emma had told him of his mother's
death, and, though he could not speak for crying, he had
insisted on going in to say good-bye to the Misses Watkin so
that they might see his grief and pity him.

Chapter 14

Then a wave of religiosity parsed through the school. Bad
language was no longer, heard, and the Uttle nastinesses of
small boys were looked .upon with hostility; the bigger boys,
like the lords temporal of the Middle Ages, used the strength-
of their arms to persuade those weaker than themselves to
virtuous courses.

Philip, his restless mind avid for new things, became very
devout. He heard soon that it was possible to join a Bible
League, and wrote to London for particulars. These consisted
in a form to be filled up with the applicant's njime, age, and
school; a solemn declaration to be signed thai he would read

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 57

a set portion of Holy Scripture every night for a year; and a
request for half a crown; this, it was explained, was demanded
partly to prove the earnestness of the applicant's desire to be-
come a member of the League, and partly to cover clerical
expenses. Philip duly sent the papers and the money, and in
return received a calendar worth about a penny, on which was
set down the appointed passage to be read each day, and a
sheet of paper on one side of which was a picture of the Good
Shepherd and a lamb, and on the other, decoratively framed
in red lines^ a short prayer which had to be said before be-
ginning to read.

Every evening he undressed as quickly as possible in order
to have time for his task before the gas was put out. He read
industriously, as he read always, without criticism, stories of
cruelty, deceit, ingratitude, dishonesty, and low cunning. Ac-
tions which would have excited his horror in the life about
him, in the reading passed through his mind without com-
ment, because they were committed under direct inspiration
of God. The method of the League was to alternate a book of
the Old Testament with a book of the New, and one night
Philip came across these words of' Jesus Christ:

// ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this
which is done to the fig-tree, but also if ye shall say unto this
mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into, the seaj it
shall be done.

And all this, whatsoever ye shall as\ in prayer, believing, ye
shall receive.

They made no particular impression on him, but it hap-
pened that two or three days later, being Sunday, the Canon
in residence chose them for the text of his sermon. Even if
Philip had wanted to hear this it would have been impossible,
for the boys of King's School sit in the choir, and the pulpit
stands' at the corner of the transept so that the preacher's back
is almost turned to them. The distance also is so great that it
needs a man with a fine voice and a knowledge of elocution to
make himself heard in the choir; and according to long usage

58 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

the Canons o£ Tercanbury are chosen for their learning rather
than for any qualities which might be of use in a cathedral
church. But the words of the text, perhaps because he had read
them so short a while before, came clearly enough to Philip's
ears, and they seemed on a sudden to have a personal applica-
«:ion. He thought about them through most of the sermon, and
that night, on getting into bed, he turned ovdr the pages of
the Gospel and found once more the passage. Though he be-
lieved implicitly everything he saw in print, he had learned
already that in the Bible things that said one, thing quite
clearly often mysteriously meant another. There was no one
he liked to ask at school, so he kept the question he had in
mind till the Christmas holidays, and then one day he made
an opportunity. It was after supper and prayers were just fin-
ished. Mrs. Carey was counting the eggs that Mary Ann had
brought in as usual and writing on each one the date. Philip
stood at the table and pretended to turn listlessly the pages
of the Bible.

"I say, Uncle William, this passage here, does it really mean
that?"

He put his finger against it as though he had come across
it accidentally.

Mr. Carey looked up over his spectacles. He was holding
The Blac\stable Times in front of the fire. It had come in
that evening damp from the press, and the- Vicar always aired
it for ten minutes before he began to read.

"What passage is that?" he asked.

"Why, this about if you have faith you can remove moun-
tains."

"If it says so in the Bible it is so, Philip," said Mrs. Carey
gently, taking up the plate-basket.

Philip looked at his uncle for an answer.

"It's a matter of faith."

"P'you mean to say that if you really beUeved you could
move mountains you could?"

"By the grace of God," said the Vicar.

OFHUMAN BONDAGE 59

"Now, say good-night 60 your uncle, Philip," said Aunt
Louisa. "You're not wanting to move a mountain tonight, are
you?"

Philip allowed himself to be kissed on the forehead by his
uncle and preceded Mrs. Carey upstairs. He had got the in-
formation he wanted. His little room was icy, and he shivered
when he put on his nightgown. But he always felt that his
prayers were more pleasing to God when he said them under
conditions of discomfort. The coldness of his hands and feet
were an offering to the Almighty. And tonight he sank on
his knees,, buried his face in his hands, and prayed to God
with all his might that He would make his club-foot whole.
It was a very small thing beside the moving of mountains. He
knew that God could do it if He wished, and his own faith
was complete. Next morning, finishing his prayers with the
same request, he fixed a date for the miracle.

"Oh, God, in Thy loving mercy and goodness, if it be Thy
will, please make my foot all right on the night before I ga
back to school."

He was glad to get his petition into a formula, and he
repeated it later in the dining-room during the short pause
which the Vicar always made after prayers, before he rose
from his knees. He said it again in the evening and again, shiv-
ering in his nightshirt, before he got into bed. And he believed
For once he looked forward with eagerness to the end of the
holidays. He laughed to himself as he thought of his uncle's
astonishment when he ran down the stairs three at a time; and
after breakfast he and Aunt Louisa would have to hurry out
and buy a new pair of boots. At school they would be
astounded.

"HuUoa, Carey, what have you done with your foot?"

"Oh, it's all right now," he would answer casually, as though
it were the most natural thing in the world.

He would be able to play football. His heart leaped as he
saw himself running, running, faster than any of the other
boys. At the end of the Easter term there were the sports, and

60 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

he would be able to go in for the races; he rather fancied him-
self over the hurdles. It would be splendid to be like everyone
else, not to be stared at curiously by new boys who did not
know about his deformity, nor at the baths in summer to need
incredible precautions, while he was undressing, before he
could hide his foot in ^:he water.

/jHe prayed with all the power of his soul. No doubts assailed
/ him. He was confident in the word of God. And the night
sbefore he was to go back to school he went up to bed tremu-
lous with excitement. There was snow on the ground, and
Aunt Louisa had allowed herself the unaccustomed luxury of
a fire in her bed-room; but in PhiUp's Uttle room it was so
cold that his fingers were numb, and he had great difficulty in
undoing his collar. His teeth chattered. The idea came to him
that he must do something more than usual to attract the at-
tention of God, ahd he turned back the rug which was in front
of his bed so that he could kneel on the bare boards; and then
it struck him that his nightshirt was a softness that might dis-
please his Maker, so he took it off and said his prayers naked.
When he got into bed he was so cold that for some time he
could not sleep, but when he, did, it was so soundly that Mary
Ann had to snake him when she- brought in his hot water next
morning. She talked to him while she drew the curtains, but
he did not' answer; he had remembered at once that this was
the morning for the miracle. His heart was filled with joy and
' gratitude. His first instinct was to put down his hand and feel
the foot which was whole now, but to do this seemed to doubt
the goodness of God. He knew that his foot was well. But at
last he made up his mind, and with the toes of his right foot
he just touched his left. Then he passed his hand over it.

He limped downstairs just as Mary Ann was going into the
dining-room for prayers, and then he sat down to breakfast.

"You're very quiet this morning, Philip," said Aunt Louisa
presently.

"He's thinking of the good breakfast he'll have at school
fo-morrow," said the Vicar.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE ^j -^^

When Philip answered, it was in a way that always irrit.-.'^''^
his uncle, with something that had nothing to do wit! "^^"^^
matter in hand. He called it a bad habit of wool-gatherif^°™^'

"Supposing you'd asked God to do something," said ' ^^- ^^
"and really believed it was going to happen, like mof ^^'^'•
mountain, I mean, and you had faith, and it didn't haJJ''^'^^*
what would it mean?" the

"What a funny boy you are!" said Aunt Louisa. "You ask'P^
about moving mountains two ar thre? weeks ago." " ^

"It would just mean that you hadn't got faith," answerex^
Uncle William. ' \

Philip accepted the explanation. If God had not cured him,
it was because he did not really beUeve. And yet he did not
see how he could believe more than he did. But perhaps he
had not given God enough time. He had only asked Him for
nineteen days. In a day or two he began his" prayer again, and
this time he fixed upon Easter. That was the day of His Son's
glorious resurrection, and God in His happiness might be
mercifully inclined. But now Philip added other means of
attaining his desire: he began to wish, when he saw a new
moon or a dappled horse, and he looked out for shooting stars;
.during exeat they had a chicken at the vicarage, and he broke
the lucky bone with Aunt Louisa and vvished again, each time
that his foot might be made whole. He was appealing uncon-
sciously to gods older to his race than the God of Israel. And
he bombarded the Almighty with his prayer, at odd times of
the day, whenever it occurred to him, in identical words al- ^
ways, for it seemed to him important to make his request in '
the same terms. But presently the feeling came to him that this
time also his faith would not be great enough. He could
not resist the doubt that assailed him. He made his own ex-
perience into a general rule.
"I suppose no one ever has faith enough," he said. A
It was like the salt which his nurse used to tell him about:
you could catch any bird by putting salt on his tail; and once
he- had taken a little bag of it into Kensington Gardens. But he,

6Q. OFHUMAN BONDAGE

he nld never get near enough to put the salt on a bird's tail,
self ore Easter he had given up the. struggle. He felt a dull
else, itment against his uncle for taking him in. The text
know s spoke of the moying of mountains was just one of those
incredjid one thing and meant another. He thought his uncle
couldjeen playing a practical joke on him.

Chapter 15

The King's School at Tercanbury, to which Philip went when
he was thirteen, prided itself on its antiquity. It traced its
origin to an abbey school, founded before the Conquest, where
the rudiments of learning were taught by Augustine monks;
and, like many another establishment of this sort, on the
destruction of the monasteries it had been reorganised by the
officers of King Henry VIII and thus acquired its name. Since
then, pursuing its modest course, it had given to the sons of the
local gentry and of the professional people of Kent an educa-
tion sufficient to their needs. One or two men of letters, be-
ginning with a poet, than whom only Shakespeare had a more
splendid genius, and ending with a writer of prose whose view
of life has affected profoundly the generation of which Philip
was a member, had gone forth from its gates to achieve fame ;
it had produced one or two eminent lawyers, but eminent la^y-
yers are common, and one or two soldiers of distinction; but
during the three centuries since its separation from the monas-
tic order it had trained especially men of the church, bishops,
deans, canofis, and above all country clergymen:, there were
boys in the school whose fathers, grandfathers, great-grand-
fathers, had been educated there and had all been rectors of
parishes in the diocese of Tercanbury; and they came to it

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 63

with their minds made up already to be ordained. But there
were signs notwithstanding that even there changes were
coming; for a few, repeating what they had heard at home,
said that the Church was no longer what it used to be. It
wasn\ so much the money; but the class of people who went
in for it weren't the same; and two or three boys knew curates
whose fathers were tradesmen: they'd rather go out to the
Colonies (in those days the Colonies were still the last hope
of those who could get nothing to do in England) than be a
curate under some chap who wasn't a gentleman. At King's
School, as at Blackstable Vicarage, a tradesman was anyone
who was not lucky enough to own land (and here a fine dis-
tinction was made between the gentleman farmer and the
landowner), or did not follow one of the four professions to
which it was possible for a gentleman to belong. Among the
day-boys, of whom there were about a hundred and fifty, sons
of the local gentry and of the men stationed at the depot, those
whose fathers were engaged in business were made to feel the
degradation of their state.

The masters had no patience with modern ideas of educa- f.
tion, which they read of sometimes in The Times or The \
Guardian, and hoped fervently that King's School would re- \
main true to its old traditions. The dead languages were taught |
with such thoroughness that an old boy seldom thought of
Homer or Virgil in after life without a qualm of boredpm; j
and though in the common room at dinner one or two bolder j
spirits suggested that mathematics were of increasing impor' |
tance, the general feeling was that they were a less noble study |
than the classics. Neither German nor chemistry was taught. |
and French only by the form-masters; they could keep order \
better than a foreigner, and, since they knew the grammar as '
well as any Frenchman, it seemed unimportant that none of
them could have got a cup of coffee in the restaurant at Bou- I
logne unless the waiter had known a little EngUsh. Geography
was taught chiefly by making boys draw maps, and this was
a favourite occupation, especially when the country dealt with-

<64 OF HUMAN BONDXGE

j was mountainous : it was possible to waste a great deal of time
I in drawing the Andes or the Apennines. The masters, graduates
of Oxford or Cambridge, were ordained and unmarried; if by
chance they wished to marry they could only do so by accept-
ing one of the smaller livings at the disposal of the Chapter;
but for many years none of, them had cared to leave the refined
society of Tercanbury, which owing to the cavalry depot had
a martial as well as an ecclesiastical tone, for the monotony
■of life in a country rectory; and they were now all men of
middle age.

The headmaster, on the other hand, was obliged to be
married, and he conducted the school till age began to tell
upon him. When he retired he was rewarded with a much
better living than any of the under-masters could hope for,
.and an honorary Canonry.

But a year before Philip entered the school a great change
had come over it. It had been obvious for some time that Dr.
-Fleming, who had been headmaster for the quarter of a cen-
tury, was become too deaf to continue his work to the greater
glory of God; and when one of the livings on the outskirts of
the city fell vacant, with a stipend of six hundred a year, the
■Chapter offered it to him in such a manner as to imply that
they thought it high time for him to retire. He could nurse
-his ailments comfortably on such an income. Two or three
-curates who had hoped for preferment told their wives it was
.scandalous to give a parish that needed a young, strong, and
•energetic man to an old fellow who knew nothing of parochial
work, and had feathered his nest already; but the mutterings
■of the unbeneficed clergy do not reach the ears of a cathedral
Chapter. And as for the parishioners they had nothing to say
in the matter, and therefore, nobody asked for their opinion.
The Wesleyans and the Baptists both had chapels in the
village.

When Dr. Fleming was thus disposed of it became necessary
to find a successor. It was contrary to the traditions of the
.school that one of the lower-masters should be chosen. The

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 65

common-room was unanimous in desiring the election of Mr.
Watson, headmaster o£ the preparatory school; he could
hardly be described as already a master of King's School, they
had all known him for twenty years," and there was no danger
that he would make a nuisance of himself. But the Chapter
sprang a surprise on them. It chose a man called Perkins. At
first nobody knew who Perkins was, and the name favourably
impressed no one; but before the shock of it had passed away,,
it was realised that Perkins was the son of Perkins the linen-f
draper. Dr. Fleming informed the masters just before dinner,,
and his manner showed his consternation. Such of them as
were dining in, ate their meal almost in silence, and no refer-
ence was made to the matter till the servants had left the
room. Then thdy set to. The names of those present on this
occasion are unimportant, but they had been known to genera-
tions of school-boys as Sighs, Tar, Winks, Squirts, and Pat.
They all knew Tom Perkins. The first thing about him was
that he was not a gentleman. They remembered him quite
well. He was a small, dark boy, with untidy black hair and
large eyes. He looked like a gipsy. He had come to the school,
as a day-boy, with the best scholarship on their endowment,
so that his education had cost him nothing. Of course he was
brilliant. At every Speech-Day he was loaded with prizes. He
wa!s their show-boy, and they remembered now bitterly their
fear that 'Iwg-would try to get some scholarship at one of the
larger public schools and so pass out of their hands. Dr. Flem-
ing had gone to the linendraper his father — they all remem-
bered the shop, Perkins and Cooper, in St. Catherine's Street —
and said he hoped Tom would remain with them till he went
to Oxford. The school was Perkins and Cooper's best cus-
tomer, and Mr. Perkins was only too glad to give the required
assurance. Tom Perkins continued to triumph, he was the
finest classical scholar that Dr. Fleming remembered, and on
leaving the school took with him the most valuable scholar-
ship they had to offer. He got another at Magdalen and settled
down to a brilliant career at the University. The school maga-

66 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

zine recorded the distinctions he achieved year after year, and
when he got his double first Dr. Fleming himself wrote a few
words of eulogy on the front page. It was with greater satisfac-
tion that they welcomed his success, since Perkins and Cooper
had fallen upon evil days: Cooper drank like a fish, and just
before Tom Perkins took his degree the linendrapers filed their
petition in bankruptcy. i ■

In due course Tom Perkins took Holy Orders and entered
upon the profession for which he was so admirably suited. He
had been an assistant master at Wellington and then at Rugby.
But there was quite a difference between welcoming his suc-
cess at other schools and serving under his leadership in their
own. Tar had frequently given him lines, and Squirts had
boxed his ears. They could not imagine how the Chapter had
made such a mistake. No one could be expected to forget that
he was the son of a bankrupt linendraper, and the alcoholism
of Cooper seemed to increase the disgrace. It was understood
that the Dean had supported his candidature with zeal, so the
Dean would probably ask him to dinner; but would the pleas-
ant little dinners in the precincts ever be the same when Tom
Perkins sat at the table? And what about the depot? He
really could not expect officers and gentlemen to receive him
I as one of themselves. It would do the school incalculable
1 harm. Parents would be dissatisfied, and no one could be sur-
i prised if there were wholesale withdrawals. And then the in-
I dignity of calling him Mr. Perkins! The masters thought by
' way of protest of sending in their resignations in a body, but
I the uneasy fear that they would be accepted with equanimity
i restrained them.

I "The only thing is to prepare ourselves for changes," said
1 Sighs, who had conducted the fifth form for five and twenty
\ years with unparalleled incompetence.

And when they saw him they were not reassured. Dr. Flem-
ing invited them to meet him at luncheon. He was now a man
of thirty-two, tall and lean, but with the same wild and un-
iempt look they remembered on him as a boy. His clothes,

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 69

ill-made and shabby, were put on untidily. His hair was as
black and as long as ever, and he had plainly never learned to
brush it; it fell over his forehead with every gesture, and he
had a quick movement of the hand with which he pushed it
back from his eyes. He had a black moustache and a beard
which came high up on his face almost to the cheek-bones. He
talked to the masters quite easily, as though he had parted
from them a week or two before; he was evidently delighted
to see them. He seemed unconscious of the strangeness of the
position and appeared not to notice any oddness in being
addressed as Mr. Perkins.

When he bade them good-bye, one of the masters, for some-
thing to say, remarked that he was allowing himself plenty
of time to catch his train.

"I want to go round and have a look at the shop," he
answered cheerfully.

There was a distinct embarrassment. They wondered thai-
he could be so tactless, and to make it worse Dr. Fleming had
not heard what he said. His wife shouted it in his ear.
"He wants to go round and look at his father's old shop."
Only Tom Perkins was unconscious of the humiliation
which the whole party felt. He turned to Mrs. Fleming.
"Who's got it now, d'you know?"
She could hardly answer. She was very angry.
"It's still a linendraper's," she said bitterly. "Grove is the
name. We don't deal there any more."
"I wonder if he'd let me go over the house."
"I expect he would if you explain who you are."
It was not till the end of dinner that evening that any refer-
ence was made in the common-room to the subject that was
in all their minds. Then it was Sighs who asked :
"Well, what did you think of our new head.''"
They thought of the conversation at luncheon. It was hardly
a conversation; it was a monologue. Perkins had talked in-
cessantly. He talked very quickly, with a flow of easy words
and in a deep, resonant voice., He had a short, odd little laugh

68 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

which showed his white teeth. They had followed him with
difficulty, for his mind darted from subject to subject with a
connection they did not always catch. He talked of peda-
gogics, and this was natural enough; but he had much to say
of modern theories in Germany which they had never heard
of and received with misgiving. He talked of the classics, but
he had been to Greece, and he discoursed on archaeology; he
had once spent a winter digging; they could not see how that
helped a man to teach boys to pass examinations. He talked
of politics. It sounded odd to them to hear him compare Lord
Beaconsfield with Alcibiades. He talked of Mr. Gladstone and
Home Rule. They realised that he was a Liberal. Their hearts
sank. He talked of German philosophy and of French fiction.
They could not think a man profound whose interests were
so diverse.

It was Winks who summed up the general impression and
put it into a form they all felt conclusively damning. Winks
was the master of the upper third, a weak-kneed man with
drooping eyelids. He was too tall for his strength, and his
movements were slow and languid. He gave an impression of
lassitude, and his nickname was eminently appropriate.

"He's very enthusiastic," said Winks.

Enthusiasm was ill-bred. Enthusiasm was ungentlemanly.
They thought of the Salvation Army with its braying trumpets
and its drums. Enthusiasm meant change. They had goose-
flesh when they thought of all the pleasant old habits which
stood in imminent danger. They hardly dared to look forward
to the future.

"He looks more of a gipsy than ever," said one, after a pause.

"I wonder if the Dean and Chapter knew that he was a '
Radical when they elected him," another observed bitterly.

But conversation halted. They were too much disturbed for
words.

When Tar and Sighs were walking together to the Chapter
House on Speech-Day a week later. Tar, who had a bitter
tongue, remarked to his colleague:

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 69

"Well, we've seen a good many Speech-Days here, haven't'
we ? I wonder if we shall see another."
' Sighs was more melancholy even than usual.

"If anything worth having comes along in the way of a
living I don't mind when I retire."

Chapter 16

A YEAR passed, and when Philip came to the school the old
masters were all in their places; but a good many changes had
taken place notwithstanding their stul^born resistance, none
the less formidable because it was concealed under an apparent
desire to fall in with the new head's ideas. Though the form-
masters still taught French to the lower school, another master
had come, with a degree of doctor of philology from the Uni-
versity of Heidelberg and a record of three years spent in a
French lycee, to teach French to the upper forms and German
to anyone who cared to take it up instead of Greek. Another
master was engaged to teach ihathematics more systematically
than had been found necessary hitherto. Neither of these was
ordained. This was a real revolution, and when the pair ar-
rived the older masters received them with distrust. A labora-
tory had been fitted up, army classes were instituted; they all
said the character of the school was changing. And heaven only
knew wha,t further projects Mr. Perkins turned in that untidy
head of his. The school was small as public schools go, there
were not more than two hundred boarders; and it was diffi-
cult for it to grow larger, for it was huddled up against the
Cathedral; the precincts, with the exception of a house in
which some of the masters lodged, were occupied by the
cathedral clergy; and there was no more room for building.
But Mr. Perkins devised an elaborate scheme by which he

70 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

might obtain sufficient space to make the school double its
present size. He wanted to attract boys from London. He
thought it would be good for them to be thrown in contact
with the Kentish lads, and it would sharpen the country wits
of these.

"It's against all our traditions," said Sighs, when Mr. Per-
kins made the suggestion to him. "We've rather gone out of
our way to avoid the contamination of boys from London."

"Oh, what nonsense!" said Mr. Perkins.

No one had ever told the form-master before that he talked
nonsense, and he was meditating an acid reply, in which per-
haps he might insert a veiled reference to hosiery, when Mr.
Perkins in his impetuous way attacked him outrageously.

"That house in the Precincts — if you'd only marry I'd get
the Chapter to put another couple of stories on, and we'd
make dormitories and studies, and your wife could help you."

The elderly clergyman gasped. Why should he marry.? He
was fifty-seven, a man couldn't marry at fifty-seven. He
couldn't start looking ,after a house at his time of life. He
didn't want to marry. If the choice lay between that and the
country living he would much sooner resign. All he wanted
now was peace and quietness.

"I'm not thinking of marrying," he said.

Mr. Perkins looked at him with his dark, bright eyes, and
if there was a twinkle in them poor Sighs never saw it.

"What a pity! Couldn't you marry to oblige me? It would
help me a great deal with the Dean and Chapter when I sug-
gest rebuilding your house."

But Mr. Perkins' most unpopular innovation was his system
of taking occasionally another man's form. He asked it as a
favour, but after all it was a favour which could not be re-
fused, and as Tar, otherwise Mr. Turner, said, it was undigni-
fied for all parties. He gave no warning, but after morning
prayers would say to one of the masters:

"I wonder if you'd mind taking the Sixth today at eleven.
We'll change over, shall we.?"

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 7i

They did not know whether this was usual at other schools,
but certainly it had never been done at Tercanbury. The re-
sults were curious. Mr. Turner, who was the first victim,
broke the news to hisform that the head-master would take
them for Latin that day, and on the pretence that they might
like to ask him a question or two so that they should not
make perfect fools of themselves, spent the last quarter of an
hour of the history lesson in construing for them the passage
of Livy which had been set for the day; but when he rejoined
his class and looked at the paper on which Mr. Perkins had
written the marks, a surprise awaited him; for the two boys
at the top of the form seemed to have done very ill, while
others who had never distinguished themselves before were
given full marks. When he asked Eldridge, his cleverest boy,
what was the meaning of this the answer came sullenly*:

"Mr. Perkins never gave us any construing to do. He asked
me what I knew about General Gordon."

Mr. Turner looked at him in astonishment. The boys evi-
dently felt they had been hardly used, and he could not help
agreeing with their silent dissatisfaction. He could not see
either what General Gordon had to do with Livy. He
hazarded an enquiry afterwards.

"Eldridge was dreadfully put out because you asked him
what he knew about General Gordon," he said to the head-
master, with an attempt at a chuckle.

Mr. Perkins laughed.

"I saw they'd got to the agrarian laws of Caius Gracchus,
and I wondered if they knew anything about the agrarian
troubles in Ireland. But all they knew about Ireland was that
Dublin was on the Liffey. So I wondered if they'd ever heard
of, General Gordon."

Then the horrid fact was disclosed that the new head had
a mania for general information. He had doubts about the
utility of examinations on subjects which had been cramm^
for the occasion. He wanted common sense.

72 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Sighs grew more worried every month; he could not get the >
thought out of his head that Mr. Perkins would ask him to
fix a day fpr his marriage; and he hated the attitude the head
adopted towards classical literature. There was no doubt that
he was a fine scholar, and he was engaged on a work which
was quite in the right tradition: he was writing a treatise on
the trees in Latin literature; but he talked of it flippantly, as
though it were a pastime of no great importance, like billiards,
which engaged his leisure but was not to be considered with
seriousness. And Squirts, the master of the middle-third, grew
more ill-tempered every day.

It was in his form that Philip was put on enteririg the
school. The Rev. B. B. Gordon was a man by nature ill-suited
to be a schoolmaster: he was impatient and choleric. With no
one to. call him to account, with only small boys to face him,
he had long lost all power of self-control. He began his work
in a rage and ended, it in a passion. He was a man of middle
height and of a corpulent figure; he had sandy hair, worn very
short and now growing gray, and a small bristly moustache.
His large face, with indistinct features and small blue eyes,
was naturally red, but during his frequent attacks of anger it
grew dark and purple. His nails were bitten to the quick, for
while some trembling boy was construing he would sit at his
desk shaking with the fury that consumed him, and gnaw his
fingers. Stories, perhaps exaggerated, were told of his violence,
and two years before there had been some excitement in the
school when it was heard that one father was threatening a
prosecution: he had boxed the ears of a boy named Walters
with a book so violently that his hearing was affected and the
boy had to be taken away from the 'school. The boy's father
lived in Tercanbury, and there had been much indignation in
the city, the local paper had referred to the matter; but Mr.
Walters was only a brewer, so the sympathy was divided. The
rest of the boys, for reasons best known to themselves, though
they loathed the master, took his side in the affair, and, to
show their indignation that the school's business had been

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 73

dealt with outside, made things as uncomfortable as they
could for Walters' younger brother, who still remained. But
Mr. Gordon had only escaped the country living by the skin
of his teeth, and, he had never hit a boy since. The right the
masters possessed to cane boys on the hand was taken away
from them, and Squirts could no longer emphasize his anger
by beating his desk with the cane. He never did more now
than take a boy by the shoulders and shake him. He still made
a naughty or refractory lad stand with one arm stretched out
for anything from ten minutes to half an hour, and he was as
violent as before with his tongue.

No master could have been more unfitted to teach things to
so shy a boy as Philip. He had come to the school with fewer
terrors than he had when first he went to Mr. Watson's. He
knew a good many boys who had been with him at the pre-
paratory school. He felt more growir-up, and instinctively
realised that among the larger numbers his deformity would
be less noticeable. But from the first day Mr. Gordon struck
terror in his heart; and the master, quick to discern the boys
who were frightened of him, seemed on that account to take
a peculiar dislike to him. Philip had enjoyed his work, but
now he began to look upon the hours passed in school with
horror. Rather than risk an answer which might be wrong and
excite a storm of abuse from the master, he would sit stupidly
silent, and when it came towards his turn to stand up and
construe he grew sick and white with apprehension. His
happy moments were those when Mr. Perkins took the form.
He was able to gratify the passion for general knowledge
which beset the headmaster; he had read all sorts of strange
books beyond his years, and often Mr. Perkins, when a
question was going round the room, would stop at Philip with
a smile that filled the boy with rapture, and say:

"Now, Carey, you tell them."

The good marks he got on these occasions increased Mr.
Gordon's indignation. ■ One day it came to Philip's turn to
'■■ranslate, and the master sat there glaring at him and furiously

74 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

biting his thumb. He was in a ferocious mood. Philip began
to speak in a low voice.

"Don't mumble," shouted the master.

Something seemed to stick in Philip's throat.

"Go on. Go on. Go on."

Each time the words were screamed more loudly. The effect
was to drive all he knew out of Philip's head, and he looked
at the printed page vacantly. Mr. Gordon began to breathe
heavily.

"If you don't know why don't you say so? Do you know it
or not? Did you hear all this construed last time or not? Why
don't you speak? Speak, you blockhead, speak!"

The master seized the arms of his chair and grasped them
as though to prevent himself from falling upon Philip. They
knew that in past days he often used to seize boys by the
throat till they almost choked. The veins in his forehead stood
out and his face grew dark and threatening. He was a man
insane.

Philip had known the passage perfectly the day before, but
now he could remember nothing.

"I don't know it," he gasped.

"Why don't you know it? Let's take the words one by one.
We'll soon see if you don't know it."

Philip stood silent, very white, trembling a little, with his
head bent down on the book. The master's breathing grew
almost stertorous.

"The headmaster says you're clever. I don't know how he
sees it. General information." He laughed savagely. "I don't
know what they put you in this form for. Blockhead."

He was pleased with the word, and he repeated it at the top
of his voice.
, "Blockhead! Blockhead! Club-footed blockhead!"

That relieved him a little. He saw Philip redden suddenly.
He told him to fetch the Black Book. Philip put down his
Caesar and went silently out. Thfe Black Book was a sombre
volume in which the names of boys were written with their

OF HUMAN BONDAGE ,75

misdeeds, and when a name was down three times it meant
a caning. Phihp went to the headmaster's house and knocked
at his study-door. Mr. Perkins was seated at his table.
"May I have the Black Book, please, sir."
"There it is," answered Mr. Perkins, indicating its place by
a. nod of his head. "What have you been doing that you
shouldn't.?"
"I don't know, sir."

Mr. Perkins gave him a quick look, but without answering
went on with his work. Philip took the book and went out.
When the hour was up, a few minutes later, he brought it
back.

"Let me have a look at it," said the headmaster. "I see Mr.
Gordon has black-booked you for 'gross impertinence.' Whan
was it.?"

"I don't know, sir. Mr. Gordon said I was a club-footed
blockhead."

Mr. Perkins looked at him again. He wondered whether
there was sarcasm behind the boy's reply, but he was, still
much too shaken. His face was white and his, eyes had a look
of terrified distress. Mr. Perkins got up and put the book
down. As he did so he took up some photographs.

"A friend of mine sent me some pictures of Athens this
morning," he said casually. "Look here, there's the Acropolis."
He began explaining to Philip what he saw. The ruin grew
vivid with his wor-ds. He showed him the theatre of Dionysus
and explained in what order the people sat, and how beyond
they could see the blue Aegean. And then suddenly he said :

"I remember Mr. Gordon used to call me a gipsy counter-
jumper when I was in his form."

And before Philip, his mind fixed on the photographs, had
time to gather the meaning of the remark, Mr. Perkins was
showing him a picture of Salamis, and with his finger, a finger
of which the nail had a httle black edge to it, was pointing
out how the Greek ships were placed and how the Persian.

76 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 17

Philip passed the next two years with comfortable monotony.
He was not bullied more than other boys of his size; and his
deformity, withdrawing him from games, acquired for him an
insignificance for which he was grateful. He was not popular,
?ind~he^as7very Jcmdy. He spent a couple of terms with
Wmks in the UpperTmrd. Winks, with his weary manner and
his drooping eyelids, looked infinitely bored. He did his duty,
but he did it with an abstracted mind. He was kind, gentle,
and foolish. He had a great belief in the honour of boys; he
felt that the first thing to make them truthful was not to, let
it enter your head for a moment that it was possible for them
to lie. "Ask much," he quoted, "and much shall be given to
you." Life was easy in the Upper Third. You knew exactly
what lines would come to your turn to construe, and with the
crib that passed from hand to hand you could find out all you
wanted in two minutes; you could hold a Latin Grammar
open on your knees while questions were passing round; and
Winks never noticed anything odd in the fact that the same
incredible mistake was to be found in a dozen different exer-
cises. He had no great faith in examinations, for he noticed
that boys never did so well in them as in form: it was disap-
pointing, but not significant. In due course they were moved
up, having learned little but a cheerful effrontery in the dis-
tortion of truth, which was possibly of greater service to them
in after life than an ability to read Latin at sight.

Then they fell into the hands of Tar. His name was Turner;
he was the most vivacious of the old masters, a short man with
an immense belly, a black beard turning now to gray, and a

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 77

swarthy skin. In his clerical dress there was indeed something
in him to suggest the tar-barrel; and though on principle he
gave five h^indred lines to any boy on whose Hps he overheard
his nicknatne, at dinner-parties in the precincts he often made
little jokes about it. He was the most worldly of the masters;
he dined out more frequently than any of the others, and the
society he kept was not so exclusively clerical. The boys looked
upon him as rather a dog. He left Ojfif his clerical attire during
the hohdays and had been seen in Switzerland in gay tweeds.
He liked a bottle of wine and a good dinner, and having once
been seen at the Cafe Royal with a lady who was very proba-
bly a near relation, was thenceforward supposed by gener-
ations of school-boys to indulge in orgies the circumstantial
details of which pointed to an unbounded belief in human
depravity.

Mr. Turner reckoned that it took him a term to lick boys .
into shape after they had been in the Upper Third; and now
and then he let fall a sly hint, which showed that he knew
perfectly what went on in his colleague's form. He took it
good-humouredly. He looked upon boys as young ruffians
who were more apt to be truthful if it was quite certain a lie
would be found out, whose sense of honour Was peculiar to
themselves and did not apply to dealings with masters, and
who were least likely to be troublesome wheli they learned
that it did not pay. He was proud of his form and as eager at
fifty-five that it should do better in examinations than any of
the others as he had been when he first came to the school. He
had the choler of the obese, easily roused and as easily calmed,
and his boys soon discovered that there was much kindliness
beneath the invective with vvhich he constantly assailed them.
He had no patience with fools, but was willing to take much
trouble with boys whom he suspected of concealing intelli-
gence behind their wilfulness. He was fond of inviting them
to tea; and, though vowing they never got a look in with hirn
at the cakes and muffins, for it was the fashion to believe that
his corpulence pointed to a voracious appetite, and his vo-

78 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

racious appetite to tapeworms, they accepted his invitations
with real pleasure.

Philip was now more comfortable, for space was so limited
that there were only studies for boys in the upper school, and
till then he had lived in the great hall in which they all ate
and in which the lower forms did preparation in a prom-
iscuity which was vaguely distasteful to him. Now and then
it made him restless to be with people and he wanted urgently
to be alone. He set out for solitary walks into the country.
There was a little stream, with. pollards on both sides of it,
that ran through green fields, and it made him happy, he
knew not why, to wander along its banks. When he was tired
he lay face-downward on the grass and watched the eager
scurrying of minnows and of tadpoles. It gave him a peculiar
satisfaction to saunter round the precincts. On the green in the
middle they practised at nets in the summer, but during the
rest of the year it was quiet : boys used to wander round some-
times arm in arm, or a studious fellow with abstracted gaze
walked slowly, repeating to himself something he had to learn
by heart. There was a colony of rooks in the great elms, and
they filled the air with melancholy cries. Along one side lay
the Cathedral with its great central tower, and Philip, who
knew as yet nothing of beauty, felt when he looked at it a
troubling delight which he could not understand. When he
had a study (it was a little square room looking on a slum,
and four boys shared it), he bought a photograph of that view
of the Cathedral, and pinned it up over his desk. And he
found himself taking a new interest in what he saw from the
window of the Fourth Form room. It looked on to old lawns,
carefully tended, and fine trees with foliage dense and rich. It
gave him an odd feeling in his heart, and he did not know if
it was pain or pleasure. It was the first dawn of the aesthetic
emotion. It accompanied other changes. His voice broke. It
was no longer quite under his control, and queer sounds
issued from his throat.

Then he began to go to the classes which were held in the

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 79

headmaster's study, immediately after tea, to prepare boys for
confirmation. Philip's piety had not stood the test of time, and
he had long since given up his nightly reading of the Bible;
but now, under the influence of Mr. Perkins, with this new
condition of the body which made him so restless, his old feel-
ings revived, and he reproached himself bitterly for his back-
sliding. The fires of Hell burned fiercely before his mind's
eye. If he had died during that time when he was little better
than an infidel he would have been lost; he believed implicitly
in pain everlasting, he believed in it much more than in
eternal happiness; and he shuddered at the dangers he had
run.

Since the day on which Mr. Perkins had spoken kindly to
him, when he was smarting under the particular form of
abuse which he could least bear, Philip had conceived for his
headmaster a dog-like adoration. He racked his brains vainly
for some way to please him. He treasured the smallest word
of commendation which by chance fell from his lips. And
when he came to the quiet little meetings in his house he was
prepared to surrender himself entirely. He kept his eyes fixed
on Mr. Perkins' shining eyes, and sat with mouth half open,
his head a little thrown forward so as to miss no word. The
ordinariness of the surroundings made the matters they dealt
with extraordinarily moving. And often the master, seized
himself by the wonder of his subject, would push back the
book in froiit of him, and with his hands clasped together over
his heart, as though to still the beating, would talk of the
mysteries of their religion. Sometimes Philip did not under-
stand, but he did not want to understand, he felt vaguely that
it was enough to feel. It seemed to him then that the head-
master, with his black, straggling hair and his pale face, was
like those prophets of Israel who feared not to take kings to
task; and when he thought of the Redeemer he saw Him only
with the same dark eyes and those wan cheeks.

Mr. Perkins took this part of his work with great serious-
ness. There was never here any of that flashing humour which

80 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

made the other masters suspect him of flippancy. Finding
time for everything in his busy day, he was able at certam
intervals to take separately for a quarter of an hour or twenty
minutes the boys whom he was preparing for confirmation.
He wanted to make them feel that this was the first consciously
serious step in their lives; he tried to grope into the depths of
their souls; he wanted to instil in them his own vehement
devotion. In Philip, notwithstanding his shyness, he felt the
possibihty of a passion equal to his own. The boy's tempera-
ment seemed to him essentially religious. One day he broke
off suddenly from the subject on which he had been talking.

"Have you thought at all what you're going to be when you
grow up?" he asked.

"My uncle wants me to be ordained," said Philip.

"And you.''"

Philip looked away. He was ashamed to answer that he felt
himself unworthy.

"I don't know any life that's so full of happiness as ours. I
wish I could make you feel what a wonderful privilege it is.
One can serve God in every walk, but we stand nearer to Him.
I don't want to influence you, but if you made up your mind —
oh, at once — you couldn't help feeling that joy and relief
which never desert one again."

Philip did not answer, but the headmaster read in his eyes
that he realised already something of what he tried to indicate.

"If you go on as you are now you'll find yourself head of
the school one of these days, and you ought to be pretty safe
for a scholarship when you leave. Have you got anything of
your own.?"

"My ancle says I shall have a hundred a year when I'm
twenty-one."

"You'll be rich. I had nothing."

The headmaster hesitated a moment, and then, idly drawing
lines with a pencil on the blotting paper in front of him,
went on.

"I'm afraid your choice of professions will be rather limited.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 81

You naturally couldn't go in for anything that required
physical activity."

Philip reddened to the roots of his hair, as he always did
when any reference was made to his club-foot. Mr. Perkins
looked at him gravely.

"I wonder if you're not oversensitive about your misfortune/
Has it ever struck you to thank God for it.?"

Philip looked up quickly. His lips tightened. He remem-
bered hov(r for months, trusting in what they told him, he had
implored God to heal him as He had healed the Leper and
made the Blind to see.

"As long as you accept it rebelliously it can only cause you -
shame. But if you looked upon it as a cross that was given you
to bear only because your shoulders were strong enough to
bear it, a sign of God's favour, then it would be a sotirce of
happiness to you instead of misery."

He saw that the boy hated to discuss the matter and he let
him go.

But Philip thought over all that the headmaster had saidj
and presently, his mind taken up entirely with the ceremony
that was before him, a mystical rapture seized him. His spirit
seemed to free itself from the bonds of the flesh and he seemed
to be living a new life. He aspired to perfection with all the
passion that was in him. He wanted to surrender himself en-
tirely to the service of God, and he made up his mind defi-
nitely that he would be ordained. When the great day arrived,
his soul deeply moved by all the preparation, by the books he
had studied and above all by the overwhelming influence of
the head, he could hardly contain himself for fear and joy. One
thought had tormented him. He knew that he would have to
walk alone through the chancel, and he dreaded showing his
limp thus obviously, not only to the whole school, who were
attending the service, but also to the strangers, people from
the city or parents who had come to see their sons confirmed.
But when the time came he felt suddenly that he could accept
the humiliation joyfully; and as he limped up the chancel

82 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

very small and insignificant beneath the lofty vaulting of the
Cathedral, he offered consciously his deformity as a sacrifice
to the God who loved him.

Chapter 18

But PhiHp could not live long in the rarefied air of the hill-
tops. What had happened to him when first he was seized by
the rehgious emotion happened to him now. Because he felt
so keenly the beauty of faith, because the desire for self-
sacrifice burned in his heart with such a gem-like glow, his
strength seemed inadequate to his ambition. He was tired out
by the violence of his passion. His soul was filled on a sudden
with a singular aridity. He began to forget the presence of
God which had seemed so surrounding; and his religious
exercises, still very punctually performed, grew merely formal.
At first he blamed himself for this falling away, and the fear
of hellfire urged him to renewed vehemence; but the passion
was dead, and gradually other interests distracted his thoughts.
Philip had few friends. His habit of reading isolated him:
it became such a need that after being in company for some
time he grew tired and restl.e_ss; he was vain of the wider
knowledge he had acquired from the perusal of so many
books, his mind was alert, and he had not the skill to hide his
contempt for his companions' stupidity. They complained
that he was conceited; and, since he excelled only in matters
which to them were unimportant, they asked satirically what
he had to be conceited about. He was developing a sense of
humour, and found that he had a knack of saying bitter
things, which caught people on the raw; he said them because
they amused him, hardly reaUsing how much they hurt, and

( OFHUMANBONDAGE 83

V

was much offended when he found that his victims regarded
him with active disUke. The hurmllations he^su^erecfwhen
fimhewent to school had caused in him a shrinking from his
fellows which he could never entirely overcome; he remained
shy and silent. Bbt though he did everything to alienate the
sympathy of other boys he longed with all his heart for the
popularity which to some was so easily accorded. These from
his distance he admired extravagantly; and though he was
inclined to be more sarcastic with them than with others,
though he made little jokes at their expense, he would have
given anything to change places with them. Indeed he would
gladly have changed places with the dullest boy in the school
who was whole of limb. He took to a singular habit. He
would imagine that he was some boy whom he had a par-
ticular fancy for ; he would throw his soul, as it were, into the
other's body, talk with his voice and laugh with his heart; he
would imagine himself doing all the things the other did. It
was so vivid that he seemed for a moment really to be no
longer himself. In this way he enjoyed many intervals of fan-
tastic happiness.

At the beginning of the Christmas term which followed on
his confirmation Philip found himself moved into another
study. One of the boys who shared it was called Rose. He was
in the same form as Philip, and Philip had always looked
upon him with envious- admiration. He was not good-looking;
though his large hands and big bones suggested that he would
be a tall man, he was clumsiiy made; but his eyes were
charming, and when he laughed (he was constantly laughing)
his face wrinkled all round them in a jolly way. He was
neither clever nor stupid, but good enough at his work and
better at games. He was a favourite with masters and boys,
and he in his turn liked everyone.

When Philip was put in the study he could not help seeing
that the others, who had been together for three terms,
welcomed him coldly. It made him nervous to feel himself am
intruder; but he had learned to hide his feelings, and they

84 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

found him quiet and unobtrusive. With Rose, because he was
as little able as anyone else to resist his charm, Philip was even
more than usually shy and abrupt; and whether on account of
this, unconsciously bent upon exerting the fascination he
knew was his only by the results, or whether from sheer kind-
ness of heart, it was Rose who first took Philip into the circle.
One day, quite suddenly, he asked Philip if he would walk to
the football field with him. Philip flushed.

"I can't walk fast enough for you," he said.

"Rot. Come on."

And just before they were setting out some boy put his head
in the study-door and asked Rose to go with him.

"I can't," he answered, "I've already promised Carey."

"Don't bother about me," said Philip quickly. "I shan't
mind."

"Rot," said Rose.

He looked at Philip with those good-natured eyes of his
and laughed. Philip felt a curious tremor in his heart.

In a little while, their friendship growing with boyish ra-
pidity, the pair were inseparable. Other fellows wondered at
the sudden intimacy, and Rose was asked what he saw in
Philip.

"Oh, I don't know," he answered. "He's not half a bad chap
really."

Soon they grew accustomed to the two walking into chapel
arm in arm or strolling round the precincts in conversation;
wherever one was the other could be found also, and, as
though acknowledging his proprietorship, boys who wanfed
Rose would leave messages with Carey. Philip at first was
reserved. He would not let himself yield entirely to the proud
joy that filled him; but presently his distrust of the fates gave
way before a wild happiness. He thought Rose the most
wonderful fellow he had ever seen. His books now were insig-
nificant; he could not bother about them when there was
something infinitely more important to occupy him. Rose's
friends used to come in to tea in the study sometimes or sit

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 85

about when there was nothing better to do— Rose Uked a
crowd and the chance of a rag— and they found that PhiHp
was quite a decent fellow. Philip was happy.

When the last day of term came he and Rose arranged by
which train they should come back, so that they might meet
at the station and have tea in the town before returning to
school. Philip went home with a heavy heart. He thought of
Rose all through the holidays, and his fancy was active with
the things they would do together next term. He was bored
at the vicarage, and when on the last day his uncle put him
the usual question in the usual facetious tone:

"Well, are you glad to be going back to school.?"

Philip answered joyfully:

"Rather."

In order to be sure of meeting Rose at the station he took
an earlier train than he usually did, and he waited about the
platform for an hour. When the train came in from Faver-
sham, where he knew Rose had to change, he ran along it
excitedly. But Rose was not there. He got a porter to tell him
when. another train was due, and he waited; but again he was
disappointed; and he was cold and hungry, so he walked,
through side-streets and slums, by a short tut to the school.
He found Rose in the study, with his feet on the chimney-
piece, talking eighteen to the dozen with half a dozen boys
who were sitting on whatever there was to sit on. He shook
hands with Philip enthusiastically, but Philip's face fell, for
he realised that Rose had forgotten all about their appoint-
Aent.

"I say, why are you so late?" said Rost. "I thought you were
never coming."

"You were at the station at half-past four," said another boy.
"I saw you when I came."

Philip blushed a little. He did not want Rose to know that
he had been such a fool as to wait for him. *

"I had to see about a friend of my people's," he invented
readily. "I was asked to see her off."

86 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

But his disappointment made him a little sulky. He sat in
silence, and when spoken to answered in monosyllables. He
was making up his mind to have it out with Rose when they
were alone. But when the others had gone Rose at once came
over and sat on the arm of the chair in which Philip was
lounging.

"I say, I'm jolly glad we're in the same study this term.
Ripping, isn't it?"

He seemed so genuinely pleased ,to see PhiUp that Philip's
annoyance vanished. They began as if they had not been sepa-
rated for five minutes to talk eagerly of the thousand things
that interested them.

Chapter 19

At first Philip had been too grateful for Rose's friendship to
make any demands on him. He took things as they came and
enjoyed life. But presently he began to resent Rose's universal
amiability; he wanted a more exclusive attachment, and he
claimed as a right what before he had accepted as a favour.
He watched jealously Rose's companionship with others; and
though he knew it was unreasonable could not help sometimes
saying bitter things to him. If Rose spent an hour playing the
fool in another study, Philip would receive him when he re-
turned to his own with a sullen frown. He would sulk for a
day, and he suffered more because Rose either did not notice
his ill-humour or deliberately ignored it. Not seldom Philip,
knowing all the time how stupid he was, would force a
q«arrel, and they would not speak to one another for a couple
of days. But Philip tould not bear to be angry with him long,
and even when convinced that he was in the right, would

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 87

apologise humbly. Then for a week they would be as great
friends as ever. But the best was over, and Philip could see
that Rose often walked with him merely from old habit or
from fear of his anger; they had not so much to say to one
another as at first, and Rose was often bored. Philip felt that
his lameness began to irritate him.

Towards the end of the term two or three boys caught
scarlet fever, and there was much talk of sending them all
home in order to escape an epidemic; but the sufferers were
isolated, and since no more were attacked it was supposed that
the outbreak was stopped. One of the stricken was Philip. He
remained in hospital through the Easter holidays, and at the
heginning of the summer term was sent home to the vicarage
to get a little fresh air. The Vicar, notwithstanding medical
assurance that the boy was no longer infectious, received him
with suspicion; he thought it very inconsiderate of the doctor
to suggest that his nephew's convalescence should be spent by
the seaside, and consented to have him in the" house only be-
cause there was nowhere else he could go.

Philip went back to school at half-term. He had forgotten
the quarrels he had had with Rose, but remembered only that
he was his greatest friend. He knew that he had been silly. He
made up his mind to be more reasonable. During his illness
Rose had sent him in a couple of little notes, and he had ended
€ach with the words: "Hurry up and come back." Philip
thought Rose must be looking forward as much to his return
as he was himself to seeing Rose.

He found that owing to the death from scarlet fever of one
of the boys in the Sixth there had been some shifting in the
studies and Rose was no longer in his. It was a bitter dis-
appointment. But as soon as he arrived he burst into Rose's
study. Rose was sitting at his desk, working with a boy called
Hunter, and turned round crossly as Philip came in.

"Who the devil's that.?" he cried. And then, seeing Philip-
"Oh, it's you."

Philip stopped in embarrassment.

88 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"r thought I'd come in and see how you were."

"We were just working."

Hunter broke into the conversation.

"When did you get back .'' " V

"Five minutes ago."

They sat and looked at him as though he was disturbing
them. They evidently expected him to go quickly. Philip red-
dened.

"I'll be off. You might look in when you've done," he said to
Rose.

"All right."

Philip closed the door behind him and limped back to his
own study. He felt frightfully hurt. Rose, far from seeming
glad to see him, had looked almost- put out. They might never
have been more than acquaintances. Though' he waited in his
study, not leaving it for a moment in case just then Rose
should come, his friend never appeared; and next morning
when he went into prayers he saw Rose and Hunter swinging
along arm in arm. What he could not see for himself others
told him. He had forgotten that three months is a long time
in a school-boy's life, and though he had passed them in soli-
tude Rose had lived in the world. Hunter had stepped into
the vacant place. Philip found that Rose was quietly avoiding
him. But he was not the boy to accept a situation without put-
ting it into words; he waited till he was sure Rose was alone
in his study and went in.

"May I come in.?" he asked.

Rose looked at him with an embarrassment that made him
angry with Philip.

"Yes, if you want to."

"It's very kind of you," said Philip sarcastically.

"What d'you want.?''

"I say, why have you been so rotten since I came back.?"

"Oh, don't be an ass,'' said Rose.

"I don't know what you seein Hunter."

"That's my business."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 89

Philip looked down. He could not bring himself to say what
was in his heart. He was afraid of humiliating himself. Rose
got up.

"I've got to go to the Gym," he said.

When he was at the door Philip forced himsefi to speak.

"I say, Rose, don't be a perfect beast."

"Oh, go to hell."

Rose slammed the door behind him and left Philip alone.
Philip shivered with rage. He went back to his study and
turned the conversation over in his mind. He hated Rose now,
he wanted to hurt him, he thought of biting things he might
have said to him. He brooded over the end to their friendship
and fancied that others were talking of it. In his sensitiveness
he saw sneers and wonderings in other fellows' manner when
they were not bothering their heads with him at all. He im-
agined to himself what they were saying.

"After all, it wasn't likely to last long. I wonder he ever
stuck Carey at all. Blighter!"

To show his indifference he struck up a violent friendship
with a boy called Sharp whom he hated and despised. He was
a London boy, with a loutish air, a heavy fellow with the
beginnings of a moustache on his lip and bushy eyebrows that
joined one another across the bridge of his nose. He had soft
hands and manners too suave for his years. He spoke with the
suspicion of a cockney accent. He was one of those boys who
are too slack to play games, and he exercised great ingenuity
in making excuses to avoid such as were compulsory. He was
regarded by boys and masters with a vague dislike, and it was
from arrogance that Philip now sought his society. Sharp in
a couple of terms was going to Germany for a year. He hated
school, which he looked upon as an indignity to be endured
till he was old enough to go out into the world. London was
all he cared for, and he had many stories to tell of his doings
there during the hoHdays. From his conversation — he spoke in
a soft, deep-toned voice — there emerged the vague rumour of
the London streets by night. Philip listened to him at once

90 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

fascinated and repelled. With his vivid fancy he seemed to see
the surging throng round the pit-door of theatres, and the
glitter of cheap restaurants, bars where men, half drunk, sat
on high stools talking with barmaids; and under the street
lamps the mysterious passing of dark crowds bent upon
pleasure. Sharp lent him cheap novels from Holywell Row,
which Philip read in his cubicle with a sort of wonderful fear.

Once Rose tried to effect a reconciliation. He was a good-
natured fellow, who did not like having enemies.

"I say, Carey, why are you being such a silly ass ? It doesn't
do you any good cutting me and all that."

"I don't know what you mean," answered PhiHp.

"Well, I don't see why you shouldn't talk."

"You bore me," said PhiHp.

"Please yourself."

Rose shrugged his shoulders and left him. Philip was very
white, as he always became when he was moved, and his heart
beat violently. When Rose went away he felt suddenly sick
with misery. He did not know why he had answered in that
fashion. He would have given anything to be friends with
Rose. He hated to have quarrelled with him, and now that he
saw he had given him pain he was very sorry. But at the mo-
ment he had not been master of himself. It seemed that some
devil had seized him, forcing him to say bitter things against
his will, even though at the time he wanted to shake hands
with Rose and meet him more than half-way. The desire to
wound had been too strong for him. He had wanted to re-
venge himself for the pain and the humiliation he had
endured. It vyas pride: it was folly too, for he knew that Rose
would not care'aF'all, while he would suffer bitterly. The
thought came to him that he would go to Rose, and say :

"I say, I'm sorry I was such a beast. I couldn't help it. Let's
make it up."

But he knew he would never be able to do it. He was afraid
that Rose would sneer at him. He was angry with himself, and
when Sharp came in a little while afterwards he seized upon

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 91

the first opportunity to quarrel with him. Philip had a fiendish
instinct for discovering other people's raw spots, and was able
to say things that rankled because they were true. But Sharp
had the last word.

"I heard Rose talking about you to Mellor just now," he
said. "Mellor said: why didn't you kick him? It would teach
him manners. And Rose said: I didn't like to. Damned
cripple."

Philip suddenly became scarlet. He could not answer, for
there was a lump in his throat that almost choked him.

Chapter 20

Philip was moved into the Sixth, but he hated school now
with all his heart, and, having lost his ambition, cared nothing
whether he did ill or well. He awoke in the morning with a
sinking heart because he must go through another day of
drudgery. He was tired of having to do things because he was
told; and the restrictions irked him, not because they were un-
reasonable, but because they were restrictions. He yearned for
freedom. He was weary of repeating things that he knew al-
ready and of the hammering away, for the sake of a thick-
witted fellow, at something that he understood from the
beginning.

With Mr. Perkins you could work or not as you chose. He
was at once eager and abstracted. The Sixth Form room was
in a part of the old abbey which had been restored, and it had
a Gothic window : Philip tried to cheat his boredom by draw-
ing this over and over again; and sometimes out of his head he
drew the great tower of the Cathedral or the gateway that led
into the precincts. He had a knack for drawing. Aunt Louisa

92 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

during her youth had painted in water colours, and she had
several albums filled with sketches of churches, old bridges,
and picturesque cottages. They were often shown at the vicar--
age tea-parties. She had once given Philip a paint-box as a
Christmas present, and he had started by copying her pictures.
He copied them better than anyone could have expected, and
presently he did little pictures of his own. Mrs. Carey encour-
aged him. It was a good way to keep him out of mischief, and
later on his sketches would be useful for bazaars. Two or three
of them had been framed and hung in his bed-room.

But one day, at the end of the morning's work, Mr. Perkins
stopped him as he was lounging out of the form-room.

"I want to speak to you, Carey."

Philip waited. Mr. Perkins ran his lean fingers through his
beard and looked at Philip. He seemed to be thinking over
what he wanted to say.

"What's the matter with you, Carey?" he said abruptly.

Philip, flushing, looked at him quickly. But knowing him
well by now, without answering, he waited for him to go on.

"Fve been dissatisfied with you lately. You've been slack
and inattentive. You seem to take no interest in your work.
It's been slovenly and bad."

"I'm very sorry, sir," said Philip.

"Is that all you have to say for yourself.?"

Philip looked down sulkily. How could he answer that he
was bored to death.?

"You know, this term you'll go down instead of up. I shan't
give you a very good report."

Philip wondered what he would say if he knew how the
report was treated. It arrived at breakfast. Mr. Carey glanced
at it indifferently, and passed it over to Philip.

"There's your report. You'd better see what it says,'' he re-
marked, as he ran his fingers through the wrapper of a cata-
logue of second-hand books.

Philip read it.

"Is it good.?" asked Aunt Louisa.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 93

"Not so good as I deserve," answered Philip, with a smile,
giving it to her.

"I'll read it afterwards when I've got my spectacles," she
said.

But after breakfast Mary Ann came in to say the butcher
was there, and she generally forgot.

Mr. Perkins went on.

"I'm disappointed with you. And I can't understand. I know
you can do things if you want to, but you don't seem to want
to any more. I was going to make you a monitor next term, but
I think I'd better wait a bit."

Philip flushed. He did not like the thought of being passed
over. He tightened his lips.

"And there's something else. You must begin thinking of
your scholarship now. You won't get anything unless you start
working very seriously."

Philip was irritated by the lecture. He was angry with the
headmaster, and angry with himself.

"I don't think I'm going up to Oxford," he said.

"Why not ? I thought your idea was to be ordained."

"I've changed my mind."

"Why.?"

Philip did not answer. Mr. Perkins, holding himself oddly
as he always did, hke a figure in one of Perugino's pictures,
drew his fingers thoughtfully through his beard. He looked at
Philip as though he were trying to understand and then
abruptly told him he might go.

Apparently he was not satisfied, for one evening, a week
later, when Phihp had to go into his study with some papers,
he resumed the conversation; but this tirhe he adopted a dif-
ferent method : he spoke to Philip not as a schoolmaster with
a boy but as one human being with another. He did not seem
to care now that Philip's work was poor, that he ran small
chance against keen rivals of carrying off the scholarship neces-
sary for him to go to Oxford: the important matter was his
changed intention about his hfe afterwards. Mr. Perkins set

M OF HUMAN BONDAGE

himself to revive his eagerness to be ordained. With infinite skill
he worked on his feelings, and this vv^as easier since he was him-
self genuinely moved. Philip's change of mind caused him
bitter distress, and he really thought he was throwing away his
chance of happiness in life for he knew not what. His voice
was very persuasive. And Philip, easily moved by the emotion
of otheii, very emotional himself notwithstanding a placid
exterior — his face, partly by nature but also from the habit of
all these ye^rs at school, seldom except by his quick flushing
showed what he felt — Philip was deeply touched by what the
master said. He was very grateful to him for the interest he
showed, and he was conscience-stricken by the grief which he
felt his behaviour caused him. It was subtly flattering to know
that with the whole school to think about Mr. Perkins should
trouble with him, but at the same time something else in him,
like another person standing at his elbow, clung desperately
to two words.

"I won't. I won't. I won't."

He felt himself slipping. He was powerless against the
weakness that seemed to well up in him; it was like the water
that rises up in an empty bottle held over a full basin; and he
set his teeth, saying the words over and over to himself.

"I won't. I won't. I won't."

At last Mr. Perkins put his hand on Philip's shoulder.

"I don't want to influence you," he said. "You must decide
for yourself. Pray to Almighty God for help and guidance."

When Philip came out of the headmaster's house there was
a light rain falling. He went under the archway that led to the
precincts, there was not a soul there, and the rooks were silent
in the elms. He walked round slowly. He felt hot, and the rain
did him good. He thought over all that Mr. Perkins had said,
calmly now that he was withdrawn from the fervour of his
personality, and he was thankful he had not given way.

In the darkness he could but vaguely see the great mass of
the Cathedral: he hated it now because of the irksomeness of
the long services which he was forced to attend. The anthem

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 95

was interminable, and you had to stand drearily while it was
being sung; you could not hear the droning sermon, and your
body twitched because you had to sit still when you wanted
to move about. Then Philip thought of the two services every
Sunday at Blackstable. The church was bare and cold, and
there was a smell all about one of pomade and,,„starched
clothes. The curate preached once and his uncle preached
once. As he grew up he had learned to know his uncle;
Philip was downright and intolerant, and he could not under-
stand that a man might sincerely say things as a clergyman
which he never acted up to as a man. The deception outraged
him. His uncle was a weak and selfish man, whose chief
desire it was to be saved trouble.

Mr. Perkins had spoken to him of the beauty of a life
dedicated to the service of God. PhiHp knew what sort of
lives the clergy led in the corner of East Anglia which was his
home. There was the Vicar of Whitestone, a parish a little way
from Blackstable: he was a bachelor and to give himself
something to do had lately taken up farming: the local paper
constantly reported the cases he had in the county court
against this one and that, labourers he would not pay their
wages to or tradesmen whom he accused of cheating him;
scandal said he starved his cows, and there was much talk
about some general action which should be taken against him.
Then there was the Vicar of Feme, a bearded, fine figure of a
man: his wife had been forced to leave him because of his
cruelty, and she had filled the neighbourhood with stories of his
immorality. The Vicar of Surle, a tiny hamlet by the sea, was
to be seen every evening in the public house a stone's throw
from his vicarage; and the churchwardens had been to Mr.
Carey to ask his advice. There was not a soul for any of them
to talk to except small farmers or fishermen; there were Ipng
winter evenings when the wind blew, whistling drearily
through the leafless trees, and all around they saw nothing but
the bare monotony of ploughed fields; and there was poverty,
and there was lack of any work that seemed to matter; every

96 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

kink in their characters had free play; there was nothing to
restrain them; they grew narrow and eccentric: PhiUp knew
all this, but in his young intolerance he did not offer it as an
excuse. He shivered at the thought of leading such a life; he
wanted to get out into the world.

Chapter 21

Mr. PERKINS soon saw that his words had had no effect on
Philip, and for the rest of the term ignored him. He wrote a
report which was vitriolic. When it arrived and Aunt Louisa
asked Philip what it was like, he answered cheerfully:

"Rotten."

"Is it.''" said the Vicar. "I must look at it again."

"Do you think there's any use in my staying on at Tercan-
bury? I should have thought it would be better if I went to
Germany for a bit."

"What has put that in your head.?" said Aunt Louisa.

"Don't you think it's rather a good idea?"

Sharp had already left -King's School and had written to
Philip from Hanover. He was really starting life, and it made
Philip more restless to think of it. He felt he could not bear
another year of restraint.

"But then you wouldn't get a scholarship."

"I haven't a chance of getting one anyhow. And besides, I
don't know that I particularly want to go to Oxford."

"But if you're going to be ordained, Philip.?" Aunt Louisa
exclaimed in dismay.

"I've given up that idea long ago."

Mrs. Carey looked at him with startled eyes, and then, used
to self-restraint, she poured out another cup of tea for his

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 97

uncle. They did not speak. In a moment Philip saw tears
slowiy falling down her cheeks. His heart was suddenly wrung
because he caused her pain. In her tight black dress, made by
the dressmaker down the street, with her wrinkled face and
pale tired eyes, her gray hair still done in the frivolous ringlets,
of her youth, she was a ridiculous but strangely pathetic figure.
Philip saw it for the first time.

Afterwards, when the Vicar was shut up in his study with
the curate, he put his arms round her waist.

"I say, I'm sorry you're upset, Aunt Louisa," he said. "But
it's no good my being ordained if I haven't a real vocation,,
is it.?"

"I'm so disappointed, PhiHp," she moaned. "I'd set my heart
on it. I thought you could be your uncle's curate, and then
when our time came — after all, we can't last for ever, can we.-"
— you might have taken his place."

Philip shivered. He was seized with panic. His heart beat
like a pigeon in a trap beating with its wings. His aunt wept
softly, her head upon his shoulder.

"I wish you'd persuade Uncle William to let me leave Ter'
canbury. I'm so sick of it."

But the Vicar of Blackstable did not easily alter any arrange-
ments he had made, and it had always been intended that
Philip should stay at King's School till he was eighteen, and
should then go to Oxford. At all events he would not hear of
Philip leaving then, for no notice had been given and the-
term's fee would have to be paid in any case.

"Then will you give notice for me to leave at Christmas.?"
said Philip, at the end of a, long and often bitter conversation.

"I'll write to Mr. Perkins about it and see what he says."

"Oh, I wish to goodness I were twenty-one. .It is awful to be
at somebody else's beck and call."

"Philip, "you shouldn't speak to your uncle like that," said-
Mrs. Cai-ey gently.

"But don't you see that Perkins will want me to stay.? He
gets s6 much a head for every chap in the school."

98 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Why don't you want to go to Oxford?"

"What's the good if I'm not going into the Church?"

"You can't go into the Church; you're in the Church al-
ready," said the Vicar.

"Ordained then," replied Philip impatiently.

"What are you going to be, Philip?" asked Mrs. Carey.

"I don't know. I've not made up my mind. But whatever
I am, it'll be useful to know foreign languages. I shall get far
more out of a year in Germany than by staying on at that
hole."

He would not say that he felt Oxford would be little better
than a continuation of his life at school. He wished immensely
to be his own master. Besides he would be known to a certain
extent among old schoolfellows, and he wanted to get away
from them all. He felt that. his life at school had been a fail-
ure. He wanted to start fresh.

It happened that his desire to go to Germany fell in with
certain ideas which had been of late discussed at Blackstable.
Sometimes friends came to stay with the doctor and brought
news of the world outside; and the visitors spending August
by the sea had their own way of looking at things. The Vicar
had heard that there were people who did not think the old-
fashioned education so useful nowadays as it had been in the
past, and modern languages were gaining an importance
which they had not had in his own youth. His own mind was
divided, for a younger brother of his had been sent to Ger-
many when he failed in some examination, thus creating a
precedent, but since he had there died of typhoid it was impos-
sible to look upon the experiment as other thar/ dangerous.
The result of innumerable conversations was ithat Philip
should go back to Tercanbury for another term, and then
should leave. With this agreement Philip was not dissatisfied.
But when he had been back a few days the headmaster spoke
to him.

"I've had a letter from your uncle. It appears you ■want to
go to Germany, and he asks me what I think about it."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 99

Philip was astounded. He was furious with his. guardian
for going back on his word.

"I thought it was settled, sir," he said.

"Far from it. I've written to say I think it the greatest mis-
take to take you away."

Philip immediately sat down and wrote a violent letter to
his uncle. He did not measure his language. He was so angry
that he could not get to sleep till quite late that night, and he
awoke in the early morning and began brooding over the
way they had treated him. He waited impatiently for an
answer. In two or three days it came. It was a mild, pained
letter from Aunt Louisa, saying that he should not write such
things to his uncle, who was very much distressed. He was
unkind and unchristian. He must know they were only trying
to do their best for him, and they were so much older than
he that they must be better judges of what was good for him.
Philip clenched his hands. He had heard that statement so
often, and he could not see why it was true; they did not
know the conditions as he did, why should they accept it as
self-evident that their greater age gave them greater wisdom.?
The letter ended with the information that Mr. Carey had
withdrawn the notice he had given.

Philip nursed his wrath till the next half-holiday. They had
them on Tuesdays and Thursdays, since on Saturday after-
noons they had to go to a service in the Cathedral. He stopped
behind when the rest of the Sixth went out.

"May I go to Blackstable this afternoon, please, sir.?" he
asked.

"No," said the headmaster briefly.

"I wanted to see my uncle about something very important."

"Didn't you hear me say no?"

PhiHp did not answer. He went out. He felt almost sick with
humiUation, the humiliation of having to ask and the humilia-
tion of the curt refusal. He hated the headmaster now. Phihp
writhed under that despotism which never vouchsafed a
reason for the most tyrannous act. He was too angry to care

100 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

what he did, and after dinner walked down to the station, by
the back ways he knew so well, just in time to catch the train
to Blackstable. He walked into the vicarage and found his
uncle and aunt sitting in the dining-room.

"Hulloa, where have you sprung from?" said the Vicar.

It was very clear that he was not pleased to see him. He
looked a little uneasy.

"I thought I'd come and see you about my leaving. I want
to know what you mean by promising me one thing when I
was here, and doing something different a week after."

He was a little frightened at his own boldness, but he had
made up his mind exactly what words to use, and, though his
heart beat violently, he forced himself to say them.

"Have you got leave to come here this afternoon?"

"No. I asked Perkins and he refused. If you like to write
and tell him I've been here you can get me into a really fine
old row."

Mrs. Carey sat knitting with trembling hands. She was un-
used to scenes and they agitated her extremely.

"It would serve you right if I told him," said Mr. Carey.

"If you like to be a perfect sneak you can. After writing to
Perkins as you did you're quite capable of it."

It was foolish of Philip to say that, because it gave the Vicar
exactly the opportunity he wanted.

"I'm not going to sit still while you say impertinent things
to me," he said with dignity.

He got up and walked quickly out of the room into his
study. Philip heard him shut the door and lock it.

"Oh, I wish to God I were twenty-one. It is awful to be tied
down like this."

Aunt Louisa began to cry quietly.

"Oh, Philip, you oughtn't to have spoken to your uncle like
that. Do please go and tell him you're sorry.''

"I'm not in the least sorry. He's taking a mean advantage.
Of course it's just waste of money keeping me on at school

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 101

but what does he care ? It's not his money. It was cruel to put
me under the guardianship of people who know nothing
about things."

"Philip."

Philip in his voluble anger stopped suddenly at the sound
of her voice. It was heart-broken. He had not realised what
bitter things he was saying.

"Philip, how can you be so unkind ? You know we are only
trying to do our best for you, and we know that we have no
experience; it isn't as if we'd had any children of our own:
that's why we consulted Mr. Perkins." Her voice broke. "I've
tried to be like a mother to you. I've loved you as if you were
my own son."

She was so small and frail, there was something so pathetic
in her old-maidish air, that Philip was touched. A great lump
came suddenly in his throat and his eyes filled with tears.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to be beastly."

He knelt down beside her and took her in his arms, and
kissed her wet, withered cheeks. She sobbed bitterly, and he
seemed to feel on a sudden the pity of that wasted life. She had
never surrendered herself before to such a display of emotion.

"I know I've not been what I wanted to be to you, Philip,
but I didn't know how. It's been just as dreadful for me to have
no children as for you to have no mother."

Philip forgot his anger and his own concerns, but thought
only of consoling her, with broken words and clumsy little
caresses. Then the clock struck, and he had to bolt off at once
to catch the only train that would get him back to Tercanbury
in time for call-over. As he sat in the corner of the railway
carriage he saw that he had done nothing. He was angry vidth
himself for his weakness. It was despicable to have allowed
himself to be turned from his purpose by the pompous airs
of the Vicar and the tears of his aunt. But as the result of he
knew not what conversations between the couple another let-
ter was written to the headmaster. Mr. Perkins read it with an

102 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

impatient shrug of the shoulders. He showed it to Phihp. It
ran:

Dear Mr. Perkins,

Forgive me for troubling you again about my ward, but ■
both his Aunt and I have been uneasy about him. He seems
very anxious to leave school, and his Aunt thinks he is un-
happy. It is very difficult for us to \now what to do as we are
not his parents. He does not seem to thin\ he is doing very
well and he feels it is wasting his money to stay on. I should
be v'ery much obliged if you would have a tal\ to him, and if
he is still of the same mind perhaps it would be better if he
left at Christmas as I originally intended.

Yours very truly,

William Carey.

Philip gave him back the letter. He felt a thrill of pride in
his triumph. He had got his own way, and he was satisfied.
His v/ill had gained a victory over the wills of others.

"It's not much good my spending half an hour writing to
your uncle if he changes his mind the next letter he gets from
you," said the headmaster irritably.

Philip said nothing, and his face was perfectly placid; but
he could not prevent the twinkle in his eyes. Mr. Perkins
noticed it and broke into a little laugh.

"You've rather scored, haven't you?" he said.

Then Philip smiled outright. He could not conceal his ex-
ultation.

"Is it true that you're very anxious to leave.''"

"Yes, sir."

"Are you unhappy here.''"

Philip blushed. He hated instinctively any attempt to get
into the depths of his feelings.

"Oh, I don't know, sir."

Mr. Perkins, slowly dragging his fingers through his beard,
looked at him thoughtfully. He seemed to speak almost to
himself.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 103

"Of course schools are made for the average. The holes are
all round, and whatever shape the pegs are they must wedge
in somehow. One hasn't time to bother about anything but the
average." Then suddenly he addressed himself to Philip:
"Look here, I've got a suggestion to make to you. It's getting
on towards the end of the term now. Another term won't kill
you, and if you want to go to Germany you'd better go after
Easter than after Christmas. It'll be much pleasanter in the
spring than in mid-winter. If at the end of the next term you
still want to go I'll make no objection. What d'you say to
that?"

"Thank you very much, sir."

Philip was so glad to have gained the last three months
that he did not mind the extra term. The school seemed less
of a prison when he knew that before Easter he would be free
from it for ever. His heart danced within him. That evening
in chapel he looked round at the boys, standing according to
their forms, each in his due place, and he chuckled with satis-
faction at the thought that soon he would never see them
again. It made him regard them almost with a friendly feel-
ing. His eyes rested on Rose. Rose took his position as a monitor
very seriously : he had quite an idea of being a good influence
in the school; it was his turn to read the lesson that evening,
and he read it very well. Philip smiled when he thought that
he would be rid of him for ever, and it would not matter in
six months whether Rose was tall and straight-limbed; and
where would the importance be that he was a monitor and
captain of the eleven.? Philip looked at the masters in their
gowns. Gordon was dead, he had died of apoplexy two years
before, but all the rest were there. Philip knew now what a
poor lot they were, except Turner perhaps, there was some-
thing of a man in him; and he writhed at the thought of the
subjection in which they had held him. In six months they
would not matter either. Their praise would mean nothing to
him, and he would shrug his shoulders at their censure.
Phihp had learned not to express his emotions by outward

104 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

signs, and shyness still tormented him, but he had often very
high spirits; and then, though he limped about demurely,
silent and reserved, it seemed to be hallooing in his heart. He
seemed to himself to walk more lightly. All sorts of ideas
danced through his head, fancies chased one another so furi-
ously that he could not catch them; but their coming and their
going filled him with exhilaration. Now, being happy, he was
able to work, and during the remaining weeks of the term set
himself to make up for his long neglect. His brain worked
easily, and he took a keen pleasure in the activity of his in-
tellect. He did very well in the examinations that closed the
term. Mr. Perkins made only one remark: he was talking to
him about an essay he had written, and, after the usual criti-
cisms, said:

"So you've made up your mind to stop playing the fool
for a bit, have you?"

He smiled at him with his shining teeth, and Philip, look-
ing down, gave an embarrassed smile.

The half dozen boys who expected to divide between them
the various prizes which were given at the end of the summer
term had ceased to look upon Philip as a serious rival, but
now they began to regard him with some uneasiness. He told
no one that he was leaving at Easter and so was in no sense
a competitor, but left them to their anxieties. He knew that
Rose flattered himself on his French, for he had spent two or
three holidays in France; and he expected to get the Dean's
Prize for English essay; Philip got a good deal of satisfac-
tion in watching his dismay when he saw how much better
Philip was doing in these subjects than himself. Another fel-
low, Norton, could not go to Oxford unless he got one of the
scholarships at the disposal of the school. He asked PhiUp if
he was going in for them.

"Have you any objection.?" asked Philip.

It entertained him to think that he held someone else's future
in his hand. There was something romantic in getting these
various rewards actually in his grasp, and then leaving them to

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 105

others because he disdained them. At last the breaking-up day
came, and he went to Mr. Perkins to bid him good-bye.

"You don't mean to say you really want to leave?"

Philip's face fell at the headmaster's evident surprise.

"You said you wouldn't put any objection in the way, sir,"
he answered.

"I thought it was only a whim that I'd better humour. I
know you're obstinate and headstrong. What on earth d'you
want to leave for now? You've only got another term in any
case. You can get the Magdalen scholarship easily; you'll get
half the prizes we've got to give."

Philip looked at him sullenly. He felt that he had been
tricked; but he had the promise, and Perkins would have to
stand by it.

"You'll have a very pleasant time at Oxford. You needn't
decide at once what you're going to do afterwards. I wonder
if you realise how delightful the life is up there for anyone
who has brains."

"I've made all my arrangements now to go to Germany,
sir," said Philip.

"Are they arrangements that couldn't possibly be altered?"
asked Mr. Perkins, with his quizzical smile. "I shall be very
sorry to lose you. In schools the rather stupid boys who work
always do better than the clever boy who's idle, but when the
clever boy works — why then, he does what you've done this
term."

Philip flushed darkly. He was unused to compliments, and
no one had ever told him he was clever. The headmaster put
his hand on PhiHp's shoulder.

"You know, driving things into the heads of thick-witted
boys is dull work, but when now and then you have the
chance of teaching a boy who comes half-way towards you,
who understands almost before you've got the words out of
ypur mouth, why, then teaching is the most exhilarating thing
in the world."

Philip was melted by kindness; it had never occurred to him

106^ -6 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

that it mattered really to Mr. Perkins whether he went or
stayed. He was touched and immensely flattered. It would
be pleasant to end up his school-days with glory and then go
to Oxford : in a flash there appeared before him the life which
he had heard described from boys who came back to play
in the O. K. S. match or in letters from the University read out
in one of the studies. But he was ashamed; he would look such
a fool in his own eyes if he gave in now; his uncle would
chuckle at the success of the headmaster's ruse. It was rather
a come-down from the dramatic surrender of all these prizes
which were in his reach, because he disdained to take them,
to the plain, ordinary winning of them. It only required a
little more persuasion, just enough to save his self-respect, and
Philip would have done anything that Mr. Perkins wished;
but his face showed nothing of his conflicting emotions. It
was placid and sullen.

"I think I'd rather go, sir," he said.

Mr. Perkins, like many men who manage things by their
personal influence, grew a little impatient when his power was
not immediately manifest. He had a great deal of work to do,
and could not waste more time on a boy who seemed to him
insanely obstinate.

"Very well, I promised to let you if you really wanted it,
and I keep my promise. When do you go to Germany.?"

Philip's heart beat violently. The battle was won, and he
did not know whether he had not rather lost it.

"At the beginning of May, sir," he answered.

"Well, you must come and see us when you get back."

He held out his hand. If he had given him one more chance
Philip would have changed his mind, but he seemed to look
upon the matter as settled. Philip walked out of the house.
His school-days were over, and he was free; but the wild
exultation to which he had looked forward at that moment
was not there. He walked round the precincts slowly, and a
profound depression seized him. He vrished now that he had
not been foolish. He did not want to go, but he knew he

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 107

could never bring himself to go to the headmaster and tell
him he would stay. That was a humiUation he could never put
upon himself. He wondered whether he had done right. He
was dissatisfied with himself and with all his circumstances.
He asked himself dully whether whenever you got your way
you wished afterwards that you hadn't.

Chapter 22

Philip's uncle had an old friend, called Miss Wilkinson, who
lived in Berlin. She was the daughter of a clergyman, and it
was with her father, the rector of a village in Lincolnshire
that Mr. Carey had spent his last curacy; on his death, forced
to earn her living, she had taken various situations as a gov-
erness in France and Germany. She had kept up a corre-
spondence with Mrs. Carey, and two or three times had s{)ent
her holidays at Blackstable Vicarage, paying as was usual with
the Careys' unfrequent guests a small sum for her keep. When
it became clear that it was less trouble to yield to Philip's
wishes than to resist them, Mrs. Carey wrote to ask her for ad-
vice. Miss Wilkinson recommended Heidelberg as an excellent
place to learn German in and the house of Frau Professor
Erlin as a comfortable home. Philip might live there for thirty
marks a week, and the Professor himself, a teacher at the local
high school, would instruct him.

Philip arrived in Heidelberg one morning in May. His thiugs
were put on a barrow and he followed the porter out of the
station. The sky was bright blue, and the trees in the avenue
through which they passed were thick with leaves; there was
something in the air fresh to Philip, and mingled with the
timidity he felt at entering on a new life, among strangers, was

108 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

a great exhilaration. He was a little disconsolate that no one
had come to meet him, and felt very shy when the porter left
him at the front door of a big white house. An untidy lad let
him in and took him into a drawing-room. It was filled with
a large suite covered in green velvet, and in the middle was
a round table. On this in water stood a bouquet of flowers
tightly packed together in a paper frill hke the bone of a
mutton chop, and carefully spaced round it were books in
leather bindings. There was a musty smell.

Presently, with an odour of cooking, the Frau Professor
came in, a short, very stout woman with tightly dressed hair
and a red face; she had little eyes, sparkling like beads, and
an effusive manner. She took both Philip's hands and asked
him about Miss Wilkinson, who had twice spent a few weeks
with her. She spoke in German and in broken English. Philip
could not make her understand that he did not know Miss
Wilkinson. Then her two daughters appeared. They seemed
hardly young to Philip, but perhaps they were not more than '
twenty-five : the elder, Thekla, was as short as her mother, with
the same, rather shifty air, but with a pretty face and abundant
dark hair; Anna, her younger sister, was tall and plain, but
since she had a pleasant smile Philip immediately preferred
her. After a few minutes of polite conversation the Frau Pro-
fessor took Philip to his room and left him. It was in a turret,
looking over the tops of the trees in the Anlage; and the bed
was in an alcove, so that when you sat at the desk it had not
the look of a bed-room at all. Philip unpacked his things and
set out all his books. He was his own master at last.

A bell summoned him to dinner at one o'clock, and he
found the Frau Professor's guests assembled in the drawing-
room. He was introduced to her husband, a tall man of middle
age with a large fair head, turning now to gray, and mild blue
eyes. He spoke to Philip in correct, rather archaic EngHsh,
having learned it from a study of the English classics, not from
conversation; and it was odd to hear him use words collo-
quially which Philip had only met in the plays of Shakespeare

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 109

Frau Professor Erlin called her establishment a family and not
a pension; but it would have required the subtlety of a meta-
physician to find out exactly where the difference lay. When
they sat down to dinner in a long dark apartment that led out
of the drawing-room, Philip, feehng very shy, saw that there
were sixteen people. The Frau Professor sat at one end and
carved. The service was conducted, with a great clattering of
plates, by the same clumsy lout who had opened the door for
him; and though he was quick, it happened that the first
persons to be served had finished before the last had received
their appointed portions. The Frau Professor insisted that
nothing but German should be spoken, so that Philip, even if
his bashfulness had permitted him to be talkative, was forced
to hold his tongue. He looked at the people among whom he
was to live. By the Frau Professor sat several old ladies, but
Phihp did not give them much of his attention. There were
two young girls, both fair and one of them very pretty, whom
Philip heard addressed as Fraulein Hedwig and Fraulein
Cacilie. Fraulein Cacilie had a long pig-tail hanging down her
back. They sat side by side and chattered to one another, with
smothered laughter: now and then they glanced at Philip and
one of them said something in an undertone; they both gig-
gled, and Philip blushed awkwardly, feeling that they were
making fun of him. Near them sat a Chinaman, with a yellow
face and an expansive smile, who was studying Western con-
ditions at the University. He spoke so quickly, with a queer
accent, that the girls could not always understand him, and
then they burst out laughing. He laughed too, good-
humouredly, and his almond eyes almost closed as he did so.
There were two or three American men, in black coats? rather
yellow and dry of skin: they were theological students; Philip
heard the twang of their New England accent through their
bad German, and he glanced at them with suspicion; for he
had been taught to look upon Americans as wild and desper-
ate barbarians.
Afterwards, when they had sat for a httle on the stiff green

110 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

velvet chairs of the drawing-room, Fraulein Anna asked Philip
if he would like to go for a walk with them.

Philip accepted the invitation. They were quite a party.
There were the two daughters of the Frau Professor, the two
other girls, one of the American students, and Philip. Philip
walked by the side of Anna and Fraulein Hedwig. He was a
Httle fluttered. He had never known any girls. At Blackstable
there were only the farmers' daughters and the girls of the
local tradesmen. He knew them by name and by sight, but
he was timid, and he thought they laughed at his deformity.
He accepted willingly the difference which the Vicar and Mrs.
Carey put between their own exalted rank and that of the
farmers. The doctor had two daughters, but they were both
much older than Philip and had been married to successive
■assistants while Philip was still a small boy. At school there
had been two or three girls of more boldness than modesty
whom some of the boys knew; and desperate stories, due in all
probability to the masculine imagination, were told of intrigues
with them; but Philip had always concealed under a lofty con-
tempt the terror with which they filled him. His imagination
and the books he had read had inspired in him a desire for
the Byronic attitude; and he was torn between a morbid self-
consciousness and a conviction that he owed it to himself to
be gallant. He felt now that he should be bright and amusing,
but his brain seemed empty and he could not for the life of
him think of anything to say. Fraulein Anna, the Frau Profes-
sor's daughter, addressed herself to him frequently from a
sense of duty, but the other said little: she looked at him now
and then with sparkling eyes, and sometimes to his confusion
laughed outright. Philip felt that she thought him perfectly
ridiculous. They walked along the side of a hill among pine-
trpes, and their pleasant odour caused Philip a keen delight.
The day was warm and cloudless. At last they came to an
eminence from which they saw the valley of the Rhine spread
out before them under the sun. It was a vast stretch of country,
sparkling with golden light, with cities in the distance; and

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 111

through it meandered the silver ribband of the river. Wide
spaces are rare in the corner of Kent which PhiHp knew, the
sea offers the only broad horizon, and the immense distance
he saw now gave him a pecuHar, an indescribable thrill. He
felt suddenly elated. Though he did not know it, it was the
first time that he hadexperienced, quite undiluted with foreign
emotions, the sense of beauty. They sat on a bench, the three
of them, for the others had gone on, and while the girls talked
in rapid German, Philip, indifferent to their proximity, feasted
his eyes.
"By Jove, I am happy," he said to himself unconsciously.

Chapter 23

Philip thought occasionally of the King's School at Tercan.
bury, and laughed to himself as he remembered what at some
panicular moment of the day they were doing. Now and then
he dreamed that he was there still, and it gave him an extraor-
dinary satisfaction, on awaking, to realise that he was in his
little room in the turret. From his bed he could see the great
cumulus clouds that hung in the blue sky. He revelled in his
freedom. He could go to bed when he chose and get up when
the fancy took him. There was no one to order him about. It
struck him that he need not tell any more lies.

It had been arranged that Professor Erlin should teach him
Latin and German; a Frenchman came every day to. give him
lessons in French; and the Frau Professor had recommended
for mathematics an Englishman who was taking a philological
degree at the University. This was a man named Wharton.
Philip went to him every morning. He lived in one room on
the top floor of a shabby house. It was dirty and untidy, and
it was filled with a pungent odour made up of many different

112 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

stinks. He was generally in bed when Philip arrived at ten
o'clock, and he jumped out, put on a filthy dressing-gown and
felt slippers, and, while he gave instruction, ate his simple
breakfast. He was a short man, stout from excessive beer
drinking, with a heavy moustache and long, unkempt hair. He
had been in Germany for five years and was become very
Teutonic. He spoke with scorn of Cambridge where he had
taken his degree and with horror of the life which awaited him
when, having taken his doctorate in Heidelberg, he must
return to England and a pedagogic career. He adored the life
of the German University with its happy freedom and its
jolly companionships. He was a member of a Burschenschaft,
and promised to take Philip to a Kneipe. He was very poor
and made no secret that the lessons he was giving Philip meant
the difference between meat for his dinner and bread and
cheese. Sometimes after a heavy night he had such a headache
that he could not drink his coffee, and he gave his lesson with
heaviness of spirit. For these occasions he kept a few bottles
of beer under the bed, and one of these and a pipe would help
him to bear the burden of life.

"A hair of the dog that bit him," he would say as he poured
out the beer, carefully so that the foam should not make him
wait too long to drink.

Then he would talk to Philip of the University, the quarrels
between rival corps, the duels, and the merits of this and that
professor. Philip learnt more of life from him than of mathe-
matics. Sometimes Wharton would sit back with a laugh and
say:

"Look here, we've not done anything today. You needn't
pay me for the lesson."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Philip.

This was something new and very interesting, and he felt
that it was of greater import than trigonometry, which he
never could understand. It was like a window on life that he
had a chance of peeping through, and he looked with a wildly
beating heart.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 113

"No, you can keep your dirty money," said Wharton.

"But how about your dinner?" said PhiHp, with a smile, for
he knew exactly how his master's finances stood.

Wharton had even asked him to pay him the two shillings
vvhich the lesson cost once a week rather than once a month,
since it made things less complicated.

"Oh, never mind my dinner. It won't be the first time I've
dined off a bottle of beer, and my mind's never clearer than
when I do."

He dived under the bed (the sheets were gray with want of
washing), and fished out another bottle. PhiHp, who was
young and did not know the good things of life, refused to
share it with him, so he drank alone.

"How long are you going to stay here.?" asked Wharton.

Both he and Philip had given up with relief the pretence of
mathematics.

"Oh, I don't know. I suppose about a year. Then my people
want me to go to Oxford."

Wharton gave a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. It
was a new experience for Philip to learn that there were per-
sons who did not look upon that seat of learning with awe.

"What d'you want to go there for.? You'll only be a glorified
school-boy. Why don't you matriculate here ? A year's no good,
Spend five years here. You know, there are two good things
in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action. In France
you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and
nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In
Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may
think as you choose. They're both very good things. I per-
sonally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get
neither: you're ground down by convention. You can't think
as you like and you can't act as you like. That's because it's a
democratic nation. I expect America's worse."

He leaned back cautiously, for the chair on which he sat had
a ricketty leg, and it was disconcerting when a rhetorical
Sourish was interrupted by a sudden fall to the floor.

114 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I ought to go back to England this year, but if I can scrape
together enough to keep body and soul on speaking terms I
shall stay another twelve months. But then I shall have to go.
And I must leave all this" — ^he waved his arm round the dirty
garret, with its unmade bed, the clothes lying on the floor, a
row of empty beer bottles against the wall, piles of unbound,
ragged books in every corner — "for some provincial university
where I shall try and get a chair of philology. And I shall play
tennis and go to tea-parties." He interrupted himself and gave
Philip, very neatly dressed, with a clean collar on and his hair
well-brushed, a quizzical look. "And, my God! I shall have
to wash."

Philip reddened, feeling his own spruceness an intolerable
reproach; for of late he had begun to pay some attention to his
toilet, and he had come out from England with a pretty selec-
tion of ties.

The summer came upon the country like a conqueror. Each
day was beautiful. The sky had an arrogant blue which goaded
the nerves like a spur. The green of the trees in the Anlage
was violent and crude; and the houses, when the sun caught
them, had a dazzhng white which stimulated till it hurt.
Sometimes on his way back from Wharton Philip would sit
in the shade on one of the benches in the Anlage, enjoying
the coolness and watching the patterns of light which the sun,
shining through the leaves, made on the ground. His soul'
danced with delight as gaily as the sunbeams. He revelled in
those moments of idleness stolen from his work. Sometimes he
sauntered through the streets of the old town. He looked with
awe at the students of the corps, their cheeks gashed and red,
who swaggered about in their coloured caps. In the afternoons
he wandered about the hills with the girls in the Frau Pro-
fessor's house, and sometimes they went up the river and had
tea in a leafy beer-garden. In the evenings they walked round
and round the Stadtgarten, listening to the band.

Philip soon learned the various interests of the household.
Fraulein Thekla, the professor's elder daughter, was engaged

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 115(

to a man in England who had spent twelve months in the
house to learn German, and their marriage was to take place
at the end of the year. But the young man wrote that his
father, an india-rubber merchant who lived in Slough, did not
approve of the union, and Friiulein Thekla was often in tears.
Sometimes she and her mother might be seen, with stern eyes
and determined mouths, looking over the letters of the reluc-
tant lover. Thekla painted in water colour, and occasionally
she and Philip, with another of the girls to keep them com-
pany, would go out and paint little pictures. The pretty Frau-
lein Hedwig had amorous troubles too. She was the daughter
of a merchant in Berlin and a dashing hussar had fallen in
love with her, a von if you please; but his parents opposed a
marriage with a person of her condition, and she had been
sent to Heidelberg to forget him. She could never, never do
this, and corresponded with him continually, and he was
making every effort to induce an exasperating father to change
his mind. She told all this to Philip with pretty sighs and
becoming blushes, and showed him the photograph of the gay
lieutenant. Philip liked her best of all the girls at the Frau
Professor's, and on their walks always tried to get by her side.
He blushed a great deal when the others chaffed him for his
obvious preference. He made the first declaration in his life
to Fraulein Hedwig, but unfortunately it was an accident, and
it happened in this manner. In the evenings when they did not
go out, the young women sang little songs in the green velvet
' drawing-room, while Fraulein Anna, who always made herself
useful, industriously accompanied. Fraulein Hedwig's favour-
ite song was called Ich Hebe dich, I love you; and one evening
after she had sung this, when Philip was standing with her on
the balcony, looking at the stars, it occurred to him to make
some remark about it. He began:

"Ich Hebe dich."

His German was halting, and he looked about for the word
lie wanted. The pause was infinitesimal, but before he could
^o on Fraulein Hedwig said :

116 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Ach, Herr Carey, Sie mussen mir nicht du sagen — you
mustn't talk to me in the second person singular."

Philip felt himself grow hot all over, for he would never
have dared to do anything so familiar, and he could think of
nothing on earth to say. It would be ungallant to explain that
he was not making an observation, but merely mentioning the
title of a song.

"Entschuldigen Sie," he said. "I beg your pardon."

"It does not matter," she whispered.

She smiled pleasantly, quietly took his hand and pressed it,
then turned back into the drawing-room.

Next day he was so embarrassed that he could not speak to
her, and in his shyness did all that was possible to avoid her.
When he was asked to go for the usual walk he refused be-
cause, he said, he had work to do. But Fraulein Hedwig seized
an opportunity to speak to him alone.

"Why are you behaving in this way?" she said kindly. "You
know, I'm not angry with you for what you said last night.
You can't help it if you love me. I'm flattered. But although
I'm not exactly engaged to Hermann I can never love anyone
else, and I look upon myself as his bride."

Philip blushed again, but he put on quite the expression of
a rejected lover.

"I hope you'll be very happy," he said.

Chapter 24

Professor erlin gave Philip a lesson every day. He made out
a list of books which Philip was to read till he was ready for
the final achievement of Faust, and meanwhile, ingeniously
enough, started him on a German translation of one of the
plays by Shakespeare which Philip had studied at school. It

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 117

was the period in Germany of Goethe's highest fame. Notwith-
standing his rather condescending attitude towards patriotism
he had been adopted as the national poet, and seemed since
the war of seventy to be one of the most significant glories of
national unity. The enthusiastic seemed in the wildness of
the Walpurgisnacht to hear the rattle of artillery at Gravelotte.
But one mark of a writer's greatness is that different minds
can find in him different inspirations; and Professor Erlin,
who hated the Prussians, gave his enthusiastic admiration to
Goethe because his works, Olympian and sedate, offered the
only refuge for a sane mind against the onslaughts of the
present generation. There was a dramatist whose name of late
had been much heard at Heidelberg, and the winter before
one of his plays had been given at the theatre amid the cheers
of adherents and the hisses of decent people. Philip heard dis-
cussions about it at the Frau Professor's long table, and at
these Professor Erlin lost his wonted calm: he beat the table
with his fist, and drowned all opposition with the roar of
his fine deep voice. It was nonsense and obscene nonsense. He
forced himself to sit the play out, but he did not know whether
he was more bored or nauseated. If that was what the theatre
was coming to, then it was high time the police stepped in
and closed the playhouses. He was no prude and could laugh
as well as anyone at the witty immorality of a farce at the
Palais Royal, but here was nothing but filth. With an emphatic
gesture he held his nose and whistled through his teeth. It
was the ruin of the family, the uprooting of morals, the
destruction of Germany.

"Aber, Adolf," said the Frau Professor from the other end
of the table. "Calm yourself."

He shook his fist at her. He was the mildest of creatures
and ventured upon no action of his life without consulting
her.

"No, Helene, I tell you this," he shouted. "I would sooner
my daughters were lying dead at my feet than see them listen'
ing to the garbage of that shameless fellow."

118 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

The play was The Doll's House and the author was Henrik
Ibsen.

Professor ErHn classed him with Richard Wagner, but of
him he spoke not with anger but with good-humoured laugh-
ter. He was a charlatan but a successful charlatan, and in that
was always something for the comic spirit to rejoice in.

"Verruc\ter Kerl! A madman!" he said.

He had seen Lohengrin and that passed muster. It was dull
but no worse. But Siegfried! When he mentioned it Professor
Erlin leaned his head on his hand and bellowed with laughter.
Not a melody in it from beginning to end! He could imagine
Richard Wagner sitting in his box and laughing till his sides
ached at the sight of all the people who were taking it seri-
ously. It was the greatest hoax of the nineteenth century. He
lifted his glass of beer to his lips, threw back his head, and
drank till the glass was empty. Then wiping his mouth with
the back of his hand, he said :

"I tell you young people that before the nineteenth century
is out Wagner will be as dead as mutton. Wagner! I would
give all his works for one opera by Donizetti."

Chapter 25

The oddest of Philip's masters was his teacher of French.
Monsieur Ducroz was a citizen of Geneva. He was a tall old
man, with a sallow skin and hollow cheeks; his gray hair was
thin and long. He wore shabby black clothes with holes at the
elbows of his coat and frayed trousers. His linen was very
dirty. Philip had never seen him in a clean collar. He was a
man of few words, who gave his lesson conscientiously but
without enthusiasm, arriving as the clock struck and leaving

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 119

on the minute. His charges were very small. He was taciturn,
and what Philip learnt about him he learnt from others: it
appeared that he had fought with Garibaldi against the Pope,
but had left Italy in disgust when it was clear that all his
efforts for freedom, by which he meant the estabUshment of a
republic, tended to no more than an exchange of yokes; he
had been expelled from Geneva for it was not known what
political offences. Philip looked upon him with puzzled sur-
prise; for he was very unlike his idea of the revolutionary: he
spoke in a low voice and was extraordinarily polite; he never
sat down till he was asked to; and when on rare occasions he
met Philip in the street took off his hat with an elaborate ges-
ture; he never laughed, he never even smiled. A' more complete
imagination than Philip's might have pictured a youth of
splendid hope, for he must have been entering upon manhood
in 1848 when kings, remembering their brother of-France,
went about with an uneasy crick in their necks; and perhaps
that passion for liberty which passed through Europe, sweeps
ing before it what of absolutism and tyranny had reared its
liead during the reaction from the revolution of 1789, filled no
breast with a hotter fire. One might fancy him, passionate
with theories of human equality and human rights, discussing,
arguing, fighting behind barricades in Paris, flying before the
Austrian cavalry in Milan, imprisoned here, exiled from there,
lioping on and upborne ever with the word which seemed
so magical, the word Liberty; till at last, broken with disease
and starvation, old, without means to keep body and soul to-
gether but by such lessons as he could pick up from poor stu-
dents, he found himself in that little neat town under the heel
of a personal tyranny greater than any in Europe. Perhaps his
taciturnity hid a contempt for the human race which had
abandoned the great dreams of his youth and now wallowed
in sluggish ease; or perhaps these thirty years of revolution
had taught him that men are unfit for liberty, and he thought
that he had, spent his life in the pursuit of that which was not

120 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

worth the finding. Or maybe he was tired out and waited only
with indifference for the release of death.

One day Philip, with the bluntness of his age, asked him if
it was true he had been with Garibaldi. The old man did not
seem to attach any importance to the question. He answered
quite quietly in as low a voice as usual.

"Out, monsieur.''

"They say you were in the Commune?"

"Do they? Shall we get on with our work?"

He held the book open and Philip, intimidated, began to
translate the passage he had prepared.

One day Monsieur Ducroz seemed to be in great pain. He
had been scarcely able to drag himself up the many stairs to
Philip's room; and when he arrived sat down heavily, his sal-
low face drawn, with beads of sweat on his forehead, trying to
recover himself.

"I'm afraid you're ill," said Philip.

"It's of no consequence."

But Philip saw that he was sUfEering, and at the end of the
hour asked whether he would not prefer to give no more les-
sons till he was better.

"No," said the old man, in his even low voice. "I prefer to
go on while I am able." >

Philip, morbidly nervous when he had to make any refer-
ence to money, reddened.

"But it won't make any difference to you," he said. "I'll pay
for the lessons just the same. If you wouldn't mind I'd like to
give you the money for next week in advance."

Monsieur Ducroz charged eighteen pence an hour. Philip
took a ten-mark piece- out of his pocket and shyly put it on the
table. He could not bring himself to offer it as if the old man
were a beggar.

"In that case I think I won't come again till I'm better." He
took the coin and, without anything more than the elaborate
bow with which he always took his leave, went out.

"Bonjour, monsieur."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 121

Philip was vaguely disappointed. Thinking he had done a
generous thing, he had expected that Monsieur Ducroz would
overwhelm him with expressions of gratitude. He was taken
aback to find that the old teacher accepted the present as
though it were his due. He was so young, he did not realise
how much less is the sense of obligation in those who receive
favours than in those who grant them. Monsieur Ducroz ap-
peared again five or six days later. He tottered a little more
and was very weak, but seemed to have overcome the severity
of the attack. He was no more* communicative than he had
been before. He remained mysterious, aloof, and dirty. He
made no reference to his illness till after the lesson; and then,
just as he was leaving, at the door, which he held open, he
paused. He hesitated, as though to speak were difficult.

"If it hadn't been for the money you gave me I should have
starved. It was all I had to live on."

He made his solemn, obsequious bow, and went out. Philip
felt a little lump in his throat. He seemed to realise in a fashion
the hopeless bitterness of the old man's struggle, and how hard
life was for him when to himself it was so pleasant.

Chapter 26

Philip had spent three months in Heidelberg when one morn-
ing the Frau Professor told him that an Englishman named
Hayward was coming to stay in the house, and the same eve-
ning at" supper he saw a new face. For some days the family
had lived in a state of excitement. First, as the result of
heaven knows what scheming, by dint of humble prayers and
veiled threats, the parents of the young Englishman to whom
Fraulein Thekla was engaged had invited her to visit them in

122 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

England, and she had set off with an album of water colours
to show how accomplished she was and a bundle of letters to
prove how deeply the young man had compromised himself.
A week later Fraulein Hedwig with radiant smiles announced
_^at the Ueutenant of her aflfections was coming to Heidelberg
with his father and mother. Exhausted by the importunity- of
their son and touched by the dowry which Fraulein Hedwig's
father offered, the lieutenant's parents had consented to pass
through Heidelberg to make the young woman's acquaintance.
The interview was satisfactory and Fraulein Hedwig had the
satisfaction of showing her lover in the Stadtgarten to the
whole of Frau Professor Erlin's household. The silent old
ladies who sat at the top of the table near the Frau Professor
were in a flutter, and when Fraulein Hedwig said she was to
go home at once for the formal engagement to take place, the
Frau Professor, regardless of expense, said she would give a
Maibou/le. Professor Erlin prided himself on his skill in pre-
paring this mild intoxicant, and after supper the large bowl
of hock and soda, with scented herbs floating in it and wild
strawberries, was placed with solemnity on the round table in
the drawing-room. Fraulein Anna teased Philip about the de-
parture of his lady-love, and he felt very uncomfortable and
rather melancholy. Fraulein Hedwig sang several songs, Frau-
lein Anna played the Wedding March, and the Professor sang
Die Wacht am Rhein. Amid all this jollification Philip paid
little attention to the new arrival. They had sat opposite one
another at supper, but Philip was chattering busily with
Fraulein Hedwig, and the stranger, knowing no German, had
eaten his food in silence. Philip, observing that he wore a pale
blue tie, had on that account taken a sudden dislike to him.
He was a man of twenty-six, very fair, with long, wavy hair
through which he passed his hand frequently with a careless
gesture. His eyes were large and blue, but the blue was very
pale, and they looked rather tired already. He was clean-
shaven, and his mouth, notwithstanding its thin lips, was well-
shaped. Fraulein Anna took an interest in physiognomy, and

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 123

she made Philip notice afterwards how finely shaped was his
skull, and how weak was the lower part of his face. The head,
she remarked, was the head of a thinker, but the jaw lacked
character. Fraulein Anna, foredoomed to a spinster's life, with
her high cheek-bones and large misshapen nose, laid great
stress upon character. While they talked of him he stood a
little apart from the others, watching the noisy party with a
good-humoured but faintly supercilious expression. He was
tall and slim. He held himself with a deliberate grace. Weeks,
one of the American students, seeing him alone, went up and
began to talk to him. The pair were oddly contrasted: the
American very neat in his black coat and pepper-and-salt
trousers, thin and dried-up, with something of ecclesiastical
unction already in his manner; and the Englishman in his
loose tweed suit, large-limbed and slow of gesture.

Philip did not speak to the new-comer till next day. They
found themselves alone on the balcony of the drawing-room
before dinner. Hayward addressed him.
"You're English, aren't you.?"
"Yes."

"Is the food always as bad as it was last night.''"
"It's always about the same."
"Beastly, isn't it.?"
"Beastly."

Philip had found nothing wrong with the food at all, and
in fact had eaten it in large quantities with appetite and en-
joyment, but he did not want to show himself a person of so
little discrimination as to think a dinner good which another
thought execrable.

Fraulein Thekla's visit to England made it necessary for her
sister to do more in the house, and she could not often spare
the time for long walks; and Fraulein Cacihe, with her long
plait of fair hair and her little snub-nosed face, had of late
shown a certain disinclination for society. Fraulein Hedwig
was gone, and Weeks, the American who generally accom-
panied them on their rambles, had set out for a tour of South

124 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Germany. Philip was left a good deal to himself. Hayward
sought his acquaintance; but Philip had an unfortunate trait:
from shyness or from some atavistic inheritance of the cave-
dweller, he always disliked people on first acquaintance; and it
was not till he became used to them that he got over his first
impression. It made him difficult of access. He received Hay-
ward's advances very shyly, and when Hayward asked him
one day to go for a walk he accepted only because he could not
think of a civil excuse. He made his usual apology, angry with
h,imself for the flushing cheeks he could not control, and try-
ing to carry it off with a laugh.

"I'm afraid I can't walk very fast."

"Good heavens, I don't walk for a wager. I prefer to stroll.
Don't you remember the chapter in Marius where Pater talks
of the gentle exercise of walking as the best incentive to con-
versation?"

Philip was a good listener; though he often thought of clever
things- to say, it was seldom till after the opportunity to say
them had passed; but Hayward was communicative; anyone
more experienced than Philip might have thought he liked
to hear himself talk. His supercilious attitude impressed
Philip. He could not help admiring, and yet being awed by, a
man who faintly despised so many things which Philip had
looked upon as almost sacred. He cast down the fetish of
exercise, damning with the contemptuous word pot-hunters
all those who devoted themselves to its various forms; and
Philip did not realise that he was merely putting up in its
stead the other fetish of culture.

They wandered up to the castle, and sat on the terrace that
overlooked the town. It nestled in the valley along the pleasant
Neckar with a comfortable friendhness. The smoke from the
chimneys hung over it, a pale blue haze, and the tall roofs,
the spires of the churches, gave it a pleasantly medieval air.
There was a homeliness in it which warmed the heart. Hay-
ward talked of Richard Feverel and Madame Bovary, of Ver-
laine, Dante, and Matthew Arnold. In those days Fitzgerald's

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 125

translation of Omar Khayyam was known only to the elect, and
Hayward repeated it to Philip. He was very fond of reciting
poetry, his own and that of others, which he did in a monoto-
nous sing-song. By the-time they reached home Philip's distrust
of Hayward was changed to enthusiastic admiration.

They made a practice of walking together every afternoon,
and Philip learned presently something of Hayward's circum-
stances. He was the son of a country judge, on whose death
some time before he had inherited three hundred a year. His
record at Charterhouse was so brilliant that when he went to
Cambridge the Master of Trinity Hall went out of his way
to express his satisfaction that he was going to that college.
He prepared himself for a distinguished career. He moved in
the most intellectual circles; he read Browning with enthusi-
asm and turned up his well-shaped nose at Tennyson; he knew
all the details of Shelley's treatment of Harriet; he dabbled in
the history of art (on the walls of his rooms were reproduce
tions of pictures by G. F. Watts, Burne-Jones, and Botticelli) ;
and he wrote not without distinction verses of a pessimistic
character. His friends told one another that he was a man of
excellent gifts, and he listened to them willingly when they
prophesied his future eminence. In course of time he became
an authority on art and literature. He came under the influ-
ence of Newman's Apologia; the picturesqueness of the Roman
Catholic faith appealed to his aesthetic sensibility; and it was
only the fear of his father's wrath (a plain, blunt man of nar-
row ideas, who read Macaulay) which prevented him from
'going over.' When he only got a pass degree his friends were
astonished; but he shrugged his shoulders and delicately
insinuated that he was not the dupe of examiners. He made
one feel that a first class was ever so slightly vulgar. He de-
scribed one of the vivas with tolerant humour; some fellow in
an outrageous collar was asking him questions in logic; it was
infinitely tedious, and suddenly he noticed that he wore
elastic-sided boots: it was grotesque and ridiculous; so he
withdrew his mind and thought of the Gothic beauty of the

126 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapel at King's. But he had spent some delightful days at
Cambridge; he had given better dinners than anyone he knew;
and the conversation in his rooms had been often memorable.
He quoted to Philip the exquisite epigram:

"They told me, Herakleitus, they told me you were dead."

And now, when he related again the picturesque little anec-
dote about the examiner and his boots, he laughed.

"Of course it was folly," he said, "but it was a folly in which
there was something fine."

Philip, with a little thrill, thought it magnificent.

Then Hayward went to London to read for the bar. He
had charming rooms in Clement's Inn, with panelled walls,
and he tried to make them look like his old rooms at the Hall.
He had ambitions that were vaguely political, he described
himself as a Whig, and he was put up for a club which was
of Liberal but gentlemanly flavour. His idea was to practise
at the Bar (he chose the Chancery side as less brutal), and get
a seat for some pleasant censtituency as soon as the various
promises made him were carried out; meanwhile he went a
great deal to the opera, and made acquaintance with a small
number of charming people who admired the things that he
admired. He joined a dining-club of which the motto was,
The Whole, The Good, and The Beautiful. He formed a
platonic friendship with a lady some years older than himself,
who hved in Kensington Square; and nearly every afternoon
he drank tea with her by the hght of shaded candles, and
talked of George Meredith and Walter Pater. It was notorious
that any fool could pass the examinations of the Bar Council,
and he pursued his studies in a dilatory fashion. When he
was ploughed for his final he looked upon it as a personal
affront. At the same time the lady in Kensington Square told
him that her husband was coming home from India on leave,
and was a man, though worthy in every way, of a common-
place mind, who would not understand a young man's fre-
quent visits. Hayward felt that life was full of ugliness his
soul revolted from the thought of affronting again the cynicism

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 127

of examiners, and he saw something rather splendid in kick-
ing away the ball which lay at his feet. He was also a good
deal in debt: it was difficult to live in London like a gentleman
on three hundred a year; and his heart yearned for the Venfce
and Florence which John Ruskin had so magically described,
He felt that he was unsuited to the vulgar bustle of the Bar,
for he had discovered that it was not sufficient to put your
name on a door to get briefs; and modern politics seemed ta
lack nobiHty. He felt himself a poet. He disposed of his rooms
in Clement's Inn and went to Italy. He had spent a winter
in Florence and a winter in Rome, and now was passing his
second summer abroad in Germany so that he might read
Goethe in the original.

Hayward had one gift which was very precious. He had a.
real feeling for literature, and he could impart his own passion
with an admirable fluency. He could throw himself into sym-
pathy with a writer and see all that was best in him, and then
he could talk about him with understanding. Philip had read
a great deal, but he had read without discrimination every-
thing that he happened to come across, and it was very good
for him now to meet someone who could guide his taste. He
borrowed books from the small lending library which the
town possessed and began reading all the wonderful thing?
that Hayward spoke of. He did not read always with enjoy-
ment but invariably with perseverance. He was eager for self-
improvement. He felt himself very ignorant and very humble.
By the end of August, when Weeks returned from South
Germany, Philip was completely under Hayward's influence.,
Hayward did not Uke Weeks. He deplored the American's
black coat and pepper-and-salt trousers, and spoke with a
■ scornful shrug of his New England conscience. Phihp listened
complacently to the abuse of a man who had gone, out of his
way to be kind to him, but when Weeks in his turn made dis-
agreeable remarks about Hayward he lost his temper.

"Your new friend looks like a poet," said Weeks, with a
thin smile on his careworn, bitter mouth.

128 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"He is a poet."

"Did he tell you so? In America we should call him a pretty
fair specimen of a waster."

"Well, we're not in America," said Philip frigidly.

"How old is he.? Twenty-five ? And he does nothing but stay
in pensions and -write poetry."

"You don't know him," said Philip hotly.

"Oh yes, I do: I've met a hundred and forty-seven of him."
. Weeks' eyes twinkled, but Philip, who did not understand
American humour, pursed his lips and looked severe. Weeks
to Philip seemed a man of middle-age, but he was in point of
fact little, more than thirty. He had a long, thin body and the
scholar's stoop; his head was large and ugly; he had pale scanty
hair and an earthy skin; his thin mouth and thin, long nose,
and the great protuberance of his frontal bones, gave him an
uncouth look. He was cold and precise in his manner, a blood-
less man, without passion; but he had a curious vein of
frivolity which disconcerted the serious-minded among whom
his instincts naturally threw him. He was studying theology
in Heidelberg, but the other theological students of his own
nationaHty looked upon him with suspicion. He was very un-
orthodox, which frightened them; and his freakish humour
excited their disapproval.

"How can you have known a hundred and forty-seven of
him.?" asked Philip seriously.

"I've met him in the Latin Quarter in Paris, and I've met
him in pensions in Berlin and Munich. He lives in small
hotels in Perugia and Assisi. He stands by the dozen before
the Botticellis in Florence, and he sits on all the benches of the
Sistine Chapel in Rome. In Italy he drinks a little too much
wine, and in Germany he drinks a great deal too much beer.
He always admires the right thing whatever the right thing is,
and one of these days he's going to write a great work. Think
of it, there are a hundred and forty-seven great works reposing
in the bosoms of a hundred and forty-seven great men, and
the tragic thing is that not one of those hundred and forty-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 129

seven great works will ever be written. And yet the world
goes on."

Weeks spoke seriously, but his gray eyes twinkled a little
at the end of his long speech, and Philip flushed when he saw
that the American was making fun of him.

"You do talk rot," he said crossly.

Chapter 27

Weeks had two little rooms at the back of Frau Erlin's house,
and one of them, arranged as a parlour, was comfortable
enoiigh for him to invite people to sit in. After supper, urged
perhaps by the impish humour which was the despair of his
friends in Cambridge, Mass., he often asked Philip and Hay-
ward to come in for a chat. He received them with elaborate
courtesy and insisted on their sitting in the only two comfort-
able chairs in the room. Though he did not drink himself,
with a politeness of which Philip recognized the irony, he put
a couple of bottles of beer at Hayward's elbow, and he insisted
on lighting matches whenever in the heat of argument Hay-
ward's pipe went out. At the beginning of their acquaintance
Haywardj as a member of so celebrated a university, had
adopted a patronising attitude towards Weeks, who was a
graduate of Harvard; and when by chance the conversation
turned upon the Greek tragedians, a subject upon which
Hayward felt he spoke with authority, he had assumed the
a:ir that it was his part to give information rather than to
exchange ideas. Weeks had listened politely, with smiling
modesty, till Hayward finished; then he asked one or two
insidious questions, so innocent in appearance that Hayward,
not seeing into what a quandary they led him, answered

130 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

blandly; Weeks made a courteous objection, then a correction
of fact, after that a quotation from some little known Latin
commeiitator, then a reference to a German authority ; and the
fact was disclosed that he was a scholar. With smiling ease,
apologetically, Weeks tore to pieces all that Hay ward had said;
with elaborate civility he displayed the superficiality of his at-
tainments. He mocked him with gentle irony. Philip could not
help seeing that Hayward looked a perfect fool, and Hayward
had not the sense to hold his tongue; in his irritation, his self-
assurance undaunted, he attempted to argue: he made wild
statements and Weeks amicably corrected them; he reasoned
falsely and Weeks proved that he was absurd: Weeks con-
fessed that he had taught Greek Literature at Harvard. Hay-
ward gave a laugh of scorn.

"I might have known it. Of course you read Greek like a
schoolmaster," he said. "I read it like a poet."

"And do you find it more poetic when you don't quite
know what it means.? I thought it was only in revealed reli-
gion that a mistranslation improved the sense."

At last, having finished the beer, Hayward left Weeks' room
hot and dishevelled; with an angry gesture he said to Philip:

"Of course the man's a pedant. He has no real feeling for

' beauty. Accuracy is the virtue of clerks. It's the spirit of the

Greeks that we aim at. Weeks is like that fellow who went

to hear Rubenstein and complained that he played false notes.

False notes! What did they matter when he played divinely.?"

Philip, not knowing how many incompetent people have
found solace in these false notes, was much impressed.

Hayward could never resist the opportunity which Weeks
offered him of regaining ground lost on a previous occasion,
and Weeks was able with the greatest ease to draw him into
a discussion. Though he could not help seeing how small his
attainments were beside the American's, his British pertinacity,
his wounded vanity (perhaps they are the same thing), would
not allow him to give up the struggle. Hayward seemed to
take a delight in displaying his ignorance, self-satisfaction, and

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 131

wrongheadedness. Whenever Hayward said something which
was illogical. Weeks in a few words would show the falseness
of his reasoning, pause for a moment to enjoy his triumph, and
then hurry on to another subject as though Christian charity
impelled him to spare the vanquished foe. PhiUp tried some-
times to put in something to help his friend, and Weeks gently
crushed him, but so kindly, differently from the way in which
he answered Hayward, that even Philip, outrageously sensi-
tive, could not feel hurt. Now and then, losing his calm as he
felt himself more and more foolish, Hayward became abusive,
and only the American's smiling politeness prevented the
argument from degenerating into a quarrel. On these occasions
when Hayward left Weeks' room he muttered angrily:

"Damned Yankee!"

That settled it. It was a perfect answer to an argument
which had seemed unanswerable.

Though they began by discussing all manner of subjects in
Weeks' little room eventually the conversation always turned
to religion: the theological student took a professional interest
in it, and Hayward welcomed a subject in which hard facts
need not disconcert him; when feeling is the gauge you can
snap your fingers at logic, and when your logic is weak that
is very agreeable. Hayward found it difficult to explain his
beliefs to Philip without a great flow of words; but it was clear
(and this fell in with Philip's idea of the natural order of
things), that he had been brought up in the church by law
estabhshed. Though he had now given up all idea of becom-
ing a Roman Catholic, he still looked upon that communion
with sympathy. He had much to say in its praise, and he com-
pared favourably its gorgeous ceremonies with the simple
services of the Church of England. He gave Philip Newman's
Apologia to read, and Philip, finding it very dull, nevertheless
read it to the end.

"Read it for its style, not for its matter," said Hayward.

He talked enthusiastically of the music at the Oratory, and
said charming things about the connection between incense

132 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

and the devotional spirit. Weeks listened to him with his
frigid smile.

"You think it proves the truth of Roman Catholicism that
John Henry Newman wrote good English and that Cardinal
Manning has a picturesque appearance.?"

Hayward hinted that he had gone through much trouble
vVith his soul. For a year he had swum in a sea of darkness. He
passed his fingers through his fair, waving hair and told them
that he would not for five hundred pounds endure again those
agonies of mind. Fortunately he had reached calm waters at
last.

"But what do you believe.'"' asked Philip, who was never
satisfied with vague staitements.

"I believe in the Whole, the Good, and the Beautiful."

Hayward with his loose large limbs and the fine carriage
of his head looked very handsome when he said this, and he
said it with an air.

"Is that how you would describe your religion in a census
paper.?" asked Weeks, in mild tones.

"I hate the rigid definition: it's so ugly, so obvious. If you
like I will say that I believe in the church of the Duke of
Wellington and Mr. Gladstone."

"That's the Church of England," said Philip.

"Oh wise young man!" retorted Hayward, with a smile
which made Philip blush, for he felt that in putting into plain
words what the other had expressed in a paraphrase, he had
been guilty of vulgarity. "I belong to the Church of England.
But I love the gold and the silk which clothe the priest of
Rome, and his celibacy, and the confessional, and purgatory;
and in the darkness of an Italian cathedral, incense-laden and
mysterious, I believe with all my-hfeart in the miracle of the
Mass. In Venice I have seen a fisherwoman come in, barefoot,
throw down her basket of fish by her side, fall on her knees,
and pray to the Madonna; and that I felt was the real faith,
and I prayed and beUeved with her. But I believe also in
Aphrodite and Apollo and the Great God Pan."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 133

He had a charming voice, and he chose his words as he
spoke; he uttered them almost rhythmically. He would have
gone on, but Weeks opened a second bottle of beer.

"Let me give you something to drink."

Hayward turned to Philip with the slightly condescending
gesture which so impressed the youth.

"Now are you satisfied.?" he asked.

Philip, somewhat bewildered, confessed that he was.

"I'm disappointed that you didn't add a little Buddhism,"
said Weeks. "And I confess I have a sort of sympathy for
Mahomet; I regret that you should have left him out in the
cold." •

Hayward laughed, for he was in a good humour with him-
self that evening, and the ring of his sentences still sounded
pleasant in his ears. He emptied his glass.

"I didn't expect you to understand me," he answered. "With
your cold American intelligence you can only adopt the criti-
cal attitude. Emerson and all that sort of thing. But what is
criticism.? Criticism is purely destructive; anyone can destroy,
but not everyone can build up. You are a pedant, my dear
fellow. The important thing is to construct: I am constructive;
I am a poet."

Weeks looked at him with eyes which seemed at the same
time to be quite grave and yet to be smiling brightly.

"I think, if you don't mind my saying so, you're a little
drunk."

"Nothing to speak of," answered Hayward cheerfully. "And
not enough for me to be unable to overwhelm you in argu-
ment. But come, I have unbosomed my soul; now tell us what
your religion is."

Weeks put his head on one side so that he looked like a
sparrow on a perch.

"I've been trying to find that out for years. I think I'm a
Unitarian."

"But that's a dissenter," said PhiHp.

134 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

He could not imagine why they both burst into laughter.
Hayward uproariously, and Weeks with a funny chuckle.

"And in England dissenters aren't gentlemen, are they?"
asked Weeks.

"Well, if you ask me point-blank, they're not," replied PhiUp
rather crossly.

He hated being laughed at, and they laughed again.

"And will you tell me what a gentleman is?" asked Weeks.

"Oh, I don't know; everyone knows what it is."

"Are you a gentleman?"

No doubt had ever crossed Philip's mind on the subject,
but he knew it was not a thing to state of oneself.

"If a man tells you he's a gentleman you can bet your boots
he isn't," he retorted.

"Am I a gentleman?"

Philip's truthfulness made it difficult for him to answer, but
he was naturally polite.

"Oh, well, you're different," he said. "You're American,
aren't you?"

"I suppose we may take it that only Englishmen are gentle-
men," said Weeks gravely.

Philip did not contradict him.

"Couldn't you give me a few more particulars?" asked
Weeks.

Phihp reddened, but, growing angry, did not care if he
made himself ridiculous.

"I can give you plenty." He remembered his uncle's saying
that it took three generations to make a gentleman: it was a
companion proverb to the silk purse and the sow's ear. "First
of all he's the son of a gentleman, and he's been to a pubhc
school, and to Oxford or Cambridge."

"Edinburgh wouldn't do, I suppose?" asked Weeks.

"And he talks English like a gentleman, and he wears the
right sort of things, and if he's a gentleman he can always tell
if another chap's a gentleman."

It seemed rather lame to Philip as he went on, but there it

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 135

was: that was what he meant by the word, and everyone he
had ever known had meant that too.

"It is evident to me that I am not a gentleman," said Weeks.
"I don't see why you should have been so surprised because I
was a dissenter."

"I don't quite know what a Unitarian is," said Philip.

Weeks in his odd way again put his head on one side: you
almost expected him to twitter.

"A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves in almost everything
that anybody else believes, and he has a very lively sustaining
faith in he doesn't quite know what."

"I don't see why you should make fun of me," said Philip.
"I really want to know."

"My dear friend, I'm not making fun of you. I have arrived
at that definition after years of great labour and the most
anxious, nerve-racking study."

When Philip and Hayward got up to go. Weeks handed
Philip a little book in a paper cover.

"I suppose you can read French pretty well by now. I
wonder if this would amuse you."

Philip thanked him and, taking the book, looked at the title.
It was Renan's Vie de Jesus.

Chapter 28

It occurred neither to Hayward nor to Weeks that the con-
versations which helped them to pass an idle evening were
being turned over afterwards in Philip's active brain. jL-had
never struckjiimbeforfijjiat-ixhgion was a matt£j:aipQn_whkh
discission was possible. To him it meant the Church of
England, and not to believe in its tenets was a sign of wilful-

136 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

ness which could not fail of punishment here or hereafter.
There was some doubt in his mind about the chastisement of
unbelievers. It was possible that a merciful judge, reserving
the flames of hell for the heathen — Mahommedans, Buddhists,
and the rest — would spare Dissenters and Roman Catholics
(though at the cost of how much humiliation when they were
made to realise their error!), and it was also possible that He
would be pitiful to those who had had no chance of learning
the truth, — this was reasonable enough, though such wpre the
activities of the Missionary Society there could not be many
in this condition — but if the chance had been theirs and they
had neglected it (in which category were obviously Roman
Catholics and Dissenters), the punishment was sure and
merited. It was clear that the miscreant was in a parlous state.
Perhaps Philip had not been taught it in so many words,
but cert-ainly the impression had been given him that only
members of the Church of England had any real hope of
eternal happiness.

One of the things that Philip had heard definitely stated
was that the unbeliever was a wicked and a vicious man; but
Weeks, though he believed in hardly anything that Philip
believed, led a life of Christian purity. Philip had received
little kindness in his life, and he was touched by the Ameri-
can's desire to help him: once when a cold kept him in bed
for three days. Weeks nursed him like a mother. There was
neither vice nor wickedness in him, but only sincerity and
loving-kindness. It was evidently possible to be virtuous and
unbelieving.

Also Philip had been given to understand that people ad-
hered to other faiths only from obstinacy or self-interest: in
their hearts they knew they were false; they deliberately
sought to deceive others. Now, for the sake of his German
he had been accustomed on Sunday mornings to attend the
Lutheran service, but when Hayward arrived he began in-
stead to go with him to Mass. He noticed that, whereas the
protestant church was nearly empty and the congregation had

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 137

a listless air, the Jesuit on the other hand was crowded and the
worshippers seemed to pray with all their hearts. They had not
the look of hypocrites. He was surprised at the contrast; for
he knew of course that the Lutherans, whose faith was closer
to that of the Church of England, on that account were nearer
the truth than the Roman Catholics. Most of the men — it was
largely a masculine congregation — were South Germans; and
he could not help saying to himself that if he had been born
in South Germany he would certainly have been a Roman
Catholic. He might just as well have been born in a Roman
Catholic country as in England; and in England as well in
a Wesleyan, Baptist, or Methodist family as in one that fortu-
nately belonged to the church by law established. He was a
little breathless at the danger he had run. Philip was on
friendly terms with the little Chinaman who sat at table with
him twice each day. His name was Sung. He was always smil-
ing, affable, and polite. It seemed strange that he should
frizzle in hell merely because Ije was a Chinaman; but if sal-
vation was possible whatever a man's faith was, there did not
seem to be any particular advantage in belonging to the
Church of England.

Philip, more puzzled than he had ever been in his life,
sounded Weeks. He had to be careful, for he was very sensi-
tive to ridicule; and the acidulous humour with which the
American treated the Church of England disconcerted him.
Weeks only puzzled him more. He made Philip acknowledge
that those South Germans whom he saw in the Jesuit church
were every bit as firmly convinced of the truth of Roman
Catholicism as he was of that of the Church of England, and
from that he led him to admit that the Mahommedan and the
Buddhist were convinced also of the truth of their respective
religions. It looked as though knowing that you were right
meant nothing; they all knew they were right. Weeks had no
intention of uiidermining the boy's faith, but he was deeply
interested in religion, and found it an absorbing topic of con-
versation. He had described his own views accurately when

138 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

he said that he very earnestly disbcHeved in almost everything
that other people believed. Once Phihp asked him a question,
which he had heard his uncle put when the conversation at
the vicarage had fallen upon some mildly rationalistic work
which was then exciting discussion in the newspapers.

"But why should you be right and all those fellows like St.
Anselm and St. Augustine be wrong?"

"You mean that they were very clever and learned men,
while you have grave doubts whether I am either?" asked
Weeks.

, "Yes," answered Philip uncertainly, for put in that way his
question seemed impertinent.

"St. Augustine believed that the earth was flat and that the
sun turned round it."

"I don't know what that proves."

"Why, it proves that you believe with your generation. Your
saints lived in an age of faith, when it was practically im-
possible to disbelieve what to us is positively incredible."

"Then how d'you know that we have the truth now?"

"I don't."

Philip thought this over for a moment, then he said :

"I don't see why the things we believe absolutely now
shouldn't be just as wrong as what they believed in the past."

"Neither do I."

"Then how can you believe anything at all?"

"I don't know."

Philip asked Weeks what he thought of Hayward's religion.

"Men have always formed gods in their own image," said
Weeks. "He believes in the picturesque."

