Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham (epub e reader txt) 📖

“You haven’t told me what it is yet.”

“Oh, it’s only a ragged little bit of carpet. I shouldn’t think it’s worth anything. I asked him one day what the devil he’d sent the filthy thing for. He told me he’d seen it in a shop in the Rue de Rennes and bought it for fifteen francs. It appears to be a Persian rug. He said you’d asked him the meaning of life and that was the answer. But he was very drunk.”

Philip laughed.

“Oh yes, I know. I’ll take it. It was a favourite wheeze of his. He said I must find out for myself, or else the answer meant nothing.”

Philip worked well and easily; he had a good deal to do, since he was taking in July the three parts of the First Conjoint examination, two of which he had failed in before; but he found life pleasant. He made a new friend. Lawson, on the lookout for models, had discovered a girl who was understudying at one of the theatres, and in order to induce her to sit to him arranged a little luncheon-party one Sunday. She brought a chaperon with her; and to her Philip, asked to make a fourth, was instructed to confine his attentions. He found this easy, since she turned out to be an agreeable chatterbox with an amusing tongue. She asked Philip to go and see her; she had rooms in Vincent Square, and was always in to tea at five o’clock; he went, was delighted with his welcome, and went again. Mrs. Nesbit was not more than twenty-five, very small, with a pleasant, ugly face; she had very bright eyes, high cheekbones, and a large mouth: the excessive contrasts of her colouring reminded one of a portrait by one of the modern French painters; her skin was very white, her cheeks were very red, her thick eyebrows, her hair, were very black. The effect was odd, a little unnatural, but far from unpleasing. She was separated from her husband and earned her living and her child’s by writing penny novelettes. There were one or two publishers who made a specialty of that sort of thing, and she had as much work as she could do. It was ill-paid, she received fifteen pounds for a story of thirty thousand words; but she was satisfied.

“After all, it only costs the reader twopence,” she said, “and they like the same thing over and over again. I just change the names and that’s all. When I’m bored I think of the washing and the rent and clothes for baby, and I go on again.”

Besides, she walked on at various theatres where they wanted supers and earned by this when in work from sixteen shillings to a guinea a week. At the end of her day she was so tired that she slept like a top. She made the best of her difficult lot. Her keen sense of humour enabled her to get amusement out of every vexatious circumstance. Sometimes things went wrong, and she found herself with no money at all; then her trifling possessions found their way to a pawnshop in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, and she ate bread and butter till things grew brighter. She never lost her cheerfulness.

Philip was interested in her shiftless life, and she made him laugh with the fantastic narration of her struggles. He asked her why she did not try her hand at literary work of a better sort, but she knew that she had no talent, and the abominable stuff she turned out by the thousand words was not only tolerably paid, but was the best she could do. She had nothing to look forward to but a continuation of the life she led. She seemed to have no relations, and her friends were as poor as herself.

“I don’t think of the future,” she said. “As long as I have enough money for three weeks’ rent and a pound or two over for food I never bother. Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.”

Soon Philip grew in the habit of going in to tea with her every day, and so that his visits might not embarrass her he took in a cake or a pound of butter or some tea. They started to call one another by their Christian names. Feminine sympathy was new to him, and he delighted in someone who gave a willing ear to all his troubles. The hours went quickly. He did not hide his admiration for her. She was a delightful companion. He could not help comparing her with Mildred; and he contrasted with the one’s obstinate stupidity, which refused interest to everything she did not know, the other’s quick appreciation and ready intelligence. His heart sank when he thought that he might have been tied for life to such a woman as Mildred. One evening he told Norah the whole story of his love. It was not one to give him much reason for self-esteem, and it was very pleasant to receive such charming sympathy.

“I think you’re well out of it,” she said, when he had finished.

She had a funny way at times of holding her head on one side like an Aberdeen puppy. She was sitting in an upright chair, sewing, for she had no time to do nothing, and Philip had made himself comfortable at her feet.

“I can’t tell you how heartily thankful I am it’s all over,” he sighed.

“Poor thing, you must have had a rotten time,” she murmured, and by way of showing her sympathy put her hand on his shoulder.

He took it and kissed it, but she withdrew it quickly.

“Why did you do that?” she asked, with a blush.

“Have you any objection?”

She looked at him for a moment with twinkling eyes, and she smiled.

“No,” she said.

He got up