CVIII
The winter passed. Now and then Philip went to the hospital, slinking in when it was late and there was little chance of meeting anyone he knew, to see whether there were letters for him. At Easter he received one from his uncle. He was surprised to hear from him, for the Vicar of Blackstable had never written him more than half a dozen letters in his whole life, and they were on business matters.
Dear Philip,
If you are thinking of taking a holiday soon and care to come down here I shall be pleased to see you. I was very ill with my bronchitis in the winter and Doctor Wigram never expected me to pull through. I have a wonderful constitution and I made, thank God, a marvellous recovery. Yours affectionately, William Carey.
The letter made Philip angry. How did his uncle think he was living? He did not even trouble to inquire. He might have starved for all the old man cared. But as he walked home something struck him; he stopped under a lamp-post and read the letter again; the handwriting had no longer the business-like firmness which had characterised it; it was larger and wavering: perhaps the illness had shaken him more than he was willing to confess, and he sought in that formal note to express a yearning to see the only relation he had in the world. Philip wrote back that he could come down to Blackstable for a fortnight in July. The invitation was convenient, for he had not known what to do, with his brief holiday. The Athelnys went hopping in September, but he could not then be spared, since during that month the autumn models were prepared. The rule of Lynn’s was that everyone must take a fortnight whether he wanted it or not; and during that time, if he had nowhere to go, the assistant might sleep in his room, but he was not allowed food. A number had no friends within reasonable distance of London, and to these the holiday was an awkward interval when they had to provide food out of their small wages and, with the whole day on their hands, had nothing to spend. Philip had not been out of London since his visit to Brighton with Mildred, now two years before, and he longed for fresh air and the silence of the sea. He thought of it with such a passionate desire, all through May and June, that, when at length the time came for him to go, he was listless.
On his last evening, when he talked with the buyer of one or two jobs he had to leave over, Mr. Sampson suddenly said to him:
“What wages have you been getting?”
“Six shillings.”
“I don’t think it’s enough. I’ll see that you’re put up to twelve when you come back.”
“Thank you very much,” smiled Philip. “I’m beginning to want some new clothes badly.”
“If you stick to your work and don’t go larking about with the girls like what some of them do, I’ll look after you, Carey. Mind you, you’ve got a lot to learn, but you’re promising, I’ll say that for you, you’re promising, and I’ll see that you get a pound a week as soon as you deserve it.”
Philip wondered how long he would have to wait for that. Two years?
He was startled at the change in his uncle. When last he had seen him he was a stout man, who held himself upright, clean-shaven, with a round, sensual face; but he had fallen in strangely, his skin was yellow; there were great bags under the eyes, and he was bent and old. He had grown a beard during his last illness, and he walked very slowly.
“I’m not at my best today,” he said when Philip, having just arrived, was sitting with him in the dining-room. “The heat upsets me.”
Philip, asking after the affairs of the parish, looked at him and wondered how much longer he could last. A hot summer would finish him; Philip noticed how thin his hands were; they trembled. It meant so much to Philip. If he died that summer he could go back to the hospital at the beginning of the winter session; his heart leaped at the thought of returning no more to Lynn’s. At dinner the Vicar sat humped up on his chair, and the housekeeper who had been with him since his wife’s death said:
“Shall Mr. Philip carve, sir?”
The old man, who had been about to do so from disinclination to confess his weakness, seemed glad at the first suggestion to relinquish the attempt.
“You’ve got a very good appetite,” said Philip.
“Oh yes, I always eat well. But I’m thinner than when you were here last. I’m glad to be thinner, I didn’t like being so fat. Dr. Wigram thinks I’m all the better for being thinner than I was.”
When dinner was over the housekeeper brought him some medicine.
“Show the prescription to Master Philip,” he said. “He’s a doctor too. I’d like him to see that he thinks it’s all right. I told Dr. Wigram that now you’re studying to be a doctor he ought to make a reduction in his charges. It’s dreadful the bills I’ve had to pay. He came every day for two months, and he charges five shillings a visit. It’s a lot of money, isn’t it? He comes twice a week still. I’m going to tell him he needn’t come any more. I’ll send for him if I want him.”
