Philip could not get Miss Wilkinson’s story out of his head. It was
clear enough what she meant even though she cut it short, and he was a
little shocked. That sort of thing was all very well for married women,
he had read enough French novels to know that in France it was indeed
the rule, but Miss Wilkinson was English and unmarried; her father was
a clergyman. Then it struck him that the art-student probably was
neither the first nor the last of her lovers, and he gasped: he had
never looked upon Miss Wilkinson like that; it seemed incredible that
anyone should make love to her. In his ingenuousness he doubted her
story as little as he doubted what he read in books, and he was angry
that such wonderful things never happened to him. It was humiliating
that if Miss Wilkinson insisted upon his telling her of his adventures
in Heidelberg he would have nothing to tell. It was true that he had
some power of invention, but he was not sure whether he could persuade
her that he was steeped in vice; women were full of intuition, he had
read that, and she might easily discover that he was fibbing. He
blushed scarlet as he thought of her laughing up her sleeve.
Miss Wilkinson played the piano and sang in a rather tired voice; but
her songs, Massenet, Benjamin Goddard, and Augusta Holmes, were new to
Philip; and together they spent many hours at the piano. One day she
wondered if he had a voice and insisted on trying it. She told him he
had a pleasant baritone and offered to give him lessons. At first with
his usual bashfulness he refused, but she insisted, and then every
morning at a convenient time after breakfast she gave him an hour’s
lesson. She had a natural gift for teaching, and it was clear that she
was an excellent governess. She had method and firmness. Though her
French accent was so much part of her that it remained, all the
mellifluousness of her manner left her when she was engaged in
teaching. She put up with no nonsense. Her voice became a little
peremptory, and instinctively she suppressed inattention and corrected
slovenliness. She knew what she was about and put Philip to scales and
exercises.
When the lesson was over she resumed without effort her seductive
smiles, her voice became again soft and winning, but Philip could not
so easily put away the pupil as she the pedagogue; and this impression
convicted with the feelings her stories had aroused in him. He looked
at her more narrowly. He liked her much better in the evening than in
the morning. In the morning she was rather lined and the skin of her
neck was just a little rough. He wished she would hide it, but the
weather was very warm just then and she wore blouses which were cut
low. She was very fond of white; in the morning it did not suit her. At
night she often looked very attractive, she put on a gown which was
almost a dinner dress, and she wore a chain of garnets round her neck;
the lace about her bosom and at her elbows gave her a pleasant
softness, and the scent she wore (at Blackstable no one used anything
but Eau de Cologne, and that only on Sundays or when suffering from a
sick headache) was troubling and exotic. She really looked very young
then.
Philip was much exercised over her age. He added twenty and seventeen
together, and could not bring them to a satisfactory total. He asked
Aunt Louisa more than once why she thought Miss Wilkinson was
thirty-seven: she didn’t look more than thirty, and everyone knew that
foreigners aged more rapidly than English women; Miss Wilkinson had
lived so long abroad that she might almost be called a foreigner. He
personally wouldn’t have thought her more than twenty-six.
“She’s more than that,” said Aunt Louisa.
Philip did not believe in the accuracy of the Careys’ statements. All
they distinctly remembered was that Miss Wilkinson had not got her hair
up the last time they saw her in Lincolnshire. Well, she might have
been twelve then: it was so long ago and the Vicar was always so
unreliable. They said it was twenty years ago, but people used round
figures, and it was just as likely to be eighteen years, or seventeen.
Seventeen and twelve were only twenty-nine, and hang it all, that
wasn’t old, was it? Cleopatra was forty-eight when Antony threw away
the world for her sake.
It was a fine summer. Day after day was hot and cloudless; but the heat
was tempered by the neighbourhood of the sea, and there was a pleasant
exhilaration in the air, so that one was excited and not oppressed by
the August sunshine. There was a pond in the garden in which a fountain
played; water lilies grew in it and gold fish sunned themselves on the
surface. Philip and Miss Wilkinson used to take rugs and cushions there
after dinner and lie on the lawn in the shade of a tall hedge of roses.
They talked and read all the afternoon. They smoked cigarettes, which
the Vicar did not allow in the house; he thought smoking a disgusting
habit, and used frequently to say that it was disgraceful for anyone to
grow a slave to a habit. He forgot that he was himself a slave to
afternoon tea.
