Of Human Bondage (48 page)

  "That's all," he said presently, with a nervous
laugh.

  Monsieur Foinet rolled himself a cigarette and lit
it.

  "You have very little private means?" he asked at
last.

  "Very little," answered Philip, with a sudden
feeling of cold at his heart. "Not enough to live on."

  "There is nothing so degrading as the constant
anxiety about one's means of livelihood. I have nothing but
contempt for the people who despise money. They are hypocrites or
fools. Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a
complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income half the
possibilities of life are shut off. The only thing to be careful
about is that you do not pay more than a shilling for the shilling
you earn. You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to
the artist. They have never felt the iron of it in their flesh.
They do not know how mean it makes you. It exposes you to endless
humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a
cancer. It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve
one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank, and
independent. I pity with all my heart the artist, whether he writes
or paints, who is entirely dependent for subsistence upon his
art."

  Philip quietly put away the various things which he
had shown.

  "I'm afraid that sounds as if you didn't think I had
much chance."

  Monsieur Foinet slightly shrugged his shoulders.

  "You have a certain manual dexterity. With hard work
and perseverance there is no reason why you should not become a
careful, not incompetent painter. You would find hundreds who
painted worse than you, hundreds who painted as well. I see no
talent in anything you have shown me. I see industry and
intelligence. You will never be anything but mediocre."

  Philip obliged himself to answer quite steadily.

  "I'm very grateful to you for having taken so much
trouble. I can't thank you enough."

  Monsieur Foinet got up and made as if to go, but he
changed his mind and, stopping, put his hand on Philip's
shoulder.

  "But if you were to ask me my advice, I should say:
take your courage in both hands and try your luck at something
else. It sounds very hard, but let me tell you this: I would give
all I have in the world if someone had given me that advice when I
was your age and I had taken it."

  Philip looked up at him with surprise. The master
forced his lips into a smile, but his eyes remained grave and
sad.

  "It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when
it is too late. It does not improve the temper."

  He gave a little laugh as he said the last words and
quickly walked out of the room.

  Philip mechanically took up the letter from his
uncle. The sight of his handwriting made him anxious, for it was
his aunt who always wrote to him. She had been ill for the last
three months, and he had offered to go over to England and see her;
but she, fearing it would interfere with his work, had refused. She
did not want him to put himself to inconvenience; she said she
would wait till August and then she hoped he would come and stay at
the vicarage for two or three weeks. If by any chance she grew
worse she would let him know, since she did not wish to die without
seeing him again. If his uncle wrote to him it must be because she
was too ill to hold a pen. Philip opened the letter. it ran as
follows:

  My dear Philip,

  I regret to inform you that your dear Aunt departed
this life early this morning. She died very suddenly, but quite
peacefully. The change for the worse was so rapid that we had no
time to send for you. She was fully prepared for the end and
entered into rest with the complete assurance of a blessed
resurrection and with resignation to the divine will of our blessed
Lord Jesus Christ. Your Aunt would have liked you to be present at
the funeral so I trust you will come as soon as you can. There is
naturally a great deal of work thrown upon my shoulders and I am
very much upset. I trust that you will be able to do everything for
me. Your affectionate uncle,

William Carey.

  Next day Philip arrived at Blackstable. Since the
death of his mother he had never lost anyone closely connected with
him; his aunt's death shocked him and filled him also with a
curious fear; he felt for the first time his own mortality. He
could not realise what life would be for his uncle without the
constant companionship of the woman who had loved and tended him
for forty years. He expected to find him broken down with hopeless
grief. He dreaded the first meeting; he knew that he could say
nothing which would be of use. He rehearsed to himself a number of
apposite speeches.

  He entered the vicarage by the side-door and went
into the dining-room. Uncle William was reading the paper.

  "Your train was late," he said, looking up.

  Philip was prepared to give way to his emotion, but
the matter-of-fact reception startled him. His uncle, subdued but
calm, handed him the paper.

  "There's a very nice little paragraph about her in
The Blackstable Times," he said.

  Philip read it mechanically.

  "Would you like to come up and see her?"

  Philip nodded and together they walked upstairs.
Aunt Louisa was lying in the middle of the large bed, with flowers
all round her.

  "Would you like to say a short prayer?" said the
Vicar.

  He sank on his knees, and because it was expected of
him Philip followed his example. He looked at the little shrivelled
face. He was only conscious of one emotion: what a wasted life! In
a minute Mr. Carey gave a cough, and stood up. He pointed to a
wreath at the foot of the bed.

  "That's from the Squire," he said. He spoke in a low
voice as though he were in church, but one felt that, as a
clergyman, he found himself quite at home. "I expect tea is
ready."

  They went down again to the dining-room. The drawn
blinds gave a lugubrious aspect. The Vicar sat at the end of the
table at which his wife had always sat and poured out the tea with
ceremony. Philip could not help feeling that neither of them should
have been able to eat anything, but when he saw that his uncle's
appetite was unimpaired he fell to with his usual heartiness. They
did not speak for a while. Philip set himself to eat an excellent
cake with the air of grief which he felt was decent.

