Chapter LXXX

by William Somerset Maugham

　　For the next three months Philip worked on subjects which were new to him.The unwieldy crowd which had entered the Medical School nearly two yearsbefore had thinned out: some had left the hospital, finding theexaminations more difficult to pass than they expected, some had beentaken away by parents who had not foreseen the expense of life in London,and some had drifted away to other callings. One youth whom Philip knewhad devised an ingenious plan to make money; he had bought things at salesand pawned them, but presently found it more profitable to pawn goodsbought on credit; and it had caused a little excitement at the hospitalwhen someone pointed out his name in police-court proceedings. There hadbeen a remand, then assurances on the part of a harassed father, and theyoung man had gone out to bear the White Man's Burden overseas. Theimagination of another, a lad who had never before been in a town at all,fell to the glamour of music-halls and bar parlours; he spent his timeamong racing-men, tipsters, and trainers, and now was become abook-maker's clerk. Philip had seen him once in a bar near PiccadillyCircus in a tight-waisted coat and a brown hat with a broad, flat brim. Athird, with a gift for singing and mimicry, who had achieved success atthe smoking concerts of the Medical School by his imitation of notoriouscomedians, had abandoned the hospital for the chorus of a musical comedy.Still another, and he interested Philip because his uncouth manner andinterjectional speech did not suggest that he was capable of any deepemotion, had felt himself stifle among the houses of London. He grewhaggard in shut-in spaces, and the soul he knew not he possessed struggledlike a sparrow held in the hand, with little frightened gasps and a quickpalpitation of the heart: he yearned for the broad skies and the open,desolate places among which his childhood had been spent; and he walkedoff one day, without a word to anybody, between one lecture and another;and the next thing his friends heard was that he had thrown up medicineand was working on a farm.Philip attended now lectures on medicine and on surgery. On certainmornings in the week he practised bandaging on out-patients glad to earna little money, and he was taught auscultation and how to use thestethoscope. He learned dispensing. He was taking the examination inMateria Medica in July, and it amused him to play with various drugs,concocting mixtures, rolling pills, and making ointments. He seized avidlyupon anything from which he could extract a suggestion of human interest.He saw Griffiths once in the distance, but, not to have the pain ofcutting him dead, avoided him. Philip had felt a certainself-consciousness with Griffiths' friends, some of whom were now friendsof his, when he realised they knew of his quarrel with Griffiths andsurmised they were aware of the reason. One of them, a very tall fellow,with a small head and a languid air, a youth called Ramsden, who was oneof Griffiths' most faithful admirers, copied his ties, his boots, hismanner of talking and his gestures, told Philip that Griffiths was verymuch hurt because Philip had not answered his letter. He wanted to bereconciled with him."Has he asked you to give me the message?" asked Philip."Oh, no. I'm saying this entirely on my own," said Ramsden. "He's awfullysorry for what he did, and he says you always behaved like a perfect brickto him. I know he'd be glad to make it up. He doesn't come to the hospitalbecause he's afraid of meeting you, and he thinks you'd cut him.""I should.""It makes him feel rather wretched, you know.""I can bear the trifling inconvenience that he feels with a good deal offortitude," said Philip."He'll do anything he can to make it up.""How childish and hysterical! Why should he care? I'm a very insignificantperson, and he can do very well without my company. I'm not interested inhim any more."Ramsden thought Philip hard and cold. He paused for a moment or two,looking about him in a perplexed way."Harry wishes to God he'd never had anything to do with the woman.""Does he?" asked Philip.He spoke with an indifference which he was satisfied with. No one couldhave guessed how violently his heart was beating. He waited impatientlyfor Ramsden to go on."I suppose you've quite got over it now, haven't you?""I?" said Philip. "Quite."Little by little he discovered the history of Mildred's relations withGriffiths. He listened with a smile on his lips, feigning an equanimitywhich quite deceived the dull-witted boy who talked to him. The week-endshe spent with Griffiths at Oxford inflamed rather than extinguished hersudden passion; and when