‘You're getting at me.'
He gave a little shout of joy. He was so happy. But Mildred didn't like being laughed at.
‘I don't see anything funny in telling lies.'
‘Don't be cross.'
He took her hand, which was lying on the table, and pressed it gently.
‘You are lovely, and I could kiss the ground you walk on,' he said.
The greenish pallor of her skin intoxicated him, and her thin white lips had an extraordinary fascination. Her anaemia made her rather short of breath, and she held her mouth slightly open. It seemed to add somehow to the attractiveness of her face.
‘You do like me a bit, don't you?' he asked.
‘Well, if I didn't I suppose I shouldn't be here, should I? You're a gentleman in every sense of the word, I will say that for you.'
They had finished their dinner and were drinking coffee. Philip, throwing economy to the winds, smoked a threepenny cigar.
‘You can't imagine what a pleasure it is to me just to sit opposite and look at you. I've yearned for you. I was sick for a sight of you.'
Mildred smiled a little and faintly flushed. She was not then suffering from the dyspepsia which generally attacked her immediately after a meal. She felt more kindly disposed to Philip than ever before, and the unaccustomed tenderness in her eyes filled him with joy. He knew instinctively that it was madness to give himself into her hands; his only chance was to treat her casually and never allow her to see the untamed passions that seethed in his breast; she would only take advantage of his weakness; but he could not be prudent now: he told her all the agony he had endured during the separation from her; he told her of his struggles with himself, how he had tried to get over his passion, thought he had succeeded, and how he found out that is was as strong as ever. He knew that he had never really wanted to get over it. He loved her so much that he did not mind suffering. He bared his heart to her. He showed her proudly all his weakness.
Nothing would have pleased him more than to sit on in the cosy, shabby restaurant, but he knew that Mildred wanted entertainment. She was restless and, wherever she was, wanted after a while to go somewhere else. He dared not bore her.
‘I say, how about going to a music-hall?' he said.
He thought rapidly that if she cared for him at all she would say she preferred to stay there.
‘I was just thinking we ought to be going if we are going,' she answered.
‘Come on then.'
Philip waited impatiently for the end of the performance. He had made up his mind exactly what to do, and when they got into the cab he passed his arm, as though almost by accident, round her waist. But he drew it back quickly with a little cry. He had pricked himself. She laughed.
‘There, that comes of putting your arm where it's got no business to be,' she said. ‘I always know when men try and put their arm round my waist. That pin always catches them.'
‘I'll be more careful.'
He put his arm round again. She made no objection.
‘I'm so comfortable,' he sighed blissfully.
‘So long as you're happy,' she retorted.
They drove down St James's Street into the Park, and Philip quickly kissed her. He was strangely afraid of her, and it required all his courage. She turned her lips to him without speaking. She neither seemed to mind nor to like it.
‘If you only knew how long I've wanted to do that,' he murmured.
He tried to kiss her again, but she turned her head away.
‘Once is enough,' she said.
On the chance of kissing her a second time he travelled down to Herne Hill with her, and at the end of the road in which she lived he asked her:
‘Won't you give me another kiss?'
She looked at him indifferently and then glanced up the road to see that no one was in sight.
‘I don't mind.'
He seized her in his arms and kissed her passionately, but she pushed him away.
‘Mind my hat, silly. You are clumsy,' she said.
LXI
HE SAW her then every day. He began going to lunch at the shop, but Mildred stopped him: she said it made the girls talk; so he had to content himself with tea; but he always waited about to walk with her to the station; and once or twice a week they dined together. He gave her little presents, a gold bangle, gloves, handkerchiefs, and the like. He was spending more than he could afford, but he could not help it: it was only when he gave her anything that she showed any affection. She knew the price of everything, and her gratitude was in exact proportion with the value of his gift. He did not care. He was too happy when she volunteered to kiss him to mind by what means he got her demonstrativeness. He discovered that she found Sundays at home tedious, so he went down to Herne Hill in the morning, met her at the end of the road, and went to church with her.
‘I always like to go to church once,' she said. ‘It looks well, doesn't it?'
Then she went back to dinner, he got a scrappy meal at a hotel, and in the afternoon they took a walk in Brockwell Park. They had nothing much to say to one another, and Philip, desperately afraid she was bored (she was very easily bored), racked his brain for topics of conversation. He realized that these walks amused neither of them, but he could not bear to leave her, and did all he could to lengthen them till she became tired and out of temper. He knew that she did not care for him, and he tried to force a love which his reason told him was not in her nature: she was cold. He had no claim on her, but he could not help being exacting. Now that they were more intimate he found it less easy to control his temper; he was often irritable and could not help saying bitter things. Often they quarrelled, and she would not speak to him for a while; but this always reduced him to subjection, and he crawled before her. He was angry with himself for showing so little dignity. He grew furiously jealous if he saw her speaking to any other man in the shop, and when he was jealous he seemed to be beside himself. He would deliberately insult her, leave the shop, and spend afterwards a sleepless night tossing on his bed, by turns angry and remorseful. Next day he would go to the shop and appeal for forgiveness.
