Chapter 112 Chapter 12

Josiah Graves managed the funeral with great organizational skills, and it was done with style and money.As soon as the funeral was over he accompanied Philip back to the vicarage.The will of the late pastor is in his hands.Over his tea, he read the will to Philip with an emotion befitting the atmosphere.It is said to be a will, but it is only half a piece of paper, which states that everything left by Mr. Carey after his death will be inherited by his nephew Philip.The specific items include: furniture; eighty pounds in bank deposits; besides twenty shares in Eppy West, shares in Althorp Winery, Oxford Variety Theatre, and a restaurant in London.These shares were purchased at the direction of Mr. Graves.At this point Mr. Graves said to Philip quite proudly:

"You know, as a human being, you have to eat, drink, and have fun. If you invest money in items that the public thinks are indispensable for a moment, then you can rest assured that you can't lose money if you keep it." Graves's words express the difference between the vulgarity of the inferior and the elegance of the superior, and it is just right.Philip was disgusted with the vulgarity of inferior people, but he accepted it wholeheartedly.The total amount invested in various industries is only about five hundred pounds, but this amount must include bank deposits and proceeds from auction furniture.For Philip, this was a fortune. Although he was not very happy in his heart, he felt a sense of a stone that had been weighing on his heart for a long time suddenly fell to the ground.

Then, the two of them agreed to auction off the furniture as soon as possible.After this, Mr. Graves took his leave, and Philip set about sorting out the letters and papers which had been left by the dead man.The venerable Reverend William Carey used to boast that he never destroyed a thing, and he took pride in it.So the room was filled with bundles of correspondence from fifty years ago and packets of neatly signed slips.The late pastor not only preserved letters written to him, but also his letters to others.Among them was a bunch of yellowed letters, all written by the pastor to his father in the forties.At the time, he was on a long holiday in Germany as a graduate of Oxford University.Philip read it absently.The William Carey who wrote the letter was quite different from the William Carey he remembered, but it is not difficult for a careful reader to see some shadow of the grown-up Carey from the young man who wrote the letter .The letters were well-written and well-mannered, but there was something pretentious and artificial about them.In his letter he stated that he had gone through a lot of painstaking efforts in order to taste all the sights worth seeing; he also described the beauty of the castle on the Rhine with elegance and excitement.The waterfall in Schaffhausen opened the floodgates of his emotions. He wrote in the letter: "I can't help admiring the Almighty Creator of the universe. I am grateful to Dade. His works are simply too wonderful and beautiful." Moreover, he also Can't help thinking that those who live "in the presence of this masterpiece of the divine Creator should be moved by the expectation of living a holy life".Among some bills Philip found a pocket portrait of William Carey, just consecrated: a lean young curate, with long curly hair, and dark Large, dreamy eyes, a pale ascetic face.At this moment, Philip heard his uncle's chuckling laughter, which his uncle used to laugh like when he was alive, and told how some ladies who admired him had made dozens of slippers for him.Philip spent the rest of the afternoon and the whole evening sorting through this innumerable pile of letters.He glanced at the address and signature on the letter first, then tore the letter in half and threw it into the wastebasket beside him.Suddenly, he found a letter signed by Helen, but he didn't recognize the handwriting on it. It was written in old handwriting, and the strokes were thin and stiff.The title is "Dear William" and the signature is "Your dear sister-in-law".He suddenly realized that the letter was originally written by his mother.He had never seen her letters, so her handwriting was foreign to him.What the letter wrote was about him.

Dear William: Stephen wrote to you, thanking you for your congratulations on the birth of our son and your best wishes for myself.Thank God, our mother and son are safe and sound.I am deeply grateful for the mercy God has bestowed upon me.Now that I can hold a pen, I should like to express my heart to you and dear Louisa.I can't thank you enough for the care you've both shown me since my confinement and my marriage to Stephen.Here I am asking you to do me a favor.Stephen and I would like to ask you to be godfather to this boy, and hope you will accept this request.I am convinced that you will agree to take this responsibility seriously, and it is for this reason that I have the liberty to make this request to you, which is by no means a trivial matter.I earnestly look forward to your taking on this role, as you are both a priest and this boy's uncle.The happiness of this child is really worrying and worrying.For this reason, I prayed to God day and night, asking God to bless this child to grow into a kind, honest and Christian person.I sincerely hope that under your teaching, this child will become a believer who believes in Christianity, and that he will be a pious, humble, and filial person all his life.

your dear sister-in-law Helen Philip pushed the letter aside, leaned forward, and put his face in his hands.The letter struck a chord in his heart, and at the same time astonished him.He was surprised by the didactic tone of the letter, which seemed to him neither cloying nor sentimental.It has been nearly twenty years since his mother died, and he only knows that she is beautiful, other than that, he has no impression of her.Knowing that his mother had been so innocent and pious during her lifetime, Philip couldn't help being surprised.He had never thought of this aspect of his mother's character.He picked up his mother's letter again and reread the passages about him, her hopes and thoughts about himself.But he turned out to be a very different kind of person from what his mother expected.He studied himself carefully for a moment.Maybe she was better off dead.Then, in a moment of emotion, Philip tore up the letter with a snap.The intimacy and candid tone of the letter make it seem like a peculiarly personal letter.At this moment Philip could not help feeling an inexplicable feeling that it would be immoral for him to read the letter revealing his mother's soul.Then he went on to organize the disgusting pile of letters left by the priest.

