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OF HUMAN BONDAGE...................................................................................................................................1

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM................................................................................................................1

THE day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested

snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced

mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed.

She pulled down the bedclothes, took him in her arms, and carried him downstairs. He was only half awake.

She opened the door of a room on the floor below and took the child over to a bed in which a woman was

lying. It was his mother. She stretched out her arms, and the child nestled by her side. He did not ask why he

had been awakened. The woman kissed his eyes, and with thin, small hands felt the warm body through his

Her voice was so weak that it seemed to come already from a great distance. The child did not answer, but

smiled comfortably. He was very happy in the large, warm bed, with those soft arms about him. He tried to

make himself smaller still as he cuddled up against his mother, and he kissed her sleepily. In a moment he

closed his eyes and was fast asleep. The doctor came forwards and stood by the bedside.

The doctor, without answering, looked at her gravely. Knowing she would not be allowed to keep the child

much longer, the woman kissed him again; and she passed her hand down his body till she came to his feet;

she held the right foot in her hand and felt the five small toes; and then slowly passed her hand over the left

She shook her head, unable to speak, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. The doctor bent down.

She was too weak to resist his wish, and she gave the child up. The doctor handed him back to his nurse.

"Very well, sir." The little boy, still sleeping, was taken away. His mother sobbed now brokenheartedly.

The monthly nurse tried to quiet her, and presently, from exhaustion, the crying ceased. The doctor walked to

a table on the other side of the room, upon which, under a towel, lay the body of a stillborn child. He lifted

the towel and looked. He was hidden from the bed by a screen, but the woman guessed what he was doing.

The woman did not answer. In a moment the child's nurse came back. She approached the bed.

"Master Philip never woke up," she said. There was a pause. Then the doctor felt his patient's pulse once

"I don't think there's anything I can do just now," he said. "I'll call again after breakfast."

IT was a week later. Philip was sitting on the floor in the drawingroom at Miss Watkin's house in Onslow

gardens. He was an only child and used to amusing himself. The room was filled with massive furniture, and

on each of the sofas were three big cushions. There was a cushion too in each armchair. All these he had

taken and, with the help of the gilt rout chairs, light and easy to move, had made an elaborate cave in which

he could hide himself from the Red Indians who were lurking behind the curtains. He put his ear to the floor

and listened to the herd of buffaloes that raced across the prairie. Presently, hearing the door open, he held his

breath so that he might not be discovered; but a violent hand piled away a chair and the cushions fell down.

The nurse bent down and kissed him, then began to shake out the cushions, and put them back in their places.

It was in eighteeneightyfive, and she wore a bustle. Her gown was of black velvet, with tight sleeves and

sloping shoulders, and the skirt had three large flounces. She wore a black bonnet with velvet strings. She

hesitated. The question she had expected did not come, and so she could not give the answer she had

"Your mamma's gone away. You won't ever see her any more." Philip did not know what she meant.

She began to cry, and Philip, though he did not quite under stand, cried too. Emma was a tall, bigboned

woman, with fair hair and large features. She came from Devonshire and, notwithstanding her many years of

service in London, had never lost the breadth of her accent. Her tears increased her emotion, and she pressed

the little boy to her heart. She felt vaguely the pity of that child deprived of the only love in the world that is

quite unselfish. It seemed dreadful that he must be handed over to strangers. But in a little while she pulled

"Your Uncle William is waiting in to see you," she said. "Go and say goodbye to Miss Watkin, and we'll go

"I don't want to say goodbye," he answered, instinctively anxious to hide his tears.

He fetched it, and when he came down Emma was waiting for him in the hall. He heard the sound of voices

in the study behind the diningroom. He paused. He knew that Miss Watkin and her sister were talking to

friends, and it seemed to himhe was nine years oldthat if he went in they would be sorry for him.

He wished to make the most of his opportunity. Emma knocked at the door and walked in. He heard her

There was a sudden hush of the conversation, and Philip limped in. Henrietta Watkin was a stout woman,

with a red face and dyed hair. In those days to dye the hair excited comment, and Philip had heard much

gossip at home when his godmother's changed colour. She lived with an elder sister, who had resigned herself

contentedly to old age. Two ladies, whom Philip did not know, were calling, and they looked at him

She began to cry. Philip understood now why she had not been in to luncheon and why she wore a black

He disengaged himself from Miss Watkin's arms, and she kissed him again. Then he went to her sister and

bade her goodbye too. One of the strange ladies asked if she might kiss him, and he gravely gave her

permission. Though crying, he keenly enjoyed the sensation he was causing; he would have been glad to stay

a little longer to be made much of, but felt they expected him to go, so he said that Emma was waiting for

him. He went out of the room. Emma had gone downstairs to speak with a friend in the basement, and he

"You oughtn't to have gone to the funeral, Henrietta," said her sister. "I knew it would upset you."

"Poor little boy, it's dreadful to think of him quite alone in the world. I see he limps."

WHEN they reached the house Mrs. Carey had died init was in a dreary, respectable street between

Notting Hill Gate and High Street, KensingtonEmma led Philip into the drawingroom. His uncle was

writing letters of thanks for the wreaths which had been sent. One of them, which had arrived too late for the

Mr. Carey stood up slowly and shook hands with the little boy. Then on second thoughts he bent down and

kissed his forehead. He was a man of somewhat less than average height, inclined to corpulence, with his

hair, worn long, arranged over the scalp so as to conceal his baldness. He was cleanshaven. His features

were regular, and it was possible to imagine that in his youth he had been goodlooking. On his watchchain

"You're going to live with me now, Philip," said Mr. Carey. "Shall you like that?"

Two years before Philip had been sent down to stay at the vicarage after an attack of chickenpox; but there

remained with him a recollection of an attic and a large garden rather than of his uncle and aunt.

Mr. Carey had no great ease in expressing himself. When the news came that his sisterinlaw was dying, he

set off at once for London, but on the way thought of nothing but the disturbance in his life that would be

caused if her death forced him to undertake the care of her son. He was well over fifty, and his wife, to whom

he had been married for thirty years, was childless; he did not look forward with any pleasure to the presence

of a small boy who might be noisy and rough. He had never much liked his sisterinlaw.

Philip began to cry, and the nurse could not help crying too. Mr. Carey looked at them helplessly.

Though Philip clung to her, she released herself gently. Mr. Carey took the boy on his knee and put his arm

"You mustn't cry," he said. "You're too old to have a nurse now. We must see about sending you to school."

"It costs too much money, Philip. Your father didn't leave very much, and I don't know what's become of it.

Mr. Carey had called the day before on the family solicitor. Philip's father was a surgeon in good practice,

and his hospital appointments suggested an established position; so that it was a surprise on his sudden death

from bloodpoisoning to find that he had left his widow little more than his life insurance and what could be

got for the lease of their house in Bruton Street. This was six months ago; and Mrs. Carey, already in delicate

health, finding herself with child, had lost her head and accepted for the lease the first offer that was made.

She stored her furniture, and, at a rent which the parson thought outrageous, took a furnished house for a

year, so that she might suffer from no inconvenience till her child was born. But she had never been used to

the management of money, and was unable to adapt her expenditure to her altered circumstances. The little

she had slipped through her fingers in one way and another, so that now, when all expenses were paid, not

much more than two thousand pounds remained to support the boy till he was able to earn his own living. It

"You'd better go to Emma," Mr. Carey said, feeling that she could console the child better than anyone.

We must go tomorrow, because on Saturday I've got to prepare my sermon, and you must tell Emma to get

your things ready today. You can bring all your toys. And if you want anything to remember your father and

mother by you can take one thing for each of them. Everything else is going to be sold."

The boy slipped out of the room. Mr. Carey was unused to work, and he turned to his correspondence with

resentment. On one side of the desk was a bundle of bills, and these filled him with irritation. One especially

seemed preposterous. Immediately after Mrs. Carey's death Emma had ordered from the florist masses of

white flowers for the room in which the dead woman lay. It was sheer waste of money. Emma took far too

much upon herself. Even if there had been no financial necessity, he would have dismissed her.

But Philip went to her, and hid his face in her bosom, and wept as though his heart would break. And she,

feeling that he was almost her own sonshe had taken him when he was a month oldconsoled him with

soft words. She promised that she would come and see him sometimes, and that she would never forget him;

and she told him about the country he was going to and about her own home in Devonshireher father kept

a turnpike on the highroad that led to Exeter, and there were pigs in the sty, and there was a cow, and the

cow had just had a calftill Philip forgot his tears and grew excited at the thought of his approaching

journey. Presently she put him down, for there was much to be done, and he helped her to lay out his clothes

on the bed. She sent him into the nursery to gather up his toys, and in a little while he was playing happily.

But at last he grew tired of being alone and went back to the bedroom, in which Emma was now putting his

things into a big tin box; he remembered then that his uncle had said he might take something to remember

Philip went downstairs slowly and found the door open. Mr. Carey had left the room. Philip walked slowly

round. They had been in the house so short a time that there was little in it that had a particular interest to

him. It was a stranger's room, and Philip saw nothing that struck his fancy. But he knew which were his

mother's things and which belonged to the landlord, and presently fixed on a little clock that he had once

heard his mother say she liked. With this he walked again rather disconsolately upstairs. Outside the door of

his mother's bedroom he stopped and listened. Though no one had told him not to go in, he had a feeling

that it would be wrong to do so; he was a little frightened, and his heart beat uncomfortably; but at the same

time something impelled him to turn the handle. He turned it very gently, as if to prevent anyone within from

hearing, and then slowly pushed the door open. He stood on the threshold for a moment before he had the

courage to enter. He was not frightened now, but it seemed strange. He closed the door behind him. The

blinds were drawn, and the room, in the cold light of a January afternoon, was dark. On the dressingtable

were Mrs. Carey's brushes and the hand mirror. In a little tray were hairpins. There was a photograph of

himself on the chimneypiece and one of his father. He had often been in the room when his mother was not

in it, but now it seemed different. There was something curious in the look of the chairs. The bed was made

as though someone were going to sleep in it that night, and in a case on the pillow was a nightdress.

Philip opened a large cupboard filled with dresses and, stepping in, took as many of them as he could in his

arms and buried his face in them. They smelt of the scent his mother used. Then he pulled open the drawers,

filled with his mother's things, and looked at them: there were lavender bags among the linen, and their scent

was fresh and pleasant. The strangeness of the room left it, and it seemed to him that his mother had just gone

out for a walk. She would be in presently and would come upstairs to have nursery tea with him. And he

It was not true that he would never see her again. It was not true simply because it was impossible. He

PHILIP parted from Emma with tears, but the journey to Blackstable amused him, and, when they arrived, he

was resigned and cheerful. Blackstable was sixty miles from London. Giving their luggage to a porter, Mr.

Carey set out to walk with Philip to the vicarage; it took them little more than five minutes, and, when they

reached it, Philip suddenly remembered the gate. It was red and fivebarred: it swung both ways on easy

hinges; and it was possible, though forbidden, to swing backwards and forwards on it. They walked through

the garden to the frontdoor. This was only used by visitors and on Sundays, and on special occasions, as

when the Vicar went up to London or came back. The traffic of the house took place through a sidedoor,

and there was a back door as well for the gardener and for beggars and tramps. It was a fairly large house of

yellow brick, with a red roof, built about five and twenty years before in an ecclesiastical style. The

Mrs. Carey, knowing by what train they were coming, waited in the drawingroom and listened for the click

"There's Aunt Louisa," said Mr. Carey, when he saw her. "Run and give her a kiss."

Philip started to run, awkwardly, trailing his clubfoot, and then stopped. Mrs. Carey was a little, shrivelled

woman of the same age as her husband, with a face extraordinarily filled with deep wrinkles, and pale blue

eyes. Her gray hair was arranged in ringlets according to the fashion of her youth. She wore a black dress,

and her only ornament was a gold chain, from which hung a cross. She had a shy manner and a gentle voice.

"Did you walk, William?" she said, almost reproachfully, as she kissed her husband.

He was a little surprised at their conversation. Aunt Louisa told him to come in, and they entered the hall. It

was paved with red and yellow tiles, on which alternately were a Greek Cross and the Lamb of God. An

imposing staircase led out of the hall. It was of polished pine, with a peculiar smell, and had been put in

because fortunately, when the church was reseated, enough wood remained over. The balusters were

"I've had the stove lighted as I thought you'd be cold after your journey," said Mrs. Carey.

It was a large black stove that stood in the hall and was only lighted if the weather was very bad and the Vicar

had a cold. It was not lighted if Mrs. Carey had a cold. Coal was expensive. Besides, Mary Ann, the maid,

didn't like fires all over the place. If they wanted all them fires they must keep a second girl. In the winter Mr.

and Mrs. Carey lived in the diningroom so that one fire should do, and in the summer they could not get out

of the habit, so the drawingroom was used only by Mr. Carey on Sunday afternoons for his nap. But every

Aunt Louisa took Philip upstairs and showed him into a tiny bedroom that looked out on the drive.

Immediately in front of the window was a large tree, which Philip remembered now because the branches

"A small room for a small boy," said Mrs. Carey. "You won't be frightened at sleeping alone?"

On his first visit to the vicarage he had come with his nurse, and Mrs. Carey had had little to do with him.

Philip should come down to Blackstable, Mrs. Carey had thought much how she should treat him; she was

anxious to do her duty; but now he was there she found herself just as shy of him as he was of her. She hoped

he would not be noisy and rough, because her husband did not like rough and noisy boys. Mrs. Carey made

an excuse to leave Philip alone, but in a moment came back and knocked at the door; she asked him, without

coming in, if he could pour out the water himself. Then she went downstairs and rang the bell for tea.

The diningroom, large and wellproportioned, had windows on two sides of it, with heavy curtains of red

rep; there was a big table in the middle; and at one end an imposing mahogany sideboard with a

lookingglass in it. In one corner stood a harmonium. On each side of the fireplace were chairs covered in

stamped leather, each with an antimacassar; one had arms and was called the husband, and the other had none

and was called the wife. Mrs. Carey never sat in the armchair: she said she preferred a chair that was not too

comfortable; there was always a lot to do, and if her chair had had arms she might not be so ready to leave it.

Mr. Carey was making up the fire when Philip came in, and he pointed out to his nephew that there were two

pokers. One was large and bright and polished and unused, and was called the Vicar; and the other, which

was much smaller and had evidently passed through many fires, was called the Curate.

"I told Mary Ann to make you an egg. I thought you'd be hungry after your journey."

Mrs. Carey thought the journey from London to Blackstable very tiring. She seldom travelled herself, for the

living was only three hundred a year, and, when her husband wanted a holiday, since there was not money for

two, he went by himself. He was very fond of Church Congresses and usually managed to go up to London

once a year; and once he had been to Paris for the exhibition, and two or three times to Switzerland. Mary

Ann brought in the egg, and they sat down. The chair was much too low for Philip, and for a moment neither

She took from the top of the harmonium the large Bible and the prayerbook from which the Vicar was

"Oh, William, he can't sit on the Bible," said Mrs. Carey, in a shocked tone. "Couldn't you get him some

"I don't think it matters this once if you put the prayerbook on the top, Mary Ann," he said. "The book of

Common Prayer is the composition of men like ourselves. It has no claim to divine authorship."

Philip perched himself on the books, and the Vicar, having said grace, cut the top off his egg.

Philip would have liked an egg to himself, but he was not offered one, so took what he could.

Mr. Carey always had a boiled egg at tea on Sunday, so that he might be fortified for the evening service.

PHILIP came gradually to know the people he was to live with, and by fragments of conversation, some of it

not meant for his ears, learned a good deal both about himself and about his dead parents. Philip's father had

been much younger than the Vicar of Blackstable. After a brilliant career at St. Luke's Hospital he was put on

the staff, and presently began to earn money in considerable sums. He spent it freely. When the parson set

about restoring his church and asked his brother for a subscription, he was surprised by receiving a couple of

hundred pounds: Mr. Carey, thrifty by inclination and economical by necessity, accepted it with mingled

feelings; he was envious of his brother because he could afford to give so much, pleased for the sake of his

church, and vaguely irritated by a generosity which seemed almost ostentatious. Then Henry Carey married a

patient, a beautiful girl but penniless, an orphan with no near relations, but of good family; and there was an

array of fine friends at the wedding. The parson, on his visits to her when he came to London, held himself

with reserve. He felt shy with her and in his heart he resented her great beauty: she dressed more

magnificently than became the wife of a hardworking surgeon; and the charming furniture of her house, the

flowers among which she lived even in winter, suggested an extravagance which he deplored. He heard her

talk of entertainments she was going to; and, as he told his wife on getting home again, it was impossible to

accept hospitality without making some return. He had seen grapes in the diningroom that must have cost at

least eight shillings a pound; and at luncheon he had been given asparagus two months before it was ready in

the vicarage garden. Now all he had anticipated was come to pass: the Vicar felt the satisfaction of the

prophet who saw fire and brimstone consume the city which would not mend its way to his warning. Poor

Philip was practically penniless, and what was the good of his mother's fine friends now? He heard that his

father's extravagance was really criminal, and it was a mercy that Providence had seen fit to take his dear

When Philip had been a week at Blackstable an incident happened which seemed to irritate his uncle very

much. One morning he found on the breakfast table a small packet which had been sent on by post from the

late Mrs. Carey's house in London. It was addressed to her. When the parson opened it he found a dozen

photographs of Mrs. Carey. They showed the head and shoulders only, and her hair was more plainly done

than usual, low on the forehead, which gave her an unusual look; the face was thin and worn, but no illness

could impair the beauty of her features. There was in the large dark eyes a sadness which Philip did not

remember. The first sight of the dead woman gave Mr. Carey a little shock, but this was quickly followed by

perplexity. The photographs seemed quite recent, and he could not imagine who had ordered them.

"I remember mamma said she'd been taken," he answered. "Miss Watkin scolded her.... She said: I wanted

Mr. Carey looked at Philip for an instant. The child spoke in a clear treble. He recalled the words, but they

"You'd better take one of the photographs and keep it in your room," said Mr. Carey. "I'll put the others

He sent one to Miss Watkin, and she wrote and explained how they came to be taken.

One day Mrs. Carey was lying in bed, but she was feeling a little better than usual, and the doctor in the

morning had seemed hopeful; Emma had taken the child out, and the maids were downstairs in the basement:

suddenly Mrs. Carey felt desperately alone in the world. A great fear seized her that she would not recover

from the confinement which she was expecting in a fortnight. Her son was nine years old. How could he be

expected to remember her? She could not bear to think that he would grow up and forget, forget her utterly;

and she had loved him so passionately, because he was weakly and deformed, and because he was her child.

She had no photographs of herself taken since her marriage, and that was ten years before. She wanted her

son to know what she looked like at the end. He could not forget her then, not forget utterly. She knew that if

she called her maid and told her she wanted to get up, the maid would prevent her, and perhaps send for the

doctor, and she had not the strength now to struggle or argue. She got out of bed and began to dress herself.

She had been on her back so long that her legs gave way beneath her, and then the soles of her feet tingled so

that she could hardly bear to put them to the ground. But she went on. She was unused to doing her own hair

and, when she raised her arms and began to brush it, she felt faint. She could never do it as her maid did. It

was beautiful hair, very fine, and of a deep rich gold. Her eyebrows were straight and dark. She put on a

black skirt, but chose the bodice of the evening dress which she liked best: it was of a white damask which

was fashionable in those days. She looked at herself in the glass. Her face was very pale, but her skin was

clear: she had never had much colour, and this had always made the redness of her beautiful mouth emphatic.

She could not restrain a sob. But she could not afford to be sorry for herself; she was feeling already

desperately tired; and she put on the furs which Henry had given her the Christmas beforeshe had been so

proud of them and so happy thenand slipped downstairs with beating heart. She got safely out of the house

and drove to a photographer. She paid for a dozen photographs. She was obliged to ask for a glass of water in

the middle of the sitting; and the assistant, seeing she was ill, suggested that she should come another day, but

she insisted on staying till the end. At last it was finished, and she drove back again to the dingy little house

in Kensington which she hated with all her heart. It was a horrible house to die in.

She found the front door open, and when she drove up the maid and Emma ran down the steps to help her.

They had been frightened when they found her room empty. At first they thought she must have gone to Miss

Watkin, and the cook was sent round. Miss Watkin came back with her and was waiting anxiously in the

drawingroom. She came downstairs now full of anxiety and reproaches; but the exertion had been more than

Mrs. Carey was fit for, and when the occasion for firmness no longer existed she gave way. She fell heavily

into Emma's arms and was carried upstairs. She remained unconscious for a time that seemed incredibly long

to those that watched her, and the doctor, hurriedly sent for, did not come. It was next day, when she was a

little better, that Miss Watkin got some explanation out of her. Philip was playing on the floor of his mother's

bedroom, and neither of the ladies paid attention to him. He only understood vaguely what they were talking

"I can't make out why she ordered a dozen," said Mr. Carey. "Two would have done."

Soon after breakfast Mary Ann brought in _The Times_. Mr. Carey shared it with two neighbours. He had it

from ten till one, when the gardener took it over to Mr. Ellis at the Limes, with whom it remained till seven;

then it was taken to Miss Brooks at the Manor House, who, since she got it late, had the advantage of keeping

it. In summer Mrs. Carey, when she was making jam, often asked her for a copy to cover the pots with. When

the Vicar settled down to his paper his wife put on her bonnet and went out to do the shopping. Philip

accompanied her. Blackstable was a fishing village. It consisted of a high street in which were the shops, the

bank, the doctor's house, and the houses of two or three coalship owners; round the little harbor were shabby

streets in which lived fishermen and poor people; but since they went to chapel they were of no account.

When Mrs. Carey passed the dissenting ministers in the street she stepped over to the other side to avoid

meeting them, but if there was not time for this fixed her eyes on the pavement. It was a scandal to which the

Vicar had never resigned himself that there were three chapels in the High Street: he could not help feeling

that the law should have stepped in to prevent their erection. Shopping in Blackstable was not a simple

matter; for dissent, helped by the fact that the parish church was two miles from the town, was very common;

and it was necessary to deal only with churchgoers; Mrs. Carey knew perfectly that the vicarage custom

might make all the difference to a tradesman's faith. There were two butchers who went to church, and they

would not understand that the Vicar could not deal with both of them at once; nor were they satisfied with his

simple plan of going for six months to one and for six months to the other. The butcher who was not sending

meat to the vicarage constantly threatened not to come to church, and the Vicar was sometimes obliged to

make a threat: it was very wrong of him not to come to church, but if he carried iniquity further and actually

went to chapel, then of course, excellent as his meat was, Mr. Carey would be forced to leave him for ever.

Mrs. Carey often stopped at the bank to deliver a message to Josiah Graves, the manager, who was

choirmaster, treasurer, and churchwarden. He was a tall, thin man with a sallow face and a long nose; his

hair was very white, and to Philip he seemed extremely old. He kept the parish accounts, arranged the treats

for the choir and the schools; though there was no organ in the parish church, it was generally considered (in

Blackstable) that the choir he led was the best in Kent; and when there was any ceremony, such as a visit

from the Bishop for confirmation or from the Rural Dean to preach at the Harvest Thanksgiving, he made the

necessary preparations. But he had no hesitation in doing all manner of things without more than a

perfunctory consultation with the Vicar, and the Vicar, though always ready to be saved trouble, much

resented the churchwarden's managing ways. He really seemed to look upon himself as the most important

person in the parish. Mr. Carey constantly told his wife that if Josiah Graves did not take care he would give

him a good rap over the knuckles one day; but Mrs. Carey advised him to bear with Josiah Graves: he meant

well, and it was not his fault if he was not quite a gentleman. The Vicar, finding his comfort in the practice of

a Christian virtue, exercised forbearance; but he revenged himself by calling the churchwarden Bismarck

Once there had been a serious quarrel between the pair, and Mrs. Carey still thought of that anxious time with

dismay. The Conservative candidate had announced his intention of addressing a meeting at Blackstable; and

Josiah Graves, having arranged that it should take place in the Mission Hall, went to Mr. Carey and told him

that he hoped he would say a few words. It appeared that the candidate had asked Josiah Graves to take the

chair. This was more than Mr. Carey could put up with. He had firm views upon the respect which was due to

the cloth, and it was ridiculous for a churchwarden to take the chair at a meeting when the Vicar was there.

He reminded Josiah Graves that parson meant person, that is, the vicar was the person of the parish. Josiah

Graves answered that he was the first to recognise the dignity of the church, but this was a matter of politics,

and in his turn he reminded the Vicar that their Blessed Saviour had enjoined upon them to render unto

Caesar the things that were Caesar's. To this Mr. Carey replied that the devil could quote scripture to his

purpose, himself had sole authority over the Mission Hall, and if he were not asked to be chairman he would

refuse the use of it for a political meeting. Josiah Graves told Mr. Carey that he might do as he chose, and for

his part he thought the Wesleyan Chapel would be an equally suitable place. Then Mr. Carey said that if

Josiah Graves set foot in what was little better than a heathen temple he was not fit to be churchwarden in a

Christian parish. Josiah Graves thereupon resigned all his offices, and that very evening sent to the church for

his cassock and surplice. His sister, Miss Graves, who kept house for him, gave up her secretaryship of the

Maternity Club, which provided the pregnant poor with flannel, baby linen, coals, and five shillings. Mr.

Carey said he was at last master in his own house. But soon he found that he was obliged to see to all sorts of

things that he knew nothing about; and Josiah Graves, after the first moment of irritation, discovered that he

had lost his chief interest in life. Mrs. Carey and Miss Graves were much distressed by the quarrel; they met

after a discreet exchange of letters, and made up their minds to put the matter right: they talked, one to her

husband, the other to her brother, from morning till night; and since they were persuading these gentlemen to

do what in their hearts they wanted, after three weeks of anxiety a reconciliation was effected. It was to both

their interests, but they ascribed it to a common love for their Redeemer. The meeting was held at the Mission

Hall, and the doctor was asked to be chairman. Mr. Carey and Josiah Graves both made speeches.

When Mrs. Carey had finished her business with the banker, she generally went upstairs to have a little chat

with his sister; and while the ladies talked of parish matters, the curate or the new bonnet of Mrs.

WilsonMr. Wilson was the richest man in Blackstable, he was thought to have at least five hundred a year,

and he had married his cookPhilip sat demurely in the stiff parlour, used only to receive visitors, and

busied himself with the restless movements of goldfish in a bowl. The windows were never opened except to

air the room for a few minutes in the morning, and it had a stuffy smell which seemed to Philip to have a

Then Mrs. Carey remembered that she had to go to the grocer, and they continued their way. When the

shopping was done they often went down a side street of little houses, mostly of wood, in which fishermen

dwelt (and here and there a fisherman sat on his doorstep mending his nets, and nets hung to dry upon the

doors), till they came to a small beach, shut in on each side by warehouses, but with a view of the sea. Mrs.

Carey stood for a few minutes and looked at it, it was turbid and yellow, [and who knows what thoughts

passed through her mind?] while Philip searched for flat stones to play ducks and drakes. Then they walked

slowly back. They looked into the post office to get the right time, nodded to Mrs. Wigram the doctor's wife,

Dinner was at one o'clock; and on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday it consisted of beef, roast, hashed, and

minced, and on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of mutton. On Sunday they ate one of their own chickens. In

the afternoon Philip did his lessons, He was taught latin and mathematics by his uncle who knew neither, and

French and the piano by his aunt. Of French she was ignorant, but she knew the piano well enough to

accompany the oldfashioned songs she had sung for thirty years. Uncle William used to tell Philip that when

he was a curate his wife had known twelve songs by heart, which she could sing at a moment's notice

whenever she was asked. She often sang still when there was a teaparty at the vicarage. There were few

people whom the Careys cared to ask there, and their parties consisted always of the curate, Josiah Graves

with his sister, Dr. Wigram and his wife. After tea Miss Graves played one or two of Mendelssohn's _Songs

without Words_, and Mrs. Carey sang _When the Swallows Homeward Fly_, or _Trot, Trot, My Pony._

But the Careys did not give teaparties often; the preparations upset them, and when their guests were gone

they felt themselves exhausted. They preferred to have tea by themselves, and after tea they played

backgammon. Mrs. Carey arranged that her husband should win, because he did not like losing. They had

cold supper at eight. It was a scrappy meal because Mary Ann resented getting anything ready after tea, and

Mrs. Carey helped to clear away. Mrs. Carey seldom eat{sic} more than bread and butter, with a little stewed

fruit to follow, but the Vicar had a slice of cold meat. Immediately after supper Mrs. Carey rang the bell for

prayers, and then Philip went to bed. He rebelled against being undressed by Mary Ann and after a while

succeeded in establishing his right to dress and undress himself. At nine o'clock Mary Ann brought in the

eggs and the plate. Mrs. Carey wrote the date on each egg and put the number down in a book. She then took

the platebasket on her arm and went upstairs. Mr. Carey continued to read one of his old books, but as the

When Philip arrived there was some difficulty in deciding on which evening he should have his bath. It was

never easy to get plenty of hot water, since the kitchen boiler did not work, and it was impossible for two

persons to have a bath on the same day. The only man who had a bathroom in Blackstable was Mr. Wilson,

and it was thought ostentatious of him. Mary Ann had her bath in the kitchen on Monday night, because she

liked to begin the week clean. Uncle William could not have his on Saturday, because he had a heavy day

before him and he was always a little tired after a bath, so he had it on Friday. Mrs. Carey had hers on

Thursday for the same reason. It looked as though Saturday were naturally indicated for Philip, but Mary Ann

said she couldn't keep the fire up on Saturday night: what with all the cooking on Sunday, having to make

pastry and she didn't know what all, she did not feel up to giving the boy his bath on Saturday night; and it

was quite clear that he could not bath himself. Mrs. Carey was shy about bathing a boy, and of course the

Vicar had his sermon. But the Vicar insisted that Philip should be clean and sweet for the lord's Day. Mary

Ann said she would rather go than be put uponand after eighteen years she didn't expect to have more

work given her, and they might show some considerationand Philip said he didn't want anyone to bath

him, but could very well bath himself. This settled it. Mary Ann said she was quite sure he wouldn't bath

himself properly, and rather than he should go dirtyand not because he was going into the presence of the

Lord, but because she couldn't abide a boy who wasn't properly washedshe'd work herself to the bone even

SUNDAY was a day crowded with incident. Mr. Carey was accustomed to say that he was the only man in

The household got up half an hour earlier than usual. No lying abed for a poor parson on the day of rest, Mr.

Carey remarked as Mary Ann knocked at the door punctually at eight. It took Mrs. Carey longer to dress, and

she got down to breakfast at nine, a little breathless, only just before her husband. Mr. Carey's boots stood in

front of the fire to warm. Prayers were longer than usual, and the breakfast more substantial. After breakfast

the Vicar cut thin slices of bread for the communion, and Philip was privileged to cut off the crust. He was

sent to the study to fetch a marble paperweight, with which Mr. Carey pressed the bread till it was thin and

pulpy, and then it was cut into small squares. The amount was regulated by the weather. On a very bad day

few people came to church, and on a very fine one, though many came, few stayed for communion. There

were most when it was dry enough to make the walk to church pleasant, but not so fine that people wanted to

Then Mrs. Carey brought the communion plate out of the safe, which stood in the pantry, and the Vicar

polished it with a chamois leather. At ten the fly drove up, and Mr. Carey got into his boots. Mrs. Carey took

several minutes to put on her bonnet, during which the Vicar, in a voluminous cloak, stood in the hall with

just such an expression on his face as would have become an early Christian about to be led into the arena. It

was extraordinary that after thirty years of marriage his wife could not be ready in time on Sunday morning.

At last she came, in black satin; the Vicar did not like colours in a clergyman's wife at any time, but on

Sundays he was determined that she should wear black; now and then, in conspiracy with Miss Graves, she

ventured a white feather or a pink rose in her bonnet, but the Vicar insisted that it should disappear; he said

he would not go to church with the scarlet woman: Mrs. Carey sighed as a woman but obeyed as a wife. They

were about to step into the carriage when the Vicar remembered that no one had given him his egg. They

knew that he must have an egg for his voice, there were two women in the house, and no one had the least

regard for his comfort. Mrs. Carey scolded Mary Ann, and Mary Ann answered that she could not think of

everything. She hurried away to fetch an egg, and Mrs. Carey beat it up in a glass of sherry. The Vicar

swallowed it at a gulp. The communion plate was stowed in the carriage, and they set off.

The fly came from _The Red Lion_ and had a peculiar smell of stale straw. They drove with both windows

closed so that the Vicar should not catch cold. The sexton was waiting at the porch to take the communion

plate, and while the Vicar went to the vestry Mrs. Carey and Philip settled themselves in the vicarage pew.

Mrs. Carey placed in front of her the sixpenny bit she was accustomed to put in the plate, and gave Philip

threepence for the same purpose. The church filled up gradually and the service began.

Philip grew bored during the sermon, but if he fidgetted Mrs. Carey put a gentle hand on his arm and looked

at him reproachfully. He regained interest when the final hymn was sung and Mr. graves passed round with

When everyone had gone Mrs. Carey went into Miss graves' pew to have a few words with her while they

were waiting for the gentlemen, and Philip went to the vestry. His uncle, the curate, and Mr. graves were still

in their surplices. Mr. Carey gave him the remains of the consecrated bread and told him he might eat it. He

had been accustomed to eat it himself, as it seemed blasphemous to throw it away, but Philip's keen appetite

relieved him from the duty. Then they counted the money. It consisted of pennies, sixpences and threepenny

bits. There were always two single shillings, one put in the plate by the Vicar and the other by Mr. graves;

and sometimes there was a florin. Mr. graves told the Vicar who had given this. It was always a stranger to

Blackstable, and Mr. Carey wondered who he was. But Miss graves had observed the rash act and was able to

tell Mrs. Carey that the stranger came from London, was married and had children. During the drive home

Mrs. Carey passed the information on, and the Vicar made up his mind to call on him and ask for a

subscription to the Additional Curates Society. Mr. Carey asked if Philip had behaved properly; and Mrs.

Carey remarked that Mrs. Wigram had a new mantle, Mr. Cox was not in church, and somebody thought that

Miss Phillips was engaged. When they reached the vicarage they all felt that they deserved a substantial

When this was over Mrs. Carey went to her room to rest, and Mr. Carey lay down on the sofa in the

They had tea at five, and the Vicar ate an egg to support himself for evensong. Mrs. Carey did not go to this

so that Mary Ann might, but she read the service through and the hymns. Mr. Carey walked to church in the

evening, and Philip limped along by his side. The walk through the darkness along the country road strangely

impressed him, and the church with all its lights in the distance, coming gradually nearer, seemed very

friendly. At first he was shy with his uncle, but little by little grew used to him, and he would slip his hand in

They had supper when they got home. Mr. Carey's slippers were waiting for him on a footstool in front of the

fire and by their side Philip's, one the shoe of a small boy, the other misshapen and odd. He was dreadfully

tired when he went up to bed, and he did not resist when Mary Ann undressed him. She kissed him after she

PHILIP had led always the solitary life of an only child, and his loneliness at the vicarage was no greater than

it had been when his mother lived. He made friends with Mary Ann. She was a chubby little person of

thirtyfive, the daughter of a fisherman, and had come to the vicarage at eighteen; it was her first place and

she had no intention of leaving it; but she held a possible marriage as a rod over the timid heads of her master

and mistress. Her father and mother lived in a little house off Harbour Street, and she went to see them on her

evenings out. Her stories of the sea touched Philip's imagination, and the narrow alleys round the harbour

grew rich with the romance which his young fancy lent them. One evening he asked whether he might go

home with her; but his aunt was afraid that he might catch something, and his uncle said that evil

communications corrupted good manners. He disliked the fisher folk, who were rough, uncouth, and went to

chapel. But Philip was more comfortable in the kitchen than in the diningroom, and, whenever he could, he

took his toys and played there. His aunt was not sorry. She did not like disorder, and though she recognised

that boys must be expected to be untidy she preferred that he should make a mess in the kitchen. If he

fidgeted his uncle was apt to grow restless and say it was high time he went to school. Mrs. Carey thought

Philip very young for this, and her heart went out to the motherless child; but her attempts to gain his

affection were awkward, and the boy, feeling shy, received her demonstrations with so much sullenness that

she was mortified. Sometimes she heard his shrill voice raised in laughter in the kitchen, but when she went

in, he grew suddenly silent, and he flushed darkly when Mary Ann explained the joke. Mrs. Carey could not

"He seems happier with Mary Ann than with us, William," she said, when she returned to her sewing.

On the second Sunday after Philip arrived an unlucky incident occurred. Mr. Carey had retired as usual after

dinner for a little snooze in the drawingroom, but he was in an irritable mood and could not sleep. Josiah

Graves that morning had objected strongly to some candlesticks with which the Vicar had adorned the altar.

He had bought them secondhand in Tercanbury, and he thought they looked very well. But Josiah graves

said they were popish. This was a taunt that always aroused the Vicar. He had been at Oxford during the

movement which ended in the secession from the Established Church of Edward Manning, and he felt a

certain sympathy for the Church of Rome. He would willingly have made the service more ornate than had

been usual in the lowchurch parish of Blackstable, and in his secret soul he yearned for processions and

lighted candles. He drew the line at incense. He hated the word protestant. He called himself a Catholic. He

was accustomed to say that Papists required an epithet, they were Roman Catholic; but the Church of

England was Catholic in the best, the fullest, and the noblest sense of the term. He was pleased to think that

his shaven face gave him the look of a priest, and in his youth he had possessed an ascetic air which added to

the impression. He often related that on one of his holidays in Boulogne, one of those holidays upon which

his wife for economy's sake did not accompany him, when he was sitting in a church, the _cure_ had come up

to him and invited him to preach a sermon. He dismissed his curates when they married, having decided

views on the celibacy of the unbeneficed clergy. But when at an election the Liberals had written on his

garden fence in large blue letters: This way to Rome, he had been very angry, and threatened to prosecute the

leaders of the Liberal party in Blackstable. He made up his mind now that nothing Josiah Graves said would

induce him to remove the candlesticks from the altar, and he muttered Bismarck to himself once or twice

Suddenly he heard an unexpected noise. He pulled the handkerchief off his face, got up from the sofa on

which he was lying, and went into the diningroom. Philip was seated on the table with all his bricks around

him. He had built a monstrous castle, and some defect in the foundation had just brought the structure down

"What are you doing with those bricks, Philip? You know you're not allowed to play games on Sunday."

Philip stared at him for a moment with frightened eyes, and, as his habit was, flushed deeply.

Philip did not know it was wicked; but if it was, he did not wish it to be supposed that his mother had

"Don't you know it's very, very wicked to play on Sundays what d'you suppose it's called the day of rest for?

You're going to church tonight, and how can you face your Maker when you've been breaking one of His

Mr. Carey told him to put the bricks away at once, and stood over him while Philip did so.

"You're a very naughty boy," he repeated. "Think of the grief you're causing your poor mother in heaven."

Philip felt inclined to cry, but he had an instinctive disinclination to letting other people see his tears, and he

clenched his teeth to prevent the sobs from escaping. Mr. Carey sat down in his armchair and began to turn

over the pages of a book. Philip stood at the window. The vicarage was set back from the highroad to

Tercanbury, and from the diningroom one saw a semicircular strip of lawn and then as far as the horizon

green fields. Sheep were grazing in them. The sky was forlorn and gray Philip felt infinitely unhappy.

Presently Mary Ann came in to lay the tea, and Aunt Louisa descended the stairs.

This was not quite accurate, for he had been kept awake by his own thoughts; and Philip, listening sullenly,

reflected that he had only made a noise once, and there was no reason why his uncle should not have slept

before or after. When Mrs. Carey asked for an explanation the Vicar narrated the facts.

"Oh, Philip, I'm sure you're sorry," said Mrs. Carey, anxious that the child should not seem wickeder to his

Philip did not reply. He went on munching his bread and butter. He did not know what power it was in him

that prevented him from making any expression of regret. He felt his ears tingling, he was a little inclined to

Tea was finished in silence. Mrs. Carey looked at Philip surreptitiously now and then, but the Vicar

elaborately ignored him. When Philip saw his uncle go upstairs to get ready for church he went into the hall

and got his hat and coat, but when the Vicar came downstairs and saw him, he said:

"I don't wish you to go to church tonight, Philip. I don't think you're in a proper frame of mind to enter the

Philip did not say a word. He felt it was a deep humiliation that was placed upon him, and his cheeks

reddened. He stood silently watching his uncle put on his broad hat and his voluminous cloak. Mrs. Carey as

"Never mind, Philip, you won't be a naughty boy next Sunday, will you, and then your uncle will take you to

"Shall you and I read the service together, Philip, and we'll sing the hymns at the harmonium. Would you like

Philip shook his head decidedly. Mrs. Carey was taken aback. If he would not read the evening service with

"Then what would you like to do until your uncle comes back?" she asked helplessly.

"Philip, how can you say anything so unkind? Don't you know that your uncle and I only want your good?

Mrs. Carey gasped. He said the words so savagely that it gave her quite a start. She had nothing to say. She

sat down in her husband's chair; and as she thought of her desire to love the friendless, crippled boy and her

eager wish that he should love hershe was a barren woman and, even though it was clearly God's will that

she should be childless, she could scarcely bear to look at little children sometimes, her heart ached sothe

tears rose to her eyes and one by one, slowly, rolled down her cheeks. Philip watched her in amazement. She

took out her handkerchief, and now she cried without restraint. Suddenly Philip realised that she was crying

because of what he had said, and he was sorry. He went up to her silently and kissed her. It was the first kiss

he had ever given her without being asked. And the poor lady, so small in her black satin, shrivelled up and

sallow, with her funny corkscrew curls, took the little boy on her lap and put her arms around him and wept

as though her heart would break. But her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness

between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.

ON the following Sunday, when the Vicar was making his preparations to go into the drawingroom for his

napall the actions of his life were conducted with ceremonyand Mrs. Carey was about to go upstairs,

Mr. Carey looked out of the window, but it was cold and raw, and he could not suggest that Philip should go

He took the prayerbook which was used for prayers from the harmonium, and turned the pages till he came

"It's not a long one. If you can say it without a mistake when I come in to tea you shall have the top of my

Mrs. Carey drew up Philip's chair to the diningroom tablethey had bought him a high chair by nowand

He put some more coals on the fire so that there should be a cheerful blaze when he came in to tea, and went

into the drawingroom. He loosened his collar, arranged the cushions, and settled himself comfortably on the

sofa. But thinking the drawingroom a little chilly, Mrs. Carey brought him a rug from the hall; she put it

over his legs and tucked it round his feet. She drew the blinds so that the light should not offend his eyes, and

since he had closed them already went out of the room on tiptoe. The Vicar was at peace with himself today,

It was the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, and the collect began with the words: _O God, whose blessed Son

was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil, and make us the sons of God, and heirs of

Eternal life_. Philip read it through. He could make no sense of it. He began saying the words aloud to

himself, but many of them were unknown to him, and the construction of the sentence was strange. He could

not get more than two lines in his head. And his attention was constantly wandering: there were fruit trees

trained on the walls of the vicarage, and a long twig beat now and then against the windowpane; sheep grazed

stolidly in the field beyond the garden. It seemed as though there were knots inside his brain. Then panic

seized him that he would not know the words by teatime, and he kept on whispering them to himself

quickly; he did not try to understand, but merely to get them parrotlike into his memory.

Mrs. Carey could not sleep that afternoon, and by four o'clock she was so wide awake that she came

downstairs. She thought she would hear Philip his collect so that he should make no mistakes when he said it

to his uncle. His uncle then would be pleased; he would see that the boy's heart was in the right place. But

when Mrs. Carey came to the diningroom and was about to go in, she heard a sound that made her stop

suddenly. Her heart gave a little jump. She turned away and quietly slipped out of the frontdoor. She walked

round the house till she came to the diningroom window and then cautiously looked in. Philip was still

sitting on the chair she had put him in, but his head was on the table buried in his arms, and he was sobbing

desperately. She saw the convulsive movement of his shoulders. Mrs. Carey was frightened. A thing that had

always struck her about the child was that he seemed so collected. She had never seen him cry. And now she

realised that his calmness was some instinctive shame of showing his fillings: he hid himself to weep.

Without thinking that her husband disliked being wakened suddenly, she burst into the drawingroom.

"William, William," she said. "The boy's crying as though his heart would break."

"I don't know.... Oh, William, we can't let the boy be unhappy. D'you think it's our fault? If we'd had children

"He can't be crying because I gave him the collect to learn. It's not more than ten lines."

"Don't you think I might take him some picture books to look at, William? There are some of the Holy Land.

Mrs. Carey went into the study. To collect books was Mr. Carey's only passion, and he never went into

Tercanbury without spending an hour or two in the secondhand shop; he always brought back four or five

musty volumes. He never read them, for he had long lost the habit of reading, but he liked to turn the pages,

look at the illustrations if they were illustrated, and mend the bindings. He welcomed wet days because on

them he could stay at home without pangs of conscience and spend the afternoon with white of egg and a

gluepot, patching up the Russia leather of some battered quarto. He had many volumes of old travels, with

steel engravings, and Mrs. Carey quickly found two which described Palestine. She coughed elaborately at

the door so that Philip should have time to compose himself, she felt that he would be humiliated if she came

upon him in the midst of his tears, then she rattled the door handle. When she went in Philip was poring over

the prayerbook, hiding his eyes with his hands so that she might not see he had been crying.

He did not answer for a moment, and she felt that he did not trust his voice. She was oddly embarrassed.

"Oh, well, never mind," she said. "You needn't. I've got some picture books for you to look at. Come and sit

Philip slipped off his chair and limped over to her. He looked down so that she should not see his eyes. She

She showed him an Eastern town with flat roofs and cupolas and minarets. In the foreground was a group of

palmtrees, and under them were resting two Arabs and some camels. Philip passed his hand over the picture

Mrs. Carey in her even voice read the opposite page. It was a romantic narrative of some Eastern traveller of

the thirties, pompous maybe, but fragrant with the emotion with which the East came to the generation that

When Mary Ann came in and Mrs. Carey rose to help her lay the cloth. Philip took the book in his hands and

hurried through the illustrations. It was with difficulty that his aunt induced him to put the book down for tea.

He had forgotten his horrible struggle to get the collect by heart; he had forgotten his tears. Next day it was

raining, and he asked for the book again. Mrs. Carey gave it him joyfully. Talking over his future with her

husband she had found that both desired him to take orders, and this eagerness for the book which described

places hallowed by the presence of Jesus seemed a good sign. It looked as though the boy's mind addressed

itself naturally to holy things. But in a day or two he asked for more books. Mr. Carey took him into his

study, showed him the shelf in which he kept illustrated works, and chose for him one that dealt with Rome.

Philip took it greedily. The pictures led him to a new amusement. He began to read the page before and the

page after each engraving to find out what it was about, and soon he lost all interest in his toys.

Then, when no one was near, he took out books for himself; and perhaps because the first impression on his

mind was made by an Eastern town, he found his chief amusement in those which described the Levant. His

heart beat with excitement at the pictures of mosques and rich palaces; but there was one, in a book on

Constantinople, which peculiarly stirred his imagination. It was called the Hall of the Thousand Columns. It

was a Byzantine cistern, which the popular fancy had endowed with fantastic vastness; and the legend which

he read told that a boat was always moored at the entrance to tempt the unwary, but no traveller venturing

into the darkness had ever been Seen again. And Philip wondered whether the boat went on for ever through

One day a good fortune befell him, for he hit upon Lane's translation of _The Thousand Nights and a Night_.

He was captured first by the illustrations, and then he began to read, to start with, the stories that dealt with

magic, and then the others; and those he liked he read again and again. He could think of nothing else. He

forgot the life about him. He had to be called two or three times before he would come to his dinner.

Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he

was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating

for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.

Presently he began to read other things. His brain was precocious his uncle and aunt, seeing that he occupied

himself and neither worried nor made a noise, ceased to trouble themselves about him. Mr. Carey had so

many books that he did not know them, and as he read little he forgot the odd lots he had bought at one time

and another because they were cheap. Haphazard among the sermons and homilies, the travels, the lives of

the Saints, the Fathers, the histories of the church, were oldfashioned novels; and these Philip at last

discovered. He chose them by their titles, and the first he read was _The Lancashire Witches_, and then he

read _The Admirable Crichton_, and then many more. Whenever he started a book with two solitary

The summer was come now, and the gardener, an old sailor, made him a hammock and fixed it up for him in

the branches of a weeping willow. And here for long hours he lay, hidden from anyone who might come to

the vicarage, reading, reading passionately. Time passed and it was July; August came: on Sundays the

church was crowded with strangers, and the collection at the offertory often amounted to two pounds. Neither

the Vicar nor Mrs. Carey went out of the garden much during this period; for they disliked strange faces, and

they looked upon the visitors from London with aversion. The house opposite was taken for six weeks by a

gentleman who had two little boys, and he sent in to ask if Philip would like to go and play with them; but

Mrs. Carey returned a polite refusal. She was afraid that Philip would be corrupted by little boys from

London. He was going to be a clergyman, and it was necessary that he should be preserved from

THE Careys made up their minds to send Philip to King's School at Tercanbury. The neighbouring clergy

sent their sons there. It was united by long tradition to the Cathedral: its headmaster was an honorary Canon,

and a past headmaster was the Archdeacon. Boys were encouraged there to aspire to Holy Orders, and the

education was such as might prepare an honest lad to spend his life in God's service. A preparatory school

was attached to it, and to this it was arranged that Philip should go. Mr. Carey took him into Tercanbury one

Thursday afternoon towards the end of September. All day Philip had been excited and rather frightened. He

knew little of school life but what he had read in the stories of _The Boy's Own Paper_. He had also read

When they got out of the train at Tercanbury, Philip felt sick with apprehension, and during the drive in to the

town sat pale and silent. The high brick wall in front of the school gave it the look of a prison. There was a

little door in it, which opened on their ringing; and a clumsy, untidy man came out and fetched Philip's tin

trunk and his playbox. They were shown into the drawingroom; it was filled with massive, ugly furniture,

and the chairs of the suite were placed round the walls with a forbidding rigidity. They waited for the

There was another pause. Mr. Carey wondered why the headmaster did not come. Presently Philip made an

Before Mr. Carey could speak the door burst open and Mr. Watson swept into the room. To Philip he seemed

gigantic. He was a man of over six feet high, and broad, with enormous hands and a great red beard; he talked

loudly in a Jovial manner; but his aggressive cheerfulness struck terror in Philip's heart. He shook hands with

To give the boy confidence he began to tickle him with rough fingers. Philip, feeling shy and uncomfortable,

"I've put him in the small dormitory for the present.... You'll like that, won't you?" he added to Philip. "Only

Then the door opened, and Mrs. Watson came in. She was a dark woman with black hair, neatly parted in the

middle. She had curiously thick lips and a small round nose. Her eyes were large and black. There was a

singular coldness in her appearance. She seldom spoke and smiled more seldom still. Her husband introduced

Without a word she shook hands with Philip and then sat down, not speaking, while the headmaster asked

Mr. Carey how much Philip knew and what books he had been working with. The Vicar of Blackstable was a

little embarrassed by Mr. Watson's boisterous heartiness, and in a moment or two got up.

"That's all right," said Mr. Watson. "He'll be safe with me. He'll get on like a house on fire. Won't you, young

Without waiting for an answer from Philip the big man burst into a great bellow of laughter. Mr. Carey kissed

He swept out of the drawingroom with giant strides, and Philip hurriedly limped behind him. He was taken

into a long, bare room with two tables that ran along its whole length; on each side of them were wooden

"Nobody much here yet," said Mr. Watson. "I'll Just show you the playground, and then I'll leave you to shift

Mr. Watson led the way. Philip found himself in a large playground with high brick walls on three sides of

it. On the fourth side was an iron railing through which you saw a vast lawn and beyond this some of the

buildings of King's School. One small boy was wandering disconsolately, kicking up the gravel as he walked.

The headmaster glared amicably at the two children, filling them with fear by the roar of his voice, and then

Philip thought this answer would cause the boy a certain awkwardness, but Venning was not to be turned

The little boy crowed with delight at the success of his dialectic. Then he caught sight of Philip's feet.

Philip instinctively tried to withdraw it from sight. He hid it behind the one which was whole.

The little boy accompanied the words with a sharp kick on Philip's shin, which Philip did not expect and thus

could not guard against. The pain was so great that it made him gasp, but greater than the pain was the

surprise. He did not know why Venning kicked him. He had not the presence of mind to give him a black

eye. Besides, the boy was smaller than he, and he had read in _The Boy's Own Paper_ that it was a mean

thing to hit anyone smaller than yourself. While Philip was nursing his shin a third boy appeared, and his

tormentor left him. In a little while he noticed that the pair were talking about him, and he felt they were

But others arrived, a dozen together, and then more, and they began to talk about their doings during the

holidays, where they had been, and what wonderful cricket they had played. A few new boys appeared, and

with these presently Philip found himself talking. He was shy and nervous. He was anxious to make himself

pleasant, but he could not think of anything to say. He was asked a great many questions and answered them

The boy looked down quickly and reddened. Philip saw that he felt he had asked an unseemly question. He

NEXT morning when the clanging of a bell awoke Philip he looked round his cubicle in astonishment. Then

The partitions of the cubicle were of polished pitchpine, and there was a green curtain in front. In those days

there was little thought of ventilation, and the windows were closed except when the dormitory was aired in

Philip got up and knelt down to say his prayers. It was a cold morning, and he shivered a little; but he had

been taught by his uncle that his prayers were more acceptable to God if he said them in his nightshirt than if

he waited till he was dressed. This did not surprise him, for he was beginning to realise that he was the

creature of a God who appreciated the discomfort of his worshippers. Then he washed. There were two baths

for the fifty boarders, and each boy had a bath once a week. The rest of his washing was done in a small basin

on a washstand, which with the bed and a chair, made up the furniture of each cubicle. The boys chatted

gaily while they dressed. Philip was all ears. Then another bell sounded, and they ran downstairs. They took

their seats on the forms on each side of the two long tables in the schoolroom; and Mr. Watson, followed by

his wife and the servants, came in and sat down. Mr. Watson read prayers in an impressive manner, and the

supplications thundered out in his loud voice as though they were threats personally addressed to each boy.

Philip listened with anxiety. Then Mr. Watson read a chapter from the Bible, and the servants trooped out. In

a moment the untidy youth brought in two large pots of tea and on a second journey immense dishes of bread

Philip had a squeamish appetite, and the thick slabs of poor butter on the bread turned his stomach, but he

saw other boys scraping it off and followed their example. They all had potted meats and such like, which

they had brought in their playboxes; and some had 'extras,' eggs or bacon, upon which Mr. Watson made a

profit. When he had asked Mr. Carey whether Philip was to have these, Mr. Carey replied that he did not

think boys should be spoilt. Mr. Watson quite agreed with himhe considered nothing was better than bread

and butter for growing ladsbut some parents, unduly pampering their offspring, insisted on it.

Philip noticed that 'extras' gave boys a certain consideration and made up his mind, when he wrote to Aunt

After breakfast the boys wandered out into the playground. Here the dayboys were gradually assembling.

They were sons of the local clergy, of the officers at the Depot, and of such manufacturers or men of business

as the old town possessed. Presently a bell rang, and they all trooped into school. This consisted of a large,

long room at opposite ends of which two undermasters conducted the second and third forms, and of a

smaller one, leading out of it, used by Mr. Watson, who taught the first form. To attach the preparatory to the

senior school these three classes were known officially, on speech days and in reports, as upper, middle, and

lower second. Philip was put in the last. The master, a redfaced man with a pleasant voice, was called Rice;

he had a jolly manner with boys, and the time passed quickly. Philip was surprised when it was a quarter to

The whole school rushed noisily into the playground. The new boys were told to go into the middle, while

the others stationed themselves along opposite walls. They began to play _Pig in the Middle_. The old boys

ran from wall to wall while the new boys tried to catch them: when one was seized and the mystic words

saidone, two, three, and a pig for mehe became a prisoner and, turning sides, helped to catch those who

were still free. Philip saw a boy running past and tried to catch him, but his limp gave him no chance; and the

runners, taking their opportunity, made straight for the ground he covered. Then one of them had the brilliant

idea of imitating Philip's clumsy run. Other boys saw it and began to laugh; then they all copied the first; and

they ran round Philip, limping grotesquely, screaming in their treble voices with shrill laughter. They lost

their heads with the delight of their new amusement, and choked with helpless merriment. One of them

tripped Philip up and he fell, heavily as he always fell, and cut his knee. They laughed all the louder when he

got up. A boy pushed him from behind, and he would have fallen again if another had not caught him. The

game was forgotten in the entertainment of Philip's deformity. One of them invented an odd, rolling limp that

struck the rest as supremely ridiculous, and several of the boys lay down on the ground and rolled about in

laughter: Philip was completely scared. He could not make out why they were laughing at him. His heart beat

so that he could hardly breathe, and he was more frightened than he had ever been in his life. He stood still

stupidly while the boys ran round him, mimicking and laughing; they shouted to him to try and catch them;

but he did not move. He did not want them to see him run any more. He was using all his strength to prevent

Suddenly the bell rang, and they all trooped back to school. Philip's knee was bleeding, and he was dusty and

dishevelled. For some minutes Mr. Rice could not control his form. They were excited still by the strange

novelty, and Philip saw one or two of them furtively looking down at his feet. He tucked them under the

In the afternoon they went up to play football, but Mr. Watson stopped Philip on the way out after dinner.

"Very well. You'd better go up to the field. You can walk as far as that, can't you? "

The boys went in charge of Mr. Rice, who glanced at Philip and seeing he had not changed, asked why he

There were boys all round him, looking at him curiously, and a feeling of shame came over Philip. He looked

Mr. Rice was quite young; he had only taken his degree a year before; and he was suddenly embarrassed. His

instinct was to beg the boy's pardon, but he was too shy to do so. He made his voice gruff and loud.

Some of them had already started and those that were left now set off, in groups of two or three.

"You'd better come along with me, Carey," said the master "You don't know the way, do you?"

Philip's heart went out to the redfaced, commonplace young man who said a gentle word to him. He

But at night when they went up to bed and were undressing, the boy who was called Singer came out of his

The boy in the next cubicle was looking round the corner, and at the words he slipped in. They made for

Singer seized a brush and with the back of it beat Philip's hands clenched on the blanket. Philip cried out.

In desperation Philip clenched his fist and hit the boy who tormented him, but he was at a disadvantage, and

Philip gave a sob and a gasp. The boy gave the arm another wrench. The pain was unendurable.

He put out his foot. Singer still kept his hand on Philip's wrist. He looked curiously at the deformity.

He touched it with the tip of his forefinger, cautiously, as though it were something that had a life of its own.

Suddenly they heard Mr. Watson's heavy tread on the stairs. They threw the clothes back on Philip and

dashed like rabbits into their cubicles. Mr. Watson came into the dormitory. Raising himself on tiptoe he

could see over the rod that bore the green curtain, and he looked into two or three of the cubicles. The little

Singer called out to Philip, but he did not answer. He had got his teeth in the pillow so that his sobbing should

be inaudible. He was not crying for the pain they had caused him, nor for the humiliation he had suffered

when they looked at his foot, but with rage at himself because, unable to stand the torture, he had put out his

And then he felt the misery of his life. It seemed to his childish mind that this unhappiness must go on for

ever. For no particular reason he remembered that cold morning when Emma had taken him out of bed and

put him beside his mother. He had not thought of it once since it happened, but now he seemed to feel the

warmth of his mother's body against his and her arms around him. Suddenly it seemed to him that his life was

a dream, his mother's death, and the life at the vicarage, and these two wretched days at school, and he would

awake in the morning and be back again at home. His tears dried as he thought of it. He was too unhappy, it

must be nothing but a dream, and his mother was alive, and Emma would come up presently and go to bed.

But when he awoke next morning it was to the clanging of a bell, and the first thing his eyes saw was the

AS time went on Philip's deformity ceased to interest. It was accepted like one boy's red hair and another's

unreasonable corpulence. But meanwhile he had grown horribly sensitive. He never ran if he could help it,

because he knew it made his limp more conspicuous, and he adopted a peculiar walk. He stood still as much

as he could, with his clubfoot behind the other, so that it should not attract notice, and he was constantly on

the look out for any reference to it. Because he could not join in the games which other boys played, their life

remained strange to him; he only interested himself from the outside in their doings; and it seemed to him

that there was a barrier between them and him. Sometimes they seemed to think that it was his fault if he

could not play football, and he was unable to make them understand. He was left a good deal to himself. He

had been inclined to talkativeness, but gradually he became silent. He began to think of the difference

The biggest boy in his dormitory, Singer, took a dislike to him, and Philip, small for his age, had to put up

with a good deal of hard treatment. About halfway through the term a mania ran through the school for a

game called Nibs. It was a game for two, played on a table or a form with steel pens. You had to push your

nib with the fingernail so as to get the point of it over your opponent's, while he manoeuvred to prevent this

and to get the point of his nib over the back of yours; when this result was achieved you breathed on the ball

of your thumb, pressed it hard on the two nibs, and if you were able then to lift them without dropping either,

both nibs became yours. Soon nothing was seen but boys playing this game, and the more skilful acquired

vast stores of nibs. But in a little while Mr. Watson made up his mind that it was a form of gambling, forbade

the game, and confiscated all the nibs in the boys' possession. Philip had been very adroit, and it was with a

heavy heart that he gave up his winning; but his fingers itched to play still, and a few days later, on his way to

the football field, he went into a shop and bought a pennyworth of J pens. He carried them loose in his pocket

and enjoyed feeling them. Presently Singer found out that he had them. Singer had given up his nibs too, but

he had kept back a very large one, called a Jumbo, which was almost unconquerable, and he could not resist

the opportunity of getting Philip's Js out of him. Though Philip knew that he was at a disadvantage with his

small nibs, he had an adventurous disposition and was willing to take the risk; besides, he was aware that

Singer would not allow him to refuse. He had not played for a week and sat down to the game now with a

thrill of excitement. He lost two of his small nibs quickly, and Singer was jubilant, but the third time by some

chance the Jumbo slipped round and Philip was able to push his J across it. He crowed with triumph. At that

Philip's heart beat fast. He knew what was coming and was dreadfully frightened, but in his fright there was a

certain exultation. He had never been swished. Of course it would hurt, but it was something to boast about

The headmaster turned, and they followed him side by side Singer whispered to Philip:

Philip, very white, saw the boy quiver at each stroke, and after the third he heard him cry out. Three more

Singer stood up. The tears were streaming down his face. Philip stepped forward. Mr. Watson looked at him

"I'm not going to cane you. You're a new boy. And I can't hit a cripple. Go away, both of you, and don't be

When they got back into the schoolroom a group of boys, who had learned in some mysterious way what

was happening, were waiting for them. They set upon Singer at once with eager questions. Singer faced them,

his face red with the pain and marks of tears still on his cheeks. He pointed with his head at Philip, who was

"Don't ask me to play Nibs with you again," he said to Philip. "It's jolly nice for you. You don't risk

He quickly put out his foot and tripped Philip up. Philip was always rather unsteady on his feet, and he fell

For the rest of the term he tormented Philip cruelly, and, though Philip tried to keep out of his way, the school

was so small that it was impossible; he tried being friendly and jolly with him; he abased himself, so far as to

buy him a knife; but though Singer took the knife he was not placated. Once or twice, driven beyond

endurance, he hit and kicked the bigger boy, but Singer was so much stronger that Philip was helpless, and he

was always forced after more or less torture to beg his pardon. It was that which rankled with Philip: he could

not bear the humiliation of apologies, which were wrung from him by pain greater than he could bear. And

what made it worse was that there seemed no end to his wretchedness; Singer was only eleven and would not

go to the upper school till he was thirteen. Philip realised that he must live two years with a tormentor from

whom there was no escape. He was only happy while he was working and when he got into bed. And often

there recurred to him then that queer feeling that his life with all its misery was nothing but a dream, and that

TWO years passed, and Philip was nearly twelve. He was in the first form, within two or three places of the

top, and after Christmas when several boys would be leaving for the senior school he would be head boy. He

had already quite a collection of prizes, worthless books on bad paper, but in gorgeous bindings decorated

with the arms of the school: his position had freed him from bullying, and he was not unhappy. His fellows

"After all, it's jolly easy for him to get prizes," they said, "there's nothing he _can_ do but swat."

He had lost his early terror of Mr. Watson. He had grown used to the loud voice, and when the headmaster's

heavy hand was laid on his shoulder Philip discerned vaguely the intention of a caress. He had the good

memory which is more useful for scholastic achievements than mental power, and he knew Mr. Watson

But he had grown very selfconscious. The newborn child does not realise that his body is more a part of

himself than surrounding objects, and will play with his toes without any feeling that they belong to him

more than the rattle by his side; and it is only by degrees, through pain, that he understands the fact of the

body. And experiences of the same kind are necessary for the individual to become conscious of himself; but

here there is the difference that, although everyone becomes equally conscious of his body as a separate and

complete organism, everyone does not become equally conscious of himself as a complete and separate

personality. The feeling of apartness from others comes to most with puberty, but it is not always developed

to such a degree as to make the difference between the individual and his fellows noticeable to the individual.

It is such as he, as little conscious of himself as the bee in a hive, who are the lucky in life, for they have the

best chance of happiness: their activities are shared by all, and their pleasures are only pleasures because they

are enjoyed in common; you will see them on WhitMonday dancing on Hampstead Heath, shouting at a

football match, or from club windows in Pall Mall cheering a royal procession. It is because of them that man

Philip passed from the innocence of childhood to bitter consciousness of himself by the ridicule which his

clubfoot had excited. The circumstances of his case were so peculiar that he could not apply to them the

readymade rules which acted well enough in ordinary affairs, and he was forced to think for himself. The

many books he had read filled his mind with ideas which, because he only half understood them, gave more

scope to his imagination. Beneath his painful shyness something was growing up within him, and obscurely

he realised his personality. But at times it gave him odd surprises; he did things, he knew not why, and

There was a boy called Luard between whom and Philip a friendship had arisen, and one day, when they were

playing together in the schoolroom, Luard began to perform some trick with an ebony penholder of

But no sooner were the words out of the boy's mouth than the penholder snapped in two. Luard looked at

"I say, what's the matter?" said Luard, with surprise. "I'll get you another one exactly the same."

"It's not about the penholder I care," said Philip, in a trembling voice, "only it was given me by my mater,

Philip took the two pieces of the penholder and looked at them. He tried to restrain his sobs. He felt utterly

miserable. And yet he could not tell why, for he knew quite well that he had bought the penholder during his

last holidays at Blackstable for one and twopence. He did not know in the least what had made him invent

that pathetic story, but he was quite as unhappy as though it had been true. The pious atmosphere of the

vicarage and the religious tone of the school had made Philip's conscience very sensitive; he absorbed

insensibly the feeling about him that the Tempter was ever on the watch to gain his immortal soul; and

though he was not more truthful than most boys he never told a lie without suffering from remorse. When he

thought over this incident he was very much distressed, and made up his mind that he must go to Luard and

tell him that the story was an invention. Though he dreaded humiliation more than anything in the world, he

hugged himself for two or three days at the thought of the agonising joy of humiliating himself to the Glory

of God. But he never got any further. He satisfied his conscience by the more comfortable method of

expressing his repentance only to the Almighty. But he could not understand why he should have been so

genuinely affected by the story he was making up. The tears that flowed down his grubby cheeks were real

tears. Then by some accident of association there occurred to him that scene when Emma had told him of his

mother's death, and, though he could not speak for crying, he had insisted on going in to say goodbye to the

THEN a wave of religiosity passed through the school. Bad language was no longer heard, and the little

nastinesses of small boys were looked upon with hostility; the bigger boys, like the lords temporal of the

Middle Ages, used the strength of their arms to persuade those weaker than themselves to virtuous courses.

Philip, his restless mind avid for new things, became very devout. He heard soon that it was possible to join a

Bible League, and wrote to London for particulars. These consisted in a form to be filled up with the

applicant's name, age, and school; a solemn declaration to be signed that he would read a set portion of Holy

Scripture every night for a year; and a request for half a crown; this, it was explained, was demanded partly to

prove the earnestness of the applicant's desire to become a member of the League, and partly to cover clerical

expenses. Philip duly sent the papers and the money, and in return received a calendar worth about a penny,

on which was set down the appointed passage to be read each day, and a sheet of paper on one side of which

was a picture of the Good Shepherd and a lamb, and on the other, decoratively framed in red lines, a short

Every evening he undressed as quickly as possible in order to have time for his task before the gas was put

out. He read industriously, as he read always, without criticism, stories of cruelty, deceit, ingratitude,

dishonesty, and low cunning. Actions which would have excited his horror in the life about him, in the

reading passed through his mind without comment, because they were committed under the direct inspiration

of God. The method of the League was to alternate a book of the Old Testament with a book of the New, and

_If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the figtree, but also if ye shall say

unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done._

They made no particular impression on him, but it happened that two or three days later, being Sunday, the

Canon in residence chose them for the text of his sermon. Even if Philip had wanted to hear this it would

have been impossible, for the boys of King's School sit in the choir, and the pulpit stands at the corner of the

transept so that the preacher's back is almost turned to them. The distance also is so great that it needs a man

with a fine voice and a knowledge of elocution to make himself heard in the choir; and according to long

usage the Canons of Tercanbury are chosen for their learning rather than for any qualities which might be of

use in a cathedral church. But the words of the text, perhaps because he had read them so short a while

before, came clearly enough to Philip's ears, and they seemed on a sudden to have a personal application. He

thought about them through most of the sermon, and that night, on getting into bed, he turned over the pages

of the Gospel and found once more the passage. Though he believed implicitly everything he saw in print, he

had learned already that in the Bible things that said one thing quite clearly often mysteriously meant another.

There was no one he liked to ask at school, so he kept the question he had in mind till the Christmas holidays,

and then one day he made an opportunity. It was after supper and prayers were just finished. Mrs. Carey was

counting the eggs that Mary Ann had brought in as usual and writing on each one the date. Philip stood at the

Mr. Carey looked up over his spectacles. He was holding _The Blackstable Times_ in front of the fire. It had

come in that evening damp from the press, and the Vicar always aired it for ten minutes before he began to

"If it says so in the Bible it is so, Philip," said Mrs. Carey gently, taking up the platebasket.

"D'you mean to say that if you really believed you could move mountains you could?"

"Now, say goodnight to your uncle, Philip," said Aunt Louisa. "You're not wanting to move a mountain

Philip allowed himself to be kissed on the forehead by his uncle and preceded Mrs. Carey upstairs. He had

got the information he wanted. His little room was icy, and he shivered when he put on his nightshirt. But he

always felt that his prayers were more pleasing to God when he said them under conditions of discomfort.

The coldness of his hands and feet were an offering to the Almighty. And tonight he sank on his knees;

buried his face in his hands, and prayed to God with all his might that He would make his clubfoot whole. It

was a very small thing beside the moving of mountains. He knew that God could do it if He wished, and his

own faith was complete. Next morning, finishing his prayers with the same request, he fixed a date for the

"Oh, God, in Thy loving mercy and goodness, if it be Thy will, please make my foot all right on the night

He was glad to get his petition into a formula, and he repeated it later in the diningroom during the short

pause which the Vicar always made after prayers, before he rose from his knees. He said it again in the

evening and again, shivering in his nightshirt, before he got into bed. And he believed. For once he looked

forward with eagerness to the end of the holidays. He laughed to himself as he thought of his uncle's

astonishment when he ran down the stairs three at a time; and after breakfast he and Aunt Louisa would have

"Oh, it's all right now," he would answer casually, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

He would be able to play football. His heart leaped as he saw himself running, running, faster than any of the

other boys. At the end of the Easter term there were the sports, and he would be able to go in for the races; he

rather fancied himself over the hurdles. It would be splendid to be like everyone else, not to be stared at

curiously by new boys who did not know about his deformity, nor at the baths in summer to need incredible

precautions, while he was undressing, before he could hide his foot in the water.

He prayed with all the power of his soul. No doubts assailed him. He was confident in the word of God. And

the night before he was to go back to school he went up to bed tremulous with excitement. There was snow

on the ground, and Aunt Louisa had allowed herself the unaccustomed luxury of a fire in her bedroom; but

in Philip's little room it was so cold that his fingers were numb, and he had great difficulty in undoing his

collar. His teeth chattered. The idea came to him that he must do something more than usual to attract the

attention of God, and he turned back the rug which was in front of his bed so that he could kneel on the bare

boards; and then it struck him that his nightshirt was a softness that might displease his Maker, so he took it

off and said his prayers naked. When he got into bed he was so cold that for some time he could not sleep, but

when he did, it was so soundly that Mary Ann had to shake him when she brought in his hot water next

morning. She talked to him while she drew the curtains, but he did not answer; he had remembered at once

that this was the morning for the miracle. His heart was filled with joy and gratitude. His first instinct was to

put down his hand and feel the foot which was whole now, but to do this seemed to doubt the goodness of

God. He knew that his foot was well. But at last he made up his mind, and with the toes of his right foot he

He limped downstairs just as Mary Ann was going into the diningroom for prayers, and then he sat down to

"He's thinking of the good breakfast he'll have at school tomorrow," said the Vicar.

When Philip answered, it was in a way that always irritated his uncle, with something that had nothing to do

"Supposing you'd asked God to do something," said Philip, "and really believed it was going to happen, like

moving a mountain, I mean, and you had faith, and it didn't happen, what would it mean?"

"What a funny boy you are!" said Aunt Louisa. "You asked about moving mountains two or three weeks

Philip accepted the explanation. If God had not cured him, it was because he did not really believe. And yet

he did not see how he could believe more than he did. But perhaps he had not given God enough time. He

had only asked Him for nineteen days. In a day or two he began his prayer again, and this time he fixed upon

Easter. That was the day of His Son's glorious resurrection, and God in His happiness might be mercifully

inclined. But now Philip added other means of attaining his desire: he began to wish, when he saw a new

moon or a dappled horse, and he looked out for shooting stars; during exeat they had a chicken at the

vicarage, and he broke the lucky bone with Aunt Louisa and wished again, each time that his foot might be

made whole. He was appealing unconsciously to gods older to his race than the God of Israel. And he

bombarded the Almighty with his prayer, at odd times of the day, whenever it occurred to him, in identical

words always, for it seemed to him important to make his request in the same terms. But presently the feeling

came to him that this time also his faith would not be great enough. He could not resist the doubt that assailed

It was like the salt which his nurse used to tell him about: you could catch any bird by putting salt on his tail;

and once he had taken a little bag of it into Kensington Gardens. But he could never get near enough to put

the salt on a bird's tail. Before Easter he had given up the struggle. He felt a dull resentment against his uncle

for taking him in. The text which spoke of the moving of mountains was just one of those that said one thing

and meant another. He thought his uncle had been playing a practical joke on him.

THE King's School at Tercanbury, to which Philip went when he was thirteen, prided itself on its antiquity. It

traced its origin to an abbey school, founded before the Conquest, where the rudiments of learning were

taught by Augustine monks; and, like many another establishment of this sort, on the destruction of the

monasteries it had been reorganised by the officers of King Henry VIII and thus acquired its name. Since

then, pursuing its modest course, it had given to the sons of the local gentry and of the professional people of

Kent an education sufficient to their needs. One or two men of letters, beginning with a poet, than whom only

Shakespeare had a more splendid genius, and ending with a writer of prose whose view of life has affected

profoundly the generation of which Philip was a member, had gone forth from its gates to achieve fame; it

had produced one or two eminent lawyers, but eminent lawyers are common, and one or two soldiers of

distinction; but during the three centuries since its separation from the monastic order it had trained especially

men of the church, bishops, deans, canons, and above all country clergymen: there were boys in the school

whose fathers, grandfathers, greatgrandfathers, had been educated there and had all been rectors of parishes

in the diocese of Tercanbury; and they came to it with their minds made up already to be ordained. But there

were signs notwithstanding that even there changes were coming; for a few, repeating what they had heard at

home, said that the Church was no longer what it used to be. It wasn't so much the money; but the class of

people who went in for it weren't the same; and two or three boys knew curates whose fathers were

tradesmen: they'd rather go out to the Colonies (in those days the Colonies were still the last hope of those

who could get nothing to do in England) than be a curate under some chap who wasn't a gentleman. At King's

School, as at Blackstable Vicarage, a tradesman was anyone who was not lucky enough to own land (and

here a fine distinction was made between the gentleman farmer and the landowner), or did not follow one of

the four professions to which it was possible for a gentleman to belong. Among the dayboys, of whom there

were about a hundred and fifty, sons of the local gentry and of the men stationed at the depot, those whose

fathers were engaged in business were made to feel the degradation of their state.

The masters had no patience with modern ideas of education, which they read of sometimes in _The Times_

or _The Guardian_, and hoped fervently that King's School would remain true to its old traditions. The dead

languages were taught with such thoroughness that an old boy seldom thought of Homer or Virgil in after life

without a qualm of boredom; and though in the common room at dinner one or two bolder spirits suggested

that mathematics were of increasing importance, the general feeling was that they were a less noble study

than the classics. Neither German nor chemistry was taught, and French only by the formmasters; they

could keep order better than a foreigner, and, since they knew the grammar as well as any Frenchman, it

seemed unimportant that none of them could have got a cup of coffee in the restaurant at Boulogne unless the

waiter had known a little English. Geography was taught chiefly by making boys draw maps, and this was a

favourite occupation, especially when the country dealt with was mountainous: it was possible to waste a

great deal of time in drawing the Andes or the Apennines. The masters, graduates of Oxford or Cambridge,

were ordained and unmarried; if by chance they wished to marry they could only do so by accepting one of

the smaller livings at the disposal of the Chapter; but for many years none of them had cared to leave the

refined society of Tercanbury, which owing to the cavalry depot had a martial as well as an ecclesiastical

tone, for the monotony of life in a country rectory; and they were now all men of middle age.

The headmaster, on the other hand, was obliged to be married and he conducted the school till age began to

tell upon him. When he retired he was rewarded with a much better living than any of the undermasters

But a year before Philip entered the school a great change had come over it. It had been obvious for some

time that Dr. Fleming, who had been headmaster for the quarter of a century, was become too deaf to

continue his work to the greater glory of God; and when one of the livings on the outskirts of the city fell

vacant, with a stipend of six hundred a year, the Chapter offered it to him in such a manner as to imply that

they thought it high time for him to retire. He could nurse his ailments comfortably on such an income. Two

or three curates who had hoped for preferment told their wives it was scandalous to give a parish that needed

a young, strong, and energetic man to an old fellow who knew nothing of parochial work, and had feathered

his nest already; but the mutterings of the unbeneficed clergy do not reach the ears of a cathedral Chapter.

And as for the parishioners they had nothing to say in the matter, and therefore nobody asked for their

When Dr. Fleming was thus disposed of it became necessary to find a successor. It was contrary to the

traditions of the school that one of the lowermasters should be chosen. The commonroom was unanimous in

desiring the election of Mr. Watson, headmaster of the preparatory school; he could hardly be described as

already a master of King's School, they had all known him for twenty years, and there was no danger that he

would make a nuisance of himself. But the Chapter sprang a surprise on them. It chose a man called Perkins.

At first nobody knew who Perkins was, and the name favourably impressed no one; but before the shock of it

had passed away, it was realised that Perkins was the son of Perkins the linendraper. Dr. Fleming informed

the masters just before dinner, and his manner showed his consternation. Such of them as were dining in, ate

their meal almost in silence, and no reference was made to the matter till the servants had left the room. Then

they set to. The names of those present on this occasion are unimportant, but they had been known to

They all knew Tom Perkins. The first thing about him was that he was not a gentleman. They remembered

him quite well. He was a small, dark boy, with untidy black hair and large eyes. He looked like a gipsy. He

had come to the school as a dayboy, with the best scholarship on their endowment, so that his education had

cost him nothing. Of course he was brilliant. At every SpeechDay he was loaded with prizes. He was their

showboy, and they remembered now bitterly their fear that he would try to get some scholarship at one of

the larger public schools and so pass out of their hands. Dr. Fleming had gone to the linendraper his

fatherthey all remembered the shop, Perkins and Cooper, in St. Catherine's Streetand said he hoped

Tom would remain with them till he went to Oxford. The school was Perkins and Cooper's best customer, and

Mr. Perkins was only too glad to give the required assurance. Tom Perkins continued to triumph, he was the

finest classical scholar that Dr. Fleming remembered, and on leaving the school took with him the most

valuable scholarship they had to offer. He got another at Magdalen and settled down to a brilliant career at

the University. The school magazine recorded the distinctions he achieved year after year, and when he got

his double first Dr. Fleming himself wrote a few words of eulogy on the front page. It was with greater

satisfaction that they welcomed his success, since Perkins and Cooper had fallen upon evil days: Cooper

drank like a fish, and just before Tom Perkins took his degree the linendrapers filed their petition in

In due course Tom Perkins took Holy Orders and entered upon the profession for which he was so admirably

But there was quite a difference between welcoming his success at other schools and serving under his

leadership in their own. Tar had frequently given him lines, and Squirts had boxed his ears. They could not

imagine how the Chapter had made such a mistake. No one could be expected to forget that he was the son of

a bankrupt linendraper, and the alcoholism of Cooper seemed to increase the disgrace. It was understood that

the Dean had supported his candidature with zeal, so the Dean would probably ask him to dinner; but would

the pleasant little dinners in the precincts ever be the same when Tom Perkins sat at the table? And what

about the depot? He really could not expect officers and gentlemen to receive him as one of themselves. It

would do the school incalculable harm. Parents would be dissatisfied, and no one could be surprised if there

were wholesale withdrawals. And then the indignity of calling him Mr. Perkins! The masters thought by way

of protest of sending in their resignations in a body, but the uneasy fear that they would be accepted with

"The only thing is to prepare ourselves for changes," said Sighs, who had conducted the fifth form for five

And when they saw him they were not reassured. Dr. Fleming invited them to meet him at luncheon. He was

now a man of thirtytwo, tall and lean, but with the same wild and unkempt look they remembered on him as

a boy. His clothes, illmade and shabby, were put on untidily. His hair was as black and as long as ever, and

he had plainly never learned to brush it; it fell over his forehead with every gesture, and he had a quick

movement of the hand with which he pushed it back from his eyes. He had a black moustache and a beard

which came high up on his face almost to the cheekbones, He talked to the masters quite easily, as though

he had parted from them a week or two be fore; he was evidently delighted to see them. He seemed

unconscious of the strangeness of the position and appeared not to notice any oddness in being addressed as

When he bade them goodbye, one of the masters, for something to say, remarked that he was allowing

There was a distinct embarrassment. They wondered that he could be so tactless, and to make it worse Dr.

Only Tom Perkins was unconscious of the humiliation which the whole party felt. He turned to Mrs. Fleming.

"It's still a linendraper's," she said bitterly. "Grove is the name. We don't deal there any more."

It was not till the end of dinner that evening that any reference was made in the commonroom to the subject

"Well, what did you think of our new head?" They thought of the conversation at luncheon. It was hardly a

conversation; it was a monologue. Perkins had talked incessantly. He talked very quickly, with a flow of easy

words and in a deep, resonant voice. He had a short, odd little laugh which showed his white teeth. They had

followed him with difficulty, for his mind darted from subject to subject with a connection they did not

always catch. He talked of pedagogics, and this was natural enough; but he had much to say of modern

theories in Germany which they had never heard of and received with misgiving. He talked of the classics,

but he had been to Greece, and he discoursed of archaeology; he had once spent a winter digging; they could

not see how that helped a man to teach boys to pass examinations, He talked of politics. It sounded odd to

them to hear him compare Lord Beaconsfield with Alcibiades. He talked of Mr. Gladstone and Home Rule.

They realised that he was a Liberal. Their hearts sank. He talked of German philosophy and of French fiction.

It was Winks who summed up the general impression and put it into a form they all felt conclusively

damning. Winks was the master of the upper third, a weakkneed man with drooping eyelids, He was too

tall for his strength, and his movements were slow and languid. He gave an impression of lassitude, and his

Enthusiasm was illbred. Enthusiasm was ungentlemanly. They thought of the Salvation Army with its

braying trumpets and its drums. Enthusiasm meant change. They had gooseflesh when they thought of all

the pleasant old habits which stood in imminent danger. They hardly dared to look forward to the future.

"I wonder if the Dean and Chapter knew that he was a Radical when they elected him," another observed

When Tar and Sighs were walking together to the Chapter House on SpeechDay a week later, Tar, who had

"Well, we've seen a good many SpeechDays here, haven't we? I wonder if we shall see another."

"If anything worth having comes along in the way of a living I don't mind when I retire."

A YEAR passed, and when Philip came to the school the old masters were all in their places; but a good

many changes had taken place notwithstanding their stubborn resistance, none the less formidable because it

was concealed under an apparent desire to fall in with the new head's ideas. Though the formmasters still

taught French to the lower school, another master had come, with a degree of doctor of philology from the

University of Heidelberg and a record of three years spent in a French lycee, to teach French to the upper

forms and German to anyone who cared to take it up instead of Greek. Another master was engaged to teach

mathematics more systematically than had been found necessary hitherto. Neither of these was ordained. This

was a real revolution, and when the pair arrived the older masters received them with distrust. A laboratory

had been fitted up, army classes were instituted; they all said the character of the school was changing. And

heaven only knew what further projects Mr. Perkins turned in that untidy head of his. The school was small

as public schools go, there were not more than two hundred boarders; and it was difficult for it to grow larger,

for it was huddled up against the Cathedral; the precincts, with the exception of a house in which some of the

masters lodged, were occupied by the cathedral clergy; and there was no more room for building. But Mr.

Perkins devised an elaborate scheme by which he might obtain sufficient space to make the school double its

present size. He wanted to attract boys from London. He thought it would be good for them to be thrown in

"It's against all our traditions," said Sighs, when Mr. Perkins made the suggestion to him. "We've rather gone

No one had ever told the formmaster before that he talked nonsense, and he was meditating an acid reply, in

which perhaps he might insert a veiled reference to hosiery, when Mr. Perkins in his impetuous way attacked

"That house in the precinctsif you'd only marry I'd get the Chapter to put another couple of stories on, and

The elderly clergyman gasped. Why should he marry? He was fiftyseven, a man couldn't marry at

fiftyseven. He couldn't start looking after a house at his time of life. He didn't want to marry. If the choice

lay between that and the country living he would much sooner resign. All he wanted now was peace and

Mr. Perkins looked at him with his dark, bright eyes, and if there was a twinkle in them poor Sighs never saw

"What a pity! Couldn't you marry to oblige me? It would help me a great deal with the Dean and Chapter

But Mr. Perkins' most unpopular innovation was his system of taking occasionally another man's form. He

asked it as a favour, but after all it was a favour which could not be refused, and as Tar, otherwise Mr.

Turner, said, it was undignified for all parties. He gave no warning, but after morning prayers would say to

"I wonder if you'd mind taking the Sixth today at eleven. We'll change over, shall we?"

They did not know whether this was usual at other schools, but certainly it had never been done at

Tercanbury. The results were curious. Mr. Tumer, who was the first victim, broke the news to his form that

the headmaster would take them for Latin that day, and on the pretence that they might like to ask him a

question or two so that they should not make perfect fools of themselves, spent the last quarter of an hour of

the history lesson in construing for them the passage of Livy which had been set for the day; but when he

rejoined his class and looked at the paper on which Mr. Perkins had written the marks, a surprise awaited

him; for the two boys at the top of the form seemed to have done very ill, while others who had never

distinguished themselves before were given full marks. When he asked Eldridge, his cleverest boy, what was

"Mr. Perkins never gave us any construing to do. He asked me what I knew about General Gordon."

Mr. Turner looked at him in astonishment. The boys evidently felt they had been hardly used, and he could

not help agreeing with their silent dissatisfaction. He could not see either what General Gordon had to do

"Eldridge was dreadfully put out because you asked him what he knew about General Gordon," he said to the

"I saw they'd got to the agrarian laws of Caius Gracchus, and I wondered if they knew anything about the

agrarian troubles in Ireland. But all they knew about Ireland was that Dublin was on the Liffey. So I

Then the horrid fact was disclosed that the new head had a mania for general information. He had doubts

about the utility of examinations on subjects which had been crammed for the occasion. He wanted common

Sighs grew more worried every month; he could not get the thought out of his head that Mr. Perkins would

ask him to fix a day for his marriage; and he hated the attitude the head adopted towards classical literature.

There was no doubt that he was a fine scholar, and he was engaged on a work which was quite in the right

tradition: he was writing a treatise on the trees in Latin literature; but he talked of it flippantly, as though it

were a pastime of no great importance, like billiards, which engaged his leisure but was not to be considered

with seriousness. And Squirts, the master of the Middle Third, grew more illtempered every day.

It was in his form that Philip was put on entering the school. The Rev. B. B. Gordon was a man by nature

illsuited to be a schoolmaster: he was impatient and choleric. With no one to call him to account, with only

small boys to face him, he had long lost all power of selfcontrol. He began his work in a rage and ended it in

a passion. He was a man of middle height and of a corpulent figure; he had sandy hair, worn very short and

now growing gray, and a small bristly moustache. His large face, with indistinct features and small blue eyes,

was naturally red, but during his frequent attacks of anger it grew dark and purple. His nails were bitten to the

quick, for while some trembling boy was construing he would sit at his desk shaking with the fury that

consumed him, and gnaw his fingers. Stories, perhaps exaggerated, were told of his violence, and two years

before there had been some excitement in the school when it was heard that one father was threatening a

prosecution: he had boxed the ears of a boy named Walters with a book so violently that his hearing was

affected and the boy had to be taken away from the school. The boy's father lived in Tercanbury, and there

had been much indignation in the city, the local paper had referred to the matter; but Mr. Walters was only a

brewer, so the sympathy was divided. The rest of the boys, for reasons best known to themselves, though they

loathed the master, took his side in the affair, and, to show their indignation that the school's business had

been dealt with outside, made things as uncomfortable as they could for Walters' younger brother, who still

remained. But Mr. Gordon had only escaped the country living by the skin of his teeth, and he had never hit a

boy since. The right the masters possessed to cane boys on the hand was taken away from them, and Squirts

could no longer emphasize his anger by beating his desk with the cane. He never did more now than take a

boy by the shoulders and shake him. He still made a naughty or refractory lad stand with one arm stretched

out for anything from ten minutes to half an hour, and he was as violent as before with his tongue.

No master could have been more unfitted to teach things to so shy a boy as Philip. He had come to the school

with fewer terrors than he had when first he went to Mr. Watson's. He knew a good many boys who had been

with him at the preparatory school. He felt more grownup, and instinctively realised that among the larger

numbers his deformity would be less noticeable. But from the first day Mr. Gordon struck terror in his heart;

and the master, quick to discern the boys who were frightened of him, seemed on that account to take a

peculiar dislike to him. Philip had enjoyed his work, but now he began to look upon the hours passed in

school with horror. Rather than risk an answer which might be wrong and excite a storm of abuse from the

master, he would sit stupidly silent, and when it came towards his turn to stand up and construe he grew sick

and white with apprehension. His happy moments were those when Mr. Perkins took the form. He was able

to gratify the passion for general knowledge which beset the headmaster; he had read all sorts of strange

books beyond his years, and often Mr. Perkins, when a question was going round the room, would stop at

The good marks he got on these occasions increased Mr. Gordon's indignation. One day it came to Philip's

turn to translate, and the master sat there glaring at him and furiously biting his thumb. He was in a ferocious

Each time the words were screamed more loudly. The effect was to drive all he knew out of Philip's head, and

"If you don't know why don't you say so? Do you know it or not? Did you hear all this construed last time or

The master seized the arms of his chair and grasped them as though to prevent himself from falling upon

Philip. They knew that in past days he often used to seize boys by the throat till they almost choked. The

veins in his forehead stood out and his face grew dark and threatening. He was a man insane.

Philip had known the passage perfectly the day before, but now he could remember nothing.

"Why don't you know it? Let's take the words one by one. We'll soon see if you don't know it."

Philip stood silent, very white, trembling a little, with his head bent down on the book. The master's breathing

"The headmaster says you're clever. I don't know how he sees it. General information." He laughed savagely.

That relieved him a little. He saw Philip redden suddenly. He told him to fetch the Black Book. Philip put

down his Caesar and went silently out. The Black Book was a sombre volume in which the names of boys

were written with their misdeeds, and when a name was down three times it meant a caning. Philip went to

the headmaster's house and knocked at his studydoor. Mr. Perkins was seated at his table.

"There it is," answered Mr. Perkins, indicating its place by a nod of his head. "What have you been doing that

Mr. Perkins gave him a quick look, but without answering went on with his work. Philip took the book and

"Let me have a look at it," said the headmaster. "I see Mr. Gordon has blackbooked you for 'gross

Mr. Perkins looked at him again. He wondered whether there was sarcasm behind the boy's reply, but he was

still much too shaken. His face was white and his eyes had a look of terrified distress. Mr. Perkins got up and

"A friend of mine sent me some pictures of Athens this morning," he said casually. "Look here, there's the

He began explaining to Philip what he saw. The ruin grew vivid with his words. He showed him the theatre

of Dionysus and explained in what order the people sat, and how beyond they could see the blue Aegean.

"I remember Mr. Gordon used to call me a gipsy counterjumper when I was in his form."

And before Philip, his mind fixed on the photographs, had time to gather the meaning of the remark, Mr.

Perkins was showing him a picture of Salamis, and with his finger, a finger of which the nail had a little black

edge to it, was pointing out how the Greek ships were placed and how the Persian.

PHILIP passed the next two years with comfortable monotony. He was not bullied more than other boys of

his size; and his deformity, withdrawing him from games, acquired for him an insignificance for which he

was grateful. He was not popular, and he was very lonely. He spent a couple of terms with Winks in the

Upper Third. Winks, with his weary manner and his drooping eyelids, looked infinitely bored. He did his

duty, but he did it with an abstracted mind. He was kind, gentle, and foolish. He had a great belief in the

honour of boys; he felt that the first thing to make them truthful was not to let it enter your head for a moment

that it was possible for them to lie. "Ask much," he quoted, "and much shall be given to you." Life was easy

in the Upper Third. You knew exactly what lines would come to your turn to construe, and with the crib that

passed from hand to hand you could find out all you wanted in two minutes; you could hold a Latin Grammar

open on your knees while questions were passing round; and Winks never noticed anything odd in the fact

that the same incredible mistake was to be found in a dozen different exercises. He had no great faith in

examinations, for he noticed that boys never did so well in them as in form: it was disappointing, but not

significant. In due course they were moved up, having learned little but a cheerful effrontery in the distortion

of truth, which was possibly of greater service to them in after life than an ability to read Latin at sight.

Then they fell into the hands of Tar. His name was Turner; he was the most vivacious of the old masters, a

short man with an immense belly, a black beard turning now to gray, and a swarthy skin. In his clerical dress

there was indeed something in him to suggest the tarbarrel; and though on principle he gave five hundred

lines to any boy on whose lips he overheard his nickname, at dinnerparties in the precincts he often made

little jokes about it. He was the most worldly of the masters; he dined out more frequently than any of the

others, and the society he kept was not so exclusively clerical. The boys looked upon him as rather a dog. He

left off his clerical attire during the holidays and had been seen in Switzerland in gay tweeds. He liked a

bottle of wine and a good dinner, and having once been seen at the Cafe Royal with a lady who was very

probably a near relation, was thenceforward supposed by generations of schoolboys to indulge in orgies the

circumstantial details of which pointed to an unbounded belief in human depravity.

Mr. Turner reckoned that it took him a term to lick boys into shape after they had been in the Upper Third;

and now and then he let fall a sly hint, which showed that he knew perfectly what went on in his colleague's

form. He took it goodhumouredly. He looked upon boys as young ruffians who were more apt to be truthful

if it was quite certain a lie would be found out, whose sense of honour was peculiar to themselves and did not

apply to dealings with masters, and who were least likely to be troublesome when they learned that it did not

pay. He was proud of his form and as eager at fiftyfive that it should do better in examinations than any of

the others as he had been when he first came to the school. He had the choler of the obese, easily roused and

as easily calmed, and his boys soon discovered that there was much kindliness beneath the invective with

which he constantly assailed them. He had no patience with fools, but was willing to take much trouble with

boys whom he suspected of concealing intelligence behind their wilfulness. He was fond of inviting them to

tea; and, though vowing they never got a look in with him at the cakes and muffins, for it was the fashion to

believe that his corpulence pointed to a voracious appetite, and his voracious appetite to tapeworms, they

Philip was now more comfortable, for space was so limited that there were only studies for boys in the upper

school, and till then he had lived in the great hall in which they all ate and in which the lower forms did

preparation in a promiscuity which was vaguely distasteful to him. Now and then it made him restless to be

with people and he wanted urgently to be alone. He set out for solitary walks into the country. There was a

little stream, with pollards on both sides of it, that ran through green fields, and it made him happy, he knew

not why, to wander along its banks. When he was tired he lay facedownward on the grass and watched the

eager scurrying of minnows and of tadpoles. It gave him a peculiar satisfaction to saunter round the precincts.

On the green in the middle they practised at nets in the summer, but during the rest of the year it was quiet:

boys used to wander round sometimes arm in arm, or a studious fellow with abstracted gaze walked slowly,

repeating to himself something he had to learn by heart. There was a colony of rooks in the great elms, and

they filled the air with melancholy cries. Along one side lay the Cathedral with its great central tower, and

Philip, who knew as yet nothing of beauty, felt when he looked at it a troubling delight which he could not

understand. When he had a study (it was a little square room looking on a slum, and four boys shared it), he

bought a photograph of that view of the Cathedral, and pinned it up over his desk. And he found himself

taking a new interest in what he saw from the window of the Fourth Form room. It looked on to old lawns,

carefully tended, and fine trees with foliage dense and rich. It gave him an odd feeling in his heart, and he did

not know if it was pain or pleasure. It was the first dawn of the aesthetic emotion. It accompanied other

changes. His voice broke. It was no longer quite under his control, and queer sounds issued from his throat.

Then he began to go to the classes which were held in the headmaster's study, immediately after tea, to

prepare boys for confirmation. Philip's piety had not stood the test of time, and he had long since given up his

nightly reading of the Bible; but now, under the influence of Mr. Perkins, with this new condition of the body

which made him so restless, his old feelings revived, and he reproached himself bitterly for his backsliding.

The fires of Hell burned fiercely before his mind's eye. If he had died during that time when he was little

better than an infidel he would have been lost; he believed implicitly in pain everlasting, he believed in it

much more than in eternal happiness; and he shuddered at the dangers he had run.

Since the day on which Mr. Perkins had spoken kindly to him, when he was smarting under the particular

form of abuse which he could least bear, Philip had conceived for his headmaster a doglike adoration. He

racked his brains vainly for some way to please him. He treasured the smallest word of commendation which

by chance fell from his lips. And when he came to the quiet little meetings in his house he was prepared to

surrender himself entirely. He kept his eyes fixed on Mr. Perkins' shining eyes, and sat with mouth half open,

his head a little thrown forward so as to miss no word. The ordinariness of the surroundings made the matters

they dealt with extraordinarily moving. And often the master, seized himself by the wonder of his subject,

would push back the book in front of him, and with his hands clasped together over his heart, as though to

still the beating, would talk of the mysteries of their religion. Sometimes Philip did not understand, but he did

not want to understand, he felt vaguely that it was enough to feel. It seemed to him then that the headmaster,

with his black, straggling hair and his pale face, was like those prophets of Israel who feared not to take kings

to task; and when he thought of the Redeemer he saw Him only with the same dark eyes and those wan

Mr. Perkins took this part of his work with great seriousness. There was never here any of that flashing

humour which made the other masters suspect him of flippancy. Finding time for everything in his busy day,

he was able at certain intervals to take separately for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes the boys whom

he was preparing for confirmation. He wanted to make them feel that this was the first consciously serious

step in their lives; he tried to grope into the depths of their souls; he wanted to instil in them his own

vehement devotion. In Philip, notwithstanding his shyness, he felt the possibility of a passion equal to his

own. The boy's temperament seemed to him essentially religious. One day he broke off suddenly from the

"I don't know any life that's so full of happiness as ours. I wish I could make you feel what a wonderful

privilege it is. One can serve God in every walk, but we stand nearer to Him. I don't want to influence you,

but if you made up your mindoh, at onceyou couldn't help feeling that joy and relief which never desert

Philip did not answer, but the headmaster read in his eyes that he realised already something of what he tried

"If you go on as you are now you'll find yourself head of the school one of these days, and you ought to be

pretty safe for a scholarship when you leave. Have you got anything of your own?"

The headmaster hesitated a moment, and then, idly drawing lines with a pencil on the blotting paper in front

"I'm afraid your choice of professions will be rather limited. You naturally couldn't go in for anything that

Philip reddened to the roots of his hair, as he always did when any reference was made to his clubfoot. Mr.

"I wonder if you're not oversensitive about your misfortune. Has it ever struck you to thank God for it?"

Philip looked up quickly. His lips tightened. He remembered how for months, trusting in what they told him,

he had implored God to heal him as He had healed the Leper and made the Blind to see.

"As long as you accept it rebelliously it can only cause you shame. But if you looked upon it as a cross that

was given you to bear only because your shoulders were strong enough to bear it, a sign of God's favour, then

But Philip thought over all that the headmaster had said, and presently, his mind taken up entirely with the

ceremony that was before him, a mystical rapture seized him. His spirit seemed to free itself from the bonds

of the flesh and he seemed to be living a new life. He aspired to perfection with all the passion that was in

him. He wanted to surrender himself entirely to the service of God, and he made up his mind definitely that

he would be ordained. When the great day arrived, his soul deeply moved by all the preparation, by the books

he had studied and above all by the overwhelming influence of the head, he could hardly contain himself for

fear and joy. One thought had tormented him. He knew that he would have to walk alone through the chancel,

and he dreaded showing his limp thus obviously, not only to the whole school, who were attending the

service, but also to the strangers, people from the city or parents who had come to see their sons confirmed.

But when the time came he felt suddenly that he could accept the humiliation joyfully; and as he limped up

the chancel, very small and insignificant beneath the lofty vaulting of the Cathedral, he offered consciously

BUT Philip could not live long in the rarefied air of the hilltops. What had happened to him when first he was

seized by the religious emotion happened to him now. Because he felt so keenly the beauty of faith, because

the desire for selfsacrifice burned in his heart with such a gemlike glow, his strength seemed inadequate to

his ambition. He was tired out by the violence of his passion. His soul was filled on a sudden with a singular

aridity. He began to forget the presence of God which had seemed so surrounding; and his religious exercises,

still very punctually performed, grew merely formal. At first he blamed himself for this falling away, and the

fear of hellfire urged him to renewed vehemence; but the passion was dead, and gradually other interests

Philip had few friends. His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a need that after being in company

for some time he grew tired and restless; he was vain of the wider knowledge he had acquired from the

perusal of so many books, his mind was alert, and he had not the skill to hide his contempt for his

companions' stupidity. They complained that he was conceited; and, since he excelled only in matters which

to them were unimportant, they asked satirically what he had to be conceited about. He was developing a

sense of humour, and found that he had a knack of saying bitter things, which caught people on the raw; he

said them because they amused him, hardly realising how much they hurt, and was much offended when he

found that his victims regarded him with active dislike. The humiliations he suffered when first he went to

school had caused in him a shrinking from his fellows which he could never entirely overcome; he remained

shy and silent. But though he did everything to alienate the sympathy of other boys he longed with all his

heart for the popularity which to some was so easily accorded. These from his distance he admired

extravagantly; and though he was inclined to be more sarcastic with them than with others, though he made

little jokes at their expense, he would have given anything to change places with them. Indeed he would

gladly have changed places with the dullest boy in the school who was whole of limb. He took to a singular

habit. He would imagine that he was some boy whom he had a particular fancy for; he would throw his soul,

as it were, into the other's body, talk with his voice and laugh with his heart; he would imagine himself doing

all the things the other did. It was so vivid that he seemed for a moment really to be no longer himself. In this

At the beginning of the Christmas term which followed on his confirmation Philip found himself moved into

another study. One of the boys who shared it was called Rose. He was in the same form as Philip, and Philip

had always looked upon him with envious admiration. He was not goodlooking; though his large hands and

big bones suggested that he would be a tall man, he was clumsily made; but his eyes were charming, and

when he laughed (he was constantly laughing) his face wrinkled all round them in a jolly way. He was neither

clever nor stupid, but good enough at his work and better at games. He was a favourite with masters and

When Philip was put in the study he could not help seeing that the others, who had been together for three

terms, welcomed him coldly. It made him nervous to feel himself an intruder; but he had learned to hide his

feelings, and they found him quiet and unobtrusive. With Rose, because he was as little able as anyone else to

resist his charm, Philip was even more than usually shy and abrupt; and whether on account of this,

unconsciously bent upon exerting the fascination he knew was his only by the results, or whether from sheer

kindness of heart, it was Rose who first took Philip into the circle. One day, quite suddenly, he asked Philip if

And just before they were setting out some boy put his head in the studydoor and asked Rose to go with

He looked at Philip with those goodnatured eyes of his and laughed. Philip felt a curious tremor in his heart.

In a little while, their friendship growing with boyish rapidity, the pair were inseparable. Other fellows

Soon they grew accustomed to the two walking into chapel arm in arm or strolling round the precincts in

conversation; wherever one was the other could be found also, and, as though acknowledging his

proprietorship, boys who wanted Rose would leave messages with Carey. Philip at first was reserved. He

would not let himself yield entirely to the proud joy that filled him; but presently his distrust of the fates gave

way before a wild happiness. He thought Rose the most wonderful fellow he had ever seen. His books now

were insignificant; he could not bother about them when there was something infinitely more important to

occupy him. Rose's friends used to come in to tea in the study sometimes or sit about when there was nothing

better to doRose liked a crowd and the chance of a ragand they found that Philip was quite a decent

When the last day of term came he and Rose arranged by which train they should come back, so that they

might meet at the station and have tea in the town before returning to school. Philip went home with a heavy

heart. He thought of Rose all through the holidays, and his fancy was active with the things they would do

together next term. He was bored at the vicarage, and when on the last day his uncle put him the usual

In order to be sure of meeting Rose at the station he took an earlier train than he usually did, and he waited

about the platform for an hour. When the train came in from Faversham, where he knew Rose had to change,

he ran along it excitedly. But Rose was not there. He got a porter to tell him when another train was due, and

he waited; but again he was disappointed; and he was cold and hungry, so he walked, through sidestreets

and slums, by a short cut to the school. He found Rose in the study, with his feet on the chimneypiece,

talking eighteen to the dozen with half a dozen boys who were sitting on whatever there was to sit on. He

shook hands with Philip enthusiastically, but Philip's face fell, for he realised that Rose had forgotten all

"You were at the station at halfpast four," said another boy. "I saw you when I came."

Philip blushed a little. He did not want Rose to know that he had been such a fool as to wait for him.

"I had to see about a friend of my people's," he invented readily. "I was asked to see her off."

But his disappointment made him a little sulky. He sat in silence, and when spoken to answered in

monosyllables. He was making up his mind to have it out with Rose when they were alone. But when the

others had gone Rose at once came over and sat on the arm of the chair in which Philip was lounging.

He seemed so genuinely pleased to see Philip that Philip's annoyance vanished. They began as if they had not

been separated for five minutes to talk eagerly of the thousand things that interested them.

AT FIRST Philip had been too grateful for Rose's friendship to make any demands on him. He took things as

they came and enjoyed life. But presently he began to resent Rose's universal amiability; he wanted a more

exclusive attachment, and he claimed as a right what before he had accepted as a favour. He watched

jealously Rose's companionship with others; and though he knew it was unreasonable could not help

sometimes saying bitter things to him. If Rose spent an hour playing the fool in another study, Philip would

receive him when he returned to his own with a sullen frown. He would sulk for a day, and he suffered more

because Rose either did not notice his illhumour or deliberately ignored it. Not seldom Philip, knowing all

the time how stupid he was, would force a quarrel, and they would not speak to one another for a couple of

days. But Philip could not bear to be angry with him long, and even when convinced that he was in the right,

would apologise humbly. Then for a week they would be as great friends as ever. But the best was over, and

Philip could see that Rose often walked with him merely from old habit or from fear of his anger; they had

not so much to say to one another as at first, and Rose was often bored. Philip felt that his lameness began to

Towards the end of the term two or three boys caught scarlet fever, and there was much talk of sending them

all home in order to escape an epidemic; but the sufferers were isolated, and since no more were attacked it

was supposed that the outbreak was stopped. One of the stricken was Philip. He remained in hospital through

the Easter holidays, and at the beginning of the summer term was sent home to the vicarage to get a little

fresh air. The Vicar, notwithstanding medical assurance that the boy was no longer infectious, received him

with suspicion; he thought it very inconsiderate of the doctor to suggest that his nephew's convalescence

should be spent by the seaside, and consented to have him in the house only because there was nowhere else

Philip went back to school at halfterm. He had forgotten the quarrels he had had with Rose, but remembered

only that he was his greatest friend. He knew that he had been silly. He made up his mind to be more

reasonable. During his illness Rose had sent him in a couple of little notes, and he had ended each with the

words: "Hurry up and come back." Philip thought Rose must be looking forward as much to his return as he

He found that owing to the death from scarlet fever of one of the boys in the Sixth there had been some

shifting in the studies and Rose was no longer in his. It was a bitter disappointment. But as soon as he arrived

he burst into Rose's study. Rose was sitting at his desk, working with a boy called Hunter, and turned round

They sat and looked at him as though he was disturbing them. They evidently expected him to go quickly.

Philip closed the door behind him and limped back to his own study. He felt frightfully hurt. Rose, far from

seeming glad to see him, had looked almost put out. They might never have been more than acquaintances.

Though he waited in his study, not leaving it for a moment in case just then Rose should come, his friend

never appeared; and next morning when he went in to prayers he saw Rose and Hunter singing along arm in

arm. What he could not see for himself others told him. He had forgotten that three months is a long time in a

schoolboy's life, and though he had passed them in solitude Rose had lived in the world. Hunter had stepped

into the vacant place. Philip found that Rose was quietly avoiding him. But he was not the boy to accept a

situation without putting it into words; he waited till he was sure Rose was alone in his study and went in.

Philip looked down. He could not bring himself to say what was in his heart. He was afraid of humiliating

Rose slammed the door behind him and left Philip alone. Philip shivered with rage. He went back to his study

and turned the conversation over in his mind. He hated Rose now, he wanted to hurt him, he thought of biting

things he might have said to him. He brooded over the end to their friendship and fancied that others were

talking of it. In his sensitiveness he saw sneers and wonderings in other fellows' manner when they were not

bothering their heads with him at all. He imagined to himself what they were saying.

"After all, it wasn't likely to last long. I wonder he ever stuck Carey at all. Blighter!"

To show his indifference he struck up a violent friendship with a boy called Sharp whom he hated and

despised. He was a London boy, with a loutish air, a heavy fellow with the beginnings of a moustache on his

lip and bushy eyebrows that joined one another across the bridge of his nose. He had soft hands and manners

too suave for his years. He spoke with the suspicion of a cockney accent. He was one of those boys who are

too slack to play games, and he exercised great ingenuity in making excuses to avoid such as were

compulsory. He was regarded by boys and masters with a vague dislike, and it was from arrogance that Philip

now sought his society. Sharp in a couple of terms was going to Germany for a year. He hated school, which

he looked upon as an indignity to be endured till he was old enough to go out into the world. London was all

he cared for, and he had many stories to tell of his doings there during the holidays. From his

conversationhe spoke in a soft, deeptoned voicethere emerged the vague rumour of the London streets

by night. Philip listened to him at once fascinated and repelled. With his vivid fancy he seemed to see the

surging throng round the pitdoor of theatres, and the glitter of cheap restaurants, bars where men, half

drunk, sat on high stools talking with barmaids; and under the street lamps the mysterious passing of dark

crowds bent upon pleasure. Sharp lent him cheap novels from Holywell Row, which Philip read in his cubicle

Once Rose tried to effect a reconciliation. He was a goodnatured fellow, who did not like having enemies.

"I say, Carey, why are you being such a silly ass? It doesn't do you any good cutting me and all that."

Rose shrugged his shoulders and left him. Philip was very white, as he always became when he was moved,

and his heart beat violently. When Rose went away he felt suddenly sick with misery. He did not know why

he had answered in that fashion. He would have given anything to be friends with Rose. He hated to have

quarrelled with him, and now that he saw he had given him pain he was very sorry. But at the moment he had

not been master of himself. It seemed that some devil had seized him, forcing him to say bitter things against

his will, even though at the time he wanted to shake hands with Rose and meet him more than halfway. The

desire to wound had been too strong for him. He had wanted to revenge himself for the pain and the

humiliation he had endured. It was pride: it was folly too, for he knew that Rose would not care at all, while

he would suffer bitterly. The thought came to him that he would go to Rose, and say:

But he knew he would never be able to do it. He was afraid that Rose would sneer at him. He was angry with

himself, and when Sharp came in a little while afterwards he seized upon the first opportunity to quarrel with

him. Philip had a fiendish instinct for discovering other people's raw spots, and was able to say things that

"I heard Rose talking about you to Mellor just now," he said. "Mellor said: Why didn't you kick him? It

Philip suddenly became scarlet. He could not answer, for there was a lump in his throat that almost choked

PHILIP was moved into the Sixth, but he hated school now with all his heart, and, having lost his ambition,

cared nothing whether he did ill or well. He awoke in the morning with a sinking heart because he must go

through another day of drudgery. He was tired of having to do things because he was told; and the restrictions

irked him, not because they were unreasonable, but because they were restrictions. He yearned for freedom.

He was weary of repeating things that he knew already and of the hammering away, for the sake of a

With Mr. Perkins you could work or not as you chose. He was at once eager and abstracted. The Sixth Form

room was in a part of the old abbey which had been restored, and it had a gothic window: Philip tried to cheat

his boredom by drawing this over and over again; and sometimes out of his head he drew the great tower of

the Cathedral or the gateway that led into the precincts. He had a knack for drawing. Aunt Louisa during her

youth had painted in water colours, and she had several albums filled with sketches of churches, old bridges,

and picturesque cottages. They were often shown at the vicarage teaparties. She had once given Philip a

paintbox as a Christmas present, and he had started by copying her pictures. He copied them better than

anyone could have expected, and presently he did little pictures of his own. Mrs. Carey encouraged him. It

was a good way to keep him out of mischief, and later on his sketches would be useful for bazaars. Two or

But one day, at the end of the morning's work, Mr. Perkins stopped him as he was lounging out of the

Philip waited. Mr. Perkins ran his lean fingers through his beard and looked at Philip. He seemed to be

Philip, flushing, looked at him quickly. But knowing him well by now, without answering, he waited for him

"I've been dissatisfied with you lately. You've been slack and inattentive. You seem to take no interest in your

"You know, this term you'll go down instead of up. I shan't give you a very good report."

