Of Human Bondage
by W. Somerset Maugham
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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I

The day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a
rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room
in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced
mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and
went to the child's bed.

"Wake up, Philip," she said.

She pulled down the bed-clothes, took him in her arms, and carried him
downstairs. He was only half awake.

"Your mother wants you," she said.

She opened the door of a room on the floor below and took the child over
to a bed in which a woman was lying. It was his mother. She stretched out
her arms, and the child nestled by her side. He did not ask why he had
been awakened. The woman kissed his eyes, and with thin, small hands felt
the warm body through his white flannel nightgown. She pressed him closer
to herself.

"Are you sleepy, darling?" she said.

Her voice was so weak that it seemed to come already from a great
distance. The child did not answer, but smiled comfortably. He was very
happy in the large, warm bed, with those soft arms about him. He tried to
make himself smaller still as he cuddled up against his mother, and he
kissed her sleepily. In a moment he closed his eyes and was fast asleep.
The doctor came forwards and stood by the bed-side.

"Oh, don't take him away yet," she moaned.

The doctor, without answering, looked at her gravely. Knowing she would
not be allowed to keep the child much longer, the woman kissed him again;
and she passed her hand down his body till she came to his feet; she held
the right foot in her hand and felt the five small toes; and then slowly
passed her hand over the left one. She gave a sob.

"What's the matter?" said the doctor. "You're tired."

She shook her head, unable to speak, and the tears rolled down her cheeks.
The doctor bent down.

"Let me take him."

She was too weak to resist his wish, and she gave the child up. The doctor
handed him back to his nurse.

"You'd better put him back in his own bed."

"Very well, sir." The little boy, still sleeping, was taken away. His
mother sobbed now broken-heartedly.

"What will happen to him, poor child?"

The monthly nurse tried to quiet her, and presently, from exhaustion, the
crying ceased. The doctor walked to a table on the other side of the room,
upon which, under a towel, lay the body of a still-born child. He lifted
the towel and looked. He was hidden from the bed by a screen, but the
woman guessed what he was doing.

"Was it a girl or a boy?" she whispered to the nurse.

"Another boy."

The woman did not answer. In a moment the child's nurse came back. She
approached the bed.

"Master Philip never woke up," she said. There was a pause. Then the
doctor felt his patient's pulse once more.

"I don't think there's anything I can do just now," he said. "I'll call
again after breakfast."

"I'll show you out, sir," said the child's nurse.

They walked downstairs in silence. In the hall the doctor stopped.

"You've sent for Mrs. Carey's brother-in-law, haven't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"D'you know at what time he'll be here?"

"No, sir, I'm expecting a telegram."

"What about the little boy? I should think he'd be better out of the way."

"Miss Watkin said she'd take him, sir."

"Who's she?"

"She's his godmother, sir. D'you think Mrs. Carey will get over it, sir?"

The doctor shook his head.

II

It was a week later. Philip was sitting on the floor in the drawing-room
at Miss Watkin's house in Onslow gardens. He was an only child and used to
amusing himself. The room was filled with massive furniture, and on each
of the sofas were three big cushions. There was a cushion too in each
arm-chair. All these he had taken and, with the help of the gilt rout
chairs, light and easy to move, had made an elaborate cave in which he
could hide himself from the Red Indians who were lurking behind the
curtains. He put his ear to the floor and listened to the herd of
buffaloes that raced across the prairie. Presently, hearing the door open,
he held his breath so that he might not be discovered; but a violent hand
piled away a chair and the cushions fell down.

"You naughty boy, Miss Watkin WILL be cross with you."

"Hulloa, Emma!" he said.

The nurse bent down and kissed him, then began to shake out the cushions,
and put them back in their places.

"Am I to come home?" he asked.

"Yes, I've come to fetch you."

"You've got a new dress on."

It was in eighteen-eighty-five, and she wore a bustle. Her gown was of
black velvet, with tight sleeves and sloping shoulders, and the skirt had
three large flounces. She wore a black bonnet with velvet strings. She
hesitated. The question she had expected did not come, and so she could
not give the answer she had prepared.

"Aren't you going to ask how your mamma is?" she said at length.

"Oh, I forgot. How is mamma?"

Now she was ready.

"Your mamma is quite well and happy."

"Oh, I am glad."

"Your mamma's gone away. You won't ever see her any more." Philip did not
know what she meant.

"Why not?"

"Your mamma's in heaven."

She began to cry, and Philip, though he did not quite understand, cried
too. Emma was a tall, big-boned woman, with fair hair and large features.
She came from Devonshire and, notwithstanding her many years of service in
London, had never lost the breadth of her accent. Her tears increased her
emotion, and she pressed the little boy to her heart. She felt vaguely the
pity of that child deprived of the only love in the world that is quite
unselfish. It seemed dreadful that he must be handed over to strangers.
But in a little while she pulled herself together.

"Your Uncle William is waiting in to see you," she said. "Go and say
good-bye to Miss Watkin, and we'll go home."

"I don't want to say good-bye," he answered, instinctively anxious to hide
his tears.

"Very well, run upstairs and get your hat."

He fetched it, and when he came down Emma was waiting for him in the hall.
He heard the sound of voices in the study behind the dining-room. He
paused. He knew that Miss Watkin and her sister were talking to friends,
and it seemed to him--he was nine years old--that if he went in they would
be sorry for him.

"I think I'll go and say good-bye to Miss Watkin."

"I think you'd better," said Emma.

"Go in and tell them I'm coming," he said.

He wished to make the most of his opportunity. Emma knocked at the door
and walked in. He heard her speak.

"Master Philip wants to say good-bye to you, miss."

There was a sudden hush of the conversation, and Philip limped in.
Henrietta Watkin was a stout woman, with a red face and dyed hair. In
those days to dye the hair excited comment, and Philip had heard much
gossip at home when his godmother's changed colour. She lived with an
elder sister, who had resigned herself contentedly to old age. Two ladies,
whom Philip did not know, were calling, and they looked at him curiously.

"My poor child," said Miss Watkin, opening her arms.

She began to cry. Philip understood now why she had not been in to
luncheon and why she wore a black dress. She could not speak.

"I've got to go home," said Philip, at last.

He disengaged himself from Miss Watkin's arms, and she kissed him again.
Then he went to her sister and bade her good-bye too. One of the strange
ladies asked if she might kiss him, and he gravely gave her permission.
Though crying, he keenly enjoyed the sensation he was causing; he would
have been glad to stay a little longer to be made much of, but felt they
expected him to go, so he said that Emma was waiting for him. He went out
of the room. Emma had gone downstairs to speak with a friend in the
basement, and he waited for her on the landing. He heard Henrietta
Watkin's voice.

"His mother was my greatest friend. I can't bear to think that she's
dead."

"You oughtn't to have gone to the funeral, Henrietta," said her sister. "I
knew it would upset you."

Then one of the strangers spoke.

"Poor little boy, it's dreadful to think of him quite alone in the world.
I see he limps."

"Yes, he's got a club-foot. It was such a grief to his mother."

Then Emma came back. They called a hansom, and she told the driver where
to go.

III

When they reached the house Mrs. Carey had died in--it was in a dreary,
respectable street between Notting Hill Gate and High Street,
Kensington--Emma led Philip into the drawing-room. His uncle was writing
letters of thanks for the wreaths which had been sent. One of them, which
had arrived too late for the funeral, lay in its cardboard box on the
hall-table.

"Here's Master Philip," said Emma.

Mr. Carey stood up slowly and shook hands with the little boy. Then on
second thoughts he bent down and kissed his forehead. He was a man of
somewhat less than average height, inclined to corpulence, with his hair,
worn long, arranged over the scalp so as to conceal his baldness. He was
clean-shaven. His features were regular, and it was possible to imagine
that in his youth he had been good-looking. On his watch-chain he wore a
gold cross.

"You're going to live with me now, Philip," said Mr. Carey. "Shall you
like that?"

Two years before Philip had been sent down to stay at the vicarage after
an attack of chicken-pox; but there remained with him a recollection of an
attic and a large garden rather than of his uncle and aunt.

"Yes."

"You must look upon me and your Aunt Louisa as your father and mother."

The child's mouth trembled a little, he reddened, but did not answer.

"Your dear mother left you in my charge."

Mr. Carey had no great ease in expressing himself. When the news came that
his sister-in-law was dying, he set off at once for London, but on the way
thought of nothing but the disturbance in his life that would be caused if
her death forced him to undertake the care of her son. He was well over
fifty, and his wife, to whom he had been married for thirty years, was
childless; he did not look forward with any pleasure to the presence of a
small boy who might be noisy and rough. He had never much liked his
sister-in-law.

"I'm going to take you down to Blackstable tomorrow," he said.

"With Emma?"

The child put his hand in hers, and she pressed it.

"I'm afraid Emma must go away," said Mr. Carey.

"But I want Emma to come with me."

Philip began to cry, and the nurse could not help crying too. Mr. Carey
looked at them helplessly.

"I think you'd better leave me alone with Master Philip for a moment."

"Very good, sir."

Though Philip clung to her, she released herself gently. Mr. Carey took
the boy on his knee and put his arm round him.

"You mustn't cry," he said. "You're too old to have a nurse now. We must
see about sending you to school."

"I want Emma to come with me," the child repeated.

"It costs too much money, Philip. Your father didn't leave very much, and
I don't know what's become of it. You must look at every penny you spend."

Mr. Carey had called the day before on the family solicitor. Philip's
father was a surgeon in good practice, and his hospital appointments
suggested an established position; so that it was a surprise on his sudden
death from blood-poisoning to find that he had left his widow little more
than his life insurance and what could be got for the lease of their house
in Bruton Street. This was six months ago; and Mrs. Carey, already in
delicate health, finding herself with child, had lost her head and
accepted for the lease the first offer that was made. She stored her
furniture, and, at a rent which the parson thought outrageous, took a
furnished house for a year, so that she might suffer from no inconvenience
till her child was born. But she had never been used to the management of
money, and was unable to adapt her expenditure to her altered
circumstances. The little she had slipped through her fingers in one way
and another, so that now, when all expenses were paid, not much more than
two thousand pounds remained to support the boy till he was able to earn
his own living. It was impossible to explain all this to Philip and he was
sobbing still.

"You'd better go to Emma," Mr. Carey said, feeling that she could console
the child better than anyone.

Without a word Philip slipped off his uncle's knee, but Mr. Carey stopped
him.

"We must go tomorrow, because on Saturday I've got to prepare my sermon,
and you must tell Emma to get your things ready today. You can bring all
your toys. And if you want anything to remember your father and mother by
you can take one thing for each of them. Everything else is going to be
sold."

The boy slipped out of the room. Mr. Carey was unused to work, and he
turned to his correspondence with resentment. On one side of the desk was
a bundle of bills, and these filled him with irritation. One especially
seemed preposterous. Immediately after Mrs. Carey's death Emma had ordered
from the florist masses of white flowers for the room in which the dead
woman lay. It was sheer waste of money. Emma took far too much upon
herself. Even if there had been no financial necessity, he would have
dismissed her.

But Philip went to her, and hid his face in her bosom, and wept as though
his heart would break. And she, feeling that he was almost her own
son--she had taken him when he was a month old--consoled him with soft
words. She promised that she would come and see him sometimes, and that
she would never forget him; and she told him about the country he was
going to and about her own home in Devonshire--her father kept a turnpike
on the high-road that led to Exeter, and there were pigs in the sty, and
there was a cow, and the cow had just had a calf--till Philip forgot his
tears and grew excited at the thought of his approaching journey.
Presently she put him down, for there was much to be done, and he helped
her to lay out his clothes on the bed. She sent him into the nursery to
gather up his toys, and in a little while he was playing happily.

But at last he grew tired of being alone and went back to the bed-room, in
which Emma was now putting his things into a big tin box; he remembered
then that his uncle had said he might take something to remember his
father and mother by. He told Emma and asked her what he should take.

"You'd better go into the drawing-room and see what you fancy."

"Uncle William's there."

"Never mind that. They're your own things now."

Philip went downstairs slowly and found the door open. Mr. Carey had left
the room. Philip walked slowly round. They had been in the house so short
a time that there was little in it that had a particular interest to him.
It was a stranger's room, and Philip saw nothing that struck his fancy.
But he knew which were his mother's things and which belonged to the
landlord, and presently fixed on a little clock that he had once heard his
mother say she liked. With this he walked again rather disconsolately
upstairs. Outside the door of his mother's bed-room he stopped and
listened. Though no one had told him not to go in, he had a feeling that
it would be wrong to do so; he was a little frightened, and his heart beat
uncomfortably; but at the same time something impelled him to turn the
handle. He turned it very gently, as if to prevent anyone within from
hearing, and then slowly pushed the door open. He stood on the threshold
for a moment before he had the courage to enter. He was not frightened
now, but it seemed strange. He closed the door behind him. The blinds were
drawn, and the room, in the cold light of a January afternoon, was dark.
On the dressing-table were Mrs. Carey's brushes and the hand mirror. In a
little tray were hairpins. There was a photograph of himself on the
chimney-piece and one of his father. He had often been in the room when
his mother was not in it, but now it seemed different. There was something
curious in the look of the chairs. The bed was made as though someone were
going to sleep in it that night, and in a case on the pillow was a
night-dress.

Philip opened a large cupboard filled with dresses and, stepping in, took
as many of them as he could in his arms and buried his face in them. They
smelt of the scent his mother used. Then he pulled open the drawers,
filled with his mother's things, and looked at them: there were lavender
bags among the linen, and their scent was fresh and pleasant. The
strangeness of the room left it, and it seemed to him that his mother had
just gone out for a walk. She would be in presently and would come
upstairs to have nursery tea with him. And he seemed to feel her kiss on
his lips.

It was not true that he would never see her again. It was not true simply
because it was impossible. He climbed up on the bed and put his head on
the pillow. He lay there quite still.

IV

Philip parted from Emma with tears, but the journey to Blackstable amused
him, and, when they arrived, he was resigned and cheerful. Blackstable was
sixty miles from London. Giving their luggage to a porter, Mr. Carey set
out to walk with Philip to the vicarage; it took them little more than
five minutes, and, when they reached it, Philip suddenly remembered the
gate. It was red and five-barred: it swung both ways on easy hinges; and
it was possible, though forbidden, to swing backwards and forwards on it.
They walked through the garden to the front-door. This was only used by
visitors and on Sundays, and on special occasions, as when the Vicar went
up to London or came back. The traffic of the house took place through a
side-door, and there was a back door as well for the gardener and for
beggars and tramps. It was a fairly large house of yellow brick, with a
red roof, built about five and twenty years before in an ecclesiastical
style. The front-door was like a church porch, and the drawing-room
windows were gothic.

Mrs. Carey, knowing by what train they were coming, waited in the
drawing-room and listened for the click of the gate. When she heard it she
went to the door.

"There's Aunt Louisa," said Mr. Carey, when he saw her. "Run and give her
a kiss."

Philip started to run, awkwardly, trailing his club-foot, and then
stopped. Mrs. Carey was a little, shrivelled woman of the same age as her
husband, with a face extraordinarily filled with deep wrinkles, and pale
blue eyes. Her gray hair was arranged in ringlets according to the fashion
of her youth. She wore a black dress, and her only ornament was a gold
chain, from which hung a cross. She had a shy manner and a gentle voice.

"Did you walk, William?" she said, almost reproachfully, as she kissed her
husband.

"I didn't think of it," he answered, with a glance at his nephew.

"It didn't hurt you to walk, Philip, did it?" she asked the child.

"No. I always walk."

He was a little surprised at their conversation. Aunt Louisa told him to
come in, and they entered the hall. It was paved with red and yellow
tiles, on which alternately were a Greek Cross and the Lamb of God. An
imposing staircase led out of the hall. It was of polished pine, with a
peculiar smell, and had been put in because fortunately, when the church
was reseated, enough wood remained over. The balusters were decorated with
emblems of the Four Evangelists.

"I've had the stove lighted as I thought you'd be cold after your
journey," said Mrs. Carey.

It was a large black stove that stood in the hall and was only lighted if
the weather was very bad and the Vicar had a cold. It was not lighted if
Mrs. Carey had a cold. Coal was expensive. Besides, Mary Ann, the maid,
didn't like fires all over the place. If they wanted all them fires they
must keep a second girl. In the winter Mr. and Mrs. Carey lived in the
dining-room so that one fire should do, and in the summer they could not
get out of the habit, so the drawing-room was used only by Mr. Carey on
Sunday afternoons for his nap. But every Saturday he had a fire in the
study so that he could write his sermon.

Aunt Louisa took Philip upstairs and showed him into a tiny bed-room that
looked out on the drive. Immediately in front of the window was a large
tree, which Philip remembered now because the branches were so low that it
was possible to climb quite high up it.

"A small room for a small boy," said Mrs. Carey. "You won't be frightened
at sleeping alone?"

"Oh, no."

On his first visit to the vicarage he had come with his nurse, and Mrs.
Carey had had little to do with him. She looked at him now with some
uncertainty.

"Can you wash your own hands, or shall I wash them for you?"

"I can wash myself," he answered firmly.

"Well, I shall look at them when you come down to tea," said Mrs. Carey.

She knew nothing about children. After it was settled that Philip should
come down to Blackstable, Mrs. Carey had thought much how she should treat
him; she was anxious to do her duty; but now he was there she found
herself just as shy of him as he was of her. She hoped he would not be
noisy and rough, because her husband did not like rough and noisy boys.
Mrs. Carey made an excuse to leave Philip alone, but in a moment came back
and knocked at the door; she asked him, without coming in, if he could
pour out the water himself. Then she went downstairs and rang the bell for
tea.

The dining-room, large and well-proportioned, had windows on two sides of
it, with heavy curtains of red rep; there was a big table in the middle;
and at one end an imposing mahogany sideboard with a looking-glass in it.
In one corner stood a harmonium. On each side of the fireplace were chairs
covered in stamped leather, each with an antimacassar; one had arms and
was called the husband, and the other had none and was called the wife.
Mrs. Carey never sat in the arm-chair: she said she preferred a chair that
was not too comfortable; there was always a lot to do, and if her chair
had had arms she might not be so ready to leave it.

Mr. Carey was making up the fire when Philip came in, and he pointed out
to his nephew that there were two pokers. One was large and bright and
polished and unused, and was called the Vicar; and the other, which was
much smaller and had evidently passed through many fires, was called the
Curate.

"What are we waiting for?" said Mr. Carey.

"I told Mary Ann to make you an egg. I thought you'd be hungry after your
journey."

Mrs. Carey thought the journey from London to Blackstable very tiring. She
seldom travelled herself, for the living was only three hundred a year,
and, when her husband wanted a holiday, since there was not money for two,
he went by himself. He was very fond of Church Congresses and usually
managed to go up to London once a year; and once he had been to Paris for
the exhibition, and two or three times to Switzerland. Mary Ann brought in
the egg, and they sat down. The chair was much too low for Philip, and for
a moment neither Mr. Carey nor his wife knew what to do.

"I'll put some books under him," said Mary Ann.

She took from the top of the harmonium the large Bible and the prayer-book
from which the Vicar was accustomed to read prayers, and put them on
Philip's chair.

"Oh, William, he can't sit on the Bible," said Mrs. Carey, in a shocked
tone. "Couldn't you get him some books out of the study?"

Mr. Carey considered the question for an instant.

"I don't think it matters this once if you put the prayer-book on the top,
Mary Ann," he said. "The book of Common Prayer is the composition of men
like ourselves. It has no claim to divine authorship."

"I hadn't thought of that, William," said Aunt Louisa.

Philip perched himself on the books, and the Vicar, having said grace, cut
the top off his egg.

"There," he said, handing it to Philip, "you can eat my top if you like."

Philip would have liked an egg to himself, but he was not offered one, so
took what he could.

"How have the chickens been laying since I went away?" asked the Vicar.

"Oh, they've been dreadful, only one or two a day."

"How did you like that top, Philip?" asked his uncle.

"Very much, thank you."

"You shall have another one on Sunday afternoon."

Mr. Carey always had a boiled egg at tea on Sunday, so that he might be
fortified for the evening service.

V

Philip came gradually to know the people he was to live with, and by
fragments of conversation, some of it not meant for his ears, learned a
good deal both about himself and about his dead parents. Philip's father
had been much younger than the Vicar of Blackstable. After a brilliant
career at St. Luke's Hospital he was put on the staff, and presently began
to earn money in considerable sums. He spent it freely. When the parson
set about restoring his church and asked his brother for a subscription,
he was surprised by receiving a couple of hundred pounds: Mr. Carey,
thrifty by inclination and economical by necessity, accepted it with
mingled feelings; he was envious of his brother because he could afford to
give so much, pleased for the sake of his church, and vaguely irritated by
a generosity which seemed almost ostentatious. Then Henry Carey married a
patient, a beautiful girl but penniless, an orphan with no near relations,
but of good family; and there was an array of fine friends at the wedding.
The parson, on his visits to her when he came to London, held himself with
reserve. He felt shy with her and in his heart he resented her great
beauty: she dressed more magnificently than became the wife of a
hardworking surgeon; and the charming furniture of her house, the flowers
among which she lived even in winter, suggested an extravagance which he
deplored. He heard her talk of entertainments she was going to; and, as he
told his wife on getting home again, it was impossible to accept
hospitality without making some return. He had seen grapes in the
dining-room that must have cost at least eight shillings a pound; and at
luncheon he had been given asparagus two months before it was ready in the
vicarage garden. Now all he had anticipated was come to pass: the Vicar
felt the satisfaction of the prophet who saw fire and brimstone consume
the city which would not mend its way to his warning. Poor Philip was
practically penniless, and what was the good of his mother's fine friends
now? He heard that his father's extravagance was really criminal, and it
was a mercy that Providence had seen fit to take his dear mother to
itself: she had no more idea of money than a child.

When Philip had been a week at Blackstable an incident happened which
seemed to irritate his uncle very much. One morning he found on the
breakfast table a small packet which had been sent on by post from the
late Mrs. Carey's house in London. It was addressed to her. When the
parson opened it he found a dozen photographs of Mrs. Carey. They showed
the head and shoulders only, and her hair was more plainly done than
usual, low on the forehead, which gave her an unusual look; the face was
thin and worn, but no illness could impair the beauty of her features.
There was in the large dark eyes a sadness which Philip did not remember.
The first sight of the dead woman gave Mr. Carey a little shock, but this
was quickly followed by perplexity. The photographs seemed quite recent,
and he could not imagine who had ordered them.

"D'you know anything about these, Philip?" he asked.

"I remember mamma said she'd been taken," he answered. "Miss Watkin
scolded her.... She said: I wanted the boy to have something to remember
me by when he grows up."

Mr. Carey looked at Philip for an instant. The child spoke in a clear
treble. He recalled the words, but they meant nothing to him.

"You'd better take one of the photographs and keep it in your room," said
Mr. Carey. "I'll put the others away."

He sent one to Miss Watkin, and she wrote and explained how they came to
be taken.

One day Mrs. Carey was lying in bed, but she was feeling a little better
than usual, and the doctor in the morning had seemed hopeful; Emma had
taken the child out, and the maids were downstairs in the basement:
suddenly Mrs. Carey felt desperately alone in the world. A great fear
seized her that she would not recover from the confinement which she was
expecting in a fortnight. Her son was nine years old. How could he be
expected to remember her? She could not bear to think that he would grow
up and forget, forget her utterly; and she had loved him so passionately,
because he was weakly and deformed, and because he was her child. She had
no photographs of herself taken since her marriage, and that was ten years
before. She wanted her son to know what she looked like at the end. He
could not forget her then, not forget utterly. She knew that if she called
her maid and told her she wanted to get up, the maid would prevent her,
and perhaps send for the doctor, and she had not the strength now to
struggle or argue. She got out of bed and began to dress herself. She had
been on her back so long that her legs gave way beneath her, and then the
soles of her feet tingled so that she could hardly bear to put them to the
ground. But she went on. She was unused to doing her own hair and, when
she raised her arms and began to brush it, she felt faint. She could never
do it as her maid did. It was beautiful hair, very fine, and of a deep
rich gold. Her eyebrows were straight and dark. She put on a black skirt,
but chose the bodice of the evening dress which she liked best: it was of
a white damask which was fashionable in those days. She looked at herself
in the glass. Her face was very pale, but her skin was clear: she had
never had much colour, and this had always made the redness of her
beautiful mouth emphatic. She could not restrain a sob. But she could not
afford to be sorry for herself; she was feeling already desperately tired;
and she put on the furs which Henry had given her the Christmas
before--she had been so proud of them and so happy then--and slipped
downstairs with beating heart. She got safely out of the house and drove
to a photographer. She paid for a dozen photographs. She was obliged to
ask for a glass of water in the middle of the sitting; and the assistant,
seeing she was ill, suggested that she should come another day, but she
insisted on staying till the end. At last it was finished, and she drove
back again to the dingy little house in Kensington which she hated with
all her heart. It was a horrible house to die in.

She found the front door open, and when she drove up the maid and Emma ran
down the steps to help her. They had been frightened when they found her
room empty. At first they thought she must have gone to Miss Watkin, and
the cook was sent round. Miss Watkin came back with her and was waiting
anxiously in the drawing-room. She came downstairs now full of anxiety and
reproaches; but the exertion had been more than Mrs. Carey was fit for,
and when the occasion for firmness no longer existed she gave way. She
fell heavily into Emma's arms and was carried upstairs. She remained
unconscious for a time that seemed incredibly long to those that watched
her, and the doctor, hurriedly sent for, did not come. It was next day,
when she was a little better, that Miss Watkin got some explanation out of
her. Philip was playing on the floor of his mother's bed-room, and neither
of the ladies paid attention to him. He only understood vaguely what they
were talking about, and he could not have said why those words remained in
his memory.

"I wanted the boy to have something to remember me by when he grows up."

"I can't make out why she ordered a dozen," said Mr. Carey. "Two would
have done."

VI

One day was very like another at the vicarage.

Soon after breakfast Mary Ann brought in The Times. Mr. Carey shared it
with two neighbours. He had it from ten till one, when the gardener took
it over to Mr. Ellis at the Limes, with whom it remained till seven; then
it was taken to Miss Brooks at the Manor House, who, since she got it
late, had the advantage of keeping it. In summer Mrs. Carey, when she was
making jam, often asked her for a copy to cover the pots with. When the
Vicar settled down to his paper his wife put on her bonnet and went out to
do the shopping. Philip accompanied her. Blackstable was a fishing
village. It consisted of a high street in which were the shops, the bank,
the doctor's house, and the houses of two or three coalship owners; round
the little harbor were shabby streets in which lived fishermen and poor
people; but since they went to chapel they were of no account. When Mrs.
Carey passed the dissenting ministers in the street she stepped over to
the other side to avoid meeting them, but if there was not time for this
fixed her eyes on the pavement. It was a scandal to which the Vicar had
never resigned himself that there were three chapels in the High Street:
he could not help feeling that the law should have stepped in to prevent
their erection. Shopping in Blackstable was not a simple matter; for
dissent, helped by the fact that the parish church was two miles from the
town, was very common; and it was necessary to deal only with churchgoers;
Mrs. Carey knew perfectly that the vicarage custom might make all the
difference to a tradesman's faith. There were two butchers who went to
church, and they would not understand that the Vicar could not deal with
both of them at once; nor were they satisfied with his simple plan of
going for six months to one and for six months to the other. The butcher
who was not sending meat to the vicarage constantly threatened not to come
to church, and the Vicar was sometimes obliged to make a threat: it was
very wrong of him not to come to church, but if he carried iniquity
further and actually went to chapel, then of course, excellent as his meat
was, Mr. Carey would be forced to leave him for ever. Mrs. Carey often
stopped at the bank to deliver a message to Josiah Graves, the manager,
who was choir-master, treasurer, and churchwarden. He was a tall, thin man
with a sallow face and a long nose; his hair was very white, and to Philip
he seemed extremely old. He kept the parish accounts, arranged the treats
for the choir and the schools; though there was no organ in the parish
church, it was generally considered (in Blackstable) that the choir he led
was the best in Kent; and when there was any ceremony, such as a visit
from the Bishop for confirmation or from the Rural Dean to preach at the
Harvest Thanksgiving, he made the necessary preparations. But he had no
hesitation in doing all manner of things without more than a perfunctory
consultation with the Vicar, and the Vicar, though always ready to be
saved trouble, much resented the churchwarden's managing ways. He really
seemed to look upon himself as the most important person in the parish.
Mr. Carey constantly told his wife that if Josiah Graves did not take care
he would give him a good rap over the knuckles one day; but Mrs. Carey
advised him to bear with Josiah Graves: he meant well, and it was not his
fault if he was not quite a gentleman. The Vicar, finding his comfort in
the practice of a Christian virtue, exercised forbearance; but he revenged
himself by calling the churchwarden Bismarck behind his back.

Once there had been a serious quarrel between the pair, and Mrs. Carey
still thought of that anxious time with dismay. The Conservative candidate
had announced his intention of addressing a meeting at Blackstable; and
Josiah Graves, having arranged that it should take place in the Mission
Hall, went to Mr. Carey and told him that he hoped he would say a few
words. It appeared that the candidate had asked Josiah Graves to take the
chair. This was more than Mr. Carey could put up with. He had firm views
upon the respect which was due to the cloth, and it was ridiculous for a
churchwarden to take the chair at a meeting when the Vicar was there. He
reminded Josiah Graves that parson meant person, that is, the vicar was
the person of the parish. Josiah Graves answered that he was the first to
recognise the dignity of the church, but this was a matter of politics,
and in his turn he reminded the Vicar that their Blessed Saviour had
enjoined upon them to render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's. To
this Mr. Carey replied that the devil could quote scripture to his
purpose, himself had sole authority over the Mission Hall, and if he were
not asked to be chairman he would refuse the use of it for a political
meeting. Josiah Graves told Mr. Carey that he might do as he chose, and
for his part he thought the Wesleyan Chapel would be an equally suitable
place. Then Mr. Carey said that if Josiah Graves set foot in what was
little better than a heathen temple he was not fit to be churchwarden in
a Christian parish. Josiah Graves thereupon resigned all his offices, and
that very evening sent to the church for his cassock and surplice. His
sister, Miss Graves, who kept house for him, gave up her secretaryship of
the Maternity Club, which provided the pregnant poor with flannel, baby
linen, coals, and five shillings. Mr. Carey said he was at last master in
his own house. But soon he found that he was obliged to see to all sorts
of things that he knew nothing about; and Josiah Graves, after the first
moment of irritation, discovered that he had lost his chief interest in
life. Mrs. Carey and Miss Graves were much distressed by the quarrel; they
met after a discreet exchange of letters, and made up their minds to put
the matter right: they talked, one to her husband, the other to her
brother, from morning till night; and since they were persuading these
gentlemen to do what in their hearts they wanted, after three weeks of
anxiety a reconciliation was effected. It was to both their interests, but
they ascribed it to a common love for their Redeemer. The meeting was held
at the Mission Hall, and the doctor was asked to be chairman. Mr. Carey
and Josiah Graves both made speeches.

When Mrs. Carey had finished her business with the banker, she generally
went upstairs to have a little chat with his sister; and while the ladies
talked of parish matters, the curate or the new bonnet of Mrs. Wilson--Mr.
Wilson was the richest man in Blackstable, he was thought to have at least
five hundred a year, and he had married his cook--Philip sat demurely in
the stiff parlour, used only to receive visitors, and busied himself with
the restless movements of goldfish in a bowl. The windows were never
opened except to air the room for a few minutes in the morning, and it had
a stuffy smell which seemed to Philip to have a mysterious connection with
banking.

Then Mrs. Carey remembered that she had to go to the grocer, and they
continued their way. When the shopping was done they often went down a
side street of little houses, mostly of wood, in which fishermen dwelt
(and here and there a fisherman sat on his doorstep mending his nets, and
nets hung to dry upon the doors), till they came to a small beach, shut in
on each side by warehouses, but with a view of the sea. Mrs. Carey stood
for a few minutes and looked at it, it was turbid and yellow, [and who
knows what thoughts passed through her mind?] while Philip searched for
flat stones to play ducks and drakes. Then they walked slowly back. They
looked into the post office to get the right time, nodded to Mrs. Wigram
the doctor's wife, who sat at her window sewing, and so got home.

Dinner was at one o'clock; and on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday it
consisted of beef, roast, hashed, and minced, and on Thursday, Friday, and
Saturday of mutton. On Sunday they ate one of their own chickens. In the
afternoon Philip did his lessons, He was taught Latin and mathematics by
his uncle who knew neither, and French and the piano by his aunt. Of
French she was ignorant, but she knew the piano well enough to accompany
the old-fashioned songs she had sung for thirty years. Uncle William used
to tell Philip that when he was a curate his wife had known twelve songs
by heart, which she could sing at a moment's notice whenever she was
asked. She often sang still when there was a tea-party at the vicarage.
There were few people whom the Careys cared to ask there, and their
parties consisted always of the curate, Josiah Graves with his sister, Dr.
Wigram and his wife. After tea Miss Graves played one or two of
Mendelssohn's Songs without Words, and Mrs. Carey sang When the
Swallows Homeward Fly, or Trot, Trot, My Pony.

But the Careys did not give tea-parties often; the preparations upset
them, and when their guests were gone they felt themselves exhausted. They
preferred to have tea by themselves, and after tea they played backgammon.
Mrs. Carey arranged that her husband should win, because he did not like
losing. They had cold supper at eight. It was a scrappy meal because Mary
Ann resented getting anything ready after tea, and Mrs. Carey helped to
clear away. Mrs. Carey seldom ate more than bread and butter, with a
little stewed fruit to follow, but the Vicar had a slice of cold meat.
Immediately after supper Mrs. Carey rang the bell for prayers, and then
Philip went to bed. He rebelled against being undressed by Mary Ann and
after a while succeeded in establishing his right to dress and undress
himself. At nine o'clock Mary Ann brought in the eggs and the plate. Mrs.
Carey wrote the date on each egg and put the number down in a book. She
then took the plate-basket on her arm and went upstairs. Mr. Carey
continued to read one of his old books, but as the clock struck ten he got
up, put out the lamps, and followed his wife to bed.

