XXIX
Winter set in. Weeks went to Berlin to attend the lectures of Paulssen, and Hayward began to think of going South. The local theatre opened its doors. Philip and Hayward went to it two or three times a week with the praiseworthy intention of improving their German, and Philip found it a more diverting manner of perfecting himself in the language than listening to sermons. They found themselves in the midst of a revival of the drama. Several of Ibsen’s plays were on the repertory for the winter; Sudermann’s Die Ehre was then a new play, and on its production in the quiet university town caused the greatest excitement; it was extravagantly praised and bitterly attacked; other dramatists followed with plays written under the modern influence, and Philip witnessed a series of works in which the vileness of mankind was displayed before him. He had never been to a play in his life till then (poor touring companies sometimes came to the Assembly Rooms at Blackstable, but the Vicar, partly on account of his profession, partly because he thought it would be vulgar, never went to see them) and the passion of the stage seized him. He felt a thrill the moment he got into the little, shabby, ill-lit theatre. Soon he came to know the peculiarities of the small company, and by the casting could tell at once what were the characteristics of the persons in the drama; but this made no difference to him. To him it was real life. It was a strange life, dark and tortured, in which men and women showed to remorseless eyes the evil that was in their hearts: a fair face concealed a depraved mind; the virtuous used virtue as a mask to hide their secret vice, the seeming-strong fainted within with their weakness; the honest were corrupt, the chaste were lewd. You seemed to dwell in a room where the night before an orgy had taken place: the windows had not been opened in the morning; the air was foul with the dregs of beer, and stale smoke, and flaring gas. There was no laughter. At most you sniggered at the hypocrite or the fool: the characters expressed themselves in cruel words that seemed wrung out of their hearts by shame and anguish.
Philip was carried away by the sordid intensity of it. He seemed to see the world again in another fashion, and this world too he was anxious to know. After the play was over he went to a tavern and sat in the bright warmth with Hayward to eat a sandwich and drink a glass of beer. All round were little groups of students, talking and laughing; and here and there was a family, father and mother, a couple of sons and a girl; and sometimes the girl said a sharp thing, and the father leaned back in his chair and laughed, laughed heartily. It was very friendly and innocent. There was a pleasant homeliness in the scene, but for this Philip had no eyes. His thoughts ran on the play he had just come from.
“You do feel it’s life, don’t you?” he said excitedly. “You know, I don’t think I can stay here much longer. I want to get to London so that I can really begin. I want to have experiences. I’m so tired of preparing for life: I want to live it now.”
Sometimes Hayward left Philip to go home by himself. He would never exactly reply to Philip’s eager questioning, but with a merry, rather stupid laugh, hinted at a romantic amour; he quoted a few lines of Rossetti, and once showed Philip a sonnet in which passion and purple, pessimism and pathos, were packed together on the subject of a young lady called Trude. Hayward surrounded his sordid and vulgar little adventures with a glow of poetry, and thought he touched hands with Pericles and Pheidias because to describe the object of his attentions he used the word hetaira instead of one of those, more blunt and apt, provided by the English language. Philip in the daytime had been led by curiosity to pass through the little street near the old bridge, with its neat white houses and green shutters, in which according to Hayward the Fraulein Trude lived; but the women, with brutal faces and painted cheeks, who came out of their doors and cried out to him, filled him with fear; and he fled in horror from the rough hands that sought to detain him. He yearned above all things for experience and felt himself ridiculous because at his age he had not enjoyed that which all fiction taught him was the most important thing in life; but he had the unfortunate gift of seeing things as they were, and the reality which was offered him differed too terribly from the ideal of his dreams.
He did not know how wide a country, arid and precipitous, must be crossed before the traveller through life comes to an acceptance of reality. It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life. The strange thing is that each one who has gone through that bitter disillusionment adds to it in his turn, unconsciously, by the power within him which is stronger than himself. The companionship of Hayward was the worst possible thing for Philip. He was a man who saw nothing for himself, but only through a literary atmosphere, and he was dangerous because he had deceived himself into sincerity. He honestly mistook his sensuality for romantic emotion, his vacillation for the artistic temperament, and his idleness for philosophic calm. His mind, vulgar in its effort at refinement, saw everything a little larger than life size, with the outlines blurred, in a golden mist of sentimentality. He lied and never knew that he lied, and when it was pointed out to him said that lies were beautiful. He was an idealist.
