Martin spent his last two terms without effort and without emotion. The fact that he was a scholar elect of King's College, Oxford, caused him to feel in some strange way that his career was made and that there was nothing more to be done. So he chattered to Finney on Sunday afternoons, read poetry (condescendingly now) at Mrs Berney's Saturday soirees, and enjoyed the modern novelists when he should have been doing his prep. He had found a copy of Butler's Way of All Flesh in his uncle's study: this he read with joy and lent to the more worthy members of the Upper Sixth. A book with an appeal so universal naturally made an effect: it seemed to crystallise the religious experience of all. Martin was eager to discover whether Foskett had read it and consequently alluded to it at some length in an essay on 'Recent Aspects of Evolution,' in which he courageously let himself go. Foskett made no allusion to Butler and merely wrote on the last sheet: 'Good, but lacks balance. Don't dogmatise on subjects of this kind. Many of your ideas, though well put, are crude.' Martin groaned as he read the criticism. If Foskett had been a bigoted parson and had lectured him on the perils of free thought, he could have looked on himself as a martyr and enjoyed the nursing of a grievance: if, on the other hand, the strength and sincerity of the essay had been genuinely praised, Martin's vanity would have been gratified. But this kindly tolerance, so well meant, was infuriating; it was typical Foskettism. Perhaps what contributed most to Martin's disgust was the lurking suspicion that his ideas were, after all, a trifle crude.
With Foskett, Martin was never in sympathy. He was out of touch with all the causes for which Foskett stood, and it was among the small set of desperately serious and religious boys that the headmaster found his champions. The very fact that he had not taken orders seemed to them, perhaps justly, proof of the deepest faith: in after life they would all have signed photographs in their studies and point him out to their sons. 'That's old Foskett,' they would say. 'Fine character. Great influence.' But the popular verdict was against Foskett. The really strong man can get his way without criticism: he says 'Do' and people just crumple up and do it. When Foskett said 'Do,' things were done as a rule, but the doer had a habit of saying, as he went grudgingly to his work: 'Silly ass, thinks he's a Blood-and-ironer.' Martin said of him to his uncle: 'He's quite efficient and all that, and he's bound to get on. As crushers go, he might be a lot worse.'
And that was the common view.
Foskett took the Upper Sixth in composition and Greek plays. Martin could not help admiring Foskett's fair copies which showed undoubted feeling for the classical languages, but he could never quite endure his enthusiasm for the Greek drama. When Foskett enjoyed literature in public, it always seemed as though he was saying sternly to himself: 'This is good stuff and we've got to like it.' He would stride up and down the room with the text of a play, chanting the iambics or the choruses as though they were everything in the world to him, and all the time Martin felt that it couldn't mean so much to him, just because he sought beauty with a fervour so literary and so incessant. With Martin, appreciation was a thing of moods, coming swiftly and as swiftly departing: he could not understand how Foskett's enjoyment remained always at high pressure: it must, he thought, be artificial. Foskett's affection for Euripides was the most unconvincing of enthusiasms: how could a man so far removed from Euripides in taste and temperament really appreciate that passionate rebel of genius? Martin could have tolerated an open enemy, a thorough conservative who called Euripides a botcher, and a dirty-minded botcher at that: but Foskett's liberal attitude, sweetly reasonable to the extent of being nauseous, was harder to endure. It was not so much that Foskett had set out to like Euripides because Euripides was fashionable once again, though that of course was possible: but it was his determination to be fair at all costs that was fatal. Foskett was so pertinaciously fair, so eager to do justice to both sides of the literary problem that Martin considered that he didn't in the end properly understand or sympathise with either side. It occurred to him that compromise is always necessary in human affairs and usually fatal. And so while Foskett declaimed the Electra and gave out the points to be noticed for and against such treatment of the tragic theme, Martin shuddered and sometimes sulked. Intellectual isolation is not good for the manners, and Foskett found Martin difficult: the two remained always at a distance, never openly hostile, and never sympathetic.
Few Public School boys are critical of the institutions amid which they are brought up, but it was natural for Martin to ponder, as he idled through his last two terms, on the value of the things he had learnt and of the habits in which he had been trained. He had been interested in H. G. Wells' pungent comments on the way we manage education, and he was fascinated by the sweeping schemes of reconstruction. Was all this classical business, he asked himself, just a waste of time and effort? Was he just groping at the door of a treasure-house whose contents had long ago been rifled? He resolved to consult Finney.
Though Finney was now always charitably treated by the Upper Sixth, his warfare with the Upper Fourth was telling on him. Even in a few months he had lost vivacity and ambition, for he was beginning to suffer from the spiritual blight that attacks every unsuccessful schoolmaster in his time. In a year or two he would be shrivelled up into an irritable bunch of nerves, his ability wasted, his hopes stifled. Martin could foresee no escape for Finney, unless by some lucky chance he could get back to Oxford: but that was impossible, for those who leave Oxford rarely return.
Finney was willing enough to talk, but Martin was disappointed with the conversation. He was a Liberal both in politics and disposition, and as a result he had no point of view: he was angry about things and could suggest little reform, but there was no comprehensive unity or vitality in his ideas. He was the kind of man who makes great play with the word 'efficiency.'
