“I say, Carey, why are you being such a silly
ass? It doesn’t do you any good cutting
me and all that.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” answered
Philip.
“Well, I don’t see why you shouldn’t
talk.”
“You bore me,” said Philip.
“Please yourself.”
Rose shrugged his shoulders and left him. Philip
was very white, as he always became when he was moved,
and his heart beat violently. When Rose went
away he felt suddenly sick with misery. He did
not know why he had answered in that fashion.
He would have given anything to be friends with Rose.
He hated to have quarrelled with him, and now that
he saw he had given him pain he was very sorry.
But at the moment he had not been master of himself.
It seemed that some devil had seized him, forcing him
to say bitter things against his will, even though
at the time he wanted to shake hands with Rose and
meet him more than halfway. The desire to wound
had been too strong for him. He had wanted to
revenge himself for the pain and the humiliation he
had endured. It was pride: it was folly too,
for he knew that Rose would not care at all, while
he would suffer bitterly. The thought came to
him that he would go to Rose, and say:
“I say, I’m sorry I was such a beast.
I couldn’t help it. Let’s make it
up.”
But he knew he would never be able to do it.
He was afraid that Rose would sneer at him. He
was angry with himself, and when Sharp came in a little
while afterwards he seized upon the first opportunity
to quarrel with him. Philip had a fiendish instinct
for discovering other people’s raw spots, and
was able to say things that rankled because they were
true. But Sharp had the last word.
“I heard Rose talking about you to Mellor just
now,” he said. “Mellor said:
Why didn’t you kick him? It would teach
him manners. And Rose said: I didn’t
like to. Damned cripple.”
Philip suddenly became scarlet. He could not
answer, for there was a lump in his throat that almost
choked him.
Philip was moved into the Sixth, but he hated school
now with all his heart, and, having lost his ambition,
cared nothing whether he did ill or well. He
awoke in the morning with a sinking heart because he
must go through another day of drudgery. He was
tired of having to do things because he was told;
and the restrictions irked him, not because they were
unreasonable, but because they were restrictions.
He yearned for freedom. He was weary of repeating
things that he knew already and of the hammering away,
for the sake of a thick-witted fellow, at something
that he understood from the beginning.
