Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated)

by William Somerset Maugham

  But a day or two later she made a real scene. There was a tennis-party at the vicarage, and two girls came, daughters of a retired major in an Indian regiment who had lately settled in Blackstable. They were very pretty, one was Philip’s age and the other was a year or two younger. Being used to the society of young men (they were full of stories of hill-stations in India, and at that time the stories of Rudyard Kipling were in every hand) they began to chaff Philip gaily; and he, pleased with the novelty — the young ladies at Blackstable treated the Vicar’s nephew with a certain seriousness — was gay and jolly. Some devil within him prompted him to start a violent flirtation with them both, and as he was the only young man there, they were quite willing to meet him half-way. It happened that they played tennis quite well and Philip was tired of pat-ball with Miss Wilkinson (she had only begun to play when she came to Blackstable), so when he arranged the sets after tea he suggested that Miss Wilkinson should play against the curate’s wife, with the curate as her partner; and he would play later with the new-comers. He sat down by the elder Miss O’Connor and said to her in an undertone:

  “We’ll get the duffers out of the way first, and then we’ll have a jolly set afterwards.”

  Apparently Miss Wilkinson overheard him, for she threw down her racket, and, saying she had a headache, went away. It was plain to everyone that she was offended. Philip was annoyed that she should make the fact public. The set was arranged without her, but presently Mrs. Carey called him.

  “Philip, you’ve hurt Emily’s feelings. She’s gone to her room and she’s crying.”

  “What about?”

  “Oh, something about a duffer’s set. Do go to her, and say you didn’t mean to be unkind, there’s a good boy.”

  “All right.”

  He knocked at Miss Wilkinson’s door, but receiving no answer went in. He found her lying face downwards on her bed, weeping. He touched her on the shoulder.

  “I say, what on earth’s the matter?”

  “Leave me alone. I never want to speak to you again.”

  “What have I done? I’m awfully sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings. I didn’t mean to. I say, do get up.”

  “Oh, I’m so unhappy. How could you be cruel to me? You know I hate that stupid game. I only play because I want to play with you.”

  She got up and walked towards the dressing-table, but after a quick look in the glass sank into a chair. She made her handkerchief into a ball and dabbed her eyes with it.

  “I’ve given you the greatest thing a woman can give a man — oh, what a fool

  I was — and you have no gratitude. You must be quite heartless. How could

  you be so cruel as to torment me by flirting with those vulgar girls.

  We’ve only got just over a week. Can’t you even give me that?”

  Philip stood over her rather sulkily. He thought her behaviour childish.

  He was vexed with her for having shown her ill-temper before strangers.

  “But you know I don’t care twopence about either of the O’Connors. Why on earth should you think I do?”

  Miss Wilkinson put away her handkerchief. Her tears had made marks on her powdered face, and her hair was somewhat disarranged. Her white dress did not suit her very well just then. She looked at Philip with hungry, passionate eyes.

  “Because you’re twenty and so’s she,” she said hoarsely. “And I’m old.”

  Philip reddened and looked away. The anguish of her tone made him feel strangely uneasy. He wished with all his heart that he had never had anything to do with Miss Wilkinson.

  “I don’t want to make you unhappy,” he said awkwardly. “You’d better go down and look after your friends. They’ll wonder what has become of you.”

  “All right.”

  He was glad to leave her.

  The quarrel was quickly followed by a reconciliation, but the few days that remained were sometimes irksome to Philip. He wanted to talk of nothing but the future, and the future invariably reduced Miss Wilkinson to tears. At first her weeping affected him, and feeling himself a beast he redoubled his protestations of undying passion; but now it irritated him: it would have been all very well if she had been a girl, but it was silly of a grown-up woman to cry so much. She never ceased reminding him that he was under a debt of gratitude to her which he could never repay. He was willing to acknowledge this since she made a point of it, but he did not really know why he should be any more grateful to her than she to him. He was expected to show his sense of obligation in ways which were rather a nuisance: he had been a good deal used to solitude, and it was a necessity to him sometimes; but Miss Wilkinson looked upon it as an unkindness if he was not always at her beck and call. The Miss O’Connors asked them both to tea, and Philip would have liked to go, but Miss Wilkinson said she only had five days more and wanted him entirely to herself. It was flattering, but a bore. Miss Wilkinson told him stories of the exquisite delicacy of Frenchmen when they stood in the same relation to fair ladies as he to Miss Wilkinson. She praised their courtesy, their passion for self-sacrifice, their perfect tact. Miss Wilkinson seemed to want a great deal.