Philip wondered what he would say if he knew how the report was treated. It arrived at breakfast, Mr. Carey

"There's your report. You'd better see what it says," he remarked, as he ran his fingers through the wrapper of

But after breakfast Mary Ann came in to say the butcher was there, and she generally forgot.

"I'm disappointed with you. And I can't understand. I know you can do things if you want to, but you don't

seem to want to any more. I was going to make you a monitor next term, but I think I'd better wait a bit."

Philip flushed. He did not like the thought of being passed over. He tightened his lips.

"And there's something else. You must begin thinking of your scholarship now. You won't get anything

Philip was irritated by the lecture. He was angry with the headmaster, and angry with himself.

Philip did not answer. Mr. Perkins, holding himself oddly as he always did, like a figure in one of Perugino's

pictures, drew his fingers thoughtfully through his beard. He looked at Philip as though he were trying to

Apparently he was not satisfied, for one evening, a week later, when Philip had to go into his study with

some papers, he resumed the conversation; but this time he adopted a different method: he spoke to Philip not

as a schoolmaster with a boy but as one human being with another. He did not seem to care now that Philip's

work was poor, that he ran small chance against keen rivals of carrying off the scholarship necessary for him

to go to Oxford: the important matter was his changed intention about his life afterwards. Mr. Perkins set

himself to revive his eagerness to be ordained. With infinite skill he worked on his feelings, and this was

easier since he was himself genuinely moved. Philip's change of mind caused him bitter distress, and he

really thought he was throwing away his chance of happiness in life for he knew not what. His voice was very

persuasive. And Philip, easily moved by the emotion of others, very emotional himself notwithstanding a

placid exteriorhis face, partly by nature but also from the habit of all these years at school, seldom except

by his quick flushing showed what he feltPhilip was deeply touched by what the master said. He was very

grateful to him for the interest he showed, and he was consciencestricken by the grief which he felt his

behaviour caused him. It was subtly flattering to know that with the whole school to think about Mr. Perkins

should trouble with him, but at the same time something else in him, like another person standing at his

He felt himself slipping. He was powerless against the weakness that seemed to well up in him; it was like

the water that rises up in an empty bottle held over a full basin; and he set his teeth, saying the words over

"I don't want to influence you," he said. "You must decide for yourself. Pray to Almighty God for help and

When Philip came out of the headmaster's house there was a light rain falling. He went under the archway

that led to the precincts, there was not a soul there, and the rooks were silent in the elms. He walked round

slowly. He felt hot, and the rain did him good. He thought over all that Mr. Perkins had said, calmly now that

he was withdrawn from the fervour of his personality, and he was thankful he had not given way.

In the darkness he could but vaguely see the great mass of the Cathedral: he hated it now because of the

irksomeness of the long services which he was forced to attend. The anthem was interminable, and you had to

stand drearily while it was being sung; you could not hear the droning sermon, and your body twitched

because you had to sit still when you wanted to move about. Then philip thought of the two services every

Sunday at Blackstable. The church was bare and cold, and there was a smell all about one of pomade and

starched clothes. The curate preached once and his uncle preached once. As he grew up he had learned to

know his uncle; Philip was downright and intolerant, and he could not understand that a man might sincerely

say things as a clergyman which he never acted up to as a man. The deception outraged him. His uncle was a

Mr. Perkins had spoken to him of the beauty of a life dedicated to the service of God. Philip knew what sort

of lives the clergy led in the corner of East Anglia which was his home. There was the Vicar of Whitestone, a

parish a little way from Blackstable: he was a bachelor and to give himself something to do had lately taken

up farming: the local paper constantly reported the cases he had in the county court against this one and that,

labourers he would not pay their wages to or tradesmen whom he accused of cheating him; scandal said he

starved his cows, and there was much talk about some general action which should be taken against him.

Then there was the Vicar of Ferne, a bearded, fine figure of a man: his wife had been forced to leave him

because of his cruelty, and she had filled the neighbourhood with stories of his immorality. The Vicar of

Surle, a tiny hamlet by the sea, was to be seen every evening in the public house a stone's throw from his

vicarage; and the churchwardens had been to Mr. Carey to ask his advice. There was not a soul for any of

them to talk to except small farmers or fishermen; there were long winter evenings when the wind blew,

whistling drearily through the leafless trees, and all around they saw nothing but the bare monotony of

ploughed fields; and there was poverty, and there was lack of any work that seemed to matter; every kink in

their characters had free play; there was nothing to restrain them; they grew narrow and eccentric: Philip

knew all this, but in his young intolerance he did not offer it as an excuse. He shivered at the thought of

MR. PERKINS soon saw that his words had had no effect on Philip, and for the rest of the term ignored him.

He wrote a report which was vitriolic. When it arrived and Aunt Louisa asked Philip what it was like, he

"Do you think there's any use in my staying on at Tercanbury? I should have thought it would be better if I

Sharp had already left King's School and had written to Philip from Hanover. He was really starting life, and

it made Philip more restless to think of it. He felt he could not bear another year of restraint.

"I haven't a chance of getting one anyhow. And besides, I don't know that I particularly want to go to

Mrs. Carey looked at him with startled eyes, and then, used to selfrestraint, she poured out another cup of

tea for his uncle. They did not speak. In a moment Philip saw tears slowly falling down her cheeks. His heart

was suddenly wrung because he caused her pain. In her tight black dress, made by the dressmaker down the

street, with her wrinkled face and pale tired eyes, her gray hair still done in the frivolous ringlets of her youth,

she was a ridiculous but strangely pathetic figure. Philip saw it for the first time.

Afterwards, when the Vicar was shut up in his study with the curate, he put his arms round her waist.

"I say, I'm sorry you're upset, Aunt Louisa," he said. "But it's no good my being ordained if I haven't a real

"I'm so disappointed, Philip," she moaned. "I'd set my heart on it. I thought you could be your uncle's curate,

and then when our time cameafter all, we can't last for ever, can we?you might have taken his place."

Philip shivered. He was seized with panic. His heart beat like a pigeon in a trap beating with its wings. His

"I wish you'd persuade Uncle William to let me leave Tercanbury. I'm so sick of it."

But the Vicar of Blackstable did not easily alter any arrangements he had made, and it had always been

intended that Philip should stay at King's School till he was eighteen, and should then go to Oxford. At all

events he would not hear of Philip leaving then, for no notice had been given and the term's fee would have to

"Then will you give notice for me to leave at Christmas?" said Philip, at the end of a long and often bitter

"Oh, I wish to goodness I were twentyone. It is awful to be at Somebody else's beck and call."

"But don't you see that Perkins will want me to stay? He gets so much a head for every chap in the school."

"I don't know. I've not made up my mind. But whatever I am, it'll be useful to know foreign languages. I shall

He would not say that he felt Oxford would be little better than a continuation of his life at school. He wished

immensely to be his own master. Besides he would be known to a certain extent among old schoolfellows,

and he wanted to get away from them all. He felt that his life at school had been a failure. He wanted to start

It happened that his desire to go to Germany fell in with certain ideas which had been of late discussed at

Blackstable. Sometimes friends came to stay with the doctor and brought news of the world outside; and the

visitors spending August by the sea had their own way of looking at things. The Vicar had heard that there

were people who did not think the oldfashioned education so useful nowadays as it had been in the past, and

modern languages were gaining an importance which they had not had in his own youth. His own mind was

divided, for a younger brother of his had been sent to Germany when he failed in some examination, thus

creating a precedent but since he had there died of typhoid it was impossible to look upon the experiment as

other than dangerous. The result of innumerable conversations was that Philip should go back to Tercanbury

for another term, and then should leave. With this agreement Philip was not dissatisfied. But when he had

"I've had a letter from your uncle. It appears you want to go to Germany, and he asks me what I think about

Philip was astounded. He was furious with his guardian for going back on his word.

"Far from it. I've written to say I think it the greatest mistake to take you away."

Philip immediately sat down and wrote a violent letter to his uncle. He did not measure his language. He was

so angry that he could not get to sleep till quite late that night, and he awoke in the early morning and began

brooding over the way they had treated him. He waited impatiently for an answer. In two or three days it

came. It was a mild, pained letter from Aunt Louisa, saying that he should not write such things to his uncle,

who was very much distressed. He was unkind and unchristian. He must know they were only trying to do

their best for him, and they were so much older than he that they must be better judges of what was good for

him. Philip clenched his hands. He had heard that statement so often, and he could not see why it was true;

they did not know the conditions as he did, why should they accept it as selfevident that their greater age

gave them greater wisdom? The letter ended with the information that Mr. Carey had withdrawn the notice he

Philip nursed his wrath till the next halfholiday. They had them on Tuesdays and Thursdays, since on

Saturday afternoons they had to go to a service in the Cathedral. He stopped behind when the rest of the Sixth

Philip did not answer. He went out. He felt almost sick with humiliation, the humiliation of having to ask and

the humiliation of the curt refusal. He hated the headmaster now. Philip writhed under that despotism which

never vouchsafed a reason for the most tyrannous act. He was too angry to care what he did, and after dinner

walked down to the station, by the back ways he knew so well, just in time to catch the train to Blackstable.

He walked into the vicarage and found his uncle and aunt sitting in the diningroom.

It was very clear that he was not pleased to see him. He looked a little uneasy.

"I thought I'd come and see you about my leaving. I want to know what you mean by promising me one thing

He was a little frightened at his own boldness, but he had made up his mind exactly what words to use, and,

"No. I asked Perkins and he refused. If you like to write and tell him I've been here you can get me into a

Mrs. Carey sat knitting with trembling hands. She was unused to scenes and they agitated her extremely.

"If you like to be a perfect sneak you can. After writing to Perkins as you did you're quite capable of it."

It was foolish of Philip to say that, because it gave the Vicar exactly the opportunity he wanted.

"I'm not going to sit still while you say impertinent things to me," he said with dignity.

He got up and walked quickly out of the room into his study. Philip heard him shut the door and lock it.

"Oh, Philip, you oughtn't to have spoken to your uncle like that. Do please go and tell him you're sorry."

"I'm not in the least sorry. He's taking a mean advantage. Of Course it's just waste of money keeping me on at

school, but what does he care? It's not his money. It was cruel to put me under the guardianship of people

Philip in his voluble anger stopped suddenly at the sound of her voice. It was heartbroken. He had not

"Philip, how can you be so unkind? You know we are only trying to do our best for you, and we know that

we have no experience; it isn't as if we'd had any children of our own: that's why we consulted Mr. Perkins."

Her voice broke. "I've tried to be like a mother to you. I've loved you as if you were my own son."

She was so small and frail, there was something so pathetic in her oldmaidish air, that Philip was touched. A

He knelt down beside her and took her in his arms, and kissed her wet, withered cheeks. She sobbed bitterly,

and he seemed to feel on a sudden the pity of that wasted life. She had never surrendered herself before to

"I know I've not been what I wanted to be to you, Philip, but I didn't know how. It's been just as dreadful for

Philip forgot his anger and his own concerns, but thought only of consoling her, with broken words and

clumsy little caresses. Then the clock struck, and he had to bolt off at once to catch the only train that would

get him back to Tercanbury in time for callover. As he sat in the corner of the railway carriage he saw that

he had done nothing. He was angry with himself for his weakness. It was despicable to have allowed himself

to be turned from his purpose by the pompous airs of the Vicar and the tears of his aunt. But as the result of

he knew not what conversations between the couple another letter was written to the headmaster. Mr. Perkins

read it with an impatient shrug of the shoulders. He showed it to Philip. It ran:

Forgive me for troubling you again about my ward, but both his Aunt and I have been uneasy about him. He

seems very anxious to leave school, and his Aunt thinks he is unhappy. It is very difficult for us to know what

to do as we are not his parents. He does not seem to think he is doing very well and he feels it is wasting his

money to stay on. I should be very much obliged if you would have a talk to him, and if he is still of the same

mind perhaps it would be better if he left at Christmas as I originally intended. Yours very truly, William

Philip gave him back the letter. He felt a thrill of pride in his triumph. He had got his own way, and he was

"It's not much good my spending half an hour writing to your uncle if he changes his mind the next letter he

Philip said nothing, and his face was perfectly placid; but he could not prevent the twinkle in his eyes. Mr.

Philip blushed. He hated instinctively any attempt to get into the depths of his feelings.

Mr. Perkins, slowly dragging his fingers through his beard, looked at him thoughtfully. He seemed to speak

"Of course schools are made for the average. The holes are all round, and whatever shape the pegs are they

must wedge in somehow. One hasn't time to bother about anything but the average." Then suddenly he

addressed himself to Philip: "Look here, I've got a suggestion to make to you. It's getting on towards the end

of the term now. Another term won't kill you, and if you want to go to Germany you'd better go after Easter

than after Christmas. It'll be much pleasanter in the spring than in midwinter. If at the end of the next term

Philip was so glad to have gained the last three months that he did not mind the extra term. The school

seemed less of a prison when he knew that before Easter he would be free from it for ever. His heart danced

within him. That evening in chapel he looked round at the boys, standing according to their forms, each in his

due place, and he chuckled with satisfaction at the thought that soon he would never see them again. It made

him regard them almost with a friendly feeling. His eyes rested on Rose. Rose took his position as a monitor

very seriously: he had quite an idea of being a good influence in the school; it was his turn to read the lesson

that evening, and he read it very well. Philip smiled when he thought that he would be rid of him for ever, and

it would not matter in six months whether Rose was tall and straightlimbed; and where would the

importance be that he was a monitor and captain of the eleven? Philip looked at the masters in their gowns.

Gordon was dead, he had died of apoplexy two years before, but all the rest were there. Philip knew now

what a poor lot they were, except Turner perhaps, there was something of a man in him; and he writhed at the

thought of the subjection in which they had held him. In six months they would not matter either. Their praise

Philip had learned not to express his emotions by outward signs, and shyness still tormented him, but he had

often very high spirits; and then, though he limped about demurely, silent and reserved, it seemed to be

hallooing in his heart. He seemed to himself to walk more lightly. All sorts of ideas danced through his head,

fancies chased one another so furiously that he could not catch them; but their coming and their going filled

him with exhilaration. Now, being happy, he was able to work, and during the remaining weeks of the term

set himself to make up for his long neglect. His brain worked easily, and he took a keen pleasure in the

activity of his intellect. He did very well in the examinations that closed the term. Mr. Perkins made only one

remark: he was talking to him about an essay he had written, and, after the usual criticisms, said:

He smiled at him with his shining teeth, and Philip, looking down, gave an embarrassed smile.

The half dozen boys who expected to divide between them the various prizes which were given at the end of

the summer term had ceased to look upon Philip as a serious rival, but now they began to regard him with

some uneasiness. He told no one that he was leaving at Easter and so was in no sense a competitor, but left

them to their anxieties. He knew that Rose flattered himself on his French, for he had spent two or three

holidays in France; and he expected to get the Dean's Prize for English essay; Philip got a good deal of

satisfaction in watching his dismay when he saw how much better Philip was doing in these subjects than

himself. Another fellow, Norton, could not go to Oxford unless he got one of the scholarships at the disposal

It entertained him to think that he held someone else's future in his hand. There was something romantic in

getting these various rewards actually in his grasp, and then leaving them to others because he disdained

them. At last the breakingup day came, and he went to Mr. Perkins to bid him goodbye.

"I thought it was only a whim that I'd better humour. I know you're obstinate and headstrong. What on earth

d'you want to leave for now? You've only got another term in any case. You can get the Magdalen

Philip looked at him sullenly. He felt that he had been tricked; but he had the promise, and Perkins would

"You'll have a very pleasant time at Oxford. You needn't decide at once what you're going to do afterwards. I

wonder if you realise how delightful the life is up there for anyone who has brains."

"Are they arrangements that couldn't possibly be altered?" asked Mr. Perkins, with his quizzical smile. "I

shall be very sorry to lose you. In schools the rather stupid boys who work always do better than the clever

boy who's idle, but when the clever boy workswhy then, he does what you've done this term."

Philip flushed darkly. He was unused to compliments, and no one had ever told him he was clever. The

"You know, driving things into the heads of thickwitted boys is dull work, but when now and then you have

the chance of teaching a boy who comes halfway towards you, who understands almost before you've got

the words out of your mouth, why, then teaching is the most exhilarating thing in the world." Philip was

melted by kindness; it had never occurred to him that it mattered really to Mr. Perkins whether he went or

stayed. He was touched and immensely flattered. It would be pleasant to end up his schooldays with glory

and then go to Oxford: in a flash there appeared before him the life which he had heard described from boys

who came back to play in the O.K.S. match or in letters from the University read out in one of the studies.

But he was ashamed; he would look such a fool in his own eyes if he gave in now; his uncle would chuckle at

the success of the headmaster's ruse. It was rather a comedown from the dramatic surrender of all these

prizes which were in his reach, because he disdained to take them, to the plain, ordinary winning of them. It

only required a little more persuasion, just enough to save his selfrespect, and Philip would have done

anything that Mr. Perkins wished; but his face showed nothing of his conflicting emotions. It was placid and

Mr. Perkins, like many men who manage things by their personal influence, grew a little impatient when his

power was not immediately manifest. He had a great deal of work to do, and could not waste more time on a

"Very well, I promised to let you if you really wanted it, and I keep my promise. When do you go to

Philip's heart beat violently. The battle was won, and he did not know whether he had not rather lost it.

He held out his hand. If he had given him one more chance Philip would have changed his mind, but he

seemed to look upon the matter as settled. Philip walked out of the house. His schooldays were over, and he

was free; but the wild exultation to which he had looked forward at that moment was not there. He walked

round the precincts slowly, and a profound depression seized him. He wished now that he had not been

foolish. He did not want to go, but he knew he could never bring himself to go to the headmaster and tell him

he would stay. That was a humiliation he could never put upon himself. He wondered whether he had done

right. He was dissatisfied with himself and with all his circumstances. He asked himself dully whether

PHILIP'S uncle had an old friend, called Miss Wilkinson, who lived in Berlin. She was the daughter of a

clergyman, and it was with her father, the rector of a village in Lincolnshire, that Mr. Carey had spent his last

curacy; on his death, forced to earn her living, she had taken various situations as a governess in France and

Germany. She had kept up a correspondence with Mrs. Carey, and two or three times had spent her holidays

at Blackstable Vicarage, paying as was usual with the Careys' unfrequent guests a small sum for her keep.

When it became clear that it was less trouble to yield to Philip's wishes than to resist them, Mrs. Carey wrote

to ask her for advice. Miss Wilkinson recommended Heidelberg as an excellent place to learn German in and

the house of Frau Professor Erlin as a comfortable home. Philip might live there for thirty marks a week, and

Philip arrived in Heidelberg one morning in May. His things were put on a barrow and he followed the porter

out of the station. The sky was bright blue, and the trees in the avenue through which they passed were thick

with leaves; there was something in the air fresh to Philip, and mingled with the timidity he felt at entering on

a new life, among strangers, was a great exhilaration. He was a little disconsolate that no one had come to

meet him, and felt very shy when the porter left him at the front door of a big white house. An untidy lad let

him in and took him into a drawingroom. It was filled with a large suite covered in green velvet, and in the

middle was a round table. On this in water stood a bouquet of flowers tightly packed together in a paper frill

like the bone of a mutton chop, and carefully spaced round it were books in leather bindings. There was a

Presently, with an odour of cooking, the Frau Professor came in, a short, very stout woman with tightly

dressed hair and a red face; she had little eyes, sparkling like beads, and an effusive manner. She took both

Philip's hands and asked him about Miss Wilkinson, who had twice spent a few weeks with her. She spoke in

German and in broken English. Philip could not make her understand that he did not know Miss Wilkinson.

Then her two daughters appeared. They seemed hardly young to Philip, but perhaps they were not more than

twentyfive: the elder, Thekla, was as short as her mother, with the same, rather shifty air, but with a pretty

face and abundant dark hair; Anna, her younger sister, was tall and plain, but since she had a pleasant smile

Philip immediately preferred her. After a few minutes of polite conversation the Frau Professor took Philip to

his room and left him. It was in a turret, looking over the tops of the trees in the Anlage; and the bed was in

an alcove, so that when you sat at the desk it had not the look of a bedroom at all. Philip unpacked his things

A bell summoned him to dinner at one o'clock, and he found the Frau Professor's guests assembled in the

drawingroom. He was introduced to her husband, a tall man of middle age with a large fair head, turning

now to gray, and mild blue eyes. He spoke to Philip in correct, rather archaic English, having learned it from

a study of the English classics, not from conversation; and it was odd to hear him use words colloquially

which Philip had only met in the plays of Shakespeare. Frau Professor Erlin called her establishment a family

and not a pension; but it would have required the subtlety of a metaphysician to find out exactly where the

difference lay. When they sat down to dinner in a long dark apartment that led out of the drawingroom,

Philip, feeling very shy, saw that there were sixteen people. The Frau Professor sat at one end and carved.

The service was conducted, with a great clattering of plates, by the same clumsy lout who had opened the

door for him; and though he was quick it happened that the first persons to be served had finished before the

last had received their appointed portions. The Frau Professor insisted that nothing but German should be

spoken, so that Philip, even if his bashfulness had permitted him to be talkative, was forced to hold his

tongue. He looked at the people among whom he was to live. By the Frau Professor sat several old ladies, but

Philip did not give them much of his attention. There were two young girls, both fair and one of them very

pretty, whom Philip heard addressed as Fraulein Hedwig and Fraulein Cacilie. Fraulein Cacilie had a long

pigtail hanging down her back. They sat side by side and chattered to one another, with smothered laughter:

now and then they glanced at Philip and one of them said something in an undertone; they both giggled, and

Philip blushed awkwardly, feeling that they were making fun of him. Near them sat a Chinaman, with a

yellow face and an expansive smile, who was studying Western conditions at the University. He spoke so

quickly, with a queer accent, that the girls could not always understand him, and then they burst out laughing.

He laughed too, goodhumouredly, and his almond eyes almost closed as he did so. There were two or three

American men, in black coats, rather yellow and dry of skin: they were theological students; Philip heard the

twang of their New England accent through their bad German, and he glanced at them with suspicion; for he

Afterwards, when they had sat for a little on the stiff green velvet chairs of the drawingroom, Fraulein Anna

Philip accepted the invitation. They were quite a party. There were the two daughters of the Frau Professor,

the two other girls, one of the American students, and Philip. Philip walked by the side of Anna and Fraulein

Hedwig. He was a little fluttered. He had never known any girls. At Blackstable there were only the farmers'

daughters and the girls of the local tradesmen. He knew them by name and by sight, but he was timid, and he

thought they laughed at his deformity. He accepted willingly the difference which the Vicar and Mrs. Carey

put between their own exalted rank and that of the farmers. The doctor had two daughters, but they were both

much older than Philip and had been married to successive assistants while Philip was still a small boy. At

school there had been two or three girls of more boldness than modesty whom some of the boys knew; and

desperate stories, due in all probability to the masculine imagination, were told of intrigues with them; but

Philip had always concealed under a lofty contempt the terror with which they filled him. His imagination

and the books he had read had inspired in him a desire for the Byronic attitude; and he was torn between a

morbid selfconsciousness and a conviction that he owed it to himself to be gallant. He felt now that he

should be bright and amusing, but his brain seemed empty and he could not for the life of him think of

anything to say. Fraulein Anna, the Frau Professor's daughter, addressed herself to him frequently from a

sense of duty, but the other said little: she looked at him now and then with sparkling eyes, and sometimes to

his confusion laughed outright. Philip felt that she thought him perfectly ridiculous. They walked along the

side of a hill among pinetrees, and their pleasant odour caused Philip a keen delight. The day was warm and

cloudless. At last they came to an eminence from which they saw the valley of the Rhine spread out before

them under the sun. It was a vast stretch of country, sparkling with golden light, with cities in the distance;

and through it meandered the silver ribband of the river. Wide spaces are rare in the corner of Kent which

Philip knew, the sea offers the only broad horizon, and the immense distance he saw now gave him a

peculiar, an indescribable thrill. He felt suddenly elated. Though he did not know it, it was the first time that

he had experienced, quite undiluted with foreign emotions, the sense of beauty. They sat on a bench, the three

of them, for the others had gone on, and while the girls talked in rapid German, Philip, indifferent to their

PHILIP thought occasionally of the King's School at Tercanbury, and laughed to himself as he remembered

what at some particular moment of the day they were doing. Now and then he dreamed that he was there still,

and it gave him an extraordinary satisfaction, on awaking, to realise that he was in his little room in the turret.

From his bed he could see the great cumulus clouds that hung in the blue sky. He revelled in his freedom. He

could go to bed when he chose and get up when the fancy took him. There was no one to order him about. It

It had been arranged that Professor Erlin should teach him Latin and German; a Frenchman came every day

to give him lessons in French; and the Frau Professor had recommended for mathematics an Englishman who

was taking a philological degree at the university. This was a man named Wharton. Philip went to him every

morning. He lived in one room on the top floor of a shabby house. It was dirty and untidy, and it was filled

with a pungent odour made up of many different stinks. He was generally in bed when Philip arrived at ten

o'clock, and he jumped out, put on a filthy dressinggown and felt slippers, and, while he gave instruction,

ate his simple breakfast. He was a short man, stout from excessive beer drinking, with a heavy moustache and

long, unkempt hair. He had been in Germany for five years and was become very Teutonic. He spoke with

scorn of Cambridge where he had taken his degree and with horror of the life which awaited him when,

having taken his doctorate in Heidelberg, he must return to England and a pedagogic career. He adored the

life of the German university with its happy freedom and its jolly companionships. He was a member of a

Burschenschaft, and promised to take Philip to a Kneipe. He was very poor and made no secret that the

lessons he was giving Philip meant the difference between meat for his dinner and bread and cheese.

Sometimes after a heavy night he had such a headache that he could not drink his coffee, and he gave his

lesson with heaviness of spirit. For these occasions he kept a few bottles of beer under the bed, and one of

"A hair of the dog that bit him," he would say as he poured out the beer, carefully so that the foam should not

Then he would talk to Philip of the university, the quarrels between rival corps, the duels, and the merits of

this and that professor. Philip learnt more of life from him than of mathematics. Sometimes Wharton would

This was something new and very interesting, and he felt that it was of greater import than trigonometry,

which he never could understand. It was like a window on life that he had a chance of peeping through, and

"But how about your dinner?" said Philip, with a smile, for he knew exactly how his master's finances stood.

Wharton had even asked him to pay him the two shillings which the lesson cost once a week rather than once

"Oh, never mind my dinner. It won't be the first time I've dined off a bottle of beer, and my mind's never

He dived under the bed (the sheets were gray with want of washing), and fished out another bottle. Philip,

who was young and did not know the good things of life, refused to share it with him, so he drank alone.

"Oh, I don't know. I suppose about a year. Then my people want me to go to Oxford."

Wharton gave a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. It was a new experience for Philip to learn that there

"What d'you want to go there for? You'll only be a glorified schoolboy. Why don't you matriculate here? A

year's no good. Spend five years here. You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and

freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but

you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as

you choose. They're both very good things. I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get

neither: you're ground down by convention. You can't think as you like and you can't act as you like. That's

He leaned back cautiously, for the chair on which he sat had a ricketty leg, and it was disconcerting when a

"I ought to go back to England this year, but if I can scrape together enough to keep body and soul on

speaking terms I shall stay another twelve months. But then I shall have to go. And I must leave all this"he

waved his arm round the dirty garret, with its unmade bed, the clothes lying on the floor, a row of empty beer

bottles against the wall, piles of unbound, ragged books in every corner"for some provincial university

where I shall try and get a chair of philology. And I shall play tennis and go to teaparties." He interrupted

himself and gave Philip, very neatly dressed, with a clean collar on and his hair wellbrushed, a quizzical

Philip reddened, feeling his own spruceness an intolerable reproach; for of late he had begun to pay some

attention to his toilet, and he had come out from England with a pretty selection of ties.

The summer came upon the country like a conqueror. Each day was beautiful. The sky had an arrogant blue

which goaded the nerves like a spur. The green of the trees in the Anlage was violent and crude; and the

houses, when the sun caught them, had a dazzling white which stimulated till it hurt. Sometimes on his way

back from Wharton Philip would sit in the shade on one of the benches in the Anlage, enjoying the coolness

and watching the patterns of light which the sun, shining through the leaves, made on the ground. His soul

danced with delight as gaily as the sunbeams. He revelled in those moments of idleness stolen from his work.

Sometimes he sauntered through the streets of the old town. He looked with awe at the students of the corps,

their cheeks gashed and red, who swaggered about in their coloured caps. In the afternoons he wandered

about the hills with the girls in the Frau Professor's house, and sometimes they went up the river and had tea

in a leafy beergarden. In the evenings they walked round and round the Stadtgarten, listening to the band.

Philip soon learned the various interests of the household. Fraulein Thekla, the professor's elder daughter,

was engaged to a man in England who had spent twelve months in the house to learn German, and their

marriage was to take place at the end of the year. But the young man wrote that his father, an indiarubber

merchant who lived in Slough, did not approve of the union, and Fraulein Thekla was often in tears.

Sometimes she and her mother might be seen, with stern eyes and determined mouths, looking over the

letters of the reluctant lover. Thekla painted in water colour, and occasionally she and Philip, with another of

the girls to keep them company, would go out and paint little pictures. The pretty Fraulein Hedwig had

amorous troubles too. She was the daughter of a merchant in Berlin and a dashing hussar had fallen in love

with her, a _von_ if you please: but his parents opposed a marriage with a person of her condition, and she

had been sent to Heidelberg to forget him. She could never, never do this, and corresponded with him

continually, and he was making every effort to induce an exasperating father to change his mind. She told all

this to Philip with pretty sighs and becoming blushes, and showed him the photograph of the gay lieutenant.

Philip liked her best of all the girls at the Frau Professor's, and on their walks always tried to get by her side.

He blushed a great deal when the others chaffed him for his obvious preference. He made the first declaration

in his life to Fraulein Hedwig, but unfortunately it was an accident, and it happened in this manner. In the

evenings when they did not go out, the young women sang little songs in the green velvet drawingroom,

while Fraulein Anna, who always made herself useful, industriously accompanied. Fraulein Hedwig's

favourite song was called _Ich liebe dich_, I love you; and one evening after she had sung this, when Philip

was standing with her on the balcony, looking at the stars, it occurred to him to make some remark about it.

His German was halting, and he looked about for the word he wanted. The pause was infinitesimal, but

"_Ach, Herr Carey, Sie mussen mir nicht du sagen_you mustn't talk to me in the second person singular."

Philip felt himself grow hot all over, for he would never have dared to do anything so familiar, and he could

think of nothing on earth to say. It would be ungallant to explain that he was not making an observation, but

She smiled pleasantly, quietly took his hand and pressed it, then turned back into the drawingroom.

Next day he was so embarrassed that he could not speak to her, and in his shyness did all that was possible to

avoid her. When he was asked to go for the usual walk he refused because, he said, he had work to do. But

"Why are you behaving in this way?" she said kindly. "You know, I'm not angry with you for what you said

last night. You can't help it if you love me. I'm flattered. But although I'm not exactly engaged to Hermann I

PROFESSOR ERLIN gave Philip a lesson every day. He made out a list of books which Philip was to read

till he was ready for the final achievement of _Faust_, and meanwhile, ingeniously enough, started him on a

German translation of one of the plays by Shakespeare which Philip had studied at school. It was the period

in Germany of Goethe's highest fame. Notwithstanding his rather condescending attitude towards patriotism

he had been adopted as the national poet, and seemed since the war of seventy to be one of the most

significant glories of national unity. The enthusiastic seemed in the wildness of the _Walpurgisnacht_ to hear

the rattle of artillery at Gravelotte. But one mark of a writer's greatness is that different minds can find in him

different inspirations; and Professor Erlin, who hated the Prussians, gave his enthusiastic admiration to

Goethe because his works, Olympian and sedate, offered the only refuge for a sane mind against the

onslaughts of the present generation. There was a dramatist whose name of late had been much heard at

Heidelberg, and the winter before one of his plays had been given at the theatre amid the cheers of adherents

and the hisses of decent people. Philip heard discussions about it at the Frau Professor's long table, and at

these Professor Erlin lost his wonted calm: he beat the table with his fist, and drowned all opposition with the

roar of his fine deep voice. It was nonsense and obscene nonsense. He forced himself to sit the play out, but

he did not know whether he was more bored or nauseated. If that was what the theatre was coming to, then it

was high time the police stepped in and closed the playhouses. He was no prude and could laugh as well as

anyone at the witty immorality of a farce at the Palais Royal, but here was nothing but filth. With an emphatic

gesture he held his nose and whistled through his teeth. It was the ruin of the family, the uprooting of morals,

"_Aber, Adolf_," said the Frau Professor from the other end of the table. "Calm yourself."

He shook his fist at her. He was the mildest of creatures and ventured upon no action of his life without

"No, Helene, I tell you this," he shouted. "I would sooner my daughters were lying dead at my feet than see

Professor Erlin classed him with Richard Wagner, but of him he spoke not with anger but with

goodhumoured laughter. He was a charlatan but a successful charlatan, and in that was always something

He had seen _Lohengrin_ and that passed muster. It was dull but no worse. But _Siegfried!_ When he

mentioned it Professor Erlin leaned his head on his hand and bellowed with laughter. Not a melody in it from

beginning to end! He could imagine Richard Wagner sitting in his box and laughing till his sides ached at the

sight of all the people who were taking it seriously. It was the greatest hoax of the nineteenth century. He

lifted his glass of beer to his lips, threw back his head, and drank till the glass was empty. Then wiping his

"I tell you young people that before the nineteenth century is out Wagner will be as dead as mutton. Wagner!

THE oddest of Philip's masters was his teacher of French. Monsieur Ducroz was a citizen of Geneva. He was

a tall old man, with a sallow skin and hollow cheeks; his gray hair was thin and long. He wore shabby black

clothes, with holes at the elbows of his coat and frayed trousers. His linen was very dirty. Philip had never

seen him in a clean collar. He was a man of few words, who gave his lesson conscientiously but without

enthusiasm, arriving as the clock struck and leaving on the minute. His charges were very small. He was

taciturn, and what Philip learnt about him he learnt from others: it appeared that he had fought with Gatibaldi

against the Pope, but had left Italy in disgust when it was clear that all his efforts for freedom, by which he

meant the establishment of a republic, tended to no more than an exchange of yokes; he had been expelled

from Geneva for it was not known what political offences. Philip looked upon him with puzzled surprise; for

he was very unlike his idea of the revolutionary: he spoke in a low voice and was extraordinarily polite; he

never sat down till he was asked to; and when on rare occasions he met Philip in the street took off his hat

with an elaborate gesture; he never laughed, he never even smiled. A more complete imagination than Philip's

might have pictured a youth of splendid hope, for he must have been entering upon manhood in 1848 when

kings, remembering their brother of France, went about with an uneasy crick in theit necks; and perhaps that

passion for liberty which passed through Europe, sweeping before it what of absolutism and tyranny had

reared its head during the reaction from the revolution of 1789, filled no breast with a hotter fire. One might

fancy him, passionate with theories of human equality and human rights, discussing, arguing, fighting behind

barricades in Paris, flying before the Austrian cavalry in Milan, imprisoned here, exiled from there, hoping on

and upborne ever with the word which seemed so magical, the word Liberty; till at last, broken with disease

and starvation, old, without means to keep body and soul together but such lessons as he could pick up from

poor students, he found himself in that little neat town under the heel of a personal tyranny greater than any in

Europe. Perhaps his taciturnity hid a contempt for the human race which had abandoned the great dreams of

his youth and now wallowed in sluggish ease; or perhaps these thirty years of revolution had taught him that

men are unfit for liberty, and he thought that he had spent his life in the pursuit of that which was not worth

the finding. Or maybe he was tired out and waited only with indifference for the release of death.

One day Philip, with the bluntness of his age, asked him if it was true he had been with Garibaldi. The old

man did not seem to attach any importance to the question. He answered quite quietly in as low a voice as

He held the book open and Philip, intimidated, began to translate the passage he had prepared.

One day Monsieur Ducroz seemed to be in great pain. He had been scarcely able to drag himself up the many

stairs to Philip's room: and when he arrived sat down heavily, his sallow face drawn, with beads of sweat on

But Philip saw that he was suffering, and at the end of the hour asked whether he would not prefer to give no

"No," said the old man, in his even low voice. "I prefer to go on while I am able."

"But it won't make any difference to you," he said. "I'll pay for the lessons just the same. If you wouldn't

Monsieur Ducroz charged eighteen pence an hour. Philip took a tenmark piece out of his pocket and shyly put

it on the table. He could not bring himself to offer it as if the old man were a beggar.

"In that case I think I won't come again till I'm better." He took the coin and, without anything more than the

Philip was vaguely disappointed. Thinking he had done a generous thing, he had expected that Monsieur

Ducroz would overwhelm him with expressions of gratitude. He was taken aback to find that the old teacher

accepted the present as though it were his due. He was so young, he did not realise how much less is the

sense of obligation in those who receive favours than in those who grant them. Monsieur Ducroz appeared

again five or six days later. He tottered a little more and was very weak, but seemed to have overcome the

severity of the attack. He was no more communicative than he had been before. He remained mysterious,

aloof, and dirty. He made no reference to his illness till after the lesson: and then, just as he was leaving, at

the door, which he held open, he paused. He hesitated, as though to speak were difficult.

"If it hadn't been for the money you gave me I should have starved. It was all I had to live on."

He made his solemn, obsequious bow, and went out. Philip felt a little lump in his throat. He seemed to

realise in a fashion the hopeless bitterness of the old man's struggle, and how hard life was for him when to

PHILIP had spent three months in Heidelberg when one morning the Frau Professor told him that an

Englishman named Hayward was coming to stay in the house, and the same evening at supper he saw a new

face. For some days the family had lived in a state of excitement. First, as the result of heaven knows what

scheming, by dint of humble prayers and veiled threats, the parents of the young Englishman to whom

Fraulein Thekla was engaged had invited her to visit them in England, and she had set off with an album of

water colours to show how accomplished she was and a bundle of letters to prove how deeply the young man

had compromised himself. A week later Fraulein Hedwig with radiant smiles announced that the lieutenant of

her affections was coming to Heidelberg with his father and mother. Exhausted by the importunity of their

son and touched by the dowry which Fraulein Hedwig's father offered, the lieutenant's parents had consented

to pass through Heidelberg to make the young woman's acquaintance. The interview was satisfactory and

Fraulein Hedwig had the satisfaction of showing her lover in the Stadtgarten to the whole of Frau Professor

Erlin's household. The silent old ladies who sat at the top of the table near the Frau Professor were in a flutter,

and when Fraulein Hedwig said she was to go home at once for the formal engagement to take place, the Frau

Professor, regardless of expense, said she would give a _Maibowle_. Professor Erlin prided himself on his

skill in preparing this mild intoxicant, and after supper the large bowl of hock and soda, with scented herbs

floating in it and wild strawberries, was placed with solemnity on the round table in the drawingroom.

Fraulein Anna teased Philip about the departure of his ladylove, and he felt very uncomfortable and rather

melancholy. Fraulein Hedwig sang several songs, Fraulein Anna played the Wedding March, and the

Professor sang _Die Wacht am Rhein_. Amid all this jollification Philip paid little attention to the new

arrival. They had sat opposite one another at supper, but Philip was chattering busily with Fraulein Hedwig,

and the stranger, knowing no German, had eaten his food in silence. Philip, observing that he wore a pale

blue tie, had on that account taken a sudden dislike to him. He was a man of twentysix, very fair, with long,

wavy hair through which he passed his hand frequently with a careless gesture. His eyes were large and blue,

but the blue was very pale, and they looked rather tired already. He was cleanshaven, and his mouth,

notwithstanding its thin lips, was wellshaped. Fraulein Anna took an interest in physiognomy, and she made

Philip notice afterwards how finely shaped was his skull, and how weak was the lower part of his face. The

head, she remarked, was the head of a thinker, but the jaw lacked character. Fraulein Anna, foredoomed to a

spinster's life, with her high cheekbones and large misshapen nose, laid great stress upon character. While

they talked of him he stood a little apart from the others, watching the noisy party with a goodhumoured but

faintly supercilious expression. He was tall and slim. He held himself with a deliberate grace. Weeks, one of

the American students, seeing him alone, went up and began to talk to him. The pair were oddly contrasted:

the American very neat in his black coat and pepperandsalt trousers, thin and driedup, with something of

ecclesiastical unction already in his manner; and the Englishman in his loose tweed suit, largelimbed and

Philip did not speak to the newcomer till next day. They found themselves alone on the balcony of the

Philip had found nothing wrong with the food at all, and in fact had eaten it in large quantities with appetite

and enjoyment, but he did not want to show himself a person of so little discrimination as to think a dinner

Fraulein Thekla's visit to England made it necessary for her sister to do more in the house, and she could not

often spare the time for long walks; and Fraulein Cacilie, with her long plait of fair hair and her little

snubnosed face, had of late shown a certain disinclination for society. Fraulein Hedwig was gone, and

Weeks, the American who generally accompanied them on their rambles, had set out for a tour of South

Germany. Philip was left a good deal to himself. Hayward sought his acquaintance; but Philip had an

unfortunate trait: from shyness or from some atavistic inheritance of the cavedweller, he always disliked

people on first acquaintance; and it was not till he became used to them that he got over his first impression.

It made him difficult of access. He received Hayward's advances very shyly, and when Hayward asked him

one day to go for a walk he accepted only because he could not think of a civil excuse. He made his usual

apology, angry with himself for the flushing cheeks he could not control, and trying to carry it off with a

"Good heavens, I don't walk for a wager. I prefer to stroll. Don't you remember the chapter in Marius where

Pater talks of the gentle exercise of walking as the best incentive to conversation?"

Philip was a good listener; though he often thought of clever things to say, it was seldom till after the

opportunity to say them had passed; but Hayward was communicative; anyone more experienced than Philip

might have thought he liked to hear himself talk. His supercilious attitude impressed Philip. He could not

help admiring, and yet being awed by, a man who faintly despised so many things which Philip had looked

upon as almost sacred. He cast down the fetish of exercise, damning with the contemptuous word pothunters

all those who devoted themselves to its various forms; and Philip did not realise that he was merely putting

They wandered up to the castle, and sat on the terrace that overlooked the town. It nestled in the valley along

the pleasant Neckar with a comfortable friendliness. The smoke from the chimneys hung over it, a pale blue

haze; and the tall roofs, the spires of the churches, gave it a pleasantly medieval air. There was a homeliness

in it which warmed the heart. Hayward talked of _Richard Feverel_ and _Madame Bovary_, of Verlaine,

Dante, and Matthew Arnold. In those days Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam was known only to the

elect, and Hayward repeated it to Philip. He was very fond of reciting poetry, his own and that of others,

which he did in a monotonous singsong. By the time they reached home Philip's distrust of Hayward was

They made a practice of walking together every afternoon, and Philip learned presently something of

Hayward's circumstances. He was the son of a country judge, on whose death some time before he had

inherited three hundred a year. His record at Charterhouse was so brilliant that when he went to Cambridge

the Master of Trinity Hall went out of his way to express his satisfaction that he was going to that college. He

prepared himself for a distinguished career. He moved in the most intellectual circles: he read Browning with

enthusiasm and turned up his wellshaped nose at Tennyson; he knew all the details of Shelley's treatment of

Harriet; he dabbled in the history of art (on the walls of his rooms were reproductions of pictures by G. F.

Watts, BurneJones, and Botticelli); and he wrote not without distinction verses of a pessimistic character.

His friends told one another that he was a man of excellent gifts, and he listened to them willingly when they

prophesied his future eminence. In course of time he became an authority on art and literature. He came

under the influence of Newman's _Apologia_; the picturesqueness of the Roman Catholic faith appealed to

his esthetic sensibility; and it was only the feat of his father's wrath (a plain, blunt man of narrow ideas, who

read Macaulay) which prevented him from 'going over.' When he only got a pass degree his friends were

astonished; but he shrugged his shoulders and delicately insinuated that he was not the dupe of examiners. He

made one feel that a first class was ever so slightly vulgar. He described one of the vivas with tolerant

humour; some fellow in an outrageous collar was asking him questions in logic; it was infinitely tedious, and

suddenly he noticed that he wore elasticsided boots: it was grotesque and ridiculous; so he withdrew his

mind and thought of the gothic beauty of the Chapel at King's. But he had spent some delightful days at

Cambridge; he had given better dinners than anyone he knew; and the conversation in his rooms had been

And now, when he related again the picturesque little anecdote about the examiner and his boots, he laughed.

"Of course it was folly," he said, "but it was a folly in which there was something fine."

Then Hayward went to London to read for the Bar. He had charming rooms in Clement's Inn, with panelled

walls, and he tried to make them look like his old rooms at the Hall. He had ambitions that were vaguely

political, he described himself as a Whig, and he was put up for a club which was of Liberal but gentlemanly

flavour. His idea was to practise at the Bar (he chose the Chancery side as less brutal), and get a seat for some

pleasant constituency as soon as the various promises made him were carried out; meanwhile he went a great

deal to the opera, and made acquaintance with a small number of charming people who admired the things

that he admired. He joined a diningclub of which the motto was, The Whole, The Good, and The Beautiful.

He formed a platonic friendship with a lady some years older than himself, who lived in Kensington Square;

and nearly every afternoon he drank tea with her by the light of shaded candles, and talked of George

Meredith and Walter Pater. It was notorious that any fool could pass the examinations of the Bar Council, and

he pursued his studies in a dilatory fashion. When he was ploughed for his final he looked upon it as a

personal affront. At the same time the lady in Kensington Square told him that her husband was coming

home from India on leave, and was a man, though worthy in every way, of a commonplace mind, who would

not understand a young man's frequent visits. Hayward felt that life was full of ugliness, his soul revolted

from the thought of affronting again the cynicism of examiners, and he saw something rather splendid in

kicking away the ball which lay at his feet. He was also a good deal in debt: it was difficult to live in London

like a gentleman on three hundred a year; and his heart yearned for the Venice and Florence which John

Ruskin had so magically described. He felt that he was unsuited to the vulgar bustle of the Bar, for he had

discovered that it was not sufficient to put your name on a door to get briefs; and modern politics seemed to

lack nobility. He felt himself a poet. He disposed of his rooms in Clement's Inn and went to Italy. He had

spent a winter in Florence and a winter in Rome, and now was passing his second summer abroad in

Hayward had one gift which was very precious. He had a real feeling for literature, and he could impart his

own passion with an admirable fluency. He could throw himself into sympathy with a writer and see all that

was best in him, and then he could talk about him with understanding. Philip had read a great deal, but he had

read without discrimination everything that he happened to come across, and it was very good for him now to

meet someone who could guide his taste. He borrowed books from the small lending library which the town

possessed and began reading all the wonderful things that Hayward spoke of. He did not read always with

enjoyment but invariably with perseverance. He was eager for selfimprovement. He felt himself very

ignorant and very humble. By the end of August, when Weeks returned from South Germany, Philip was

completely under Hayward's influence. Hayward did not like Weeks. He deplored the American's black coat

and pepperandsalt trousers, and spoke with a scornful shrug of his New England conscience. Philip

listened complacently to the abuse of a man who had gone out of his way to be kind to him, but when Weeks

"Your new friend looks like a poet," said Weeks, with a thin smile on his careworn, bitter mouth.

"Did he tell you so? In America we should call him a pretty fair specimen of a waster."

"How old is he? Twentyfive? And he does nothing but stay in pensions and write poetry."

Weeks' eyes twinkled, but Philip, who did not understand American humour, pursed his lips and looked

severe. Weeks to Philip seemed a man of middle age, but he was in point of fact little more than thirty. He

had a long, thin body and the scholar's stoop; his head was large and ugly; he had pale scanty hair and an

earthy skin; his thin mouth and thin, long nose, and the great protuberance of his frontal bones, gave him an

uncouth look. He was cold and precise in his manner, a bloodless man, without passion; but he had a curious

vein of frivolity which disconcerted the seriousminded among whom his instincts naturally threw him. He

was studying theology in Heidelberg, but the other theological students of his own nationality looked upon

him with suspicion. He was very unorthodox, which frightened them; and his freakish humour excited their

"How can you have known a hundred and fortyseven of him?" asked Philip seriously.

"I've met him in the Latin Quarter in Paris, and I've met him in pensions in Berlin and Munich. He lives in

small hotels in Perugia and Assisi. He stands by the dozen before the Botticellis in Florence, and he sits on all

the benches of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In Italy he drinks a little too much wine, and in Germany he

drinks a great deal too much beer. He always admires the right thing whatever the right thing is, and one of

these days he's going to write a great work. Think of it, there are a hundred and fortyseven great works

reposing in the bosoms of a hundred and fortyseven great men, and the tragic thing is that not one of those

hundred and fortyseven great works will ever be written. And yet the world goes on."

Weeks spoke seriously, but his gray eyes twinkled a little at the end of his long speech, and Philip flushed

WEEKS had two little rooms at the back of Frau Erlin's house, and one of them, arranged as a parlour, was

comfortable enough for him to invite people to sit in. After supper, urged perhaps by the impish humour

which was the despair of his friends in Cambridge, Mass., he often asked Philip and Hayward to come in for

a chat. He received them with elaborate courtesy and insisted on their sitting in the only two comfortable

chairs in the room. Though he did not drink himself, with a politeness of which Philip recognised the irony,

he put a couple of bottles of beer at Hayward's elbow, and he insisted on lighting matches whenever in the

heat of argument Hayward's pipe went out. At the beginning of their acquaintance Hayward, as a member of

so celebrated a university, had adopted a patronising attitude towards Weeks, who was a graduate of Harvard;

and when by chance the conversation turned upon the Greek tragedians, a subject upon which Hayward felt

he spoke with authority, he had assumed the air that it was his part to give information rather than to

exchange ideas. Weeks had listened politely, with smiling modesty, till Hayward finished; then he asked one

or two insidious questions, so innocent in appearance that Hayward, not seeing into what a quandary they led

him, answered blandly; Weeks made a courteous objection, then a correction of fact, after that a quotation

from some little known Latin commentator, then a reference to a German authority; and the fact was

disclosed that he was a scholar. With smiling ease, apologetically, Weeks tore to pieces all that Hayward had

said; with elaborate civility he displayed the superficiality of his attainments. He mocked him with gentle

irony. Philip could not help seeing that Hayward looked a perfect fool, and Hayward had not the sense to hold

his tongue; in his irritation, his selfassurance undaunted, he attempted to argue: he made wild statements

and Weeks amicably corrected them; he reasoned falsely and Weeks proved that he was absurd: Weeks

confessed that he had taught Greek Literature at Harvard. Hayward gave a laugh of scorn.

"I might have known it. Of course you read Greek like a schoolmaster," he said. "I read it like a poet."

"And do you find it more poetic when you don't quite know what it means? I thought it was only in revealed

At last, having finished the beer, Hayward left Weeks' room hot and dishevelled; with an angry gesture he

"Of course the man's a pedant. He has no real feeling for beauty. Accuracy is the virtue of clerks. It's the

spirit of the Greeks that we aim at. Weeks is like that fellow who went to hear Rubenstein and complained

that he played false notes. False notes! What did they matter when he played divinely?"

Philip, not knowing how many incompetent people have found solace in these false notes, was much

Hayward could never resist the opportunity which Weeks offered him of regaining ground lost on a previous

occasion, and Weeks was able with the greatest ease to draw him into a discussion. Though he could not help

seeing how small his attainments were beside the American's, his British pertinacity, his wounded vanity

(perhaps they are the same thing), would not allow him to give up the struggle. Hayward seemed to take a

delight in displaying his ignorance, selfsatisfaction, and wrongheadedness. Whenever Hayward said

something which was illogical, Weeks in a few words would show the falseness of his reasoning, pause for a

moment to enjoy his triumph, and then hurry on to another subject as though Christian charity impelled him

to spare the vanquished foe. Philip tried sometimes to put in something to help his friend, and Weeks gently

crushed him, but so kindly, differently from the way in which he answered Hayward, that even Philip,

outrageously sensitive, could not feel hurt. Now and then, losing his calm as he felt himself more and more

foolish, Hayward became abusive, and only the American's smiling politeness prevented the argument from

degenerating into a quarrel. On these occasions when Hayward left Weeks' room he muttered angrily:

That settled it. It was a perfect answer to an argument which had seemed unanswerable.

Though they began by discussing all manner of subjects in Weeks' little room eventually the conversation

always turned to religion: the theological student took a professional interest in it, and Hayward welcomed a

subject in which hard facts need not disconcert him; when feeling is the gauge you can snap your angers at

logic, and when your logic is weak that is very agreeable. Hayward found it difficult to explain his beliefs to

Philip without a great flow of words; but it was clear (and this fell in with Philip's idea of the natural order of

things), that he had been brought up in the church by law established. Though he had now given up all idea of

becoming a Roman Catholic, he still looked upon that communion with sympathy. He had much to say in its

praise, and he compared favourably its gorgeous ceremonies with the simple services of the Church of

England. He gave Philip Newman's _Apologia_ to read, and Philip, finding it very dull, nevertheless read it

He talked enthusiastically of the music at the Oratory, and said charming things about the connection between

"You think it proves the truth of Roman Catholicism that John Henry Newman wrote good English and that

Hayward hinted that he had gone through much trouble with his soul. For a year he had swum in a sea of

darkness. He passed his fingers through his fair, waving hair and told them that he would not for five hundred

pounds endure again those agonies of mind. Fortunately he had reached calm waters at last.

"But what do you believe?" asked Philip, who was never satisfied with vague statements.

Hayward with his loose large limbs and the fine carriage of his head looked very handsome when he said this,

"Is that how you would describe your religion in a census paper?" asked Weeks, in mild tones.

"I hate the rigid definition: it's so ugly, so obvious. If you like I will say that I believe in the church of the

"Oh wise young man!" retorted Hayward, with a smile which made Philip blush, for he felt that in putting

into plain words what the other had expressed in a paraphrase, he had been guilty of vulgarity. "I belong to

the Church of England. But I love the gold and the silk which clothe the priest of Rome, and his celibacy, and

the confessional, and purgatory: and in the darkness of an Italian cathedral, incenseladen and mysterious, I

believe with all my heart in the miracle of the Mass. In Venice I have seen a fisherwoman come in, barefoot,

throw down her basket of fish by her side, fall on her knees, and pray to the Madonna; and that I felt was the

real faith, and I prayed and believed with her. But I believe also in Aphrodite and Apollo and the Great God

He had a charming voice, and he chose his words as he spoke; he uttered them almost rhythmically. He

Hayward turned to Philip with the slightly condescending gesture which so impressed the youth.

"I'm disappointed that you didn't add a little Buddhism," said Weeks. "And I confess I have a sort of

Hayward laughed, for he was in a good humour with himself that evening, and the ring of his sentences still

"I didn't expect you to understand me," he answered. "With your cold American intelligence you can only

adopt the critical attitude. Emerson and all that sort of thing. But what is criticism? Criticism is purely

destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up. You are a pedant, my dear fellow. The

Weeks looked at him with eyes which seemed at the same time to be quite grave and yet to be smiling

"Nothing to speak of," answered Hayward cheerfully. "And not enough for me to be unable to overwhelm

you in argument. But come, I have unbosomed my soul; now tell us what your religion is."

He could not imagine why they both burst into laughter, Hayward uproariously, and Weeks with a funny

No doubt had ever crossed Philip's mind on the subject, but he knew it was not a thing to state of oneself.

"If a man tells you he's a gentleman you can bet your boots he isn't," he retorted.

Philip's truthfulness made it difficult for him to answer, but he was naturally polite.

"I suppose we may take it that only Englishmen are gentlemen," said Weeks gravely.

Philip reddened, but, growing angry, did not care if he made himself ridiculous.

"I can give you plenty" He remembered his uncle's saying that it took three generations to make a gentleman:

it was a companion proverb to the silk purse and the sow's ear. "First of all he's the son of a gentleman, and

"And he talks English like a gentleman, and he wears the right sort of things, and if he's a gentleman he can

It seemed rather lame to Philip as he went on, but there it was: that was what he meant by the word, and

"It is evident to me that I am not a gentleman," said Weeks. "I don't see why you should have been so

Weeks in his odd way again put his head on one side: you almost expected him to twitter.

"A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves in almost everything that anybody else believes, and he has a very

"I don't see why you should make fun of me," said Philip. "I really want to know."

"My dear friend, I'm not making fun of you. I have arrived at that definition after years of great labour and

When Philip and Hayward got up to go, Weeks handed Philip a little book in a paper cover.

"I suppose you can read French pretty well by now. I wonder if this would amuse you."

Philip thanked him and, taking the book, looked at the title. It was Renan's _Vie de Jesus_.

IT OCCURRED neither to Hayward nor to Weeks that the conversations which helped them to pass an idle

evening were being turned over afterwards in Philip's active brain. It had never struck him before that religion

was a matter upon which discussion was possible. To him it meant the Church of England, and not to believe

in its tenets was a sign of wilfulness which could not fail of punishment here or hereafter. There was some

doubt in his mind about the chastisement of unbelievers. It was possible that a merciful judge, reserving the

flames of hell for the heathenMahommedans, Buddhists, and the restwould spare Dissenters and Roman

Catholics (though at the cost of how much humiliation when they were made to realise their error!), and it

was also possible that He would be pitiful to those who had had no chance of learning the truth,this was

reasonable enough, though such were the activities of the Missionary Society there could not be many in this

conditionbut if the chance had been theirs and they had neglected it (in which category were obviously

Roman Catholics and Dissenters), the punishment was sure and merited. It was clear that the miscreant was in

a parlous state. Perhaps Philip had not been taught it in so many words, but certainly the impression had been

given him that only members of the Church of England had any real hope of eternal happiness.

One of the things that Philip had heard definitely stated was that the unbeliever was a wicked and a vicious

man; but Weeks, though he believed in hardly anything that Philip believed, led a life of Christian purity.

Philip had received little kindness in his life, and he was touched by the American's desire to help him: once

when a cold kept him in bed for three days, Weeks nursed him like a mother. There was neither vice nor

wickedness in him, but only sincerity and lovingkindness. It was evidently possible to be virtuous and

Also Philip had been given to understand that people adhered to other faiths only from obstinacy or

selfinterest: in their hearts they knew they were false; they deliberately sought to deceive others. Now, for

the sake of his German he had been accustomed on Sunday mornings to attend the Lutheran service, but

when Hayward arrived he began instead to go with him to Mass. He noticed that, whereas the Protestant

church was nearly empty and the congregation had a listless air, the Jesuit on the other hand was crowded and

the worshippers seemed to pray with all their hearts. They had not the look of hypocrites. He was surprised at

the contrast; for he knew of course that the Lutherans, whose faith was closer to that of the Church of

England, on that account were nearer the truth than the Roman Catholics. Most of the menit was largely a

masculine congregationwere South Germans; and he could not help saying to himself that if he had been

born in South Germany he would certainly have been a Roman Catholic. He might just as well have been

born in a Roman Catholic country as in England; and in England as well in a Wesleyan, Baptist, or Methodist

family as in one that fortunately belonged to the church by law established. He was a little breathless at the

danger he had run. Philip was on friendly terms with the little Chinaman who sat at table with him twice each

day. His name was Sung. He was always smiling, affable, and polite. It seemed strange that he should frizzle

in hell merely because he was a Chinaman; but if salvation was possible whatever a man's faith was, there did

Philip, more puzzled than he had ever been in his life, sounded Weeks. He had to be careful, for he was very

sensitive to ridicule; and the acidulous humour with which the American treated the Church of England

disconcerted him. Weeks only puzzled him more. He made Philip acknowledge that those South Germans

whom he saw in the Jesuit church were every bit as firmly convinced of the truth of Roman Catholicism as he

was of that of the Church of England, and from that he led him to admit that the Mahommedan and the

Buddhist were convinced also of the truth of their respective religions. It looked as though knowing that you

were right meant nothing; they all knew they were right. Weeks had no intention of undermining the boy's

faith, but he was deeply interested in religion, and found it an absorbing topic of conversation. He had

described his own views accurately when he said that he very earnestly disbelieved in almost everything that

other people believed. Once Philip asked him a question, which he had heard his uncle put when the

conversation at the vicarage had fallen upon some mildly rationalistic work which was then exciting

"But why should you be right and all those fellows like St. Anselm and St. Augustine be wrong?"

"You mean that they were very clever and learned men, while you have grave doubts whether I am either?"

"Yes," answered Philip uncertainly, for put in that way his question seemed impertinent.

"St. Augustine believed that the earth was flat and that the sun turned round it."

"Why, it proves that you believe with your generation. Your saints lived in an age of faith, when it was

"I don't see why the things we believe absolutely now shouldn't be just as wrong as what they believed in the

"Men have always formed gods in their own image," said Weeks. "He believes in the picturesque."

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he realised that he had ceased to do so. It took his breath

away like a plunge into cold water. He looked at Weeks with startled eyes. Suddenly he felt afraid. He left

Weeks as quickly as he could. He wanted to be alone. It was the most startling experience that he had ever

had. He tried to think it all out; it was very exciting, since his whole life seemed concerned (he thought his

decision on this matter must profoundly affect its course) and a mistake might lead to eternal damnation; but

the more he reflected the more convinced he was; and though during the next few weeks he read books, aids

to scepticism, with eager interest it was only to confirm him in what he felt instinctively. The fact was that he

had ceased to believe not for this reason or the other, but because he had not the religious temperament. Faith

had been forced upon him from the outside. It was a matter of environment and example. A new environment

and a new example gave him the opportunity to find himself. He put off the faith of his childhood quite

simply, like a cloak that he no longer needed. At first life seemed strange and lonely without the belief which,

though he never realised it, had been an unfailing support. He felt like a man who has leaned on a stick and

finds himself forced suddenly to walk without assistance. It really seemed as though the days were colder and

the nights more solitary. But he was upheld by the excitement; it seemed to make life a more thrilling

adventure; and in a little while the stick which he had thrown aside, the cloak which had fallen from his

shoulders, seemed an intolerable burden of which he had been eased. The religious exercises which for so

many years had been forced upon him were part and parcel of religion to him. He thought of the collects and

epistles which he had been made to learn by heart, and the long services at the Cathedral through which he

had sat when every limb itched with the desire for movement; and he remembered those walks at night

through muddy roads to the parish church at Blackstable, and the coldness of that bleak building; he sat with

his feet like ice, his fingers numb and heavy, and all around was the sickly odour of pomatum. Oh, he had

He was surprised at himself because he ceased to believe so easily, and, not knowing that he felt as he did on

account of the subtle workings of his inmost nature, he ascribed the certainty he had reached to his own

cleverness. He was unduly pleased with himself. With youth's lack of sympathy for an attitude other than its

own he despised not a little Weeks and Hayward because they were content with the vague emotion which

they called God and would not take the further step which to himself seemed so obvious. One day he went

alone up a certain hill so that he might see a view which, he knew not why, filled him always with wild

exhilaration. It was autumn now, but often the days were cloudless still, and then the sky seemed to glow

with a more splendid light: it was as though nature consciously sought to put a fuller vehemence into the

remaining days of fair weather. He looked down upon the plain, aquiver with the sun, stretching vastly

before him: in the distance were the roofs of Mannheim and ever so far away the dimness of Worms. Here

and there a more piercing glitter was the Rhine. The tremendous spaciousness of it was glowing with rich

gold. Philip, as he stood there, his heart beating with sheer joy, thought how the tempter had stood with Jesus

on a high mountain and shown him the kingdoms of the earth. To Philip, intoxicated with the beauty of the

scene, it seemed that it was the whole world which was spread before him, and he was eager to step down and

enjoy it. He was free from degrading fears and free from prejudice. He could go his way without the

intolerable dread of hellfire. Suddenly he realised that he had lost also that burden of responsibility which

made every action of his life a matter of urgent consequence. He could breathe more freely in a lighter air. He

was responsible only to himself for the things he did. Freedom! He was his own master at last. From old

Drunk with pride in his intelligence and in his fearlessness, Philip entered deliberately upon a new life. But

his loss of faith made less difference in his behaviour than he expected. Though he had thrown on one side

the Christian dogmas it never occurred to him to criticise the Christian ethics; he accepted the Christian

virtues, and indeed thought it fine to practise them for their own sake, without a thought of reward or

punishment. There was small occasion for heroism in the Frau Professor's house, but he was a little more

exactly truthful than he had been, and he forced himself to be more than commonly attentive to the dull,

elderly ladies who sometimes engaged him in conversation. The gentle oath, the violent adjective, which are

typical of our language and which he had cultivated before as a sign of manliness, he now elaborately

Having settled the whole matter to his satisfaction he sought to put it out of his mind, but that was more

easily said than done; and he could not prevent the regrets nor stifle the misgivings which sometimes

tormented him. He was so young and had so few friends that immortality had no particular attractions for

him, and he was able without trouble to give up belief in it; but there was one thing which made him

wretched; he told himself that he was unreasonable, he tried to laugh himself out of such pathos; but the tears

really came to his eyes when he thought that he would never see again the beautiful mother whose love for

him had grown more precious as the years since her death passed on. And sometimes, as though the influence

of innumerable ancestors, Godfearing and devout, were working in him unconsciously, there seized him a

panic fear that perhaps after all it was all true, and there was, up there behind the blue sky, a jealous God who

would punish in everlasting flames the atheist. At these times his reason could offer him no help, he imagined

the anguish of a physical torment which would last endlessly, he felt quite sick with fear and burst into a

"After all, it's not my fault. I can't force myself to believe. If there is a God after all and he punishes me

WINTER set in. Weeks went to Berlin to attend the lectures of Paulssen, and Hayward began to think of

going South. The local theatre opened its doors. Philip and Hayward went to it two or three times a week with

the praiseworthy intention of improving their German, and Philip found it a more diverting manner of

perfecting himself in the language than listening to sermons. They found themselves in the midst of a revival

of the drama. Several of Ibsen's plays were on the repertory for the winter; Sudermann's _Die Ehre_ was then

a new play, and on its production in the quiet university town caused the greatest excitement; it was

extravagantly praised and bitterly attacked; other dramatists followed with plays written under the modern

influence, and Philip witnessed a series of works in which the vileness of mankind was displayed before him.

He had never been to a play in his life till then (poor touring companies sometimes came to the Assembly

Rooms at Blackstable, but the Vicar, partly on account of his profession, partly because he thought it would

be vulgar, never went to see them) and the passion of the stage seized him. He felt a thrill the moment he got

into the little, shabby, illlit theatre. Soon he came to know the peculiarities of the small company, and by the

casting could tell at once what were the characteristics of the persons in the drama; but this made no

difference to him. To him it was real life. It was a strange life, dark and tortured, in which men and women

showed to remorseless eyes the evil that was in their hearts: a fair face concealed a depraved mind; the

virtuous used virtue as a mask to hide their secret vice, the seemingstrong fainted within with their

weakness; the honest were corrupt, the chaste were lewd. You seemed to dwell in a room where the night

before an orgy had taken place: the windows had not been opened in the morning; the air was foul with the

dregs of beer, and stale smoke, and flaring gas. There was no laughter. At most you sniggered at the hypocrite

or the fool: the characters expressed themselves in cruel words that seemed wrung out of their hearts by

Philip was carried away by the sordid intensity of it. He seemed to see the world again in another fashion, and

this world too he was anxious to know. After the play was over he went to a tavern and sat in the bright

warmth with Hayward to eat a sandwich and drink a glass of beer. All round were little groups of students,

talking and laughing; and here and there was a family, father and mother, a couple of sons and a girl; and

sometimes the girl said a sharp thing, and the father leaned back in his chair and laughed, laughed heartily. It

was very friendly and innocent. There was a pleasant homeliness in the scene, but for this Philip had no eyes.

"You do feel it's life, don't you?" he said excitedly. "You know, I don't think I can stay here much longer. I

want to get to London so that I can really begin. I want to have experiences. I'm so tired of preparing for life:

Sometimes Hayward left Philip to go home by himself. He would never exactly reply to Philip's eager

questioning, but with a merry, rather stupid laugh, hinted at a romantic amour; he quoted a few lines of

Rossetti, and once showed Philip a sonnet in which passion and purple, pessimism and pathos, were packed

together on the subject of a young lady called Trude. Hayward surrounded his sordid and vulgar little

adventures with a glow of poetry, and thought he touched hands with Pericles and Pheidias because to

describe the object of his attentions he used the word hetaira instead of one of those, more blunt and apt,

provided by the English language. Philip in the daytime had been led by curiosity to pass through the little

street near the old bridge, with its neat white houses and green shutters, in which according to Hayward the

Fraulein Trude lived; but the women, with brutal faces and painted cheeks, who came out of their doors and

cried out to him, filled him with fear; and he fled in horror from the rough hands that sought to detain him.

He yearned above all things for experience and felt himself ridiculous because at his age he had not enjoyed

that which all fiction taught him was the most important thing in life; but he had the unfortunate gift of seeing

things as they were, and the reality which was offered him differed too terribly from the ideal of his dreams.

He did not know how wide a country, arid and precipitous, must be crossed before the traveller through life

comes to an acceptance of reality. It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it;

but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into

them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were

victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of

their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal

life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies;

and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life. The strange thing is that each one

who has gone through that bitter disillusionment adds to it in his turn, unconsciously, by the power within

him which is stronger than himself. The companionship of Hayward was the worst possible thing for Philip.

He was a man who saw nothing for himself, but only through a literary atmosphere, and he was dangerous

because he had deceived himself into sincerity. He honestly mistook his sensuality for romantic emotion, his

vacillation for the artistic temperament, and his idleness for philosophic calm. His mind, vulgar in its effort at

refinement, saw everything a little larger than life size, with the outlines blurred, in a golden mist of

sentimentality. He lied and never knew that he lied, and when it was pointed out to him said that lies were

PHILIP was restless and dissatisfied. Hayward's poetic allusions troubled his imagination, and his soul

And it happened that an incident was taking place in Frau Erlin's house which increased Philip's

preoccupation with the matter of sex. Two or three times on his walks among the hills he had met Fraulein

Cacilie wandering by herself. He had passed her with a bow, and a few yards further on had seen the

Chinaman. He thought nothing of it; but one evening on his way home, when night had already fallen, he

passed two people walking very close together. Hearing his footstep, they separated quickly, and though he

could not see well in the darkness he was almost certain they were Cacilie and Herr Sung. Their rapid

movement apart suggested that they had been walking arm in arm. Philip was puzzled and surprised. He had

never paid much attention to Fraulein Cacilie. She was a plain girl, with a square face and blunt features. She

could not have been more than sixteen, since she still wore her long fair hair in a plait. That evening at supper

he looked at her curiously; and, though of late she had talked little at meals, she addressed him.

Soon, however, there could be no doubt that there was something between the pair, and other people in the

Frau Professor's house saw them lurking in dark places. The elderly ladies who sat at the head of the table

began to discuss what was now a scandal. The Frau Professor was angry and harassed. She had done her best

to see nothing. The winter was at hand, and it was not as easy a matter then as in the summer to keep her

house full. Herr Sung was a good customer: he had two rooms on the ground floor, and he drank a bottle of

Moselle at each meal. The Frau Professor charged him three marks a bottle and made a good profit. None of

her other guests drank wine, and some of them did not even drink beer. Neither did she wish to lose Fraulein

Cacilie, whose parents were in business in South America and paid well for the Frau Professor's motherly

care; and she knew that if she wrote to the girl's uncle, who lived in Berlin, he would immediately take her

away. The Frau Professor contented herself with giving them both severe looks at table and, though she dared

not be rude to the Chinaman, got a certain satisfaction out of incivility to Cacilie. But the three elderly ladies

were not content. Two were widows, and one, a Dutchwoman, was a spinster of masculine appearance; they

paid the smallest possible sum for their pension, and gave a good deal of trouble, but they were permanent

and therefore had to be put up with. They went to the Frau Professor and said that something must be done; it

was disgraceful, and the house was ceasing to be respectable. The Frau Professor tried obstinacy, anger, tears,

but the three old ladies routed her, and with a sudden assumption of virtuous indignation she said that she

After luncheon she took Cacilie into her bedroom and began to talk very seriously to her; but to her

amazement the girl adopted a brazen attitude; she proposed to go about as she liked; and if she chose to walk

with the Chinaman she could not see it was anybody's business but her own. The Frau Professor threatened to

"Then Onkel Heinrich will put me in a family in Berlin for the winter, and that will be much nicer for me.

The Frau Professor began to cry. The tears rolled down her coarse, red, fat cheeks; and Cacilie laughed at her.

Then the Frau Professor tried another plan. She appealed to Fraulein Cacilie's better nature: she was kind,

sensible, tolerant; she treated her no longer as a child, but as a grown woman. She said that it wouldn't be so

dreadful, but a Chinaman, with his yellow skin and flat nose, and his little pig's eyes! That's what made it so

The Frau Professor stared at her with horrified surprise; she had thought it was no more than naughtiness on

the child's part, and innocent, folly. but the passion in her voice revealed everything. Cacilie looked at her for

a moment with flaming eyes, and then with a shrug of her shoulders went out of the room.

Frau Erlin kept the details of the interview to herself, and a day or two later altered the arrangement of the

table. She asked Herr Sung if he would not come and sit at her end, and he with his unfailing politeness

accepted with alacrity. Cacilie took the change indifferently. But as if the discovery that the relations between

them were known to the whole household made them more shameless, they made no secret now of their

walks together, and every afternoon quite openly set out to wander about the hills. It was plain that they did

not care what was said of them. At last even the placidity of Professor Erlin was moved, and he insisted that

his wife should speak to the Chinaman. She took him aside in his turn and expostulated; he was ruining the

girl's reputation, he was doing harm to the house, he must see how wrong and wicked his conduct was; but

she was met with smiling denials; Herr Sung did not know what she was talking about, he was not paying any

attention to Fraulein Cacilie, he never walked with her; it was all untrue, every word of it.

"_Ach_, Herr Sung, how can you say such things? You've been seen again and again."

He looked at her with an unceasing smile, which showed his even, little white teeth. He was quite calm. He

denied everything. He denied with bland effrontery. At last the Frau Professor lost her temper and said the

She could get nothing out of him. The weather grew very bad; there was snow and frost, and then a thaw with

a long succession of cheerless days, on which walking was a poor amusement. One evening when Philip had

just finished his German lesson with the Herr Professor and was standing for a moment in the drawingroom,

The Frau Professor gave an exclamation, and she looked at her daughter in dismay. The thought which was in

This was the stupid lout who waited at table and did most of the housework. He came in.

"Emil, go down to Herr Sung's room and enter without knocking. If anyone is there say you came in to see

He went slowly downstairs. The Frau Professor and Anna left the door open and listened. Presently they

"And who is going to pay the rent? And the taxes are falling due. It's all very well for you to say they must go

away. If they go away I can't pay the bills." She turned to Philip, with tears streaming down her face. "_Ach_,

Herr Carey, you will not say what you have heard. If Fraulein Forster" this was the Dutch spinster"if

Fraulein Forster knew she would leave at once. And if they all go we must close the house. I cannot afford to

That evening at supper Fraulein Cacilie, redder than usual, with a look of obstinacy on her face, took her

place punctually; but Herr Sung did not appear, and for a while Philip thought he was going to shirk the

ordeal. At last he came, very smiling, his little eyes dancing with the apologies he made for his late arrival.

He insisted as usual on pouring out the Frau Professor a glass of his Moselle, and he offered a glass to

Fraulein Forster. The room was very hot, for the stove had been alight all day and the windows were seldom

opened. Emil blundered about, but succeeded somehow in serving everyone quickly and with order. The

three old ladies sat in silence, visibly disapproving: the Frau Professor had scarcely recovered from her tears;

her husband was silent and oppressed. Conversation languished. It seemed to Philip that there was something

dreadful in that gathering which he had sat with so often; they looked different under the light of the two

hanging lamps from what they had ever looked before; he was vaguely uneasy. Once he caught Cacilie's eye,

and he thought she looked at him with hatred and contempt. The room was stifling. It was as though the

beastly passion of that pair troubled them all; there was a feeling of Oriental depravity; a faint savour of

josssticks, a mystery of hidden vices, seemed to make their breath heavy. Philip could feel the beating of the

arteries in his forehead. He could not understand what strange emotion distracted him; he seemed to feel

For several days things went on. The air was sickly with the unnatural passion which all felt about them, and

the nerves of the little household seemed to grow exasperated. Only Herr Sung remained unaffected; he was

no less smiling, affable, and polite than he had been before: one could not tell whether his manner was a

triumph of civilisation or an expression of contempt on the part of the Oriental for the vanquished West.

Cacilie was flaunting and cynical. At last even the Frau Professor could bear the position no longer. Suddenly

panic seized her; for Professor Erlin with brutal frankness had suggested the possible consequences of an

intrigue which was now manifest to everyone, and she saw her good name in Heidelberg and the repute of her

house ruined by a scandal which could not possibly be hidden. For some reason, blinded perhaps by her

interests, this possibility had never occurred to her; and now, her wits muddled by a terrible fear, she could

hardly be prevented from turning the girl out of the house at once. It was due to Anna's good sense that a

cautious letter was written to the uncle in Berlin suggesting that Cacilie should be taken away.

But having made up her mind to lose the two lodgers, the Frau Professor could not resist the satisfaction of

giving rein to the illtemper she had curbed so long. She was free now to say anything she liked to Cacilie.

"I have written to your uncle, Cacilie, to take you away. I cannot have you in my house any longer."

Her little round eyes sparkled when she noticed the sudden whiteness of the girl's face.

"What did you say to my uncle Heinrich, Frau Professor?" the girl asked, suddenly falling from her attitude

Next day, in order to make the humiliation more public, at supper she called down the table to Cacilie.

"I have had a letter from your uncle, Cacilie. You are to pack your things tonight, and we will put you in the

train tomorrow morning. He will meet you himself in Berlin at the Central Bahnhof."

Herr Sung smiled in the Frau Professor's eyes, and notwithstanding her protests insisted on pouring out a

glass of wine for her. The Frau Professor ate her supper with a good appetite. But she had triumphed

"Emil, if Fraulein Cacilie's box is ready you had better take it downstairs tonight. The porter will fetch it

With a cry the Frau Professor hurried along: the box was on the floor, strapped and locked; but there was no

bag, and neither hat nor cloak. The dressingtable was empty. Breathing heavily, the Frau Professor ran

downstairs to the Chinaman's rooms, she had not moved so quickly for twenty years, and Emil called out

after her to beware she did not fall; she did not trouble to knock, but burst in. The rooms were empty. The

luggage had gone, and the door into the garden, still open, showed how it had been got away. In an envelope

on the table were notes for the money due on the month's board and an approximate sum for extras.

Groaning, suddenly overcome by her haste, the Frau Professor sank obesely on to a sofa. There could be no

HAYWARD, after saying for a month that he was going South next day and delaying from week to week out

of inability to make up his mind to the bother of packing and the tedium of a journey, had at last been driven

off just before Christmas by the preparations for that festival. He could not support the thought of a Teutonic

merrymaking. It gave him gooseflesh to think of the season's aggressive cheerfulness, and in his desire to

Philip was not sorry to see him off, for he was a downright person and it irritated him that anybody should

not know his own mind. Though much under Hayward's influence, he would not grant that indecision pointed

to a charming sensitiveness; and he resented the shadow of a sneer with which Hayward looked upon his

straight ways. They corresponded. Hayward was an admirable letterwriter, and knowing his talent took

pains with his letters. His temperament was receptive to the beautiful influences with which he came in

contact, and he was able in his letters from Rome to put a subtle fragrance of Italy. He thought the city of the

ancient Romans a little vulgar, finding distinction only in the decadence of the Empire; but the Rome of the

Popes appealed to his sympathy, and in his chosen words, quite exquisitely, there appeared a rococo beauty.

He wrote of old church music and the Alban Hills, and of the languor of incense and the charm of the streets

by night, in the rain, when the pavements shone and the light of the street lamps was mysterious. Perhaps he

repeated these admirable letters to various friends. He did not know what a troubling effect they had upon

Philip; they seemed to make his life very humdrum. With the spring Hayward grew dithyrambic. He

proposed that Philip should come down to Italy. He was wasting his time at Heidelberg. The Germans were

gross and life there was common; how could the soul come to her own in that prim landscape? In Tuscany the

spring was scattering flowers through the land, and Philip was nineteen; let him come and they could wander

through the mountain towns of Umbria. Their names sang in Philip's heart. And Cacilie too, with her lover,

had gone to Italy. When he thought of them Philip was seized with a restlessness he could not account for. He

cursed his fate because he had no money to travel, and he knew his uncle would not send him more than the

fifteen pounds a month which had been agreed upon. He had not managed his allowance very well. His

pension and the price of his lessons left him very little over, and he had found going about with Hayward

expensive. Hayward had often suggested excursions, a visit to the play, or a bottle of wine, when Philip had

come to the end of his month's money; and with the folly of his age he had been unwilling to confess he could

Luckily Hayward's letters came seldom, and in the intervals Philip settled down again to his industrious life.

He had matriculated at the university and attended one or two courses of lectures. Kuno Fischer was then at

the height of his fame and during the winter had been lecturing brilliantly on Schopenhauer. It was Philip's

introduction to philosophy. He had a practical mind and moved uneasily amid the abstract; but he found an

unexpected fascination in listening to metaphysical disquisitions; they made him breathless; it was a little like

watching a tightrope dancer doing perilous feats over an abyss; but it was very exciting. The pessimism of

the subject attracted his youth; and he believed that the world he was about to enter was a place of pitiless

woe and of darkness. That made him none the less eager to enter it; and when, in due course, Mrs. Carey,

acting as the correspondent for his guardian's views, suggested that it was time for him to come back to

England, he agreed with enthusiasm. He must make up his mind now what he meant to do. If he left

Heidelberg at the end of July they could talk things over during August, and it would be a good time to make

The date of his departure was settled, and Mrs. Carey wrote to him again. She reminded him of Miss

Wilkinson, through whose kindness he had gone to Frau Erlin's house at Heidelberg, and told him that she

had arranged to spend a few weeks with them at Blackstable. She would be crossing from Flushing on such

and such a day, and if he travelled at the same time he could look after her and come on to Blackstable in her

company. Philip's shyness immediately made him write to say that he could not leave till a day or two

afterwards. He pictured himself looking out for Miss Wilkinson, the embarrassment of going up to her and

asking if it were she (and he might so easily address the wrong person and be snubbed), and then the

difficulty of knowing whether in the train he ought to talk to her or whether he could ignore her and read his

At last he left Heidelberg. For three months he had been thinking of nothing but the future; and he went

without regret. He never knew that he had been happy there. Fraulein Anna gave him a copy of _Der

Trompeter von Sackingen_ and in return he presented her with a volume of William Morris. Very wisely

PHILIP was surprised when he saw his uncle and aunt. He had never noticed before that they were quite old

people. The Vicar received him with his usual, not unamiable indifference. He was a little stouter, a little

balder, a little grayer. Philip saw how insignificant he was. His face was weak and selfindulgent. Aunt

Louisa took him in her arms and kissed him; and tears of happiness flowed down her cheeks. Philip was

touched and embarrassed; he had not known with what a hungry love she cared for him.

There was a very small moustache on his upper lip. He had bought a razor and now and then with infinite

"We've been so lonely without you." And then shyly, with a little break in her voice, she asked: "You are glad

She was so thin that she seemed almost transparent, the arms she put round his neck were frail bones that

reminded you of chicken bones, and her faded face was oh! so wrinkled. The gray curls which she still wore

in the fashion of her youth gave her a queer, pathetic look; and her little withered body was like an autumn

leaf, you felt it might be blown away by the first sharp wind. Philip realised that they had done with life,

these two quiet little people: they belonged to a past generation, and they were waiting there patiently, rather

stupidly, for death; and he, in his vigour and his youth, thirsting for excitement and adventure, was appalled

at the waste. They had done nothing, and when they went it would be just as if they had never been. He felt a

Then Miss Wilkinson, who had kept discreetly out of the way till the Careys had had a chance of welcoming

"The prodigal has returned," she said, holding out her hand. "I have brought a rose for the prodigal's

With a gay smile she pinned to Philip's coat the flower she had just picked in the garden. He blushed and felt

foolish. He knew that Miss Wilkinson was the daughter of his Uncle William's last rector, and he had a wide

acquaintance with the daughters of clergymen. They wore illcut clothes and stout boots. They were

generally dressed in black, for in Philip's early years at Blackstable homespuns had not reached East Anglia,

and the ladies of the clergy did not favour colours. Their hair was done very untidily, and they smelt

aggressively of starched linen. They considered the feminine graces unbecoming and looked the same

whether they were old or young. They bore their religion arrogantly. The closeness of their connection with

the church made them adopt a slightly dictatorial attitude to the rest of mankind.

Miss Wilkinson was very different. She wore a white muslin gown stamped with gay little bunches of

flowers, and pointed, highheeled shoes, with openwork stockings. To Philip's inexperience it seemed that

she was wonderfully dressed; he did not see that her frock was cheap and showy. Her hair was elaborately

dressed, with a neat curl in the middle of the forehead: it was very black, shiny and hard, and it looked as

though it could never be in the least disarranged. She had large black eyes and her nose was slightly aquiline;

in profile she had somewhat the look of a bird of prey, but full face she was prepossessing. She smiled a great

deal, but her mouth was large and when she smiled she tried to hide her teeth, which were big and rather

yellow. But what embarrassed Philip most was that she was heavily powdered: he had very strict views on

feminine behaviour and did not think a lady ever powdered; but of course Miss Wilkinson was a lady because

Philip made up his mind to dislike her thoroughly. She spoke with a slight French accent; and he did not

know why she should, since she had been born and bred in the heart of England. He thought her smile

affected, and the coy sprightliness of her manner irritated him. For two or three days he remained silent and

hostile, but Miss Wilkinson apparently did not notice it. She was very affable. She addressed her conversation

almost exclusively to him, and there was something flattering in the way she appealed constantly to his sane

judgment. She made him laugh too, and Philip could never resist people who amused him: he had a gift now

and then of saying neat things; and it was pleasant to have an appreciative listener. Neither the Vicar nor Mrs.

Carey had a sense of humour, and they never laughed at anything he said. As he grew used to Miss

Wilkinson, and his shyness left him, he began to like her better; he found the French accent picturesque; and

at a garden party which the doctor gave she was very much better dressed than anyone else. She wore a blue

foulard with large white spots, and Philip was tickled at the sensation it caused.

"I'm certain they think you're no better than you should be," he told her, laughing.

One day when Miss Wilkinson was in her room he asked Aunt Louisa how old she was.

"Oh, my dear, you should never ask a lady's age; but she's certainly too old for you to marry."

"She's no chicken, Louisa," he said. "She was nearly grown up when we were in Lincolnshire, and that was

At that moment Miss Wilkinson tripped downstairs, singing a song by Benjamin Goddard. She had put her

hat on, for she and Philip were going for a walk, and she held out her hand for him to button her glove. He

did it awkwardly. He felt embarrassed but gallant. Conversation went easily between them now, and as they

strolled along they talked of all manner of things. She told Philip about Berlin, and he told her of his year in

Heidelberg. As he spoke, things which had appeared of no importance gained a new interest: he described the

people at Frau Erlin's house; and to the conversations between Hayward and Weeks, which at the time

seemed so significant, he gave a little twist, so that they looked absurd. He was flattered at Miss Wilkinson's

Then she asked him playfully whether he had not had any love affairs at Heidelberg. Without thinking, he

He was pleased that she should think he had been a sad dog, and he changed the conversation so as to make

her believe he had all sorts of romantic things to conceal. He was angry with himself that he had not. There

Miss Wilkinson was dissatisfied with her lot. She resented having to earn her living and told Philip a long

story of an uncle of her mother's, who had been expected to leave her a fortune but had married his cook and

changed his will. She hinted at the luxury of her home and compared her life in Lincolnshire, with horses to

ride and carriages to drive in, with the mean dependence of her present state. Philip was a little puzzled when

he mentioned this afterwards to Aunt Louisa, and she told him that when she knew the Wilkinsons they had

never had anything more than a pony and a dogcart; Aunt Louisa had heard of the rich uncle, but as he was

married and had children before Emily was born she could never have had much hope of inheriting his

fortune. Miss Wilkinson had little good to say of Berlin, where she was now in a situation. She complained of

the vulgarity of German life, and compared it bitterly with the brilliance of Paris, where she had spent a

number of years. She did not say how many. She had been governess in the family of a fashionable

portraitpainter, who had married a Jewish wife of means, and in their house she had met many distinguished

people. She dazzled Philip with their names. Actors from the Comedie Francaise had come to the house

frequently, and Coquelin, sitting next her at dinner, had told her he had never met a foreigner who spoke such

perfect French. Alphonse Daudet had come also, and he had given her a copy of _Sappho_: he had promised

to write her name in it, but she had forgotten to remind him. She treasured the volume none the less and she

would lend it to Philip. Then there was Maupassant. Miss Wilkinson with a rippling laugh looked at Philip

knowingly. What a man, but what a writer! Hayward had talked of Maupassant, and his reputation was not

The words seemed to stick funnily in his throat, but he asked them nevertheless. He liked Miss Wilkinson

very much now, and was thrilled by her conversation, but he could not imagine anyone making love to her.

"What a question!" she cried. "Poor Guy, he made love to every woman he met. It was a habit that he could

A greater experience than Philip's would have guessed from these words the probabilities of the encounter:

the distinguished writer invited to luncheon _en famille_, the governess coming in sedately with the two tall

And the luncheon during which the Miss Anglaise sat silent while the distinguished writer talked to his host

"There's nothing to tell," she said truthfully, but in such a manner as to convey that three volumes would

She began to talk of Paris. She loved the boulevards and the Bois. There was grace in every street, and the

trees in the Champs Elysees had a distinction which trees had not elsewhere. They were sitting on a stile now

by the highroad, and Miss Wilkinson looked with disdain upon the stately elms in front of them. And the

theatres: the plays were brilliant, and the acting was incomparable. She often went with Madame Foyot, the

"Oh, what a misery to be poor!" she cried. "These beautiful things, it's only in Paris they know how to dress,

and not to be able to afford them! Poor Madame Foyot, she had no figure. Sometimes the dressmaker used to

"Men are so stupid in England. They only think of the face. The French, who are a nation of lovers, know

Philip had never thought of such things before, but he observed now that Miss Wilkinson's ankles were thick

"You should go to France. Why don't you go to Paris for a year? You would learn French, and it

"You must look it out in the dictionary. Englishmen do not know how to treat women. They are so shy.

Shyness is ridiculous in a man. They don't know how to make love. They can't even tell a woman she is

Philip felt himself absurd. Miss Wilkinson evidently expected him to behave very differently; and he would

have been delighted to say gallant and witty things, but they never occurred to him; and when they did he was

"Oh, I love Paris," sighed Miss Wilkinson. "But I had to go to Berlin. I was with the Foyots till the girls

married, and then I could get nothing to do, and I had the chance of this post in Berlin. They're relations of

Madame Foyot, and I accepted. I had a tiny apartment in the Rue Breda, on the _cinquieme_: it wasn't at all

Philip nodded, not knowing at all what she meant, but vaguely suspecting, and anxious she should not think

"But I didn't care. _Je suis libre, n'estce pas_?" She was very fond of speaking French, which indeed she

"I don't know what Mrs. Carey would say if she knew the sort of things we talk about together."

When he had done this, she told him how an artstudent who had a room on the floor above herbut she

"That is for others to judge. _Je m'y connais_, and I believe you have the making of a great artist."

"Can't you see Uncle William's face if I suddenly told him I wanted to go to Paris and study art?"

"You're trying to put me off. Please go on with the story." Miss Wilkinson, with a little laugh, went on. The

artstudent had passed her several times on the stairs, and she had paid no particular attention. She saw that

he had fine eyes, and he took off his hat very politely. And one day she found a letter slipped under her door.

It was from him. He told her that he had adored her for months, and that he waited about the stairs for her to

pass. Oh, it was a charming letter! Of course she did not reply, but what woman could help being flattered?

And next day there was another letter! It was wonderful, passionate, and touching. When next she met him on

the stairs she did not know which way to look. And every day the letters came, and now he begged her to see

him. He said he would come in the evening, _vers neuf heures_, and she did not know what to do. Of course

it was impossible, and he might ring and ring, but she would never open the door; and then while she was

waiting for the tinkling of the bell, all nerves, suddenly he stood before her. She had forgotten to shut the

Philip was silent for a moment. His heart beat quickly, and strange emotions seemed to be hustling one

another in his heart. He saw the dark staircase and the chance meetings, and he admired the boldness of the

lettersoh, he would never have dared to do thatand then the silent, almost mysterious entrance. It

"He treated me abominably. Men are always the same. You're heartless, all of you."

PHILIP could not get Miss Wilkinson's story out of his head. It was clear enough what she meant even

though she cut it short, and he was a little shocked. That sort of thing was all very well for married women,

he had read enough French novels to know that in France it was indeed the rule, but Miss Wilkinson was

English and unmarried; her father was a clergyman. Then it struck him that the artstudent probably was

neither the first nor the last of her lovers, and he gasped: he had never looked upon Miss Wilkinson like that;

it seemed incredible that anyone should make love to her. In his ingenuousness he doubted her story as little

as he doubted what he read in books, and he was angry that such wonderful things never happened to him. It

was humiliating that if Miss Wilkinson insisted upon his telling her of his adventures in Heidelberg he would

have nothing to tell. It was true that he had some power of invention, but he was not sure whether he could

persuade her that he was steeped in vice; women were full of intuition, he had read that, and she might easily

discover that he was fibbing. He blushed scarlet as he thought of her laughing up her sleeve.

Miss Wilkinson played the piano and sang in a rather tired voice; but her songs, Massenet, Benjamin

Goddard, and Augusta Holmes, were new to Philip; and together they spent many hours at the piano. One day

she wondered if he had a voice and insisted on trying it. She told him he had a pleasant baritone and offered

to give him lessons. At first with his usual bashfulness he refused, but she insisted, and then every morning at

a convenient time after breakfast she gave him an hour's lesson. She had a natural gift for teaching, and it was

clear that she was an excellent governess. She had method and firmness. Though her French accent was so

much part of her that it remained, all the mellifluousness of her manner left her when she was engaged in

teaching. She put up with no nonsense. Her voice became a little peremptory, and instinctively she

suppressed inattention and corrected slovenliness. She knew what she was about and put Philip to scales and

When the lesson was over she resumed without effort her seductive smiles, her voice became again soft and

winning, but Philip could not so easily put away the pupil as she the pedagogue; and this impression

convicted with the feelings her stories had aroused in him. He looked at her more narrowly. He liked her

much better in the evening than in the morning. In the morning she was rather lined and the skin of her neck

was just a little rough. He wished she would hide it, but the weather was very warm just then and she wore

blouses which were cut low. She was very fond of white; in the morning it did not suit her. At night she often

looked very attractive, she put on a gown which was almost a dinner dress, and she wore a chain of garnets

round her neck; the lace about her bosom and at her elbows gave her a pleasant softness, and the scent she

wore (at Blackstable no one used anything but _Eau de Cologne_, and that only on Sundays or when

suffering from a sick headache) was troubling and exotic. She really looked very young then.

Philip was much exercised over her age. He added twenty and seventeen together, and could not bring them

to a satisfactory total. He asked Aunt Louisa more than once why she thought Miss Wilkinson was

thirtyseven: she didn't look more than thirty, and everyone knew that foreigners aged more rapidly than

English women; Miss Wilkinson had lived so long abroad that she might almost be called a foreigner. He

Philip did not believe in the accuracy of the Careys' statements. All they distinctly remembered was that Miss

Wilkinson had not got her hair up the last time they saw her in Lincolnshire. Well, she might have been

twelve then: it was so long ago and the Vicar was always so unreliable. They said it was twenty years ago,

but people used round figures, and it was just as likely to be eighteen years, or seventeen. Seventeen and

twelve were only twentynine, and hang it all, that wasn't old, was it? Cleopatra was fortyeight when

It was a fine summer. Day after day was hot and cloudless; but the heat was tempered by the neighbourhood

of the sea, and there was a pleasant exhilaration in the air, so that one was excited and not oppressed by the

August sunshine. There was a pond in the garden in which a fountain played; water lilies grew in it and gold

fish sunned themselves on the surface. Philip and Miss Wilkinson used to take rugs and cushions there after

dinner and lie on the lawn in the shade of a tall hedge of roses. They talked and read all the afternoon. They

smoked cigarettes, which the Vicar did not allow in the house; he thought smoking a disgusting habit, and

used frequently to say that it was disgraceful for anyone to grow a slave to a habit. He forgot that he was

One day Miss Wilkinson gave Philip _La Vie de Boheme_. She had found it by accident when she was

rummaging among the books in the Vicar's study. It had been bought in a lot with something Mr. Carey

Philip began to read Murger's fascinating, illwritten, absurd masterpiece, and fell at once under its spell. His

soul danced with joy at that picture of starvation which is so goodhumoured, of squalor which is so

picturesque, of sordid love which is so romantic, of bathos which is so moving. Rodolphe and Mimi, Musette

and Schaunard! They wander through the gray streets of the Latin Quarter, finding refuge now in one attic,

now in another, in their quaint costumes of Louis Philippe, with their tears and their smiles, happygolucky

and reckless. Who can resist them? It is only when you return to the book with a sounder judgment that you

find how gross their pleasures were, how vulgar their minds; and you feel the utter worthlessness, as artists

"Don't you wish you were going to Paris instead of London?" asked Miss Wilkinson, smiling at his

During the fortnight he had been back from Germany there had been much discussion between himself and

his uncle about his future. He had refused definitely to go to Oxford, and now that there was no chance of his

getting scholarships even Mr. Carey came to the conclusion that he could not afford it. His entire fortune had

consisted of only two thousand pounds, and though it had been invested in mortgages at five per cent, he had

not been able to live on the interest. It was now a little reduced. It would be absurd to spend two hundred a

year, the least he could live on at a university, for three years at Oxford which would lead him no nearer to

earning his living. He was anxious to go straight to London. Mrs. Carey thought there were only four

professions for a gentleman, the Army, the Navy, the Law, and the Church. She had added medicine because

her brotherinlaw practised it, but did not forget that in her young days no one ever considered the doctor a

gentleman. The first two were out of the question, and Philip was firm in his refusal to be ordained. Only the

law remained. The local doctor had suggested that many gentlemen now went in for engineering, but Mrs.

Mrs. Carey was not sorry. The Bar seemed out of the question, since he was not going to Oxford, for the

Careys were under the impression that a degree was still necessary for success in that calling; and finally it

was suggested that he should become articled to a solicitor. They wrote to the family lawyer, Albert Nixon,

who was coexecutor with the Vicar of Blackstable for the late Henry Carey's estate, and asked him whether

he would take Philip. In a day or two the answer came back that he had not a vacancy, and was very much

opposed to the whole scheme; the profession was greatly overcrowded, and without capital or connections a

man had small chance of becoming more than a managing clerk; he suggested, however, that Philip should

become a chartered accountant. Neither the Vicar nor his wife knew in the least what this was, and Philip had

never heard of anyone being a chartered accountant; but another letter from the solicitor explained that the

growth of modern businesses and the increase of companies had led to the formation of many firms of

accountants to examine the books and put into the financial affairs of their clients an order which

oldfashioned methods had lacked. Some years before a Royal Charter had been obtained, and the profession

was becoming every year more respectable, lucrative, and important. The chartered accountants whom Albert

Nixon had employed for thirty years happened to have a vacancy for an articled pupil, and would take Philip

for a fee of three hundred pounds. Half of this would be returned during the five years the articles lasted in

the form of salary. The prospect was not exciting, but Philip felt that he must decide on something, and the

thought of living in London overbalanced the slight shrinking he felt. The Vicar of Blackstable wrote to ask

Mr. Nixon whether it was a profession suited to a gentleman; and Mr. Nixon replied that, since the Charter,

men were going into it who had been to public schools and a university; moreover, if Philip disliked the work

and after a year wished to leave, Herbert Carter, for that was the accountant's name, would return half the

money paid for the articles. This settled it, and it was arranged that Philip should start work on the fifteenth of

Her holidays were to last six weeks, and she would be leaving Blackstable only a day or two before Philip.

Philip reddened. He was afraid that Miss Wilkinson would think him a milksop: after all she was a young

woman, sometimes quite pretty, and he was getting on for twenty; it was absurd that they should talk of

nothing but art and literature. He ought to make love to her. They had talked a good deal of love. There was

the artstudent in the Rue Breda, and then there was the painter in whose family she had lived so long in

Paris: he had asked her to sit for him, and had started to make love to her so violently that she was forced to

invent excuses not to sit to him again. It was clear enough that Miss Wilkinson was used to attentions of that

sort. She looked very nice now in a large straw hat: it was hot that afternoon, the hottest day they had had,

and beads of sweat stood in a line on her upper lip. He called to mind Fraulein Cacilie and Herr Sung. He had

never thought of Cacilie in an amorous way, she was exceedingly plain; but now, looking back, the affair

seemed very romantic. He had a chance of romance too. Miss Wilkinson was practically French, and that

added zest to a possible adventure. When he thought of it at night in bed, or when he sat by himself in the

garden reading a book, he was thrilled by it; but when he saw Miss Wilkinson it seemed less picturesque.

At all events, after what she had told him, she would not be surprised if he made love to her. He had a feeling

that she must think it odd of him to make no sign: perhaps it was only his fancy, but once or twice in the last

He was thinking that he ought to kiss her there and then. He wondered if she expected him to do it; but after

all he didn't see how he could without any preliminary business at all. She would just think him mad, or she

might slap his face; and perhaps she would complain to his uncle. He wondered how Herr Sung had started

with Fraulein Cacilie. It would be beastly if she told his uncle: he knew what his uncle was, he would tell the

doctor and Josiah Graves; and he would look a perfect fool. Aunt Louisa kept on saying that Miss Wilkinson

was thirtyseven if she was a day; he shuddered at the thought of the ridicule he would be exposed to; they

There it was again! Whenever he had succeeded in working himself up she said something which reminded

him of the governess. She called him playfully a naughty boy when he did not sing his exercises to her

She put out her hand and he took it. Once or twice lately when they shook hands at night he had fancied she

He did not quite know what he ought to say next. Here at last was his chance of an adventure, and he would

be a fool not to take it; but it was a little ordinary, and he had expected more glamour. He had read many

descriptions of love, and he felt in himself none of that uprush of emotion which novelists described; he was

not carried off his feet in wave upon wave of passion; nor was Miss Wilkinson the ideal: he had often

pictured to himself the great violet eyes and the alabaster skin of some lovely girl, and he had thought of

himself burying his face in the rippling masses of her auburn hair. He could not imagine himself burying his

face in Miss Wilkinson's hair, it always struck him as a little sticky. All the same it would be very satisfactory

to have an intrigue, and he thrilled with the legitimate pride he would enjoy in his conquest. He owed it to

himself to seduce her. He made up his mind to kiss Miss Wilkinson; not then, but in the evening; it would be

easier in the dark, and after he had kissed her the rest would follow. He would kiss her that very evening. He

He laid his plans. After supper he suggested that they should take a stroll in the garden. Miss Wilkinson

accepted, and they sauntered side by side. Philip was very nervous. He did not know why, but the

conversation would not lead in the right direction; he had decided that the first thing to do was to put his arm

round her waist; but he could not suddenly put his arm round her waist when she was talking of the regatta

which was to be held next week. He led her artfully into the darkest parts of the garden, but having arrived

there his courage failed him. They sat on a bench, and he had really made up his mind that here was his

opportunity when Miss Wilkinson said she was sure there were earwigs and insisted on moving. They walked

round the garden once more, and Philip promised himself he would take the plunge before they arrived at that

bench again; but as they passed the house, they saw Mrs. Carey standing at the door.

"Hadn't you young people better come in? I'm sure the night air isn't good for you."

He said it with a sigh of relief. He could attempt nothing more that night. But afterwards, when he was alone

in his room, he was furious with himself. He had been a perfect fool. He was certain that Miss Wilkinson

expected him to kiss her, otherwise she wouldn't have come into the garden. She was always saying that only

Frenchmen knew how to treat women. Philip had read French novels. If he had been a Frenchman he would

have seized her in his arms and told her passionately that he adored her; he would have pressed his lips on her

_nuque_. He did not know why Frenchmen always kissed ladies on the _nuque_. He did not himself see

anything so very attractive in the nape of the neck. Of course it was much easier for Frenchmen to do these

things; the language was such an aid; Philip could never help feeling that to say passionate things in English

sounded a little absurd. He wished now that he had never undertaken the siege of Miss Wilkinson's virtue; the

first fortnight had been so jolly, and now he was wretched; but he was determined not to give in, he would

never respect himself again if he did, and he made up his mind. irrevocably that the next night he would kiss

Next day when he got up he saw it was raining, and his first thought was that they would not be able to go

into the garden that evening. He was in high spirits at breakfast. Miss Wilkinson sent Mary Ann in to say that

she had a headache and would remain in bed. She did not come down till teatime, when she appeared in a

becoming wrapper and a pale face; but she was quite recovered by supper, and the meal was very cheerful.

After prayers she said she would go straight to bed, and she kissed Mrs. Carey. Then she turned to Philip.

The following day there was not a cloud in the sky, and the garden was sweet and fresh after the rain. Philip

went down to the beach to bathe and when he came home ate a magnificent dinner. They were having a

tennis party at the vicarage in the afternoon and Miss Wilkinson put on her best dress. She certainly knew

how to wear her clothes, and Philip could not help noticing how elegant she looked beside the curate's wife

and the doctor's married daughter. There were two roses in her waistband. She sat in a garden chair by the

side of the lawn, holding a red parasol over herself, and the light on her face was very becoming. Philip was

fond of tennis. He served well and as he ran clumsily played close to the net: notwithstanding his clubfoot

he was quick, and it was difficult to get a ball past him. He was pleased because he won all his sets. At tea he

"D'you know, Mrs. Carey has been scolding me on your account?" said Miss Wilkinson, when they were

Philip put his arm round her waist and kissed her lips. She only laughed a little and made no attempt to

withdraw. It had come quite naturally. Philip was very proud of himself. He said he would, and he had. It was

the easiest thing in the world. He wished he had done it before. He did it again.

NEXT day after dinner they took their rugs and cushions to the fountain, and their books; but they did not

read. Miss Wilkinson made herself comfortable and she opened the red sunshade. Philip was not at all shy

"It was very wrong of me last night," she said. "I couldn't sleep, I felt I'd done so wrong."

He knew he ought to reply: "Because I love you." But he could not bring himself to say it.

She looked at him with smiling eyes and touched his face with the tips of her fingers.

It was astonishing how difficult he found it to make romantic speeches. He found that silence helped him

much more than words. He could look inexpressible things. Miss Wilkinson sighed.

When he tried to kiss her again she did not resist. He pretended to be much more passionate than he really

He was catching fire from the flame he was partly simulating, and at teatime he was obstreperously merry.

"You mustn't have those shining eyes," she said to him afterwards. "What will your Aunt Louisa think?"

Miss Wilkinson gave a little laugh of pleasure. They had no sooner finished supper than he said to her:

"Why don't you let Miss Wilkinson rest?" said Mrs. Carey. "You must remember she's not as young as you."

"Your aunt is very nice, but she gets on my nerves sometimes," said Miss Wilkinson, as soon as they closed

Philip threw away the cigarette he had just lighted, and flung his arms round her. She tried to push him away.

"Not so near the house, Philip," she said. "Supposing someone should come out suddenly?"

He led her to the kitchen garden where no one was likely to come, and this time Miss Wilkinson did not think

of earwigs. He kissed her passionately. It was one of the things that puzzled him that he did not like her at all

in the morning, and only moderately in the afternoon, but at night the touch of her hand thrilled him. He said

things that he would never have thought himself capable of saying; he could certainly never have said them in

the broad light of day; and he listened to himself with wonder and satisfaction.

"Oh, if I could only say all the things that burn my heart!" he murmured passionately.

It was splendid. It was the most thrilling game he had ever played; and the wonderful thing was that he felt

almost all he said. It was only that he exaggerated a little. He was tremendously interested and excited in the

effect he could see it had on her. It was obviously with an effort that at last she suggested going in.

"I can't go in yet. I shall stay here and think. My cheeks are burning. I want the nightair. Goodnight."

He held out his hand seriously, and she took it in silence. He thought she stifled a sob. Oh, it was

magnificent! When, after a decent interval during which he had been rather bored in the dark garden by

After that things were different between them. The next day and the day after Philip showed himself an eager

lover. He was deliciously flattered to discover that Miss Wilkinson was in love with him: she told him so in

English, and she told him so in French. She paid him compliments. No one had ever informed him before that

his eyes were charming and that he had a sensual mouth. He had never bothered much about his personal

appearance, but now, when occasion presented, he looked at himself in the glass with satisfaction. When he

kissed her it was wonderful to feel the passion that seemed to thrill her soul. He kissed her a good deal, for he

found it easier to do that than to say the things he instinctively felt she expected of him. It still made him feel

a fool to say he worshipped her. He wished there were someone to whom he could boast a little, and he would

willingly have discussed minute points of his conduct. Sometimes she said things that were enigmatic, and he

was puzzled. He wished Hayward had been there so that he could ask him what he thought she meant, and

what he had better do next. He could not make up his mind whether he ought to rush things or let them take

"I can't bear to think of that," she said. "It breaks my heart. And then perhaps we shall never see one another

"Oh, why can't you be content to let it go on as it is? Men are always the same. They're never satisfied."

He proposed all sorts of schemes, but she would not have anything to do with them.

"Look here, if you had a headache on Sunday evening and offered to stay at home and look after the house,

Generally Mrs. Carey remained in on Sunday evening in order to allow Mary Ann to go to church, but she

Philip had not found it necessary to impart to his relations the change in his views on Christianity which had

occurred in Germany; they could not be expected to understand; and it seemed less trouble to go to church

quietly. But he only went in the morning. He regarded this as a graceful concession to the prejudices of

society and his refusal to go a second time as an adequate assertion of free thought.

When he made the suggestion, Miss Wilkinson did not speak for a moment, then shook her head.

But on Sunday at teatime she surprised Philip. "I don't think I'll come to church this evening," she said

Mrs. Carey, much concerned, insisted on giving her some `drops' which she was herself in the habit of using.

Miss Wilkinson thanked her, and immediately after tea announced that she would go to her room and lie

"Because, if there isn't, I think I'll go to church. I don't often have the chance of going in the evening."

"I shall be in," said Philip. "If Miss Wilkinson wants anything, she can always call me."

"You'd better leave the drawingroom door open, Philip, so that if Miss Wilkinson rings, you'll hear."

So after six o'clock Philip was left alone in the house with Miss Wilkinson. He felt sick with apprehension.

He wished with all his heart that he had not suggested the plan; but it was too late now; he must take the

opportunity which he had made. What would Miss Wilkinson think of him if he did not! He went into the hall

and listened. There was not a sound. He wondered if Miss Wilkinson really had a headache. Perhaps she had

forgotten his suggestion. His heart beat painfully. He crept up the stairs as softly as he could, and he stopped

with a start when they creaked. He stood outside Miss Wilkinson's room and listened; he put his hand on the

knob of the doorhandle. He waited. It seemed to him that he waited for at least five minutes, trying to make

up his mind; and his hand trembled. He would willingly have bolted, but he was afraid of the remorse which

he knew would seize him. It was like getting on the highest divingboard in a swimmingbath; it looked

nothing from below, but when you got up there and stared down at the water your heart sank; and the only

thing that forced you to dive was the shame of coming down meekly by the steps you had climbed up. Philip

screwed up his courage. He turned the handle softly and walked in. He seemed to himself to be trembling like

Miss Wilkinson was standing at the dressingtable with her back to the door, and she turned round quickly

She had taken off her skirt and blouse, and was standing in her petticoat. It was short and only came down to

the top of her boots; the upper part of it was black, of some shiny material, and there was a red flounce. She

wore a camisole of white calico with short arms. She looked grotesque. Philip's heart sank as he stared at her;

she had never seemed so unattractive; but it was too late now. He closed the door behind him and locked it.

PHILIP woke early next morning. His sleep had been restless; but when he stretched his legs and looked at

the sunshine that slid through the Venetian blinds, making patterns on the floor, he sighed with satisfaction.

He was delighted with himself. He began to think of Miss Wilkinson. She had asked him to call her Emily,

but, he knew not why, he could not; he always thought of her as Miss Wilkinson. Since she chid him for so

addressing her, he avoided using her name at all. During his childhood he had often heard a sister of Aunt

Louisa, the widow of a naval officer, spoken of as Aunt Emily. It made him uncomfortable to call Miss

Wilkinson by that name, nor could he think of any that would have suited her better. She had begun as Miss

Wilkinson, and it seemed inseparable from his impression of her. He frowned a little: somehow or other he

saw her now at her worst; he could not forget his dismay when she turned round and he saw her in her

camisole and the short petticoat; he remembered the slight roughness of her skin and the sharp, long lines on

the side of the neck. His triumph was shortlived. He reckoned out her age again, and he did not see how she

could be less than forty. It made the affair ridiculous. She was plain and old. His quick fancy showed her to

him, wrinkled, haggard, madeup, in those frocks which were too showy for her position and too young for

her years. He shuddered; he felt suddenly that he never wanted to see her again; he could not bear the thought

He took as long as he could over dressing in order to put back the moment of seeing her, and when at last he

went into the diningroom it was with a sinking heart. Prayers were over, and they were sitting down at

He looked at her and gave a little gasp of relief. She was sitting with her back to the window. She was really

quite nice. He wondered why he had thought such things about her. His selfsatisfaction returned to him.

He was taken aback by the change in her. She told him in a voice thrilling with emotion immediately after

breakfast that she loved him; and when a little later they went into the drawingroom for his singing lesson

and she sat down on the musicstool she put up her face in the middle of a scale and said:

When he bent down she flung her arms round his neck. It was slightly uncomfortable, for she held him in

"_Ah, je t'aime. Je t'aime. Je t'aime_," she cried, with her extravagantly French accent.

