IV

The summer term was a joyous interlude. Martin and Lawrence had nothing to do but play tennis or regard the world from a punt, and an early summer encouraged these methods of killing time. Rendell was cajoled by Petworth into entering for the Hertford scholarship, which involved some attention to the Latin language. While Martin read novels Rendell was perusing some of the worst poetry that the world has ever produced, it being the habit of the examiners to select passages from the frigid obscurity of Silver Latin.

"There's your classical education," shouted Lawrence contemptuously. "Silius Italicus and drivel about Etna and its siphons."

Rendell had to admit that, taken as a whole, Latin literature made a poor show.

"There's Lucretius and Catullus," he said.

"They're all right," said Lawrence. "But who else is there? Virgil, the Victorian before his time. The cave scene, so refined and all that. Better than old Arthur from the barge. Virgil the most blatant pirate and lifter of literary goods that ever made a name. Virgil who couldn't even translate the originals right and showed himself to be a fool as well as a knave. If we're going to have thieves, let's have them competent. Virgil! Ugh!"

Lawrence always spoke like this about Virgil: the subject gave him eloquence, and the others had long ago ceased to argue with him on this theme. To withstand his river of rhetoric was like trying to make a match-box float up-stream.

"No, my lad," he continued, "you are making a distinct fool of yourself by believing Mr Petworth's flattery. Not only is Latin literature rot, but that rot will be more efficiently done by those intolerable creatures from Balliol, who think of nothing else but these pots. You're wasting valuable time, failing to improve your execrable tennis, and demeaning yourself into the bargain. I wouldn't compete with those swine."

Of course Rendell took no notice and continued to read the more obscure Romans. But Lawrence was right; he did himself no good.

In June Martin went down to Devonshire. Only his uncle and aunt were at home: Margaret was abroad and Robert was working in chambers in town. Martin had much time for recalling the past and considering the future. He saw now that a day of reckoning was at hand. For two years, with the exception of a few weeks, he had taken life very, very easily, and it was inevitable that he should begin to take it with corresponding seriousness. He would have to settle down: his second in Mods had been a fluky affair, based rather on previous knowledge than on any real work done at Oxford. "Greats" would depend on genuine reading, and after Greats the Civil—and his livelihood. Probably he would have to go to India: how unthinkable it all was! Martin thought of India as a very hot place, where you either died before you got your pension or sat in clubs drinking whisky and soda with bullet-headed soldiers who didn't know the difference between Chopin and Cézanne, didn't know probably that such people had been. The future became hatefully plain. Either he would fail for the Civil and go to slave dismally at Wren's or else he would pass and go out to Colonels or to death. He wanted none of these things: he wanted books and friends and work in London, just enough work to neglect. It was scarcely possible for him to get a job at home and he hadn't money enough for the Bar. In fact he hadn't a penny, and he knew that his uncle couldn't help him: as it was, Mr Berrisford had been more than generous.

It was a bad prospect. To make matters worse, he set out to read Herodotus. He had been told that Herodotus was the jolliest man on earth (of course by Petworth) and he expected a treat. He found two immense volumes about nothing in particular, which contained a description of the world, occasionally amusing but more often fruitful only of hard words. What it all had to do with the Greek states and why the father of history had chosen to write almost anything but history, and that in the most muddled way possible, he found it hard to discover. And then he tried the ethics of Aristotle: he penetrated as far as Book V. and then gave way. For two whole days he yawned and swore alternately. There was not even anyone to talk to.

One night he decided to put the case to his uncle. He approached it in a rather tentative way after dinner as they sat smoking.

"Don't you ever get tired of being the country gentleman?" he asked.

"Frequently," said John Berrisford.

"Does it pass off, or what do you do about it?"

"Sometimes I go up to town to a company meeting and sometimes I bravely defy boredom by catching, or failing to catch, trout."

"And it works?"

"Tolerably. But why this anxiety about country life?"

"It just occurred to me."

After a silence, John Berrisford said to Martin:

"You've got a lit of depression and you want to meet men and talk about Art or the good life or women. It's quite right and natural that you should. Where have all your set vanished to?"

"Two or three have gone to Paris."

"Well, go thou and do likewise."

Martin paused. "I'm afraid I can't afford it. I've only got twelve pounds to keep me going till October. And I've got some bills as it is."

"I'll give you twenty-five. Go and talk your head off. Do some work too."

"It's frightfully good of you. They were going to work. They're living very cheaply in rooms somewhere: later on, when it's too hot, they're going into Brittany."

"Well, I don't know how long the money will last, but we'll expect you when we see you."

"Thanks awfully!"

"Now let's walk in the garden."