Philip paused for a little while, then he said :

"I don't see why one should believe in God at all."
i The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he realised
that he had ceased to do so. It took his breath away like a
plunge into cold water. He looked at Weeks with startled
eyes. Suddenly he felt afraid. He left Weeks as quickly as he
could. He wanted to be alone. It was the most startling experi-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 139

ence that he had ever had. He tried to think it all out; it was
very exciting, since his whole life seemed concerned (he
thought his decision on this matter must profoundly affect
its course) and a mistake might lead to eternal damnation;
but the more he reflected the more convinced he was; and
though during the next few weeks he read books, aids to
scepticism, with eager interest it was only to confirm him in
what he felt instinctively. The fact was that he had ceased to
believe not for this reason or the other, but because he had
not the religious temperament. Faith had been forced upon
him from the outside. It was a matter of environment and
example. A new environment and ^ new example gave him
the opportunity to find himself. He put off the faith of his
childhood quite simply, like a cloak that he no longer needed.
At first life seemed strange and lonely without the belief
which, though he never realised it, had been an unfailing sup-
port. He felt like a man who has leaned on a stick and finds
himself forced suddenly to walk without assistance. It really
seemed as though the days were colder and the nights more
solitary. But he was upheld by the excitement; it seemed to
make life a more thrilling adventure; and in a little while the
stick which he had thrown aside, the cloak which had fallen
from his shoulders, seemed an intolerable burden of which he
had been eased. The religious exercises which for so many
years had been forced upon him were part and parcel of
religion to him. He thought of the collects and epistles which
he had been made to learn by heart, and the long services at
the Cathedral through which he had sat when every limb
itched with the desire for movement; and he remembered
those walks at night through muddy roads to the parish
church at Blackstable, and the coldness of that bleak building;
he sat with his feet like ice, his fingers numb and heavy, and
all around was the sickly odour of pomatum. Oh, he had been
so bored! His hesrt leaped when he saw he was free from all

that. ^ , ^ 1 i-

He was sm prised at himself because he ceased to beheve so

140 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

easily, and, not knowing that he felt as he did on account of
the subtle workings of his inmost nature, he ascribed the
certainty he had reached to his own cleverness. He was un-
duly pleased with himself. With youth's lack of sympathy for
an attitude other than its own he despised not a little Weeks
and Hayward because they were content with the vague
emotion which they called God and would not take the
further step which to himself seemed so obvious. One day he
went alone up a certain hill so that he might see a view which,
he knew not why, filled him always with wild exhilaration. It
was autumn now, but often the days were cloudless still, and
then the sky seemed to glow with a more splendid light: it
was as though nature consciously sought to put a fuller vehe-
mence into the remaining days of fair weather. He looked
down upon the plain, a-quiver with the sun, stretching vastly
before him: in the distance were the roofs of Mannheim and
ever so far away the dimness of Worms. Here and there a
more piercing glitter was the Rhine. The tremendous spacious-
ness of it was glowing with rich gold. Philip, as he stood there,
his heart beating with sheer joy, thought how the tempter had
stood with Jesus on a high mountain and shown him the king-
doms of the earth. To Philip, intoxicated with the beauty of
the scene, it seemed that it was the whole world which was
spread before himy and he was eager to step down and enjoy
it. He was free from degrading fears and free from prejudice.
He could go his way without the intolerable dread of hell-fire.
Suddenly he reahsed that he had lost also that burden of re-
sponsibiHty which made every action of his life a matter of
urgent consequence. He could breathe more freely in a lighter
air. He was responsible only to himself for the things he did.
Freedom! He was his own master at last. From old habit, un-
consciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in
.,Him.

Drunk with pride in his intelligence and in his fearlessness,
Philip entered deliberately upon a new life. But his loss of
faith made less difference in his behaviour than he expected.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 141

Though he had thrown on one side the Christian dogmas it
never occurred to him to criticise the Christian ethics; he ac^
cepted the Christian virtues, and indeed thought it fine to
practise them for their own sake, without a thought of reward
or punishment. There was small occasion for heroism in the
Frau Professor's house, but he was a httle more exactly truth-
ful than he had been, and he forced himself to be more than
commonly attentive to- the dull, elderly ladies who sometimes
engaged him in conversation. The gentle oath, the violent
adjective, which are typical of our language and which he had
cultivated before as a sign of manHness, he now elaborately
eschewed.

Having settled the- whole matter to his satisfaction he sought
to put it out of his mind, but that was more easily said than
done; and he could not prevent the regrets nor stifle the mis-
givings which sometimes tormented him. He was so young
and had so few friends that immortality had no particular
attractions for him, and he was able without trouble to give
up belief in it; but there was one thing which made him
wretched; he told himself that he was unreasonable, he tried
to laugh himself out of such pathos; but the tears really came
to his eyes when he thought that he would never see again the
beautiful mother whose love for him had grown more precious
as the years since her death passed on. And sometimes, as
though the influence of innumerable ancestors. God-fearing
and devout, were working in him unconsciously, there seized
him a panic fear that perhaps after all it was all true, and there
was, up there behind the blue sky, a jealous God who would
punish in everlasting flames the atheist. At these times his
reason could offer him no help, he imagined the anguish of
a physical torment which would last endlessly, he felt quite
sick with fear and burst into a violent sweat. At last he would
say to himself desperately :

"After all, it's not my fault. I can't force myself to beHeve.
If there is a God after all and he punishes me because I
honestly don't beheve in Him I can't help it."

142 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 29

Winter set in. Weeks went to Berlin to- attend the lectures of
Paulssen, and Hayward began to think of going South. The
local theatre opened its doors. Philip and Hayward went to
it two or three times a week with the praiseworthy intention
of improving their German, and Philip found it a more divert-
ing manner of perfecting himself in the language than listen-
ing to sermons. They found themselves in the midst of a
revival of the drama. Several of Ibsen's plays were on the reper-
tory for the winter; Sudermann's Die Ehre was then a new
play, and on its production in the quiet university town caused
the greatest excitement; it was extravagantly praised and
bitterly attacked; other dramatists followed with plays written
tinder the modern influence, and Philip witnessed a series of
works in which the vileness of mankind was displayed before
him. He had never been to a play in his life till then (poor
touring companies sometimes came to the Assembly Rooms at
Blackstablc, but the Vicar, partly on account of his profession,
partly because he thought it would be vulgar, never went to
see them) and the passion of the stage seized him. He felt a
thrill the moment he got into the little, shabby, ill-lit theatre.
Soon he came to know the pecuHarities of the small company,
and by the casting could tell at once what were the character-
istics of the persons in the drama; but this made no difference
to him. To him it was real life. It was a strange life, dark and
tortured, in which men and women showed to remorseless
eyes the evil that was in their hearts: a fair face concealed a
depraved mind; the virtuous used virtue as a mask to hide
their secret vice, the seeming-strong fainted within with their

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 143

weakness; the honest were corrupt, the chaste were lewd. You
seemed-to dwell in a room wh re the night before an orgy had
taken place: the windows had not been opened in the morn-
ing; the air was foul with the dregs of beer, and stale smoke,
and flaring gas. There was no laughter. At most you sniggered
at the hypocrite or the fool: the characters expressed them-
selves in cruel words that seemed wrung out of their hearts by
shame and anguish.

Phihp was carried away by the sordid intensity of it. He
seemed to see the world again in another fashion, and this
world too he was anxious to know. After the play was over
he went to a tavern and sat in the bright warmth with Hay-
ward to eat a sandwich and drink a glass of beer. All round
were little groups of students, talking and laughing; and here
and there was a family, father and mother, a couple of sons
and a girl; and sometimes the girl said a sharp thing, and the
father leaned back in his chair and laughed, laughed heartily,
It was very friendly and innocent. There was a pleasant
homeliness in the scene, but for this Philip had no eyes. His
thoughts' ran on the play he had just come from.

"You do feel it's life, don't you?" he said excitedly. "You
know, I don't think I can stay here much longer. I want to
get to London so that I can really begin. I want to have experi-
ences. I'm so tired of preparing for life: I want to live it now."

Sometimes Hayward left Phihp to go home by himself. He
would never exactly reply to PhiUp's eager questioning, but
with a merry, rather stupid laugh, hinted at a romantic amour;
he quoted a few Hues of Rossetti, and once showed Philip a
sonnet in which passion and purple, pessimism and pathos,
were packed together on the subject of a young lady called
Trudc. Hayward surrounded his sordid and vulgar Httle ad-
ventures with a glow of poetry, and thought he touched hands
with Pericles and Pheidias because to describe the object of his
attentions he used the word hetaira instead of one of those,
more blunt and apt, provided by the English language. Philip
in the daytime had been led by curiosity to pass through the

144 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

little street near the old bridge, with its neat white houses and
green shutters, in which according to Hayward the Fraulein
Trude lived; but the women, with brutal faces and painted
cheeks, who came out of their doors and cried out to him,
filled him with fear; and he fled in horror from the rough
hands that sought to detain him. He yearned above all things
for experience and felt himself ridiculous because at his age
he had not enjoyed that which all fiction taught him was the
most important thing in life; but he had the unfortunate gift
of seeing things as they were, and the reality which was
offered him differed too terribly from the ideal of his dreams.
He did not know how wide a country, arid and precipitous,
must be crossed before the traveller tiirough life comes to an
acceptance of reality. It is an illusion that youth is happy, an
illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they
are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which
have been instilled into them, and each time they come in
contact with the real they are bruised and wounded. It looks as
if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read,
ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their
elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of
forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must dis-
cover for themselves that all they have read and all they have
been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail
driven into the body on the cross of life. The strange thing is
that each one who has gone through that bitter disillusion-
ment adds to it in his turn, unconsciously, by the power within
him which is stronger than himself. The companionship of
Hayward was the worst possible thing for Philip. He was a
man who saw nothing for himself, but only through a literary
atmosphere, and he was dangerous because he had deceived
himself into sincerity. He honestly mistook his sensuality for
romantic emotion, his vacillation for the artistic temperament,
and his idleness for philosophic calm. His mind, vulgar in its
eflort at refinement, saw everything a little larger than life
size, with the outlines blurred, in a golden mist of senti-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 145

mentality. He lied and never knew that he Hed, and when it
was pointed out to him said that lies were beautiful. He was
an idealist.

Chapter 30

Philip was restless and dissatisfied. Hayward's poetic allusions
troubled his imagination, and his soul yearned for romance.
At least that was how he put it to himself.

And it happened that an incident was taking place in Frau
Erlin's house which increased Philip's preoccupation with the
matter of sex. Two or three times on his walks among the hills
he had met Fraulein Ciicilie wandering by herself. He had
passed her with a bow, and a few yards further on had seen
the Chinaman. He thought nothing of it; but one evening on
his way home, when night had already fallen, he passed two
people walking very close together. Hearing his footstep, they
separated quickly, and though he could not see well in the
darkness he was almost certain they were Cacilie and Herr
Sung. Their rapid movement apart suggested that they had
been walking arm in arm. Philip was puzzled and surprised.
He had never paid much attention to Fraulein Cacilie. She
was a plain girl, with a square face and blunt features. She
could not have been more than sixteen, since she still wore
her long fair hair in a plait. That evening at supper he looked
at her curiously; and, though of late she had talked little at
meals, she addressed him.

"Where did you go for your walk today, Herr Carey.'"' she
asked.

"Oh, I walked up towards the Konigstuhl."

"I didn't go out," she volunteered. "I had a headache."

146 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

The Chinaman, who sat next to her, turned round.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "I hope it's better now."

Friiulein CaciUe was evidently uneasy, for she spoke again
to PhiHp.

"Did you meet many people on the way.''"

Philip could not help reddening when he told a downright
lie.

"No. I don't think I saw a living soul."

He fancied that a look of relief passed across her eyes.

Soon, however, there could be no doubt that there was
something between the pair, and other people in the Frau
Professor's house saw them lurking in dark places. The elderly
ladies who sat at the head of the table began to discuss what
was now a scandal. The Frau Professor was angry and
harassed. She had done her best to see nothing. The winter
was at hand, and it was not as easy a matter then as in the
summer to keep her house full. Herr Sung was a good
customer: he had two rooms on the ground floor, and he
drank a bottle of Moselle at each meal. The Frau Professor
charged him three marks a bottle and made a good profit.
None of her other guests drank wine, and some of them did
not even drink beer. Neither did she wish to lose Fraulein
Cacilie, whose parents were in business in South America and
paid well for the Frau Professor's motherly care; and she
knew that if she wrote to the girl's uncle, who lived in Berlin,
he would immediately take her away. The Frau Professor con-
tented herself with giving them both severe looks at table and,
though she dared not be rude to the Chinaman, got a certain
satisfaction out of incivihty to Cacilie. But the three elderly
ladies were not content. Two were widows, and one, a Dutch-
woman, was a spinster of mascuHne appearance; they paid the
smallest possible sum for their pension, and gave a good deal
of trouble, but they were permanent and therefore had to be
put up with. They went to the Frau Professor and said that
something must be done; it was disgraceful, and the house
was ceasing to be respectable. The Frau Professor tried obsti-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 147

nacy, anger, tears, but the three old ladies routed her, and
with a sudden assumption of virtuous indignation she said
that she would put a stop to the whole thing.

After luncheon she took Cacihe into her bed-room and
began to talk very seriously to her; but to her amazement the
girl adopted a brazen attitude; she proposed to go about as
she hked; and if she chose to walk with the Chinaman she
could not see it was anybody's business but her own. The Frau
Professor threatened to write to her uncle.

"Then Onkel Heinrich will put me in a family in Berlin for
the winter, and that will be much nicer for me. And Herr
Sung will come to Berlin too."

The Frau Professor began to cry. The tears rolled down her
coarse, red, fat cheeks; and Cacilie laughed at her.

"That will mean three rooms empty all through the winter,"
she said.

Then the Frau Professor tried another plan. She appealed to
Fraulein Ciicilie's better nature: she was kind, sensible, toler-
ant; she treated her no longer as a child, but as a grown
woman. She said that it wouldn't be so dreadful, but a China-
man, with his yellow skin and flat nose, and his little pig's
eyes! That's what made it so horrible. It filled one with dis-
gust to think of it.

"Bine, bitte," said Cacilie, with a rapid intake of the breath.
"I won't listen to anything against him."

"But it's not serious?" gasped Frau Erlin.

"I love him. I love him. I love him."

"Gott in Himmel!"

The Frau Professor stared at her with horrified surprise; she
had thought it was no more than naughtiness on the child's
part, and innocent folly; but the passion in her voice revealed
everything. Cacilie looked at her for a moment with flaming
eyes, and then with a shrug of her shoulders went out of the

room.

Frau Erlin kept the details of the interview to herself, and
a day or two later altered the arrangement of the table. She

148 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

asked Herr Sung if he would not come and sit at her end, and
he with his unfaiUng politeness accepted with alacrity. Cacilie
took the change indifferently. But as if the discovery that the
relations between them were known to the whole household
made them more shameless, they made no secret now of their
walks together, and every afternoon quite openly set out to
wander about the hills. It was plain that they did not care
what was said of them. At last even the placidity of Professor
Erlin was moved, and he insisted that his wife should speak
to the Chinaman. She took him aside in his turn and expostu-
lated; he was ruining the girl's reputation, he was doing harm
to the house, he must see how wrong and wicked his conduct
was; but she was met with smiling denials; Herr Sung did
not know what she was talking about, he was not paying any
attention to Fraulein Cacihe, he never walked with her; it was
all untrue, every word of it.

"Ach, Herr Sung, how can you say such things? You've
been seen again and again."

"No, you're mistaken. It's untrue."

He looked at her with an unceasing smile, which showed
his even, little white teeth. He was quite calm. He denied
everything. He denied with bland effrontery. At last the Frau
Professor lost her temper and said the girl had confessed she
loved him. He was not moved. He continued to smile.

"Nonsense! Nonsense! It's all untrue."

She could get nothing out of him. The weather grew very
bad; there was snow and frost, and then a thaw with a long
succession of cheerless days, on which walking was a poor
amusement. One evening when Philip had just finished his
German lesson with the Herr Professor and was standing for
a moment in the drawing-room, talking to Frau Erlin, Anna
came quickly in.

"Mamma, "where is Cacilie?" she said.

"I suppose she's in her room."

"There's no light in it."

The Frau Professor gave an exclamation, and she looked at

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 149

her daughter in dismay. The thought which was in Anna's
head had flashed across hers.

"Ring for Emil," she said hoarsely.

This was the stupid lout who waited at table and did most
of the housework. He came in.

"Emil, go down to Herr Sung's room and enter without
knocking. If anyone is there say you came in to see about the
stove."

No sign of astonishment appeared on Emil's phlegmatic
face.

He went slowly downstairs. The Frau Professor and Anna
left the door open and listened. Presently they heard Emil
come up again, and they called him.

"Was any one there?" asked the Frau Professor.

'Yes, Herr Sung was there."

"Was he alone.?"

The beginning of a cunning smile narrowed his mouth.

"No, Fraulein Cacilie was there."

"Oh, it's disgraceful," cried the Frau Professor.

Now he smiled broadly.

"Fraulein Cacilie is there every evening. She spends hours at
a time there."

Frau Professor began to wring her hands.

"Oh, how abominable! But why didn't you tell me?"

"It was no business of mine," he answered, slowly shrugging
his shoulders.

"I suppose they paid you well. Go away. Go."

He lurched clumsily to the door.

"They must go away, mamma," said Anna.

"And who is going to pay the rent? And the taxes are fall-
ing due. It's all very well for you to say they must go away. If
they go away I can't pay the bills." She turned to Philip, with
tears streaming down her face. "Ach, Herr Carey, you will not
say what you have heard. If Fraulein Forster— " this was the
Dutch spinster— "if Fraulein Forster knew she would leave at

150 OF HUMANBONDAGE

once. And if they all go wc must close the house. I cannot
afford to keep it."

"Of course I won't say anything."

"If she stays, I will not speak to her," said Anna. '

That evening at supper Fraulein Cacilie, redder than usual,
with a look of obstinacy on her face, took her place punctu-
ally; but Herr Sung did not appear, and for a while Philip
thought he was going to shirk the ordeal. At last he came,
Very smiling, his little eyes dancing with the apologies he
made for his late arrival. He insisted as usual on pouring out
the Frau Professor a glass of his Moselle, and he offered a glass
to Fraulein Forster. The room was very hot, for the stove had
been alight all day and the windows were seldom opened.
Emil blundered about, but succeeded somehow in serving
everyone quickly and with order. The three old ladies sat in
silence, visibly disapproving: the Frau Professor had scarcely
recovered from her tears; her husband was silent and op-
pressed. Conversation languished. It seemed to Philip that
there was something dreadful in that gathering which he had
sat with so often; they looked different under the light of the
two hanging lamps from what they had ever "looked before;
he was vaguely uneasy. Once he caught Cacilie's eye, and he
thought she looked at him with hatred and contempt. The
room was stifling. It was as though the beastly passion of that
pair troubled them all; there was a feeling of Oriental de-
pravity; a faint savour of joss-sticks, a mystery of hidden vices,
seemed to make their breath heavy. Philip could feel the beat-
ing of the arteries in his forehead. He could not understand
what strange emotion distracted him; he seemed to feel some-
thing infinitely attractive, and yet he was repelled and horri-
Hed.

For several days things went on. The air was sickly with
the unnatural passion which all felt about them, and the
nerves of the Uttle household seemed to grow exasperated.
Only Herr Sung remained unaffected; he was no less smiling,
affable, and polite than he had been before: one could not tell

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 151

whether his manner was a triumph of civiHsation or an ex-
pression o£ contempt on the part of the Oriental for the
vanquished West. Cacilie was flaunting and cynical. At last
even the Frau Professor could bear the position no longer.
Suddenly panic seized her; for Professor Erlin with brutal
frankness had suggested the possible consequences of an in-
trigue which was now manifest to everyone, and she saw her
good name in Heidelberg and the repute of her house ruined
by a scandal which could not possibly be hidden. For some
reason, blinded perhaps by her interests, this possibility had
never occurred to her; and now, her wits muddled by a terri-
ble fear, she could hardly be prevented from turning the girl
out of the house at once. It was due to Anna's good sense that
a cautious letter was written to the uncle in Berlin suggesting
that Cacilie should be taken away.

But having made up her mind to lose the two lodgers, the
Frau Professor could not resist the satisfaction of giving rein
to the ill-temper she had curbed so long. She was free now to
say anything she liked to Cacilie.

"I have written to your uncle, Cacilie, to take you away. I
cannot have you in my house any longer.''

Her little round eyes sparkled when she noticed the sudden
whiteness of the girl's face.

"You're shameless. Shameless," she went on.

She called her foul names.

"What did you say to my uncle Heinrich, Frau Professor?"
the girl asked, suddenly falling from her attitude of flaunting
independence.

"Oh, he'll tell you himself. I expect to get a letter from him
tomorrow."

Next day, in order to make the humiUation more public, at
supper she called down the table to Cacilie.

"I have had a letter from your uncle, Cacilie. You are to
pack your things tonight, and we will put you in the train
tomorrow morning. He will meet you himself in Berlin at the
Central Bahnhof."

152 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Very good, Frau Professor."

Herr Sung smiled in the Frau Professor's eyes, and notwith-
standing her protests insisted on pouring out a glass of wine
for her. The Frau Professor ate her supper with a good appe-
tite. But she had triumphed unwisely. Just before going to bed
she called the servant.

"Emil, if Fraulein Cacilie's box is ready you had better take
it downstairs tonight. The porter will fetch it before breakfast."

The servant went away and in a moment came back.

"Fraulein Cacilie is not in her room, and her bag has gone."

With a cry the -Frau Professor hurried along: the box was
on the floor, strapped and locked; but there was no bag, and
neither hat nor cloak. The dressing-table was empty. Breath-
ing heavily, the Frau Professor ran downstairs to the China-
man's rooms, she had not moved so quickly for twenty years,
and Emil called out after her to beware she did not fall; she
did not trouble to knock, but burst in. The rooms were empty.
The luggage had gone, and the door into the garden, still
open, showed how it had been got away. In an envelope on
the table were notes for the money due on the month's board
and an approximate sum for extras. Groaning, siiddenly over-
come by her haste, the Frau Professor sank obesely on to a
sofa. There could be no doubt. The pair had gone off together.
Emil remained stolid and unmoved.

Chapter 31

Hayward, after saying for a month that he was going South
next day and delaying from week to week out of inability to
make up his mind to the bother of packing and the tedium
of a journey, had at last been driven off just before Christmas

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 153

by the preparations for that festival. He could not support the
thought of a Teutonic merry-making. It gave him goose-flesh
to think of the season's aggressive cheerfulness, and in his
desire to avoid the obvious he determined to travel on
Christmas Eve.

Philip was not sorry to see him off, for he w^as a downright
person and it irritated him that anybody should not know
his own mind. Though much under Hayward's influence,
he would not grant that indecision pointed to a charming
sensitiveness; and he resented the shadow of a sneer with
which Hayward looked upon his straight ways. They corre-
sponded. Hayward was an admirable letter-writer, and know-
ing his talent took pains with his letters. His temperament
was receptive to the beautiful influences with which he came
in contact, and he was able in his letters from Rome to put
a subtle fragrance of Italy. He thought the city of the ancient
Romans a little vulgar, finding distinction only in the deca-
dence of the Empire; but the Rome of the Popes appealed
to his sympathy, and in his chosen words, quite exquisitely,
there appeared a Rococo beauty. He wrote of old church
music and the Alban Hills, and of the languor of incense
and the charm of the streets by night, in the rain, when the
pavements shone and the light of the street lamps was mys-
terious. Perhaps he repeated these admirable letters to various
friends. He did not know what a troubling effect they had
upon Philip; they seemed to make his life very humdrum.
With the spring Hayward grew dithyrambic. He proposed
that Philip should come down to Italy. He was wasting his
time at Heidelberg. The Germans were gross and life there
was common; how could the soul come to her own in that
prim landscape } In Tuscany the spring was scattering flowers
through the land, and Philip was nineteen; let him come and
they could wander through the mountain towns of Umbria.
Their names sang in Philip's heart. And Cacilie too, with
her lover, had gone to Italy. When he thought of them Philip
was seized with a restlessness he could not account for. He

154 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

cursed his fate because he had no money to travel, and he
knew his uncle would not send him more than the fifteen
pounds a month which had been agreed upon. He had iiot
managed his allowance very well. His pension and the price
of his lessons left him very little over, and he had found going
about with Hayward expensive. Hayward had often suggested
excursions, a visit to the play, or a bottle of wine, when Philip
had come to the end of his month's money; and with the folly
of his age he had been unwilling to confess he could not
afford an extravagance.

Luckily Hayward's letters came seldom, and in the intervals
PhiUp settled down again to his industrious life. He had
matriculated at the university and attended one or two courses
of lectures. Kuno Fischer was then at the height of his fame
and during the winter had been lecturing brilliantly on
Schopenhauer. It was Philip's introduction to philosophy. He
had a practical mind and moved uneasily amid the abstract;
but he found an unexpected fascination in listening to meta-
physical disquisitions; .they made him breathless; it was a
little like watching a tight-rope dancer doing perilous feats
over an abyss; but it was very exciting. The pessimism of the
subject attracted his youth; and he believed that the world
he was about to enter was a place of pitiless woe and of
darkness. That made him none the less eager to enter it; and
when, in due course, Mrs. Carey, acting as the correspondent
for his guardian's views, suggested that it was time for him to
come back to England, he agreed with enthusiasm. He must
make up his mind now what he meant to do. If he left Heidel-
berg at the end of July they could talk things over during
August, and it would be a good time to make arrangements.

The date of his departure was settled, and Mrs. Carey
wrote to him again. She reminded him of Miss Wilkinson,
through whose kindness he had gone to Frau Erlin's house
at Heidelberg, and told him that she had arranged to spend
a few weeks with them at Blackstable. She would be crossing
horn Flushing on such and such a day, and if he travelled at

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 155

the same time he could look after her and come on to Black'
stable m her company. Philip's shyness immediately made him
write to say that he could not leave till a day or two after-
wards. He pictured himself looking out for Miss Wilkinson,
the embarrassment of going up to her and asking if it were
she (and he might so easily address the wrong person and
be snubbed), and then the difficulty of knowing whether in
the train he ought to talk to her or whether he could ignore
her and read his book.

At last he left Heidelberg. For three months he had been y'
thinking of nothing but the future; and he went without''^"
regret. He never knew that he had been happy there. Fraulein
Anna gave him a copy of Der Trompeter von Sackjngen and
in return he presented her with a volume of William Moivis.
Very wisely neither of them ever read the other's present.

Chapter 32

Philip was surprised when he saw his uncle and aunt. He
had never noticed before that they were quite old people.
The Vicar received him with his usual, not unamiablc indif-
ference. He was a little stouter, a little balder, a little grayer.
Philip saw how insignificant he was. His face was weak and
self-indulgent. Aunt Louisa took him in her arms and kissed
him; and tears of happiness flowed down her cheeks. Philip
was touched and embarrassed; he had not known with what
a hungry love she cared for him.

"Oh, the time has seemed long since you've been away,
Philip," she cried.

She stroked his hands and looked into his face with
glad eyes.

156 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"You've grown. You're quite a man now."

There was a very small moustache on his upper lip. He
had bought a razor and now and then with infinite care
shaved the down o£F his smooth chin.

"We've been so lonely without you." And then shyly, with
a little break in her voice, she asked: "You are glad to cbme
back to your home, aren't you?"

"Yes, rather."

She was so thin that she seemed almost transparent, the
arms she put round his neck were frail bones jUat reminded
you of chicken bones, and her faded face was oh! so wrinkled.
The gray curls which she still wore in ftie fashion of her
youth gave her a queer, pathetic look; and her little withered
body was like an autumn leaf, you felt it might be -blown
away by the first sharp wind. Philip realised that they had
done with life, these two quiet little^eople : they belonged
to a past generation, and they v^re waiting there patiently,
rather stupidly, for death; atfd he, in his vigour and his
youth, thirsting for excitement and adventure, was appalled
at the waste. They had done nothing, and when they went
it would be just as if they had never been. He felt a great
pity for Aunt Louisa, and he loved her suddenly because
she loved him. ij

Then Miss Wilkinson, who had kept discreetly out of the
way till the Careys had had a chance of welcoming their
nephew, came into the room.

"This is Miss Wilkinson, Philip," said Mrs. Carey.
,"The prodigal has returned," she said, holding out her
hand. "I have brought a rose for the prodigal's buttonhole."

With a gay smile she pinned to Philip's coat the flower she
had just picked in the garden. He blushed and felt foolish.
He knew that Miss Wilkinson was the daughter of his
Uncle William's last rector, and he had a wide acquaintance
with the daughters of clergymen^ They wore ill-cut clothes
and stout boots. They were generally^ dressed in black, for
in Philip's early years at Blackstable home-spuns had not

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 157

reached East Anglia, and the ladies of the clergy did not
favour colours. Their hair was done very untidily, and they
smelt aggressively of starched linen. They considered the
feminine graces unbecoming and looked the same vvhether
they were old or young. They bore their religion arrogantly.
The closeness of their connection with the church made them
adopt a sUghtly dictatorial attitude to the rest of mankind.

Miss Wilkinson was very different. She wore a white muslin
gown stamped with gray little bunches of flowers, and pointed,
high-heeled shoes, with open-work stockings. To Philip's
inexperience it seemed that she was wonderfully dressed; he
did not see that her frock was cheap and showy. Her hair
was elaborately dressed, with a neat curl in the middle of the
forehead: it was very black, shiny and hard, and it looked as
though it could never be in the least disarranged. She had
large black eyes and her nose was slightly aquiline; in profile
she had somewhat the look of a bird of prey, but full face she
was prepossessing. She smiled a great deal, but her mouth
was large and when she smiled she tried to hide her teeth,
which were big and rather yellow. But what embarrassed
Philip most was that she was heavily powdered: he had very
strict views on feminine behaviour and did not think a lady
ever powdered; but of course Miss Wilkinson was a lady
because she was a clergyman's daughter, and a clergyman
was a gentleman.

Philip made up his mind to dislike her thoroughly. She
spoke with a slight French accent; and he did not know
why she should, since she had been born and bred in the
heart of England. He thought her smile affected, and the coy
sprighthness of her manner irritated him. For two or three
days he remained silent and hostile, but Miss Wilkinson
apparently did not notice it. She was very affable. She
addressed her conversation almost exclusively to him, and
there was something flattering in the way she appealed con-
stantly to his sane judgment. She made him laugh too, and
Philip could never resist people who amused him: he had

158 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

a gift now and then of saying neat things; and it was pleasant
to have an appreciative listener. Neither the Vicar nor Mrs.
Carey had a sense of humour, and they never laughed at any-
thing he said. As he grew used to Miss Wilkinson, and his
shyness left him, he began to like her better; he found the
French accent picturesque; and at a garden party which the
doctor gave she was very much better dressed than anyone
else. She wore a blue foulard with large white spots, and
Philip was tickled at the sensation it caused.

"I'm certain they think you're no better than you should
be," he told her, laughing. '

"It's the dream of my life to be taken for an abandoned
hussy," she answered.

One day when Miss Wilkinson was in her room he asked
Aunt Louisa how old she was. "

"Oh, my dear, you should never ask a lady's age; but she's
certainly too old for you to marry."

The Vicar gave his slow, obese smile.

"She's no chicken, Louisa," he said. "She was nearly grown
up wheft we were in Lincolnshire, and that was twenty years
ago. She wore a pigtail hanging down her back."

"She may not have been more than ten," said Philip.

"She was older than that," said Aunt Louisa.

"I think she was nearer twenty," said, the Vicar.

"Oh no, William. Sixteen or seventeen at the outside."

"That would make her well over thirty," said Philip.

At that moment Miss Wilkinson tripped downstairs, sing-
ing a song by Benjamin Goddard. She had put her hat on,
for she and Philip were going for a walk, and she held out
her hand for him to button her glove. He did it awliwardly.
He felt embarrassed but gallant. Conversation went easily
between them now, and as they strolled along they talked of
all manner of things. She told Philip about Berlin, and he
told her of his year in Heidelberg. As he spoke, things
which had appeared of no importance gained a new interest:
he dkscribed the people at Frau Erhn's house; and to the

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 159

conversations between Hayward and Weeks, which at the
time seemed so significant, he gave a Httle twist, so that
they looked absurd. He was flattered at Miss Wilkinson's
laughter.

"I'm quite frightened of you," she said. "You're so sarcastic."

Then she asked him playfully whether he had not had any
love afFairs at Heidelberg. Without thinking, he frankly
answered that he had not; but she refused to believe him.

"How secretive you are!" she said. "At your age is it likely?"

He blushed and laughed.

"You want to know too much," he said.

"Ah, I thought so," she laughed triumphantly. "Look at
him blushing."

He was pleased that she should think he had been a sad
dog, and he changed the conversation so as to make her
believe he had all sorts of romantic things to conceal. He
was angry with himself that he had not. There had been
no opportunity.

Miss Wilkinson was dissatisfied with her lot. She resented
having to earn her living and told Philip a long story of
an uncle of her mother's, who had been expected to leave her
a fortune but had married his cook and changed his will. She
hinted at the luxury of her home and compared her life in
Lincolnshire, with horses to ride and carriages to drive in,
with the mean dependence of her present state. Philip was a
little puzzled when he mentioned this afterwards to Aunt
Louisa,, and she told him that when she knew the Wilkinsons
they had never had anything more than a pony and a dog-
cart; Aunt Louisa had heard of the rich uncle, but as he was
married and had children before Emily was born she could
never have had much hope of inheriting his fortune. Miss
Wilkinson had little good to say of Berlin, where she was
now in a situation. She complained of the vulgarity of German
life, and compared it bitterly with the brilliance of Paris,
where she had spent a number of years. She did not say how
many. She had been governess in the family of a fashionable

160 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

portrait-painter, who had married a Jewish wife of means,
and in their house she had met many distinguished people
She dazzled Philip with their names. Actors from the Come-
die Frangaise had come to the house frequently, and Coquelia
sitting next her at dinner, had told her he had never met a
foreigner who spoke such perfect French. Alphonse Daudet
had come also, and he had given her a copy of Sapho: he
had promised to write her name in it, but she had forgotten
to remind him. She treasured the volume none the less and
she would lend it to Philip. Then there was Maupassant.
Miss Wilkinson with a rippling laugh looked at Philip know-
ingly. What a man, but what a writer! Hayward had talked
of Maupassant, and his reputation was not unknown to Philip.

"Did he make love to you.''" he asked.

The words seemed to stick funnily in his throat, but he
asked them nevertheless. He liked Miss Wilkinson very much
now, and was thrilled by her conversation, but he could not
imagine anyone malting love to her.

"What a question!" she cried. "Poor Guy, he made love to
every woman he met. It was a habit that he could not break
himself of."

She sighed a little, and seemed to look back tenderly on
the past.

"He was a charming man," she murmured.

A greater experience than Philip's would have guessed
from these words the probabilities of the encounter: the dis-
tinguished writer invited to luncheon en famille, the governess
coming in sedately with the two tall girls she was teaching;
the introduction:

"Notre Miss Anglaise.''

"Mademoiselle."

And the luncheon during which the Miss Anglaise sat
silent while the distinguished writer talked to his host and
hostess.

But to Philip her words called up much more romantic
fancies.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 161

"Do tell me all about him," he said excitedly.

"There's nothing to tell," she said truthfully, but in such
a manner as to convey that three volumes would scarcely
have contained the lurid facts. "You mustn't be curious."

She began to talk of Paris. She loved the boulevards and the
Bois. There was grace in every street, and the trees in the
Champs Elysees had a distinction which trees had not else-
where. They were sitting on a stile now by the high-road,
and Miss Wilkinson looked with disdain upon the stately
elms in front of them. And the theatres; the plays were
brilliant, and the acting was incomparable. She often went
with Madame Foyot, the mother of the girls she was edu-
cating, when she was trying on clothes.

"Oh, what a misery to be poor!" she cried. "These beautiful
things, it's only in Paris they know how to dress, and not to
be able to afford them! Poor Madame Foyot, she had no
figure. Sometimes the dressmaker used to whisper to me:
'Ah, Mademoiselle, if she only had your figure.' "

Philip noticed then that Miss Wilkinson had a robust form,
and was proud of it.

"Men are so stupid in England. They only think of the
face. The French, who are a nation of lovers, know how
much more important the figure is."

Philip had never thought of such things before, but he
observed now that Miss Wilkinson's ankles were thick and
ungainly. He withdrew his eyes quickly.

"You should go to France. Why don't you go to Paris for
a year.? You wouLd^ learn French, and it would— deniaiser
you." ;

"What is that?" asked Philip.

She laughed slyly.

"You must look it out in the dictionary. Enghshmen do
not know how Ko treat women. They are so shy. Shyness is
ridiculous in a man. They don't know how to make love.
They can't even tell a woman she is charming without look-
ing foolish."

162 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Philip felt himself absurd. Miss Wilkinson evidently ex-
pected him to behave very differently; and he would have
been delighted to say gallant and witty things, but they
never occurred to him; and when they did he was too much
afraid of making a fool of himself to say them.

"Oh, I love Paris," sighed Miss Wilkinson. "But I had to
go to Berlin. I was with the Foyots till the girls married, and
then I could get nothing to do, and I had the chance of this
post in Berlin. They're relations of Madame Foyot, and I
accepted. I had a tiny apartment in the Rue Breda, on the
cinqui^me: it wasn't at all respectable. You know about the
Rue Breda. — ces dames, you know."

Philip nodded, not knowing at all what she meant, but
vaguely suspecting, and anxious she should not think him
too ignorant.

"But I didn't care. Je suis litre, n'est-ce-pas?" She was very
fond of speaking French, which indeed she spoke well.
"Once I had such a curious adventure there."

She paused a little and Philip pressed her to tell it.

"You wouldn't tell me yours in Heidelberg," she said.

"They were so unadventurous," he retorted.

"I don't know what Mrs. Carey would say if she knew the
sort of things we talk about together."

"You don't imagine I shall tell heri."

"Will you promise?" \

When he had done this, she told hi-pi how an art-student
who had a room on the floor above hci' — but she interrupted
herself.

"Why don't you go in for art? You paint so prettily."

"Not well enough for that."

"That is for others to judge. Je my coti'itais, and I believe
you have the making of a great artist." \

"Can't you see Uncle William's face if I suddenly told him
I wanted to go to Paris and study art?" \

"You're your own master, aren't you?"

"You're trying to put me off. Please go on witK\ the story."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 163

Miss Wilkinson, with a little laugh, went on. The art-
student had passed her several times on the stairs, and she
had paid no particular attention. She saw that he had fine
eyes, and he took off his hat very politely. And one day she
found a letter slipped under her door. It was from him. He
told her that he had adored her for months, and that he
waited about the stairs for her to pass. Oh, it was a charming
letter! Of course she did not reply, but what woman could
help being flattered? And next day there was another
letter! It was wonderful, passionate, and touching. When
next she met him on the stairs she did not know which way
to look. And every day the letters came, and now he begged
her to see him. He said he w^ould come in the evening, ven
neuf heures, and she did not know what to do. Of course it
was impossible, and he might ring and ring, but she would
never open the door; and then while she was waiting for the
tinkling of the bell, all nerves, suddenly he stood before her-
She had forgotten to shut the door when she came in. ^

"C'etait une fatalite."

"And what happened then.?" asked Philip.

"That is the end of the story," she replied, with a ripple of
laughter.

Philip was silent for a moment. His heart beat quickly, and
strange emotions seemed to be hustling one another in his
heart. He saw the dark staircase and the chance meetings,
and he admired the boldness of the letters— oh, he would
never have dared to do that — and then the silent, almost
mysterious entrance. It seemed to him the very soul of
romance.

"What was he like.?"

"Oh, he was handsome. Charmant gargon."

"Do you know him still.?"

Philip felt a slight feeling of irritation as he asked this.

"He treated me abominably. Men are always the same
You're heartless, all of you."

164 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I don't know about that," said Philip, not without embar-
rassment.
"Let us go home," said Miss Wilkinson.

Chapter 33

Philip could not get Miss Wilkinson's story out of his head.
It was clear enough what she meant even though she cut it
short, and he was a little shocked. That sort of thing was all
very well for married women, he had read enough French
novels to know that in France it was indeed the rule, but Miss
Wilkinson was English and unmarried; her father was a
clergyman. Then it struck him that the art-student probably
was neither the first nor the last of her lovers, and he gasped :
he had never looked upon Miss Wilkinson like that; it seemed
incredible that anyone should make love to her. In his ingen-
uousness he doubted her story as little as he doubted what
he read in books, and he was angry that such wonderful
things never happened to him. It was humiliating that if
Miss Wilkinson insisted upon his telling her of his adventures
in Heidelberg he would have nothing to tell. It was true that
he had some power of invention, but he was not sure whether
he could persuade her that he was steeped in vice; women
were full of intuition, he had read that, and she might easily
discover that he was fibbing. He blushed scarlet as he thought
of her laughing up her sleeve.

Miss Wilkinson played the piano and sang in a rather
tired voice; but her songs, Massenet, Benjamin Goddard, and
Augusta Holmes, were new to Philip; and together they
spent many hours at the piano. One day she wondered if he
had a voice and insisted on trying it. She told him he had a
pleasant baritone and oflered to give him lessons. At first

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 165

with his usual bashfulness he refused, but she insisted, and
then every morning at a convenient time after breakfast she
gave him an hour's lesson. She had a natural gift for teaching,
and it was clear that she was an excellent governess. She had
method and firmness. Though her French accent was so
much part of her that it remained, all the mellifluousness of
her manner left her when she was engaged in teaching. She
put up with no nonsense. Her voice became a little peremp-
tory, and instinctively she suppressed inattention and cor-
rected slovenliness. She knew what she was about and put
Philip to scales and exercises.

When the lesson was over she resumed without effort her
seductive smiles, her voice became again soft and winning,
but Philip could not so easily put away the pupil as she the
pedagogue; and this impression conflicted with the feelings
her stories had aroused in him. He looked at her more nar-
rowly. He liked her much better in the evening than in the
morning. In the morning she was rather lined and the skin
of her neck was just a little rough. He wished she would hide
it, but the weather was very warm just then and she wore
blouses which were cut low. She was very fond of white; in
the morning it did not suit her. At night she often looked
very attractive, she put on a gown which was almost a dinner
dress, and she wore a chain of garnets round her neck; the
lace about her bosom and at her elbows gave her a pleasant
softness, and the scent she wore (at Blackstable no one used
anything but Eau de Cologne, and that only on Sundays or
when suffering from a sick headache) was troubling and
exotic. She really looked very young then.

Philip was much exercised over her age. He added twenty^
and seventeen together, and could not bring them to a satis-
factory total. He asked Aunt Louisa more than once why-
she thought Miss Wilkinson was thirty-seven; she didn't look;
more than thirty, and everyone knew that foreigners aged"
more rapidly than English women; Miss Wilkinson had lived
so long abroad that she might almost be called a foreigner.

166 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

He personally wouldn't have thought her more than twenty-
six.

"She's more than that," said Aunt Louisa.

Philip did not believe in the accuracy of the Careys' state-
ments. All they distinctly remembered was that Miss Wilkin-
son had not got her hair up the last time they saw her in
Lincolnshire. Well, she might have been twelve then: it was
so long ago and the Vicar was always so unreliable. They
said it was twenty years ago, but people used round figures,
and it was just as likely to be eighteen years, or seventeen.
Seventeen and twelve were only twenty-nine, and hang it all,
that wasn't old, was it.? Cleopatra was forty-eight when
Antony threw away the world for her sake.

It was a fine summer. Day after day was hot and cloudless;
but the heat was tempered by the neighbourhood of the sea,
and there was a pleasant exhilaration in the air, so that one
was excited and not oppressed by the August sunshine.
There was a pond in the garden in which a fountain played;
water lilies grew in it and gold fish sunned themselves on
the surface. Philip and Miss Wilkinson used to take rugs and
cushions there after dinner and lie on the lawn in the shade
of a tall hedge of roses. They talked and read all the after-
noon. They smoked cigarettes, which the Vicar did not allow
in the house; he thought smoking a disgusting habit, and used
frequently to say that it was disgraceful for anyone to grow
a slave to a habit. He forgot that he was himself a slave to
afternoon tea.

One day Miss Wilkinson gave Philip La Vie de Boheme.
She had found it by accident when she was rummaging
among the books in the Vicar's study. It had been bought in
a lot with something Mr. Carey wanted and had remained
undiscovered for ten years.

Philip began to read Murger's fascinating, ill-written, absurd
masterpiece, and fell at once under its spell. His soul danced
with joy at that picture of starvation which is so good-
humoured, of squalor which is so picturesque, of sordid love

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 167

which is so romantic, of bathos which is so moving. Rodolphe
and Mimi, Musette and Schaunard! They wander through
the gray streets of the Latin Quarter, finding refuge now in
one attic, now in another, in their quaint costumes of Louis
PhiUppe, with their tears and their smiles, happy-go-lucky
and reckless. Who can resist them? It is only when you return
to the book with a sounder judgment that you find how gross
their pleasures were, how vulgar their minds; and you feel
the utter worthlessness, as artists and as human beings, of that
gay procession. Philip was enraptured.

"Don't you wish you were going to Paris instead of Lon-
don?" asked Miss . Wilkinson, smiHng at his enthusiasm.

"It's too late now even if I did," he answered.

During the fortnight he had been back from Germany
there had been much discussion between himself and his
uncle about his future. He had refused definitely, to go to
Oxford, and now that there was no chance, of his getting
scholarships even Mr. Carey came to the conclusion that he
could not afford it. His entire fortune had consisted of only
two thousand pounds, and though it had been invested in
mortgages at five per cent, he had not been able to live on
the interest. It was now a little reduced. It would be absurd
to spend two hundred a year, the least he could live on at a
university, for three years at Oxford which would lead him
no nearer to earning his living. He was anxious to go straight
to London. Mrs. Carey thought there were only four pro-
fessions for a gentleman, the Army, the Navy, the Law, and
the Church. She had added medicine because her brother-in-
law practised it, but did not forget that in her yourig days
no one ever considered the doctor a gentleman. The first two
were out of the question, and Philip was firm in his refusal
to be ordained. Only the law remained. The local doctor had
suggested that many gentlemen now went in for engineering,
but Mrs. Carey opposed the idea at once.

"I shouldn't like Philip to go into trade," she said.

"No, he must have a profession," answered the Vicar.

168 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Why not make him a doctor Hke his father?"

"I should hate it," said PhiUp.

Mrs. Carey was not sorry. The Bar seemed out of the
question, since he was not going to Oxford, for the Careys
were under the impression that a degree was still necessary
for success in that caUing; and finally it was suggested that
he should become articled to a solicitor. They, wrote to the
family lawyer, Albert Nixon, who was co-executor with the
Vicar of Blackstable for the late Henry Carey's estate, and
asked him whether he would take Philip. In a day or two the
answer came back that he had not a vacancy, and was very
much opposed to the whole scheme; the profession was greatly
overcrowded, and without capital or connections a man had
small chance of becoming more than a managing clerk; he
suggested, however, that Philip should become a chartered
accountant. Neither the Vicar nor his wife knew in the least
what this was, and Philip had never heard of anyone being a
chartered accountant; but another letter from the solicitor
explained that the growth of modern businesses and the
increase of companies had led to the formation of many
firms of accountants to examine the books and put into the
financial affairs of their clients an order which old-fashioned
methods had lacked. Some years before a Royal Charter had
been obtained, and the profession was becoming every year
more respectable, lucrative, and important. The chartered
accountants whom Albert Nixon had employed for thirty
years happened to have a vacancy for an articled pupil, and
would take Philip for a fee of three hundred pounds. Half
of this would be returned during the five years the articles
lasted in the form of salary. The prospect was not exciting,
but Philip felt that he must decide on something, and the
thought of living in London over-balanced the slight shrinking
he felt. The Vicar of Blackstable wrote to ask Mr. Nixon
whether it was a profession suited to a gentleman; and Mr.
Nixon replied that, since the Charter, men were going into it
who had been to public schools and a university; moreover,

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 169

i£ Philip disliked the work and after a year wished to leave,
Herbert Carter, for that was the accountant's name, would
return half the money paid for the articles. This settled it,
and it was arranged that Philip should start work on the
fifteenth of September.

"I have a full month before me," said Philip.

"And then you go to freedom and I to bondage," returned
Miss Wilkinson.

Her hohdays were to last six weeks, and she would be
leaving Blackstable only a day or two before Philip.

"I wonder if we shall ever meet again," she said.

"I don't know why not."

"Oh, don't speak in that practical way. I never knew anyone
so unsentimental."

PhiUp reddened. He was afraid that Miss Wilkinson would
think him a milksop : after all she was a young woman, some-
times quite pretty, and he was getting on for twenty; it was
absurd that they should talk of nothing but art and literature.
He ought to make love to her. They had talked a good deal
of love. There was the art-student in the Rue Breda, and then
there was the painter in whose family she had lived so long
in Paris: he had asked her to sit for him, and had started to
make love to her so violently that she was forced to invent
excuses not to sit to him again. It was clear enough that Miss
Wilkinson was used to attentions of that sort. She looked
very nice now in a large straw hat: it was hot that afternoon,
the hottest day they had had, and beads of sweat stood in a
hne on her upper lip. He called to mind Fraulein Cacilie
and Herr Sung. He had never thought of Cacilie in an
amorous way, she was exceedingly plain; but now, looking
back, the affair seemed very romantic. He had a chance of
romance too. Miss Wilkinson was practically French, and
that added zest to a possible adventure. When he thought of it
at night in bed, or when he sat by himself in the garden
reading a book, he was thrilled by it; but when he saw Miss
Wilkinson it seemed less picturesque.

170 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

At all events, after what she had told him, she would not
be surprised if he made love to her. He had a feeling that
she must think it odd of him to make no sign: perhaps it
was only his fancy, but once or twice in the last day or two
he had imagined that there was a suspicion of contempt in
her eyes.

"A penny for your thoughts," said Miss Wilkinson, looking
at him with a smile.

"I'm not going to tell you,'' he answered.

He was thinking that he ought to kiss her there and then.
He wondered if she expected him to do it; but after all he
didn't see how he could without any preliminary business at
all. She would just think him mad, or she might slap his face;
and perhaps she would complain to his uncle. He wondered
how Herr Sung had started with Fraulein Cacilie. It would
be beastly if she told his uncle: he knew what his uncle was,
he would tell the doctor and Josiah Graves; and he would
look a perfect fool. Aunt Louisa kept on saying that Miss
Wilkinson was thirty-seven if she was a day; he shuddered
at the thought of the ridicule he would be exposed to; they
would say she was old enough to be his mother.

"Twopence for your thoughts," smiled Miss Wilkinson.

"I was thinking about you,'' he answered boldly.

That at all events committed him to nothing.

"What were you thinking?"

"Ah, now you want to know too much."

"Naughty boy!" said Miss Wilkinson.

There it was again! Whenever he had succeeded in working
himself up she said something which reminded him of the
governess. She called him playfully a naughty boy when he
did not sing his exercises to her satisfaction. This time he
grew quite sulky.

"I wish you wouldn't treat mc as if I were a child."

"Are you cross.?"

"Very."

"I didn't mean to."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 171

She put out her hand and he took it. Once or twice lately
when they shook hands at night he had fancied she slightly
pressed his hand, but this time there was no doubt about it.

He did not quite know what he ought to say next. Here
at last was his chance of an adventure, and he would be a fool
not to take it; but it was a little ordinary, and he had expected
more glamour. He had read many descriptions of love, and
he felt in himself none of that uprush of emotion which
novelists described; he was not carried off his feet in wave-
upon wave of passion; nor was Miss Wilkinson the ideal:-
he had often pictured to himself the great violet eyes and the-
alabaster skin of some lovely girl, and he had thought of him-
self burying his face in the rippling masses of her auburn
hair. He could not imagine himself burying his face in Miss;
Wilkinson's hair, it always struck him as a little sticky. AU
the same it would be very satisfactory to have an intrigue,
and he thrilled with the legitimate pride he would enjoy in
his conquest. He owed it to himself to seduce her. He made
up his mind to kiss Miss Wilkinson; not then, but in the
evening; it would be easier in the dark, and after he had
kissed her the rest would follow. He would kiss her that very
evening. He swore an oath to that effect.

He laid his plans. After supper he suggested that they
should take a stroll in the garden. Miss Wilkinson accepted,
and they sauntered side by side. Philip was very nervous. He
did not know why, but the conversation would not lead in
the right direction; he had decided that the first thing to do
was to put his arm round her waist; but he could not suddenly
put his arm round her waist when she was talking of the
regatta which was to be held next week. He led her artfully
into the darkest parts of the garden, but having arrived there
his courage failed him. They sat on a bench, and he had
really made up his mind that here was his opportunity when
Miss Wilkinson said she was sure there were earwigs and
insisted on moving. They walked round the garden once
more, and Philip promised himself he would take the plunge

172 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

before they arrived at that bench again; but as they passed
the house, they saw Mrs. Carey standing at the door.

"Hadn't you young people better come in.? I'm sure the
night air isn't good for you."

"Perhaps we had better go in," said Phihp. "I don't want
you to catch cold."

He said it with a sigh of relief. He could attempt nothing
more that night. But afterwards, when he was alone in his
room, he was furious with himself. He had been a perfect fool.
He was certain that Miss Wilkinson expected him to kiss her,
otherwise she wouldn't have come into the garden. She was
-always saying that only Frenchmen knew how to treat women.
Philip had read French novels. If he had been a Frenchman
lie would have seized her in his arms and told her passionately
that he adored her; he would have pressed his lips on her
muque. He did not know why Frenchmen always kissed
ladies on the nuque. He did not himself see anything so very
attractive in the nape of the neck. Of course it was much
easier for Frenchmen to do these things; the language
was such an aid; PhiHp could never help feeling that to say
passionate things in EngUsh sounded a little absurd. He
wished now that he had never undertaken the siege of Miss
Wilkinson's virtue; the first fortnight had been so jolly, and
now he was wretched; but he was determined not to give in,
he would never respect himself again if he did, and he made
up his mind irrevocably that the next night he would kiss
her without fail.

Next day when he got up he saw it was raining, and his first
thought was that they would not be able to go into the garden
that evening. He was in high spirits at breakfast. Miss Wilkin-
son sent Mary Ann in to say that she had a headache and
would remain in bed. She did not come down till tea-time
when she appeared in a becoming wrapper and a pale face;
but she was quite recovered by supper, and the meal was very
cheerful. After prayers she said she would go straight to bed
and she kissed Mrs. Carey. Then she turned to Philip.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 173

"Good gracious!" she cried. "I was just going to kiss
you too."

"Why don't you?" he said.

She laughed and held out her hand. She distinctly pressed
his.

The following day there was not a cloud in the sky, and
the garden was sweet and fresh after the rain. Philip went
down to the beach to bathe and when he came home ate a
magnificent dinner. They were having a termis party at the
vicarage in the afternoon and Miss Wilkinson put on her
best dress. She certainly knew how to wear her clothes, and
Philip could not help noticing how elegant she looked beside
the curate's wife and the doctor's married daughter. There
were two roses in her waistband. She sat in a garden chair
by the side of the lawn, holding a red parasol over herself, and
the light on her face was very becoming. Philip was fond of
tennis. Hd served well and as he ran clumsily played close
to the net: notwithstanding his club-foot he was quick, and
it was difficult to get a ball past him. He was pleased because
he won all his sets. At tea he lay down at Miss Wilkinson's
feet, hot and panting.

"Flannels suit you," she said. "You look very nice this
afternoon."

He blushed with delight.

"I can honestly return the compliment. You look perfectly
ravishing."

She smiled and gave him a long look with her black eyes.

After supper he insisted that she should come out.

"Haven't you had enough exercise for one day.?"

"It'll be lovely in the garden tonight. The stars are all out."

He was in high spirits.

"D'you know, Mrs. Carey has been scolding me on your
account.?" said Miss Wilkinson, when they were sauntering
through the kitchen garden. "She says I mustn't flirt with you."

"Have you been flirting with me? I hadn't noticed it."
' "She was only joking."

174 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"It was very unkind of you to refuse to kiss me last night.

"If you saw the look your uncle gave me when I said what
I did I"

"Was that all that prevented you?"

"I prefer to kiss people without witnesses."

"There are no witnesses now."

Phihp put his arm round her waist and kissed her lips.
She only laughed a little and made no attempt to withdraw.
It had come quite naturally. Philip was very proud of himself.
He said he would, and he had. It was the easiest thing in
the world. He wished he had done it before. He did it again.

"Oh, you mustn't," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because I like it," she laughed.

Chapter 34

Next day after dinner they took their rugs and cushions to
the fountain, and their books; but they did not read. Miss
Wilkinson made herself comfortable and she opened the
red sun-shade. Philip was not at all shy now, but at first she
would not let him kiss her.

"It was very wrong of me last night," she said. "I couldn't
sleep, I felt I'd done so wrong."

"What nonsense!" he cried. "I'm sure you slept like a top."

"What do you think your uncle would say if he knew?"

"There's no reason why he should know."

He leaned over her, and his heart went pit-a-pat.

"Why d'you want to kiss me?"

He knew he ought to reply: "Because I love you." But he
could not bring himself to say it.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 175

"Why do you think?" he asked instead.

She looked at him with smiUng eyes and touched his face
with the tips of her fingers.

"How smooth your face is," she murmured.

"I want shaving awfully," he said.

It was astonishing how difficult he found it to make roman-
tic speeches. He found that silence helped him much more
than words. He could look inexpressible things. Miss Wilkin-
son sighed.

"Do you like me at all?"

"Yes, awfully."

When he tried to kiss her again she did not resist. He
pretended to be much more passionate than he really was,
and he succeeded in playing a part which looked very well
in his own eyes.

"I'm beginning to be rather frightened of you," said Miss
Wilkinson.

"You'll come out after supper, won't you?" he begged.

"Not unless you promise to behave yourself."

"I'll promise anything."

He was catching fire from the flame he was partly simu-
lating, and at tea-time he was obstreperously merry. Miss
Wilkinson looked at him nervously.

"You mustn't have those shining eyes," she said to him
afterwards. "What will your Aunt Louisa think?"

"I doii't care what she thinks." ■

Miss Wilkinson gave a little laugh of pleasure. They had
no sooner finished supper than he said to her:

"Are you going to keep me company while I smoke a
cigarette?"

"Why don't you let Miss Wilkinson rest?" said Mrs. Carey.
"You must remember she's not as young as you."

"Oh, I'd Hke to go out, Mrs. Carey," she said, rather acidly.

"After dinner walk a mild, after supper rest a while," said
the Vicar.

"Your aunt is very nice, but she gets on my nerves some-

176 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

times," said Miss Wilkinson, as soon as they closed the side-
door behind them.

Philip threw away the cigarette he had just lighted, and
flung his arms round her. She tried to push him away.

"You promised you'd be good, Philip."

"You didn't think I was going to keep a promise like that?"

"Not so near the house, Phihp," she said. "Supposing some-
one should come out suddenly?"

He led her to the kitchen garden where no one was likely to
come, and this time Miss Wilkinson did not think o£ earwigs.
He kissed her passionately. It was one of the things that
puzzled him that he did not like her at all in the morning,
and only moderately in the afternoon, but at night the touch
of her hand thrilled him. He said things that he would never
have thought himself capable of saying; .he could certainly
never have said them in the broad light of day; and he
listened to himself with wonder and satisfaction.

"How beautifully you make love," she said.

That was what he thought himself.

"Oh, if I could only say all the things that burn my heart!"
he murmured passionately.

It was splendid. It was the most thrilling game he had ever
played; and the wonderful thing was that he felt almost all
he said. It was only that he exaggerated a little. He was tre-
mendously interested and excited in the effect he could see
it had on her. It was obviously with an effort that at last
she suggested going in.

"Oh, don't go yet," he cried.

'*I must," she muttered. "I'm frightened."

He had a sudden intuition what was the right thing to
do then.

"I can't go in yet. I shall stay here and think. My cheeks
are burning. I want the night-air. Good-night.''

He held out his hand seriously, and she took it in silence.
He thought she stifled a sob. Oh, it was magnificent! When
after a decent interval during which he had been rather

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 177

bored in the dark garden by himself, he went in he found
that Miss Wilkinson had already gone to bed.

After that things were different between them. The next
day and the day after Philip showed himself an eager lover.
He was deliciously flattered to discover that Miss Wilkinson
was in love with him: she told him so in English, and she
told him so in French. She paid him compliments. No one
had ever informed him before that his eyes were charming
and that he had a sensual mouth. He had never bothered much
about his personal appearance, but now, when occasion pre-
sented, he looked at himself in the glass with satisfaction.
When he kissed her it was wonderful to feel the passion that
seemed to thrill her soul. He kissed her a good deal, for he
found it easier to do that than to say the things he instinc-
tively felt she expected of him. It still made him feel a fool to
say he worshipped her. He wished there were someone to
whom he could boast a little, and he would willingly have
discussed minute points of his conduct. Sometimes she said
things that were enigmatic, and he was puzzled. He wished
Hayward had been there so that he could ask him what he
thought she meant, and what he had better do next. He
could not make up his mind whether he ought to rush things
or let them take their time. There were only three weeks more.

"I can't bear to think of that," she said. "It breaks my
heart, j^nd then perhaps we shall never see one another again."

"If you cared for' me at all, you wouldE,'t be so unkind to
me," he whispered.

"Oh, why can't you be content to let it go on as it is ? Men
are always the same. They're never satisfied."

And when he pressed her, she said:

"But don't you see it's impossible. How can we here?"

He proposed all sorts of schemes, but she would not have
anything to do with them.

"I daren't take the risk. It would be too dreadful if your
aunt found out."

A day or two later he had an idea which seemed brilliant.

178 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Look here, if you had a headache on Sunday evening and
offered to stay at home and look after the house, Aunt Louisa
would go to church."

Generally Mrs. Carey remained in on Sunday evening in
order to allow Mary Ann to go to church, but she would
welcome the opportunity of attending evensong.

Philip had not found it necessary to impart to his relations
the change in his views on Christianity which had occurred
in Germany; they could not be expected to understand; and
it seemed less trouble to go to church quietly. But he only
went in the morning. He regarded this as a graceful con-
cession to the prejudices of society and his refusal to go a
second time as an adequate assertion of free thought.

When he made the suggestion, Miss Wilkinson did not
speak for a moment, then shook her head.

"No, I won't," she said.

But on Sunday at tea-time she surprised Philip.

"I don't think I'll come to church this evening," she said
suddenly. "Fve really got a dreadful headache."

Mrs. Carey, much concerned, insisted on giving her some
'drops' which she was herself in the habit of using. Miss
Wilkinson thanked her, and immediately after tea announced
ithat she would go to her room and lie down.

"Are you sure there's nothing you'll want.''" asked Mrs.
Carey anxiously.

"Quite sure, thank you."

"Because, if there isn't, I think I'll go to church. I don't
often have the chance of going in the evening."

"Oh yes, do go."

"I shall be in," said Philip. "If Miss Wilkinson wants any-
thing, she can always call me.''

"You'd better leave the drawing-room door open, Phihp,
so that if Miss Wilkinson rings, you'll hear."

"Certainly," said Philip.

So after six o'clock Philip was left alone in the house with
Miss Wilkinson. He felt sick with apprehension. He wished

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 179

with all his heart that he had not suggested the plan; but it
was too late now; he must take the opportunity which he had
made. What would Miss Wilkinson think of him if he did
not! He went into the hall and listened. There was not a
sound. He wondered if Miss Wilkinson really had a headache.
Perhaps she had forgotten his suggestion. His heart beat
painfully. He crept up the stairs as softly as he could, and
he stopped with a start when they creaked. He stood outside
Miss Wilkinson's room and Hstened; he put his hand on the
knob of the door-handle. He waited. It seemed to him
that he waited for at least five minutes, trying to make up
his mind; and his hand trembled. He would willingly have
bolted, but he was afraid of the remorse which he knew
would seize him. It was hke getting on the highest diving-
board in a swimming-bath; it looked nothing from below,
but when you got up there and stared down at the water
your heart sank; and the only thing that forced you to dive
was the shame of coming down meekly by the steps you had
climbed up. Philip screwed up his courage. He turned the
handle softly and walked in. He seemed to himself to be
trembling like a leaf.

Miss Wilkinson was standing at the dressing-table with hev
back to the door, and she turned round quickly when she
heard it open.

"Oh, it's you. What d'you want?"

She had taken off her skirt and blouse, and was standing in
her petticoat. It was short and only came down to the top of
her boots; the upper part of it was black, of some shiny ma-
terial, and there was a red flounce. She wore a camisole of
white calico with short arms. She looked grotesque. Philip's
heart sank as he stared at her; she had never seemed so un-
attractive; but it was too late now. He closed the door behind
him and locked it.

180 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 35

Phiup woke early next morning. His sleep had been restless;
but when he stretched his legs and looked at the sunshine
that shd through the Venetian bhnds, making patterns on the
floor, he sighed with satisfaction. He was delighted with him-
self. He began to think of Miss Wilkinson. She had asked
him to call her Emily, but, he knew not why, he could not; he
always thought of her as Miss Wilkinson. Since she chid him
for so addressing her, he avoided using her name at all. During
his childhood he had often heard a sister of Aunt Louisa, the
widow of a naval officer, spoken of as Aunt Emily. It made
him uncomfortable to call Miss Wilkinson by that name, nor
could he think of any that would have suited her better. She
had begun as Miss Wilkinson, and it seemed inseparable from
his impression of her. He frowned a little: somehow or other
he saw her now at her worst; he could not forget his dismay
when she turned round and he saw her in her camisole and
the short petticoat; he remembered the slight roughness of her
skin and the sharp, long lines on the side of the neck. His
triumph was short-lived. He reckoned out her age again, and
he did not see how she could be less than forty. It made the
affair ridiculous. She was plain and old. His quick fancy
showed her to him, wrinkled, haggard, made-up, in those
frocks which were too showy for her position and too young
for her years. He shuddered; he felt suddenly that he never
wanted to see her again; he could not bear the thought of
kissing her. He was horriiied with himself. Was that love ?

He took as long as he could over dressing in order to put
back the moment of seeing her, and when at last he went into
the dining-room it was with a sinking heart. Prayers were over
and they were sitting down at breakfast.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 181

"Lazy bonesj" Miss Wilkinson cried gaily.

He looked at her and gave a little gasp of relief. She was
sitting with her back to the window. She was really quite
nice. He wondered why he had thought such things about
her. His self-satisfaction returned to him.

He was taken aback by the change in her. She told him in
a voice thrilling with emotion immediately after breakfast
that she loved him; and when a little later they went into the
drawing-room for his singing lesson and she sat down on the
music-stool she put up her face in the middle of a scale and
said:

"Em brasse-m oi."

When he bent down she flung her arms round his neck. It
■was slightly uncomfortable, for she held him in such a posi-
tion that he felt rather choked.

"Ah, je t'aime. Je t'aime. Je t'aime," she cried, with her
extravagantly French accent.

Philip wished she would speak English.

"I say, I don't know if it's struck you that the gardener's
quite likely to pass the window any minute."

"A/i, je m'en fiche du jardinier. Je men refiche, et je m'en
■contrefiche."

Philip thought it was very like a French novel, and he did
not know why it slightly irritated him.

At last he said :

"Well, I think I'll tootle along to the beach and have a dip."

"Oh, you're not going to leave me this morning — of all
mornings.?"

Philip did not quite know why he should not, but it did not
matter.

"Would you like me to stay?" he smiled.

"Oh, you darling! But no, go. Go. I want to think of you
mastering the salt sea waves, bathing your limbs in the broad
•ocean."

He got his hat and sauntered off.

182 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"What rot women talk!" he thought to himself.

But he was pleased and happy and flattered. She was evi-
dently frightfully gone on him. As he limped along the high
street of Blackstable he looked with a tinge of superciliousness
at the people he passed. He knew a good many to nod to, and
as he gave them a smile of recognition he thought to himself,
if they only knew! He did want someone to know very badly.
He thought he would write to Hay ward, and in his mind com-
posed the letter. He would talk of the garden and the roses,
and the little French governess, like an exotic flower amongst
them, scented and perverse: he would say she was French,
because — well, she had lived in France so long that she almost
was, and besides it would be shabby to give the whole thing
away too exactly, don't you know; and he would tell Hay-
ward how he had seen her first in her pretty muslin dress
and of the flower she had given him. He made a delicate idyl
of it: the sunshine and the sea gave it passion and magic, and
the stars added poetry, and the old vicarage garden was a fit
and exquisite setting. There was something Meredithian
about it: it was not quite Lucy Feverel and not quite Clara
Middleton; but it was inexpressibly charming. Philip's heart
beat quickly. He was so delighted with his fancies that he
began thinking of them again as soon as he crawled back, drip-
ping and cold, into his bathing-machine. He thought of the ob-
ject of his affections. She had the most adorable little nose and
large brown eyes — he would describe her to Hayward — and
masses of soft brown hair, the sort of hair it was delicious to
bury your face in, and a skin which was like ivory and sun-
shine, and her cheek was like a red, red rose. How old was
she } Eighteen perhaps, and he called her Musette. Her laugh-
ter was like a rippling brook, and her voice was so soft, so
lovy, it was the sweetest music he had ever heard.

"What are you thinking about.'"'

Philip stopped suddenly. He was walking slowly home.

"I've been waving at you for the last quarter of a mile. You
are absent-minded."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 183

Miss Wilkinson was standing in front. of him, laughing ar
his surprise.

"I thought I'd come and meet you."

"That's awfully nice of you," he said.

"Did I startle you?"

"You did a bit," he admitted.

He wrote his letter to Hayward all the same. There were
eight pages of it.

The fortnight that remained passed quickly, and though
each evening, when they went into the garden after supper,
Miss Wilkinson remarked that one day more had gone, Philip
was in teo cheerful spirits to let the thought depress him. One
night Miss Wilkinson suggested that it would be delightful
if she could exchange her situation in Berlin for one in Lon-
don. Then they could see one another constantly. Philip said
it would be very jolly, but the prospect aroused no enthusiasm
in him; he was looking forward to a wonderful life in London,
and he preferred not to be hampered. He spoke a little too
freely of all he meant to do, and allowed Miss Wilkinson to
see that already he was longing to be off.

"You wouldn't talk Uke that if you loved me," she cried.

He was taker aback and remained silent.

"What a fool I've been," she muttered.

To his surprise he saw that she was crying. He had a tender
heart, and hated to see anyone miserable.

"Oh, I'm awfully sorry. What have I done.? Don't cry."

"Oh, Philip, don't leave me. You don't know what you
mean to me. I have such a wretched life, and you've made me
so happy."

He kissed her silently. There really was anguish in her tone,
and he was frightened. It had never occurred to him that she
meant what she said quite, quite seriously.

"I'm awfully sorry." You know I'm frightfully fond of you.
I wish you would come to London."

"You know I can't. Places are almost impossible to get, and
I hate EngHsh life."

184 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Almost unconscious that he was acting a part, moved by
her distress, he pressed her more and more. Her tears vaguely-
flattered him, and he kissed her with real passion.

But a day or two later she made a real scene. There was a
tennis-party at the vicarage, and two girls came, daughters
of a retired major in an Indian regiment who had lately settled
in Blackstable. They were very pretty, one was Philip's age
and the other was a year or two younger. Being used to the
society of young men (they were full of stories of hill-stations
in India, and at that time the stories of Rudyard Kipling were
in every hand) they began to chaff Philip gaily; and he, pleased
with the novelty — the young ladies at Blackstable treated the
Vicar's nephew with a certain seriousness — was gay and jolly..
Some devil within him prompted him to start a violent flirta-
tion with them both, and as he was the only young man there,,
they were quite willing to meet him half-way. It happened
that they played tennis quite well and Philip was tired of pat-
ball with Miss Wilkinson (she had only begun to play when
she came to Blackstable), so when he arranged the sets after
tea he suggested that Miss Wilkinson should play against the:
curate's wife, with the curate as her partner; and he would
play later with the newcomers. He sat down by the elder Miss-
O'Connor and said to her in an undertone:

"We'll get the duffers out of the way first, and then we'll
have a jolly set afterwards." '

Apparently Miss Wilkinson overheard him, for she threw
down her racket, and, saying she had a headache, went away.
It was plain to everyone that she was offended. Philip was an-
noyed that she should make the fact public. The set was
arranged without her, but presently Mrs. Carey called him.

"Philip, you've hurt Emily's feelings. She's gone to her room^.
and she's crying."

"What about?"

"Oh, something about a duffer's set. Do go to her, and say
you didn't mean to be unkind, there's a good boy."

"All right."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 185

He knocked at Miss Wilkinson's door, but receiving no an-
swer went in. He found her lying face downwards on her bed,
"weeping. He touched her on the shoulder.

"I say, what on earth's the matter?"

"Leave me alone. I never want to speak to you again."

"What have I done? I'm awfully sorry if I've hurt your
feelings. I didn't mean to. I say, do get up."

"Oh, I'm so unhappy. How could you be cruel to me? You
know I hate that stupid game. I only play because I want to
play with you."

She got up and walked towards the dressing-table, but after
a quick look in the glass sank into a chair. She made her hand-
kerchief into a ball and dabbed her eyes with it.

"I've given you the greatest thing a woman can give a man
— oh, what a fool I was — and you have no gratitude. You must
be quite heartless. How could you be so cruel as to torment
me by flirting with those vulgar girls. We've only got just over
a week. Can't you even give me that?"

Phihp stood over her rather sulkily. He thought her be-
haviour childish. He was vexed with her for having shown her
ill-temper before strangers.

"But you know I don't care twopence about either of the
O'Connors. Why on earth should you think I do?"

Miss Wilkinson put away her handkerchief. Her tears had
made marks on her powdered face, and her hair was some-
what disarranged. Her white dress did not suit her very well
just then. She looked at Philip with hungry, passionate eyes.

"Because you're twenty and so's she," she said hoarsely.
''And I'm old."

Philip reddened and looked away. The anguish of her tone
made him feel strangely uneasy. He wished with all his heart
that he had never had anything to do with Miss Wilkinson.

"I don't want to make you unhappy," he said awkwardly.

"You'd better go down and look after your friends. They'll
wonder what has become of you."
"All right."

186 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

He was glad to leave her.

The quarrel was quickly followed by a reconciliation, but
the few days that remained were sometimes irksome to Philip.
He wanted to talk of nothing but the future, and the future
invariably reduced Miss Wilkinson to tears. At first her weep-
ing affected him, and feeling himself a beast he redoubled his
protestations of undying passion; but now it irritated him: it
would have been all very well if she had been a girl, but it was
silly of a grown-up woman to cry so much. She never ceased
reminding him that he was under a debt of gratitude to her
which he could never repay. He was willing to acknowledge
this since she made a point of it, but he did not really know
why he should be any more grateful to her than she to him.
He was expected to show his sense of obligation in ways which
were rather a nuisance: he had been a good deal used to soli-
tude, and it was a necessity to him sometimes; but Miss Wil-
kinson looked upon it as an unkindness if he was not always
at her beck and call. The Miss O'Connors asked them both to
tea, and Philip would have liked to go, but Miss Wilkinson
said she only had five days more and wanted him entirely
to herself. It was flattering, but a bore. Miss Wilkinson told
him stories of the exquisite delicacy of Frenchmen when they
stood in the same relation to fair ladies as he to Miss Wilkin-
son. She praised tjieir courtesy, their passion for self-sacrifice,
their perfect tact. Miss Wilkinson seemed to want a great deal.

Philip listened to her enumeration of the qualities which
must be possessed by the perfect lover, and he could not help
feeling a certain satisfaction that she lived in Berlin.

"You will write to me, won't you? Write to me every day.
I want to know everything you're doing. You must keep noth-
ing from me."

"I shall be awfully busy," he answered. "I'll write as often as
I can."

She flung her arms passionately round his neck. He was
embarrassed sometimes by the demonstrations of her affection.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 187

He would have preferred her to be more passive. It shocked
him a little that she should give him so marked a lead : it did
not tally altogether with his prepossessions about the modesty
of the feminine temperament.

At length the day came on which Miss Wilkinson was to go,
and she came down to breakfast, pale and subdued, in a
serviceable travelling dress of black and white check. She
looked a very competent governess. Philip was silent too, for
he did not quite know what to say that would fit the circum-
stance; and he was terribly afraid that, if he said something
flippant, Miss Wilkinson would break down before his uncle
and make a scene. They had said their last good-bye to one
another in the garden the night before, and Philip was relieved
that there was now no opportunity for them to be alone. He
remained in the dining-room after breakfast in case Miss
Wilkinson should insist on kissing him on the stairs. He did
not want Mary Ann, now a woman hard upon middle age
with a sharp tongue, to catch them in a compromising posi-
tion. Mary Ann did not like Miss Wilkinson and called her
an old cat. Aunt Louisa was not very well and could not come
to the station, but the Vicar and Philip saw her off. Just as the
train was leaving she leaned out and kissed Mr. Carey.

"I iriust kiss you too, PhiHp," she said.

"All right," he said, blushing.

He stood up on the step and she kissed him quickly.
The train started, and Miss Wilkinson sank into the corner
of her carriage and wept disconsolately. Philip as he walked
back to the vicarage felt a distinct sensation of relief.

"Well, did you see her safely off?" asked Aunt Louisa, when
they got in.

"Yes, she seemed rather weepy. She insisted on kissing me
and Phihp."

"Oh, well, at her age it's not dangerous." Mrs. Carey pointed
to the sideboard. "There's a letter for you, Philip. It came by
the second post."

188 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

It was from Hay ward and ran as follows :

My dear boy,

I answer your letter at once. I ventured to read it to a great
friend of mine, a charming woman whose help and sympathy
have been very precious to me, a woman withal with a real
feeling for art and literature; and we agreed that it was charm-
ing. You wrote from your heart and you do not know the
delightful naivete which is in every line. And because you love
you write li\e a poet. Ah, dear boy, that is the real thing: I
felt the glow of your young passion, and your prose was musi-
cal from the sincerity of your emotion. You must be happy! I
wish I could have been present unseen in that enchanted gar-
den while you wandered hand in hand, like Daphnis and
Chloe, amid the flowers. I can see you, my Daphnis, with the
light of young love in your eyes, tender, enraptured, and ar-
dent; while Chloe in your arms, so young and soft and fresh,
vowing she would ne'er consent — consented. Roses and violets
and honeysuckle! Oh, my friend, I envy you. It is so good to
thin\ that your first love should have been pure poetry. Treas-
ure the moments, for the immortal gods have given you the
Greatest Gift of All, and it will be a sweet, sad memory till
your dying day. You will never again enjoy that careless rap-
ture. First love is best love; and she is beautiful and you are
young, and all the world is yours. I felt my pulse go faster
when with your adorable simplicity you told me that you
buried your face in her long hair. I am sure that it is that ex-
quisite chestnut which seems just touched with gold. I would
have you sit under a leafy tree side by side, and read to-
gether Romeo and Juliet; and then I would have you fall
on your knees and on my behalf kiss the ground on tvhich her
foot has left its imprint; then tell her it is the homage of a poet
to her radiant youth and to your love for her.
Yours always,

G. Etheridge Hayward.

"What damned rot!" said Philip, when he finished the letter.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 189

Miss Wilkinson oddly enough had suggested that they
should read Romeo and Juliet together; but Philip had firmly
declined. Then, as he put the letter in his pocket, he felt a
queer little pang of bitterness because reality seemed so difler-
ent from the ideal.

Chapter 36

A FEW days later Philip went to London. The curate had
recommended rooms in Barnes, and these Philip engaged b)
letter at fourteen shillings a week. He reached them in the eve-
ning; and the landlady, a funny little old woman with a, shriv-
elled body and a deeply wrinkled face, had prepared high tea
for him. Most of the sitting-room was taken up by the side-
board and a square table; against one wall was a sofa covered
with horsehair, and by the fireplace an arm-chair to match?
there was a white antimacassar over the back of it, and on
the seat, because the springs were broken, a hard cushion.

After having his tea he unpacked and arranged his books,
then he sat down and tried to read; but he was depressed. Thr.
silence in the street made him slightly uncomfortable, and he
felt very much alone.

Next day he got up early. He put on his tail-coat and the
tall hat which he had worn at school; but it was very shabby,
and he made up his mind to stop at the Stores on his way to
the office and buy a new one. When he had done this he found
himself in plenty of time and so walked along the Strand,
The office of Messrs. Herbert Carter & Co. was in a little street
oil Chancery Lane, and he had to ask his way two or three
times. He felt that people were staring at him a great deal, and
once he took off his hat to see whether by chance the label

190 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

had been left on. When he arrived he knocked at the door:
but no one answered, and looking at his watch he found it was
barely half past nine; he supposed he was too early. He went
away and ten minutes later returned to find an office-boy, withj
a long nose, pimply face, and a Scotch accent, opening th<,' ;
door. Philip asked for Mr. Herbert Carter. He had not come :

yet- _^ ■ ,

"When will he be here?" '

"Between ten and half past."

"I'd better wait," said Philip.

"What are you wanting.''" asked the office-boy.

Philip was nervous, but tried to hide the fact by a jocose
manner.

"Well, I'm going to work here if you have no objection."

"Oh, you're the new articled clerk? You'd better come in.
Mr. Goodworthy'll be here in a while."

Philip walked in, and as he did so saw the office-boy — he
was about the same age as Philip and called himself a junior
J clerk — look at his foot. He flushed and, sitting down, hid it
'^behind the other. He looked round the room. It was dark
and very dingy. It was lit by a skylight. There were three rows
of desks in it and against them high stools. Over the chimney-
piece was a dirty engraving of a prize-fight. Presently a clerk
came in and then another; they glanced at Philip and in an
undertone asked the office-boy (Philip found his name was
Macdougal) who he was. A whistle blew, and Macdougal got

up-

"Mr. Goodworthy's come. He's the managing clerk. Shall I
tell him you're here?"

"Yes, please," said Philip.

The office-boy went out and in a moment returned.

"Will you come this way?"

Philip followed him across the passage and was shown into
a room, small and barely furnished, in which a little, thin man
was standing with his back to the fireplace. He was much
below the middle height, but his large head, which seemed

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 191

to hang loosely on his body, gave him an odd ungainliness. His
features were wide and flattened, and he had prominent, pale
eyes; his thin hair was sandy; he wore whiskers that grew
unevenly on his face, and in places where you would have
expected the hair to grow thickly there was no hair at all. His
skin was pasty and yellow. He held out his hand to Philip, and
when he smiled showed badly decayed teeth. He spoke with
a patronising and at the same time a timid air, as though he
sought to assume an importance which he did not feel. He
said he hoped Philip would like the work; there was a good
deal of drudgery about it, but when you got used to it, it was
interesting; and one made money, that was the chief thing,
wasn't it.? He laughed with his odd mixture of superiority
and shyness.

"Mr. Carter will be here presently," he said. "He's a little
late on Monday mornings sometimes. I'll call you when he
comes. In the meantime I must give you something to do. Do
you know anything about book-keeping or accounts.?"

"I'm afraid not," answered Philip.

"I didn't suppose you would. They don't teach you things
at school that are much use in business, I'm afraid." He con-
sidered for a moment. "I think I can find you something to
do."

He went into the next room and after a little while came
out with a large cardboard' box. It contained a vast number of
letters in great disorder, and he told Philip to sort them out
and arrange them alphabetically according to the names of the
writers.

"I'll take you to the room in which the articled clerk gen-
erally sits. There's a very nice fellow in it. His name is Watson.
He's a son of Watson, Crag, and Thompson— you knovs^— the
brewers. He's spending a year with us to learn business."

Mr. Goodworthy led Philip through the dingy office, where
now six or eight clerks were working, into a narrow room
behind. It had been made into a separate apartment by a glass
partition, and here they found Watson sitting back in a chair,

192 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

reading The Sportsman. He was a large, stout young man,
elegantly dressed, and he looked up as Mr. Goodworthy en-
tered. He asserted his position by calling the managing clerk
Goodworthy. The managing clerk objected to the familiarity,
and pointedly called him Mr. Watson, but Watson, instead of
seeing that it was a rebuke, accepted the title as a tribute to
his gentlemanliness.

"I see they've scratched Rigoletto," be said to Philip, as soon
as they were left alone.

"Have they?" said Philip, who knew nothing about horse-
racing.

He looked with awe upon Watson's beautiful clothes. His
tail-coat fitted him perfectly, and there was a valuable pin
artfully stuck in the middle of an enormous tie. On the
•chimney-piece rested his tall hat; it was saucy and bell-shaped
and shiny. Philip felt himself very shabby. Watson began to
talk of hunting — it was such an infernal bore having to waste
•one's time in an infernal office, he would only be able to hunt
on Saturdays — and shooting: he had ripping invitations all
over the country and of course he had to refuse them. It was
mfernal luck, but he wasn't going to put up with it long; he
was only in this infernal hole for a year, and then he was going
into the business, and he would hunt four days a week and get
all the shooting there was.

"You've got five years of it, haven't you?" he said, waving
his arm round the tiny room.

"I suppose so," said Philip.

"I daresay 1 shall see something of you. Carter does our
accounts, you know."

Philip was somewhat overpowered by the young gentle-
man's condescension. At Blackstable they had always looked
upon brewing with civil contempt, the Vicar made little jokes
about the beerage, and it was a surprising experience for
Philip to discover that Watson was such an important and
magnificent fellow. He had been to Winchester and to Oxford
and his conversation impressed the fact upon one with fre-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 193:

quency. When he discovered the details o£ Philip's education
his manner became more patronising still.

"Of course, i£ one doesn't go to a public school those sort of
schools are the next best thing, aren't they?"

Philip asked about the other men in the office.

"Oh, I don't bother about them much, you know," said.
Watson. "Carter's not a bad sort. We have him to dine now
and then. All the rest are awful bounders." ^

Presently Watson applied himself to some work he had in
hand, and Philip set about sorting his letters. Then Mr. Good-
worthy came in to say that Mr. Carter had arrived. He took
Philip into a large room next door to his own. There was a
big desk in it, and a couple of big arm-chairs; a Turkey carpet
adorned the floor, and the walls were decorated with sporting
prints. Mr. Carter was sitting at the desk and got up to shake
hands with Philip. He was dressed in a long frock coat. He
looked like a miUtary man; his moustache was waxed, his gray
hair was short and neat, he held himself upright, he talked in a
breezy way, he lived at Enfield. He was very keen on games,
and the good of the country. He was an officer in the Hert-
fordshire Yeomanry and chairman of the Conservative Asso-
ciation. When he was told that a local magnate had said no
one would take him for a City man, he felt that he had not
lived in vain. He talked to Philip in a pleasant, off-hand
fashion. Mr. Goodworthy would look after him. Watson was
a nice fellow, perfect gentleman, good sportsman— did Philip
hunt.? Pity, the sport for gentlemen. Didn't have much chance
of hunting now, had to leave that to his son. His son was at
Cambridge, he'd sent him to Rugby, fine school Rugby, nice
class of boys there, in a couple of years his son would be
articled, that would be nice for Philip, he'd like his son, thor-
ough sportsman. He hoped Philip would get on well and like
the work, he mustn't miss his lectures, they were getting up
the tone of the profession, they wanted gentlemen in it. Well,
well, Mr. Goodworthy was there. If he wanted to know any-
thing Mr. Goodworthy would tell him. What was his hand-

194 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

writing like? Ah well, Mr. Goodworthy would see about
that.

Philip was overwhelmed by so much gentlemanliness : in
East Anglia they knew who were gentlemen and who weren't,
but the gentlemen didn't talk about it.

Chapter 37

At first the novelty of the work kept Philip interested. Mr.
Carter dictated letters to him, and he had to make fair copies
of statements of accounts.

Mr. Carter preferred to conduct the office on gentlemanly .
lines; he would have nothing to do with typewriting and
looked upon shorthand with disfavour: the office-boy knew
shorthand, but it was only Mr. Goodworthy who made use
of his accomplishment. Now and then Philip with one of the
more experienced clerks went out to audit the accounts of some
firm : he came to know which of the clients must be treated
with respect and which were in low water. Now and then long
lists of figures were given him to add up. He attended lectures
for his first examination. Mr. Goodworthy repeated to him
that the work was dull at first, but he would grow used to it.
Philip left the office at six and walked across the river to
Waterloo. His supper was waiting for him when he reached
his lodgings and he spent the evening reading. On Saturday
afternoons he went to the National Gallery. Hayward had
recommended to him a guide which had been compiled out
of Ruskin's works, and with this in hand he went indus-
triously through room after room: he read carefully what the
critic had said about a picture and then in a determined
fashion set himself to see the same things in it. His Sundays

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 195

were difficult to get through. He knew no one in London and
spent them by himself. Mr. Nixon, the solicitor, asked him to
spend a Sunday at Hampstead, and Philip passed a happy
day with a set of exuberant strangers; he ate and drank a great
deal, took a walk on the heath, and came away with a general
invitation to come again whenever he liked; but he was mor-
bidly afraid of being in the way, so waited for a formal
invitation. Naturally enough it never came, for with numbers
of friends of their own the Nixons did not think of the lonely.,
silent boy whose claim upon their 'hospitality was so small-
So on Sundays he got up late and took a walk along the
tow-path. At Barnes the river is muddy, dingy, and tidal; it
has neither the graceful charm of the Thames above the locks
nor the romance of the crowded stream below London Bridge.
In the afternoon he walked about the common; and that is
gray and dingy too; it is neither country nor town; the gorsc
is stunted; and all about is the litter of civilisation. He went
to a play every Saturday night and stood cheerfully for an
hour or more at the gallery-door. It was not worth while to go
back to Barnes for the interval between the closing of the
Museum and his meal in an A. B. C. shop, and the time hung
heavily on his hands. He strolled up Bond Street or through
the Burlington Arcade, and when he was tired went and sat
down in the Park or in wet weather in the public library in
St. Martin's Lane. He looked at the people walking about and
envied them because they had friends; sometimes his envy
turned to hatred because they were happy and he was misep
able. He had never imagined that it was possible to be so
lonely in a great city. Sometimes when he was standing at the
gallery-door the man next to him would attempt a conversa^
tion; but Philip had the country boy's suspicion of strangers!
and answered in such a way as to prevent any further ac-
quaintance. After the play was over, obliged to keep to him-
self all he thought about it, he hurried across the bridge to
Waterloo. When he got back to his rooms, in which for
economy no fire had been lit, his heart sank. It was horribly

196 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

cheerless. He began to loathe his lodgings and the long solitary
evenings he spent in them. Sometimes he felt so lonely that
"Tie could not read, and then he sat looking into the fire hour
after hour in bitter wretchedness.

He had spent three months in London now, and except for
that one Sunday at Hampstead had never talked to anyone
but his fellow-clerks. One evening Watson asked him to dinner
at a restaurant and they went to a music-hall together; but he
felt shy and uncomfortable. Watson talked all the time of
things he did not care about, and while he looked upon
Watson as a Philistine he could not help admiring him. He
was angry because Watson obviously set no store on his cul-
ture, and with his way of taking himself at the estimate at
which he saw others held him he began to despise the acquire-
ments which till then had seemed to him not unimportant.
He felt for the first time the humiliation of poverty. His uncle
sent him fourteen pounds a month and he had had to buy a
good many clothes. His evening suit cost him five guineas. He
had not dared tell Watson that it was bought in the Strand.
Watson said there was only one tailor in London.

"I suppose you don't dance," said Watson, one day, with a
glance at Philip's club-foot.

"No," said Philip.
,„ "Pity. I've been asked to bring some dancing men to a ball.
I could have introduced you to some jolly girls."

Once or twice, hating the thought of going back to Barnes,
Philip had remained in town, and late in the evening wan-
dered through the West End till he found some house at
which there was a party. He stood among the little group of
shabby people, behind the footmen, watching the guests arrive,
and he listened to the music that floated through the window.
Sometimes, notwithstanding the cold, a couple came on to the
balcony and stood for a moment to get some fresh air; and
Philip, imagining that they were in love with one another,
turned away and limped along the street with a heavy heart.
He wopld never be able to stand in that man's place. He felt

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 197

that no woman could ever really look upon him without dis-
taste for his deformity.

That reminded him of Miss Wilkinson. .He thought of her
without satisfaction. Before parting they had made an arrange-
ment that she should write to Charing Cross Post Office till
he was able to send her an address, and when he went there
he found three letters from her. She wrote on blue paper with
violet ink, and she wrote in French. Philip wondered why
she could not write in English like a sensible woman, and her
passionate expressions, because they reminded him of a French
hovel, left him cold. She upbraided him for not having written,
and when he answered he excused himself by saying that he
had been busy. He did not quite know how to start the letter.
He could not bring himself to use dearest or darling, and he
hated to address her as Emily, so finally he began with the
word dear. It looked odd, standing by itself, and rather silly,
but he made it do. It was the first love letter he had ever
written, and he was conscious of its tameness; he felt that he
should say all sorts of vehement things, how he thought of her
every minute of the day and how he longed to kiss her beau-
tiful hands and how he trembled at the thought of her red
lips, but some inexplicable modesty prevented him; and in-
stead he told her of his new rooms and his office. The answer
came by return of post, angry, heart-broken, reproachful: how
could he be so cold? Did he not know that she hung on his
letters .? She had given him all that a woman could give, and
this was her reward. Was he tired of her already? Then, be-
cause he did not reply for several days, Miss Wilkinson bom-
barded him with letters. She could not bear his unkindness,
she waited for the post, and it never brought her his letter,
she cried herself to sleep night after night, she was looking
so ill that everyone remarked on it: if he did not love her why
did he not say so? She added that she could not live without
him, and the only thing was for her to commit suicide. She
told him he was cold and selfish and ungrateful. It was all in
French, and Philip knew that she wrote in that language to

198 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

show oil, but he was worried all the same. He did not want to
make her unhappy. In a little while she wrote that she could
not bear the separation any longer, she would arrange to come
over to London for Christmas. Philip wrote back that he
would hke nothing better, only he had already an engagement
to spend Christmas with friends in the country, and he did not
see how he could break it. She answered that she did not wish
to force herself on him, it was quite evident that he did not
wish to see her; she was deeply hurt, and she never thought
he would repay with such cruelty all her kindness. Her letter
was touching, and Philip thought he saw marks of her tears
on the paper; he wrote an impulsive reply saying that he was
dreadfully sorry and imploring her to come; but it was with
relief that he received her answer in which she said that she
found it would be impossible for her to get away. Presently
when her letters came his heart sank: he delayed opening
them, for he knew what they would contain, angry reproaches
and pathetic appeals; they would make him feel a perfect
beast, and yet he did not see with what he had to blame him-
self. He put off his answer from day to day, and then another
letter would come, saying she was ill and lonely and miserable.

"I wish to God I'd never had anything to do with her," he
said.

He admired Watson because he arranged these things so
easily. The young man had been engaged in an intrigue with
a girl who played in touring companies, and his account of
the affair filled Philip with envious amazement. But after
a time Watson's young affections changed, and one day he
described the rupture to Philip.

"I thought it was no good making any bones about it so I
just told her I'd had enough of her," he said.

"Didn't she make an awful scene?" asked Philip.

"The usual thing, you know, but I told her it was no good
trying on that sort of thing with me."

"Did she cry.?"

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 199

She began to, but I can't stand women when they cry, so
I said she'd better hook it."

Phihp's sense of humour was growing keener with advanc-
ing years.

"And did she hook it?" he asked smiUng.

"Well, there wasn't anything else for her to do, was there.'"'

Meanwhile the Christmas holidays approached. Mrs. Carey
had been ill all through November, and the doctor suggested
that she and the Vicar should go to Cornwall for a couple
of weeks round Christmas so that she should get back her
strength. The result was that Philip had nowhere to go, and
he spent Christmas L^y in his lodgings. Under Hayward's
influence he had persuaded himself that the festivities that
attend this season were vulgar and barbaric, and he made up
his mind that he would take no notice of the day; but when
it came, the jollity of all around affected him strangely. His
landlady and her husband were spending the day with a
married daughter, and to save trouble Philip announced that
he would take his meals out. He went up to London towards
mid-day and ate a slice of turkey and some Christmas pudding
by himself at Gatti's, and since he had nothing to do after-
wards went to Westminster Abbey for the afternoon service.
The streets were almost empty, and the people who went along
had a preoccupied look; they did not saunter but walked
with some definite goal in view, and hardly anyone was alone.
To Philip they all seemed happy. He felt himself more solitary
than he had ever done in his life. His intention had been to
kill the day, somehow in the streets and then dine at a restau-
rant, but he could not face again the sight of cheerful people,
talking, laughing, and making merry; so he went back to
Waterloo, and on his way through the Westminster Bridge
Road bought some ham and a couple of mince pies and went
back to Barnes. He ate his food in his lonely little room and
spent the evening with a book. His depression was almost
intolerable.

When he was back at the office it made him very sore to

200 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

listen to Watson's account of the short holiday. They had had
some jolly girls staying with them, and after dinner they had
cleared out the drawing-room and had a dance.

"I didn't get to bed till three and I don't know how I got
there then. By George, I was squiffy."

At last Philip asked desperately:

"How does one get to know people in London?"

Watson looked at him with surprise and with a slightly
contemptuous amusement.

"Oh, I don't know, one just knows them. If you go to
dances you soon get to know as many people as you can do
with."

Philip hated Watson, and yet he would have given anything
to change places with him. The old feehng that he had had at
school came back to him, and he tried to throw himself into
the other's skin, imagining what life would be if he were
Watson.

Chapter 38

At the end of the year there was a great deal to do. Philip
went to various places with a clerk named Thompson and
spent the day monotonously calling out items of expenditure,
which the other checked; and sometimes he was given long
pages of figures to add up. He had never had a head for
figures, and he could only do this slowly. Thompson grew
irritated at his mistakes. His fellow-clerk was a long, lean man
of forty, sallow, with black hair and a ragged moustache; he
had hollow cheeks and deep lines on each side of his nose. He
took a dislike to PhiUp because he was an articled clerk. Be-
cause he could put down three hundred guineas and keep
himself for five years Philip had the chance of a career; while

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 201

he, with his experience and abiUty, had no possibiUty of ever
being more than a clerk at thirty-five shiUings a w^eek. He was
a cross-grained man, oppressed by a large family, and he
resented the superciliousness which he fancied he saw in
Philip. He sneered at Philip because he was better educated
than himself, and he mocked at Philip's pronunciation; he
Eould not forgive him because he spoke without a cockney
accent, and when he talked to him sarcastically exaggerated
his aitches. At first his manner was merely gruff and repellent,
but as he discovered that Philip had no gift for accountancy
he took pleasure in humiliating him; his attacks were gross
and silly, but they wounded Philip, and in self-defence he
assumed an attitude of superiority which he did not feel.

"Had a bath this morning?" Thompson said when Philip
came to the office late, for his early punctuaHty had not lasted.

"Yes, haven't you?"

"No, I'm not a gentleman, I'm only a clerk. I have a bath
on Saturday night."

"I suppose that's why you're more than usually disagreeable
on Monday."

"Will you condescend to do a few sums in simple addition
today? I'm afraid it's asking a great deal from a gentleman
who knows Latin and Greek."

"Your attempts at sarcasm are not very happy.''

But Philip could not conceal from himself that the other
clerks, ill-paid and uncouth, were more useful than himself.
Once or twice Mr. Goodworthy grew impatient with him.

"You really ought to be able to do better than this by now,"
he said. "You're not even as smart as the office-boy."

Philip listened sulkily. He did not like being blamed, and
it humiliated him, when, having been given accounts to rnake
fair copies of, Mr. Goodworthy was not satisfied and gave
them to another clerk to do. At first the work had been toler-
able from its novcky, but now it grew irksome; and when he
discovered that he had no aptitude for it, he began to hate it.
Often, when he should have been doing something that was

202 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

given him, he wasted his time drawing little pictures on the
office note-paper. He made sketches of Watson in every con-
ceivable attitude, and Watson was impressed by his talent. It
occurred to him to take the drawings home, and he came back
next day with the praises of his family.

"I wonder you didn't become a painter," he said. "Only of
course there's no money in it."

It chanced that Mr. Carter two or three days later was dining
with the Watsons, and the sketches were shown him. The fol-
lowing morning he sent for Philip. Philip saw him seldom and
stood in some awe of him.

"Look here, young fellow, I don't care what you do out of
office-hours, but I've seen those sketches of yours and they're
on office-paper, and Mr. Goodworthy tells me you're slack.
You won't do any good as a chartered accountant unless you
look alive. It's a fine profession, and we're getting a very good
class of men in it, but it's a profession in which you have
to . . ." he looked for the termination of his phrase, but could
not find exactly what he wanted, so finished rather tamely,
"in which you have to look alive."

Perhaps Philip would have settled down but for the agree-
ment that if he did not like the work he could leave after a
year, and get back half the money paid for his articles. He felt
that he was fit for something better than to add up accounts,
and it was humiliating that he did so ill something which
seemed contemptible. The vulgar scenes with Thompson got
on his nerves. In March Watson ended his year at the office
and Philip, though he did not care for him, saw him go with
regret. The fact that the other clerks disUked them equally,
because they belonged to a class a little higher than their own,
was a bond of union. When Philip thought that he must spend
over four years more with that dreary set of fellows his heart
sank. He had expected |Wonderf ul things from London and it
had given him nothing. He hated it now. He did not know
a soul, and he had no idea how he was to get to know anyone,
He was tired of going everywhere by himself. He began to

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 203

feel that he could not stand much more of such a life. He
would lie in bed at night and think of the joy of never seeing
again that dingy office or any of the ijien in it, and of getting
away from those drab lodgings.

A great disappointment befell him in the spring. Hayward
had announced his intention of coming to London for the
season, and Philip had looked forward very much to seeing
him again. He had read so much lately and thought so much
that his mind was full of ideas which he wanted to discuss,
and he knew nobody who was willing to interest himself in
abstract things. He was quite excited at the thought of talking
his fill with someone, and he was wretched when Hayward
wrote to say that the spring was lovelier than ever he had
known it in Italy, and he could not bear to tear himself away.
He went on to ask why Philip did not come. What was the
use of squandering the days of his youth in an office when the
world was beautiful? The letter proceeded.

I wonder you can bear it. I thin\ of Fleet Street and Lin-
coln's Inn now with a shudder of disgust. There are only two
things in the world that tna\e life worth living, love and art.
I cannot imagine you sitting in an office over a ledger, and do
you wear a tall hat and an umbrella and a little blac\ bag?
My feeling is that one should loo{ upon life as an adventure,
one should burn with the hard, gem-li{e flame, and one
should take ris^s, one should expose oneself to danger. Why
do you not go to Paris and study art? I always thought you
had talent.

The suggestion fell in with the possibility that Philip for
some time had been vaguely turning over in his mind. It
startled him at first, but he could not help thinking of it, and
in the constant rumination over it he found his only escape
from the wretchedness of his present state. They all thought
he had talent, at Heidelberg they had admired his water
colours. Miss Wilkinson had told him over and over again

204 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

that they were charming; even strangers hke the Watsons had
been struck by his sketches. La Vie de Boheme had made a
deep impression on him. He had brought it to London and
when he was most depressed he had only to read a few pages
to be transported into those charming attics where Rodolphe
and the rest of them danced and loved and sang. He began
to think of Paris as before he had thought of London, but he
had no fear of a second disillusion; he yearned for romance
and beauty and love, and Paris seemed to offer them all. He
had a passion for pictures, and why should he not be able to
paint as well as anybody else.? He wrote to Miss Wilkinson
and asked her how much she thought he could live on in
Paris. She told him that he could manage easily on eighty
pounds a year, and she enthusiastically approved of his project.
She told him he was too good to be wasted in an office. Who
would be a clerk when he might be a great artist, she asked
dramatically, and she besought Philip to believe in himself:
that was the great thing. But Philip had a cautious nature.
It was all very well for Hay ward to talk of taking risks, he had
three hundred a year in gilt-edged securities; Philip's entire
fortune amounted to no more than cightcen-hundred pounds.
He hesitated.

Then it chanced that one day Mr. Goodworthy asked him
suddenly if he would like to go to Paris. The firm did the
accounts for a hotel in the Faubourg St. Honore, which was
owned by an English company, and twice a year Mr. Good-
worthy and a clerk went over. The clerk who generally vwnt
happened to be ill, and a press of work prevented any of the
others from getting away. Mr. Goodworthy thought of Philip
because he could best be spared, and his articles gave him
some claim upon a job which was one of the pleasures of the
business. Philip was delighted.

"You'll 'ave to work all day," said Mr. Goodworthy, "but
we get our evenings to ourselves, and Paris is Paris." He
smiled in a knowing way. "They do us very well at the hotel
and they give us all our meals, so it don't cost one anything.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 20?

That's the way I Hke going to Paris, at other people's expense."

When they arrived at Calais and Philip saw the crowd of
gesticulating porters his heart leaped.

"This is the real thing," he said to himself.

He was all eyes as the train sped through the country; he
adored the sand dunes, their colour seemed to him more lovely
than anything he had ever seen; and he was enchanted with
the canals and the long lines of poplars. When they got out of
the Gare du Nord, and trundled along the cobbled streets in
a ramshackle, noisy cab, it seemed to him that he was breath-
ing a new air so intoxicating that he could hardly restrain
himself from shouting aloud. They were met at the door of the.
hotel by the manager, a stout, pleasant man, who spoke tol-
erable English; Mr. Goodworthy was an old friend and he
greeted them effusively; they dined in his private room with
his wife, and to Phihp it seemed that he had never eaten any-
thing so delicious as the beefsteak aux pommes, nor drunk
such nectar as the vin ordinaire, which were set before them,

To Mr. Goodworthy, a respectable householder with excel-
lent principles, the capital of France was a paradise of the
joyously obscene. He asked the manager next morning what
there was to be seen what was 'thick.' He thoroughly enjoyed
these visits of his to Paris; he said they kept you from growing
rusty. In the evenings, after their work was over and they had
dined, he took Philip to the Moulin Rouge and the Folies
Bergeres. His Httle eyes twinkled and his face wore a sly,
sensual smile as he sought out the pornographic. He went into
all the haunts which were specially arranged for the foreigner,
and afterwards said that a nation could come to no good which
permitted that sort of thing. He nudged Philip when at some
revue a woman appeared with practically nothing on, and
pointed out to him the most strapping of the courtesans who
walked about the hall. It was a vulgar Paris that he showed
Philip, but Philip saw it with eyes blinded with illusion. In
the early morning he would rush out of the hotel and go to
the Champs Elysees, and stand at the Place de la Concorde.

206 OF HUMAN bondage

It was June, and Paris was silvery with the delicacy of the air.
Philip felt his heart go out to the people. Here he thought at
last was romance.

They spent the inside of a week there, leaving on Sunday,
and when Philip late at night reached his dingy rooms in
Barnes his mind was made up ; he would surrender his articles,
and go to Paris to study art; but so that no one should think
him unreasonable he determined to stay at the office till his
year was up. He was to have his holiday during the last fort-
night in August, and when he went away he would tell Her-
bert Carter that he had no intention of returning. But though
Philip could force himself to go to the office every day he
could not even pretend to show any interest in the work. His
mind was occupied with the future. After the middle of July
there was nothing much to do and he escaped a good deal by
pretending he had to go to lectures for his first examination.
The time he got in this way he spent in the National Gallery.
He read books about Paris and books about painting. He was
steeped in Ruskin. He read many of Vasari's lives of the
painters. He liked that story of Correggio, and he fancied
himself standing before some great masterpiece and crying:
Anch 'to son' pittore. His hesitation had left him now, and he
was convinced that he had in him the makings of a great
painter.

"After all, I can only try," he said to himself. "The great
thing in life is to take risks."

At last came the middle of August. Mr. Carter was spend-
ing the month in Scotland, and the managing clerk was in
charge of the office. Mr. Goodworthy had seemed pleasantly
disposed to Philip since their trip to Paris, and now that Philip
knew he was so soon to be free, he could look upon the
funny little man with tolerance.

"You're going for your holiday tomorrow, Carey.?" he said
to him in the evening.

All day Philip had been telling himself that this was the
last time he would ever sit in that hateful office.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 207

"Yes, this is the end of my year."

"I'm afraid you've not done very well. Mr. Carter's very
dissatisfied with you."

"Not nearly so dissatisfied as I am with Mr. Carter," re-
turned Philip cheerfully.

"I don't think you should speak like that, Carey."

"I'm not coming back. I made the arrangement that if I
didn't like accountancy Mr. Carter would return me half the
money I paid for my articles and I could chuck it at the end
of a year."

"You shouldn't come to such a decision hastily."

"For ten months I've loathed it all, I've loathed the work,
I've loathed the office, I loathe London. I'd rather sweep a
crossing than spend my days here."

"Well, I must say, I don't think you're very fitted for ac-
countancy."

"Good-bye," said Philip, holding out his hand. "I want tb
thank you for your kindness to me. I'm sorry if I've been
troublesome. I knew almost from the beginning I was no
good."

"Well, if you really do make up your mind it is good-bye,
I don't know what you're going to do, but if you're in the
neighbourhood at any time come in and see us."

Philip gave a little laugh.

"I'm afraid it sounds very rude, but I hope from the bottom
of my heart that I shall never set eyes on any of you again."

208 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 39

The Vicar of Blackstable would have nothing to do with the
scheme which Phihp laid before him. He had a great idea
that one should stick to whatever one had begun. Like all
weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's
mind.

"You chose to be an accountant of your own free will," he
said.

"I just took that because it was the only chance I saw of
getting up to town. I hate London, I hate the work, and noth-
ing will induce me to go back to it."

Mr. and Mrs. Carey were frankly shocked at Philip's idea
of being an artist. He should not forget, they said,' that his
father and mother were gentlefolk, and painting wasn't a
serious profession; it was Bohemian, disreputable, immoral.
And then Paris!

"So long as I have anything to say in the matter, I shall
act allow you to live in Paris," said the Vicar firmly.

It was a sink of iniquity. The scarlet woman and she of
Babylon flaunted their vileness there; the cities of the plain
were not more wicked.

"You've been brought up like a gentleman and Christian,
and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead
father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such
temptation."

"Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to
doubt whether I'm a gentleman," said Philip.

The dispute grew more violent. There was another year
before Philip took possession of his small inheritance and
during that time Mr. Carey proposed only to give him an

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 209

allowance if he remained at the office. It was clear to Philip
that if he meant not to continue with accountancy he must
leave it while he could still get back half the money that he
had been paid for his articles. The Vicar would not Usten.
Philip, losing all reserve, said things to wound and irritate.

"You've got no right to waste my money," he said at last.
"After all it's my money, isn't it? I'm not a child. You can't
prevent me from going to Paris if I make up my mind to. You
can't force me to go back to London."

"All I can do is to refuse you money unless you do what
I think fit."

"Well, I don't care, I've made up my mind to go to Paris.
I shall sell my clothes, and my books, and my father's
jewellery."

Aunt Louisa sat by in silence, anxious and unhappy: she
saw that Philip was beside himself, and anything she said
then would but increase his anger. Finally the Vicar an-
nounced that he wished to hear nothing more about it and
with dignity left the room. For the next three days neither
Philip nor he spoke to one another. Philip wrote to Hayward
for information about Paris, and made up his mind to set out
as soon as he got a reply. Mrs. Carey turned the matter over
in her mind incessantly; she felt that Philip included her in
the hatred he bore her husband, and the thought tortured her.
She loved him with all her heart. At length she spoke to him;
she listened attentively while he poured out all his disillusion-
ment of London and his eager ambition for the future.

"I may be no good, but at least let me have a try. I can't
be a worse failure than I was in that beastly office. And I feel
that I can paint. I know I've got it in me."

She was not so sure as her husband that they did right in
thwarting so strong an inclination. She had read of great
painters whose parents had opposed their wish to study, the
event had shown with what folly; and after all it was just as
possible for a painter to lead a virtuous hfe to the glory of
God as for a chartered accountant.

210 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I'm so afraid of your going to Paris," she said pitcously. "It
wouldn't be so bad if you studied in London."

"If I'm going in for painting I must do it thoroughly, and
it's only in Paris that you can get the real thing."

At his suggestion Mrs. Carey wrote to the solicitor, saying
that Philip was discontented with his work in London, and
asking what, he thought of a change. Mr. Nixon answered as
follows :

Dear Mrs. Carey,

I have seen Mr. Herbert Carter, and I am afraid I must tell
you that Philip has not done so well as one could have wished.
If he is very strongly set against the wor\, perhaps it is better
that he should take the opportunity there is now to brea\ his
articles. I am naturally very disappointed, but as you \now you
can ta\e a horse to the water, but you can't make him dnn\.

Yours very sincerely,

Albert Nixon.

The letter was shown to the Vicar, but served only to in-
crease his obstinacy. He was willing enough that Philip should
take up some other profession, he suggested his father's call-
ing, medicine, but nothing would induce him to pay an al-
lowance if Philip went to Paris.

"It's a mere excuse for self-indulgence and sensuality," he
said.

"I'm interested to hear you blame self-indulgence in others,"
retorted Philip acidly.

But by this time an answer had come from Hay ward, giving
the name of a hotel where Philip could get a room for thirty
francs a month and enclosing a note of introduction to the
massiere of a school. Philip read the letter to Mrs. Carey and
told her he proposed to start on the first of September.

"But you haven't got any money?" she said.

"I'm going into Tercanbury this afternoon to sell the
jewellery."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 211

He had inherited from his father a gold watch and chain,
two or three rings, some links, and two pins. One of them was
a pearl and might fetch a considerable sum.

"It's a very different thing, what a thing's worth and what
it'll fetch," said Aunt Louisa.

Philip smiled, for this was one of his uncle's stock phrases.

"I know, but at the worst I think I can get a hundred pounds
on the lot, and that'll keep me till I'm twenty-one."

Mrs. Carey did not answer, but she went upstairs, put on
her little black bonnet, and went to the bank. In an hour
she came back. She went to Philip, who was reading in the
drawing-room, and handed him an envelope.

"What's this.?" he asked.

"It's a Httle present for you," she answered, smiling shyly.

He opened it and found eleven five-pound notes and a little
paper sack bulging with sovereigns.

"I couldn't bear to let you sell your father's jewellery. It's
the money I had in the bank. It comes to very nearly a hun-
dred pounds."

Philip blushed, and, he knew not why, tears suddenly filled
his eyes.

"Oh, my dear, I can't take it," he said. "It's most awfully
good of you, but I couldn't bear to take it."

When Mrs. Carey was married she had three hundred
pounds, and this money, carefully watched, had been used by
her to meet any unforeseen expense, any urgent charity, or to
buy Christmas and birthday presents for her husband and for
Philip. In the course of years it had diminished sadly, but it
was still with the Vicar a subject for jesting. He talked of his
wife as a rich woman and he constantly spoke of the 'nest egg.'

"Oh, please take it, Philip. I'm so sorry I've been extrava-
gant, and there's only that left. But it'll make me so happy if
you'll accept it."

"But you'll want it," said Philip.

"No, I don't think I shall. I was keeping it in case your
uncle died before me. I thought it would be useful to have

212 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

a little something I could get at immediately if I wanted it,
but I don't think I shall live very much longer now."

"Oh, my dear, don't say that. Why, of course you're going
to live for ever. I can't possibly spare you."

"Oh, I'm not sorry." Her voice broke and she hid her eyes,
but in a moment, drying them, she smiled bravely. "At first, I
used to pray to God that He might not take me first, because
I didn't want your uncle to be left alone, I didn't want him
to have all the suffering, but now I know that it wouldn't
mean so much to your uncle as it would mean to me. He
wants to live more than- 1 do, I've never been the wife he
wanted, and I daresay he'd marry again if anything happened
to me. So I should like to go first. You don't think it's selfish
of me, Phihp, do you ? But I couldn't bear it if he went."

Philip kissed her wrinkled, thin cheek. He did not know
why the sight he had of that overwhelming love made him
feel strangely ashamed. It was incomprehensible that she
should care so much for a man who was so indifferent, so
selfish, so grossly self-indulgent; and he divined dimly that in
her heart she knew his indifference and his selfishness, knew
therh and loved him humbly all the same.

"You will take the money, Philip?" she said, gently stroking
his hand. "I know you can do without it, but it'll give me so
much happiness. I've always wanted to do something for you.
You see, I never had a child of my own, and I've loved you as
if you were my son. When you were a little boy, though I
knew it was wicked, I used to wish almost that you might be
ill, so that I could nurse you day and night. But you were
only ill once and then it was at school. I should so like to help
you. It's the only chance I shall ever have. And perhaps some
day when you're a great artist you won't forget me, but you'll
remember that I gave you your start."

"It's very good of you," said Philip. "I'm very grateful."

A smile came into her tired eyes, a smile of pure happiness.

"Oh, I'm so glad."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 213

Chapter 40

A FEW days later Mrs. Carey went to the station to see Philip
off. She stood at the door of the carriage, trying to keep back
her tears. Philip was restless and eager. He wanted to be gone.

"Kiss me once more," she said.

He leaned out of the window and kissed her. The train
started, and she stood on the wooden platform of the little
station, waving her handkerchief till it was out of sight. Her
heart was dreadfully heavy, and the few hundred yards to the
vicarage seemed very, very long. It was natural enough that
he should be eager to go, she thought, he was a boy and the
future beckoned to him; but she — she clenched her teeth so
that she should not cry. She uttered a little inward prayer that
God would guard him, and keep him out of temptation, and
give him happiness and good fortune.

But Philip ceased to think of her a moment after he had
settled down in his carriage. He thought only of the future.
He had written to Mrs. Otter, the massiere to whom Hayward
had given him an introduction, and had in his pocket an
invitation to tea on the following day. When he arrived in
Paris he had his luggage put on a cab and trundled off slowly
through the gay streets, over the bridge,, and along*the narrow
ways of the Latin Quarter. He had taken a room at the Hotel
dcs Deux Ecoles, which, was in a shabby street off the Boule-
vard du Montparnasse; it was convenient for Amitrano's
School at which he was going to work. A waiter took his bojf
up five flights of stairs, and Phihp was shown into a tiny room,
fusty from unopened windows, the greater part of which was
taken up by a large wooden bed with a canopy over it of red

214 OF HUMAN BONDAGE ,

rep; there were heavy curtains on the windows of the same
dingy material; the chest of drawers served also as a washing-
stand; and there was a massive wardrobe- of the style which is
connected with the good King Louis Philippe. The wall-paper
was discoloured with age; it was dark gray, and there could
be vaguely seen on it garlands of brown leaves. To Philip the
room seemed quaint and charming.

Though it was late he felt too excited to sleep and, going
out, made his way into the boulevard and walked towards the
light. This led him to the station; and the square in front of
it, vivid with arc-lamps, noisy with the yellow trams that
seemed to cross it in all directions, made him laugh aloud with
joy. There were cafes all round, and by chance, thirsty and
, eager to get a nearer sight of the crowd, Philip installed him-
self at a little table outside the Cafe de Versailles. Every other
table was taken, for it was a fine night; and Phihp looked
curiously at the people, here little family groups, there a knot
of men with odd-shaped hats and beards talking loudly and
gesticulating; next to him were two men who looked like
painters with women who Philip hoped were not their lawful
wives; behind him he heard Americans loudly arguing on art.
His soul was thrilled. He sat till very late, tired out but too
happy to move, and when at last he went to bed he Was wide
awake; he listened to the manifold noise of Paris.

Next day about tea-time he made his way to the Lion de
Belfort, and in a new street that led out of the Boulevard
Raspail found Mrs. Otter. She was an insignificant woman of
thirty, with a provincial air and a deliberately lady-hke man-
ner; she introduced him to her mother. He discovered pres-
ently that she had been studying in Paris for three years and
later that she was separated from her husband. She had in her
small drawing-room one or two portraits which she had
painted, and to Philip's inexperience they seemed extremely
accomplished.

"I wonder if I shall ever be able to paint as well as that,"
he said to her.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 215

^^ Oh, I expect so," she rephed, not without self-satisfaction.
'You can't expect to do everything all at once, of course."

She was very kind. She gave him the address of a shop
where he could get a portfolio, drawing-paper, and charcoal.

"I shall be going to Amitrano's about nine tomorrow, and
if you'll be there then I'll see that you get a good place and
all that sort of thing."

She asked him what he wanted to do, and Philip felt that
he should not let her see how vague he was about the whole
matter.

"Well, first I want to learn to draw," he said.

"I'm so glad to hear you say that. People always want to do
things in such a hurry. I never touched oils till I'd been here
for two years, and look at the result."

She gave a glance at the portrait of her mother, a sticky piece
of painting that hung over the piano.

"And if I were you, I would be very careful about the
people you get to know. I wouldn't mix myself up with any
foreigners. I'm very careful myself."

Philip thanked her for the suggestion, but it seemed to him
odd. He did not know that he particularly wanted to be
careful.

"We live just as we would if we were in England," said
Mrs. Otter's mother, who till then had spoken little. "When
we came here we brought all our own furniture over."

Philip looked round the room. It was filled with a massive
suite, and at the window were the same sort of white lace cup
tains which Aunt Louisa put up at the vicarage in summer.
The piano was draped in Liberty silk and so was the chimney
piece. Mrs. Otter followed his wandering eye.

"In the evening when we close the shutters one might really
feel one was in England."

"And we have our meals just as if we were at home," added
her mother. "A meat breakfast in the morning and dinner in
the middle of the day."

When he left Mrs. Otter Philip went to buy drawing ma.

216 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

terials; and next morning at the stroke of nine, trying to seem
'self-assured, he presented himself at the school. Mrs. Otter
was already there, and she came forward with a friendly smile.
He had been anxious about the reception he would have as a
nouveau, for he had read a good deal of the rough joking to
which a newcomer was exposed at some of the studios; but
Mrs. Otter had reassured him.

"Oh, there's nothing like that here," she said. "You see,
about half our students are ladies, and they set a tone to the
place."

The studio was large and bare, with gray walls, on which
were pinned the studies that had received prizes. A model
was sitting in a chair with a loose wrap thrown over her, and
about a dozen men and women were standing about, some
talking and others still working on their sketch. It was the
first rest of the model.

"You'd better not try anything too difScult at first," said
Mrs. Otter. "Put your easel here. You'll find that's the easiest
pose."

Philip placed an easel where she indicated, and Mrs. Otter
introduced him to a young woman who sat next to him.

"Mr. Carey, — Miss Price. Mr. Carey's never studied before,
you won't mind helping him a little just at first, will you.?"
Then she turned to the model. "La Pose."

The model threw aside the paper she had been reading,
Im Petite Republique, and sulkily, throwing off her gown,
got on to the stand. She stood, squarely on both feet, with her
hands clasped behind her head.

"It's a stupid pose," said Miss Price. "I can't imagine why
they chose it."

When Philip entered, the people in the studio had looked
at him curiously, and the model gave him an indifferent
glance, but now they ceased to pay attention to him. Philip,
with his beautiful sheet of paper in front of him, stared awk-
wardly at the model. He did not know how to begin. He had
never seen a naked woman before. She was not young and her

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 217

breasts were shrivelled. She had colourless, fair hair that fell
over her forehead untidily, and her face was covered with
large freckles. He glanced at Miss Price's work. She had only
been working on it two days, and it looked as though she had
had trouble; her paper was in a mess from constant rubbing
out, and to Philip's eyes the figure looked strangely distorted.

"I should have thought I could do as well as that," he said
to himself.

He began on the head, thinking that he would work slowly
downwards, but, he could not understand why, he found it
infinitely more difficult to draw a head from the model than
to draw one from his imagination. He got into difficulties. He
glanced at Miss Price. She was working with vehement
gravity. Her brow was wrinkled with eagerness, and there
was an anxious look in her eyes. It was hot in the studio, and
drops of sweat stood on her forehead. She was a girl of
twenty-six, with a great deal of dull gold hair; it was hand'
some hair, but it was carelessly done, dragged back from hei"
forehead and tied in a hurried knot. She had a large face, with
broad, flat features and small eyes; her skin was pasty, with
a singular unhealthiness of tone, and there was no colour in
the cheeks. She had an unwashed air and you could not help
wondering if she slept in her clothes. She was serious and
silent. When the next pause came, she stepped back to look
at her work.

"I don't know why I'm having so much bother," she said.
"But I mean to get it right." She turned to Philip. "How are
you getting on?"

"Not at all," he answered, with a rueful smile.

She looked at what he had done.

"You can't expect to do anything that way. You must take
measurements. And you must square out your paper."

She showed him rapidly how to set about the business.
Philip was impressed by her earnestness, but repelled by her
want of charm. He was grateful for the hints she gave him and
set to work again. Meanwhile other people had come in, mostly

218 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

men, for the women always arrived first, and the studio for
the time of year (it was early yet) was fairly full. Presently
there came in a young man with thin, black hair, an enormous
nose, and a face so long that it reminded you of a horse. He
sat down next to Philip and nodded across him to Miss Price.

"You're very late," she said. "Are you only just up.''"

"It was such a splendid day, I thought I'd lie in bed and
think how beautiful it was out."

Philip smiled, but Miss Price took the remark seriously.

"That seems a funny thing to do, I should have thought it
would be more to the point to get up and enjoy it."

"The way of the humorist is very hard," said the young man
gravely.

He did not seem inclined to work. He looked at his canvas;
he was working in colour, and had sketched in' the day before
the model who was posing. He turned to Philip.

"Have you just come out from England?"

"Yes."

"How did you find your way to Amitrano's.'"'

"It was the only school I knew of."

"I hope you haven't come with the idea that you will learn
anything here which will be of the smallest use to you."

"It's the best school in Paris," said Miss Price. "It's the only
one where they take art seriously."

"Should art be taken seriously.?" the young man asked; and
since Miss Price replied only with a scornful shrug, he added :
"But the point is, all schtwls are bad. They are academical,
obviously. Why this is less injurious than most is that the
teaching is more incompetent than elsewhere. Because you
learn nothing. ..." ,

"But why d'you come here then?" interrupted PhiUp.

"I see the better course, but do not follow it. Miss Price, who
is cultured, will remember the Latin of that."

"I wish you would leave me out of your conversation, Mr.
Glutton," said Miss Price brusquely.

"The only way to learn to paint," he went on, imperturb-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 219

able, "is to take a studio, hire a model, and just fight it out for
yourself."

"That seems a simple thing to do," said Philip.

"It only needs money," replied Glutton.

He began to paint, and Philip looked at him from the
corner of his eye. He was long and desperately thin; his huge
bones seemed to protrude from his body; his elbows were so , ,
sharp that they appeared to jut out through the arms of his
shabby coat. His trousers were frayed at the bottom, and on
each of his boots was a clumsy patch. Miss Price got up and
went over to Philip's easel.

"If Mr. Glutton will hold his tongue for a moment, I'll just
help you a little," she said.

"Miss Price dislikes me because I Ifave humour," said Glut-
ton, looking meditatively at his canvas, "but she detests me
because I have genius."

He spoke with solemnity, and his colossal, misshapen nose
made what he said very quaint. Philip was obliged to laugh,
but Miss Price grew darkly red with anger.

"You're the only person who has ever accused you of
genius."

"Also I am the only person whose opinion is of the least
value to me."

Miss Price began to criticise what PhiHp had done. She
talked glibly of anatomy and construction, planes and lines,
and of much else which Philip did not understand. She had
been at the studio a long time and knew the main points
which the masters insisted upon, but though she could show
what was wrong with Philip's work she could not tell him
how to put it right.

"It's awfully kind of you to take so much trouble with me,"
said PhiUp.

"Oh, it's nothing," she answered, flushing awkwardly. "Peo-
ple did the same for me when I first came, I'd do it for any

one.

"Miss Price wants to indicate that she is givmg you the

220 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

advantage of her knowledge from a sense of duty rather than
on account of any charms of your person," said Glutton.

Miss Price gave him a furious look, and went back to her
own drawing. The clock struck twelve, and the model with a
cry of relief stepped down from the stand.

Miss Price gathered up her things.

"Some of us go to Gravier's for lunch," she said to Philip,
with a look at Glutton. "I always go home myself."

"I'll take you to Gravier's if you like," said Glutton.

Philip thanked him and made ready to go. On his way out
Mrs. Otter asked him how he had been getting on.

"Did Fanny Price help you?" she asked. "I put you there
because I know she can do it if she likes. She's a disagreeable,
ill-natured girl, and sh^ can't draw herself at all, but she
knows the ropes, and she can be usefiil to a newcomer if she
cares to take the trouble."

On the way down the street Glutton said to him:

"You've made an impression on Fanny Price. You'd better
look out."

Philip laughed. He had never seen anyone on whom he
wished less to make an impression. They came to the cheap
little restaurant at which several of the students ate, and
Glutton sat down at a table at which three or four men were
already seated. For a franc, they got an egg, a plate of meat,
cheese, and a small bottle of wine. Goflee was extra. They sat
on the pavement, and yellow trams passed up and down the
boulevard with a ceaseless ringing of bells.

"By the way, what's your name?" said Glutton, as they took
their, seats.

"Garey."

"Allow me to introduce an old and trusted friend, Garey by
name," said Glutton gravely. "Mr. Flanagan, Mr. Lawson."

They laughed and went on with their conversation. They
talked of a thousand things, and they all talked at once. No
one paid the smallest attention to anyone else. They talked of
the places they had been to in the summer, of studios, of the

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 22).

various schools; they mentioned names which were unfa-
mihar to Philip, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Pissaro, Degas. Philip
listened with all his ears, and though he felt a little out of it,
his heart leaped with exultation. The time flew. When Glutton
got up he said:

"I expect you'll find me here this evening if you care to
come. You'll find this about the best place for getting dys-
pepsia at the lowest cost in the Quarter."

Chapter 41

Philip walked down the Boulevard du Montparnasse. It was
not at all like the Paris he had seen in the spring during his
visit to do the accounts of the Hotel St. Georges — ^he thought
already of that part of his life with a shudder — but reminded
him of what he thought a provincial town must be. There was
an easy-going air about it, and a sunny spaciousness which in-
vited the mind to day-dreaming. The trimness of the trees, the
vivid whiteness of the houses, the breadth, were very agree-
able; and he felt himself already thoroughly at home. He
sauntered along, staring at the people; there seemed an ele-
gance about the most ordinary, workmen with their broad red
sashes and their wide trousers, little soldiers in dingy, charm-
ing uniforms. He came presently to the Avenue de I'Observa-
toire, and he gave a sigh of pleasure at the magnificent, yet so
graceful, vista. He came to the gardens of the Luxembourg:
children were playing, nurses with long ribbons walked slowly
two by two, busy men passed through with satchels under
their arms, youths strangely dressed. The scene was formal
and dainty; nature was arranged and ordered, but so ex-
quisitely, that nature unordered and unarranged seemed bar-
baric. Philip was enchanted. It excited him to stand on that

222 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

spot of which he had read so much; it was classic ground to
him; and he felt the awe and the delight which some old don
might feel when for the first time he looked on the smiHng
plain of Sparta.

