Chapter CVI

by William Somerset Maugham

　　Philip avoided the places he had known in happier times. The littlegatherings at the tavern in Beak Street were broken up: Macalister, havinglet down his friends, no longer went there, and Hayward was at the Cape.Only Lawson remained; and Philip, feeling that now the painter and he hadnothing in common, did not wish to see him; but one Saturday afternoon,after dinner, having changed his clothes he walked down Regent Street togo to the free library in St. Martin's Lane, meaning to spend theafternoon there, and suddenly found himself face to face with him. Hisfirst instinct was to pass on without a word, but Lawson did not give himthe opportunity."Where on earth have you been all this time?" he cried."I?" said Philip."I wrote you and asked you to come to the studio for a beano and you nevereven answered.""I didn't get your letter.""No, I know. I went to the hospital to ask for you, and I saw my letter inthe rack. Have you chucked the Medical?"Philip hesitated for a moment. He was ashamed to tell the truth, but theshame he felt angered him, and he forced himself to speak. He could nothelp reddening."Yes, I lost the little money I had. I couldn't afford to go on with it.""I say, I'm awfully sorry. What are you doing?""I'm a shop-walker."The words choked Philip, but he was determined not to shirk the truth. Hekept his eyes on Lawson and saw his embarrassment. Philip smiled savagely."If you went into Lynn and Sedley, and made your way into the `made robes'department, you would see me in a frock coat, walking about with adegage air and directing ladies who want to buy petticoats or stockings.First to the right, madam, and second on the left."Lawson, seeing that Philip was making a jest of it, laughed awkwardly. Hedid not know what to say. The picture that Philip called up horrified him,but he was afraid to show his sympathy."That's a bit of a change for you," he said.His words seemed absurd to him, and immediately he wished he had not saidthem. Philip flushed darkly."A bit," he said. "By the way, I owe you five bob."He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out some silver."Oh, it doesn't matter. I'd forgotten all about it.""Go on, take it."Lawson received the money silently. They stood in the middle of thepavement, and people jostled them as they passed. There was a sardonictwinkle in Philip's eyes, which made the painter intensely uncomfortable,and he could not tell that Philip's heart was heavy with despair. Lawsonwanted dreadfully to do something, but he did not know what to do."I say, won't you come to the studio and have a talk?""No," said Philip."Why not?""There's nothing to talk about."He saw the pain come into Lawson's eyes, he could not help it, he wassorry, but he had to think of himself; he could not bear the thought ofdiscussing his situation, he could endure it only by determiningresolutely not to think about it. He was afraid of his weakness if once hebegan to open his heart. Moreover, he took irresistible dislikes to theplaces where he had been miserable: he remembered the humiliation he hadendured when he had waited in that studio, ravenous with hunger, forLawson to offer him a meal, and the last occasion when he had taken thefive shillings off him. He hated the sight of Lawson, because he recalledthose days of utter abasement."Then look here, come and dine with me one night. Choose your ownevening."Philip was touched with the painter's kindness. All sorts of people werestrangely kind to him, he thought."It's awfully good of you, old man, but I'd rather not." He held out hishand. "Good-bye."Lawson, troubled by a behaviour which seemed inexplicable, took his hand,and Philip quickly limped away. His heart was heavy; and, as was usualwith him, he began to reproach himself for what he had done: he did notknow what madness of pride had made him refuse the offered friendship. Buthe heard someone running behind him and presently Lawson's voice callinghim; he stopped and suddenly the feeling of hostility got the better ofhim; he presented to Lawson a cold, set face."What is it?""I suppose you heard about Hayward, didn't you?""I know he went to the Cape.""He died, you know, soon after landing."For a moment Philip did not answer. He could hardly believe his ears."How?" he asked."Oh, enteric. Hard luck, wasn't it? I thought you mightn't know. Gave mea bit of a turn when I heard it."Lawson nodded quickly and walked away. Philip felt a shiver pass throughhis heart. He had never before lost a friend of his own age, for the deathof Cronshaw, a man so much older than himself, had seemed to come in thenormal course of things. The news gave him a peculiar shock. It remindedhim of his own mortality, for like everyone else Philip, knowing perfectlythat all men must die, had no intimate feeling that the same must apply tohimself; and Hayward's death, though he had long ceased to have any warmfeeling for him, affected him deeply. He remembered on a sudden all thegood talks they had had, and it pained him to think that they would nevertalk with one another again; he remembered their first meeting and thepleasant months they had spent together in Heidelberg. Philip's heart sankas he thought of the lost years. He walked on mechanically, not noticingwhere he went, and realised suddenly, with a movement of irritation, thatinstead of turning down the Haymarket he had sauntered along