Griffiths went home, with a feeling that wasunexpected in her she determined to stay in Oxford by herself for a coupleof days, because she had been so happy in it. She felt that nothing couldinduce her to go back to Philip. He revolted her. Griffiths was takenaback at the fire he had aroused, for he had found his two days with herin the country somewhat tedious; and he had no desire to turn an amusingepisode into a tiresome affair. She made him promise to write to her, and,being an honest, decent fellow, with natural politeness and a desire tomake himself pleasant to everybody, when he got home he wrote her a longand charming letter. She answered it with reams of passion, clumsy, forshe had no gift of expression, ill-written, and vulgar; the letter boredhim, and when it was followed next day by another, and the day after by athird, he began to think her love no longer flattering but alarming. Hedid not answer; and she bombarded him with telegrams, asking him if hewere ill and had received her letters; she said his silence made herdreadfully anxious. He was forced to write, but he sought to make hisreply as casual as was possible without being offensive: he begged her notto wire, since it was difficult to explain telegrams to his mother, anold-fashioned person for whom a telegram was still an event to excitetremor. She answered by return of post that she must see him and announcedher intention to pawn things (she had the dressing-case which Philip hadgiven her as a wedding-present and could raise eight pounds on that) inorder to come up and stay at the market town four miles from which was thevillage in which his father practised. This frightened Griffiths; and he,this time, made use of the telegraph wires to tell her that she must donothing of the kind. He promised to let her know the moment he came up toLondon, and, when he did, found that she had already been asking for himat the hospital at which he had an appointment. He did not like this, and,on seeing her, told Mildred that she was not to come there on any pretext;and now, after an absence of three weeks, he found that she bored himquite decidedly; he wondered why he had ever troubled about her, and madeup his mind to break with her as soon as he could. He was a person whodreaded quarrels, nor did he want to give pain; but at the same time hehad other things to do, and he was quite determined not to let Mildredbother him. When he met her he was pleasant, cheerful, amusing,affectionate; he invented convincing excuses for the interval since lasthe had seen her; but he did everything he could to avoid her. When sheforced him to make appointments he sent telegrams to her at the lastmoment to put himself off; and his landlady (the first three months of hisappointment he was spending in rooms) had orders to say he was out whenMildred called. She would waylay him in the street and, knowing she hadbeen waiting about for him to come out of the hospital for a couple ofhours, he would give her a few charming, friendly words and bolt off withthe excuse that he had a business engagement. He grew very skilful inslipping out of the hospital unseen. Once, when he went back to hislodgings at midnight, he saw a woman standing at the area railings andsuspecting who it was went to beg a shake-down in Ramsden's rooms; nextday the landlady told him that Mildred had sat crying on the doorsteps forhours, and she had been obliged to tell her at last that if she did not goaway she would send for a policeman."I tell you, my boy," said Ramsden, "you're jolly well out of it. Harrysays that if he'd suspected for half a second she was going to make sucha blooming nuisance of herself he'd have seen himself damned before he hadanything to do with her."Philip thought of her sitting on that doorstep through the long hours ofthe night. He saw her face as she looked up dully at the landlady who senther away."I wonder what she's doing now.""Oh, she's got a job somewhere, thank God. That keeps her busy all day."The last thing he heard, just before the end of the summer session, wasthat Griffiths, urbanity had given way at length under the exasperation ofthe constant persecution. He had told Mildred that he was sick of beingpestered, and she had better take herself off and not bother him again."It was the only thing he could do," said Ramsden. "It was getting a bittoo thick.""Is it all over then?" asked Philip."Oh, he hasn't seen her for ten days. You know, Harry's wonderful atdropping people. This is about the toughest nut he's ever had to crack,but he's cracked it all right."Then Philip heard nothing more of her at all. She vanished into the vastanonymous mass of the population of London.