Chapter 33 Chapter Thirty-Three

Philip could not get Miss Wilkinson's affair out of his mind.Although she stopped short at a critical point, the meaning was clear enough that he was a little shocked.This kind of thing is of course nothing to a married woman. He has read a lot of French novels and knows that such things are indeed common in France.Miss Wilkinson, however, was an Englishwoman, unmarried, and her father was a clergyman.Then it occurred to him that perhaps the art student was neither her first nor her last lover, and he gasped at the thought: he had never experienced Miss Wilkinson in this respect. , It's unbelievable that someone actually wooed her.Because of his innocence, he did not doubt the authenticity of her self-report, just as he never doubted the content of the book; what annoyed him was why such a wonderful thing never happened to him.It would be a shame if Miss Wilkinson insisted on him telling about his adventures at Heidelberg and he had nothing to say.Of course, he also has a set of inventing skills, but whether he can convince her that he is a veteran of flirting is hard to say.A woman's intuition is very keen, and Philip saw that the book said so, and she might have seen at a glance that he was lying.He could not help but blush at the thought that she might hide her face and snigger at him.

Miss Wilkinson sang lazily as she played the piano.She sang songs by Massinet, Benjamin Godart, and Augusta Holmes, but they were all new to Philip.They just sat by the piano for hours on end.One day, Miss Wilkinson wondered if he had a natural singing voice, and insisted that he try it.She praised him for his melodious baritone voice and offered to teach him how to sing.At first, he declined out of his usual shyness.But she insisted again and again, so she taught him for an hour every day after breakfast.She had a gift for teaching, and was undoubtedly an excellent governess.She teaches well and is strict.During the lectures, although he still had a strong French accent, the softness was swept away.From the beginning to the end, there was no nonsense, and the decisive tone was somewhat authoritative; when the students wandered off or were slightly sloppy, she immediately stopped and corrected them unceremoniously out of instinct.Knowing her duty, she forced Philip to practice his voice.

As soon as the class was over, a seductive smile naturally appeared on her face, and her tone of speaking became gentle and lovely again.She shed the shell of being a teacher in an instant, but it was not so easy for Philip to get rid of his identity as a student. The impression he got in class was quite incompatible with her inner feelings when she told her personal affair.He observed her more nuancedly.He found Miss Wilkinson much more lovely in the evening than in the morning.In the morning, her face was wrinkled and the skin on her neck was a bit rough.He wished she'd covered her neck, but it was warm and she wore blouses that were cut low.She also likes to wear white clothes very much, and it is really not suitable for her to wear clothes of this color in the morning.At night, she looks charming and charming: she wears a long dress like an evening dress, with a necklace of red pomegranate beads hanging around her neck, and lace on the chest and elbows of the long dress, making her look gentle and pleasing like.The perfume she wore had a voluptuous smell (in Blackstable only cologne was used, and only a few drops on Sundays or when headaches struck).At this time, she did look very young.

Philip was troubled with calculating her age.He added twenty and seventeen together, but couldn't come up with a satisfactory answer.More than once he asked Aunt Louisa why she thought Miss Wilkinson was thirty-seven.She doesn't look thirty yet!It was well known that foreign women age faster than English women; Miss Wilkinson was almost a foreigner after her long stay in a foreign country.Philip personally thought she was under twenty-six. "She's more than that old," said Aunt Louisa. Philip had doubts about the accuracy of the Careys' words.The only thing they could remember was that the last time they saw Miss Wilkinson in Lincolnshire she had her braids on.Well, maybe she was only eleven or twelve years old then.That was many years ago, and the pastor's memory has always been unreliable.They say it was twenty years ago, but people like round numbers, so it was probably eighteen, or seventeen years ago.Seventeen plus twelve is just twenty-nine.Hell, is this age old?Cleopatra was forty-eight years old when Antony gave up the whole world for Cleopatra.

The summer weather was fine that year.Day after day, the sky was blue and cloudless.Although the climate is hot, but due to the proximity to the sea, the summer heat has been diluted, and the air is permeated with an exhilarating freshness. Therefore, even under the scorching sun in midsummer in August, you don't feel smoky and uncomfortable. Interested.There is a small pool in the garden, the fountain splashes in the pool, the water lilies are in full bloom, and the goldfish floats on the water, bathing in the sun.After lunch Philip and Miss Wilkinson used to take traveling rugs and cushions to the edge of the pool, and lie on the grass in the shade of the tall rose hedges.They just lay there all afternoon chatting, reading, and sometimes smoking a few cigarettes.The priest forbids smoking indoors, considering it a vice.He often said that it would be unseemly for anyone to be the slave of a hobby.He forgot that he himself had a penchant for afternoon tea.

