Philip had spent three months in Heidelberg when one morning the Frau
Professor told him that an Englishman named Hayward was coming to stay
in the house, and the same evening at supper he saw a new face. For
some days the family had lived in a state of excitement. First, as the
result of heaven knows what scheming, by dint of humble prayers and
veiled threats, the parents of the young Englishman to whom Fraulein
Thekla was engaged had invited her to visit them in England, and she
had set off with an album of water colours to show how accomplished she
was and a bundle of letters to prove how deeply the young man had
compromised himself. A week later Fraulein Hedwig with radiant smiles
announced that the lieutenant of her affections was coming to
Heidelberg with his father and mother. Exhausted by the importunity of
their son and touched by the dowry which Fraulein Hedwig’s father
offered, the lieutenant’s parents had consented to pass through
Heidelberg to make the young woman’s acquaintance. The interview was
satisfactory and Fraulein Hedwig had the satisfaction of showing her
lover in the Stadtgarten to the whole of Frau Professor Erlin’s
household. The silent old ladies who sat at the top of the table near
the Frau Professor were in a flutter, and when Fraulein Hedwig said she
was to go home at once for the formal engagement to take place, the
Frau Professor, regardless of expense, said she would give a Maibowle.
Professor Erlin prided himself on his skill in preparing this mild
intoxicant, and after supper the large bowl of hock and soda, with
scented herbs floating in it and wild strawberries, was placed with
solemnity on the round table in the drawing-room. Fraulein Anna teased
Philip about the departure of his lady-love, and he felt very
uncomfortable and rather melancholy. Fraulein Hedwig sang several
songs, Fraulein Anna played the Wedding March, and the Professor sang
Die Wacht am Rhein. Amid all this jollification Philip paid little
attention to the new arrival. They had sat opposite one another at
supper, but Philip was chattering busily with Fraulein Hedwig, and the
stranger, knowing no German, had eaten his food in silence. Philip,
observing that he wore a pale blue tie, had on that account taken a
sudden dislike to him. He was a man of twenty-six, very fair, with
long, wavy hair through which he passed his hand frequently with a
careless gesture. His eyes were large and blue, but the blue was very
pale, and they looked rather tired already. He was clean-shaven, and
his mouth, notwithstanding its thin lips, was well-shaped. Fraulein
Anna took an interest in physiognomy, and she made Philip notice
afterwards how finely shaped was his skull, and how weak was the lower
part of his face. The head, she remarked, was the head of a thinker,
but the jaw lacked character. Fraulein Anna, foredoomed to a spinster’s
life, with her high cheek-bones and large misshapen nose, laid great
stress upon character. While they talked of him he stood a little apart
from the others, watching the noisy party with a good-humoured but
faintly supercilious expression. He was tall and slim. He held himself
with a deliberate grace. Weeks, one of the American students, seeing
him alone, went up and began to talk to him. The pair were oddly
contrasted: the American very neat in his black coat and
pepper-and-salt trousers, thin and dried-up, with something of
ecclesiastical unction already in his manner; and the Englishman in his
loose tweed suit, large-limbed and slow of gesture.
Philip did not speak to the newcomer till next day. They found
themselves alone on the balcony of the drawing-room before dinner.
Hayward addressed him.
“You’re English, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Is the food always as bad it was last night?”
“It’s always about the same.”
“Beastly, isn’t it?”
“Beastly.”
Philip had found nothing wrong with the food at all, and in fact had
eaten it in large quantities with appetite and enjoyment, but he did
not want to show himself a person of so little discrimination as to
think a dinner good which another thought execrable.
Fraulein Thekla’s visit to England made it necessary for her sister to
do more in the house, and she could not often spare the time for long
walks; and Fraulein Cacilie, with her long plait of fair hair and her
little snub-nosed face, had of late shown a certain disinclination for
society. Fraulein Hedwig was gone, and Weeks, the American who
generally accompanied them on their rambles, had set out for a tour of
South Germany. Philip was left a good deal to himself. Hayward sought
his acquaintance; but Philip had an unfortunate trait: from shyness or
from some atavistic inheritance of the cave-dweller, he always disliked
people on first acquaintance; and it was not till he became used to
them that he got over his first impression. It made him difficult of
access. He received Hayward’s advances very shyly, and when Hayward
asked him one day to go for a walk he accepted only because he could
not think of a civil excuse. He made his usual apology, angry with
himself for the flushing cheeks he could not control, and trying to
carry it off with a laugh.
“I’m afraid I can’t walk very fast.”
“Good heavens, I don’t walk for a wager. I prefer to stroll. Don’t you
remember the chapter in Marius where Pater talks of the gentle exercise
of walking as the best incentive to conversation?”
Philip was a good listener; though he often thought of clever things to
say, it was seldom till after the opportunity to say them had passed;
but Hayward was communicative; anyone more experienced than Philip
might have thought he liked to hear himself talk. His supercilious
attitude impressed Philip. He could not help admiring, and yet being
awed by, a man who faintly despised so many things which Philip had
looked upon as almost sacred. He cast down the fetish of exercise,
damning with the contemptuous word pot-hunters all those who devoted
themselves to its various forms; and Philip did not realise that he was
merely putting up in its stead the other fetish of culture.