"We aren't clear enough," he used to say, "about what we want. We chatter airily at congresses about education, but we never really formulate our wants and bully people into doing things. We don't train our teachers or tell them what is needed ... we just plug them down. Besides the schools aren't to blame: we've got to keep in touch with the two big varsities, and if they insist on everybody mugging up just enough Greek to be a nuisance, we've got to see about the mugging.
"And on the other side there are the parents. We don't get the boys till they are thirteen or fourteen, fashioned all ready in many ways. I don't know what the parents do want, but they certainly don't want education. Ask any housemaster about the letters they write: they're nearly always economic. Why does this cost extra and why doesn't Harry get that free?"
"I suppose that's fairly natural," said Martin.
"Of course. But it shouldn't be all. It's typical of the British attitude. You buy your son an education costing so much, as you would buy him a suit of clothes. They don't care twopence about the teaching or the curriculum, except in so far as it concerns passing exams and leads to money. Parents write about Tom's chances for Sandhurst, but who ever writes about his classics? It's all taken for granted, even its sickening narrowness. No one ever heard of a parent slanging the headmaster because his son didn't know who wrote The Alchemist or because he thought Chopin was a music hall comedian."
"Do you suppose," asked Martin, "that fifty per cent of the Elfreyan parents know there is a play called The Alchemist?"
"Well, I wouldn't bet on it," said Finney. "Still there it all is. Ignorance and muddle. We've got so horribly linked up. Union may be strength, but strength may be tyranny. Capital is all knotted together. Labour soon will be, and Education is in the same way. We can't change without the others changing, the others can't change without the varsities——"
"And the varsities won't change till public opinion blows them to bits," added Martin. "So it all comes back to the dear old vox populi."
"I suppose so," said Finney wearily. "Come and have some tea."
Although he found Finney's suggestions disappointing, Martin continued to ponder occasionally on the phenomena of school life, and when he went to Devonshire for the Easter holidays he took the opportunity of questioning his uncle, for whose views he had a great respect. John Berrisford was always willing to talk after his third glass of port and he welcomed Martin's questions.
"Of course you know," he said, "that though I'm a revolutionary in politics and economics, I'm a sound Tory about institutions and the things that matter, like beef and beer. So I believe in the Public Schools and the Universities, not because they're good, but because they are. Everything that is, must be an expression of human nature, and, being rather an optimist, I think it has some good in it. Anyhow, we can't take human nature and twist it about, as social reformers want to do. The people who cry out for Censors of Art seem to imagine that Art makes public opinion. It may do so now and then, but it's much more important to realise that public opinion makes current art. Art is the emergence of what people are feeling and thinking, and our schools, like our art, must be an expression of the national self."
"But the national self," said Martin, "is pretty stiff."
"That is true, but it doesn't matter. My idea is that, being Englishmen, we ought to make the best of it. Smash international capitalism, which is hellish, and stick to any good things England can give. Of course if you like to turn your destructive criticism on our school system you can knock it to pieces in a minute, just as you can knock out Socialism, or the Co-operative Commonwealth, or any other sensible proposition. A half-educated person can criticise anything; it takes a man to appreciate.
"No, it's no use battering the Public Schools. They are there, so let's make the best of them. They may not teach very much, but men learn to behave reasonably and not to get on one another's nerves. Tell me: if you had to live on a desert island for six months with one other man, would you take a chap with ideas who had been co-educated or privately educated and generally fad-educated or an unintellectual but reasonable man from Elfrey, a person you could always rely on, if it was only to be dull?"
Martin wanted the Elfreyan.
"Well, that says a lot for the schools. You can't smash them until you have smashed the British Character: of course that would be a capital thing to do, but it's a stiff proposal, and while we are waiting let's make the best of it. I quite expect that at times you must have been sick to death of Elfrey, but didn't you like it on the whole?"
"I think I did," answered Martin reflectively.
"Exactly. You liked the chaps, because, with all their intellectual limitations, they're reliable. You know they won't play dirty tricks behind your back. You liked your study and you liked cooking enormous and hideously indigestible meals and gorging until all was blue. You liked shutting the window on a cold night and collecting a crowd and raising such a frowst that the air was solid and the windows steamed. You liked smoking your secret cigarette and discussing who was going to be the school wicket-keeper three years hence and who was the worst bat in first-class cricket. Am I right?"
"Absolutely."
Mr Berrisford started a new cigar with satisfaction. "Good. Then the system hasn't altered altogether. Oh yes, and you liked some of your classics?"
"Most of them, when I could escape the notes and grammarian's drivel."
"The classics are worth sticking to. It's no good these scientists talking about translations being as good. They aren't and there's an end of it. Good translations have their uses, but they aren't the real thing. We don't read Homer to find out what happened. So let's thank God for Homer and philosophy and leave psychology and applied mechanics to the Life Force."
Mr Berrisford had certainly a definite point of view, and he did not fall between the two stools of acceptance and sweeping reconstruction as Finney seemed to. So Martin was not only amused but influenced and on his return to Elfrey for the summer term gave up worrying about the pros and cons of Public School education. He determined to enjoy himself, and he knew that in order to enjoy himself he must have an interest. It couldn't be concerned with art, because in that case he would have to keep it to himself. It must be a common interest, a part of school life. Ultimately, he fixed upon the bowling of googlies.
