Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham (epub e reader txt) 📖

uncle had repeated it often during the arguments which had preceded his departure from business. Apparently it recalled that occasion to his guardian.

“You’re no longer a boy, you know; you must begin to think of settling down. First you insist on becoming a chartered accountant, and then you get tired of that and you want to become a painter. And now if you please you change your mind again. It points to⁠ ⁠…”

He hesitated for a moment to consider what defects of character exactly it indicated, and Philip finished the sentence.

“Irresolution, incompetence, want of foresight, and lack of determination.”

The Vicar looked up at his nephew quickly to see whether he was laughing at him. Philip’s face was serious, but there was a twinkle in his eyes which irritated him. Philip should really be getting more serious. He felt it right to give him a rap over the knuckles.

“Your money matters have nothing to do with me now. You’re your own master; but I think you should remember that your money won’t last forever, and the unlucky deformity you have doesn’t exactly make it easier for you to earn your living.”

Philip knew by now that whenever anyone was angry with him his first thought was to say something about his clubfoot. His estimate of the human race was determined by the fact that scarcely anyone failed to resist the temptation. But he had trained himself not to show any sign that the reminder wounded him. He had even acquired control over the blushing which in his boyhood had been one of his torments.

“As you justly remark,” he answered, “my money matters have nothing to do with you and I am my own master.”

“At all events you will do me the justice to acknowledge that I was justified in my opposition when you made up your mind to become an art-student.”

“I don’t know so much about that. I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one’s own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody’s else advice. I’ve had my fling, and I don’t mind settling down now.”

“What at?”

Philip was not prepared for the question, since in fact he had not made up his mind. He had thought of a dozen callings.

“The most suitable thing you could do is to enter your father’s profession and become a doctor.”

“Oddly enough that is precisely what I intend.”

He had thought of doctoring among other things, chiefly because it was an occupation which seemed to give a good deal of personal freedom, and his experience of life in an office had made him determine never to have anything more to do with one; his answer to the Vicar slipped out almost unawares, because it was in the nature of a repartee. It amused him to make up his mind in that accidental way, and he resolved then and there to enter his father’s old hospital in the autumn.

“Then your two years in Paris may be regarded as so much wasted time?”

“I don’t know about that. I had a very jolly two years, and I learned one or two useful things.”

“What?”

Philip reflected for an instant, and his answer was not devoid of a gentle desire to annoy.

“I learned to look at hands, which I’d never looked at before. And instead of just looking at houses and trees I learned to look at houses and trees against the sky. And I learned also that shadows are not black but coloured.”

“I suppose you think you’re very clever. I think your flippancy is quite inane.”

LIII

Taking the paper with him Mr. Carey retired to his study. Philip changed his chair for that in which his uncle had been sitting (it was the only comfortable one in the room), and looked out of the window at the pouring rain. Even in that sad weather there was something restful about the green fields that stretched to the horizon. There was an intimate charm in the landscape which he did not remember ever to have noticed before. Two years in France had opened his eyes to the beauty of his own countryside.

He thought with a smile of his uncle’s remark. It was lucky that the turn of his mind tended to flippancy. He had begun to realise what a great loss he had sustained in the death of his father and mother. That was one of the differences in his life which prevented him from seeing things in the same way as other people. The love of parents for their children is the only emotion which is quite disinterested. Among strangers he had grown up as best he could, but he had seldom been used with patience or forbearance. He prided himself on his self-control. It had been whipped into him by the mockery of his fellows. Then they called him cynical and callous. He had acquired calmness of demeanour and under most circumstances an unruffled exterior, so that now he could not show his feelings. People told him he was unemotional; but he knew that he was at the mercy of his emotions: an accidental kindness touched him so much that sometimes he did not venture to speak in order not to betray the unsteadiness of his voice. He remembered the bitterness of his life at school, the humiliation which he had endured, the banter which had made him morbidly afraid of making himself ridiculous; and he remembered the loneliness he had felt since, faced with the world, the disillusion and the disappointment caused by the difference between what it promised to his active imagination and what it gave. But notwithstanding he was able to look at himself from the outside and smile with amusement.

“By Jove, if I weren’t flippant, I should hang myself,” he thought cheerfully.

His mind went back to the answer he had given his uncle when he asked him what he had learnt in Paris. He had learnt a good deal more than he told him. A conversation with Cronshaw had stuck