BOOK ONE

SCHOOL

I

Life seemed to Martin Leigh, as he gazed at the wooden walls of his cubicle, very overwhelming: there were so many things to remember. He had lived through his first day as a boarder at a public school and at length he had the great joy of knowing that for nine hours there would be nothing to find out. He seemed to have been finding things out ever since seven o'clock that morning: finding out his form and his form master, his desk at school and his desk in the house, his place in chapel and his place at meals, his hours of work and his field for play. He had moved in a world of mystery, a world of doors which had to be opened and of locks which had to be picked. It had been terrifying work, this probing of places.

All day Martin had been shown things by formidable people in a hustling, inadequate way: he had been far too awed by the majesty of his conductors to ask any questions and he realised now that he had forgotten nearly all that he had been told. He knew that he was in the Lower Fifth, Classical, and that his form master was a renowned terror: he knew also that he was supposed to play football with the other small boys of his house in a muddy-looking field some distance away. But his place in chapel ... that had vanished entirely from his mind. And to-morrow morning he would either have to pluck up his scanty courage and make a fool of himself by asking one of the formidable people, or else trust to luck and probably make an even greater fool of himself by wandering disconsolate in the aisle. He was vague also as to the locality of the Lower Fifth classroom: there was, indeed, one other member of that form in the house, but he was a gigantic, moustachioed person, a man of weight in the football world: to approach him would be impossible. Martin came to the conclusion that not only would chapel make him notorious for life, but that he would also get lost in school and reach his classroom late: then he would come in blushing, amidst the smiles of the superior. And the Terror would not rage and swear like a gentleman: he would smile, as he had smiled that morning, and make a little joke.

Life was undoubtedly overwhelming. And there were other no less cruel facts to face. His collars were all wrong. All the other new boys, he had noticed, wore Eton collars: these, apparently, should be retained for a few terms, until the owner considered himself sufficiently dignified for 'stick-ups.' Martin, who was fourteen and tall for his age, had been sent to school with 'stick-ups' and no Eton collars. He saw at once the horrid nature of his offence: it was side of the first degree, involuntary side, but who would know that, much less conjecture it? The new boys, as timid as himself, had of course said nothing, but he had observed the smiles and queer looks of the people about a year older, who had themselves only just assumed the emblem of position. It was a very awkward and bothering occurrence, and he had already written home for others to be sent as soon as possible. In reality Martin was more worried about this than about all the information he had forgotten. What made him dread the morrow with a fear he had never known before was not so much the possibility of his wandering about school and chapel like a lost sheep, but the certainty that he would be dressed in open defiance of all the sartorial traditions of Elfrey School.

Martin tried to console himself with the reflection that nothing could now deprive him of nine hours' peace. He was glad that he was allowed a cubicle and could enjoy a certain amount of privacy: he had anticipated a large, bare room with rows of beds and the continual shower, so dear to the books of his youth, of hurtling slippers and sponges. Instead he had found a comfortable dormitory with a broad passage separating two rows of nine wooden-sided cubicles. As far as he could gather most of the boys adorned their cubicles with family photographs, presumably because they were content with a hasty glance at their parents and sisters during the shamefully few seconds in which the acts of washing and dressing were completed: their actresses they pinned inside their workroom desks, or, if they were study owners, hung on their walls so that the long watches of the day were not uncomforted. It struck Martin that here was another gap: he had not brought with him any family photographs, and he expected that to seem unfilial would be very bad form: nor had he a favourite actress. He would have, he saw, to ask for his family photographs to be sent with the Eton collars and the sardines, which he had discovered at tea to be essential to the good life. The actress problem could be dealt with later.

The rules of the dormitory were strict. Lights were turned out at ten and no one could leave his cubicle without permission. No talking was allowed after 'Lights out.' But to-night things were disorganised. In the first place, Moore was the prefect on duty, an occurrence which usually meant that no one was on duty, for it was Moore's habit to go back to his study to find a book and then to forget about returning. And besides it was only natural that at the beginning of term discipline should not be established in all its accustomed rigour. Everyone, except the six new boys, had plenty to say, and in the prolonged absence of Moore they passed freely about from cubicle to cubicle. It was already a quarter past ten.

Martin, of course, lay quietly in bed gazing at the cracks in the plaster above him and wondering how long it would be before the lights went out and sleep became possible. His thoughts shifted painfully from chapel to collars, from collars to the Lower Fifth. This invasion of a new world which had seemed only a week ago to be so supreme an adventure was nothing but a nuisance and an agony. His sole comfort lay in the reflection that bed, even a hard, knobbly, school bed is an excellent place: here at least there was nothing to find out.

Suddenly he realised that a conversation was in progress close to the curtain of his cubicle. Cullen, his neighbour in the dormitory, was talking to a friend called Neave: already he had marked them both as giants of a year's standing, youthful bloods of surpassing glory.

"I've got a ripping photo of Sally Savoy," said Cullen.

"She's a bit of fluff for you," answered Neave.

"Yes, by gum. My brother at Sandhurst told me a grand story about her."

"What was it?"

"It's jolly hot stuff."

"All the better. Let's have it."

Then Cullen launched out. Martin, who could not help overhearing every word, understood the beginning of the tale, but just when Neave's exclamation betrayed the listener's thrill, he found it unintelligible. And later on there was the recitation of a Limerick which he could not at all understand. It was not that anything deeply wicked was related, but Martin had been a day boy at his private school and had only received a vague impression of the ways of nature and of man. Never before had it struck him how confused and ignorant he was.

Then a mighty voice roared: "What the deuce are you all playing at?" Numerous forms in more or less advanced stages of nudity started like rabbits to their proper cubicles, while Moore bellowed in the doorway. If it had been anyone but Moore there would have been a row: but Moore was an angel and never did anything but shout. The lights were turned down and the voices died away.

Cullen took one lingering glance at Sally before he put her away and said his prayers: Neave, having ended his supplications, lay chuckling quietly in bed. Martin began to feel acutely miserable. In spite of all his hopes that the dormitory would bring him peace, he had only come across another door which had to be opened. There was no escape: he would have to find out, for he might be expected to join in one of these conversations and then he would be shown up. He would have to discover some decent new boy and question him tactfully. It would be embarrassing: it would be perfect hell: but it would be inevitable. He began to wish he was back in Devonshire, at home. God, how he loathed Life and Elfrey and Sally Savoy: he wanted ... but just when, in spite of the promptings of conscience, he was yielding to the soft embrace of sentiment and memory, sleep saved the situation.

II

It is one of the world's happiest phenomena that pessimism, by creating expectations gloomier far than any possible event, destroys by that very process its _raison d'etre_. For Martin the future had, almost of necessity, to be brighter than its promise. He was pushed into his right place in chapel and found his way, without undue meandering, to the Lower Fifth classroom: he even appeased the Terror by his ability to explain the history of the genitive case in Greek. A schoolmaster's lot is hard enough without his making it worse, and the Terror sensibly seized any opportunity of investing his work with an element of real interest. With the bloods who found higher progress impossible and remained to clog the Lower Fifth, it was always routine: but Martin had come with a scholarship and was capable of an ingenious and tasteful turn in translation. He was obviously a boy in whom an interest could be taken, and the Terror warmed to him even to the extent of abandoning the sardonic humour on which he so prided himself. According to all the best traditions of scholastic fiction, Martin should have been unpopular for this reason, but as a matter of fact the bloods were far too bored with the Terror and all his works, and far too contemptuous of all clever kids and 'sweat-guts,' to take the least notice of what happened: or, if they did take notice, they were not going to give themselves away by showing it.

