Of Human Bondage (19 page)

  "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.

  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."

  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."