‘Don't be angry with me,' he said. ‘I'm so awfully fond of you that I can't help myself.'
‘One of these days you'll go too far,' she answered.
He was anxious to come to her home in order that the greater intimacy should give him an advantage over the stray acquaintances she made during her working hours; but she would not let him.
‘My aunt would think it so funny,' she said.
He suspected that her refusal was due only to a disinclination to let him see her aunt. Mildred had represented her as the widow of a professional man (that was her formula of distinction), and was uneasily conscious that the good woman could hardly be called distinguished. Philip imagined that she was in point of fact the widow of a small tradesman. He knew that Mildred was a snob. But he found no means by which he could indicate to her that he did not mind how common the aunt was.
Their worst quarrel took place one evening at dinner when she told him that a man had asked her to go to a play with him. Philip turned pale, and his face grew hard and stern.
‘You're not going?' he said.
‘Why shouldn't I? He's a very nice gentlemanly fellow.'
‘I'll take you anywhere you like.'
‘But that isn't the same thing. I can't always go about with you. Besides he's asked me to fix my own day, and I'll just go one evening when I'm not going out with you. It won't make any difference to you.'
‘If you had any sense of decency, if you had any gratitude, you wouldn't dream of going.'
‘I don't know what you mean by gratitude. If you're referring to the things you've given me you can have them back. I don't want them.'
Her voice had the shrewish tone it sometimes got.
‘It's not very lively, always going about with you. It's always “do you love me? do you love me?” till I just get about sick of it.'
(He knew it was madness to go on asking h
er that, but he could not help himself.
‘Oh, I like you all right,' she would answer.
‘Is that all? I love you with all my heart.'
‘I'm not that sort, I'm not one to say much.'
‘If you knew how happy just one word would make me!'
‘Well, what I always say is, people must take me as they find me, and if they don't like it they can lump it.'
But sometimes she expressed herself more plainly still, and, when he asked the question, answered:
‘Oh, don't go on at that again.'
Then he became sulky and silent. He hated her.)
And now he said:
‘Oh, well, if you feel like that about it I wonder you condescend to come out with me at all.'
‘It's not my seeking, you can be very sure of that, you just force me to.'
His pride was bitterly hurt, and he answered madly:
‘You think I'm just good enough to stand you dinners and theatres when there's no one else to do it, and when someone else turns up I can go to hell. Thank you, I'm about sick of being made a convenience.'
‘I'm not going to be talked to like that by anyone. I'll just show you how much I want your dirty dinner.'
She got up, put on her jacket, and walked quickly out of the restaurant. Philip sat on. He determined he would not move, but ten minutes afterwards he jumped in a cab and followed her. He guessed that she would take a bus to Victoria, so that they would arrive about the same time. He saw her on the platform, escaped her notice, and went down to Herne Hill in the same train. He did not want to speak to her till she was on the way home and could not escape him.
As soon as she had turned out of the main street, brightly lit and noisy with traffic, he caught her up.
‘Mildred,' he called.
She walked on and would neither look at him nor answer. He repeated her name. Then she stopped and faced him.
‘What d'you want? I saw you hanging about Victoria. Why don't you leave me alone?'
‘I'm awfully sorry. Won't you make it up?
‘No. I'm sick of your temper and your jealousy. I don't care for you, I never have cared for you, and I never shall care for you. I don't want to have anything more to do with you.'
She walked on quickly, and he had to hurry to keep up with her.
‘You never make allowances for me,' he said. ‘It's all very well to be jolly and amiable when you're indifferent to anyone. It's very hard when you're as much in love as I am. Have mercy on me. I don't mind that you don't care for me. After all you can't help it. I only want you to let me love you.'
She walked on, refusing to speak, and Philip saw with agony that they had only a few hundred yards to go before they reached her house. He abased himself. He poured out an incoherent story of love and penitence.
‘If you'll only forgive me this time I promise you you'll never have to complain of me in future. You can go out with whoever you choose. I'll be only too glad if you'll come with me when you've got nothing better to do.'
She stopped again, for they had reached the corner at which he always left her.
‘Now you can take yourself off. I won't have you coming up to the door.'
‘I won't go till you say you forgive me.'
‘I'm sick and tired of the whole thing.'
He hesitated a moment, for he had an instinct that he could say something that would move her. It made him feel almost sick to utter the words.
‘It is cruel, I have so much to put up with. You don't know what it is to be a cripple. Of course you don't like me. I can't expect you to.'
‘Philip, I didn't mean that,' she answered quickly, with a sudden break of pity in her voice. ‘You know it's not true.'
He was beginning to act now, and his voice was husky and low.
‘Oh, I've felt it,' he said.
She took his hand and looked at him, her own eyes were filled with tears.
‘I promise you it never made any difference to me. I never thought about it after the first day or two.'
He kept a gloomy, tragic silence. He wanted her to think he was overcome with emotion.
‘You know I like you awfully, Philip. Only you are so trying sometimes. Let's make it up.'
She put up her lips to his, and with a sigh of relief he kissed her.
‘Now are you happy again?' she asked.
‘Madly.'
