“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.”
LXIII
Philip did not pass the examination in anatomy at the end of March. He and Dunsford had worked at the subject together on Philip’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 poverty made picturesque by song and laughter, of lawless love made romantic by beauty and youth. He never attacked her prejudices directly, but sought to combat them by the suggestion 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 himself be angry, he never asked for anything, he never complained, he never scolded. When she made engagements and broke them, he met her next day with 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 sentiment 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 of 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.
“All right,” he said. “Where would you like to go afterwards?”
“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 conversation 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 extravagant 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 little 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.”
“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, are you? The fact 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 perhaps 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 believe 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 dinner. 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 unconsciously.
“I suppose it was inevitable,” he said at last. “You were bound to accept the highest bidder. When are you going to marry?”
“On Saturday next. I have given notice.”
Philip felt a sudden pang.
“As soon as that?”
“We’re going to be married at a registry office. Emil prefers it.”
Philip felt dreadfully tired. He wanted to get away 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 I 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 smile 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.
LXIV
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 time till his brain reeled. It was inevitable that she should marry: life was hard for a girl who had to 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 a great part of his wretchedness. He despised himself as muc
h 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: Hayward 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 afford, but it was showy and vulgar: he knew she would be aware exactly how much it cost; he got a melancholy satisfaction in choosing a gift which would give her pleasure and at the same time indicate for himself the contempt he had for her.
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 letter 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 Hayward 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, and 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 subject led to another; they talked excitedly. The sun was shining and the air was warm.
Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated) Page 194