The collar problem had been the hardest to face, and Martin still longed eagerly for the Etons to arrive. As for the question of Neave, Cullen, and Sally Savoy, he found that here too his fears had been exaggerated. Most of the smaller boys did not talk on this subject: Neave and Cullen turned out to be remote and superior creatures: by their well-oiled hair and exquisite variety of ties and socks and handkerchiefs they revealed the majesty of their doggishness. But Martin was not prepared to run any risks: he became intimate with the most imposing of the new boys, one Caruth, and plied him with questions. He saw plainly that it was an ordeal which had to be gone through if he was ever to attain peace of mind, and consequently he bravely endured Caruth's surprise at the deficiencies in his knowledge. Martin had foolishly begun by hinting that he really knew a good deal and only wanted a few supplementary details, but he soon discovered that he was giving himself most terribly away. Then he broke down and confessed his ignorance.

"You are a kid," said Caruth. "You with your stick-ups!"

"Well, it's not my fault," protested Martin.

Thereupon Caruth became very patronising and talked to him at length, telling him much that was true and more that was false: he also gave information as to suitable passages in Shakespeare and the Bible for the confirmation of theory. At first Martin was sickened and disgusted by his investigations, but his sense of repulsion was soon outweighed by the consideration that another barrier had been broken down and that now he could join in conversation, if need be, without that gnawing fear of being shown up. Caruth had the decency not to betray Martin's ignorance to the other new boys.

Martin was in Berney's house. Berney's had a reputation for mediocrity--that is to say, it rarely won many challenge cups, and those which it did hold were gained more often by individuals than by teams. Berney's usually had some brilliant athletes, but it never succeeded in training good sides. Occasionally at the bidding of a conscientious prefect it made an effort; but its efforts were nearly always in vain. Berney's had a lofty contempt for pot-hunting, which the other houses of course attributed to jealousy. When Martin came to Berney's the house was in its usual state: two of the prefects, Jamieson and Parker, were very clever men but indifferent athletes: the other two, Moore and Leopard, were brilliant athletes and not at all clever. The house as a whole was listless and apathetic, and there was a healthy spirit of tolerance resulting in the formation of groups. There was a doggish group, which discussed socks and hair oil and other more exciting things, a young athletic group, a group of 'sweat-guts,' and a group of complete nullities. The new boys remained in a bunch until half-term and then began to drift to their appropriate circles. Martin, reasoning from certain conversations at his private school, had been afraid that the new boys might have a rough time. Nothing of the sort occurred. They were left very much alone and, as long as they put on no side, received quite reasonable treatment. In all his career at Elfrey Martin never saw a fight or a case of bullying: at times there would be a little playful ragging, and insolence usually met with its reward, but there was no systematic oppression. Above all, the 'sweat-guts,' though they might be laughed at now and then, were never persecuted.

At the end of this second week Martin received two invitations to supper. One was from Mrs Berney, the other from Mrs Foskett, the headmaster's wife. Mrs Berney's hospitality came first. Instead of going in to house tea and eating bread and butter and whatever else he chose to provide for himself, he went to the front part of the house with a clean collar (Eton by now) and hair 'sloshed' down with copious water. There he met Caruth and two others, all equally wet about the hair. They were fed with fried soles, cold tongue, meringues, tea, toast, and marmalade--not at all a bad business, thought Martin, and well worth the previous exertions of the toilet.

Mr Berney sat at the head of the table. He was a little, freckled man with a fair moustache: he had become a schoolmaster through despair and a housemaster through patience. His chief interest lay in natural history and botany, and he was never so happy as when he forgot all about the school and his house and tramped the surrounding country. He managed his house with a bare minimum of efficiency and was never loved and never hated. In the routine of teaching at school and administration at home he worked steadily, without mistakes and without enthusiasm. He said all that a housemaster ought to say about games and work and religion and moral tone without stopping to think whether it was desirable or even consistent, for he had long ago discovered that to start thinking would be to court anxiety, if not disaster. He lived, on the whole, for his holidays.

At the other end of the table was his wife, small and dark and interesting. She it was who ran the house, not because she liked it, but because she worshipped her husband and knew that he loathed responsibility. She was popular with the boys, who could pardon her complete inability to understand games (a heinous sin in a housemaster's wife) because of her unfailing kindness and sympathy. She fed them well, as schools go, believed in culture, and used to gather select spirits to read poetry in her drawing-room.

Martin sat next to her and found her easy to talk to. She too was relieved, because she usually had to struggle with an athletic conversation, a prolonged torture in which she would cause horror and dismay by confusing half-backs and cover-points. But Martin could talk about books and even pictures: she became interested and forgot to dole out meringues, until, reminded by her husband, she looked up and saw with shame the expectant faces of her guests. Afterwards she took them to her comfortable drawing-room and talked on general school subjects: she kept them until she was certain that of this batch Martin alone had possibilities. Then she drove them to prep.

The Fosketts, as befitted a headmaster and his wife, were more formidable. To begin with, their hospitality involved, in addition to the clean collar and sloshed hair, the wearing of Sunday clothes and the completion of prep in odd moments. The six new boys at Berney's all went together, very timid and overwhelmed at the thought of being entertained by one so remote and so tremendous as the Head. He was not in their eyes so infinitely great as Llewelyn, the Captain of Football: but, distinctly, he counted.

Foskett was one of the new headmasters. He was young (Elfrey figured early in the _cursus honorum_ of one who aspired to the greatest thrones), and he had declined to take holy orders. But, though fashionably sceptical about the hardest dogmas, he believed intensely in all the right things, in the Classics and the Empire and Moral Tone and the Educational Value of Athletics and Our Duty to the Poor and the Need for Personal Service. Consequently his name was already a byword with all the conscientious young men in London and at the universities who form quasi-religious clubs and believe that the world can be reformed by heartiness and committee meetings. Foskett was a very able man, who knew quite well what he wanted and was determined to get it: being an Englishman to the backbone, he combined an affection for the word Duty with an invincible belief that Duty, for him, always corresponded with his own particular ambitions. He was by no means a hypocrite: it simply never occurred to him that his policy of 'getting on' might be inconsistent with some of his moral ideals. While he had chosen to disguise the more unpalatable articles of faith with a sugary paste of scientific catch-words, he never questioned the absolute value of Christian Morality.

He had married, characteristically, the daughter of a colonial bishop, a tall, gaunt woman with sparkling eyes and an immense capacity for enthusiasm. Not only was she prepared to take up all her husband's causes, but she also took up him and worshipped at his shrine with a persistent and unflinching devotion. He represented for her all that was estimable: he was strong and wise and pure: he was just the man to mould the lives and ideals of the new generation, to make the finest religion and the finest patriotism vital forces in the school, and to pass through the richest headmasterships in England to a dignified old age as head of an Oxford college. They were both of them supremely methodical, and she bore him a child every three years. Naturally her guests were overwhelmed. While Foskett looked quiet and authoritative and made bad jokes in a quaint, theoretic manner at the head of the table, his wife chattered and gushed and became vastly enthusiastic over house junior football teams and the personnel of next year's cricket eleven. Her grasp of detail and statistics carried dismay even to boys. Martin was glad that he was in the middle of the table and avoided the necessity of making conversation.

