Of Human Bondage
difficulty in undoing his collar. His teeth chattered. The idea came to
him that he must do something more than usual to attract the attention
of God, and he turned back the rug which was in front of his bed so
that he could kneel on the bare boards; and then it struck him that his
nightshirt was a softness that might displease his Maker, so he took it
off and said his prayers naked. When he got into bed he was so cold
that for some time he could not sleep, but when he did, it was so
soundly that Mary Ann had to shake him when she brought in his hot
water next morning. She talked to him while she drew the curtains, but
he did not answer; he had remembered at once that this was the morning
for the miracle. His heart was filled with joy and gratitude. His first
instinct was to put down his hand and feel the foot which was whole
now, but to do this seemed to doubt the goodness of God. He knew that
his foot was well. But at last he made up his mind, and with the toes
of his right foot he just touched his left. Then he passed his hand
over it.
He limped downstairs just as Mary Ann was going into the dining-room
for prayers, and then he sat down to breakfast.
“You’re very quiet this morning, Philip,” said Aunt Louisa presently.
“He’s thinking of the good breakfast he’ll have at school to-morrow,”
said the Vicar.
When Philip answered, it was in a way that always irritated his uncle,
with something that had nothing to do with the matter in hand. He
called it a bad habit of wool-gathering.
“Supposing you’d asked God to do something,” said Philip, “and really
believed it was going to happen, like moving a mountain, I mean, and
you had faith, and it didn’t happen, what would it mean?”
“What a funny boy you are!” said Aunt Louisa. “You asked about moving
mountains two or three weeks ago.”
“It would just mean that you hadn’t got faith,” answered Uncle William.
Philip accepted the explanation. If God had not cured him, it was
because he did not really believe. And yet he did not see how he could
believe more than he did. But perhaps he had not given God enough time.
He had only asked Him for nineteen days. In a day or two he began his
prayer again, and this time he fixed upon Easter. That was the day of
His Son’s glorious resurrection, and God in His happiness might be
mercifully inclined. But now Philip added other means of attaining his
desire: he began to wish, when he saw a new moon or a dappled horse,
and he looked out for shooting stars; during exeat they had a chicken
at the vicarage, and he broke the lucky bone with Aunt Louisa and
wished again, each time that his foot might be made whole. He was
appealing unconsciously to gods older to his race than the God of
Israel. And he bombarded the Almighty with his prayer, at odd times of
the day, whenever it occurred to him, in identical words always, for it
seemed to him important to make his request in the same terms. But
presently the feeling came to him that this time also his faith would
not be great enough. He could not resist the doubt that assailed him.
He made his own experience into a general rule.
“I suppose no one ever has faith enough,” he said.
It was like the salt which his nurse used to tell him about: you could
catch any bird by putting salt on his tail; and once he had taken a
little bag of it into Kensington Gardens. But he could never get near
enough to put the salt on a bird’s tail. Before Easter he had given up
the struggle. He felt a dull resentment against his uncle for taking
him in. The text which spoke of the moving of mountains was just one of
those that said one thing and meant another. He thought his uncle had
been playing a practical joke on him.
XV
The King’s School at Tercanbury, to which Philip went when he was
thirteen, prided itself on its antiquity. It traced its origin to an
abbey school, founded before the Conquest, where the rudiments of
learning were taught by Augustine monks; and, like many another
establishment of this sort, on the destruction of the monasteries it
had been reorganised by the officers of King Henry VIII and thus
acquired its name. Since then, pursuing its modest course, it had given
to the sons of the local gentry and of the professional people of Kent
an education sufficient to their needs. One or two men of letters,
beginning with a poet, than whom only Shakespeare had a more splendid
genius, and ending with a writer of prose whose view of life has
affected profoundly the generation of which Philip was a member, had
gone forth from its gates to achieve fame; it had produced one or two
eminent lawyers, but eminent lawyers are common, and one or two
soldiers of distinction; but during the three centuries since its
separation from the monastic order it had trained especially men of the
church, bishops, deans, canons, and above all country clergymen: there
were boys in the school whose fathers, grandfathers,
great-grandfathers, had been educated there and had all been rectors of
parishes in the diocese of Tercanbury; and they came to it with their
minds made up already to be ordained. But there were signs
notwithstanding that even there changes were coming; for a few,
repeating what they had heard at home, said that the Church was no
longer what it used to be. It wasn’t so much the money; but the class
of people who went in for it weren’t the same; and two or three boys
knew curates whose fathers were tradesmen: they’d rather go out to the
Colonies (in those days the Colonies were still the last hope of those
who could get nothing to do in England) than be a curate under some
chap who wasn’t a gentleman. At King’s School, as at Blackstable
Vicarage, a tradesman was anyone who was not lucky enough to own land
(and here a fine distinction was made between the gentleman farmer and
the landowner), or did not follow one of the four professions to which
it was possible for a gentleman to belong. Among the day-boys, of whom
there were about a hundred and fifty, sons of the local gentry and of
the men stationed at the depot, those whose fathers were engaged in
business were made to feel the degradation of their state.
