Chapter XVII

by William Somerset Maugham

　　Philip passed the next two years with comfortable monotony. He was notbullied more than other boys of his size; and his deformity, withdrawinghim from games, acquired for him an insignificance for which he wasgrateful. He was not popular, and he was very lonely. He spent a couple ofterms with Winks in the Upper Third. Winks, with his weary manner and hisdrooping eyelids, looked infinitely bored. He did his duty, but he did itwith an abstracted mind. He was kind, gentle, and foolish. He had a greatbelief in the honour of boys; he felt that the first thing to make themtruthful was not to let it enter your head for a moment that it waspossible for them to lie. "Ask much," he quoted, "and much shall be givento you." Life was easy in the Upper Third. You knew exactly what lineswould come to your turn to construe, and with the crib that passed fromhand to hand you could find out all you wanted in two minutes; you couldhold a Latin Grammar open on your knees while questions were passinground; and Winks never noticed anything odd in the fact that the sameincredible mistake was to be found in a dozen different exercises. He hadno great faith in examinations, for he noticed that boys never did so wellin them as in form: it was disappointing, but not significant. In duecourse they were moved up, having learned little but a cheerful effronteryin the distortion of truth, which was possibly of greater service to themin after life than an ability to read Latin at sight.Then they fell into the hands of Tar. His name was Turner; he was the mostvivacious of the old masters, a short man with an immense belly, a blackbeard turning now to gray, and a swarthy skin. In his clerical dress therewas indeed something in him to suggest the tar-barrel; and though onprinciple he gave five hundred lines to any boy on whose lips he overheardhis nickname, at dinner-parties in the precincts he often made littlejokes about it. He was the most worldly of the masters; he dined out morefrequently than any of the others, and the society he kept was not soexclusively clerical. The boys looked upon him as rather a dog. He leftoff his clerical attire during the holidays and had been seen inSwitzerland in gay tweeds. He liked a bottle of wine and a good dinner,and having once been seen at the Cafe Royal with a lady who was veryprobably a near relation, was thenceforward supposed by generations ofschoolboys to indulge in orgies the circumstantial details of whichpointed to an unbounded belief in human depravity.Mr. Turner reckoned that it took him a term to lick boys into shape afterthey had been in the Upper Third; and now and then he let fall a sly hint,which showed that he knew perfectly what went on in his colleague's form.He took it good-humouredly. He looked upon boys as young ruffians who weremore apt to be truthful if it was quite certain a lie would be found out,whose sense of honour was peculiar to themselves and did not apply todealings with masters, and who were least likely to be troublesome whenthey learned that it did not pay. He was proud of his form and as eager atfifty-five that it should do better in examinations than any of the othersas he had been when he first came to the school. He had the choler of theobese, easily roused and as easily calmed, and his boys soon discoveredthat there was much kindliness beneath the invective with which heconstantly assailed them. He had no patience with fools, but was willingto take much trouble with boys whom he suspected of concealingintelligence behind their wilfulness. He was fond of inviting them to tea;and, though vowing they never got a look in with him at the cakes andmuffins, for it was the fashion to believe that his corpulence pointed toa voracious appetite, and his voracious appetite to tapeworms, theyaccepted his invitations with real pleasure.Philip was now more comfortable, for space was so limited that there wereonly studies for boys in the upper school, and till then he had lived inthe great hall in which they all ate and in which the lower forms didpreparation in a promiscuity which was vaguely distasteful to him. Now andthen it made him restless to be with people and he wanted urgently to bealone. He set out for solitary walks into the country. There was a littlestream, with pollards on both sides of it, that ran through green fields,and it made him happy, he knew not why, to wander along its banks. When hewas tired he lay face-downward on the grass and watched the eagerscurrying of minnows and of tadpoles. It gave him a peculiar satisfactionto saunter round the precincts. On the green in the middle they practisedat nets in the summer, but during the rest of the year it was quiet: boysused to wander round sometimes arm in arm, or a studious fellow withabstracted gaze walked slowly, repeating to himself something he had tolearn by heart. There was a colony of rooks in the great elms, and theyfilled the air with melancholy cries. Along one side lay the Cathedralwith its great central tower, and Philip, who knew as yet nothing ofbeauty, felt when he looked at it a troubling delight which he could notunderstand. When he had a study (it was a little square room looking on aslum, and four boys shared it), he bought a photograph of that view of theCathedral, and pinned it up over his desk. And he found himself taking anew interest in what he saw from the window of the Fourth Form room. Itlooked on to old lawns, carefully tended, and fine trees with foliagedense and rich. It gave him an odd feeling in his heart, and he did notknow