Of Human Bondage
or a studious fellow with abstracted gaze walked slowly, repeating to
himself something he had to learn by heart. There was a colony of rooks
in the great elms, and they filled the air with melancholy cries. Along
one side lay the Cathedral with its great central tower, and Philip,
who knew as yet nothing of beauty, felt when he looked at it a
troubling delight which he could not understand. When he had a study
(it was a little square room looking on a slum, and four boys shared
it), he bought a photograph of that view of the Cathedral, and pinned
it up over his desk. And he found himself taking a new interest in what
he saw from the window of the Fourth Form room. It looked on to old
lawns, carefully tended, and fine trees with foliage dense and rich. It
gave him an odd feeling in his heart, and he did not know if it was
pain or pleasure. It was the first dawn of the aesthetic emotion. It
accompanied other changes. His voice broke. It was no longer quite
under his control, and queer sounds issued from his throat.
Then he began to go to the classes which were held in the headmaster’s
study, immediately after tea, to prepare boys for confirmation.
Philip’s piety had not stood the test of time, and he had long since
given up his nightly reading of the Bible; but now, under the influence
of Mr. Perkins, with this new condition of the body which made him so
restless, his old feelings revived, and he reproached himself bitterly
for his backsliding. The fires of Hell burned fiercely before his
mind’s eye. If he had died during that time when he was little better
than an infidel he would have been lost; he believed implicitly in pain
everlasting, he believed in it much more than in eternal happiness; and
he shuddered at the dangers he had run.
Since the day on which Mr. Perkins had spoken kindly to him, when he
was smarting under the particular form of abuse which he could least
bear, Philip had conceived for his headmaster a dog-like adoration. He
racked his brains vainly for some way to please him. He treasured the
smallest word of commendation which by chance fell from his lips. And
when he came to the quiet little meetings in his house he was prepared
to surrender himself entirely. He kept his eyes fixed on Mr. Perkins’
shining eyes, and sat with mouth half open, his head a little thrown
forward so as to miss no word. The ordinariness of the surroundings
made the matters they dealt with extraordinarily moving. And often the
master, seized himself by the wonder of his subject, would push back
the book in front of him, and with his hands clasped together over his
heart, as though to still the beating, would talk of the mysteries of
their religion. Sometimes Philip did not understand, but he did not
want to understand, he felt vaguely that it was enough to feel. It
seemed to him then that the headmaster, with his black, straggling hair
and his pale face, was like those prophets of Israel who feared not to
take kings to task; and when he thought of the Redeemer he saw Him only
with the same dark eyes and those wan cheeks.
Mr. Perkins took this part of his work with great seriousness. There
was never here any of that flashing humour which made the other masters
suspect him of flippancy. Finding time for everything in his busy day,
he was able at certain intervals to take separately for a quarter of an
hour or twenty minutes the boys whom he was preparing for confirmation.
He wanted to make them feel that this was the first consciously serious
step in their lives; he tried to grope into the depths of their souls;
he wanted to instil in them his own vehement devotion. In Philip,
notwithstanding his shyness, he felt the possibility of a passion equal
to his own. The boy’s temperament seemed to him essentially religious.
One day he broke off suddenly from the subject on which he had been
talking.
“Have you thought at all what you’re going to be when you grow up?” he
asked.
“My uncle wants me to be ordained,” said Philip.
“And you?”
Philip looked away. He was ashamed to answer that he felt himself
unworthy.
“I don’t know any life that’s so full of happiness as ours. I wish I
could make you feel what a wonderful privilege it is. One can serve God
in every walk, but we stand nearer to Him. I don’t want to influence
you, but if you made up your mind—oh, at once—you couldn’t help feeling
that joy and relief which never desert one again.”
Philip did not answer, but the headmaster read in his eyes that he
realised already something of what he tried to indicate.
“If you go on as you are now you’ll find yourself head of the school
one of these days, and you ought to be pretty safe for a scholarship
when you leave. Have you got anything of your own?”
“My uncle says I shall have a hundred a year when I’m twenty-one.”
“You’ll be rich. I had nothing.”
The headmaster hesitated a moment, and then, idly drawing lines with a
pencil on the blotting paper in front of him, went on.
“I’m afraid your choice of professions will be rather limited. You
naturally couldn’t go in for anything that required physical activity.”
Philip reddened to the roots of his hair, as he always did when any
reference was made to his club-foot. Mr. Perkins looked at him gravely.
“I wonder if you’re not oversensitive about your misfortune. Has it
ever struck you to thank God for it?”
Philip looked up quickly. His lips tightened. He remembered how for
months, trusting in what they told him, he had implored God to heal him
as He had healed the Leper and made the Blind to see.
“As long as you accept it rebelliously it can only cause you shame. But
if you looked upon it as a cross that was given you to bear only
because your shoulders were strong enough to bear it, a sign of God’s
favour, then it would be a source of happiness to you instead of
misery.”