"Medio tutissimus ibis," he quoted to himself from that morning's 'trans' as he listened to Caruth, who had used Brilliantine instead of water and was eager to shine socially, answering her questions and assenting to her tremendous declamations.

"Isn't it splendid," said Mrs Foskett, "about the school athletics? When we first came here Elfrey hardly ever won its school matches and now we never get beaten. Fermor's play last summer was marvellous, positively marvellous. D'you know, he actually got fifty wickets for 9.76 and had a batting average of 37. He's sure to get a blue at Cambridge. The last Elfreyan to get a blue was Staples: he made 74 at Lord's and was run out by an Old Etonian."

"Hard luck," said Caruth. "I do think being run out is rotten."

"Are you a cricketer?" continued Mrs Foskett.

"Well, I was captain of my preparatory school," said Caruth, assuming the humble voice and depreciatory smile that betoken a proper modesty. "But of course that's not much."

"It's the best beginning. You're sure to play for the school before you're done."

"Oh, I don't suppose so," answered Caruth. He felt it to be an inefficient answer and wondered, fingering his tie, what the ideal reply would have been. Would 'Oh, Mrs Foskett!' have been too familiar?

Then it turned out that Caruth had been to Murren for the winter sports. This was one of Mrs Foskett's well-known themes. Her subjects included Greece, Switzerland, Patriotism, Sport, and the Nobility.

"Oh, I think Murren's so lovely," she began. "To be so high up, right above those Wengen people. I love ski-ing. And the sun. And the glorious air. There's nothing like it. And such nice people. Such really charming people. Last winter we met Lord and Lady Dalston. They're so interested in the personal side of Social Service. Lord Dalston has a club in the Mile End Road, and in the evenings he goes and sings there himself--such a beautiful voice. Of course they don't get many people yet because of----"

"The picture palaces," suggested Caruth nobly. He thought it about time that he got a word in and was eager to excuse the scandalous absence of appreciation of Lord Dalston's art.

"Yes, those terrible places. And they do have such sensational films in the East End. I'm sure they have a bad influence. What the people really need is a drill hall with exercises and good music. I've been putting the case to Lady Dalston."

"Rather," said Caruth, who was himself a staunch patron of the pictorial drama. And then he added: "I think National Service would be a good thing for the poor."

He had given Mrs Foskett her cue. She broke out into a triumph song in whose turbulent flow the words 'physique' and 'efficiency' came frequently rolling. She was careful to say that she was not a militantist and hated the thought of war, but she didn't see any harm in teaching people how to shoot one another if need be. "War's so educational," she ended. "Brings out the strength of the nation."

And then there floated from the other end of the table the throaty voice of the Head as he told an antique Jowett story, which had been picked up in his under-graduate days and always did good service when the flame of conversation flickered.

Martin, sitting silently in the middle of the table, concentrated on the supper. It was worth all the attention he gave it. He managed to consume a plate of soup, some fried sole, two sausages and bacon, one helping of trifle and one of fruit salad, and as much dessert and chocolate as came his way. The Fosketts certainly understood the art of feeding.

Afterwards there was a feeble attempt made to play some games, but not even Mrs Foskett could overcome the self-consciousness of her guests. Interest waned and the Head's jokes became worse and worse. They were all relieved when the time came for departure.

As they walked back Caruth, who was secretly pleased with his conversational display, said loftily: "Thank the Lord that's over."

Martin answered: "I should think so. Ghastly show." In reality he was thinking, 'Ripping grub.' He was not a particularly greedy person, but Elfrey air is keen and any growing boy can appreciate a solid meal about half-past six. Martin was quite prepared, for his part, to change his clothes and undergo the ordeal of any company, even Mrs Foskett's, for the sake of a meal which included sausages and trifle.

III

Elfrey was one of the numerous public schools brought into existence by the sudden growth of the middle class during the nineteenth century. Consequently it had neither money nor traditions. The lack of the former was a severe handicap and could only result in the scandalous underpayment of the masters and the abominable necessity of sending round the hat, which of course returned half empty, whenever the school needed a new building or playing-field. The absence of the latter was more wholesome. Everyone had a hearty contempt for Eton and Harrow and Winchester and considered that the fuss made about them was ridiculous. "We could have damped the lot at cricket last summer" was the general opinion, and it may have been correct, so great had Fermor been. How far this attitude was based on mere jealousy, and how far it represented a sound distrust of top-hats, side, and antiquated customs, it would be difficult to decide. As a result of their abhorrence for tradition, Elfrey had no organised system of fagging, and each house had established its own regime.

At Berney's any prefect or member of the Sixth could, theoretically, command the services of anyone who had not a study; but this right was little used, and it was generally felt that too great assumption on the part of a Sixth would lead to unpopularity.

Prefects, however, as opposed to Sixths, were accustomed to take unto themselves a small boy and give him the use of their study on the condition that he dusted it, cleaned their cups and plates, and made himself generally useful. Although this office received the derogatory title of 'being study-slut,' it was, on the whole, rather sought after, as only the more attractive and popular members of the workroom were chosen for the position.

Martin was therefore considerably surprised when one of the prefects, called Leopard, adopted him in the fourth week of term. Leopard was a genuine Olympian. He had played with distinction in the historic Elfreyan eleven of last summer: he was school sports champion: he had played rackets for Elfrey at Queen's Club: and now he was being tried as wing three-quarter in the rugger team. By specialising in science he had scraped into a Sixth, and he was intending to continue his athletic, if not his scientific, career at Cambridge. This ambition, however, necessitated the study of Greek, and the study of Greek necessitated for a scientist laborious days. Leopard had discovered that Martin was in the Lower Fifth and could write Greek prose without howlers. He seemed also to be quite an attractive individual, and neither law nor custom forbade the acquisition of a second menial. So Martin became, to his own great satisfaction, the junior study-slut of Leopard.

Pearson, his senior in that office, naturally attempted to make him do all the work of tidying, but Leopard put an end to that, and it was soon understood that Martin's function was the composition of correct Greek prose. This he fulfilled efficiently and Leopard, who had recently been harried by his instructor in Greek in a way quite revolting to his dignity and self-respect, found life at once more easy and more honourable. He became very intimate with Martin and would talk to him at great length in a patronising but amusing way: he would even allow Martin to rag him and call him by his nickname, Spots.