"I say, I don't know if it's struck you that the gardener's quite likely to pass the window any minute."

Philip thought it was very like a French novel, and he did not know why it slightly irritated him.

"Oh, you're not going to leave me this morningof all mornings?" Philip did not quite know why he should

"Oh, you darling! But no, go. Go. I want to think of you mastering the salt sea waves, bathing your limbs in

But he was pleased and happy and flattered. She was evidently frightfully gone on him. As he limped along

the high street of Blackstable he looked with a tinge of superciliousness at the people he passed. He knew a

good many to nod to, and as he gave them a smile of recognition he thought to himself, if they only knew! He

did want someone to know very badly. He thought he would write to Hayward, and in his mind composed the

letter. He would talk of the garden and the roses, and the little French governess, like an exotic flower

amongst them, scented and perverse: he would say she was French, becausewell, she had lived in France

so long that she almost was, and besides it would be shabby to give the whole thing away too exactly, don't

you know; and he would tell Hayward how he had seen her first in her pretty muslin dress and of the flower

she had given him. He made a delicate idyl of it: the sunshine and the sea gave it passion and magic, and the

stars added poetry, and the old vicarage garden was a fit and exquisite setting. There was something

Meredithian about it: it was not quite Lucy Feverel and not quite Clara Middleton; but it was inexpressibly

charming. Philip's heart beat quickly. He was so delighted with his fancies that he began thinking of them

again as soon as he crawled back, dripping and cold, into his bathingmachine. He thought of the object of

his affections. She had the most adorable little nose and large brown eyeshe would describe her to

Haywardand masses of soft brown hair, the sort of hair it was delicious to bury your face in, and a skin

which was like ivory and sunshine, and her cheek was like a red, red rose. How old was she? Eighteen

perhaps, and he called her Musette. Her laughter was like a rippling brook, and her voice was so soft, so low,

"I've been waving at you for the last quarter of a mile. You _are_ absentminded."

The fortnight that remained passed quickly, and though each evening, when they went into the garden after

supper, Miss Wilkinson remarked that one day more had gone, Philip was in too cheerful spirits to let the

thought depress him. One night Miss Wilkinson suggested that it would be delightful if she could exchange

her situation in Berlin for one in London. Then they could see one another constantly. Philip said it would be

very jolly, but the prospect aroused no enthusiasm in him; he was looking forward to a wonderful life in

London, and he preferred not to be hampered. He spoke a little too freely of all he meant to do, and allowed

To his surprise he saw that she was crying. He had a tender heart, and hated to see anyone miserable.

"Oh, Philip, don't leave me. You don't know what you mean to me. I have such a wretched life, and you've

He kissed her silently. There really was anguish in her tone, and he was frightened. It had never occurred to

"I'm awfully sorry. You know I'm frightfully fond of you. I wish you would come to London."

"You know I can't. Places are almost impossible to get, and I hate English life."

Almost unconscious that he was acting a part, moved by her distress, he pressed her more and more. Her tears

But a day or two later she made a real scene. There was a tennisparty at the vicarage, and two girls came,

daughters of a retired major in an Indian regiment who had lately settled in Blackstable. They were very

pretty, one was Philip's age and the other was a year or two younger. Being used to the society of young men

(they were full of stories of hillstations in India, and at that time the stories of Rudyard Kipling were in

every hand) they began to chaff Philip gaily; and he, pleased with the noveltythe young ladies at

Blackstable treated the Vicar's nephew with a certain seriousnesswas gay and jolly. Some devil within him

prompted him to start a violent flirtation with them both, and as he was the only young man there, they were

quite willing to meet him halfway. It happened that they played tennis quite well and Philip was tired of

patball with Miss Wilkinson (she had only begun to play when she came to Blackstable), so when he

arranged the sets after tea he suggested that Miss Wilkinson should play against the curate's wife, with the

curate as her partner; and he would play later with the newcomers. He sat down by the elder Miss O'Connor

"We'll get the duffers out of the way first, and then we'll have a jolly set afterwards."

Apparently Miss Wilkinson overheard him, for she threw down her racket, and, saying she had a headache,

went away. It was plain to everyone that she was offended. Philip was annoyed that she should make the fact

"Philip, you've hurt Emily's feelings. She's gone to her room and she's crying."

"Oh, something about a duffer's set. Do go to her, and say you didn't mean to be unkind, there's a good boy."

He knocked at Miss Wilkinson's door, but receiving no answer went in. He found her lying face downwards

"What have I done? I'm awfully sorry if I've hurt your feelings. I didn't mean to. I say, do get up."

"Oh, I'm so unhappy. How could you be cruel to me? You know I hate that stupid game. I only play because I

She got up and walked towards the dressingtable, but after a quick look in the glass sank into a chair. She

"I've given you the greatest thing a woman can give a manoh, what a fool I wasand you have no

gratitude. You must be quite heartless. How could you be so cruel as to torment me by flirting with those

Philip stood over her rather sulkily. He thought her behaviour childish. He was vexed with her for having

"But you know I don't care twopence about either of the O'Connors. Why on earth should you think I do?"

Miss Wilkinson put away her handkerchief. Her tears had made marks on her powdered face, and her hair

was somewhat disarranged. Her white dress did not suit her very well just then. She looked at Philip with

Philip reddened and looked away. The anguish of her tone made him feel strangely uneasy. He wished with

"I don't want to make you unhappy," he said awkwardly. "You'd better go down and look after your friends.

The quarrel was quickly followed by a reconciliation, but the few days that remained were sometimes

irksome to Philip. He wanted to talk of nothing but the future, and the future invariably reduced Miss

Wilkinson to tears. At first her weeping affected him, and feeling himself a beast he redoubled his

protestations of undying passion; but now it irritated him: it would have been all very well if she had been a

girl, but it was silly of a grownup woman to cry so much. She never ceased reminding him that he was

under a debt of gratitude to her which he could never repay. He was willing to acknowledge this since she

made a point of it, but he did not really know why he should be any more grateful to her than she to him. He

was expected to show his sense of obligation in ways which were rather a nuisance: he had been a good deal

used to solitude, and it was a necessity to him sometimes; but Miss Wilkinson looked upon it as an

unkindness if he was not always at her beck and call. The Miss O'Connors asked them both to tea, and Philip

would have liked to go, but Miss Wilkinson said she only had five days more and wanted him entirely to

herself. It was flattering, but a bore. Miss Wilkinson told him stories of the exquisite delicacy of Frenchmen

when they stood in the same relation to fair ladies as he to Miss Wilkinson. She praised their courtesy, their

passion for selfsacrifice, their perfect tact. Miss Wilkinson seemed to want a great deal.

Philip listened to her enumeration of the qualities which must be possessed by the perfect lover, and he could

"You will write to me, won't you? Write to me every day. I want to know everything you're doing. You must

She flung her arms passionately round his neck. He was embarrassed sometimes by the demonstrations of her

affection. He would have preferred her to be more passive. It shocked him a little that she should give him so

marked a lead: it did not tally altogether with his prepossessions about the modesty of the feminine

At length the day came on which Miss Wilkinson was to go, and she came down to breakfast, pale and

subdued, in a serviceable travelling dress of black and white check. She looked a very competent governess.

Philip was silent too, for he did not quite know what to say that would fit the circumstance; and he was

terribly afraid that, if he said something flippant, Miss Wilkinson would break down before his uncle and

make a scene. They had said their last goodbye to one another in the garden the night before, and Philip was

relieved that there was now no opportunity for them to be alone. He remained in the diningroom after

breakfast in case Miss Wilkinson should insist on kissing him on the stairs. He did not want Mary Ann, now a

woman hard upon middle age with a sharp tongue, to catch them in a compromising position. Mary Ann did

not like Miss Wilkinson and called her an old cat. Aunt Louisa was not very well and could not come to the

station, but the Vicar and Philip saw her off. Just as the train was leaving she leaned out and kissed Mr.

He stood up on the step and she kissed him quickly. The train started, and Miss Wilkinson sank into the

corner of her carriage and wept disconsolately. Philip, as he walked back to the vicarage, felt a distinct

"Oh, well, at her age it's not dangerous." Mrs. Carey pointed to the sideboard. "There's a letter for you, Philip.

I answer your letter at once. I ventured to read it to a great friend of mine, a charming woman whose help and

sympathy have been very precious to me, a woman withal with a real feeling for art and literature; and we

agreed that it was charming. You wrote from your heart and you do not know the delightful naivete which is

in every line. And because you love you write like a poet. Ah, dear boy, that is the real thing: I felt the glow

of your young passion, and your prose was musical from the sincerity of your emotion. You must be happy! I

wish I could have been present unseen in that enchanted garden while you wandered hand in hand, like

Daphnis and Chloe, amid the flowers. I can see you, my Daphnis, with the light of young love in your eyes,

tender, enraptured, and ardent; while Chloe in your arms, so young and soft and fresh, vowing she would

ne'er consentconsented. Roses and violets and honeysuckle! Oh, my friend, I envy you. It is so good to

think that your first love should have been pure poetry. Treasure the moments, for the immortal gods have

given you the Greatest Gift of All, and it will be a sweet, sad memory till your dying day. You will never

again enjoy that careless rapture. First love is best love; and she is beautiful and you are young, and all the

world is yours. I felt my pulse go faster when with your adorable simplicity you told me that you buried your

face in her long hair. I am sure that it is that exquisite chestnut which seems just touched with gold. I would

have you sit under a leafy tree side by side, and read together Romeo and Juliet; and then I would have you

fall on your knees and on my behalf kiss the ground on which her foot has left its imprint; then tell her it is

the homage of a poet to her radiant youth and to your love for her. Yours always, G. Etheridge Hayward.

Miss Wilkinson oddly enough had suggested that they should read Romeo and Juliet together; but Philip had

firmly declined. Then, as he put the letter in his pocket, he felt a queer little pang of bitterness because reality

A FEW days later Philip went to London. The curate had recommended rooms in Barnes, and these Philip

engaged by letter at fourteen shillings a week. He reached them in the evening; and the landlady, a funny

little old woman with a shrivelled body and a deeply wrinkled face, had prepared high tea for him. Most of

the sittingroom was taken up by the sideboard and a square table; against one wall was a sofa covered with

horsehair, and by the fireplace an armchair to match: there was a white antimacassar over the back of it, and

After having his tea he unpacked and arranged his books, then he sat down and tried to read; but he was

depressed. The silence in the street made him slightly uncomfortable, and he felt very much alone.

Next day he got up early. He put on his tailcoat and the tall hat which he had worn at school; but it was very

shabby, and he made up his mind to stop at the Stores on his way to the office and buy a new one. When he

had done this he found himself in plenty of time and so walked along the Strand. The office of Messrs.

Herbert Carter Co. was in a little street off Chancery Lane, and he had to ask his way two or three times. He

felt that people were staring at him a great deal, and once he took off his hat to see whether by chance the

label had been left on. When he arrived he knocked at the door; but no one answered, and looking at his

watch he found it was barely half past nine; he supposed he was too early. He went away and ten minutes

later returned to find an officeboy, with a long nose, pimply face, and a Scotch accent, opening the door.

"Oh, you're the new articled clerk? You'd better come in. Mr. Goodworthy'll be here in a while."

Philip walked in, and as he did so saw the officeboyhe was about the same age as Philip and called

himself a junior clerklook at his foot. He flushed and, sitting down, hid it behind the other. He looked

round the room. It was dark and very dingy. It was lit by a skylight. There were three rows of desks in it and

against them high stools. Over the chimneypiece was a dirty engraving of a prizefight. Presently a clerk

came in and then another; they glanced at Philip and in an undertone asked the officeboy (Philip found his

Philip followed him across the passage and was shown into a room, small and barely furnished, in which a

little, thin man was standing with his back to the fireplace. He was much below the middle height, but his

large head, which seemed to hang loosely on his body, gave him an odd ungainliness. His features were wide

and flattened, and he had prominent, pale eyes; his thin hair was sandy; he wore whiskers that grew unevenly

on his face, and in places where you would have expected the hair to grow thickly there was no hair at all.

His skin was pasty and yellow. He held out his hand to Philip, and when he smiled showed badly decayed

teeth. He spoke with a patronising and at the same time a timid air, as though he sought to assume an

importance which he did not feel. He said he hoped Philip would like the work; there was a good deal of

drudgery about it, but when you got used to it, it was interesting; and one made money, that was the chief

"Mr. Carter will be here presently," he said. "He's a little late on Monday mornings sometimes. I'll call you

when he comes. In the meantime I must give you something to do. Do you know anything about

"I didn't suppose you would. They don't teach you things at school that are much use in business, I'm afraid."

He went into the next room and after a little while came out with a large cardboard box. It contained a vast

number of letters in great disorder, and he told Philip to sort them out and arrange them alphabetically

"I'll take you to the room in which the articled clerk generally sits. There's a very nice fellow in it. His name

is Watson. He's a son of Watson, Crag, and Thompsonyou knowthe brewers. He's spending a year with

Mr. Goodworthy led Philip through the dingy office, where now six or eight clerks were working, into a

narrow room behind. It had been made into a separate apartment by a glass partition, and here they found

Watson sitting back in a chair, reading The _Sportsman_. He was a large, stout young man, elegantly dressed,

and he looked up as Mr. Goodworthy entered. He asserted his position by calling the managing clerk

Goodworthy. The managing clerk objected to the familiarity, and pointedly called him Mr. Watson, but

Watson, instead of seeing that it was a rebuke, accepted the title as a tribute to his gentlemanliness.

"I see they've scratched Rigoletto," he said to Philip, as soon as they were left alone.

He looked with awe upon Watson's beautiful clothes. His tailcoat fitted him perfectly, and there was a

valuable pin artfully stuck in the middle of an enormous tie. On the chimneypiece rested his tall hat; it was

saucy and bellshaped and shiny. Philip felt himself very shabby. Watson began to talk of huntingit was

such an infernal bore having to waste one's time in an infernal office, he would only be able to hunt on

Saturdaysand shooting: he had ripping invitations all over the country and of course he had to refuse them.

It was infernal luck, but he wasn't going to put up with it long; he was only in this internal hole for a year, and

then he was going into the business, and he would hunt four days a week and get all the shooting there was.

"You've got five years of it, haven't you?" he said, waving his arm round the tiny room.

Philip was somewhat overpowered by the young gentleman's condescension. At Blackstable they had always

looked upon brewing with civil contempt, the Vicar made little jokes about the beerage, and it was a

surprising experience for Philip to discover that Watson was such an important and magnificent fellow. He

had been to Winchester and to Oxford, and his conversation impressed the fact upon one with frequency.

When he discovered the details of Philip's education his manner became more patronising still.

"Of course, if one doesn't go to a public school those sort of schools are the next best thing, aren't they?"

"Oh, I don't bother about them much, you know," said Watson. "Carter's not a bad sort. We have him to dine

Presently Watson applied himself to some work he had in hand, and Philip set about sorting his letters. Then

Mr. Goodworthy came in to say that Mr. Carter had arrived. He took Philip into a large room next door to his

own. There was a big desk in it, and a couple of big armchairs; a Turkey carpet adorned the floor, and the

walls were decorated with sporting prints. Mr. Carter was sitting at the desk and got up to shake hands with

Philip. He was dressed in a long frock coat. He looked like a military man; his moustache was waxed, his

gray hair was short and nut, he held himself upright, he talked in a breezy way, he lived at Enfield. He was

very keen on games and the good of the country. He was an officer in the Hertfordshire Yeomanry and

chairman of the Conservative Association. When he was told that a local magnate had said no one would take

him for a City man, he felt that he had not lived in vain. He talked to Philip in a pleasant, offhand fashion.

Mr. Goodworthy would look after him. Watson was a nice fellow, perfect gentleman, good sportsmandid

Philip hunt? Pity, _the_ sport for gentlemen. Didn't have much chance of hunting now, had to leave that to his

son. His son was at Cambridge, he'd sent him to Rugby, fine school Rugby, nice class of boys there, in a

couple of years his son would be articled, that would be nice for Philip, he'd like his son, thorough sportsman.

He hoped Philip would get on well and like the work, he mustn't miss his lectures, they were getting up the

tone of the profession, they wanted gentlemen in it. Well, well, Mr. Goodworthy was there. If he wanted to

know anything Mr. Goodworthy would tell him. What was his handwriting like? Ah well, Mr. Goodworthy

Philip was overwhelmed by so much gentlemanliness: in East Anglia they knew who were gentlemen and

AT FIRST the novelty of the work kept Philip interested. Mr. Carter dictated letters to him, and he had to

Mr. Carter preferred to conduct the office on gentlemanly lines; he would have nothing to do with

typewriting and looked upon shorthand with disfavour: the officeboy knew shorthand, but it was only Mr.

Goodworthy who made use of his accomplishment. Now and then Philip with one of the more experienced

clerks went out to audit the accounts of some firm: he came to know which of the clients must be treated with

respect and which were in low water. Now and then long lists of figures were given him to add up. He

attended lectures for his first examination. Mr. Goodworthy repeated to him that the work was dull at first,

but he would grow used to it. Philip left the office at six and walked across the river to Waterloo. His supper

was waiting for him when he reached his lodgings and he spent the evening reading. On Saturday afternoons

he went to the National Gallery. Hayward had recommended to him a guide which had been compiled out of

Ruskin's works, and with this in hand he went industriously through room after room: he read carefully what

the critic had said about a picture and then in a determined fashion set himself to see the same things in it. His

Sundays were difficult to get through. He knew no one in London and spent them by himself. Mr. Nixon, the

solicitor, asked him to spend a Sunday at Hampstead, and Philip passed a happy day with a set of exuberant

strangers; he ate and drank a great deal, took a walk on the heath, and came away with a general invitation to

come again whenever he liked; but he was morbidly afraid of being in the way, so waited for a formal

invitation. Naturally enough it never came, for with numbers of friends of their own the Nixons did not think

of the lonely, silent boy whose claim upon their hospitality was so small. So on Sundays he got up late and

took a walk along the towpath. At Barnes the river is muddy, dingy, and tidal; it has neither the graceful

charm of the Thames above the locks nor the romance of the crowded stream below London Bridge. In the

afternoon he walked about the common; and that is gray and dingy too; it is neither country nor town; the

gorse is stunted; and all about is the litter of civilisation. He went to a play every Saturday night and stood

cheerfully for an hour or more at the gallerydoor. It was not worth while to go back to Barnes for the

interval between the closing of the Museum and his meal in an A. B. C. shop, and the time hung heavily on

his hands. He strolled up Bond Street or through the Burlington Arcade, and when he was tired went and sat

down in the Park or in wet weather in the public library in St. Martin's Lane. He looked at the people walking

about and envied them because they had friends; sometimes his envy turned to hatred because they were

happy and he was miserable. He had never imagined that it was possible to be so lonely in a great city.

Sometimes when he was standing at the gallerydoor the man next to him would attempt a conversation; but

Philip had the country boy's suspicion of strangers and answered in such a way as to prevent any further

acquaintance. After the play was over, obliged to keep to himself all he thought about it, he hurried across the

bridge to Waterloo. When he got back to his rooms, in which for economy no fire had been lit, his heart sank.

It was horribly cheerless. He began to loathe his lodgings and the long solitary evenings he spent in them.

Sometimes he felt so lonely that he could not read, and then he sat looking into the fire hour after hour in

He had spent three months in London now, and except for that one Sunday at Hampstead had never talked to

anyone but his fellowclerks. One evening Watson asked him to dinner at a restaurant and they went to a

musichall together; but he felt shy and uncomfortable. Watson talked all the time of things he did not care

about, and while he looked upon Watson as a Philistine he could not help admiring him. He was angry

because Watson obviously set no store on his culture, and with his way of taking himself at the estimate at

which he saw others held him he began to despise the acquirements which till then had seemed to him not

unimportant. He felt for the first time the humiliation of poverty. His uncle sent him fourteen pounds a month

and he had had to buy a good many clothes. His evening suit cost him five guineas. He had not dared tell

Watson that it was bought in the Strand. Watson said there was only one tailor in London.

"I suppose you don't dance," said Watson, one day, with a glance at Philip's clubfoot.

"Pity. I've been asked to bring some dancing men to a ball. I could have introduced you to some jolly girls."

Once or twice, hating the thought of going back to Barnes, Philip had remained in town, and late in the

evening wandered through the West End till he found some house at which there was a party. He stood

among the little group of shabby people, behind the footmen, watching the guests arrive, and he listened to

the music that floated through the window. Sometimes, notwithstanding the cold, a couple came on to the

balcony and stood for a moment to get some fresh air; and Philip, imagining that they were in love with one

another, turned away and limped along the street with a heavy hurt. He would never be able to stand in that

man's place. He felt that no woman could ever really look upon him without distaste for his deformity.

That reminded him of Miss Wilkinson. He thought of her without satisfaction. Before parting they had made

an arrangement that she should write to Charing Cross Post Office till he was able to send her an address, and

when he went there he found three letters from her. She wrote on blue paper with violet ink, and she wrote in

French. Philip wondered why she could not write in English like a sensible woman, and her passionate

expressions, because they reminded him of a French novel, left him cold. She upbraided him for not having

written, and when he answered he excused himself by saying that he had been busy. He did not quite know

how to start the letter. He could not bring himself to use dearest or darling, and he hated to address her as

Emily, so finally he began with the word dear. It looked odd, standing by itself, and rather silly, but he made

it do. It was the first love letter he had ever written, and he was conscious of its tameness; he felt that he

should say all sorts of vehement things, how he thought of her every minute of the day and how he longed to

kiss her beautiful hands and how he trembled at the thought of her red lips, but some inexplicable modesty

prevented him; and instead he told her of his new rooms and his office. The answer came by return of post,

angry, heartbroken, reproachful: how could he be so cold? Did he not know that she hung on his letters? She

had given him all that a woman could give, and this was her reward. Was he tired of her already? Then,

because he did not reply for several days, Miss Wilkinson bombarded him with letters. She could not bear his

unkindness, she waited for the post, and it never brought her his letter, she cried herself to sleep night after

night, she was looking so ill that everyone remarked on it: if he did not love her why did he not say so? She

added that she could not live without him, and the only thing was for her to commit suicide. She told him he

was cold and selfish and ungrateful. It was all in French, and Philip knew that she wrote in that language to

show off, but he was worried all the same. He did not want to make her unhappy. In a little while she wrote

that she could not bear the separation any longer, she would arrange to come over to London for Christmas.

Philip wrote back that he would like nothing better, only he had already an engagement to spend Christmas

with friends in the country, and he did not see how he could break it. She answered that she did not wish to

force herself on him, it was quite evident that he did not wish to see her; she was deeply hurt, and she never

thought he would repay with such cruelty all her kindness. Her letter was touching, and Philip thought he saw

marks of her tears on the paper; he wrote an impulsive reply saying that he was dreadfully sorry and

imploring her to come; but it was with relief that he received her answer in which she said that she found it

would be impossible for her to get away. Presently when her letters came his heart sank: he delayed opening

them, for he knew what they would contain, angry reproaches and pathetic appeals; they would make him

feel a perfect beast, and yet he did not see with what he had to blame himself. He put off his answer from day

to day, and then another letter would come, saying she was ill and lonely and miserable.

He admired Watson because he arranged these things so easily. The young man had been engaged in an

intrigue with a girl who played in touring companies, and his account of the affair filled Philip with envious

amazement. But after a time Watson's young affections changed, and one day he described the rupture to

"I thought it was no good making any bones about it so I just told her I'd had enough of her," he said.

"The usual thing, you know, but I told her it was no good trying on that sort of thing with me."

"She began to, but I can't stand women when they cry, so I said she'd better hook it."

Meanwhile the Christmas holidays approached. Mrs. Carey had been ill all through November, and the doctor

suggested that she and the Vicar should go to Cornwall for a couple of weeks round Christmas so that she

should get back her strength. The result was that Philip had nowhere to go, and he spent Christmas Day in his

lodgings. Under Hayward's influence he had persuaded himself that the festivities that attend this season were

vulgar and barbaric, and he made up his mind that he would take no notice of the day; but when it came, the

jollity of all around affected him strangely. His landlady and her husband were spending the day with a

married daughter, and to save trouble Philip announced that he would take his meals out. He went up to

London towards midday and ate a slice of turkey and some Christmas pudding by himself at Gatti's, and

since he had nothing to do afterwards went to Westminster Abbey for the afternoon service. The streets were

almost empty, and the people who went along had a preoccupied look; they did not saunter but walked with

some definite goal in view, and hardly anyone was alone. To Philip they all seemed happy. He felt himself

more solitary than he had ever done in his life. His intention had been to kill the day somehow in the streets

and then dine at a restaurant, but he could not face again the sight of cheerful people, talking, laughing, and

making merry; so he went back to Waterloo, and on his way through the Westminster Bridge Road bought

some ham and a couple of mince pies and went back to Barnes. He ate his food in his lonely little room and

When he was back at the office it made him very sore to listen to Watson's account of the short holiday. They

had had some jolly girls staying with them, and after dinner they had cleared out the drawingroom and had a

"I didn't get to bed till three and I don't know how I got there then. By George, I was squiffy."

"Oh, I don't know, one just knows them. If you go to dances you soon get to know as many people as you can

Philip hated Watson, and yet he would have given anything to change places with him. The old feeling that

he had had at school came back to him, and he tried to throw himself into the other's skin, imagining what life

AT THE end of the year there was a great deal to do. Philip went to various places with a clerk named

Thompson and spent the day monotonously calling out items of expenditure, which the other checked; and

sometimes he was given long pages of figures to add up. He had never had a head for figures, and he could

only do this slowly. Thompson grew irritated at his mistakes. His fellowclerk was a long, lean man of forty,

sallow, with black hair and a ragged moustache; he had hollow cheeks and deep lines on each side of his

nose. He took a dislike to Philip because he was an articled clerk. Because he could put down three hundred

guineas and keep himself for five years Philip had the chance of a career; while he, with his experience and

ability, had no possibility of ever being more than a clerk at thirtyfive shillings a week. He was a

crossgrained man, oppressed by a large family, and he resented the superciliousness which he fancied he

saw in Philip. He sneered at Philip because he was better educated than himself, and he mocked at Philip's

pronunciation; he could not forgive him because he spoke without a cockney accent, and when he talked to

him sarcastically exaggerated his aitches. At first his manner was merely gruff and repellent, but as he

discovered that Philip had no gift for accountancy he took pleasure in humiliating him; his attacks were gross

and silly, but they wounded Philip, and in selfdefence he assumed an attitude of superiority which he did not

"Had a bath this morning?" Thompson said when Philip came to the office late, for his early punctuality had

"Will you condescend to do a few sums in simple addition today? I'm afraid it's asking a great deal from a

But Philip could not conceal from himself that the other clerks, illpaid and uncouth, were more useful than

"You really ought to be able to do better than this by now," he said. "You're not even as smart as the

Philip listened sulkily. He did not like being blamed, and it humiliated him, when, having been given

accounts to make fair copies of, Mr. Goodworthy was not satisfied and gave them to another clerk to do. At

first the work had been tolerable from its novelty, but now it grew irksome; and when he discovered that he

had no aptitude for it, he began to hate it. Often, when he should have been doing something that was given

him, he wasted his time drawing little pictures on the office notepaper. He made sketches of Watson in

every conceivable attitude, and Watson was impressed by his talent. It occurred to him to take the drawings

"I wonder you didn't become a painter," he said. "Only of course there's no money in it."

It chanced that Mr. Carter two or three days later was dining with the Watsons, and the sketches were shown

him. The following morning he sent for Philip. Philip saw him seldom and stood in some awe of him.

"Look here, young fellow, I don't care what you do out of officehours, but I've seen those sketches of yours

and they're on officepaper, and Mr. Goodworthy tells me you're slack. You won't do any good as a chartered

accountant unless you look alive. It's a fine profession, and we're getting a very good class of men in it, but

it's a profession in which you have to..." he looked for the termination of his phrase, but could not find

exactly what he wanted, so finished rather tamely, "in which you have to look alive."

Perhaps Philip would have settled down but for the agreement that if he did not like the work he could leave

after a year, and get back half the money paid for his articles. He felt that he was fit for something better than

to add up accounts, and it was humiliating that he did so ill something which seemed contemptible. The

vulgar scenes with Thompson got on his nerves. In March Watson ended his year at the office and Philip,

though he did not care for him, saw him go with regret. The fact that the other clerks disliked them equally,

because they belonged to a class a little higher than their own, was a bond of union. When Philip thought that

he must spend over four years more with that dreary set of fellows his heart sank. He had expected wonderful

things from London and it had given him nothing. He hated it now. He did not know a soul, and he had no

idea how he was to get to know anyone. He was tired of going everywhere by himself. He began to feel that

he could not stand much more of such a life. He would lie in bed at night and think of the joy of never seeing

again that dingy office or any of the men in it, and of getting away from those drab lodgings.

A great disappointment befell him in the spring. Hayward had announced his intention of coming to London

for the season, and Philip had looked forward very much to seeing him again. He had read so much lately and

thought so much that his mind was full of ideas which he wanted to discuss, and he knew nobody who was

willing to interest himself in abstract things. He was quite excited at the thought of talking his fill with

someone, and he was wretched when Hayward wrote to say that the spring was lovelier than ever he had

known it in Italy, and he could not bear to tear himself away. He went on to ask why Philip did not come.

What was the use of squandering the days of his youth in an office when the world was beautiful? The letter

_I wonder you can bear it. I think of Fleet Street and Lincoln's Inn now with a shudder of disgust. There are

only two things in the world that make life worth living, love and art. I cannot imagine you sitting in an office

over a ledger, and do you wear a tall hat and an umbrella and a little black bag? My feeling is that one should

look upon life as an adventure, one should burn with the hard, gemlike flame, and one should take risks, one

should expose oneself to danger. Why do you not go to Paris and study art? I always thought you had talent._

The suggestion fell in with the possibility that Philip for some time had been vaguely turning over in his

mind. It startled him at first, but he could not help thinking of it, and in the constant rumination over it he

found his only escape from the wretchedness of his present state. They all thought he had talent; at

Heidelberg they had admired his water colours, Miss Wilkinson had told him over and over again that they

were chasing; even strangers like the Watsons had been struck by his sketches. _La Vie de Boheme_ had

made a deep impression on him. He had brought it to London and when he was most depressed he had only

to read a few pages to be transported into those chasing attics where Rodolphe and the rest of them danced

and loved and sang. He began to think of Paris as before he had thought of London, but he had no fear of a

second disillusion; he yearned for romance and beauty and love, and Paris seemed to offer them all. He had a

passion for pictures, and why should he not be able to paint as well as anybody else? He wrote to Miss

Wilkinson and asked her how much she thought he could live on in Paris. She told him that he could manage

easily on eighty pounds a year, and she enthusiastically approved of his project. She told him he was too

good to be wasted in an office. Who would be a clerk when he might be a great artist, she asked dramatically,

and she besought Philip to believe in himself: that was the great thing. But Philip had a cautious nature. It

was all very well for Hayward to talk of taking risks, he had three hundred a year in giltedged securities;

Philip's entire fortune amounted to no more than eighteenhundred pounds. He hesitated.

Then it chanced that one day Mr. Goodworthy asked him suddenly if he would like to go to Paris. The firm

did the accounts for a hotel in the Faubourg St. Honore, which was owned by an English company, and twice

a year Mr. Goodworthy and a clerk went over. The clerk who generally went happened to be ill, and a press

of work prevented any of the others from getting away. Mr. Goodworthy thought of Philip because he could

best be spared, and his articles gave him some claim upon a job which was one of the pleasures of the

"You'll 'ave to work all day," said Mr. Goodworthy, "but we get our evenings to ourselves, and Paris is

Paris." He smiled in a knowing way. "They do us very well at the hotel, and they give us all our meals, so it

don't cost one anything. That's the way I like going to Paris, at other people's expense."

When they arrived at Calais and Philip saw the crowd of gesticulating porters his heart leaped.

He was all eyes as the train sped through the country; he adored the sand dunes, their colour seemed to him

more lovely than anything he had ever seen; and he was enchanted with the canals and the long lines of

poplars. When they got out of the Gare du Nord, and trundled along the cobbled streets in a ramshackle,

noisy cab, it seemed to him that he was breathing a new air so intoxicating that he could hardly restrain

himself from shouting aloud. They were met at the door of the hotel by the manager, a stout, pleasant man,

who spoke tolerable English; Mr. Goodworthy was an old friend and he greeted them effusively; they dined

in his private room with his wife, and to Philip it seemed that he had never eaten anything so delicious as the

_beefsteak aux pommes_, nor drunk such nectar as the _vin ordinaire_, which were set before them.

To Mr. Goodworthy, a respectable householder with excellent principles, the capital of France was a paradise

of the joyously obscene. He asked the manager next morning what there was to be seen that was `thick.' He

thoroughly enjoyed these visits of his to Paris; he said they kept you from growing rusty. In the evenings,

after their work was over and they had dined, he took Philip to the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergeres.

His little eyes twinkled and his face wore a sly, sensual smile as he sought out the pornographic. He went into

all the haunts which were specially arranged for the foreigner, and afterwards said that a nation could come to

no good which permitted that sort of thing. He nudged Philip when at some revue a woman appeared with

practically nothing on, and pointed out to him the most strapping of the courtesans who walked about the

hall. It was a vulgar Paris that he showed Philip, but Philip saw it with eyes blinded with illusion. In the early

morning he would rush out of the hotel and go to the Champs Elysees, and stand at the Place de la Concorde.

It was June, and Paris was silvery with the delicacy of the air. Philip felt his heart go out to the people. Here

They spent the inside of a week there, leaving on Sunday, and when Philip late at night reached his dingy

rooms in Barnes his mind was made up; he would surrender his articles, and go to Paris to study art; but so

that no one should think him unreasonable he determined to stay at the office till his year was up. He was to

have his holiday during the last fortnight in August, and when he went away he would tell Herbert Carter that

he had no intention of returning. But though Philip could force himself to go to the office every day he could

not even pretend to show any interest in the work. His mind was occupied with the future. After the middle of

July there was nothing much to do and he escaped a good deal by pretending he had to go to lectures for his

first examination. The time he got in this way he spent in the National Gallery. He read books about Paris and

books about painting. He was steeped in Ruskin. He read many of Vasari's lives of the painters. He liked that

story of Correggio, and he fancied himself standing before some great masterpiece and crying: _Anch' io son'

pittore_. His hesitation had left him now, and he was convinced that he had in him the makings of a great

"After all, I can only try," he said to himself. "The great thing in life is to take risks."

At last came the middle of August. Mr. Carter was spending the month in Scotland, and the managing clerk

was in charge of the office. Mr. Goodworthy had seemed pleasantly disposed to Philip since their trip to

Paris, and now that Philip knew he was so soon to be free, he could look upon the funny little man with

All day Philip had been telling himself that this was the last time he would ever sit in that hateful office.

"I'm afraid you've not done very well. Mr. Carter's very dissatisfied with you."

"Not nearly so dissatisfied as I am with Mr. Carter," returned Philip cheerfully.

"I'm not coming back. I made the arrangement that if I didn't like accountancy Mr. Carter would return me

half the money I paid for my articles and I could chuck it at the end of a year."

"For ten months I've loathed it all, I've loathed the work, I've loathed the office, I loathe Loudon. I'd rather

"Goodbye," said Philip, holding out his hand. "I want to thank you for your kindness to me. I'm sorry if I've

"Well, if you really do make up your mind it is goodbye. I don't know what you're going to do, but if you're

"I'm afraid it sounds very rude, but I hope from the bottom of my heart that I shall never set eyes on any of

THE Vicar of Blackstable would have nothing to do with the scheme which Philip laid before him. He had a

great idea that one should stick to whatever one had begun. Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress

"I just took that because it was the only chance I saw of getting up to town. I hate London, I hate the work,

Mr. and Mrs. Carey were frankly shocked at Philip's idea of being an artist. He should not forget, they said,

that his father and mother were gentlefolk, and painting wasn't a serious profession; it was Bohemian,

"So long as I have anything to say in the matter, I shall not allow you to live in Paris," said the Vicar firmly.

It was a sink of iniquity. The scarlet woman and she of Babylon Haunted their vileness there; the cities of the

"You've been brought up like a gentleman and Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by

your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation."

"Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman," said Philip.

The dispute grew more violent. There was another year before Philip took possession of his small inheritance,

and during that time Mr. Carey proposed only to give him an allowance if he remained at the office. It was

clear to Philip that if he meant not to continue with accountancy he must leave it while he could still get back

half the money that had been paid for his articles. The Vicar would not listen. Philip, losing all reserve, said

"You've got no right to waste my money," he said at last. "After all it's my money, isn't it? I'm not a child.

You can't prevent me from going to Paris if I make up my mind to. You can't force me to go back to

"Well, I don't care, I've made up my mind to go to Paris. I shall sell my clothes, and my books, and my

Aunt Louisa sat by in silence, anxious and unhappy. she saw that Philip was beside himself, and anything she

said then would but increase his anger. Finally the Vicar announced that he wished to hear nothing more

about it and with dignity left the room. For the next three days neither Philip nor he spoke to one another.

Philip wrote to Hayward for information about Paris, and made up his mind to set out as soon as he got a

reply. Mrs. Carey turned the matter over in her mind incessantly; she felt that Philip included her in the hatred

he bore her husband, and the thought tortured her. She loved him with all her heart. At length she spoke to

him; she listened attentively while he poured out all his disillusionment of London and his eager ambition for

"I may be no good, but at least let me have a try. I can't be a worse failure than I was in that beastly office.

She was not so sure as her husband that they did right in thwarting so strong an inclination. She had read of

great painters whose parents had opposed their wish to study, the event had shown with what folly; and after

all it was just as possible for a painter to lead a virtuous life to the glory of God as for a chartered accountant.

"I'm so afraid of your going to Paris," she said piteously. "It wouldn't be so bad if you studied in London."

"If I'm going in for painting I must do it thoroughly, and it's only in Paris that you can get the real thing."

At his suggestion Mrs. Carey wrote to the solicitor, saying that Philip was discontented with his work in

I have seen Mr. Herbert Carter, and I am afraid I must tell you that Philip has not done so well as one could

have wished. If he is very strongly set against the work, perhaps it is better that he should take the

opportunity there is now to break his articles. I am naturally very disappointed, but as you know you can take

a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink. Yours very sincerely, Albert Nixon._

The letter was shown to the Vicar, but served only to increase his obstinacy. He was willing enough that

Philip should take up some other profession, he suggested his father's calling, medicine, but nothing would

"I'm interested to hear you blame selfindulgence in others," retorted Philip acidly.

But by this time an answer had come from Hayward, giving the name of a hotel where Philip could get a

room for thirty francs a month and enclosing a note of introduction to the massiere of a school. Philip read the

letter to Mrs. Carey and told her he proposed to start on the first of September.

He had inherited from his father a gold watch and chain, two or three rings, some links, and two pins. One of

"It's a very different thing, what a thing's worth and what it'll fetch," said Aunt Louisa.

"I know, but at the worst I think I can get a hundred pounds on the lot, and that'll keep me till I'm

Mrs. Carey did not answer, but she went upstairs, put on her little black bonnet, and went to the bank. In an

hour she came back. She went to Philip, who was reading in the drawingroom, and handed him an envelope.

He opened it and found eleven fivepound notes and a little paper sack bulging with sovereigns.

"I couldn't bear to let you sell your father's jewellery. It's the money I had in the bank. It comes to very nearly

"Oh, my dear, I can't take it," he said. "It's most awfully good of you, but I couldn't bear to take it."

When Mrs. Carey was married she had three hundred pounds, and this money, carefully watched, had been

used by her to meet any unforeseen expense, any urgent charity, or to buy Christmas and birthday presents

for her husband and for Philip. In the course of years it had diminished sadly, but it was still with the Vicar a

subject for jesting. He talked of his wife as a rich woman and he constantly spoke of the `nest egg.'

"Oh, please take it, Philip. I'm so sorry I've been extravagant, and there's only that left. But it'll make me so

"No, I don't think I shall. I was keeping it in case your uncle died before me. I thought it would be useful to

have a little something I could get at immediately if I wanted it, but I don't think I shall live very much longer

"Oh, my dear, don't say that. Why, of course you're going to live for ever. I can't possibly spare you."

"Oh, I'm not sorry." Her voice broke and she hid her eyes, but in a moment, drying them, she smiled bravely.

"At first, I used to pray to God that He might not take me first, because I didn't want your uncle to be left

alone, I didn't want him to have all the suffering, but now I know that it wouldn't mean so much to your uncle

as it would mean to me. He wants to live more than I do, I've never been the wife he wanted, and I daresay

he'd marry again if anything happened to me. So I should like to go first. You don't think it's selfish of me,

Philip kissed her wrinkled, thin cheek. He did not know why the sight he had of that overwhelming love

made him feel strangely ashamed. It was incomprehensible that she should care so much for a man who was

so indifferent, so selfish, so grossly selfindulgent; and he divined dimly that in her heart she knew his

"You will take the money, Philip?" she said, gently stroking his hand. "I know you can do without it, but it'll

give me so much happiness. I've always wanted to do something for you. You see, I never had a child of my

own, and I've loved you as if you were my son. When you were a little boy, though I knew it was wicked, I

used to wish almost that you might be ill, so that I could nurse you day and night. But you were only ill once

and then it was at school. I should so like to help you. It's the only chance I shall ever have. And perhaps

some day when you're a great artist you won't forget me, but you'll remember that I gave you your start."

"It's very good of you," said Philip. "I'm very grateful." A smile came into her tired eyes, a smile of pure

A FEW days later Mrs. Carey went to the station to see Philip off. She stood at the door of the carriage, trying

He leaned out of the window and kissed her. The train started, and she stood on the wooden platform of the

little station, waving her handkerchief till it was out of sight. Her heart was dreadfully heavy, and the few

hundred yards to the vicarage seemed very, very long. It was natural enough that he should be eager to go,

she thought, he was a boy and the future beckoned to him; but sheshe clenched her teeth so that she should

not cry. She uttered a little inward prayer that God would guard him, and keep him out of temptation, and

But Philip ceased to think of her a moment after he had settled down in his carriage. He thought only of the

future. He had written to Mrs. Otter, the _massiere_ to whom Hayward had given him an introduction, and

had in his pocket an invitation to tea on the following day. When he arrived in Paris he had his luggage put

on a cab and trundled off slowly through the gay streets, over the bridge, and along the narrow ways of the

Latin Quarter. He had taken a room at the Hotel des Deux Ecoles, which was in a shabby street off the

Boulevard du Montparuasse; it was convenient for Amitrano's School at which he was going to work. A

waiter took his box up five flights of stairs, and Philip was shown into a tiny room, fusty from unopened

windows, the greater part of which was taken up by a large wooden bed with a canopy over it of red rep;

there were heavy curtains on the windows of the same dingy material; the chest of drawers served also as a

washingstand; and there was a massive wardrobe of the style which is connected with the good King Louis

Philippe. The wallpaper was discoloured with age; it was dark gray, and there could be vaguely seen on it

Though it was late he felt too excited to sleep and, going out, made his way into the boulevard and walked

towards the light. This led him to the station; and the square in front of it, vivid with arclamps, noisy with

the yellow trams that seemed to cross it in all directions, made him laugh aloud with joy. There were cafes all

round, and by chance, thirsty and eager to get a nearer sight of the crowd, Philip installed himself at a little

table outside the Cafe de Versailles. Every other table was taken, for it was a fine night; and Philip looked

curiously at the people, here little family groups, there a knot of men with oddshaped hats and beards

talking loudly and gesticulating; next to him were two men who looked like painters with women who Philip

hoped were not their lawful wives; behind him he heard Americans loudly arguing on art. His soul was

thrilled. He sat till very late, tired out but too happy to move, and when at last he went to bed he was wide

Next day about teatime he made his way to the Lion de Belfort, and in a new street that led out of the

Boulevard Raspail found Mrs. Otter. She was an insignificant woman of thirty, with a provincial air and a

deliberately ladylike manner; she introduced him to her mother. He discovered presently that she had been

studying in Paris for three years and later that she was separated from her husband. She had in her small

drawingroom one or two portraits which she had painted, and to Philip's inexperience they seemed

"Oh, I expect so," she replied, not without selfsatisfaction. "You can't expect to do everything all at once, of

She was very kind. She gave him the address of a shop where he could get a portfolio, drawingpaper, and

"I shall be going to Amitrano's about nine tomorrow, and if you'll be there then I'll see that you get a good

She asked him what he wanted to do, and Philip felt that he should not let her see how vague he was about

"I'm so glad to hear you say that. People always want to do things in such a hurry. I never touched oils till I'd

She gave a glance at the portrait of her mother, a sticky piece of painting that hung over the piano.

"And if I were you, I would be very careful about the people you get to know. I wouldn't mix myself up with

Philip thanked her for the suggestion, but it seemed to him odd. He did not know that he particularly wanted

"We live just as we would if we were in England," said Mrs. Otter's mother, who till then had spoken little.

Philip looked round the room. It was filled with a massive suite, and at the window were the same sort of

white lace curtains which Aunt Louisa put up at the vicarage in summer. The piano was draped in Liberty silk

"In the evening when we close the shutters one might really feel one was in England."

"And we have our meals just as if we were at home," added her mother. "A meat breakfast in the morning and

When he left Mrs. Otter Philip went to buy drawing materials; and next morning at the stroke of nine, trying

to seem selfassured, he presented himself at the school. Mrs. Otter was already there, and she came forward

with a friendly smile. He had been anxious about the reception he would have as a _nouveau_, for he had

read a good deal of the rough joking to which a newcomer was exposed at some of the studios; but Mrs. Otter

"Oh, there's nothing like that here," she said. "You see, about half our students are ladies, and they set a tone

The studio was large and bare, with gray walls, on which were pinned the studies that had received prizes. A

model was sitting in a chair with a loose wrap thrown over her, and about a dozen men and women were

standing about, some talking and others still working on their sketch. It was the first rest of the model.

"You'd better not try anything too difficult at first," said Mrs. Otter. "Put your easel here. You'll find that's the

Philip placed an easel where she indicated, and Mrs. Otter introduced him to a young woman who sat next to

"Mr. CareyMiss Price. Mr. Carey's never studied before, you won't mind helping him a little just at first

The model threw aside the paper she had been reading, _La Petite Republique_, and sulkily, throwing off her

gown, got on to the stand. She stood, squarely on both feet with her hands clasped behind her head.

When Philip entered, the people in the studio had looked at him curiously, and the model gave him an

indifferent glance, but now they ceased to pay attention to him. Philip, with his beautiful sheet of paper in

front of him, stared awkwardly at the model. He did not know how to begin. He had never seen a naked

woman before. She was not young and her breasts were shrivelled. She had colourless, fair hair that fell over

her forehead untidily, and her face was covered with large freckles. He glanced at Miss Price's work. She had

only been working on it two days, and it looked as though she had had trouble; her paper was in a mess from

constant rubbing out, and to Philip's eyes the figure looked strangely distorted.

He began on the head, thinking that he would work slowly downwards, but, he could not understand why, he

found it infinitely more difficult to draw a head from the model than to draw one from his imagination. He

got into difficulties. He glanced at Miss Price. She was working with vehement gravity. Her brow was

wrinkled with eagerness, and there was an anxious look in her eyes. It was hot in the studio, and drops of

sweat stood on her forehead. She was a girl of twentysix, with a great deal of dull gold hair; it was

handsome hair, but it was carelessly done, dragged back from her forehead and tied in a hurried knot. She had

a large face, with broad, flat features and small eyes; her skin was pasty, with a singular unhealthiness of

tone, and there was no colour in the cheeks. She had an unwashed air and you could not help wondering if

she slept in her clothes. She was serious and silent. When the next pause came, she stepped back to look at

"I don't know why I'm having so much bother," she said. "But I mean to get it right." She turned to Philip.

"You can't expect to do anything that way. You must take measurements. And you must square out your

She showed him rapidly how to set about the business. Philip was impressed by her earnestness, but repelled

by her want of charm. He was grateful for the hints she gave him and set to work again. Meanwhile other

people had come in, mostly men, for the women always arrived first, and the studio for the time of year (it

was early yet) was fairly full. Presently there came in a young man with thin, black hair, an enormous nose,

and a face so long that it reminded you of a horse. He sat down next to Philip and nodded across him to Miss

"It was such a splendid day, I thought I'd lie in bed and think how beautiful it was out."

"That seems a funny thing to do, I should have thought it would be more to the point to get up and enjoy it."

He did not seem inclined to work. He looked at his canvas; he was working in colour, and had sketched in the

"I hope you haven't come with the idea that you will learn anything here which will be of the smallest use to

"It's the best school in Paris," said Miss Price. "It's the only one where they take art seriously."

"Should art be taken seriously?" the young man asked; and since Miss Price replied only with a scornful

shrug, he added: "But the point is, all schools are bad. They are academical, obviously. Why this is less

injurious than most is that the teaching is more incompetent than elsewhere. Because you learn nothing...."

"I see the better course, but do not follow it. Miss Price, who is cultured, will remember the Latin of that."

"I wish you would leave me out of your conversation, Mr. Clutton," said Miss Price brusquely.

"The only way to learn to paint," he went on, imperturbable, "is to take a studio, hire a model, and just fight it

He began to paint, and Philip looked at him from the comer of his eye. He was long and desperately thin; his

huge bones seemed to protrude from his body; his elbows were so sharp that they appeared to jut out through

the arms of his shabby coat. His trousers were frayed at the bottom, and on each of his boots was a clumsy

"If Mr. Clutton will hold his tongue for a moment, I'll just help you a little," she said.

"Miss Price dislikes me because I have humour," said Clutton, looking meditatively at his canvas, "but she

He spoke with solemnity, and his colossal, misshapen nose made what he said very quaint. Philip was obliged

Miss Price began to criticise what Philip had done. She talked glibly of anatomy and construction, planes and

lines, and of much else which Philip did not understand. She had been at the studio a long time and knew the

main points which the masters insisted upon, but though she could show what was wrong with Philip's work

"Oh, it's nothing," she answered, flushing awkwardly. "People did the same for me when I first came, I'd do it

"Miss Price wants to indicate that she is giving you the advantage of her knowledge from a sense of duty

Miss Price gave him a furious look, and went back to her own drawing. The clock struck twelve, and the

"Some of us go to Gravier's for lunch," she said to Philip, with a look at Clutton. "I always go home myself."

Philip thanked him and made ready to go. On his way out Mrs. Otter asked him how he had been getting on.

"Did Fanny Price help you?" she asked. "I put you there because I know she can do it if she likes. She's a

disagreeable, illnatured girl, and she can't draw herself at all, but she knows the ropes, and she can be useful

Philip laughed. He had never seen anyone on whom he wished less to make an impression. They came to the

cheap little restaurant at which several of the students ate, and Clutton sat down at a table at which three or

four men were already seated. For a franc, they got an egg, a plate of meat, cheese, and a small bottle of wine.

Coffee was extra. They sat on the pavement, and yellow trams passed up and down the boulevard with a

"Allow me to introduce an old and trusted friend, Carey by name," said Clutton gravely. "Mr. Flanagan, Mr.

They laughed and went on with their conversation. They talked of a thousand things, and they all talked at

once. No one paid the smallest attention to anyone else. They talked of the places they had been to in the

summer, of studios, of the various schools; they mentioned names which were unfamiliar to Philip, Monet,

Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas. Philip listened with all his ears, and though he felt a little out of it, his heart

"I expect you'll find me here this evening if you care to come. You'll find this about the best place for getting

PHILIP walked down the Boulevard du Montparnasse. It was not at all like the Paris he had seen in the spring

during his visit to do the accounts of the Hotel St. Georgeshe thought already of that part of his life with a

shudderbut reminded him of what he thought a provincial town must be. There was an easygoing air

about it, and a sunny spaciousness which invited the mind to daydreaming. The trimness of the trees, the

vivid whiteness of the houses, the breadth, were very agreeable; and he felt himself already thoroughly at

home. He sauntered along, staring at the people; there seemed an elegance about the most ordinary, workmen

with their broad red sashes and their wide trousers, little soldiers in dingy, charming uniforms. He came

presently to the Avenue de l'Observatoire, and he gave a sigh of pleasure at the magnificent, yet so graceful,

vista. He came to the gardens of the Luxembourg: children were playing, nurses with long ribbons walked

slowly two by two, busy men passed through with satchels under their arms, youths strangely dressed. The

scene was formal and dainty; nature was arranged and ordered, but so exquisitely, that nature unordered and

unarranged seemed barbaric. Philip was enchanted. It excited him to stand on that spot of which he had read

so much; it was classic ground to him; and he felt the awe and the delight which some old don might feel

As he wandered he chanced to see Miss Price sitting by herself on a bench. He hesitated, for he did not at that

moment want to see anyone, and her uncouth way seemed out of place amid the happiness he felt around

him; but he had divined her sensitiveness to affront, and since she had seen him thought it would be polite to

"Oh, I come here every day from four to five. I don't think one does any good if one works straight through."

"He's no good, you know. He thinks he's a genius, but he isn't. He's too lazy, for one thing. Genius is an

infinite capacity for taking pains. The only thing is to peg away. If one only makes up one's mind badly

She spoke with a passionate strenuousness which was rather striking. She wore a sailor hat of black straw, a

white blouse which was not quite clean, and a brown skirt. She had no gloves on, and her hands wanted

washing. She was so unattractive that Philip wished he had not begun to talk to her. He could not make out

"I'll do anything I can for you," she said all at once, without reference to anything that had gone before. "I

"Thank you very much," said Philip, then in a moment: "Won't you come and have tea with me somewhere?"

She looked at him quickly and flushed. When she reddened her pasty skin acquired a curiously mottled look,

"If you find it long you needn't bother about me, you know. I don't mind being left alone."

At that moment two men passed, in brown velveteens, enormous trousers, and basque caps. They were

"I say, are those artstudents?" said Philip. "They might have stepped out of the _Vie de Boheme_."

"They're Americans," said Miss Price scornfully. "Frenchmen haven't worn things like that for thirty years,

but the Americans from the Far West buy those clothes and have themselves photographed the day after they

arrive in Paris. That's about as near to art as they ever get. But it doesn't matter to them, they've all got

Philip liked the daring picturesqueness of the Americans' costume; he thought it showed the romantic spirit.

"I must be getting along to the studio," she said. "Are you going to the sketch classes?"

Philip did not know anything about them, and she told him that from five to six every evening a model sat,

from whom anyone who liked could go and draw at the cost of fifty centimes. They had a different model

They got up and walked to the studio. Philip could not tell from her manner whether Miss Price wished him

to walk with her or preferred to walk alone. He remained from sheer embarrassment, not knowing how to

leave her; but she would not talk; she answered his questions in an ungracious manner.

A man was standing at the studio door with a large dish into which each person as he went in dropped his half

franc. The studio was much fuller than it had been in the morning, and there was not the preponderance of

English and Americans; nor were women there in so large a proportion. Philip felt the assemblage was more

the sort of thing he had expected. It was very warm, and the air quickly grew fetid. It was an old man who sat

this time, with a vast gray beard, and Philip tried to put into practice the little he had learned in the morning;

but he made a poor job of it; he realised that he could not draw nearly as well as he thought. He glanced

enviously at one or two sketches of men who sat near him, and wondered whether he would ever be able to

use the charcoal with that mastery. The hour passed quickly. Not wishing to press himself upon Miss Price he

sat down at some distance from her, and at the end, as he passed her on his way out, she asked him brusquely

"If you'd condescended to come and sit near me I could have given you some hints. I suppose you thought

Philip went out and wondered what he should do with himself till dinner. He was eager to do something

characteristic. _Absinthe!_ of course it was indicated, and so, sauntering towards the station, he seated

himself outside a cafe and ordered it. He drank with nausea and satisfaction. He found the taste disgusting,

but the moral effect magnificent; he felt every inch an artstudent; and since he drank on an empty stomach

his spirits presently grew very high. He watched the crowds, and felt all men were his brothers. He was

happy. When he reached Gravier's the table at which Clutton sat was full, but as soon as he saw Philip

limping along he called out to him. They made room. The dinner was frugal, a plate of soup, a dish of meat,

fruit, cheese, and half a bottle of wine; but Philip paid no attention to what he ate. He took note of the men at

the table. Flanagan was there again: he was an American, a short, snubnosed youth with a jolly face and a

laughing mouth. He wore a Norfolk jacket of bold pattern, a blue stock round his neck, and a tweed cap of

fantastic shape. At that time impressionism reigned in the Latin Quarter, but its victory over the older schools

was still recent; and CarolusDuran, Bouguereau, and their like were set up against Manet, Monet, and

Degas. To appreciate these was still a sign of grace. Whistler was an influence strong with the English and his

compatriots, and the discerning collected Japanese prints. The old masters were tested by new standards. The

esteem in which Raphael had been for centuries held was a matter of derision to wise young men. They

offered to give all his works for Velasquez' head of Philip IV in the National Gallery. Philip found that a

discussion on art was raging. Lawson, whom he had met at luncheon, sat opposite to him. He was a thin

youth with a freckled face and red hair. He had very bright green eyes. As Philip sat down he fixed them on

"Raphael was only tolerable when he painted other people's pictures. When he painted Peruginos or

Pinturichios he was charming; when he painted Raphaels he was," with a scornful shrug, "Raphael."

Lawson spoke so aggressively that Philip was taken aback, but he was not obliged to answer because

"Nothing to what I mean to be tonight," he answered. "Fancy being in Paris and thinking of nothing but art

all the time." He spoke with a broad Western accent. "My, it is good to be alive." He gathered himself

"You not only say it, but you say it with tiresome iteration," said Clutton severely.

There was another American at the table. He was dressed like those fine fellows whom Philip had seen that

afternoon in the Luxembourg. He had a handsome face, thin, ascetic, with dark eyes; he wore his fantastic

garb with the dashing air of a buccaneer. He had a vast quantity of dark hair which fell constantly over his

eyes, and his most frequent gesture was to throw back his head dramatically to get some long wisp out of the

way. He began to talk of the _Olympia_ by Manet, which then hung in the Luxembourg.

"I stood in front of it for an hour today, and I tell you it's not a good picture."

Lawson put down his knife and fork. His green eyes flashed fire, he gasped with rage; but he could be seen

"It's very interesting to hear the mind of the untutored savage," he said. "Will you tell us why it isn't a good

"D'you mean to say you can look at the painting of that flesh and say it's not good?"

"The right breast be damned," shouted Lawson. "The whole thing's a miracle of painting."

He began to describe in detail the beauties of the picture, but at this table at Gravier's they who spoke at

length spoke for their own edification. No one listened to him. The American interrupted angrily.

Lawson, white with passion now, began to defend the head; but Clutton, who had been sitting in silence with

"All right, I'll give you the head," cried Lawson. "Take the head and be damned to you."

"What about the black line?" cried the American, triumphantly pushing back a wisp of hair which nearly fell

"Oh, God, send down fire from heaven to consume the blasphemer," said Lawson. "What has nature got to do

with it? No one knows what's in nature and what isn't! The world sees nature through the eyes of the artist.

Why, for centuries it saw horses jumping a fence with all their legs extended, and by Heaven, sir, they were

extended. It saw shadows black until Monet discovered they were coloured, and by Heaven, sir, they were

black. If we choose to surround objects with a black line, the world will see the black line, and there will be a

black line; and if we paint grass red and cows blue, it'll see them red and blue, and, by Heaven, they will be

"Now look here, when _Olympia_ was shown at the Salon, Zolaamid the jeers of the Philistines and the

hisses of the pompiers, the academicians, and the public, Zola said: `I look forward to the day when Manet's

picture will hang in the Louvre opposite the _Odalisque_ of Ingres, and it will not be the _Odalisque_ which

will gain by comparison.' It'll be there. Every day I see the time grow nearer. In ten years the _Olympia_ will

"Never," shouted the American, using both hands now with a sudden desperate attempt to get his hair once

for all out of the way. "In ten years that picture will be dead. It's only a fashion of the moment. No picture can

"Oh God!" cried Lawson furiously. "I knew it was that. He wants morality." He joined his hands and held

them towards heaven in supplication. "Oh, Christopher Columbus, Christopher Columbus, what did you do

But before he could add another word, Clutton rapped with the handle of his knife imperiously on the table.

"Gentlemen," he said in a stern voice, and his huge nose positively wrinkled with passion, "a name has been

mentioned which I never thought to hear again in decent society. Freedom of speech is all very well, but we

must observe the limits of common propriety. You may talk of Bouguereau if you will: there is a cheerful

disgustingness in the sound which excites laughter; but let us not sully our chaste lips with the names of J.

"Ruskin's stylea thing of shreds and purple patches," said Lawson. "Besides, damn the Great Victorians.

Whenever I open a paper and see Death of a Great Victorian, I thank Heaven there's one more of them gone.

Their only talent was longevity, and no artist should be allowed to live after he's forty; by then a man has

done his best work, all he does after that is repetition. Don't you think it was the greatest luck in the world for

them that Keats, Shelley, Bonnington, and Byron died early? What a genius we should think Swinburne if he

The suggestion pleased, for no one at the table was more than twentyfour, and they threw themselves upon

it with gusto. They were unanimous for once. They elaborated. Someone proposed a vast bonfire made out of

the works of the Forty Academicians into which the Great Victorians might be hurled on their fortieth

birthday. The idea was received with acclamation. Carlyle and Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning, G. F. Watts, E.

B. Jones, Dickens, Thackeray, they were hurried into the flames; Mr. Gladstone, John Bright, and Cobden;

there was a moment's discussion about George Meredith, but Matthew Arnold and Emerson were given up

"You're quite right, Walter Pater is the only justification for Mona Lisa. D'you know Cronshaw? He used to

La Closerie des Lilas was a cafe to which they often went in the evening after dinner, and here Cronshaw was

invariably to be found between the hours of nine at night and two in the morning. But Flanagan had had

enough of intellectual conversation for one evening, and when Lawson made his suggestion, turned to Philip.

"Oh gee, let's go where there are girls," he said. "Come to the Gaite Montparnasse, and we'll get ginny."

THERE was a general disturbance. Flanagan and two or three more went on to the musichall, while Philip

"You must go to the Gaite Montparnasse," said Lawson to him. "It's one of the loveliest things in Paris. I'm

Philip, influenced by Hayward, looked upon musichalls with scornful eyes, but he had reached Paris at a

time when their artistic possibilities were just discovered. The peculiarities of lighting, the masses of dingy

red and tarnished gold, the heaviness of the shadows and the decorative lines, offered a new theme; and half

the studios in the Quarter contained sketches made in one or other of the local theatres. Men of letters,

following in the painters' wake, conspired suddenly to find artistic value in the turns; and rednosed

comedians were lauded to the skies for their sense of character; fat female singers, who had bawled obscurely

for twenty years, were discovered to possess inimitable drollery; there were those who found an aesthetic

delight in performing dogs; while others exhausted their vocabulary to extol the distinction of conjurers and

trickcyclists. The crowd too, under another influence, was become an object of sympathetic interest. With

Hayward, Philip had disdained humanity in the mass; he adopted the attitude of one who wraps himself in

solitariness and watches with disgust the antics of the vulgar; but Clutton and Lawson talked of the multitude

with enthusiasm. They described the seething throng that filled the various fairs of Paris, the sea of faces, half

seen in the glare of acetylene, half hidden in the darkness, and the blare of trumpets, the hooting of whistles,

the hum of voices. What they said was new and strange to Philip. They told him about Cronshaw.

They looked upon him, as painters often do writers, with contempt because he was a layman, with tolerance

because he practised an art, and with awe because he used a medium in which themselves felt illatease.

"He's an extraordinary fellow. You'll find him a bit disappointing at first, he only comes out at his best when

"And the nuisance is," added Clutton, "that it takes him a devil of a time to get drunk."

When they arrived at the cafe Lawson told Philip that they would have to go in. There was hardly a bite in the

autumn air, but Cronshaw had a morbid fear of draughts and even in the warmest weather sat inside.

"He knows everyone worth knowing," Lawson explained. "He knew Pater and Oscar Wilde, and he knows

The object of their search sat in the most sheltered corner of the cafe, with his coat on and the collar turned

up. He wore his hat pressed well down on his forehead so that he should avoid cold air. He was a big man,

stout but not obese, with a round face, a small moustache, and little, rather stupid eyes. His head did not seem

quite big enough for his body. It looked like a pea uneasily poised on an egg. He was playing dominoes with

a Frenchman, and greeted the newcomers with a quiet smile; he did not speak, but as if to make room for

them pushed away the little pile of saucers on the table which indicated the number of drinks he had already

consumed. He nodded to Philip when he was introduced to him, and went on with the game. Philip's

knowledge of the language was small, but he knew enough to tell that Cronshaw, although he had lived in

"Cronshaw knows the averages of every firstclass cricketer for the last twenty years," said Lawson, smiling.

The Frenchman left them for friends at another table, and Cronshaw, with the lazy enunciation which was one

of his peculiarities, began to discourse on the relative merits of Kent and Lancashire. He told them of the last

"That's the only thing I miss in Paris," he said, as he finished the _bock_ which the waiter had brought. "You

Philip was disappointed, and Lawson, pardonably anxious to show off one of the celebrities of the Quarter,

grew impatient. Cronshaw was taking his time to wake up that evening, though the saucers at his side

indicated that he had at least made an honest attempt to get drunk. Clutton watched the scene with

amusement. He fancied there was something of affectation in Cronshaw's minute knowledge of cricket; he

liked to tantalise people by talking to them of things that obviously bored them; Clutton threw in a question.

Cronshaw looked at him slowly, as if he were turning the inquiry over in his mind, and before he answered

"Bring my bottle of whiskey," he called out. He turned again to Philip. "I keep my own bottle of whiskey. I

"Monsieur made a mark, but he kept on drinking after that. At that rate Monsieur wastes his time in making

The waiter was a jovial fellow and knew Cronshaw intimately. Cronshaw gazed at him.

"If you give me your word of honour as a nobleman and a gentleman that nobody but I has been drinking my

This remark, translated literally into the crudest French, sounded very funny, and the lady at the _comptoir_

Cronshaw, hearing her, turned a sheepish eye upon her; she was stout, matronly, and middleaged; and

"Fear not, madam," he said heavily. "I have passed the age when I am tempted by fortyfive and gratitude."

He poured himself out some whiskey and water, and slowly drank it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his

Lawson and Clutton knew that Cronshaw's remark was an answer to the question about Mallarme. Cronshaw

often went to the gatherings on Tuesday evenings when the poet received men of letters and painters, and

discoursed with subtle oratory on any subject that was suggested to him. Cronshaw had evidently been there

"He talked very well, but he talked nonsense. He talked about art as though it were the most important thing

"What you're here for I don't know. It is no business of mine. But art is a luxury. Men attach importance only

to selfpreservation and the propagation of their species. It is only when these instincts are satisfied that they

consent to occupy themselves with the entertainment which is provided for them by writers, painters, and

Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved

liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.

Without being asked he began to recite it, very slowly, marking the rhythm with an extended forefinger. It

was possibly a very fine poem, but at that moment a young woman came in. She had scarlet lips, and it was

plain that the vivid colour of her cheeks was not due to the vulgarity of nature; she had blackened her

eyelashes and eyebrows, and painted both eyelids a bold blue, which was continued to a triangle at the corner

of the eyes. It was fantastic and amusing. Her dark hair was done over her ears in the fashion made popular

by Mlle. Cleo de Merode. Philip's eyes wandered to her, and Cronshaw, having finished the recitation of his

"I do not blame you, for you have given an apt illustration of the statement I just made. What is art beside

love? I respect and applaud your indifference to fine poetry when you can contemplate the meretricious

"Come and sit by my side, dear child, and let us play the divine comedy of love."

"_Fichezmoi la paix_," she said, and pushing him on one side continued her perambulation.

"Art," he continued, with a wave of the hand, "is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when

Cronshaw filled his glass again, and began to talk at length. He spoke with rotund delivery. He chose his

words carefully. He mingled wisdom and nonsense in the most astounding manner, gravely making fun of his

hearers at one moment, and at the next playfully giving them sound advice. He talked of art, and literature,

and life. He was by turns devout and obscene, merry and lachrymose. He grew remarkably drunk, and then he

began to recite poetry, his own and Milton's, his own and Shelley's, his own and Kit Marlowe's.

Clutton, the most silent of them all, remained behind listening, with a sardonic smile on his lips, to

Cronshaw's maunderings. Lawson accompanied Philip to his hotel and then bade him goodnight. But when

Philip got to bed he could not sleep. All these new ideas that had been flung before him carelessly seethed in

his brain. He was tremendously excited. He felt in himself great powers. He had never before been so

A thrill passed through him as another thought came, but even to himself he would not put it into words:

He was in fact very drunk, but as he had not taken more than one glass of beer, it could have been due only to

ON TUESDAYS and Fridays masters spent the morning at Amitrano's, criticising the work done. In France

the painter earns little unless he paints portraits and is patronised by rich Americans; and men of reputation

are glad to increase their incomes by spending two or three hours once a week at one of the numerous studios

where art is taught. Tuesday was the day upon which Michel Rollin came to Amitrano's. He was an elderly

man, with a white beard and a florid complexion, who had painted a number of decorations for the State, but

these were an object of derision to the students he instructed: he was a disciple of Ingres, impervious to the

progress of art and angrily impatient with that _tas de farceurs_ whose names were Manet, Degas, Monet,

and Sisley; but he was an excellent teacher, helpful, polite, and encouraging. Foinet, on the other hand, who

visited the studio on Fridays, was a difficult man to get on with. He was a small, shrivelled person, with bad

teeth and a bilious air, an untidy gray beard, and savage eyes; his voice was high and his tone sarcastic. He

had had pictures bought by the Luxembourg, and at twentyfive looked forward to a great career; but his

talent was due to youth rather than to personality, and for twenty years he had done nothing but repeat the

landscape which had brought him his early success. When he was reproached with monotony, he answered:

He was envious of everyone else's success, and had a peculiar, personal loathing of the impressionists; for he

looked upon his own failure as due to the mad fashion which had attracted the public, _sale bete_, to their

works. The genial disdain of Michel Rollin, who called them impostors, was answered by him with

vituperation, of which _crapule_ and _canaille_ were the least violent items; he amused himself with abuse of

their private lives, and with sardonic humour, with blasphemous and obscene detail, attacked the legitimacy

of their births and the purity of their conjugal relations: he used an Oriental imagery and an Oriental emphasis

to accentuate his ribald scorn. Nor did he conceal his contempt for the students whose work he examined. By

them he was hated and feared; the women by his brutal sarcasm he reduced often to tears, which again

aroused his ridicule; and he remained at the studio, notwithstanding the protests of those who suffered too

bitterly from his attacks, because there could be no doubt that he was one of the best masters in Paris.

Sometimes the old model who kept the school ventured to remonstrate with him, but his expostulations

quickly gave way before the violent insolence of the painter to abject apologies.

It was Foinet with whom Philip first came in contact. He was already in the studio when Philip arrived. He

went round from easel to easel, with Mrs. Otter, the _massiere_, by his side to interpret his remarks for the

benefit of those who could not understand French. Fanny Price, sitting next to Philip, was working feverishly.

Her face was sallow with nervousness, and every now and then she stopped to wipe her hands on her blouse;

for they were hot with anxiety. Suddenly she turned to Philip with an anxious look, which she tried to hide by

Philip got up and looked at it. He was astounded; he felt she must have no eye at all; the thing was hopelessly

"You can't expect to, you've only just come. It's a bit too much to expect that you should draw as well as I do.

Fanny Price puzzled Philip. Her conceit was stupendous. Philip had already discovered that everyone in the

studio cordially disliked her; and it was no wonder, for she seemed to go out of her way to wound people.

"I complained to Mrs. Otter about Foinet," she said now. "The last two weeks he hasn't looked at my

drawings. He spends about half an hour on Mrs. Otter because she's the _massiere_. After all I pay as much

as anybody else, and I suppose my money's as good as theirs. I don't see why I shouldn't get as much

She looked at Foinet, who was coming towards them with Mrs. Otter. Mrs. Otter, meek, mediocre, and

selfsatisfied, wore an air of importance. Foinet sat down at the easel of an untidy little Englishwoman called

Ruth Chalice. She had the fine black eyes, languid but passionate, the thin face, ascetic but sensual, the skin

like old ivory, which under the influence of BurneJones were cultivated at that time by young ladies in

Chelsea. Foinet seemed in a pleasant mood; he did not say much to her, but with quick, determined strokes of

her charcoal pointed out her errors. Miss Chalice beamed with pleasure when he rose. He came to Clutton,

and by this time Philip was nervous too but Mrs. Otter had promised to make things easy for him. Foinet

stood for a moment in front of Clutton's work, biting his thumb silently, then absentmindedly spat out upon

"That's a fine line," he said at last, indicating with his thumb what pleased him. "You're beginning to learn to

Clutton did not answer, but looked at the master with his usual air of sardonic indifference to the world's

Mrs. Otter, who did not like Clutton, pursed her lips. She did not see anything out of the way in his work.

Foinet sat down and went into technical details. Mrs. Otter grew rather tired of standing. Clutton did not say

anything, but nodded now and then, and Foinet felt with satisfaction that he grasped what he said and the

reasons of it; most of them listened to him, but it was clear they never understood. Then Foinet got up and

"He only arrived two days ago," Mrs. Otter hurried to explain. "He's a beginner. He's never studied before."

He looked at her as though she were some repulsive animal, and his voice grew more rasping.

"It appears that you do not think I pay enough attention to you. You have been complaining to the

Fanny Price coloured. The blood under her unhealthy skin seemed to be of a strange purple. Without

answering she pointed to the drawing on which she had been at work since the beginning of the week. Foinet

"Well, what do you wish me to say to you? Do you wish me to tell you it is good? It isn't. Do you wish me to

tell you it is well drawn? It isn't. Do you wish me to say it has merit? It hasn't. Do you wish me to show you

what is wrong with it? It is all wrong. Do you wish me to tell you what to do with it? Tear it up. Are you

Miss Price became very white. She was furious because he had said all this before Mrs. Otter. Though she

had been in France so long and could understand French well enough, she could hardly speak two words.

"He's got no right to treat me like that. My money's as good as anyone else's. I pay him to teach me. That's

"_Mais, nom de Dieu_, I can't teach you. I could more easily teach a camel." He turned to Mrs. Otter. "Ask

"Then it is my duty to tell you that you are wasting your time. It would not matter that you have no talent,

talent does not run about the streets in these days, but you have not the beginning of an aptitude. How long

have you been here? A child of five after two lessons would draw better than you do. I only say one thing to

you, give up this hopeless attempt. You're more likely to earn your living as a _bonne a tout faire_ than as a

He seized a piece of charcoal, and it broke as he applied it to the paper. He cursed, and with the stump drew

great firm lines. He drew rapidly and spoke at the same time, spitting out the words with venom.

"Look, those arms are not the same length. That knee, it's grotesque. I tell you a child of five. You see, she's

With each word the angry pencil made a mark, and in a moment the drawing upon which Fanny Price had

spent so much time and eager trouble was unrecognisable, a confusion of lines and smudges. At last he flung

"Take my advice, Mademoiselle, try dressmaking." He looked at his watch. "It's twelve. _A la semaine

Miss Price gathered up her things slowly. Philip waited behind after the others to say to her something

"Is that what you're waiting about for? When I want your sympathy I'll ask for it. Please get out of my way."

She walked past him, out of the studio, and Philip, with a shrug of the shoulders, limped along to Gravier's

"It served her right," said Lawson, when Philip told him what had happened. "Illtempered slut."

Lawson was very sensitive to criticism and, in order to avoid it, never went to the studio when Foinet was

"I don't want other people's opinion of my work," he said. "I know myself if it's good or bad."

"You mean you don't want other people's bad opinion of your work," answered Clutton dryly.

In the afternoon Philip thought he would go to the Luxembourg to see the pictures, and walking through the

garden he saw Fanny Price sitting in her accustomed seat. He was sore at the rudeness with which she had

met his wellmeant attempt to say something pleasant, and passed as though he had not caught sight of her.

"Would you like me to come with you? I know the Luxembourg rather well. I could show you one or two

He understood that, unable to bring herself to apologise directly, she made this offer as amends.

They walked towards the gallery. Caillebotte's collection had lately been placed on view, and the student for

the first time had the opportunity to examine at his ease the works of the impressionists. Till then it had been

possible to see them only at DurandRuel's shop in the Rue Lafitte (and the dealer, unlike his fellows in

England, who adopt towards the painter an attitude of superiority, was always pleased to show the shabbiest

student whatever he wanted to see), or at his private house, to which it was not difficult to get a card of

admission on Tuesdays, and where you might see pictures of worldwide reputation. Miss Price led Philip

"You can take it from me that it's the best thing in the gallery except perhaps Whistler's portrait of his

She gave him a certain time to contemplate the masterpiece and then took him to a picture representing a

Philip felt ashamed of himself. Fanny Price had picked up the glib chatter of the studios and had no difficulty

in impressing Philip with the extent of her knowledge. She proceeded to explain the pictures to him,

superciliously but not without insight, and showed him what the painters had attempted and what he must

look for. She talked with much gesticulation of the thumb, and Philip, to whom all she said was new, listened

with profound but bewildered interest. Till now he had worshipped Watts and BurneJones. The pretty

colour of the first, the affected drawing of the second, had entirely satisfied his aesthetic sensibilities. Their

vague idealism, the suspicion of a philosophical idea which underlay the titles they gave their pictures,

accorded very well with the functions of art as from his diligent perusal of Ruskin he understood it; but here

was something quite different: here was no moral appeal; and the contemplation of these works could help no

At last he said: "You know, I'm simply dead. I don't think I can absorb anything more profitably. Let's go and

"Oh, that's all right," she said, a little ungraciously. "I do it because I enjoy it. We'll go to the Louvre

"They think they'll drive me away from the studio; but they won't; I shall stay there just exactly as long as it

suits me. All that this morning, it was Lucy Otter's doing, I know it was. She always has hated me. She

thought after that I'd take myself off. I daresay she'd like me to go. She's afraid I know too much about her."

Miss Price told him a long, involved story, which made out that Mrs. Otter, a humdrum and respectable little

person, had scabrous intrigues. Then she talked of Ruth Chalice, the girl whom Foinet had praised that

"She's been with every one of the fellows at the studio. She's nothing better than a streetwalker. And she's

Philip listened uncomfortably. He had heard already that various rumours were in circulation about Miss

Chalice; but it was ridiculous to suppose that Mrs. Otter, living with her mother, was anything but rigidly

virtuous. The woman walking by his side with her malignant lying positively horrified him.

"I don't care what they say. I shall go on just the same. I know I've got it in me. I feel I'm an artist. I'd sooner

kill myself than give it up. Oh, I shan't be the first they've all laughed at in the schools and then he's turned

out the only genius of the lot. Art's the only thing I care for, I'm willing to give my whole life to it. It's only a

She found discreditable motives for everyone who would not take her at her own estimate of herself. She

detested Clutton. She told Philip that his friend had no talent really; it was just flashy and superficial; he

"Little beast, with his red hair and his freckles. He's so afraid of Foinet that he won't let him see his work.

After all, I don't funk it, do I? I don't care what Foinet says to me, I know I'm a real artist."

They reached the street in which she lived, and with a sigh of relief Philip left her.

BUT notwithstanding when Miss Price on the following Sunday offered to take him to the Louvre Philip

accepted. She showed him Mona Lisa. He looked at it with a slight feeling of disappointment, but he had read

till he knew by heart the jewelled words with which Walter Pater has added beauty to the most famous

"That's all literature," she said, a little contemptuously. "You must get away from that."

She showed him the Rembrandts, and she said many appropriate things about them. She stood in front of the

"When you feel the beauty of that," she said, "you'll know something about painting."

She showed him the _Odalisque_ and _La Source_ of Ingres. Fanny Price was a peremptory guide, she would

not let him look at the things he wished, and attempted to force his admiration for all she admired. She was

desperately in earnest with her study of art, and when Philip, passing in the Long Gallery a window that

looked out on the Tuileries, gay, sunny, and urbane, like a picture by Raffaelli, exclaimed:

She said, indifferently: "Yes, it's all right. But we've come here to look at pictures."

The autumn air, blithe and vivacious, elated Philip; and when towards midday they stood in the great

courtyard of the Louvre, he felt inclined to cry like Flanagan: To hell with art.

"I say, do let's go to one of those restaurants in the Boul' Mich' and have a snack together, shall we?" he

They crossed the river, and at the corner of the Boulevard St. Michel there was a restaurant.

She walked on firmly, and Philip was obliged to follow. A few steps brought them to a smaller restaurant,

where a dozen people were already lunching on the pavement under an awning; on the window was

They sat down at a vacant table and waited for the omelette which was the first article on the bill of fare.

Philip gazed with delight upon the passersby. His heart went out to them. He was tired but very happy.

He glanced at Miss Price, and to his astonishment saw that she was looking down at her plate, regardless of

He was entirely puzzled, but fortunately at that moment the omelette came. He divided it in two and they

began to eat. Philip did his best to talk of indifferent things, and it seemed as though Miss Price were making

an effort on her side to be agreeable; but the luncheon was not altogether a success. Philip was squeamish,

and the way in which Miss Price ate took his appetite away. She ate noisily, greedily, a little like a wild beast

in a menagerie, and after she had finished each course rubbed the plate with pieces of bread till it was white

and shining, as if she did not wish to lose a single drop of gravy. They had Camembert cheese, and it

disgusted Philip to see that she ate rind and all of the portion that was given her. She could not have eaten

Miss Price was unaccountable, and having parted from her on one day with friendliness he could never tell

whether on the next she would not be sulky and uncivil; but he learned a good deal from her: though she

could not draw well herself, she knew all that could be taught, and her constant suggestions helped his

progress. Mrs. Otter was useful to him too, and sometimes Miss Chalice criticised his work; he learned from

the glib loquacity of Lawson and from the example of Clutton. But Fanny Price hated him to take suggestions

from anyone but herself, and when he asked her help after someone else had been talking to him she would

refuse with brutal rudeness. The other fellows, Lawson, Clutton, Flanagan, chaffed him about her.

The thought that Miss Price could be in love with anyone was preposterous. It made him shudder when he

thought of her uncomeliness, the bedraggled hair and the dirty hands, the brown dress she always wore,

stained and ragged at the hem: he supposed she was hard up, they were all hard up, but she might at least be

clean; and it was surely possible with a needle and thread to make her skirt tidy.

Philip began to sort his impressions of the people he was thrown in contact with. He was not so ingenuous as

in those days which now seemed so long ago at Heidelberg, and, beginning to take a more deliberate interest

in humanity, he was inclined to examine and to criticise. He found it difficult to know Clutton any better after

seeing him every day for three months than on the first day of their acquaintance. The general impression at

the studio was that he was able; it was supposed that he would do great things, and he shared the general

opinion; but what exactly he was going to do neither he nor anybody else quite knew. He had worked at

several studios before Amitrano's, at Julian's, the Beaux Arts, and MacPherson's, and was remaining longer at

Amitrano's than anywhere because he found himself more left alone. He was not fond of showing his work,

and unlike most of the young men who were studying art neither sought nor gave advice. It was said that in

the little studio in the Rue Campagne Premiere, which served him for workroom and bedroom, he had

wonderful pictures which would make his reputation if only he could be induced to exhibit them. He could

not afford a model but painted still life, and Lawson constantly talked of a plate of apples which he declared

was a masterpiece. He was fastidious, and, aiming at something he did not quite fully grasp, was constantly

dissatisfied with his work as a whole: perhaps a part would please him, the forearm or the leg and foot of a

figure, a glass or a cup in a stilllife; and he would cut this out and keep it, destroying the rest of the canvas;

so that when people invited themselves to see his work he could truthfully answer that he had not a single

picture to show. In Brittany he had come across a painter whom nobody else had heard of, a queer fellow

who had been a stockbroker and taken up painting at middleage, and he was greatly influenced by his work.

He was turning his back on the impressionists and working out for himself painfully an individual way not

only of painting but of seeing. Philip felt in him something strangely original.

At Gravier's where they ate, and in the evening at the Versailles or at the Closerie des Lilas Clutton was

inclined to taciturnity. He sat quietly, with a sardonic expression on his gaunt face, and spoke only when the

opportunity occurred to throw in a witticism. He liked a butt and was most cheerful when someone was there

on whom he could exercise his sarcasm. He seldom talked of anything but painting, and then only with the

one or two persons whom he thought worth while. Philip wondered whether there was in him really anything:

his reticence, the haggard look of him, the pungent humour, seemed to suggest personality, but might be no

With Lawson on the other hand Philip Soon grew intimate. He had a variety of interests which made him an

agreeable companion. He read more than most of the students and though his income was small, loved to buy

books. He lent them willingly; and Philip became acquainted with Flaubert and Balzac, with Verlaine,

Heredia, and Villiers de l'Isle Adam. They went to plays together and sometimes to the gallery of the Opera

Comique. There was the Odeon quite near them, and Philip Soon shared his friend's passion for the

tragedians of Louis XIV and the sonorous Alexandrine. In the Rue Taitbout were the Concerts Rouge, where

for seventyfive centimes they could hear excellent music and get into the bargain something which it was

quite possible to drink: the seats were uncomfortable, the place was crowded, the air thick with caporal

horrible to breathe, but in their young enthusiasm they were indifferent. Sometimes they went to the Bal

Bullier. On these occasions Flanagan accompanied them. His excitability and his roisterous enthusiasm made

them laugh. He was an excellent dancer, and before they had been ten minutes in the room he was prancing

The desire of all of them was to have a mistress. It was part of the paraphernalia of the artstudent in Paris. It

gave consideration in the eyes of one's fellows. It was something to boast about. But the difficulty was that

they had scarcely enough money to keep themselves, and though they argued that Frenchwomen were so

clever it cost no more to keep two then one, they found it difficult to meet young women who were willing to

take that view of the circumstances. They had to content themselves for the most part with envying and

abusing the ladies who received protection from painters of more settled respectability than their own. It was

extraordinary how difficult these things were in Paris. Lawson would become acquainted with some young

thing and make an appointment; for twentyfour hours he would be all in a flutter and describe the charmer

at length to everyone he met; but she never by any chance turned up at the time fixed. He would come to

"Confound it, another rabbit! I don't know why it is they don't like me. I suppose it's because I don't speak

French well, or my red hair. It's too sickening to have spent over a year in Paris without getting hold of

He had a long and enviable list of triumphs to narrate, and though they took leave not to believe all he said,

evidence forced them to acknowledge that he did not altogether lie. But he sought no permanent arrangement.

He only had two years in Paris: he had persuaded his people to let him come and study art instead of going to

college; but at the end of that period he was to return to Seattle and go into his father's business. He had made

up his mind to get as much fun as possible into the time, and demanded variety rather than duration in his

"There's no difficulty about that, sonny," answered Flanagan. "You just go right in. The difficulty is to get rid

Philip was too much occupied with his work, the books he was reading, the plays he saw, the conversation he

listened to, to trouble himself with the desire for female society. He thought there would be plenty of time for

It was more than a year now since he had seen Miss Wilkinson, and during his first weeks in Paris he had

been too busy to answer a letter she had written to him just before he left Blackstable. When another came,

knowing it would be full of reproaches and not being just then in the mood for them, he put it aside, intending

to open it later; but he forgot and did not run across it till a month afterwards, when he was turning out a

drawer to find some socks that had no holes in them. He looked at the unopened letter with dismay. He was

afraid that Miss Wilkinson had suffered a good deal, and it made him feel a brute; but she had probably got

over the suffering by now, at all events the worst of it. It suggested itself to him that women were often very

emphatic in their expressions. These did not mean so much as when men used them. He had quite made up

his mind that nothing would induce him ever to see her again. He had not written for so long that it seemed

"I daresay she won't write again," he said to himself. "She can't help seeing the thing's over. After all, she was

For an hour or two he felt a little uncomfortable. His attitude was obviously the right one, but he could not

help a feeling of dissatisfaction with the whole business. Miss Wilkinson, however, did not write again; nor

did she, as he absurdly feared, suddenly appear in Paris to make him ridiculous before his friends. In a little

Meanwhile he definitely forsook his old gods. The amazement with which at first he had looked upon the

works of the impressionists, changed to admiration; and presently he found himself talking as emphatically as

the rest on the merits of Manet, Monet, and Degas. He bought a photograph of a drawing by Ingres of the

_Odalisque_ and a photograph of the _Olympia_. They were pinned side by side over his washingstand so

that he could contemplate their beauty while he shaved. He knew now quite positively that there had been no

painting of landscape before Monet; and he felt a real thrill when he stood in front of Rembrandt's _Disciples

at Emmaus_ or Velasquez' _Lady with the Fleabitten Nose_. That was not her real name, but by that she

was distinguished at Gravier's to emphasise the picture's beauty notwithstanding the somewhat revolting

peculiarity of the sitter's appearance. With Ruskin, BurneJones, and Watts, he had put aside his bowler hat

and the neat blue tie with white spots which he had worn on coming to Paris; and now disported himself in a

soft, broadbrimmed hat, a flowing black cravat, and a cape of romantic cut. He walked along the Boulevard

du Montparnasse as though he had known it all his life, and by virtuous perseverance he had learnt to drink

absinthe without distaste. He was letting his hair grow, and it was only because Nature is unkind and has no

PHILIP soon realised that the spirit which informed his friends was Cronshaw's. It was from him that Lawson

got his paradoxes; and even Clutton, who strained after individuality, expressed himself in the terms he had

insensibly acquired from the older man. It was his ideas that they bandied about at table, and on his authority

they formed their judgments. They made up for the respect with which unconsciously they treated him by

"Of course, poor old Cronshaw will never do any good," they said. "He's quite hopeless."

They prided themselves on being alone in appreciating his genius; and though, with the contempt of youth for

the follies of middleage, they patronised him among themselves, they did not fail to look upon it as a feather

in their caps if he had chosen a time when only one was there to be particularly wonderful. Cronshaw never

came to Gravier's. For the last four years he had lived in squalid conditions with a woman whom only

Lawson had once seen, in a tiny apartment on the sixth floor of one of the most dilapidated houses on the

Quai des Grands Augustins: Lawson described with gusto the filth, the untidiness, the litter.

But he would not deny himself the pleasure of giving picturesque details of the odours which met his nostril.

With a fierce delight in his own realism he described the woman who had opened the door for him. She was

dark, small, and fat, quite young, with black hair that seemed always on the point of coming down. She wore

a slatternly blouse and no corsets. With her red cheeks, large sensual mouth, and shining, lewd eyes, she

reminded you of the _Bohemienne_ in the Louvre by Franz Hals. She had a flaunting vulgarity which amused

and yet horrified. A scrubby, unwashed baby was playing on the floor. It was known that the slut deceived

Cronshaw with the most worthless ragamuffins of the Quarter, and it was a mystery to the ingenuous youths

who absorbed his wisdom over a cafe table that Cronshaw with his keen intellect and his passion for beauty

could ally himself to such a creature. But he seemed to revel in the coarseness of her language and would

often report some phrase which reeked of the gutter. He referred to her ironically as _la fille de mon

concierge_. Cronshaw was very poor. He earned a bare subsistence by writing on the exhibitions of pictures

for one or two English papers, and he did a certain amount of translating. He had been on the staff of an

English paper in Paris, but had been dismissed for drunkenness; he still however did odd jobs for it,

describing sales at the Hotel Drouot or the revues at musichalls. The life of Paris had got into his bones, and

he would not change it, notwithstanding its squalor, drudgery, and hardship, for any other in the world. He

remained there all through the year, even in summer when everyone he knew was away, and felt himself only

at ease within a mile of the Boulevard St. Michel. But the curious thing was that he had never learnt to speak

French passably, and he kept in his shabby clothes bought at _La Belle Jardiniere_ an ineradicably English

He was a man who would have made a success of life a century and a half ago when conversation was a

"I ought to have lived in the eighteen hundreds," he said himself. "What I want is a patron. I should have

published my poems by subscription and dedicated them to a nobleman. I long to compose rhymed couplets

upon the poodle of a countess. My soul yearns for the love of chambermaids and the conversation of

He liked new faces, and he took a fancy to Philip, who seemed to achieve the difficult feat of talking just

enough to suggest conversation and not too much to prevent monologue. Philip was captivated. He did not

realise that little that Cronshaw said was new. His personality in conversation had a curious power. He had a

beautiful and a sonorous voice, and a manner of putting things which was irresistible to youth. All he said

seemed to excite thought, and often on the way home Lawson and Philip would walk to and from one

another's hotels, discussing some point which a chance word of Cronshaw had suggested. It was

disconcerting to Philip, who had a youthful eagerness for results, that Cronshaw's poetry hardly came up to

expectation. It had never been published in a volume, but most of it had appeared in periodicals; and after a

good deal of persuasion Cronshaw brought down a bundle of pages torn out of _The Yellow Book_, _The

Saturday Review_, and other journals, on each of which was a poem. Philip was taken aback to find that most

of them reminded him either of Henley or of Swinburne. It needed the splendour of Cronshaw's delivery to

make them personal. He expressed his disappointment to Lawson, who carelessly repeated his words; and

next time Philip went to the Closerie des Lilas the poet turned to him with his sleek smile:

"Do not attempt to spare my feelings," returned Cronshaw, with a wave of his fat hand. "I do not attach any

exaggerated importance to my poetical works. Life is there to be lived rather than to be written about. My aim

is to search out the manifold experience that it offers, wringing from each moment what of emotion it

presents. I look upon my writing as a graceful accomplishment which does not absorb but rather adds

Philip smiled, for it leaped to one's eyes that the artist in life had produced no more than a wretched daub.

Cronshaw looked at him meditatively and filled his glass. He sent the waiter for a packet of cigarettes.

"You are amused because I talk in this fashion and you know that I am poor and live in an attic with a vulgar

trollop who deceives me with hairdressers and _garcons de cafe_; I translate wretched books for the British

public, and write articles upon contemptible pictures which deserve not even to be abused. But pray tell me

"I say, that's rather a difficult question. Won't you give the answer yourself?"

"No, because it's worthless unless you yourself discover it. But what do you suppose you are in the world

"Oh, I don't know: I suppose to do one's duty, and make the best possible use of one's faculties, and avoid

"No, it isn't," said Philip indignantly. "It has nothing to do with Christianity. It's just abstract morality."

"In that case, supposing under the influence of liquor you left your purse behind when you leave here and I

picked it up, why do you imagine that I should return it to you? It's not the fear of the police."

"That may be. Neither did Kant when he devised the Categorical Imperative. You have thrown aside a creed,

but you have preserved the ethic which was based upon it. To all intents you are a Christian still, and if there

is a God in Heaven you will undoubtedly receive your reward. The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the

churches make out. If you keep His laws I don't think He can care a packet of pins whether you believe in

"But if I left my purse behind you would certainly return it to me," said Philip.

"My ancestors have lived in a civilised state so long that the fear of the police has eaten into my bones. The

daughter of my _concierge_ would not hesitate for a moment. You answer that she belongs to the criminal

"But then that does away with honour and virtue and goodness and decency and everything," said Philip.

"You speak with the lips of a dissenting minister. I have never committed a sin."

Cronshaw in his shabby greatcoat, with the collar turned up, and his hat well down on his head, with his red

fat face and his little gleaming eyes, looked extraordinarily comic; but Philip was too much in earnest to

"The illusion which man has that his will is free is so deeply rooted that I am ready to accept it. I act as

though I were a free agent. But when an action is performed it is clear that all the forces of the universe from

all eternity conspired to cause it, and nothing I could do could have prevented it. It was inevitable. If it was

"Have some whiskey," returned Cronshaw, passing over the bottle. "There's nothing like it for clearing the

"You're not a bad fellow, but you won't drink. Sobriety disturbs conversation. But when I speak of good and

bad..." Philip saw he was taking up the thread of his discourse, "I speak conventionally. I attach no meaning

to those words. I refuse to make a hierarchy of human actions and ascribe worthiness to some and illrepute

to others. The terms vice and virtue have no signification for me. I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I

"I speak only for myself. I know them only as they limit my activities. Round each of them too the world

turns, and each one for himself is the centre of the universe. My right over them extends only as far as my

power. What I can do is the only limit of what I may do. Because we are gregarious we live in society, and

society holds together by means of force, force of arms (that is the policeman) and force of public opinion

(that is Mrs. Grundy). You have society on one hand and the individual on the other: each is an organism

striving for selfpreservation. It is might against might. I stand alone, bound to accept society and not

unwilling, since in return for the taxes I pay it protects me, a weakling, against the tyranny of another

stronger than I am; but I submit to its laws because I must; I do not acknowledge their justice: I do not know

justice, I only know power. And when I have paid for the policeman who protects me and, if I live in a

country where conscription is in force, served in the army which guards my house and land from the invader,

I am quits with society: for the rest I counter its might with my wiliness. It makes laws for its

selfpreservation, and if I break them it imprisons or kills me: it has the might to do so and therefore the

right. If I break the laws I will accept the vengeance of the state, but I will not regard it as punishment nor

shall I feel myself convicted of wrongdoing. Society tempts me to its service by honours and riches and the

good opinion of my fellows; but I am indifferent to their good opinion, I despise honours and I can do very

"I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with myself. I take advantage of the fact that the

majority of mankind are led by certain rewards to do things which directly or indirectly tend to my

"But are you under the impression that men ever do anything except for selfish reasons?"

"It is impossible that they should. You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the

world a tolerable place to live in is to recognise the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand

unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why

should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from

your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one

"You rear like a frightened colt, because I use a word to which your Christianity ascribes a deprecatory

meaning. You have a hierarchy of values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a little

thrill of selfsatisfaction, of duty, charity, and truthfulness. You think pleasure is only of the senses; the

wretched slaves who manufactured your morality despised a satisfaction which they had small means of

enjoying. You would not be so frightened if I had spoken of happiness instead of pleasure: it sounds less

shocking, and your mind wanders from the sty of Epicurus to his garden. But I will speak of pleasure, for I

see that men aim at that, and I do not know that they aim at happiness. It is pleasure that lurks in the practice

of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good

for other people as well they are thought virtuous: if he finds pleasure in giving alms he is charitable; if he

finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure in working for society he is

publicspirited; but it is for your private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is for my

private pleasure that I drink another whiskey and soda. I, less of a humbug than you, neither applaud myself

"But have you never known people do things they didn't want to instead of things they did?"

"No. You put your question foolishly. What you mean is that people accept an immediate pain rather than an

immediate pleasure. The objection is as foolish as your manner of putting it. It is clear that men accept an

immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the

future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule. You are puzzled

because you cannot get over the idea that pleasures are only of the senses; but, child, a man who dies for his

country dies because he likes it as surely as a man eats pickled cabbage because he likes it. It is a law of

creation. If it were possible for men to prefer pain to pleasure the human race would have long since become

"But if all that is true," cried Philip, "what is the use of anything? If you take away duty and goodness and

He pointed to two persons who at that moment opened the door of the cafe, and, with a blast of cold air,

entered. They were Levantines, itinerant vendors of cheap rugs, and each bore on his arm a bundle. It was

Sunday evening, and the cafe was very full. They passed among the tables, and in that atmosphere heavy and

discoloured with tobacco smoke, rank with humanity, they seemed to bring an air of mystery. They were clad

in European, shabby clothes, their thin greatcoats were threadbare, but each wore a tarbouch. Their faces

were gray with cold. One was of middle age, with a black beard, but the other was a youth of eighteen, with a

face deeply scarred by smallpox and with one eye only. They passed by Cronshaw and Philip.

The elder advanced with a cringing smile, like a mongrel used to blows. With a sidelong glance at the door

"Are you MasredDeen, the merchant of Alexandria, or is it from far Bagdad that you bring your goods, O,

my uncle; and yonder oneeyed youth, do I see in him one of the three kings of whom Scheherazade told

The pedlar's smile grew more ingratiating, though he understood no word of what Cronshaw said, and like a

"Nay, show us the priceless web of Eastern looms," quoth Cronshaw. "For I would point a moral and adorn a

The Levantine unfolded a tablecloth, red and yellow, vulgar, hideous, and grotesque.

"O, my uncle, this cloth knew not the weavers of Samarkand, and those colours were never made in the vats

"Ultima Thule was the place of its manufacture, even Birmingham the place of my birth."

"Get thee gone, fellow," said Cronshaw. "May wild asses defile the grave of thy maternal grandmother."

Imperturbably, but smiling no more, the Levantine passed with his wares to another table. Cronshaw turned

"Have you ever been to the Cluny, the museum? There you will see Persian carpets of the most exquisite hue

and of a pattern the beautiful intricacy of which delights and amazes the eye. In them you will see the

mystery and the sensual beauty of the East, the roses of Hafiz and the winecup of Omar; but presently you

will see more. You were asking just now what was the meaning of life. Go and look at those Persian carpets,

PHILIP did not find living in Paris as cheap as he had been led to believe and by February had spent most of

the money with which he started. He was too proud to appeal to his guardian, nor did he wish Aunt Louisa to

know that his circumstances were straitened, since he was certain she would make an effort to send him

something from her own pocket, and he knew how little she could afford to. In three months he would attain

his majority and come into possession of his small fortune. He tided over the interval by selling the few

At about this time Lawson suggested that they should take a small studio which was vacant in one of the

streets that led out of the Boulevard Raspail. It was very cheap. It had a room attached, which they could use

as a bedroom; and since Philip was at the school every morning Lawson could have the undisturbed use of

the studio then; Lawson, after wandering from school to school, had come to the conclusion that he could

work best alone, and proposed to get a model in three or four days a week. At first Philip hesitated on account

of the expense, but they reckoned it out; and it seemed (they were so anxious to have a studio of their own

that they calculated pragmatically) that the cost would not be much greater than that of living in a hotel.

Though the rent and the cleaning by the _concierge_ would come to a little more, they would save on the

_petit dejeuner_, which they could make themselves. A year or two earlier Philip would have refused to share

a room with anyone, since he was so sensitive about his deformed foot, but his morbid way of looking at it

was growing less marked: in Paris it did not seem to matter so much, and, though he never by any chance

forgot it himself, he ceased to feel that other people were constantly noticing it.

They moved in, bought a couple of beds, a washingstand, a few chairs, and felt for the first time the thrill of

possession. They were so excited that the first night they went to bed in what they could call a home they lay

awake talking till three in the morning; and next day found lighting the fire and making their own coffee,

which they had in pyjamas, such a jolly business that Philip did not get to Amitrano's till nearly eleven. He

"D'you think it's worth while quarrelling with me too?" asked Philip mildly. "There are so few people you're

He began to work, vaguely wondering why Fanny Price made herself so disagreeable. He had come to the

conclusion that he thoroughly disliked her. Everyone did. People were only civil to her at all from fear of the

malice of her tongue; for to their faces and behind their backs she said abominable things. But Philip was

feeling so happy that he did not want even Miss Price to bear illfeeling towards him. He used the artifice

Philip stared at her in surprise, for the one thing she could be counted upon to do with alacrity was to give

"Now that Lawson's gone you think you'll put up with me. Thank you very much. Go and find somebody else

Lawson had the pedagogic instinct; whenever he found anything out he was eager to impart it; and because

he taught with delight he talked with profit. Philip, without thinking anything about it, had got into the habit

of sitting by his side; it never occurred to him that Fanny Price was consumed with jealousy, and watched his

"You were very glad to put up with me when you knew nobody here," she said bitterly, "and as soon as you

made friends with other people you threw me aside, like an old glove"she repeated the stale metaphor with

satisfaction"like an old glove. All right, I don't care, but I'm not going to be made a fool of another time."

There was a suspicion of truth in what she said, and it made Philip angry enough to answer what first came

She gave a gasp and threw him a sudden look of anguish. Then two tears rolled down her cheeks. She looked

frowsy and grotesque. Philip, not knowing what on earth this new attitude implied, went back to his work. He

was uneasy and consciencestricken; but he would not go to her and say he was sorry if he had caused her

pain, because he was afraid she would take the opportunity to snub him. For two or three weeks she did not

speak to him, and, after Philip had got over the discomfort of being cut by her, he was somewhat relieved to

be free from so difficult a friendship. He had been a little disconcerted by the air of proprietorship she

assumed over him. She was an extraordinary woman. She came every day to the studio at eight o'clock, and

was ready to start working when the model was in position; she worked steadily, talking to no one, struggling

hour after hour with difficulties she could not overcome, and remained till the clock struck twelve. Her work

was hopeless. There was not in it the smallest approach even to the mediocre achievement at which most of

the young persons were able after some months to arrive. She wore every day the same ugly brown dress,

with the mud of the last wet day still caked on the hem and with the raggedness, which Philip had noticed the

But one day she came up to him, and with a scarlet face asked whether she might speak to him afterwards.

"Will you walk a little bit with me?" she said, looking away from him with embarrassment.

"I don't want to quarrel with you. You're the only friend I had in Paris. I thought you rather liked me. I felt

there was something between us. I was drawn towards youyou know what I mean, your clubfoot."

Philip reddened and instinctively tried to walk without a limp. He did not like anyone to mention the

deformity. He knew what Fanny Price meant. She was ugly and uncouth, and because he was deformed there

was between them a certain sympathy. He was very angry with her, but he forced himself not to speak.

"You said you only asked my advice to please me. Don't you think my work's any good?"

"I've only seen your drawing at Amitrano's. It's awfully hard to judge from that."

"I was wondering if you'd come and look at my other work. I've never asked anyone else to look at it. I

"I live quite near here," she said apologetically. "It'll only take you ten minutes."

They were walking along the boulevard, and she turned down a side street, then led him into another, poorer

still, with cheap shops on the ground floor, and at last stopped. They climbed flight after flight of stairs. She

unlocked a door, and they went into a tiny attic with a sloping roof and a small window. This was closed and

the room had a musty smell. Though it was very cold there was no fire and no sign that there had been one.

The bed was unmade. A chair, a chest of drawers which served also as a washstand, and a cheap easel, were

all the furniture. The place would have been squalid enough in any case, but the litter, the untidiness, made

the impression revolting. On the chimneypiece, scattered over with paints and brushes, were a cup, a dirty

"If you'll stand over there I'll put them on the chair so that you can see them better."

She showed him twenty small canvases, about eighteen by twelve. She placed them on the chair, one after the

He was collecting himself. He was panicstricken. He did not know what to say. It was not only that they

were illdrawn, or that the colour was put on amateurishly by someone who had no eye for it; but there was

no attempt at getting the values, and the perspective was grotesque. It looked like the work of a child of five,

but a child would have had some naivete and might at least have made an attempt to put down what he saw;

but here was the work of a vulgar mind chock full of recollections of vulgar pictures. Philip remembered that

she had talked enthusiastically about Monet and the Impressionists, but here were only the worst traditions of

Philip was no more truthful than anybody else, but he had a great difficulty in telling a thundering, deliberate

"Haven't you got any criticism to offer? There must be some you don't like as well as others."

Philip looked round helplessly. He saw a landscape, the typical picturesque `bit' of the amateur, an old bridge,

"Of course I don't pretend to know anything about it," he said. "But I wasn't quite sure about the values of

"I don't know why you should have chosen that one to sneer at. It's the best thing I've ever done. I'm sure my

values are all right. That's a thing you can't teach anyone, you either understand values or you don't."

Philip saw no sign of it, but supposed perhaps the _concierge_ would bring it up when he was gone. He was

IN MARCH there was all the excitement of sending in to the Salon. Clutton, characteristically, had nothing

ready, and he was very scornful of the two heads that Lawson sent; they were obviously the work of a

student, straightforward portraits of models, but they had a certain force; Clutton, aiming at perfection, had

no patience with efforts which betrayed hesitancy, and with a shrug of the shoulders told Lawson it was an

impertinence to exhibit stuff which should never have been allowed out of his studio; he was not less

contemptuous when the two heads were accepted. Flanagan tried his luck too, but his picture was refused.

Mrs. Otter sent a blameless _Portrait de ma Mere_, accomplished and secondrate; and was hung in a very

Hayward, whom Philip had not seen since he left Heidelberg, arrived in Paris to spend a few days in time to

come to the party which Lawson and Philip were giving in their studio to celebrate the hanging of Lawson's

pictures. Philip had been eager to see Hayward again, but when at last they met, he experienced some

disappointment. Hayward had altered a little in appearance: his fine hair was thinner, and with the rapid

wilting of the very fair, he was becoming wizened and colourless; his blue eyes were paler than they had

been, and there was a muzziness about his features. On the other hand, in mind he did not seem to have

changed at all, and the culture which had impressed Philip at eighteen aroused somewhat the contempt of

Philip at twentyone. He had altered a good deal himself, and regarding with scorn all his old opinions of art,

life, and letters, had no patience with anyone who still held them. He was scarcely conscious of the fact that

he wanted to show off before Hayward, but when he took him round the galleries he poured out to him all the

revolutionary opinions which himself had so recently adopted. He took him to Manet's _Olympia_ and said

"I would give all the old masters except Velasqued, Rembrandt, and Vermeer for that one picture."

"Oh, my dear fellow, don't you know Vermeer? You're not civilised. You mustn't live a moment longer

without making his acquaintance. He's the one old master who painted like a modern."

"But aren't there any more pictures here?" asked Hayward, with the tourist's passion for thoroughness.

"Nothing of the least consequence. You can come and look at them by yourself with your Baedeker."

At last, in a small room, Philip stopped before _The Lacemaker_ of Vermeer van Delft.

With an expressive, eloquent thumb Philip expatiated on the charming work. He used the jargon of the

"I don't know that I see anything so wonderful as all that in it," said Hayward.

"Of course it's a painter's picture," said Philip. "I can quite believe the layman would see nothing much in it."

Like most people who cultivate an interest in the arts, Hayward was extremely anxious to be right. He was

dogmatic with those who did not venture to assert themselves, but with the selfassertive he was very

modest. He was impressed by Philip's assurance, and accepted meekly Philip's implied suggestion that the

painter's arrogant claim to be the sole possible judge of painting has anything but its impertinence to

A day or two later Philip and Lawson gave their party. Cronshaw, making an exception in their favour,

agreed to eat their food; and Miss Chalice offered to come and cook for them. She took no interest in her own

sex and declined the suggestion that other girls should be asked for her sake. Clutton, Flanagan, Potter, and

two others made up the party. Furniture was scarce, so the model stand was used as a table, and the guests

were to sit on portmanteaux if they liked, and if they didn't on the floor. The feast consisted of a

_potaufeu_, which Miss Chalice had made, of a leg of mutton roasted round the corner and brought round

hot and savoury (Miss Chalice had cooked the potatoes, and the studio was redolent of the carrots she had

fried; fried carrots were her specialty); and this was to be followed by _poires flambees_, pears with burning

brandy, which Cronshaw had volunteered to make. The meal was to finish with an enormous _fromage de

Brie_, which stood near the window and added fragrant odours to all the others which filled the studio.

Cronshaw sat in the place of honour on a Gladstone bag, with his legs curled under him like a Turkish

bashaw, beaming goodnaturedly on the young people who surrounded him. From force of habit, though the

small studio with the stove lit was very hot, he kept on his greatcoat, with the collar turned up, and his

bowler hat: he looked with satisfaction on the four large _fiaschi_ of Chianti which stood in front of him in a

row, two on each side of a bottle of whiskey; he said it reminded him of a slim fair Circassian guarded by

four corpulent eunuchs. Hayward in order to put the rest of them at their ease had clothed himself in a tweed

suit and a Trinity Hall tie. He looked grotesquely British. The others were elaborately polite to him, and

during the soup they talked of the weather and the political situation. There was a pause while they waited for

With an elegant gesture she untied a ribbon so that her tresses fell over her shoulders. She shook her head.

With her large brown eyes, thin, ascetic face, her pale skin, and broad forehead, she might have stepped out

of a picture by BurneJones. She had long, beautiful hands, with fingers deeply stained by nicotine. She wore

sweeping draperies, mauve and green. There was about her the romantic air of High Street, Kensington. She

was wantonly aesthetic; but she was an excellent creature, kind and good natured; and her affectations were

but skindeep. There was a knock at the door, and they all gave a shout of exultation. Miss Chalice rose and

opened. She took the leg of mutton and held it high above her, as though it were the head of John the Baptist

on a platter; and, the cigarette still in her mouth, advanced with solemn, hieratic steps.

The mutton was eaten with gusto, and it did one good to see what a hearty appetite the palefaced lady had.

Clutton and Potter sat on each side of her, and everyone knew that neither had found her unduly coy. She

grew tired of most people in six weeks, but she knew exactly how to treat afterwards the gentlemen who had

laid their young hearts at her feet. She bore them no illwill, though having loved them she had ceased to do

so, and treated them with friendliness but without familiarity. Now and then she looked at Lawson with

melancholy eyes. The _poires flambees_ were a great success, partly because of the brandy, and partly

"I don't know whether it's perfectly delicious, or whether I'm just going to vomit," she said, after she had

Coffee and cognac followed with sufficient speed to prevent any untoward consequence, and they settled

down to smoke in comfort. Ruth Chalice, who could do nothing that was not deliberately artistic, arranged

herself in a graceful attitude by Cronshaw and just rested her exquisite head on his shoulder. She looked into

the dark abyss of time with brooding eyes, and now and then with a long meditative glance at Lawson she

Then came the summer, and restlessness seized these young people. The blue skies lured them to the sea, and

the pleasant breeze sighing through the leaves of the planetrees on the boulevard drew them towards the

country. Everyone made plans for leaving Paris; they discussed what was the most suitable size for the

canvases they meant to take; they laid in stores of panels for sketching; they argued about the merits of

various places in Brittany. Flanagan and Potter went to Concarneau; Mrs. Otter and her mother, with a natural

instinct for the obvious, went to PontAven; Philip and Lawson made up their minds to go to the forest of

Fontainebleau, and Miss Chalice knew of a very good hotel at Moret where there was lots of stuff to paint; it

was near Paris, and neither Philip nor Lawson was indifferent to the railway fare. Ruth Chalice would be

there, and Lawson had an idea for a portrait of her in the open air. Just then the Salon was full of portraits of

people in gardens, in sunlight, with blinking eyes and green reflections of sunlit leaves on their faces. They

asked Clutton to go with them, but he preferred spending the summer by himself. He had just discovered

Cezanne, and was uger to go to Provence; he wanted heavy skies from which the hot blue seemed to drip like

beads of sweat, and broad white dusty roads, and pale roofs out of which the sun had burnt the colour, and

The day before they were to start, after the morning class, Philip, putting his things together, spoke to Fanny

"No, I'm staying in Paris. I thought you were going to stay too. I was looking forward...."