When Philip arrived there was some difficulty in deciding on which evening
he should have his bath. It was never easy to get plenty of hot water,
since the kitchen boiler did not work, and it was impossible for two
persons to have a bath on the same day. The only man who had a bathroom in
Blackstable was Mr. Wilson, and it was thought ostentatious of him. Mary
Ann had her bath in the kitchen on Monday night, because she liked to
begin the week clean. Uncle William could not have his on Saturday,
because he had a heavy day before him and he was always a little tired
after a bath, so he had it on Friday. Mrs. Carey had hers on Thursday for
the same reason. It looked as though Saturday were naturally indicated for
Philip, but Mary Ann said she couldn't keep the fire up on Saturday night:
what with all the cooking on Sunday, having to make pastry and she didn't
know what all, she did not feel up to giving the boy his bath on Saturday
night; and it was quite clear that he could not bath himself. Mrs. Carey
was shy about bathing a boy, and of course the Vicar had his sermon. But
the Vicar insisted that Philip should be clean and sweet for the lord's
Day. Mary Ann said she would rather go than be put upon--and after
eighteen years she didn't expect to have more work given her, and they
might show some consideration--and Philip said he didn't want anyone to
bath him, but could very well bath himself. This settled it. Mary Ann said
she was quite sure he wouldn't bath himself properly, and rather than he
should go dirty--and not because he was going into the presence of the
Lord, but because she couldn't abide a boy who wasn't properly
washed--she'd work herself to the bone even if it was Saturday night.

VII

Sunday was a day crowded with incident. Mr. Carey was accustomed to say
that he was the only man in his parish who worked seven days a week.

The household got up half an hour earlier than usual. No lying abed for a
poor parson on the day of rest, Mr. Carey remarked as Mary Ann knocked at
the door punctually at eight. It took Mrs. Carey longer to dress, and she
got down to breakfast at nine, a little breathless, only just before her
husband. Mr. Carey's boots stood in front of the fire to warm. Prayers
were longer than usual, and the breakfast more substantial. After
breakfast the Vicar cut thin slices of bread for the communion, and Philip
was privileged to cut off the crust. He was sent to the study to fetch a
marble paperweight, with which Mr. Carey pressed the bread till it was
thin and pulpy, and then it was cut into small squares. The amount was
regulated by the weather. On a very bad day few people came to church, and
on a very fine one, though many came, few stayed for communion. There were
most when it was dry enough to make the walk to church pleasant, but not
so fine that people wanted to hurry away.

Then Mrs. Carey brought the communion plate out of the safe, which stood
in the pantry, and the Vicar polished it with a chamois leather. At ten
the fly drove up, and Mr. Carey got into his boots. Mrs. Carey took
several minutes to put on her bonnet, during which the Vicar, in a
voluminous cloak, stood in the hall with just such an expression on his
face as would have become an early Christian about to be led into the
arena. It was extraordinary that after thirty years of marriage his wife
could not be ready in time on Sunday morning. At last she came, in black
satin; the Vicar did not like colours in a clergyman's wife at any time,
but on Sundays he was determined that she should wear black; now and then,
in conspiracy with Miss Graves, she ventured a white feather or a pink
rose in her bonnet, but the Vicar insisted that it should disappear; he
said he would not go to church with the scarlet woman: Mrs. Carey sighed
as a woman but obeyed as a wife. They were about to step into the carriage
when the Vicar remembered that no one had given him his egg. They knew
that he must have an egg for his voice, there were two women in the house,
and no one had the least regard for his comfort. Mrs. Carey scolded Mary
Ann, and Mary Ann answered that she could not think of everything. She
hurried away to fetch an egg, and Mrs. Carey beat it up in a glass of
sherry. The Vicar swallowed it at a gulp. The communion plate was stowed
in the carriage, and they set off.

The fly came from The Red Lion and had a peculiar smell of stale straw.
They drove with both windows closed so that the Vicar should not catch
cold. The sexton was waiting at the porch to take the communion plate, and
while the Vicar went to the vestry Mrs. Carey and Philip settled
themselves in the vicarage pew. Mrs. Carey placed in front of her the
sixpenny bit she was accustomed to put in the plate, and gave Philip
threepence for the same purpose. The church filled up gradually and the
service began.

Philip grew bored during the sermon, but if he fidgetted Mrs. Carey put a
gentle hand on his arm and looked at him reproachfully. He regained
interest when the final hymn was sung and Mr.Graves passed round with the
plate.

When everyone had gone Mrs. Carey went into Miss Graves' pew to have a few
words with her while they were waiting for the gentlemen, and Philip went
to the vestry. His uncle, the curate, and Mr. Graves were still in their
surplices. Mr. Carey gave him the remains of the consecrated bread and
told him he might eat it. He had been accustomed to eat it himself, as it
seemed blasphemous to throw it away, but Philip's keen appetite relieved
him from the duty. Then they counted the money. It consisted of pennies,
sixpences and threepenny bits. There were always two single shillings, one
put in the plate by the Vicar and the other by Mr. Graves; and sometimes
there was a florin. Mr. Graves told the Vicar who had given this. It was
always a stranger to Blackstable, and Mr. Carey wondered who he was. But
Miss Graves had observed the rash act and was able to tell Mrs. Carey that
the stranger came from London, was married and had children. During the
drive home Mrs. Carey passed the information on, and the Vicar made up his
mind to call on him and ask for a subscription to the Additional Curates
Society. Mr. Carey asked if Philip had behaved properly; and Mrs. Carey
remarked that Mrs. Wigram had a new mantle, Mr. Cox was not in church, and
somebody thought that Miss Phillips was engaged. When they reached the
vicarage they all felt that they deserved a substantial dinner.

When this was over Mrs. Carey went to her room to rest, and Mr. Carey lay
down on the sofa in the drawing-room for forty winks.

They had tea at five, and the Vicar ate an egg to support himself for
evensong. Mrs. Carey did not go to this so that Mary Ann might, but she
read the service through and the hymns. Mr. Carey walked to church in the
evening, and Philip limped along by his side. The walk through the
darkness along the country road strangely impressed him, and the church
with all its lights in the distance, coming gradually nearer, seemed very
friendly. At first he was shy with his uncle, but little by little grew
used to him, and he would slip his hand in his uncle's and walk more
easily for the feeling of protection.

They had supper when they got home. Mr. Carey's slippers were waiting for
him on a footstool in front of the fire and by their side Philip's, one
the shoe of a small boy, the other misshapen and odd. He was dreadfully
tired when he went up to bed, and he did not resist when Mary Ann
undressed him. She kissed him after she tucked him up, and he began to
love her.

VIII

Philip had led always the solitary life of an only child, and his
loneliness at the vicarage was no greater than it had been when his mother
lived. He made friends with Mary Ann. She was a chubby little person of
thirty-five, the daughter of a fisherman, and had come to the vicarage at
eighteen; it was her first place and she had no intention of leaving it;
but she held a possible marriage as a rod over the timid heads of her
master and mistress. Her father and mother lived in a little house off
Harbour Street, and she went to see them on her evenings out. Her stories
of the sea touched Philip's imagination, and the narrow alleys round the
harbour grew rich with the romance which his young fancy lent them. One
evening he asked whether he might go home with her; but his aunt was
afraid that he might catch something, and his uncle said that evil
communications corrupted good manners. He disliked the fisher folk, who
were rough, uncouth, and went to chapel. But Philip was more comfortable
in the kitchen than in the dining-room, and, whenever he could, he took
his toys and played there. His aunt was not sorry. She did not like
disorder, and though she recognised that boys must be expected to be
untidy she preferred that he should make a mess in the kitchen. If he
fidgeted his uncle was apt to grow restless and say it was high time he
went to school. Mrs. Carey thought Philip very young for this, and her
heart went out to the motherless child; but her attempts to gain his
affection were awkward, and the boy, feeling shy, received her
demonstrations with so much sullenness that she was mortified. Sometimes
she heard his shrill voice raised in laughter in the kitchen, but when she
went in, he grew suddenly silent, and he flushed darkly when Mary Ann
explained the joke. Mrs. Carey could not see anything amusing in what she
heard, and she smiled with constraint.

"He seems happier with Mary Ann than with us, William," she said, when she
returned to her sewing.

"One can see he's been very badly brought up. He wants licking into
shape."

On the second Sunday after Philip arrived an unlucky incident occurred.
Mr. Carey had retired as usual after dinner for a little snooze in the
drawing-room, but he was in an irritable mood and could not sleep. Josiah
Graves that morning had objected strongly to some candlesticks with which
the Vicar had adorned the altar. He had bought them second-hand in
Tercanbury, and he thought they looked very well. But Josiah Graves said
they were popish. This was a taunt that always aroused the Vicar. He had
been at Oxford during the movement which ended in the secession from the
Established Church of Edward Manning, and he felt a certain sympathy for
the Church of Rome. He would willingly have made the service more ornate
than had been usual in the low-church parish of Blackstable, and in his
secret soul he yearned for processions and lighted candles. He drew the
line at incense. He hated the word protestant. He called himself a
Catholic. He was accustomed to say that Papists required an epithet, they
were Roman Catholic; but the Church of England was Catholic in the best,
the fullest, and the noblest sense of the term. He was pleased to think
that his shaven face gave him the look of a priest, and in his youth he
had possessed an ascetic air which added to the impression. He often
related that on one of his holidays in Boulogne, one of those holidays
upon which his wife for economy's sake did not accompany him, when he was
sitting in a church, the cure had come up to him and invited him to
preach a sermon. He dismissed his curates when they married, having
decided views on the celibacy of the unbeneficed clergy. But when at an
election the Liberals had written on his garden fence in large blue
letters: This way to Rome, he had been very angry, and threatened to
prosecute the leaders of the Liberal party in Blackstable. He made up his
mind now that nothing Josiah Graves said would induce him to remove the
candlesticks from the altar, and he muttered Bismarck to himself once or
twice irritably.

Suddenly he heard an unexpected noise. He pulled the handkerchief off his
face, got up from the sofa on which he was lying, and went into the
dining-room. Philip was seated on the table with all his bricks around
him. He had built a monstrous castle, and some defect in the foundation
had just brought the structure down in noisy ruin.

"What are you doing with those bricks, Philip? You know you're not allowed
to play games on Sunday."

Philip stared at him for a moment with frightened eyes, and, as his habit
was, flushed deeply.

"I always used to play at home," he answered.

"I'm sure your dear mamma never allowed you to do such a wicked thing as
that."

Philip did not know it was wicked; but if it was, he did not wish it to be
supposed that his mother had consented to it. He hung his head and did not
answer.

"Don't you know it's very, very wicked to play on Sunday? What d'you
suppose it's called the day of rest for? You're going to church tonight,
and how can you face your Maker when you've been breaking one of His laws
in the afternoon?"

Mr. Carey told him to put the bricks away at once, and stood over him
while Philip did so.

"You're a very naughty boy," he repeated. "Think of the grief you're
causing your poor mother in heaven."

Philip felt inclined to cry, but he had an instinctive disinclination to
letting other people see his tears, and he clenched his teeth to prevent
the sobs from escaping. Mr. Carey sat down in his arm-chair and began to
turn over the pages of a book. Philip stood at the window. The vicarage
was set back from the highroad to Tercanbury, and from the dining-room one
saw a semicircular strip of lawn and then as far as the horizon green
fields. Sheep were grazing in them. The sky was forlorn and gray. Philip
felt infinitely unhappy.

Presently Mary Ann came in to lay the tea, and Aunt Louisa descended the
stairs.

"Have you had a nice little nap, William?" she asked.

"No," he answered. "Philip made so much noise that I couldn't sleep a
wink."

This was not quite accurate, for he had been kept awake by his own
thoughts; and Philip, listening sullenly, reflected that he had only made
a noise once, and there was no reason why his uncle should not have slept
before or after. When Mrs. Carey asked for an explanation the Vicar
narrated the facts.

"He hasn't even said he was sorry," he finished.

"Oh, Philip, I'm sure you're sorry," said Mrs. Carey, anxious that the
child should not seem wickeder to his uncle than need be.

Philip did not reply. He went on munching his bread and butter. He did not
know what power it was in him that prevented him from making any
expression of regret. He felt his ears tingling, he was a little inclined
to cry, but no word would issue from his lips.

"You needn't make it worse by sulking," said Mr. Carey.

Tea was finished in silence. Mrs. Carey looked at Philip surreptitiously
now and then, but the Vicar elaborately ignored him. When Philip saw his
uncle go upstairs to get ready for church he went into the hall and got
his hat and coat, but when the Vicar came downstairs and saw him, he said:

"I don't wish you to go to church tonight, Philip. I don't think you're in
a proper frame of mind to enter the House of God."

Philip did not say a word. He felt it was a deep humiliation that was
placed upon him, and his cheeks reddened. He stood silently watching his
uncle put on his broad hat and his voluminous cloak. Mrs. Carey as usual
went to the door to see him off. Then she turned to Philip.

"Never mind, Philip, you won't be a naughty boy next Sunday, will you, and
then your uncle will take you to church with him in the evening."

She took off his hat and coat, and led him into the dining-room.

"Shall you and I read the service together, Philip, and we'll sing the
hymns at the harmonium. Would you like that?"

Philip shook his head decidedly. Mrs. Carey was taken aback. If he would
not read the evening service with her she did not know what to do with
him.

"Then what would you like to do until your uncle comes back?" she asked
helplessly.

Philip broke his silence at last.

"I want to be left alone," he said.

"Philip, how can you say anything so unkind? Don't you know that your
uncle and I only want your good? Don't you love me at all?"

"I hate you. I wish you was dead."

Mrs. Carey gasped. He said the words so savagely that it gave her quite a
start. She had nothing to say. She sat down in her husband's chair; and as
she thought of her desire to love the friendless, crippled boy and her
eager wish that he should love her--she was a barren woman and, even
though it was clearly God's will that she should be childless, she could
scarcely bear to look at little children sometimes, her heart ached
so--the tears rose to her eyes and one by one, slowly, rolled down her
cheeks. Philip watched her in amazement. She took out her handkerchief,
and now she cried without restraint. Suddenly Philip realised that she was
crying because of what he had said, and he was sorry. He went up to her
silently and kissed her. It was the first kiss he had ever given her
without being asked. And the poor lady, so small in her black satin,
shrivelled up and sallow, with her funny corkscrew curls, took the little
boy on her lap and put her arms around him and wept as though her heart
would break. But her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt
that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new
love because he had made her suffer.

IX

On the following Sunday, when the Vicar was making his preparations to go
into the drawing-room for his nap--all the actions of his life were
conducted with ceremony--and Mrs. Carey was about to go upstairs, Philip
asked:

"What shall I do if I'm not allowed to play?"

"Can't you sit still for once and be quiet?"

"I can't sit still till tea-time."

Mr. Carey looked out of the window, but it was cold and raw, and he could
not suggest that Philip should go into the garden.

"I know what you can do. You can learn by heart the collect for the day."

He took the prayer-book which was used for prayers from the harmonium, and
turned the pages till he came to the place he wanted.

"It's not a long one. If you can say it without a mistake when I come in
to tea you shall have the top of my egg."

Mrs. Carey drew up Philip's chair to the dining-room table--they had
bought him a high chair by now--and placed the book in front of him.

"The devil finds work for idle hands to do," said Mr. Carey.

He put some more coals on the fire so that there should be a cheerful
blaze when he came in to tea, and went into the drawing-room. He loosened
his collar, arranged the cushions, and settled himself comfortably on the
sofa. But thinking the drawing-room a little chilly, Mrs. Carey brought
him a rug from the hall; she put it over his legs and tucked it round his
feet. She drew the blinds so that the light should not offend his eyes,
and since he had closed them already went out of the room on tiptoe. The
Vicar was at peace with himself today, and in ten minutes he was asleep.
He snored softly.

It was the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, and the collect began with the
words: O God, whose blessed Son was manifested that he might destroy the
works of the devil, and make us the sons of God, and heirs of Eternal
life. Philip read it through. He could make no sense of it. He began
saying the words aloud to himself, but many of them were unknown to him,
and the construction of the sentence was strange. He could not get more
than two lines in his head. And his attention was constantly wandering:
there were fruit trees trained on the walls of the vicarage, and a long
twig beat now and then against the windowpane; sheep grazed stolidly in
the field beyond the garden. It seemed as though there were knots inside
his brain. Then panic seized him that he would not know the words by
tea-time, and he kept on whispering them to himself quickly; he did not
try to understand, but merely to get them parrot-like into his memory.

Mrs. Carey could not sleep that afternoon, and by four o'clock she was so
wide awake that she came downstairs. She thought she would hear Philip his
collect so that he should make no mistakes when he said it to his uncle.
His uncle then would be pleased; he would see that the boy's heart was in
the right place. But when Mrs. Carey came to the dining-room and was about
to go in, she heard a sound that made her stop suddenly. Her heart gave a
little jump. She turned away and quietly slipped out of the front-door.
She walked round the house till she came to the dining-room window and
then cautiously looked in. Philip was still sitting on the chair she had
put him in, but his head was on the table buried in his arms, and he was
sobbing desperately. She saw the convulsive movement of his shoulders.
Mrs. Carey was frightened. A thing that had always struck her about the
child was that he seemed so collected. She had never seen him cry. And now
she realised that his calmness was some instinctive shame of showing his
fillings: he hid himself to weep.

Without thinking that her husband disliked being wakened suddenly, she
burst into the drawing-room.

"William, William," she said. "The boy's crying as though his heart would
break."

Mr. Carey sat up and disentangled himself from the rug about his legs.

"What's he got to cry about?"

"I don't know.... Oh, William, we can't let the boy be unhappy. D'you
think it's our fault? If we'd had children we'd have known what to do."

Mr. Carey looked at her in perplexity. He felt extraordinarily helpless.

"He can't be crying because I gave him the collect to learn. It's not more
than ten lines."

"Don't you think I might take him some picture books to look at, William?
There are some of the Holy Land. There couldn't be anything wrong in
that."

"Very well, I don't mind."

Mrs. Carey went into the study. To collect books was Mr. Carey's only
passion, and he never went into Tercanbury without spending an hour or two
in the second-hand shop; he always brought back four or five musty
volumes. He never read them, for he had long lost the habit of reading,
but he liked to turn the pages, look at the illustrations if they were
illustrated, and mend the bindings. He welcomed wet days because on them
he could stay at home without pangs of conscience and spend the afternoon
with white of egg and a glue-pot, patching up the Russia leather of some
battered quarto. He had many volumes of old travels, with steel
engravings, and Mrs. Carey quickly found two which described Palestine.
She coughed elaborately at the door so that Philip should have time to
compose himself, she felt that he would be humiliated if she came upon him
in the midst of his tears, then she rattled the door handle. When she went
in Philip was poring over the prayer-book, hiding his eyes with his hands
so that she might not see he had been crying.

"Do you know the collect yet?" she said.

He did not answer for a moment, and she felt that he did not trust his
voice. She was oddly embarrassed.

"I can't learn it by heart," he said at last, with a gasp.

"Oh, well, never mind," she said. "You needn't. I've got some picture
books for you to look at. Come and sit on my lap, and we'll look at them
together."

Philip slipped off his chair and limped over to her. He looked down so
that she should not see his eyes. She put her arms round him.

"Look," she said, "that's the place where our blessed Lord was born."

She showed him an Eastern town with flat roofs and cupolas and minarets.
In the foreground was a group of palm-trees, and under them were resting
two Arabs and some camels. Philip passed his hand over the picture as if
he wanted to feel the houses and the loose habiliments of the nomads.

"Read what it says," he asked.

Mrs. Carey in her even voice read the opposite page. It was a romantic
narrative of some Eastern traveller of the thirties, pompous maybe, but
fragrant with the emotion with which the East came to the generation that
followed Byron and Chateaubriand. In a moment or two Philip interrupted
her.

"I want to see another picture."

When Mary Ann came in and Mrs. Carey rose to help her lay the cloth.
Philip took the book in his hands and hurried through the illustrations.
It was with difficulty that his aunt induced him to put the book down for
tea. He had forgotten his horrible struggle to get the collect by heart;
he had forgotten his tears. Next day it was raining, and he asked for the
book again. Mrs. Carey gave it him joyfully. Talking over his future with
her husband she had found that both desired him to take orders, and this
eagerness for the book which described places hallowed by the presence of
Jesus seemed a good sign. It looked as though the boy's mind addressed
itself naturally to holy things. But in a day or two he asked for more
books. Mr. Carey took him into his study, showed him the shelf in which he
kept illustrated works, and chose for him one that dealt with Rome. Philip
took it greedily. The pictures led him to a new amusement. He began to
read the page before and the page after each engraving to find out what it
was about, and soon he lost all interest in his toys.

Then, when no one was near, he took out books for himself; and perhaps
because the first impression on his mind was made by an Eastern town, he
found his chief amusement in those which described the Levant. His heart
beat with excitement at the pictures of mosques and rich palaces; but
there was one, in a book on Constantinople, which peculiarly stirred his
imagination. It was called the Hall of the Thousand Columns. It was a
Byzantine cistern, which the popular fancy had endowed with fantastic
vastness; and the legend which he read told that a boat was always moored
at the entrance to tempt the unwary, but no traveller venturing into the
darkness had ever been seen again. And Philip wondered whether the boat
went on for ever through one pillared alley after another or came at last
to some strange mansion.

One day a good fortune befell him, for he hit upon Lane's translation of
The Thousand Nights and a Night. He was captured first by the
illustrations, and then he began to read, to start with, the stories that
dealt with magic, and then the others; and those he liked he read again
and again. He could think of nothing else. He forgot the life about him.
He had to be called two or three times before he would come to his dinner.
Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of
reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge
from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating
for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day
a source of bitter disappointment. Presently he began to read other
things. His brain was precocious. His uncle and aunt, seeing that he
occupied himself and neither worried nor made a noise, ceased to trouble
themselves about him. Mr. Carey had so many books that he did not know
them, and as he read little he forgot the odd lots he had bought at one
time and another because they were cheap. Haphazard among the sermons and
homilies, the travels, the lives of the Saints, the Fathers, the histories
of the church, were old-fashioned novels; and these Philip at last
discovered. He chose them by their titles, and the first he read was The
Lancashire Witches, and then he read The Admirable Crichton, and then
many more. Whenever he started a book with two solitary travellers riding
along the brink of a desperate ravine he knew he was safe.

The summer was come now, and the gardener, an old sailor, made him a
hammock and fixed it up for him in the branches of a weeping willow. And
here for long hours he lay, hidden from anyone who might come to the
vicarage, reading, reading passionately. Time passed and it was July;
August came: on Sundays the church was crowded with strangers, and the
collection at the offertory often amounted to two pounds. Neither the
Vicar nor Mrs. Carey went out of the garden much during this period; for
they disliked strange faces, and they looked upon the visitors from London
with aversion. The house opposite was taken for six weeks by a gentleman
who had two little boys, and he sent in to ask if Philip would like to go
and play with them; but Mrs. Carey returned a polite refusal. She was
afraid that Philip would be corrupted by little boys from London. He was
going to be a clergyman, and it was necessary that he should be preserved
from contamination. She liked to see in him an infant Samuel.

X

The Careys made up their minds to send Philip to King's School at
Tercanbury. The neighbouring clergy sent their sons there. It was united
by long tradition to the Cathedral: its headmaster was an honorary Canon,
and a past headmaster was the Archdeacon. Boys were encouraged there to
aspire to Holy Orders, and the education was such as might prepare an
honest lad to spend his life in God's service. A preparatory school was
attached to it, and to this it was arranged that Philip should go. Mr.
Carey took him into Tercanbury one Thursday afternoon towards the end of
September. All day Philip had been excited and rather frightened. He knew
little of school life but what he had read in the stories of The Boy's
Own Paper. He had also read Eric, or Little by Little.

When they got out of the train at Tercanbury, Philip felt sick with
apprehension, and during the drive in to the town sat pale and silent. The
high brick wall in front of the school gave it the look of a prison. There
was a little door in it, which opened on their ringing; and a clumsy,
untidy man came out and fetched Philip's tin trunk and his play-box. They
were shown into the drawing-room; it was filled with massive, ugly
furniture, and the chairs of the suite were placed round the walls with a
forbidding rigidity. They waited for the headmaster.

"What's Mr. Watson like?" asked Philip, after a while.

"You'll see for yourself."

There was another pause. Mr. Carey wondered why the headmaster did not
come. Presently Philip made an effort and spoke again.

"Tell him I've got a club-foot," he said.

Before Mr. Carey could speak the door burst open and Mr. Watson swept into
the room. To Philip he seemed gigantic. He was a man of over six feet
high, and broad, with enormous hands and a great red beard; he talked
loudly in a jovial manner; but his aggressive cheerfulness struck terror
in Philip's heart. He shook hands with Mr. Carey, and then took Philip's
small hand in his.

"Well, young fellow, are you glad to come to school?" he shouted.

Philip reddened and found no word to answer.

"How old are you?"

"Nine," said Philip.

"You must say sir," said his uncle.

"I expect you've got a good lot to learn," the headmaster bellowed
cheerily.

To give the boy confidence he began to tickle him with rough fingers.
Philip, feeling shy and uncomfortable, squirmed under his touch.

"I've put him in the small dormitory for the present.... You'll like that,
won't you?" he added to Philip. "Only eight of you in there. You won't
feel so strange."

Then the door opened, and Mrs. Watson came in. She was a dark woman with
black hair, neatly parted in the middle. She had curiously thick lips and
a small round nose. Her eyes were large and black. There was a singular
coldness in her appearance. She seldom spoke and smiled more seldom still.
Her husband introduced Mr. Carey to her, and then gave Philip a friendly
push towards her.

"This is a new boy, Helen, His name's Carey."

Without a word she shook hands with Philip and then sat down, not
speaking, while the headmaster asked Mr. Carey how much Philip knew and
what books he had been working with. The Vicar of Blackstable was a little
embarrassed by Mr. Watson's boisterous heartiness, and in a moment or two
got up.

"I think I'd better leave Philip with you now."

"That's all right," said Mr. Watson. "He'll be safe with me. He'll get on
like a house on fire. Won't you, young fellow?"

Without waiting for an answer from Philip the big man burst into a great
bellow of laughter. Mr. Carey kissed Philip on the forehead and went away.

"Come along, young fellow," shouted Mr. Watson. "I'll show you the
school-room."

He swept out of the drawing-room with giant strides, and Philip hurriedly
limped behind him. He was taken into a long, bare room with two tables
that ran along its whole length; on each side of them were wooden forms.

"Nobody much here yet," said Mr. Watson. "I'll just show you the
playground, and then I'll leave you to shift for yourself."

Mr. Watson led the way. Philip found himself in a large play-ground with
high brick walls on three sides of it. On the fourth side was an iron
railing through which you saw a vast lawn and beyond this some of the
buildings of King's School. One small boy was wandering disconsolately,
kicking up the gravel as he walked.

"Hulloa, Venning," shouted Mr. Watson. "When did you turn up?"

The small boy came forward and shook hands.

"Here's a new boy. He's older and bigger than you, so don't you bully
him."

The headmaster glared amicably at the two children, filling them with fear
by the roar of his voice, and then with a guffaw left them.

"What's your name?"

"Carey."

"What's your father?"

"He's dead."

"Oh! Does your mother wash?"

"My mother's dead, too."

Philip thought this answer would cause the boy a certain awkwardness, but
Venning was not to be turned from his facetiousness for so little.

"Well, did she wash?" he went on.

"Yes," said Philip indignantly.

"She was a washerwoman then?"

"No, she wasn't."

"Then she didn't wash."

The little boy crowed with delight at the success of his dialectic. Then
he caught sight of Philip's feet.

"What's the matter with your foot?"

Philip instinctively tried to withdraw it from sight. He hid it behind the
one which was whole.

"I've got a club-foot," he answered.

"How did you get it?"

"I've always had it."

"Let's have a look."

"No."

"Don't then."

The little boy accompanied the words with a sharp kick on Philip's shin,
which Philip did not expect and thus could not guard against. The pain was
so great that it made him gasp, but greater than the pain was the
surprise. He did not know why Venning kicked him. He had not the presence
of mind to give him a black eye. Besides, the boy was smaller than he, and
he had read in The Boy's Own Paper that it was a mean thing to hit
anyone smaller than yourself. While Philip was nursing his shin a third
boy appeared, and his tormentor left him. In a little while he noticed
that the pair were talking about him, and he felt they were looking at his
feet. He grew hot and uncomfortable.

But others arrived, a dozen together, and then more, and they began to
talk about their doings during the holidays, where they had been, and what
wonderful cricket they had played. A few new boys appeared, and with these
presently Philip found himself talking. He was shy and nervous. He was
anxious to make himself pleasant, but he could not think of anything to
say. He was asked a great many questions and answered them all quite
willingly. One boy asked him whether he could play cricket.

"No," answered Philip. "I've got a club-foot."

The boy looked down quickly and reddened. Philip saw that he felt he had
asked an unseemly question. He was too shy to apologise and looked at
Philip awkwardly.

XI

Next morning when the clanging of a bell awoke Philip he looked round his
cubicle in astonishment. Then a voice sang out, and he remembered where he
was.

"Are you awake, Singer?"

The partitions of the cubicle were of polished pitch-pine, and there was
a green curtain in front. In those days there was little thought of
ventilation, and the windows were closed except when the dormitory was
aired in the morning.

Philip got up and knelt down to say his prayers. It was a cold morning,
and he shivered a little; but he had been taught by his uncle that his
prayers were more acceptable to God if he said them in his nightshirt than
if he waited till he was dressed. This did not surprise him, for he was
beginning to realise that he was the creature of a God who appreciated the
discomfort of his worshippers. Then he washed. There were two baths for
the fifty boarders, and each boy had a bath once a week. The rest of his
washing was done in a small basin on a wash-stand, which with the bed and
a chair, made up the furniture of each cubicle. The boys chatted gaily
while they dressed. Philip was all ears. Then another bell sounded, and
they ran downstairs. They took their seats on the forms on each side of
the two long tables in the school-room; and Mr. Watson, followed by his
wife and the servants, came in and sat down. Mr. Watson read prayers in an
impressive manner, and the supplications thundered out in his loud voice
as though they were threats personally addressed to each boy. Philip
listened with anxiety. Then Mr. Watson read a chapter from the Bible, and
the servants trooped out. In a moment the untidy youth brought in two
large pots of tea and on a second journey immense dishes of bread and
butter.

Philip had a squeamish appetite, and the thick slabs of poor butter on the
bread turned his stomach, but he saw other boys scraping it off and
followed their example. They all had potted meats and such like, which
they had brought in their play-boxes; and some had 'extras,' eggs or
bacon, upon which Mr. Watson made a profit. When he had asked Mr. Carey
whether Philip was to have these, Mr. Carey replied that he did not think
boys should be spoilt. Mr. Watson quite agreed with him--he considered
nothing was better than bread and butter for growing lads--but some
parents, unduly pampering their offspring, insisted on it.

Philip noticed that 'extras' gave boys a certain consideration and made up
his mind, when he wrote to Aunt Louisa, to ask for them.

After breakfast the boys wandered out into the play-ground. Here the
day-boys were gradually assembling. They were sons of the local clergy, of
the officers at the Depot, and of such manufacturers or men of business as
the old town possessed. Presently a bell rang, and they all trooped into
school. This consisted of a large, long room at opposite ends of which two
under-masters conducted the second and third forms, and of a smaller one,
leading out of it, used by Mr. Watson, who taught the first form. To
attach the preparatory to the senior school these three classes were known
officially, on speech days and in reports, as upper, middle, and lower
second. Philip was put in the last. The master, a red-faced man with a
pleasant voice, was called Rice; he had a jolly manner with boys, and the
time passed quickly. Philip was surprised when it was a quarter to eleven
and they were let out for ten minutes' rest.

The whole school rushed noisily into the play-ground. The new boys were
told to go into the middle, while the others stationed themselves along
opposite walls. They began to play Pig in the Middle. The old boys ran
from wall to wall while the new boys tried to catch them: when one was
seized and the mystic words said--one, two, three, and a pig for me--he
became a prisoner and, turning sides, helped to catch those who were still
free. Philip saw a boy running past and tried to catch him, but his limp
gave him no chance; and the runners, taking their opportunity, made
straight for the ground he covered. Then one of them had the brilliant
idea of imitating Philip's clumsy run. Other boys saw it and began to
laugh; then they all copied the first; and they ran round Philip, limping
grotesquely, screaming in their treble voices with shrill laughter. They
lost their heads with the delight of their new amusement, and choked with
helpless merriment. One of them tripped Philip up and he fell, heavily as
he always fell, and cut his knee. They laughed all the louder when he got
up. A boy pushed him from behind, and he would have fallen again if
another had not caught him. The game was forgotten in the entertainment of
Philip's deformity. One of them invented an odd, rolling limp that struck
the rest as supremely ridiculous, and several of the boys lay down on the
ground and rolled about in laughter: Philip was completely scared. He
could not make out why they were laughing at him. His heart beat so that
he could hardly breathe, and he was more frightened than he had ever been
in his life. He stood still stupidly while the boys ran round him,
mimicking and laughing; they shouted to him to try and catch them; but he
did not move. He did not want them to see him run any more. He was using
all his strength to prevent himself from crying.

Suddenly the bell rang, and they all trooped back to school. Philip's knee
was bleeding, and he was dusty and dishevelled. For some minutes Mr. Rice
could not control his form. They were excited still by the strange
novelty, and Philip saw one or two of them furtively looking down at his
feet. He tucked them under the bench.

In the afternoon they went up to play football, but Mr. Watson stopped
Philip on the way out after dinner.

"I suppose you can't play football, Carey?" he asked him.

Philip blushed self-consciously.

"No, sir."

"Very well. You'd better go up to the field. You can walk as far as that,
can't you? "

Philip had no idea where the field was, but he answered all the same.

"Yes, sir."

The boys went in charge of Mr. Rice, who glanced at Philip and seeing he
had not changed, asked why he was not going to play.

"Mr. Watson said I needn't, sir," said Philip.

"Why?"

There were boys all round him, looking at him curiously, and a feeling of
shame came over Philip. He looked down without answering. Others gave the
reply.

"He's got a club-foot, sir."

"Oh, I see."

Mr. Rice was quite young; he had only taken his degree a year before; and
he was suddenly embarrassed. His instinct was to beg the boy's pardon, but
he was too shy to do so. He made his voice gruff and loud.

"Now then, you boys, what are you waiting about for? Get on with you."

Some of them had already started and those that were left now set off, in
groups of two or three.

"You'd better come along with me, Carey," said the master "You don't know
the way, do you?"

Philip guessed the kindness, and a sob came to his throat.

"I can't go very fast, sir."

"Then I'll go very slow," said the master, with a smile.

Philip's heart went out to the red-faced, commonplace young man who said
a gentle word to him. He suddenly felt less unhappy.

