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Booth Tarkington - "The Conquest of Canaan"

Emma Wolf - "Other Things Being Equal"

Earl Derr Biggers - "The Agony Column"

Robert Louis Stevenson - "Underwoods"

Of Human Bondage

W >> W. Somerset Maugham >> Of Human Bondage




"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
fleur 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 than 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 he lives with has been
giving him a rotten time."

"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's only a ragged little bit of carpet. I shouldn't think it's worth
anything. I asked 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."

Philip 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."



LXVI


Philip worked well and easily; he had a good deal to do, since he was
taking in July the three parts of the First Conjoint examination, two of
which he had failed in before; but he found life pleasant. He made a new
friend. Lawson, on the lookout 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 welcome, and went again. Mrs.
Nesbit was not more than twenty-five, very small, with a pleasant, ugly
face; she had very bright eyes, high cheekbones, and a large mouth: the
excessive contrasts 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 publishers 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 was
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 like 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 pawnshop in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, and
she ate bread and butter till things grew brighter. She never lost her
cheerfulness.

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 money
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 sympathy was new to him, and he delighted in someone who
gave a willing ear to all his 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 with the one's
obstinate stupidity, which refused interest to everything she did not
know, the other's quick appreciation and ready 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 in an upright chair, sewing, for she had
no time to do nothing, and Philip had made himself comfortable at her
feet.

"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 murmured, 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 blush.

"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.

"Norah, you're not fond of me, are you?" he asked, incredulously.

"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 with 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
received 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 tenderness. 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 me 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 conversation. She restored his
belief in himself and put healing ointments, as it were, on all the
bruises of his soul. He was 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 believe 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 bush 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.

"You 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, smiling. "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 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 like," he said to her 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
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 holiday 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."

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."



LXVII


Philip looked forward to his return to London with impatience. 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 publishers 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 examination. 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 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
away. 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 consolation 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 drank two or three glasses of whiskey
he was inclined to be elegiac.

"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 discovered 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?"

"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," said 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 feelings; he mingled
idleness and idealism so that he could not separate them. At Lawson's
studio one day he met a 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 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. Hayward smiled enigmatically.

But Hayward could still talk delightfully about books; his taste was
exquisite and his discrimination elegant; and he had a constant interest
in ideas, which made him an entertaining 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 Philip and Lawson to a tavern situated in Beak
Street, remarkable not only in itself and for its history--it had memories
of eighteenth-century glories which excited the romantic imagination--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 Haydon; 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 at 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 brocades 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. He was a student of Kant and judged everything from the standpoint
of pure reason. He was fond of expounding his doctrines. Philip listened
with excited interest. He had long 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 conduct of life. It seemed to him that life lived
itself. He remembered 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 experience (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 himself 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
soul was striving for.

Macalister reminded him of the Categorical Imperative.

"Act so that every action of yours should be capable of 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 Immanuel 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 Imperative?" (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."

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