Of Human Bondage (21 page)

  "Your new friend looks like a poet," said Weeks,
with a thin smile on his careworn, bitter mouth.

  "He is a poet."

  "Did he tell you so? In America we should call him a
pretty fair specimen of a waster."

  "Well, we're not in America," said Philip
frigidly.

  "How old is he? Twenty-five? And he does nothing but
stay in pensions and write poetry."

  "You don't know him," said Philip hotly.

  "Oh yes, I do: I've met a hundred and forty-seven of
him."

  Weeks' eyes twinkled, but Philip, who did not
understand American humour, pursed his lips and looked severe.
Weeks to Philip seemed a man of middle age, but he was in point of
fact little more than thirty. He had a long, thin body and the
scholar's stoop; his head was large and ugly; he had pale scanty
hair and an earthy skin; his thin mouth and thin, long nose, and
the great protuberance of his frontal bones, gave him an uncouth
look. He was cold and precise in his manner, a bloodless man,
without passion; but he had a curious vein of frivolity which
disconcerted the serious-minded among whom his instincts naturally
threw him. He was studying theology in Heidelberg, but the other
theological students of his own nationality looked upon him with
suspicion. He was very unorthodox, which frightened them; and his
freakish humour excited their disapproval.

  "How can you have known a hundred and forty-seven of
him?" asked Philip seriously.

  "I've met him in the Latin Quarter in Paris, and
I've met him in pensions in Berlin and Munich. He lives in small
hotels in Perugia and Assisi. He stands by the dozen before the
Botticellis in Florence, and he sits on all the benches of the
Sistine Chapel in Rome. In Italy he drinks a little too much wine,
and in Germany he drinks a great deal too much beer. He always
admires the right thing whatever the right thing is, and one of
these days he's going to write a great work. Think of it, there are
a hundred and forty-seven great works reposing in the bosoms of a
hundred and forty-seven great men, and the tragic thing is that not
one of those hundred and forty-seven great works will ever be
written. And yet the world goes on."

  Weeks spoke seriously, but his gray eyes twinkled a
little at the end of his long speech, and Philip flushed when he
saw that the American was making fun of him.

  "You do talk rot," he said crossly.

  Weeks had two little rooms at the back of Frau
Erlin's house, and one of them, arranged as a parlour, was
comfortable enough for him to invite people to sit in. After
supper, urged perhaps by the impish humour which was the despair of
his friends in Cambridge, Mass., he often asked Philip and Hayward
to come in for a chat. He received them with elaborate courtesy and
insisted on their sitting in the only two comfortable chairs in the
room. Though he did not drink himself, with a politeness of which
Philip recognised the irony, he put a couple of bottles of beer at
Hayward's elbow, and he insisted on lighting matches whenever in
the heat of argument Hayward's pipe went out. At the beginning of
their acquaintance Hayward, as a member of so celebrated a
university, had adopted a patronising attitude towards Weeks, who
was a graduate of Harvard; and when by chance the conversation
turned upon the Greek tragedians, a subject upon which Hayward felt
he spoke with authority, he had assumed the air that it was his
part to give information rather than to exchange ideas. Weeks had
listened politely, with smiling modesty, till Hayward finished;
then he asked one or two insidious questions, so innocent in
appearance that Hayward, not seeing into what a quandary they led
him, answered blandly; Weeks made a courteous objection, then a
correction of fact, after that a quotation from some little known
Latin commentator, then a reference to a German authority; and the
fact was disclosed that he was a scholar. With smiling ease,
apologetically, Weeks tore to pieces all that Hayward had said;
with elaborate civility he displayed the superficiality of his
attainments. He mocked him with gentle irony. Philip could not help
seeing that Hayward looked a perfect fool, and Hayward had not the
sense to hold his tongue; in his irritation, his self-assurance
undaunted, he attempted to argue: he made wild statements and Weeks
amicably corrected them; he reasoned falsely and Weeks proved that
he was absurd: Weeks confessed that he had taught Greek Literature
at Harvard. Hayward gave a laugh of scorn.

  "I might have known it. Of course you read Greek
like a schoolmaster," he said. "I read it like a poet."

  "And do you find it more poetic when you don't quite
know what it means? I thought it was only in revealed religion that
a mistranslation improved the sense."

  At last, having finished the beer, Hayward left
Weeks' room hot and dishevelled; with an angry gesture he said to
Philip:

  "Of course the man's a pedant. He has no real
feeling for beauty. Accuracy is the virtue of clerks. It's the
spirit of the Greeks that we aim at. Weeks is like that fellow who
went to hear Rubenstein and complained that he played false notes.
False notes! What did they matter when he played divinely?"

  Philip, not knowing how many incompetent people have
found solace in these false notes, was much impressed.