It was a perfect midsummer evening. Away to the west the sky was still red with the sunset and higher up above them the changing hues of opal merged into a lustrous blue which again was turned to steel in the summit of the vault. To the east shapely stems of firs rose to a black bulk of branches, spread out against the sky like tails of giant peacocks. And behind them was the splendid body of the moor with its great bosom of heather towering into nipples of stone. The night, which had stolen away colour and left only light and shade, had given strength and meaning to every line and curve and silhouette. They walked over soft, clinging grass to a paddock dotted with hen-coops, where the tiny pheasants were wont to squeak and scuttle. The black line of a distant bank twinkled with the tails of startled rabbits and an owl clattered heavily through leafy boughs. Then followed a silence, vivid and unforgettable, but soon to be broken by the shrill note of a bat that came and went with magic swerve and speed.

"Well," said John Berrisford, after lighting a fresh cigar, "isn't this rather convincing?"

"About the country, you mean?"

"Yes. On such a night do you thirst for Paris and café chatter with a drink-sodden Futurist?"

"It's too clear," answered Martin, looking round. "Perhaps to-morrow night it will be pouring, and then even you may have a hankering after the roar of traffic and the fine smell of a city."

"My dear Martin, you're impossible. You can't have everything your own way. If you intend to worship at one shrine you've got to keep it up for a bit and give the deity a chance of getting hold of you."

"And what if you don't believe in worshipping deities?"

"Then you'll be very unhappy."

"But you don't worship and you profess to be happy?"

"Don't I worship?"

"It's the first I've heard of it."

"How do you suppose I would be here now if I didn't worship the place? I'm a positive mystic."

"And the mystery?"

"The blessed mystery of Ham and Eggs."

"It sounds very fleshly. Tell me about it."

"Fleshly! It's the most spiritual thing on earth: in fact it's the cardinal point in the country gentleman's faith. But I'd better explain it all from the beginning. Just after I'd left Oxford your grandfather died and left me this estate. I was young and rebellious, as every young man should be, and I can tell you I didn't enjoy the prospect of settling down as a squire. Like Herrick, I preferred London to 'that dull Devonshire.' I wanted to hang about town, to join the devotees of Morris, to be a genius, a writer of brilliant plays and beautiful books, to be a lover of woman and to have breakfast after lunch. So I let this place to a tenant and fooled round."

"But I don't want to fool round. I want reasonable work."

"That's what they all say. It's what I said. But I never did any work."

"And you liked it?"

"On the whole, yes—until at last I went down to stay with a friend at a gorgeous place in the Cotswolds. There was a great grey manor-house, Jacobean and very good about the windows. My host gave me ham and eggs for breakfast: I had been used to omelettes and white wine. After breakfast—God, how I remember it—he took me across his wide, smooth lawns to talk to the keeper. We shot all day—I hadn't forgotten how to bowl over a pheasant—and then we dined and drank port and smoked cigars. Suddenly it all flashed across me, the fitness of things, the rich joy of escaping from chattering artists and cranks and reformers and all the crowds who had Done Something: I understood about pomp and circumstance. As I ate my ham and eggs next morning I became an initiate into their perfect mystery. (The eggs, I may say, must be fried, not poached.) The ham was a hill red with autumn and the eggs houses of gold in pure gardens of white. Then I swore to go back home and kick out the cotton king who used to come here for three weeks in the year. I would set up a new temple to the goddess and, worship her with all due rites. So I married my host's daughter, who was sound about ham and eggs and never played with fruit at breakfast-time, and here I am. I've stuck to it, for, as I said, you can't worship for a week and then go away: that isn't fair on the mystery. You've got to let things soak in. I've let the spirit of Ham and Eggs soak into me and I'm not tempted now to get it out again."

"And you didn't repent at the beginning?"

"Never permanently. I'm not idle. I'm a J.P., a soundly democratic J.P., to the disgust of the Colonels. I work on a host of committees and I direct two highly disreputable companies. Just because I like to live here in the country and be an acolyte for the goddess, there's no reason why I shouldn't do a lot besides. You can believe that I'm a much better squire than the rest of them. Of course I'm well aware that there oughtn't to be squires and that the whole thing is wrong. But equally plainly there are squires, and squiredom has its point, of which I may as well make the most. So I've played the part properly. To begin with, I put my farms on a business basis, gave a reasonable minimum, and became unpopular with my neighbours because I made them pay. If the State demands my abolition, I'll go like a shot, but I don't intend to let some magnate from Mincing Lane, who never eats ham, come and buy the place, redecorate the house—as he'd call it—buy some ancestors at Christie's and arrange an aerodrome. You young men think that because you like one sort of pleasure you've got to drop the others. It's all rubbish. I'll read any literature you want and talk you silly, but only after ham and eggs for breakfast and port wine for dinner. To hell with lunch!"

John Berrisford talked happily on and Martin was always pleased to listen.

"You're not converted?" said the elder man at last.

"Only on fine nights."

"Well you aren't fit for the mystery. Go away to your Latin Quarter and squalid digs and midnight settling of the universe."

