Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham.mobi [328]
“Aren’t you glad?” she asked again. “I thought you’d be as pleased as Punch.”
He met her gaze haggardly.
“I’m not sure,” he muttered.
“You are funny. Most men would.”
He realized that he had deceived himself; it was no self-sacrifice that had driven him to think of marrying, but the desire for a wife and a home and love; and now that it all seemed to slip through his fingers he was seized with despair. He wanted all that more than anything in the world. What did he care for Spain and its cities, Cordova, Toledo, León; what to him were the pagodas of Burma and the lagoons of South Sea Islands? America was here and now. It seemed to him that all his life he had followed the ideals that other people, by their words or their writings, had instilled into him, and never the desires of his own heart. Always his course had been swayed by what he thought he should do and never by what he wanted with his whole soul to do. He put all that aside now with a gesture of impatience. He had lived always in the future, and the present always, always had slipped through his fingers. His ideals? He thought of his desire to make a design, intricate and beautiful, out of the myriad, meaningless facts of life: had he not seen also that the simplest pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most perfect? It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.
He glanced quickly at Sally, he wondered what she was thinking, and then looked away again.
“I was going to ask you to marry me,” he said.
“I thought p’raps you might, but I shouldn’t have liked to stand in your way.”
“You wouldn’t have done that.”
“How about your travels, Spain and all that?”
“How d’you know I want to travel?”
“I ought to know something about it. I’ve heard you and Dad talk about it till you were blue in the face.”
“I don’t care a damn about all that.” He paused for an instant and then spoke in a low, hoarse whisper. “I don’t want to leave you! I can’t leave you.”
She did not answer. He could not tell what she thought.
“I wonder if you’ll marry me, Sally.”
She did not move and there was no flicker of emotion on her face, but she did not look at him when she answered:
“If you like.”
“Don’t you want to?”
“Oh, of course I’d like to have a house of my own, and it’s about time I was settling down.”
He smiled a little. He knew her pretty well by now, and her manner did not surprise him.
“But don’t you want to marry me?”
“There’s no one else I would marry.”
“Then that settles it.”
“Mother and Dad will be surprised, won’t they?”
“I’m so happy.”
“I want my lunch,” she said.
“Dear!”
He smiled and took her hand and pressed it. They got up and walked out of the gallery. They stood for a moment at the balustrade and looked at Trafalgar Square. Cabs and omnibuses hurried to and fro, and crowds passed, hastening in every direction, and the sun was shining.
AFTERWORD
We certainly get to know Philip Carey, whose story is told here in Of Human Bondage. In fact, I think we know him better than we know a lot of our neighbors and friends because we travel a journey with him from when we first meet him as an anxious little boy. Naturally, right away we care what happens to him, hoping against hope that his loving mother will not die, or that his cold and awkward uncle will find common ground with the eager child. When Philip believes literally all that he is told about the power of prayer and then prays so earnestly that God will cure his club foot, there cannot be a reader who does not hope for a miracle too. It isn’t a very big thing, after all, and it would make poor little Philip so happy! (And Philip is so sure it will happen; after all, God had cured the lepers and the blind.)
Just when we get over the fact that there is going to be no cure this time come Philip’s first tentative friendships. School is torture, and our poor Carey (they all called each other by their surnames in those days) is friendless and very lonely at first. Then joy of joys, he finds a pal. Rose is a normal, uncomplicated fellow who is happy to laugh and joke and walk with Carey through the complexities of school life. But Carey puts too much into the friendship, and Rose eventually tires of him being overpossessive and moody, and moves on to other friends.