But at night when they went up to bed and were undressing, the boy who was
called Singer came out of his cubicle and put his head in Philip's.

"I say, let's look at your foot," he said.

"No," answered Philip.

He jumped into bed quickly.

"Don't say no to me," said Singer. "Come on, Mason."

The boy in the next cubicle was looking round the corner, and at the words
he slipped in. They made for Philip and tried to tear the bed-clothes off
him, but he held them tightly.

"Why can't you leave me alone?" he cried.

Singer seized a brush and with the back of it beat Philip's hands clenched
on the blanket. Philip cried out.

"Why don't you show us your foot quietly?"

"I won't."

In desperation Philip clenched his fist and hit the boy who tormented him,
but he was at a disadvantage, and the boy seized his arm. He began to turn
it.

"Oh, don't, don't," said Philip. "You'll break my arm."

"Stop still then and put out your foot."

Philip gave a sob and a gasp. The boy gave the arm another wrench. The
pain was unendurable.

"All right. I'll do it," said Philip.

He put out his foot. Singer still kept his hand on Philip's wrist. He
looked curiously at the deformity.

"Isn't it beastly?" said Mason.

Another came in and looked too.

"Ugh," he said, in disgust.

"My word, it is rum," said Singer, making a face. "Is it hard?"

He touched it with the tip of his forefinger, cautiously, as though it
were something that had a life of its own. Suddenly they heard Mr.
Watson's heavy tread on the stairs. They threw the clothes back on Philip
and dashed like rabbits into their cubicles. Mr. Watson came into the
dormitory. Raising himself on tiptoe he could see over the rod that bore
the green curtain, and he looked into two or three of the cubicles. The
little boys were safely in bed. He put out the light and went out.

Singer called out to Philip, but he did not answer. He had got his teeth
in the pillow so that his sobbing should be inaudible. He was not crying
for the pain they had caused him, nor for the humiliation he had suffered
when they looked at his foot, but with rage at himself because, unable to
stand the torture, he had put out his foot of his own accord.

And then he felt the misery of his life. It seemed to his childish mind
that this unhappiness must go on for ever. For no particular reason he
remembered that cold morning when Emma had taken him out of bed and put
him beside his mother. He had not thought of it once since it happened,
but now he seemed to feel the warmth of his mother's body against his and
her arms around him. Suddenly it seemed to him that his life was a dream,
his mother's death, and the life at the vicarage, and these two wretched
days at school, and he would awake in the morning and be back again at
home. His tears dried as he thought of it. He was too unhappy, it must be
nothing but a dream, and his mother was alive, and Emma would come up
presently and go to bed. He fell asleep.

But when he awoke next morning it was to the clanging of a bell, and the
first thing his eyes saw was the green curtain of his cubicle.

XII

As time went on Philip's deformity ceased to interest. It was accepted
like one boy's red hair and another's unreasonable corpulence. But
meanwhile he had grown horribly sensitive. He never ran if he could help
it, because he knew it made his limp more conspicuous, and he adopted a
peculiar walk. He stood still as much as he could, with his club-foot
behind the other, so that it should not attract notice, and he was
constantly on the look out for any reference to it. Because he could not
join in the games which other boys played, their life remained strange to
him; he only interested himself from the outside in their doings; and it
seemed to him that there was a barrier between them and him. Sometimes
they seemed to think that it was his fault if he could not play football,
and he was unable to make them understand. He was left a good deal to
himself. He had been inclined to talkativeness, but gradually he became
silent. He began to think of the difference between himself and others.

The biggest boy in his dormitory, Singer, took a dislike to him, and
Philip, small for his age, had to put up with a good deal of hard
treatment. About half-way through the term a mania ran through the school
for a game called Nibs. It was a game for two, played on a table or a form
with steel pens. You had to push your nib with the finger-nail so as to
get the point of it over your opponent's, while he manoeuvred to prevent
this and to get the point of his nib over the back of yours; when this
result was achieved you breathed on the ball of your thumb, pressed it
hard on the two nibs, and if you were able then to lift them without
dropping either, both nibs became yours. Soon nothing was seen but boys
playing this game, and the more skilful acquired vast stores of nibs. But
in a little while Mr. Watson made up his mind that it was a form of
gambling, forbade the game, and confiscated all the nibs in the boys'
possession. Philip had been very adroit, and it was with a heavy heart
that he gave up his winning; but his fingers itched to play still, and a
few days later, on his way to the football field, he went into a shop and
bought a pennyworth of J pens. He carried them loose in his pocket and
enjoyed feeling them. Presently Singer found out that he had them. Singer
had given up his nibs too, but he had kept back a very large one, called
a Jumbo, which was almost unconquerable, and he could not resist the
opportunity of getting Philip's Js out of him. Though Philip knew that he
was at a disadvantage with his small nibs, he had an adventurous
disposition and was willing to take the risk; besides, he was aware that
Singer would not allow him to refuse. He had not played for a week and sat
down to the game now with a thrill of excitement. He lost two of his small
nibs quickly, and Singer was jubilant, but the third time by some chance
the Jumbo slipped round and Philip was able to push his J across it. He
crowed with triumph. At that moment Mr. Watson came in.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

He looked from Singer to Philip, but neither answered.

"Don't you know that I've forbidden you to play that idiotic game?"

Philip's heart beat fast. He knew what was coming and was dreadfully
frightened, but in his fright there was a certain exultation. He had never
been swished. Of course it would hurt, but it was something to boast about
afterwards.

"Come into my study."

The headmaster turned, and they followed him side by side Singer whispered
to Philip:

"We're in for it."

Mr. Watson pointed to Singer.

"Bend over," he said.

Philip, very white, saw the boy quiver at each stroke, and after the third
he heard him cry out. Three more followed.

"That'll do. Get up."

Singer stood up. The tears were streaming down his face. Philip stepped
forward. Mr. Watson looked at him for a moment.

"I'm not going to cane you. You're a new boy. And I can't hit a cripple.
Go away, both of you, and don't be naughty again."

When they got back into the school-room a group of boys, who had learned
in some mysterious way what was happening, were waiting for them. They set
upon Singer at once with eager questions. Singer faced them, his face red
with the pain and marks of tears still on his cheeks. He pointed with his
head at Philip, who was standing a little behind him.

"He got off because he's a cripple," he said angrily.

Philip stood silent and flushed. He felt that they looked at him with
contempt.

"How many did you get?" one boy asked Singer.

But he did not answer. He was angry because he had been hurt

"Don't ask me to play Nibs with you again," he said to Philip. "It's jolly
nice for you. You don't risk anything."

"I didn't ask you."

"Didn't you!"

He quickly put out his foot and tripped Philip up. Philip was always
rather unsteady on his feet, and he fell heavily to the ground.

"Cripple," said Singer.

For the rest of the term he tormented Philip cruelly, and, though Philip
tried to keep out of his way, the school was so small that it was
impossible; he tried being friendly and jolly with him; he abased himself,
so far as to buy him a knife; but though Singer took the knife he was not
placated. Once or twice, driven beyond endurance, he hit and kicked the
bigger boy, but Singer was so much stronger that Philip was helpless, and
he was always forced after more or less torture to beg his pardon. It was
that which rankled with Philip: he could not bear the humiliation of
apologies, which were wrung from him by pain greater than he could bear.
And what made it worse was that there seemed no end to his wretchedness;
Singer was only eleven and would not go to the upper school till he was
thirteen. Philip realised that he must live two years with a tormentor
from whom there was no escape. He was only happy while he was working and
when he got into bed. And often there recurred to him then that queer
feeling that his life with all its misery was nothing but a dream, and
that he would awake in the morning in his own little bed in London.

XIII

Two years passed, and Philip was nearly twelve. He was in the first form,
within two or three places of the top, and after Christmas when several
boys would be leaving for the senior school he would be head boy. He had
already quite a collection of prizes, worthless books on bad paper, but in
gorgeous bindings decorated with the arms of the school: his position had
freed him from bullying, and he was not unhappy. His fellows forgave him
his success because of his deformity.

"After all, it's jolly easy for him to get prizes," they said, "there's
nothing he CAN do but swat."

He had lost his early terror of Mr. Watson. He had grown used to the loud
voice, and when the headmaster's heavy hand was laid on his shoulder
Philip discerned vaguely the intention of a caress. He had the good memory
which is more useful for scholastic achievements than mental power, and he
knew Mr. Watson expected him to leave the preparatory school with a
scholarship.

But he had grown very self-conscious. The new-born child does not realise
that his body is more a part of himself than surrounding objects, and will
play with his toes without any feeling that they belong to him more than
the rattle by his side; and it is only by degrees, through pain, that he
understands the fact of the body. And experiences of the same kind are
necessary for the individual to become conscious of himself; but here
there is the difference that, although everyone becomes equally conscious
of his body as a separate and complete organism, everyone does not become
equally conscious of himself as a complete and separate personality. The
feeling of apartness from others comes to most with puberty, but it is not
always developed to such a degree as to make the difference between the
individual and his fellows noticeable to the individual. It is such as he,
as little conscious of himself as the bee in a hive, who are the lucky in
life, for they have the best chance of happiness: their activities are
shared by all, and their pleasures are only pleasures because they are
enjoyed in common; you will see them on Whit-Monday dancing on Hampstead
Heath, shouting at a football match, or from club windows in Pall Mall
cheering a royal procession. It is because of them that man has been
called a social animal.

Philip passed from the innocence of childhood to bitter consciousness of
himself by the ridicule which his club-foot had excited. The circumstances
of his case were so peculiar that he could not apply to them the
ready-made rules which acted well enough in ordinary affairs, and he was
forced to think for himself. The many books he had read filled his mind
with ideas which, because he only half understood them, gave more scope to
his imagination. Beneath his painful shyness something was growing up
within him, and obscurely he realised his personality. But at times it
gave him odd surprises; he did things, he knew not why, and afterwards
when he thought of them found himself all at sea.

There was a boy called Luard between whom and Philip a friendship had
arisen, and one day, when they were playing together in the school-room,
Luard began to perform some trick with an ebony pen-holder of Philip's.

"Don't play the giddy ox," said Philip. "You'll only break it."

"I shan't."

But no sooner were the words out of the boy's mouth than the pen-holder
snapped in two. Luard looked at Philip with dismay.

"Oh, I say, I'm awfully sorry."

The tears rolled down Philip's cheeks, but he did not answer.

"I say, what's the matter?" said Luard, with surprise. "I'll get you
another one exactly the same."

"It's not about the pen-holder I care," said Philip, in a trembling voice,
"only it was given me by my mater, just before she died."

"I say, I'm awfully sorry, Carey."

"It doesn't matter. It wasn't your fault."

Philip took the two pieces of the pen-holder and looked at them. He tried
to restrain his sobs. He felt utterly miserable. And yet he could not tell
why, for he knew quite well that he had bought the pen-holder during his
last holidays at Blackstable for one and twopence. He did not know in the
least what had made him invent that pathetic story, but he was quite as
unhappy as though it had been true. The pious atmosphere of the vicarage
and the religious tone of the school had made Philip's conscience very
sensitive; he absorbed insensibly the feeling about him that the Tempter
was ever on the watch to gain his immortal soul; and though he was not
more truthful than most boys he never told a lie without suffering from
remorse. When he thought over this incident he was very much distressed,
and made up his mind that he must go to Luard and tell him that the story
was an invention. Though he dreaded humiliation more than anything in the
world, he hugged himself for two or three days at the thought of the
agonising joy of humiliating himself to the Glory of God. But he never got
any further. He satisfied his conscience by the more comfortable method of
expressing his repentance only to the Almighty. But he could not
understand why he should have been so genuinely affected by the story he
was making up. The tears that flowed down his grubby cheeks were real
tears. Then by some accident of association there occurred to him that
scene when Emma had told him of his mother's death, and, though he could
not speak for crying, he had insisted on going in to say good-bye to the
Misses Watkin so that they might see his grief and pity him.

XIV

Then a wave of religiosity passed through the school. Bad language was no
longer heard, and the little nastinesses of small boys were looked upon
with hostility; the bigger boys, like the lords temporal of the Middle
Ages, used the strength of their arms to persuade those weaker than
themselves to virtuous courses.

Philip, his restless mind avid for new things, became very devout. He
heard soon that it was possible to join a Bible League, and wrote to
London for particulars. These consisted in a form to be filled up with the
applicant's name, age, and school; a solemn declaration to be signed that
he would read a set portion of Holy Scripture every night for a year; and
a request for half a crown; this, it was explained, was demanded partly to
prove the earnestness of the applicant's desire to become a member of the
League, and partly to cover clerical expenses. Philip duly sent the papers
and the money, and in return received a calendar worth about a penny, on
which was set down the appointed passage to be read each day, and a sheet
of paper on one side of which was a picture of the Good Shepherd and a
lamb, and on the other, decoratively framed in red lines, a short prayer
which had to be said before beginning to read.

Every evening he undressed as quickly as possible in order to have time
for his task before the gas was put out. He read industriously, as he read
always, without criticism, stories of cruelty, deceit, ingratitude,
dishonesty, and low cunning. Actions which would have excited his horror
in the life about him, in the reading passed through his mind without
comment, because they were committed under the direct inspiration of God.
The method of the League was to alternate a book of the Old Testament with
a book of the New, and one night Philip came across these words of Jesus
Christ:

If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done
to the fig-tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou
removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.

And all this, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall
receive.

They made no particular impression on him, but it happened that two or
three days later, being Sunday, the Canon in residence chose them for the
text of his sermon. Even if Philip had wanted to hear this it would have
been impossible, for the boys of King's School sit in the choir, and the
pulpit stands at the corner of the transept so that the preacher's back is
almost turned to them. The distance also is so great that it needs a man
with a fine voice and a knowledge of elocution to make himself heard in
the choir; and according to long usage the Canons of Tercanbury are chosen
for their learning rather than for any qualities which might be of use in
a cathedral church. But the words of the text, perhaps because he had read
them so short a while before, came clearly enough to Philip's ears, and
they seemed on a sudden to have a personal application. He thought about
them through most of the sermon, and that night, on getting into bed, he
turned over the pages of the Gospel and found once more the passage.
Though he believed implicitly everything he saw in print, he had learned
already that in the Bible things that said one thing quite clearly often
mysteriously meant another. There was no one he liked to ask at school, so
he kept the question he had in mind till the Christmas holidays, and then
one day he made an opportunity. It was after supper and prayers were just
finished. Mrs. Carey was counting the eggs that Mary Ann had brought in as
usual and writing on each one the date. Philip stood at the table and
pretended to turn listlessly the pages of the Bible.

"I say, Uncle William, this passage here, does it really mean that?"

He put his finger against it as though he had come across it accidentally.

Mr. Carey looked up over his spectacles. He was holding The Blackstable
Times in front of the fire. It had come in that evening damp from the
press, and the Vicar always aired it for ten minutes before he began to
read.

"What passage is that?" he asked.

"Why, this about if you have faith you can remove mountains."

"If it says so in the Bible it is so, Philip," said Mrs. Carey gently,
taking up the plate-basket.

Philip looked at his uncle for an answer.

"It's a matter of faith."

"D'you mean to say that if you really believed you could move mountains
you could?"

"By the grace of God," said the Vicar.

"Now, say good-night to your uncle, Philip," said Aunt Louisa. "You're not
wanting to move a mountain tonight, are you?"

Philip allowed himself to be kissed on the forehead by his uncle and
preceded Mrs. Carey upstairs. He had got the information he wanted. His
little room was icy, and he shivered when he put on his nightshirt. But he
always felt that his prayers were more pleasing to God when he said them
under conditions of discomfort. The coldness of his hands and feet were an
offering to the Almighty. And tonight he sank on his knees; buried his
face in his hands, and prayed to God with all his might that He would make
his club-foot whole. It was a very small thing beside the moving of
mountains. He knew that God could do it if He wished, and his own faith
was complete. Next morning, finishing his prayers with the same request,
he fixed a date for the miracle.

"Oh, God, in Thy loving mercy and goodness, if it be Thy will, please make
my foot all right on the night before I go back to school."

He was glad to get his petition into a formula, and he repeated it later
in the dining-room during the short pause which the Vicar always made
after prayers, before he rose from his knees. He said it again in the
evening and again, shivering in his nightshirt, before he got into bed.
And he believed. For once he looked forward with eagerness to the end of
the holidays. He laughed to himself as he thought of his uncle's
astonishment when he ran down the stairs three at a time; and after
breakfast he and Aunt Louisa would have to hurry out and buy a new pair of
boots. At school they would be astounded.

"Hulloa, Carey, what have you done with your foot?"

"Oh, it's all right now," he would answer casually, as though it were the
most natural thing in the world.

He would be able to play football. His heart leaped as he saw himself
running, running, faster than any of the other boys. At the end of the
Easter term there were the sports, and he would be able to go in for the
races; he rather fancied himself over the hurdles. It would be splendid to
be like everyone else, not to be stared at curiously by new boys who did
not know about his deformity, nor at the baths in summer to need
incredible precautions, while he was undressing, before he could hide his
foot in the water.

He prayed with all the power of his soul. No doubts assailed him. He was
confident in the word of God. And the night before he was to go back to
school he went up to bed tremulous with excitement. There was snow on the
ground, and Aunt Louisa had allowed herself the unaccustomed luxury of a
fire in her bed-room; but in Philip's little room it was so cold that his
fingers were numb, and he had great difficulty in undoing his collar. His
teeth chattered. The idea came to him that he must do something more than
usual to attract the attention of God, and he turned back the rug which
was in front of his bed so that he could kneel on the bare boards; and
then it struck him that his nightshirt was a softness that might displease
his Maker, so he took it off and said his prayers naked. When he got into
bed he was so cold that for some time he could not sleep, but when he did,
it was so soundly that Mary Ann had to shake him when she brought in his
hot water next morning. She talked to him while she drew the curtains, but
he did not answer; he had remembered at once that this was the morning for
the miracle. His heart was filled with joy and gratitude. His first
instinct was to put down his hand and feel the foot which was whole now,
but to do this seemed to doubt the goodness of God. He knew that his foot
was well. But at last he made up his mind, and with the toes of his right
foot he just touched his left. Then he passed his hand over it.

He limped downstairs just as Mary Ann was going into the dining-room for
prayers, and then he sat down to breakfast.

"You're very quiet this morning, Philip," said Aunt Louisa presently.

"He's thinking of the good breakfast he'll have at school to-morrow," said
the Vicar.

When Philip answered, it was in a way that always irritated his uncle,
with something that had nothing to do with the matter in hand. He called
it a bad habit of wool-gathering.

"Supposing you'd asked God to do something," said Philip, "and really
believed it was going to happen, like moving a mountain, I mean, and you
had faith, and it didn't happen, what would it mean?"

"What a funny boy you are!" said Aunt Louisa. "You asked about moving
mountains two or three weeks ago."

"It would just mean that you hadn't got faith," answered Uncle William.

Philip accepted the explanation. If God had not cured him, it was because
he did not really believe. And yet he did not see how he could believe
more than he did. But perhaps he had not given God enough time. He had
only asked Him for nineteen days. In a day or two he began his prayer
again, and this time he fixed upon Easter. That was the day of His Son's
glorious resurrection, and God in His happiness might be mercifully
inclined. But now Philip added other means of attaining his desire: he
began to wish, when he saw a new moon or a dappled horse, and he looked
out for shooting stars; during exeat they had a chicken at the vicarage,
and he broke the lucky bone with Aunt Louisa and wished again, each time
that his foot might be made whole. He was appealing unconsciously to gods
older to his race than the God of Israel. And he bombarded the Almighty
with his prayer, at odd times of the day, whenever it occurred to him, in
identical words always, for it seemed to him important to make his request
in the same terms. But presently the feeling came to him that this time
also his faith would not be great enough. He could not resist the doubt
that assailed him. He made his own experience into a general rule.

"I suppose no one ever has faith enough," he said.

It was like the salt which his nurse used to tell him about: you could
catch any bird by putting salt on his tail; and once he had taken a little
bag of it into Kensington Gardens. But he could never get near enough to
put the salt on a bird's tail. Before Easter he had given up the struggle.
He felt a dull resentment against his uncle for taking him in. The text
which spoke of the moving of mountains was just one of those that said one
thing and meant another. He thought his uncle had been playing a practical
joke on him.

XV

The King's School at Tercanbury, to which Philip went when he was
thirteen, prided itself on its antiquity. It traced its origin to an abbey
school, founded before the Conquest, where the rudiments of learning were
taught by Augustine monks; and, like many another establishment of this
sort, on the destruction of the monasteries it had been reorganised by the
officers of King Henry VIII and thus acquired its name. Since then,
pursuing its modest course, it had given to the sons of the local gentry
and of the professional people of Kent an education sufficient to their
needs. One or two men of letters, beginning with a poet, than whom only
Shakespeare had a more splendid genius, and ending with a writer of prose
whose view of life has affected profoundly the generation of which Philip
was a member, had gone forth from its gates to achieve fame; it had
produced one or two eminent lawyers, but eminent lawyers are common, and
one or two soldiers of distinction; but during the three centuries since
its separation from the monastic order it had trained especially men of
the church, bishops, deans, canons, and above all country clergymen: there
were boys in the school whose fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers,
had been educated there and had all been rectors of parishes in the
diocese of Tercanbury; and they came to it with their minds made up
already to be ordained. But there were signs notwithstanding that even
there changes were coming; for a few, repeating what they had heard at
home, said that the Church was no longer what it used to be. It wasn't so
much the money; but the class of people who went in for it weren't the
same; and two or three boys knew curates whose fathers were tradesmen:
they'd rather go out to the Colonies (in those days the Colonies were
still the last hope of those who could get nothing to do in England) than
be a curate under some chap who wasn't a gentleman. At King's School, as
at Blackstable Vicarage, a tradesman was anyone who was not lucky enough
to own land (and here a fine distinction was made between the gentleman
farmer and the landowner), or did not follow one of the four professions
to which it was possible for a gentleman to belong. Among the day-boys, of
whom there were about a hundred and fifty, sons of the local gentry and of
the men stationed at the depot, those whose fathers were engaged in
business were made to feel the degradation of their state.

The masters had no patience with modern ideas of education, which they
read of sometimes in The Times or The Guardian, and hoped fervently
that King's School would remain true to its old traditions. The dead
languages were taught with such thoroughness that an old boy seldom
thought of Homer or Virgil in after life without a qualm of boredom; and
though in the common room at dinner one or two bolder spirits suggested
that mathematics were of increasing importance, the general feeling was
that they were a less noble study than the classics. Neither German nor
chemistry was taught, and French only by the form-masters; they could keep
order better than a foreigner, and, since they knew the grammar as well as
any Frenchman, it seemed unimportant that none of them could have got a
cup of coffee in the restaurant at Boulogne unless the waiter had known a
little English. Geography was taught chiefly by making boys draw maps, and
this was a favourite occupation, especially when the country dealt with
was mountainous: it was possible to waste a great deal of time in drawing
the Andes or the Apennines. The masters, graduates of Oxford or Cambridge,
were ordained and unmarried; if by chance they wished to marry they could
only do so by accepting one of the smaller livings at the disposal of the
Chapter; but for many years none of them had cared to leave the refined
society of Tercanbury, which owing to the cavalry depot had a martial as
well as an ecclesiastical tone, for the monotony of life in a country
rectory; and they were now all men of middle age.

The headmaster, on the other hand, was obliged to be married and he
conducted the school till age began to tell upon him. When he retired he
was rewarded with a much better living than any of the under-masters could
hope for, and an honorary Canonry.

But a year before Philip entered the school a great change had come over
it. It had been obvious for some time that Dr. Fleming, who had been
headmaster for the quarter of a century, was become too deaf to continue
his work to the greater glory of God; and when one of the livings on the
outskirts of the city fell vacant, with a stipend of six hundred a year,
the Chapter offered it to him in such a manner as to imply that they
thought it high time for him to retire. He could nurse his ailments
comfortably on such an income. Two or three curates who had hoped for
preferment told their wives it was scandalous to give a parish that needed
a young, strong, and energetic man to an old fellow who knew nothing of
parochial work, and had feathered his nest already; but the mutterings of
the unbeneficed clergy do not reach the ears of a cathedral Chapter. And
as for the parishioners they had nothing to say in the matter, and
therefore nobody asked for their opinion. The Wesleyans and the Baptists
both had chapels in the village.

When Dr. Fleming was thus disposed of it became necessary to find a
successor. It was contrary to the traditions of the school that one of the
lower-masters should be chosen. The common-room was unanimous in desiring
the election of Mr. Watson, headmaster of the preparatory school; he could
hardly be described as already a master of King's School, they had all
known him for twenty years, and there was no danger that he would make a
nuisance of himself. But the Chapter sprang a surprise on them. It chose
a man called Perkins. At first nobody knew who Perkins was, and the name
favourably impressed no one; but before the shock of it had passed away,
it was realised that Perkins was the son of Perkins the linendraper. Dr.
Fleming informed the masters just before dinner, and his manner showed his
consternation. Such of them as were dining in, ate their meal almost in
silence, and no reference was made to the matter till the servants had
left the room. Then they set to. The names of those present on this
occasion are unimportant, but they had been known to generations of
school-boys as Sighs, Tar, Winks, Squirts, and Pat.

They all knew Tom Perkins. The first thing about him was that he was not
a gentleman. They remembered him quite well. He was a small, dark boy,
with untidy black hair and large eyes. He looked like a gipsy. He had come
to the school as a day-boy, with the best scholarship on their endowment,
so that his education had cost him nothing. Of course he was brilliant. At
every Speech-Day he was loaded with prizes. He was their show-boy, and
they remembered now bitterly their fear that he would try to get some
scholarship at one of the larger public schools and so pass out of their
hands. Dr. Fleming had gone to the linendraper his father--they all
remembered the shop, Perkins and Cooper, in St. Catherine's Street--and
said he hoped Tom would remain with them till he went to Oxford. The
school was Perkins and Cooper's best customer, and Mr. Perkins was only
too glad to give the required assurance. Tom Perkins continued to triumph,
he was the finest classical scholar that Dr. Fleming remembered, and on
leaving the school took with him the most valuable scholarship they had to
offer. He got another at Magdalen and settled down to a brilliant career
at the University. The school magazine recorded the distinctions he
achieved year after year, and when he got his double first Dr. Fleming
himself wrote a few words of eulogy on the front page. It was with greater
satisfaction that they welcomed his success, since Perkins and Cooper had
fallen upon evil days: Cooper drank like a fish, and just before Tom
Perkins took his degree the linendrapers filed their petition in
bankruptcy.

In due course Tom Perkins took Holy Orders and entered upon the profession
for which he was so admirably suited. He had been an assistant master at
Wellington and then at Rugby.

But there was quite a difference between welcoming his success at other
schools and serving under his leadership in their own. Tar had frequently
given him lines, and Squirts had boxed his ears. They could not imagine
how the Chapter had made such a mistake. No one could be expected to
forget that he was the son of a bankrupt linendraper, and the alcoholism
of Cooper seemed to increase the disgrace. It was understood that the Dean
had supported his candidature with zeal, so the Dean would probably ask
him to dinner; but would the pleasant little dinners in the precincts ever
be the same when Tom Perkins sat at the table? And what about the depot?
He really could not expect officers and gentlemen to receive him as one of
themselves. It would do the school incalculable harm. Parents would be
dissatisfied, and no one could be surprised if there were wholesale
withdrawals. And then the indignity of calling him Mr. Perkins! The
masters thought by way of protest of sending in their resignations in a
body, but the uneasy fear that they would be accepted with equanimity
restrained them.

"The only thing is to prepare ourselves for changes," said Sighs, who had
conducted the fifth form for five and twenty years with unparalleled
incompetence.

And when they saw him they were not reassured. Dr. Fleming invited them to
meet him at luncheon. He was now a man of thirty-two, tall and lean, but
with the same wild and unkempt look they remembered on him as a boy. His
clothes, ill-made and shabby, were put on untidily. His hair was as black
and as long as ever, and he had plainly never learned to brush it; it fell
over his forehead with every gesture, and he had a quick movement of the
hand with which he pushed it back from his eyes. He had a black moustache
and a beard which came high up on his face almost to the cheek-bones, He
talked to the masters quite easily, as though he had parted from them a
week or two before; he was evidently delighted to see them. He seemed
unconscious of the strangeness of the position and appeared not to notice
any oddness in being addressed as Mr. Perkins.

When he bade them good-bye, one of the masters, for something to say,
remarked that he was allowing himself plenty of time to catch his train.

"I want to go round and have a look at the shop," he answered cheerfully.

There was a distinct embarrassment. They wondered that he could be so
tactless, and to make it worse Dr. Fleming had not heard what he said. His
wife shouted it in his ear.

"He wants to go round and look at his father's old shop."

Only Tom Perkins was unconscious of the humiliation which the whole party
felt. He turned to Mrs. Fleming.

"Who's got it now, d'you know?"

She could hardly answer. She was very angry.

"It's still a linendraper's," she said bitterly. "Grove is the name. We
don't deal there any more."

"I wonder if he'd let me go over the house."

"I expect he would if you explain who you are."

It was not till the end of dinner that evening that any reference was made
in the common-room to the subject that was in all their minds. Then it was
Sighs who asked:

"Well, what did you think of our new head?" They thought of the
conversation at luncheon. It was hardly a conversation; it was a
monologue. Perkins had talked incessantly. He talked very quickly, with a
flow of easy words and in a deep, resonant voice. He had a short, odd
little laugh which showed his white teeth. They had followed him with
difficulty, for his mind darted from subject to subject with a connection
they did not always catch. He talked of pedagogics, and this was natural
enough; but he had much to say of modern theories in Germany which they
had never heard of and received with misgiving. He talked of the classics,
but he had been to Greece, and he discoursed of archaeology; he had once
spent a winter digging; they could not see how that helped a man to teach
boys to pass examinations, He talked of politics. It sounded odd to them
to hear him compare Lord Beaconsfield with Alcibiades. He talked of Mr.
Gladstone and Home Rule. They realised that he was a Liberal. Their hearts
sank. He talked of German philosophy and of French fiction. They could not
think a man profound whose interests were so diverse.

It was Winks who summed up the general impression and put it into a form
they all felt conclusively damning. Winks was the master of the upper
third, a weak-kneed man with drooping eye-lids, He was too tall for his
strength, and his movements were slow and languid. He gave an impression
of lassitude, and his nickname was eminently appropriate.

"He's very enthusiastic," said Winks.

Enthusiasm was ill-bred. Enthusiasm was ungentlemanly. They thought of the
Salvation Army with its braying trumpets and its drums. Enthusiasm meant
change. They had goose-flesh when they thought of all the pleasant old
habits which stood in imminent danger. They hardly dared to look forward
to the future.

"He looks more of a gipsy than ever," said one, after a pause.

"I wonder if the Dean and Chapter knew that he was a Radical when they
elected him," another observed bitterly.

But conversation halted. They were too much disturbed for words.

When Tar and Sighs were walking together to the Chapter House on
Speech-Day a week later, Tar, who had a bitter tongue, remarked to his
colleague:

"Well, we've seen a good many Speech-Days here, haven't we? I wonder if we
shall see another."

Sighs was more melancholy even than usual.

"If anything worth having comes along in the way of a living I don't mind
when I retire."

XVI

A year passed, and when Philip came to the school the old masters were all
in their places; but a good many changes had taken place notwithstanding
their stubborn resistance, none the less formidable because it was
concealed under an apparent desire to fall in with the new head's ideas.
Though the form-masters still taught French to the lower school, another
master had come, with a degree of doctor of philology from the University
of Heidelberg and a record of three years spent in a French lycee, to
teach French to the upper forms and German to anyone who cared to take it
up instead of Greek. Another master was engaged to teach mathematics more
systematically than had been found necessary hitherto. Neither of these
was ordained. This was a real revolution, and when the pair arrived the
older masters received them with distrust. A laboratory had been fitted
up, army classes were instituted; they all said the character of the
school was changing. And heaven only knew what further projects Mr.
Perkins turned in that untidy head of his. The school was small as public
schools go, there were not more than two hundred boarders; and it was
difficult for it to grow larger, for it was huddled up against the
Cathedral; the precincts, with the exception of a house in which some of
the masters lodged, were occupied by the cathedral clergy; and there was
no more room for building. But Mr. Perkins devised an elaborate scheme by
which he might obtain sufficient space to make the school double its
present size. He wanted to attract boys from London. He thought it would
be good for them to be thrown in contact with the Kentish lads, and it
would sharpen the country wits of these.

"It's against all our traditions," said Sighs, when Mr. Perkins made the
suggestion to him. "We've rather gone out of our way to avoid the
contamination of boys from London."

"Oh, what nonsense!" said Mr. Perkins.

No one had ever told the form-master before that he talked nonsense, and
he was meditating an acid reply, in which perhaps he might insert a veiled
reference to hosiery, when Mr. Perkins in his impetuous way attacked him
outrageously.

"That house in the precincts--if you'd only marry I'd get the Chapter to
put another couple of stories on, and we'd make dormitories and studies,
and your wife could help you."

The elderly clergyman gasped. Why should he marry? He was fifty-seven, a
man couldn't marry at fifty-seven. He couldn't start looking after a house
at his time of life. He didn't want to marry. If the choice lay between
that and the country living he would much sooner resign. All he wanted now
was peace and quietness.

"I'm not thinking of marrying," he said.

Mr. Perkins looked at him with his dark, bright eyes, and if there was a
twinkle in them poor Sighs never saw it.

"What a pity! Couldn't you marry to oblige me? It would help me a great
deal with the Dean and Chapter when I suggest rebuilding your house."

But Mr. Perkins' most unpopular innovation was his system of taking
occasionally another man's form. He asked it as a favour, but after all it
was a favour which could not be refused, and as Tar, otherwise Mr. Turner,
said, it was undignified for all parties. He gave no warning, but after
morning prayers would say to one of the masters:

"I wonder if you'd mind taking the Sixth today at eleven. We'll change
over, shall we?"

They did not know whether this was usual at other schools, but certainly
it had never been done at Tercanbury. The results were curious. Mr.
Turner, who was the first victim, broke the news to his form that the
headmaster would take them for Latin that day, and on the pretence that
they might like to ask him a question or two so that they should not make
perfect fools of themselves, spent the last quarter of an hour of the
history lesson in construing for them the passage of Livy which had been
set for the day; but when he rejoined his class and looked at the paper on
which Mr. Perkins had written the marks, a surprise awaited him; for the
two boys at the top of the form seemed to have done very ill, while others
who had never distinguished themselves before were given full marks. When
he asked Eldridge, his cleverest boy, what was the meaning of this the
answer came sullenly:

"Mr. Perkins never gave us any construing to do. He asked me what I knew
about General Gordon."