So Martin went and found various members of his college living in contented poverty. It seemed to him that, at the rate at which they were existing, twenty-five pounds would keep him for a lifetime. Their nights were late but frugal and an ability to sleep saved the expense of petit déjeuner. They found where to obtain the noblest dinner for one franc fifty and made the acquaintance of artists, male and female, who would expound the whole theory of life and its artistic expression if someone paid for their drinks: which Martin did, purposing to improve his French. The weather was dry without being too hot, and one Sunday they went to Versailles in search of amusement, which materialised, for Martin and Lawrence, in the shape of two delightful women who said they had lost their way in the woods and needed a guide. Martin and Lawrence guided them with some skill to a house of refreshment, where the strangers became pleasantly intoxicated and very charming. They soon announced that they had lost their husbands as well as their way and were going to look for them at the station. Thither they went, with Martin and Lawrence following discreetly at a distance. The husbands were found to be in other company and the wives made a scene on the platform; it all ended by Martin and Lawrence, themselves not frigidly sober, removing the other company to a café and comforting their insulted dignity. They had a strange evening, and Martin learned a lot more French.

Owing to one or two reckless evenings he found himself a pauper just when the others were setting off to see Pierre Loti's fishermen, Paimpol and Guingamp and the quaint religion of the West. Of necessity he returned to Devonshire, fired with a determination to settle those texts which he had carried in vain to Paris.

He crossed by night and came down during the day. When he arrived, it was an evening of great beauty. Suddenly, as he was driven between banked hedges and silent woods of purest green, he came to view the mystery of Ham and Eggs as he had never viewed it before. He knew now how sick he was of Paris with its noise and penetrating smell of petrol, how tired of street cafés and superficial chattering about art. It struck him that if a man isn't going to create something he may as well shut his mouth and leave off jabbering for a bit. Here there was at least silence. Paris had been kindly in its way, but its way was sordid. He had been left with an impression that the city lacked baths and the citizens a cleanly comprehension. To forego ham and eggs and then to eat vastly in the middle of the day! What insipidity it showed, despite their reputation for taste. And there through a gap in the woods he saw The Steading, solid and calm as ever. Solidity and calmness counted, he knew, and what had Paris to do with them?

That evening he walked again with his uncle in the paddock, drinking in the sweet air, amazed at the restfulness.

"I enjoyed myself all the time," he said. "It was splendid!"

"That was good. And did you learn anything?"

"Nothing much from our talking. But I think I understand about the mystery."

"I thought Paris might drive it home; it used to smell so in August. Does it still?"

"In places." The scent of fir-trees came to him on the summer breeze. "I do see really," he added, almost pleadingly.

"I'm glad for your own sake. It's as well to look at the future. You may have to go to India. That may mean the end of books and talking and ideas. But you'll get reasonable pay and occasional leave and then you won't feel like anything but shooting and fishing. And perhaps when you're fifty or so you'll struggle back to this kind of existence. I assure you there's something in it all. And once you've dropped your philosophy of this and art of that for thirty years they won't come back. Ham and Eggs will be your only deity. But it isn't merely carnal."

"I see that," Martin replied.

Somehow the future did not seem so ugly to Martin as he stood watching the young moon hanging lightly over the dark shoulder of the moor. It would be good to come back and worship the goddess in Devonshire.

"Thanks for the initiation," he said as they turned back to the house.

V

"The' being no fur' questions, much pleasure call on Mr Leigh for his paper on Industrialism and the Home." (Mild applause.)

The members of the King's Essay Society were scattered about Martin's rooms, lounging in window-seats or strewn on the floor. The air was thick with smoke, the carpet invisible by reason of the mingled feet, tobacco, coffee-cups, books, and crystallised fruit. The Push were present in force, and Lawrence, larger than ever, lounged on the sofa and smoked a cigar with ungainly opulence.

Martin, from his seat by the reading-lamp, began to inform them about the home. He started philosophically, taking as his text the assertion that voluntary associations are always preferable to compulsory grouping and that it should be our object to restrict such compulsion as far as possible. The home is a compulsory association and its sphere must be limited. He pointed out that since the whole trend of industrialism had been to invade the home, to capture the women and to drag them out to wage-slavery, it was irrational to stop in the present position. The home must be either a real thing where women were free from the direct clutches of capitalism and made up for indirect economic dependence by freedom from drudgery in offices and factories, or else we must be logical and complete the tendency by industrialising the home. This process would of course destroy the home as at present understood. But it would substitute for the present compulsory group a voluntary association: and this he would welcome because the home of to-day was not only a compulsory but a fundamentally rotten institution. (Loud applause from emancipated young men.)

He didn't care whether women had votes or not: that was inessential. The great thing was to smash the home by making it a commercial unit. This, he maintained, could be done by the State endowment of motherhood and by marriage contracts in which payment for all domestic work should be made by the husband. There must be honest, open payment; wheedling and pin-money must go. Probably the best solution would be to insist on a fixed percentage of the husband's income going to the wife as a matter of course so long as she lived with him and kept his house.

