Of Human Bondage (20 page)

  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.

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

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

  "You're English, aren't you?"

  "Yes."

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

  "It's always about the same."

  "Beastly, isn't it?"

  "Beastly."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Philip, with a little thrill, thought it
magnificent.

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

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