Mr. Turner looked at him in astonishment. The boys evidently felt they had
been hardly used, and he could not help agreeing with their silent
dissatisfaction. He could not see either what General Gordon had to do
with Livy. He hazarded an inquiry afterwards.

"Eldridge was dreadfully put out because you asked him what he knew about
General Gordon," he said to the headmaster, with an attempt at a chuckle.

Mr. Perkins laughed.

"I saw they'd got to the agrarian laws of Caius Gracchus, and I wondered
if they knew anything about the agrarian troubles in Ireland. But all they
knew about Ireland was that Dublin was on the Liffey. So I wondered if
they'd ever heard of General Gordon."

Then the horrid fact was disclosed that the new head had a mania for
general information. He had doubts about the utility of examinations on
subjects which had been crammed for the occasion. He wanted common sense.

Sighs grew more worried every month; he could not get the thought out of
his head that Mr. Perkins would ask him to fix a day for his marriage; and
he hated the attitude the head adopted towards classical literature. There
was no doubt that he was a fine scholar, and he was engaged on a work
which was quite in the right tradition: he was writing a treatise on the
trees in Latin literature; but he talked of it flippantly, as though it
were a pastime of no great importance, like billiards, which engaged his
leisure but was not to be considered with seriousness. And Squirts, the
master of the Middle Third, grew more ill-tempered every day.

It was in his form that Philip was put on entering the school. The Rev. B.
B. Gordon was a man by nature ill-suited to be a schoolmaster: he was
impatient and choleric. With no one to call him to account, with only
small boys to face him, he had long lost all power of self-control. He
began his work in a rage and ended it in a passion. He was a man of middle
height and of a corpulent figure; he had sandy hair, worn very short and
now growing gray, and a small bristly moustache. His large face, with
indistinct features and small blue eyes, was naturally red, but during his
frequent attacks of anger it grew dark and purple. His nails were bitten
to the quick, for while some trembling boy was construing he would sit at
his desk shaking with the fury that consumed him, and gnaw his fingers.
Stories, perhaps exaggerated, were told of his violence, and two years
before there had been some excitement in the school when it was heard that
one father was threatening a prosecution: he had boxed the ears of a boy
named Walters with a book so violently that his hearing was affected and
the boy had to be taken away from the school. The boy's father lived in
Tercanbury, and there had been much indignation in the city, the local
paper had referred to the matter; but Mr. Walters was only a brewer, so
the sympathy was divided. The rest of the boys, for reasons best known to
themselves, though they loathed the master, took his side in the affair,
and, to show their indignation that the school's business had been dealt
with outside, made things as uncomfortable as they could for Walters'
younger brother, who still remained. But Mr. Gordon had only escaped the
country living by the skin of his teeth, and he had never hit a boy since.
The right the masters possessed to cane boys on the hand was taken away
from them, and Squirts could no longer emphasize his anger by beating his
desk with the cane. He never did more now than take a boy by the shoulders
and shake him. He still made a naughty or refractory lad stand with one
arm stretched out for anything from ten minutes to half an hour, and he
was as violent as before with his tongue.

No master could have been more unfitted to teach things to so shy a boy as
Philip. He had come to the school with fewer terrors than he had when
first he went to Mr. Watson's. He knew a good many boys who had been with
him at the preparatory school. He felt more grownup, and instinctively
realised that among the larger numbers his deformity would be less
noticeable. But from the first day Mr. Gordon struck terror in his heart;
and the master, quick to discern the boys who were frightened of him,
seemed on that account to take a peculiar dislike to him. Philip had
enjoyed his work, but now he began to look upon the hours passed in school
with horror. Rather than risk an answer which might be wrong and excite a
storm of abuse from the master, he would sit stupidly silent, and when it
came towards his turn to stand up and construe he grew sick and white with
apprehension. His happy moments were those when Mr. Perkins took the form.
He was able to gratify the passion for general knowledge which beset the
headmaster; he had read all sorts of strange books beyond his years, and
often Mr. Perkins, when a question was going round the room, would stop at
Philip with a smile that filled the boy with rapture, and say:

"Now, Carey, you tell them."

The good marks he got on these occasions increased Mr. Gordon's
indignation. One day it came to Philip's turn to translate, and the master
sat there glaring at him and furiously biting his thumb. He was in a
ferocious mood. Philip began to speak in a low voice.

"Don't mumble," shouted the master.

Something seemed to stick in Philip's throat.

"Go on. Go on. Go on."

Each time the words were screamed more loudly. The effect was to drive all
he knew out of Philip's head, and he looked at the printed page vacantly.
Mr. Gordon began to breathe heavily.

"If you don't know why don't you say so? Do you know it or not? Did you
hear all this construed last time or not? Why don't you speak? Speak, you
blockhead, speak!"

The master seized the arms of his chair and grasped them as though to
prevent himself from falling upon Philip. They knew that in past days he
often used to seize boys by the throat till they almost choked. The veins
in his forehead stood out and his face grew dark and threatening. He was
a man insane.

Philip had known the passage perfectly the day before, but now he could
remember nothing.

"I don't know it," he gasped.

"Why don't you know it? Let's take the words one by one. We'll soon see if
you don't know it."

Philip stood silent, very white, trembling a little, with his head bent
down on the book. The master's breathing grew almost stertorous.

"The headmaster says you're clever. I don't know how he sees it. General
information." He laughed savagely. "I don't know what they put you in his
form for "Blockhead."

He was pleased with the word, and he repeated it at the top of his voice.

"Blockhead! Blockhead! Club-footed blockhead!"

That relieved him a little. He saw Philip redden suddenly. He told him to
fetch the Black Book. Philip put down his Caesar and went silently out.
The Black Book was a sombre volume in which the names of boys were written
with their misdeeds, and when a name was down three times it meant a
caning. Philip went to the headmaster's house and knocked at his
study-door. Mr. Perkins was seated at his table.

"May I have the Black Book, please, sir."

"There it is," answered Mr. Perkins, indicating its place by a nod of his
head. "What have you been doing that you shouldn't?"

"I don't know, sir."

Mr. Perkins gave him a quick look, but without answering went on with his
work. Philip took the book and went out. When the hour was up, a few
minutes later, he brought it back.

"Let me have a look at it," said the headmaster. "I see Mr. Gordon has
black-booked you for 'gross impertinence.' What was it?"

"I don't know, sir. Mr. Gordon said I was a club-footed blockhead."

Mr. Perkins looked at him again. He wondered whether there was sarcasm
behind the boy's reply, but he was still much too shaken. His face was
white and his eyes had a look of terrified distress. Mr. Perkins got up
and put the book down. As he did so he took up some photographs.

"A friend of mine sent me some pictures of Athens this morning," he said
casually. "Look here, there's the Akropolis."

He began explaining to Philip what he saw. The ruin grew vivid with his
words. He showed him the theatre of Dionysus and explained in what order
the people sat, and how beyond they could see the blue Aegean. And then
suddenly he said:

"I remember Mr. Gordon used to call me a gipsy counter-jumper when I was
in his form."

And before Philip, his mind fixed on the photographs, had time to gather
the meaning of the remark, Mr. Perkins was showing him a picture of
Salamis, and with his finger, a finger of which the nail had a little
black edge to it, was pointing out how the Greek ships were placed and how
the Persian.

XVII

Philip passed the next two years with comfortable monotony. He was not
bullied more than other boys of his size; and his deformity, withdrawing
him from games, acquired for him an insignificance for which he was
grateful. He was not popular, and he was very lonely. He spent a couple of
terms with Winks in the Upper Third. Winks, with his weary manner and his
drooping eyelids, looked infinitely bored. He did his duty, but he did it
with an abstracted mind. He was kind, gentle, and foolish. He had a great
belief in the honour of boys; he felt that the first thing to make them
truthful was not to let it enter your head for a moment that it was
possible for them to lie. "Ask much," he quoted, "and much shall be given
to you." Life was easy in the Upper Third. You knew exactly what lines
would come to your turn to construe, and with the crib that passed from
hand to hand you could find out all you wanted in two minutes; you could
hold a Latin Grammar open on your knees while questions were passing
round; and Winks never noticed anything odd in the fact that the same
incredible mistake was to be found in a dozen different exercises. He had
no great faith in examinations, for he noticed that boys never did so well
in them as in form: it was disappointing, but not significant. In due
course they were moved up, having learned little but a cheerful effrontery
in the distortion of truth, which was possibly of greater service to them
in after life than an ability to read Latin at sight.

Then they fell into the hands of Tar. His name was Turner; he was the most
vivacious of the old masters, a short man with an immense belly, a black
beard turning now to gray, and a swarthy skin. In his clerical dress there
was indeed something in him to suggest the tar-barrel; and though on
principle he gave five hundred lines to any boy on whose lips he overheard
his nickname, at dinner-parties in the precincts he often made little
jokes about it. He was the most worldly of the masters; he dined out more
frequently than any of the others, and the society he kept was not so
exclusively clerical. The boys looked upon him as rather a dog. He left
off his clerical attire during the holidays and had been seen in
Switzerland in gay tweeds. He liked a bottle of wine and a good dinner,
and having once been seen at the Cafe Royal with a lady who was very
probably a near relation, was thenceforward supposed by generations of
schoolboys to indulge in orgies the circumstantial details of which
pointed to an unbounded belief in human depravity.

Mr. Turner reckoned that it took him a term to lick boys into shape after
they had been in the Upper Third; and now and then he let fall a sly hint,
which showed that he knew perfectly what went on in his colleague's form.
He took it good-humouredly. He looked upon boys as young ruffians who were
more apt to be truthful if it was quite certain a lie would be found out,
whose sense of honour was peculiar to themselves and did not apply to
dealings with masters, and who were least likely to be troublesome when
they learned that it did not pay. He was proud of his form and as eager at
fifty-five that it should do better in examinations than any of the others
as he had been when he first came to the school. He had the choler of the
obese, easily roused and as easily calmed, and his boys soon discovered
that there was much kindliness beneath the invective with which he
constantly assailed them. He had no patience with fools, but was willing
to take much trouble with boys whom he suspected of concealing
intelligence behind their wilfulness. He was fond of inviting them to tea;
and, though vowing they never got a look in with him at the cakes and
muffins, for it was the fashion to believe that his corpulence pointed to
a voracious appetite, and his voracious appetite to tapeworms, they
accepted his invitations with real pleasure.

Philip was now more comfortable, for space was so limited that there were
only studies for boys in the upper school, and till then he had lived in
the great hall in which they all ate and in which the lower forms did
preparation in a promiscuity which was vaguely distasteful to him. Now and
then it made him restless to be with people and he wanted urgently to be
alone. He set out for solitary walks into the country. There was a little
stream, with pollards on both sides of it, that ran through green fields,
and it made him happy, he knew not why, to wander along its banks. When he
was tired he lay face-downward on the grass and watched the eager
scurrying of minnows and of tadpoles. It gave him a peculiar satisfaction
to saunter round the precincts. On the green in the middle they practised
at nets in the summer, but during the rest of the year it was quiet: boys
used to wander round sometimes arm in arm, or a studious fellow with
abstracted gaze walked slowly, repeating to himself something he had to
learn by heart. There was a colony of rooks in the great elms, and they
filled the air with melancholy cries. Along one side lay the Cathedral
with its great central tower, and Philip, who knew as yet nothing of
beauty, felt when he looked at it a troubling delight which he could not
understand. When he had a study (it was a little square room looking on a
slum, and four boys shared it), he bought a photograph of that view of the
Cathedral, and pinned it up over his desk. And he found himself taking a
new interest in what he saw from the window of the Fourth Form room. It
looked on to old lawns, carefully tended, and fine trees with foliage
dense and rich. It gave him an odd feeling in his heart, and he did not
know if it was pain or pleasure. It was the first dawn of the aesthetic
emotion. It accompanied other changes. His voice broke. It was no longer
quite under his control, and queer sounds issued from his throat.

Then he began to go to the classes which were held in the headmaster's
study, immediately after tea, to prepare boys for confirmation. Philip's
piety had not stood the test of time, and he had long since given up his
nightly reading of the Bible; but now, under the influence of Mr. Perkins,
with this new condition of the body which made him so restless, his old
feelings revived, and he reproached himself bitterly for his backsliding.
The fires of Hell burned fiercely before his mind's eye. If he had died
during that time when he was little better than an infidel he would have
been lost; he believed implicitly in pain everlasting, he believed in it
much more than in eternal happiness; and he shuddered at the dangers he
had run.

Since the day on which Mr. Perkins had spoken kindly to him, when he was
smarting under the particular form of abuse which he could least bear,
Philip had conceived for his headmaster a dog-like adoration. He racked
his brains vainly for some way to please him. He treasured the smallest
word of commendation which by chance fell from his lips. And when he came
to the quiet little meetings in his house he was prepared to surrender
himself entirely. He kept his eyes fixed on Mr. Perkins' shining eyes, and
sat with mouth half open, his head a little thrown forward so as to miss
no word. The ordinariness of the surroundings made the matters they dealt
with extraordinarily moving. And often the master, seized himself by the
wonder of his subject, would push back the book in front of him, and with
his hands clasped together over his heart, as though to still the beating,
would talk of the mysteries of their religion. Sometimes Philip did not
understand, but he did not want to understand, he felt vaguely that it was
enough to feel. It seemed to him then that the headmaster, with his black,
straggling hair and his pale face, was like those prophets of Israel who
feared not to take kings to task; and when he thought of the Redeemer he
saw Him only with the same dark eyes and those wan cheeks.

Mr. Perkins took this part of his work with great seriousness. There was
never here any of that flashing humour which made the other masters
suspect him of flippancy. Finding time for everything in his busy day, he
was able at certain intervals to take separately for a quarter of an hour
or twenty minutes the boys whom he was preparing for confirmation. He
wanted to make them feel that this was the first consciously serious step
in their lives; he tried to grope into the depths of their souls; he
wanted to instil in them his own vehement devotion. In Philip,
notwithstanding his shyness, he felt the possibility of a passion equal to
his own. The boy's temperament seemed to him essentially religious. One
day he broke off suddenly from the subject on which he had been talking.

"Have you thought at all what you're going to be when you grow up?" he
asked.

"My uncle wants me to be ordained," said Philip.

"And you?"

Philip looked away. He was ashamed to answer that he felt himself
unworthy.

"I don't know any life that's so full of happiness as ours. I wish I could
make you feel what a wonderful privilege it is. One can serve God in every
walk, but we stand nearer to Him. I don't want to influence you, but if
you made up your mind--oh, at once--you couldn't help feeling that joy and
relief which never desert one again."

Philip did not answer, but the headmaster read in his eyes that he
realised already something of what he tried to indicate.

"If you go on as you are now you'll find yourself head of the school one
of these days, and you ought to be pretty safe for a scholarship when you
leave. Have you got anything of your own?"

"My uncle says I shall have a hundred a year when I'm twenty-one."

"You'll be rich. I had nothing."

The headmaster hesitated a moment, and then, idly drawing lines with a
pencil on the blotting paper in front of him, went on.

"I'm afraid your choice of professions will be rather limited. You
naturally couldn't go in for anything that required physical activity."

Philip reddened to the roots of his hair, as he always did when any
reference was made to his club-foot. Mr. Perkins looked at him gravely.

"I wonder if you're not oversensitive about your misfortune. Has it ever
struck you to thank God for it?"

Philip looked up quickly. His lips tightened. He remembered how for
months, trusting in what they told him, he had implored God to heal him as
He had healed the Leper and made the Blind to see.

"As long as you accept it rebelliously it can only cause you shame. But if
you looked upon it as a cross that was given you to bear only because your
shoulders were strong enough to bear it, a sign of God's favour, then it
would be a source of happiness to you instead of misery."

He saw that the boy hated to discuss the matter and he let him go.

But Philip thought over all that the headmaster had said, and presently,
his mind taken up entirely with the ceremony that was before him, a
mystical rapture seized him. His spirit seemed to free itself from the
bonds of the flesh and he seemed to be living a new life. He aspired to
perfection with all the passion that was in him. He wanted to surrender
himself entirely to the service of God, and he made up his mind definitely
that he would be ordained. When the great day arrived, his soul deeply
moved by all the preparation, by the books he had studied and above all by
the overwhelming influence of the head, he could hardly contain himself
for fear and joy. One thought had tormented him. He knew that he would
have to walk alone through the chancel, and he dreaded showing his limp
thus obviously, not only to the whole school, who were attending the
service, but also to the strangers, people from the city or parents who
had come to see their sons confirmed. But when the time came he felt
suddenly that he could accept the humiliation joyfully; and as he limped
up the chancel, very small and insignificant beneath the lofty vaulting of
the Cathedral, he offered consciously his deformity as a sacrifice to the
God who loved him.

XVIII

But Philip could not live long in the rarefied air of the hilltops. What
had happened to him when first he was seized by the religious emotion
happened to him now. Because he felt so keenly the beauty of faith,
because the desire for self-sacrifice burned in his heart with such a
gem-like glow, his strength seemed inadequate to his ambition. He was
tired out by the violence of his passion. His soul was filled on a sudden
with a singular aridity. He began to forget the presence of God which had
seemed so surrounding; and his religious exercises, still very punctually
performed, grew merely formal. At first he blamed himself for this falling
away, and the fear of hell-fire urged him to renewed vehemence; but the
passion was dead, and gradually other interests distracted his thoughts.

Philip had few friends. His habit of reading isolated him: it became such
a need that after being in company for some time he grew tired and
restless; he was vain of the wider knowledge he had acquired from the
perusal of so many books, his mind was alert, and he had not the skill to
hide his contempt for his companions' stupidity. They complained that he
was conceited; and, since he excelled only in matters which to them were
unimportant, they asked satirically what he had to be conceited about. He
was developing a sense of humour, and found that he had a knack of saying
bitter things, which caught people on the raw; he said them because they
amused him, hardly realising how much they hurt, and was much offended
when he found that his victims regarded him with active dislike. The
humiliations he suffered when first he went to school had caused in him a
shrinking from his fellows which he could never entirely overcome; he
remained shy and silent. But though he did everything to alienate the
sympathy of other boys he longed with all his heart for the popularity
which to some was so easily accorded. These from his distance he admired
extravagantly; and though he was inclined to be more sarcastic with them
than with others, though he made little jokes at their expense, he would
have given anything to change places with them. Indeed he would gladly
have changed places with the dullest boy in the school who was whole of
limb. He took to a singular habit. He would imagine that he was some boy
whom he had a particular fancy for; he would throw his soul, as it were,
into the other's body, talk with his voice and laugh with his heart; he
would imagine himself doing all the things the other did. It was so vivid
that he seemed for a moment really to be no longer himself. In this way he
enjoyed many intervals of fantastic happiness.

At the beginning of the Christmas term which followed on his confirmation
Philip found himself moved into another study. One of the boys who shared
it was called Rose. He was in the same form as Philip, and Philip had
always looked upon him with envious admiration. He was not good-looking;
though his large hands and big bones suggested that he would be a tall
man, he was clumsily made; but his eyes were charming, and when he laughed
(he was constantly laughing) his face wrinkled all round them in a jolly
way. He was neither clever nor stupid, but good enough at his work and
better at games. He was a favourite with masters and boys, and he in his
turn liked everyone.

When Philip was put in the study he could not help seeing that the others,
who had been together for three terms, welcomed him coldly. It made him
nervous to feel himself an intruder; but he had learned to hide his
feelings, and they found him quiet and unobtrusive. With Rose, because he
was as little able as anyone else to resist his charm, Philip was even
more than usually shy and abrupt; and whether on account of this,
unconsciously bent upon exerting the fascination he knew was his only by
the results, or whether from sheer kindness of heart, it was Rose who
first took Philip into the circle. One day, quite suddenly, he asked
Philip if he would walk to the football field with him. Philip flushed.

"I can't walk fast enough for you," he said.

"Rot. Come on."

And just before they were setting out some boy put his head in the
study-door and asked Rose to go with him.

"I can't," he answered. "I've already promised Carey."

"Don't bother about me," said Philip quickly. "I shan't mind."

"Rot," said Rose.

He looked at Philip with those good-natured eyes of his and laughed.
Philip felt a curious tremor in his heart.

In a little while, their friendship growing with boyish rapidity, the pair
were inseparable. Other fellows wondered at the sudden intimacy, and Rose
was asked what he saw in Philip.

"Oh, I don't know," he answered. "He's not half a bad chap really."

Soon they grew accustomed to the two walking into chapel arm in arm or
strolling round the precincts in conversation; wherever one was the other
could be found also, and, as though acknowledging his proprietorship, boys
who wanted Rose would leave messages with Carey. Philip at first was
reserved. He would not let himself yield entirely to the proud joy that
filled him; but presently his distrust of the fates gave way before a wild
happiness. He thought Rose the most wonderful fellow he had ever seen. His
books now were insignificant; he could not bother about them when there
was something infinitely more important to occupy him. Rose's friends used
to come in to tea in the study sometimes or sit about when there was
nothing better to do--Rose liked a crowd and the chance of a rag--and they
found that Philip was quite a decent fellow. Philip was happy.

When the last day of term came he and Rose arranged by which train they
should come back, so that they might meet at the station and have tea in
the town before returning to school. Philip went home with a heavy heart.
He thought of Rose all through the holidays, and his fancy was active with
the things they would do together next term. He was bored at the vicarage,
and when on the last day his uncle put him the usual question in the usual
facetious tone:

"Well, are you glad to be going back to school?"

Philip answered joyfully.

"Rather."

In order to be sure of meeting Rose at the station he took an earlier
train than he usually did, and he waited about the platform for an hour.
When the train came in from Faversham, where he knew Rose had to change,
he ran along it excitedly. But Rose was not there. He got a porter to tell
him when another train was due, and he waited; but again he was
disappointed; and he was cold and hungry, so he walked, through
side-streets and slums, by a short cut to the school. He found Rose in the
study, with his feet on the chimney-piece, talking eighteen to the dozen
with half a dozen boys who were sitting on whatever there was to sit on.
He shook hands with Philip enthusiastically, but Philip's face fell, for
he realised that Rose had forgotten all about their appointment.

"I say, why are you so late?" said Rose. "I thought you were never
coming."

"You were at the station at half-past four," said another boy. "I saw you
when I came."

Philip blushed a little. He did not want Rose to know that he had been
such a fool as to wait for him.

"I had to see about a friend of my people's," he invented readily. "I was
asked to see her off."

But his disappointment made him a little sulky. He sat in silence, and
when spoken to answered in monosyllables. He was making up his mind to
have it out with Rose when they were alone. But when the others had gone
Rose at once came over and sat on the arm of the chair in which Philip was
lounging.

"I say, I'm jolly glad we're in the same study this term. Ripping, isn't
it?"

He seemed so genuinely pleased to see Philip that Philip's annoyance
vanished. They began as if they had not been separated for five minutes to
talk eagerly of the thousand things that interested them.

XIX

At first Philip had been too grateful for Rose's friendship to make any
demands on him. He took things as they came and enjoyed life. But
presently he began to resent Rose's universal amiability; he wanted a more
exclusive attachment, and he claimed as a right what before he had
accepted as a favour. He watched jealously Rose's companionship with
others; and though he knew it was unreasonable could not help sometimes
saying bitter things to him. If Rose spent an hour playing the fool in
another study, Philip would receive him when he returned to his own with
a sullen frown. He would sulk for a day, and he suffered more because Rose
either did not notice his ill-humour or deliberately ignored it. Not
seldom Philip, knowing all the time how stupid he was, would force a
quarrel, and they would not speak to one another for a couple of days. But
Philip could not bear to be angry with him long, and even when convinced
that he was in the right, would apologise humbly. Then for a week they
would be as great friends as ever. But the best was over, and Philip could
see that Rose often walked with him merely from old habit or from fear of
his anger; they had not so much to say to one another as at first, and
Rose was often bored. Philip felt that his lameness began to irritate him.

Towards the end of the term two or three boys caught scarlet fever, and
there was much talk of sending them all home in order to escape an
epidemic; but the sufferers were isolated, and since no more were attacked
it was supposed that the outbreak was stopped. One of the stricken was
Philip. He remained in hospital through the Easter holidays, and at the
beginning of the summer term was sent home to the vicarage to get a little
fresh air. The Vicar, notwithstanding medical assurance that the boy was
no longer infectious, received him with suspicion; he thought it very
inconsiderate of the doctor to suggest that his nephew's convalescence
should be spent by the seaside, and consented to have him in the house
only because there was nowhere else he could go.

Philip went back to school at half-term. He had forgotten the quarrels he
had had with Rose, but remembered only that he was his greatest friend. He
knew that he had been silly. He made up his mind to be more reasonable.
During his illness Rose had sent him in a couple of little notes, and he
had ended each with the words: "Hurry up and come back." Philip thought
Rose must be looking forward as much to his return as he was himself to
seeing Rose.

He found that owing to the death from scarlet fever of one of the boys in
the Sixth there had been some shifting in the studies and Rose was no
longer in his. It was a bitter disappointment. But as soon as he arrived
he burst into Rose's study. Rose was sitting at his desk, working with a
boy called Hunter, and turned round crossly as Philip came in.

"Who the devil's that?" he cried. And then, seeing Philip: "Oh, it's you."

Philip stopped in embarrassment.

"I thought I'd come in and see how you were."

"We were just working."

Hunter broke into the conversation.

"When did you get back?"

"Five minutes ago."

They sat and looked at him as though he was disturbing them. They
evidently expected him to go quickly. Philip reddened.

"I'll be off. You might look in when you've done," he said to Rose.

"All right."

Philip closed the door behind him and limped back to his own study. He
felt frightfully hurt. Rose, far from seeming glad to see him, had looked
almost put out. They might never have been more than acquaintances. Though
he waited in his study, not leaving it for a moment in case just then Rose
should come, his friend never appeared; and next morning when he went in
to prayers he saw Rose and Hunter singing along arm in arm. What he could
not see for himself others told him. He had forgotten that three months is
a long time in a schoolboy's life, and though he had passed them in
solitude Rose had lived in the world. Hunter had stepped into the vacant
place. Philip found that Rose was quietly avoiding him. But he was not the
boy to accept a situation without putting it into words; he waited till he
was sure Rose was alone in his study and went in.

"May I come in?" he asked.

Rose looked at him with an embarrassment that made him angry with Philip.

"Yes, if you want to."

"It's very kind of you," said Philip sarcastically.

"What d'you want?"

"I say, why have you been so rotten since I came back?"

"Oh, don't be an ass," said Rose.

"I don't know what you see in Hunter."

"That's my business."

Philip looked down. He could not bring himself to say what was in his
heart. He was afraid of humiliating himself. Rose got up.

"I've got to go to the Gym," he said.

When he was at the door Philip forced himself to speak.

"I say, Rose, don't be a perfect beast."

"Oh, go to hell."

Rose slammed the door behind him and left Philip alone. Philip shivered
with rage. He went back to his study and turned the conversation over in
his mind. He hated Rose now, he wanted to hurt him, he thought of biting
things he might have said to him. He brooded over the end to their
friendship and fancied that others were talking of it. In his
sensitiveness he saw sneers and wonderings in other fellows' manner when
they were not bothering their heads with him at all. He imagined to
himself what they were saying.

"After all, it wasn't likely to last long. I wonder he ever stuck Carey at
all. Blighter!"

To show his indifference he struck up a violent friendship with a boy
called Sharp whom he hated and despised. He was a London boy, with a
loutish air, a heavy fellow with the beginnings of a moustache on his lip
and bushy eyebrows that joined one another across the bridge of his nose.
He had soft hands and manners too suave for his years. He spoke with the
suspicion of a cockney accent. He was one of those boys who are too slack
to play games, and he exercised great ingenuity in making excuses to avoid
such as were compulsory. He was regarded by boys and masters with a vague
dislike, and it was from arrogance that Philip now sought his society.
Sharp in a couple of terms was going to Germany for a year. He hated
school, which he looked upon as an indignity to be endured till he was old
enough to go out into the world. London was all he cared for, and he had
many stories to tell of his doings there during the holidays. From his
conversation--he spoke in a soft, deep-toned voice--there emerged the
vague rumour of the London streets by night. Philip listened to him at
once fascinated and repelled. With his vivid fancy he seemed to see the
surging throng round the pit-door of theatres, and the glitter of cheap
restaurants, bars where men, half drunk, sat on high stools talking with
barmaids; and under the street lamps the mysterious passing of dark crowds
bent upon pleasure. Sharp lent him cheap novels from Holywell Row, which
Philip read in his cubicle with a sort of wonderful fear.

Once Rose tried to effect a reconciliation. He was a good-natured fellow,
who did not like having enemies.

"I say, Carey, why are you being such a silly ass? It doesn't do you any
good cutting me and all that."

"I don't know what you mean," answered Philip.

"Well, I don't see why you shouldn't talk."

"You bore me," said Philip.

"Please yourself."

Rose shrugged his shoulders and left him. Philip was very white, as he
always became when he was moved, and his heart beat violently. When Rose
went away he felt suddenly sick with misery. He did not know why he had
answered in that fashion. He would have given anything to be friends with
Rose. He hated to have quarrelled with him, and now that he saw he had
given him pain he was very sorry. But at the moment he had not been master
of himself. It seemed that some devil had seized him, forcing him to say
bitter things against his will, even though at the time he wanted to shake
hands with Rose and meet him more than halfway. The desire to wound had
been too strong for him. He had wanted to revenge himself for the pain and
the humiliation he had endured. It was pride: it was folly too, for he
knew that Rose would not care at all, while he would suffer bitterly. The
thought came to him that he would go to Rose, and say:

"I say, I'm sorry I was such a beast. I couldn't help it. Let's make it
up."

But he knew he would never be able to do it. He was afraid that Rose would
sneer at him. He was angry with himself, and when Sharp came in a little
while afterwards he seized upon the first opportunity to quarrel with him.
Philip had a fiendish instinct for discovering other people's raw spots,
and was able to say things that rankled because they were true. But Sharp
had the last word.

"I heard Rose talking about you to Mellor just now," he said. "Mellor
said: Why didn't you kick him? It would teach him manners. And Rose said:
I didn't like to. Damned cripple."

Philip suddenly became scarlet. He could not answer, for there was a lump
in his throat that almost choked him.

XX

Philip was moved into the Sixth, but he hated school now with all his
heart, and, having lost his ambition, cared nothing whether he did ill or
well. He awoke in the morning with a sinking heart because he must go
through another day of drudgery. He was tired of having to do things
because he was told; and the restrictions irked him, not because they were
unreasonable, but because they were restrictions. He yearned for freedom.
He was weary of repeating things that he knew already and of the hammering
away, for the sake of a thick-witted fellow, at something that he
understood from the beginning.

With Mr. Perkins you could work or not as you chose. He was at once eager
and abstracted. The Sixth Form room was in a part of the old abbey which
had been restored, and it had a gothic window: Philip tried to cheat his
boredom by drawing this over and over again; and sometimes out of his head
he drew the great tower of the Cathedral or the gateway that led into the
precincts. He had a knack for drawing. Aunt Louisa during her youth had
painted in water colours, and she had several albums filled with sketches
of churches, old bridges, and picturesque cottages. They were often shown
at the vicarage tea-parties. She had once given Philip a paint-box as a
Christmas present, and he had started by copying her pictures. He copied
them better than anyone could have expected, and presently he did little
pictures of his own. Mrs. Carey encouraged him. It was a good way to keep
him out of mischief, and later on his sketches would be useful for
bazaars. Two or three of them had been framed and hung in his bed-room.

But one day, at the end of the morning's work, Mr. Perkins stopped him as
he was lounging out of the form-room.

"I want to speak to you, Carey."

Philip waited. Mr. Perkins ran his lean fingers through his beard and
looked at Philip. He seemed to be thinking over what he wanted to say.

"What's the matter with you, Carey?" he said abruptly.

Philip, flushing, looked at him quickly. But knowing him well by now,
without answering, he waited for him to go on.

"I've been dissatisfied with you lately. You've been slack and
inattentive. You seem to take no interest in your work. It's been slovenly
and bad."

"I'm very sorry, sir," said Philip.

"Is that all you have to say for yourself?"

Philip looked down sulkily. How could he answer that he was bored to
death?

"You know, this term you'll go down instead of up. I shan't give you a
very good report."

Philip wondered what he would say if he knew how the report was treated.
It arrived at breakfast, Mr. Carey glanced at it indifferently, and passed
it over to Philip.

"There's your report. You'd better see what it says," he remarked, as he
ran his fingers through the wrapper of a catalogue of second-hand books.

Philip read it.

"Is it good?" asked Aunt Louisa.

"Not so good as I deserve," answered Philip, with a smile, giving it to
her.

"I'll read it afterwards when I've got my spectacles," she said.

But after breakfast Mary Ann came in to say the butcher was there, and she
generally forgot.

Mr. Perkins went on.

"I'm disappointed with you. And I can't understand. I know you can do
things if you want to, but you don't seem to want to any more. I was going
to make you a monitor next term, but I think I'd better wait a bit."

Philip flushed. He did not like the thought of being passed over. He
tightened his lips.

"And there's something else. You must begin thinking of your scholarship
now. You won't get anything unless you start working very seriously."

Philip was irritated by the lecture. He was angry with the headmaster, and
angry with himself.

"I don't think I'm going up to Oxford," he said.

"Why not? I thought your idea was to be ordained."

"I've changed my mind."

"Why?"

Philip did not answer. Mr. Perkins, holding himself oddly as he always
did, like a figure in one of Perugino's pictures, drew his fingers
thoughtfully through his beard. He looked at Philip as though he were
trying to understand and then abruptly told him he might go.

Apparently he was not satisfied, for one evening, a week later, when
Philip had to go into his study with some papers, he resumed the
conversation; but this time he adopted a different method: he spoke to
Philip not as a schoolmaster with a boy but as one human being with
another. He did not seem to care now that Philip's work was poor, that he
ran small chance against keen rivals of carrying off the scholarship
necessary for him to go to Oxford: the important matter was his changed
intention about his life afterwards. Mr. Perkins set himself to revive his
eagerness to be ordained. With infinite skill he worked on his feelings,
and this was easier since he was himself genuinely moved. Philip's change
of mind caused him bitter distress, and he really thought he was throwing
away his chance of happiness in life for he knew not what. His voice was
very persuasive. And Philip, easily moved by the emotion of others, very
emotional himself notwithstanding a placid exterior--his face, partly by
nature but also from the habit of all these years at school, seldom except
by his quick flushing showed what he felt--Philip was deeply touched by
what the master said. He was very grateful to him for the interest he
showed, and he was conscience-stricken by the grief which he felt his
behaviour caused him. It was subtly flattering to know that with the whole
school to think about Mr. Perkins should trouble with him, but at the same
time something else in him, like another person standing at his elbow,
clung desperately to two words.