He saw that the boy hated to discuss the matter and he let him go.
But Philip thought over all that the headmaster had said, and
presently, his mind taken up entirely with the ceremony that was before
him, a mystical rapture seized him. His spirit seemed to free itself
from the bonds of the flesh and he seemed to be living a new life. He
aspired to perfection with all the passion that was in him. He wanted
to surrender himself entirely to the service of God, and he made up his
mind definitely that he would be ordained. When the great day arrived,
his soul deeply moved by all the preparation, by the books he had
studied and above all by the overwhelming influence of the head, he
could hardly contain himself for fear and joy. One thought had
tormented him. He knew that he would have to walk alone through the
chancel, and he dreaded showing his limp thus obviously, not only to
the whole school, who were attending the service, but also to the
strangers, people from the city or parents who had come to see their
sons confirmed. But when the time came he felt suddenly that he could
accept the humiliation joyfully; and as he limped up the chancel, very
small and insignificant beneath the lofty vaulting of the Cathedral, he
offered consciously his deformity as a sacrifice to the God who loved
him.
XVIII
But Philip could not live long in the rarefied air of the hilltops.
What had happened to him when first he was seized by the religious
emotion happened to him now. Because he felt so keenly the beauty of
faith, because the desire for self-sacrifice burned in his heart with
such a gem-like glow, his strength seemed inadequate to his ambition.
He was tired out by the violence of his passion. His soul was filled on
a sudden with a singular aridity. He began to forget the presence of
God which had seemed so surrounding; and his religious exercises, still
very punctually performed, grew merely formal. At first he blamed
himself for this falling away, and the fear of hell-fire urged him to
renewed vehemence; but the passion was dead, and gradually other
interests distracted his thoughts.
Philip had few friends. His habit of reading isolated him: it became
such a need that after being in company for some time he grew tired and
restless; he was vain of the wider knowledge he had acquired from the
perusal of so many books, his mind was alert, and he had not the skill
to hide his contempt for his companions’ stupidity. They complained
that he was conceited; and, since he excelled only in matters which to
them were unimportant, they asked satirically what he had to be
conceited about. He was developing a sense of humour, and found that he
had a knack of saying bitter things, which caught people on the raw; he
said them because they amused him, hardly realising how much they hurt,
and was much offended when he found that his victims regarded him with
active dislike. The humiliations he suffered when first he went to
school had caused in him a shrinking from his fellows which he could
never entirely overcome; he remained shy and silent. But though he did
everything to alienate the sympathy of other boys he longed with all
his heart for the popularity which to some was so easily accorded.
These from his distance he admired extravagantly; and though he was
inclined to be more sarcastic with them than with others, though he
made little jokes at their expense, he would have given anything to
change places with them. Indeed he would gladly have changed places
with the dullest boy in the school who was whole of limb. He took to a
singular habit. He would imagine that he was some boy whom he had a
particular fancy for; he would throw his soul, as it were, into the
other’s body, talk with his voice and laugh with his heart; he would
imagine himself doing all the things the other did. It was so vivid
that he seemed for a moment really to be no longer himself. In this way
he enjoyed many intervals of fantastic happiness.
At the beginning of the Christmas term which followed on his
confirmation Philip found himself moved into another study. One of the
boys who shared it was called Rose. He was in the same form as Philip,
and Philip had always looked upon him with envious admiration. He was
not good-looking; though his large hands and big bones suggested that
he would be a tall man, he was clumsily made; but his eyes were
charming, and when he laughed (he was constantly laughing) his face
wrinkled all round them in a jolly way. He was neither clever nor
stupid, but good enough at his work and better at games. He was a
favourite with masters and boys, and he in his turn liked everyone.
When Philip was put in the study he could not help seeing that the
others, who had been together for three terms, welcomed him coldly. It
made him nervous to feel himself an intruder; but he had learned to
hide his feelings, and they found him quiet and unobtrusive. With Rose,
because he was as little able as anyone else to resist his charm,
Philip was even more than usually shy and abrupt; and whether on
account of this, unconsciously bent upon exerting the fascination he
knew was his only by the results, or whether from sheer kindness of
heart, it was Rose who first took Philip into the circle. One day,
quite suddenly, he asked Philip if he would walk to the football field
with him. Philip flushed.
“I can’t walk fast enough for you,” he said.
“Rot. Come on.”
And just before they were setting out some boy put his head in the
study-door and asked Rose to go with him.
“I can’t,” he answered. “I’ve already promised Carey.”
“Don’t bother about me,” said Philip quickly. “I shan’t mind.”
“Rot,” said Rose.
He looked at Philip with those good-natured eyes of his and laughed.
Philip felt a curious tremor in his heart.
In a little while, their friendship growing with boyish rapidity, the
pair were inseparable. Other fellows wondered at the sudden intimacy,