Inevitably Martin worshipped Spots. The study became to him a temple, a very awful and a sacred place. On its walls were scores of photographs, signed pictures of school bloods past and present, photographs of elevens, photographs of fifteens, photographs of the Racket Pair, and photographs of a girl, who was usually on horseback. These last were carefully framed and signed in round, sprawling letters, 'Kiddie.' Martin, as he gazed upon them, began to form conceptions of the perfect life. There was a bookcase, too, with a fine collection of shilling novels whose paper covers bore lurid pictures of Life and Love. In spite of a certain monotony of theme and a devastating dullness in its elaboration, Spots seemed to derive considerable pleasure from those works, which he always read while Martin was doing his Greek prose. Martin was kept too busy to do much reading, but he appreciated the pictures on the covers and was impressed by the dark-eyed women in red who accepted on divans the passionate kisses of blond young men in faultless evening dress. The room also contained some old swords (bought from a predecessor), a number of rackets, a bag of golf-clubs, and a fine array of cushions with humorous designs. The culinary outfit and china were complete to the verge of opulence. The Leopard's Den, as the study was commonly called, had achieved a certain reputation for magnificence, a reputation in which Martin gloried. He even enjoyed the dusting and cleaning and despised Pearson for his laziness and lack of proper pride. But it was not mere priggishness that animated him.

Meanwhile Mrs Berney had not forgotten his possibilities, and it was arranged that he should attend her poetry circle which met after prayers on Saturday evenings. It was composed mainly of older boys, and two of them were vast intellectuals in the Upper Sixth, so that Martin felt very awed at the prospect of reading Keats amid such company. One of them was actually the school poet and had lately worked off in _The Elfreyan_ the emotions evoked by a summer holiday in the Lakes:

"The flaming bracken fires the breast Of bosky Borrowdale, Down swoops the sun in a riot of red Behind Scawfell to a watery bed, And the moon hath clomb o'er Skiddaw's head, So perfect and so pale."

Martin, who had also been in the Lakes, thought this rather good and much better than Wordsworth. He was still a Tennysonian and connected poetry with the lavish use of alliteration and words like 'clomb' and 'bosky.' The thought that on the next Saturday evening he was to read in the company of such an one was as terrifying as it was inspiring. But it was not yet to be.

Leopard's one fault was, in Martin's opinion, his tendency to sulk: his career had been so uniformly successful that he was easily piqued by a reverse. Once or twice before Martin had thought it expedient to slip away quietly when he saw Spots looking black, but on this particular Saturday Fate fought against him. Leopard was dropped from the school fifteen for the match against Oxford A. It was admitted that once Leopard had the ball in his hands no one on earth could catch him, but it was rumoured that his defence was weak: it was always the way with these running-track sprinters; they couldn't tackle. So the captain had taken notice of a mere child of sixteen, called Raikes, who played "back" for his house and could tumble anybody over.

Oxford brought down a strong team, but they only won by sixteen points to eleven: and Raikes not only scored two excellent tries, but marked with unerring certainty the notable Rhodes scholar who had made history in South African Rugby. It was on the lips of all that Spots was in the soup or the apple-cart (the popularity of the rival metaphors was evenly balanced), and sporting members of Raikes' house were laying ten to one that their hero would be 'capped' within a month. Spots had watched the match dismally from the touch-line and he did not take it at all well. When he came back to Berney's his angry soul cried out for tea: and he found that all his cups were dirty. It was Pearson's duty to clean the cups, and Pearson was in 'sicker' with influenza. Martin had been told to do Pearson's work for the next few days, but he had not realised what Pearson really did and he had forgotten about the cups. Moreover, after watching the match, he had gone off to the tuck-shop to eat ham and chocolate: so Leopard shouted for him in vain, and then, spurning the proffered aid of sycophantic aliens, he furiously washed his own cups and made his own tea. An angry man does not lightly reject an excuse for wrath, and Spots thoroughly enjoyed the nursing of his grievance.

On his way back from the tuck-shop Martin borrowed a copy of Keats from the school library: then he settled down at his desk in the workroom and began to look through the Odes to see if there were any words that he could not pronounce. The meeting of the poetry circle was formidably near and the old fear of being shown up was vigorously attacking him.

Suddenly Caruth came up and said: "Spots wants you."

So he put away the book and went up to the study. He saw at once that Spots was in the blackest of moods.

"Why the blazes didn't you wash the cups?" he said. "I told you to do Pearson's work."

Martin trembled. "I forgot," he said. "I couldn't think of all the things Pearson did."

"I should have thought that the washing of cups might have struck you as a fairly obvious thing to do."

"Yes; I'm sorry."

"The fact of the matter is, you're getting a bit above yourself. Just because you're clever you think you're everyone. Now you're too good to wash cups."

"It wasn't that really, Leopard. I forgot."

"Well you damned well mustn't forget. You're too good to keep awake. That's just as bad. Now get out, you little beast, and come to me after prayers."

Martin went back to his Keats in misery. He could guess what was in store for him, but he could not be certain, because Spots might have recovered from his wrath by the appointed time and then he might treat the matter as a joke. But if Spots didn't recover ... well, then he would be swiped. Martin had never been caned at his private school and this would be his first experience; he wondered how much it would hurt. Then fear came surging over him, not the dread of anything definite, but the hideous fear of the unknown. He was not so much afraid that he would be hurt as that he would show that he had been hurt: that was the deadly, the unpardonable, sin. He wished to heaven he had been swiped before so that he might know his own capacity for endurance. Keats became intolerable. House tea was a long-drawn agony. Discussion centred on the match and the brilliant play of Raikes.

"What did old Spots want?" asked Caruth. "He seemed to be in the deuce of a hair."

"Only about cleaning cups," said Martin gloomily.

"Thank the Lord I'm not a study-slut. Was he very ratty?"

"Oh, not very. Flannery, you hog, pass the bread."

The conversation had at any cost to be changed, and Martin was pleased when the general attention was directed to the colossal hoggishness of Flannery, who was mixing jam, sardines, and potted meat.

As time went on the agony of suspense grew like an avalanche, carrying all before it. Martin did practically no work during prep. Impossible to linger over algebra or the Bacchae when Spots and his cups obsessed the mind. It was not the injustice of being victimised for a slip of the memory when Pearson was in sicker, but the possibility of being shown up as a coward that tortured him most. He knew that other boys were swiped with some frequency and managed to pretend that they did not mind. But it might turn out that he was not so tough as other boys. Besides Spots had the wrist of a racket player and was renowned for his powers of castigation. And then there was the poetry circle. If the worst happened, he would have to cut that and explain afterwards. What on earth could he say? The thought was too horrid for consideration.

After prep and supper Mr Berney used to read prayers, while the boys knelt down and thought about any odd subject that came to mind. They were not, as a house, particularly irreligious, but it is astonishingly easy to acquire the habit of saying 'Amen' at the right place and repeating the Lord's Prayer without being aware of your actions. But to-night Martin was conscious of all that was said and did not open his lips. As he gazed in silence at the backs of the wooden benches he began to feel physically sick.

After prayers the house dispersed to talk, or finish work, or go to bed. Martin hurried to Leopard's study. There he waited for five age-long minutes: he felt that a hundred swipings would be better than this delay. The study seemed a vast blur of photographs, all dim and misty except one: that was a large picture of Kiddie, the equestrienne, who beamed on him from close at hand, gripping her riding-switch. Kiddie became the only object in the room. The smile and the switch fascinated him. They were symbolic, they were abominable. At this same Kiddie he had often gazed in rapturous worship, wondering whether Leopard was the more blessed for knowing her or she for knowing him. God, how he loathed her now.