"I won't. I won't. I won't."

He felt himself slipping. He was powerless against the weakness that
seemed to well up in him; it was like the water that rises up in an empty
bottle held over a full basin; and he set his teeth, saying the words over
and over to himself.

"I won't. I won't. I won't."

At last Mr. Perkins put his hand on Philip's shoulder.

"I don't want to influence you," he said. "You must decide for yourself.
Pray to Almighty God for help and guidance."

When Philip came out of the headmaster's house there was a light rain
falling. He went under the archway that led to the precincts, there was
not a soul there, and the rooks were silent in the elms. He walked round
slowly. He felt hot, and the rain did him good. He thought over all that
Mr. Perkins had said, calmly now that he was withdrawn from the fervour of
his personality, and he was thankful he had not given way.

In the darkness he could but vaguely see the great mass of the Cathedral:
he hated it now because of the irksomeness of the long services which he
was forced to attend. The anthem was interminable, and you had to stand
drearily while it was being sung; you could not hear the droning sermon,
and your body twitched because you had to sit still when you wanted to
move about. Then philip thought of the two services every Sunday at
Blackstable. The church was bare and cold, and there was a smell all about
one of pomade and starched clothes. The curate preached once and his uncle
preached once. As he grew up he had learned to know his uncle; Philip was
downright and intolerant, and he could not understand that a man might
sincerely say things as a clergyman which he never acted up to as a man.
The deception outraged him. His uncle was a weak and selfish man, whose
chief desire it was to be saved trouble.

Mr. Perkins had spoken to him of the beauty of a life dedicated to the
service of God. Philip knew what sort of lives the clergy led in the
corner of East Anglia which was his home. There was the Vicar of
Whitestone, a parish a little way from Blackstable: he was a bachelor and
to give himself something to do had lately taken up farming: the local
paper constantly reported the cases he had in the county court against
this one and that, labourers he would not pay their wages to or tradesmen
whom he accused of cheating him; scandal said he starved his cows, and
there was much talk about some general action which should be taken
against him. Then there was the Vicar of Ferne, a bearded, fine figure of
a man: his wife had been forced to leave him because of his cruelty, and
she had filled the neighbourhood with stories of his immorality. The Vicar
of Surle, a tiny hamlet by the sea, was to be seen every evening in the
public house a stone's throw from his vicarage; and the churchwardens had
been to Mr. Carey to ask his advice. There was not a soul for any of them
to talk to except small farmers or fishermen; there were long winter
evenings when the wind blew, whistling drearily through the leafless
trees, and all around they saw nothing but the bare monotony of ploughed
fields; and there was poverty, and there was lack of any work that seemed
to matter; every kink in their characters had free play; there was nothing
to restrain them; they grew narrow and eccentric: Philip knew all this,
but in his young intolerance he did not offer it as an excuse. He shivered
at the thought of leading such a life; he wanted to get out into the
world.

XXI

Mr. Perkins soon saw that his words had had no effect on Philip, and for
the rest of the term ignored him. He wrote a report which was vitriolic.
When it arrived and Aunt Louisa asked Philip what it was like, he answered
cheerfully.

"Rotten."

"Is it?" said the Vicar. "I must look at it again."

"Do you think there's any use in my staying on at Tercanbury? I should
have thought it would be better if I went to Germany for a bit."

"What has put that in your head?" said Aunt Louisa.

"Don't you think it's rather a good idea?"

Sharp had already left King's School and had written to Philip from
Hanover. He was really starting life, and it made Philip more restless to
think of it. He felt he could not bear another year of restraint.

"But then you wouldn't get a scholarship."

"I haven't a chance of getting one anyhow. And besides, I don't know that
I particularly want to go to Oxford."

"But if you're going to be ordained, Philip?" Aunt Louisa exclaimed in
dismay.

"I've given up that idea long ago."

Mrs. Carey looked at him with startled eyes, and then, used to
self-restraint, she poured out another cup of tea for his uncle. They did
not speak. In a moment Philip saw tears slowly falling down her cheeks.
His heart was suddenly wrung because he caused her pain. In her tight
black dress, made by the dressmaker down the street, with her wrinkled
face and pale tired eyes, her gray hair still done in the frivolous
ringlets of her youth, she was a ridiculous but strangely pathetic figure.
Philip saw it for the first time.

Afterwards, when the Vicar was shut up in his study with the curate, he
put his arms round her waist.

"I say, I'm sorry you're upset, Aunt Louisa," he said. "But it's no good
my being ordained if I haven't a real vocation, is it?"

"I'm so disappointed, Philip," she moaned. "I'd set my heart on it. I
thought you could be your uncle's curate, and then when our time
came--after all, we can't last for ever, can we?--you might have taken his
place."

Philip shivered. He was seized with panic. His heart beat like a pigeon in
a trap beating with its wings. His aunt wept softly, her head upon his
shoulder.

"I wish you'd persuade Uncle William to let me leave Tercanbury. I'm so
sick of it."

But the Vicar of Blackstable did not easily alter any arrangements he had
made, and it had always been intended that Philip should stay at King's
School till he was eighteen, and should then go to Oxford. At all events
he would not hear of Philip leaving then, for no notice had been given and
the term's fee would have to be paid in any case.

"Then will you give notice for me to leave at Christmas?" said Philip, at
the end of a long and often bitter conversation.

"I'll write to Mr. Perkins about it and see what he says."

"Oh, I wish to goodness I were twenty-one. It is awful to be at somebody
else's beck and call."

"Philip, you shouldn't speak to your uncle like that," said Mrs. Carey
gently.

"But don't you see that Perkins will want me to stay? He gets so much a
head for every chap in the school."

"Why don't you want to go to Oxford?"

"What's the good if I'm not going into the Church?"

"You can't go into the Church: you're in the Church already," said the
Vicar.

"Ordained then," replied Philip impatiently.

"What are you going to be, Philip?" asked Mrs. Carey.

"I don't know. I've not made up my mind. But whatever I am, it'll be
useful to know foreign languages. I shall get far more out of a year in
Germany than by staying on at that hole."

He would not say that he felt Oxford would be little better than a
continuation of his life at school. He wished immensely to be his own
master. Besides he would be known to a certain extent among old
schoolfellows, and he wanted to get away from them all. He felt that his
life at school had been a failure. He wanted to start fresh.

It happened that his desire to go to Germany fell in with certain ideas
which had been of late discussed at Blackstable. Sometimes friends came to
stay with the doctor and brought news of the world outside; and the
visitors spending August by the sea had their own way of looking at
things. The Vicar had heard that there were people who did not think the
old-fashioned education so useful nowadays as it had been in the past, and
modern languages were gaining an importance which they had not had in his
own youth. His own mind was divided, for a younger brother of his had been
sent to Germany when he failed in some examination, thus creating a
precedent but since he had there died of typhoid it was impossible to look
upon the experiment as other than dangerous. The result of innumerable
conversations was that Philip should go back to Tercanbury for another
term, and then should leave. With this agreement Philip was not
dissatisfied. But when he had been back a few days the headmaster spoke to
him.

"I've had a letter from your uncle. It appears you want to go to Germany,
and he asks me what I think about it."

Philip was astounded. He was furious with his guardian for going back on
his word.

"I thought it was settled, sir," he said.

"Far from it. I've written to say I think it the greatest mistake to take
you away."

Philip immediately sat down and wrote a violent letter to his uncle. He
did not measure his language. He was so angry that he could not get to
sleep till quite late that night, and he awoke in the early morning and
began brooding over the way they had treated him. He waited impatiently
for an answer. In two or three days it came. It was a mild, pained letter
from Aunt Louisa, saying that he should not write such things to his
uncle, who was very much distressed. He was unkind and unchristian. He
must know they were only trying to do their best for him, and they were so
much older than he that they must be better judges of what was good for
him. Philip clenched his hands. He had heard that statement so often, and
he could not see why it was true; they did not know the conditions as he
did, why should they accept it as self-evident that their greater age gave
them greater wisdom? The letter ended with the information that Mr. Carey
had withdrawn the notice he had given.

Philip nursed his wrath till the next half-holiday. They had them on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, since on Saturday afternoons they had to go to a
service in the Cathedral. He stopped behind when the rest of the Sixth
went out.

"May I go to Blackstable this afternoon, please, sir?" he asked.

"No," said the headmaster briefly.

"I wanted to see my uncle about something very important."

"Didn't you hear me say no?"

Philip did not answer. He went out. He felt almost sick with humiliation,
the humiliation of having to ask and the humiliation of the curt refusal.
He hated the headmaster now. Philip writhed under that despotism which
never vouchsafed a reason for the most tyrannous act. He was too angry to
care what he did, and after dinner walked down to the station, by the back
ways he knew so well, just in time to catch the train to Blackstable. He
walked into the vicarage and found his uncle and aunt sitting in the
dining-room.

"Hulloa, where have you sprung from?" said the Vicar.

It was very clear that he was not pleased to see him. He looked a little
uneasy.

"I thought I'd come and see you about my leaving. I want to know what you
mean by promising me one thing when I was here, and doing something
different a week after."

He was a little frightened at his own boldness, but he had made up his
mind exactly what words to use, and, though his heart beat violently, he
forced himself to say them.

"Have you got leave to come here this afternoon?"

"No. I asked Perkins and he refused. If you like to write and tell him
I've been here you can get me into a really fine old row."

Mrs. Carey sat knitting with trembling hands. She was unused to scenes and
they agitated her extremely.

"It would serve you right if I told him," said Mr. Carey.

"If you like to be a perfect sneak you can. After writing to Perkins as
you did you're quite capable of it."

It was foolish of Philip to say that, because it gave the Vicar exactly
the opportunity he wanted.

"I'm not going to sit still while you say impertinent things to me," he
said with dignity.

He got up and walked quickly out of the room into his study. Philip heard
him shut the door and lock it.

"Oh, I wish to God I were twenty-one. It is awful to be tied down like
this."

Aunt Louisa began to cry quietly.

"Oh, Philip, you oughtn't to have spoken to your uncle like that. Do
please go and tell him you're sorry."

"I'm not in the least sorry. He's taking a mean advantage. Of course it's
just waste of money keeping me on at school, but what does he care? It's
not his money. It was cruel to put me under the guardianship of people who
know nothing about things."

"Philip."

Philip in his voluble anger stopped suddenly at the sound of her voice. It
was heart-broken. He had not realised what bitter things he was saying.

"Philip, how can you be so unkind? You know we are only trying to do our
best for you, and we know that we have no experience; it isn't as if we'd
had any children of our own: that's why we consulted Mr. Perkins." Her
voice broke. "I've tried to be like a mother to you. I've loved you as if
you were my own son."

She was so small and frail, there was something so pathetic in her
old-maidish air, that Philip was touched. A great lump came suddenly in
his throat and his eyes filled with tears.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to be beastly."

He knelt down beside her and took her in his arms, and kissed her wet,
withered cheeks. She sobbed bitterly, and he seemed to feel on a sudden
the pity of that wasted life. She had never surrendered herself before to
such a display of emotion.

"I know I've not been what I wanted to be to you, Philip, but I didn't
know how. It's been just as dreadful for me to have no children as for you
to have no mother."

Philip forgot his anger and his own concerns, but thought only of
consoling her, with broken words and clumsy little caresses. Then the
clock struck, and he had to bolt off at once to catch the only train that
would get him back to Tercanbury in time for call-over. As he sat in the
corner of the railway carriage he saw that he had done nothing. He was
angry with himself for his weakness. It was despicable to have allowed
himself to be turned from his purpose by the pompous airs of the Vicar and
the tears of his aunt. But as the result of he knew not what conversations
between the couple another letter was written to the headmaster. Mr.
Perkins read it with an impatient shrug of the shoulders. He showed it to
Philip. It ran:

Dear Mr. Perkins,

Forgive me for troubling you again about my ward, but both his Aunt and I
have been uneasy about him. He seems very anxious to leave school, and his
Aunt thinks he is unhappy. It is very difficult for us to know what to do
as we are not his parents. He does not seem to think he is doing very well
and he feels it is wasting his money to stay on. I should be very much
obliged if you would have a talk to him, and if he is still of the same
mind perhaps it would be better if he left at Christmas as I originally
intended.
                        Yours very truly,
                                              William Carey.

Philip gave him back the letter. He felt a thrill of pride in his triumph.
He had got his own way, and he was satisfied. His will had gained a
victory over the wills of others.

"It's not much good my spending half an hour writing to your uncle if he
changes his mind the next letter he gets from you," said the headmaster
irritably.

Philip said nothing, and his face was perfectly placid; but he could not
prevent the twinkle in his eyes. Mr. Perkins noticed it and broke into a
little laugh.

"You've rather scored, haven't you?" he said.

Then Philip smiled outright. He could not conceal his exultation.

"Is it true that you're very anxious to leave?"

"Yes, sir."

"Are you unhappy here?"

Philip blushed. He hated instinctively any attempt to get into the depths
of his feelings.

"Oh, I don't know, sir."

Mr. Perkins, slowly dragging his fingers through his beard, looked at him
thoughtfully. He seemed to speak almost to himself.

"Of course schools are made for the average. The holes are all round, and
whatever shape the pegs are they must wedge in somehow. One hasn't time to
bother about anything but the average." Then suddenly he addressed himself
to Philip: "Look here, I've got a suggestion to make to you. It's getting
on towards the end of the term now. Another term won't kill you, and if
you want to go to Germany you'd better go after Easter than after
Christmas. It'll be much pleasanter in the spring than in midwinter. If at
the end of the next term you still want to go I'll make no objection. What
d'you say to that?"

"Thank you very much, sir."

Philip was so glad to have gained the last three months that he did not
mind the extra term. The school seemed less of a prison when he knew that
before Easter he would be free from it for ever. His heart danced within
him. That evening in chapel he looked round at the boys, standing
according to their forms, each in his due place, and he chuckled with
satisfaction at the thought that soon he would never see them again. It
made him regard them almost with a friendly feeling. His eyes rested on
Rose. Rose took his position as a monitor very seriously: he had quite an
idea of being a good influence in the school; it was his turn to read the
lesson that evening, and he read it very well. Philip smiled when he
thought that he would be rid of him for ever, and it would not matter in
six months whether Rose was tall and straight-limbed; and where would the
importance be that he was a monitor and captain of the eleven? Philip
looked at the masters in their gowns. Gordon was dead, he had died of
apoplexy two years before, but all the rest were there. Philip knew now
what a poor lot they were, except Turner perhaps, there was something of
a man in him; and he writhed at the thought of the subjection in which
they had held him. In six months they would not matter either. Their
praise would mean nothing to him, and he would shrug his shoulders at
their censure.

Philip had learned not to express his emotions by outward signs, and
shyness still tormented him, but he had often very high spirits; and then,
though he limped about demurely, silent and reserved, it seemed to be
hallooing in his heart. He seemed to himself to walk more lightly. All
sorts of ideas danced through his head, fancies chased one another so
furiously that he could not catch them; but their coming and their going
filled him with exhilaration. Now, being happy, he was able to work, and
during the remaining weeks of the term set himself to make up for his long
neglect. His brain worked easily, and he took a keen pleasure in the
activity of his intellect. He did very well in the examinations that
closed the term. Mr. Perkins made only one remark: he was talking to him
about an essay he had written, and, after the usual criticisms, said:

"So you've made up your mind to stop playing the fool for a bit, have
you?"

He smiled at him with his shining teeth, and Philip, looking down, gave an
embarrassed smile.

The half dozen boys who expected to divide between them the various prizes
which were given at the end of the summer term had ceased to look upon
Philip as a serious rival, but now they began to regard him with some
uneasiness. He told no one that he was leaving at Easter and so was in no
sense a competitor, but left them to their anxieties. He knew that Rose
flattered himself on his French, for he had spent two or three holidays in
France; and he expected to get the Dean's Prize for English essay; Philip
got a good deal of satisfaction in watching his dismay when he saw how
much better Philip was doing in these subjects than himself. Another
fellow, Norton, could not go to Oxford unless he got one of the
scholarships at the disposal of the school. He asked Philip if he was
going in for them.

"Have you any objection?" asked Philip.

It entertained him to think that he held someone else's future in his
hand. There was something romantic in getting these various rewards
actually in his grasp, and then leaving them to others because he
disdained them. At last the breaking-up day came, and he went to Mr.
Perkins to bid him good-bye.

"You don't mean to say you really want to leave?"

Philip's face fell at the headmaster's evident surprise.

"You said you wouldn't put any objection in the way, sir," he answered.

"I thought it was only a whim that I'd better humour. I know you're
obstinate and headstrong. What on earth d'you want to leave for now?
You've only got another term in any case. You can get the Magdalen
scholarship easily; you'll get half the prizes we've got to give."

Philip looked at him sullenly. He felt that he had been tricked; but he
had the promise, and Perkins would have to stand by it.

"You'll have a very pleasant time at Oxford. You needn't decide at once
what you're going to do afterwards. I wonder if you realise how delightful
the life is up there for anyone who has brains."

"I've made all my arrangements now to go to Germany, sir," said Philip.

"Are they arrangements that couldn't possibly be altered?" asked Mr.
Perkins, with his quizzical smile. "I shall be very sorry to lose you. In
schools the rather stupid boys who work always do better than the clever
boy who's idle, but when the clever boy works--why then, he does what
you've done this term."

Philip flushed darkly. He was unused to compliments, and no one had ever
told him he was clever. The headmaster put his hand on Philip's shoulder.

"You know, driving things into the heads of thick-witted boys is dull
work, but when now and then you have the chance of teaching a boy who
comes half-way towards you, who understands almost before you've got the
words out of your mouth, why, then teaching is the most exhilarating thing
in the world." Philip was melted by kindness; it had never occurred to him
that it mattered really to Mr. Perkins whether he went or stayed. He was
touched and immensely flattered. It would be pleasant to end up his
school-days with glory and then go to Oxford: in a flash there appeared
before him the life which he had heard described from boys who came back
to play in the O.K.S. match or in letters from the University read out in
one of the studies. But he was ashamed; he would look such a fool in his
own eyes if he gave in now; his uncle would chuckle at the success of the
headmaster's ruse. It was rather a come-down from the dramatic surrender
of all these prizes which were in his reach, because he disdained to take
them, to the plain, ordinary winning of them. It only required a little
more persuasion, just enough to save his self-respect, and Philip would
have done anything that Mr. Perkins wished; but his face showed nothing of
his conflicting emotions. It was placid and sullen.

"I think I'd rather go, sir," he said.

Mr. Perkins, like many men who manage things by their personal influence,
grew a little impatient when his power was not immediately manifest. He
had a great deal of work to do, and could not waste more time on a boy who
seemed to him insanely obstinate.

"Very well, I promised to let you if you really wanted it, and I keep my
promise. When do you go to Germany?"

Philip's heart beat violently. The battle was won, and he did not know
whether he had not rather lost it.

"At the beginning of May, sir," he answered.

"Well, you must come and see us when you get back."

He held out his hand. If he had given him one more chance Philip would
have changed his mind, but he seemed to look upon the matter as settled.
Philip walked out of the house. His school-days were over, and he was
free; but the wild exultation to which he had looked forward at that
moment was not there. He walked round the precincts slowly, and a profound
depression seized him. He wished now that he had not been foolish. He did
not want to go, but he knew he could never bring himself to go to the
headmaster and tell him he would stay. That was a humiliation he could
never put upon himself. He wondered whether he had done right. He was
dissatisfied with himself and with all his circumstances. He asked himself
dully whether whenever you got your way you wished afterwards that you
hadn't.

XXII

Philip's uncle had an old friend, called Miss Wilkinson, who lived in
Berlin. She was the daughter of a clergyman, and it was with her father,
the rector of a village in Lincolnshire, that Mr. Carey had spent his last
curacy; on his death, forced to earn her living, she had taken various
situations as a governess in France and Germany. She had kept up a
correspondence with Mrs. Carey, and two or three times had spent her
holidays at Blackstable Vicarage, paying as was usual with the Careys'
unfrequent guests a small sum for her keep. When it became clear that it
was less trouble to yield to Philip's wishes than to resist them, Mrs.
Carey wrote to ask her for advice. Miss Wilkinson recommended Heidelberg
as an excellent place to learn German in and the house of Frau Professor
Erlin as a comfortable home. Philip might live there for thirty marks a
week, and the Professor himself, a teacher at the local high school, would
instruct him.

Philip arrived in Heidelberg one morning in May. His things were put on a
barrow and he followed the porter out of the station. The sky was bright
blue, and the trees in the avenue through which they passed were thick
with leaves; there was something in the air fresh to Philip, and mingled
with the timidity he felt at entering on a new life, among strangers, was
a great exhilaration. He was a little disconsolate that no one had come to
meet him, and felt very shy when the porter left him at the front door of
a big white house. An untidy lad let him in and took him into a
drawing-room. It was filled with a large suite covered in green velvet,
and in the middle was a round table. On this in water stood a bouquet of
flowers tightly packed together in a paper frill like the bone of a mutton
chop, and carefully spaced round it were books in leather bindings. There
was a musty smell.

Presently, with an odour of cooking, the Frau Professor came in, a short,
very stout woman with tightly dressed hair and a red face; she had little
eyes, sparkling like beads, and an effusive manner. She took both Philip's
hands and asked him about Miss Wilkinson, who had twice spent a few weeks
with her. She spoke in German and in broken English. Philip could not make
her understand that he did not know Miss Wilkinson. Then her two daughters
appeared. They seemed hardly young to Philip, but perhaps they were not
more than twenty-five: the elder, Thekla, was as short as her mother, with
the same, rather shifty air, but with a pretty face and abundant dark
hair; Anna, her younger sister, was tall and plain, but since she had a
pleasant smile Philip immediately preferred her. After a few minutes of
polite conversation the Frau Professor took Philip to his room and left
him. It was in a turret, looking over the tops of the trees in the Anlage;
and the bed was in an alcove, so that when you sat at the desk it had not
the look of a bed-room at all. Philip unpacked his things and set out all
his books. He was his own master at last.

A bell summoned him to dinner at one o'clock, and he found the Frau
Professor's guests assembled in the drawing-room. He was introduced to her
husband, a tall man of middle age with a large fair head, turning now to
gray, and mild blue eyes. He spoke to Philip in correct, rather archaic
English, having learned it from a study of the English classics, not from
conversation; and it was odd to hear him use words colloquially which
Philip had only met in the plays of Shakespeare. Frau Professor Erlin
called her establishment a family and not a pension; but it would have
required the subtlety of a metaphysician to find out exactly where the
difference lay. When they sat down to dinner in a long dark apartment that
led out of the drawing-room, Philip, feeling very shy, saw that there were
sixteen people. The Frau Professor sat at one end and carved. The service
was conducted, with a great clattering of plates, by the same clumsy lout
who had opened the door for him; and though he was quick it happened that
the first persons to be served had finished before the last had received
their appointed portions. The Frau Professor insisted that nothing but
German should be spoken, so that Philip, even if his bashfulness had
permitted him to be talkative, was forced to hold his tongue. He looked at
the people among whom he was to live. By the Frau Professor sat several
old ladies, but Philip did not give them much of his attention. There were
two young girls, both fair and one of them very pretty, whom Philip heard
addressed as Fraulein Hedwig and Fraulein Cacilie. Fraulein Cacilie had a
long pig-tail hanging down her back. They sat side by side and chattered
to one another, with smothered laughter: now and then they glanced at
Philip and one of them said something in an undertone; they both giggled,
and Philip blushed awkwardly, feeling that they were making fun of him.
Near them sat a Chinaman, with a yellow face and an expansive smile, who
was studying Western conditions at the University. He spoke so quickly,
with a queer accent, that the girls could not always understand him, and
then they burst out laughing. He laughed too, good-humouredly, and his
almond eyes almost closed as he did so. There were two or three American
men, in black coats, rather yellow and dry of skin: they were theological
students; Philip heard the twang of their New England accent through their
bad German, and he glanced at them with suspicion; for he had been taught
to look upon Americans as wild and desperate barbarians.

Afterwards, when they had sat for a little on the stiff green velvet
chairs of the drawing-room, Fraulein Anna asked Philip if he would like to
go for a walk with them.

Philip accepted the invitation. They were quite a party. There were the
two daughters of the Frau Professor, the two other girls, one of the
American students, and Philip. Philip walked by the side of Anna and
Fraulein Hedwig. He was a little fluttered. He had never known any girls.
At Blackstable there were only the farmers' daughters and the girls of the
local tradesmen. He knew them by name and by sight, but he was timid, and
he thought they laughed at his deformity. He accepted willingly the
difference which the Vicar and Mrs. Carey put between their own exalted
rank and that of the farmers. The doctor had two daughters, but they were
both much older than Philip and had been married to successive assistants
while Philip was still a small boy. At school there had been two or three
girls of more boldness than modesty whom some of the boys knew; and
desperate stories, due in all probability to the masculine imagination,
were told of intrigues with them; but Philip had always concealed under a
lofty contempt the terror with which they filled him. His imagination and
the books he had read had inspired in him a desire for the Byronic
attitude; and he was torn between a morbid self-consciousness and a
conviction that he owed it to himself to be gallant. He felt now that he
should be bright and amusing, but his brain seemed empty and he could not
for the life of him think of anything to say. Fraulein Anna, the Frau
Professor's daughter, addressed herself to him frequently from a sense of
duty, but the other said little: she looked at him now and then with
sparkling eyes, and sometimes to his confusion laughed outright. Philip
felt that she thought him perfectly ridiculous. They walked along the side
of a hill among pine-trees, and their pleasant odour caused Philip a keen
delight. The day was warm and cloudless. At last they came to an eminence
from which they saw the valley of the Rhine spread out before them under
the sun. It was a vast stretch of country, sparkling with golden light,
with cities in the distance; and through it meandered the silver ribband
of the river. Wide spaces are rare in the corner of Kent which Philip
knew, the sea offers the only broad horizon, and the immense distance he
saw now gave him a peculiar, an indescribable thrill. He felt suddenly
elated. Though he did not know it, it was the first time that he had
experienced, quite undiluted with foreign emotions, the sense of beauty.
They sat on a bench, the three of them, for the others had gone on, and
while the girls talked in rapid German, Philip, indifferent to their
proximity, feasted his eyes.

"By Jove, I am happy," he said to himself unconsciously.

XXIII

Philip thought occasionally of the King's School at Tercanbury, and
laughed to himself as he remembered what at some particular moment of the
day they were doing. Now and then he dreamed that he was there still, and
it gave him an extraordinary satisfaction, on awaking, to realise that he
was in his little room in the turret. From his bed he could see the great
cumulus clouds that hung in the blue sky. He revelled in his freedom. He
could go to bed when he chose and get up when the fancy took him. There
was no one to order him about. It struck him that he need not tell any
more lies.

It had been arranged that Professor Erlin should teach him Latin and
German; a Frenchman came every day to give him lessons in French; and the
Frau Professor had recommended for mathematics an Englishman who was
taking a philological degree at the university. This was a man named
Wharton. Philip went to him every morning. He lived in one room on the top
floor of a shabby house. It was dirty and untidy, and it was filled with
a pungent odour made up of many different stinks. He was generally in bed
when Philip arrived at ten o'clock, and he jumped out, put on a filthy
dressing-gown and felt slippers, and, while he gave instruction, ate his
simple breakfast. He was a short man, stout from excessive beer drinking,
with a heavy moustache and long, unkempt hair. He had been in Germany for
five years and was become very Teutonic. He spoke with scorn of Cambridge
where he had taken his degree and with horror of the life which awaited
him when, having taken his doctorate in Heidelberg, he must return to
England and a pedagogic career. He adored the life of the German
university with its happy freedom and its jolly companionships. He was a
member of a Burschenschaft, and promised to take Philip to a Kneipe. He
was very poor and made no secret that the lessons he was giving Philip
meant the difference between meat for his dinner and bread and cheese.
Sometimes after a heavy night he had such a headache that he could not
drink his coffee, and he gave his lesson with heaviness of spirit. For
these occasions he kept a few bottles of beer under the bed, and one of
these and a pipe would help him to bear the burden of life.

"A hair of the dog that bit him," he would say as he poured out the beer,
carefully so that the foam should not make him wait too long to drink.

Then he would talk to Philip of the university, the quarrels between rival
corps, the duels, and the merits of this and that professor. Philip learnt
more of life from him than of mathematics. Sometimes Wharton would sit
back with a laugh and say:

"Look here, we've not done anything today. You needn't pay me for the
lesson."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Philip.

This was something new and very interesting, and he felt that it was of
greater import than trigonometry, which he never could understand. It was
like a window on life that he had a chance of peeping through, and he
looked with a wildly beating heart.

"No, you can keep your dirty money," said Wharton.

"But how about your dinner?" said Philip, with a smile, for he knew
exactly how his master's finances stood.

Wharton had even asked him to pay him the two shillings which the lesson
cost once a week rather than once a month, since it made things less
complicated.

"Oh, never mind my dinner. It won't be the first time I've dined off a
bottle of beer, and my mind's never clearer than when I do."

He dived under the bed (the sheets were gray with want of washing), and
fished out another bottle. Philip, who was young and did not know the good
things of life, refused to share it with him, so he drank alone.

"How long are you going to stay here?" asked Wharton.

Both he and Philip had given up with relief the pretence of mathematics.

"Oh, I don't know. I suppose about a year. Then my people want me to go to
Oxford."

Wharton gave a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. It was a new
experience for Philip to learn that there were persons who did not look
upon that seat of learning with awe.

"What d'you want to go there for? You'll only be a glorified schoolboy.
Why don't you matriculate here? A year's no good. Spend five years here.
You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and
freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what
you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In
Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you
choose. They're both very good things. I personally prefer freedom of
thought. But in England you get neither: you're ground down by convention.
You can't think as you like and you can't act as you like. That's because
it's a democratic nation. I expect America's worse."

He leaned back cautiously, for the chair on which he sat had a ricketty
leg, and it was disconcerting when a rhetorical flourish was interrupted
by a sudden fall to the floor.

"I ought to go back to England this year, but if I can scrape together
enough to keep body and soul on speaking terms I shall stay another twelve
months. But then I shall have to go. And I must leave all this"--he waved
his arm round the dirty garret, with its unmade bed, the clothes lying on
the floor, a row of empty beer bottles against the wall, piles of unbound,
ragged books in every corner--"for some provincial university where I
shall try and get a chair of philology. And I shall play tennis and go to
tea-parties." He interrupted himself and gave Philip, very neatly dressed,
with a clean collar on and his hair well-brushed, a quizzical look. "And,
my God! I shall have to wash."

Philip reddened, feeling his own spruceness an intolerable reproach; for
of late he had begun to pay some attention to his toilet, and he had come
out from England with a pretty selection of ties.

The summer came upon the country like a conqueror. Each day was beautiful.
The sky had an arrogant blue which goaded the nerves like a spur. The
green of the trees in the Anlage was violent and crude; and the houses,
when the sun caught them, had a dazzling white which stimulated till it
hurt. Sometimes on his way back from Wharton Philip would sit in the shade
on one of the benches in the Anlage, enjoying the coolness and watching
the patterns of light which the sun, shining through the leaves, made on
the ground. His soul danced with delight as gaily as the sunbeams. He
revelled in those moments of idleness stolen from his work. Sometimes he
sauntered through the streets of the old town. He looked with awe at the
students of the corps, their cheeks gashed and red, who swaggered about in
their coloured caps. In the afternoons he wandered about the hills with
the girls in the Frau Professor's house, and sometimes they went up the
river and had tea in a leafy beer-garden. In the evenings they walked
round and round the Stadtgarten, listening to the band.

Philip soon learned the various interests of the household. Fraulein
Thekla, the professor's elder daughter, was engaged to a man in England
who had spent twelve months in the house to learn German, and their
marriage was to take place at the end of the year. But the young man wrote
that his father, an india-rubber merchant who lived in Slough, did not
approve of the union, and Fraulein Thekla was often in tears. Sometimes
she and her mother might be seen, with stern eyes and determined mouths,
looking over the letters of the reluctant lover. Thekla painted in water
colour, and occasionally she and Philip, with another of the girls to keep
them company, would go out and paint little pictures. The pretty Fraulein
Hedwig had amorous troubles too. She was the daughter of a merchant in
Berlin and a dashing hussar had fallen in love with her, a von if you
please: but his parents opposed a marriage with a person of her condition,
and she had been sent to Heidelberg to forget him. She could never, never
do this, and corresponded with him continually, and he was making every
effort to induce an exasperating father to change his mind. She told all
this to Philip with pretty sighs and becoming blushes, and showed him the
photograph of the gay lieutenant. Philip liked her best of all the girls
at the Frau Professor's, and on their walks always tried to get by her
side. He blushed a great deal when the others chaffed him for his obvious
preference. He made the first declaration in his life to Fraulein Hedwig,
but unfortunately it was an accident, and it happened in this manner. In
the evenings when they did not go out, the young women sang little songs
in the green velvet drawing-room, while Fraulein Anna, who always made
herself useful, industriously accompanied. Fraulein Hedwig's favourite
song was called Ich liebe dich, I love you; and one evening after she
had sung this, when Philip was standing with her on the balcony, looking
at the stars, it occurred to him to make some remark about it. He began:

"Ich liebe dich."

His German was halting, and he looked about for the word he wanted. The
pause was infinitesimal, but before he could go on Fraulein Hedwig said:

"Ach, Herr Carey, Sie mussen mir nicht du sagen--you mustn't talk to me
in the second person singular."

Philip felt himself grow hot all over, for he would never have dared to do
anything so familiar, and he could think of nothing on earth to say. It
would be ungallant to explain that he was not making an observation, but
merely mentioning the title of a song.

"Entschuldigen Sie," he said. "I beg your pardon."

"It does not matter," she whispered.

She smiled pleasantly, quietly took his hand and pressed it, then turned
back into the drawing-room.

Next day he was so embarrassed that he could not speak to her, and in his
shyness did all that was possible to avoid her. When he was asked to go
for the usual walk he refused because, he said, he had work to do. But
Fraulein Hedwig seized an opportunity to speak to him alone.