He looked at Philip eagerly while he read the prescriptions. They were narcotics. There were two of them, and one was a medicine which the Vicar explained he was to use only if his neuritis grew unendurable.
“I’m very careful,” he said. “I don’t want to get into the opium habit.”
He did not mention his nephew’s affairs. Philip fancied that it was by way of precaution, in case he asked for money, that his uncle kept dwelling on the financial calls upon him. He had spent so much on the doctor and so much more on the chemist, while he was ill they had had to have a fire every day in his bed-room, and now on Sunday he needed a carriage to go to church in the evening as well as in the morning. Philip felt angrily inclined to say he need not be afraid, he was not going to borrow from him, but he held his tongue. It seemed to him that everything had left the old man now but two things, pleasure in his food and a grasping desire for money. It was a hideous old age.
In the afternoon Dr. Wigram came, and after the visit Philip walked with him to the garden gate.
“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. 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; but he had not much practice among the better people, because no one really knew anything about him.
“Oh, he’s as well as can be expected,” said Dr. Wigram in answer to Philip’s inquiry.
“Has he got anything seriously the matter with him?”
“Well, Philip, your uncle is no longer a young man,” said the doctor with a cautious little smile, which suggested that after all the Vicar of Blackstable was not an old man either.
“He seems to think his heart’s in a bad way.”
“I’m not satisfied with his heart,” hazarded the doctor, “I think he should be careful, very careful.”
On the tip of Philip’s tongue was the question: how much longer can he live? He was afraid it would shock. In these matters a periphrase was demanded by the decorum of life, but, as he asked another question instead, it flashed through him that the doctor must be accustomed to the impatience of a sick man’s relatives. He must see through their sympathetic expressions. Philip, with a faint smile at his own hypocrisy, cast down his eyes.
“I suppose he’s in no immediate danger?”
This was the kind of question the doctor hated. If you said a patient couldn’t live another month the family prepared itself for a bereavement, and if then the patient lived on they visited the medical attendant with the resentment they felt at having tormented themselves before it was necessary. On the other hand, if you said the patient might live a year and he died in a week the family said you did not know your business. They thought of all the affection they would have lavished on the defunct if they had known the end was so near. Dr. Wigram made the gesture of washing his hands.
“I don’t think there’s any grave risk so long as he remains as he is,” he ventured at last. “But on the other hand, we mustn’t forget that he’s no longer a young man, and well, the machine is wearing out. If he gets over the hot weather I don’t see why he shouldn’t get on very comfortably till the winter, and then if the winter does not bother him too much, well, I don’t see why anything should happen.”
Philip went back to the dining-room where his uncle was sitting. With his skull-cap and a crochet shawl over his shoulders he looked grotesque. His eyes had been fixed on the door, and they rested on Philip’s face as he entered. Philip saw that his uncle had been waiting anxiously for his return.
“Well, what did he say about me?”
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.
A gleam of delight came into his uncle’s eyes.
“I’ve got a wonderful constitution,” he said. “What else did he say?” he added suspiciously.
Philip smiled.
“He said that if you take care of yourself there’s no reason why you shouldn’t live to be a hundred.”
“I don’t know that I can expect to do that, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t see eighty. My mother lived till she was eighty-four.”
There was a little table by the side of Mr. Carey’s chair, and on it were a Bible and the large volume of the Common Prayer from which for so many years he had been accustomed to read to his household. He stretched out now his shaking hand and took his Bible.
“Those old patriarchs lived to a jolly good old age, didn’t they?” he said, with a queer little laugh in which Philip read a sort of timid appeal.
The old man clung to life. Yet he believed implicitly all that his religion taught him. He had no doubt in the immortality of the soul, and he felt that he had conducted himself well enough, according to his capacities, to make it very likely that he would go to heaven. In his long career to how many dying persons must he have administered the consolations of religion! Perhaps he was like the doctor who could get no benefit from his own prescriptions. Philip was puzzled and shocked by that eager cleaving to the earth. He wondered what nameless horror was at the back of the old man’s mind. He would have liked to probe into his soul so that he might see in its nakedness the dreadful dismay of the unknown which he suspected.
