Philip arrived at Victoria Station nearly half an hour before the time
which Mildred had appointed, and sat down in the second-class
waiting-room. 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 waiting-rooms and looked
at the people sitting in them. Suddenly his heart gave a great thud.
“There you are. I thought you were never coming.”
“I like that after keeping me waiting all this time. I had half a mind
to go back home again.”
“But you said you’d come to the second-class waiting-room.”
“I didn’t say any such thing. It isn’t exactly likely I’d sit in the
second-class room when I could sit in the first is it?”
Though Philip was sure he had not made a mistake, he said nothing, and
they got into a cab.
“Where are we dining?” she asked.
“I thought of the Adelphi Restaurant. Will that suit you?”
“I don’t mind where we dine.”
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 looking-glasses, lent the room a
sumptuous air.
“I’ve never been here before.”
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 her eyes sparkled.
“You are going it,” she said.
“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 misdeeds at length.
“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 her something she
doesn’t think I know anything about.”
“What is that?” asked Philip.
“Well, I happen to know that she’s not above going to Eastbourne with a
man for the week-end 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 boarding-house, and she ’ad a wedding-ring 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 pen-holder, 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 she applauded rapturously.
“This is the seventh time I’ve been,” she said, after the first act,
“and I don’t mind if I come seven times more.”
She was much interested in the women who surrounded them in the stalls.
She pointed out to Philip those who were painted and those who wore
false hair.
“It is horrible, these West-end people,” she said. “I don’t know how
they can do it.” She put her hand to her hair. “Mine’s all my own,
every bit of it.”
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 way home he asked:
“I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself?”
“Rather.”
“Will you come out with me again one evening?”
“I don’t mind.”
He could never get beyond such expressions as that. Her indifference
maddened him.
“That sounds as if you didn’t much care if you came or not.”
“Oh, if you don’t take me out some other fellow will. I need never want
for men who’ll take me to the theatre.”
Philip was silent. They came to the station, and he went to the
booking-office.
“I’ve got my season,” she said.
“I thought I’d take you home as it’s rather late, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, I don’t mind if it gives you any pleasure.”
He took a single first for her and a return for himself.
“Well, you’re not mean, I will say that for you,” she said, when he
opened the carriage-door.
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 good-night to you here,” she said, holding out her hand.
“You’d better not come up to the door. I know what people are, and I
don’t want to have anybody talking.”
She said good-night 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 miserable.
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 him at last. He was in love with her. It was incredible.
He had often thought of falling in love, and there was one scene which
he had pictured to himself over and over again. He saw himself coming
into a ball-room; 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.
“I’ve been looking for you all my life,” he said.
“You’ve come at last,” she murmured.
“Will you dance with me?”
She surrendered herself to his outstretched hands and they danced.
(Philip always pretended that he was not lame.) She danced divinely.
“I’ve never danced with anyone who danced like you,” she said.
She tore up her programme, and they danced together the whole evening.
“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 ball-room 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, star-lit
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 evening-dress;
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 pass his fingers
down the slightly greenish cheeks. He wanted her.
He had thought of love as a rapture which seized one so that all the
world seemed spring-like, 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 was despair.
He stretched himself in his bed as a dog stretches himself. He wondered
how he was going to endure that ceaseless aching of his soul.