Philip’s uncle had an old friend, called Miss Wilkinson, who lived in
Berlin. She was the daughter of a clergyman, and it was with her
father, the rector of a village in Lincolnshire, that Mr. Carey had
spent his last curacy; on his death, forced to earn her living, she had
taken various situations as a governess in France and Germany. She had
kept up a correspondence with Mrs. Carey, and two or three times had
spent her holidays at Blackstable Vicarage, paying as was usual with
the Careys’ unfrequent guests a small sum for her keep. When it became
clear that it was less trouble to yield to Philip’s wishes than to
resist them, Mrs. Carey wrote to ask her for advice. Miss Wilkinson
recommended Heidelberg as an excellent place to learn German in and the
house of Frau Professor Erlin as a comfortable home. Philip might live
there for thirty marks a week, and the Professor himself, a teacher at
the local high school, would instruct him.
Philip arrived in Heidelberg one morning in May. His things were put on
a barrow and he followed the porter out of the station. The sky was
bright blue, and the trees in the avenue through which they passed were
thick with leaves; there was something in the air fresh to Philip, and
mingled with the timidity he felt at entering on a new life, among
strangers, was a great exhilaration. He was a little disconsolate that
no one had come to meet him, and felt very shy when the porter left him
at the front door of a big white house. An untidy lad let him in and
took him into a drawing-room. It was filled with a large suite covered
in green velvet, and in the middle was a round table. On this in water
stood a bouquet of flowers tightly packed together in a paper frill
like the bone of a mutton chop, and carefully spaced round it were
books in leather bindings. There was a musty smell.
Presently, with an odour of cooking, the Frau Professor came in, a
short, very stout woman with tightly dressed hair and a red face; she
had little eyes, sparkling like beads, and an effusive manner. She took
both Philip’s hands and asked him about Miss Wilkinson, who had twice
spent a few weeks with her. She spoke in German and in broken English.
Philip could not make her understand that he did not know Miss
Wilkinson. Then her two daughters appeared. They seemed hardly young to
Philip, but perhaps they were not more than twenty-five: the elder,
Thekla, was as short as her mother, with the same, rather shifty air,
but with a pretty face and abundant dark hair; Anna, her younger
sister, was tall and plain, but since she had a pleasant smile Philip
immediately preferred her. After a few minutes of polite conversation
the Frau Professor took Philip to his room and left him. It was in a
turret, looking over the tops of the trees in the Anlage; and the bed
was in an alcove, so that when you sat at the desk it had not the look
of a bed-room at all. Philip unpacked his things and set out all his
books. He was his own master at last.
A bell summoned him to dinner at one o’clock, and he found the Frau
Professor’s guests assembled in the drawing-room. He was introduced to
her husband, a tall man of middle age with a large fair head, turning
now to gray, and mild blue eyes. He spoke to Philip in correct, rather
archaic English, having learned it from a study of the English
classics, not from conversation; and it was odd to hear him use words
colloquially which Philip had only met in the plays of Shakespeare.
Frau Professor Erlin called her establishment a family and not a
pension; but it would have required the subtlety of a metaphysician to
find out exactly where the difference lay. When they sat down to dinner
in a long dark apartment that led out of the drawing-room, Philip,
feeling very shy, saw that there were sixteen people. The Frau
Professor sat at one end and carved. The service was conducted, with a
great clattering of plates, by the same clumsy lout who had opened the
door for him; and though he was quick it happened that the first
persons to be served had finished before the last had received their
appointed portions. The Frau Professor insisted that nothing but German
should be spoken, so that Philip, even if his bashfulness had permitted
him to be talkative, was forced to hold his tongue. He looked at the
people among whom he was to live. By the Frau Professor sat several old
ladies, but Philip did not give them much of his attention. There were
two young girls, both fair and one of them very pretty, whom Philip
heard addressed as Fraulein Hedwig and Fraulein Cacilie. Fraulein
Cacilie had a long pig-tail hanging down her back. They sat side by
side and chattered to one another, with smothered laughter: now and
then they glanced at Philip and one of them said something in an
undertone; they both giggled, and Philip blushed awkwardly, feeling
that they were making fun of him. Near them sat a Chinaman, with a
yellow face and an expansive smile, who was studying Western conditions
at the University. He spoke so quickly, with a queer accent, that the
girls could not always understand him, and then they burst out
laughing. He laughed too, good-humouredly, and his almond eyes almost
closed as he did so. There were two or three American men, in black
coats, rather yellow and dry of skin: they were theological students;
Philip heard the twang of their New England accent through their bad
German, and he glanced at them with suspicion; for he had been taught
to look upon Americans as wild and desperate barbarians.
Afterwards, when they had sat for a little on the stiff green velvet
chairs of the drawing-room, Fraulein Anna asked Philip if he would like
to go for a walk with them.
Philip accepted the invitation. They were quite a party. There were the
two daughters of the Frau Professor, the two other girls, one of the
American students, and Philip. Philip walked by the side of Anna and
Fraulein Hedwig. He was a little fluttered. He had never known any
girls. At Blackstable there were only the farmers’ daughters and the
girls of the local tradesmen. He knew them by name and by sight, but he
was timid, and he thought they laughed at his deformity. He accepted
willingly the difference which the Vicar and Mrs. Carey put between
their own exalted rank and that of the farmers. The doctor had two
daughters, but they were both much older than Philip and had been
married to successive assistants while Philip was still a small boy. At
school there had been two or three girls of more boldness than modesty
whom some of the boys knew; and desperate stories, due in all
probability to the masculine imagination, were told of intrigues with
them; but Philip had always concealed under a lofty contempt the terror
with which they filled him. His imagination and the books he had read
had inspired in him a desire for the Byronic attitude; and he was torn
between a morbid self-consciousness and a conviction that he owed it to
himself to be gallant. He felt now that he should be bright and
amusing, but his brain seemed empty and he could not for the life of
him think of anything to say. Fraulein Anna, the Frau Professor’s
daughter, addressed herself to him frequently from a sense of duty, but
the other said little: she looked at him now and then with sparkling
eyes, and sometimes to his confusion laughed outright. Philip felt that
she thought him perfectly ridiculous. They walked along the side of a
hill among pine-trees, and their pleasant odour caused Philip a keen
delight. The day was warm and cloudless. At last they came to an
eminence from which they saw the valley of the Rhine spread out before
them under the sun. It was a vast stretch of country, sparkling with
golden light, with cities in the distance; and through it meandered the
silver ribband of the river. Wide spaces are rare in the corner of Kent
which Philip knew, the sea offers the only broad horizon, and the
immense distance he saw now gave him a peculiar, an indescribable
thrill. He felt suddenly elated. Though he did not know it, it was the
first time that he had experienced, quite undiluted with foreign
emotions, the sense of beauty. They sat on a bench, the three of them,
for the others had gone on, and while the girls talked in rapid German,
Philip, indifferent to their proximity, feasted his eyes.
“By Jove, I am happy,” he said to himself unconsciously.