XXX
Philip was restless and dissatisfied. Hayward’s poetic allusions troubled his imagination, and his soul yearned for romance. At least that was how he put it to himself.
And it happened that an incident was taking place in Frau Erlin’s house which increased Philip’s preoccupation with the matter of sex. Two or three times on his walks among the hills he had met Fraulein Cacilie wandering by herself. He had passed her with a bow, and a few yards further on had seen the Chinaman. He thought nothing of it; but one evening on his way home, when night had already fallen, he passed two people walking very close together. Hearing his footstep, they separated quickly, and though he could not see well in the darkness he was almost certain they were Cacilie and Herr Sung. Their rapid movement apart suggested that they had been walking arm in arm. Philip was puzzled and surprised. He had never paid much attention to Fraulein Cacilie. She was a plain girl, with a square face and blunt features. She could not have been more than sixteen, since she still wore her long fair hair in a plait. That evening at supper he looked at her curiously; and, though of late she had talked little at meals, she addressed him.
“Where did you go for your walk today, Herr Carey?” she asked.
“Oh, I walked up towards the Konigstuhl.”
“I didn’t go out,” she volunteered. “I had a headache.”
The Chinaman, who sat next to her, turned round.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I hope it’s better now.”
Fraulein Cacilie was evidently uneasy, for she spoke again to Philip.
“Did you meet many people on the way?”
Philip could not help reddening when he told a downright lie.
“No. I don’t think I saw a living soul.”
He fancied that a look of relief passed across her eyes.
Soon, however, there could be no doubt that there was something between the pair, and other people in the Frau Professor’s house saw them lurking in dark places. The elderly ladies who sat at the head of the table began to discuss what was now a scandal. The Frau Professor was angry and harassed. She had done her best to see nothing. The winter was at hand, and it was not as easy a matter then as in the summer to keep her house full. Herr Sung was a good customer: he had two rooms on the ground floor, and he drank a bottle of Moselle at each meal. The Frau Professor charged him three marks a bottle and made a good profit. None of her other guests drank wine, and some of them did not even drink beer. Neither did she wish to lose Fraulein Cacilie, whose parents were in business in South America and paid well for the Frau Professor’s motherly care; and she knew that if she wrote to the girl’s uncle, who lived in Berlin, he would immediately take her away. The Frau Professor contented herself with giving them both severe looks at table and, though she dared not be rude to the Chinaman, got a certain satisfaction out of incivility to Cacilie. But the three elderly ladies were not content. Two were widows, and one, a Dutchwoman, was a spinster of masculine appearance; they paid the smallest possible sum for their pension, and gave a good deal of trouble, but they were permanent and therefore had to be put up with. They went to the Frau Professor and said that something must be done; it was disgraceful, and the house was ceasing to be respectable. The Frau Professor tried obstinacy, anger, tears, but the three old ladies routed her, and with a sudden assumption of virtuous indignation she said that she would put a stop to the whole thing.
After luncheon she took Cacilie into her bed-room and began to talk very seriously to her; but to her amazement the girl adopted a brazen attitude; she proposed to go about as she liked; and if she chose to walk with the Chinaman she could not see it was anybody’s business but her own. The Frau Professor threatened to write to her uncle.
“Then Onkel Heinrich will put me in a family in Berlin for the winter, and that will be much nicer for me. And Herr Sung will come to Berlin too.”
The Frau Professor began to cry. The tears rolled down her coarse, red, fat cheeks; and Cacilie laughed at her.
“That will mean three rooms empty all through the winter,” she said.
Then the Frau Professor tried another plan. She appealed to Fraulein Cacilie’s better nature: she was kind, sensible, tolerant; she treated her no longer as a child, but as a grown woman. She said that it wouldn’t be so dreadful, but a Chinaman, with his yellow skin and flat nose, and his little pig’s eyes! That’s what made it so horrible. It filled one with disgust to think of it.
“Bitte, bitte,” said Cacilie, with a rapid intake of the breath. “I won’t listen to anything against him.”
“But it’s not serious?” gasped Frau Erlin.
“I love him. I love him. I love him.”
“Gott im Himmel!”