The fortnight passed quickly and Philip returned to London. He passed a sweltering August behind his screen in the costumes department, drawing in his shirt sleeves. The assistants in relays went for their holidays. In the evening Philip generally went into Hyde Park and listened to the band. Growing more accustomed to his work it tired him less, and his mind, recovering from its long stagnation, sought for fresh activity. His whole desire now was set on his uncle’s death. He kept on dreaming the same dream: a telegram was handed to him one morning, early, which announced the Vicar’s sudden demise, and freedom was in his grasp. When he awoke and found it was nothing but a dream he was filled with sombre rage. He occupied himself, now that the event seemed likely to happen at any time, with elaborate plans for the future. In these he passed rapidly over the year which he must spend before it was possible for him to be qualified and dwelt on the journey to Spain on which his heart was set. He read books about that country, which he borrowed from the free library, and already he knew from photographs exactly what each city looked like. He saw himself lingering in Cordova on the bridge that spanned the Gaudalquivir; he wandered through tortuous streets in Toledo and sat in churches where he wrung from El Greco the secret which he felt the mysterious painter held for him. Athelny entered into his humour, and on Sunday afternoons they made out elaborate itineraries so that Philip should miss nothing that was noteworthy. To cheat his impatience Philip began to teach himself Spanish, and in the deserted sitting-room in Harrington Street he spent an hour every evening doing Spanish exercises and puzzling out with an English translation by his side the magnificent phrases of Don Quixote. Athelny gave him a lesson once a week, and Philip learned a few sentences to help him on his journey. Mrs. Athelny laughed at them.
“You two and your Spanish!” she said. “Why don’t you do something useful?”
But Sally, who was growing up and was to put up her hair at Christmas, stood by sometimes and listened in her grave way while her father and Philip exchanged remarks in a language she did not understand. She thought her father the most wonderful man who had ever existed, and she expressed her opinion of Philip only through her father’s commendations.
“Father thinks a rare lot of your Uncle Philip,” she remarked to her brothers and sisters.
Thorpe, the eldest boy, was old enough to go on the Arethusa, and Athelny regaled his family with magnificent descriptions of the appearance the lad would make when he came back in uniform for his holidays. As soon as Sally was seventeen she was to be apprenticed to a dressmaker. Athelny in his rhetorical way talked of the birds, strong enough to fly now, who were leaving the parental nest, and with tears in his eyes told them that the nest would be there still if ever they wished to return to it. A shakedown and a dinner would always be theirs, and the heart of a father would never be closed to the troubles of his children.
“You do talk, Athelny,” said his wife. “I don’t know what trouble they’re likely to get into so long as they’re steady. So long as you’re honest and not afraid of work you’ll never be out of a job, that’s what I think, and I can tell you I shan’t be sorry when I see the last of them earning their own living.”
Child-bearing, hard work, and constant anxiety were beginning to tell on Mrs. Athelny; and sometimes her back ached in the evening so that she had to sit down and rest herself. Her ideal of happiness was to have a girl to do the rough work so that she need not herself get up before seven. Athelny waved his beautiful white hand.
“Ah, my Betty, we’ve deserved well of the state, you and I. We’ve reared nine healthy children, and the boys shall serve their king; the girls shall cook and sew and in their turn breed healthy children.” He turned to Sally, and to comfort her for the anti-climax of the contrast added grandiloquently: “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Athelny had lately added socialism to the other contradictory theories he vehemently believed in, and he stated now:
“In a socialist state we should be richly pensioned, you and I, Betty.”
“Oh, don’t talk to me about your socialists, I’ve got no patience with them,” she cried. “It only means that another lot of lazy loafers will make a good thing out of the working classes. My motto is, leave me alone; I don’t want anyone interfering with me; I’ll make the best of a bad job, and the devil take the hindmost.”
“D’you call life a bad job?” said Athelny. “Never! We’ve had our ups and downs, we’ve had our struggles, we’ve always been poor, but it’s been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.”