One day Miss Wilkinson gave Philip La Vie de Boheme. She had found it
by accident when she was rummaging among the books in the Vicar’s
study. It had been bought in a lot with something Mr. Carey wanted and
had remained undiscovered for ten years.
Philip began to read Murger’s fascinating, ill-written, absurd
masterpiece, and fell at once under its spell. His soul danced with joy
at that picture of starvation which is so good-humoured, of squalor
which is so picturesque, of sordid love which is so romantic, of bathos
which is so moving. Rodolphe and Mimi, Musette and Schaunard! They
wander through the gray streets of the Latin Quarter, finding refuge
now in one attic, now in another, in their quaint costumes of Louis
Philippe, with their tears and their smiles, happy-go-lucky and
reckless. Who can resist them? It is only when you return to the book
with a sounder judgment that you find how gross their pleasures were,
how vulgar their minds; and you feel the utter worthlessness, as
artists and as human beings, of that gay procession. Philip was
enraptured.
“Don’t you wish you were going to Paris instead of London?” asked Miss
Wilkinson, smiling at his enthusiasm.
“It’s too late now even if I did,” he answered.
During the fortnight he had been back from Germany there had been much
discussion between himself and his uncle about his future. He had
refused definitely to go to Oxford, and now that there was no chance of
his getting scholarships even Mr. Carey came to the conclusion that he
could not afford it. His entire fortune had consisted of only two
thousand pounds, and though it had been invested in mortgages at five
per cent, he had not been able to live on the interest. It was now a
little reduced. It would be absurd to spend two hundred a year, the
least he could live on at a university, for three years at Oxford which
would lead him no nearer to earning his living. He was anxious to go
straight to London. Mrs. Carey thought there were only four professions
for a gentleman, the Army, the Navy, the Law, and the Church. She had
added medicine because her brother-in-law practised it, but did not
forget that in her young days no one ever considered the doctor a
gentleman. The first two were out of the question, and Philip was firm
in his refusal to be ordained. Only the law remained. The local doctor
had suggested that many gentlemen now went in for engineering, but Mrs.
Carey opposed the idea at once.
“I shouldn’t like Philip to go into trade,” she said.
“No, he must have a profession,” answered the Vicar.
“Why not make him a doctor like his father?”
“I should hate it,” said Philip.
Mrs. Carey was not sorry. The Bar seemed out of the question, since he
was not going to Oxford, for the Careys were under the impression that
a degree was still necessary for success in that calling; and finally
it was suggested that he should become articled to a solicitor. They
wrote to the family lawyer, Albert Nixon, who was co-executor with the
Vicar of Blackstable for the late Henry Carey’s estate, and asked him
whether he would take Philip. In a day or two the answer came back that
he had not a vacancy, and was very much opposed to the whole scheme;
the profession was greatly overcrowded, and without capital or
connections a man had small chance of becoming more than a managing
clerk; he suggested, however, that Philip should become a chartered
accountant. Neither the Vicar nor his wife knew in the least what this
was, and Philip had never heard of anyone being a chartered accountant;
but another letter from the solicitor explained that the growth of
modern businesses and the increase of companies had led to the
formation of many firms of accountants to examine the books and put
into the financial affairs of their clients an order which
old-fashioned methods had lacked. Some years before a Royal Charter had
been obtained, and the profession was becoming every year more
respectable, lucrative, and important. The chartered accountants whom
Albert Nixon had employed for thirty years happened to have a vacancy
for an articled pupil, and would take Philip for a fee of three hundred
pounds. Half of this would be returned during the five years the
articles lasted in the form of salary. The prospect was not exciting,
but Philip felt that he must decide on something, and the thought of
living in London over-balanced the slight shrinking he felt. The Vicar
of Blackstable wrote to ask Mr. Nixon whether it was a profession
suited to a gentleman; and Mr. Nixon replied that, since the Charter,
men were going into it who had been to public schools and a university;
moreover, if Philip disliked the work and after a year wished to leave,
Herbert Carter, for that was the accountant’s name, would return half
the money paid for the articles. This settled it, and it was arranged
that Philip should start work on the fifteenth of September.
“I have a full month before me,” said Philip.
“And then you go to freedom and I to bondage,” returned Miss Wilkinson.