  Philip listened to her enumeration of the qualities which must be possessed by the perfect lover, and he could not help feeling a certain satisfaction that she lived in Berlin.

  “You will write to me, won’t you? Write to me every day. I want to know everything you’re doing. You must keep nothing from me.”

  “I shall be awfully, busy” he answered. “I’ll write as often as I can.”

  She flung her arms passionately round his neck. He was embarrassed sometimes by the demonstrations of her affection. He would have preferred her to be more passive. It shocked him a little that she should give him so marked a lead: it did not tally altogether with his prepossessions about the modesty of the feminine temperament.

  At length the day came on which Miss Wilkinson was to go, and she came down to breakfast, pale and subdued, in a serviceable travelling dress of black and white check. She looked a very competent governess. Philip was silent too, for he did not quite know what to say that would fit the circumstance; and he was terribly afraid that, if he said something flippant, Miss Wilkinson would break down before his uncle and make a scene. They had said their last good-bye to one another in the garden the night before, and Philip was relieved that there was now no opportunity for them to be alone. He remained in the dining-room after breakfast in case Miss Wilkinson should insist on kissing him on the stairs. He did not want Mary Ann, now a woman hard upon middle age with a sharp tongue, to catch them in a compromising position. Mary Ann did not like Miss Wilkinson and called her an old cat. Aunt Louisa was not very well and could not come to the station, but the Vicar and Philip saw her off. Just as the train was leaving she leaned out and kissed Mr. Carey.

  “I must kiss you too, Philip,” she said.

  “All right,” he said, blushing.

  He stood up on the step and she kissed him quickly. The train started, and Miss Wilkinson sank into the corner of her carriage and wept disconsolately. Philip, as he walked back to the vicarage, felt a distinct sensation of relief.

  “Well, did you see her safely off?” asked Aunt Louisa, when they got in.

  “Yes, she seemed rather weepy. She insisted on kissing me and Philip.”

  “Oh, well, at her age it’s not dangerous.” Mrs. Carey pointed to the sideboard. “There’s a letter for you, Philip. It came by the second post.”

  It was from Hayward and ran as follows:

  My dear boy,

  I answer your letter at once. I ventured to read it to a great friend of mine, a charming woman whose help and sympathy have been very precious to me, a woman withal with a real feeling for art and literature; and we agreed that it was charming. You wrote from your heart and you do not know the delightful naivete which is in every line. And because you love you write like a poet. Ah, dear boy, that is the real thing: I felt the glow of your young passion, and your prose was musical from the sincerit
y of your emotion. You must be happy! I wish I could have been present unseen in that enchanted garden while you wandered hand in hand, like Daphnis and Chloe, amid the flowers. I can see you, my Daphnis, with the light of young love in your eyes, tender, enraptured, and ardent; while Chloe in your arms, so young and soft and fresh, vowing she would ne’er consent — consented. Roses and violets and honeysuckle! Oh, my friend, I envy you. It is so good to think that your first love should have been pure poetry. Treasure the moments, for the immortal gods have given you the Greatest Gift of All, and it will be a sweet, sad memory till your dying day. You will never again enjoy that careless rapture. First love is best love; and she is beautiful and you are young, and all the world is yours. I felt my pulse go faster when with your adorable simplicity you told me that you buried your face in her long hair. I am sure that it is that exquisite chestnut which seems just touched with gold. I would have you sit under a leafy tree side by side, and read together Romeo and Juliet; and then I would have you fall on your knees and on my behalf kiss the ground on which her foot has left its imprint; then tell her it is the homage of a poet to her radiant youth and to your love for her. Yours always, G. Etheridge Hayward.

