Of Human Bondage
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.
XXIV
Professor Erlin gave Philip a lesson every day. He made out a list of
books which Philip was to read till he was ready for the final
achievement of Faust, and meanwhile, ingeniously enough, started him on
a German translation of one of the plays by Shakespeare which Philip
had studied at school. It was the period in Germany of Goethe’s highest
fame. Notwithstanding his rather condescending attitude towards
patriotism he had been adopted as the national poet, and seemed since
the war of seventy to be one of the most significant glories of
national unity. The enthusiastic seemed in the wildness of the
Walpurgisnacht to hear the rattle of artillery at Gravelotte. But one
mark of a writer’s greatness is that different minds can find in him
different inspirations; and Professor Erlin, who hated the Prussians,
gave his enthusiastic admiration to Goethe because his works, Olympian
and sedate, offered the only refuge for a sane mind against the
onslaughts of the present generation. There was a dramatist whose name
of late had been much heard at Heidelberg, and the winter before one of
his plays had been given at the theatre amid the cheers of adherents
and the hisses of decent people. Philip heard discussions about it at
the Frau Professor’s long table, and at these Professor Erlin lost his
wonted calm: he beat the table with his fist, and drowned all
opposition with the roar of his fine deep voice. It was nonsense and
obscene nonsense. He forced himself to sit the play out, but he did not
know whether he was more bored or nauseated. If that was what the
theatre was coming to, then it was high time the police stepped in and
closed the playhouses. He was no prude and could laugh as well as
anyone at the witty immorality of a farce at the Palais Royal, but here
was nothing but filth. With an emphatic gesture he held his nose and
whistled through his teeth. It was the ruin of the family, the
uprooting of morals, the destruction of Germany.
“Aber, Adolf,” said the Frau Professor from the other end of the table.
“Calm yourself.”
He shook his fist at her. He was the mildest of creatures and ventured
upon no action of his life without consulting her.
“No, Helene, I tell you this,” he shouted. “I would sooner my daughters
were lying dead at my feet than see them listening to the garbage of
that shameless fellow.”
The play was The Doll’s House and the author was Henrik Ibsen.
Professor Erlin classed him with Richard Wagner, but of him he spoke
not with anger but with good-humoured laughter. He was a charlatan but
a successful charlatan, and in that was always something for the comic
spirit to rejoice in.
“Verruckter Kerl! A madman!” he said.
He had seen Lohengrin and that passed muster. It was dull but no worse.
But Siegfried! When he mentioned it Professor Erlin leaned his head on
his hand and bellowed with laughter. Not a melody in it from beginning
to end! He could imagine Richard Wagner sitting in his box and laughing
till his sides ached at the sight of all the people who were taking it
seriously. It was the greatest hoax of the nineteenth century. He
lifted his glass of beer to his lips, threw back his head, and drank
till the glass was empty. Then wiping his mouth with the back of his
hand, he said:
“I tell you young people that before the nineteenth century is out
Wagner will be as dead as mutton. Wagner! I would give all his works
for one opera by Donizetti.”
XXV
The oddest of Philip’s masters was his teacher of French. Monsieur
Ducroz was a citizen of Geneva. He was a tall old man, with a sallow
skin and hollow cheeks; his gray hair was thin and long. He wore shabby
black clothes, with holes at the elbows of his coat and frayed
trousers. His linen was very dirty. Philip had never seen him in a
clean collar. He was a man of few words, who gave his lesson
conscientiously but without enthusiasm, arriving as the clock struck
and leaving on the minute. His charges were very small. He was
taciturn, and what Philip learnt about him he learnt from others: it
appeared that he had fought with Garibaldi against the Pope, but had
left Italy in disgust when it was clear that all his efforts for
freedom, by which he meant the establishment of a republic, tended to
no more than an exchange of yokes; he had been expelled from Geneva for
it was not known what political offences. Philip looked upon him with
puzzled surprise; for he was very unlike his idea of the revolutionary:
he spoke in a low voice and was extraordinarily polite; he never sat
down till he was asked to; and when on rare occasions he met Philip in
the street took off his hat with an elaborate gesture; he never
laughed, he never even smiled. A more complete imagination than
Philip’s might have pictured a youth of splendid hope, for he must have
been entering upon manhood in 1848 when kings, remembering their
brother of France, went about with an uneasy crick in their necks; and
perhaps that passion for liberty which passed through Europe, sweeping
before it what of absolutism and tyranny had reared its head during the
reaction from the revolution of 1789, filled no breast with a hotter
fire. One might fancy him, passionate with theories of human equality
and human rights, discussing, arguing, fighting behind barricades in
Paris, flying before the Austrian cavalry in Milan, imprisoned here,
exiled from there, hoping on and upborne ever with the word which
seemed so magical, the word Liberty; till at last, broken with disease
and starvation, old, without means to keep body and soul together but
such lessons as he could pick up from poor students, he found himself
in that little neat town under the heel of a personal tyranny greater
than any in Europe. Perhaps his taciturnity hid a contempt for the
human race which had abandoned the great dreams of his youth and now
wallowed in sluggish ease; or perhaps these thirty years of revolution
had taught him that men are unfit for liberty, and he thought that he
had spent his life in the pursuit of that which was not worth the
finding. Or maybe he was tired out and waited only with indifference
for the release of death.