ShaftesburyAvenue. It bored him to retrace his steps; and besides, with that news, hedid not want to read, he wanted to sit alone and think. He made up hismind to go to the British Museum. Solitude was now his only luxury. Sincehe had been at Lynn's he had often gone there and sat in front of thegroups from the Parthenon; and, not deliberately thinking, had allowedtheir divine masses to rest his troubled soul. But this afternoon they hadnothing to say to him, and after a few minutes, impatiently, he wanderedout of the room. There were too many people, provincials with foolishfaces, foreigners poring over guide-books; their hideousness besmirchedthe everlasting masterpieces, their restlessness troubled the god'simmortal repose. He went into another room and here there was hardlyanyone. Philip sat down wearily. His nerves were on edge. He could not getthe people out of his mind. Sometimes at Lynn's they affected him in thesame way, and he looked at them file past him with horror; they were sougly and there was such meanness in their faces, it was terrifying; theirfeatures were distorted with paltry desires, and you felt they werestrange to any ideas of beauty. They had furtive eyes and weak chins.There was no wickedness in them, but only pettiness and vulgarity. Theirhumour was a low facetiousness. Sometimes he found himself looking at themto see what animal they resembled (he tried not to, for it quickly becamean obsession,) and he saw in them all the sheep or the horse or the fox orthe goat. Human beings filled him with disgust.But presently the influence of the place descended upon him. He feltquieter. He began to look absently at the tombstones with which the roomwas lined. They were the work of Athenian stone masons of the fourth andfifth centuries before Christ, and they were very simple, work of no greattalent but with the exquisite spirit of Athens upon them; time hadmellowed the marble to the colour of honey, so that unconsciously onethought of the bees of Hymettus, and softened their outlines. Somerepresented a nude figure, seated on a bench, some the departure of thedead from those who loved him, and some the dead clasping hands with onewho remained behind. On all was the tragic word farewell; that and nothingmore. Their simplicity was infinitely touching. Friend parted from friend,the son from his mother, and the restraint made the survivor's grief morepoignant. It was so long, long ago, and century upon century had passedover that unhappiness; for two thousand years those who wept had been dustas those they wept for. Yet the woe was alive still, and it filledPhilip's heart so that he felt compassion spring up in it, and he said:"Poor things, poor things."And it came to him that the gaping sight-seers and the fat strangers withtheir guide-books, and all those mean, common people who thronged theshop, with their trivial desires and vulgar cares, were mortal and mustdie. They too loved and must part from those they loved, the son from hismother, the wife from her husband; and perhaps it was more tragic becausetheir lives were ugly and sordid, and they knew nothing that gave beautyto the world. There was one stone which was very beautiful, a bas reliefof two young men holding each other's hand; and the reticence of line, thesimplicity, made one like to think that the sculptor here had been touchedwith a genuine emotion. It was an exquisite memorial to that than whichthe world offers but one thing more precious, to a friendship; and asPhilip looked at it, he felt the tears come to his eyes. He thought ofHayward and his eager admiration for him when first they met, and howdisillusion had come and then indifference, till nothing held themtogether but habit and old memories. It was one of the queer things oflife that you saw a person every day for months and were so intimate withhim that you could not imagine existence without him; then separationcame, and everything went on in the same way, and the companion who hadseemed essential proved unnecessary. Your life proceeded and you did noteven miss him. Philip thought of those early days in Heidelberg whenHayward, capable of great things, had been full of enthusiasm for thefuture, and how, little by little, achieving nothing, he had resignedhimself to failure. Now he was dead. His death had been as futile as hislife. He died ingloriously, of a stupid disease, failing once more, evenat the end, to accomplish anything. It was just the same now as if he hadnever lived.Philip asked himself desperately what was the use of living at all. It allseemed inane. It was the same with Cronshaw: it was quite unimportant thathe had lived; he was dead and forgotten, his book of poems sold inremainder by second-hand booksellers; his life seemed to have servednothing except to give a pushing journalist occasion to write an articlein a review. And Philip cried out in his soul:"What is the use of it?"The effort was so incommensurate with the result. The bright hopes ofyouth had to be paid for at such a bitter price of disillusionment. Painand disease and unhappiness weighed down the scale so heavily. What did itall mean? He thought of his own life, the high hopes with which he hadentered upon it, the limitations which his body forced upon him, hisfriendlessness, and the lack of affection which had surrounded his youth.