Chapter IX

by William Somerset Maugham

　　On the following Sunday, when the Vicar was making his preparations to gointo the drawing-room for his nap--all the actions of his life wereconducted with ceremony--and Mrs. Carey was about to go upstairs, Philipasked:"What shall I do if I'm not allowed to play?""Can't you sit still for once and be quiet?""I can't sit still till tea-time."Mr. Carey looked out of the window, but it was cold and raw, and he couldnot suggest that Philip should go into the garden. "I know what you can do. You can learn by heart the collect for the day."He took the prayer-book which was used for prayers from the harmonium, andturned the pages till he came to the place he wanted."It's not a long one. If you can say it without a mistake when I come into tea you shall have the top of my egg."Mrs. Carey drew up Philip's chair to the dining-room table--they hadbought him a high chair by now--and placed the book in front of him."The devil finds work for idle hands to do," said Mr. Carey.He put some more coals on the fire so that there should be a cheerfulblaze when he came in to tea, and went into the drawing-room. He loosenedhis collar, arranged the cushions, and settled himself comfortably on thesofa. But thinking the drawing-room a little chilly, Mrs. Carey broughthim a rug from the hall; she put it over his legs and tucked it round hisfeet. She drew the blinds so that the light should not offend his eyes,and since he had closed them already went out of the room on tiptoe. TheVicar was at peace with himself today, and in ten minutes he was asleep.He snored softly.It was the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, and the collect began with thewords: O God, whose blessed Son was manifested that he might destroy theworks of the devil, and make us the sons of God, and heirs of Eternallife. Philip read it through. He could make no sense of it. He begansaying the words aloud to himself, but many of them were unknown to him,and the construction of the sentence was strange. He could not get morethan two lines in his head. And his attention was constantly wandering:there were fruit trees trained on the walls of the vicarage, and a longtwig beat now and then against the windowpane; sheep grazed stolidly inthe field beyond the garden. It seemed as though there were knots insidehis brain. Then panic seized him that he would not know the words bytea-time, and he kept on whispering them to himself quickly; he did nottry to understand, but merely to get them parrot-like into his memory.Mrs. Carey could not sleep that afternoon, and by four o'clock she was sowide awake that she came downstairs. She thought she would hear Philip hiscollect so that he should make no mistakes when he said it to his uncle.His uncle then would be pleased; he would see that the boy's heart was inthe right place. But when Mrs. Carey came to the dining-room and was aboutto go in, she heard a sound that made her stop suddenly. Her heart gave alittle jump. She turned away and quietly slipped out of the front-door.She walked round the house till she came to the dining-room window andthen cautiously looked in. Philip was still sitting on the chair she hadput him in, but his head was on the table buried in his arms, and he wassobbing desperately. She saw the convulsive movement of his shoulders.Mrs. Carey was frightened. A thing that had always struck her about thechild was that he seemed so collected. She had never seen him cry. And nowshe realised that his calmness was some instinctive shame of showing hisfillings: he hid himself to weep.Without thinking that her husband disliked being wakened suddenly, sheburst into the drawing-room."William, William," she said. "The boy's crying as though his heart wouldbreak."Mr. Carey sat up and disentangled himself from the rug about his legs."What's he got to cry about?""I don't know.... Oh, William, we can't let the boy be unhappy. D'youthink it's our fault? If we'd had children we'd have known what to do."Mr. Carey looked at her in perplexity. He felt extraordinarily helpless."He can't be crying because I gave him the collect to learn. It's not morethan ten lines.""Don't you think I might take him some picture books to look at, William?There are some of the Holy Land. There couldn't be anything wrong inthat.""Very well, I don't mind."Mrs. Carey went into the study. To collect books was Mr. Carey's onlypassion, and he never went into Tercanbury without spending an hour or twoin the second-hand shop; he always brought back four or five mustyvolumes. He never read them, for he had long lost the habit of reading,but he liked to turn the pages, look at the illustrations if they wereillustrated, and mend the bindings. He welcomed wet days because on themhe could stay at home without pangs of conscience and spend the afternoonwith white of egg and a glue-pot, patching up the Russia leather of somebattered quarto. He had many volumes of old travels, with steelengravings, and Mrs. Carey quickly found two which described Palestine.She coughed elaborately at the door so that Philip should have time tocompose himself, she felt that he would be humiliated if she came upon himin the midst of his tears, then she rattled the door handle. When she wentin Philip was poring over the prayer-book, hiding his eyes with his handsso that she might not see he had been crying."Do you know the collect yet?" she said.He did not answer for a moment, and she felt