Even more important was the case of the children. They too must be economic members of a commercial unit. Of course in early childhood that was impossible, but as soon as they reached a reasonable age—say seventeen—they too should have a legal claim to a certain percentage of the family income, to be continued until they were self-supporting. In the interest of youth, no one should be compelled to support himself until the age of twenty-four, for it was wicked to drive people into offices at eighteen, before they had known freedom of any kind. During these seven years the child might either take his salary and go or stay at home as a paying guest. The amount paid for such board would depend on the standard of life of the family. After all the parents had brought the child into the world without asking if he wanted it, and consequently, so far from having rights with regard to the fruit of their pleasure, they had only duties. Aristotle was reduced to pulp with regard to this point.

Such a policy would safeguard the liberties of the child, who, on reaching a reasonable age, could always go away and need not accept his father's politics and religion with his father's beef. The home would thus be a compulsory association only during early childhood and would be a voluntary association for the adolescent. Thus would we solve the woman question and build an honest, self-reliant nation. Let Dr Bosanquet maunder on about organisms and compare the family meal—that ghastly rite—to the Holy Communion. To hell with such sentimentality! (Applause.)

Martin then reverted to political philosophy and maintained that no group whose membership was not spontaneous could have a vital purpose and a common will. In so far as the family remained compulsory it could have no such will: because a man was born a Jones he need not have the same interests as the rest of the Jones' group: indeed most great men loathed their relations. For the small children a home of some sort, whether private or municipal, was inevitable. The question was whether they were going to save the young adult from sentimental tyranny by insisting on incomes and latch-key rights for sons and daughters and building up a multitude of voluntary co-operative groups on a strictly business basis.

"Of course I admit it is more or less impossible," he said as he finished. "But we may as well talk theory."

There was a short interval, and then Rendell, by grace of his three "F's," was chosen to open the discussion.

He couldn't, he said, accept all that about voluntary associations. He wasn't a Syndicalist, though, judging from the latest efforts of the Tories, we were all not only Socialists, but Syndicalists nowadays. He believed in the State.... The State ... yes, organisms and all that. He didn't mind the commercialism, provided it was State commercialism. Couldn't have these voluntary groups ... dangerous. Besides, he wanted domestic work all done by clever machines, electric stoves and automatic beds that "made" themselves and became sofas in the next room by slipping through the wall. This would liberate woman. "Woman's sphere is not the home, her home is the sphere."

With these feeble aphorisms he sat down. He had at least convinced the company on one point—namely, that discussions are always a futile anti-climax.

But Davenant was up, and he was amusing, though he always said the same thing. "I protest," he said, "against industrialism being carried any further. It has marred our men, let us keep it from our women. I want to see a world full of guilds and craftsmen and artificers, not working eight hours a day and then going to a municipal park to drink municipal cocoa and hear the municipal band, but working because they love their work, because it is their creation, their life. And I want to see women working as they love to work, not sordidly and cheaply in a market of labour. The women I want will not work against men, but with them and for them, fashioning beautiful homes and beautiful things of every kind. And you will find that it is no use to put woman on a level with men because women are not crudely rational like men, who analyse and destroy. With woman lies the future, because she alone can create without destroying. Man is destructive and analytic. Woman is ultimate, intuitive, basic, and synthetic."

The less experienced members of the Essay Society began to wonder whether this could mean anything and roused themselves from sleep. But those who knew Davenant understood. He had an affection for certain words and loved to entwine them with any subject that came to hand. Woman was not the only entity which Davenant had been known to call "ultimate, intuitive, basic, and synthetic."

Then a remote, unknown young man in spectacles and spats said in a plaintive way that the reader of the paper did not understand about Laav: that Laav made all things different: that religion was morality tinged with emotion: that the home was just what its inhabitants made of it: that a change of heart was needed: that you couldn't make men good by Act of Parliament; that, just as dancing was the poetry of motion, so Laav was the poetry of life.

Then this master of the catch-word sat down amid a deathly silence. It appeared afterwards that he had got in by mistake: he thought he was attending a meeting of Oxford Churchmen on Home Missions. Lawrence rose. He began, suitably, by treading on some coffee-cups and bananas, stumbling backward and tripping over the cord which united the reading-lamp and the wall. The lamp fell with a crash and confusion and foul language ensued. At length order was restored and he could let himself go.

"It may seem odd," he said, "but I agree with the last speaker more than with anyone else: and he was about as wrong as can be. He was right when he said love mattered but wrong in what he meant by it. The love that counts isn't the squidgy, religious thing he wants and it hasn't anything to do with the great passions of poets and intellectual young men. It isn't even Browning's ethereal penguin, half angel and half bird. The love that really matters for people who are interested in the way the world is going is just extensive, sentimental wallowing. Nothing more. Has it ever struck you remote philosophers that making love is the only thing that most people really care about? The papers may rave about a great political crisis or a strike movement. But if you met the average man you wouldn't bet a button that he cared twopence either way, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that he cared about taking a girl out on Saturday night. That's the permanent and irresistible fact. Every cinema film, every piece of cheap fiction, every popular song has one message. There must be 'a strong love interest.' The world has known friendship and sensuality and passion since the beginning. This great flood of sentimentality is as new as it is strong."