They wandered up to the castle, and sat on the terrace that overlooked
the town. It nestled in the valley along the pleasant Neckar with a
comfortable friendliness. The smoke from the chimneys hung over it, a
pale blue haze; and the tall roofs, the spires of the churches, gave it
a pleasantly medieval air. There was a homeliness in it which warmed
the heart. Hayward talked of Richard Feverel and Madame Bovary, of
Verlaine, Dante, and Matthew Arnold. In those days Fitzgerald’s
translation of Omar Khayyam was known only to the elect, and Hayward
repeated it to Philip. He was very fond of reciting poetry, his own and
that of others, which he did in a monotonous sing-song. By the time
they reached home Philip’s distrust of Hayward was changed to
enthusiastic admiration.
They made a practice of walking together every afternoon, and Philip
learned presently something of Hayward’s circumstances. He was the son
of a country judge, on whose death some time before he had inherited
three hundred a year. His record at Charterhouse was so brilliant that
when he went to Cambridge the Master of Trinity Hall went out of his
way to express his satisfaction that he was going to that college. He
prepared himself for a distinguished career. He moved in the most
intellectual circles: he read Browning with enthusiasm and turned up
his well-shaped nose at Tennyson; he knew all the details of Shelley’s
treatment of Harriet; he dabbled in the history of art (on the walls of
his rooms were reproductions of pictures by G. F. Watts, Burne-Jones,
and Botticelli); and he wrote not without distinction verses of a
pessimistic character. His friends told one another that he was a man
of excellent gifts, and he listened to them willingly when they
prophesied his future eminence. In course of time he became an
authority on art and literature. He came under the influence of
Newman’s Apologia; the picturesqueness of the Roman Catholic faith
appealed to his esthetic sensibility; and it was only the fear of his
father’s wrath (a plain, blunt man of narrow ideas, who read Macaulay)
which prevented him from ‘going over.’ When he only got a pass degree
his friends were astonished; but he shrugged his shoulders and
delicately insinuated that he was not the dupe of examiners. He made
one feel that a first class was ever so slightly vulgar. He described
one of the vivas with tolerant humour; some fellow in an outrageous
collar was asking him questions in logic; it was infinitely tedious,
and suddenly he noticed that he wore elastic-sided boots: it was
grotesque and ridiculous; so he withdrew his mind and thought of the
gothic beauty of the Chapel at King’s. But he had spent some delightful
days at Cambridge; he had given better dinners than anyone he knew; and
the conversation in his rooms had been often memorable. He quoted to
Philip the exquisite epigram:
“They told me, Herakleitus, they told me you were dead.”
And now, when he related again the picturesque little anecdote about
the examiner and his boots, he laughed.
“Of course it was folly,” he said, “but it was a folly in which there
was something fine.”
Philip, with a little thrill, thought it magnificent.
Then Hayward went to London to read for the Bar. He had charming rooms
in Clement’s Inn, with panelled walls, and he tried to make them look
like his old rooms at the Hall. He had ambitions that were vaguely
political, he described himself as a Whig, and he was put up for a club
which was of Liberal but gentlemanly flavour. His idea was to practise
at the Bar (he chose the Chancery side as less brutal), and get a seat
for some pleasant constituency as soon as the various promises made him
were carried out; meanwhile he went a great deal to the opera, and made
acquaintance with a small number of charming people who admired the
things that he admired. He joined a dining-club of which the motto was,
The Whole, The Good, and The Beautiful. He formed a platonic friendship
with a lady some years older than himself, who lived in Kensington
Square; and nearly every afternoon he drank tea with her by the light
of shaded candles, and talked of George Meredith and Walter Pater. It
was notorious that any fool could pass the examinations of the Bar
Council, and he pursued his studies in a dilatory fashion. When he was
ploughed for his final he looked upon it as a personal affront. At the
same time the lady in Kensington Square told him that her husband was
coming home from India on leave, and was a man, though worthy in every
way, of a commonplace mind, who would not understand a young man’s
frequent visits. Hayward felt that life was full of ugliness, his soul
revolted from the thought of affronting again the cynicism of
examiners, and he saw something rather splendid in kicking away the
ball which lay at his feet. He was also a good deal in debt: it was
difficult to live in London like a gentleman on three hundred a year;
and his heart yearned for the Venice and Florence which John Ruskin had
so magically described. He felt that he was unsuited to the vulgar
bustle of the Bar, for he had discovered that it was not sufficient to
put your name on a door to get briefs; and modern politics seemed to
lack nobility. He felt himself a poet. He disposed of his rooms in
Clement’s Inn and went to Italy. He had spent a winter in Florence and
a winter in Rome, and now was passing his second summer abroad in
Germany so that he might read Goethe in the original.
Hayward had one gift which was very precious. He had a real feeling for
literature, and he could impart his own passion with an admirable
fluency. He could throw himself into sympathy with a writer and see all
that was best in him, and then he could talk about him with
understanding. Philip had read a great deal, but he had read without
discrimination everything that he happened to come across, and it was
very good for him now to meet someone who could guide his taste. He
borrowed books from the small lending library which the town possessed
and began reading all the wonderful things that Hayward spoke of. He
did not read always with enjoyment but invariably with perseverance. He
was eager for self-improvement. He felt himself very ignorant and very
humble. By the end of August, when Weeks returned from South Germany,
Philip was completely under Hayward’s influence. Hayward did not like
Weeks. He deplored the American’s black coat and pepper-and-salt
trousers, and spoke with a scornful shrug of his New England
conscience. Philip listened complacently to the abuse of a man who had
gone out of his way to be kind to him, but when Weeks in his turn made
disagreeable remarks about Hayward he lost his temper.
“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.