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 time and with the smallest incision.
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 common-room; 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 public-houses the busiest hour. Men would be brought in
by the police dead drunk and it would be necessary to administer a
stomach-pump; 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 house-surgeon: he did this with care, since the house-surgeon 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, wild-eyed 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 house-surgeon 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
night-nurse. She was a gray-haired woman of masculine appearance, who
had been night-nurse 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 horse-hair 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 accepted. She had a certain grim humour.
“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.”
“Did he die?”
“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 pawned 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. I wonder why that is.”
“I suppose money’s more important than love,” suggested Philip.
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 cheap.”
“I don’t think fourteen shillings is so bad,” answered Philip, drily.
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
sitting-room: 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 wedding-ring 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 happy
days. Mildred had long looked at them with disfavour.
“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.”
“What’s the matter with them?”
“They’re indecent. Disgusting, that’s what I call it, to have drawings
of naked people about. And it isn’t nice for baby either. She’s
beginning to notice things now.”
“How can you be so vulgar?”
“Vulgar? Modest, I call it. I’ve never said anything, but d’you think I
like having to look at those naked people all day long.”
“Have you no sense of humour at all, Mildred?” he asked frigidly.
“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 want to know what I think about
them, I think they’re disgusting.”
“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 would cry bitterly. To
Philip’s remonstrances she replied:
“I don’t want her to get into habits.”
And if then he said anything more she said:
“It’s nothing to do with you what I do with my child. To hear you talk
one would think you was her father. I’m her mother, and I ought to know
what’s good for her, oughtn’t I?”
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 arm-chair 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 good-night, and with a smile he went into Mildred’s
bed-room. 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
sitting-room.
“Where are you going to sit?” he asked Mildred.
“You sit in your chair. I’m going to sit on the floor.”
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 seemed still to feel twined round his neck the baby’s soft
little arms.
“Are you comfy?” he asked.
She looked up at him, gave a slight smile, and nodded. They gazed into
the fire dreamily, without speaking to one another. At last she turned
round and stared at him curiously.
“D’you know that you haven’t kissed me once since I came here?” she
said suddenly.
“D’you want me to?” he smiled.
“I suppose you don’t care for me in that way any more?”
“I’m very fond of you.”
“You’re much fonder of baby.”
He did not answer, and she laid her cheek against his hand.
“You’re not angry with me any more?” she asked presently, with her eyes
cast down.
“Why on earth should I be?”
“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 her genuine feelings
than the stilted language of The Family Herald.
“It seems so funny our living together like this.”
He did not reply for quite a long time, and silence fell upon them
again; but at last he spoke and seemed conscious of no interval.
“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 you won’t create it by kindness, or generosity,
or anything of that sort.”
“I should have thought if you’d loved me really you’d have loved me
still.”
“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 nobody cared for you any more and I should have you all to
myself.”
She did not answer, and presently she got up and said she was going to
bed. She gave a timid little smile.
“It’s Christmas Day, Philip, won’t you kiss me good-night?”
He gave a laugh, blushed slightly, and kissed her. She went to her
bed-room and he began to read.