“You do talk, Athelny,” she said, looking at him, not with anger but with scornful calm. “You’ve had the pleasant part of the children, I’ve had the bearing of them, and the bearing with them. I don’t say that I’m not fond of them, now they’re there, but if I had my time over again I’d remain single. Why, if I’d remained single I might have a little shop by now, and four or five hundred pounds in the bank, and a girl to do the rough 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. 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.
CIX
The autumn passed into winter. Philip had left his address with Mrs. Foster, his uncle’s housekeeper, so that she might communicate with him, but still went once a week to the hospital on the chance of there being a letter. One evening he saw his name on an envelope in a handwriting he had hoped never to see again. It gave him a queer feeling. For a little while he could not bring himself to take it. It brought back a host of hateful memories. But at length, impatient with himself, he ripped open the envelope.
7 William Street, Fitzroy Square.
Dear Phil,
Can I see you for a minute or two as soon as possible. I am in awful trouble and don’t know what to do. It’s not money.
Yours truly, Mildred.
He tore the letter into little bits and going out into the street scattered them in the darkness.
“I’ll see her damned,” he muttered.
A feeling of disgust surged up in him at the thought of seeing her again. He did not care if she was in distress, it served her right whatever it was, he thought of her with hatred, and the love he had had for her aroused his loathing. His recollections filled him with nausea, and as he walked across the Thames he drew himself aside in an instinctive withdrawal from his thought of her. He went to bed, but he could not sleep; he wondered what was the matter with her, and he could not get out of his head the fear that she was ill and hungry; she would not have written to him unless she were desperate. He was angry with himself for his weakness, but he knew that he would have no peace unless he saw her. Next morning he wrote a letter-card and posted it on his way to the shop. He made it as stiff as he could and said merely that he was sorry she was in difficulties and would come to the address she had given at seven o’clock that evening.
It was that of a shabby lodging-house in a sordid street; and when, sick at the thought of seeing her, he asked whether she was in, a wild hope seized him that she had left. It looked the sort of place people moved in and out of frequently. He had not thought of looking at the postmark on her letter and did not know how many days it had lain in the rack. The woman who answered the bell did not reply to his inquiry, but silently preceded him along the passage and knocked on a door at the back.
“Mrs. Miller, a gentleman to see you,” she called.
The door was slightly opened, and Mildred looked out suspiciously.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Come in.”
He walked in and she closed the door. It was a very small bed-room, untidy as was every place she lived in; there was a pair of shoes on the floor, lying apart from one another and uncleaned; a hat was on the chest of drawers, with false curls beside it; and there was a blouse on the table. Philip looked for somewhere to put his hat. The hooks behind the door were laden with skirts, and he noticed that they were muddy at the hem.
“Sit down, won’t you?” she said. Then she gave a little awkward laugh. “I suppose you were surprised to hear from me again.”
“You’re awfully hoarse,” he answered. “Have you got a sore throat?”
“Yes, I have had for some time.”
He did not say anything. He waited for her to explain why she wanted to see him. The look of the room told him clearly enough that she had gone back to the life from which he had taken her. He wondered what had happened to the baby; there was a photograph of it on the chimney-piece, but no sign in the room that a child was ever there. Mildred was holding her handkerchief. She made it into a little ball, and passed it from hand to hand. He saw that she was very nervous. She was staring at the fire, and he could look at her without meeting her eyes. She was much thinner than when she had left him; and the skin, yellow and dryish, was drawn more tightly over her cheekbones. She had dyed her hair and it was now flaxen: it altered her a good deal, and made her look more vulgar.
“I was relieved to get your letter, I can tell you,” she said at last. “I thought p’raps you weren’t at the ’ospital any more.”
Philip did not speak.
“I suppose you’re qualified by now, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“How’s that?”
“I’m no longer at the hospital. I had to give it up eighteen months ago.”
“You are changeable. You don’t seem as if you could stick to anything.”
Philip was silent for another moment, and when he went on it was with coldness.
“I lost the little money I had in an unlucky speculation and I couldn’t afford to go on with the medical. I had to earn my living as best I could.”
“What are you doing then?”
