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Of Human Bondage

W >> W. Somerset Maugham >> Of Human Bondage




"Oh, God, in Thy loving mercy and goodness, if it be Thy will, please make
my foot all right on the night before I go back to school."

He was glad to get his petition into a formula, and he repeated it later
in the dining-room during the short pause which the Vicar always made
after prayers, before he rose from his knees. He said it again in the
evening and again, shivering in his nightshirt, before he got into bed.
And he believed. For once he looked forward with eagerness to the end of
the holidays. He laughed to himself as he thought of his uncle's
astonishment when he ran down the stairs three at a time; and after
breakfast he and Aunt Louisa would have to hurry out and buy a new pair of
boots. At school they would be astounded.

"Hulloa, Carey, what have you done with your foot?"

"Oh, it's all right now," he would answer casually, as though it were the
most natural thing in the world.

He would be able to play football. His heart leaped as he saw himself
running, running, faster than any of the other boys. At the end of the
Easter term there were the sports, and he would be able to go in for the
races; he rather fancied himself over the hurdles. It would be splendid to
be like everyone else, not to be stared at curiously by new boys who did
not know about his deformity, nor at the baths in summer to need
incredible precautions, while he was undressing, before he could hide his
foot in the water.

He prayed with all the power of his soul. No doubts assailed him. He was
confident in the word of God. And the night before he was to go back to
school he went up to bed tremulous with excitement. There was snow on the
ground, and Aunt Louisa had allowed herself the unaccustomed luxury of a
fire in her bed-room; but in Philip's little room it was so cold that his
fingers were numb, and he had great 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 profession
for which he was so admirably suited. He had been an assistant master at
Wellington and then at Rugby.

But there was quite a difference between welcoming his success at other
schools and serving under his leadership in their own. Tar had frequently
given him lines, and Squirts had boxed his ears. They could not imagine
how the Chapter had made such a mistake. No one could be expected to
forget that he was the son of a bankrupt linendraper, and the alcoholism
of Cooper seemed to increase the disgrace. It was understood that the Dean
had supported his candidature with zeal, so the Dean would probably ask
him to dinner; but would the pleasant little dinners in the precincts ever
be the same when Tom Perkins sat at the table? And what about the depot?
He really could not expect officers and gentlemen to receive him as one of
themselves. It would do the school incalculable harm. Parents would be
dissatisfied, and no one could be surprised if there were wholesale
withdrawals. And then the indignity of calling him Mr. Perkins! The
masters thought by way of protest of sending in their resignations in a
body, but the uneasy fear that they would be accepted with equanimity
restrained them.

"The only thing is to prepare ourselves for changes," said Sighs, who had
conducted the fifth form for five and twenty years with unparalleled
incompetence.

And when they saw him they were not reassured. Dr. Fleming invited them to
meet him at luncheon. He was now a man of thirty-two, tall and lean, but
with the same wild and unkempt look they remembered on him as a boy. His
clothes, ill-made and shabby, were put on untidily. His hair was as black
and as long as ever, and he had plainly never learned to brush it; it fell
over his forehead with every gesture, and he had a quick movement of the
hand with which he pushed it back from his eyes. He had a black moustache
and a beard which came high up on his face almost to the cheek-bones, He
talked to the masters quite easily, as though he had parted from them a
week or two before; he was evidently delighted to see them. He seemed
unconscious of the strangeness of the position and appeared not to notice
any oddness in being addressed as Mr. Perkins.

When he bade them good-bye, one of the masters, for something to say,
remarked that he was allowing himself plenty of time to catch his train.

"I want to go round and have a look at the shop," he answered cheerfully.

There was a distinct embarrassment. They wondered that he could be so
tactless, and to make it worse Dr. Fleming had not heard what he said. His
wife shouted it in his ear.

"He wants to go round and look at his father's old shop."

Only Tom Perkins was unconscious of the humiliation which the whole party
felt. He turned to Mrs. Fleming.

"Who's got it now, d'you know?"

She could hardly answer. She was very angry.

"It's still a linendraper's," she said bitterly. "Grove is the name. We
don't deal there any more."

"I wonder if he'd let me go over the house."

"I expect he would if you explain who you are."

It was not till the end of dinner that evening that any reference was made
in the common-room to the subject that was in all their minds. Then it was
Sighs who asked:

"Well, what did you think of our new head?" They thought of the
conversation at luncheon. It was hardly a conversation; it was a
monologue. Perkins had talked incessantly. He talked very quickly, with a
flow of easy words and in a deep, resonant voice. He had a short, odd
little laugh which showed his white teeth. They had followed him with
difficulty, for his mind darted from subject to subject with a connection
they did not always catch. He talked of pedagogics, and this was natural
enough; but he had much to say of modern theories in Germany which they
had never heard of and received with misgiving. He talked of the classics,
but he had been to Greece, and he discoursed of archaeology; he had once
spent a winter digging; they could not see how that helped a man to teach
boys to pass examinations, He talked of politics. It sounded odd to them
to hear him compare Lord Beaconsfield with Alcibiades. He talked of Mr.
Gladstone and Home Rule. They realised that he was a Liberal. Their hearts
sank. He talked of German philosophy and of French fiction. They could not
think a man profound whose interests were so diverse.

It was Winks who summed up the general impression and put it into a form
they all felt conclusively damning. Winks was the master of the upper
third, a weak-kneed man with drooping eye-lids, He was too tall for his
strength, and his movements were slow and languid. He gave an impression
of lassitude, and his nickname was eminently appropriate.

"He's very enthusiastic," said Winks.

