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

“Is that all?” she said joyfully. “Griffiths can so easily get another man.”

He wished he had thought of something more urgent than that. It was a clumsy lie.

“No, I’m awfully sorry, I can’t⁠—I’ve promised and I mean to keep my promise.”

“But you promised me too. Surely I come first.”

“I wish you wouldn’t persist,” he said.

She flared up.

“You won’t come because you don’t want to. I don’t know what you’ve been doing the last few days, you’ve been quite different.”

He looked at his watch.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to be going,” he said.

“You won’t come tomorrow?”

“No.”

“In that case you needn’t trouble to come again,” she cried, losing her temper for good.

“That’s just as you like,” he answered.

“Don’t let me detain you any longer,” she added ironically.

He shrugged his shoulders and walked out. He was relieved that it had gone no worse. There had been no tears. As he walked along he congratulated himself on getting out of the affair so easily. He went into Victoria Street and bought a few flowers to take in to Mildred.

The little dinner was a great success. Philip had sent in a small pot of caviar, which he knew she was very fond of, and the landlady brought them up some cutlets with vegetables and a sweet. Philip had ordered Burgundy, which was her favourite wine. With the curtains drawn, a bright fire, and one of Mildred’s shades on the lamp, the room was cosy.

“It’s really just like home,” smiled Philip.

“I might be worse off, mightn’t I?” she answered.

When they finished, Philip drew two armchairs in front of the fire, and they sat down. He smoked his pipe comfortably. He felt happy and generous.

“What would you like to do tomorrow?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m going to Tulse Hill. You remember the manageress at the shop, well, she’s married now, and she’s asked me to go and spend the day with her. Of course she thinks I’m married too.”

Philip’s heart sank.

“But I refused an invitation so that I might spend Sunday with you.”

He thought that if she loved him she would say that in that case she would stay with him. He knew very well that Norah would not have hesitated.

“Well, you were a silly to do that. I’ve promised to go for three weeks and more.”

“But how can you go alone?”

“Oh, I shall say that Emil’s away on business. Her husband’s in the glove trade, and he’s a very superior fellow.”

Philip was silent, and bitter feelings passed through his heart. She gave him a sidelong glance.

“You don’t grudge me a little pleasure, Philip? You see, it’s the last time I shall be able to go anywhere for I don’t know how long, and I had promised.”

He took her hand and smiled.

“No, darling, I want you to have the best time you can. I only want you to be happy.”

There was a little book bound in blue paper lying open, face downwards, on the sofa, and Philip idly took it up. It was a twopenny novelette, and the author was Courtenay Paget. That was the name under which Norah wrote.

“I do like his books,” said Mildred. “I read them all. They’re so refined.”

He remembered what Norah had said of herself.

“I have an immense popularity among kitchen-maids. They think me so genteel.”

Philip, in return for Griffiths’ confidences, had told him the details of his own complicated amours, and on Sunday morning, after breakfast when they sat by the fire in their dressing-gowns and smoked, he recounted the scene of the previous day. Griffiths congratulated him because he had got out of his difficulties so easily.

“It’s the simplest thing in the world to have an affair with a woman,” he remarked sententiously, “but it’s a devil of a nuisance to get out of it.”

Philip felt a little inclined to pat himself on the back for his skill in managing the business. At all events he was immensely relieved. He thought of Mildred enjoying herself in Tulse Hill, and he found in himself a real satisfaction because she was happy. It was an act of self-sacrifice on his part that he did not grudge her pleasure even though paid for by his own disappointment, and it filled his heart with a comfortable glow.

But on Monday morning he found on his table a letter from Norah. She wrote:

Dearest,

I’m sorry I was cross on Saturday. Forgive me and come to tea in the afternoon as usual. I love you.

Your Norah.

His heart sank, and he did not know what to do. He took the note to Griffiths and showed it to him.

“You’d better leave it unanswered,” said he.

“Oh, I can’t,” cried Philip. “I should be miserable if I thought of her waiting and waiting. You don’t know what it is to be sick for the postman’s knock. I do, and I can’t expose anybody else to that torture.”

“My dear fellow, one can’t break that sort of affair off without somebody suffering. You must just set your teeth to that. One thing is, it doesn’t last very long.”

Philip felt that Norah had not deserved that he should make her suffer; and what did Griffiths know about the degrees of anguish she was capable of? He remembered his own pain when Mildred had told him she was going to be married. He did not want anyone to experience what he had experienced then.

“If you’re so anxious not to give her pain, go back to her,” said Griffiths.

“I can’t do that.”

He got up and walked up and down the room nervously. He was angry with Norah because she had not let the matter rest. She must have seen that he had no more love to give her. They said women were so quick at seeing those things.

“You might help me,” he said to Griffiths.

“My dear fellow, don’t make such a fuss about it. People do get over these things, you know. She probably isn’t so wrapped up in you as you think, either. One’s always rather apt to