“I’m in a shop.”
“Oh!”
She gave him a quick glance and turned her eyes away at once. He thought that she reddened. She dabbed her palms nervously with the handkerchief.
“You’ve not forgotten all your doctoring, have you?” She jerked the words out quite oddly.
“Not entirely.”
“Because that’s why I wanted to see you.” Her voice sank to a hoarse whisper. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
“Why don’t you go to a hospital?”
“I don’t like to do that, and have all the stoodents staring at me, and I’m afraid they’d want to keep me.”
“What are you complaining of?” asked Philip coldly, with the stereotyped phrase used in the out-patients’ room.
“Well, I’ve come out in a rash, and I can’t get rid of it.”
Philip felt a twinge of horror in his heart. Sweat broke out on his forehead.
“Let me look at your throat?”
He took her over to the window and made such examination as he could. Suddenly he caught sight of her eyes. There was deadly fear in them. It was horrible to see. She was terrified. She wanted him to reassure her; she looked at him pleadingly, not daring to ask for words of comfort but with all her nerves astrung to receive them: he had none to offer her.
“I’m afraid you’re very ill indeed,” he said.
“What d’you think it is?”
When he told her she grew deathly pale, and her lips even turned, yellow. she began to cry, hopelessly, quietly at first and then with choking sobs.
“I’m awfully sorry,” he said at last. “But I had to tell you.”
“I may just as well kill myself and have done with it.”
He took no notice of the threat.
“Have you got any money?” he asked.
“Six or seven pounds.”
“You must give up this life, you know. Don’t you think you could find some work to do? I’m afraid I can’t help you much. I only get twelve bob a week.”
“What is there I can do now?” she cried impatiently.
“Damn it all, you MUST try to get something.”
He spoke to her very gravely, telling her of her own danger and the danger to which she exposed others, and she listened sullenly. He tried to console her. At last he brought her to a sulky acquiescence in which she promised to do all he advised. He wrote a prescription, which he said he would leave at the nearest chemist’s, and he impressed upon her the necessity of taking her medicine with the utmost regularity. Getting up to go, he held out his hand.
“Don’t be downhearted, you’ll soon get over your throat.”
But as he went her face became suddenly distorted, and she caught hold of his coat.
“Oh, don’t leave me,” she cried hoarsely. “I’m so afraid, don’t leave me alone yet. Phil, please. There’s no one else I can go to, you’re the only friend I’ve ever had.”
He felt the terror of her soul, and it was strangely like that terror he had seen in his uncle’s eyes when he feared that he might die. Philip looked down. Twice that woman had come into his life and made him wretched; she had no claim upon him; and yet, he knew not why, deep in his heart was a strange aching; it was that which, when he received her letter, had left him no peace till he obeyed her summons.
“I suppose I shall never really quite get over it,” he said to himself.
What perplexed him was that he felt a curious physical distaste, which made it uncomfortable for him to be near her.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Let’s go out and dine together. I’ll pay.”
He hesitated. He felt that she was creeping back again into his life when he thought she was gone out of it for ever. She watched him with sickening anxiety.
“Oh, I know I’ve treated you shocking, but don’t leave me alone now. You’ve had your revenge. If you leave me by myself now I don’t know what I shall do.”
“All right, I don’t mind,” he said, “but we shall have to do it on the cheap, I haven’t got money to throw away these days.”
She sat down and put her shoes on, then changed her skirt and put on a hat; and they walked out together till they found a restaurant in the Tottenham Court Road. Philip had got out of the habit of eating at those hours, and Mildred’s throat was so sore that she could not swallow. They had a little cold ham and Philip drank a glass of beer. They sat opposite one another, as they had so often sat before; he wondered if she remembered; they had nothing to say to one another and would have sat in silence if Philip had not forced himself to talk. In the bright light of the restaurant, with its vulgar looking-glasses that reflected in an endless series, she looked old and haggard. Philip was anxious to know about the child, but he had not the courage to ask. At last she said:
“You know baby died last summer.”
“Oh!” he said.
“You might say you’re sorry.”
“I’m not,” he answered, “I’m very glad.”