The Frau Professor stared at her with horrified surprise; she had thought it was no more than naughtiness on the child’s part, and innocent, folly. but the passion in her voice revealed everything. Cacilie looked at her for a moment with flaming eyes, and then with a shrug of her shoulders went out of the room.
Frau Erlin kept the details of the interview to herself, and a day or two later altered the arrangement of the table. She asked Herr Sung if he would not come and sit at her end, and he with his unfailing politeness accepted with alacrity. Cacilie took the change indifferently. But as if the discovery that the relations between them were known to the whole household made them more shameless, they made no secret now of their walks together, and every afternoon quite openly set out to wander about the hills. It was plain that they did not care what was said of them. At last even the placidity of Professor Erlin was moved, and he insisted that his wife should speak to the Chinaman. She took him aside in his turn and expostulated; he was ruining the girl’s reputation, he was doing harm to the house, he must see how wrong and wicked his conduct was; but she was met with smiling denials; Herr Sung did not know what she was talking about, he was not paying any attention to Fraulein Cacilie, he never walked with her; it was all untrue, every word of it.
“Ach, Herr Sung, how can you say such things? You’ve been seen again and again.”
“No, you’re mistaken. It’s untrue.”
He looked at her with an unceasing smile, which showed his even, little white teeth. He was quite calm. He denied everything. He denied with bland effrontery. At last the Frau Professor lost her temper and said the girl had confessed she loved him. He was not moved. He continued to smile.
“Nonsense! Nonsense! It’s all untrue.”
She could get nothing out of him. The weather grew very bad; there was snow and frost, and then a thaw with a long succession of cheerless days, on which walking was a poor amusement. One evening when Philip had just finished his German lesson with the Herr Professor and was standing for a moment in the drawing-room, talking to Frau Erlin, Anna came quickly in.
“Mamma, where is Cacilie?” she said.
“I suppose she’s in her room.”
“There’s no light in it.”
The Frau Professor gave an exclamation, and she looked at her daughter in dismay. The thought which was in Anna’s head had flashed across hers.
“Ring for Emil,” she said hoarsely.
This was the stupid lout who waited at table and did most of the housework. He came in.
“Emil, go down to Herr Sung’s room and enter without knocking. If anyone is there say you came in to see about the stove.”
No sign of astonishment appeared on Emil’s phlegmatic face.
He went slowly downstairs. The Frau Professor and Anna left the door open and listened. Presently they heard Emil come up again, and they called him.
“Was anyone there?” asked the Frau Professor.
“Yes, Herr Sung was there.”
“Was he alone?”
The beginning of a cunning smile narrowed his mouth.
“No, Fraulein Cacilie was there.”
“Oh, it’s disgraceful,” cried the Frau Professor.
Now he smiled broadly.
“Fraulein Cacilie is there every evening. She spends hours at a time there.”
Frau Professor began to wring her hands.
“Oh, how abominable! But why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was no business of mine,” he answered, slowly shrugging his shoulders.
“I suppose they paid you well. Go away. Go.”
He lurched clumsily to the door.
“They must go away, mamma,” said Anna.
“And who is going to pay the rent? And the taxes are falling due. It’s all very well for you to say they must go away. If they go away I can’t pay the bills.” She turned to Philip, with tears streaming down her face. “Ach, Herr Carey, you will not say what you have heard. If Fraulein Forster ” this was the Dutch spinster “if Fraulein Forster knew she would leave at once. And if they all go we must close the house. I cannot afford to keep it.”
“Of course I won’t say anything.”
“If she stays, I will not speak to her,” said Anna.
That evening at supper Fraulein Cacilie, redder than usual, with a look of obstinacy on her face, took her place punctually; but Herr Sung did not appear, and for a while Philip thought he was going to shirk the ordeal. At last he came, very smiling, his little eyes dancing with the apologies he made for his late arrival. He insisted as usual on pouring out the Frau Professor a glass of his Moselle, and he offered a glass to Fraulein Forster. The room was very hot, for the stove had been alight all day and the windows were seldom opened. Emil blundered about, but succeeded somehow in serving everyone quickly and with order. The three old ladies sat in silence, visibly disapproving: the Frau Professor had scarcely recovered from her tears; her husband was silent and oppressed. Conversation languished. It seemed to Philip that there was something dreadful in that gathering which he had sat with so often; they looked different under the light of the two hanging lamps from what they had ever looked before; he was vaguely uneasy. Once he caught Cacilie’s eye, and he thought she looked at him with hatred and contempt. The room was stifling. It was as though the beastly passion of that pair troubled them all; there was a feeling of Oriental depravity; a faint savour of joss-sticks, a mystery of hidden vices, seemed to make their breath heavy. Philip could feel the beating of the arteries in his forehead. He could not understand what strange emotion distracted him; he seemed to feel something infinitely attractive, and yet he was repelled and horrified.
