Of Human Bondage (15 page)

  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.

  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.