Why, if I'd remained single I might have a little shop by now, and four or five hundred pounds in the bank, and a girl to do the rough work.
Oh, I wouldn't go over my life again, not for something."
Philip thought of the countless millions to whom life is no more than unending labour, neither beautiful nor ugly, but just to be accepted in the same spirit as one accepts the changes of the seasons.
Fury seized him because it all seemed useless.
He could not reconcile himself to the belief that life had no meaning and yet everything he saw, all his thoughts, added to the force of his conviction.
But though fury seized him it was a joyful fury.
Life was not so horrible if it was meaningless, and he faced it with a strange sense of power.
CIX
The autumn passed into winter.
Philip had left his address with Mrs. Foster, his uncle's housekeeper, so that she might communicate with him, but still went once a week to the hospital on the chance of there being a letter.
One evening he saw his name on an envelope in a handwriting he had hoped never to see again.
It gave him a queer feeling. For a little while he could not bring himself to take it.
It brought back a host of hateful memories.
But at length, impatient with himself, he ripped open the envelope.
7 William Street, Fitzroy Square.
Dear Phil,
Can I see you for a minute or two as soon as possible.
I am in awful trouble and don't know what to do.
It's not money.
Yours truly,
Mildred.
He tore the letter into little bits and going out into the street scattered them in the darkness.
"I'll see her damned," he muttered.
A feeling of disgust surged up in him at the thought of seeing her again.
He did not care if she was in distress, it served her right whatever it was, he thought of her with hatred, and the love he had had for her aroused his loathing.
His recollections filled him with nausea, and as he walked across the Thames he drew himself aside in an instinctive withdrawal from his thought of her.
He went to bed, but he could not sleep; he wondered what was the matter with her, and he could not get out of his head the fear that she was ill and hungry; she would not have written to him unless she were desperate.
He was angry with himself for his weakness, but he knew that he would have no peace unless he saw her.
Next morning he wrote a letter-card and posted it on his way to the shop.
He made it as stiff as he could and said merely that he was sorry she was in difficulties and would come to the address she had given at seven o'clock that evening.
It was that of a shabby lodging-house in a sordid street; and when, sick at the thought of seeing her, he asked whether she was in, a wild hope seized him that she had left.
It looked the sort of place people moved in and out of frequently.
He had not thought of looking at the postmark on her letter and did not know how many days it had lain in the rack.
The woman who answered the bell did not reply to his inquiry, but silently preceded him along the passage and knocked on a door at the back.
"Mrs. Miller, a gentleman to see you," she called.
The door was slightly opened, and Mildred looked out suspiciously.
"Oh, it's you," she said. "Come in."
He walked in and she closed the door.
It was a very small bed-room, untidy as was every place she lived in; there was a pair of shoes on the floor, lying apart from one another and uncleaned; a hat was on the chest of drawers, with false curls beside it; and there was a blouse on the table.
Philip looked for somewhere to put his hat.
The hooks behind the door were laden with skirts, and he noticed that they were muddy at the hem.
"Sit down, won't you?" she said.
Then she gave a little awkward laugh. "I suppose you were surprised to hear from me again."
"You're awfully hoarse," he answered. "Have you got a sore throat?"
"Yes, I have had for some time."
He did not say anything.
He waited for her to explain why she wanted to see him.
The look of the room told him clearly enough that she had gone back to the life from which he had taken her.
He wondered what had happened to the baby; there was a photograph of it on the chimney-piece, but no sign in the room that a child was ever there.
Mildred was holding her handkerchief. She made it into a little ball, and passed it from hand to hand.