At last Leopard arrived. The clouds had not lifted. He had just overheard Moore remarking to a friend that, as a three-quarter, Raikes was worth a dozen of Spots.

"Oh, you," he said quietly. "Just go to the prefects' common-room."

Martin turned and went out. His fate was settled. He felt, as he walked down the long passage listening to the tread of Leopard behind him, as though all his internal organs were falling into his feet.

When they reached the common-room Leopard turned up the light and locked the door. Then he took a cane from a cupboard in the corner and made Martin bend over with his head under the table. Leopard had suffered during the evening, for the almost certain loss of a rugger cap on which he had counted was a terrible blow to his pride and his ambitions. He was angry, desperately angry, and his only desire was to express his anger in action. The fact that he was fond of Martin only added piquancy to the situation. The maximum punishment that a house prefect could inflict was eight strokes. He did not stop short of his maximum.

After the first three strokes Martin felt as though nothing could prevent him crying out: then a blessed numbness seemed to come over him and he remained silent and motionless. Afterwards he had to climb on to the table and put out the light. Then he went upstairs to his cubicle: he was not in the mood for poetry. On such occasions rumour has swift wings, and when he reached the dormitory the news had magically been spread abroad.

Voices cried: "How many?"

"Eight."

"Did it hurt?"

"No, not much." He lied, for he had learned the tradition.

There were murmurs of: "Bad luck," "Old Spots is the limit," "Just because he got the chuck for not tackling."

And then Neave remarked in the midst of a silence: "If we get nailed funking a collar we get swiped. But if Spots gets nailed, then he swipes someone else. That's justice."

The expressions of genuine sympathy were very comforting to Martin. Though now the numbness was wearing off and the reality of his pain came home to him, he was happier than he had been for days. He had opened another door: he was getting on with his task of finding things out. Not only was the cruel suspense finished for ever, but he had learned his own capacities: he could stick it like the others. And to have the regard, the compassion, of one so great as Neave! He had suffered, he still suffered, but who would not suffer to become a martyr? He began to realise, as he pulled the bed-clothes over him, that Spots had not been the minister of a fortune sheerly malignant.

IV

In the morning Martin was stiff and sore and began his toilet by examining himself in a looking-glass: when he discovered the havoc that had been wrought he felt very proud of himself and knew that this appearance in the changing-room before football on Monday need cause him no distress: those who wanted to see the damage would have something to look at. The discomfort which he experienced during the day was quite outweighed by his satisfaction at his achievement and fortitude: that he was the first of the new boys to be swiped rendered him in their eyes a distinctly important person. Even Caruth, who always patronised Martin, began to climb down.

The Berneys had midday dinner with the house, and Martin succeeded in catching Mrs Berney as she left the dining-hall.

"I'm very sorry I couldn't come last night," he said, blushing.

"So am I. You must come next Saturday. What kept you?"

"Oh--er--I had to see one of the prefects," he answered with hesitation.

Mrs Berney, knowing that 'after prayers' was the hour of justice, could guess from the boy's manner what had occurred.

"That was a pity," she said kindly. And Martin knew that she knew. He felt prouder and more heroic than ever. Then she added: "Come in after prayers to-morrow night. There won't be anyone there."

"Oh, thank you very much," he said in ecstasy. He had become in a moment the slave and worshipper of Mrs Berney. Afterwards Caruth asked him the subject of his conversation with Mrs B., and he answered: "Oh, nothing." On Monday night he went to the drawing-room and read the odes with which the circle had dealt on Saturday. Mrs Berney gave him cocoa and cake and was entirely charming. As he left her he even thanked heaven for old Spots.

Leopard, on the other hand, was extremely angry with himself. He realised on the following day that he had behaved like a brute: under normal circumstances he would have ragged Martin and told him not to do it again. At the most a mild four would have been considered ample. But eight! It was undeniably excessive. If it had only been someone else it wouldn't have mattered so much (for abstract justice made no great appeal to Spots), but there was that kid slinking about his study and cleaning everything that he could lay hold of with maddening assiduity. Not for a moment could he forget his iniquity. One thing, however, was certain. It would be quite inconsistent with the dignity of a blood to say anything about what had occurred. So Martin noticed several changes in Spots' demeanour. He was more silent and did not rag him as before: nor did he follow his custom of bringing the Greek prose to Martin on Tuesdays and Fridays. Nobly he toiled at it alone and was roundly abused in form on the following days. But the memory of youth is short and soon they drifted back into the old friendly relations. Martin, however, took good care not to be guilty of further slips, for though he was glad now that he had been swiped, he did not in the least wish it to happen again.

The term ran smoothly on. Caruth was adopted, to his infinite joy, by Cullen and Neave and the youthful nuts, while Martin drifted into more soulful society. He was even taken up in a kindly way by the poet of Borrowdale, who lent him an anthology and used to hold forth to him about men and letters. Martin was very much impressed and could not decide what to think when Spots said the poet was a bilger. To Martin the voice of Spots was still the voice of a god. Later on he heard the poet call Spots 'a piffling Philistine,' but he did not know what it meant and was ashamed to ask. Life began to expand in many directions and new doors pressed themselves on his attention with haunting urgency. On the whole Martin was enjoying his first term.

And so he settled down gladly to the routine. School life is liable to a clearly marked dichotomy; there is a world of games and a world of work. For Martin both had their pleasure, both their monotony. Football, for instance, distinctly afforded moments. There were seventy minutes of consummate joy while the school, released from the round of "league" games, watched the match with their greatest rival, Ashminster. Martin never forgot that struggle. It was the first school match which he had been able to see, and he had not yet escaped from the age of worship, the age in which every blood is a true Olympian and reveals the deity as he walks. It was tremendous to watch Moore battling in the line-out, or Llewelyn heaving an enemy to the ground, or Raikes, capped now and the undisputed successor to Spots' position on the left wing, go plunging along the touch-line with that long and powerful stride. Martin could even forgive him for ousting Spots when he saw him pick up an opponent by the knees and pitch him a full three yards into touch.

For sixty minutes Martin stood wedged in a mass of shoving, bawling humanity. And he had bawled, bawled till his voice and breath were gone and he saw that he would need all his strength to avoid being barged out of his position in the front row, a treasured post won by a tedious wait. And now the long-drawn roar of 'Schoo-ool' went up almost in despair. Ashminster were leading by six points to three and Elfrey, with only ten minutes more, were being penned in their own twenty-five. Never had their prospects looked more gloomy: the forwards were losing the ball in the scrummage time after time and only the perfect tackling of the backs kept down the score. Suddenly Ross, on the right wing, intercepted a fumbled pass and was off. Someone shouted: "Kick, man, kick." But this was no moment for safety play, and Ross went on. Not till he was close to the fullback did he kick, and then it was no feeble punt into touch that he made, but a great swinging kick across field. For a moment there was a silence. Then a great roar went up, the greatest roar since the beginning of the match. Raikes, on the left wing, had foreseen the move, and following up with the speed of the wind had magnificently caught the ball and was making for the enemy's undefended line. It was the kind of movement that comes crashing into the mind of the spectator years later on without cause or suggestion just because it is unique.