He paused a moment to look round. The sleepers had been roused: Lawrence was good when he was under way.

"It came in with the industrial system," he went on. "I believe that there is in man a natural tendency to look for beauty somewhere. Capitalism made of work so foul a thing that it couldn't be found there. And in answer to demand it turned out a numberless horde of stunted, overworked, half-educated people. Work was foul: for ordinary amusements there was no time, except on Sunday, and then it was wicked. Some means of self-expression had to be found, something to bring comfort of a sort, something that would be suitable for Sundays and the evenings. There was sex. I wonder why it never occurs to the parsons who protest against Sunday games (for the poor) that the British Sabbath is nothing but a forcing-house for sex. The average artisan or shop-girl has not the possibility of any other occupation.

"The worker has combined with his notion of love the notion of home as a place where he will be free to do as he likes, to express himself, to create the ugliness which he or she thinks 'so sweet.' The capitalist has bound his hands and his brain and, if the Eugenists get their abominable way, he'll bind his emotions and his body too. Hitherto he has been free to love as he chooses, and that's why he loves such a lot. It isn't for nothing that a very popular song tells of a Little Grey Home in the West where people go to amatory bliss 'when the toil of the long day is o'er.'

"Well, what's the upshot of it all? Merely that the home matters far more than you imagine, because it's the one place where the Servile State hasn't really got hold of its victims yet. It's true that a middle-class home may be deadly; so far I agree with the paper. But I don't agree that the minor's next step is to smash the home altogether. No, we've got to save it if we want to save men from being turned into mere wealth-producing machines. We've got to save it with all its dangers because it is the expression of genuine and valuable emotion. You people are all for smashing the home before you've smashed the system: my idea is just the reverse. When you have a state in which men can take pride and find beauty in their work, you can go in and smash the home. If you try and put the home on a business basis you may help a few middle-class people who have brains and time enough to quarrel, but you'll be taking from the oppressed their only release and making life more commercial and sordid than it is at present. Set up a society where life has rational interests, where a man can express his desire for beauty without leaving it to nocturnal sentimentality, and I'm with you. In the meanwhile there's a good deal to be said for The Little Grey Home in the West. It answers a need. To kill that need you must smash Industrialism. And that, my Fabian friends, is some business."

After such an oration, not silly and blatant as the words of Lawrence often tended to become, it seemed wrong to talk further. Martin, who was by nature far more sympathetic to the popular taste than was Rendell, had been influenced by the last speech and the defence of The Little Grey Home: in his reply he made a considerable recantation. The society adjourned, the visitors disappeared, and the elect remained to talk. Once more Woman was the theme, and her position and claims were thoroughly discussed until, about midnight, the conversation drifted, like early Greek history, "into the mythical" and fiction succeeded theory. That, from the male talker's standpoint, is the advantage about woman; equally she can point the moral or adorn the tale.

Martin was enjoying his third year. He still had rooms in college and had enough work to keep him contented while the shadow of exams was too remote to cause apprehension. The Push had risen to fame and were running the college: they had taken charge of its societies in a lordly way and talked sense or nonsense as they chose. But the heavy hand of Age was beginning to make them increasingly fond of sense. They were none the less happy, however, for being less superficial, and secretly they were pleased by the admiration of the advanced freshers and the effort made to cultivate their society. Martin's third year was a time of activity, free both from the boundless and discursive idling of his "fresher" period and the anxious strain that pending examinations cannot fail to produce.

Chard, however, was deserting them, for his career at the Union made him a busy man. His triumph (he was Junior Librarian early in his third year) had been mainly achieved by hard work. Office at the Oxford Union can be won either by courting or despising the members: there is no middle path. The latter method needs audacity and ability. The man who never pulls strings, dashes in late to make his speech, and dashes out again to seek reasonable company may win the votes of the people whom he so treats, provided that he is either really witty, a peer, or a Blue. A titled Blue could afford to do anything, but fortunately neither peers nor Blues deign to have much business with so common a place as the Union.

Chard had adopted the other method. He had pulled strings diligently. He had got to know the right people: he had learned up the right epigrams for the right speeches: asked the right questions of the officers and, when himself an officer, had made the right retorts. He had worked hard in search of votes and had addressed, carefully and capably, nearly every debating society in Oxford. He was standing for the Presidency at the end of the spring term and had every chance of success. The Union loved him, because, not being a Balliol man, he had beaten the Balliol people at their own game.

