Of Human Bondage (17 page)

  "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.

  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.