For his years he was early in Miss Tibbet's class. There was something about him which much endeared Philip to the young ladies of ten and eleven who sat in the same benches. The emotion at first was one of somewhat elderly amusement and compassion. But when Jane Freedman declared herself in love with him, it became a universal discovery that Philip lay wedged between the split sections of every heart. They brought offerings to him—cigarette cards, jujubes and raw carrots, (Philip had an unholy appetite for raw carrots). One day Jane Freedman waylaid him with a large lump of pine-apple rock.
"Kiss me, and it is yours!" she said. It was a very large and inviting piece of pine-apple rock; it had only been slightly sucked, not more than a taste. He kissed her.
The other girls promptly waylaid him with larger pieces of pine-apple rock. The whole thing really was very unpleasant. On the other hand pine-apple rock had its compensation. Yet Philip developed a great distaste for humanity. Boys, at one extreme, were more unclean than cats, (cats being the predominant fauna of Angel Street, they were a useful starting point for all philosophy). Girls, at the other, were more sentimental than fish. Pine-apple rock began speedily to pall upon him.
School was wearying beyond words. Not a chance gleam of gold filtered through the pall of cloud. Miss Tibbet's mouth opened; then it closed. It would have been an incident, even if you could have seen her eyelids blink beyond her spectacles. She taught poetry as she taught vulgar fractions. A mad impulse began to seize upon Philip. He must separate his own lips further, wider, more hilariously than ever Miss Tibbet was capable. Then to deliver himself of one prolonged shout—no more. One prolonged shout which would cleave a path through the clouds of monotony wherethrough the dizzy horses of adventure might come tumbling from the spacious blue winds beyond. Not a shout of pain or of desperation. A shout merely from the whole capacity of his lungs, a human shout, a challenge of the body in ennui.
His lips opened trembling. Miss Tibbet's spectacles swept blankly towards his face. He bent down over his paper. The impulse waxed within him and became a passion. He began to say to himself that the whole future of his life depended upon his courage. If he did not open his lips and yell he would be one thing. If he did open his lips and yell, he would be another thing, and a bigger, freer thing. One day he stretched his jaws to make the effort. The back of his mouth was crammed with sand. He lifted his hand as if to hide a yawn.
A mystic conviction took possession of him. If he had any value, that shout would be achieved. But its agent would be something greater than himself. Prepared or unprepared for it, the shout would come, if he was worthy.
It was a very hot afternoon. Miss Tibbet croaked at the blackboard like a machine. A desultory dog was barking somewhere with insensate yelps. The geranium before the closed windows drooped in the heat. Flies were droning aimlessly.
A huge shout swept suddenly into every corner of the room, slapped Miss Tibbet's face like the palm of a hand. There was an intense silence. All eyes turned to Philip's face, which was flushed furiously red, unhappy, exultant.
"Philip Massel, stand up!" He shuffled to his feet.
"Was it you who made that noise?"
"Yes, Miss Tibbet!"
"Why did you make that noise?"
"I don't know!"
"Did somebody stick a pin into you?"
"No!"
"Did anybody stick a pin into Philip Massel?"
No reply.
Here was something entirely beyond Miss Tibbet's experience.
"Will the monitors keep order, please, while I take this boy to the head master!"
Philip knew that sooner or later he would burst into tears. But a great load was off his mind. He was free, he was free! For one moment of dizzy elation a pang of that emotion struck him which long ago made him tremble on a locker in Miss Green's room before the fateful question—"Tell me, Philip, which would you rather be, Jew or Christian?" The sheer poignancy passed, but something of his elation remained, even in the cadaverous sanctum of the head master.
Mr. Tomlinson sat ominous in his chair as he listened to Miss Tibbet's recital.
"Why did you behave in that disgraceful way, Philip Massel?"
"I—I—don't know, sir!"
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"I don't know, sir!"
"Are you sure it wasn't a pin?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Are you in pain?"
"No, sir!"
"Am I to understand that … " But Philip's shoulders were shaking. Big tears rolled down his face. He hid his face in a dirty, frayed handkerchief. He heard Mr. Tomlinson and Miss Tibbet whispering overhead.
"The heat … " said one.
"Yes, I should think … the heat. … "
"You may go home, Philip Massel!" said Mr. Tomlinson. "Tell your mother to put you to bed at once. Say I told her she must keep you quiet. Don't come to school to-morrow if your head is aching. … And never let it happen again, young man! Understand that!"
Philip withdrew. A grin mingled maliciously with his tears.
A day or two later he was standing contemplatively against the playground wall during the interval, when he observed Harry Sewelson approaching. Sewelson, though he was about a year older, was in Philip's class. He lived in a draper's shop some minutes along Doomington Road. They had had no commerce hitherto. Philip made a new friend with extreme difficulty, and though he realized that there was a quality in Sewelson, a keenness in his grey eyes, which distinguished him from the rest, there was a garlic vulgarity about him, a strongly-flavoured bluster, which, he had learned from Reb Monash, was inseparable from Roumanian Jewry.
"I say!" declared Sewelson, "I bet you I know what was the matter on Tuesday! I bet I know why you gave that shout!"
"Bet you don't!" Philip replied. He was vaguely proud of the complex of motives which had induced him to behave in so baffling a manner.
"Nobody pricked you!" Sewelson asserted.
"Right for once!" Philip agreed.
"And you weren't ill! I bet I know!"
Philip looked up curiously.
"You just wanted to!" Sewelson whispered in a somewhat melodramatic manner. "You felt you just had to. You couldn't get away. You were sick and tired!"
Philip's brown eyes looked up shyly, with a certain pleasure, with a certain distrust, into the grey eyes before him.
"You're right!" said Philip. "It wasn't my fault!"
"I say," Sewelson said, after a pause. "I say … " Then he paused again.
"Yes?" asked Philip.
"I say, what about being pals?"
Philip blushed slightly. "Let's!" he said.
They walked down the playground with linked arms.
"Oh, yes!" accepted Philip innocently. "I do think Miss Tibbet is a narky bitch!"
"Carried nem-con!" exclaimed Sewelson, proud of his elegant introduction of a foreign tongue.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу