Then, as if he had been thinking it all over, the old man spoke again.
"Everyone has the right to live as long as he can."
Philip wanted to distract his mind.
"By the way, I suppose you never hear from Miss Wilkinson now?"
"Yes, I had a letter some time this year.
She's married, you know."
"Really?"
"Yes, she married a widower.
I believe they're quite comfortable."
CXI
Next day Philip began work again, but the end which he expected within a few weeks did not come.
The weeks passed into months.
The winter wore away, and in the parks the trees burst into bud and into leaf.
A terrible lassitude settled upon Philip.
Time was passing, though it went with such heavy feet, and he thought that his youth was going and soon he would have lost it and nothing would have been accomplished.
His work seemed more aimless now that there was the certainty of his leaving it.
He became skilful in the designing of costumes, and though he had no inventive faculty acquired quickness in the adaptation of French fashions to the English market.
Sometimes he was not displeased with his drawings, but they always bungled them in the execution.
He was amused to notice that he suffered from a lively irritation when his ideas were not adequately carried out.
He had to walk warily.
Whenever he suggested something original Mr. Sampson turned it down: their customers did not want anything outre, it was a very respectable class of business, and when you had a connection of that sort it wasn't worth while taking liberties with it.
Once or twice he spoke sharply to Philip; he thought the young man was getting a bit above himself, because Philip's ideas did not always coincide with his own.
"You jolly well take care, my fine young fellow, or one of these days you'll find yourself in the street."
Philip longed to give him a punch on the nose, but he restrained himself.
After all it could not possibly last much longer, and then he would be done with all these people for ever.
Sometimes in comic desperation he cried out that his uncle must be made of iron.
What a constitution!
The ills he suffered from would have killed any decent person twelve months before.
When at last the news came that the Vicar was dying Philip, who had been thinking of other things, was taken by surprise.
It was in July, and in another fortnight he was to have gone for his holiday.
He received a letter from Mrs. Foster to say the doctor did not give Mr. Carey many days to live, and if Philip wished to see him again he must come at once.
Philip went to the buyer and told him he wanted to leave.
Mr. Sampson was a decent fellow, and when he knew the circumstances made no difficulties.
Philip said good-bye to the people in his department; the reason of his leaving had spread among them in an exaggerated form, and they thought he had come into a fortune.
Mrs. Hodges had tears in her eyes when she shook hands with him.
"I suppose we shan't often see you again," she said.
"I'm glad to get away from Lynn's," he answered.
It was strange, but he was actually sorry to leave these people whom he thought he had loathed, and when he drove away from the house in Harrington Street it was with no exultation.
He had so anticipated the emotions he would experience on this occasion that now he felt nothing: he was as unconcerned as though he were going for a few days' holiday.
"I've got a rotten nature," he said to himself. "I look forward to things awfully, and then when they come I'm always disappointed."
He reached Blackstable early in the afternoon.
Mrs. Foster met him at the door, and her face told him that his uncle was not yet dead.
"He's a little better today," she said. "He's got a wonderful constitution."
She led him into the bed-room where Mr. Carey lay on his back.
He gave Philip a slight smile, in which was a trace of satisfied cunning at having circumvented his enemy once more.
"I thought it was all up with me yesterday," he said, in an exhausted voice. "They'd all given me up, hadn't you, Mrs. Foster?"
"You've got a wonderful constitution, there's no denying that."
"There's life in the old dog yet."
Mrs. Foster said that the Vicar must not talk, it would tire him; she treated him like a child, with kindly despotism; and there was something childish in the old man's satisfaction at having cheated all their expectations.
It struck him at once that Philip had been sent for, and he was amused that he had been brought on a fool's errand.