His batting had always been respectable and had won him a place in his house team for two summers, and now, as Rayner was likely to be engaged in school matches, or practice games, Martin became house captain on most afternoons. Ever since the day when, as a small boy being tried in 'firsts,' he had shivered with terror in the field and dreaded more than death itself the agony of the fumbled catch, he had always envied house captains. Now was his chance: he could become a slow bowler. He believed that most things in this world can be achieved by bluff and a little hard work, and it seemed a simple thing to get wickets if you had unlimited power of keeping yourself on and had terrorised your fielders into holding on to anything. And so, weary of the Upper Sixth and Foskett and even Finney, and wearier far of wondering whether the Public Schools were right, and how and when the Trade Unions would take them over, he found comfort in the googly.
During the holidays he had put up a stump on the Berrisfords' lawn, and practised leg-breaks, waiting patiently for the desired freak which should turn from the off. Sometimes it had come, but Martin never had the least notion why it came: still the essential and undeniable fact was that it had come. On the second night of term he put it to Rayner that he was intending to bowl googlies.
"My hat!" said Rayner. "And you'll be house captain usually!"
"Exactly," answered Martin. "That is the point."
Rayner smiled grimly. "Think of the house, old man!" he exclaimed.
"I shall. Really I do break both ways."
"And how often do you bounce?"
"That depends. Anyhow it's the googly man's privilege to pitch one ball in six on his own toss. Have you ever seen young Jack Hearne?"
Rayner neglected the question. "Look here!" he said, "are you really going to bowl?"
"Rather! But I'll make you an offer. If I don't take ten wickets in the first fortnight with an average under eighteen, I'll never do it again."
"Done!" said Rayner confidently.
Martin triumphantly kept his side of the agreement. The ordinary house pitches were rough and ready, the ordinary house player a slogger. Martin's ordinary ball was well pitched up and apparently simple. But he had had his eye on two or three small boys in the junior team who, though poor bats, could run like hares in 'the country' and hold on to anything they touched. These he translated to the first, to the vast indignation of several clumsy hitters who were moved down in their stead. The policy was a success. Martin used to go on first before the other side were set and occasionally got a victim in the slips or enticed a steady man in front of his wicket. Then he made way for orthodox 'fast rights,' but after the fall of five or six wickets he would polish off the tail with atrocious slow stuff. His small boys were scattered far away and interfered considerably with an adjacent game: they had plenty to do and were given an ice for every catch they held. Martin soon found it an expensive amusement and became extremely unpopular with the tenants of the neighbouring pitch.
He never sulked if he were 'knocked off,' an unusual trait in a house captain and a cause of popularity with his team. And the fielders knew that he only pretended to mind when catches were dropped: Martin was incapable of being ruffled by a mere game. As a result the eleven played keenly and with efficiency. Though Berney's had only one man, Rayner, in the school eleven they succeeded in reaching the final of the Cock House matches. They were to play, just before the end of term, their old enemy, Randall's.
Martin now became thoroughly engrossed in cricket. He neglected to work for one or two school prizes, but he knew that he could get a leaving scholarship without difficulty. Thus he became a more prominent figure in the house and was, on the whole, much happier than in the days of reading and thinking. He abandoned Wells the social theorist for Wells the fantastic romancer and combined Wisden's Almanac with Arnold Bennett for his literature in prep-time. He knew now that he couldn't bowl googlies at all: on the house pitches it depended on the lie of the land which way the ball broke. But he kept up the fraud for his own amusement, and continued to take the wickets to which his confidence entitled him.
The school were laying five to one on Randall's, who had far the better record and were as usual a hard-hitting, level, ugly lot. Berney's won the toss and only made a hundred and thirty on a good wicket. Martin's first ball bumped a little and he poked it into slip's hands: Rayner made twelve and was run out. The runs were made by Martin's small protégés, who scored by fluky shots over and through the slips. It was a disgraceful display. Randall's knocked up two hundred and fifty. Martin was bowling unusually well and consequently never looked like taking a wicket. The batsmen played forward correctly and stayed for hours. Even when in despair he tossed up the most tempting half-volleys, they were content to play him along the ground for one. Randall's never risked anything when a cup was at stake.
In the second innings Rayner put up a fine century and Martin made a pleasing thirty: had he resisted the temptation to cut "the uncuttable," he would have stayed in and served his house better. But Martin could not play cricket in that spirit. The rest did little this time and Randall's was left with only eighty to make.
The score stood at fifty for two when Rayner, who was, of course, captain when he played for the house, put on Martin to bowl. Spectators were moving to the tuck-shop to drown grief or express elation. Martin knew that it was all over and sent down, by way of a change, a fast, straight ball. Randall's captain was expecting something very different, mistimed it, and was bowled: his successor scraped nervously at a leg-break and was caught at the wicket. The next man survived three balls: the last delivery of the over was monstrous. It was pitched very short and went slowly away to leg: the batsman hit under it and was taken far out. A gift indeed. The score was now fifty for five wickets and the tuck-shop began to empty again.