One day Miss Wilkinson showed Philip the Life of a Bohemian.She found this book by chance in the pile of books in the parsonage's study.Mr. Carey once bought a batch of cheap books and bought them too, and they have been lying there for ten years. This masterpiece of Miller, with its bizarre plot, clumsy writing and absurd content, Philip was immediately fascinated as soon as he opened it.The descriptions of famine in the book are humorous, resentful but not angry; the scenes of abject poverty are vivid, and the love affairs that jump off the paper are so romantic when written by the author; But the writing is lingering, graceful and moving-all of which make Philip fascinated and overjoyed.Rudolph and Mimi, Musset and Shonard!They roamed the gray streets of the Latin Quarter in the strange costumes of Louis Philippe's time, and settled now in this little garret and now in that little garret. With tears and smiles, Drunken, dreaming and dying, carpe diem in time.Who can not be seduced by them?It is only when you come back to this book with a sounder discernment that you realize how vulgar their joys were, how mediocre their hearts were, and then you will feel that they were a bunch of rascals. There is nothing to be redeemed by a man, whether as an artist or as a mortal.But Philip was fascinated by it.

"Now you intend to go to Paris instead of London?" asked Miss Wilkinson, not without irony at his enthusiasm. "It's too late for me to go to Paris now," he replied. It has been two weeks since he came back from Germany, and he has talked with his uncle many times about his future.He had steadfastly refused to go to Oxford, and besides the fact that he would never get a scholarship, even Mr. Carey had come to the conclusion that he was incapable of going to college.Philip's entire fortune was originally only two thousand pounds, and although this money was invested in mortgages at five per cent interest, he could not live on the interest on it.Now the money is reduced a little more.The minimum cost of living at university is at least two hundred pounds a year, and it is absurd to spend such a large amount of money to study.Because even after three years at Oxford, I still couldn't support myself.He was anxious to go straight to London to earn a living.According to Mrs. Carey, a respected gentleman can only choose among four professions: Army, Navy, Judiciary, and Church.She also added a medical profession, because her brother-in-law was in it, but she did not forget that when she was young, no one considered doctors among the best.The first two professions did not need to be considered at all, and Philip himself was firmly opposed to the priesthood, so the only way out was to enter the judicial profession.The local doctor suggested that many well-to-do people were now engaged in engineering, but Mrs. Carey immediately objected.

"I don't want Philip to go into business," she said. "Yes, but he must have a job," replied the priest. "Why can't he be a doctor like his father?" "I hate this profession," Philip said. Mrs. Carey was not sorry.Since he wasn't going to Oxford, he couldn't expect to be a lawyer either.Because the Careys felt that in order to make a name for themselves in the industry, they had to have a degree.After discussing and discussing, it was finally suggested that Philip should be apprenticed to a lawyer.They wrote to the family lawyer, Albert Nixon, asking if he would take Philip as an apprentice.He was appointed executor of Henry Carey's will, along with the Vicar of Blackstable.A letter came back after a day or two, saying that there were no vacancies under his door, and he was very disapproving of their whole plan.At present, this industry is overcrowded. If a person has no funds and no backing, he can only be an office manager at most.He suggested that Philip should become an accountant.Neither the clergyman nor his wife knew what an accountant was, and Philip had never heard of anyone who was an accountant.The lawyer wrote another letter explaining: With the development of modern industry and commerce, with the increase of enterprises and companies, there have been many accounting firms that audit accounts and assist customers in financial management. The effective financial management system they have established, Something that old-fashioned financial management didn't have.Since its Royal Charter a few years ago, the industry has grown in importance every year, and is not only respected but also lucrative.The accounting firm that has managed Albert Nixon's finances for 30 years happened to have a vacancy for a trainee. They were willing to accept Philip for a fee of three hundred pounds, half of which would be paid in the form of salary during the five-year contract period. Return me.Although the prospect was not very attractive, Philip felt that he had to make a decision. He weighed the pros and cons, and finally his longing for life in London overwhelmed his withdrawal.The vicar of Blackstable wrote to ask Mr. Nixon whether this was a respectable occupation for a gentleman, and Mr. Nixon wrote back: "Since the grant of the charter, many young men who have gone to public schools and universities Everyone is involved in this industry.Besides, if Philip did not find the job to his liking and wished to leave after a year, Herbert Carter--the accountant--was willing to return half of the contract fee.Even so.According to the arrangement, Philip will start work on September 15th.