For several days things went on. The air was sickly with the unnatural passion which all felt about them, and the nerves of the little household seemed to grow exasperated. Only Herr Sung remained unaffected; he was no less smiling, affable, and polite than he had been before: one could not tell whether his manner was a triumph of civilisation or an expression of contempt on the part of the Oriental for the vanquished West. Cacilie was flaunting and cynical. At last even the Frau Professor could bear the position no longer. Suddenly panic seized her; for Professor Erlin with brutal frankness had suggested the possible consequences of an intrigue which was now manifest to everyone, and she saw her good name in Heidelberg and the repute of her house ruined by a scandal which could not possibly be hidden. For some reason, blinded perhaps by her interests, this possibility had never occurred to her; and now, her wits muddled by a terrible fear, she could hardly be prevented from turning the girl out of the house at once. It was due to Anna’s good sense that a cautious letter was written to the uncle in Berlin suggesting that Cacilie should be taken away.
But having made up her mind to lose the two lodgers, the Frau Professor could not resist the satisfaction of giving rein to the ill-temper she had curbed so long. She was free now to say anything she liked to Cacilie.
“I have written to your uncle, Cacilie, to take you away. I cannot have you in my house any longer.”
Her little round eyes sparkled when she noticed the sudden whiteness of the girl’s face.
“You’re shameless. Shameless,” she went on.
She called her foul names.
“What did you say to my uncle Heinrich, Frau Professor?” the girl asked, suddenly falling from her attitude of flaunting independence.
“Oh, he’ll tell you himself. I expect to get a letter from him tomorrow.”
Next day, in order to make the humiliation more public, at supper she called down the table to Cacilie.
“I have had a letter from your uncle, Cacilie. You are to pack your things tonight, and we will put you in the train tomorrow morning. He will meet you himself in Berlin at the Central Bahnhof.”
“Very good, Frau Professor.”
Herr Sung smiled in the Frau Professor’s eyes, and notwithstanding her protests insisted on pouring out a glass of wine for her. The Frau Professor ate her supper with a good appetite. But she had triumphed unwisely. Just before going to bed she called the servant.
“Emil, if Fraulein Cacilie’s box is ready you had better take it downstairs tonight. The porter will fetch it before breakfast.”
The servant went away and in a moment came back.
“Fraulein Cacilie is not in her room, and her bag has gone.”
With a cry the Frau Professor hurried along: the box was on the floor, strapped and locked; but there was no bag, and neither hat nor cloak. The dressing-table was empty. Breathing heavily, the Frau Professor ran downstairs to the Chinaman’s rooms, she had not moved so quickly for twenty years, and Emil called out after her to beware she did not fall; she did not trouble to knock, but burst in. The rooms were empty. The luggage had gone, and the door into the garden, still open, showed how it had been got away. In an envelope on the table were notes for the money due on the month’s board and an approximate sum for extras. Groaning, suddenly overcome by her haste, the Frau Professor sank obesely on to a sofa. There could be no doubt. The pair had gone off together. Emil remained stolid and unmoved.
XXXI
Hayward, after saying for a month that he was going South next day and delaying from week to week out of inability to make up his mind to the bother of packing and the tedium of a journey, had at last been driven off just before Christmas by the preparations for that festival. He could not support the thought of a Teutonic merry-making. It gave him goose-flesh to think of the season’s aggressive cheerfulness, and in his desire to avoid the obvious he determined to travel on Christmas Eve.