Her holidays were to last six weeks, and she would be leaving
Blackstable only a day or two before Philip.
“I wonder if we shall ever meet again,” she said.
“I don’t know why not.”
“Oh, don’t speak in that practical way. I never knew anyone so
unsentimental.”
Philip reddened. He was afraid that Miss Wilkinson would think him a
milksop: after all she was a young woman, sometimes quite pretty, and
he was getting on for twenty; it was absurd that they should talk of
nothing but art and literature. He ought to make love to her. They had
talked a good deal of love. There was the art-student in the Rue Breda,
and then there was the painter in whose family she had lived so long in
Paris: he had asked her to sit for him, and had started to make love to
her so violently that she was forced to invent excuses not to sit to
him again. It was clear enough that Miss Wilkinson was used to
attentions of that sort. She looked very nice now in a large straw hat:
it was hot that afternoon, the hottest day they had had, and beads of
sweat stood in a line on her upper lip. He called to mind Fraulein
Cacilie and Herr Sung. He had never thought of Cacilie in an amorous
way, she was exceedingly plain; but now, looking back, the affair
seemed very romantic. He had a chance of romance too. Miss Wilkinson
was practically French, and that added zest to a possible adventure.
When he thought of it at night in bed, or when he sat by himself in the
garden reading a book, he was thrilled by it; but when he saw Miss
Wilkinson it seemed less picturesque.
At all events, after what she had told him, she would not be surprised
if he made love to her. He had a feeling that she must think it odd of
him to make no sign: perhaps it was only his fancy, but once or twice
in the last day or two he had imagined that there was a suspicion of
contempt in her eyes.
“A penny for your thoughts,” said Miss Wilkinson, looking at him with a
smile.
“I’m not going to tell you,” he answered.
He was thinking that he ought to kiss her there and then. He wondered
if she expected him to do it; but after all he didn’t see how he could
without any preliminary business at all. She would just think him mad,
or she might slap his face; and perhaps she would complain to his
uncle. He wondered how Herr Sung had started with Fraulein Cacilie. It
would be beastly if she told his uncle: he knew what his uncle was, he
would tell the doctor and Josiah Graves; and he would look a perfect
fool. Aunt Louisa kept on saying that Miss Wilkinson was thirty-seven
if she was a day; he shuddered at the thought of the ridicule he would
be exposed to; they would say she was old enough to be his mother.
“Twopence for your thoughts,” smiled Miss Wilkinson.
“I was thinking about you,” he answered boldly.
That at all events committed him to nothing.
“What were you thinking?”
“Ah, now you want to know too much.”
“Naughty boy!” said Miss Wilkinson.
There it was again! Whenever he had succeeded in working himself up she
said something which reminded him of the governess. She called him
playfully a naughty boy when he did not sing his exercises to her
satisfaction. This time he grew quite sulky.
“I wish you wouldn’t treat me as if I were a child.”
“Are you cross?”
“Very.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
She put out her hand and he took it. Once or twice lately when they
shook hands at night he had fancied she slightly pressed his hand, but
this time there was no doubt about it.
He did not quite know what he ought to say next. Here at last was his
chance of an adventure, and he would be a fool not to take it; but it
was a little ordinary, and he had expected more glamour. He had read
many descriptions of love, and he felt in himself none of that uprush
of emotion which novelists described; he was not carried off his feet
in wave upon wave of passion; nor was Miss Wilkinson the ideal: he had
often pictured to himself the great violet eyes and the alabaster skin
of some lovely girl, and he had thought of himself burying his face in
the rippling masses of her auburn hair. He could not imagine himself
burying his face in Miss Wilkinson’s hair, it always struck him as a
little sticky. All the same it would be very satisfactory to have an
intrigue, and he thrilled with the legitimate pride he would enjoy in
his conquest. He owed it to himself to seduce her. He made up his mind
to kiss Miss Wilkinson; not then, but in the evening; it would be
easier in the dark, and after he had kissed her the rest would follow.
He would kiss her that very evening. He swore an oath to that effect.