  “What damned rot!” said Philip, when he finished the letter.

  Miss Wilkinson oddly enough had suggested that they should read Romeo and Juliet together; but Philip had firmly declined. Then, as he put the letter in his pocket, he felt a queer little pang of bitterness because reality seemed so different from the ideal.

  XXXVI

  A few days later Philip went to London. The curate had recommended rooms in Barnes, and these Philip engaged by letter at fourteen shillings a week. He reached them in the evening; and the landlady, a funny little old woman with a shrivelled body and a deeply wrinkled face, had prepared high tea for him. Most of the sitting-room was taken up by the sideboard and a square table; against one wall was a sofa covered with horsehair, and by the fireplace an arm-chair to match: there was a white antimacassar over the back of it, and on the seat, because the springs were broken, a hard cushion.

  After having his tea he unpacked and arranged his books, then he sat down and tried to read; but he was depressed. The silence in the street made him slightly uncomfortable, and he felt very much alone.

  Next day he got up early. He put on his tail-coat and the tall hat which he had worn at school; but it was very shabby, and he made up his mind to stop at the Stores on his way to the office and buy a new one. When he had done this he found himself in plenty of time and so walked along the Strand. The office of Messrs. Herbert Carter & Co. was in a little street off Chancery Lane, and he had to ask his way two or three times. He felt that people were staring at him a great deal, and once he took off his hat to see whether by chance the label had been left on. When he arrived he knocked at the door; but no one answered, and looking at his watch he found it was barely half past nine; he supposed he was too early. He went away and ten minutes later returned to find an office-boy, with a long nose, pimply face, and a Scotch accent, opening the door. Philip asked for Mr. Herbert Carter. He had not come yet.

  “When will he be here?”

  “Between ten and half past.”

  “I’d better wait,” said Philip.

  “What are you wanting?” asked the office-boy.

  Philip was nervous, but tried to hide the fact by a jocose manner.

  “Well, I’m going to work here if you have no objection.”

  “Oh, you’re the new articled clerk? You’d better come in. Mr.

  Goodworthy’ll be here in a while.”

  Philip walked in, and as he did so saw the office-boy — he was about the same age as Philip and called himself a junior clerk — look at his foot. He flushed and, sitting down, hid it behind the other. He looked round the room. It was dark and very dingy. It was lit by a skylight. There were three rows of desks in it and against them high stools. Over the chimney-piece was a dirty engraving of a prize-fight. Presently a clerk came in and then another; they glanced at Philip and in an undertone asked the office-boy (Philip found his name was Macdougal) who he was. A whistle blew, and Macdougal got up.

  “Mr. Goodworthy’s come. He’s the managing clerk. Shall I tell him you’re here?”

  “Yes, please,” said Philip.

  The office-boy went out and in a moment returned.

  “Will you come this way?”

  Philip followed him across the passage and was shown into a room, small and barely furnished, in which a little, thin man was standing with his back to the fireplace. He was much below the middle height, but his large head, which seemed to hang loosely on his body, gave him an odd ungainliness. His features were wide and flattened, and he had prominent, pale eyes; his thin hair was sandy; he wore whiskers that grew unevenly on his face, and in places where you would have expected the hair to grow thickly there was no hair at all. His skin was pasty and yellow. He held out his hand to Philip, and when he smiled showed badly decayed teeth. He spoke with a patronising and at the same time a timid air, as though he sought to assume an importance which he did not feel. He said he hoped Philip would like the work; there was a good deal of drudgery about it, but when you got used to it, it was interesting; and one made money, that was the chief thing, wasn’t it? He laughed with his odd mixture of superiority and shyness.

  “Mr. Carter will be here presently,” he said. “He’s a little late on Monday mornings sometimes. I’ll call you when he comes. In the meantime I must give you something to do. Do you know anything about book-keeping or accounts?”

  “I’m afraid not,” answered Philip.

  “I didn’t suppose you would. They don’t teach you things at school that are much use in business, I’m afraid.” He considered for a moment. “I think I can find you something to do.”

  He went into the next room and after a little while came out with a large cardboard box. It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder, and he told Philip to sort them out and arrange them alphabetically according to the names of the writers.

