Chapter 78 Chapter 78

At last Monday came, and Philip thought that the protracted mental torment was at last at last.He consulted the train timetable and found that Griffiths could reach his hometown that night by the latest train, which would leave Oxford shortly after one o'clock in the afternoon.He estimated that Mildred would catch the train back to London in a few minutes.He really wanted to meet her at the station, but then he thought that Mildred might like to be alone for a day, and maybe she would send him a note that night to tell him that she was back in London, or he would be the first. The next day I went to her residence to visit her.Thinking of meeting her again, he felt a little sad.He hated Griffiths to the bone; and to Mildred, in spite of all that had happened, there was a passion, though poignant, still burning.Philip was glad that Hayward left London on Saturday afternoon, and went off frantically for the pleasures of life.Had Heyward been in London, he would not have been able to resist telling him all this, and he would have been astonished at his cowardice.Heyward must have despised him, and would have been shocked and disgusted at the same time, to know that Philip wanted Mildred to be his mistress after she had committed herself to another man.Whether it was shock or disgust, he didn't care!As long as he can fulfill his life's wishes and satisfy his desires, he can make any concessions at any time, and he is ready, even if he suffers a more humiliating humiliation.

In the evening his legs carried him against Mildred's apartment door against his will.Philip looked up at the window of her room, and there was no lamp in the darkness, but he stopped, not daring to inquire about her, because he had no doubts in Mildred's promise.The next morning, he didn't see any letter, so he went to inquire about it at noon.The maid there told him that Mildred had not returned.He was puzzled by this.He knew that Griffiths had to go home the day before yesterday because he was going to be the actor at a wedding, and besides, Mildred had no money.His mind suddenly tossed, thinking about all kinds of possible things.Philip called again in the afternoon, and left a note inviting Mildred to dine with him that evening, as calmly as if nothing had happened for nearly a fortnight.He wrote the place and time in a note, and waited patiently in the hope that Mildred would be punctual.An hour passed, but there was no sign of her.On Wednesday morning Philip no longer felt ashamed to ask, so he sent a messenger boy to deliver, and bade him bring an answer.But within an hour, the letter boy came back and took back the letter he had brought with him.He reported to Philip that the lady was still in the country, and had not yet returned to London.Philip was on the verge of madness, and it was the shock of Mildred's lie that he could not bear.He murmured repeatedly that he hated Mildred, and blamed Griffiths for his frustration at Mildred's lying.He hated Griffiths to death, and he was happy to ask him to kill Griffiths with a knife at this time.Philip paced up and down the room, thinking how good it would be to pounce on him in the dark and stab him in the carotid artery in the throat, and see him lying in the street like a mangy dog.Philip was filled with grief and indignation, and his soul was out of his body.He had never liked whiskey, but he drank it anyway to numb his nerves.On Tuesday and Wednesday, two nights in a row, he went to bed too drunk.

On Thursday morning, he got up very late.With sleepy eyes and pale face, he staggered to the living room to see if there was any letter from him.As soon as he saw Griffith's handwriting, an indescribable feeling haunted his heart. dear brother: I don't know where to start writing this letter, but I have to write it.I hope you are not mad at me.I knew I shouldn't have brought Millie out, but the heat was too hot to help.She's literally mesmerized, and I'll do anything to get her.When she told me that you offered to pay for us, how could I refuse.Right now, everything has become a passing cloud.I'm so ashamed of myself, if only I hadn't been so dazed!I want you to write me a letter saying you're not mad at me, and at the same time I want you to allow me to visit you.Do write me something, good man, tell me you forgive me.Only in this way can my conscience be at ease.I thought you had no objection at the time, otherwise you wouldn't have offered to give us money.But I know I shouldn't accept that money.I arrived home on Monday, and Millie wanted to spend a few more days alone in Oxford.She is due to return to London on Wednesday, so by the time you get this letter, you may have seen her.Hopefully everything will be fine.Wanwang sent me a letter saying that you forgive me.Looking forward to hearing back.

your faithful friend Harry Philip was so enraged that he tore up the letter, not intending to reply.He despised Griffith's apology, couldn't bear Griffith's condemnation of his conscience.A man can do cowardly things, but it is cowardly to repent after the thing is over.Philip thought Griffith's letter showed him to be a coward and a hypocrite, and he hated the sentimentality expressed in it. "It's so easy for you to do something like a brute, and then just say you're sorry!" muttered Philip. In the back of his mind he longed for a chance to show Griffith something.

