Of Human Bondage (49 page)

  "I suppose it'll do if you go back to Paris in
September."

  Philip did not reply. He had thought much of what
Foinet said to him, but he was still so undecided that he did not
wish to speak of the future. There would be something fine in
giving up art because he was convinced that he could not excel; but
unfortunately it would seem so only to himself: to others it would
be an admission of defeat, and he did not want to confess that he
was beaten. He was an obstinate fellow, and the suspicion that his
talent did not lie in one direction made him inclined to force
circumstances and aim notwithstanding precisely in that direction.
He could not bear that his friends should laugh at him. This might
have prevented him from ever taking the definite step of abandoning
the study of painting, but the different environment made him on a
sudden see things differently. Like many another he discovered that
crossing the Channel makes things which had seemed important
singularly futile. The life which had been so charming that he
could not bear to leave it now seemed inept; he was seized with a
distaste for the cafes, the restaurants with their ill-cooked food,
the shabby way in which they all lived. He did not care any more
what his friends thought about him: Cronshaw with his rhetoric,
Mrs. Otter with her respectability, Ruth Chalice with her
affectations, Lawson and Clutton with their quarrels; he felt a
revulsion from them all. He wrote to Lawson and asked him to send
over all his belongings. A week later they arrived. When he
unpacked his canvases he found himself able to examine his work
without emotion. He noticed the fact with interest. His uncle was
anxious to see his pictures. Though he had so greatly disapproved
of Philip's desire to go to Paris, he accepted the situation now
with equanimity. He was interested in the life of students and
constantly put Philip questions about it. He was in fact a little
proud of him because he was a painter, and when people were present
made attempts to draw him out. He looked eagerly at the studies of
models which Philip showed him. Philip set before him his portrait
of Miguel Ajuria.

  "Why did you paint him?" asked Mr. Carey.

  "Oh, I wanted a model, and his head interested
me."

  "As you haven't got anything to do here I wonder you
don't paint me."

  "It would bore you to sit."

  "I think I should like it."

  "We must see about it."

  Philip was amused at his uncle's vanity. It was
clear that he was dying to have his portrait painted. To get
something for nothing was a chance not to be missed. For two or
three days he threw out little hints. He reproached Philip for
laziness, asked him when he was going to start work, and finally
began telling everyone he met that Philip was going to paint him.
At last there came a rainy day, and after breakfast Mr. Carey said
to Philip:

  "Now, what d'you say to starting on my portrait this
morning?" Philip put down the book he was reading and leaned back
in his chair.

  "I've given up painting," he said.

  "Why?" asked his uncle in astonishment.

  "I don't think there's much object in being a
second-rate painter, and I came to the conclusion that I should
never be anything else."

  "You surprise me. Before you went to Paris you were
quite certain that you were a genius."

  "I was mistaken," said Philip.

  "I should have thought now you'd taken up a
profession you'd have the pride to stick to it. It seems to me that
what you lack is perseverance."

  Philip was a little annoyed that his uncle did not
even see how truly heroic his determination was.

  "'A rolling stone gathers no moss,'" proceeded the
clergyman. Philip hated that proverb above all, and it seemed to
him perfectly meaningless. His uncle had repeated it often during
the arguments which had preceded his departure from business.
Apparently it recalled that occasion to his guardian.

  "You're no longer a boy, you know; you must begin to
think of settling down. First you insist on becoming a chartered
accountant, and then you get tired of that and you want to become a
painter. And now if you please you change your mind again. It
points to..."

  He hesitated for a moment to consider what defects
of character exactly it indicated, and Philip finished the
sentence.

  "Irresolution, incompetence, want of foresight, and
lack of determination."

  The Vicar looked up at his nephew quickly to see
whether he was laughing at him. Philip's face was serious, but
there was a twinkle in his eyes which irritated him. Philip should
really be getting more serious. He felt it right to give him a rap
over the knuckles.

  "Your money matters have nothing to do with me now.
You're your own master; but I think you should remember that your
money won't last for ever, and the unlucky deformity you have
doesn't exactly make it easier for you to earn your living."

  Philip knew by now that whenever anyone was angry
with him his first thought was to say something about his
club-foot. His estimate of the human race was determined by the
fact that scarcely anyone failed to resist the temptation. But he
had trained himself not to show any sign that the reminder wounded
him. He had even acquired control over the blushing which in his
boyhood had been one of his torments.

  "As you justly remark," he answered, "my money
matters have nothing to do with you and I am my own master."

  "At all events you will do me the justice to
acknowledge that I was justified in my opposition when you made up
your mind to become an art-student."

  "I don't know so much about that. I daresay one
profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by
doing the right thing on somebody's else advice. I've had my fling,
and I don't mind settling down now."

  "What at?"

  Philip was not prepared for the question, since in
fact he had not made up his mind. He had thought of a dozen
callings.

  "The most suitable thing you could do is to enter
your father's profession and become a doctor."

  "Oddly enough that is precisely what I intend."

  He had thought of doctoring among other things,
chiefly because it was an occupation which seemed to give a good
deal of personal freedom, and his experience of life in an office
had made him determine never to have anything more to do with one;
his answer to the Vicar slipped out almost unawares, because it was
in the nature of a repartee. It amused him to make up his mind in
that accidental way, and he resolved then and there to enter his
father's old hospital in the autumn.

  "Then your two years in Paris may be regarded as so
much wasted time?"

  "I don't know about that. I had a very jolly two
years, and I learned one or two useful things."

  "What?"

  Philip reflected for an instant, and his answer was
not devoid of a gentle desire to annoy.