  “I’ll take you to the room in which the articled clerk generally sits.

  There’s a very nice fellow in it. His name is Watson. He’s a son of

  Watson, Crag, and Thompson — you know — the brewers. He’s spending a year

  with us to learn business.”

  Mr. Goodworthy led Philip through the dingy office, where now six or eight clerks were working, into a narrow room behind. It had been made into a separate apartment by a glass partition, and here they found Watson sitting back in a chair, reading The Sportsman. He was a large, stout young man, elegantly dressed, and he looked up as Mr. Goodworthy entered. He asserted his position by calling the managing clerk Goodworthy. The managing clerk objected to the familiarity, and pointedly called him Mr. Watson, but Watson, instead of seeing that it was a rebuke, accepted the title as a tribute to his gentlemanliness.

  “I see they’ve scratched Rigoletto,” he said to Philip, as soon as they were left alone.

  “Have they?” said Philip, who knew nothing about horse-racing.

  He looked with awe upon Watson’s beautiful clothes. His tail-coat fitted him perfectly, and there was a valuable pin artfully stuck in the middle of an enormous tie. On the chimney-piece rested his tall hat; it was saucy and bell-shaped and shiny. Philip felt himself very shabby. Watson began to talk of hunting — it was such an infernal bore having to waste one’s time in an infernal office, he would only be able to hunt on Saturdays — and shooting: he had ripping invitations all over the country and of course he had to refuse them. It was infernal luck, but he wasn’t going to put up with it long; he was only in this internal hole for a year, and then he was going into the business, and he would hunt four days a week and get all the shooting there was.

  “You’ve got five years of it, haven’t you?” he said, waving his arm round the tiny room.

  “I suppose so,” said Philip.

  “I daresay I shall see something of you. Carter does our
accounts, you know.”

  Philip was somewhat overpowered by the young gentleman’s condescension. At Blackstable they had always looked upon brewing with civil contempt, the Vicar made little jokes about the beerage, and it was a surprising experience for Philip to discover that Watson was such an important and magnificent fellow. He had been to Winchester and to Oxford, and his conversation impressed the fact upon one with frequency. When he discovered the details of Philip’s education his manner became more patronising still.

  “Of course, if one doesn’t go to a public school those sort of schools are the next best thing, aren’t they?”

  Philip asked about the other men in the office.

  “Oh, I don’t bother about them much, you know,” said Watson. “Carter’s not a bad sort. We have him to dine now and then. All the rest are awful bounders.”

  Presently Watson applied himself to some work he had in hand, and Philip set about sorting his letters. Then Mr. Goodworthy came in to say that Mr. Carter had arrived. He took Philip into a large room next door to his own. There was a big desk in it, and a couple of big arm-chairs; a Turkey carpet adorned the floor, and the walls were decorated with sporting prints. Mr. Carter was sitting at the desk and got up to shake hands with Philip. He was dressed in a long frock coat. He looked like a military man; his moustache was waxed, his gray hair was short and neat, he held himself upright, he talked in a breezy way, he lived at Enfield. He was very keen on games and the good of the country. He was an officer in the Hertfordshire Yeomanry and chairman of the Conservative Association. When he was told that a local magnate had said no one would take him for a City man, he felt that he had not lived in vain. He talked to Philip in a pleasant, off-hand fashion. Mr. Goodworthy would look after him. Watson was a nice fellow, perfect gentleman, good sportsman — did Philip hunt? Pity, THE sport for gentlemen. Didn’t have much chance of hunting now, had to leave that to his son. His son was at Cambridge, he’d sent him to Rugby, fine school Rugby, nice class of boys there, in a couple of years his son would be articled, that would be nice for Philip, he’d like his son, thorough sportsman. He hoped Philip would get on well and like the work, he mustn’t miss his lectures, they were getting up the tone of the profession, they wanted gentlemen in it. Well, well, Mr. Goodworthy was there. If he wanted to know anything Mr. Goodworthy would tell him. What was his handwriting like? Ah well, Mr. Goodworthy would see about that.