"Lawson and I are going. And she's going there too. I don't know that we're actually going together."

"How filthy! I thought you were a decent fellow. You were about the only one here. She's been with Clutton

and Potter and Flanagan, even with old Foinetthat's why he takes so much trouble about herand now

"Oh, what nonsense! She's a very decent sort. One treats her just as if she were a man."

"But what can it matter to you?" asked Philip. "It's really no business of yours where I spend my summer."

"I was looking forward to it so much," she gasped, speaking it seemed almost to herself. "I didn't think you

had the money to go away, and there wouldn't have been anyone else here, and we could have worked

together, and we'd have gone to see things." Then her thoughts flung back to Ruth Chalice. "The filthy beast,"

Philip looked at her with a sinking heart. He was not a man to think girls were in love with him; he was too

conscious of his deformity, and he felt awkward and clumsy with women; but he did not know what else this

outburst could mean. Fanny Price, in the dirty brown dress, with her hair falling over her face, sloppy, untidy,

stood before him; and tears of anger rolled down her cheeks. She was repellent. Philip glanced at the door,

"You're just the same as all of them. You take all you can get, and you don't even say thank you. I've taught

you everything you know. No one else would take any trouble with you. Has Foinet ever bothered about you?

And I can tell you thisyou can work here for a thousand years and you'll never do any good. You haven't

got any talent. You haven't got any originality. And it's not only methey all say it. You'll never be a painter

"Oh, you think it's only my temper. Ask Clutton, ask Lawson, ask Chalice. Never, never, never. You haven't

Moret was in those days an oldfashioned town of one street at the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau, and

the _Ecu d'Or_ was a hotel which still had about it the decrepit air of the _Ancien Regime_. It faced the

winding river, the Loing; and Miss Chalice had a room with a little terrace overlooking it, with a charming

view of the old bridge and its fortified gateway. They sat here in the evenings after dinner, drinking coffee,

smoking, and discussing art. There ran into the river, a little way off, a narrow canal bordered by poplars, and

along the banks of this after their day's work they often wandered. They spent all day painting. Like most of

their generation they were obsessed by the fear of the picturesque, and they turned their backs on the obvious

beauty of the town to seek subjects which were devoid of a prettiness they despised. Sisley and Monet had

painted the canal with its poplars, and they felt a desire to try their hands at what was so typical of France; but

they were frightened of its formal beauty, and set themselves deliberately to avoid it. Miss Chalice, who had a

clever dexterity which impressed Lawson notwithstanding his contempt for feminine art, started a picture in

which she tried to circumvent the commonplace by leaving out the tops of the trees; and Lawson had the

brilliant idea of putting in his foreground a large blue advertisement of _chocolat Menier_ in order to

Philip began now to paint in oils. He experienced a thrill of delight when first he used that grateful medium.

He went out with Lawson in the morning with his little box and sat by him painting a panel; it gave him so

much satisfaction that he did not realise he was doing no more than copy; he was so much under his friend's

influence that he saw only with his eyes. Lawson painted very low in tone, and they both saw the emerald of

the grass like dark velvet, while the brilliance of the sky turned in their hands to a brooding ultramarine.

Through July they had one fine day after another; it was very hot; and the heat, searing Philip's heart, filled

him with languor; he could not work; his mind was eager with a thousand thoughts. Often he spent the

mornings by the side of the canal in the shade of the poplars, reading a few lines and then dreaming for half

an hour. Sometimes he hired a rickety bicycle and rode along the dusty road that led to the forest, and then

lay down in a clearing. His head was full of romantic fancies. The ladies of Watteau, gay and insouciant,

seemed to wander with their cavaliers among the great trees, whispering to one another careless, charming

They were alone in the hotel but for a fat Frenchwoman of middle age, a Rabelaisian figure with a broad,

obscene laugh. She spent the day by the river patiently fishing for fish she never caught, and Philip

sometimes went down and talked to her. He found out that she had belonged to a profession whose most

notorious member for our generation was Mrs. Warren, and having made a competence she now lived the

"You must go to Seville," she saidshe spoke a little broken English. "The most beautiful women in the

She leered and nodded her head. Her triple chin, her large belly, shook with inward laughter.

It grew so hot that it was almost impossible to sleep at night. The heat seemed to linger under the trees as

though it were a material thing. They did not wish to leave the starlit night, and the three of them would sit on

the terrace of Ruth Chalice's room, silent, hour after hour, too tired to talk any more, but in voluptuous

enjoyment of the stillness. They listened to the murmur of the river. The church clock struck one and two and

sometimes three before they could drag themselves to bed. Suddenly Philip became aware that Ruth Chalice

and Lawson were lovers. He divined it in the way the girl looked at the young painter, and in his air of

possession; and as Philip sat with them he felt a kind of effluence surrounding them, as though the air were

heavy with something strange. The revelation was a shock. He had looked upon Miss Chalice as a very good

fellow and he liked to talk to her, but it had never seemed to him possible to enter into a closer relationship.

One Sunday they had all gone with a teabasket into the forest, and when they came to a glade which was

suitably sylvan, Miss Chalice, because it was idyllic, insisted on taking off her shoes and stockings. It would

have been very charming only her feet were rather large and she had on both a large corn on the third toe.

Philip felt it made her proceeding a little ridiculous. But now he looked upon her quite differently; there was

something softly feminine in her large eyes and her olive skin; he felt himself a fool not to have seen that she

was attractive. He thought he detected in her a touch of contempt for him, because he had not had the sense to

see that she was there, in his way, and in Lawson a suspicion of superiority. He was envious of Lawson, and

he was jealous, not of the individual concerned, but of his love. He wished that he was standing in his shoes

and feeling with his heart. He was troubled, and the fear seized him that love would pass him by. He wanted a

passion to seize him, he wanted to be swept off his feet and borne powerless in a mighty rush he cared not

whither. Miss Chalice and Lawson seemed to him now somehow different, and the constant companionship

with them made him restless. He was dissatisfied with himself. Life was not giving him what he wanted, and

The stout Frenchwoman soon guessed what the relations were between the couple, and talked of the matter to

"And you," she said, with the tolerant smile of one who had fattened on the lust of her fellows, "have you got

He shrugged his shoulders. He had a volume of Verlaine in his hands, and he wandered off. He tried to read,

but his passion was too strong. He thought of the stray amours to which he had been introduced by Flanagan,

the sly visits to houses in a _culdesac_, with the drawingroom in Utrecht velvet, and the mercenary

graces of painted women. He shuddered. He threw himself on the grass, stretching his limbs like a young

animal freshly awaked from sleep; and the rippling water, the poplars gently tremulous in the faint breeze, the

blue sky, were almost more than he could bear. He was in love with love. In his fancy he felt the kiss of warm

lips on his, and around his neck the touch of soft hands. He imagined himself in the arms of Ruth Chalice, he

thought of her dark eyes and the wonderful texture of her skin; he was mad to have let such a wonderful

adventure slip through his fingers. And if Lawson had done it why should not he? But this was only when he

did not see her, when he lay awake at night or dreamed idly by the side of the canal; when he saw her he felt

suddenly quite different; he had no desire to take her in his arms, and he could not imagine himself kissing

her. It was very curious. Away from her he thought her beautiful, remembering only her magnificent eyes and

the creamy pallor of her face; but when he was with her he saw only that she was flatchested and that her

teeth were slightly decayed; he could not forget the corns on her toes. He could not understand himself.

Would he always love only in absence and be prevented from enjoying anything when he had the chance by

He was not sorry when a change in the weather, announcing the definite end of the long summer, drove them

WHEN PHILIP returned to Amitrano's he found that Fanny Price was no longer working there. She had

given up the key of her locker. He asked Mrs. Otter whether she knew what had become of her; and Mrs.

Otter, with a shrug of the shoulders, answered that she had probably gone back to England. Philip was

relieved. He was profoundly bored by her illtemper. Moreover she insisted on advising him about his work,

looked upon it as a slight when he did not follow her precepts, and would not understand that he felt himself

no longer the duffer he had been at first. Soon he forgot all about her. He was working in oils now and he was

full of enthusiasm. He hoped to have something done of sufficient importance to send to the following year's

Salon. Lawson was painting a portrait of Miss Chalice. She was very paintable, and all the young men who

had fallen victims to her charm had made portraits of her. A natural indolence, joined with a passion for

picturesque attitude, made her an excellent sitter; and she had enough technical knowledge to offer useful

criticisms. Since her passion for art was chiefly a passion to live the life of artists, she was quite content to

neglect her own work. She liked the warmth of the studio, and the opportunity to smoke innumerable

cigarettes; and she spoke in a low, pleasant voice of the love of art and the art of love. She made no clear

Lawson was painting with infinite labour, working till he could hardly stand for days and then scraping out

all he had done. He would have exhausted the patience of anyone but Ruth Chalice. At last he got into a

"The only thing is to take a new canvas and start fresh," he said. "I know exactly what I want now, and it

"Why don't you paint me too? You'll be able to learn a lot by watching Mr. Lawson."

It was one of Miss Chalice's delicacies that she always addressed her lovers by their surnames.

It was the first time that Philip set about a portrait, and he began with trepidation but also with pride. He sat

by Lawson and painted as he saw him paint. He profited by the example and by the advice which both

Lawson and Miss Chalice freely gave him. At last Lawson finished and invited Clutton in to criticise. Clutton

had only just come back to Paris. From Provence he had drifted down to Spain, eager to see Velasquez at

Madrid, and thence he had gone to Toledo. He stayed there three months, and he was returned with a name

new to the young men: he had wonderful things to say of a painter called El Greco, who it appeared could

"Oh yes, I know about him," said Lawson, "he's the old master whose distinction it is that he painted as badly

Clutton, more taciturn than ever, did not answer, but he looked at Lawson with a sardonic air.

"Are you going to show us the stuff you've brought back from Spain?" asked Philip.

"I thought things out. I believe I'm through with the Impressionists; I've got an idea they'll seem very thin and

superficial in a few years. I want to make a clean sweep of everything I've learnt and start fresh. When I came

back I destroyed everything I'd painted. I've got nothing in my studio now but an easel, my paints, and some

He spoke slowly, in a curious manner, as though he were straining to hear something which was only just

audible. There seemed to be a mysterious force in him which he himself did not understand, but which was

struggling obscurely to find an outlet. His strength impressed you. Lawson dreaded the criticism he asked for

and had discounted the blame he thought he might get by affecting a contempt for any opinion of Clutton's;

but Philip knew there was nothing which would give him more pleasure than Clutton's praise. Clutton looked

at the portrait for some time in silence, then glanced at Philip's picture, which was standing on an easel.

Lawson's face fell, and he stared at Clutton with astonishment: he had no notion what he meant, Clutton had

no gift of expression in words, and he spoke as though it were an effort. What he had to say was confused,

halting, and verbose; but Philip knew the words which served as the text of his rambling discourse. Clutton,

who never read, had heard them first from Cronshaw; and though they had made small impression, they had

remained in his memory; and lately, emerging on a sudden, had acquired the character of a revelation: a good

painter had two chief objects to paint, namely, man and the intention of his soul. The Impressionists had been

occupied with other problems, they had painted man admirably, but they had troubled themselves as little as

the English portrait painters of the eighteenth century with the intention of his soul.

"But when you try to get that you become literary," said Lawson, interrupting. "Let me paint the man like

"That would be all very well if you could beat Manet at his own game, but you can't get anywhere near him.

You can't feed yourself on the day before yesterday, it's ground which has been swept dry. You must go back.

It's when I saw the Grecos that I felt one could get something more out of portraits than we knew before."

"Noyou see, he went for morality: I don't care a damn for morality: teaching doesn't coOme in, ethics and

all that, but passion and emotion. The greatest portrait painters have painted both, man and the intention of

his soul; Rembrandt and El Greco; it's only the secondraters who've only painted man. A lily of the valley

would be lovely even if it didn't smell, but it's more lovely because it has perfume. That picture"he pointed

to Lawson's portrait"well, the drawing's all right and so's the modelling all right, but just conventional; it

ought to be drawn and modelled so that you know the girl's a lousy slut. Correctness is all very well: El Greco

made his people eight feet high because he wanted to express something he couldn't get any other way."

"Damn El Greco," said Lawson, "what's the good of jawing about a man when we haven't a chance of seeing

Clutton shrugged his shoulders, smoked a cigarette in silence, and went away. Philip and Lawson looked at

"How the devil is one to get the intention of the soul except by painting exactly what one sees?"

About this time Philip made a new friend. On Monday morning models assembled at the school in order that

one might be chosen for the week, and one day a young man was taken who was plainly not a model by

profession. Philip's attention was attracted by the manner in which he held himself: when he got on to the

stand he stood firmly on both feet, square, with clenched hands, and with his head defiantly thrown forward;

the attitude emphasised his fine figure; there was no fat on him, and his muscles stood out as though they

were of iron. His head, closecropped, was wellshaped, and he wore a short beard; he had large, dark eyes

and heavy eyebrows. He held the pose hour after hour without appearance of fatigue. There was in his mien a

mixture of shame and of determination. His air of passionate energy excited Philip's romantic imagination,

and when, the sitting ended, he saw him in his clothes, it seemed to him that he wore them as though he were

a king in rags. He was uncommunicative, but in a day or two Mrs. Otter told Philip that the model was a

It chanced that Potter, one of the Americans who worked at Amitrano's, was going to Italy for a couple of

months, and offered his studio to Philip. Philip was pleased. He was growing a little impatient of Lawson's

peremptory advice and wanted to be by himself. At the end of the week he went up to the model and on the

pretence that his drawing was not finished asked whether he would come and sit to him one day.

"I'm not a model," the Spaniard answered. "I have other things to do next week."

"Come and have luncheon with me now, and we'll talk about it," said Philip, and as the other hesitated, he

With a shrug of the shoulders the model consented, and they went off to a _cremerie_. The Spaniard spoke

broken French, fluent but difficult to follow, and Philip managed to get on well enough with him. He found

out that he was a writer. He had come to Paris to write novels and kept himself meanwhile by all the

expedients possible to a penniless man; he gave lessons, he did any translations he could get hold of, chiefly

business documents, and at last had been driven to make money by his fine figure. Sitting was well paid, and

what he had earned during the last week was enough to keep him for two more; he told Philip, amazed, that

he could live easily on two francs a day; but it filled him with shame that he was obliged to show his body for

money, and he looked upon sitting as a degradation which only hunger could excuse. Philip explained that he

did not want him to sit for the figure, but only for the head; he wished to do a portrait of him which he might

Philip answered that the head interested him, he thought he could do a good portrait.

"I can't afford the time. I grudge every minute that I have to rob from my writing."

"But it would only be in the afternoon. I work at the school in the morning. After all, it's better to sit to me

There were legends in the Latin quarter of a time when students of different countries lived together

intimately, but this was long since passed, and now the various nations were almost as much separated as in

an Oriental city. At Julian's and at the Beaux Arts a French student was looked upon with disfavour by his

fellowcountrymen when he consorted with foreigners, and it was difficult for an Englishman to know more

than quite superficially any native inhabitants of the city in which he dwelt. Indeed, many of the students

after living in Paris for five years knew no more French than served them in shops and lived as English a life

Philip, with his passion for the romantic, welcomed the opportunity to get in touch with a Spaniard; he used

"I'll tell you what I'll do," said the Spaniard at last. "I'll sit to you, but not for money, for my own pleasure."

Philip expostulated, but the other was firm, and at length they arranged that he should come on the following

Monday at one o'clock. He gave Philip a card on which was printed his name: Miguel Ajuria.

Miguel sat regularly, and though he refused to accept payment he borrowed fifty francs from Philip every

now and then: it was a little more expensive than if Philip had paid for the sittings in the usual way; but gave

the Spaniard a satisfactory feeling that he was not earning his living in a degrading manner. His nationality

made Philip regard him as a representative of romance, and he asked him about Seville and Granada,

Velasquez and Calderon. But Miguel bad no patience with the grandeur of his country. For him, as for so

many of his compatriots, France was the only country for a man of intelligence and Paris the centre of the

Little by little, with the exuberant rhetoric of his race, he revealed his ambitions. He was writing a novel

which he hoped would make his name. He was under the influence of Zola, and he had set his scene in Paris.

He told Philip the story at length. To Philip it seemed crude and stupid; the naive obscenity _c'est la vie,

mon cher, c'est la vie_, he criedthe naive obscenity served only to emphasise the conventionality of the

anecdote. He had written for two years, amid incredible hardships, denying himself all the pleasures of life

which had attracted him to Paris, fighting with starvation for art's sake, determined that nothing should hinder

"But why don't you write about Spain?" cried Philip. "It would be so much more interesting. You know the

One day he brought part of the manuscript, and in his bad French, translating excitedly as he went along so

that Philip could scarcely understand, he read passages. It was lamentable. Philip, puzzled, looked at the

picture he was painting: the mind behind that broad brow was trivial; and the flashing, passionate eyes saw

nothing in life but the obvious. Philip was not satisfied with his portrait, and at the end of a sitting he nearly

always scraped out what he had done. It was all very well to aim at the intention of the soul: who could tell

what that was when people seemed a mass of contradictions? He liked Miguel, and it distressed him to realise

that his magnificent struggle was futile: he had everything to make a good writer but talent. Philip looked at

his own work. How could you tell whether there was anything in it or whether you were wasting your time? It

was clear that the will to achieve could not help you and confidence in yourself meant nothing. Philip thought

of Fanny Price; she had a vehement belief in her talent; her strength of will was extraordinary.

"If I thought I wasn't going to be really good, I'd rather give up painting," said Philip. "I don't see any use in

Then one morning when he was going out, the _concierge_ called out to him that there was a letter. Nobody

wrote to him but his Aunt Louisa and sometimes Hayward, and this was a handwriting he did not know. The

Please come at once when you get this. I couldn't put up with it any more. Please come yourself. I can't bear

the thought that anyone else should touch me. I want you to have everything. F. Price

Philip felt on a sudden sick with fear. He hurried to the house in which she lived. He was astonished that she

was in Paris at all. He had not seen her for months and imagined she had long since returned to England.

Philip ran upstairs and knocked at the door. There was no reply. He called her name. The door was locked,

He ran down and told the porter that she was certainly in the room. He had had a letter from her and feared a

terrible accident. He suggested breaking open the door. The porter, who had been sullen and disinclined to

listen, became alarmed; he could not take the responsibility of breaking into the room; they must go for the

_commissaire de police_. They walked together to the _bureau_, and then they fetched a locksmith. Philip

found that Miss Price had not paid the last quarter's rent: on New Year's Day she had not given the

_concierge_ the present which oldestablished custom led him to regard as a right. The four of them went

upstairs, and they knocked again at the door. There was no reply. The locksmith set to work, and at last they

entered the room. Philip gave a cry and instinctively covered his eyes with his hands. The wretched woman

was hanging with a rope round her neck, which she had tied to a hook in the ceiling fixed by some previous

tenant to hold up the curtains of the bed. She had moved her own little bed out of the way and had stood on a

chair, which had been kicked away. it was lying on its side on the floor. They cut her down. The body was

THE story which Philip made out in one way and another was terrible. One of the grievances of the

womenstudents was that Fanny Price would never share their gay meals in restaurants, and the reason was

obvious: she had been oppressed by dire poverty. He remembered the luncheon they had eaten together when

first he came to Paris and the ghoulish appetite which had disgusted him: he realised now that she ate in that

manner because she was ravenous. The _concierge_ told him what her food had consisted of. A bottle of milk

was left for her every day and she brought in her own loaf of bread; she ate half the loaf and drank half the

milk at midday when she came back from the school, and consumed the rest in the evening. It was the same

day after day. Philip thought with anguish of what she must have endured. She had never given anyone to

understand that she was poorer than the rest, but it was clear that her money had been coming to an end, and

at last she could not afford to come any more to the studio. The little room was almost bare of furniture, and

there were no other clothes than the shabby brown dress she had always worn. Philip searched among her

things for the address of some friend with whom he could communicate. He found a piece of paper on which

his own name was written a score of times. It gave him a peculiar shock. He supposed it was true that she had

loved him; he thought of the emaciated body, in the brown dress, hanging from the nail in the ceiling; and he

shuddered. But if she had cared for him why did she not let him help her? He would so gladly have done all

he could. He felt remorseful because he had refused to see that she looked upon him with any particular

feeling, and now these words in her letter were infinitely pathetic: I can't bear the thought that anyone else

Philip found at length a letter signed: your loving brother, Albert. it was two or three weeks old, dated from

some road in Surbiton, and refused a loan of five pounds. The writer had his wife and family to think of, he

didn't feel justified in lending money, and his advice was that Fanny should come back to London and try to

get a situation. Philip telegraphed to Albert Price, and in a little while an answer came:

"Deeply distressed. Very awkward to leave my business. Is presence essential. Price."

Philip wired a succinct affirmative, and next morning a stranger presented himself at the studio.

He was a commonish man in black with a band round his bowler hat; he had something of Fanny's clumsy

look; he wore a stubbly moustache, and had a cockney accent. Philip asked him to come in. He cast sidelong

glances round the studio while Philip gave him details of the accident and told him what he had done.

"I needn't see her, need I?" asked Albert Price. "My nerves aren't very strong, and it takes very little to upset

He began to talk freely. He was a rubbermerchant, and he had a wife and three children. Fanny was a

governess, and he couldn't make out why she hadn't stuck to that instead of coming to Paris.

"Me and Mrs. Price told her Paris was no place for a girl. And there's no money in artnever 'as been."

It was plain enough that he had not been on friendly terms with his sister, and he resented her suicide as a last

injury that she had done him. He did not like the idea that she had been forced to it by poverty; that seemed to

reflect on the family. The idea struck him that possibly there was a more respectable reason for her act.

"I suppose she 'adn't any trouble with a man, 'ad she? You know what I mean, Paris and all that. She might

Philip felt himself reddening and cursed his weakness. Price's keen little eyes seemed to suspect him of an

"I believe your sister to have been perfectly virtuous," he answered acidly. "She killed herself because she

"Well, it's very 'ard on her family, Mr. Carey. She only 'ad to write to me. I wouldn't have let my sister want."

Philip had found the brother's address only by reading the letter in which he refused a loan; but he shrugged

his shoulders: there was no use in recrimination. He hated the little man and wanted to have done with him as

soon as possible. Albert Price also wished to get through the necessary business quickly so that he could get

back to London. They went to the tiny room in which poor Fanny had lived. Albert Price looked at the

"I don't pretend to know much about art," he said. "I suppose these pictures would fetch something, would

Albert Price knew no French and Philip had to do everything. It seemed that it was an interminable process to

get the poor body safely hidden away under ground: papers had to be obtained in one place and signed in

another; officials had to be seen. For three days Philip was occupied from morning till night. At last he and

"I want to do the thing decent," said Albert Price, "but there's no use wasting money."

The short ceremony was infinitely dreadful in the cold gray morning. Half a dozen people who had worked

with Fanny Price at the studio came to the funeral, Mrs. Otter because she was _massiere_ and thought it her

duty, Ruth Chalice because she had a kind heart, Lawson, Clutton, and Flanagan. They had all disliked her

during her life. Philip, looking across the cemetery crowded on all sides with monuments, some poor and

simple, others vulgar, pretentious, and ugly, shuddered. It was horribly sordid. When they came out Albert

Price asked Philip to lunch with him. Philip loathed him now and he was tired; he had not been sleeping well,

for he dreamed constantly of Fanny Price in the torn brown dress, hanging from the nail in the ceiling; but he

"You take me somewhere where we can get a regular slapup lunch. All this is the very worst thing for my

Albert Price settled himself on a velvet seat with a sigh of relief. He ordered a substantial luncheon and a

He threw out a few artful questions, and Philip discovered that he was eager to hear about the painter's life in

Paris. He represented it to himself as deplorable, but he was anxious for details of the orgies which his fancy

suggested to him. With sly winks and discrect sniggering he conveyed that he knew very well that there was a

great deal more than Philip confessed. He was a man of the world, and he knew a thing or two. He asked

Philip whether he had ever been to any of those places in Montmartre which are celebrated from Temple Bar

to the Royal Exchange. He would like to say he had been to the Moulin Rouge. The luncheon was very good

and the wine excellent. Albert Price expanded as the processes of digestion went satisfactorily forwards.

"Let's 'ave a little brandy," he said when the coffee was brought, "and blow the expense."

"You know, I've got 'alf a mind to stay over tonight and go back tomorrow. What d'you say to spending the

"If you mean you want me to take you round Montmartre tonight, I'll see you damned," said Philip.

Albert Price concluded that he had better go back to London by the four o'clock train, and presently he took

"Well, goodbye, old man," he said. "I tell you what, I'll try and come over to Paris again one of these days

Philip was too restless to work that afternoon, so he jumped on a bus and crossed the river to see whether

there were any pictures on view at DurandRuel's. After that he strolled along the boulevard. It was cold and

windswept. People hurried by wrapped up in their coats, shrunk together in an effort to keep out of the cold,

and their faces were pinched and careworn. It was icy underground in the cemetery at Montparnasse among

all those white tombstones. Philip felt lonely in the world and strangely homesick. He wanted company. At

that hour Cronshaw would be working, and Clutton never welcomed visitors; Lawson was painting another

portrait of Ruth Chalice and would not care to be disturbed. He made up his mind to go and see Flanagan. He

found him painting, but delighted to throw up his work and talk. The studio was comfortable, for the

American had more money than most of them, and warm; Flanagan set about making tea. Philip looked at the

"It's awful cheek my sending anything," said Flanagan, "but I don't care, I'm going to send. D'you think

They showed in fact an astounding cleverness. The difficulties had been avoided with skill, and there was a

dash about the way in which the paint was put on which was surprising and even attractive. Flanagan, without

knowledge or technique, painted with the loose brush of a man who has spent a lifetime in the practice of the

"If one were forbidden to look at any picture for more than thirty seconds you'd be a great master, Flanagan,"

These young people were not in the habit of spoiling one another with excessive flattery.

"We haven't got time in America to spend more than thirty seconds in looking at any picture," laughed the

Flanagan, though he was the most scatterbrained person in the world, had a tenderness of heart which was

unexpected and charming. Whenever anyone was ill he installed himself as sicknurse. His gaiety was better

than any medicine. Like many of his countrymen he had not the English dread of sentimentality which keeps

so tight a hold on emotion; and, finding nothing absurd in the show of feeling, could offer an exuberant

sympathy which was often grateful to his friends in distress. He saw that Philip was depressed by what he had

gone through and with unaffected kindliness set himself boisterously to cheer him up. He exaggerated the

Americanisms which he knew always made the Englishmen laugh and poured out a breathless stream of

conversation, whimsical, highspirited, and jolly. In due course they went out to dinner and afterwards to the

Gaite Montparnasse, which was Flanagan's favourite place of amusement. By the end of the evening he was

in his most extravagant humour. He had drunk a good deal, but any inebriety from which he suffered was due

much more to his own vivacity than to alcohol. He proposed that they should go to the Bal Bullier, and

Philip, feeling too tired to go to bed, willingly enough consented. They sat down at a table on the platform at

the side, raised a little from the level of the floor so that they could watch the dancing, and drank a bock.

Presently Flanagan saw a friend and with a wild shout leaped over the barrier on to the space where they were

dancing. Philip watched the people. Bullier was not the resort of fashion. It was Thursday night and the place

was crowded. There were a number of students of the various faculties, but most of the men were clerks or

assistants in shops; they wore their everyday clothes, readymade tweeds or queer tailcoats, and their hats,

for they had brought them in with them, and when they danced there was no place to put them but their heads.

Some of the women looked like servantgirls, and some were painted hussies, but for the most part they were

shopgirls. They were poorlydressed in cheap imitation of the fashions on the other side of the river. The

hussies were got up to resemble the musichall artiste or the dancer who enjoyed notoriety at the moment;

their eyes were heavy with black and their cheeks impudently scarlet. The hall was lit by great white lights,

low down, which emphasised the shadows on the faces; all the lines seemed to harden under it, and the

colours were most crude. It was a sordid scene. Philip leaned over the rail, staring down, and he ceased to

hear the music. They danced furiously. They danced round the room, slowly, talking very little, with all their

attention given to the dance. The room was hot, and their faces shone with sweat. it seemed to Philip that they

had thrown off the guard which people wear on their expression, the homage to convention, and he saw them

now as they really were. In that moment of abandon they were strangely animal: some were foxy and some

were wolflike; and others had the long, foolish face of sheep. Their skins were sallow from the unhealthy

life they led and the poor food they ate. Their features were blunted by mean interests, and their little eyes

were shifty and cunning. There was nothing of nobility in their bearing, and you felt that for all of them life

was a long succession of petty concerns and sordid thoughts. The air was heavy with the musty smell of

humanity. But they danced furiously as though impelled by some strange power within them, and it seemed

to Philip that they were driven forward by a rage for enjoyment. They were seeking desperately to escape

from a world of horror. The desire for pleasure which Cronshaw said was the only motive of human action

urged them blindly on, and the very vehemence of the desire seemed to rob it of all pleasure. They were

hurried on by a great wind, helplessly, they knew not why and they knew not whither. Fate seemed to tower

above them, and they danced as though everlasting darkness were beneath their feet. Their silence was

vaguely alarming. It was as if life terrified them and robbed them of power of speech so that the shriek which

was in their hearts died at their throats. Their eyes were haggard and grim; and notwithstanding the beastly

lust that disfigured them, and the meanness of their faces, and the cruelty, notwithstanding the stupidness

which was worst of all, the anguish of those fixed eyes made all that crowd terrible and pathetic. Philip

He took his coat from the cloakroom and went out into the bitter coldness of the night.

PHILIP could not get the unhappy event out of his head. What troubled him most was the uselessness of

Fanny's effort. No one could have worked harder than she, nor with more sincerity; she believed in herself

with all her heart; but it was plain that selfconfidence meant very little, all his friends had it, Miguel Ajuria

among the rest; and Philip was shocked by the contrast between the Spaniard's heroic endeavour and the

triviality of the thing he attempted. The unhappiness of Philip's life at school had called up in him the power

of selfanalysis; and this vice, as subtle as drugtaking, had taken possession of him so that he had now a

peculiar keenness in the dissection of his feelings. He could not help seeing that art affected him differently

from others. A fine picture gave Lawson an immediate thrill. His appreciation was instinctive. Even Flanagan

felt certain things which Philip was obliged to think out. His own appreciation was intellectual. He could not

help thinking that if he had in him the artistic temperament (he hated the phrase, but could discover no other)

he would feel beauty in the emotional, unreasoning way in which they did. He began to wonder whether he

had anything more than a superficial cleverness of the hand which enabled him to copy objects with

accuracy. That was nothing. He had learned to despise technical dexterity. The important thing was to feel in

terms of paint. Lawson painted in a certain way because it was his nature to, and through the imitativeness of

a student sensitive to every influence, there pierced individuality. Philip looked at his own portrait of Ruth

Chalice, and now that three months had passed he realised that it was no more than a servile copy of Lawson.

He felt himself barren. He painted with the brain, and he could not help knowing that the only painting worth

He had very little money, barely sixteen hundred pounds, and it would be necessary for him to practise the

severest economy. He could not count on earning anything for ten years. The history of painting was full of

artists who had earned nothing at all. He must resign himself to penury; and it was worth while if he produced

work which was immortal; but he had a terrible fear that he would never be more than secondrate. Was it

worth while for that to give up one's youth, and the gaiety of life, and the manifold chances of being? He

knew the existence of foreign painters in Paris enough to see that the lives they led were narrowly provincial.

He knew some who had dragged along for twenty years in the pursuit of a fame which always escaped them

till they sunk into sordidness and alcoholism. Fanny's suicide had aroused memories, and Philip heard ghastly

stories of the way in which one person or another had escaped from despair. He remembered the scornful

advice which the master had given poor Fanny: it would have been well for her if she had taken it and given

Philip finished his portrait of Miguel Ajuria and made up his mind to send it to the Salon. Flanagan was

sending two pictures, and he thought he could paint as well as Flanagan. He had worked so hard on the

portrait that he could not help feeling it must have merit. It was true that when he looked at it he felt that there

was something wrong, though he could not tell what; but when he was away from it his spirits went up and he

was not dissatisfied. He sent it to the Salon and it was refused. He did not mind much, since he had done all

he could to persuade himself that there was little chance that it would be taken, till Flanagan a few days later

rushed in to tell Lawson and Philip that one of his pictures was accepted. With a blank face Philip offered his

congratulations, and Flanagan was so busy congratulating himself that he did not catch the note of irony

which Philip could not prevent from coming into his voice. Lawson, quickerwitted, observed it and looked

at Philip curiously. His own picture was all right, he knew that a day or two before, and he was vaguely

resentful of Philip's attitude. But he was surprised at the sudden question which Philip put him as soon as the

"I wonder if it's worth while being a secondrate painter. You see, in other things, if you're a doctor or if

you're in business, it doesn't matter so much if you're mediocre. You make a living and you get along. But

Lawson was fond of Philip and, as soon as he thought he was seriously distressed by the refusal of his

picture, he set himself to console him. It was notorious that the Salon had refused pictures which were

afterwards famous; it was the first time Philip had sent, and he must expect a rebuff; Flanagan's success was

explicable, his picture was showy and superficial: it was just the sort of thing a languid jury would see merit

in. Philip grew impatient; it was humiliating that Lawson should think him capable of being seriously

disturbed by so trivial a calamity and would not realise that his dejection was due to a deepseated distrust of

Of late Clutton had withdrawn himself somewhat from the group who took their meals at Gravier's, and lived

very much by himself. Flanagan said he was in love with a girl, but Clutton's austere countenance did not

suggest passion; and Philip thought it more probable that he separated himself from his friends so that he

might grow clear with the new ideas which were in him. But that evening, when the others had left the

restaurant to go to a play and Philip was sitting alone, Clutton came in and ordered dinner. They began to

talk, and finding Clutton more loquacious and less sardonic than usual, Philip determined to take advantage

"I say I wish you'd come and look at my picture," he said. "I'd like to know what you think of it."

The request was one which they all made of one another, and no one ever thought of refusing. Clutton

"People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise. Besides, what's the good of criticism? What does it

"No. The only reason that one paints is that one can't help it. it's a function like any of the other functions of

the body, only comparatively few people have got it. One paints for oneself: otherwise one would commit

suicide. Just think of it, you spend God knows how long trying to get something on to canvas, putting the

sweat of your soul into it, and what is the result? Ten to one it will be refused at the Salon; if it's accepted,

people glance at it for ten seconds as they pass; if you're lucky some ignorant fool will buy it and put it on his

walls and look at it as little as he looks at his diningroom table. Criticism has nothing to do with the artist. it

Clutton put his hands over his eyes so that he might concentrate his mind on what he wanted to say.

"The artist gets a peculiar sensation from something he sees, and is impelled to express it and, he doesn't

know why, he can only express his feeling by lines and colours. It's like a musician; he'll read a line or two,

and a certain combination of notes presents itself to him: he doesn't know why such and such words call forth

in him such and such notes; they just do. And I'll tell you another reason why criticism is meaningless: a great

painter forces the world to see nature as he sees it; but in the next generation another painter sees the world in

another way, and then the public judges him not by himself but by his predecessor. So the Barbizon people

taught our fathers to look at trees in a certain manner, and when Monet came along and painted differently,

people said: But trees aren't like that. It never struck them that trees are exactly how a painter chooses to see

them. We paint from within outwardsif we force our vision on the world it calls us great painters; if we

don't it ignores us; but we are the same. We don't attach any meaning to greatness or to smallness. What

happens to our work afterwards is unimportant; we have got all we could out of it while we were doing it."

There was a pause while Clutton with voracious appetite devoured the food that was set before him. Philip,

smoking a cheap cigar, observed him closely. The ruggedness of the head, which looked as though it were

carved from a stone refractory to the sculptor's chisel, the rough mane of dark hair, the great nose, and the

massive bones of the jaw, suggested a man of strength; and yet Philip wondered whether perhaps the mask

conculed a strange weakness. Clutton's refusal to show his work might be sheer vanity: he could not bear the

thought of anyone's criticism, and he would not expose himself to the chance of a refusal from the Salon; he

wanted to be received as a master and would not risk comparisons with other work which might force him to

diminish his own opinion of himself. During the eighteen months Philip had known him Clutton had grown

more harsh and bitter; though he would not come out into the open and compete with his fellows, he was

indignant with the facile success of those who did. He had no patience with Lawson, and the pair were no

longer on the intimate terms upon which they had been when Philip first knew them.

"Lawson's all right," he said contemptuously, "he'll go back to England, become a fashionable portrait

painter, urn ten thousand a year and be an A. R. A. before he's forty. Portraits done by hand for the nobility

Philip, too, looked into the future, and he saw Clutton in twenty years, bitter, lonely, savage, and unknown;

still in Paris, for the life there had got into his bones, ruling a small _cenacle_ with a savage tongue, at war

with himself and the world, producing little in his increasing passion for a perfection he could not reach; and

perhaps sinking at last into drunkenness. Of late Philip had been captivated by an idea that since one had only

one life it was important to make a success of it, but he did not count success by the acquiring of money or

the achieving of fame; he did not quite know yet what he meant by it, perhaps variety of experience and the

making the most of his abilities. It was plain anyway that the life which Clutton seemed destined to was

failure. Its only justification would be the painting of imperishable masterpieces. He recollected Cronshaw's

whimsical metaphor of the Persian carpet; he had thought of it often; but Cronshaw with his faunlike

humour had refused to make his meaning clear: he repeated that it had none unless one discovered it for

oneself. It was this desire to make a success of life which was at the bottom of Philip's uncertainty about

"D'you remember my telling you about that chap I met in Brittany? I saw him the other day here. He's just off

to Tahiti. He was broke to the world. He was a _brasseur d'affaires_, a stockbroker I suppose you call it in

English; and he had a wife and family, and he was earning a large income. He chucked it all to become a

painter. He just went off and settled down in Brittany and began to paint. He hadn't got any money and did

"Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up being an artist. They've got nothing to

do with one another. You hear of men painting potboilers to keep an aged motherwell, it shows they're

excellent sons, but it's no excuse for bad work. They're only tradesmen. An artist would let his mother go to

the workhouse. There's a writer I know over here who told me that his wife died in childbirth. He was in love

with her and he was mad with grief, but as he sat at the bedside watching her die he found himself making

mental notes of how she looked and what she said and the things he was feeling. Gentlemanly, wasn't it?"

"No, not yet, he paints just like Pissarro. He hasn't found himself, but he's got a sense of colour and a sense of

decoration. But that isn't the question. it's the feeling, and that he's got. He's behaved like a perfect cad to his

wife and children, he's always behaving like a perfect cad; the way he treats the people who've helped

himand sometimes he's been saved from starvation merely by the kindness of his friendsis simply

Philip pondered over the man who was willing to sacrifice everything, comfort, home, money, love, honour,

duty, for the sake of getting on to canvas with paint the emotion which the world gave him. it was

Thinking of Cronshaw recalled to him the fact that he had not seen him for a week, and so, when Clutton left

him, he wandered along to the cafe in which he was certain to find the writer. During the first few months of

his stay in Paris Philip had accepted as gospel all that Cronshaw said, but Philip had a practical outlook and

he grew impatient with the theories which resulted in no action. Cronshaw's slim bundle of poetry did not

seem a substantial result for a life which was sordid. Philip could not wrench out of his nature the instincts of

the middleclass from which he came; and the penury, the hack work which Cronshaw did to keep body and

soul together, the monotony of existence between the slovenly attic and the cafe table, jarred with his

respectability. Cronshaw was astute enough to know that the young man disapproved of him, and he attacked

"You're a tradesman," he told Philip, "you want to invest life in consols so that it shall bring you in a safe

three per cent. I'm a spendthrift, I run through my capital. I shall spend my last penny with my last heartbeat."

The metaphor irritated Philip, because it assumed for the speaker a romantic attitude and cast a slur upon the

position which Philip instinctively felt had more to say for it than he could think of at the moment.

But this evening Philip, undecided, wanted to talk about himself. Fortunately it was late already and

Cronshaw's pile of saucers on the table, each indicating a drink, suggested that he was prepared to take an

"I wonder if you'd give me some advice," said Philip suddenly. "You won't take it, will you?" Philip shrugged

"I don't believe I shall ever do much good as a painter. I don't see any use in being secondrate. I'm thinking

A change Came over Cronshaw's placid, round face. The corners of the mouth were suddenly depressed, the

"This?" he cried, looking round the cafe in which they sat. His voice really trembled a little.

Philip stared at him with astonishment, but the sight of emotion always made him feel shy, and he dropped

his eyes. He knew that he was looking upon the tragedy of failure. There was silence. Philip thought that

Cronshaw was looking upon his own life; and perhaps he considered his youth with its bright hopes and the

disappointments which wore out the radiancy; the wretched monotony of pleasure, and the black future.

Philip's eyes rested on the little pile of saucers, and he knew that Cronshaw's were on them too.

It seemed to Philip, brooding over these matters, that in the true painters, writers, musicians, there was a

power which drove them to such complete absorption in their work as to make it inevitable for them to

subordinate life to art. Succumbing to an influence they never realised, they were merely dupes of the instinct

that possessed them, and life slipped through their fingers unlived. But he had a feeling that life was to be

lived rather than portrayed, and he wanted to search out the various experiences of it and wring from each

moment all the emotion that it offered. He made up his mind at length to take a certain step and abide by the

result, and, having made up his mind, he determined to take the step at once. Luckily enough the next

morning was one of Foinet's days, and he resolved to ask him pointblank whether it was worth his while to

go on with the study of art. He had never forgotten the master's brutal advice to Fanny Price. It had been

sound. Philip could never get Fanny entirely out of his head. The studio seemed strange without her, and now

and then the gesture of one of the women working there or the tone of a voice would give him a sudden start,

reminding him of her: her presence was more noticuble now she was dead than it had ever been during her

life; and he often dreamed of her at night, waking with a cry of terror. it was horrible to think of all the

Philip knew that on the days Foinet came to the studio he lunched at a little restaurant in the Rue d'Odessa,

and he hurried his own meal so that he could go and wait outside till the painter came out. Philip walked up

and down the crowded street and at last saw Monsieur Foinet walking, with bent head, towards him; Philip

"I've been working here nearly two years now under you. I wanted to ask you to tell me frankly if you think it

Philip's voice was trembling a little. Foinet walked on without looking up. Philip, watching his face, saw no

"All my friends know they have talent, but I am aware some of them are mistaken."

Philip had nothing to say. He walked silently by the master's side. He felt horribly sick. It had never struck

him that Foinet would wish to see his things there and then; he meant, so that he might have time to prepare

himself, to ask him if he would mind coming at some future date or whether he might bring them to Foinet's

studio. He was trembling with anxiety. In his heart he hoped that Foinet would look at his picture, and that

rare smile would come into his face, and he would shake Philip's hand and say: "_Pas mal_. Go on, my lad.

You have talent, real talent." Philip's heart swelled at the thought. It was such a relief, such a joy! Now he

could go on with courage; and what did hardship matter, privation, and disappointment, if he arrived at last?

He had worked very hard, it would be too cruel if all that industry were futile. And then with a start he

remembered that he had heard Fanny Price say just that. They arrived at the house, and Philip was seized with

fear. If he had dared he would have asked Foinet to go away. He did not want to know the truth. They went in

and the _concierge_ handed him a letter as they passed. He glanced at the envelope and recognised his uncle's

handwriting. Foinet followed him up the stairs. Philip could think of nothing to say; Foinet was mute, and the

silence got on his nerves. The professor sat down; and Philip without a word placed before him the picture

which the Salon had rejected; Foinet nodded but did not speak; then Philip showed him the two portraits he

had made of Ruth Chalice, two or three landscapes which he had painted at Moret, and a number of sketches.

"Very little," answered Philip, with a sudden feeling of cold at his heart. "Not enough to live on."

"There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood. I have nothing but

contempt for the people who despise money. They are hypocrites or fools. Money is like a sixth sense

without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income half the

possibilities of life are shut off. The only thing to be careful about is that you do not pay more than a shilling

for the shilling you earn. You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never

felt the iron of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. it exposes you to endless

humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a cancer. It is not wealth one asks for, but just

enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank, and independent. I pity with all

my heart the artist, whether he writes or paints, who is entirely dependent for subsistence upon his art."

"You have a certain manual dexterity. With hard work and perseverance there is no reason why you should

not become a careful, not incompetent painter. You would find hundreds who painted worse than you,

hundreds who painted as well. I see no talent in anything you have shown me. I see industry and intelligence.

"I'm very grateful to you for having taken so much trouble. I can't thank you enough."

Monsieur Foinet got up and made as if to go, but he changed his mind and, stopping, put his hand on Philip's

"But if you were to ask me my advice, I should say: take your courage in both hands and try your luck at

something else. It sounds very hard, but let me tell you this: I would give all I have in the world if someone

Philip looked up at him with surprise. The master forced his lips into a smile, but his eyes remained grave and

"It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper."

He gave a little laugh as he said the last words and quickly walked out of the room.

Philip mechanically took up the letter from his uncle. The sight of his handwriting made him anxious, for it

was his aunt who always wrote to him. She had been ill for the last three months, and he had offered to go

over to England and see her; but she, fearing it would interfere with his work, had refused. She did not want

him to put himself to inconvenience; she said she would wait till August and then she hoped he would come

and stay at the vicarage for two or three weeks. If by any chance she grew worse she would let him know,

since she did not wish to die without seeing him again. If his uncle wrote to him it must be because she was

I regret to inform you that your dear Aunt departed this life early this morning. She died very suddenly, but

quite peacefully. The change for the worse was so rapid that we had no time to send for you. She was fully

prepared for the end and entered into rest with the complete assurance of a blessed resurrection and with

resignation to the divine will of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Your Aunt would have liked you to be present

at the funeral so I trust you will come as soon as you can. There is naturally a great deal of work thrown upon

my shoulders and I am very much upset. I trust that you will be able to do everything for me. Your

NEXT day Philip arrived at Blackstable. Since the death of his mother he had never lost anyone closely

connected with him; his aunt's death shocked him and filled him also with a curious fear; he felt for the first

time his own mortality. He could not realise what life would be for his uncle without the constant

companionship of the woman who had loved and tended him for forty years. He expected to find him broken

down with hopeless grief. He dreaded the first meeting; he knew that he could say nothing which would be of

He entered the vicarage by the sidedoor and went into the diningroom. Uncle William was reading the

Philip was prepared to give way to his emotion, but the matteroffact reception startled him. His uncle,

"There's a very nice little paragraph about her in _The Blackstable Times_," he said.

Philip nodded and together they walked upstairs. Aunt Louisa was lying in the middle of the large bed, with

He sank on his knees, and because it was expected of him Philip followed his example. He looked at the little

shrivelled face. He was only conscious of one emotion: what a wasted life! In a minute Mr. Carey gave a

"That's from the Squire," he said. He spoke in a low voice as though he were in church, but one felt that, as a

They went down again to the diningroom. The drawn blinds gave a lugubrious aspect. The Vicar sat at the

end of the table at which his wife had always sat and poured out the tea with ceremony. Philip could not help

feeling that neither of them should have been able to eat anything, but when he saw that his uncle's appetite

was unimpaired he fell to with his usual heartiness. They did not speak for a while. Philip set himself to eat

"Things have changed a great deal since I was a curate," said the Vicar presently. "In my young days the

moumers used always to be given a pair of black gloves and a piece of black silk for their hats. Poor Louisa

used to make the silk into dresses. She always said that twelve funerals gave her a new dress."

Then he told Philip who had sent wreaths; there were twentyfour of them already; when Mrs. Rawlingson,

wife of the Vicar at Feme, had died she had had thirtytwo; but probably a good many more would come the

next day; the funeral would start at eleven o'clock from the vicarage, and they should beat Mrs. Rawlingson

"I shall take the funeral myself. I promised Louisa I would never let anyone else bury her."

Philip looked at his uncle with disapproval when he took a second piece of cake. Under the circumstances he

"Mary Ann certainly makes capital cakes. I'm afraid no one else will make such good ones."

Mary Ann had been at the vicarage ever since he could remember. She never forgot his birthday, but made a

point always of sending him a trifle, absurd but touching. He had a real affection for her.

"Yes," answered Mr. Carey. "I didn't think it would do to have a single woman in the house."

"Yes, I think she is. But she's been rather troublesome lately, she's been inclined to take too much on herself,

"It wouldn't be quite respectful to smoke in the house so long as your poor Aunt Louisa is upstairs."

Josiah Graves, churchwarden and manager of the bank, came back to dinner at the vicarage after the funeral.

The blinds had been drawn up, and Philip, against his will, felt a curious sensation of relief. The body in the

house had made him uncomfortable: in life the poor woman had been all that was kind and gentle; and yet,

when she lay upstairs in her bedroom, cold and stark, it seemed as though she cast upon the survivors a

He found himself alone for a minute or two in the diningroom with the churchwarden.

"I hope you'll be able to stay with your uncle a while," he said. "I don't think he ought to be left alone just

"I haven't made any plans," answered Philip. "if he wants me I shall be very pleased to stay."

By way of cheering the bereaved husband the churchwarden during dinner talked of a recent fire at

"That won't make any difference," said the Vicar. "They'll get as much money as they want to rebuild. Chapel

Holden was the dissenting minister, and, though for Christ's sake who died for both of them, Mr. Carey

"I think it was very pushing," he remarked. "There were fortyone wreaths. Yours was beautiful. Philip and I

He had noticed with satisfaction that it was larger than anyone's else. it had looked very well. They began to

discuss the people who attended the funeral. Shops had been closed for it, and the churchwarden took out of

his pocket the notice which had been printed: _Owing to the funeral of Mrs. Carey this establishment will not

"I think it was very nice of them to close," said the Vicar. "Poor Louisa would have appreciated that."

Philip ate his dinner. Mary Ann had treated the day as Sunday, and they had roast chicken and a gooseberry

"Yes, I have. I thought of a plain stone cross. Louisa was always against ostentation."

"I don't think one can do much better than a cross. If you're thinking of a text, what do you say to: _With

The Vicar pursed his lips. It was just like Bismarck to try and settle everything himself. He did not like that

"I don't think I should put that. I much prefer: _The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away_."

The Vicar answered with some acidity, and Mr. Graves replied in a tone which the widower thought too

authoritative for the occasion. Things were going rather far if he could not choose his own text for his own

wife's tombstone. There was a pause, and then the conversation drifted to parish matters. Philip went into the

garden to smoke his pipe. He sat on a bench, and suddenly began to laugh hysterically.

A few days later his uncle expressed the hope that he would spend the next few weeks at Blackstable.

Philip did not reply. He had thought much of what Foinet said to him, but he was still so undecided that he

did not wish to speak of the future. There would be something fine in giving up art because he was convinced

that he could not excel; but unfortunately it would seem so only to himself: to others it would be an

admission of defeat, and he did not want to confess that he was beaten. He was an obstinate fellow, and the

suspicion that his talent did not lie in one direction made him inclined to force circumstances and aim

notwithstanding precisely in that direction. He could not bear that his friends should laugh at him. This might

have prevented him from ever taking the definite step of abandoning the study of painting, but the different

environment made him on a sudden see things differently. Like many another he discovered that crossing the

Channel makes things which had seemed important singularly futile. The life which had been so charming

that he could not bear to leave it now seemed inept; he was seized with a distaste for the cafes, the restaurants

with their illcooked food, the shabby way in which they all lived. He did not care any more what his friends

thought about him: Cronshaw with his rhetoric, Mrs. Otter with her respectability, Ruth Chalice with her

affectations, Lawson and Clutton with their quarrels; he felt a revulsion from them all. He wrote to Lawson

and asked him to send over all his belongings. A week later they arrived. When he unpacked his Canvases he

found himself able to examine his work without emotion. He noticed the fact with interest. His uncle was

anxious to see his pictures. Though he had so greatly disapproved of Philip's desire to go to Paris, he accepted

the situation now with equanimity. He was interested in the life of students and constantly put Philip

questions about it. He was in fact a little proud of him because he was a painter, and when people were

present made attempts to draw him out. He looked eagerly at the studies of models which Philip showed him.

Philip was amused at his uncle's vanity. It was clear that he was dying to have his portrait painted. To get

something for nothing was a chance not to be missed. For two or three days he threw out little hints. He

reproached Philip for laziness, asked him when he was going to start work, and finally began telling everyone

he met that Philip was going to paint him. At last there came a rainy day, and after breakfast Mr. Carey said

"Now, what d'you say to starting on my portrait this morning?" Philip put down the book he was reading and

"I don't think there's much object in being a secondrate painter, and I came to the conclusion that I should

"You surprise me. Before you went to Paris you were quite certain that you were a genius."

"I should have thought now you'd taken up a profession you'd have the pride to stick to it. It seems to me that

Philip was a little annoyed that his uncle did not even see how truly heroic his determination was.

"'A rolling stone gathers no moss,'" proceeded the clergyman. Philip hated that proverb above all, and it

seemed to him perfectly meaningless. His uncle had repeated it often during the arguments which had

preceded his departure from business. Apparently it recalled that occasion to his guardian.

"You're no longer a boy, you know; you must begin to think of settling down. First you insist on becoming a

chartered accountant, and then you get tired of that and you want to become a painter. And now if you please

He hesitated for a moment to consider what defects of character exactly it indicated, and Philip finished the

The Vicar looked up at his nephew quickly to see whether he was laughing at him. Philip's face was serious,

but there was a twinkle in his eyes which irritated him. Philip should really be getting more serious. He felt it

"Your money matters have nothing to do with me now. You're your own master; but I think you should

remember that your money won't last for ever, and the unlucky deformity you have doesn't exactly make it

Philip knew by now that whenever anyone was angry with him his first thought was to say something about

his clubfoot. His estimate of the human race was determined by the fact that scarcely anyone failed to resist

the temptation. But he had trained himself not to show any sign that the reminder wounded him. He had even

acquired control over the blushing which in his boyhood had been one of his torments.

"As you justly remark," he answered, "my money matters have nothing to do with you and I am my own

"At all events you will do me the justice to acknowledge that I was justified in my opposition when you made

"I don't know so much about that. I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat

than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice. I've had my fling, and I don't mind settling down

Philip was not prepared for the question, since in fact he had not made up his mind. He had thought of a

"The most suitable thing you could do is to enter your father's profession and become a doctor."

He had thought of doctoring among other things, chiefly because it was an occupation which seemed to give

a good deal of personal freedom, and his experience of life in an office had made him determine never to

have anything more to do with one; his answer to the Vicar slipped out almost unawares, because it was in

the nature of a repartee. It amused him to make up his mind in that accidental way, and he resolved then and

"I don't know about that. I had a very jolly two years, and I learned one or two useful things."

Philip reflected for an instant, and his answer was not devoid of a gentle desire to annoy.

"I learned to look at hands, which I'd never looked at before. And instead of just looking at houses and trees I

learned to look at houses and trees against the sky. And I learned also that shadows are not black but

"I suppose you think you're very clever. I think your flippancy is quite inane."

TAKING the paper with him Mr. Carey retired to his study. Philip changed his chair for that in which his

uncle had been sitting (it was the only comfortable one in the room), and looked out of the window at the

pouring rain. Even in that sad weather there was something restful about the green fields that stretched to the

horizon. There was an intimate charm in the landscape which he did not remember ever to have noticed

before. Two years in France had opened his eyes to the beauty of his own countryside.

He thought with a smile of his uncle's remark. It was lucky that the turn of his mind tended to flippancy. He

had begun to realise what a great loss he had sustained in the death of his father and mother. That was one of

the differences in his life which prevented him from seeing things in the same way as other people. The love

of parents for their children is the only emotion which is quite disinterested. Among strangers he had grown

up as best he could, but he had seldom been used with patience or forbearance. He prided himself on his

selfcontrol. It had been whipped into him by the mockery of his fellows. Then they called him cynical and

callous. He had acquired calmness of demeanour and under most circumstances an unruffled exterior, so that

now he could not show his feelings. People told him he was unemotional; but he knew that he was at the

mercy of his emotions: an accidental kindness touched him so much that sometimes he did not venture to

speak in order not to betray the unsteadiness of his voice. He remembered the bitterness of his life at school,

the humiliation which he had endured, the banter which had made him morbidly afraid of making himself

ridiculous; and he remembered the loneliness he had felt since, faced with the world, the disillusion and the

disappointment caused by the difference between what it promised to his active imagination and what it gave.

But notwithstanding he was able to look at himself from the outside and smile with amusement.

His mind went back to the answer he had given his uncle when he asked him what he had learnt in Paris. He

had learnt a good deal more than he told him. A conversation with Cronshaw had stuck in his memory, and

When Philip ceased to believe in Christianity he felt that a great weight was taken from his shoulders; casting

off the responsibility which weighed down every action, when every action was infinitely important for the

welfare of his immortal soul, he experienced a vivid sense of liberty. But he knew now that this was an

illusion. When he put away the religion in which he had been brought up, he had kept unimpaired the

morality which was part and parcel of it. He made up his mind therefore to think things out for himself. He

determined to be swayed by no prejudices. He swept away the virtues and the vices, the established laws of

good and evil, with the idea of finding out the rules of life for himself. He did not know whether rules were

necessary at all. That was one of the things he wanted to discover. Clearly much that seemed valid seemed so

only because he had been taught it from his earliest youth. He had read a number of books, but they did not

help him much, for they were based on the morality of Christianity; and even the writers who emphasised the

fact that they did not believe in it were never satisfied till they had framed a system of ethics in accordance

with that of the Sermon on the Mount. It seemed hardly worth while to read a long volume in order to learn

that you ought to behave exactly like everybody else. Philip wanted to find out how he ought to behave, and

he thought he could prevent himself from being influenced by the opinions that surrounded him. But

meanwhile he had to go on living, and, until he formed a theory of conduct, he made himself a provisional

He thought the best thing he had gained in Paris was a complete liberty of spirit, and he felt himself at last

absolutely free. In a desultory way he had read a good deal of philosophy, and he looked forward with delight

to the leisure of the next few months. He began to read at haphazard. He entered upon each system with a

little thrill of excitement, expecting to find in each some guide by which he could rule his conduct; he felt

himself like a traveller in unknown countries and as he pushed forward the enterprise fascinated him; he read

emotionally, as other men read pure literature, and his heart leaped as he discovered in noble words what

himself had obscurely felt. His mind was concrete and moved with difficulty in regions of the abstract; but,

even when he could not follow the reasoning, it gave him a curious pleasure to follow the tortuosities of

thoughts that threaded their nimble way on the edge of the incomprehensible. Sometimes great philosophers

seemed to have nothing to say to him, but at others he recognised a mind with which he felt himself at home.

He was like the explorer in Central Africa who comes suddenly upon wide uplands, with great trees in them

and stretches of meadow, so that he might fancy himself in an English park. He delighted in the robust

common sense of Thomas Hobbes; Spinoza filled him with awe, he had never before come in contact with a

mind so noble, so unapproachable and austere; it reminded him of that statue by Rodin, _L'Age d'Airain_,

which he passionately admired; and then there was Hume: the scepticism of that charming philosopher

touched a kindred note in Philip; and, revelling in the lucid style which seemed able to put complicated

thought into simple words, musical and measured, he read as he might have read a novel, a smile of pleasure

on his lips. But in none could he find exactly what he wanted. He had read somewhere that every man was

born a Platonist, an Aristotelian, a Stoic, or an Epicurean; and the history of George Henry Lewes (besides

telling you that philosophy was all moonshine) was there to show that the thought of each philospher was

inseparably connected with the man he was. When you knew that you could guess to a great extent the

philosophy he wrote. It looked as though you did not act in a certain way because you thought in a certain

way, but rather that you thought in a certain way because you were made in a certain way. Truth had nothing

to do with it. There was no such thing as truth. Each man was his own philosopher, and the elaborate systems

The thing then was to discover what one was and one's system of philosophy would devise itself. It seemed to

Philip that there were three things to find out: man's relation to the world he lives in, man's relation with the

men among whom he lives, and finally man's relation to himself. He made an elaborate plan of study.

The advantage of living abroad is that, coming in contact with the manners and customs of the people among

whom you live, you observe them from the outside and see that they have not the necessity which those who

practise them believe. You cannot fail to discover that the beliefs which to you are selfevident to the

foreigner are absurd. The year in Germany, the long stay in Paris, had prepared Philip to receive the sceptical

teaching which came to him now with such a feeling of relief. He saw that nothing was good and nothing was

evil; things were merely adapted to an end. He read _The Origin of Species_. It seemed to offer an

explanation of much that troubled him. He was like an explorer now who has reasoned that certain natural

features must present themselves, and, beating up a broad river, finds here the tributary that he expected,

there the fertile, populated plains, and further on the mountains. When some great discovery is made the

world is surprised afterwards that it was not accepted at once, and even on those who acknowledge its truth

the effect is unimportant. The first readers of _The Origin of Species_ accepted it with their reason; but their

emotions, which are the ground of conduct, were untouched. Philip was born a generation after this great

book was published, and much that horrified its contemporaries had passed into the feeling of the time, so

that he was able to accept it with a joyful heart. He was intensely moved by the grandeur of the struggle for

life, and the ethical rule which it suggested seemed to fit in with his predispositions. He said to himself that

might was right. Society stood on one side, an organism with its own laws of growth and selfpreservation,

while the individual stood on the other. The actions which were to the advantage of society it termed virtuous

and those which were not it called vicious. Good and evil meant nothing more than that. Sin was a prejudice

from which the free man should rid himself. Society had three arms in its contest with the individual, laws,

public opinion, and conscience: the first two could be met by guile, guile is the only weapon of the weak

against the strong: common opinion put the matter well when it stated that sin consisted in being found out;

but conscience was the traitor within the gates; it fought in each heart the battle of society, and caused the

individual to throw himself, a wanton sacrifice, to the prosperity of his enemy. For it was clear that the two

were irreconcilable, the state and the individual conscious of himself. _That_ uses the individual for its own

ends, trampling upon him if he thwarts it, rewarding him with medals, pensions, honours, when he serves it

faithfully; _this_, strong only in his independence, threads his way through the state, for convenience' sake,

paying in money or service for certain benefits, but with no sense of obligation; and, indifferent to the

rewards, asks only to be left alone. He is the independent traveller, who uses Cook's tickets because they save

trouble, but looks with goodhumoured contempt on the personally conducted parties. The free man can do

no wrong. He does everything he likesif he can. His power is the only measure of his morality. He

recognises the laws of the state and he can break them without sense of sin, but if he is punished he accepts

But if for the individual there was no right and no wrong, then it seemed to Philip that conscience lost its

power. It was with a cry of triumph that he seized the knave and flung him from his breast. But he was no

nearer to the meaning of life than he had been before. Why the world was there and what men had come into

existence for at all was as inexplicable as ever. Surely there must be some reason. He thought of Cronshaw's

parable of the Persian carpet. He offered it as a solution of the riddle, and mysteriously he stated that it was

And so, on the last day of September, eager to put into practice all these new theories of life, Philip, with

sixteen hundred pounds and his clubfoot, set out for the second time to London to make his third start in

THE examination Philip had passed before he was articled to a chartered accountant was sufficient

qualification for him to enter a medical school. He chose St. Luke's because his father had been a student

there, and before the end of the summer session had gone up to London for a day in order to see the secretary.

He got a list of rooms from him, and took lodgings in a dingy house which had the advantage of being within

"You'll have to arrange about a part to dissect," the secretary told him. "You'd better start on a leg; they

Philip found that his first lecture was in anatomy, at eleven, and about half past ten he limped across the road,

and a little nervously made his way to the Medical School. Just inside the door a number of notices were

pinned up, lists of lectures, football fixtures, and the like; and these he looked at idly, trying to seem at his

ease. Young men and boys dribbled in and looked for letters in the rack, chatted with one another, and passed

downstairs to the basement, in which was the student's readingroom. Philip saw several fellows with a

desultory, timid look dawdling around, and surmised that, like himself, they were there for the first time.

When he had exhausted the notices he saw a glass door which led into what was apparently a museum, and

having still twenty minutes to spare he walked in. It was a collection of pathological specimens. Presently a

They walked out of the museum into a long, dark corridor, with the walls painted in two shades of red, and

other youths walking along suggested the way to them. They came to a door marked Anatomy Theatre. Philip

found that there were a good many people already there. The seats were arranged in tiers, and just as Philip

entered an attendant came in, put a glass of water on the table in the well of the lectureroom and then

brought in a pelvis and two thighbones, right and left. More men entered and took their seats and by eleven

the theatre was fairly full. There were about sixty students. For the most part they were a good deal younger

than Philip, smoothfaced boys of eighteen, but there were a few who were older than he: he noticed one tall

man, with a fierce red moustache, who might have been thirty; another little fellow with black hair, only a

year or two younger; and there was one man with spectacles and a beard which was quite gray.

The lecturer came in, Mr. Cameron, a handsome man with white hair and cleancut features. He called out

the long list of names. Then he made a little speech. He spoke in a pleasant voice, with wellchosen words,

and he seemed to take a discreet pleasure in their careful arrangement. He suggested one or two books which

they might buy and advised the purchase of a skeleton. He spoke of anatomy with enthusiasm: it was

essential to the study of surgery; a knowledge of it added to the appreciation of art. Philip pricked up his ears.

He heard later that Mr. Cameron lectured also to the students at the Royal Academy. He had lived many years

in Japan, with a post at the University of Tokyo, and he flattered himself on his appreciation of the beautiful.

"You will have to learn many tedious things," he finished, with an indulgent smile, "which you will forget the

moment you have passed your final examination, but in anatomy it is better to have learned and lost than

He took up the pelvis which was lying on the table and began to describe it. He spoke well and clearly.

At the end of the lecture the boy who had spoken to Philip in the pathological museum and sat next to him in

the theatre suggested that they should go to the dissectingroom. Philip and he walked along the corridor

again, and an attendant told them where it was. As soon as they entered Philip understood what the acrid

smell was which he had noticed in the passage. He lit a pipe. The attendant gave a short laugh.

The dissectingroom was a large apartment painted like the corridors, the upper part a rich salmon and the

dado a dark terracotta. At regular intervals down the long sides of the room, at right angles with the wall,

were iron slabs, grooved like meatdishes; and on each lay a body. Most of them were men. They were very

dark from the preservative in which they had been kept, and the skin had almost the look of leather. They

were extremely emaciated. The attendant took Philip up to one of the slabs. A youth was standing by it.

"They generally always like a male better," said the attendant. "A female's liable to have a lot of fat about

Philip looked at the body. The arms and legs were so thin that there was no shape in them, and the ribs stood

out so that the skin over them was tense. A man of about fortyfive with a thin, gray beard, and on his skull

scanty, colourless hair: the eyes were closed and the lower jaw sunken. Philip could not feel that this had ever

been a man, and yet in the row of them there was something terrible and ghastly.

"I thought I'd start at two," said the young man who was dissecting with Philip.

He had bought the day before the case of instruments which was needful, and now he was given a locker. He

looked at the boy who had accompanied him into the dissectingroom and saw that he was white.

They walked along the corridor till they came to the entrance of the school. Philip remembered Fanny Price.

She was the first dead person he had ever seen, and he remembered how strangely it had affected him. There

was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same

species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and

laughed. There was something horrible about the dead, and you could imagine that they might cast an evil

They went down into the basement, where there was a dark room fitted up as a restaurant, and here the

students were able to get the same sort of fare as they might have at an aerated bread shop. While they ate

(Philip had a scone and butter and a cup of chocolate), he discovered that his companion was called

Dunsford. He was a freshcomplexioned lad, with pleasant blue eyes and curly, dark hair, largelimbed, slow

"I'm taking it too, but I shall take the F. R. C. S. afterwards. I'm going in for surgery."

Most of the students took the curriculum of the Conjoint Board of the College of Surgeons and the College of

Physicians; but the more ambitious or the more industrious added to this the longer studies which led to a

degree from the University of London. When Philip went to St. Luke's changes had recently been made in the

regulations, and the course took five years instead of four as it had done for those who registered before the

autumn of 1892. Dunsford was well up in his plans and told Philip the usual course of events. The "first

conjoint" examination consisted of biology, anatomy, and chemistry; but it could be taken in sections, and

most fellows took their biology three months after entering the school. This science had been recently added

to the list of subjects upon which the student was obliged to inform himself, but the amount of knowledge

When Philip went back to the dissectingroom, he was a few minutes late, since he had forgotten to buy the

loose sleeves which they wore to protect their shirts, and he found a number of men already working. His

partner had started on the minute and was busy dissecting out cutaneous nerves. Two others were engaged on

He took the book, open at a diagram of the dissected part, and looked at what they had to find.

"Oh, I've done a good deal of dissecting before, animals, you know, for the Pre Sci."

There was a certain amount of conversation over the dissectingtable, partly about the work, partly about the

prospects of the football season, the demonstrators, and the lectures. Philip felt himself a great deal older than

the others. They were raw schoolboys. But age is a matter of knowledge rather than of years; and Newson,

the active young man who was dissecting with him, was very much at home with his subject. He was perhaps

not sorry to show off, and he explained very fully to Philip what he was about. Philip, notwithstanding his

hidden stores of wisdom, listened meekly. Then Philip took up the scalpel and the tweezers and began

"Ripping to have him so thin," said Newson, wiping his hands. "The blighter can't have had anything to eat

"Oh, I don't know, any old thing, starvation chiefly, I suppose.... I say, look out, don't cut that artery."

"It's all very fine to say, don't cut that artery," remarked one of the men working on the opposite leg. "Silly

"Arteries always are in the wrong place," said Newson. "The normal's the one thing you practically never get.

"If you cut yourself," answered Newson, full of information, "wash it at once with antiseptic. It's the one

thing you've got to be careful about. There was a chap here last year who gave himself only a prick, and he

Philip's back ached by the time it was proper to have tea, and his luncheon had been so light that he was quite

ready for it. His hands smelt of that peculiar odour which he had first noticed that morning in the corridor. He

"Oh, you'll get used to that," said Newson. "When you don't have the good old dissectingroom stink about,

"I'm not going to let it spoil my appetite," said Philip, as he followed up the muffin with a piece of cake.

PHILIP'S ideas of the life of medical students, like those of the public at large, were founded on the pictures

which Charles Dickens drew in the middle of the nineteenth century. He Soon discovered that Bob Sawyer, if

It is a mixed lot which enters upon the medical profession, and naturally there are some who are lazy and

reckless. They think it is an easy life, idle away a couple of years; and then, because their funds come to an

end or because angry parents refuse any longer to support them, drift away from the hospital. Others find the

examinations too hard for them; one failure after another robs them of their nerve; and, panicstricken, they

forget as soon as they come into the forbidding buildings of the Conjoint Board the knowledge which before

they had so pat. They remain year after year, objects of goodhumoured scorn to younger men: some of them

crawl through the examination of the Apothecaries Hall; others become nonqualified assistants, a precarious

position in which they are at the mercy of their employer; their lot is poverty, drunkenness, and Heaven only

knows their end. But for the most part medical students are industrious young men of the middleclass with a

sufficient allowance to live in the respectable fashion they have been used to; many are the sons of doctors

who have already something of the professional manner; their career is mapped out: as soon as they are

qualified they propose to apply for a hospital appointment, after holding which (and perhaps a trip to the Far

East as a ship's doctor), they will join their father and spend the rest of their days in a country practice. One or

two are marked out as exceptionally brilliant: they will take the various prizes and scholarships which are

open each year to the deserving, get one appointment after another at the hospital, go on the staff, take a

consultingroom in Harley Street, and, specialising in one subject or another, become prosperous, eminent,

The medical profession is the only one which a man may enter at any age with some chance of making a

living. Among the men of Philip's year were three or four who were past their first youth: one had been in the

Navy, from which according to report he had been dismissed for drunkenness; he was a man of thirty, with a

red face, a brusque manner, and a loud voice. Another was a married man with two children, who had lost

money through a defaulting solicitor; he had a bowed look as if the world were too much for him; he went

about his work silently, and it was plain that he found it difficult at his age to commit facts to memory. His

Philip made himself at home in his tiny rooms. He arranged his books and hung on the walls such pictures

and sketches as he possessed. Above him, on the drawingroom floor, lived a fifthyear man called Griffiths;

but Philip saw little of him, partly because he was occupied chiefly in the wards and partly because he had

been to Oxford. Such of the students as had been to a university kept a good deal together: they used a variety

of means natural to the young in order to impress upon the less fortunate a proper sense of their inferiority;

the rest of the students found their Olympian serenity rather hard to bear. Griffiths was a tall fellow, with a

quantity of curly red hair and blue eyes, a white skin and a very red mouth; he was one of those fortunate

people whom everybody liked, for he had high spirits and a constant gaiety. He strummed a little on the piano

and sang comic songs with gusto; and evening after evening, while Philip was reading in his solitary room, he

heard the shouts and the uproarious laughter of Griffiths' friends above him. He thought of those delightful

evenings in Paris when they would sit in the studio, Lawson and he, Flanagan and Clutton, and talk of art and

morals, the loveaffairs of the present, and the fame of the future. He felt sick at heart. He found that it was

easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results. The worst of it was that the work seemed to

him very tedious. He had got out of the habit of being asked questions by demonstrators. His attention

wandered at lectures. Anatomy was a dreary science, a mere matter of learning by heart an enormous number

of facts; dissection bored him; he did not see the use of dissecting out laboriously nerves and arteries when

with much less trouble you could see in the diagrams of a book or in the specimens of the pathological

He made friends by chance, but not intimate friends, for he seemed to have nothing in particular to say to his

companions. When he tried to interest himself in their concerns, he felt that they found him patronising. He

was not of those who can talk of what moves them without caring whether it bores or not the people they talk

to. One man, hearing that he had studied art in Paris, and fancying himself on his taste, tried to discuss art

with him; but Philip was impatient of views which did not agree with his own; and, finding quickly that the

other's ideas were conventional, grew monosyllabic. Philip desired popularity but could bring himself to

make no advances to others. A fear of rebuff prevented him from affability, and he concealed his shyness,

which was still intense, under a frigid taciturnity. He was going through the same experience as he had done

at school, but here the freedom of the medical students' life made it possible for him to live a good deal by

It was through no effort of his that he became friendly with Dunsford, the freshcomplexioned, heavy lad

whose acquaintance he had made at the beginning of the session. Dunsford attached himself to Philip merely

because he was the first person he had known at St. Luke's. He had no friends in London, and on Saturday

nights he and Philip got into the habit of going together to the pit of a musichall or the gallery of a theatre.

He was stupid, but he was goodhumoured and never took offence; he always said the obvious thing, but

when Philip laughed at him merely smiled. He had a very sweet smile. Though Philip made him his butt, he

liked him; he was amused by his candour and delighted with his agreeable nature: Dunsford had the charm

They often went to have tea at a shop in Parliament Street, because Dunsford admired one of the young

women who waited. Philip did not find anything attractive in her. She was tall and thin, with narrow hips and

She had the small regular features, the blue eyes, and the broad low brow, which the Victorian painters, Lord

Leighton, Alma Tadema, and a hundred others, induced the world they lived in to accept as a type of Greek

beauty. She seemed to have a great deal of hair: it was arranged with peculiar elaboration and done over the

forehead in what she called an Alexandra fringe. She was very anaemic. Her thin lips were pale, and her skin

was delicate, of a faint green colour, without a touch of red even in the cheeks. She had very good teeth. She

took great pains to prevent her work from spoiling her hands, and they were small, thin, and white. She went

Dunsford, very shy with women, had never succeeded in getting into conversation with her; and he urged

Philip, to please him, made one or two remarks, but she answered with monosyllables. She had taken their

measure. They were boys, and she surmised they were students. She had no use for them. Dunsford noticed

that a man with sandy hair and a bristly moustache, who looked like a German, was favoured with her

attention whenever he came into the shop; and then it was only by calling her two or three times that they

could induce her to take their order. She used the clients whom she did not know with frigid insolence, and

when she was talking to a friend was perfectly indifferent to the calls of the hurried. She had the art of

treating women who desired refreshment with just that degree of impertinence which irritated them without

affording them an opportunity of complaining to the management. One day Dunsford told him her name was

It chanced that on this day the German was not there, and, when she brought the tea, Philip, smiling,

"I was referring to the nobleman with the sandy moustache. Has he left you for another?"

She left them, and, since for a minute or two there was no one to attend to, sat down and looked at the

"I'm really quite indifferent to the attitude of her vertebrae," replied Philip.

But he was piqued. It irritated him that when he tried to be agreeable with a woman she should take offence.

When he asked for the bill, he hazarded a remark which he meant to lead further.

"I'm here to take orders and to wait on customers. I've got nothing to say to them, and I don't want them to

She put down the slip of paper on which she had marked the sum they had to pay, and walked back to the

His influence with Dunsford was strong enough to get him to take their tea elsewhere, and Dunsford soon

found another young woman to flirt with. But the snub which the waitress had inflicted on him rankled. If she

had treated him with civility he would have been perfectly indifferent to her; but it was obvious that she

disliked him rather than otherwise, and his pride was wounded. He could not suppress a desire to be even

with her. He was impatient with himself because he had so petty a feeling, but three or four days' firmness,

during which he would not go to the shop, did not help him to surmount it; and he came to the conclusion that

it would be least trouble to see her. Having done so he would certainly cease to think of her. Pretexting an

appointment one afternoon, for he was not a little ashamed of his weakness, he left Dunsford and went

straight to the shop which he had vowed never again to enter. He saw the waitress the moment he came in

and sat down at one of her tables. He expected her to make some reference to the fact that he had not been

there for a week, but when she came up for his order she said nothing. He had heard her say to other

She gave no sign that she had ever seen him before. In order to see whether she had really forgotten him,

He wanted to use this as the beginning of a conversation, but he was strangely nervous and could think of

nothing to say. She gave him no opportunity, but at once went away. He had no chance of saying anything till

It was mortifying that he had been forced to prepare such a phrase as that. He could not make out why she

"It don't make much difference to me what the weather is, having to be in here all day."

There was an insolence in her tone that peculiarly irritated him. A sarcasm rose to his lips, but he forced

"I wish to God she'd say something really cheeky," he raged to himself, "so that I could report her and get her

HE COULD not get her out of his mind. He laughed angrily at his own foolishness: it was absurd to care

what an anaemic little waitress said to him; but he was strangely humiliated. Though no one knew of the

humiliation but Dunsford, and he had certainly forgotten, Philip felt that he could have no peace till he had

wiped it out. He thought over what he had better do. He made up his mind that he would go to the shop every

day; it was obvious that he had made a disagreeable impression on her, but he thought he had the wits to

eradicate it; he would take care not to say anything at which the most susceptible person could be offended.

All this he did, but it had no effect. When he went in and said goodevening she answered with the same

words, but when once he omitted to say it in order to see whether she would say it first, she said nothing at

all. He murmured in his heart an expression which though frequently applicable to members of the female sex

is not often used of them in polite society; but with an unmoved face he ordered his tea. He made up his mind

not to speak a word, and left the shop without his usual goodnight. He promised himself that he would not

go any more, but the next day at teatime he grew restless. He tried to think of other things, but he had no

The struggle with himself had taken a long time, and it was getting on for seven when he entered the shop.

His heart leaped in his bosom and he felt himself reddening. "I was detained. I couldn't come before."

But that seemed to satisfy her curiosity. She went away and, since at that late hour there was nobody else at

her tables, she immersed herself in a novelette. This was before the time of the sixpenny reprints. There was a

regular supply of inexpensive fiction written to order by poor hacks for the consumption of the illiterate.

Philip was elated; she had addressed him of her own accord; he saw the time approaching when his turn

would come and he would tell her exactly what he thought of her. It would be a great comfort to express the

immensity of his contempt. He looked at her. It was true that her profile was beautiful; it was extraordinary

how English girls of that class had so often a perfection of outline which took your breath away, but it was as

cold as marble; and the faint green of her delicate skin gave an impression of unhealthiness. All the

waitresses were dressed alike, in plain black dresses, with a white apron, cuffs, and a small cap. On a half

sheet of paper that he had in his pocket Philip made a sketch of her as she sat leaning over her book (she

outlined the words with her lips as she read), and left it on the table when he went away. It was an inspiration,

"I showed that drawing you left be'ind you last night to the manageress and she _was_ struck with it. Was it

"I saw that picture you done of Miss Rogers. It was the very image of her," she said.

That was the first time he had heard her name, and when he wanted his bill he called her by it.

"She wants you to do one of her. Don't you do it. If you once begin you'll have to go on, and they'll all be

wanting you to do them." Then without a pause, with peculiar inconsequence, she said: "Where's that young

Philip felt quite a peculiar sensation in his heart. He did not know what it was. Dunsford had jolly curling

hair, a fresh complexion, and a beautiful smile. Philip thought of these advantages with envy.

Philip repeated every word of the conversation to himself as he limped home. She was quite friendly with

him now. When opportunity arose he would offer to make a more finished sketch of her, he was sure she

would like that; her face was interesting, the profile was lovely, and there was something curiously

fascinating about the chlorotic colour. He tried to think what it was like; at first he thought of pea soup; but,

driving away that idea angrily, he thought of the petals of a yellow rosebud when you tore it to pieces before

It was silly of him to take offence at what she had said; it was doubtless his own fault; she had not meant to

make herself disagreeable: he ought to be accustomed by now to making at first sight a bad impression on

people. He was flattered at the success of his drawing; she looked upon him with more interest now that she

was aware of this small talent. He was restless next day. He thought of going to lunch at the teashop, but he

was certain there would be many people there then, and Mildred would not be able to talk to him. He had

managed before this to get out of having tea with Dunsford, and, punctually at half past four (he had looked

Mildred had her back turned to him. She was sitting down, talking to the German whom Philip had seen there

every day till a fortnight ago and since then had not seen at all. She was laughing at what he said. Philip

thought she had a common laugh, and it made him shudder. He called her, but she took no notice; he called

her again; then, growing angry, for he was impatient, he rapped the table loudly with his stick. She

"If you'll kindly give your order I'll get what you want. I can't stand talking all night."

He was furious with her. He had _The Star_ with him and read it elaborately when she brought the tea.

She wrote out the slip, placed it on the table, and went back to the German. Soon she was talking to him with

animation. He was a man of middle height, with the round head of his nation and a sallow face; his

moustache was large and bristling; he had on a tailcoat and gray trousers, and he wore a massive gold

watchchain. Philip thought the other girls looked from him to the pair at the table and exchanged significant

glances. He felt certain they were laughing at him, and his blood boiled. He detested Mildred now with all his

heart. He knew that the best thing he could do was to cease coming to the teashop, but he could not bear to

think that he had been worsted in the affair, and he devised a plan to show her that he despised her. Next day

he sat down at another table and ordered his tea from another waitress. Mildred's friend was there again and

she was talking to him. She paid no attention to Philip, and so when he went out he chose a moment when she

had to cross his path: as he passed he looked at her as though he had never seen her before. He repeated this

for three or four days. He expected that presently she would take the opportunity to say something to him; he

thought she would ask why he never came to one of her tables now, and he had prepared an answer charged

with all the loathing he felt for her. He knew it was absurd to trouble, but he could not help himself. She had

beaten him again. The German suddenly disappeared, but Philip still sat at other tables. She paid no attention

to him. Suddenly he realised that what he did was a matter of complete indifference to her; he could go on in

The day after he sat down in his old seat, and when she came up said goodevening as though he had not

ignored her for a week. His face was placid, but he could not prevent the mad beating of his heart. At that

time the musical comedy had lately leaped into public favour, and he was sure that Mildred would be

"I say," he said suddenly, "I wonder if you'd dine with me one night and come to _The Belle of New York_.

He added the last sentence in order to tempt her. He knew that when the girls went to the play it was either in

the pit, or, if some man took them, seldom to more expensive seats than the upper circle. Mildred's pale face

They made arrangements. Mildred lived with an aunt at Herne Hill. The play began at eight so they must dine

at seven. She proposed that he should meet her in the secondclass waitingroom at Victoria Station. She

showed no pleasure, but accepted the invitation as though she conferred a favour. Philip was vaguely

PHILIP arrived at Victoria Station nearly half an hour before the time which Mildred had appointed, and sat

down in the secondclass waitingroom. He waited and she did not come. He began to grow anxious, and

walked into the station watching the incoming suburban trains; the hour which she had fixed passed, and still

there was no sign of her. Philip was impatient. He went into the other waitingrooms and looked at the

"I like that after keeping me waiting all this time. I had half a mind to go back home again."

"I didn't say any such thing. It isn't exactly likely I'd sit in the secondclass room when I could sit in the first

Though Philip was sure he had not made a mistake, he said nothing, and they got into a cab.

She spoke ungraciously. She was put out by being kept waiting and answered Philip's attempt at conversation

with monosyllables. She wore a long cloak of some rough, dark material and a crochet shawl over her head.

They reached the restaurant and sat down at a table. She looked round with satisfaction. The red shades to the

candles on the tables, the gold of the decorations, the lookingglasses, lent the room a sumptuous air.

She gave Philip a smile. She had taken off her cloak; and he saw that she wore a pale blue dress, cut square at

the neck; and her hair was more elaborately arranged than ever. He had ordered champagne and when it came

"Because I've ordered fiz?" he asked carelessly, as though he never drank anything else.

"I _was_ surprised when you asked me to do a theatre with you." Conversation did not go very easily, for she

did not seem to have much to say; and Philip was nervously conscious that he was not amusing her. She

listened carelessly to his remarks, with her eyes on other diners, and made no pretence that she was interested

in him. He made one or two little jokes, but she took them quite seriously. The only sign of vivacity he got

was when he spoke of the other girls in the shop; she could not bear the manageress and told him all her

"I can't stick her at any price and all the air she gives herself. Sometimes I've got more than half a mind to tell

"Well, I happen to know that she's not above going to Eastbourne with a man for the weekend now and

again. One of the girls has a married sister who goes there with her husband, and she's seen her. She was

staying at the same boardinghouse, and she 'ad a weddingring on, and I know for one she's not married."

Philip filled her glass, hoping that champagne would make her more affable; he was anxious that his little

jaunt should be a success. He noticed that she held her knife as though it were a penholder, and when she

drank protruded her little finger. He started several topics of conversation, but he could get little out of her,

and he remembered with irritation that he had seen her talking nineteen to the dozen and laughing with the

German. They finished dinner and went to the play. Philip was a very cultured young man, and he looked

upon musical comedy with scorn. He thought the jokes vulgar and the melodies obvious; it seemed to him

that they did these things much better in France; but Mildred enjoyed herself thoroughly; she laughed till her

sides ached, looking at Philip now and then when something tickled her to exchange a glance of pleasure; and

"This is the seventh time I've been," she said, after the first act, "and I don't mind if I come seven times

She was much interested in the women who surrounded them in the stalls. She pointed out to Philip those

"It is horrible, these Westend people," she said. "I don't know how they can do it." She put her hand to her

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 had bored her to death. He disliked her, and yet, he knew not why, he wanted to be with her. On the

He could never get beyond such expressions as that. Her indifference maddened him.

"Oh, if you don't take me out some other fellow will. I need never want for men who'll take me to the

"I've got my season," she said. "I thought I'd take you home as it's rather late, if you don't mind."

"Well, you're not mean, I will say that for you," she said, when he opened the carriagedoor.

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 goodnight to you here," she said, holding out her hand. "You'd better not come up to the door. I

She said goodnight 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

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

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.

She surrendered herself to his outstretched hands and they danced. (Philip always pretended that he was not

"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, starlit 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 eveningdress; 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

He had thought of love as a rapture which seized one so that all the world seemed springlike, 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

He stretched himself in his bed as a dog stretches himself. He wondered how he was going to endure that

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 aud watched the incoming trains. Crowds poured out of

them, clerks and shoppeople 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

"Goodmorning," 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.

"I'm none too early. I shall have to walk fast," she answered, looking down at Philip's clubfoot.

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 ever 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

He felt that a great weight had suddenly been lifted from him. He was infinitely grateful for one word of

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

"Oh, he's gone back to Birmingham. He's in business there. He only comes up to London every now and

"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."

"You are quicktempered," she said, when she saw the gesture. "You do take offence easily."

He went out after tea and went back to his rooms, but at eight o'clock, when the shop closed, he was waiting

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

"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

"What are you laughing at?" she said quickly. "Don't you believe I'm telling you the truth?"

She looked at him suspiciously, but in a moment could not resist the temptation to impress him with the

"My father always kept a dogcart, 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 naivete and slightly touched. There was a very faint colour in her cheeks.

"The moment you come into the shop I saw you was a gentleman in every sense of the word. Was your father

"You can always tell a professional man. There's something about them, I don't know what it is, but I know at

They made further arrangements, and then found themselves at the corner of the road in which she lived. She

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

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 anglicised 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

"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?"

"You don't suppose I want to go and see a rotten musical comedy by myself, do you? I only took seats there

"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.

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

"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

"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,

"That's no business of yours. In point of fact I haven't, so you're wrong again."

"Well, what if he did? I can go out with him if I want to, can't I? I don't know what you've got to say to it."

"Well, I'd rather wait for him than have you wait for me. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. And now p'raps

His mood changed suddenly from anger to despair, and his voice trembled when he spoke.

"I say, don't be beastly with me, Mildred. You know I'm awfully fond of you. I think I love you with all my

heart. Won't you change your mind? I was looking forward to this evening so awfully. You see, he hasn't

come, and he can't care twopence about you really. Won't you dine with me? I'll get some more tickets, and

"I tell you I won't. It's no good you talking. I've made up my mind, and when I make up my mind I keep to

He looked at her for a moment. His heart was torn with anguish. People were hurrying past them on the

pavement, and cabs and omnibuses rolled by noisily. He saw that Mildred's eyes were wandering. She was

"I can't go on like this," groaned Philip. "it's too degrading. if I go now I go for good. Unless you'll come with

"You seem to think that'll be an awful thing for me. All I say is, good riddance to bad rubbish."

He nodded and limped away slowly, for he hoped with all his heart that she would call him back. At the next

lamppost he stopped and looked over his shoulder. He thought she might beckon to himhe was willing to

forget everything, he was ready for any humiliationbut she had turned away, and apparently had ceased to

PHILIP passed the evening wretchedly. He had told his landlady that he would not be in, so there was

nothing for him to eat, and he had to go to Gatti's for dinner. Afterwards he went back to his rooms, but

Griffiths on the floor above him was having a party, and the noisy merriment made his own misery more hard

to bear. He went to a musichall, but it was Saturday night and there was standingroom only: after half an

hour of boredom his legs grew tired and he went home. He tried to read, but he could not fix his attention;

and yet it was necessary that he should work hard. His examination in biology was in little more than a

fortnight, and, though it was easy, he had neglected his lectures of late and was conscious that he knew

nothing. It was only a _viva_, however, and he felt sure that in a fortnight he could find out enough about the

subject to scrape through. He had confidence in his intelligence. He threw aside his book and gave himself up

He reproached himself bitterly for his behaviour that evening. Why had he given her the alternative that she

must dine with him or else never see him again? Of course she refused. He should have allowed for her pride.

He had burnt his ships behind him. It would not be so hard to bear if he thought that she was suffering now,

but he knew her too well: she was perfectly indifferent to him. If he hadn't been a fool he would have

pretended to believe her story; he ought to have had the strength to conceal his disappointment and the

selfcontrol to master his temper. He could not tell why he loved her. He had read of the idealisation that

takes place in love, but he saw her exactly as she was. She was not amusing or clever, her mind was common;

she had a vulgar shrewdness which revolted him, she had no gentleness nor softness. As she would have put

it herself, she was on the make. What aroused her admiration was a clever trick played on an unsuspecting

person; to `do' somebody always gave her satisfaction. Philip laughed savagely as he thought of her gentility

and the refinement with which she ate her food; she could not bear a coarse word, so far as her limited

vocabulary reached she had a passion for euphemisms, and she scented indecency everywhere; she never

spoke of trousers but referred to them as nether garments; she thought it slightly indelicate to blow her nose

and did it in a deprecating way. She was dreadfully anaemic and suffered from the dyspepsia which

accompanies that ailing. Philip was repelled by her flat breast and narrow hips, and he hated the vulgar way

The fact remained that he was helpless. He felt just as he had felt sometimes in the hands of a bigger boy at

school. He had struggled against the superior strength till his own strength was gone, and he was rendered

quite powerlesshe remembered the peculiar languor he had felt in his limbs, almost as though he were

paralysedso that he could not help himself at all. He might have been dead. He felt just that same weakness

now. He loved the woman so that he knew he had never loved before. He did not mind her faults of person or

of character, he thought he loved them too: at all events they meant nothing to him. It did not seem himself

that was concerned; he felt that he had been seized by some strange force that moved him against his will,

contrary to his interests; and because he had a passion for freedom he hated the chains which bound him. He

laughed at himself when he thought how often he had longed to experience the overwhelming passion. He

cursed himself because he had given way to it. He thought of the beginnings; nothing of all this would have

happened if he had not gone into the shop with Dunsford. The whole thing was his own fault. Except for his

ridiculous vanity he would never have troubled himself with the illmannered slut.

At all events the occurrences of that evening had finished the whole affair. Unless he was lost to all sense of

shame he could not go back. He wanted passionately to get rid of the love that obsessed him; it was degrading

and hateful. He must prevent himself from thinking of her. In a little while the anguish he suffered must grow

less. His mind went back to the past. He wondered whether Emily Wilkinson and Fanny Price had endured on

his account anything like the torment that he suffered now. He felt a pang of remorse.

He slept very badly. The next day was Sunday, and he worked at his biology. He sat with the book in front of

him, forming the words with his lips in order to fix his attention, but he could remember nothing. He found

his thoughts going back to Mildred every minute, and he repeated to himself the exact words of the quarrel

they had had. He had to force himself back to his book. He went out for a walk. The streets on the South side

of the river were dingy enough on weekdays, but there was an energy, a coming and going, which gave

them a sordid vivacity; but on Sundays, with no shops open, no carts in the roadway, silent and depressed,

they were indescribably dreary. Philip thought that day would never end. But he was so tired that he slept

heavily, and when Monday came he entered upon life with determination. Christmas was approaching, and a

good many of the students had gone into the country for the short holiday between the two parts of the winter

session; but Philip had refused his uncle's invitation to go down to Blackstable. He had given the approaching

examination as his excuse, but in point of fact he had been unwilling to leave London and Mildred. He had

neglected his work so much that now he had only a fortnight to learn what the curriculum allowed three

months for. He set to work seriously. He found it easier each day not to think of Mildred. He congratulated

himself on his force of character. The pain he suffered was no longer anguish, but a sort of soreness, like

what one might be expected to feel if one had been thrown off a horse and, though no bones were broken,

were bruised all over and shaken. Philip found that he was able to observe with curiosity the condition he had

been in during the last few weeks. He analysed his feelings with interest. He was a little amused at himself.

One thing that struck him was how little under those circumstances it mattered what one thought; the system

of personal philosophy, which had given him great satisfaction to devise, had not served him. He was puzzled

But sometimes in the street he would see a girl who looked so like Mildred that his heart seemed to stop

beating. Then he could not help himself, he hurried on to catch her up, eager and anxious, only to find that it

was a total stranger. Men came back from the country, and he went with Dunsford to have tea at an A. B. C.

shop. The wellknown uniform made him so miserable that he could not speak. The thought came to him that

perhaps she had been transferred to another establishment of the firm for which she worked, and he might

suddenly find himself face to face with her. The idea filled him with panic, so that he feared Dunsford would

see that something was the matter with him: he could not think of anything to say; he pretended to listen to

what Dunsford was talking about; the conversation maddened him; and it was all he could do to prevent

Then came the day of his examination. Philip, when his turn arrived, went forward to the examiner's table

with the utmost confidence. He answered three or four questions. Then they showed him various specimens;

he had been to very few lectures and, as soon as he was asked about things which he could not learn from

books, he was floored. He did what he could to hide his ignorance, the examiner did not insist, and soon his

ten minutes were over. He felt certain he had passed; but next day, when he went up to the examination

buildings to see the result posted on the door, he was astounded not to find his number amoug those who had

satisfied the examiners. In amazement he read the list three times. Dunsford was with him.

He had just inquired Philip's number. Philip turned and saw by his radiant face that Dunsford had passed.

"Oh, it doesn't matter a bit," said Philip. "I'm jolly glad you're all right. I shall go up again in July."

He was very anxious to pretend he did not mind, and on their way back along The Embankment insisted on

talking of indifferent things. Dunsford goodnaturedly wanted to discuss the causes of Philip's failure, but

Philip was obstinately casual. He was horribly mortified; and the fact that Dunsford, whom he looked upon as

a very pleasant but quite stupid fellow, had passed made his own rebuff harder to bear. He had always been

proud of his intelligence, and now he asked himself desperately whether he was not mistaken in the opinion

he held of himself. In the three months of the winter session the students who had joined in October had

already shaken down into groups, and it was clear which were brilliant, which were clever or industrious, and

which were `rotters.' Philip was conscious that his failure was a surprise to no one but himself. It was

teatime, and he knew that a lot of men would be having tea in the basement of the Medical School: those

who had passed the examination would be exultant, those who disliked him would look at him with

satisfaction, and the poor devils who had failed would sympathise with him in order to receive sympathy. His

instinct was not to go near the hospital for a week, when the affair would be no more thought of, but, because

he hated so much to go just then, he went: he wanted to inflict suffering upon himself. He forgot for the

moment his maxim of life to follow his inclinations with due regard for the policeman round the corner; or, if

he acted in accordance with it, there must have been some strange morbidity in his nature which made him

But later on, when he had endured the ordeal to which he forced himself, going out into the night after the

noisy conversation in the smokingroom, he was seized with a feeling of utter loneliness. He seemed to

himself absurd and futile. He had an urgent need of consolation, and the temptation to see Mildred was

irresistible. He thought bitterly that there was small chance of consolation from her; but he wanted to see her

even if he did not speak to her; after all, she was a waitress and would be obliged to serve him. She was the

only person in the world he cared for. There was no use in hiding that fact from himself. Of course it would

be humiliating to go back to the shop as though nothing had happened, but he had not much selfrespect left.

Though he would not confess it to himself, he had hoped each day that she would write to him; she knew that

a letter addressed to the hospital would find him; but she had not written: it was evident that she cared

The desire was so great that he could not give the time necessary to walk, but jumped in a cab. He was too

thrifty to use one when it could possibly be avoided. He stood outside the shop for a minute or two. The

thought came to him that perhaps she had left, and in terror he walked in quickly. He saw her at once. He sat

She was smiling. Smiling! She seemed to have forgotten completely that last scene which Philip had repeated

It seemed impossible for her to say a gracious thing. Philip cursed the fate which chained him to such a

"Would you like me to sit down for a minute or two?" she said, when she brought it.

She seemed anxious to make him drink up the cup of his humiliation; but he knew her well enough to know

that she spoke at random; she hurt him frightfully, and never even tried to. He did not answer.

"It was a nasty trick you played on me, spying on me like that. I always thought you was a gentleman in

"It's very simple. I'm such a blasted fool as to love you with all my heart and soul, and I know that you don't

"If you had been a gentleman I think you'd have come next day and begged my pardon."

She had no mercy. He looked at her neck and thought how he would like to jab it with the knife he had for his

muffin. He knew enough anatomy to make pretty certain of getting the carotid artery. And at the same time

He grew very white. She felt that she had done nothing wrong on that occasion. She wanted him now to

humble himself. He was very proud. For one instant he felt inclined to tell her to go to hell, but he dared not.

His passion made him abject. He was willing to submit to anything rather than not see her.

"Now you've said that I don't mind telling you that I wish I had come out with you that evening. I thought

Miller was a gentleman, but I've discovered my mistake now. I soon sent him about his business."

"I'll send her a wire. You can say you've been detained in the shop; she won't know any better. Oh, do come,

"Never mind about that. We'll go somewhere where it doesn't matter how you're dressed. And we'll go to a

"Well, I don't mind if I do. I haven't been out anywhere since I don't know how long."

It was with the greatest difficulty he could prevent himself from seizing her hand there and then to cover it

THEY dined in Soho. Philip was tremulous with joy. It was not one of the more crowded of those cheap

restaurants where the respectable and needy dine in the belief that it is bohemian and the assurance that it is

economical. It was a humble establishment, kept by a good man from Rouen and his wife, that Philip had

discovered by accident. He had been attracted by the Gallic look of the window, in which was generally an

uncooked steak on one plate and on each side two dishes of raw vegetables. There was one seedy French

waiter, who was attempting to learn English in a house where he never heard anything but French; and the

customers were a few ladies of easy virtue, a _menage_ or two, who had their own napkins reserved for them,

Here Mildred and Philip were able to get a table to themselves. Philip sent the waiter for a bottle of Burgundy

from the neighbouring tavern, and they had a _potage aux herbes_, a steak from the window _aux pommes_,

and an _omelette au kirsch_. There was really an air of romance in the meal and in the place. Mildred, at first

a little reserved in her appreciation"I never quite trust these foreign places, you never know what there is

"I like this place, Philip," she said. "You feel you can put your elbows on the table, don't you?"

A tall fellow came in, with a mane of gray hair and a ragged thin beard. He wore a dilapidated cloak and a

"He is, one of the most dangerous in Europe. He's been in every prison on the Continent and has assassinated

more persons than any gentleman unhung. He always goes about with a bomb in his pocket, and of course it

makes conversation a little difficult because if you don't agree with him he lays it on the table in a marked

She looked at the man with horror and surprise, and then glanced suspiciously at Philip. She saw that his eyes

He gave a little shout of joy. He was so happy. But Mildred didn't like being laughed at.

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

"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

They had finished their dinner and were drinking coffee. Philip, throwing economy to the winds, smoked a

"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

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 it 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 thought rapidly that if she cared for him at all she would say she preferred to stay there.

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

"There, that comes of putting your arm where it's got no business to be," she said. "I always know when men

They drove down St. James' 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

On the chance of kissing her a second time he travelled down to Herne Hill with her, and at the end of the

She looked at him indifferently and then glanced up the road to see that no one was in sight.

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

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 realised 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

"Don't be angry with me," he said. "I'm so awfully fond of you that I can't help myself."

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 workinghours; but she would not let him.

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

Their worst quarrel took place one evening at dinner when she told him that a man had asked her to go to a

"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

"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

(He knew it was madness to go on asking her that, but he could not help himself.

"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, well, if you feel like that about it I wonder you condescend to come out with me at all."

"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

As soon as she had turned out of the main street, brightly lit and noisy with traffic, he caught her up.

She walked on and would neither look at him nor answer. He repeated her name. Then she stopped and faced

"What d'you want? I saw you hanging about Victoria. Why don't you leave me alone?"

"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

"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

He hesitated a moment, for he had an instinct that he could say something that would move her. It made him

"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

"Philip, I didn't mean that," she answered quickly, with a sudden break of pity in her voice. "You know it's

"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 bade him goodnight and hurried down the road. Next day he took her in a little watch with a brooch to

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?"

"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

"It's not much fun to be in love with a girl who has no imagination and no sense of humour," he thought, as

But the want of these things excused her. He felt that if he had not realised this he could never forgive her for

"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

"He's a gentleman in every sense of the word," thought Philip, but he clenched his teeth to prevent himself

Philip went to the Tivoli and saw Mildred with her companion, a smoothfaced 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 smalltalk. 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

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' 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 wharfs; 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 sightseer; 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 smokingroom of

the hospital club, turning over innumerable periodicals. This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the

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

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 teashop 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

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

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.

Philip chose an opportunity when she seemed more than usually friendly. He had an examination in anatomy

at the end of March. Easter, which came a week later, would give Mildred three whole days holiday.

"I say, why don't you come over to Paris then?" he suggested. "We'd have such a ripping time."

Philip had thought of that. It would cost at least fiveandtwenty pounds. It was a large sum to him. He was

"What next, I should like to know. I can't see myself going away with a man that I wasn't married to. You

He enlarged on the glories of the Rue de la Paix and the garish splendour of the Folies Bergeres. He described

the Louvre and the Bon Marche. He told her about the Cabaret du Neant, the Abbaye, and the various haunts

to which foreigners go. He painted in glowing colours the side of Paris which he despised. He pressed her to

"You know, you say you love me, but if you really loved me you'd want to marry me. You've never asked me

"You know I can't afford it. After all, I'm in my first year, I shan't earn a penny for six years."

"Oh, I'm not blaming you. I wouldn't marry you if you went down on your bended knees to me."

He had thought of marriage more than once, but it was a step from which he shrank. In Paris he had come by

the opinion that marriage was a ridiculous institution of the philistines. He knew also that a permanent tie

would ruin him. He had middleclass instincts, and it seemed a dreadful thing to him to marry a waitress. A

common wife would prevent him from getting a decent practice. Besides, he had only just enough money to

last him till he was qualified; he could not keep a wife even if they arranged not to have children. He thought

of Cronshaw bound to a vulgar slattern, and he shuddered with dismay . He foresaw what Mildred, with her

genteel ideas and her mean mind, would become: it was impossible for him to marry her. But he decided only

with his reason; he felt that he must have her whatever happened; and if he could not get her without

marrying her he would do that; the future could look after itself. It might end in disaster; he did not care.

When he got hold of an idea it obsessed him, he could think of nothing else, and he had a more than common

power to persuade himself of the reasonableness of what he wished to do. He found himself overthrowing all

the sensible arguments which had occurred to him against marriage. Each day he found that he was more

passionately devoted to her; and his unsatisfied love became angry and resentful.

"By George, if I marry her I'll make her pay for all the suffering I've endured," he said to himself.

At last he could bear the agony no longer. After dinner one evening in the little restaurant in Soho, to which

"I say, did you mean it the other day that you wouldn't marry me if I asked you?"

"Because I can't live without you. I want you with me always. I've tried to get over it and I can't. I never shall

"I'm sure I'm very grateful to you, Philip. I'm very much flattered at your proposal."

"Well, you are a funny chap. Why d'you want to marry me then? The other day you said you couldn't afford

"I think I've got about fourteen hundred pounds left. Two can live just as cheaply as one. That'll keep us till

I'm qualified and have got through with my hospital appointments, and then I can get an assistantship."

"It means you wouldn't be able to earn anything for six years. We should have about four pounds a week to

"D'you mean to say you have to work all that time and spend a small fortune just to earn three pounds a week

"D'you mean to say you won't marry me?" he asked hoarsely. "Does my great love mean nothing to you at

"One has to think of oneself in those things, don't one? I shouldn't mind marrying, but I don't want to marry if

He was silent. He drank a glass of wine in order to get rid of the choking in his throat.

"Look at that girl who's just going out," said Mildred. "She got them furs at the Bon Marche at Brixton. I saw

"What are you laughing at?" she asked. "It's true. And I said to my aunt at the time, I wouldn't buy anything

that had been in the window like that, for everyone to know how much you paid for it."

"I can't understand you. You make me frightfully unhappy, and in the next breath you talk rot that has

"You are nasty to me," she answered, aggrieved. "I can't help noticing those furs, because I said to my aunt..."

"I wish you wouldn't use bad language when you speak to me Philip. You know I don't like it."

Philip smiled a little, but his eyes were wild. He was silent for a while. He looked at her sullenly. He hated,

"If I had an ounce of sense I'd never see you again," he said at last. "If you only knew how heartily I despise

"That's what's so funny in you, you start laughing just when one doesn't expect you to. And if I make you that

PHILIP did not pass the examination in anatomy at the end of March. He and Dunsford had worked at the

subject together on Philip's skeleton, asking each other questions till both knew by heart every attachment

and the meaning of every nodule and groove on the human bones; but in the examination room Philip was

seized with panic, and failed to give right answers to questions from a sudden fear that they might be wrong.

He knew he was ploughed and did not even trouble to go up to the building next day to see whether his

number was up. The second failure put him definitely among the incompetent and idle men of his year.

He did not care much. He had other things to think of. He told himself that Mildred must have senses like

anybody else, it was only a question of awakening them; he had theories about woman, the rip at heart, and

thought that there must come a time with everyone when she would yield to persistence. It was a question of

watching for the opportunity, keeping his temper, wearing her down with small attentions, taking advantage

of the physical exhaustion which opened the heart to tenderness, making himself a refuge from the petty

vexations of her work. He talked to her of the relations between his friends in Paris and the fair ladies they

admired. The life he described had a charm, an easy gaiety, in which was no grossness. Weaving into his own

recollections the adventures of Mimi and Rodolphe, of Musette and the rest of them, he poured into Mildred's

ears a story of poverty made picturesque by song and laughter, of lawless love made romantic by beauty and

youth. He never attacked her prejudices directly, but sought to combat them by the suggestion that they were

suburban. He never let himself be disturbed by her inattention, nor irritated by her indifference. He thought

he had bored her. By an effort he made himself affable and entertaining; he never let himself be angry, he

never asked for anything, he never complained, he never scolded. When she made engagements and broke

them, he met her next day with a smiling face; when she excused herself, he said it did not matter. He never

let her see that she pained him. He understood that his passionate grief had wearied her, and he took care to

hide every sentiment which could be in the least degree troublesome. He was heroic.

Though she never mentioned the change, for she did not take any conscious notice of it, it affected her

nevertheless: she became more confidential with him; she took her little grievances to him, and she always

had some grievance against the manageress of the shop, one of her fellow waitresses, or her aunt; she was

talkative enough now, and though she never said anything that was not trivial Philip was never tired of

She did not realise how her words made his heart sink nor what an effort it needed for him to answer so

"Oh, I don't mind your kissing me now and then. It doesn't hurt me and it gives you pleasure."

Occasionally she went so far as to ask him to take her out to dinner, and the offer, coming from her, filled

"I wouldn't do it to anyone else," she said, by way of apology. "But I know I can with you."

She asked him to give her something to eat one evening towards the end of April.

He thought she must be beginning to care for him. Three months before the thought of an evening spent in

conversation would have bored her to death. It was a fine day, and the spring added to Philip's high spirits.

"I say, won't it be ripping when the summer comes along," he said, as they drove along on the top of a 'bus to

Sohoshe had herself suggested that they should not be so extravagant as to go by cab. "We shall be able to

She smiled slightly, and he was encouraged to take her hand. She did not withdraw it.

They were old customers at the little restaurant in Soho by now, and the _patronne_ gave them a smile as

Philip, thinking her more enchanting than ever, gave her the menu, and she chose her favourite dishes. The

range was small, and they had eaten many times all that the restaurant could provide. Philip was gay. He

looked into her eyes, and he dwelt on every perfection of her pale cheek. When they had finished Mildred by

"Were you surprised, my asking you to take me out and give me a bit of dinner tonight?"

"You're not going to be silly about it, are you? The fact is I'm going to get married."

He could think of nothing else to say. He had considered the possibility often and had imagined to himself

what he would do and say. He had suffered agonies when he thought of the despair he would suffer, he had

thought of suicide, of the mad passion of anger that would seize him; but perhaps he had too completely

anticipated the emotion he would experience, so that now he felt merely exhausted. He felt as one does in a

serious illness when the vitality is so low that one is indifferent to the issue and wants only to be left alone.

"You see, I'm getting on," she said. "I'm twentyfour and it's time I settled down."

He was silent. He looked at the _patronne_ sitting behind the counter, and his eye dwelt on a red feather one

"I might, mightn't I? I can hardly believe it's true. I've dreamt it so often. It rather tickles me that I should

have been so jolly glad that you asked me to take you out to dinner. Whom are you going to marry?"

"He came in to lunch one day last week and asked me then. He's earning very good money. He makes seven

Philip was silent again. He remembered that she had always liked Miller; he amused her; there was in his

"I suppose it was inevitable," he said at last. "You were bound to accept the highest bidder. When are you

Philip felt dreadfully tired. He wanted to get away from her. He thought he would go straight to bed. He

"I'll put you in a cab and send you down to Victoria. I daresay you won't have to wait long for a train."

"It's just as you please," she answered haughtily. "I suppose I shall see you at teatime tomorrow?"

"No, I think we'd better make a full stop now. I don't see why I should go on making myself unhappy. I've

He nodded to her and forced a smile on his lips, then jumped on a 'bus and made his way home. He smoked a

pipe before he went to bed, but he could hardly keep his eyes open. He suffered no pain. He fell into a heavy

BUT about three in the morning Philip awoke and could not sleep again. He began to think of Mildred. He

tried not to, but could not help himself. He repeated to himself the same thing time after time till his brain

reeled. It was inevitable that she should marry: life was hard for a girl who had to earn her own living; and if

she found someone who could give her a comfortable home she should not be blamed if she accepted. Philip

acknowledged that from her point of view it would have been madness to marry him: only love could have

made such poverty bearable, and she did not love him. It was no fault of hers; it was a fact that must be

accepted like any other. Philip tried to reason with himself. He told himself that deep down in his heart was

mortified pride; his passion had begun in wounded vanity, and it was this at bottom which caused now a great

part of his wretchedness. He despised himself as much as he despised her. Then he made plans for the future,

the same plans over and over again, interrupted by recollections of kisses on her soft pale cheek and by the

sound of her voice with its trailing accent; he had a great deal of work to do, since in the Summer he was

taking chemistry as well as the two examinations he had failed in. He had separated himself from his friends

at the hospital, but now he wanted companionship. There was one happy occurrence: Hayward a fortnight

before had written to say that he was passing through London and had asked him to dinner; but Philip,

unwilling to be bothered, had refused. He was coming back for the season, and Philip made up his mind to

He was thankful when eight o'clock struck and he could get up. He was pale and weary. But when he had

bathed, dressed, and had breakfast, he felt himself joined up again with the world at large; and his pain was a

little easier to bear. He did not feel like going to lectures that morning, but went instead to the Army and

Navy Stores to buy Mildred a weddingpresent. After much wavering he settled on a dressingbag. It cost

twenty pounds, which was much more than he could afford, but it was showy and vulgar: he knew she would

be aware exactly how much it cost; he got a melancholy satisfaction in choosing a gift which would give her

Philip had looked forward with apprehension to the day on which Mildred was to be married; he was

expecting an intolerable anguish; and it was with relief that he got a letter from Hayward on Saturday

morning to say that he was coming up early on that very day and would fetch Philip to help him to find

rooms. Philip, anxious to be distracted, looked up a timetable and discovered the only train Hayward was

likely to come by; he went to meet him, and the reunion of the friends was enthusiastic. They left the luggage

at the station, and set off gaily. Hayward characteristically proposed that first of all they should go for an hour

to the National Gallery; he had not seen pictures for some time, and he stated that it needed a glimpse to set

him in tune with life. Philip for months had had no one with whom he could talk of art and books. Since the

Paris days Hayward had immersed himself in the modern French versifiers, and, such a plethora of poets is

there in France, he had several new geniuses to tell Philip about. They walked through the gallery pointing

out to one another their favourite pictures; one subject led to another; they talked excitedly. The sun was

"Let's go and sit in the Park," said Hayward. "We'll look for rooms after luncheon."

