Chapter LXXVIII

by William Somerset Maugham

　　At last Monday came, and Philip thought his long torture was over. Lookingout the trains he found that the latest by which Griffiths could reachhome that night left Oxford soon after one, and he supposed that Mildredwould take one which started a few minutes later to bring her to London.His desire was to go and meet it, but he thought Mildred would like to beleft alone for a day; perhaps she would drop him a line in the evening tosay she was back, and if not he would call at her lodgings next morning:his spirit was cowed. He felt a bitter hatred for Griffiths, but forMildred, notwithstanding all that had passed, only a heart-rending desire.He was glad now that Hayward was not in London on Saturday afternoon when,distraught, he went in search of human comfort: he could not haveprevented himself from telling him everything, and Hayward would have beenastonished at his weakness. He would despise him, and perhaps be shockedor disgusted that he could envisage the possibility of making Mildred hismistress after she had given herself to another man. What did he care ifit was shocking or disgusting? He was ready for any compromise, preparedfor more degrading humiliations still, if he could only gratify hisdesire.Towards the evening his steps took him against his will to the house inwhich she lived, and he looked up at her window. It was dark. He did notventure to ask if she was back. He was confident in her promise. But therewas no letter from her in the morning, and, when about mid-day he called,the maid told him she had not arrived. He could not understand it. He knewthat Griffiths would have been obliged to go home the day before, for hewas to be best man at a wedding, and Mildred had no money. He turned overin his mind every possible thing that might have happened. He went againin the afternoon and left a note, asking her to dine with him that eveningas calmly as though the events of the last fortnight had not happened. Hementioned the place and time at which they were to meet, and hopingagainst hope kept the appointment: though he waited for an hour she didnot come. On Wednesday morning he was ashamed to ask at the house and senta messenger-boy with a letter and instructions to bring back a reply; butin an hour the boy came back with Philip's letter unopened and the answerthat the lady had not returned from the country. Philip was besidehimself. The last deception was more than he could bear. He repeated tohimself over and over again that he loathed Mildred, and, ascribing toGriffiths this new disappointment, he hated him so much that he knew whatwas the delight of murder: he walked about considering what a joy it wouldbe to come upon him on a dark night and stick a knife into his throat,just about the carotid artery, and leave him to die in the street like adog. Philip was out of his senses with grief and rage. He did not likewhiskey, but he drank to stupefy himself. He went to bed drunk on theTuesday and on the Wednesday night.On Thursday morning he got up very late and dragged himself, blear-eyedand sallow, into his sitting-room to see if there were any letters. Acurious feeling shot through his heart when he recognised the handwritingof Griffiths.Dear old man:I hardly know how to write to you and yet I feel I must write. I hopeyou're not awfully angry with me. I know I oughtn't to have gone away withMilly, but I simply couldn't help myself. She simply carried me off myfeet and I would have done anything to get her. When she told me you hadoffered us the money to go I simply couldn't resist. And now it's all overI'm awfully ashamed of myself and I wish I hadn't been such a fool. I wishyou'd write and say you're not angry with me, and I want you to let mecome and see you. I was awfully hurt at your telling Milly you didn't wantto see me. Do write me a line, there's a good chap, and tell me youforgive me. It'll ease my conscience. I thought you wouldn't mind or youwouldn't have offered the money. But I know I oughtn't to have taken it.I came home on Monday and Milly wanted to stay a couple of days at Oxfordby herself. She's going back to London on Wednesday, so by the time youreceive this letter you will have seen her and I hope everything will gooff all right. Do write and say you forgive me. Please write at once.Yours ever,Harry.Philip tore up the letter furiously. He did not mean to answer it. Hedespised Griffiths for his apologies, he had no patience with hisprickings of conscience: one could do a dastardly thing if one chose, butit was contemptible to regret it afterwards. He thought the lettercowardly and hypocritical. He was disgusted at its sentimentality."It would be very easy if you could do a beastly thing," he muttered tohimself, "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 doGriffiths a bad turn.But at all events he knew that Mildred was in town. He dressed hurriedly,not waiting to shave, drank a cup of tea, and took a cab to her rooms. Thecab seemed to crawl. He was painfully anxious to see her, andunconsciously he uttered a prayer to the God he did not believe in to makeher receive him kindly. He only wanted to forget. With beating heart herang the bell. He forgot all his suffering in the passionate desire toenfold her once more in his arms."Is Mrs. Miller in?" he asked joyously."She's gone," the maid answered.He looked at her blankly."She came about an hour ago and took away her things."For a moment he did not know what to say."Did you give her my letter? Did she say where she was going?"Then he understood that Mildred had deceived him again. She was not comingback to him. He made an effort to save his face."Oh, well, I daresay I shall hear from her. She may have sent a letter toanother address."He turned away and went back hopeless to his rooms. He might have knownthat she would do this; she had never cared for him, she had made a foolof him from the beginning; she had no pity, she had no kindness, she hadno charity. The only thing was to accept the inevitable. The pain he wassuffering was horrible, he would sooner be dead than endure it; and thethought came to him that it would be better to finish with the wholething: he might throw himself in the river or put his neck on a railwayline; but he had no sooner set the thought into words than he rebelledagainst it. His reason told him that he would get over his unhappiness intime; if he tried with all his might he could forget her; and it would