Randall's were not the sort of people one suspected of having nerves. But to lose three wickets in one over of the last innings is startling, and Randall's were rattled, despite their stodginess. Martin's second over was weak in direction and pitiable in length, but he might have been Barnes for the respect he received. It was another maiden. Martin knew well enough that if one batsman had the sense to go for his bowling and treat it according to its merits the match was finished. He took another wicket with a slow leg-break and then a brawny youth named Coxwell came in. He had been warned by his frantic housemaster 'to lash at 'em.' He did so and scored three fours in succession.
During Martin's next over Coxwell was at his end. He saw now that the secret was discovered and that Randall's would knock off their runs with impunity: he could imagine the gloating joy of Randall's, all the greater because victory had been in doubt: Berney's would be in the position of the mouse set free and recaptured. In his anger Martin bowled an amazing ball. He had really meant to send up a "googly," but it pitched half-way to the wicket and scarcely left the ground. The batsman drove it back and Martin, stooping quickly, just touched it with his left hand: the ball crashed into the wickets. Coxwell, who was backing-up, was a yard outside the crease. The batsman who might have won the match had been run out by a gross fluke. "The stars in their courses," said Martin to Rayner, as they waited for the next man. The score was sixty-five for seven.
Martin took all three remaining wickets, or rather the batsmen handed him their lives. They came in half dead with fear (was not a cup at stake?) and demanded their own extinction. The first played forward to a slow half-volley and was caught and bowled, the next put his leg in front of the straight ball on the leg stump, the last was caught off a slow full toss. That was how Berney's won the cup.
Rayner walked home silently with Martin. "You great man!" was all he could say.
"It was the great god Funk," answered Martin. "They just asked to get out."
"You certainly bowled muck," admitted Rayner. "But it was all sheer joy."
And though they pretended to treat the matter as a great jest, they both felt a very genuine pleasure because they had won the cup for Berney's.
That evening the captain of the School Eleven, who had heard that Martin had taken seven wickets for twelve and thereby rendered Berney's cock house, gave him his Second Eleven colours. He had not seen Martin bowl.
Martin took the news to Rayner. "Well that," said Rayner, "fairly puts the lid on it."
Together they shook the walls with laughter. Life is occasionally dramatic, and the finale of Martin's school career had certainly a touch of comedy.
It is commonly believed that boys undergo regrets and deep emotions when they leave school. But Martin noticed that only a few Elfreyans were moved at the thought of saying good-bye: some were charmed by the prospect of entering a world of unlimited smokes and drinks and girls and motor bicycles, others by the prospect of intellectual as well as practical freedom. There were some who really regretted the end of life's first act, boys who had enjoyed the games and the friendships and were now passing to office work without the freedom of three or four years' residence at the university. But those who were more fortunate were eager as a rule to be up and off. Martin had been amused by his last term with its athletic adventures and he had come to appreciate to the full his uncle's advice about making the best of existing institutions. Rayner, too, was a good sort and an excellent friend. But the prospect of Oxford, notwithstanding his gloomy foretaste of the place, attracted him undeniably—no, he could not be moved.
On the last Sunday night Foskett delivered an address and ended with a special appeal to those who were leaving to remember the honour and welfare of their house and their school as well as their king and country. But Martin was wondering all the time whether it were more satisfactory to have won colours for good, solid cricket or to have extorted a cup by mere bluff. There was something pleasant indeed in the thought that a real cricketer would go on with his career, whereas Martin would never dare to call himself a bowler at Oxford: on the other hand, there was an exquisite piquancy in the consideration that he had set out to 'do' cricket and had very successfully done it. Also he had 'done' Randall's, and he was still boy enough to hate the rival house with a fervent loathing. As the organ thundered out the farewell hymn, he decided that to succeed in a fraud which does no real harm is a very gratifying process. Then he pulled himself together and sang dutifully.
Martin spent August and September at The Steading. The weather was kind and he could lounge and play tennis to his heart's content. In his spare moments he read Homer and Virgil, marking the hard passages with a blue pencil, according to advice. His cousin Robert, who had just finished his third year at Balliol, was working in a frenzy of confusion and despair. He had devoted the whole previous year to becoming President of the Union and, having gained his end, was now endeavouring to condense all his Greats work into one year. He had foolishly given way to panic, which meant that his work was as unintelligent as it was ferocious. In the mornings he read Thucydides and Cicero's Letters, smoking and swearing continuously. Martin used to sit in the same room reading his Homer, but concentration was rendered difficult by Robert's habit of roaring when he came to a speech in the text of Thucydides. And when the roar was over he would mutter in his distress:
"But the seeming firmness of those who will join in the contest is not the actual loyalty of those who brought it on, but if, on the other hand, anyone has much the greater advantage..." Having progressed so far, he would look up and say: "Did I speak? I'm sorry!" Then he would return sorrowfully to his speech.
In the evenings Robert read Bradley's Logic and Appearance and Reality; if Martin came into the room he would be met with an outburst on philosophy.