But he was not over the line yet. Carter, the Ashminster centre, who had captained his school for three years and played for the Harlequins in the holidays, was in desperate pursuit. It was a race from the half-way line and Raikes had five yards' start. Martin, crushed against the ropes, hoarse and gasping, discerned with horror the deadly speed of Carter. It was growing dark and a November mist was creeping over the great field: impossible to trace that relentless pursuit: one could only wait and listen. A roar went up. Raikes had been collared. The teams gathered round the fallen figures and the referee. At last they parted. Ashminster remained on their line and Armstrong, the Elfrey scrum-half, was bringing out the ball. Raikes had fallen over the line in a central position. The school gave vent to a shout that stirred Mr Foskett to quote Homer on the wounded Ares. Llewelyn of course took the kick. A safe thing, one said. But now, incredibly, he failed. The ball trickled feebly along the ground and a vague moan passed down the ranks.

Six all and five minutes to go. Play settled down near half-way. Both teams were fighting like devils: and still there were found men to go down to the rushes. Then the Ashminster back miskicked in an effort to find touch. Llewelyn had made a mark. It was far off, but he was going to have a shot at goal. As the teams separated and Llewelyn balanced the ball in the half-back's hands, there was silence. Only here and there a muttered voice would be heard as someone strove to relieve the strain by objurgation.

"Callingham, you blighter, don't barge," or: "After you with my feet, Ginger," or: "Hack that stinker Murray, he's oiled up two places."

Then, as Llewelyn took his run and the enemy charged, there was no sound. The ball went soaring up. He had done it? The mist was ubiquitously damned. Then the touch-judges behind the goals raised their flags, a signal for the greatest roar of all. The match was over, gloriously over. It only remained to charge headlong to the tuck-shop and fight the whole game over again with ham and eggs or the succulent cho-hone.

These were moments.

Football too brought other, more directly personal, moments. There was the occasion when Moore and Spots came down to watch the juniors of Berney's and Martin scored a try beneath their awful gaze. Surely it was the very essence of triumph to see the enemy scowling on their goal-line while Berney's sauntered away with the ball, and to know that he and he alone was responsible for this cleavage of the hosts. Martin walked with all the tremendous humility of glowing pride. It was the first try he had ever scored, and Moore and Spots had seen it.

That evening Moore approached him after prayers.

"Hullo, Leigh," he said. "You scored this afternoon, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Martin, making a desperate effort to conceal his satisfaction.

"Well," answered Moore deliberately, "you hadn't any business to. You're a forward and it isn't your job to cut the scrum and lurk about for the ball. They were pushing us and it was a mere fluke that they kicked too hard. Anyhow the half could have scored: it was only a matter of going two or three yards. You ought to have been in the middle, shoving like hell. See?"

"Yes."

"Well, don't lurk any more, or there'll be trouble. It isn't a forward's business to score tries. Anyone can be a 'winger': it takes a man to shove."

Moore was one of the old school of forwards. He believed in foot-work and read _The Morning Post_.

"So don't let me catch you loafing outside the scrum again," he concluded. "There's quite enough chaps doing that already." And he strolled away.

Moore was not a person of much imagination and he never saw that he was not going the right way to make a great forward. A word of encouragement coming on the top of this, possibly injudicious, success would have made Martin play like a devil. Instead he deliberately slacked for a week.

Indeed footer, in spite of its moments, became monotonous. Martin had to play four and often five times a week in all weathers, and very often the sides were uneven and the game, consequently, a farce, a shivery, cheerless farce in which everyone longed for the pleasant signal for release. By the end of term nobody liked the games and everybody was as sick of the fields as of the classrooms. If was not merely that the games were too frequent, but that they were scarcely ever treated as games. As the end of the term approached, bringing with it challenge cup matches for old and young, house feeling ran strong and the various teams were goaded by their prefects with relentless severity. Sometimes whole fifteens would be swiped in turn for their failure to win matches, quite irrespective of their capacity to do so: slackness could always be alleged. At Berney's, it was true, no great rigour was displayed. Had Spots been captain more blood might have been shed, but Moore, who directed the house teams, was more lenient and rarely went further than guttural abuse and threats. Being, however, himself a forward, he instituted scrumming practice in the evenings, and Martin found himself being pushed about the house gymnasium at great pain to his ears and limbs, while larger boys planted shrewd and stinging blows on the prominent portions of the losing side: it was no fun being in the back row. As he shoved and groaned in the perspiring mass, there flamed across his mind the remark of a well-meaning aunt: 'How you will enjoy the games!' Martin was not particularly weak or unathletic: his physique and taste for games were quite up to the normal, but he did not stand alone when he proclaimed to his friends his weariness with the official recreation which only doubled life's burden.

"Of course," said Caruth, after scrumming practice one night, "it's awfully good for us. Bally influence and all that. You know what the crushers say."

"And they ought to know," added Martin, "as they never play, at least not compulsorily."

"Anyhow," said Caruth, "there is one comfort."

"What is that?"

"We don't have to sweat it out like Randall's. Their pre's make them groise at it all day and all night."

"Good job. The stinkers."

Martin's sympathy with the oppressed was not yet as strong as his hatred of Randall's, the pot hunters, the unspeakable.

Work with the Terror was not always terrible: for Martin it even had its moments. He enjoyed turning out a good verse or a good translation, and he enjoyed also the commendation that it won. The Terror, whose real name was Vickers, was a young man soured by misfortune. He had meant to go triumphantly to the Bar: he had connections, he had brains, he would rise. But a financial crisis in the family had left him in despair, too old to enter for the Civil Service, too poor to attempt the Bar in spite of his connections. He had drifted, of necessity, to the arduous, responsible, and despised task of moulding the future generation. The future generation, as represented by the Lower Fifth, Classical, of Elfrey, seemed to Vickers a loathsome crew, fit only to be the victim of the sarcastic tongue on which he prided himself. He hated the elderly bloods who remained calmly and irremovably at the bottom of the form: he hated the ink-stained urchins with brains who passed through his hands on their way to higher things. The Lower Fifth he held to be an abominable form because it was neither one thing nor the other. The teaching was not mere routine, the soulless cramming of impenetrable skulls: on the other hand, it wasn't like taking a Sixth. There were times, especially in the afternoons, when the frowst of the water-warmed room, the dingy walls and desks, the ponderous horror of mistranslated AEschylus, and the unmannered lumpishness of the human boy (average age sixteen) would all combine to play upon his nerves and to rend the amorphous thing which once had been an active, ambitious soul. Wearily he vented his wrath upon the form.

His method was, as a rule, the sarcasm courteous. He lounged magnificently while he played with his victim.

"Simpson!" This to a clever but idle youth remarkable for his large, inky hands and persistent untidiness of apparel. There was something in Simpson's grimy collars and straggling bootlaces that infuriated Vickers.

"Simpson!"

"Yes, sir?"

"You owe me, I think, a rendering of Virgil."

"Please, sir, I haven't quite finished it yet, sir."

"And how much, may I ask, have you finished?"

"Well, sir, last night I had the Agamemnon chorus."

"I see, Simpson. I see."

"Please, sir, I was very busy."

