‘I say, I'm sorry I was such a beast. I couldn't help it. Let's make it up.'
But he knew he would never be able to do it. He was afraid that Rose would sneer at him. He was angry with himself, and when Sharp came in a little while afterwards he seized upon the first opportunity to quarrel with him. Philip had a fiendish instinct for discovering other people's raw spots, and was able to say things that rankled because they were true. But Sharp had the last word.
‘I heard Rose talking about you to Mellor just now,' he said. ‘Mellor said: why didn't you kick him? It would teach him manners. And Rose said: I didn't like to. Damned cripple.'
Philip suddenly became scarlet. He could not answer, for there was a lump in his throat that almost choked him.
XX
PHILIP WAS moved into the Sixth, but he hated school now with all his heart, and, having lost his ambition, cared nothing whether he did ill or well. He awoke in the morning with a sinking heart because he must go through another day of drudgery. He was tired of having to do things because he was told; and the restrictions irked him, not because they were unreasonable, but because they were restrictions. He yearned for freedom. He was weary of repeating things that he knew already and of the hammering away, for the sake of a thick-witted fellow, at something that he understood from the beginning.
With Mr Perkins you could work or not as you chose. He was at once eager and abstracted. The Sixth Form room was in a part of the old abbey which had been restored, and it had a Gothic window: Philip tried to cheat his boredom by drawing this over and over again; and sometimes out of his head he drew the great tower of the Cathedral or the gateway that led into the precincts. He had a knack for drawing. Aunt Louisa during her youth had painted in water colours, and she had several albums filled with sketches of churches, old bridges, and picturesque cottages. They were often shown at the vicarage tea-parties. She had once given Philip a paint-box as a Christmas present, and he had started by copying her pictures. He copied them better than anyone could have expected, and presently he did little pictures of his own. Mrs Carey encouraged him. It was a good way to keep him out of mischief, and later on his sketches would be useful for bazaars. Two or three of them had been framed and hung in his bedroom.
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 P
erkins had spoken to him of the beauty of a life dedicated to the service of God. Philip knew what sort of lives the clergy led in the corner of East Anglia which was his home. There was the Vicar of Whitestone, a parish a little way from Blackstable: he was a bachelor and to give himself something to do had lately taken up farming: the local paper constantly reported the cases he had in the county court against this one and that, labourers he would not pay their wages to or tradesmen whom he accused of cheating him; scandal said he starved his cows, and there was much talk about some general action which should be taken against him. Then there was the Vicar of Ferne, a bearded, fine figure of a man: his wife had been forced to leave him because of his cruelty, and she had filled the neighbourhood with stories of his immorality. The Vicar of Surle, a tiny hamlet by the sea, was to be seen every evening in the public house a stone's throw from his vicarage; and the churchwardens had been to Mr Carey to ask his advice. There was not a soul for any of them to talk to except small farmers or fishermen; there were long winter evenings when the wind blew, whistling drearily through the leafless trees, and all around they saw nothing but the bare monotony of ploughed fields; and there was poverty, and there was lack of any work that seemed to matter; every kink in their characters had free play; there was nothing to restrain them; they grew narrow and eccentric: Philip knew all this, but in his young intolerance he did not offer it as an excuse. He shivered at the thought of leading such a life; he wanted to get out into the world.
XXI
MR PERKINS soon saw that his words had had no effect on Philip, and for the rest of the term ignored him. He wrote a report which was vitriolic. When it arrived and Aunt Louisa asked Philip what it was like, he answered cheerfully:
‘Rotten.'
‘Is it?' said the Vicar. ‘I must look at it again.'
‘Do you think there's any use in my staying on at Tercanbury? I should have thought it would be better if I went to Germany for a bit.'
‘What has put that in your head?' said Aunt Louisa.
‘Don't you think it's rather a good idea?'
Sharp had already left King's School and had written to Philip from Hanover. He was really starting life, and it made Philip more restless to think of it. He felt he could not bear another year of restraint.
‘But then you wouldn't get a scholarship.'
‘I haven't got 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 grey 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 arm 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 school-fellows, and he wanted to get away from them all. He felt that his life at school had been a failure. He wanted to start afresh.
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.
‘Hullo, 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.