The spring was pleasant there. It was a day upon which one felt it good merely to live. The young green of

the trees was exquisite against the sky; and the sky, pale and blue, was dappled with little white clouds. At

the end of the ornamental water was the gray mass of the Horse Guards. The ordered elegance of the scene

had the charm of an eighteenthcentury picture. It reminded you not of Watteau, whose landscapes are so

idyllic that they recall only the woodland glens seen in dreams, but of the more prosaic JeanBaptiste Pater.

Philip's heart was filled with lightness. He realised, what he had only read before, that art (for there was art in

They went to an Italian restaurant for luncheon and ordered themselves a _fiaschetto_ of Chianti. Lingering

over the meal they talked on. They reminded one another of the people they had known at Heidelberg, they

spoke of Philip's friends in Paris, they talked of books, pictures, morals, life; and suddenly Philip heard a

clock strike three. He remembered that by this time Mildred was married. He felt a sort of stitch in his heart,

and for a minute or two he could not hear what Hayward was saying. But he filled his glass with Chianti. He

was unaccustomed to alcohol and it had gone to his head. For the time at all events he was free from care. His

quick brain had lain idle for so many months that he was intoxicated now with conversation. He was thankful

to have someone to talk to who would interest himself in the things that interested him.

"I say don't let's waste this beautiful day in looking for rooms. I'll put you up tonight. You can look for rooms

The idea appealed to Hayward, and they jumped into a cab which took them to Westminster Bridge. They got

on the steamboat just as she was starting. Presently Philip, a smile on his lips, spoke.

"I remember when first I went to Paris, Clutton, I think it was, gave a long discourse on the subject that

beauty is put into things by painters and poets. They create beauty. In themselves there is nothing to choose

between the Campanile of Giotto and a factory chimney. And then beautiful things grow rich with the

emotion that they have aroused in succeeding generations. That is why old things are more beautiful than

modern. The _Ode on a Grecian Urn_ is more lovely now than when it was written, because for a hundred

Philip left Hayward to infer what in the passing scene had suggested these words to him, and it was a delight

to know that he could safely leave the inference. It was in sudden reaction from the life he had been leading

for so long that he was now deeply affected. The delicate iridescence of the London air gave the softness of a

pastel to the gray stone of the buildings; and in the wharfs and storehouses there was the severity of grace of a

Japanese print. They went further down; and the splendid channel, a symbol of the great empire, broadened,

and it was crowded with traffic; Philip thought of the painters and the poets who had made all these things so

beautiful, and his heart was filled with gratitude. They came to the Pool of London, and who can describe its

majesty? The imagination thrills, and Heaven knows what figures people still its broad stream, Doctor

Johnson with Boswell by his side, an old Pepys going on board a mano'war: the pageant of English

history, and romance, and high adventure. Philip turned to Hayward with shining eyes.

"No, I hate it, but there was nothing else to do. The drudgery of the first two years is awful, and unfortunately

"Oh, no. I'm going to stick to this. I think I shall like it better when I get into the wards. I have an idea that

I'm more interested in people than in anything else in the world. And as far as I can see, it's the only

profession in which you have your freedom. You carry your knowledge in your head; with a box of

"Not for a good long time at any rate," Philip answered. "As soon as I've got through my hospital

appointments I shall get a ship; I want to go to the Eastthe Malay Archipelago, Siam, China, and all that

sort of thingand then I shall take odd jobs. Something always comes along, cholera duty in India and

things like that. I want to go from place to place. I want to see the world. The only way a poor man can do

They came to Greenwich then. The noble building of Inigo Jones faced the river grandly.

"I say, look, that must be the place where Poor Jack dived into the mud for pennies," said Philip.

They wandered in the park. Ragged children were playing in it, and it was noisy with their cries: here and

there old seamen were basking in the sun. There was an air of a hundred years ago.

"Waste? Look at the movement of that child, look at the pattern which the sun makes on the ground, shining

through the trees, look at that skywhy, I should never have seen that sky if I hadn't been to Paris."

Hayward thought that Philip choked a sob, and he looked at him with astonishment.

"Nothing. I'm sorry to be so damned emotional, but for six months I've been starved for beauty."

"Damn it all, I don't want to be interesting," laughed Philip. "Let's go and have a stodgy tea."

HAYWARD'S visit did Philip a great deal of good. Each day his thoughts dwelt less on Mildred. He looked

back upon the past with disgust. He could not understand how he had submitted to the dishonour of such a

love; and when he thought of Mildred it was with angry hatred, because she had submitted him to so much

humiliation. His imagination presented her to him now with her defects of person and manner exaggerated, so

"It just shows how damned weak I am," he said to himself. The adventure was like a blunder that one had

committed at a party so horrible that one felt nothing could be done to excuse it: the only remedy was to

forget. His horror at the degradation he had suffered helped him. He was like a snake casting its skin and he

looked upon the old covering with nausea. He exulted in the possession of himself once more; he realised

how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called

love; he had had enough of it; he did not want to be in love any more if love was that. Philip told Hayward

"Wasn't it Sophocles," he asked, "who prayed for the time when he would be delivered from the wild beast of

Philip seemed really to be born again. He breathed the circumambient air as though he had never breathed it

before, and he took a child's pleasure in all the facts of the world. He called his period of insanity six months'

Hayward had only been settled in London a few days when Philip received from Blackstable, where it had

been sent, a card for a private view at some picture gallery. He took Hayward, and, on looking at the

"I suppose he sent the card," said Philip. "Let's go and find him, he's sure to be in front of his picture."

This, a profile of Ruth Chalice, was tucked away in a corner, and Lawson was not far from it. He looked a

little lost, in his large soft hat and loose, pale clothes, amongst the fashionable throng that had gathered for

the private view. He greeted Philip with enthusiasm, and with his usual volubility told him that he had come

to live in London, Ruth Chalice was a hussy, he had taken a studio, Paris was played out, he had a

commission for a portrait, and they'd better dine together and have a good old talk. Philip reminded him of

his acquaintance with Hayward, and was entertained to see that Lawson was slightly awed by Hayward's

elegant clothes and grand manner. They sat upon him better than they had done in the shabby little studio

At dinner Lawson went on with his news. Flanagan had gone back to America. Clutton had disappeared. He

had come to the conclusion that a man had no chance of doing anything so long as he was in contact with art

and artists: the only thing was to get right away. To make the step easier he had quarrelled with all his friends

in Paris. He developed a talent for telling them home truths, which made them bear with fortitude his

declaration that he had done with that city and was settling in Gerona, a little town in the north of Spain

which had attracted him when he saw it from the train on his way to Barcelona. He was living there now

He was interested in the human side of that struggle to express something which was so obscure in the man's

mind that he was become morbid and querulous. Philip felt vaguely that he was himself in the same case, but

with him it was the conduct of his life as a whole that perplexed him. That was his means of selfexpression,

and what he must do with it was not clear. But he had no time to continue with this train of thought, for

Lawson poured out a frank recital of his affair with Ruth Chalice. She had left him for a young student who

had just come from England, and was behaving in a scandalous fashion. Lawson really thought someone

ought to step in and save the young man. She would ruin him. Philip gathered that Lawson's chief grievance

"Women have no real feeling for art," he said. "They only pretend they have." But he finished philosophically

enough: "However, I got four portraits out of her, and I'm not sure if the last I was working on would ever

Philip envied the easy way in which the painter managed his love affairs. He had passed eighteen months

pleasantly enough, had got an excellent model for nothing, and had parted from her at the end with no great

"Oh, he's done for," answered Lawson, with the cheerful callousness of his youth. "He'll be dead in six

months. He got pneumonia last winter. He was in the English hospital for seven weeks, and when he came

"He kept off for a bit. He used to go to the Lilas all the same, he couldn't keep away from that, but he used to

"Oh, he knew it himself. A little while ago he started on whiskey again. He said he was too old to turn over

any new leaves. He would rather be happy for six months and die at the end of it than linger on for five years.

And then I think he's been awfully hard up lately. You see, he didn't earn anything while he was ill, and the

"I remember, the first time I saw him I admired him awfully," said Philip. "I thought he was wonderful. It is

"Of course he was a rotter. He was bound to end in the gutter sooner or later," said Lawson.

Philip was hurt because Lawson would not see the pity of it. Of Course it was cause and effect, but in the

"Oh, I' d forgotten," said Lawson. "Just after you left he sent round a present for you. I thought you'd be

coming back and I didn't bother about it, and then I didn't think it worth sending on; but it'll come over to

London with the rest of my things, and you can come to my studio one day and fetch it away if you want it."

"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

"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

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 luncheonparty 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 twentyfive, 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 illpaid, she received fifteen pounds for a story of thirty thousand words;

"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,

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

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

"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

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 selfesteem, and it was

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.

"Poor thing, you must have had a rotten time," she murmured, and by way of showing her sympathy put her

He got up on his knees and faced her. She looked into his eyes steadily, and her large mouth trembled with a

"You know, you are a ripper. I'm so grateful to you for being nice to me. I like you so much."

Philip took hold of her elbows and drew her towards him. She made no resistance, but bent forward a little,

She did not answer, but a tender look came into her eyes, and she passed her hand softly over his hair.

"You know, it's awfully silly of you to behave like this. We were such good friends. It would be so jolly to

"If you really want to appeal to my better nature," replied Philip, "you'll do well not to stroke my cheek while

Philip, surprised and a little amused, looked into her eyes, and as he looked he saw them soften and grow

liquid, and there was an expression in them that enchanted him. His heart was suddenly stirred, and tears

He flung his arms round her and kissed her, while she, laughing, blushing, and crying, surrendered herself

Presently he released her and sitting back on his heels looked at her curiously.

"Delighted," he cried with all his heart, "and so proud and so happy and so grateful."

He took her hands and covered them with kisses. This was the beginning for Philip of a happiness which

seemed both solid and durable. They became lovers but remained friends. There was in Norah a maternal

instinct which received satisfaction in her love for Philip; she wanted someone to pet, and scold, and make a

fuss of; she had a domestic temperament and found pleasure in looking after his health and his linen. She

pitied his deformity, over which he was so sensitive, and her pity expressed itself instinctively in tenderness.

She was young, strong, and healthy, and it seemed quite natural to her to give her love. She had high spirits

and a merry soul. She liked Philip because he laughed with her at all the amusing things in life that caught her

"Nonsense. You like me because I'm a silent person and never want to get a word in."

Philip did not love her at all. He was extremely fond of her, glad to be with her, amused and interested by her

conversation. She restored his belief in himself and put healing ointments, as it were, on all the bruises of his

soul. He was immensely flattered that she cared for him. He admired her courage, her optimism, her

impudent defiance of fate; she had a little philosophy of her own, ingenuous and practical.

"You know, I don't believe in churches and parsons and all that," she said, "but I believe in God, and I don't

believe He minds much about what you do as long as you keep your end up and help a lame dog over a stile

when you can. And I think people on the whole are very nice, and I'm sorry for those who aren't."

"Oh, well, I don't know for certain, you know," she smiled, "but I hope for the best. And anyhow there'll be

She had a feminine gift for delicate flattery. She thought that Philip did a brave thing when he left Paris

because he was conscious he could not be a great artist; and he was enchanted when she expressed

enthusiastic admiration for him. He had never been quite certain whether this action indicated courage or

infirmity of purpose. It was delightful to realise that she considered it heroic. She ventured to tackle him on a

"It's very silly of you to be so sensitive about your clubfoot," she said. She saw him bush darkly, but went

on. "You know, people don't think about it nearly as much as you do. They notice it the first time they see

"You know, I only speak about it because I love you. I don't want it to make you unhappy."

"I think you can say anything you choose to me," he answered, smiling. "I wish I could do something to show

She took him in hand in other ways. She would not let him be bearish and laughed at him when he was out of

He had the sense to realise his happiness. It seemed to him that she gave him all that a wife could, and he

preserved his freedom; she was the most charming friend he had ever had, with a sympathy that he had never

found in a man. The sexual relationship was no more than the strongest link in their friendship. It completed

it, but was not essential. And because Philip's appetites were satisfied, he became more equable and easier to

live with. He felt in complete possession of himself. He thought sometimes of the winter, during which he

had been obsessed by a hideous passion, and he was filled with loathing for Mildred and with horror of

His examinations were approaching, and Norah was as interested in them as he. He was flattered and touched

by her eagerness. She made him promise to come at once and tell her the results. He passed the three parts

"I can take a holiday with a clear conscience. I have no work to do till the winter session begins in October."

"Because you've been working hard, and you look utterly washed out. You want some fresh air and a rest.

"You know, I'd never believe it of anyone but you. You're only thinking of my good. I wonder what you see

"I'll say that you're thoughtful and kind, and you're not exacting; you never worry, you're not troublesome,

"All that's nonsense," she said, "but I'll tell you one thing: I'm one of the few persons I ever met who are able

PHILIP looked forward to his return to London with impatience. During the two months he spent at

Blackstable Norah wrote to him frequently, long letters in a bold, large hand, in which with cheerful humour

she described the little events of the daily round, the domestic troubles of her landlady, rich food for laughter,

the comic vexations of her rehearsalsshe was walking on in an important spectacle at one of the London

theatresand her odd adventures with the publishers of novelettes. Philip read a great deal, bathed, played

tennis, and sailed. At the beginning of October he settled down in London to work for the Second Conjoint

examination. He was eager to pass it, since that ended the drudgery of the curriculum; after it was done with

the student became an outpatients' clerk, and was brought in contact with men and women as well as with

Lawson had been spending the summer at Poole, and had a number of sketches to show of the harbour and of

the beach. He had a couple of commissions for portraits and proposed to stay in London till the bad light

drove him away. Hayward, in London too, intended to spend the winter abroad, but remained week after

week from sheer inability to make up his mind to go. Hayward had run to fat during the last two or three

yearsit was five years since Philip first met him in Heidelbergand he was prematurely bald. He was very

sensitive about it and wore his hair long to conceal the unsightly patch on the crown of his head. His only

consolation was that his brow was now very noble. His blue eyes had lost their colour; they had a listless

droop; and his mouth, losing the fulness of youth, was weak and pale. He still talked vaguely of the things he

was going to do in the future, but with less conviction; and he was conscious that his friends no longer

believed in him: when he had drank two or three glasses of whiskey he was inclined to be elegiac.

"I'm a failure," he murmured, "I'm unfit for the brutality of the struggle of life. All I can do is to stand aside

He gave you the impression that to fail was a more delicate, a more exquisite thing, than to succeed. He

insinuated that his aloofness was due to distaste for all that was common and low. He talked beautifully of

"I should have thought you'd got through with Plato by now," said Philip impatiently.

He was not inclined to pursue the subject. He had discovered of late the effective dignity of silence.

"I don't see the use of reading the same thing over and over again," said Philip. "That's only a laborious form

"But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind that you can understand the most profound

"I don't want to understand him, I'm not a critic. I'm not interested in him for his sake but for mine."

"Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read as if I don't smoke, and

partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come

across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for _me_, and it becomes part of me; I've got

out of the book all that's any use to me, and I can't get anything more if I read it a dozen times. You see, it

seems to me, one's like a closed bud, and most of what one reads and does has no effect at all; but there are

certain things that have a peculiar significance for one, and they open a petal; and the petals open one by one;

Philip was not satisfied with his metaphor, but he did not know how else to explain a thing which he felt and

"You want to do things, you want to become things," said Hayward, with a shrug of the shoulders. "It's so

Philip knew Hayward very well by now. He was weak and vain, so vain that you had to be on the watch

constantly not to hurt his feelings; he mingled idleness and idealism so that he could not separate them. At

Lawson's studio one day he met a journalist, who was charmed by his conversation, and a week later the

editor of a paper wrote to suggest that he should do some criticism for him. For fortyeight hours Hayward

lived in an agony of indecision. He had talked of getting occupation of this sort so long that he had not the

face to refuse outright, but the thought of doing anything filled him with panic. At last he declined the offer

Then he went on to say beautiful things about Amiel, the professor of Geneva, whose brilliancy promised

achievement which was never fulfilled; till at his death the reason of his failure and the excuse were at once

manifest in the minute, wonderful journal which was found among his papers. Hayward smiled enigmatically.

But Hayward could still talk delightfully about books; his taste was exquisite and his discrimination elegant;

and he had a constant interest in ideas, which made him an entertaining companion. They meant nothing to

him really, since they never had any effect on him; but he treated them as he might have pieces of china in an

auctionroom, handling them with pleasure in their shape and their glaze, pricing them in his mind; and then,

And it was Hayward who made a momentous discovery. One evening, after due preparation, he took Philip

and Lawson to a tavern situated in Beak Street, remarkable not only in itself and for its historyit had

memories of eighteenthcentury glories which excited the romantic imaginationbut for its snuff, which

was the best in London, and above all for its punch. Hayward led them into a large, long room, dingily

magnificent, with huge pictures on the walls of nude women: they were vast allegories of the school of

Haydon; but smoke, gas, and the London atmosphere had given them a richness which made them look like

old masters. The dark panelling, the massive, tarnished gold of the cornice, the mahogany tables, gave the

room an air of sumptuous comfort, and the leathercovered seats along the wall were soft and easy. There

was a ram's head on a table opposite the door, and this contained the celebrated snuff. They ordered punch.

They drank it. it was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the excellence thereof; the

sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous terms,

jewelled, exotic phrases rise to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and cleared the head; it filled the soul

with wellbeing; it disposed the mind at once to utter wit and to appreciate the wit of others; it had the

vagueness of music and the precision of mathematics. Only one of its qualities was comparable to anything

else: it had the warmth of a good heart; but its taste, its smell, its feel, were not to be described in words.

Charles Lamb, with his infinite tact, attempting to, might have drawn charming pictures of the life of his day;

Lord Byron in a stanza of Don Juan, aiming at the impossible, might have achieved the sublime; Oscar

Wilde, heaping jewels of ispahan upon brocades of Byzantium, might have created a troubling beauty.

Considering it, the mind reeled under visions of the feasts of Elagabalus; and the subtle harmonies of

Debussy mingled with the musty, fragrant romance of chests in which have been kept old clothes, ruffs, hose,

doublets, of a forgotten generation, and the wan odour of lilies of the valley and the savour of Cheddar

Hayward discovered the tavern at which this priceless beverage was to be obtained by meeting in the street a

man called Macalister who had been at Cambridge with him. He was a stockbroker and a philosopher. He

was accustomed to go to the tavern once a week; and soon Philip, Lawson, and Hayward got into the habit of

meeting there every Tuesday evening: change of manners made it now little frequented, which was an

advantage to persons who took pleasure in conversation. Macalister was a bigboned fellow, much too short

for his width, with a large, fleshy face and a soft voice. He was a student of Kant and judged everything from

the standpoint of pure reason. He was fond of expounding his doctrines. Philip listened with excited interest.

He had long come to the conclusion that nothing amused him more than metaphysics, but he was not so sure

of their efficacy in the affairs of life. The neat little system which he had formed as the result of his

meditations at Blackstable had not been of conspicuous use during his infatuation for Mildred. He could not

be positive that reason was much help in the conduct of life. It seemed to him that life lived itself. He

remembered very vividly the violence of the emotion which had possessed him and his inability, as if he were

tied down to the ground with ropes, to react against it. He read many wise things in books, but he could only

judge from his own experience (he did not know whether he was different from other people); he did not

calculate the pros and cons of an action, the benefits which must befall him if he did it, the harm which might

result from the omission; but his whole being was urged on irresistibly. He did not act with a part of himself

but altogether. The power that possessed him seemed to have nothing to do with reason: all that reason did

"Act so that every action of yours should be capable of becoming a universal rule of action for all men."

"You're a bold man to say that of anything stated by Immanuel Kant," retorted Macalister.

"Why? Reverence for what somebody said is a stultifying quality: there's a damned sight too much reverence

in the world. Kant thought things not because they were true, but because he was Kant."

"Well, what is your objection to the Categorical Imperative?" (They talked as though the fate of empires were

"It suggests that one can choose one's course by an effort of will. And it suggests that reason is the surest

guide. Why should its dictates be any better than those of passion? They're different. That's all."

While he spoke he thought of that hot madness which had driven him in pursuit of Mildred. He remembered

And yet even as he said it he was not quite sure whether he spoke sincerely. When he was under the influence

of passion he had felt a singular vigour, and his mind had worked with unwonted force. He was more alive,

there was an excitement in sheer being, an eager vehemence of soul, which made life now a trifle dull. For all

the misery he had endured there was a compensation in that sense of rushing, overwhelming existence.

But Philip's unlucky words engaged him in a discussion on the freedom of the will, and Macalister, with his

wellstored memory, brought out argument after argument. He had a mind that delighted in dialectics, and he

forced Philip to contradict himself; he pushed him into corners from which he could only escape by damaging

"Well, I can't say anything about other people. I can only speak for myself. The illusion of free will is so

strong in my mind that I can't get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. But it is an illusion which

is one of the strongest motives of my actions. Before I do anything I feel that I have choice, and that

influences what I do; but afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe that it was inevitable from all eternity."

"Why, merely the futility of regret. It's no good crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe

ONE morning Philip on getting up felt his head swim, and going back to bed suddenly discovered he was ill.

All his limbs ached and he shivered with cold. When the landlady brought in his breakfast he called to her

through the open door that he was not well, and asked for a cup of tea and a piece of toast. A few minutes

later there was a knock at his door, and Griffiths came in. They had lived in the same house for over a year,

"I say, I hear you're seedy," said Griffiths. "I thought I'd come in and see what was the matter with you."

Philip, blushing he knew not why, made light of the whole thing. He would be all right in an hour or two.

Philip put the thermometer in his mouth. Griffiths sat on the side of the bed and chatted brightly for a

"Now, look here, old man, you must stay in bed, and I'll bring old Deacon in to have a look at you."

"Nonsense," said Philip. "There's nothing the matter. I wish you wouldn't bother about me."

"But it isn't any bother. You've got a temperature and you must stay in bed. You will, won't you?"

There was a peculiar charm in his manner, a mingling of gravity and kindliness, which was infinitely

"You've got a wonderful bedside manner," Philip murmured, closing his eyes with a smile.

Griffiths shook out his pillow for him, deftly smoothed down the bedclothes, and tucked him up. He went

into Philip's sittingroom to look for a siphon, could not find one, and fetched it from his own room. He drew

"Now, go to sleep and I'll bring the old man round as soon as he's done the wards."

It seemed hours before anyone came to Philip. His head felt as if it would split, anguish rent his limbs, and he

was afraid he was going to cry. Then there was a knock at the door and Griffiths, healthy, strong, and

The physician stepped forward, an elderly man with a bland manner, whom Philip knew only by sight. A few

"Wouldn't you like to go to the hospital? They'll put you in a private ward, and you can be better looked after

He did not want to be disturbed, and he was always shy of new surroundings. He did not fancy nurses fussing

"Now you've got to do exactly as I tell you," said Griffiths. "I'm daynurse and nightnurse all in one."

Griffiths put his hand on Philip's forehead, a large cool, dry hand, and the touch seemed to him good.

"I'm just going to take this round to the dispensary to have it made up, and then I'll come back."

In a little while he brought the medicine and gave Philip a dose. Then he went upstairs to fetch his books.

"You won't mind my working in your room this afternoon, will you?" he said, when he came down. "I'll leave

Later in the day Philip, awaking from an uneasy doze, heard voices in his sittingroom. A friend had come in

And then a minute or two afterwards someone else entered the room and expressed his surprise at finding

"I'm looking after a second year's man who's got these rooms. The wretched blighter's down with influenza.

Philip grew worse. As the night came on he became slightly delirious, but towards morning he awoke from a

restless sleep. He saw Griffiths get out of an armchair, go down on his knees, and with his fingers put piece

"About five. I thought I'd better sit up with you tonight. I brought an armchair in as I thought if I put a

mattress down I should sleep so soundly that I shouldn't hear you if you wanted anything."

In the morning Griffiths drew up the blind. He looked pale and tired after his night's watch, but was full of

"Nonsense. If you were in the small ward a nurse would wash you, and I can do it just as well as a nurse."

Philip, too weak and wretched to resist, allowed Griffiths to wash his hands and face, his feet, his chest and

back. He did it with charming tenderness, carrying on meanwhile a stream of friendly chatter; then he

changed the sheet just as they did at the hospital, shook out the pillow, and arranged the bedclothes.

"I should like Sister Arthur to see me. It would make her sit up. Deacon's coming in to see you early."

Griffiths gave him his breakfast and went off to get dressed and have something to eat. A few minutes before

Norah and Griffiths nursed him between them. Though Griffiths was the same age as Philip he adopted

towards him a humorous, motherly attitude. He was a thoughtful fellow, gentle and encouraging; but his

greatest quality was a vitality which seemed to give health to everyone with whom he came in contact. Philip

was unused to the petting which most people enjoy from mothers or sisters and he was deeply touched by the

feminine tenderness of this strong young man. Philip grew better. Then Griffiths, sitting idly in Philip's room,

amused him with gay stories of amorous adventure. He was a flirtatious creature, capable of carrying on three

or four affairs at a time; and his account of the devices he was forced to in order to keep out of difficulties

made excellent hearing. He had a gift for throwing a romantic glamour over everything that happened to him.

He was crippled with debts, everything he had of any value was pawned, but he managed always to be

cheerful, extravagant, and generous. He was the adventurer by nature. He loved people of doubtful

occupations and shifty purposes; and his acquaintance among the riffraff that frequents the bars of London

was enormous. Loose women, treating him as a friend, told him the troubles, difficulties, and successes of

their lives; and cardsharpers, respecting his impecuniosity, stood him dinners and lent him fivepound

notes. He was ploughed in his examinations time after time; but he bore this cheerfully, and submitted with

such a charming grace to the parental expostulations that his father, a doctor in practice at Leeds, had not the

Life was much too jolly. But it was clear that when he had got through the exuberance of his youth, and was

at last qualified, he would be a tremendous success in practice. He would cure people by the sheer charm of

Philip worshipped him as at school he had worshipped boys who were tall and straight and high of spirits. By

the time he was well they were fast friends, and it was a peculiar satisfaction to Philip that Griffiths seemed to

enjoy sitting in his little parlour, wasting Philip's time with his amusing chatter and smoking innumerable

cigarettes. Philip took him sometimes to the tavern off Regent Street. Hayward found him stupid, but Lawson

recognised his charm and was eager to paint him; he was a picturesque figure with his blue eyes, white skin,

and curly hair. Often they discussed things he knew nothing about, and then he sat quietly, with a

goodnatured smile on his handsome face, feeling quite rightly that his presence was sufficient contribution

to the entertainment of the company. When he discovered that Macalister was a stockbroker he was eager for

tips; and Macalister, with his grave smile, told him what fortunes he could have made if he had bought certain

stock at certain times. It made Philip's mouth water, for in one way and another he was spending more than

he had expected, and it would have suited him very well to make a little money by the easy method

"Next time I hear of a really good thing I'll let you know," said the stockbroker. "They do come along

Philip could not help thinking how delightful it would be to make fifty pounds, so that he could give Norah

the furs she so badly needed for the winter. He looked at the shops in Regent Street and picked out the

articles he could buy for the money. She deserved everything. She made his life very happy

ONE afternoon, when he went back to his rooms from the hospital to wash and tidy himself before going to

tea as usual with Norah, as he let himself in with his latchkey, his landlady opened the door for him.

He was surprised. It would only be Norah, and he had no idea what had brought her.

"I shouldn't 'ave let her in, only she's been three times, and she seemed that upset at not finding you, so I told

He pushed past the explaining landlady and burst into the room. His heart turned sick. It was Mildred. She

was sitting down, but got up hurriedly as he came in. She did not move towards him nor speak. He was so

She did not answer, but began to cry. She did not put her hands to her eyes, but kept them hanging by the side

of her body. She looked like a housemaid applying for a situation. There was a dreadful humility in her

bearing. Philip did not know what feelings came over him. He had a sudden impulse to turn round and escape

Philip left her standing where she was. He could only think at the moment of steadying himself. His knees

Philip's heart bounded. He knew then that he loved her as passionately as ever. He had never ceased to love

her. She was standing before him humble and unresisting. He wished to take her in his arms and cover her

tearstained face with kisses. Oh, how long the separation had been! He did not know how he could have

He drew the chair near the fire and she sat in it. He mixed her whiskey and soda, and, sobbing still, she drank

it. She looked at him with great, mournful eyes. There were large black lines under them. She was thinner and

Philip did not know why the remark seemed to swell his heart. He could not keep the distance from her which

She leaned her head against his bosom and burst into hysterical crying. Her hat was in the way and she took it

off. He had never dreamt that she was capable of crying like that. He kissed her again and again. It seemed to

"You were always good to me, Philip," she said. "That's why I knew I could come to you."

"Don't you know that there's nothing you can't tell me? I can never blame you for anything."

She told him the story little by little, and sometimes she sobbed so much that he could hardly understand.

"Last Monday week he went up to Birmingham, and he promised to be back on Thursday, and he never came,

and he didn't come on the Friday, so I wrote to ask what was the matter, and he never answered the letter.

And I wrote and said that if I didn't hear from him by return I'd go up to Birmingham, and this morning I got

a solicitor's letter to say I had no claim on him, and if I molested him he'd seek the protection of the law."

"But it's absurd," cried Philip. "A man can't treat his wife like that. Had you had a row?"

"Oh, yes, we'd had a quarrel on the Sunday, and he said he was sick of me, but he'd said it before, and he'd

come back all right. I didn't think he meant it. He was frightened, because I told him a baby was coming. I

kept it from him as long as I could. Then I had to tell him. He said it was my fault, and I ought to have known

better. If you'd only heard the things he said to me! But I found out precious quick that he wasn't a gentleman.

He left me without a penny. He hadn't paid the rent, and I hadn't got the money to pay it, and the woman who

kept the house said such things to mewell, I might have been a thief the way she talked."

"That's what he said, but we just took furnished apartments in Highbury. He was that mean. He said I was

She had an extraordinary way of mixing the trivial with the important. Philip was puzzled. The whole thing

"You don't know him. I wouldn't go back to him now not if he was to come and ask me on his bended knees.

I was a fool ever to think of him. And he wasn't earning the money he said he was. The lies he told me!"

Philip thought for a minute or two. He was so deeply moved by her distress that he could not think of

"Would you like me to go to Birmingham? I could see him and try to make things up."

"But he must provide for you. He can't get out of that. I don't know anything about these things, you'd better

"I'll pay all that. I'll write a note to my own solicitor, the sportsman who was my father's executor. Would you

She was a little calmer now. He sat down and wrote a note. Then he remembered that she had no money. He

had fortunately changed a cheque the day before and was able to give her five pounds.

She put up her lips and he kissed her. There was a surrender in the action which he had never seen in her

She went away and he found that she had been there for two hours. He was extraordinarily happy.

"Poor thing, poor thing," he murmured to himself, his heart glowing with a greater love than he had ever felt

He never thought of Norah at all till about eight o'clock a telegram came. He knew before opening it that it

He did not know what to do nor what to answer. He could fetch her after the play, in which she was walking

on, was over and stroll home with her as he sometimes did; but his whole soul revolted against the idea of

seeing her that evening. He thought of writing to her, but he could not bring himself to address her as usual,

He visualised her. He was slightly repelled by the ugly little face, with its high cheekbones and the crude

colour. There was a coarseness in her skin which gave him gooseflesh. He knew that his telegram must be

Mildred had suggested coming at four in the afternoon, and he would not tell her that the hour was

inconvenient. After all she came first. He waited for her impatiently. He watched for her at the window and

"Yes," she answered. "He said it wasn't any good. Nothing's to be done. I must just grin and bear it."

"There's your letter, Philip. I never took it. I couldn't tell you yesterday, I really couldn't. Emil didn't marry

Philip felt a sudden pang of jealousy and anguish. It was almost more than he could bear.

"What made you go away with him?" Philip asked, in a low voice which he struggled to make firm.

"I don't know. I didn't know he was a married man at first, and when he told me I gave him a piece of my

mind. And then I didn't see him for months, and when he came to the shop again and asked me I don't know

"I don't know. I couldn't hardly help laughing at the things he said. And there was something about himhe

said I'd never regret it, he promised to give me seven pounds a weekhe said he was earning fifteen, and it

was all a lie, he wasn't. And then I was sick of going to the shop every morning, and I wasn't getting on very

well with my aunt; she wanted to treat me as a servant instead of a relation, said I ought to do my own room,

and if I didn't do it nobody was going to do it for me. Oh, I wish I hadn't. But when he came to the shop and

Philip moved away from her. He sat down at the table and buried his face in his hands. He felt dreadfully

"You see, I was so dreadfully in love with you. I did everything I could to make you care for me. I thought

you were incapable of loving anyone. It's so horrible to know that you were willing to sacrifice everything for

"I'm awfully sorry, Philip. I regretted it bitterly afterwards, I promise you that."

He thought of Emil Miller, with his pasty, unhealthy look, his shifty blue eyes, and the vulgar smartness of

his appearance; he always wore bright red knitted waistcoats. Philip sighed. She got up and went to him. She

"Philip, if you want me still I'll do anything you like now. I know you're a gentleman in every sense of the

"Then why shouldn't we have a good time while we've got the chance? You see, it can't matter now"

"You don't understand. I've been sick with love for you ever since I saw you, but nowthat man. I've

"You mustn't think I'm not grateful. I can never thank you enough, but you see, it's just stronger than I am."

They went on talking, and soon they had returned to the familiar companionship of old days. It grew late.

Philip suggested that they should dine together and go to a musichall. She wanted some persuasion, for she

had an idea of acting up to her situation, and felt instinctively that it did not accord with her distressed

condition to go to a place of entertainment. At last Philip asked her to go simply to please him, and when she

could look upon it as an act of selfsacrifice she accepted. She had a new thoughtfulness which delighted

Philip. She asked him to take her to the little restaurant in Soho to which they had so often been; he was

infinitely grateful to her, because her suggestion showed that happy memories were attached to it. She grew

much more cheerful as dinner proceeded. The Burgundy from the public house at the corner warmed her

heart, and she forgot that she ought to preserve a dolorous countenance. Philip thought it safe to speak to her

"I suppose you haven't got a brass farthing, have you?" he asked, when an opportunity presented itself.

"Only what you gave me yesterday, and I had to give the landlady three pounds of that."

"Well, I'd better give you a tenner to go on with. I'll go and see my solicitor and get him to write to Miller.

We can make him pay up something, I'm sure. If we can get a hundred pounds out of him it'll carry you on till

It was a little awkward for Philip. He needed rigid economy to make his own money last till he was qualified,

and he must have something over to keep him during the year he intended to spend as house physician and

house surgeon either at his own or at some other hospital. But Mildred had told him various stories of Emil's

meanness, and he was afraid to remonstrate with her in case she accused him too of want of generosity.

"I wouldn't take a penny piece from him. I'd sooner beg my bread. I'd have seen about getting some work to

do long before now, only it wouldn't be good for me in the state I'm in. You have to think of your health,

"You needn't bother about the present," said Philip. "I can let you have all you want till you're fit to work

"I knew I could depend on you. I told Emil he needn't think I hadn't got somebody to go to. I told him you

By degrees Philip learned how the separation had come about. It appeared that the fellow's wife had

discovered the adventure he was engaged in during his periodical visits to London, and had gone to the head

of the firm that employed him. She threatened to divorce him, and they announced that they would dismiss

him if she did. He was passionately devoted to his children and could not bear the thought of being separated

from them. When he had to choose between his wife and his mistress he chose his wife. He had been always

anxious that there should be no child to make the entanglement more complicated; and when Mildred, unable

longer to conceal its approach, informed him of the fact, he was seized with panic. He picked a quarrel and

It was necessary to discuss plans. Mildred declared she would not remain in the rooms at Highbury, and

Philip thought it more convenient too that she should be nearer to him. He promised to look for something

"Well, I should only be able to stay there about two months or a little more, and then I should have to go into

a house. I know a very respectable place, where they have a most superior class of people, and they take you

for four guineas a week and no extras. Of Course the doctor's extra, but that's all. A friend of mine went there,

and the lady who keeps it is a thorough lady. I mean to tell her that my husband's an officer in India and I've

It seemed extraordinary to Philip to hear her talking in this way. With her delicate little features and her pale

face she looked cold and maidenly. When he thought of the passions that burnt within her, so unexpected, his

PHILIP expected to find a letter from Norah when he got back to his rooms, but there was nothing; nor did he

receive one the following morning. The silence irritated and at the same time alarmed him. They had seen

one another every day he had been in London since the previous June; and it must seem odd to her that he

should let two days go by without visiting her or offering a reason for his absence; he wondered whether by

an unlucky chance she had seen him with Mildred. He could not bear to think that she was hurt or unhappy,

and he made up his mind to call on her that afternoon. He was almost inclined to reproach her because he had

allowed himself to get on such intimate terms with her. The thought of continuing them filled him with

He found two rooms for Mildred on the second floor of a house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road. They were

"I don't like a dead and alive street where you don't see a soul pass all day," she said. "Give me a bit of life."

Then he forced himself to go to Vincent Square. He was sick with apprehension when he rang the bell. He

had an uneasy sense that he was treating Norah badly; he dreaded reproaches; he knew she had a quick

temper, and he hated scenes: perhaps the best way would be to tell her frankly that Mildred had come back to

him and his love for her was as violent as it had ever been; he was very sorry, but he had nothing to offer

Norah any more. Then he thought of her anguish, for he knew she loved him; it had flattered him before, and

he was immensely grateful; but now it was horrible. She had not deserved that he should inflict pain upon

her. He asked himself how she would greet him now, and as he walked up the stairs all possible forms of her

behaviour flashed across his mind. He knocked at the door. He felt that he was pale, and wondered how to

"I recognised your step," she cried. "Where have you been hiding yourself, you naughty boy?"

She came towards him joyfully and put her arms round his neck. She was delighted to see him. He kissed her,

and then, to give himself countenance, said he was dying for tea. She bustled the fire to make the kettle boil.

She began to chatter in her bright way, telling him of a new commission she had to provide a novelette for a

firm which had not hitherto employed her. She was to get fifteen guineas for it.

"It's money from the clouds. I'll tell you what we'll do, we'll stand ourselves a little jaunt. Let's go and spend a

He looked at her to see whether there was any shadow of reproach in her eyes; but they were as frank and

merry as ever: she was overjoyed to see him. His heart sank. He could not tell her the brutal truth. She made

some toast for him, and cut it into little pieces, and gave it him as though he were a child.

He nodded, smiling; and she lit a cigarette for him. Then, as she loved to do, she came and sat on his knees.

She was very light. She leaned back in his arms with a sigh of delicious happiness.

He had not the heart to tell her then. He would give her peace at all events for that day, and perhaps he might

write to her. That would be easier. He could not bear to think of her crying. She made him kiss her, and as he

kissed her he thought of Mildred and Mildred's pale, thin lips. The recollection of Mildred remained with him

all the time, like an incorporated form, but more substantial than a shadow; and the sight continually

He reddened a little, wondering whether she had some inkling of his secret; he turned away his eyes uneasily.

The weight of her irked him this afternoon, and he did not want her to touch him.

"I'm so sorry," she cried, jumping up. "I shall have to bant if I can't break myself of this habit of sitting on

He went through an elaborate form of stamping his foot and walking about. Then he stood in front of the fire

so that she should not resume her position. While she talked he thought that she was worth ten of Mildred;

she amused him much more and was jollier to talk to; she was cleverer, and she had a much nicer nature. She

was a good, brave, honest little woman; and Mildred, he thought bitterly, deserved none of these epithets. If

he had any sense he would stick to Norah, she would make him much happier than he would ever be with

Mildred: after all she loved him, and Mildred was only grateful for his help. But when all was said the

important thing was to love rather than to be loved; and he yearned for Mildred with his whole soul. He

would sooner have ten minutes with her than a whole afternoon with Norah, he prized one kiss of her cold

He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather

He knew that he would not be able to come, since he was going to help Mildred with her moving, but he had

not the courage to say so. He made up his mind that he would send a wire. Mildred saw the rooms in the

morning, was satisfied with them, and after luncheon Philip went up with her to Highbury. She had a trunk

for her clothes and another for the various odds and ends, cushions, lampshades, photograph frames, with

which she had tried to give the apartments a homelike air; she had two or three large cardboard boxes

besides, but in all there was no more than could be put on the roof of a fourwheeler. As they drove through

Victoria Street Philip sat well back in the cab in case Norah should happen to be passing. He had not had an

opportunity to telegraph and could not do so from the post office in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, since she

would wonder what he was doing in that neighbourhood; and if he was there he could have no excuse for not

going into the neighbouring square where she lived. He made up his mind that he had better go in and see her

for half an hour; but the necessity irritated him: he was angry with Norah, because she forced him to vulgar

and degrading shifts. But he was happy to be with Mildred. It amused him to help her with the unpacking;

and he experienced a charming sense of possession in installing her in these lodgings which he had found and

was paying for. He would not let her exert herself. It was a pleasure to do things for her, and she had no

desire to do what somebody else seemed desirous to do for her. He unpacked her clothes and put them away.

She was not proposing to go out again, so he got her slippers and took off her boots. It delighted him to

"You do spoil me," she said, running her fingers affectionately through his hair, while he was on his knees

He arranged the cushions and the photograph frames. She had several jars of green earthenware.

"As I'm not going out any more I think I'll get into a teagown," she said. "Undo me behind, will you?"

She turned round as unconcernedly as though he were a woman. His sex meant nothing to her. But his heart

was filled with gratitude for the intimacy her request showed. He undid the hooks and eyes with clumsy

"That first day I came into the shop I never thought I'd be doing this for you now," he said, with a laugh

She went into the bedroom and slipped into a pale blue teagown decorated with a great deal of cheap lace.

"I'm afraid I can't stay and have it with you," he said regretfully. "I've got a beastly appointment. But I shall

He wondered what he should say if she asked him what the appointment was, but she showed no curiosity.

He had ordered dinner for the two of them when he took the rooms, and proposed to spend the evening with

her quietly. He was in such a hurry to get back that he took a tram along the Vauxhall Bridge Road. He

thought he had better break the fact to Norah at once that he could not stay more than a few minutes.

"I say, I've got only just time to say how d'you do," he said, as soon as he got into her rooms. "I'm frightfully

It exasperated him that she should force him to tell lies, and he knew that he reddened when he answered that

there was a demonstration at the hospital which he was bound to go to. He fancied that she looked as though

He looked at her blankly. It was Sunday, and he had been looking forward to spending the day with Mildred.

He told himself that he must do that in common decency; he could not leave her by herself in a strange house.

He knew this was the beginning of a scene which he would have given anything to avoid. The colour on

"But I've asked the Gordons to lunch"they were an actor and his wife who were touring the provinces and

"I'm awfully sorry, I forgot." He hesitated. "I'm afraid I can't possibly come. Isn't there somebody else you

"I don't in the least mind telling you, but it's rather annoying to be forced to account for all one's movements."

Norah suddenly changed. With an effort of selfcontrol she got the better of her temper, and going up to him

"Don't disappoint me tomorrow, Philip, I've been looking forward so much to spending the day with you. The

"I'm not very exacting, am I? I don't often ask you to do anything that's a bother. Won't you get out of your

He had had time to invent something. "Griffiths' two sisters are up for the weekend and we're taking them

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

"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

"In that case you needn't trouble to come again," she cried, losing her temper for good.

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

The little dinner was a great success. Philip had sent in a small pot of caviare, 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

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

"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."

He thought that if she loved him she would say that in that case she would stay with him. He knew very well

"Well, you were a silly to do that. I've promised to go for three weeks and more."

"Oh, I shall say that Emil's away on business. Her husband's in the glove trade, and he's a very superior

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

"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

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 dressinggowns 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

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 selfsacrifice 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.

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

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

"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

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.

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

"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 exaggerate the passion one's

"Look here, there's only one thing you can do. Write to her, and tell her the thing's over. Put it so that there

can be no mistake about it. It'll hurt her, but it'll hurt her less if you do the thing brutally than if you try

I am sorry to make you unhappy, but I think we had better let things remain where we left them on Saturday.

I don't think there's any use in letting these things drag on when they've ceased to be amusing. You told me to

He showed the letter to Griffiths and asked him what he thought of it. Griffiths read it and looked at Philip

Philip went out and posted it. He passed an uncomfortable morning,. for he imagined with great detail what

Norah would feel when she received his letter. He tortured himself with the thought of her tears. But at the

same time he was relieved. Imagined grief was more easy to bear than grief seen, and he was free now to love

Mildred with all his soul. His heart leaped at the thought of going to see her that afternoon, when his day's

When as usual he went back to his rooms to tidy himself, he had no sooner put the latchkey in his door than

It was Norah. He felt himself blush to the roots of his hair. She spoke gaily. There was no trace of resentment

in her voice and nothing to indicate that there was a rupture between them. He felt himself cornered. He was

He opened the door, and she preceded him into his sittingroom. He was nervous and, to give himself

countenance, offered her a cigarette and lit one for himself. She looked at him brightly.

"Why did you write me such a horrid letter, you naughty boy? If I'd taken it seriously it would have made me

"Don't be so silly. I lost my temper the other day, and I wrote and apologised. You weren't satisfied, so I've

come here to apologise again. After all, you're your own master and I have no claims upon you. I don't want

She got up from the chair in which she was sitting and went towards him impulsively, with outstretched

"Philip, don't be silly. I'm quicktempered too and I can understand that I hurt you, but it's so stupid to sulk

over it. What's the good of making us both unhappy? It's been so jolly, our friendship." She passed her fingers

He got up, disengaging himself from her, and went to the other side of the room.

"You were just looking for an opportunity to throw me over and you took that one?"

He did not answer. She looked at him steadily for a time which seemed intolerable. She was sitting on the

floor where he had left her, leaning against the armchair. She began to cry quite silently, without trying to

hide her face, and the large tears rolled down her cheeks one after the other. She did not sob. It was horribly

She did not answer. She merely sat there, as though she were overwhelmed, and the tears flowed down her

cheeks. It would have been easier to bear if she had reproached him. He had thought her temper would get the

better of her, and he was prepared for that. At the back of his mind was a feeling that a real quarrel, in which

each said to the other cruel things, would in some way be a justification of his behaviour. The time passed. At

last he grew frightened by her silent crying; he went into his bedroom and got a glass of water; he leaned

She put her lips listlessly to the glass and drank two or three mouthfuls. Then in an exhausted whisper she

"I'm afraid that's always the case," he said. "There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be

He thought of Mildred, and a bitter pain traversed his heart. Norah did not answer for a long time.

She did not speak to him, but to herself. He had never heard her before complain of the life she had led with

her husband or of her poverty. He had always admired the bold front she displayed to the world.

"And then you came along and you were so good to me. And I admired you because you were clever and it

was so heavenly to have someone I could put my trust in. I loved you. I never thought it could come to an

Her tears began to flow again, but now she was more mistress of herself, and she hid her face in Philip's

"I'm awfully sorry, Norah. I want you to know that I'm very grateful for all you've done for me."

"Oh, it's always the same," she sighed, "if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them;

She got up from the floor and said she must go. She gave Philip a long, steady look. Then she sighed.

"I think I'd better tell you, I don't want you to think too badly of me, I want you to see that I can't help myself.

He went to the door and stopped a passing hansom; but when she followed him into the street he was startled

to see how white she was. There was a heaviness in her movements as though she had suddenly grown older.

She did not answer, and he got into the cab. They drove along in silence over the bridge, through shabby

streets in which children, with shrill cries, played in the road. When they arrived at her door she did not

immediately get out. It seemed as though she could not summon enough strength to her legs to move.

She turned her eyes towards him, and he saw that they were bright again with tears, but she forced a smile to

"Poor fellow, you're quite worried about me. You mustn't bother. I don't blame you. I shall get over it all

Lightly and quickly she stroked his face to show him that she bore no illfeeling, the gesture was scarcely

more than suggested; then she jumped out of the cab and let herself into her house.

Philip paid the hansom and walked to Mildred's lodgings. There was a curious heaviness in his heart. He was

inclined to reproach himself. But why? He did not know what else he could have done. Passing a fruiterer's,

he remembered that Mildred was fond of grapes. He was so grateful that he could show his love for her by

FOR the next three months Philip went every day to see Mildred. He took his books with him and after tea

worked, while Mildred lay on the sofa reading novels. Sometimes he would look up and watch her for a

He put aside his book when the landlady came in to lay the cloth for dinner, and in his high spirits he

exchanged chaff with her. She was a little cockney, of middle age, with an amusing humour and a quick

tongue. Mildred had become great friends with her and had given her an elaborate but mendacious account of

the circumstances which had brought her to the pass she was in. The goodhearted little woman was touched

and found no trouble too great to make Mildred comfortable. Mildred's sense of propriety had suggested that

Philip should pass himself off as her brother. They dined together, and Philip was delighted when he had

ordered something which tempted Mildred's capricious appetite. It enchanted him to see her sitting opposite

him, and every now and then from sheer joy he took her hand and pressed it. After dinner she sat in the

armchair by the fire, and he settled himself down on the floor beside her, leaning against her knees, and

smoked. Often they did not talk at all, and sometimes Philip noticed that she had fallen into a doze. He dared

not move then in case he woke her, and he sat very quietly, looking lazily into the fire and enjoying his

She would never acknowledge that she had been asleep. She had a phlegmatic temperament, and her

condition did not seriously inconvenience her. She took a lot of trouble about her health and accepted the

advice of anyone who chose to offer it. She went for a `constitutional' every morning that it was fine and

remained out a definite time. When it was not too cold she sat in St. James' Park. But the rest of the day she

spent quite happily on her sofa, reading one novel after another or chatting with the landlady; she had an

inexhaustible interest in gossip, and told Philip with abundant detail the history of the landlady, of the lodgers

on the drawingroom floor, and of the people who lived in the next house on either side. Now and then she

was seized with panic; she poured out her fears to Philip about the pain of the confinement and was in terror

lest she should die; she gave him a full account of the confinements of the landlady and of the lady on the

drawingroom floor (Mildred did not know her; "I'm one to keep myself to myself," she said, "I'm not one to

go about with anybody.") and she narrated details with a queer mixture of horror and gusto; but for the most

"After all, I'm not the first one to have a baby, am I? And the doctor says I shan't have any trouble. You see, it

Mrs. Owen, the owner of the house she was going to when her time came, had recommended a doctor, and

"Of course I could have got it done cheaper, but Mrs. Owen strongly recommended him, and I thought it

"If you feel happy and comfortable I don't mind a bit about the expense," said Philip.

She accepted all that Philip did for her as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and on his side he

loved to spend money on her: each fivepound note he gave her caused him a little thrill of happiness and

"I don't know where the money goes to," she said herself, "it seems to slip through my fingers like water."

"It doesn't matter," said Philip. "I'm so glad to be able to do anything I can for you."

She could not sew well and so did not make the necessary things for the baby; she told Philip it was much

cheaper in the end to buy them. Philip had lately sold one of the mortgages in which his money had been put;

and now, with five hundred pounds in the bank waiting to be invested in something that could be more easily

realised, he felt himself uncommonly welltodo. They talked often of the future. Philip was anxious that

Mildred should keep the child with her, but she refused: she had her living to earn, and it would be more easy

to do this if she had not also to look after a baby. Her plan was to get back into one of the shops of the

company for which she had worked before, and the child could be put with some decent woman in the

"I can find someone who'll look after it well for seven and sixpence a week. It'll be better for the baby and

It seemed callous to Philip, but when he tried to reason with her she pretended to think he was concerned with

At the bottom of her heart was the hope that the child would be stillborn. She did no more than hint it, but

Philip saw that the thought was there. He was shocked at first; and then, reasoning with himself, he was

"It's all very fine to say this and that," Mildred remarked querulously, "but it's jolly difficult for a girl to earn

"Good heavens, I don't want a return. If I've done anything for you, I've done it because I love you. You owe

He was a little horrified by her feeling that her body was a commodity which she could deliver indifferently

"Well, it won't hurt for waiting. When you're all right again we'll go for our little honeymoon."

Mildred expected to be confined early in March, and as soon as she was well enough she was to go to the

seaside for a fortnight: that would give Philip a chance to work without interruption for his examination; after

that came the Easter holidays, and they had arranged to go to Paris together. Philip talked endlessly of the

things they would do. Paris was delightful then. They would take a room in a little hotel he knew in the Latin

Quarter, and they would eat in all sorts of charming little restaurants; they would go to the play, and he would

take her to music halls. It would amuse her to meet his friends. He had talked to her about Cronshaw, she

would see him; and there was Lawson, he had gone to Paris for a couple of months; and they would go to the

Bai Bullier; there were excursions; they would make trips to Versailles, Chartres, Fontainebleau.

"Oh, damn the expense. Think how I've been looking forward to it. Don't you know what it means to me? I've

She listened to his enthusiasm with smiling eyes. He thought he saw in them a new tenderness, and he was

grateful to her. She was much gentler than she used to be. There was in her no longer the superciliousness

which had irritated him. She was so accustomed to him now that she took no pains to keep up before him any

pretences. She no longer troubled to do her hair with the old elaboration, but just tied it in a knot; and she left

off the vast fringe which she generally wore: the more careless style suited her. Her face was so thin that it

made her eyes seem very large; there were heavy lines under them, and the pallor of her cheeks made their

colour more profound. She had a wistful look which was infinitely pathetic. There seemed to Philip to be in

her something of the Madonna. He wished they could continue in that same way always. He was happier than

He used to leave her at ten o'clock every night, for she liked to go to bed early, and he was obliged to put in

another couple of hours' work to make up for the lost evening. He generally brushed her hair for her before he

went. He had made a ritual of the kisses he gave her when he bade her goodnight; first he kissed the palms

of her hands (how thin the fingers were, the nails were beautiful, for she spent much time in manicuring

them,) then he kissed her closed eyes, first the right one and then the left, and at last he kissed her lips. He

went home with a heart overflowing with love. He longed for an opportunity to gratify the desire for

Presently the time came for her to move to the nursinghome where she was to be confined. Philip was then

able to visit her only in the afternoons. Mildred changed her story and represented herself as the wife of a

soldier who had gone to India to join his regiment, and Philip was introduced to the mistress of the

"I have to be rather careful what I say," she told him, "as there's another lady here whose husband's in the

"I wouldn't let that disturb me if I were you," said Philip. "I'm convinced that her husband and yours went out

Mildred was safely delivered of a daughter, and when Philip was allowed to see her the child was lying by

her side. Mildred was very weak, but relieved that everything was over. She showed him the baby, and

It was red and wrinkled and odd. Philip smiled when he looked at it. He did not quite know what to say; and

it embarrassed him because the nurse who owned the house was standing by his side; and he felt by the way

she was looking at him that, disbelieving Mildred's complicated story, she thought he was the father.

The nurse left them alone for a few minutes, and Philip bent down and kissed Mildred on the mouth.

They heard the nurse at the door, and Philip hurriedly got up. The nurse entered. There was a slight smile on

THREE weeks later Philip saw Mildred and her baby off to Brighton. She had made a quick recovery and

looked better than he had ever seen her. She was going to a boardinghouse where she had spent a couple of

weekends with Emil Miller, and had written to say that her husband was obliged to go to Germany on

business and she was coming down with her baby. She got pleasure out of the stories she invented, and she

showed a certain fertility of invention in the working out of the details. Mildred proposed to find in Brighton

some woman who would be willing to take charge of the baby. Philip was startled at the callousness with

which she insisted on getting rid of it so soon, but she argued with common sense that the poor child had

much better be put somewhere before it grew used to her. Philip had expected the maternal instinct to make

itself felt when she had had the baby two or three weeks and had counted on this to help him persuade her to

keep it; but nothing of the sort occurred. Mildred was not unkind to her baby; she did all that was necessary;

it amused her sometimes, and she talked about it a good deal; but at heart she was indifferent to it. She could

not look upon it as part of herself. She fancied it resembled its father already. She was continually wondering

how she would manage when it grew older; and she was exasperated with herself for being such a fool as to

"You couldn't make more fuss if you was the father," she said. "I'd like to see Emil getting into such a stew

Philip's mind was full of the stories he had heard of babyfarming and the ghouls who illtreat the wretched

"Don't be so silly," said Mildred. "That's when you give a woman a sum down to look after a baby. But when

you're going to pay so much a week it's to their interest to look after it well."

Philip insisted that Mildred should place the child with people who had no children of their own and would

"Don't haggle about the price," he said. "I'd rather pay half a guinea a week than run any risk of the kid being

To him there was something very touching in the child's helplessness. It was small, ugly, and querulous. Its

birth had been looked forward to with shame and anguish. Nobody wanted it. It was dependent on him, a

As the train started he kissed Mildred. He would have kissed the baby too, but he was afraid she would laugh

"You will write to me, darling, won't you? And I shall look forward to your coming back with oh! such

He had been working for it industriously, and now with only ten days before him he made a final effort. He

was very anxious to pass, first to save himself time and expense, for money had been slipping through his

fingers during the last four months with incredible speed; and then because this examination marked the end

of the drudgery: after that the student had to do with medicine, midwifery, and surgery, the interest of which

was more vivid than the anatomy and physiology with which he had been hitherto concerned. Philip looked

forward with interest to the rest of the curriculum. Nor did he want to have to confess to Mildred that he had

failed: though the examination was difficult and the majority of candidates were ploughed at the first attempt,

he knew that she would think less well of him if he did not succeed; she had a peculiarly humiliating way of

Mildred sent him a postcard to announce her safe arrival, and he snatched half an hour every day to write a

long letter to her. He had always a certain shyness in expressing himself by word of mouth, but he found he

could tell her, pen in hand, all sorts of things which it would have made him feel ridiculous to say. Profiting

by the discovery he poured out to her his whole heart. He had never been able to tell her before how his

adoration filled every part of him so that all his actions, all his thoughts, were touched with it. He wrote to her

of the future, the happiness that lay before him, and the gratitude which he owed her. He asked himself (he

had often asked himself before but had never put it into words) what it was in her that filled him with such

extravagant delight; he did not know; he knew only that when she was with him he was happy, and when she

was away from him the world was on a sudden cold and gray; he knew only that when he thought of her his

heart seemed to grow big in his body so that it was difficult to breathe (as if it pressed against his lungs) and

it throbbed, so that the delight of her presence was almost pain; his knees shook, and he felt strangely weak as

though, not having eaten, he were tremulous from want of food. He looked forward eagerly to her answers.

He did not expect her to write often, for he knew that letterwriting came difficultly to her; and he was quite

content with the clumsy little note that arrived in reply to four of his. She spoke of the boardinghouse in

which she had taken a room, of the weather and the baby, told him she had been for a walk on the front with a

ladyfriend whom she had met in the boardinghouse and who had taken such a fancy to baby, she was

going to the theatre on Saturday night, and Brighton was filling up. It touched Philip because it was so

matteroffact. The crabbed style, the formality of the matter, gave him a queer desire to laugh and to take

He went into the examination with happy confidence. There was nothing in either of the papers that gave him

trouble. He knew that he had done well, and though the second part of the examination was _viva voce_ and

he was more nervous, he managed to answer the questions adequately. He sent a triumphant telegram to

When he got back to his rooms Philip found a letter from her, saying that she thought it would be better for

her to stay another week in Brighton. She had found a woman who would be glad to take the baby for seven

shillings a week, but she wanted to make inquiries about her, and she was herself benefiting so much by the

seaair that she was sure a few days more would do her no end of good. She hated asking Philip for money,

but would he send some by return, as she had had to buy herself a new hat, she couldn't go about with her

ladyfriend always in the same hat, and her ladyfriend was so dressy. Philip had a moment of bitter

disappointment. It took away all his pleasure at getting through his examination.

"If she loved me one quarter as much as I love her she couldn't bear to stay away a day longer than

He put the thought away from him quickly; it was pure selfishness; of course her health was more important

than anything else. But he had nothing to do now; he might spend the week with her in Brighton, and they

could be together all day. His heart leaped at the thought. It would be amusing to appear before Mildred

suddenly with the information that he had taken a room in the boardinghouse. He looked out trains. But he

paused. He was not certain that she would be pleased to see him; she had made friends in Brighton; he was

quiet, and she liked boisterous joviality; he realised that she amused herself more with other people than with

him. It would torture him if he felt for an instant that he was in the way. He was afraid to risk it. He dared not

even write and suggest that, with nothing to keep him in town, he would like to spend the week where he

could see her every day. She knew he had nothing to do; if she wanted him to come she would have asked

him to. He dared not risk the anguish he would suffer if he proposed to come and she made excuses to

He wrote to her next day, sent her a fivepound note, and at the end of his letter said that if she were very

nice and cared to see him for the weekend he would be glad to run down; but she was by no means to alter

any plans 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 musichall 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

Sunday. He blessed the day because it was fine. As the train approached Brighton the sun poured through the

"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

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

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,

"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

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

"Well, I must say you've deserved to get something," he remarked. "It must have cost you a pretty penny. It's

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 shopboys who walked in twos and

threes, swinging their canes, and there were the Brighton shopgirls 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 middleaged 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 LondonbytheSea. Here and there a wellknown actor passed, elaborately unconscious of the

attention he excited: sometimes he wore patent leather boots, a coat with an astrakhan collar, and carried a

silverknobbed 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

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

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 lonely, it would be something to do to look after a child, and the few shillings a week paid for it

They went back to have tea at the Metropole. Mildred liked the crowd and the band. Philip was tired of

talking, and he watched her face as she looked with keen eyes at the dresses of the women who came in. She

had a peculiar sharpness for reckoning up what things cost, and now and then she leaned over to him and

Or: "Look at that ermine, Philip. That's rabbit, that isthat's not ermine." She laughed triumphantly. "I'd

Philip smiled happily. He was glad to see her pleasure, and the ingenuousness of her conversation amused

After dinner they walked down to the station, and Philip took her arm. He told her what arrangements he had

made for their journey to France. She was to come up to London at the end of the week, but she told him that

she could not go away till the Saturday of the week after that. He had already engaged a room in a hotel in

"You won't mind going secondclass, will you? We mustn't be extravagant, and it'll be all the better if we can

He had talked to her a hundred times of the Quarter. They would wander through its pleasant old streets, and

they would sit idly in the charming gardens of the Luxembourg. If the weather was fine perhaps, when they

had had enough of Paris, they might go to Fontainebleau. The trees would be just bursting into leaf. The

green of the forest in spring was more beautiful than anything he knew; it was like a song, and it was like the

happy pain of love. Mildred listened quietly. He turned to her and tried to look deep into her eyes.

"You don't know how I'm looking forward to it. I don't know how I shall get through the next days. I'm so

afraid something will happen to prevent it. It maddens me sometimes that I can't tell you how much I love

He broke off. They reached the station, but they had dawdled on the way, and Philip had barely time to say

goodnight. He kissed her quickly and ran towards the wicket as fast as he could. She stood where he left

THE following Saturday Mildred returned, and that evening Philip kept her to himself. He took seats for the

play, and they drank champagne at dinner. It was her first gaiety in London for so long that she enjoyed

everything ingenuously. She cuddled up to Philip when they drove from the theatre to the room he had taken

She did not answer, but gently pressed his hand. Demonstrations of affection were so rare with her that Philip

There was no place of entertainment to take her to on Sunday night, and Philip was afraid she would be bored

if she were alone with him all day. Griffiths was amusing; he would help them to get through the evening;

and Philip was so fond of them both that he wanted them to know and to like one another. He left Mildred

They had arranged to dine in the gallery at Romano's on Sunday, because the dinner was excellent and looked

as though it cost a good deal more than it did. Philip and Mildred arrived first and had to wait some time for

"He's an unpunctual devil," said Philip. "He's probably making love to one of his numerous flames."

But presently he appeared. He was a handsome creature, tall and thin; his head was placed well on the body,

it gave him a conquering air which was attractive; and his curly hair, his bold, friendly blue eyes, his red

mouth, were charming. Philip saw Mildred look at him with appreciation, and he felt a curious satisfaction.

Griffiths laughed, and Philip saw that Mildred noticed how white and regular his teeth were and how pleasant

"You ought to feel like old friends," said Philip. "I've talked so much about you to one another."

Griffiths was in the best possible humour, for, having at length passed his final examination, he was

qualified, and he had just been appointed housesurgeon at a hospital in the North of London. He was taking

up his duties at the beginning of May and meanwhile was going home for a holiday; this was his last week in

town, and he was determined to get as much enjoyment into it as he could. He began to talk the gay nonsense

which Philip admired because he could not copy it. There was nothing much in what he said, but his vivacity

gave it point. There flowed from him a force of life which affected everyone who knew him; it was almost as

sensible as bodily warmth. Mildred was more lively than Philip had ever known her, and he was delighted to

see that his little party was a success. She was amusing herself enormously. She laughed louder and louder.

"I say, it's dreadfully difficult for me to call you Mrs. Miller. Philip never calls you anything but Mildred."

"I daresay she won't scratch your eyes out if you call her that too," laughed Philip.

Philip sat silent while they chattered away and thought how good it was to see people happy. Now and then

"He isn't a bad old thing," answered Griffiths, and taking Philip's hand he shook it gaily.

It seemed an added charm in Griffiths that he liked Philip. They were all sober people, and the wine they had

drunk went to their heads. Griffiths became more talkative and so boisterous that Philip, amused, had to beg

him to be quiet. He had a gift for storytelling, and his adventures lost nothing of their romance and their

laughter in his narration. He played in all of them a gallant, humorous part. Mildred, her eyes shining with

excitement, urged him on. He poured out anecdote after anecdote. When the lights began to be turned out she

"My word, the evening has gone quickly. I thought it wasn't more than half past nine."

"I'm coming to have tea at Philip's room tomorrow. You might look in if you can."

On the way back to Pimlico Mildred talked of nothing but Griffiths. She was taken with his good looks, his

"I am glad you like him," said Philip. "D'you remember you were rather sniffy about meeting him?"

"I think it's so nice of him to be so fond of you, Philip. He is a nice friend for you to have."

She put up her face to Philip for him to kiss her. It was a thing she did rarely.

"Don't be so absurd," he laughed, touched by her appreciation so that he felt the moisture come to his eyes.

Next day, when they were having tea, Griffiths came in. He sank lazily into an armchair. There was

something strangely sensual in the slow movements of his large limbs. Philip remained silent, while the

others chattered away, but he was enjoying himself. He admired them both so much that it seemed natural

enough for them to admire one another. He did not care if Griffiths absorbed Mildred's attention, he would

have her to himself during the evening: he had something of the attitude of a loving husband, confident in his

wife's affection, who looks on with amusement while she flirts harmlessly with a stranger. But at half past

"I'll just go and have a wash," he said, and to Mildred he added: "Would you like to wash your hands?"

"Oh, that doesn't matter," insisted Mildred. "Make him come, Philip. He won't be in the way, will he?"

"All right, then," said Griffiths promptly. "I'll just go upstairs and tidy myself."

"I couldn't help myself. It would have looked so funny to say nothing when he said he wasn't doing

They heard Griffiths coming heavily down the stairs, and Philip went into his bedroom to wash. They dined

in the neighbourhood in an Italian restaurant. Philip was cross and silent, but he quickly realised that he was

showing to disadvantage in comparison with Griffiths, and he forced himself to hide his annoyance. He drank

a good deal of wine to destroy the pain that was gnawing at his heart, and he set himself to talk. Mildred, as

though remorseful for what she had said, did all she could to make herself pleasant to him. She was kindly

and affectionate. Presently Philip began to think he had been a fool to surrender to a feeling of jealousy. After

dinner when they got into a hansom to drive to a musichall Mildred, sitting between the two men, of her

own accord gave him her hand. His anger vanished. Suddenly, he knew not how, he grew conscious that

Griffiths was holding her other hand. The pain seized him again violently, it was a real physical pain, and he

asked himself, panicstricken, what he might have asked himself before, whether Mildred and Griffiths were

in love with one another. He could not see anything of the performance on account of the mist of suspicion,

anger, dismay, and wretchedness which seemed to be before his eyes; but he forced himself to conceal the

fact that anything was the matter; he went on talking and laughing. Then a strange desire to torture himself

seized him, and he got up, saying he wanted to go and drink something. Mildred and Griffiths had never been

Philip did not know why he said that. He was throwing them together now to make the pain he suffered more

intolerable. He did not go to the bar, but up into the balcony, from where he could watch them and not be

seen. They had ceased to look at the stage and were smiling into one another's eyes. Griffiths was talking

with his usual happy fluency and Mildred seemed to hang on his lips. Philip's head began to ache frightfully.

He stood there motionless. He knew he would be in the way if he went back. They were enjoying themselves

without him, and he was suffering, suffering. Time passed, and now he had an extraordinary shyness about

rejoining them. He knew they had not thought of him at all, and he reflected bitterly that he had paid for the

dinner and their seats in the musichall. What a fool they were making of him! He was hot with shame. He

could see how happy they were without him. His instinct was to leave them to themselves and go home, but

he had not his hat and coat, and it would necessitate endless explanations. He went back. He felt a shadow of

"I met some men I knew. I've been talking to them, and I couldn't get away. I thought you'd be all right

"I've been enjoying myself thoroughly," said Griffiths. "I don't know about Mildred."

She gave a little laugh of happy complacency. There was a vulgar sound in the ring of it that horrified Philip.

Philip suspected that she had suggested that arrangement so that she might not be left alone with him. In the

cab he did not take her hand nor did she offer it, and he knew all the time that she was holding Griffiths'. His

chief thought was that it was all so horribly vulgar. As they drove along he asked himself what plans they had

made to meet without his knowledge, he cursed himself for having left them alone, he had actually gone out

"Let's keep the cab," said Philip, when they reached the house in which Mildred was lodging. "I'm too tired to

On the way back Griffiths talked gaily and seemed indifferent to the fact that Philip answered in

monosyllables. Philip felt he must notice that something was the matter. Philip's silence at last grew too

significant to struggle against, and Griffiths, suddenly nervous, ceased talking. Philip wanted to say

something, but he was so shy he could hardly bring himself to, and yet the time was passing and the

opportunity would be lost. It was best to get at the truth at once. He forced himself to speak.

"I?" Griffiths laughed. "Is that what you've been so funny about this evening? Of course not, my dear old

He tried to slip his hand through Philip's arm, but Philip drew himself away. He knew Griffiths was lying. He

could not bring himself to force Griffiths to tell him that he had not been holding the girl's hand. He suddenly

"It doesn't matter to you, Harry," he said. "You've got so many womendon't take her away from me. It

His voice broke, and he could not prevent the sob that was torn from him. He was horribly ashamed of

"My dear old boy, you know I wouldn't do anything to hurt you. I'm far too fond of you for that. I was only

playing the fool. If I'd known you were going to take it like that I'd have been more careful."

NEXT day Philip was in a good temper. He was very anxious not to bore Mildred with too much of his

society, and so had arranged that he should not see her till dinnertime. She was ready when he fetched her,

and he chaffed her for her unwonted punctuality. She was wearing a new dress he had given her. He

"You'll have to make the dressmaker hurry up if you want to take it to Paris with you."

He would have her for nearly a month entirely to himself. His eyes rested on her with hungry adoration. He

Her body was so thin that one could almost see her skeleton. Her chest was as flat as a boy's. Her mouth, with

"I shall give you Blaud's Pills in quantities when we're away," said Philip, laughing. "I'm going to bring you

She did not speak of Griffiths, and presently while they were dining Philip half in malice, for he felt sure of

She hesitated a moment, looking at Philip, and a curious gleam came into her eyes.

She handed him an envelope and Philip recognised Griffiths' bold, legible writing. There were eight pages. It

was well written, frank and charming; it was the letter of a man who was used to making love to women. He

told Mildred that he loved her passionately, he had fallen in love with her the first moment he saw her; he did

not want to love her, for he knew how fond Philip was of her, but he could not help himself. Philip was such

a dear, and he was very much ashamed of himself, but it was not his fault, he was just carried away. He paid

her delightful compliments. Finally he thanked her for consenting to lunch with him next day and said he was

dreadfully impatient to see her. Philip noticed that the letter was dated the night before; Griffiths must have

written it after leaving Philip, and had taken the trouble to go out and post it when Philip thought he was in

He read it with a sickening palpitation of his heart, but gave no outward sign of surprise. He handed it back to

"I can't help it either," she said, in a voice which she tried to make nonchalant. "I don't know what's come

"The funny thing is, I'm not at all. I ought to have known this would happen. I was a fool to bring you

together. I know perfectly well that he's got every advantage over me; he's much jollier, and he's very

handsome, he's more amusing, he can talk to you about the things that interest you."

"I don't know what you mean by that. If I'm not clever I can't help it, but I'm not the fool you think I am, not

by a long way, I can tell you. You're a bit too superior for me, my young friend."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. I just wanted to talk things over quietly. We don't want to make a

mess of them if we can help it. I saw you were attracted by him and it seemed to me very natural. The only

thing that really hurts me is that he should have encouraged you. He knew how awfully keen I was on you. I

think it's rather shabby of him to have written that letter to you five minutes after he told me he didn't care

"If you think you're going to make me like him any the less by saying nasty things about him, you're

Philip was silent for a moment. He did not know what words he could use to make her see his point of view.

He wanted to speak coolly and deliberately, but he was in such a turmoil of emotion that he could not clear

"It's not worth while sacrificing everything for an infatuation that you know can't last. After all, he doesn't

care for anyone more than ten days, and you're rather cold; that sort of thing doesn't mean very much to you."

"If you're in love with him you can't help it. I'll just bear it as best I can. We get on very well together, you

and I, and I've not behaved badly to you, have I? I've always known that you're not in love with me, but you

like me all right, and when we get over to Paris you'll forget about Griffiths. If you make up your mind to put

him out of your thoughts you won't find it so hard as all that, and I've deserved that you should do something

She did not answer, and they went on eating their dinner. When the silence grew oppressive Philip began to

talk of indifferent things. He pretended not to notice that Mildred was inattentive. Her answers were

perfunctory, and she volunteered no remarks of her own. At last she interrupted abruptly what he was saying:

"Philip, I'm afraid I shan't be able to go away on Saturday. The doctor says I oughtn't to."

She glanced at him, saw that his face was white and rigid, and looked nervously away. She was at that

"I may as well tell you and have done with it, I can't come away with you at all."

"I thought you were driving at that. It's too late to change your mind now. I've got the tickets and everything."

"I've changed my mind. I'm not going to have any more tricks played with me. You must come."

"I like you very much, Philip, as a friend. But I can't bear to think of anything else. I don't like you that way. I

Her face was set into a sulky look, and she kept her eyes fixed on her plate. Philip was white with rage. He

would have liked to hit her in the face with his clenched fist, and in fancy he saw how she would look with a

black eye. There were two lads of eighteen dining at a table near them, and now and then they looked at

Mildred; he wondered if they envied him dining with a pretty girl; perhaps they were wishing they stood in

"What's the good of our going away together? I'd be thinking of him all the time. It wouldn't be much fun for

"For God's sake don't laugh," she cried. "I can't come away with you, Philip. I'm awfully sorry. I know I

"Have you forgotten that when you were in trouble I did everything for you? I planked out the money to keep

you till your baby was born, I paid for your doctor and everything, I paid for you to go to Brighton, and I'm

paying for the keep of your baby, I'm paying for your clothes, I'm paying for every stitch you've got on now."

"Oh, for goodness' sake, shut up. What d'you suppose I care if I'm a gentleman or not? If I were a gentleman I

shouldn't waste my time with a vulgar slut like you. I don't care a damn if you like me or not. I'm sick of

being made a blasted fool of. You're jolly well coming to Paris with me on Saturday or you can take the

Her cheeks were red with anger, and when she answered her voice had the hard commonness which she

"I never liked you, not from the beginning, but you forced yourself on me, I always hated it when you kissed

Philip tried to swallow the food on his plate, but the muscles of his throat refused to act. He gulped down

something to drink and lit a cigarette. He was trembling in every part. He did not speak. He waited for her to

move, but she sat in silence, staring at the white tablecloth. If they had been alone he would have flung his

arms round her and kissed her passionately; he fancied the throwing back of her long white throat as he

pressed upon her mouth with his lips. They passed an hour without speaking, and at last Philip thought the

She did not reply, but gathered together her bag and her gloves. She put on her coat.

She opened her bag mechanically and saw a piece of paper in it. She took it out.

"He'll be glad to help you. He owes me seven pounds at the moment, and he pawned his microscope last

"You needn't think you can frighten me by that. I'm quite capable of earning my own living."

She thought of her rent due on Saturday and the baby's keep, but did not say anything. They left the

"It won't hurt you to walk. If you want to see me tomorrow I shall be in about teatime."

He took off his hat and sauntered away. He looked round in a moment and saw that she was standing

helplessly where he had left her, looking at the traffic. He went back and with a laugh pressed a coin into her

NEXT day, in the afternoon, Philip sat in his room and wondered whether Mildred would come. He had slept

badly. He had spent the morning in the club of the Medical School, reading one newspaper after another. It

was the vacation and few students he knew were in London, but he found one or two people to talk to, he

played a game of chess, and so wore out the tedious hours. After luncheon he felt so tired, his head was

aching so, that he went back to his lodgings and lay down; he tried to read a novel. He had not seen Griffiths.

He was not in when Philip returned the night before; he heard him come back, but he did not as usual look

into Philip's room to see if he was asleep; and in the morning Philip heard him go out early. It was clear that

he wanted to avoid him. Suddenly there was a light tap at his door. Philip sprang to his feet and opened it.

She gave him a faint smile. It reminded Philip of the timid, ingratiating look of a puppy that has been beaten

A quick thrill of triumph shot through his heart, but it was a sensation that only lasted an instant; it was

"Partly," she answered simply. "Harry can't do anything. He owes five weeks here, and he owes you seven

pounds, and his tailor's pressing him for money. He'd pawn anything he could, but he's pawned everything

already. I had a job to put the woman off about my new dress, and on Saturday there's the book at my

lodgings, and I can't get work in five minutes. It always means waiting some little time till there's a vacancy."

She said all this in an even, querulous tone, as though she were recounting the injustices of fate, which had to

be borne as part of the natural order of things. Philip did not answer. He knew what she told him well enough.

"Well, Harry says you've been a brick to both of us. You've been a real good friend to him, he says, and

you've done for me what p'raps no other man would have done. We must do the straight thing, he says. And

he said what you said about him, that he's fickle by nature, he's not like you, and I should be a fool to throw

He looked at her, and the corners of his mouth turned down in an expression of misery. He had triumphed

indeed, and he was going to have his way. He gave a little laugh of derision at his own humiliation. She

"I've looked forward with all my soul to going away with you, and I thought at last, after all that

He did not finish what he was going to say. And then on a sudden, without warning, Mildred broke into a

storm of tears. She was sitting in the chair in which Norah had sat and wept, and like her she hid her face on

the back of it, towards the side where there was a little bump formed by the sagging in the middle, where the

Her thin body was shaken with sobs. Philip had never seen a woman cry with such an utter abandonment. It

was horribly painful, and his heart was torn. Without realising what he did, he went up to her and put his

arms round her; she did not resist, but in her wretchedness surrendered herself to his comforting. He

whispered to her little words of solace. He scarcely knew what he was saying, he bent over her and kissed her

Her hat was in her way, and Philip took it off for her. He placed her head more comfortably in the chair, and

Presently the violence of her sobbing diminished and she sat in the chair, exhausted, with her head thrown

back and her arms hanging by her side. She had the grotesque look of one of those painters' dummies used to

He understood Griffiths' love well enough, for he put himself in Griffiths' place and saw with his eyes,

touched with his hands; he was able to think himself in Griffiths' body, and he kissed her with his lips, smiled

at her with his smiling blue eyes. It was her emotion that surprised him. He had never thought her capable of

passion, and this was passion: there was no mistaking it. Something seemed to give way in his heart; it really

"I don't want to make you unhappy. You needn't come away with me if you don't want to. I'll give you the

"Yes, that's the word. I'm sick with love. I know it won't last, just as well as he does, but just now..."

She paused and shut her eyes as though she were going to faint. A strange idea came to Philip, and he spoke

She sat up and looked at him. Her eyes began to shine, and the colour came into her cheeks.

"Perhaps the best thing would be to get it over, and then you'd come back to me."

Now that he had made the suggestion he was sick with anguish, and yet the torture of it gave him a strange,

Her objections made him insist, and yet he wanted her with all his heart to refuse vehemently.

"I'll give you a fiver, and you can go away from Saturday to Monday. You could easily do that. On Monday

"Oh, Philip, do you mean that?" she cried, clasping her hands. "if you could only let us goI would love you

so much afterwards, I'd do anything for you. I'm sure I shall get over it if you'll only do that. Would you

She was entirely changed now. She began to laugh. He could see that she was insanely happy. She got up and

"You are a brick, Philip. You're the best fellow I've ever known. Won't you be angry with me afterwards?"

"May I go and tell Harry now? And can I say to him that you don't mind? He won't consent unless you

promise it doesn't matter. Oh, you don't know how I love him! And afterwards I'll do anything you like. I'll

"No, it doesn't matter, you'd better go at once. There's only one thing: I can't bear to see Griffiths just now, it

would hurt me too awfully. Say I have no illfeeling towards him or anything like that, but ask him to keep

"All right." She sprang up and put on her gloves. "I'll let you know what he says."

She put up her face for him to kiss her, and when he pressed his lips to hers she threw her arms round his

She sent him a note a couple of hours later to say that she had a headache and could not dine with him. Philip

had almost expected it. He knew that she was dining with Griffiths. He was horribly jealous, but the sudden

passion which had seized the pair of them seemed like something that had come from the outside, as though a

god had visited them with it, and he felt himself helpless. It seemed so natural that they should love one

another. He saw all the advantages that Griffiths had over himself and confessed that in Mildred's place he

would have done as Mildred did. What hurt him most was Griffiths' treachery; they had been such good

friends, and Griffiths knew how passionately devoted he was to Mildred: he might have spared him.

He did not see Mildred again till Friday; he was sick for a sight of her by then; but when she came and he

realised that he had gone out of her thoughts entirely, for they were engrossed in Griffiths, he suddenly hated

her. He saw now why she and Griffiths loved one another, Griffiths was stupid, oh so stupid! he had known

that all along, but had shut his eyes to it, stupid and emptyheaded: that charm of his concealed an utter

selfishness; he was willing to sacrifice anyone to his appetites. And how inane was the life he led, lounging

about bars and drinking in music halls, wandering from one light amour to another! He never read a book, he

was blind to everything that was not frivolous and vulgar; he had never a thought that was fine: the word

most common on his lips was smart; that was his highest praise for man or woman. Smart! It was no wonder

Philip talked to Mildred of things that mattered to neither of them. He knew she wanted to speak of Griffiths,

but he gave her no opportunity. He did not refer to the fact that two evenings before she had put off dining

with him on a trivial excuse. He was casual with her, trying to make her think he was suddenly grown

indifferent; and he exercised peculiar skill in saying little things which he knew would wound her; but which

were so indefinite, so delicately cruel, that she could not take exception to them. At last she got up.

She held out her hand, he took it, said goodbye, and opened the door for her. He knew what she wanted to

speak about, and he knew also that his cold, ironical air intimidated her. Often his shyness made him seem so

frigid that unintentionally he frightened people, and, having discovered this, he was able when occasion arose

"You haven't forgotten what you promised?" she said at last, as he held open the door.

He spoke with an icy deliberation which made his words peculiarly offensive. Mildred flushed. He knew she

hated him at that moment, and he wondered at the selfcontrol by which she prevented herself from flying

"There's the dress and the book tomorrow. That's all. Harry won't come, so we shan't want money for that."

Philip's heart gave a great thud against his ribs, and he let the door handle go. The door swung to.

A devil seized Philip, a devil of selftorture which was always lurking within him, and, though with all his

soul he wished that Griffiths and Mildred should not go away together, he could not help himself; he set

"Oh, it's not that, he wants to all right. He'd go at once if he had the money."

"It's rather a change for you going on your knees to get a man to take you away for a weekend."

"It is rather, isn't it?" she said, with a shameless little laugh. It sent a cold shudder down Philip's spine.

That would be Philip's salvation. With Griffiths out of the way he could get Mildred back. She knew no one

in London, she would be thrown on to his society, and when they were alone together he could soon make her

forget this infatuation. If he said nothing more he was safe. But he had a fiendish desire to break down their

scruples, he wanted to know how abominably they could behave towards him; if he tempted them a little

more they would yield, and he took a fierce joy at the thought of their dishonour. Though every word he

There was a passionate note in her voice which struck Philip. He was biting his nails in his nervousness.

"Oh, to Oxford. He was at the 'Varsity there, you know. He said he'd show me the colleges."

Philip remembered that once he had suggested going to Oxford for the day, and she had expressed firmly the

"And it looks as if you'd have fine weather. It ought to be very jolly there just now."

She paused for a minute or two, looking at him. Philip forced himself to look at her in a friendly way. He

"I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll go and see if he can't arrange it. And then, if he says yes, I'll come and fetch the

He went to his desk and took out what money he had. The dress was six guineas; there was besides her rent

AFTER lunching in the basement of the Medical School Philip went back to his rooms. It was Saturday

Philip wondered what this could mean. He took a book and began to read. It was Burton's _Journey to

Meccah_, which he had just got out of the Westminster Public Library; and he read the first page, but could

make no sense of it, for his mind was elsewhere; he was listening all the time for a ring at the bell. He dared

not hope that Griffiths had gone away already, without Mildred, to his home in Cumberland. Mildred would

be coming presently for the money. He set his teeth and read on; he tried desperately to concentrate his

attention; the sentences etched themselves in his brain by the force of his effort, but they were distorted by

the agony he was enduring. He wished with all his heart that he had not made the horrible proposition to give

them money; but now that he had made it he lacked the strength to go back on it, not on Mildred's account,

but on his own. There was a morbid obstinacy in him which forced him to do the thing he had determined. He

discovered that the three pages he had read had made no impression on him at all; and he went back and

started from the beginning: he found himself reading one sentence over and over again; and now it weaved

itself in with his thoughts, horribly, like some formula in a nightmare. One thing he could do was to go out

and keep away till midnight; they could not go then; and he saw them calling at the house every hour to ask if

he was in. He enjoyed the thought of their disappointment. He repeated that sentence to himself

mechanically. But he could not do that. Let them come and take the money, and he would know then to what

depths of infamy it was possible for men to descend. He could not read any more now. He simply could not

see the words. He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes, and, numb with misery, waited for Mildred.

Philip pulled himself together to receive her without any sign of what he was feeling. He had an impulse to

throw himself on his knees and seize her hands and beg her not to go; but he knew there was no way of

moving her; she would tell Griffiths what he had said and how he acted. He was ashamed.

"We're going. Harry's outside. I told him you didn't want to see him, so he's kept out of your way. But he

He could see she did not care if he saw Griffiths or not. Now that she was there he wanted her to go quickly.

He knew what he was going to say was humiliating, but he was broken down with jealousy and desire.

He shook hands with her. Through the curtains he watched her jump into a fourwheeler that stood at the

door. It rolled away. Then he threw himself on his bed and hid his face in his hands. He felt tears coming to

his eyes, and he was angry with himself; he clenched his hands and screwed up his body to prevent them; but

He got up at last, exhausted and ashamed, and washed his face. He mixed himself a strong whiskey and soda.

It made him feel a little better. Then he caught sight of the tickets to Paris, which were on the chimneypiece,

and, seizing them, with an impulse of rage he flung them in the fire. He knew he could have got the money

back on them, but it relieved him to destroy them. Then he went out in search of someone to be with. The

club was empty. He felt he would go mad unless he found someone to talk to; but Lawson was abroad; he

went on to Hayward's rooms: the maid who opened the door told him that he had gone down to Brighton for

the weekend. Then Philip went to a gallery and found it was just closing. He did not know what to do. He

was distracted. And he thought of Griffiths and Mildred going to Oxford, sitting opposite one another in the

train, happy. He went back to his rooms, but they filled him with horror, he had been so wretched in them; he

tried once more to read Burton's book, but, as he read, he told himself again and again what a fool he had

been; it was he who had made the suggestion that they should go away, he had offered the money, he had

forced it upon them; he might have known what would happen when he introduced Griffiths to Mildred; his

own vehement passion was enough to arouse the other's desire. By this time they had reached Oxford. They

would put up in one of the lodginghouses in John Street; Philip had never been to Oxford, but Griffiths had

talked to him about it so much that he knew exactly where they would go; and they would dine at the

Clarendon: Griffiths had been in the habit of dining there when he went on the spree. Philip got himself

something to eat in a restaurant near Charing Cross; he had made up his mind to go to a play, and afterwards

he fought his way into the pit of a theatre at which one of Oscar Wilde's pieces was being performed. He

wondered if Mildred and Griffiths would go to a play that evening: they must kill the evening somehow; they

were too stupid, both of them to content themselves with conversation: he got a fierce delight in reminding

himself of the vulgarity of their minds which suited them so exactly to one another. He watched the play with

an abstracted mind, trying to give himself gaiety by drinking whiskey in each interval; he was unused to

alcohol, and it affected him quickly, but his drunkenness was savage and morose. When the play was over he

had another drink. He could not go to bed, he knew he would not sleep, and he dreaded the pictures which his

vivid imagination would place before him. He tried not to think of them. He knew he had drunk too much.

Now he was seized with a desire to do horrible, sordid things; he wanted to roll himself in gutters; his whole

He walked up Piccadilly, dragging his clubfoot, sombrely drunk, with rage and misery clawing at his heart.

He was stopped by a painted harlot, who put her hand on his arm; he pushed her violently away with brutal

words. He walked on a few steps and then stopped. She would do as well as another. He was sorry he had

She looked at him with amazement, and hesitated for a while. She saw he was drunk.

He was amused that she should use a phrase he had heard so often on Mildred's lips. He took her to one of the

restaurants he had been in the habit of going to with Mildred. He noticed as they walked along that she

When he got home his bones were aching, and in his head there was a hammering that made him nearly

scream. He took another whiskey and soda to steady himself, and going to bed sank into a dreamless sleep till

AT LAST Monday came, and Philip thought his long torture was over. looking out the trains he found that

the latest by which Griffiths could reach home that night left Oxford soon after one, and he supposed that

Mildred would take one which started a few minutes later to bring her to London. His desire was to go and

meet it, but he thought Mildred would like to be left alone for a day; perhaps she would drop him a line in the

evening to say she was back, and if not he would call at her lodgings next morning: his spirit was cowed. He

felt a bitter hatred for Griffiths, but for Mildred, notwithstanding all that had passed, only a heartrending

desire. He was glad now that Hayward was not in London on Saturday afternoon when, distraught, he went in

search of human comfort: he could not have prevented himself from telling him everything, and Hayward

would have been astonished at his weakness. He would despise him, and perhaps be shocked or disgusted that

he could envisage the possibility of making Mildred his mistress after she had given herself to another man.

What did he care if it was shocking or disgusting? He was ready for any compromise, prepared for more

Towards the evening his steps took him against his will to the house in which she lived, and he looked up at

her window. It was dark. He did not venture to ask if she was back. He was confident in her promise. But

there was no letter from her in the morning, and, when about midday he called, the maid told him she had

not arrived. He could not understand it. He knew that Griffiths would have been obliged to go home the day

before, for he was to be best man at a wedding, and Mildred had no money. He turned over in his mind every

possible thing that might have happened. He went again in the afternoon and left a note, asking her to dine

with him that evening as calmly as though the events of the last fortnight had not happened. He mentioned

the place and time at which they were to meet, and hoping against hope kept the appointment: though he

waited for an hour she did not come. On Wednesday morning he was ashamed to ask at the house and sent a

messengerboy with a letter and instructions to bring back a reply; but in an hour the boy came back with

Philip's letter unopened and the answer that the lady had not returned from the country. Philip was beside

himself. The last deception was more than he could bear. He repeated to himself over and over again that he

loathed Mildred, and, ascribing to Griffiths this new disappointment, he hated him so much that he knew

what was the delight of murder: he walked about considering what a joy it would be to come upon him on a

dark night and stick a knife into his throat, just about the carotid artery, and leave him to die in the street like

a dog. Philip was out of his senses with grief and rage. He did not like whiskey, but he drank to stupefy

On Thursday morning he got up very late and dragged himself, bleareyed and sallow, into his sittingroom

to see if there were any letters. A curious feeling shot through his heart when he recognised the handwriting

I hardly know how to write to you and yet I feel I must write. I hope you're not awfully angry with me. I

know I oughtn't to have gone away with Milly, but I simply couldn't help myself. She simply carried me off

my feet and I would have done anything to get her. When she told me you had offered us the money to go I

simply couldn't resist. And now it's all over I'm awfully ashamed of myself and I wish I hadn't been such a

fool. I wish you'd write and say you're not angry with me, and I want you to let me come and see you. I was

awfully hurt at your telling Milly you didn't want to see me. Do write me a line, there's a good chap, and tell

me you forgive me. It'll ease my conscience. I thought you wouldn't mind or you wouldn't have offered the

money. But I know I oughtn't to have taken it. I came home on Monday and Milly wanted to stay a couple of

days at Oxford by herself. She's going back to London on Wednesday, so by the time you receive this letter

you will have seen her and I hope everything will go off all right. Do write and say you forgive me. Please

Philip tore up the letter furiously. He did not mean to answer it. He despised Griffiths for his apologies, he

had no patience with his prickings of conscience: one could do a dastardly thing if one chose, but it was

contemptible to regret it afterwards. He thought the letter cowardly and hypocritical. He was disgusted at its

"It would be very easy if you could do a beastly thing," he muttered to himself, "and then say you were sorry,

He hoped with all his heart he would have the chance one day to do Griffiths a bad turn.

But at all events he knew that Mildred was in town. He dressed hurriedly, not waiting to shave, drank a cup

of tea, and took a cab to her rooms. The cab seemed to crawl. He was painfully anxious to see her, and

unconsciously he uttered a prayer to the God he did not believe in to make her receive him kindly. He only

wanted to forget. With beating heart he rang the bell. He forgot all his suffering in the passionate desire to

Then he understood that Mildred had deceived him again. She was not coming back to him. He made an

"Oh, well, I daresay I shall hear from her. She may have sent a letter to another address."

He turned away and went back hopeless to his rooms. He might have known that she would do this; she had

never cared for him, she had made a fool of him from the beginning; she had no pity, she had no kindness,

she had no charity. The only thing was to accept the inevitable. The pain he was suffering was horrible, he

would sooner be dead than endure it; and the thought came to him that it would be better to finish with the

whole thing: he might throw himself in the river or put his neck on a railway line; but he had no sooner set

the thought into words than he rebelled against it. His reason told him that he would get over his unhappiness

in time; if he tried with all his might he could forget her; and it would be grotesque to kill himself on account

of a vulgar slut. He had only one life, and it was madness to fling it away. He _felt_ that he would never

overcome his passion, but he _knew_ that after all it was only a matter of time.

He would not stay in London. There everything reminded him of his unhappiness. He telegraphed to his uncle

that he was coming to Blackstable, and, hurrying to pack, took the first train he could. He wanted to get away

from the sordid rooms in which he had endured so much suffering. He wanted to breathe clean air. He was

Since he was grown up Philip had been given the best spare room at the vicarage. It was a cornerroom and

in front of one window was an old tree which blocked the view, but from the other you saw, beyond the

garden and the vicarage field, broad meadows. Philip remembered the wallpaper from his earliest years. On

the walls were quaint water colours of the early Victorian period by a friend of the Vicar's youth. They had a

faded charm. The dressingtable was surrounded by stiff muslin. There was an old tallboy to put your

clothes in. Philip gave a sigh of pleasure; he had never realised that all those things meant anything to him at

all. At the vicarage life went on as it had always done. No piece of furniture had been moved from one place

to another; the Vicar ate the same things, said the same things, went for the same walk every day; he had

grown a little fatter, a little more silent, a little more narrow. He had become accustomed to living without his

wife and missed her very little. He bickered still with Josiah Graves. Philip went to see the churchwarden. He

was a little thinner, a little whiter, a little more austere; he was autocratic still and still disapproved of candles

on the altar. The shops had still a pleasant quaintness; and Philip stood in front of that in which things useful

to seamen were sold, seaboots and tarpaulins and tackle, and remembered that he had felt there in his

He could not help his heart beating at each double knock of the postman in case there might be a letter from

Mildred sent on by his landlady in London; but he knew that there would be none. Now that he could think it

out more calmly he understood that in trying to force Mildred to love him he had been attempting the

impossible. He did not know what it was that passed from a man to a woman, from a woman to a man, and

made one of them a slave: it was convenient to call it the sexual instinct; but if it was no more than that, he

did not understand why it should occasion so vehement an attraction to one person rather than another. It was

irresistible: the mind could not battle with it; friendship, gratitude, interest, had no power beside it. Because

he had not attracted Mildred sexually, nothing that he did had any effect upon her. The idea revolted him; it

made human nature beastly; and he felt suddenly that the hearts of men were full of dark places. Because

Mildred was indifferent to him he had thought her sexless; her anaemic appearance and thin lips, the body

with its narrow hips and flat chest, the languor of her manner, carried out his supposition; and yet she was

capable of sudden passions which made her willing to risk everything to gratify them. He had never

understood her adventure with Emil Miller: it had seemed so unlike her, and she had never been able to

explain it; but now that he had seen her with Griffiths he knew that just the same thing had happened then:

she had been carried off her feet by an ungovernable desire. He tried to think out what those two men had

which so strangely attracted her. They both had a vulgar facetiousness which tickled her simple sense of

humour, and a certain coarseness of nature; but what took her perhaps was the blatant sexuality which was

their most marked characteristic. She had a genteel refinement which shuddered at the facts of life, she

looked upon the bodily functions as indecent she had all sorts of euphemisms for common objects, she

always chose an elaborate word as more becoming than a simple one: the brutality of these men was like a

One thing Philip had made up his mind about. He would not go back to the lodgings in which he had

suffered. He wrote to his landlady and gave her notice. He wanted to have his own things about him. He

determined to take unfurnished rooms: it would be pleasant and cheaper; and this was an urgent

consideration, for during the last year and a half he had spent nearly seven hundred pounds. He must make up

for it now by the most rigid economy. Now and then he thought of the future with panic; he had been a fool

to spend so much money on Mildred; but he knew that if it were to come again he would act in the same way.

It amused him sometimes to consider that his friends, because he had a face which did not express his

feelings very vividly and a rather slow way of moving, looked upon him as strongminded, deliberate, and

cool. They thought him reasonable and praised his common sense; but he knew that his placid expression was

no more than a mask, assumed unconsciously, which acted like the protective colouring of butterflies; and

himself was astonished at the weakness of his will. It seemed to him that he was swayed by every light

emotion, as though he were a leaf in the wind, and when passion seized him he was powerless. He had no

selfcontrol. He merely seemed to possess it because he was indifferent to many of the things which moved

He considered with some irony the philosophy which he had developed for himself, for it had not been of

much use to him in the conjuncture he had passed through; and he wondered whether thought really helped a

man in any of the critical affairs of life: it seemed to him rather that he was swayed by some power alien to

and yet within himself, which urged him like that great wind of Hell which drove Paolo and Francesca

ceaselessly on. He thought of what he was going to do and, when the time came to act, he was powerless in

the grasp of instincts, emotions, he knew not what. He acted as though he were a machine driven by the two

forces of his environment and his personality; his reason was someone looking on, observing the facts but

powerless to interfere: it was like those gods of Epicurus, who saw the doings of men from their empyrean

PHILIP went up to London a couple of days before the session began in order to find himself rooms. He

hunted about the streets that led out of the Westminster Bridge Road, but their dinginess was distasteful to

him; and at last he found one in Kennington which had a quiet and oldworld air. It reminded one a little of

the London which Thackeray knew on that side of the river, and in the Kennington Road, through which the

great barouche of the Newcomes must have passed as it drove the family to the West of London, the

planetrees were bursting into leaf. The houses in the street which Philip fixed upon were twostoried, and in

most of the windows was a notice to state that lodgings were to let. He knocked at one which announced that

the lodgings were unfurnished, and was shown by an austere, silent woman four very small rooms, in one of

which there was a kitchen range and a sink. The rent was nine shillings a week. Philip did not want so many

rooms, but the rent was low and he wished to settle down at once. He asked the landlady if she could keep the

place clean for him and cook his breakfast, but she replied that she had enough work to do without that; and

he was pleased rather than otherwise because she intimated that she wished to have nothing more to do with

him than to receive his rent. She told him that, if he inquired at the grocer's round the corner, which was also

Philip had a little furniture which he had gathered as he went along, an armchair that he had bought in Paris,

and a table, a few drawings, and the small Persian rug which Cronshaw had given him. His uncle had offered

a foldup bed for which, now that he no longer let his house in August, he had no further use; and by

spending another ten pounds Philip bought himself whatever else was essential. He spent ten shillings on

putting a corncoloured paper in the room he was making his parlour; and he hung on the walls a sketch

which Lawson had given him of the Quai des Grands Augustins, and the photograph of the _Odalisque_ by

Ingres and Manet's _Olympia_ which in Paris had been the objects of his contemplation while he shaved. To

remind himself that he too had once been engaged in the practice of art, he put up a charcoal drawing of the

young Spaniard Miguel Ajuria: it was the best thing he had ever done, a nude standing with clenched hands,

his feet gripping the floor with a peculiar force, and on his face that air of determination which had been so

impressive; and though Philip after the long interval saw very well the defects of his work its associations

made him look upon it with tolerance. He wondered what had happened to Miguel. There is nothing so

terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent. Perhaps, worn out by exposure, starvation, disease,

he had found an end in some hospital, or in an access of despair had sought death in the turbid Seine; but

perhaps with his Southern instability he had given up the struggle of his own accord, and now, a clerk in

some office in Madrid, turned his fervent rhetoric to politics and bullfighting.

Philip asked Lawson and Hayward to come and see his new rooms, and they came, one with a bottle of

whiskey, the other with a _pate de foie gras_; and he was delighted when they praised his taste. He would

have invited the Scotch stockbroker too, but he had only three chairs, and thus could entertain only a definite

number of guests. Lawson was aware that through him Philip had become very friendly with Norah Nesbit

Philip flushed at the mention of her name (he could not get himself out of the awkward habit of reddening

when he was embarrassed), and Lawson looked at him quizzically. Lawson, who now spent most of the year

in London, had so far surrendered to his environment as to wear his hair short and to dress himself in a neat

"She was looking rather nice. She had a very smart hat on with a lot of white ostrich feathers on it. She must

Philip changed the conversation, but he kept thinking of her, and after an interval, when the three of them

Philip had thought of Norah often. When Mildred left him his first thought was of her, and he told himself

bitterly that she would never have treated him so. His impulse was to go to her; he could depend on her pity;

but he was ashamed: she had been good to him always, and he had treated her abominably.

"If I'd only had the sense to stick to her!" he said to himself, afterwards, when Lawson and Hayward had

He remembered the pleasant hours they had spent together in the cosy sittingroom in Vincent Square, their

visits to galleries and to the play, and the charming evenings of intimate conversation. He recollected her

solicitude for his welfare and her interest in all that concerned him. She had loved him with a love that was

kind and lasting, there was more than sensuality in it, it was almost maternal; he had always known that it

was a precious thing for which with all his soul he should thank the gods. He made up his mind to throw

himself on her mercy. She must have suffered horribly, but he felt she had the greatness of heart to forgive

him: she was incapable of malice. Should he write to her? No. He would break in on her suddenly and cast

himself at her feethe knew that when the time came he would feel too shy to perform such a dramatic

gesture, but that was how he liked to think of itand tell her that if she would take him back she might rely

on him for ever. He was cured of the hateful disuse from which he had suffered, he knew her worth, and now

she might trust him. His imagination leaped forward to the future. He pictured himself rowing with her on the

river on Sundays; he would take her to Greenwich, he had never forgotten that delightful excursion with

Hayward, and the beauty of the Port of London remained a permanent treasure in his recollection; and on the

warm summer afternoons they would sit in the Park together and talk: he laughed to himself as he

remembered her gay chatter, which poured out like a brook bubbling over little stones, amusing, flippant, and

full of character. The agony he had suffered would pass from his mind like a bad dream.

But when next day, about teatime, an hour at which he was pretty certain to find Norah at home, he knocked

at her door his courage suddenly failed him. Was it possible for her to forgive him? It would be abominable

of him to force himself on her presence. The door was opened by a maid new since he had been in the habit

"Will you ask her if she could see Mr. Carey?" he said. "I'll wait here." The maid ran upstairs and in a

It seemed to say come in to a new life of peace and happiness. When he entered Norah stepped forward to

greet him. She shook hands with him as if they had parted the day before. A man stood up.

Philip, bitterly disappointed at not finding her alone, sat down and took stock of the stranger. He had never

heard her mention his name, but he seemed to Philip to occupy his chair as though he were very much at

home. He was a man of forty, cleanshaven, with long fair hair very neatly plastered down, and the reddish

skin and pale, tired eyes which fair men get when their youth is passed. He had a large nose, a large mouth;

the bones of his face were prominent, and he was heavily made; he was a man of more than average height,

"I was wondering what had become of you," said Norah, in her sprightly manner. "I met Mr. Lawson the

other daydid he tell you?and I informed him that it was really high time you came to see me again."

Philip could see no shadow of embarrassment in her countenance, and he admired the use with which she

carried off an encounter of which himself felt the intense awkwardness. She gave him tea. She was about to

He did not believe that. She must remember quite well that he never took sugar in his tea. He accepted the

The conversation which Philip had interrupted went on, and presently he began to feel a little in the way.

Kingsford took no particular notice of him. He talked fluently and well, not without humour, but with a

slightly dogmatic manner: he was a journalist, it appeared, and had something amusing to say on every topic

that was touched upon; but it exasperated Philip to find himself edged out of the conversation. He was

determined to stay the visitor out. He wondered if he admired Norah. In the old days they had often talked of

the men who wanted to flirt with her and had laughed at them together. Philip tried to bring back the

conversation to matters which only he and Norah knew about, but each time the journalist broke in and

succeeded in drawing it away to a subject upon which Philip was forced to be silent. He grew faintly angry

with Norah, for she must see he was being made ridiculous; but perhaps she was inflicting this upon him as a

punishment, and with this thought he regained his good humour. At last, however, the clock struck six, and

Norah shook hands with him, and accompanied him to the landing. She shut the door behind her and stood

"Oh, he's the editor of one of Harmsworth's Magazines. He's been taking a good deal of my work lately."

"I'm glad you stayed. I wanted to have a talk with you." She curled herself into the large armchair, feet and

all, in a way her small size made possible, and lit a cigarette. He smiled when he saw her assume the attitude

"I really ought to break myself of the habit. It's absurd to behave like a child when you're my age, but I'm

"It's awfully jolly to be sitting in this room again," said Philip happily. "You don't know how I've missed it."

"D'you remember the last time we met? I treated you awfully badlyI'm dreadfully ashamed of myself."

She looked at him steadily. She did not answer. He was losing his head; he seemed to have come on an errand

of which he was only now realising the outrageousness. She did not help him, and he could only blurt out

Then impetuously he told her that Mildred had left him and that his unhappiness had been so great that he

almost killed himself. He told her of all that had happened between them, of the birth of the child, and of the

meeting with Griffiths, of his folly and his trust and his immense deception. He told her how often he had

thought of her kindness and of her love, and how bitterly he had regretted throwing it away: he had only been

happy when he was with her, and he knew now how great was her worth. His voice was hoarse with emotion.

Sometimes he was so ashamed of what he was saying that he spoke with his eyes fixed on the ground. His

face was distorted with pain, and yet he felt it a strange relief to speak. At last he finished. He flung himself

back in his chair, exhausted, and waited. He had concealed nothing, and even, in his selfabasement, he had

striven to make himself more despicable than he had really been. He was surprised that she did not speak, and

at last he raised his eyes. She was not looking at him. Her face was quite white, and she seemed to be lost in

She seemed about to go on, but she stopped, and again he waited. At length she seemed to force herself to

"Why didn't you tell me at once?" he cried. "You needn't have allowed me to humiliate myself before you."

"I'm sorry, I couldn't stop you.... I met him soon after you"she seemed to search for an expression that

should not wound him"told me your friend had come back. I was very wretched for a bit, he was extremely

kind to me. He knew someone had made me suffer, of course he doesn't know it was you, and I don't know

what I should have done without him. And suddenly I felt I couldn't go on working, working, working; I was

so tired, I felt so ill. I told him about my husband. He offered to give me the money to get my divorce if I

would marry him as soon as I could. He had a very good job, and it wouldn't be necessary for me to do

anything unless I wanted to. He was so fond of me and so anxious to take care of me. I was awfully touched.

"I've got the decree nisi. It'll be made absolute in July, and then we are going to be married at once."

He was thinking of his long, humiliating confession. She looked at him curiously.

But he was always able to recover himself quickly, and, getting up now and holding out his hand, he said:

"I hope you'll be very happy. After all, it's the best thing that could have happened to you."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "It would make me too envious to see you happy."

He walked slowly away from her house. After all she was right when she said he had never loved her. He was

disappointed, irritated even, but his vanity was more affected than his heart. He knew that himself. And

presently he grew conscious that the gods had played a very good practical joke on him, and he laughed at

himself mirthlessly. It is not very comfortable to have the gift of being amused at one's own absurdity.

FOR the next three months Philip worked on subjects which were new to him. The unwieldy crowd which

had entered the Medical School nearly two years before had thinned out: some had left the hospital, finding

the examinations more difficult to pass than they expected, some had been taken away by parents who had

not foreseen the expense of life in London, and some had drifted away to other callings. One youth whom

Philip knew had devised an ingenious plan to make money; he had bought things at sales and pawned them,

but presently found it more profitable to pawn goods bought on credit; and it had caused a little excitement at

the hospital when someone pointed out his name in policecourt proceedings. There had been a remand, then

assurances on the part of a harassed father, and the young man had gone out to bear the White Man's Burden

overseas. The imagination of another, a lad who had never before been in a town at all, fell to the glamour of

musichalls and bar parlours; he spent his time among racingmen, tipsters, and trainers, and now was

become a bookmaker's clerk. Philip had seen him once in a bar near Piccadilly Circus in a tightwaisted

coat and a brown hat with a broad, flat brim. A third, with a gift for singing and mimicry, who had achieved

success at the smoking concerts of the Medical School by his imitation of notorious comedians, had

abandoned the hospital for the chorus of a musical comedy. Still another, and he interested Philip because his

uncouth manner and interjectional speech did not suggest that he was capable of any deep emotion, had felt

himself stifle among the houses of London. He grew haggard in shutin spaces, and the soul he knew not he

possessed struggled like a sparrow held in the hand, with little frightened gasps and a quick palpitation of the

heart: he yearned for the broad skies and the open, desolate places among which his childhood had been

spent; and he walked off one day, without a word to anybody, between one lecture and another; and the next

thing his friends heard was that he had thrown up medicine and was working on a farm.

Philip attended now lectures on medicine and on surgery. On certain mornings in the week he practised

bandaging on outpatients glad to earn a little money, and he was taught auscultation and how to use the

stethoscope. He learned dispensing. He was taking the examination in _Materia Medica_ in July, and it

amused him to play with various drugs, concocting mixtures, rolling pills, and making ointments. He seized

avidly upon anything from which he could extract a suggestion of human interest.

He saw Griffiths once in the distance, but, not to have the pain of cutting him dead, avoided him. Philip had

felt a certain selfconsciousness with Griffiths' friends, some of whom were now friends of his, when he

realised they knew of his quarrel with Griffiths and surmised they were aware of the reason. One of them, a

very tall fellow, with a small head and a languid air, a youth called Ramsden, who was one of Griffiths' most

faithful admirers, copied his ties, his boots, his manner of talking and his gestures, told Philip that Griffiths

was very much hurt because Philip had not answered his letter. He wanted to be reconciled with him.

"Oh, no. I'm saying this entirely on my own," said Ramsden. "He's awfully sorry for what he did, and he says

you always behaved like a perfect brick to him. I know he'd be glad to make it up. He doesn't come to the

"How childish and hysterical! Why should he care? I'm a very insignificant person, and he can do very well

Ramsden thought Philip hard and cold. He paused for a moment or two, looking about him in a perplexed

He spoke with an indifference which he was satisfied with. No one could have guessed how violently his

Little by little he discovered the history of Mildred's relations with Griffiths. He listened with a smile on his

lips, feigning an equanimity which quite deceived the dullwitted boy who talked to him. The weekend she

spent with Griffiths at Oxford inflamed rather than extinguished her sudden passion; and when Griffiths went

home, with a feeling that was unexpected in her she determined to stay in Oxford by herself for a couple of

days, because she had been so happy in it. She felt that nothing could induce her to go back to Philip. He

revolted her. Griffiths was taken aback at the fire he had aroused, for he had found his two days with her in

the country somewhat tedious; and he had no desire to turn an amusing episode into a tiresome affair. She

made him promise to write to her, and, being an honest, decent fellow, with natural politeness and a desire to

make himself pleasant to everybody, when he got home he wrote her a long and charming letter. She

answered it with reams of passion, clumsy, for she had no gift of expression, illwritten, and vulgar; the letter

bored him, and when it was followed next day by another, and the day after by a third, he began to think her

love no longer flattering but alarming. He did not answer; and she bombarded him with telegrams, asking

him if he were ill and had received her letters; she said his silence made her dreadfully anxious. He was

forced to write, but he sought to make his reply as casual as was possible without being offensive: he begged

her not to wire, since it was difficult to explain telegrams to his mother, an oldfashioned person for whom a

telegram was still an event to excite tremor. She answered by return of post that she must see him and

announced her intention to pawn things (she had the dressingcase which Philip had given her as a

weddingpresent and could raise eight pounds on that) in order to come up and stay at the market town four

miles from which was the village in which his father practised. This frightened Griffiths; and he, this time,

made use of the telegraph wires to tell her that she must do nothing of the kind. He promised to let her know

the moment he came up to London, and, when he did, found that she had already been asking for him at the

hospital at which he had an appointment. He did not like this, and, on seeing her, told Mildred that she was

not to come there on any pretext; and now, after an absence of three weeks, he found that she bored him quite

decidedly; he wondered why he had ever troubled about her, and made up his mind to break with her as soon

as he could. He was a person who dreaded quarrels, nor did he want to give pain; but at the same time he had

other things to do, and he was quite determined not to let Mildred bother him. When he met her he was

for the interval since last he had seen her; but he did everything he could to avoid her. When she forced him

to make appointments he sent telegrams to her at the last moment to put himself off; and his landlady (the

first three months of his appointment he was spending in rooms) had orders to say he was out when Mildred

called. She would waylay him in the street and, knowing she had been waiting about for him to come out of

the hospital for a couple of hours, he would give her a few charming, friendly words and bolt off with the

excuse that he had a business engagement. He grew very skilful in slipping out of the hospital unseen. Once,

when he went back to his lodgings at midnight, he saw a woman standing at the area railings and suspecting

who it was went to beg a shakedown in Ramsden's rooms; next day the landlady told him that Mildred had

sat crying on the doorsteps for hours, and she had been obliged to tell her at last that if she did not go away

"I tell you, my boy," said Ramsden, "you're jolly well out of it. Harry says that if he'd suspected for half a

second she was going to make such a blooming nuisance of herself he'd have seen himself damned before he

Philip thought of her sitting on that doorstep through the long hours of the night. He saw her face as she

The last thing he heard, just before the end of the summer session, was that Griffiths, urbanity had given way

at length under the exasperation of the constant persecution. He had told Mildred that he was sick of being

"It was the only thing he could do," said Ramsden. "It was getting a bit too thick."

