‘This is the seventh time I've been,' she said, after the first act, ‘and I don't mind if I come seven times more.'
She was much interested in the women who surrounded them in the stalls. She pointed out to Philip those who were painted and those who wore false hair.
‘It is horrible, these West-end people,' she said. ‘I don't know how they can do it.' She put her hand to her hair. ‘Mine's all my own, every bit of it.'
She found no one to admire, and whenever she spoke of anyone it was to say something disagreeable. It made Philip uneasy. He supposed that next day she would tell the girls in the shop that he had taken her out and that he bored her to death. He disliked her, and yet, he knew not why, he wanted to be with her. On the way home he asked:
‘I hope you've enjoyed yourself?'
‘Rather.'
‘Will you come out with me again one evening?'
‘I don't mind.'
He could never get beyond such expressions as that. Her indifference maddened him.
‘That sounds as if you didn't much care if you came or not.'
‘Oh, if you don't take me out some other fellow will. I need never want for men who'll take me to the theatre.'
Philip was silent. They came to the station, and he went to the booking-office.
‘I've got my season,' she said.
‘I thought I'd take you home as it's rather late, if you don't mind.'
‘Oh, I don't mind if it gives you any pleasure.'
He took a single first for her and a return for himself.
‘Well, you're not mean, I will say that for you,' she said, when he opened the carriage door.
Philip did not know whether he was pleased or sorry when other people entered and it was impossible to speak. They got out at Herne Hill, and he accompanied her to the corner of the road in which she lived.
‘I'll say good-night to you here,' she said, holding out her hand. ‘You'd better not come up to the door. I know what people are, and I don't want to have anybody talking.'
She said good-night and walked quickly away. He could see the white shawl in the darkness. He thought she might turn round, but she did not. Philip saw which house she went into, and in a moment he walked along to look at it. It was a trim, common little house of yellow brick, exactly like all the other little houses in the street. He stood outside for a few minutes, and presently the window on the top floor was darkened. Philip strolled slowly back to the station. The evening had been unsatisfactory. He felt irritated, restless, and miserable.
When he lay in bed he seemed still to see her sitting in the corner of the railway carriage, with the white crochet shawl over her head. He did not know how he was to get through the hours that must pass before his eyes rested on her again. He thought drowsily of her thin face, with its delicate features, and the greenish pallor of her skin. He was not happy with her, but he was unhappy away from her. He wanted to sit by her side and look at her, he wanted to touch her, he wanted . . . the thought came to him and he did not finish it, suddenly he grew wide awake . . . he wanted to kiss the thin, pale mouth with its narrow lips. The truth came to him at last. He was in love with her. It was incredible.
He had often thought of falling in love, and there was one scene which he had pictured to himself over and over again. He saw himself coming into a ballroom; his eyes fell on a little group of men and women talking; and one of the women turned round. Her eyes fell upon him, and he knew that the gasp in his throat was in her throat too. He stood quite still. She was tall and dark and beautiful, with eyes like the night; she was dressed in white, and in her black hair shone diamonds; they stared at one another, forgetting that people surrounded them. He went straight up to her, and she moved a little towards him. Both felt that the formality of introduction was out of place. He spoke to her.
‘I've been looking for you all my life,' he said.
‘You've come at last,' she murmured.
‘Will you dance with me?'
She surrendered herself to his outstretched hands and they danced. (Philip always pretended that he was not lame.) She danced divinely.
‘I've never danced with anyone who danced like you,' she said.
She tore up her programme, and they danced together the whole evening.
‘I'm so thankful that I waited for you,' he said to her. ‘I knew that in the end I must meet you.'
People in the ballroom stared. They did not care. They did not wish to hide their passion. At last they went into the garden. He flung a light cloak over her shoulders and put her in a waiting cab. They caught the midnight train to Paris; and they sped through the silent, star-lit night into the unknown.
He thought of this old fancy of his, and it seemed impossible that he should be in love with Mildred Rogers. Her name was grotesque. He did not think her pretty; he hated the thinness of her, only that evening he had noticed how the bones of her chest stood out in evening dress; he went over her features one by one; he did not like her mouth, and the unhealthiness of her colour vaguely repelled him. She was common. Her phrases, so bald and few, constantly repeated, showed the emptiness of her mind; he recalled her vulgar little laugh at the jokes of the musical comedy; and he remembered the little finger carefully extended when she held her glass to her mouth; her manners, like her conversation, were odiously genteel. He remembered her insolence; sometimes he had felt inclined to box her ears; and suddenly, he knew not why, perhaps it was the thought of hitting her or the recollection of her tiny, beautiful ears, he was seized by an uprush of emotion. He yearned for her. He thought of taking her in his arms, the thin, fragile body, and kissing her pale mouth; he wanted to pass his fingers down the slightly greenish cheeks. He wanted her.