"It's all bunkum," Robert used to assert, throwing Bradley (library copy) across the room. "Just organised bunkum. I suppose philosophers have to make up some twaddle to justify their salaries, but they might have spared us the Absolute!"
Robert was very angry about the Absolute and used to draw obscene pictures of it, adding appropriate lyrics. Martin came to the conclusion that Greats must be bad for the temper, but he was not troubled by the reflection that some day he himself would be a sufferer, for no sane person of eighteen thinks more than a year in advance.
He began now to feel a growing dignity and responsibility. Plainly he was no longer a schoolboy, not even a god-like prefectorial schoolboy, but an undergraduate and a man of the world. Such status implied duties, and he made efforts to cultivate a manner: he smoked a pipe openly instead of cigarettes in secret: he also set about the task of liking wine. This did not turn out to be so big a business as his first experiences had led him to expect.
Further, he began to prefer his tennis mixed: he had been happier before when there were only men and they could have a hard-hitting, vigorous set. But now he wanted to display his newly acquired American service and deadly smashes at the net to the girls who hit patiently from the back line: he was inwardly ashamed of this desire to make an impression on girls, but there it undeniably was.
Margaret Berrisford he had always taken for granted. She was a year older than he was and very often she went away, for her father was taking every precaution to save her from the usual limitations of the squire's daughter. They were cousins and good friends and scarcely ever spoke to each other alone: they merely said 'Good-morning' and 'Good-night' and played tennis together. Because they were practically members of the same family they never took the trouble to find out about one another. Margaret had beauty of a subtle, unimposing kind and a strong athletic figure: moreover, she had brains and could talk. Her interests were wide and she had an astonishing fund of information. If she had been precipitated suddenly into the house as a visitor Martin would certainly have fallen in love with her. As it was, the idea never occurred to him.
It remained, as frequently happens, for a married woman to inflict the first wound.
One afternoon at the end of September Martin was leaving the tennis lawn after a vain effort to play in the failing light on dew-soaked grass. He had stayed behind to collect the balls and was walking slowly with three folded deck-chairs in one hand, while with the other he carried the balls on his racket. Suddenly he became aware of voices and almost ran into Mrs Berrisford and a stranger. He was introduced to Mrs Cartmell.
"You can't very well shake hands," she observed. "We're going in. Suppose I take the balls."
"Oh, please don't bother," said Martin.
But Mrs Cartmell grasped the racket and took it from him without dropping any of the balls.
"Thanks very much," Martin remarked. "Do you play tennis?"
"In a feeble kind of way. I'm out of practice too."
"We'll put that all right," said Mrs Berrisford.
"The court is quite dry, up to tea-time," added Martin eagerly. "The dew is very heavy later on and it gets dark soon, but it's all right if you play early."
Martin's keenness amused Mrs Cartmell. "Of course I should love to play," she said.
To his own astonishment Martin felt greatly relieved.
Godfrey Cartmell was prospective Radical candidate for the division. To pass away the time he had been called to the Bar, but he never had any need or any inclination to practise. At Oxford he had, like most people, been President of the Liberal Club, and his faith was nebulous but genuine. He had had the good sense to marry a capable woman who carried him off maternally and saw to it that he didn't hang about any longer, but made his terms with the Whips at once. Viola Cartmell was neither egoistic nor vulgar, but she combined ambition with practical driving power, and she had eaten the bread of obscurity far longer than she liked. Godfrey had chances, but she saw that he had picked up during his first-class education a capacity for doing nothing in a very charming manner. She had already made him a candidate: she intended to make him a success.
The Cartmells were close friends of the Berrisfords, and it was through the connection that Godfrey had been introduced to the local Liberal Association. Now they had come down to look round: the seat was held by a Tory but had sound Radical traditions, so that a change was not impossible. Naturally Godfrey Cartmell spent much of his time with the agent: his wife thought it more tactful not to be too conspicuous at first, for she had resolved that, when the time arrived, she was to direct the campaign. So she had time to play tennis and go for walks and make, quite unwittingly, a conquest.
It was certainly not with any feminine charms that Viola Cartmell won Martin's adoration: rather it was by reason of her difference from the average girl who came to play tennis or to visit the Berrisfords. There was no need to talk down to her or to make conversation, no need to take the initiative and play the gallant male. Viola neither patronised Martin, as did the men who came to the house, nor expected patronage, as did the girls. She treated him as an equal and talked about reasonable things; she had ideas and could think clearly. If a man had expressed her views Martin would have been interested, but the fact that they came from a woman rendered them doubly attractive. During the vacation Martin had begun to form a vision of the perfect woman: it had been the ideal that appeals to most intelligent boys at some period of their adolescence, the union of masculine mind and female beauty. He was old enough now to be troubled by sex, not as something abstract that might crop up in a theoretical future, but as a present pain and pleasure: in his growing restlessness he tended inevitably to find his ideal personified in every woman who was not quite a fool, the wish being always father to the thought. Viola Cartmell's masculine attributes, her managing ways, and her power of thought and argument gave him a genuine excuse for setting her on his pedestal. Yet Martin's attitude was one of adoration, not of passion. Quite apart from the manifest impossibility of making love, apart too from the fact that, even if circumstances had allowed, he did not know how to make love, he did not even want to make love. He wanted to be with her, to watch her, above all to talk with her: and that was the limit of his desires.