As he wandered he chanced to see Miss Price sitting by her-
self on a bench. He hesitated, for he did not at that moment
want to see anyone, and her uncouth way seemed out of place
amid the happiness he felt around him; but he had divined
her sensitiveness to affront, and since she had seen him
thought it would be polite to speak to her.

"What are you doing here?" she said, as he came up.

"Enjoying myself. Aren't you?"

"Oh, I come here every day from four to five. I don't think
one does any good if one works straight through."

"May I sit down for a minute?" he said.

"If you want to."

"That doesn't sound very cordial," he laughed.

"I'm not much of a one for saying pretty things."

Philip, a little disconcerted, was silent as he lit a cigarette.

"Did Glutton say anything about my work?" she asked sud- .
denly.

"No, I don't think he did," said Philip.

"He's no good, you know. He thinks he's a genius, but he
isn't. He's too lazy, for one thing. Genius is an infinite capacity
for taking pains. The only tjiing is to peg away. If one only
makes up one's mind badly 'enough to do a thing one can't
help doing it."

She spoke with a passionate strenuousness which was rather
striking. She wore a sailor hat of black straw, a white blouse
which was not quite clean, and a brown skirt. She had no
gloves on, and her hands wanted washing. She was so un-
attractive that Philip wished he had not begun to talk to her.
He could not make out whether she wanted him to stay or go.

"I'll do anything I can for you," she said all at once, without
reference to anything that had gone before. "I know how hard
it is."

OF HUMANBONDAGE 223

, "Th^nk you very much," said Philip, then in a moment:

Won't you come and have tea with me somewhere?" -^^

She looked at him quickly and flushed. When she reddened
her pasty skin acquired a curiously mottled look, like straw-
berries and cream that had gone bad.

"No, thanks. What d'you think I want tea for.? I've only just
' had lunch."

"I thought it would pass the time," said Philip.

"If you find it long you needn't bother about me, you know.
I don't mind being left alone."

At that moment two men passed, in brown velveteens,
enormous trousers, and basque caps. They were young, but
both wore beards.

"I say, are those art-students.?" said Philip. "They might
have stepped out of the Vie de Boheme."

"They're Americans," said Miss Price scornfully. "French-
men haven't worn things like that for thirty years, but the
Americans from the Far West buy those clothes and have
themselves photographed the day after they arrive in Paris.
That's about as near to art as they ever get. But it doesn't
matter to them, they've all got money."

Philip liked the daring picturesqueness of the Americans'
costume; he thought it showed the romantic spirit. Miss Price
asked him the time.

"I must be getting along to the studio," she said. "Are you
going to the sketch classes?"

Philip did not know anything about them, and she told him
that from five to six every evening a model sat, from whom
anyone who liked could go and draw at the cost of fifty cen-
times. They had a different model every day, and it was very
good practice.

"I don't suppose you're good enough yet for that. You'd
better wait a bit."

"I don't see why I shouldn't try. I haven't got anything else
to do."

They got up and walked to the studio. Philip could not tell

224 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

from her manner whether Miss Price wished him to walk with
her or preferred to walk alone. He remained from sheer em-
barrassment, not knowing how to leave her; but she would
not talk; she answered his questions in an ungracious manner.

A man was standing at the studio door with a large dish
into which each person as he went in dropped his half franc.
The studio was much fuller than it had been in the morning,
and there was not the preponderance of English and Amferi-
ca'ns; nor were women there in so large a proportion. Philip
felt the assemblage was more the sort of thing he had ex-
pected. It was very warm, and the air quickly grew fetid. It
was an old man who sat this time, with a vast gray beard, and
Philip tried to put into practice the little he had learned in
the morning; but he made a poor job of it; he realised that
he could not draw nearly as well as he thought. He glanced
enviously at one or two sketches of men who sat near him, and
wondered whether he would ever be able to use the charcoal
with that mastery. The hour passed quickly. Not wishing to
press himself upon Miss Price he sat down at some distance
from her, and at the end, as he passed her on his way out, she
asked him brusquely how he had got on.

"Not very well," he smiled.

"If you'd condescended to come and sit near me I could
have given you some hints. I suppose you thought yourself too
grand."

"No, it wasn't that. I was afraid you'd think me a nuisance."

"When I do that I'll tell you sharp enough."

Philip saw that in her uncouth way she was offering him
help.

"Well, tomorrow I'll just force myself upon you."

"Idon't mind," she answered.

Philip went out and wondered what he should do with him-
self till dinner. He was eager to do something characteristic.
Absinthe! Of course it was indicated, and so, sauntering
towards the station, he seated himself outside a cafe and
ordered it. He drank with nausea and satisfaction. He found

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 225

the taste disgusting, but the moral effect magnificent; he felt
every inch an art-student; and since he drank on an empty
stomach his spirits presently grew very high. He watched the
crowds, and felt all men were his brothers. He was happy.
When he reached Gravier's the table at which Glutton sat was
full, but as soon as he saw Philip limping along he called out
to him. They made room. The dinner was frugal, a plate of
soup, a dish of meat, fruit, cheese, and half a bottle of wine;
but Philip paid no attention to what he ate. He took note of
the men at the table. Flanagan was there again: he was an
American, a short, snub-nosed youth with a jolly face and a .
laughing mouth. He wore a Norfolk jacket of bold pattern, a
blue stock round his neck, and a tweed cap of fantastic shape.
At that time impressionism reigned in the Latin Quarter, but
its victory over the older schools was still recent; and Garolus-
Duran, Bouguereau, and their like were set up against Manet,
Monet, and Degas. To appreciate these was still a sign of
grace. Whistler was an influence strong with the English and
his compatriots, and the discerning collected Japanese prints.
The old masters were tested by new standards. The esteem in
which Raphael had been for centuries held was a matter of
derision to wise young men. They offered to give all his works
iar Velasquez' head of Philip IV in the National Gallery.
Philip found that a discussion on art was raging. Lawson,
whom he had met at luncheon, sat opposite to him. He was
a thin youth with a freckled face and red hair. He had very
bright green eyes. As Philip sat down he fixed them on him
and remarked suddenly:

"Raphael was only tolerable when he painted other people's;
pictures. When he painted Peruginos or Pinturicchios he was
charming; when he painted Raphaels he was," with a scornfuj
shrug, "Raphael."

Lawson spoke so aggressively that Philip was taken aback,
but he was not obliged to answer because Flanagan broke m
impatiently.

"Oh, to hell with art!" he cried. "Let's get gmny.

226 OFHUMANBONDAGE

"You were ginny last night, Flanagan," said Lawson.

"Nothing to what I mean to be tonight," he answered.
"Fancy being in Pa-ris and thinking of nothing but art all the
time." He spoke with a broad Western accent. "My, it is good
to be alive." He gathered himself together and then banged
his fist on the table. "To hell with art, I say."

"You not only say it, but you say it with tiresome iteration,"
said Glutton severely.

There was another American at the table. He was dressed
like those fine fellows whom Philip had seen that afternoon in
the Luxembourg. He had a handsome face, thin, ascetic, with
dark eyes; he wore his fantastic garb with the dashing air of
a buccaneer. He had a vast quantity of dark hair which fell
constantly over his eyes, and his most frequent gesture was to
throw back his head dramatically to get some long wisp out
of the way. He began to talk of the Olympia by Manet, which
then hung in the Luxembourg.

"I stood in front of it for an hour today, and I tell you it's
not a good picture."

Lawson put down his knife and fork. His green eyes flashed
fire, he gasped with rage; but he could be seen imposing calm
upon himself.

"It's very interesting to hear the mind of the untutored
savage," he said. "Will you tell us why it isn't a good picture?"

Before the American could answer someone else broke in
vehemently.

"D'you mean to say you can look at the painting of that
flesh and say it's not good.?"

"I don't say that. I think the right breast is very well
painted."

"The right breast be damned," shouted Lawson. "The
whole thing's a miracle of paiinting."

He began to describe in detail the beauties of the picture,
but at this table at Gravier's they who spoke at length spoke
for their own edification. No one listened to him. The Ameri-
can interrupted angrily.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 227

"You don't mean to say you think the head's good?"

Lawson, white with passion now, began to defend the head;
but Glutton, who had been sitting in silence with a look on his
face o£ good-humoured scorn, broke in.

"Give him the head. We don't want the head. It doesn't
affect the picture."

"All right, I'll give you the head," cried Lawson. "Take the
head and be damned to you."

"What about the black line.?" cried the American, trium-
phantly pushing back a wisp of hair which nearly fell in his
soup. "You don't see a black line round objects in nature."

"Oh, God, send down fire from heaven to consume the
blasphemer," said Lawson. "What has nature got to do with
it.'' No one knows what's in nature and what isn't! The world
sees nature through the eyes of the artist. Why, for centuries
it saw horses jumping a fence with all their legs extended, and
by Heaven, sir, they were extended. It saw shadows black
until Monet discovered they were coloured, and by Heaven,
sir, they were black. If we choose to surround objects with a
black Hne, the world will see the black Hne, and there will be
a black line; and if we paint grass red and cows blue, it'll see
them red and blue, and, by Heaven, they will be red and
blue."

"To hell with art," murmured Flanagan. "I want to get
ginny."

Lawson took no notice of the interruption.

"Now look here, when Olympia was shown at the Salon,
Zola— amid the jeers of the philistines and the hisses of the
pompiers, the academicians, and the public, Zola said: 'I look
forward to the day when Manet's picture will hang in the
Louvre opposite the Odalisque of Ingres, and it will not be
the Odalisque which will gain by comparison.' It'll be there.
Every day I see the time grow nearer. In ten years the Olympia
will be in the Louvre."

"Never," shouted the American, using both hands now with
a sudden desperate attempt to get his hair once for all out of

228 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

the way. "In ten years that picture will be dead. It's only a
fashion of the moment. No picture can live that hasn't got
something which that picture misses by a million miles."

"And what is that.?"

"Great art can't exist without a moral element."

"Oh God!" cried Lawson furiously. "I knew it was that. He
wants morahty." He joined his hands and held them towards
heaven in supplication. "Oh, Christopher Columbus, Christo-
pher Columbus, what did you do when you discovered
America.?"

"Ruskin says . . ."

But before he could add another word. Glutton rapped with
the handle of his knife imperiously on the table.

"Gentlemen," he said in a stern voice, and his huge nose
positively wrinkled with passion, "a name has been mentioned
which I never thought to hear again in decent society.
Preedom of speech is all very well, but we must observe the
limits of common propriety. You may talk of Bouguereau if
you will : there is a cheerful disgustingness in the sound which
£xcites laughter; but let us not sully our chaste lips with the
names of J. Ruskin, G. F. Watts, or E. B. Jones."

"Who was Ruskin anyway.?" asked Flanagan.

"He was one of the great Victorians. He was a master of
English style."

"Ruskin's style— a thing of shreds and purple patches," said
Lawson. "Besides, damn the Great Victorians. Whenever I
open a paper and see Death of a Great Victorian, I thank
Heaven there's one more, of them gone. Their only talent was
longevity, and no artist should be allowed to live after he's
forty; by then a man has done his best work, all he does after
that is repetition. Don't you think it was the greatest luck in
the world for them that Keats, Shelley, Bonington, and
Byron died early.? What a genius we should think Swinburne
if he had perished on the day the first series of Poems and
Ballads was published!"

The suggestion pleased, for no one at the table was more

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 229

than twenty-four, and they threw themselves upon it with
gusto. They were unanimous for once. They elaborated. Some-
one proposed a vast bonfire made out of the works of the
Forty Academicians into which the Great Victorians might
be hurled on their fortieth birthday. The idea was received
with acclamation. Carlyle and Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning,,
G. F. Watts, E. B. Jones, Dickens, Thackeray, they were
hurried into the flames; Mr. Gladstone, John Bright, and
Cobden; there was a moment's discussion about George
Meredith, but Matthew Arnold and Emerson were given up
cheerfully. At last came Walter Pater.

"Not Walter Pater," murmured Philip.

Lawson stared at him for a moment with his green eyes and
then nodded.

"You're quite right, Walter Pater is the only justification
for Mona Lisa. D'you know Cronshaw.? He used to know
Pater."

"Who's Cronshaw?" asked Philip.

"Cronshaw's a poet. He lives here. Let's go to the Lilas."

La Closerie des Lilas was a cafe to which they often went
in the evening after dinner, and here Cronshaw was invariably
to be found between the hours of iiine at night and two in the
morning. But Flanagan had had enough of intellectual conver-
sation for one evening, and when Lawson made his suggestion,
turned to Philip.

"Oh gee, let's go where there are girls," he said. "Come to
the Gaite Montparnasse, and we'll get ginny."

"I'd rather go and see Cronshaw and keep sober," laughed
Philip.

230 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 42

There was a general disturbance. Flanagan and two or three
more went on to the music-hall, while Philip walked slowly
with Glutton and Lawson to the Closerie des Lilas.

"You must go to the Gaite Montparnasse," said Lawson to
him. "It's one of the loveliest things in Paris. I'm going to
paint it one of these days."

Philip, influenced by Hayward, looked upon music-halls
with scornful eyes, but he had reached Paris at a time when
their artistic possibilities were just discovered. The pecuUari-
ties of lighting, the masse-s of dingy red and tarnished gold,
the heaviness of the shadows and the decorative lines, offered
a new theme; and half the studios in the Quarter contained
sketches made in one or other of the local theatres. Men of
letters, following in the painters' wake, conspired suddenly to
find artistic value in the turns; and red-nosed comedians were
landed to the skies for their sense of character; fat female
singers, who had bawled obscurely for twenty years, were dis-
covered to possess inimitable drollery; there were those who
found an aesthetic delight in performing dogs; while others
exhausted their vocabulary to extol the distinction of conjurers
and trick-cyclists. The crowd too, under another influence,
was become an ct)ject of sympathetic interest. With Hayward,
Philip had disdained humanity in the mass; he adopted the
attitude of one who wraps himself in solitariness and watches
with disgust the antics of the vulgar; but Glutton and Lawson
talked of the multitude vvith enthusiasm. They described the
seething throng that filled the various fairs of Paris, the sea of
faces, half seen in the glare of acetylene, half hidden in the
darkness, and the blare of trumpets, the hooting of whistles,

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 231

the hum of voices. What they said was new and strange to
Phihp. They told him about Cronshaw.

"Have you ever read any of his work?"

"No," said PhiHp.

"It came out in The Yellow Boo\:'

They looked upon him, as painters often do writers, with
contempt because he was a layman, with tolerance because he
practised an art, and with awe because he used a medium in
which themselves felt ill-at-ease.

"He's an extraordinary fellow. You'll find him a bit dis-
appointing at first, he only comes out at his best when he's
drunk."

"And the nuisance is," added Glutton, "that it takes him a
devil of a time to get drunk."

When they arrived at the cafe Lawson told Philip that they
would have to go in. There was hardly a bite in the autumn
air, but Cronshaw had a morbid fear of draughts and even in
the warmest weather sat inside.

"He knows everyone worth knowing," Lawson explained.
"He knew Pater and Oscar Wilde, and he knows Mallarme
and all those fellows."

The object of their search sat in the most sheltered corner
of the cafe, with his coat on and the collar turned up. He wore
his hat pressed well down on his forehead so that he should
avoid cold air. He was a big man, stout but not obese, with a
round face, a small moustache, and little, rather stupid eyes.
His head did not seem quite big enough for his body. It
looked like a pea uneasily poised on an &^g. He was playing
- dominoes with a Frenchman, and greeted the newcomers with
a quiet smile; he did not speak, but as if to make room for
them pushed away the little pile of saucers on the table which
indicated the number of drinks he had already consumed. He
nodded to Philip when he was introduced to him, and went
on with the game. Philip's knowledge of the language was
small, but he knew enough to tell that Cronshaw, although he
had lived in Paris for several years; spoke French execrably.

232 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

At last he leaned back with a smile of tiriumph.

"]e yous ai battu" he said, with an abominable accent.
" Garqongl" i

He called the waiter and turned to Philip.

"Just out from England.? See any cricket.'"' i

Philip was a little confused at the unexpected question.

"Cronshaw knows the averages of every first-class cricketer
for the last twenty years," said Lawson, smiling.

The Frenchman left them for friends at another table, and
Cronshaw, with the lazy enunciation which was one of his
peculiarities, began to discourse on the relative merits of Kent
and Lancashire. He told them of the last test match he had
seen and described the course of the game wicket by wicket.

"That's the only thing I miss in Paris," he said, as he finished
the boc\ which the waiter had brought. "You don't get any
cricket."

Philip was disappointed, and Lawson, pardonably anxious
to show off one of the celebrities of the Quarter, grew im-
patient. Cronshaw was taking his time to wake up that eve-
ning, though the saucers at his side indicated that he had at
least made an honest attempt to get drunk. Clutton watched
the scene with amusement. He fancied there was something of
affection in Cronshaw's minute knowledge of cricket; he liked
to tantalise people by talking to them of things that obviously
bored them; Clutton threw in a question.

"Have you seen Mallarme lately.?"

Cronshaw looked at him slowly, as if he were turning the
inquiry over in his mind, and before he answered rapped on
the marble table with one of the saucers.

"Bring my bottle of whiskey," he called out. He turned-
again to Philip. "I keep my own bottle of whiskey. I can't
afford to pay fifty centimes for every thimbleful."

The waiter brought the bottle, and Cronshaw held it up to
the light.

"They've been drinking it. Waiter, who's been helping him-
self to my whiskey.?"

. OF HUMAN BONDAGE 235*

"Mais personne, Monsieur Cronshaw."

"I made a mark on it last night, and look at it."

"Monsieur made a mark, but he kep^t on drinking after that.
At that rate Monsieur wastes his time in making marks."

The waiter was a jovial fellow and knew Cronshaw inti-
mately. Cronshaw gazed at him.

"If you give me your word of honour as a nobleman and a
gentleman that nobody but I has been drinking my whiskey,
I'll accept your statement."

This remark, translated literally into the crudest French,
sounded very funny, and the lady at the comptoir could not
help laughing.

"II est impayable," she murmured.

Cronshaw, hearing her, turned a sheepish eye upon her; she
was stout, matronly, and middle-aged ; and solemnly kissed his
hand to her. She shrugged her shoulders.

"Fear not, madam," he said heavily. "I have passed the age
when I am tempted by forty-five and gratitude."

He poured himself out some whiskey and water, and slowly
drank it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"He talked very well."

Lawson and Clutton knew that Cronshaw's remark was an
answer to the question about Mallarme. Cronshaw often went
to the gatherings on Tuesday evenings when the poet received
men of letters and painters, and discoursed with subtle oratory
on any subject that was suggested to him. Cronshaw had evi-
dently been there lately.

"He talked very well, but he talked nonsense. He talked
about art as though it were the most important thing in the
world."

"If it isn't, what are we here for.?" asked Philip.

"What you're here for I don't know. It is no business of
mine. But art is a luxury. Men attach importance only to self-
preservation and the propagation of their species. It is only
when these instincts are satisfied that they consent to occupy

234 OF HUMAN BONDAGE ,

themselves with the entertainment which is provided for them
by writers, painters, and poets."

Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pon-
dered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor
because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation
because it made him thirsty.

Then he said : "I wrote a poem yesterday.''

Without being asked he began to recite it, very slowly,
marking the rhythm with an extended forefinger. It was
possibly a very fine poem, but at that moment a young woman
came in. She had scarlet lips, and it was plain that the vivid
colour of her cheeks was not due to the vulgarity of nature;
she had blackened her eyelashes and eyebrows, and painted
both eyelids a bold blue, which was continued to a triangle at
the corner of the eyes. It was fantastic and amusing. Her dark
hair was done over her ears in the fashion made popular by
Mile. Cleo de Merode. Philip's eyes wandered to her, and
Cronshaw, having finished the recitation of his verses, smiled
upon him indulgently.

"You were not listening," he said.

"Oh yes, I was."

"I do not blame you, for you have given an apt illustration
of the statement I just made. What is art beside love? I respect
and applaud your indifference to fine poetry when you con-
template the meretricious charms of this young person."

She passed by the table at which they were sitting, and he
took her arm.

"Come and sit by my side, dear child, and let us play the
divine comedy of love."

"Fichez-moi la paix," she said, and pushing him on one side
continued her perambulation.

"Art," he continued, with a wave of the hand, "is merely the
refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were
supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of
life."

Cronshaw filled his glass again, and began to talk at length.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 235

He spoke with rotund delivery. He chose his words carefully.
He mingled wisdom and nonsense in the most astounding
manner, gravely making fun of his hearers at one moment,
and at the next playfully giving them sound advice. He talked
of art, and literature, and life. He was by turns devout and
obscene, merry and lachrymose. He grew remarkably drunk,
and then he began to recite poetry, his own and Milton's, hia
own and Shelley's, his own and Kit Marlowe's.

At last Lawson, exhausted, got up to go home.

"I shall go too," said Philip.

Glutton, the most silent of them all, remained behind listen,
ing, with a sardonic smile on his lips, to Cronshaw's maunder,
ings. Lawson accompanied Philip to his hotel and then bade
him good-night. But when Philip got to bed he could not
sleep. All these new ideas that had been flung before him care-
lessly seethed in his brain. He was tremendously excited. He
felt in himself great powers. He had never before been so
self-confident.

"I know I shall be a great artist," he said to himself. "I feel
it in me."

A thrill passed through him as another thought came, but
even to himself he would not put it into words : ^ ,/) ,

"By George, I believe I've got genius."

He was in fact very drunk, but as he had not taken more
than one glass of beer, it could have been due only to a more
dangerous intoxicant than alcohol.

Chapter 43

On TUESDAYS and Fridays masters spent the morning at Ami-
trano's, criticising the work done. In France the painter earns
little unless he paints portraits and is patronised by rich

236 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Americans; and men of reputation are glad to increase their
incomes by spending two or three hours once a week at one
of the numerous studios where art is taught. Tuesday was the
day upon- which Michel Rollin came to Amitrano's. He was
an elderly man, with a white beard and a florid complexion,
who had painted a number of decorations for the State, but
these were an object of derision to the students he instructed:
he was a disciple of Ingres, impervious to the progress of art
and angrily impatient with that tas de farceurs whose names
were Manet, Degas, Monet, and Sisley; but he was an excellent
teacher, helpful, polite, and encouraging. Foinet, on the other
hand, who visited the studio on Fridays, was a difficult man
to get on with. He was a small, shrivelled person, with bad
teeth and a bilious air, an untidy gray beard, and savage eyes;
his voice was high and his tone sarcastic. He had had pictures
bought by the Luxembourg, and at twenty-five looked for-
ward to a great career; but his talent was due to youth rather
than to personality, and for twenty years he had done nothing
but repeat the landscape which had brought him his early suc-
cess. When he was. reproached with monotony, he answered:
"Corot only painted one thing. Why shouldn't I.?"
He was envious of everyone else's success, and had a pe-
culiar, personal loathing of the impressionists; for he looked
upon his own failure as due to the mad fashion which had
attracted the public, sale bite, to their works. The genial dis-
dain of Michel Rollin, who called them impostors, was
answered ■ by him with vituperation, of which crapule and
canaille were the least violent items; he amused himself with
abuse of their private lives, and with sardonic humour, with
blasphemous and obscene detail, attacked the legitimacy of
their births and the purity of their conjugal relations: he used
an Oriental imagery and an Oriental emphasis to accentuate
his ribald scorn. Nor did he conceal his contempt for the
students whose work he examined. By them he was hated and
feared; the women by his brutal sarcasm he reduced often to
tears, which again aroused his ridicule; and he remained at

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 23!7

the studio, notwithstanding the protests of those who suffered
too bitterly from his attacks, because there could be no doubt
that he was one of the best masters in Paris. Sometimes the
old model who kept the school ventured to remonstrate with
him, but his expostulations quickly gave way before the violent
insolence of the painter to abject apologies.

It was Foinet with whom Philip first came in contact. He
was already in the stu<lio when Philip arrived. He went round
from easel to easel, with Mrs. Otter, the massiere, by his side
to interpret his remarks for the benefit of those who could not
understand French. Fanny Price, sitting next to Philip, was
working feverishly. Hfr face was sallow with nervousness,
and every now and then she stopped to wipe her hands on
her blouse; for they were hot with anxiety. Suddenly she
turned to Philip with an anxious look, which she tried to hide
by a sullen frown.

"D'you think it's good?" she asked, nodding at her drawing.

Philip got up and looked at it. He was astounded; he felt
she must have no eye at all; the thing was hopelessly out of
drawing.

"I wish I could draw half as well myself," he answered.

"You can't expect to, you've only just come. It's a bit too
much to expect that you should draw as well as I do. I've been
here two years."

Fanny Price puzzled Philip. Her conceit was stupendous.
Philip had already discovered that everyone in the studio
cordially disliked her; and it was no wonder, for she seemed
to go out of her way to wound people.

"I complained to Mrs. Otter about Foinet," she said now.
"The last two weeks he hasn't looked at my drawings. He
spends about half an hour on Mrs. Otter because she's the
massiere. After all I pay as much as anybody else, and I sup-
pose my money's as good as theirs. I don't' see why I shouldn't
get as much attention as anybody else."

She took up her charcoal again, but in a moment put it
down with a groan.

238 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I can't do any more now. I'm so frightfully nervous."

She looked at Foinet, who was coming towards them with
Mrs. Otter. Mrs. Otter, meek, mediocre, and self-satisfied,
wore an air of importance. Foinet sat down at the easel of an
untidy little Englishwoman called Ruth Chalice. She had the
fine black eyes, languid but passionate, the thin face, ascetic
but sensual, the skin like old ivory, which under the influence
of Burne-Jones were cultivated at that time by young ladies
in Chelsea. Foinet seemed in a pleasant mood; he did not say
much to her, but with quick, determined strokes of her
charcoal pointed out her errors. Miss Chalice beamed with
pleasure when he rose. He came to Clutton, and by this time
Philip was nervous too but Mrs. Otter had promised to make
things easy for him. Foinet stood for a moment in front of
Glutton's work, biting his thumb silently, then absent-mind-
edly spat out upon the canvas the little piece of skin which he
had bitten o£F.

"That's a fine line," he said at last, indicating with his
thumb what pleased him. "You're beginning to learn to draw."

Clutton did not answer, but looked at the master with his
usual air of sardonic indifference to the world's opinion.

"I'm beginning to think you have at least a trace of talent."

Mrs. Otter, who did not like Clutton, pursed her lips. She
did not see anything out of the way in his work. Foinet sat
down and went into technical details. Mrs. Otter grew rather
tired of standing. Clutton did not say anything, but nodded
now and then, and Foinet felt with satisfaction that he
grasped what he said and the reasons of it; most of them
listc|apd to him, but it was clear they never understood. Then
Foi4^t got up and came to Philip.

"He only arrived two days ago," Mrs. Otter hurried to ex-
plain. "He's a beginner. He's never studied before."

"Qa se voit," the master said. "One sees that."

He passed on, and Mrs. Otter murmured to him :

"This is the young lady I told you about."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 239

He looked at her as though she were some repulsive animal,
and his voice grew more rasping.

"It appears that you do not think I pay enough attention
to you. You have been complaining to the massiere. Well,
show me this work to which you wish me to give attention."

Fanny Price coloured. The blood under her unhealthy skin
seemed to be of a strange purple. Without answering she
pointed to the drawing on which she had beeii at work since
the beginning of the week. Foinet sat down.

"Well, what do you wish me to say to you? Do you wish
me to tell you it is good? It isn't. Do you wish me to tell
you it is well drawn? It isn't. Do you wish me to say it has
merit? It hasn't. Do you wish me to show you what is
wrong with it? It is all wrong. Do you wish me to tell you
what to do with it? Tear it up. Are you satisfied now?"

Miss Price became very white. She was furious because he
had said all this before Mrs. Otter. Though she had been in
France so long and could understand French well enough,
she could hardly speak two words.

"He's got no right to treat me like that. My money's as
good as anyone else's. I pay him to teach me. That's not
teaching me."

"What does she say? What does she say?" asked Foinet.

Mrs. Otter hesitated to translate, and Miss Price repeated
in execrable French.

"fe vous paye pour m'apprendre."

His eyes flashed with rage, he raised his voice and shook'
his fist.

"Mais, now. de Dieu, I can't teach you. I could more easily
teach a camel." He turned to Mrs. Otter. "Ask her does
she do this for amusement, or does she expect to earn
money by it?"

"I'm going to earn my living as an artist," Miss Price

answered.

"Then it is my duty to tell you that you are wastmg your
time. It would not matter that you have no talent, talent

240 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

does not run about the streets in these days, but you have
not the beginning of an aptitude. How long have you been
here? A child of five after two lessons would draw better
than you do. I only say one thing to you, give up this hopeless
attempt.' You're more likely to earn your living as a bonne
i tout faire than as a painter. Look."

He seized a piece of charcoal, and it broke as he applied it
to the paper. He cursed, and with the stump drew great firm
lines. He drew rapidly and spoke at the same time, spitting
out the words with venom.

"Look, those ariris are not the same length. That .knee,
it's grotesque. I tell you a child of five. You see, she's not
standing on her legs. That foot!"

With each word the angry pencil made a mark, and in
a moment the drawing upon which Fanny Price had spent
so much time and eager trouble was unrecognisable, a con-
fusion of lines and smudges. At last he flung down the char-
coal and stood up.

"Take my advice. Mademoiselle, try dressmaking." He
looked at his watch. "It's twelve. A la semaine prochaine,
messieurs."

Miss Price gathered up her things slowly. Philip waited
behind after the others to say to her something consolatory.
He could think of nothing but:

"I say, I'm awfully sorry. What a beast that man is!"

She turned on him savagely.

"Is that what you're waiting about for? When I want your
sympathy I'll ask for it. Please get out of my way."

She walked past him, out of the studio^ and Philip, with a
shrug of the shoulders, limped along to Gravier's for luncheon;

"It served her right," said Lawson, when Philip told him
what had happened. "Ill-tempered slut."

Lawson was very sensitive to criticism and, in order to
avoid it, never went to the studio when Foinet was coming.

"I don't want other people's opinion of my work," he
said. "I know myself if it's good or bad."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 241

"You mean you don't want other people's bad opinion of
your work," answered Glutton dryly.

In the afternoon Philip thought he would go to the Lux-
embourg to see the pictures, and walking through the garden
he saw Fanny Price sitting in her accustomed seat. He was
sore at the rudeness with which she had met his well-meant
attempt to say something pleasant, and passed as though
he had not caught sight of her. But she got up at once and
came towards him.

"Arc you trying to cut me?" she said.

"No, of course not. I thought perhaps you didn't want to
be spoken to."

"Where are you going?"

"I wanted to have a look at the Manet, I've heard so
much about it."

"Would you like me. to come with you? I know the Lux-
embourg rather well. I could show you one or two good
things."

He understood that, unable to bring herself to apologise
directly, she made this offer as amends.

"It's awfully kind of you. I should like it very much."

"You needn't say yes if you'd rather go alone," she said
suspiciously.

"I wouldn't."

They walked towards the gallery. Caillebotte's collection
had lately been placed on view, and the student for the first
time had the opportunity to examine at his ease the works of
the impressionists. Till then it had been possible to see them
only at Durand-Ruel's shop in the Rue Lafitte (and the
dealer, unlike his fellows in England, who adopt towards
the painter an attitude of superiority, was always pleased to
show the shabbiest student whatever he wanted to see), or
at his private house, to which it was not difficult to get a card
of admission on Tuesdays, and where you might see pictures
of world-wide reputation. Miss Price led Philip straight up
to Manet's Olympia. He looked at it in astonished silence.

242 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Do you like it?" asked Miss Price.

"I don't know," he answered helplessly.

"You can take it from me that it's the best thing in the
gallery except perhaps Whistler's portrait of his mother."

She gave him a certain time to contemplate the master-
piece and then took him to a picture representing a railway-
station.

"Look, here's a Monet," she said. "It's the Gare St. Larzare."

"But the railway lines aren't parallel," said Philip.

"What does that matter.?" she asked, with a haughty air.

Philip felt ashamed of himself. Fanny Price had picked
up the glib chatter of the studios and had no difficulty in
impressing Philip with the extent of her knowledge. She
proceeded to explain the pictures to him, superciliously but
not without insight, and showed him what the painters had
attempted and what he must look for. She talked with much
gesticulation of the thumb, and Philip, to whom all she said
was new, listened with profound but bewildered interest.
Till now he had worshipped Watts and Burne-Jones. The
pretty colour of the first, the affected drawing of the second,
had entirely satisfied his esthetic sensibilities. Their vague
idealism, the suspicion of a philosophical idea which underlay
the titles they gave their pictures, accorded very well with
the functions of art as from his diligent perusal of Ruskin
he understood it; but here was something quite different:
here was no moral appeal; and the contemplation of these
works could help no one to lead a purer and a higher life.
He was puzzled.

At last he said: "You know, I'm simply dead. I don't
think I can absorb anything more profitably. Let's go and
sit down on one of the benches."

"It's better not to take too much art at a time," Miss
Price answered.

When they got outside he thanked her warmly for the
trouble she had taken.

"Oh, that's all right," she said, a little ungraciously. "I do

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 243

it because I enjoy it. We'll go to the Louvre tomorrow if
you like, and then I'll take you to Durand-Ruel's."

"You're really awfully good to me."

"You don't think me such a beast as the most of them do."

"I don't," he smiled.

"They think they'll drive me away from the studio; but they
won't; I shall stay there just exactly as long as it suits me.
All that this morning, it was Lucy Otter's doing, I know it
was. She always has hated me. She thought after that I'd
take myself off. I daresay she'd like me to go. She's afraid
I know too much about her."

Miss Price told him a long, involved story, which made
out that Mrs. Otter, a humdrum and respectable little person,
had scabrous intrigues. Then she talked of Ruth Chalice, the
girl whom Foinet had praised that morning.

"She's been with every one of the fellows at the studio.
She's nothing better than a street-walker. And she's dirty
She hasn't had a bath for a month, I know it for a fact."

Philip listened uncomfortably. He had heard already that
various rumours were in circulation about Miss Chahce;
but it was ridiculous to suppose that Mrs. Otter, living with
her mother, was anything but rigidly virtuous. The woman
walking by his side with her malignant lying positively
horrified him.

"I don't care what they say. I shall go on just the same. I
know I've got it in me. I feel I'm an artist. I'd sooner kill
myself than give it up. Oh, I shan't be the first they've all
laughed at in the schools and then he's turned out the only
genius of the lot. Art's the only thing I care for, I'm willing
to give my whole life to it. It's only a question of sticking to
it and pegging away."

She found discreditable motives for everyone who would
not take her at her own estimate of herself. She detested
Glutton. She told Philip that his friend had no talent really;
it was just flashy and superficial; he couldn't compose a
figure to save his life. And Lawson:

244 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Little beast, with red hair and his freckles. He's so afraid
of Foinet that he won't let him see his work. After all, I don't
funk it, do I? I don't care what Foinet says to me, I know
I'm a real artist."

They reached the street in which she lived, and with a sigh
of relief Philip left her.

Chapter 44

But notwithstanding when Miss Price on the following
Sunday offered to take him to the Louvre Philip accepted.
She showed him Mona Lisa. He looked at it yvith a slight
feeling of disappointment, but he had read till he knew by
heart the jewelled words with which Walter Pater has added
beauty to the most famous picture in the world; and these
now he repeated to Miss Price.

"That's all literature," she said, a little contemptuously.
"You must get away from that."

She showed him the Rembrandts, and she said many
appropriate things about them. She stood in front of the
Disciples at Emmaus.

"When you feel the beauty of that," she said, "you'll know
something about painting."

She showed him the Odalisque and La Source of Ingres.
Fanny Price was a peremptory guide, she would not let him
look at the things he wished, and attempted to force his
admiration for all she admired. She was desperately in earnest
with her study of art, and when PhiUp, passing in the Long
Gallery a window that looked out on the Tuileries, gay,
sunny, and urbane, like a picture by Raffaelli, exclaimed:

"I say, how jolly! Do let's stop here a minute."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 245

She said, indifferently: "Yes, it's all right. But we've come
here to look at pictures."

The autumn air, blithe and vivacious, elated Philip; and
when towards mid-day they stood in the great court-yard
of the Louvre, he felt inclined to cry like Flanagan: To
Hell with art.

"I say, do let's go to one of those restaurants in the Boul'
Mich' and have a snack together, shall we.?" he suggested.

Miss Price gave him a suspicious look.

"I've got my lunch waiting for me at home," she answered.

"That doesn't matter. You can eat it tomorrow. Do let
me stand you a lunch."

"I don't know why you want to."

"It would give me pleasure," he replied, smiling.

They crossed the river, and at the corner of the Boulevard
St. Michel there was a restaurant.

"Let's go in there."

"No, I won't go there, it looks too expensive."

She walked on firmly, and Philip was obliged to follow.
A few steps brought them to a smaller restaurant, where
a dozen people were already lunching on the pavement
under an awning; on the window was announced in large
white letters: Dejeuner 1.2^, vin compris.

"We couldn't have anything cheaper than this, and it
looks quite all right."

They sat down at a vacant table and waited for the omelette
which was the first article on the bill of fare. Philip gazed
with delight upon the passersby. His heart went out to
them. He was tired but very happy.

"I say, look at that man in the blouse. Isn't he ripping!"

He glanced at Miss Price, and to his astonishment saw
that she was looking down at her plate, regardless of the
passing spectacle, and two heavy tears were roUing down
her cheeks.

"What on earth's the matter.?" he exclaimed.

246 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"If you say anything to me I shall get up and go at once,"
she answered.

He was entirely puzzled, but fortunately at that moment
ihe omelette came. He divided it in two and they began to
eat. Philip did his best to talk of indifferent things, and it
seemed as though Miss Price were making an effort on her
side to be agreeable; but the luncheon was not altogether
a success. Philip was squeamish, and the way in which Miss
Price ate took his appetite away. She ate noisily, greedily, a
little like a wild beast in a menagerie, and after she had fin-
ished each course rubbed the plate with pieces of bread till
it was white and shining, as if she did not wish to lose a
single drop of gravy. They had Camembert cheese, and it
disgusted Philip to see that she ate rind and all of the portion
that was given her. She could not have eaten more ravenously
if she were starving.

Miss Price was unaccountable, and having parted from
her on one day with friendliness he could never tell whether
on the next she would not be sulky and uncivil; but he
learned a good deal from her: though she could not draw
well herself, she knew all that could be taught, and her
constant suggestions helped his progress. Mrs. Otter was
useful to him too, and sometimes Miss Chahce criticised his
work; he learned from the glib loquacity of'Lawson and
from the example of Glutton. But Fanny Price ^hated him
to take suggestions from anyone but herself, and when he
asked her help after someone else had been talking to him
she would refuse with brutal rudeness. The other fellows,
Lawson, Glutton, Flanagan, chaffed him about her.

"You be careful, my lad," they said, "she's in love with you."

"Oh, what nonsense," he laughed.

The thought that Miss Price could be in love with anyone
was preposterous. It made him shudder when he thought
of her uncomeliness, the bedraggled hair and the dirty hands,
the brown dress she always wore, stained and ragged at the
hem: he supposed she was hard up, they were all hard up,

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 247

but she might at least be clean; and it was surely possible
with a needle and thread to make her skirt tidy.

Philip began to sort his impressions of the people he was
thrown in contact with. He was not so ingenuous as in those
days which now seemed so long ago at Heidelberg, and,
beginning to take a more deliberate interest in humanity, he
was inclined to examine and to criticise. He found it difficult
to know Glutton any better after seeing him every day for
three months than on the first day of their acquaintance.
The general impression at the studio was that he was abk; it
was supposed that he would do great things, and he shared
the general opinion; but what exactly he was going to do
neither he nor anybody else quite knew. He had worked at
several studios before Amitrano's, at Julian's, the Beaux Arts,
and MacPherson's, and was remaining longer at Amitrano's
than anywhere because he found himself more left alone. He
was not fond of showing his work, and unlike most of the
young men who were studying art neither sought nor gave
advice. It was said that in the little studio in the Rue, Cam-
pagne Premiere, which served him for work-room and bed-
room, he had wonderful pictures which would make his
reputation if only he could be induced to exhibit them. He
could not afford a model but painted still life, and Lawson
constantly talked of a plate of apples which he declared was
a masterpiece. He was fastidious, and, aiming at something
he did not quite fully grasp, was constantly dissatisfied with
his work as a whole: perhaps a part would please him, the
forearm or the leg and foot of a figure, a glass or a cup in a
still-life; and he would cut this out and keep it, destroying
the rest of the canvas; so that when people invited themselves
to see his work he could truthfully answer that he had not a
single picture to show. In Brittany he had come across a
painter whom nobody else had heard of, a queer fellow who
had been a stockbroker and taken up painting at middle-age,
and he was greatly influenced by his work. He was turning
his back on the impressionists and working out for himself

248 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

painfully an individual way not only of painting but of seeing.
Philip felt in him something strangely original.

At Gravier's where they ate, and in the evening at the
Versailles or at the Closerie des Lilas Glutton was inclined
to taciturnity. He sat quietly, with a sardonic expression on
his gaunt face, and spoke only when the opportunity occurred
to throw in a witticism. He liked a butt and was most cheerful
when someone was there on whom he could exercise his
sarcasm. He seldom talked of anything but painting, and
then only with the one or two persons whom he thought
worth while. Philip wondered whether there was in him
really anything: his reticence, the haggard look of him, the
pungent humour, seemed to suggest personality, but might
be no more than an effective mask which covered nothing.

With Lawson on the other hand Philip soon grew intimate.
He had a variety of interests which made him an agreeable
companion. He read more than most of the students and
though his income was small, loved to buy books. He lent
them willingly; and Philip became acquainted with Flaubert
and Balzac, with Verlaine, Heredia, and Villiers de I'lsle
Adam. They went to plays together and sometimes to the
gallery of the Opera Gomique. There was the Odeon quite
near them, and Philip soon shared his friend's passion for
the tragedians of Louis XIV and the sonorous Alexandrine.
In the Rue Taitbout were the Concerts Rouge, where for
seventy-five centimes they could hear excellent music and
get into the bargain soniething which it was quite possible
to drink : the seats were uncomfortable, the place was crowded,
the air thick with caporal horrible to breathe, but in their
young enthusiasm they were ihdiflerent. Sometimes they
went to the Bal Bullier. On these occasions Flanagan accom-
panied them. His excitability and his roisterous enthusiasm
made them laugh. He was an excellent dancer, and before
they had been ten minutes in the room he was prancing
round with some little shop-girl whose acquaintance he had
just made.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 249

The desire of all of them was to have a mistress. It was
part of the paraphernalia of the art-student in Paris. It gave
consideration in the eyes of one's fellows. It was something
to boast about. But the difficulty was that they had scarcely
enough money to keep themselves, and though they argued
that Frenchwomen were so clever it cost no more to keep
two than one, they found it difficult to meet young women
who were willing to take that view of the circumstances.
They had to content themselves for the most part with envy-
ing and abusing the ladies who received protection from
painters of more settled respectability than their own. It was
extraordinary how 'difficult these things were in Paris. Law-
son would become acquainted with some young thing and
make an appointment; for twenty-four hours he would be
all in a flutter and describe the charmer at length to everyone
he met; but she never by any chance turned up at the time
fixed. He would come to Gravier's very late, ill-tempered, and
exclaim :

"Confound it, another rabbit! I don't know why it is they
don't like me. I suppose it's because I don't speak French
well, or my red hair. It's too sickening to have spent over a
year in Paris without getting hold of anyone."

"You don't go the right way to work," said Flanagan.

He had a long and enviable list of triumphs to narrate,
and though they took leave not to believe all he said, evidence
forced them to acknowledge that he did not altogether lie.
But be sought no permanent arrangement. He only had two
years in Paris: he had persuaded his people to let him come
and study art instead of going to college; but at the end of
that period he was to return to Seattle and go into his father's
business. He had made up his mind to get as much fun as
'possible into the time, and demanded variety rather thaa
■duration in his love affairs.

"I don't know how you get hold of them," said Lawson

furiously. -

"There's no difficulty about that, sonny, answered Flanagan

250 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"You just go right in. The difficulty is to get rid o£ them.
That's where you want tact."

Philip was too much occupied with his work, the books
he was reading, the plays he saw, the conversation he listened
to, to trouble himself with the desire for female society. He
thought there would be plenty of time for that when he could
speak French more glibly.

It was more than a year now since he had seen Miss Wil-
kinson, and during his first weeks in Paris he had been too
busy to answer a letter she had written to him just before
he left Blackstable. When another came, knowing it would
be full of reproaches and not being just then in the mood
for them, he put it aside, intending to open it later; but he
forgot and did not run across it till a month afterwards, when
he was turning out a drawer to find some socks that had no
: holes in them. He looked at the unopened letter with dismay.
He was afraid that Miss Wilkinson had suffered a good deal,
and it made him feel a brute; but she had probably got over
the suffering by now, at all events the worst of it. It suggested
itself to him that women were often very emphatic in their
expressions. These did not mean so much as when men used
them. He had quite made up his mind that nothing would
induce him ever to see her again. He had not written for so
long that it seemed hardly worth while to write now. He
made up his mind not to read the letter.

"I daresay she won't write again," he said to himself. "She
can't help seeing the thing's over. After all, she was old enough
to be my mother; she ought to have known better."

For an hour or two he felt a little uncomfortable. His
attitude was obviously the right one, but he could not help
a feeling of dissatisfaction with the whole business. Miss
Wilkinson, however, did not write again; nor did she, as he
absurdly feared, suddenly appear in Paris to make him ridic-
ulous before his friends. In a Uttle while he clean forgot her.

Meanwhile he definitely forsook his old gods. The amaze-
ment with which at first he had looked upon the works o£

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 251

the impressionists, changed to admiration; and presently he
found himself talking as emphatically as the rest on the
merits of Manet, Monet, and Degas. He bought a photograph
of a drawing by Ingres of the Odalisque and a photograph
of the Olympia. They were pinned side by side over his
washing-stand so that he could contemplate their beauty
while he shaved. He knew now quite positively thaf there
had been no painting of landscape before Monet; and he felt,
a real thrill when he stood in front of Rembrandt's Disciples
at Emmaus or Velasquez' LM.dy with the Flea-bitten Nose.
That was not her real name, but by that she was distinguished
at Gravier's to emphasise the picture's beauty notwithstanding
the somewhat revolting peculiarity of the sitter's appearance.
With Ruskin, Burne-Jones, and Watts, he had put aside his
bowler hat and the neat blue tie with white spots which he
had worn on coming to Paris ; and now disported himself in
a soft, broad-brimmed hat, a flowing black cravat, and a cape
of romantic cut. He walked along the Boulevard du Mont-
parnasse as though he had known it all his life, and by virtuous
perseverance he had learnt to drink absinthe without dis-
taste. He was letting his hair grow, and it was only because
Nature is unkind and has no regard for the immortal longings
of youth that he did not attempt a beard.

Chapter. 43

Philip soon realised that the spirit which informed his friends
was Cronshaw's. It was from him that Lawson got his para-
doxes; and even Glutton, who strained after individuality,
expressed himself in the terms he had insensibly acquired
from the older man. It was his ideas that they bandied about

252 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

at table, and on his authority they formed their judgments.
They made up for the respect with which unconsciously they
treated him by laughing at his foibles and lamenting his vices.

"Of course, poor old Cronshaw will never do any good,"
they said. "He's quite hopeless."

They prided themselves on being alone in appreciating his
genius; and though, with the contempt of youth for the
follies of middle-age, they patronised him among themselves,
they did not fail to look upon it as a feather in their caps if he
had chosen a time when only one was there to be particularly
wonderful. Cronshaw never came to Gravier's. For the last
four years he had lived in squalid conditions with a woman
whom only Lawson had once seen, in a tiny apartment on the
sixth floor of one of the most dilapidated houses on the Quai
des Grands Augustins: Lawson described with gusto the
filth, the untidiness, the litter.

"And the stink nearly blew your head off."

"Not at dinner, Lawson," expostulated one of the others.

But he would not deny himself the pleasure of giving pic-
turesque details of the odours which met his nostril. With a
fierce delight in his own realism he described the woman who
had opened the door for him. She was dark, small, and fat,
quite young, with black hair that seemed always on the
point of coming down. She wore a slatternly blouse and no
corsets. With her red cheeks, large sensual mouth, and shin-
ing, lewd eyes, she reminded you of the Bohemienne in the
Louvre by Franz Hals. She had a flaunting vulgarity which
amused and yet horrified. A scrubby, unwashed baby was
playing on the floor. It was known that the slut deceived
Cronshaw with the most worthless ragamuffins of the Quarter,
and it was a mystery to the ingenuous youths who absorbed
his wisdom over a cafe table that Cronshaw with his keen
intellect and his passion for beauty could ally himself to such
a creature. But he seemed to revel in the coarseness of her
language and would often report some phrase which reeked
■)f the gutter. He referred to her ironically as la fille de mon

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 253

concierge. Cronshaw was very poor. He earned a bare sub-
sistence by writing on the exhibitions of pictures for one or
■two English papers, and he did a certain amount of translat-
ing. He had been on the staff of an English paper in Paris,
but had been dismissed for drunkenness; he still however
did odd jobs for it, describing sales at the Hotel Drouot or
the revues at music-halls. The life of Paris had got into his
bones, and he would not change it, notwithstanding its
squalor, drudgery, and hardship, for any other in the world.
He remained there all through the year, even in summer when
everyone he knew was away, and felt himself only at ease
within a mile of the Boulevard St. Michel. But the curious
thing was that he had never learnt to speak French passably,
and he kept in his shabby clothes bought at La Belle faraini-
ere an ineradicably English appearance.

He was a man who would have made a success of life a
century and a half ago when conversation was a passport to
good company and inebriety no bar.

"I ought to have lived in the eighteen hundreds," he said
himself. "What I want is a patron. I should have published
my poems by subscription and dedicated them to a nobleman.
I long to compose rhymed couplets upon the poodle of a
countess. My soul yearns for the love of chambermaids and
the conversation of bishops."

He quoted the romantic RoUa,

"Je suis venu trop tard dans up monde trop vieux."

He liked new faces, and he took a fancy to Philip, who
seemed to achieve the difficult feat of talking just enough tc
suggest conversation and not too much to prevent mono-
logue. Philip was captivated. He did not realise that little
that Cronshaw said was new. His. personality in conversation
had a curious power. He had a beautiful and a sonorous
voice, and a manner of putting things which was irresistible
to youth. All he said seemed to excite thought, and often on
the way home Law^on and Philip would walk to and from
one another's hotels, discussing some point which a chance

254 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

word of Cronshaw had suggested. It was disconcerting to
Philip, who had a youthful eagerness for results, that Cren-
shaw's poetry hardly came up to expectation. It had never
been published in a volume, but most of it had appeared in
periodicals; and after a good deal of persuasion Cronshaw
brought down a bundle of pages torn out of The Yellow Boo\,
The Saturday Review, and other journals, on each of which
was a poem. Philip was taken aback to find that most of
them reminded him either of Henley or of Swinburne. It
needed the splendour of Cronshaw's delivery to make them
personal. He expressed his disappointment to Lawson, who
carelessly repeated his words; and next time Philip went to
the Closerie des Lilas the poet turned to him with his sleek
smile :

"I hear you don't think much of my verses."

Philip was embarrassed.

"I don't know about that," he answered. "I enjoyed reading
them very much."

"Do not attempt to spare my feelings," returned Cronshaw,
with a wave of his fat hand. "I do not attach any exaggerated
importance to my poetical works. Life is there to be lived
rather than to be written about. My aim is to search out the
manifSld experience that it offers, wringing from each mo-
ment what of emotion it presents. I look upon my writing
as a graceful accomplishment which does not absorb but
rather adds pleasure to existence. And as for posterity-
damn posterity."

Philip smiled, for it leaped to one's eyes that the artist
in life had produced no more than a wretched daub. Cron-
shaw looked at him meditatively and filled his glass. He sent
the waiter for a packet of cigarettes.

"You are amused because I talk in this fashion and you
know that I am poor and live in an attic with a vulgar trollop
who deceives me with hair-dressers and gargons de cafe; I
translate wretched books for the British public, and write
articles upon contemptible pictures which deserve not even

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 255

to be abused. But pray tell me what is the meaning of life?"
'I say, that's rather a difficult question. Won't you give
the answer yourself?"

"No, because it's worthless unless you yourself discover it.
But what do you suppose you are in the world for?"

Philip had never asked himself, and he thought for a
moment before replying.

"Oh, I don't know: I suppose to do one's duty, and make
the best possible use of one's faculties, and avoid hurting
other people.''

"In short, to do unto others as you would they should do
unto you?"

"I suppose so."

"Christianity."

"No, it isn't," said Philip indignantly. "It has nothing to
do with Christianity. It's just abstract morahty."

"But there's no such thing as abstract morality."

"In that case, supposing under the influence of liquor you
left your purse behind when you leave here and I picked it
up, why do you imagine that I should return it to you? It's
not the fear of the police."

"It's the dread of hell if you sin and the hope of Heaven
if you are virtuous."

"But I believe in neither."

"That may be. Neither did Kant when he devised the
Categorical Imperative. You have thrown aside a creed, but
you have preserved the etl»c which was based upon it. To all
intents you are a Christian still, and if there is a God in
Heaven you will undoubtedly receive your reward. The
Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.
If you keep His laws I don't think He can care a packet of
pins whether you believe in Him or not."

"But if I left my purse behind you would certainly return
it to me," said Philip.

"Not from motives of abstract morality, but only from
fear of the police."

256 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"It's a thousand to one that the police would never find out."

"My ancestors have lived in a civilised state so long that the
fear of the police has eaten into my bones. The daughter of
my concierge would not hesitate for a momfent. You answer
that she belongs to the criminal classes; not at all, she is merely
devoid of vulgar prejudice."

"But then that does away with honour and virtue and good-
ness and decency and everything," said Philip.

"Have you ever committed a sin?"

"I don't know, I suppose so," answered Philip.

"You speak with the lips of a dissenting minister. I have
'never committed a sin."

Cronshaw in his shabby great-coat, with the collar turned
up, and his hat well down on his head, with his red fat face
. and his little gleaming eyes, looked extraordinarily comic;
but Philip was too much in earnest to laugh.

"Have you never done anything you regret?"

"How can I regret when what I did was inevitable?"
asked Cronshaw in return.

"But that's fataUsm."

"The illusion which man has that his will is free is so
deeply rooted that I am ready to accept it. I act as though
I were a free agent. But when an action is performed it is
clear that all the forces of the universe from all eternity con-
spired to cause it, and nothing I could do could have pre-
vented it. It was inevitable. If it was good I can claim no
merit; if it was bad I can accept jio censure."

"My brain reels," said Philip.

"Have some whiskey," returned Cronshaw, passing over
the bottle. "There's nothing like it for clearing the head. You
must expect to be thick-witted if you insist upon drinking
beer."

Philip shook his head, and Cronshaw proceeded:

"You're not a bad fellow, but you won't drink. Sobriety
disturbs conversation. But when I speak of good and bad . . ."
Philip saw he was taking up the thread of his discourse, "I

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 257

speak conventionally. I attach no meaning to those words.
I refuse to make a hierarchy of human actions and asCribe
worthiness to some and ill-repute to others. The terms vice
and virtue have no signification for me. I do not ' confer
praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things.
I am the centre of the world."

"But there are one or two other people in the world,"
objected Philip.

"I speak only for myself. I know them only as they limi>
my activities. Round each of them too the world turns, and
each one for himself is the centre of the universe. My right
over them extends only as far as my power. What I can
do is the only limit of what I may do. Because we are gre-
garious we live in society, and society holds together by
means of force, force of arms (that is the poUceman) and
force of public opinion (that is Mrs. Grundy). You have
society on one hand and the individual on the other: each is
an organism striving for self-preservation. It is might against
might. I stand alone, bound to accept society and not unwill-
ing, since in return for the taxes I pay it protects me, a weak-
ling, against the tyranny of another stronger than I am; but
I submit to its laws because I must; I do not acknowledge
their justice: I do not know justice, I only know power.
And when I have paid for the policeman who protects me
and, if I live in a country where conscription is in force,
served in the army which guards my house and land from
the invader, I am quits with society: for the rest I counter
its might with my wiliness. It makes laws for its self-
preservation, and if I break them it imprisons or kills me:
it has the might to do so and therefore the right. If I break
the, laws I will accept the vengeance of the state, but I will
not regard it as punishment nor shall I feel myself convicted
of wrong-doing. Society tempts me to its service by honours
and riches and the good opinion of my fellows; but I arn
indifferent to their good opinioxi, I despise honours and I
can do very well without riches."

258 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"But if everyone thought hke you things would go to
pieces at once."

"I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with
myself.- I take advantage of the fact that the majority of
mankind are led by certain rewards to do things which
directly or indirectly tend to my convenience."

"It seems to me an awfully selfish way of looking at things,"
said Philip.

"But are you under the impression that men ever do any-
thing except for selfish reasons.?"

"Yes."

"It is impossible that they should. You will find as you
grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a
tolerable place to live in is to recognise the inevitable selfish-
ness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others,
which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their
desires to yours. Why should they ? When you are reconciled
to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask
less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and
you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one
thing in life — their pleasure."

"No, no, no!" cried Philip.

Cronshaw chuckled.

"You rear like a frightened colt, because I use a word to
which your Christianity ascribes a deprecatory meaning.
You have a hierarchy of values; pleasure is at the bottom
of the ladder, and you speak with a little thrill of self-
satisfaction, of duty, charity, and truthfulness. You think
pleasure is only of the senses; the wretched slaves who manu-
factured your morality despised a satisfaction which they
had small means of enjoying. You would not be so frightened
if I had spoken of happiness instead of pleasure: it sounds
less shocking, and your mind wanders from the sty of Epicurus
to his garden. But I will speak of pleasure, for I see that men
aim at that, and I do not know that they aim at happiness.
It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 259

^^'''^'Jes. Man_4iexfQrms_actiojiS-_because they are good for
him, andw^ienjhey, are good jor^ot people as well, they
^''^ -tteuSLvirtuous :Jf he finds pleasure in giving alms he
IS charitable; if he finds pleasure in helping others he is
benevolent; if he finds pleasure in working for society he
is pubhc-spirited; but it is for your private pleasure that you
give twopence to a beggar as much as it is for my private
pleasure that I drink another whiskey and soda. I, less of
a humbug than you, neither applaud myself for my pleasure
nor demand your admiration."

"But have you never known people do things they didn't
want to instead of things they did.?"

"No. You put your question foohshly. What you mean is
that people accept an immediate pain rather than an imme-
diate pleasure. The objection is as foolish as your manner of
putting it. It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather
than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a
greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but
their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule. You' are
puzzled because you cannot get over the idea that pleasures
are only of the senses; but, child,' a man who dies for his coun-
try dies because he likes it as surely as a man eats pickled cab-
bage because he Hkes it. It is a law of creation. If it were
possible for men to prefer pain to pleasure the human race
would have long since become extinct."

"But if all that is true," cried Phihp, "what is the use of
anything? If you take away duty and goodness and beauty
why are we brought into the world?"

"Here comes the gorgeous East to suggest an answer,"
smiled Cronshaw.

He pointed to two persons who at that moment opened
the door of the cafe, and, with a blast of cold air, entered.
They were Levantines, itinerant vendors of cheap rugs, and
each bore on his arm a bundle. It was Sunday evening, and
the cafe was very full. They passed among the tables, and
in that atmosphere heavy and discoloured with tobacco

260 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

smoke, rank with humanity, they seemed to bring an air of
mystery. They were clad in European, shabby clothes, their
thin great-coats were threadbare, but each wore a tarbouch.
Their faces were gray with cold. One was of middle age,
with a black beard, but the other was a youth of eighteen,
with a face deeply scarred by small-pox and with one eye
only. They passed by Cronshaw and Philip.

"Allah is great, and Mahomet is his prophet," said Cron-
shaw impressively.

The elder advanced with a cringiijg smile, like a mongrel
used to blows. With a sidelong glance at the door and a
quick surreptitious movement he showed a pornographic
picture.

"Are you Masr-ed-Deen, the merchant of Alexandria, or
is it from far Bagdad that you bring your goods, O, my
uncle; and yonder one-eyed youth, do I see in him one of
the three kings of whom Scheherazade told stories to her
lord?"

The pedlar's smile grew more ingratiating, though he
understood no word of what Cronshaw said, and like a con-
jurer he produced a sandal-wood box.

"Nay, show us the priceless web of Eastern looms," quoth
Cronshaw. "For I would point a moral and adorn a tale."

The Levantine unfolded a table-cloth, red and yellow,
vulgar, hideous, and grotesque.

"Thirty-five francs," he said.

"O, my uncle, this cloth knew not the weavers of Samar-
kand, and those colours were never made in the vats of
Bokhara."

"Twenty-five francs," smiled the pedlar obsequiously.

"Ultima Thule was the place of its manufacture, even
Birmingham the place of my birth."

"Fifteen francs," cringed the bearded man.

"Get thee gone, fellow," said Cronshaw. "May wild asses
defile the grave of thy maternal grandmother."

Imperturbably, but smihng no more, the Levantine passed

-OF HUMAN BONDAGE 261

with his wares to another table. Cronshaw turned to Philip.

"Have you ever been to the Cluny, the museum? There
you will see Persian carpets o£ the most exquisite hue and
of a pattern the beautiful intricacy of which delights and
amazes the eye. In them you will see the mystery and the
sensual beauty of the East, the roses of Hafiz and the wine-
cup of Omar; but presently you will see more. You were
asking just now what was the meaning of life. Go and look
at those Persian carpets, and one of these days the answei
will come to you."

"You are cryptic," said Philip.

"I am drunk," answered Cronshaw.

Chapter 46

Philip did not fin(^ living in Paris as cheap as he had been
led to believe and by February had spent most of the money
with which -he started. He was too proud to appeal to his
guardian, nor did he wish Aunt Louisa to know that his
circumstances were straitened, since he was certain she
would make an effort to send him something from her own-
pocket, and he knew how little she could afford to. In three
months he would attain his majority and come into possession
of his small fortune. He tided over the interval by selling
the few trinkets which he had inherited from his father.

At about this time Lawson suggested that they should take
a small studio which was vacant in one of the streets that led
out of the Boulevard Raspail. It was very cheap. It had a room
attached, which they could use as a bed-room; and since
Philip was at the. school every morning Lawson could have
the imdisturbed use of the studio then; Lawson, after wander-

262 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

ing from school to school, had come to the conclusion that
he could work best alone, and proposed to get a model in
three or four days a week. At first Philip hesitated on accouiit
of the expense, but they reckoned it out; and it seemed (they
were so anxious to have a studio of their own that they
calculated pragmatically) that the cost would not be much
greater than that of. living in a hotel. Though the rent and
the cleaning by the concierge would come to a little more,
they would save on the petit dejeuner, which they could make
"|-themselves. A year or two earlier Philip would have refused
to share a room with anyone, since he was so sensitive about
his deformed foot, but his morbid way of lool^ing at it was
growing less marked: in Paris it did not seem to matter so
much, and, though he never by any chance forgot it himself,
he ceased to feel that other people were constantly noticing it.

They moved in, bought a couple of beds, a washing-stand,
a few chairs, and felt for the first time the thrill of possession.
They were so excited that the first night they went to bed
in what they could call a home they lay awake talking till
three in the morning; and next day found lighting the fire
and making their own coffee, which thfy had in pyjamas,
such a jolly business that Philip did not get to Amitrano's
till nearly eleven. He was in excellent spirits. He nodded to
Fanny Price.

"How are you getting on.?" he asked cheerily.

"What does that matter to' you?" she asked in reply.

Philip could not help laughing.

"Don't jump down my throat. I was only trying to make
myself polite."

"I don't want your politeness."

"D'you think it's worth while quarrelling with me too?"
asked Philip mildly. "There are so few people you're on
speaking terms with, as it is."

"That's my business, isn't it?"

"Quite."

He began to work, vaguely vpondering why Fanny Price

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 265

made herself so disagreeable. He had come to the c
that he thoroughly disliked her. Everyone did. Pily friend I
only civil to her at all from fear of the malice of heihere was
for to their faces and behind their backs she said abomiV.noW
things. But Philip was feeling so happy that he did not wau.
even Miss Price to bear ill-feeling towards him. He used
the artifice which had often before sucseeded in banishing
her ill-humour.

"I say, I wish you'd come and look at my drawing. I've
got in an awful mess."

"Thank you very much, but I've got something better to
do with my time."

Philip stared at her in surprise, for the one thing she
could be counted upon to do with alacrity was to give advice.
She went on quickly in a low voice, savage with fury.

"Now that Lawson's gone you think you'll put up with
me. Thank you very much. Go and find somebody else to
help you I don't want anybody else's leavings."

Lawson had the pedagogic instinct; whenever he found
anything out he was eager to impart it; and because he
taught with delight he talked with profit. Philip, without
thinking anything about it, had got into the habit of sitting
by his side; it never occurred to him that Fanny Price was
consumed with jealousy, and watched his acceptance of some-
one else's tuition with ever-increasing anger.

"You were very glad to put up with me when you knew
nobody here," she said bitterly, "and as soon as you made
friends with other people you threw me aside, like an old
glove" — she repeated the stale metaphor with satisfaction —
"like an old glove. All right, I don't care, but I'm not going
to be made a fool of another time."

There was a suspicion of truth in what she said, and it
made Philip angry enough to answer what first came into his

head.
"Hang it all, I only asked your advice because I saw it

pleased you."

262 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

ing froi.yg ^ ggjp jjjj threw him a sudden look of anguish,
he could tears rolled down her cheeks. She looked frowsy
three or §sque. Philip, not knowing what on earth this new
°f th^e implied, went back to his work. He was uneasy and
^nscience-stricken; but he would not go to her and say he
was sorry if he had caused her pain, because he was afraid
she would take the opportunity to snub him. For two or
three weeks she did not speak to him, and, after Philip had
got over the discomfort of being cut by her, he was some-
what relieved to be free from so difficult a friendship. He
had been a Uttle disconcerted by the air of proprietorship
she assumed over him. She was an extraordinary woman.
She came every day to the studio at eight o'clock, and was
ready to start working when the model was in position; she
worked steadily, talking to no one, struggling hour after hour
with difficulties she could not overcome, and remained till
the clock struck twelve. Her work was hopeless. There was
not in it the smallest approach even to the mediocre achieve-
ment at which most of the young persons were able after
some months to arrive. She wore every day the same ugly
brown dress, with the mud of the last wet day still caked on
the hem and with the raggedness, which Philip had noticed
the first time he saw her, still unmended.

But one day she came up to him, and with a scarlet face
asked whether she might speak to him afterwards.

"Of course, as much as you like," smiled Philip. "I'll wait
behind at twelve."

He went to her when the day's work was over.

"Will you walk a little, bit with me?" she said, looking
aVvay from him with embarrassment.

"Certainly."

They walked for two or three minutes in silence.

"D'you remember what you said to me the other day.?"
she asked then on a sudden.

"Oh, I say, don't let's quarrel," said PhiUp. "It really isn't
worth while."

OF HUMA>J BONDAGE 265

She gave a quick, painful inspiration.

"I don't want to quarrel with you. You're the only friend I
had in Paris. I thought you rather hked me. I felt there was
something between us. I was drawn towards you — ^you know
what I mean, your club-foot."

Philip reddened and instinctively tried to walk without a
limp. He did not like anyone to mention the deformity. He /•
knew what Fanny Price meant. She was ugly and uncouthj
and because he was deformed there was between them a
certain sympathy. He was very angry with her, but he forced
himself not to speak.

"You said you only asked my advice ter please me. Don't
you think my work's any good?"

"I've only seen your drawing at Amitrano's. It's awfully
hard to judge from that."

"I was wondering if you'd come and look at my other
work. I've never asked anyone else to look at it. I should like
to show it to you."

"It's awfully kind of you. I'd like to see it very much."

"I live quite near here," she said apologetically. "It'll only
take you ten minutes."

"Oh, that's all right," he said.

They were walking along the boulevard, and she turned
down a side street, then led him into another, poorer still,
with cheap shops on the ground floor, and at last stopped.
They climbed flight after flight of stairs. She unlocked a
door, and they went into a tiny attic with a sloping roof and
a small window. This was closed and the room had a musty
smell. Though it was very cold there was no fire and no
sign that there had been one. The bed was unmade. A chair,
a chest of drawers which served also as a wash-stand, and a
cheap easel, were all the furniture. The place would have
been squalid enough in any case, but the litter, the untidiness,
made the impression revolting. On the chimney-piece, scat-
tered over with paints and brushes, were a cup, a dirty plate,
and a tea-pot.

266 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"If you'll stand over there I'll put them on the chair so
that you can see them better."

She showed him twenty small canvases, about eighteen by
twelve. She placed them on the chair, one after the other,
watching his face; he nodded as he looked at each one.

"You do like them, don't you.?" she said anxiously, after
a bit.

"I just want to look at them all first," he answered.. "I'll
ta^k afterwards."

He was collecting himself. He was panic-stricken. He did
not know what to say. It was not only that they were ill-
drawn, or that the colour was put on amateurishly by someone
who had no eye for it; but there was no attempt at getting
the values, and the perspective was grotesque. It looked like
the work of a child of five, but a child would have had some
naivete and might at least have made an attempt to put down
what he saw; but here was the work of a vulgar mind chock
full of recollections of vulgar pictures. Philip remembered
that she had talked enthusiastically about Monet and the
Impressionists, but here were only the worst traditions of the
Royal Academy.

"There," she said at last, "that's the lot."

Philip was no more truthful than anybody else, but he had
a great difficulty in telling a thundering, deliberate lie, and
he blushed furiously when he answered:

"I think they're most awfully good."

A faint colour came into her unhealthy cheeks, and she
smiled a little.

"You needn't say so if you don't think so, you know. I
want the truth."

"But I do think so."

"Haven't you got any criticism to offer? There must be
some you don't like as well as others."

Philip looked round helplessly. He saw a landscape, the
typical picturesque 'bit' of the amateur, an old bridge, a
creeper-clad cottage, and a leafy bank.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 267

"Of course I don't pretend to know anything about it," he
said. "But I wasn't quite sure about the values of that."

She flushed darkly and taking up the picture quickly turned
its back to him.

"I don't know why you should have chosen that one to
sneer at. It's the best thing I've ever done. I'm sure my values
are all right. That's a thing you can't teach anyone, you either
understand values or you don't."

"I think they're all most awfully good," repeated Philip.

She looked at them with an air of self-satisfaction.

"I don't think they're anything to be ashamed of."

Phihp looked at his watch.

"I say, it's getting late. Won't you let me give you a little
lunch.?"

"I've got my lunch waiting for me here."

Philip saw no sign of it, but supposed perhaps the con-
cierge would bring it up when he was gone. He was in a
hurry to get away. The mustiness of the room made his head -^
ache.

Chapter 47

In march there was all the excitement of sending in to the
Salon. Glutton, characteristically, had nothing ready, and he
was very scornful of the two heads that Lawson sent; they
were obviously the work of a student, straight-forward por-
traits of models, but they had a certain force; Glutton, aiming
at perfection, had no patience with efforts which betrayed
hesitancy, and with a shrug of the shoulders told Lawson it
was an impertinence to exhibit stuff which should never have
been allowed out of his studio; he was not less contemptuous
when the two heads were accepted. Flanagan tried his luck

268 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

too, but his picture was refused. Mrs. Otter sent a blameless
Portrait de ma Mere, accomplished and second-rate; and was
hung in a very good place.

Hayward, whom Philip had not seen since he left Heidel-
berg, arrived in Paris to spend a few days in time to come
to the party which Lawson and Philip were giving in their
studio to celebrate the hanging of Lawson's pictures. Philip
had been eager to see Hayward again, but when at last they
met, he experienced some disappointment. Hayward had al-
tered a little in appearance : his fine hair was thinner, and with
the rapid wilting of the very fair, he was becoming wizened and
colourless; his blue eyes were paler than they had been, and
there was a muzziness about his features. On the other hand,
in mind he did not seem to have changed at all, and the cul-
ture which had impressed Philip at eighteen aroused some-
what the contempt of Philip at twenty-one. He had altered a
good deal himself, and regarding with scorn all his old opin-
ions of art, life, and letters, had no patience with anyone who
still held them. He was scarcely conscious of the fact that he
wanted to show off before Hayward, but when he took him
round the galleries he poured out to him all the revolutionary
opinions which he himself had so recently adopted. He took
him to Manet's Olympia and said dramatically :

"I would give all the old masters except Velasquez, Rem-
brandt, and Vermeer for that one picture."

"Who was Vermeer.?" asked Hayward.

"Oh, my dear fellow, don't you know Vermeer.? You're not
civilised. You mustn't live a moment longer without making
his acquaintance. He's the one old master who painted like a
modern."

He dragged Hayward out of the Luxembourg and hurried
him off to the Louvre.

"But aren't there any more pictures here.?" asked Hayward,
with the tourist's passion for thoroughness.

"Nothing of the least consequence. You can come and look
at them by yourself with your Baedeker."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 269

When they arrived at the Louvre PhiHp led his friend down
the Long Gallery.

"I should Hke to see The Gioconda," said Hayward.

"Oh, my dear fellow^, it's only literature," answered Philip.

At last, in a small room, Philip stopped before The Lace'
maf{er of Vermeer van Delft.

"There, that's the best picture in the Louvre. It's exactly like
a Manet."

With an expressive, eloquent thumb Philip expatiated on
the charming work. He used the jargon of the studios with
overpowering effect.

"I don't know that I see anything so wonderful as all that
in it," said Hayward.

"Of course it's a painter's picture," said Phihp. "I can quite
believe the layman would see nothing much in it."

"The what.?" said Hayward.

"The layman."

Like most people who cultivate an interest in the arts, Hay-
ward was extremely anxious to be right. -He was dogmatic
with those who did not venture to assert themselves, but with
the self-assertive he was very modest. He was impressed by
Philip's assurance, and accepted meekly Philip's implied sug-
gestion that the painter's arrogant claim to be the sole possible
judge of painting has anything but its impertinence to recom-
mend it.

A day or two later Philip and Lawson gave their party.
Cronshaw, making an exception in their favour, agreed to eat
their food; and Miss Chalice offered to come and cook for
them. She took no interest in her own sex and declined the
suggestion that other girls should be asked for her sake.
Glutton, Flanagan, Potter, and two others made up the party.
Furniture was scarce, so the model stand was used as a table,
and the guests were to sit on portmanteaux if they liked, and
if they didn't on the floor. The feast consisted of a pot-au-feu,
which Miss 'Chalice had made, of a leg of mutton roasted
round the corner and brought round hot and savoury (Miss

■m OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chalice had cooked the potatoes, and the studio was redolent
of the carrots she had fried; fried carrots were her specialty) ;
and this was to be followed by poires flambees, pears with
burning brandy, which Cronshaw had volunteered to make.
The meal was to finish with an enormous fromage de Brie,
which stood near the window and added fragrant odours to
all the others which filled the studio. Cronshaw sat in the
place of honour on a Gladstone bag, with his legs curled
under him like a Turkish bashaw, beaming good-naturedly on
the young people who surrounded him. From force of habit,
though the small studio with the stove lit was very hot, he kept
on his great-coat, with the collar turned up, and his bowler
hat: he looked with satisfaction on the four large fiaschi of
Chianti which stood in front of him in a row, two on each
side of a bottle of whiskey; he said it reminded him of a slim
fair Circassian guarded by four corpulent eunuchs. Hayward in
order to put the rest of them at their ease had clothed himself
in a tweed suit and a Trinity Hall tie. He looked grotesquely
British. The others were elaborately polite to him, and during
the soup they talked of the weather and the political situation.
There was a pause while they waited for the leg of mutton,
and Miss Chalice lit a cigarette.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair," she said sud-
denly.

With an elegant gesture she untied a ribbon so that her
tresses fell over her shoulders. She shook her head.

"I always feel more comfortable with my hair down."

With her large brown eyes, thin, ascetic face, her pale skin,
and broad forehead, she might have stepped out of a picture
by Burne-Jones. She had long, beautiful hands, with fingers
deeply stained by nicotine. She wore sweeping draperies,
mauve and green. There was about her the romantic air of
High Street, Kensington. She was wantonly aesthetic; but
she was an excellent creature, kind and good-natured; and
her affectations were but skin-deep. There was a Tcnock at the
door, and they all gave a shout of exultation. Miss Chalice rose

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 271

and opened. She took the leg of mutton and held it high
above her, as though it were the head of John the Baptist on
a platter; and, the cigarette still in her mouth, advanced with
solemn, hieratic steps.

"Hail, daughter of Herodias," cried Cronshaw.

The mutton was eaten with gusto, and it did one good to
see what a hearty appetite the pale-faced lady had. Glutton
and Potter sat on each side of her, and everyone knew that
neither had found her unduly coy. She grew tired of most
people in six weeks, but she knew exactly how to treat after-
wards the gentlemen who had laid their young hearts at her
feet. She bore them no ill-will, though having loved them she
had ceased to do so, and treated them with friendliness but
without familiarity. Now and then she looked at Lawson with
melancholy eyes. The poires fiambees were a great success,
partly because of the brandy, and partly because Miss Chalice
insisted that they should be eaten with the cheese.

"I don't know whether it's perfectly delicious, or whether
I'm just going to vomit," she said, after she had thoroughly
tried the mixture.

Coffee and cognac followed with sufficient speed to prevent
any untoward consequence, and they settled down to smoke
in comfort. Ruth Chalice, who could do nothing that was not
deliberately artistic, arranged herself in a graceful attitude by
Cronshaw and just rested her exquisite head on his shoulder.
She looked into the dark abyss of time with brooding eyes,
and now and then with a long meditative glance at Lawson
she sighed deeply.

Then came the summer, and restlessness seized these young
people. The blue skies lured them to the sea, and the pleasant
-breeze sighing through the leaves of the plane-trees on the
boulevard drew them towards the country. Everyone made
plans for leaving Paris; they discussed what was the most
suitable size for the canvases they meant to take; they laid ill
stores of panels for sketching; they argued about the merits

272 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

of various places in Brittany. Flanagan and Potter went to
Concarneau; Mrs. Otter and her mother, with a natural in-
stinct for the obvious, went to Pont-Aven; Philip and Lawson
made up their minds to go to the forest of Fontainebleau, and
Miss Chalice knew of a very good hotel at Moret where there
was lots of stuff to paint; it was near Paris, and neither Philip
nor Lawson was indifferent to the railway fare. Ruth Chalice
would be there, and Lawson had an idea for a portrait of her
in the open air. Just then the Salon was full of portraits of
people in gardens, in sunlight, with blinking eyes and green
reflections of sunlit leaves on their faces. They asked Clutton
to go with them, but he preferred spending the summer by
himself. He had just discovered Cezanne, and was eager to
go to Provence; he wanted heavy skies from which the hot
blue seemed to drip like beads of sweat, and broad white
dusty roads, and pale roofs out of which the sun had burnt
the colour, and olive trees gray with heat.

The day before they were to start, after the morning class,
Philip, putting his things together, spoke to Fanny Price.

"I'm off tomorrow," he said cheerfully.

"Off where?" she said quickly. "You're not going away.?"
Her face fell.

"I'm going away for the summer. Aren't you?"

"No, I'm staying in Paris. I thought you were going to stay
too. I was looking forward. ..."

She stopped and shrugged her shoulders.

"But won't it be frightfully hot here? It's awfully bad for
you."

"Much you care if it's bad for me. Where are vou goine?"

"Moret." ^ ^

"Chahce is going there. You're not going with her?"

"Lawson and I are going. And she's going there too. I don't
know that we're actually going together."

She gave a low guttural sound, and her large face grew dark
and red.

"Hr>w filthy! I thought you were a decent fellow. You were

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 273

about the only one here. She's been with Glutton and Potter
and Flanagan, even with old Foinet— that's why he takes so
much trouble about her — and now two of you, you and Law-
son. It makes me sick."

"Oh, what nonsense! She's a very decent sort. One treats her
just as if she were a man."

"Oh, don't speak to me, don't speak to me."

"But what can it matter to you.?" asked Philip. "It's really
no business of yours where I spend my summer."

"I was looking forward to it so much," she gasped, speaking
it seemed almost to herself. "I didn't think you had the money
to go away, and there wouldn't have been anyone else here,
and we could have worked together, and we'd have gone to see
things." Then her thoughts flung back to Ruth Chalice. "The
filthy beast," she cried. "She isn't fit to speak to."

Philip looked at her with a sinking heart. He was not a
man to think girls were in love with him; he was too conscious
of his deformity, and he felt awkward and clumsy with
women; but he did not know what else this outburst could
mean. Fanny Price, in the dirty brown dress, with her hair
falling over her face, sloppy, untidy, stood before him; and
tears of anger rolled down her cheeks. She was repellent. Philip
glanced at the door, instinctively hoping that someone would
come in and put an end to the scene.

"I'm awfully sorry," he said.

"You're just the same as all of them. You take all you cai;
get, and you don't even say thank you. I've taught you every
thing you know. No one else would take any trouble with you
Has Foinet ever bothered about you? And I can tell you this—
you can work here for a thousand years and you'll never do
any good. You haven't got any talent. You haven't got any
originality. And it's not only me— they all say it. You'll nevei
be a painter as long as you Uve."

"That is no business of yours either, is it.?" said Philip, flush-
ing.

"Oh, you think it's only my temper. Ask Glutton, ask Law-

274 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

son, ask Chalice. Never, never, never. You haven't got it in
you."

Philip shrugged his shoulders and walked out. She shouted
after him.

"Never, never, never."

Moret was in those days an old-fashioned town of one street
at the edge of the forest of Fontainbleau, and the Ecu d'Or
was a hotel which still had about it the decrepit air of the
Ancien Regime. It faced the winding river, the Loing; and
Miss Chalice had a room with a little terrace overlooking it,
with a charming view of the old bridge and its fortified gate-
way. They sat here in the evenings after dinner, drinking cof-
fee, smoking, and discussing art. There ran into the river, a
little way off, a narrow canal bordered by poplars, and along
the banks of this after their day's work they often wandered.
They spent all day painting. Like most of their generation they
were obsessed by the fear of the picturesque, and they turned
their backs on the obvious beauty of the town to seek subjects
which were devoid of a prettiness they despised. Sisley and
Monet had painted the canal with its poplars, and they felt
a desire to try their hands at what was so typical of France;
" but they were frightened of its formal beauty, and set them-
selves deliberately to avoid it. Miss Chalice, who had a clever
dexterity which impressed Lawson notwithstanding his con-
tempt for feminine art, started a picture in which she tried
to circumvent the commonplace by leaving out the tops of the
trees; and Lawson had the brilliant idea of putting in his
foreground a large blue advertisement of chocolat Menier
in order to emphasise his abhorrence of the chocolate box.

Philip began now to paint in oils. He experienced a thrill of
delight when first he used that grateful medium. He went
out with Lawson in the morning with his little box and sat by
him painting a panel; it gave him so much satisfaction that
he did not realise he was doing no more than copy; he was so
much under his friend's influence that he saw only with his

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 275

eyes. Lawson painted very low in tone, and they both saw the
emerald of the grass like dark velvet, while the brilliance of
the sky turned in their hands to a brooding ultramarine.
Through July they had one fine day after another; it was very
hot; and the heat, searing Philip's heart, filled him with lan-
guor; he could not work; his mind was eager with a thousand
thoughts. Often he spent the mornings by the side of the canal
in the shade of the poplars, reading a few lines and then
dreaming for half an hour. Sometimes he hired a rickety
bicycle and rode along the dusty road that led to the forest,
and then lay down in a clearing. His head was full of romantic
fancies. The ladies of Watteau, gay and insouciant, seemed to
wander with their cavaliers among the great trees, whispering
to one another careless, charming things, and yet somehow
oppressed by a nameless fear.

They were alone in the hotel but for a fat Frenchwoman
of middle age, a Rabelaisian figure with a broad, obscene
laugh. She spent the day by the river patiently fishing for fish
she never caught, and Philip sometimes went down and talked
to her. He found out that she had belonged to a profession
whose most notorious member for our generation was Mrs,
Warren, and having made a competence she now lived the
quiet life of the bourgeoise. She told Philip lewd stories.

"You must go to Seville," she said — she spoke a little broken
English. "The most beautiful women in the world."

She leered and nodded her head. Her triple chin, her large
belly, shook with inward laughter.

It grew so hot that it was almost impossible to sleep at night.
The heat seemed to linger under the trees as though it were a
material thing. They did not wish to leave the starlit night,
and the three of them would sit on the terrace of Ruth
Chalice's room, silent, hour after hour, too tired to talk any
more, but in voluptuous enjoyment of the stillness. They
listened to the murmur of the river. The church clock struck
one and two and sometimes three before they could drag
themselves to bed. Suddenly Philip became aware that Ruth

276 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chalice and Lawson were lovers. He divined it in the vi^ay the
girl looked at the young painter, and in his air of possession;
and as Philip sat with them he felt a kind of effluence sur-
rounding them, as though the air were heavy with something
strange. The revelation was a shock. He had looked upon Miss
Chalice as a very good fellow and he liked to talk to her, but
it had never seemed to him possible to enter into a closer
reiarronstiip. Une Sunday they-^tarf-Mlgone with a tea-basket
into the forest, and when they came to a glade which was
suitably sylvan. Miss Chalice, because it was idyllic, insisted
on taking off her shoes and stockings. It would have been very
charming only her feet were rather large and she had on both
a large corn on the third toe. Philip felt it made her proceed-
ing a little ridiculous. But now he looked upon her quite dif-
ferently; there was something softly feminine in her large eyes
and her olive skin; he felt himself a fool not to have seen that
she was attractive. He thought he detected in her a touch of
contempt for him, because he had not had the sense to see that
she was there, in his way, and in Lawson a suspicion of su-
periority. He was envious of Lawson, and he was jealous, not
of the individual concerned, but of his love. He wished that
he was standing in his shoes and feeUng with his heart. He
was troubled, and the fear seized him that love would pass him
by. He wanted a passion to seize him, he wanted to be swept
off his feet and borne powerless in a mighty rush he cared not
whither. Miss Chalice and Lawson seemed to him now some-
how different, and the constant companionship with them
made him restless. He was dissatisfied with himself. Life was
not giving him what he wanted, and he had an uneasy feeling
that he was losing his time.

The stout Frenchwoman soon guessed what the relations
were between the couple, and talked of the matter to Philip
with the utmost frankness.

"And you," she said, with the tolerant smile of one who
had fattened on the lust of her fellows, "have you got a petite
amie?"

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 277

"No," said Philip, blushing.

"And why not ? C'est de voire age!'

■He shrugged his shoulders. He had a volume of Verlajne in
his hands, and he wandered oiff. He tried to read, but his
passion was too strong. He thought of' the stray amours to
which he had been introduced by Flanagan, the sly visits to
houses in a cul-de-sac, with the drawing-room in Utrecht
velvet, and the mercenary graces of painted women. He shud-
dered. He threw himself on the grass, stretching his Hmbs like
a young animal freshly awaked from sleep; and the rippling
water, the poplars gently tremulous in the faint breeze, the
blue sky, were almost more than he could bear. He was in love
with love. In his fancy he felt the kiss of warm lips on his, and
around his neck the touch of soft hands. He imagined himself
in the arms of Ruth Chalice, he thought of her dark eyes and
the wonderful texture of her skin; he was mad to have let
such a wonderful adventure slip through his fingers. And if
Lawson had done it why should not he.? But this was only
when he did not see her, when he lay awake at night or
dreamed idly by the side of the canal; when he saw her he
felt suddenly quite different; he had no desire to take her in
his arms, and he could not imagine himself kissing her. It
was very curious. Away from her he thought her beautiful,
remembering only her magnificent eyes and the creamy pallor
of her face; but when he was with her he saw only that she
was flat-chested and that her teeth were slightly decayed; he
could not forget the corns on her toes. He could not under-
stand himself. Would he always love only in absence and be
prevented from enjoying anything when he had the chance bf
that deformity of vision which seemed to exaggerate the
revolting.''

He was not sorry when a change in the weather, announc-
ing the definite end of the long summer, drove them all bad",
to Paris.

278 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 48

When Philip returned to Amitrano's he found that Fanny
Price was no longer working there. She had given up the key
of her locker. He asked Mrs. Otter whether she knew what
had become of her; and Mrs. Otter, with a shrug of the shoul-
ders, answered that she had probably gone back to England.
Philip was relieved. He was profoundly bored by her ill-
temper. Moreover she insisted on advising him about his
work, looked upon it as a slight when he did not follow her
precepts, and would not understand that he felt himself no
longer the duffer he had been at first. Soon he forgot all about
her. He was working in oils now and he was full of enthusi-
asm. He hoped to have something done of sufficient impor-
tance to send to the following year's Salon. Lawson was paint-
ing a portrait of Miss Chalice. She was very paintable, and
all the young men who had fallen victims to her charm had
made portraits of her. A natural indolence, joined with a pas-
sion for picturesque attitude, made her an excellent sitter; and
she. had enough technical knowledge to offer useful criticisms.
Since her passion for art was .chiefly a passion to live the life
of artists, she was>quite content to neglect her own work. She
liked the warmth of the studio, and the opportunity to smoke
innumerable cigarettes; and she spoke in a low, pleasant voice
of the love of art and the art of love. She made no clear distinc-
tion between the two.

Lawson was painting with infinite labour, working till he
could hardly stand for days and then scraping out all he had
done. He would have exhausted the patience of anyone but
Ruth ChaUce. At last he got into a hopeless muddle.

"The only thing is to take a new canvas and start fresh,"

OF HUMAN BO^.'DAGt- 279

he said. "I know exactly what I war-ts to. 'J, and it won't take
mc long."

Philip was present at the time, and Miss Chalice said to
him:

"Why don't you paint me too ? You'll be able to learn a lot
by watching Mr. Lawson."

It was one of Miss ChaHce's delicacies that she always ad-
dressed her lovers by their surnames.

"I should like it awfully if Lawson wouldn't mind."

"I don't care a damn," said Lawson.

It was the first time that Philip set about a portrait, and he
began with trepidation but also with pride. He sat by Lawson
and painted as he saw him paint. He profited by the example
and by the advice which both Lawson and Miss Chalice freely
gave him. At last Lawson finished and invited Clutton in to
criticise. Clutton had only just come back to Paris. From
Provence he had drifted down to Spain, eager to see Velasquez
at Madrid, and thence he had gone to Toledo. He stayed there
three months, and he was returned with a name new to the
young men : he had wonderful things to say of a painter called
El Greco, who it appeared could only be studied in Toledo.

"Oh yes, I know about him," said Lawson, "he's the old
master whose distinction it is that he painted as badly as the
moderns.''

Clutton, more taciturn than ever, did not answer, but he
looked at Lawson with a sardonic air.

"Are you going to show us the stuff you've brought back
from Spain?" asked Philip.

"I didn't paint in Spain, I was too busy."

"What did you do then.?"

"I thought things out. I believe I'm through with the Im-
pressionists; I've got an idea they'll seem very thin and super-
ficial in a few years. I want to make a clean sweep of every-
thing I've learnt and start fresh. When I came back I destroyed
everything I'd painted. I've got nothing in my studio now but
an easel, my paints, and some clean canvases."

280 e:)F hVMAN BONDAGE

"What are you go. o do?"

"I don't know yet. I've only got an inkling of what I want."

He spoke slowly, in a curious manner, as though he were
straining to hear something which was only just audible. There
seemed to be a mysterious force in him which he himself did
not understand, but which was struggling obscurely to find an
outlet. His strength impressed you. Lawson dreaded the criti-
cism heasked for and had discounted the blame he thought he
might get by affecting a contempt for any opinion of Glut-
ton's; but Philip knew there, was nothing which would give
him more pleasure than Glutton's praise. Glutton looked at the
portrait for some time in silence, then glanced at Philip's pic-
ture, which was standing on an easel.

"What's that?" he asked. '

"Oh, I had a shot at a portrait too."

"The sedulous ape," he murmured.

He turned away again to Lawson's canvas. Philip reddened
but did not speak.

"Well, what d'you think of it?" asked Lawson at length.

"The modelling's jolly good," said Glutton. "And I think
it's very well drawn."

"D'you think the values are all right?"

"Quite."

Lawson smiled with delight. He shook himself in his clothes
like a wet dog.

"I say, I'm jolly glad you like it."

"I don't. I don't think it's of the smallest importance."

Lawson's face fell, and he stared at Glutton with astonish-
ment: he had no notion what he meant. Glutton had no gift
of expression in words, and he spoke as though it were an
effort. What he had to say was confused, halting, and verbose;
but Philip knew the words which served as the text of his
rambling discourse. Glutton, who never read, had heard them
first from Grpnshaw; and though they had made small im-
pression, they had remained in his memory; and lately, emerg-
ing on a sudden, had acquired the character of a revelation:

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 281

a good painter had two chief objects to paint, namely, man
and the intention of his soul. The Impressionists had been
occupied with other problems, they had painted man ad-
mirably, but they had troubled themselves as little as the Eng-
lish portrait painters of the eighteenth century with the inten-
tion of his soul.

"But when you try to get that you become literary," said
Lawson, interrupting. "Let me paint the man like Manet, and
the intention of his soul can go to the devil."

"That would be all very well if you could beat Manet at his
own game, but you can't get anywhere near him. You can't
feed yourself on the day before yesterday, it's ground which
has been swept dry. You must go back. It's when I saw the
Grecos that I felt one could get something more out of por-
traits than we knew before."

"It's just going back to Ruskin," cried Lawson.

"No — you see, he went for morality : I don't care a damn for
morality: teaching doesn't come in, ethics and all that, but
passion and emotion. The greatest portrait painters have
painted both, man and the intention of his soul; Rembrandt
and El Greco; it's only the second-raters who've only painted
man. A lily of the valley would be lovely even if it didn't
smell, but it's more lovely because it has perfume. That pic-
ture"— he pointed to Lawson's portrait — "Well, the drawing's
all right and so's the modelling all right, but just conventional;
it ought to be drawn and modelled so that you know the girl's
a lousy slut. Correctness is all very well: El Greco made his
people eight feet high because he wanted to express something
he couldn't get any other way."

"Damn El Greco," said Lawson, "what's the good of jawing
about a man when we haven't a chance of seeing any of his
work.?"

Glutton shrugged his shoulders, smoked a cigarette in si"
lence, and went away. Philip and Lawson looked at onC
another.

"There's something in what he says," said Philip.

282 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Lawson stared ill-temperedly at his picture.
"How the devil is one to get the intention of the soul ex-
cept by painting exactly what one sees?"

About this time Philip made a new friend. On Monday
morning models assembled at the school in order that one
might be chosen for the week, and one day a young man was
taken who was plainly not a model by profession. Philip's at-
tention was attracted by the manner in which he held himself:
when he got on to the stand he stood firmly on both feet,
square, with clenched hands, and with his head defiantly
thrown forward; the attitude emphasised his fine figure; there
was no fat on him, and his muscles stood out as though they
were of iron. His head, close-cropped, was well-shaped, and
he wore a short beard; he had large, dark eyes and heavy eye-
brows. He held the pose hour after hour without appearance
of fatigue. There was in his mien a mixture of shame and of
determination. His air of passionate energy excited Philip's
romantic imagination, and when, the sitting ended, he saw
him in his clothes, it seemed to him that he wore them as
though he Were a king in rags. He was uncommunicative, but
in a day or two Mrs. Otter told Philip that the model was a
Spaniard and that he had never sat before.

"I suppose he was starving," said Philip.

"Have you noticed his clothes? They're quite neat and
decent, aren't they?"

It chanced that Potter, one of the Americans who worked
at Amitrano's, was going to Italy for a couple of months, and
offered his studio to Philip. Philip was pleased. He was grow-
ing a little impatient of Lawson's peremptory advice and
wanted to be by himself. At the end of the week he went up
to the model and on the pretence that his drawing was not
finished asked whether he would come and sit to him one
day.

"I'm not a model," the Spaniard answered. "I have other
things to do next week."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 283

"Come and have luncheon with me now, and we'll talk
about it," said Philip, and as the other hesitated, he added
with a smile: "It won't hurt you to lunch with me."

With a shrug of the shoulders the model consented, and they
went off to a cremerie. The Spaniard spoke broken French,
fluent but difficult to follow, and Philip managed to get on
well enough with him. He found out that he was a writer.
He had come to Paris to write novels and kept himself mean-
while by all the expedients possible to a penniless man: he
gave lessons, he did any translations he could get hold of,
chiefly business documents, and at last had been driven to
rnake money by his fine ligqre. Sitting was well paid, and
what he had earned during the last week was enough to keep
him for two more; he told Philip, amazed, that he could live
easily on two francs a day; but it filled him with shame that
he was obliged to show his body for money, and he looked
upon sitting as a degradation which only hunger could ex.
cuse. Philip explained that he did not want him to sit for the
figure, but only for the head; he wished to do a portrait of
him which he might send to the next Salon.

"But why should you want to paint me?" asked the
Spaniard.

Philip answered that the head interested him, he thought
he could do a good portrait.

"I can't afford the time. I grudge every minute that I have
to rob from my writing."

"But it would only be in the afternoon. I work at the school
in the morning. After all, it's better to sit to me than to do
translations of legal documents.''

There were legends in the Latin Quarter of a time when
students of different countries lived together intimately, but
this was long since passed, and now the various nations were
almost as much separated as in an .Oriental city. At JuHan's
and at the Beaux Arts a French student was looked upon with
disfavour by his fellow-countrymen when he consorted with

284 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

foreigners, and it was difficult for an Englishman to know
more than quite superficially any native inhabitants of the
city in which he dwelt. Indeed, many of the students after
living in Paris for five years knew no more French than served
them in shops and lived as English a life as though they were
working in South Kensington.

Philip, with his passion for the romantic, welcomed the
opportunity to get in touch with a Spaniard; he used all his
persuasiveness to overcome the man's reluctance.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," said the Spaniard at last. "I'll sit
to you, but not for money; for my own pleasure."

Philip expostulated, but the other was firm, and at length
they arranged that he should come on the following Monday
at one o'clock. He gave Philip a card on which was printed his
name: Miguel Ajuria.

Miguel sat regularly, and though he refused to accept pay-
ment he borrowed fifty francs from Philip every now and
then : it was a little more expensive than if Philip had paid for
the sittings in the usual way; but gave the Spaniard a satis-
factory feeling that he was not earning his living in a degrad-
ing manner. His nationality made Philip regard him as a
representative of romance, and he asked him about Seville
and Granada, Velasquez and Calderon. But Miguel had no
patience with the grandeur of his country. For him, as for so
many of his compatriots, France was the only country for a
man of intelligence and Paris the centre of the world.

"Spain is dead," he cried. "It has no writers, it has no art,
it has nothing."

Little by little, with the exuberant rhetoric of his race, he
revealed his ambitions. He was writing a novel which he hoped
would make his name. He was under the influence of Zola,
and he had set his scene in Paris. He told Philip the story
at length. To Philip it seemed crude and stupid; the naive
obscenity — c'est la vie, mon cher, c'est la vie, he cried — the
naive obscenity served only to emphasise the conventionaUty
of the anecdote. He had written for two years, amid incredible

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 285

hardships, denying himself all the pleasures of life which had
attracted him to Paris, fighting with starvation for art's sake,
determined that nothing should hinder his great achievement.
The effort was heroic.

"But why don't you write about Spain.?" cried Philip. "It
would be so much more interesting. You know the life."

"But Paris is the only place worth writing about. Paris is
life."

One day he brought part of the manuscript, and in his bad
French, translating excitedly as he went along so that Philip
could scarcely understand, he read passages. It was lamentable.
Philip, puzzled, looked at the picture he was painting: the
mind behind that broad brow was trivial; and the flashing,
passionate eyes saw nothing in life but the obvious. Philip was
not satisfied with his portrait, and at the end of a sitting he
nearly always scraped out what he had done. It was all very
well to aim at the intention of the soul: who could tell what
that was when people seemed a mass of contradictions? He
liked Miguel, and it distressed him to realise that his magnifi-
cent struggle was futile: he had everything to make a good
writer but talent. Philip looked at his own work. How could
you tell whether there was anything in it or whether you were
wasting your time? It was clear that the will to achieve could
not help you and confidence in yourself meant nothing. Philip
thought of Fanny Price; she had a vehement belief in her
talent; her strength of will was extraordinary.

"If I thought I wasn't going to be really good, I'd rather
give up painting," said Philip. "I don't see any use in being
a second-rate painter."

Then one morning when he was going out, the concierge
called out to him that there was a letter. Nobody wrote to
him but his Aunt Louisa and sometimes. Hayward, and this
was a handwriting he did not know. The letter was as follows:

Please come at once when you get this. 1 couldn't put up
with it any more. Please come yourself. I can't bear the thought

'm OF HUMAN BONDAGE

that anyone else should touch me. I want you to have every-
thing.

F. Price.

I have not had anything to eat for three days.

Philip felt on a sudden sick with fear. He hurried to the
house in which she lived. He was astonished that she was in
Paris at all. He had not seen her for months and imagined she
had long since returned to England. When he arrived he
asked the concierge whether she was in.

"Yes, I've not seen her go out for two days."

Philip ran upstairs and knocked at the door. There was no
reply. He called her name. The door was locked, and on
bending down he found the key was in the lock.

"Oh, my God, I hope she hasn't done something awful,"
he cried aloud.

He ran down and told the porter that she was certainly in
the room. He had had a letter from her and feared a terrible
accident. He suggested breaking open the door. The porter,
who had been sullen and disinclined to listen, became alarmed;
he could not take the responsibility of breaking into the room;
they must go for the commissaire de police. They walked
together to the bureau, and then they fetched a locksmith.
Philip found that Miss Price had not paid the last quarter's
rent: on New Year's Day she had not given the concierge
the present which old-established custom led him to regard as
a right. The four of them went upstairs, and they knocked
again at the door. There was no reply. The locksmith set to
work, and at last they entered the room. Philip gave a cry and
instinctively covered his eyes with his hands. The wretched
Woman was hanging with a rope round her neck, which she
had tied to a hook in the ceiling fixed by some previous tenant
to hold up the curtains of the bed. She had moved her own
little bed out of the way and had stood on a chair, which had
been kicked away. It was lying on its side on the floor. They
cut her down. The body was quite cold.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 28?

Chapter 49

The story which Phihp made out in one way and another was
terrible. One of the grievances of the women-students was
that Fanny Price would never share their gay meals in restau-
rants, and the reason was obvious : she had been oppressed by
dire poventy. He remembered the luncheon they had eaten
together when first he came to Paris and the ghoulish appetite
which had disgusted him: he realised now that she ate in that
manner because she was ravenous. The concierge told him
what her food had consisted of. A bottle of milk was left for
her every day and she brought in her own loaf of bread; she
ate half the loaf and drank half the milk at mid-day when she
came back from the school, and consumed the rest in the
evening. It was the same day after day. Philip thought with
anguish of what she must have endured. She had never given
anyone to understand that she was poorer than the rest, but
it was clear that her money had been coming to an end, and
at last she could not afford to come any more to the studio.
The Httle room was almost bare of furniture, and there were
no other clothes than the shabby brown dress she had always
worn. Philip searched among her things for the address of
some friend with whom he could communicate. He found a
piece of paper on which his own name was written a score of
times. It gave him a peculiar shock. He supposed it was true
that she had loved him; he thought of the emaciated body, in
the brown dress, hanging from the nail in the ceiling; and he
shuddered. But if she had cared for hini why did she not let
him help her? He would so gladly have done all he could. He
felt remorseful because he had refused to see that she looked

28S OF HUMAN BONDAGE

upon him with any particular feeUng, and now these words in
her letter were infinitely pathetic: / can't bear the thought that
anyone else should touch me. She had died of starvation.

Philip found at length a letter signed : your loving brother,
Albert. It was two or three weeks old, dated from some road
in Surbiton, and refused a loan of five pounds. The writer had
'his wife and family to think of, he didn't feel justified in lend-
ing money, and his advice was that Fanny should come back
to London and try to get a situation. Philip telegraphed to
Albert Price, and in a little while an answer came :

"Deeply distressed. Very aw\ward to leave my business. Is
presence essential. Price."

Philip wired a succinct affirmative, and next morning a
stranger presented himself at the studio.

"My name's Price," he said, when Philip opened the door.

He was a commonish man in black with a band round his
bowler hat; he had something of Fanny's clumsy look; he
wore a stubbly moustache, and had a Cockney accent. Philip
asked him to come in. He cast sidelong glances round the
studio while Philip gave him details of the accident and told
him what he had done.

"I needn't see her, need I?" asked Albert Price. "My nerves
aren't very strong, and it takes very little to upset me."

He began to talk freely. He was a rubber-merchant, and he
had a wife and three children. Fanny was a governess, and he
couldn't make out why she hadn't stuck to that instead of
coming to Paris.

"Me and Mrs. Price told her Paris was no place for a girl.
And there's no money in art — never 'as been."

It was plain enough that he had not been on friendly terms
with his sister, and he resented her suicide as a last injury that
she had done him. He did not like the idea that she had been
forced to it by poverty; that seemed to reflect on the family.
The idea struck him that possibly there was a more respectable
reason for her act.

"I suppose she 'adn't any trouble with a man, 'ad she.? You

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 289

know what I mean, Paris and all that. She might 'ave done it
so as not to disgrace herself."

Philip felt himself reddening and cursed his weakness.
Price's keen little eyes seemed to suspect him of an intrigue.

"I believe your sister to have been perfectly virtuous," he
answered acidly. "She killed herself because she was starving."

"Well, it's very 'ard on her family, Mr. Carey. She only 'ad to
write to me. I wouldn't have let my sister want."

Philip had found the brother's address only by reading the
letter in which he refused a loan; but he shrugged his shoul-
ders: there was no use in recrimination. He hated the little
man and wanted to have done with him as soon as possible.
Albert Price also wished to get through the necessary busi-
ness quickly so that he could get back to Londofi. They went
to the tiny room in which poor Fanny had lived. Albert Price
looked at the pictures and the furniture.

"I don't pretend to know much about art," he said. "I sup-
pose these pictures would fetch something, would they?"

"Nothing," said Philip.

"The furniture's not worth ten shillings."

Albert Price knew no French and Philip had to do every-
thing. It seemed that it was an interminable process to get the
poor body safely hidden away under ground: papers had to be
obtained in one place and signed in another; ofificials had to
be seen. For three days Philip was occupied from morning till
night. At last he and Albert Price followed the hearse to the
cemetery at Montparnasse.

"I want to do the thing decent," said Albert Price, "but
there's no use wasting money."

The short ceremony was infinitely dreadful in the cold gray
morning. Half a dozen people who had worked with Fanny
Price at the studio came to the funeral, Mrs. Otter because she
was massiere and thought it 'her duty, Ruth Chalice because
she had a kind heart, Lawson, Glutton, and Flanagan. They
had all disliked her during her life. Philip, looking across the
cemetery crowded on all sides with monuments, some poor

290 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

.and simple, others vulgar, pretentious, and ugly, shuddered.
It was horribly sordid. When they came out Albert Price asked
Philip to lunch with him. Philip loathed him now and he was
tired; he had not been sleeping well, for he dreamed constantly
of Fanny Price in the torn brown dress, hanging from the nail
in the ceiling; but he could not think of an excuse.

"You take me somewhere where we can get a regular slap-up
lunch. All this is the very worst thing for my nerves."

"Lavenue's is about the best place round here," answered
Philip.

Albert Price settled himself on a velvet seat with a sigh of
relief. He ordered a substantial luncheon and a bottle of wine.

"Well, I'm glad that's over," he said.

He threw put a few artful ^questions, and Philip discov-
ered that he was eager to hear about the painter's life in Paris.
He represented it to himself as deplorable, but he was anxious
for details of the orgies which his fancy suggested to him.
With sly winks and discreet sniggering he conveyed that he
knew very well that there was a great deal' more than Philip
confessed. He was a man of the world, and he knew a thing
or two. He asked Philip whether he had ever been to any
of those places in Montmartre which are celebrated from
Temple Bar to the Royal Exchange. He would like to say he
had been to the Moulin Rouge. The luncheon was very good
and the wine excellent. Albert Price expanded as the processes
of digestion went satisfactorily forwards.

"Let's 'ave a little brandy," he said when the coffee was
brought, "and blow the expense."

He rubbed his hands.

"You know, I've got 'alf a mind to stay over tonight and go
back tomorrow. What d'you say to spending the evening
together?"

"If you mean you want me to take you round Montmartre
tonight, I'll see you damned," said Philip.

"I suppose it wouldn't be quite the thing."

The answer was made so seriously that Philip was tickled.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 291

"Besides it would be rotten for your nerves," he said gravely,

Albert Price concluded that he had better go back to Lon-
don by the four o'clock train, and presently he took leave of
Philip.

"Well, good-bye, old man," he said. "I tell you what, I'll try
and come over to Paris again one of these days and I'll look
you up. And then we won't 'alf go on the razzle."

Philip was too restless to work that afternoon, so he jumped
on a bus and crossed the river to see whether there were any
pictures on view at Durand-Ruel's. After that he strolled along
the boulevard. It was cold and windswept. People hurried by
wrapped up in their coats, shrunk together in an effort to keep
out of the cold, and their faces were pinched and careworn.
It was icy underground in the cemetery at Montparnasse
among all those white tombstones. Philip felt lonely in the
world and strangely homesick. He wanted company. At that
hour Cronshaw would be working, and Glutton never wel-
comed visitors; Lawson was painting another portrait of
Ruth Chalice and would not care to be disturbed. He made
up his mind to go and see Flanagan. He found him painting,
but delighted to throw up his work and talk. The studio was
comfortable, for the American had more money than most of
them, and warm; Flanagan set about making tea. Philif
looked at the two heads that he was sending to the Salon.

"It's awful cheek my sending anything," said FlanagaUi
"but I don't care, I'm going to send. D'you think they're
rotten.?"

"Not so rotten as I should have expected," said Philip.

They showed in fact an astounding cleverness. The diffi-
culties had been avoided with skill, and there was a dash
about the way in which the paint was put on which was
surprising and even attractive. Flanagan, without knowledge
or technique, painted with the loose brush of a man who has
spent a lifetime in the practice of the art.

"If one were forbidden to look at any picture for more than

292 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

thirty seconds you'd be a great master, Flanagan," smiled
Philip.

These young people were not in the habit of spoiling one
another with excessive flattery.

"We haven't got time in America to spend more than thirty
:seconds in looking at any picture," laughed the other.

Flanagan, though he was the most scatter-brained person
in the world, had a tenderness of heart which was unex-
pected and charming. Whenever anyone was ill he installed
Jiimself as sick-nurse. His gaiety was better than any medicine.
Like many of his countrymen he had not the English dread
-of sentimentality which keeps so tight a hold on emotion; and,
ifinding nothing absurd in the show of feeling, could offer an
•exuberant sympathy which was often grateful to his friends
in distress. He saw that Philip was depressed by what he had
_gone through and with unaffected kindliness set himself bois-
terously to cheer him up. He exaggerated the Americanisms
"which he knew always made the Englishmen laugh and
poured out a breathless stream of conversation, whimsical,
Jhigh-spirited, and jolly. In due course they went out to dinner
,and afterwards to the Gaite Montparnasse, which was Flana-
gan's favourite place of amusement. By the end of the evening
he was in his most extravagant humour. He had drunk a good
<leal, but any inebriety from which he suffered was due much
jnore to his own vivacity than to alcohol. He proposed that
they should go to the Bal Bullier, and Philip, feeling too tired
ito go to bed, willingly enough consented. They sat down at a
table on the platform at the side, raised a little from the level
'of the floor so that they could watch the dancing, and drank
a bock. Presently Flanagan saw a friend and with a wild shout
Jeaped over the barrier on to the space where they were danc-
^ing. Philip watched the people. Bullier was not the resort of
fashion. It was Thursday night and the place was crowded.
There were a number of students of the various faculties, but
most of the men were clerks or assistants in shops; they wore
their every-day clothes, ready-made tweeds or queer tail-coats,

OF HUMAN BONDAGE

rn

and their hats, for they had brought them in with them, and
when they danced there was no place to put them but their
heads. Some of the women looked like servant-girls, and some
were painted hussies, but for the most part they were shop,
girls. They were poorly-dressed in cheap imitation of the
fashions on the other side of the river. The hussies were got
up to resemble the music-hall artiste or the dancer who en.
joyed notoriety at the moment; their eyes were heavy with
black and their cheeks impudently scarlet. The hall was lit
by great white lights, low down, which emphasised the
shadows on the faces; all the lines seemed to harden under it,
and the colors were most crude. It was a sordid scene. Philip
leaned over the rail, staring down, and he ceased to hear the
music. They danced furiously. They danced round the room,
slowly, talking very little, with all their attention given to the
dance. The room was hot, and their faces shone with sweat.
It seemed to Philip that they had thrown off the guard which
people wear on their expression, the homage to convention,
and he saw them now as they really were. In that moment
of abandon they were strangely animal: some were foxy and
some were wolflike; and others had the long, foolish face of
sheep. Their skins were sallow from the unhealthy life they
led and the poor food they ate. Their features were blunted
by mean interests, and their little eyes were shifty and cunning.
There was nothing of nobility in their bearing, and you felt
that for all of them life was a long succession of petty concerns
and sordid thoughts. The air was heavy with the musty smell
of humanity. But they danced furiously as though impelled
by some strange power within them, and it seemed to Philip,
that they were driven forward by a rage for enjoyment. They
were seeking desperately to escape from a world of horror.
The desire for pleasure which Cronshaw said was the only-
motive of human action urged them blindly on, and the ver^
vehemence of the desire seemed to rob it of all pleasure. They
were hurried on by a great wind, helplessly, they knew not
why and they knew not whither. Fate seemed to tower above

7.1i

OF HUMAN -BONDAGE

Them, and they danced as though everlasting darkness were
beneath their feet, Their silence was vaguely alarming. It was
as if life terrified them and robbed them of power of speech
so that the shriek which was in their hearts died at their
throats. Their eyes were haggard and grim; and notwithstand-
ing the beastly lust that disfigured them, and the meanness of
their faces, and the cruelty, notwithstanding the stupidness
which was worst of all, the anguish of those fixed eyes made
all that crowd terrible and pathetic. Philip loathed them, and
yet his heart ached with the infinite pity which filled him.
He took his coat from the cloak-room and went out into
the bitter coldness of the night.

Chapter 30

Philip could not get the unhappy event out of his head. What
troubled him most was the uselessness of Fanny's effort. No
one could have worked harder than she, nor with more sin-
cerity; she believed in herself with all her heart; but it was
plain that self-confidence meant very little, all his friends had
it, Miguel Ajuria among the rest; and Philip was shocked by
the contrast between the Spaniard's heroic endeavour and the
triviality of the thing he attempted. The unhappiness of
Philip's life at school had called up in him the power of self-
analysis; and this vice, as subtle as drug-taking, had taken
possession of him so that he had now a peculiar keenness in
the dissection of his feelings. He could not help seeing that
art affected him differently from others. A fine picture gave
Lawson an immediate thrill. His appreciation was instinctive.
Even Flanagan felt certain things which Philip was obliged to
think out. His own appreciation was intellectual. He could
not help thinking that if he had in him the artistic tempera-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 295

ment (he hated the phrase, but could discover no other) he
would feel beauty in the emotional, unreasoning way in which
they did. He began to wonder whether h&had anything more
than a superficial cleverness of the hand which enabled him
to copy objects with accuracy. That was nothing. He had
learned to despise technical dexterity. The important thing
was to feel in terms of paint. Lawson painted in a certain way
because it was his nature to, and through the imitativeness of
a student sensitive to every influence, there pierced individu-
ality. Philip looked at his own portrait of Ruth Chalice, and
now that three months had passed he realised that it was no
more than a servile copy of Lawson. He felt himself barren.
He painted with the brain, and he could not help knowing
that the only painting worth anything was done with the
heart.

He had very Httle money, barely sixteen hundred pounds,
and it would be necessary for him to practise the severest
economy. He could not count on earning anything for ten
years. The history of painting was full of artists who had
earned nothing at all. He must resign himself to penury; and
it was worth while if he produced work which was immortal;
but he had a terrible fear that he would never be more than
second-rate. Was it worth while for that to give up one's
youth, and the gaiety of life, and the manifold chances of
being? He knew the existence of foreign painters in Paris
enough to see that the lives they led were narrowly provincial.
He knew some who had dragged along for twenty years in
the pursuit of a fame which always escaped them till they
sunk ihto sordidncss and alcoholism. Fanny's suicide had
aroused memories, and Philip heard ghastly stories of the way
in which one person or another had escaped from despair. He
remembered the scornful advice which the master had given
poor Fanny : it would have been well for her if she had taken
it and given up an attempt which was hopeless.

Philip finished his portrait of Miguel Ajuria and made
up his mind to send it to the Salon. Flanagan was sending two

296 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

pictures, and he thought he could paint as well as Flanagan.
He had worked so hard on the portrait that he could not help
feeling it must have merit. It was true that when he looked at
it he felt that there was something wrong, though he could
not tell what; but when he was away from it his spirits went
up and he was not dissatisfied. He sent it to the Salon and it
was refused. He did not mind much, since he had done all
he could to persuade himself that there was little chance that
it would be taken, till Flanagan a few days later rushed in to
tell Lawson and Philip that one of his pictures was accepted.
With a blank face Philip offered his congratulations, and
Flanagan«was so busy congratulating himself that he did not
catch the note of irony which Philip could not prevent from
coming into his voice. Lawson, quicker-witted, observed it
and looked at Philip curiously. His own picture was all right,
he knew that a- day or two before, and he was vaguely resent-
ful of Philip's attitude. But he was surprised at the sudden
question which Philip put him as soon as the American was
gone.

"If you were in my place would you chuck the whole
thing?"

"What do you mean.?"

"I wonder if it's worth while being a second-rate painter.
You see, in other things, if you're a doctor or if you're in busi-
ness, it doesn't matter so much if you're mediocre. You make
a living and you get along. But what is the good of turning
out second-rate pictures?"

Lawson was fond of Philip and, as soon as he thought he
was seriously distressed by the refusal of his picture, he set
himself to console him. It was notorious that the Salon had
refused pictures which were afterwards famous; it was the
first time Philip had sent, and he must expect a rebuff;
Flanagan's success was explicable, his picture was showry and
superficial: it was just the sort of thing a languid jury would
see merit in. Philip grew impatient; it was humihating that
Lawson should think him capable of being seriously dis-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 297

turbed by so trivial a calamity and would not realise that his
dejection was due to a deep-seated distrust of his powers.

Of late Glutton had withdrawn himself somewhat from the
group who took their meals at Gravier's, and lived very much
by himself. Flanagan said he was in love with a girl, but Glut-
ton's austere countenance did not suggest passion; and Philip
thought it more probable that he separated himself from his
friends so that he might grow clear with the new ideas which
were in him. But that evening, when the others had left the
restaurant to go to a play and Philip was sitting alone, Glutton
came in and ordered dinner. They began to talk, and finding
Glutton more loquacious and less sardonic than usual, Philip
determined to take advantage of his good humour.

"I say I wish you'd come and look at my picture," he said.
"I'd like to know what you think of it."
"No, I won't do that."
"Why not.?" asked Philip, reddening.

The request was one which they all made of one another,
and no one ever thought of refusing. Glutton shrugged his
shoulders.

"People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
Besides, what's the good of criticism.? What does it matter if
your picture is good or bad.?"
"It matters to me."

"No. The only reason that one paints is that one can't help
it. It's a function like any of the other functions of the body,
only comparatively few people have got it. One paints for
oneself: otherwise one would commit suicide. Just think of it,
you spend God knows how long trying to get something on
to canvas, putting the sweat of your soul into it, and what is
the result.? Ten to one it will be refused at the Salon; if it's
accepted, people glance at it for ten seconds as they pass; if
you're lucky some ignorant fool will buy it and put it on his
^Valls and look at it as little as he looks at his dining-room
table. Criticism has nothing to do with the artist. It judges
objectively, but the objective doesn't concern the artist."

298 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Glutton put his hands over his eyes so that he might con-
centrate his mind on what he wanted to say.

"The artist gets a pecuUar sensation from something he sees,
and is impelled to express it and, he doesn't know why, he
can only express his feeling by lines and colours. It's like a
musician; he'll read a line or two, and a certain combination
of notes presents itself to him : he doesn't know why such and
such words call forth in him such and such notes; they just
do. And I'll tell you another reason why criticism is meaning-
less: a great painter forces the world to see nature as he sees
it; but in the next generation another painter sees the world
in another way, and then the public judges him not by himself
but by his predecessor. So the Barbizon people taught our
fathers to look at trees in a certain manner, and when Monet
came along and painted differently, people said: But trees
aren't like that. It never struck them that trees are exactly how
a painter chooses to see them. We paint from within outwards
— if we force our vision on the world it calls us great painters;
if we don't it ignores us; but we are the same. We don't attach
any meaning to greatness or to smallness. What happens to
our work afterwards is unimportant; we have got all we could
out of it while we were doing it."

There was a pause while Glutton with voracious appetite
devoured the food that was set before him. Philip, smoking a
cheap cigar, observed him closely. The ruggedness of the head,
which looked as though it were carved from a stone refractory
to the sculptor's chisel, the rough mane of dark hair, the great
nose, and the massive bones of the jaw, suggested a man of
strength; and yet Philip wondered whether perhaps the mask
concealed a strange weakness. Glutton's refusal to show his
work might be sheer vanity: he could not bear the thought of
anyone's criticism, and he would not expose himself to the
chance of a refusal from the Salon; he wanted to be received
as a master and would not risk comparisons with other work
which might force him to diminish his own opinion of him-
self. During the eighteen months Philip had known him Glut-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 299

ton had grown more harsh and bitter; though he would not
come out into the open and compete with his fellows, he was
indignant with the facile success of those who did. He had
no patience with Lawson, and the pair were no longer on the
intimate terms upon which they had been when Philip first
knew them.

"Lawson's all right," he said contemptuously, "he'll go back
to England, become a fashionable portrait painter, earn ten
thousand a year and be an A. R. A. before he's forty. Portraits;
done by hand for the nobility and gentry!"

Philip, too, looked into the future, and he saw Glutton in-
twenty years, bitter, lonely, savage, and unknown; still in
Paris, for the life there had got into his bones, ruling a small-
cenacle with a savage tongue, at war with himself and the
world, producing little in his increasing passion for a per-
fection he could not reach: and perhaps sinking at last into
drunkenness. Of late Philip had been captivated by an idea
that since one had only one life it was important to make a
success of it, but he did not count success by the acquiring
of money or the achieving of fame; he did not quite know yet
what he meant by it, perhaps variety of experience and the
making the most of his abilities. It was plain anyway that the
life which Glutton seemed destined to was failure. Its only
justification would be the painting of imperishable master-
pieces. He recollected Gronshaw's whimsical metaphor of the
Persian carpet; he had thought of it often; but Gronshaw with
his faunlike humour had refused to make his meaning clear :
he repeated that it had none unless one discovered it for one-
self. It was this desire to make a success of life which was at
the bottom of Philip's uncertainty about continuing his artistic
career. But Glutton began to talk again.

"D'you remember my telling you about that chap I met in
Brittany? I saw him the other day here. He's just off to Tahiti.
He was broke to the world. He was a brasseur d'affaires, a
stockbroker I suppose you call it in EngHsh; and he had a
wife and family, and he was earning a large income. He

300 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

chucked it all to become a painter. He just went off and
settled down in Brittany and began to paint. He hadn't got
any money and did the next best thing to starving."

"And what about his wife and family.'"' asked Philip.

"Oh, he dropped them. He left them to starve on their own
account.''

"It sounds a pretty low-down thing to do."

■"Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you
tnust give up being an artist. They've got nothing to do with
■one another. You hear of men painting pot-boilers to keep an
aged mother — well, it shows they're excellent sons, but it's no
excuse for bad work. They're only tradesmen. An artist would
let his mother go to the workhouse. There's a writer I know
over here who told me that his wife died in childbirth. He
was in love with her and he was mad with grief, but as he sat
at the bedside watching her die he found himself making
mental notes of how she looked and what she said and the
things he was feeling. Gentlemanly, wasn't it?"

"But is your friend a good painter?" asked Philip.

"No, not yet, he paints just like Pissaro. He hasn't found
himself, but he's got a sense of colour and a sense of deco-
ration. But that isn't the question. It's the feeling, and that
he's got. He's behaved like a perfect cad to his wife and
children, he's always behaving like a perfect cad; the way he
Creats the people who've helped him — and sometimes he's been
saved from starvation merely by the kindness of his friends —
is simply beastly. He just happens to be a great artist."

Philip pondered over the man who was willing to sacrifice
everything, comfort, home, money, love, honour, duty, for the
sake of getting on to canvas with paint the emotion which the
world gave him. It was magnificent, and yet his courage failed
him.

Thinking of Cronshaw recalled to him the fact that he had
not seen him for a week, and so, when Glutton left him, he
wandered along to the cafe in which he was certain to find
the writer. During the first few months of his stay in Paris

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 301

Phihp had accepted as gospel all that Cronshaw said, but
Philip had a practical outlook and he grew impatient with the
theories which resulted in no action. Cronshaw's slim bundle
of poetry did not seem a substantial result for a life which was
sordid. Philip could not wrench out of his nature the instincts
of the middle-class from which he came; and the penury, the
hack work which Cronshaw did to keep body and soul to-
gether, the monotony of existence between the slovenly attic
and the cafe table, jarred with his respectability. Cronshaw
was astute enough to know that the young man disapproved
of him, and he attacked his philistinism with an irony which
was sometimes playful but often very keen.

"You're a tradesman," he told Philip, "you want to invest
life in consols so that it shall bring you in a safe three per cent
I'm a spendthrift, I run through my capital. I shall spend my
last penny with my last heartbeat."

The metaphor irritated Philip, because it assumed for th-e
speaker a romantic attitude and cast a slur upon the position
which Philip instinctively felt had more to say for it than he
could think of at the moment.

But this evening Philip, undecided, wanted to talk about
himself. Fortunately it was late already and Cronshaw's pile
of saucers on the table, each indicating a drink, suggested that
he was prepared to take an independent view of things in
general.

"I wonder if you'd giVe me some advice," said Philip sud-
denly.

"You won't fake it, will you.?"

Philip shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

"I don't beheve I shall ever do much good as a painter. I
don't see any use in being second-rate. I'm thinking of chuck-
ing it."

"Why shouldn't you.?"

Philip hesitated for an instant.

"I suppose I like the life."

A change came over Cronshaw's placid, round face. The.

302 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

corners of the mouth were suddenly depressed, the eyes sunk
dully in their orbits; he seemed to become strangely bowed
and old.

"This?" he cried, looking round the cafe in which they sat.
His voice really trembled a little.
"If you can get out of it, do while there's time."
Philip stared at him with astonishment, but the sight of
emotion always made him feel shy, and he dropped his eyes.
He knew that he was looking upon the tragedy of failure.
There was silence. Philip thought that Cronshaw was looking
upon his own life; and perhaps he considered his youth with
its bright hopes and the disappointments which wore out the
radiancy; the wretched rnonotony of pleasure, and the black
future. Philip's eyes rested on the little pile of saucers, and he
knew that Cronshaw's were on them too.

Chapter 51

Two months passed.

It seemed to Philip, brooding over these matters, that in the
true painters, writers, musicians, there was a power which
drove them to such complete absorption in their work as to
make it inevitable for them to subordinate life to art. Suc-
cumbing to an influence they never realised, they were merely
dupes of the instinct that possessed them, and . life sUpped
through their fingers unlived. But he had a feeling that life
was to be lived rather than portrayed, and he wanted to search
out the various experiences of it and wring from each moment
all the emotion that it offered. He made up his mind at length
to take a certain step and abide by the result, and, having
made up his mind, he determined to take the step at once.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 303

Luckily enough the next morning was one of Foinet's days,
and he resolved to ask him point-blank whether it was worth
his while to go on with the study of art. He had never for-
gotten the master's brutal advice to Fanny Price. It had been
sound. Philip could never get Fanny entirely out of his head.
The studio seemed strange without her, and now and then
the gesture of one of the women working there or the tone of
a voice would give him a sudden start, reminding him of her :
her presence was more noticeable now she was dead than it
had ever been during her life; and he often dreamed of her
at night, waking with a cry of terror. It was horrible to think
of all the suffering she must have endured.

Philip knew that on the days Foinet came to the studio he
lunched at a little restaurant in the Rue d'Odessa, and he
hurried his own meal so that he could go and wait outside
till the painter came out. Philip walked up and down the
crowded street and at last saw Monsieur Foinet walking, with
bent head, towards him; Philip was very nervous, but he
forced himself to go up to him.

"Pardon monsieur, I should like to speak to you for one
moment."

Foinet gave him a rapid glance, recognised him, but did
not smile a greeting.

"Speak," he said.

"I've been working here nearly two years now under you. 1
wanted to ask you to tell rne frankly if you think it worth
while for me to continue."

Philip's voice was trembling a little. Foinet walked on with'
out looking up. Philip, watching his face, saw no trace of
expression upon it.

"I don't understand."

"I'm very poor. If I have no talent I would sooner do some
thing else."

"Don't you know if you have talent?"

"All my friends know they have talent, but I am aware some
of them are mistaken."

304 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Foinet's bitter mouth outlined the shadow of a smile, and
he asked :

"Do you live near here?"

Philip told him where his studio was. Foinet turned round.
' "Let us go there. You shall show me your work."

"Now?" cried Philip.

"Why not?"

Philip had nothing to say. He walked silently by the
master's side. He felt horribly sick. It had never struck him
that Foinet would wish to see his things there and then; he
meant, so that he might have time to prepare himself, to ask
him if he would mind coming at some future date or whether
he might bring them to Foinet's studio. He was trembling
with anxiety. In his heart he hoped that Foinet would look at
his picture, and that rare smile would come into his face, and
he would shake Philip's hand and say: "Pas mal. Go on, my
lad. You have talent, real talent." Philip's heart swelled at the
thought. It was such a relief, such a joy! Now he could go on
with courage; and what did hardship matter, privation, and
disappointment, if he arrived at last? He had worked very
haijd, it would be too cruel if all that industry were futile. And
then with a start he remembered that he had heard Fanny
Price say just that. They arrived at the house, and Philip was
seized with fear. If he had dared he would have asked Foinet
to go away. He did not want to know the truth. They went in
and the concierge handed him a letter as they passed. He
glanced at the envelope and recognised his uncle's handwrit--
ing. Foinet followed him up the stairs. Philip could think of
nothing to say; Foinet was mute, and the silence got on his
nerves. The professor sat down; and Philip without a word
placed before him the picture which the Salon had rejected;
Foinet nodded but did not speak; then Philip showed him
the two portraits he had made of Ruth Chalice, two or three
landscapes which he had painted at Moret, and a number of
«;ketches.