She glanced at him and, understanding what he meant, looked away
“You were rare stuck on it at one time, weren’t you? I always thought it funny like how you could see so much in another man’s child.”
When they had finished eating they called at the chemist’s for the medicine Philip had ordered, and going back to the shabby room he made her take a dose. Then they sat together till it was time for Philip to go back to Harrington Street. He was hideously bored.
Philip went to see her every day. She took the medicine he had prescribed and followed his directions, and soon the results were so apparent that she gained the greatest confidence in Philip’s skill. As she grew better she grew less despondent. She talked more freely.
“As soon as I can get a job I shall be all right,” she said. “I’ve had my lesson now and I mean to profit by it. No more racketing about for yours truly.”
Each time he saw her, Philip asked whether she had found work. She told him not to worry, she would find something to do as soon as she wanted it; she had several strings to her bow; it was all the better not to do anything for a week or two. He could not deny this, but at the end of that time he became more insistent. She laughed at him, she was much more cheerful now, and said he was a fussy old thing. She told him long stories of the manageresses she interviewed, for her idea was to get work at some eating-house; what they said and what she answered. Nothing definite was fixed, but she was sure to settle something at the beginning of the following week: there was no use hurrying, and it would be a mistake to take something unsuitable.
“It’s absurd to talk like that,” he said impatiently. “You must take anything you can get. I can’t help you, and your money won’t last for ever.”
“Oh, well, I’ve not come to the end of it yet and chance it.”
He looked at her sharply. It was three weeks since his first visit, and she had then less than seven pounds. Suspicion seized him. He remembered some of the things she had said. He put two and two together. He wondered whether she had made any attempt to find work. Perhaps she had been lying to him all the time. It was very strange that her money should have lasted so long.
“What is your rent here?”
“Oh, the landlady’s very nice, different from what some of them are; she’s quite willing to wait till it’s convenient for me to pay.”
He was silent. What he suspected was so horrible that he hesitated. It was no use to ask her, she would deny everything; if he wanted to know he must find out for himself. He was in the habit of leaving her every evening at eight, and when the clock struck he got up; but instead of going back to Harrington Street he stationed himself at the corner of Fitzroy Square so that he could see anyone who came along William Street. It seemed to him that he waited an interminable time, and he was on the point of going away, thinking his surmise had been mistaken, when the door of No. 7 opened and Mildred came out. He fell back into the darkness and watched her walk towards him. She had on the hat with a quantity of feathers on it which he had seen in her room, and she wore a dress he recognized, too showy for the street and unsuitable to the time of year. He followed her slowly till she came into the Tottenham Court Road, where she slackened her pace; at the corner of Oxford Street she stopped, looked round, and crossed over to a music-hall. He went up to her and touched her on the arm. He saw that she had rouged her cheeks and painted her lips.
“Where are you going, Mildred?”
She started at the sound of his voice and reddened as she always did when she was caught in a lie; then the flash of anger which he knew so well came into her eyes as she instinctively sought to defend herself by abuse. But she did not say the words which were on the tip of her tongue.
“Oh, I was only going to see the show. It gives me the hump sitting every night by myself.”
He did not pretend to believe her.
“You mustn’t. Good heavens, I’ve told you fifty times how dangerous it is. You must stop this sort of thing at once.”
“Oh, hold your jaw,” she cried roughly. “How d’you suppose I’m going to live?”
He took hold of her arm and without thinking what he was doing tried to drag her away.
“For God’s sake come along. Let me take you home. You don’t know what you’re doing. It’s criminal.”
“What do I care? Let them take their chance. Men haven’t been so good to me that I need bother my head about them.”
She pushed him away and walking up to the box-office put down her money. Philip had threepence in his pocket. He could not follow. He turned away and walked slowly down Oxford Street.
“I can’t do anything more,” he said to himself.
That was the end. He did not see her again.