A few days later Philip was in London, and for the first time in two years he entered the halls of St Luke's Hospital in white heaven.He went to see the secretary of the medical school.The secretary was very surprised to see Philip, and asked curiously about Philip's situation in the previous period.Philip's previous experiences gave him a sense of confidence and enabled him to see things with new eyes.In the past, after listening to the secretary's inquiry, Philip would have been embarrassed and ashamed.But now he was calm and calm, and replied that some personal matters made him have to suspend his studies, and now he wanted to obtain the qualifications to be a doctor as soon as possible.And in order to prevent the secretary from asking questions, he deliberately made his words vague.Since the earliest examination subjects he could take were midwifery and gynecology, he registered his name and went to the gynecological ward to become a midwife.It was a holiday, and he got the seat without much trouble.The two finally agreed that his work schedule would be the last week of August and the first two weeks of September.Philip came out from the secretary and walked across the school.The exams for the summer semester had just ended, so the campus was seldom seen and seemed empty.He wandered along the river terrace.At this point, he was content.Now, he thought to himself, he could begin a new life, leaving behind all his past mistakes, follies, and misfortunes.The ever-flowing river symbolizes that everything is gone, that everything is always disappearing, that nothing matters.A bright future full of opportunity opened up before him.

When Philip returned to Blackstable he was busy with his uncle's estate.The day for the furniture auction was set for mid-August, because at that time many people would come here from all over the country for summer vacation, so that the furniture could be sold at a good price.Catalogs have been printed and distributed to dealers in used bookshops in Canterbury, Maidstone and Ashford. One afternoon, on a sudden whim, Philip ran to Canterbury to visit the school where he had been studying.He hasn't been back since the day he left school.He remembered leaving school that day with a sense of relief, thinking that from then on, he would be free to make his own arrangements.Walking through the narrow streets of Canterbury, which he had known for many years, he could not help feeling a strange emotion in him.He looked at those few old shops, they were still there, and they were still selling the same products as in the past.In one window there were textbooks, religious books, and recent novels, and in another hung photographs of the cathedral and the city.Sporting goods stores are stocked with fishing gear, cricket and tennis racquets and footballs.The tailor's shop was still there, and all the clothes he wore throughout his childhood were made in this shop.The fish shop was still open; his uncle used to go there to buy a few fish every time he came to Canterbury.He strolled along the dirty street until he came to a high wall with a red-brick building in it that was the preparatory school.A few steps forward is the gate leading to the Royal College.Philip stood in a quadrangle surrounded by several buildings.At four o'clock, students flocked out of the school.He saw teachers wearing square caps and gowns, but he didn't know any of them.It has been more than ten years since he left this school, and the school has changed greatly.Philip saw the principal of the school, walking slowly from the school to his house, chatting with what appeared to be a sixth grader.The headmaster's face remained the same, not much changed. It was still the skinny, haggard, and grotesque look in Philip's memory. The two eyes were still as burning, but there were a few silver strands mixed with the original black beard. The pale face was deeply lined.Philip would have liked to go up and speak to him, but he was afraid that the headmaster would not remember him, and he was afraid of introducing himself.

The male students lingered in the school, talking to each other.After a while, some of the students were eager to play in a different way, so they ran out to play ball; the students behind ran out of the school gate in twos and threes.Philip knew they were going to the cricket ground.Another group of students entered the field to play tennis.Philip stood among them, a total stranger, save for one or two students who glanced at him indifferently.However, the sight of the Norman staircase is so common that visitors rarely attract attention.Philip watched the students curiously.He reflected wistfully on the distance between him and his students, and recalled bitterly the times when he had tried to make a splash, but had done so little in the end.In his view, the passing years are like unrecoverable overwhelmed water, wasted in vain.Those children were full of energy and vigor, playing the games he used to play back then, as if not a single day had passed since he left school.However, in the same place where he could at least call everyone by name, now he knew no one.In a few years, if other children were playing on the playground, this group of students in front of him would be ignored like he is now.He wondered what his classmates were doing now: they were also thirty years old.Some of them may have died; while those who are still alive have married and established businesses, and have children.They were soldiers, priests, doctors and lawyers.They are all about to bid farewell to youth and enter the age of forty.Has any of them messed up their lives like Philip?He remembered the boy he once loved dearly.Strange to say, he could not remember his name.Philip still remembered the boy's face and voice, and his face.The two of them had been very good friends, but they just couldn't remember his name.Philip recalled with amusement how he had been so jealous on his account.He couldn't remember his name, but it made Philip anxious like something.He longed to be a child again, like the children he had seen wandering across the quad, so that he could avoid his mistakes, be a man again, and learn more from life.Suddenly, an unbearable sense of loneliness hit his heart.He almost complained of the hard times he had lived the previous two years, for the pain of life was softened by the mere struggle to get on with the world.In the sweat of your brow you shall eat your bread.Although this motto is not a curse to human beings, it is an anesthetic that makes human beings bow their heads to the mercy of life.

But Philip could not contain himself, and recalled his thoughts on the pattern of life: that his misfortunes were but parts of a beautiful and delicate ornament.He kept reminding himself that he would gladly accept any boredom, excitement, joy, or pain, because they all added color to the pattern he designed.He consciously pursues beauty.He remembered how, as a boy, he must have loved that Gothic cathedral, just as one sees it now from the tennis court.So he moved there and gazed at the huge gray building under the cloudy sky, with its central spire so high that it seemed people were praising God.The children were playing tennis, all agile, strong, and lively.Philip could not help listening to the shouts and laughter of the children.The young man's cries had a peculiar timbre of their own, but Philip only admired with his eyes the wonderful thing that was unfolding before him.