Philip accepted the invitation. They were quite
a party. There were the two daughters of the
Frau Professor, the two other girls, one of the American
students, and Philip. Philip walked by the side
of Anna and Fraulein Hedwig. He was a little
fluttered. He had never known any girls.
At Blackstable there were only the farmers’ daughters
and the girls of the local tradesmen. He knew
them by name and by sight, but he was timid, and he
thought they laughed at his deformity. He accepted
willingly the difference which the Vicar and Mrs.
Carey put between their own exalted rank and that
of the farmers. The doctor had two daughters,
but they were both much older than Philip and had
been married to successive assistants while Philip
was still a small boy. At school there had been
two or three girls of more boldness than modesty whom
some of the boys knew; and desperate stories, due
in all probability to the masculine imagination, were
told of intrigues with them; but Philip had always
concealed under a lofty contempt the terror with which
they filled him. His imagination and the books
he had read had inspired in him a desire for the Byronic
attitude; and he was torn between a morbid self-consciousness
and a conviction that he owed it to himself to be
gallant. He felt now that he should be bright
and amusing, but his brain seemed empty and he could
not for the life of him think of anything to say.
Fraulein Anna, the Frau Professor’s daughter,
addressed herself to him frequently from a sense of
duty, but the other said little: she looked at
him now and then with sparkling eyes, and sometimes
to his confusion laughed outright. Philip felt
that she thought him perfectly ridiculous. They
walked along the side of a hill among pine-trees,
and their pleasant odour caused Philip a keen delight.
The day was warm and cloudless. At last they came
to an eminence from which they saw the valley of the
Rhine spread out before them under the sun. It
was a vast stretch of country, sparkling with golden
light, with cities in the distance; and through it
meandered the silver ribband of the river. Wide
spaces are rare in the corner of Kent which Philip
knew, the sea offers the only broad horizon, and the
immense distance he saw now gave him a peculiar, an
indescribable thrill. He felt suddenly elated.
Though he did not know it, it was the first time that
he had experienced, quite undiluted with foreign emotions,
the sense of beauty. They sat on a bench, the
three of them, for the others had gone on, and while
the girls talked in rapid German, Philip, indifferent
to their proximity, feasted his eyes.
“By Jove, I am happy,” he said to himself
unconsciously.
XXIII
Philip thought occasionally of the King’s School
at Tercanbury, and laughed to himself as he remembered
what at some particular moment of the day they were
doing. Now and then he dreamed that he was there
still, and it gave him an extraordinary satisfaction,
on awaking, to realise that he was in his little room
in the turret. From his bed he could see the great
cumulus clouds that hung in the blue sky. He revelled
in his freedom. He could go to bed when he chose
and get up when the fancy took him. There was
no one to order him about. It struck him that
he need not tell any more lies.