"That's all," he said presently, with a nervous laugh.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 305

Monsieur Foinet rolled himself a cigarette and lit it.

"You have very httle private means?" he asked at last.

"Very little," answered Philip, with a sudden feeling of cold
at his heart. "Not enough to live on."

"There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about
one's means of livelihood. I have nothing but contempt for
the people who despise money. They are hypocrites or fools.
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a
complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income
half the possibilities of life are shut off. The only thing to be
careful about is that you do not pay more than a shilling for
the shilling you earn. You will hear people say that poverty
is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it
in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It
exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats
into your soul like a cancer. It is not wealth one asks for, but
just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered,
to be generous, frank, and independent. I pity with all my
heart the artist, whether he writes or paints, who is entirely
dependent for subsistence upon his art."

Philip quietly put away the various things which he had
shown.

"I'm afraid that sounds as if you didn't think I had much
chance."

Monsieur Foinet slightly shrugged his shoulders.

"You have a certain manual dexterity. With hard work and
perseverance there is no reason why you should not become a
careful, not incompetent painter. You would find hundreds
who painted worse than you, hundreds who painted as well.
I see no talent in anything you have shown me. I see industry
and intelligence. You will never be anything but mediocre."

Philip obliged himself to answer quite steadily.

"I'm very grateful to you for having taken so much trouble
I can't thank you enough."

Monsieur Foinet got up and made as if to go, but he

^06 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

changed his mind and, stopping, put his hand on Philip's
shoulder.

"But if you w^e to ask me my advice, I should say: take
your courage in both hands and try your luck at something
else. It sounds very hard, but let me tell you this : I would give '
all I have in the world if someone had given me that advice
when I was your age and I had taken it."

Philip looked up at him with surprise. The master forced
his lips into a smile, but his eyes remained grave and sad.

"It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too
late. It does not improve the temper."

He gave a little laugh as he said the last words and quickly
walked out of the room.

Philip mechanically took up the letter from his uncle. The
sight of his handwriting made him anxious, for it was his aunt
who always wrote to him. She had been ill for the last three
months, and he had offered to go over to England and see her;
but she, fearing it would interfere with his work, had refused.
She did not want him to put himself to inconvenience; she
said she would wait till August and then she hoped he would
come and stay at the vicarage for two or three weeks. If by
any chance she grew worse she would let him know, since she
did not wish to die without seeing him again. If his uncle
wrote to him it must be because she was too ill to hold a pen.
Philip opened the letter. It ran as follows:

My dear Philip,

I regret to inform you that your dear Aunt departed this life
early this morning. She died very suddenly, but quite peace-
fully. The change for the worse was so rapid that we had no
time to send for you. She was fully prepared for the end arid
entered into rest with the complete assurance of a I^lessed
resurrection and with resignation to the divine will of our
blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Your Aunt would have liked you
to be present at the funeral so I trust you will come as soon as
you can, There is naturally a great deal of wor/^^ thrown upon

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 307

my shoulders and I am very much upset. I trust that you will
be able to do everything for me.

Your affectionate uncle,

William Carey.

Chapter 52

Next day Philip arrived at Blackstable. Since the death of his
mother he had never lost anyone closely connected vi^ith him;
his aunt's death shocked him and filled him also with a curi-
ous fear; he felt for the first time his own mortality. He could
not realise what life would be for his uncle without the
constant companionship of the woman who had loved and
tended him for forty years. He expected to find him broken
down with hopeless grief. He dreaded the first meeting; he
knew that he could say nothing which would be of use. He
rehearsed to himself a number of apposite speeches.

He entered the vicarage by the side-door and went into the
dining-room. Uncle William was reading the paper.

"Your train was late," he said, looking up.

Philip was prepared to give way to his emotion, but the
matter-of-fact reception startled him. His uncle, subdued but
calm, handed him the paper.

"There's a very nice Uttle paragraph about her in The Black-
stable Times," he said.

Philip read it mechanically.

"Would you like to come up and see her.?"

Philip nodded and together they walked upstairs. Aunt
Louisa was lying in the middle of the large bed, with flowers
all round her.

"Would you like to say a short prayer.?" said the Vicar.

He sank on his knees, and because it was expected of him

'j08 of human bondage

Philip foilowcd his example. He looked at the little shrivelled
face. Hr; was only conscious of one emotion: what a wasted
iife! In a minute Mr. Carey gave a cough, and stood up. He
pointed to a wreath at the foot of the bed.

"That's from the Squire," he said. He spoke in a low voice
as though he were in church, but one felt that, as a clergyman,
he found himself quite at home. "I expect tea is ready."

They went down again to the dining-room. The drawn
blinds gave a lugubrious aspect. The Vicar sat at the end of
the table at which his wife had always sat and poured out the
tea with ceremony. Philip could not help feeling that neither
'of them should have been able to eat anything, but when he
saw that his uncle's appetite was unimpaired he fell to with
his usual heartiness. They did not speak for a while. Philip set
himself to eat an excellent cake with the air of grief which he
felt was decent.

"Things have changed a great deal since I was a curate,"
said the Vicar presently. "In my young days the mourners
used always to be given a pair of black gloves and a piece of
black silk for their hats Poor Louisa used to make the silk
into dresses. She always said that twelve funerals gave her a
new dress."

Then he told Philip who had sent wreaths; there were
twenty-four of them already; when Mrs. RawUngson, wife of
the Vicar at Feme, had died she had had thirty-two; but
probably a good many more would come the next day; the
funeral would- start at eleven o'clock from the vicarage, and
they should beat Mrs. Rawlingson easily. Louisa never liked
Mrs. Rawlingson.

"I shall take the funeral myself. I promised Louisa I would
never let anyone else bury her."

Philip looked at his uncle with disapproval when he took a
second piece of cake. Under the circumstances he could not
help thinking it greedy.

"Mary Ann certainly makes capital cakes. I'm afraid no one
else will make such good ones."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 309

"She's not going?" cried Philip, with astonishment.

Mary Ann had been at the vicarage ever since he could
remember. She never forgot his birthday, but made a point
always of sending him a trifle, absurd but touching. He had
a real affection for her.

"Yes," answered Mr. Carey. "I didn't think it would do tc
have a single woman in the house."

"But, good heavens, she must be over forty."

"Yes, I think she is. But she's been rather troublesome lately,
she's been inclined to take too much on herself, and I thought
this was a very good opportunity to give her notice."

"It's certainly one which isn't likely to recur," said Philip.

He took out a cigarette, but his uncle prevented him from
lighting it.

"Not till after the funeral, Philip," he said gently.

"All right," said Philip.

"It wouldn't be quite respectful to smoke in the house so
long as your poor Aunt Louisa is upstairs."

Josiah Graves, churchwarden and manager of the bank,
came back to dinner at the vicarage after the funeral. The
blinds had been drawn up, and Philip, against his will, felt
a curious sensation of relief. The body in the house had made
him uncomfortable: in life the poor woman had been all that
was kind and ^gentle; and yet, when she lay upstairs in her
bed-room, cold and stark, it seemed as though she cast upon
the survivors a baleful influence. The thought horrified Philip.

He found himself alone for a minute or two in the dining-
room with the churchwarden.

"I hope you'll be able to stay with your uncle a while," he
said. "I don't think he ought to be left alone just yet."

"I haven't made any plans," answered Philip. "If he wants
me I shall be very pleased to stay."

By way of cheering the bereaved husband the church-
warden during dinner talked of a recent fire at Blackstabk
which had partly destroyed the Wesleyan chapel.

310 OF flUMAN BONDAGE

"I hear they weren't insured," he said, with a Uttle smile.

"That won't make any difference," said the Vicar. "They'll
get as much money as they want to rebuild. Chapel people
are always ready to give money."

"I see that Holden sent a wreath."

Holden was the dissenting minister, and, though for Christ's
sake, who died for both of them, Mr. Carey nodded to him in
the street, he did not speak to him.

"I think it was very pushing," he remarked. "There were
forty-one wreaths. Yours was beautiful. Philip and I admired
it very much."

"Don't mention it," said the banker.

He had noticed with satisfaction that it was larger than any
one's else. It had looked very well. They began to discuss the
pfeople who attended the funeral. Shops had been closed for
it, and the churchwarden took out of his pocket the notice
which had been printed: Owing to the funeral of Mrs. Carey
this establishment will not be opened till qne o'clock^.

"It was my idea," he said.

"I think it was very nice of them to close," said the Vicar.
"Poor Louisa would have appreciated that."
, Philip ate his dinner. Mary Ann had treated the day as Sun-
day, and they had roast chicken and a gooseberry tart.

"I suppose you haven't thought about a tombstone yet?"
said the churchwarden.

"Yes, I have. I thought of a plain stone cross. Louisa was
always against ostentation."

"I don't think one can do much better than a cross. If you're
thinking of a text,^what do you say to: With Christ, which it
far better?"

The Vicar pursed his lips. It was just hke Bismarck to try
and settle everything himself. He did not like that text; it
seemed to cast an aspersion on himself.

"I don't think I should put that. I much prefer: The Lord
has given and the Lord has ta\en away."

"Oh, do you.? That always seems to me a little indifferent."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 311

The Vicar answered with some acidity, and Mr. Graves re-
pUed in a ttine which the widower thought too authoritative
for the occasion. Things were going rather far if he could not
choose his own text for his own wife's tombstone. There was
a pause, and then the conversation drifted to parish matters.
Phihp went into the garden to smoke his pipe. He sat on a
bench, and suddenly began to laugh hysterically.

A few days later his uncle expressed the hope that he would
spend the next few weeks at Blackstable.

"Yes, that will suit me very well," said Philip.

"I suppose it'll do if you go back to Paris in September."

Philip did not reply. He had thought much of what Foinei
said to him, bqt he was still so undecided that he did not wish
to speak of the future. There would be something fine in giv-
ing up art because he was convinced that he could not excel;
but unfortunately it would seem so only to himself: to others
it would be an admission of defeat, and he did not want to
confess that he was beaten. He was an obstinate fellow, and
the suspicion that his talent did not lie in one direction made
him inclined to force circumstances and aim notwithstanding
precisely in that direction. He could not bear that his friends
should laugh at him. This might have prevented him from
ever taking the definite step of abandoning the study of paint-
ing, but the different environment made him on a sudden see
things differently. Like many another he discovered that cross-
ing the Channel makes things which had seemed important
singularly futile. The life which had been so charming that
he could not bear to leave it now seemed inept; he was seized
with a distaste for the cafes, the restaurants with their ill-
cooked food, the shabby way in which they all lived. He did
not care any more what his friends thought about him: Cron-
shaw with his rhetoric, Mrs. Otter with her respectability,
Ruth Chalice with her affections, Lawson and Clutton with
their quarrels; he felt a revulsion from them all. He wrote to
Lawson and asked him to send over all his belongings. A week
later they arrived. When he unpacked his canvases he found

312 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

himself able to examine his work without emotion. He noticed,
the fact with interest. His uncle was anxious to see his;
pictures. Though he had so greatly disapproved of Philip's,
desire to go to Paris, he accepted the situation now with
equanimity. He was interested in the life of students and con-
stantly put Philip questions about it. He was in fact a little
proud of him because he was a painter and when people were
present made attempts to draw him out. He looked eagerly
at the studies of models which Philip showed him. Philip set
before him his portrait of Miguel Ajuria.

"Why did you paint him?" asked Mr. Carey.
■ "Oh, I wanted a model, and his head interested me."

"As you haven't got anything to do here I wonder you don't
paint me."

"It would bore you to sit."

"I think I should like it."

"We must see about it."

Philip wsis amused at his uncle's vanity. It was clear that he
was dying to have his portrait painted. To get something for
nothing was a chance not to be missed. For two or three days
he threw out little hints. He reproached Philip for laziness,
asked him when he was going to start work, and finally began
telling everyone he met that Philip was going to paint him.
At last there came a rainy day, and after breakfast Mr. Carey
said to Philip:

"Now, what d'you say to starting on my portrait this morn-
ing?" Philip put down the book he v^as reading and leaned
back in his chair.

"I've given up painting," he said.

"Why?" asked his uncle in astonishment.

"I don't think there's much object in being a second-rate
painter, and I came to the conclusion that I should never be
anything else."

"You surprise me. Before you went to Paris you were quite
certain that you were a genius."

"I was mistaken," said Philip.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 313

"I should have thought now you'd taken up a profession
you'd have the pride to stick to it. It seems to me that what
you lack is perseverance."

Philip was a little annoyed that his uncle did not even see
how truly heroic his determination was.

" 'A rolling stone gathers no moss,' " - proceeded the clergy-
man. Philip hated that proverb above all, and it seemed to him
perfectly meaningless. His uncle had repeated it often during
the arguments which had preceded his departure from busi-
ness. Apparently it recalled that occasion to his guardian.

"You're no longer a boy, you know; you must begin to think
of settling down. First you insist on becoming a chartered
accountant, and then you get tired of that and you want to
become a painter. And now if you please yoil change your
mind again. It points to . . ."

He hesitated for a moment to consider what defects of
■character exactly it indicated, and Philip finished the sentence.

"Irresolution, incompetence, want of foresight, and lack of
■determination."

The Vicar looked up at his nephew quickly to see whether
he was laughing at him. Philip's face was serious, but there was
a twinkle in his eyes which irritated him. Philip should really
be getting more serious. He felt it right to give him a rap over
the knuckles.

"Your money matters have nothing to do with me now.
You're your own master; but I think you should remember
that your money won't last for ever, and the unlucky de-
formity you have doesn't exactly make it easier for you to earn
your living."

Philip knew by now that whenever anyone was angry with
him his first thought was to say something about his club-
foot. His estimate of the human race was determined by the
fact that scarcely anyone failed to resist the temptation. Buf.
lie had trained himself not to show any sign that the remindei
■wounded him. He had even acquired control over the blush,
ing which in his boyhood had been one of his torments.

314 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"As you justly remark," he answered, "my money matters
have nothing to do with you and I am my own master."

"At all events you will do me the justice to acknowledge
that I was justified in my opposition when you made up your
mind to become an art-student."

"I don't know so much about that. I daresay one profits
more by the mistakes one makes oflF one's own bat than by
doing the right thing on somebody's else advice. I've had my
fling, and I don't mind settling down now."

"What at?"

Philip was not prepared for the question, since in fact he
had not made up his mind. He had thought of a dozen call-
ings.

"The most suitable thing you could do is to enter your
father's profession and become a doctor."

"Oddly enough that is precisely what I intend."

He had thought of doctoring among other things, chiefly
because it was an occupation which seemed to give a good
deal of personal freedom, and his experience of life in an office
had made him determined never to have anything more to do
with one; his answer to the Vicar slipped out almost un-
awares, because it was in the nature of a repartee. It amused
him to make up his mind in that accidental way, and he re-
solved then and there to enter his father's old hospital in the
autumn.

"Then your two years in Paris may be regarded as so much
wasted time?"

"I don't know about that. I had a very jolly two years, and
i learned one or two useful things."

"What?"

Phihp reflected for an instant, and his answer was not
devoid of a gentle desire to annoy.

"I learned to look at hands, which I'd never looked at be-
fore. And instead of just looking at houses and trees I learned
to look at houses arid trees against the sky. And I learned also
that shadows are not black but coloured."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 315

'I suppose you think you're very clever. I think your
flippancy is quite inane."

Chapter 33

Taking the paper with him Mr. Carey retired to his study.
Phihp changed his chair for that in which his uncle had been
sitting (it was the only comfortable one in the room), and
looked out of the window at the pouring rain. Even in that
sad weather there was something restful about the green fields
that stretched to the horizon. There was an intimate charm
in the landscape which he did not remember ever to have
noticed before. Two years in France had opened his eyes to
the beauty of his own countryside.

He thought with a smile of his uncle's remark. It was lucky
that the turn of his mind tended to flippancy. He had begun
to realise what a great loss he had sustained in the death of
his father and mother. That was one of the differences in his
life which prevented him from seeing things in the same way
as other people. The love of parents for their children is the
only emotion which is quite disinterested. Among strangers he
had grown up as best he could, but he had seldom been used
with patience or forbearance. He prided himself on his self-
control. It had been whipped into him by the mockery of his
fellows. Then they called him cynical and callous. He had ac-
quired calmness of demeanour and under most circumstances
an unruffled exterior, so that now he could not show his feel-
ings. People told him he was unemotional; but he knew that
he was at the mercy of his emotions: an accidental kindnesi
touched him so much that sometimes he did not venture to
speak in order not to betray the unsteadiness of his voice. H*;

il6 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

remembered the bitterness of his life at school, the humiliation
which he had endured, the banter which had made him
morbidly afraid of making himself ridiculous; and he re-
rnembered the loneliness he had felt since, faced with the
world, the disillusion and the disappointment caused by the
difference between what it promised to his active imagination
and what it gave. But notwithstanding he was able to look at
himself from the outside and smile with amusement.

"By Jove, if I weren't flippant, I should hang myself," he
thought cheerfully.

His mind went back to the answer he had given his uncle
when he asked him what he had learnt in Paris. He had
learnt a good deal more than he told him. A conversation with
Cronshaw had stuck in his memory, and one phrase he had
used, a commonplace one enough, had set his brain working.

"My dear fellow," Cronshaw said, "there's no such thing as,
abstract morality.''

When Philip ceased to believe in Christianity he felt that a
great weight was taken from his shoulders; casting off the
responsibility which weighed down every action, when every
action was infinitely important for the welfare of his immortal
soul, he experienced a vivid sense of liberty. But he knew now
that this was an illusion. When he put away the religion in
which he had been brought up, he had kept unimpaired the
morality which was part and parcel of it. He made up his
mind therefore to think things out for himself. He determined
to be swayed by no prejudices. He swept away the virtues and
the vices, the established laws of good and evil, with the idea
of finding out the rules of life for himself. He did not know
whether rules were necessary at all. That was one of the things
he wanted to discover. Clearly much that seemed valid seemed
so only because he had been taught it from his earliest youth.
He had read a number of books, but they did not help him
much, for they were based on the morality of Christianity;
and even the writers who emphasised the fact that they did
not believe in it were never satisfied till they had framed a

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 317

system of ethics in accordance with that of the Sermon on the
Mount. It seemed hardly worth while to read a long volume
m order to learn that you ought to behave exactly like every-
body else. Philip wanted to find out how he ought to behave,
and he thought he could prevent himself from being influ-
enced by the opinions that .surrounded him. But meanwhile
he had to go on living, and, until he formed a theory of con-
duct, he made himself a provisional rule.

"Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman
round the corner."

He thought the best thing he had gained in Paris was a
complete liberty of spirit, and he felt himself at last absoluteiy
free. In a desultory way he had read a good deal of philosophy,
and he looked forward with delight to the leisure of the next
few months. He began to read at haphazard. He entered upon
each system with a_little thrill of excitement, expecting to find
in each some guide by which he could rule his conduct; he felt
himself like a traveller in unknown countries and as he pushed
forward the enterprise fascinated him; he read emotionally, as
other men read pure literature, and his heart leaped as he dis-
covered in noble, words what himself had obscurely felt. His
mind was concrete and moved with difficulty in regions of the
abstract; but, even when he could not follow the reasoning, it
gave him a curious pleasure to follow the tortuosities of
thoughts that threaded their nimble way on the edge of the
incomprehensible. Sometimes great philosophers seemed to
have nothing to say to him, but at others he recognised a mind
with which he felt himself at home. He was like the explorer
in Central Africa who comes suddenly upon wide uplands,
with great trees in them and stretches of meadow, so that he
might fancy himself in an English park. He delighted in the
robust common sense of Thomas Hobbes; Spinoza filled him
with awe, he had never before come in contact with a mind
so noble, so unapproachable and austere; it reminded him of
that statue by Rodin, L'Age d'Airain, which he passionately
admired; and then there was Hume: the scepticism of that

318 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

charming philosopher touched a kindred note in PhiUp; and,
revelhng in the lucid style which seemed able to put compli-
cated thought into simple words, musical and measured, he
read as he might have read a novel, a smile of pleasure on his
lips. But in none could he find exactly what he wanted. He
had read somewhere that every man was born a Platonist, an
Aristotelian, a Stoic, or an Epicurean; and the history of
George Henry Lewes (besides telling you that philosophy was
all moonshine) was there to show that the thought of each
philosopher was inseparably connected with the man he was.
When you knew that you could guess to a great extent the
philosophy he wrote. It looked as though you did not act in
a certain way because you thought in a certain way, but rather
that you thought in a certain way because you were made in
a certain way. Truth had nothing to do with it. There was no
such thing as truth. Each man was his own philosopher, and
the elaborate systems which the great men of the past had
composed were only valid for the writers.

The thing then was to discover what one was and one's
jystem of philosophy would devise itself. It seemed to Philip
that there were three things to find out: man's relation to
the world he lives in, man's relation with the men among
whom he lives, and finally man's relation to himself. He made
an elaborate plan of study.

The advantage of living abroad is that, coming in contact
with the manners and customs of the people among whom
you live, you observe them from the outside and see that they
have not the necessity which those who practise them believe.
You cannot fail to discover that the beliefs which to you are
self-evident to the foreigner are absurd. The year in Germany,
the long stay in Paris, had prepared Philip to receive the
sceptical teaching which came to him now vvith such a feeUng
of relief. He saw that nothing was good and nothing was
evil; things were merely adapted to an end. He read The
Origin of Species. It seemed to offer an explanation of much
that troubled him. He was like an explorer now who has

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 319

reasoned that certain natural features must present them-
selves, and, beating up a broad river, finds here the tributary
that he expected, there the fertile, populated plains, and
further on the mountains. When some great discovery is
made the world is surprised afterwards that it was not accepted
at once, and even on those who acknowledge its truth the
effect is unimportant. The first readers of The Origin of
Species accepted it with their reason; but their emotions,
which are the ground of conduct, were untouched. Philip was
born a generation after this great book was published, and
much that horrified its contemporaries had passed into the
feeUng of the time, so that he was able to accept it with a
joyful heart. He was intensely moved by the grandeur of
the struggle for Ufe, and the ethical rule which it suggested
seemed to fit in with his predispositions. He said to himself,
that might was right. Society stood on one side, an organism
with its own laws of growth and self-preservation, while the
individual stood on the other. The actions which were to
the advantage of society it termed virtuous and those which
were not it called vicious. Good and evil meant nothing more
than that. Sin was a prejudice from which the free man
should rid himself. Society had three arms in its contest with
the individual, laws, pubhc opinion, and conscience: the first
two could be met by guile, guile is the only weapon of the
weak against the strong: common opinion put the matter
well when it stated that sin consisted in being found out;
but conscience was the traitor within the gates; it fought m
each heart the battle of society, and caused the individual to
throw himself, a wanton sacrifice, to the prosperity of his
enemy. For it was clear that the two were irreconcilable, the
state and the individual conscious of himself. That uses the
individual for its own ends, trampling upon him if he thwarts
it rewarding him with medals, pensions, honours, when he
served it faithfully; this, strong only in his independence,
threads his way through the state, for convenience sake, pay-
ing in money or service for certain benefits, but with no sense

320 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

of obligation; and, indifferent to the rewards, asks only to be
left alone. He is the independent traveller, who uses Cook's
tickets because they save trouble, but looks with good-
humoured contempt on the personally conducted parties. The
free man can do no wrong. He does everything he likes —
if he can. His power is the only measure of his morality. He
recognises the laws of the state and he can break them with-
out sense of sin, but if he is punished he accepts the punish-
ment without rancour. Society has the power.

But if for the individual there was no right and no wrong,
then it seemed to Philip that conscience lost its - power. It
was with a cry of triumph that he seized the knave and
flung him from his breast. But he was no nearer to the mean-
ing of life than he had been before. Why the world was
there and what men had come into existence for at all was
as inexplicable as ever. Surely there must be some reason. He
thought of Cronshaw's parable of the Persian Carpet. He
offered it as a solution of the riddle, and mysteriously he
stated that it was no answer at all unless you found it out
for yourself.

"I wonder what the devil he meant," Philip smiled.

And so, on the last day of September, eager to put into
practice all these new theories of life, Philip, with sixteen
hundred pounds and his club-foot, set out for the second time
to London to make his third stam in hfe.

Chapter 34

The examination Philip had passed before he was articled
to a chartered accountant was sufficient qualification for him to
f-nter a medical school. He chose St. Luke's because his father

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 321

had been a, student there, and before the end of the summer
session had gone up to London for a day in order to see the
secretary. He got a Hst of rooms from him, and took lodgings
in a dingy house which had the advantage of being within
two minutes' walk of the hospital.

"You'll have to arrange about a part to dissect," the sec-
retary told him. "You'd better start on a leg; they generally
do; they seem to think it easier."

Philip found that his first lecture was in anatomy, at eleven,
and about half past ten he limped across the road, and a little
nervously made his way to the Medical School. Just inside
the door a number of notices were pinned up, lists of lectures,
football fixtures, and the like; and these he looked at idly,
trying to seem at his ease. Young men and boys dribbled in
and looked for letters in the rack, chatted with one another,
and passed downstairs to the basement, in which was the
students' reading-room. Philip saw several fellows with a
desultory, timid look dawdling around, and surmised that,
like himself, they were there for the first time. When he had
exhausted the notices he saw a glass door which led into what
was apparently a museum, and having still twenty minutes
to spare he walked in. It was a collection of pathological
specimens. Presently a boy of about eighteen came up to him.

"I say, are you first year?" he said.

"Yes," answered Philip.

"Where's the lecture room, d'you know.? It's getting on
for eleven."

"We'd better try to find it."

They walked out of the museum into a long, dark corridor,
with the walls painted in two shades of red, and other youths
walking along suggested the way to them. They came to a
door marked Anatomy Theatre. Philip found that there
were a good many people already there. The seats were ar-
ranged in tiers, and just as Philip entered an attendant came
in, put a glass of water on the table in the well of the lecture-
room and then brought in a pelvis and two thigh-bones, right

322 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

and left. More men entered and took their seats and by
eleven the theatre was fairly full. There were about sixty stu-
dents. For the most part they were a good deal younger than
Philip, smooth-faced boys of eighteen, but there were a few
who were older than he : he noticed one tall man, with a fierce
red moustache, who might have been thirty; another little
fellow with black hair, only a year or two younger; and
there was one man with spectacles and a beard which was
quite gray.

The lecturer came in, Mr. Cameron, a handsome man
with white hair and clean-cut features. He called out the long
Ust of names. Then he made a little speech. He spoke in a
pleasant voice, with well-chosen words, and he seemed to
take a discreet pleasure in their careful arrangement. He
suggested one or two books which they might buy and advised
the purchase of a skeleton. He spoke of anatomy with enthu-
siasm: it was essential to the study of Surgery; a knowledge
of it added to the appreciation of art. Phihp pricked up his
ears. He heard later that Mr. Cameron lectured also to the
students at the Royal Academy. He had lived many years in
Japan, with a post at the University of Tokio, and he flattered
himself on his appreciation of the beautiful.

"You will have to learn many tedious things," he finished,
with an indulgent smile, "which you will forget the moment
you have passed your final examination, but in anatomy it
is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned
at all."

He took up the pelvis which vyas lying on the table and
began to describe it. He spoke well and clearly.

At the end of the lecture the boy who had spoken to Philip
in the pathological museum and sat next to him in the theatre
suggested that they should go to the dissecting-room. Philip
and he walked along the corridor again, and an attendant
told them where it was. As soon as they entered Philip under-
stood what the acrid smell was which he had noticed in the
passage. He lit a pipe. The attendant gave a short laugh.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 323

"You'll soon get used to the smell. I don't notice it myself."

He asked Philip's name and looked at a hst on the board.

"You've got a leg— number four."

Philip saw that another name was bracketed with his own.

"What's the meaning of that.?" he asked.

"We're very short of bodies just now. We've had to put
two on each part."

The dissecting-room was a large apartment painted like the
corridors, the upper part a rich salmon and the dado a dark
terra-cotta. At regular intervals down the long sides of the
room, at right angles with the wall, were iron slabs, grooved
like meat-dishes; and on each lay a body. Most of them were
men. They were very dark from the preservative in which
they had been kept, and the skin had almost the look of
leather. They were extremely emaciated. The attendant took
PhiUp up to one of the slabs. A youth was standing by it.

"Is your name Carey.?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Oh, then we've got this leg together. It's lucky it's a
man, isn't it.?"

"Why.?" asked Philip.

"They generally always like a male better," said the attend-
ant. "A female's liable to have a lot of fat about her."

Philip looked at the body. The arms and legs were so thin
that there was no shape in them, and the ribs stood out so
that the skin over them was tense. A man of about forty-five
with a thin, gray beard, and on his skull scanty, colourless
hair: the eyes were closed and the lower jaw sunken. Philip
could not feel that this had ever been a man, and yet in the
row of them there was something terrible and ghastly.

"I thought I'd start at two," said the young man who was
dissecting with Philip.

"All right, I'll be here then."

He had bought the day before the case of instruments
which was needful, and now he was given a locfker. He

324. OF HUMAN BONDAGE

looked at the boy who had accompanied him into the dissect-
ing-room and saw that he was white.

"Make you feel rotten?" Philip asked him.

"I've never seen anyone dead before."

They walked along the corridor till they came to the en-
trance of the school. Philip remembered Fanny Price. She
was the first dead person he had ever seen, and he remem-
bered how strangely it had affected him. There was an
immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they
did not seem to belong to the same species ; and it was strange
to think that but a little while before they had spoken and
moved and eaten and laughed. There was something horrible
about the dead, and you could imagine that they might cast
an evil influence on the living.

"What d'you say to having something to eat?" said his new
friend to Philip.

They went down into the basement, where there was a
dark room fitted up as a restaurant, and here the students
were able to get the same sort of fare as they might have at
an aerated bread shop. While they ate (Philip had a scone
and butter and a cup of chocolate), he discovered that his
companion was called Dunsford. He was a fresh<omplexioned
lad, with pleasant blue eyes and curly, dark hair, large-
limbed, slow of speech and movement. He had just come
from Clifton.

"Are you taking the Conjoint?" he asked Philip.

"Yes, Iwant to get qualified as soon as I can."

"I'm taking it too, but I shall take the F. R. C. S. afterwards.
I'm going in for surgery."

Most of the students took the curriculum of the Conjoint
Board of the College of Surgeons and the College of Phy-
sicians; but the more ambitious or the more industrious added
to this the longer studies which led to a degree from the
University of London. When Philip went to St. Luke's
changes had recently been made in the regulations, and the
course took five years instead of four as it had done for those

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 325

who registered before the autumn of 1892. Dunsford was well
"P i^J^is plans and told Philip the usual course of events.
The "first conjoint" examination consisted of Biology, Anat-
omy, and Chemistry; but it could be taken in sections, and
most fellows took their biology three months after entering
the school. This science had been recently added to the Hst
of subjects upon which the student was obliged to inform
himself, but the amount of knowledge required was very
small.

When Philip went back to the dissecting-room, he was a
few minutes late, since he had forgotten to buy the loose
sleeves which they wore to protect their shirts, and he found
a number of men already working. His partner had started
on the minute and was busy dissecting out cutaneous nerves.
Two others were engaged on the second leg, and more were
occupied with the arrns.
"You don't mind my having started?"
"That's all right, fire away," said Philip.
He took the book, open at a diagram of the dissected part,
and looked at what they had to find.
"You're rather a dab at this," said Phihp.
"Oh, I've done a good deal of dissecting before, animals,
you know, for the Pre Sci."

There was a certain amount of conversation over the dis-
secting-table, partly about the work, partly about the prospects
of the football season, the demonstrators, and the lectures.
Philip felt himself a great deal older than the others. They were
raw schoolboys. But age is a matter of knowledge rather than
of years; and Newson, the active young man who was dissect-
ing with him, was very much at home with his subject. He
was perhaps not sorry to show off, and he explained very
fully to PhiHp what he was about. Phihp, notwithstanding
his hidden stores of wisdom, listened meekly. Then Philip
took up the scalpel and the tweezers and began working
while the other looked on.
"Ripping to have him so thin," said Newson, wiping his

326 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

hands. "The blighter can't have had anything to eat for a
month."

"1 wonder what he died of," murmured PhiUp.

"Oh, I don't kno~w, any old thing, starvation chiefly, I sup-
pose. ... I say, look out, don't cut that artery."

"It's all very fine to say, don't cut that artery," remarked
one of the men working on the opposite leg. "Silly old fool's
got an artery, in the wrong place."

"Arteries always are in the wrong place," said Newson.
"The normal's the one thing you practically never get. That's
why it's called the normal."

"Don't say things like that," said Philip, "or I shall cut
myself."

"If you cut yourself," answered Newson, full of information,
"wash it at once with antiseptic. It's the one thing you've got
to be careful about. There was a chap here last year who gave
himself only a prick, and he didn't bother about it, and he
got septicaemia."

"Did he get all right.?"

"Oh, no, he died in a week. I went and had a look at him
in the P. M. room."

Philip's back ached by the time it was proper to have tea,
and his luncheon had been so light that he was quite ready
for it. His hands smelt of that peculiar odour which he had
first noticed that morning in the corridor. He thought his
muffin tasted of it too.

. "Oh, you'll get used to that," said Newson. "When you
don't have the good old dissecting-room stink about, you feel
quite lonely."

"I'm not going to let it spoil my appetite," said Philip, as
he followed up the muffin with a piece of cake.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 327

Chapter 33

Philip's ideas of the life of medical students, like those of
the public at large, were founded on the pictures which
Charles Dickens drew in the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury. He soon discovered that Bob Sawyer, if he ever existed,
was no longer at all like the medical student of the present.

It is a mixed lot which enters upon the medical profession,
and naturally there are some who are lazy and reckless. They
think it is an easy life, idle away a couple of years; and then,
because their funds come tp an end or because angry parents
refuse any longer to support them, drift away from the hos-
pital. Others find the examinations too hard for them; one
failure after another robs them of their nerve; and, panic-
stricken, they forget as soon as they come into the forbidding
buildings of the Conjoint Board the knowledge which before
they had so pat. They remain year after year, objects of good-
humoured scorn to younger men: some of them crawl
through the examination of the Apothecaries Hall; others
become non-qualified assistants, a precarious position in which
they are at the mercy of their employer; their lot is poverty,
drunkenness, and Heaven only knows their end. But for the
most part medical students are industrious young men of
the middle-class with a suiScient allowance to live in the
respectable fashion they have been used to; many are the sons
of doctors who have already something of the professional
manner; their career is mapped out: as soon as they are quali-
fied they propose to apply for a hospital appointment, after
holding which (and perhaps a trip to the Far East as '^'>^, '''■
doctor), they will join their father and spend thf session.

328 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

their days in a country practice. One or two are marked out
as exceptionally brilliant: they will take the various prizes
and scholarships which are open each year to the deserving,
get one appointment after another at the hospital, go on the
staff, take a consulting-room in Harley Street, and, special-
ising in one subject or another, become prosperous, eminent,
and titled.

The medical profession is the only one which a man may
enter at any age with some chance of making a living. Among
the men of Philip's year were three or four who were past
their first youth: one had been in the Navy, from which
according to report he had been dismissed for drunkenness;
he was a man of thirty, with a red face, a brusque manner,
and a loud voice. Another was a married man with two
children, who had lost money through a defaulting solicitor;
he had a bowed look as if the world were too much for him;
he went about his work silently, and it was plain that he
found it difficult at his age to commit facts to memory. His
mind worked slowly. His effort at application was painful
to see.

Philip made hiniself at home in his tiny rooms. He ar- ,
ranged his books and hung on the walls such pictures and
sketches as he possessed. Above him, on the drawing-room
floor, lived a fifth-year man called Griffiths; but PhiHp saw
little of him, partly because he was occupied chiefly in the
wards and partly because he had been to Oxford. Such of
the students as had been to a university kept a good deal
together: they used a variety of means natural to the young
in order to impress upon the less fortunate a proper sense of
their inferiority; the rest of the students found their Olympian
serenity rather hard to bear. Griffiths was a tall fellow, with
a quantity of curly red hair and blue eyes, a white skin and a
very red mouth; he was one of those fortunate people whom
everybody liked, for he had high spirits and a constant gaiety,
mmed a little on the piano and sang comic songs with
id evening after evening, while PhiUp was reading in

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 329

ms solitary room, he heard the shouts and the uproarious
laughter o£ Griffiths' friends above him. He thought of
those delightful evenings in Paris when they would sit in
the studio, Lawson and he, Flanagan and Glutton, and talk
of art and morals, the love-affairs of the present, and the fame
of the future. He felt sick at heart. He found that it was easy
to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.
The worst of it was that the work seemed to him rery tedi-
ous. He had got out of the habit of being asked questions by
demonstrators. His attention wandered at lectures. Anatomy
was a dreary science, a mere matter of learning by heart an
enormous number of facts; dissection bored him; he did not
see the use of dissecting out laboriously nerves and arteries
when with much less trouble you could see in the diagrams of a
book or in the specimens of the pathological museum exactly
where they were.

He made friends by chance, but not intimate friends, for
he seemed to have nothing in particular to say to his com-
panions. When he tried to interest himself in their concerns,
he felt that they found him patronising. He was not of those
who can talk of what moves them without caring whether
it bores or not the people they talk to. One man, hearing that
he had studied art in Paris, and fancying himself on his
taste, tried to discuss art with him; but Philip was impatient
of views which did not agree with his own; and, finding
quickly that the other's ideas were conventional, grew mono-
syllabic. PhiHp desired popularity but could bring himself to
make no advances to others. A fear of rebuff prevented him
from affability, and he concealed his shyness, which was still
intense, under a frigid taciturnity. He was going through the
same experience as he had done at school, but here the free-
dom of the medical students' hfe made it possible for him to
live a good deal by himself.

It was through no effort of his that he became friendly
with Durisford, the fresh-complexioned, heavy lad whose ac-
quaintance he had made at the beginning of the session.

330 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Dunsford attached himself to PhUip merely because he was
the first person he had known at St. Luke's. He had no friends
in London, and on Saturday nights he and Philip got into
the habit of going together to the pit of a music-hall or the
gallery of a theatre. He was stupid, but he was good-humoured
and never took offence; he always said the obvious thing, but
when Philip laughed at him merely smiled. He had a very
sweet smile. Though Philip made him his butt, he liked him;
he was amused by his candour and delighted with his agree-
able nature: Dunsford had the charm which himself was
acutely conscious of not possessing.

They often went to have tea at a shop in Parliament Street,
because Dunsford admired one of the young women who
waited. Philip did not find anything attractive in her. She
Was tall and thin, with narrow hips and the chest of a boy.

"No one wotild look at her in Paris," said Philip scornfully.

"She's got a ripping face," said Dunsford.

"What does the face matter.?"

She had the small regular features, the blue eyes, and the
broad low brow, which the Victorian painters. Lord Leighton,
Alma Tadema, and a hundred others, induced the world
they lived in to accept as a type of Greek beauty. She seemed
to have a great deal of hair: it was arranged with peculiar
elaboration and done over the forehead in what she called an
Alexandra fringe. She was very anzmic. Her thin lips were
pale, and her skin was delicate, of a faint green colour, with-
out a touch of red even in the cheeks. She had very good
teeth. She took great pains to prevent her work from spoiUng
her hands, and they were small, thin, and white. She went
about her duties with a bored look.

Dunsford, very shy with women, had never succeeded in
getting into conversation with her; and he urged Philip to
help him.

"All I want is a lead," he said, "and then I can manage
for myself."

Philip, to please him^ made one or two remarks, but she

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 331

answered with monosyllables. She had taken their measure.
They were boys, and she surmised they were students. She
had no use for them. Dunsford noticed that a man with sandy
hair and a bristly moustache, who looked Hke a German, was
favoured with her attention whenever he came into the shop;
and then it was only by caUing her two or three times that they
could induce her to take their order. She used the clients
whom she did not know with frigid insolence, and when she
was talking to a friend was perfectly indifferent to the calls
of the hurried. She had the art of treating women who desired
refreshment with just that degree of impertinence which irri-
tated them without affording them an opportunity of com-
plaining to the management. One day Dunsford told him her
name was Mildred. He had heard one of the other girls in
the shop address her.

"What an odious name," said Philip.

"Why?" asked Dunsford. "I like it."

"It's so pretentious."

It chanced that on this day the German was not there, and,
when she brought the tea, Phihp, smiling, remarked:

"Your friend's not here today."

"I don't know what you mean," she said coldly.

"I was referring to the nobleman with the sandy moustache-
Has he left you for another.?"

"Some people would do better to mind their own business,"
she retorted.

She left them, and, since for a minute or two there was no
one to attend to, sat down and looked at the evening paper
which a customer had left behind him.

"You are a fool to put her back up," said Dunsford.

"I'm really quite indifferent to the attitude of ^er vertebrae,"
replied Philip.

But he was piqued. It irritated him that when he tried to
be agreeable with a woman she should take offence. When
he asked for the bill, he hazarded a remark which he meant
to lead further.

332 .OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Are we no longer on speaking terms?" he smiled.

"I'm here to take orders and to wait on customers. I've got
nothing to say to them, and I don't want them to say anything
to tne."

She put down the slip of paper on which she had marked
the sum they had to pay, and walked back to the table at
fvhich she had been sitting. Philip flushed with anger.

"That's one in the eye for you, Carey," said Dunsford,
when they got outside.

"Ill-mannered slut," said Philip. "I shan't go there again."

His influence with Dunsford was strong enough to get him
to take their tea elsewhere, and Dunsford soon found another
young woman to flirt with. But the snub which the waitress
had inflicted on him rankled. If she had treated him with
civility he would have been perfectly indifferent to her; but
it was obvious that she disliked him rather than otherwise,
''and_his pricle was ^voun3ed'. He could n^tsuppress a desire
•to be even with her. He was impatient with "himself because
he had so petty a feeling, but three or four days' firmness,
during which he would not go to the shop, did not help him
to surmount it; and he came to the conclusion that it would
be least trouble to see her. Having done so he would certainly
cease to think of her. Pretexting an appointment one after-
noon, for he was not a little ashamed of his weakness, he left
Dunsford and went straight to the shop which he had vowed
never again to enter. He saw the waitress the moment he
came in and sat down at one of her tables. He expected her to
make some reference to the fact that he had not been there
for a week, but when she came up for his order she said
nothing. He had heard her say to other customers:

"You're quite a stranger."

She gave no sign that she had ever seen him before. In
order to see whether she had really forgotten him, when she
brought his tea, he asked :

"Have you seen my friend tonight.?"

"No, he's not been in here for some days."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 333

He wanted to use this as the beginning of a conversation,
but he was strangely nervous and could think of nothing to
say. She gave him no opportunity, but at once went away.
He had no chance of saying anything till he asked for his bill.

"Filthy weather, isn't it?" he said.

It was mortifying that he had been forced to prepare such
a phrase as that. He could not make out why she filled him
with such embarrassment.

"It don't make much difference to me what the weather is,
having to be in here all day."

There was an insolence in her tone that peculiarly irritated
him. A sarcasm rose to his Hps, but he forced himself to be
silent.

"I wished to God she'd say something really cheeky,'' he
raged to himself, "so that I could report her and get hei
sacked. It would serve her damned well right."

Chapter 56

He could not get her out of his mind. He laughed angrily at
his own foolishness: it was absurd to care what an anaemic
little waitress said to him; but._be was strangely humiliar^H.
Though no one knew of the humiliation but Dunsford, and he
had certainly forgotten, Philip felt that he could have no
peace till he had wiped it out. He thought over what he had
better do. He made up his mind that he would go to the
shop every day; it was obvious that he had made a disagree-
able impression on her, but he thought he had the wits to
eradicate it; he would take care not to say anything at which
the most susceptible person could be offended. All this he
did, but it had no effect. When he went in and said good-

334 ^ OFHUMANBONDAGE

evening she answered with the same words, but when once
he omitted to say it in order' to see whether she would say it
first, she said nothing at all. He murmured in his heart an
expression which though frequently applicable to members
of the female sex is not often used of them in polite society;
but with an unmoved face he ordered his tea. He made up
his mind not to speak a word, and left the shop without his
usual good-night. He promised himself that he would not go
any more, but the next day at tea-time he grew restless. He
tried to think of other things, but he had no command over
his thoughts. At last he said desperately:

"After all there's no reason why I shouldn't go if I want to."

The struggle with himself had taken a long time, and it
was getting on for seven when he entered the shop.

"I thought you weren't coming," the girl said to him, when
he sat down.

His heart leaped in his bosorh and he felt himself reddening.
*'I was detained. I couldn't come before."

"Cutting up people, I suppose?"

"Not so bad as that."

"You are a stoodent, aren't you.?"

"Yes."

But that seemed to satisfy her curiosity. She went away and,
since at that late hour there was nobody else at her tables, she
immersed herself in a novelette. This was before the time
of the sixpenny reprints. There was a regular supply of inex-
pensive fiction written to order by poor hacks for the con-
sumption of the illiterate. Philip was elated; she had addressed
him of her own accord; \^^ saw the time approaching when
4iis mmwould come and he would tell herexactly what' he
.^^thou^t^rhenlt would be a great comfort To~'express the
immensity ot his contempt. He looked at her. It was true that
her profile was beautiful; it was extraordinary how Enghsh
girls of that class had so often a perfection of outline which
took your breath away, but it was as cold as marble; and the
faint green of her delicate skin gave an impression of unhealth-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 335

iness. All the waitresses were dressed alike, in plain black
dresses, with a white apron, cuffs, and a small cap. On a
half sheet of paper that he had in his pocket PhiHp made a
sketch of her as she sat leaning over her book (she outlined
the words with her lips as she read), and left it on the table
when he went away. It was an inspiration, for next day,
when he came in, she smiled at him.

"I didn't know you could draw," she said.

"I was an art-student in Paris for two years."

"I showed that drawing you left be'ind you last night to
the manageress and she was struck with it. Was it meant to
be me?"
■ "It was," said Philip.

When she went for his tea, one of the other girls came up
to him.

"I saw that picture you done of Miss Rogers. It was the
very image of her," she said.

That was the first time he had heard her name, and when
he wanted his bill he called her by it.

"I see you know my name," she said, when she carrie.

"Your friend mentioned it when she said something to me
about that drawing."

"She wants you to do one of her. Don't you do it. If you
once begin you'll have to go on, and they'll all be wanting
you to do them." Then without a pause, with peculiar incon-
sequence, she said: "Where's that young fellow that used to
come with you.? Has he gone away.?"

"Fancy your remembering him," said Philip.

"He was a nice-looking young fellow."

Philip felt quite a peculiar sensation in his heart. He did
not know what it was. Dunsfonj had jolly rtirling hmL_g_
fresE~FomplexioVjnJJ;_beauSu^^
these~advaritageswith_eriv)\___

"OK7he's m love,"laid heTwith a little laugh.

Philip repeated every word of the conversation to himself
as he limped home. She was quite friendly with him now-

336 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

When opportunity arose he would offer to make a more
finished sketch of her, he was sure she would like that; her
face was interesting, the profile was lovely, and there was
something curiously fascinating about the chlorotic colour.
He tried to think what it was like; at first he thought of pea
soup; but, driving away that idea angrily, he thought of the
petals of a yellow rosebud when you tore it to pieces before it
had burst. He had no ill-feeling towards her now.

"She's not a bad sort," he murmured.

It was silly of him to take offence at what she had said; it
was doubtless his own fault; she had not meant to make her-
self disagreeable: he ought to be accustomed by now to mak-
ing at first sight a bad impression on people. He was flattered
at the. success of his drawing; she looked upon him with
more interest now that she was aware of this small talent.
He was restless next day. He thought of going to lunch at
the tea-shop, but he was certain there would be many people
there then, and Mildred would not be able to talk to him. He
had managed before this to get out of having tea with Duns-
ford, and, punctually at half past four (he had looked at his
watch a dozen times), he went into the shop.

Mildred had her back turned to him. She was sitting down,
talking to the German whom Philip had seen there every day
till a fortnight ago and since then had not seen at all. She was
laughing at what he said. Philip thought she had a common
laugh, and it made him shudder. He called her, but she took
no notice; he called her again; then, growing angry, for he
was impatient, he rapped the table loudly with his stick. She
approached sulkily.

"How d'you do.?" he said.

"You seem to be in a great hurry."

She looked down at him with the insolent manner which
he knew so well.

"I say, what's the matter with you.?" he asked.

"If you'll kindly give your order I'll get what you want. 1
can't stand talking all night."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 337

"Tea and toasted bun, please," Philip answered briefly.

He was furious with her. He had The Star with him and
read it elaborately when she brought the tea.

"If you'll give me my bill now I needn't trouble you again,"
he said icily.

She wrote out the sHp, placed it on the table, and went back
to the German. Soon she was talking to him with animation .
He was a man of middle height, with the round head of his
nation and a sallow face; his moustache was large and
bristling; he had on a tail-coat and gray trousers, and he wore
a massive gold watch-chain. Philip thought the other girls
looked from him to the pair at the table and exchanged sig-
nificant glances. He felt certain they were laughing at him,
and his blood boiled. He detested Mildred now with all his
heart. He knew that the best thing he could do was to cease
coming to the tea-shop, but he could not bear to think that
he had been worsted in the affair, and he devised a plan ta
show her that he despised her. Next day he sat down at
another table and ordered his tea from another waitress. Mil-
dred's friend was there again and she was talking to him.
She paid no attention to Philip, and so when he went out he
chose a moment when she had to cross his path: as he passed
he looked at her as though he had never seen her before. He
repeated this for three or four days. He expected that presently
she would take the opportunity to say something to him; he
thought she would ask why he never came to one of her
tables now, and he had prepared an answer charged with all
the loathing he felt for her. He knew it was absurd to trouble,
but he could not help himself. She had beaten him again. The
German suddenly disappeared, but PhiUp still sat at other
tables. She paid no attention to him. Suddenly he realised
that what he did was a matter of complete indifference to
her; he could go on in that way till doomsday, and it would
have no effect.

"I've not finished yet," he said to himself.
' The day after he sat down in his old seat, and when ."ih«

J38 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

came up said good-evening as though he had not ignored her
{or a week. His face was placid, but he could not prevent the
mad beating of his heart. At that time the musical comedy
had lately leaped into public favour, and he was sure that
Mildred would be delighted to go to one.

"I say," he said suddenly, "I wonder if you'd dine with me
one night and come to The Belle of New Yor\. I'll get a
couple of stalls."

He added the last sentence in order to tempt her. He knew
that when the girls went to the play it was either in the pit,
or, if some man topk them, seldom to more expensive seats
than the upper circle. Mildred's pale face showed no change
of expression.

"I don't mind," she said.

"When will you come?"

"I get off early on Thursdays."

They made arrangements. Mildred lived with an aunt at
Heme Hill. The play began at eight so they must dine at
seven. She proposed that he should meet her in the second-
class waiting-room at Victoria Station. She showed no pleasure,
but accepted the invitation as though she conferred a favour.
Philip was vagoiely irritated.

Chapter 37

Philip arrived at Victoria Station nearly half an hour before
the time which Mildred had appointed, and sat down in the
second-class waiting-room. He waited and she did not come.
He began to grow anxious, and walked into the station
watching the incoming suburban trains; the hour which she
had fixed passed, and still there was no sign of her. PhiUp

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 339

was impatient. He went into the other waiting-rooms and
looked at the people sitting in them. Suddenly his heart gave
a great thud.

"There you are. I thought you were never coming."

"I like that after keeping me waiting all this time. I had
half a mind to go back home again."

"But you said you'd come to the second-class waiting-room."

"I didn't say any such thing. It isn't exactly likely I'd sit
in the second-class room when I could sit in the first, is it?"

Though Philip was sure he had not made a mistake, he
said nothing, and they got into a cab.

"Where are we dining.?" she asked.

"I thought of the Adelphi Restaurant. Will that suit, you.?"

"I don't mind where we dine."

She spoke ungraciously. She was put out by being kept
waiting and answered Philip's attempt at conversation with
monosyllables. She wore a long cloak of some rough, dark
material and a crochet shawl over her head. They reached the
restaurant and sat down at a table. She looked round with
satisfaction. The red shades to the candles on the tables, the
gold of the decorations, the looking-glasses, lent the room a
sumptuous air.

"I've never been here before."

She gave Philip a smile. She had taken off her cloak; and
he saw that she wore a pale blue dress, cut square at the neck;
and her hair was more elaborately arranged than ever. He had
ordered champagne and when it came her eyes sparkled.

"You are going it," she said. '

"Because I've ordered fiz.?" he asked carelessly, as though
he never drank anything else.

"I was surprised when you asked me to do a theatre with
you."

Conversation did not go very easily, for she did not seem
to have much to say; and PhiUp was nervously conscious thi'^
he was not amusing her. She Hstened carelessly to his remarksj
with her eyes on other diners, and made no pretence that

340 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

she was interested in him. He made one or two Httle jokes,
but she took them quite seriously. The only sign of vivacity
he got was when he spoke of the other girls in the shop; she
could not bear the manageress and told him all her misdeeds
at length.

"I can't stick her at any price and all the air she gives hcr-
seJf. Sometimes I've got more than half a mind to tell her
something she doesn't think I know anything about."

"What is that?" asked Phihp.

"Well, I happen to know that she's not above going to
Eastbourne with a man for the week-end now and again.
One of the girls has a married sister who goes there with her
husband, and she's seen her. She was staying at the same
boarding-house, and she 'ad a wedding-ring on, and I know
for one she's not married."

Philip filled her glass, hoping that champagne would make
her more affable; he was anxious that his little jaunt should
be a success. He noticed that she held her knife as though
it were a p>en-holder, and when she drank protruded her little
finger. He started several topics of conversation, but he could
get little out of her, and he remembered with irritation that
he had seen her talking nineteen to the dozen and laughing
with the German. They finished dinner and went to the
play. Philip was a very cultured young man, and he looked
upon musical comedy with scorn. He thought the jokes vulgar
and the melodies obvious ; it seemed to him that they did these
things much better in France; but Mildred enjoyed herself
thoroughly; she laughed till her sides ached, looking at Philip
now and then when something tickled her to exchange a
glance of pleasure; and she applauded rapturously.

"This is the seventh time I've been," she said, after the first
art, "and I don't mind if I come seven times more."

She was much interested in the women who surrounded
them in the stalls. She pointed out to PhiUp those who were
painted and those who wore false hair.

"It is horrible, these West-end people," she said. "I don't

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 341

know how they can do it." She put her hand to her hair.
Mine's all my own, every bit of it."

She found no one to admire, and whenever she spoke of
anyone it was to say something disagreeable. It made Philip
uneasy. He supposed that next day she would tell the girls in
the shop that he had taken her out and that he had bored
her to death. He disliked her, and yet, he knew not why, be
wanted to be with her. On the way home he asked:

"I hope you've enjoyed yourself.?"

"Rather."

"Will you come out with me again one evening?"

"I don't mind."

He could never get beyond such expressions as that. Hei
indifference maddened him.

"That sounds as if you didn't much care if you came or not.''

"Oh, if you don't take me out some other fellow will. 1
need never want for men who'll take me to the theatre."

Philip was silent. They came to the station, and he went
to the booking-office.

"I've got my season," she said.

"I thought I'd take you home as it's rather late, if you
■don't mind."

"Oh, I don't mind if it gives you any pleastire."

He took a single first for her and a return for himself.

"Well, you're not mean, I will say that for you," she said,
when he opened the carriage-door.

Philip did not know vyhether he was pleased or sorry when
other people entered and it was impossible to speak. They
got out at Heme Hill, and he accompanied her to the corner
oi. the road in which she lived.

"I'll say good-night to you here," she said, holding out hei
hand. "You'd better not come up to the door. I know what
people are, and I don't want to have anybody talking."

She said good-night and walked quickly away. He could
see the white shawl in the darkness. He thought she might

542 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

curn round, but she did not. Philip saw which house she
went into, and in a moment he walked along to look at it.
It was a trim, common little house of yellow brick, exactly
like all the other little houses in the street. He stood outside
for a few miniJtes, and presently the window on the top
floor was darkened. Philip strolled slowly back to the station.
The evening had been unsatisfactory. He felt irritated, rest-
less, and miserable.

^ When he lay in bed he seemed still to see her sitting in the
corner of the railway carriage, with the white crochet shawl
over her head. He did not know how he was to get through
the hours that must pass before his eyes rested on her again.
He thought drowsily of her thin face, with its delicate features,
and the greenish pallor of her skin. He was not happy with
her, but he was unhappy away from her. He wanted to sit
by her side and look at her, he wanted to touch her, he
wanted . . . the thought came to him and he did not finish
it, suddenly he grew wide awake ... he wanted to kiss the
thin, pale mouth with its narrow lips. The truth came to
him at last. He was in love with her. It was incredible.

He had often thought of falling in love, and there was
one scene which he had pictured to himself over and over
again. He saw himself coming into a ball-room; his eyes fell
on a Uttle group of men and woman talking; and one of the
women turned round. Her eyes fell upon him, and he knew
that the gasp in his throat was in her throat too. He stood
quite still. She was tall and dark and beautiful with eyes
like the night; she was dressed in white, and in her black
hair shone diamonds; they stared at one another, forgetting
that people surrounded them. He went straight up to her, and
she moved a little towards him. Both felt that the formality
df introduction was out of place. He spoke to her.

"I've been looking for you all my life," he said.

"You've come at last," she murmured.

"Will you dance with me.?"

She surrendered herself to his outstretched hands and they

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 343

danced. (Philip always pretended that he was not lame.)
She danced divinely.

"I've never danced with anyone who danced like you,"
she said.

She tore up her programme, and they daifced together the
whole evening.

"I'm so thankful that I waited for you," he said to her.
"I knew that in the end I must meet you."

People in the ball-room stared. They did not care. They
did not wish to hide their passion. At last they went into
the garden. He flung a light cloak over her shoulders and put
her in a waiting cab. They caught the midnight train to
Paris; and they sped through the silent, star-lit night into
the unknown.

He thought of this old fancy of his, and it seemed impossible
that he should be in love with Mildred Rogers. Her name
was grotesque. He did not think her pretty; he hated the
thinness of her, only that evening he had noticed how the
bones of her chest stood out in evening-dress; he went over
her features one by one; he did not like her mouth, and the
unhealthiness of her colour vaguely repelled him. She was
common. Her phrases, so bald and few, constantly repeated,
showed the emptiness of her mind; he recalled her vulgar
little laugh at the jokes of the musical comedy; and he remem-
bered the little finger carefully extended when she held her
glass to her mouth; her manners, like her conversation, were
odiously genteel. He remembered her insolence; sometimes
he had felt inclined to box her ears; and suddenly, he knew
not why, perhaps it was the thought of hitting her or the
recollection of her tiny, beautiful ears, he was seized by an
uprush of emotion. He yearned for her. He thought of taking
her in his arms, the thin, fragile body, and kissing her pale
mouth : he wanted to pass his fingers down the slightly green-
ish cheeks. He wanted her.

He had thought of love as a rapture which seized one so
that all the world seemed spring-like, he had looked forward

344 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

to an ecstatic happiness; but this was not happiness; it was:
a hunger of the soul, it was a painful yearning, it was a bitter
anguish, he had never known before. He tried to think when,
it had first come to him. He did not know. He only remem-
bered that each time he had gone into the shop, after the
first two or three times, it had been with a little feeling in
the heart that was pain; and he remembered that when she:
spoke to him he felt curiously breathless. When she left him
it was wretchedness, and when she came to him again it was-
despair.

He stretched himself in his bed as a dog stretches himself.
He wondered how he was going to endure that ceaseless,
"aching of his soul.

Chapter 38

Philip woke early next morning, and his first thought was
of Mildred. It struck him that he might meet her at Victoria.
Station and walk with her to the shop. He shaved quickly,,
scrambled into his clothes, and took a bus to the station. He
was there by twenty to eight and watched the incoming
trains. Crowds poured out of them, clerks and shop-people
at that early hour, and thronged up the platform: they hur-
ried along, sometimes in pairs, here and there a group of
girls, but more often alone. They were white, most of them^
ugly in the morning, and they had an abstracted look; the
younger ones walked lightly, as though the cement of the
platform were pleasant to tread, but the others went as though,
impelled by a machine: their faces were set in an anxious
frown.
At last Philip saw Mildred, and he went up to her eagerly.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 345

"Good-morning," he said. "I thought I'd come and see how
you were after last night."

She wore an old brown ulster and a sailor hat. It was Very
■clear that she was not pleased to see him.

||Oh, I'm all right. I haven't got much time to waste."

I^D'you mind if I walk down Victoria Street with you.?"

"I'm none too early. I shall have to walk fast," she answered,
looking down at Philip's club-foot.

He turned scarlet.

"I beg your pardon. I won't detain you."

"You can please yourself."

She went 'on, and he with a sinking heart made his way
liome to breakfast. He hated her. He knew he was a fool to
bother about her; she was not the sort of woman who would
ever care two straws for him, and she must look upon his
deformity with distaste. He made up his mind that he would
not go in to tea that afternoon, but, hating himself, he went.
She nodded to him as he came in and smiled.

"I expect I was rather short with you this morning," she
said. "You see, I didn't expect you, and it came like a surprise."

"Oh, it doesn't matter at all."

He felt that a great weight had suddenly been lifted from
him. He was infinitely grateful for one word of kindness.

"Why don't you sit down?" he asked. "Nobody's wanting
you just now."

"I don't mind if I do."

He looked at her, but could think of nothing lo say; he
racked his brains anxiously, seeking for a remark which
should keep her by him; he wanted to tell her how much she
meant to him; but he did not know how to make love now
that he loved in earnest.

"Where's your friend with the fair moustache? I haven't
seen him lately."

"Oh, he's gone back to Birmingham. He's in business there-
He only comes up to London every now and again."

"Is he in love with you?"

?46 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"You'd better ask him," she said, with a laugh. "I don't
know what it's got to do with you if he is."

A bitter answer leaped to his tongue, but he was learning
self-restraint.

"I wonder why you say things like that," was all he per-
mitted himself to say.

She looked at him with those indifferent eyes of hers.

"It looks as if you didn't set much store on me," he added.

"Why should I.?"

"No reason at all."

He reached over for his paper.

•"You are quick-tempered," she said, when she saw the
gesture. "You do take offence easily."

He smiled and looked at her appealingly.

"Will you do something for me.?" he asked.

"That depends what it is."

"Let me walk back to the. station with you tonight."

"I don't mind."

He went out after tea and went back to his rooms, but at
eight o'clock, when the shop closed, he was waiting outside.

"You are a caution," she said, when she came out. "I don't
understand you.''

"I shouldn't have thought it was very difficult," he answered
bitterly.

"Did any of the girls see you waiting for me?"

"I don't know and I don't care."

"They all laugh at you, you know. They say you're spoony
on me."

"Much you care," he muttered.

"Now then, quarrelsome."

At the: station he took a ticket and said he was going to
accompany her home.

"You don't seem to have much to do with your time,"
she said.

"I suppose I can waste it in my own way."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 347

They seemed to be always on the verge of a quarrel. The
fact was that he hated himself for loving her. She seemed
to be constantly humiliating him, and for each snub that he
endured he owed her a grudge. But she was in a friendly
mood that evening, and talkative: she told him that her
parents were dead; she gave him to understand that she did
not have to earn her living, but worked for amusement. v

"My aunt doesn't like my going to business. I can have
the best of everything at home. I don't want you to think I
work because I need to."

Philip knew that she was not speaking the truth. The
gentiUty of her class made her use this pretence to avoid the
stigma attached to earning her living.

"My family's very well-connected," she said.

Philip smiled faintly, and she noticed it.

"What are you laughing at?" she said quickly. "Don't you
believe I'm telUng you the truth?"

"Of course I do," he answered.

She looked at him suspiciously, but in a moment could
not resist the temptation to impress him with the splendour
of her early days.

"My father always kept a dog-cart, and we had three
servants. We had a cook and a housemaid and an odd man.
We used to grow beautiful roses. People used to stop at the
gate and ask who the house belonged to, the roses were so
beautiful. Of course it isn't Very nice for me having to mix
with them girls in the shop, it's not the class of person I've
been used to, and sometimes I really think I'll give up business
on that account. It's not the work I mind, don't think that;
but it's the class of people I have to mix with."

They were sitting opposite one another in the train, and
Philip listening sympathetically to what she said, was quite
happy' He was amused at her naivete and slightly touched.
There was a very faint colour in her cheeks. He was thmking
that it would be delightful to kiss the tip of her chin.

348 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"The moment you come into the shop I saw you was a
^gentleman in every sense of the word. Was your father a
professional man?"

"He was a doctor."

"You can always tell a professional man. There's something
about them, I don't know what it is, but I know at once."

They walked along from the station together.

"I say, I want you to come and see another play with me,"
he said.

"I don't mind," she said.

"You might go so far as to say you'd like to."

"Why?"

"It doesn't matter. Let's fix a day. Would Saturday night
suit you?"

"Yes, that'll do."

They made further arrangements, and then found them-
selves at the corner of the road in which she lived. She gave
him her hand, and he held it.

"I say, I do so awfully want to call you Mildred."

"You may if you like, I don't care."

"And you'll call me Philip, won't you?"

"I will if I can think of it. It seems more natural to call
you Mr. Carey."

He drew her slightly towards him, but she leaned back.

"What are you doing?"

"Won't you kiss me good-night?" he whispered.

"Impudence!" she said.

She snatched away her hand and hurried towards her house.

Philip bought tickets for Saturday night. It was not one of
the days on which she got off early and therefore she would
have no time to go home and change; but she meant to bring
a frock up with her in the morning and hurry into her clothes
at the shop. If the manageress was in a good temper she would
let her go at seven. Philip had agreed to wait outside from a
quarter past seven onwards. He looked forward to the occa-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 349

sion with painful eagerness, for in the cab on the way from the
theatre to the station he thought she would let him kiss her.
The vehicle gave every facility for a man to put his arm round
a girl's waist, (an advantage which the hansom had over the
taxi of the present day,) and the delight of that was worth
the cost of the evening's entertainment.

But on Saturday afternoon when he went in to have tea, in
order to confirm the arrangements, he met the man with the
fair moustache coming out of the shop. He knew by now that
he was called Miller. He was a naturalized German, who had
anglicised his name, and he had lived many years in England.
Philip had heard him speak, and, though his English was
fluent and natural, it had not quite the intonation of the native.
Philip knew that he was flirting with Mildred, and he was
horribly jealous of him; but he took comfort in the coldness
of her temperament, which otherwise distressed him; and,
thinking her incapable of passion, he looked upon his rival as
no better off than himself. But his heart sank now, for his first
thought was that Miller's sudden appearance might interfere
with the jaunt which he had so looked forward to. He entered,
sick with apprehension. The waitress came up to him, took his
order for tea, and presently brought it.

"I'm awfully sorry," she said, with an expression on her face
of real distress. "I shan't be able to come tonight after all."

"Why.?" said Philip.

"Don't look so stern about it," she laughed. "It's not my
fault. My aunt was taken ill last night, and it's the girl's night
out so I must go and sit with her. She can't be left alone, can
she.?"

"It doesn't matter. I'll see you home instead."

"But you've got the tickets. It would be a pity to waste
them."

He took them out of his pocket and deliberately tore them

up.
"What are you doing that for?"
"You don't suppose I want to go and see a' rotten musical

350 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

comedy by myself, do you? I only took seats there for your
sake."

"You can't see me home if that's what you mean."

"You've made other arrangements."

"I don't know what you mean by that. You're just as selfish
as all the rest of them. You only think of yourself. It's not
my fault if my aunt's queer."

She quickly wrote out his bill and left him. Philip knew
very little about women, or he would have been aware that one
should accept their most transparent lies. He made up his
mind that he would watch the shop and see for certain
whether Mildred went out with the German. He had an
unhappy passion for certainty. At seven he stationed himself
on the jpposite pavement. He looked about for Miller, but did
not set him. In ten minutes she came out, she had on the
cloak End shawl which she had worn when he took her to the
Shaftesbury Theatre. It was obvious that she was not going
home. She saw him before he had time to move away, started
a little, and then came straight up to him.

"What are you doing here.?" she said.

"Taking the air," he answered.

"You're spying on me, you dirty little cad. I thought you
was a gentleman."

"Did you think a gentleman would be likely to take any
interest in you?" he murmured.

There was a devil within him which forced him to make
matters worse. He wanted to hurt her as much as she was
hurting him.

"I suppose I can change my mind if I hke. I'm not obliged
to come out with you. I tell you I'm going home, and I won't
be followed or spied upon."

"Have you seen Miller today?"

"That's no business of yours. In point of fact I haven't, so
you're wrong again."

"I saw him this afternoon. He'd just come out of the shop
when I went in."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 351

"Well, what if he did? I can go out with him if I want to,
can't I ? I don't know what you've got to say to it."

"He's keeping you waiting, isn't he?"

"Well, I'd rather wait for him than have you wait for me.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it. And now p'raps you'll go
off home and mind your own business in future."

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 le 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 Mil-
dred'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 sec me again."

"You seem to think that'll be an awrful thing for me. All '
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. ^C

352 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 59

Philip ^passed the evening wretchedly. He had told his land-
lady 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 Satur-
day 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 nec-
essary that- he should work hard. His examination in biology
was in little more than a fortiiight, 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 deliber-
ately of the matter which was in his mind all the time.

He reproached himself bitterly for his behaviour that eve-
ning. 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

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 353

love but he saw her exactly as she was. She was not aniusing
or clever, her mmd was common; she had a vulgar shrewd-
ness which revolted him, she had no gentleness nor softness,
As she would have put it herself, she was on the make. Whal
aroused her admiration was a clever trick played on an un-
suspecting person; to 'do' somebody always gave her satisfac-
tion. 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
anemic 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 inter-
ests; 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 over-
whelming 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

354- OF HUMAN BONDAGE

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 hfe 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 PhiUp 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 un^iUing 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 HUMAN BONDAGE 355

of Mildred. He congratulated himself on his force of char-
acter. 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. PhiHp 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 hot 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 estab-
lishment 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 lec-
tures 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;

356 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

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 Hst three times. Dunsford was with
him.

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

He had just inquired Philip's number. PhiUp 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 dis-
cuss 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 bril-
liant, 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 sym-
pathise 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

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 357

been some strange morbidity in his nature which made himw,
take a grim pleasure in self-torture. 7^

But later on, when he had endured the ordeal to which he
forced himself, going out into the night after the noisy con-
versation in the smoking-room, he was seized with a feeHng
of utter loneUness. 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:

"I must see her. I must see her."

The desire was so great that he could not give the time
necessary to walk, but jumped in a cab. He was too thrifty
to use one when it could possibly be avoided. He stood out-
side the shop for a minute or two. The thought came to him
that perhaps she had left, and in terror he walked in quickly.
He saw her at once. He sat down and she came up to him.

"A cup of tea and a mufSn, please," he ordered.

He could hardly speak. He was afraid for a moment that
he was going to cry.

"I almost thought you was dead," she said.

She was siniling. Smiling! She seemed to have forgotten
completely that last scene which Philip had repeated to him-
self a hundred times.

"I thought if you'd wanted to see me you'd write," he
answered.

358 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I've got too much to do to think about writing letters/'

It seemed impossible for her to say a gracious thing. Philip
cursed the fate which chained him to such a woman.' She went
away to fetch his tea. ^ '

"Would you like me to sit down for a minute or two?" shfe
sai-d, when she brought it.

"Yes."

"Where have you been all this time?"

"I've been in London."

"I thought you'd gone away for the holidays. Why haven't
you been in then?" '

Philip looked at her with haggard, passionate eyes.

"Don't you remember that I said I'd never see you again?"

"What are you doing now then?" '

She seemed anxious to make him drink up the cup of his
humiliation; but he knew her well enough to know that she
spoke at random; she hurt him frightfully, and never even
tried to. He did not answer.

"It was a nasty trick you played on me, spying on me like
that. I always thought you was a gentleman in every sense of .
the word."

"Don't be beastly to me, Mildred. I can't bear it."

"You are a funny feller. I can't make you out.''

"It's very simple. I'm such a blasted fool as to love you with
all my heart and soul, and I know that you don't care two-
pence for me."

"If you had been a gentleman I think you'd have come next
day and begged my pardon."

She had no mercy. He looked at her neck and thought how
he would like to jab it with the knife he had for his muffin.
He knew enough anatomy to make pretty certain of getting
the carotid artery. And at the same time he wanted to cover
her pale, thin face with kisses.

"If I could only make you understand how frightfully I'm in
love with you."

"You haven't begged my pardon yet."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 359

He grew very white. She felt that she had done nothing
wrong on that occasion. She wanted him now to humble
himself. He was very proud. For one instant he felt inclined
to tell her to go to hell, but he dared not. His passion made
him abject. He was wilUng to submit to anything rather than
not see her.

"I'm very sorry, Mildred. I beg your pardon."
, He had to force the words out. It was a horrible effort.

"Now you've said that I don't mind telling you that I wish
I had come out with you that evening. I thought Miller was a
gentleman, but I've discovered my mistake now. I soon sent
him about his business."

Philip gave a little gasp.

"Mildred, won't you come out with me tonight? Let's go
and dine somewhere."

"Oh, I can't. My aunt'U be expecting me home."

"I'll send her a wire. You can say you've been detained in
the shop; she won't know any better. Oh, do come, for God's
sake. I haven't seen you for so long, and I want to talk to
you.

She looked down at her clothes.

"Never mind about that. We'll go somewhere where it
doesn't matter how you're dressed. And we'll go to a music-
hall afterwards. Please say yes. It would give me so much
pleasure."

She hesitated a moment; he looked at her with pitifully

appealing eyes.

"Well, I don't mind if I do. I haven't been out anywhere
since I don't know how long."

It was with the greatest difficulty he could prevent himself
from seizing her hand there and then to cover it with kisses.

360 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 60

They dined in Soho. Philip was tremulous with joy. It was
not one of the more crowded of those cheap restaurants where
the respectable and needy dine in the belief that it is bohemian
and the assurance that it is economical. It was a humble
establishment, kept by a good man from Rouen and his wife,
that Philip had discovered by accident. He had been attracted
by the Gallic look of the window, in which was generally an
uncooked steak on one plate and on each side two dishes of
raw vegetables. There was one seedy French waiter, who was
attempting to learn English in a house where he never heard
anything but French; aild the customers were a few ladies
of easy virtue, a menage or two, who had their own napkins
reserved for them, and a few queer men who came in for
hurried, scanty meals.

Here Mildred and Philip were able to get a table to them-
selves. Philip sent the waiter for a bottle of Burgundy from
the neighbouring tavern, and they had a potage aux herbes, a
steak from the window aux potnmes, and an omelette au
ktrsch. There was really an air of romance in the meal and in
the place. Mildred, at first a Uttle reserved in her appreciation
—"I never quite trust these foreign places, you never know
what there is in these messed up dishes" — was insensibly
moved by it.

"I like this place, Philip," she said. "You feel you can put
your elbows on the table, don't you.?"

A tall fellow came in, with a mane of gray hair and a ragged
thin beard. He wore a dilapidated cloak and a wide-awake
hat. He nodded to Philip, who had met him there before.

"He looks like an anarchist," said Mildred.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 361

"He IS, one of the most dangerous in Europe. He's been in
every prison on the Continent and has assassinated more per-
sons than any gentleman unhung. He always goes about with
a bomb in his pocket, and of course it makes conversation a
little difficult because if you don't agree with him he lays it
on the table in a marked manner."

She looked at the man with horror and surprise, and then
glanced suspiciously at Philip. She saw that his eyes were
laughing. She frowned a little.

"You're getting at me."

He gave a little shout of joy. He was so happy. But Mildred
didn't like being laughed at.

"I don't see anything funny in telling lies."

"Don't be cross."

He took her hand, which was lying on the table, and pressed
it gently.

"You are lovely, and I could kiss the ground' you walk on,"
he said.

The greenish pallor of her skin intoxicated him, and her
thin white lips had an extraordinary fascination. Her anaemia
made her rather short of breath, and she held her mouth
slightly open. It seemed to add somehow to the attractiveness
of her face.

"You do like me a bit, don't you.?" he asked.

"Well, if I didn't I suppose I shouldn't be here, should I?
You're a gentleman iti every sense of the word, I will say that
for you."

They had finished their dinner and were drinking coffee.
Philip, throwing economy to the winds, smoked a three-penny
cigar.

"You. can't imagine what a pleasure it is to me just to sit
opposite and look at you. I've yearned for you. I was sick
for a sight of you."

Mildred smiled a little and faintly flushed. She was not
then suffering from the dyspepsia which generally attacked
her inimediately after a meal. She felt more kindly disposed

362 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

to Philip than ever before, and the unaccustomed tenderness
in her eyes filled him with joy. He kneW^ instinctively that it
was madness to give himself into her hands; his only chance
was to treat her casually and never allow her to see the un-
tamed passions that seethed in his breast; she would only take
advantage of his weakness; but he could not be prudent now:
he told her all the agohy he had endured during the separation
from her; he told her of his struggles with himself, how he had
tried to get over his passion, thought he had succeeded, and
how he found out that it was as strong as ever. He knew that
he had never really wanted to get over it. He loved her so
much that he did not mind suffering. He bared his heart to
her. He showed her proudly all his weakness.

Nothing would have pleased him more than to sit on in the
cosy, shabby restaurant, but he knew that Mildred wanted
entertainment. She was restless and, wherever she was, wanted
after a while to go somewhere else. He dared not bore her.

"I say, how about going to a music-hall?" he said.

He thought rapidly that if she cared for him at all she
would say she preferred to stay there.

"I was just thinking we ought to be going if we are going,"
she aiiswered.

"Come on then."

Philip waited impatiently for the end of the performance.
He had made up his mind exactly what to do, and when they
got into the cab he passed his arm, as though almost by acci-
dent, round her waist. But he drew it back quickly with a
little cry. He had pricked himself. She laughed.

"There, that comes of putting your arm where it's got no
business to be," she said. "I always know when men try and
put their arm round my waist. That pin always catches them."

"I'll be more careful."

He put his arm round again. She made no objection.

"I'm so comfortable," he sighed blissfully.

"So long as you're happy," she retorted.

They drove down St. James' Street into the Park, and Philip

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 363

quickly kissed her. He was strangely afraid of her, and it re-
quired all his courage. She turned her lips to him without
speaking. She neither -seemed to mind nor to like it.

"If you only knew how long I've wanted to do that," he
murmured.

He tried to kiss her again, but she turned her head away.

"Once is enough," she said.

On the chance of kissing her a second time he travelled
down to Heme Hill with her, and dt the end of the road ia
which she lived he asked her:

"Won't you give me another kiss?"

She looked at him indifferently and then glanced up the
road to see that no one was in sight.

"I don't mind."

He seized her in his arms and kissed her passionately, but
she pushed him away.

"Mind my hat, silly. You are clumsy," she said.

Chapter 61

He saw her then every day. He began going to lunch at the
shop, but. Mildred stopped him : she said it made the girls
talk; so he had to content himself with tea; but he always
waited about to walk with her to the station; and once or
twice a week they dined together. He gave her little presents,
a gold bangle, gloves, handkerchiefs, 'and the like. He was
spending more than he could afford, but he could not help
it: it was only when he gave her anything that she showed
any affection. She knew the price of everything, and her grati-
tude was in exact proportion with the value of his gift. He did
not care. He was too happy when she volunteered to kiss him

364 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

to mind by what means he got her demonstrativeness. He dis-
covered that she found Sundays at home tedious, so he went
down to Heme Hill in the morning, met her at the end of the
road, and Went to church with her.

"I always like to go to church once," she said. "It looks well,
doesn't it?"

Then she went back to dinner, he got a scrappy meal at a
hotel, and in the afternoon they took a walk in Brockwell
Park. They had riothing much to say to one another, and
Philip, desperately afraid she was bored, (she was very easily
bored,) racked his brain for topics of conversation. He realised
that these walks amused neither of them, but he could not
bear to leave her, and did all he could to lengthen them till
she became tired and out of temper. He knew that she did not
care for him, and he tried to force a love which his reason told
him was not in her nature: she was cold. He had no claim on
her, but he could not help being exacting. Now that they were
more intimate he found it less easy to control his temper; he
■was often irritable and could not help saying bitter things.
Often they quarrelled, and she would not speak to him for
a while; but- this always reduced him to subjection, and he
crawled before her. He was angry with himself for showing
so little dignity. He grew furiously jealous if he saw her speak-
ing to any other man in the shop, and when he was jealous
he seemed to be beside himself. He would deliberately insult
her, leave the shop and spend afterwards a sleepless night toss-
ing on his bed, by turns angry and remorseful. Next day he
would go to the shop and appeal for forgiveness.

"Don't be angry with me," he said. "I'm so awfully fond
of you' that I can't help myself."

"One of these days you'll go too far," she answered.

He was anxious to come to her home in order that the
greater intimacy should give him an advantage over the stray
acquaintances she made during her working-hours; but she
would not let him.

"My aunt would think it so funny," she said.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 365

He suspected .that her refusal was due only to a disinclina-
tion to let him see her aunt. Mildred had represented her as
the widow of a professional man, (that was her formula of
distinction,) and was uneasily conscious that the good woman
could hardly be called distinguished. PhiUp imagined that she
was in point of fact the widow of a small tradesman. He knew
that Mildred was a snob. But he found no means by which
he could indicate to her that he did not mind how common
the aunt was.

Their worst quarrel took place one evening at dinner when
she told him that a man had asked her to go to a play with
him. Philip turned pale, and his face grew hard and stern.

"You're not going?" he said.

"Why shouldn't I? He's a very nice gentlemanly fellow."

"I'll take you anywhere you like."

"But that isn't the same thing. I can't always go about with
you. Besides he's asked me to fix my own day, and I'll just
go one evening when I'm not going out with you. It won't
make any difference to you."

"If you had any sense of decency, if you had any gratitude,
you wouldn't dream of going."

"I don't know what you mean by gratitude. If you're
referring to the things you've given me you can have their
back. I don't want them."

Her voice had the shrewish tone it sometimes got.

"It's not very lively, always going about with you. It's always
do you love me, do you love me, till I just get about sick

of it."

(He knew it was madness to go on askmg her that, but he

could not help himself.
"Oh, I like you all right," she would answer.
"Is that all.? I love you with all my heart."
"I'm not that sort, I'm not one to say much."
"If you knew how happy just one word would make me! '
"Well, what I always say is, people must take me as the '

find me, and if they don't like it they can lump it."

366 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

But sometimes she expressed herself more plainly still, and,
when he asked the question, answered:

"Oh, don't go on at that again."

Then he became sulky and silent. He hated her.)

And now he said:

"Oh, well, if you feel like that about it I wonder you con-
descend to come out with me at all."

"It's iiot my seeking, you can be very sure of that, you just
force me to."

His pride was bitterly hurt, and he answered madly.

"You think I'm just good enough to stand you dinners and
theatres when there's no one else to do it, and when someone
else turns up I can go to hell. Thank you, I'm about sick of
being made a convenience."

"I'm not going to be talked to like that by anyone. I'll just
show you how much I want your dirty dinner."

She got up, put on her jacket, and walked quickly out of
the restaurant. Philip sat on. He determined he would not
move, but ten minutes afterwards he jumped in a cab and
followed her. He guessed that she would take a 'bus to Vic-
toria, so that they would arrive about the same time. He saw
her on the platform, escaped her notice, and went down to
Heme Hill in the same train. He did not want to speak to her
till she was on the way home and could not escape him.

As soon as she had turned out on the main street, brightly
lit and noisy with traffic, he caught her up.

"Mildred," he called.

She walked on and would neither look at him nor answer.
He repeated her name. Then she stopped and faced him.

"What d'you want ? I saw you hanging about Victoria. Why
don't you leave me alone?"

"I'm awfully sorry. Won't you make it up?"

"Nsl. I'm sick of your temper and your jealousy. I don't
care f6r you, I never have cared for you, and I never shall care
for you. I don't want to have anything more to do with you."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 367

She walked on quickly, and he had to hurry to keep up with
her.

"You never make allowances for me," he said. "It's all very
well to be jolly and amiable when you're indifferent to any-
one. It's very hard when you're as much in love as I am. Have
mercy on me. I don't mind that you don't care for me. After
all you can't help it. I only want you to let me love you."

She walked on, refusing to speak, and Philip saw with agony
that they had only a few hundred yards to go before they
reached her house. He abased himself. He poured out an in-
coherent story of love and penitence.

"If you'll only forgive me this time I promise you you'll never
have to complain of me in future. You can go out with who-
ever you choose. I'll be only too glad if you'll come with me
when you've got nothing better to do."

She stopped again, for they had reached the corner at which
he always left her.

"Now you can take yourself off. I won't have you coming up
to the door."

"I won't go till you say you'll forgive me."

"I'm sick and tired of the whole thing."

He hesitated a moment, for he had an instinct that he could
say something that would move her. It made him feel almost
sick to utter the words.

"It is cruel, I have so much to put up with. You don't
know what it is. to be a cripple. Of course you don't like me.
I can't expect you to."

"Philip, I didn't mean that," she answered quickly, with
a sudden break of pity in her voice. "You know it's not true."

He was beginning to act now, and his voice was husky
and low.

"Oh, I've felt it," he said.

She took his hand and looked at him, and her own eyes
were filled with tears.

"I promise you it never made any difference to me. I never
thought about it after the first day or two."

368 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

He kept a gloomy, tragic siknce. He wanted her to think he
was overcome with emotion.

"You know I Hke you awfully, Philip. Only you are so try-
ing sometimes. Let's make it up."

She put up her lips to his, and with a sigh of relief he kissed
her.

"Now are you happy again?" she asked.

"Madly."

She bade him good-night and hurried down the road. Next
day he took her in a Uttle watch with a brooch to pin on her
dress. She had been hankering for it.

But three or four ,days later, when she brought him his tea,
Mildred said to him:

"You remember what you promised the other night.? You
mean to keep that, don't you.''"

"Yes."

He knew exactly what she meant and was prepared for her
next words.

"Because I'm going out with that gentleman I told you
about tonight.''

"All right. I hope you'll enjoy yourself."

"You don't mind, do you.""'

He had himself now under excellent control.

"I don't like it," he smiled, "but I'm not going to make my-
self more disagreeable than I can help."

She was excited over the «uting and talked about it
willingly. Philip wondered whether she did so in order to pain
him or merely because she was callous. He was in the habit of
condoning her cruelty by the thought of her stupidity. She
had not the brains to see when she was wounding him.

"It's not much fun to be in love with a girl who has no
imagination and no sense of humour," he thought, as he
listened.

But the want of these things excused her. He felt that if he
had not realised this he could never forgive her for the pain
she caused him.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 369

"He's got seats for the Tivoli," she said. "He gave me my
choice and I chose that. And we're going to dine at the Cafe
Royal. He says it's the most expensive place in London."

"He's a gentleman in every sense of the word," thought-
Philip, but he clenched his teeth to prevent himself from utter-
ing a syllable.

Phihp went to the Tivoli and saw Mildred with her com-
panion, a smooth-faced young man with sleek hair and the
spruce look of a commercial traveller, sitting in the second
row of the stalls. Mildred wore a black picture hat with ostrich
feathers in it, which became her well. She was listening to her
host with that quiet smile which Philip knew; she had no
vivacity of expression, and it required broad farce to excite her
laughter; but Philip could see that she was interested and
amused. He thought to himself bitterly that her companion,
flashy and jovial, exactly suited her. Her sluggish tempera-
ment made her appreciate noisy people. Philip had a passion
for discussion, but no talent for small-talk. He admired the
easy drollery of which some of his friends were masters,
Lawson for instance, and his sense of inferiority made him
shy and awkward. The things which interested him bored
Mildred. She expected men to talk about football and racing,
and he knew nothing of either. He did not know the catch'
words which only need be said to excite a laugh.

Printed matter had always been a fetish to Philip, and now,
in order to make himself more interesting, he read industri-
ously The Sporting Times.

Chapter 62

Philip did not surrender himself willingly to the passion that
consurried him. He knew that all things human are transitory

370 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked
forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a
parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's
blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take
pleasure in nothing else. He had been used to delight in the
grace of St. James' Park, and often he sat and looked at the
branches of a tree silhouetted against the sky, it was like a
Japanese print; and he found a continual magic in the beauti-
ful Thames with its barges and its wharfs; the changing sky
of London had filled his soul with pleasant fancies. But now
beauty meant nothing to him. He was bored and restless when
he was not with Mildred. Sometimes he thought he would
console his sorrow by looking at pictures, but he walked
through the National Gallery like a sight-seer; and no picture
called up in him a thrill of emotion. He wondered if he could
ever care again for all the things he had loved. He had been
devoted to reading, but now books were meaningless; and he
spent his spare hours in the smoking-room of the hospital
club, turning over innumerable periodicals. This love was a
torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it
Sield him; he was a prisoner and he longed for' freedom.

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 feel-
ings, discussing with himself continually his condition, came
to the conclusion that he could only cure himself of his de-
grading 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

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 371

from him with instinctive distaste. She had no sens'uaUty;
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 free-
dom. 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 peo-
ple, 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 Lpndon; 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'wefe there; the Moulin Rouge and I don't know
what all. Phffip did not care that if she yielded to his desires
it would only be the unwilling price she paid for the gratifi-
cation of her wish. He did not care upon what terms he satis-
fied his passion. He had even had a mad, melodramatic idea SQ
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

372 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

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 sug-
gested. "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 corrie, 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

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 373

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 hap-
pened; 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 reason-
ableness of what he wished to do. He found himself over
throwing 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 yoa 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.?"

374 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"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 quali-
fied 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."
F 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

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 375

had been in the window hke 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."

376 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 63

Philip did not pass the examination in anatomy at the end
of March. He and Dunsford had worked at the subject
together on PhiUp'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 poyerty made picturesque by song and laughter,
of lawless love made romantic by beauty and youth. He

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 377

never attacked her prejudices directly, but sought to combat
them by the suggestioa 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 him-
self be angry, he never asked for anything, he never com-
plained, he never scolded. When she made engagements and
broke them, he met her next day vv^ith 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 senti-
ment which could be in the least degree troublesome. He
was heroic.

Though she never mentioned the change, for she did not
take any conscious notice of it, it affected her nevertheless:
she became more confidential with him; she took her little
grievances to him, and she always had some grievance against
the manageress of the shop, one of her fellow-waitresses, or
her aunt; she was talkative enough now, and though she
never said anything that was not trivial Philip was never
tired of listening to her.

"I like you when you don't want to make love to me,"
she told him once.

"That's flattering for me," he laughed. •

She did not realise how her words made his heart sink
nor what an effort it needed for him to answer so lightly.

"Oh, I don't mind your kissing me now and then. It
doesn't hurt me and it gives you pleasure."

Occasionally she went so far as to ask him to take her out
to dinner, and the offer, coming from her, filled him with
rapture.

"I wouldn't do it to anyone else," she said, by way ofc
apology. "But I know I can with you."

"You couldn't give me greater pleasure," he smiled.

She asked him to give her something to eat one evening
towards the end of April.

378 OF HUMANBONDAGE

"All right," he said. "Where would you like to go aftcr^
wards ? "

"Oh, don't let's go anywhere. Let's just sit and talk. You
don't mind, do you?"

"Rather not."

He thought she must be beginning to care for him. Three
months before the thought of an evening spent in conversa-
tion would have bored her to death. It was a fine day, and the
spring added to Philip's high spirits. He was content with
very little now.

"I say, won't it be ripping when the summer comes along,"
he said, as they drove along on the top of a 'bus to Soho —
she had herself suggested that they should not be so extrava-
gant as to go by cab. "We shall be able to spend every Sunday
on the River. We'll take our luncheon in a basket."

She smiled slightly, and he was encouraged to take her
hand. She did not withdraw it. •

"I really think you're beginning to like me a bit," he smiled.

"You are silly, you know I like you, or else I shouldn't be
here, should I.?"

They were old customers at the httle restaurant in Soho
by now, and the patronne gave them a smile as they came in.
The waiter was obsequious.

"Let me»order the dinner tonight," said Mildred.

Philip, thinking her more enchanting than ever, gave her
the menu, and she chose her favourite dishes. The range was
small, and they had eaten many times all that the restaurant
could provide. Philip was gay. He looked into her eyes, and
he dwelt on every perfection of her pale cheek. When they
had finished Mildred by way of exception took a cigarette.
She smoked very seldom.

"I don't like to see a lady smoking," she said.

She hesitated a moment and then spoke.

"Were you surprised, my asking you to take me out and
give me a bit of dinner tonight.?"

"I was delighted."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 379

'I've got something to say to you, Philip."

He looked at her quickly, his heart sank, but he had trained
himself well.

"Well, fire away," he said, smiling.

"You're not going to be silly about it, arc you.? The fcict
is I'm going to get married."

"Are you?" said Philip.

He could think of nothing else to say. He had considered
the possibility often and had imagined to himself what he
would do and say. He had suffered agonies when he thought
of the despair he would suffer, he had thought of suicide,
of the mad passion of anger that would seize him; but per^
haps he had too completely anticipated the emotion he would
experience, so that now he felt merely exhausted. He felt as
one does in a serious illness when the vitality is so low that
one is indifferent to the issue and wants only to be left alone.

"You see, I'm getting on," she said. "I'm twenty-four and
it's time I settled down."

He was silent. He looked at the patronne sitting behind the
counter, and his eye dwelt on a red feather one of the diners
wore in her hat. Mildred was nettled.

"You might congratulate me," she said.

"I might, mightn't I.? I can hardly beHeve it's true. I've
dreamt it so often. It rather tickles me that I should have been
so jolly glad that you asked me to take you out to dinntr.
Whom are you going to marry.?"

"Miller," she answered, with a slight blush.

"Miller.?" cried Philip, astounded. "But you've not seen
him for months."

"He came in to lunch one day last week and asked me
then. He's earning very good money. He makes seven pounds
a week now and he's got prospects."

Philip was silent again. He remembered that she had always
liked Miller; he amused her; there was in his foreign birth
an exotic charm which she felt unconscieusly.

"I suppose it was inevitable," he said at last. "You were

380 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

bound to accept the highest bidder. When are you going to
marry?"

"On Saturday next. I have given notice."

Phihp felt a sudden pang.

"As soon as that?"

"We're going to be married at a registry office. Erail
prefers it."

Phihp felt dreadfully tired. He wanted to get aw^ay from
her. He thought he would go straight to bed. He called
for the bill.

"I'll put you in a cab and send you down to Victoria. I
daresay you won't have to wait long for a train."

"Won't you come with me?"

"I think I'd rather not if you don't mind."

"It's just as you please," she answered haughtily. "I suppose
[ shall see you at tea-time tomorrow?"

"No, I think we'd better make a full stop now. I don't
see why I should go on making myself unhappy. I've paid
the cab."

He nodded to her and forced a sniile on his lips, then
jumped on a 'bus and made his way home. He smoked a
pipe before he went to bed, but he could hardly keep his
eyes open. He suffered no pain. He fell into a heavy sleep
almost as soon as his head touched the pillow.

Chapter 64

But about three in the morning Philip awoke and could not
sleep again. He began to think of Mildred. He tried not to,
but could not help himself. He repeated to himself the same
thing time after tixne till his brain reeled. It was inevitable
ihat she should marry: life was hard for a girl who had to

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 381.

earn her own living; and if she found someone who could
give her a comfortable home she should not be blamed if she
accepted. Philip acknowledged that from her point of view
it would have been madness to marry him: only love could
have made such poverty bearable, and she did not love him.
It was no fault of hers; it was a fact that must be accepted
like any other. Philip tried to reason with himself. He told
himself that deep down in his heart was mortified pride; his
passion had begun in wounded vanity, and it was this at
bottom which caused now great part of his wretchedness.
He despised himself as much as he despised her. Then he
made plans for the future, the same plans over and over again,
interrupted by recollections of kisses on her soft pale cheek
and by the sound of her voice with its trailing accent; he had
a great deal of work to do, since in the summer he was taking
Chemistry as well as the two examinations he had failed in.
He had separated himself from his friends at the hospital,
but now he wanted companionship. There was one happy
occurrence: Hay ward a fortnight before had written to say
that he was passing through London and had asked him to
dinner; but Philip, unwilling to be bothered, had refused.
He was coming back for the season, and Philip made up his
mind to write to him.

He was thankful when eight o'clock struck and he could
get up. He was pale and weary. But when he had bathed,
dressed, and had breakfast, he felt himself joined up again
with the world at large; and his pain was a little easier to
bear. He did not feel like going to lectures that morning,
but went instead to the Army and Navy Stores to buy Mildred
a wedding-present. After much wavering he settled on a
dressing-bag. It cost twenty pounds, which was much more
than he could aflord, but it was showy and vulgar: he knew
she would be aware exactly how much it cost; he got a melan-
choly satisfaction in choosing a gift which would give her
pleasure and at the same time indicate for himself the con-
tempt he had for her.

382 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Philip had looked forward with apprehension to the day on
which Mildred was to be married; he was expecting an
intolerable anguish; and it was with relief that he got a lettei
from Hayward on Saturday morning to say that he was
coming up early on that very day and would fetch Philip to
help him to find rooms. Philip, anxious to be distracted,
looked up a time-table and discovered the only train Hay-
ward was likely to come by; he went to meet him, and the
reunion of the friends was enthusiastic. They left the luggage
at the station, and set off gaily. Hayward characteristically
proposed that first of all they should go for an hour to the
National Gallery; he had not seen pictures for some time,
^nd he stated that it needed a glimpse to set him in tune with
life. Philip for months had had no one with whom he could
talk of art and books. Since the Paris days Hayward had
immersed himself in the modern French versifiers, and, such
a plethora of poets is there in France, he had several new
geniuses to tell Philip about. They walked through the gallery
pointing out to one another their favourite pictures; one sub-
ject led to another; they talked excitedly. The sun was shining
and the air was warm.

"Let's go and sit in the Park," said Hayward. "We'll look
for rooms after luncheon."

The spring was pleasant there. It was a day upon which one
felt it good merely to live. The young green of the trees was
exquisite against the sky; and the sky, pale and blue, was
dappled with little white clouds. At the end of the ornamental
water was the gray mass of the Horse Guards. The ordered
elegance of the scene had the charm of an eighteenth-century
picture. It reminded you not of Watteau, whose landscapes
are so idyllic that they recall only the woodland glens seen in
dreams, but of the more prosaic Jean-Baptiste Pater. Philip's
heart was filled with lightness. He realised, what he had
only read before, that art (for there was art in the manner
in which he looked upon nature) might liberate the soul
from pain.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 383

They went to an Italian restaurant for luncheon and
ordered themselves a fiaschetto of Chianti. Lingering over
the meal they talked on. They reminded one another of the
people they had knowrn at Heidelberg, they spoke of Philip's
friends in Paris, they talked of books, pictures, morals, life;,
and suddenly Philip heard a clock strike three. He remem-
bered that by this time Mildred was married. He felt a sort
of stitch in his heart, and for a minute or two he could not
hear what Hayward was saying. But he filled his glass with
Chianti. He was unaccustomed to alcohol and it had gone
to his head. For the time at all events he was free from care.
His quick brain had lain idle for so many months that he
was intoxicated now with conversation. He was thankful to
have someone to talk to who would interest himself in the
things that interested him.

"I say don't let's waste this beautiful day in looking for
rooms. I'll put you up to-night. You can look for rooms tomor-
row or Monday."

"All right. What shall we do.?" answered Hayward.

"Let's get on a penny steamboat and go down to Green
wich."

The idea appealed to Hayward, and they jumped into i
cab which took them to Westminster Bridge. They got oi
the steamboat just as she was starting. Presently Philip, »
smile on his lips, spoke.

"I remember when first I went to Paris, Glutton, I think it
was, gave a long discourse on the subject that beauty is put
into things by painters and poets. They create beauty. In
themselves there is nothing to choose between the Campanile
of Giotto and a factory chimney. And then beautiful things
grow rich with the emotion that they have aroused in suc-
ceeding generations. That is why old things are more beautiful
than modern. The Ode on a Grecian Urn is more lovely now
than when it was written, because for a hundred years lovers
have read it and the sick at heart taken comfort m its Imes.'

Philip lefe Hayward to infer what in the passing scenf

,384 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

liad' suggested these words to him, and it was a delight to
know that he could safely leave the inference. It was in sudden
jeaction from the life he had been leading for so long that
he was now deeply affected. The delicate iridescence of the
London air gave the softness of a pastel to the gray stone of
the buildings; and in the wharves and storehouses there was
the severity of grace of a Japanese print. They went further
idown; and the splendid channel, a symbol of the great empire,
broadened, and it was crowded with traffic; Philip thought of
the painters and the poets who had made all these things so
beautiful, and his heart was filled with gratitude. They came
to the Pool of London, and who can describe its majesty.?
The imagination thrills, - and Heaven knows what figures
people still its broad stream. Doctor Johnson with Boswell
ty his side, an old Pepys going on board a man-o'-war: the
pageant of English history, and romance, and high adventure.
Philip turned to Hayward with shining eyes.

"Dear Charles Dickens," he murmured, smiling a little at
his own emotion.

"Aren't you rather sorry you chucked painting?" asked
Hayward.

"No."

"I suppose you like doctoring?"

"No, I hate it, but there was nothing else to do. The drudg-
ery of the first two years is awful, and unfortunately I haven't
got the scientific temperament."

"Well, you can't go on changing professions."

"Oh, no. I'm going to stick to this. I think I shall like it
better when I get into the wards. I have an idea that I'm more
interested in people than in anything else in the world. And
as far as I can see, it's the only profession in which you have
your freedom. You carry your knowledge in your head; with
a box of instruments and a few drugs you can make your
Kving anywhere."

"Aren't you going to take a practice then?"

"Not for a good long time at any rate," Philip answered.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 385

"As soon as I've got through my hospital appointments T.
shall get a ship; I want to go to the East— the Malay Archi-
pelago, Siam, China, and all that sort of thing— and then I
shall take odd jobs. Something always comes along, cholera
duty in India and things like that. I want to go from place
to place. I want to see the world. The only way a poor man
can do that is by going in for the medical."

They came to Greenwich then. The noble building of
Inigb Jones faced the river grandly.

"I say, look, that must be the place where Poor Jack dived
into the mud for pennies," said Philip.

They wandered in the Park. Ragged children were playing
in it, and it was noisy with their cries: here and there old
seamen were basking in the sun. There was an air of a hun-
dred years ago.

"It seems a pity you wasted two years in Paris," said
Hay ward.

"Waste.? Look at the movement of that child, look at the
pattern which the sun makes on the ground, shining through
the trees, look at that sky — why, I should never have seen
that sky if I hadn't been to Paris."

Hayward thought that Philip choked a sob, and he looked -^
at him with astonishment. /

"What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing. I'm sorry to be so damned emotional, but for
six months I've been starved for beauty."

"You used to be so matter of fact. It's very interesting to
hear you say that."

"Damn it all, I don't want to be interesting," laughed
Philip. "Let's go and have a stodgy tea."

J86 ~ OP HUMAN B O N D A G E^

Chapter 63

Hayward's visit did Philip a great deal of good. Each day
his thoughts dwelt less on Mildred. He looked back upon
the past with disgust. He could not understand how he had
submitted to the dishonour of such a love; and when he
thought of Mildred it was with angry hatred, because she
had submitted him to so much humiliation. His imagination
presented her to him now with her defects of person and
manner exaggerated, so that he shuddered at the thought of
having been connected with her.

"It just shows how damned weak I am," he said to himself.
The adventure was like a blunder that one had committed
at a party so horrible that one felt nothing could be done to
excuse it: the only remedy was to forget. His horror at the
degradation he had suffered helped him. He was like a snake
casting its skin and he looked upon the old covering with
nausea. He exulted in the possession of himself once more;
he realised how much of the delight of the world he had
lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called
love; he had had enough of it; he did not want to be in love
any more if love was that. Philip told Hayward something
of what he had gone through.

"Wasn't it Sophocles," he asked, "who prayed for the time
when he would be delivered from the wild beast of passion
that devoured his heart-strings?"

Philip seemed really to be born again. He breathed the
circumambient air as though he had never breathed it before,
and he took a child's pleasure in all the facts of the world.
He called his period of insanity six months' hard labour.

Hayward had only been settled in London a few days

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 387

when Philip received from Blackstable, where it had been
sent, a card for a private view^ at some picture gallery. He
took Hayvi^ard, and, on looking at the catalogue, saw that
Lawson had a picture in it.

"I suppose he sent the card," said Philip. "Let's go and
find him, he's sure to be in front of his picture."

This, a profile of Ruth Chalice, was tucked away in p
corner, and Lawson was not far from it. He looked a little
lost, in his large soft hat and loose, pale clothes, amongst
the fashionable throng that had gathered for the private view.
He greeted Philip with enthusiasm, and with his usual volu-
biUty told him that he had come to live in London, Ruth
Chalice was a hussy, he had taken a studio, Paris was played
out, he had a commission for a portrait, and they'd better
dine together and have a good old talk. Philip reminded him
of his acquaintance with Hayward, and was entertained to
see that Lawson was slightly awed by Hayward's elegant
clothes and grand manner. They sat upon him better than
they had done in the shabby little studio which Lawson and
Philip had shared.

At dinner Lawson went on with his news. Flanagan had
gone back to America. Clutton had disappeared. He had
come to the conclusion that a man had no chance of doing
anything so long as he was in contact with art and artists:
the only thing was to get right away. To make the step easier
he had quarrelled with all his friends in Paris. He developed
a talent for telling them home truths, which made them bear
with fortitude his declaration that he had done with that
city and was settling in Gerona, a little town in the north of
Spain which had attracted him when he saw it from the
train on his way to Barcelona. He was living there now alone.
"I wonder if he'll ever do any good," said Philip.
He was interested in the human side of that struggle to
express something which was so obscure in the man's mind
that he was become morbid and querulous. Philip felt vaguely
that he was himself in the same case, but with him it wa*

388 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

the conduct of his hfe as a whole that perplexed him. That
was his means of self-expression, and what he must do with it
was not clear. But he had no time to continue with this train
of thought, for Lawson poured out a frank recital of his
affair with Ruth Chalice. She had left him for a young
student who had just come from England, and was behaving
in a scandalous fashion. Lawson really thought someone ought
to step in and save the young man. She would ruin him.
Philip gathered that Lawson's chief grievance was that the
rupture had come in the middle of a portrait he was painting.

"Women have no real feeling for art," he said. "They only
pretend they have." But he finished philosophically enough:
"However, I got four portraits out of her, and I'm not sure
if the last I was working on would ever have been a success."

Philip envied the easy way in which the painter managed
his love-affairs. He had passed eighteen months pleasantly
enough, had got an excellent model for nothing, and had
parted from her at the end with no great pang.

"And what about Cronshaw?" asked Philip.

"Oh, he's done for," answered Lawson, with the cheerful
callousness of his youth. "He'll be dead in six months. He
got pneumonia last winter. He was in the English hospital
for seven weeks, and when he came out they told him his
only chance was to give up liquor.''

"Poor devil," smiled the abstemious Philip.

"He kept off for a bit. He used to go to the Lilas all the
same, he couldn't keep away from that, but he used to drink
hot milk, avec de la fieur d'oranger, and he was damned dull."

"I take it you did not conceal the fact from him."

"Oh, he knew it himself. A little while ago he started on
whiskey again. He said he was too old to turn over any new
leaves. He would rather be happy for six months and die
at the end of it dian linger on for five years. And then I think
he's been awfully hard up lately. You see, he didn't earn
anything while he was ill, and the slut )ie hves with has been
giving him a rotten time."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 389

"I remember, the first time I saw him I admired him
awfully," said Philip. "I thought he was wonderful. It is
sickening that vulgar, middle-class virtue should pay."

"Of course he was a rotter. He was bound to end in the
gutter sooner or later," said Lawson.

Philip was hurt because Lawson would not see the pity
of it. Of course it was cause and effect, but in the necessity
with which one follows the other lay all tragedy of life.

"Oh, I'd forgotten," said Lawson. "Just after you left he
sent round a present for you. I thought you'd be coming back
and I didn't bother about it, and then I didn't think it worth
sending on; but it'll come over to London with the rest
of my things, and you can come to my studio one day and
fetch it away if you want it."

"You haven't told me what it is yet."

"Oh, it'sonly_a_ta.ggedJittle_bit of carpet. I shouldn't think
it's wSfflTanything. I aske^~Him one day what the devil he'd
sent the filthy thing for. He told me he'd seen it in a shop in
the Rue de Rennes and bought it for fifteen francs. It appears
to be a Persian rug. He said you'd asked him the meaning of
life and that was the answer. But he was very drunk."

Phihp laughed.

"Oh yes, I know. I'll take it. It was a favourite wheeze of
his. He said I must find out for myself, or else the answer
meant nothing."

Chapter 66

Philip worked well and easily; he had a good deal to do,
since he was taking, in July the three parts of the First Con-
joint examination, two of which he had failed in before;
but he found life pleasant. He made a new friend. Lawson,

S9C OF HUMAN BONDAGE

on the look out for models, had discovered a girl who was
understudying at one of the theatres, and in order to induce
her to sit to him arranged a little luncheon-party one Sunday.
She brought a chaperon with her; and to her Philip, asked to
make a fourth, was instructed to confine his attentions. He
found this easy, since she turned out to be an agreeable
chatterbox with an amusing tongue. She asked Philip to go
and see her; she had rooms in Vincent Square, and was always
in to tea at five o'clock; he went, was delighted with his wel-
come, and went again. Mrs. Nesbit was not more than twenty-
five, very small, with a pleasant, ugly face; she had very bright
eyes, high cheek bones, and a large mouth: the excessive con-
trasts of her colouring reminded one of a portrait by one of
the modern French painters; her skin was very white, her
cheeks were very red, her thick eyebrows, her hair, were very
black. The effect was odd, a little unnatural, but far from
unpleasing. She was separated from her husband and earned
her living and her child's by writing penny novelettes. There
were one or two pubhshers who made a specialty of that sort
of thing, and she had as much work as she could do. It was
ill-paid, she received fifteen pounds for a story of thirty
thousand words; but she wSs satisfied.

"After all, it only costs the reader twopence," she said, "and
they like the, same thing over and over again. I just change
the names and that's all. When I'm bored I think of the
washing and the rent and clothes for baby, and I go on again."

Besides, she walked on at various theatres where they
wanted supers and earned by this when in work from sixteen
shillings to a guinea a week. At the end of her day she was
so tired that she slept hke a top. She made the best of her
difficult lot. Her keen sense of humour enabled her to get
amusement out of every vexatious circumstance. Sometimes
things went wrong, and she found herself with no money at
all; then her trifling possessions found their way to a pawn-
shop in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, and she ate bread and
butter till things grew brighter. She never lost her cheerfulness.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 391

Philip was interested in 'her shiftless life, and she made him
laugh with the fantastic narration of her struggles. He asked
her why she did not try her hand at literary work of a better
sort, but she knew that she had no talent, and the abominable
stuff she turned out by the thousand words was not only
tolerably paid, but was the best she could do. She had nothing
to look forward to but a continuation of the life she led. She
seemed to have no relations, and her friends were as poor as
herself.

"I don't think of the future," she said. "As long as I have
enough liioney for three weeks' rent and a pound or two
over for food I never bother. Life wouldn't be worth living
if I worried over the future as well as the present. When
things are at their worst I find something always happens."

Soon Philip grew in the habit of going in to tea with her
every day, and so that his visits might not embarrass her he
took in a cake or a pound of butter or some tea. They started
to call one another by their Christian names. Feminine sym-
pathy was new to him, and he delighted in someone who
gave a willing ear to all hi? troubles. The hours went quickly.
He did not hide his admiration for her. She was a delightful
companion. He could not help comparing her with Mildred;
and he contrasted vi^ith the one's obstinate stupidity, which
refused interest to everything she did not know, the other's
quick appreciation and jcady intelligence. His heart sank
when he thought that he might have been tied for life to such
a woman as Mildred. One evening he told Norah the whole
story of his love. It was not one to giVe him much reason for
self-esteem, and it was very pleasant to receive such charming
sympathy.

"I think you're well out of it," she said, when he had
finished:

She had a funny, way at times of holding her head on one
side like an Aberdeen puppy. She was sitting iii an upright
chair, sewing, for she had no time to do nothing, and Philip
had made himself comfortable at her feet.

392 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I can't tell you how heartily thankful I am it's all over,"
he sighed.

"Poor thing, you must have had a rotten time," she mur-
mured, and by way of showing her sympathy put her hand
on his shoulder.

He took it and kissed it, but she withdrew it quickly.

"Why did you do that?" she asked, with a b-lush.

"Have you any objection?"

She looked at him for a moment with twinkling eyes, and
she smiled.

"No," she said.

He got up on his knees and faced her. She looked into his
eyes steadily, and her large mouth trembled with a smile.

"Well?" she said.

"You know, you are a ripper. I'm so grateful to you for
being nice to me. I like you so much."

"Don't be idiotic," she said.

Philip took hold of her elbows and drew her towards him.
She made no resistance, but bent forward a little, and he
kissed her red lips.

"Why did you do that?" she asked again.

''Because it's comfortable."

She did not answer, but a tender look came into her eyes,
and she passed her hand softly over his hair.

"You know, it's awfully silly of you to behave like this. We
were such good friends. It would be so jolly to leave it at that."

"If you really want to appeal to my better nature," replied
Philip, "you'll do well not to stroke my cheek while you're
doing it."

She gave a little chuckle, but she did not stop.

"It's very wrong of me, isn't it?" she said.

Philip, surprised and a little amused, looked into her eyes,
and as he looked he saw them soften and grow liquid, and
there was an expression in them that enchanted him. His
heart was suddenly stirred, and tears came to his eyes.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 393

Norah, you're not fond of me, are you?" he asked, in-
credulously.

"You clever boy, you ask such stupid questions."

"Oh, my dear, it never struck me that you could be."

He flung his arms round her and kissed her, while she,
laughing, blushing, and crying, surrendered herself willingly
to his embrace.

Presently he released her and sitting back on his heels
looked at her curiously.

"Well, I'm blowed!" he said.

"Why.?"

"I'm so surprised."

"And pleased.?"

"Delighted," he cried vyith all his heart, "and so proud and
so happy and so grateful."

He took her hands and covered them with kisses. This
was the beginning for Philip of a happiness which seemed
both solid and durable. They became lovers but remained
friends. There was in Norah a maternal instinct which re^y,
ceived satisfaction in her love for Philip ; she wanted someone^
to pet, and scold, and make a fuss of; she had a domestic
temperament and found pleasure in looking after his health
and his linen. She pitied his deformity, over which he was so
sensitive, and her pity expressed itself instinctively in tender-
ness. She was young, strong, and healthy, and it seemed
quite natural to her to give her love. She had high spirits and
a merry soul. She liked Philip because he laughed with her
at all the amusing things in life that caught her fancy, and
above all she liked him because he was he.

When she told him this he answered gaily :

"Nonsense. You like mc because I'm a silent person and
never want to get a word in." ,

Philip did not love her at all. He was extremely fond of her,
glad to be with her, amused and interested by her conversa-j
tion. She restored his behef in himself and put healing oint-
ments, as it were, on all the bruises of his soul. He was

394 OF HUMAN BONDAGE'

immensely flattered that she cared for him. He admired her
courage, her optimism, her impudent defiance of fate; she
had a little philosophy of her own, ingenuous and practical.

"You know, I don't believe in churches and parsons and
all that," she said, "but I beheve in God, and I don't believe
He minds much about what you do as long as you keep your
end up and help a lame dog over a stile when you can. And
I think people on the whole are very nice, and I'm sorry for
those who aren't."

"And what about afterwards?" asked Philip.

"Oh, well, I don't know for certain, you know," she smiled,
"but I hope for the best. And anyhow there'll be no rent to
pay and no novelettes to write."

She had a feminine gift for delicate flattery. She thought
that Philip did a brave thing when he left Paris because he
was conscious he could not be a great artist; and he was
enchanted when she expressed enthusiastic admiration for
him. He had never been quite certain whether this action
indicated courage or infirmity of purpose. It was delightful
to realise that she considered it heroic. She ventured to tackle
him on a subject which his friends instinctively avoided.

"It's very silly of you to be so sensitive about your club-foot,"
she said. She saw him flush darkly, but went on. "You know,
people don't think about it nearly as much as you do. They
notice it the first time they see you, and then they forget
about it."

He would not answer.

"You're not angry with me, are you?"

"No."

She put her arm round his neck.

'Tou know, I only speak about it because I love you. I
don't want it to make you unhappy."

"I think you can say anything you choose to me," he
answered, smiUng. "I wish I could do something to show you
how grateful I am to you."

She took him in hand in other ways. She would not let

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 395

him be bearish and laughed at him when he was out of
temper. She made him more urbane.

"You can make me do anything you hke," he said to hef
once.

"D'you mind?"

"No, I want to do what you like."

He had the sense to realise his happiness. It seemed to him
that she gave him all that a wife could, and he preserved
his freedom; she was the most charming friend he had ever
had, with a sympathy that he had never found in a man. The
sexual relationship was no more than the strongest link in^v
their friendship. It completed it, but was not essential. And
because Philip's appetites were satisfied, he became more
equable and easier to live with. He felt in complete possession
of himself. He thought sometimes of the winter, during which
he had been obsessed by a hideous passion, and he was filled
with loathing for Mildred and with horror of himself.

His examinations were approaching, and Norah was as
interested in them as he. He was flattered and touched by her
eagerness. She made him promise to come at once and tell
her the results. He passed the three parts this time without
mishap, and when he went to tell her she burst into tears.

"Oh, I'm so glad, I Was so anxious."

"You silly little thing," he laughed, but he was choking.

No one could help being pleased with the way she took it.

"And what are you going to do now?" she asked.

"I can take a hoHday with a clear conscience. I have no
work to do till the winter session begins in October."

"I suppose you'll go down to your uncle's at Blackstable.?"

"You suppose quite wrong. I'm going to stay in London
and play with you."

"I'd rather you went away."

"Why.? Are you tired of me.?"

She laughed and put her hands on his shoulders.

"Because you've been working hard, and you look utterly
washed out. You want some fresh air and a rest. Please go."

396 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

He did not answer for a moment. He looked at her with^
loving eyes.

".You know, I'd never believe it of anyone but you. You're
only thinking of my good. I wonder what you see in me."

"Will you give me a good character with my month's
notice.?" she laughed gaily.

"I'll say that you're thoughtful and kind, and you're not
exacting; you never worry, you're not troublesome, and you're
easy to please."

"All that's nonsense," she said, "but I'll tell you one thing:
I'm one of the few persons I ever met who are able to
learn from experience."

Chapter 67

Philip looked forward to his return to London with impa-
tience. During the two months he spent at Blackstable Norah
wrote to him frequently, long letters in a bold, large hand, in
which with cheerful humour she described the little events
of the daily round, the domestic troubles of her landlady,
rich food for laughter, the comic vexations of her rehearsals —
she was walking on in an important spectacle at one of the
London theatres — and her odd adventures with the pub-
lishers of novelettes. Philip read a great deal, bathed, played
tennis, and sailed. At the beginning of October he settled
down in London to work for the Second Conjoint examina-
tion. He was eager to pass it, since that ended the drudgery
of the curriculum; after it was done with the student became
an out-patients' clerk, and was brought in contact with men
and women as well as with text-books^ Philip saw Norah
every day.
Lawson had been spending the summer at Poole, and

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 397

had a number of sketches to show of the harbour and of the
beach. He had a couple of commissions for portraits and
proposed to stay in London till the bad light drove him
a,way. Hayward, in London too, intended to spend the winter
abroad, but remained week after week from sheer inability
to make up his mind to go. Hayward had run to fat during
the last two or three years — it was five years since Philip first
met him in Heidelberg — and he was prematurely bald. He
was very sensitive about it and wore his hair long to conceal
the unsightly patch on the crown of his head. His only con-
solation was that his brow was now very noble. His blue
eyes had lost their colour; they had a listless droop; and his
mouth, losing the fulness of youth, was weak and pale. He
still talked vaguely of the things he, was going to do in the
future, but with less conviction; and he was conscious that
his friends no longer believed in him: when he had drunk
two or three glasses of whiskey he was inclined to be elegiaq.

"I'm a failure," he murmured, "I'm unfit for the brutality
of the struggle of life. All I can do is to stand aside and let
the vulgar throng hustle by in their pursuit of the good
things."

He gave you the impression that to fail was a more delicate,
a more exquisite thing, than to succeed. He insinuated that
his aloofness was due to distaste for all that was common and
low. He talked beautifully of Plato.

"I should have thought you'd got through with Plato by
now," said Philip impatiently.
' "Would you.?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

He was not inclined to pursue the subject. He had discov-
ered of late the effective dignity of silence.

"I don't see the use of reading the same thing over and
over again," said Philip. "That's only a laborious form of
idleness."

"But are you under the impression that you have so great
a mind that you can understand the most profound writer
at a first reading.?"

398 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I don't want to understand him, I'm not a critic. I'm not
interested in him for his sake but for mine."

"Why d'you read then.?"

"Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as
uncomfortable if I don't read as if I don't smoke, and partly
to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with
my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage,
perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it
becomes part of me; I've got out of the book all that's any
use to me, and I can't get anything more if I read it a dozen
times. You see, it seems to me, one's like a closed bud, and
most of what one reads and does has no effect at all; but
there are certain things that have a peculiar significance for
one, and they open a petal; and the petals open one by one;
and at last the flower is there."

Philip was not satisfied with his metaphor, but he did not
know how else to explain a thing which he felt and yet was
not clear about.

"You want to do • things, you want to become things,"
jaid Hayward, with a shrug of the shoulders. "It's so vulgar."

Philip knew Hayward very well by now. He was weak
and vain, so vain that you had to be on the watch constantly
not to hurt his feeUngs; he mingled idleness and idealism so
that he could not separate them. At Lawson's studio one day
he met ^ journalist, who was charmed by his conversation,
and a week later the editor of a paper wrote to suggest that
he should do some criticism for him. For forty-eight hours
Hayward lived in an agony of indecision. He had talked of
getting occupation of this sort so long that he had not the face
to refuse outright, but the thought of doing anything filled
him with panic. At last he declined the offer and breathed
freely.

"It would have interfered with my work," he told Philip.

"What work.?" asked Philip brutally.

"My inner life," he answered.

Then he went on to say beautiful things about Amiel, the

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 399

professor of Geneva, whose brilliancy promised achievement
which was never fulfilled; till at his death the reason of his
failure and the excuse were at once manifest in the minute,
wonderful journal which was found among his papers. Hay-
ward smiled enigmatically.

But Hay ward could still talk dehghtfuUy about books; his
taste was exquisite and his discrimination elegant; and he
had a constant interest in ideas, which made him an enter-
taining companion. They meant nothing to him really, since
they never had any effect on him; but he treated them as he
might have pieces of china in an auction-room, handling
them with pleasure in their shape and their glaze, pricing
them in his mind; and then, putting them back into their
case, thought of them no more.

And it was Hayward who made a momentous discovery.
One evening, after due preparation, he took Phi|jp and
Lawson to a tavern situated in Beak Street, remarkable not
only in itself and for its history — it had memories of eight-
eenth-century glories which excited the romantic imagina-
tion— but for its snufF, which was the best in London, and
above all for its punch. Hayward led them into a large, long
room, dingily magnificent, with huge pictures on the walls
of nude women: they were vast allegories of the school of
Hay don; but smoke, gas, and the London atmosphere had
given them a richness which made them look like old masters.
The dark panelling, the massive, tarnished gold of the cornice,
the mahogany tables, gave the room an air of sumptuous
comfort, and the leather-covered seats along the wall were
soft and easy. There was a ram's head on a table opposite the
door, and this contained the celebrated snuff. They ordered
punch. They drank it. It was hot rum punch. The pen falters
when it attempts to treat of the excellence thereof; the sober
vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this narrative, are inadequate
to the task; and pompous terms, jewelled, exotic phrases rise /
to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and cleared the <
head; it filled the soul with well-being; it disposed the mind a» C

400 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

once to utter wit and to appreciate the wit of others; it had
the vagueness of music and the precision of mathematics.
Only one of its qualities was comparable to anything else:
it had the warmth of a good heart; but its taste, its smell, its
feel, were not to be described in words. Charles Lamb, with
his infinite tact, attempting to, might have drawn charming
pictures of the life of his day; Lord Byron in a stanza of Don
Juan, aiming at the impossible, might have achieved the
sublime; Oscar Wilde, heaping jewels of Ispahan upon bro-
cades of Byzantium, might have created a troubling beauty.
Considering it, the mind reeled under visions of the feasts of
Elagabalus; and the subtle harmonies of Debussy mingled
with the musty, fragrant romance of chests in which have
been kept old clothes, ruffs, hose, doublets, of a forgotten
generation, and the wan odour of lilies of the valley and the
savour of Cheddar cheese.

Hayward discovered the tavern at which this priceless
beverage was to be obtained by meeting in the street a man
called Macalister who had been at Cambridge with him. He
was a stockbroker and a philosopher. He was accustomed to
go to the tavern once a week; and soon Philip, Lawson, and
Hayward got into the habit of meeting there every Tuesday
evening: change of manners made it now little frequented,
which was an advantage to persons who took pleasure in
conversation. Macalister was a big-boned fellow, much too
.short for his width, with a large, fleshy face and a soft voice.
JrY\& was a student of Kant and judged everything from the
C— standpoint of pure reason. He was fond of expounding his
doctrines. Philip listened with excited interest. He had long
S^ come to the conclusion that nothing amused him more than
metaphysics, but he was not so sure of their efficacy in the
affairs of life. The neat little system which he had formed
as the result of his meditations at Blackstable had not been
of conspicuous use during his infatuation for Mildred. He
could not be positive that reason was much help in the con-
duct of life. It seemed to him that life lived itself. He remem-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 401

bered very vividly the violence of the emotion which had
possessed him and his inability, as if he were tied down to
the ground with ropes, to react against it. He read many wise
things in books, but he could only judge from his own experi-
ence; (he did not know whether he was different from other
people;) he did not calculate the pros and cons of an action,
the benefits which must befall him if he did it, the harm
which might result from the omission; but his whole being
was urged on irresistibly. He did not act with a part of him-
self but altogether. The power that possessed him seemed to
have nothing to do with reason : all that reason did was to
point out the methods of obtaining what his whole soiil
was striving for.

Macalister reminded him of the Categorical Imperative.

"Act so that every action of yours should be capable ol
becoming a universal rule of action for all men."

"That seems to me perfect nonsense," said Philip.

"You're a bold man to say that of anything stated ■ by
Emanuel Kant," retorted Macalister.

"Why.? Reverence for what somebody said is a stultifying
quality: there's a damned sight too much reverence in the
world. Kant thought things not because they were true, but
because he was Kant."

"Well, what is your objection to the Categorical Impera-
tive.?"

(They talked as though the fate of empires were in the
balance.)

"It suggests that one can choose one's course by an effort
of will. And it suggests that reason is the surest guide. Why
should its dictates be any better than those of passion? They're
different. That's all."

"You seem to be a contented slave of your passions."

"A slave because I can't help myself, but not a contented
one," laughed Philip.

While he spoke he thought of that hot madness which had
driven him in pursuit of Mildred. He remembered how he

402 OF HUMANBONDAGE

had chafed against it, and how he had felt the degradation'

of it.

; "Thank God, I'm free from all that now," he thought.

And yet even as he said it he was not quite sure whether
he spoke sincerely. When he was under the influence of pas-
sion he had felt a singular vigour, and his mind had worked
with unwonted force. He was more aHve, there was an excite-
ment in sheer being, an eager vehemence of soul, which made
life now a trifle dull. For all the misery he had endured there
was a compensation in that sense of rushing, overwhela^ng
existence. W'

"' But Philip's unlucky words engaged him in a discussion on
the freedom of the will, and Macalister, with his well-stored
memory, brought out argument after argument. He had a
mind that delighted in dialectics, and he forced Philip to
contradict himself; he pushed him into corners from which he
could only escape by damaging concessions; he tripped him
up with logic and battered him with authorities.

At last Philip said:

"Well, I can't say anything about other people. I can only
speak for ihyself. The illusion of free will is so strong in my
mind that I can't get away from it, but I believe it is only an
illusion. But it is an illusion which is one of the strongest
motives of my actions. Before I do anything I feel that I have
choice, and that influences what I do; but afterwards, when
the thing is done, I believe that it was inevitable from all
eternity."

"What do you deduce from that?" asked Hay ward.

"Why, merely the futility of regret. It's no good crying over
spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on
spilling it."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 403

Chapter 68

One morning Philip on getting up felt his head swim, and
going back to bed suddenly discovered he was ill. All his
limbs ached and he shivered with cold. When the landlady
brought in his breakfast he called to her through the open
door that he was not well, and asked for a cup of tea and a
piece of toast. A few minutes later there was a knock at his
door, and Griffiths came in. They had lived in the same house
for over a year, but had never done more than nod to one
another in the passage.

"I say, I hear you're seedy,'' said Griffiths. "I thought I'd
come in and see what was the matter with you."

Philip, blushing he knew not why, made light of the whole
thing. He would be all right in an hour or two.

"Well, you'd better let me take your temperature," said
Griffiths.

"It's quite unnecessary," answered Philip irritably.

"Come on."

Philip put the thermometer in his mouth. Griffiths sat on the
side of the bed and chatted brightly for a moment, then he
took it out and looked at it.

"Now, look here, old man, you must stay in bed, and I'll
bring old Deacon in to have a look at you."

"Nonsense," said Philip. "There's nothing the matter. I wish
you wouldn't bother about me."

"But it isn't any bother. You've got a temperature and you
must stay in bed. You will, won't you.?" „

There was a peculiar charm in his manner, a mingling of 2
gravity and kindliness, which was infinitely attractive. ^

404 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"You've got a wonderful bed-side manner," Philip mur-
mured, closing his eyes with a smile.

Griffiths shook out his pillow for him, deftly smoothed down
the bed-clothes, and tucked him up. He went into Philip's
sitting-room to look for a siphon, could not find one, and
fetched it from his own room. He drew down the blind.

"Now, go to sleep and I'll bring the old man round as soon
as he's done the wards."

It seemed hours before anyone came to Philip. His head
felt as if it would split, anguish rent his limbs, and he was
afraid he was going to cry. Then there was a knock at the
door and Griffiths, healthy, strong, and cheerful, came in.

"Here's Doctor Deacon," he said.

The physician stepped forward, an elderly man with a
bland manner, whom Philip knew only by sight. A few ques-
tions, a brief examination, and the diagnosis.

"What d'you make it.?" he asked Griffiths, smiling.

"Influenza."

"Quite right.''

Doctor Deacon looked round the dingy lodging-house room.