Knowing, however, that Mildred was at any rate back in London, he dressed hastily, without shaving, and having some tea, hired a cab, and drove to Mildred's lodgings.The carriage crawled like a snail.He was anxious to see Mildred, and unconsciously he began to pray to God, whom he did not believe in, that Mildred would receive him kindly to Philip.He just wants to forget everything about the past.With a beating heart in his heart, he raised his hand and rang the doorbell.He longed with passion to hold Mildred tightly in his arms again, and at that moment all the pain he had suffered in the past was forgotten.

"Is Mrs. Miller in?" asked Philip cheerfully. "She is gone," answered the maid. Philip looked at the servant girl blankly. "She came here an hour ago and removed her things." For a while Philip did not know what to say. "Did you give her my letter? Did she say where she moved?" Philip suddenly realized that Mildred had deceived him again.She was determined not to come back to him.He tried to save face with the servant girl. "Oh, well, I'm sure I'll have a letter from her soon, perhaps she sent it somewhere else." After that, Philip turned and left, returning to his apartment with a dejected expression.He could have expected her to; she'd never cared about him, had thought him a fool from the start.She has no compassion, no kindness, no kindness in her treatment of people.For now he could only swallow his breath and accept the inevitable.He was so distraught that he would rather die than endure such painful torture.Suddenly, he thought that it would be better if he thought about it: he could throw himself into the river or lie on the rails, but before he could express these ideas, he rejected them one by one.Reason told Philip that this unfortunate experience would be forgotten by then, and as long as he was determined, he could also erase Mildred from his mind; to end his life for a vulgar slut, that is Absurd.You only live once, and throwing it away for no reason is madness.He felt he would never get over his lust, but he also knew it was only a matter of time in the end.

Philip did not want to be in London any longer.Everything here reminded him of his misfortunes.He first telegraphed to his uncle to say he was going to Blackstable at once, then hurriedly packed up and took the first train.He wanted to get out of those dirty rooms, because it was there that the pain came one after another, befalling him one by one!He wants a breath of fresh air.He loathed himself and thought he was a little crazy. The Uncle Vicar had given Philip the best spare room in the Vicarage since he was grown up.This room is located in a corner of the mansion, and there is a century-old tree in front of one window blocking the view, but looking out from the other window, one can see an open grass field at the end of the mansion garden and open space.The wallpaper in the room had been by Philip's memory from childhood.The walls were covered with quaint early Victorian watercolours, painted by a friend of the Uncle Vicar's youth.Although the color of the picture has faded, the charm still remains.The dresser was surrounded by expensive tulle silk.There is also a tall cabinet for clothes in the room.Philip sighed with relief; he never realized how much all this could still be of use to him.Life in the parsonage continued as before.Not a single piece of furniture has moved from place to place.Uncle Pastor’s recipes and conversations remain the same as before, and he still has to go for a walk after work every day.The difference is that he gained a little weight, talked less, and had a narrower air.He was used to the life of a widower, and he seldom missed his late wife.He was still prone to quarrels with Josiah Graves.Philip ran to see the deacon.He looked paler than before, his face was paler, and his expression was more serious.He still had his own way, and he still hated putting candles on the altar.Those few shops still present a quaint atmosphere, which seems refreshing.Philip stood before the shop which sold such nautical things as boots, tarpaulins, and tackle for sails, and he remembered his childhood.At that moment, he felt that the thrilling joy of sea life was permeated in this shop, and there was a charm that induced people to explore unknown worlds.