The masters had no patience with modern ideas of education, which they
read of sometimes in The Times or The Guardian, and hoped fervently
that King’s School would remain true to its old traditions. The dead
languages were taught with such thoroughness that an old boy seldom
thought of Homer or Virgil in after life without a qualm of boredom;
and though in the common room at dinner one or two bolder spirits
suggested that mathematics were of increasing importance, the general
feeling was that they were a less noble study than the classics.
Neither German nor chemistry was taught, and French only by the
form-masters; they could keep order better than a foreigner, and, since
they knew the grammar as well as any Frenchman, it seemed unimportant
that none of them could have got a cup of coffee in the restaurant at
Boulogne unless the waiter had known a little English. Geography was
taught chiefly by making boys draw maps, and this was a favourite
occupation, especially when the country dealt with was mountainous: it
was possible to waste a great deal of time in drawing the Andes or the
Apennines. The masters, graduates of Oxford or Cambridge, were ordained
and unmarried; if by chance they wished to marry they could only do so
by accepting one of the smaller livings at the disposal of the Chapter;
but for many years none of them had cared to leave the refined society
of Tercanbury, which owing to the cavalry depot had a martial as well
as an ecclesiastical tone, for the monotony of life in a country
rectory; and they were now all men of middle age.
The headmaster, on the other hand, was obliged to be married and he
conducted the school till age began to tell upon him. When he retired
he was rewarded with a much better living than any of the under-masters
could hope for, and an honorary Canonry.
But a year before Philip entered the school a great change had come
over it. It had been obvious for some time that Dr. Fleming, who had
been headmaster for the quarter of a century, was become too deaf to
continue his work to the greater glory of God; and when one of the
livings on the outskirts of the city fell vacant, with a stipend of six
hundred a year, the Chapter offered it to him in such a manner as to
imply that they thought it high time for him to retire. He could nurse
his ailments comfortably on such an income. Two or three curates who
had hoped for preferment told their wives it was scandalous to give a
parish that needed a young, strong, and energetic man to an old fellow
who knew nothing of parochial work, and had feathered his nest already;
but the mutterings of the unbeneficed clergy do not reach the ears of a
cathedral Chapter. And as for the parishioners they had nothing to say
in the matter, and therefore nobody asked for their opinion. The
Wesleyans and the Baptists both had chapels in the village.
When Dr. Fleming was thus disposed of it became necessary to find a
successor. It was contrary to the traditions of the school that one of
the lower-masters should be chosen. The common-room was unanimous in
desiring the election of Mr. Watson, headmaster of the preparatory
school; he could hardly be described as already a master of King’s
School, they had all known him for twenty years, and there was no
danger that he would make a nuisance of himself. But the Chapter sprang
a surprise on them. It chose a man called Perkins. At first nobody knew
who Perkins was, and the name favourably impressed no one; but before
the shock of it had passed away, it was realised that Perkins was the
son of Perkins the linendraper. Dr. Fleming informed the masters just
before dinner, and his manner showed his consternation. Such of them as
were dining in, ate their meal almost in silence, and no reference was
made to the matter till the servants had left the room. Then they set
to. The names of those present on this occasion are unimportant, but
they had been known to generations of school-boys as Sighs, Tar, Winks,
Squirts, and Pat.
They all knew Tom Perkins. The first thing about him was that he was
not a gentleman. They remembered him quite well. He was a small, dark
boy, with untidy black hair and large eyes. He looked like a gipsy. He
had come to the school as a day-boy, with the best scholarship on their
endowment, so that his education had cost him nothing. Of course he was
brilliant. At every Speech-Day he was loaded with prizes. He was their
show-boy, and they remembered now bitterly their fear that he would try
to get some scholarship at one of the larger public schools and so pass
out of their hands. Dr. Fleming had gone to the linendraper his
father—they all remembered the shop, Perkins and Cooper, in St.
Catherine’s Street—and said he hoped Tom would remain with them till he
went to Oxford. The school was Perkins and Cooper’s best customer, and
Mr. Perkins was only too glad to give the required assurance. Tom
Perkins continued to triumph, he was the finest classical scholar that
Dr. Fleming remembered, and on leaving the school took with him the
most valuable scholarship they had to offer. He got another at Magdalen
and settled down to a brilliant career at the University. The school
magazine recorded the distinctions he achieved year after year, and
when he got his double first Dr. Fleming himself wrote a few words of
eulogy on the front page. It was with greater satisfaction that they
welcomed his success, since Perkins and Cooper had fallen upon evil
days: Cooper drank like a fish, and just before Tom Perkins took his
degree the linendrapers filed their petition in bankruptcy.
In due course Tom Perkins took Holy Orders and entered upon the