"Why are you behaving in this way?" she said kindly. "You know, I'm not
angry with you for what you said last night. You can't help it if you love
me. I'm flattered. But although I'm not exactly engaged to Hermann I can
never love anyone else, and I look upon myself as his bride."

Philip blushed again, but he put on quite the expression of a rejected
lover.

"I hope you'll be very happy," he said.

XXIV

Professor Erlin gave Philip a lesson every day. He made out a list of
books which Philip was to read till he was ready for the final achievement
of Faust, and meanwhile, ingeniously enough, started him on a German
translation of one of the plays by Shakespeare which Philip had studied at
school. It was the period in Germany of Goethe's highest fame.
Notwithstanding his rather condescending attitude towards patriotism he
had been adopted as the national poet, and seemed since the war of seventy
to be one of the most significant glories of national unity. The
enthusiastic seemed in the wildness of the Walpurgisnacht to hear the
rattle of artillery at Gravelotte. But one mark of a writer's greatness is
that different minds can find in him different inspirations; and Professor
Erlin, who hated the Prussians, gave his enthusiastic admiration to Goethe
because his works, Olympian and sedate, offered the only refuge for a sane
mind against the onslaughts of the present generation. There was a
dramatist whose name of late had been much heard at Heidelberg, and the
winter before one of his plays had been given at the theatre amid the
cheers of adherents and the hisses of decent people. Philip heard
discussions about it at the Frau Professor's long table, and at these
Professor Erlin lost his wonted calm: he beat the table with his fist, and
drowned all opposition with the roar of his fine deep voice. It was
nonsense and obscene nonsense. He forced himself to sit the play out, but
he did not know whether he was more bored or nauseated. If that was what
the theatre was coming to, then it was high time the police stepped in and
closed the playhouses. He was no prude and could laugh as well as anyone
at the witty immorality of a farce at the Palais Royal, but here was
nothing but filth. With an emphatic gesture he held his nose and whistled
through his teeth. It was the ruin of the family, the uprooting of morals,
the destruction of Germany.

"Aber, Adolf," said the Frau Professor from the other end of the table.
"Calm yourself."

He shook his fist at her. He was the mildest of creatures and ventured
upon no action of his life without consulting her.

"No, Helene, I tell you this," he shouted. "I would sooner my daughters
were lying dead at my feet than see them listening to the garbage of that
shameless fellow."

The play was The Doll's House and the author was Henrik Ibsen.

Professor Erlin classed him with Richard Wagner, but of him he spoke not
with anger but with good-humoured laughter. He was a charlatan but a
successful charlatan, and in that was always something for the comic
spirit to rejoice in.

"Verruckter Kerl! A madman!" he said.

He had seen Lohengrin and that passed muster. It was dull but no worse.
But Siegfried! When he mentioned it Professor Erlin leaned his head on
his hand and bellowed with laughter. Not a melody in it from beginning to
end! He could imagine Richard Wagner sitting in his box and laughing till
his sides ached at the sight of all the people who were taking it
seriously. It was the greatest hoax of the nineteenth century. He lifted
his glass of beer to his lips, threw back his head, and drank till the
glass was empty. Then wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he said:

"I tell you young people that before the nineteenth century is out Wagner
will be as dead as mutton. Wagner! I would give all his works for one
opera by Donizetti."

XXV

The oddest of Philip's masters was his teacher of French. Monsieur Ducroz
was a citizen of Geneva. He was a tall old man, with a sallow skin and
hollow cheeks; his gray hair was thin and long. He wore shabby black
clothes, with holes at the elbows of his coat and frayed trousers. His
linen was very dirty. Philip had never seen him in a clean collar. He was
a man of few words, who gave his lesson conscientiously but without
enthusiasm, arriving as the clock struck and leaving on the minute. His
charges were very small. He was taciturn, and what Philip learnt about him
he learnt from others: it appeared that he had fought with Garibaldi
against the Pope, but had left Italy in disgust when it was clear that all
his efforts for freedom, by which he meant the establishment of a
republic, tended to no more than an exchange of yokes; he had been
expelled from Geneva for it was not known what political offences. Philip
looked upon him with puzzled surprise; for he was very unlike his idea of
the revolutionary: he spoke in a low voice and was extraordinarily polite;
he never sat down till he was asked to; and when on rare occasions he met
Philip in the street took off his hat with an elaborate gesture; he never
laughed, he never even smiled. A more complete imagination than Philip's
might have pictured a youth of splendid hope, for he must have been
entering upon manhood in 1848 when kings, remembering their brother of
France, went about with an uneasy crick in their necks; and perhaps that
passion for liberty which passed through Europe, sweeping before it what
of absolutism and tyranny had reared its head during the reaction from the
revolution of 1789, filled no breast with a hotter fire. One might fancy
him, passionate with theories of human equality and human rights,
discussing, arguing, fighting behind barricades in Paris, flying before
the Austrian cavalry in Milan, imprisoned here, exiled from there, hoping
on and upborne ever with the word which seemed so magical, the word
Liberty; till at last, broken with disease and starvation, old, without
means to keep body and soul together but such lessons as he could pick up
from poor students, he found himself in that little neat town under the
heel of a personal tyranny greater than any in Europe. Perhaps his
taciturnity hid a contempt for the human race which had abandoned the
great dreams of his youth and now wallowed in sluggish ease; or perhaps
these thirty years of revolution had taught him that men are unfit for
liberty, and he thought that he had spent his life in the pursuit of that
which was not worth the finding. Or maybe he was tired out and waited only
with indifference for the release of death.

One day Philip, with the bluntness of his age, asked him if it was true he
had been with Garibaldi. The old man did not seem to attach any importance
to the question. He answered quite quietly in as low a voice as usual.

"Oui, monsieur."

"They say you were in the Commune?"

"Do they? Shall we get on with our work?"

He held the book open and Philip, intimidated, began to translate the
passage he had prepared.

One day Monsieur Ducroz seemed to be in great pain. He had been scarcely
able to drag himself up the many stairs to Philip's room: and when he
arrived sat down heavily, his sallow face drawn, with beads of sweat on
his forehead, trying to recover himself.

"I'm afraid you're ill," said Philip.

"It's of no consequence."

But Philip saw that he was suffering, and at the end of the hour asked
whether he would not prefer to give no more lessons till he was better.

"No," said the old man, in his even low voice. "I prefer to go on while I
am able."

Philip, morbidly nervous when he had to make any reference to money,
reddened.

"But it won't make any difference to you," he said. "I'll pay for the
lessons just the same. If you wouldn't mind I'd like to give you the money
for next week in advance."

Monsieur Ducroz charged eighteen pence an hour. Philip took a ten-mark
piece out of his pocket and shyly put it on the table. He could not bring
himself to offer it as if the old man were a beggar.

"In that case I think I won't come again till I'm better." He took the
coin and, without anything more than the elaborate bow with which he
always took his leave, went out.

"Bonjour, monsieur."

Philip was vaguely disappointed. Thinking he had done a generous thing, he
had expected that Monsieur Ducroz would overwhelm him with expressions of
gratitude. He was taken aback to find that the old teacher accepted the
present as though it were his due. He was so young, he did not realise how
much less is the sense of obligation in those who receive favours than in
those who grant them. Monsieur Ducroz appeared again five or six days
later. He tottered a little more and was very weak, but seemed to have
overcome the severity of the attack. He was no more communicative than he
had been before. He remained mysterious, aloof, and dirty. He made no
reference to his illness till after the lesson: and then, just as he was
leaving, at the door, which he held open, he paused. He hesitated, as
though to speak were difficult.

"If it hadn't been for the money you gave me I should have starved. It was
all I had to live on."

He made his solemn, obsequious bow, and went out. Philip felt a little
lump in his throat. He seemed to realise in a fashion the hopeless
bitterness of the old man's struggle, and how hard life was for him when
to himself it was so pleasant.

XXVI

Philip had spent three months in Heidelberg when one morning the Frau
Professor told him that an Englishman named Hayward was coming to stay in
the house, and the same evening at supper he saw a new face. For some days
the family had lived in a state of excitement. First, as the result of
heaven knows what scheming, by dint of humble prayers and veiled threats,
the parents of the young Englishman to whom Fraulein Thekla was engaged
had invited her to visit them in England, and she had set off with an
album of water colours to show how accomplished she was and a bundle of
letters to prove how deeply the young man had compromised himself. A week
later Fraulein Hedwig with radiant smiles announced that the lieutenant of
her affections was coming to Heidelberg with his father and mother.
Exhausted by the importunity of their son and touched by the dowry which
Fraulein Hedwig's father offered, the lieutenant's parents had consented
to pass through Heidelberg to make the young woman's acquaintance. The
interview was satisfactory and Fraulein Hedwig had the satisfaction of
showing her lover in the Stadtgarten to the whole of Frau Professor
Erlin's household. The silent old ladies who sat at the top of the table
near the Frau Professor were in a flutter, and when Fraulein Hedwig said
she was to go home at once for the formal engagement to take place, the
Frau Professor, regardless of expense, said she would give a Maibowle.
Professor Erlin prided himself on his skill in preparing this mild
intoxicant, and after supper the large bowl of hock and soda, with scented
herbs floating in it and wild strawberries, was placed with solemnity on
the round table in the drawing-room. Fraulein Anna teased Philip about the
departure of his lady-love, and he felt very uncomfortable and rather
melancholy. Fraulein Hedwig sang several songs, Fraulein Anna played the
Wedding March, and the Professor sang Die Wacht am Rhein. Amid all this
jollification Philip paid little attention to the new arrival. They had
sat opposite one another at supper, but Philip was chattering busily with
Fraulein Hedwig, and the stranger, knowing no German, had eaten his food
in silence. Philip, observing that he wore a pale blue tie, had on that
account taken a sudden dislike to him. He was a man of twenty-six, very
fair, with long, wavy hair through which he passed his hand frequently
with a careless gesture. His eyes were large and blue, but the blue was
very pale, and they looked rather tired already. He was clean-shaven, and
his mouth, notwithstanding its thin lips, was well-shaped. Fraulein Anna
took an interest in physiognomy, and she made Philip notice afterwards how
finely shaped was his skull, and how weak was the lower part of his face.
The head, she remarked, was the head of a thinker, but the jaw lacked
character. Fraulein Anna, foredoomed to a spinster's life, with her high
cheek-bones and large misshapen nose, laid great stress upon character.
While they talked of him he stood a little apart from the others, watching
the noisy party with a good-humoured but faintly supercilious expression.
He was tall and slim. He held himself with a deliberate grace. Weeks, one
of the American students, seeing him alone, went up and began to talk to
him. The pair were oddly contrasted: the American very neat in his black
coat and pepper-and-salt trousers, thin and dried-up, with something of
ecclesiastical unction already in his manner; and the Englishman in his
loose tweed suit, large-limbed and slow of gesture.

Philip did not speak to the newcomer till next day. They found themselves
alone on the balcony of the drawing-room before dinner. Hayward addressed
him.

"You're English, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Is the food always as bad it was last night?"

"It's always about the same."

"Beastly, isn't it?"

"Beastly."

Philip had found nothing wrong with the food at all, and in fact had eaten
it in large quantities with appetite and enjoyment, but he did not want to
show himself a person of so little discrimination as to think a dinner
good which another thought execrable.

Fraulein Thekla's visit to England made it necessary for her sister to do
more in the house, and she could not often spare the time for long walks;
and Fraulein Cacilie, with her long plait of fair hair and her little
snub-nosed face, had of late shown a certain disinclination for society.
Fraulein Hedwig was gone, and Weeks, the American who generally
accompanied them on their rambles, had set out for a tour of South
Germany. Philip was left a good deal to himself. Hayward sought his
acquaintance; but Philip had an unfortunate trait: from shyness or from
some atavistic inheritance of the cave-dweller, he always disliked people
on first acquaintance; and it was not till he became used to them that he
got over his first impression. It made him difficult of access. He
received Hayward's advances very shyly, and when Hayward asked him one day
to go for a walk he accepted only because he could not think of a civil
excuse. He made his usual apology, angry with himself for the flushing
cheeks he could not control, and trying to carry it off with a laugh.

"I'm afraid I can't walk very fast."

"Good heavens, I don't walk for a wager. I prefer to stroll. Don't you
remember the chapter in Marius where Pater talks of the gentle exercise of
walking as the best incentive to conversation?"

Philip was a good listener; though he often thought of clever things to
say, it was seldom till after the opportunity to say them had passed; but
Hayward was communicative; anyone more experienced than Philip might have
thought he liked to hear himself talk. His supercilious attitude impressed
Philip. He could not help admiring, and yet being awed by, a man who
faintly despised so many things which Philip had looked upon as almost
sacred. He cast down the fetish of exercise, damning with the contemptuous
word pot-hunters all those who devoted themselves to its various forms;
and Philip did not realise that he was merely putting up in its stead the
other fetish of culture.

They wandered up to the castle, and sat on the terrace that overlooked the
town. It nestled in the valley along the pleasant Neckar with a
comfortable friendliness. The smoke from the chimneys hung over it, a pale
blue haze; and the tall roofs, the spires of the churches, gave it a
pleasantly medieval air. There was a homeliness in it which warmed the
heart. Hayward talked of Richard Feverel and Madame Bovary, of
Verlaine, Dante, and Matthew Arnold. In those days Fitzgerald's
translation of Omar Khayyam was known only to the elect, and Hayward
repeated it to Philip. He was very fond of reciting poetry, his own and
that of others, which he did in a monotonous sing-song. By the time they
reached home Philip's distrust of Hayward was changed to enthusiastic
admiration.

They made a practice of walking together every afternoon, and Philip
learned presently something of Hayward's circumstances. He was the son of
a country judge, on whose death some time before he had inherited three
hundred a year. His record at Charterhouse was so brilliant that when he
went to Cambridge the Master of Trinity Hall went out of his way to
express his satisfaction that he was going to that college. He prepared
himself for a distinguished career. He moved in the most intellectual
circles: he read Browning with enthusiasm and turned up his well-shaped
nose at Tennyson; he knew all the details of Shelley's treatment of
Harriet; he dabbled in the history of art (on the walls of his rooms were
reproductions of pictures by G. F. Watts, Burne-Jones, and Botticelli);
and he wrote not without distinction verses of a pessimistic character.
His friends told one another that he was a man of excellent gifts, and he
listened to them willingly when they prophesied his future eminence. In
course of time he became an authority on art and literature. He came under
the influence of Newman's Apologia; the picturesqueness of the Roman
Catholic faith appealed to his esthetic sensibility; and it was only the
fear of his father's wrath (a plain, blunt man of narrow ideas, who read
Macaulay) which prevented him from 'going over.' When he only got a pass
degree his friends were astonished; but he shrugged his shoulders and
delicately insinuated that he was not the dupe of examiners. He made one
feel that a first class was ever so slightly vulgar. He described one of
the vivas with tolerant humour; some fellow in an outrageous collar was
asking him questions in logic; it was infinitely tedious, and suddenly he
noticed that he wore elastic-sided boots: it was grotesque and ridiculous;
so he withdrew his mind and thought of the gothic beauty of the Chapel at
King's. But he had spent some delightful days at Cambridge; he had given
better dinners than anyone he knew; and the conversation in his rooms had
been often memorable. He quoted to Philip the exquisite epigram:

"They told me, Herakleitus, they told me you were dead."

And now, when he related again the picturesque little anecdote about the
examiner and his boots, he laughed.

"Of course it was folly," he said, "but it was a folly in which there was
something fine."

Philip, with a little thrill, thought it magnificent.

Then Hayward went to London to read for the Bar. He had charming rooms in
Clement's Inn, with panelled walls, and he tried to make them look like
his old rooms at the Hall. He had ambitions that were vaguely political,
he described himself as a Whig, and he was put up for a club which was of
Liberal but gentlemanly flavour. His idea was to practise at the Bar (he
chose the Chancery side as less brutal), and get a seat for some pleasant
constituency as soon as the various promises made him were carried out;
meanwhile he went a great deal to the opera, and made acquaintance with a
small number of charming people who admired the things that he admired. He
joined a dining-club of which the motto was, The Whole, The Good, and The
Beautiful. He formed a platonic friendship with a lady some years older
than himself, who lived in Kensington Square; and nearly every afternoon
he drank tea with her by the light of shaded candles, and talked of George
Meredith and Walter Pater. It was notorious that any fool could pass the
examinations of the Bar Council, and he pursued his studies in a dilatory
fashion. When he was ploughed for his final he looked upon it as a
personal affront. At the same time the lady in Kensington Square told him
that her husband was coming home from India on leave, and was a man,
though worthy in every way, of a commonplace mind, who would not
understand a young man's frequent visits. Hayward felt that life was full
of ugliness, his soul revolted from the thought of affronting again the
cynicism of examiners, and he saw something rather splendid in kicking
away the ball which lay at his feet. He was also a good deal in debt: it
was difficult to live in London like a gentleman on three hundred a year;
and his heart yearned for the Venice and Florence which John Ruskin had so
magically described. He felt that he was unsuited to the vulgar bustle of
the Bar, for he had discovered that it was not sufficient to put your name
on a door to get briefs; and modern politics seemed to lack nobility. He
felt himself a poet. He disposed of his rooms in Clement's Inn and went to
Italy. He had spent a winter in Florence and a winter in Rome, and now was
passing his second summer abroad in Germany so that he might read Goethe
in the original.

Hayward had one gift which was very precious. He had a real feeling for
literature, and he could impart his own passion with an admirable fluency.
He could throw himself into sympathy with a writer and see all that was
best in him, and then he could talk about him with understanding. Philip
had read a great deal, but he had read without discrimination everything
that he happened to come across, and it was very good for him now to meet
someone who could guide his taste. He borrowed books from the small
lending library which the town possessed and began reading all the
wonderful things that Hayward spoke of. He did not read always with
enjoyment but invariably with perseverance. He was eager for
self-improvement. He felt himself very ignorant and very humble. By the
end of August, when Weeks returned from South Germany, Philip was
completely under Hayward's influence. Hayward did not like Weeks. He
deplored the American's black coat and pepper-and-salt trousers, and spoke
with a scornful shrug of his New England conscience. Philip listened
complacently to the abuse of a man who had gone out of his way to be kind
to him, but when Weeks in his turn made disagreeable remarks about Hayward
he lost his temper.

"Your new friend looks like a poet," said Weeks, with a thin smile on his
careworn, bitter mouth.

"He is a poet."

"Did he tell you so? In America we should call him a pretty fair specimen
of a waster."

"Well, we're not in America," said Philip frigidly.

"How old is he? Twenty-five? And he does nothing but stay in pensions and
write poetry."

"You don't know him," said Philip hotly.

"Oh yes, I do: I've met a hundred and forty-seven of him."

Weeks' eyes twinkled, but Philip, who did not understand American humour,
pursed his lips and looked severe. Weeks to Philip seemed a man of middle
age, but he was in point of fact little more than thirty. He had a long,
thin body and the scholar's stoop; his head was large and ugly; he had
pale scanty hair and an earthy skin; his thin mouth and thin, long nose,
and the great protuberance of his frontal bones, gave him an uncouth look.
He was cold and precise in his manner, a bloodless man, without passion;
but he had a curious vein of frivolity which disconcerted the
serious-minded among whom his instincts naturally threw him. He was
studying theology in Heidelberg, but the other theological students of his
own nationality looked upon him with suspicion. He was very unorthodox,
which frightened them; and his freakish humour excited their disapproval.

"How can you have known a hundred and forty-seven of him?" asked Philip
seriously.

"I've met him in the Latin Quarter in Paris, and I've met him in pensions
in Berlin and Munich. He lives in small hotels in Perugia and Assisi. He
stands by the dozen before the Botticellis in Florence, and he sits on all
the benches of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In Italy he drinks a little too
much wine, and in Germany he drinks a great deal too much beer. He always
admires the right thing whatever the right thing is, and one of these days
he's going to write a great work. Think of it, there are a hundred and
forty-seven great works reposing in the bosoms of a hundred and
forty-seven great men, and the tragic thing is that not one of those
hundred and forty-seven great works will ever be written. And yet the
world goes on."

Weeks spoke seriously, but his gray eyes twinkled a little at the end of
his long speech, and Philip flushed when he saw that the American was
making fun of him.

"You do talk rot," he said crossly.

XXVII

Weeks had two little rooms at the back of Frau Erlin's house, and one of
them, arranged as a parlour, was comfortable enough for him to invite
people to sit in. After supper, urged perhaps by the impish humour which
was the despair of his friends in Cambridge, Mass., he often asked Philip
and Hayward to come in for a chat. He received them with elaborate
courtesy and insisted on their sitting in the only two comfortable chairs
in the room. Though he did not drink himself, with a politeness of which
Philip recognised the irony, he put a couple of bottles of beer at
Hayward's elbow, and he insisted on lighting matches whenever in the heat
of argument Hayward's pipe went out. At the beginning of their
acquaintance Hayward, as a member of so celebrated a university, had
adopted a patronising attitude towards Weeks, who was a graduate of
Harvard; and when by chance the conversation turned upon the Greek
tragedians, a subject upon which Hayward felt he spoke with authority, he
had assumed the air that it was his part to give information rather than
to exchange ideas. Weeks had listened politely, with smiling modesty, till
Hayward finished; then he asked one or two insidious questions, so
innocent in appearance that Hayward, not seeing into what a quandary they
led him, answered blandly; Weeks made a courteous objection, then a
correction of fact, after that a quotation from some little known Latin
commentator, then a reference to a German authority; and the fact was
disclosed that he was a scholar. With smiling ease, apologetically, Weeks
tore to pieces all that Hayward had said; with elaborate civility he
displayed the superficiality of his attainments. He mocked him with gentle
irony. Philip could not help seeing that Hayward looked a perfect fool,
and Hayward had not the sense to hold his tongue; in his irritation, his
self-assurance undaunted, he attempted to argue: he made wild statements
and Weeks amicably corrected them; he reasoned falsely and Weeks proved
that he was absurd: Weeks confessed that he had taught Greek Literature at
Harvard. Hayward gave a laugh of scorn.

"I might have known it. Of course you read Greek like a schoolmaster," he
said. "I read it like a poet."

"And do you find it more poetic when you don't quite know what it means?
I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved
the sense."

At last, having finished the beer, Hayward left Weeks' room hot and
dishevelled; with an angry gesture he said to Philip:

"Of course the man's a pedant. He has no real feeling for beauty. Accuracy
is the virtue of clerks. It's the spirit of the Greeks that we aim at.
Weeks is like that fellow who went to hear Rubenstein and complained that
he played false notes. False notes! What did they matter when he played
divinely?"

Philip, not knowing how many incompetent people have found solace in these
false notes, was much impressed.

Hayward could never resist the opportunity which Weeks offered him of
regaining ground lost on a previous occasion, and Weeks was able with the
greatest ease to draw him into a discussion. Though he could not help
seeing how small his attainments were beside the American's, his British
pertinacity, his wounded vanity (perhaps they are the same thing), would
not allow him to give up the struggle. Hayward seemed to take a delight in
displaying his ignorance, self-satisfaction, and wrongheadedness. Whenever
Hayward said something which was illogical, Weeks in a few words would
show the falseness of his reasoning, pause for a moment to enjoy his
triumph, and then hurry on to another subject as though Christian charity
impelled him to spare the vanquished foe. Philip tried sometimes to put in
something to help his friend, and Weeks gently crushed him, but so kindly,
differently from the way in which he answered Hayward, that even Philip,
outrageously sensitive, could not feel hurt. Now and then, losing his calm
as he felt himself more and more foolish, Hayward became abusive, and only
the American's smiling politeness prevented the argument from degenerating
into a quarrel. On these occasions when Hayward left Weeks' room he
muttered angrily:

"Damned Yankee!"

That settled it. It was a perfect answer to an argument which had seemed
unanswerable.

Though they began by discussing all manner of subjects in Weeks' little
room eventually the conversation always turned to religion: the
theological student took a professional interest in it, and Hayward
welcomed a subject in which hard facts need not disconcert him; when
feeling is the gauge you can snap your angers at logic, and when your
logic is weak that is very agreeable. Hayward found it difficult to
explain his beliefs to Philip without a great flow of words; but it was
clear (and this fell in with Philip's idea of the natural order of
things), that he had been brought up in the church by law established.
Though he had now given up all idea of becoming a Roman Catholic, he still
looked upon that communion with sympathy. He had much to say in its
praise, and he compared favourably its gorgeous ceremonies with the simple
services of the Church of England. He gave Philip Newman's Apologia to
read, and Philip, finding it very dull, nevertheless read it to the end.

"Read it for its style, not for its matter," said Hayward.

He talked enthusiastically of the music at the Oratory, and said charming
things about the connection between incense and the devotional spirit.
Weeks listened to him with his frigid smile.

"You think it proves the truth of Roman Catholicism that John Henry Newman
wrote good English and that Cardinal Manning has a picturesque
appearance?"

Hayward hinted that he had gone through much trouble with his soul. For a
year he had swum in a sea of darkness. He passed his fingers through his
fair, waving hair and told them that he would not for five hundred pounds
endure again those agonies of mind. Fortunately he had reached calm waters
at last.

"But what do you believe?" asked Philip, who was never satisfied with
vague statements.

"I believe in the Whole, the Good, and the Beautiful."

Hayward with his loose large limbs and the fine carriage of his head
looked very handsome when he said this, and he said it with an air.

"Is that how you would describe your religion in a census paper?" asked
Weeks, in mild tones.

"I hate the rigid definition: it's so ugly, so obvious. If you like I will
say that I believe in the church of the Duke of Wellington and Mr.
Gladstone."

"That's the Church of England," said Philip.

"Oh wise young man!" retorted Hayward, with a smile which made Philip
blush, for he felt that in putting into plain words what the other had
expressed in a paraphrase, he had been guilty of vulgarity. "I belong to
the Church of England. But I love the gold and the silk which clothe the
priest of Rome, and his celibacy, and the confessional, and purgatory: and
in the darkness of an Italian cathedral, incense-laden and mysterious, I
believe with all my heart in the miracle of the Mass. In Venice I have
seen a fisherwoman come in, barefoot, throw down her basket of fish by her
side, fall on her knees, and pray to the Madonna; and that I felt was the
real faith, and I prayed and believed with her. But I believe also in
Aphrodite and Apollo and the Great God Pan."

He had a charming voice, and he chose his words as he spoke; he uttered
them almost rhythmically. He would have gone on, but Weeks opened a second
bottle of beer.

"Let me give you something to drink."

Hayward turned to Philip with the slightly condescending gesture which so
impressed the youth.

"Now are you satisfied?" he asked.

Philip, somewhat bewildered, confessed that he was.

"I'm disappointed that you didn't add a little Buddhism," said Weeks. "And
I confess I have a sort of sympathy for Mahomet; I regret that you should
have left him out in the cold."

Hayward laughed, for he was in a good humour with himself that evening,
and the ring of his sentences still sounded pleasant in his ears. He
emptied his glass.

"I didn't expect you to understand me," he answered. "With your cold
American intelligence you can only adopt the critical attitude. Emerson
and all that sort of thing. But what is criticism? Criticism is purely
destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up. You are a
pedant, my dear fellow. The important thing is to construct: I am
constructive; I am a poet."

Weeks looked at him with eyes which seemed at the same time to be quite
grave and yet to be smiling brightly.

"I think, if you don't mind my saying so, you're a little drunk."

"Nothing to speak of," answered Hayward cheerfully. "And not enough for me
to be unable to overwhelm you in argument. But come, I have unbosomed my
soul; now tell us what your religion is."

Weeks put his head on one side so that he looked like a sparrow on a
perch.

"I've been trying to find that out for years. I think I'm a Unitarian."

"But that's a dissenter," said Philip.

He could not imagine why they both burst into laughter, Hayward
uproariously, and Weeks with a funny chuckle.

"And in England dissenters aren't gentlemen, are they?" asked Weeks.

"Well, if you ask me point-blank, they're not," replied Philip rather
crossly.

He hated being laughed at, and they laughed again.

"And will you tell me what a gentleman is?" asked Weeks.

"Oh, I don't know; everyone knows what it is."

"Are you a gentleman?"

No doubt had ever crossed Philip's mind on the subject, but he knew it was
not a thing to state of oneself.

"If a man tells you he's a gentleman you can bet your boots he isn't," he
retorted.

"Am I a gentleman?"

Philip's truthfulness made it difficult for him to answer, but he was
naturally polite.

"Oh, well, you're different," he said. "You're American, aren't you?"

"I suppose we may take it that only Englishmen are gentlemen," said Weeks
gravely.

Philip did not contradict him.

"Couldn't you give me a few more particulars?" asked Weeks.

Philip reddened, but, growing angry, did not care if he made himself
ridiculous.

"I can give you plenty" He remembered his uncle's saying that it took
three generations to make a gentleman: it was a companion proverb to the
silk purse and the sow's ear. "First of all he's the son of a gentleman,
and he's been to a public school, and to Oxford or Cambridge."

"Edinburgh wouldn't do, I suppose?" asked Weeks.

"And he talks English like a gentleman, and he wears the right sort of
things, and if he's a gentleman he can always tell if another chap's a
gentleman."

It seemed rather lame to Philip as he went on, but there it was: that was
what he meant by the word, and everyone he had ever known had meant that
too.

"It is evident to me that I am not a gentleman," said Weeks. "I don't see
why you should have been so surprised because I was a dissenter."

"I don't quite know what a Unitarian is," said Philip.

Weeks in his odd way again put his head on one side: you almost expected
him to twitter.

"A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves in almost everything that anybody
else believes, and he has a very lively sustaining faith in he doesn't
quite know what."

"I don't see why you should make fun of me," said Philip. "I really want
to know."

"My dear friend, I'm not making fun of you. I have arrived at that
definition after years of great labour and the most anxious, nerve-racking
study."

When Philip and Hayward got up to go, Weeks handed Philip a little book in
a paper cover.

"I suppose you can read French pretty well by now. I wonder if this would
amuse you."

Philip thanked him and, taking the book, looked at the title. It was
Renan's Vie de Jesus.

XXVIII

It occurred neither to Hayward nor to Weeks that the conversations which
helped them to pass an idle evening were being turned over afterwards in
Philip's active brain. It had never struck him before that religion was a
matter upon which discussion was possible. To him it meant the Church of
England, and not to believe in its tenets was a sign of wilfulness which
could not fail of punishment here or hereafter. There was some doubt in
his mind about the chastisement of unbelievers. It was possible that a
merciful judge, reserving the flames of hell for the heathen--Mahommedans,
Buddhists, and the rest--would spare Dissenters and Roman Catholics
(though at the cost of how much humiliation when they were made to realise
their error!), and it was also possible that He would be pitiful to those
who had had no chance of learning the truth,--this was reasonable enough,
though such were the activities of the Missionary Society there could not
be many in this condition--but if the chance had been theirs and they had
neglected it (in which category were obviously Roman Catholics and
Dissenters), the punishment was sure and merited. It was clear that the
miscreant was in a parlous state. Perhaps Philip had not been taught it in
so many words, but certainly the impression had been given him that only
members of the Church of England had any real hope of eternal happiness.

One of the things that Philip had heard definitely stated was that the
unbeliever was a wicked and a vicious man; but Weeks, though he believed
in hardly anything that Philip believed, led a life of Christian purity.
Philip had received little kindness in his life, and he was touched by the
American's desire to help him: once when a cold kept him in bed for three
days, Weeks nursed him like a mother. There was neither vice nor
wickedness in him, but only sincerity and loving-kindness. It was
evidently possible to be virtuous and unbelieving.

Also Philip had been given to understand that people adhered to other
faiths only from obstinacy or self-interest: in their hearts they knew
they were false; they deliberately sought to deceive others. Now, for the
sake of his German he had been accustomed on Sunday mornings to attend the
Lutheran service, but when Hayward arrived he began instead to go with him
to Mass. He noticed that, whereas the Protestant church was nearly empty
and the congregation had a listless air, the Jesuit on the other hand was
crowded and the worshippers seemed to pray with all their hearts. They had
not the look of hypocrites. He was surprised at the contrast; for he knew
of course that the Lutherans, whose faith was closer to that of the Church
of England, on that account were nearer the truth than the Roman
Catholics. Most of the men--it was largely a masculine congregation--were
South Germans; and he could not help saying to himself that if he had been
born in South Germany he would certainly have been a Roman Catholic. He
might just as well have been born in a Roman Catholic country as in
England; and in England as well in a Wesleyan, Baptist, or Methodist
family as in one that fortunately belonged to the church by law
established. He was a little breathless at the danger he had run. Philip
was on friendly terms with the little Chinaman who sat at table with him
twice each day. His name was Sung. He was always smiling, affable, and
polite. It seemed strange that he should frizzle in hell merely because he
was a Chinaman; but if salvation was possible whatever a man's faith was,
there did not seem to be any particular advantage in belonging to the
Church of England.

Philip, more puzzled than he had ever been in his life, sounded Weeks. He
had to be careful, for he was very sensitive to ridicule; and the
acidulous humour with which the American treated the Church of England
disconcerted him. Weeks only puzzled him more. He made Philip acknowledge
that those South Germans whom he saw in the Jesuit church were every bit
as firmly convinced of the truth of Roman Catholicism as he was of that of
the Church of England, and from that he led him to admit that the
Mahommedan and the Buddhist were convinced also of the truth of their
respective religions. It looked as though knowing that you were right
meant nothing; they all knew they were right. Weeks had no intention of
undermining the boy's faith, but he was deeply interested in religion, and
found it an absorbing topic of conversation. He had described his own
views accurately when he said that he very earnestly disbelieved in almost
everything that other people believed. Once Philip asked him a question,
which he had heard his uncle put when the conversation at the vicarage had
fallen upon some mildly rationalistic work which was then exciting
discussion in the newspapers.

"But why should you be right and all those fellows like St. Anselm and St.
Augustine be wrong?"

"You mean that they were very clever and learned men, while you have grave
doubts whether I am either?" asked Weeks.

"Yes," answered Philip uncertainly, for put in that way his question
seemed impertinent.

"St. Augustine believed that the earth was flat and that the sun turned
round it."

"I don't know what that proves."

"Why, it proves that you believe with your generation. Your saints lived
in an age of faith, when it was practically impossible to disbelieve what
to us is positively incredible."

"Then how d'you know that we have the truth now?"

"I don't."

Philip thought this over for a moment, then he said:

"I don't see why the things we believe absolutely now shouldn't be just as
wrong as what they believed in the past."

"Neither do I."

"Then how can you believe anything at all?"

"I don't know."

Philip asked Weeks what he thought of Hayward's religion.