if it was pain or pleasure. It was the first dawn of the aestheticemotion. It accompanied other changes. His voice broke. It was no longerquite under his control, and queer sounds issued from his throat.Then he began to go to the classes which were held in the headmaster'sstudy, immediately after tea, to prepare boys for confirmation. Philip'spiety had not stood the test of time, and he had long since given up hisnightly 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 oldfeelings revived, and he reproached himself bitterly for his backsliding.The fires of Hell burned fiercely before his mind's eye. If he had diedduring that time when he was little better than an infidel he would havebeen lost; he believed implicitly in pain everlasting, he believed in itmuch more than in eternal happiness; and he shuddered at the dangers hehad run.Since the day on which Mr. Perkins had spoken kindly to him, when he wassmarting under the particular form of abuse which he could least bear,Philip had conceived for his headmaster a dog-like adoration. He rackedhis brains vainly for some way to please him. He treasured the smallestword of commendation which by chance fell from his lips. And when he cameto the quiet little meetings in his house he was prepared to surrenderhimself entirely. He kept his eyes fixed on Mr. Perkins' shining eyes, andsat with mouth half open, his head a little thrown forward so as to missno word. The ordinariness of the surroundings made the matters they dealtwith extraordinarily moving. And often the master, seized himself by thewonder of his subject, would push back the book in front of him, and withhis hands clasped together over his heart, as though to still the beating,would talk of the mysteries of their religion. Sometimes Philip did notunderstand, but he did not want to understand, he felt vaguely that it wasenough 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 whofeared not to take kings to task; and when he thought of the Redeemer hesaw Him only with the same dark eyes and those wan cheeks.Mr. Perkins took this part of his work with great seriousness. There wasnever here any of that flashing humour which made the other masterssuspect him of flippancy. Finding time for everything in his busy day, hewas able at certain intervals to take separately for a quarter of an houror twenty minutes the boys whom he was preparing for confirmation. Hewanted to make them feel that this was the first consciously serious stepin their lives; he tried to grope into the depths of their souls; hewanted to instil in them his own vehement devotion. In Philip,notwithstanding his shyness, he felt the possibility of a passion equal tohis own. The boy's temperament seemed to him essentially religious. Oneday 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?" heasked."My uncle wants me to be ordained," said Philip."And you?"Philip looked away. He was ashamed to answer that he felt himselfunworthy."I don't know any life that's so full of happiness as ours. I wish I couldmake you feel what a wonderful privilege it is. One can serve God in everywalk, but we stand nearer to Him. I don't want to influence you, but ifyou made up your mind--oh, at once--you couldn't help feeling that joy andrelief which never desert one again."Philip did not answer, but the headmaster read in his eyes that herealised already something of what he tried to indicate."If you go on as you are now you'll find yourself head of the school oneof these days, and you ought to be pretty safe for a scholarship when youleave. 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 apencil on the blotting paper in front of him, went on."I'm afraid your choice of professions will be rather limited. Younaturally couldn't go in for anything that required physical activity."Philip reddened to the roots of his hair, as he always did when anyreference was made to his club-foot. Mr. Perkins looked at him gravely."I wonder if you're not oversensitive about your misfortune. Has it everstruck you to thank God for it?"Philip looked up quickly. His lips tightened. He remembered how formonths, trusting in what they told him, he had implored God to heal him asHe had healed the Leper and made the Blind to see."As long as you accept it rebelliously it can only cause you shame. But ifyou looked upon it as a cross that was given you to bear only because yourshoulders were strong enough to bear it, a sign of God's favour, then itwould 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, amystical rapture seized him. His spirit seemed to free itself from thebonds of the flesh and he seemed to be living a new life. He aspired toperfection with all the passion that was in him. He wanted to surrenderhimself entirely to the service of God, and he made up his mind definitelythat he would be ordained. When the great day arrived, his soul deeplymoved by all the preparation, by the books he had studied and above all bythe overwhelming influence of the head, he could hardly contain himselffor fear and joy. One thought had tormented him. He knew that he wouldhave to walk alone through the chancel, and he dreaded showing his limpthus obviously, not only to the whole school, who were attending theservice, but also to the strangers, people from the city or parents whohad come to see their sons confirmed. But when the time came he feltsuddenly that he could accept the humiliation joyfully; and as he limpedup the chancel, very small and insignificant beneath the lofty vaulting ofthe Cathedral, he offered consciously his deformity as a sacrifice to theGod who loved him.