"Our Simpson was busy early this morning also, I suppose."

"Yes, sir."

"At your ablutions, I presume."

Here the form would laugh: Simpson's cleanliness was a standing joke.

"Please, sir, I didn't wake up very early."

"That was very distressing."

There was a silence. "Well, Simpson?" Vickers would continue in his softest tone.

Simpson gazed moodily at the desk, digging nibs into the wood.

"Our Simpson seems fonder of water than of Maro. We must tighten the bonds between Simpson and the poet. May I say the whole of the first Georgic this time?"

"Oh, sir."

"You think the quantity excessive?"

Simpson summoned up his courage and said he did think so.

"Ah, but the verse is so beautiful," came the answer. "I couldn't deprive you, Simpson. Anyhow, you may begin your _magnum opus_ and let me know when you have reached line two hundred."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you, Simpson, that will be delightful. You were translating, Grant, I think."

Vickers aimed at being a strong man and he never set a grammar paper in which he did not ask for a comment on the phrase:

"Oderint dum metuant."

"A capital sentiment, Simpson," he would say with his gentlest smile, as he mouthed out the words. But his pretensions were not idle, as was shown by the fact that he could lose his temper without becoming ridiculous. If a weaker man had called the giant Batson 'a contemptible ass,' Batson would have laughed and the form would have sniggered. But when Vickers flared up he commanded the silence of the greatest.

Vickers had a gift of phrase and Martin learned much from him, partly because he was so afraid that he always worked hard, and partly because Vickers took a fancy to him and would give him little hints about translation and composition which he did not choose to waste on the ruck. Martin was less inky and more intelligent than the average new boy who was placed in the Lower Fifth. Moreover, his fear of his master was obvious, and there was no more effective method of flattering Vickers than to fear him and to let your fear be seen.

Yet it was a relief, even to Martin, to escape from the tension of the Terror's classroom to the turbulent relaxation that prevailed in the dark chamber where Barmy Walters taught mathematics. Old Barmy suffered from acute poverty and incipient senile decay. He had once been a brilliant undergraduate at Cambridge and then a wrangler, a man with a future: he now lived in a red-brick villa with a chattering wife and two gaunt, unwedded daughters. For nearly forty years it had been his function to instruct the classical side in mathematics: he had never been a strong man, never fitted for his work. And so in spite of all his brilliance as a mathematician he had missed promotion, seen his chance of a house go by, and eventually lost grip. To retire was financially impossible (Elfrey was too poor a school to have a pension fund), and he stuck to his work grimly, sitting beneath his blackboard with an overcoat under his dusty gown, wheezing and grumbling and looking for his glasses. Plainly he could be ragged: and ragged he was without mercy or cessation. A couple of hours with the Terror had a vicious effect on the tempers of his victims, and Barmy Walters found in the Lower Fifth, coming straight from Vickers, torturers of a fiendish devilry.

To begin with, there was the distribution of the instrument-boxes before geometry. The boxes stood in great piles at the end of the room and it was the duty of the bottom boy to deal them round. It was also part of the established order of things that the bottom boy dropped the two and twenty boxes with a series of slow and deafening crashes. At the end he would say: "Oh, sir, I'm so sorry."

And Barmy would answer: "Um, ah. Really, really, you boys will shatter my nerves. How many times have I told you to be careful? Um, ah!"

Then there would be a rush to recover the boxes, a long, clattering rush with much jostling and swearing and spilling of ink, some of which would find its way to Barmy's glass of water. When peace had been restored people would begin to ask questions, to demand elaborate demonstrations on the blackboard, or to consume food. Barmy's room was renowned as a resort for picnics. Biscuits were popular in winter, but in summer there was a special line in fruit. Once a daring individual threw a biscuit at Barmy's head and hit him, whereupon he had to carry to his housemaster a note which began:

"DEAR RANDALL,--Morgan struck me with a macaroon."

The conjunction of the words 'strike' and 'macaroon' so pleased Mr Randall that he omitted to deal with Morgan.

All the obvious things were done to Barmy by one or other of his classes. Mice were brought into form and released, and once a grass snake. He found a hedgehog in his mortar-board. Barmy had an idea that fifty lines formed a long imposition and he used to whine out:

"Um, ah, boy, I'll give you a long day's work. Take fifty lines."

He would enter the imposition in a note-book which he left in his unlocked desk, and in the morning he would find 'shown up' written against it in his own handwriting. After a long day of wheezing and grumbling about his shattered nerves Barmy would be seen mounting his aged bicycle with fixed wheel and pedalling laboriously to the villa and the chattering wife and the gaunt, unwedded daughters. Yet perhaps he was not altogether unhappy, for, if a master is to be ragged, he may as well sink to the depths: the tragedy of the defenceless dotard has less pathos than the suffering of the young man with ideals, whose burning desire to teach well and to succeed is thwarted by just the slightest lack of that presence and authority which make the master.

Undoubtedly, however, Barmy could be hurt, and Martin was not old enough to understand the consummate brutality of the proceedings in that dismal room. Like all young schoolboys, Martin regarded a master or crusher as a natural foe, a person with whom truceless war is waged. If he is fool enough to let himself be ragged, that is his look-out: he has all the resources of punishment on his side and if he cannot use them he deserves no mercy. So Martin worked off his vitality in ragging, and, being of an ingenious turn of mind, became noted for the improvisation of new japes. He was patronised by the bloods of the form and enjoyed himself hugely: without realising the nature and results of his conduct, he even lay awake at nights devising new and exquisite methods for completing the destruction of Barmy's nervous system.

V

Every school, even so modern a foundation as Elfrey, has its traditional rows, its stories of rags perpetrated on a colossal scale by the heroes of old: but the modern schoolboy finds that, like fights, they don't happen. Martin's life moved calmly on and its monotony was only broken by sundry interludes, painful or humorous, with masters or prefects. Still, ragging old Barmy was tame enough and only once was he involved in a genuine row, an affair that counted and was history for several years. Partly because it was his only rag, and partly because it chanced to occur in his first term, while he was still very impressionable, the memory remained with him clearly and for ever. It is true also that he played a part in the drama and even was responsible for its name, so naturally he remembered that notable December night with its comradeship and perils and glorious achievement.

The end of term, so exasperating to the harried teacher, brings exhilaration to the taught. As Christmas approached Martin found prefectorial discipline slackening and, though exams might mean harder work in school, there was in the house a very agreeable relaxation of tension. Even games were taken less seriously, and one or two of the more audacious spirits actually cut without detection. But just as Berney's began to slacken their reins, Randall's, the neighbouring house, became more vigorous than usual: for Randall's were in the final of the "footer pot."

Berney's always objected to Randall's. This animosity might have been accounted for by the mere fact of neighbourship, but there was more in it than that. As was Athens to Sparta, so was Berney's house to Randall's. Berney's stood always for an easy-going tolerance and, though, for instance, it was not a particularly well-dressed house, it left its nuts in peace. In all its pursuits it was either brilliant or ineffectual, and, if it did anything at all, it did it beautifully: both in games and work it was a house of individuals. A typical batsman from Berney's would make three divine, soul-satisfying cuts and be caught in attempting an impossible fourth: Berney's was never thorough and never took defeat to heart.