Philip was not sorry to see him off, for he was a downright person and it irritated him that anybody should not know his own mind. Though much under Hayward’s influence, he would not grant that indecision pointed to a charming sensitiveness; and he resented the shadow of a sneer with which Hayward looked upon his straight ways. They corresponded. Hayward was an admirable letter-writer, and knowing his talent took pains with his letters. His temperament was receptive to the beautiful influences with which he came in contact, and he was able in his letters from Rome to put a subtle fragrance of Italy. He thought the city of the ancient Romans a little vulgar, finding distinction only in the decadence of the Empire; but the Rome of the Popes appealed to his sympathy, and in his chosen words, quite exquisitely, there appeared a rococo beauty. He wrote of old church music and the Alban Hills, and of the languor of incense and the charm of the streets by night, in the rain, when the pavements shone and the light of the street lamps was mysterious. Perhaps he repeated these admirable letters to various friends. He did not know what a troubling effect they had upon Philip; they seemed to make his life very humdrum. With the spring Hayward grew dithyrambic. He proposed that Philip should come down to Italy. He was wasting his time at Heidelberg. The Germans were gross and life there was common; how could the soul come to her own in that prim landscape? In Tuscany the spring was scattering flowers through the land, and Philip was nineteen; let him come and they could wander through the mountain towns of Umbria. Their names sang in Philip’s heart. And Cacilie too, with her lover, had gone to Italy. When he thought of them Philip was seized with a restlessness he could not account for. He cursed his fate because he had no money to travel, and he knew his uncle would not send him more than the fifteen pounds a month which had been agreed upon. He had not managed his allowance very well. His pension and the price of his lessons left him very little over, and he had found going about with Hayward expensive. Hayward had often suggested excursions, a visit to the play, or a bottle of wine, when Philip had come to the end of his month’s money; and with the folly of his age he had been unwilling to confess he could not afford an extravagance.
Luckily Hayward’s letters came seldom, and in the intervals Philip settled down again to his industrious life. He had matriculated at the university and attended one or two courses of lectures. Kuno Fischer was then at the height of his fame and during the winter had been lecturing brilliantly on Schopenhauer. It was Philip’s introduction to philosophy. He had a practical mind and moved uneasily amid the abstract; but he found an unexpected fascination in listening to metaphysical disquisitions; they made him breathless; it was a little like watching a tight-rope dancer doing perilous feats over an abyss; but it was very exciting. The pessimism of the subject attracted his youth; and he believed that the world he was about to enter was a place of pitiless woe and of darkness. That made him none the less eager to enter it; and when, in due course, Mrs. Carey, acting as the correspondent for his guardian’s views, suggested that it was time for him to come back to England, he agreed with enthusiasm. He must make up his mind now what he meant to do. If he left Heidelberg at the end of July they could talk things over during August, and it would be a good time to make arrangements.
The date of his departure was settled, and Mrs. Carey wrote to him again. She reminded him of Miss Wilkinson, through whose kindness he had gone to Frau Erlin’s house at Heidelberg, and told him that she had arranged to spend a few weeks with them at Blackstable. She would be crossing from Flushing on such and such a day, and if he travelled at the same time he could look after her and come on to Blackstable in her company. Philip’s shyness immediately made him write to say that he could not leave till a day or two afterwards. He pictured himself looking out for Miss Wilkinson, the embarrassment of going up to her and asking if it were she (and he might so easily address the wrong person and be snubbed), and then the difficulty of knowing whether in the train he ought to talk to her or whether he could ignore her and read his book.
At last he left Heidelberg. For three months he had been thinking of nothing but the future; and he went without regret. He never knew that he had been happy there. Fraulein Anna gave him a copy of Der Trompeter von Sackingen and in return he presented her with a volume of William Morris. Very wisely neither of them ever read the other’s present.
XXXII
Philip was surprised when he saw his uncle and aunt. He had never noticed before that they were quite old people. The Vicar received him with his usual, not unamiable indifference. He was a little stouter, a little balder, a little grayer. Philip saw how insignificant he was. His face was weak and self-indulgent. Aunt Louisa took him in her arms and kissed him; and tears of happiness flowed down her cheeks. Philip was touched and embarrassed; he had not known with what a hungry love she cared for him.
“Oh, the time has seemed long since you’ve been away, Philip,” she cried.
She stroked his hands and looked into his face with glad eyes.
“You’ve grown. You’re quite a man now.”