"Wouldn't you like to go to the hospital.? They'll put you
in a private ward, and you can be better looked after than you
can here.''

"I'd rather stay where I am," said Philip.

He did not want to be disturbed, and he was always shy of
new surroundings. He did not fancy nurses fussing about
him, and the dreary cleanhness of the hospital.

"I can look after him, sir," said Griffiths at once.

"Oh, very well."

He wrote a prescription, gave instructions, and left.
^^ "Now you've got to do exactly as I tell you," said Griffiths.
"I'm day-nurse and night-nurse all in one."

"It's very kind of you, but I shan't want anythins," said
Phihp. "

GriflSths put his hand on Philip's forehead, a large cool, dry
hand, and the touch seemed to him good.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 405

"I'm just going to take this round to the dispensary to have
it made up, and then I'll come back."

In a little while he brought the medicine and gave Philip
a dose. Then he went upstairs to fetch his books.

"You won't mind my working in your room this afternoon,
will you?" he said, when he came down. "I'll leave the door
open so that you can give me a shout if you want anything."

Later in the day Philip, awaking from an uneasy doze, heard
voices in his sitting-room. A friend had come in to see Griffiths.

"I say, you'd better not come in tonight," he heard Griffiths
saying.

And then a minute or two afterwards someone else entered
the room and expressed his surprise at finding Griffiths there,
Philip heard him explain. "* ^

"I'm looking after a second year's man who's got these
rooms. The wretched blighter's down with influenza. No
whist tonight, old man."

Presently Griffiths was left alone and Philip called him.

"I say, you're not putting off a party tonight, are you?" he
asked.

"Not on your account. I must work at my surgery."

"Don't put it off. I shall be all right. You needn't bother
about me."

"That's all right."

Philip grew worse. As the night came on he became slightly
delirious, but towards morning he awoke from a restless sleep.
He saw Griffiths get out of an arm-chair, go down on his
knees, and with his fingers put piece after piece of coal on
the fire. He was in pyjamas and a dressing-gown.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Did I wake you up? I tried to make up the fire without
making a row."

"Why aren't you in bed? What's the time?"'

"About five. I thought I'd better sit up with you tonight.
I brought an arm-chair in as I thought if I put a mattress down

l^ '7 -^V

406 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

I should sleep so soundly that I shouldn't hear you if you
wanted anything."

"I wish you wouldn't be so good to me," groaned PhiUp.
"Suppose you catch it?"

"Then you shall nurse me, old man," said Griffiths, with a
laugh.

In the morning Griffiths drew up the blind. He looked pale
^nd tired after his night's watch, but was full of spirits.

"Now, I'm going to wash you," he said to Philip cheerfully.

"I can wash myself," said Philip, ashamed.

"Nonsense. If you were in the small ward a nurse would
wash you, and I can do it just as well as a nurse."

Phihp, too weak and wretched to resist, allowed Griffiths
to wash his hands and face, his feet, his chest and back. He did
it with charming tenderness, carrying on meanwhile a stream
of friendly chatter; then he changed the sheet just as they
did at the hospital, shook out the pillow, and arranged the
bed-clothes.

"I should like Sister Arthur to see me. It would make her
sit up. Deacon's coming in to see you early."

"I can't imagine why you should be so good to me," said
Philip.

"It's good practice for me. It's rather a lark having a
patient."

Griffiths gave him his breakfast and went off to get dressed
and have something to eat. A few minutes before ten he came
back with a bunch of grapes and a few flowers.

"You are awfully kind," said Philip.

He was in bed for five days.

Norah and Griffiths nursed him between them. Though.
Griffiths was the same age as Philip he adopted towards him
a humorous, motherly attitude. He was a thoughtful fellow,,
gentle and encouraging; but his greatest quality was a vitahty
which seemed to give health to everyone with whom he came
in contact. Philip vi^as unused to the petting which most
people enjoy from mothers or sisters and he was deeply

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 407

touched by the feminine tenderness of this strong young man.
Phihp grew better. Then Griffiths, sitting idly in Phihp's room,
amused him with gay stories of amorous adventure. He was a
flirtatious creature, capable of carrying on three or four affairs
at a time; and his account of the devices he was forced to in
order to keep out of difficulties made excellent hearing. He
had a gift for throwing a romantic glamour over everything
that happened to him. He was crippled with debts, everything
he had of any value was pawned, but he managed always to
be cheerful, extravagant, and generous. He was the adventurer
by nature. He loved people of doubtful occupations and shifty
purposes; and his acquaintance among the riff-raff that fre-
quents the bars of London was enormous. Loose women, treat-
ing him as a friend, told him the troubles, difficulties, and
successes of their lives; and card-sharpers, respecting his im-
pecuniosity, stood him dinners and lent him five-pound notes.
He was ploughed in his examinations time after time; but he
bore this cheerfully, and submitted with such a charming
j;race to the parental expostulations that his father, a doctor in
practice at Leeds, had not the heart to be seriously angry with
liim.

"I'm an awful fool at books," he said cheerfully, "but I can't
Avork." -^

Life was much too jolly. But it was clear that when he had/
^ot through the exuberance of his youth, and was at last quali-7
fied, he would be a tremendous success in practice. He would^
cure people by the sheer charm of his manner.

Philip worshipped him as at school he had worshipped boys
who were tall and straight and high of spirits. By the time he
was well they were fast friends, and it was a peculiar satisfac-
tion to Phihp diat Griffiths seemed to enjoy sitting in his little
parlour, wasting Philip's time with his amusing chatter and
smoking innumerable cigarettes. Philip took him sometimes
to the tavern off Regent Street. Hayward found him stupid,
but Lawson recognised his charm and was eager to paint him;
be was a picturesque figure with his blue eyes, white skin, and

408 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

curly hair. Often they discussed things he knew nothing
about, and then he sat quietly, with a good-natured smile on
his handsome face, feeling quite rightly that his presence
was sufficient contribution to the entertainment of the com-
pany. When he discovered that Macalister was a stockbroker
he was eager for tips; and Macalister, with his grave smile,
told him what fortunes he could have made if he had bought
certain Stock at certain times. It made Philip's mouth water,
for in one way and another he was spending more than he
had expected, and it would have suited him very well to
make a little money by the easy method Macalister suggested.

"Next time I hear of a really good thing I'll let you know,"
said -the stockbroker. "They do come along sometimes. It's
only a matter of biding one's time."

Philip could not help thinking how delightful it would be
to make fifty pounds, so that he could give Norah the furs she
so badly needed for the winter. He looked at the shops in
Regent Street and picked out the articles he could buy for
the money. She deserved everything. She made his life very
happyi

Chapter 69

One afternoon, when he went back to his rooms from the
hospital to w>ash and tidy himself before going to tea as usual
with Norah, as he let himself in with his latchkey, his land-
lady opened the door for him.

"There's a lady waiting to see you," she said.

"Me.?" exclairtied Philip.

He was surprised. It would only be Norah, and he had no
idea what had brought her.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE , 409

. "I shouldn't 'ave let her in, only she's been three times, and
she seemed that upset at not finding you, so I told her she
could wait."

He pushed past the explaining landlady and burst into the
room. His heart turned sick. It was Mildred. She was sitting
down, but got up hurriedly as he came in. She did not move
towards him nor speak. He was so surprised that he did not
know what he was saying.

"What the hell d'you want?" he asked.

She did not answer, but began to cry. She did not put her
hands to her eyes, but kept them hanging by the side of her
body. She looked like a housemaid applying for a situation.
There was a dreadful humility in her bearing. Philip did not
know what feelings came over him. He had a sudden impulse
to turn round and escape from the room.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you again," he said at last,

"I wish I was dead," she moaned.

Philip left her standing where she was. He could only think
at the moment of steadying himself. His knees were shaking.
He looked at her, and he groaned in despair.

"What's the matter.?" he said.

"He's left me — Emil." V

Philip's heart bounded. He knew then that he loved her as ^ ^
passionately as ever. He had never ceased to love her. She was
standing before him humble and unresisting. He wished to
take her in his arms and cover her tear-stained face with
kisses. Oh, how long the separation had been! He did not
know how he could have endured it.

"You'd better sit down. Let me give you a drink."

He drew the chair near the fire and she sat in it. He mixed
her whiskey and soda, and, sobbing still, she drank it. She
looked at him with great, mournful eyes. There were large
black Hnes under them. She was thinner and whiter than when
last he had seen her. „ l j

"I wish I'd married you when you asked me," she said.

Philip did not know why the remark seemed to swell hi."-

410 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

heart. He could not keep the distance from her which he had
forced upon himself. He put his hand on her shoulder.

"I'm awfully sorry you're in trouble."

She leaned her head against his bosom and burst into
hysterical crying. Her hat was in the way and she took it off.
He had never dreamt that she was capable of crying like that.
He kissed her again and again. It seemed to ease her a Httle.

"You were always good to me, PhiUp," she said. "That's
why I knew I could come to you."

"Tell me what's happened."

"Oh, I can't, I can't," she cried out, breaking away from him.

He sank down on his knees beside her and put his cheek
against hers.

"Don't you know that there's nothing you can't tell me? I
can never blame you for anyt"hing."

She told him the story little by little, and sometimes she
sobbed so much that he could hardly understand.

"Last Monday week he went up to Birmingham, and he
promised to be back on Thursday, and he never came, and he
didn't come on the Friday, so I wrote to ask what was the mat-
ter, and he never answered the letter. And I wrote and said that
if I didn't hear from him by return I'd go up to Birmingham,
and this morning I got a solicitor's letter to say I had no claim
on him, and if I rriolested him he'd seek the protection of the
law."

"But it's absurd," cried Philip. "A man can't treat his wife
like that. Had you had a row?"

"Oh, yes, we'd had a quarrel on the Sunday, and he said
he was sick of me, but he'd said it before, and he'd come back
all right. I didn't think he meant it. He was frightened, because
I told him a baby was coming. I kept it from him as long as
I could. Then I had to tell him. He said it was my fault, and
I ought to have known better. If you'd only heard the things
he said to me! But I found out precious quick that he wasn't
a gentleman. He left me without a penny. He hadn't paid the
rent, and I hadn't got the money to pay it, and the woman who

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 411

kept the house said such things to me — well, I might have been
a thief the way she talked."

"I thought you were going to take a flat."

"That's what he said, but we just took furnished apartments
in Highbury. He was that mean. He said I was extravagant, he
didn't give me anything to be extravagant with."

She had an extraordinary way of mixing the trivial with the
important. Philip was puzzled. The whole thing was incom-
prehensible.

"No man could be such a blackguard."

"You don't know him. I wouldn't go back to him now not
if he was to come and ask me on his bended knees. I was a
fool ever to think of him. And he wasn't earning the money
he said he was. The lies he told me!"

Philip thought for a minute or two. He was so deeply
moved by her distress that he could not think of himself.

"Would you like me to go to Birmingham ? I could see him
and try to make things up."

"Oh, there's no chance of that. He'll never come back nov/,
I know him."

"But he must provide for you. He can't get out of that. 1
don't know anything about these things, you'd better go anu
see a solicitor."

"How can I ? I haven't got the money."

"I'll pay all that. I'll write a note to my own solicitor, the
sportsman who was my father's executor. Would you like me
to come with you now? I expect he'll still be at his office."

"No, give me a letter to him. I'll go alone."

She was a little calmer now. He sat down and wrote a note.
Then he remembered that she had no money. He had fortu-
nately changed a cheque the day before and was able to give
her five pounds.

"You arc good to me, Philip," she said.

"I'm so happy to be able to do something for you."

"Are you fond of me still?"

"Just as fond as ever."

412 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

She put up her Ups and he kissed her. There was a surrender
in the action which he had never seen in her before. It was
worth all the agony he had suffered.

She went away and he found that she had been there for
two hours. He was extraordinarily happy.

"Poor thing, poor thing," he murmured to himself, his
heart glowing with a greater love than he had ever felt before.

He never thought of Norah at all till about eight o'clock a
telegram came. He knew before opening it that it was from
her.

Is anything the matter? Norah.

He did not know what to do nor what to answer. He could
fetch her after the play, in which she was walking on, was
over and stroll home with her as he sometimes did; but his
whole soul revolted against the idea of seeing her that evening.
He thought of writing to her, but he could not bring himself
to address her as usual, dearest Norah. He made up his mind
to telegraph.

Sorry. Could not get away, Philip.

He visualised her. He was slightly repelled by the ugly little
face, with its high cheek-bones and the crude colour. There
was a coarseness in her skin which gave him goose-flesh. He
knew that his telegram must be followed by some action on
his part, but' at all events it postponed it.

Next day he wired again.

Regret, unable to come. Will write.

Mildred had suggested coming at four in the afternoon, and
he would not tell her that the hour was inconvenient. After
all she came first. He waited for her impatiently. He watched
for her at the window and opened the front-door himself.

"Well? Did you see Nixon.?"

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 413

"Yes," she answered. "He said it wasn't any good. Nothing's
to be done. I must just grin and bear it."

"But that's impossible," cried PhiUp.

She sat down wearily.

"Did he give any reasons.?" he asked.

She gave him a crumpled letter.

"There's your letter, Philip. I never took it. I couldn't tell
you yesterday, I really couldn't. Emil didn't marry me. He
couldn't. He had a wife already and three children."

Philip felt a sudden pang of jealousy and anguish. It was
almost more than he could bear.

"That's why I couldn't go back to my aunt. There's no one
I can go to but you."

"What made you go away with him.?" Philip asked, in a low
voice which he struggled to make firm.

"I don't know. I didn't know he was a married man at first,
and when he told me I gave him a piece of my mind. And
then I didn't see him for months, and when he came to the
shop again arid asked me I don't know what came over me.
I felt as if I couldn't help it. I had to go with him."

"Were you in love with him?"

"I don't know. I couldn't hardly help laughing at the things
he said. And there was something about him — he said I'd never
regret it, he promised to give me seven pounds a week — he
said he was earning fifteen, and it was all a lie, he wasn't. And
then I was sick of going to the shop every morning, and I
wasn't getting on very well with my aunt; she wanted to treat
me as a servant instead of a relation, said I ought to do my own
room, and if I didn't do it nobody was going to do it for me.
Oh, I wish I hadn't. But when he came to the shop and asked
me I felt I couldn't help it."

Philip moved away from her. He sat down at the table and
buried his face in his hands. He felt dreadfully humiliated.

"You're not angry with me, Philip?" she asked piteously.
"No," he answered, looking up but away from her, "only
I'm awrfuUy hurt."

414 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Why?"

"You see, I was so dreadfully in love with you. I did every-
thing I could to make you care for me. I thought you were
incapable of loving anyone. It's so horrible to know that you
were willing to sacrifice everything for that bounder. I wonder
what you saw in him."

"I'm awfully sorry, Philip. I regretted it bitterly afterwards,
I promise you that."

He thought of Emil Miller, with his pasty, unhealthy look,
his shifty blue eyes, and the vulgar smartness of his appear-
ance; he always wore bright red knitted waistcoats. Philip
sighed. She got up and went to him. She put her arm round
his neck.

"I shall never forget that you offered to -marry me, Philip."

He took her hand and looked up at her. She bent down and
, kissed him.

"Philip, if you want me still I'll do anything you like now.
I know you're a gentleman in every sense of the word."

His heart stood still. Her words made him feel slightly sick.

"It's awiully good of you, but I couldn't."

"Don't you care for me any more.?"

"Yes, I love you with all my heart."

"Then why shouldn't we have a good time while we've got
the chance.'' You see, it can't matter now."

He released himself from her.

"You don't understand. I've been sick with love for you ever
since I saw you, but now — that man. I've unfortunately got a
vivid imagination. The thought of it simply disgusts me."

"You are funny," she said.

He took her hand again and smiled at her.

"You mustn't think I'm not grateful. I can never thank you
enough, but you see, it's just stronger than I am."

"You are a good 'friend, Philip."

They went on talking, and soon they had returned to the
familiar companionship of old days. It grew late. Philip sug-
gested that they should dine together and go to a music-hall.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 415

She wanted some persuasion, for she had an idea of acting up
to her situation, and felt instinctively that it did not accord
with her distressed condition to go to a place of entertainment.
At last Philip asked her to go simply to please him, and when
she could look upon it as an act of self-sacrifice she accepted.
She had a new thoughtfulness which delighted Philip. She
asked him to take her to the little restaurant in Soho to which
they had so often been; he was infinitely grateful to her, be-
cause her suggestion showed that happy memories were
attached to it. She grew much more cheerful as dinner pro-
ceeded. The Burgundy from the public house at the corner
warmed her heart, and she forgot that she ought to preserve
a dolorous countenance. Philip thought it safe to speak to her
of the future.

"I suppose you haven't got a brass farthing, have you?" he
asked, when an opportunity presented itself.

"Only what you gave me yesterday, and I had to give the
landlady three pounds of that."

"Well, I'd better give you a tenner to go on with. I'll go and
see my solicitor and get him to write to Miller. We can make
him pay up something, I'm sure. If we can get a hundred
pounds out of him it'll carry you on till after the baby comes."

"I wouldn't take a penny from him. I'd rather starve."

"But it's- monstrous that he should leave you in the lurch
like this."

"I've got my pride to consider."

It was a little awkward for PhiUp. He needed rigid economy
to make his own money last till he was qualified, and he must
have something over to keep him during the year he intended
to spend as house physician and house surgeon either at his
own or at some other hospital. But Mildred had told him
various stories of Emil's meanness, and he was afraid to remon-
strate with her in case she accused him too of want of
generosity.

"I wouldn't take a penny piece from him. I'd sooner beg
my bread. I'd have seen about getting some work to do long

416 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

before now, only it wouldn't be good for me in the state I'm
in. You have to think of your health, don't you?"

"You needn't bother about the present," said Philip. "I can
let you have all you want till you're fit to work again."

"I knew I could depend on you. I told Emil he needn't think
I hadn't got somebody to go to. I told him you was a gentle-
man in every sense of the word."

By degrees Philip learned how the separation had come
about. It appeared that the fellow's wife had discovered the
adventure he was engaged in during his periodical visits to
London, and had gone to the head of the firm that employed
him. She threatened to divorce him, and they announced
that they would dismiss him if she did. He was passionately
devoted to his children and could not bear the thought of
being separated from them. When he had to choose between
his wife and his mistress he chose his wife. He had been always
anxious that there should be no child to make the entangle-
ment more complicated; and when Mildred, unable longer to
conceal its approach, informed him of the fact, he was seized
with panic. He picked a quarrel and left her without more
ado.

"When d'you expect to be confined.''" asked Philip.

"At the beginning of March." r

"Three months."

It was necessary to discuss plans. Mildred declared she
would not remain in the rooms at Highbury, and Philip
thought it more convenient too that she should be nearer to
him. He promised to look for something next day. She sug-
gested the Vauxhall Bridge Road as a likely neighbourhood.

"And it would be near for afterwards," she said.

"What do you mean.?"

"Well, I should only be able to stay there about two months
or a little more, and then I should have to go into a house.
I know a very respectable place, where they have a most su-
perior class of people, and they take you for four guineas a
week and no extras. Of course the doctor's extra, but that's all.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 417

A friend of mine went there, and the lady who keeps it is
a thorough lady. I mean to tell her that my husband's an
officer in India and I've come to London for my baby, because
it's better for my health."

It seemed extraordinary to Philip to hear her talking in this
way. With her delicate little features and her pale face she
looked cold and maidenly. When he thought of the passions
that burnt within her, so unexpected, his heart was strangely
troubled. His pulse beat quickly.

Chapter 70

Philip expected to find a letter from Norah when he got back
to his rooms, but there was nothing; nor did he receive one
the following morning. The silence irritated and at the same
time alarmed him. They had seen one another every day he
had been in London since the previous June; and it must seem
odd to her that he should let two days go by without visiting
her or offering a reason for his absence; he wondered whether
by an unlucky chance she had seen him with Mildred. He
could not bear to think that she was hurt or unhappy, and he
made up his mind to call on her that afternoon. He was almost
inclined to reproach her because he had allowed himself to
get on such intimate terms with her. The thought of continu-
ing them filled him with disgust.

He found two rooms for Mildred on the second floor of a
house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road. They were noisy, but he
knew that she liked the rattle of traffic under her windows.

"I don't Uke a dead and alive street where you don't see a
soul pass all day," she said. "Give me a bit of life."

Then he forced himself to go to Vincent Square. He was sick

418 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

with apprehension when he rang the bell. He had an uneasy
sense that he was treating Norah badly; he dreaded re-
proaches; he knew she had a quick temper, and he hated
scenes : perhaps the best way would be to tell her frankly that
Mildred had come back to him and his love for her was as
violent as it had ever been; he was very sorry, but he had
nothing to offer Norah any more. Then he thought of her
anguish, for he knew she loved him; it had flattered him
before, and he was immensely grateful; but now it was hor-
rible. She had not deserved that he should inflict pain upon
her. He asked himself how she would greet him now, and as
he walked up the stairs all possible forms of her behaviour
flashed across his mind. He knocked at the door. He felt that
he was pale, and wondered how to conceal his nervousness.

She was writing away industriously, but she sprang to her
feet as he entered.

"I recognised your step," she cried. "Where have you been
hiding yourself, you naughty boy.?"

She came towards him joyfully and put her arms round his
neck. She was delighted to see him. He kissed her, and then,
to give himself countenance, said he was dying for tea. She
bustled the fire to make the kettle boil.

"I've been awfully busy," he said lamely.

She began to chatter in her bright way, telling him of a new
commission she had to provide a novelette for a firm which
had Hot hitherto employed her. She was to get fifteen guineas
for it.

'It's money from the clouds. I'll tell you what we'll do,
we'll stand ourselves a httle jaunt. Let's go and spend a day
at Oxford, shall we.? I'd love to see the colleges."

He looked at her to see whether there was any shadow of
reproach in her eyes; but they were as frank and merry as ever:
she was overjoyed to see him. His heart sank. He could not
tell her the brutal truth. She made some toast for him, and
cut it into little pieces, and gave it him as though he were a
child.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 419

"Is the brute fed?" she asked.

He nodded, smiling; and she lit a cigarette for him. Then,
as she loved to do, she came and sat on his knees. She was
very light. She leaned back in his arms with a sigh of deli-
cious happiness.

"Say something nice to me," she murmured.

"What shall I say?"

"You might by an effort of imagination say that you rather
liked me."

"You know I do that."

He had not the heart to tell her then. He would give her
peace at all events for that day, and perhaps he might write
to her. That would be easier. He could not bear to think of
her crying. She made him kiss her, and as he kissed her he
thought of Mildred and Mildred's pale, thin lips. The recoil
lection of Mildred remained with him all the time, like an
incorporated form, but more substantial than a shadow; and
the sight continually distracted his attention.

"You're very quiet today," Norah said.

Her loquacity was a standing joke between them, and he
answered :

"You never let me get a word in, and I've got out of the
habit of talking."

"But you're not listening, and that's bad manners."

He reddened a little, wondering whether she had some
inkling of his secret; he turned away his eyes uneasily. The
weight of her irked him this afternoon, and he did not want
her to touch him.

"My foot's gone to sleep," he said.

"I'm so sorry," she cried, jumping up. "I shall have to bant
if I can't break myself of this habit of sitting on gentlemen's
knees."

He went through an elaborate form of stamping his foot
and walking about. Then he stood in front of the fire so that
she should not resume her position. While she talked he
thought that she was worth ten of Mildred; she amused him

420 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

much more and was jollier to talk to; she was cleverer, and
she had a much nicer nature. She was a good, brave, honest
little woman; and Mildred, he thought bitterly, deserved none
of these epithets. If he had any sense he would stick to Norah,
she would make him much happier^ than he would ever be
with Mildred: after all she loved him, and Mildred was only
grateful for his help. But when all was said the important
thing was to love rather than to be loved; and he yearned for
Mildred with his whole soul. He would sooner have ten min-
utes with her than a whole afternoon with Norah, he prized
one kiss of her cold lips more than all Norah could give him.

"I can't help myself," he thought. "I've just got her in my
bones."

He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar,
stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have
misery with the one than happiness with the other.

When he got up to go Norah said casually:

"Well, I shall see you tomorrow, shan't I?"

"Yes," he answered.

He knew that he would not be able to come, since he was
going to help Mildred with her moving, but he had not the
courage to say so. He made up his mind that he would send
Sl wire. Mildred saw the rooms in the morning, was satisfied
with them, and after luncheon Philip went up with her to
Highbury. She had a trunk for her clothes and another for
the various odds and ends, cushions, lamp-shades, photograph
frames, with which she had tried to give the apartments a
home-like air; she had two or three large cardboard boxes
besides, but in all there was no more than could be put on the
roof of a four-wheeler. As they drove through Victoria Street
Philip sat well back in the cab in case Norah should happen
to be passing. He had not had an opportunity to telegraph
and could not do so from the post-office in the Vauxhall Bridge
Road, since she would wonder what he was doing in that
neighbourhood; and if he was there he could have no excuse
for not going into the neighbouring square where she lived.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 421

He made up his mind that he had better go in and see her for
half an hour; but the necessity irritated him: he was angry
with Norah, because she forced him to vulgar and degrading
shifts. But he was happy to be with Mildred. It amused him to
help her with the unpacking; and he experienced a charming
sense of possession in installing her in these lodgings which he
had found and was paying for. He would not let her exert
herself. It was a pleasure to do things for her, and she had no
desire to do what somebody else seemed desirous to do for
her. He unpacked her clothes and put them away. She was not
proposing to go out again, so he got her slippers and took ofi
her boots. It delighted him to perform menial offices.

"You do spoil me," she said, running her lingers affection-
ately through his hair, while he was on his knees unbuttoning
her boots.

He took her hands and kissed them.

"It is nipping to have you here."

He arranged the cushions and the photograph frames. She
had several jars of green earthenware.

"I'll get you some flowers for them," he said.

He looked round at his work proudly.

"As I'm not going out any more I think I'll get into a tea-
gown," she said. "Undo me behind, will you.?"

She turned round as unconcernedly as though he were a
woman. His sex meant nothing to her. But his heart was filled
with gratitude for the intimacy her request showed. He undid
the hooks and eyes with clumsy fingers.

"That first day I came into the shop I never thought I'd be
doing this for you now," he said, with a laugh which he forced..

"Somebody must do it," she answered.

She went into the bed-room and slipped into a pale bPue-.
tea-gown decorated with a great deal of cheap lace. Then.
Philip settled her on a sofa and made tea for her.

"I'm afraid I can't stay and have it with you," he said re-
gretf uUy. "I've got a beastly appointment. But I shall be ba.cjj;
in half an hour."

422 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

He wondered what he should say if she asked him what
the appointment was, but she showed no curiosity. He had
ordered dinner for the two of them when he took the rooms,
and proposed to spend the evening with her quietly. He was
in such a hurry to get back that he took a tram along the
Vauxhall Bridge Road. He thought he had better break the
fact to Norah at once that he could not stay more than a few
minutes.

"I say, I've got only just time to say how d'you do," he said,
as soon as he got into her rooms. "I'm frightfully busy."

Her face fell.

"Why, what's the matter.?"

It exasperated him that she should force him to tell lies, and
he knew that he reddened when he answered that there was
a demonstration at the hospital which he was bound to -go to.
He fancied that she looked as though she did not believe him,
and this irritated him all the more.

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter," she said* "I shall have you all
tomorrow."

He looked at her blankly. It was Sunday, and he had been
looking forward to spending the day with Mildred. He told
himself that he must do that in common decency; he could
not leave her by herself in a strange house.

"I'm awfully sorry, I'm engaged tomorrow."

He knew this was the beginning of a scene which he vrauld
have given anything to avoid. The colour on Norah's cheeks
grew brighter.

"But I've asked the Gordons to lunch" — they were an actor
and his wife who were touring the provinces and in London
for Sunday — "I told you about it a week ago."

"I'm awfully sorry, I forgot." He hesitated. "I'm afraid I
can't possibly come. Isn't there somebody else you can get?"

"What are you doing tomorrow then.?"
, "I wish you wouldn't cross-examine me."

"Don't you want to tell mc?"

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 423

"I don't in the least mind telling you, but it's rather annoy-
ing to be forced to account for all one's movements."

Norah suddenly changed. With an effort of self-control she
got the better of her temper, and going up to him took his
hands.

"Don't disappoint me tomorrow, Philip, I've been looking
forward so much to spending the day with you. The Gordons
want to see you, and we'll have such a jolly time."

"I-'d love to if I could."

"I'm not very exacting, am I? I don't often ask you to do
anything that's a bother. Won't you get out of your horrid
engagement — just this once?"

"I'm awfully sorry, I don't see how I can," he replied
sullenly.

"Tell me what it is," she said coaxingly.

He had had time to invent something.

"Griffiths' two sisters are up for the week-end and we're
taking them out."

"Is that all?" she said joyfully. "Griffiths can so easily gel
another man."

He wished he had thought of something more urgent than
that. It was a clumsy lie.

"No, I'm awfully sorry, I can't— I've promised and I mean
to keep my promise."

"But you promised me too. Surely I come first."

"I wish you wouldn't persist," he said.

She flared up. t j . i

"You won't come because you don't want to. I don t know
what you've been doing the last few days, you've been quibJ

different."
He looked at his watch.
"I'm afraid I'll have to be going," he said.
"You won't come tomorrow?"

"In that case you needn't trouble to come again," she cried
losing her temper for good.

424 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"That's just as you like," he answered.

"Don't let me detain you any longer," she added ironically.

He shrugged this shoulders and walked out. He was relieved
that it had gone no worse. There had been no tears. As he
walked along he congratulated himself on getting out of the
affair so easily. He went into Victoria-Street and bought a few
flowers to take in to Mildred.

The little dinner was a great success. Philip had sent in
a small pot of caviare, which he knew she was very fond of,
and the landlady brought them up some cutlets with vege-
tables and a sweet. Philip had ordered Burgundy, which was
her favourite wine. With the curtains drawn, a bright fire, and
one of Mildred's shades on the lamp, the room was cosy.

"It's really just like home," smiled Philip.

"I might be worse off, mightn't I?" she answered.

When they finished, Philip drew two arm-chairs in front
of the fire, and they sat down. He smoked his pipe comfort-
ably. He feh happy and generous.

"What would you like to do tomorrow?" he asked.

"Oh, I'm going to Tulse Hill. You remember the manageress
of the shop, well, she's married now, and she's asked me to go
and spend the day with her. Of course she thinks I'm married
too."

Phihp's heart sank.

"But I refused an invitation so that I might spend Sunday
with you."

He thought that if she loved him she would say that in that
case she would stay with him. He knew very well that Norah
Would not have hesitated.

"Well, you were a silly to do that. I've promised to go for
three weeks and more."

"But how can you go alone.?"

"Oh, I shall say that Emil's away on business. Her husband's
in the glove trade, and he's a very superior fellow."

PhiUp was silent, and bitter feeUngs passed through his
heart. She gave him a sidelong glance.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 425

"You don't grudge me a little pleasure, Philip ? You see, it's
the last time I shall be able to go anywhere for I don't know
how long, and I had promised."

He took her hand and smiled.

"No, darling, I want you to have the best time you can. I
only want you to be happy."

There was a little book bound in blue paper lying open, face
downwards, on the sofa, and Philip idly took it up. It was a
twopenny novelette, and the author was Courtenay Paget.
That was the name under which Norah wrote.

"I do like his books," said Mildred. "I read them all. They're
so refined."

He remembered what Norah had said of herself.

"I have an immense popularity among kitchen-maids. They
think me so genteel."

Chapter 71

Philip, in return for Griffiths' confidences, had told him the
details of his own complicated amours, and on Sunday morn-
ing, after breakfast when they sat by the fire in their dressing-
gowns and smoked, he recounted the scene of the previous
day. Griffiths congratulated him because he had got out of
his difficulties so easily.

"It's the simplest thing in the world to have an affair with
a woman," he remarked sententiously, "but it's a devil of a
nuisance to get out of it."

PhiUp felt a little inclined to pat himself on the back for
his skill in managing the business. At all events he was im-
mensely relieved. He thought of Mildred enjoying herself in
Tulse Hill, and he found in himself a real satisfaction because

426 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

she was happy. It was an act of self-sacrifice on his part that
he did not grudge her pleasure even though paid for by his
own disappointment, and it filled his heart with a comfortable
glow.

But on Monday morning he found on his table a letter from
Norah. She wrote :

JDearest,

I'm sorry I was cross on Saturday. Forgive me and come to
tea in the afternoon as usual. I love you. ,

Your Norah.

His heart sank, and he did not know what to do. He
took the note to Griffiths and showed it to him.

"You'd better leave it unanswered," said he.

"Oh, I can't," cried Philip. "I should be miserable if I
thought of her waiting and waiting. You don't know what
it is to be sick for the postman's knock. I do, and I can't
expose anybody else to that torture."

"My dear fellow, one can't break that sort of affair off with-
out somebody suffering. You must just set your teeth tc that.
One thing is, it doesn't last very long."

Philip felt that Norah had not deserved that he should make
her suffer; and what did Griffiths know about the degrees of
anguish she was capable of.? He remembered his own pain
when Mildred had told him she was going to be married. He
did not want anyone to experience what he had experienced
then.

"If you're so anxious not to give her pain, go back to her,"
said Griffiths.

"I can't do that."

He got up and walked up and down the room nervously.
He was angry with Norah because she had not let the matter
test. She must have seen that he had no more love to give her.
They said women were so quick at seeing those things.

"You might help me," he said to Griffiths.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 427

"My dear fellow, don't make such a fuss about it. People
do get over these things, you know. She probably isn't so
wrapped up in you as you think, either. One's always rather
apt to exaggerate the passion one's inspired other people with."

He paused and looked at Philip with amusement.

"Look here, there's only one thing you can do. Write to her^
and tell her the diing's over. Put it so that there can be no.
mistake about it. It'll hurt her, but it'll hurt her less if you.
do the thing brutally than if you try half-hearted ways."

Philip sat down and wrote the following letter:

My dear Norah,

I am sorry to ma\e you unhappy, but I thin\ we had better-
let things remain where we left them on Saturday. I don't
thin\ there's any use in letting these things drag on when
they've ceased to be amusing. You told me to go and I went..
I do not propose to come bac\. Good-bye.

Philip Carey,

He showed the letter to Griffiths and asked him what he
thought of it. Griffiths read it and looked at Philip with twin-
kling eyes. He did not say what he felt.

"I think that'll do the trick," he said.

Philip went out and posted it. He passed an uncomfortable
morning, for he imagined with great detail what Norah would
feel when she received his letter. He tortured himself with
the thought of her tears. But at the same time he was relieved.
Imagined grief was more easy to bear than grief seen, and
he was free now to love Mildred with all his soul. His heart
leaped at the thought of going to see her that afternoon, when
his day's work at the hospital was over.

When as usual he went back to his rooms to tidy himself, he
had no sooner put the latch-key in his door than he heard a
voice behind him.

"May I come in ? I've been waiting for you for half an hour."

It was Norah. He felt himself blush to the roots of his hair.

428 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

She spoke gaily. There was no trace of resentment in her voice
and nothing to indicate that there was a rupture between
them. He felt himself cornered. He was sick with fear, but
he did his best to smile.

"Yes, do," he- said.

He opened the door, and she preceded him into his sitting-
room. He was nervous and, to give himself countenance, of-
fered her a cigarette and lit one for himself. She looked at
him brightly.

"Why did you write me such a horrid letter, you naughty
iboy .'' If I'd taken it seriously it would have made me perfectly
■wretched."

*'lt was meant seriously," he answered gravely.

""Don't be so silly. I lost my temper the other day, and I
wrote and apologised. You weren't satisfied, so I've come here
to apologise again. After all, you're your own master and I
have no claims upon you. I don't want you to do anything
you don't want to."

She got up from the chair in which she was sitting and went
towards him impulsively, with outstretched hands.

"Let's make friends again, Philip. I'm so sorry if I offended
you."

He could not prevent her from taking his hands, but he
could not look at her.

"I'm afraid it's too late," he said.

She let herself down on the floor by his side and clasped his
knees.

"Philip, don't be silly. I'm quick-tempered too and I can
understand that I hurt you, but it's so stupid to sulk over it.
What's the good of making us both unhappy? It's been so
jolly, our friendship." She passed her fingers slowly over his
hand. "I love you, Philip."

He got up, disengaging himself from her, and went to the
other side of the room.

"I'm awfully sorry, I can't do anything. The whole thing's
over." "

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 429

"D'you mean to say you don't love me any more?"

"I'm afraid so."

"You were just looking for an opportunity to throw mt
over and you took that one?"

He did not answer. She looked at him steadily for a time
which seemed intolerable. She was sitting on the floor where
he had left her, leaning against the arm-chair. She began to
cry quite silently, without trying to hide her face, and the
large tears rolled down her cheeks one after the other. She
did not sob. It was horribly painful to see her. Philip turned
away.

"I'm awfully sorry to hurt you. It's not my fault if I don't
love you."

She did not answer. She merely sat there, as though she
were overwhelmed, and the tears flowed down her cheeks.
It would have been easier to bear if she had reproached him.
He had thought her temper would get the better of her, and
he was prepared for that. At the back of his mind was a feel-
ing that a real quarrel, in which each said to the other cruel
things, would in some way be a justification of his behaviour.
The time passed. At last he grew frightened by her silent
crying; he went into his bed-room and got a glass of water;
he leaned over her.

"Won't you drink a little? It'll reUeve you."

She put her lips Hstlessly to the glass and drank two or
three mouthfuls. Then in an exhausted whisper she asked him
for a handkerchief. She dried her eyes.

"Of course I knew you never loved me as much as I loved
you," she moaned.

"I'm afraid that's always the case," he said. "There's always
one who loves and one who lets himself be loved."

He thought of Mildred, and a bitter pain traversed his heart.
Norah did not answer for a long time.

"I'd been so miserably unhappy, and my life was so hateful,

she said at last. ,r tt i j

She did not speak to him, but to herself. He had never

430 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

heard her before complain o£ the Hfe she had led with her
husband or of her poverty. He had always admired the bold
front she displayed to the -world.

"And then you came along and you were so good to me.
And I admired you because you were clever and it was
so heavenly to have someone I could put my trust in. I loved
you. I never thought it could come to an end. And without
any fault of mine at all."

Her tears began to flow again, but now she was more mis-
tress of herself, and she hid her face in Philip's handkerchief.
She tried hard to control herself.

"Give me some more water," she said.

She wiped her 'eyes.

"I'm sorry to make such a fool of myself. I was so unpre-
pared."

"I'm awfully sorry, Norah. I want you to know that I'm very
grateful for all you've done for me."

He wondered what it was she saw in him.

"Oh, it's always the same," she sighed, "if you want men to
behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat
them decently they make you suffer for it."

She got up from the floor and said she must go. She gave
Philip a long, steady look. Then she sighed.

"It's so inexpHcable. What does it all mean?"

Philip took a sudden determination.

"I think I'd better tell you, I don't want you to think too
badly of me, I want you to see that I can't help myself. Mil-
dred's come back."

The colour came to her face.

"Why didn't you tell me at once? I deserved that surely."

"I was afraid to."

She looked at herself in the glass and set her hat straight.

"Will you call me a cab," she said. "I don't feel I can walk."

He went to the door and stopped a passing hansotn; but
when she followed him into the street he was startled to see
how white she was. There was a heaviness in her movements

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 431

as though she had suddenly grown older. She looked so ill
that he had not the heart to let her go alone.

"I'll drive back with you if you don't mind."

She did not answer, and he got into the cab. They drove
along in silence over the bridge, through shabby streets in
which children, with shrill cries, played in the road. When
they arrived at her door she did not immediately get out. It
seemed as though she could not summon enough strength to
her legs to move.

"I hope you'll forgive me, Norah," he said.

She turned her eyes towards him, and he saw that they were
bright again with tears, but she forced a smile to her lips.

"Poor fellow, you're. quite worried about me. You mustn't
bother. I don't blame you. I shall get over it all right."

Lightly and quickly she stroked his face to show him thai
she bore no ill-feeling, the gesture was scarcely more than sug-
gested; then she jumped out of the cab and let herself into
her house.

Philip paid the hansom and walked to Mildred's lodgings,
There was a curious heaviness in his heart. He was inclined
to reproach himself. But why? He did not know what else
he could have done. Passing a fruiterer's, he remembered that
Mildred was fond of grapes. He was so grateful that he could
show his love for her by recollecting every whim she had.

Chapter 72

For the next three months Philip went every day to see Mil-
dred. He took his books with him and after tea worked, while
Mildred lay on the sofa reading novels. Sometimes he wouki
look up and vvatch her for a minute. A happy smile crossed
his lips. She would feel his eyes upon her.

432 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Don't waste your time looking at me, silly. Go on with your
work," she said.

"Tyrant," he answered gaily.

He put aside his book when the landlady came in to lay the
cloth for dinner, and in his high spirits he exchanged chaff
with her. She was a httle cockney, of middle-age, with an
amusing humour and a quick tongue. Mildred had become
great friends with her and had given her an elaborate but
tnendacious account of the circumstances which had brought
her to the pass she was in. The good-hearted little woman
was touched and found no trouble too great to make Mildred
comfortable. Mildred's sense of propriety had suggested that
Philip should pass himself off as her brother. They dined
together, and Philip was delighted when he had ordered some-
thing which tempted Mildred's capricious appetite. It en-
chanted him to see her sitting opposite him, and every now
and then from sheer joy he took her hand and pressed it. After
dinner she sat in the arm-chair by the fire, and he settled him-
self down on the floor beside her, leaning against her knees,
and smoked. Often they did not talk at all, and sometimes
Philip noticed that she had fallen into a doze. He dared not
move then in case he woke her, an 1 he sat very quietly, looking
lazily into the fire and enjoying his happiness.

"Had a nice little nap.?" he smiled, when she woke.

"I've not been sleeping," she answered. "I only just closed
my eyes."

She would never acknowledge that she had been asleep. She
had a phlegmatic temperament, and her condition did not
seriously inconvenience her. She took a lot of trouble about
her health and accepted the advice of anyone who chose to
offer it. She went for a 'constitutional' every morning that it
was fine and remained out a definite time. When it was not
too cold she sat in St. James' Park. But the rest of the day
she spent quite happily on her sofa, reading one novel after
another or chatting with the landlady; she had an inexhaust-
ible interest in gossip, and told Philip with abundant detail

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 433

the history of the landlady, of the lodgers on the drawing-
room floor, and of the people who lived in the next house on
either side. Now and then she was seized with panic; she
poured out her fears to Philip about the pain of the confine-
ment and was in terror lest she should die; she gave him a full
account of the confinements of the landlady and of the lady
on the drawing-room floor (Mildred did not know her; "I'm
one to keep myself to myself," she said, "I'm not one to go
about with anybody.") and she narrated details with a queer
mixture of horror and gusto; but for the most part she looked
forward to the occurrence with equanimity.

"After all, I'm not the first one to have a baby, am I.'' And
the doctor says I shan't have any trouble. You see, it isn't as if
I wasn't well made."

Mrs. Owen, the owner of the house she was going to when
her time came, had recommended a doctor, and Mildred saw
him once a week. He was to charge fifteen guineas.

"Of course I could have got it done cheaper, but Mrs. Owen
strongly recommended him, and I thought it wasn't worth
while to spoil the ship for a coat of tar."

"If you feel happy and comfortable I don't mind a bit about
the expense," said Philip, o.

She accepted all that PhiUp did for her as if it were the most
natural thing in the world, and on his side he loved to spend
money on her : each five-pound note he gave her caused him a
little thrill of happiness and pride; he gave her a good many,
for she was not economical.

"I don't know where the money goes to," she said herself,
"it seems to sHp through my fingers Uke water."

"It doesn't matter," said Philip. "I'm so glad to be able to
do anything I can for you."

She could not sew well and so did not make the necessary
things for the baby; she told Philip it was much cheaper in the
end to buy them. Philip had lately sold one of the mortgages
in which his money had been put; and now, with five hundred
pounds in the bank waiting to be invested in something rhat

434 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

could be more easily realised, he felt himself uncommonly
well-to-do. They talked often of the future. Philip was anxious
that Mildred should keep the child with her, but she refused:,
she had her living to earn, and it would be more easy to do
this if she had not also to look after a baby. Her plan was to get
back into one of the shops of the company for which she had
worked before, and the child could be put with some decent
woman in the country.

"I can find someone who'll look after it well for seven and
sixpence a week.'It'll be better for the baby and better for me."

It seemed callous to Philip, but when he tried to reason with
her she pretended to think he was concerned with the expense.

"You needn't worry about that," she said. "I shan't ask you
to pay for it."

"You know I don't care how much I pay."

At the bottom of her heart was the hope that the child
would be still-born. She did no more than hint it, but Philip
saw that the thought was there. He was shocked at first; and
then, reasoning with himself, he was obliged to confess that
for all concerned such an event was to be desired.

"It's all very fine to say this and that," Mildred remarked
querulously, "but it's jolly difficult for a girl to earn her living
by herself; it doesn't make it any easier when she's got a
baby."

"Fortunately you've got me to fall back on," smiled PhiUp,
taking her hand.

"You've been good to me, Philip."

"Oh, what rot!"

"You can't say I didn't offer anything in return for what
you've done."

"Good heavens, I don't want a return. If I've done anything
for you, I've done it because I love you. You owe me nothing.
I don't want you to do anything unless you love me."

He was a little horrified by her feeling that her body was a
■ commodity which she could deliver indifferently as an ac-
knowledgment for services rendered.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 435

"But I do want to, Philip. You've been so good to me."

"Well, it won't hurt for waiting. When you're all right again
we'll go for our little honeymoon."

"You are naughty," she said, smiling.

Mildred expected to be confined early in March, and as soon
as she was well enough she. was to go to the seaside for a
fortnight: that would give Philip a chance to work without
interruption for his examination; after that came the Easter
hoUdays, and they had arranged to go to Paris together. Philip
talked endlessly of the things they would do. Paris was de-
lightful then. They would take a room in a little hotel he
knew in the Latin Quarter, and they would eat in all sorts of
charming little restaurants; they would go to the play, and he
would take her to music-halls. It would amuse her to- meet his
friends. He had talked to her about Cronshaw, she would see
him; and there was Lawson, he had gone to Paris for a. couple
of months; and they would go to the Bal Bullier; there were
excursions; they would make trips to- Versailles, Charthes,
Fontainebleau.

"It'll cost a lot of money," she said.

"Oh, damn the expense. Think how I've been looking for-
ward to it. Don't you know what it means to me? I've never
loved anyone but you. I never shall."

She listened to his enthusiasm with smiling eyes. He thought
he saw in them a new tenderness, and he was grateful to her,
She was much gentler than she used to be. There was in her
no longer the superciliousness which had irritated him. She
was so accustomed to him now that she took no pains to keep
up before him any pretences. She no longer troubled to do her
hair with the old elaboration, but just tied it in a knot; and
she left oS the vast fringe which she generally wore: the more
careless style suited her. Her face was so thin that it made het
eyes seem very large; there were heavy lines under them, and
the pallor of her cheeks made their colour more profound. She
had a wistful look which was infinitely pathetic. There seemed
to Philip to be in her something of the Madonna. He wished

436 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

they could continue in that same way always. He was happier
than he had ever been in his life.

He used to leave her at ten o'clock every night, for she liked
to go to bed early, and he was obliged to put in another couple
of hours' work to make up for the lost evening. He generally
brushed her hair for her before he went. He had made a ritual
of the kisses he gave her when he bade her good-night; first
he kissed the palms of her hands, (how thin the fingers were,
the nails were beautiful, for she spent much time in manicur-
ing them,) then he kissed her closed eyes, first the right one
and then the left, and at last he kissed her lips. He went home
with a heart overflowing with love. He longed for an oppor-
tunity to gratify the desire for self-sacrifice which consumed
him.

Presently the time came for her to move to the nursing-
home where she was to be confined. Philip was then able to
visit her only in the afternoons. Mildred changed her story
and represented herself as the wife of a soldier who had gone
to India to join his regiment, and Philip was introduced to the
mistress of the establishment as her brother-in-law.

"I have to be rather careful what I say," she told him, "as
there's another lady here whose husband's in the Indian Civil."

"I wouldn't let that disturb me if I were you," said Philip.
"I'm convinced that her husband and yours went out on the
same boat."

"What boat?" she asked innocently.

"The Flying Dutchman."

Mildred was safely delivered of a daughter, and when
Philip was allowed to see her the child was lying by her side.
Mildred was very weak, but relieved that everything was over.
She showed him the baby, and herself looked at it curiously.

"It's a funny-looking little thing, isn't it.? I can't believe it's
mine."

It was red and wrinkled and odd. Philip smiled when he
looked at it. He did not quite know what to say; and it em-
barrassed him because the nurse who owned the house was

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 437

standing by his side; and he felt by the way she was looking
at him that, disbelieving Mildred's complicated story, she
thought he was the father.

"What are you going to call her?" asked Philip.

"I can't make up my mind if I shall call her Madeleine or
Cecilia."

The nurse left them alone for a few minutes, and Philip
bent down and kissed Mildred on the mouth.

"I'm so glad it's all over happily, darhng."

She put her thin arms round his neck.

"You have been a brick to me, Phil dear."

"Now I feel that you're mine at last. I've waited so long foi
you, my dear."

They heard the nurse at the door, and Philip hurriedly got
up. The nurse entered. There was a slight smile on her lips.

Chapter 73

Three weeks later Philip saw Mildred and her baby off to
Brighton. She had made a quick recovery and looked better
that he had ever seen her. She was going to a boarding-house
where she had spent a couple of week-ends with Emil Miller,
and had written to say that her husband was obliged to go to
Germany on business and she was coming down with her
baby. She got pleasure out of the stories she invented, and she
showed a certain fertility of invention in the working out of
the details. Mildred proposed to- find in Brighton some woman
who would be willing to take charge of the baby. Philip was
startled at the callousness with which she insisted on getting
rid of it so soon, but she argued with common sense that the
poor child had much better be put somewhere before it grew
used to her. Philip had expected the maternal instinct to make

438 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

(tself felt when she had had the baby two or three weeks and
had counted on this to help him persuade her to keep it; but
nothing of the sort occurred. Mildred was' not unkind to her
baby; she did all that was necessary; it amused her sometimes,
and she talked about it a good deal; but at heart she was in-
different to it. She could not look upon it as part of herself.
She fancied it resembled its father already. She was continually
wondering how she would manage when it grew older; and
she was exasperated with herself for being such a fool as to
have it at all.

"If I'd only known then all I do now," she said.

She laughed at Philip, because he was anxious about its wel-
fare.

"You couldn't make more fuss if you was the father," she
said. "I'd like to see Emil getting into such a stew about it."

Philip's mind was full of the stories he had heard of baby-
farming and the ghouls who ill-treat the wretched children
that selfish, cruel parents have put in their charge.

"Don't be so silly," said Mildred. "That's when you give a
woman a sum down to look after a baby. But when you're
going to pay so much a week it's to their interest to look aftei"
it well."

Philip insisted that Mildred should place the child with peo-
ple who had no children of their own and would promise to
take no other.

"Don't haggle about the price," he said. "I'd rather pay half
a guinea a week than run any risk of the kid being starved or
beaten."

"You're a funny old thing, Philip," she laughed.

To him there was something very touching in the child's
helplessness. It was small, ugly, and querulous. Its birth had
been looked forward to with shame and anguish. Nobody
wanted it. It was dependent on him, a stranger, for food,
shelter, and clothes to cover its nakedness.

As the train started he kissed Mildred. He would have
(kissed the baby too, but he was afraid she would laugh at him.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 439

"You will write to me, darling, won't you ? And I shall look
forward to your coming back with oh! such impatience."

"Mind you get through your exam."

He had been working for it industriously, and now with
only .ten days before him he made a final effort. He was very
anxious to pass, first to save himself time and expense, for
money had been slipping through his fingers during the last
four months with incredible speed; and then because this ex-
amination marked the end of the drudgery: after that the
student had to do with medicine, midwifery, and surgery, the
interest of which was more vivid than the anatomy and physi-
ology with which he had been hitherto concerned. Philip
looked forward with interest to the rest of the curriculum. Nor
did he want to have to confess to Mildred that he had failed:
though the examination was difficult and the majority of
candidates were ploughed at the first attempt, he knew that
she would think less well of him if he did not succeed;
she had a peculiarly humiliating way of showing what she
thought.

Mildred sent him a postcard to announce her safe' arrival,
and he snatched half an hour every day to write a long letter
to her. He had always a certain shyness in expressing himself
by word of mouth, but he found he could tell her, pen in
hand, all sorts of things which it would have made him feel
ridiculous to say. Profiting by the discovery he poured out to
her his whole heart. He had never been able to tell her before
how his adoration filled every part of him so that all his
actions, all his thoughts, were touched with it. He wrote to her
of the future, the happiness that lay before him, and the gratis
tude which he owed her. He asked himself (he had often
asked himself before but had never put it into words) what
it was in her that filled him with such extravagant delight; he
did not know; he knew only that when she was with him he
was happy, and when she was away from him the world was
on a sudden cold and gray; he knew only that when be
thought of her his heart seemed to grow big in his body so

440 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

that it was difficult to breathe (as if it pressed against his
lungs) and it throbbed, so that the delight of her presence was
almost pain; his knees shook, and he felt strangely weak as
though, not having eaten, he were tremulous from want of
food. He looked forward eagerly to her answers. He did not
expect her to write often, for he knew that letter-writing came
difficultly to her; and he was quite content with the clumsy
little note that arrived in reply to four of his. She spoke of the
boarding-house in which she had taken a room, of the weather
and the baby, told him she had been for a walk on the front
with a lady-friend whom she had met in the boarding-house
and who had taken such a fancy to baby, she was going to the
theatre on Saturday night, and Brighton was filling up. It
touched Philip because it was so matter-of-fact. The crabbed
style, the formality of the matter, gave him a queer desire to
laugh and to take her in his arms and kiss her.

He went into the examination with happy confidence. There
was nothing in either of the papers that gave him trouble. He
knew that he had done well, and though the second part of
the examination was vit/a voce and he was more nervous, he
managed to answer the questions adequately. He sent a tri-
umphant telegram to Mildred when the result was announced.

When he got back to his rooms Philip found a letter from
her, saying that she thought it would be better for her to stay
another week in Brighton. She had found a woman who
would be glad to take the baby for seven shillings a week, but
she wanted to make inquiries about her, and she was herself
benefiting so much by the sea-air that she was sure a few days
more would do her no end of good. She hated asking Phihp
for money, but would he send some by return, as she had had
to buy herself a new hat, she couldn't go about with her lady-
friend always in the same hat, and her lady-friend was so
dressy. PhiUp had a moment of bitter disappointment. It took
away all his pleasure at getting through his examination.

"If she loved me one quarter as much as I love her she
couldn't bear to stay away a day longer than necessary."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 441

He put the thought away from him quickly; it was pure
selfishness; of course her health was more important than any-
thing else. But he had nothing to do now; he might spend the
week with her in Brighton, and they could be together all day.
His heart leaped at the thought. It would be amusing to ap-
pear before Mildred suddenly with the information that he
had taken a room in the boarding-house. He looked out trains.
But he paused. He was not certain that she would be pleased
to see him; she had made friends in Brighton; he was quiet,
and she liked boisterous joviality; he realised that she amused
herself more with other people than with him. It would
torture him if he felt for an instant that he was in the way.
He was afraid to risk it. He dared not even write and suggest
that, with nothing to keep him in town, he would like to
spend the week where he could see her every day. She knew
he had nothing to do; if she wanted him to come she would
have asked him to. He dared not risk the anguish he would
suffer if he proposed to come and she made excuses to prevent
him.

He wrote to her next day, sent her a five-pound note, and at
the end of his letter said that if she were very nice and cared
to see him for the week-end he would be glad to run down;
but she was by no means to alter any plans she had made. He
awaited her answer with impatience. In it she said that if she
had only known before she could have arranged it, but she
had promised to- go to a music-hall on the Saturday night;
besides, it would make the people at the boarding-house talk
if he stayed there. Why did he not come on Sunday morning
and spend the day.? They could lunch at the Metropole, and
she would take him afterwards to see the very superior lady-
like person who was going to take the baby.

Sunday. He blessed the day because it was fine. As the train
approached Brighton the sun poured through the carriage
window. Mildred was waiting for him on the platform.

"How jolly of you to come and meet me!" he cried, as he
seized her hands.

442 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"You expected me, didn't you?"

"I hoped you would. I say, how well you're looking."

"It's done me a rare lot of good, but I think I'm wise to stay
here as long as I can. And there are a very nice class of people
at the boarding-house. I wanted cheering up after seeing no-
body all these months. It was dull sometimes."

She looked very smart in her new hat, a large black straw
with a great many inexpensive flowers on it; and round her
neck floated a long boa of imitation swansdown. She was still
very thin, and she stooped a little when she walked, (she had
always done that,) but her eyes did not seem so large; and
though she never had any colour, her skin had lost the earthy
look it had. They walked down to the sea. Philip, remember-
ing he had not walked with her for months, grew suddenly
conscious of his limp and walked stiffly in the attempt to
conceal it.

"Are you glad to see me?" he asked, love dancing madly in
his heart.

"Of course I am. You needn't ask that."

"By the way, Griffiths sends you his love."

"What cheek!"

He had talked to her a great deal of Griffiths. He had told
her how flirtatious he was and had amused her often with the
narration of some adventure which Griffiths under the seal
of secrecy had imparted to him. Mildred had Ustened, with
some pretence of disgust sometimes, but generally with curi-
osity; and Philip, admiringly, had enlarged upon his friend's
good looks and charm.

"I'm sure you'll Uke him just as much as I do. He's so jolly
and amusing, and he's such an awfully good sort."

Philip told her how, when they were perfect strangers,
Griffiths had nursed him through an illness; and in the telling
Griffiths' self-sacrifice lost nothing.

"You can't help liking him," said Philip.

"I don't like good-looking men," said Mildred. "They're too
conceited for me."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 443

"He wants to know you. I've talked to him about you an
awful lot."

"What have you said?" asked Mildred.

Philip had no one but Griffiths to talk to of his love for
Mildred, and little by little had told him the whole story oi
his connection with her. He described her to him fifty times.
He dwelt amorously on every detail of her appearance, and
Griffiths knew exactly how her thin hands were shaped and
how white her face was, and he laughed at Philip when he
talked of the charm of her pale, thin lips.

"By Jove, I'm glad I don't take things so badly as that," he
said, "Life wouldn't be worth living." . .•

Philip smiled. Griffiths did not know the delight of being
so madly in love that it was like meat and wine and the air
one breathed and whatever, else was essential to existence.
Griffiths knew that Philip had looked after the girl while she
was having her baby and was- now going away with her.

"Well, I must say you've deserved to get something," he
remarked. "It must have cost you a pretty penny. It's lucky
you can afford it."

"I can't," said Philip. "But what do I care!"

Since it was early for luncheon, Philip and Mildred sat in
one of the shelters on the parade, sunning themselves, and
watched the people pass. There were the Brighton, shop-boys
who walked in twos and threes, swinging their canes, and
there were the Brighton, shop-girls who tripped along in gig-
gling bunches. They could tell the people who had come down
from London for the day; the keen air gave a fillip to their
weaririess. There were many Jews, stout ladies in tight satin
dresses and diamonds, little corpulent men with a gesticulative
manner. There were middle-aged gentlemen spending a week'
end in one of the large hotels, carefully dressed; and thej
walked industriously after too substantial a breakfast to give
themselves an appetite for too substantial a luncheon: they
exchanged the time of day with friends and talked of Dr,
Brighton or London-by-the-Sea. Here and there a well-known i

444 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

actor passed, elaborately unconscious of the attention he ex-
cited: sometimes he wore patent leather boots, a coat with an
astrakhan collar, and carried a silver-knobbed stick; and some-
times, looking as though he had come from a day's shooting,
he strolled in knickerbockers, and ulster of Harris tweed, and
a tweed hat on the back of his head. The sun shone on the
blue sea, and the blue sea was trim and neat.

After luncheon they went to Hove to see the woman who
was to take charge of the baby. She lived in a small house in a
back street, but it was clean and tidy. Her name was Mrs.
Harding. She was an elderly, stout person, with gray hair and
a red, fleshy face. She looked motherly in her cap, and Philip
thought she seemed kind.

"Won't you find it an awful nuisance to look after a baby.'"'
he asked her.

She explained that her husband was a curate, a good deal
older than herself, who had difficulty in getting permanent
work, since vicars wanted young men to assist them; he
earned a little now and then by doing locums when someone
took a holiday or fell ill, and a charitable institution gave
therri a small pension; but her life was lonely, it would be
something to do to look after a child, and the few shillings a
week paid for it would help her to keep things going. She
promised that it should be well fed.

"Quite the lady, isn't she?" said Mildred, when they went
away.

They went back to have tea at the Metropole. Mildred liked
the crowd and the band. PhiUp was tired of talking, and he
watched her face as she looked with keen eyes at the dresses
of the women who came in. She had a peculiar sharpness for
reckoning up what things cost, and now and then she leaned
over to him and whispered the result of her meditations.

"D'you see that aigrette there ? That cost every bit of seven
guineas."

Or: "Look at that ermine, Philip. That's rabbit, that is—

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 445

that's not ermine." She laughed triumphantly. "I'd know it a
mile off."

Philip smiled happily. He was glad to see her pleasure, and
the ingenuousness of her conversation amused and touched
him. The band played sentimental music.

After dinner they walked down to the station, and Philip
took her arm. He told her what arrangements he had made
for their journey to France. She was to come up to London al
the end of the week, but she told him that she could not go
away till the Saturday of the week after that.- He had already
engaged a room in a hotel in Paris. He was looking forward
eagerly to taking the tickets.

"You won't mind going second-class, will you ? We mustn't
be extravagant, and it'll be all the better if we can do ourselves
pretty well when we get there."

He had talked to her a hundred times of the Quarter. They
would wander through its pleasant old streets, and they would
sit idly in the charming gardens of the Luxembourg. If the
weather was fine perhaps, when they had had enough of Paris,
they might go to Fontainebleau. The trees would be just
bursting into leaf. The green of the forest ia spring was more
beautiful than anything he knew; it was like a song, and it
was like the happy pain of love.- Mildred listened quietly. He
turned to- her and tried to look deep into her eyes.

"You do want to come, don't you?" he said.

"Of course I do," she smiled.

"You don't know how I'm looking forward to it. I don't
know how I shall get through the next days. I'm so afraid
something will happen to prevent it. It maddens me some-
times that I can't tell you how much I love you. And at last,
at last . . ."

He broke off.. They reached the station, but they had
dawdled on the way, and Philip had barely time to say good-
night. He kissed her quickly and ran towards the wicket as
fast as he could. She stood where he left her. He was strangely
grotesque when he ran.

446 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 74

The. following Saturday Mildred returned, and that evening
Philip kept her to himself. He took seats for the play, and
they drank champagne at dinner. It was her first gaiety in
London for so long that she enjoyed everything ingenuously.
She cuddled up to Philip when they drove from the theatre
to the room he had taken for her in Pimlico.

"I really believe you're quite glad to see? me," he said.

She did not answer, but gently pressed his hand. Demon-
strations of affection were so rare with her that Philip was
enchanted.

"I've asked Griffiths to dine with us tomorrow," he told her.

"Oh, I'm glad you've done that. I wanted to meet him."

There was no place of entertainment to take her to on Sun-
day night, and Philip was afraid she would be bored if she
were alone with him all day. Griffiths was amusing; he would
help them to get through the evening; and Philip was so fond
of them both that he ^vanted them to know and to like one
another. He left Mildred with the words :

"Only six days more."

They had arranged to dine in the gallery at Romano's on
Sunday, because the dinner was excellent and looked as
though it cost a good deal more than it did. Philip and
Mildred arrived first and had to wait some time for Griffiths.

"He's an unpunctual devil," said Philip. "He's probably
making love to one of his numerous flames."

But presently he appeared. He was a handsome creature, tall
and thin; his head was placed well on the body, it gave him
a conquering air which was attractive; and his curly hair, his
bold, friendly blue eyes, his red mouth, were charming. Philip

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 447

.saw Mildred look at him with appreciation, and he felt a curi-
ous satisfaction. Griffiths greeted them with a smile.

"I've heard a great deal about you," he said to Mildred, as
he took her hand.

"Not so much as I've heard about you," she answered.

"Nor so bad," said PhiHp.

"Has he been blackening my character.?"

Griffiths laughed, and Philip saw that Mildred noticed how
white and regular his teeth were and how pleasant his smile.

"You ought to feel like old friends," said Philip. "I've talked
so much about you to one another."

Griffiths was in the best possible humour, for, having at
length passed his final examination, he was qualified, and he
had just been appointed house-surgeon at a hospital in the
North of London. He was taking up his duties at the be-
ginning of May and meanwhile was going home for a holiday;
this was his last week in town, and he was determined to get
as much enjoyment into it as he could. He began to talk the
gay nonsense which Philip admired because he could not copy
it. There was nothing much in what he said, but his vivacity
gave it point. There flowed from him a force of life which
affected everyone who knew him; it was almost as sensible as
bodily warmth. Mildred was more lively than Philip had ever
known her, and he was delighted to see that his little party
was a success. She was amusing herself enormously. She
laughed louder and louder. She quite forgot the genteel re-
serve which had become second nature to her.

Presently Griffiths said:

"I say, it's dreadfully difficult for me to call you Mrs. Miller,
Philip never calls you anything but Mildred."

"I daresay she won't scratch your eyes out if you call her
that too," laughed Philip.

"Then she must call me Harry."

PhiHp sat silent while they chattered away and thought how
good it was to see people happy. Now and then Griffiths
teased him a little, kindly, because he v/as always so serious.

448 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I believe he's quite fond of you, Philip," smiled Mildred.

"He isn't a bad old thing," answered Griffiths, and taking
Philip's hand he shook it gaily.

It seemed an added charm in Griffiths that he liked Philip.
They were all sober people, and the wine they had drunk
went to their heads. Griffiths became more talkative and so
boisterous that Philip, amused, had to beg him to be quiet. He
had a gift for story-telling, and his adventures lost nothing of
their romance and their laughter in his narration. He played
in all of them a gallant, humorous part. Mildred, her eyes
shining with excitement, urged him on. He poured out anec-
dote after anecdote. When the lights began to be turned out
she was astonished.

"My word, the evening has gone quickly. I thought it wasn't
more than half past njne."

They got up to go and when she said good-bye, she added:

"I'm coming to have tea at Philip's room tomorrow. You
might look in if you can."

"All right," he smiled.

On the way back to Pimlico Mildred talked of nothing but
Griffiths. She was taken with his good looks, his well-cut
clothes, his voice, his gaiety.

"I am glad you like him," said Phihp. "D'you remember "ou
were rather sniffy about meeting him?"

"I think it's so nice of him to be so fond of you, Philip. He
is a nice friend for you to have."

She put up her face to Philip for him to kiss her. It was a
thing she did rarely.

"I have enjoyed myself this evening, Philip. Thank you so
much."

"Don't be so absurd," he laughed, touched by her appreci-
ation so that he felt the moisture come to his eyes.

She opened her door and just before she went in, turned
again to Philip.

"Tell Harry I'm madly in love with him," she said.

"All right," he laughed. "Good-night."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 449

Next day, when they were having tea, Griffiths came in. He
sank lazily into an arm-chair. There was something strangely
sensual in the slow movements of his large limbs. Philip re-
mained silent, while , the others chattered away, but he was
enjoying himself. He admired them both so much that it
seemed natural enough for them to admire one another. He
did not care if Griffiths absorbed Mildred's attention, he
would have her to himself during the evening: he had some-
thing the attitude of a loving husband, confident in his wife's
aflection, who looks on with amusement while she flirts harm-
Icssly with a stranger. But at half past seven he looked at his
watch and said:

"It's about time we went out to dinner, Mildred."

There was a moment's pause, and Griffiths seemed to be
considering.

"Well, I'll be getting along," he said at last. "I didn't know
it was so late."

"Are you doing anything tonight?" asked Mildreds

"No."

There was another silence. Philip felt slightly irritated.

"I'll just go and have a wash," he said, and to' Mildred he
added: "Would you like to wash your hands?"

She did not answer him.

"Why don't you come and dine with us?" she said ttj
Griffiths.

He looked at Philip and saw him staring at him sombrely.

"I dined with you last night," he laughed. "I should be in
the way."

"Oh, that doesn't matter," insisted Mildred. "Make him
come, Philip. He won't be in the way, will he?"

"Let him come by all means if he'd like to."

"All right, then," said Griffiths promptly. "I'll just go up-
stairs and tidy myself."

The moment he left the room Philip turned to Mildred

angrily. .

"Why on earth did you ask him to dine with us.-*

450 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I couldn't help myself. It would have looked so funny to
say nothing when he said he wasn't doing anything."

"Oh, what rot! And why the hell .did you ask him if he
was doing anything?"

Mildred's pale lips tightened a little.

"I want a little amusement sometimes. I get tired always
being alone with you."

They heard Griffiths coming heavily down the stairs, and
Philip wenf into his bed-room to wash. They dined in the
neighbourTiood in an Itahan restaurant. Philip was cross and
silent, but he quickly realised that he was showing to disad-
■vantage in comparison with Griffiths, and he forced himself
to hide his annoyance. He drank a good deal of wine to
destroy the pain that was gnawing at his heart, and he set
iiimself to talk. Mildred, as though remorseful for what she
had said, did all she could to make herself pleasant to him.
5he was kindly and affectionate. Presently Philip began to
think he had been a fool to surrender to a feeling of jealousy.
After dinner when they got into a hansom to drive to a
music-hall Mildred, sitting between the two men, of her own
accord gave- him her hand. His anger vanished. Suddenly, he
knew not how, he grew conscious that Griffiths was holding
her other hand. The pain seized him again violently, it vvas
a. real physical pain, and he asked himself, panic-stricken,
what he might have asked himself before, whether Mildred
and Griffiths were in love with one another. He could not see
anything of the performance on account of the mist of sus-
picion, anger, dismay, and wretchedness which seemed to
be before his eyes; but he forced himself to conceal the fact
that anything was the matter; he went on talking and laugh-
,ing. Then a strange desire to torture himself seized him, and
he got up, saying he wanted to go and drink something.
Mildred and Griffiths had never been alone together for a
moment. He wanted to leave them by themselves.

"I'll come too," said Griffiths. "I've got rather a thirst on."

"Oh, nonsense, you stay and talk to Mildred."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 451

Philip did not know why he said that. He was throwing
them together now to make the pain he suffered more
intolerable. He did not go to the bar, but up into the balcony,
from where he could watch them and not be seen. They had
ceased to look at the stage and were smiling into one another's
eyes. Griffiths was talking with his usual happy fluency and
Mildred seemed to hang on his hps. Philip's head began to
ache frightfully. He stood there motionless. He knew he
would be in the way if he went back. They were enjoying
themselves without him, and he was suffering, suffering. Time
passed, and now he had an extraordinary shyness about
rejoining them. He knew they had not thought of him at all,
and he reflected bitterly that he had paid for the dinner and
their seats in the music-hall. 'What a fool they were making
of him! He was hot with shame. He could see how happy
they were without him. His instinct was to leave them to
themselves and go home, but he had not his hat and coat, and
it would necessitate endless explanations. He went back. He
felt a shadow of annoyance in Mildred's eyes when she saw
him, and his heart sank.

"You've been a devil of a time," said Griffiths, with a
smile of welcome.

"I met some men I knew. I've been talking to them, and
I couldn't get away. I thought you'd be all right together."

"I've been enjoying myself thoroughly," said Griffiths. "I
don't know about Mildred."

She gave a little laugh of happy complacency. There was a
vulgar sound in the riilg of it that horrified Philip. He sug-
gested that they should go.

"Come on," said Griffiths, "we'll both drive you home."

Philip suspected that she had suggested that arrangement
'so that she might not be left alone with him. In the cab he
did not take her hand nor did she offer it, and he knew all
the time that she was holding Griffiths'. His chief thought
was that it was all so horribly vulgar. As they drove along he
asked himself what plans they had made to meet without

452 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

his knowledge, he cursed himself for having left them alone,
he had actually gone out of his way to enable them to arrange
things.

"Let's keep the cab," said Philip, when they reached the
house in which Mildred was lodging. "I'm too tired to walk
home."

On the way back Griffiths talked gaily and seemed indiffer-
ent to the fact that Philip answered in monosyllables. Philip
felt he must notice that something was the matter. Philip's
silence at last grew too significant to struggle against, and
Griffiths, suddenly nervous, ceased talking. Philip wanted to
say something, but he was so shy he could hardly bring him-
self to, and yet the time was passing and the opportunity
would be lost. It was best to get at the truth at once. He
forced himself to speak.

"Are you in love with Mildred.?" he asked suddenly.

"I?" Griffiths laughed. "Is that what you've been so funny
about this evening .i^ Of course not, my dear old man."

He tried to slip his hand through Philip's arm, but Philip
drew himself away. He knew Griffiths was lying. He could
not bring himself to force Griffiths to tell him th^t he had
not been holding the girl's hand. He suddenly feliPvery weak
and broken.

"It doesn't matter to you, Harry," he said. "You've got so
many women — don't take her away from me. It means my
whole life. I've been so awfully wretched."

His voice broke, and he could not prevent the sob that was
torn from him. He was horribly ashamed of himself.

"My dear old boy, you know I wouldn't do anything to
hurt you. I'm far too fond of you for that. I was only playing
the fool. If I'd known you were going to take it Hke that
I'd have been more careful."

"Is that true?" asked Philip.

"I don't care a twopenny damn for her. I give you my
'vord of honour."

Philip gave a sigh of relief. The cab stopped at their door.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 453

Chapter 75

Next day Philip was in a good temper. He was very anxious
not to bore Mildred with too much of his society, and so had
arranged that he should not see her till dinner-time. She
was ready when he fetched her, and he chaffed her for her
unwonted punctuaHty. She was wearing a new dress he had
given her. He remarked on its smartness.

"It'll have to go back and be altered," she said. "The skirt
hangs all wrong."

"You'll have to make the dressmaker hurry up if you want
to take it to Paris with you."

"It'll be ready in time for that."

"Only three more whole days. We'll go over by the eleveir
o'clock, shall we.?"

"If you like."

He wou'ii have her for nearly a month entirely to himself
His eyes rested on her with hungry adoration. He was ablf.'
to laugh a Httle at his own passion.

"I wonder what it is I see in you," he smiled.

"That's a nice thing to say," she answered..

Her body was so thin that one could almost see her skeleton.
Her chest was as flat as a boy's. Her mouth, with its narrow
pale lips, was ugly, and her skin was faintly green.

"I shall give you Blaud's Pills in quantities when we're
away," said Philip, laughing. "I'm going to bring you bad'
fat and rosy."

"I don't want to get fat," she said.

She did not speak of Griffiths, and presently while they
were dining Philip half in malice, for he felt sure of himself
and his power over her, said:

454 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"It seems to me you were having a great flirtation with
Harry last night?"

"I told you I was in love with him," she laughed.

"I'm glad to know that he's not in love with you."

"How d'you know?"

"I asked him."

She hesitated a moment, looking at Philip, and a curious
j;leam came into her eyes.

"Would you like to read a letter I had from him this
morning?"

She handed him an envelope and PhiUp recognised Grif-
fith's bold, legible writing. There were eight pages. It was
well written, frank and charming; it was the letter of a man
who was used to making love to women. He told Mildred
that he loved her passionately, he had fallen in love with
her the first moment he saw her; he did not want to love her,
for he knew how fond Philip was of her, but he could not
help himself. Philip was such a dear, and he was very much
ashamed of himself, but it was not his fault, he was just
carried away. He paid her dehghtful comphments. Finally
he thanked her for consenting to lunch with him next day
and said he was dreadfully impatient to see her. Philip noticed
that the letter was dated the night before; Griffiths must have
written it after leaving Philip, and had taken the trouble to
go out and post it when PhiUp thought he was in bed.

He read it with a sickening palpitation of his heart, but
gave no outward sign of surprise. He handed it back to Mil-
dred with a smile, calmly.

"Did you enjoy your lunch?"

"Rather," she said emphatically.

He felt that his hands were trembHng, so he put them
under the table.

"You mustn't take Griffiths too seriously. He's just a butter-
fly, you know."

She took the letter and looked at it again.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 455

"I can't help it either," she said, in a voice which she tried
to make nonchalant. "I don't know what's come over me."

"It's a little awkward for me, isn't it?" said Philip.

She gave him a quick look.

"You're taking it pretty calmly, I must say."

"What do you expect me to do.? Do you want me to tear
out my hair in handfuls.?"

"I knew you'd be angry with me."

"The fiinny thing is, I'm not at all. I ought to have known
this would happen. I was a fool ,to bring you together. I
know perfectly well that he's got every advantage over me;
he's much jollier, and he's very handsome, he's more amusing,
he can talk to you about the things that interest you."

"I don't know what you mean by that. If I'm not clever I
can't help it, but I'm not the fool you think I am, not by a
long way, I can tell you. You're a bit too superior for me, my
young friend."

"D'you want to quarrel with me.?" he asked mildly.

"No, but I don't see why you should treat me as if I was
I don't know what."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. I just wanted to
talk things over quietly. We don't want to make a mess ol
them if we can help it. I saw you were attracted by him and
it seemed to me very natural. The only thing that really
hurts me is that he should have encouraged you. He knew
how awfully keen I was on you. I think it's rather shabby of
him to have written that letter to you five minutes after he
told me he didn't care twopence about you."

"If you think you're going to make me like him any the
less by saying nasty things about him, you're mistaken."

Philip was silent for a moment. He did not know what

words he could use to make her see his point of view. He

wanted to speak coolly and deliberately, but he was in such

a turmoil of emotion that he could not clear his thoughts.

"It's not worth while sacrificing everything for an infatua-

456 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

tion that you know can't last. After all, he doesn't care for
anyone more than ten days, and you're rather cold; that
sort of thing doesn't mean very much to you."

"That's what you think."

She made it more difficult for him by adopting a cantank-
oerous tone.

"If you're in love with him you can't help it. I'll just bear
it as best I can. We get on very well together, you and I,
and I've not behaved badly to you, have I ? I've always known
that you're not in love with me, but you Uke me all right,
and when we get over to Paris you'll forget about Griffiths.
If you make up your mind to put him out of your thoughts
you won't find it so hard as all that, and I've deserved that
you should do something for me."

She did not answer, and they went on eating their dinner.
When the silence grew oppressive Philip began to talk of
indifferent things. He pretended not to notice that Mildred
was inattentive. Her answers were perfunctory, and she-volun-
teered no remarks of her own. At last she interrupted abruptly
what he was saying:

"Philip, I'm afraid I shan't be able to go away on Saturday.
The doctor says I oughtn't to."

He knew this was not true, but he answered :

"When will you be able to come away.?"

She glanced at him, saw that his face was white and rigid,
and looked nervously away. She was at that moment a little
afraid of him.

"I may as well tell you and have done with it, I can't come
away with you at all."

' "I thought you were driving at that. It's too late to change
your mind now. I've got the tickets and everything."

"You said you didn't wish me to go unless I wanted it too,
and I don't."

"I've changed my mind. I'm not going to have any more
tricks played with me. You must come."

"I like you very much, Philip, as a friend. But I can't bear

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 457

to think of anything else. I don't Uke you that way. I couldn't,
Philip."

"You were quite willing to a week ago."

'It was different then."

"You hadn't met Griffiths.?"

"You said yourself I couldn't help it if I'm in love with him."

Her face was set into a sulky look, and she kept her eyes
fixed on her plate. Philip was white with rage. He would
have liked to hit her in the face with his clenched fist, and
in fancy he saw how she would look with a black eye. There
were two lads of eighteen dining at a table near them, and
now and then they looked at Mildred; he wondered if they
envied him dining with a pretty girl; perhaps they were wish-
ing they stood in his shoes. It was Mildred who broke the
silence.

"What's the good of our going away together.? I'd be
thinking of him all the time. It wouldn't be much fun for you."

"That's my business," he answered.

She thought over all his reply implicated, and she reddened.

"But that's just beastly."

"What of it.?"

"I thought you were a gentleman in every sense of the
word."

"You were mistaken."

His reply entertained him, and he laughed as he said it.

"For God's sake don't laugh," she cried. "I can't come away
with you, Philip. I'm awfully sorry. I know I haven't behaved
well to you, but one can't force themselves."

"Have you forgotten that when you were in trouble I did
everything for you.? I planked out the money to keep you
till your baby was born, I paid for your doctor and every-
thing, I paid for you to go to Brighton, and I'm paying for
the keep of your baby, I'm paying for your clothes, I'm paying
for every stitch you've got on now." ^

"If you was a gentleman you wouldn't throw what you ve
done for me in my face."

458 O F HI U M A J\ a.U JN U A U ii

"Oh, for goodness' sake, shut up. What d'you suppose I care
if I'm a gentleman or not? If I were a gentleman I shouldn't
waste my time with a vulgar slut like yon. I don't care a
damn if you like me or not. I'm sick of being made a blasted
fool of. You're jolly well coming to Paris with me on Saturday
or you can take the consequences."

Her cheeks were red with anger, and when she answered
her voice had the hard commonness which she concealed
generally by a genteel enunciation.

"I never liked you, not from the beginning, but you forced
yourself on me, I always hated it when you kissed me. I
wouldn't let you touch me now not if I was starving."

Philip tried to swallow the food on his plate, but the
muscles of his throat refused to act. He gulped down some-
thing to drink and lit a cigarette. He was trembling in every
part. He did not speak. He waited for her to move, but she
sat in silence, staring at the white tablecloth. If they had been
alone he would have flung his arms round her and kissed
her passionately; he fancied the throwing back of her long
white throat as he pressed upon her mouth with his lips.
They passed an hour without speaking, and at last Philip
thought the waiter began to stare at them curiously. He
called for the bill.

"Shall we go?" he said then, in an even tone.

She did not reply, but gathered together her bag and her
gloves. She put on her coat.

"When are you seeing Griffiths again?"

"Tomorrow," she answered indifferently.

"You'd better talk it over with him."

She opened her bag mechanically and saw a piece of paper
in it. She took it out.

"Here's the bill for this dress," she said hesitatingly

"What of it?"

"I promised I'd give her the money tomorrow "

"Did you?"

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 459

"Does that mean you won't pay for it after having told me
I could get it?"

"It does."

"I'll ask Harry," she said, flushing quickly.

"He'll be glad to help you. He owes ine seven pounds at
the moment, and he pawned his microscope last week, be-
cause he was so broke."

"You needn't think you can frighten me by that. I'm quite
capable of earning my own living."

"It's the best thing you can do. I don't propose to give you
a farthing more."

She thought of her rent due on Saturday and the baby's
keep, but did not say anything. They left the restaurant, and
in the street Philip asked her :

"Shall I call a cab for you.? I'm gding to take a little stroll."

"I haven't got any money. I had to pay a bill this afternoon."

"It won't hurt you to walk. If you want to see me tomorrow
I shall be in about tea-time."

He took of? his hat and sauntered away. He looked round
in a moment and saw that she was standing helplessly where
he had left her, looking at the traffic. He went back and with a
laugh pressed a coin into her hand.

"Here's two bob for you to get home with."

Before she could speak he hurried away.

Chapter 76

Next day, in the afternoon, Philip sat in his room and won-
dered whether Mildred would come. He had slept badly. He
had spent the morning in the club of the Medical School,
reading one newspaper after another. It was the vacation and

460 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

few students he knew were in London, but he found one or
two people to talk to, he played a game of chess, and so wore
out the tedious hours. After luncheon he felt so tired, his
head was aching so, that he went back to his lodgings and
lay down; he tried to read a novel. He had not seen Griffiths.
He was not in when Philip returned the night before; he
heard him come back, but he did not as' usual look into
Philip's room to see if he was asleep; and in the morning
Philip heard him go out early. It was clear that he wanted
to avoid him. Suddenly there was a light tap at his door.
Philip sprang to his feet and opened it. Mildred stood on the
threshold. She did not move.

"Come in," said Philip.

He closed the door after her. She sat down. She hesitated to
begin.

"Thank you for giving me that two shillings last night,"
she said.

"Oh, that's all right."

She gave him a faint smile. It reminded Philip of the
timid, ingratiating look of a puppy that has been beaten for
naughtiness and wants to reconcile himself with his master.

"I've been lunching with Harry," she said.

"Have you?"

"If you still want me to go away with you on Saturday,
PhiHp, I'll come."

A quick thrill of triumph shot through his heart, but it
was a sensation that only lasted an instant; it was followed
by a suspicion.

"Because of the money.?" he asked.

"Partly," she answered simply. "Harry can't do anything.
He owes five weeks here, and he owes you seven pounds, and
his tailor's pressing him for money. He'd pawn anythino- he
could, but he's pawned everything already. I had a job to
put the woman off about my new dress, and on Saturday
there's the book at my lodgings, and I can't get work in five

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 461

minutes. It always means waiting some little time till there's
a vacancy."

She said all this in an even, querulous tone, as though she
were recounting the injustices of fate, which had to be borne
as part of the natural order of things. Philip did not answer.
He knew what she told him well enough.

"You said partly," he observed at last.

"Well, Harry says you've been a brick to both of us. You've
been a real good friend to him, he says, and you've done for
me what p'raps no other man would have done. We must
do the straight thing, he says. And he said what you said
about him, that he's fickle by nature, he's not like you, and I
should be a fool to throw you away for him. He won't last
and you will, he says so himself."

"D'you want to come away with me.?" asked Philip.

"I don't mind."

He looked at her, and the corners of his mouth turned
down in an expression of misery. He had triumphed indeed,
and he was going to have his way. He gave a little laugh of
derision at his own humiliation. She looked at him quickly,
but did not speak.

"I've looked forward with all my soul to going away with
you, and I thought at last, after all that wretchedness, I was
going to be happy . . ."

He did not finish what he was going to say. And then on
a sudden, without warning, Mildred broke into a storm of
tears. She was sitting in the chair in which Norah had sat
and wept, and like her she hid her face on the back of it,
towards the side where there was a little bump formed by
the sagging in the middle, where the head had rested.

"I'm not lucky with women," thought Philip.

Her thin body was shaken with sobs. Philip had never seen
a woman, cry with such an utter abandonment. It was hor-
ribly painful, and his heart was torn. Without reahsing what
he did, he went up to her and put his arms round her; she
did not resist, but in her wretchedness surrendered herself

462 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

to his comforting. He whispered to hef little words of solace.
He scarcely knew what he was saying, he bent over her and
kissed her repeatedly.

"Are you awfully unhappy?" he said at last.

"I wish I was dead," she moaned. "I wish I'd died when
the baby come."

Her hat was in her way, and Philip took it off for her. He
placed her head more comfortably in the chair, and then he
r/ent and sat down at the table and looked at her.

"It is awful, love, isn't it.?" he said. "Fancy anyone wanting
to be in love."

Presently the violence of her sobbing diminished and she
sat in the chair, exhausted, with her head thrown back
and her arms hanging by her side. She had the grotesque
look of one of those painters' dummies used to hang dra-
peries on.

"I didn't know you loved him so much as all that," said
Philip.

He understood Griffiths' love well enough, for he put him-
self in Griffiths' place and saw with his eyes, touched with his
hands; he was able to think himself in Griffiths' body, and
he kissed her with his lips, smiled at her with his smiling blue
eyes. It was her emotion that surprised him. He had never
thought hei" capable of passion, and this was passion: there
Was no mistaking it. Something seemed to give way in his
heart; it really fek to him as though something were breaking,
and he felt strangely weak.

"I don't want to make you unhappy. You needn't come
away with me if you don't want to. I'll give you the money
all the same."

She shook her head.

"No, I said I'd come, and I'll come."

"What's the good, if you're sick with love for him.?"

"Yes, that's the word. I'm sick with love. I know it won't
'ast, just as well as he does, but just now . . ,"

She paused and shut her eyes as though she were going to

OF HUMAN BUNUAGE 463

faint. A strange idea came to Philip, and he spoke it as it
came, without stopping to tl;iink it out.

"Why don't you go away with him?"

"How can I? You know we haven't got the money."

"I'll give you the money."

"You?"

She sat up and looked at him. Her eyes began to shine,
and the colour came into her cheeks.

"Perhaps the best thing would be to get it over, and then
you'd come back to me."

Now that he had made the suggestion he was sick with
anguish, and yet the torture of it gave him a strange, subtle
sensation. She stared at him with open eyes.

"Oh, how could we, on your money ? Harry wouldn't think
of it."

"Oh yes, he would, if you persuaded him."

Her objections made him insist, and yet he wanted her
with all his heart to refuse vehemently.

"I'll give you a fiver, and you can go away from Saturday
to Monday. You could easily do that. On Monday he's going
home till he takes up his appointment at the North London."

"Oh, Philip, do you mean that?" she cried, clasping her
hands. "If you could only let us go — I would love you so much
afterwards, I'd do anything for you. I'm sure I shall get over
it if you'll only do that. Would you really give us the money ? "

"Yes," he said.

She was entirely changed now. She began to laugh. He
could see that she was insanely happy. She got up and knelt
down by Philip's side, taking his hands.

"You are a brick, Philip. You're the best fellow I've ever
known. Won't you be angry with me afterwards?"

.He shook his head, smiling, but with what agony in his
heart!

"May I go and tell Harry now? And can I say to him that
you don't mind? He won't consent unless you promise it
doesn't matter. Oh, you don't know how I love him! And

464 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

afterwards I'll do anything you like. I'll come over to Paris
with you or anywhere on Monday."

She got up and put on her hat.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to ask him if he'll take me."

"Already?"

"D'you want me to stay? I'll stay if you like."

She sat down, but he gave a little laugh.

"No, it doesn't matter, you'd better go at once. There's only
one thing: I can't bear to see GriiBths just now, it would
hurt me too awfully. Say I have no ill-feeling towards him
or anything like that, but ask him to keep out of my way."

"All right." She sprang up and put on her gloves. "I'll let
you know what he says."

"You'd better dine with me tonight."

"Very well." *

She put up her face for him to kiss her, and when he
pressed his lips to hers she threw her arms round his neck.

"You are a darling, Philip."

She sent him a note a couple of hours later to say that she
had a headache and could not dine with him. Philip had
almost expected it. He knew that she was dining with Grif-
fiths. He was horribly jealous, but the sudden passion which
had seized the pair of them seemed like something that had
come from the outside, as though a god had visited them
with it, and he felt himself helpless. It seemed so natural that
they should love one another. He saw all the advantages that
Griffiths had over himself and confessed that in Mildred's
place he would have done as Mildred did. What hurt him
most was Griffiths' treachery; they had been such good friends,
and Griffiths knew how passionately devoted he was to Mil-
dred: he might have spared him.

He did not see Mildred again till Friday; he was sick for a
sight of her by then; but when she came and he reaUsed that
he had gone out of her thoughts entirely, for they were en-
grossed in Griffiths, he suddenly hated her. He saw now why

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 465

she and Griffiths loved one another, Griffiths was stupid,
oh so stupid! he had known that all along, but had shut his
eyes to it, stupid and empty-headed: that charm of his con-
cealed an utter selfishness; he was willing to sacrifice anyone
to his appetites. And how inane was the life he led, lounging
about bars and drinking in music-halls, wandering from one
light amour to another! He never read a book, he was blind
to everything that was not frivolous and vulgar; he had never
a thought that was fine: the word most common on his lips
was smart; that was his highest praise for man or woman.
Smart! It was no wonder he pleased Mildred. They suited
one another.

Philip talked to Mildred of things that mattered to neither
of them. He knew she wanted to speak of Griffiths, but he
gave her no opportunity. He did not refer to the fact that
two evenings before she had put off dining with him on a
trivial excuse. He was casual with her, trying to make her
think he was suddenly grown indifferent; and he exercised
peculiar skill in saying little things which he knew would
wound her; but which were so indefinite, so delicately cruel,
that she could not take exception to them. At last she got up.

"I think I must be going off now," she said.

"I daresay you've got a lot to do," he answered.

She held out her hand, he took it, said good-bye, and
opened the door for her. He knew what she wanted to speak
about, and he knew also that his cold, ironical air intimidated
her. Often his shyness made him seem so frigid that unin-
tentionally he frightened people, and, having discovered this,
he was able when occasion arose to assume the same manner.

"You haven't forgotten what you promised?" she said at
last, as he held open the door.

"What is that?"

"About the money."

"How much d'you want?"

He spoke with an icy deliberation which made his wordi
pecuharly offensive. Mildred flushed. He knew she hated

466 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

him at that moment, and he wondered at the self-control
by which she prevented herself from flying out at him. He
wanted to- make her suffer.

"There's the dress and the book tomorrow. That's all.
Harry won't come, so we shan't want money for that."

Philip's heart gave a great thud against his ribs, and he let
the door-handle go. The door swung to.

"Why not?"

"He says we couldn't, not on your money."

A devil seized Philip, a devil of self-torture which was
always lurking within him, and, though with all his soul
he wished that Griffiths and Mildred should not go away
together, he' could not help himself; he set himself to per-
suade Griffiths through her.

"I don't see why not, if I'm willing," he said.

"That's what I told him."

"I should have thought if he really wanted to go he wouldn't
hesitate."

"Oh, it's not that, he wants to all right. He'd go at once
if he had the money."

"If he's squeamish about it I'll give you the money."

"I said you'd lend it if he liked, and we'd pay it back as
soon as we could."

"It's rather a change for you going on your knees to get
a man to take you away for a week-end."

"It is rather, isn't it?" she said, with a shameless little laugh.

It sent a cold shudder down Philip's spine.

"What are you going to do then?" he asked.

"Nothing. He's going home tomorrow. He must."

That would be Philip's salvation. With Griffiths out of the
way he could get Mildred back. She knew no one in London,
she would be thrown on to his society, and when they were
alone together he could soon make her forget this infatuation.
If he said nothing more- he was safe. But he had a fiendish
desire to break down their scruples, he wanted to know how
abominably they could behave towards him; if he tempted

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 467

them a httle more they would yield, and he took a fierce joy
at the thought of their dishonour. Though every word he
spoke tortured him, he found in the torture a horrible delight.

'It looks as if it were now or never."

"That's what I told him," she said.

There was a passionate note in her voice which struck
Philip. He was biting his nails in his nervousness.

"Where were you thinking of going.?"

"Oh, to Oxford. He was at the 'Varsity there, you know.
He said he'd show me the colleges."

Philip remembered that once he had suggested going to
Oxford for the day, and she had expressed firmly the boredom
she felt at the thought of sights. *

"And it looks as if you'd have fine weather. It ought to be
very jolly there just now."

"I've done all I could to persuade him."

"Why don't you have another try.?"

"Shall I say you want us to go.?"

"I don't think you must go as far as that," said PhiHp.

She paused for a minute or two, looking at him. Philip
forced" himself to look at her in a friendly way. He hated her.,
he despised her, he loved her with all his heart.

"I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll go and see if he can't arrange
it. And then, if he says yes, I'll come and fetch the money
tomorrow. When shall you be in.?"

"I'll come back here after luncheon and wait."

"All right."

"I'll give you the money for your dress and your room now."

He went to his desk and took out what money he had. The
dress was six guineas; there was besides her rent and her
food, and the baby's keep for a week. He gave her eight
pounds ten.

"Thanks very much," she said.

She left him.

468 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 77

After lunching in the basement of the Medical School Philip
went back to his rooms. It was Saturday afternoon, and the
landlady was cleaning the stairs.

"Is Mr. Griffiths in?" he asked.

"No, sir. He went away this morning, soon after you went
out."

"Isn't he coming back.?"

"I don't think so, sir. He's taken his luggage."

Philip wondered what this could mean. He took a book
and began to read. It was Burton's ]ourney to Meccah which
he had just got out of the Westminster Public Library; and
he read the first page, but could make no sense of it, for
his mind was elsewhere; he was listening all the time for a
ring at the bell. He dared not hope that Griffiths had gone
away already, without Mildred, to his home in Cumberland.
Mildred would be coming presently for the money. He set
his teeth and read on; he tried desperately to concentrate his
attention; the sentences etched themselves in his brain by the
force of his effort, but they were distorted by the agony he
was enduring. He wished with all his heart that he had not
made the horrible proposition to give them money; but now
that he had made it he lacked the strength to go back on it,
not on Mildred's account, but on his own. There was a mor-
bid obstinacy in him which forced him to do the thing he
had determined. He discovered that the three pages he had
read had made no impression on him at all; and he went
back and started from the beginning: he found himself read-
ing one sentence over and over again; and now it weaved

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 469

itself in with his thoughts, horribly, like some formula in g
nightmare. One thing he could do was to go out and keep
away till midnight; they could not go then; and he saw them
calling at the house every hour to ask if he was in. He en-
joyed the thought of their disappointment. He repeated thai
sentence to himself mechanically. But he 'could not do that.
Let them come and take the money, and he would know then
to what depths of infamy it was possible for men to descend.
He could not read any more now. He simply could not see
the words. He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes, and,
numb with misery, waited for Mildred.

The landlady came in.

"Will you see Mrs. Miller, sir.?"

"Show her in."

Philip pulled himself together to receive her without any
sign of what he was feeling. He had an impulse to throw
himself on his knees and seize her hands and beg her not
to go; but he knew there was no way of moving her; she
would tell Griffiths what he had said and how he acted. He
was ashamed.

"Well, how about the little jaunt.?" he said gaily.

"We're going. Harry's outside. I told him you didn't want
to see him, so he's kept out of your way. But he wants to know
if he can come in just for a minute to say good-bye to you."

"No, I won't see him," said Philip.

He could sec she did not care if he saw Griffiths or not-
Now that she was there he wanted her to go quickly.

"Look here, here's the fiver. I'd like you to go now."

She took it and thanked him. She turned to leave the room

"When are you coming back.?" he asked.

"Oh, on Monday. Harry must go home then."

He knew what he was going to say was humiHating, but
he was broken down with jealousy and desire.

"Then I shall see you, shan't 1?"

He could not help the note of appeal in his voice.

"Of course, til let you know the moment I'm back."

470 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

He shook hands with her. Through the curtains he watched
her jymp into a four-wheelfer that stood at the door. It rolled
away. Then he threw himself on his bed and hid his face in
his hands. He felt tears coming to his eyes, and he was angry
with himself; he clenched his hands and screwed up his body
to prevent them; but he could not; and great painful sobs
were forced from him.

He got up at last, exhausted and ashamed, and washed his
face. He mixed himself a strong whiskey and soda. It made
him feel a little better. Then he caught sight of the tickets to
Paris, which were on the chimney-piece, and, seizing them,
with an impulse of rage he flung them in the fire. He knew
he could have got the money back on them, but it relieved
him to destroy them. Then he went out in search of someone
to be with. The club was empty. He felt he would go mad
unless he found someone to talk to; but Lawson was abroad;
he went on to Hayward's rooms: the maid who opened the
door told him that he had gone down to Brighton for the
week-end. Then Philip went to a gallery and found it was just
closing. He did not know what to do. He was distracted.
And he thought of Griffiths and Mildred going to Oxford,
sitting opposite one another in the train, happy. He went
back to his rooms, but they filled him with horror, he had
been so wretched in them; he tried once more to read Burton's
book, but, as he read, he told himself again and again what
a fool he had been; it was he who had made the suggestion
that they should go away, he had offered the money, he had
forced it upon them; he might have known what would hap-
pen when he introduced Griffiths to Mildred; his own vehe-
ment passion was enough to arouse the other's desire. By this
time they had reached Oxford. They would put up in one of
the lodging-houses in John Street; Philip had never been to
Oxford, but Griffiths had talked to him about it so much that
he knew exactly where they would go; and they would dine
at the Clarendon: Griffiths had been in the habit of dining
there when he went on the spree. Philip got himself something

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 471

to eat in a restaurant near Charing Cross; he had made up
his mind to go to a play, and afterwards he fought his way
into the pit of a theatre at which one of Oscar Wilde's pieces
was being performed. He wondered if Mildred and Griffiths
would go to a play that evening: they must kill the evening
somehow; they were too stupid, both of them to content
fhemselves with conversation: he got a fierce delight in re-
minding himself of the vulgarity of their minds- which
suited them so exactly to one another. He watched the play
with an abstracted mind, trying to give himself gaiety by
drinking whiskey in each interval; he was unused to alcohol,
and it affected him quickly, but his drunkenness was savage
and morose. When the play was over he had another drink.
He could not go to bed, he knew he would not sleep, and
he dreaded the pictures which his vivid imagination would
place before him. He tried not to think of them. He knew
he had drunk too much. Now he was seized with a desire to
do horrible, sordid things; he wanted to roll himself in gut-
ters; his whole being yearned for beasthness; he v^anted to jj
grovel.

He walked up Piccadilly, dragging his club-foot, sombrely
drunk, with rage and misery clawing at his heart. He was
stopped by a painted harlot, who put her hand on his arm;
he pushed her violently away with brutal words. He walked
on a few steps and then stopped. She would do as well as
another. He was sorry he had spoken so roughly to her. He
went up to her.

"I say," he began.

"Go to hell," she said.

Philip laughed.

"I merely wanted to ask if you'd do me the honour of sup-
ping with me tonight."

She looked at him with amazement, and hesitated for a
while. She saw he was drunk.

"I don't mind." , , , , j

He was amused that she should use a phrase he had heard

472 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

so often on Mildred's lips. He took her to one of the restaurants
he had been in the habit of going to with Mildred. He noticed
as they walked along that she looked down at his limb.
■ "I've got a club-foot," he said. "Have you any objection.?"

"You are a cure," she laughed.

When he got home his bones were aching, and in his head,
there was a hammering that made hirn nearly scream. He;
took another whiskey and soda to steady himself, and going
to bed sank into a dreamless sleep till mid-day.

Chapter 78

At last Monday came, and Philip thought his long torture was
over. Looking out the trains he found that the latest by which
GriiBths could reach home that night left Oxford soon after
one, and he supposed that Mildred would take one which
started a few minutes later to bring her to London. His
desire was to go and meet it, but he thought Mildred would
Uke to be left alone for a day; perhaps she would drop him a
line in the evening to say she was back, and if not he would
call at her lodgings next morning: his spirit was cowed. He
felt a bitter hatred for Griffiths, but for Mildred, notwith-
standing all that had ^passed, only a heart-rending desire. He
was glad now that Hayward was not in London on Saturday
afternoon when, distraught, he went in search of human
comfort: he could not have prevented himself from telling-
him everything, and Hayward would have been astonished
at his weakness. He would despise him, and perhaps be
shocked or disgusted that he could envisage the possibility
of making Mildred his mistress after' she had given herself
to another man. What did he care if it was shocking or dis-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 473

gusting? He was ready for any compromise, prepared for
rnore degrading humiliations still, if he could only gratify
his desire.

Towards the evening his steps took him against his will to
the house in which she lived, and he looked up at her window.
It was dark. He did not venture to ask if she was back. He
was confident in her promise. But there was no letter from
her in the morning, and, when about mid-day he called, the
maid told him she had not arrived. He could not understand
it. He knew that Griffiths would have been obliged to go
home the day before, for he was to be best man at a wedding,
and Mildred had no money. He turned over in his mind every
possible thing that might have happened. He went again in
the afternoon and left a note, asking her to dine with him
that evening as calmly as though the events of the last fort-
night had not happened. He mentioned the place and time
at which they were to meet, and hoping against hope kept
the appointment: though he waited for an hour she did not
come. On Wednesday morning he was ashamed to ask at
the house and sent a messenger-boy with a letter and instruc-
tions to bring back a reply; but in an hour the boy came
back with Philip's letteir unopened and the answer that the
lady had not returned from the country. Philip was beside
himself. The last deception was more than he could bear. He
repeated to himself over and over again that, he loathed
Mildred, and, ascribing to Griffiths this new disappointment,
he hated him so much that he knew what was the delight of
murder: he walked about considering what a joy it would
be to come upon him on a dark night and stick a knife into
his throat, just about the carotid artery, and leave him to die
in the street like a dog. Philip was out of his senses with
grief and rage. He did not like whiskey, but he drank to
stupefy himself. He went to bed drunk on the Tuesday and
on the Wednesday night.

On Thursday morning he got up very late and dragged
himself, blear-eyed and sallow, into his sitting-room to see ii

474 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

'there were any letters. A curious feeling shot through his
heart when he recognised the handwriting of Griffiths.

Dear old man:

I hardly \now how to write to you and yet I feel I must
write. I hope you're not awfully angry with me. I kjiQW 1
oughtn't to have gone away with Milly, but I simply couldn't
help myself. She simply carried me off my feet and I would
have done anything to get her. When she told me you had
offered us the money to go I simply couldn't resist. And now
it's all over I'm awfully ashamed of myself and I wish I
hadn't been such a fool. I wish you'd write and say you're
not angry with me, and I want you to let me come and see
you. 1 was awfully hurt at your telling Milly you didn't want
to see me. Do write me a line, there's a good chap, and tell
me you forgive me. It'll ease my conscience. I thought you
wouldn't mind or you wouldn't have offered the money. But
I \now I oughtn't to have ta\en it. I came home on Monday
and Milly wanted to stay a couple of days at Oxford by her-
self. She's going bac\ to London on Wednesday, so by the
time you receive this letter you will have seen her and I hope
everything will go off all right. Do write and say you forgive
me. Please write at once.

Yours ever,

Harry.

Phihp tore up the letter furiously. He did not mean to answer
it. He despised Griffiths for his apologies, he had no patience
with his prickings of conscience: one could do a dastardly
thing if one chose, but it was contemptible to regret it after-
wards. He thought the letter cowardly and hypocritical. He
was disgusted at its sentimentality.

"It would be very easy if you could do a beastly thing," he
muttered to himself, "and then say you were sorry, and that
put it all right again."

He hoped with all his heart he would have the chance one
day to do Griffiths a bad turn.

OF HUMAN, BONDAGE 475

But at all events he knew that Mildred was in town. He
dressed hurriedly, not waiting to shave, drank a cup of tea,
and took a cab to her rooms. The cab seemed to crawl. He
was painfully anxious to see her, and unconsciously he uttered
a prayer to the God he did not believe in to make her receive
him kindly. He only wanted to forget. With beating heart
he rang the bell. He forgot all his suffering in the passionate
desire to enfold her once more in his arms.

"Is Mrs. Miller in?" he asked joyously.

"She's gone," the maid answered.

He looked at her blankly.

"She came about an hour ago and took away her things."

For a moment he did not know what to say.

"Did you give her my letter.'' Did she say where she was
going.?"

Then he understood that Mildred had deceived him again*
She was not coming back to him. He made an effort to save
his face.

"Oh, well, I daresay I shall hear from her. She may have
sent a letter to another address."

He turned away and went back hopeless to his rooms. He
might have known that she would do this; she had never
cared for him, she had made a fool of him from the begin-
ning; she had no pity, she had no kindness, she had no
charity. The only thing was to accept the inevitable. The
pain he was suffering was horrible, he would sooner be dead
than endure it; and the thought came to him that it would be
better to finish with the whole thing: he might throw himself
in the river or put his neck on a railway line; but he had no
sooner set the thought into words than he rebelled against it.
His reason told him that he would get oyer his unhappiness
in time; if he tried with all his might he could forget her;
and it would be grotesque to kill himself on account of a
vulgar slut. He had only one life, and it was madness to fling
it away. He felt that he would never overcome his passion,
but he \new that after all it was only a matter of time. ,

476 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

He would not stay in London. There everything reminded
him of his unhappiness. He telegraphed to his uncle that he
was coming to Blackstable, and, hurrying to pack, took the
first train he could. He wanted to get away from the sordid
rooms in which he had endured so much suffering. He
wanted to breathe clean air. He was disgusted with himself.
He felt that he was a little mad.

Since he was grown up Philip had been given the best
spare room at the vicarage. It was a corner-room and in front
of one window was an old tree which blocked the view, but
from the other you saw, beyond the garden and the vicarage
field, broad meadows. Philip remembered the wall-paper from
his earliest years. On the walls were quaint water colours of the
early Victorian period by a friend of the Vicar's youth. They
had a faded charm. The dressing-table was surrounded by stiff
muslin. There was an old tall-boy to put your clothes in.
Philip gave a sigh of pleasure; he had never realised that all
those things meant anything to him at all. At the vicarage
life went on as it had always done. No piece of furniture had
been moved from one place to another; the Vicar ate the same
things, said the same things, went for the same walk every
day; he had grown a little fatter, a little more silent, a little
more narrow. He had become accustomed to living without
his wife and missed her very little. He bickered still with
Josiah Graves. Philip went to see the church-warden. He was
a little thinner, a little whiter, a little more austere; he was
autocratic still and still disapproved of candles on the altar.
The shops had still a pleasant quaintness; and Philip stood
in front of that in which things useful to seamen were sold,
sea-boots and tarpaulins and tackle, and remembered that he
had felt there in his childhood the thrill of the sea and the
adventurous magic of the unknown.

He could not help his heart beating at each double knock
of the postman in case there might be a letter from Mildred
sent on by his landlady in London; but he knew that there

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 477

would be none. Now that he could think it out more calmly
he understood that in trying to force Mildred to love him he
had been attempting the impossible. He did not know what
it was that passed from a man to a woman, from a woman
to a man, and made one of them a slave: it was convenient
to call it the sexual instinct; but if it was no more than that,
he did not understand why it should occasion so vehement
an attraction to one person rather than another. It was irre-
sistible: the mind could not battle with it; friendship, grati-
tude, interest, had no power beside it. Because he had not
attracted Mildred sexually, nothing that he did had any effect
upon her. The idea revolted him; it made human nature
beastly; and he felt suddenly that the hearts of men were full
of dark places. Because Mildred was indifferent to him he had
thought her sexless; her anaemic appearance and thin lips, the
body with its narrow hips and flat chest, the languor of her
manner, carried out his supposition; and yet she was capable
of sudden passions which made her willing to risk everything
to gratify them. He had never understood her adventure with
Emil Miller: it had seemed so unlike her, and she had never
been able to explain it; but now that he had seen her with
Griffiths he knew that just the same thing had happened them
she had been carried off her feet by an ungovernable desire.
He tried to think out what those two men had which so
strangely attracted her. They both had a vulgar facetiousness
which tickled her simple sense of humour, and a certain
coarseness of natur-e; but what took her perhaps was the
blatant sexuality which was their most marked characteristic.
She had a genteel refinement which shuddered at the facts of
life, she looked upon the bodily functions as indecent, she had
all sorts of euphemisms for common objects, she always chose
an elaborate word as more becoming than a simple one: the
brutality of these men was like a whip on her thin white
shoulders, and she shuddered with voluptuous pain.

One thing Philip had made up his mind about. He would
not go back to the lodgings in which he had suffered. He

478 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

wrote ta his landlady and gave her notice. He wanted to have
his own things about him. He determined to take unfur-
nished rooms: it would be pleasant and cheaper; and this was
an urgent consideration, for during the last year and a half he
had spent nearly seven hundred pounds. He must make up
for it now by the most rigid economy. Now and then he
thought of the future with panic; he had been a fool to spend
so much money on Mildred; but he knew that if it were to
come again he would act in the same way. It amused him
sometimes to consider that his friends, because he had a face
which did not express his feelings very vividly and a rather
slow way of moving, looked upon him' as strong-minded, de-
liberate, and cool. They thought him reasonable and praised
his common sense; but he knew that his placid expression was
no more than a mask, assumed unconsciously, which acted
like the protective colouring of butterflies; and himself was
astonished at the weakness of his will. It seemed to him that
he was swayed by every light emotion, as though he were a
leaf in the wind, and when passion seized him he was power-
less. He had no self-control. He merely seemed to possess it
because he was indifferent to many of the things which moved
other people.

He considered with some irony the philosophy which he
had developed for himself, for it had not been of much use to
him in the conjuncture he had passed through; and he won-
dered whether thought really helped a man in any of the
critical affairs of life: it seemed to him rather that he was
swayed by some power alien to and yet within himself, which
urged him like that great wind of Hell which drove Paolo and
Francesca ceaselessly on. He thought of what he was going
to do and, when the time came to act, he was powerless in
the grasp of instincts, emotions, he knew not what. He acted
as though he were a machine driven by the two forces of his
environment and his personahty; his reason was someone
looking on, observing the facts but powerless to interfere: it
was like those gods of Epicurus, who saw the doings of men

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 479

from their empyrean heights and had no might to alter one
smallest particle of what occurred. " '

Chapter 79

Philip went up to London a couple of days before the session
began in order to find himself rooms. He hunted about the
streets that led out of the Westminster Bridge Road, but their
dinginess was distasteful to him; and at last he found one in
Kennington which had a quiet and old-world air. It reminded
one a little of the London which Thackeray knew on that side
of the river, and in the Kennington Road, through which the
great barouche of the Newcomes must have passed as it drove
the family to the West of London, the plane-trees were burst-
ing into leaf. The houses in the street which Philip fixed upon
were two-storied, and in most of the windows was a notice to
state that lodgings were to let. He knocked at one which an-
nounced that the lodgings were unfurnished, and was shown
by an austere, silent woman four very small rooms, in one of
which there was a kitchen range and a sink. The rent was nine
shillings a week. Philip did not want so many rooms, but the
rent was low and he wished to settle down at once. He asked
the landlady if she could keep the place clean for him and
cook his breakfast, but she replied that she had enough work
to do without that; and he was pleased rather than otherwise
because she intimated that she wished to have nothing more
to do with him than to receive his rent. She told him that, if
he inquired at the grocer's round the corner, which was also
a post-office, he might hear of a woman who would 'do' for
him.
Philip had a little furniture which he had gathered as he

480 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

went along, an arm-chair that he had bought in Paris, and a
table, a few drawings, and the small Persian rug which Cren-
shaw had given him. His uncle had offered a fold-up bed for
which, now that he no longer let his house in August, he had
no further use; and by spending another ten pounds Philip
bought himself whatever else was essential. He spent ten
shillings on putting a corn-coloured paper in the room he was
making his parlour; and he hung on the walls a sketch which
Lawson had given him of the Quai des Grands Augustins,
and the photogi'aph of the Odalisque by Ingres and Manet's
Olympia which in Paris had been the objects of his contem-
plation while he shaved. To remind himself that he too had
once been engaged in the practice of art, he put up a charcoal
drawing of the young Spaniard Miguel Ajuria: it was the best
thing he had ever done, a nude standing with clenched hands,
his feet gripping the floor with a peculiar force, and on his face
that air of determination which had been so impressive; and
though Philip after the long interval saw very well' the defects
of his work its associations made him look upon it with toler-
ance. He wondered what had happened to Miguel. There is
nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no
talent. Perhaps, worn out by exposure, starvation, disease, he
had found an end in some hospital, or in an access of despair
had sought death in the turbid Seine; but perhaps with his
Southern instability he had given up the struggle of his own
accord, and now, a clerk in some office in Madrid, turned his
fervent rhetoric to politics and bull-fighting.

Philip asked Lawson and Hayward to come and see his new
rooms, and they came, one with a bottle of whiskey, the other
with a pate de foie gras; and he was delighted when they
praised his taste. He would have invited the Scotch stock-
broker too, but he had only three chairs, and thus could enter-
tain only a definite number of guests. Lawson was aware that
through him Philip had become very friendly with Norah
Nesbit and now remarked that he had run across her a few
days before.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 481

' She was asking how you were."

Philip flushed at the mention of her name, (he could not get
himself out of the awkward habit of reddening when he was
embarrassed,) and Lawson looked at him quizzically. Lawson,
who now spent most of the year in London, had so far sur-
rendered to his environment as to wear his hair short and to
dress himself in a neat serge suit and a bowler hat.

"I gather that all is over between you," he said.

"I've not seen her for months."

"She was looking rather nice. She had a very smart hat on
with a lot of white ostrich feathers on it. She must be doing
pretty well."

Philip changed the conversation, but he kept thinking of her,
and after an interval, when the three of them were talking of
something else, he asked suddenly:

"Did you gather that Norah was angry with me?"

"Not a bit. She talked very nicely of you."

"I've got half a mind to go and see her."
• "She won't eat you."

Philip had thought of Norah often. When Mildred left hirn
his first thought was of her, and he told himself bitterly that
she would never have treated him so. His impulse was to go
to her; he could depend on her pity; but he was ashamed:
she had been good to him always, and he had treated her
abominably.

"If I'd only had the sense to stick to her!" he said to himself,
afterwards, when Lawson and Hayward had gone and he was
smoking a last pipe before going to bed.

He remembered the pleasant hours they had spent together
-in the cosy sitting-room in Vincent Square, their visits to gal-
leries and to the play, and the charming evenings of intimate
conversation. He recollected her solicitude for his welfare and
her interest in all that concerned him. She had loved him with
a love that was kind and lasting, there was more than sensual-
ity in it, it was almost maternal; he had always known that
it was a precious thing for which with all his soul he should

482 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

thank the gods. He made up his mind to throw himself on her
mercy. She must have suffered horribly, but he felt she had the
greatness of heart to forgive him : she was incapable of malice.
Should he write to her? No. He would break in on her sud-
denly and cast himself at her feet— he knew that when the
time came he would feel too shy to perform such a dramatic
gesture, but that was how he liked to think of it — and tell her
that if she would take him back she might rely on him for
ever. He was cured of the hateful disease from which he had
suffered, he knew her worth, and now she might trust him.
His imagination leaped forward to the future. He pictured
himself rowing with her on the river on Sundays; he would
take her to Greenwich, he had never forgotten that delightful
excursion with Hayward, and the beauty of the Port of Lon-
don remained a permanent treasure in his recollection; and
on the warm summer afternoons they would sit in the Park
together and talk : he laughed to himself as he remembered her
gay chatter, which poured out like a brook bubbling over little
stones, amusing, flippant, and full of character. The agony he
had suffered would pass from his mind like a bad dream.

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 him-
self 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 Phihp, with a slight smile.

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

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

tt seemed to say come in to a new life of peace and happi-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 48,5

ness. 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."

PhiUp, 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 coun-
tenance, and he admired the ease with which she carried off an
encounter of which he 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 Httle 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

484 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

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 jt away to a subject upon
which Philip was forced to be silent. He grew faintly angry
with Norah, for she iriust 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
rurled 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 hirri 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."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 483

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 los-
ing his head; he seemed to have come on an errand of which
he was only now reahsing 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 Grif-
fiths, 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 emo-
tion. Sometimes he was so ashamed of what he was saying that
he spoke with his eyes fixed on the ground. His face was dis-
torted 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 dread-
fully 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."

486 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"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 hus-
band. 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. A.fter all, it's the best thing that
could have happened to you."

She looked a httle 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 disap-
pointed, irritated even, but his vanity was more affected than

ut HUMAN BONDAGE 487

his heart. He knew that himself. And presently he grew con-
scious that the gods had played a very good practical joke on
him, and he laughed at himself mirthlessly. It is not very com-
fortable to have the gift of being amused at one's own
absurdity.

Chapter 80

For the next three months PhiHp 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. Phihp 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 aban--

488 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

doned the hospital for the chorus of a musical comedy. Still
another, and he interested Philip because his uncouth manner
and inter] ectional 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 dis-
pensing. He was taking the examination in Materia Medica
in July, and it amused him to play with various drugs, con-
cocting 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 cer-
tain self-consciousness with Griffiths' friends, some of whom
were now friends of his, when he reaUsed 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.

"Has he asked you to give me the message.?" asked Philip.

"Oh, no, I'm saying this entirely on my own," said Ramsden.
•'He's awfully sorry for what he did, and he says you always
behaved Uke a perfect brick to him. I know he'd be glad to

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 489

make it up. He doesn't come to the hospital because he's afraid
of meeting you, and he thinks you'd cut him."

"I should."

"It makes him feel rather wretched, you know."

"I can bear the trifling inconvenience that he feels with a
good deal of fortitude," said PhiUp.

"He'll do anything he can to make it up."

"How childish and hysterical! Why should he care? I'm a
very insignificant person, and he can do very well without my
company. I'm not interested in him any more."

Ramsden thought Philip hard and cold. He paused for a
moment or two, looking about him in a perplexed way.

"Harry wishes to God he'd never had anything to do with
the woman."

"Does he?" asked Philip.

He spoke with an indifference which he was satisfied with.
No one could have guessed how violently his heart was beat-
ing. He waited impatiently for Ramsden to go on.

"I suppose you've quite got over it now, haven't you.''"

"I.?" said Philip. "Quite."

Little by little he discovered the history of Mildred's rela-
tions with Griffiths. He listened with a smile on his lips, feign-
ing an equanimity which quite deceived the dull-witted boy
who talked to him. The week-end she spent with Griffiths at
Oxford inflamed rather than extinguished her sudden passion;
and when Griffiths went home, with a feeling that was unex-
pected in her she determined to stay in Oxford by herself for
a couple of days, because she had been so happy in it. She felt
that nothing could induce her to go back to Philip. He re-
volted her. Griffiths was taken aback at the fire he had aroused
for he had found his two days with her in the country some
what tedious; and he had no desire to turn an amusing
episode into a tiresome affair.. She made him promise to write
to her, and, being an honest, decent fellow, with natural polite
ness and a desire to make himself pleasant to everybody, when
he got home he wrote her a long and charming letter. She

490 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

answered it with reams of passion, clumsy, for she had no gift
of expression, ill-written, and vulgar; the letter bored him,
and when it. was followed next day by another, and the day
after by a third, he began to think her love no longer flattering
but alarming. He did not answer; and she bombarded him
with telegrams, asking him if he were ill and had received
her letters; she said his silence made her dreadfully anxious.
He was forced to write, but he sought to make his reply as
casual as was possible without being offensive: he begged her
not to wire, since it was difficult to explain telegrams to his
mother, an old-fashioned person for whom a telegram was
still an event to excite tremor. She answered by return of post
that she must see him and announced her intention to pawn
things (she had the dressing-case which Philip had given her
as a wedding-present and could raise eight pounds on that)
in order to come up and stay at the market town four miles
from which was the village in which his father practised. This
frightened Griffiths; and he, this time, made use of the tele-
graph wires to- tell her that she must do nothing of the kind.
He promised to let her know the moment he came up to
London, and, when he did, found that she had already been
asking for him at the hospital at which he had an appoint-
ment. He did not like this, and, on seeing her, told Mildred
that she was not to come there on any pretext; and now, after
an absence of three weeks, he found that she bored him quite
decidedly; he wondered why he had ever troubled about her,
and made up his mind to break with her as soon as he could.
He was a person who dreaded quarrels, nor did he want to
give pain; but at the same time he had other things to do, and
he was quite determined not to let Mildred bother him. When
he met her he was pleasant, cheerful, amusing, affectionate;
he invented convincing excuses for the interval since last he
had seen her; but he did everything he could to avoid her.
When she forced him to make appointments he sent tele-
t^rams to her at the last moment to put himself off; and his
,'andlady (the first three months of his appointment he was

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 49i

spending in rooms) had orders to say he was out when Mil
dred called. She would waylay him in the street and, knowing;
she had been waiting about for him to come out of the hospita'
for a couple of hours, he would give her a few charming
friendly words and bolt off with the excuse that he had a busi
ness engagement. He grew very skilful in slipping out of th*-
hospital unseen. Once, when he vvent back to his lodgings al
midnight, he saw a woman standing at the area railings and'.
suspecting who it was went to beg a shake-down in Ramsden'i.
rooms; next day the landlady told him that Mildred had sai.
crying on the doorstep for hours, and she had been obliged tti,
tell her at last that if she did not go away she would send foi
a policeman.

"I tell you, my boy," said Ramsden, "you're jolly well out of
it. Harry says that if he'd suspected for half a second she was
going to make such a blooming nuisance of herself he'd have
seen himself damned before he had anything to do with her."

Philip thought of her sitting on that doorstep through the
long hours of the night. He saw her face as she looked up dully
at the landlady who sent her away.

"I wonder what she's doing now."

"Oh, she's got a job somewhere, thank God. That keeps her
busy all day."

The last thing he heard, just before the end of the summer
session, was that Griffiths' urbanity had given way at length
under the exasperation of the constant persecution. He had
told Mildred that he was sick of being pestered, and she had
better take herself off and not bother him again.

"It was the only thing- he could do," said Ramsden. "It was
getting- a bit too thick."

"Is it all over then?" asked Philip.

"Oh, he hasn't seen her for ten days. You know, Harry's
wonderful at dropping people. This is about the toughest nut
he's ever had to crack, but he's cracked it all right."

Then Philip heard nothing more of her at all. She vanished
into the vast anonymous mass of the population of London.

492 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 81

At the beginning of the winter session Philip became an out-
patients' clerk. There were three assistant-physicians who took
out-patients, two days a week each, and Philip put his name
down for Dr. Tyrell. He was popular with the students, and
there was some competition to be his clerk. Dr. Tyrell was a
tall, thin man of thirty-five, with a very small head, red hair
cut short, and prominent blue eyes : his face was bright scarlet.
He talked well in a. pleasant voice, was fond of a little joke,
and treated the world lightly. He was a successful man, with
a large consulting practice and a knighthood in prospect. From
commerce with students and poor people he had the patronis-
ing air, and from dealing always with the sick he had the
healthy man's jovial condescension, which some consultants
achieve as the professional manner. He made the patient feel
like a boy confronted by a jolly schoolmaster; his illness was
an absurd piece of naughtiness which amused rather than
irritated.

The student was supposed to attend in the out-patients'
room every day, see cases, and pick up what information he
could; but on the days on which he clerked his duties were a
little more definite. At that time the out-patients' department
at St. Luks's consisted of three rooms, leading into one an-
other, and a large, dark waiting-room with massive pillars of
masonry and long benches. Here the patients waited after
having been given their 'letters' at mid-day; and the long rows
of them, bottles and gallipots in hand, some tattered and dirty,
others decent enough, sitting in the dimness, men and women
of all ages, children, gave one an impression which was weird
and horrible. They suggested the grim drawings of Daumier.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 49^'

All the rooms were painted alike, in salmon-colour with a high
dado of maroon; and there was in them an odour of disin-
fectants, mingling as the afternoon wore on with the crude
stench of humanity. The first room was the largest and in the
middle of it were a table and. an office chair for the physician;
on each side of this were two smaller tables, a little lower:
at one of these sat the house-physician and at the other the
clerk who took the 'book' for the day. This was a large volume
in which were written down the name, age, sex, profession,
of the patient and the diagnosis of his disease.

At half past one the house-physician came in, rang the bell,
and told the porter to send in the old patients. There were
always a good many of these, and it was necessary to get
through as many of them as possible before Dr. Tyrell came
at two. The H.P. with whom Philip came in contact was a
dapper little man, excessively conscious of his importance:
he treated the clerks with condescension and patently resented
the familiarity of older students who had been his con-
ternporaries and did not use him with the respect he felt his
present position demanded. He set about the cases. A clerk
helped him. The patients streamed in. The men came first.
Chronic bronchitis, "a nasty 'acking cough," was vi'hat they
chiefly suffered from; one went to- the H.P. and the other to
the clerk, handing in their letters : if they were going on well
the words Rep i^ were written on them, and they went to the
dispensary with their bottles or gallipots in order to have
medicine givea them for fourteen days more. Some old stagers
held back so that they might be seen by the physician himself,
but they seldom succeeded in this; and only three or four,
whose condition seemed to demand his attention, were kept.

Dr. Tyrell came in with quick movements and a breezy
manner. He reminded one slightly of a clown leaping into
the arena of a circus with the cry: Here we are again. His
air seemed to indicate: What's all this ' nonsense about being
ill } I'll soon put that right. He took his seat, asked if there
were any old patients for him to see, rapidly passed them in

494 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

review, looking at them with shrewd eyes as he discussed
their symptoms, cracked a joke (at which all the clerks
laughed heartily) with the H.P., who laughed heartily too but
with an air as if he thought it was rather impudent for the
clerks to laugh, remarked that it was a fine day or a hot one,
and rang the bell for the porter to show in the new patients.

They came in one by one and walked up to the table at
which sat Dr. Tyrell. They were old men and young men and
middle-aged men, mostly of the labouring class, dock labour-
ers, draymen, factory hands, barmen; but some, neatly dressed,
were of a station which was obviously superior, shop-assistants,
clerks, and the like. Dr. Tyrell looked at these with suspicion.
Sometimes they put on shabby clothes in order to pretend they
were poor; but he had a keen eye to prevent what he regarded
as fraud and sometimes refused to see people who, he thought,
could well pay for medical attendance. Women were the
worst offenders and they managed the thing more clumsily.
They would wear a cloak and a skirt which were almost in
rags, and neglect to take the rings off their fingers.

"If you can afford to wear jewellery you can afford a doctor.
A hospital is a charitable institution," said Dr. Tyrell.

He handed back the letter and called for the next case.

"But I've got my letter."

"I don't care a hang about your letter; you get out. You've
got no business to come and steal the time which is wanted
by the really poor.''

The patient retired sulkily, with an angry scowl.

"She'll probably write a letter to the papers on the gross mis-
ms^nagement of the London hospitals," said Dr. Tyrell, with a
smile, as he took the next paper and gave the patient one of
his shrewd glances.

Most of them were under the impression that the hospital
was an institution of tlie state, for which they paid out of the
rates, and took the attendance they received as a right they
could claim. They imagined the physician who gave Them his
^ime was heavily paid.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 495

Dr. Tyrell gave each of his clerks a case to examiivt. The
clerk took the patient into one of the inner rooms; they were
smaller, and each had a couch in it covered with black horse-
hair: he asked his patient a variety of questions, examined
his lungs, his heart, and his liver, made notes of fact on the
hospital letter, formed in his own mind some idea of the
diagnosis, and then waited for Dr. Tyrell to come in. This he
did, followed by a small crowd of students, when he had
finished the men, and the clerk read out what he had learned.
The physician asked him one or two questions, and exam-
ined the patient himself. If there was anything interesting to
hear students applied their stethoscope: you would see a man
with two or three to the chest, and two perhaps to his back,
while others waited impatiently to listen. The patient stood
among them a little embarrassed, but not altogether displeased
to find himself the centre of attention: he listened confusedly
while Dr. Tyrell discoursed glibly on the case. Two or three
students listened again to recognise the murmur or the crepi-
tation which the physician described, and then the man was
told to put on his clothes.

When the various cases had been examined Dr. Tyrell went
back into the large room and sat down again at his desk. He
asked any student who happened to be standing near him
what he would prescribe for a patient he had Just seen. The
student mentioned one or two drugs.

"Would you.?" said Dr. Tyrell. "Well, that's original at all
events. I don't think we'll be rash."

This always made the students laugh, and with a twinkle
of amusement at his own bright humour the physician pre-
scribed, some other drug than that which the student had
suggested. When there were two cases of exactly the same sort
and the student proposed the treatment which the physician
had ordered for the first. Dr. Tyrell exercised considerable in-
genuity in thinking of something else. Sometimes, knowing
that in the dispensary they were worked off their legs and
preferred to give the medicines which they had all ready, the

496 OF, HUMAN BONDAGE

good hospital mixtures which had been found by the experi-
ence of years to answer their purpose so well, he amused him-
self by writing an elaborate prescription.