For the visitors' debate Bavin, K.C., M.P., was coming down, Bavin than whom no fiercer lawyer flayed the Government on provincial platforms and was photographed at country houses. His fees were unparalleled, his wife, a peer's daughter, the most beautiful woman in society. Bavin had done everything as it should be done, at Eton, at Balliol, at All Souls, at the Bar, in the social world. His career was an epitome of success.

He would, of course, speak last. Chard, a strong supporter of the Government, would precede him. It was hard luck on Chard, one felt, that he should have to come first: Bavin's oratorical bludgeonings would make a mess of Chard. Still Chard was the only man who had any chance against Bavin. One pinned one's faith on Chard to rise to the occasion. Anyhow it would be fun, and everybody would be there.

Martin liked Chard for his thorough-going pursuit of success, his willingness to borrow brilliance from any source, his capacity for making use of anybody and anything.

"Chard is getting the limit," Rendell complained to Martin. "Do you think he ever has a single thought outside his career?"

"Chard is to me as a modern hotel palace to Arnold Bennett. His methods fascinate me: I can't help loving him."

"I suppose he'll be a Cabinet Minister in twelve years or so."

"I trust it won't be long. He'll be very nice on a Front Bench."

So Martin remained a friend of Chard's, and Chard read to him all the great speech wherewith he was to extinguish in advance the raging fire of Bavin's dialectic.

Chard knew his audience and had included just the right jokes.

But Chard was not liked by everyone. Many of the college objected to him for seeking friends outside their walls: the athletic Mandarins had never forgiven his method of meeting their request for his presence at the boats. Chard didn't mind: these people were not voting members of the Union. Most of all he was disliked by Smith-Aitken, whose father, né Smith, had made a fortune in pickles. This father, being a self-made man, had entertained notions of his son as a hard worker and had refused to send him to one of the more expensive and aristocratic colleges. Foolishly he forgot to limit his son's allowance, and so Smith-Aitken rode horses and joined the Bullingdon. He was not a nice man. He had greasy yellow curls, several rings, an eyeglass, a motor car, some horses, and a very special taste for liqueur brandy. Chard used to make jokes about him and his victim knew it.

One night Smith-Aitken, having ridden after a fox all day, returned to a repast whose main features were champagne and the very special liqueur brandy. Before he was put to bed he threw the junior dean's bicycle through Chard's window.

Chard spent the next morning making out a little bill. It amused him. In addition to ordinary claims for broken glass he included other items, as:

"To new tablecloth to replace old cloth spoiled by ink upset by bicycle propelled by Mr R. W. Smith-Aitken—one guinea."

"To essay on Austin's 'Theory of Sovereignty,' spoiled by ink upset by bicycle as before: at two guineas a thousand words—four guineas."

The total amount claimed was twelve pounds ten shillings.

By return of messenger Chard received a cheque for that amount.

Smith-Aitken had made the obvious retort. Chard couldn't, he thought, take the money when the damage had really been small. Chard considered the problem: he was disagreeably surprised at receiving the cheque: it had made him look a fool. There was only one reply, to cash the cheque and give the money to a hospital. This he did. Smith-Aitken, on discovering what had happened, was furious. The money didn't matter much to him, but he didn't see why he should have to pay four guineas for making a splash of ink on one of Chard's jocular essays; besides, he now looked the fool. But he was very polite to Chard whenever he met him and they talked to one another with urbanity.

On the afternoon of the great day on which Chard and Bavin were to batter one another in the arena of the Oxford Union Society, Chard was walking across the quad when Smith-Aitken came out of the porch. He carried a telegram in his hand and rushed up to Chard at once.

"I've just seen Bob Marshall," he said. Marshall was the President of the Union, a new Tory blood and a close friend of Smith-Aitken's. "He has had this telegram from Bavin. It says that his car has broken down badly. They're close to a village with a telegraph but miles from a railway. He wants someone to go and fetch him in. Marshall is too busy; he's got to see to the dinner and a heap of things. But he saw me in my car and asked me to run out. You've met Bavin, haven't you? What's he like?"

"I met him at a dinner once," said Chard. "Successful barrister. Face like a hatchet. Stern, morose, and inexorable, you know the type. But I believe he's nicer than he looks."

"Well, look here. You'd better come and talk to him while I drive him in. It would be better to have someone who knows the man. You can arrange what names to call each other."

Chard was attracted. Bavin was, he thought, a bouncing jackass, but he bounced before a large audience. He was certainly a person to 'acquire,' and Chard went about the world 'acquiring' the people whom he deemed worthy of that honour. It would be useful to know Bavin well and the formal President's dinner would not give him much chance. Smith-Aitken, too, had been civil lately; he really wasn't such a bad chap. So Chard accepted with alacrity and Martin watched them being driven away. Nixon, a friend of Smith-Aitken's, went with them. He wanted a lift to the station.

That was at half-past two.

At a quarter to seven Lawrence rushed into Martin's rooms.