"I'll be free for a whole month," said Philip. "At that time, you will go to freedom, but I will throw myself into bondage," Miss Wilkinson replied.She had six weeks' leave, and would leave Blackstable only a day or two before Philip did. "I don't know if we will meet again in the future," she said. "I don't see why not?" "Oh, don't talk in such a dry tone. I've never seen anyone so ungrateful as you." Philip flushed.He was afraid that Miss Wilkinson would think of him as a pussy: after all, she was a young woman, and she was pretty sometimes, and he was almost twenty years old. If their conversation was limited to art and literature, it would be difficult Kind of ridiculous.He should woo her.They talked often about love, about the art student in the Rue de Brida, and about the Parisian portraitist.She had lived in his house for a long time, and he asked her to be a model, and pursued her fanatically, so frightened that she had to excuse herself and stop being a model for him.It goes without saying that Miss Wilkinson was accustomed to such courtesies.That day, she wore a big straw hat and looked very charming.It was hot in the afternoon, the hottest day since summer, and there were bead-sized beads of sweat on her upper lip.He thought of Miss Cacilie and Mr. Sung.He used to think of Cacilie without emotion.She was plain and unattractive, but in retrospect their affair seemed romantic.At this moment, he also has a chance to encounter some romantic affairs.Miss Wilkinson was almost entirely French, which added some spice to possible adventures.It made his heart tremble at the thought of it when he lay in bed at night, or when he was reading alone in the garden by day, but when Miss Wilkinson was in his presence it seemed less charming.

At any rate, after all the affairs she had told, she would not be surprised if he professed his love to her too.He also vaguely felt that she must be surprised that he hadn't expressed anything so far.Maybe it's just his own random thinking, but in the past two days, he has faintly discerned a bit of contempt in her eyes more than once. "What are you thinking about," said Miss Wilkinson, looking at him with a smile. "I don't want to tell you," he replied. He thought he should kiss her here and now.I don't know if she was expecting him to do that.But Bi Jing didn't say anything in advance, how could he be so reckless.She didn't think she was crazy, maybe she would give herself a slap in the face, maybe she would complain to his uncle.I really don't know how Mr. Song hooked up Cacilie.It would be bad if she told her uncle about it.He knew what his uncle was like, and he would tell the doctor and Josiah Graves, and he would look a complete fool in front of everyone.Hadn't Aunt Louisa insisted that Miss Wilkinson was a full thirty-seven years old?Thinking that he would become the laughing stock of everyone, he couldn't help feeling cold.They would also say that she was old enough to be his mother!