"Oh, he hasn't seen her for ten days. You know, Harry's wonderful at dropping people. This is about the

Then Philip heard nothing more of her at all. She vanished into the vast anonymous mass of the population of

AT The beginning of the winter session Philip became an outpatients' clerk. There were three

assistantphysicians who took outpatients, two days a week each, and Philip put his name down for Dr.

Tyrell. He was popular with the students, and there was some competition to be his clerk. Dr. Tyrell was a

tall, thin man of thirtyfive, with a very small head, red hair cut short, and prominent blue eyes: his face was

bright scarlet. He talked well in a pleasant voice, was fond of a little joke, and treated the world lightly. He

was a successful man, with a large consulting practice and a knighthood in prospect. From commerce with

students and poor people he had the patronising air, and from dealing always with the sick he had the healthy

man's jovial condescension, which some consultants achieve as the professional manner. He made the patient

feel like a boy confronted by a jolly schoolmaster; his illness was an absurd piece of naughtiness which

The student was supposed to attend in the outpatients' room every day, see cases, and pick up what

information he could; but on the days on which he clerked his duties were a little more definite. At that time

the outpatients' department at St. Luke's consisted of three rooms, leading into one another, and a large, dark

waitingroom with massive pillars of masonry and long benches. Here the patients waited after having been

given their `letters' at midday; and the long rows of them, bottles and gallipots in hand, some tattered and

dirty, others decent enough, sitting in the dimness, men and women of all ages, children, gave one an

impression which was weird and horrible. They suggested the grim drawings of Daumier. All the rooms were

painted alike, in salmoncolour with a high dado of maroon; and there was in them an odour of disinfectants,

mingling as the afternoon wore on with the crude stench of humanity. The first room was the largest and in

the middle of it were a table and an office chair for the physician; on each side of this were two smaller

tables, a little lower: at one of these sat the housephysician and at the other the clerk who took the `book' for

the day. This was a large volume in which were written down the name, age, sex, profession, of the patient

At half past one the housephysician came in, rang the bell, and told the porter to send in the old patients.

There were always a good many of these, and it was necessary to get through as many of them as possible

before Dr. Tyrell came at two. The H.P. with whom Philip came in contact was a dapper little man,

excessively conscious of his importance: he treated the clerks with condescension and patently resented the

familiarity of older students who had been his contemporaries and did not use him with the respect he felt his

present position demanded. He set about the cases. A clerk helped him. The patients streamed in. The men

came first. Chronic bronchitis, "a nasty 'acking cough," was what they chiefly suffered from; one went to the

H.P. and the other to the clerk, handing in their letters: if they were going on well the words _Rep 14_ were

written on them, and they went to the dispensary with their bottles or gallipots in order to have medicine

given them for fourteen days more. Some old stagers held back so that they might be seen by the physician

himself, but they seldom succeeded in this; and only three or four, whose condition seemed to demand his

Dr. Tyrell came in with quick movements and a breezy manner. He reminded one slightly of a clown leaping

into the arena of a circus with the cry: Here we are again. His air seemed to indicate: What's all this nonsense

about being ill? I'll soon put that right. He took his seat, asked if there were any old patients for him to see,

rapidly passed them in review, looking at them with shrewd eyes as he discussed their symptoms, cracked a

joke (at which all the clerks laughed heartily) with the H.P., who laughed heartily too but with an air as if he

thought it was rather impudent for the clerks to laugh, remarked that it was a fine day or a hot one, and rang

They came in one by one and walked up to the table at which sat Dr. Tyrell. They were old men and young

men and middleaged men, mostly of the labouring class, dock labourers, draymen, factory hands, barmen;

but some, neatly dressed, were of a station which was obviously superior, shopassistants, clerks, and the

like. Dr. Tyrell looked at these with suspicion. Sometimes they put on shabby clothes in order to pretend they

were poor; but he had a keen eye to prevent what he regarded as fraud and sometimes refused to see people

who, he thought, could well pay for medical attendance. Women were the worst offenders and they managed

the thing more clumsily. They would wear a cloak and a skirt which were almost in rags, and neglect to take

"If you can afford to wear jewellery you can afford a doctor. A hospital is a charitable institution," said Dr.

"I don't care a hang about your letter; you get out. You've got no business to come and steal the time which is

"She'll probably write a letter to the papers on the gross mismanagement of the London hospitals," said Dr.

Tyrell, with a smile, as he took the next paper and gave the patient one of his shrewd glances.

Most of them were under the impression that the hospital was an institution of the state, for which they paid

out of the rates, and took the attendance they received as a right they could claim. They imagined the

Dr. Tyrell gave each of his clerks a case to examine. The clerk took the patient into one of the inner rooms;

they were smaller, and each had a couch in it covered with black horsehair: he asked his patient a variety of

questions, examined his lungs, his heart, and his liver, made notes of fact on the hospital letter, formed in his

own mind some idea of the diagnosis, and then waited for Dr. Tyrell to come in. This he did, followed by a

small crowd of students, when he had finished the men, and the clerk read out what he had learned. The

physician asked him one or two questions, and examined the patient himself. If there was anything interesting

to hear students applied their stethoscope: you would see a man with two or three to the chest, and two

perhaps to his back, while others waited impatiently to listen. The patient stood among them a little

embarrassed, but not altogether displeased to find himself the centre of attention: he listened confusedly

while Dr. Tyrell discoursed glibly on the case. Two or three students listened again to recognise the murmur

or the crepitation which the physician described, and then the man was told to put on his clothes.

When the various cases had been examined Dr. Tyrell went back into the large room and sat down again at

his desk. He asked any student who happened to be standing near him what he would prescribe for a patient

"Would you?" said Dr. Tyrell. "Well, that's original at all events. I don't think we'll be rash."

This always made the students laugh, and with a twinkle of amusement at his own bright humour the

physician prescribed some other drug than that which the student had suggested. When there were two cases

of exactly the same sort and the student proposed the treatment which the physician had ordered for the first,

Dr. Tyrell exercised considerable ingenuity in thinking of something else. Sometimes, knowing that in the

dispensary they were worked off their legs and preferred to give the medicines which they had all ready, the

good hospital mixtures which had been found by the experience of years to answer their purpose so well, he

"We'll give the dispenser something to do. If we go on prescribing _mist: alb:_ he'll lose his cunning."

The students laughed, and the doctor gave them a circular glance of enjoyment in his joke. Then he touched

He leaned back in his chair, chatting with the H.P. while the porter herded along the old patients. They came

in, strings of anaemic girls, with large fringes and pallid lips, who could not digest their bad, insufficient

food; old ladies, fat and thin, aged prematurely by frequent confinements, with winter coughs; women with

this, that, and the other, the matter with them. Dr. Tyrell and his housephysician got through them quickly.

Time was getting on, and the air in the small room was growing more sickly. The physician looked at his

They entered. With the men the most common ailments were due to the excessive use of alcohol, but with the

women they were due to defective nourishment. By about six o'clock they were finished. Philip, exhausted by

standing all the time, by the bad air, and by the attention he had given, strolled over with his fellowclerks to

the Medical School to have tea. He found the work of absorbing interest. There was humanity there in the

rough, the materials the artist worked on; and Philip felt a curious thrill when it occurred to him that he was

in the position of the artist and the patients were like clay in his hands. He remembered with an amused shrug

of the shoulders his life in Paris, absorbed in colour, tone, values, Heaven knows what, with the aim of

producing beautiful things: the directness of contact with men and women gave a thrill of power which he

had never known. He found an endless excitement in looking at their faces and hearing them speak; they

came in each with his peculiarity, some shuffling uncouthly, some with a little trip, others with heavy, slow

tread, some shyly. Often you could guess their trades by the look of them. You learnt in what way to put your

questions so that they should be understood, you discovered on what subjects nearly all lied, and by what

inquiries you could extort the truth notwithstanding. You saw the different way people took the same things.

The diagnosis of dangerous illness would be accepted by one with a laugh and a joke, by another with dumb

despair. Philip found that he was less shy with these people than he had ever been with others; he felt not

exactly sympathy, for sympathy suggests condescension; but he felt at home with them. He found that he was

able to put them at their ease, and, when he had been given a case to find out what he could about it, it

seemed to him that the patient delivered himself into his hands with a peculiar confidence.

"Perhaps," he thought to himself, with a smile, "perhaps I'm cut out to be a doctor. It would be rather a lark if

It seemed to Philip that he alone of the clerks saw the dramatic interest of those afternoons. To the others men

and women were only cases, good if they were complicated, tiresome if obvious; they heard murmurs and

were astonished at abnormal livers; an unexpected sound in the lungs gave them something to talk about. But

to Philip there was much more. He found an interest in just looking at them, in the shape of their heads and

their hands, in the look of their eyes and the length of their noses. You saw in that room human nature taken

by surprise, and often the mask of custom was torn off rudely, showing you the soul all raw. Sometimes you

saw an untaught stoicism which was profoundly moving. Once Philip saw a man, rough and illiterate, told his

case was hopeless; and, selfcontrolled himself, he wondered at the splendid instinct which forced the fellow

to keep a stiff upperlip before strangers. But was it possible for him to be brave when he was by himself,

face to face with his soul, or would he then surrender to despair? Sometimes there was tragedy. Once a young

woman brought her sister to be examined, a girl of eighteen, with delicate features and large blue eyes, fair

hair that sparkled with gold when a ray of autumn sunshine touched it for a moment, and a skin of amazing

beauty. The students' eyes went to her with little smiles. They did not often see a pretty girl in these dingy

rooms. The elder woman gave the family history, father and mother had died of phthisis, a brother and a

sister, these two were the only ones left. The girl had been coughing lately and losing weight. She took off

her blouse and the skin of her neck was like milk. Dr. Tyrell examined her quietly, with his usual rapid

method; he told two or three of his clerks to apply their stethoscopes to a place he indicated with his finger;

and then she was allowed to dress. The sister was standing a little apart and she spoke to him in a low voice,

She began to cry, while the doctor looked at her gravely; he thought she too had the type; she would not make

old bones either. The girl turned round and saw her sister's tears. She understood what they meant. The colour

fled from her lovely face and tears fell down her cheeks. The two stood for a minute or two, crying silently,

and then the older, forgetting the indifferent crowd that watched them, went up to her, took her in her arms,

"Her brother and sister died within three months of the first symptoms. She'll do the same. If they were rich

one might do something. You can't tell these people to go to St. Moritz. Nothing can be done for them."

Once a man who was strong and in all the power of his manhood came because a persistent aching troubled

him and his clubdoctor did not seem to do him any good; and the verdict for him too was death, not the

inevitable death that horrified and yet was tolerable because science was helpless before it, but the death

which was inevitable because the man was a little wheel in the great machine of a complex civilisation, and

had as little power of changing the circumstances as an automaton. Complete rest was his only chance. The

Dr. Tyrell shrugged his shoulders. The dilemma had been presented to him a hundred times. Time was

"Well, I'll give you some medicine and you can come back in a week and tell me how you're getting on."

The man took his letter with the useless prescription written upon it and walked out. The doctor might say

what he liked. He did not feel so bad that he could not go on working. He had a good job and he could not

Sometimes there was comedy. Now and then came a flash of cockney humour, now and then some old lady, a

character such as Charles Dickens might have drawn, would amuse them by her garrulous oddities. Once a

woman came who was a member of the ballet at a famous musichall. She looked fifty, but gave her age as

twentyeight. She was outrageously painted and ogled the students impudently with large black eyes; her

smiles were grossly alluring. She had abundant selfconfidence and treated Dr. Tyrell, vastly amused, with

the easy familiarity with which she might have used an intoxicated admirer. She had chronic bronchitis, and

"I don't know why I should 'ave such a thing, upon my word I don't. I've never 'ad a day's illness in my life.

She rolled her eyes round the young men, with a long sweep of her painted eyelashes, and flashed her yellow

teeth at them. She spoke with a cockney accent, but with an affectation of refinement which made every word

"It's what they call a winter cough," answered Dr. Tyrell gravely. "A great many middleaged women have

"Well, I never! That is a nice thing to say to a lady. No one ever called me middleaged before."

She opened her eyes very wide and cocked her head on one side, looking at him with indescribable archness.

"That is the disadvantage of our profession," said he. "It forces us sometimes to be ungallant."

But on the whole the impression was neither of tragedy nor of comedy. There was no describing it. It was

manifold and various; there were tears and laughter, happiness and woe; it was tedious and interesting and

indifferent; it was as you saw it: it was tumultuous and passionate; it was grave; it was sad and comic; it was

trivial; it was simple and complex; joy was there and despair; the love of mothers for their children, and of

men for women; lust trailed itself through the rooms with leaden feet, punishing the guilty and the innocent,

helpless wives and wretched children; drink seized men and women and cost its inevitable price; death sighed

in these rooms; and the beginning of life, filling some poor girl with terror and shame, was diagnosed there.

TOWARDS the end of the year, when Philip was bringing to a close his three months as clerk in the

Cronshaw is in London and would be glad to see you. He is living at 43 Hyde Street, Soho. I don't know

where it is, but I daresay you will be able to find out. Be a brick and look after him a bit. He is very down on

his luck. He will tell you what he is doing. Things are going on here very much as usual. Nothing seems to

have changed since you were here. Clutton is back, but he has become quite impossible. He has quarrelled

with everybody. As far as I can make out he hasn't got a cent, he lives in a little studio right away beyond the

Jardin des Plantes, but he won't let anybody see his work. He doesn't show anywhere, so one doesn't know

what he is doing. He may be a genius, but on the other hand he may be off his head. By the way, I ran against

Flanagan the other day. He was showing Mrs. Flanagan round the Quarter. He has chucked art and is now in

popper's business. He seems to be rolling. Mrs. Flanagan is very pretty and I'm trying to work a portrait. How

much would you ask if you were me? I don't want to frighten them, and then on the other hand I don't want to

be such an ass as to ask {Pounds Sterling symbol}> L150 if they're quite willing to give L300.

Philip wrote to Cronshaw and received in reply the following letter. It was written on a halfsheet of

common notepaper, and the flimsy envelope was dirtier than was justified by its passage through the post.

Of course I remember you very well. I have an idea that I had some part in rescuing you from the Slough of

Despond in which myself am hopelessly immersed. I shall be glad to see you. I am a stranger in a strange city

and I am buffeted by the philistines. It will be pleasant to talk of Paris. I do not ask you to come and see me,

since my lodging is not of a magnificence fit for the reception of an eminent member of Monsieur Purgon's

Profession, but you will find me eating modestly any evening between seven and eight at a restaurant yclept

Philip went the day he received this letter. The restaurant, consisting of one small room, was of the poorest

class, and Cronshaw seemed to be its only customer. He was sitting in the corner, well away from draughts,

wearing the same shabby greatcoat which Philip had never seen him without, with his old bowler on his

"I eat here because I can be alone," he said. "They are not doing well; the only people who come are a few

trollops and one or two waiters out of a job; they are giving up business, and the food is execrable. But the

Cronshaw had before him a glass of absinthe. It was nearly three years since they had met, and Philip was

shocked by the change in his appearance. He had been rather corpulent, but now he had a driedup, yellow

look: the skin of his neck was loose and winkled; his clothes hung about him as though they had been bought

for someone else; and his collar, three or four sizes too large, added to the slatternliness of his appearance.

His hands trembled continually. Philip remembered the handwriting which scrawled over the page with

"I eat little these days," he said. "I'm very sick in the morning. I'm just having some soup for my dinner, and

Philip's glance unconsciously went to the absinthe, and Cronshaw, seeing it, gave him the quizzical look with

"You have diagnosed my case, and you think it's very wrong of me to drink absinthe."

He looked at Philip in the way which had formerly had the power of making him feel incredibly narrow. It

seemed to point out that what he was thinking was distressingly obvious; and when you have agreed with the

The very naturalness with which he said this startled Philip. He thought of half a dozen things to say, but they

"What is London to me? I am a fish out of water. I walk through the crowded streets, men jostle me, and I

seem to walk in a dead city. I felt that I couldn't die in Paris. I wanted to die among my own people. I don't

Philip knew of the woman Cronshaw had lived with and the two draggletailed children, but Cronshaw had

never mentioned them to him, and he did not like to speak of them. He wondered what had happened to them.

"I had pneumonia a couple of winters ago, and they told me then it was a miracle that I came through. It

"Oh, what nonsense! You're not so bad as all that. You've only got to take precautions. Why don't you give

"Because I don't choose. It doesn't matter what a man does if he's ready to take the consequences. Well, I'm

ready to take the consequences. You talk glibly of giving up drinking, but it's the only thing I've got left now.

What do you think life would be to me without it? Can you understand the happiness I get out of my

absinthe? I yearn for it; and when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel my soul swimming in

ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures.

Sensual pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man blessed with vivid senses, and I

have indulged them with all my soul. I have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay."

"Sometimes, when I'm alone." He looked at Philip. "You think that's a condemnation? You're wrong. I'm not

afraid of my fear. It's folly, the Christian argument that you should live always in view of your death. The

only way to live is to forget that you're going to die. Death is unimportant. The fear of it should never

influence a single action of the wise man. I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall

be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has

brought me to such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul

"I told you that it would give you an answer to your question when you asked me what was the meaning of

"No, no, I can't do that. The answer is meaningless unless you discover it for yourself."

CRONSHAW was publishing his poems. His friends had been urging him to do this for years, but his

laziness made it impossible for him to take the necessary steps. He had always answered their exhortations by

telling them that the love of poetry was dead in England. You brought out a book which had cost you years of

thought and labour; it was given two or three contemptuous lines among a batch of similar volumes, twenty

or thirty copies were sold, and the rest of the edition was pulped. He had long since worn out the desire for

fame. That was an illusion like all else. But one of his friends had taken the matter into his own hands. This

was a man of letters, named Leonard Upjohn, whom Philip had met once or twice with Cronshaw in the cafes

of the Quarter. He had a considerable reputation in England as a critic and was the accredited exponent in this

country of modern French literature. He had lived a good deal in France among the men who made the

_Mercure de France_ the liveliest review of the day, and by the simple process of expressing in English their

point of view he had acquired in England a reputation for originality. Philip had read some of his articles. He

had formed a style for himself by a close imitation of Sir Thomas Browne; he used elaborate sentences,

carefully balanced, and obsolete, resplendent words: it gave his writing an appearance of individuality.

Leonard Upjohn had induced Cronshaw to give him all his poems and found that there were enough to make

a volume of reasonable size. He promised to use his influence with publishers. Cronshaw was in want of

money. Since his illness he had found it more difficult than ever to work steadily; he made barely enough to

keep himself in liquor; and when Upjohn wrote to him that this publisher and the other, though admiring the

poems, thought it not worth while to publish them, Cronshaw began to grow interested. He wrote impressing

upon Upjohn his great need and urging him to make more strenuous efforts. Now that he was going to die he

wanted to leave behind him a published book, and at the back of his mind was the feeling that he had

produced great poetry. He expected to burst upon the world like a new star. There was something fine in

keeping to himself these treasures of beauty all his life and giving them to the world disdainfully when, he

His decision to come to England was caused directly by an announcement from Leonard Upjohn that a

publisher had consented to print the poems. By a miracle of persuasion Upjohn had persuaded him to give ten

"In advance of royalties, mind you," said Cronshaw to Philip. "Milton only got ten pounds down."

Upjohn had promised to write a signed article about them, and he would ask his friends who reviewed to do

their best. Cronshaw pretended to treat the matter with detachment, but it was easy to see that he was

One day Philip went to dine by arrangement at the wretched eatinghouse at which Cronshaw insisted on

taking his meals, but Cronshaw did not appear. Philip learned that he had not been there for three days. He

got himself something to eat and went round to the address from which Cronshaw had first written to him. He

had some difficulty in finding Hyde Street. It was a street of dingy houses huddled together; many of the

windows had been broken and were clumsily repaired with strips of French newspaper; the doors had not

been painted for years; there were shabby little shops on the ground floor, laundries, cobblers, stationers.

Ragged children played in the road, and an old barrelorgan was grinding out a vulgar tune. Philip knocked

at the door of Cronshaw's house (there was a shop of cheap sweetstuffs at the bottom), and it was opened by

"Ah, yes, there is an Englishman who lives at the top, at the back. I don't know if he's in. If you want him you

The staircase was lit by one jet of gas. There was a revolting odour in the house. When Philip was passing up

a woman came out of a room on the first floor, looked at him suspiciously, but made no remark. There were

three doors on the top landing. Philip knocked at one, and knocked again; there was no reply; he tried the

handle, but the door was locked. He knocked at another door, got no answer, and tried the door again. It

He received no answer. He walked in. The window was closed and the stink was overpowering. There was a

certain amount of light from the arclamp in the street, and he saw that it was a small room with two beds in

it, end to end; there was a washingstand and one chair, but they left little space for anyone to move in.

Cronshaw was in the bed nearest the window. He made no movement, but gave a low chuckle.

Philip struck a match and discovered that there was a candlestick on the floor beside the bed. He lit it and put

it on the washingstand. Cronshaw was lying on his back immobile; he looked very odd in his nightshirt; and

"George brings me in a bottle of milk in the morning before he goes to his work."

"I call him George because his name is Adolphe. He shares this palatial apartment with me."

Philip noticed then that the second bed had not been made since it was slept in. The pillow was black where

"Why not? Lodging costs money in Soho. George is a waiter, he goes out at eight in the morning and does

not come in till closing time, so he isn't in my way at all. We neither of us sleep well, and he helps to pass

away the hours of the night by telling me stories of his life. He's a Swiss, and I've always had a taste for

"D'you mean to say you've had nothing but a bottle of milk for the last three days? Why on earth didn't you

send me a line? I can't bear to think of you lying here all day long without a soul to attend to you."

"Look at your face. Why, dear boy, I really believe you're distressed. You nice fellow."

Philip blushed. He had not suspected that his face showed the dismay he felt at the sight of that horrible room

and the wretched circumstances of the poor poet. Cronshaw, watching Philip, went on with a gentle smile.

"I've been quite happy. Look, here are my proofs. Remember that I am indifferent to discomforts which

would harass other folk. What do the circumstances of life matter if your dreams make you lord paramount of

The proofs were lying on his bed, and as he lay in the darkness he had been able to place his hands on them.

He showed them to Philip and his eyes glowed. He turned over the pages, rejoicing in the clear type; he read

Philip had an idea. It would involve him in a little expense and he could not afford even the smallest increase

of expenditure; but on the other hand this was a case where it revolted him to think of economy.

"I say, I can't bear the thought of your remaining here. I've got an extra room, it's empty at present, but I can

easily get someone to lend me a bed. Won't you come and live with me for a while? It'll save you the rent of

"Then you can very easily make the move. And then if you don't feel well at any time you can just go to bed,

"If it'll please you I'll come," said Cronshaw, with his torpid not unpleasant smile.

They settled that Philip should fetch Cronshaw next day, and Philip snatched an hour from his busy morning

to arrange the change. He found Cronshaw dressed, sitting in his hat and greatcoat on the bed, with a small,

shabby portmanteau, containing his clothes and books, already packed: it was on the floor by his feet, and he

looked as if he were sitting in the waitingroom of a station. Philip laughed at the sight of him. They went

over to Kennington in a fourwheeler, of which the windows were carefully closed, and Philip installed his

guest in his own room. He had gone out early in the morning and bought for himself a secondhand bedstead,

a cheap chest of drawers, and a lookingglass. Cronshaw settled down at once to correct his proofs. He was

Philip found him, except for the irritability which was a symptom of his disease, an easy guest. He had a

lecture at nine in the morning, so did not see Cronshaw till the night. Once or twice Philip persuaded him to

share the scrappy meal he prepared for himself in the evening, but Cronshaw was too restless to stay in, and

preferred generally to get himself something to eat in one or other of the cheapest restaurants in Soho. Philip

asked him to see Dr. Tyrell, but he stoutly refused; he knew a doctor would tell him to stop drinking, and this

he was resolved not to do. He always felt horribly ill in the morning, but his absinthe at midday put him on

his feet again, and by the time he came home, at midnight, he was able to talk with the brilliancy which had

astonished Philip when first he made his acquaintance. His proofs were corrected; and the volume was to

come out among the publications of the early spring, when the public might be supposed to have recovered

AT the new year Philip became dresser in the surgical outpatients' department. The work was of the same

character as that which he had just been engaged on, but with the greater directness which surgery has than

medicine; and a larger proportion of the patients suffered from those two diseases which a supine public

allows, in its prudishness, to be spread broadcast. The assistantsurgeon for whom Philip dressed was called

Jacobs. He was a short, fat man, with an exuberant joviality, a bald head, and a loud voice; he had a cockney

accent, and was generally described by the students as an `awful bounder'; but his cleverness, both as a

surgeon and as a teacher, caused some of them to overlook this. He had also a considerable facetiousness,

which he exercised impartially on the patients and on the students. He took a great pleasure in making his

dresses look foolish. Since they were ignorant, nervous, and could not answer as if he were their equal, this

was not very difficult. He enjoyed his afternoons, with the home truths he permitted himself, much more than

the students who had to put up with them with a smile. One day a case came up of a boy with a clubfoot.

His parents wanted to know whether anything could be done. Mr. Jacobs turned to Philip.

"You'd better take this case, Carey. It's a subject you ought to know something about."

Philip flushed, all the more because the surgeon spoke obviously with a humorous intention, and his

browbeaten dressers laughed obsequiously. It was in point of fact a subject which Philip, since coming to

the hospital, had studied with anxious attention. He had read everything in the library which treated of talipes

in its various forms. He made the boy take off his boot and stocking. He was fourteen, with a snub nose, blue

eyes, and a freckled face. His father explained that they wanted something done if possible, it was such a

hindrance to the kid in earning his living. Philip looked at him curiously. He was a jolly boy, not at all shy,

but talkative and with a cheekiness which his father reproved. He was much interested in his foot.

"It's only for the looks of the thing, you know," he said to Philip. "I don't find it no trouble."

Philip examined the foot and passed his hand slowly over the shapelessness of it. He could not understand

why the boy felt none of the humiliation which always oppressed himself. He wondered why he could not

take his deformity with that philosophic indifference. Presently Mr. Jacobs came up to him. The boy was

sitting on the edge of a couch, the surgeon and Philip stood on each side of him; and in a semicircle,

crowding round, were students. With accustomed brilliancy Jacobs gave a graphic little discourse upon the

clubfoot: he spoke of its varieties and of the forms which followed upon different anatomical conditions.

Philip felt the eyes of his fellowstudents rest on him, and he cursed himself because he could not help

blushing. He felt the sweat start up in the palms of his hands. The surgeon spoke with the fluency due to long

practice and with the admirable perspicacity which distinguished him. He was tremendously interested in his

profession. But Philip did not listen. He was only wishing that the fellow would get done quickly. Suddenly

Philip felt a shudder pass through him. He had an impulse to tell the surgeon to go to hell, but he had not the

courage to make a scene. He feared his brutal ridicule. He forced himself to appear indifferent.

He sat down and unlaced his boot. His fingers were trembling and he thought he should never untie the knot.

He remembered how they had forced him at school to show his foot, and the misery which had eaten into his

"He keeps his feet nice and clean, doesn't he?" said Jacobs, in his rasping, cockney voice.

The attendant students giggled. Philip noticed that the boy whom they were examining looked down at his

"Yes, that's what I thought. I see you've had an operation. When you were a child, I suppose?"

He went on with his fluent explanations. The students leaned over and looked at the foot. Two or three

He could have killed them all. He thought how jolly it would be to jab a chisel (he didn't know why that

particular instrument came into his mind) into their necks. What beasts men were! He wished he could

believe in hell so as to comfort himself with the thought of the horrible tortures which would be theirs. Mr.

Jacobs turned his attention to treatment. He talked partly to the boy's father and partly to the students. Philip

put on his sock and laced his boot. At last the surgeon finished. But he seemed to have an afterthought and

"You know, I think it might be worth your while to have an operation. Of course I couldn't give you a normal

foot, but I think I can do something. You might think about it, and when you want a holiday you can just

Philip had often asked himself whether anything could be done, but his distaste for any reference to the

subject had prevented him from consulting any of the surgeons at the hospital. His reading told him that

whatever might have been done when he was a small boy, and then treatment of talipes was not as skilful as

in the present day, there was small chance now of any great benefit. Still it would be worth while if an

operation made it possible for him to wear a more ordinary boot and to limp less. He remembered how

passionately he had prayed for the miracle which his uncle had assured him was possible to omnipotence. He

Towards the end of February it was clear that Cronshaw was growing much worse. He was no longer able to

get up. He lay in bed, insisting that the window should be closed always, and refused to see a doctor; he

would take little nourishment, but demanded whiskey and cigarettes: Philip knew that he should have neither,

"I daresay they are killing me. I don't care. You've warned me, you've done all that was necessary: I ignore

Leonard Upjohn blew in two or three times a week, and there was something of the dead leaf in his

appearance which made the word exactly descriptive of the manner of his appearance. He was a

weedylooking fellow of fiveandthirty, with long pale hair and a white face; he had the look of a man who

lived too little in the open air. He wore a hat like a dissenting minister's. Philip disliked him for his

patronising manner and was bored by his fluent conversation. Leonard Upjohn liked to hear himself talk. He

was not sensitive to the interest of his listeners, which is the first requisite of the good talker; and he never

realised that he was telling people what they knew already. With measured words he told Philip what to think

of Rodin, Albert Samain, and Caesar Franck. Philip's charwoman only came in for an hour in the morning,

and since Philip was obliged to be at the hospital all day Cronshaw was left much alone. Upjohn told Philip

that he thought someone should remain with him, but did not offer to make it possible.

"It's dreadful to think of that great poet alone. Why, he might die without a soul at hand."

"Why don't you come and do your work here every day, and then you'd be near if he wanted anything?"

"I? My dear fellow, I can only work in the surroundings I'm used to, and besides I go out so much."

Upjohn was also a little put out because Philip had brought Cronshaw to his own rooms.

"I wish you had left him in Soho," he said, with a wave of his long, thin hands. "There was a touch of

romance in that sordid attic. I could even bear it if it were Wapping or Shoreditch, but the respectability of

Cronshaw was often so illhumoured that Philip could only keep his temper by remembering all the time that

this irritability was a symptom of the disease. Upjohn came sometimes before Philip was in, and then

"The fact is that Carey has no sense of beauty," he smiled. "He has a middleclass mind."

He was very sarcastic to Philip, and Philip exercised a good deal of selfcontrol in his dealings with him. But

one evening he could not contain himself. He had had a hard day at the hospital and was tired out. Leonard

Upjohn came to him, while he was making himself a cup of tea in the kitchen, and said that Cronshaw was

"Don't you realise that you're enjoying a very rare, a very exquisite privilege? You ought to do everything in

Whenever there was any question of money, Leonard Upjohn assumed a slightly disdainful expression. His

"There's something fine in Cronshaw's attitude, and you disturb it by your importunity. You should make

The poet was lying on his back, reading a book, with a pipe in his mouth. The air was musty; and the room,

notwithstanding Philip's tidying up, had the bedraggled look which seemed to accompany Cronshaw

wherever he went. He took off his spectacles as they came in. Philip was in a towering rage.

"Upjohn tells me you've been complaining to him because I've urged you to have a doctor," he said. "I want

you to have a doctor, because you may die any day, and if you hadn't been seen by anyone I shouldn't be able

to get a certificate. There'd have to be an inquest and I should be blamed for not calling a doctor in."

"I hadn't thought of that. I thought you wanted me to see a doctor for my sake and not for your own. I'll see a

Philip did not answer, but gave an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders. Cronshaw, watching him,

"Don't look so angry, my dear. I know very well you want to do everything you can for me. Let's see your

doctor, perhaps he can do something for me, and at any rate it'll comfort you." He turned his eyes to Upjohn.

"You're a damned fool, Leonard. Why d'you want to worry the boy? He has quite enough to do to put up with

me. You'll do nothing more for me than write a pretty article about me after my death. I know you."

Next day Philip went to Dr. Tyrell. He felt that he was the sort of man to be interested by the story, and as

soon as Tyrell was free of his day's work he accompanied Philip to Kennington. He could only agree with

"I'll take him into the hospital if you like," he said. "He can have a small ward."

"You know, he may die any minute, or else he may get another attack of pneumonia."

Philip nodded. Dr. Tyrell made one or two suggestions, and promised to come again whenever Philip wanted

him to. He left his address. When Philip went back to Cronshaw he found him quietly reading. He did not

ABOUT a fortnight after this Philip, going home one evening after his day's work at the hospital, knocked at

the door of Cronshaw's room. He got no answer and walked in. Cronshaw was lying huddled up on one side,

and Philip went up to the bed. He did not know whether Cronshaw was asleep or merely lay there in one of

his uncontrollable fits of irritability. He was surprised to see that his mouth was open. He touched his

shoulder. Philip gave a cry of dismay. He slipped his hand under Cronshaw's shirt and felt his heart; he did

not know what to do; helplessly, because he had heard of this being done, he held a lookingglass in front of

his mouth. It startled him to be alone with Cronshaw. He had his hat and coat still on, and he ran down the

stairs into the street; he hailed a cab and drove to Harley Street. Dr. Tyrell was in.

"I should be awfully grateful if you would. I've got a cab at the door. It'll only take half an hour."

"He seemed no worse than usual when I left this morning," said Philip. "It gave me an awful shock when I

went in just now. And the thought of his dying all alone.... D'you think he knew he was going to die?"

Philip remembered what Cronshaw had said. He wondered whether at that last moment he had been seized

with the terror of death. Philip imagined himself in such a plight, knowing it was inevitable and with no one,

He looked at him with his bright blue eyes. They were not unsympathetic. When he saw Cronshaw, he said:

"He must have been dead for some hours. I should think he died in his sleep. They do sometimes."

The body looked shrunk and ignoble. It was not like anything human. Dr. Tyrell looked at it dispassionately.

"Well, I must be getting along. I'll send the certificate round. I suppose you'll communicate with the

Dr. Tyrell gave Philip a glance. He wondered whether he ought to offer a couple of sovereigns towards it. He

knew nothing of Philip's circumstances; perhaps he could well afford the expense; Philip might think it

Philip and he went out together, parting on the doorstep, and Philip went to a telegraph office in order to send

a message to Leonard Upjohn. Then he went to an undertaker whose shop he passed every day on his way to

the hospital. His attention had been drawn to it often by the three words in silver lettering on a black cloth,

which, with two model coffins, adorned the window: Economy, Celerity, Propriety. They had always diverted

him. The undertaker was a little fat Jew with curly black hair, long and greasy, in black, with a large diamond

ring on a podgy finger. He received Philip with a peculiar manner formed by the mingling of his natural

blatancy with the subdued air proper to his calling. He quickly saw that Philip was very helpless and

promised to send round a woman at once to perform the needful offices. His suggestions for the funeral were

very magnificent; and Philip felt ashamed of himself when the undertaker seemed to think his objections

mean. It was horrible to haggle on such a matter, and finally Philip consented to an expensiveness which he

"I quite understand, sir," said the undertaker, "you don't want any show and thatI'm not a believer in

ostentation myself, mind youbut you want it done gentlemanlylike. You leave it to me, I'll do it as cheap

as it can be done, 'aving regard to what's right and proper. I can't say more than that, can I?"

Philip went home to eat his supper, and while he ate the woman came along to lay out the corpse. Presently a

_Shocked and grieved beyond measure. Regret cannot come tonight. Dining out. With you early tomorrow.

Philip followed her. Cronshaw was lying on his back, with his eyes closed and his hands folded piously

She gave the body a glance of satisfaction. She had performed her job, and now she rolled down her sleeves,

took off her apron, and put on her bonnet. Philip asked her how much he owed her.

Philip was ashamed to give her less than the larger sum. She thanked him with just so much effusiveness as

was seemly in presence of the grief he might be supposed to feel, and left him. Philip went back into his

sittingroom, cleared away the remains of his supper, and sat down to read Walsham's _Surgery_. He found

it difficult. He felt singularly nervous. When there was a sound on the stairs he jumped, and his heart beat

violently. That thing in the adjoining room, which had been a man and now was nothing, frightened him. The

silence seemed alive, as if some mysterious movement were taking place within it; the presence of death

weighed upon these rooms, unearthly and terrifying: Philip felt a sudden horror for what had once been his

friend. He tried to force himself to read, but presently pushed away his book in despair. What troubled him

was the absolute futility of the life which had just ended. It did not matter if Cronshaw was alive or dead. It

would have been just as well if he had never lived. Philip thought of Cronshaw young; and it needed an effort

of imagination to picture him slender, with a springing step, and with hair on his head, buoyant and hopeful.

Philip's rule of life, to follow one's instincts with due regard to the policeman round the corner, had not acted

very well there: it was because Cronshaw had done this that he had made such a lamentable failure of

existence. It seemed that the instincts could not be trusted. Philip was puzzled, and he asked himself what rule

of life was there, if that one was useless, and why people acted in one way rather than in another. They acted

according to their emotions, but their emotions might be good or bad; it seemed just a chance whether they

led to triumph or disaster. Life seemed an inextricable confusion. Men hurried hither and thither, urged by

forces they knew not; and the purpose of it all escaped them; they seemed to hurry just for hurrying's sake.

Next morning Leonard Upjohn appeared with a small wreath of laurel. He was pleased with his idea of

crowning the dead poet with this; and attempted, notwithstanding Philip's disapproving silence, to fix it on

the bald head; but the wreath fitted grotesquely. It looked like the brim of a hat worn by a low comedian in a

They went back into the sittingroom, and Philip told him what arrangements he had made for the funeral.

"I hoped you've spared no expense. I should like the hearse to be followed by a long string of empty coaches,

and I should like the horses to wear tall nodding plumes, and there should be a vast number of mutes with

"As the cost of the funeral will apparently fall on me and I'm not over flush just now, I've tried to make it as

"But, my dear fellow, in that case, why didn't you get him a pauper's funeral? There would have been

Philip flushed a little, but did not answer; and next day he and Upjohn followed the hearse in the one carriage

which Philip had ordered. Lawson, unable to come, had sent a wreath; and Philip, so that the coffin should

not seem too neglected, had bought a couple. On the way back the coachman whipped up his horses. Philip

"It's rather lucky the poems haven't come out yet. I think we'd better hold them back a bit and I'll write a

preface. I began thinking of it during the drive to the cemetery. I believe I can do something rather good.

"I daresay I'd be wiser not to whittle away my copy. I think I'll do an article for one of the reviews, and then I

Philip kept his eye on the monthlies, and a few weeks later it appeared. The article made something of a stir,

and extracts from it were printed in many of the papers. It was a very good article, vaguely biographical, for

no one knew much of Cronshaw's early life, but delicate, tender, and picturesque. Leonard Upjohn in his

intricate style drew graceful little pictures of Cronshaw in the Latin Quarter, talking, writing poetry:

Cronshaw became a picturesque figure, an English Verlaine; and Leonard Upjohn's coloured phrases took on

a tremulous dignity, a more pathetic grandiloquence, as he described the sordid end, the shabby little room in

Soho; and, with a reticence which was wholly charming and suggested a much greater generosity than

modesty allowed him to state, the efforts he made to transport the Poet to some cottage embowered with

honeysuckle amid a flowering orchard. And the lack of sympathy, wellmeaning but so tactless, which had

taken the poet instead to the vulgar respectability of Kennington! Leonard Upjohn described Kennington with

that restrained humour which a strict adherence to the vocabulary of Sir Thomas Browne necessitated. With

delicate sarcasm he narrated the last weeks, the patience with which Cronshaw bore the wellmeaning

clumsiness of the young student who had appointed himself his nurse, and the pitifulness of that divine

vagabond in those hopelessly middleclass surroundings. Beauty from ashes, he quoted from Isaiah. It was a

triumph of irony for that outcast poet to die amid the trappings of vulgar respectability; it reminded Leonard

Upjohn of Christ among the Pharisees, and the analogy gave him opportunity for an exquisite passage. And

then he told how a friendhis good taste did not suffer him more than to hint subtly who the friend was with

such gracious fancieshad laid a laurel wreath on the dead poet's heart; and the beautiful dead hands had

seemed to rest with a voluptuous passion upon Apollo's leaves, fragrant with the fragrance of art, and more

green than jade brought by swart mariners from the manifold, inexplicable China. And, an admirable contrast,

the article ended with a description of the middleclass, ordinary, prosaic funeral of him who should have

been buried like a prince or like a pauper. It was the crowning buffet, the final victory of Philistia over art,

Leonard Upjohn had never written anything better. It was a miracle of charm, grace, and pity. He printed all

Cronshaw's best poems in the course of the article, so that when the volume appeared much of its point was

gone; but he advanced his own position a good deal. He was thenceforth a critic to be reckoned with. He had

seemed before a little aloof; but there was a warm humanity about this article which was infinitely attractive.

IN the spring Philip, having finished his dressing in the outpatients' department, became an inpatients'

clerk. This appointment lasted six months. The clerk spent every morning in the wards, first in the men's, then

in the women's, with the housephysician; he wrote up cases, made tests, and passed the time of day with the

nurses. On two afternoons a week the physician in charge went round with a little knot of students, examined

the cases, and dispensed information. The work had not the excitement, the constant change, the intimate

contact with reality, of the work in the outpatients' department; but Philip picked up a good deal of

knowledge. He got on very well with the patients, and he was a little flattered at the pleasure they showed in

his attendance on them. He was not conscious of any deep sympathy in their sufferings, but he liked them;

and because he put on no airs he was more popular with them than others of the clerks. He was pleasant,

encouraging, and friendly. Like everyone connected with hospitals he found that male patients were more

easy to get on with than female. The women were often querulous and illtempered. They complained

bitterly of the hardworked nurses, who did not show them the attention they thought their right; and they

Presently Philip was fortunate enough to make a friend. One morning the housephysician gave him a new

case, a man; and, seating himself at the bedside, Philip proceeded to write down particulars on the `letter.' He

noticed on looking at this that the patient was described as a journalist: his name was Thorpe Athelny, an

unusual one for a hospital patient, and his age was fortyeight. He was suffering from a sharp attack of

jaundice, and had been taken into the ward on account of obscure symptoms which it seemed necessary to

watch. He answered the various questions which it was Philip's duty to ask him in a pleasant, educated voice.

Since he was lying in bed it was difficult to tell if he was short or tall, but his small head and small hands

suggested that he was a man of less than average height. Philip had the habit of looking at people's hands, and

Athelny's astonished him: they were very small, with long, tapering fingers and beautiful, rosy fingernails;

they were very smooth and except for the jaundice would have been of a surprising whiteness. The patient

kept them outside the bedclothes, one of them slightly spread out, the second and third fingers together, and,

while he spoke to Philip, seemed to contemplate them with satisfaction. With a twinkle in his eyes Philip

glanced at the man's face. Notwithstanding the yellowness it was distinguished; he had blue eyes, a nose of an

imposing boldness, hooked, aggressive but not clumsy, and a small beard, pointed and gray: he was rather

bald, but his hair had evidently been quite fine, curling prettily, and he still wore it long.

"I write for all the papers. You cannot open a paper without seeing some of my writing." There was one by

the side of the bed and reaching for it he pointed out an advertisement. In large letters was the name of a firm

wellknown to Philip, Lynn and Sedley, Regent Street, London; and below, in type smaller but still of some

magnitude, was the dogmatic statement: Procrastination is the Thief of Time. Then a question, startling

because of its reasonableness: Why not order today? There was a repetition, in large letters, like the

hammering of conscience on a murderer's heart: Why not? Then, boldly: Thousands of pairs of gloves from

the leading markets of the world at astounding prices. Thousands of pairs of stockings from the most reliable

manufacturers of the universe at sensational reductions. Finally the question recurred, but flung now like a

"I'm the press representative of Lynn and Sedley." He gave a little wave of his beautiful hand. "To what base

Philip went on asking the regulation questions, some a mere matter of routine, others artfully devised to lead

Philip remembered that Clutton had spent some months in Toledo, and the journalist's answer made him look

at him with more interest; but he felt it would be improper to show this: it was necessary to preserve the

distance between the hospital patient and the staff. When he had finished his examination he went on to other

Thorpe Athelny's illness was not grave, and, though remaining very yellow, he soon felt much better: he

stayed in bed only because the physician thought he should be kept under observation till certain reactions

became normal. One day, on entering the ward, Philip noticed that Athelny, pencil in hand, was reading a

"May I see what you're reading?" asked Philip, who could never pass a book without looking at it.

Philip took it up and saw that it was a volume of Spanish verse, the poems of San Juan de la Cruz, and as he

opened it a sheet of paper fell out. Philip picked it up and noticed that verse was written upon it.

"You're not going to tell me you've been occupying your leisure in writing poetry? That's a most improper

"He was one of the Spanish mystics. He's one of the best poets they've ever had. I thought it would be worth

"It's very rough," said Athelny, but he gave it to Philip with an alacrity which suggested that he was eager for

It was written in pencil, in a fine but very peculiar handwriting, which was hard to read: it was just like black

"I don't know why handwriting shouldn't be beautiful." Philip read the first verse:

_In an obscure night With anxious love inflamed O happy lot! Forth unobserved I went, My house being now

Philip looked curiously at Thorpe Athelny. He did not know whether he felt a little shy with him or was

attracted by him. He was conscious that his manner had been slightly patronising, and he flushed as it struck

"It's a very old Yorkshire name. Once it took the head of my family a day's hard riding to make the circuit of

He was shortsighted and when he spoke looked at you with a peculiar intensity. He took up his volume of

"You should read Spanish," he said. "It is a noble tongue. It has not the mellifluousness of Italian, Italian is

the language of tenors and organgrinders, but it has grandeur: it does not ripple like a brook in a garden, but

His grandiloquence amused Philip, but he was sensitive to rhetoric; and he listened with pleasure while

Athelny, with picturesque expressions and the fire of a real enthusiasm, described to him the rich delight of

reading _Don Quixote_ in the original and the music, romantic, limpid, passionate, of the enchanting

"Oh, forgive me, I forgot. I will tell my wife to bring me a photograph of Toledo, and I will show it you.

Come and talk to me when you have the chance. You don't know what a pleasure it gives me."

During the next few days, in moments snatched whenever there was opportunity, Philip's acquaintance with

the journalist increased. Thorpe Athelny was a good talker. He did not say brilliant things, but he talked

inspiringly, with an eager vividness which fired the imagination; Philip, living so much in a world of

makebelieve, found his fancy teeming with new pictures. Athelny had very good manners. He knew much

more than Philip, both of the world and of books; he was a much older man; and the readiness of his

conversation gave him a certain superiority; but he was in the hospital a recipient of charity, subject to strict

rules; and he held himself between the two positions with ease and humour. Once Philip asked him why he

"Oh, my principle is to profit by all the benefits that society provides. I take advantage of the age I live in.

When I'm ill I get myself patched up in a hospital and I have no false shame, and I send my children to be

"And a capital education they get too, much better than I got at Winchester. How else do you think I could

educate them at all? I've got nine. You must come and see them all when I get home again. Will you?"

TEN days later Thorpe Athelny was well enough to leave the hospital. He gave Philip his address, and Philip

promised to dine with him at one o'clock on the following Sunday. Athelny had told him that he lived in a

house built by Inigo Jones; he had raved, as he raved over everything, over the balustrade of old oak; and

when he came down to open the door for Philip he made him at once admire the elegant carving of the lintel.

It was a shabby house, badly needing a coat of paint, but with the dignity of its period, in a little street

between Chancery Lane and Holborn, which had once been fashionable but was now little better than a slum:

there was a plan to pull it down in order to put up handsome offices; meanwhile the rents were small, and

Athelny was able to get the two upper floors at a price which suited his income. Philip had not seen him up

before and was surprised at his small size; he was not more than five feet and five inches high. He was

dressed fantastically in blue linen trousers of the sort worn by working men in France, and a very old brown

velvet coat; he wore a bright red sash round his waist, a low collar, and for tie a flowing bow of the kind used

by the comic Frenchman in the pages of _Punch_. He greeted Philip with enthusiasm. He began talking at

"Look at it, feel it, it's like silk. What a miracle of grace! And in five years the housebreaker will sell it for

He insisted on taking Philip into a room on the first floor, where a man in shirt sleeves, a blousy woman, and

"I've just brought this gentleman in to show him your ceiling. Did you ever see anything so wonderful? How

are you, Mrs. Hodgson? This is Mr. Carey, who looked after me when I was in the hospital."

"Come in, sir," said the man. "Any friend of Mr. Athelny's is welcome. Mr. Athelny shows the ceiling to all

his friends. And it don't matter what we're doing, if we're in bed or if I'm 'aving a wash, in 'e comes."

Philip could see that they looked upon Athelny as a little queer; but they liked him none the less and they

listened openmouthed while he discoursed with his impetuous fluency on the beauty of the

"What a crime to pull this down, eh, Hodgson? You're an influential citizen, why don't you write to the

"Mr. Athelny will 'ave his little joke. They do say these 'ouses are that insanitory, it's not safe to live in them."

"Sanitation be damned, give me art," cried Athelny. "I've got nine children and they thrive on bad drains. No,

no, I'm not going to take any risk. None of your newfangled notions for me! When I move from here I'm

"This is my third daughter," said Athelny, pointing to her with a dramatic forefinger. "She is called Maria del

Pilar, but she answers more willingly to the name of Jane. Jane, your nose wants blowing."

"Tut, tut, child," he answered, as he produced a vast, brilliant bandanna, "what do you suppose the Almighty

They went upstairs, and Philip was taken into a room with walls panelled in dark oak. In the middle was a

narrow table of teak on trestle legs, with two supporting bars of iron, of the kind called in Spain _mesa de

hieraje_. They were to dine there, for two places were laid, and there were two large armchairs, with broad

flat arms of oak and leathern backs, and leathern seats. They were severe, elegant, and uncomfortable. The

only other piece of furniture was a _bargueno_, elaborately ornamented with gilt ironwork, on a stand of

ecclesiastical design roughly but very finely carved. There stood on this two or three lustre plates, much

broken but rich in colour; and on the walls were old masters of the Spanish school in beautiful though

dilapidated frames: though gruesome in subject, ruined by age and bad treatment, and secondrate in their

conception, they had a glow of passion. There was nothing in the room of any value, but the effect was

lovely. It was magnificent and yet austere. Philip felt that it offered the very spirit of old Spain. Athelny was

in the middle of showing him the inside of the _bargueno_, with its beautiful ornamentation and secret

drawers, when a tall girl, with two plaits of bright brown hair hanging down her back, came in.

"Mother says dinner's ready and waiting and I'm to bring it in as soon as you sit down."

"Come and shake hands with Mr. Carey, Sally." He turned to Philip. "Isn't she enormous? She's my eldest.

"I christened her Maria del Sol, because she was my first child and I dedicated her to the glorious sun of

The girl smiled shyly, she had even, white teeth, and blushed. She was well setup, tall for her age, with

"Go and tell your mother to come in and shake hands with Mr. Carey before he sits down."

"Then we'll go in and see her ourselves. He mustn't eat the Yorkshire pudding till he's shaken the hand that

Philip followed his host into the kitchen. It was small and much overcrowded. There had been a lot of noise,

but it stopped as soon as the stranger entered. There was a large table in the middle and round it, eager for

dinner, were seated Athelny's children. A woman was standing at the oven, taking out baked potatoes one by

She wore a dirty apron, and the sleeves of her cotton dress were turned up above her elbows; she had curling

pins in her hair. Mrs. Athelny was a large woman, a good three inches taller than her husband, fair, with blue

eyes and a kindly expression; she had been a handsome creature, but advancing years and the bearing of

many children had made her fat and blousy; her blue eyes had become pale, her skin was coarse and red, the

colour had gone out of her hair. She straightened herself, wiped her hand on her apron, and held it out.

"You're welcome, sir," she said, in a slow voice, with an accent that seemed oddly familiar to Philip.

"Now you must be introduced to the live stock," said Athelny. "That is Thorpe," he pointed to a chubby boy

with curly hair, "he is my eldest son, heir to the title, estates, and responsibilities of the family. There is

Athelstan, Harold, Edward." He pointed with his forefinger to three smaller boys, all rosy, healthy, and

smiling, though when they felt Philip's smiling eyes upon them they looked shyly down at their plates. "Now

"Your sense of humour is rudimentary, my son. Maria de los Mercedes, Maria del Pilar, Maria de la

"I call them Sally, Molly, Connie, Rosie, and Jane," said Mrs. Athelny. "Now, Athelny, you go into your own

room and I'll send you your dinner. I'll let the children come in afterwards for a bit when I've washed them."

"My dear, if I'd had the naming of you I should have called you Maria of the Soapsuds. You're always

"You go first, Mr. Carey, or I shall never get him to sit down and eat his dinner."

Athelny and Philip installed themselves in the great monkish chairs, and Sally brought them in two plates of

beef, Yorkshire pudding, baked potatoes, and cabbage. Athelny took sixpence out of his pocket and sent her

"I hope you didn't have the table laid here on my account," said Philip. "I should have been quite happy to eat

"Oh no, I always have my meals by myself. I like these antique customs. I don't think that women ought to sit

down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads,

"Did you ever taste such Yorkshire pudding? No one can make it like my wife. That's the advantage of not

"No, she's not a lady, nor anything like it. Her father was a farmer, and she's never bothered about aitches in

her life. We've had twelve children and nine of them are alive. I tell her it's about time she stopped, but she's

an obstinate woman, she's got into the habit of it now, and I don't believe she'll be satisfied till she's had

At that moment Sally came in with the beer, and, having poured out a glass for Philip, went to the other side

"Did you ever see such a handsome, strapping girl? Only fifteen and she might be twenty. Look at her cheeks.

She's never had a day's illness in her life. It'll be a lucky man who marries her, won't it, Sally?"

Sally listened to all this with a slight, slow smile, not much embarrassed, for she was accustomed to her

"Don't let your dinner get cold, father," she said, drawing herself away from his arm. "You'll call when you're

They were left alone, and Athelny lifted the pewter tankard to his lips. He drank long and deep.

"My word, is there anything better than English beer?" he said. "Let us thank God for simple pleasures, roast

beef and rice pudding, a good appetite and beer. I was married to a lady once. My God! Don't marry a lady,

Philip laughed. He was exhilarated by the scene, the funny little man in his odd clothes, the panelled room

and the Spanish furniture, the English fare: the whole thing had an exquisite incongruity.

"You laugh, my boy, you can't imagine marrying beneath you. You want a wife who's an intellectual equal.

Your head is crammed full of ideas of comradeship. Stuff and nonsense, my boy! A man doesn't want to talk

politics to his wife, and what do you think I care for Betty's views upon the Differential Calculus? A man

wants a wife who can cook his dinner and look after his children. I've tried both and I know. Let's have the

He clapped his hands and presently Sally came. When she took away the plates, Philip wanted to get up and

"Let her alone, my boy. She doesn't want you to fuss about, do you, Sally? And she won't think it rude of you

to sit still while she waits upon you. She don't care a damn for chivalry, do you, Sally?"

Athelny laughed boisterously. Sally brought them plates of rice pudding, rich, creamy, and luscious. Athelny

"One of the rules of this house is that Sunday dinner should never alter. It is a ritual. Roast beef and rice

pudding for fifty Sundays in the year. On Easter Sunday lamb and green peas, and at Michaelmas roast goose

and apple sauce. Thus we preserve the traditions of our people. When Sally marries she will forget many of

the wise things I have taught her, but she will never forget that if you want to be good and happy you must

"D'you know the legend of the halcyon?" said Athelny: Philip was growing used to his rapid leaping from

one subject to another. "When the kingfisher, flying over the sea, is exhausted, his mate places herself

beneath him and bears him along upon her stronger wings. That is what a man wants in a wife, the halcyon. I

lived with my first wife for three years. She was a lady, she had fifteen hundred a year, and we used to give

nice little dinner parties in our little red brick house in Kensington. She was a charming woman; they all said

so, the barristers and their wives who dined with us, and the literary stockbrokers, and the budding

politicians; oh, she was a charming woman. She made me go to church in a silk hat and a frock coat, she took

me to classical concerts, and she was very fond of lectures on Sunday afternoon; and she sat down to

breakfast every morning at eightthirty, and if I was late breakfast was cold; and she read the right books,

admired the right pictures, and adored the right music. My God, how that woman bored me! She is charming

still, and she lives in the little red brick house in Kensington, with Morris papers and Whistler's etchings on

the walls, and gives the same nice little dinner parties, with veal creams and ices from Gunter's, as she did

Philip did not ask by what means the illmatched couple had separated, but Athelny told him.

"Betty's not my wife, you know; my wife wouldn't divorce me. The children are bastards, every jack one of

them, and are they any the worse for that? Betty was one of the maids in the little red brick house in

Kensington. Four or five years ago I was on my uppers, and I had seven children, and I went to my wife and

asked her to help me. She said she'd make me an allowance if I'd give Betty up and go abroad. Can you see

me giving Betty up? We starved for a while instead. My wife said I loved the gutter. I've degenerated; I've

come down in the world; I earn three pounds a week as press agent to a linendraper, and every day I thank

Sally brought in Cheddar cheese, and Athelny went on with his fluent conversation.

"It's the greatest mistake in the world to think that one needs money to bring up a family. You need money to

make them gentlemen and ladies, but I don't want my children to be ladies and gentlemen. Sally's going to

earn her living in another year. She's to be apprenticed to a dressmaker, aren't you, Sally? And the boys are

going to serve their country. I want them all to go into the Navy; it's a jolly life and a healthy life, good food,

Philip lit his pipe. Athelny smoked cigarettes of Havana tobacco, which he rolled himself. Sally cleared

away. Philip was reserved, and it embarrassed him to be the recipient of so many confidences. Athelny, with

his powerful voice in the diminutive body, with his bombast, with his foreign look, with his emphasis, was an

astonishing creature. He reminded Philip a good deal of Cronshaw. He appeared to have the same

independence of thought, the same bohemianism, but he had an infinitely more vivacious temperament; his

mind was coarser, and he had not that interest in the abstract which made Cronshaw's conversation so

captivating. Athelny was very proud of the county family to which he belonged; he showed Philip

"The Athelnys have lived there for seven centuries, my boy. Ah, if you saw the chimneypieces and the

There was a cupboard in the wainscoting and from this he took a family tree. He showed it to Philip with

"You see how the family names recur, Thorpe, Athelstan, Harold, Edward; I've used the family names for my

An uneasy feeling came to Philip that possibly the whole story was an elaborate imposture, not told with any

base motive, but merely from a wish to impress, startle, and amaze. Athelny had told him that he was at

Winchester; but Philip, sensitive to differences of manner, did not feel that his host had the characteristics of

a man educated at a great public school. While he pointed out the great alliances which his ancestors had

formed, Philip amused himself by wondering whether Athelny was not the son of some tradesman in

Winchester, auctioneer or coalmerchant, and whether a similarity of surname was not his only connection

THERE was a knock at the door and a troop of children came in. They were clean and tidy, now. their faces

shone with soap, and their hair was plastered down; they were going to Sunday school under Sally's charge.

Athelny joked with them in his dramatic, exuberant fashion, and you could see that he was devoted to them

all. His pride in their good health and their good looks was touching. Philip felt that they were a little shy in

his presence, and when their father sent them off they fled from the room in evident relief. In a few minutes

Mrs. Athelny appeared. She had taken her hair out of the curling pins and now wore an elaborate fringe. She

had on a plain black dress, a hat with cheap flowers, and was forcing her hands, red and coarse from much

"I'm going to church, Athelny," she said. "There's nothing you'll be wanting, is there?"

"They won't do you much good, you're too far gone for that," she smiled. Then, turning to Philip, she

"Doesn't she look like Rubens' second wife?" cried Athelny. "Wouldn't she look splendid in a

seventeenthcentury costume? That's the sort of wife to marry, my boy. Look at her."

She succeeded in buttoning her gloves, but before she went she turned to Philip with a kindly, slightly

"You'll stay to tea, won't you? Athelny likes someone to talk to, and it's not often he gets anybody who's

"Of course he'll stay to tea," said Athelny. Then when his wife had gone: "I make a point of the children

going to Sunday school, and I like Betty to go to church. I think women ought to be religious. I don't believe

Philip, straitlaced in matters of truth, was a little shocked by this airy attitude.

"But how can you look on while your children are being taught things which you don't think are true?"

"If they're beautiful I don't much mind if they're not true. It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to

your reason as well as to your sense of the aesthetic. I wanted Betty to become a Roman Catholic, I should

have liked to see her converted in a crown of paper flowers, but she's hopelessly Protestant. Besides, religion

is a matter of temperament; you will believe anything if you have the religious turn of mind, and if you

haven't it doesn't matter what beliefs were instilled into you, you will grow out of them. Perhaps religion is

the best school of morality. It is like one of those drugs you gentlemen use in medicine which carries another

in solution: it is of no efficacy in itself, but enables the other to be absorbed. You take your morality because

it is combined with religion; you lose the religion and the morality stays behind. A man is more likely to be a

good man if he has learned goodness through the love of God than through a perusal of Herbert Spencer."

This was contrary to all Philip's ideas. He still looked upon Christianity as a degrading bondage that must be

cast away at any cost; it was connected subconsciously in his mind with the dreary services in the cathedral at

Tercanbury, and the long hours of boredom in the cold church at Blackstable; and the morality of which

Athelny spoke was to him no more than a part of the religion which a halting intelligence preserved, when it

had laid aside the beliefs which alone made it reasonable. But while he was meditating a reply Athelny, more

interested in hearing himself speak than in discussion, broke into a tirade upon Roman Catholicism. For him

it was an essential part of Spain; and Spain meant much to him, because he had escaped to it from the

found so irksome. With large gestures and in the emphatic tone which made what he said so striking, Athelny

described to Philip the Spanish cathedrals with their vast dark spaces, the massive gold of the altarpieces,

and the sumptuous ironwork, gilt and faded, the air laden with incense, the silence: Philip almost saw the

Canons in their short surplices of lawn, the acolytes in red, passing from the sacristy to the choir; he almost

heard the monotonous chanting of vespers. The names which Athelny mentioned, Avila, Tarragona,

Saragossa, Segovia, Cordova, were like trumpets in his heart. He seemed to see the great gray piles of granite

"I've always thought I should love to go to Seville," he said casually, when Athelny, with one hand

"Seville!" cried Athelny. "No, no, don't go there. Seville: it brings to the mind girls dancing with castanets,

singing in gardens by the Guadalquivir, bullfights, orangeblossom, mantillas, _mantones de Manila_. It is

the Spain of comic opera and Montmartre. Its facile charm can offer permanent entertainment only to an

intelligence which is superficial. Theophile Gautier got out of Seville all that it has to offer. We who come

after him can only repeat his sensations. He put large fat hands on the obvious and there is nothing but the

Athelny got up from his chair, walked over to the Spanish cabinet, let down the front with its great gilt hinges

and gorgeous lock, and displayed a series of little drawers. He took out a bundle of photographs.

"El Greco was the painter of Toledo. Betty couldn't find the photograph I wanted to show you. It's a picture

that El Greco painted of the city he loved, and it's truer than any photograph. Come and sit at the table."

Philip dragged his chair forward, and Athelny set the photograph before him. He looked at it curiously, for a

long time, in silence. He stretched out his hand for other photographs, and Athelny passed them to him. He

had never before seen the work of that enigmatic master; and at the first glance he was bothered by the

arbitrary drawing: the figures were extraordinarily elongated; the heads were very small; the attitudes were

extravagant. This was not realism, and yet, and yet even in the photographs you had the impression of a

troubling reality. Athelny was describing eagerly, with vivid phrases, but Philip only heard vaguely what he

said. He was puzzled. He was curiously moved. These pictures seemed to offer some meaning to him, but he

did not know what the meaning was. There were portraits of men with large, melancholy eyes which seemed

to say you knew not what; there were long monks in the Franciscan habit or in the Dominican, with

distraught faces, making gestures whose sense escaped you; there was an Assumption of the Virgin; there

was a Crucifixion in which the painter by some magic of feeling had been able to suggest that the flesh of

Christ's dead body was not human flesh only but divine; and there was an Ascension in which the Saviour

seemed to surge up towards the empyrean and yet to stand upon the air as steadily as though it were solid

ground: the uplifted arms of the Apostles, the sweep of their draperies, their ecstatic gestures, gave an

impression of exultation and of holy joy. The background of nearly all was the sky by night, the dark night of

the soul, with wild clouds swept by strange winds of hell and lit luridly by an uneasy moon.

"I've seen that sky in Toledo over and over again," said Athelny. "I have an idea that when first El Greco

came to the city it was by such a night, and it made so vehement an impression upon him that he could never

Philip remembered how Clutton had been affected by this strange master, whose work he now saw for the

first time. He thought that Clutton was the most interesting of all the people he had known in Paris. His

sardonic manner, his hostile aloofness, had made it difficult to know him; but it seemed to Philip, looking

back, that there had been in him a tragic force, which sought vainly to express itself in painting. He was a

man of unusual character, mystical after the fashion of a time that had no leaning to mysticism, who was

impatient with life because he found himself unable to say the things which the obscure impulses of his heart

suggested. His intellect was not fashioned to the uses of the spirit. It was not surprising that he felt a deep

sympathy with the Greek who had devised a new technique to express the yearnings of his soul. Philip looked

again at the series of portraits of Spanish gentlemen, with ruffles and pointed beards, their faces pale against

the sober black of their clothes and the darkness of the background. El Greco was the painter of the soul; and

these gentlemen, wan and wasted, not by exhaustion but by restraint, with their tortured minds, seem to walk

unaware of the beauty of the world; for their eyes look only in their hearts, and they are dazzled by the glory

of the unseen. No painter has shown more pitilessly that the world is but a place of passage. The souls of the

men he painted speak their strange longings through their eyes: their senses are miraculously acute, not for

sounds and odours and colour, but for the very subtle sensations of the soul. The noble walks with the

monkish heart within him, and his eyes see things which saints in their cells see too, and he is unastounded.

Philip, silent still, returned to the photograph of Toledo, which seemed to him the most arresting picture of

them all. He could not take his eyes off it. He felt strangely that he was on the threshold of some new

discovery in life. He was tremulous with a sense of adventure. He thought for an instant of the love that had

consumed him: love seemed very trivial beside the excitement which now leaped in his Heart. The picture he

looked at was a long one, with houses crowded upon a hill; in one corner a boy was holding a large map of

the town; in another was a classical figure representing the river Tagus; and in the sky was the Virgin

surrounded by angels. It was a landscape alien to all Philip's notion, for he had lived in circles that

worshipped exact realism; and yet here again, strangely to himself, he felt a reality greater than any achieved

by the masters in whose steps humbly he had sought to walk. He heard Athelny say that the representation

was so precise that when the citizens of Toledo came to look at the picture they recognised their houses. The

painter had painted exactly what he saw but he had seen with the eyes of the spirit. There was something

unearthly in that city of pale gray. It was a city of the soul seen by a wan light that was neither that of night

nor day. It stood on a green hill, but of a green not of this world, and it was surrounded by massive walls and

bastions to be stormed by no machines or engines of man's invention, but by prayer and fasting, by contrite

sighs and by mortifications of the flesh. It was a stronghold of God. Those gray houses were made of no

stone known to masons, there was something terrifying in their aspect, and you did not know what men might

live in them. You might walk through the streets and be unamazed to find them all deserted, and yet not

empty; for you felt a presence invisible and yet manifest to every inner sense. It was a mystical city in which

the imagination faltered like one who steps out of the light into darkness; the soul walked naked to and fro,

knowing the unknowable, and conscious strangely of experience, intimate but inexpressible, of the absolute.

And without surprise, in that blue sky, real with a reality that not the eye but the soul confesses, with its rack

of light clouds driven by strange breezes, like the cries and the sighs of lost souls, you saw the Blessed Virgin

with a gown of red and a cloak of blue, surrounded by winged angels. Philip felt that the inhabitants of that

city would have seen the apparition without astonishment, reverent and thankful, and have gone their ways.

Athelny spoke of the mystical writers of Spain, of Teresa de Avila, San Juan de la Cruz, Fray Luis de Leon;

in all of them was that passion for the unseen which Philip felt in the pictures of El Greco: they seemed to

have the power to touch the incorporeal and see the invisible. They were Spaniards of their age, in whom

were tremulous all the mighty exploits of a great nation: their fancies were rich with the glories of America

and the green islands of the Caribbean Sea; in their veins was the power that had come from agelong

battling with the Moor; they were proud, for they were masters of the world; and they felt in themselves the

wide distances, the tawny wastes, the snowcapped mountains of Castile, the sunshine and the blue sky, and

the flowering plains of Andalusia. Life was passionate and manifold, and because it offered so much they felt

a restless yearning for something more; because they were human they were unsatisfied; and they threw this

eager vitality of theirs into a vehement striving after the ineffable. Athelny was not displeased to find

someone to whom he could read the translations with which for some time he had amused his leisure; and in

his fine, vibrating voice he recited the canticle of the Soul and Christ her lover, the lovely poem which begins

with the words _en una noche oscura_, and the _noche serena_ of Fray Luis de Leon. He had translated them

quite simply, not without skill, and he had found words which at all events suggested the roughhewn

grandeur of the original. The pictures of El Greco explained them, and they explained the pictures.

Philip had cultivated a certain disdain for idealism. He had always had a passion for life, and the idealism he

had come across seemed to him for the most part a cowardly shrinking from it. The idealist withdrew himself,

because he could not suffer the jostling of the human crowd; he had not the strength to fight and so called the

battle vulgar; he was vain, and since his fellows would not take him at his own estimate, consoled himself

with despising his fellows. For Philip his type was Hayward, fair, languid, too fat now and rather bald, still

cherishing the remains of his good looks and still delicately proposing to do exquisite things in the uncertain

future; and at the back of this were whiskey and vulgar amours of the street. It was in reaction from what

Hayward represented that Philip clamoured for life as it stood; sordidness, vice, deformity, did not offend

him; he declared that he wanted man in his nakedness; and he rubbed his hands when an instance came before

him of meanness, cruelty, selfishness, or lust: that was the real thing. In Paris he had learned that there was

neither ugliness nor beauty, but only truth: the search after beauty was sentimental. Had he not painted an

advertisement of _chocolat Menier_ in a landscape in order to escape from the tyranny of prettiness?

But here he seemed to divine something new. He had been coming to it, all hesitating, for some time, but

only now was conscious of the fact; he felt himself on the brink of a discovery. He felt vaguely that here was

something better than the realism which he had adored; but certainly it was not the bloodless idealism which

stepped aside from life in weakness; it was too strong; it was virile; it accepted life in all its vivacity, ugliness

and beauty, squalor and heroism; it was realism still; but it was realism carried to some higher pitch, in which

facts were transformed by the more vivid light in which they were seen. He seemed to see things more

profoundly through the grave eyes of those dead noblemen of Castile; and the gestures of the saints, which at

first had seemed wild and distorted, appeared to have some mysterious significance. But he could not tell

what that significance was. It was like a message which it was very important for him to receive, but it was

given him in an unknown tongue, and he could not understand. He was always seeking for a meaning in life,

and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague. He was profoundly

troubled. He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightning on a dark, stormy night you might see a

mountain range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful;

he seemed to see that selfcontrol might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he seemed

to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who

THE conversation between Philip and Athelny was broken into by a clatter up the stairs. Athelny opened the

door for the children coming back from Sunday school, and with laughter and shouting they came in. Gaily

he asked them what they had learned. Sally appeared for a moment, with instructions from her mother that

father was to amuse the children while she got tea ready; and Athelny began to tell them one of Hans

Andersen's stories. They were not shy children, and they quickly came to the conclusion that Philip was not

formidable. Jane came and stood by him and presently settled herself on his knees. It was the first time that

Philip in his lonely life had been present in a family circle: his eyes smiled as they rested on the fair children

engrossed in the fairy tale. The life of his new friend, eccentric as it appeared at first glance, seemed now to

Jane slipped off Philip's knees, and they all went back to the kitchen. Sally began to lay the cloth on the long

"Mother says, shall she come and have tea with you?" she asked. "I can give the children their tea."

"Tell your mother that we shall be proud and honoured if she will favour us with her company," said Athelny.

It seemed to Philip that he could never say anything without an oratorical flourish.

She came back again in a moment with a tray on which were a cottage loaf, a slab of butter, and a jar of

strawberry jam. While she placed the things on the table her father chaffed her. He said it was quite time she

was walking out; he told Philip that she was very proud, and would have nothing to do with aspirants to that

honour who lined up at the door, two by two, outside the Sunday school and craved the honour of escorting

"You wouldn't think to look at her that a tailor's assistant has enlisted in the army because she would not say

how d'you do to him and an electrical engineer, an electrical engineer, mind you, has taken to drink because

she refused to share her hymnbook with him in church. I shudder to think what will happen when she puts

"Sally never pays any attention to me," laughed Athelny, looking at her with fond, proud eyes. "She goes

about her business indifferent to wars, revolutions, and cataclysms. What a wife she'll make to an honest

Mrs. Athelny brought in the tea. She sat down and proceeded to cut bread and butter. It amused Philip to see

that she treated her husband as though he were a child. She spread jam for him and cut up the bread and

butter into convenient slices for him to eat. She had taken off her hat; and in her Sunday dress, which seemed

a little tight for her, she looked like one of the farmers' wives whom Philip used to call on sometimes with his

uncle when he was a small boy. Then he knew why the sound of her voice was familiar to him. She spoke

"That's a funny thing now," she said. "I was wondering in Church just now whether you was any connection

of Mr. Carey. Many's the time I've seen 'im. A cousin of mine married Mr. Barker of Roxley Farm, over by

Blackstable Church, and I used to go and stay there often when I was a girl. Isn't that a funny thing now?"

She looked at him with a new interest, and a brightness came into her faded eyes. She asked him whether he

knew Ferne. It was a pretty village about ten miles across country from Blackstable, and the Vicar had come

over sometimes to Blackstable for the harvest thanksgiving. She mentioned names of various farmers in the

neighbourhood. She was delighted to talk again of the country in which her youth was spent, and it was a

pleasure to her to recall scenes and people that had remained in her memory with the tenacity peculiar to her

class. It gave Philip a queer sensation too. A breath of the countryside seemed to be wafted into that

panelled room in the middle of London. He seemed to see the fat Kentish fields with their stately elms; and

his nostrils dilated with the scent of the air; it is laden with the salt of the North Sea, and that makes it keen

Philip did not leave the Athelnys' till ten o'clock. The children came in to say goodnight at eight and quite

naturally put up their faces for Philip to kiss. His heart went out to them. Sally only held out her hand.

"You mustn't take any notice of what father says," remarked Sally, with a smile.

They had supper of bread and cheese and beer, while Mrs. Athelny was putting the children to bed; and when

Philip went into the kitchen to bid her goodnight (she had been sitting there, resting herself and reading

"There's always a good dinner on Sundays so long as Athelny's in work," she said, "and it's a charity to come

On the following Saturday Philip received a postcard from Athelny saying that they were expecting him to

dinner next day; but fearing their means were not such that Mr. Athelny would desire him to accept, Philip

wrote back that he would only come to tea. He bought a large plum cake so that his entertainment should cost

nothing. He found the whole family glad to see him, and the cake completed his conquest of the children. He

insisted that they should all have tea together in the kitchen, and the meal was noisy and hilarious.

Soon Philip got into the habit of going to Athelny's every Sunday. He became a great favourite with the

children, because he was simple and unaffected and because it was so plain that he was fond of them. As

soon as they heard his ring at the door one of them popped a head out of window to make sure it was he, and

then they all rushed downstairs tumultuously to let him in. They flung themselves into his arms. At tea they

fought for the privilege of sitting next to him. Soon they began to call him Uncle Philip.

Athelny was very communicative, and little by little Philip learned the various stages of his life. He had

followed many occupations, and it occurred to Philip that he managed to make a mess of everything he

attempted. He had been on a tea plantation in Ceylon and a traveller in America for Italian wines; his

secretaryship of the water company in Toledo had lasted longer than any of his employments; he had been a

journalist and for some time had worked as policecourt reporter for an evening paper; he had been

subeditor of a paper in the Midlands and editor of another on the Riviera. From all his occupations he had

gathered amusing anecdotes, which he told with a keen pleasure in his own powers of entertainment. He had

read a great deal, chiefly delighting in books which were unusual; and he poured forth his stores of abstruse

knowledge with childlike enjoyment of the amazement of his hearers. Three or four years before abject

poverty had driven him to take the job of pressrepresentative to a large firm of drapers; and though he felt

the work unworthy his abilities, which he rated highly, the firmness of his wife and the needs of his family

WHEN he left the Athelnys' Philip walked down Chancery Lane and along the Strand to get a 'bus at the top

of Parliament Street. One Sunday, when he had known them about six weeks, he did this as usual, but he

found the Kennington 'bus full. It was June, but it had rained during the day and the night was raw and cold.

He walked up to Piccadilly Circus in order to get a seat; the 'bus waited at the fountain, and when it arrived

there seldom had more than two or three people in it. This service ran every quarter of an hour, and he had

some time to wait. He looked idly at the crowd. The publichouses were closing, and there were many people

about. His mind was busy with the ideas Athelny had the charming gift of suggesting.

Suddenly his heart stood still. He saw Mildred. He had not thought of her for weeks. She was crossing over

from the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and stopped at the shelter till a string of cabs passed by. She was

watching her opportunity and had no eyes for anything else. She wore a large black straw hat with a mass of

feathers on it and a black silk dress; at that time it was fashionable for women to wear trains; the road was

clear, and Mildred crossed, her skirt trailing on the ground, and walked down Piccadilly. Philip, his heart

beating excitedly, followed her. He did not wish to speak to her, but he wondered where she was going at that

hour; he wanted to get a look at her face. She walked slowly along and turned down Air Street and so got

through into Regent Street. She walked up again towards the Circus. Philip was puzzled. He could not make

out what she was doing. Perhaps she was waiting for somebody, and he felt a great curiosity to know who it

was. She overtook a short man in a bowler hat, who was strolling very slowly in the same direction as herself;

she gave him a sidelong glance as she passed. She walked a few steps more till she came to Swan and

Edgar's, then stopped and waited, facing the road. When the man came up she smiled. The man stared at her

He was overwhelmed with horror. For a moment he felt such a weakness in his legs that he could hardly

She turned round with a violent start. He thought that she reddened, but in the obscurity he could not see very

well. For a while they stood and looked at one another without speaking. At last she said:

He did not know what to answer; he was horribly shaken; and the phrases that chased one another through his

She did not say anything more, she turned away from him, and looked down at the pavement. He felt that his

The thought struck him that perhaps she was in urgent need of money and could not afford to go away at that

"I don't know what you mean. I was just walking along here on my way back to my lodgings. I expected to

"No, you can't do that," she sobbed. "I'm not allowed to take gentlemen in there. If you like I'll met you

He felt certain that she would not keep an appointment. He was not going to let her go.

She gave him the address, and he called a cab. They drove to a shabby street beyond the British Museum in

the neighbourhood of the Gray's Inn Road, and she stopped the cab at the corner.

They were the first words either of them had spoken since getting into the cab. They walked a few yards and

Mildred knocked three times, sharply, at a door. Philip noticed in the fanlight a cardboard on which was an

announcement that apartments were to let. The door was opened quietly, and an elderly, tall woman let them

in. She gave Philip a stare and then spoke to Mildred in an undertone. Mildred led Philip along a passage to a

room at the back. It was quite dark; she asked him for a match, and lit the gas; there was no globe, and the gas

flared shrilly. Philip saw that he was in a dingy little bedroom with a suite of furniture, painted to look like

pine much too large for it; the lace curtains were very dirty; the grate was hidden by a large paper fan.

Mildred sank on the chair which stood by the side of the chimneypiece. Philip sat on the edge of the bed. He

felt ashamed. He saw now that Mildred's cheeks were thick with rouge, her eyebrows were blackened; but

she looked thin and ill, and the red on her cheeks exaggerated the greenish pallor of her skin. She stared at the

paper fan in a listless fashion. Philip could not think what to say, and he had a choking in his throat as if he

"I don't know what you've got to fuss about. I should have thought you'd have been rather pleased."

Again Philip found nothing to say. He was desperately afraid of saying anything which she might take for a

"I've got her with me in London. I hadn't got the money to keep her on at Brighton, so I had to take her. I've

got a room up Highbury way. I told them I was on the stage. It's a long way to have to come down to the

West End every day, but it's a rare job to find anyone who'll let to ladies at all."

"I couldn't get any work to do anywhere. I walked my legs off looking for work. I did get a job once, but I

was off for a week because I was queer, and when I went back they said they didn't want me any more. You

can't blame them either, can you? Them places, they can't afford to have girls that aren't strong."

"I wasn't fit to come out tonight, but I couldn't help myself, I wanted the money. I wrote to Emil and told him

"I didn't like to, not after what happened, and I didn't want you to know I was in difficulties. I shouldn't have

For a moment he remembered all the anguish he had suffered on her account, and he was sick with the

recollection of his pain. But it was no more than recollection. When he looked at her he knew that he no

longer loved her. He was very sorry for her, but he was glad to be free. Watching her gravely, he asked

"You're a gentleman in every sense of the word," she said. "You're the only one I've ever met." She paused

for a minute and then flushed. "I hate asking you, Philip, but can you spare me anything?"

He had said nothing that he wanted to say. They had talked as if the whole thing were natural; and it looked

as though she would go now, back to the horror of her life, and he would be able to do nothing to prevent it.

Those words, with all they implied, tore his heart, and it was dreadfully painful to see the weary way in which

she sank back into the chair. The silence lasted so long that Philip in his embarrassment lit a cigarette.

"It's very good of you not to have said anything disagreeable to me, Philip. I thought you might say I didn't

He saw that she was crying again. He remembered how she had come to him when Emil Miller had deserted

her and how she had wept. The recollection of her suffering and of his own humiliation seemed to render

"If I could only get out of it!" she moaned. "I hate it so. I'm unfit for the life, I'm not the sort of girl for that.

I'd do anything to get away from it, I'd be a servant if I could. Oh, I wish I was dead."

And in pity for herself she broke down now completely. She sobbed hysterically, and her thin body was

Philip could not bear to see her cry. He was tortured by the horror of her position.

He was deeply moved. Suddenly he had an inspiration. It filled him with a perfect ecstasy of happiness.

"Look here, if you want to get away from it, I've got an idea. I'm frightfully hard up just now, I've got to be as

economical as I can; but I've got a sort of little flat now in Kennington and I've got a spare room. If you like

you and the baby can come and live there. I pay a woman three and sixpence a week to keep the place clean

and to do a little cooking for me. You could do that and your food wouldn't come to much more than the

money I should save on her. It doesn't cost any more to feed two than one, and I don't suppose the baby eats

"I don't want you to mistake me. I'm just giving you a room which doesn't cost me anything and your food. I

don't expect anything more from you than that you should do exactly the same as the woman I have in does.

Except for that I don't want anything from you at all. I daresay you can cook well enough for that."

"No, please stop where you are," he said hurriedly, putting out his hand as though to push her away.

He did not know why it was, but he could not bear the thought that she should touch him.

"Oh, yes, I'd do anything to get away from this. You'll never regret what you've done, Philip, never. When

He wrote out the address and told her that if she came at half past five he would be ready for her. It was so

late that he had to walk home, but it did not seem a long way, for he was intoxicated with delight; he seemed

NEXT day he got up early to make the room ready for Mildred. He told the woman who had looked after him

that he would not want her any more. Mildred came about six, and Philip, who was watching from the

window, went down to let her in and help her to bring up the luggage: it consisted now of no more than three

large parcels wrapped in brown paper, for she had been obliged to sell everything that was not absolutely

needful. She wore the same black silk dress she had worn the night before, and, though she had now no rouge

on her cheeks, there was still about her eyes the black which remained after a perfunctory wash in the

morning: it made her look very ill. She was a pathetic figure as she stepped out of the cab with the baby in

her arms. She seemed a little shy, and they found nothing but commonplace things to say to one another.

Philip showed her the room. It was that in which Cronshaw had died. Philip, though he thought it absurd, had

never liked the idea of going back to it; and since Cronshaw's death he had remained in the little room,

sleeping on a foldup bed, into which he had first moved in order to make his friend comfortable. The baby

Mildred put the baby in an armchair and looked round the room. She recognised most of the things which

she had known in his old diggings. Only one thing was new, a head and shoulders of Philip which Lawson

had painted at the end of the preceding summer; it hung over the chimneypiece; Mildred looked at it

"In some ways I like it and in some ways I don't. I think you're better looking than that."

"Things are looking up," laughed Philip. "You've never told me I was goodlooking before."

"I'm not one to worry myself about a man's looks. I don't like goodlooking men. They're too conceited for

Her eyes travelled round the room in an instinctive search for a lookingglass, but there was none; she put up

"What'll the other people in the house say to my being here?" she asked suddenly.

"Oh, there's only a man and his wife living here. He's out all day, and I never see her except on Saturday to

pay my rent. They keep entirely to themselves. I've not spoken two words to either of them since I came."

Mildred went into the bedroom to undo her things and put them away. Philip tried to read, but his spirits were

too high: he leaned back in his chair, smoking a cigarette, and with smiling eyes looked at the sleeping child.

He felt very happy. He was quite sure that he was not at all in love with Mildred. He was surprised that the

old feeling had left him so completely; he discerned in himself a faint physical repulsion from her; and he

thought that if he touched her it would give him gooseflesh. He could not understand himself. Presently,

"You'll find it large enough to cook our sumptuous repasts," he retorted lightly.

He gave her some money and she went out. She came in half an hour later and put her purchases on the table.

"I say, you are anaemic," said Philip. "I'll have to dose you with Blaud's Pills."

"It took me some time to find the shops. I bought some liver. That's tasty, isn't it? And you can't eat much of

There was a gas stove in the kitchen, and when she had put the liver on, Mildred came into the sittingroom

"Why are you only laying one place?" asked Philip. "Aren't you going to eat anything?"

He smiled, but her humility gave him a curious twist in his heart. Poor thing! He remembered what she had

"Don't think I'm conferring any benefit on you," he said. "It's simply a business arrangement, I'm giving you

board and lodging in return for your work. You don't owe me anything. And there's nothing humiliating to

She did not answer, but tears rolled heavily down her cheeks. Philip knew from his experience at the hospital

that women of her class looked upon service as degrading: he could not help feeling a little impatient with

her; but he blamed himself, for it was clear that she was tired and ill. He got up and helped her to lay another

place at the table. The baby was awake now, and Mildred had prepared some Mellin's Food for it. The liver

and bacon were ready and they sat down. For economy's sake Philip had given up drinking anything but

water, but he had in the house a half a bottle of whiskey, and he thought a little would do Mildred good. He

did his best to make the supper pass cheerfully, but Mildred was subdued and exhausted. When they had

"I think you'll do well to turn in early yourself," said Philip. "You look absolute done up."

Philip lit his pipe and began to read. It was pleasant to hear somebody moving about in the next room.

Sometimes his loneliness had oppressed him. Mildred came in to clear the table, and he heard the clatter of

plates as she washed up. Philip smiled as he thought how characteristic it was of her that she should do all

that in a black silk dress. But he had work to do, and he brought his book up to the table. He was reading

Osler's _Medicine_, which had recently taken the place in the students' favour of Taylor's work, for many

years the textbook most in use. Presently Mildred came in, rolling down her sleeves. Philip gave her a

casual glance, but did not move; the occasion was curious, and he felt a little nervous. He feared that Mildred

might imagine he was going to make a nuisance of himself, and he did not quite know how without brutality

"By the way, I've got a lecture at nine, so I should want breakfast at a quarter past eight. Can you manage

"Oh, yes. Why, when I was in Parliament Street I used to catch the eighttwelve from Herne Hill every

"I hope you'll find your room comfortable. You'll be a different woman tomorrow after a long night in bed."

The table was between them. He did not offer to shake hands with her. She shut the door quietly. He heard

her moving about in the bedroom, and in a little while he heard the creaking of the bed as she got in.

THE following day was Tuesday. Philip as usual hurried through his breakfast and dashed off to get to his

lecture at nine. He had only time to exchange a few words with Mildred. When he came back in the evening

"I say, you are industrious," he smiled. "What have you been doing with yourself all day?"

She was wearing an old black dress, the same as she had worn as uniform when she served in the teashop; it

was shabby, but she looked better in it than in the silk of the day before. The baby was sitting on the floor.

She looked up at Philip with large, mysterious eyes and broke into a laugh when he sat down beside her and

began playing with her bare toes. The afternoon sun came into the room and shed a mellow light.

"It's rather jolly to come back and find someone about the place. A woman and a baby make very good

He had gone to the hospital dispensary and got a bottle of Blaud's Pills, He gave them to Mildred and told her

she must take them after each meal. It was a remedy she was used to, for she had taken it off and on ever

"I'm sure Lawson would love that green skin of yours," said Philip. "He'd say it was so paintable, but I'm

terribly matter of fact nowadays, and I shan't be happy till you're as pink and white as a milkmaid."

After a frugal supper Philip filled his pouch with tobacco and put on his hat. It was on Tuesdays that he

generally went to the tavern in Beak Street, and he was glad that this day came so soon after Mildred's arrival,

"Yes, on Tuesdays I give myself a night off. I shall see you tomorrow. Goodnight."

Philip always went to the tavern with a sense of pleasure. Macalister, the philosophic stockbroker, was

generally there and glad to argue upon any subject under the sun; Hayward came regularly when he was in

London; and though he and Macalister disliked one another they continued out of habit to meet on that one

evening in the week. Macalister thought Hayward a poor creature, and sneered at his delicacies of sentiment:

he asked satirically about Hayward's literary work and received with scornful smiles his vague suggestions of

future masterpieces; their arguments were often heated; but the punch was good, and they were both fond of

it; towards the end of the evening they generally composed their differences and thought each other capital

fellows. This evening Philip found them both there, and Lawson also; Lawson came more seldom now that

he was beginning to know people in London and went out to dinner a good deal. They were all on excellent

terms with themselves, for Macalister had given them a good thing on the Stock Exchange, and Hayward and

Lawson had made fifty pounds apiece. It was a great thing for Lawson, who was extravagant and earned little

money: he had arrived at that stage of the portraitpainter's career when he was noticed a good deal by the

critics and found a number of aristocratic ladies who were willing to allow him to paint them for nothing (it

advertised them both, and gave the great ladies quite an air of patronesses of the arts); but he very seldom got

hold of the solid philistine who was ready to pay good money for a portrait of his wife. Lawson was

"It's the most ripping way of making money that I've ever struck," he cried. "I didn't have to put my hand in

"You lost something by not being here last Tuesday, young man," said Macalister to Philip.

"My God, why didn't you write to me?" said Philip. "If you only knew how useful a hundred pounds would

"Oh, there wasn't time for that. One has to be on the spot. I heard of a good thing last Tuesday, and I asked

these fellows if they'd like to have a flutter, I bought them a thousand shares on Wednesday morning, and

there was a rise in the afternoon so I sold them at once. I made fifty pounds for each of them and a couple of

Philip was sick with envy. He had recently sold the last mortgage in which his small fortune had been

invested and now had only six hundred pounds left. He was panicstricken sometimes when he thought of the

future. He had still to keep himself for two years before he could be qualified, and then he meant to try for

hospital appointments, so that he could not expect to earn anything for three years at least. With the most

rigid economy he would not have more than a hundred pounds left then. It was very little to have as a

standby in case he was ill and could not earn money or found himself at any time without work. A lucky

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter," said Macalister. "Something is sure to turn up soon. There'll be a boom in South

Macalister was in the Kaffir market and often told them stories of the sudden fortunes that had been made in

They sat on talking till nearly midnight, and Philip, who lived furthest off, was the first to go. If he did not

catch the last tram he had to walk, and that made him very late. As it was he did not reach home till nearly

half past twelve. When he got upstairs he was surprised to find Mildred still sitting in his armchair.

She did not move. He noticed that since supper she had changed into her black silk dress.

She looked at him, and the shadow of a smile played upon her thin pale lips. Philip was not sure whether he

understood or not. He was slightly embarrassed, but assumed a cheerful, matteroffact air.

"It's very nice of you, but it's very naughty also. Run off to bed as fast as you can, or you won't be able to get

She got up, a little sulkily, and went into her room. He smiled when he heard her lock the door loudly.

The next few days passed without incident. Mildred settled down in her new surroundings. When Philip

hurried off after breakfast she had the whole morning to do the housework. They ate very simply, but she

liked to take a long time to buy the few things they needed; she could not be bothered to cook anything for

her dinner, hut made herself some cocoa and ate bread and butter; then she took the baby out in the gocart,

and when she came in spent the rest of the afternoon in idleness. She was tired out, and it suited her to do so

little. She made friends with Philip's forbidding landlady over the rent, which he left with Mildred to pay, and

within a week was able to tell him more about his neighbours than he had learned in a year.

"She's a very nice woman," said Mildred. "Quite the lady. I told her we was married."

"Well, I had to tell her something. It looks so funny me being here and not married to you. I didn't know what

"That she did, I lay. I told her we'd been married two yearsI had to say that, you know, because of

babyonly your people wouldn't hear of it, because you was only a student"she pronounced it

stoodent"and so we had to keep it a secret, but they'd given way now and we were all going down to stay

He was vaguely irritated that Mildred still had this passion for telling fibs. In the last two years she had learnt

It was a beautiful evening, warm and cloudless, and the people of South London seemed to have poured out

into the streets. There was that restlessness in the air which seizes the cockney sometimes when a turn in the

weather calls him into the open. After Mildred had cleared away the supper she went and stood at the

window. The street noises came up to them, noises of people calling to one another, of the passing traffic, of

"I suppose you must work tonight, Philip?" she asked him, with a wistful expression.

"I ought, but I don't know that I must. Why, d'you want me to do anything else?"

The night made it almost impossible to stay indoors. The baby was asleep and could be safely left; Mildred

said she had always left it alone at night when she went out; it never woke. She was in high spirits when she

came back with her hat on. She had taken the opportunity to put on a little rouge. Philip thought it was

excitement which had brought a faint colour to her pale cheeks; he was touched by her childlike delight, and

reproached himself for the austerity with which he had treated her. She laughed when she got out into the air.

The first tram they saw was going towards Westminster Bridge and they got on it. Philip smoked his pipe,

and they looked at the crowded street. The shops were open, gaily lit, and people were doing their shopping

for the next day. They passed a musichall called the Canterbury and Mildred cried out:

They got down and walked back a hundred yards till they came to the doors. They got capital seats for

sixpence each, high up but not in the gallery, and the night was so fine that there was plenty of room.

Mildred's eyes glistened. She enjoyed herself thoroughly. There was a simplemindedness in her which

touched Philip. She was a puzzle to him. Certain things in her still pleased him, and he thought that there was

a lot in her which was very good: she had been badly brought up, and her life was hard; he had blamed her

for much that she could not help; and it was his own fault if he had asked virtues from her which it was not in

her power to give. Under different circumstances she might have been a charming girl. She was

extraordinarily unfit for the battle of life. As he watched her now in profile, her mouth slightly open and that

delicate flush on her cheeks, he thought she looked strangely virginal. He felt an overwhelming compassion

for her, and with all his heart he forgave her for the misery she had caused him. The smoky atmosphere made

Philip's eyes ache, but when he suggested going she turned to him with beseeching face and asked him to stay

till the end. He smiled and consented. She took his hand and held it for the rest of the performance. When

they streamed out with the audience into the crowded street she did not want to go home; they wandered up

Philip's heart was full, and he was thankful to the fates because he had carried out his sudden impulse to take

Mildred and her baby into his flat. It was very pleasant to see her happy gratitude. At last she grew tired and

they jumped on a tram to go home; it was late now, and when they got down and turned into their own street

She had never called him Phil before, that was what Griffiths called him; and even now it gave him a curious

pang. He remembered how much he had wanted to die then; his pain had been so great that he had thought

quite seriously of committing suicide. It all seemed very long ago. He smiled at his past self. Now he felt

nothing for Mildred but infinite pity. They reached the house, and when they got into the sittingroom Philip

When she came back it was to say that it had not stirred since she left it. It was a wonderful child. Philip held

"Phil, the other night in that room, when you asked me to come and stay here, I didn't mean what you thought

I meant, when you said you didn't want me to be anything to you except just to cook and that sort of thing."

"I meant it quite seriously. I shouldn't have asked you to stay here on any other condition."

"Oh, very well, it's just as you choose. I'm not one to go down on my hands and knees for that, and chance it."

NEXT morning Mildred was sulky and taciturn. She remained in her room till it was time to get the dinner

ready. She was a bad cook and could do little more than chops and steaks; and she did not know how to use

up odds and ends, so that Philip was obliged to spend more money than he had expected. When she served up

she sat down opposite Philip, but would eat nothing; he remarked on it; she said she had a bad headache and

was not hungry. He was glad that he had somewhere to spend the rest of the day; the Athelnys were cheerful

and friendly. It was a delightful and an unexpected thing to realise that everyone in that household looked

forward with pleasure to his visit. Mildred had gone to bed when he came back, but next day she was still

silent. At supper she sat with a haughty expression on her face and a little frown between her eyes. It made

Philip impatient, but he told himself that he must be considerate to her; he was bound to make allowance.

He thought it an ungracious answer, but if they were going to live together he must do all he could to make

It was an awkward thing to speak about, but apparently it was necessary to discuss it.

"Please don't be angry with me. I should never have asked you to come and live here if I'd not meant our

relations to be merely friendly. I suggested it because I thought you wanted a home and you would have a

"I don't for a moment," he hastened to say. "You mustn't think I'm ungrateful. I realise that you only proposed

it for my sake. It's just a feeling I have, and I can't help it, it would make the whole thing ugly and horrid."

She was not angry with him now, but puzzled; she had no idea what he meant: she accepted the situation, she

had indeed a vague feeling that he was behaving in a very noble fashion and that she ought to admire it; but

also she felt inclined to laugh at him and perhaps even to despise him a little.

Life went smoothly enough with them. Philip spent all day at the hospital and worked at home in the evening

except when he went to the Athelnys' or to the tavern in Beak Street. Once the physician for whom he clerked

asked him to a solemn dinner, and two or three times he went to parties given by fellowstudents. Mildred

accepted the monotony of her life. If she minded that Philip left her sometimes by herself in the evening she

never mentioned it. Occasionally he took her to a music hall. He carried out his intention that the only tie

between them should be the domestic service she did in return for board and lodging. She had made up her

mind that it was no use trying to get work that summer, and with Philip's approval determined to stay where

she was till the autumn. She thought it would be easy to get something to do then.

As far as I'm concerned you can stay on here when you've got a job if it's convenient. The room's there, and

He grew very much attached to Mildred's child. He had a naturally affectionate disposition, which had had

little opportunity to display itself. Mildred was not unkind to the little girl. She looked after her very well and

once when she had a bad cold proved herself a devoted nurse; but the child bored her, and she spoke to her

sharply when she bothered; she was fond of her, but had not the maternal passion which might have induced

her to forget herself. Mildred had no demonstrativeness, and she found the manifestations of affection

ridiculous. When Philip sat with the baby on his knees, playing with it and kissing it, she laughed at him.

"You couldn't make more fuss of her if you was her father," she said. "You're perfectly silly with the child."

Philip flushed, for he hated to be laughed at. It was absurd to be so devoted to another man's baby, and he

was a little ashamed of the overflowing of his heart. But the child, feeling Philip's attachment, would put her

"It's all very fine for you," said Mildred. "You don't have any of the disagreeable part of it. How would you

like being kept awake for an hour in the middle of the night because her ladyship wouldn't go to sleep?"

Philip remembered all sorts of things of his childhood which he thought he had long forgotten. He took hold

When he came home in the evening and entered the sittingroom his first glance was for the baby sprawling

on the floor, and it gave him a little thrill of delight to hear the child's crow of pleasure at seeing him. Mildred

taught her to call him daddy, and when the child did this for the first time of her own accord, laughed

"I wonder if you're that stuck on baby because she's mine," asked Mildred, "or if you'd be the same with

Towards the end of his second term as inpatients' clerk a piece of good fortune befell Philip. It was the

middle of July. He went one Tuesday evening to the tavern in Beak Street and found nobody there but

Macalister. They sat together, chatting about their absent friends, and after a while Macalister said to him:

"Oh, by the way, I heard of a rather good thing today, New Kleinfonteins; it's a gold mine in Rhodesia. If

Philip had been waiting anxiously for such an opportunity, but now that it came he hesitated. He was

"I'd love to, but I don't know if I dare risk it. How much could I lose if things went wrong?"

"I shouldn't have spoken of it, only you seemed so keen about it," Macalister answered coldly.

Macalister began to talk of other things and Philip, while he was answering him, kept thinking that if the

venture turned out well the stockbroker would be very facetious at his expense next time they met. Macalister

"All right. I'll buy you two hundred and fifty shares and if I see a halfcrown rise I'll sell them at once."

Philip quickly reckoned out how much that would amount to, and his mouth watered; thirty pounds would be

a godsend just then, and he thought the fates owed him something. He told Mildred what he had done when

"I never knew anyone who made money on the Stock Exchange," she said. "That's what Emil always said,

Philip bought an evening paper on his way home and turned at once to the money columns. He knew nothing

about these things and had difficulty in finding the stock which Macalister had spoken of. He saw they had

advanced a quarter. His heart leaped, and then he felt sick with apprehension in case Macalister had forgotten

or for some reason had not bought. Macalister had promised to telegraph. Philip could not wait to take a tram

"Then he didn't buy them for me after all. Curse him," he added violently. "What cruel luck! And I've been

He tore it out of her hands. Macalister had bought him two hundred and fifty shares and sold them at the

halfcrown profit he had suggested. The commission note was to follow next day. For one moment Philip

was furious with Mildred for her cruel jest, but then he could only think of his joy.

"It makes such a difference to me," he cried. "I'll stand you a new dress if you like."

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to be operated upon at the end of July."

It struck her that an illness she did not know might explain what had so much puzzled her. He flushed, for he

"No, but they think they can do something to my foot. I couldn't spare the time before, but now it doesn't

matter so much. I shall start my dressing in October instead of next month. I shall only be in hospital a few

weeks and then we can go away to the seaside for the rest of the Summer. It'll do us all good, you and the

"Oh, let's go to Brighton, Philip, I like Brighton, you get such a nice class of people there." Philip had

vaguely thought of some little fishing village in Cornwall, but as she spoke it occurred to him that Mildred

He did not know why, but he had suddenly an irresistible longing for the sea. He wanted to bathe, and he

thought with delight of splashing about in the salt water. He was a good swimmer, and nothing exhilarated

"It'll be like a honeymoon, won't it?" she said. "How much can I have for my new dress, Phil?"

PHILIP asked Mr. Jacobs, the assistantsurgeon for whom he had dressed, to do the operation. Jacobs

accepted with pleasure, since he was interested just then in neglected talipes and was getting together

materials for a paper. He warned Philip that he could not make his foot like the other, but he thought he could

do a good deal; and though he would always limp he would be able to wear a boot less unsightly than that

which he had been accustomed to. Philip remembered how he had prayed to a God who was able to remove

"I think you're wise to let me try what I can do. You'll find a clubfoot rather a handicap in practice. The

layman is full of fads, and he doesn't like his doctor to have anything the matter with him."

Philip went into a `small ward', which was a room on the landing, outside each ward, reserved for special

cases. He remained there a month, for the surgeon would not let him go till he could walk; and, bearing the

operation very well, he had a pleasant enough time. Lawson and Athelny came to see him, and one day Mrs.

Athelny brought two of her children; students whom he knew looked in now and again to have a chat;

Mildred came twice a week. Everyone was very kind to him, and Philip, always surprised when anyone took

trouble with him, was touched and grateful. He enjoyed the relief from care; he need not worry there about

the future, neither whether his money would last out nor whether he would pass his final examinations; and

he could read to his heart's content. He had not been able to read much of late, since Mildred disturbed him:

she would make an aimless remark when he was trying to concentrate his attention, and would not be

satisfied unless he answered; whenever he was comfortably settled down with a book she would want

something done and would come to him with a cork she could not draw or a hammer to drive in a nail.

They settled to go to Brighton in August. Philip wanted to take lodgings, but Mildred said that she would

have to do housekeeping, and it would only be a holiday for her if they went to a boardinghouse.

"I have to see about the food every day at home, I get that sick of it I want a thorough change."

Philip agreed, and it happened that Mildred knew of a boardinghouse at Kemp Town where they would not

be charged more than twentyfive shillings a week each. She arranged with Philip to write about rooms, but

when he got back to Kennington he found that she had done nothing. He was irritated.

Philip was so anxious to get to the sea that he would not wait to communicate with the mistress of the

"We'll leave the luggage at the station and go to the house and see if they've got rooms, and if they have we

She did not like being reproached, and, retiring huffily into a haughty silence, she sat by listlessly while

Philip made the preparations for their departure. The little flat was hot and stuffy under the August sun, and

from the road beat up a malodorous sultriness. As he lay in his bed in the small ward with its red,

distempered walls he had longed for fresh air and the splashing of the sea against his breast. He felt he would

go mad if he had to spend another night in London. Mildred recovered her good temper when she saw the

streets of Brighton crowded with people making holiday, and they were both in high spirits as they drove out

"We shall get a very different colour into them when we've been down here a few days," he said, smiling.

They arrived at the boardinghouse and dismissed the cab. An untidy maid opened the door and, when Philip

asked if they had rooms, said she would inquire. She fetched her mistress. A middleaged woman, stout and

businesslike, came downstairs, gave them the scrutinising glance of her profession, and asked what

"Two single rooms, and if you've got such a thing we'd rather like a cot in one of them."

"I'm afraid I haven't got that. I've got one nice large double room, and I could let you have a cot."

"I could give you another room next week. Brighton's very full just now, and people have to take what they

"If it were only for a few days, Philip, I think we might be able to manage," said Mildred.

"I think two rooms would be more convenient. Can you recommend any other place where they take

The house the stout woman suggested was in the next street, and they walked towards it. Philip could walk

quite well, though he had to lean on a stick, and he was rather weak. Mildred carried the baby. They went for

a little in silence, and then he saw she was crying. It annoyed him, and he took no notice, but she forced his

"Lend me a hanky, will you? I can't get at mine with baby," she said in a voice strangled with sobs, turning

He gave her his handkerchief, but said nothing. She dried her eyes, and as he did not speak, went on.

"It'll look so funny insisting on separate rooms like that. What'll they think of us?"

"If they knew the circumstances I imagine they'd think us surprisingly moral," said Philip.

"My dear, I can't explain. I don't want to humiliate you, but I simply can't. I daresay it's very silly and

unreasonable, but it's stronger than I am. I loved you so much that now..." he broke off. "After all, there's no

The boardinghouse to which they had been directed was kept by a bustling maiden lady, with shrewd eyes

and voluble speech. They could have one double room for twentyfive shillings a week each, and five

shillings extra for the baby, or they could have two single rooms for a pound a week more.

"I have to charge that much more," the woman explained apologetically, "because if I'm pushed to it I can put

Philip passed off her sulky reply with a laugh, and, the landlady having arranged to send for their luggage,

they sat down to rest themselves. Philip's foot was hurting him a little, and he was glad to put it up on a chair.

"I suppose you don't mind my sitting in the same room with you," said Mildred aggressively.

"I didn't know you was so well off you could afford to throw away a pound a week."

"Don't be angry with me. I assure you it's the only way we can live together at all."

There were about a dozen people in the boardinghouse. They ate in a narrow, dark room at a long table, at

the head of which the landlady sat and carved. The food was bad. The landlady called it French cooking, by

which she meant that the poor quality of the materials was disguised by illmade sauces: plaice masqueraded

as sole and New Zealand mutton as lamb. The kitchen was small and inconvenient, so that everything was

served up lukewarm. The people were dull and pretentious; old ladies with elderly maiden daughters; funny

old bachelors with mincing ways; palefaced, middleaged clerks with wives, who talked of their married

daughters and their sons who were in a very good position in the Colonies. At table they discussed Miss

Corell's latest novel; some of them liked Lord Leighton better than Mr. AlmaTadema, and some of them

liked Mr. AlmaTadema better than Lord Leighton. Mildred soon told the ladies of her romantic marriage

with Philip; and he found himself an object of interest because his family, county people in a very good

position, had cut him off with a shilling because he married while he was only a stoodent; and Mildred's

father, who had a large place down Devonshire way, wouldn't do anything for them because she had married

Philip. That was why they had come to a boardinghouse and had not a nurse for the baby; but they had to

have two rooms because they were both used to a good deal of accommodation and they didn't care to be

cramped. The other visitors also had explanations of their presence: one of the single gentlemen generally

went to the Metropole for his holiday, but he liked cheerful company and you couldn't get that at one of those

expensive hotels; and the old lady with the middleaged daughter was having her beautiful house in London

done up and she said to her daughter: "Gwennie, my dear, we must have a cheap holiday this year," and so

they had come there, though of course it wasn't at all the kind of thing they were used to. Mildred found them

all very superior, and she hated a lot of common, rough people. She liked gentlemen to be gentlemen in every

"When people are gentlemen and ladies," she said, "I like them to be gentlemen and ladies."

The remark seemed cryptic to Philip, but when he heard her say it two or three times to different persons, and

found that it aroused hearty agreement, he came to the conclusion that it was only obscure to his own

intelligence. It was the first time that Philip and Mildred had been thrown entirely together. In London he did

not see her all day, and when he came home the household affairs, the baby, the neighbours, gave them

something to talk about till he settled down to work. Now he spent the whole day with her. After breakfast

they went down to the beach; the morning went easily enough with a bathe and a stroll along the front; the

evening, which they spent on the pier, having put the baby to bed, was tolerable, for there was music to listen

to and a constant stream of people to look at; (Philip amused himself by imagining who they were and

weaving little stories about them; he had got into the habit of answering Mildred's remarks with his mouth

only so that his thoughts remained undisturbed;) but the afternoons were long and dreary. They sat on the

beach. Mildred said they must get all the benefit they could out of Doctor Brighton, and he could not read

because Mildred made observations frequently about things in general. If he paid no attention she

"Oh, leave that silly old book alone. It can't be good for you always reading. You'll addle your brain, that's

He discovered that it was difficult to talk to her. She had not even the power of attending to what she was

herself saying, so that a dog running in front of her or the passing of a man in a loud blazer would call forth a

remark and then she would forget what she had been speaking of. She had a bad memory for names, and it

irritated her not to be able to think of them, so that she would pause in the middle of some story to rack her

brains. Sometimes she had to give it up, but it often occurred to her afterwards, and when Philip was talking

"Collins, that was it. I knew it would come back to me some time. Collins, that's the name I couldn't

It exasperated him because it showed that she was not listening to anything he said, and yet, if he was silent,

she reproached him for sulkiness. Her mind was of an order that could not deal for five minutes with the

abstract, and when Philip gave way to his taste for generalising she very quickly showed that she was bored.

Mildred dreamt a great deal, and she had an accurate memory for her dreams, which she would relate every

One morning he received a long letter from Thorpe Athelny. He was taking his holiday in the theatrical way,

in which there was much sound sense, which characterised him. He had done the same thing for ten years. He

took his whole family to a hopfield in Kent, not far from Mrs. Athelny's home, and they spent three weeks

hopping. It kept them in the open air, earned them money, much to Mrs. Athelny's satisfaction, and renewed

their contact with mother earth. It was upon this that Athelny laid stress. The sojourn in the fields gave them a

new strength; it was like a magic ceremony, by which they renewed their youth and the power of their limbs

and the sweetness of the spirit: Philip had heard him say many fantastic, rhetorical, and picturesque things on

the subject. Now Athelny invited him to come over for a day, he had certain meditations on Shakespeare and

the musical glasses which he desired to impart, and the children were clamouring for a sight of Uncle Philip.

Philip read the letter again in the afternoon when he was sitting with Mildred on the beach. He thought of

Mrs. Athelny, cheerful mother of many children, with her kindly hospitality and her good humour; of Sally,

grave for her years, with funny little maternal ways and an air of authority, with her long plait of fair hair and

her broad forehead; and then in a bunch of all the others, merry, boisterous, healthy, and handsome. His heart

went out to them. There was one quality which they had that he did not remember to have noticed in people

before, and that was goodness. It had not occurred to him till now, but it was evidently the beauty of their

goodness which attracted him. In theory he did not believe in it: if morality were no more than a matter of

convenience good and evil had no meaning. He did not like to be illogical, but here was simple goodness,

natural and without effort, and he thought it beautiful. Meditating, he slowly tore the letter into little pieces;

he did not see how he could go without Mildred, and he did not want to go with her.

It was very hot, the sky was cloudless, and they had been driven to a shady corner. The baby was gravely

playing with stones on the beach, and now and then she crawled up to Philip and gave him one to hold, then

took it away again and placed it carefully down. She was playing a mysterious and complicated game known

only to herself. Mildred was asleep. She lay with her head thrown back and her mouth slightly open; her legs

were stretched out, and her boots protruded from her petticoats in a grotesque fashion. His eyes had been

resting on her vaguely, but now he looked at her with peculiar attention. He remembered how passionately he

had loved her, and he wondered why now he was entirely indifferent to her. The change in him filled him

with dull pain. It seemed to him that all he had suffered had been sheer waste. The touch of her hand had

filled him with ecstasy; he had desired to enter into her soul so that he could share every thought with her and

every feeling; he had suffered acutely because, when silence had fallen between them, a remark of hers

showed how far their thoughts had travelled apart, and he had rebelled against the unsurmountable wall

which seemed to divide every personality from every other. He found it strangely tragic that he had loved her

so madly and now loved her not at all. Sometimes he hated her. She was incapable of learning, and the

experience of life had taught her nothing. She was as unmannerly as she had always been. It revolted Philip to

hear the insolence with which she treated the hardworked servant at the boardinghouse.

