Of Human Bondage quotes

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 herself together.

She would be in presently and would come upstairs to have nursery tea with him. And he seemed to feel her kiss on his lips.

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

He climbed up on the bed and put his head on the pillow. He lay there quite still.

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.

“You shall have another one on Sunday afternoon.”

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

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.

“I wanted the boy to have something to remember me by when he grows up.”

“I can’t make out why she ordered a dozen,” said Mr. Carey. “Two would have done.”

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 behind his back.

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;

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.

Sunday was a day crowded with incident.

Mr. Carey was accustomed to say that he was the only man in his parish who worked seven days a week.

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.

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.

He would willingly have made the service more ornate than had been usual in the low-church 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.

“Philip, how can you say anything so unkind? Don’t you know that your uncle and I only want your good? Don’t you love me at all?”

“I hate you. I wish you was dead.”

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;

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.

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.

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.

you will see them on Whit-Monday 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 has been called a social animal.

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 ready-made rules which acted well enough in ordinary affairs, and he was forced to think for himself.

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.

“He’s very enthusiastic,” said Winks.

Enthusiasm was ill-bred. 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.

Enthusiasm was ill-bred. 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.

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.

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 rankled because they were true.

But Sharp had the last word.

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 whenever you got your way you wished afterwards that you hadn’t.

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 struck him that he need not tell any more lies.

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.

“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.

And I shall play tennis and go to tea-parties.” He interrupted himself and gave Philip, very neatly dressed, with a clean collar on and his hair well-brushed, a quizzical look.

“And, my God! I shall have to wash.”

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.

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;

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.

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.

“You don’t know him,” said Philip hotly.

“Oh yes, I do: I’ve met a hundred and forty-seven of him.”

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.

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 lively sustaining faith in he doesn’t quite know what.”

“I don’t see why you should make fun of me,” said Philip. “I really want to know.”

“I don’t see why one should believe in God at all.”

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;

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.

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;

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;

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.

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 beautiful. He was an idealist.

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.

Fräulein Anna gave him a copy of Der Trompeter von Säckingen and in return he presented her with a volume of William Morris. Very wisely neither of them ever read the other’s present.

and he went without regret. He never knew that he had been happy there. Fräulein Anna gave him a copy of Der Trompeter von Säckingen and in return he presented her with a volume of William Morris.

Very wisely neither of them ever read the other’s present.

“I’m certain they think you’re no better than you should be,” he told her, laughing.

“It’s the dream of my life to be taken for an abandoned hussy,” she answered.

One day when Miss Wilkinson was in her room he asked Aunt Louisa how old she was.

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 twenty-nine, and hang it all, that wasn’t old, was it? Cleopatra was forty-eight when Antony threw away the world for her sake.

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.

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 himself a slave to afternoon tea.

One day Miss Wilkinson gave Philip La Vie de Bohème. 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.

“Ah, je m’en fiche du jardinier. Je m’en refiche, et je m’en contrefiche.”

Philip thought it was very like a French novel, and he did not know why it slightly irritated him.

“Well, I think I’ll tootle along to the beach and have a dip.”

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 would see about that.

Philip was overwhelmed by so much gentlemanliness: in East Anglia they knew who were gentlemen and who weren’t, but the gentlemen didn’t talk about it.

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 gallery-door 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.

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 painter.

“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.

“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 don’t think you should speak like that, Carey.”

Philip gave a little laugh.

“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 you again.”

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 on not changing one’s mind.

“You chose to be an accountant of your own free will,” he said.

“It’s a mere excuse for self-indulgence and sensuality,” he said.

“I’m interested to hear you blame self-indulgence 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 massière of a school. Philip read the letter to Mrs.

“That seems a funny thing to do, I should have thought it would be more to the point to get up and enjoy it.”

“The way of the humorist is very hard,” said the young man gravely.

He did not seem inclined to work. He looked at his canvas; he was working in colour, and had sketched in the day before the model who was posing. He turned to Philip.

“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 detests me because I have genius.”

He spoke with solemnity, and his colossal, misshapen nose made what he said very quaint. Philip was obliged to laugh, but Miss Price grew darkly red with anger.

“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 enough to do a thing one can’t help doing it.”

