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Anthony Hope - "Frivolous Cupid"

Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell - "The Square Root of 8"

Wilhelm Busch - "Hans Huckebein"

H. Barber - "The Aeroplane Speaks"

Of Human Bondage

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




"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 ticklish 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. 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 hesitated. 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
venturesome 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 advertisement. There were about a
hundred of them, and whichever 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 shudder. He
dared not risk it.



CVIII


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 surprised to hear from him, for the Vicar of Blackstable had
never written him more than half a dozen letters in his whole life, and
they were on business matters.


Dear Philip,

If you are thinking of taking 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, thank God, a marvellous recovery.
Yours affectionately,
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 the
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 Blackstable 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 their small wages and, with
the whole day on their hands, had nothing to spend. Philip had not been
out of London since his visit to Brighton with Mildred, now two years
before, and he 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
were great bags under the eyes, and he was bent and old. He had grown a
beard during his last illness, and he walked very slowly.

"I'm not at my best today," he said when Philip, 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 no more to Lynn's. At dinner the Vicar sat humped up on his
chair, and the housekeeper who had been with him since his wife's death
said:

"Shall Mr. Philip carve, sir?"

The old man, who had been about to do so from disinclination to confess
his weakness, seemed glad at the first suggestion to relinquish the
attempt.

"You'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 felt 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," said 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
sympathetic expressions. Philip, with a faint smile at his own hypocrisy,
cast down his eyes.

"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 on 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 shoulders 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 frightened 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 delight 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."

"I don't know that I can expect to do that, but I don't see why I
shouldn't see eighty. My mother lived 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 lived to a jolly good old age, didn't they?" he
said, with a queer little 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 immortality of the soul, and
he felt that he had conducted himself 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
consolations 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 London. He passed a
sweltering August behind his screen in the costumes department, drawing in
his shirt sleeves. The assistants in relays went for their holidays. In
the evening Philip generally 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 rage. He
occupied himself, now that the event seemed likely 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
Gaudalquivir; 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 Philip
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 language 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 commendations.

"Father thinks a rare lot of your Uncle Philip," she remarked to her
brothers and sisters.

Thorpe, the eldest boy, was old enough to go on the Arethusa, and Athelny
regaled his family with magnificent descriptions of the appearance the lad
would make when he came back in uniform for his holidays. As soon as Sally
was 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 beginning to tell on
Mrs. Athelny; and sometimes her back ached in the evening so that she had
to sit down and rest herself. 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 reared
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 interfering 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 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 there, 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.



CIX


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 a host of hateful
memories. But at length, impatient with himself, 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 know 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 postmark on
her letter and did not know how many days it had lain in the rack. The
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 little awkward 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 holding
her handkerchief. She made it into a little 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 meeting her eyes. She was much thinner
than when she had left him; and the skin, yellow and dryish, was drawn
more tightly over her cheekbones. 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 at last. "I
thought p'raps you weren't at the 'ospital any more."

Philip did not speak.

"I suppose you're qualified 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 examination 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 pleadingly, not daring to ask for words of comfort but
with all her nerves astrung to receive them: he had none to offer 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.

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