Of Human Bondage (10 page)

  If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only
do this which is done to the fig-tree, but also if ye shall say
unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea;
it shall be done.

  And all this, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer,
believing, ye shall receive.

  They made no particular impression on him, but it
happened that two or three days later, being Sunday, the Canon in
residence chose them for the text of his sermon. Even if Philip had
wanted to hear this it would have been impossible, for the boys of
King's School sit in the choir, and the pulpit stands at the corner
of the transept so that the preacher's back is almost turned to
them. The distance also is so great that it needs a man with a fine
voice and a knowledge of elocution to make himself heard in the
choir; and according to long usage the Canons of Tercanbury are
chosen for their learning rather than for any qualities which might
be of use in a cathedral church. But the words of the text, perhaps
because he had read them so short a while before, came clearly
enough to Philip's ears, and they seemed on a sudden to have a
personal application. He thought about them through most of the
sermon, and that night, on getting into bed, he turned over the
pages of the Gospel and found once more the passage. Though he
believed implicitly everything he saw in print, he had learned
already that in the Bible things that said one thing quite clearly
often mysteriously meant another. There was no one he liked to ask
at school, so he kept the question he had in mind till the
Christmas holidays, and then one day he made an opportunity. It was
after supper and prayers were just finished. Mrs. Carey was
counting the eggs that Mary Ann had brought in as usual and writing
on each one the date. Philip stood at the table and pretended to
turn listlessly the pages of the Bible.

  "I say, Uncle William, this passage here, does it
really mean that?"

  He put his finger against it as though he had come
across it accidentally.

  Mr. Carey looked up over his spectacles. He was
holding The Blackstable Times in front of the fire. It had come in
that evening damp from the press, and the Vicar always aired it for
ten minutes before he began to read.

  "What passage is that?" he asked.

  "Why, this about if you have faith you can remove
mountains."

  "If it says so in the Bible it is so, Philip," said
Mrs. Carey gently, taking up the plate-basket.

  Philip looked at his uncle for an answer.

  "It's a matter of faith."

  "D'you mean to say that if you really believed you
could move mountains you could?"

  "By the grace of God," said the Vicar.

  "Now, say good-night to your uncle, Philip," said
Aunt Louisa. "You're not wanting to move a mountain tonight, are
you?"

  Philip allowed himself to be kissed on the forehead
by his uncle and preceded Mrs. Carey upstairs. He had got the
information he wanted. His little room was icy, and he shivered
when he put on his nightshirt. But he always felt that his prayers
were more pleasing to God when he said them under conditions of
discomfort. The coldness of his hands and feet were an offering to
the Almighty. And tonight he sank on his knees; buried his face in
his hands, and prayed to God with all his might that He would make
his club-foot whole. It was a very small thing beside the moving of
mountains. He knew that God could do it if He wished, and his own
faith was complete. Next morning, finishing his prayers with the
same request, he fixed a date for the miracle.

  "Oh, God, in Thy loving mercy and goodness, if it be
Thy will, please make my foot all right on the night before I go
back to school."

  He was glad to get his petition into a formula, and
he repeated it later in the dining-room during the short pause
which the Vicar always made after prayers, before he rose from his
knees. He said it again in the evening and again, shivering in his
nightshirt, before he got into bed. And he believed. For once he
looked forward with eagerness to the end of the holidays. He
laughed to himself as he thought of his uncle's astonishment when
he ran down the stairs three at a time; and after breakfast he and
Aunt Louisa would have to hurry out and buy a new pair of boots. At
school they would be astounded.

  "Hulloa, Carey, what have you done with your
foot?"

  "Oh, it's all right now," he would answer casually,
as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

  He would be able to play football. His heart leaped
as he saw himself running, running, faster than any of the other
boys. At the end of the Easter term there were the sports, and he
would be able to go in for the races; he rather fancied himself
over the hurdles. It would be splendid to be like everyone else,
not to be stared at curiously by new boys who did not know about
his deformity, nor at the baths in summer to need incredible
precautions, while he was undressing, before he could hide his foot
in the water.

  He prayed with all the power of his soul. No doubts
assailed him. He was confident in the word of God. And the night
before he was to go back to school he went up to bed tremulous with
excitement. There was snow on the ground, and Aunt Louisa had
allowed herself the unaccustomed luxury of a fire in her bed-room;
but in Philip's little room it was so cold that his fingers were
numb, and he had great difficulty in undoing his collar. His teeth
chattered. The idea came to him that he must do something more than
usual to attract the attention of God, and he turned back the rug
which was in front of his bed so that he could kneel on the bare
boards; and then it struck him that his nightshirt was a softness
that might displease his Maker, so he took it off and said his
prayers naked. When he got into bed he was so cold that for some
time he could not sleep, but when he did, it was so soundly that
Mary Ann had to shake him when she brought in his hot water next
morning. She talked to him while she drew the curtains, but he did
not answer; he had remembered at once that this was the morning for
the miracle. His heart was filled with joy and gratitude. His first
instinct was to put down his hand and feel the foot which was whole
now, but to do this seemed to doubt the goodness of God. He knew
that his foot was well. But at last he made up his mind, and with
the toes of his right foot he just touched his left. Then he passed
his hand over it.

  He limped downstairs just as Mary Ann was going into
the dining-room for prayers, and then he sat down to breakfast.

