Philip thought occasionally of the King's School at Tercanbury, and
laughed to himself as he remembered what at some particular moment of the
day they were doing. Now and then he dreamed that he was there still, and
it gave him an extraordinary satisfaction, on awaking, to realise that he
was in his little room in the turret. From his bed he could see the great
cumulus clouds that hung in the blue sky. He revelled in his freedom. He
could go to bed when he chose and get up when the fancy took him. There
was no one to order him about. It struck him that he need not tell any
more lies.
It had been arranged that Professor Erlin should teach him Latin and
German; a Frenchman came every day to give him lessons in French; and the
Frau Professor had recommended for mathematics an Englishman who was
taking a philological degree at the university. This was a man named
Wharton. Philip went to him every morning. He lived in one room on the top
floor of a shabby house. It was dirty and untidy, and it was filled with
a pungent odour made up of many different stinks. He was generally in bed
when Philip arrived at ten o'clock, and he jumped out, put on a filthy
dressing-gown and felt slippers, and, while he gave instruction, ate his
simple breakfast. He was a short man, stout from excessive beer drinking,
with a heavy moustache and long, unkempt hair. He had been in Germany for
five years and was become very Teutonic. He spoke with scorn of Cambridge
where he had taken his degree and with horror of the life which awaited
him when, having taken his doctorate in Heidelberg, he must return to
England and a pedagogic career. He adored the life of the German
university with its happy freedom and its jolly companionships. He was a
member of a Burschenschaft, and promised to take Philip to a Kneipe. He
was very poor and made no secret that the lessons he was giving Philip
meant the difference between meat for his dinner and bread and cheese.
Sometimes after a heavy night he had such a headache that he could not
drink his coffee, and he gave his lesson with heaviness of spirit. For
these occasions he kept a few bottles of beer under the bed, and one of
these and a pipe would help him to bear the burden of life.
"A hair of the dog that bit him," he would say as he poured out the beer,
carefully so that the foam should not make him wait too long to drink.
Then he would talk to Philip of the university, the quarrels between rival
corps, the duels, and the merits of this and that professor. Philip learnt
more of life from him than of mathematics. Sometimes Wharton would sit
back with a laugh and say:
"Look here, we've not done anything today. You needn't pay me for the
lesson."
"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Philip.
This was something new and very interesting, and he felt that it was of
greater import than trigonometry, which he never could understand. It was
like a window on life that he had a chance of peeping through, and he
looked with a wildly beating heart.
"No, you can keep your dirty money," said Wharton.
"But how about your dinner?" said Philip, with a smile, for he knew
exactly how his master's finances stood.
Wharton had even asked him to pay him the two shillings which the lesson
cost once a week rather than once a month, since it made things less
complicated.
"Oh, never mind my dinner. It won't be the first time I've dined off a
bottle of beer, and my mind's never clearer than when I do."
He dived under the bed (the sheets were gray with want of washing), and
fished out another bottle. Philip, who was young and did not know the good
things of life, refused to share it with him, so he drank alone.
"How long are you going to stay here?" asked Wharton.
Both he and Philip had given up with relief the pretence of mathematics.
"Oh, I don't know. I suppose about a year. Then my people want me to go to
Oxford."
Wharton gave a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. It was a new
experience for Philip to learn that there were persons who did not look
upon that seat of learning with awe.
"What d'you want to go there for? You'll only be a glorified schoolboy.
Why don't you matriculate here? A year's no good. Spend five years here.
You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and
freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what
you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In
Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you
choose. They're both very good things. I personally prefer freedom of
thought. But in England you get neither: you're ground down by convention.
You can't think as you like and you can't act as you like. That's because
it's a democratic nation. I expect America's worse."
He leaned back cautiously, for the chair on which he sat had a ricketty
leg, and it was disconcerting when a rhetorical flourish was interrupted
by a sudden fall to the floor.
"I ought to go back to England this year, but if I can scrape together
enough to keep body and soul on speaking terms I shall stay another twelve
months. But then I shall have to go. And I must leave all this"--he waved
his arm round the dirty garret, with its unmade bed, the clothes lying on
the floor, a row of empty beer bottles against the wall, piles of unbound,
ragged books in every corner--"for some provincial university where I
shall try and get a chair of philology. And I shall play tennis and go to
tea-parties." He interrupted himself and gave Philip, very neatly dressed,
with a clean collar on and his hair well-brushed, a quizzical look. "And,
my God! I shall have to wash."