One day Philip, with the bluntness of his age, asked him if it was true
he had been with Garibaldi. The old man did not seem to attach any
importance to the question. He answered quite quietly in as low a voice
as usual.
“Oui, monsieur.”
“They say you were in the Commune?”
“Do they? Shall we get on with our work?”
He held the book open and Philip, intimidated, began to translate the
passage he had prepared.
One day Monsieur Ducroz seemed to be in great pain. He had been
scarcely able to drag himself up the many stairs to Philip’s room: and
when he arrived sat down heavily, his sallow face drawn, with beads of
sweat on his forehead, trying to recover himself.
“I’m afraid you’re ill,” said Philip.
“It’s of no consequence.”
But Philip saw that he was suffering, and at the end of the hour asked
whether he would not prefer to give no more lessons till he was better.
“No,” said the old man, in his even low voice. “I prefer to go on while
I am able.”
Philip, morbidly nervous when he had to make any reference to money,
reddened.
“But it won’t make any difference to you,” he said. “I’ll pay for the
lessons just the same. If you wouldn’t mind I’d like to give you the
money for next week in advance.”
Monsieur Ducroz charged eighteen pence an hour. Philip took a ten-mark
piece out of his pocket and shyly put it on the table. He could not
bring himself to offer it as if the old man were a beggar.
“In that case I think I won’t come again till I’m better.” He took the
coin and, without anything more than the elaborate bow with which he
always took his leave, went out.
“Bonjour, monsieur.”
Philip was vaguely disappointed. Thinking he had done a generous thing,
he had expected that Monsieur Ducroz would overwhelm him with
expressions of gratitude. He was taken aback to find that the old
teacher accepted the present as though it were his due. He was so
young, he did not realise how much less is the sense of obligation in
those who receive favours than in those who grant them. Monsieur Ducroz
appeared again five or six days later. He tottered a little more and
was very weak, but seemed to have overcome the severity of the attack.
He was no more communicative than he had been before. He remained
mysterious, aloof, and dirty. He made no reference to his illness till
after the lesson: and then, just as he was leaving, at the door, which
he held open, he paused. He hesitated, as though to speak were
difficult.
“If it hadn’t been for the money you gave me I should have starved. It
was all I had to live on.”
He made his solemn, obsequious bow, and went out. Philip felt a little
lump in his throat. He seemed to realise in a fashion the hopeless
bitterness of the old man’s struggle, and how hard life was for him
when to himself it was so pleasant.
XXVI
Philip had spent three months in Heidelberg when one morning the Frau
Professor told him that an Englishman named Hayward was coming to stay
in the house, and the same evening at supper he saw a new face. For
some days the family had lived in a state of excitement. First, as the
result of heaven knows what scheming, by dint of humble prayers and
veiled threats, the parents of the young Englishman to whom Fraulein
Thekla was engaged had invited her to visit them in England, and she
had set off with an album of water colours to show how accomplished she
was and a bundle of letters to prove how deeply the young man had
compromised himself. A week later Fraulein Hedwig with radiant smiles
announced that the lieutenant of her affections was coming to
Heidelberg with his father and mother. Exhausted by the importunity of
their son and touched by the dowry which Fraulein Hedwig’s father
offered, the lieutenant’s parents had consented to pass through