Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated)

by William Somerset Maugham

  When the last day of term came he and Rose arranged by which train they should come back, so that they might meet at the station and have tea in the town before returning to school. Philip went home with a heavy heart. He thought of Rose all through the holidays, and his fancy was active with the things they would do together next term. He was bored at the vicarage, and when on the last day his uncle put him the usual question in the usual facetious tone:

  “Well, are you glad to be going back to school?”

  Philip answered joyfully.

  “Rather.”

  In order to be sure of meeting Rose at the station he took an earlier train than he usually did, and he waited about the platform for an hour. When the train came in from Faversham, where he knew Rose had to change, he ran along it excitedly. But Rose was not there. He got a porter to tell him when another train was due, and he waited; but again he was disappointed; and he was cold and hungry, so he walked, through side-streets and slums, by a short cut to the school. He found Rose in the study, with his feet on the chimney-piece, talking eighteen to the dozen with half a dozen boys who were sitting on whatever there was to sit on. He shook hands with Philip enthusiastically, but Philip’s face fell, for he realised that Rose had forgotten all about their appointment.

  “I say, why are you so late?” said Rose. “I thought you were never coming.”

  “You were at the station at half-past four,” said another boy. “I saw you when I came.”

  Philip blushed a little. He did not want Rose to know that he had been such a fool as to wait for him.

  “I had to see about a friend of my people’s,” he invented readily. “I was asked to see her off.”

  But his disappointment made him a little sulky. He sat in silence, and when spoken to answered in monosyllables. He was making up his mind to have it out with Rose when they were alone. But when the others had gone Rose at once came over and sat on the arm of the chair in which Philip was lounging.

  “I say, I’m jolly glad we’re in the same study this term. Ripping, isn’t it?”

  He seemed so genuinely pleased to see Philip that Philip’s annoyance vanished. They began as if they had not been separated for five minutes to talk eagerly of the thousand things that interested them.

  XIX

  At first Philip had been too grateful for Rose’s friendship to make any demands on him. He took things as they came and enjoyed life. But presently he began to resent Rose’s universal amiability; he wanted a more exclusive attachment, and he claimed as a right what before he had accepted as a favour. He watched jealously Rose’s companionship with others; and though he knew it was unreasonable could not help sometimes saying bitter things to him. If Rose spent an hour playing the fool in another study, Philip would receive him when he returned to his own with a sullen frown. He would sulk for a day, and he suffered more because Rose either did not notice his ill-humour or deliberately ignored it. Not seldom Philip, knowing all the time how stupid he was, would force a quarrel, and they would not speak to one another for a couple of days. But Philip could not bear to be angry with him long, and even when convinced that he was in the right, would apologise humbly. Then for a week they would be as great friends as ever. But the best was over, and Philip could see that Rose often walked with him merely from old habit or from fear of his anger; they had not so much to say to one another as at first, and Rose was often bored. Philip felt that his lameness began to irritate him.

  Towards the end of the term two or three boys caught scarlet fever, and there was much talk of sending them all home in order to escape an epidemic; but the sufferers were isolated, and since no more were attacked it was supposed that the outbreak was stopped. One of the stricken was Philip. He remained in hospital through the Easter holidays, and at the beginning of the summer term was sent home to the vicarage to get a little fresh air. The Vicar, notwithstanding medical assurance that the boy was no longer infectious, received him with suspicion; he thought it very inconsiderate of the doctor to suggest that his nephew’s convalescence should be spent by the seaside, and consented to have him in the house only because there was nowhere else he could go.

  Philip went back to school at half-term. He had forgotten the quarrels he had had with Rose, but remembered only that he was his greatest friend. He knew that he had been silly. He made up his mind to be more reasonable. During his illness Rose had sent him in a couple of little notes, and he had ended each with the words: “Hurry up and come back.” Philip thought Rose must be looking forward as much to his return as he was himself to seeing Rose.