“Ruskin’s style—a 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 had perished on the day the first series of Poems and Ballads was published!”

Cronshaw, hearing her, turned a sheepish eye upon her; she was stout, matronly, and middle-aged; and solemnly kissed his hand to her. She shrugged her shoulders.

“Fear not, madam,” he said heavily. “I have passed the age when I am tempted by forty-five and gratitude.”

He poured himself out some whiskey and water, and slowly drank it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

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.

Then he said: “I wrote a poem yesterday.”

“Fichez-moi 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 they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.”

Cronshaw filled his glass again, and began to talk at length. He spoke with rotund delivery. He chose his words carefully.

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 regard for the immortal longings of youth that he did not attempt a beard.

“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 pleasure to existence. And as for posterity—damn posterity.”

I attach no meaning to those words. I refuse to make a hierarchy of human actions and ascribe worthiness to some and ill-repute to others. The terms vice and virtue have no signification for me.

I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things.

I am the centre of the world.”

“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 don’t care a damn for morality: teaching doesn’t come 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 second-raters 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:

“

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.

Besides, what’s the good of criticism? What does it matter if your picture is good or bad?”

“

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 mother—well, 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.

They’ve got nothing to do with one another. You hear of men painting potboilers to keep an aged mother—well, 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.

“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.

“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.

“

It is cruel to discover one’s mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.

”

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 cafés, the restaurants with their ill-cooked food, the shabby way in which they all lived.

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 self-control. It had been whipped into him by the mockery of his fellows. Then they called him cynical and callous.

But notwithstanding he was able to look at himself from the outside and smile with amusement.

“By Jove, if I weren’t flippant, I should hang myself,” he thought cheerfully.

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.

“

Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.

”

There was a certain amount of conversation over the dissecting-table, 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.

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 love-affairs 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.

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 …

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.

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.

There was a devil within him which forced him to make matters worse.

He wanted to hurt her as much as she was hurting him.

“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, and I won’t be followed or spied upon.”

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 church with her.

“I always like to go to church once,” she said. “It looks well, doesn’t it?”

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.

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 her stupidity. She had not the brains to see when she was wounding him.

“It’s not much fun to be in love with a girl who has no imagination and no sense of humour,” he thought, as he listened.

But the want of these things excused her. He felt that if he had not realised this he could never forgive her for the pain she caused him.

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 industriously the Sporting Times.

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;

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 no greater torture in the world than at the same time to love and to contemn.

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.

Philip smiled a little, but his eyes were wild. He was silent for a while. He looked at her sullenly.

He hated, despised, and loved her.

“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 myself for loving you!”

Philip smiled a little, but his eyes were wild. He was silent for a while. He looked at her sullenly. He hated, despised, and loved her.

“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 myself for loving you!”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say to me,” she replied sulkily.

“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 unhappy why d’you want to take me to the Pavilion? I’m quite ready to go home.”

“Merely because I’m less unhappy with you than away from you.”

“I should like to know what you really think of me.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry to be so damned emotional, but for six months I’ve been starved for beauty.”

“You used to be so matter of fact. It’s very interesting to hear you say that.”

“You used to be so matter of fact. It’s very interesting to hear you say that.”

“Damn it all, I don’t want to be interesting,” laughed Philip. “Let’s go and have a stodgy tea.”

“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 and let the vulgar throng hustle by in their pursuit of the good things.”

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 Plato.

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 of idleness.”

“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.”

“What do you deduce from that?” asked Hayward.

“Why, merely the futility of regret. It’s no good crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.”

“I can’t help myself,” he thought. “I’ve just got her in my bones.”

He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with the one than happiness with the other.

When he got up to go Norah said casually:

He remembered what Norah had said of herself.

“I have an immense popularity among kitchen-maids. They think me so genteel.”

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 devil of a nuisance to get out of it.”

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.

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 work at the hospital was over.

“I’m afraid that’s always the case,” he said. “

There’s always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.

”

He wondered what it was she saw in him.

“Oh, it’s always the same,” she sighed, “if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.”

She got up from the floor and said she must go. She gave Philip a long, steady look. Then she sighed.