On the tennis court Margaret and he were too strong for Robert and Viola; accordingly the two Berrisfords fought great battles against the visitors and as a rule prevailed. But they were not invincible. Once Martin and Viola had lost two sets in succession and in the third the score was five-three and forty-fifteen against them. Viola had said, "Now we're going to win," and Martin had performed the most impossible feats at the net, smashing and cutting and getting back for the lob.
Martin finished the set with a perfect drive down the said line.
"Wimbledon," said Robert, making no effort to reach it.
As they went in to tea his partner smiled upon him and said: "You were simply wonderful."
That moment gave him greater joy than he had ever gained from the avenging of Gideon or the conquest of Randall's with fraudulent googlies.
On the last day of his holidays (it is a nice point whether the two months before a man goes up to the university are to be called 'summer hols' or 'long vac') a discussion was held after breakfast as to procedure. Robert was sorry, but he had to give himself to the Ethics: he had one day in which to settle the business of friendship and pleasure (long neglected), and he had discovered to his horror that some pieces of Aristotle must be learned by heart with a view to translation. Margaret had to go to a dentist at Plymouth. At last Martin asked Viola Cartmell to come out on the moor and to his joy she assented.
They went by car to Merivale Bridge and then climbed up to Maiden Hill and Cowsic Head. It was a superb October day. A great south wind came up from the sea, salt and stinging but with no load of rain. Down in the village the autumn had kindled the first fire in the woods and no hue of flame was absent from the leaves. Shimmering with green and yellow, gold and copper, the boughs made music for ear and eye. And on the moor there was the wind and the sky and the infinite sweep of ridge after ridge, broken with harsh tors and intractable granite. It may be that the brave struggle of the dying year has its effect on man, for there is something challenging in a good autumn day, something that lifts and braces a man as spring can never do. Spring, at its best, is languorous and its pleasures cloying, but autumn is a rousing friend and makes exquisite the burden of life.
As they ate their sandwiches by the Bear Down Man, Martin could not refrain from quoting:
"'And oh the days, the days, the days,
When all the four were off together:
The infinite deep of summer haze,
The roaring charge of autumn weather.'"
And indeed it was in the face of a charge as of cavalry that they fought their way down to Two Bridges. There is rough going where the moormen have cut for peat and trenched the heathery ridges in their labour: and now, in addition to the need of leaping the rifts and skirting green morasses, they had to battle with a wind that shrieked and wrenched and gave no quarter. They talked but little until they sheltered in a hollow. Then Martin took up the thread of an earlier conversation.
"Do you really believe in this Liberalism?" he asked.
"Yes, of course."
"But do you think modern Liberal politics have any connection with Liberalism?"
"Not much, I admit."
"Then I don't understand your point."
"It's quite simple. I believe vaguely in Liberalism, but we live in a busy world where everybody is far too much occupied to think about anything except business. Parliament's busy too: it has got to get certain things done and it hasn't time for too much idealism and spiritual attitudes and things of that sort. And when it comes to the rather dull but very necessary work of keeping things going and administering the Empire, I prefer the Liberals, because they have got leaders with brains."
"I see."
"You think me very worldly?"
"Not at all. But I think you are wrong on your own canons. Liberal leaders may be cleverer than Tory leaders, but that doesn't prove Liberalism to be efficient. Just look at things!"
"And for efficiency you propose Socialism?"
"Not only for efficiency. It's a philosophy as well."
"But we're considering efficiency. Do you really suppose you have got at your disposal the human capacity and good will and reasonableness to build up a Co-operative Commonwealth? I don't say man hasn't the brains to plan things. He plainly has, as you can see by reading the wiser Socialists. But he hasn't a corresponding capacity for cohesion and give and take. You'll have to depend on your Labour leaders and Trade Unionists; but just look at them! They can only squabble and bicker and show up their jealousy and pettiness. That's where the stumbling-block lies."
In vain Martin contested. His opponent confronted him with the old dilemma (new to him), that if, in setting up collectivism, you confiscate property, you act unjustly to many, while, if you compensate, you maintain an idle rich class. By the time that they were once more on the march, Martin was becoming a devotee of 'efficient Liberalism.' But he enjoyed his defeat. If this method and insistence had come from a man he would have felt very differently.
At last they reached Two Bridges and had tea at the hotel and waited for the car to fetch them as had been arranged. It pleased Martin to pay for the tea with his own pocket-money (his allowance would begin to-morrow) and to refuse to listen to demands. She thought him silly for the moment, since she did not understand how much he cared.
Dinner that evening was a capital meal. John Berrisford was in his best form and kept up a lively duel with Viola Cartmell. Even Robert managed to shake off the depressing effects of Aristotle. They drank to Martin's career at Oxford.
"You're certain to like Oxford," said Godfrey Cartmell when the men were alone.
"I'm afraid I wasn't much impressed by it in December," answered Martin.
"That wasn't Oxford," interrupted Robert. "That was a dismal city in the Midlands seen at its worst."