He laid his plans. After supper he suggested that they should take a
stroll in the garden. Miss Wilkinson accepted, and they sauntered side
by side. Philip was very nervous. He did not know why, but the
conversation would not lead in the right direction; he had decided that
the first thing to do was to put his arm round her waist; but he could
not suddenly put his arm round her waist when she was talking of the
regatta which was to be held next week. He led her artfully into the
darkest parts of the garden, but having arrived there his courage
failed him. They sat on a bench, and he had really made up his mind
that here was his opportunity when Miss Wilkinson said she was sure
there were earwigs and insisted on moving. They walked round the garden
once more, and Philip promised himself he would take the plunge before
they arrived at that bench again; but as they passed the house, they
saw Mrs. Carey standing at the door.
“Hadn’t you young people better come in? I’m sure the night air isn’t
good for you.”
“Perhaps we had better go in,” said Philip. “I don’t want you to catch
cold.”
He said it with a sigh of relief. He could attempt nothing more that
night. But afterwards, when he was alone in his room, he was furious
with himself. He had been a perfect fool. He was certain that Miss
Wilkinson expected him to kiss her, otherwise she wouldn’t have come
into the garden. She was always saying that only Frenchmen knew how to
treat women. Philip had read French novels. If he had been a Frenchman
he would have seized her in his arms and told her passionately that he
adored her; he would have pressed his lips on her nuque. He did not
know why Frenchmen always kissed ladies on the nuque. He did not
himself see anything so very attractive in the nape of the neck. Of
course it was much easier for Frenchmen to do these things; the
language was such an aid; Philip could never help feeling that to say
passionate things in English sounded a little absurd. He wished now
that he had never undertaken the siege of Miss Wilkinson’s virtue; the
first fortnight had been so jolly, and now he was wretched; but he was
determined not to give in, he would never respect himself again if he
did, and he made up his mind irrevocably that the next night he would
kiss her without fail.
Next day when he got up he saw it was raining, and his first thought
was that they would not be able to go into the garden that evening. He
was in high spirits at breakfast. Miss Wilkinson sent Mary Ann in to
say that she had a headache and would remain in bed. She did not come
down till tea-time, when she appeared in a becoming wrapper and a pale
face; but she was quite recovered by supper, and the meal was very
cheerful. After prayers she said she would go straight to bed, and she
kissed Mrs. Carey. Then she turned to Philip.
“Good gracious!” she cried. “I was just going to kiss you too.”
“Why don’t you?” he said.
She laughed and held out her hand. She distinctly pressed his.
The following day there was not a cloud in the sky, and the garden was
sweet and fresh after the rain. Philip went down to the beach to bathe
and when he came home ate a magnificent dinner. They were having a
tennis party at the vicarage in the afternoon and Miss Wilkinson put on
her best dress. She certainly knew how to wear her clothes, and Philip
could not help noticing how elegant she looked beside the curate’s wife
and the doctor’s married daughter. There were two roses in her
waistband. She sat in a garden chair by the side of the lawn, holding a
red parasol over herself, and the light on her face was very becoming.
Philip was fond of tennis. He served well and as he ran clumsily played
close to the net: notwithstanding his club-foot he was quick, and it
was difficult to get a ball past him. He was pleased because he won all
his sets. At tea he lay down at Miss Wilkinson’s feet, hot and panting.
“Flannels suit you,” she said. “You look very nice this afternoon.”
He blushed with delight.
“I can honestly return the compliment. You look perfectly ravishing.”
She smiled and gave him a long look with her black eyes.
After supper he insisted that she should come out.
“Haven’t you had enough exercise for one day?”
“It’ll be lovely in the garden tonight. The stars are all out.”
He was in high spirits.
“D’you know, Mrs. Carey has been scolding me on your account?” said
Miss Wilkinson, when they were sauntering through the kitchen garden.
“She says I mustn’t flirt with you.”
“Have you been flirting with me? I hadn’t noticed it.”
“She was only joking.”
“It was very unkind of you to refuse to kiss me last night.”
“If you saw the look your uncle gave me when I said what I did!”
“Was that all that prevented you?”
“I prefer to kiss people without witnesses.”
“There are no witnesses now.”
Philip put his arm round her waist and kissed her lips. She only
laughed a little and made no attempt to withdraw. It had come quite
naturally. Philip was very proud of himself. He said he would, and he
had. It was the easiest thing in the world. He wished he had done it
before. He did it again.
“Oh, you mustn’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because I like it,” she laughed.