Philip reddened, feeling his own spruceness an intolerable reproach; for
of late he had begun to pay some attention to his toilet, and he had come
out from England with a pretty selection of ties.
The summer came upon the country like a conqueror. Each day was beautiful.
The sky had an arrogant blue which goaded the nerves like a spur. The
green of the trees in the Anlage was violent and crude; and the houses,
when the sun caught them, had a dazzling white which stimulated till it
hurt. Sometimes on his way back from Wharton Philip would sit in the shade
on one of the benches in the Anlage, enjoying the coolness and watching
the patterns of light which the sun, shining through the leaves, made on
the ground. His soul danced with delight as gaily as the sunbeams. He
revelled in those moments of idleness stolen from his work. Sometimes he
sauntered through the streets of the old town. He looked with awe at the
students of the corps, their cheeks gashed and red, who swaggered about in
their coloured caps. In the afternoons he wandered about the hills with
the girls in the Frau Professor's house, and sometimes they went up the
river and had tea in a leafy beer-garden. In the evenings they walked
round and round the Stadtgarten, listening to the band.
Philip soon learned the various interests of the household. Fraulein
Thekla, the professor's elder daughter, was engaged to a man in England
who had spent twelve months in the house to learn German, and their
marriage was to take place at the end of the year. But the young man wrote
that his father, an india-rubber merchant who lived in Slough, did not
approve of the union, and Fraulein Thekla was often in tears. Sometimes
she and her mother might be seen, with stern eyes and determined mouths,
looking over the letters of the reluctant lover. Thekla painted in water
colour, and occasionally she and Philip, with another of the girls to keep
them company, would go out and paint little pictures. The pretty Fraulein
Hedwig had amorous troubles too. She was the daughter of a merchant in
Berlin and a dashing hussar had fallen in love with her, a von if you
please: but his parents opposed a marriage with a person of her condition,
and she had been sent to Heidelberg to forget him. She could never, never
do this, and corresponded with him continually, and he was making every
effort to induce an exasperating father to change his mind. She told all
this to Philip with pretty sighs and becoming blushes, and showed him the
photograph of the gay lieutenant. Philip liked her best of all the girls
at the Frau Professor's, and on their walks always tried to get by her
side. He blushed a great deal when the others chaffed him for his obvious
preference. He made the first declaration in his life to Fraulein Hedwig,
but unfortunately it was an accident, and it happened in this manner. In
the evenings when they did not go out, the young women sang little songs
in the green velvet drawing-room, while Fraulein Anna, who always made
herself useful, industriously accompanied. Fraulein Hedwig's favourite
song was called Ich liebe dich, I love you; and one evening after she
had sung this, when Philip was standing with her on the balcony, looking
at the stars, it occurred to him to make some remark about it. He began:
"Ich liebe dich."
His German was halting, and he looked about for the word he wanted. The
pause was infinitesimal, but before he could go on Fraulein Hedwig said:
"Ach, Herr Carey, Sie mussen mir nicht du sagen--you mustn't talk to me
in the second person singular."
Philip felt himself grow hot all over, for he would never have dared to do
anything so familiar, and he could think of nothing on earth to say. It
would be ungallant to explain that he was not making an observation, but
merely mentioning the title of a song.
"Entschuldigen Sie," he said. "I beg your pardon."
"It does not matter," she whispered.
She smiled pleasantly, quietly took his hand and pressed it, then turned
back into the drawing-room.
Next day he was so embarrassed that he could not speak to her, and in his
shyness did all that was possible to avoid her. When he was asked to go
for the usual walk he refused because, he said, he had work to do. But
Fraulein Hedwig seized an opportunity to speak to him alone.
"Why are you behaving in this way?" she said kindly. "You know, I'm not
angry with you for what you said last night. You can't help it if you love
me. I'm flattered. But although I'm not exactly engaged to Hermann I can
never love anyone else, and I look upon myself as his bride."
Philip blushed again, but he put on quite the expression of a rejected
lover.
"I hope you'll be very happy," he said.
Read next: CHAPTER XXIV
Read previous: CHAPTER XXII
Table of content of Of Human Bondage
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your reviewYour review will be placed after the table of content of this book
