what power it was in him that prevented him from making any expression of regret. He felt his ears tingling, he was a little inclined to cry, but no word would issue from his lips."You needn't make it worse by sulking," said Mr. Carey.
Tea was finished in silence. Mrs. Carey looked at Philip surreptitiously now and then, but the Vicar elaborately ignored him. When Philip saw his uncle go upstairs to get ready for church he went into the hall and got his hat and coat, but when the Vicar came downstairs and saw him, he said:
"I don't wish you to go to church tonight, Philip. I don't think you're in a proper frame of mind to enter the House of God." Philip did not say a word. He felt it was a deep humiliation that was placed upon him, and his cheeks reddened. He stood silently
watching his uncle put on his broad hat and his voluminous cloak. Mrs. Carey as usual went to the door to see him off. Then she
turned to Philip.
"Never mind, Philip, you won't be a naughty boy next Sunday, will you, and then your uncle will take you to church with him in the evening."
She took off his hat and coat, and led him into the dining-room.
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"Shall you and I read the service together, Philip, and we'll sing the hymns at the harmonium. Would you like that?"
Philip shook his head decidedly. Mrs. Carey was taken aback. If he would not read the evening service with her she did not know what to do with him.
"Then what would you like to do until your uncle comes back?" she asked helplessly. Philip broke his silence at last.
"I want to be left alone," he said.
"Philip, how can you say anything so unkind? Don't you know that your uncle and I only want your good? Don't you love me at all?" "I hate you. I wish you was dead."
Mrs. Carey gasped. He said the words so savagely that it gave her quite a start. She had nothing to say. She sat down in her husband's chair; and as she thought of her desire to love the friendless, crippled boy and her eager wish that he should love her--she was a barren woman and, even though it was clearly God's will that she should be childless, she could scarcely bear to look at little children sometimes, her heart ached so--the tears rose to her eyes and one by one, slowly, rolled down her cheeks. Philip watched her in amazement. She took out her handkerchief, and now she cried without restraint. Suddenly Philip realised that she was crying because of what he had said, and he was sorry. He went up to her silently and kissed her. It was the first kiss he had ever given her without being asked. And the poor lady, so small in her black satin, shrivelled up and sallow, with her funny corkscrew curls, took the little
boy on her lap and put her arms around him and wept as though her heart would break. But her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.
IX
On the following Sunday, when the Vicar was making his preparations to go into the drawing-room for his nap--all the actions of his life were conducted with ceremony--and Mrs. Carey was about to go upstairs, Philip asked:
"What shall I do if I'm not allowed to play?" "Can't you sit still for once and be quiet?"
"I can't sit still till tea-time."
Mr. Carey looked out of the window, but it was cold and raw, and he could not suggest that Philip should go into the garden. "I know what you can do. You can learn by heart the collect for the day."
He took the prayer-book which was used for prayers from the harmonium, and turned the pages till he came to the place he wanted. "It's not a long one. If you can say it without a mistake when I come in to tea you shall have the top of my egg."
Mrs. Carey drew up Philip's chair to the dining-room table--they had bought him a high chair by now--and placed the book in front of him.
"The devil finds work for idle hands to do," said Mr. Carey.
He put some more coals on the fire so that there should be a cheerful blaze when he came in to tea, and went into the drawing-room. He loosened his collar, arranged the cushions, and settled himself comfortably on the sofa. But thinking the drawing-room a little chilly, Mrs. Carey brought him a rug from the hall; she put it over his legs and tucked it round his feet. She drew the blinds
so that the light should not offend his eyes, and since he had closed them already went out of the room on tiptoe. The Vicar was at peace with himself today, and in ten minutes he was asleep. He snored softly.
It was the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, and the collect began with the words: O God, whose blessed Son was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil, and make us the sons of God, and heirs of Eternal life. Philip read it through. He could make
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no sense of it. He began saying the words aloud to himself, but many of them were unknown to him, and the construction of the sentence was strange. He could not get more than two lines in his head. And his attention was constantly wandering: there were fruit trees trained on the walls of the vicarage, and a long twig beat now and then against the windowpane; sheep grazed stolidly in the field beyond the garden. It seemed as though there were knots inside his brain. Then panic seized him that he would not know the words by tea-time, and he kept on whispering them to himself quickly; he did not try to understand, but merely to get them parrot-like into his memory.
Mrs. Carey could not sleep that afternoon, and by four o'clock she was so wide awake that she came downstairs. She thought she would hear Philip his collect so that he should make no mistakes when he said it to his uncle. His uncle then would be pleased; he would see that the boy's heart was in the right place. But when Mrs. Carey came to the dining-room and was about to go in, she heard a sound that made her stop suddenly. Her heart gave a little jump. She turned away and quietly slipped out of the front-door. She walked round the house till she came to the dining-room window and then cautiously looked in. Philip was still sitting on the chair she had put him in, but his head was on the table buried in his arms, and he was sobbing desperately. She saw the convulsive movement of his shoulders. Mrs. Carey was frightened. A thing that had always struck her about the child was that he seemed so collected. She had never seen him cry. And now she realised that his calmness was some instinctive shame of showing his fillings: he hid himself to weep.
Without thinking that her husband disliked being wakened suddenly, she burst into the drawing-room. "William, William," she said. "The boy's crying as though his heart would break."
Mr. Carey sat up and disentangled himself from the rug about his legs. "What's he got to cry about?"
"I don't know.... Oh, William, we can't let the boy be unhappy. D'you think it's our fault? If we'd had children we'd have known what to do."
Mr. Carey looked at her in perplexity. He felt extraordinarily helpless.
"He can't be crying because I gave him the collect to learn. It's not more than ten lines."
"Don't you think I might take him some picture books to look at, William? There are some of the Holy Land. There couldn't be anything wrong in that."
"Very well, I don't mind."
Mrs. Carey went into the study. To collect books was Mr. Carey's only passion, and he never went into Tercanbury without spending an hour or two in the second-hand shop; he always brought back four or five musty volumes. He never read them, for he had long
