Philip asked Mr. Jacobs, the assistant-surgeon 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 mountains for him who had faith,
and he smiled bitterly.
“I don’t expect a miracle,” he answered.
“I think you’re wise to let me try what I can do. You’ll find a
club-foot 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 boarding-house.
“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 boarding-house at
Kemp Town where they would not be charged more than twenty-five
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.
“I shouldn’t have thought you had so much to do as all that,” he said.
“Well, I can’t think of everything. It’s not my fault if I forget, is
it?”
Philip was so anxious to get to the sea that he would not wait to
communicate with the mistress of the boarding-house.
“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 can just send an outside porter
for our traps.”
“You can please yourself,” said Mildred stiffly.
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 to Kemp Town. Philip stroked the baby’s cheek.
“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 boarding-house 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 middle-aged woman, stout and
business-like, came downstairs, gave them the scrutinising glance of
her profession, and asked what accommodation they required.
“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 don’t think that would do,” said Philip.
“I could give you another room next week. Brighton’s very full just
now, and people have to take what they can get.”
“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 boarders?”
“I can, but I don’t suppose they’d have room any more than I have.”
“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving me the address.”
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 attention.
“Lend me a hanky, will you? I can’t get at mine with baby,” she said in
a voice strangled with sobs, turning her head away from him.
He gave her his handkerchief, but said nothing. She dried her eyes, and
as he did not speak, went on.
“I might be poisonous.”
“Please don’t make a scene in the street,” he said.
“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.
She gave him a sidelong glance.
“You’re not going to give it away that we’re not married?” she asked
quickly.
“No.”
“Why won’t you live with me as if we were married then?”
“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 accounting for that sort of thing.”
“A fat lot you must have loved me!” she exclaimed.
The boarding-house 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 twenty-five 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 two beds even in the single
rooms.”
“I daresay that won’t ruin us. What do you think, Mildred?”
“Oh, I don’t mind. Anything’s good enough for me,” she answered.
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.
“Don’t let’s quarrel, Mildred,” he said gently.
“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.”
“I suppose you despise me, that’s it.”
“Of course I don’t. Why should I?”
“It’s so unnatural.”
“Is it? You’re not in love with me, are you?”
“Me? Who d’you take me for?”
“It’s not as if you were a very passionate woman, you’re not that.”
“It’s so humiliating,” she said sulkily.
“Oh, I wouldn’t fuss about that if I were you.”
There were about a dozen people in the boarding-house. 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 ill-made 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; pale-faced, middle-aged 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 Corelli’s
latest novel; some of them liked Lord Leighton better than Mr.
Alma-Tadema, and some of them liked Mr. Alma-Tadema 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
boarding-house 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 middle-aged 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 sense of the word.
“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 complained.
“Oh, leave that silly old book alone. It can’t be good for you always
reading. You’ll addle your brain, that’s what you’ll do, Philip.”
“Oh, rot!” he answered.
“Besides, it’s so unsociable.”
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 of
something she would interrupt him.
“Collins, that was it. I knew it would come back to me some time.
Collins, that’s the name I couldn’t remember.”
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 day with prolixity.
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 hop-field 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 hard-worked servant at the
boarding-house.
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 palm-trees and skies blue
and hot, dark-skinned people, pagodas; the scents of the Orient
intoxicated his nostrils. His heart beat with passionate desire for the
beauty and the strangeness of the world.
Mildred awoke.
“I do believe I’ve been asleep,” she said. “Now then, you naughty girl,
what have you been doing to yourself? Her dress was clean yesterday and
just look at it now, Philip.”