Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated)

by William Somerset Maugham

  He did not know how wide a country, arid and precipitous, must be crossed before the traveller through life comes to an acceptance of reality. It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life. The strange thing is that each one who has gone through that bitter disillusionment adds to it in his turn, unconsciously, by the power within him which is stronger than himself. The companionship of Hayward was the worst possible thing for Philip. He was a man who saw nothing for himself, but only through a literary atmosphere, and he was dangerous because he had deceived himself into sincerity. He honestly mistook his sensuality for romantic emotion, his vacillation for the artistic temperament, and his idleness for philosophic calm. His mind, vulgar in its effort at refinement, saw everything a little larger than life size, with the outlines blurred, in a golden mist of sentimentality. He lied and never knew that he lied, and when it was pointed out to him said that lies were beautiful. He was an idealist.

  XXX

  Philip was restless and dissatisfied. Hayward’s poetic allusions troubled his imagination, and his soul yearned for romance. At least that was how he put it to himself.

  And it happened that an incident was taking place in Frau Erlin’s house which increased Philip’s preoccupation with the matter of sex. Two or three times on his walks among the hills he had met Fraulein Cacilie wandering by herself. He had passed her with a bow, and a few yards further on had seen the Chinaman. He thought nothing of it; but one evening on his way home, when night had already fallen, he passed two people walking very close together. Hearing his footstep, they separated quickly, and though he could not see well in the darkness he was almost certain they were Cacilie and Herr Sung. Their rapid movement apart suggested that they had been walking arm in arm. Philip was puzzled and surprised. He had never paid much attention to Fraulein Cacilie. She was a plain girl, with a square face and blunt features. She could not have been more than sixteen, since she still wore her long fair hair in a plait. That evening at supper he looked at her curiously; and, though of late she had talked little at meals, she addressed him.

  “Where did you go for your walk today, Herr Carey?” she asked.

  “Oh, I walked up towards the Konigstuhl.”

  “I didn’t go out,” she volunteered. “I had a headache.”

  The Chinaman, who sat next to her, turned round.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I hope it’s better now.”

  Fraulein Cacilie was evidently uneasy, for she spoke again to Philip.

  “Did you meet many people on the way?”

  Philip could not help reddening when he told a downright lie.

  “No. I don’t think I saw a living soul.”

  He fancied that a look of relief passed across her eyes.

  Soon, however, there could be no doubt that there was something between the pair, and other people in the Frau Professor’s house saw them lurking in dark places. The elderly ladies who sat at the head of the table began to discuss what was now a scandal. The Frau Professor was angry and harassed. She had done her best to see nothing. The winter was at hand, and it was not as easy a matter then as in the summer to keep her house full. Herr Sung was a good customer: he had two rooms on the ground floor, and he drank a bottle of Moselle at each meal. The Frau Professor charged him three marks a bottle and made a good profit. None of her other guests drank wine, and some of them did not even drink beer. Neither did she wish to lose Fraulein Cacilie, whose parents were in business in South America and paid well for the Frau Professor’s motherly care; and she knew that if she wrote to the girl’s uncle, who lived in Berlin, he would immediately take her away. The Frau Professor contented herself with giving them both severe looks at table and, though she dared not be rude to the Chinaman, got a certain satisfaction out of incivility to Cacilie. But the three elderly ladies were not content. Two were widows, and one, a Dutchwoman, was a spinster of masculine appearance; they paid the smallest possible sum for their pension, and gave a good deal of trouble, but they were permanent and therefore had to be put up with. They went to the Frau Professor and said that something must be done; it was disgraceful, and the house was ceasing to be respectable. The Frau Professor tried obstinacy, anger, tears, but the three old ladies routed her, and with a sudden assumption of virtuous indignation she said that she would put a stop to the whole thing.

  After luncheon she took Cacilie into her bed-room and began to talk very seriously to her; but to her amazement the girl adopted a brazen attitude; she proposed to go about as she liked; and if she chose to walk with the Chinaman she could not see it was anybody’s business but her own. The Frau Professor threatened to write to her uncle.

  “Then Onkel Heinrich will put me in a family in Berlin for the winter, and that will be much nicer for me. And Herr Sung will come to Berlin too.”

  The Frau Professor began to cry. The tears rolled down her coarse, red, fat cheeks; and Cacilie laughed at her.

  “That will mean three rooms empty all through the winter,” she said.

  Then the Frau Professor tried another plan. She appealed to Fraulein Cacilie’s better nature: she was kind, sensible, tolerant; she treated her no longer as a child, but as a grown woman. She said that it wouldn’t be so dreadful, but a Chinaman, with his yellow skin and flat nose, and his little pig’s eyes! That’s what made it so horrible. It filled one with disgust to think of it.

  “Bitte, bitte,” said Cacilie, with a rapid intake of the breath. “I won’t listen to anything against him.”

  “But it’s not serious?” gasped Frau Erlin.

  “I love him. I love him. I love him.”

  “Gott im Himmel!”