There was a very small moustache on his upper lip. He had bought a razor and now and then with infinite care shaved the down off his smooth chin.
“We’ve been so lonely without you.” And then shyly, with a little break in her voice, she asked: “You are glad to come back to your home, aren’t you?”
“Yes, rather.”
She was so thin that she seemed almost transparent, the arms she put round his neck were frail bones that reminded you of chicken bones, and her faded face was oh! so wrinkled. The gray curls which she still wore in the fashion of her youth gave her a queer, pathetic look; and her little withered body was like an autumn leaf, you felt it might be blown away by the first sharp wind. Philip realised that they had done with life, these two quiet little people: they belonged to a past generation, and they were waiting there patiently, rather stupidly, for death; and he, in his vigour and his youth, thirsting for excitement and adventure, was appalled at the waste. They had done nothing, and when they went it would be just as if they had never been. He felt a great pity for Aunt Louisa, and he loved her suddenly because she loved him.
Then Miss Wilkinson, who had kept discreetly out of the way till the Careys had had a chance of welcoming their nephew, came into the room.
“This is Miss Wilkinson, Philip,” said Mrs. Carey.
“The prodigal has returned,” she said, holding out her hand. “I have brought a rose for the prodigal’s buttonhole.”
With a gay smile she pinned to Philip’s coat the flower she had just picked in the garden. He blushed and felt foolish. He knew that Miss Wilkinson was the daughter of his Uncle William’s last rector, and he had a wide acquaintance with the daughters of clergymen. They wore ill-cut clothes and stout boots. They were generally dressed in black, for in Philip’s early years at Blackstable homespuns had not reached East Anglia, and the ladies of the clergy did not favour colours. Their hair was done very untidily, and they smelt aggressively of starched linen. They considered the feminine graces unbecoming and looked the same whether they were old or young. They bore their religion arrogantly. The closeness of their connection with the church made them adopt a slightly dictatorial attitude to the rest of mankind.
Miss Wilkinson was very different. She wore a white muslin gown stamped with gay little bunches of flowers, and pointed, high-heeled shoes, with open-work stockings. To Philip’s inexperience it seemed that she was wonderfully dressed; he did not see that her frock was cheap and showy. Her hair was elaborately dressed, with a neat curl in the middle of the forehead: it was very black, shiny and hard, and it looked as though it could never be in the least disarranged. She had large black eyes and her nose was slightly aquiline; in profile she had somewhat the look of a bird of prey, but full face she was prepossessing. She smiled a great deal, but her mouth was large and when she smiled she tried to hide her teeth, which were big and rather yellow. But what embarrassed Philip most was that she was heavily powdered: he had very strict views on feminine behaviour and did not think a lady ever powdered; but of course Miss Wilkinson was a lady because she was a clergyman’s daughter, and a clergyman was a gentleman.
Philip made up his mind to dislike her thoroughly. She spoke with a slight French accent; and he did not know why she should, since she had been born and bred in the heart of England. He thought her smile affected, and the coy sprightliness of her manner irritated him. For two or three days he remained silent and hostile, but Miss Wilkinson apparently did not notice it. She was very affable. She addressed her conversation almost exclusively to him, and there was something flattering in the way she appealed constantly to his sane judgment. She made him laugh too, and Philip could never resist people who amused him: he had a gift now and then of saying neat things; and it was pleasant to have an appreciative listener. Neither the Vicar nor Mrs. Carey had a sense of humour, and they never laughed at anything he said. As he grew used to Miss Wilkinson, and his shyness left him, he began to like her better; he found the French accent picturesque; and at a garden party which the doctor gave she was very much better dressed than anyone else. She wore a blue foulard with large white spots, and Philip was tickled at the sensation it caused.
“I’m certain they think you’re no better than you should be,” he told her, laughing.
“It’s the dream of my life to be taken for an abandoned hussy,” she answered.
One day when Miss Wilkinson was in her room he asked Aunt Louisa how old she was.
“Oh, my dear, you should never ask a lady’s age; but she’s certainly too old for you to marry.”
The Vicar gave his slow, obese smile.
“She’s no chicken, Louisa,” he said. “She was nearly grown up when we were in Lincolnshire, and that was twenty years ago. She wore a pigtail hanging down her back.”
“She may not have been more than ten,” said Philip.