"Exactly," said Mr Berrisford, breaking into the conversation. "Oxford isn't a place. Everybody talks about the buildings and the age and the dreaming spires. It goes down with the Yankees and the people who are proud of having read The Scholar Gipsy, and I suppose it keeps up the picture post card business."
"But there are good things," said Cartmell resentfully. He was of Magdalen.
"Certainly. But these things are incidental and not essential. After all, the best college—with all due respect to you, Cartmell, and to you, Martin—has a front quad like a toy castle and a chapel—well, I suppose it's the kind of chapel that particular college ought to have, according to all tradition—a Great Speckled Warning against God. Half the most sensible people in Oxford don't know a jot about the architecture, but they know Oxford."
"Then," answered Cartmell, taking up the argument, as behoved a Liberal, seriously, "would you mind if the whole show—the educational work, I mean—were transferred to Margate or Southend or some place with a little air? On your theory that would be a very sound plan."
"It has its points," added Robert. "Just think of the progs on a seaside promenade."
"And the sea," continued his father, "is limitless. Many young men would go down to the sea in ships and have business in great waters. What a chance for enterprise! Moonlight trips round the bay."
"But seriously," said Cartmell, still smarting under the implied contempt for Magdalen's beauty.
"The port lingers at your side," was the answer. "Restore the circulation."
"Well, seriously," John Berrisford continued, when his glass had been filled again, "to move would be fatal, because the traditions would all go if you took them away from their home. But it's the traditions that count, not the place. God knows I'm willing enough to be sentimental about places. I can even enjoy hearing the song about 'Devon, glorious Devon,' sung by a Dandy Coon baritone at an audience of Cockneys at Teignmouth. I can understand a Scottish exile in America going a hundred miles to hear Harry Lauder. To my mind places are the only things about which a man has a right to be sentimental. No causes or catch-words for me: but hills and valleys—as much as you like. That's Nationalism, and therefore Liberalism, Cartmell."
"I agree!"
"You don't, but I'll take your word. But what was I saying? Oh yes, about Oxford. Oxford is all right. I know you get the worst wine in the world there—I suppose it's specially imported for the benefit of the young men of the world who believe that anything is nectar if you pay more than ten bob a bottle for it—but you still find people drinking properly. Richly, I mean, and with conviction. I think I'd rather be a teetotaller——"
"Which God avert!" put in Cartmell.
"Amen to that. Yes, I'd rather be a True Blue than drink one glass of wine at dinner. One glass! It's an insult. Now at Oxford——"
"But, father," Robert interrupted, "the don of to-day is just the sort of person who does drink one glass of wine. With a kind of ghastly self-conscious moderation he sips some claret and then hurries off to organise a mission meeting. There aren't any good old fogeys left, only some fogeys without the merits of fogeyism. They've got consciences and think about social reform and the possibility of all classes pulling together before the last Red Day. You know the kind of thing. By Good Will out of Nervousness."
"Well then," answered Mr Berrisford, "I'm wrong. Oxford is going to the dogs. I suppose they had to let the dons marry, but they might have foreseen that the kind of women who would pounce on the dons wouldn't understand about the good life. I expect it's the women that are destroying Oxford. When Oxford spread northwards, it spread to the devil."
"But this is downright Toryism," protested Cartmell. "You call yourself a revolutionary!"
"So I am. But I'm sound about tradition and things that matter. I don't want soaking: I want proper drinking and proper talking. I thought it might have lingered in one or two common-rooms. Anyhow, the undergraduates——"
He paused a moment and then went on:
"I remember Oxford as a place where I had some excellent pipes and never took my breakfast till I wanted it. It was a place where I worked devilish hard when I hadn't anything better to do. And I worked sensibly. No gentleman works after lunch or dinner. He walks or buys books after lunch and after dinner he talks. You must talk at Oxford, Martin."
"At debates, do you mean?"
"Not at the Union. Oh, Lord, not there. Robert has done that, and look at him. He's a broken man. He used to spend his vacs wondering how he could get the votes of Malthusian Mongols in Worcester without losing the support of Church and State in Keble. Didn't you, Robert?"
"I shall draw a veil over the past," said Robert. "I became President, anyhow."
"Be warned, Martin," his uncle went on. "Speak at college debates, if it amuses you. But shun a public career. Talk all night to your friends, for afterwards you won't get talk like it. You'll get shop talk and small talk and dirty talk, but at Oxford you'll get the real thing with luck."
Martin, remembering the tastes of Theo. K. Snutch, felt doubtful.
"Of course you'll find lots of nonsense there," John Berrisford added. "Lectures, for instance. They're nothing but an excuse to keep the dons from lounging: it certainly does give them an occupation for the mornings. Just think of it! There they are, mouthing away term after term. Either wisely cut——"
"Hear, hear!" from Robert.
"—or laboriously taken down, by conscientious youths with fountain pens and patent note-books. I suppose the Rhodes scholars use shorthand."
"Possibly," said Robert. "Certainly they have nasty little black books to slip in their pockets like reporters."
"Anyhow the stuff could be got out of reputable books in half the time with no manual labour of scribbling. Sometimes the man's lectures are actually published in book form and yet he solemnly dictates them year after year!"