CX
Christmas that year falling on Thursday, the shop was to close for four days: Philip wrote to his uncle asking whether it would be convenient for him to spend the holidays at the vicarage. He received an answer from Mrs. Foster, saying that Mr. Carey was not well enough to write himself, but wished to see his nephew and would be glad if he came down. She met Philip at the door, and when she shook hands with him, said:
“You’ll find him changed since you was here last, sir; but you’ll pretend you don’t notice anything, won’t you, sir? He’s that nervous about himself.”
Philip nodded, and she led him into the dining-room.
“Here’s Mr. Philip, sir.”
The Vicar of Blackstable was a dying man. There was no mistaking that when you looked at the hollow cheeks and the shrunken body. He sat huddled in the arm-chair, with his head strangely thrown back, and a shawl over his shoulders. He could not walk now without the help of sticks, and his hands trembled so that he could only feed himself with difficulty.
“He can’t last long now,” thought Philip, as he looked at him.
“How d’you think I’m looking?” asked the Vicar. “D’you think I’ve changed since you were here last?”
“I think you look stronger than you did last summer.”
“It was the heat. That always upsets me.”
Mr. Carey’s history of the last few months consisted in the number of weeks he had spent in his bed-room and the number of weeks he had spent downstairs. He had a hand-bell by his side and while he talked he rang it for Mrs. Foster, who sat in the next room ready to attend to his wants, to ask on what day of the month he had first left his room.
“On the seventh of November, sir.”
Mr. Carey looked at Philip to see how he took the information.
“But I eat well still, don’t I, Mrs. Foster?”
“Yes, sir, you’ve got a wonderful appetite.”
“I don’t seem to put on flesh though.”
Nothing interested him now but his health. He was set upon one thing indomitably and that was living, just living, notwithstanding the monotony of his life and the constant pain which allowed him to sleep only when he was under the influence of morphia.
“It’s terrible, the amount of money I have to spend on doctor’s bills.” He tinkled his bell again. “Mrs. Foster, show Master Philip the chemist’s bill.”
Patiently she took it off the chimney-piece and handed it to Philip.
“That’s only one month. I was wondering if as you’re doctoring yourself you couldn’t get me the drugs cheaper. I thought of getting them down from the stores, but then there’s the postage.”
Though apparently taking so little interest in him that he did not trouble to inquire what Phil was doing, he seemed glad to have him there. He asked how long he could stay, and when Philip told him he must leave on Tuesday morning, expressed a wish that the visit might have been longer. He told him minutely all his symptoms and repeated what the doctor had said of him. He broke off to ring his bell, and when Mrs. Foster came in, said:
“Oh, I wasn’t sure if you were there. I only rang to see if you were.”
When she had gone he explained to Philip that it made him uneasy if he was not certain that Mrs. Foster was within earshot; she knew exactly what to do with him if anything happened. Philip, seeing that she was tired and that her eyes were heavy from want of sleep, suggested that he was working her too hard.
“Oh, nonsense,” said the Vicar, “she’s as strong as a horse.” And when next she came in to give him his medicine he said to her:
“Master Philip says you’ve got too much to do, Mrs. Foster. You like looking after me, don’t you?”
“Oh, I don’t mind, sir. I want to do everything I can.”
Presently the medicine took effect and Mr. Carey fell asleep. Philip went into the kitchen and asked Mrs. Foster whether she could stand the work. He saw that for some months she had had little peace.
“Well, sir, what can I do?” she answered. “The poor old gentleman’s so dependent on me, and, although he is troublesome sometimes, you can’t help liking him, can you? I’ve been here so many years now, I don’t know what I shall do when he comes to go.”
Philip saw that she was really fond of the old man. She washed and dressed him, gave him his food, and was up half a dozen times in the night; for she slept in the next room to his and whenever he awoke he tinkled his little bell till she came in. He might die at any moment, but he might live for months. It was wonderful that she should look after a stranger with such patient tenderness, and it was tragic and pitiful that she should be alone in the world to care for him.
It seemed to Philip that the religion which his uncle had preached all his life was now of no more than formal importance to him: every Sunday the curate came and administered to him Holy Communion, and he often read his Bible; but it was clear that he looked upon death with horror. He believed that it was the gateway to life everlasting, but he did not want to enter upon that life. In constant pain, chained to his chair and having given up the hope of ever getting out into the open again, like a child in the hands of a woman to whom he paid wages, he clung to the world he knew.
