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.
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