"We'll give the dispenser something to do. If we go on
prescribing mist: alt: he'll lose his cunning."

The students laughed, and the doctor gave them ,a circular
glance of enjoyment in his joke. Then he touched the bell
and, when the porter poked his head in, said :

"Old women, please."

He leaned back in his chair, chatting with the H.P. while
the porter herded along the old patients. They came in, strings
of anjemic girls, with large fringes and pallid '.lips, who could
not digest their bad, insufficient food; old ladies, fat and thin,
aged prematurely by frequent confinements, with winter
Coughs; women vvith this, that, and the other, the matter
with them. Dr. Tyrell and his house-physician got through
them quickly. Time was getting on, and the air in the small
room was growing more sickly. The physician looked at his
>vatch.

"Are there many new women to-day.?" he asked.

"A good few, I think," said the H.P.

"We'd better have them in. You can go on with the old
ones."

They entererd. With the men the most common ailments were
due to the excessive use of alcohol, but with the women they
were due to defective nourishment. By about six o'clock they
were finished. Philip, exhausted by standing all the time, by
the bad air, and by the attention he had given, strolled over
with, his fellow-clerks to the Medical School to have tea. He
found the work of absorbing interest. There was humanity
there in the rough, the materials the artist worked on; and
Philip felt a curious thrill when it occurred to him that he was
in the position of the artist and the patients were like clay in
his hands. He remembered with an amused shrug of the
shoulders his life in Paris, absorbed in colour, tone, values.
Heaven knows what, with the aim of producing beautiful

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 497

things : the directness of contact with men and women gave a
thrill of power which he had never known. He found an end-
less excitement in looking at their faces and hearing them
speak; they came in each with his peculiarity, some shuffling
uncouthly, some with a little trip, others with heavy, slow
tread, some shyly. Often you could guess their trades by the
look of them. You learnt in what way to put your questions so
that they should be understood, you discovered on what sub-
jects nearly all lied, and by what inquiries you could extort
the truth notwithstanding. You saw the different way people
took the same things.. The diagnosis of dangerous illness would
be accepted by one with a laugh and a joke, by another with
dumb despair. Philip found that he was less shy with these
people than he had ever been with others; he felt not exactly
sympathy, for sympathy suggests condescension; but he felt
at home with them. He found that he was able to put them
at their ease, and, when he had been given a case to find out
what he could about it, it seemed to him that the patient
delivered himself into his hands with a peculiar confidence.

"Perhaps," he thought to himself, with a smile, "perhaps
I'm cut out to be a doctor. It would be rather a lark if I'd hit
upon the one thing I'm fit for."

It seemed to Philip that he alone of the clerks saw the dra-
matic interest of those afternoons. To the others men and
women were only cases, good if they were complicated, tire-
some if obvious; they heard murmurs and were astonished at
abnormal livers; an unexpected sound in the lungs gave them
something to talk about. But to Philip there was much more.
He found an interest in just looking at them, in the shape of
their heads and their hands, in the look of their eyes and the
length of their noses. You saw in that room human nature
taken by surprise, and often the mask of custom was torn off
rudely, showing you the soul all raw. Sometimes you saw an
untaught stoicism which was profoundly moving. Once Philip
saw a man, rough and illiterate, told his case was hopelessj
and self-controlled himself, he wondered at the splendid in^

498 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

stinct which forced the fellow to keep a stiff upper-lip before
strangers. But was it possible for him to be brave when he was
by himself, face to face with his soul, or would he then sur-
render to despair ? Sometimes there was tragedy. Once a young
woman brought her sister to be examined, a girl of eighteen,
with delicate features and large blue eyes, fair hair that
sparkled with gold when a ray of autumn sunshine touched
it for a moment, and a skin of amazing beauty. The students'
eyes went to her with little smiles. They did not often see a
pretty girl in these dingy rooms. The elder woman gave the
family history, father and mother had died of phthisis, a
brother and a sister, these two were the only ones left. The
girl had been coughing lately and losing weight. She took off
her blouse and the skin of her neck was like milk. Dr. Tyrell
examined her quietly, with his usual rapid method; he told
two or three of his clerks to apply their stethoscopes to a place
he indicated with his finger; and then she was allowed to dress.
The sister was standing a little apart and she spoke to him in
a low voice, so that the girl should not hear. Her voice trem-
bled with fear.

"She hasn't got it, doctor, has she.?"

"I'm afraid there's no doubt about it."

"She was the last one. When she goes I shan't have any-
body."

she began to cry, while the doctor looked at her gravely; he
thought she too had the type; she would not make old bones
either. The girl turned round and saw her sister's tears. She,
understood what they meant. The colour fled from her lovely
face and tears fell down her cheeks. The two stood for a min-
ute or two, crying silently, and then the older, forgetting the
indifferent crowd that watched them, went up to her, took her
in her arms, and rocked her gently to and fro as if she were a
baby.

When they were gone a student asked:

"How long d'you think she'll last, sir.?"

Dr. Tyrell shrugged his shoulders.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 499

"Her brother and sister died within three months of the
first symptoms. She'll do the same. If they were rich one might
do something. You can't tell these people to go to St. Moritz.
Nothing can be done for them."

Once a man who was strong and in all the power of his
manhood came because a persistent aching troubled him and
his club-doctor did not seem to do him any good; and the
verdict for him too was death, not the inevitable death that
horrified and yet was tolerable because science was helpless
before it, but the death which was inevitable because the man
was a little wheel in the great machine of a complex civilisa-
tion, and had as little power of changing the circumstances as
an automaton. Complete rest was his only chance. The physi-
cian did not ask impossibilities.

"You ought to get some very much lighter job."

"There ain't no light jobs in my business."

"Well, if you go on like this you'll kill yourself. You're very
ill."

"D'you mean to say I'm going to die?"

"I shouldn't like to say that, but you're certainly unfit for
hard work."

"If I don't work who's to keep the wife and the kids.?"

Dr. Tyrell shrugged his shoulders. The dilemma had been
presented to him a hundred times. Time was pressing and
there were many patients to be seen.

"Well, I'll give you some medicine and you can come back
in a week and tell me how you're getting on."

The man took his letter with the useless prescription written
upon it and walked out. The doctor might say what he liked.
He did not feel so bad that he could not go on working. He
had a good job and he could not afford to throw it away.

"I give him a year," said Dr. Tyrell.

Sometimes there was comedy. Now and then came a flash
of cockney humour, now and then some old lady, a character
such as Charles Dickens might have drawn, would amuse
them by her garrulous oddities. Once a woman came who was

500 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

a member of the ballet 3t a famous music-hall. She looked
fifty, but gave her age as twenty-eight. She was outrageously
painted and ogled the students impudently with large black
eyes; her smiles were grossly alluring. She had abundant self-
confidence and treated Dr. Tyrell, vastly amused, with the
easy familiarity with which she might have used an intoxicated
admirer. She had chronic bronchitis, and told him it hindered
her in the exercise of her profession.

"I don't know why I should 'ave such a thing, upon my
word I don't. I've never 'ad a day's illness in my life. You've
only got to look at me to know that."

She rolled her eyes round the young men, with a long sweep
of her painted eyelashes, and flashed her yellow teeth at them.
She spoke with a cockney accent, but with an affectation of
refinement which made every word a feast of fun.

"It's what they call a winter cough," answered Dr. Tyrell
gravely. "A great many middle-aged women have it."

"Well, I never! That is a nice thing to say to a lady. No one
ever called me middle-aged before."

She opened her eyes very wide and cocked her head on one
side, looking at him with indescribable archness.

"That is the disadvantage of our profession," said he. "It
forces us sometimes to be ungallant."

She took the prescription and gave him one last, luscious
smile.

"You will come and see me dance, dearie, won't you.?"

"I will indeed."

He rang the bell for the next case.

"I am glad you gentlemen were here to protect me."

But on' the whole the impression was neither of tragedy nor
of comedy. There was no describing it. It was manifold and
various; there were tears and laughter, happiness and woe;
it was tedious and interesting and indifferent; it was as you
saw it: it was tumultuous and passionate; it was grave; it was
sad and comic; it was trivial; it was simple and complex; joy
was there and despair; the love of mothers for their children.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 501

and of men for women; lust trailed itself through the rooms
with leaden feet, punishing the guilty and the innocent, help-
less wives and wretched children; drink seized men and
women and cost its inevitable price; death sighed in these
rooms; and the beginning of life, filling some poor girl with
terror and shame, was diagnosed there. There was neither good,
nor bad there. There were just facts. It was life.

Chapter 82

Towards the end of the year, when Philip was bringing to a
close his three months as clerk in the out-patiei>ts' department,
he received a letter from Lawson, who was in Paris.

Dear Philip,

Cronshaw is in London and would be glad to see. you. He is
living at ^5 Hyde Street, Soho. I don't know where it is, but I
daresay you will be able to find out. Be a bric\ and loo\ after
him a bit. He is very down on his luc\. He will tell you what
he is doing. Things are going on here very much as usual.
Nothing seems to have changed since you were here. Glut-
ton is back, but he has become quite impossible. He has
quarrelled with everybody. As far as I can make out he hasn't
got a cent, he lives in a little studio right away beyond the
Jardin des Plantes, but he won't let anybody see his work- He
doesn't show anywhere, so one doesn't know what he is doing.
He may be a genius, but on the other hand he may be off his
head. By the way, I ran against Flanagan the other day. He
was showing Mrs. Flanagan round the Quarter. He has
chucked art and is now in popper's business. He seems to be
rolling. Mrs. Flanagan is very pretty and I'm trying ta work f
portrait. How much would you ask if you were me? I don't

502 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

want to frighten them, and then on the other hand I don't
want to be such an ass as to as\ £i^o if they're quite willing to
give £^00.

Yours ever,

Frederick^ Lawson.

Philip wrote to Cronshaw and received in reply the fol-
lowing letter. It was written on a half-sheet of common note-
paper, and the flimsy envelope was dirtier than was justified
by its passage through the post.

Dear Carey,

Of course I remember you very tvell. I have an idea that I
had some part in rescuing you from the Slough of Despond in
which myself am hopelessly immersed. I shall be glad to see
you. I am a stranger in a strange city and I am buffeted by the
Philistines. It will be pleasant to tall{ of Paris. I do not as\ you
to come and see me, since my lodging is not of a magnificence
fit for the reception of an eminent member of Monsieur
Purgon's profession, but you will find me eating modestly any
evening between seven and eight at a restaurant yclept Au Bon
Plaisir in Dean Street.

Your sincere

/. Cronshaw.

Philip went the day he received this letter. The restaurant,
consisting of one small room, was of the poorest class, and
Cronshaw seemed to be its only customer. He was sitting in
the corner, well away from draughts, wearing the same shabby
great-coat which Philip had never seen him without, with his
old bowler on his head.

"I eat here because I can be alone," he said. "They are not
doing well; the only people who come are a few trollops and
one or two waiters out of a job; they are giving up business,
and the food is execrable. But the ruin of their fortunes is my
advantage."

Cronshaw had before him a glass of absinthe. It was nearly

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 503

three years since they had met, aqd Philip was shocked by the
change in his appearance. He had been rather corpulent, but
now he had a dried-up, yellow look: the skin of his neck was
loose and wrinkled; his clothes hung about him as though
they had been bought for someone else; and his collar, three
or four sizes too large, added to the slatternliness of his appear-
ance. His hands trembled continually. Philip remembered the
handwriting which scrawled over the page with shapeless,
haphazard letters. Cronshaw was evidently very ill.

"I eat little these days," he said. "I'm very sick in the morn-
ing. I'm just having some soup for my dinner, and then I
shall have a bit of cheese."

Philip's glance unconsciously went to the absinthe, and
Cronshaw, seeing it, gave him the quizzical look with which
he reproved the admonitions of common sense.

"You have diagnosed my case, and you think it's very wrong
of me to drink absinthe."

"You've evidently got cirrhosis of the liver," said Philip.

"Evidently."

He looked at Philip in the way which had formerly had the
power of making him feel incredibly narrow. It seemed to
point out that what he was thinking was distressingly obvious;
and when you have agreed with the obvious what more is
there to say ? Philip changed the topic.

"When are you going back to Paris?"

"I'm not going back to Paris. I'm going to die."

The very naturalness with which he said this startled Philip.
He thought of half a doz;en things to say, but they seemed
futile. He knew that Cronshaw was a dying man.

"Are you going to settle in London then?" he asked lamely.

"What is London to me? I am a fish out of water. I walk
through the crowded streets, men jostle me, and I seem to
walk in a dead city. I fek that I couldn't die in Paris. I wanted
to die among my own people. I don't know what hidden in-
stinct drew me back at the last."

Philip knew of the woman Cronshaw had lived with and

504 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

the two draggle-tailed children, but Cronshaw had nevet
mentioned them to him, and he did not like to speak of them.
He wondered what had happened to them.

"I don't know why you talk of dying," he said.

"I had pneumonia a couple of winters ago, and they told
me then it was a miracle that I came through. It appears I'm
extremely liable to it, and another bout will kill me."

"Oh, what nonsense! You're not so bad as all that. You've
only got to take precautions. Why don't you give up drink-
ing?"

"Because I don't choose. It doesn't matter what a man does
if he's ready to take the consequences. Well, I'm ready to take
the consequences. You talk glibly of giving up drinking, but
it's the only thing I've got left now. What do you think life
would be to me without it ? Can you understand the happiness
I get out of my absinthe? I yearn for it; and when I drink it
I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel my soul swimming
in ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a puritan and
in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures
are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man blessed
with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul.
I have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay."

Philip looked at him for a while steadily.

"Aren't you afraid?"

For a moment Cronshaw did not answer. He seemed to con-
^ sider his reply.

"Sometimes, when I'm alone." He looked at Philip. "You
think that's a condemnation? You're wrong. I'm not afraid of
my fear. It's folly, the Christian argument that you should live
always in view of your death. The only way to live is to forget
that you're going to die. Death is unimportant. The fear of it
should never influence a single action of the wise man. I know
that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that 1 shall
be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep my-
self from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to
such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, dis-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 505

eased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret
nothing."

"D'you remember that Persian carpet you gave me?" asked
Philip.

Cronshaw smiled his old, slow smile of past days.

"I told you that it would give you an answer to your ques-
tion when you asked me what was the meaning of life. Well,
Kave you discovered the answer?"

||No," smiled PhiHp. "Won't you tell it me?"

"No, no, I can't do that. The answer is meaningless unless
you discover it for yourself."

'Chapter 83

Cronshaw was publishing his poems. His friends had been
urging him to do this for years, but his laziness made it im^
possible for him to take the necessary steps. He had always
answered their exhortations by telling them that the love of
poetry was dead in England. You brought out a book which
had cost you years of thought and labour; it was given two or
three contemptuous lines among a batch of similar volumes,
twenty or thirty copies were sold, and the rest of the edition
was pulped. He had long since worn out the desire for fame,
That was an illusion like all else. But one of his friends had
taken the matter into his own hands. This was a man of letters,
named Leonard Upjohn, whom Philip had met once or twice
with Cronshaw in the dafes of the Quarter. He had a consid-
<erable reputation in England as a critic and was the accredited
■exponent in this country of modern French literature. He had
lived a good deal in France among the men \yho made the
Mercure de France the liveliest review of the day, and by the
simple process of expressing in English their point of view hft

506 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

had acquired in England a reputation for originality. Philip
had read some of his articles. He had formed a style for him-
self by a close imitation of Sir Thomas Browne; he used
elaborate sentences, carefully balanced, and obsolete, resplend-
ent words : it gave his writing an appearance of individuality.
Leonard Upjohn had induced Cronshaw to give him all his
poems and found that there were enough to make a volume
of reasonable size. He promised to use his influence with pub-
lishers. Cronshaw was in want of money. Since his illness he
had found it more diiBcult than ever to work steadily; he
made barely enough to keep himself in liquor; and when Up-
john wrote to him that this publisher and the other, though
admiring the poems, thought it not worth while to publish
them, Cronshaw began to grow interested. He wrote impress-
ing upon Upjohn his great need and urging him to make
more strenuous efforts. Now that h'e was going to die he
wanted to leave behind him a published book, and at the back
of his mind was the feeling that he had produced great poetry.
He expected to burst upon the world like a new star. There
was something fine in keeping to himself these treasures of
beauty all his life and giving them to the world disdainfully
when, he and the world parting company, he had no further
use for them.

His decision to come to England was caused directly by an
announcement from Leonard Upjohn that a publisher had
consented to print the poems. By a miracle of persuasion
Upjohn had persuaded him to give ten pounds in advance of _
royalties.

"In advance of royalties, mind you," said Cronshaw to
Philip. "Milton only got ten pounds down."

Upjohn had promised to write a signed article about them,
and he would ask his friends who reviewed to do their best.
Cronshaw pretended to treat the matter with detachment, but
it was easy to see that he was delighted with the thought of
the stir he would make.

One day Philip went to dine by arrangement at the wretched

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 507

eating-house at which Cronshaw insisted on taking his meals,
but Cronshaw did not appear. Philip learned that he had not
been there for three days. He got himself something to eat and
went round to the address from which Cronshaw had first
written to him. He had some difficulty in finding Hyde Street.
It was a street of dingy houses huddled together; many of the
windows had been broken and were clumsily repaired with
strips of French newspaper; the doors had not been painted
for years; there were shabby Httle shops on the ground floor,
laundries, cobblers, stationers. Ragged children played in the
road, and an old barrel-organ was grinding out a vulgar tune.
Philip knocked at the door of Cronshaw's house, (there was
a shop of cheap sweetstufis at the bottom,) and it was opened
by an elderly Frenchwoman in a dirty apron. Philip asked her
if Cronshaw was in.

"Ah, yes, there is an Englishman who lives at the top, at
the back. I don't know if he's in. If you want him you had
better go up and see."

The st'aircase was lit by one jet of gas. There was a revolting
odour in the house. When PhiHp was passing up a woman
came out of a room on the first floor, looked at him suspi-
ciously, but made no remark. There were three doors on the
top landing. Philip knocked at one, and knocked again; there
was no reply; he tried the handle, but the door was locked.
He knocked at another door, got no answer, and tried the door
again. It opened. The room was dark.

"Who's that.?"

He recognised Cronshaw's voice.

"Carey. Can I come in.?"

He received no answer. He walked in. The window was
closed and the stink was overpowering. There was a certain
amount of light from the arc-lamp in the street, and he saw
that it was a small room with two beds in it, end to end; there
was a W€shing-stand and one chair, but they left little space
for anyone to move in. Cronshaw was in the bed nearest the
wdndow. He made no movement, but gave a low chuckle.

508 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Why don't you light the candle?" he said then.

Philip struck a match arid discovered that there was a candle-
stick on the floor beside the bed. He lit it and put it on the
washing-stand. Cronshaw was lying on his back immobile;
he looked very odd in his nightshirt; and his baldness was dis-
concerting. His face was earthy and death-like.

"I say, old man, you look awfully ill. Is there, anyone to look
after you here?"

"George brings me in a bottle of milk in the moj-ning before
he goes to his work."

"Who's George?"

"I call him George because his name is Adolphe. He shares
this palatial apartment with me."

Philip noticed then that the second bed had not been made
since it was slept in. The pillow was black where the head had
rested.

"You don't mean to say you're sharing this room with some-
body else?" he cried.

"Why not ? Lodging costs money in Soho. George iS a waiter,
he goes out at eight in the morning and does not come in till
closing time, so he isn't in my way at all. We neither of us
sleep well, and he helps to pass away the hours of the night
by telling me stories of his life. He's a Swiss, and I've always
had a taste" for waiters. They see life from an entertaining
angle."

"How long have you been in bed?"

"Three days."

"D'you mean to say you've had nothing but a bottle of milk
for the last three days? Why on earth didn't you send me a
line? I can't bear to think of you lying here all day long with-
out a soul to attend to you."

Cronshaw gave a little laugh.

"Look at your face. Why, dear boy, I really believe you're
distressed. You nice fellow."

Philip blushed. He had not suspected that his face showed
the dismay he felt at the sight of that horrible room and the

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 509

wretched circumstances of the poor poet. Cronshaw, watching
Philip, went on with a gentle smile.

"I've been quite happy. Look, here are my proofs. Remem-
ber that I am indifferent to discomforts which would harass
other folk. What do the circumstances of life matter if your
dreams make you lord paramount of time and space?"

The proofs were lying on his bed, and as he lay in the dark-
ness he had been able to place his hands on them. He showed
them to Philip and his eyes glowed. He turned over the pages,
rejoicing in the clear type; he read out a stanza.

"They don't look bad, do they.?"

Philip had an idea. It would involve him in a little expense
and he could not afford even the smallest increase of expendi-
ture; but on the other hand this was a case where it revolted
him to think of economy.

"I say, I can't bear the thought of your remaining here. I've
got an extra rbom, it's empty at present, but I can easily get
someone to lend me a bed. Won't you come and live with me
for a while ? It'll save you the rent of this."

"Oh, my dear boy, you'd insist on my keeping my window
open."

"You shall have every window in the place sealed if you
like."

"I shall be all right tomorrow. I could have got up today,
only I felt lazy."

"Then you can very easily make the move. And then if you
don't feel well at any time you can just go to bed, and I shall
be there to look after you."

"If it'll please you I'll come," said .Cronshaw, with his torpid
not unpleasant smile.

"That'll be ripping."

They settled that Philip should fetch Cronshaw next day,
and Philip snatched an hour from his busy morning to arrange
the change. He found Cronshaw dressed, sitting in his hat and
great-coat on the bed, with a small, shabby portmanteau, con-
taining his clothes and books, already packed: it was on the

510 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

floor by his feet, and he looked as if he were sitting in the
waiting-room of a station. PhiUp laughed at the sight of him.
They went over to Kennington in a four-wheeler, of which
the windows were carefully closed, and Philip installed his
guest in his own room. He had gone out early in the morning
and bought for himself a second-hand bedstead, a cheap chest
of drawers, and a looking-glass. Cronshaw settled down at
once to correct his proofs. He was much better.

Philip found him, except for the irritability which was a
symptom of his disease, an easy guest. He had a lecture at nine
in the morning, so did not see Cronshaw till the night. Once
or twice Philip persuaded him to share the scrappy meal he
prepared for himself in the evening, but Cronshaw was too
restless. to stay in, and preferred generally to get himself some-
thing to eat in one or other of the cheapest restaurants in Soho.
Philip asked him to see Dr. Tyrell, but he stoutly refused; he
knew a doctor would -tell him to stop drinking, and this he
was resolved not to do. He always felt horribly ill in the morn-
ing, but his absinthe at mid-day put him on his feet again,
and by the time he came home, at midnight, he was able to
talk with the brilliancy which had astonished Philip when
first he made his acquaintance. His proofs were corrected; and
the volume was to come out among the pubhcations of the
early spring, when the public might be supposed to have re-
covered from the avalanche of Christmas books.

Chapter 84

At the new year Philip became dresser in the surgical out-
patients' department. The work was of the same character as
that which he had just been engaged on, but with the greater
directness which surgery has than medicine; and a larger pro-

OF HUMAN. BONDAGE 5111

portion of the patients suffered from those two diseases whichi
a supine public allows, in its prudishness, to be spread- broadi-
cast. The assistant-surgeon for whom Philip dressed was called!
Jacobs. He was a short, fat man, with an exuberant joviality,.
a bald head, and a loud voice; he had a cockney accent, and
was generally described by the students as an 'awful bounder';
but his cleverness, both as a surgeon and as a teacher, caused
some of them to overlook this. He had also a considerable
facetiousness, which he exercised impartially on the patients
and on the students. He took a great pleasure in making his.
dressers look foolish. Since they were ignorant, nervous, and
could not answer as if he were their equal, this was not very
difficult. He enjoyed his afternoons, with the home truths he
permitted himself, much more than the students who had to
put up with them with a smile. One day a case came up of
a boy with a club-foot. His parents wanted to know whether
anything could be done. Mr. Jacobs turned to PhiHp.

"You'd better take this case, Carey. It's a subject you ought
to know something about."

Philip flushed, all the more because the surgeon spoke obvi^
, ously with a humorous intention, and his brow-beaten dressers,
laughed obsequiously. It was in point of fact a subject which
PhiUp, since coming to the hospital, had studied' with anxious,
attention. He had read everything in the library which treated
of talipes in its various forms. He made the boy take off his
boot and stocking. He was fourteen, with a snub nose, blue
eyes, and a freckled face. His father explained that they
wanted something done if possible, it was such a hindrance to-
the kid in earning his living. Philip looked at him curiously..
He was a jolly boy, not at all shy, but talkative and with a
cheekiness which his father reproved. He was much interested
in his foot.

"It's only for the looks of the thing, you know," he said to.
Philip. "I don't find it no trouble."

"Be quiet, Ernie," said his father. "There's too much gas;
about you."

512 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Philip examined the foot and passed his hand slowly over
the shapelessness of it. He could not understand why the boy
felt none of the humiliation which always oppressed himself.
He wondered why he could not take his deformity with that '
philosophic indifference. Presently Mr. Jacobs came up to him.
The boy was sitting on the edge of a couch, the surgeon and
Philip stood on each side of him; and in a semi-circle, crowd-
ing round, were students. With accustomed brilliancy Jacobs
gave a graphic little discourse upon the club-foot: he spoke of
its varieties and of the forms which followed upon different
anatomical conditions.

"I suppose you've got talipes equinus.?" he said, turning sud-
denly to Philip.

'Tes."

Philip felt the eyes of his fellow-students rest on him, and
he cursed himself because he could not help blushing. He felt
the sweat start up in the palms of his hands. The surgeon
spoke with the fluency due to long practice and with the
admirable perspicacity which distinguished him. He was tre-
mendously interested in his profession. But Philip did not
listen. He was only wishing that the fellow would get done
quickly. Suddenly he realised that Jacobs was addressing him.

"You don't mind taking off your sock for a moment,
Carey.?"

Philip felt a shudder pass through him. He had an impulse
to tell the surgeon to go to hell, but he had not the courage to
make a scene. He feared his brutal ridicule. He forced himself
to appear indifferent.

"Not a bit," he said.

He sat down and unlaced his boot. His fingers were trem-
bling, and he thought he should never untie the knot. He
rerriembered how they had forced him at school to show his
foot, and the misery which had eaten into his soul.

"He keeps his feet nice and clean, doesn't he.?" said Jacobs,
in his rasping, cockney voice.

The attendant students giggled. Philip noticed that the boy

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 513

whom they were examining looked down at his foot with
eager curiosity. Jacobs took the foot in his hands and said:

"Yes, that's what I thought. I see you've had an operation,
When you were a child, I suppose?"

He went on with his fluent explanations. The students
leaned over and looked at the foot. Two or three examined it
minutely when Jacobs let it go.

"When you've quite done," said Philip, with a smile, ironi-
cally.

He could have killed them all. He thought how jolly it
would be to jab a chisel (he didn't know why that particular
instrument came into his mind) into their necks. What beasts
men were! He wished he could believe in hell so as to comfort
himself with the thought of the horrible tortures which would
be theirs. Mr. Jacobs turned his attention to treatment. He
talked partly to the boy's father and partly to the students.
Philip put on his sock and laced his boot. At last the surgeon
finished. But he seemed to have an afterthought and turnea
to Philip.

"You know, I think it might be worth your while to have
an operation. Of course I couldn't give you a normal foot, but
I think I can do something. You might think about it, and
when you want a holiday vou can just come into the hospital
for a bit."

Philip had often asked himself whether anything could be
done, but his distaste -for any reference to the subject had.
prevented him from consulting any of the surgeons at the
hospital. His reading told him that whatever might have been
done when he was a small boy, and then treatment of talipes
was not as skilful as in the present day, there was small chance
now of any great benefit. Still it would be worth while if an
operation made it possible for him to wear a more ordinary
boot and to limp less. He remembered how passionately he
had prayed for the miracle which his uncle had assured him
was possible to omnipotence. He smiled ruefully.

"I was rather a simple soul in those days," he thought.

514 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Towards the end of February it was clear that Cronshaw
was growing much worse. He was no longer able to get up.
He lay in bed, insisting that the window should be closed
always, and refused to see a doctor; he would take little
nourishment, but demanded whiskey and cigarettes: Philip
knew that he should have neither, but Cronshaw's argument
was unanswerable.

"I daresay they are killing me. I don't care. You've warned
me, you've done all that was necessary : I ignore your warning.
<jive me something to drink and be damned to you."

Leonard Upjohn blew in two or three times a week, and
there was something of the dead leaf in his appearance which
made that word exactly descriptive of the manner of his ap-
pearance. He was a weedy-looking fellow of five-and-thirty,
with long pale hair and a white face; he had the look of a man
"who lived too little in the open air. He wore a hat like a dis-
senting minister's. Philip disliked him for his patronising
manner and was bored by his fluent conversation. Leonard
Upjohn liked to hear himself talk. He was not sensitive to the
interest of his listeners, which is the first requisite of the good
talker; and he never realised that he was telling people what
they knew already. With measured words he told Philip what
to think of Rodin, Albert Samain, and Cxsar Franck. Philip's
char-woman only came in for an hour in the morning, and
since Philip was obliged to be at the hospital all day Cronshaw
was left much alone. Upjohn told Philip that he thought some-
one should remain with him, but did not offer to make it
possible.

"It's dreadful to think of that great poet alone. Why, he
might die without a soul at hand."

"I think he very probably will," said Philip.

"How can you be so callous!"

"Why don't you come and do your work here every day,
and then you'd be near if he wanted anything.?" asked Philip
drily.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 515

"I? My dear fellow, I can only work in the surrounding!
I'm used to, and besides I go out so much."

Upjohn was also a little put out because Phihp had brought
Cronshaw to his own rooms.

"I wish you had left him in Soho," he said, with a wave ol
his long, thin hands. "There was a touch of romance in that
sordid attic. I could even bear it if it were Wapping or Shore-
ditch, but the respectability of Kennington! What a place foi
a poet to die!"

Cronshaw was often so ill-humoured that PhiHp could onl>
keep his temper by remembering all the time that this irrita-
bility was a symptom of the disease. Upjohn came sometime;
before Philip was in, and then Cronshaw would complai^ ol
him bitterly. Upjohn hstened with complacency.

"The fact is that Carey has no sense of beauty," he smiled
"He has a middle-class mind."

He was very sarcastic to Philip, and Philip exercised a good
deal of self-control in his dealings with him. But one evening
he could not contain himself. He had had a hard day at the
hospital and was tired out. Leonard Upjohn came to him,
while, he. was making himself a cup of tea in the kitchen, and
said that Cronshaw was complaining of Philip's insistence
that he should have a doctor.

"Don't you realise that you're enjoying a very rare, a very
exquisite privilege.? You ought to do everything in youi
power, surely, to show your sense of the greatness of your
trust."

"It's a rare and exquisite privilege which I can ill afford,"
said Philip.

Whenever there was any question of money', Leonard Up-
john assumed a slightly disdainful expression. His sensitive
temperament was offended by the reference.

"There's something fine in Cronshaw's attitude, and you
disturb it by your importunity. You should make allowances
for the delicate imaginings which you cannot feel."

516 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Philip's face darkened.

"Let us go in to Cronshaw," he said frigidly.

The poet was lying on his back, reading a book, with a pipe
in his mouth. The air was musty; and the room, notwith-
standing Philip's tidying up, had the bedraggled look which
seemed to accompany Cronshaw wherever he went. He took
off his spectacles as they came in. Philip was in a towering
rage.

"Upjohn tells me you've been complaining to him because
I've urged you to have a doctor," he said. "I want you to have
a doctor, because you may die any day, and if you hadn't
been seen by anyone I shouldn't be able to get a certificate.
There'd have to be an inquest and I should be blamed for not
calling a doctor in."

"I hadn't thought of that. I thought you wanted me to see
a doctor for my sake and not for your own. I'll see a doctor
whenever you like."

Philip did not answer, but gave an almost imperceptible
shrug of the shoulders. Cronshaw, watching him, gave a little
chuckle.

"Don't look so angry, my dear. I know very well you want
to do everything you can for me. Let's see your doctor, per-
haps he can do something for me, and at any rate it'll comfort
you." He turned his eyes to Upjohn. "You're a damned fool,
Leonard. Why d'you want to worry the boy ? He has quite
enough to do to put up with me. You'll do nothing more for
me than write a pretty article about me after my death. I know
you."

Next day Philip went to Dr. Tyrell. He felt that he was the
sort' of man to be interested by the story, and as soon as Tyrell
was free of his day's work he accompanied Philip to Kenning-
ton. He could only agree with what Philip had told him. The
case was hopeless.

"I'll take him into the hospital if you like," he said. "He can
have a small ward."

"Nothing would induce him to come."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 517

'You know, he may die any minute, or else he may get
another attack of pneumonia."

Phihp nodded. Dr. Tyrell made one or two suggestions, and
promised to come again whenever Philip wanted him to. He
left his address. When Philip went back to Cronshaw he
found him quietly reading. He did not trouble to enquire
what the doctor had said.

"Are you satisfied now, dear boy?" he asked.

"I suppose nothing will induce you to do any of the things
Tyrell advised?"

"Nothing," smiled Cronshaw.

Chapter 85

About a fortnight after this Philip, going home one evening
after his day's work at the hospital, knocked at the door of
Cronshaw's room. Heigot. no answer and walked in. Cronshaw
was lying huddled up on one side, and Philip went up to the
bed. He did not know whether Cronshaw was asleep or
merely lay there in one of his uncontrollable fits of irritability.
He was surprised to see that his mouth was open. He touched
his shoulder. Philip gave a cry of dismay. He slipped his hand
under Cronshaw's shirt and felt his heart; he did not know
what to do; helplessly, because he had heard of this being
done, he held a looking-glass in front of his mouth. It startled
him to be alone with Cronshaw. He had his hat and coat still
on, and he ran down the stairs into the street; he hailed a cab
and drove to Harley Street. Dr. Tyrell was in.

"I say, would you mind coming at once? I think Cronshaw's
dead."

"If he is it's not much good my coming, is it?"

518 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I should be awfully grateful i£ you would. I've got a cab
at the door. It'll only take half an hour."

Tyrell put on his hat. In the cab he asked him one or two
questions.

"He seemed no worse than usual when I left this morning,"
said Phihp. "It gave me an awful shock when I went in just
now. And the thought of his dying all alone. . . . D'you think
he knew he was going to die?"

Philip remembered what Cronshaw had said. He wondered
whether at that last moment he had been seized with the
terror of death. Philip imagined himself in such a plight^ know-
ing it was inevitable and with no one, not a soul, to give an en-
couraging word when the fear seized him.

"You're rather upset," said Dr. Tyrell.

He looked at him with his bright blue eyes. They were not
unsympathetic. When he saw Cronshaw, he said:

"He must have been dead for some hours. I should think
he died in his sleep. They do sometimes."

The body looked shrunk and ignoble. It was not like any-
thing human. Dr. Tyrell looked at it dispassionately. With a
mechanical gesture he took out his watch.

"Well, I must be getting along. I'll send the certificate
round. I suppose you'll communicate with the relatives."

"I don't think there are any," said Philip.

"How about the funeral.?"

"Oh, I'll sec to that."

Dr. Tyrell gave Philip a glance. He wondered whether he
ought to offer a couple of sovereigns towards it. He knew
nothing of Phihp's circumstances; perhaps he could well
afford the expense; Philip might think it impertinent if he
made any suggestion.

"Well, let me know if there's anything I can do," he said.

PhiUp and he went out together, parting on the doorstep,
and Phihp went to a telegraph office in order to send a message
to Leonard Upjohn. Then he went to an undertaker whose
shop he passed every day on his way to the hospital. His at-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 519

tention had been drawn to it often by the three words in silver
lettering on a black cloth, which, with two model coffins,
adorned the window : Economy, Celerity, Propriety. They had
always diverted him. The undertaker was a little fat Jew with
curly black hair, long and greasy, in black, with a large dia-
mond ring on a podgy finger. He received Philip with a
peculiar manner formed by the mingling of his natural
blatancy with the subdued air proper to his calling. He
quickly saw that Philip was very helpless and promised to
send round a woman at once to perform the needful offices.
His suggestions for the funeral were very magnificent; and
Philip felt ashamed of himself when the undertaker seemed
to think his objections mean. It was horrible to haggle on such
a matter, and finally Philip consented to an expensiveness
which he could ill afford.

"I quite understand, sir," said the undertaker, "you don't
want any show and that — I'm not a believer in ostentation
myself, mind you — but you want it done gentlemanly-like,
You leave it to me, I'll do it as cheap as it can be done, 'aving
regard to what's right and proper. I can't say more than that,
can I.?"

PhiUp went home to eat his supper, and while he ate the
woman came along to lay out the corpse. Presently a telegram
arrived from Leonard Upjohn.

Shoc\ed and grieved beyond measure. Regret cannot come
tonight. Dining out. With you early tomorrow. Deepest sympa-
thy. Upjohn.

In a little while the woman knocked at the door of the
sitting-room.
"I've done now, sir. Will you come and look at 'im and see

it's all right.?" , . , , . t

Philip followed her. Cronshaw was lymg on his back, with

his eyes closed and his hands folded piously across his chest.
"You ought by rights to 'ave a few flowers, sir."

520 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I'll get some tomorrow."

She gave the body a glance of satisfaction. She had per-
formed her job, and now she rolled down her sleeves, took
off her apron, and put on her bonnet. Philip asked her how
much he owed her.

"Well, sir, some give me two and sixpence and some give
me five shillings."

Philip was ashamed to give her less than the larger sum. She
thanked him with just so much effusiveness as was seemly in
presence of the grief he might be supposed to feel, and left
him. Philip went back into his sitting-room, cleared away the
remains of his supper, and sat down to read Walsham's
Surgery. He found it difficult. He felt singularly nervous.
When there was a sound on the stairs he jumped, and his
heart beat violently. That thing in the adjoining room, which
had been a man and now was nothing, frightened him. The
silence seemed alive, as if some mysterious movement were
taking place within it; the presence of death weighed upon
these rooms, unearthly and terrifying: Philip felt a sudden
horror for what had once been his friend. He tried to force
himself to read, but presently pushed away his book in despair.
What troubled him was the absolute futility of the life which
had just ended. It did not matter if Cronshaw was alive or
dead. It would have been just as well if he had never lived.
Philip thought of Cronshaw young; and it needed an effort
of imagination to picture him slender, with a springing step,
and with hair on his head, buoyant and hopeful Philip's rule
of life, to follow one's instincts with due regard to the police-
man round the corner, had not acted very well there: it was
because Cronshaw had done this that he had made such a
lamentable failure of existence. It seemed that the instincts
could not be trusted. Philip was puzzled, and he asked him-
self what rule of life was there, if that one was useless, and
why people acted in one way rather than in another. They
acted according to their emotions, but their emotions might
be good or bad; it seemed just a chance whether they led to

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 521

triumph or disaster. Life seemed an inextricable confusion.
Men hurried hither and thither, urged by forces they knew
not; and the purpose of it all escaped them; they seemed to
hurry just for hurrying's sake.

Next morning Leonard Upjohn appeared with a small
wreath of laurel. He was pleased with his idea of crowning
the dead poet with this; and attempted, notwithstanding
Philip's disapproving silence, to fix it on the bald head; but
the wreath fitted grotesquely. It looked like the brim of a hat
worn by a low comedian in a music-hall.

"I'll put it over his heart instead," said Upjohn.

"You've put it on his stomach," remarked Philip.

Upjohn give a thin smile.

"Only a poet knows where lies a poet's heart," he answered.

They went back into the sitting-room, and Philip told him
what arrangements he had made for the funeral.

"I hope you've spared no expense. I should like the hearse
to be followed by a long string of empty coaches, and I should
•like the horses to wear tall nodding plumes, and there should
be a vast number of mutes with long streamers on their hats.
I like the thought of all those empty coaches."

"As the cost of the funeral will apparently fall on me, and
I'm not over flush just now, I've tried to make it as moderate
as possible."

"But, my dear fellow, in that case, why didn't you get him
a pauper's funeral? There would have been something poetic
in that. You have an unerring instinct for mediocrity."

Philip flushed a Httle, but did not answer; and next day he
and Upjohn followed the hearse in the one carriage which
Philip had ordered. Lawson, unable to come, had sent a
wreath; and Philip, so that the coffin should not seem too neg-
lected, had bought a couple. On the way back the coachmaii
whipped up his horses. Philip was dog-tired and presently
went to sleep. He was awakened by Upjohn's voice.

"It's rather lucky the poems haven't come out yet. I thmk
we'd better hold them back a bit and I'll write a preface. I

522 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

began thinking of it during the drive to the cemetery. I believe
I can do something rather good. Anyhow I'll start with an
article in The Saturday."

Philip did not reply, and there was silence between them.
At last Upjohn said:

"I daresay I'd be wiser not to whittle away my copy. I think
I'll do an article for one of the reviews, and then I can just
print it afterwards as a preface."

Philip kept his eye on the monthlies, and a few weeks later
it appeared. The article made something of a stir, and extracts
from it were printed in many of the papers. It was a very good
article, vaguely biographical, for no one knew much of Cren-
shaw's early Hfe, but delicate, tender, and picturesque. Leonard
Upjohn in his intricate style drew graceful little pictures of
Cronshaw in the Latin Quarter, talking, writing poetry : Cron-
shaw became a picturesque figure, an Enghsh Verlaine; and
Leonard Upjohn's coloured phrases took on a tremulous
dignity, a more pathetic grandiloquence, as he described the
sordid end, the shabby little room in Soho; and, with a ret-
icence which was wholly charming and suggested a much
greater generosity than modesty allowed him to state, the
efforts* he made to transport the poet to some cottage em-
bowered with honeysuckle amid a flowering orchard. And the
lack of sympathy, well-meaning but so tactless, which had
taken the poet instead to the vulgar respectability of Kenning-
ton! Leonard Upjohn described Kennington with that re-
strained humour which a strict adherence to the vocabulary
of Sir Thomas Browne necessitated. With delicate sarcasm he
narrated the last weeks, the patience with which Cronshaw
bore the well-meaning clumsiness of the young student who
had appointed himself his nurse, and the pitifulncss of that
divine vagabond in those hopelessly middle-class surround-
ings. Beauty from ashes, he quoted from Isaiah. It was a
triumph of irony for that outcast poet to die amid the
trappings of vulgar respectability; it reminded Leonard Up-
john of Christ among the Pharisees, and the analogy gave him

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 523

opportunity for an exquisite passage. And then he told how
a friend — his good taste did not suffer him more than to hint
subtly who the friend was with such gracious fancies — had
laid a laurel wreath on the dead poet's heart; and the beautiful
dead hands had seemed to rest with a voluptuous passion
upon Apollo's leaves,. fragrant with the fragrance of art, and
more green than jade brought by swart mariners from the
manifold, inexplicable China. And, an admirable contrast, the
article ended with a description of the middle-class, ordinary,
prosaic funeral of him who should have been buried like a
prince or like a pauper. It was the crowning bufEet, the final
victory of Philistia over art, beauty, and immaterial things.

Leonard Upjohn had never written anything better. It was
a miracle of charm, grace, and pity. He printed all Cronshaw's
best poems in the course of the article, so that when the
volume appeared much of its point was gone ; but he advanced
his own position a good deal. He was thenceforth a critic to
be reckoned with. He had seemed before a little aloof; but
there was a warm humanity about this article which was
infinitely attractive.

Chapter 86

In the spring Philip, having finished his dressing in the out-
patients' department, became an in-patients' clerk. Xbis ap-
pointment lasted six months. The- clerk spent every morning
in the wards, first in the men's, then in the women's, with the
house-physician; he wrote up cases, made tests, and passed the
time of day with the nurses. On two afternoons a week the
physician in charge went roimd with a little knot of students,
examined the cases and dispensed information. The work had

524 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

not tht excitement, the constant change, the intimate contact
with reaUty, of the work in the out-patients' department; but
PhiUp picked up a good deal of knowledge. He got on very
well with the patients, and he was a little flattered at the
pleasure they showed in his attendance on them. He was not
conscious of any deep sympathy in their sufferings, but he
liked them; and becausehe put on no airs he was more popu-
lar with them than others of the clerks. He was pleasant, en-
couraging, and friendly. Like everyone connected with hospi-
tals he found that male patients were more easy to get on
with than female. The women were often querulous and
ill-tempered. They complained bitterly of the hard-worked
nurses, who did not show them the attention they thought
their right; and they were troublesome, ungrateful, and rude.
Presently Philip was fortunate enough to make a friend.
One morning the house-physician gave him a new case, a man;
and, seating himself at the bedside, Philip proceeded to write
down particulars on the 'letter.' He noticed on looking at this
that the patient was described as a journalist: his name was
Thorpe Athelny, an unusual one for a hospital patient, and
his age was forty-eight. He was suffering from a sharp attack
of jaundice, and had been taken into the ward on account of
obscure symptoms which it seemed necessary to watch. He
answered the various questions which it was Philip's duty
to ask him in a pleasant, educated voice. Since he was lying
in bed it was difficult to tell if he was short or tall, but his
small head and small hands suggested that he was a man of
less than average hpight. Philip had the habit of looking at
people's hands, and Athelny 's astonished him: they were very
small, with long, tapering fingers and beautiful, rosy finger-
nails; they were very smooth and except for the jaundice
would have been of a surprising whiteness. The patient kept
them outside the bed-clothes, one of them slightly spread out,
the second and third fingers together, and, while he spoke to
Philip, seemed to contemplate them with satisfaction. With
fl twinkle in his eyes Philip glanced at the man's face. Not-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 525'

withstanding the yellowness it was distinguished; he had blue
eyes, a nose of an imposing boldness, hooked, aggressive but
not clumsy, and a small beard, pointed and gray : he was rather
bald, but his hair had evidently been quite fine, curling
prettily, and he still wore it long.

"I see you're a journalist," said Philip. "What papers d'you
write for.?"

"I write for all the papers. You cannot open a paper without
seeing some of my writing."

There was one by the side of the bed and reaching for it
he pointed out an advertisement. In large letters was the name
of a firm well-known to Philip, Lynn and Sedley, Regent
Street, London; and below, in type smaller but still of some
magnitude, was the dogmatic statement : Procrastination is the
Thief of Time. Then a question, startling because of its
reasonableness : Why not order today ? There was a repetition,
in large letters, like the hammering of conscience on a mur-
derer's heart: Why not.'' Then, boldly: Thousands of pairs of
gloves from the leading markets of the world at astounding
prices. Thousands of pairs of stockings from the most re-
liable manufacturers of the universe at sensational reductions.
Finally the question recurred, but flung now like a challenging
gauntlet in the lists: Why not order today?

"I'm the press representative of Lynn and Sedley." He gave
a little wave of his beautiful hand. "To what base uses . . ."

Philip went on asking the regulation questions, some a mere
matter of routine, others artfully devised to lead the patient
to discover things which he might be expected to desire to
conceal.

"Have you ever lived abroad?" asked Philip.

"I was in Spain for eleven years."

"What were you doing there?"

"I was secretary of the English water company at Toledo."

Philip remembered that Glutton had spent some months in
Toledo, and the journalist's answer made him look at him
with more interest; but he felt it would be improper to show

526 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

this: it was necessary to preserve the distance between the
hospital patient and the staff. When he had finished his ex-
amination he went on to other beds.

Thorpe Athelny's illness was not grave, and, though remain-
Jng very yellow, he soon felt much better: he stayed in bed
only because the physician thought he should be kept under
observation till certain reactions became normal. One day, on
entering the ward, Philip noticed that Athelny, pencil in hand,
was reading a book. He put it down when Philip came to his
bed.

"May I see what you're reading.?" asked Philip, who could
never pass a book without looking at it.

Philip took it up and saw that it was a volume of Spanish
verse, the poems of San Juan de la -Cruz, and as he opened it
a sheet of paper fell out. PhiUp picked it up and noticed that
verse was written upon it.

"You're not .going to tell me you've been occupying your
leisure in writing poetry.'' That's a most improper proceeding
in a hospital patient."

"I was trying to do some translations. D'you know
Spanish.?"

"No."

"Well, you know all about San Juan de la Cruz, don't you?"

"I don't indeed."

"He was one of the Spanish mystics. He's one of the best
poets they've ever had. I thought it would be worth while
translating him into English."

"May I look at your translation.?"

"It's very rough," said Athelny, but he gave it to Philip with
an alacrity which suggested that he was eager for him to read
it.

It was written in pencil, in a fine but very peculiar hand-
writing, which was hard to read: it was just Uke black letter.

"Doesn't it take you an awful time to write like that.? It's
wonderful."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 527

'I don't know why handwriting shouldn't be beautiful."
Philip read the first verse:

In an obscure night

With anxious love inflamed

O happy lot!

Forth unobserved I went,

My house being now at rest . . .

Philip looked curiously at Thorpe Athelny. He iid not
know whether he felt a little shy with him or was attracted
by him. He was conscious that his manner had been slightly
patronising, and he flushed as it struck him that Athelny
might have thought him ridiculous.

"What an unusual name you've got," he remarked, for some-
thing to say.

"It's a very old Yorkshire name. Once it took the head of my
family a day's hard riding to make the circuit of his estates
but the mighty are fallen. Fast women and slow horses."

He was short-sighted and when he spoke looked at you with
a peculiar intensity. He took up his volume of poetry.

"You should read Spanish," he said. "It is a noble tongue.
It has not the mellifluousness of Italian, Italian is the language
of tenors and organ-grinders, but it -has grandeur : it does not
ripple like a brook in a garden, but it surges tumultuous like
a mighty river in flood."

His grandiloquence amused Philip, but he was sensitive to
rhetoric; and he listened with pleasure while Athelny, with
picturesque expressions and the fire of a real enthusiasm, de-
scribed to him the rich delight of reading Don Quixote in the ,
original and the music, romantic, limpid, passionate, of tht
enchanting Calderon.

"I must get on with my work," said Philip presently.

"Oh, forgive me, I forgot. I will tell my wife to bring me a
photograph of Toledo, and I will show it you. Come and talk
to me when you have the chance. You don't know what 3
pleasure it gives me."

528 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

During the next few days, in moments snatched whenever
there was opportunity, Philip's acquaintance with the journal-
ist increased. Thorpe Athelny was a good talker. He did not
say brilliant things, but he talked inspiringly, with an eager
": vividness which fired the imagination; Philip, living so much
^ in a' world of make-believe, found his fancy teeming with new
pictures. Athelny had very good manners. He knew much
more than Philip, both of the world and of books; he was a
much older man; and the readiness of his conversation gave
him a certain superiority; but he was in the hospital a re-
cipient of charity, subject to strict rules; and he held himself
between the two positions with ease and humour. Once Philip
asked him why he had come to the hospital.

"Oh, my principle is to profit by all the benefits that society
provides. I take advantage of the age I live in. When I'm ill
I get myself patched up in a hospital and I have no false
shame, and I send my children to be educated at the board-
school."

"Do you really.?" said Philip.

"And a capital education they get too, much better than
I got at Winchester. How else do you think I could educate
them at all? I've got nine. You must come and see them all
when I get home again. Will you.?"

"I'd like to very much," said Philip.

Chapter 87

Ten days later Thorpe Athelny was well enough to leave
the hospital. He gave Philip his address, and Philip promised
to dine with him at one o'clock on the following Sunday.
Athelny had told him that he lived in a house built by Inigp

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 529

Jones; he had raved, as he raved over everything, over the
balustrade of old oak; and when he came down to open the
door for Philiohe made him at once admire the elegant
carving of the (lintel? It was a shabby house, badly needing a
coat of paint, butwith the dignity of its period, in a little
street between Chancery Lane and Holborn, which had once
been fashionable but was now little better than a slum: there
was a plan to pull it down in order to put up handsome
offices; meanwhile the rents were small, and Athelny was
able to get the two upper floors at a price which suited his
income. Philip had not seen him up before and was sur-
prised at his small size; he was not more than five feet and
five inches high. He was dressed fantastically in blue Hnen
trousers of the sort worn by working men in France, and a
very old brown velvet coat; he wore a bright red sash round
his waist, a low collar, and for tie a flowing bow of the kind
used by the comic Frenchman in the pages of Punch. He
greeted Philip with enthusiasm. He hegan talking at once of
the house and passed his hand lovingly over the balusters.

"Look at it, feel it, it's like silk. What a miracle of grace!
And in five years the house-breaker will sell it for firewood."

He insisted on taking Philip into a room on the first floor,
where a man in shirt sleeves, a blousy woman, and three
children were having their Sunday dinner.

"I've just brought this gentleman in to show him your ceil-
ing. Did you ever see anything so wonderful? How are you,
Mrs. Hodgson ? This is Mr. Carey, who looked after me when
I was in the hospital."

"Come in, sir," said the man. "Any friend of Mr. Athelny's
is welcome. Mr. Athelny shows the ceiling to all his friends.
And it don't matter what we're doing, if we're in bed or if
I'm 'aving a wash, in 'e comes."

Philip could see that they looked upon Athelny as a little
queer; but they hked him none the less and they Ustened open-
mouthed while he discoursed with his impetuous fluency on
the beauty of the seventeenth-century ceiling.

530 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"What a crime to pull this down, eh, Hodgson? You're an
influential citizen, why don't you write to the papers and
protest?"

The man in shirt sleeves gave a laugh and said to Philip:

"Mr. Athelny will 'ave his little joke. They do say these
'ouses are that insaijitory, it's not safe to live in them."

"Sanitation be damned, give me art," cried Athelny. "I've
got nine children and they thrive on bad drains. No, no, I'm
not going to take any risk. None of your new-fangled notions
for me! When I move from here I'm going to make sure the
drains are bad before I take anything."

There was a knock at the door, and a little fair-haired girl
opened it.

"Daddy, mummy says, do stop talking and come and eat
your dinner."

"This is my third daughter," said Athelny, pointing to her
with a dramatic forefinger. "She is called Maria del Pilar,
but she answers more willingly to the name of Jane. Jane,,
your nose wants blowing."

"I haven't got a hanky, daddy."

"Tut, tut, child," he answered, as he produced a vast, bril-
liant bandanna, "what do you suppose -the Almighty gave
you fingers for?"

They went upstairs, and Philip was taken into a room with
walls panelled in dark oak. In the middle was a narrow table
of teak on trestle legs, with two supporting bars of iron, of
the kind called in Spain mesa de hieraje. They were to dine
there, for two places were laid, and there were two large arm-
chairs, with broad flat arms of oak and leathern backs, and
feathern seats. They were severe, elegant, and uncomfortable.
The only other piece of furniture was a hargueho, elaborately
ornamented with gilt iron-work, on a stand of ecclesiastical
design roughly but very finely carved. There stood on this
two or three lustre plates, much broken but rich in colour;
and on the vralls were old masters of the Spanish school in
beautifu' though, delapidated frames: though gruesome in

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 531

subject, ruined by age and bad treatment, and second rate
in their conception, they had a glow of passion. There was
nothing in the room of any value, but the effect was lovely.
It was magnificent and yet austere. Philip felt that it offered
the very spirit of old Spain. Athelny was in the middle of
showing him the inside of the bargueno, with its beautiful
ornamentation and secret drawers, when a tall girl, with two
plaits of bright brown hair hanging down her back, came in.

"Mother says dinner's ready and waiting and I'm to bring
it in as soon as you sit down."

"Come and shake hands with Mr. Carey, Sally." He turned
to Philip. "Isn't she enormous.'' She's my eldest. How old are
you, Sally.?"

"Fifteen, father, come next June."

"I christened her Maria del Sol, because she was my first
child and I dedicated her to the glorious sun of Castile; but
her mother calls her Sally and her brother Pudding-Face."

The girl smiled shyly, she had even, white teeth, and
blushed. She was well set-up, tall for her age, with pleasant
gray eyes and a broad forehead. She had red cheeks.

"Go and tell your mother to come in and shake hands with
Mr. Carey before he sits down."

"Mother says she'll come in after dinner. She hasn't washed
herself yet."

"Then we'll go in and see her ourselves. He mustn't eat
the Yorkshire pudding till he's shaken the hand that made it."

Philip followed his host into the kitchen. It was small and
much overcrowded. There had been a lot of noise, but it
stopped as soon as the stranger entered. There was a large
table in the middle and round it, eager for dinner, were
seated Athelny 's children. A woman was standing at the
oven, taking out baked potatoes one by one.

"Here's Mr. Carey, Betty," said Athelny.

"Fancy bringing him in here. What will he think?"

She wore a dirty apron, and the sleeves of her cotton dress
were turned up above her elbows; she had curling pins in her

532 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

hair. Mrs. Athelny was a large woman, a good three inches
taller than her husband, fair, with blue eyes and a kindly
expression; she had been a handsome creature, but advancing
years and the bearing of many children had made her fat and
blousy; her blue eyes had become pale, her skin was coarse
and red, the colour had gone out of her hair. She straightened
herself, wiped her hand on her apron, and held it out.

"You're welcome, sir," she said, in a slow voice, with an
accent that seemed oddly familiar to Philip. "Athelny said
you was very kind to him in the 'prspital."

"Now you must be introduced to the live stock," said
Athelny. "That is Thorpe," he pointed to a chubby boy with
curly hair, "he is my eldest son, heir to the title, estates, and
responsibilities of the family. There is Athelstan, Harold,
Edward." He pointed with his forefinger to three smaller
boys, all rosy, healthy, and smiling, though when they felt
Philip's smiling eyes upon them they looked shyly down at
their plates. "Now the girls in order: Maria del Sol . . ."

"Pudding-Face," said one of the small boys.

"Your sense of humour is rudimentary, my son. Maria de
los Mercedes, Maria del Pilar, Maria de la Concepcion, Maria
del Rosario."

"I call them Sally, Molly, Connie, Rosie, and Jane," said
Mrs. Athelny. "Now, Athelny, you go into your own room
and ril send you your dinner. I'll let the children come in
afterwards for a bit when I've washed them."

"My dear, if I'd had the naming of you I should have called
you Maria of the Soapsuds. You're always torturing these
wretched brats with soap."

"You go first, Mr. Carey, or I shall never get him to sit
down and eat his dinner."

Athelny and Philip installed themselves in the great monk-
ish chairs, and Sally brought them in two plates of beef,
Yorkshire pudding, baked potatoes, and cabbage. Athelny
took sixpence out of his pocket and sent her for a jug of beer.

"I hope you didn't have the table laid here on my account,"

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 533

said Philip. "I should have been quite happy to eat with the
children."

"Oh no, I always have my meals by myself. I like these
antique customs. I don't think that women ought to sit down
at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very
bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are
never at ease with themselves when they have ideas."

Both host and guest ate with a hearty appetite.

"Did you ever taste such Yorkshire pudding.? No one can
make it like my wife. That's the advantage of not marrying
a lady. You noticed she wasn't a lady, didn't you?"

It was an awkward question, and Philip did not know hovl
to answer it.

"I never thought about it," he said lamely.

Athelny laughed. He had a peculiarly joyous laugh.

"No, she's not a lady, nor anything like it. Her father was
a farmer, and she's never bothered about aitches in her life.
We've had twelve children and nine of them are alive. I tell
her it's about time she stopped, but she's an obstinate woman,
she's got into the habit of it now, and I don't believe she'll be
satisfied till she's had twenty."

At that moment Sally came in with the beer, and, having
poured out a glass for Philip, went to the other side of the
table to pour some out for her father. He put his hand round
her waist.

"Did you ever see such a handsome, strapping girl? Only
fifteen and she might be twenty. Look at her cheeks. She's
never had a day's illness in her life. It'll be a lucky man who
marries her, won't it, Sally?"

Sally listened to all this with a slight, slow smile, not much
embarrassed, for she was accustomed to her father's outbursts,
but with an easy modesty which was very attractive, i

"Don't let your dinner get cold, father," she said, drawing
herself away from his arm. "You'll call when you're ready for
your pudding, won't you?"

534 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

They were left alone, and Athelny lifted the pewter tankard
to his lips. He drank long and deep.

"My word, is there anything better than English beer?" he
said. "Let us thank God for simple pleasures, roast beef and
rice pudding, a good appetite and beer. I was married to a
lady once. My God! Don't marry a lady, my boy."

Philip laughed. He was exhilarated by the scene, the funny
Httle man in his odd clothes, the panelled room and the
Spanish furniture, the English fare: the whole thing had an
exquisite incongruity.

"You laugh, my boy, you can't imagine marrying beneath
you. You want a wife who's an intellectual equal. Your head
is crammed full of ideas of comradeship. Stuff and nonsense,
my boy! A man doesn't want to talk politics to his wife, and
what do you think I care for Betty's views upon the Differen-
tial Calculus.? A man wants a wife who can cook his dinner
and look after his children. I've '.ried both and I know. Let's
have the pudding in."

He clapped his hands and presently Sally came. When she
took away the plates, Philip wanted to get up and help her,
but Athelny stopped him.

"Let her alone, my boy. She doesn't want you to fuss about,
do you, Sally.? And she won't think it rude of you to sit still
while she waits upon you. She don't care a damn for chivalry,
do you, Sally?"

"No, father," answered Sally demurely.

"Do you know what I'm talking about, Sally?"

"No, father. But you know mother doesn't hke you to
swear."

Athelny laughed boisterously. Sally brought them plates of
rice pudding, rich, creamy, and luscious. Athelny attacked
his with gusto.

"One of the rules of this house is that Sunday dinner
should never alter. It is a ritual. Roast beef and rice pudding
for fifty Sundays in the year. On Easter Sunday lamb and
green peas, and at Michaelmas roast goose and apple sauce.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 535

Thus we preserve the traditions of our people. When Sally
marries she will forget many of the wise things I have taught
her, but she will never forget that if you want to be good
and happy you must eat on Sundays roast beef and rice
pudding."

"You'll call when you're ready for cheese," said Sally im-
passively.

"D'you know the legend of the halcyon?" said Athelny:
Philip was growing used to his rapid leaping from one sub-
ject to another. "When the kingfisher, flying over the sea, is
exhausted, his mate places herself beneath him and bears
him along upon her stronger wings. That is what a man
wants in a wife, the halcyon. I lived with my first wife for
three years. She was a lady, she had fifteen hundred a year,
and we used to give nice Httle dinner parties in our little red
brick house in Kensington. She was a charming woman; they
all said so, the barristers and their wives who dined with us,
and the literary stockbrokers, and the budding politicians;
oh, she was a charming woman. She made me go to church in
a silk hat and a, frock coat, she took me to classical concerts,
and she was very fond of lectures on Sunday afternoon; and.
she sat down to breakfast every morning at eight-thirty, and
if I was late breakfast was cold; and she read the right books,
admired the right pictures, and adored the right music. My
God, how that woman bored me!. She is charming still, and
she lives in the Uttle red brick house in Kensington, with
Morris papers and Whistler's etchings on the walls, and
^ives the same nice Httle dinner parties, with veal creams
and ices from Gunter's, as she did twenty years ago."

Philip did not ask by what means the ill-matched couple
had separated, but Athelny told him.

"Betty's not my wife, you know; my wife wouldn't divorce
iile. The children are bastards, every jack one of them, and
are they any the worse for that? Betty was one of the maids
in the little red brick house in Kensington. Four or five years
ago I was on my uppers, and I had seven children, and I

536 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

went to my wife and asked her to help me. She said she'd
make me an allowance if I'd give Betty up and go abroad.
Can you see me giving Betty up? We starved for a while
instead. My wife said I loved the gutter. I've degenerated;
I've come down in the world; I earn three pounds a week
as press agent to a linen-draper, and every day I thank God
that I'm not in the little red brick house in Kensington."

Sally brought in Cheddar cheese, and Athelny went on
with his fluent conversation.

"It's the greatest mistake in the world to think that one
needs money to bring up a family. You need money to make
them gentlemen and ladies, but I don't want my children to
be ladies and gentlernen. Sally's going to earn her living in
another year. She's to be apprenticed to a dressmaker, aren't
you, Sally? And the boys are going to serve their country. I
want them all to go into the Navy; it's a jolly life and a healthy
life, good food, good pay, and a pension to end their days on."

Philip lit his pipe. Athelny smoked cigarettes of Havana
tobacco, which he rolled himself. Sally cleared away. Philip
was reserved, and it embarrassed him to be the recipient of
so many confidences. Athelny, with his powerful voice in the
diminutive body, with his bombast, with his foreign look,
with his emphasis, was an astonishing creature. He reminded
PhiUp a good deal of Cronshaw. He appeared to have the
same independence of tho^ught, the same bohemianism, but
he had an infinitely more vivacious temperament; his mind
was coarser, and he had not that interest in the abstract which
made Cronshaw's conversation so captivating. Athelny was
very proud of the county family to which he belonged; he
showed Philip photographs of an Elizabethan mansion, and
told him:

"The Athelnys have lived there for seven centuries, my
boy. Ah, if you saw the chimney-pieces and the ceilings!" •

There was a cupboard in the wainscoting and from this
he took a family tree. He showed it to Philip with childUke
satisfaction. It was indeed imposing.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 537

"You see how the family names recur, Thorpe, Athelstan,
Harold, Edward; I've used the family names for my sons.
And the girls, you see, I've given Spanish names to."

An uneasy feeling came to Philip that possibly the whole
story was an elaborate imposture, not told with any base
motive, but merely from a wish to impress, startle, and amaze.
Athelny had told him that he was at Winchester; but Philip,
sensitive to differences of manner, did not feel that his host
had the characteristics of a man educated at a great public
school. While he pointed out the great alliances which his
ancestors had formed, Philip amused himself by wondering
whether Athelny was not the son of some tradesman in Win-
chester, auctioneer or coal-merchant, and whether a similarity
of surname was not his only connection with the ancient
family whose tree he was displaying.

Chapter 88

There was a knock at the door and a troop of children came
in. They were clean and tidy now; their faces shone with
soap, and their hair was plastered down; they were gcing to
Sunday school under Sally's charge. Athelnyjoked with them
in his dramatic, exuberant fashion, and you could see that he
was devoted to them all. His pride in their good health and
their good looks was touching. Philip fek that they were a
little shy in his presence, and when their father sent them
off they fled from the room in evident relief. In a few minutes
Mrs. Athelny appeared. She had taken her hair out of the
curling pins and now wore an elaborate fringe. She had on a
plain black dress, a hat with cheap flowers, and was forcing
her hands, red and coarse from much work, into black
kid gloves.

538 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I'm going to church, Athelny," she said. "There's nothing
you'll be- wanting, is there?"

"Only your prayers, my Betty."

"They won't do you much good, you're too far gone for
that," she smiled. Then, turning to Philip, she drawled: "I
can't get him to go to church. He's no better than an atheist."

"Doesn't she look like Rubens' second wife.?" cried Athelny.
"Wouldn't she look splendid in a seventeenth-century cos-
tume ? That's the sort of wife to marry, my boy. Look at her."

"I believe you'd talk the hind leg off a donkey, Athelny,"
she answered calmly.

She succ<;eded in buttoning her gloves, but before she went
she turned to Philip with a kindly, slightly embarrassed smile.

"You'll stay to tea, won't you.? Athelny likes someone to
talk to, and it's not often he gets anybody who's clever
enough."

"Of course he'll stay to tea," said Athelny. Then when
his wife had gone: "I make a point of the children going to
Sunday school, and I like Betty to go to church. I think
women ought to be religious. I don't beHeve myself, but I
like women and children to."

Philip, strait-laced in matters of truth, was a little shocked
by this airy attitude.

"But how can you look on while your children are being
taught things which you don't think are true?"

"If they're beautiful I don't much mind if they're not true.
It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your
reason as well as to your sense of the aesthetic. I wanted Betty
to become a Roman Catholic, I should have liked to see her
converted in a crown of paper flovvers, but she's hopelessly
Protestant. Besides, religion is a matter of temperament; you
toll beUeve anything if you have the religious turn of mind,
and if you haven't it doesn't matter what beliefs were instilled
into you, you will grow out of them. Perhaps reUgion is the
best school of morality. It is like one of those drugs you gentle-
men use in medicine which carries another in solution : it is

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 539

of no efficacy in itself, but enables the other to be absorbed.
You take your morality because it is combined with religion;
you lose the religion and the morality stays behind. A man'
is more likely to be a good man if he has learned goodness
through the love of God than through a perusal of Herbert
Spencer." ^

This was contrary to all Philip's ideas. He still looked upon
Christianity as a degrading bondage that must be cast away
at any cost; it was connected subconsciously in his mind
with the dreary services in the cathedral at Tercanbury, and
the long hours of boredom in the cold church at Blackstable;
and the morality of which Athelny spoke was to him no more
than a part of the religion which a halting intelligence pre-
served, when it had laid aside the beliefs which alone made
it reasonable. But while he was meditating a reply Athelny,
more interested in hearing himself speak than in discussion,
broke into a tirade upon Roman Catholicism. For him it was
an essential part of Spain; and Spain meant much to him,
because he had escaped to it from the conventionality which
during his married life he had found so irksome. With large
gestures and in the emphatic tone which made what he said
so striking, Athelny- described to Philip the Spanish cathedrals
with their vast dark spaces, the massive gold of the altar-
pieces, and the sumptuous iron-work, gilt and faded, the air
laden with incense, the silence : Philip almost saw the Canons
in their short surplices of lawn, the acolytes in red, passing
from the sacristy to the choir; he almost heard the monotonous
chanting of vespers. The names which Athelny mentioned,
Avila, Tarragona, Saragossa, Segovia, Cordoba, were like trum-
pets in his heart. He seemed to see the great gray piles of
granite set in old Spanish towns amid a landscape tawny.,
wild, and wind-swept.

"I've always thought I should love to go to Seville," he said
casually, when Athelny, vyith one hand dramatically uplifted,
paused for a moment.

"Seville!" cried Athelny. "No, no, don't go there. Seville: it

540 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

brings to the mind girls dancing with castanets, singing in
gardens by the Guadalquivir, bull-fights, orange-blossom,
mantillas, tnantones de Manila. It is the Spain of comic opera
and Montmartre. Its facile charm can offer permanent enter-
tainment only to an intelligence which is superficial. Theo-
phile Gautier got out of Seville all that it has to offer. We who
come after him can only repeat his sensations. He put large
fat hands on the obvious and there is nothing but the obvious
there; and it is all finger-marked and frayed. Murillo is its
painter."

Athelny got up from his chair, walked over to the Spanish
cabinet, let down the front with its great gilt hinges and
gorgeous lock, and displayed a series of little drawees. He
took out a bundle of photographs.

"Do you know El Greco?" he asked.

"Oh, I remember one of the men in Paris was awfully
impressed by him."

"El Greco was the painter of Toledo. Betty couldn't find
the photograph I wanted to show you. It's a picture that El
Greco painted of the city he loved, and it's truer than any
photograph. Come and sit at the table."

Philip dragged his chair forward, and Athelny set the
photograph before him. He looked at it curiously, for a long
time, in silence. He stretched out his hand for other photo-
graphs, and Athelny passed them to him. He had never before
seen the work of that enigmatic master; and at the first glance
he was bothered by the arbitrary drawing: the figures were
extraordinarily elongated; the heads were very small; the
attitudes were extravagant. This was not realism, and yet,
and yet even in the photographs you had the impression of a
troubhng reality. Athelny was describing eagerly, with vivid
phrases, but Philip only heard vaguely what he said. He was
puzzled. He was curiously moved. These pictures seemed
to offer some meaning to him, but he did not know what the
meaning was. There were portraits of men with large, melan-
choly eyes which seemed to say you knew not what; there

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 541

were long monks in the Franciscan habit or in the Dominican,
with distraught faces, making gestures whose sense escaped
you; there was an Assumption of the Virgin; there was a
Crucifixion in which the painter by some magic of feeUng
had been able to suggest that the flesh of Christ's dead body
was not human flesh only but divine; and there was an
Ascension in which the Saviour seemed to surge up towards
the empyrean and yet to stand upon the air as steadily as
though it were solid ground: the uplifted arms of the Apostles,
the sweep of their draperies, their ecstatic gestures, gave an
impression of exultation and of holy joy. The background
of nearly all was the sky by night, the dark night of the soul,
with wild clouds swept by strange winds of hell and lit
luridly by an uneasy moon.

"I've seen that sky in Toledo over and over again," said
Athelny. "I have an idea that when first El Greco came to
the city it was by such a night, and it made so vehement an
impression upon him that he could never get away from it."

Philip remembered how Clutton had been affected by
this strange master, whose work he now saw for the first time.
He thought that Clutton was the most interesting of all the
people he had known in Paris. His sardonic manner, his
hostile aloofness, had made it difficult to know him; but it
seemed to Philip, looking back, that there had been in him
a tragic force, which sought vainly to express itself in paint-
ing. He was a man of unusual character, mystical after the
fashion of a time that had no leaning to mysticism, who was
impatient with life because he found .himself unable to say
the things which the obscure impulses of his heart suggested.
His intellect was not fashioned to the uses of the spirit. It
was not surprising that he felt a deep sympathy with the
Greek who had devised a new technique to express the yearn-
ings of his soul. Phihp looked again at the series of portraits
of Spanish gentlemen, with ruffles and pointed beards, theii
faces pale against the sober black of their clothes and the
darkness of the background. El Greco was the painter of the

542 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

soul; and these gentlemen, wan and wasted, not by exhaustion
but by restraint, with their tortured minds, seem to walk
unaware of the beauty of the world; for their eyes look only
in their hearts, and they are dazzled by the glory of the
unseen. No painter has shown more pitilessly that the world
is but a place of passage. The souls of the men he painted
speak their strangfe longings through their eyes: their senses
are miraculously acute, not for sounds and odours and colour,
but for the very subtle sensations of the soul. The noble walks
with the monkish heart within him, and his eyes see things
which saints in their cells see too, and he is unastounded. His
lips are not lips that smile.

Philip, silent still, returned to the photograph of Toledo,
which seemed to him the most arresting picture of them all.
He could not take his eyes off it. He felt strangely that he
wa9*on the threshold of some new discovery in life. He was
tremulous with a sense Cif adventure. He thought for an
instant of the love that had consumed him: love seemed very
trivial beside the excitement which now leaped in his heart.
The picture he looked at was a long one, with houses
crowded upon a hill; in one corner a boy was holding a large
map of the town; in another was a classical figure representing
the river Tagus; and in the sky was the Virgin surrounded by
angels. It was a landscape alien to all Philip's notions, for he
had lived in circles that worshipped exact reahsm; and yet
here again, strangely to himself, he felt a reality greater than
any achieved by the masters in whose steps humbly he had
sought to walk. He heard Athelny say that the representation
was so precise that when the citizens of Toledo came to look
at the picture they recognised their houses. The painter had
painted exactly what he saw but he had seen with the eyes
of the spirit. There was something unearthly in that city of
pale gray. It was a city of the soul seen by" a wan light that
was neither that of night nor day. It stood on a green hill, but
of a green not of this world, and it was surrounded by
massive walls and bastions to be stormed by no machines or

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 543

engines of ma'n's invention, but by prayer and fasting, by
contrite sighs and by mortifications of the flesh. It was a
stronghold of God. Those gray houses were made of no stone
known to masons, there was something terrifying in their
aspect, and you did not know what men might hve in them.
You might walk through the streets and be unamazed to find
them all deserted, and yet not empty; for you fek a presence
invisible and yet manifest to every inner sense. It was a mys-
tical city in which the imagination faltered like one who steps
out of the light into darkness; the soul walked naked to and
fro, knowing the unknowable, and conscious strangely of
experience, intimate but inexpressible, of the absolute. And
without surprise, in that blue sky, real with a reality that not
the eye but the soul confesses, with its rack of light clouds
driven by strange breezes, like the cries and the sighs of lost
souls, you saw the Blessed Virgin with a gown of red and a
cloak of blue, surrounded by winged angels. Philip felt that
the inhabitants of that city would have seen the apparition
without astonishment, reverent and thankful, and have gone
their ways.

Athelny spoke of the mystical writers of Spain, of Teresa
de Avila, San Juan de la Cruz, Fray Diego de Leon; in all
of them was that passion for the unseen which PhiUp felt
in the pictures of El Greco: they seemed to have the power
to touch the incorporeal and see the invisible. They were
Spaniards of their age, in whom were tremulous all the
mighty exploits of a great nation: their fancies were rich
with the glories of America and the green islands of the
Caribbean Sea; in their veins was the power that had come
from age-long battling with the Moor; they were proud, for
they were masters of the world; and they felt in themselves
the wide distances, the tawny wastes, the snow-capped moun-
tains of Castile, the sunshine and the blue sky, and the
flowering plains of Andalusia. Life was passionate and mapi-
fold, and because it offered so much they felt a restless
yearning for something more; because they were human they

544 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

were unsatisfied; and they threw this eager vitaHty of theirs
into a vehement striving after the ineffable. Athelny was not,
displeased to find someone to whom he could read the trans-
lations with which for some time he had amused his leisure;
and in his fine, vibrating voice he recited the canticle of the
Soul and Christ her lover, the lovely poem which begins with
the words en una noche oscura, and the noche serena of Fray
Luis de Leon. He had translated them quite simply, not
without skill, and he had found words which at all events
suggested the rough-hewn grandeur of the original. The pic-
tures of El Greco explained them, and they explained the
pictures.

Philip had cultivated a certain disdain for idealism. He had
always had a passion for life, and the idealism he had come
across seemed to him for the rriost part a cowardly shrinking
from it. The idealist withdrew himself, because he could not
suffer the jostling of the human crowd; he had not the
strength to fight and so called the battle vulgar; he was vain,
arnd since his fellows would not take him at his own estimate,
consoled himself with despising his fellows. For Philip his
type was Hayward, fair, languid, too fat now and rather bald,
still cherishing the remains of his good looks and still del-
icately proposing to do exquisite things in the uncertain
future; and at the back of this were whiskey and Vulgar
amours of the street. It was in reaction from what Hayward
represented that Philip clamoured for life as it stood; sordid-
ness, vice, deformity, did not offend him; he declared that
he wanted man in his nakedness; and he rubbed his hands
when an instance came before him of meanness, cruelty, self-
ishness, or lust: that was the real thing. In Paris he had
learned that there was neither ugliness nor beauty, but only
truth: the search after beauty was sentimental. Had he not
painted an advertisement of chocolat Menier in a landscape
in order to escape from the tyranny of prettiness?

But here he seemed to divine something new. He had been
■;omiug to it, all hesitating, for some time, but only now was

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 545

conscious of the fact; he felt himself on the brink of a dis-
covery. He felt vaguely that here was something better than
the reaUsm which he had adored; but certainly it was not
the bloodless idealism which stepped aside from life in weak-
ness; it was too strong; it was virile; it accepted life in all its
vivacity, ugliness and beauty, squalor and heroism; it was
realism still; but it was realism carried to some higher pitch,
in which facts were transformed by the more vivid light in
which they were seen. He seemed to see things more pro-
foundly through the grave eyes of those dead noblemen of
Castile; and the gestures of the saints, which at first had
seemed wild. and distorted, appeared to have some mysterious
significance. But he could not tell what that significance was.
It was like a message vyhich it was very important for him to
receive, but it was given him in an unknown tongue, and he
could not understand. He was always seeking for a meaning
in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered;
but it was obscure and vague. He was profoundly troubled.
He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightning
on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain range. He
seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance,
but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-
control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender
to passion; he seemed to see that the inward life might be as
manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the hfe of
one who conquered realms and explored unknown lands.

Chapter 89

The conversation between Philip and Athehiy was brokv.,
into by a clatter up the stairs. Athelnj opened the door for

546 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

the children coming back from Sunday school, and with
laughter and shouting they came in. Gaily he asked them
what they had learned. Sally appeared for a moment, with
instructions from her mother that father was to amuse the
children while she got tea ready; and Athelny began to tell
them one of Hans Andersen's stories. They were not shy
children, and they quickly came to the conclusion that Phihp
was not formidable. Jane came and stood by him and pres-
ently settled herself on his knees. It was the first time that
Philip in his lonely life had been present in a family circle:
his eyes smiled as they rested on the fair children engrossed
in the fairy tale. The life of his new friend, eccentric as it
appeared at first glance, seemed now to have the beauty of
perfect naturalness. Sally came in once more.

"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 buiter, 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

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 547

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 '11 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 pro-
ceeded 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 Feme."

"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 mar-
ried 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
Feme. 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

548 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

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," re-
marked 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 Des-
patch) 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 dinne£ 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 to-
gether in the kitchen, and the meal was noisy and hilarious.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 549

Soon Philip got into the habit of going to Athelny's every
Sunday. He became a great favourite with the children, be-
cause 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 if 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 littk 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 employment; he had been a
journalist and for some time had worked as police-court re-
porter 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 childlike enjoyment of the amaze-
ment 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.

550 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 90

When he left the Athelnys' Philip walked down Chancery
Lane and along the Strand to get a 'bus at the top of Parlia-
ment 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 Cir-
cus 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 oppor-
tunity 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
ti-ains; 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

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 551

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 fek
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 walkmg 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.

552 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

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 meet 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 neigh-
bourhood 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

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 553

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 Highbur)' 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 ofl looking for work. I did get a job once, but I was off
for a week because J 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 PhiHp. ^

"I wasn't fit to come oiit 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."

"I didn't like to, not after what happened, and I didnt
want you to know I was in difficulties. I shouldn't have been
surprised if you'd just told me I'd only got what I deserved.

"You don't know me very well, do you, even now?'

For a moment he remembered all the anguish he had
suffered on her account, and he was sick with the recollection

554 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

of his pain. But it was no more than recollection. When he
looked at her he knew that he no longer loved her. He was
very sorry for her, but he was glad to be free. Watching her
gravely, he asked himself why he had been so besotted with
passion for her.

"You're a gentleman in every sense of the word," she said.
'You're the only one I've .ever met." She paused for a minute
and then flushed. "I hate asking you, Philip, but can you
spare me anything?"

"It's lucky I've got some money on me. I'm afraid I've only
got two pounds."

He gave her the sovereigns.

"I'll pay you back, Philip."

"Oh, that's all right," he smiled. "You needn't worry."

He had said nothing that he wanted to say. They had talked
as if the whole thing were natural; and if. looked -as though
she would go now, back to the horror of her life, and he
VTOuld be able to do nothing to prevent it. She had got up
to take the money, and they were both standing.

"Am I keeping you.?" she asked. "I suppose you want to
be getting home."

"No, I'm in no hurry," he answered.,

"I'm glad to have a chance of sitting down."

Those words, with all they implied, tore his heart, and it
was dreadfully painful to see the weary way in which she
sank back into the chair. The silence lasted so long that Philip
in his embarrassment lit a cigarette.

"It's very good of you not to have said anything disagree-
able to me, Philip. I thought you might say I didn't know
\yhat all."

He saw that she was crying again. He remembered how
she had come to him when Emil Miller had deserted her and
how she had wept. The recollection of her suffering and of
his own humiliation seemed to render more overwhelming the
compassion he felt now.
. "If I could only get out of it!" she moaned. "I hate it so. I'm

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 555

unfit for the life, I'm not the sort of girl for that. I'd do any-
thing to get away from it, I'd be a servant if I could. Oh,
I wish I was dead."

And in pity for herself she broke down now completely.
She sobbed hysterically, and her thin body was shaken.

"Oh, you don't know what it is. Nobody knows till they've
done it."

Philip could not bear to see her cry. He was tortured by
the horror of her position.

"Poor child," he whispered. "Poor child."

He was deeply moved. Suddenly he had an inspiration. It
filled him with a perfect ecstasy of happiness.

"Look here, if you want to get away from it, I've got an idea.
I'm frightfully hard up just now, I've got to be as economical
as I can; but I've got a sort of little flat noyv in Kennington
and I've got a spare room. If you like you and the baby can
come and live there. I pay a woman three and sixpence a week
to keep the place clean and to do a little cooking for me. You
could do that and your food wouldn't come to much more
than the money I should save on her. It doesn't cost any
more to feed two than one, and I don't suppose the baby eats
much."

She stopped crying and looked at him.

"D'you mean to say that you could take me back after all
that's happened?"

Philip flushed a little in embarrassment at what he had to
say.

"I don't want you to mistake me. I'm just giving you a room
which doesn't cost me anything and your food. I don't expect
anything more from you than that you should do exactly the
same as the woman I have in does. Except for that I don't
want anything from you at all. I daresay you can cook well
enough for that."

She sprang to her feet and was about to come towards him.

"You are good to me, Philip."

356 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"No, please stop where you are," he said hurriedly, putting,
out his hand as though to push her away.

He did not know why it was, but he could not bear the
thought that she should touch him.

"I don't want to be anything more than a friend to you."

"You are good to me," she repeated. "You are good to me."

"Does that mean you'll come?"

""Oh, yes, I'd do anything to get away from this. You'll never
regret what you've done, Philip, never. When can I come,
Philip?"

"You'd better come tomorrow."

Suddenly she burst into tears again.

■""What on earth are you crying for now?" he 'smiled.

"'I'm so grateful to you. I don't know how I can ever make
it up to you?"

"Oh, that's all right. You'd better go home now."

He wrote out the address and told her that if she came at
half past five he would be ready for her. It was so late that he
had to walk home, but it did not seem a long way, for he was
intoxicated with delight; he seemed to walk on air.

Chapter 91

Mext day he got up early to make the room ready for Mildred.
He told the woman who had looked after him that he would
not want her any more. Mildred came about six, and Philip,
who was watching from the window, went down to let her in
and help her to bring up the luggage : it consisted now of no
more than three large parcels wrapped in brown paper, for she
had been obliged to sell everything that was not absolutely
needful. She wore the same black silk dress she had worn the

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 557

night before, and, though she had now no rouge on her cheeks,
there was still about her eyes the black which remained after
a perfunctory wash m the morning: it made her look very ill.
She was a pathetic figure as she stepped out of the cab with
the .baby in her arms. She seemed a little shy, and they found
nothmg but commonplace things to say to one another.
''So you've got here all right."
"I've never lived in this part of London before."
Philip showed her the room. It Was that in which Cronshaw
had died. Philip, though he thought it absurd, had never Hked
the idea of going back to it; and since Cronshaw's death he
had remained in the little room, sleeping on a fold-up bed,
into which he had first moved, in order to make his friend
comfortable. The baby was sleeping placidly.
"You don't recognise her, I expect," said Mildred.
"I've not seen her since we took her down to Brighton."
"Where shall I put her.? She's so heavy I can't carry her
very long."

"I'm afraid I haven't got a cradle," said Philip, with a
nervous laugh.
"Oh, she'll sleep with me. She always does." ,
Mildred put the baby in an arm-chair and looked round the
room. She recognised most of the things which she had known
in his old diggings. Only one thing was new, a head and
shoulders of Philip which Lawson had painted at the end of
the preceding summer; it hung over the chimney-piece; Mil-
dred looked at it critically.

"In some ways I like it and in some ways I don't. I think
you're better looking than that."

"Things are looking up," laughed Philip. "You've never told
me I was good-looking before."

. "I'm not one to worry myself about a man's looks. I don't
like good-looking men. They're too conceited for me."

Her eyes travelled round the room in an instinctive search
for a looking-glass, but there was none; she put up her hand
and patted her large fringe.

558 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"What '11 the other people in the house say to my being
here?" she asked suddenly.

"Oh, there's only a man and his wife living here. He's out all
day, and T never see her except on Saturday to pay my rent.
They keep entirely to themselves. I've not spoken two words
to either of them since I came."

Mildred went into the bedroom to undo her things and put
them away. Philip tried to read, but his spirits were too high :
he leaned back in his chair, smoking a cigarette, and with
smiling eyes looked at the sleeping child. He felt very happy.
He was quite sure that he was not at all in love with Mildred.
He was surprised that the old feeling had left him so com-
pletely; he discerned in himself a faint physical repulsion from
her; and he thought that if he touched her it would give him
goose-flesh. He could not understand himself. Presently, knock-
ing at the door, she came in again.

"I say, you needn't knock," he said. "Have you made the
tour of the mansion?"

"It's the smallest kitchen I've ever seen."

"You'll find it large enough to cook our sumptuous repasts,"
he retorted lightly;

"I see there's nothing in. I'd better go out and get some-
thing."

"Yes, but I venture to remind you that we must be deviUsh
•economical."

"What shall I get for supper?"

"You'd better get what you think you can cook,'' laughed
Philip.

He gave her some money and she went out. She came in
half an hour later and put her purchases on the table. She was
out of breath from climbing the stairs.

"I say, you are anaemic," said Philip. "I'll have to dose vou
with Blaud's Pills."

'It took me some time to find the shops. I bought some liver.
That's tasty, isn't it? And you can't eat much of it, so it's
more economical than butcher's meat."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 559

There was a' gas stove in the kitchen, and when she had put
the liver on, Mildred came into the sitting-room to lay the
cloth.

"Why are you only laying one place?" asked Philip. "Aren't
you going to eat anything?"

Mildred flushed.

"I thought you mightn't like me to have my meals with
you."

"Why on earth not?" /

"Well, I'm only a servant, aren't I?"

"Don't be an ass. How can you be so silly?"

He smiled, but her humility gave him a curious twist in his
heart. Poor thing! He remembered what she had been when
first he knew her. He hesitated for an instant.

"Don't think I'm conferring any benefit on you," he said.
"It's simply a business arrangement, I'm giving you board and
lodging in return for your work. You don't owe me anything.
And there's nothing humihating to you in it."

She- did not answer, but tears rolled heavily down her
chfeeks. Philip knew from his experience at the hospital that
women of her class looked upon service as degrading: he
could not help feeling a little impatient with her; but he
blamed himself, for it was clear that she was tired and ill. He
got up and helped her to lay another place at the table. The
baby was awake now, and Mildred had prepared some Mellin's
Food for it. The liver and bacon were ready and they sat
down. For economy's sake Philip had given up drinking any-
thing but water, but he had in the house half a bottle of
whiskey, and he thought a little would do Mildred good. He ,
did his best to make the supper pass cheerfully, but Mildred
was subdued and exhausted. When they had finished she got
up to put the baby to bed.

"I. think you'll do well to turn in early yourself," said Philip.
"You look absolutely done up."
"I think I will after Tve washed up."
Philip lit his pipe and began to read. It was pleasant to hear

360 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

somebody moving about in the next room. Sometimes his lone-
liness had oppressed him. Mildred came in to clear the table,
and he heard the clatter of plates as she washed up. Philip
smiled as he thought how characteristic it was of her that she
should do all that in a black silk dress. But he had work to do,
and he brought his book up to the table. He was reading
Osier's Meiiicine, which had recently taken the place in the
students' favour of Taylor's work, for many years the text-
book most in use. Presently Mildred carrie in, rolling down her
sleeves. Philip gave her a casual glance, but did not move; the
occasion was curious, and he felt a little nervous. He feared
that Mildred might imagine he was going to make a nuisance
of himself, and he did not quite know how without brutality
to reassure her.

"By the way, I've got a lecture at nine, so I should want
breakfast at a quarter past eight. Can you manage that?"

"Oh, yes. Why, when I was in Parhament Street I used to
catch the eight-twelve from Heme Hill every morning."

"I hope you'll find your room comfortable. You'll be a dif-
ferent woman tomorrow after a long night in bed."
. "I suppose you work till late?"

"I generally work till about eleven or half-past."

"I'll say good-night then."

"Good-night."

The table was between them. He did not offer to shake
hands with her. She shut the door quietly. He heard her mov-
ing about in the bedroom, and in a little while he heard the
creaking of the bed as she got in.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 56J

Chapter 92

The following day was Tuesday. Philip as usual hurricf",
through his breakfast and dashed off to get to his lecture at
nine. He had only time to exchange a few words with Mildred.
When he came back in the evening he found her seated at the
window, darning his socks.

"I say, you are industrious," he smiled. "What have you
been doing with yourself all day?"

"Oh, I. gave the place a good cleaning and then I took baby
out for a httle."

She was wearing an old black dress, the same as she had
worn as uniform when she served in the tea-shop; it was
shabby, but she looked better in it than in the silk of the day
before. The baby was sitting on the floor. She looked up at
Philip with large, mysterious eyes and broke into a laugh when
he sat down beside her and began playing with her bare toes^
The afternoon sun came into the room and shed a mellow
light.

"It's rather jolly to come back and find someone about the
place. A woman and a baby make very good decoration in a
room."

He had gone to the hospital dispensary and got a bottle of
Blaud's Pills. He gave them to Mildred and told her she must
take them after each meal. It was a remedy she was used to,
for she had taken it off and on ever since she was sixteen.

"I'm sure Lawson would love that green skin of yours," said
Philip. "He'd say it was so paintable, but I'm terribly matter
of fact nowadays, and I shan't be happy till you're as pink and
white as a milkmaid."

"I feel better already."

iSl OF HUMAN BONDAGE

After a fr.ugal supper Philip filled his pouch with tobacco
and put on his hat. It was on Tuesdays that he generally went
to the tavern in Beak Street, and he was glad that this day
came so' soon after Mildred's arrival, for he wanted to make
his relations with her perfectly clear.

"Are you going out?" she said.

"Yes, on Tuesdays I give myself a night off. I shall see you
tomorrow. Good-night."

Philip always went to the tavern with a sense of pleasure.
Macalister, the philosophic stockbroker, was generally there
and glad to argue upon any subject under the sun; Hay ward
came regularly when he was in London; and though he and
Macahster disliked one another they continued out of habit
to meet on that one evening in the week. Macalister thought
Hayward a poor creature, and sneered at his delicacies of sen-
timent: he asked satirically about Hay ward's literary work
and received with scornful smiles his vague suggestions of
future masterpieces; their arguments were often heated; but the
punch was good, and they were both fond of it; towards the
end of the evening they generally composed their differences
and thought each other capital fellows. This evening Philip
found them both there, and Lawson also; Lawson came more
seldom now that he was beginning to know people in London
and went out to dinner a good deal. They were all on excellent
terms with themselves, for Macalister had given them a good
thing on the Stock Exchange, and Hayward and Lawson had
made fifty pounds apiece. It was a great thing for Lawson, who
was extravagant and earned little money: he had arrived at
that stage of the portrait-painter's career when he was noticed
a good deal by the critics and found a number of aristocratic
ladies who were willing to allow him to paint them for noth-
ing (it advertised them both, and gave the great ladies quite
an air of patronesses of the arts) ; but he very seldom got hold
of the solid philistine who was ready to pay good money for
a portrait of his wife. Lawson was brimming over with satis-
faction.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 563

It's the most ripping way of making money that I've ever
struck," he cried. "I didn't have to put my hand in my pocket
for sixpence."

"You lost something by not being here last Tuesday, young
man," said Macalister to Philip.

"My God, why didn't you write me.?" said Philip. "If you
only knew how useful a hundred pounds would be to me."

"Oh, there wasn't time for that. One has to be on the spot.
I heard of a good thing last Tuesday, and I asked these fellows
if they'd like to have a flutter. I bought them a thousand shares
on Wednesday morning, and there was a rise in the afternoon
so I sold them at once. I made fifty pounds for each of them
and a couple of hundred for myself."

Philip was sick with envy. He had recently sold the last
mortgage in which his small fortune had been invested and
now had only six hundred pounds left. He was panic-stricken
sometimes when he thought of the future. He had still to keep
himself for two years before he could be qualified, and then
he meant to try for hospital appointments, so that he could
not expect to earn anything for three years at least. With the
most rigid economy he would not have more than a hundred
pounds left then. It was very little to have as a stand-by in case
he was ill and could not earn money or found himself at any
time without work. A lucky gamble would make all the dif-
ference to him.

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter," said Macalister. "Something is
sure to turn up soon. There'll be a boom in South Africans
again one of these days, and then I'll see what I can do for
you."

Macalister was in the Kaffir market and often told them
stories of the sudden fortunes that had been made in the great
boom of a year or two back.

"Well, don't forget- next time."

They sat on talking till nearly midnight, and Philip, wh(
lived furthest off, was the first to go. If he did not catch thf
last tram he had to walk, and that made him very late. As it

564 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

was he did not reach home till nearly half past twelve. When
he got upstairs he was surprised to find Mildred still sitting
in his arm-chair.

"Why on earth aren't you in bed?" he cried.

"I wasn't sleepy."

"You ought to go to bed all the same. It would rest you."

She did not move. He noticed that since supper she had
changed into her black silk dress.

"I thought I'd rather wait up for you in case you wanted
anything."

She looked at him, and the shadow of a smile played upon
her thin pale lips. Philip was not sure whether he understood
or not. He was slightly embarrassed, but assumed a cheerful,
matter-of-fact air.

"It's very nice of you, but it's very naughty also. Run off to
bed as fast as you can, or you won't be able to get up tomorrow
morning."

"I don't feel like going to bed."

"Nonsense," he said coldly.

She got up, a little sulkily, and went into her room. He
Bmiled when he heard her lock the door loudly.

The next few days passed without incident. Mildred settled
down in her new surroundings. When Philip hurried off after
breakfast she had the whole morning to do the housework.
They ate very simply, but she liked to take a long time to buy
the few things they needed; she could not be bothered to cook
anything for her dinner, but made herself some cocoa and ate
bread and butter; then, she took the baby out in the go-cart,
and when she came in spent the rest of the afternoon in idle-
ness. She was tired out, and it suited her to do so little. She
made friends with Philip's forbidding landlady over the rent,
which he left with Mildred to pay, and within a week was able
to tell him more about his neighbours than he had learned in
a year.

"She's a very nice woman," said Mildred. "Quite the lady.
I told her we was married."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 565

"D'you think that was necessary?"

"Well, I had to tell her something. It looks so funny me
being here and not married to you. I didn't know what she'd
think of me."

"I don't suppose she believed you for a moment."

"That she did, I lay. I told her we'd been married two years
—I had to say that, you know, because of baby — only your
people wouldn't hear of it, because you was only a student"—
she pronounced it stoodent— "and so we had to keep it a
secret, but they'd given way now and we were all going
down to stay with them in the summer."

"You're a past mistress of the cock-and-bull story," said
Philip.

He was vaguely irritated that Mildred still had this passion
for telling fibs. In the last two years she had learnt nothing.
But he shrugged his shoulders.*

"When all's said and done," he reflected, "she hasn't had
much chance."

It was a beautiful evening, warm and cloudless, and the
people of South London seemed to have poured out into the
streets. There was that restlessness in the air which seizes the
cockney sometimes when a turn in the weather calls him into
the open. After Mildred had cleared away the supper she went
and stood at the window. The street noises came up to them,
noises of people calling to one another, of the passing traffic,
of a barrel-organ in the distance.

"I suppose you must work tonight, Philip?" she asked him,
with a wistful expression.

"I ought, but I don't know that I must. Why, d'you want
me to do anything else?"

"I'd like to go out for a bit. Couldn't we take a ride on the
top of a tram?"

"If you like."

"I'll just go and put on my hat," she said joyfully.

The night made it almost impossible to stay indoors. The
baby was asleep and could be safely left; Mildred said she had

566. OF HUMAN BONDAGE

always left it alone at night when she went out; it never woke.
She was in high spirits when she came back with her hat on.
She had taken the opportunity to put on a little rouge. Philip
thought it was excitement which had brought a faint colour
to her pale cheeks; he was touched by her child-like delight,
and reproached himself for the austerity with which he had
treated her. She laughed when she got out into the air. The
first tram they saw ^yas going towards Westminster Bridge and
they got on it. Philip smoked his pipe, and they looked at the
crowded street. The shops were open, gaily lit, and people
were doing their shopping for the next day. They passed a
music-hall called the Canterbury and Mildred cried out:

"Oh, Philip, do let's go there. I haven't been to a music-hall
for months."

"We can't afford stalls, you know,"

"Oh, I don't mind, I shall be quite happy in the gallery."

They got down and walked back a hundred yards till they
came to the doors. They got capital seats for sixpence each,
high up but not in the gallery, and the night was so fine that
there' was plenty of room. Mildred's eyes glistened. She enjoyed
herself thoroughly. There was a simple-mindedness in her
which touched Philip. She was a puzzle to him. Certain things
in her still pleased him, and he thought that there was a lot
in her which was very good : she had been badly brought up,
and her life was hard; he had blamed her for much that she
could not help; and it was his own fault if he had asked
virtues from her which it was not in her power to give. Under
different circumstances she might have been a charming girl.
She was extraordinarily unfit for the battle of life. As he
watched her now in profile, her mouth slightly open and that
delicate flush on her cheeks, he thought she looked strangely
virginal. He felt an overwhelming compassion for her, and
with all his heart he forgave her for the misery she had caused
him. The smoky atmosphere made Philip's eyes ache, but
when he suggested going she turned to him with beseeching
face and asked him to stay till the end. He smiled and con-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 567

sented. She took his hand and held it for the rest of the
performance. When they streamed out with the audience into
the crowded street she did not want to go home; they, wan-
dered up the Westminster Bridge Road, looking at the people-

"I've not had such a good time as this for months," she said.

Philip's heart was full, and he was thankful to the fates
because he had carried out his sudden impulse to take Mildred
and her baby into his flat. It was very pleasant to see her
happy gratitude. At last she grew tired and they jumped on a
tram to go home; it was late now, and when they got down
and turned into their own street there was no one about. Mil-
dred slipped her arm through his.

"It's just like old times, Phil," she said.

She had never called him Phil before, that was what Griffiths
called him; and even now it gave him a curious pang. Hi
remembered how much he had wanted to die then; his pain
had been so great that he had thought quite seriously of com-
mitting suicide. It all seemed very long ago. He smiled at his
past self. Now he felt nothing for Mildred but infinite pity.
They reached the house, and when they got into the sitting-
room Philip lit the gas.

"Is the baby all right.?" he asked.

"I'll just go in and see."

When she came back it was to say that it had not stirred
since she left it. It was a wonderful child. Philip held out his
hand.

"Well, good-night."

"D'you want to go to bed already?"

"It's nearly one. I'm not used to late hours these days," said

Philip. . , , . , . • 1

She took his hand and holding it looked mto his eyes with

a little smile.

"Phil, the other night in that room, when you asked me to
come and stay here, I didn't mean what you thought I meant,
when you said you didn't want me to be anything to yoir
except just to cook and that sort of thing."

568 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Didn't you?" answered Philip, withdrawing his hand. "I
did."

"Don't be such an old silly," she laughed.

He shook his head.

"I meant it quite seriously. I shouldn't have asked you to
stay here on any other condition."

"Why not.?"

"I feel I couldn't. I can't explain it, but it would spoil it all."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, very well, it's just as you choose. I'm not one to go
down on my hands and knees for that, and chance it."

She went out, slamming the door behind her.

Chapter 93

Next morning Mildred was sulky and taciturn. She remained
in her room till it was time to get the dinner ready. She was
a bad cook and could do little more than chops and steaks;
and she did not know how to use up odds and ends, so that
Philip was obliged to spend more money than he had expected.
When she served up she sat down opposite Philip, but would
eat nothing; he remarked on it; she said she had a bad head-
ache and was not hungry. He was glad that he had somewhere
to spend the rest of the day; the Athelnys were cheerful and
friendly : it was a delightful' and an unexpected thing to realise
that everyone in that household looked forward with pleasure
to his visit. Mildred had gone to bed when he came back, but
next day she was still silent. At supper she sat with a haughty
expression on her face and a little frown between her eyes.
It made Philip impatient, but he told himself that he must be
considerate to her; he was bound to make allowance.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 569

"You're very silent," he said, with a pleasant smile.
"I'm paid to cook and clean, I didn't know I was expected
to talk as well."

He thought it an ungracious answer, but if they were going
to live together he must do all he could to make things go
easily.

"I'm afraid you're cross with me about the other night," he
said.

It was an awkward thing to speak about, but apparently it
was necessary to discuss it.

"I don't know what you mean," she answered.

"Please don't be angry with me. I should never have asked
you to come and live here if I'd not meant our relations to
be merely friendly. I suggested it because I thought you wanted
a home and you would have a chance of looking about for
something to do."

"Oh, don't think I care."

"I don't for a moment," he hastened to say. "You mustn't
think I'm ungrateful. I realise that you only proposed it for
my sake. It's just a feeling I have, and I can't help it, it would
make the whole thing ugly and horrid."

"You are funny," she said, looking at him curiously. "I can't
make you out.''

She was not angry with him now, but puzzled; she had no
idea what he meant : she accepted the situation, she had indeed
a vague feeling that he was behaving in a very noble fashion
and that she ought to admire it; but also she felt inclined to
laugh at him and perhaps even to despise him a little.

"He's a rum customer," she thought.

Life went smoothly enough with them. Philip spent all day
at the hospital and worked at home in the evening except
when he went to the Athelnys' or to the tavern in Beak Street.
Once the physician for whom he clerked asked him to a solemn
dinner, and two or three times he went to parties given by
fellow-students. Mildred accepted the monotony of her life.

570 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

If she minded that Phihp left her sometimes by herself in the
evening she never mentioned it. Occasionally he took her to
a music-hall. He carried out his intention that the only tie
between them should be the domestic service she did in
return for board and lodging. She had made up her mind that
it was no use trying to get work that summer, and with Philip's
approval determined to stay where she was till the autumn.
She thought it would be easy to get something to do then.

"As far as I'm concerned you can stay on here when you've
got a job if it's convenient. The room's there, and the woman
who did for me before can come in to look after th€ baby.".

He grew very much attached to Mildred's child. He had
a naturally affectionate disposition, which had had little oppor-
tunity to display itself. Mildred was not unkind to the little
girl. She looked after her very well and once when she had a
bad cold proved herself a devoted nurse; but the child bored
her, and she spoke to her sharply when she bothered; she was
fond of her, but had not the maternal passion which might
have induced her to forget herself. Mildred had no demon-
■ strativeness, and she found the manifestations of affection
ridiculous. When Philip sat with the baby on his knees, play-
ing with it and kissing it, she laughed at him.

"You couldn't make more fuss of her if you was her father,"
she said. "You're perfectly silly with the child."

Philip flushed, for he hated to be laughed at. It was absurd
to be so devoted to another man's baby, and he was a little
ashamed of the overflowing of his heart. But the child, feeling
Philip's attachment, would put her face against his or nestle
in his arms.

"It's all very fine for you," said Mildred. "You don't have
any of the disagreeable part of it. How would you like being
kept awake for an hour in the middle of the night because
her ladyship wouldn't go to sleep?"

PhiHp remembered all sorts of things of his childhood which,
he thought he had long forgotten. He took hold of the baby's
toes.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 571

This little pig went to market, this Httle pig stayed at
home."

When he came home in the evening and entered the sitting-
room his first glance was for the baby sprawling on the floor,
and it gave him a little thrill of delight to hear the child's crow
of pleasure at seeing him. Mildred taught her to call him
daddy, and when the child did this for the first time of her
own accord, laughed immoderately.

"I wonder if you're that stuck on baby because she's mine,"
asked Mildred, "or if you'd be the same with anybody's baby.''

"I've never known anybody else's baby, so I can't say," said
Philip.

Towards the end of his second term as in-patients' clerk a
piece of good fortune befell Philip. It was the middle of July.
He went one Tuesday evening to the tavern in Beak Street
and found nobody there but Macalister. They sat together,
chatting about their absent friends, and after a while Mac-
alister said to him :

"Oh, by the way, I heard of a rather good thing today. New
Kleinfonteins; it's a gold mine in Rhodesia. If you'd like to
have a flutter you might make a bit."

Philip had been waiting anxiously for such an opportunity,
but now that it came he hesitated'. He was desperately afraid
of losing money. He had Httle of the gambler's spirit.

"I'd love to, but I don't know if I dare risk it. How much
could I lose if things went wrong?"

"I shouldn't have spoken of it, only you seemed so keen about
it," Macalister answered coldly.

PhiUp felt that Macalister looked upon him as rather a
donkey.

"I'm awfully keen on making a bit," he laughed.

"You can't make money unless you're prepared to risk
money."

Macalister began to talk of other things and Philip, while
he was answering him, kept thinking that if the venture turned
out well the stockbroker would be very facetious at his ex-

572 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

pense next time they met. Macalister had a sarcastic tongue.

"I think I will have a flutter if you don't mind," said Philip
anxiously.

"All right. I'll buy you two hundred and fifty shares and if
I see a half-crown rise I'll sell them at once."

Philip quickly reckoned out how much that would amount
to, and his mouth watered; thirty pounds would be a godsend
just then, and he thought the fates owed him something. He
told Mildred what he had done when he saw her at breakfast
next morning. She thought him very silly.

"I never knew anyone who made money on the Stock Ex-
change," she said. "That's what Emil always said, you can't
expect to make money on the Stock Exchange, he said."

Philip bought an evening paper on his way home and turned
at once to the money columns. He knew'nothing about these
things and had difficulty in finding the stock which Macalister
had spoken of. He saw they had advanced a quarter. His heart
, leaped, and then he felt sick with apprehension in case Mac-
alister had forgotten or for some reason had not bought. Mac-
alister had promised to, telegraph. Philip could not wait to
take a tram home. He jumped into a cab. It was an unwonted
extravagance.

"Is there a telegram for me.?" he said, as he burst in.

"No," said Mildred.

His face fell, and in bitter disappointment he sank heavily
into a chair.

"Then he didn't buy them for me after all. Curse him," he
added violently. "What cruel luck! And I've been thinking all
day of what I'd do with the money."

"Why, what were you going to do.?" she asked.

"What's the good of thinking about that now.? Oh, I wanted
the money so badly."

She gave a laugh and handed him a telegram.

"I was only having a joke with you. I opened it."

He tore it out of her hands. Macalister had bought him two
hundred and fifty shares and sold them at the half-crown

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 573

profit he had suggested. The commission note was to follow
next day. For one moment Philip was furious with Mildred for
her cruel jest, but then he could only think of his joy.

"It makes such a difference to me," he cried. "I'll stand you
a new dress if you Hke."

"I want it badly enough," she answered.

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to be operated
upon at the end of July."

"Why, have you got something the matter with you.'"' she
interrupted.

It struck her that an illness she did not know rriight explain
what had so much puzzled her. He flushed, for he hated to
refer to his deformity.

"No, but they think they can do something to my foot. I
couldn't spare the time before, but now it doesn't matter so
much. I shall start my dressing in October instead of next
month. I shall only be in hospital a few weeks and then we
can go away to the seaside for the rest of the summer. It'll do
us all good, you and the baby and me."

"Oh, let's go to Brighton, Philip, I like Brighton, you get
such a nice class of people there."

Phihp had vaguely thought of some little fishing village in
Cornwall, but as she spoke it occurred to him that Mildred
would be bored to death there.

"I don't mind where we go as long as I get the sea."

He did not know why, but he had suddenly an irresistible
longing for the sea. He wanted to bathe, and he thought with
delight of splashing about in the salt water. He was a good
swimmer, and nothing exhilarated him like a rough sea.

"I say, it will be jolly," he cried.

"It'll be like a honeymoon, won't it?" she said. "How much
can I have for my new dress, Phil.?"

574 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 94

Philip asked Mr. Jacobs, the assistant-surgeon for whom tc
had dressed, to do the operation. Jacobs accepted with pleas-
ure, since he was interested just then in neglected talipes and
was getting together materials for a paper. He warned Philip
that he could not make his foot like the other, but he thought
he could do a good deal; and though he would always limp he
would be able to wear a boot less unsightly than that which he
had been accustomed to. Philip remembered how he had
prayed to a God who was able to remove mountains for him
who had faith, and he smiled bitterly.

"I don't expect a miracle," he answered.

"I think you're wise to let me try what I can do. You'll find
a club-foot rather a handicap in practice. The layman is full of
fads, and he doesn't like his doctor to have anything the
matter with him."

Philip went into a 'small ward,' which was a room on the
landing, outside each ward, reserved for special cases. He
remained there a month, for the surgeon would not let him go
till he could walk; and, bearing the operation very well, he
had a pleasant enough time. Lawson and Athelny came to see
him, and one day Mrs. Athelny brought two of her children;
students whom he knew looked in now and again to have a
chat; Mildred came twice a week. Everyone was very kind
to him, and Philip, always surprised when anyone took trouble
with him, was touched and grateful. He enjoyed the relief
from care; he need not worry there about the future, neither
whether his money would last out nor whether he would pass
his final examinations; and he could read to his heart's con-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 575

If"*^" ^^ ^^'^ '^°^ ^^^'^ ^^^^ ^° '^^^'^ ^^'^^ °^ ^^^^' ^^"'^^ Mildred
disturbed him: she would make an aimless remark when he

was trymg to concentrate his attention, and would not be sat-
isfied unless he answered; whenever he was comfortably
settled down with a book she would want something done
and would come to him with a cork she could not draw or a
hammer to drive in a nail.

They settled to go to Brighton in August. Philip wanted to
take lodgings, but Mildred said that she would have to do
housekeeping, and it would only be a holiday for her if they
went to a boarding-house.

"I have to see about the food every day at home, I get that
sick of it I want a thorough change."

Philip agreed, and it happened that Mildred knew of a
boarding-house a': Kemp Town where they would not be
charged more than twenty-five shillings a week each. She
arranged with Philip to write about rooms, but when he got
back to Kennington he found that she had done nothing. He
was irritated.

"I shouldn't have thought you had so much to do as all
that," he said.

"Well, I can't think of everything. It's not my fault if I for-
get, is it.?"

Philip was so anxious to get to the sea that he would not

wait to communicate with the mistress of the boarding-house.

"We'll leave the luggage at the station and go to the house

and see if they've got rooms, and if they have we can just send

an outside porter for our traps."

"You can please yourself," said Mildred stiffly.

She did not like being reproached, and, retiring huffily into

a haughty silence, she sat by listlessly while Philip made the

preparations for their departure. The little flat was hot and

stuffy under the August sun, and from the road beat up a

malodorous sultriness. As he lay in his bed in the small ward

with its red, distempered walls he had longed for fresh air and

the splashing of the sea against his breast. He felt he would

576 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

go mad if he had to spend another night in London. Mildred
recovered her good temper when she saw the streets of
Brighton crowded with people making holiday, and they were
both in high spirits as they drove out to Kemp Town. Philip
stroked the baby's cheek.

"We shall get a very different colour into them when we've
been down here a few days," he said, smiling.

They arrived at the boarding-house and dismissed the cab.
An untidy maid opened the door and, when Philip asked if
they had rooms, said she would inquire. She fetched her
mistress. A middle-aged woman, stout and business-like, came
downstairs, gave them the scrutinising glance of her profes-
sion, and asked what accommodation they required.

"Two single rooms, and if you've got such a thing we'd
rather like a cot in one of them."

"I'm afraid I haven't got that. I've got one nice large double
room, and I could let you have a cot."

"I don't think that would do," said Philip.

"I could give you another room next week. Brighton's very
full just now, and people have to take what they can get."

"If it were only for a few days, Philip, I think we might be
able to manage," said Mildred.

"I think two rooms would be more convenient. Can you
recommend any other place where they take boarders?"

"I can, but I don't suppose they'd have room any more than
I have."

"Perhaps you wouldn't mind giving me the address."

The house the stout woman suggested was in the next street,
and they walked towards it. Philip could walk quite well,
though he had to lean on a stick, and he was rather weak.
Mildred carried the baby. They went for a little in silence, and
then he saw she was crying. It annoyed him, and he took no
notice, but she forced his attention.

"Lend me a hanky, will you? I can't get at mine with baby,"
she said in a voice strangled with sobs, turning her head away
from him.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 577

He gave her his handkerchief, but said nothing. She dried
her eyes, and as he did not speak, went on.

"I might be poisonous."

"Please don't make a scene in the street," he said.

"It'll look so funny insisting on separate rooms like that.
What'll they think of us.?"

"If they knew the circumstances I imagine they'd think us
surprisingly moral," said Philip.

She gave him a sidelong glance.

"You're not going to give it away that we're not married.""'
she asked quickly.

"No."

"Why won't you live with me as if we were married then?"

"My dear, I can't explain. I don't want to humiliate you,
but I simply can't. I daresay it's very silly and unreasonable,
but it's stronger than I am. I loved you so much that now
. . ." he broke o£E. "After all, there's no accounting for that
sort of thing."

"A fat lot you must have loved me!" she exclaimed.

The boarding-house to which they had been directed was
kept by a bustling maiden lady, with shrewd eyes' and voluble
speech. They could have one double room for twenty-five
shillings a week each, and five shillings extra for the baby,,
or they could have two single rooms for a pound a week more.

"I have to charge that much more," the woman explained
apologetically, "because if I'm pushed to it I can put two beds
even in the single rooms."

"I daresay that won't ruin us. What do you think, Mildred?"

"Oh, I don't mind. Anything's good enough for me," she
answered.

Philip passed off her sulky reply with a laugh, and, the land-
lady having arranged to send for their luggage, they sat down
to rest themselves. Philip's foot was hurting him a little, and
he was glad to put it up on a chair.

"I suppose you don't mind my sitting in the same room
with you," said Mildred aggressively.

V78 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Don't let's quarrel, Mildred," he said gently.

"I didn't know you was so well o£F you could afford to
throw away a pound a week."

"Don't be angry with me. I assure you it's the only way wc
can live together at all."

"I suppose you despise me, that's it."

"Of course I don't. Why should I?"

"It's so unnatural."

"Is it.? You're not in love with me, are you.?"

"Me? Who d'you take me for?"

"It's not as if you were a very passionate woman, you're not
that."

"It's so humiliating," she said sulkily.

"Oh, I wouldn't fuss about that if I were you."

There were about a dozen people in the boarding-house.
They ate in a narrow, dark room at a long table, at the head
of which the landlady sat and carved. The food was bad. The
landlady called it French cooking, by which she meant that
the poor quality of the materials was disguised by ill-made
sauces: plaice masqueraded as sole and New Zealand mutton
as lamb. The kitchen was small and inconvenient, so that
everything was served up lukewarm. The people were dull
and pretentious; old ladies with elderly maiden daughters;
funny old bachelors with mincing ways; pale-faced, middle-
aged clerks with wives, who talked of their married daughters
and ■ their sons who vvere in a very gopd position in the
Colonies. At table they discussed Miss Corelli's latest novel;
some of them liked Lord Leighton better than Mr. Alma-
Tadema, and some of them like Mr. Alma-Tadema better
than Lord Leighton. Mildred soon told the ladies of her
romantic marriage with Phihp; and he found himself an
object of interest because his family, county people in a very
good position, had cut him off with a shilling because he
married while he was only a stoodent; and Mildred's father,
who had a large place down Devonshire way, wouldn't do
anything for them because she had married Philip. That was

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 579

why they had come to a boarding-house and had not a nurse
for the baby; but they had to have two rooms because they
were both used to a good deal of accommodation and they
didn't care to be cramped. The other visitors also had explana-
tions of their presence: one of the single gentlemen generally
went to the Metropole for his holiday, but he liked cheerful
company and you couldn't get that at one of those expensive
hotels; and the old lady with the middle-aged daughter was
having her beautiful house in London done up and. she said
to her daughter: "Gwennie, my dear, we must have a cheap
holiday this year," and so they had come there, though of
course it wasn't at all the kind of thing they were used to.
Mildred found them all very superior, and she hated a lot of
common, rough people. She liked gentlemen to be gentlemen
in every sense of the word.

"When people are gentlenien and ladies," she said, "I like
them to be gentlemen and ladies."

The remark seemed cryptic to Philip, but when he heard
her say it two or three times to different persons, and found
that it aroused hearty agreement, he came to the conclusion
that it was only obscure to his own intelligence. It was the first
time that Philip and Mildred had been thrown entirely to-
gether. In London he did not see her all day, and when he
came home the household affairs, the baby, the neighbours,
gave them something to talk about till he settled down to
work. Now he spent the whole day with her. After breakfast
they went down to the beach; the morning went easily enough
with a bathe and a stroll along the front; the evening, which
they spent on the pier, having put the baby to bed, was tol-
erable, for there was music to listen to and a constant stream
of people to look at; (Philip amused himself by imagining
who they were and weaving little stories about them; he had
got into the habit of answering Mildred's remarks with his
mopth only so that his thoughts remained undisturbed;) but
the afternoons were long and dreary. They sat on the beach.
Mildred said they must get all the benefit they could out of

580 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

iDoctor Brighton, and he could not read because Mildred made
observations frequently about things in general. If he paid no
attention she complained.

"Oh, leave that silly old book alone. It can't be good for
you always reading. You'll addle your brain, that's what you'll
do, Philip."

"Oh, rot!" he answered.

"Besides, it's so unsociable."

He discovered that it was difficult to talk to her. She had
not even the power of attending to what she was herself say-
ing, so that a dog running in front of her or the passing of
a man in a loud blazer would call forth a remark and then
she would forget what she had been speaking of. She had a
bad memory for names, and it irritated her not to be able to
think of them, so that she would pause in the middle of some
story to rack her brains. Sometimes she had to give it up, but
it often occurred to her afterwards, and when Philip was talk-
ing of something she would interrupt him.

"Collins, that was it. I knew it would come back to me some
time. Collins, that's the name I couldn't remember."

It exasperated him because it showed that she was not listen-
ing to anything he said, and yet, if he was silent, she re-
proached him for sulkiness. Her mind was of an order that
could not deal for live minutes with the abstract, and when
Phihp gave way to his taste for generaUsing she very quickly
showed that she was bored. Mildred dreamt a great deal, and
she had an accurate memory for her dreams, which she would
relate every day with prolixity.

One morning he received a long letter from Thorpe Athelny,
He was taking his holiday in the theatrical way, in which there
was much sound sense, which characterised him. He had done
the samj? thing for ten years. He took his whole family to a
hop-field in Kent, not far from Mrs. Athelny's home, and they
spent three weeks hopping. It kept them in the open air,
earned them money, much to Mrs. Atheby's satisfaction, and
renewed their contact with mother earth. It was upon this that

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 581

Athelny laid stress. The sojourn in the fields gave them a nevi
strength; it was like a magic ceremony, by which they re-
newed their youth and the power of their limbs and the sweet-
ness of the spirit: Philip had heard him say many fantastic,
rhetorical, and picturesque things on the subject. Now Athelny
invited him to come over for a day, he had certain meditations
on Shakespeare and the musical glasses which he desired to
impart, and the children were clamouring for a sight of Uncle
Philip. Philip read the letter again in the afternoon when he
was sitting with Mildred on the beach. He thought of Mrs.
Athelny, cheerful mother of many children, with her kindly
hospitahty and her good humour; of Sally, grave for her years,
with funny little maternal ways and an air of authority, with
her long plait of fair hair and her broad forehead; and then
in a bunch of all the others, merry, boisterous, healthy, and
handsome. His heart went out to them. There was'one quality
which they had that he did not remember to have noticed
in people before, and that was goodness. It had not occurred
to him till now, but it was evidently the beauty of their good-
ness which attracted him. In theory he did not believe in it;
if morality were no more than a matter of convenience good
and evil had no meaning. He did not like to be illogical, but
here was simple goodness, natural and without effort, and he
thought it beautiful. Meditating, he slowly tore the letter into
little pieces; he did not see how he could go without Mildred,
and he did not want to go with her.

It was very hot, the sky was cloudless, and they had been
driven to a shady corner. The baby was gravely playing with
stones on the beach, and now and then she crawled up to
Philip and gave him one to hold, then took it away again and
placed it carefully down. She was playing a mysterious and
compUcated game known only to herself. Mildred was asleep.
She lay with her head thrown back and her mouth slightly
open; her legs were stretched out, and her boots protruded
from her petticoats in a grotesque fashion. His eyes had been
resting on her vaguely, but now he looked at her with peculiar

>

582 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

attention. He remembered how passionately he had loved her,
and he wondered why now he was entirely indifferent to her.
The change in him filled him with dull pain. It seemed to him
that all he had suffered had been sheer- waste. The touch of her
hand had filled him with ecstasy; he had desired to enter into
her soul so that he could share every thought with her and
every feeling; he had suffered acutely because, when silence
had fallen between them, a remark of hers showed how far
their thoughts had travelled apart, and he had rebelled against
the unsurmountable wall which seemed to divide every per-
sonality from every other. He found it strangely tragic that
he had loved her so madly and now loved her not at all. Some-
times he hated her. She was incapable of learning, and the
experience of life had taught her nothing. She was as unman-
nerly as she had always been. It revolted Philip to hear the
insolence with which she treated the hard-worked servant at
the boarding-house.

Presently he considered his own plans. At the end of his
fourth year he would be able to take his examination in mid-
wifery, and a year more would see him qualified. Then he
might manage a journey to Spain. He wanted to see the pic-
tures which he knew only from photographs; he felt deeply
that El Greco held a secret of peculiar moment to him; and
he fancied that in Toledo he would surely find it out. He did
not wish to do things grandly, and on a hundred pounds he
might live for six months in Spain: if Macalister put him on
to another good thing he could make that easily. His heart
warmed at the thought of those old beautiful cities, and the
tawny plains of Castile. He was convinced that more might
be got out of life than offered itself at present, and he thought
that in Spain he could live with greater intensity: it might be
possible to practise in one of those old cities, there were a good
many foreigners, passing or resident, and he should be able to
pick up a living. But that would be much later; first he must
get one or two hospital appointments; they gave experience
and made it easy to get jobs afterwards. He wished to get a

OF HUMAN BONDAGE ^83

berth as ship's doctor on one of the large tramps that took \
things leisurely enough for a man to see something of the \
places at which they stopped. He wanted to go to the East; /
and his fancy was rich with pictures of Bangkok and Shang^ (
hai and the ports of Japan: he pictured to himself palm-trees /
and skies blue and hot, dark-skinned people, pagodas; the (
scents of the Orient intoxicated his nostrils. His heart beat 1
with passionate desire for the beauty and the strangeness of )
the world. /

Mildred awoke.

"I do believe I've been asleep," she said. "Now then, you
naughty girl, what have you been doing to yourself? Her dress
was clean yesterday and just look at it now, Philip."

Chapter 95

When they returned to London Philip begati his dressing in;
the surgical wards. He was not so much interested in surgery
as in medicine, which, a more empirical science, offered greater
scope to the imagination. The work was a little harder than the
corresponding work on the medical side. There was a lecture-
from nine till ten, when he went into the wards ; there wounds,
had to be dressed, stitches taken out, bandages renewed : Philip
prided himself a little on his skill in bandaging, and it amused
him to wring a word of approval from a nurse. On certain
afternoons in the week there were operations; and he stood,
in the well of the theatre, in a white jacket, ready to hand the
operating surgeon any instrument he wanted or to sponge
the blood away so that he could •^e what he was about. When
some rare operation was to be performed the theatre would
fill up, but generally there were not more than half a dozen

584 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

students present, and then the proceedings had a cosines^
which Philip enjoyed. At that time the world at large seemed
to have a passion for appendicitis, and a good many cases came
to the operating theatre for this complaint: the surgeon for
whom Philip dressed was in friendly rivalry with a colleague
as to which could remove an appendix in the shortest tiriie and
with the smallest incision.

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 belljust 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 chil-
dren who had broken a limb while playing: now and then
attempted suicides were carried in by the poUce: 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

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 585

made no secret of the fact that he would again try 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 poHce : 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 mascu-
line 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 inexperi-
enced 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 expostu-
lated 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 ac-
cepted. 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 re-
member one man who couldn't get any work to do and his
wife died, so he pawned his clothes and bought a revolver;

586 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

iDut 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 blown 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 com-
mit 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
£lled, or the work was more than she felt strong enough to
<lo. 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 be-
ginning 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

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 587

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 khock 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 quarreHed. 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
iintidiness 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 heir. 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

588 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

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."

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

When Mildred was cross with him ske 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?"

Phihp 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 Christ-
mas 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 pud-
ding which she had bought at a local grocer's. They stood
themselves a bottle of wine. When they had dined Phihp sat
in his arm-chair by the fire, smoking his pipe; and the unac-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 589

customed wirie 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, teUing 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 remember-
ing that this was how they had sat together in her rooms in
the Vauxhall Bridge Road, but the positions had been re-
versed ; 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 PhiUp to hear her make use of the sort of phrase
she read in the penny novelettes which she devoured. Then he

590 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

wondered whether what she said had any meaning for her:
perhaps she knew no other way to express her genuine feel-
ings 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 tised to
think that it would last for ever, I felt I would rather die than
be withoi:; 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.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 591

Chapter 96

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, and 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 Jiked 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.

When she first came to live in the little rooms in Kenning-
ton she was tired out and ashamed. She was glad to be left
alone. It was a comfort to think that there was no rent to pay;
she need not go out in all weathers, and she could lie quietly
in bed if she did not feel well. She had hated the life she led.
It was horrible to have to be affable and subservient; and even
now when it crossed her mind she cried with pity for herself
as she thought of the roughness of men and their brutal lan-
guage. But it crossed her mind very seldom. She was grateful
to Philip for coming to her rescue, and when she remembered
how honestly he had loved her and how badly she had treated
him, she felt a pang of remorse. It was easy to make it up to
him. It meant very little to her. She was surprised when he
refused her suggestion, but she shrugged her shoulders: let

592 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Iiim put on airs i£ he liked, she did not care, he would be
anxious enough in a little while, and then it would be her
turn to refuse; if he thought it was any deprivation to her he
was very much mistaken. She had no doubt of her power over
him. He was peculiar, but she knew him through and through.
He had so often quarrelled with her and sworn he would
never see her again, and then in a little while he had come on
his knees begging to be forgiven. It gave her a thrill to think
how he had cringed before her. He would have been glad
to lie down on the ground for her to walk on him. She had
seen him cry. She knew ejiactly how to treat him, pay no atten-
tion to him, just pretend you didn't notice his tempers, leave
him severely alone, and in a little while he was sure to grovel.
She lafighed a little to herself, good-humouredly, when she
thought how he had come and eaten dirt before her. She had
had her fling now. She knew what men were and did not want
to have anything more to do with them. She was quite ready
to settle down with Philip. When all was said, he was a gentle-
man in every sense of the word, and that was something not
to be sneezed at, wasn't it? Anyhow she was in no hurry,
and she was not going to take the first step. She was glad to
see how fond he was growing of the baby, though it tickled
her a good deal; it was comic that he should set so much
store on another man's child. He was peculiar and no mistake.
But one or two things surprised her. She had been used
to his subservience: he was only too glad to do anything for
her in the old days, she was accustomed to see him cast down
by a cross word and in ecstasy at a kind one; he was different
now, and she said to herself that he had not improved in the
last year. It never struck her for a moment that there could
be any change in his feelings, and she thought it was only
acting when he paid no heed to her bad temper. He wanted to
read sometimes and told her to stop talking: she did not know
whether to flare up or to sulk, and was so puzzled that she
did neither. Then came the conversation in which he told her
that he intended their relations to be platonic, and, remember-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 593

ing an incident of their common past, it occurred to her that
he dreaded the possibihty of her being pregnant. She took
pains to reassure him. It made no difference. She was the sort
of woman who was unable to realise that a man might not
have her own obsession with sex; her relations with men had
been purely on those lines; and she could not understand that
they ever had other interests. The thought struck her that
Philip was in love with somebody else, and she watched him,
suspecting nurses at the hospital or people he met out; but
artful questions led her to the conclusion that there was no
one dangerous in the Athelny household; and it forced itself
upon her also that Philip, like most medical students, was
unconscious of the sex of the nurses with whom his work
threw him in contact. They were associated in his mind with
a faint odour of iodoform. Philip received no letters, and there
was no girl's photograph among his belongings. If he was in
love with someone, he was very clever at hiding it; and he
answered all Mildred's questions with frankness and ap-
parently without suspicion that there was any motive in them,

"I don't believe he's in love with anybody else," she said tCt
herself at last.