Philip's heart beat uncontrollably every time the postman came and knocked on the door. Maybe the landlady would bring Mildred's letter to him.However, he knew in his stomach that there would be no letter from him at all.Now, he can think more calmly.He realized that he was trying to force Mildred to love him, and he was undoubtedly asking for money.Philip knew nothing of what a man gave to a woman, and what a woman gave to a man, and why it made a man or a woman a submissive slave.It is convenient to call this thing the instinct of libido.But if it was more than that, he wondered why it sometimes appealed so strongly to one and not to another?This stuff is irresistible.Reason is no rival to it; and friendship, gratitude, interest, all are feeble compared with him.Just because he couldn't arouse Mildred's sexual desire, everything he did had no effect on Mildred.The thought made Philip sick, and it made human nature no different from beasts.Suddenly, he felt that there were dark corners in people's hearts.Because of Mildred's indifference to him, he thought her unattractive, her pale face, her thin lips, her small hips and flat breasts, her limp His actions confirmed his hypothesis one by one.However, she sometimes has a burst of lust, can't control herself, and even dares to take great risks to fill her lust.He would never be able to fathom her affair with Emil Miller, which seemed unlikely to be within her reach and which she herself could not possibly explain.But now that he had witnessed her intrigue with Griffiths, and knew it was the same thing all over again, she was completely captivated by an irrepressible desire.Philip tried to find out what it was that made the two men so magically attractive to Mildred.Both of them were vulgar by nature, and both had a vulgar knack for making fun of her banal sense of humor, and what made them work, perhaps, was the promiscuous sex that made them both special.Mildred, delicate in feeling and refined in manner, shuddered at the naked facts of life.She thought the workings of the body dishonorable, and she used all kinds of euphemisms when speaking of simple things, and always took pains to choose the exact word, which she thought was better than the simple one. as appropriate.Therefore, the beastliness of those two men was like a whip, whipping her pale and slender shoulders, and she was trembling with the pain of sensual indulgence.

There was one thing Philip had made up his mind to do.He didn't want to go back to the room he had rented because of the unbearable pain he had suffered there.He wrote a letter to inform the landlady.He wanted to take everything that belonged to him with him, and decided to rent some unfurnished rooms, which would be comfortable and cheap.His consideration was also due to the situation, because in the past year and a half, he had spent nearly seven hundred pounds, and he had to cut expenses as much as possible to make up for past losses.From time to time he looked to the future and shuddered.He had been a fool to spend so much on Mildred.But he knew in his heart that if things happened again, he would still be so angry.Philip was sometimes amused to think that his friends thought he was strong-willed, thoughtful, and level-headed because he was withdrawn and less exuberant.They thought him sensible, and unanimously praised him for his common sense.But he knew in his heart that his calm expression was just a mask that he put on his face consciously or unconsciously, its function was just like the protective color of a butterfly, on the contrary he was shocked by his weakness of will.He seemed to him like a lone leaf in the wind, swayed by every slight ripple of emotion, and when passion took hold of him he seemed helpless.He lost all self-control.He only appears to have self-control on the surface, because he is completely indifferent to many things that can move others.

He brooded, somewhat ironically, on the philosophy by which he had settled down, for it had not served him much during the troubled times he had passed.He could not help wondering whether thoughts could really be of any help to a man at a crucial moment in his life's path.It seemed to him that he was completely swayed by a power alien to him, but still within him, which urged him like the great hellish wind that drove Paul and Francesca step by step into the abyss of crime. Own.He considered what he needed to do, and when to act, but seemed helpless, bewildered by instincts and emotions that were inexplicable even to himself.He acted like a machine, driven by the two forces of his environment and his personality.His reason is like a person watching from the sidelines, but unable to participate in it, just like the gods described by Epicurus, who sit on the nine heavens and watch what people do, but they are powerless to change the development of the situation, not even a little bit. Can't change.