begrotesque to kill himself on account of a vulgar slut. He had only onelife, and it was madness to fling it away. He felt that he would neverovercome his passion, but he knew that after all it was only a matterof time.He would not stay in London. There everything reminded him of hisunhappiness. He telegraphed to his uncle that he was coming toBlackstable, and, hurrying to pack, took the first train he could. Hewanted to get away from the sordid rooms in which he had endured so muchsuffering. He wanted to breathe clean air. He was disgusted with himself.He felt that he was a little mad.Since he was grown up Philip had been given the best spare room at thevicarage. It was a corner-room and in front of one window was an old treewhich blocked the view, but from the other you saw, beyond the garden andthe vicarage field, broad meadows. Philip remembered the wall-paper fromhis earliest years. On the walls were quaint water colours of the earlyVictorian period by a friend of the Vicar's youth. They had a faded charm.The dressing-table was surrounded by stiff muslin. There was an oldtall-boy to put your clothes in. Philip gave a sigh of pleasure; he hadnever realised that all those things meant anything to him at all. At thevicarage life went on as it had always done. No piece of furniture hadbeen moved from one place to another; the Vicar ate the same things, saidthe same things, went for the same walk every day; he had grown a littlefatter, a little more silent, a little more narrow. He had becomeaccustomed to living without his wife and missed her very little. Hebickered still with Josiah Graves. Philip went to see the churchwarden. Hewas a little thinner, a little whiter, a little more austere; he wasautocratic still and still disapproved of candles on the altar. The shopshad still a pleasant quaintness; and Philip stood in front of that inwhich things useful to seamen were sold, sea-boots and tarpaulins andtackle, and remembered that he had felt there in his childhood the thrillof the sea and the adventurous magic of the unknown.He could not help his heart beating at each double knock of the postman incase there might be a letter from Mildred sent on by his landlady inLondon; but he knew that there would be none. Now that he could think itout more calmly he understood that in trying to force Mildred to love himhe had been attempting the impossible. He did not know what it was thatpassed from a man to a woman, from a woman to a man, and made one of thema slave: it was convenient to call it the sexual instinct; but if it wasno more than that, he did not understand why it should occasion sovehement an attraction to one person rather than another. It wasirresistible: the mind could not battle with it; friendship, gratitude,interest, had no power beside it. Because he had not attracted Mildredsexually, nothing that he did had any effect upon her. The idea revoltedhim; it made human nature beastly; and he felt suddenly that the hearts ofmen were full of dark places. Because Mildred was indifferent to him hehad thought her sexless; her anaemic appearance and thin lips, the bodywith its narrow hips and flat chest, the languor of her manner, carriedout his supposition; and yet she was capable of sudden passions which madeher willing to risk everything to gratify them. He had never understoodher adventure with Emil Miller: it had seemed so unlike her, and she hadnever been able to explain it; but now that he had seen her with Griffithshe knew that just the same thing had happened then: she had been carriedoff her feet by an ungovernable desire. He tried to think out what thosetwo men had which so strangely attracted her. They both had a vulgarfacetiousness which tickled her simple sense of humour, and a certaincoarseness of nature; but what took her perhaps was the blatant sexualitywhich was their most marked characteristic. She had a genteel refinementwhich shuddered at the facts of life, she looked upon the bodily functionsas indecent, she had all sorts of euphemisms for common objects, shealways chose an elaborate word as more becoming than a simple one: thebrutality of these men was like a whip on her thin white shoulders, andshe shuddered with voluptuous pain.One thing Philip had made up his mind about. He would not go back to thelodgings in which he had suffered. He wrote to his landlady and gave hernotice. He wanted to have his own things about him. He determined to takeunfurnished rooms: it would be pleasant and cheaper; and this was anurgent consideration, for during the last year and a half he had spentnearly seven hundred pounds. He must make up for it now by the most rigideconomy. Now and then he thought of the future with panic; he had been afool to spend so much money on Mildred; but he knew that if it were tocome again he would act in the same way. It amused him sometimes toconsider that his friends, because he had a face which did not express hisfeelings very vividly and a rather slow way of moving, looked upon him asstrong-minded, deliberate, and cool. They thought him reasonable andpraised his common sense; but he knew that his placid expression was nomore than a mask, assumed unconsciously, which acted like the protectivecolouring of butterflies; and himself was astonished at the weakness ofhis will. It seemed to him that he was swayed by every light emotion, asthough he were a leaf in the wind, and when passion seized him he waspowerless. He had no self-control. He merely seemed to possess it becausehe was indifferent to many of the things which moved other people.He considered with some irony the philosophy which he had developed forhimself, for it had not been of much use to him in the conjuncture he hadpassed through; and he wondered whether thought really helped a man in anyof the critical affairs of life: it seemed to him rather that he wasswayed by some power alien to and yet within himself, which urged him likethat great wind of Hell which drove Paolo and Francesca ceaselessly on. Hethought of what he was going to do and, when the time came to act, he waspowerless in the grasp of instincts, emotions, he knew not what. He actedas though he were a machine driven by the two forces of his environmentand his personality; his reason was someone looking on, observing thefacts but powerless to interfere: it was like those gods of Epicurus, whosaw the doings of men from their empyrean heights and had no might toalter one smallest particle of what occurred.