Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham [63]
“I might have known it. Of course you read Greek like a schoolmaster,” he said. “I read it like a poet.”
“And do you find it more poetic when you don’t quite know what it means? I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved the sense.”
At last, having finished the beer, Hayward left Weeks’s room hot and dishevelled; with an angry gesture he said to Philip:
“Of course the man’s a pedant. He has no real feeling for beauty. Accuracy is the virtue of clerks. It’s the spirit of the Greeks that we aim at. Weeks is like that fellow who went to hear Rubinstein and complained that he played false notes. False notes! What did they matter when he played divinely?”
Philip, not knowing how many incompetent people have found solace in these false notes, was much impressed.
Hayward could never resist the opportunity which Weeks offered him of regaining ground lost on a previous occasion, and Weeks was able with the greatest ease to draw him into a discussion. Though he could not help seeing how small his attainments were beside the American’s, his British pertinacity, his wounded vanity (perhaps they are the same thing), would not allow him to give up the struggle. Hayward seemed to take a delight in displaying his ignorance, self-satisfaction, and wrongheadedness. Whenever Hayward said something which was illogical, Weeks in a few words would show the falseness of his reasoning, pause for a moment to enjoy his triumph, and then hurry on to another subject. as though Christian charity impelled him to spare the vanquished foe. Philip tried sometimes to put in something to help his friend, and Weeks gently crushed him, but so kindly, differently from the way in which he answered Hayward, that even Philip, outrageously sensitive, could not feel hurt. Now and then, losing his calm as he felt himself more and more foolish, Hayward became abusive, -and only the American’s smiling politeness prevented the argument from degenerating into a quarrel. On these occasions when Hayward left Weeks’s room he muttered angrily:
“Damned Yankee!”
That settled it. It was a perfect answer to an argument which had seemed unanswerable.
Though they began by discussing all manner of subjects in Weeks’s little room eventually the conversation always turned to religion: the theological student took a professional interest in it, and Hayward welcomed a subject in which hard facts need not disconcert him; when feeling is the gauge you can snap your fingers at logic, and when your logic is weak that is very agreeable. Hayward found it difficult to explain his beliefs to Philip without a great flow of words; but it was clear (and this fell in with Philip’s idea of the natural order of things) that he had been brought up in the church by law established. Though he had now given up all idea of becoming a Roman Catholic, he still looked upon that communion with sympathy. He had much to say in its praise, and he compared favorably its gorgeous ceremonies with the simple services of the Church of England. He gave Philip Newman’s Apologia to read, and Philip, finding it very dull, nevertheless read it to the end.
“Read it for its style, not for its matter,’ said Hayward.
He talked enthusiastically of the music at the Oratory, and said charming things about the connexion between incense and the devotional spirits. Weeks listened to him with his frigid smile.
“You think it proves the truth of Roman Catholicism that John Henry Newman wrote good English and that Cardinal Manning has a picturesque appearance?”
Hayward hinted that he had gone through much trouble with his soul. For a year he had swum in a sea of darkness. He passed his fingers through his fair, waving hair and told them that he would not for five hundred pounds endure again those agonies of mind. Fortunately he had reached calm waters at last.
“But what do you believe?” asked Philip, who was never satisfied with vague statement.
“I believe in the Whole, the