  The Frau Professor stared at her with horrified surprise; she had thought it was no more than naughtiness on the child’s part, and innocent, folly. but the passion in her voice revealed everything. Cacilie looked at her for a moment with flaming eyes, and then with a shrug of her shoulders went out of the room.

  Frau Erlin kept the details of the interview to herself, and a day or two later altered the arrangement of the table. She asked Herr Sung if he would not come and sit at her end, and he with his unfailing politeness accepted with alacrity. Cacilie took the change indifferently. But as if the discovery that the relations between them were known to the whole household made them more shameless, they made no secret now of their walks together, and every afternoon quite openly set out to wander about the hills. It was plain that they did not care what was said of them. At last even the placidity of Professor Erlin was moved, and he insisted that his wife should speak to the Chinaman. She took him aside in his turn and expostulated; he was ruining the girl’s reputation, he was doing harm to the house, he must see how wrong and wicked his conduct was; but she was met with smiling denials; Herr Sung did not know what she was talking about, he was not paying any attention to Fraulein Cacilie, he never walked with her; it was all untrue, every word of it.

  “Ach, Herr Sung, how can you say such things? You’ve been seen again and again.”

  “No, you’re mistaken. It’s untrue.”

  He looked at her with an unceasing smile, which showed his even, little white teeth. He was quite calm. He denied everything. He denied with bland effrontery. At last the Frau Professor lost her temper and said the girl had confessed she loved him. He was not moved. He continued to smile.

  “Nonsense! Nonsense! It’s all untrue.”

  She could get nothing out of
him. The weather grew very bad; there was snow and frost, and then a thaw with a long succession of cheerless days, on which walking was a poor amusement. One evening when Philip had just finished his German lesson with the Herr Professor and was standing for a moment in the drawing-room, talking to Frau Erlin, Anna came quickly in.

  “Mamma, where is Cacilie?” she said.

  “I suppose she’s in her room.”

  “There’s no light in it.”

  The Frau Professor gave an exclamation, and she looked at her daughter in dismay. The thought which was in Anna’s head had flashed across hers.

  “Ring for Emil,” she said hoarsely.

  This was the stupid lout who waited at table and did most of the housework. He came in.

  “Emil, go down to Herr Sung’s room and enter without knocking. If anyone is there say you came in to see about the stove.”

  No sign of astonishment appeared on Emil’s phlegmatic face.

  He went slowly downstairs. The Frau Professor and Anna left the door open and listened. Presently they heard Emil come up again, and they called him.

  “Was anyone there?” asked the Frau Professor.

  “Yes, Herr Sung was there.”

  “Was he alone?”

  The beginning of a cunning smile narrowed his mouth.

  “No, Fraulein Cacilie was there.”

  “Oh, it’s disgraceful,” cried the Frau Professor.

  Now he smiled broadly.

  “Fraulein Cacilie is there every evening. She spends hours at a time there.”

  Frau Professor began to wring her hands.

  “Oh, how abominable! But why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It was no business of mine,” he answered, slowly shrugging his shoulders.

  “I suppose they paid you well. Go away. Go.”

  He lurched clumsily to the door.

  “They must go away, mamma,” said Anna.

  “And who is going to pay the rent? And the taxes are falling due. It’s all very well for you to say they must go away. If they go away I can’t pay the bills.” She turned to Philip, with tears streaming down her face. “Ach, Herr Carey, you will not say what you have heard. If Fraulein Forster—” this was the Dutch spinster— “if Fraulein Forster knew she would leave at once. And if they all go we must close the house. I cannot afford to keep it.”

  “Of course I won’t say anything.”

  “If she stays, I will not speak to her,” said Anna.

  That evening at supper Fraulein Cacilie, redder than usual, with a look of obstinacy on her face, took her place punctually; but Herr Sung did not appear, and for a while Philip thought he was going to shirk the ordeal. At last he came, very smiling, his little eyes dancing with the apologies he made for his late arrival. He insisted as usual on pouring out the Frau Professor a glass of his Moselle, and he offered a glass to Fraulein Forster. The room was very hot, for the stove had been alight all day and the windows were seldom opened. Emil blundered about, but succeeded somehow in serving everyone quickly and with order. The three old ladies sat in silence, visibly disapproving: the Frau Professor had scarcely recovered from her tears; her husband was silent and oppressed. Conversation languished. It seemed to Philip that there was something dreadful in that gathering which he had sat with so often; they looked different under the light of the two hanging lamps from what they had ever looked before; he was vaguely uneasy. Once he caught Cacilie’s eye, and he thought she looked at him with hatred and contempt. The room was stifling. It was as though the beastly passion of that pair troubled them all; there was a feeling of Oriental depravity; a faint savour of joss-sticks, a mystery of hidden vices, seemed to make their breath heavy. Philip could feel the beating of the arteries in his forehead. He could not understand what strange emotion distracted him; he seemed to feel something infinitely attractive, and yet he was repelled and horrified.

