Of Human Bondage — LXII

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

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

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

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

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

“It shows the waiters who you are,” she said.

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

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

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

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

“What does that matter? Say you’ll come, darling.”

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

“What does it matter?”

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

“You know, you say you love me, but if you really loved me you’d want to marry me. You’ve never asked me to marry you.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I say, did you mean it the other day that you wouldn’t marry me if I asked you?”

“Yes, why not?”

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

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

“I’m sure I’m very grateful to you, Philip. I’m very much flattered at your proposal.”

“Oh, don’t talk rot. You will marry me, won’t you?”

“D’you think we should be happy?”

“No. But what does that matter?”

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

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

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

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

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

“And what would you get as an assistant?”

“Three pounds a week.”

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

He was silent for a moment.

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

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

“If you cared for me you wouldn’t think of all that.”

“P’raps not.”

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

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

Philip smiled grimly.

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

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

“You are nasty to me,” she answered, aggrieved. “I can’t help noticing those furs, because I said to my aunt…”

“I don’t care a damn what you said to your aunt,” he interrupted impatiently.

“I wish you wouldn’t use bad language when you speak to me Philip. You know I don’t like it.”

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

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

“That’s not a very nice thing to say to me,” she replied sulkily.

“It isn’t,” he laughed. “Let’s go to the Pavilion.”

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

“Merely because I’m less unhappy with you than away from you.”

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

He laughed outright.

“My dear, if you did you’d never speak to me again.”