Of Human Bondage (92 page)

  "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 obscene 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!"

  Then she burst again into abominable invective. She
accused him of every mean fault; she said he was 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,
shouting at him an opprobrious, filthy epithet. She seized the
handle 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 at him as though
it were a blow.

  "Cripple!"

  XCVII

  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 get
himself 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 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 placards, 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
renewed 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
contemptuously. He had long known that when his fellows were angry
with him they never failed to taunt him with his deformity. 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 tuberculous 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
treated them good-humouredly; and he had gentle, sensitive hands
which did not hurt them: some of the dressers were a little 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 Macalister's opinion too, and he had told Philip
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 presented 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 evening for
the time of year, and even in those gray streets of South London
there was the languor 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 heartstrings, 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 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 light 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
landing, 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 room, 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
photographs of Philip's mother, the frames had been smashed and the
glass shivered. Philip went into the tiny kitchen. Everything 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 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 Philip IV, had been smashed
with great blows of the coal-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 Philip 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 no value, but he
had bought them one by one for very small sums 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
house, and he was hungry. He went out and got himself something 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 rooms, 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 undamaged; and two days later he moved
into the house opposite the hospital in which he had had rooms when
first he became 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.

  XCVIII

  And now it happened that the fortunes of Philip
Carey, of no consequence to any but himself, were affected by the
events through which his country was passing. History was being
made, and the process was so significant that it seemed absurd it
should touch the life of an obscure medical student. Battle after
battle, Magersfontein, Colenso, Spion Kop, lost on the playing
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 assertion 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, blundering again, at last blundered into
the semblance 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 was 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. To show
how good a thing the senior partner thought it Macalister 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.