Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham [161]
“Oh, it doesn’t matter at all.”
He felt that a great weight had suddenly been lifted from him. He was infinitely grateful for one word of kindness.
“Why don’t you sit down?” he asked. “Nobody’s wanting you just now.”
“I don’t mind if I do.”
He looked at her, but could think of nothing to say; he racked his brains anxiously, seeking for a remark which should keep her by him; he wanted to tell her how much she meant to him; but he did not know how to make love now that he loved in earnest.
“Where’s your friend with the fair mustache? I haven’t seen him lately. ”
“Oh, he’s gone back to Birmingham. He’s in business there. He only comes up to London every now and again. ”
“Is he in love with you?”
“You’d better ask him,” she said, with a laugh. “I don’t know what it’s got to do with you if he is.”
A bitter answer leaped to his tongue, but he was learning self-restraint.
“I wonder why you say things like that,” was all he permitted himself to say.
She looked at him with those indifferent eyes of hers.
“It looks as if you didn’t set much store on me,” he added.
“Why should I?”
“No reason at all.”
He reached over for his paper.
“You are quick-tempered,” she said, when she saw the gesture. “You do take offense easily.”
He smiled and looked at her appealingly.
“Will you do something for me?” he asked.
“That depends what it is.”
“Let me walk back to the station with you tonight.”
“I don’t mind.”
He went out after tea and went back to his rooms, but at eight o’clock, when the shop closed, he was waiting outside.
“You are a caution,” she said, when she came out. “I don’t understand you.”
“I shouldn’t have thought it was very difficult,” he answered bitterly.
“Did any of the girls see you waiting for me?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“They all laugh at you, you know. They say you’re spoony on me.”
“Much you care,” he muttered.
“Now then, quarrelsome.”
At the station he took a ticket and said he was going to accompany her home.
“You don’t seem to have much to do with your time,” she said.
“I suppose I can waste it in my own way.”
They seemed to be always on the verge of a quarrel. The fact was that he hated himself for loving her. She seemed to be constantly humiliating him, and for each snub that he endured he owed her a grudge. But she was in a friendly mood that evening, and talkative: she told him that her parents were dead; she gave him to understand that she did not have to earn her living, but worked for amusement.
“My aunt doesn’t like my going to business. I can have the best of everything at home. I don’t want you to think I work because I need to.”
Philip knew that she was not speaking the truth. The gentility of her class made her use this pretense to avoid the stigma attached to earning her living.
“My family’s very well-connected,” she said.
Philip smiled faintly, and she noticed it.
“What are you laughing at?” she said quickly. “Don’t you believe I’m telling you the truth?”
“Of course I do,” he answered.
She looked at him suspiciously, but in a moment could not resist the temptation to impress him with the splendor of her early days.
“My father always kept a dog-cart, and we had three servants. We had a cook and a housemaid and an odd man. We used to grow beautiful roses. People used to stop at the gate and ask who the house belonged to, the roses were so beautiful. Of course it isn’t very nice for me having to mix with them girls in the shop, it’s not the class of person I’ve been used to, and sometimes I really think I’ll give up business on that account. It’s not the work I mind, don’t think that; but it’s the class of people I have to mix with. ”
They were sitting opposite one another in the train, and Philip, listening sympathetically to what she said, was quite happy. He was amused at her naïveté and slightly touched. There was a very faint color in her cheeks. He was thinking that it would be delightful to kiss the tip of her chin.
“The moment you come into the shop I saw you was a gentleman in every sense of the word. Was your father a professional man?”
“He was a