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 thanhe, succeeded, and others again, with many more, failed. It seemed purechance. The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and fornothing was there a why and a wherefore.Thinking of Cronshaw, Philip remembered the Persian rug which he had givenhim, telling him that it offered an answer to his question upon themeaning of life; and suddenly the answer occurred to him: he chuckled: nowthat he had it, it was like one of the puzzles which you worry over tillyou are shown the solution and then cannot imagine how it could ever haveescaped you. The answer was obvious. Life had no meaning. On the earth,satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen underthe influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; andas there had been a beginning of life upon it so, under the influence ofother conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant thanother forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as aphysical reaction to the environment. Philip remembered the story of theEastern King who, desiring to know the history of man, was brought by asage five hundred volumes; busy with affairs of state, he bade him go andcondense it; in twenty years the sage returned and his history now was inno more than fifty volumes, but the King, too old then to read so manyponderous tomes, bade him go and shorten it once more; twenty years passedagain and the sage, old and gray, brought a single book in which was theknowledge the King had sought; but the King lay on his death-bed, and hehad no time to read even that; and then the sage gave him the history ofman 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 wasimmaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased tolive. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philipexulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief inGod was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burdenof responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he wasutterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himselfsuddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for,if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he didor left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and successamounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in thatswarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface ofthe earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos thesecret of its nothingness. Thoughts came tumbling over one another inPhilip's eager fancy, and he took long breaths of joyous satisfaction. Hefelt 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 ofmathematical demonstration that life had no meaning, brought with itanother idea; and that was why Cronshaw, he imagined, had given him thePersian rug. As the weaver elaborated his pattern for no end but thepleasure of his aesthetic sense, so might a man live his life, or if onewas forced to believe that his actions were outside his choosing, so mighta man look at his life, that it made a pattern. There was as little needto do this as there was use. It was merely something he did for his ownpleasure. Out of the manifold events of his life, his deeds, his feelings,his thoughts, he might make a design, regular, elaborate, complicated, orbeautiful; and though it might be no more than an illusion that he had thepower of selection, though it might be no more than a fantasticlegerdemain in which appearances were interwoven with moonbeams, that didnot matter: it seemed, and so to him it was. In the vast warp of life (ariver arising from no spring and flowing endlessly to no sea), with thebackground to his fancies that there was no meaning and that nothing wasimportant, a man might get a personal satisfaction in selecting thevarious strands that worked out the pattern. There was one pattern, themost obvious, perfect, and beautiful, in which a man was born, grew tomanhood, married, produced children, toiled for his bread, and died; butthere were others, intricate and wonderful, in which happiness did notenter and in which success was not attempted; and in them might bediscovered a more troubling grace. Some lives, and Hayward's was amongthem, the blind indifference of chance cut off while the design was stillimperfect; and then the solace was comfortable that it did not matter;other lives, such as Cronshaw's, offered a pattern which was difficult tofollow, the point of view had to be shifted and old standards had to bealtered before one could understand that such a life was its ownjustification. Philip thought that in throwing over the desire forhappiness he was casting aside the last of his illusions. His life hadseemed horrible when it was measured by its happiness, but now he seemedto gather strength as he realised that it might be measured by somethingelse. Happiness mattered as little as pain. They came in, both of them, asall the other details of his life came in, to the elaboration of thedesign. He seemed for an instant to stand above the accidents of hisexistence, and he felt that they could not affect him again as they haddone before. Whatever happened to him now would be one more motive to addto the complexity of the pattern, and when the end approached he wouldrejoice in its completion. It would be a work of art, and it would be nonethe less beautiful because he alone knew of its existence, and with hisdeath it would at once cease to be.Philip was happy.