"Have you heard the latest?" he shouted. "Our Chard has been kidnapped. It's all over the place. Smith-Aitken got him in his car and God knows where they've taken him."

Martin saw it all in a flash. "But how did it leak out?" he asked.

"One of Smith-Aitken's push let on. Couldn't contain himself for glee. Someone on the Bullingdon suggested it. They all hate Chard, and now they think they've fairly got him. No cheers and epigrams to-night."

"Are you dead certain about it?"

"Well, Chard isn't in his rooms. Neither he nor Smith-Aitken have been seen, and Bavin arrived from town by the 6.5."

Martin was silent.

"It's damned funny," said Lawrence.

"It would be a damned sight funnier if he could get back."

"But he won't. They'll see to that."

"We might get him," said Martin suddenly. "I've got an idea. This morning I heard the man Holland ask Smith-Aitken to dine with him to-night at Vincent's. Smith-A. said he wouldn't be in Oxford. 'Town?' said Holland. 'No, Abingdon, King's Arms.' Holland said something about a woman in the case and Smith-A. said: 'Not this time. Don't you know?' It was a mere fluke that I heard him. But I fancy we may as well make use of the chance. I'm pretty sure Chard will be a guest at a little dinner in Abingdon."

"Yes, but it's only a possibility. Besides, what can we do?"

"We can look them up, just to emphasise the necessity of keeping secrets."

"It's nearly seven now."

"We can bag Rendell's motor bike and side-car."

"Yes; but what can we do when we're there?"

"Wait for an inspiration."

They went. The journey took some time, for the motor bicycle behaved abominably on Hinksey hill. Not till a quarter to eight did they reach Abingdon. Martin dismounted in the square and left Lawrence with the machine. He walked up to the King's Arms and glanced through the windows of the dining-room, which looked directly upon the street. He had been right in his surmise. Chard was dining with Nixon and Smith-Aitken. Apparently he was making the best of it: they seemed to be a happy party and passed bottles with conviction.

Martin brought the news to Lawrence: "We simply must get hold of him," he said. "It would be the deed of a lifetime."

"That's all very well," said Lawrence. "But what the devil can we do? We can't just go in and knock out our Bullingdon friends. We'd have the manager and the police nosing round and we'd never get away in time."

"We can't do that," Martin agreed. "And we can't afford to wait. It's nearly eight and we must be back by nine. What do people do in cinema dramas?"

"I know," Lawrence almost shouted. "Don't you remember 'Lust or Love?' and how they rescued the white slave. The drama has its uses."

Martin remembered. "We might try," he said.

They entered the hotel and looked into the smoking-room. It was dark and empty. They collected all the old newspapers, took the wood from the unlit fire, and in the grate they heaped a monstrous pile. After blocking up the chimney they lit their bonfire. Smoke belched out into the room in dense, curling waves. When they could endure it no longer they opened the door and let the smoke into the passage. Then they opened the door of the dining-room and shouted from concealment: "Fire! Help! Fire!"

Smith-Aitken looked round, sniffed, and listened. There was an ominous crackling and an unspeakable smell. "So there is," he said. "I wonder if it started in the garage. My god." He fled without dignity to his car. Nixon and Chard went into the passage. The manager, the housekeeper, the waiter, and three maids were gasping and fussing and talking about water. There didn't seem to be any.

Suddenly Nixon found himself pushed into the reeking smoking-room and Chard was hauled swiftly into the square. The turmoil was terrific. A policeman came and a crowd began to collect.

"You," said Chard, when he saw Martin and Lawrence.

There was no time for talking. Martin pushed Chard into the side-car, told Lawrence to follow by train, and let the bike do its best. When they were clear of Abingdon he explained things to the mystified Chard.

It was all so simple, so incredible.

"I never dreamed Smith-A. would try on that game," said Chard. "It was rather a dirty trick, but he was charming all the time. We seem to have toured half England during the afternoon. And it was a capital dinner. He brought the wine with him, the red wine of Burgundy, my boy. And I was looking forward to some of that very special liqueur brandy. He never travels without that. And now you've robbed me of it."

The cold, fresh air coming on top of the red wine of Burgundy made Chard more talkative than usual.

At five minutes past eight the debating hall of the Union Society was not merely full: it was crammed with an unparalleled audience. Normally a large crowd would have come to hear Chard: a dense crowd would have come to hear Bavin. But Bavin versus Chard! It was unique. And Chard was so reliable! He never failed on such occasions: he had his impromptus ready and his answers well rehearsed.

But to the charms of oratory had been added this evening the fascination of mystery. Rumour has swift wings in such a community as a university, and already it was on everyone's lips that a colossal 'rag' had taken place, that Chard wouldn't be there for the occasion of his life, that he had been kidnapped.

