of reward or punishment. There was small occasion
for heroism in the Frau Professor’s house, but
he was a little more exactly truthful than he had been,
and he forced himself to be more than commonly attentive
to the dull, elderly ladies who sometimes engaged
him in conversation. The gentle oath, the violent
adjective, which are typical of our language and which
he had cultivated before as a sign of manliness, he
now elaborately eschewed.
Having settled the whole matter to his satisfaction
he sought to put it out of his mind, but that was
more easily said than done; and he could not prevent
the regrets nor stifle the misgivings which sometimes
tormented him. He was so young and had so few
friends that immortality had no particular attractions
for him, and he was able without trouble to give up
belief in it; but there was one thing which made him
wretched; he told himself that he was unreasonable,
he tried to laugh himself out of such pathos; but
the tears really came to his eyes when he thought that
he would never see again the beautiful mother whose
love for him had grown more precious as the years
since her death passed on. And sometimes, as
though the influence of innumerable ancestors, Godfearing
and devout, were working in him unconsciously, there
seized him a panic fear that perhaps after all it
was all true, and there was, up there behind the blue
sky, a jealous God who would punish in everlasting
flames the atheist. At these times his reason
could offer him no help, he imagined the anguish of
a physical torment which would last endlessly, he
felt quite sick with fear and burst into a violent
sweat. At last he would say to himself desperately:
“After all, it’s not my fault. I
can’t force myself to believe. If there
is a God after all and he punishes me because I honestly
don’t believe in Him I can’t help it.”
XXIX
Winter set in. Weeks went to Berlin to attend
the lectures of Paulssen, and Hayward began to think
of going South. The local theatre opened its
doors. Philip and Hayward went to it two or three
times a week with the praiseworthy intention of improving
their German, and Philip found it a more diverting
manner of perfecting himself in the language than listening
to sermons. They found themselves in the midst
of a revival of the drama. Several of Ibsen’s
plays were on the repertory for the winter; Sudermann’s
Die Ehre was then a new play, and on its production
in the quiet university town caused the greatest excitement;
it was extravagantly praised and bitterly attacked;
other dramatists followed with plays written under
the modern influence, and Philip witnessed a series
of works in which the vileness of mankind was displayed
before him. He had never been to a play in his
life till then (poor touring companies sometimes came
to the Assembly Rooms at Blackstable, but the Vicar,
partly on account of his profession, partly because
