The whole of Philip’s belongings would not have sold for thirty pounds, but most of them were old friends, and he was a domestic creature, attached to all those odds and ends because they were his; he had been proud of his little home, and on so little money had made it pretty and characteristic.  He sank down now in despair.  He asked himself how she could have been so cruel.  A sudden fear got him on his feet again and into the passage, where stood a cupboard in which he kept his clothes.  He opened it and gave a sigh of relief.  She had apparently forgotten it and none of his things was touched.

He went back into the sitting-room and, surveying the scene, wondered what to do; he had not the heart to begin trying to set things straight; besides there was no food in the house, and he was hungry.  He went out and got himself something to eat.  When he came in he was cooler.  A little pang seized him as he thought of the child, and he wondered whether she would miss him, at first perhaps, but in a week she would have forgotten him; and he was thankful to be rid of Mildred.  He did not think of her with wrath, but with an overwhelming sense of boredom.

“I hope to God I never see her again,” he said aloud.

The only thing now was to leave the rooms, and he made up his mind to give notice the next morning.  He could not afford to make good the damage done, and he had so little money left that he must find cheaper lodgings still.  He would be glad to get out of them.  The expense had worried him, and now the recollection of Mildred would be in them always.  Philip was impatient and could never rest till he had put in action the plan which he had in mind; so on the following afternoon he got in a dealer in second-hand furniture who offered him three pounds for all his goods damaged and undamaged; and two days later he moved into the house opposite the hospital in which he had had rooms when first he became a medical student.  The landlady was a very decent woman.  He took a bed-room at the top, which she let him have for six shillings a week; it was small and shabby and looked on the yard of the house that backed on to it, but he had nothing now except his clothes and a box of books, and he was glad to lodge so cheaply.

XCVIII

And now it happened that the fortunes of Philip Carey, of no consequence to any but himself, were affected by the events through which his country was passing.  History was being made, and the process was so significant that it seemed absurd it should touch the life of an obscure medical student.  Battle after battle, Magersfontein, Colenso, Spion Kop, lost on the playing fields of Eton, had humiliated the nation and dealt the death-blow to the prestige of the aristocracy and gentry who till then had found no one seriously to oppose their assertion that they possessed a natural instinct of government.  The old order was being swept away:  history was being made indeed.  Then the colossus put forth his strength, and, blundering again, at last blundered into the semblance of victory.  Cronje surrendered at Paardeberg, Ladysmith was relieved, and at the beginning of March Lord Roberts marched into Bloemfontein.