She bade him good-night and hurried down the road. Next day he took her in a little watch with a brooch to pin on her dress. She had been hankering for it.
But three or four days later, when she brought him his tea, Mildred said to him:
‘You remember what you promised the other night? You mean to keep that, don't you?'
‘Yes.'
He knew exactly what she meant and was prepared for her next words.
‘Because I'm going out with that gentleman I told you about tonight.'
‘All right. I hope you'll enjoy yourself.'
‘You don't mind, do you?'
He had himself now under excellent control.
‘I don't like it,' he smiled, ‘but I'm not going to make myself more disagreeable than I can help.'
She was excited over the outing and talked about it willingly. Philip wondered whether she did so in order to pain him or merely because she was callous. He was in the habit of condoning her cruelty by the thought of her stupidity. She had not the brains to see when she was wounding him.
‘It's not much fun to be in love with a girl who has no imagination and no sense of humour,' he thought, as he listened.
But the want of these things excused her. He felt that if he had not realized this he could never forgive her for the pain she caused him.
‘He's got seats for the Tivoli,' she said. ‘He gave me my choice and I chose that. And we're going to dine at the Café Royal. He says it's the most expensive place in London.'
‘He's a gentleman in every sense of the word,' thought Philip, but he clenched his teeth to prevent himself from uttering a syllable.
Philip went to the Tivoli and saw Mildred with her companion, a smooth-faced young man with sleek hair and the spruce look of a commercial traveller, sitting in the second row of the stalls. Mildred wore a black picture hat with ostrich feathers in it, which became her well. She was listening to her host with that quiet smile which Philip knew; she had no vivacity of expression, and it required broad farce to excite her laughter; but Philip could see that she was interested and amused. He thought to himself bitterly that her companion, flashy and jovial, exactly suited her. Her sluggish temperament made her appreciate noisy people. Philip had a passion for discussion, but no talent for small-talk. He admired the easy drollery of which some of his friends were masters, Lawson for instance, and his sense of inferiority made him shy and awkward. The things which interested him bored Mildred. She expected men to talk about football and racing, and he knew nothing of either. He did not know the catchwords which only need be said to excite a laugh.
Printed matter had always been a fetish to Philip, and now, in order to make himself more interesting, he read industriously The Sporting Times.
LXII
PHILIP DID not surrender himself willingly to the passion that consumed him. He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else. He had been used to delight in the grace of St James's Park, and often he sat and looked at the branches of a tree silhouetted against the sky, it was like a Japanese print; and he found a continual magic in the beautiful Thames with its barges and its wharves; the changing sky of London had filled his soul with pleasant fancies. But now beauty meant nothing to him. He was bored and restless when he was not with Mildred. Sometimes he thought he would console his sorrow by looking at pictures, but he walked through the National Gallery like a s
ightseer; and no picture called up in him a thrill of emotion. He wondered if he could ever care again for all the things he had loved. He had been devoted to reading, but now books were meaningless; and he spent his spare hours in the smoking-room of the hospital club, turning over innumerable periodicals. This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom.
Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped, for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while, as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that he was not cured yet. Though he yearned for Mildred so madly he despised her. He thought to himself that there could be no greater torture in the world than at the same time to love and to contemn.
Philip, burrowing as was his habit into the state of his feelings, discussing with himself continually his condition, came to the conclusion that he could only cure himself of his degrading passion by making Mildred his mistress. It was sexual hunger that he suffered from, and if he could satisfy this he might free himself from the intolerable chains that bound him. He knew that Mildred did not care for him at all in that way. When he kissed her passionately she withdrew herself from him with instinctive distaste. She had no sensuality. Sometimes he had tried to make her jealous by talking of adventures in Paris, but they did not interest her; once or twice he had sat at other tables in the tea-shop and affected to flirt with the waitress who attended them, but she was entirely indifferent. He could see that it was no pretence on her part.
‘You didn't mind my not sitting at one of your tables this afternoon?' he asked once, when he was walking to the station with her. ‘Yours seemed to be all full.'
This was not a fact, but she did not contradict him. Even if his desertion meant nothing to her, he would have been grateful if she had pretended it did. A reproach would have been balm to his soul.
‘I think it's silly of you to sit at the same table every day. You ought to give the other girls a turn now and again.'
But the more he thought of it the more he was convinced that complete surrender on her part was his only way to freedom. He was like a knight of old, metamorphosed by magic spells, who sought the potions which should restore him to his fair and proper form. Philip had only one hope. Mildred greatly desired to go to Paris. To her, as to most English people, it was the centre of gaiety and fashion: she had heard of the Magasin du Louvre, where you could get the very latest thing for about half the price you had to pay in London; a friend of hers had passed her honeymoon in Paris and had spent all day at the Louvre; and she and her husband, my dear, they never went to bed till six in the morning all the time they were there; the Moulin Rouge and I don't know what all. Philip did not care that if she yielded to his desires it would only be the unwilling price she paid for the gratification of her wish. He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even had a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her. He had plied her with liquor in the hope of exciting her, but she had no taste for wine; and though she liked him to order champagne because it looked well, she never drank more than half a glass. She liked to leave untouched a large glass filled to the brim.