  "You're very quiet this morning, Philip," said Aunt
Louisa presently.

  "He's thinking of the good breakfast he'll have at
school to-morrow," said the Vicar.

  When Philip answered, it was in a way that always
irritated his uncle, with something that had nothing to do with the
matter in hand. He called it a bad habit of wool-gathering.

  "Supposing you'd asked God to do something," said
Philip, "and really believed it was going to happen, like moving a
mountain, I mean, and you had faith, and it didn't happen, what
would it mean?"

  "What a funny boy you are!" said Aunt Louisa. "You
asked about moving mountains two or three weeks ago."

  "It would just mean that you hadn't got faith,"
answered Uncle William.

  Philip accepted the explanation. If God had not
cured him, it was because he did not really believe. And yet he did
not see how he could believe more than he did. But perhaps he had
not given God enough time. He had only asked Him for nineteen days.
In a day or two he began his prayer again, and this time he fixed
upon Easter. That was the day of His Son's glorious resurrection,
and God in His happiness might be mercifully inclined. But now
Philip added other means of attaining his desire: he began to wish,
when he saw a new moon or a dappled horse, and he looked out for
shooting stars; during exeat they had a chicken at the vicarage,
and he broke the lucky bone with Aunt Louisa and wished again, each
time that his foot might be made whole. He was appealing
unconsciously to gods older to his race than the God of Israel. And
he bombarded the Almighty with his prayer, at odd times of the day,
whenever it occurred to him, in identical words always, for it
seemed to him important to make his request in the same terms. But
presently the feeling came to him that this time also his faith
would not be great enough. He could not resist the doubt that
assailed him. He made his own experience into a general rule.

  "I suppose no one ever has faith enough," he
said.

  It was like the salt which his nurse used to tell
him about: you could catch any bird by putting salt on his tail;
and once he had taken a little bag of it into Kensington Gardens.
But he could never get near enough to put the salt on a bird's
tail. Before Easter he had given up the struggle. He felt a dull
resentment against his uncle for taking him in. The text which
spoke of the moving of mountains was just one of those that said
one thing and meant another. He thought his uncle had been playing
a practical joke on him.

  The King's School at Tercanbury, to which Philip
went when he was thirteen, prided itself on its antiquity. It
traced its origin to an abbey school, founded before the Conquest,
where the rudiments of learning were taught by Augustine monks;
and, like many another establishment of this sort, on the
destruction of the monasteries it had been reorganised by the
officers of King Henry VIII and thus acquired its name. Since then,
pursuing its modest course, it had given to the sons of the local
gentry and of the professional people of Kent an education
sufficient to their needs. One or two men of letters, beginning
with a poet, than whom only Shakespeare had a more splendid genius,
and ending with a writer of prose whose view of life has affected
profoundly the generation of which Philip was a member, had gone
forth from its gates to achieve fame; it had produced one or two
eminent lawyers, but eminent lawyers are common, and one or two
soldiers of distinction; but during the three centuries since its
separation from the monastic order it had trained especially men of
the church, bishops, deans, canons, and above all country
clergymen: there were boys in the school whose fathers,
grandfathers, great-grandfathers, had been educated there and had
all been rectors of parishes in the diocese of Tercanbury; and they
came to it with their minds made up already to be ordained. But
there were signs notwithstanding that even there changes were
coming; for a few, repeating what they had heard at home, said that
the Church was no longer what it used to be. It wasn't so much the
money; but the class of people who went in for it weren't the same;
and two or three boys knew curates whose fathers were tradesmen:
they'd rather go out to the Colonies (in those days the Colonies
were still the last hope of those who could get nothing to do in
England) than be a curate under some chap who wasn't a gentleman.
At King's School, as at Blackstable Vicarage, a tradesman was
anyone who was not lucky enough to own land (and here a fine
distinction was made between the gentleman farmer and the
landowner), or did not follow one of the four professions to which
it was possible for a gentleman to belong. Among the day-boys, of
whom there were about a hundred and fifty, sons of the local gentry
and of the men stationed at the depot, those whose fathers were
engaged in business were made to feel the degradation of their
state.

  The masters had no patience with modern ideas of
education, which they read of sometimes in The Times or The
Guardian, and hoped fervently that King's School would remain true
to its old traditions. The dead languages were taught with such
thoroughness that an old boy seldom thought of Homer or Virgil in
after life without a qualm of boredom; and though in the common
room at dinner one or two bolder spirits suggested that mathematics
were of increasing importance, the general feeling was that they
were a less noble study than the classics. Neither German nor
chemistry was taught, and French only by the form-masters; they
could keep order better than a foreigner, and, since they knew the
grammar as well as any Frenchman, it seemed unimportant that none
of them could have got a cup of coffee in the restaurant at
Boulogne unless the waiter had known a little English. Geography
was taught chiefly by making boys draw maps, and this was a
favourite occupation, especially when the country dealt with was
mountainous: it was possible to waste a great deal of time in
drawing the Andes or the Apennines. The masters, graduates of
Oxford or Cambridge, were ordained and unmarried; if by chance they
wished to marry they could only do so by accepting one of the
smaller livings at the disposal of the Chapter; but for many years
none of them had cared to leave the refined society of Tercanbury,
which owing to the cavalry depot had a martial as well as an
ecclesiastical tone, for the monotony of life in a country rectory;
and they were now all men of middle age.