He had thought of love as a rapture which seized one so that all the world seemed spring-like, he had looked forward to an ecstatic happiness; but this was not happiness; it was a hunger of the soul, it was a painful yearning, it was a bitter anguish, he had never known before. He tried to think when it had first come to him. He did not know. He only remembered that each time he had gone into the shop, after the first two or three times, it had been with a little feeling in the heart that was pain; and he remembered that when she spoke to him he felt curiously breathless. When she left him it was wretchedness, and when she came to him again it was despair.
He stretched himself in his bed as a dog stretches himself. He wondered how he was going to endure that ceaseless aching of his soul.
LVIII
PHILIP WOKE early next morning, and his first thought was of Mildred. It struck him that he might meet her at Victoria Station and walk with her to the shop. He shaved quickly, scrambled into his clothes, and took a bus to the station. He was there by twenty to eight and watched the incoming trains. Crowds poured out of them, clerks and shop-people at that early hour, and thronged up the platform: they hurried along, sometimes in pairs, here and there a group of girls, but more often alone. They were white, most of them, ugly in the early morning, and they had an abstracted look; the younger ones walked lightly, as though the cement of the platform were pleasant to tread, but the others went as though impelled by a machine: their faces were set in an anxious frown.
At last Philip saw Mildred, and he went up to her eagerly.
‘Good morning,' he said. ‘I thought I'd come and see how you were after last night.'
She wore an old brown ulster and a sailor hat. It was very clear that she was not pleased to see him.
‘Oh, I'm all right. I haven't got much time to waste.'
‘D'you mind if I walk down Victoria Street with you?'
‘I'm none too early. I shall have to walk fast,' she answered, looking down at Philip's club-foot.
He turned scarlet.
‘I beg your pardon. I won't detain you.'
‘You can please yourself.'
She went on, and he with a sinking heart made his way home to breakfast. He hated her. He knew he was a fool to bother about her; she was not the sort of woman who would ev
er care two straws for him, and she must look upon his deformity with distaste. He made up his mind that he would not go in to tea that afternoon, but, hating himself, he went. She nodded to him as he came in and smiled.
‘I expect I was rather short with you this morning,' she said. ‘You see, I didn't expect you, and it came like a surprise.'
‘Oh, it doesn't matter at all.'
He felt that a great weight had suddenly been lifted from him. He was infinitely grateful for one word of kindness.
‘Why don't you sit down?' he asked. ‘Nobody's wanting you just now.'
‘I don't mind if I do.'
He looked at her, but could think of nothing to say; he racked his brains anxiously, seeking for a remark which should keep her by him; he wanted to tell her how much she meant to him; but he did not know how to make love now that he loved in earnest.
‘Where's your friend with the fair moustache? I haven't seen him lately.'
‘Oh, he's gone back to Birmingham. He's in business there. He only comes up to London every now and again.'
‘Is he in love with you?'
‘You'd better ask him,' she said, with a laugh. ‘I don't know what it's got to do with you if he is.'
A bitter answer leaped to his tongue, but he was learning self-restraint.
‘I wonder why you say things like that,' was all he permitted himself to say.
She looked at him with those indifferent eyes of hers.
‘It looks as if you didn't set much store on me,' he added.
‘Why should I?'
‘No reason at all.'
He reached over for his paper.
‘You are quick-tempered,' she said, when she saw the gesture. ‘You do take offence easily.'
He smiled and looked at her appealingly.
‘Will you do something for me?' he asked.
‘That depends what it is.'
‘Let me walk back to the station with you tonight.'
‘I don't mind.'
He went out after tea and went back to his rooms, but at eight o'clock, when the shop closed, he was waiting outside.
‘You are a caution,' she said, when she came out. ‘I don't understand you.'
‘I shouldn't have thought it was very difficult,' he answered bitterly.
‘Did any of the girls see you waiting for me?'
‘I don't know and I don't care.'
‘They all laugh at you, you know. They say you're spoony on me.'
‘Much you care,' he muttered.
‘Now then, quarrelsome.'
At the station he took a ticket and said he was going to accompany her home.
‘You don't seem to have much to do with your time,' she said.
‘I suppose I can waste it in my own way.'
They seemed to be always on the verge of a quarrel. The fact was that he hated himself for loving her. She seemed to be constantly humiliating him, and for each snub that he endured he owed her a grudge. But she was in a friendly mood that evening, and talkative: she told him that her parents were dead; she gave him to understand that she did not have to earn her living, but worked for amusement.
‘My aunt doesn't like my going to business. I can have the best of everything at home. I don't want you to think I work because I need to.'
Philip knew that she was not speaking the truth. The gentility of her class made her use this pretence to avoid the stigma attached to earning her living.
‘My family's very well-connected,' she said.
Philip smiled faintly, and she noticed it.
‘What are you laughing at?' she said quickly. ‘Don't you believe I'm telling you the truth?'
‘Of course I do,' he answered.
She looked at him suspiciously, but in a moment could not resist the temptation to impress him with the splendour of her early days.
