Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham.mobi [160]
“I’ll be more careful.”
He put his arm round again. She made no objection.
“I’m so comfortable,” he sighed blissfully.
“So long as you’re happy,” she retorted.
They drove down St. James’s Street into the Park, and Philip quickly kissed her. He was strangely afraid of her, and it required all his courage. She turned her lips to him without speaking. She neither seemed to mind nor to like it.
“If you only knew how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he murmured.
He tried to kiss her again, but she turned her head away.
“Once is enough,” she said.
On the chance of kissing her a second time he travelled down to Heme Hill with her, and at the end of the road in which she lived he asked her:
“Won’t you give me another kiss?”
She looked at him indifferently and then glanced up the road to see that no one was in sight.
“I don’t mind.”
He seized her in his arms and kissed her passionately, but she pushed him away.
“Mind my hat, silly. You are clumsy,” she said.
LXI
He saw her then every day. He began going to lunch at the shop, but Mildred stopped him: she said it made the girls talk; so he had to content himself with tea; but he always waited about to walk with her to the station; and once or twice a week they dined together. He gave her little presents, a gold bangle, gloves, handkerchiefs, and the like. He was spending more than he could afford, but he could not help it: it was only when he gave her anything that she showed any affection. She knew the price of everything, and her gratitude was in exact proportion with the value of his gift. He did not care. He was too happy when she volunteered to kiss him to mind by what means he got her demonstrativeness. He discovered that she found Sundays at home tedious, so he went down to Herne Hill in the morning, met her at the end of the road, and went to church with her.
“I always like to go to church once,” she said. “It looks well, doesn’t it?”
Then she went back to dinner, he got a scrappy meal at a hotel, and in the afternoon they took a walk in Brockwell Park. They had nothing much to say to one another, and Philip, desperately afraid she was bored (she was very easily bored), racked his brain for topics of conversation. He realized that these walks amused neither of them, but he could not bear to leave her, and did all he could to lengthen them till she became tired and out of temper. He knew that she did not care for him, and he tried to force a love which his reason told him was not in her nature: she was cold. He had no claim on her, but he could not help being exacting. Now that they were more intimate he found it less easy to control his temper; he was often irritable and could not help saying bitter things. Often they quarrelled, and she would not speak to him for a while; but this always reduced him to subjection, and he crawled before her. He was angry with himself for showing so little dignity. He grew furiously jealous if he saw her speaking to any other man in the shop, and when he was jealous he seemed to be beside himself. He would deliberately insult her, leave the shop, and spend afterwards a sleepless night tossing on his bed, by turns angry and remorseful. Next day he would go to the shop and appeal for forgiveness.
“Don’t be angry with me,” he said. “I’m so awfully fond of you that I can’t help myself.”
“One of these days you’ll go too far,” she answered.
He was anxious to come to her home in order that the greater intimacy should give him an advantage over the stray acquaintances she made during her working hours; but she would not let him.
“My aunt would think it so funny,” she said.
He suspected that her refusal was due only to a disinclination to let him see her aunt. Mildred had represented her as the widow of a professional man (that was her formula of distinction), and was uneasily conscious that the good woman could hardly be called distinguished. Philip imagined that she was in point of fact the widow of a small tradesman. He knew that Mildred was a snob. But he found no means by which he could indicate to her that he did not mind how common her aunt was.