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              OF HUMAN BONDAGE, by W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

             Digitized by Cardinalis Etext Press, C.E.K.
            Posted to Wiretap in July 1993, as humbond.txt.

                 Italics are marked with _Italics_.

                 This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN.



                        OF HUMAN BONDAGE
                               BY
                       W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

                      GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
                 DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.
                         COPYRIGHT, 1915
                   BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
                         OF HUMAN BONDAGE
            PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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 under-
stand, 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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."


CHAPTER 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 secretary-ship 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 eat{sic} 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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 Sundays 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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 mothers 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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
commonroom 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 be-
fore; 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."


CHAPTER 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. Tumer, 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{sic}.

"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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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.


CHAPTER 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."


CHAPTER 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 Gatibaldi 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 theit 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
tenmark 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.