  "I learned to look at hands, which I'd never looked
at before. And instead of just looking at houses and trees I
learned to look at houses and trees against the sky. And I learned
also that shadows are not black but coloured."

  "I suppose you think you're very clever. I think
your flippancy is quite inane."

  Taking the paper with him Mr. Carey retired to his
study. Philip changed his chair for that in which his uncle had
been sitting (it was the only comfortable one in the room), and
looked out of the window at the pouring rain. Even in that sad
weather there was something restful about the green fields that
stretched to the horizon. There was an intimate charm in the
landscape which he did not remember ever to have noticed before.
Two years in France had opened his eyes to the beauty of his own
countryside.

  He thought with a smile of his uncle's remark. It
was lucky that the turn of his mind tended to flippancy. He had
begun to realise what a great loss he had sustained in the death of
his father and mother. That was one of the differences in his life
which prevented him from seeing things in the same way as other
people. The love of parents for their children is the only emotion
which is quite disinterested. Among strangers he had grown up as
best he could, but he had seldom been used with patience or
forbearance. He prided himself on his self-control. It had been
whipped into him by the mockery of his fellows. Then they called
him cynical and callous. He had acquired calmness of demeanour and
under most circumstances an unruffled exterior, so that now he
could not show his feelings. People told him he was unemotional;
but he knew that he was at the mercy of his emotions: an accidental
kindness touched him so much that sometimes he did not venture to
speak in order not to betray the unsteadiness of his voice. He
remembered the bitterness of his life at school, the humiliation
which he had endured, the banter which had made him morbidly afraid
of making himself ridiculous; and he remembered the loneliness he
had felt since, faced with the world, the disillusion and the
disappointment caused by the difference between what it promised to
his active imagination and what it gave. But notwithstanding he was
able to look at himself from the outside and smile with
amusement.

  "By Jove, if I weren't flippant, I should hang
myself," he thought cheerfully.

  His mind went back to the answer he had given his
uncle when he asked him what he had learnt in Paris. He had learnt
a good deal more than he told him. A conversation with Cronshaw had
stuck in his memory, and one phrase he had used, a commonplace one
enough, had set his brain working.

  "My dear fellow," Cronshaw said, "there's no such
thing as abstract morality."

  When Philip ceased to believe in Christianity he
felt that a great weight was taken from his shoulders; casting off
the responsibility which weighed down every action, when every
action was infinitely important for the welfare of his immortal
soul, he experienced a vivid sense of liberty. But he knew now that
this was an illusion. When he put away the religion in which he had
been brought up, he had kept unimpaired the morality which was part
and parcel of it. He made up his mind therefore to think things out
for himself. He determined to be swayed by no prejudices. He swept
away the virtues and the vices, the established laws of good and
evil, with the idea of finding out the rules of life for himself.
He did not know whether rules were necessary at all. That was one
of the things he wanted to discover. Clearly much that seemed valid
seemed so only because he had been taught it from his earliest
youth. He had read a number of books, but they did not help him
much, for they were based on the morality of Christianity; and even
the writers who emphasised the fact that they did not believe in it
were never satisfied till they had framed a system of ethics in
accordance with that of the Sermon on the Mount. It seemed hardly
worth while to read a long volume in order to learn that you ought
to behave exactly like everybody else. Philip wanted to find out
how he ought to behave, and he thought he could prevent himself
from being influenced by the opinions that surrounded him. But
meanwhile he had to go on living, and, until he formed a theory of
conduct, he made himself a provisional rule.

  "Follow your inclinations with due regard to the
policeman round the corner."

  He thought the best thing he had gained in Paris was
a complete liberty of spirit, and he felt himself at last
absolutely free. In a desultory way he had read a good deal of
philosophy, and he looked forward with delight to the leisure of
the next few months. He began to read at haphazard. He entered upon
each system with a little thrill of excitement, expecting to find
in each some guide by which he could rule his conduct; he felt
himself like a traveller in unknown countries and as he pushed
forward the enterprise fascinated him; he read emotionally, as
other men read pure literature, and his heart leaped as he
discovered in noble words what himself had obscurely felt. His mind
was concrete and moved with difficulty in regions of the abstract;
but, even when he could not follow the reasoning, it gave him a
curious pleasure to follow the tortuosities of thoughts that
threaded their nimble way on the edge of the incomprehensible.
Sometimes great philosophers seemed to have nothing to say to him,
but at others he recognised a mind with which he felt himself at
home. He was like the explorer in Central Africa who comes suddenly
upon wide uplands, with great trees in them and stretches of
meadow, so that he might fancy himself in an English park. He
delighted in the robust common sense of Thomas Hobbes; Spinoza
filled him with awe, he had never before come in contact with a
mind so noble, so unapproachable and austere; it reminded him of
that statue by Rodin, L'Age d'Airain, which he passionately
admired; and then there was Hume: the scepticism of that charming
philosopher touched a kindred note in Philip; and, revelling in the
lucid style which seemed able to put complicated thought into
simple words, musical and measured, he read as he might have read a
novel, a smile of pleasure on his lips. But in none could he find
exactly what he wanted. He had read somewhere that every man was
born a Platonist, an Aristotelian, a Stoic, or an Epicurean; and
the history of George Henry Lewes (besides telling you that
philosophy was all moonshine) was there to show that the thought of
each philospher was inseparably connected with the man he was. When
you knew that you could guess to a great extent the philosophy he
wrote. It looked as though you did not act in a certain way because
you thought in a certain way, but rather that you thought in a
certain way because you were made in a certain way. Truth had
nothing to do with it. There was no such thing as truth. Each man
was his own philosopher, and the elaborate systems which the great
men of the past had composed were only valid for the writers.