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

she had made. He awaited her answer with impatience. In it she said that if she had only known before she could have arranged it, but she had promised to go to a music-hall on the Saturday night; besides, it would make the people at the boardinghouse talk if he stayed there. Why did he not come on Sunday morning and spend the day? They could lunch at the Metropole, and she would take him afterwards to see the very superior ladylike person who was going to take the baby.

Sunday. He blessed the day because it was fine. As the train approached Brighton the sun poured through the carriage window. Mildred was waiting for him on the platform.

“How jolly of you to come and meet me!” he cried, as he seized her hands.

“You expected me, didn’t you?”

“I hoped you would. I say, how well you’re looking.”

“It’s done me a rare lot of good, but I think I’m wise to stay here as long as I can. And there are a very nice class of people at the boardinghouse. I wanted cheering up after seeing nobody all these months. It was dull sometimes.”

She looked very smart in her new hat, a large black straw with a great many inexpensive flowers on it; and round her neck floated a long boa of imitation swansdown. She was still very thin, and she stooped a little when she walked (she had always done that,) but her eyes did not seem so large; and though she never had any colour, her skin had lost the earthy look it had. They walked down to the sea. Philip, remembering he had not walked with her for months, grew suddenly conscious of his limp and walked stiffly in the attempt to conceal it.

“Are you glad to see me?” he asked, love dancing madly in his heart.

“Of course I am. You needn’t ask that.”

“By the way, Griffiths sends you his love.”

“What cheek!”

He had talked to her a great deal of Griffiths. He had told her how flirtatious he was and had amused her often with the narration of some adventure which Griffiths under the seal of secrecy had imparted to him. Mildred had listened, with some pretence of disgust sometimes, but generally with curiosity; and Philip, admiringly, had enlarged upon his friend’s good looks and charm.

“I’m sure you’ll like him just as much as I do. He’s so jolly and amusing, and he’s such an awfully good sort.”

Philip told her how, when they were perfect strangers, Griffiths had nursed him through an illness; and in the telling Griffiths’ self-sacrifice lost nothing.

“You can’t help liking him,” said Philip.

“I don’t like good-looking men,” said Mildred. “They’re too conceited for me.”

“He wants to know you. I’ve talked to him about you an awful lot.”

“What have you said?” asked Mildred.

Philip had no one but Griffiths to talk to of his love for Mildred, and little by little had told him the whole story of his connection with her. He described her to him fifty times. He dwelt amorously on every detail of her appearance, and Griffiths knew exactly how her thin hands were shaped and how white her face was, and he laughed at Philip when he talked of the charm of her pale, thin lips.

“By Jove, I’m glad I don’t take things so badly as that,” he said. “Life wouldn’t be worth living.”

Philip smiled. Griffiths did not know the delight of being so madly in love that it was like meat and wine and the air one breathed and whatever else was essential to existence. Griffiths knew that Philip had looked after the girl while she was having her baby and was now going away with her.

“Well, I must say you’ve deserved to get something,” he remarked. “It must have cost you a pretty penny. It’s lucky you can afford it.”

“I can’t,” said Philip. “But what do I care!”

Since it was early for luncheon, Philip and Mildred sat in one of the shelters on the parade, sunning themselves, and watched the people pass. There were the Brighton shop-boys who walked in twos and threes, swinging their canes, and there were the Brighton shop-girls who tripped along in giggling bunches. They could tell the people who had come down from London for the day; the keen air gave a fillip to their weariness. There were many Jews, stout ladies in tight satin dresses and diamonds, little corpulent men with a gesticulative manner. There were middle-aged gentlemen spending a weekend in one of the large hotels, carefully dressed; and they walked industriously after too substantial a breakfast to give themselves an appetite for too substantial a luncheon: they exchanged the time of day with friends and talked of Dr. Brighton or London-by-the-Sea. Here and there a well-known actor passed, elaborately unconscious of the attention he excited: sometimes he wore patent leather boots, a coat with an astrakhan collar, and carried a silver-knobbed stick; and sometimes, looking as though he had come from a day’s shooting, he strolled in knickerbockers, and ulster of Harris tweed, and a tweed hat on the back of his head. The sun shone on the blue sea, and the blue sea was trim and neat.

After luncheon they went to Hove to see the woman who was to take charge of the baby. She lived in a small house in a back street, but it was clean and tidy. Her name was Mrs. Harding. She was an elderly, stout person, with gray hair and a red, fleshy face. She looked motherly in her cap, and Philip thought she seemed kind.

“Won’t you find it an awful nuisance to look after a baby?” he asked her.

She explained that her husband was a curate, a good deal older than herself, who had difficulty in getting permanent work since vicars wanted young men to assist them; he earned a little now and then by doing locums when someone took a holiday or fell ill, and a charitable institution gave them a small pension; but her life was