that he did not trust hisvoice. She was oddly embarrassed."I can't learn it by heart," he said at last, with a gasp."Oh, well, never mind," she said. "You needn't. I've got some picturebooks for you to look at. Come and sit on my lap, and we'll look at themtogether."Philip slipped off his chair and limped over to her. He looked down sothat she should not see his eyes. She put her arms round him."Look," she said, "that's the place where our blessed Lord was born."She showed him an Eastern town with flat roofs and cupolas and minarets.In the foreground was a group of palm-trees, and under them were restingtwo Arabs and some camels. Philip passed his hand over the picture as ifhe wanted to feel the houses and the loose habiliments of the nomads."Read what it says," he asked.Mrs. Carey in her even voice read the opposite page. It was a romanticnarrative of some Eastern traveller of the thirties, pompous maybe, butfragrant with the emotion with which the East came to the generation thatfollowed Byron and Chateaubriand. In a moment or two Philip interruptedher."I want to see another picture."When Mary Ann came in and Mrs. Carey rose to help her lay the cloth.Philip took the book in his hands and hurried through the illustrations.It was with difficulty that his aunt induced him to put the book down fortea. He had forgotten his horrible struggle to get the collect by heart;he had forgotten his tears. Next day it was raining, and he asked for thebook again. Mrs. Carey gave it him joyfully. Talking over his future withher husband she had found that both desired him to take orders, and thiseagerness for the book which described places hallowed by the presence ofJesus seemed a good sign. It looked as though the boy's mind addresseditself naturally to holy things. But in a day or two he asked for morebooks. Mr. Carey took him into his study, showed him the shelf in which hekept illustrated works, and chose for him one that dealt with Rome. Philiptook it greedily. The pictures led him to a new amusement. He began toread the page before and the page after each engraving to find out what itwas about, and soon he lost all interest in his toys.Then, when no one was near, he took out books for himself; and perhapsbecause the first impression on his mind was made by an Eastern town, hefound his chief amusement in those which described the Levant. His heartbeat with excitement at the pictures of mosques and rich palaces; butthere was one, in a book on Constantinople, which peculiarly stirred hisimagination. It was called the Hall of the Thousand Columns. It was aByzantine cistern, which the popular fancy had endowed with fantasticvastness; and the legend which he read told that a boat was always mooredat the entrance to tempt the unwary, but no traveller venturing into thedarkness had ever been seen again. And Philip wondered whether the boatwent on for ever through one pillared alley after another or came at lastto some strange mansion.One day a good fortune befell him, for he hit upon Lane's translation ofThe Thousand Nights and a Night. He was captured first by theillustrations, and then he began to read, to start with, the stories thatdealt with magic, and then the others; and those he liked he read againand again. He could think of nothing else. He forgot the life about him.He had to be called two or three times before he would come to his dinner.Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit ofreading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refugefrom all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creatingfor himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every daya source of bitter disappointment. Presently he began to read otherthings. His brain was precocious. His uncle and aunt, seeing that heoccupied himself and neither worried nor made a noise, ceased to troublethemselves about him. Mr. Carey had so many books that he did not knowthem, and as he read little he forgot the odd lots he had bought at onetime and another because they were cheap. Haphazard among the sermons andhomilies, the travels, the lives of the Saints, the Fathers, the historiesof the church, were old-fashioned novels; and these Philip at lastdiscovered. He chose them by their titles, and the first he read was TheLancashire Witches, and then he read The Admirable Crichton, and thenmany more. Whenever he started a book with two solitary travellers ridingalong the brink of a desperate ravine he knew he was safe.The summer was come now, and the gardener, an old sailor, made him ahammock and fixed it up for him in the branches of a weeping willow. Andhere for long hours he lay, hidden from anyone who might come to thevicarage, reading, reading passionately. Time passed and it was July;August came: on Sundays the church was crowded with strangers, and thecollection at the offertory often amounted to two pounds. Neither theVicar nor Mrs. Carey went out of the garden much during this period; forthey disliked strange faces, and they looked upon the visitors from Londonwith aversion. The house opposite was taken for six weeks by a gentlemanwho had two little boys, and he sent in to ask if Philip would like to goand play with them; but Mrs. Carey returned a polite refusal. She wasafraid that Philip would be corrupted by little boys from London. He wasgoing to be a clergyman, and it was necessary that he should be preservedfrom contamination. She liked to see in him an infant Samuel.