Presently he considered his own plans. At the end of his fourth year he would be able to take his examination

in midwifery, and a year more would see him qualified. Then he might manage a journey to Spain. He

wanted to see the pictures which he knew only from photographs; he felt deeply that El Greco held a secret of

peculiar moment to him; and he fancied that in Toledo he would surely find it out. He did not wish to do

things grandly, and on a hundred pounds he might live for six months in Spain: if Macalister put him on to

another good thing he could make that easily. His heart warmed at the thought of those old beautiful cities,

and the tawny plains of Castile. He was convinced that more might be got out of life than offered itself at

present, and he thought that in Spain he could live with greater intensity: it might be possible to practise in

one of those old cities, there were a good many foreigners, passing or resident, and he should be able to pick

up a living. But that would be much later; first he must get one or two hospital appointments; they gave

experience and made it easy to get jobs afterwards. He wished to get a berth as ship's doctor on one of the

large tramps that took things leisurely enough for a man to see something of the places at which they stopped.

He wanted to go to the East; and his fancy was rich with pictures of Bangkok and Shanghai, and the ports of

Japan: he pictured to himself palmtrees and skies blue and hot, darkskinned people, pagodas; the scents of

the Orient intoxicated his nostrils. His heart but with passionate desire for the beauty and the strangeness of

"I do believe I've been asleep," she said. "Now then, you naughty girl, what have you been doing to yourself?

WHEN they returned to London Philip began his dressing in the surgical wards. He was not so much

interested in surgery as in medicine, which, a more empirical science, offered greater scope to the

imagination. The work was a little harder than the corresponding work on the medical side. There was a

lecture from nine till ten, when he went into the wards; there wounds had to be dressed, stitches taken out,

bandages renewed: Philip prided himself a little on his skill in bandaging, and it amused him to wring a word

of approval from a nurse. On certain afternoons in the week there were operations; and he stood in the well of

the theatre, in a white jacket, ready to hand the operating surgeon any instrument he wanted or to sponge the

blood away so that he could see what he was about. When some rare operation was to be performed the

theatre would fill up, but generally there were not more than half a dozen students present, and then the

proceedings had a cosiness which Philip enjoyed. At that time the world at large seemed to have a passion for

appendicitis, and a good many cases came to the operating theatre for this complaint: the surgeon for whom

Philip dressed was in friendly rivalry with a colleague as to which could remove an appendix in the shortest

In due course Philip was put on accident duty. The dressers took this in turn; it lasted three days, during

which they lived in hospital and ate their meals in the commonroom; they had a room on the ground floor

near the casualty ward, with a bed that shut up during the day into a cupboard. The dresser on duty had to be

at hand day and night to see to any casualty that came in. You were on the move all the time, and not more

than an hour or two passed during the night without the clanging of the bell just above your head which made

you leap out of bed instinctively. Saturday night was of course the busiest time and the closing of the

publichouses the busiest hour. Men would be brought in by the police dead drunk and it would be necessary

to administer a stomachpump; women, rather the worse for liquor themselves, would come in with a wound

on the head or a bleeding nose which their husbands had given them: some would vow to have the law on

him, and others, ashamed, would declare that it had been an accident. What the dresser could manage himself

he did, but if there was anything important he sent for the housesurgeon: he did this with care, since the

housesurgeon was not vastly pleased to be dragged down five flights of stairs for nothing. The cases ranged

from a cut finger to a cut throat. Boys came in with hands mangled by some machine, men were brought who

had been knocked down by a cab, and children who had broken a limb while playing: now and then

attempted suicides were carried in by the police: Philip saw a ghastly, wildeyed man with a great gash from

ear to ear, and he was in the ward for weeks afterwards in charge of a constable, silent, angry because he was

alive, and sullen; he made no secret of the fact that he would try again to kill himself as soon as he was

released. The wards were crowded, and the housesurgeon was faced with a dilemma when patients were

brought in by the police: if they were sent on to the station and died there disagreeable things were said in the

papers; and it was very difficult sometimes to tell if a man was dying or drunk. Philip did not go to bed till he

was tired out, so that he should not have the bother of getting up again in an hour; and he sat in the casualty

ward talking in the intervals of work with the nightnurse. She was a grayhaired woman of masculine

appearance, who had been nightnurse in the casualty department for twenty years. She liked the work

because she was her own mistress and had no sister to bother her. Her movements were slow, but she was

immensely capable and she never failed in an emergency. The dressers, often inexperienced or nervous,

found her a tower of strength. She had seen thousands of them, and they made no impression upon her: she

always called them Mr. Brown; and when they expostulated and told her their real names, she merely nodded

and went on calling them Mr. Brown. It interested Philip to sit with her in the bare room, with its two

horsehair couches and the flaring gas, and listen to her. She had long ceased to look upon the people who

came in as human beings; they were drunks, or broken arms, or cut throats. She took the vice and misery and

cruelty of the world as a matter of course; she found nothing to praise or blame in human actions: she

"I remember one suicide," she said to Philip, "who threw himself into the Thames. They fished him out and

brought him here, and ten days later he developed typhoid fever from swallowing Thames water."

"Yes, he did all right. I could never make up my mind if it was suicide or not.... They're a funny lot, suicides.

I remember one man who couldn't get any work to do and his wife died, so he pawed his clothes and bought a

revolver; but he made a mess of it, he only shot out an eye and he got all right. And then, if you please, with

an eye gone and a piece of his face blow away, he came to the conclusion that the world wasn't such a bad

place after all, and he lived happily ever afterwards. Thing I've always noticed, people don't commit suicide

for love, as you'd expect, that's just a fancy of novelists; they commit suicide because they haven't got any

Money was in any case occupying Philip's thoughts a good deal just then. He discovered the little truth there

was in the airy saying which himself had repeated, that two could live as cheaply as one, and his expenses

were beginning to worry him. Mildred was not a good manager, and it cost them as much to live as if they

had eaten in restaurants; the child needed clothes, and Mildred boots, an umbrella, and other small things

which it was impossible for her to do without. When they returned from Brighton she had announced her

intention of getting a job, but she took no definite steps, and presently a bad cold laid her up for a fortnight.

When she was well she answered one or two advertisements, but nothing came of it: either she arrived too

late and the vacant place was filled, or the work was more than she felt strong enough to do. Once she got an

offer, but the wages were only fourteen shillings a week, and she thought she was worth more than that.

"It's no good letting oneself be put upon," she remarked. "People don't respect you if you let yourself go too

He could not help thinking how useful it would be towards the expenses of the household, and Mildred was

already beginning to hint that she did not get a place because she had not got a decent dress to interview

employers in. He gave her the dress, and she made one or two more attempts, but Philip came to the

conclusion that they were not serious. She did not want to work. The only way he knew to make money was

on the Stock Exchange, and he was very anxious to repeat the lucky experiment of the summer; but war had

broken out with the Transvaal and nothing was doing in South Africans. Macalister told him that Redvers

Buller would march into Pretoria in a month and then everything would boom. The only thing was to wait

patiently. What they wanted was a British reverse to knock things down a bit, and then it might be worth

while buying. Philip began reading assiduously the `city chat' of his favourite newspaper. He was worried and

irritable. Once or twice he spoke sharply to Mildred, and since she was neither tactful nor patient she

answered with temper, and they quarrelled. Philip always expressed his regret for what he had said, but

Mildred had not a forgiving nature, and she would sulk for a couple of days. She got on his nerves in all sorts

of ways; by the manner in which she ate, and by the untidiness which made her leave articles of clothing

about their sittingroom: Philip was excited by the war and devoured the papers, morning and evening; but

she took no interest in anything that happened. She had made the acquaintance of two or three people who

lived in the street, and one of them had asked if she would like the curate to call on her. She wore a

weddingring and called herself Mrs. Carey. On Philip's walls were two or three of the drawings which he

had made in Paris, nudes, two of women and one of Miguel Ajuria, standing very square on his feet, with

clenched fists. Philip kept them because they were the best things he had done, and they reminded him of

"I wish you'd take those drawings down, Philip," she said to him at last. "Mrs. Foreman, of number thirteen,

came in yesterday afternoon, and I didn't know which way to look. I saw her staring at them."

"They're indecent. Disgusting, that's what I call it, to have drawings of naked people about. And it isn't nice

"Vulgar? Modest, I call it. I've never said anything, but d'you think I like having to look at those naked people

"I don't know what sense of humour's got to do with it. I've got a good mind to take them down myself. If you

"I don't want to know what you think about them, and I forbid you to touch them."

When Mildred was cross with him she punished him through the baby. The little girl was as fond of Philip as

he was of her, and it was her great pleasure every morning to crawl into his room (she was getting on for two

now and could walk pretty well), and be taken up into his bed. When Mildred stopped this the poor child

"It's nothing to do with you what I do with my child. To hear you talk one would think you was her father.

Philip was exasperated by Mildred's stupidity; but he was so indifferent to her now that it was only at times

she made him angry. He grew used to having her about. Christmas came, and with it a couple of days holiday

for Philip. He brought some holly in and decorated the flat, and on Christmas Day he gave small presents to

Mildred and the baby. There were only two of them so they could not have a turkey, but Mildred roasted a

chicken and boiled a Christmas pudding which she had bought at a local grocer's. They stood themselves a

bottle of wine. When they had dined Philip sat in his armchair by the fire, smoking his pipe; and the

unaccustomed wine had made him forget for a while the anxiety about money which was so constantly with

him. He felt happy and comfortable. Presently Mildred came in to tell him that the baby wanted him to kiss

her goodnight, and with a smile he went into Mildred's bedroom. Then, telling the child to go to sleep, he

turned down the gas and, leaving the door open in case she cried, went back into the sittingroom.

When he sat down she settled herself in front of the fire and leaned against his knees. He could not help

remembering that this was how they had sat together in her rooms in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, but the

positions had been reversed; it was he who had sat on the floor and leaned his head against her knee. How

passionately he had loved her then! Now he felt for her a tenderness he had not known for a long time. He

She looked up at him, gave a slight smile, and nodded. They gazed into the fire dreamily, without speaking to

"D'you know that you haven't kissed me once since I came here?" she said suddenly.

"You're not angry with me any more?" she asked presently, with her eyes cast down.

"I've never cared for you as I do now. It's only since I passed through the fire that I've learnt to love you." It

chilled Philip to hear her make use of the sort of phrase she read in the penny novelettes which she devoured.

Then he wondered whether what she said had any meaning for her: perhaps she knew no other way to express

He did not reply for quite a long time, and silence fell upon them again; but at last he spoke and seemed

"You mustn't be angry with me. One can't help these things. I remember that I thought you wicked and cruel

because you did this, that, and the other; but it was very silly of me. You didn't love me, and it was absurd to

blame you for that. I thought I could make you love me, but I know now that was impossible. I don't know

what it is that makes someone love you, but whatever it is, it's the only thing that matters, and if it isn't there

"I should have thought so too. I remember how I used to think that it would last for ever, I felt I would rather

die than be without you, and I used to long for the time when you would be faded and wrinkled so that

She did not answer, and presently she got up and said she was going to bed. She gave a timid little smile.

He gave a laugh, blushed slightly, and kissed her. She went to her bedroom and he began to read.

THE climax came two or three weeks later. Mildred was driven by Philip's behaviour to a pitch of strange

exasperation. There were many different emotions in her soul, and she passed from mood to mood with

facility. She spent a great deal of time alone and brooded over her position. She did not put all her feelings

into words, she did not even know what they were, but certain things stood out in her mind, and she thought

of them over and over again. She had never understood Philip, nor had very much liked him; but she was

pleased to have him about her because she thought he was a gentleman. She was impressed because his father

had been a doctor and his uncle was a clergyman. She despised him a little because she had made such a fool

of him, and at the same time was never quite comfortable in his presence; she could not let herself go, and she

When she first came to live in the little rooms in Kennington she was tired out and ashamed. She was glad to

be left alone. It was a comfort to think that there was no rent to pay; she need not go out in all weathers, and

she could lie quietly in bed if she did not feel well. She had hated the life she led. It was horrible to have to be

affable and subservient; and even now when it crossed her mind she cried with pity for herself as she thought

of the roughness of men and their brutal language. But it crossed her mind very seldom. She was grateful to

Philip for coming to her rescue, and when she remembered how honestly he had loved her and how badly she

had treated him, she felt a pang of remorse. It was easy to make it up to him. It meant very little to her. She

was surprised when he refused her suggestion, but she shrugged her shoulders: let him put on airs if he liked,

she did not care, he would be anxious enough in a little while, and then it would be her turn to refuse; if he

thought it was any deprivation to her he was very much mistaken. She had no doubt of her power over him.

He was peculiar, but she knew him through and through. He had so often quarrelled with her and sworn he

would never see her again, and then in a little while he had come on his knees begging to be forgiven. It gave

her a thrill to think how he had cringed before her. He would have been glad to lie down on the ground for

her to walk on him. She had seen him cry. She knew exactly how to treat him, pay no attention to him, just

pretend you didn't notice his tempers, leave him severely alone, and in a little while he was sure to grovel.

She laughed a little to herself, goodhumouredly, when she thought how he had come and eaten dirt before

her. She had had her fling now. She knew what men were and did not want to have anything more to do with

them. She was quite ready to settle down with Philip. When all was said, he was a gentleman in every sense

of the word, and that was something not to be sneezed at, wasn't it? Anyhow she was in no hurry, and she

was not going to take the first step. She was glad to see how fond he was growing of the baby, though it

tickled her a good deal; it was comic that he should set so much store on another man's child. He was peculiar

But one or two things surprised her. She had been used to his subservience: he was only too glad to do

anything for her in the old days, she was accustomed to see him cast down by a cross word and in ecstasy at a

kind one; he was different now, and she said to herself that he had not improved in the last year. It never

struck her for a moment that there could be any change in his feelings, and she thought it was only acting

when he paid no heed to her bad temper. He wanted to read sometimes and told her to stop talking: she did

not know whether to flare up or to sulk, and was so puzzled that she did neither. Then came the conversation

in which he told her that he intended their relations to be platonic, and, remembering an incident of their

common past, it occurred to her that he dreaded the possibility of her being pregnant. She took pains to

reassure him. It made no difference. She was the sort of woman who was unable to realise that a man might

not have her own obsession with sex; her relations with men had been purely on those lines; and she could

not understand that they ever had other interests. The thought struck her that Philip was in love with

somebody else, and she watched him, suspecting nurses at the hospital or people he met out; but artful

questions led her to the conclusion that there was no one dangerous in the Athelny household; and it forced

itself upon her also that Philip, like most medical students, was unconscious of the sex of the nurses with

whom his work threw him in contact. They were associated in his mind with a faint odour of iodoform. Philip

received no letters, and there was no girl's photograph among his belongings. If he was in love with someone,

he was very clever at hiding it; and he answered all Mildred's questions with frankness and apparently

It was a relief, for in that case he was certainly still in love with her; but it made his behaviour very puzzling.

If he was going to treat her like that why did he ask her to come and live at the flat? It was unnatural. Mildred

was not a woman who conceived the possibility of compassion, generosity, or kindness. Her only conclusion

was that Philip was queer. She took it into her head that the reasons for his conduct were chivalrous; and, her

imagination filled with the extravagances of cheap fiction, she pictured to herself all sorts of romantic

explanations for his delicacy. Her fancy ran riot with bitter misunderstandings, purifications by fire,

snowwhite souls, and death in the cruel cold of a Christmas night. She made up her mind that when they

went to Brighton she would put an end to all his nonsense; they would be alone there, everyone would think

them husband and wife, and there would be the pier and the band. When she found that nothing would induce

Philip to share the same room with her, when he spoke to her about it with a tone in his voice she had never

heard before, she suddenly realised that he did not want her. She was astounded. She remembered all he had

said in the past and how desperately he had loved her. She felt humiliated and angry, but she had a sort of

native insolence which carried her through. He needn't think she was in love with him, because she wasn't.

She hated him sometimes, and she longed to humble him; but she found herself singularly powerless; she did

not know which way to handle him. She began to be a little nervous with him. Once or twice she cried. Once

or twice she set herself to be particularly nice to him; but when she took his arm while they walked along the

front at night he made some excuse in a while to release himself, as though it were unpleasant for him to be

touched by her. She could not make it out. The only hold she had over him was through the baby, of whom

he seemed to grow fonder and fonder: she could make him white with anger by giving the child a slap Or a

push; and the only time the old, tender smile came back into his eyes was when she stood with the baby in

her arms. She noticed it when she was being photographed like that by a man on the beach, and afterwards

When they got back to London Mildred began looking for the work she had asserted was so easy to find; she

wanted now to be independent of Philip; and she thought of the satisfaction with which she would announce

to him that she was going into rooms and would take the child with her. But her heart failed her when she

came into closer contact with the possibility. She had grown unused to the long hours, she did not want to be

at the beck and call of a manageress, and her dignity revolted at the thought of wearing once more a uniform.

She had made out to such of the neighbours as she knew that they were comfortably off: it would be a

comedown if they heard that she had to go out and work. Her natural indolence asserted itself. She did not

want to leave Philip, and so long as he was willing to provide for her, she did not see why she should. There

was no money to throw away, but she got her board and lodging, and he might get better off. His uncle was

an old man and might die any day, he would come into a little then, and even as things were, it was better

than slaving from morning till night for a few shillings a week. Her efforts relaxed; she kept on reading the

advertisement columns of the daily paper merely to show that she wanted to do something if anything that

was worth her while presented itself. But panic seized her, and she was afraid that Philip would grow tired of

supporting her. She had no hold over him at all now, and she fancied that he only allowed her to stay there

because he was fond of the baby. She brooded over it all, and she thought to herself angrily that she would

make him pay for all this some day. She could not reconcile herself to the fact that he no longer cared for her.

She would make him. She suffered from pique, and sometimes in a curious fashion she desired Philip. He

was so cold now that it exasperated her. She thought of him in that way incessantly. She thought that he was

treating her very badly, and she did not know what she had done to deserve it. She kept on saying to herself

that it was unnatural they should live like that. Then she thought that if things were different and she were

going to have a baby, he would be sure to marry her. He was funny, but he was a gentleman in every sense of

the word, no one could deny that. At last it became an obsession with her, and she made up her mind to force

a change in their relations. He never even kissed her now, and she wanted him to: she remembered how

ardently he had been used to press her lips. It gave her a curious feeling to think of it. She often looked at his

One evening, at the beginning of February, Philip told her that he was dining with Lawson, who was giving a

party in his studio to celebrate his birthday; and he would not be in till late; Lawson had bought a couple of

bottles of the punch they favoured from the tavern in Beak Street, and they proposed to have a merry evening.

Mildred asked if there were going to be women there, but Philip told her there were not; only men had been

invited; and they were just going to sit and talk and smoke: Mildred did not think it sounded very amusing; if

she were a painter she would have half a dozen models about. She went to bed, but could not sleep, and

presently an idea struck her; she got up and fixed the catch on the wicket at the landing, so that Philip could

not get in. He came back about one, and she heard him curse when he found that the wicket was closed. She

He walked into the sittingroom and turned up the gas. She followed him in. She went up to the fire.

He sat down and began to take off his boots. His eyes were shining and his cheeks were flushed. She thought

Philip was quite sober, but he had been talking and laughing, and he was excited still. An evening of that sort

reminded him of the old days in Paris. He was in high spirits. He took his pipe out of his pocket and filled it.

"Not yet, I'm not a bit sleepy. Lawson was in great form. He talked sixteen to the dozen from the moment I

"Heaven knows! Of every subject under the sun. You should have seen us all shouting at the tops of our

Philip laughed with pleasure at the recollection, and Mildred laughed too. She was pretty sure he had drunk

more than was good for him. That was exactly what she had expected. She knew men.

"Oh, I'm all right as I am." Then putting her arms round his neck, she placed her face against his and said:

"Please get up. You're making a fool of yourself and you're making me feel a perfect idiot."

"I love you, Philip. I want to make up for all the harm I did you. I can't go on like this, it's not in human

"I suppose it's because I loved you too much. I wore the passion out. The thought of anything of that sort

horrifies me. I can't look at you now without thinking of Emil and Griffiths. One can't help those things, I

"Don't be foolish, you haven't anywhere to go. You can stay here as long as you like, but it must be on the

Then she dropped suddenly the vehemence of passion and gave a soft, insinuating laugh. She sidled up to

"Don't be such an old silly. I believe you're nervous. You don't know how nice I can be."

She put her face against his and rubbed his cheek with hers. To Philip her smile was an abominable leer, and

the suggestive glitter of her eyes filled him with horror. He drew back instinctively.

But she would not let him go. She sought his mouth with her lips. He took her hands and tore them roughly

She steadied herself with one hand on the chimneypiece. She looked at him for an instant, and two red spots

She paused and drew in her breath sharply. Then she burst into a furious torrent of abuse. She shouted at the

top of her voice. She called him every foul name she could think of. She used language so obscene that Philip

was astounded; she was always so anxious to be refined, so shocked by coarseness, that it had never occurred

to him that she knew the words she used now. She came up to him and thrust her face in his. It was distorted

"I never cared for you, not once, I was making a fool of you always, you bored me, you bored me stiff, and I

hated you, I would never have let you touch me only for the money, and it used to make me sick when I had

to let you kiss me. We laughed at you, Griffiths and me, we laughed because you was such a mug. A mug! A

Then she burst again into abominable invective. She accused him of every mean fault; she said he was stingy,

she said he was dull, she said he was vain, selfish; she cast virulent ridicule on everything upon which he was

most sensitive. Aud at last she turned to go. She kept on, with hysterical violence, shouting at him an

opprobrious, filthy epithet. She seized the handle of the door and flung it open. Then she turned round and

hurled at him the injury which she knew was the only one that really touched him. She threw into the word all

the malice and all the venom of which she was capable. She flung it at him as though it were a blow.

PHILIP awoke with a start next morning, conscious that it was late, and looking at his watch found it was

nine o'clock. He jumped out of bed and went into the kitchen to get himself some hot water to shave with.

There was no sign of Mildred, and the things which she had used for her supper the night before still lay in

She did not answer, even after a second louder knocking, and he concluded that she was sulking. He was in

too great a hurry to bother about that. He put some water on to boil and jumped into his bath which was

always poured out the night before in order to take the chill off. He presumed that Mildred would cook his

breakfast while he was dressing and leave it in the sittingroom. She had done that two or three times when

she was out of temper. But he heard no sound of her moving, and realised that if he wanted anything to eat he

would have to get it himself. He was irritated that she should play him such a trick on a morning when he had

overslept himself. There was still no sign of her when he was ready, but he heard her moving about her

room. She was evidently getting up. He made himself some tea and cut himself a couple of pieces of bread

and butter, which he ate while he was putting on his boots, then bolted downstairs and along the street into

the main road to catch his tram. While his eyes sought out the newspaper shops to see the war news on the

placards, he thought of the scene of the night before: now that it was over and he had slept on it, he could not

help thinking it grotesque; he supposed he had been ridiculous, but he was not master of his feelings; at the

time they had been overwhelming. He was angry with Mildred because she had forced him into that absurd

position, and then with renewed astonishment he thought of her outburst and the filthy language she had

used. He could not help flushing when he remembered her final jibe; but he shrugged his shoulders

contemptuously. He had long known that when his fellows were angry with him they never failed to taunt

him with his deformity. He had seen men at the hospital imitate his walk, not before him as they used at

school, but when they thought he was not looking. He knew now that they did it from no wilful unkindness,

but because man is naturally an imitative animal, and because it was an easy way to make people laugh: he

He was glad to throw himself into his work. The ward seemed pleasant and friendly when he entered it. The

Laughing, he went to the first of his cases, a boy with tuberculous ulcers, and removed his bandages. The boy

was pleased to see him, and Philip chaffed him as he put a clean dressing on the wound. Philip was a

favourite with the patients; he treated them goodhumouredly; and he had gentle, sensitive hands which did

not hurt them: some of the dressers were a little rough and happygolucky in their methods. He lunched

with his friends in the clubroom, a frugal meal consisting of a scone and butter, with a cup of cocoa, and

they talked of the war. Several men were going out, but the authorities were particular and refused everyone

who had not had a hospital appointment. Someone suggested that, if the war went on, in a while they would

be glad to take anyone who was qualified; but the general opinion was that it would be over in a month. Now

that Roberts was there things would get all right in no time. This was Macalister's opinion too, and he had

told Philip that they must watch their chance and buy just before peace was declared. There would be a boom

then, and they might all make a bit of money. Philip had left with Macalister instructions to buy him stock

whenever the opportunity presented itself. His appetite had been whetted by the thirty pounds he had made in

He finished his day's work and got on a tram to go back to Kennington. He wondered how Mildred would

behave that evening. It was a nuisance to think that she would probably be surly and refuse to answer his

questions. It was a warm evening for the time of year, and even in those gray streets of South London there

was the languor of February; nature is restless then after the long winter months, growing things awake from

their sleep, and there is a rustle in the earth, a forerunner of spring, as it resumes its eternal activities. Philip

would have liked to drive on further, it was distasteful to him to go back to his rooms, and he wanted the air;

but the desire to see the child clutched suddenly at his heartstrings, and he smiled to himself as he thought of

her toddling towards him with a crow of delight. He was surprised, when he reached the house and looked up

mechanically at the windows, to see that there was no light. He went upstairs and knocked, but got no answer.

When Mildred went out she left the key under the mat and he found it there now. He let himself in and going

into the sittingroom struck a match. Something had happened, he did not at once know what; he turned the

gas on full and lit it; the room was suddenly filled with the glare and he looked round. He gasped. The whole

place was wrecked. Everything in it had been wilfully destroyed. Anger seized him, and he rushed into

Mildred's room. It was dark and empty. When he had got a light he saw that she had taken away all her things

and the baby's (he had noticed on entering that the gocart was not in its usual place on the landing, but

thought Mildred had taken the baby out;) and all the things on the washingstand had been broken, a knife

had been drawn crossways through the seats of the two chairs, the pillow had been slit open, there were

large gashes in the sheets and the counterpane, the lookingglass appeared to have been broken with a

hammer. Philip was bewildered. He went into his own room, and here too everything was in confusion. The

basin and the ewer had been smashed, the lookingglass was in fragments, and the sheets were in ribands.

Mildred had made a slit large enough to put her hand into the pillow and had scattered the feathers about the

room. She had jabbed a knife into the blankets. On the dressingtable were photographs of Philip's mother,

the frames had been smashed and the glass shivered. Philip went into the tiny kitchen. Everything that was

It took Philip's breath away. Mildred had left no letter, nothing but this ruin to mark her anger, and he could

imagine the set face with which she had gone about her work. He went back into the sittingroom and looked

about him. He was so astonished that he no longer felt angry. He looked curiously at the kitchenknife and

the coalhammer, which were lying on the table where she had left them. Then his eye caught a large

carvingknife in the fireplace which had been broken. It must have taken her a long time to do so much

damage. Lawson's portrait of him had been cut crossways and gaped hideously. His own drawings had been

ripped in pieces; and the photographs, Manet's _Olympia_ and the _Odalisque_ of Ingres, the portrait of

Philip IV, had been smashed with great blows of the coalhammer. There were gashes in the tablecloth and

in the curtains and in the two armchairs. They were quite ruined. On one wall over the table which Philip

used as his desk was the little bit of Persian rug which Cronshaw had given him. Mildred had always hated it.

"If it's a rug it ought to go on the floor," she said, "and it's a dirty stinking bit of stuff, that's all it is."

It made her furious because Philip told her it contained the answer to a great riddle. She thought he was

making fun of her. She had drawn the knife right through it three times, it must have required some strength,

and it hung now in tatters. Philip had two or three blue and white plates, of no value, but he had bought them

one by one for very small sums and liked them for their associations. They littered the floor in fragments.

There were long gashes on the backs of his books, and she had taken the trouble to tear pages out of the

unbound French ones. The little ornaments on the chimneypiece lay on the hearth in bits. Everything that it

The whole of Philip's belongings would not have sold for thirty pounds, but most of them were old friends,

and he was a domestic creature, attached to all those odds and ends because they were his; he had been proud

of his little home, and on so little money had made it pretty and characteristic. He sank down now in despair.

He asked himself how she could have been so cruel. A sudden fear got him on his feet again and into the

passage, where stood a cupboard in which he kept his clothes. He opened it and gave a sigh of relief. She had

He went back into the sittingroom and, surveying the scene, wondered what to do; he had not the heart to

begin trying to set things straight; besides there was no food in the house, and he was hungry. He went out

and got himself something to eat. When he came in he was cooler. A little pang seized him as he thought of

the child, and he wondered whether she would miss him, at first perhaps, but in a week she would have

forgotten him; and he was thankful to be rid of Mildred. He did not think of her with wrath, but with an

The only thing now was to leave the rooms, and he made up his mind to give notice the next morning. He

could not afford to make good the damage done, and he had so little money left that he must find cheaper

lodgings still. He would be glad to get out of them. The expense had worried him, and now the recollection of

Mildred would be in them always. Philip was impatient and could never rest till he had put in action the plan

which he had in mind; so on the following afternoon he got in a dealer in secondhand furniture who offered

him three pounds for all his goods damaged and undamaged; and two days later he moved into the house

opposite the hospital in which he had had rooms when first he became a medical student. The landlady was a

very decent woman. He took a bedroom at the top, which she let him have for six shillings a week; it was

small and shabby and looked on the yard of the house that backed on to it, but he had nothing now except his

AND now it happened that the fortunes of Philip Carey, of no consequence to any but himself, were affected

by the events through which his country was passing. History was being made, and the process was so

significant that it seemed absurd it should touch the life of an obscure medical student. Battle after battle,

Magersfontein, Colenso, Spion Kop, lost on the playing fields of Eton, had humiliated the nation and dealt

the deathblow to the prestige of the aristocracy and gentry who till then had found no one seriously to

oppose their assertion that they possessed a natural instinct of government. The old order was being swept

away: history was being made indeed. Then the colossus put forth his strength, and, blundering again, at last

blundered into the semblance of victory. Cronje surrendered at Paardeberg, Ladysmith was relieved, and at

It was two or three days after the news of this reached London that Macalister came into the tavern in Beak

Street and announced joyfully that things were looking brighter on the Stock Exchange. Peace was in sight,

Roberts would march into Pretoria within a few weeks, and shares were going up already. There was bound

"Now's the time to come in," he told Philip. "It's no good waiting till the public gets on to it. It's now or

He had inside information. The manager of a mine in South Africa had cabled to the senior partner of his firm

that the plant was uninjured. They would start working again as soon as possible. It wasn't a speculation, it

was an investment. To show how good a thing the senior partner thought it Macalister told Philip that he had

bought five hundred shares for both his sisters: he never put them into anything that wasn't as safe as the

The shares were two and an eighth to a quarter. He advised Philip not to be greedy, but to be satisfied with a

tenshilling rise. He was buying three hundred for himself and suggested that Philip should do the same. He

would hold them and sell when he thought fit. Philip had great faith in him, partly because he was a Scotsman

and therefore by nature cautious, and partly because he had been right before. He jumped at the suggestion.

"I daresay we shall be able to sell before the account," said Macalister, "but if not, I'll arrange to carry them

It seemed a capital system to Philip. You held on till you got your profit, and you never even had to put your

hand in your pocket. He began to watch the Stock Exchange columns of the paper with new interest. Next

day everything was up a little, and Macalister wrote to say that he had had to pay two and a quarter for the

shares. He said that the market was firm. But in a day or two there was a setback. The news that came from

South Africa was less reassuring, and Philip with anxiety saw that his shares had fallen to two; but Macalister

was optimistic, the Boers couldn't hold out much longer, and he was willing to bet a tophat that Roberts

would march into Johannesburg before the middle of April. At the account Philip had to pay out nearly forty

pounds. It worried him considerably, but he felt that the only course was to hold on: in his circumstances the

loss was too great for him to pocket. For two or three weeks nothing happened; the Boers would not

understand that they were beaten and nothing remained for them but to surrender: in fact they had one or two

small successes, and Philip's shares fell half a crown more. It became evident that the war was not finished.

"I'm not sure if the best thing wouldn't be to cut the loss. I've been paying out about as much as I want to in

Philip was sick with anxiety. He could not sleep at night; he bolted his breakfast, reduced now to tea and

bread and butter, in order to get over to the club readingroom and see the paper; sometimes the news was

bad, and sometimes there was no news at all, but when the shares moved it was to go down. He did not know

what to do. If he sold now he would lose altogether hard on three hundred and fifty pounds; and that would

leave him only eighty pounds to go on with. He wished with all his heart that he had never been such a fool

as to dabble on the Stock Exchange, but the only thing was to hold on; something decisive might happen any

day and the shares would go up; he did not hope now for a profit, but he wanted to make good his loss. It was

his only chance of finishing his course at the hospital. The Summer session was beginning in May, and at the

end of it he meant to take the examination in midwifery. Then he would only have a year more; he reckoned

it out carefully and came to the conclusion that he could manage it, fees and all, on a hundred and fifty

Early in April he went to the tavern in Beak Street anxious to see Macalister. It eased him a little to discuss

the situation with him; and to realise that numerous people beside himself were suffering from loss of money

made his own trouble a little less intolerable. But when Philip arrived no one was there but Hayward, and no

Hayward was the last person he would have expected to do anything of the kind. At the hospital men were

going out now in numbers; the Government was glad to get anyone who was qualified; and others, going out

as troopers, wrote home that they had been put on hospital work as soon as it was learned that they were

medical students. A wave of patriotic feeling had swept over the country, and volunteers were coming from

Philip had known Hayward for eight years. The youthful intimacy which had come from Philip's enthusiastic

admiration for the man who could tell him of art and literature had long since vanished; but habit had taken

its place; and when Hayward was in London they saw one another once or twice a week. He still talked about

books with a delicate appreciation. Philip was not yet tolerant, and sometimes Hayward's conversation

irritated him. He no longer believed implicitly that nothing in the world was of consequence but art. He

resented Hayward's contempt for action and success. Philip, stirring his punch, thought of his early friendship

and his ardent expectation that Hayward would do great things; it was long since he had lost all such

illusions, and he knew now that Hayward would never do anything but talk. He found his three hundred a

year more difficult to live on now that he was thirtyfive than he had when he was a young man; and his

clothes, though still made by a good tailor, were worn a good deal longer than at one time he would have

thought possible. He was too stout and no artful arrangement of his fair hair could conceal the fact that he

was bald. His blue eyes were dull and pale. It was not hard to guess that he drank too much.

Philip was silent. He felt rather silly. He understood that Hayward was being driven by an uneasiness in his

soul which he could not account for. Some power within him made it seem necessary to go and fight for his

country. It was strange, since he considered patriotism no more than a prejudice, and, flattering himself on his

cosmopolitanism, he had looked upon England as a place of exile. His countrymen in the mass wounded his

susceptibilities. Philip wondered what it was that made people do things which were so contrary to all their

theories of life. It would have been reasonable for Hayward to stand aside and watch with a smile while the

barbarians slaughtered one another. It looked as though men were puppets in the hands of an unknown force,

which drove them to do this and that; and sometimes they used their reason to justify their actions; and when

"People are very extraordinary," said Philip. "I should never have expected you to go out as a trooper."

"I was examined yesterday," he remarked at last. "It was worth while undergoing the _gene_ of it to know

Philip noticed that he still used a French word in an affected way when an English one would have served.

"I wanted to see you, Carey," he said. "My people don't feel inclined to hold those shares any more, the

Philip's heart sank. He knew that was impossible. It meant that he must accept the loss. His pride made him

"It's all very fine to say that, I'm not sure if I can. The market's stagnant, there are no buyers."

"Oh, I don't say that. Of course they're worth something, but you see, nobody's buying them now."

"I'm awfully sorry, old man, but we're all in the same boat. No one thought the war was going to hang on this

He moved back to the table from which he had got up to talk to Macalister. He was dumfounded; his head

suddenly began to ache furiously; but he did not want them to think him unmanly. He sat on for an hour. He

"You take it pretty coolly," said Macalister, shaking hands with him. "I don't suppose anyone likes losing

When Philip got back to his shabby little room he flung himself on his bed, and gave himself over to his

despair. He kept on regretting his folly bitterly; and though he told himself that it was absurd to regret for

what had happened was inevitable just because it had happened, he could not help himself. He was utterly

miserable. He could not sleep. He remembered all the ways he had wasted money during the last few years.

The following evening there came by the last post the statement of his account. He examined his passbook.

He found that when he had paid everything he would have seven pounds left. Seven pounds! He was thankful

he had been able to pay. It would have been horrible to be obliged to confess to Macalister that he had not the

money. He was dressing in the eyedepartment during the summer session, and he had bought an

ophthalmoscope off a student who had one to sell. He had not paid for this, but he lacked the courage to tell

the student that he wanted to go back on his bargain. Also he had to buy certain books. He had about five

pounds to go on with. It lasted him six weeks; then he wrote to his uncle a letter which he thought very

businesslike; he said that owing to the war he had had grave losses and could not go on with his studies

unless his uncle came to his help. He suggested that the Vicar should lend him a hundred and fifty pounds

paid over the next eighteen months in monthly instalments; he would pay interest on this and promised to

refund the capital by degrees when he began to earn money. He would be qualified in a year and a half at the

latest, and he could be pretty sure then of getting an assistantship at three pounds a week. His uncle wrote

back that he could do nothing. It was not fair to ask him to sell out when everything was at its worst, and the

little he had he felt that his duty to himself made it necessary for him to keep in case of illness. He ended the

letter with a little homily. He had warned Philip time after time, and Philip had never paid any attention to

him; he could not honestly say he was surprised; he had long expected that this would be the end of Philip's

extravagance and want of balance. Philip grew hot and cold when he read this. It had never occurred to him

that his uncle would refuse, and he burst into furious anger; but this was succeeded by utter blankness: if his

uncle would not help him he could not go on at the hospital. Panic seized him and, putting aside his pride, he

wrote again to the Vicar of Blackstable, placing the case before him more urgently; but perhaps he did not

explain himself properly and his uncle did not realise in what desperate straits he was, for he answered that he

could not change his mind; Philip was twentyfive and really ought to be earning his living. When he died

Philip would come into a little, but till then he refused to give him a penny. Philip felt in the letter the

satisfaction of a man who for many years had disapproved of his courses and now saw himself justified.

PHILIP began to pawn his clothes. He reduced his expenses by eating only one meal a day beside his

breakfast; and he ate it, bread and butter and cocoa, at four so that it should last him till next morning. He was

so hungry by nine o'clock that he had to go to bed. He thought of borrowing money from Lawson, but the

fear of a refusal held him back; at last he asked him for five pounds. Lawson lent it with pleasure, but, as he

"You'll let me have it back in a week or so, won't you? I've got to pay my framer, and I'm awfully broke just

Philip knew he would not be able to return it, and the thought of what Lawson would think made him so

ashamed that in a couple of days he took the money back untouched. Lawson was just going out to luncheon

and asked Philip to come too. Philip could hardly eat, he was so glad to get some solid food. On Sunday he

was sure of a good dinner from Athelny. He hesitated to tell the Athelnys what had happened to him: they

had always looked upon him as comparatively welltodo, and he had a dread that they would think less well

Though he had always been poor, the possibility of not having enough to eat had never occurred to him; it

was not the sort of thing that happened to the people among whom he lived; and he was as ashamed as if he

had some disgraceful disease. The situation in which he found himself was quite outside the range of his

experience. He was so taken aback that he did not know what else to do than to go on at the hospital; he had a

vague hope that something would turn up; he could not quite believe that what was happening to him was

true; and he remembered how during his first term at school he had often thought his life was a dream from

which he would awake to find himself once more at home. But very soon he foresaw that in a week or so he

would have no money at all. He must set about trying to earn something at once. If he had been qualified,

even with a clubfoot, he could have gone out to the Cape, since the demand for medical men was now great.

Except for his deformity he might have enlisted in one of the yeomanry regiments which were constantly

being sent out. He went to the secretary of the Medical School and asked if he could give him the coaching of

some backward student; but the secretary held out no hope of getting him anything of the sort. Philip read the

advertisement columns of the medical papers, and he applied for the post of unqualified assistant to a man

who had a dispensary in the Fulham Road. When he went to see him, he saw the doctor glance at his

clubfoot; and on hearing that Philip was only in his fourth year at the hospital he said at once that his

experience was insufficient: Philip understood that this was only an excuse; the man would not have an

assistant who might not be as active as he wanted. Philip turned his attention to other means of earning

money. He knew French and German and thought there might be some chance of finding a job as

correspondence clerk; it made his heart sink, but he set his teeth; there was nothing else to do. Though too

shy to answer the advertisements which demanded a personal application, he replied to those which asked for

letters; but he had no experience to state and no recommendations: he was conscious that neither his German

nor his French was commercial; he was ignorant of the terms used in business; he knew neither shorthand nor

typewriting. He could not help recognising that his case was hopeless. He thought of writing to the solicitor

who had been his father's executor, but he could not bring himself to, for it was contrary to his express advice

that he had sold the mortgages in which his money had been invested. He knew from his uncle that Mr.

Nixon thoroughly disapproved of him. He had gathered from Philip's year in the accountant's office that he

Once or twice the possibility of suicide presented itself to him; it would be easy to get something from the

hospital dispensary, and it was a comfort to think that if the worst came to the worst he had at hand means of

making a painless end of himself; but it was not a course that he considered seriously. When Mildred had left

him to go with Griffiths his anguish had been so great that he wanted to die in order to get rid of the pain. He

did not feel like that now. He remembered that the Casualty Sister had told him how people oftener did away

with themselves for want of money than for want of love; and he chuckled when he thought that he was an

exception. He wished only that he could talk his worries over with somebody, but he could not bring himself

to confess them. He was ashamed. He went on looking for work. He left his rent unpaid for three weeks,

explaining to his landlady that he would get money at the end of the month; she did not say anything, but

pursed her lips and looked grim. When the end of the month came and she asked if it would be convenient for

him to pay something on account, it made him feel very sick to say that he could not; he told her he would

write to his uncle and was sure to be able to settle his bill on the following Saturday.

"Well, I 'ope you will, Mr. Carey, because I 'ave my rent to pay, and I can't afford to let accounts run on." She

did not speak with anger, but with determination that was rather frightening. She paused for a moment and

then said: "If you don't pay next Saturday, I shall 'ave to complain to the secretary of the 'ospital."

She looked at him for a little and glanced round the bare room. When she spoke it was without any emphasis,

"I've got a nice 'ot joint downstairs, and if you like to come down to the kitchen you're welcome to a bit of

Philip felt himself redden to the soles of his feet, and a sob caught at his throat.

When she left the room Philip threw himself on his bed. He had to clench his fists in order to prevent himself

SATURDAY. It was the day on which he had promised to pay his landlady. He had been expecting

something to turn up all through the week. He had found no work. He had never been driven to extremities

before, and he was so dazed that he did not know what to do. He had at the back of his mind a feeling that the

whole thing was a preposterous joke. He had no more than a few coppers left, he had sold all the clothes he

could do without; he had some books and one or two odds and ends upon which he might have got a shilling

or two, but the landlady was keeping an eye on his comings and goings: he was afraid she would stop him if

he took anything more from his room. The only thing was to tell her that he could not pay his bill. He had not

the courage. It was the middle of June. The night was fine and warm. He made up his mind to stay out. He

walked slowly along the Chelsea Embankment, because the river was restful and quiet, till he was tired, and

then sat on a bench and dozed. He did not know how long he slept; he awoke with a start, dreaming that he

was being shaken by a policeman and told to move on; but when he opened his eyes he found himself alone.

He walked on, he did not know why, and at last came to Chiswick, where he slept again. Presently the

hardness of the bench roused him. The night seemed very long. He shivered. He was seized with a sense of

his misery; and he did not know what on earth to do: he was ashamed at having slept on the Embankment; it

seemed peculiarly humiliating, and he felt his cheeks flush in the darkness. He remembered stories he had

heard of those who did and how among them were officers, clergymen, and men who had been to

universities: he wondered if he would become one of them, standing in a line to get soup from a charitable

institution. It would be much better to commit suicide. He could not go on like that: Lawson would help him

when he knew what straits he was in; it was absurd to let his pride prevent him from asking for assistance. He

wondered why he had come such a cropper. He had always tried to do what he thought best, and everything

had gone wrong. He had helped people when he could, he did not think he had been more selfish than anyone

But it was no good thinking about it. He walked on. It was now light: the river was beautiful in the silence,

and there was something mysterious in the early day; it was going to be very fine, and the sky, pale in the

dawn, was cloudless. He felt very tired, and hunger was gnawing at his entrails, but he could not sit still; he

was constantly afraid of being spoken to by a policeman. He dreaded the mortification of that. He felt dirty

and wished he could have a wash. At last he found himself at Hampton Court. He felt that if he did not have

something to eat he would cry. He chose a cheap eatinghouse and went in; there was a smell of hot things,

and it made him feel slightly sick: he meant to eat something nourishing enough to keep up for the rest of the

day, but his stomach revolted at the sight of food. He had a cup of tea and some bread and butter. He

remembered then that it was Sunday and he could go to the Athelnys; he thought of the roast beef and the

Yorkshire pudding they would eat; but he was fearfully tired and could not face the happy, noisy family. He

was feeling morose and wretched. He wanted to be left alone. He made up his mind that he would go into the

gardens of the palace and lie down. His bones ached. Perhaps he would find a pump so that he could wash his

hands and face and drink something; he was very thirsty; and now that he was no longer hungry he thought

with pleasure of the flowers and the lawns and the great leafy trees. He felt that there he could think out better

what he must do. He lay on the grass, in the shade, and lit his pipe. For economy's sake he had for a long time

confined himself to two pipes a day; he was thankful now that his pouch was full. He did not know what

people did when they had no money. Presently he fell asleep. When he awoke it was nearly midday, and he

thought that soon he must be setting out for London so as to be there in the early morning and answer any

advertisements which seemed to promise. He thought of his uncle, who had told him that he would leave him

at his death the little he had; Philip did not in the least know how much this was: it could not be more than a

few hundred pounds. He wondered whether he could raise money on the reversion. Not without the old man's

Philip reckoned his age. The Vicar of Blackstable was well over seventy. He had chronic bronchitis, but

many old men had that and lived on indefinitely. Meanwhile something must turn up; Philip could not get

away from the feeling that his position was altogether abnormal; people in his particular station did not

starve. It was because he could not bring himself to believe in the reality of his experience that he did not

give way to utter despair. He made up his mind to borrow half a sovereign from Lawson. He stayed in the

garden all day and smoked when he felt very hungry; he did not mean to eat anything until he was setting out

again for London: it was a long way and he must keep up his strength for that. He started when the day began

to grow cooler, and slept on benches when he was tired. No one disturbed him. He had a wash and brush up,

and a shave at Victoria, some tea and bread and butter, and while he was eating this read the advertisement

columns of the morning paper. As he looked down them his eye fell upon an announcement asking for a

salesman in the `furnishing drapery' department of some wellknown stores. He had a curious little sinking of

the heart, for with his middleclass prejudices it seemed dreadful to go into a shop; but he shrugged his

shoulders, after all what did it matter? and he made up his mind to have a shot at it. He had a queer feeling

that by accepting every humiliation, by going out to meet it even, he was forcing the hand of fate. When he

presented himself, feeling horribly shy, in the department at nine o'clock he found that many others were

there before him. They were of all ages, from boys of sixteen to men of forty; some were talking to one

another in undertones, but most were silent; and when he took up his place those around him gave him a look

"The only thing I look forward to is getting my refusal soon enough to give me time to look elsewhere."

He paused a moment and then made a remark: "Even the smaller houses won't see you without appointment

Philip looked at the assistants. Some were draping chintzes and cretonnes, and others, his neighbour told him

were preparing country orders that had come in by post. At about a quarter past nine the buyer arrived. He

heard one of the men who were waiting say to another that it was Mr. Gibbons. He was middleaged, short

and corpulent, with a black beard and dark, greasy hair. He had brisk movements and a clever face. He wore

a silk hat and a frock coat, the lapel of which was adorned with a white geranium surrounded by leaves. He

went into his office, leaving the door open; it was very small and contained only an American rolldesk in

the corner, a bookcase, and a cupboard. The men standing outside watched him mechanically take the

geranium out of his coat and put it in an inkpot filled with water. It was against the rules to wear flowers in

[During the day the department men who wanted to keep in with the governor admired the flower.

He took off his hat and changed his coat, glanced at the letters and then at the men who were waiting to see

him. He made a slight sign with one finger, and the first in the queue stepped into the office. They filed past

him one by one and answered his questions. He put them very briefly, keeping his eyes fixed on the

He listened to the replies without expression. When it came to Philip's turn he fancied that Mr. Gibbons

stared at him curiously. Philip's clothes were neat and tolerably cut. He looked a little different from the

Philip walked out of the office. The ordeal had been so much less painful than he expected that he felt no

particular disappointment. He could hardly hope to succeed in getting a place the first time he tried. He had

kept the newspaper and now looked at the advertisements again: a shop in Holborn needed a salesman too,

and he went there; but when he arrived he found that someone had already been engaged. If he wanted to get

anything to eat that day he must go to Lawson's studio before he went out to luncheon, so he made his way

"I say, I'm rather broke till the end of the month," he said as soon as he found an opportunity. "I wish you'd

It was incredible the difficulty he found in asking for money; and he remembered the casual way, as though

almost they were conferring a favour, men at the hospital had extracted small sums out of him which they had

But when he put his hand in his pocket he found that he had only eight shillings. Philip's heart sank.

Philip went to the public baths in Westminster and spent sixpence on a bath. Then he got himself something

to eat. He did not know what to do with himself in the afternoon. He would not go back to the hospital in case

anyone should ask him questions, and besides, he had nothing to do there now; they would wonder in the two

or three departments he had worked in why he did not come, but they must think what they chose, it did not

matter: he would not be the first student who had dropped out without warning. He went to the free library,

and looked at the papers till they wearied him, then he took out Stevenson's _New Arabian Nights_; but he

found he could not read: the words meant nothing to him, and he continued to brood over his helplessness.

He kept on thinking the same things all the time, and the fixity of his thoughts made his head ache. At last,

craving for fresh air, he went into the Green Park and lay down on the grass. He thought miserably of his

deformity, which made it impossible for him to go to the war. He went to sleep and dreamt that he was

suddenly sound of foot and out at the Cape in a regiment of Yeomanry; the pictures he had looked at in the

illustrated papers gave materials for his fancy; and he saw himself on the Veldt, in khaki, sitting with other

men round a fire at night. When he awoke he found that it was still quite light, and presently he heard Big

Ben strike seven. He had twelve hours to get through with nothing to do. He dreaded the interminable night.

The sky was overcast and he feared it would rain; he would have to go to a lodginghouse where he could get

a bed; he had seen them advertised on lamps outside houses in Lambeth: Good Beds sixpence; he had never

been inside one, and dreaded the foul smell and the vermin. He made up his mind to stay in the open air if he

possibly could. He remained in the park till it was closed and then began to walk about. He was very tired.

The thought came to him that an accident would be a piece of luck, so that he could be taken to a hospital and

lie there, in a clean bed, for weeks. At midnight he was so hungry that he could not go without food any

more, so he went to a coffee stall at Hyde Park Corner and ate a couple of potatoes and had a cup of coffee.

Then he walked again. He felt too restless to sleep, and he had a horrible dread of being moved on by the

police. He noted that he was beginning to look upon the constable from quite a new angle. This was the third

night he had spent out. Now and then he sat on the benches in Piccadilly and towards morning he strolled

down to The Embankment. He listened to the striking of Big Ben, marking every quarter of an hour, and

reckoned out how long it left till the city woke again. In the morning he spent a few coppers on making

himself neat and clean, bought a paper to read the advertisements, and set out once more on the search for

He went on in this way for several days. He had very little food and began to feel weak and ill, so that he had

hardly enough energy to go on looking for the work which seemed so desperately hard to find. He was

growing used now to the long waiting at the back of a shop on the chance that he would be taken on, and the

curt dismissal. He walked to all parts of London in answer to the advertisements, and he came to know by

sight men who applied as fruitlessly as himself. One or two tried to make friends with him, but he was too

tired and too wretched to accept their advances. He did not go any more to Lawson, because he owed him

five shillings. He began to be too dazed to think clearly and ceased very much to care what would happen to

him. He cried a good deal. At first he was very angry with himself for this and ashamed, but he found it

relieved him, and somehow made him feel less hungry. In the very early morning he suffered a good deal

from cold. One night he went into his room to change his linen; he slipped in about three, when he was quite

sure everyone would be asleep, and out again at five; he lay on the bed and its softness was enchanting; all

his bones ached, and as he lay he revelled in the pleasure of it; it was so delicious that he did not want to go

to sleep. He was growing used to want of food and did not feel very hungry, but only weak. Constantly now

at the back of his mind was the thought of doing away with himself, but he used all the strength he had not to

dwell on it, because he was afraid the temptation would get hold of him so that he would not be able to help

himself. He kept on saying to himself that it would be absurd to commit suicide, since something must

happen soon; he could not get over the impression that his situation was too preposterous to be taken quite

seriously; it was like an illness which must be endured but from which he was bound to recover. Every night

he swore that nothing would induce him to put up with such another and determined next morning to write to

his uncle, or to Mr. Nixon, the solicitor, or to Lawson; but when the time came he could not bring himself to

make the humiliating confession of his utter failure. He did not know how Lawson would take it. In their

friendship Lawson had been scatterbrained and he had prided himself on his common sense. He would have

to tell the whole history of his folly. He had an uneasy feeling that Lawson, after helping him, would turn the

cold shoulder on him. His uncle and the solicitor would of course do something for him, but he dreaded their

reproaches. He did not want anyone to reproach him: he clenched his teeth and repeated that what had

The days were unending, and the five shillings Lawson had lent him would not last much longer. Philip

longed for Sunday to come so that he could go to Athelny's. He did not know what prevented him from going

there sooner, except perhaps that he wanted so badly to get through on his own; for Athelny, who had been in

straits as desperate, was the only person who could do anything for him. Perhaps after dinner he could bring

himself to tell Athelny that he was in difficulties. Philip repeated to himself over and over again what he

should say to him. He was dreadfully afraid that Athelny would put him off with airy phrases: that would be

so horrible that he wanted to delay as long as possible the putting of him to the test. Philip had lost all

Saturday night was cold and raw. Philip suffered horribly. From midday on Saturday till he dragged himself

wearily to Athelny's house he ate nothing. He spent his last twopence on Sunday morning on a wash and a

WHEN Philip rang a head was put out of the window, and in a minute he heard a noisy clatter on the stairs as

the children ran down to let him in. It was a pale, anxious, thin face that he bent down for them to kiss. He

was so moved by their exuberant affection that, to give himself time to recover, he made excuses to linger on

the stairs. He was in a hysterical state and almost anything was enough to make him cry. They asked him why

he had not come on the previous Sunday, and he told them he had been ill; they wanted to know what was the

matter with him; and Philip, to amuse them, suggested a mysterious ailment, the name of which,

doublebarrelled and barbarous with its mixture of Greek and Latin (medical nomenclature bristled with

such), made them shriek with delight. They dragged Philip into the parlour and made him repeat it for their

father's edification. Athelny got up and shook hands with him. He stared at Philip, but with his round, bulging

eyes he always seemed to stare, Philip did not know why on this occasion it made him selfconscious.

Philip could never tell lies without embarrassment, and he was scarlet when he finished his explanation for

He did not know why she imagined that anything had been the matter with him, for the kitchen door was

"Dinner won't be ready for another ten minutes," she said, in her slow drawl. "Won't you have an egg beaten

There was a look of concern on her face which made Philip uncomfortable. He forced a laugh and answered

that he was not at all hungry. Sally came in to lay the table, and Philip began to chaff her. It was the family

joke that she would be as fat as an aunt of Mrs. Athelny, called Aunt Elizabeth, whom the children had never

"That's a _tu quoque_, Sally," cried her father. "You will be fined one golden hair of your head. Jane, fetch

"That's not the question, child. He is at perfect liberty to be thin, but your obesity is contrary to decorum."

As he spoke he put his arm proudly round her waist and looked at her with admiring eyes.

"Let me get on with the table, father. If I am comfortable there are some who don't seem to mind it."

"The hussy!" cried Athelny, with a dramatic wave of the hand. "She taunts me with the notorious fact that

Joseph, a son of Levi who sells jewels in Holbom, has made her an offer of marriage."

"Don't you know father better than that by this time? There's not a word of truth in it."

"Well, if he hasn't made you an offer of marriage," cried Athelny, "by Saint George and Merry England, I

will seize him by the nose and demand of him immediately what are his intentions."

"Sit down, father, dinner's ready. Now then, you children, get along with you and wash your hands all of you,

and don't shirk it, because I mean to look at them before you have a scrap of dinner, so there."

Philip thought he was ravenous till he began to eat, but then discovered that his stomach turned against food,

and he could eat hardly at all. His brain was weary; and he did not notice that Athelny, contrary to his habit,

spoke very little. Philip was relieved to be sitting in a comfortable house, but every now and then he could

not prevent himself from glancing out of the window. The day was tempestuous. The fine weather had

broken; and it was cold, and there was a bitter wind; now and again gusts of rain drove against the window.

Philip wondered what he should do that night. The Athelnys went to bed early, and he could not stay where

he was after ten o'clock. His heart sank at the thought of going out into the bleak darkness. It seemed more

terrible now that he was with his friends than when he was outside and alone. He kept on saying to himself

that there were plenty more who would be spending the night out of doors. He strove to distract his mind by

talking, but in the middle of his words a spatter of rain against the window would make him start.

"It's like March weather," said Athelny. "Not the sort of day one would like to be crossing the Channel."

Philip took it and inhaled the smoke with delight. It soothed him extraordinarily. When Sally had finished

"Now we shan't be disturbed," he said, turning to Philip. "I've arranged with Betty not to let the children

Philip gave him a startled look, but before he could take in the meaning of his words, Athelny, fixing his

"I wrote to you last Sunday to ask if anything was the matter with you, and as you didn't answer I went to

Philip turned his head away and did not answer. His heart began to beat violently. Athelny did not speak, and

presently the silence seemed intolerable to Philip. He could not think of a single word to say.

"Your landlady told me you hadn't been in since Saturday night, and she said you owed her for the last

"Betty and I have been just as broke in our day, only we had babies to look after. Why didn't you come here?"

Philip was afraid he was going to cry. He felt very weak. He shut his eyes and frowned, trying to control

himself. He felt a sudden flash of anger with Athelny because he would not leave him alone; but he was

broken; and presently, his eyes still closed, slowly in order to keep his voice steady, he told him the story of

his adventures during the last few weeks. As he spoke it seemed to him that he had behaved inanely, and it

made it still harder to tell. He felt that Athelny would think him an utter fool.

"Now you're coming to live with us till you find something to do," said Athelny, when he had finished.

Philip did not answer. He had refused instinctively from fear that he would be a bother, and he had a natural

bashfulness of accepting favours. He knew besides that the Athelnys lived from hand to mouth, and with their

"Of course you must come here," said Athelny. "Thorpe will tuck in with one of his brothers and you can

sleep in his bed. You don't suppose your food's going to make any difference to us."

She spoke in such a hearty, friendly tone, taking everything for granted, that Philip was deeply touched. He

never expected people to be kind to him, and when they were it surprised and moved him. Now he could not

prevent two large tears from rolling down his cheeks. The Athelnys discussed the arrangements and

pretended not to notice to what a state his weakness had brought him. When Mrs. Athelny left them Philip

ATHELNY told Philip that he could easily get him something to do in the large firm of linendrapers in which

himself worked. Several of the assistants had gone to the war, and Lynn and Sedley with patriotic zeal had

promised to keep their places open for them. They put the work of the heroes on those who remained, and

since they did not increase the wages of these were able at once to exhibit public spirit and effect an

economy; but the war continued and trade was less depressed; the holidays were coming, when numbers of

the staff went away for a fortnight at a time: they were bound to engage more assistants. Philip's experience

had made him doubtful whether even then they would engage him; but Athelny, representing himself as a

person of consequence in the firm, insisted that the manager could refuse him nothing. Philip, with his

training in Paris, would be very useful; it was only a matter of waiting a little and he was bound to get a

wellpaid job to design costumes and draw posters. Philip made a poster for the summer sale and Athelny

took it away. Two days later he brought it back, saying that the manager admired it very much and regretted

with all his heart that there was no vacancy just then in that department. Philip asked whether there was

"Well, the fact is they're advertising for a shopwalker tomorrow," said Athelny, looking at him doubtfully

Athelny was a little confused; he had led Philip to expect something much more splendid; on the other hand

"You might take it while you wait for something better. You always stand a better chance if you're engaged

"If you decide on that you must be there at a quarter to nine tomorrow morning."

Notwithstanding the war there was evidently much difficulty in finding work, for when Philip went to the

shop many men were waiting already. He recognised some whom he had seen in his own searching, and there

was one whom he had noticed lying about the park in the afternoon. To Philip now that suggested that he was

as homeless as himself and passed the night out of doors. The men were of all sorts, old and young, tall and

short; but every one had tried to make himself smart for the interview with the manager: they had carefully

brushed hair and scrupulously clean hands. They waited in a passage which Philip learnt afterwards led up to

the dininghall and the work rooms; it was broken every few yards by five or six steps. Though there was

electric light in the shop here was only gas, with wire cages over it for protection, and it flared noisily. Philip

arrived punctually, but it was nearly ten o'clock when he was admitted into the office. It was threecornered,

like a cut of cheese lying on its side: on the walls were pictures of women in corsets, and two posterproofs,

one of a man in pyjamas, green and white in large stripes, and the other of a ship in full sail ploughing an

azure sea: on the sail was printed in large letters `great white sale.' The widest side of the office was the back

of one of the shopwindows, which was being dressed at the time, and an assistant went to and fro during the

interview. The manager was reading a letter. He was a florid man, with sandy hair and a large sandy

moustache; from the middle of his watchchain hung a bunch of football medals. He sat in his shirt sleeves at

a large desk with a telephone by his side; before him were the day's advertisements, Athelny's work, and

cuttings from newspapers pasted on a card. He gave Philip a glance but did not speak to him; he dictated a

letter to the typist, a girl who sat at a small table in one corner; then he asked Philip his name, age, and what

experience he had had. He spoke with a cockney twang in a high, metallic voice which he seemed not able

always to control; Philip noticed that his upper teeth were large and protruding; they gave you the impression

He looked Philip up and down. He seemed to notice that Philip was in some way different from the men who

"You'd 'ave to get a frock coat, you know. I suppose you 'aven't got one. You seem a respectable young feller.

Philip could not tell whether he meant to engage him or not. He threw remarks at him in a hostile way.

"I like to give young fellers a chance. Many's the one I've given their chance to and they're managers of

departments now. And they're grateful to me, I'll say that for them. They know what I done for them. Start at

the bottom of the ladder, that's the only way to learn the business, and then if you stick to it there's no

knowing what it can lead to. If you suit, one of these days you may find yourself in a position like what mine

He knew that he must put in the sir whenever he could, but it sounded odd to him, and he was afraid of

overdoing it. The manager liked talking. It gave him a happy consciousness of his own importance, and he

"Well, I daresay you'll do," he said at last, in a pompous way. "Anyhow I don't mind giving you a trial."

"You can start at once. I'll give you six shillings a week and your keep. Everything found, you know; the six

shillings is only pocket money, to do what you like with, paid monthly. Start on Monday. I suppose you've

"Harrington Street, d'you know where that is, Shaftesbury Avenue. That's where you sleep. Number ten, it is.

You can sleep there on Sunday night, if you like; that's just as you please, or you can send your box there on

MRS. ATHELNY lent Philip money to pay his landlady enough of her bill to let him take his things away.

For five shillings and the pawnticket on a suit he was able to get from a pawnbroker a frock coat which

fitted him fairly well. He redeemed the rest of his clothes. He sent his box to Harrington Street by Carter

Patterson and on Monday morning went with Athelny to the shop. Athelny introduced him to the buyer of the

costumes and left him. The buyer was a pleasant, fussy little man of thirty, named Sampson; he shook hands

with Philip, and, in order to show his own accomplishment of which he was very proud, asked him if he

"Oh! I go over to Paris myself occasionally. _Parlezvous francais?_ Ever been to Maxim's?"

Philip was stationed at the top of the stairs in the `costumes.' His work consisted in directing people to the

various departments. There seemed a great many of them as Mr. Sampson tripped them off his tongue.

"I've got a clubfoot," said Philip. "But it doesn't prevent my walking or anything like that."

The buyer looked at it for a moment doubtfully, and Philip surmised that he was wondering why the manager

had engaged him. Philip knew that he had not noticed there was anything the matter with him.

"I don't expect you to get them all correct the first day. If you're in any doubt all you've got to do is to ask one

Mr. Sampson turned away; and Philip, trying to remember where this or the other department was, watched

anxiously for the customer in search of information. At one o'clock he went up to dinner. The diningroom,

on the top floor of the vast building, was large, long, and well lit; but all the windows were shut to keep out

the dust, and there was a horrid smell of cooking. There were long tables covered with cloths, with big glass

bottles of water at intervals, and down the centre salt cellars and bottles of vinegar. The assistants crowded in

noisily, and sat down on forms still warm from those who had dined at twelvethirty.

He was a tall thin young man, with a hooked nose and a pasty face; he had a long head, unevenly shaped as

though the skull had been pushed in here and there oddly, and on his forehead and neck were large acne spots

red and inflamed. His name was Harris. Philip discovered that on some days there were large soupplates

down the table full of mixed pickles. They were very popular. There were no knives and forks, but in a

minute a large fat boy in a white coat came in with a couple of handfuls of them and threw them loudly on the

middle of the table. Each man took what he wanted; they were warm and greasy from recent washing in dirty

water. Plates of meat swimming in gravy were handed round by boys in white jackets, and as they flung each

plate down with the quick gesture of a prestidigitator the gravy slopped over on to the tablecloth. Then they

brought large dishes of cabbages and potatoes; the sight of them turned Philip's stomach; he noticed that

everyone poured quantities of vinegar over them. The noise was awful. They talked and laughed and shouted,

and there was the clatter of knives and forks, and strange sounds of eating. Philip was glad to get back into

the department. He was beginning to remember where each one was, and had less often to ask one of the

One or two of the girls spoke to him, just a word when things were slack, and he felt they were taking his

measure. At five he was sent up again to the diningroom for tea. He was glad to sit down. There were large

slices of bread heavily spread with butter; and many had pots of jam, which were kept in the `store' and had

Philip was exhausted when work stopped at half past six. Harris, the man he had sat next to at dinner, offered

to take him over to Harrington Street to show him where he was to sleep. He told Philip there was a spare bed

in his room, and, as the other rooms were full, he expected Philip would be put there. The house in

Harrington Street had been a bootmaker's; and the shop was used as a bedroom; but it was very dark, since

the window had been boarded three parts up, and as this did not open the only ventilation came from a small

skylight at the far end. There was a musty smell, and Philip was thankful that he would not have to sleep

there. Harris took him up to the sittingroom, which was on the first floor; it had an old piano in it with a

keyboard that looked like a row of decayed teeth; and on the table in a cigarbox without a lid was a set of

dominoes; old numbers of _The Strand Magazine_ and of _The Graphic_ were lying about. The other rooms

were used as bedrooms. That in which Philip was to sleep was at the top of the house. There were six beds

in it, and a trunk or a box stood by the side of each. The only furniture was a chest of drawers: it had four

large drawers and two small ones, and Philip as the newcomer had one of these; there were keys to them,

but as they were all alike they were not of much use, and Harris advised him to keep his valuables in his

trunk. There was a lookingglass on the chimneypiece. Harris showed Philip the lavatory, which was a

fairly large room with eight basins in a row, and here all the inmates did their washing. It led into another

room in which were two baths, discoloured, the woodwork stained with soap; and in them were dark rings at

When Harris and Philip went back to their bedroom they found a tall man changing his clothes and a boy of

sixteen whistling as loud as he could while he brushed his hair. In a minute or two without saying a word to

anybody the tall man went out. Harris winked at the boy, and the boy, whistling still, winked back. Harris

told Philip that the man was called Prior; he had been in the army and now served in the silks; he kept pretty

much to himself, and he went off every night, just like that, without so much as a goodevening, to see his

girl. Harris went out too, and only the boy remained to watch Philip curiously while he unpacked his things.

His name was Bell and he was serving his time for nothing in the haberdashery. He was much interested in

Philip's evening clothes. He told him about the other men in the room and asked him every sort of question

about himself. He was a cheerful youth, and in the intervals of conversation sang in a halfbroken voice

snatches of musichall songs. When Philip had finished he went out to walk about the streets and look at the

crowd; occasionally he stopped outside the doors of restaurants and watched the people going in; he felt

hungry, so he bought a bath bun and ate it while he strolled along. He had been given a latchkey by the

prefect, the man who turned out the gas at a quarter past eleven, but afraid of being locked out he returned in

good time; he had learned already the system of fines: you had to pay a shilling if you came in after eleven,

and half a crown after a quarter past, and you were reported besides: if it happened three times you were

All but the soldier were in when Philip arrived and two were already in bed. Philip was greeted with cries.

He discovered that Bell had dressed up the bolster in his evening clothes. The boy was delighted with his

Philip had already heard of the social evenings, for the money stopped from the wages to pay for them was

one of the grievances of the staff. It was only two shillings a month, and it covered medical attendance and

the use of a library of worn novels; but as four shillings a month besides was stopped for washing, Philip

discovered that a quarter of his six shillings a week would never be paid to him.

Most of the men were eating thick slices of fat bacon between a roll of bread cut in two. These sandwiches,

the assistants' usual supper, were supplied by a small shop a few doors off at twopence each. The soldier

rolled in; silently, rapidly, took off his clothes and threw himself into bed. At ten minutes past eleven the gas

gave a big jump and five minutes later went out. The soldier went to sleep, but the others crowded round the

big window in their pyjamas and nightshirts and, throwing remains of their sandwiches at the women who

passed in the street below, shouted to them facetious remarks. The house opposite, six storeys high, was a

workshop for Jewish tailors who left off work at eleven; the rooms were brightly lit and there were no blinds

to the windows. The sweater's daughterthe family consisted of father, mother, two small boys, and a girl of

twentywent round the house to put out the lights when work was over, and sometimes she allowed herself

to be made love to by one of the tailors. The shop assistants in Philip's room got a lot of amusement out of

watching the manoeuvres of one man or another to stay behind, and they made small bets on which would

succeed. At midnight the people were turned out of the Harrington Arms at the end of the street, and soon

after they all went to bed: Bell, who slept nearest the door, made his way across the room by jumping from

bed to bed, and even when he got to his own would not stop talking. At last everything was silent but for the

He was awaked at seven by the loud ringing of a bell, and by a quarter to eight they were all dressed and

hurrying downstairs in their stockinged feet to pick out their boots. They laced them as they ran along to the

shop in Oxford Street for breakfast. If they were a minute later than eight they got none, nor, once in, were

they allowed out to get themselves anything to eat. Sometimes, if they knew they could not get into the

building in time, they stopped at the little shop near their quarters and bought a couple of buns; but this cost

money, and most went without food till dinner. Philip ate some bread and butter, drank a cup of tea, and at

Soon he began to answer the questions quite mechanically. The work was monotonous and very tiring. After

a few days his feet hurt him so that he could hardly stand: the thick soft carpets made them burn, and at night

his socks were painful to remove. It was a common complaint, and his fellow `floormen' told him that socks

and boots just rotted away from the continual sweating. All the men in his room suffered in the same fashion,

and they relieved the pain by sleeping with their feet outside the bedclothes. At first Philip could not walk at

all and was obliged to spend a good many of his evenings in the sittingroom at Harrington Street with his

feet in a pail of cold water. His companion on these occasions was Bell, the lad in the haberdashery, who

stayed in often to arrange the stamps he collected. As he fastened them with little pieces of stamppaper he

THE social evenings took place on alternate Mondays. There was one at the beginning of Philip's second

This was Mrs. Hodges, a little woman of fiveandforty, with badly dyed hair; she had a yellow face with a

network of small red veins all over it, and yellow whites to her pale blue eyes. She took a fancy to Philip and

She told Philip that her real name was not Hodges, but she always referred to 'me 'usband Misterodges;" he

was a barrister and he treated her simply shocking, so she left him as she preferred to be independent like; but

she had known what it was to drive in her own carriage, dearshe called everyone dearand they always

had late dinner at home. She used to pick her teeth with the pin of an enormous silver brooch. It was in the

form of a whip and a huntingcrop crossed, with two spurs in the middle. Philip was ill at ease in his new

surroundings, and the girls in the shop called him `sidey.' One addressed him as Phil, and he did not answer

because he had not the least idea that she was speaking to him; so she tossed her head, saying he was a

`stuckup thing,' and next time with ironical emphasis called him Mister Carey. She was a Miss Jewell, and

she was going to marry a doctor. The other girls had never seen him, but they said he must be a gentleman as

"Never you mind what they say, dear," said Mrs. Hodges. "I've 'ad to go through it same as you 'ave. They

don't know any better, poor things. You take my word for it, they'll like you all right if you 'old your own

The social evening was held in the restaurant in the basement. The tables were put on one side so that there

She introduced him to Miss Bennett, who was the belle of Lynn's. She was the buyer in the `Petticoats,' and

when Philip entered was engaged in conversation with the buyer in the `Gentlemen's Hosiery;' Miss Bennett

was a woman of massive proportions, with a very large red face heavily powdered and a bust of imposing

dimensions; her flaxen hair was arranged with elaboration. She was overdressed, but not badly dressed, in

black with a high collar, and she wore black _glace_ gloves, in which she played cards; she had several heavy

gold chains round her neck, bangles on her wrists, and circular photograph pendants, one being of Queen

"Please to meet you, Mr. Carey," she said. "This is your first visit to our social evenings, ain't it? I expect you

She did her best to make people feel at home. She slapped them on the shoulders and laughed a great deal.

"Ain't I a pickle?" she cried, turning to Philip. "What must you think of me? But I can't 'elp meself."

Those who were going to take part in the social evening came in, the younger members of the staff mostly,

boys who had not girls of their own, and girls who had not yet found anyone to walk with. Several of the

young gentlemen wore lounge suits with white evening ties and red silk handkerchiefs; they were going to

perform, and they had a busy, abstracted air; some were selfconfident, but others were nervous, and they

watched their public with an anxious eye. Presently a girl with a great deal of hair sat at the piano and ran her

hands noisily across the keyboard. When the audience had settled itself she looked round and gave the name

There was a round of clapping during which she deftly fixed bells to her wrists. She smiled a little and

immediately burst into energetic melody. There was a great deal more clapping when she finished, and when

this was over, as an encore, she gave a piece which imitated the sea; there were little trills to represent the

lapping waves and thundering chords, with the loud pedal down, to suggest a storm. After this a gentleman

sang a song called _Bid me Goodbye_, and as an encore obliged with _Sing me to Sleep_. The audience

measured their enthusiasm with a nice discrimination. Everyone was applauded till he gave an encore, and so

that there might be no jealousy no one was applauded more than anyone else. Miss Bennett sailed up to

"I'm sure you play or sing, Mr. Carey," she said archly. "I can see it in your face."

The buyer in the `gentleman's hosiery' was a wellknown reciter, and he was called upon loudly to perform

by all the assistants in his department. Needing no pressing, he gave a long poem of tragic character, in which

he rolled his eyes, put his hand on his chest, and acted as though he were in great agony. The point, that he

had eaten cucumber for supper, was divulged in the last line and was greeted with laughter, a little forced

because everyone knew the poem well, but loud and long. Miss Bennett did not sing, play, or recite.

"Now, don't you begin chaffing me. The fact is I know quite a lot about palmistry and second sight."

"Oh, do tell my 'and, Miss Bennett," cried the girls in her department, eager to please her.

"I don't like telling 'ands, I don't really. I've told people such terrible things and they've all come true, it

A little crowd collected round her, and, amid screams of embarrassment, giggles, blushings, and cries of

dismay or admiration, she talked mysteriously of fair and dark men, of money in a letter, and of journeys, till

Supper was at nine. There were cakes, buns, sandwiches, tea and coffee, all free; but if you wanted mineral

water you had to pay for it. Gallantry often led young men to offer the ladies ginger beer, but common

decency made them refuse. Miss Bennett was very fond of ginger beer, and she drank two and sometimes

three bottles during the evening; but she insisted on paying for them herself. The men liked her for that.

"She's a rum old bird," they said, "but mind you, she's not a bad sort, she's not like what some are."

After supper progressive whist was played. This was very noisy, and there was a great deal of laughing and

shouting, as people moved from table to table. Miss Bennett grew hotter and hotter.

In due course one of the more dashing of the young men remarked that if they wanted to dance they'd better

begin. The girl who had played the accompaniments sat at the piano and placed a decided foot on the loud

pedal. She played a dreamy waltz, marking the time with the bass, while with the right hand she `tiddled' in

alternate octaves. By way of a change she crossed her hands and played the air in the bass.

"She does play well, doesn't she?" Mrs. Hodges remarked to Philip. "And what's more she's never 'ad a lesson

Miss Bennett liked dancing and poetry better than anything in the world. She danced well, but very, very

slowly, and an expression came into her eyes as though her thoughts were far, far away. She talked

breathlessly of the floor and the heat and the supper. She said that the Portman Rooms had the best floor in

London and she always liked the dances there; they were very select, and she couldn't bear dancing with all

sorts of men you didn't know anything about; why, you might be exposing yourself to you didn't know what

all. Nearly all the people danced very well, and they enjoyed themselves. Sweat poured down their faces, and

Philip looked on, and a greater depression seized him than he remembered to have felt for a long time. He felt

intolerably alone. He did not go, because he was afraid to seem supercilious, and he talked with the girls and

laughed, but in his heart was unhappiness. Miss Bennett asked him if he had a girl.

"Oh, well, there's plenty to choose from here. And they're very nice respectable girls, some of them. I expect

It was nearly eleven o'clock, and the party broke up. Philip could not get to sleep. Like the others he kept his

aching feet outside the bedclothes. He tried with all his might not to think of the life he was leading. The

THE wages were paid once a month by the secretary. On payday each batch of assistants, coming down

from tea, went into the passage and joined the long line of people waiting orderly like the audience in a queue

outside a gallery door. One by one they entered the office. The secretary sat at a desk with wooden bowls of

money in front of him, and he asked the employe's name; he referred to a book, quickly, after a suspicious

glance at the assistant, said aloud the sum due, and taking money out of the bowl counted it into his hand.

The assistant passed on to the second secretary and before leaving the room paid him four shillings for

washing money, two shillings for the club, and any fines that he might have incurred. With what he had left

he went back into his department and there waited till it was time to go. Most of the men in Philip's house

were in debt with the woman who sold the sandwiches they generally ate for supper. She was a funny old

thing, very fat, with a broad, red face, and black hair plastered neatly on each side of the forehead in the

fashion shown in early pictures of Queen Victoria. She always wore a little black bonnet and a white apron;

her sleeves were tucked up to the elbow; she cut the sandwiches with large, dirty, greasy hands; and there was

grease on her bodice, grease on her apron, grease on her skirt. She was called Mrs. Fletcher, but everyone

addressed her as, `Ma'. she was really fond of the shop assistants, whom she called her boys; she never

minded giving credit towards the end of the month, and it was known that now and then she had lent

Someone or other a few shillings when he was in straits. She was a good woman. When they were leaving or

when they came back from the holidays, the boys kissed her fat red cheek; and more than one, dismissed and

unable to find another job, had got for nothing food to keep body and soul together. The boys were sensible

of her large heart and repaid her with genuine affection. There was a story they liked to tell of a man who had

done well for himself at Bradford, and had five shops of his own, and had come back after fifteen years and

Philip found himself with eighteen shillings left out of his month's pay. It was the first money he had ever

earned in his life. It gave him none of the pride which might have been expected, but merely a feeling of

dismay. The smallness of the sum emphasised the hopelessness of his position. He took fifteen shillings to

Mrs. Athelny to pay back part of what he owed her, but she would not take more than half a sovereign.

"As long as Athelny's in work I can afford to wait, and who knows, p'raps they'll give you a rise."

Athelny kept on saying that he would speak to the manager about Philip, it was absurd that no use should be

made of his talents; but he did nothing, and Philip soon came to the conclusion that the pressagent was not a

person of so much importance in the manager's eyes as in his own. Occasionally he saw Athelny in the shop.

commonplace, shabby clothes he hurried, a subdued, unassuming little man, through the departments as

"When I think of how I'm wasted there," he said at home, "I'm almost tempted to give in my notice. There's

Mrs. Athelny, quietly sewing, took no notice of his complaints. Her mouth tightened a little.

"It's very hard to get jobs in these times. It's regular and it's safe; I expect you'll stay there as long as you give

It was evident that Athelny would. It was interesting to see the ascendency which the uneducated woman,

bound to him by no legal tie, had acquired over the brilliant, unstable man. Mrs. Athelny treated Philip with

motherly kindness now that he was in a different position, and he was touched by her anxiety that he should

make a good meal. It was the solace of his life (and when he grew used to it, the monotony of it was what

chiefly appalled him) that he could go every Sunday to that friendly house. It was a joy to sit in the stately

Spanish chairs and discuss all manner of things with Athelny. Though his condition seemed so desperate he

never left him to go back to Harrington Street without a feeling of exultation. At first Philip, in order not to

forget what he had learned, tried to go on reading his medical books, but he found it useless; he could not fix

his attention on them after the exhausting work of the day; and it seemed hopeless to continue working when

he did not know in how long he would be able to go back to the hospital. He dreamed constantly that he was

in the wards. The awakening was painful. The sensation of other people sleeping in the room was

inexpressibly irksome to him; he had been used to solitude, and to be with others always, never to be by

himself for an instant was at these moments horrible to him. It was then that he found it most difficult to

combat his despair. He saw himself going on with that life, first to the right, second on the left, madam,

indefinitely; and having to be thankful if he was not sent away: the men who had gone to the war would be

coming home soon, the firm had guaranteed to take them back, and this must mean that others would be

There was only one thing to free him and that was the death of his uncle. He would get a few hundred pounds

then, and on this he could finish his course at the hospital. Philip began to wish with all his might for the old

man's death. He reckoned out how long he could possibly live: he was well over seventy, Philip did not know

his exact age, but he must be at least seventyfive; he suffered from chronic bronchitis and every winter had

a bad cough. Though he knew them by heart Philip read over and over again the details in his textbook of

medicine of chronic bronchitis in the old. A severe winter might be too much for the old man. With all his

heart Philip longed for cold and rain. He thought of it constantly, so that it became a monomania. Uncle

William was affected by the great heat too, and in August they had three weeks of sweltering weather. Philip

imagined to himself that one day perhaps a telegram would come saying that the Vicar had died suddenly,

and he pictured to himself his unutterable relief. As he stood at the top of the stairs and directed people to the

departments they wanted, he occupied his mind with thinking incessantly what he would do with the money.

He did not know how much it would be, perhaps no more than five hundred pounds, but even that would be

enough. He would leave the shop at once, he would not bother to give notice, he would pack his box and go

without saying a word to anybody; and then he would return to the hospital. That was the first thing. Would

he have forgotten much? In six months he could get it all back, and then he would take his three examinations

as soon as he could, midwifery first, then medicine and surgery. The awful fear seized him that his uncle,

notwithstanding his promises, might leave everything he had to the parish or the church. The thought made

Philip sick. He could not be so cruel. But if that happened Philip was quite determined what to do, he would

not go on in that way indefinitely; his life was only tolerable because he could look forward to something

better. If he had no hope he would have no fear. The only brave thing to do then would be to commit suicide,

and, thinking this over too, Philip decided minutely what painless drug he would take and how he would get

hold of it. It encouraged him to think that, if things became unendurable, he had at all events a way out.

"Second to the right, madam, and down the stairs. First on the left and straight through. Mr. Philips, forward

Once a month, for a week, Philip was `on duty.' He had to go to the department at seven in the morning and

keep an eye on the sweepers. When they finished he had to take the sheets off the cases and the models.

Then, in the evening when the assistants left, he had to put back the sheets on the models and the cases and

`gang' the sweepers again. It was a dusty, dirty job. He was not allowed to read or write or smoke, but just

had to walk about, and the time hung heavily on his hands. When he went off at half past nine he had supper

given him, and this was the only consolation; for tea at five o'clock had left him with a healthy appetite, and

One day when Philip had been at Lynn's for three months, Mr. Sampson, the buyer, came into the

department, fuming with anger. The manager, happening to notice the costume window as he came in, had

sent for the buyer and made satirical remarks upon the colour scheme. Forced to submit in silence to his

superior's sarcasm, Mr. Sampson took it out of the assistants; and he rated the wretched fellow whose duty it

"If you want a thing well done you must do it yourself," Mr. Sampson stormed. "I've always said it and I

always shall. One can't leave anything to you chaps. Intelligent you call yourselves, do you? Intelligent!"

He threw the word at the assistants as though it were the bitterest term of reproach.

"Don't you know that if you put an electric blue in the window it'll kill all the other blues?"

"You'll dress the window next Friday, Carey. let's see what you can make of it."

He went into his office, muttering angrily. Philip's heart sank. When Friday morning came he went into the

window with a sickening sense of shame. His cheeks were burning. It was horrible to display himself to the

passersby, and though he told himself it was foolish to give way to such a feeling he turned his back to the

street. There was not much chance that any of the students at the hospital would pass along Oxford Street at

that hour, and he knew hardly anyone else in London; but as Philip worked, with a huge lump in his throat, he

fancied that on turning round he would catch the eye of some man he knew. He made all the haste he could.

By the simple observation that all reds went together, and by spacing the costumes more than was usual,

Philip got a very good effect; and when the buyer went into the street to look at the result he was obviously

"I knew I shouldn't go far wrong in putting you on the window. The fact is, you and me are gentlemen, mind

you I wouldn't say this in the department, but you and me are gentlemen, and that always tells. It's no good

Philip was put on the job regularly, but he could not accustom himself to the publicity; and he dreaded Friday

morning, on which the window was dressed, with a terror that made him awake at five o'clock and lie

sleepless with sickness in his heart. The girls in the department noticed his shamefaced way, and they very

soon discovered his trick of standing with his back to the street. They laughed at him and called him `sidey.'

On the whole he got on well enough with the girls. They thought him a little queer; but his clubfoot seemed

to excuse his not being like the rest, and they found in due course that he was goodnatured. He never

"Very reserved, isn't he?" said one young woman, to whose passionate enthusiasm for the theatre he had

Most of them had `fellers,' and those who hadn't said they had rather than have it supposed that no one had an

inclination for them. One or two showed signs of being willing to start a flirtation with Philip, and he

watched their manoeuvres with grave amusement. He had had enough of lovemaking for some time; and he

PHILIP avoided the places he had known in happier times. The little gatherings at the tavern in Beak Street

were broken up: Macalister, having let down his friends, no longer went there, and Hayward was at the Cape.

Only Lawson remained; and Philip, feeling that now the painter and he had nothing in common, did not wish

to see him; but one Saturday afternoon, after dinner, having changed his clothes he walked down Regent

Street to go to the free library in St. Martin's Lane, meaning to spend the afternoon there, and suddenly found

himself face to face with him. His first instinct was to pass on without a word, but Lawson did not give him

"I wrote you and asked you to come to the studio for a beano and you never even answered."

"No, I know. I went to the hospital to ask for you, and I saw my letter in the rack. Have you chucked the

Philip hesitated for a moment. He was ashamed to tell the truth, but the shame he felt angered him, and he

The words choked Philip, but he was determined not to shirk the truth. He kept his eyes on Lawson and saw

"If you went into Lynn and Sedley, and made your way into the `made robes' department, you would see me

in a frock coat, walking about with a _degage_ air and directing ladies who want to buy petticoats or

Lawson, seeing that Philip was making a jest of it, laughed awkwardly. He did not know what to say. The

picture that Philip called up horrified him, but he was afraid to show his sympathy.

His words seemed absurd to him, and immediately he wished he had not said them. Philip flushed darkly.

Lawson received the money silently. They stood in the middle of the pavement, and people jostled them as

they passed. There was a sardonic twinkle in Philip's eyes, which made the painter intensely uncomfortable,

and he could not tell that Philip's heart was heavy with despair. Lawson wanted dreadfully to do something,

He saw the pain come into Lawson's eyes, he could not help it, he was sorry, but he had to think of himself;

he could not bear the thought of discussing his situation, he could endure it only by determining resolutely

not to think about it. He was afraid of his weakness if once he began to open his heart. Moreover, he took

irresistible dislikes to the places where he had been miserable: he remembered the humiliation he had

endured when he had waited in that studio, ravenous with hunger, for lawson to offer him a meal, and the last

occasion when he had taken the five shillings off him. He hated the sight of Lawson, because he recalled

Philip was touched with the painter's kindness. All sorts of people were strangely kind to him, he thought.

"It's awfully good of you, old man, but I'd rather not." He held out his hand. "Goodbye."

Lawson, troubled by a behaviour which seemed inexplicable, took his hand, and Philip quickly limped away.

His heart was heavy; and, as was usual with him, he began to reproach himself for what he had done: he did

not know what madness of pride had made him refuse the offered friendship. But he heard someone running

behind him and presently Lawson's voice calling him; he stopped and suddenly the feeling of hostility got the

"Oh, enteric. Hard luck, wasn't it? I thought you mightn't know. Gave me a bit of a turn when I heard it."

Lawson nodded quickly and walked away. Philip felt a shiver pass through his heart. He had never before lost

a friend of his own age, for the death of Cronshaw, a man so much older than himself, had seemed to come in

the normal course of things. The news gave him a peculiar shock. It reminded him of his own mortality, for

like everyone else Philip, knowing perfectly that all men must die, had no intimate feeling that the same must

apply to himself; and Hayward's death, though he had long ceased to have any warm feeling for him, affected

him deeply. He remembered on a sudden all the good talks they had had, and it pained him to think that they

would never talk with one another again; he remembered their first meeting and the pleasant months they had

spent together in Heidelberg. Philip's heart sank as he thought of the lost years. He walked on mechanically,

not noticing where he went, and realised suddenly, with a movement of irritation, that instead of turning

down the Haymarket he had sauntered along Shaftesbury Avenue. It bored him to retrace his steps; and

besides, with that news, he did not want to read, he wanted to sit alone and think. He made up his mind to go

to the British Museum. Solitude was now his only luxury. Since he had been at Lynn's he had often gone

there and sat in front of the groups from the Parthenon; and, not deliberately thinking, had allowed their

divine masses to rest his troubled soul. But this afternoon they had nothing to say to him, and after a few

minutes, impatiently, he wandered out of the room. There were too many people, provincials with foolish

faces, foreigners poring over guidebooks; their hideousness besmirched the everlasting masterpieces, their

restlessness troubled the god's immortal repose. He went into another room and here there was hardly anyone.

Philip sat down wearily. His nerves were on edge. He could not get the people out of his mind. Sometimes at

Lynn's they affected him in the same way, and he looked at them file past him with horror; they were so ugly

and there was such meanness in their faces, it was terrifying; their features were distorted with paltry desires,

and you felt they were strange to any ideas of beauty. They had furtive eyes and weak chins. There was no

wickedness in them, but only pettiness and vulgarity. Their humour was a low facetiousness. Sometimes he

found himself looking at them to see what animal they resembled (he tried not to, for it quickly became an

obsession,) and he saw in them all the sheep or the horse or the fox or the goat. Human beings filled him with

But presently the influence of the place descended upon him. He felt quieter. He began to look absently at the

tombstones with which the room was lined. They were the work of Athenian stone masons of the fourth and

fifth centuries before Christ, and they were very simple, work of no great talent but with the exquisite spirit of

Athens upon them; time had mellowed the marble to the colour of honey, so that unconsciously one thought

of the bees of Hymettus, and softened their outlines. Some represented a nude figure, seated on a bench, some

the departure of the dead from those who loved him, and some the dead clasping hands with one who

remained behind. On all was the tragic word farewell; that and nothing more. Their simplicity was infinitely

touching. Friend parted from friend, the son from his mother, and the restraint made the survivor's grief more

poignant. It was so long, long ago, and century upon century had passed over that unhappiness; for two

thousand years those who wept had been dust as those they wept for. Yet the woe was alive still, and it filled

And it came to him that the gaping sightseers and the fat strangers with their guidebooks, and all those

mean, common people who thronged the shop, with their trivial desires and vulgar cares, were mortal and

must die. They too loved and must part from those they loved, the son from his mother, the wife from her

husband; and perhaps it was more tragic because their lives were ugly and sordid, and they knew nothing that

gave beauty to the world. There was one stone which was very beautiful, a bas relief of two young men

holding each other's hand; and the reticence of line, the simplicity, made one like to think that the sculptor

here had been touched with a genuine emotion. It was an exquisite memorial to that than which the world

offers but one thing more precious, to a friendship; and as Philip looked at it, he felt the tears come to his

eyes. He thought of Hayward and his eager admiration for him when first they met, and how disillusion had

come and then indifference, till nothing held them together but habit and old memories. It was one of the

queer things of life that you saw a person every day for months and were so intimate with him that you could

not imagine existence without him; then separation came, and everything went on in the same way, and the

companion who had seemed essential proved unnecessary. Your life proceeded and you did not even miss

him. Philip thought of those early days in Heidelberg when Hayward, capable of great things, had been full of

enthusiasm for the future, and how, little by little, achieving nothing, he had resigned himself to failure. Now

he was dead. His death had been as futile as his life. He died ingloriously, of a stupid disease, failing once

more, even at the end, to accomplish anything. It was just the same now as if he had never lived.

Philip asked himself desperately what was the use of living at all. It all seemed inane. It was the same with

Cronshaw: it was quite unimportant that he had lived; he was dead and forgotten, his book of poems sold in

remainder by secondhand booksellers; his life seemed to have served nothing except to give a pushing

journalist occasion to write an article in a review. And Philip cried out in his soul:

The effort was so incommensurate with the result. The bright hopes of youth had to be paid for at such a

bitter price of disillusionment. Pain and disease and unhappiness weighed down the scale so heavily. What

did it all mean? He thought of his own life, the high hopes with which he had entered upon it, the limitations

which his body forced upon him, his friendlessness, and the lack of affection which had surrounded his

youth. He did not know that he had ever done anything but what seemed best to do, and what a cropper he

had come! Other men, with no more advantages than he, succeeded, and others again, with many more,

failed. It seemed pure chance. The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there

Thinking of Cronshaw, Philip remembered the Persian rug which he had given him, telling him that it offered

an answer to his question upon the meaning of life; and suddenly the answer occurred to him: he chuckled:

now that he had it, it was like one of the puzzles which you worry over till you are shown the solution and

then cannot imagine how it could ever have escaped you. The answer was obvious. Life had no meaning. On

the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions

which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it so, under the

influence of other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had

come not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment. Philip remembered the story

of the Eastern King who, desiring to know the history of man, was brought by a sage five hundred volumes;

busy with affairs of state, he bade him go and condense it; in twenty years the sage returned and his history

now was in no more than fifty volumes, but the King, too old then to read so many ponderous tomes, bade

him go and shorten it once more; twenty years passed again and the sage, old and gray, brought a single book

in which was the knowledge the King had sought; but the King lay on his deathbed, and he had no time to

read even that; and then the sage gave him the history of man in a single line; it was this: he was born, he

suffered, and he died. There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial

whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without

consequence. Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted

from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the

first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with

the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its

cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing.

He was the most inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied

the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its

nothingness. Thoughts came tumbling over one another in Philip's eager fancy, and he took long breaths of

joyous satisfaction. He felt inclined to leap and sing. He had not been so happy for months.

For the same uprush of fancy which had shown him with all the force of mathematical demonstration that life

had no meaning, brought with it another idea; and that was why Cronshaw, he imagined, had given him the

Persian rug. As the weaver elaborated his pattern for no end but the pleasure of his aesthetic sense, so might a

man live his life, or if one was forced to believe that his actions were outside his choosing, so might a man

look at his life, that it made a pattern. There was as little need to do this as there was use. It was merely

something he did for his own pleasure. Out of the manifold events of his life, his deeds, his feelings, his

thoughts, he might make a design, regular, elaborate, complicated, or beautiful; and though it might be no

more than an illusion that he had the power of selection, though it might be no more than a fantastic

legerdemain in which appearances were interwoven with moonbeams, that did not matter: it seemed, and so

to him it was. In the vast warp of life (a river arising from no spring and flowing endlessly to no sea), with the

background to his fancies that there was no meaning and that nothing was important, a man might get a

personal satisfaction in selecting the various strands that worked out the pattern. There was one pattern, the

most obvious, perfect, and beautiful, in which a man was born, grew to manhood, married, produced children,

toiled for his bread, and died; but there were others, intricate and wonderful, in which happiness did not enter

and in which success was not attempted; and in them might be discovered a more troubling grace. Some

lives, and Hayward's was among them, the blind indifference of chance cut off while the design was still

imperfect; and then the solace was comfortable that it did not matter; other lives, such as Cronshaw's, offered

a pattern which was difficult to follow, the point of view had to be shifted and old standards had to be altered

before one could understand that such a life was its own justification. Philip thought that in throwing over the

desire for happiness he was casting aside the last of his illusions. His life had seemed horrible when it was

measured by its happiness, but now he seemed to gather strength as he realised that it might be measured by

something else. Happiness mattered as little as pain. They came in, both of them, as all the other details of his

life came in, to the elaboration of the design. He seemed for an instant to stand above the accidents of his

existence, and he felt that they could not affect him again as they had done before. Whatever happened to him

now would be one more motive to add to the complexity of the pattern, and when the end approached he

would rejoice in its completion. It would be a work of art, and it would be none the less beautiful because he

MR. SAMPSON, the buyer, took a fancy to Philip. Mr. Sampson was very dashing, and the girls in his

department said they would not be surprised if he married one of the rich customers. He lived out of town and

often impressed the assistants by putting on his evening clothes in the office. Sometimes he would be seen by

those on sweeping duty coming in next morning still dressed, and they would wink gravely to one another

while he went into his office and changed into a frock coat. On these occasions, having slipped out for a

hurried breakfast, he also would wink at Philip as he walked up the stairs on his way back and rub his hands.

He told Philip that he was the only gentleman there, and he and Philip were the only fellows who knew what

life was. Having said this, he changed his manner suddenly, called Philip Mr. Carey instead of old boy,

assumed the importance due to his position as buyer, and put Philip back into his place of shopwalker.

Lynn and Sedley received fashion papers from Paris once a week and adapted the costumes illustrated in

them to the needs of their customers. Their clientele was peculiar. The most substantial part consisted of

women from the smaller manufacturing towns, who were too elegant to have their frocks made locally and

not sufficiently acquainted with London to discover good dressmakers within their means. Beside these,

incongruously, was a large number of musichall artistes. This was a connection that Mr. Sampson had

worked up for himself and took great pride in. They had begun by getting their stagecostumes at Lynn's, and

He had a persuasive, hailfellow wellmet air with him which appealed to customers of this sort, and they

"What's the good of throwing money away when you can get a coat and skirt at Lynn's that nobody knows

Mr. Sampson was very proud of his friendship with the popular favourites whose frocks he made, and when

he went out to dinner at two o'clock on Sunday with Miss Victoria Virgo"she was wearing that powder

blue we made her and I lay she didn't let on it come from us, I 'ad to tell her meself that if I 'adn't designed it

with my own 'ands I'd have said it must come from Paquin"at her beautiful house in Tulse Hill, he regaled

the department next day with abundant details. Philip had never paid much attention to women's clothes, but

in course of time he began, a little amused at himself, to take a technical interest in them. He had an eye for

colour which was more highly trained than that of anyone in the department, and he had kept from his student

days in Paris some knowledge of line. Mr. Sampson, an ignorant man conscious of his incompetence, but

with a shrewdness that enabled him to combine other people's suggestions, constantly asked the opinion of

the assistants in his department in making up new designs; and he had the quickness to see that Philip's

criticisms were valuable. But he was very jealous, and would never allow that he took anyone's advice. When

he had altered some drawing in accordance with Philip's suggestion, he always finished up by saying:

One day, when Philip had been at the shop for five months, Miss Alice Antonia, the wellknown

seriocomic, came in and asked to see Mr. Sampson. She was a large woman, with flaxen hair, and a boldly

painted face, a metallic voice, and the breezy manner of a comedienne accustomed to be on friendly terms

with the gallery boys of provincial musichalls. She had a new song and wished Mr. Sampson to design a

"I want something striking," she said. "I don't want any old thing you know. I want something different from

Mr. Sampson, bland and familiar, said he was quite certain they could get her the very thing she required. He

"I know there's nothing here that would do, but I just want to show you the kind of thing I would suggest."

"Oh no, that's not the sort of thing at all," she said, as she glanced at them impatiently. "What I want is

"Yes, I quite understand, Miss Antonia," said the buyer, with a bland smile, but his eyes grew blank and

"Oh, I think we can give you satisfaction, Miss Antonia. What you can get in Paris you can get here."

When she had swept out of the department Mr. Sampson, a little worried, discussed the matter with Mrs.

"Alice, where art thou?" remarked the buyer, irritably, and thought he had scored a point against her.

His ideas of musichall costumes had never gone beyond short skirts, a swirl of lace, and glittering sequins;

And the invocation was uttered in such a tone as to indicate a rooted antipathy to anything so commonplace,

even if she had not added that sequins gave her the sick. Mr. Sampson `got out' one or two ideas, but Mrs.

Hodges told him frankly she did not think they would do. It was she who gave Philip the suggestion:

Philip bought a cheap box of water colours, and in the evening while Bell, the noisy lad of sixteen, whistling

three notes, busied himself with his stamps, he made one or two sketches. He remembered some of the

costumes he had seen in Paris, and he adapted one of them, getting his effect from a combination of violent,

unusual colours. The result amused him and next morning he showed it to Mrs. Hodges. She was somewhat

It puzzled him, and at the same time his trained eye saw that it would make up admirably. To save his face he

began making suggestions for altering it, but Mrs. Hodges, with more sense, advised him to show it to Miss

"It's a good deal more nothing than neck," said Mr. Sampson, looking at the _decolletage_. "He can draw,

When Miss Antonia was announced, the buyer placed the design on the table in such a position that it must

catch her eye the moment she was shown into his office. She pounced on it at once.

"That's just an idea we got out for you," said Mr. Sampson casually. "D'you like it?"

"Do I like it!" she said. "Give me 'alf a pint with a little drop of gin in it."

"Ah, you see, you don't have to go to Paris. You've only got to say what you want and there you are."

The work was put in hand at once, and Philip felt quite a thrill of satisfaction when he saw the costume

completed. The buyer and Mrs. Hodges took all the credit of it; but he did not care, and when he went with

them to the Tivoli to see Miss Antonia wear it for the first time he was filled with elation. In answer to her

questions he at last told Mrs. Hodges how he had learnt to drawfearing that the people he lived with would

think he wanted to put on airs, he had always taken the greatest care to say nothing about his past

occupationsand she repeated the information to Mr. Sampson. The buyer said nothing to him on the

subject, but began to treat him a little more deferentially and presently gave him designs to do for two of the

country customers. They met with satisfaction. Then he began to speak to his clients of a "clever young feller,

Paris artstudent, you know," who worked for him; and soon Philip, ensconced behind a screen, in his shirt

sleeves, was drawing from morning till night. Sometimes he was so busy that he had to dine at three with the

`stragglers.' He liked it, because there were few of them and they were all too tired to talk; the food also was

better, for it consisted of what was left over from the buyers' table. Philip's rise from shopwalker to designer

of costumes had a great effect on the department. He realised that he was an object of envy. Harris, the

assistant with the queershaped head, who was the first person he had known at the shop and had attached

"Some people 'ave all the luck," he said. "You'll be a buyer yourself one of these days, and we shall all be

He told Philip that he should demand higher wages, for notwithstanding the difficult work he was now

engaged in, he received no more than the six shillings a week with which he started. But it was a ticklish

matter to ask for a rise. The manager had a sardonic way of dealing with such applicants.

The assistant, with his heart in his mouth, would suggest that he thought he ought to have another two

"Oh, very well, if you think you're worth it. You can 'ave it." Then he paused and sometimes, with a steely

It was no use then to withdraw your request, you had to go. The manager's idea was that assistants who were

dissatisfied did not work properly, and if they were not worth a rise it was better to sack them at once. The

result was that they never asked for one unless they were prepared to leave. Philip hesitated. He was a little

suspicious of the men in his room who told him that the buyer could not do without him. They were decent

fellows, but their sense of humour was primitive, and it would have seemed funny to them if they had

persuaded Philip to ask for more wages and he were sacked. He could not forget the mortification he had

suffered in looking for work, he did not wish to expose himself to that again, and he knew there was small

chance of his getting elsewhere a post as designer: there were hundreds of people about who could draw as

well as he. But he wanted money very badly; his clothes were worn out, and the heavy carpets rotted his

socks and boots; he had almost persuaded himself to take the venturesome step when one morning, passing

up from breakfast in the basement through the passage that led to the manager's office, he saw a queue of

men waiting in answer to an advertisement. There were about a hundred of them, and whichever was engaged

would be offered his keep and the same six shillings a week that Philip had. He saw some of them cast

envious glances at him because he had employment. It made him shudder. He dared not risk it.

THE winter passed. Now and then Philip went to the hospital, slinking in when it was late and there was little

chance of meeting anyone he knew, to see whether there were letters for him. At Easter he received one from

his uncle. He was surprised to hear from him, for the Vicar of Blackstable had never written him more than

If you are thinking of taking a holiday soon and care to come down here I shall be pleased to see you. I was

very ill with my bronchitis in the winter and Doctor Wigram never expected me to pull through. I have a

wonderful constitution and I made, thank God, a marvellous recovery. Yours affectionately, William Carey._

The letter made Philip angry. How did his uncle think he was living? He did not even trouble to inquire. He

might have starved for all the old man cared. But as he walked home something struck him; he stopped under

a lamppost and read the letter again; the handwriting had no longer the businesslike firmness which had

characterised it; it was larger and wavering: perhaps the illness had shaken him more than he was willing to

confess, and he sought in that formal note to express a yearning to see the only relation he had in the world.

Philip wrote back that he could come down to Blackstable for a fortnight in July. The invitation was

convenient, for he had not known what to do, with his brief holiday. The Athelnys went hopping in

September, but he could not then be spared, since during that month the autumn models were prepared. The

rule of Lynn's was that everyone must take a fortnight whether he wanted it or not; and during that time, if he

had nowhere to go, the assistant might sleep in his room, but he was not allowed food. A number had no

friends within reasonable distance of London, and to these the holiday was an awkward interval when they

had to provide food out of their small wages and, with the whole day on their hands, had nothing to spend.

Philip had not been out of London since his visit to Brighton with Mildred, now two years before, and he

longed for fresh air and the silence of the sea. He thought of it with such a passionate desire, all through May

On his last evening, when he talked with the buyer of one or two jobs he had to leave over, Mr. Sampson

"I don't think it's enough. I'll see that you're put up to twelve when you come back."

"Thank you very much," smiled Philip. "I'm beginning to want some new clothes badly."

"If you stick to your work and don't go larking about with the girls like what some of them do, I'll look after

you, Carey. Mind you, you've got a lot to learn, but you're promising, I'll say that for you, you're promising,

He was startled at the change in his uncle. When last he had seen him he was a stout man, who held himself

upright, cleanshaven, with a round, sensual face; but he had fallen in strangely, his skin was yellow; there

were great bags under the eyes, and he was bent and old. He had grown a beard during his last illness, and he

"I 'm not at my best today," he said when Philip, having just arrived, was sitting with him in the diningroom.

Philip, asking after the affairs of the parish, looked at him and wondered how much longer he could last. A

hot summer would finish him; Philip noticed how thin his hands were; they trembled. It meant so much to

Philip. If he died that summer he could go back to the hospital at the beginning of the winter session; his

heart leaped at the thought of returning no more to Lynn's. At dinner the Vicar sat humped up on his chair,

The old man, who had been about to do so from disinclination to confess his weakness, seemed glad at the

"Oh yes, I always eat well. But I'm thinner than when you were here last. I'm glad to be thinner, I didn't like

being so fat. Dr. Wigram thinks I'm all the better for being thinner than I was."

"Show the prescription to Master Philip," he said. "He's a doctor too. I'd like him to see that he thinks it's all

right. I told Dr. Wigram that now you're studying to be a doctor he ought to make a reduction in his charges.

It's dreadful the bills I've had to pay. He came every day for two months, and he charges five shillings a visit.

It's a lot of money, isn't it? He comes twice a week still. I'm going to tell him he needn't come any more. I'll

He looked at Philip eagerly while he read the prescriptions. They were narcotics. There were two of them,

and one was a medicine which the Vicar explained he was to use only if his neuritis grew unendurable.

He did not mention his nephew's affairs. Philip fancied that it was by way of precaution, in case he asked for

money, that his uncle kept dwelling on the financial calls upon him. He had spent so much on the doctor and

so much more on the chemist, while he was ill they had had to have a fire every day in his bedroom, and

now on Sunday he needed a carriage to go to church in the evening as well as in the morning. Philip felt

angrily inclined to say he need not be afraid, he was not going to borrow from him, but he held his tongue. It

seemed to him that everything had left the old man now but two things, pleasure in his food and a grasping

In the afternoon Dr. Wigram came, and after the visit Philip walked with him to the garden gate.

Dr. Wigram was more anxious not to do wrong than to do right, and he never hazarded a definite opinion if

he could help it. He had practised at Blackstable for fiveandthirty years. He had the reputation of being

very safe, and many of his patients thought it much better that a doctor should be safe than clever. There was

a new man at Blackstablehe had been settled there for ten years, but they still looked upon him as an

interloperand he was said to be very clever; but he had not much practice among the better people, because

"Oh, he's as well as can be expected," said Dr. Wigram in answer to Philip's inquiry.

"Well, Philip, your uncle is no longer a young man," said the doctor with a cautious little smile, which

"I'm not satisfied with his heart," hazarded the doctor, "I think he should be careful, very careful."

On the tip of Philip's tongue was the question: how much longer can he live? He was afraid it would shock. In

these matters a periphrase was demanded by the decorum of life, but, as he asked another question instead, it

flashed through him that the doctor must be accustomed to the impatience of a sick man's relatives. He must

see through their sympathetic expressions. Philip, with a faint smile at his own hypocrisy, cast down his eyes.

This was the kind of question the doctor hated. If you said a patient couldn't live another month the family

prepared itself for a bereavement, and if then the patient lived on they visited the medical attendant with the

resentment they felt at having tormented themselves before it was necessary. On the other hand, if you said

the patient might live a year and he died in a week the family said you did not know your business. They

thought of all the affection they would have lavished on the defunct if they had known the end was so near.

"I don't think there's any grave risk so long as heremains as he is," he ventured at last. "But on the other

hand, we mustn't forget that he's no longer a young man, and well, the machine is wearing out. If he gets over

the hot weather I don't see why he shouldn't get on very comfortably till the winter, and then if the winter

Philip went back to the diningroom where his uncle was sitting. With his skullcap and a crochet shawl

over his shoulders he looked grotesque. His eyes had been fixed on the door, and they rested on Philip's face

as he entered. Philip saw that his uncle had been waiting anxiously for his return.

Philip understood suddenly that the old man was frightened of dying. It made Philip a little ashamed, so that

he looked away involuntarily. He was always embarrassed by the weakness of human nature.

"I've got a wonderful constitution," he said. "What else did he say?" he added suspiciously.

"He said that if you take care of yourself there's no reason why you shouldn't live to be a hundred."

"I don't know that I can expect to do that, but I don't see why I shouldn't see eighty. My mother lived till she

There was a little table by the side of Mr. Carey's chair, and on it were a Bible and the large volume of the

Common Prayer from which for so many years he had been accustomed to read to his household. He

"Those old patriarchs lived to a jolly good old age, didn't they?" he said, with a queer little laugh in which

The old man clung to life. Yet he believed implicitly all that his religion taught him. He had no doubt in the

immortality of the soul, and he felt that he had conducted himself well enough, according to his capacities, to

make it very likely that he would go to heaven. In his long career to how many dying persons must he have

administered the consolations of religion! Perhaps he was like the doctor who could get no benefit from his

own prescriptions. Philip was puzzled and shocked by that eager cleaving to the earth. He wondered what

nameless horror was at the back of the old man's mind. He would have liked to probe into his soul so that he

might see in its nakedness the dreadful dismay of the unknown which he suspected.

The fortnight passed quickly and Philip returned to London. He passed a sweltering August behind his screen

in the costumes department, drawing in his shirt sleeves. The assistants in relays went for their holidays. In

the evening Philip generally went into Hyde Park and listened to the band. Growing more accustomed to his

work it tired him less, and his mind, recovering from its long stagnation, sought for fresh activity. His whole

desire now was set on his uncle's death. He kept on dreaming the same dream: a telegram was handed to him

one morning, early, which announced the Vicar's sudden demise, and freedom was in his grasp. When he

awoke and found it was nothing but a dream he was filled with sombre rage. He occupied himself, now that

the event seemed likely to happen at any time, with elaborate plans for the future. In these he passed rapidly

over the year which he must spend before it was possible for him to be qualified and dwelt on the journey to

Spain on which his heart was set. He read books about that country, which he borrowed from the free library,

and already he knew from photographs exactly what each city looked like. He saw himself lingering in

Cordova on the bridge that spanned the Gaudalquivir; he wandered through tortuous streets in Toledo and sat

in churches where he wrung from El Greco the secret which he felt the mysterious painter held for him.

Athelny entered into his humour, and on Sunday afternoons they made out elaborate itineraries so that Philip

should miss nothing that was noteworthy. To cheat his impatience Philip began to teach himself Spanish, and

in the deserted sittingroom in Harrington Street he spent an hour every evening doing Spanish exercises and

puzzling out with an English translation by his side the magnificent phrases of Don Quixote. Athelny gave

him a lesson once a week, and Philip learned a few sentences to help him on his journey. Mrs. Athelny

But Sally, who was growing up and was to put up her hair at Christmas, stood by sometimes and listened in

her grave way while her father and Philip exchanged remarks in a language she did not understand. She

thought her father the most wonderful man who had ever existed, and she expressed her opinion of Philip

"Father thinks a rare lot of your Uncle Philip," she remarked to her brothers and sisters.