"See you're dazed again," smiled Miss Wilkinson. "I was thinking of you," he replied courageously. In any case, this sentence can not catch any braids. "What are you thinking about?" "Ah, this time it's you who's asking the bottom line." "Naughty boy!" said Miss Wilkinson. It's that tone again!Whenever he managed to arouse his feelings, she always said something that killed the scenery, so that people could not forget her identity as a governess.When he didn't meet her requirements when he practiced his voice, she playfully called him a mischievous one.This time it made him very unhappy. "I hope you don't treat me like a three-year-old." "Annoyed?" "Very annoying." "I didn't mean to." She held out her hand and he took it.On several occasions of late, when they shook hands in the evening, he seemed to have felt that she had squeezed his hand on purpose, but this time there was no doubt about it. He didn't know what to say next.At this moment, the opportunity for him to take risks finally came. If he missed this opportunity, wouldn't he really be a fool?It's a pity that this scene is too ordinary, it should be more charming.He had read a great deal about love, and he now felt nothing of the rush of inner emotion that novelists described. Not his ideal lover either.He often described to himself such a charming girl: with a pair of big watery eyes, her skin was as white and smooth as alabaster; he often imagined how he would bury his face in her rippling hair In thick brown hair.But he could not imagine burying his face in Miss Wilkinson's hair, which always made him feel a little sticky.Then again, stealing incense and jade is exciting enough after all. He is excited and proud of his upcoming success.He had seduced her entirely by himself.He made up his mind to kiss Miss Wilkinson, but not at this moment. He had to wait until night, when it was more convenient in a dimly lit place.As long as you kiss her, everything will be settled after that.Just tonight, be sure to kiss her.He also made a vow like this. He has a well-thought-out plan and thoughtful consideration.After supper he suggested that they should go for a walk in the garden, and Miss Wilkinson agreed.They walked side by side in the garden.Philip was very nervous.For some reason, talking and talking always failed to lead me that way.He had decided that the first step would be to put his arm around her waist, and she was talking about the regatta next week, so he couldn't just reach out and hook her.He skillfully led her into the shaded depths of the garden, but once there his courage was gone.They sat on the bench, and he really made up his mind to take advantage of the great opportunity in front of him, but at this moment, Miss Wilkinson suddenly said that there must be a coy here, and he would move forward no matter what.They walked about the garden again, and Philip made up his mind to make a decisive move before turning to the bench, but as they passed the house, he saw Mrs. Carey standing in the doorway. "Young men, you'd better come in. It's cold at night, and I dare say it's not doing you any good." "Perhaps we'd better go in," said Philip, "I don't want you to catch a cold." After all, he suddenly felt relieved.Don't think about what to do tonight.But then when he came back to his room alone, he was very angry with himself.What a complete fool.To be sure, Miss Wilkinson was waiting for him to kiss her, otherwise she would not have gone to the garden.Didn't she always say that only the French know how to treat women?Philip had read a good deal of French novels.If he had been French, he would have thrown her in his arms and told her passionately of his love; he would have pressed his lips to her nuque.He didn't understand why the French always liked to kiss women's nuque.He himself had never noticed anything charming about the neck.Of course, these things are easy for the French, and the language helps a lot, but Philip always felt that those passionate words sounded ridiculous in English.If only he had never intended, Philip thought, to lay siege to Miss Wilkinson's virtue.The first two weeks had been easy, but now he was suffering and restless.However, he must not stop there, or he will despise himself for the rest of his life.He was determined to kiss her tomorrow night. The next day, he got up and saw that it was raining outside. His first thought was that he couldn't go to the garden tonight.He was in good spirits at breakfast.Miss Wilkinson sent Mary to tell her she had a headache and didn't want to get out of bed.She did not come downstairs until afternoon tea, pale and in a well-fitting dressing-gown.By dinner time she was fully recovered, so the dinner was lively.When she had said her prayers, and said she must go to her room to rest, she kissed Mrs. Carey, and then turning to Philip, said: "My God!" she cried, "I want to kiss you!" "Why not?" he said. She chuckled and held out her hand.She squeezed his hand visibly. The next day the weather turned fine, and the blue sky did not see a wisp of cloud. In the rainy garden, the air was exceptionally fresh and fragrant.Philip went to the beach for a swim, and when he came back he had a good meal.In the afternoon there was a tennis-party at the Vicarage, and Miss Wilkinson dressed in her best dress.She really knew how to dress well, and Philip could not help noticing how well she looked beside the curate's wife and the doctor's ex-wife daughter.She adorned two roses on her belt, and sat in a garden chair on the edge of the lawn, holding a big red parasol. The sun shone through the umbrella and reflected on her face, with just the right shade.Philip likes to play tennis, and his serving skills are good. It is inconvenient for him to run, so he only plays close tennis.Although he has a foot problem, his movements are quite agile and it is difficult for him to concede a goal.He won every game, and he was so happy.At tea he sat at Miss Wilkinson's feet, sweating and panting. "That flannel suit suits you well," she said. "You look handsome this afternoon." He blushed with joy. "And I can honestly compliment you. You look mesmerizing." She smiled sweetly, and her dark eyes stared at his face for a long time. After dinner, he insisted that she go for a walk. "Have you played all day and haven't had enough?" "It's a beautiful night in the garden tonight, and the stars are out." He is in high spirits. "You know what? Mrs. Carey blames me for you," said Miss Wilkinson as they strolled through the vegetable garden. "She said I shouldn't have fallen in love with you." "Are you flirting with me? I haven't noticed yet." "She was just telling a joke." "You were so cruel last night, you just refused to kiss me." "You didn't even look at the way your uncle looked at me when I said that!" "You're so intimidated?" "I don't like being around when I kiss someone." "There's no one here right now." Philip wrapped his hands around her waist and kissed her on the mouth.She just grinned without flinching.Everything went quite naturally.Philip was quite proud.What he was determined to do, he did.It was the easiest thing in the world.If only he had done it earlier.He kissed her again. "Oh, you shouldn't have done that," she said. "why?" "Because I like your kisses so much," she laughed.