"But sometimes," put in Cartmell, "a man has got something original to say."
"Well," said Robert, "why doesn't he publish his notes at a price? I'm quite willing to buy his knowledge, but I dislike having to waste time and trouble in a stuffy lecture-room in order to get it."
"The whole thing is preposterous," his father concluded. "But the system will last for fifty years or more. Just like the discipline. So beautifully English, they drive everything underground, make it twice as dangerous, and then pretend it doesn't exist. Instead of men having open and honourable relations with women, they'll be slinking about in back streets and snatching their kisses in taxicabs."
"Well," said Martin, "you set out to praise Oxford but you haven't made it seem very attractive."
"Oh! you'll find it all right, when you come to it. If a man has got to earn his own living it's about the only time when he can live a reasonable life. You'll be able to say what you like, read what you like, go to bed when you like, get up when you like, work when you like, and, if you use a little discretion, do what you like. Don't become a slave to any one thing, the River or the Union or even the Classics. You can get into the Civil Service without straining yourself, so make the most of your time. Doing the kind of work you like is the only really good thing in the world."
Just then Margaret opened the door and looked in.
"Father," she said, "you're booming terribly. Mother says you must come and play games."
"I never play games."
"Well, mother says you must. All of you!"
"Are we wanted at once?"
"Yes."
"Then, gentlemen, we must yield. We were born too late. The matriarchy has returned. Do you agree to that, Cartmell?"
"Certainly!"
"There was a time when no young lady would have the daring to invade the dining-room and order the men to play games. Games, indeed!"
"Don't start again, father," interrupted Margaret. "I won't budge till you do."
"Just think what you might hear!"
"Oh, I'm not a 'puffick lidy.' They passed away with the patriarchy. Now, come along!"
Games were a success because they were taken seriously. Mr Berrisford asserted that if he must waste time in that particular way he meant to do it properly. So they all exercised great ardour and ingenuity, composed pretty rhymes, and drew the strangest pictures. At the end he insisted, however, that instead of taking famous men beginning with C, they should have infamous people. The test of infamy was to be a referendum. The game began well enough, because no opposition was raised to such people as Cicero or Christopher Columbus. But the inclusion of both Cromwell and Charles I. caused a heated argument and Cartmell was sure that they couldn't both be on one black list.
But Mr Berrisford exposed the crimes of both at great length. Crippen and Calvin both had defenders and the game at last broke up in confusion.
Martin enjoyed the evening, partly from vanity (he had done some quite clever things), and partly because he could watch Viola Cartmell without being noticed. To watch her was heavenly. There was nothing subtle or analytic in his adoration: for him there was just an indivisible whole called Viola. And that was perfect.
At eleven Robert declared that he still had some of the Ethics left and retired to find out about the contemplative life. Mr Berrisford took Godfrey Cartmell to smoke a cigar in his study and the rest prepared to go to bed.
Martin went to his room and then came back and lingered by the staircase window. As he looked out he could see a solid line of fir-trees standing out with black severity against the moonlit sky, and farther away was the long shoulder of the moor—he could see the ridge they had climbed together and the rough peak which broke its symmetry and made its splendour.
Someone was coming up. It could only be Viola: the Berrisfords slept on the other side of the house.
It was she. Trembling, he heard the rustling of her skirts, the creaking of the stairs, her voice by his side.
"Hullo!" she said. "Star-gazing?"
"It's a great night," he answered.
She came and stood at the window. The closeness of her thrilled him.
"I wish those owls wouldn't hoot," she said. "Is that the ridge we climbed?"
"Yes. I did enjoy the walk."
"So did I! The air up there is so splendid. And it's all so gorgeously empty."
"I've been up before. But I enjoyed it much more this time."
Naturally she did not take it as he meant it.
"One doesn't often get such a perfect day, I suppose," was her answer.
Martin was at a loss. He wanted to say all sorts of things: fortunately they stuck.
She turned to go: "I'm sure you'll have a good time at Oxford and make the most of it!"
"Thank you very much. Everyone does seem to enjoy it."
"Good-night!" she said, and left him to go to her room. The door closed behind with a sharpness that hurt.
As Martin lingered in the passage it began to occur to him that he was a silly fool, that boys of eighteen shouldn't fall in love with married women of twenty-five or even more, and that, even if they did, there was no point in being tongue-tied and nervous. But what was the good of self-reproach? He wasn't to blame if she was perfect. And she was perfect. To-morrow he would have to go up to Oxford. He would scarcely see her again. There was nothing left of her now, nothing except the boots which stood outside her door, their strong brown leather stained with the peat of Bear Down and Devil's Tor. At last he moved quickly to his room and undressed.
As he lay half naked on his bed he recalled the glories of the moor and the way they had talked. God, how she had talked! They had defied that leaping wind from whose onslaught his cheeks still burned. It had been a day of days. Then he heard Godfrey Cartmell come up and again the door closed. The sound of it hurt him. How could she waste herself on that correct, that unutterably correct, young Liberal?
Why was life so full of silliness, of waste and bungling? Why ... but one thing was certain—he would never, never forget her.