  "Things have changed a great deal since I was a
curate," said the Vicar presently. "In my young days the mourners
used always to be given a pair of black gloves and a piece of black
silk for their hats. Poor Louisa used to make the silk into
dresses. She always said that twelve funerals gave her a new
dress."

  Then he told Philip who had sent wreaths; there were
twenty-four of them already; when Mrs. Rawlingson, wife of the
Vicar at Ferne, had died she had had thirty-two; but probably a
good many more would come the next day; the funeral would start at
eleven o'clock from the vicarage, and they should beat Mrs.
Rawlingson easily. Louisa never liked Mrs. Rawlingson.

  "I shall take the funeral myself. I promised Louisa
I would never let anyone else bury her."

  Philip looked at his uncle with disapproval when he
took a second piece of cake. Under the circumstances he could not
help thinking it greedy.

  "Mary Ann certainly makes capital cakes. I'm afraid
no one else will make such good ones."

  "She's not going?" cried Philip, with
astonishment.

  Mary Ann had been at the vicarage ever since he
could remember. She never forgot his birthday, but made a point
always of sending him a trifle, absurd but touching. He had a real
affection for her.

  "Yes," answered Mr. Carey. "I didn't think it would
do to have a single woman in the house."

  "But, good heavens, she must be over forty."

  "Yes, I think she is. But she's been rather
troublesome lately, she's been inclined to take too much on
herself, and I thought this was a very good opportunity to give her
notice."

  "It's certainly one which isn't likely to recur,"
said Philip.

  He took out a cigarette, but his uncle prevented him
from lighting it.

  "Not till after the funeral, Philip," he said
gently.

  "All right," said Philip.

  "It wouldn't be quite respectful to smoke in the
house so long as your poor Aunt Louisa is upstairs."

  Josiah Graves, churchwarden and manager of the bank,
came back to dinner at the vicarage after the funeral. The blinds
had been drawn up, and Philip, against his will, felt a curious
sensation of relief. The body in the house had made him
uncomfortable: in life the poor woman had been all that was kind
and gentle; and yet, when she lay upstairs in her bed-room, cold
and stark, it seemed as though she cast upon the survivors a
baleful influence. The thought horrified Philip.

  He found himself alone for a minute or two in the
dining-room with the churchwarden.

  "I hope you'll be able to stay with your uncle a
while," he said. "I don't think he ought to be left alone just
yet."

  "I haven't made any plans," answered Philip. "if he
wants me I shall be very pleased to stay."

  By way of cheering the bereaved husband the
churchwarden during dinner talked of a recent fire at Blackstable
which had partly destroyed the Wesleyan chapel.

  "I hear they weren't insured," he said, with a
little smile.

  "That won't make any difference," said the Vicar.
"They'll get as much money as they want to rebuild. Chapel people
are always ready to give money."

  "I see that Holden sent a wreath."

  Holden was the dissenting minister, and, though for
Christ's sake who died for both of them, Mr. Carey nodded to him in
the street, he did not speak to him.

  "I think it was very pushing," he remarked. "There
were forty-one wreaths. Yours was beautiful. Philip and I admired
it very much."

  "Don't mention it," said the banker.

  He had noticed with satisfaction that it was larger
than anyone's else. It had looked very well. They began to discuss
the people who attended the funeral. Shops had been closed for it,
and the churchwarden took out of his pocket the notice which had
been printed: Owing to the funeral of Mrs. Carey this establishment
will not be opened till one o'clock."

  "It was my idea," he said.

  "I think it was very nice of them to close," said
the Vicar. "Poor Louisa would have appreciated that."

  Philip ate his dinner. Mary Ann had treated the day
as Sunday, and they had roast chicken and a gooseberry tart.

  "I suppose you haven't thought about a tombstone
yet?" said the churchwarden.

  "Yes, I have. I thought of a plain stone cross.
Louisa was always against ostentation."

  "I don't think one can do much better than a cross.
If you're thinking of a text, what do you say to: With Christ,
which is far better?"

  The Vicar pursed his lips. It was just like Bismarck
to try and settle everything himself. He did not like that text; it
seemed to cast an aspersion on himself.

  "I don't think I should put that. I much prefer: The
Lord has given and the Lord has taken away."

  "Oh, do you? That always seems to me a little
indifferent."

  The Vicar answered with some acidity, and Mr. Graves
replied in a tone which the widower thought too authoritative for
the occasion. Things were going rather far if he could not choose
his own text for his own wife's tombstone. There was a pause, and
then the conversation drifted to parish matters. Philip went into
the garden to smoke his pipe. He sat on a bench, and suddenly began
to laugh hysterically.

  A few days later his uncle expressed the hope that
he would spend the next few weeks at Blackstable.

  "Yes, that will suit me very well," said Philip.