"Men have always formed gods in their own image," said Weeks. "He believes
in the picturesque."

Philip paused for a little while, then he said:

"I don't see why one should believe in God at all."

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he realised that he had
ceased to do so. It took his breath away like a plunge into cold water. He
looked at Weeks with startled eyes. Suddenly he felt afraid. He left Weeks
as quickly as he could. He wanted to be alone. It was the most startling
experience that he had ever had. He tried to think it all out; it was very
exciting, since his whole life seemed concerned (he thought his decision
on this matter must profoundly affect its course) and a mistake might lead
to eternal damnation; but the more he reflected the more convinced he was;
and though during the next few weeks he read books, aids to scepticism,
with eager interest it was only to confirm him in what he felt
instinctively. The fact was that he had ceased to believe not for this
reason or the other, but because he had not the religious temperament.
Faith had been forced upon him from the outside. It was a matter of
environment and example. A new environment and a new example gave him the
opportunity to find himself. He put off the faith of his childhood quite
simply, like a cloak that he no longer needed. At first life seemed
strange and lonely without the belief which, though he never realised it,
had been an unfailing support. He felt like a man who has leaned on a
stick and finds himself forced suddenly to walk without assistance. It
really seemed as though the days were colder and the nights more solitary.
But he was upheld by the excitement; it seemed to make life a more
thrilling adventure; and in a little while the stick which he had thrown
aside, the cloak which had fallen from his shoulders, seemed an
intolerable burden of which he had been eased. The religious exercises
which for so many years had been forced upon him were part and parcel of
religion to him. He thought of the collects and epistles which he had been
made to learn by heart, and the long services at the Cathedral through
which he had sat when every limb itched with the desire for movement; and
he remembered those walks at night through muddy roads to the parish
church at Blackstable, and the coldness of that bleak building; he sat
with his feet like ice, his fingers numb and heavy, and all around was the
sickly odour of pomatum. Oh, he had been so bored! His heart leaped when
he saw he was free from all that.

He was surprised at himself because he ceased to believe so easily, and,
not knowing that he felt as he did on account of the subtle workings of
his inmost nature, he ascribed the certainty he had reached to his own
cleverness. He was unduly pleased with himself. With youth's lack of
sympathy for an attitude other than its own he despised not a little Weeks
and Hayward because they were content with the vague emotion which they
called God and would not take the further step which to himself seemed so
obvious. One day he went alone up a certain hill so that he might see a
view which, he knew not why, filled him always with wild exhilaration. It
was autumn now, but often the days were cloudless still, and then the sky
seemed to glow with a more splendid light: it was as though nature
consciously sought to put a fuller vehemence into the remaining days of
fair weather. He looked down upon the plain, a-quiver with the sun,
stretching vastly before him: in the distance were the roofs of Mannheim
and ever so far away the dimness of Worms. Here and there a more piercing
glitter was the Rhine. The tremendous spaciousness of it was glowing with
rich gold. Philip, as he stood there, his heart beating with sheer joy,
thought how the tempter had stood with Jesus on a high mountain and shown
him the kingdoms of the earth. To Philip, intoxicated with the beauty of
the scene, it seemed that it was the whole world which was spread before
him, and he was eager to step down and enjoy it. He was free from
degrading fears and free from prejudice. He could go his way without the
intolerable dread of hell-fire. Suddenly he realised that he had lost also
that burden of responsibility which made every action of his life a matter
of urgent consequence. He could breathe more freely in a lighter air. He
was responsible only to himself for the things he did. Freedom! He was his
own master at last. From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he
no longer believed in Him.

Drunk with pride in his intelligence and in his fearlessness, Philip
entered deliberately upon a new life. But his loss of faith made less
difference in his behaviour than he expected. Though he had thrown on one
side the Christian dogmas it never occurred to him to criticise the
Christian ethics; he accepted the Christian virtues, and indeed thought it
fine to practise them for their own sake, without a thought of reward or
punishment. There was small occasion for heroism in the Frau Professor's
house, but he was a little more exactly truthful than he had been, and he
forced himself to be more than commonly attentive to the dull, elderly
ladies who sometimes engaged him in conversation. The gentle oath, the
violent adjective, which are typical of our language and which he had
cultivated before as a sign of manliness, he now elaborately eschewed.

Having settled the whole matter to his satisfaction he sought to put it
out of his mind, but that was more easily said than done; and he could not
prevent the regrets nor stifle the misgivings which sometimes tormented
him. He was so young and had so few friends that immortality had no
particular attractions for him, and he was able without trouble to give up
belief in it; but there was one thing which made him wretched; he told
himself that he was unreasonable, he tried to laugh himself out of such
pathos; but the tears really came to his eyes when he thought that he
would never see again the beautiful mother whose love for him had grown
more precious as the years since her death passed on. And sometimes, as
though the influence of innumerable ancestors, Godfearing and devout, were
working in him unconsciously, there seized him a panic fear that perhaps
after all it was all true, and there was, up there behind the blue sky, a
jealous God who would punish in everlasting flames the atheist. At these
times his reason could offer him no help, he imagined the anguish of a
physical torment which would last endlessly, he felt quite sick with fear
and burst into a violent sweat. At last he would say to himself
desperately:

"After all, it's not my fault. I can't force myself to believe. If there
is a God after all and he punishes me because I honestly don't believe in
Him I can't help it."

XXIX

Winter set in. Weeks went to Berlin to attend the lectures of Paulssen,
and Hayward began to think of going South. The local theatre opened its
doors. Philip and Hayward went to it two or three times a week with the
praiseworthy intention of improving their German, and Philip found it a
more diverting manner of perfecting himself in the language than listening
to sermons. They found themselves in the midst of a revival of the drama.
Several of Ibsen's plays were on the repertory for the winter; Sudermann's
Die Ehre was then a new play, and on its production in the quiet
university town caused the greatest excitement; it was extravagantly
praised and bitterly attacked; other dramatists followed with plays
written under the modern influence, and Philip witnessed a series of works
in which the vileness of mankind was displayed before him. He had never
been to a play in his life till then (poor touring companies sometimes
came to the Assembly Rooms at Blackstable, but the Vicar, partly on
account of his profession, partly because he thought it would be vulgar,
never went to see them) and the passion of the stage seized him. He felt
a thrill the moment he got into the little, shabby, ill-lit theatre. Soon
he came to know the peculiarities of the small company, and by the casting
could tell at once what were the characteristics of the persons in the
drama; but this made no difference to him. To him it was real life. It was
a strange life, dark and tortured, in which men and women showed to
remorseless eyes the evil that was in their hearts: a fair face concealed
a depraved mind; the virtuous used virtue as a mask to hide their secret
vice, the seeming-strong fainted within with their weakness; the honest
were corrupt, the chaste were lewd. You seemed to dwell in a room where
the night before an orgy had taken place: the windows had not been opened
in the morning; the air was foul with the dregs of beer, and stale smoke,
and flaring gas. There was no laughter. At most you sniggered at the
hypocrite or the fool: the characters expressed themselves in cruel words
that seemed wrung out of their hearts by shame and anguish.

Philip was carried away by the sordid intensity of it. He seemed to see
the world again in another fashion, and this world too he was anxious to
know. After the play was over he went to a tavern and sat in the bright
warmth with Hayward to eat a sandwich and drink a glass of beer. All round
were little groups of students, talking and laughing; and here and there
was a family, father and mother, a couple of sons and a girl; and
sometimes the girl said a sharp thing, and the father leaned back in his
chair and laughed, laughed heartily. It was very friendly and innocent.
There was a pleasant homeliness in the scene, but for this Philip had no
eyes. His thoughts ran on the play he had just come from.

"You do feel it's life, don't you?" he said excitedly. "You know, I don't
think I can stay here much longer. I want to get to London so that I can
really begin. I want to have experiences. I'm so tired of preparing for
life: I want to live it now."

Sometimes Hayward left Philip to go home by himself. He would never
exactly reply to Philip's eager questioning, but with a merry, rather
stupid laugh, hinted at a romantic amour; he quoted a few lines of
Rossetti, and once showed Philip a sonnet in which passion and purple,
pessimism and pathos, were packed together on the subject of a young lady
called Trude. Hayward surrounded his sordid and vulgar little adventures
with a glow of poetry, and thought he touched hands with Pericles and
Pheidias because to describe the object of his attentions he used the word
hetaira instead of one of those, more blunt and apt, provided by the
English language. Philip in the daytime had been led by curiosity to pass
through the little street near the old bridge, with its neat white houses
and green shutters, in which according to Hayward the Fraulein Trude
lived; but the women, with brutal faces and painted cheeks, who came out
of their doors and cried out to him, filled him with fear; and he fled in
horror from the rough hands that sought to detain him. He yearned above
all things for experience and felt himself ridiculous because at his age
he had not enjoyed that which all fiction taught him was the most
important thing in life; but he had the unfortunate gift of seeing things
as they were, and the reality which was offered him differed too terribly
from the ideal of his dreams.

He did not know how wide a country, arid and precipitous, must be crossed
before the traveller through life comes to an acceptance of reality. It is
an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it;
but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless
ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in
contact with the real they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they
were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the
necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look
back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for
an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read
and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is
another nail driven into the body on the cross of life. The strange thing
is that each one who has gone through that bitter disillusionment adds to
it in his turn, unconsciously, by the power within him which is stronger
than himself. The companionship of Hayward was the worst possible thing
for Philip. He was a man who saw nothing for himself, but only through a
literary atmosphere, and he was dangerous because he had deceived himself
into sincerity. He honestly mistook his sensuality for romantic emotion,
his vacillation for the artistic temperament, and his idleness for
philosophic calm. His mind, vulgar in its effort at refinement, saw
everything a little larger than life size, with the outlines blurred, in
a golden mist of sentimentality. He lied and never knew that he lied, and
when it was pointed out to him said that lies were beautiful. He was an
idealist.

XXX

Philip was restless and dissatisfied. Hayward's poetic allusions troubled
his imagination, and his soul yearned for romance. At least that was how
he put it to himself.

And it happened that an incident was taking place in Frau Erlin's house
which increased Philip's preoccupation with the matter of sex. Two or
three times on his walks among the hills he had met Fraulein Cacilie
wandering by herself. He had passed her with a bow, and a few yards
further on had seen the Chinaman. He thought nothing of it; but one
evening on his way home, when night had already fallen, he passed two
people walking very close together. Hearing his footstep, they separated
quickly, and though he could not see well in the darkness he was almost
certain they were Cacilie and Herr Sung. Their rapid movement apart
suggested that they had been walking arm in arm. Philip was puzzled and
surprised. He had never paid much attention to Fraulein Cacilie. She was
a plain girl, with a square face and blunt features. She could not have
been more than sixteen, since she still wore her long fair hair in a
plait. That evening at supper he looked at her curiously; and, though of
late she had talked little at meals, she addressed him.

"Where did you go for your walk today, Herr Carey?" she asked.

"Oh, I walked up towards the Konigstuhl."

"I didn't go out," she volunteered. "I had a headache."

The Chinaman, who sat next to her, turned round.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "I hope it's better now."

Fraulein Cacilie was evidently uneasy, for she spoke again to Philip.

"Did you meet many people on the way?"

Philip could not help reddening when he told a downright lie.

"No. I don't think I saw a living soul."

He fancied that a look of relief passed across her eyes.

Soon, however, there could be no doubt that there was something between
the pair, and other people in the Frau Professor's house saw them lurking
in dark places. The elderly ladies who sat at the head of the table began
to discuss what was now a scandal. The Frau Professor was angry and
harassed. She had done her best to see nothing. The winter was at hand,
and it was not as easy a matter then as in the summer to keep her house
full. Herr Sung was a good customer: he had two rooms on the ground floor,
and he drank a bottle of Moselle at each meal. The Frau Professor charged
him three marks a bottle and made a good profit. None of her other guests
drank wine, and some of them did not even drink beer. Neither did she wish
to lose Fraulein Cacilie, whose parents were in business in South America
and paid well for the Frau Professor's motherly care; and she knew that if
she wrote to the girl's uncle, who lived in Berlin, he would immediately
take her away. The Frau Professor contented herself with giving them both
severe looks at table and, though she dared not be rude to the Chinaman,
got a certain satisfaction out of incivility to Cacilie. But the three
elderly ladies were not content. Two were widows, and one, a Dutchwoman,
was a spinster of masculine appearance; they paid the smallest possible
sum for their pension, and gave a good deal of trouble, but they were
permanent and therefore had to be put up with. They went to the Frau
Professor and said that something must be done; it was disgraceful, and
the house was ceasing to be respectable. The Frau Professor tried
obstinacy, anger, tears, but the three old ladies routed her, and with a
sudden assumption of virtuous indignation she said that she would put a
stop to the whole thing.

After luncheon she took Cacilie into her bed-room and began to talk very
seriously to her; but to her amazement the girl adopted a brazen attitude;
she proposed to go about as she liked; and if she chose to walk with the
Chinaman she could not see it was anybody's business but her own. The Frau
Professor threatened to write to her uncle.

"Then Onkel Heinrich will put me in a family in Berlin for the winter, and
that will be much nicer for me. And Herr Sung will come to Berlin too."

The Frau Professor began to cry. The tears rolled down her coarse, red,
fat cheeks; and Cacilie laughed at her.

"That will mean three rooms empty all through the winter," she said.

Then the Frau Professor tried another plan. She appealed to Fraulein
Cacilie's better nature: she was kind, sensible, tolerant; she treated her
no longer as a child, but as a grown woman. She said that it wouldn't be
so dreadful, but a Chinaman, with his yellow skin and flat nose, and his
little pig's eyes! That's what made it so horrible. It filled one with
disgust to think of it.

"Bitte, bitte," said Cacilie, with a rapid intake of the breath. "I won't
listen to anything against him."

"But it's not serious?" gasped Frau Erlin.

"I love him. I love him. I love him."

"Gott im Himmel!"

The Frau Professor stared at her with horrified surprise; she had thought
it was no more than naughtiness on the child's part, and innocent, folly.
but the passion in her voice revealed everything. Cacilie looked at her
for a moment with flaming eyes, and then with a shrug of her shoulders
went out of the room.

Frau Erlin kept the details of the interview to herself, and a day or two
later altered the arrangement of the table. She asked Herr Sung if he
would not come and sit at her end, and he with his unfailing politeness
accepted with alacrity. Cacilie took the change indifferently. But as if
the discovery that the relations between them were known to the whole
household made them more shameless, they made no secret now of their walks
together, and every afternoon quite openly set out to wander about the
hills. It was plain that they did not care what was said of them. At last
even the placidity of Professor Erlin was moved, and he insisted that his
wife should speak to the Chinaman. She took him aside in his turn and
expostulated; he was ruining the girl's reputation, he was doing harm to
the house, he must see how wrong and wicked his conduct was; but she was
met with smiling denials; Herr Sung did not know what she was talking
about, he was not paying any attention to Fraulein Cacilie, he never
walked with her; it was all untrue, every word of it.

"Ach, Herr Sung, how can you say such things? You've been seen again and
again."

"No, you're mistaken. It's untrue."

He looked at her with an unceasing smile, which showed his even, little
white teeth. He was quite calm. He denied everything. He denied with bland
effrontery. At last the Frau Professor lost her temper and said the girl
had confessed she loved him. He was not moved. He continued to smile.

"Nonsense! Nonsense! It's all untrue."

She could get nothing out of him. The weather grew very bad; there was
snow and frost, and then a thaw with a long succession of cheerless days,
on which walking was a poor amusement. One evening when Philip had just
finished his German lesson with the Herr Professor and was standing for a
moment in the drawing-room, talking to Frau Erlin, Anna came quickly in.

"Mamma, where is Cacilie?" she said.

"I suppose she's in her room."

"There's no light in it."

The Frau Professor gave an exclamation, and she looked at her daughter in
dismay. The thought which was in Anna's head had flashed across hers.

"Ring for Emil," she said hoarsely.

This was the stupid lout who waited at table and did most of the
housework. He came in.

"Emil, go down to Herr Sung's room and enter without knocking. If anyone
is there say you came in to see about the stove."

No sign of astonishment appeared on Emil's phlegmatic face.

He went slowly downstairs. The Frau Professor and Anna left the door open
and listened. Presently they heard Emil come up again, and they called
him.

"Was anyone there?" asked the Frau Professor.

"Yes, Herr Sung was there."

"Was he alone?"

The beginning of a cunning smile narrowed his mouth.

"No, Fraulein Cacilie was there."

"Oh, it's disgraceful," cried the Frau Professor.

Now he smiled broadly.

"Fraulein Cacilie is there every evening. She spends hours at a time
there."

Frau Professor began to wring her hands.

"Oh, how abominable! But why didn't you tell me?"

"It was no business of mine," he answered, slowly shrugging his shoulders.

"I suppose they paid you well. Go away. Go."

He lurched clumsily to the door.

"They must go away, mamma," said Anna.

"And who is going to pay the rent? And the taxes are falling due. It's all
very well for you to say they must go away. If they go away I can't pay
the bills." She turned to Philip, with tears streaming down her face.
"Ach, Herr Carey, you will not say what you have heard. If Fraulein
Forster--" this was the Dutch spinster--"if Fraulein Forster knew she
would leave at once. And if they all go we must close the house. I cannot
afford to keep it."

"Of course I won't say anything."

"If she stays, I will not speak to her," said Anna.

That evening at supper Fraulein Cacilie, redder than usual, with a look of
obstinacy on her face, took her place punctually; but Herr Sung did not
appear, and for a while Philip thought he was going to shirk the ordeal.
At last he came, very smiling, his little eyes dancing with the apologies
he made for his late arrival. He insisted as usual on pouring out the Frau
Professor a glass of his Moselle, and he offered a glass to Fraulein
Forster. The room was very hot, for the stove had been alight all day and
the windows were seldom opened. Emil blundered about, but succeeded
somehow in serving everyone quickly and with order. The three old ladies
sat in silence, visibly disapproving: the Frau Professor had scarcely
recovered from her tears; her husband was silent and oppressed.
Conversation languished. It seemed to Philip that there was something
dreadful in that gathering which he had sat with so often; they looked
different under the light of the two hanging lamps from what they had ever
looked before; he was vaguely uneasy. Once he caught Cacilie's eye, and he
thought she looked at him with hatred and contempt. The room was stifling.
It was as though the beastly passion of that pair troubled them all; there
was a feeling of Oriental depravity; a faint savour of joss-sticks, a
mystery of hidden vices, seemed to make their breath heavy. Philip could
feel the beating of the arteries in his forehead. He could not understand
what strange emotion distracted him; he seemed to feel something
infinitely attractive, and yet he was repelled and horrified.

For several days things went on. The air was sickly with the unnatural
passion which all felt about them, and the nerves of the little household
seemed to grow exasperated. Only Herr Sung remained unaffected; he was no
less smiling, affable, and polite than he had been before: one could not
tell whether his manner was a triumph of civilisation or an expression of
contempt on the part of the Oriental for the vanquished West. Cacilie was
flaunting and cynical. At last even the Frau Professor could bear the
position no longer. Suddenly panic seized her; for Professor Erlin with
brutal frankness had suggested the possible consequences of an intrigue
which was now manifest to everyone, and she saw her good name in
Heidelberg and the repute of her house ruined by a scandal which could not
possibly be hidden. For some reason, blinded perhaps by her interests,
this possibility had never occurred to her; and now, her wits muddled by
a terrible fear, she could hardly be prevented from turning the girl out
of the house at once. It was due to Anna's good sense that a cautious
letter was written to the uncle in Berlin suggesting that Cacilie should
be taken away.

But having made up her mind to lose the two lodgers, the Frau Professor
could not resist the satisfaction of giving rein to the ill-temper she had
curbed so long. She was free now to say anything she liked to Cacilie.

"I have written to your uncle, Cacilie, to take you away. I cannot have
you in my house any longer."

Her little round eyes sparkled when she noticed the sudden whiteness of
the girl's face.

"You're shameless. Shameless," she went on.

She called her foul names.

"What did you say to my uncle Heinrich, Frau Professor?" the girl asked,
suddenly falling from her attitude of flaunting independence.

"Oh, he'll tell you himself. I expect to get a letter from him tomorrow."

Next day, in order to make the humiliation more public, at supper she
called down the table to Cacilie.

"I have had a letter from your uncle, Cacilie. You are to pack your things
tonight, and we will put you in the train tomorrow morning. He will meet
you himself in Berlin at the Central Bahnhof."

"Very good, Frau Professor."

Herr Sung smiled in the Frau Professor's eyes, and notwithstanding her
protests insisted on pouring out a glass of wine for her. The Frau
Professor ate her supper with a good appetite. But she had triumphed
unwisely. Just before going to bed she called the servant.

"Emil, if Fraulein Cacilie's box is ready you had better take it
downstairs tonight. The porter will fetch it before breakfast."

The servant went away and in a moment came back.

"Fraulein Cacilie is not in her room, and her bag has gone."

With a cry the Frau Professor hurried along: the box was on the floor,
strapped and locked; but there was no bag, and neither hat nor cloak. The
dressing-table was empty. Breathing heavily, the Frau Professor ran
downstairs to the Chinaman's rooms, she had not moved so quickly for
twenty years, and Emil called out after her to beware she did not fall;
she did not trouble to knock, but burst in. The rooms were empty. The
luggage had gone, and the door into the garden, still open, showed how it
had been got away. In an envelope on the table were notes for the money
due on the month's board and an approximate sum for extras. Groaning,
suddenly overcome by her haste, the Frau Professor sank obesely on to a
sofa. There could be no doubt. The pair had gone off together. Emil
remained stolid and unmoved.

XXXI

Hayward, after saying for a month that he was going South next day and
delaying from week to week out of inability to make up his mind to the
bother of packing and the tedium of a journey, had at last been driven off
just before Christmas by the preparations for that festival. He could not
support the thought of a Teutonic merry-making. It gave him goose-flesh to
think of the season's aggressive cheerfulness, and in his desire to avoid
the obvious he determined to travel on Christmas Eve.

Philip was not sorry to see him off, for he was a downright person and it
irritated him that anybody should not know his own mind. Though much under
Hayward's influence, he would not grant that indecision pointed to a
charming sensitiveness; and he resented the shadow of a sneer with which
Hayward looked upon his straight ways. They corresponded. Hayward was an
admirable letter-writer, and knowing his talent took pains with his
letters. His temperament was receptive to the beautiful influences with
which he came in contact, and he was able in his letters from Rome to put
a subtle fragrance of Italy. He thought the city of the ancient Romans a
little vulgar, finding distinction only in the decadence of the Empire;
but the Rome of the Popes appealed to his sympathy, and in his chosen
words, quite exquisitely, there appeared a rococo beauty. He wrote of old
church music and the Alban Hills, and of the languor of incense and the
charm of the streets by night, in the rain, when the pavements shone and
the light of the street lamps was mysterious. Perhaps he repeated these
admirable letters to various friends. He did not know what a troubling
effect they had upon Philip; they seemed to make his life very humdrum.
With the spring Hayward grew dithyrambic. He proposed that Philip should
come down to Italy. He was wasting his time at Heidelberg. The Germans
were gross and life there was common; how could the soul come to her own
in that prim landscape? In Tuscany the spring was scattering flowers
through the land, and Philip was nineteen; let him come and they could
wander through the mountain towns of Umbria. Their names sang in Philip's
heart. And Cacilie too, with her lover, had gone to Italy. When he thought
of them Philip was seized with a restlessness he could not account for. He
cursed his fate because he had no money to travel, and he knew his uncle
would not send him more than the fifteen pounds a month which had been
agreed upon. He had not managed his allowance very well. His pension and
the price of his lessons left him very little over, and he had found going
about with Hayward expensive. Hayward had often suggested excursions, a
visit to the play, or a bottle of wine, when Philip had come to the end of
his month's money; and with the folly of his age he had been unwilling to
confess he could not afford an extravagance.

Luckily Hayward's letters came seldom, and in the intervals Philip settled
down again to his industrious life. He had matriculated at the university
and attended one or two courses of lectures. Kuno Fischer was then at the
height of his fame and during the winter had been lecturing brilliantly on
Schopenhauer. It was Philip's introduction to philosophy. He had a
practical mind and moved uneasily amid the abstract; but he found an
unexpected fascination in listening to metaphysical disquisitions; they
made him breathless; it was a little like watching a tight-rope dancer
doing perilous feats over an abyss; but it was very exciting. The
pessimism of the subject attracted his youth; and he believed that the
world he was about to enter was a place of pitiless woe and of darkness.
That made him none the less eager to enter it; and when, in due course,
Mrs. Carey, acting as the correspondent for his guardian's views,
suggested that it was time for him to come back to England, he agreed with
enthusiasm. He must make up his mind now what he meant to do. If he left
Heidelberg at the end of July they could talk things over during August,
and it would be a good time to make arrangements.

The date of his departure was settled, and Mrs. Carey wrote to him again.
She reminded him of Miss Wilkinson, through whose kindness he had gone to
Frau Erlin's house at Heidelberg, and told him that she had arranged to
spend a few weeks with them at Blackstable. She would be crossing from
Flushing on such and such a day, and if he travelled at the same time he
could look after her and come on to Blackstable in her company. Philip's
shyness immediately made him write to say that he could not leave till a
day or two afterwards. He pictured himself looking out for Miss Wilkinson,
the embarrassment of going up to her and asking if it were she (and he
might so easily address the wrong person and be snubbed), and then the
difficulty of knowing whether in the train he ought to talk to her or
whether he could ignore her and read his book.

At last he left Heidelberg. For three months he had been thinking of
nothing but the future; and he went without regret. He never knew that he
had been happy there. Fraulein Anna gave him a copy of Der Trompeter von
Sackingen and in return he presented her with a volume of William Morris.
Very wisely neither of them ever read the other's present.

XXXII

Philip was surprised when he saw his uncle and aunt. He had never noticed
before that they were quite old people. The Vicar received him with his
usual, not unamiable indifference. He was a little stouter, a little
balder, a little grayer. Philip saw how insignificant he was. His face was
weak and self-indulgent. Aunt Louisa took him in her arms and kissed him;
and tears of happiness flowed down her cheeks. Philip was touched and
embarrassed; he had not known with what a hungry love she cared for him.

"Oh, the time has seemed long since you've been away, Philip," she cried.

She stroked his hands and looked into his face with glad eyes.

"You've grown. You're quite a man now."

There was a very small moustache on his upper lip. He had bought a razor
and now and then with infinite care shaved the down off his smooth chin.

"We've been so lonely without you." And then shyly, with a little break in
her voice, she asked: "You are glad to come back to your home, aren't
you?"

"Yes, rather."

She was so thin that she seemed almost transparent, the arms she put round
his neck were frail bones that reminded you of chicken bones, and her
faded face was oh! so wrinkled. The gray curls which she still wore in the
fashion of her youth gave her a queer, pathetic look; and her little
withered body was like an autumn leaf, you felt it might be blown away by
the first sharp wind. Philip realised that they had done with life, these
two quiet little people: they belonged to a past generation, and they were
waiting there patiently, rather stupidly, for death; and he, in his vigour
and his youth, thirsting for excitement and adventure, was appalled at the
waste. They had done nothing, and when they went it would be just as if
they had never been. He felt a great pity for Aunt Louisa, and he loved
her suddenly because she loved him.

Then Miss Wilkinson, who had kept discreetly out of the way till the
Careys had had a chance of welcoming their nephew, came into the room.

"This is Miss Wilkinson, Philip," said Mrs. Carey.

"The prodigal has returned," she said, holding out her hand. "I have
brought a rose for the prodigal's buttonhole."

With a gay smile she pinned to Philip's coat the flower she had just
picked in the garden. He blushed and felt foolish. He knew that Miss
Wilkinson was the daughter of his Uncle William's last rector, and he had
a wide acquaintance with the daughters of clergymen. They wore ill-cut
clothes and stout boots. They were generally dressed in black, for in
Philip's early years at Blackstable homespuns had not reached East Anglia,
and the ladies of the clergy did not favour colours. Their hair was done
very untidily, and they smelt aggressively of starched linen. They
considered the feminine graces unbecoming and looked the same whether they
were old or young. They bore their religion arrogantly. The closeness of
their connection with the church made them adopt a slightly dictatorial
attitude to the rest of mankind.

Miss Wilkinson was very different. She wore a white muslin gown stamped
with gay little bunches of flowers, and pointed, high-heeled shoes, with
open-work stockings. To Philip's inexperience it seemed that she was
wonderfully dressed; he did not see that her frock was cheap and showy.
Her hair was elaborately dressed, with a neat curl in the middle of the
forehead: it was very black, shiny and hard, and it looked as though it
could never be in the least disarranged. She had large black eyes and her
nose was slightly aquiline; in profile she had somewhat the look of a bird
of prey, but full face she was prepossessing. She smiled a great deal, but
her mouth was large and when she smiled she tried to hide her teeth, which
were big and rather yellow. But what embarrassed Philip most was that she
was heavily powdered: he had very strict views on feminine behaviour and
did not think a lady ever powdered; but of course Miss Wilkinson was a
lady because she was a clergyman's daughter, and a clergyman was a
gentleman.

Philip made up his mind to dislike her thoroughly. She spoke with a slight
French accent; and he did not know why she should, since she had been born
and bred in the heart of England. He thought her smile affected, and the
coy sprightliness of her manner irritated him. For two or three days he
remained silent and hostile, but Miss Wilkinson apparently did not notice
it. She was very affable. She addressed her conversation almost
exclusively to him, and there was something flattering in the way she
appealed constantly to his sane judgment. She made him laugh too, and
Philip could never resist people who amused him: he had a gift now and
then of saying neat things; and it was pleasant to have an appreciative
listener. Neither the Vicar nor Mrs. Carey had a sense of humour, and they
never laughed at anything he said. As he grew used to Miss Wilkinson, and
his shyness left him, he began to like her better; he found the French
accent picturesque; and at a garden party which the doctor gave she was
very much better dressed than anyone else. She wore a blue foulard with
large white spots, and Philip was tickled at the sensation it caused.

"I'm certain they think you're no better than you should be," he told her,
laughing.

"It's the dream of my life to be taken for an abandoned hussy," she
answered.

One day when Miss Wilkinson was in her room he asked Aunt Louisa how old
she was.

"Oh, my dear, you should never ask a lady's age; but she's certainly too
old for you to marry."

The Vicar gave his slow, obese smile.

"She's no chicken, Louisa," he said. "She was nearly grown up when we were
in Lincolnshire, and that was twenty years ago. She wore a pigtail hanging
down her back."

"She may not have been more than ten," said Philip.

"She was older than that," said Aunt Louisa.

"I think she was near twenty," said the Vicar.

"Oh no, William. Sixteen or seventeen at the outside."

"That would make her well over thirty," said Philip.

At that moment Miss Wilkinson tripped downstairs, singing a song by
Benjamin Goddard. She had put her hat on, for she and Philip were going
for a walk, and she held out her hand for him to button her glove. He did
it awkwardly. He felt embarrassed but gallant. Conversation went easily
between them now, and as they strolled along they talked of all manner of
things. She told Philip about Berlin, and he told her of his year in
Heidelberg. As he spoke, things which had appeared of no importance gained
a new interest: he described the people at Frau Erlin's house; and to the
conversations between Hayward and Weeks, which at the time seemed so
significant, he gave a little twist, so that they looked absurd. He was
flattered at Miss Wilkinson's laughter.

"I'm quite frightened of you," she said. "You're so sarcastic."

Then she asked him playfully whether he had not had any love affairs at
Heidelberg. Without thinking, he frankly answered that he had not; but she
refused to believe him.

"How secretive you are!" she said. "At your age is it likely?"

He blushed and laughed.

"You want to know too much," he said.

"Ah, I thought so," she laughed triumphantly. "Look at him blushing."

He was pleased that she should think he had been a sad dog, and he changed
the conversation so as to make her believe he had all sorts of romantic
things to conceal. He was angry with himself that he had not. There had
been no opportunity.

Miss Wilkinson was dissatisfied with her lot. She resented having to earn
her living and told Philip a long story of an uncle of her mother's, who
had been expected to leave her a fortune but had married his cook and
changed his will. She hinted at the luxury of her home and compared her
life in Lincolnshire, with horses to ride and carriages to drive in, with
the mean dependence of her present state. Philip was a little puzzled when
he mentioned this afterwards to Aunt Louisa, and she told him that when
she knew the Wilkinsons they had never had anything more than a pony and
a dog-cart; Aunt Louisa had heard of the rich uncle, but as he was married
and had children before Emily was born she could never have had much hope
of inheriting his fortune. Miss Wilkinson had little good to say of
Berlin, where she was now in a situation. She complained of the vulgarity
of German life, and compared it bitterly with the brilliance of Paris,
where she had spent a number of years. She did not say how many. She had
been governess in the family of a fashionable portrait-painter, who had
married a Jewish wife of means, and in their house she had met many
distinguished people. She dazzled Philip with their names. Actors from the
Comedie Francaise had come to the house frequently, and Coquelin, sitting
next her at dinner, had told her he had never met a foreigner who spoke
such perfect French. Alphonse Daudet had come also, and he had given her
a copy of Sappho: he had promised to write her name in it, but she had
forgotten to remind him. She treasured the volume none the less and she
would lend it to Philip. Then there was Maupassant. Miss Wilkinson with a
rippling laugh looked at Philip knowingly. What a man, but what a writer!
Hayward had talked of Maupassant, and his reputation was not unknown to
Philip.

"Did he make love to you?" he asked.

The words seemed to stick funnily in his throat, but he asked them
nevertheless. He liked Miss Wilkinson very much now, and was thrilled by
her conversation, but he could not imagine anyone making love to her.

"What a question!" she cried. "Poor Guy, he made love to every woman he
met. It was a habit that he could not break himself of."

She sighed a little, and seemed to look back tenderly on the past.

"He was a charming man," she murmured.

A greater experience than Philip's would have guessed from these words the
probabilities of the encounter: the distinguished writer invited to
luncheon en famille, the governess coming in sedately with the two tall
girls she was teaching; the introduction:

"Notre Miss Anglaise."

"Mademoiselle."

And the luncheon during which the Miss Anglaise sat silent while the
distinguished writer talked to his host and hostess.

But to Philip her words called up much more romantic fancies.

"Do tell me all about him," he said excitedly.

"There's nothing to tell," she said truthfully, but in such a manner as to
convey that three volumes would scarcely have contained the lurid facts.
"You mustn't be curious."

