Philip left Hayward to infer what in the passing scene had suggested these words to him, and it was a delight to know that he could safely leave the inference.
It was in sudden reaction from the life he had been leading for so long that he was now deeply affected.
The delicate iridescence of the London air gave the softness of a pastel to the gray stone of the buildings; and in the wharfs and storehouses there was the severity of grace of a Japanese print.
They went further down; and the splendid channel, a symbol of the great empire, broadened, and it was crowded with traffic; Philip thought of the painters and the poets who had made all these things so beautiful, and his heart was filled with gratitude.
They came to the Pool of London, and who can describe its majesty?
The imagination thrills, and Heaven knows what figures people still its broad stream, Doctor Johnson with Boswell by his side, an old Pepys going on board a man-o'-war: the pageant of English history, and romance, and high adventure.
Philip turned to Hayward with shining eyes.
"Dear Charles Dickens," he murmured, smiling a little at his own emotion.
"Aren't you rather sorry you chucked painting?" asked Hayward.
"No."
"I suppose you like doctoring?"
"No, I hate it, but there was nothing else to do.
The drudgery of the first two years is awful, and unfortunately I haven't got the scientific temperament."
"Well, you can't go on changing professions."
"Oh, no.
I'm going to stick to this.
I think I shall like it better when I get into the wards.
I have an idea that I'm more interested in people than in anything else in the world.
And as far as I can see, it's the only profession in which you have your freedom.
You carry your knowledge in your head; with a box of instruments and a few drugs you can make your living anywhere."
"Aren't you going to take a practice then?"
"Not for a good long time at any rate," Philip answered. "As soon as I've got through my hospital appointments I shall get a ship; I want to go to the East—the Malay Archipelago, Siam, China, and all that sort of thing—and then I shall take odd jobs.
Something always comes along, cholera duty in India and things like that.
I want to go from place to place.
I want to see the world.
The only way a poor man can do that is by going in for the medical."
They came to Greenwich then.
The noble building of Inigo Jones faced the river grandly.
"I say, look, that must be the place where Poor Jack dived into the mud for pennies," said Philip.
They wandered in the park.
Ragged children were playing in it, and it was noisy with their cries: here and there old seamen were basking in the sun.
There was an air of a hundred years ago.
"It seems a pity you wasted two years in Paris," said Hayward.
"Waste?
Look at the movement of that child, look at the pattern which the sun makes on the ground, shining through the trees, look at that sky—why, I should never have seen that sky if I hadn't been to Paris."
Hayward thought that Philip choked a sob, and he looked at him with astonishment.
"What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing.
I'm sorry to be so damned emotional, but for six months I've been starved for beauty."
"You used to be so matter of fact.
It's very interesting to hear you say that."
"Damn it all, I don't want to be interesting," laughed Philip. "Let's go and have a stodgy tea."
LXV
Hayward's visit did Philip a great deal of good.
Each day his thoughts dwelt less on Mildred.
He looked back upon the past with disgust.
He could not understand how he had submitted to the dishonour of such a love; and when he thought of Mildred it was with angry hatred, because she had submitted him to so much humiliation.
His imagination presented her to him now with her defects of person and manner exaggerated, so that he shuddered at the thought of having been connected with her.
"It just shows how damned weak I am," he said to himself.
The adventure was like a blunder that one had committed at a party so horrible that one felt nothing could be done to excuse it: the only remedy was to forget.