  For several days things went on. The air was sickly with the unnatural passion which all felt about them, and the nerves of the little household seemed to grow exasperated. Only Herr Sung remained unaffected; he was no less smiling, affable, and polite than he had been before: one could not tell whether his manner was a triumph of civilisation or an expression of contempt on the part of the Oriental for the vanquished West. Cacilie was flaunting and cynical. At last even the Frau Professor could bear the position no longer. Suddenly panic seized her; for Professor Erlin with brutal frankness had suggested the possible consequences of an intrigue which was now manifest to everyone, and she saw her good name in Heidelberg and the repute of her house ruined by a scandal which could not possibly be hidden. For some reason, blinded perhaps by her interests, this possibility had never occurred to her; and now, her wits muddled by a terrible fear, she could hardly be prevented from turning the girl out of the house at once. It was due to Anna’s good sense that a cautious letter was written to the uncle in Berlin suggesting that Cacilie should be taken away.

  But having made up her mind to lose the two lodgers, the Frau Professor could not resist the satisfaction of giving rein to the ill-temper she had curbed so long. She was free now to say anything she liked to Cacilie.

  “I have written to your uncle, Cacilie, to take you away. I cannot have you in my house any longer.”

  Her little round eyes sparkled when she noticed the sudden whiteness of the girl’s face.

  “You’re shameless. Shameless,” she went on.

  She called her foul names.

  “What did you say to my uncle Heinrich, Frau Professor?” the girl asked, suddenly falling from her attitude of flaunting independence.

  “Oh, he’ll tell you himself. I expect to get a letter from him tomorrow.”

  Next day, in order to make the humiliation more public, at supper she called down the table to Cacilie.

  “I have had a letter from your uncle, Cacilie. You are to pack your things tonight, and we will put you in the train tomorrow morning. He will meet you himself in Berlin at the Central Bahnhof.”

  “Very good, Frau Professor.”

  Herr Sung smiled in the Frau Professor’s eyes, and notwithstanding her protests insisted on pouring out a glass of wine for her. The Frau Professor ate her supper with a good appetite. But she had triumphed unwisely. Just before going to bed she called the servant.

  “Emil, if Fraulein Cacilie’s box is ready you had better take it downstairs tonight. The porter will fetch it before breakfast.”

  The servant went away and in a moment came back.

  “Fraulein Cacilie is not in her room, and her bag has gone.”

  With a cry the Frau Professor hurried along: the box was on the floor, strapped and locked; but there was no bag, and neither hat nor cloak. The dressing-table was empty. Breathing heavily, the Frau Professor ran downstairs to the Chinaman’s rooms, she had not moved so quickly for twenty years, and Emil called out after her to beware she did not fall; she did not trouble to knock, but burst in. The rooms were empty. The luggage had gone, and the door into the garden, still open, showed how it had been got away. In an envelope on the table were notes for the money due on the month’s board and an approximate sum for extras. Groaning, suddenly overcome by her haste, the Frau Professor sank obesely on to a sofa. There could be no doubt. The pair had gone off together. Emil remained stolid and unmoved.

  XXXI

  Hayward, after saying for a month that he was going South next day and delaying from week to week out of inability to make up his mind to the bother of packing and the tedium of a journey, had at last been driven off just before Christmas by the preparations for that festival. He could not support the thought of a Teutonic merry-making. It gave him goose-flesh to think of the season’s aggressive cheerfulness, and in his desire to avoid the obvious he determined to travel on Christmas Eve.

  Philip was not sorry to see him off, for he was a downright person and it irritated him that anybody should not know his own mind. Though much under Hayward’s influence, he would not grant that indecision pointed to a charmi
ng sensitiveness; and he resented the shadow of a sneer with which Hayward looked upon his straight ways. They corresponded. Hayward was an admirable letter-writer, and knowing his talent took pains with his letters. His temperament was receptive to the beautiful influences with which he came in contact, and he was able in his letters from Rome to put a subtle fragrance of Italy. He thought the city of the ancient Romans a little vulgar, finding distinction only in the decadence of the Empire; but the Rome of the Popes appealed to his sympathy, and in his chosen words, quite exquisitely, there appeared a rococo beauty. He wrote of old church music and the Alban Hills, and of the languor of incense and the charm of the streets by night, in the rain, when the pavements shone and the light of the street lamps was mysterious. Perhaps he repeated these admirable letters to various friends. He did not know what a troubling effect they had upon Philip; they seemed to make his life very humdrum. With the spring Hayward grew dithyrambic. He proposed that Philip should come down to Italy. He was wasting his time at Heidelberg. The Germans were gross and life there was common; how could the soul come to her own in that prim landscape? In Tuscany the spring was scattering flowers through the land, and Philip was nineteen; let him come and they could wander through the mountain towns of Umbria. Their names sang in Philip’s heart. And Cacilie too, with her lover, had gone to Italy. When he thought of them Philip was seized with a restlessness he could not account for. He cursed his fate because he had no money to travel, and he knew his uncle would not send him more than the fifteen pounds a month which had been agreed upon. He had not managed his allowance very well. His pension and the price of his lessons left him very little over, and he had found going about with Hayward expensive. Hayward had often suggested excursions, a visit to the play, or a bottle of wine, when Philip had come to the end of his month’s money; and with the folly of his age he had been unwilling to confess he could not afford an extravagance.