It was a relief, for in that case he was certainly still in love
with' her; but it made his behaviour very puzzHng. If he was
going to treat her hke that why did he ask her to come and
live at the flat? It was unnatural. Mildred was not a woman
who conceived the possibility of compassion, generosity, or
kindness. Her only conclusion was that Philip was queer. She
took it into her head that the reasons for his conduct were
chivalrous; and, her imagination filled with the extravagances
of cheap fiction, she pictured to herself all sorts of romantic
explanations for his delicacy. Her fancy ran riot with bitter
misunderstandings, purifications by fire, snow-white souls,
and death in the cruel cold of a Christmas night. She made
up her mind that when they went to Brighton she would put
an end to all his nonsense; they would be alon^ there, every-
one would think them husband and wife, and there would

594 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

he the pier and the band. When she found that nothing would
induce PhiHp to share the same room with her, when he spoke
to her about it with a tone in his voice she had never heard
before, she suddenly realised that he did not want her. She
was astounded. She remembered all he had said in the past
and how desperately he had loved her. She felt humiliated
and angry, but she had a sort of native insolence which carried
her through. He needn't think she jvas in love with him, be-
cause she wasn't. She hated him sometimes, and she longed
to humble him; but she found herself singularly powerless;
she did not know which way to handle him. She began to be
a little nervous with him. Once or twice she cried. Once or
twice she set herself to be particularly nice to him; but when
she took his arm while they walked along the front at night
he made some excuse in a while to release himself, as though
it were unpleasant for him to be touched by her. She could
not make it out. The only hold she had over him was through
the baby, of whom he seemed to grow fonder and fonder: she
could make him white with anger by giving the child a slap
or a push; and the only time the old, tender smile came back
into his eyes was when she stood with the baby in her arms.
She noticed it when she was being photographed like that by
a man on the beach, and afterwards she often stood in the
same way for Philip to look at her.

When they got back to London Mildred began looking for
the work she had asserted was so easy to find; she wanted now
to be independent of Philip; and she thought of the satis-
faction with which she would announce to him that she was
going into rooms and would take the child with her. But her
heart failed her when she came into closer contact with the
possibility. She had grown unused to the long hours, she did
not want to be at the beck and call of a manageress, and her
dignity revolted at the thought of wearing once more a uni-
form. She had made out to such of .the neighbours as she knew
that they were comfortably off: it would be a coine-down if
they heard that she had to go out and work. Her natural in-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 595

dolencc asserted itself. She did not want to leave Philip, and
so long as he was willing to provide for her, she did not see
why she should. There was no money to throw away, but she
got her board and lodging, and he might get better off. His
uncle was an old man and might die any day, he would come
into a little then, and even as things were, it was better than
slaving from morning till night for a few shillings a week. Her
efforts relaxed; she kept on reading the advertisement columns
of the daily paper merely to show that she wanted to do some'
thing if anything that was worth her while presented itself.
But panic seized her, and she was afraid that Philip would
grow tired of supporting her. She had no hold over him at all
now, and she fancied that he only allowed her to stay there
because he was fond of the baby. She brooded over it all, and
she thought to herself angrily that she would make him pay
for all this some day. She could not reconcile herself to the
fact that he no longer cared for her. She would make him.
She suffered from pique, and sometimes in a curious fashion
she desired PhiUp. He was so cold now that it exasperated
her. She thought of him in that way incessantly. She thought
that he was treating her very badly, and she did not know
what she had done to deserve it. She kept on saying to herself
that it was unnatural they should live like that. Then she
thought that if things were different and she were going to
have a baby, he would be sure to marry her. He was funny,
but he was a gentleman in every sense of the word, no one
could deny that. At last it became an obsession with her, and
she made up her mind to force a change in their relations. He
never even kissed her now, and she wanted him to: she re-
membered how ardently he had been used to press her lips.
It gave her a curious feeling to think of it. She often looked
at his mouth.

One evening, at the beginning of February, Philip told her
that he was dining with Lawson, who was giving a party in
his studio to celebrate his birthday; and he would not be in
till late; Lawson had bought a couple of bottles of the punch

596 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

they favoured from the tavern in Beak Street, and they pro-
posed to have a merry evening. Mildred asked i£ there were
going to be vi^omen there, but Philip told her there were not;
only men had been invited; and they were just going to sit
and talk and smoke: Mildred did not think it sounded very
amusing; i£ she were a painter she would have half a dozen
taodels about. She went to bed, but could not sleep, and
presently an idea struck her; she got up and fixed the catch on
the wicket at the landing, so that Philip could not get in. He
came back about one, and she heard him curse when he found
that the wicket was closed. She got out of bed and opened.

"Why on earth did you shut yourself in? I'm sorry I've
dragged you out of bed."

"I left it open on purpose, I can't think how it came to be
shut."

"Hurry up and get back to bed, or you'll catch cold."

He walked into the sitting-room and turned up the gas. She
followed him in. She went up to the fire.

"I want to warm my feet a bit. They're like ice."

He sat down and began to take off his boots. His eyes were
shining and his cheeks were flushed. She thought he had been
drinking.

"Have you been enjoying yourself.?" she asked, with a smile.

"Yes, I've had a ripping time."

Philip was quite sober, but he had been talking and laugh-
ing, and he was excited still. An evening of that sort reminded
him of the old days in Paris. He was in high spirits. He took
his pipe out of his pocket and filled it.

"Aren't you going to bed?" she asked.

"Not yet, I'm not a bit sleepy. Lawson was in great form.
He talked sixteen to the dozen from the moment I got there
till the moment I left."

"What did you talk about?"

"Heaven knows! Of every subject under the sun. You should
have seen us all shouting at the tops of our voices and nobody
listening."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 59/

M^IJ '^ughed with pleasure at the recollection, and
Mildred laughed too. She was pretty sure he had drunk more
than was good for him. That was exactly what she had ex-
.pected. She knew men.

"Can I sit down?" she said.

Before he could answer she settled herself on his knees.

"If you're not going to bed you'd better go and put on a
dressing-gown."

"Oh, I'm all right as I am." Then putting her arms round
his neck, she placed her face against his and said: "Why are
you so horrid to me, Phil?"

He tried to get up, but she would not let him.

"I do love you, Philip," she said.

"Don't talk damned rot."

"It isn't, it's true. I can't live without you. I want you."

He released himself from her arms.

"Please get up. You're making a fool of yourself and you're
making me feel a perfect idiot."

"I love you, Philip. I want to make up for all the harm I did
you. I can't go on like this, it's not in human nature."

He slipped out of the chair and left her in it.

"I'm very sorry, but it's too late."

She gave a heart-rending sob.

"But why? How can you be so cruel?"

"I suppose it's because I loved you too much. I wore the
passion out. The thought of anything of that sort horrifies
Xne. I can't look at you now without thinking of Emil and
Griffiths. One can't help those things, I suppose it's just
nerves."

She seized his hand and covered it with kisses.

"Don't," he cried.

She sank back into the chair.

"I can't go on like this. If you won't love me, I'd rather go
away."
"Don't be foolish, you haven't anywhere to go. You can sta]/

598 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

here as long as you like, but it must be on the definite under-
standing that we're friends and nothing more."

Then she dropped suddenly the vehemence of passion and
gave a soft, insinuating laugh. She sidled up to Philip and put
her arms round him. She made her voice low and wheedling.

"Don't be such an old silly. I believe you're nervous. You
don't know how nice I can be."

She put her face against his and rubbed his cheek with hers.
To Phihp her smile was an abominable leer, and the sug-
gestive glitter of her eyes filled him with horror. He drew back
instinctively.

"I won't," he said.

But she would not let him go. She sought his mouth with
her lips. He took her hands and tore them roughly apart and
pushed her away.

"You disgust me," he said.

"Me?"

She steadied herself with one hand on the chimney-piece.
She looked at him for an instant, and two red spots suddenly
appeared on her cheeks. She gave a shrill, angry laugh.

"I disgust you."

She paused and drew in her breath sharply. Then she burst
into a furious torrent of abuse. She shouted at the top of her
voice. She called him every foul name she could think of. She
used language so obscfene that Philip was astounded; she was
always so anxious to be refined, so shocked by coarseness, that
it had never occurred to him that she knew the words she used
now. She came up to him and thrust her face in his. It was
distorted with passion, and in her tumultuous speech the
spittle dribbled over her lips.

"I never cared for you, not once, I was making a fool of you
always, you bored me, you bored me stiff, and I hated you,
I would never have let you touch me only for the money, and
it used to make me sick when I had to let you kiss me. We
laughed at you, Griffiths and me, we laughed because you was
such a mug. A mug! A mug!"

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 599

Then she burst again into abominable invective. She accused
him of every mean fault; she said he vi^as stingy, she said he
was dull, she said he was vain, selfish; she cast virulent ridicule
on everything upon which he was most sensitive. And at last
she turned to go. She kept on, with hysterical violence, shout-
ing at him an opprobrious, filthy epithet. She seized the hand
of the door and flung it open. Then she turned round and
hurled at him the injury which she knew was the only one
that really touched him. She threw into the word all the malice
and all the venom of which she was capable. She flung it al
him as though it were a blow.

"Cripple!"

Chapter 97

Philip awoke with a start next morning, conscious that it was
late, and looking at his watch found it was nine o'clock. He
jumped out of bed and went into the kitchen to ge^ hirriself
some hot water to shave with. There was no sign of Mildred,
and the things which she had used for her supper the night
before still lay in the sink unwashed. He knocked at her door.

"Wake up, Mildred. It's awfully late."

She did not answer, even after a second louder knocking,
and he concluded that she was sulking. He was in too great a
hurry to bother about that. He put some water on to boil and
jumped into his bath which was always poured out the night
before in order to take the chill off. He presumed that Mildred
would cook his breakfast while he was dressing and leave it
in the sitting-room. She had done that two or three times
when she was out of temper. But he heard no sound of her
moving, and realised that if he wanted anything to eat he
would have to get it himself. He was irritated that she should

600 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

play him such a trick on a morning when he had over-slept
himself. There was still no sign of her when he was ready, but
he heard her moving about her room. She was evidently
getting up. He made himself some tea and cut himself a
couple of pieces of bread and butter, which he ate while he
was putting on his boots, then bolted downstairs and along
the street into the main road to catch his tram. While his eyes
sought out the newspaper shops to see the war news on the
placardsj he thought of the scene of the night before: now
that it was over and he had slept on it, he could not help
thinking it grotesque; he supposed he had been ridiculous,
but he was not master of his feelings; at the time they had
been overwhelming. He was angry with Mildred because she
had forced him into that absurd position, and then with re-
newed astonishment he thought of her outburst and the filthy
language she had used. He could not help flushing when he
remembered her final jibe; but he .shrugged his shoulders con-
temptuously. He had long known that when his fellows were
angry with him they never failed to taunt him with his de-
formity. He had seen men at the hospital imitate his walk,
not, before him as they used at school, but when they thought
he was not looking. He knew now that they did it from no
wilful unkindness, but because man is naturally an imitative
animal, and because it was an easy way to make people laugh:
he knew it, but he could never resign himself to it.

He was glad to throw himself into his work. The ward
seemed pleasant and friendly when he entered it. The sister
greeted him with a quick, business-like smile.

"You're very late, Mr. Carey."

"I was out on the loose last night."

"You look it."

"Thank you."

Laughing, he went to the first of his cases, a boy with tuber-
culous ulcers, and removed his bandages. The boy was pleased
to see him, and Philip chaffed him as he put a clean dressing
on the wound. Philip was a favourite with the patients; he

|. OF HUMAN BONDAGE 601

treated them good-humouredly; and he had gentle, sensitive
hands which did not hurt them: some of the dressers were a
httle rough and happy-go-lucky in their methods. He lunched
with his friends in the club-room, a frugal meal consisting of
a scone and butter, with a cup of cocoa, and they talked of
the war. Several men were going out, but the authorities were
particular and refused everyone who had not had a hospital
appointment. Someone suggested that, if the war went on, in
a while they would be glad to take anyone who was qualified;
but the general opinion was that it would be over in a month.
Now that Roberts was there things would get all right in no
time. This was MacaUster's opinion too, and he had told
PhiHp that they must watch their chance and buy just before
peace was declared. There would be a boom then, and they
might all make a bit of money. Philip had left with Macalister
instructions to buy him stock whenever the opportunity pre-
sented itself. His appetite had been whetted by the thirty
pounds he had made in the summer, and he wanted now to
make a couple of hundred.

He finished his day's work and got on a tram to go back
to Kennington. He wondered how Mildred would behave that
evening. It was a nuisance to think that she would probably be
surly and refuse to answer his questions. It was a warm eve-
ning for the time of year, and even in those gray streets of
South London there was the langour of February; nature is
restless then after the long winter months, growing things
awake from their sleep, and there is a rustle in the earth, a
forerunner of spring, as it resumes its eternal activities. Philip
would have liked to drive on further, it was distasteful to him
to go back to his rooms, and he wanted the air; but the desire
to see the child clutched suddenly at his heart-strings, and he
smiled to himself as he thought of her toddling towards him
with a crow of delight. He was surprised, when he reached
the house and looked up mechanically at the windows, to see.
that there was no light. He went upstairs and knocked, but
got no answer. When Mildred went out she left the key under

602 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

the mat and he found it there now. He let himself in and
going into the sitting-room struck a match. Something had
happened, he did not at once know what; he turned the gas
on full and lit it; the room was suddenly filled with the glare
and he looked round. He gasped. The whole place was
wrecked. Everything in it had been wilfully destroyed. Anger
seized him, and he rushed into Mildred's room. It was dark
and empty. When he had got a hght he saw that she had
taken away all her things and the baby's; (he had noticed on
entering that the go-cart was not in its usual place on the land-
ing, but thought Mildred had taken the baby out;) and all the
things on the washing-stand had been broken, a knife had
been drawn cross-ways through the seats of the two chairs, the
pillow had been slit open, there were large gashes in the sheets
and the counterpane, the looking-glass appeared to have been
broken with a hammer. Philip was bewildered. He went into
his own rbofn, and here too everything was in confusion. The
basin and the ewer had been smashed, the looking-glass was
in fragments, and the sheets were in ribands. Mildred had
made a slit large enough to put her hand into the pillow and
had scattered the feathers about the room. She had jabbed a
■knife into the blankets. On the dressing-table were photo-
graphs of Phihp's mother, the frames had been smashed and
the glass shivered. Philip went into the tiny kitchen. Every-
thing that was breakable was broken, glasses, pudding-basins,
plates, dishes.

It took Philip's breath away. Mildred had left no letter,
nothing but this ruin to mark her anger, and he could imagine
the set face with which she had gone about her work. He
went back into the sitting-room and looked about him. He
was so astonished that he no longer felt angry. He looked
curiously at the kitchen-knife and the coal-hammer, which
were lying on the table where she had left them. Then his eye
caught a large carving-knife in the fireplace which had been
broken. It must have taken her a long time to do so much
damage. Lawson's portrait of him had been cut cross-ways

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 603

and gaped hideously. His own drawings had been ripped
in pieces; and the photographs, Manet's Olympia and the
Odalisque of Ingres, the portrait of PhiUp IV, had been
smashed with great blows of the eoal-hammer. There were
gashes in the table-cloth and in the curtains and in the two
arm-chairs. They were quite ruined. On one wall over the
table which Philip- used as his desk was the little bit of Persian
rug which Cronshaw had given him. Mildred had always
hated it.

"If it's a rug it ought to go on the floor," she said, "and
it's a dirty stinking bit of stuff, that's all it is." •

It made her furious because PhiHp told her it contained
the answer to a great riddle. She thought he was making fun
of her. She had drawn the knife right through it three times,
it must have required some strength, and it hung now in
tatters, Philip had two or three blue and white plates, of nc
value, but he had bought them one by one for very small sum?
and liked them for their associations. They littered the floor
in fragments. There, were long gashes on the backs of his
books, and she had taken the trouble to tear pages out of the
unbound French ones. The little ornaments on the chimney-
piece lay on the hearth in bits. Everything that it had been
possible to destroy with a knife or a hammer was destroyed.

The whole of Philip's belongings would not have sold for
thirty pounds, but most of them were old friends, and he was a
domestic creature, attached to all those odds and ends because
they were his; he had been proud of his little home, and on so
little money had made it pretty and characteristic. He sank
down now in despair. He asked himself how she could have
been so cruel. A sudden fear got him on his feet again and
into the passage, where stood a cupboard in which he kept his
clothes. He opened it and gave a sigh of relief. She had
apparently forgotten it and none of his things was touched.

He went back into the sitting-room and, surveying the
scene, wondered what to do; he had not the heart to begin
trying to set things straight; besides there was no food in the

604 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

house, and he was hungry. He went out and got himself some-
thing to eat. When he came in he was cooler. A little pang
seized him as he thought of the child, and he wondered
whether she would miss him, at first perhaps, but in a week ;
she would have forgotten him; and he was thankful to be rid
of Mildred. He did not think of her with wrath, but with an
overwhelming sense of boredom.

"I hope to God I never see her again," he said aloud.

The only thing now was to leave the roms, and he made
up his mind to give notice the next morning. He could not
afford to make good the damage done, and he had so little
money left that he must find cheaper lodgings still. He would
be glad to get out of them. The expense had worried him,
and now the recollection of Mildred would be in them always.
Philip was impatient and could never rest till he had put in
action the plan which he had in mind; so on the following
afternoon he got in a dealer in second-hand furniture who
offered him three pounds for all his goods damaged and un-
damaged; and two days later he moved into the house oppo-
site the hospital in which he had had rooms when first he be-
came a medical student. The landlady was a very decent
woman. He took a bed-room at the top, which she let him
have for six shillings a week; it was small and shabby and
looked on the yard of the house that backed on to it, but he
had nothing now except his clothes and a box of books, and he
was glad to lodge so cheaply.

Chapter 98

And now it happened that the fortunes of Philip Carey, of no
consequence to any but himself, were affected by the events

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 60?

through which his country was passing. History was being
made, and the process was so significant that it seemed absurd
it should touch the Hfe of an obscure medical student. Battle
after battle, Magersfontein, Colenso, Spion Kop, lost on the
playmg fields of Eton, had humiliated the nation and dealt
the death-blow to the prestige of the aristocracy and gentry
who till then had found no one seriously to oppose their as-
sertion that they possessed a natural instinct of government.
The old order was being swept away : history was being made
indeed. Then the colossus put forth his strength, and, blunder-
ing again, at last blundered into the semblante of victory,
Cronje surrendered at Paardeberg, Ladysmith was relieved,
and at the beginning of March Lord Roberts marched into
Bloemfontein.

It was two or three days after the news of this reached
London that Macalister came into the tavern in Beak Street
and announced joyfully that things were looking brighter on
the Stock Exchange. Peace Vv^as in sight, Roberts would march
into Pretoria within a few weeks, and shares were going up
already. There was bound to be a boom.

"Now's the time to come in," he told Philip. "It's no good
waiting till the public gets on to it. It's now or never."

He had inside information. The manager of a mine in South
Africa had cabled to the senior partner of his firm that the
plant was uninjured. They would start working again as soon
as possible. It wasn't a speculation, it was an investment. Tc
show how good a thing the senior partner thought it Mac-
ahster told Philip that he had bought five hundred shares for
both his sisters; he never put them into anything that wasn't
as safe as the Bank of England.

"I'm going to put my shirt on it myself," he said.

The shares were two and an eighth to a quarter. He advised
PhiHp not to be greedy, but to be satisfied with a ten-shilling
rise. He was buying three hundred for himself and suggested
that Philip should do the same. He would hold them and sell
when he thought fit. Philip had great faith in him, partly be-

^06 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

cause he- vas a Scotsman and therefore by nature cautious,
and partly because he had been right before. He jumped at
the suggestion.

"I daresay we shall be able to sell before the account," said
Macalister, "but if not, I'll arrange to carry them over for you."

It seemed a capital system to Philip. You held on till you
got your profit, and you never even had to put your hand in
your pocket. He began to watch the Stock Exchange columns
of the paper with new interest. Next day everything was up
a httle, and Macalister wrote to say that he had had to pay two
and a quarter for the shares. He said that the market was firm.
But in a day or two there was a set-back. The news that came
from South Africa was less reassuring, and Philip with anxiety
saw that his shares had fallen to two; but Macalister was opti-
'mistic, 'the Boers couldn't hold out much longer, and he
was willing to bet a top-hat that Roberts would march into
Johannesburg before the middle of April. At the account
Philip had to pay out nearly forty pounds. It worried him
considerably, but he felt that the only course was to hold on:
in his circumstances the loss was too great for him to pocket.
For two or three weeks nothing happened; the Boers would
not understand that they were beaten and nothing remained
for them but to surrender: in fact they had one or two small
successes, and Philip's shares fell half a crown more. It became
evident that the war was not finished. There was a lot of sell-
ing. When Macahster saw Phihp he was pessimistic.

"I'm not sure if the best thing wouldn't be to cut the
loss. I've been paying out about as much as I want to in
differences."

Philip was sick with anxiety. He could not sleep at night;
he bolted his breakfast, reduced now to tea and bread and
butter, in order to get over to the club reading-room and see
the paper; sometimes the news was bad, and sometimes there
was no news at all, but when the shares moved it was to go
down. He did not know what to do. If he sold now he would
lose altogether hard on three hundred arid fifty pounds; and

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 607

that would leave him only eighty pounds to go on with. He
wished with all his heart that he had nev^r been such a fool
as to dabble on the Stock Exchange, but the only thing was
to hold on; something decisive might happen any day and the
shares would go up; he did not hope now for a profit, but he
wanted to make good his loss. It was his only chance of finishr
ing his course at the hospital. The summer session was begin-
nmg in May, and at the end of it he meant to take the ex-
amination in midwifery. Then he would only have a year
more; he reckoned it Out carefully and came to the conclusion
that he could manage it, fees and all, on a hundred and fifty
pounds; but that was the least it could possibly be done on.

Early in April he went to the tavern in Beak Street anxious
to see Macalister. It eased him a Httle to discuss the situation
with him; and to realise that numerous people beside himself
were suffering from loss of money made his own trouble a
little less intolerable. But when PhiHp arrived no one was there
but Hayward, and no sooner had Philip seated himself than
he said:

"Frh sailing for the Cape on Sunday."

"Are you!" exclaimed Philip.

Hayward was the last person he would have expected to do
anything of the kind. At the hospital men were going out now
in numbers; the Government was glad to get anyone who was
qualified; and others, going out as troopers, wrote home that
they had been put on hospital work as soon as it was learned
that they were medical students. A wave of patriotic feeling
had swept over the country, and volunteers were coming from
all ranks of spciety.

"What are you going as?" asked Philip.

"Oh, in the Dorset Yeomanry. I'm going as a trooper."

Philip had known Hayward for eight years. The youthful
intimacy which had come from Philip's enthusiastic admi-
ration for the man who could tell him of art and literature
had long since vanished; but habit had taken its place; and
when Hayward was in London they saw one another once

608, OF HUMAN BONDAGE

or twice a week. He still talked about books with a delicate
appreciation. Philip was not yet tolerant, and sometimes Hay-
ward's conversation irritated him. He no longer believed im-
plicitly that nothing in the world was of consequence but
art. He resented Hayward's contempt for action and success.
Phihp, stirring his punch, thought of his early friendship and
his ardent expectation that Hay ward would do great things;
it was long since he had lost all such illusions, and he knew
now that Hayward would never do anything but talk. He
found his three hundred a year more difficult to live on now
that he was thirty-five than he had when he was a young man;
and his clothes, though still made by a good tailor, were worn
a good deal longer than at One time he would have thought
possible. He was too stout, and no artful arrangement of his
fair hair could conceal the fact that he was bald. His blue eyes
were dull and pale. It was not hard to guess that he drank too
much.

"What on earth made you think of going out to the Cape?"
asked Philip.

"Oh, I don't know, I thought I ought to."

Philip was silent. He felt rather silly. He understood that •
Hayward was being driven by an uneasiness in his soul which
he could not account for. Some power within him made it
seem necessary to go and fight for his country. It was strange,
since he considered patriotism no more than a prejudice, and,
flattering himself on his cosmopolitanism, he had looked upon
England as a place of exile. His countrymen in the mass
wounded his susceptibilities. Philip wondered what it was that
made people do things which were so contrary to all their
theories of life. It would have been reasonable for Hayward
to stand aside and watch with a srnile while the barbarians
slaughtered one another. It looked as though men were pup-
pets in the hands of an unknown force, which drove them to
do this and that; and sometimes they used their reason to
justify their actions; and when this was impossible they did
the actions in despite of reason.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 609

"People are very extraordinary," said Philip. "I should never
nave expected you to go out as a trooper."

Hayward smiled, slightly embarrassed, and said nothing.
I was examined yesterday," he remarked at last. "It was:
worth while undergoing the gene of it to know that one was,
perfectly fit."

Philip noticed that he still used a Frenth word in an af-
fected way when an English one would have served. But just
then Macalister came in.

"I wanted to see you, Carey," he said. "My people don't feel!
inclined to hold those $hares any more, the market's in sucK
an awful state, and they want you to take them up."

Philip's heart sank. He knew that was impossible. It meant
that he must accept the loss. His pride made him answer
calmly.

"I don't know that I think that's worth while. You'd better
sell them."

"It's all very fine to say that, I'm not sure if I can. The
market's stagnant, there are no buyers."

"But they're marked down at one and an eighth."

"Oh yes, but that doesn't mean anything. You can't get that
for them."

Philip did not say anything for a moment. He was trying;
to collect himself.

"D'you mean to say they're worth nothing at all?"

"Oh, I don't say that. Of course they're worth something,,
but you see, nobody's buying them now."

"Then you must just sell them for what you can get."

Macalister looked at Philip narrowly. He wondered whether
he was very hard hit.

"I'm awfully sorry, old man, but we're all in the same boat..
No one thought the war was going to hang on this way. I put
you into them, but I was in myself too."

"It doesn't matter at all," said Philip. "One has to take one's,
chance."

He moved back to the table from which he had got up to<

610 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

talk to Macalister. He was dumfounded; his head suddenly
began to ache furiously; but he did not want them to think
him unmanly. He sat on for an hour. He laughed feverishly
at everything they said. At last he got up to go.

"You take it pretty coolly," said Macalister, shaking hands
with him. "I don't suppose anyone Ukes losing between three
and four hundred pounds."

When Phihp got back to his shabby little room he flung
himself on his bed, and gave himself over to his despair. He
kept on regretting his folly bitterly; and though he told him-
self that it was absurd to regret, for what had happened was
inevitable just because it had happened, he could not help
himself. He was utterly miserable. He could not sleep. He re-
membered all the ways he had wasted money during the las6
few years. His head ached dreadfully.

The following evening there came by the last post the state-
ment of his account. He examined his pass-book. He found
that when he had paid everything he would have seven pounds
left. Seven pounds! He was thankful he had been able to pay.
It would have been horrible to be obliged to confess to Mac-
alister that he had not the money. He was dressing in the eye-
department during the summer session, and he had bought
an ophthalmoscope off a student who had one to sell. He had
not paid for this, but he lacked the courage to tell the student
that he wanted to go back on his bargain. Also he had to buy
certain books. He had about five pounds to go on with. It
lasted him six weeks; then he wrote to his uncle a letter which
he thought very business-like; he said that owing to the war
he had had grave losses and could not go on with his studies
unless his uncle came to his help. He suggested that the Vicar
should lend him a hundred and fifty pounds paid over the
next eighteen months in monthly instalments; he would pay
interest on this and promised to refund the capital by degrees
when he began to earn money. He would be qualified in a
year and a half at the latest, and he could be pretty sure then
of getting an assistantship at three pounds a week. His uncle

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 611

wrote back that he could do nothing. It was not fair to ask
him to sell out when everything was at its worst, and the little
ne had he felt that his duty to himself made it necessary for
him to keep in case of illness. He ended the letter with a Uttle
homily. He had warned Philip time after time, and Philip had
never paid any attention to him; he could not honestly say he
was surprised; he had long expected that this would be the
end m Philip's extravagance and want of balance. Philip grew
hot and cold when he read this. It had never occurred to him
that his uncle would refuse, and he burst into furious anger;
but this was succeeded by utter blankness : if his uncle would
not help him he could not go on at the hospital. Panic seized
him and, putting aside his pride, he wrote again to the Vicar
of Blackstable, placing the case before him more urgently; but
perhaps he did not explain himself properly and his uncle did
not realise in what desperate straits he was, for he answered
that he could not change his mind; Philip was twenty-five and
really ought to be earning his living. When he died Philip
would come into a little, but till then he refused to give him
a penny. Philip felt in the letter the satisfaction of a man who
for many years had disapproved of his courses and now saw
himself justified.

Chapter 99

Phiup began to pawn his clothes. He reduced his expenses by
eating only one meal a day beside his breakfast; and he ate it,
bread and butter and cocoa, at four so that it should last him
till next morning. He was so hungry by nine o'clock that he
had to go to bed. He thought of borrowing money from Law-
son, but the fear of a refusal held him back; at last he asked

612 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

liim for five pounds. Lawson lent it with pleasure, but, as he
idid so, said:

"You'll let me have it back in a week or so, won't you? I've
^ot'to pay my framer, and I'm awfully broke just now."

Philip knew he would not be able to return it, and the
thought of what Lawson would think made hirn so ashamed
that in a couple of days he took the money back untouched,
lawson was just going out to luncheon and asked Philip to
come too. Philip could hardly eat, he was so glad to get some
:solid food. On Sunday he was sure of a good dinner from
Athelny. He hesitated to tell the Athelnys what had happened
to him: they had always looked upon him as comparatively
-well-to-do, and he had a dread that they would think less well
of him if they knew he was penniless.

Though he had always been poor, the possibility of not hav-
ing enough to eat had never occurred to him; it Was not the
sort of thing that happened to the people among whom he
lived; and he was as ashamed as if he had some disgraceful
■disease. The situation in which he found himself was quite
outside the range of his experience. He was so taken aback
that he did not know what else to do than to go on at the
liospital; he had a vague hope that something would turn up;
he could not quite believe that what was happening to him
Tvas true; and he remembered iiow during his first term at
school he had often thought his life was a dream from which
;he would awake to find himself once more at home. But very
soon he foresaw that in a week or so he would have no money
at all. He must set about trying to earn something at once. If
he had been qualified, even with a club-foot, he could have
gone out to the Cape, since the demand for medical men Was
now great. Except for his deformity he might have enlisted
in one of the yeomanry regiments which were constantly being
sent out. He went to the secretary of the Medical School and
asked if he could give him the coaching of some backward
student; but the secretary held out no hope of getting him
anything of the sort. Philip read the advertisement columns of

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 613

the medical papers, and he applied for the post of unqualified
assistant to a man who had a dispensary in the Fulham Road,
When he went to see him, he saw the doctor glance at his club-
foot; and on hearing that Philip was only in his fourth year
at the hospital he said at once that his experience was insuffi-
cient: Philip understood that this was only an excuse; the man
would not have an assistant who might not be as active as he
wanted. Philip turned his attention to other means of earning
money. He knew French and German and thought there
might be some chance of finding a job as correspondence
clerk; it made his heart sink, but he set his teeth; there was
nothing else to do. Though too shy to answer the advertise-
ments which demanded a personal appHcation, he replied to
those which asked for letters; but he had no experience to
state and no recommendations: he was conscious that neithei
his German nor his French was commercial; he was ignorant
of the terms used in business; he knew neither shorthand not
typewriting. He could not help recognising that his case was
hopeless. He thought of writing to the sohcitor who had beea
his father's executor, but he could not bring himself to, for
it was contrary to his express advice that he had sold the
mortgages in which his money had been invested. He knew
from his uncle that Mr. Nixon thoroughly disapproved of him,
He had gathered from Philip's year in the accountant's office
that he was idle and incompetent.

"I'd sooner starve," Philip muttered to himself.

Once or twice the possibility of suicide presented itself to
him: it would be easy to get something from the hospital dis-
pensary, and it was a comfort to think that if the worst came
to the worst he had at hand means of making a painless end
of himself; but it was not a course that he considered seriously.
When Mildred had left him to go with Griffiths his anguish
had been so great that he wanted to die in order to get rid of
the pain. He did not feel like that now. He remembered that
the Casualty Sister had told him how people oftener did away
with themselves for want of money than for want of love; and

614 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

he chuckled when he thought that he was an exception. He
wished only that he could talk his worries over with some-
body, but he could not bring himself to confess them. He was
ashamed. He went on looking for work. He left his rent un-
paid for three weeks, explaining to his landlady that he would
get money at the end of the month; she did not say anything,
but pursed her lips and looked grim. When the end of the
month came and she asked if it would be convenient for him
to pay something on account, it made him feel very sick to
say that he could not; he told her he would write to his uncle
and was sure to be able to settle his bill on the following
Saturday.

"Well, I 'ope you will, Mr. Carey, because I 'ave my rent to
pay, and I can't afford to let accounts run on." She did not
speak with anger, but with determination that was rather
frightening. She paused for a moment and then said: "If you
don't pay next Saturday, I shall 'ave to complain to the secre-
tary of the 'ospital." '

"Oh yes, that'll be all right."

She looked at him for a little and glanced round the bare
room. When she spoke it was without any emphasis, as though
it were quite a natural thing to say.

"I've got a nice 'ot joint downstairs, and if you like to come
down to the kitchen you're welcome to a bit of dinner."

Philip felt himself redden to the soles of his feet, and a sob
caught at his throat.

"Thank you very much, Mrs. Higgins, but I'm not at all
hungry."

"Very good, sir."

When she left the room Philip threw himself on his bed.
He had to clench his fists in order to prevent himself from
crying.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 615

Chapter 100

Saturday. It was the day on which he had promised to pay
his landlady. He had been expecting something to turn ap all
through the week. He had found no work. He had never
been driven to extremities before, and he was so dazed that
he did not know what to do. He had at the back of his mind
a feehng that the whole thing was a preposterous joke. He
had no more than a few coppers left, he had sold all the
clothes he could do without; he had some books and one or
two odds and ends upon which he might have got a shilling
or two, but the landlady was keeping an eye on his comings
and goings: he was afraid she would stop him if he took
anything more from his room. The only thing was to tell her
that he could not pay his bill. He had not the courage. It was
the middle of June. The night was line and warm. He made
up his mind to stay out. He walked slowly along the Chelsea
Embankment, because the river was restful and quiet, till he
was tired, and then sat on a bench and dozed. He did not
know how long he slept; he awoke with a start, dreaming that
he was being shaken by a policeman and told to move on; but
when he opened his eyes he found himself alone. He walked
on, he did not know why, and at last came to Chiswick, where
he slept again. Presently the hardness of the bench roused him.
The night seemed very long. He shivered. He was seized
with a sense of his misery; and he did not know what on
earth to do: he was ashamed at having slept on the Embank-
ment; it seemed pecuHarly humihating, and he felt his cheeks
flush in the darkness. He remembered stories he had heard
of those who did and how among them were officers, clergy-

616 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

men, and men who had been to universities: he wondered
if he would become one of them, standing in a line to get
soup from a charitable institution. It would be much better
to commit suicide. He could not go on Hke that: Lawson
would help him when he knew what straits he was in; it was
absurd to let his pride prevent him from asking for assistance.
He wondered why he had come such a cropper. He had
always tried to do what he thought best, and everything
had gone wrong. He had helped people when he could, he
did not think he had been more selfish than anyone else, it
seeiiied horribly unjust that he should be reduced to such
a pass.

But it was no good thinking about it. He walked on. It
was now light: the river was beautiful in the silence, and
there was something mysterious in the early day; it was going
to be very fine, and the sky, pale in the dawn, was cloudless.
He felt very tired, and hunger was gnawing at his entrails, but
he could not sit still; he was constantly afraid of being spoken -
to by a policeman. He dreaded the mortification of that. He
felt dirty and wished he could have a wash. At last he found
himself at Hampton Court. He felt thai if he did not have
something to eat he would cry. He chose a cheap eating-
house and went in; there was a smell of hot things, and it
made him feel slightly sick: he meant to eat something nour-
ishing enough to keep up for the rest of the day, but his
stomach revolted at the sight of food. He had a cup of tea
and some bread and butter. He remembered then that it
was Sunday and he could go to the Athelnys; he thought
of the roast beef and the Yorkshire pudding they would eat;
but he was fearfully tired and could not face the happy, noisy
family. He was feeling morose and wretched. He wanted to
be left alone. He made up his mind that he would go into
the gardens of the palace and lie down. His bones ached.
Perhaps he would find a pump so that he could wash his
hands and face and drink something; he was very thirsty;
and now that he was no longer hungry he thought with

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 617

pleasure of the flowers and the lawns and the great leafy trees.
He felt that there he could think but better what he must do.
He lay on the grass, in the shade, and lit his pipe. For econ-
omy s sake he had for a long time confined himself to two
pipes a day;' he was thankful now that his pouch was full.
He did not know what people did when they had no money.
Presently he fell asleep. When he awoke it was nearly mid-day,
and he thought that soon he must be setting out for London
so as to be there in the early morning and answer any adver-
tisements which seemed to promise. He thought of his uncle,
who had told him that he would leave him at his death the
little he had; Philip did not in the least know how much this
was: it could not be more than a few hundred pounds. He
wondered whether he could raise money on the reversion.
Not without the old man's consent, and that he would
never give.
"The only thing I can do is to hang on somehow till he dies."
Philip reckoned his age. The Vicar of Blackstable was well
over seventy. He had chronic bronchitis, but many old men
had that and lived on indefinitely. Meanwhile something must
turn up; Philip could not get away from the feeling that his
position was altogether abnormal; people in his particular
station did not starve. It was because he could not bring
himself to believe in the reality of his experience that he did
not give way to utter despair. He made up his mind to borrow
half a sovereign from Lawson. He stayed in the garden all
day and smoked when he felt very hungry; he did not mean
to eat anything until he was setting out again for London:
it was a long way and he must keep up his strength for that.
He started when the day began to grow cooler, and slept on
benches when he was tired. No one disturbed him. He had a
wash and brush up, and a shave at Victoria, some tea and
bread and butter, and while he was eating this read the adver-
tisement columns of the morning paper. As he looked down
them his eye fell upon an announcement asking for a sales-
man in the 'furnishing drapery' department of some well-

618 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

known stores. He had a curious little sinking of the heart, for
with his middle-class prejudices it seemed dreadful to go into
a shop; but he shrugged his shoulders, after all what did it
matter? and he made up his mind to have a shot at it. He
had a queer feeling that by accepting every humiliation, by
going out to meet it even, he was forcing the hand of fate.
When he presented himself, feeling horribly shy, in the de-
partment at nine o'clock he found that many others were there
before him. They were of all ages, from boys of sixteen to
men of forty; some were talking to one another in undertones,
but most were silent; and when he took up his place those
around him gave him a look of hostility. He heard one man
say:

"The only thing I look forward to is getting my refusal
soon enough to give me time to look elsewhere."

The man, standing next him, glanced at Philip and asked:

"Had any experience?"

"No," said Philip. •

He paused a moment and then made a remark: "Even
the smaller houses won't see you without appointment after
lunch."

Philip looked at the assistants. Some were draping chintzes
and cretonnes, and others, his neighbour told him, were
preparing country orders that had come in by post. At about
a quarter past nine the buyer arrived. He heard one of the
men who were waiting say to another that it was Mr. Gibbons.
He was middle-aged, short and corpulent, with a black beard
and dark, greasy hair. He had brisk movements and a clever
face. He wore a silk hat and a frock coat, the lapel of which
was adorned with a white geranium surrounded by leaves.
He went into his office, leaving the door open; it was very
small and contained only an American roll-desk in the cor-
ner, a bookcase, and a cupboard. The men standing outside
watched him mechanically take the geranium out of his coat
and put it in an ink-pot filled with water. It was against the
rules to wear flowers in business.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 619

[During the day the department men who wanted to keep
in with the governor admired the flower.

"I've never seen better," they said, "you didn't grow it
yourself?"

"Yes I did," he smiled, and a gleam of pride filled his intel-
ligent eyes.]

He took off his hat and changed his coat, glanced at the
letters and then at the men who were waiting to see him. He
made a slight sign with one finger, and the first in the cue
stepped into the office. They filed past him one by one and
answered his questions. He put them very briefly, keeping his,
eyes 'fixed on the applicant's face.

"Age? Experience? Why did you leave your job?"

He hstened to the replies without expression. When it came
to Philip's turn he fancied that Mr. Gibbons stared at him curi-
ously. Philip's clothes were neat and tolerably cut. He looked
a little different from the others.

"Experience?" "

"I'm afraid I haven't any," said Philip.

"No good."

Philip walked out of the office. The ordeal had been so
much less painful than he expected that he felt no particular
disappointment. He could hardly hope to succeed in getting
a place the first time he tried. He had kept the newspaper and
now looked at the advertisements again: a shop in Holborn
needed a salesman too, and he went there; but when he
arrived he found that someone had already been engaged.
If he wanted to get anything to eat that day he must go to
Lawson's studio before he went out to luncheon, so he made
his way along the Brompton Road to Yeoman's Row.

"I say, I'm rather broke till the end of the month," he said,
as soon as he found an opportunity. "I wish you'd lend me
half a sovereign, will you?"

It was incredible the difficulty he found in asking for
money; and he remembered the casual way, as though almost
they were conferring a favour, men at the hospital had eX'

620 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

traded small sums out of him which they had no intention
of repaying.

"Like a shot," said Lawson.

But when he put his hand in his pocket he found that he
had only eight shillings. Philip's heart sank.

"Oh well, lend me five bob, will you.?" he said lightly.

"Here you are."

Philip went to the public baths in Westminster and spent
sixpence on a bath. Then he got himself something to eat. He
did not know what to do with himself in the afternoon. He
would not go back to the hospital in case anyone should ask
him questions, and besides, he had nothing to do there now;
they would wonder in the two or three departments he had
worked in why he did not come, but they must think what
they chose, it did not matter : he would not be the first student
who had dropped out without warning. He went to the free
library, and looked at the papers till they wearied him, then
he took out Stevenson's New Arabian Nights; but he found
he could not read : the words meant nothing to him, and he
continued to brood over his helplessness. He kept on thinking
the same things all the time, and the fixity of his thoughts
made his head ache. At last, craving for fresh air, he went into~
the Green Park and lay down on the grass. He thought
miserably of his deformity, which made it impossible for him
to go to the war. He went to sleep and dreamed that he was
suddenly sound of foot and out at the Cape in a regiment
of Yeomanry; the pictures he had looked at in the illustrated
papers gave materials for his fancy; and he saw himself on
the Veldt, in khaki, sitting with other men round a fire at
night. When he awoke he found that it was still quite light,
and presently he heard Big Ben strike seven. He had twelve
hours to get through with nothing to do. He dreaded the
interminable night. The sky was overcast and h? feared it
would rain; he would have to go to a lodging-house where
he could get a bed; he had seen them advertised on lamps
outside houses in Lambeth: Good Beds sixpence; he had

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 62*

never been inside one, and dreaded the foul smell and the
verrnin. He made up his mind to stay in the open air if he
possibly could. He remained in the park till it was closed and
then began to walk about. He was very tired. The thought
:ame to him that an accident would be a piece of luck, so
that he could be taken to a hospital and lie there, in a clean
bed, for weeks. At midnight he was so hungry that he could
not go without food any more, so he went to a coffee stall at
Hyde Park Corner and ate a couple of potatoes and had a
cup of coffee. Then he walked again. He felt too restless to
sleep, and he had a horrible dread of being moved on by the
pohce. He noted that he was beginning to look upon the
constable from quite a new angle. This was the third night
he had spent out. Now and then he sat on the benches in
Piccadilly and towards morning he strolled down to the
Embankment. He listened to the striking of Big Ben, marking
every quarter of an hour, and reckoned out how long it left
till the city woke again. In the morning he spent a few cop-
pers on making himself neat and clean, bought a paper to
read the advertisements, and set out once more on the search
for work.

He went on in this way for several days. He had very little
food and began to feel weak and ill, so that he had hardly
enough energy to go on looking for the work which seemed
so desperately hard to find. He was growing used now to
the long waiting at the back of a shop on the chance that he
would be taken on, and the curt dismissal. He walked to all
parts of London in answer to the advertisements, and he
came to know by sight men who applied as fruitlessly as
himself. One or two tried to make friends with him, but he
was too tired and too wretched to accept their advances. He
did not go any more to Lawson, because he owed him five
shillings. He began to be too dazed to think clearly and
ceased very much to care what would happen to him. He
cried a good deal. At first he was very angry with himself
for this and ashamed, but he found it relieved him, and

622 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

somehow made him feel less hungry. In the very early morn-
ing he suffered a good deal from cold. One night he went into
his room to change his linen; he slipped in about three, when
he was quite sure everyone would be asleep, and out again at
five; he lay on the bed and its softness was enchanting; all
his bones ached, and as he lay he revelled in the pleasure of
it; it was so delicious that he did not- want to go to sleep. He
was growing used to want of food and did not feel very
hungry, but only weak. Constantly now at the back of his
mind was the thought of doing away with himself, but he
used all the strength he had not to dwell on it, because he
was afraid the temptation would get hold of him so that he
would not be able to help himself. He kept on saying to
himself that it would be absurd to commit suicide, since some-
thing must happen soon; he could not get over the impression
that his situation was too preposterous to be taken quite
seriously; it was like an illness which must be endured but
from which he was bound to recover. JEvery night he swore
that nothing would induce him to put up with such another
and determined next morning to write to his- uncle, or to
Mr. Nixon, the solicitor, or to Lawson; but when the time
came he could not bring himself to make the humiliating
confession of his utter failure. He did not know how Lawson
would take it. In their friendship Lawson had been scatter-
brained and he had prided himself on his common sense. He
would have to tell the whole history of his folly. He had an
uneasy feeling that Lawson, after helping him, would turn
the cold shoulder on him. His uncle and the soHcitor would
of course do something for him, but he dreaded their re-
proaches. He did not want anyone to reproach him: he
clenched his teeth and repeated that what had happened was
inevitable just because it had happened. Regret was absurd.
The days were unending, and the five shillings Lawson had
lent him would not last much longer. Philip longed for Sun-
day to come so that he could go to Athelny's. He did not
know what prevented him from going there sooner, except

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 623

perhaps that he wanted so badly to get through on his own;
for Athelny, who had been in straits as desperate, was the
only person who could do anything for him. Perhaps after
dmner he could bring himself to tell Athelny that he was in
difficulties. Philip repeated to himself over and over again
what he should say to him. He was dreadfully afraid that
Athelny would put him off with airy phrases: that would
be so horrible that he wanted to delay as long as possible the
putting of him to the test. Philip had lost all confidence in
his fellows.

Saturday night was cold and raw. Philip suffered horribly.
From mid-day on Saturday till he dragged himself wearily
to Athelny's house he ate nothing. He spent his last twopence
on Sunday morning on a wash and a brush up in the lavatory
at Charing Cross.

Chapter 101

When Philip rang a head was put out the window, and in a
minute he heard a noisy clatter on the stairs as the children
ran down to let him in. It was a pale, anxious, thin face that
he bent down for them to kiss. He was so moved by their
exuberant affection that, to give himself time to recover, he
made excuses to linger on the stairs. He was in a hysterical
state and almost anything was enough to make him cry.
They asked him why he had not come on the previous Sun^
day, and he told them he had been ill; they wanted to know
what was the matter with him; and Philip, to amuse them,
suggested a mysterious ailment, the name of which, double-
barrelled and barbarous with its mixture of Greek and Latin
(medical nomenclature bristled with such), made them shriek

624 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

with delight. They dragged Philip into the parlour and made-
him repeat it for their father's edification. Athelny got up and
shook hands with him. He stared at Philip, but with his round,^
bulging eyes he always seemed to stare. Phihp did not know
why on this occasion it made him self-conscious.

"We missed you last Sunday," he said.

Philip could never tell lies without embarrassment, and he
was scarlet when he finished his explanation for not coming.
Then Mrs. Athelny entered and shook hands with him.

"I hope you're better, Mr. Carey," she said.

He did not know why she imagined that anything, had
been the matter with him, for the kitchen door was closed
when he came up with the children, and they had not left him.

"Dinner won't be ready for another ten minutes," she said,,
in her slow drawl. "Won't you have an egg beaten up in a
glass of milk while you're waiting?"

There was a look of concern on her face which made Philip
uncomfortable. He forced a laugh and answered that he was
not at all hungry. Sally came in to lay the table, and Philip
began to chaff her. It was the family joke that she would be
as fat as an aunt of Mrs. Athelny, called Aunt Elizabeth,
whom the children had never seen but regarded as the type
of obscene corpulence.

"I say, what has happened since I saw you last, Sally?"
Philip began.

"Nothing that I know of."

"I believe you've been putting on weight."

"I'm sure you haven't," she retorted. "You're a perfect
skeleton."

Philip reddened.

"That's a tu quoque, Sally," cried her father. "You will be
fined one golden hair of your head. Jane, fetch the shears."

"Well, he is thin, father," remonstrated Sally. "He's just
skin and bone."

"That's not the question, child. He is at perfect liberty to
be thin, but your obesity is contrary to decorum."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 625

As he spoke he put his arm proudly round her waist and
looked at her with admiring eyes.

"Let me get on with the table, father. If I am comfortable
there are some who don't seem to mind it."

"The hussy!" cried Athelny, with a dramatic wave of the
hand. "She taunts me with the notorious fact that Joseph, a
son of Levi who sells jewels in Holborn, has made her ar
ofFer of marriage."

"Have you accepted him, Sally?" asked Philip.

"Don't you know father better than that by this time.?
There's not a word of truth in it."

"Well, if he hasn't made you an offer of marriage," cried
Athelny, "by Saint George and Merry England, I will seize
him by the nose and demand of him immediately what are
his intentions."

"Sit down, father, dinner's ready. Now then, you children,
get along with you and wash your hands all of you, and don't
shirk it, because I mean to look at them before you have a
scrap of dinner, so there."

Phihp thought he was ravenous till he began to eat, but
then discovered that his stomach turned against food, and
he could eat hardly at all. His brain was weary; and he did
not notice that Athelny, contrary to his habit, spoke very
little. Philip was relieved to be sitting in a comfortable house,
but every now and then he could not prevent himself from
glancing out of the window. The day was tempestuous. The
fine weather had broken; and it was cold, and there was a
bitter wind; now and again gusts of rain drove against the
window. Philip wondered what he should do that night. The
Athelnys went to bed early, and he could not stay where he
was after ten o'clock. His heart sank at the thought of going
out into the bleak darkness. It seemed more terrible now that
he was with his friends than when he was outside and alone.
He kept on saying to himself that there were plenty more
who would be spending the night out of doors. He strove to
distract his mind by talking, but in the middle of his word*

626 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

a spatter of rain against the window would make him start.

"It's hke March weather," said Athelny. "Not the sort of
day one would like to be crossing the Channel."

Presently they finished, and Sally came in and cleared away;

"Would you like a twopenny stinker?" said Athelny, hand-
ing him a cigar. -

Philip took it and inhaled the smoke with delight. It soothed
him extraordinarily. When Sally had finished Athelny told
her to shut the door after her.

"Now we shan't be disturbed," he said, turning to Philip.
"I've arranged with Betty not to let the children come in till
I call them."

Philip gave him a startled look, but before he could take in
the meaning of his words, Athelny, fixing his glasses on his
nose with the gesture habitual to him, went on.

"I wrote to you last Sunday to ask if anything was the
matter with you, and as you didn't answer I went to your
rooms on Wednesday."

Philip turned his head away and did not answer. His heart
began to beat violently. Athelny did not speak, and presently
the silence seemed intolerable to Philip. He could not think
of a single word to say.

"Your landlady told me you hadn't been in since Saturday
night, and she said you owed her for the last month. Where
have you been sleeping all this week?"

It made Philip sick to answer. He stared out of the window. ,

"Nowhere."

"I tried to find you."

"Why?" asked Philip.

"Betty and I have been just as broke in our day, only we had
babies to look after. Why didn't you come here?"

"I couldn't."

Philip was afraid he was going to cry. He felt very weak.
He shut his eyes and frowned, trying to control himself. He
felt a sudden flash of anger with Athelny because he would
not leave him alone; but he was broken; and presently, his

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 627

^^U i!'^^^'^ ^^°^^^' slowly in order to keep his voice steady, he
A* k ™ ^^^ ^^°'^^ °^ ^^^ adventures during the last few weeks.
As he spoke it seemed to him that he had behaved inanely, and
It niade it still harder to tell. He felt that Athelny would
thmk him an utter fool.

"Now you're coming to live with us till you find something
to do," said Athelny, when he had finished.
Philip flushed, he knew not why.

"Oh, it's awfully kind of you, but I don't think I'll do that."
"Why not?"

Philip did not answer. He had refused instinctively from
fear that he would be a bother, and he had a natural bashful-
ness of accepting favours. He knew besides that the Athelnys
lived from hand ^ to mouth, and with their large family had
neither space nor money to entertain a stranger.

"Of course you must come here," said Athelny. "Thorpe
will tuck in with one of his brothers and you can sleep in
his bed. You don't suppose your food's going to make any
difference to us."

Philip was afraid to speak, and Athelny, going to the door,
called his wife.

"Betty," he said, when she came in, "Mr. Carey's coming to
live with us."

"Oh, that is nice," she said. "I'll go and get the bed ready."
She spoke in such a hearty, friendly tone, taking everything
for granted, that Philip was deeply touched. He never expected
people to be kind to him, and when they were it surprised
and moved him. Now he could not prevent two large tears
from rolling down his cheeks. The Athelnys discussed the
arrangements and pretended not to notice to what a state his
weakness had brought him. When Mrs. Athelny left them
Philip leaned back in his chair, and looking out of the window
laughed a little.

"It's not a very nice night to be out, is it.?"

628 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Chapter 102

Athelny told Philip that he could easily get him something
to do in the large firm of linendrapers in which himself
worked. Several of the assistants had gone to the war, and
Lynn and Sedley with patriotic zeal had promised to keep
their places open for them. They put the work of the heroes
on those who remained, and since they did riot increase the
wages of these were able at once to exhibit public spirit and
effect an economy; but the war continued and trade was less
depressed; the holidays were coming, when numbers of the
staff went away for a fortnight at a time: they were bound
to engage more assistants. Philip's experience had made him
doubtful whether even then they would engage him; but
Athelny, representing himself as a person of consequence in
the firm, insisted that the manager could refuse him nothing.
Philip, with his training in Paris, would be very useful; it was
only a matter of waiting a little and he was bound to get a
Well-paid job to design costumes and draw posters. Philip
made a poster for the summer sale and Athelny took it away.
Two days later he brought it back, saying that the manager
admired it very much and regretted with all his heart that
there was no vacancy just then in that department. Philip
asked whether there was nothing else he could do.

"I'm afraid not."

"Are you quite sure.!""

"Well, the fact is they're advertising for a shop-walker
tomorrow," said Athelny, looking at him doubtfully through
his glasses.

"D'you think I stand any chance of getting it?"

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 62I

Athelny was a little confused; he had led Philip to expect
something much more splendid; on the other hand he was
too poor to go on providing him indefinitely with board and
lodging.

"You might take it while you wait for something better.
You always stand a better chance if you're engaged by the
firm already.''

"I'm not proud, you know," smiled Philip.

"If you decide on that you must be there at a quarter to
nine tomorrow morning."

Notwithstanding the war there was evidently much diffi-
culty in finding work, for when Philip went to the shop many
men were waiting already. He recognised some whom he
had seen in his own searching, and there was one whom he
had noticed lying about the park in the afternoon. To Philip
now that suggested that he was as homeless as himself and
passed the night out of doors. The men were of all sorts,
old and young, tall and short; but every one had- tried to make
himself smart for the interview with the manager: they had
carefully brushed hair and scrupulously clean hands. They
waited in a passage which Philip learnt afterwards led up
to the dining-hall and the work rooms; it was broken every
few yards by five or six steps. Though there was electric light
in the shop here was only gas, with wire cages over it for
protection, and it flared noisily. Philip arrived punctually, but it
was nearly ten o'clock when he was admitted into the office.
It was three-cornered, like a cut of cheese lying on its side:
on the walls were pictures of women in corsets, and two
poster-proofs, one of a man in pyjamas, green and white in
large stripes, and the other of a ship in full sail ploughing
an azure sea: on the sail was printed in large letters 'great
white sale.' The widest side of the office was the back of one
of the shop-windows, which was being dressed at the time,
and an assistant went to and fro during the interview. The
manager was reading a letter. He was a florid man, with
sandy hair and a large sandy moustache; from the middle

feo OF HUMAN BONDAGE

of his watch-chain hung a bunch o£ football medals. He
sat in his shirt-sleeves at a large desk with a telephone by his
side; before him were the day's advertisements, Athelny's
work, and cuttings from newspapers pasted on a card. He
gave Philip a glance but did not speak to him; he dictated a
letter to the typist, a girl who sat at a small table in one corner;
then he asked Philip his name, age, and what experience he
had had. He spoke with a cockney twang in a high, metallic
voice which he seemed not able always to control; Philip
noticed that his upper teeth were large and protruding; they
gave you the impression that they were loose and would come
out if you gave them a sharp tug.

"I think Mr. Athelny has spoken to you about me," said
Philip.

"Oh, you are the young feller who did that poster?"

"Yes, sir."

"No good to us, you know, not a bit of good."

He looked Philip up and down. He seemed to notice that
Philip was in some way different from the men who had
preceded him.

"You'd 'ave to get a frock coat, you know. I suppose you
'aven't got one. You seem a respectable young feller. I suppose
you found art didn't pay."

Philip could not tell whether he meant to engage him or
not. He threw remarks at him in a hostile way.

"Where's your home.?"

"My father and mother died when I was a child."

"I like to give young fellers a chance. Many's the one I've
given their chance to and they're managers of departments
now. And they're grateful to me, I'll say that for them. They
know what I done for them. Start at the bottom of the ladder,
that's the only way to learn the business, and then if you
stick to it there's no knowing what it can lead to. If you suit,
one of these days you may find yourself in a position like what
mine is. Bear that in mind, young feller."

"I'm very anxious to do my best, sir," said Philip.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 631

He knew that he must put in the sir whenever he could,
but it sounded odd to him, and he was afraid of overdoing it.
The manager Hked talking. It gave him a happy conscious-
ness of his own importance, and he did not give Philip his
•decision till he had used a great many words.

"Well, I daresay you'll do," he said at last, in a pompous
way. "Anyhow I don't mind giving you a trial."

"Thank you very much, sir."

"You can start at once. I'll give you six shiUings a week and
your keep. Everything found, you know; the six shillings is
•only pocket money, to do what" you like with, paid monthly.
Start on Monday. I suppose you've got no cause of complaint
with that."

"No, sir."

"Harrington Street, d'you know where that is, Shaftesbury
Avenue. That's where you sleep. Number ten, it is. You can
sleep there on Sunday night, if you like; that's just as you
please, or you can send your box there on Monday." The
manager nodded: "Good-morning."

Chapter 103

Mrs. Athelny lent Philip money to pay his landlady enough
•of her bill to let him take his things away. For five shillings
and the pawn-ticket on a suit he was able to get from a pawn-
broker a frock coat which fitted him fairly well. He redeemed
the rest of his clothes. He sent his box to Harrington Street
by Carter Patterson and on Monday morning went with
Athelny to the shop. Athelny introduced him to the buyer
<j£ the costumes and left him. The buyer was a pleasant,
fussy little man of thirty, named Sampson; he shook hands

632 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

with Philip, and, in order to show his own acpomphshment
of which he was very proud, asked him if he spoke French.
He was surprised when PhiUp told him he did.

"Any other language?"

"I speak German."

"Oh! I go over to Paris myself occasionally. Parlez-vous'
fran^ais? Ever been to Maxim's?"

Philip was stationed at the top of the stairs in the 'costumes.'
His work consisted in directing people to the various depart-
ments. There seemed a great many of them as Mr. Sampson
tripped them off his tongue. Suddenly he noticed that Philip
limped.

"What's the matter with your leg?" he asked.

"I've got a club-foot," said Philip. "But it doesn't prevent
my walking or anything like that."

The buyer looked at it for a moment doubtfully, and Philip
surmised that he was wondering why the manager had en-
gaged him. Philip knew that he had not noticed there was
anything the matter with him.

"I don't expect you to get them all correct the first day. If
you're in any doubt all you've got to do is to ask one of the
young ladies."

Mr. Sampson turned away; and Philip, trying to remember
where- this or the other department was, watched anxiously
for the customer in search of information. At one o'clock he
went up to dinner. The dining-room, on the top floor of the
vast buildihg, was large, long, and well ht; but all the win-
dows were shut to keep out the dust, and there was a horrid
smell of cooking. There were long tables covered with cloths,
with big glass bottles of water at intervals, and down the
centre salt cellars and bottles of vinegar. The assistants
crowded in noisily, and sat down on forms still warm from
those who had dined at twelve-thirty.

"No pickles," remarked the man next to Philip.

He was a tall thin young man, with a hooked nose and a
pasty face; he had a long head, unevenly shaped as though

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 633

the skull had been pushed in here and there oddly, and on
Jiis forehead and neck were large acne spots red and inflamed.
His name was Harris. Philip discovered that on some days
there were large soup-plates down the table full of mixed
pickles. They were very popular. There were no knives and
forks, but in a minute a large fat boy in a white coat came
in with a couple of handfuls of them and threw them loudly
on the middle of the table. Each man took what he wanted;
they were warm and greasy from recent washing in dirty
water. Plates of meat swimming in gravy were handed roufid
by boys in white jackets, and as they flung each plate down
with the quick gesture of a prestidigitator the gravy slopped
over on to the table-cloth. Then they brought large dishes of
cabbages and potatoes; the sight of them turned Philip's
stomach; he noticed that everyone poured quantities of vinegar
over them. The noise was awful. They talked and laughed
and shouted, and there was the clatter of knives and forks,
and strange sounds of eating. Philip was glad to get back
into the department. He was beginning to remember where
■each one was, and had less often to ask' one of the assistants,
when somebody wanted to know the way.
"First to the right. Second on the left, madam."
One or two of the girls spoke to him, just a word when
things were slack, and he felt they were taking his measure.
At five he was sent up again to the dining-room for tea. He
was glad to sit down. There were large slices of bread heavily
spread with butter; and many had pots of jam, which were
'kept in the 'store' and had their names written on.

Philip was exhausted when work stopped at half past six.
Harris, the man he had sat next to at dinner, offered to take
him over to Harrington Street to show him where he was to
sleep. He told Philip there was a spare bed in his room,*andr
as the other rooms were full, he expected Philip would be
put there. The house in Harrington Street had been a boot-
maker's; and the shop was used as a bed-room; but it waj
very dark, since the window had been boarded three part^

634 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

up, and as this did not open the only ventilation came from
a small skylight at the far end. There was a musty smell, and
Philip was thankful that he would not have to sleep there.
Harris took him up to the sitting-room, which was on the
first floor; it had an old piano in it with a keyboard that
looked like a row of decayed teeth; and on the table in a cigar-
box without a lid was a set of dominoes; old numbers of The
Strand Magazine and of The Graphic were lying about. The
other rooms were used as bed-rooms. That in which Philip
was to sleep was at the top of the house. There were six beds
in it, and a trunk or a box stood by the side of each. The only
furniture was a chest of drawers: it had four large drawers
and two small ones, and Philip as the new-comer had one of
these; there were keys to them, but as they were all alike they
were not of much use, and Harris advised him to keep his
valuables in his trunk. There was a looking-glass on the
chimney-piece. Harris showed Philip the lavatory, which was
a fairly large room with eight basins in a row, and here all
the inmates did their washing. It led into another room in
which were two baths, discoloured, the woodwork - stained
with soap; and in them were dark rings at various intervals
which indicated the water marks of different baths.

When Harris and Philip went back to their bed-room they
found a tall man changing his clothes and a boy of sixteen
whistling as loud as he could while he brushed his hair. In
a minute or two without saying a word to anybody the tall
man went out. Harris winked at the boy, and the boy,
whistling still, winked back. Harris told Philip that the man
was called Prior; he had been in the army, and now served in
the silks; he kept pretty much to himself, and he went off
every night, just Hke that, without so much as a good-evening,
to s'ee his girl. Harris went out too, and only the boy remained
to watch Philip curiously while he unpacked his things. His
name was Bell and he was serving his time for nothing in
the haberdashery. He was much interested in Philip's evening
clothes. He told him about the other men in the room and

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 635

asked him every sort of question about himself. He was a
cheerful youth, and in the intervals of conversation sang in a
half-broken voice snatches of music-hall songs. When Philip
had finished he went out to walk about the streets and look
at the crowd; occasionally he stopped outside the doors of
restaurants and watched the people going in; he felt hungry,
so he bought a bath bun and ate it while he strolled along.
He had been given a latch-key by the prefect, the man who
turned out the gas at a quarter past eleven, but afraid of
bemg locked out he returned in good time; he had learned
already the system of fines : you had to pay a shilling if you
came in after eleven, and half a crown after a quarter past,
and you were reported besides: if it happened three times
you were dismissed.

All but the soldier were in when Philip arrived and two
were already in bed. Philip was greeted with cries.
"Oh, Clarence! Naughty boy!"

He discovered that Bell had dressed up the bolster in his
evening clothes. The boy was delighted with his joke.
"You must wear them at the social evening, Clarence."
"He'll catch the belle of Lynn's, if he's not careful."
Philip- had already heard of the social evenings, for the
money stopped from the wages to pay for them was one of
the grievances of the staff. It was only two shillings a month,
and it covered medical attendance and the use of a
library of worn novels; but as four shillings a month
besides was stopped for washing, Philip discovered that a
quarter of his six shillings a week would never be paid to him.
Most of the men were eating thick slices of fat bacon be-
tween a roll of bread cut in two. These sandwiches, the
assistants' usual supper, were supplied by a small shop a few
doors oflf at twopence each. The soldier rolled in; silently,
rapidly, took off his clothes and threw himself into bed. At
ten minutes past eleven the gas gave a big jump and five
minutes later went out. The soldier went to sleep, but the
others crowded round the big window in their pyjamas and

636 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

night-shirts and, throwing remains of their sandwiches at
the women who passed in the street below, shouted to them
facetious remarks. The house opposite, six storeys high, was
a workshop for Jewish tailors who left off work at eleven;
the rooms were brightly lit and there were no blinds to the
windows. The sweater's daughter — the family consisted of
father, mother, two small boys, and a girl of twenty — went
round the house to put out the lights when work was over,
and sometimes she allowed herself to be made love to by
one of the tailors. The shop assistants in Philip's room got a
lot of amusement out of watching the manoevres of one man
or another to stay behind, and they made small bets on which
would succeed. At midnight the people were turned out of
the Harrington Arms at the end of the street, and soon after
they all went to bed: Bell, who slept nearest the door, made
his way across the room by jumping from- bed to bed, and
even when he got to his own would not stop talking. At last
everything was silent but for the steady snoring of the soldier,
and Philip went to sleep.

He was awaked at seven by the loud ringing of a bell, and
by a quarter to eight they were all dressed and hurrying
downstairs in their stockinged feet to pick out their boots.
They laced them as they ran along to the shop in Oxford
Street for breakfast. If they were a minute later than eight
they got none, nor, once in, were they allowed out to get
themselves anything to eat. Sometimes, if they knew they
could not get into the building in time, they stopped at the
little shop near their quarters and bought a couple of buns;
but this cost money, and most went without food till dinner.
Philip ate some bread and butter, drank a cup of tea, and at
half past eight began his day's work again.
"First to the right. Second on the left, madam."
Soon he began to answer the questions quite mechanically.
The work was monotonous and very tiring. After a few days
his feet hurt him so that he could hardly stand: the thick
soft carpets made them burn, and at night his socks were

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 637

painful to remove. It was a common complaint, and his fellow
'floormen' told him that socks and boots just rotted away
from the continual sweating. All the men in his room suffered
in the same fashion, and they relieved the pain by sleeping
with their feet outside the bed-clothes. At first Philip could
not walk at all and was obliged to spend a good many of his
evenings in the sitting-room at Harrington Street with his
feet in a pail of cold water. His companion on these occasions
was Bell, the lad in the haberdashery, who stayed in often to
arrange the stamps he collected. As he fastened them with
little pieces of stamp-paper he whistled monotonously.

Chapter 104

The social evenings took place on alternate Mondays. There
was one at the beginning of Philip's second week at Lynn's.
He arranged to go with one of the women in his department

"Meet 'em 'alf-way^" she said, "same as I do."

This was Mrs. 'Hodges, a little woman of five and forty,
with badly dyed hair; she had a yellow face with a network of
small red veins all over it, and yellow whites to her pale blue
eyes. She took a fancy to Philip and called him by his Christian
name before he had been in the shop a week.

"We've both known what it is to come down," she said.

She told Philip that her real name was not Hodges, but
she always referred to "me 'usband Misterodges;" he was a
barrister and he treated her simply shocking, so she left him
as she preferred to be independent like; but she had known
what it was to drive in her own carriage, dear— she called
everyone dear — and they always had late dinner at home.
She used to pick her teeth with the pin of an enormous silver

638 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

brooch. It was in the form of a whip and a hunting-crop
crossed, with two spurs in the middle. PhiHp was ill at ease
in his new surroundings, and the girls in the shop called him
'sidey.' One addressed him as Phil, and he did not answer
because he had not the least idea that she was speaking to
him; so she tossed her head, saying he was a 'stuck-up thing,'
and next time with ironical emphasis called him Mister
Carey. She was a Miss Jewell, and she was going to marry a
doctor. The other girls had never seen him, but they said he
must be a gentleman as he gave her such lovely presents.

"Never you mind what they say, dear,'' said Mrs. Hodges.
"I've 'ad to go through it same as you 'ave. They don't know
any better, poor things. You take my word for it, they'll like
you all right if you 'old your own same as I 'ave."

The social evening was held in the restaurant in the base-
ment. The tables were put on one side so that there might be
room for dancing, and smaller ones were set out for pro-
gressive whist.

"The 'eads 'ave to get there early," said Mrs. Hodges.

She introduced him to Miss Bennett, who was the belle of
Lynn's. She was the buyer in the 'Petticoats,' and when Philip
entered was engaged in conversation with the buyer in the
'Gentlemen's Hosiery;' Miss Bennett was a woman of massive
proportions, with a very large red face heavily powdered and
a bust of imposing dimensions; her flaxen hair was arranged
with elaboration. She was overdressed, but not badly dresseci,
in black with a high collar, and she wore black glace gloves,
in which she played cards; she had several heavy gold chains
round her neck, bangles on her wrists, and circular photo-
graph pendants, one being of Queen Alexandra; she carried
a black satin bag and chewed Sen-sens.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Carey," she said. "This is your
first visit to our social evenings, ain't it.? I expect you feel a bit
shy, but there's no cause to, I promise you that."

She did her best to make people feel at home. She slapped
them on the shoulders and laughed a great deal.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 63Si

"Ain't I a pickle?" she cried, turning to Philip. "What
must you think of me? But I can^t 'elp meself."

Those who were going to take part in the social evening
came in, the younger members of the staff mostly, boys who
had not girls of their own, and girls who had not yet found
anyone to walk with. Several of the young gentlemen wore
lounge suits with white evening ties and red silk handker-
chiefs; they were going to perform, and they had a busy,
abstracted air; some were self-confident, but others were
nervous, and they watched their public with an anxious eye.
Presently a girl with a great deal of hair sat at the piano and
ran her hands noisily across the keyboard. When the audience
had settled itself she looked round and gave the name of
her piece.

"A Drive in Russia."

There was a round of clapping during which she deftly
fixed bells to her wrists. She smiled a little and immediately
burst into energetic melody. There was a great deal more
clapping when she finished, and when this was over, as an
encore, she gave a piece which imitated the sea; there were
little trills to represent the lapping waves and thundering
chords, with the loud pedal down, to suggest a storm. After
this a gentleman sang a song called Bid me Good-bye, and as
an encore obliged with Sing me to Sleep. The, audience
measured their enthusiasm with a nice discrimination. Every-
one was applauded till he gave an encore, and so that 'there
might be no jealousy no one was applauded more than any-
one else. Miss Bennett sailed up to Philip.

"I'm sure you play or sing, Mr. Carey," she said archly. "I
can see it in your face."

"I'm afraid I don't."

"Don't you even recite?"

"I have no parlour tricks."

The buyer in the 'gentleman's hosiery' was a well-known
reciter, and he was called upon loudly to perform by all the
assistants in his department. Needing no pressing, he gave

640 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

a long poem o£ tragic character, in which he rolled his eyes,
put his hand on his chest, and acted as though he were in
great agony. The point, that he had eaten cucumber for sup-
per, was divulged in the last line and was greeted with
laughter, a little forced because everyone knew the poem
well, but loud and long. Miss Bennett did not sing, play, or
recite.

"Oh no, she 'as a little game of her own," said Mrs. Hodges.

"Now, don't you begin chaffing me. The fact is I know
quite a Jot about palmistry and second sight."

"Oh, do tell my 'and. Miss Bennett," cried the girls in her
department, eager to please her.

"I don't like telling 'ands, I don't really. I've told people
such terrible things and they've all come true, it makes one
superstitious like."

"Oh, Miss Bennett, just for once."

A little crowd collected round her, and, amid screams of
embarrassment, giggles, blushings, and cries of dismay or
admiration, she talked mysteriously of fair and dark men, of
money in a letter, and of journeys, till the sweat stood in
heavy beads on her painted face.

"Look at me," she said. "I'm all of a perspiration."

Supper was at nine. There were cakes, buns, sandwiches,
tea and qoflee, all free; but if you wanted mineral water
you had to pay for it. Gallantry often led young men to offer
the ladies ginger beer, but common decency made them refuse.
Miss Bennett was very fond of ginger beer, and she drank
two and sometimes three bottles during the evening; but she
insisted on paying for them herself. The men liked her
for that.

"She's a rum old bird," they said, "but mind you, she's not
a bad sort, she's not like what some are."

After supper progressive whist was played. This was very
noisy, and there was a great deal of laughing and shouting,
as people moved from table to table. Miss Bennett grew hot-
ter and hotter.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 641

"Look at me," she said. "I'm all of a perspiration."

In due course one of the more dashing of the young men
remarked that if they wanted to dance they'd better begin.
The girl who had played the accompaniments sat at the
piano and placed a decided foot on the loud pedal. She
played a dreamy waltz, marking the time with the bass, while
with the right hand she 'tiddled' in alternate octaves. By
way of a change she crossed her hands and played the air in
the bass.

"She does play well, doesn't she.?" Mrs. Hodges remarked
to Philip. "And what's more she's never 'ad a lesson in 'er
life; it's all ear."

Miss Bennett liked dancing and poetry better than anything
in the world. She danced well, but very, very slowly, and an
expression came into her eyes as though her thoughts were
far, far away. She talked breathlessly of the floor and the heat
and the supper. She said that the Portman Rooms had the best
floor in London and she always liked the dances there; they
were very select, and she couldn't bear dancing with all sorts
of men you didn't know anything about; why, you might be
exposing yourself to you didn't know what all. Nearly all the
people danced very well, and they enjoyed themselves. Sweat
poured down their faces, and the very high collars of the
young men grew limp. '

Philip looked on, and a greater depression seized him than
he remembered to have felt for a long time. He. felt intolerably
alone. He did not go, because he was afraid to seem super-
ciHous, and he talked with the girls and laughed, but in his
heart was unhappiness. Miss Bennett asked him if he had a
girl.

"No," he smiled.

"Oh, well, there's plenty to choose from here. And they're
very nice respectable girls, some of them. I expect you'll have
a girl before you've been here long."

She looked at him very archly.

642 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Meet 'em 'alf-way," said Mrs. Hodges. "That's what I tell
him."

It was nearly eleven o'clock, and the party broke up. Philip
could not get to sleep. Like the others he kept his aching feet
outside the bed-clothes. He tried with all his might not to
think of the life he was leading. The soldier was snoring
quietly.

Chapter 105

The wages were paid once a month by the secretary. On pay-
day each batch of assistants, coming down from tea, went into
the passage and joined the long line of people waiting orderly
like the audience in a queue outside a gallery door. One by
one they entered the oiBce. The secretary sat at a desk with
wooden bowls of money in front of him, and he asked the
employe's name; he referred to a book, quickly, after a sus-
picious glance at the assistant, said aloud the sum due, and
taking money out of the bowl counted it into his hand.

"Thank you," he said. "Next."

"Thank you," was the reply.

The assistant passed on to the second secretary and before
leaving the room paid him four shillings for washing money,
two shillings for the club, and any fines that he might have
incurred. With what he had left he went back into his depart-
ment and there waited till it was time to go. Most of the men
in Philip's house were in debt with the woman who sold the
sandwiches they generally ate for supper. She was a funny old
thing, very fat, with a broad, red face, and black hair plastered
neatly on each side of the forehead in the fashion shown in
early pictures of Queen Victoria. She always wore a little black

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 643

bonnet and a white apron; her sleeves were tucked up to the
elbow; she cut the sandwiches with large, dirty, greasy hands;
and there was grease on her bodice, grease on her apron,
grease on her skirt. She was called Mrs. Fletcher, but everyone
addressed her as 'Ma;' she was really fond of the shop assist-
ants, whom she called her boys; she never minded giving
credit towards the end of the month, and it was known that
now and then she had lent someone or other a few shiUing."^
when he was in straits. She was a good woman. When they
were leaving or when they came back from the holidays, the
boys kissed her fat red cheek; and more than one, dismissed
and unable to find another job, had got for nothing food to
keep body and soul together. The boys were sensible of her
large heart and repaid her with genuine affection. There was a
story they Hked to tell of a man who had done well for himself
at Bradford, and had five shops of his own, and had come back
after fifteen years and visited Ma Fletcher and given her a
gold watch.

Philip found himself with eighteen shillings left out of his
month's pay. It was the first money he had ever earned in his
life. It gave him none of the pride which might have been
expected, but merely a feeling of dismay. The smallness o{
the sum emphasised the hopelessness of his position. He took
fifteen shillings to Mrs. Athelny to pay back part of what he
owed her, but she would not take more than half a sovereign.

"D'you know, at that rate it'll take me eight months to settle
up with you."

"As long as Athelny's in work I can afford to wait, and who
knows, p'raps they'll give you a rise."

Athelny kept on saying that he would speak to the manager
about Philip, it was absurd that no use should be made of his
talents; but he did nothing, and Philip soon came to the con-
clusion that the press-agent was not a person of so much
importance in the manager's eyes as in his own. Occasionally
he saw Athelny ip. the shop. His flamboyance was extin-
guished; and in neat, commonplace, shabby clothes he hurried,

644 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

a subdued, unassuming little man, through the departments
as though anxious to escape notice.

"When I think of how I'm wasted there," he said at home,
"I'm almost tempted to give in my notice. There's no scope for
a man like me. I'm stunted, I'm starved."

Mrs Athelny, quietly sewing, took no notice of his com-
plaints. Her mouth tightened a little.

"It's very hard to get jobs in these times. It's regular and it's
safe; I expect you'll stay there as long as you give satisfaction."

It was evident that Athelny would. It was interesting to see
the ascendency which the uneducated woman, bound to him
by no legal tie, had acquired over the brilliant, unstable man.
Mrs. Athelny treated Philip with motherly kindness now that
he was in a different position, and he was touched by her
anxiety that he should make, a good meal. It was the solace
of his life (and when he grew used to it, the monotony of it
was what chiefly appalled him) that he could go every Sunday
to that friendly house. It was a joy to sit in the stately Spanish
chairs and discuss all manner of things with Athelny. Though
his condition seemed so desperate he never left him to go back
to Harrington Street without a feeling of exultation. At first
Philip, in order not to forget what he had learned, tried to go
on reading his medical books, but he founjd it useless; he could
not fix his attention on them after the exhausting work of the
day; and it seemed hopeless to continue working when he did
not know in how long he would be able to go back to the
hospital. He dreamed constantly that he was in the wards.
The awakening was painful. The sensation of other people
sleeping in the room was inexpressibly irksome to him; he had
been used to solitude, and to be with others always, never to
be by himself for an instant, was at these moments horrible
to him. It was then that he found it most difficult to combat
his despair. He saw himself going on with that life, first to the
right, second on the left, madam, indefinitely; and having to
be thankful if he was not sent away: the men who had gone
to the war would be coming home soon, tlie firm had guaran-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 645

teed to take them back, and this must mean that others would
be sacked; he would have to stir himself even to keep the
wretched post he had.

There was only one thing to free him and that was the
death of his uncle. He would get a few hundred pounds then,
and on this he could finish his course at the hospital. Philip
began to wish with all his might for the old man's death. He
reckoned out how long he could possibly live; he was well
over seventy, Philip did not know his exact age, but he must
be at least seventy-five; he suffered from chronic bronchitis
and every winter had a bad cough. Though he knew them by
heart Philip read over and over again the details in his text-
book of medicine of chronic bronchitis in the old. A severe
winter might be too much for the old man. With all his heart
Philip longed for cold and rain. He thought of it constantly,
so that it became a monomania. Uncle William was affected
by the great heat too, and in August they had three weeks of
sweltering weather. Philip imagined to himself that one day
perhaps a telegram would come saying that the Vicar had
died suddenly, and he pictured to himself his unutterable
relief. As he stood at the top of the stairs and directed people
to the departments they wanted, he occupied his mind with
thinking incessantly what he would do with the money. He
did not know how much it would be, perhaps no more than
five hundred pounds, but even that would be enough. He
would leave the shop at once, he would iiot bother to give
notice, he would pack his box and go without saying a word
to anybody; and then he would return to the hospital. That
was the first thing. Would he have forgotten much? In six
months he could get it all back, and then he would take his
three examinations as soon as he could, midwifery first, then
medicine and surgery. The awful fear seized him, that his
uncle, notwithstanding his promises, might leave everything
he had to the' parish or the church. The thought made Philip
sick. He could not be so cruel. But if that happened Philip
was quite determined what to do, he would not go on in that

646 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

way indefinitely; his life was only tolerable because he could
look forward to something better. If he had no hope he would
have no fear. The only brave thing to do then would be to
commit suicide, and, thinking this over too, Philip decided
minutely what painless drug he would take and how he would
get hold of it. It encouraged him to think that, if things
became unendurable, he had at all events a way out.

"Second to the right, madam, and down the stairs. First on
the left and straight through. Mr. Philips, forward please."

Once a month, for a week, Philip was 'on duty.' He had to
go to the department at seven in the morning and keep an eye
on the sweepers. When they finished he had to take the sheets
off the cases and the models. Then, in'tr •■•=■;. .ning when the
assistants left, he had to put back the sWtts on the models
and the cases and 'gang' the sweepers again. It was a dusty,
dirty job. He was not allowed to read or write or smoke, but
just had to walk about, and the time hung heavily on his
hands. When he went oS at half past nine he had supper
given him, and this was the only consolation; for tea at five
o'clock had left him with a healthy appetite, and the bread
and cheese, the abundant cocoa which the firm provided, were
welcome.

One day when Philip had been at Lynn's for three months,
Mr. ^mpson, the buyer, came into the department, fuming
with anger. The manager, happening to notice the costume
window as he came in, had sent for the buyer and made
satirical remarks upon the colour scheme. Forced to submit
in silence to his superior's sarcasm, Mr. Sampson took it out
of the assistants; and he rated the wretched fellow whose duty
it was to dress the window.

"If you want a thing well done you must do it yourself,"
Mr. Sampson stormed. "I've always said it and I always shall
One can't leave anything to you chaps. InteUigent you call
yourselves, do you.? Intelligent!"

He threw the word at the assistants as though it were the
bitterest term of reproach.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 647

"Don't you know that if you put an electric blue in the
window it'll kill all the other blues?"

He looked round the department ferociously, and his eye
fell upon Philip.

"You'll dress the window next Friday, Carey. Let's see what
you can make of it."

He went into his office, muttering angrily. Philip's heart
sank. When Friday morning came he went into the window
with a sickening sense of shame. His cheeks were burning. It
"was horrible to display himself to the passers-by, and though
he told himself it was foolish to give way to such a feeling he
turned his bar'- itMljhe street. There was not much chance
that any of the stadtents at the hospital would pass along Ox-
ford Street at that hour, and he knew hardly anyone else in
London; but as Philip worked, with a huge lump in his throat,
he fancied that on turning round he would catch the eye of
some man he knew. He made all the haste he could. By the
simple observation that all reds went together, and by spacing
the costumes more than was usual, Philip got a very good
effect; and when the buyer went into the street to look at the
result he was obviously pleased.

"I knew I shouldn't go far wrong in putting you on the
window. The fact is, you and me are gentlemen, mind you I
wouldn't say this in the department, but you and me are gen-
tlemen, and that always tells. It's no good your telling me it
doesn't tell, because I know it does tell."

Philip was put on the job regularly, but he could not accus-
tom himself to the publicity; and he dreaded Friday morn-
ing, on which the window wasdressed, with a terror that made
him awake at five o'clock and lie sleepless with sickness in
his heart. The girls in the department noticed his shamefaced
way, and they very soon discovered his trick of standing with
his back to the street. They laughed at him and called him
■sidey.'

"I suppose you're afraid your aunt '11 come along and cut you

out of her will."

648 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

On the whole he got on well enough with the girls. They
thought him a little queer; but his club-foot seemed to excuse
his not being like the rest, and they found in due course that
he was good-natured. He never minded helping anyone, and
he was polite and even tempered.

"You can see he's a gentleman," they said.

"Very reserved, isn't he?" said one young woman, to whose
passionate enthusiasm for the theatre he had listened unmoved.

Most of them had 'fellers,' and those who hadn't said they
had rather than have it supposed that no one had an inclina-
tion for them. One or two showed signs of being willing to
start a flirtation with Philip, and he watched their manoeuvres
with grave amusement. He had had enough of love-making
for some time; and he was nearly always tired and often
hungry.

Chapter 106

Philip avoided the places he had known in happier times.
The little gatherings at the tavern in Beak Street were broken
up: Macalister, having let down his friends, no longer went
there, and Hay ward was at the Cape. Only Lawson remained;
and Philip, feeling that now the painter and he had nothing
in common, did not wish to see him; but one Saturday after-
noon, after dinner, having changed his clothes he walked
down Regent Street to go to the free library in St. Martin's
Lane, meaning to spend the afternoon there, and suddenly
found himself face to face with him. His first instinct was
to pass on without a word, but Lawson did not give him the
opportunity.
"Where on earth have you been all this time?" he cried.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 649

"I?" said Philip.

"I wfrote you and asked you to come to the studio for a
beano, and you never even ansvvrered."

"I didn't get your letter."

"No, I know. I went to the hospital to ask for you, and I
saw my letter in the rack. Have you chucked the Medical?"

Philip hesitated for a moment. He was ashamed to tell the
truth, but die shame he felt angered him, and he forced him-
self to speak. He could not help reddening.

"Yes, I lost the little money I had. I couldn't afford to go
on with it."

"I say, I'm. awfully sorry. What are you doing?"

"I'm a shop-walker."

The words choked Philip, but he was determined not to
shirk the truth. He kept his eyes on Lawson and saw his
embarrassment. Philip smiled, savagely.

"If you went into Lynn and Sedley, and made your way
into the 'made robes' department, you would see me in a frock
coat, walking about with a degage air and directing ladies
who want to buy petticoats or stockings. First to the right,
madam, and second on the left."

Lawson, seeing that Philip was making a jest of it, laughed
awkwardly. He did not know what to say. The picture that
Philip called up horrified him, but he was afraid to show his
sympathy.

"That's a bit of a change for you," he said.

His words seemed absurd to him, and immediately he
wished he had not said them. Philip flushed darkly.

"A bit," he said. "By the way, I owe you five bob."

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out some silver.

"Oh, it doesn't matter. I'd forgotten all about it."

"Go on, take it."

Lawson received the money silently. They stood in the
middle of the pavement, and people jostled them as they
passed. There was a sardonic twinkle in Philip's eyes, which
made the painter intensely uncomfortable, and he could not

650 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

tell that Philip's heart was heavy with despair. Lawson wanted
dreadfully to do- something, but he did not know whaft/to do.

"I say, won't you come to the studio and have a talk.?"

"No," said Philip.

"Why not?"

"There's nothing to talk about."

He saw the pain come into Lawson's eyes, he could not help
it, he was sorry, but he had to think of himself; he could not
bear the thought of discussing his situation, he could endure
it only by determining resolutely not to think about it. He was
afraid of his weakness if once he began to open his heart.
Moreover, he took irresistible dislikes to the places where he
had been miserable: he remembered the humiliation he had
endured when he had waited in that studio, ravenous with
hunger, for Lawson to offer him a meal, and the last occasion
when he had taken the five shillings off him. He hated the
sight of Lawson, because he recalled those days of utter' abase-
ment.

"Then look here, come and dine with me one night. Choose
your own evening."

Philip was touched with the painter's kindness. All sorts of
people were strangely kind to- him, he thought.

"It's awfully good of you, old man, but I'd rather not." He
held out his hand. "Good-bye."

Lawson, troubled by a behaviour which seemed inexplicable,
took his hand, and PhiHp quickly limped away. His heart was
heavy; and, as was usual with him, he began to reproach him-
self for what he had done: he did not know what madness
of pride had made him refuse the offered friendship. But he
heard someone running behind him and presently Lawson's
voice caUing him; he stopped and suddenly the feeling of
hostility got the better of him: he presented to Lawson a cold,
set. face.

"What is it.?"

"I suppose you heard about Hay ward, didn't you?"

"I know he went to the Cape."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 651

"He died, you know, soon after landing."

For a moment Philip did not answer. He- could hardly
believe his ears.

"How?" he asked.

"Oh, enteric. Hard luck, wasn't it.? I thought you mightn't
know. Gave me a bit of a turn when I heard it."

Lawson nodded quickly and walked away. Philip felt a
shiver pass through his heart. He had never before lost a
friend of his own age, for the death of Cronshaw, a man so
much older than himself, had seemed to come in the normal
course of things. The news gave him a peculiar shock. It
reminded him of his own mortality, for like everyone else
Philip, knowing perfectly that all men must die, had no inti-
mate feeling that the same must apply to himself; and Hay-
ward's death, though he had long ceased to have any warm
feeling for him, affected him deeply. He remembered on a
sudden all the good talks they had had, and it pained him
to think that they would never talk with one another again;
he remembered their first meeting and the pleasant months
they had spent together in Heidelberg. Philip's heart sank as
he thought of the lost years. He walked on mechanically, not
noticing where he went, and realised suddenly, with a move-
ment of irritation, that instead of turning down the Haymarket
he had sauntered along Shaftesbury Avenue. It bored him to
retrace his steps; and besides, with that news, he did not want
to read, he wanted to sit alone and think. He made up his
mind to go to the British Museum. Solitude was now his only
luxury. Since he had been at Lynn's he had often gone there
and sat in front of the groups from the Parthenon; and, not
deliberately thinking, had allowed their divine masses to rest
his troubled soul. But this afternoon they had nothing to say
to him, and after a few minutes, impatiently, he wandered
out of the room. There were too many people, provincials with
foolish faces, foreigners poring over guide-books; their hide-
ousness besmirched the everlasting masterpieces, their restless-
ness troubled the god's immortal repose. He went into another

652 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

room and here there was hardly anyone. Philip sat down
wearily. His nerves were on edge. He could not get the people
out of his mind. Sometimes at Lynn's they affected him in the
same way, and he looked at them file past him with horror;
they were so ugly and there was such meanness in their faces,
it was terrifying; their features were distorted with paltry
desires, and you felt they were strange to any ideas of beauty.
They had furtive eyes and weak chins. There was no wicked-
ness in them, but only pettiness and vulgarity. Their humour
was a low facetiousness. Sometimes he found himself looking
at thern to see what animtil they resembled, (he tried not to,
for it quickly became an obsession,) and -he saw in them all the
sheep or the horse or the fox or the goat. Human beings filled
him with disgust.

But presently the influence of the place descended upon
him. He felt quieter. He began to look absently at the tomb-
stones with which the room was lined. They were the work
of Athenian stone masons of the fourth and fifth centuries
before Christ, and they were very simple, work of no great
talent but with the exquisite spirit of Athens upon them; time
had mellowed the marble to the colour of honey, so that un-
consciously one thought of the bees of Hymettus, and softened
their outlines. Some represented a nude figure, seated on a
bench, some the departure of the dead from those who loved
him, and some the dead clasping hands with one who re-
mained behind. On all was the tragic word farewell; that and
nothing more. Their simplicity was infinitely touching. Friend
parted from friend, the son from his mother, and the restraint
made the survivor's grief more poignant. It was so long, long
ago, and century upon century had passed over that unhappi-
ness; for two thousand years those who wept had been dust as
those they wept for. Yet the woe was alive still, and it filled
Philip's heart so that he felt compassion spring up in it, and
he said:

"Poor things, poor things."

And it came to him that the gaping sight-seers and the fat

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 653

strangers with their guide-books, and all those mean, common
people who thronged the shop, with- their trivial desires and
vulgar cares, were mortal and must die. They too loved and
must part from those they loved, the son from his mother, the
wife from her husband; and perhaps it was more tragic be-
cause their lives were ugly and sordid, and they knew nothing
that gave beauty to the- world. There was one stone which was
very beautiful, a bas reUef of two young men holding each
other's hand; and the reticence of line, the simpHcity, made
one like to think that the sculptor here had been touched with
a genuine emotion. It was an exquisite memorial to that than
which the world offers but one thing more previous, to a
friendship; and as Philip looked at it, he felt the tears come
to his eyes. He thought of Hayward and his eager admiration
for him when first they met, and how disillusion had come
and then indifference, till nothing held them together but habit
and old memories. It was one of the queer things of life that
you saw a person every day for months and were so intimate
with him that you could not imagine existence without him;
then separation came, and everything went on in the same way,
and the companion who had seemed essential proved unneces-
sary. Your life proceeded and you did not even miss him.
Philip thought of those early days in Heidelberg when Hay-
ward, capable of great things, had been full of enthusiasm
for the future, and how, little by little, achieving nothing, he
had resigned himself to failure. Now he was dead. His death
had been as futile as his life. He died ingloriously, of a stupid
disease, failing once more, even at the end, to accomplish any-
thing. It was just the same now as if he had never lived.

Philip asked himself desperately what was the use of Uving
at all. It all seemed inane. It was the same with Cronshaw:
it was quite unimportant that he had lived; he was dead and
forgotten, his book of poems sold in remainder by second-hand
booksellers; his life seemed to have served nothing except to
give a pushing journalist occasion to write an article in a
review. And Philip cried out in his soul:

654 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"What is the use of it?"

The effort was so incommensurate with the result. The
bright hopes of youth had to be paid for at such a bitter price
of disillusionment. Pain and disease and unhappiness weighed
down the scale so heavily. What did it all mean ? He thought
of his own life, the high hopes with which he had entered
upon it, the limitations which his body forced upon him, his
friendlessness, and the lack of affection which had surrounded
his youth. He did not know that he had ever done anything
but what seemed best to do, and what a cropper he had come!
"Other men, with no more advantages than he, succeeded, and
others again, with many more, failed. It seemed pure chance.
The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for
nothing was there a why and a wherefore.

Thinking of Cronshaw, Philip remembered the Persian rug
which he had given him, telling him that it offered an answer
to his question upon the meaning of life; and suddenly the
answer occurred to him: he chuckled: now that he had it, it
was like one of the puzzles which you worry over till you are
shown the solution and then cannot imagine how it could ever
have escaped you. The answer was obvious. Life had no mean-
ing. On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space,
living things had arisen under the influence of conditions
which were part of the planet's history ; and as there had been
a beginning of life upon it so, under the influence of other
conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant
than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation
but as a physical reaction to the environment. Philip remem-
bered the story of the Eastern King who, desiring to know the
history of man, was brought by a sage five hundred volumes;
busy with affairs of state, he bade him go and condense it; in
twenty years the sage returned and his history now was in no
more than fifty volumes, but the King, too old then to read so
many ponderous tomes, bade him go and shorten it once
more; twenty years passed again and the sage, old and gray,
brought a single book in which was the knowledge the King

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 655

had sought; but the King lay on his death-bed, and he had no
time to read even that; and then the sage gave him the history
o£ man in a single line; it was this: he was born, he suffered,
and he died. There was no meaning in life, and man by living
served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not
born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant
and death without consequence. Philip exulted, as he had ex-
ulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was
lifted from his shoulders : it seemed to him that the last burden
of responsibihty was taken from him; and for the first time
he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power,
and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which
had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the
world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone
did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted
to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in that
swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied
the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had
wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness. Thoughts
canie tumbling over one another in Philip's eager fancy, and
he took long breaths of joyous satisfaction. He felt inclined
tofeap and sing. He had not been so happy for months.
"Oh life," he cried in his heart, "Oh life, where is thy sting.-"'
For the same uprush of fancy which had shown him with
all the force of mathematical demonstration that life had no
meaning, brought with it another idea; and that was why
Cronshaw, he imagined, had given him the Persian rug. As
the weaver elaborated his pattern for no end but the pleasure
of his aesthetic sense, so might a man live his life, or if one was
forced to believe that his actions were outside his choosing, so
might a man look at his life, that it made a pattern. There was
as little need to do this as there was use. It was merely some-
thing he did for his own pleasure. Out of the manifold events
of his life, his deeds, his feelings, his thoughts, he might make
a design, regular, elaborate, complicated, or beautiful; and
though it might be no more than an illusion that he had the

656 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

power of selection, though it might be no more than a fantastic
legerdemain in which appearances were interwoven with
moonbeams, that did not matter: it seemed, and so to him it
was. In the vast warp of life, (a river arising from no spring
and flowing endlessly to no sea,) with the background to his
fancies that there was no meaning and that nothing was im-
portant, a man might get a personal satisfaction in selecting
the various strands that worked out the pattern. There was
one pattern, the most obvious, perfect, and beautiful, in which
a man was born, grew to manhood, married, produced chil-
dren, toiled for his bread, and died; but there were others,
intricate and wonderful, in which happiness did not enter and
in which success was not attempted; and in them might be
discovered a more troubling grace. Some lives, and Hayward's
was among them, the blind indifference of chance cut off while
the design was still imperfect; and then the solace was com-
fortable that it did not matter; other lives, such as Cronshaw's,
offered a pattern which was difficult to follow: the point of
view had to be shifted and old standards had to be altered
before one could understand that such a life was its own justi-
fication. Philip thought that in throwing over the desire for
happiness he was casting aside the last of his illusions. His life
had seemed horrible when it was measured by its happiness,
but now he seemed to gather strength as he realised that it
might be measured by something else. Happiness mattered as
little as pain. They came in, both of them, as all the other
details of his life came in, to the elaboration of the design. He
seemed for an instant to stand above the accidents of his ex-
istence, and he felt that they could not affect him again as they
had done before. Whatever happened to him now would be
one more motive to add to the complexity of the pattern, and
when the end approached he would rejoice in its completion.
It would be a work of art, and it would be none the less beau-
tiful because he alone knew of its existence, and with his death
it would at once cease to be.
Philip was happy.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 657

Chapter 107

Mr. SAMPSON, the buyer, took a fancy to Philip. Mr. Sampson
was very dashing, and the girls in his department said they
would not be surprised if he married one of the rich cus-
tomers. He lived out of town and often impressed the assist-
ants by putting on his evening clothes in the office. Sometimes
he would be seen by those on sweeping duty coming in next
morning still dressed, and they would wink gravely to one
another while he went into his office and changed into a frock
coat. On these occasions, having slipped out for a hurried
breakfast, he also would wink at Philip as he walked up the
stairs on his way back and rub his hands.
"What a night! What a night!" he said. "My word!"
He told Philip that he was the only gentleman there, and
he and Philip were the only fellows who knew what life was.
Having said this, he changed his manner suddenly, called
Philip Mr. Carey instead of old boy, assumed the importance
due to his position as buyer, and put Philip back into his
place as shop-walker.

Lynn and Sedley received fashion papers from Paris once
a week and adapted the costumes illustrated in them to the
needs of their customers. Their clientele was peculiar. The
most substantial part consisted of women from the smaller
manufacturing towns, who were too elegant to have their
frocks made locally and not sufficiently acquainted with Lon-
don to discover good dressmakers within their means. Beside .
these, incongruously, was a large number of music-hall artistes.
This was a connection that Mr. Sampson had worked up for
himself and took great pride in. They had begun by getting

658 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

their stage-costumes at Lynn's, and he had induced many of
them to get their other clothes there as well.

"As good as Paquin and half the price," he said.

He had a persuasive, hail-fellow well-met air with him
which appealed to customers of this sort, and they said to one
another :

"What's the good of throwing money away when you can
get a coat and skirt at Lynn's that nobody knows don't come
from Paris?"

Mr. Sampson was very proud of his friendship with the
popular favourites whose frocks he made, and when he went
out to dinner at two o'clock on Sunday with Miss Victoria
Virgo — "she was wearing that powder blue we made her and
I lay she didn't let on it come from us, I 'ad to tell her meself
that if I 'adn't designed it with my own 'ands I'd have said it
must come from Paquin" — at her beautiful house in Tulse
Hill, he regaled the department next day with abundant
details. Philip had never paid much attention to women's
clothes, but in course of time he began, a little amused at him-
self, to take a techrficaL interest in them. He had an eye for
colour which was more highly trained than that of anyone
in the department, and he had kept from his student days in
Paris some knowledge of line. Mr. Sampson, an ignorant man
conscious of his incompetence, but with a shrewdness that
enabled him to combine other people's suggestions, constantly
asked the opinion of the assistants in his department in mak-
ing up new designs; and he had the quickness to see that
PhiHp's criticisms were valuable. But he was very jealous, and
would never allow that he took anyone's advice. When he
had altered some drawing in accordance with Philip's sugges-
tion, he always finished up by saying:

"Well, it comes round to my own idea in the end."

One day, when Philip had been at the shop for five months,
Miss Alice Antonia, the well-known serio-comic, came in and
asked to see Mr. Sampson. She was a large woman, with flaxen
hair, and a boldly painted face, a metallic voice, and the breezy

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 659

manner of a comedienne accustomed to be on friendly terms
with the gallery boys of provincial music-halls. She had a new
song and wished Mr. Sampson to design a costume for her.

"I want something striking," she said. "I don't want any
old thing, you know. I want something different from what
anybody else has,"

Mr. Sampson, bland and familiar, said he was quite certain
they could get her the very thing she required. He showed her
sketches.

"I know there's nothing here that would do, but I just want
to show you the kind of thing I would suggest."

"Oh no, that's not the sort of thing at all," she said, as she
glanced at them impatiently. "What I want is something that'll
just hit 'em in the jaw and make their front teeth rattle."

"Yes, I quite understand. Miss Antonia," said the buyer,
with a bland smile, but his eyes grew blank and stupid.

"I expect I shall 'ave to pop over to Paris for it in the end."

"Oh, I think we can give you satisfaction. Miss Antonia.
What you can get in Paris you can get here."

When she had swept out of the department Mr. Sampson,
a little worried, discussed the matter with Mrs. Hodges.

"She's a caution and no mistake," said Mrs. Hodges.

"Alice, where art thou?" remarked the buyer, irritably, and
thought he had scored a point against her.

His ideas of music-hall costumes had never gone beyond
short skirts, a swirl of lace, and glittering sequins; but Miss
Antonia had expressed herself on that subject in no uncertain
terms.

"Oh, my aunt!" she said.
• And the invocation was uttered in such a tone as to indicate
a rooted antipathy to anything so commonplace, even if she
had not added that sequins gave her the sick. Mr. Sampson
•got out' one or two ideas, but Mrs. Hodges told him frankly
she did not think they would do. It was she who gave Philip
the suggestion:

660 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Can you draw, Phil? Why don't you try your 'and and see
what you can do?"

Philip bought a cheap box of water colours, and in the eve-
ning while Bell, the noisy lad of sixteen, whistling three notes,
busied himself with his stamps, he made one or two sketches.
He remembered some of the costumes he had seen in Paris,
an J he adapted one of them, getting his effect from a com-
bination of violent, unusual colours. The result amused him
and next morning he showed it to Mrs. Hodges. She was some-
what astonished, but took it at once to the buyer.

"It's unusual," he said, "there's no denying that."

It puzzled him, and at the same time his trained eye saw
that it would make up admirably. To save his face he began
making suggestions for altering it, but Mrs. Hodges, with
more sense^ advised him to show it to Miss Antonia as it was.

"It's neck or nothing with her, and she may take a fancy
to it."

"It's a good deal more nothing than neck," said Mr. Samp-
son, looking at the decolletage. "He can draw, can't he ? Fancy
'im keeping it dark all this time."

When Miss Antonia was announced, the buyer placed the
design on the table in such a position that it must catch her
eye the moment she was shown into his office. She pounced on
it at once.

"What's that?" she said. "Why can't I 'ave that?"

"That's just an idea we got out for you," said Mr. Sampson
casually. "D'you like it?"

"Do I like it!" she said. "Give me 'alf a pint with a Httle
drop of gin in it."

"Ah, you see, you don't have to go to Paris. You've only got
to say what you want and there you are."

The work was put in hand at once, and Philip felt quite a
tjirill of satisfaction when he saw the costume completed. The
buyer and Mrs. Hodges took all the credit of it; but he did not
care, and when he went with them to the Tivoli to see Miss
Antonia wear it for the first time he was filled with elation.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 661

In answer to her questions he at last told Mrs. Hodges how he
had learnt to draw— fearing that the people he lived with
would think he wanted to put on airs, he had always taken
the greatest care to say nothing about his past occupations —
and she repeated the information to Mr. Sampson. The buyer
said nothing to him on the subject, but began to treat him a
little more deferentially and presently gave him designs to do
for two of the country customers. They met with satisfaction.
Then he began to speak to his clients of a ''clever young feller,
Paris art-student, you know" who worked for him; and soon
Philip, ensconced behind a screen, in his shirt-sleeves, was
drawing from morning till night. Sometimes he was so busy
that he had to dine at three with the 'stragglers.' He liked it,
because there were few of them and they were all too tired
to talk; the food also was better, for it consisted of what was
left over from the buyers' table. Philip's rise from shop-walker
to designer of costumes had a great effect on the department.
He realised that he was an object of envy. Harris, the assistant
with the queer-shaped head, who was the first person he
had known at the shop and had attached himself to Philip,
could not conceal his bitterness.

"Some people 'ave all the luck," he said. "You'll be a buyer
yourself one of these days, and we shall all be calling you sir."

He told Philip that he should demand higher wages, for
notwithstanding the difficult work he was now engaged in,
he received no more than the six shillings a week with which
he started. But it was a tickhsh matter to ask for a rise. The
manager had a sardonic way of dealing with such applicants.

"Think you're worth more, do you ? How much d'you think
you're worth, eh.'"'

The assistant, with his heart in his mouth, would suggest
that he thought he ought to have another two shillings a week.

"Oh, very well, if you think you're worth it. You can 'ave it."
Then he paused and sometimes, with a steely eye, added: "And
you can 'ave your notice too."

It was no use then to withdraw your request, you had to go-

662 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

The manager's idea was that assistants who were dissatisfied
did not work properly, and if they were not worth a rise it
was better to sack them at once. The result was that they never
asked for one unless they were prepared to leave. Philip hesi-
tated. He was a little suspicious of the men in his room who
told him that the buyer could not do without him. They were
decent fellows, but their sense of humour was primitive, and
it would have seemed funny to them if they had persuaded
Philip to ask for more wages and he were sacked. He could
not forget the mortification he had suffered in looking for
work, he did not wish to expose himself to that again, and he
knew there was small chance of his getting elsewhere a post
as designer: there were hundreds of people about who could
draw as well as he. But he wanted money very badly; his
clothes were worn out, and the heavy carpets rotted his socks
and boots; he had almost persuaded himself to take the ven-
turesome step when one morning, passing up from breakfast
in the basement through the passage that led to the manager's
office, he saw a queue of men waiting in answer to an adver-
tisement. There were about a hundred of them, and which-
ever was engaged would be offered his keep and the same six
shillings a week that Philip had. He saw some of them cast
envious glances at him because he had employment. It made
him shuddet. He dared not risk it.

Chapter 108

The winter passed. Now and then Philip went to the hospital,
slinking in when it was late and there was little chance of
meeting anyone he knew, to see whether there were letters for
him. At Easter he received one from his uncle. He was sur-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 663

prised to hear from him, for the Vicar of Blackstable had
never written him more than half a dozen letters in his whole
Me, and they were on business matters.

Dear Philip,

If you are thinking of ta\ing a holiday soon and care to come
down here I shall be pleased to see you. I was very ill with my
bronchitis in the winter and Doctor Wigram never expected
me to pull through. I have a wonderful constitution and I
made, than\ God, a marvellous recovery.

Yours a'Qectionately,

William Carey.

The letter made Philip angry. How did his uncle think he
was living? He did not even trouble to inquire. He might
have starved for all the old man cared. But as he walked home
something struck him; he stopped under a lamp-post and
read the letter again; the handwriting had no longer tht
business-like firmness which had characterised it; it was larger
and wavering: perhaps the illness had shaken him more than
he was willing to confess, and he sought in that formal note
to express a yearning to see the only relation he had in the
world. Philip wrote back that he could come down to Black-
stable for a fortnight in July. The invitation was convenient,
for he had not known what to do with his brief holiday. The
Athelnys went hopping in September, but he could not then
"be spared, since during that month the autumn models were
prepared. The rule of Lynn's was that everyone must take a
fortnight whether he wanted it or not; and during that time^
if he had nowhere to go, the assistant might sleep in his room,
but he was not allowed food. A number had no friends within
reasonable distance of London, and to these the holiday was an
awkward interval when they had to provide food out of theif
small wages and, with the whole day on their hands, had noth-
ing to spend. Philip had not been out of London since his visit
to Brighton with Mildred, now two years before, and he

664 OF HUMANBONDAGE

longed for fresh air and the silence of the sea. He thought of
it with such a passionate desire, all through May and June,
that, when at length the time came for him to go, he was
listless.

On his last evening, when he talked with the buyer of one
or two jobs he had to leave over, Mr. Sampson suddenly said
to him:

"What wages have you been getting.?"

"Six shillings."

"I don't think it's enough. I'll see that you're put up to
twelve when you come back."

"Thank you very much," smiled Philip. "I'm beginning to
want some new clothes badly."

"If you stick to your work and don't go larking about with
the girls like what some of them do, I'll look after you, Carey.
Mind you, you've got a lot to learn, but you're promising. I'll
say that for you, you're promising, and I'll see that you get a
pound a week as soon as you deserve it."

Philip wondered how long he would have to wait for that.
Two years ?

He was startled at the change in his uncle. When last he had
seen him he was a stout man, who held himself upright, clean-
shaven, with a round, sensual face; but he had fallen in
strangely, his skin was yellow; there vv^ere great bags under
the eyes, and he was bent and old. He had grown a beard
during his last illness, and he vsfalked very slowly.

"I'm not at my best today," he said when PhiUp, having just
arrived, was sitting with him in the dining-room. "The heat
upsets me."

Philip, asking after the affairs of the parish, looked at him
and wondered how much longer he could last. A hot summer
would finish him; Philip noticed how thin his hands were;
they trembled. It meant so much to Philip. If he died that
summer he could go back to the hospital at the beginning of
the winter session; his heart leaped at the thought of returning

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 665

no more to Lynn's. At dinner the Vicar sat humped up on his
cnair, and the housekeeper who had been with him since his
wite s death said :

"Shall Mr. Philip carve, sir .? "

The old man, who had been about to do so from disinclina-
tion to confess his weakness, seemed glad at the first sugges-
tion to relinquish the attempt.

"I^ou've got a very good appetite," said Philip.
Oh yes, I always eat well. But I'm thinner than when you
■ were here last. I'm glad to be thinner. I didn't like being so
fat. Dr. Wigram thinks I'm all the better for being thinner
than I was."

When dinner was over the housekeeper brought him some
medicine.

"Show the prescription to Master Philip," he said. "He's a
doctor too. I'd like him to see that he thinks it's all right. I
told Dr. Wigram that now you're studying to be a doctor he
ought to make a reduction in his charges. It's dreadful the
bills I've had to pay. He came every day for two months, and
he charges five shillings a visit. It's a lot of money, isn't it? He
comes twice a week still. I'm going to tell him he needn't
come any more. I'll send for him if I want him."

He looked at Philip eagerly while he read the prescriptions.
They were narcotics. There were two of them, and one was a
medicine which the Vicar explained he was to use only if his
neuritis grew unendurable.

"I'm very careful," he said. "I don't want to get into the
opium habit."

He did not mention his nephew's affairs. Philip fancied that
it was by way of precaution, in case he asked for money, that
his uncle kept dwelling on the financial calls upon him. He
had spent so much on the doctor and so much more on the
chemist, while he was ill they had had to have a fire every
day in his bed-room, and now on Sunday he needed a carriage
to go to church in the evening as well as in the morning. Philip

666 OF HUMAK BONDAGE

/elt angrily inclined to say he need not be afraid, he was not
going to borrow from him, but he held his tongue. It seemed
to him that everything had left the old man now but two
things, pleasure in his food and a grasping desire for money.
It was a hideous old age.

In the afternoon Dr. Wigram came, and after the visit Philip
' walked with him to the garden gate.

"How d'you think he is.?" said Philip.

Dr. Wigram was more anxious not to do wrong than to do
right, and he never hazarded a definite opinion if he could
help it. He had practised at Blackstable for five-and-thirty
years. He had the reputation of being very safe, and many of
his patients thought it much better that a doctor should be
safe than clever. There was a new man at Blackstable — ^he had
been settled there for ten years, but they still looked upon him
as an interloper— and he was said to be very clever; but he had
not much practice among the better people, because no one
really knew anything about him.

"Oh, he's as well as can be expected," saic Dr. Wigram in
answer to Philip's inquiry.

"Has he got anything seriously the matter with him.?"

"Well, Philip, your uncle is no longer a young man," said the
doctor with a cautious little smile, which suggested that after
all the Vicar of Blackstable was not an old man either.

"He seems to think his heart's in a bad way."

"I'm not satisfied with his heart," hazarded the doctor, "I
think he should be careful, very careful."

On the tip of Philip's tongue was the question: how much
longer can he live.? He was afraid it would shock. In these
matters a periphrase was demanded by the decorum of life,
but, as he asked another question instead, it flashed through
him that the doctor must be accustomed to the impatience
of a sick man's relatives. He must see through their sympa-
thetic expressions. Philip, with a faint smile at his own hypoc-
risy, cast down his eyes.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 667

'I suppose he's in no immediate danger?"

This was the kind of question the doctor hated. If you said
a patient couldn't live another month the family prepared itself
for a bereavement, and if then the patient lived on they
visited the medical attendant with the resentment they felt
at having tormented themselves before it was necessary. On
the other hand, if you said the patient might live a year and.
he died in a week the family said you did not know your
business. They thought of all the affection they would have
lavished on the defunct if they had known the end was so
near. Dr. Wigram made the gesture of washing his hands.

"I don't think there's any grave risk so long as he — remains
as he is," he ventured at last. "But oil the other hand, we
mustn't forget that he's no longer a young man, and well, the
machine is wearing out. If he gets over the hot weather I don't
see why he shouldn't get on very comfortably till the winter,
and then if the winter does not bother him too much, well,
I don't see why anything should happen."

Philip went back to the dining-room where his uncle was
sitting. With his skull-cap and a crochet shawl over his shoul-
ders he looked grotesque. His eyes had been fixed on the door,
and they rested on Philip's face as he entered. Philip saw that
his uncle had been waiting anxiously for his return.

"Well, what did he say about me?" ■

Philip understood suddenly that the old man was fright-
ened of dying. It made Philip a little ashamed, so that he
looked away involuntarily. He was always embarrassed by the
weakness of human nature.

"He says he thinks you're much better," said Philip.

A gleam of dchght came into his uncle's eyes.

"I've got a wonderful constitution," he said. "What else did
he say?" he added suspiciously.

Philip smiled.

"He said that if you take care of yourself there's no reason
why you shouldn't live to be a hundred."

668 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"I don't know that I can ?xpect to do that, but I don't see
why I shouldn't see eighty. My mother Hved till she was
eighty-four."

There was a little table by the side of Mr. Carey's chair,
and on it were a Bible and the large volume of the Common
Prayer from which for so many years he had been accustomed
to read to his household. He stretched out now his shaking
hand and took his Bible.

"Those old patriarchs Hved to a jolly good old age, didn't
they.?" he said, with a queer Uttle laugh in which Philip read
a sort of timid appeal.

The old man clung to life. Yet he believed implicitly all
that his religion taught him. He had no doubt in the im-
mortality of the soul, and he felt that he had conducted him-
self well enough, according to his capacities, to -make it very
likely that he would go to heaven. In his long career to how
many dying persons must he have administered the consola-
tions of religion! Perhaps he was like the doctor who could
get no benefit from his own prescriptions. Philip was puzzled
and shocked by that eager cleaving to the earth. He wondered
what nameless horror was at the back of the old man's mind.
He would have liked to probe into his soul so that he might
see in its nakedness the dreadful dismay of the unknown
■which he suspected.

The fortnight passed quickly and Philip returned to Lon-
don. He passed a sweltering August behind his screen in the
costumes department, drawing in his shirt-sleeves. The assist-
ants in relays went for their hoUdays. In the evening Philip gen-
erally went into Hyde Park and listened to the band. Growing
more accustomed to his work it tired him less, and his mind,,
recovering from its long stagnation, sought for fresh activity.
His whole desire now was set on his uncle's death. He kept
on dreaming the same dream : a telegram was handed to him
one morning, early, which announced the Vicar's sudden
demise, and freedom was in his grasp. When he awoke and
found it was nothing but a dream he was filled with sombre

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 669

rage. He occupied himself, now that the event seemed Ukely
to happen at any time, with elaborate plans for the future. In
these he passed rapidly over the year which he must spend
before it was possible for him to be qualified and dwelt on the
journey to Spain on which his heart was set. He read books
about that country, which he borrowed from the free library,
and already he knew from photographs exactly what each city
looked like. He saw himself lingering in Cordova on the
bridge that spanned the Guadalquivir; he wandered through
tortuous streets in Toledo and sat in churches where he
wrung from El Greco the secret which he felt the mysterious
painter held for him. Athelny entered into his humour, and
on Sunday afternoons they made out elaborate itineraries so
that Philip should miss nothing that was noteworthy. To cheat
his impatience Philip began to teach himself Spanish, and in
the deserted sitting-room in Harrington Street he spent an
hour every evening doing Spanish exercises and puzzling out
with an -English translation by his side the magnificent phrases
of Don Quixote. Athelny gave him a lesson once a week, and
PhiUp learned a few sentences to help him on his journey.
Mrs. Athelny laughed at them.

"You two and your Spanish!" she said. "Why don't you do
something useful?"

But Sally, who was growing up and was to put up her hair
at Christmas, stood by sometimes and listened in her grave
way while her father and Philip exchanged remarks in a lan-
guage she did not understand. She thought her father the
most wonderful man who had ever existed, and she expressed
her opinion of Philip only through her father's commenda-
tions.

"Father thinks a rare lot of your Uncle PhiHp," she remarked

to her brothers and sisters.

Thorpe, the eldest boy, w^s old enough to go on the Are-
thusa, and Athelny regaled his family with magnificent
descriptions of the appearance the lad would make when he
came back in uniform for his hohdays. As soon as Sally was

670 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

seventeen she was to be apprenticed to a dressmaker. Athelny
in his rhetorical way talked of the birds, strong enough to fly
now, who were leaving the parental nest, and with tears in
his eyes told them that the nest would be there still if ever
they wished to return to it. A shakedown and a dinner would
always be theirs, and the heart of a father would never be
closed to the troubles of his children.

"You do talk, Athelny," said his wife. "I don't know what
trouble they're likely to get into so long as they're steady. So
long as you're honest. and not afraid of work you'll never be
out of a job, that's what I think, and I can tell you I shan't be
sorry when I see the last of them earning their own living."

Child-bearing, hard work, and constant anxiety were be-
ginning to tell on Mrs. Athelny; and sometimes her back
ached in the evening so that she had to sit down and rest her-
self. Her ideal of happiness was to have a girl to do the rough
work so that she need not herself get up before seven. Athelny
waved his beautiful white hand.

"Ah, my Betty, we've deserved well of the state, you and I.
We've feared nine healthy children, and the boys shall serve
their king; the girls shall cook and sew and in their turn
breed healthy children." He turned to Sally, and to comfort
her for the anti-climax of the contrast added grandiloquently:
"They also serve who only stand and wait."

Athelny had lately added socialism to the other contradictory
theories he vehemently believed in, and he stated now:

"In a socialist state we should be richly pensioned, you and
I, Betty."

"Oh, don't talk to me about your socialists, I've got no
patience with them," she cried. "It only means that another lot
of lazy loafers will make a good thing out of the working
classes. My motto is, leave me alone; I don't want anyone in-
terfering with me; I'll make the best of a bad job, and the
devil take the hindmost."

"D'you call life a bad job.?" said Athelny. "Never! We've

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 671

-had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always
been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times
I say when I look round at my children."

'You do talk, Athelny," she said, looking at him, not with
anger but with scornful calm. "You've had the pleasant part of
the children, I've had the bearing of them, and the bearing
with them. I don't say that I'm not fond of them, now they're
here, but if I had my time over again I'd remain single. Why,
if I'd remained single I might have a little shop by now, and
four or five hundred pounds in the bank, and a girl to do the
rough work. Oh, I wouldn't go over my life again, not for
something."

Philip thought of the countless millions to whom life is no
more than unending labour, neither beautiful nor ugly, but
just to be accepted in the same spirit as one accepts the
changes of the seasons. Fury seized him because it all seemed
useless. He could not reconcile himself to the belief that life
had no meaning and yet everything he saw, all his thoughts,
added to the force of his conviction. But though fury seized
him it was a joyful fury. Life was not so horrible if it was
meaningless, and he faced it with a strange sense of power.

Chapter 109

The autumn passed into winter. Philip had left his address
with Mrs. Foster, his uncle's housekeeper, so that she might
communicate with him,' but still went once a week to the
hospital on the chance of there being a letter. One evening he
saw his name on an envelope in a handwriting he had hoped
never to see again. It gave him a queer feeling. For a little
while he could not bring himself to take it. It brought back

€72 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

a host of hateful memories. But at length, impatient with him-
self, he ripped open the envelope.

7 William Street,

Fitzroy Square.
Dear Phil,

Can I see you for a minute or two- as soon as possible. I am
in awful trouble and don't \now what to do. It's not money.

Yours truly,

Mildred.

He tore the letter into little bits and going out into the street
scattered them in the darkness.

"I'll see her damned," he muttered.

A feeling of disgust surged up in him at the thought of
seeing her again. He did -not care if she was in distress, it
served her right whatever it was, he thought of her with
hatred, and the love he had had for her aroused his loathing.
His recollections filled him with nausea, and as he walked
across the Thames he drew himself aside in an instinctive
withdrawal from his thought. of her. He went to bed, but he
could not sleep; he wondered what was the matter with her,
and he could not get out of his head the fear that she was ill
and hungry; she would not have written to him unless she
were desperate. He was angry with himself for his weakness,
but he knew that he would have no peace unless he saw her.
Next morning he wrote a letter-card and posted it on his way
to the shop. He made it as stiff as he could and said merely
that he was sorry she was in difficulties and would come to
the address she had given at seven o'clock that evening.

It was that of a shabby lodging-house in a sordid street;
and when, sick at the thought of seeing her, he asked whether
she was in, a wild hope seized him that she had left. It looked
the sort of place people moved in and out of frequently. He
had not thought of looking at the post-mark on her letter and
did not know how many days it had lain in the rack. The

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 673

woman who answered the bell did not reply to his inquiry, but
silently preceded him along the passage and knocked on a
door at the back.

"Mrs. Miller, a gentleman to see you," she called.

The door was slightly opened, and Mildred looked out
suspiciously.

"Oh, it's you," she said. "Come in."

He walked in and she closed the door. It was a very small
bed-room, untidy as was every place she lived in; there was
a pair of shoes on the floor, lying apart from one another and
uncleaned; a hat was on the chest of drawers, with false curls
beside it; and there was a blouse on the table. Philip looked
for somewhere to put his hat. The hooks behind the door were
laden with skirts, and he noticed that they were muddy at the
hem.

"Sit down, won't you.?" she said. Then she gave a Httle awk-
ward laugh. "I suppose you were surprised to hear from me
again."

"You're awfully hoarse," he answered. "Have you got a sore
throat.?"

"Yes, I have had for some time.".

He did not say anything. He waited for her to explain why
she wanted to see him. The look of the room told him clearly
enough that she had gone back to the life from which he had
taken her. He wondered what had happened to the baby;
there was a photograph of it on the chimney-piece, but no
sign in the room that a child was ever there. Mildred was hold-
ing her handkerchief. She made it into a Httle ball, and passed
it from hand to hand. He saw that she was very nervous. She
was staring at the fire, and he could look at her without^meet-
ing her eyes. She was much thinner than when she had left
him; and the skin, yellow and dryish, was drawn more tightly
over her cheek-bones. She had dyed her hair and it was now
flaxen: it altered her a good deal, and made her look more
vulgar.

"I was relieved to get your letter, I can tell you," she said

674 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

at last. "I thought p'raps you weren't at the 'ospital any more."

PhiHp did not speak.

"I suppose you're quaUfied by now, aren't you.''"

"No."

"How's that.?"

"I'm no longer at the hospital. I had to give it up eighteen
months ago."

"You are changeable. You don't seem as if you could stick
to anything."

Philip was silent for another moment, and when he went
on it was with coldness.

"I lost the little money I had in an unlucky speculation and
I couldn't afford to go on with the medical. I had to earn my
living as best I could."

"What are you doing then.?"

"I'm in a shop."

"Oh!"

She gave him a quick glance and turned her eyes away at
once. He thought that she reddened. She dabbed her palms
nervously with the handkerchief.

"You've not forgotten all your doctoring, have you?" She
jerked the words out quite oddly.

"Not entirely."

"Because that's why I wanted to see you." Her voice sank
to a hoarse whisper. "I don't know what's the matter with
me."

"Why don't you go to a hospital.?"

"I don't like to do that, and have all the stoodents staring
at me, and I'm afraid they'd want to keep me."

"What are you complaining of?" asked Philip coldly,
with the stereotyped phrase used in the out-patients' room.

"Well, I've come out in a rash, and I -can't get rid of it."

Philip felt a twinge of horror in his heart. Sweat broke out
on his forehead.

"Let me look at your throat."

He took her over to the window and made such exami-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 67S

nation as he could. Suddenly he caught sight of her eyes.
There was deadly fear in them. It was horrible to see. She was
terrified. She wanted him to reassure her; she looked at him
n k^'"^'^' "°^ ^^ring to ask for words of comfort but with
all her nerves astrung to receive them: he had none to oflea'
her.

"I'm afraid you're very ill indeed," he said.

"What d'you think it is?"

When he told her she grew deathly pale, and her lips even
turned yellow; she began to cry, hopelessly, quietly at first and
then with choking sobs.

"I'm awfully sorry," he said at last. "But I had to tell you."

"I may just as well kill myself and have done with it."

He took no notice of the threat.

"Have you got any money.?" he asked.

"Six or seven pounds."

"You must give up this life, you know. Don't you think you
could find some work to do ? I'm afraid I can't help you much,
I only get twelve bob a week."

"What is there I can do now.?" she cried impatiently.

"Damn it all, you must try to get something."

He spoke to her very gravely, telling her of her own danger
and the danger to which she exposed others, and she listened
sullenly. He tried to console her. At last he brought her to a
sulky acquiescence in which she promised to do all he advised.
He wrote a prescription, which he said he would leave at the
nearest chemist's, and he impressed upon her the necessity of
taking her medicine with the utmost regularity. Getting up
to go, he held out his hand.

"Don't be downhearted, you'll soon get over your throat."

But as he went her face became suddenly distorted, and she
caught hold of his coat.

"Oh, don't leave me," she cried hoarsely. "I'm so afraid,
don't leave me alone yet. Phil, please. There's no one else I
can go to, you're the only friend I've ever had."
He felt the terror of her soul, and it was strangely like that

€76 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

terror he had seen in his uncle's eyes when he feared that he
might die. Philip looked down. Twice that woman had come
into his life and made him wretched; she had no claim upon
him; and yet, he knew not why, deep in his heart was a
strange aching; it was, that which, when he received her letter,
had left him no peace till he obeyed her summons.

"I suppose I shall never really quite get over it," he said to
himself.

What perplexed him was that he felt a curious physical dis-
taste, which made it uncomfortable for him to be near her.

"What do you want me to do.?" he asked.

"Let's go out and dine together. I'll pay."

He hesitated. He felt that she was creeping back again into
his life when he thought she was gone out of it for ever. She
watched him with sickening anxiety.

"Oh, I know I've treated you shocking, but don't leave me
alone now. You've had your revenge. If you leave me by my-
self now I don't know what I shall do."

"All right, I don't mind," he said, "but we shall have to do
it on the cheap, I haven't got money to throw away these
days."

She sat down and put her shoes on, then changed her skirt
and put on a hat; and they walked out together till they found
a restaurant in the Tottenham Court Road. Philip had got out
of the habit of eating at those hours, and Mildred's throat was
so, sore that she could not swallow. They had a little cold ham
and Philip drank a glass of beer. They sat opposite one an-
other, as they had so often sat before; he wondered if she
remembered; they had, nothing to say to one another and
would have sat in silence if Philip had not forced hinjself to
talk. In the bright hght of the restaurant, with its vulgar look-
ing-glasses that reflected in an endless series, she looked old
and haggard. Philip was anxious to know about the child, but
Jhe had not the coura^ to ask. At last she said:

"You know baby died last summer."

"Oh!" he said.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 677

"You might say you're sorry."
"I'm not," he answered, "I'm very glad."
She glanced at him and, understanding what he meant,
looked away.

"You were rare stuck on it at one time, weren't you? I al-
ways thought it funny like how you could see so much in
another man's child."