Enthusiasm was ill-bred. Enthusiasm was ungentlemanly. They thought of the
Salvation Army with its braying trumpets and its drums. Enthusiasm meant
change. They had goose-flesh when they thought of all the pleasant old
habits which stood in imminent danger. They hardly dared to look forward
to the future.

"He looks more of a gipsy than ever," said one, after a pause.

"I wonder if the Dean and Chapter knew that he was a Radical when they
elected him," another observed bitterly.

But conversation halted. They were too much disturbed for words.

When Tar and Sighs were walking together to the Chapter House on
Speech-Day a week later, Tar, who had a bitter tongue, remarked to his
colleague:

"Well, we've seen a good many Speech-Days here, haven't we? I wonder if we
shall see another."

Sighs was more melancholy even than usual.

"If anything worth having comes along in the way of a living I don't mind
when I retire."



XVI


A year passed, and when Philip came to the school the old masters were all
in their places; but a good many changes had taken place notwithstanding
their stubborn resistance, none the less formidable because it was
concealed under an apparent desire to fall in with the new head's ideas.
Though the form-masters still taught French to the lower school, another
master had come, with a degree of doctor of philology from the University
of Heidelberg and a record of three years spent in a French lycee, to
teach French to the upper forms and German to anyone who cared to take it
up instead of Greek. Another master was engaged to teach mathematics more
systematically than had been found necessary hitherto. Neither of these
was ordained. This was a real revolution, and when the pair arrived the
older masters received them with distrust. A laboratory had been fitted
up, army classes were instituted; they all said the character of the
school was changing. And heaven only knew what further projects Mr.
Perkins turned in that untidy head of his. The school was small as public
schools go, there were not more than two hundred boarders; and it was
difficult for it to grow larger, for it was huddled up against the
Cathedral; the precincts, with the exception of a house in which some of
the masters lodged, were occupied by the cathedral clergy; and there was
no more room for building. But Mr. Perkins devised an elaborate scheme by
which he might obtain sufficient space to make the school double its
present size. He wanted to attract boys from London. He thought it would
be good for them to be thrown in contact with the Kentish lads, and it
would sharpen the country wits of these.

"It's against all our traditions," said Sighs, when Mr. Perkins made the
suggestion to him. "We've rather gone out of our way to avoid the
contamination of boys from London."

"Oh, what nonsense!" said Mr. Perkins.

No one had ever told the form-master before that he talked nonsense, and
he was meditating an acid reply, in which perhaps he might insert a veiled
reference to hosiery, when Mr. Perkins in his impetuous way attacked him
outrageously.

"That house in the precincts--if you'd only marry I'd get the Chapter to
put another couple of stories on, and we'd make dormitories and studies,
and your wife could help you."

The elderly clergyman gasped. Why should he marry? He was fifty-seven, a
man couldn't marry at fifty-seven. He couldn't start looking after a house
at his time of life. He didn't want to marry. If the choice lay between
that and the country living he would much sooner resign. All he wanted now
was peace and quietness.

"I'm not thinking of marrying," he said.

Mr. Perkins looked at him with his dark, bright eyes, and if there was a
twinkle in them poor Sighs never saw it.

"What a pity! Couldn't you marry to oblige me? It would help me a great
deal with the Dean and Chapter when I suggest rebuilding your house."

But Mr. Perkins' most unpopular innovation was his system of taking
occasionally another man's form. He asked it as a favour, but after all it
was a favour which could not be refused, and as Tar, otherwise Mr. Turner,
said, it was undignified for all parties. He gave no warning, but after
morning prayers would say to one of the masters:

"I wonder if you'd mind taking the Sixth today at eleven. We'll change
over, shall we?"

They did not know whether this was usual at other schools, but certainly
it had never been done at Tercanbury. The results were curious. Mr.
Turner, who was the first victim, broke the news to his form that the
headmaster would take them for Latin that day, and on the pretence that
they might like to ask him a question or two so that they should not make
perfect fools of themselves, spent the last quarter of an hour of the
history lesson in construing for them the passage of Livy which had been
set for the day; but when he rejoined his class and looked at the paper on
which Mr. Perkins had written the marks, a surprise awaited him; for the
two boys at the top of the form seemed to have done very ill, while others
who had never distinguished themselves before were given full marks. When
he asked Eldridge, his cleverest boy, what was the meaning of this the
answer came sullenly:

"Mr. Perkins never gave us any construing to do. He asked me what I knew
about General Gordon."

Mr. Turner looked at him in astonishment. The boys evidently felt they had
been hardly used, and he could not help agreeing with their silent
dissatisfaction. He could not see either what General Gordon had to do
with Livy. He hazarded an inquiry afterwards.

"Eldridge was dreadfully put out because you asked him what he knew about
General Gordon," he said to the headmaster, with an attempt at a chuckle.

Mr. Perkins laughed.

"I saw they'd got to the agrarian laws of Caius Gracchus, and I wondered
if they knew anything about the agrarian troubles in Ireland. But all they
knew about Ireland was that Dublin was on the Liffey. So I wondered if
they'd ever heard of General Gordon."

Then the horrid fact was disclosed that the new head had a mania for
general information. He had doubts about the utility of examinations on
subjects which had been crammed for the occasion. He wanted common sense.

Sighs grew more worried every month; he could not get the thought out of
his head that Mr. Perkins would ask him to fix a day for his marriage; and
he hated the attitude the head adopted towards classical literature. There
was no doubt that he was a fine scholar, and he was engaged on a work
which was quite in the right tradition: he was writing a treatise on the
trees in Latin literature; but he talked of it flippantly, as though it
were a pastime of no great importance, like billiards, which engaged his
leisure but was not to be considered with seriousness. And Squirts, the
master of the Middle Third, grew more ill-tempered every day.

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