“She was older than that,” said Aunt Louisa.
“I think she was near twenty,” said the Vicar.
“Oh no, William. Sixteen or seventeen at the outside.”
“That would make her well over thirty,” said Philip.
At that moment Miss Wilkinson tripped downstairs, singing a song by Benjamin Goddard. She had put her hat on, for she and Philip were going for a walk, and she held out her hand for him to button her glove. He did it awkwardly. He felt embarrassed but gallant. Conversation went easily between them now, and as they strolled along they talked of all manner of things. She told Philip about Berlin, and he told her of his year in Heidelberg. As he spoke, things which had appeared of no importance gained a new interest: he described the people at Frau Erlin’s house; and to the conversations between Hayward and Weeks, which at the time seemed so significant, he gave a little twist, so that they looked absurd. He was flattered at Miss Wilkinson’s laughter.
“I’m quite frightened of you,” she said. “You’re so sarcastic.”
Then she asked him playfully whether he had not had any love affairs at Heidelberg. Without thinking, he frankly answered that he had not; but she refused to believe him.
“How secretive you are!” she said. “At your age is it likely?”
He blushed and laughed.
“You want to know too much,” he said.
“Ah, I thought so,” she laughed triumphantly. “Look at him blushing.”
He was pleased that she should think he had been a sad dog, and he changed the conversation so as to make her believe he had all sorts of romantic things to conceal. He was angry with himself that he had not. There had been no opportunity.
Miss Wilkinson was dissatisfied with her lot. She resented having to earn her living and told Philip a long story of an uncle of her mother’s, who had been expected to leave her a fortune but had married his cook and changed his will. She hinted at the luxury of her home and compared her life in Lincolnshire, with horses to ride and carriages to drive in, with the mean dependence of her present state. Philip was a little puzzled when he mentioned this afterwards to Aunt Louisa, and she told him that when she knew the Wilkinsons they had never had anything more than a pony and a dog-cart; Aunt Louisa had heard of the rich uncle, but as he was married and had children before Emily was born she could never have had much hope of inheriting his fortune. Miss Wilkinson had little good to say of Berlin, where she was now in a situation. She complained of the vulgarity of German life, and compared it bitterly with the brilliance of Paris, where she had spent a number of years. She did not say how many. She had been governess in the family of a fashionable portrait-painter, who had married a Jewish wife of means, and in their house she had met many distinguished people. She dazzled Philip with their names. Actors from the Comedie Francaise had come to the house frequently, and Coquelin, sitting next her at dinner, had told her he had never met a foreigner who spoke such perfect French. Alphonse Daudet had come also, and he had given her a copy of Sappho: he had promised to write her name in it, but she had forgotten to remind him. She treasured the volume none the less and she would lend it to Philip. Then there was Maupassant. Miss Wilkinson with a rippling laugh looked at Philip knowingly. What a man, but what a writer! Hayward had talked of Maupassant, and his reputation was not unknown to Philip.
“Did he make love to you?” he asked.
The words seemed to stick funnily in his throat, but he asked them nevertheless. He liked Miss Wilkinson very much now, and was thrilled by her conversation, but he could not imagine anyone making love to her.
“What a question!” she cried. “Poor Guy, he made love to every woman he met. It was a habit that he could not break himself of.”
She sighed a little, and seemed to look back tenderly on the past.
“He was a charming man,” she murmured.
A greater experience than Philip’s would have guessed from these words the probabilities of the encounter: the distinguished writer invited to luncheon en famille, the governess coming in sedately with the two tall girls she was teaching; the introduction:
“Notre Miss Anglaise.”
“Mademoiselle.”
And the luncheon during which the Miss Anglaise sat silent while the distinguished writer talked to his host and hostess.
But to Philip her words called up much more romantic fancies.
“Do tell me all about him,” he said excitedly.
“There’s nothing to tell,” she said truthfully, but in such a manner as to convey that three volumes would scarcely have contained the lurid facts. “You mustn’t be curious.”
She began to talk of Paris. She loved the boulevards and the Bois. There was grace in every street, and the trees in the Champs Elysees had a distinction which trees had not elsewhere. They were sitting on a stile now by the high-road, and Miss Wilkinson looked with disdain upon the stately elms in front of them. And the theatres: the plays were brilliant, and the acting was incomparable. She often went with Madame Foyot, the mother of the girls she was educating, when she was trying on clothes.