  Hayward could never resist the opportunity which
Weeks offered him of regaining ground lost on a previous occasion,
and Weeks was able with the greatest ease to draw him into a
discussion. Though he could not help seeing how small his
attainments were beside the American's, his British pertinacity,
his wounded vanity (perhaps they are the same thing), would not
allow him to give up the struggle. Hayward seemed to take a delight
in displaying his ignorance, self-satisfaction, and
wrongheadedness. Whenever Hayward said something which was
illogical, Weeks in a few words would show the falseness of his
reasoning, pause for a moment to enjoy his triumph, and then hurry
on to another subject as though Christian charity impelled him to
spare the vanquished foe. Philip tried sometimes to put in
something to help his friend, and Weeks gently crushed him, but so
kindly, differently from the way in which he answered Hayward, that
even Philip, outrageously sensitive, could not feel hurt. Now and
then, losing his calm as he felt himself more and more foolish,
Hayward became abusive, and only the American's smiling politeness
prevented the argument from degenerating into a quarrel. On these
occasions when Hayward left Weeks' room he muttered angrily:

  "Damned Yankee!"

  That settled it. It was a perfect answer to an
argument which had seemed unanswerable.

  Though they began by discussing all manner of
subjects in Weeks' little room eventually the conversation always
turned to religion: the theological student took a professional
interest in it, and Hayward welcomed a subject in which hard facts
need not disconcert him; when feeling is the gauge you can snap
your angers at logic, and when your logic is weak that is very
agreeable. Hayward found it difficult to explain his beliefs to
Philip without a great flow of words; but it was clear (and this
fell in with Philip's idea of the natural order of things), that he
had been brought up in the church by law established. Though he had
now given up all idea of becoming a Roman Catholic, he still looked
upon that communion with sympathy. He had much to say in its
praise, and he compared favourably its gorgeous ceremonies with the
simple services of the Church of England. He gave Philip Newman's
Apologia to read, and Philip, finding it very dull, nevertheless
read it to the end.

  "Read it for its style, not for its matter," said
Hayward.

  He talked enthusiastically of the music at the
Oratory, and said charming things about the connection between
incense and the devotional spirit. Weeks listened to him with his
frigid smile.

  "You think it proves the truth of Roman Catholicism
that John Henry Newman wrote good English and that Cardinal Manning
has a picturesque appearance?"

  Hayward hinted that he had gone through much trouble
with his soul. For a year he had swum in a sea of darkness. He
passed his fingers through his fair, waving hair and told them that
he would not for five hundred pounds endure again those agonies of
mind. Fortunately he had reached calm waters at last.

  "But what do you believe?" asked Philip, who was
never satisfied with vague statements.

  "I believe in the Whole, the Good, and the
Beautiful."

  Hayward with his loose large limbs and the fine
carriage of his head looked very handsome when he said this, and he
said it with an air.

  "Is that how you would describe your religion in a
census paper?" asked Weeks, in mild tones.

  "I hate the rigid definition: it's so ugly, so
obvious. If you like I will say that I believe in the church of the
Duke of Wellington and Mr. Gladstone."

  "That's the Church of England," said Philip.

  "Oh wise young man!" retorted Hayward, with a smile
which made Philip blush, for he felt that in putting into plain
words what the other had expressed in a paraphrase, he had been
guilty of vulgarity. "I belong to the Church of England. But I love
the gold and the silk which clothe the priest of Rome, and his
celibacy, and the confessional, and purgatory: and in the darkness
of an Italian cathedral, incense-laden and mysterious, I believe
with all my heart in the miracle of the Mass. In Venice I have seen
a fisherwoman come in, barefoot, throw down her basket of fish by
her side, fall on her knees, and pray to the Madonna; and that I
felt was the real faith, and I prayed and believed with her. But I
believe also in Aphrodite and Apollo and the Great God Pan."

  He had a charming voice, and he chose his words as
he spoke; he uttered them almost rhythmically. He would have gone
on, but Weeks opened a second bottle of beer.

  "Let me give you something to drink."

  Hayward turned to Philip with the slightly
condescending gesture which so impressed the youth.

  "Now are you satisfied?" he asked.

  Philip, somewhat bewildered, confessed that he
was.

  "I'm disappointed that you didn't add a little
Buddhism," said Weeks. "And I confess I have a sort of sympathy for
Mahomet; I regret that you should have left him out in the
cold."

  Hayward laughed, for he was in a good humour with
himself that evening, and the ring of his sentences still sounded
pleasant in his ears. He emptied his glass.

  "I didn't expect you to understand me," he answered.
"With your cold American intelligence you can only adopt the
critical attitude. Emerson and all that sort of thing. But what is
criticism? Criticism is purely destructive; anyone can destroy, but
not everyone can build up. You are a pedant, my dear fellow. The
important thing is to construct: I am constructive; I am a
poet."

  Weeks looked at him with eyes which seemed at the
same time to be quite grave and yet to be smiling brightly.

  "I think, if you don't mind my saying so, you're a
little drunk."

  "Nothing to speak of," answered Hayward cheerfully.
"And not enough for me to be unable to overwhelm you in argument.
But come, I have unbosomed my soul; now tell us what your religion
is."

  Weeks put his head on one side so that he looked
like a sparrow on a perch.

  "I've been trying to find that out for years. I
think I'm a Unitarian."

  "But that's a dissenter," said Philip.

  He could not imagine why they both burst into
laughter, Hayward uproariously, and Weeks with a funny chuckle.

  "And in England dissenters aren't gentlemen, are
they?" asked Weeks.

  "Well, if you ask me point-blank, they're not,"
replied Philip rather crossly.

  He hated being laughed at, and they laughed
again.

  "And will you tell me what a gentleman is?" asked
Weeks.