  He found that owing to the death from scarlet fever of one of the boys in the Sixth there had been some shifting in the studies and Rose was no longer in his. It was a bitter disappointment. But as soon as he arrived he burst into Rose’s study. Rose was sitting at his desk, working with a boy called Hunter, and turned round crossly as Philip came in.

  “Who the devil’s that?” he cried. And then, seeing Philip: “Oh, it’s you.”

  Philip stopped in embarrassment.

  “I thought I’d come in and see how you were.”

  “We were just working.”

  Hunter broke into the conversation.

  “When did you get back?”

  “Five minutes ago.”

  They sat and looked at him as though he was disturbing them. They evidently expected him to go quickly. Philip reddened.

  “I’ll be off. You might look in when you’ve done,” he said to Rose.

  “All right.”

  Philip closed the door behind him and limped back to his own study. He felt frightfully hurt. Rose, far from seeming glad to see him, had looked almost put out. They might never have been more than acquaintances. Though he waited in his study, not leaving it for a moment in case just then Rose should come, his friend never appeared; and next morning when he went in to prayers he saw Rose and Hunter singing along arm in arm. What he could not see for himself others told him. He had forgotten that three months is a long time in a schoolboy’s life, and though he had passed them in solitude Rose had lived in the world. Hunter had stepped into the vacant place. Philip found that Rose was quietly avoiding him. But he was not the boy to accept a situation without putting it into words; he waited till he was sure Rose was alone in his study and went in.

  “May I come in?” he asked.

  Rose looked at him with an embarrassment that made him angry with Philip.

  “Yes, if you want to.”

  “It’s very kind of you,” said Philip sarcastically.

  “What d’you want?”

  “I say, why have you been so rotten since I came back?”

  “Oh, don’t be an ass,” said Rose.

  “I don’t know what you see in Hunter.”

  “That’s my business.”

  Philip looked down. He could not bring himself to say what was in his heart. He was afraid of humiliating himself. Rose got up.

  “I’ve got to go to the Gym,” he said.

  When he was at the door Philip forced himself to speak.

  “I say, Rose, don’t be a perfect beast.”

  “Oh, go to hell.”

  Rose slammed the door behind him and left Philip alone. Philip shivered with rage. He went back to his study and turned the conversation over in his mind. He hated Rose now, he wanted to hurt him, he thought of biting things he might have said to him. He brooded over the end to their friendship and fancied that others were talking of it. In his sensitiveness he saw sneers and wonderings in other fellows’ manner when they were not bothering their heads with him at all. He imagined to himself what they were saying.

  “After all, it wasn’t likely to last long. I wonder he ever stuck Carey at all. Blighter!”

  To show his indifference he struck up a violent friendship with a boy called Sharp whom he hated and despised. He was a London boy, with a loutish air, a heavy fellow with the beginnings of a moustache on his lip and bushy eyebrows that joined one another across the bridge of his no
se. He had soft hands and manners too suave for his years. He spoke with the suspicion of a cockney accent. He was one of those boys who are too slack to play games, and he exercised great ingenuity in making excuses to avoid such as were compulsory. He was regarded by boys and masters with a vague dislike, and it was from arrogance that Philip now sought his society. Sharp in a couple of terms was going to Germany for a year. He hated school, which he looked upon as an indignity to be endured till he was old enough to go out into the world. London was all he cared for, and he had many stories to tell of his doings there during the holidays. From his conversation — he spoke in a soft, deep-toned voice — there emerged the vague rumour of the London streets by night. Philip listened to him at once fascinated and repelled. With his vivid fancy he seemed to see the surging throng round the pit-door of theatres, and the glitter of cheap restaurants, bars where men, half drunk, sat on high stools talking with barmaids; and under the street lamps the mysterious passing of dark crowds bent upon pleasure. Sharp lent him cheap novels from Holywell Row, which Philip read in his cubicle with a sort of wonderful fear.

  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.

  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 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 bitte
r 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.