“Oh, what a misery to be poor!” she cried. “These beautiful things, it’s only in Paris they know how to dress, and not to be able to afford them! Poor Madame Foyot, she had no figure. Sometimes the dressmaker used to whisper to me: ‘Ah, Mademoiselle, if she only had your figure.’”
Philip noticed then that Miss Wilkinson had a robust form and was proud of it.
“Men are so stupid in England. They only think of the face. The French, who are a nation of lovers, know how much more important the figure is.”
Philip had never thought of such things before, but he observed now that Miss Wilkinson’s ankles were thick and ungainly. He withdrew his eyes quickly.
“You should go to France. Why don’t you go to Paris for a year? You would learn French, and it would deniaiser you.”
“What is that?” asked Philip.
She laughed slyly.
“You must look it out in the dictionary. Englishmen do not know how to treat women. They are so shy. Shyness is ridiculous in a man. They don’t know how to make love. They can’t even tell a woman she is charming without looking foolish.”
Philip felt himself absurd. Miss Wilkinson evidently expected him to behave very differently; and he would have been delighted to say gallant and witty things, but they never occurred to him; and when they did he was too much afraid of making a fool of himself to say them.
“Oh, I love Paris,” sighed Miss Wilkinson. “But I had to go to Berlin. I was with the Foyots till the girls married, and then I could get nothing to do, and I had the chance of this post in Berlin. They’re relations of Madame Foyot, and I accepted. I had a tiny apartment in the Rue Breda, on the cinquieme: it wasn’t at all respectable. You know about the Rue Breda ces dames, you know.”
Philip nodded, not knowing at all what she meant, but vaguely suspecting, and anxious she should not think him too ignorant.
“But I didn’t care. Je suis libre, n’est-ce pas?” She was very fond of speaking French, which indeed she spoke well. “Once I had such a curious adventure there.”
She paused a little and Philip pressed her to tell it.
“You wouldn’t tell me yours in Heidelberg,” she said.
“They were so unadventurous,” he retorted.
“I don’t know what Mrs. Carey would say if she knew the sort of things we talk about together.”
“You don’t imagine I shall tell her.”
“Will you promise?”
When he had done this, she told him how an art-student who had a room on the floor above her but she interrupted herself.
“Why don’t you go in for art? You paint so prettily.”
“Not well enough for that.”
“That is for others to judge. Je m’y connais, and I believe you have the making of a great artist.”
“Can’t you see Uncle William’s face if I suddenly told him I wanted to go to Paris and study art?”
“You’re your own master, aren’t you?”
“You’re trying to put me off. Please go on with the story.” Miss Wilkinson, with a little laugh, went on. The art-student had passed her several times on the stairs, and she had paid no particular attention. She saw that he had fine eyes, and he took off his hat very politely. And one day she found a letter slipped under her door. It was from him. He told her that he had adored her for months, and that he waited about the stairs for her to pass. Oh, it was a charming letter! Of course she did not reply, but what woman could help being flattered? And next day there was another letter! It was wonderful, passionate, and touching. When next she met him on the stairs she did not know which way to look. And every day the letters came, and now he begged her to see him. He said he would come in the evening, vers neuf heures, and she did not know what to do. Of course it was impossible, and he might ring and ring, but she would never open the door; and then while she was waiting for the tinkling of the bell, all nerves, suddenly he stood before her. She had forgotten to shut the door when she came in.
“C’etait une fatalite.”
“And what happened then?” asked Philip.
“That is the end of the story,” she replied, with a ripple of laughter.
Philip was silent for a moment. His heart beat quickly, and strange emotions seemed to be hustling one another in his heart. He saw the dark staircase and the chance meetings, and he admired the boldness of the letters oh, he would never have dared to do that and then the silent, almost mysterious entrance. It seemed to him the very soul of romance.
“What was he like?”
“Oh, he was handsome. Charmant garcon.”
“Do you know him still?”
Philip felt a slight feeling of irritation as he asked this.
“He treated me abominably. Men are always the same. You’re heartless, all of you.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Philip, not without embarrassment.
“Let us go home,” said Miss Wilkinson.