‘My father always kept a dog-cart, and we had three servants. We had a cook and a housemaid and an odd man. We used to grow beautiful roses. People used to stop at the gate and ask who the house belonged to, the roses were so beautiful. Of course it isn't very nice for me having to mix with them girls in the shop, it's not the class of person I've been used to, and sometimes I really think I'll give up business on that account. It's not the work I mind, don't think that; but it's the class of people I have to mix with.'
They were sitting opposite one another in the train, and Philip, listening sympathetically to what she said, was quite happy. He was amused at her naïveté and slightly touched. There was a very faint colour in her cheeks. He was thinking that it would be delightful to kiss the tip of her chin.
‘The moment you come into the shop I saw you was a gentleman in every sense of the word. Was your father a professional man?'
‘He was a doctor.'
‘You can always tell a professional man. There's something about them. I don't know what it is, but I know at once.'
They walked along from the station together.
‘I say, I want you to come and see another play with me,' he said.
‘I don't mind,' she said.
‘You might go so far as to say you'd like to.'
‘Why?'
‘It doesn't matter. Let's fix a day. Would Saturday night suit you?'
‘Yes, that'll do.'
They made further arrangements, and then found themselves at the corner of the road in which she lived. She gave him her hand, and he held it.
‘I say, I do so awfully want to call you Mildred.'
‘You may if you like, I don't care.'
‘And you'll call me Philip, won't you?'
‘I will if I can think of it. It seems more natural to call you Mr Carey.'
He drew her slightly towards him, but she leaned back.
‘What are you doing?'
‘Won't you kiss me good-night?' he whispered.
‘Impudence!' she said.
She snatched away her hand and hurried towards her house.
Philip bought tickets for Saturday night. It was not one of the days on which she got off early and therefore she would have no time to go home and change; but she meant to bring a frock up with her in the morning and hurry into her clothes at the shop. If the manageress was in a good temper she would let her go at seven. Philip had agreed to wait outside from a quarter past seven onwards. He looked forward to the occasion with painful eagerness, for in the cab on the way from the theatre to the station he thought she would let him kiss her. The vehicle gave every facility for a man to put his arm round a girl's waist (an advantage which the hansom had over the taxi of the present day), and the delight of that was worth the cost of the evening's entertainment.
But on Saturday afternoon when he went in to have tea, in order to confirm the arrangements, he met the man with the fair moustache coming out of the shop. He knew by now that he was called Miller. He was a naturalized German, who had anglicized his name, and he had lived many years in England. Philip had heard him speak, and, though his English was fluent and natural, it had not quite the intonation of the native. Philip knew that he was flirting with Mildred, and he was horribly jealous of him; but he took comfort in the coldness of her temperament, which otherwise distressed him; and, thinking her incapable of passion, he looked upon his rival as no better off than himself. But his heart sank now, for his first thought was that Miller's sudden appearance might interfere with the jaunt which he had so looked forward to. He entered, sick with apprehension. The waitress came up to him, took his order for tea, and presently brought it.
‘I'm awfully sorry,' she said, with an expression on her face of real distress. ‘I shan't be able to come tonight after all.'
‘Why?' said Philip.
‘Don't look so stern about it,' she laughed. ‘It's not my fault. My aunt was taken ill last night, and it's the girl's night out so I must go and sit with her. She can't be left alone, can she?'
‘It doesn't matter. I'll see you home instead.'
‘But you've got the tickets. It would be a pity to waste them.'
>
He took them out of his pocket and deliberately tore them up.
‘What are you doing that for?'
‘You don't suppose I want to go and see a rotten musical comedy by myself, do you? I only took seats there for your sake.'
‘You can't see me home if that's what you mean.'
‘You've made other arrangements.'
‘I don't know what you mean by that. You're just as selfish as all the rest of them. You only think of yourself. It's not my fault if my aunt's queer.'
She quickly wrote out his bill and left him. Philip knew very little about women, or he would have been aware that one should accept their most transparent lies. He made up his mind that he would watch the shop and see for certain whether Mildred went out with the German. He had an unhappy passion for certainty. At seven he stationed himself on the opposite pavement. He looked about for Miller, but did not see him. In ten minutes she came out, she had on the cloak and shawl which she had worn when he took her to the Shaftesbury Theatre. It was obvious that she was not going home. She saw him before he had time to move away, started a little, and then came straight up to him.
‘What are you doing here?' she said.
‘Taking the air,' he answered.
‘You're spying on me, you dirty little cad. I thought you was a gentleman.'
‘Did you think a gentleman would be likely to take any interest in you?' he murmured.
There was a devil within him which forced him to make matters worse. He wanted to hurt her as much as she was hurting him.
‘I suppose I can change my mind if I like. I'm not obliged to come out with you. I tell you I'm going home, and I won't be followed or spied upon.'
‘Have you seen Miller today?'
‘That's no business of yours. In point of fact I haven't, so you're wrong again.'
‘I saw him this afternoon. He'd just come out of the shop when I went in.'