Chapter 5

Chapter 5

At the time of Lilia's death Philip Herriton was just
twenty-four years of age--indeed the news reached Sawston on
his birthday. He was a tall, weakly-built young man, whose
clothes had to be judiciously padded on the shoulders in
order to make him pass muster. His face was plain rather
than not, and there was a curious mixture in it of good and
bad. He had a fine forehead and a good large nose, and both
observation and sympathy were in his eyes. But below the
nose and eyes all was confusion, and those people who
believe that destiny resides in the mouth and chin shook
their heads when they looked at him.

Philip himself, as a boy, had been keenly conscious of
these defects. Sometimes when he had been bullied or
hustled about at school he would retire to his cubicle and
examine his features in a looking-glass, and he would sigh
and say, "It is a weak face. I shall never carve a place
for myself in the world." But as years went on he became
either less self-conscious or more self-satisfied. The
world, he found, made a niche for him as it did for every
one. Decision of character might come later--or he might
have it without knowing. At all events he had got a sense
of beauty and a sense of humour, two most desirable gifts.
The sense of beauty developed first. It caused him at the
age of twenty to wear parti-coloured ties and a squashy hat,
to be late for dinner on account of the sunset, and to catch
art from Burne-Jones to Praxiteles. At twenty-two he went
to Italy with some cousins, and there he absorbed into one
aesthetic whole olive-trees, blue sky, frescoes, country
inns, saints, peasants, mosaics, statues, beggars. He came
back with the air of a prophet who would either remodel
Sawston or reject it. All the energies and enthusiasms of a
rather friendless life had passed into the championship of beauty.

In a short time it was over. Nothing had happened
either in Sawston or within himself. He had shocked
half-a-dozen people, squabbled with his sister, and bickered
with his mother. He concluded that nothing could happen,
not knowing that human love and love of truth sometimes
conquer where love of beauty fails.

A little disenchanted, a little tired, but aesthetically
intact, he resumed his placid life, relying more and more on
his second gift, the gift of humour. If he could not reform
the world, he could at all events laugh at it, thus
attaining at least an intellectual superiority. Laughter,
he read and believed, was a sign of good moral health, and
he laughed on contentedly, till Lilia's marriage toppled
contentment down for ever. Italy, the land of beauty, was
ruined for him. She had no power to change men and things
who dwelt in