She began to talk of Paris. She loved the boulevards and the Bois. There
was grace in every street, and the trees in the Champs Elysees had a
distinction which trees had not elsewhere. They were sitting on a stile
now by the high-road, and Miss Wilkinson looked with disdain upon the
stately elms in front of them. And the theatres: the plays were brilliant,
and the acting was incomparable. She often went with Madame Foyot, the
mother of the girls she was educating, when she was trying on clothes.

"Oh, what a misery to be poor!" she cried. "These beautiful things, it's
only in Paris they know how to dress, and not to be able to afford them!
Poor Madame Foyot, she had no figure. Sometimes the dressmaker used to
whisper to me: `Ah, Mademoiselle, if she only had your figure.' "

Philip noticed then that Miss Wilkinson had a robust form and was proud of
it.

"Men are so stupid in England. They only think of the face. The French,
who are a nation of lovers, know how much more important the figure is."

Philip had never thought of such things before, but he observed now that
Miss Wilkinson's ankles were thick and ungainly. He withdrew his eyes
quickly.

"You should go to France. Why don't you go to Paris for a year? You would
learn French, and it would--deniaiser you."

"What is that?" asked Philip.

She laughed slyly.

"You must look it out in the dictionary. Englishmen do not know how to
treat women. They are so shy. Shyness is ridiculous in a man. They don't
know how to make love. They can't even tell a woman she is charming
without looking foolish."

Philip felt himself absurd. Miss Wilkinson evidently expected him to
behave very differently; and he would have been delighted to say gallant
and witty things, but they never occurred to him; and when they did he was
too much afraid of making a fool of himself to say them.

"Oh, I love Paris," sighed Miss Wilkinson. "But I had to go to Berlin. I
was with the Foyots till the girls married, and then I could get nothing
to do, and I had the chance of this post in Berlin. They're relations of
Madame Foyot, and I accepted. I had a tiny apartment in the Rue Breda, on
the cinquieme: it wasn't at all respectable. You know about the Rue
Breda--ces dames, you know."

Philip nodded, not knowing at all what she meant, but vaguely suspecting,
and anxious she should not think him too ignorant.

"But I didn't care. Je suis libre, n'est-ce pas?" She was very fond of
speaking French, which indeed she spoke well. "Once I had such a curious
adventure there."

She paused a little and Philip pressed her to tell it.

"You wouldn't tell me yours in Heidelberg," she said.

"They were so unadventurous," he retorted.

"I don't know what Mrs. Carey would say if she knew the sort of things we
talk about together."

"You don't imagine I shall tell her."

"Will you promise?"

When he had done this, she told him how an art-student who had a room on
the floor above her--but she interrupted herself.

"Why don't you go in for art? You paint so prettily."

"Not well enough for that."

"That is for others to judge. Je m'y connais, and I believe you have the
making of a great artist."

"Can't you see Uncle William's face if I suddenly told him I wanted to go
to Paris and study art?"

"You're your own master, aren't you?"

"You're trying to put me off. Please go on with the story." Miss
Wilkinson, with a little laugh, went on. The art-student had passed her
several times on the stairs, and she had paid no particular attention. She
saw that he had fine eyes, and he took off his hat very politely. And one
day she found a letter slipped under her door. It was from him. He told
her that he had adored her for months, and that he waited about the stairs
for her to pass. Oh, it was a charming letter! Of course she did not
reply, but what woman could help being flattered? And next day there was
another letter! It was wonderful, passionate, and touching. When next she
met him on the stairs she did not know which way to look. And every day
the letters came, and now he begged her to see him. He said he would come
in the evening, vers neuf heures, and she did not know what to do. Of
course it was impossible, and he might ring and ring, but she would never
open the door; and then while she was waiting for the tinkling of the
bell, all nerves, suddenly he stood before her. She had forgotten to shut
the door when she came in.

"C'etait une fatalite."

"And what happened then?" asked Philip.

"That is the end of the story," she replied, with a ripple of laughter.

Philip was silent for a moment. His heart beat quickly, and strange
emotions seemed to be hustling one another in his heart. He saw the dark
staircase and the chance meetings, and he admired the boldness of the
letters--oh, he would never have dared to do that--and then the silent,
almost mysterious entrance. It seemed to him the very soul of romance.

"What was he like?"

"Oh, he was handsome. Charmant garcon."

"Do you know him still?"

Philip felt a slight feeling of irritation as he asked this.

"He treated me abominably. Men are always the same. You're heartless, all
of you."

"I don't know about that," said Philip, not without embarrassment.

"Let us go home," said Miss Wilkinson.

XXXIII

Philip could not get Miss Wilkinson's story out of his head. It was clear
enough what she meant even though she cut it short, and he was a little
shocked. That sort of thing was all very well for married women, he had
read enough French novels to know that in France it was indeed the rule,
but Miss Wilkinson was English and unmarried; her father was a clergyman.
Then it struck him that the art-student probably was neither the first nor
the last of her lovers, and he gasped: he had never looked upon Miss
Wilkinson like that; it seemed incredible that anyone should make love to
her. In his ingenuousness he doubted her story as little as he doubted
what he read in books, and he was angry that such wonderful things never
happened to him. It was humiliating that if Miss Wilkinson insisted upon
his telling her of his adventures in Heidelberg he would have nothing to
tell. It was true that he had some power of invention, but he was not sure
whether he could persuade her that he was steeped in vice; women were full
of intuition, he had read that, and she might easily discover that he was
fibbing. He blushed scarlet as he thought of her laughing up her sleeve.

Miss Wilkinson played the piano and sang in a rather tired voice; but her
songs, Massenet, Benjamin Goddard, and Augusta Holmes, were new to Philip;
and together they spent many hours at the piano. One day she wondered if
he had a voice and insisted on trying it. She told him he had a pleasant
baritone and offered to give him lessons. At first with his usual
bashfulness he refused, but she insisted, and then every morning at a
convenient time after breakfast she gave him an hour's lesson. She had a
natural gift for teaching, and it was clear that she was an excellent
governess. She had method and firmness. Though her French accent was so
much part of her that it remained, all the mellifluousness of her manner
left her when she was engaged in teaching. She put up with no nonsense.
Her voice became a little peremptory, and instinctively she suppressed
inattention and corrected slovenliness. She knew what she was about and
put Philip to scales and exercises.

When the lesson was over she resumed without effort her seductive smiles,
her voice became again soft and winning, but Philip could not so easily
put away the pupil as she the pedagogue; and this impression convicted
with the feelings her stories had aroused in him. He looked at her more
narrowly. He liked her much better in the evening than in the morning. In
the morning she was rather lined and the skin of her neck was just a
little rough. He wished she would hide it, but the weather was very warm
just then and she wore blouses which were cut low. She was very fond of
white; in the morning it did not suit her. At night she often looked very
attractive, she put on a gown which was almost a dinner dress, and she
wore a chain of garnets round her neck; the lace about her bosom and at
her elbows gave her a pleasant softness, and the scent she wore (at
Blackstable no one used anything but Eau de Cologne, and that only on
Sundays or when suffering from a sick headache) was troubling and exotic.
She really looked very young then.

Philip was much exercised over her age. He added twenty and seventeen
together, and could not bring them to a satisfactory total. He asked Aunt
Louisa more than once why she thought Miss Wilkinson was thirty-seven: she
didn't look more than thirty, and everyone knew that foreigners aged more
rapidly than English women; Miss Wilkinson had lived so long abroad that
she might almost be called a foreigner. He personally wouldn't have
thought her more than twenty-six.

"She's more than that," said Aunt Louisa.

Philip did not believe in the accuracy of the Careys' statements. All they
distinctly remembered was that Miss Wilkinson had not got her hair up the
last time they saw her in Lincolnshire. Well, she might have been twelve
then: it was so long ago and the Vicar was always so unreliable. They said
it was twenty years ago, but people used round figures, and it was just as
likely to be eighteen years, or seventeen. Seventeen and twelve were only
twenty-nine, and hang it all, that wasn't old, was it? Cleopatra was
forty-eight when Antony threw away the world for her sake.

It was a fine summer. Day after day was hot and cloudless; but the heat
was tempered by the neighbourhood of the sea, and there was a pleasant
exhilaration in the air, so that one was excited and not oppressed by the
August sunshine. There was a pond in the garden in which a fountain
played; water lilies grew in it and gold fish sunned themselves on the
surface. Philip and Miss Wilkinson used to take rugs and cushions there
after dinner and lie on the lawn in the shade of a tall hedge of roses.
They talked and read all the afternoon. They smoked cigarettes, which the
Vicar did not allow in the house; he thought smoking a disgusting habit,
and used frequently to say that it was disgraceful for anyone to grow a
slave to a habit. He forgot that he was himself a slave to afternoon tea.

One day Miss Wilkinson gave Philip La Vie de Boheme. She had found it by
accident when she was rummaging among the books in the Vicar's study. It
had been bought in a lot with something Mr. Carey wanted and had remained
undiscovered for ten years.

Philip began to read Murger's fascinating, ill-written, absurd
masterpiece, and fell at once under its spell. His soul danced with joy at
that picture of starvation which is so good-humoured, of squalor which is
so picturesque, of sordid love which is so romantic, of bathos which is so
moving. Rodolphe and Mimi, Musette and Schaunard! They wander through the
gray streets of the Latin Quarter, finding refuge now in one attic, now in
another, in their quaint costumes of Louis Philippe, with their tears and
their smiles, happy-go-lucky and reckless. Who can resist them? It is only
when you return to the book with a sounder judgment that you find how
gross their pleasures were, how vulgar their minds; and you feel the utter
worthlessness, as artists and as human beings, of that gay procession.
Philip was enraptured.

"Don't you wish you were going to Paris instead of London?" asked Miss
Wilkinson, smiling at his enthusiasm.

"It's too late now even if I did," he answered.

During the fortnight he had been back from Germany there had been much
discussion between himself and his uncle about his future. He had refused
definitely to go to Oxford, and now that there was no chance of his
getting scholarships even Mr. Carey came to the conclusion that he could
not afford it. His entire fortune had consisted of only two thousand
pounds, and though it had been invested in mortgages at five per cent, he
had not been able to live on the interest. It was now a little reduced. It
would be absurd to spend two hundred a year, the least he could live on at
a university, for three years at Oxford which would lead him no nearer to
earning his living. He was anxious to go straight to London. Mrs. Carey
thought there were only four professions for a gentleman, the Army, the
Navy, the Law, and the Church. She had added medicine because her
brother-in-law practised it, but did not forget that in her young days no
one ever considered the doctor a gentleman. The first two were out of the
question, and Philip was firm in his refusal to be ordained. Only the law
remained. The local doctor had suggested that many gentlemen now went in
for engineering, but Mrs. Carey opposed the idea at once.

"I shouldn't like Philip to go into trade," she said.

"No, he must have a profession," answered the Vicar.

"Why not make him a doctor like his father?"

"I should hate it," said Philip.

Mrs. Carey was not sorry. The Bar seemed out of the question, since he was
not going to Oxford, for the Careys were under the impression that a
degree was still necessary for success in that calling; and finally it was
suggested that he should become articled to a solicitor. They wrote to the
family lawyer, Albert Nixon, who was co-executor with the Vicar of
Blackstable for the late Henry Carey's estate, and asked him whether he
would take Philip. In a day or two the answer came back that he had not a
vacancy, and was very much opposed to the whole scheme; the profession was
greatly overcrowded, and without capital or connections a man had small
chance of becoming more than a managing clerk; he suggested, however, that
Philip should become a chartered accountant. Neither the Vicar nor his
wife knew in the least what this was, and Philip had never heard of anyone
being a chartered accountant; but another letter from the solicitor
explained that the growth of modern businesses and the increase of
companies had led to the formation of many firms of accountants to examine
the books and put into the financial affairs of their clients an order
which old-fashioned methods had lacked. Some years before a Royal Charter
had been obtained, and the profession was becoming every year more
respectable, lucrative, and important. The chartered accountants whom
Albert Nixon had employed for thirty years happened to have a vacancy for
an articled pupil, and would take Philip for a fee of three hundred
pounds. Half of this would be returned during the five years the articles
lasted in the form of salary. The prospect was not exciting, but Philip
felt that he must decide on something, and the thought of living in London
over-balanced the slight shrinking he felt. The Vicar of Blackstable wrote
to ask Mr. Nixon whether it was a profession suited to a gentleman; and
Mr. Nixon replied that, since the Charter, men were going into it who had
been to public schools and a university; moreover, if Philip disliked the
work and after a year wished to leave, Herbert Carter, for that was the
accountant's name, would return half the money paid for the articles. This
settled it, and it was arranged that Philip should start work on the
fifteenth of September.

"I have a full month before me," said Philip.

"And then you go to freedom and I to bondage," returned Miss Wilkinson.

Her holidays were to last six weeks, and she would be leaving Blackstable
only a day or two before Philip.

"I wonder if we shall ever meet again," she said.

"I don't know why not."

"Oh, don't speak in that practical way. I never knew anyone so
unsentimental."

Philip reddened. He was afraid that Miss Wilkinson would think him a
milksop: after all she was a young woman, sometimes quite pretty, and he
was getting on for twenty; it was absurd that they should talk of nothing
but art and literature. He ought to make love to her. They had talked a
good deal of love. There was the art-student in the Rue Breda, and then
there was the painter in whose family she had lived so long in Paris: he
had asked her to sit for him, and had started to make love to her so
violently that she was forced to invent excuses not to sit to him again.
It was clear enough that Miss Wilkinson was used to attentions of that
sort. She looked very nice now in a large straw hat: it was hot that
afternoon, the hottest day they had had, and beads of sweat stood in a
line on her upper lip. He called to mind Fraulein Cacilie and Herr Sung.
He had never thought of Cacilie in an amorous way, she was exceedingly
plain; but now, looking back, the affair seemed very romantic. He had a
chance of romance too. Miss Wilkinson was practically French, and that
added zest to a possible adventure. When he thought of it at night in bed,
or when he sat by himself in the garden reading a book, he was thrilled by
it; but when he saw Miss Wilkinson it seemed less picturesque.

At all events, after what she had told him, she would not be surprised if
he made love to her. He had a feeling that she must think it odd of him to
make no sign: perhaps it was only his fancy, but once or twice in the last
day or two he had imagined that there was a suspicion of contempt in her
eyes.

"A penny for your thoughts," said Miss Wilkinson, looking at him with a
smile.

"I'm not going to tell you," he answered.

He was thinking that he ought to kiss her there and then. He wondered if
she expected him to do it; but after all he didn't see how he could
without any preliminary business at all. She would just think him mad, or
she might slap his face; and perhaps she would complain to his uncle. He
wondered how Herr Sung had started with Fraulein Cacilie. It would be
beastly if she told his uncle: he knew what his uncle was, he would tell
the doctor and Josiah Graves; and he would look a perfect fool. Aunt
Louisa kept on saying that Miss Wilkinson was thirty-seven if she was a
day; he shuddered at the thought of the ridicule he would be exposed to;
they would say she was old enough to be his mother.

"Twopence for your thoughts," smiled Miss Wilkinson.

"I was thinking about you," he answered boldly.

That at all events committed him to nothing.

"What were you thinking?"

"Ah, now you want to know too much."

"Naughty boy!" said Miss Wilkinson.

There it was again! Whenever he had succeeded in working himself up she
said something which reminded him of the governess. She called him
playfully a naughty boy when he did not sing his exercises to her
satisfaction. This time he grew quite sulky.

"I wish you wouldn't treat me as if I were a child."

"Are you cross?"

"Very."

"I didn't mean to."

She put out her hand and he took it. Once or twice lately when they shook
hands at night he had fancied she slightly pressed his hand, but this time
there was no doubt about it.

He did not quite know what he ought to say next. Here at last was his
chance of an adventure, and he would be a fool not to take it; but it was
a little ordinary, and he had expected more glamour. He had read many
descriptions of love, and he felt in himself none of that uprush of
emotion which novelists described; he was not carried off his feet in wave
upon wave of passion; nor was Miss Wilkinson the ideal: he had often
pictured to himself the great violet eyes and the alabaster skin of some
lovely girl, and he had thought of himself burying his face in the
rippling masses of her auburn hair. He could not imagine himself burying
his face in Miss Wilkinson's hair, it always struck him as a little
sticky. All the same it would be very satisfactory to have an intrigue,
and he thrilled with the legitimate pride he would enjoy in his conquest.
He owed it to himself to seduce her. He made up his mind to kiss Miss
Wilkinson; not then, but in the evening; it would be easier in the dark,
and after he had kissed her the rest would follow. He would kiss her that
very evening. He swore an oath to that effect.

He laid his plans. After supper he suggested that they should take a
stroll in the garden. Miss Wilkinson accepted, and they sauntered side by
side. Philip was very nervous. He did not know why, but the conversation
would not lead in the right direction; he had decided that the first thing
to do was to put his arm round her waist; but he could not suddenly put
his arm round her waist when she was talking of the regatta which was to
be held next week. He led her artfully into the darkest parts of the
garden, but having arrived there his courage failed him. They sat on a
bench, and he had really made up his mind that here was his opportunity
when Miss Wilkinson said she was sure there were earwigs and insisted on
moving. They walked round the garden once more, and Philip promised
himself he would take the plunge before they arrived at that bench again;
but as they passed the house, they saw Mrs. Carey standing at the door.

"Hadn't you young people better come in? I'm sure the night air isn't good
for you."

"Perhaps we had better go in," said Philip. "I don't want you to catch
cold."

He said it with a sigh of relief. He could attempt nothing more that
night. But afterwards, when he was alone in his room, he was furious with
himself. He had been a perfect fool. He was certain that Miss Wilkinson
expected him to kiss her, otherwise she wouldn't have come into the
garden. She was always saying that only Frenchmen knew how to treat women.
Philip had read French novels. If he had been a Frenchman he would have
seized her in his arms and told her passionately that he adored her; he
would have pressed his lips on her nuque. He did not know why Frenchmen
always kissed ladies on the nuque. He did not himself see anything so
very attractive in the nape of the neck. Of course it was much easier for
Frenchmen to do these things; the language was such an aid; Philip could
never help feeling that to say passionate things in English sounded a
little absurd. He wished now that he had never undertaken the siege of
Miss Wilkinson's virtue; the first fortnight had been so jolly, and now he
was wretched; but he was determined not to give in, he would never respect
himself again if he did, and he made up his mind irrevocably that the
next night he would kiss her without fail.

Next day when he got up he saw it was raining, and his first thought was
that they would not be able to go into the garden that evening. He was in
high spirits at breakfast. Miss Wilkinson sent Mary Ann in to say that she
had a headache and would remain in bed. She did not come down till
tea-time, when she appeared in a becoming wrapper and a pale face; but she
was quite recovered by supper, and the meal was very cheerful. After
prayers she said she would go straight to bed, and she kissed Mrs. Carey.
Then she turned to Philip.

"Good gracious!" she cried. "I was just going to kiss you too."

"Why don't you?" he said.

She laughed and held out her hand. She distinctly pressed his.

The following day there was not a cloud in the sky, and the garden was
sweet and fresh after the rain. Philip went down to the beach to bathe and
when he came home ate a magnificent dinner. They were having a tennis
party at the vicarage in the afternoon and Miss Wilkinson put on her best
dress. She certainly knew how to wear her clothes, and Philip could not
help noticing how elegant she looked beside the curate's wife and the
doctor's married daughter. There were two roses in her waistband. She sat
in a garden chair by the side of the lawn, holding a red parasol over
herself, and the light on her face was very becoming. Philip was fond of
tennis. He served well and as he ran clumsily played close to the net:
notwithstanding his club-foot he was quick, and it was difficult to get a
ball past him. He was pleased because he won all his sets. At tea he lay
down at Miss Wilkinson's feet, hot and panting.

"Flannels suit you," she said. "You look very nice this afternoon."

He blushed with delight.

"I can honestly return the compliment. You look perfectly ravishing."

She smiled and gave him a long look with her black eyes.

After supper he insisted that she should come out.

"Haven't you had enough exercise for one day?"

"It'll be lovely in the garden tonight. The stars are all out."

He was in high spirits.

"D'you know, Mrs. Carey has been scolding me on your account?" said Miss
Wilkinson, when they were sauntering through the kitchen garden. "She says
I mustn't flirt with you."

"Have you been flirting with me? I hadn't noticed it."

"She was only joking."

"It was very unkind of you to refuse to kiss me last night."

"If you saw the look your uncle gave me when I said what I did!"

"Was that all that prevented you?"

"I prefer to kiss people without witnesses."

"There are no witnesses now."

Philip put his arm round her waist and kissed her lips. She only laughed
a little and made no attempt to withdraw. It had come quite naturally.
Philip was very proud of himself. He said he would, and he had. It was the
easiest thing in the world. He wished he had done it before. He did it
again.

"Oh, you mustn't," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because I like it," she laughed.

XXXIV

Next day after dinner they took their rugs and cushions to the fountain,
and their books; but they did not read. Miss Wilkinson made herself
comfortable and she opened the red sun-shade. Philip was not at all shy
now, but at first she would not let him kiss her.

"It was very wrong of me last night," she said. "I couldn't sleep, I felt
I'd done so wrong."

"What nonsense!" he cried. "I'm sure you slept like a top."

"What do you think your uncle would say if he knew?"

"There's no reason why he should know."

He leaned over her, and his heart went pit-a-pat.

"Why d'you want to kiss me?"

He knew he ought to reply: "Because I love you." But he could not bring
himself to say it.

"Why do you think?" he asked instead.

She looked at him with smiling eyes and touched his face with the tips of
her fingers.

"How smooth your face is," she murmured.

"I want shaving awfully," he said.

It was astonishing how difficult he found it to make romantic speeches. He
found that silence helped him much more than words. He could look
inexpressible things. Miss Wilkinson sighed.

"Do you like me at all?"

"Yes, awfully."

When he tried to kiss her again she did not resist. He pretended to be
much more passionate than he really was, and he succeeded in playing a
part which looked very well in his own eyes.

"I'm beginning to be rather frightened of you," said Miss Wilkinson.

"You'll come out after supper, won't you?" he begged.

"Not unless you promise to behave yourself."

"I'll promise anything."

He was catching fire from the flame he was partly simulating, and at
tea-time he was obstreperously merry. Miss Wilkinson looked at him
nervously.

"You mustn't have those shining eyes," she said to him afterwards. "What
will your Aunt Louisa think?"

"I don't care what she thinks."

Miss Wilkinson gave a little laugh of pleasure. They had no sooner
finished supper than he said to her:

"Are you going to keep me company while I smoke a cigarette?"

"Why don't you let Miss Wilkinson rest?" said Mrs. Carey. "You must
remember she's not as young as you."

"Oh, I'd like to go out, Mrs. Carey," she said, rather acidly.

"After dinner walk a mile, after supper rest a while," said the Vicar.

"Your aunt is very nice, but she gets on my nerves sometimes," said Miss
Wilkinson, as soon as they closed the side-door behind them.

Philip threw away the cigarette he had just lighted, and flung his arms
round her. She tried to push him away.

"You promised you'd be good, Philip."

"You didn't think I was going to keep a promise like that?"

"Not so near the house, Philip," she said. "Supposing someone should come
out suddenly?"

He led her to the kitchen garden where no one was likely to come, and this
time Miss Wilkinson did not think of earwigs. He kissed her passionately.
It was one of the things that puzzled him that he did not like her at all
in the morning, and only moderately in the afternoon, but at night the
touch of her hand thrilled him. He said things that he would never have
thought himself capable of saying; he could certainly never have said them
in the broad light of day; and he listened to himself with wonder and
satisfaction.

"How beautifully you make love," she said.

That was what he thought himself.

"Oh, if I could only say all the things that burn my heart!" he murmured
passionately.

It was splendid. It was the most thrilling game he had ever played; and
the wonderful thing was that he felt almost all he said. It was only that
he exaggerated a little. He was tremendously interested and excited in the
effect he could see it had on her. It was obviously with an effort that at
last she suggested going in.

"Oh, don't go yet," he cried.

"I must," she muttered. "I'm frightened."

He had a sudden intuition what was the right thing to do then.

"I can't go in yet. I shall stay here and think. My cheeks are burning. I
want the night-air. Good-night."

He held out his hand seriously, and she took it in silence. He thought she
stifled a sob. Oh, it was magnificent! When, after a decent interval
during which he had been rather bored in the dark garden by himself, he
went in he found that Miss Wilkinson had already gone to bed.

After that things were different between them. The next day and the day
after Philip showed himself an eager lover. He was deliciously flattered
to discover that Miss Wilkinson was in love with him: she told him so in
English, and she told him so in French. She paid him compliments. No one
had ever informed him before that his eyes were charming and that he had
a sensual mouth. He had never bothered much about his personal appearance,
but now, when occasion presented, he looked at himself in the glass with
satisfaction. When he kissed her it was wonderful to feel the passion that
seemed to thrill her soul. He kissed her a good deal, for he found it
easier to do that than to say the things he instinctively felt she
expected of him. It still made him feel a fool to say he worshipped her.
He wished there were someone to whom he could boast a little, and he would
willingly have discussed minute points of his conduct. Sometimes she said
things that were enigmatic, and he was puzzled. He wished Hayward had been
there so that he could ask him what he thought she meant, and what he had
better do next. He could not make up his mind whether he ought to rush
things or let them take their time. There were only three weeks more.

"I can't bear to think of that," she said. "It breaks my heart. And then
perhaps we shall never see one another again."

"If you cared for me at all, you wouldn't be so unkind to me," he
whispered.

"Oh, why can't you be content to let it go on as it is? Men are always the
same. They're never satisfied."

And when he pressed her, she said:

"But don't you see it's impossible. How can we here?"

He proposed all sorts of schemes, but she would not have anything to do
with them.

"I daren't take the risk. It would be too dreadful if your aunt found
out."

A day or two later he had an idea which seemed brilliant.

"Look here, if you had a headache on Sunday evening and offered to stay at
home and look after the house, Aunt Louisa would go to church."

Generally Mrs. Carey remained in on Sunday evening in order to allow Mary
Ann to go to church, but she would welcome the opportunity of attending
evensong.

Philip had not found it necessary to impart to his relations the change in
his views on Christianity which had occurred in Germany; they could not be
expected to understand; and it seemed less trouble to go to church
quietly. But he only went in the morning. He regarded this as a graceful
concession to the prejudices of society and his refusal to go a second
time as an adequate assertion of free thought.

When he made the suggestion, Miss Wilkinson did not speak for a moment,
then shook her head.

"No, I won't," she said.

But on Sunday at tea-time she surprised Philip. "I don't think I'll come
to church this evening," she said suddenly. "I've really got a dreadful
headache."

Mrs. Carey, much concerned, insisted on giving her some `drops' which she
was herself in the habit of using. Miss Wilkinson thanked her, and
immediately after tea announced that she would go to her room and lie
down.

"Are you sure there's nothing you'll want?" asked Mrs. Carey anxiously.

"Quite sure, thank you."

"Because, if there isn't, I think I'll go to church. I don't often have
the chance of going in the evening."

"Oh yes, do go."

"I shall be in," said Philip. "If Miss Wilkinson wants anything, she can
always call me."

"You'd better leave the drawing-room door open, Philip, so that if Miss
Wilkinson rings, you'll hear."

"Certainly," said Philip.

So after six o'clock Philip was left alone in the house with Miss
Wilkinson. He felt sick with apprehension. He wished with all his heart
that he had not suggested the plan; but it was too late now; he must take
the opportunity which he had made. What would Miss Wilkinson think of him
if he did not! He went into the hall and listened. There was not a sound.
He wondered if Miss Wilkinson really had a headache. Perhaps she had
forgotten his suggestion. His heart beat painfully. He crept up the stairs
as softly as he could, and he stopped with a start when they creaked. He
stood outside Miss Wilkinson's room and listened; he put his hand on the
knob of the door-handle. He waited. It seemed to him that he waited for at
least five minutes, trying to make up his mind; and his hand trembled. He
would willingly have bolted, but he was afraid of the remorse which he
knew would seize him. It was like getting on the highest diving-board in
a swimming-bath; it looked nothing from below, but when you got up there
and stared down at the water your heart sank; and the only thing that
forced you to dive was the shame of coming down meekly by the steps you
had climbed up. Philip screwed up his courage. He turned the handle softly
and walked in. He seemed to himself to be trembling like a leaf.

Miss Wilkinson was standing at the dressing-table with her back to the
door, and she turned round quickly when she heard it open.

"Oh, it's you. What d'you want?"

She had taken off her skirt and blouse, and was standing in her petticoat.
It was short and only came down to the top of her boots; the upper part of
it was black, of some shiny material, and there was a red flounce. She
wore a camisole of white calico with short arms. She looked grotesque.
Philip's heart sank as he stared at her; she had never seemed so
unattractive; but it was too late now. He closed the door behind him and
locked it.

XXXV

Philip woke early next morning. His sleep had been restless; but when he
stretched his legs and looked at the sunshine that slid through the
Venetian blinds, making patterns on the floor, he sighed with
satisfaction. He was delighted with himself. He began to think of Miss
Wilkinson. She had asked him to call her Emily, but, he knew not why, he
could not; he always thought of her as Miss Wilkinson. Since she chid him
for so addressing her, he avoided using her name at all. During his
childhood he had often heard a sister of Aunt Louisa, the widow of a naval
officer, spoken of as Aunt Emily. It made him uncomfortable to call Miss
Wilkinson by that name, nor could he think of any that would have suited
her better. She had begun as Miss Wilkinson, and it seemed inseparable
from his impression of her. He frowned a little: somehow or other he saw
her now at her worst; he could not forget his dismay when she turned round
and he saw her in her camisole and the short petticoat; he remembered the
slight roughness of her skin and the sharp, long lines on the side of the
neck. His triumph was short-lived. He reckoned out her age again, and he
did not see how she could be less than forty. It made the affair
ridiculous. She was plain and old. His quick fancy showed her to him,
wrinkled, haggard, made-up, in those frocks which were too showy for her
position and too young for her years. He shuddered; he felt suddenly that
he never wanted to see her again; he could not bear the thought of kissing
her. He was horrified with himself. Was that love?

He took as long as he could over dressing in order to put back the moment
of seeing her, and when at last he went into the dining-room it was with
a sinking heart. Prayers were over, and they were sitting down at
breakfast.

"Lazybones," Miss Wilkinson cried gaily.

He looked at her and gave a little gasp of relief. She was sitting with
her back to the window. She was really quite nice. He wondered why he had
thought such things about her. His self-satisfaction returned to him.

He was taken aback by the change in her. She told him in a voice thrilling
with emotion immediately after breakfast that she loved him; and when a
little later they went into the drawing-room for his singing lesson and
she sat down on the music-stool she put up her face in the middle of a
scale and said:

"Embrasse-moi."

When he bent down she flung her arms round his neck. It was slightly
uncomfortable, for she held him in such a position that he felt rather
choked.

"Ah, je t'aime. Je t'aime. Je t'aime," she cried, with her extravagantly
French accent.

Philip wished she would speak English.

"I say, I don't know if it's struck you that the gardener's quite likely
to pass the window any minute."

"Ah, je m'en fiche du jardinier. Je m'en refiche, et je m'en
contrefiche."

Philip thought it was very like a French novel, and he did not know why it
slightly irritated him.

At last he said:

"Well, I think I'll tootle along to the beach and have a dip."

"Oh, you're not going to leave me this morning--of all mornings?" Philip
did not quite know why he should not, but it did not matter.

"Would you like me to stay?" he smiled.

"Oh, you darling! But no, go. Go. I want to think of you mastering the
salt sea waves, bathing your limbs in the broad ocean."

He got his hat and sauntered off.

"What rot women talk!" he thought to himself.

But he was pleased and happy and flattered. She was evidently frightfully
gone on him. As he limped along the high street of Blackstable he looked
with a tinge of superciliousness at the people he passed. He knew a good
many to nod to, and as he gave them a smile of recognition he thought to
himself, if they only knew! He did want someone to know very badly. He
thought he would write to Hayward, and in his mind composed the letter. He
would talk of the garden and the roses, and the little French governess,
like an exotic flower amongst them, scented and perverse: he would say she
was French, because--well, she had lived in France so long that she almost
was, and besides it would be shabby to give the whole thing away too
exactly, don't you know; and he would tell Hayward how he had seen her
first in her pretty muslin dress and of the flower she had given him. He
made a delicate idyl of it: the sunshine and the sea gave it passion and
magic, and the stars added poetry, and the old vicarage garden was a fit
and exquisite setting. There was something Meredithian about it: it was
not quite Lucy Feverel and not quite Clara Middleton; but it was
inexpressibly charming. Philip's heart beat quickly. He was so delighted
with his fancies that he began thinking of them again as soon as he
crawled back, dripping and cold, into his bathing-machine. He thought of
the object of his affections. She had the most adorable little nose and
large brown eyes--he would describe her to Hayward--and masses of soft
brown hair, the sort of hair it was delicious to bury your face in, and a
skin which was like ivory and sunshine, and her cheek was like a red, red
rose. How old was she? Eighteen perhaps, and he called her Musette. Her
laughter was like a rippling brook, and her voice was so soft, so low, it
was the sweetest music he had ever heard.

"What ARE you thinking about?"

Philip stopped suddenly. He was walking slowly home.

"I've been waving at you for the last quarter of a mile. You ARE
absent-minded."

Miss Wilkinson was standing in front of him, laughing at his surprise.

"I thought I'd come and meet you."

"That's awfully nice of you," he said.

"Did I startle you?"

"You did a bit," he admitted.

He wrote his letter to Hayward all the same. There were eight pages of it.

The fortnight that remained passed quickly, and though each evening, when
they went into the garden after supper, Miss Wilkinson remarked that one
day more had gone, Philip was in too cheerful spirits to let the thought
depress him. One night Miss Wilkinson suggested that it would be
delightful if she could exchange her situation in Berlin for one in
London. Then they could see one another constantly. Philip said it would
be very jolly, but the prospect aroused no enthusiasm in him; he was
looking forward to a wonderful life in London, and he preferred not to be
hampered. He spoke a little too freely of all he meant to do, and allowed
Miss Wilkinson to see that already he was longing to be off.

"You wouldn't talk like that if you loved me," she cried.

He was taken aback and remained silent.

"What a fool I've been," she muttered.

To his surprise he saw that she was crying. He had a tender heart, and
hated to see anyone miserable.

"Oh, I'm awfully sorry. What have I done? Don't cry."

"Oh, Philip, don't leave me. You don't know what you mean to me. I have
such a wretched life, and you've made me so happy."

He kissed her silently. There really w