So those who didn't want to hear either Chard or Bavin had come to see if Chard was going to turn up. All along the benches sat serried multitudes of members, whispering, chattering, perspiring. Along all those rows of faces, black and brown, yellow and white, spectacled and pimpled, ugly and less ugly, there gleamed expectancy. And by the doorway and up the gangways there jostled and pushed an ever-growing crowd of curious young men. Perhaps they wanted to see Bavin: certainly they yearned, they most definitely yearned, to know the truth about Chard.

At last the officers filed in amid applause. One almost forgot to look at Bavin, such was the eagerness to see if Chard had really vanished. There was a loud murmur of surprise. He certainly was not there. Man said to man: "I told you so. They've nabbed him."

"In the absence of the Junior Librarian," said the President, "I call upon the Junior Treasurer to bring forward the weekly list of books."

That was all: no hint as to indisposition, no suggestion of Chard's adventure. There were the usual jokes. Of course people asked about Chard. The President said that he knew nothing of the Junior Librarian. He trusted he would appear in time for his speech. And when he read out the motion before the house and the list of speakers he included Chard's name.

At twenty minutes past eight the first speaker began. He finished at a quarter to nine and two others carried on the debate till half-past. The second of them had reached his peroration. The audience paid little heed to his anxiety about the ship of state. Where the devil was Chard? That was all that mattered. Was Chard really lying gagged and throttled in a ditch?

The speaker sat down and the expectant audience forgot to applaud. There was a pause, followed by much pushing and heaving among the crowd at the door. Suddenly Chard was shot on to the floor of the house. He wore a rough grey suit and was liberally splashed with mud. But he walked quietly to his throne and took his seat by the immaculate President.

"The Junior Librarian," announced the President without the slightest sign of emotion. It is not for presidents to be human, and Marshall knew his business.

There was a great roar of joy as Chard, foul with mire, advanced to the despatch-box. "I must apologise, sir," he began, "for my late and unkempt appearance. I have been with friends. (Cheers.) With very dear friends who would not hear of my going. That is the worst of friends. They are sometimes so pressing. (Uproar.) But I would have been earlier and in a more cleanly state had not another friend, in his eagerness to save me from my first friends, been over-hasty. Perhaps he meant it as a compliment to our honourable and gallant visitor when he compelled me to lie, providentially not to die, in the last ditch." (Prolonged applause.) Bavin's 'last ditch' speech had been his most notable success. Then Chard proceeded to welcome Bavin, as was his duty, and to trample on him, as was his pleasure. Not even the wet bed of a Hinksey ditch could damp Chard's democratic fervour or blunt the brilliancy of his wit. He had not forgotten his impromptus: in the ditch he had even devised a new one. For half-an-hour he scored point after point. He surpassed himself, he was unique. Possibly, if he had always taken the red wine of Burgundy for his dinner, he would always have spoken like this.

Martin, himself foul with mud, stood in the crowd. He thrilled with the sense of triumph. He remembered the night on which he had fought for Gideon and the Lord. It was adventure once again, terrifying and superb. And again he had been on the winning side.

Bavin, K.C., M.P., came as an anti-climax. He addressed a dwindling house and failed to rouse it. He lost his motion and concluded that the undergraduate was not only a traitor to the cause of the Right, but an uncivil jackanapes. What business had they to ask him down and then to take notice only of this Chard fellow?

A few days later Chard was elected to the presidency by a record majority. He had surpassed even the majority of Walmersly, the Churchmen's champion, who had had an election agent in every college, who had whipped up an army of country parsons and other dilapidated senior members with a silent promise of increased vacational facilities, who had entertained over three hundred junior members in two terms.

Chard received a polite note of congratulation from Smith-Aitken and sent, in return, a vote of thanks. Nothing was ever heard about the King's Arms, Abingdon: certainly no damage could have been done.

"Good for you," Martin said to him. "It's been a great business. At least one of the Push is a made man."

"It has been fun," Chard admitted. He was intensely happy.

"All the same it was just as well we had that little smash. By Jove, we had some luck. No damage done and just enough mud to be convincing. And then that carrier's cart to get us in absolutely up to time."

"Certainly I owe a good many votes to your enterprise in fetching me and to the terrific blend of eagerness and incompetence which put me in the ditch."

"I can't help a skid," said Martin.

"Whose bike?" asked Chard. It was the first time he had thought of it. "We made it look pretty silly."

"Rendell's," answered Martin. "We'd better pay the damage. I'd forgotten."

"That's my affair," said Chard, who felt like generosity. "Comes under reasonable election expenses surely."

Also he gave a dinner to his "workers." King's had not had a President of the Union for several years. That distinction and the fame gained by the kidnapping incident made Chard into a notable. Freshers stared at him in the High and pointed him out to the ignorant.

As a President he shone with incomparable lustre, and he acquired a fine presence and manner for his official duties. The Push in general and Martin in particular felt the reflection of that brilliant light. It seemed good that Chard's taper should be so radiant. Life for the Push, during that third year, was free of care and free of idleness, fruitful of activity and enterprise, restless and fascinating.