Her hat was in her way, and Philip took it off for her. He placed her head more comfortably in the chair, and then he went and sat down at the table and looked at her.

“It is awful, love, isn’t it?” he said. “Fancy anyone wanting to be in love.”

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 hang draperies on.

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 sentimentality.

“It would be very easy if you could do a beastly thing,” he muttered to himself, “and then say you were sorry, and that put it all right again.”

He hoped with all his heart he would have the chance one day to do Griffiths a bad turn.

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 self-control. He merely seemed to possess it because he was indifferent to many of the things which moved other people.

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 self-control.

He merely seemed to possess it because he was indifferent to many of the things which moved other people.

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 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;

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.

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.

There was neither good nor bad there. There were just facts. It was life.

“

I’m not going back to Paris. I’m going to die.

”

“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 in my hands, and I regret nothing.

”

“No, no, I can’t do that.

The answer is meaningless unless you discover it for yourself.

”

“

It’s a rare and exquisite privilege which I can ill afford

,” said Philip.

“

Only a poet knows where lies a poet’s heart,

” he answered.

“But, my dear fellow, in that case, why didn’t you get him a pauper’s funeral? There would have been something poetic in that.

You have an unerring instinct for mediocrity.

”

“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 going to make sure the drains are bad before I take anything.”

“Did you ever taste such Yorkshire pudding? No one can make it like my wife.

That’s the advantage of not marrying a lady.

You noticed she wasn’t a lady, didn’t you?”

“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, my boy.”

“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 myself, but I like women and children to.

”

“

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.

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.”

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.

“

Sally never kisses gentlemen till she’s seen them twice,

” said her father.

“It’s rather jolly to come back and find someone about the place.

A woman and a baby make very good decoration in a room.

”

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.”

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.

”

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.

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 this was impossible they did the actions in despite of reason.

“People are very extraordinary,” said Philip. “I should never have expected you to go out as a trooper.”

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 had a curious little sinking of the heart, for with his middle-class 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;

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.

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.

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.

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 a why and a wherefore.

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:

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.

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.

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.

“Oh, life,” he cried in his heart, “Oh life, where is thy sting?”

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.

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.

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 alone knew of its existence, and with his death it would at once cease to be.

“Oh no, that’s not the sort of thing at all,” she said, as she glanced at them impatiently.

“What I want is something that’ll just hit ’em in the jaw and make their front teeth rattle.”

“Yes, I quite understand, Miss Antonia,” said the buyer, with a bland smile, but his eyes grew blank and stupid.

“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.”

“How d’you think he is?” said Philip.

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 five-and-thirty 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.

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 five-and-thirty 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 Blackstable—he had been settled there for ten years, but they still looked upon him as an interloper—and he was said to be very clever;

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.

“He says he thinks you’re much better,” said Philip.

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 work. Oh, I wouldn’t go over my life again, not for something.”

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.

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.

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 going for a few days’ holiday.

“I’ve got a rotten nature,” he said to himself. “I look forward to things awfully, and then when they come I’m always disappointed.”

He reached Blackstable early in the afternoon. Mrs. Foster met him at the door, and her face told him that his uncle was not yet dead.

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 was to pay for being other than the beasts!

They remained in silence broken only once by a low inquiry from Mr. Carey.

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 reconciled it to existence.

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;

… 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 work was slack; he stated the fact, and sat down to his tea.

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 because it was meaningless.

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 …

It was quite true.

The black bag was a passport through wretched alleys and down foul-smelling 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:

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.

and the Thames was gray, rosy, and green; gray like mother-of-pearl 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 by the beauty of the world. Beside that nothing seemed to matter.

“You’re the most silent person I’ve ever struck,” said Philip.

“We don’t want another one who’s talkative in this house,” she said.

There was no irony in her tone: she was merely stating a fact.

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 heart-free 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:

“Were you at a university?”

“Last year when my assistant took a holiday they sent me a ’Varsity man. I told ’em not to do it again. Too damned gentlemanly for me.”

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;

“You know that I have no experience,” said Philip.

“You none of you know anything.”

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.

“Do I amuse you?” he asked icily.

“I see you’re fond of books. You can always tell by the way people handle them.”

Doctor South put down the novel immediately.