Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham [258]
“I thought I’d rather wait up for you in case you wanted anything. ”
She looked at him, and the shadow of a smile played upon her thin pale lips. Philip was not sure whether he understood or not. He was slightly embarrassed, but assumed a cheerful matter-of-fact air.
“It’s very nice of you, but it’s very naughty also. Run off to bed as fast as you can, or you won’t be able to get up tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t feel like going to bed.”
“Nonsense,” he said coldly.
She got up, a little sulkily, and went into her room. He smiled when he heard her lock the door loudly.
The next few days passed without incident. Mildred settled down in her new surroundings. When Philip hurried off after breakfast she had the whole morning to do the housework. They ate very simply, but she liked to take a long time to buy the few things they needed; she could not be bothered to cook anything for her dinner, but made herself some cocoa and ate bread and butter; then she took the baby out in the go-cart, and when she came in spent the rest of the afternoon in idleness. She was tired out, and it suited her to do so little. She made friends with Philip’s forbidding landlady over the rent, which he left with Mildred to pay, and within a week was able to tell him more about his neighbors than he had learned in a year.
“She’s a very nice woman,” said Mildred. “Quite the lady. I told her we was married.”
“D’you think that was necessary?”
“Well, I had to tell her something. It looks so funny me being here and not married to you. I didn’t now what she’d think of me.”
“I don’t suppose she believed you for a moment.”
“That she did, I lay. I told her we’d been married two years—I had to say that, you know, because of baby-only your people wouldn’t hear of it, because you was only a student”—she pronounced it stoodent—“and so we had to keep it a secret, but they’d given way now and we were all going down to stay with them in the summer.”
“You’re a past-mistress of the cock-and-bull story,” said Philip.
He was vaguely irritated that Mildred still had this passion for telling fibs. In the last two years she had learnt nothing. But he shrugged his shoulders.
“When all’s said and done,” he reflected, “she hasn’t had much chance.”
It was a beautiful evening, warm and cloudless, and the people of South London seemed to have poured out into the streets. There was that restlessness in the air which seizes the cockney sometimes when a turn in the weather calls him into the open. After Mildred had cleared away the supper she went and stood at the window. The street noises came up to them, noises of people calling to one another, of the passing traffic, of a barrel-organ in the distance.
“I suppose you must work tonight, Philip?” she asked him, with a wistful expression.
“I ought, but I don’t know that I must. Why, d’you want me to do anything else?”
“I’d like to go out for a bit. Couldn’t we take a ride on the top of a tram?”
“If you like.”
“I’ll just go and put on my hat,” she said joyfully.
The night made it almost impossible to stay indoors. The baby was asleep and could be safely left; Mildred said she had always left it alone at night when she went out; it never woke. She was in high spirits when she came back with her hat on. She had taken the opportunity to put on a little rouge. Philip thought it was excitement which had brought a faint color to her pale cheeks; he was touched by her child-like delight, and reproached himself for the austerity with which he had treated her. She laughed when she got out into the air. The first tram they saw was going toward Westminster Bridge and they got on it. Philip smoked his pipe, and they looked at the crowded street. The shops were open, gaily lit, and people were doing their shopping for the next day. They passed a music-hall called the Canterbury and Mildred cried out:
“Oh, Philip, do let’s go there. I haven’t been to a music-hall for months.”
“We can’t afford stalls, you know.”
“Oh, I don’t mind, I shall be quite happy in the gallery.”
They got down and walked back