In Philip’s head was a question he could not ask, because he was aware that his uncle would never give any but a conventional answer: he wondered whether at the very end, now that the machine was painfully wearing itself out, the clergyman still believed in immortality; perhaps at the bottom of his soul, not allowed to shape itself into words in case it became urgent, was the conviction that there was no God and after this life nothing.
On the evening of Boxing Day Philip sat in the dining-room with his uncle. He had to start very early next morning in order to get to the shop by nine, and he was to say good-night to Mr. Carey then. The Vicar of Blackstable was dozing and Philip, lying on the sofa by the window, let his book fall on his knees and looked idly round the room. He asked himself how much the furniture would fetch. He had walked round the house and looked at the things he had known from his childhood; there were a few pieces of china which might go for a decent price and Philip wondered if it would be worth while to take them up to London; but the furniture was of the Victorian order, of mahogany, solid and ugly; it would go for nothing at an auction. There were three or four thousand books, but everyone knew how badly they sold, and it was not probable that they would fetch more than a hundred pounds. Philip did not know how much his uncle would leave, and he reckoned out for the hundredth time what was the least sum upon which he could finish the curriculum at the hospital, take his degree, and live during the time he wished to spend on hospital appointments. He looked at the old man, sleeping restlessly: there was no humanity left in that shrivelled face; it was the face of some queer animal. Philip thought how easy it would be to finish that useless life. He had thought it each evening when Mrs. Foster prepared for his uncle the medicine which was to give him an easy night. There were two bottles: one contained a drug which he took regularly, and the other an opiate if the pain grew unendurable. This was poured out for him and left by his bed-side. He generally took it at three or four in the morning. It would be a simple thing to double the dose; he would die in the night, and no one would suspect anything; for that was how Doctor Wigram expected him to die. The end would be painless. Philip clenched his hands as he thought of the money he wanted so badly. A few more months of that wretched life could matter nothing to the old man, but the few more months meant everything to him: he was getting to the end of his endurance, and when he thought of going back to work in the morning he shuddered with horror. His heart beat quickly at the thought which obsessed him, and though he made an effort to put it out of his mind he could not. It would be so easy, so desperately easy. He had no feeling for the old man, he had never liked him; he had been selfish all his life, selfish to his wife who adored him, indifferent to the boy who had been put in his charge; he was not a cruel man, but a stupid, hard man, eaten up with a small sensuality. It would be easy, desperately easy. Philip did not dare. He was afraid of remorse; it would be no good having the money if he regretted all his life what he had done. Though he had told himself so often that regret was futile, there were certain things that came back to him occasionally and worried him. He wished they were not on his conscience.
His uncle opened his eyes; Philip was glad, for he looked a little more human then. He was frankly horrified at the idea that had come to him, it was murder that he was meditating; and he wondered if other people had such thoughts or whether he was abnormal and depraved. He supposed he could not have done it when it came to the point, but there the thought was, constantly recurring: if he held his hand it was from fear. His uncle spoke.
“You’re not looking forward to my death, Philip?” Philip felt his heart beat against his chest.
“Good heavens, no.”
“That’s a good boy. I shouldn’t like you to do that. You’ll get a little bit of money when I pass away, but you mustn’t look forward to it. It wouldn’t profit you if you did.”
He spoke in a low voice, and there was a curious anxiety in his tone. It sent a pang into Philip’s heart. He wondered what strange insight might have led the old man to surmise what strange desires were in Philip’s mind.
“I hope you’ll live for another twenty years,” he said.
“Oh, well, I can’t expect to do that, but if I take care of myself I don’t see why I shouldn’t last another three or four.”
He was silent for a while, and Philip found nothing to say. Then, as if he had been thinking it all over, the old man spoke again.
“Everyone has the right to live as long as he can.”
Philip wanted to distract his mind.
“By the way, I suppose you never hear from Miss Wilkinson now?”
“Yes, I had a letter some time this year. She’s married, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yes, she married a widower. I believe they’re quite comfortable.”