When they had finished eating they called at the chemist's
for the medicine Philip had ordered, and going back to the;
shabby room he made her take a dose. Then they- sat together
till it was time for Philip to go back to Harrington Street. He
was hideously bored.

Philip went to see her every day. She took the medicine he
had prescribed and followed his directions, and soon the re-
sults were so apparent that she gained the greatest confidence
in Philip's skill. As she grew better she grew less despondent.
She talked more freely.

"As soon as I can get a job I shall be all right," she said. "I've
had my lesson now and I mean to profit by it. No more racket-
ing about for yours truly."

Each time he saw her, Philip asked whether she had foundf
work. She told him not to worry, she would find something
to do as soon as she wanted it; she had several strings to her
-bow; it was all the better not to do anything for a week or
two. He could not deny this, but at the end of that time he
became more insistent. She laughed at him, she was much
more cheerful now, and said he was a fussy old thing. She told
him long stories of the manageresses she interviewed, for het
idea was to get work at some eating-house; what they said
and what she answered. Nothing definite was fixed, but she
was sure to settle something at the beginning of the following;
week: there was no use hurrying, and it would be a mistake,
to take something unsuitable.

"It's absurd to talk like that," he said impatiently. "You
must take anything you can get. I can't heJp you, and your
money won't last for ever."

^78 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Oh, well, I've not come to the end of it yet and chance it."

He looked at her sharply. It was three weeks since his first
visit, and she had then less than seven pounds. Suspicion
seized him. He remembered some of the things she had said.
He put two and two together. He wondered whether she had
made any attempt to find. work. Perhaps she had been lying
to him all the time. It was very strange that her money should
have lasted so long.

"What is your rent here?"

"Oh, the landlady's very nice, different from what some of
them arq; she's quite willing to- wait till it's convenient for me
to pay."

He was silent. What he suspected was so horrible that he
hesitated. It was no use to ask her, she would deny everything;
if he wanted to know he must find out for himself. He was in
the habit of leaving her every evening at eight, and when the
clock struck he got up; but instead of going ba:ck to Har-
rington Street he stationed himself at the corner of Fitzroy
Square so that he could see anyone who came along William
Street. It seemed to him that he waited an interminable time,
and he was on the point of going away, thinking his surmise
had been mistaken, when the door of No. 7 opened and Mil-
dred came out. He fell back into the darkness and watched
her walk towards him. She had on the hat with a quantity of
feathers on it which he had seen in her room, and she wore a
dress he recognised, too shovs^ for the street and unsuitable
to the time of year. He followed her slowly till she came into
the Tottenham Court Road, where she slackened her pace; at
the corner of Oxford Street she stopped, looked round, and
crossed over to a music-liall. He went up to her and touched
her on the arm. He saw that she had rouged her cheeks and
painted her lips.

"Where are you going, Mildred.-^"

She started at the sound of his voice and reddened as she
always did when she was caught in a Ue; then the flash of
anger which he knew so well came into her eyes as she in-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE. 679

stinctively sought to defend herself by abuse. But she did not
say the words which were on the tip cf her tongue.

"Oh, I was only going to see the show. It gives me the hump
sitting every night by myself."

He did not pretend to believe her.

"You mustn't. Good heavens, I've told you fifty times how
dangerous it is. You must stop this sort of thing at once."

"Oh, hold your jaw," she cried roughly. "How d'you sup-
pose I'm going to live.?"

He took hold of her arm and without thinking what he was
doing tried to drag her away.

"For God's sake come along. Let me take you home. You
don't know what you're doing. It's criminal."

"What do I care.? Let them take their chance. Men haven't
been so good to me that I need bother my head about them."

She pushed him away and walking up to the box-office put
down her money. Philip had threepence in his pocket. He
could not follow- He turned away and walked slowly down
Oxford Street.

"I can't do anything more," he said to himself.

That was the end. He did not see her again.

Chapter 110

Christmas that year falling on Thursday, the shop was to close
for four days: Phihp wrote to his uncle asking whether it
would be convenient for him to spend the holidays at the
vicarage. He received an answer from Mrs. Foster, saying that
Mr. Carey was not well enough to write himself, but wished
to see his nephew and would be glad if he came down. She
met Philip at the door, and when she shook hands with him,
said:

680 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"You'll find him changed since you was here last, sir; but
you'll pretend you don't notice anything, won't you, sir? He's
that nervous about himself."

Philip nodded, and she led him into the dining-room.

"Here's Mr. Philip, sir."

The Vicar of Blackstable was a dying man. There was no
mistaking that when you looked at the hollow cheeks and the
shrunken body. He sat huddled in the arm-chair, with his
head strangely thrown back, and a shawl over his shoulders.
He could not walk now without the help of sticks, and his
hands trembled so that he could only feed himself with diffi-
culty.

"He can't last long now," thought Philip, as he looked at
him.

"How d'you think I'm looking?" asked the Vicar. "D'you
think I've changed since you were here last?"

"I think you look stronger than you did last summer."

"It was the heat. That always upsets me."

Mr. Carey's history of the last few months consisted in
the number of weeks he had spent in his bed-room and the
number of weeks he had spent downstairs. He had a hand-bell
by his side and while he talked he rang it for Mrs. Foster, who
sat in the next room ready to attend to his wants, to ask on
what day of the month he had first left his room.

"On the seventh of November, sir."

Mr. Carey looked at Philip to see how he took the infor-
mation.

"But I eat well still, don't I, Mrs. Foster?"

'Tes, sir, you've got a wonderful appetite."

"I don't seem to put on flesh though."

Nothing interested him now but his health. He was set upon
one thing indomitably and that was living, just living, not-
withstanding the monotony of his life and the constant pain
which alkjwed him to sleep only when he was under the in-
fluence of morphia.

"It's terrible, the amount of money I have to spend on

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 681

doctor's bills." He tinkled his bell again. "Mrs. Foster, show
Master Philip the chemist's bill."

Patiently she took it off the chimney-piece and handed it to
Philip.

"That's only one month. I was wondering if as you're
doctoring yourself you couldn't get me the drugs cheaper. I
thought of getting them down from the stores, but then there's
the postage."

Though apparently taking so httle interest in him that he
did not trouble to inquire what Philip was doing, he seemed
glad to have him there. He asked how long he could stay, and
when Philip told him he must leave on Tuesday morning,
expressed a wish that the visit might have been longer. He
told him minutely all his symptoms and repeated what the
doctor had said of him. He broke off to ring his bell, and
when Mrs. Foster came in, said:

"Oh, I wasn't sure if you were there. I only rang to see if
you were."

When she had gone he explained to Philip that it made him
uneasy if he was not certain that Mrs. Foster was within car-
shot; she ^ knew exactly what to do with him if anything
happened. Philip, seeing that she was tired and that her eyes
were heavy from want of sleep, suggested that he was working
her too hard.

"Oh, nonsense," said the Vicar, "she's as strong as a horse."
And when next she came in to give him his medicine he said
to her:

"Master Philip says you've got too much to do, Mrs. Foster.
You Hke looking after me, don't you.?"

"Oh, I don't mind, sir. I want to do everything I can."

Presently the medicine took effect and Mr. Carey fell asleep.
Philip went into the kitchen and asked Mrs. Foster whether
she could stand the work. He saw that for some months she
had had little peace.

"Well, sir, what can I do.?" she answered. "The poor old
gentleman's so dependent on me, and, although he is trouble-

682 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

some sometimes, you can't help liking him, can you? I've been
here so many years now, I don't know what I shall do when
he comes to go."

Philip saw that she was really fond of the old man. She
washed and dressed him, gave him his food, and was up half
a dozen times in the night; for she slept in the next room to
his and whenever he awoke he tinkled his little bell till she
came in. He might die at any moment, but he might live for
months. It was wonderful that she should look after a stranger
with such patient tenderness, and it was tragic and pitiful that
she should be alone in the world to care for him.

It seemed to Philip that the religion which his uncle had
preached all his life was now of no more than formal im-
portance to him: every Sunday the curate came and adminis-
tered to him Holy Communion, and he often read his Bible;
but it was clear that he looked upon death with horror. He
believed that it was the gateway to life everlasting, but he did
not want to enter- upon that life. In constant pain, chained
to his chair and having given up the hope of ever getting out
into the open again, like a child in the hands of a woman to
whom he paid wages, he clung to the world he knew.

In Philip's head was a question he could not ask, because he
was aware that his uncle would never give any but a con-
ventional answer: he wondered whether at the very end, now
that the machine wis painfully wearing itself out, the clergy-
man still believed in immortality; perhaps at the bottom of
his soul, not allowed to shape itself into words in case it be-
came urgent, was the conviction that there was no God and
after this life nothing.

On the evening of Boxing Day PhiUp sat in the dining-room
with his uncle. He had to start very early next morning in
order to get to the shop by niiie, and he was to say good-night
to Mr. Carey then. The Vicar of Blackstable was dozing and
Philip, lying on the sofa by the window, let his book fall on
his knees and looked idly round the room. He asked himself
how much the furniture would fetch. He had walked round

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 683

the house and looked at the things he had known from his
childhood; there were a few pieces of china which might go
for a decent price and Philip wondered if it would be worth
while to take them up to London; but the furniture was of
the Victorian order, of mahogany, solid and ugly; it would go
for nothing at an auction. There were three or four thousand
books, but everyone knew how badly they ■sold, and it was not.
probable that they would fetch more than a hundred pounds^
Philip did not know how much his uncle would leave, and he
reckoned out for the hundredth time what was the least sum
upon which he could finish the curriculum at the hospital,,
take his degree, and live during the time he wished to spend
on hospital appointments. He looked at the old man, sleeping;
restlessly: there was no humanity left in that shrivelled face;
it was the face of some queer animal. Philip thought how easy
it would be to finish that useless life. He had thought it each
evening when Mrs. Foster prepared for his uncle the medicine
which was to give him an easy night. There were two bottles :
one contained a drug which he took regularly, and the other
an opiate if the pain grew unendurable. This was poured out
for him and left by his bed-side. He generally took it at three
or four in the morning. It would be a simple thing to double
the dose; he would die in the night, and no one would suspe<^
anything; for that was how Doctor Wigram expected him to
die. The end would be painless. Philip clenched his hands as
he thought of the money he wanted so badly. A few more
months of that wretched life could matter nothing to the old
man, but the few more months meant everything to him: he
was getting to the end of his endurance, and when he thought
of going back to work in the morning he shuddered with
horror. His heart beat quickly at the thought which obsessed
him and though he made an effort to put it out of his mind
he could not. It would be so easy, so desperately easy. He had
no feeling for the old man, he had nev^r liked him; he had
been selfish all his life, selfish to his wife who adored him,
indiflerent to the boy who had been put in his charge; he was

684 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

not a cruel man, but a stupid, hard man, eaten up with a small •
sensuality: It would be easy, desperately easy. Philip did not
dare. He was afraid of remorse; it would be no good having
the money if he regretted all his life what he had done.
Though he had told himself so often that regret was futile,
there were certain things that came back to him occasionally
and worried him. He wished they were not on his conscience.

His uncle opened his eyes; Philip was glad, for he looked
A little more human then. He was frankly horrified at the idea
that had come to him, it was murder that he was meditating;
and he wondered if other people had such thoughts or
whether he was abnormal and depraved. He supposed he
■could not have done it when it came to the point, but there
the thought was, constantly recurring: if he held his hand it
was from fear. His uncle spoke.

"You'rf ilot looking forward to my death, Philip.?"

Philip felt his heart beat against his chest.

"Good heavens, no."

"That's a good boy. I shouldn't like you to do that. You'll
get a little bit of money when I pass away, but you mustn't
look forward to it. It wouldn't profit you if you did."

He spoke in a low voice, and there was a curious anxiety in
his tone. It sent a pang in PhiHp's heart. He wondered what
strange insight might have led the old man to surmise what
strange desires were in Philip's mind.

"I hope you'll live for another twenty years," he, said.

"Oh, well, I can't expect to do that, but if I take care of my-
self I don't see why I shouldn't last another three or four."

He was silent for a while, and Philip found nothing to say.
Then, as if he had been thinking it all over, the old man spoke
again.

"Everyone has the right to live as long as he can."

Philip wanted to distract his mind.

"By the way, I suppose you never hear from Miss Wilkinson
now.f"'

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 685

Yes, I had a letter some time this year. She's married, you
know."
"Really?"

Yes, she married a widower. I believe they're quite comfort'
able." ^ ^

Chapter HI

Next day Philip began work again, but the end which hr
expected within a few weeks did not come. The weeks passed
into months. The winter wore away, and in the parks the treej
burst into bud and into leaf. A terrible lassitude settled upon
Philip. Time was passing, though it went with such heavy feet,
and he thought that his youth was going and soon he would
have lost it and nothing would have been accompHshed. His
work seemed more aimless now that there was the certainty
of his leaving it. He became skilful in the designing of
costumes, and though he had no inventive faculty acquired
■quickness in the adaptation of French fashions to the English
market. Sometimes he was not displeased with his drawings,
but they always bungled them in the execution. He was
amused to notice that he suffered from a lively irritation when
his- ideas were not adequately carried out. He had to walk
warily. Whenever he suggested something original Mr. Samp-
son turned it down: their customers did not want anything
■outre, it was a very respectable class of business, and when
you had. a connection of that sort it wasn't worth while taking
liberties with it. Once* or twice- he spoke sharply to Philip; he
thought the young mdn was getting a bit above himself, be-
cause-Philip's ideas did not always coincide with his own.

"You jolly well take care, my fine young fellow, or one of
these days you'll find yourself in the street."

686 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Philip longed to give him a punch, on the nose, but he re-
strained himself. After all it could not possibly last much"
longer, and then he would be done with all these people for
ever. Sometimes in comic desperation he cried out that his
uncle must be made of iron. What a- constitution! The ills he
suffered from would have killed any decent person twelve
months before. When at. last the news came that the Vicar
was dying Philip, who had been thinking of other things, was
tfiken by surprise. It was in July, and in another fortnight he
was to have gone for his holiday. He received a letter from
Mrs. Foster to say the doctor did not give Mr. Carey many
days to live, and if Philip wished to see him again he must
come at once. Philip went to the buyer and told him he
wanted to leave. Mr. Sampson was a decent fellow, and when
he knew the circumstances made no difficulties. Philip said
good-bye to the people in his department; the reason of his
leaving had spread among them in an exaggerated form, and
they thought he had come into a fortune. Mrs. Hodges had
tears in her eyes when she shook hands with him.

"I suppose we shan't often see you again," she said.

"I'm glad to get away from Lynn's," he answered.

It was strange, but he was actually sorry to leave these peo-
ple whom, he thought he had loathed, and when he drove
away from the house in Harrington Street it was with no
exultation. He had so anticipated the emotions he would ex-
perience on this occasion that now he felt nothing: he was as
unconcerned as though he were going for a few days' holiday.

"I've got a rotten nature," he said to himself. "I look for-
ward to things awfully, and then when they come I'm always
flisappointed."

He reached Blackstable early in the afternoon. Mrs. Foster
met him at the door, and her face told him that his uncle was
not yet dead.

"He's a little better today," she said. "He's got a wonderful
constitution."

She led him into the bed-room where Mr. Carey lay on his

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 687

back. He gave Philip a slight smile, in which was a trace
or satisfied cunning at having circumvented his enemy once
more.

"I thought it was all up with me yesterday," he said, in an
exhausted voice. "They'd all given me up, hadn't you, Mrs.
Foster.?"

"You've got a wonderful constitution, there's no denying
that."

"There's life in the old dog yet."

Mrs. Foster said that the Vicar must not talk, it would tire
him; she treated him like a child, with kindly despotism; and
thci^e was something childish in the old man's satisfaction at
having cheated all their expectations. It struck him at once
that Philip had been sent for, and he was amused that he had
been brought on a fool's errand. If he could only avoid another
of his heart attacks he would get well enough in a week or
two; and he had had the attacks several times before; he al-
ways felt as if he were going to die, but he never did. They
all talked of his constitution, but they none of them kn'ew how
strong it was.

"Are you going to stay a day or two.?" he asked Philip,
pretending to believe he had come down for a holiday.

"I was thinking of it," Philip answered cheerfully.

"A breath of sea-air will do you good."

Presently Dr. Wigram came, and after he had seen the Vicai
talked with Philip. He adopted an appropriate manner.

"I'm afraid it is the end this time, Philip," he said. "It'll be
a great loss to all of us. I've known him for five-ahd-thirty
years."

"He seems well enough now," said Philip.

"I'm keeping him alive on drugs, but it can't last. It was
dreadful these last two days, I thought he was dead half a
dozen times."

The doctor was silent for a minute or two, but at the gati,'
he said suddenly to Philip:

"Has Mrs. Foster said anything to you.?"

688 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"What d'you mean?"

"They're very superstitious, these people: she's got hold of .
an idea that he's got something on his mind, and he can't die
till he gets rid o£ it; and he can't bring himself to confess it."

Philip did not answer, and the doctor went on.

"Of course it's nonsense. He's led a very good life, he's done
his duty, he's been a good parish priest, and I'm sure we shall
all miss him; he can't have anything to reproach himself with.
I very much doubt whether the next vicar will suit us half so
well."

For several days Mr. Carey continued without change. His
appetite which had been excellent left him, and he could eat
little. Dr. Wigram did not hesitate now to still the pain of the
neuritis which tormented him; and that, with the constant
shaking of his palsied limbs, was gradually exhausting him.
His mind remained clear. Philip and Mrs. Foster nursed him
between them. She was so tired by the many months during
which- she had been attentive to all his wants that Philip in-
sisted on sitting up with the patient so that she might have
her night's rest. He passed the long hours in an arm-chair so
that he should not sleep soundly, and read by the light of
shaded candles The Thousand and One Nights. He had not
read them since he was a little boy, and they brought back his
childhood to him. Sometimes he sat and listened to the silence
of the night. When the effects of the opiate wore off Mr. Carey
grew restless and kept him constantly busy.

At last, early one morning, when the birds were chattering
noisily in the trees, he heard his name called. He went up to
the bed. Mr. Carey was lying on his back, with his eyes look-
ing at the ceiling; he did not turn them on Philip. Philip saw
that sweat was on his forehead, and he took a towel and wiped
it.

"Is that you, Philip?" the old man asked.

Philip was startled because the voice was suddenly changed.
It was hoarse and low. So would a man speak if he was cold
with fear.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 689

"Yes, d'you want anything?"

There was a pause, and still the unseeing eyes stared at the
'^^J, S'. '^^^" ^ twitch passed over the face.

"1 think I'm going to die," he said.

"Oh, what nonsense!" cried Philip. "You're not going to die
for years."

Two tears were wrung from the old man's' eyes'. They
moved Philip horribly. His uncle had never betrayed any
particular emotion in the affairs of life; and it was dreadful
to see them now, for they signified a terror that was unspeak-
able.

"Send for Mr. Simmonds," he said. "I want to take the
Communion."

Mr.. Simmonds was the curate.

"Now.?" asked Phihp.

"Soon, or else it'll be too late."

Philip went to awake Mrs. Foster, but it was later than
he thought and she was up already. He told her to send the
gardener with a message, and he went back to his uncle's
room.

"Have you sent for Mr. Simmonds?"
" "Yes."

There was a silence. Philip sat by the bed-side, and oc-
casionally wiped the sweating forehead.

"Let me hold your hand, Philip," the old man said at last.

Philip gave him his hand and he clung to it as to life, for
comfort in his extremity. Perhaps he had never really loved
anyone in all his days, but now he turned instinctively to a
human being. His hand was wet and cold. It grasped Philip's
with feeble, despairing energy. The old man was fighting with
the fear of death. And Philip thought that all must go through
that. Oh, how monstrous it was, and they could believe in a
God that allowed his creatures to suffer such a cruel torture!
He had never cared for his uncle, and for two years he had
longed every day for his death; but now he coiild not over-

690 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

come the compassion that filled his heart. What a price it Was
to pay for being other than the beasts!

They remained in silence broken only once by a low inquiry
from Mr. Carey.

"Hasn't he come yet?"

At last the housekeeper came in softly to say that Mr. Sim-
monds'was there. He carried a bag in which were his surplice
and his hood. Mrs. Foster brought the communion plate. Mr.
Simmonds shook hands silently with Philip, and then with
professional gravity went to the sick man's side. Philip and
the maid went out of the room.

' Philip walked round the garden all fresh and dewy in the
morning. The birds were singing gaily. The sky was blue, but
the air, salt-laden, was sweet and cool. The roses were in full
bloom. The green of the trees, the green of the lawns, was
eager and brilliant. Philip walked, and as he walked he
thought of the mystery which was proceeding in that bed-
room. It gave him a peculiar emotion. Presently Mrs. Foster
came out to him and said that his uncle wished to see him.
The curate was putting his things back into the black bag.
The sick man turned his head a little and greeted him vdth
a smile. Philip was astonished, for there was a change in him, '
an extraordinary change; his eyes had no longer the terror-
stricken look, and the pinching of his face had gone: he looked
happy and serene.

"I'm quite prepared now," he said, and his voice had a
different tone in it. "When the Lord sees fit to call me I am
ready to give my soul into his hands."

Philip did not speak. He could see that his imcle was sin-
cere. It was almost a miracle. He had taken the body and
blood o^his Saviour, and they had given him strength so that
he no longer feared the inevitable passage into the night. He
knew he was going to die : he was resigned. He only said one
thing more:

"I shall rejoin my dear wife."

It startled Phihp. He remembered with what a callous

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 691

selfishness his uncle had treated her, how obtuse he had been
to her humble, devoted love. The curate, deeply moved, went
away and Mrs. Foster, weeping, accompanied him to the door.
Mr. Carey, exhausted by his effort, fell into a light doze, and
Philip sat down by the bed" and waited for the end. The morn-
ing wore on, and the old man's breathing grew stertorous. The
doctor came and said he was dying. He was unconscious and
he pecked feebly at the sheets; he was restless and he cried out.
Dr. Wigram gave him a hypodermic injection.

"It can't do any good now, he may die at any moment."

The doctor looked at his watch and then at the patient.
Philip saw that it was one o'clock. Dr. Wigram was thinking
of his dinner.

"It's no use your waiting," he said.

"There's nothing I can do," said the doctor.

When he vras gone Mrs. Foster asked Philip if he would go
to the carpenter, who was also the undertaker, and tell him
to send up a woman to lay out the body.

"You want a little fresh air," she said, "it'll do you good."

The undertaker lived half a mile away. When Philip gave
him his message, he said :

"When did the poor old gentleman die.?"

Philip hesitated. It occurred to him that it would seem
brutal to fetch a woman to wash the body while his uncle still
lived, and he wondered why Mrs. Foster had asked him to
eome.They would think he was in a great hurry to kill the old
man off. He thought the undertaker looked at him oddly. He
repeated the question. It irritated Philip. It was no business of

his.

"When did the Vicar pass away?"

Philip's first impulse was to say that it had just happened,
but then it would seem inexplicable if the sick man lingered
for several hours. He reddened and answered awkwardly.

"Oh, he isn't exactly dead yet."

The undertaker looked at him in perplexity, and he hurried
to explain.

692 CF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Mrs. Foster is all alone and she wants a woman there. You
understand, don't you ? He may be dead by now."

The undertaker nodded.

"Oh, yes, I see. I'll send someone up at once."

When Philip got back to the vicarage he went up to the bed-
room. Mrs. Foster rose from her chair by the bed-side.

"He's just as he was when you left," she said.

She went down to get herself something to eat, and Philip
watched curiously the process of death. There was nothing
human now in the unconscious being that struggled feebly.
Sometimes a muttered ejaculation issued from the loose
mouth. The sun beat down hotly from a cloudless sky, but
the trees in the garden were pleasant and cool. It was a lovely
day. A bluebottle buzzed against the window-pane. Suddenly
there was a loud rattle, it made Philip start, it was horribly
frightening; a movement passed through the limbs and the
old man was dead. The machine had run down. The blue-
bottle buzzed, buzzed ncAsily against the window-pane.

Chapter 112

JosiAH GRAVES in his triasterful way made arrangements, be-
coming but economic?,!, for the funeral; and when it was over
came back to the vicarage with Philip. The will was in his
charge, and with a due sense of the fitness of things he read
it to Philip over an early cup of tea. It was written on half a
sheet of paper and left everything Mr. Carey had to his
nephew. There was the furniture, about eighty pounds at the
bank, twenty sha'cs in the A. B. C. company, a few in Allsop's
brewery, some in the Oxford music-hall, and a few more in a
London restaurant. They had been bought under Mr. Graves''
direction, arvd hn told Philip with satisfaction:

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 693

"You see, people must eat, they will drink, and they want
amusement. You're always safe if you put your money in what
the public thinks necessities."

His words showed a nice discrimination between the gross-
ness of the vulgar, which he deplored but accepted, and the
finer taste of the elect. Altogether in investments there was
about five hundred pounds; and to that must be added the
balance at the bank and what the furniture would fetch. It
was riches to Philip. He was not happy but infinitely relieved.

Mr. Graves left him, after they had discussed the auction
which must be held as soon as possible, and Philip sat himself
down to go through- the. papers of the deceased. The Rev.
William Carey had prided himself on never destroying any-
thing, and there were piles of correspondence dating back for
fifty years and bundles upon bundles of neatly docketed bills.
He had kept not only letters addressed to him, but letters
which himself had written. There was a yellow packet of
letters which he had written to his father in the forties, when
as an Oxford undergraduate he had gone to Germany for the
long vacation. Philip read them idly. It was a different William
Carey from the William Carey he had known, and yet there
vi^ere traces in the boy which might to an acute observer have
suggested the man. The letters were formal and a little stilted.
He showed himself strenuous to see all that was noteworthy,
and he described with a fine enthusiasm the castles of the
Rhine. The falls of Schaflhausen made him 'offer reverent
thanks to the all-powerful Creator of the universe, whose
works were wondrous and beautiful,' and he could not help
thinking that they who lived in sight of 'this handiwork of
their blessed Maker must be moved by the contemplation to
■ lead pure and holy lives.' Among some bills Philip found a
miniature which had been painted of WiUiam Carey soon
after he was ordained. It represented a thin young curate, with
long hair that fell over his head in natural curls, with dark
eyes, large and dreamy, and a pale ascetic face. Philip re-
membered the chuckle with which his uncle used to tell of

694 OP HUMAN BONDAGE

the dozens of slippers which were worked for him by adoring
ladies.

The rest of the afternoon and all the evening Philip toiled
through the innumerable correspondence. He glanced at the
address and at the signature, then tore the letter in two and
threw it into the washing-basket by his side. Suddenly he
carrie upon one signed Helen. He did not know the writing.
It was thin, angular, and old-fashioned. It began: my dear
William, and ended: your affectionate sister. Then it struck
him that it was from his own mother. He had never seen a
letter of hers before, and her handwriting was strange to him.
It was about himself.

My dear William,

Stephen wrote to you to than\ you for your congratulations
on the birth of our son and your hind wishes to myself. Than\
God we are both well and I am deeply thankful for the great
mercy which has been shown me. Now that I can hold a pen
I want to tell you and dear Louisa myself how truly grateful
I am to you both for all your kindness to me now and always
since my marriage. I am going to as\ you to do me a great
favour. Both Stephen and I wish you to be the boy's godfather,
and we hope that you will consent. I \now I am not as\ing a
small thing, for I am sure you will take the responsibilities of
the position very seriously, but I am especially anxious that
you should undertake this office because you are a clergyman
as well as the boy's uncle. I am very anxious fw the boy's wel-
fare and I pray God night and day that he may grow into a
good, honest, and Christian man. With you to guide him I
hope that he will become a soldier in Christ's Faith and be
all the days of his life God-fearing, hiimble, and pious.

Your affectionate sister,

Helen.

Philip pushed the letter away and, leaning forward, rested
his face on his hands. It deeply touched and at the same time
surprised him. He was astonished at its religious tone, which

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 695

seemed to him neither mawkish nor sentimental. He knew
nothmg of his mother, dead now for nearly twenty years, but
that she was beautiful, and it was strange to learn that she
was simple and pious. He had never thought of that side of
her. He read again what she said about him, what she ex-
pected and thought about him; he had turned- out very
diflerently; he looked at himself for a moment; perhaps it was
better that she was dead. Then a sudden impulse caused him
to tear up the letter; its tenderness and simplicity made it
seem peculiarly private; he had a queer feeling that there was
something indecent in his reading what exposed his mother's
gentle soul. He went oh with the Vicar's dreary corre-
spondence.

A few days later he went up to London, and for the first
time for two years entered by day the hall of St. Luke's Hospi-
tal. He went to see the secretary of the Medical School; he
was surprised, to see him and asked Philip- curiously what he
had been doing. Philip's experiences had given him a certain
confidence in himself and a different outlook upon many
things: such a question would have embarrassed him before;
but now he answered coolly, with a deliberate vagueness
which prevented further inquiry, that private affairs had
obliged him to make a break in the curriculum; he was now
anxious to qualify as soon as possible. The first examination he
could take was in Midwifery and the Diseases of Women, and
he put his name down to be a clerk in the ward devoted to
feminine ailments; since it was holiday time there happened
to be no difficulty in getting a post as obstetric clerk; he ar-
ranged to undertake that duty during the last week of August
and the first two of September. After this interview Philip
walked through the Medical School, more or less deserted-, for
the examinations at the end of the summer' session* were all
over; and- he wandered along the terrace by the river-side. His
heart was full. He thought that now he could begin a new
life, and he would put behind him- all the errors, follies, and
miseries of the past. The flowing river suggested that every-

696 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

thing passed, was passing always, and nothing mattered; the.
future was before him rich with possibiUties.

He went back to Blackstable and busied himself with the
settling up of his uncle's estate. The auction was fixed for the
middle of August, when the presence of visitors for the sum-
mer holidays would make it possible to get better prices. Cata-
logues were made out and sent to the various dealers in
second-hand books at Tercanbury, Maidstone, and Ashford.

One afternoon Philip took it into his head to go over to
Tercanbury and see his old school. He had not been there
since the day when, with relief in his heart, he had left it with
the feeling that thenceforward he was his own master. It was
strange to wander through the narrow streets of Tercanbury
-which he had known so well for so many years. He looked at
the old shops, still there, still selling the same things ; the book-
sellers with school-books, pious works, and the latest novels in
one window aad photographs of the Cathedral and of the city
in the other; the games shop, with its cricket bats, fishing
tackle, tennis rackets, and footballs; the tailor from whom he
had got clothes all through his boyhood; and the fishmonger
where his uncle whenever he came to Tercanbury bought fish.
He wandered along the sordid street in which, behind a high
Wall, lay the red brick house which was the preparatory
school. Further on was the gateway that led into King's
School, and he stood in the quadrangle round which were the
Various buildings. It was just four and the boys were hurrying
out of school. He saw the masters in their gowns and mortar-
boards, and they were strange to him. It was more than ten
years since he had left and many changes had taken place. He
saw the headmaster; he walked slowly down from the school-
house to his own, talking to a big boy who Philip supposed
was in the sixth; he was little changed, tall, cadaverous, ro-
mantic as Philip remembered him, with the same wild eyes;
but the black beard was streaked with gray now and the dark,
sallow face was more deeply lined. Philip had an impulse to
go up and speak to him, but he was afraid he would have for-

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 697

gotten mm, and he hated the thought of explaining who he
was.

Boys Hngered talking to one another, and presently some
who had hurried to change came out to play fives; others
straggled out in twos and threes and went out of the gateway,
PhiUp knew they were going up to the cricket ground; others
again went into the precincts to bat at the nets. Philip stood
among them a stranger; one or two gave him an indifferent
glance; but visitors, attracted by the Norman staircase, were
not rare and excited little attention. Philip looked at them
curiously. He thought with melancholy of the distance that
separated him from them, and he thought bitterly how much
he had wanted to do and how httle done. It seemed to him
that all those years, vanished beyond recall, had been utterly
wasted. The boys, fresh and buoyant, were doing the same
things that he had done, it seemed that not a day had passed
since he left the school, and yet in that place where at least by
name he had known everybody now he knew not a soul. In
a few years these too, others taking their place, would stand
alien as he stood; but the reflection brought him no solace; it
merely impressed upon him the futility of human existence. "
Each generation repeated the trivial round. He wondered
what had become of the boys who were his companions: they
were nearly thirty now; some would be dead, but others were
married and had children; they were soldiers and parsons,
doctors, lawyers; they were staid men who were beginning to
put youth behind them. Had any of them made such a hash
of life as he? He thought of the boy he had been devoted to;
it was funny, he could not recall his name; he remembered
exactly what he looked like, he had been his greatest friend;
but his name would not come back to him. He looked back
with amusement on the jealous emotions he had suffered on
his account. It was irritating not to recollect his name. He
longed to be a boy again, like those he saw sauntering through
the quadrangle, so that, avoiding his mistakes,_ he might start
fresh and make something more out of life. He felt an intoler"

698 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

able loneliness. He almost regretted the penury which he had
suffered during the last two years, since the desperate struggle
merely to keep body and soul together had deadened the pain
of living. In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy. daily
bread: it was not a curse upon mankind, but the balm which
reconciled it to existence.

But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind
his idea of the pattern of life : the unhappiness he had suifered
was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate
and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept
with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure
and pain, because it added to the richness of the design. He
sought for beauty consciously, and he remembered how even
as a boy he had taken pleasure in the Gothic cathedral as one
saw it from the precincts; he went there and looked at the
massjve pile, gray under the cloudy sky, with the central tower
that rose like the praise of men to their God; but the boys
were batting at the nets, and they were lissom and strong and
active; he could not help hearing their shouts and laughter.
The cry of youth was insistent, and he saw the beautiful thing
before him only with his eyes.

Chapter 113

At the beginning of the last week in August Philip entered
upon his duties in the 'district.' They were arduous, for he
had to attend on an average three confinements a day. The
patient had obtained a 'card' from the hospital some time be-
fore; and when her time came it was taken to the porter by a
messenger, generally a little girl, who was then sent across the
road to the house in which Philip lodged. At night the porter,
who had a latch-key, himself came over and awoke PhiUp. It

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 699

was mysterious then to get up in the darkness and walk
through the deserted streets of the South Side. At those hours
It was generally the husband who brought the card. If there
had been a number of babies before he took it for the most
part with surly indifference, but if newly married he was
nervous and th(?n sometimes strove to allay his anxiety by
getting drunk. Often there was a mile or more to walk, during
which Philip and the messenger discussed the conditions of
labour and the cost of living; Philip learnt about the various
trades which were practised on that side of the river. He in-
spired confidence in the people among whom he was throyvn,
and during the long hours that he waited in a stuffy room, the
woman in labour lying on a large bed that took up half of it,
her mother and the midwife talked to him as naturally as they
talked to one another. The circumstances in which he had
lived during the last two years had taught him several things
about the life of the very poor, which it amused them to find
he knew; and they were impressed because he was not de-
ceived by their little subterfuges. He was kind, and he had
gentle hands, and he did not lose his temper. They were
pleased because he was not above drinking a cup of tea with
them, and when the dawn came and they were still waiting
they offered him a slice of bread and dripping; he was not
squeamish and could eat most things now with a good appe-
tite. Some of the houses he went to, in filthy courts off a dingy
street, huddled against one another without light or air, were
merely squalid; but others, unexpectedly, though dilapidated,
with worm-eaten floors and leaking roofs, had the grand air:
you found in them oak balusters exquisitely carved, and the
walls had still their panelling. These were thickly inhabited.
One family lived in each room, and in the daytime there was
the incessant noise of children playing in the court. The old
walls were the breeding-place of vermin; the air was so foul
that often, feeling sick, Philip had to light his pipe. The peo-
ple who dwelt here lived from hand to mouth. Babies were
unwelcome, the man received them with surly anger, the

700 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

mother with despair; it was one more mouth to feed, and
there was Uttle enough wherewith to feed those aheady there.
PhiHp often discerned the wish that the child might be born
dead or might die quickly. He delivered one woman of twins
(a source of humour to the facetious) and when she was told
she burst into a long, shrill wail of misery. Her mother said
outright :

"I don't know how they're going to feed 'em."

"Maybe the Lord'll see fit to take 'em to 'imself," said the
midwife.

Philip caught sight of the husband's face as he looked at
the tiny pair lying side by side, and there was a ferocious
suUenness in it which startled him. He felt in the family as-
sembled there a hideous resentment against those poor atoms
who had come into the world unwished for; and he had a
suspicion that if he did not speak firmly an 'accident' would
occur. Accidents occurred often; mothers 'overlay' their
babies, and perhaps errors of diet were not always the result
of carelessness.

"I shall come every day," he said. "I warn you that if any-
thing happens to them there'll have to be an inquest."

The father made no reply, but he gave Philip a scowl. There
was murder in his soul.

"Bless their little 'earts,'' said the grandmother, "what
should 'appen to them.?"

The great difficulty was to keep the mothers in bed for ten
days, which was the minimum upon which the hospital prac-
tice insisted. It was awkward to look after the family, no one
would see to the children without payment, and the husband
grumbled because his tea was not right when he came home
tired from his work and hungry. PhiUp had heard that the
poor helped one another, but woman after woman complained
to him that she could not get anyone in to clean up and see
to the children's dinner without paying for the service, and
she could not afford to pay. By listening to the women as
they talkpd and by chance remarks from which he could

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 701

deduce much that was left unsaid, Philip learned how little
there was in common between the poor and the classes above
them. They did not envy their betters, for the life was too
different, and they had an ideal of ease which made the exist-
ence of the middle-classes seem formal and stiff; moreover,
they had a certain contempt for them because they were soft
and did not work with their hands. The proud merely wished
to be left alone, but the majority looked upon the well-to-do
as people to be exploited; they knew what to say in order
to get such advantages as the charitable put at their disposal,
and they accepted benefits as a right which came to them
from the folly of their superiors and their own astuteness.
They bore the curate with contemptuous indifference, but
the district visitor excited their bitter hatred. She came in
and opened your windows without so much as a by your
leave or with your leave, 'and me with my bronchitis, enough
•to'give me my death of cold;' she poked her nose into corners,
and if she didn't say the place was dirty you saw what she
thought right enough, 'an' it's all very well for them as 'as
servants, but I'd like to see what she'd make of 'er room if
she 'ad four children, and 'ad to do the cookin', and mend
their clothes, and wash them.'

Philip discovered that the greatest tragedy of life to these
people was not separation or death, that was natural and the
grief of it could be assuaged with tears, but loss of work. He
saw a man come home one afternoon, three days after his
wife's confinement, and tell her he had been dismissed; he
was a builder and at that time work was slack; he stated the
fact, and sat down to his tea.

"Oh, Jim," she said.

The man ate stolidly some mess which had been stewing in
a sauce-pan against his coming; he stared at his plate; his
wife looked at him two or three times, with little startled
glances, and then quite silently began to cry. The builder
was an uncouth little fellow with a rough, weather-beaten
face and a long white scar on his forehead; he had large,

702 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

stubbly hands. Presently he pushed aside his plate as if he
must give "up the effort to force himself to eat, and turned a
fixed gaze out of the window. The room was at the top of
the house, at the back, and one saw nothing but sullen clouds.
The silence seemed heavy with despair. Philip felt that there
was nothing to be said, he could only go; and as he walked
away wearily, for he had been up most of the night, his heart
was filled with rage against the cruelty of the world. He
knew the hopelessness of the search for work and the desola-
tion which is harder to bear than hunger. He was thankful
not to have to believe in God, for then such a condition of
things would be intolerable; , one could reconcile oneself to
existence only because it was meaningless.

It seemed to Philip that the people who spent their time in
helping the poorer classes erred ,beeause they sought to remedy
things which would harass them^if thems~elves had to endure
them without thinking that they did riot in the least disturb'
those who were used to them. The poor did not want large
airy rooms; they suffered from cold, for their food was not
nourishing and their circulation bad; space gave them a feel-
ing of chilliness, and they wanted to burn as little coal as need
be; there was no hardship for several to sleep in one room,
they preferred it; they were never alone for a moment, from
the time they were born to the time they died, and loneliness
oppressed them; they enjoyed the promiscuity in which they
dwelt, and the constant noise of their surroundings pressed
upon their ears unnoticed. They did not feel the need of tak-
ing a bath constantly, and Philip often heard them speak with
indignation of the necessity to do so with which they were
faced on entering the hospital: it was both an affront and
a discomfort. They wanted chiefly to be left alone; then if
the man was in regular work life went easily and was not
without its pleasures: there was plenty of time for gossip,
after the day's work a glass of beer was very good to drink,
the streets were a constant source of entertainment, if you
wanted to read there was Reynolds' or The News of the

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 703

World; ^but there, you couldn't make out 'ow the time did
ny, the truth was and that's a fact, you was a rare one for
reading when you was a girl, but what with one thing and
another you didn't get no time now not even to read the
paper.'

The usual practice was to pay three visits after a confine-
ment, and one Sunday Philip went to see a patient at the
dinner hour. She was up for the first time.

"I couldn't stay in bed no longer, I really couldn't. I'm not
■ one for idling, and it gives me the fidgets to be there and do
nothing all day long, so I said to 'Erb, I'm just going to get
up and cook your dinner for you."

_ 'Erb was sitting at table with his knife and fork already in
his hands. He was a young man, with- an open face and blue
eyes. He was earning good money, and as things went the
couple were in easy circumstances. They had only been mar-
ried a few months, and were both delighted with the rosy
boy who lay in the cradle at the foot of the bed. There was a
savoury smell of beefsteak in the room and Philip's eyes
turned to the range.

"I, was just going to dish up this minute," said the woman.

"Fire away," said Phihp. "I'lljust have a look at the son
and heir and then I'll take myself off."

Husband and wife laughed at Philip's expression, 3nd 'Erb
getting up went over with Philip to the cradle. He looked
at his baby proudly.

"There doesn't seem much wrong with him, does there.?"
said Philip.

He took up his hat, and by this time 'Erb's wife had dished
up the beefsteak and put on the table a plate of green peas.

"You're going to have a nice dinner," smiled Philip.

"He's only in of a Sunday and I like to 'ave something
special for him, so as he shall miss his 'ome when he's out
at work."

"I suppose you'd be above sittin' down and 'avin' a bit of
dinner with us.?" said 'Erb.

704 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Oh, 'Erb," said his wife, in a shocked tone.

"Not if you ask me," answered PhiHp, with his attractive
smile. ,

"Well, that's what I call friendly, I knew 'e wouldn't take
offence, Polly. Just get' another plate, my girl."

Polly was flustered, and she thought 'Erb a regular caution,
you never knew what ideas 'e'd get in 'is 'ead next; but she
got a plate and wiped it quickly with her apron, then took
a new knife and fork from the chest of drawers, where her
best cutlery rested among her best clothes. There was a jug'
of stout on the table, and 'Erb poured Philip out a glass. He
wanted to give him the lion's share of the beefsteak, but Philip
insisted that they should share alike. It was a sunny room
with two windows that reached to the floor; it had been the
parlour of a house which at one time was if not fashionable
at least respectable: it might have been inhabited fifty years
before by a well-to-do tradesman or an officer on half pay.
'Erb had been a football player before he married, and there
were photographs on the wall of various teams in self-
conscious attitudes, with neatly plastered hair, the captain
seated proudly in the middle holding a cup'. There were other
signs of prosperity: photographs of the relations of 'Erb and
his wife in Sunday clothes; on the chimney-piece an elaborate
arrangement of shells stuck on a miniature rock; and on each
side mugs, 'A present from Southend' in Gothic letters, with
pictures of a pier and a parade on them. 'Erb was something
of a character; he was a non-union man and expressed himself
with indignation at the efforts of the union to force him to
join. The union wasn't no good to him, he never found no
difficulty in getting work, and there was good wages for
anyone as 'ad a head on his shoulders and wasn't above puttin'
'is 'and to anything as come 'is way. Polly was timorous. If
she was 'im she'd join the union, the last time there was a
strike she was expectin' 'im to be brought back in an ambu-
lance every time he went out. She turned to Philip.

"He's that obstinate, there's no doing anything with 'im."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 705

"Well, what I say isj it's a free country, and I won't Be
dictated to."

"It's no good saying it's a free country," said Polly, "that
won't prevent 'em bashin' your 'ead in if they get the chanst.''

When they had finished Philip passed his pouch over to
'Erb and they lit their pipes; then he got up, for a 'call' might
be waiting for him at his rooms, and shook hands. He saw
that it had given them pleasure that he shared their meal, and
they saw that he had thoroughly enjoyed it.

"Well, good-bye, sir," ^aid 'Erb, "and I 'ope we shall 'ave
as nice a doctor next time the missus disgraces erself."

"Go on with you, 'Erb," she retorted. "'Ow d'you know
there's going to be a next time.'"

Chapter 114

The three weeks which the appointment lasted drew to an
end. Philip had attended sixty-two cases, and he was tired out.
When he came home about ten o'clock on his last night he
hoped with all his heart that he would not be called out again.
He had not had a whole night's rest for ten days. The case
which he had just come from was horrible. He had been
fetched by a huge, burly man, the worse for liquor, and taken
to a room in an evil-smelling court, which was filthier than
any he had seen: it was a tiny attic; most of the space was
taken up by a wooden bed, with a canopy of dirty red hang-
ings, and the ceiling was so low that Philip could touch it
with the tips of his fingers; with the solitary candle that
afforded what light there was he went over it, frizzling up
the bugs that crawled upon it. The woman was a blowsy
creature of middle age, who had had a long succession of still-
born children. It was a story that Philip was not unaccustomed

706 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

to: the husband had been a soldier in India; the legislation
forced upon that country by the prudery o£ the English public
had given a free run to the most distressing of all diseases;
the innocent suffered. Yawning, Philip undressed and took a
bath, then shook his clothes over the water and watched the
animals that fell out wriggling. He was just going to get into
bed when there was a knock at the door, and the hospital
porter brought him a card.

"Curse you," said Philip. "You're the last person I wanted
to see tonight. Who's brought it?" .

"I think it's the 'usband, sir. Shall I tell him to wait.?"

Philip looked at the address, saw that the street was familiar
to him, and told the porter that he would find his own way.
He dressed himself and in five minutes, with his black bag
in his hand, stepped into the street. A man, whom he could
not see in the darkness, came up to him, and said he was
the husband.

"I thought I'd better wait, sir," he said. "It's a pretty rough
neighbour'ood, and them not knowing who you was."

Philip laughed.

"Bless your heart, they all know the doctor, I've been in
some damned sight rougher places than Waver Street."

It was quite true. The black bag was a passport through
wretched alleys and down foul-smelling courts into which a
policeman was not ready to venture by himself. Once or twice
a little group of men had looked at Philip curiously as he
passed; he heard a mutter of observations and then one say:

"It's the 'orspital doctor."

As he went by one or two of them said: "Good-night, sir."

"We shall 'ave to step out if you don't mind, sir," said the
man who accompanied him now. "They told me there was
no time to lose."
■ "Why did you leave it so late.?" asked Philip, as he quick-
ened his pace.

He glanced at the fellow as they passed a lamp-post.

"You look awfully young," he said.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 707

"I'm turned eighteen, sir."

He was fair, and he had not a hair on his face, he looked
no more than a boy; he was short, but thick set.
You're young to be married," said Phihp.
We ad to.
"How much d'you earn.?"
"Sixteen, sir."

Sixteen shilhngs a week was not much to keep a wife and
child on. The room the couple lived in showed that their
poverty was extreme. It was a fair size, but it looked quite
large, since there was hardly any furniture in it; there was
no carpet on the floor; there were no pictures on the walls;
and most rooms had something, photographs or supplements
in cheap frames from the Christmas numbers of the illustrated
papers. The patient lay on a Httle iron bed of the cheapest
sort. It startled Philip to see how young she was.

"By Jove, she can't be more than sixteen," he said to the
woman who had come in to 'see her through.'

She had given her age as eighteen on the card, but when
they were very young they often put on a year or two. Also she
was pretty, which was rare in those classes in which the
constitution had been undermined by bad food, bad air, and
unhealthy occupations; she had delicate features and large
blue eyes, and a mass of dark hair done in the elaborate fashion
of the coster girl. She and her husband were very nervous.

"You'd better wait outside, so as to be at hand if I want
you," Philip said to him.

Now that he saw him better Philip was surprised again at
his boyish air: you felt that he should be larking in the street
with the other lads instead of waiting anxiously for the birth
of a child. The hours passed, and it was not till nearly two
that the baby was born. Everything seemed to be going satis-
factorily; the husband was called in, and it touched Philip
to see the awkward, shy way in which he kissed his wife;
Philip packed his things. Before going he felt once more his
patient's pulse.

708 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"Hulloa!" he said.

He looked at her quickly: something had happened. In
cases of emergency the S. O. C. — senior obstetric clerk — had
to be sent for; he was a qualified man, and the 'district' was
in his charge. Philip scribbled a note, and giving it to the
husband, told him to run with it to the hospital; he bade him
hurry, for his wife was in a dangerous state. The man set ofl.
Philip waited anxiously; he knew the woman was bleeding to
death; he was afraid she would die before his chief arrived;
he took what steps he could. He hoped fervently that the
S. O. C. would not have been called elsewhere. The minutes
were interminable. He came at last, and, while he examined
the patient, in a low voice asked Philip questions. Philip saw
by his face that he thought the case very grave. His name was
Chandler. He was a tall man of few words, with a long nose
and a thin face much lined for his age. He shook his head.

"It was hopeless from the beginning. Where's the husband?"

"I told him to wait on the stairs," said Philip.

"You'd better bring him in."

Philip opened the door and called him. He was sitting in
the dark on the first step of the flight that led to the next
floor. He came up to the bed.

"What's the matter.?" he asked.

"Why, there's internal bleeding. It's impossible to stop it."
The S. O. C. hesitated a moment, and because it was a pain-
ful thing to say he forced his voice to become brusque. "She's
dying."

The man did not say a word; he stopped quite still, look-
ing at his wife, who lay, pale and unconscious, on the bed.
It was the midwife who spoke.

"The gentlemen 'ave done all they could, 'Arry," she said.
"I saw what was comin' from the first."

"Shut up,", said Chandler.

There were no curtains on the windows, and gradually the
night seemed to lighten; it was not yet the dawn, but the
dawn was at hand. Chandler was keeping the woman^ alive

OF HUMAN BONDAGE ' 709

by all the means in his power, but life was slipping away from
her, and suddenly she died. The boy who was her husband
stood at the end of the cheap iron bed with his hands resting
on the rail; he did not speak; but he looked very pale and
once or twice Chandler gave him an uneasy glance, thinking
he was going to faint: his lips were gray. The midwife sobbed
noisily, but he took no notice of her. His eyes were fixed
upon his wife, and in them was an utter bewilderment. He
reminded you of a dog whipped for something he did not
know was wrong. When Chandler and Philip had gathered
together their things Chandler turned to the husband.

"You'd better he down for a bit. I expect you're about done
up-"

"There's nowhere for me to lie down, sir," he answered,
and there' was in his voice -a humbleness which was very
distressing.

"Don't you know anyone in the house who'll give you a
shakedown.'"'

"No, sir."

"They only moved in last week," said the midwife. "They
don't know nobody yet."

Chandler hesitated a moment awkwardly, then he went up
to the man and said:

"I'm very sorry this has happened."

He held out his hand and the man, with an instinctive
glance at his own to see if it was clean, shook it.

"Thank you, sir."

Philip shook hands with him too. Chandler told the midwife
to come and fetch the certificate in the morning. They left
the house and walked along together in silence.

"It upsets one a bit at .first, doesn't it.?" said Chandler at last.

"A bit," answered Philip.

"If you like I'll tell the porter not to bring you any more
calls tonight."

"I'm off duty at eight in the morning in any case."

"How many cases have you had."*"

710 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"SixtyMihree."

"Good. You'll get your certificate then."

They arrived at the hospital, and the S. O. C. went in to
see if anyone wanted him. Philip walked on. It had been
very hot all the day before, and even now in the early morning
there was a balminess in the air. The street was very still.
Philip did not feel inclined to go to bed. It was the end of
his work and he need not hurry. He strolled along, glad of
the fresh air and the silence; he thought that he would go on
to the bridge and look at day break on the river. A policeman
at the corner bade him good-morning. He knew who Philip
was from his bag.

"Out late tonight, sir," he said.

Philip nodded and passed. He leaned against the parapet
and looked towards the morning. At that hour the great city
was like a city of the dead. The sky was cloudless, but the
stars were dim at the approach of day; there was a light mist
on the river, and the great buildings on the north side were
like palaces in an enchanted island. A group of barges were
moored in midstream. It was all of an unearthly violet, trou-
bling somehow and awe-inspiring; but quickly every thing grew
pale, and cold, and gray. Then the sun rose, a ray of yellow
gold stole across the sky, and the sky was iridescent. PhiUp
could not get out of his eyes the dead girl lying on the bed,
wan and white, and the boy who stood at the end of it hke
a stricken beast. The bareness of the squalid room made the
pain of it more poignant. It was cruel that a stupid chance
should have cut off her life when she was just entering upon
it; but in the very moment of saying this to himself, Philip
thought of the life which had been in store for her, the
bearing of children, the dreary fight with poverty, the youth
broken by toil and deprivation into a slatternly middle age-
he saw the pretty face grow thin and white, the hair grow
scanty, the pretty hands, worn down brutally by work, be-
come like the claws of an old animal— then, when the man was
past his prime, the difficulty of getting jobs, the small wages

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 711

he had to take; and the inevitable, abject penury of the end:
she might be energetic, thrifty, industrious, it would not have
saved her; in the end was the workhouse or subsistence on the
charity of her children. Who could pity her because she had
died when life offered so httle?

But pity was inane. Philip felt it was not that which these
people needed. They did not pity themselves. They accepted
their fate. It was the natural order of things. Otherwise, good
heavens! otherwise they would swarm over the river in their
multitude to the side where those great buildings were, secure
and stately; and they would pillage, burn, and sack. But the
day, tender and pale, had broken now, and the mist was tenu-
ous; it bathed everything in a soft radiance; and the Thames
was gray, rosy, and green; gray like mother-of-pearl and
green like the heart of a yellow rose. The wharves and store-
houses of the Surrey Side were massed in disorderly loveli-
ness. The scene was so exquisite that Philip's heart beat pas-
sionately. He was overwhelmed by the beauty of the world.
Beside that nothing seemed to matter.

Chapter 115

Philip spent the few weeks that remained before the begin-
ning of the winter session in the out-patients' department, and
in October settled down to regular work. He had been away
from the hospital for so long that he found himself very
largely among new people; the men df different years had
Httle to do with one another, and his contemporaries were
now mostly qualified: some had left to take up assistant-
ships or posts in country hospitals and infirmaries, and some
held appointments at St. Luke's. The two years during which

712 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

his mind had lain fallow had refreshed him, he fancied, and
he was able now to work with energy.

The Athelnys were delighted with his change of fortune.
He had kept aside a few things from the sale of his uncle's
effects and gave them all presents. He gave Sally a gold chain
that had belonged to his aunt. She was now grown up. She
was apprenticed to a dressmaker and set out every morning
at eight to work all day in a shop in Regent Street. Sally had
frank blue eyes, a broad brow, and plentiful shining hair; she
was buxom, with broad hips and full breasts; and her father,
who was fond of discussing her appearance, warned her
constantly that she must not grow fat. She attracted because
she was healthy, animal, and feminine. She had many ad-
mirers, but they left her unmoved; she gave one the impression
that she looked upon love-making as nonsense; and it was
easy to imagine that young men found her unapproachable.
Sally was old for her years : she had been used to help her
mother in the household work and in the care of the children,
so that she had acquired a managing air, which made her
mother say that/ Sally was a bit too fond of having things her
own way. She did not speak very much, but as she grew older
she seemed to be acquiring a quiet sense of humour, and
sometimes uttered a remark which suggested that beneath
her impassive exterior she was quietly bubbling with amuse-
ment at her fellow-creatures. Philip found that with her he
never got on the terms of affectionate intimacy upon which
he was with the rest of Athelny's huge family. Now and then
her indifference slightly irritated him. There was something
enigmatic in her.

When Philip gave her the necklace AAelny in his bois-
terous way insisted that she must kiss him; but Sally reddened
and drew back.

"No, Fm not going to," she said.

"Ungrateful hussy!" cried Athelny. "Why not?"

"I, don't like being kissed by men," she said.

Fnilip saw her embarrassment, and, amused, turned

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 713

Athelny's attention to something else. That was never a very
difficult thing to do. But evidently her mother spoke of the
matter later, for next time Philip came she took the oppor-
tunity when they were alone for a couple of nainutes to
refer to it.

"You didn't think it disagreeable of me last week when I
wouldn't kiss you.?"

"Not a bit," he laughed.

"It's not because I wasn't grateful." She blushed a little as
she uttered the formal phrase which she had prepared. "I
shall always value the necklace, and it was very kind of you
to give it me."

Philip found it always a little difficult to talk to her. She
did all that she had to do very competently, but seemed to
feel no need of conversation; yet there was nothing unsociable
in her. One Sunday afternoon when Athehiy and his wife
had gone out together, and Philip, treated as one of the
family, sat reading in the parlour, Sally came in and sat by
the window to sew. The girls' clothes were made at home and
Sally could not afford to spend Sundays in idleness. Philip
thought she wished to talk and put down his book.

"Go on reading," she said. "I only thought as you were alone
I'd come and sit with you."

"You're the most silent person I've ever struck," said Philip.

"We don't want another one who's talkative in this house,"
she said.

There was no irony in her tone: she was merely stating a
fact. But it suggested to Philip that she measured her father,
alas, no longer the hero he was to her childhood, and in her
mind joined together his entertaining conversation and the
thriftlessness which often brought difficulties into their life;
she compared his rhetoric with her mother's practical com-
mon sense; and though the liveliness of her father amused
her she was perhaps sometimes a little impatient with it.
Philip looked at her as she bent over her work; she was
healthy, strong, and norrhal; it must be odd to see her among

714 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

the other girls in the shop with their flat chests arid anaemic
faces. Mildred SufTered from anaemia.

After a tirne it appeared that Sally had a suitor. She went
out occasionally with friends she had made in the work-room,
and had met a young man, an electrical engineer in a very
good way of business, who was a most eligible person. One
day she told her mother that he had asked her to marry him.

"What did you say?" said her mother.

"Oh, I told him I wasn't over-anxious to marry anyone just
yet awhile." She paused a little as was her habit between
observations. "He took on so that I said he might come to
tea on Sunday.''

It was an occasion that thoroughly appealed to Athelny.
He rehearsed all the afternoon how he should play the heavy
father for the young man's edification till he reduced his
children to helpless giggling. Just before he was due Athelny
routed out an Egyptian tarboosh and insisted on putting it on.

"Go on with you, Athelny," said his wife, who was in her
best, which was of black velvet, and, since she was growing
stouter every year, very tight for her. "You'll spoil the girl's
chances."

She tried to pull it off, but the Httle man skipped nimbly
out of her way.

"Unhand me, woman. Nothing will induce me to take it
off. This young man must be shown at once that it is no
ordinary family he is preparing to enter."

"Let him keep it on, mother," said Sally, in her even, indif-
ferent fashion. "If Mr. Donaldson doesn't take it the way it's
meant he can take himself off, and good riddance."

Philip thought it was a severe ordeal that the young man
was being exposed to, since Athelny, in his brown velvet
jacket, flowing black tie, and red tarboosh, was a startling
spectacle for an 'innocent electrical engineer. When he came
he W3S greeted by his host with the proud courtesy of a
Spanish grandee and by Mrs. Athelny in an altogether homely
and natural fashion. They sat down at the old ironing-table

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 715

in the high-backed monkish chairs, and Mrs. Athelny poured
tea out of a lustre teapot which gave a note of England and
the country-side to the festivity. She had made little cakes
with her own hand, and on the table was home-made jam.
It was a farm-house tea, and to Philip very quaint and
charming in that Jacobean house. Athelny for some fantastic
reason took it into his head to discourse upon Byzantine
history; he had been reading the later volumes of the Decline
and Fall; and, his forefinger dramatically extended, he poured
into the astonished ears of the suitor scandalous stories about
Theodora and Irene. He addressed himself directly to his
guest with a torrent of rhodomontade; and the young man,
reduced to helpless silence and shy, nodded his head at inter-
vals to show that he took an intelligent interest. Mrs. Athelny
paid no attention to Thorpe's conversation, but interrupted
now and then to offer the young man more tea or to press
upon him cake and jam. Philip watched Sally; she sat with
downcast eyes, calm, silent, and observant; and her long
eye-lashes cast a pretty shadow on her cheek. You could not
tell whether she was amused at the scene or if she cared for
the young man. She was inscrutable. But one thing was
certain; the electrical engineer was good-looking, fair and
clean-shaven, with pleasant, regular features, and an honest
face; he was tall and well-made. Philip could not help think-
ing he would make an excellent mate for her, and he felt a
pang of envy for the happiness which he fancied was in store
for them.

Presently the suitor said he thought it was about time he
was getting along. Sally rose to her feet without a word and
accompanied him to the door. When she came back hei'
father burst out:

"Well, Sally, we think your young man very nice. We are
prepared to welcome him into our family. Let the banns be
called and I will compose a nuptial song."

Sally set about clearing away the tea-things. She did not
answer. Suddenly she shot a swift glance at Philip.

716 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"What did you think of him, Mr. PhiHp?" ;

She had always refused to call him Uncle Phil as the other
children did, and would not call him Philip.

"I think you'd make an awfully handsome pair."

She looked at him quickly once more, and then with a slight
blush went on with her business.

"I thought him a very nice civil-spoken young fellow," said
Mrs. Athelny, "and I think he's just the sort to make any girl
happy."

Sally did not reply for a minute or two, and Philip looked
at her curiously: it might be thought that she was meditating
upon what her mother had said, and on the other hand she
might be thinking of the man in the moDn.

"Why don't you answer when you're spoken to, Sally.?"
remarked her mother, a little irritably.

"I thought he was a silly."

"Aren't you going to have him then?"

"No, I'm not."

"I don't know how much more you want," said Mrs.
Athelny, and it was quite clear now that she was put out.
"He's a very decent young fellow and he can afford to give
you a thorough good home. We've got quite enough to feed
here without you. If you get a chance like that it's wicked
not to take it. And I daresay you'd be able to have a girl to
do the rough work."

Philip had never before heard Mrs. Atheby refer so directly
to the difhculties of her life. He saw how important it was
that each child should be provided for.

"It's no good your carrying on, mother," said Sally in her
quiet way. "I'm not going to marry him."

"I think you're a very hard-hearted, cruel, selfish girl."

"If you want me to earn my own living, mother, I can always
go into service."

"Don't be so silly, you know your father would never let
,you do that."

Philip caught Sally's eye, and he thought there was in it a

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 717

glimmer of amusement. He wondered what there had been
m the conversation to touch her sense of humour. She was
an odd girl.

Chapter 116

During his last year at St. Luke's Philip had to work hard.
He was contented with life. He found it very comfortable to
be heart-free and to have enough money for his needs. He
had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he won-
dered if they had ever tried to do without it. He knew that
the lack made a man petty, mean, grasping; it distorted his
character and caused him to view the world from a vulgar
angle; when you had to consider every penny, money became
of grotesque importance: you needed a competency to rate
it at its proper value. He lived a solitary life, seeing no one
except the Athelnys, but he was not lonely; he busied himself
with plans for the future, and sometimes he thought of the
past. His recollection dwelt now and then on old friends,
but he made no effort to see them. He would have liked to
know what was become of Norah Nesbit; she was Norah
something else now, but he could not remember the name of
the man she was going to marry; he was glad to have known
her: she was a good and a brave soul. One evening about
half past eleven he saw Lawson, walking along Piccadilly;
he was in evening clothes and might be supposed to be com-
ing back from a theatre. Philip gave way to a sudden impulse
and quickly turned down a side street. He had not seen him
for two years and felt that he could not now take up again
the interrupted friendship. He and Lawson had nothing more
to say to one another. Philip was no longer interested in art;

J18 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

it seemed to him that he was able to enjoy beauty with greater
force than when he was a boy; but art appeared to him unim-
portant. He was occupied with the forming of a pattern out
of the manifold chaos of life, and the materials with which he
worked seemed to make preoccupation with pigments and
words very trivial. Lawson had served his turn. Philip's
friendship with him had been a motive in the design he was
elaborating: it was merely sentimental to ignore the fact that
the painter was of no further interest to him.

Sometimes Philip thought of Mildred. He avoided delib-
erately the streets in which there was a chance of seeing her;
but occasionally some feeling, perhaps curiosity, perhaps some-
thing deeper which he would not acknowledge, made him
wander about Piccadilly and Regent Street during the hours
when she might be expected to be there. He did not know
then whether he wished to see her or dreaded it. Once he
saw a back which reminded him of hers, and for a moment
he thought it was she; it gave him a curious sensation: it was
a strange sharp pain in his heart, there was fear in it and a
sickening dismay; and when he hurried on and found that
he was mistaken he did not know whether it was relief that
he experienced or disappointment.

At the beginning of August Philip passed his Surgery, his
last examination, and received his diploma. It was seven years
since he had entered St. Luke's Hospital. He was nearly thirty.
He walked down the stairs of the Royal College of Surgeons
with the roll in his hand which qualified him to practice,
and his heart beat with satisfaction.

"Now I'm really going to begin life," he thought.

Next day he went to the secretary's office to put his name
down for one of the hospital appointments. The secretary
was a pleasant little man with a black beard, whom Philip
had always found very affable. He congratulated him on his
success, and then said:

"I suppose you wouldn't like to do a locum for a month

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 719

on the South coast? Three guineas a week with board and
lodging."

"I wouldn't mind," said Philip.

"It's at Farnley, in Dorsetshire. Doctor South. You'd have
to go down at once; his assistant has developed mumps. I
believe it's a very pleasant place.".

There was something in the secretary's manner that puz-
zled Philip. It was a little doubtful.

"What's the crab in it.?" he asked.

The secretary hesitated a moment and laughed in a concili-
ating fashion.

"Well, the fact is, I understand he's rather a crusty, funny
old fellow. The agencies won't send him anyone any more.
He speaks his mind very openly, and men don't like it."

"But d'you think he'll be satisfied with a man who's only
just qualified? After all I have no experience."

"He ought to be glad to get you," said the secretary diplo-
matically.

Philip thought for a moment. He had nothing to do for the
next few weeks, and he was glad of the chance to earn a bit
of money. He could put it aside for the holiday in Spain which
he had promised himself when he had finished his appoint-
ment at St. Luke's or, if they would not give him anything
there, at some other hospital.

"All right. I'll go."

"The only thing is, you must go this afternoon. Will that
suit you? If so, I'll send a wire at once."

Philip would have liked a few days to himself; but he had
seen the Athelnys the night before (he had gone at once to
take them his good news) and there was really no reason why
he should not start immediately. He had little luggage to
pack. Soon after seven that evening he got out of the station
at Farnley and took a cab to Doctor South's. It was a broad
low stucco house, with a Virginia creeper growing over it. He
was shown into the consulting-room. An old man was writing
at a desk. He looked up as the maid ushered Philip in. H*

'/20 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

did not get up, and he did not speak; he merely stared at
Philip. Philip was taken aback.

"I think you're expecting me," he said. "The secretary of
St. Luke's wired to you this morning."

"I kept dinner back for half an hour. D'you want to wash.''"

"I do," said Philip.

Doctor South amlised him by his odd manner. He got up
now, and Philip saw that he was a man of middle height,
thin, with white hair cut very short and a long mouth closed
so tightly that he seemed to have no lips at all: he was clean-
shaven but for small white whiskers, and they increased the
squareness of face which his firm jaw gave him. He wore a
brown tweed suit and a white stock. His clothes hung
loosely about him as though they had been made for a much
larger man. He looked like a respectable farmer of the middle
of the nineteenth century. He opened the door.

"There is the dining-room," he said, pointing to the door
opposite. "Your bed-room is the first door you come to when
you get on the landing. Come downstairs when you're ready."
: During dinner Philip knew that Doctor South was examin-
ing him, but he spoke little, and Philip felt that he did not
want to hear his assistant talk.

"When were you qualified.?" he asked suddenly.

"Yesterday."

"Were you at a university?"
, "No."

"Last year when my assistant took a holiday they sent me
a 'Varsity man. I told 'em not to do it again. Too damned
gentlemanly for me.''

There was another pause. The dinner was very simple and
very good. Philip preserved a sedate exterior, but in his heart
he was bubbling over with excitement. He was immensely
elated at being engaged as a locum; it made him feel extremely
grown up; he had an insane desire to laugh at nothing in
particular; and the more he thought of his professional dig-
nity the more he was inclined to chuckle.

OFHUMAN BONDAGE 721

But Doctor South broke suddenly into his thoughts.

"How old are you?"

"Getting on for thirty."

"How is it you're only just qualified?"
I didn't go in for the medical till I was neany twenty-three
and I had to give it up for two years in the middle."

"Why?"

"Poverty."

Doctor South gave him an odd look and relapsed into
silence. At the end of dinner he got up from the table.

"D'you know what sort of a practice this is?"

"No," answered Philip.

"Mostly fishermen and their families. I have the Union
and the Seamen's Hospital. I used to be alone here, but since
they tried to make this into a fashionable sea-side resort a
man has set up on the cliff, and the well-to-do people go to
him. I only have those who can't afford to pay for a docto"-
at all."

Philip saw that the rivalry was a sore point with the old man,

"You know that I have no experience," said Philip.

"You none of you know anything."

He walked out of the room without another word and
left Philip by himself. When the maid came in to clear away
she told Philip that Doctor South saw patients from six till
seven. Work for that night was over. Philip fetched a book
from his room, lit his pipe, and settled himself down to read,
It was a great comfort, since he had read nothing but medical
books for the last few months. At ten o'clock Doctor South
came in and looked at him. Philip hated not to have his feet
up, and he had dragged up a chair for them.

"You seem able to make yourself pretty comfortable,'' said
Doctor South, with a grimness which would have disturbed
Philip if he had not been in such high spirits.
Philip's eyes twinkled as he answered.
"Have you any objection?"
Doctor South gave him a look, but did not reply directly.

722 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"What's that you're reading?"

"Peregrine Pickle. Smollett."

"I happen to know that Smollett wrote Peregrine Pic\le."

"I beg your pardon. Medical men aren't much interested
in hterature, are they?"

Philip had put the book down on the table, and Doctof
South took it up. It was a volume o£ an edition which had
belonged to the Vicar of Blackstable. It was a thin bciok
bound in faded morocco, with a copper-plate engraving as a
frontispiece; the pages were musty with age and stained
with mould. Philip, without meaning to, started forward a
little as Doctor South took the volume in his hands, and a
slight smile came into his eyes. Very little escaped the old
doctor.

"Do I amuse you?" he asked icily.

"I see you're fond of books. You can always tell by the way
people handle them."

Doctor South put down the novel immediately.

"Breakfast at eight-thirty," he said, and left the room.

"What a funny old fellow!" thought Philip.

He soon discovered why Doctor South's assistants found
it difScult to get on with him. In the first place, he set his
face firmly against all the discoveries of the last thirty years:
he had no patience with the drugs which became modish,
were thought to work marvellous cures, and in a few years'
were discarded; he had stock mixtures which he had brought
from St. Luke's, where he had been a student, and had used
all his life; he found them just as efficacious as anything that
had come into fashion since. Philip was startled at Doctor
South's suspicion of asepsis; he had accepted it in deference to
universal opinion; but he used the precautions which Philip
had known insisted upon so scrupulously at the hospital with
the disdainful tolerance of a man playing at soldiers with
children.

"I've seen antiseptics come along and sweep everything

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 723

before them, and then I've seen asepsis take their place.
Bunkum!"

The young men who were sent down to him knew only
hospital practice; and they came with the unconcealed scorn
for the General Practitioner which they had absorbed in the
air at the hospital; but they had seen only the complicated
cases which appeared in the wards; they knew how to treat
an obscure disease of the suprarenal bodies, but were helpless
when consulted for a cold in the head. Their knowledge
was theoretical and their self-assurance unbounded. Doctor
South watched them with tightened lips; he took a savage
pleasure in showing them how great was their ignorance and
how unjustified their conceit. It was a poor practice, of fishing
folk, and the doctor made up his own prescriptions. Doctor
South asked his assistant how he expected to make both ends
meet if he gave a fisherman with a stomach-ache a mixture
consisting of half a dozen expensive drugs. He complained
too that the young medical men were uneducated: their
reading consisted of The Sporting Times and The British
Medical Journal; they could neither write a legible hand nor
spell correctly. For two or three days Doctor South watched
Philip closely, ready to fall on him with acid sarcasm if he
gave him the opportunity; and Philip, aware of this, went
about his work with a quiet sense of amusement. He was
pleased with the change of occupation. He liked the feeling
of independence and of responsibility. All sorts of people came
to the consulting-room. He was gratified because he seemed
able to inspire his patients with confidence; and it v^^as enter-
taining to watch the process of cure which at a hospital
necessarily could be watched only at distant intervals. His
rounds took him into low-roofed cottages in which were
fishing tackle and sails and here and there mementoes of
deep-sea travelling, a lacquer box from Japan, spears and
oars from Melanesia, or daggers from the bazaars of Stamboul;
there was'an air of romance in the stuffy little rooms, and the
salt of the sea gave them a bitter freshness. Philip liked to

724 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

talk to the sailor-men, and when they found that he was not
supercilious they told him long yarns of the distant journeys
of their youth.

Once or twice he made a mistake in diagnosis: (he had
never seen a case of measles before, and when he was con-
fronted with the rash took it for an obscure disease of thf
skin;) and once or twice his ideas of treatment differed from
Doctor South's. The first time this happened Doctor South
attacked him with savage irony; but Philip took it with good
humour; he had some gift for repartee, and he made one or
two answers which caused Doctor South to stop and look
at him curiously. Philip's face was grave, but his eyes were
twinkling. The old gentleman could not avoid the impression
that Philip was chaffing him. He was used to being disliked
and feared by his assistants, and this was a new experience.
He had half a mind to fly into a passion and pack Philip off
by the next train, he had done that before with his assistants;
but he had an uneasy feeling that Philip then would simply
laugh at him outright; and suddenly he felt amused. His
mouth formed itself into a smile against his will, and he turned
away. In a little while he grew conscious that Philip was
amusing himself systematically at his expense. He was taken
aback at first and then diverted.

"Damn his impudence," he chuckled to himself. "Damn
his impudence."

Chapter 117

Philip had written to Athelny to tell him that he was doing
a locum in Dorsetshire and in due course received an answer
from him. It was written in the formal manner he affected,

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 725

^^'^jj^^ with pompous epithets as a Persian diadem was
studded with precious stones; and in the beautiful hand, like
black letter and as difficult to read, upon which he prided him-
J^^ suggested that Philip should join him and his family
in the Kentish hop-field to which he went every year; and
to persuade him said various beautiful and complicated
thmgs about Philip's soul and the winding tendrils of the
hops. Philip replied at once that he would come on the first
day he was free. Though not born there, he had a peculiar
affection for the Isle of Thanet, and he was fired with enthu-
siasm at the thought of spending a fortnight so close to the
earth and amid conditions which needed only a blue sky to
be as idyllic as the olive groves of Arcady.

The four weeks of his engagement' at Farnley passed
quickly. On the cliff a new town was springing up, with red
brick villas round golf Hnks, and a large hotel had recently
been opened to cater for the summer visitors; but Philip went
there seldom. Down below, by the harbour, the little stone
houses of a past century were clustered in a delightful con-
fusion, and the narrow streets, climbing down steeply, had
an air of antiquity which appealed to the imagination. By
the water's edge were neat cottages with trim, tiny gardens
in front of them; they were inhabited by retired captains in
the merchant service, and by mothers or widows of men
who had gained their living by the sea; and they had an
appearance which was quaint and peaceful. In the little
harbour came tramps from Spain and the Levant, ships of
small tonnage; and now and then a windjammer was bor-ne
in by the winds of romance. It reminded Philip of the dirty
little harbour with its colliers at Blackstable, and he thought
that there he had first acquired the desire, which was now
an obsession, for Eastern lands and sunHt islands in a tropic
sea. But here you felt yourself closer to the wide, deep ocean
than on the shore of that North Sea which seemed always
circumscribed; here you could draw a long breath as you
looked out upon the even vastness; and the west wind, the

726 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

dear soft salt wind of England, uplifted the heart and at the
same time melted it to tenderness.

One evening, when Philip had reached his last week with
Doctor South, a child came to the surgery door while the
old doctor and Philip were making up prescriptions. It'was
a little ragged girl with a dirty face and ' bare feet. Philip
opened the door.

"Please, sir, will you come to Mrs. Fletcher's in Ivy Lane
at once?"

"What's the matter with Mrs. Fletcher?" called out Doctor
South in his rasping voice.

The child took no notice of him, but addressed herself
again to Philip.

"Please, sir, her little boy's had an accident and will you
come at once?"

"Tell Mrs. Fletcher I'm coming," called out Doctor South.

The little girl' hesitated for a moment, and putting a dirty
finger in a dirty mouth stood still and looked at Philip.

"What's the matter, Kid?" said Philip, smiling.

"Please, sir, Mrs. Fletcher says, will the new doctor come?"

There was a sound in the dispensary and Doctor South
came out into the passage.

"Isn't Mrs. Fletcher satisfied with me?" he barked. "I've
attended Mrs. Fletcher since she was born. Why aren't I
good enough to attend her filthy brat?"

The little girl looked for a moment as though she were
going to cry, then she thought better of it; she put out her
tongue deliberately at Doctor South, and, before he could
recover from his astonishment, bolted off as fast as she could
run. Philip saw that the old gentleman was annoyed.

"You look rather fagged, and it's a goodish way to Ivy
Lane," he said, by way of giving him an excuse not to go
himself.

Doctor South gave a low snarl.

"It's a damned sight nearer for a man who's got the use
of both legs than for a man who's only got one and a half."

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 727

Philip reddened and stood silent for a while.

"Do you wish me to go or will you go yourself?" he said
at last frigidly.

"What's the good of my going? They want you."

Philip took up his hat and went to see the patient. It was
hard upon eight o'clock when he came back. Doctor South
was standing in the dining-room with his back to the fireplace.

"You've been a long time," he said.

"I'm sorry. Why didn't you start dinner?"

"Because I chose to wait. Have you been all this while at
Mrs. Fletcher's?"

"No, I'm afraid I haven't. I stopped to look at the sunset
en niy way back, and I didn't think of the time."

Doctor South did not reply, and the servant brought in
some grilled sprats. Philip ate them with an excellent appetite.
Suddenly Doctor South shot a question at him.

"Why did you look at the sunset?"

Philip answered with his mouth full.

"Because I was happy."

Doctor South gave him an odd look, and the shadow of a
smile flickered across his old, tired face. They ate the rest
of the dinner in silence; but when the maid had given them
the port and left the room, the old man leaned back and fixed
his sharp eyes on Philip.

"It stung you up a bit when I spoke of your game leg, young
fellow?" he said.

"People always do, directly or indirectly, when they get
angry with me." i,

"I suppose they know it's your weak point."

Philip faced him and looked at him steadily.

"Are you very glad to have discovered it?"

The doctor did not answer, but he gave a chuckle of bitter
mirth. They sat for a while staring at one another. Then
Doctor South surprised Philip extremely.

"Why don't you stay here and I'll get rid of that damned
fool with his mumps?"

728 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"It's very kind of you, but I hope to get an appointment at
the hospital in the autumn. It'll help me so much in getting
other work later."

"I'm offering you a partnership," said Doctor South grump-
ily.

"Why?" asked Philip, with surprise.

"They seem to like you down here."

"I didn't think that was a fact which altogether met with
your approval," Philip said drily.

"D'you suppose that after forty years' practice I care a two-
penny damn whether people prefer my assistant to me? No,,
my friend. There's no sentiment between my patients and me.
I don't expect gratitude from them, I expect them to pay my
fees. Well, what d'you say to it?"

Philip made no reply, not because he was thinking over
the proposal, but because he was astonished. It was evidently,
very unusual for someone to offer a partnership to a newly
qualified man; and he realised with wonder that, although
nothing would induce him to say so, Doctor South had taken
a fancy to him. He thought how amused the secretary at St.
Luke's would be when he told him.

"The practice brings in about seven hundred a year. We
can reckon out how much your share would be worth, and
you can pay me off by degrees. And when I die you can
succeed me. I think that's better than knocking about hos-
pitals for two or three years, and then taking assistantships
until you can afford to set up for yourself."

Philip knew it ^ was a chance that most people in his pro-
fession would jump at; the profession was overcrowded, and
half the men he knew would be thankful to accept the cer-
tainty of even so modest a competence as that.

"I'm awfully sorry, but I can't," he said. "It means giving
up everything I've aimed at for years. In oiie way and another
I've had a roughish time, but I always had that one hope
before me, to get qualified so that I might travel; and now,
when I wake in the morning, my bones simply ache to get off.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 729

I don't mind where particularly, but just away, to places I've
never been to."

■ Now the goal seemed very near. He would have finished
his appointment at St. Luke's by the middle of the following
year, and then he would go to Spain; he could afford to spend
several months there, rambling up and down the land which
stood to him for romance; after that he would get a ship and
go to the East. Life was before him and time of no account.
He could wander, for years if he chose, in unfrequented places,
amid strange peoples, where life was led in strange ways. He
did not know what he sought or what his journeys would
bring him; but he had a feehng that he would learn some-
thing new about life and gain some clue to the mystery that
he had solved only to find more mysterious. And even if he
found nothing he would allay the unrest which gnawed at his
heart. But Doctor South was showing him a great kindness,
and it seemed ungrateful to refuse his offer for no adequate
reason; so in his shy way, trying to appear as matter of fact
as possible, he made some attempt to explain why it was so
important to him to carry out the plans he had cherished
so passionately.

Doctor South listened quietly, and a gentle look came into
his shrewd old eyes. It seemed to Philip an added kindness
that he did not press him to accept his offer., Benevolence is
often very peremptory. He appeared to look upon Philip's
reasons as sound. Dropping the subject, he began to talk of
his own youth; he had been in the Royal Navy, and it was
his long connection with the sea that, when he retired, had
made him settle at Farnley. He told Philip of old days in tJie
Pacific and of wild adventures in China. He had taken part
in an expedition against the head-hunters of Borneo and had
known Samoa when it was still an independent state. He had
touched at coral islands. PhiHp listened to him entranced.
Little by little he told Philip about himself. Doctor South
was a widower, his wife had died thirty years before, and his
daughter had married a farmer in Rhodesia; he had qusir

730 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

relied with him, and she had not come to England for ten
years. It was just as if he had never had wife or child. He was
very lonely. His gruflness was httle more than a protection
which he wore to hide a complete disillusionment; and to
Philip it seemed tragic to see him just waiting for death, not
impatiently, but rather with loathing for it, hating old age
and unable to resign himself to its limitations, and yet with
the feeling that death was the only solution of the bitterness
of his life. Philip crossed his path, and the natural affection
which long separation from his daughter had killed — she had
taken her husband's part in the quarrel and her children he
had never seen — settled itself upon Philip. At first it made
him angry, he told himself it was a sign of dotage; but there
was something in Philip that attracted him, and he found
himself smiling at him he knew not why. Philip did not bore
him. Once or twice he put his hand on his shoulder: it was
as near a caress as he had got since his daughter left England
so many years before. When the time came for Philip to go
Doctor South accompanied him to the station : he found him-
self unaccountably depressed.

"I've had a ripping time here," said Philip. "You've been
awfully kind to me."

"I suppose you're very glad to go?"

"I've enjoyed myself here."

"But you want to get out into the world? Ah, you have
youth." He hesitated a moment. "I want you to remember
that if you change your mind my offer still stands."

"That's awfully kind of you."

Philip shook hands with him out of the carriage window,
and the train steamed out of the station. Philip thought of
the fortnight he was going to spend in the hop-field: he was
happy at the idea of seeing his friends again, and he rejoiced
because the day was fine. But Doctor South walked slowly
hiick to his empty house. He felt very old, and very lonely.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 731

Chapter 118

It was late in the evening when Phihp arrived at Feme. It
was Mr-s. Athelny's native village, and she had been accus-
tomed from her childhood to pick in the hop-field to which
with her husband and her children she still went every year.
Like many Kentish folk her family had gone out regularly,
glad to earn a little money, but especially regarding the annual
outing, looked forward to for months, as the best of holidays.
The work was not hard, it was done in common, in the open
air, and for the children it was a long, delightful picnic;
here the young men met the maidens; in the long evenings
when work was over they wandered about the lanes, making
love; and the hopping season was generally followed by wed-
dings. They went out in carts with bedding, pots and pans,
chairs and tables; and Feme while the hopping lasted was
deserted. They were very exclusive and would have resented
the intrusion of foreigners, as they called the people who came
ftom London; they looked down upon them and feared them
too; they were a rough lot, and the respectable country folk
did not want to mix with them. In the old days the hoppers
slept in barns, but ten years ago a row of huts had been
erected at the side of a meadow; and the Athelnys, like many
others, had the same hut every year.

Athelny met Philip at the station in a cart he had borrowed
from the public-house at which he had got a room for Philip.
It was a quarter of a mile from the hop-field. They left h's
bag there and walked over to the meadow in which were the
huts. They were nothing more than a long, low shed, divided
into little rooms about twelve feet square. In front of each was
a fire of sticks, round which a family was grouped, eagerly

732 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

watching the cooking of supper. The sea-air and the sun had
browned already the faces of Athelny's children. Mrs. Athelny.
seemed a different woman in her sun-bonnet: you felt that
the long years in the city had made no real difference to her;
she was the country woman born and bred, and you could see
how much at home she found herself in the country. She was
frying bacon and at the same time keeping an eye on the
younger children, but she had a hearty handshake and a jolly
smile for Philip. Athelny was enthusiastic over the delights
of a rural existence.

"We're starved for sun and light in the cities we live in. It
isn't life, it's a long imprisonment. Let us sell all we have,
Betty, and take a farm in the country."

"I can see you in the country," she answered with good-
humoured scorn. "Why, the first rainy day we had in the
winter you'd be crying for London." She turned to Philip.
"Athelny's always like this when we come down here. Coun-
try, I like that! Why, he don't know a swede from a mangel
wurzel."

"Daddy was lazy today," remarked Jane, with the frankness
which characterized her, "he didn't fill one bin."

"I'm getting into practice, child, and tomorrow I shall fill
more bins than all bf you put together."

"Come and eat your supper, children," said Mrs. Athelny.
"Where's Sally.?"

"Here I am, mother."

She stepped out of their little hut, and the flames of the
wood fire leaped up and cast sharp colour upon her face. Of
late Philip had only seen her in the trim frocks she had taken
to since she was at the dressmaker's, and there was something
very charming in the print dress she wore now, loose and easy
to work in; the sleeves were tucked up and showed her strong,
round arms. She too had a sun-bonnet.

"You look like a milkmaid in a fairy story," said Philip, as
he shook hands with her.

"She's the belle of the hop-fields," said Athelny. "My word,

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 733

if the Squire's son sees you he'll make you an offer of marriage
betore you can say Jack Robinson."
"The Squire hasn't got a son, father," said Sally.
She looked about for a place to sit down in, and Philip made
room for her beside him. She looked wonderful in the night
u '^^°°'^ ^'^"- She was like some rural goddess, gnd you
thought of those fresh, strong girls whom old Herr'ick had
P""^'^^ ill exquisite numbers. The supper, was simple, bread
and butter, crisp bacon, tea for the children, and beer for Mr,
and Mrs. Athelny and Philip. Athelny, eating hungrily, praised
loudly all he ate. He flung words of scorn at Lucullus and piled
mvectives upon Brillat-Savarin.

"There's one thing one can say for you, Athelny," said hii
wife, "you do enjoy your food and no mistake!"

"Cooked by your hand, my Betty," he said, stretching out
an eloquent forefinger.

Philip felt himself very comfortable. He looked happily at
the line of fires, with people grouped about them, and the
colour of the flames against the night; at the end of the
meadow was a line of great elms, and above the starry sky. The
children talked and laughed, and Athelny, a child among
them, made them roar by his tricks and fancies.

"They think a rare- lot of Athelny down here," said his wife.
"Why, Mrs. Bridges said to me, I don't know what we should
do without Mr. Athelny now, she said. He's always up to
something, he's more like a schoolboy than the father of a
family."

Sally sat in silence, but she attended to Philip's wants in a
thoughtful fashion that charmed him. It was pleasant to have
her beside him, and now and then he glanced at her sun-
burned, healthy face. Once he caught her eyes, and she smiled
quietly. When supper was over Jane and a small brother were
sent down to- a brook that ran at the bottom of the meadow
to fetch a pail of water for washing up.

"You children, show your Uncle Philip where we sleep, and
then ypu must be thinking of going to bed."

734 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Small hands seized Philip, and he was dragged towards the
hut. He went in and struck a match. There was no furniture
in it; and beside a tin box, in , which clothes were kept, there
was nothing but the beds; there were three of them, one
against each wall. Athelny followed Philip in and showed them
proudly.

"That's the stuff to sleep on," he cried. "None of your
spring-mattresses and swansdown. I never sleep so soundly
anywhere as here. You will sleep between sheets. My dear
fellow, I pity you from the bottom of my soul."

The* beds consisted of a thick layer of hopbine, on the top
of which was a coating of straw, and this was covered with a
blanket. After a day in the open air, with the aromatic scent
of the hops all round them, the happy pickers slept like tops.
By nine o'clock all was quiet in the meadow and everyone in
bed but one or two men who still lingered in the public-house
and would not come back till it was closed at ten. Athelny
walked there with Philip. But before he went Mrs. Athelny
said to him:

"We breakfast about a quarter to six, but I daresay you
won't want to get up as early as that. You see, we have to set
to work at six."

"Of course he must get up early," cried Athelny, "and he
must work like the rest of us. He's got to earn his board. No
work, no dinner, my lad."

"The children go down to bathe before breakfast, and they
can give you a call on their way back. They pass The Jolly
Sailor."

"If they'll wake me I'll come and bathe with them," said
Philip.

Jane and Harold and Edward shouted with dehght at the
prospect, and next morning Philip was awakened out of a
sound sleep by their bursting into his room. The boys jumped
on his bed, and he had to chase them out with his slippers.
He put on a coat and a pair of trousers and went down. The

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 735

d^y had only just broken, and there was a nip in the air; but
the sky was cloudless, and the sun was shining yellow. Sally,
holding Connie's hand, was standing in the middle of the
road, with a towel and a bathing-dress over her arm. He saw
now that her sun-bonnet was of the colour of lavender, and
agamst it her face, red and brown, was hke an apple. She
greeted him with her slow, sweet smile, and he noticed sud-
denly that her teeth were small and regular and very white.
He wondered why they had never caught his attention before,

"I was for letting you sleep on," she said, "but they would gc
up and wake you. I said you didn't really want to come."

"Oh, yes, I did."

They walked down the road and then cut across the
marshes. That way it was under a mile to the sea. The water
looked cold and gray, and Philip shivered at the sight of it;,
but the others tore off their clothes and ran in shouting. Sally
did everything a httle slowly, and she did not come into the
water till all the rest were splashing round Philip. Swimming
was his only accomplishment; he felt at home in the water;
and soon he had them all imitating him as he played at being
a porpoise, and a drowning man, and a fat lady afraid of
wetting her hair. The bathe was uproarious, and it was neces-
sary for Sally to be very severe to induce them all to come out.

"You're as bad as any of them," she said to Philip, in her
grave, maternal way, which was at once comic and touching.
"They're not anything like so naughty when you're not here."

They walked back, Sally with her bright hair streaming
over one shoulder and her sun-bonnet in her hand, but when
they got to the huts Mrs. Athelny had already started for the
hop-garden. Athelny, in a pair of the oldest trousers anyone
had ever worn, his jacket buttoned up to show he had no shirt
on, and in a wide-brimmed soft hat, was frying kippers over
a fire of sticks. He was dehghted with himself: he looked
every inch a brigand. As soon as he saw the party he began
to shout the witches' chorus from Macbeth over the odoroias
kippers.

736 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"You mustn't dawdle over your breakfast or mother will be
angry," he said, when they came up.

And in a few minutes, Harold and Jane with pieces of
bread and butter in their hands, they sauntered through the
meadow into the hop-field. They were the laSt to leave. A hop-
garden was one of the sights connected with Philip's boyhood
and the oast-houses to him the most typical feature of the
Kentish scene. It was with no sense of strangeness, but as
though he were at home, that Philip followed Sally through
the long lines of the hops. The sun was bright now and cast
a sharp shadow. Philip feasted his eyes on the richness of the
green leaves. The hops were yellowing, and to him they had
the beauty and the passion which poets in Sicily have found in
the purple grape. As they walked along Philip felt himself
overwhelmed by the rich luxuriance. A sweet scent arose from
the fat Kentish soil, and the fitful September breeze was heavy
with the goodly perfume of the hops. Athelstan felt the ex-
hilaration instinctively, for he lifted up his voice and sang; it
was the cracked voice of the boy of fifteen, and Sally turned
round.

"You be quiet, Athelstan, or we shall have a thunder-
storm."

In a moment they heard the hum of voices, and in a moment
more came upon the pickers. They were all hard at work,
talking and laughing as they picked. They sat on chairs, on
stools, on boxes, with their baskets by their sides, and some
stood by the bin throwing the hops they picked straight into
it. There were a lot of children about and a good many babies,
some in makeshift cradles, some tucked up in a rug on the
soft brown dry earth. The children picked a little and played
a great deal. The women worked busily, they had been pickers
from childhood, and they could pick twice as fast as foreigners
from London. They boasted about the number of bushels
they had picked in a day, but they complained you could not
make money now as in former times: then they paid you a
shilling for five bushels, but now the rate was eight and even

OF HUMAN BONDAGE ^ 73?

nine bushels to the shilling. In the old days a good picker
could earn enough in the season to keep her for the rest of
the year, but now there was nothing in it; you got a holiday
for nothing, and that was about all. Mrs. Hill had boughi
herself a pianner out of what she made picking, so she said,
but she was very near, one wouldn't like to be near like that,
and most people thought it was only what she said, if the truth
was known perhaps it would be found that she had put a bit
of money from the savings bank towards it.

The hoppers were divided into bin companies of ten pickers,
not counting children, and Athelny loudly boasted of the
day when he would have a company consisting entirely of his
own family. Each company had a bin-man, whose duty it was
to supply it with strings of hops at their bins; (the bin was a
large sack on a wooden frame, about seven feet high, and long
rows of them were placed between the rows of hops;) and ii
was to this position that Athelny aspired when his family was
old enough to form a company. Meanwhile he worked rather
by encouraging others than by exertions of his own. He saun-
tered up to Mrs. Athelny, who had been busy for half an
hour and had already emptied a basket into the bin, and/vvith
his cigarette between his lips began to pick. He asserted that he
was going to pick more than anyone that day, but mother; of
course no one could pick so much as mother; that reminded
him of the trials which Aphrodite put upon the curious
Psyche, and he began to tell his children the story of her love
for the unseen bridegroom. He told it very well. It seemed to
Philip, hstening with a smile on his lips, that the old tale
fitted in with- the scene. The sky was very blue now, and he-
thought it could not be more lovely even in Greece. The chil'
dren with their fair hair and rosy cheeks, strong, healthy, and
vivacious; the delicate form of the hops; the challenging
emerald of the leaves, like a blare of trumpets; the magic of
the green alley, narrowing to a point as you looked down the
row, with the pickers in their sun-bonnets : perhaps there was
more of the Greek spirit there than you could find in the books

738 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

of professors or in museums. He was thankful for the beauty
of England. He thought of the winding white roads and the
hedgerows, the green meadows with their elm-trees, the deli-
cate line of the hills and the copses that crowned them, the
flatness of the marshes, and the melancholy of the North Sea.
He was very glad that he felt its loveliness. But presently
Athelny grew restless and announced that he would go and
ask how Robert Kemp's mother was. He knew everyone in the
garden and called them all by their Christian names; he knew
their family histories and all that had happened to them from
birth. With harmless vanity he played the line gentleman
among them^ and there was a touch of condescension in his
familiarity. Philip would not go with him.

"I'm going to earn my dinner," he said.

"Quite right, my boy," answered Athelny, with a wave of
the hand, as he strolled away. "No work, no dinner."

Chapter 119

Philip had not a basket of his own, but sat with Sally. Jane
thought it monstrous that he should help her elder sister rather
than herself, and he had to promise to pick for her when
Sally's basket was full. Sally was almost as quick as her mother.

"Won't it hurt your hands for sewing?" asked Philip.

"Oh, no, it wants soft hands. That's why women pick better
than men. If your hands are hard and your fingers all stiff with
a lot of rough work you can't pick near so well."

He hked to see her deft movements, and she watched him
too now and then with that maternal spirit of hers which was
so amusing and yet so charming. He was clumsy at first, and
she laughed at him. When she bent over and showed him how

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 739

best to deal with a whole line their hands met. He was sur-
prised to see her blush. He could not persuade himself that
she was a wofnan; because he had known her as a flapper, he
could not help looking upon her as a child still; yet the num-
ber of her admirers showed that she was a child no longer;
and though they had only been down a few days one of
Sally's cousins was already so attentive that she had to endure
a lot of chaffing. His name was Peter Gann, and he was the
son of Mrs. Athelny's sister, who had married a farmer near
Feme. Everyone knew why he found it necessary to walk
through the hop-field every day.

A call-off by the sounding of a horn was made for break-
fast at eight, and though Mrs. Athelny told them they had
not deserved it, they ate it very heartily. They set to work
again and worked till twelve, when the horn sounded once
more for dinner. At intervals the measurer went his round
from bin to bin, accompanied by the booker, who entered first
in his own book and then in the hopper's the number of
bushels picked. As each bin was filled it was measured out
in bushel baskets into a huge bag called a poke; and this the
measurer and the pole-puller carried off between them and
put on the waggon. Athelny came back now and then with
stories of how much Mrs. Heath or Mrs. Jones had picked, and
he conjured his family to beat her: he was always wanting to
make records, and sometimes in his enthusiasm picked steadily
for an hour. His chief amusement in it, however, was that it
showed the beauty of his graceful hands, of which he was
excessively proud. He spent much time manicuring them. He
told Philip, as he stretched out his tapering fingers, that the
Spanish grandees had always slept in oiled gloves to preserve
their whiteness. The hand that wrung the throat of Europe,
he remarked dramatically, was as shapely and exquisite as a
woman's; and he looked at his own, as he delicately picked
the hops, and sighed with self-satisfaction. When he grew
tired of this he rolled himself a cigarette and discoursed to
Philip of art and literature. In the afternoon it grew very hot.

740 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Work did not proceed so actively and conversation halted. The
incessant chatter of 'the morning dwindled now to desultory
remarks. Tiny beads of sweat stood on Sally's upper lip, and
as she worked her lips were slightly parted. She was like a
rose-bud bursting into flower.

Calling-oiJ time depended on the state of the oast-house.
Sometimes it was filled early, and as many hops had been
picked by three or four as could be dried during the night.
Then work was stopped. But generally the last measuring of
the day began at five. As each company had its bin measured it
gathered up its things and, chatting again now that work was
over, sauntered out of the garden. The women went back to
the huts to clean up and prepare the supper, while a good
many of the men strolled down the road to the public-house.
A glass of beer was very pleasant after the day's work.

The Athelnys' bin was the last to be dealt with. When the
measurer came Mrs. Athelny, with a sigh of relief, stood up
and stretched her arms : she had been sitting in the same posi-
tion for many hours and was stiff.

"Now, let's go to The Jolly Sailor," said Athelny. "The rites
of the day must be duly performed, and there is none more
sacred than that."

"Take a jug with you, Athelny," said his wife, "and bring
back a pint and a half for supper."

She gave him the money, copper by copper. The bar-parlour
was already well filled. It had a sanded floor, benches round it,
and yellow pictures of Victorian prize-fighters on the walls;
The licencee knew all his customers by name, and he leaned
over his bar smiUng benignly at two young men who were
throwing rings on a stick that stood up from the floor: their
failure was greeted with a good deal of hearty chaff from the
rest of the company. Room was made for the new arrivals.
Philip found himself sitting between an old labourer in cordu-
roys, with string tied under his knees, and a shiny-faced lad
of seventeen with a love-lock neatly plastered on his red fore-
head. Athelny insisted on trying his hand at the throwing of

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 741

rings. He backed himself for half a pint and won it. As he
drank the loser's health he said:

'I would sooner have won this than won the Do-by, my

He was an outlandish figure, with his wide-brimmed hat
and pomted beard, among those country folk, and it was easy
to see that they thought him very queer; but his spirits were
so high, his enthusiasm so contagious, that it was impossible
not to like him. Conversation went easily. A 'certain number
of pleasantries were exchanged in the broad, slow accent of
the Isle of Thanet, and there was uproarious laughter at the
sallies of the local wag. A pleasant gathering! It would have
been a hard-hearted person who did not feel a glow of satis-
faction in his fellows. Philip's eyes wandered out of the win-
dow where it was bright and sunny still; there were Httle white
curtains in it tied up with red ribbon like those of a cottage
window, and oil the sill were pots of geraniums. In due course
one by one the idlers got up and sauntered back to the meadow
where supper was cooking.

'■'I expect you'll be ready for your bed,'' said Mrs. Athelny to
Philip. "You're not used to getting up- at five and staying in
the open air all day."

"You're coming to bathe with us. Uncle Phil, aren't you.?"
the boys cried.

"Rather."

He was tired and happy. After supper, balancing himself
.against the wall of the hut on a chair without a back, he
smoked his pipe and looked at the night. Sally was busy. She
passed in and out of the hut, and he lazily watched her
methodical actions. Her walk attracted his notice; it was not
particularly graceful, but it was easy and assured; she swung
her legs frorri the hips, and her feet seemed to tread the earth
with decision. Athelny had gone ofF to gossip with o''
neighbours, and presently Philip heard his wife " ' i li..
world in general.

"There now, I'm out of tea and I wanted Athelny to go

742 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

down to Mrs. Black's and get some." A pause, and then her
voice was raised: "Sally, just run down to Mrs. Black's and
get me half a pound of tea, will you.? I've run quite out of it."

"All right, mother."

Mrs. Black had a cottage about half a mile along the road,
and she combined the. office of postmistress with that of uni-
versal provider. Sally came out of the hut, turning down her
sleeves.

"Shall I come with you, Sally.?" asked Philip.

"Don't you trouble. I'm not afraid to go alone."

"I didn't think you were; but it's getting near my bed-time,
and I was just thinking I'd like to stretch my legs."

Sally did not answer, and they set out together. The road
was white and silent. There was not a sound in the summer
night. They did not speak much.

"It's quite hot even now, isn't it?" said Philip.

"I think it's wonderful for the time of year." >

But their silence did not seem awkward. They found it was
pleasant to walk side by side and felt no need of words. Sud-
denly at a stile in the hedgerow they heard a low murmur of
voices, and in the darkness they saw the outline of two people.
They were sitting very close to one another and did not move
as Philip and Sally passed.

"I wonder who that was," said Sally.

"They looked happy enough, didn't they.?"

"I expect they took us for lovers too."

They saw the hght of the cottage in front of them, and in
a minute went into the Uttle shop. The glare dazzled them
for a moment.

"You are late," said Mrs. Black. "I was just going to shut
up." She looked at the clock. "Getting on for nine."

Sally asked for her half pound of tea, (Mrs. Athelny could
never bring herSelf to buy more than half a pound at a time,)
and they set off up the road again. Now and then some beast
of the night made a short, sharp sound, but it seemed only
to make the silence more marked.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 743

"I believe if you stood still you could hear the sea," said Sally,
They strained their cars, and their fancy presented them
with a faint sound of little waves lapping up against the
shingle. When they passed the stile again the lovers were still
there, but now they were not speaking; they were in one an-
other's arms, and the man's lips were pressed against the girl's-
"They seem busy," said Sally.

They turned a corner, and a breath of warm wind beat for
a moment against their faces. The earth gave forth its fresh-
ness. There was something strange in the tremulous night,
and something, you knew not what, seemed to be waiting; the
silence was on a sudden pregnant with meaning. Philip had a
queer feeling in his heart, it seemed very full, it seemed to
melt, (the hackneyed phrases expressed precisely the curious
sensation,) he felt happy and anxious and expectant. To his
memory came back those lines in which Jessica and Lorenzo
murmur melodious words to one another, capping each other's
utterance; but passion shines bright and clear through the
conceits that amuse them. He did not know what there was
in the air that made his senses so strangely alert; it seemed
to him that he was pure soul to enjoy the scents and the
sounds and the savours of the earth. He had never felt such an
exquisite capacity for beauty. He was afraid that Sally by
speaking would break the spejl, but she said never a word, and
he wanted to hear the sound of her voice. Its low richness was
the voice of the country night itself.

They arrived at the field through which she had to walk to
get back to the huts. Philip went in to hold the gate open for
her.
"Well, here I think I'll say good-night."
"Thank you for coming all that way with me."
She gave him her hand, and as he took it, he said :
"If you were very nice you'd kiss me good-night like the rest
of the family."
"I don't mind," she said.

744 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Philip had spoken in jest. He merely wanted to kiss her,
because he was happy and he liked her and -the night was so
lovely.

"Good-night -then," he said, with a little laugh, drawing her

towards him.

' She gave him her lips; they were warm and full and soft;
he lingered a little, they were like a flower; then, he knew not
how, without meaning it, he flung his arms round her. She
• yielded quite silently. Her body was firm and strong. He felt
her heart beat against his. Then he lost his head. His senses
overwhelmed him hke a flood of rushing waters. He drew her
into the darker shadow of the hedge.

Chapter 120

Philip slept like a log and awoke with a start to find Harold
tickling his face with a feather. There was a shout of delight
when he opened his eyes. He was drunken with sleep.

"Come on, lazy bones," said Jane. "Sally says she won't wait
for you unless you hurry up."

Then he remembered what had happened. His heart sank,
and, half out of bed already, he stopped; he did not know how
he was going to face her; he was overwhelmed with a sudden
irush of self-reproach, and bitterly, bitterly, he regretted what
he had done. What would she say to him that morning? He
dreaded rr/.eting her, and he asked himself how he could have
been such a fool. But the children gave him no time; Edward
took \i\f bathing-drawers and his towel; Athelstan tore the
bed-clothes away; and in three minutes they all clattered down
into *.he road. Sally gave him a smile. It was as sweet and inno-
cent as it had ever been.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 745

"You do take a time to dress yourself," she said. "I thought
you was never coming."

mere was not a particle of difference in her manner. He
had expected some change, subtle or abrupt; he fancied that
there would be shame in the way she treated him, or anger,
or perhaps some increase of familiarity; but there was nothing.
She was exactly the same as before. They walked towards the
sea all together, talking and laughing; and Sally was quiet,
but she was always that, reserved, but he had never seen her
otherwise, and gentle. She neither sought conversation with
him nor avoided it. Phihp was astounded. He had expected ,
the incident of the night before to have caused some revolu-
tion in her, but it was just as .though nothing had happened;
it might have been a dream; and as he walked along, a little
girl holding on to one hand and a little boy to the others
while he chatted as unconcernedly as he could, he sought
for an explanation. He wondered whether Sally meant the
affair to be forgotten. Perhaps her senses had run away with
her just as his had, and, treating what had occurred as an
accident due to unusual circumstances, it might be that she
had decided to put the matter out of her mind. It was ascrib'
ing to her a power of thought and a mature wisdom which
fitted neither with her age nor with her character. But he
realised that he knew nothing of her. There had been in her
always something enigmatic.

lliey played leap-frog in the water, and the bathe was as
uproarious as on the previous day. Sally mothered them all,
keeping a watchful eye on them, and caUing to them when
they went out too far. She swam staidly backwards and for-
wards while the others got up to their larks, and now an-d
then turned on her back to float. Presently she went out and
began drying herself; she called to the others more or less
peremptorily, and at last only Philip was left in the water.
He took the opportunity to have a good hard swim. He was
more used to the cold water tiiis second morning, and he
revelled in its salt freshness; it rejoiced him to use his limbs

746 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

freely, and he covered the water with long, firm strokes. But
Sally, with a towel round her, went down to the water's edge.

"You're to come out this minute, Philip," she called, as
though he were a small boy under her charge.

And when, smiling with amusement at her authoritative
way, he came towards her, she upbraided him.

"It is nqiughty of you to stay in so long. Your lips are quite
blue, and just look at your teeth, they're chattering."

"All right. I'll come out."

She had never talked to him in that manner before. It was
as though what had happened gave her a sort of right over
him, and she looked upon him as a child to be cared for. In
a few minutes they were dressed, and they started to walk
back. Sally noticed his hands.

"Just look, they're quite blue."

"Oh, that's all right. It's only the circulation. I shall get the
blood back in a minute."

"Give them to me."

She took his hands in hers and rubbed them, first one and
then the other, till the colour returned. Philip, touche'd and
puzzled, watched her. He could not say anything to her on
account of the children, and he did not meet her eyes; but he
was sure they did not avoid his purposely, it just happened
that they did not meet. And during the day there was nothing
in her behaviour to suggest a consciousness in her that any-
thing had passed between them. Perhaps she was a little more
talkative than usual. When they were all sitting again in the
hop-field she told her mother how naughty Philip had been in
not coming out of the water till he was blue with cold. It was
incredible, and yet it seemed that the only effect of the incident
bi. the night before was to arouse in hpr a feeling of protection
towards him: she had the same instinctive desire to mother
him as she had with regard to her brothers and sisters.

It was riot till the evening that he found himself alone with
her. She was cooking the supper, and Philip was sitting on
the grass by the side of the fire. Mrs. Athelny.had gone down

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 747

to the village to do some shopping, and the children were
scattered in various pursuits of their own. Philip hesitated
to speak. He was very nervous. Sally attended to her business
with serene competence and she accepted placidly the silence
which to him was so embarrassing. He did not know how to
begin. Sally seldom spoke unless she was spoken to or had
something particular to say. At last he could not bear it any
longer.

"You're not angry with me, Sally?" he blurted out suddenly.

She raised her eyes quietly and looked at him without
emotion.

"Me? No. Why should I be?"

He was taken aback and did not reply. She took the lid off
the pot, stirred the contents, and put it on again. A savoury
smell spread over the air. She looked at him once mora, with
a quiet smile which barely separated her lips; it was more a
smile of the eyes.

"I always liked you," she said.

His heart gave a great thump against his ribs, and he felt the
blood rushing to his cheeks. He forced a faint laugh.

"I didn't know that."

"That's because you're a silly."

"I don't know why you liked me."

"I don't either." She put a httle more wood on the fire. "I
knew I liked you that day you came when you'd been sleeping
out and hadn't had anything to eat, d'you remember? And me
and mother, we got Thorpy's bed ready for you."

He flushed again, for he did not know that she was aware
of that incident. He remembered it himself with horror and

shame.

"That's why I wouldn't have anything to do with the others.
You remember that young fellow mother wanted me to have?
I let him come to tea because he bothered so, but I knew I'd

say no."
Philip was so surprised that he found nothmg to say. There

748 ■ OF HUMAN BONDAGE

was a queer feeling in his heart; he did not know what it
was, unless it was happiness. Sally stirred the pot once more.

"I wish those children would make haste and come. I don't
know where they've got to. Supper's ready now.','

"Shall I go and see if I can find them?" said Philip.

It was a relief to talk about practical things.

"Well, it wouldn't be a bad idea, I must say. . . . There's
mother coming."

Then, as he got up, she looked at him without embarrass-
ment.

"Shall I come for a walk with you tonight when I've put
the children to bed?"

"Yes."

"Well, you wait for me down by the stile, and I'll come
when I'm ready."

He waited under the stars, sitting- on the stile, and the hedges
with their ripening blackberries were high on each side of
him. From the earth rose rich scents of the night, and the air
was soft and still. His heart was beating madly. He could not
understand anything of what happened to him. He associated
passion with cries and tears and vehemence, and there was
nothing of this in Sally; but he did not know what else but
passion could have caused her to give herself. But passion for
him? He would not have been surprised if she had fallen to
her cousin, Peter Gann, tall, spare, and straight, with his sun-
burned face and long, easy stride. PhiUp wondered what she
saw in him. He did not know if she loved him as he reckoned
love. And yet? He was convinced of her purity. He had a
vague inkhng that many things had combined, things that she
felt though was unconscious of, the intoxication of the air and
the hops and the night, the healthy instincts of the natural
woman, a tenderness that overflowed, and an affection that
had in it something maternal and something sisterly; and she
gave all she had to give because her heart was full of charity.

He heard a step on the road, and a figure came out of the
darkness.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 74S

"Sally," he murmured.

She stopped and came to the stile, jnd with her came sweet,
clean odours of the country-side. She seemed to carry with her
scents of the new-mown hay, and the savour of ripe hops, and
the freshness of young grass. Her lips were soft and full against
his, and her lovely, strong body was firm within his arms.

"Milk and honey," he said. "You're like milk and honey."

He made her close her eyes and kissed her eyelids, first one
and then the other. Her arm, strong and muscular, was bare
to the elbow; he passed his hand over it and wondered at its
beauty; it gleamed in the darkness; she had the skin that
Rubens painted, astonishingly fair and transparent, and on
one side were Httle golden hairs. It was the arm of a Saxon
goddess; but no immortal had that exquisite, homely natural-
ness; and Philip thought of a cottage garden with the dear
flowers which bloom in all men's hearts, of the hollyhock and
the red and white rose which is called York and Lancaster,
and of love-in-a-mist and Sweet William, and honeysuckle,
larkspur, and London Pride.

"How can you care for me?" he said. "I'm insignificant ancf
crippled and ordinary and ugly."

She took his face in both her hands and kissed his Hps.

"You're an old silly, that's what you are," she said.

Chapter 121

When the hops were picked, Philip with the news in hiii
pocket that he had got the appointment as assistant house-
physician at St. Luke's, accompanied the Athelnys back to
London. He took modest rooms in Westminster and at the
beginning of October entered upon his duties. The work was

750 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

interesting and varied; every day he learned something new;
he felt himself of some consequence; and he saw^ a good deal
of Sally. He found life uncommonly pleasant. He was free
about six, except on the days on which he had out-patients,
and then he went to the shop at which Sally worked to meet
her when she came out. There were several young men, who
hung about opposite the 'trade entrance' or a little further
along, at the first corner; and the girls, coming out two and
two or in little groups, nudged one another and giggled as
they recognised them. Sally in her plain black dress looked
very diilerent from the country lass who had picked hops
side by side with him. She walked away from the shop
quickly, but she slackened her pace when they met, and
greeted him with her quiet smile. They walked together
through the busy street. He talked to her of his work at the
hospital, and she told him what she had been doing in the
shop that day. He came to know the names of the girls she
worked with. He found that Sally had a restrained, but keen,
sense of the ridiculous, and she made remarks about the girls
or the men who were set over them which amused him by
their unexpected drollery. She had a way of saying a thing
which was very characteristic, quite gravely, as though there
were nothing funny in it at all, and yet it was sn. sharp-sighted
that Philip broke into delighted laughter. Then she would
give him a little glance in which the smiling eyes showed she
was not unaware of her own humour. They met with a hand-
shake and parted as formally. Once Philip asked her to come
and have tea with him in his rooms, but she refused.
"No, I won't do that. It would look funny."
Never a word of love passed between them. She seemed
not to desire anything more than the companionship of those
walks. Yet Philip was positive that she was glad to be with
him. She puzzled him as much as she had done at the be-
ginning. He did not begin to understand her conduct; but
the more he knew her the fonder he grew of her; she was
competent and self-controlled, and there was a charming

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 751

honesty in her: you felt that you could rely upon her in every
circumstance.

"You are an awfully good sort," he said to her once ^ propos
of nothing at all.

"I expect I'm just the same as everyone else," she answered.

He knew that he did not love her. It was a great affection
that he felt for her, and he liked her company; it was curiously
soothmg; and he had a feeling for her which seemed to him
ridiculous to entertain towards a shop-girl of nineteen: he
respected her. And he admired her magnificent healthiness.
She was a splendid animal, without defect; and physical per-
fection filled him always with admiring awe. She made him
feel unworthy.

Then, one day, about three weeks after they had come back
to London as they walked together, he noticed that she was
unusually silent. The serenity of her expression was altered by
a slight line between the eyebrows : it was the beginning of a
frown.

"What's the matter, Sally?" he asked.

She did not look at him, but straight in front of her, and her
colour darkened.

"I don't know."

He understood at once what she nieant. His heart gave a
sudden, quick beat, and he felt the colour leave his cheeks.

"What d'you mean? Are you afraid that ... ?"

He stopped. He could not go on. The possibility that any-
thing of the sort could happen had never crossed his mind.
Then he saw that her lips were trembling, and she was trying
not to cry. ,

"I'm not certain yet. Perhaps it'll be all right."

They walked on in silence till they came to the corner o£
Chancery Lane, where he always left her. She held out her
hand and smiled.

"Don't worry about it yet. Let's hope for the best."

He walked away with a tumult of thoughts in his head
What a fool he had been! That was the first thing that struck

752 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

him, an abject, miserable fool, and he repeated it to himself a
dozen times in a rush of angry feeling. He despised himseE
How could he have got into such a mess? But at the same
time, for his thoughts chased one another through his brain,
and yet seemed to stand together, in a hopeless confusion, like
the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle seen in a nightmare, he asked
himself what he was going to- do. Everything was so clear
before him, all he had aimed at so long within reach at last,
and now his inconceivable stupidity had erected this new ob-
stacle. Philip had never been able to surmount what he
acknowleged was a defect in his resolute desire for a well-
ordered life, and that was his passion for living in the future;
and no sooner was he settled in his work at the hospital than
he had busied himself with arrangements for his travels. In
the past he had often tried not to think too circumstantially
of his plans for the future, it was only discouraging; but now
that his goal was so near he saw no harm in giving away to
a longing that was so difficult to resist. First of all he meant
to go to Spain. That was the land of his heart; and by now
he was imbued with its spirit, its romance and colour and
history and grandeur; he felt that it had a message for him in
particular which no other country could give. He knew the
fine old cities already as though he had trodden their tortuous
streets from childhood, Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Leon, Tar-
ragona, Burgos. The great painters of Spain were the painters
of his soul, and his pulse beat quickly as he pictured his ecstasy
on standing face to face with those works which were more
significant than any others to his own tortured, restless heart.
He had read the great poets, more characteristic of their race
than the poets of other lands; for they seemed to have drawn
their inspiration not at all from the general currents of the
world's literature but directly from the torrid, scented plains
and the bleak mountains of their country. A few short months
now, and he would hear with his own ears all around him
the language which seemed most apt for grandeur of soul and
passion. His fine taste had given him an inkling that Andalusia

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 753

was too soft and sensuous, a little vulgar even, to satisfy his
ardour; and his imagination dwelt more willingly among the
wmd-swept distances of Castile and die rugged magnificence
of Aragon and Leon. He did not know quite what those
unknown contacts would give him, but he felt that he would
gather from them a strength and a purpose which would make
him more capable of affronting and comprehending the mani-
fold wonders of places more distant and more strange.

For this was only a beginning. He had got into communica-
tion with the various companies which took surgeons out on
their ships, and knew exactly what were their routes, and
from men who had been on them what were the advantages
and disadvantages of each line. He put aside the Orient and
the P. & O. It was difficult to get a berth with them; and
besides their passenger traffic allowed the medical officer little
freedom; but there were other services which sent large tramps
on leisurely expeditions to the East, stopping at all sorts of
ports for various periods, from a day or two to a fortnight,
so that you had plenty of time, and it was often possible to
make a trip inland. The pay was poor and the food no more
than adequate, so that there was not much demand for the
posts, and a man with a London degree was pretty sure to
get one if he applied. Since there were no passengers other
than a casual man or so, shipping on business from some out'
of-the-way port to another, the life on board was friendly and
pleasant. Philip knew by heart the list of places at which they
touched; and each one called up in him visions of tropical sun-
shine, and magic colour, and of a teeming, mysterious, intense
life. Life! That was what he wanted. At last he would come
to close quarters with life. And .perhaps, from Tokio or
Shanghai it would be possible to tranship into some other
line and drop down to the islands of the South Pacific. A doc-
tor was useful anywhere. There might be an opportunity to- go
up country in Burmah, and what rich jungles in Sumatra or
Borneo might he not visit? He was young still and time was
no object to him. He had no ties in England, no friends; he

754 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

could go up and down the world for years, learning the beauty
and the wonder and the variedness of life.

Now this thing had come. He put aside the possibility that .
Sally was mistaken; he felt strangely certain that she was right;
after all, it was so likely; anyone could see that Nature had
built her to be the mother of chilren. He knew what he ought
to do. He ought not to let the incident divert him a hair's
breadth from his path. He thought of Griffiths; he could easily
imagine, with what indifference that young man would have
received such a piece of news; he would have thought it an
awful nuisance and would at once have taken to his heels, like
a wise fellow; he would have left the girl to deal with her
troubles as best she could. Philip told himself that if this had
happened it was because it was inevitable. He was no more
to blame than Sally; she was a girl who knew the world and
the facts of life, and she had taken the risk with her eyes
open. It would be madness to allow such an accident to disturb
the whole pattern of his life. He was one of the few people
who was acutely conscious of the transitoriness of life, and how
necessary it was to make the most of it. He would do what he
could for Sally; he could afford to give her a sufficient sum
of money. A strong man would never allow himself to be
turned from his purpose.

Philip said all this to himself, but he knew he could not do
it. He simply could not. He knew himself.

"I'm so damned weak," he muttered despairingly.

She had trusted him and been kind to him. He simply could
not do a thing which, notwithstanding all his reason, he felt
was horrible. He knew he would have no peace on his travels
if he had the thought ;;onstantly with him that she was
wretched. Besides, there were her father and mother : they had
always treated him well; it was not possible to repay them with
ingratitude. The only thing was to marry Sally as quickly as
possible. He could write to Doctor South, tell him he was
going to be married at once, and say that if his offer still held
he was willing to accept it. That sort of practice, among poor

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 75J

people, was the only one possible for him; there his deformity
did not matter, and they would not sneer at the simple man-
ners ot his wife. It was curious to think of her as his wife, it
gave him a queer, soft feeling; and a wave of emotion spread
over him as he thought of the child which was his. He had
httle doubt that Doctor South would be glad to have him,
and he pictured to himself the life he would lead with Sally
in the fishing village. They would have a little house within
sight of the sea, and he would watch the mighty ships passing
to the lands he would never know. Perhaps that was the wisest
thing. Cronshaw had told him that the facts of life mattered
nothing to him who by the power of fancy held in fee the twin
realms of space and time. It was true. Forever wilt thou love
and she be fair!

His wedding present to his wife would be all his high hopes.
Self-sacrifice! Philip was uplifted by its beauty, and all through
the evening he thought of it. He was so excited that he could
not read. He seemed to be driven out of his rooms into the
streets, and he walked up and down Birdcage Walk, his hearl
throbbing with joy. He could hardly bear his impatience. He
wanted to see Sally's happiness when he made her his offer,,
and if it had not been so late he would have gone to her there
and then. He pictured to himself the long evenings he would
spend with Sally in the cosy sitting-room, the blinds undrawn
so that they could watch the sea; he with his books, while she
bent over her work, and the shaded lamp made her sweet face
more fair. They would talk over the growing child, and when
she turned her eyes to his there was in them the light of love.
And the fishermen and their wives who were his patients
would come to feel a great affection for them; and they in theii'
turn would enter into the pleasures and pains of those simple
lives. But his thoughts returned to the son who would be his
and hers. Already he felt in himself a passionate devotion to>
it. He thought of passing" his hands over his little perfect
limbs, he knew he would be beautiful; and he would make
over to him all his dreams of a rich and varied life. And think'

756 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

ing over the long pilgrimage of his past he accepted it joy-
fully. He accepted the deformity which had made life so hard
for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but now
he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that power
of introspection which had given him so much delight. With-
out it he would never have had his keen appreciation of
beauty, his passion for art and literature, and his interest in
the varied spectacle of life. The ridicule and the contempt
which had so often been heaped upon him had turned his
mind inward and called forth those flowers which he felt
would never lose their fragrance. Then he saw that the iiormal
was the rarest thing in the world. Everyone had some defect,
of body or of mind: he thought of all the people he had
known, (the whole world was like a sick-house, and there was
no rhyme or reason in it,) he saw a long procession, deformed
in body and warped in mind, some with illness of the flesh,
weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit,
languor of vyill, or a craving for liquor. At this moment he
could feel a holy compassion for them all. They were the help^
less instruments of blind chance. He could pardon Griffiths
for his treachery and Mildred for the pain she had caused him.
They could not help themselves. The only reasonable thing
was to accept the good of- men and be patient with .their
faults. The words of the dying God crossed his memory: '"
Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Chapter 122

He had arranged to meet Sally on Saturday in the National
Gallery. She was to come there as soon as she was released
from the shop and had agreed to lunch with him. Two days

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 75i

had passed since he had seen her, and his exultation had not
left him for a moment. It was because he rejoiced in the feeling
that he had not attempted to see her. He had repeated to him-
self exactly what he would say to her and how he should say
it. Now his impatience was unbearable. He had written to
Doctor South and had in his pocket a telegram from him
received that morning: "Sacking the mumpish fool. When
will you come?" Philip walked along Parliament Sti'fret. It was
a fine day, and there was a bright, frosty sun which made the
light dance in the street. It was crowded. There was a tenuous
mist in the distance, and it softened exquisitely the noble line?
of the buildings. He crossed Trafalgar Square. Suddenly hi;;
heart gave a sort of twist in his body; he saw a woman in front
of him who he thought was Mildred. She had the same figure,
and she walked with that slight dragging of the feet which was
so characteristic of her. Without thinking, but with a beating
heart, he hurried till he came alongside, and then, when the
woman turned, he saw it was someone unknown to him. It
was the face of a much older person, with a lined, yellow 5kin.
He slackened his pace. He was infinitely relieved, but it was
not only relief that he felt; it was disappointment too; he was
seized with horror of himself . .Would he never be free from
that passion? At the bottom of his heart, notwithstanding
.everything, he felt that a strange, desperate thirst for that Vile
woman would always linger. That love had caused him so
much suffering that he knew he would never, never quite be
free of it. Only death could finally assuage his desire.

But he wrenched the pang from his heart. He thought
of Sally, with her kind blue eyes; and his lips unconsciously
formed themselves into a smile. He walked up the steps of
the National Gallery and sat down in the first room, so that
he should see her the moment she came in. It always com-
forted him to get among pictures. He looked at none in par-
ticular but allowed the magnificence of their colour, the beauty
of their lines, to work upon his soul. His imagination was busy
with Sally. It would be pleasant to take her away from that

758 Of HUMAN BONDAGE

London in which she seemed an unusual figure, Uke a Corn-
flower in a shop among orchids and azaleas; he had learned
in the Kentish hop-field that she did not belong to the town;
and he was sure that she would blossom under the soft skies
of Dorset to a rarer beauty. She came in, and he got up to meet
her. She was in black, with white cuffs at her wrists and a
lawn collar round her neck. They shook hands.

"Have. you been waiting long?"

"No. Ten minutes. Are you hungry.?"

"Not very."

"Let's sit here for a bit, shall we?"

"If you like."

They sat quietly, side by side, without speaking. Philip
enjoyed having her near him. He was warmed by her radiant
health. A glow of life seemed like an aureole to shine about
her.

"Well, how have you been?" he said at last, with a little
smile.

"Oh, it's all right. It was a false alarm."

"Was it?"

"Aren't you glad?"

An extraordinary sensation filled him. He had felt certain
that Sally's suspicion was well-founded; it had never occurred
to him for an instant that there was a possibility of error. All
his plans were suddenly overthrown, and the existence, so
elaborately pictured, was no more than a dream which would
never be realised. He was free once more. Free! He need give
up none of his projects, and life still was in his hands for him
to do what he liked with. He felt no exhilaration, but only
dismay. His heart sank. The future stretched out before him in
desolate emptiness. It was as though he had sailed for many
y^rs over a great waste of waters, with peril and privation,
and at last had come upon a fair haven, but as he was about to
enter, some contrary wind had arisen and drove him out again
into the open sea; and because he had let his mind dwell on
these soft meads and pleasant woods of the land, the vast

OF HUMAN BONDAGE 759

deserts of the ocean filled him with anguish. He could not
confront again the loneliness and the tempest. Sally looked
at him with her clear eyes.

"Aren't you glad?" she asked again. "I thought you'd be as
pleased as Punch."

He met her gaze haggardly.

"I'm not sure," he muttered.

"You are funny. Most men would."

He realised that he had deceived himself; it was no self-
sacrifice that had driven him to think of marrying, but the
desire for a wife and a home and love; and now that it all
seemed to slip through his fingers he was seized with despair.
He wanted all that more than anything in the world. What
did he care for Spain and its cities, Cordova, Toledo, Leon;
what to him were the pagodas of Burmah and the lagoons of
South Sea Islands? America was here and now. It seemed to N
him that all his Hfe he had followed, the ideals that other
people, by their words or their writings, had instilled into him,
and never the desires of his own heart. Always his course had
been swayed by what he thought he should do and never by
what he wanted with his whole soul to do. He put all thai
aside now with a gesture of impatience. He had lived always
in the future, and the present always, always had slipped
through his fingers. His ideals? He thought of his desire to
make a design, intricate and beautiful, out of the myriad,
meaningless facts of life : had he not seen also that the simplest
pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, married, had
children, and died, was likewise the most perfect? It might
be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it
was a defeat better than many victories.

He glanced quickly at Sally, he wondered what she was
thinking, and then looked away again.

"I was going to ask you to marry me," he said.

"I thought p'raps you might, but I shouldn't have liked to
' stand in your way."

"You wouldn't have done that."

760 OF HUMAN BONDAGE

"How about your travels, Spain and all that?"

"How d'you know I want to travel?"

"I ought to know something about it. I've heard you and
Dad talk about it till you were blue in tte face."

"I don't care a damn about all that." He paused for an
instant and then spoke in a low, hoarse whisper. "I don't want
to leave you! I can't leave you."

She did not answer. He could not tell what she thought.

"I wondtr if you'll marry me, Sally."

She did not move and there was no flicker of emotion on her
face, but she did not look at him when she answered.

"If you like."

"Don't you want to?"

"Oh, of course I'd like to have a house of my own, and it's
about time I was settling down."

He smiled a little. He knew her pretty well by now, and her
manner did not surprise him.

"But don't you want to marry me?"

"There's no one else I would marry.''

"Then that settles it."

"Mother and Dad will be surprised, won't they?'^

"I'm so happy."

"I want my lunch," she said.

"Dear!"

He smiled and took her hand and pressed it. They got up
and walked out of the gallery. They stood for a moment at
the balustrade and looked at Trafalgar Square. Cabs and omni-
buses hurried to and fro, and crowds passed, hastening in
{^V€ry direction, and the sun was shining.