Thorpe, the eldest boy, was old enough to go on the Arethusa, and Athelny regaled his family with

magnificent descriptions of the appearance the lad would make when he came back in uniform for his

holidays. As soon as Sally was seventeen she was to be apprenticed to a dressmaker. Athelny in his rhetorical

way talked of the birds, strong enough to fly now, who were leaving the parental nest, and with tears in his

eyes told them that the nest would be there still if ever they wished to return to it. A shakedown and a dinner

would always be theirs, and the heart of a father would never be closed to the troubles of his children.

"You do talk, Athelny," said his wife. "I don't know what trouble they're likely to get into so long as they're

steady. So long as you're honest and not afraid of work you'll never be out of a job, that's what I think, and I

can tell you I shan't be sorry when I see the last of them earning their own living."

Childbearing, hard work, and constant anxiety were beginning to tell on Mrs. Athelny; and sometimes her

back ached in the evening so that she had to sit down and rest herself. Her ideal of happiness was to have a

girl to do the rough work so that she need not herself get up before seven. Athelny waved his beautiful white

"Ah, my Betty, we've deserved well of the state, you and I. We've reared nine healthy children, and the boys

shall serve their king; the girls shall cook and sew and in their turn breed healthy children." He turned to

Sally, and to comfort her for the anticlimax of the contrast added grandiloquently: "They also serve who

Athelny had lately added socialism to the other contradictory theories he vehemently believed in, and he

"Oh, don't talk to me about your socialists, I've got no patience with them," she cried. "It only means that

another lot of lazy loafers will make a good thing out of the working classes. My motto is, leave me alone; I

don't want anyone interfering with me; I'll make the best of a bad job, and the devil take the hindmost."

"D'you call life a bad job?" said Athelny. "Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles,

we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my

"You do talk, Athelny," she said, looking at him, not with anger but with scornful calm. "You've had the

pleasant part of the children, I've had the bearing of them, and the bearing with them. I don't say that I'm not

fond of them, now they're there, but if I had my time over again I'd remain single. Why, if I'd remained single

I might have a little shop by now, and four or five hundred pounds in the bank, and a girl to do the rough

Philip thought of the countless millions to whom life is no more than unending labour, neither beautiful nor

ugly, but just to be accepted in the same spirit as one accepts the changes of the seasons. Fury seized him

because it all seemed useless. He could not reconcile himself to the belief that life had no meaning and yet

everything he saw, all his thoughts, added to the force of his conviction. But though fury seized him it was a

joyful fury. life was not so horrible if it was meaningless, and he faced it with a strange sense of power.

THE autumn passed into winter. Philip had left his address with Mrs. Foster, his uncle's housekeeper, so that

she might communicate with him, but still went once a week to the hospital on the chance of there being a

letter. One evening he saw his name on an envelope in a handwriting he had hoped never to see again. It gave

him a queer feeling. For a little while he could not bring himself to take it. It brought back a host of hateful

He tore the letter into little bits and going out into the street scattered them in the darkness.

A feeling of disgust surged up in him at the thought of seeing her again. He did not care if she was in distress,

it served her right whatever it was, he thought of her with hatred, and the love he had had for her aroused his

loathing. His recollections filled him with nausea, and as he walked across the Thames he drew himself aside

in an instinctive withdrawal from his thought of her. He went to bed, but he could not sleep; he wondered

what was the matter with her, and he could not get out of his head the fear that she was ill and hungry; she

would not have written to him unless she were desperate. He was angry with himself for his weakness, but he

knew that he would have no peace unless he saw her. Next morning he wrote a lettercard and posted it on

his way to the shop. He made it as stiff as he could and said merely that he was sorry she was in difficulties

It was that of a shabby lodginghouse in a sordid street; and when, sick at the thought of seeing her, he asked

whether she was in, a wild hope seized him that she had left. It looked the sort of place people moved in and

out of frequently. He had not thought of looking at the postmark on her letter and did not know how many

days it had lain in the rack. The woman who answered the bell did not reply to his inquiry, but silently

He walked in and she closed the door. It was a very small bedroom, untidy as was every place she lived in;

there was a pair of shoes on the floor, lying apart from one another and uncleaned; a hat was on the chest of

drawers, with false curls beside it; and there was a blouse on the table. Philip looked for somewhere to put his

hat. The hooks behind the door were laden with skirts, and he noticed that they were muddy at the hem.

"Sit down, won't you?" she said. Then she gave a little awkward laugh. "I suppose you were surprised to hear

He did not say anything. He waited for her to explain why she wanted to see him. The look of the room told

him clearly enough that she had gone back to the life from which he had taken her. He wondered what had

happened to the baby; there was a photograph of it on the chimneypiece, but no sign in the room that a child

was ever there. Mildred was holding her handkerchief. She made it into a little ball, and passed it from hand

to hand. He saw that she was very nervous. She was staring at the fire, and he could look at her without

meeting her eyes. She was much thinner than when she had left him; and the skin, yellow and dryish, was

drawn more tightly over her cheekbones. She had dyed her hair and it was now flaxen: it altered her a good

"I was relieved to get your letter, I can tell you," she said at last. "I thought p'raps you weren't at the 'ospital

"I lost the little money I had in an unlucky speculation and I couldn't afford to go on with the medical. I had

She gave him a quick glance and turned her eyes away at once. He thought that she reddened. She dabbed her

"You've not forgotten all your doctoring, have you?" She jerked the words out quite oddly.

"Because that's why I wanted to see you." Her voice sank to a hoarse whisper. "I don't know what's the matter

"I don't like to do that, and have all the stoodents staring at me, and I'm afraid they'd want to keep me."

"What are you complaining of?" asked Philip coldly, with the stereotyped phrase used in the outpatients'

He took her over to the window and made such examination as he could. Suddenly he caught sight of her

eyes. There was deadly fear in them. It was horrible to see. She was terrified. She wanted him to reassure her;

she looked at him pleadingly, not daring to ask for words of comfort but with all her nerves astrung to receive

When he told her she grew deathly pale, and her lips even turned, yellow. she began to cry, hopelessly,

"You must give up this life, you know. Don't you think you could find some work to do? I'm afraid I can't

He spoke to her very gravely, telling her of her own danger and the danger to which she exposed others, and

she listened sullenly. He tried to console her. At last he brought her to a sulky acquiescence in which she

promised to do all he advised. He wrote a prescription, which he said he would leave at the nearest chemist's,

and he impressed upon her the necessity of taking her medicine with the utmost regularity. Getting up to go,

But as he went her face became suddenly distorted, and she caught hold of his coat.

"Oh, don't leave me," she cried hoarsely. "I'm so afraid, don't leave me alone yet. Phil, please. There's no one

He felt the terror of her soul, and it was strangely like that terror he had seen in his uncle's eyes when he

feared that he might die. Philip looked down. Twice that woman had come into his life and made him

wretched; she had no claim upon him; and yet, he knew not why, deep in his heart was a strange aching; it

was that which, when he received her letter, had left him no peace till he obeyed her summons.

What perplexed him was that he felt a curious physical distaste, which made it uncomfortable for him to be

He hesitated. He felt that she was creeping back again into his life when he thought she was gone out of it for

"Oh, I know I've treated you shocking, but don't leave me alone now. You've had your revenge. If you leave

"All right, I don't mind," He said, "but we shall have to do it on the cheap, I haven't got money to throw away

She sat down and put her shoes on, then changed her skirt and put on a hat; and they walked out together till

they found a restaurant in the Tottenham Court Road. Philip had got out of the habit of eating at those hours,

and Mildred's throat was so sore that she could not swallow. They had a little cold ham and Philip drank a

glass of beer. They sat opposite one another, as they had so often sat before; he wondered if she remembered;

they had nothing to say to one another and would have sat in silence if Philip had not forced himself to talk.

In the bright light of the restaurant, with its vulgar lookingglasses that reflected in an endless series, she

looked old and haggard. Philip was anxious to know about the child, but he had not the courage to ask. At last

"You were rare stuck on it at one time, weren't you? I always thought it funny like how you could see so

When they had finished eating they called at the chemist's for the medicine Philip had ordered, and going

back to the shabby room he made her take a dose. Then they sat together till it was time for Philip to go back

Philip went to see her every day. She took the medicine he had prescribed and followed his directions, and

soon the results were so apparent that she gained the greatest confidence in Philip's skill. As she grew better

"As soon as I can get a job I shall be all right," she said. "I've had my lesson now and I mean to profit by it.

Each time he saw her, Philip asked whether she had found work. She told him not to worry, she would find

something to do as soon as she wanted it; she had several strings to her bow; it was all the better not to do

anything for a week or two. He could not deny this, but at the end of that time he became more insistent. She

laughed at him, she was much more cheerful now, and said he was a fussy old thing. She told him long

stories of the manageresses she interviewed, for her idea was to get work at some eatinghouse; what they

said and what she answered. Nothing definite was fixed, but she was sure to settle something at the beginning

of the following week: there was no use hurrying, and it would be a mistake to take something unsuitable.

"It's absurd to talk like that," he said impatiently. "You must take anything you can get. I can't help you, and

He looked at her sharply. It was three weeks since his first visit, and she had then less than seven pounds.

Suspicion seized him. He remembered some of the things she had said. He put two and two together. He

wondered whether she had made any attempt to find work. Perhaps she had been lying to him all the time. It

"Oh, the landlady's very nice, different from what some of them are; she's quite willing to wait till it's

He was silent. What he suspected was so horrible that he hesitated. It was no use to ask her, she would deny

everything; if he wanted to know he must find out for himself. He was in the habit of leaving her every

evening at eight, and when the clock struck he got up; but instead of going back to Harrington Street he

stationed himself at the corner of Fitzroy Square so that he could see anyone who came along William Street.

It seemed to him that he waited an interminable time, and he was on the point of going away, thinking his

surmise had been mistaken, when the door of No. 7 opened and Mildred came out. He fell back into the

darkness and watched her walk towards him. She had on the hat with a quantity of feathers on it which he had

seen in her room, and she wore a dress he recognized, too showy for the street and unsuitable to the time of

year. He followed her slowly till she came into the Tottenham Court Road, where she slackened her pace; at

the corner of Oxford Street she stopped, looked round, and crossed over to a musichall. He went up to her

and touched her on the arm. He saw that she had rouged her cheeks and painted her lips.

She started at the sound of his voice and reddened as she always did when she was caught in a lie; then the

flash of anger which he knew so well came into her eyes as she instinctively sought to defend herself by

"Oh, I was only going to see the show. It gives me the hump sitting every night by myself."

"You mustn't. Good heavens, I've told you fifty times how dangerous it is. You must stop this sort of thing at

He took hold of her arm and without thinking what he was doing tried to drag her away.

"For God's sake come along. Let me take you home. You don't know what you're doing. It's criminal."

"What do I care? Let them take their chance. Men haven't been so good to me that I need bother my head

She pushed him away and walking up to the boxoffice put down her money. Philip had threepence in his

pocket. He could not follow. He turned away and walked slowly down Oxford Street.

CHRISTMAS that year falling on Thursday, the shop was to close for four days: Philip wrote to his uncle

asking whether it would be convenient for him to spend the holidays at the vicarage. He received an answer

from Mrs. Foster, saying that Mr. Carey was not well enough to write himself, but wished to see his nephew

and would be glad if he came down. She met Philip at the door, and when she shook hands with him, said:

"You'll find him changed since you was here last, sir; but you'll pretend you don't notice anything, won't you,

The Vicar of Blackstable was a dying man. There was no mistaking that when you looked at the Hollow

cheeks and the shrunken body. He sat huddled in the armchair, with his head strangely thrown back, and a

shawl over his shoulders. He could not walk now without the help of sticks, and his hands trembled so that he

"How d'you think I'm looking?" asked the Vicar. "D'you think I've changed since you were here last?"

Mr. Carey's history of the last few months consisted in the number of weeks he had spent in his bedroom

and the number of weeks he had spent downstairs. He had a handbell by his side and while he talked he rang

it for Mrs. Foster, who sat in the next room ready to attend to his wants, to ask on what day of the month he

Nothing interested him now but his health. He was set upon one thing indomitably and that was living, just

living, notwithstanding the monotony of his life and the constant pain which allowed him to sleep only when

"It's terrible, the amount of money I have to spend on doctor's bills." He tinkled his bell again. "Mrs. Foster,

"That's only one month. I was wondering if as you're doctoring yourself you couldn't get me the drugs

cheaper. I thought of getting them down from the stores, but then there's the postage."

Though apparently taking so little interest in him that he did not trouble to inquire what Phil was doing, he

seemed glad to have him there. He asked how long he could stay, and when Philip told him He must leave on

Tuesday morning, expressed a wish that the visit might have been longer. He told him minutely all his

symptoms and repeated what the doctor had said of him. He broke off to ring his bell, and when Mrs. Foster

When she had gone he explained to Philip that it made him uneasy if he was not certain that Mrs. Foster was

within earshot; she knew exactly what to do with him if anything happened. Philip, seeing that she was tired

and that her eyes were heavy from want of sleep, suggested that he was working her too hard.

"Oh, nonsense," said the Vicar, "she's as strong as a horse." And when next she came in to give him his

"Master Philip says you've got too much to do, Mrs. Foster. You like looking after me, don't you?"

Presently the medicine took effect and Mr. Carey fell asleep. Philip went into the kitchen and asked Mrs.

Foster whether she could stand the work. He saw that for some months she had had little peace.

"Well, sir, what can I do?" she answered. "The poor old gentleman's so dependent on me, and, although he is

troublesome sometimes, you can't help liking him, can you? I've been here so many years now, I don't know

Philip saw that she was really fond of the old man. She washed and dressed him, gave him his food, and was

up half a dozen times in the night; for she slept in the next room to his and whenever he awoke he tinkled his

little bell till she came in. He might die at any moment, but he might live for months. It was wonderful that

she should look after a stranger with such patient tenderness, and it was tragic and pitiful that she should be

It seemed to Philip that the religion which his uncle had preached all his life was now of no more than formal

importance to him: every Sunday the curate came and administered to him Holy Communion, and he often

read his Bible; but it was clear that he looked upon death with horror. He believed that it was the gateway to

life everlasting, but he did not want to enter upon that life. In constant pain, chained to his chair and having

given up the hope of ever getting out into the open again, like a child in the hands of a woman to whom he

In Philip's head was a question he could not ask, because he was aware that his uncle would never give any

but a conventional answer: he wondered whether at the very end, now that the machine was painfully wearing

itself out, the clergyman still believed in immortality; perhaps at the bottom of his soul, not allowed to shape

itself into words in case it became urgent, was the conviction that there was no God and after this life

On the evening of Boxing Day Philip sat in the diningroom with his uncle. He had to start very early next

morning in order to get to the shop by nine, and he was to say goodnight to Mr. Carey then. The Vicar of

Blackstable was dozing and Philip, lying on the sofa by the window, let his book fall on his knees and looked

idly round the room. He asked himself how much the furniture would fetch. He had walked round the house

and looked at the things he had known from his childhood; there were a few pieces of china which might go

for a decent price and Philip wondered if it would be worth while to take them up to London; but the furniture

was of the Victorian order, of mahogany, solid and ugly; it would go for nothing at an auction. There were

three or four thousand books, but everyone knew how badly they sold, and it was not probable that they

would fetch more than a hundred pounds. Philip did not know how much his uncle would leave, and he

reckoned out for the hundredth time what was the least sum upon which he could finish the curriculum at the

hospital, take his degree, and live during the time he wished to spend on hospital appointments. He looked at

the old man, sleeping restlessly: there was no humanity left in that shrivelled face; it was the face of some

queer animal. Philip thought how easy it would be to finish that useless life. He had thought it each evening

when Mrs. Foster prepared for his uncle the medicine which was to give him an easy night. There were two

bottles: one contained a drug which he took regularly, and the other an opiate if the pain grew unendurable.

This was poured out for him and left by his bedside. He generally took it at three or four in the morning. It

would be a simple thing to double the dose; he would die in the night, and no one would suspect anything; for

that was how Doctor Wigram expected him to die. The end would be painless. Philip clenched his hands as

he thought of the money he wanted so badly. A few more months of that wretched life could matter nothing

to the old man, but the few more months meant everything to him: he was getting to the end of his endurance,

and when he thought of going back to work in the morning he shuddered with horror. His heart beat quickly

at the thought which obsessed him, and though he made an effort to put it out of his mind he could not. It

would be so easy, so desperately easy. He had no feeling for the old man, he had never liked him; he had

been selfish all his life, selfish to his wife who adored him, indifferent to the boy who had been put in his

charge; he was not a cruel man, but a stupid, hard man, eaten up with a small sensuality. It would be easy,

desperately easy. Philip did not dare. He was afraid of remorse; it would be no good having the money if he

regretted all his life what he had done. Though he had told himself so often that regret was futile, there were

certain things that came back to him occasionally and worried him. He wished they were not on his

His uncle opened his eyes; Philip was glad, for he looked a little more human then. He was frankly horrified

at the idea that had come to him, it was murder that he was meditating; and he wondered if other people had

such thoughts or whether he was abnormal and depraved. He supposed he could not have done it when it

came to the point, but there the thought was, constantly recurring: if he held his hand it was from fear. His

"You're not looking forward to my death, Philip?" Philip felt his heart beat against his chest.

"That's a good boy. I shouldn't like you to do that. You'll get a little bit of money when I pass away, but you

He spoke in a low voice, and there was a curious anxiety in his tone. It sent a pang into Philip's heart. He

wondered what strange insight might have led the old man to surmise what strange desires were in Philip's

"Oh, well, I can't expect to do that, but if I take care of myself I don't see why I shouldn't last another three or

He was silent for a while, and Philip found nothing to say. Then, as if he had been thinking it all over, the old

NEXT day Philip began work again, but the end which he expected within a few weeks did not come. The

weeks passed into months. The winter wore away, and in the parks the trees burst into bud and into leaf. A

terrible lassitude settled upon Philip. Time was passing, though it went with such heavy feet, and he thought

that his youth was going and soon he would have lost it and nothing would have been accomplished. His

work seemed more aimless now that there was the certainty of his leaving it. He became skilful in the

designing of costumes, and though he had no inventive faculty acquired quickness in the adaptation of French

fashions to the English market. Sometimes he was not displeased with his drawings, but they always bungled

them in the execution. He was amused to notice that he suffered from a lively irritation when his ideas were

not adequately carried out. He had to walk warily. Whenever he suggested something original Mr. Sampson

turned it down: their customers did not want anything _outre_, it was a very respectable class of business, and

when you had a connection of that sort it wasn't worth while taking liberties with it. Once or twice he spoke

sharply to Philip; he thought the young man was getting a bit above himself, because Philip's ideas did not

"You jolly well take care, my fine young fellow, or one of these days you'll find yourself in the street."

Philip longed to give him a punch on the nose, but he restrained himself. After all it could not possibly last

much longer, and then he would he done with all these people for ever. Sometimes in comic desperation he

cried out that his uncle must be made of iron. What a constitution! The ills he suffered from would have

killed any decent person twelve months before. When at last the news came that the Vicar was dying Philip,

who had been thinking of other things, was taken by surprise. It was in July, and in another fortnight he was

to have gone for his holiday. He received a letter from Mrs. Foster to say the doctor did not give Mr. Carey

many days to live, and if Philip wished to see him again he must come at once. Philip went to the buyer and

told him he wanted to leave. Mr. Sampson was a decent fellow, and when he knew the circumstances made

no difficulties. Philip said goodbye to the people in his department; the reason of his leaving had spread

among them in an exaggerated form, and they thought he had come into a fortune. Mrs. Hodges had tears in

It was strange, but he was actually sorry to leave these people whom he thought he had loathed, and when he

drove away from the house in Harrington Street it was with no exultation. He had so anticipated the emotions

he would experience on this occasion that now he felt nothing: he was as unconcerned as though he were

"I've got a rotten nature," he said to himself. "I look forward to things awfully, and then when they come I'm

He reached Blackstable early in the afternoon. Mrs. Foster met him at the door, and her face told him that his

She led him into the bedroom where Mr. Carey lay on his back. He gave philip a slight smile, in which was

"I thought it was all up with me yesterday," he said, in an exhausted voice. "They'd all given me up, hadn't

Mrs. Foster said that the Vicar must not talk, it would tire him; she treated him like a child, with kindly

despotism; and there was something childish in the old man's satisfaction at having cheated all their

expectations. It struck him at once that Philip had been sent for, and he was amused that he had been brought

on a fool's errand. If he could only avoid another of his heart attacks he would get well enough in a week or

two; and he had had the attacks several times before; he always felt as if he were going to die, but he never

did. They all talked of his constitution, but they none of them knew how strong it was.

"Are you going to stay a day or two?" He asked Philip, pretending to believe he had come down for a

Presently Dr. Wigram came, and after he had seen the Vicar talked with Philip. He adopted an appropriate

"I'm afraid it is the end this time, Philip," he said. "It'll be a great loss to all of us. I've known him for

"I'm keeping him alive on drugs, but it can't last. It was dreadful these last two days, I thought he was dead

The doctor was silent for a minute or two, but at the gate he said suddenly to Philip:

"They're very superstitious, these people: she's got hold of an idea that he's got something on his mind, and he

"Of course it's nonsense. He's led a very good life, he's done his duty, he's been a good parish priest, and I'm

sure we shall all miss him; he can't have anything to reproach himself with. I very much doubt whether the

For several days Mr. Carey continued without change. His appetite which had been excellent left him, and he

could eat little. Dr. Wigram did not hesitate now to still the pain of the neuritis which tormented him; and

that, with the constant shaking of his palsied limbs, was gradually exhausting him. His mind remained clear.

Philip and Mrs. Foster nursed him between them. She was so tired by the many months during which she had

been attentive to all his wants that Philip insisted on sitting up with the patient so that she might have her

night's rest. He passed the long hours in an armchair so that he should not sleep soundly, and read by the

light of shaded candles _The Thousand and One Nights_. He had not read them since he was a little boy, and

they brought back his childhood to him. Sometimes he sat and listened to the silence of the night. When the

effects of the opiate wore off Mr. Carey grew restless and kept him constantly busy.

At last, early one morning, when the birds were chattering noisily in the trees, he heard his name called. He

went up to the bed. Mr. Carey was lying on his back, with his eyes looking at the ceiling; he did not turn them

on Philip. Philip saw that sweat was on his forehead, and he took a towel and wiped it.

Philip was startled because the voice was suddenly changed. It was hoarse and low. So would a man speak if

There was a pause, and still the unseeing eyes stared at the ceiling. Then a twitch passed over the face.

Two tears were wrung from the old man's eyes. They moved Philip horribly. His uncle had never betrayed

any particular emotion in the affairs of life; and it was dreadful to see them now, for they signified a terror

Philip went to awake Mrs. Foster, but it was later than he thought and she was up already. He told her to send

There was a silence. Philip sat by the bedside, and occasionally wiped the sweating forehead.

Philip gave him his hand and he clung to it as to life, for comfort in his extremity. Perhaps he had never really

loved anyone in all his days, but now he turned instinctively to a human being. His hand was wet and cold. It

grasped Philip's with feeble, despairing energy. The old man was fighting with the fear of death. And Philip

thought that all must go through that. Oh, how monstrous it was, and they could believe in a God that allowed

his creatures to suffer such a cruel torture! He had never cared for his uncle, and for two years he had longed

every day for his death; but now he could not overcome the compassion that filled his heart. What a price it

At last the housekeeper came in softly to say that Mr. Simmonds was there. He carried a bag in which were

his surplice and his hood. Mrs. Foster brought the communion plate. Mr. Simmonds shook hands silently

with Philip, and then with professional gravity went to the sick man's side. Philip and the maid went out of

Philip walked round the garden all fresh and dewy in the morning. The birds were singing gaily. The sky was

blue, but the air, saltladen, was sweet and cool. The roses were in full bloom. The green of the trees, the

green of the lawns, was eager and brilliant. Philip walked, and as he walked he thought of the mystery which

was proceeding in that bedroom. It gave him a peculiar emotion. Presently Mrs. Foster came out to him and

said that his uncle wished to see him. The curate was putting his things back into the black bag. The sick man

turned his head a little and greeted him with a smile. Philip was astonished, for there was a change in him, an

extraordinary change; his eyes had no longer the terrorstricken look, and the pinching of his face had gone:

"I'm quite prepared now," he said, and his voice had a different tone in it. "When the Lord sees fit to call me I

Philip did not speak. He could see that his uncle was sincere. It was almost a miracle. He had taken the body

and blood of his Savior, and they had given him strength so that he no longer feared the inevitable passage

into the night. He knew he was going to die: he was resigned. He only said one thing more:

It startled Philip. He remembered with what a callous selfishness his uncle had treated her, how obtuse he had

been to her humble, devoted love. The curate, deeply moved, went away and Mrs. Foster, weeping,

accompanied him to the door. Mr. Carey, exhausted by his effort, fell into a light doze, and Philip sat down

by the bed and waited for the end. The morning wore on, and the old man's breathing grew stertorous. The

doctor came and said he was dying. He was unconscious and he pecked feebly at the sheets; he was restless

The doctor looked at his watch and then at the patient. Philip saw that it was one o'clock. Dr. Wigram was

When he was gone Mrs. Foster asked Philip if he would go to the carpenter, who was also the undertaker, and

The undertaker lived half a mile away. When Philip gave him his message, he said:

Philip hesitated. It occurred to him that it would seem brutal to fetch a woman to wash the body while his

uncle still lived, and he wondered why Mrs. Foster had asked him to come. They would think he was in a

great hurry to kill the old man off. He thought the undertaker looked at him oddly. He repeated the question.

Philip's first impulse was to say that it had just happened, but then it would seem inexplicable if the sick man

"Mrs. Foster is all alone and she wants a woman there. You understood, don't you? He may be dead by now."

When Philip got back to the vicarage he went up to the bedroom. Mrs. Foster rose from her chair by the

She went down to get herself something to eat, and Philip watched curiously the process of death. There was

nothing human now in the unconscious being that struggled feebly. Sometimes a muttered ejaculation issued

from the loose mouth. The sun beat down hotly from a cloudless sky, but the trees in the garden were

pleasant and cool. It was a lovely day. A bluebottle buzzed against the windowpane. Suddenly there was a

loud rattle, it made Philip start, it was horribly frightening; a movement passed through the limbs and the old

man was dead. The machine had run down. The bluebottle buzzed, buzzed noisily against the windowpane.

JOSIAH GRAVES in his masterful way made arrangements, becoming but economical, for the funeral; and

when it was over came back to the vicarage with Philip. The will was in his charge, and with a due sense of

the fitness of things he read it to Philip over an early cup of tea. It was written on half a sheet of paper and

left everything Mr. Carey had to his nephew. There was the furniture, about eighty pounds at the bank,

twenty shares in the A. B. C. company, a few in Allsop's brewery, some in the Oxford musichall, and a few

more in a London restaurant. They had been bought under Mr. Graves' direction, and he told Philip with

"You see, people must eat, they will drink, and they want amusement. You're always safe if you put your

His words showed a nice discrimination between the grossness of the vulgar, which he deplored but accepted,

and the finer taste of the elect. Altogether in investments there was about five hundred pounds; and to that

must be added the balance at the bank and what the furniture would fetch. It was riches to Philip. He was not

Mr. Graves left him, after they had discussed the auction which must be held as soon as possible, and Philip

sat himself down to go through the papers of the deceased. The Rev. William Carey had prided himself on

never destroying anything, and there were piles of correspondence dating back for fifty years and bundles

upon bundles of neatly docketed bills. He had kept not only letters addressed to him, but letters which himself

had written. There was a yellow packet of letters which he had written to his father in the forties, when as an

Oxford undergraduate he had gone to Germany for the long vacation. Philip read them idly. It was a different

William Carey from the William Carey he had known, and yet there were traces in the boy which might to an

acute observer have suggested the man. The letters were formal and a little stilted. He showed himself

strenuous to see all that was noteworthy, and he described with a fine enthusiasm the castles of the Rhine.

The falls of Schaffhausen made him `offer reverent thanks to the allpowerful Creator of the universe, whose

works were wondrous and beautiful,' and he could not help thinking that they who lived in sight of `this

handiwork of their blessed Maker must be moved by the contemplation to lead pure and holy lives.' Among

some bills Philip found a miniature which had been painted of William Carey soon after he was ordained. It

represented a thin young curate, with long hair that fell over his head in natural curls, with dark eyes, large

and dreamy, and a pale ascetic face. Philip remembered the chuckle with which his uncle used to tell of the

The rest of the afternoon and all the evening Philip toiled through the innumerable correspondence. He

glanced at the address and at the signature, then tore the letter in two and threw it into the washingbasket by

his side. Suddenly he came upon one signed Helen. He did not know the writing. It was thin, angular, and

oldfashioned. It began: my dear William, and ended: your affectionate sister. Then it struck him that it was

from his own mother. He had never seen a letter of hers before, and her handwriting was strange to him. It

Stephen wrote to you to thank you for your congratulations on the birth of our son and your kind wishes to

myself. Thank God we are both well and I am deeply thankful for the great mercy which has been shown me.

Now that I can hold a Pen I want to tell you and dear Louisa myself how truly grateful I am to you both for

all your kindness to me now and always since my marriage. I am going to ask you to do me a great favour.

Both Stephen and I wish you to be the boy's godfather, and we hope that you will consent. I know I am not

asking a small thing, for I am sure you will take the responsibilities of the position very seriously, but I am

especially anxious that you should undertake this office because you are a clergyman as well as the boy's

uncle. I am very anxious for the boy's welfare and I Pray God night and day that he may grow into a good,

honest, and Christian man. With you to guide him I hope that he will become a soldier in Christ's Faith and

Philip pushed the letter away and, leaning forward, rested his face on his hands. It deeply touched and at the

same time surprised him. He was astonished at its religious tone, which seemed to him neither mawkish nor

sentimental. He knew nothing of his mother, dead now for nearly twenty years, but that she was beautiful,

and it was strange to learn that she was simple and pious. He had never thought of that side of her. He read

again what she said about him, what she expected and thought about him; he had turned out very differently;

he looked at himself for a moment; perhaps it was better that she was dead. Then a sudden impulse caused

him to tear up the letter; its tenderness and simplicity made it seem peculiarly private; he had a queer feeling

that there was something indecent in his reading what exposed his mother's gentle soul. He went on with the

A few days later he went up to London, and for the first time for two years entered by day the hall of St.

Luke's Hospital. He went to see the secretary of the Medical School; he was surprised to see him and asked

Philip curiously what he had been doing. Philip's experiences had given him a certain confidence in himself

and a different outlook upon many things: such a question would have embarrassed him before; but now he

answered coolly, with a deliberate vagueness which prevented further inquiry, that private affairs had obliged

him to make a break in the curriculum; he was now anxious to qualify as soon as possible. The first

examination he could take was in midwifery and the diseases of women, and he put his name down to be a

clerk in the ward devoted to feminine ailments; since it was holiday time there happened to be no difficulty in

getting a post as obstetric clerk; he arranged to undertake that duty during the last week of August and the

first two of September. After this interview Philip walked through the Medical School, more or less deserted,

for the examinations at the end of the summer session were all over; and he wandered along the terrace by the

riverside. His heart was full. He thought that now he could begin a new life, and he would put behind him

all the errors, follies, and miseries of the past. The flowing river suggested that everything passed, was

passing always, and nothing mattered; the future was before him rich with possibilities.

He went back to Blackstable and busied himself with the settling up of his uncle's estate. The auction was

fixed for the middle of August, when the presence of visitors for the summer holidays would make it possible

to get better prices. Catalogues were made out and sent to the various dealers in secondhand books at

One afternoon Philip took it into his head to go over to Tercanbury and see his old school. He had not been

there since the day when, with relief in his heart, he had left it with the feeling that thenceforward he was his

own master. It was strange to wander through the narrow streets of Tercanbury which he had known so well

for so many years. He looked at the old shops, still there, still selling the same things; the booksellers with

schoolbooks, pious works, and the latest novels in one window and photographs of the Cathedral and of the

city in the other; the games shop, with its cricket bats, fishing tackle, tennis rackets, and footballs; the tailor

from whom he had got clothes all through his boyhood; and the fishmonger where his uncle whenever he

came to Tercanbury bought fish. He wandered along the sordid street in which, behind a high wall, lay the

red brick house which was the preparatory school. Further on was the gateway that led into King's School,

and he stood in the quadrangle round which were the various buildings. It was just four and the boys were

hurrying out of school. He saw the masters in their gowns and mortarboards, and they were strange to him.

It was more than ten years since he had left and many changes had taken place. He saw the headmaster; he

walked slowly down from the schoolhouse to his own, talking to a big boy who Philip supposed was in the

sixth; he was little changed, tall, cadaverous, romantic as Philip remembered him, with the same wild eyes;

but the black beard was streaked with gray now and the dark, sallow face was more deeply lined. Philip had

an impulse to go up and speak to him, but he was afraid he would have forgotten him, and he hated the

Boys lingered talking to one another, and presently some who had hurried to change came out to play fives;

others straggled out in twos and threes and went out of the gateway, Philip knew they were going up to the

cricket ground; others again went into the precincts to bat at the nets. Philip stood among them a stranger; one

or two gave him an indifferent glance; but visitors, attracted by the Norman staircase, were not rare and

excited little attention. Philip looked at them curiously. He thought with melancholy of the distance that

separated him from them, and he thought bitterly how much he had wanted to do and how little done. It

seemed to him that all those years, vanished beyond recall, had been utterly wasted. The boys, fresh and

buoyant, were doing the same things that he had done, it seemed that not a day had passed since he left the

school, and yet in that place where at least by name he had known everybody now he knew not a soul. In a

few years these too, others taking their place, would stand alien as he stood; but the reflection brought him no

solace; it merely impressed upon him the futility of human existence. Each generation repeated the trivial

round. He wondered what had become of the boys who were his companions: they were nearly thirty now;

some would be dead, but others were married and had children; they were soldiers and parsons, doctors,

lawyers; they were staid men who were beginning to put youth behind them. Had any of them made such a

hash of life as he? He thought of the boy he had been devoted to; it was funny, he could not recall his name;

he remembered exactly what he looked like, he had been his greatest friend; but his name would not come

back to him. He looked back with amusement on the jealous emotions he had suffered on his account. It was

irritating not to recollect his name. He longed to be a boy again, like those he saw sauntering through the

quadrangle, so that, avoiding his mistakes, he might start fresh and make something more out of life. He felt

an intolerable loneliness. He almost regretted the penury which he had suffered during the last two years,

since the desperate struggle merely to keep body and soul together had deadened the pain of living. _In the

sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy daily bread_: it was not a curse upon mankind, but the balm which

But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he

had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself

strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain, because

it added to the richness of the design. He sought for beauty consciously, and he remembered how even as a

boy he had taken pleasure in the Gothic cathedral as one saw it from the precincts; he went there and looked

at the massive pile, gray under the cloudy sky, with the central tower that rose like the praise of men to their

God; but the boys were batting at the nets, and they were lissom and strong and active; he could not help

hearing their shouts and laughter. The cry of youth was insistent, and he saw the beautiful thing before him

AT the beginning of the last week in August Philip entered upon his duties in the `district.' They were

arduous, for he had to attend on an average three confinements a day. The patient had obtained a `card' from

the hospital some time before; and when her time came it was taken to the porter by a messenger, generally a

little girl, who was then sent across the road to the house in which Philip lodged. At night the porter, who had

a latchkey, himself came over and awoke Philip. It was mysterious then to get up in the darkness and walk

through the deserted streets of the South Side. At those hours it was generally the husband who brought the

card. If there had been a number of babies before he took it for the most part with surly indifference, but if

newly married he was nervous and then sometimes strove to allay his anxiety by getting drunk. Often there

was a mile or more to walk, during which Philip and the messenger discussed the conditions of labour and the

cost of living; Philip learnt about the various trades which were practised on that side of the river. He inspired

confidence in the people among whom he was thrown, and during the long hours that he waited in a stuffy

room, the woman in labour lying on a large bed that took up half of it, her mother and the midwife talked to

him as naturally as they talked to one another. The circumstances in which he had lived during the last two

years had taught him several things about the life of the very poor, which it amused them to find he knew;

and they were impressed because he was not deceived by their little subterfuges. He was kind, and he had

gentle hands, and he did not lose his temper. They were pleased because he was not above drinking a cup of

tea with them, and when the dawn came and they were still waiting they offered him a slice of bread and

dripping; he was not squeamish and could eat most things now with a good appetite. Some of the houses he

went to, in filthy courts off a dingy street, huddled against one another without light or air, were merely

squalid; but others, unexpectedly, though dilapidated, with wormeaten floors and leaking roofs, had the

grand air: you found in them oak balusters exquisitely carved, and the walls had still their panelling. These

were thickly inhabited. One family lived in each room, and in the daytime there was the incessant noise of

children playing in the court. The old walls were the breedingplace of vermin; the air was so foul that often,

feeling sick, Philip had to light his pipe. The people who dwelt here lived from hand to mouth. Babies were

unwelcome, the man received them with surly anger, the mother with despair; it was one more mouth to feed,

and there was little enough wherewith to feed those already there. Philip often discerned the wish that the

child might be born dead or might die quickly. He delivered one woman of twins (a source of humour to the

facetious) and when she was told she burst into a long, shrill wail of misery. Her mother said outright:

Philip caught sight of the husband's face as he looked at the tiny pair lying side by side, and there was a

ferocious sullenness in it which startled him. He felt in the family assembled there a hideous resentment

against those poor atoms who had come into the world unwished for; and he had a suspicion that if he did not

speak firmly an `accident' would occur. Accidents occurred often; mothers `overlay' their babies, and perhaps

"I shall come every day," he said. "I warn you that if anything happens to them there'll have to be an inquest."

The father made no reply, but he gave Philip a scowl. There was murder in his soul.

"Bless their little 'earts," said the grandmother, "what should 'appen to them?"

The great difficulty was to keep the mothers in bed for ten days, which was the minimum upon which the

hospital practice insisted. It was awkward to look after the family, no one would see to the children without

payment, and the husband tumbled because his tea was not right when he came home tired from his work and

hungry. Philip had heard that the poor helped one another, but woman after woman complained to him that

she could not get anyone in to clean up and see to the children's dinner without paying for the service, and she

could not afford to pay. By listening to the women as they talked and by chance remarks from which he could

deduce much that was left unsaid, Philip learned how little there was in common between the poor and the

classes above them. They did not envy their betters, for the life was too different, and they had an ideal of

ease which made the existence of the middleclasses seem formal and stiff; moreover, they had a certain

contempt for them because they were soft and did not work with their hands. The proud merely wished to be

left alone, but the majority looked upon the welltodo as people to be exploited; they knew what to say in

order to get such advantages as the charitable put at their disposal, and they accepted benefits as a right which

came to them from the folly of their superiors and their own astuteness. They bore the curate with

contemptuous indifference, but the district visitor excited their bitter hatred. She came in and opened your

windows without so much as a by your leave or with your leave, `and me with my bronchitis, enough to give

me my death of cold;' she poked her nose into corners, and if she didn't say the place was dirty you saw what

she thought right enough, `an' it's all very well for them as 'as servants, but I'd like to see what she'd make of

'er room if she 'ad four children, and 'ad to do the cookin', and mend their clothes, and wash them.'

Philip discovered that the greatest tragedy of life to these people was not separation or death, that was natural

and the grief of it could be assuaged with tears, but loss of work. He saw a man come home one afternoon,

three days after his wife's confinement, and tell her he had been dismissed; he was a builder and at that time

The man ate stolidly some mess which had been stewing in a saucepan against his coming; he stared at his

plate; his wife looked at him two or three times, with little startled glances, and then quite silently began to

cry. The builder was an uncouth little fellow with a rough, weatherbeaten face and a long white scar on his

forehead; he had large, stubbly hands. Presently he pushed aside his plate as if he must give up the effort to

force himself to eat, and turned a fixed gaze out of the window. The room was at the top of the house, at the

back, and one saw nothing but sullen clouds. The silence seemed heavy with despair. Philip felt that there

was nothing to be said, he could only go; and as he walked away wearily, for he had been up most of the

night, his heart was filled with rage against the cruelty of the world. He knew the hopelessness of the search

for work and the desolation which is harder to bear than hunger. He was thankful not to have to believe in

God, for then such a condition of things would be intolerable; one could reconcile oneself to existence only

It seemed to Philip that the people who spent their time in helping the poorer classes erred because they

sought to remedy things which would harass them if themselves had to endure them without thinking that

they did not in the least disturb those who were used to them. The poor did not want large airy rooms; they

suffered from cold, for their food was not nourishing and their circulation bad; space gave them a feeling of

chilliness, and they wanted to burn as little coal as need be; there was no hardship for several to sleep in one

room, they preferred it; they were never alone for a moment, from the time they were born to the time they

died, and loneliness oppressed them; they enjoyed the promiscuity in which they dwelt, and the constant

noise of their surroundings pressed upon their ears unnoticed. They did not feel the need of taking a bath

constantly, and Philip often heard them speak with indignation of the necessity to do so with which they were

faced on entering the hospital: it was both an affront and a discomfort. They wanted chiefly to be left alone;

then if the man was in regular work life went easily and was not without its pleasures: there was plenty of

time for gossip, after the day's work a glass of beer was very good to drink, the streets were a constant source

of entertainment, if you wanted to read there was _Reynolds_' or _The News of the World_; `but there, you

couldn't make out 'ow the time did fly, the truth was and that's a fact, you was a rare one for reading when

you was a girl, but what with one thing and another you didn't get no time now not even to read the paper.'

The usual practice was to pay three visits after a confinement, and one Sunday Philip went to see a patient at

"I couldn't stay in bed no longer, I really couldn't. I'm not one for idling, and it gives me the fidgets to be

there and do nothing all day long, so I said to 'Erb, I'm just going to get up and cook your dinner for you."

'Erb was sitting at table with his knife and fork already in his hands. He was a young man, with an open face

and blue eyes. He was earning good money, and as things went the couple were in easy circumstances. They

had only been married a few months, and were both delighted with the rosy boy who lay in the cradle at the

foot of the bed. There was a savoury smell of beefsteak in the room and Philip's eyes turned to the range.

"Fire away," said Philip. "I'll just have a look at the son and heir and then I'll take myself off."

Husband and wife laughed at Philip's expression, and 'Erb getting up went over with Philip to the cradle. He

He took up his hat, and by this time 'Erb's wife had dished up the beefsteak and put on the table a plate of

"He's only in of a Sunday and I like to 'ave something special for him, so as he shall miss his 'ome when he's

"I suppose you'd be above sittin' down and 'avin' a bit of dinner with us?" said 'Erb.

"Well, that's what I call friendly, I knew 'e wouldn't take offence, Polly. Just get another plate, my girl."

Polly was flustered, and she thought 'Erb a regular caution, you never knew what ideas 'e'd get in 'is 'ead next;

but she got a plate and wiped it quickly with her apron, then took a new knife and fork from the chest of

drawers, where her best cutlery rested among her best clothes. There was a jug of stout on the table, and 'Erb

poured Philip out a glass. He wanted to give him the lion's share of the beefsteak, but Philip insisted that they

should share alike. It was a sunny room with two windows that reached to the floor; it had been the parlour of

a house which at one time was if not fashionable at least respectable: it might have been inhabited fifty years

before by a welltodo tradesman or an officer on half pay. 'Erb had been a football player before he

married, and there were photographs on the wall of various teams in selfconscious attitudes, with neatly

plastered hair, the captain seated proudly in the middle holding a cup. There were other signs of prosperity:

photographs of the relations of 'Erb and his wife in Sunday clothes; on the chimneypiece an elaborate

arrangement of shells stuck on a miniature rock; and on each side mugs, `A present from Southend' in Gothic

letters, with pictures of a pier and a parade on them. 'Erb was something of a character; he was a nonunion

man and expressed himself with indignation at the efforts of the union to force him to join. The union wasn't

no good to him, he never found no difficulty in getting work, and there was good wages for anyone as 'ad a

head on his shoulders and wasn't above puttin' 'is 'and to anything as come 'is way. Polly was timorous. If she

was 'im she'd join the union, the last time there was a strike she was expectin' 'im to be brought back in an

"It's no good saying it's a free country," said Polly, "that won't prevent 'em bashin' your 'ead in if they get the

When they had finished Philip passed his pouch over to 'Erb and they lit their pipes; then he got up, for a

`call' might be waiting for him at his rooms, and shook hands. He saw that it had given them pleasure that he

"Well, goodbye, sir," said 'Erb, "and I 'ope we shall 'ave as nice a doctor next time the missus disgraces

"Go on with you, 'Erb," she retorted." 'Ow d'you know there's going to be a next time?"

THE three weeks which the appointment lasted drew to an end. Philip had attended sixtytwo cases, and he

was tired out. When he came home about ten o'clock on his last night he hoped with all his heart that he

would not be called out again. He had not had a whole night's rest for ten days. The case which he had just

come from was horrible. He had been fetched by a huge, burly man, the worse for liquor, and taken to a room

in an evilsmelling court, which was filthier than any he had seen: it was a tiny attic; most of the space was

taken up by a wooden bed, with a canopy of dirty red hangings, and the ceiling was so low that Philip could

touch it with the tips of his fingers; with the solitary candle that afforded what light there was he went over it,

frizzling up the bugs that crawled upon it. The woman was a blowsy creature of middle age, who had had a

long succession of stillborn children. It was a story that Philip was not unaccustomed to: the husband had

been a soldier in India; the legislation forced upon that country by the prudery of the English public had given

a free run to the most distressing of all diseases; the innocent suffered. Yawning, Philip undressed and took a

bath, then shook his clothes over the water and watched the animals that fell out wriggling. He was just going

to get into bed when there was a knock at the door, and the hospital porter brought him a card.

"Curse you," said Philip. "You're the last person I wanted to see tonight. Who's brought it?"

Philip looked at the address, saw that the street was familiar to him, and told the porter that he would find his

own way. He dressed himself and in five minutes, with his black bag in his hand, stepped into the street. A

man, whom he could not see in the darkness, came up to him, and said he was the husband.

"I thought I'd better wait, sir," he said. "It's a pretty rough neighbour'ood, and them not knowing who you

"Bless your heart, they all know the doctor, I've been in some damned sight rougher places than Waver

It was quite true. The black bag was a passport through wretched alleys and down foulsmelling courts into

which a policeman was not ready to venture by himself. Once or twice a little group of men had looked at

Philip curiously as he passed; he heard a mutter of observations and then one say:

"We shall 'ave to step out if you don't mind, sir," said the man who accompanied him now. "They told me

He was fair, and he had not a hair on his face, he looked no more than a boy; he was short, but thick set.

Sixteen shillings a week was not much to keep a wife and child on. The room the couple lived in showed that

their poverty was extreme. It was a fair size, but it looked quite large, since there was hardly any furniture in

it; there was no carpet on the floor; there were no pictures on the walls; and most rooms had something,

photographs or supplements in cheap frames from the Christmas numbers of the illustrated papers. The

patient lay on a little iron bed of the cheapest sort. It startled Philip to see how young she was.

"By Jove, she can't be more than sixteen," he said to the woman who had come in to `see her through.'

She had given her age as eighteen on the card, but when they were very young they often put on a year or

two. Also she was pretty, which was rare in those classes in which the constitution has been undermined by

bad food, bad air, and unhealthy occupations; she had delicate features and large blue eyes, and a mass of

dark hair done in the elaborate fashion of the coster girl. She and her husband were very nervous.

"You'd better wait outside, so as to be at hand if I want you," Philip said to him.

Now that he saw him better Philip was surprised again at his boyish air: you felt that he should be larking in

the street with the other lads instead of waiting anxiously for the birth of a child. The hours passed, and it was

not till nearly two that the baby was born. Everything seemed to be going satisfactorily; the husband was

called in, and it touched Philip to see the awkward, shy way in which he kissed his wife; Philip packed up his

He looked at her quickly: something had happened. In cases of emergency the S. O. C.senior obstetric

clerkhad to be sent for; he was a qualified man, and the `district' was in his charge. Philip scribbled a note,

and giving it to the husband, told him to run with it to the hospital; he bade him hurry, for his wife was in a

dangerous state. The man set off. Philip waited anxiously; he knew the woman was bleeding to death; he was

afraid she would die before his chief arrived; he took what steps he could. He hoped fervently that the S. O.

C. would not have been called elsewhere. The minutes were interminable. He came at last, and, while he

examined the patient, in a low voice asked Philip questions. Philip saw by his face that he thought the case

very grave. His name was Chandler. He was a tall man of few words, with a long nose and a thin face much

Philip opened the door and called him. He was sitting in the dark on the first step of the flight that led to the

"Why, there's internal bleeding. It's impossible to stop it." The S. O. C. hesitated a moment, and because it

was a painful thing to say he forced his voice to become brusque. "She's dying."

The man did not say a word; he stopped quite still, looking at his wife, who lay, pale and unconscious, on the

"The gentlemen 'ave done all they could, 'Arry," she said. "I saw what was comin' from the first."

There were no curtains on the windows, and gradually the night seemed to lighten; it was not yet the dawn,

but the dawn was at hand. Chandler was keeping the woman alive by all the means in his power, but life was

slipping away from her, and suddenly she died. The boy who was her husband stood at the end of the cheap

iron bed with his hands resting on the rail; he did not speak; but he looked very pale and once or twice

Chandler gave him an uneasy glance, thinking he was going to faint: his lips were gray. The midwife sobbed

noisily, but he took no notice of her. His eyes were fixed upon his wife, and in them was an utter

bewilderment. He reminded you of a dog whipped for something he did not know was wrong. When

Chandler and Philip had gathered together their things Chandler turned to the husband.

"There's nowhere for me to lie down, sir," he answered, and there was in his voice a humbleness which was

He held out his hand and the man, with an instinctive glance at his own to see if it was clean, shook it.

Philip shook hands with him too. Chandler told the midwife to come and fetch the certificate in the morning.

They arrived at the hospital, and the S. O. C. went in to see if anyone wanted him. Philip walked on. It had

been very hot all the day before, and even now in the early morning there was a balminess in the air. The

street was very still. Philip did not feel inclined to go to bed. It was the end of his work aud he need not

hurry. He strolled along, glad of the fresh air and the silence; he thought that he would go on to the bridge

and look at day break on the river. A policeman at the corner bade him goodmorning. He knew who Philip

Philip nodded and passed. He leaned against the parapet and looked towards the morning. At that hour the

great city was like a city of the dead. The sky was cloudless, but the stars were dim at the approach of day;

there was a light mist on the river, and the great buildings on the north side were like palaces in an enchanted

island. A group of barges was moored in midstream. It was all of an unearthly violet, troubling somehow and

aweinspiring; but quickly everything grew pale, and cold, and gray. Then the sun rose, a ray of yellow gold

stole across the sky, and the sky was iridescent. Philip could not get out of his eyes the dead girl lying on the

bed, wan and white, and the boy who stood at the end of it like a stricken beast. The bareness of the squalid

room made the pain of it more poignant. It was cruel that a stupid chance should have cut off her life when

she was just entering upon it; but in the very moment of saying this to himself, Philip thought of the life

which had been in store for her, the bearing of children, the dreary fight with poverty, the youth broken by

toil and deprivation into a slatternly middle agehe saw the pretty face grow thin and white, the hair grow

scanty, the pretty hands, worn down brutally by work, become like the claws of an old animalthen, when

the man was past his prime, the difficulty of getting jobs, the small wages he had to take; and the inevitable,

abject penury of the end: she might be energetic, thrifty, industrious, it would not have saved her; in the end

was the workhouse or subsistence on the charity of her children. Who could pity her because she had died

But pity was inane. Philip felt it was not that which these people needed. They did not pity themselves. They

accepted their fate. It was the natural order of things. Otherwise, good heavens! otherwise they would swarm

over the river in their multitude to the side where those great buildings were, secure and stately. and they

would pillage, burn, and sack. But the day, tender and pale, had broken now, and the mist was tenuous; it

bathed everything in a soft radiance; and the Thames was gray, rosy, and green; gray like motherofpearl

and green like the heart of a yellow rose. The wharfs and storehouses of the Surrey Side were massed in

disorderly loveliness. The scene was so exquisite that Philip's heart beat passionately. He was overwhelmed

PHILIP spent the few weeks that remained before the beginning of the winter session in the outpatients'

department, and in October settled down to regular work. He had been away from the hospital for so long that

he found himself very largely among new people; the men of different years had little to do with one another,

and his contemporaries were now mostly qualified: some had left to take up assistantships or posts in country

hospitals and infirmaries, and some held appointments at St. luke's. The two years during which his mind had

lain fallow had refreshed him, he fancied, and he was able now to work with energy.

The Athelnys were delighted with his change of fortune. He had kept aside a few things from the sale of his

uncle's effects and gave them all presents. He gave Sally a gold chain that had belonged to his aunt. She was

now grown up. She was apprenticed to a dressmaker and set out every morning at eight to work all day in a

shop in Regent Street. Sally had frank blue eyes, a broad brow, and plentiful shining hair; she was buxom,

with broad hips and full breasts; and her father, who was fond of discussing her appearance, warned her

constantly that she must not grow fat. She attracted because she was healthy, animal, and feminine. She had

many admirers, but they left her unmoved; she gave one the impression that she looked upon lovemaking as

nonsense; and it was easy to imagine that young men found her unapproachable. Sally was old for her years:

she had been used to help her mother in the household work and in the care of the children, so that she had

acquired a managing air, which made her mother say that Sally was a bit too fond of having things her own

way. She did not speak very much, but as she grew older she seemed to be acquiring a quiet sense of humour,

and sometimes uttered a remark which suggested that beneath her impassive exterior she was quietly

bubbling with amusement at her fellowcreatures. Philip found that with her he never got on the terms of

affectionate intimacy upon which he was with the rest of Athelny's huge family. Now and then her

When Philip gave her the necklace Athelny in his boisterous way insisted that she must kiss him; but Sally

Philip saw her embarrassment, and, amused, turned Athelny's attention to something else. That was never a

very difficult thing to do. But evidently her mother spoke of the matter later, for next time Philip came she

took the opportunity when they were alone for a couple of minutes to refer to it.

"It's not because I wasn't grateful." She blushed a little as she uttered the formal phrase which she had

prepared. "I shall always value the necklace, and it was very kind of you to give it me."

Philip found it always a little difficult to talk to her. She did all that she had to do very competently, but

seemed to feel no need of conversation; yet there was nothing unsociable in her. One Sunday afternoon when

Athelny and his wife had gone out together, and Philip, treated as one of the family, sat reading in the

parlour, Sally came in and sat by the window to sew. The girls' clothes were made at home and Sally could

not afford to spend Sundays in idleness. Philip thought she wished to talk and put down his book.

"Go on reading," she said. "I only thought as you were alone I'd come and sit with you."

There was no irony in her tone: she was merely stating a fact. But it suggested to Philip that she measured her

father, alas, no longer the hero he was to her childhood, and in her mind joined together his entertaining

conversation and the thriftlessness which often brought difficulties into their life; she compared his rhetoric

with her mother's practical common sense; and though the liveliness of her father amused her she was

perhaps sometimes a little impatient with it. Philip looked at her as she bent over her work; she was healthy,

strong, and normal; it must be odd to see her among the other girls in the shop with their flat chests and

After a time it appeared that Sally had a suitor. She went out occasionally with friends she had made in the

workroom, and had met a young man, an electrical engineer in a very good way of business, who was a

most eligible person. One day she told her mother that he had asked her to marry him.

"Oh, I told him I wasn't overanxious to marry anyone just yet awhile." She paused a little as was her habit

between observations. "He took on so that I said he might come to tea on Sunday."

It was an occasion that thoroughly appealed to Athelny. He rehearsed all the afternoon how he should play

the heavy father for the young man's edification till he reduced his children to helpless giggling. Just before

he was due Athelny routed out an Egyptian tarboosh and insisted on putting it on.

"Go on with you, Athelny," said his wife, who was in her best, which was of black velvet, and, since she was

growing stouter every year, very tight for her. "You'll spoil the girl's chances."

"Unhand me, woman. Nothing will induce me to take it off. This young man must be shown at once that it is

"Let him keep it on, mother," said Sally, in her even, indifferent fashion. "If Mr. Donaldson doesn't take it the

Philip thought it was a severe ordeal that the young man was being exposed to, since Athelny, in his brown

velvet jacket, flowing black tie, and red tarboosh, was a startling spectacle for an innocent electrical engineer.

When he came he was greeted by his host with the proud courtesy of a Spanish grandee and by Mrs. Athelny

in an altogether homely and natural fashion. They sat down at the old ironingtable in the highbacked

monkish chairs, and Mrs. Athelny poured tea out of a lustre teapot which gave a note of England and the

countryside to the festivity. She had made little cakes with her own hand, and on the table was homemade

jam. It was a farmhouse tea, and to Philip very quaint and charming in that Jacobean house. Athelny for

some fantastic reason took it into his head to discourse upon Byzantine history; he had been reading the later

volumes of the _Decline and Fall_; and, his forefinger dramatically extended, he poured into the astonished

ears of the suitor scandalous stories about Theodora and Irene. He addressed himself directly to his guest with

a torrent of rhodomontade; and the young man, reduced to helpless silence and shy, nodded his head at

intervals to show that he took an intelligent interest. Mrs. Athelny paid no attention to Thorpe's conversation,

but interrupted now and then to offer the young man more tea or to press upon him cake and jam. Philip

watched Sally; she sat with downcast eyes, calm, silent, and observant; and her long eyelashes cast a pretty

shadow on her cheek. You could not tell whether she was amused at the scene or if she cared for the young

man. She was inscrutable. But one thing was certain: the electrical engineer was goodlooking, fair and

cleanshaven, with pleasant, regular features, and an honest face; he was tall and wellmade. Philip could not

help thinking he would make an excellent mate for her, and he felt a pang of envy for the happiness which he

Presently the suitor said he thought it was about time he was getting along. Sally rose to her feet without a

"Well, Sally, we think your young man very nice. We are prepared to welcome him into our family. Let the

Sally set about clearing away the teathings. She did not answer. Suddenly she shot a swift glance at Philip.

She had always refused to call him Uncle Phil as the other children did, and would not call him Philip.

She looked at him quickly once more, and then with a slight blush went on with her business.

"I thought him a very nice civilspoken young fellow," said Mrs. Athelny, "and I think he's just the sort to

Sally did not reply for a minute or two, and Philip looked at her curiously: it might be thought that she was

meditating upon what her mother had said, and on the other hand she might be thinking of the man in the

"Why don't you answer when you're spoken to, Sally?" remarked her mother, a little irritably.

"I don't know how much more you want," said Mrs. Athelny, and it was quite clear now that she was put out.

"He's a very decent young fellow and he can afford to give you a thorough good home. We've got quite

enough to feed here without you. If you get a chance like that it's wicked not to take it. And I daresay you'd

Philip had never before heard Mrs. Athelny refer so directly to the difficulties of her life. He saw how

"It's no good your carrying on, mother," said Sally in her quiet way. "I'm not going to marry him."

Philip caught Sally's eye, and he thought there was in it a glimmer of amusement. He wondered what there

DURING his last year at St. Luke's Philip had to work hard. He was contented with life. He found it very

comfortable to be heartfree and to have enough money for his needs. He had heard people speak

contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it. He knew that the lack made a

man petty, mean, grasping; it distorted his character and caused him to view the world from a vulgar angle;

when you had to consider every penny, money became of grotesque importance: you needed a competency to

rate it at its proper value. He lived a solitary life, seeing no one except the Athelnys, but he was not lonely; he

busied himself with plans for the future, and sometimes he thought of the past. His recollection dwelt now

and then on old friends, but he made no effort to see them. He would have liked to know what was become of

Norah Nesbit; she was Norah something else now, but he could not remember the name of the man she was

going to marry; he was glad to have known her: she was a good and a brave soul. One evening about half past

eleven he saw Lawson, walking along Piccadilly; he was in evening clothes and might be supposed to be

coming back from a theatre. Philip gave way to a sudden impulse and quickly turned down a side street. He

had not seen him for two years and felt that he could not now take up again the interrupted friendship. He and

Lawson had nothing more to say to one another. Philip was no longer interested in art; it seemed to him that

he was able to enjoy beauty with greater force than when he was a boy; but art appeared to him unimportant.

He was occupied with the forming of a pattern out of the manifold chaos of life, and the materials with which

he worked seemed to make preoccupation with pigments and words very trivial. Lawson had served his turn.

Philip's friendship with him had been a motive in the design he was elaborating: it was merely sentimental to

Sometimes Philip thought of Mildred. He avoided deliberately the streets in which there was a chance of

seeing her; but occasionally some feeling, perhaps curiosity, perhaps something deeper which he would not

acknowledge, made him wander about Piccadilly and Regent Street during the hours when she might be

expected to be there. He did not know then whether he wished to see her or dreaded it. Once he saw a back

which reminded him of hers, and for a moment he thought it was she; it gave him a curious sensation: it was

a strange sharp pain in his heart, there was fear in it and a sickening dismay; and when he hurried on and

found that he was mistaken he did not know whether it was relief that he experienced or disappointment.

At the beginning of August Philip passed his surgery, his last examination, and received his diploma. It was

seven years since he had entered St. Luke's Hospital. He was nearly thirty. He walked down the stairs of the

Royal College of Surgeons with the roll in his hand which qualified him to practice, and his heart beat with

Next day he went to the secretary's office to put his name down for one of the hospital appointments. The

secretary was a pleasant little man with a black beard, whom Philip had always found very affable. He

"I suppose you wouldn't like to do a locum for a month on the South coast? Three guineas a week with board

"It's at Farnley, in Dorsetshire. Doctor South. You'd have to go down at once; his assistant has developed

There was something in the secretary's manner that puzzled Philip. It was a little doubtful.

"Well, the fact is, I understand he's rather a crusty, funny old fellow. The agencies won't send him anyone any

"But d'you think he'll be satisfied with a man who's only just qualified? After all I have no experience."

Philip thought for a moment. He had nothing to do for the next few weeks, and he was glad of the chance to

earn a bit of money. He could put it aside for the holiday in Spain which he had promised himself when he

had finished his appointment at St. Luke's or, if they would not give him anything there, at some other

"The only thing is, you must go this afternoon. Will that suit you? If so, I'll send a wire at once."

Philip would have liked a few days to himself; but he had seen the Athelnys the night before (he had gone at

Once to take them his good news) and there was really no reason why he should not start immediately. He

had little luggage to pack. Soon after seven that evening he got out of the station at Farnley and took a cab to

Doctor South's. It was a broad low stucco house, with a Virginia creeper growing over it. He was shown into

the consultingroom. An old man was writing at a desk. He looked up as the maid ushered Philip in. He did

not get up, and he did not speak; he merely stared at Philip. Philip was taken aback.

"I think you're expecting me," he said. "The secretary of St. luke's wired to you this morning."

Doctor South amused him by his odd manner. He got up now, and Philip saw that he was a man of middle

height, thin, with white hair cut very short and a long mouth closed so tightly that he seemed to have no lips

at all; he was cleanshaven but for small white whiskers, and they increased the squareness of face which his

firm jaw gave him. He wore a brown tweed suit and a white stock. His clothes hung loosely about him as

though they had been made for a much larger man. He looked like a respectable farmer of the middle of the

"There is the diningroom," he said, pointing to the door opposite. "Your bedroom is the first door you

During dinner Philip knew that Doctor South was examining him, but he spoke little, and Philip felt that he

"Last year when my assistant took a holiday they sent me a 'Varsity man. I told 'em not to do it again. Too

There was another pause. The dinner was very simple and very good. Philip preserved a sedate exterior, but

in his heart he was bubbling over with excitement. He was immensely elated at being engaged as a locum; it

made him feel extremely grown up; he had an insane desire to laugh at nothing in particular; and the more he

"I didn't go in for the medical till I was nearly twentythree, and I had to give it up for two years in the

Doctor South gave him an odd look and relapsed into silence. At the end of dinner he got up from the table.

"Mostly fishermen and their families. I have the Union and the Seamen's Hospital. I used to be alone here,

but since they tried to make this into a fashionable seaside resort a man has set up on the cliff, and the

welltodo people go to him. I only have those who can't afford to pay for a doctor at all."

He walked out of the room without another word and left Philip by himself. When the maid came in to clear

away she told Philip that Doctor South saw patients from six till seven. Work for that night was over. Philip

fetched a book from his room, lit his pipe, and settled himself down to read. It was a great comfort, since he

had read nothing but medical books for the last few months. At ten o'clock Doctor South came in and looked

at him. Philip hated not to have his feet up, and he had dragged up a chair for them.

"You seem able to make yourself pretty comfortable," said Doctor South, with a grimness which would have

"I beg your pardon. Medical men aren't much interested in literature, are they?"

Philip had put the book down on the table, and Doctor South took it up. It was a volume of an edition which

had belonged to the Vicar of Blackstable. It was a thin book bound in faded morocco, with a copperplate

engraving as a frontispiece; the pages were musty with age and stained with mould. Philip, without meaning

to, started forward a little as Doctor South took the volume in his hands, and a slight smile came into his eyes.

"I see you're fond of books. You can always tell by the way people handle them."

He soon discovered why Doctor South's assistants found it difficult to get on with him. In the first place, he

set his face firmly against all the discoveries of the last thirty years: he had no patience with the drugs which

became modish, were thought to work marvellous cures, and in a few years were discarded; he had stock

mixtures which he had brought from St. Luke's where he had been a student, and had used all his life; he

found them just as efficacious as anything that had come into fashion since. Philip was startled at Doctor

South's suspicion of asepsis; he had accepted it in deference to universal opinion; but he used the precautions

which Philip had known insisted upon so scrupulously at the hospital with the disdainful tolerance of a man

"I've seen antiseptics come along and sweep everything before them, and then I've seen asepsis take their

The young men who were sent down to him knew only hospital practice; and they came with the unconcealed

scorn for the General Practitioner which they had absorbed in the air at the hospital; but they had seen only

the complicated cases which appeared in the wards; they knew how to treat an obscure disease of the

suprarenal bodies, but were helpless when consulted for a cold in the head. Their knowledge was theoretical

and their selfassurance unbounded. Doctor South watched them with tightened lips; he took a savage

pleasure in showing them how great was their ignorance and how unjustified their conceit. It was a poor

practice, of fishing folk, and the doctor made up his own prescriptions. Doctor South asked his assistant how

he expected to make both ends meet if he gave a fisherman with a stomachache a mixture consisting of half

a dozen expensive drugs. He complained too that the young medical men were uneducated: their reading

consisted of _The Sporting Times_ and _The British Medical Journal_; they could neither write a legible

hand nor spell correctly. For two or three days Doctor South watched Philip closely, ready to fall on him with

acid sarcasm if he gave him the opportunity; and Philip, aware of this, went about his work with a quiet sense

of amusement. He was pleased with the change of occupation. He liked the feeling of independence and of

responsibility. All sorts of people came to the consultingroom. He was gratified because he seemed able to

inspire his patients with confidence; and it was entertaining to watch the process of cure which at a hospital

necessarily could be watched only at distant intervals. His rounds took him into lowroofed cottages in which

were fishing tackle and sails and here and there mementoes of deepsea travelling, a lacquer box from Japan,

spears and oars from Melanesia, or daggers from the bazaars of Stamboul; there was an air of romance in the

stuffy little rooms, and the salt of the sea gave them a bitter freshness. Philip liked to talk to the sailormen,

and when they found that he was not supercilious they told him long yarns of the distant journeys of their

Once or twice he made a mistake in diagnosis: (he had never seen a case of measles before, and when he was

confronted with the rash took it for an obscure disease of the skin;) and once or twice his ideas of treatment

differed from Doctor South's. The first time this happened Doctor South attacked him with savage irony; but

Philip took it with good humour; he had some gift for repartee, and he made one or two answers which

caused Doctor South to stop and look at him curiously. Philip's face was grave, but his eyes were twinkling.

The old gentleman could not avoid the impression that Philip was chaffing him. He was used to being

disliked and feared by his assistants, and this was a new experience. He had half a mind to fly into a passion

and pack Philip off by the next train, he had done that before with his assistants; but he had an uneasy feeling

that Philip then would simply laugh at him outright; and suddenly he felt amused. His mouth formed itself

into a smile against his will, and he turned away. In a little while he grew conscious that Philip was amusing

himself systematically at his expense. He was taken aback at first and then diverted.

PHILIP had written to Athelny to tell him that he was doing a locum in Dorsetshire and in due course

received an answer from him. It was written in the formal manner he affected, studded with pompous epithets

as a Persian diadem was studded with precious stones; and in the beautiful hand, like black letter and as

difficult to read, upon which he prided himself. He suggested that Philip should join him and his family in the

Kentish hopfield to which he went every year; and to persuade him said various beautiful and complicated

things about Philip's soul and the winding tendrils of the hops. Philip replied at once that he would come on

the first day he was free. Though not born there, he had a peculiar affection for the Isle of Thanet, and he was

fired with enthusiasm at the thought of spending a fortnight so close to the earth and amid conditions which

The four weeks of his engagement at Farnley passed quickly. On the cliff a new town was springing up, with

red brick villas round golf links, and a large hotel had recently been opened to cater for the summer visitors;

but Philip went there seldom. Down below, by the harbour, the little stone houses of a past century were

clustered in a delightful confusion, and the narrow streets, climbing down steeply, had an air of antiquity

which appealed to the imagination. By the water's edge were neat cottages with trim, tiny gardens in front of

them; they were inhabited by retired captains in the merchant service, and by mothers or widows of men who

had gained their living by the sea; and they had an appearance which was quaint and peaceful. In the little

harbour came tramps from Spain and the Levant, ships of small tonnage; and now and then a windjammer

was borne in by the winds of romance. It reminded Philip of the dirty little harbour with its colliers at

Blackstable, and he thought that there he had first acquired the desire, which was now an obsession, for

Eastern lands and sunlit islands in a tropic sea. But here you felt yourself closer to the wide, deep ocean than

on the shore of that North Sea which seemed always circumscribed; here you could draw a long breath as you

looked out upon the even vastness; and the west wind, the dear soft salt wind of England, uplifted the heart

One evening, when Philip had reached his last week with Doctor South, a child came to the surgery door

while the old doctor and Philip were making up prescriptions. It was a little ragged girl with a dirty face and

"What's the matter with Mrs. Fletcher?" called out Doctor South in his rasping voice.

The little girl hesitated for a moment, and putting a dirty finger in a dirty mouth stood still and looked at

"Please, sir, Mrs. Fletcher says, will the new doctor come?" There was a sound in the dispensary and Doctor

"Isn't Mrs. Fletcher satisfied with me?" he barked. "I've attended Mrs. Fletcher since she was born. Why

The little girl looked for a moment as though she were going to cry, then she thought better of it; she put out

her tongue deliberately at Doctor South, and, before he could recover from his astonishment, bolted off as

"You look rather fagged, and it's a goodish way to Ivy Lane," he said, by way of giving him an excuse not to

"It's a damned sight nearer for a man who's got the use of both legs than for a man who's only got one and a

Philip took up his hat and went to see the patient. It was hard upon eight o'clock when he came back. Doctor

"No, I'm afraid I haven't. I stopped to look at the sunset on my way back, and I didn't think of the time."

Doctor South did not reply, and the servant brought in some grilled sprats. Philip ate them with an excellent

Doctor South gave him an odd look, and the shadow of a smile flickered across his old, tired face. They ate

the rest of the dinner in silence; but when the maid had given them the port and left the room, the old man

The doctor did not answer, but he gave a chuckle of bitter mirth. They sat for a while staring at one another.

"It's very kind of you, but I hope to get an appointment at the hospital in the autumn. It'll help me so much in

"I didn't think that was a fact which altogether met with your approval," Philip said drily.

"D'you suppose that after forty years' practice I care a twopenny damn whether people prefer my assistant to

me? No, my friend. There's no sentiment between my patients and me. I don't expect gratitude from them, I

Philip made no reply, not because he was thinking over the proposal, but because he was astonished. It was

evidently very unusual for someone to offer a partnership to a newly qualified man; and he realised with

wonder that, although nothing would induce him to say so, Doctor South had taken a fancy to him. He

"The practice brings in about seven hundred a year. We can reckon out how much your share would be

worth, and you can pay me off by degrees. And when I die you can succeed me. I think that's better than

knocking about hospitals for two or three years, and then taking assistantships until you can afford to set up

Philip knew it was a chance that most people in his profession would jump at; the profession was

overcrowded, and half the men he knew would be thankful to accept the certainty of even so modest a

"I'm awfully sorry, but I can't," he said. "It means giving up everything I've aimed at for years. In one way

and another I've had a roughish time, but I always had that one hope before me, to get qualified so that I

might travel; and now, when I wake in the morning, my bones simply ache to get off, I don't mind where

Now the goal seemed very near. He would have finished his appointment at St. Luke's by the middle of the

following year, and then he would go to Spain; he could afford to spend several months there, rambling up

and down the land which stood to him for romance; after that he would get a ship and go to the East. Life was

before him and time of no account. He could wander, for years if he chose, in unfrequented places, amid

strange peoples, where life was led in strange ways. He did not know what he sought or what his journeys

would bring him; but he had a feeling that he would learn something new about life and gain some clue to the

mystery that he had solved only to find more mysterious. And even if he found nothing he would allay the

unrest which gnawed at his heart. But Doctor South was showing him a great kindness, and it seemed

ungrateful to refuse his offer for no adequate reason; so in his shy way, trying to appear as matter of fact as

possible, he made some attempt to explain why it was so important to him to carry out the plans he had

Doctor South listened quietly, and a gentle look came into his shrewd old eyes. It seemed to Philip an added

kindness that he did not press him to accept his offer. Benevolence is often very peremptory. He appeared to

look upon Philip's reasons as sound. Dropping the subject, he began to talk of his own youth; he had been in

the Royal Navy, and it was his long connection with the sea that, when he retired, had made him settle at

Farnley. He told Philip of old days in the Pacific and of wild adventures in China. He had taken part in an

expedition against the headhunters of Borneo and had known Samoa when it was still an independent state.

He had touched at coral islands. Philip listened to him entranced. Little by little he told Philip about himself.

Doctor South was a widower, his wife had died thirty years before, and his daughter had married a farmer in

Rhodesia; he had quarrelled with him, and she had not come to England for ten years. It was just as if he had

never had wife or child. He was very lonely. His gruffness was little more than a protection which he wore to

hide a complete disillusionment; and to Philip it seemed tragic to see him just waiting for death, not

impatiently, but rather with loathing for it, hating old age and unable to resign himself to its limitations, and

yet with the feeling that death was the only solution of the bitterness of his life. Philip crossed his path, and

the natural affection which long separation from his daughter had killedshe had taken her husband's part in

the quarrel and her children he had never seensettled itself upon Philip. At first it made him angry, he told

himself it was a sign of dotage; but there was something in Philip that attracted him, and he found himself

smiling at him he knew not why. Philip did not bore him. Once or twice he put his hand on his shoulder: it

was as near a caress as he had got since his daughter left England so many years before. When the time came

for Philip to go Doctor South accompanied him to the station: he found himself unaccountably depressed.

"But you want to get out into the world? Ah, you have youth." He hesitated a moment. "I want you to

Philip shook hands with him out of the carriage window, and the train steamed out of the station. Philip

thought of the fortnight he was going to spend in the hopfield: he was happy at the idea of seeing his friends

again, and he rejoiced because the day was fine. But Doctor South walked slowly back to his empty house.

IT was late in the evening when Philip arrived at Ferne. It was Mrs. Athelny's native village, and she had

been accustomed from her childhood to pick in the hopfield to which with her husband and her children she

still went every year. Like many Kentish folk her family had gone out regularly, glad to earn a little money,

but especially regarding the annual outing, looked forward to for months, as the best of holidays. The work

was not hard, it was done in common, in the open air, and for the children it was a long, delightful picnic;

here the young men met the maidens; in the long evenings when work was over they wandered about the

lanes, making love; and the hopping season was generally followed by weddings. They went out in carts with

bedding, pots and pans, chairs and tables; and Ferne while the hopping lasted was deserted. They were very

exclusive and would have resented the intrusion of foreigners, as they called the people who came from

London; they looked down upon them and feared them too; they were a rough lot, and the respectable country

folk did not want to mix with them. In the old days the hoppers slept in barns, but ten years ago a row of huts

had been erected at the side of a meadow; and the Athelnys, like many others, had the same hut every year.

Athelny met Philip at the station in a cart he had borrowed from the publichouse at which he had got a room

for Philip. It was a quarter of a mile from the hopfield. They left his bag there and walked over to the

meadow in which were the huts. They were nothing more than a long, low shed, divided into little rooms

about twelve feet square. In front of each was a fire of sticks, round which a family was grouped, eagerly

watching the cooking of supper. The seaair and the sun had browned already the faces of Athelny's children.

Mrs. Athelny seemed a different woman in her sunbonnet: you felt that the long years in the city had made

no real difference to her; she was the country woman born and bred, and you could see how much at home

she found herself in the country. She was frying bacon and at the same time keeping an eye on the younger

children, but she had a hearty handshake and a jolly smile for Philip. Athelny was enthusiastic over the

"We're starved for sun and light in the cities we live in. It isn't life, it's a long imprisonment. Let us sell all we

"I can see you in the country," she answered with goodhumoured scorn. "Why, the first rainy day we had in

the winter you'd be crying for London." She turned to Philip. "Athelny's always like this when we come down

"Daddy was lazy today," remarked Jane, with the frankness which characterized her, "he didn't fill one bin."

"I'm getting into practice, child, and tomorrow I shall fill more bins than all of you put together."

She stepped out of their little hut, and the flames of the wood fire leaped up and cast sharp colour upon her

face. Of late Philip had only seen her in the trim frocks she had taken to since she was at the dressmaker's,

and there was something very charming in the print dress she wore now, loose and easy to work in; the

sleeves were tucked up and showed her strong, round arms. She too had a sunbonnet.

"You look like a milkmaid in a fairy story," said Philip, as he shook hands with her.

"She's the belle of the hopfields," said Athelny. "My word, if the Squire's son sees you he'll make you an

She looked about for a place to sit down in, and Philip made room for her beside him. She looked wonderful

in the night lit by wood fires. She was like some rural goddess, and you thought of those fresh, strong girls

whom old Herrick had praised in exquisite numbers. The supper was simple, bread and butter, crisp bacon,

tea for the children, and beer for Mr. and Mrs. Athelny and Philip. Athelny, eating hungrily, praised loudly all

he ate. He flung words of scorn at Lucullus and piled invectives upon BrillatSavarin.

"There's one thing one can say for you, Athelny," said his wife, "you do enjoy your food and no mistake!"

"Cooked by your hand, my Betty," he said, stretching out an eloquent forefinger.

Philip felt himself very comfortable. He looked happily at the line of fires, with people grouped about them,

and the colour of the flames against the night; at the end of the meadow was a line of great elms, and above

the starry sky. The children talked and laughed, and Athelny, a child among them, made them roar by his

"They think a rare lot of Athelny down here," said his wife. "Why, Mrs. Bridges said to me, I don't know

what we should do without Mr. Athelny now, she said. He's always up to something, he's more like a

Sally sat in silence, but she attended to Philip's wants in a thoughtful fashion that charmed him. It was

pleasant to have her beside him, and now and then he glanced at her sunburned, healthy face. Once he caught

her eyes, and she smiled quietly. When supper was over Jane and a small brother were sent down to a brook

"You children, show your Uncle Philip where we sleep, and then you must be thinking of going to bed."

Small hands seized Philip, and he was dragged towards the hut. He went in and struck a match. There was no

furniture in it; and beside a tin box, in which clothes were kept, there was nothing but the beds; there were

three of them, one against each wall. Athelny followed Philip in and showed them proudly.

"That's the stuff to sleep on," he cried. "None of your springmattresses and swansdown. I never sleep so

soundly anywhere as here. _You_ will sleep between sheets. My dear fellow, I pity you from the bottom of

The beds consisted of a thick layer of hopvine, on the top of which was a coating of straw, and this was

covered with a blanket. After a day in the open air, with the aromatic scent of the hops all round them, the

happy pickers slept like tops. By nine o'clock all was quiet in the meadow and everyone in bed but one or two

men who still lingered in the publichouse and would not come back till it was closed at ten. Athelny walked

"We breakfast about a quarter to six, but I daresay you won't want to get up as early as that. You see, we have

"Of course he must get up early," cried Athelny, "and he must work like the rest of us. He's got to earn his

"The children go down to bathe before breakfast, and they can give you a call on their way back. They pass

Jane and Harold and Edward shouted with delight at the prospect, and next morning Philip was awakened out

of a sound sleep by their bursting into his room. The boys jumped on his bed, and he had to chase them out

with his slippers. He put on a coat and a pair of trousers and went down. The day had only just broken, and

there was a nip in the air; but the sky was cloudless, and the sun was shining yellow. Sally, holding Connie's

hand, was standing in the middle of the road, with a towel and a bathingdress over her arm. He saw now that

her sunbonnet was of the colour of lavender, and against it her face, red and brown, was like an apple. She

greeted him with her slow, sweet smile, and he noticed suddenly that her teeth were small and regular and

"I was for letting you sleep on," she said, "but they would go up and wake you. I said you didn't really want

They walked down the road and then cut across the marshes. That way it was under a mile to the sea. The

water looked cold and gray, and Philip shivered at the sight of it; but the others tore off their clothes and ran

in shouting. Sally did everything a little slowly, and she did not come into the water till all the rest were

splashing round Philip. Swimming was his only accomplishment; he felt at home in the water; and soon he

had them all imitating him as he played at being a porpoise, and a drowning man, and a fat lady afraid of

wetting her hair. The bathe was uproarious, and it was necessary for Sally to be very severe to induce them

"You're as bad as any of them," she said to Philip, in her grave, maternal way, which was at once comic and

They walked back, Sally with her bright hair streaming over one shoulder and her sunbonnet in her hand,

but when they got to the huts Mrs. Athelny had already started for the hopgarden. Athleny, in a pair of the

oldest trousers anyone had ever worn, his jacket buttoned up to show he had no shirt on, and in a

widebrimmed soft hat, was frying kippers over a fire of sticks. He was delighted with himself: he looked

every inch a brigand. As soon as he saw the party he began to shout the witches' chorus from _Macbeth_ over

"You mustn't dawdle over your breakfast or mother will be angry," he said, when they came up.

And in a few minutes, Harold and Jane with pieces of bread and butter in their hands, they sauntered through

the meadow into the hopfield. They were the last to leave. A hopgarden was one of the sights connected

with Philip's boyhood and the oasthouses to him the most typical feature of the Kentish scene. It was with

no sense of strangeness, but as though he were at home, that Philip followed Sally through the long lines of

the hops. The sun was bright now and cast a sharp shadow. Philip feasted his eyes on the richness of the

green leaves. The hops were yellowing, and to him they had the beauty and the passion which poets in Sicily

have found in the purple grape. As they walked along Philip felt himself overwhelmed by the rich luxuriance.

A sweet scent arose from the fat Kentish soil, and the fitful September breeze was heavy with the goodly

perfume of the hops. Athelstan felt the exhilaration instinctively, for he lifted up his voice and sang; it was

In a moment they heard the hum of voices, and in a moment more came upon the pickers. They were all hard

at work, talking and laughing as they picked. They sat on chairs, on stools, on boxes, with their baskets by

their sides, and some stood by the bin throwing the hops they picked straight into it. There were a lot of

children about and a good many babies, some in makeshift cradles, some tucked up in a rug on the soft brown

dry earth. The children picked a little and played a great deal. The women worked busily, they had been

pickers from childhood, and they could pick twice as fast as foreigners from London. They boasted about the

number of bushels they had picked in a day, but they complained you could not make money now as in

former times: then they paid you a shilling for five bushels, but now the rate was eight and even nine bushels

to the shilling. In the old days a good picker could earn enough in the season to keep her for the rest of the

year, but now there was nothing in it; you got a holiday for nothing, and that was about all. Mrs. Hill had

bought herself a pianner out of what she made picking, so she said, but she was very near, one wouldn't like

to be near like that, and most people thought it was only what she said, if the truth was known perhaps it

would be found that she had put a bit of money from the savings bank towards it.

The hoppers were divided into bin companies of ten pickers, not counting children, and Athelny loudly

boasted of the day when he would have a company consisting entirely of his own family. Each company had

a binman, whose duty it was to supply it with strings of hops at their bins (the bin was a large sack on a

wooden frame, about seven feet high, and long rows of them were placed between the rows of hops;) and it

was to this position that Athelny aspired when his family was old enough to form a company. Meanwhile he

worked rather by encouraging others than by exertions of his own. He sauntered up to Mrs. Athelny, who had

been busy for half an hour and had already emptied a basket into the bin, and with his cigarette between his

lips began to pick. He asserted that he was going to pick more than anyone that day, but mother; of course no

one could pick so much as mother; that reminded him of the trials which Aphrodite put upon the curious

Psyche, and he began to tell his children the story of her love for the unseen bridegroom. He told it very well.

It seemed to Philip, listening with a smile on his lips, that the old tale fitted in with the scene. The sky was

very blue now, and he thought it could not be more lovely even in Greece. The children with their fair hair

and rosy cheeks, strong, healthy, and vivacious; the delicate form of the hops; the challenging emerald of the

leaves, like a blare of trumpets; the magic of the green alley, narrowing to a point as you looked down the

row, with the pickers in their sunbonnets: perhaps there was more of the Greek spirit there than you could

find in the books of professors or in museums. He was thankful for the beauty of England. He thought of the

winding white roads and the hedgerows, the green meadows with their elmtrees, the delicate line of the hills

and the copses that crowned them, the flatness of the marshes, and the melancholy of the North Sea. He was

very glad that he felt its loveliness. But presently Athelny grew restless and announced that he would go and

ask how Robert Kemp's mother was. He knew everyone in the garden and called them all by their Christian

names; he knew their family histories and all that had happened to them from birth. With harmless vanity he

played the fine gentleman among them, and there was a touch of condescension in his familiarity. Philip

"Quite right, my boy," answered Athelny, with a wave of the hand, as he strolled away. "No work, no

PHILIP had not a basket of his own, but sat with Sally. Jane thought it monstrous that he should help her

elder sister rather than herself, and he had to promise to pick for her when Sally's basket was full. Sally was

"Oh, no, it wants soft hands. That's why women pick better than men. If your hands are hard and your fingers

He liked to see her deft movements, and she watched him too now and then with that maternal spirit of hers

which was so amusing and yet so charming. He was clumsy at first, and she laughed at him. When she bent

over and showed him how best to deal with a whole line their hands met. He was surprised to see her blush.

He could not persuade himself that she was a woman; because he had known her as a flapper, he could not

help looking upon her as a child still; yet the number of her admirers showed that she was a child no longer;

and though they had only been down a few days one of Sally's cousins was already so attentive that she had

to endure a lot of chaffing. His name was Peter Gann, and he was the son of Mrs. Athelny's sister, who had

married a farmer near Ferne. Everyone knew why he found it necessary to walk through the hopfield every

A calloff by the sounding of a horn was made for breakfast at eight, and though Mrs. Athelny told them they

had not deserved it, they ate it very heartily. They set to work again and worked till twelve, when the horn

sounded once more for dinner. At intervals the measurer went his round from bin to bin, accompanied by the

booker, who entered first in his own book and then in the hopper's the number of bushels picked. As each bin

was filled it was measured out in bushel baskets into a huge bag called a poke; and this the measurer and the

polepuller carried off between them and put on the waggon. Athelny came back now and then with stories

of how much Mrs. Heath or Mrs. Jones had picked, and he conjured his family to beat her: he was always

wanting to make records, and sometimes in his enthusiasm picked steadily for an hour. His chief amusement

in it, however, was that it showed the beauty of his graceful hands, of which he was excessively proud. He

spent much time manicuring them. He told Philip, as he stretched out his tapering fingers, that the Spanish

grandees had always slept in oiled gloves to preserve their whiteness. The hand that wrung the throat of

Europe, he remarked dramatically, was as shapely and exquisite as a woman's; and he looked at his own, as

he delicately picked the hops, and sighed with selfsatisfaction. When he grew tired of this he rolled himself

a cigarette and discoursed to Philip of art and literature. In the afternoon it grew very hot. Work did not

proceed so actively and conversation halted. The incessant chatter of the morning dwindled now to desultory

remarks. Tiny beads of sweat stood on Sally's upper lip, and as she worked her lips were slightly parted. She

Callingoff time depended on the state of the oasthouse. Sometimes it was filled early, and as many hops

had been picked by three or four as could be dried during the night. Then work was stopped. But generally

the last measuring of the day began at five. As each company had its bin measured it gathered up its things

and, chatting again now that work was over, sauntered out of the garden. The women went back to the huts to

clean up and prepare the supper, while a good many of the men strolled down the road to the publichouse. A

The Athelnys' bin was the last to be dealt with. When the measurer came Mrs. Athelny, with a sigh of relief,

stood up and stretched her arms: she had been sitting in the same position for many hours and was stiff.

"Now, let's go to The Jolly Sailor," said Athelny. "The rites of the day must be duly performed, and there is

"Take a jug with you, Athelny," said his wife, "and bring back a pint and a half for supper."

She gave him the money, copper by copper. The barparlour was already well filled. It had a sanded floor,

benches round it, and yellow pictures of Victorian prizefighters on the walls. The licencee knew all his

customers by name, and he leaned over his bar smiling benignly at two young men who were throwing rings

on a stick that stood up from the floor: their failure was greeted with a good deal of hearty chaff from the rest

of the company. Room was made for the new arrivals. Philip found himself sitting between an old labourer in

corduroys, with string tied under his knees, and a shinyfaced lad of seventeen with a lovelock neatly

plastered on his red forehead. Athelny insisted on trying his hand at the throwing of rings. He backed himself

He was an outlandish figure, with his widebrimmed hat and pointed beard, among those country folk, and it

was easy to see that they thought him very queer; but his spirits were so high, his enthusiasm so contagious,

that it was impossible not to like him. Conversation went easily. A certain number of pleasantries were

exchanged in the broad, slow accent of the Isle of Thanet, and there was uproarious laughter at the sallies of

the local wag. A pleasant gathering! It would have been a hardhearted person who did not feel a glow of

satisfaction in his fellows. Philip's eyes wandered out of the window where it was bright and sunny still; there

were little white curtains in it tied up with red ribbon like those of a cottage window, and on the sill were pots

of geraniums. In due course one by one the idlers got up and sauntered back to the meadow where supper was

"I expect you'll be ready for your bed," said Mrs. Athelny to Philip. "You're not used to getting up at five and

He was tired and happy. After supper, balancing himself against the wall of the hut on a chair without a back,

he smoked his pipe and looked at the night. Sally was busy. She passed in and out of the hut, and he lazily

watched her methodical actions. Her walk attracted his notice; it was not particularly graceful, but it was easy

and assured; she swung her legs from the hips, and her feet seemed to tread the earth with decision. Athelny

had gone off to gossip with one of the neighbours, and presently Philip heard his wife address the world in

"There now, I'm out of tea and I wanted Athelny to go down to Mrs. Black's and get some." A pause, and

then her voice was raised: "Sally, just run down to Mrs. Black's and get me half a pound of tea, will you? I've

Mrs. Black had a cottage about half a mile along the road, and she combined the office of postmistress with

that of universal provider. Sally came out of the hut, turning down her sleeves.

"I didn't think you were; but it's getting near my bedtime, and I was just thinking I'd like to stretch my legs."

Sally did not answer, and they set out together. The road was white and silent. There was not a sound in the

But their silence did not seem awkward. They found it was pleasant to walk side by side and felt no need of

words. Suddenly at a stile in the hedgerow they heard a low murmur of voices, and in the darkness they saw

the outline of two people. They were sitting very close to one another and did not move as Philip and Sally

They saw the light of the cottage in front of them, and in a minute went into the little shop. The glare dazzled

"You are late," said Mrs. Black. "I was just going to shut up." She looked at the clock. "Getting on for nine."

Sally asked for her half pound of tea (Mrs. Athelny could never bring herself to buy more than half a pound

at a time), and they set off up the road again. Now and then some beast of the night made a short, sharp

They strained their ears, and their fancy presented them with a faint sound of little waves lapping up against

the shingle. When they passed the stile again the lovers were still there, but now they were not speaking; they

They turned a corner, and a breath of warm wind beat for a moment against their faces. The earth gave forth

its freshness. There was something strange in the tremulous night, and something, you knew not what,

seemed to be waiting; the silence was on a sudden pregnant with meaning. Philip had a queer feeling in his

heart, it seemed very full, it seemed to melt (the hackneyed phrases expressed precisely the curious

sensation), he felt happy and anxious and expectant. To his memory came back those lines in which Jessica

and Lorenzo murmur melodious words to one another, capping each other's utterance; but passion shines

bright and clear through the conceits that amuse them. He did not know what there was in the air that made

his senses so strangely alert; it seemed to him that he was pure soul to enjoy the scents and the sounds and the

savours of the earth. He had never felt such an exquisite capacity for beauty. He was afraid that Sally by

speaking would break the spell, but she said never a word, and he wanted to hear the sound of her voice. Its

They arrived at the field through which she had to walk to get back to the huts. Philip went in to hold the gate

Philip had spoken in jest. He merely wanted to kiss her, because he was happy and he liked her and the night

She gave him her lips; they were warm and full and soft; he lingered a little, they were like a flower; then, he

knew not how, without meaning it, he flung his arms round her. She yielded quite silently. Her body was firm

and strong. He felt her heart beat against his. Then he lost his head. His senses overwhelmed him like a flood

PHILIP slept like a log and awoke with a start to find Harold tickling his face with a feather. There was a

"Come on, lazybones," said Jane. "Sally says she won't wait for you unless you hurry up."

Then he remembered what had happened. His heart sank, and, half out of bed already, he stopped; he did not

know how he was going to face her; he was overwhelmed with a sudden rush of selfreproach, and bitterly,

bitterly, he regretted what he had done. What would she say to him that morning? He dreaded meeting her,

and he asked himself how he could have been such a fool. But the children gave him no time; Edward took

his bathingdrawers and his towel, Athelstan tore the bedclothes away; and in three minutes they all

clattered down into the road. Sally gave him a smile. It was as sweet and innocent as it had ever been.

"You do take a time to dress yourself," she said. "I thought you was never coming."

There was not a particle of difference in her manner. He had expected some change, subtle or abrupt; he

fancied that there would be shame in the way she treated him, or anger, or perhaps some increase of

familiarity; but there was nothing. She was exactly the same as before. They walked towards the sea all

together, talking and laughing; and Sally was quiet, but she was always that, reserved, but he had never seen

her otherwise, and gentle. She neither sought conversation with him nor avoided it. Philip was astounded. He

had expected the incident of the night before to have caused some revolution in her, but it was just as though

nothing had happened; it might have been a dream; and as he walked along, a little girl holding on to one

hand and a little boy to the other, while he chatted as unconcernedly as he could, he sought for an

explanation. He wondered whether Sally meant the affair to be forgotten. Perhaps her senses had run away

with her just as his had, and, treating what had occurred as an accident due to unusual circumstances, it might

be that she had decided to put the matter out of her mind. It was ascribing to her a power of thought and a

mature wisdom which fitted neither with her age nor with her character. But he realised that he knew nothing

They played leapfrog in the water, and the bathe was as uproarious as on the previous day. Sally mothered

them all, keeping a watchful eye on them, and calling to them when they went out too far. She swam staidly

backwards and forwards while the others got up to their larks, and now and then turned on her back to float.

Presently she went out and began drying herself; she called to the others more or less peremptorily, and at last

only Philip was left in the water. He took the opportunity to have a good hard swim. He was more used to the

cold water this second morning, and he revelled in its salt freshness; it rejoiced him to use his limbs freely,

and he covered the water with long, firm strokes. But Sally, with a towel round her, went down to the water's

"You're to come out this minute, Philip," she called, as though he were a small boy under her charge.

And when, smiling with amusement at her authoritative way, he came towards her, she upbraided him.

"It is naughty of you to stay in so long. Your lips are quite blue, and just look at your teeth, they're

She had never talked to him in that manner before. It was as though what had happened gave her a sort of

right over him, and she looked upon him as a child to be cared for. In a few minutes they were dressed, and

"Oh, that's all right. It's only the circulation. I shall get the blood back in a minute."

She took his hands in hers and rubbed them, first one and then the other, till the colour returned. Philip,

touched and puzzled, watched her. He could not say anything to her on account of the children, and he did not

meet her eyes; but he was sure they did not avoid his purposely, it just happened that they did not meet. And

during the day there was nothing in her behaviour to suggest a consciousness in her that anything had passed

between them. Perhaps she was a little more talkative than usual. When they were all sitting again in the

hopfield she told her mother how naughty Philip had been in not coming out of the water till he was blue

with cold. It was incredible, and yet it seemed that the only effect of the incident of the night before was to

arouse in her a feeling of protection towards him: she had the same instinctive desire to mother him as she

It was not till the evening that he found himself alone with her. She was cooking the supper, and Philip was

sitting on the grass by the side of the fire. Mrs. Athelny had gone down to the village to do some shopping,

and the children were scattered in various pursuits of their own. Philip hesitated to speak. He was very

nervous. Sally attended to her business with serene competence and she accepted placidly the silence which

to him was so embarrassing. He did not know how to begin. Sally seldom spoke unless she was spoken to or

He was taken aback and did not reply. She took the lid off the pot, stirred the contents, and put it on again. A

savoury smell spread over the air. She looked at him once more, with a quiet smile which barely separated

His heart gave a great thump against his ribs, and he felt the blood rushing to his cheeks. He forced a faint

"I don't either." She put a little more wood on the fire. "I knew I liked you that day you came when you'd

been sleeping out and hadn't had anything to eat, d'you remember? And me and mother, we got Thorpy's bed

He flushed again, for he did not know that she was aware of that incident. He remembered it himself with

"That's why I wouldn't have anything to do with the others. You remember that young fellow mother wanted

me to have? I let him come to tea because he bothered so, but I knew I'd say no."

Philip was so surprised that he found nothing to say. There was a queer feeling in his heart; he did not know

"I wish those children would make haste and come. I don't know where they've got to. Supper's ready now."

He waited under the stars, sitting on the stile, and the hedges with their ripening blackberries were high on

each side of him. From the earth rose rich scents of the night, and the air was soft and still. His heart was

beating madly. He could not understand anything of what happened to him. He associated passion with cries

and tears and vehemence, and there was nothing of this in Sally; but he did not know what else but passion

could have caused her to give herself. But passion for him? He would not have been surprised if she had

fallen to her cousin, Peter Gann, tall, spare, and straight, with his sunburned face and long, easy stride. Philip

wondered what she saw in him. He did not know if she loved him as he reckoned love. And yet? He was

convinced of her purity. He had a vague inkling that many things had combined, things that she felt though

was unconscious of, the intoxication of the air and the hops and the night, the healthy instincts of the natural

woman, a tenderness that overflowed, and an affection that had in it something maternal and something

sisterly; and she gave all she had to give because her heart was full of charity.

She stopped and came to the stile, and with her came sweet, clean odours of the countryside. She seemed to

carry with her scents of the newmown hay, and the savour of ripe hops, and the freshness of young grass.

Her lips were soft and full against his, and her lovely, strong body was firm within his arms.

He made her close her eyes and kissed her eyelids, first one and then the other. Her arm, strong and muscular,

was bare to the elbow; he passed his hand over it and wondered at its beauty; it gleamed in the darkness; she

had the skin that Rubens painted, astonishingly fair and transparent, and on one side were little golden hairs.

It was the arm of a Saxon goddess; but no immortal had that exquisite, homely naturalness; and Philip

thought of a cottage garden with the dear flowers which bloom in all men's hearts, of the hollyhock and the

red and white rose which is called York and Lancaster, and of loveinamist and Sweet William, and

"How can you care for me?" he said. "I'm insignificant and crippled and ordinary and ugly."

WHEN the hops were picked, Philip with the news in his pocket that he had got the appointment as assistant

housephysician at St. Luke's, accompanied the Athelnys back to London. He took modest rooms in

Westminster and at the beginning of October entered upon his duties. The work was interesting and varied;

every day he learned something new; he felt himself of some consequence; and he saw a good deal of Sally.

He found life uncommonly pleasant. He was free about six, except on the days on which he had outpatients,

and then he went to the shop at which Sally worked to meet her when she came out. There were several

young men, who hung about opposite the `trade entrance' or a little further along, at the first corner; and the

girls, coming out two and two or in little groups, nudged one another and giggled as they recognised them.

Sally in her plain black dress looked very different from the country lass who had picked hops side by side

with him. She walked away from the shop quickly, but she slackened her pace when they met, and greeted

him with her quiet smile. They walked together through the busy street. He talked to her of his work at the

hospital, and she told him what she had been doing in the shop that day. He came to know the names of the

girls she worked with. He found that Sally had a restrained, but keen, sense of the ridiculous, and she made

remarks about the girls or the men who were set over them which amused him by their unexpected drollery.

She had a way of saying a thing which was very characteristic, quite gravely, as though there were nothing

funny in it at all, and yet it was so sharpsighted that Philip broke into delighted laughter. Then she would

give him a little glance in which the smiling eyes showed she was not unaware of her own humour. They met

with a handshake and parted as formally. Once Philip asked her to come and have tea with him in his rooms,

Never a word of love passed between them. She seemed not to desire anything more than the companionship

of those walks. Yet Philip was positive that she was glad to be with him. She puzzled him as much as she had

done at the beginning. He did not begin to understand her conduct; but the more he knew her the fonder he

grew of her; she was competent and self controlled, and there was a charming honesty in her: you felt that

"You are an awfully good sort," he said to her once _a propos_ of nothing at all.

He knew that he did not love her. It was a great affection that he felt for her, and he liked her company; it was

curiously soothing; and he had a feeling for her which seemed to him ridiculous to entertain towards a

shopgirl of nineteen: he respected her. And he admired her magnificent healthiness. She was a splendid

animal, without defect; and physical perfection filled him always with admiring awe. She made him feel

Then, one day, about three weeks after they had come back to London as they walked together, he noticed

that she was unusually silent. The serenity of her expression was altered by a slight line between the

He understood at once what she meant. His heart gave a sudden, quick beat, and he felt the colour leave his

He stopped. He could not go on. The possibility that anything of the sort could happen had never crossed his

They walked on in silence till they came to the corner of Chancery Lane, where he always left her. She held

He walked away with a tumult of thoughts in his head. What a fool he had been! That was the first thing that

struck him, an abject, miserable fool, and he repeated it to himself a dozen times in a rush of angry feeling.

He despised himself. How could he have got into such a mess? But at the same time, for his thoughts chased

one another through his brain and yet seemed to stand together, in a hopeless confusion, like the pieces of a

jigsaw puzzle seen in a nightmare, he asked himself what he was going to do. Everything was so clear

before him, all he had aimed at so long within reach at last, and now his inconceivable stupidity had erected

this new obstacle. Philip had never been able to surmount what he acknowledged was a defect in his resolute

desire for a well ordered life, and that was his passion for living in the future; and no sooner was he settled in

his work at the hospital than he had busied himself with arrangements for his travels. In the past he had often

tried not to think too circumstantially of his plans for the future, it was only discouraging; but now that his

goal was so near he saw no harm in giving away to a longing that was so difficult to resist. First of all he

meant to go to Spain. That was the land of his heart; and by now he was imbued with its spirit, its romance

and colour and history and grandeur; he felt that it had a message for him in particular which no other country

could give. He knew the fine old cities already as though he had trodden their tortuous streets from

childhood. Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Leon, Tarragona, Burgos. The great painters of Spain were the painters

of his soul, and his pulse beat quickly as he pictured his ecstasy on standing face to face with those works

which were more significant than any others to his own tortured, restless heart. He had read the great poets,

more characteristic of their race than the poets of other lands; for they seemed to have drawn their inspiration

not at all from the general currents of the world's literature but directly from the torrid, scented plains and the

bleak mountains of their country. A few short months now, and he would hear with his own ears all around

him the language which seemed most apt for grandeur of soul and passion. His fine taste had given him an

inkling that Andalusia was too soft and sensuous, a little vulgar even, to satisfy his ardour; and his

imagination dwelt more willingly among the windswept distances of Castile and the rugged magnificence of

Aragon and Leon. He did not know quite what those unknown contacts would give him, but he felt that he

would gather from them a strength and a purpose which would make him more capable of affronting and

For this was only a beginning. He had got into communication with the various companies which took

surgeons out on their ships, and knew exactly what were their routes, and from men who had been on them

what were the advantages and disadvantages of each line. He put aside the Orient and the P. O. It was

difficult to get a berth with them; and besides their passenger traffic allowed the medical officer little

freedom; but there were other services which sent large tramps on leisurely expeditions to the East, stopping

at all sorts of ports for various periods, from a day or two to a fortnight, so that you had plenty of time, and it

was often possible to make a trip inland. The pay was poor and the food no more than adequate, so that there

was not much demand for the posts, and a man with a London degree was pretty sure to get one if he applied.

Since there were no passengers other than a casual man or so, shipping on business from some

outoftheway port to another, the life on board was friendly and pleasant. Philip knew by heart the list of

places at which they touched; and each one called up in him visions of tropical sunshine, and magic colour,

and of a teeming, mysterious, intense life. Life! That was what he wanted. At last he would come to close

quarters with Life. And perhaps, from Tokyo or Shanghai it would be possible to tranship into some other

line and drip down to the islands of the South Pacific. A doctor was useful anywhere. There might be an

opportunity to go up country in Burmah, and what rich jungles in Sumatra or Borneo might he not visit? He

was young still and time was no object to him. He had no ties in England, no friends; he could go up and

down the world for years, learning the beauty and the wonder and the variedness of life.

Now this thing had come. He put aside the possibility that Sally was mistaken; he felt strangely certain that

she was right; after all, it was so likely; anyone could see that Nature had built her to be the mother of

children. He knew what he ought to do. He ought not to let the incident divert him a hair's breadth from his

path. He thought of Griffiths; he could easily imagine with what indifference that young man would have

received such a piece of news; he would have thought it an awful nuisance and would at once have taken to

his heels, like a wise fellow; he would have left the girl to deal with her troubles as best she could. Philip told

himself that if this had happened it was because it was inevitable. He was no more to blame than Sally; she

was a girl who knew the world and the facts of life, and she had taken the risk with her eyes open. It would be

madness to allow such an accident to disturb the whole pattern of his life. He was one of the few people who

was acutely conscious of the transitoriness of Life, and how necessary it was to make the most of it. He

would do what he could for Sally; he could afford to give her a sufficient sum of money. A strong man would

Philip said all this to himself, but he knew he could not do it. He simply could not. He knew himself.

She had trusted him and been kind to him. He simply could not do a thing which, notwithstanding all his

reason, he felt was horrible. He knew he would have no peace on his travels if he had the thought constantly

with him that she was wretched. Besides, there were her father and mother: they had always treated him well;

it was not possible to repay them with ingratitude. The only thing was to marry Sally as quickly as possible.

He would write to Doctor South, tell him he was going to be married at once, and say that if his offer still

held he was willing to accept it. That sort of practice, among poor people, was the only one possible for him;

there his deformity did not matter, and they would not sneer at the simple manners of his wife. It was curious

to think of her as his wife, it gave him a queer, soft feeling; and a wave of emotion spread over him as he

thought of the child which was his. He had little doubt that Doctor South would be glad to have him, and he

pictured to himself the life he would lead with Sally in the fishing village. They would have a little house

within sight of the sea, and he would watch the mighty ships passing to the lands he would never know.

Perhaps that was the wisest thing. Cronshaw had told him that the facts of life mattered nothing to him who

by the power of fancy held in fee the twin realms of space and time. It was true. _Forever wilt thou love and

His wedding present to his wife would be all his high hopes. Selfsacrifice! Philip was uplifted by its beauty,

and all through the evening he thought of it. He was so excited that he could not read. He seemed to be driven

out of his rooms into the streets, and he walked up and down Birdcage Walk, his heart throbbing with joy. He

could hardly bear his impatience. He wanted to see Sally's happiness when he made her his offer, and if it had

not been so late he would have gone to her there and then. He pictured to himself the long evenings he would

spend with Sally in the cosy sittingroom, the blinds undrawn so that they could watch the sea; he with his

books, while she bent over her work, and the shaded lamp made her sweet face more fair. They would talk

over the growing child, and when she turned her eyes to his there was in them the light of love. And the

fishermen and their wives who were his patients would come to feel a great affection for them, and they in

their turn would enter into the pleasures and pains of those simple lives. But his thoughts returned to the son

who would be his and hers. Already he felt in himself a passionate devotion to it. He thought of passing his

hands over his little perfect limbs, he knew he would be beautiful; and he would make over to him all his

dreams of a rich and varied life. And thinking over the long pilgrimage of his past he accepted it joyfully. He

accepted the deformity which had made life so hard for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but

now he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that power of introspection which had given him so

much delight. Without it he would never have had his keen appreciation of beauty, his passion for art and

literature, and his interest in the varied spectacle of life. The ridicule and the contempt which had so often

been heaped upon him had turned his mind inward and called forth those flowers which he felt would never

lose their fragrance. Then he saw that the normal was the rarest thing in the world. Everyone had some

defect, of body or of mind: he thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was like a

sickhouse, and there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long procession, deformed in body and warped

in mind, some with illness of the flesh, weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit, languor

of will, or a craving for liquor. At this moment he could feel a holy compassion for them all. They were the

helpless instruments of blind chance. He could pardon Griffiths for his treachery and Mildred for the pain she

had caused him. They could not help themselves. The only reasonable thing was to accept the good of men

and be patient with their faults. The words of the dying God crossed his memory:

HE had arranged to meet Sally on Saturday in the National Gallery. She was to come there as soon as she was

released from the shop and had agreed to lunch with him. Two days had passed since he had seen her, and his

exultation had not left him for a moment. It was because he rejoiced in the feeling that he had not attempted

to see her. He had repeated to himself exactly what he would say to her and how he should say it. Now his

impatience was unbearable. He had written to Doctor South and had in his pocket a telegram from him

received that morning: "_Sacking the mumpish fool. When will you come_?" Philip walked along Parliament

Street. It was a fine day, and there was a bright, frosty sun which made the light dance in the street. It was

crowded. There was a tenuous mist in the distance, and it softened exquisitely the noble lines of the

buildings. He crossed Trafalgar Square. Suddenly his heart gave a sort of twist in his body; he saw a woman

in front of him who he thought was Mildred. She had the same figure, and she walked with that slight

dragging of the feet which was so characteristic of her. Without thinking, but with a beating heart, he hurried

till he came alongside, and then, when the woman turned, he saw it was someone unknown to him. It was the

face of a much older person, with a lined, yellow skin. He slackened his pace. He was infinitely relieved, but

it was not only relief that he felt; it was disappointment too; he was seized with horror of himself. Would he

never be free from that passion? At the bottom of his heart, notwithstanding everything, he felt that a strange,

desperate thirst for that vile woman would always linger. That love had caused him so much suffering that he

knew he would never, never quite be free of it. Only death could finally assuage his desire.

But he wrenched the pang from his heart. He thought of Sally, with her kind blue eyes; and his lips

unconsciously formed themselves into a smile. He walked up the steps of the National Gallery and sat down

in the first room, so that he should see her the moment she came in. It always comforted him to get among

pictures. He looked at none in particular, but allowed the magnificence of their colour, the beauty of their

lines, to work upon his soul. His imagination was busy with Sally. It would be pleasant to take her away from

that London in which she seemed an unusual figure, like a cornflower in a shop among orchids and azaleas;

he had learned in the Kentish hopfield that she did not belong to the town; and he was sure that she would

blossom under the soft skies of Dorset to a rarer beauty. She came in, and he got up to meet her. She was in

black, with white cuffs at her wrists and a lawn collar round her neck. They shook hands.

They sat quietly, side by side, without speaking. Philip enjoyed having her near him. He was warmed by her

An extraordinary sensation filled him. He had felt certain that Sally's suspicion was wellfounded; it had

never occurred to him for an instant that there was a possibility of error. All his plans were suddenly

overthrown, and the existence, so elaborately pictured, was no more than a dream which would never be

realised. He was free once more. Free! He need give up none of his projects, and life still was in his hands for

him to do what he liked with. He felt no exhilaration, but only dismay. His heart sank. The future stretched

out before him in desolate emptiness. It was as though he had sailed for many years over a great waste of

waters, with peril and privation, and at last had come upon a fair haven, but as he was about to enter, some

contrary wind had arisen and drove him out again into the open sea; and because he had let his mind dwell on

these soft meads and pleasant woods of the land, the vast deserts of the ocean filled him with anguish. He

could not confront again the loneliness and the tempest. Sally looked at him with her clear eyes.

He realised that he had deceived himself; it was no selfsacrifice that had driven him to think of marrying,

but the desire for a wife and a home and love; and now that it all seemed to slip through his fingers he was

seized with despair. He wanted all that more than anything in the world. What did he care for Spain and its

cities, Cordova, Toledo, Leon; what to him were the pagodas of Burmah and the lagoons of South Sea

Islands? America was here and now. It seemed to him that all his life he had followed the ideals that other

people, by their words or their writings, had instilled into him, and never the desires of his own heart. Always

his course had been swayed by what he thought he should do and never by what he wanted with his whole

soul to do. He put all that aside now with a gesture of impatience. He had lived always in the future, and the

present always, always had slipped through his fingers. His ideals? He thought of his desire to make a design,

intricate and beautiful, out of the myriad, meaningless facts of life: had he not seen also that the simplest

pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most

perfect? It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many

He glanced quickly at Sally, he wondered what she was thinking, and then looked away again.

"I ought to know something about it. I've heard you and Dad talk about it till you were blue in the face."

"I don't care a damn about all that." He paused for an instant and then spoke in a low, hoarse whisper. "I don't

She did not move and there was no flicker of emotion on her face, but she did not look at him when she

"Oh, of course I'd like to have a house of my own, and it's about time I was settling down."

He smiled a little. He knew her pretty well by now, and her manner did not surprise him.

He smiled and took her hand and pressed it. They got up and walked out of the gallery. They stood for a

moment at the balustrade and looked at Trafalgar Square. Cabs and omnibuses hurried to and fro, and crowds