“I’ll say that you’re thoughtful
and kind, and you’re not exacting; you never
worry, you’re not troublesome, and you’re
easy to please.”
“All that’s nonsense,” she said,
“but I’ll tell you one thing: I’m
one of the few persons I ever met who are able to
learn from experience.”
Philip looked forward to his return to London with
impatience. During the two months he spent at
Blackstable Norah wrote to him frequently, long letters
in a bold, large hand, in which with cheerful humour
she described the little events of the daily round,
the domestic troubles of her landlady, rich food for
laughter, the comic vexations of her rehearsals—she
was walking on in an important spectacle at one of
the London theatres—and her odd adventures
with the publishers of novelettes. Philip read
a great deal, bathed, played tennis, and sailed.
At the beginning of October he settled down in London
to work for the Second Conjoint examination.
He was eager to pass it, since that ended the drudgery
of the curriculum; after it was done with the student
became an out-patients’ clerk, and was brought
in contact with men and women as well as with text-books.
Philip saw Norah every day.
Lawson had been spending the summer at Poole, and
had a number of sketches to show of the harbour and
of the beach. He had a couple of commissions
for portraits and proposed to stay in London till the
bad light drove him away. Hayward, in London
too, intended to spend the winter abroad, but remained
week after week from sheer inability to make up his
mind to go. Hayward had run to fat during the
last two or three years—it was five years
since Philip first met him in Heidelberg—and
he was prematurely bald. He was very sensitive
about it and wore his hair long to conceal the unsightly
patch on the crown of his head. His only consolation
was that his brow was now very noble. His blue
eyes had lost their colour; they had a listless droop;
and his mouth, losing the fulness of youth, was weak
and pale. He still talked vaguely of the things
he was going to do in the future, but with less conviction;
and he was conscious that his friends no longer believed
in him: when he had drank two or three glasses
of whiskey he was inclined to be elegiac.
“I’m a failure,” he murmured, “I’m
unfit for the brutality of the struggle of life.
All I can do is to stand aside and let the vulgar throng
hustle by in their pursuit of the good things.”
He gave you the impression that to fail was a more
delicate, a more exquisite thing, than to succeed.
He insinuated that his aloofness was due to distaste
for all that was common and low. He talked beautifully
of Plato.
“I should have thought you’d got through
with Plato by now,” said Philip impatiently.
“Would you?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
He was not inclined to pursue the subject. He
had discovered of late the effective dignity of silence.