Randall's, on the other hand, had no nuts and suspected with Draconian severity the faintest traces of nuttishness. The average member of the house was tall and lumpy and sallow, badly dressed and with no grease to his hair. It was a standing joke with the school that Randall's youths owed their yellow faces not only to general unhealthiness, but also to a dislike of soap and water. They trained like professionals and made tin gods of their challenge cups. They worked always with a dull, sickening energy: they never had a decent three-quarter among them, but won their matches by working the touch-line and scoring from forward rushes. Yet undoubtedly, despite all their ignorance of the way things should be done, they achieved results.

Of course Berney's hated Randall's bitterly and for ever. But towards the end of term relations became more strained than was usual. To begin with, Randall's had defeated Berney's by thirty-five points to three in the first round of the footer pot. Once Spots had romped away, but for the rest of the match the heavy Randallite scrum had kept the ball close and pushed their light opponents all over the field. And Randall's juniors had crowed over their triumph, had hailed every fresh try with much shouting and throwing up of caps (it was generally held that gentlemen showed their joy by reasonable yelling and that only a low soccer crowd would hurl their caps into the air), and behaved as offensively as could be expected. Now Randall's prepared to win the final as though the future of the world rested on their efforts, while Berney's jeered from study windows or the house yard. So Randall's sulked and refused to send back balls which were kicked over into their yard, and Berney's had to scale walls secretly to recover their property. Nor did they always succeed. But the actual cause of open hostilities was the affair of Gideon.

Gideon's real name was Edward Spencer Lewis-Murray. Some reader of Mr Eden Phillpotts had called him Gideon because he was dark and had a large nose. Whether or not he was a Jew is immaterial. Certainly he not only went to school chapel, but consumed ham in large quantities. One day he had been ragged about his nose and straightway he marched to the tuck-shop, ordered an unparalleled amount of ham and pork sausages (for he was wealthy) and devoured the entire feast before a large assembly. His capacity was enormous, and he thus gained two ends at once: he demonstrated his loathing of Jewish practices and established an undoubted record in consumption.

His nose, however, was certainly large, and the name of Gideon clung to him: but he took his ragging sensibly, and, while remaining a butt, he became, in a way, popular. So when, a few days before the end of term, he was shamefully mishandled by some members of Randall's the Berneyites were furious and Gideon became temporarily a martyr and a hero. He had kicked a football into Randall's yard: then, having shouted "Thank you" in vain, he had climbed over the wall to look for it. Shouts of "Gideon," "Berney's Yiddisher," "Jew-beak," "Back to Joppa you dirty Jew-ew," and lastly a great roar of "Stone the dirty Semite" had been heard. And Gideon had not returned. He had, it turned out, been ceremoniously stoned--that is to say, he had been lashed to a pillar in Randall's house gym, and pounded with footballs thrown hard from a distance of five yards. Then he had been stripped and thoroughly washed in cold water: they had, he said, made jokes about Jordan and total immersion. He reappeared just before tea, raging and very battered. All through the meal his nose bled profusely and it was a sign of the times that no one made jokes, the old, inevitable jokes, about Gideon's 'konk.'

Berney's discussed the affair with animation. Jew or no Jew, Gideon was of Berney's and as such he deserved respectful treatment. The workroom seethed with wrath and Gideon revelled in hospitalities hitherto undreamed of. Even Cullen and Neave stooped from their heights and actually led the wail of sympathy.

"The swine," said Neave. "Forty of 'em lamming into one poor devil."

"Jaundiced Bible-bangers," said Cullen. "I suppose they're praying now for that mangy pot."

It was a traditional jest that Randall's had house prayers before cup matches to invoke heavenly aid for their team.

"Let's hope Smith puts it across them."

There was a chorus of approval.

"My sainted aunt," Neave went on. "Can't we do something?"

"What?"

"Can't we avenge our Gideon?"

It was then that Martin, standing timidly on the outskirts of the crowd and drinking in every word of the great ones, remarked boldly:

"For Gideon and the Lord."

He raised a roar of laughter. The school had been working at Judges that term in divinity and the story of Gideon was familiar to all. Martin's allusion to the Israelites' act of revenge was distinctly opportune. The ringing of the prep bell abruptly ended the conversation.

On the following day Randall's put it across Smith's, scoring twenty-eight points to nil. Again the victory was due to forward rushes.

"Not a decent movement in the match," said Spots angrily to Martin. "It's scandalous that the pot can be won by a pack of well-drilled louts."

Randall's began to stink in the nostrils of the whole school, for their elation at their successes was always characteristic. They revelled with a serious, unconvincing revelry. Other houses always celebrated the occasion by demanding and obtaining ices (in mid-December) at the school tuck-shop: it was a tradition and a noble one. Randall's gorged themselves with lumps of bread and ham.

Martin happened to walk back to Berney's just behind Cullen and Neave. He would not have spoken to them had they not turned and addressed him. It was condescension, and he appreciated it.

"Hullo," said Cullen. "What about old Gideon?"

"I don't know," answered Martin. "Can't anything be done."

"Possibly. Do you remember what you said last night?"

"For Gideon and the Lord?"

"Yes."

"What about it?"

"We'll let you know in dormy to-night."

"Good. That's ripping."

Proceedings in the lower dormy that evening were unusual. Silence was called and then Neave read from the book of Judges:

"And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the torches in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal: and they cried, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon."

Then he continued: "That, my brethren, is the text. And what is its lesson for us here in a community such as ours?" There was a laugh, for he was beautifully constructing a lay sermon on Foskett's lines. "Only to avenge our Gideon very mightily with pitchers. To-morrow night, as you may know, is the last night of term and our brothers next door" (Cries of "Swine" and counter-cries of "Order") "will hold a supper to celebrate their triumph in the playing-field. Now it is a good tradition of the Public Schools and a byword among clean-living Englishmen" (Laughter, for it was sheer Foskett) "that we do pass the last night of term in what my form master would call--thorubos. A Greek word, O Stinkers of the Modern Side. My brothers, it is up to us to infect Randall's with thorubos or disorder. (Cheers and a voice, "What about pitchers?")."

"Ah, my young friend, you hit the nail on its head. As everybody knows, to get on to Randall's gym is as easy as falling downstairs. From there you can get to the fire ladders and up to Randall's dormies. To-morrow night it is proposed to invade the dormies while the whole house gorges below and listens to slush about their pestilential pots. Meanwhile we snitch their water jugs and empty the water on their little beds. Then we bring the jugs back here and wait. The windows on this side of the dormy look out on the zinc roof of Randall's gym: beyond is the dining-room, where the swine will be guzzling. With windows open we can easily hear what's going on. When old Toffee Randall gets up to propose his blighted house" (Neave had in his excitement sunk from the level of the lay sermon) "I move that we chuck all the empty jugs on that zinc roof and shout: 'For Gideon and the Lord.' There ought to be row enough to raise hell. You know what those roofs are ... and there will be forty pitchers. They won't have the least notion what the row is till they get upstairs and see their beds. They'll think it's a private rag of our own, but they'll learn in due time. Now don't anyone say a word. We've got to keep this to our dormy or the pre's are bound to find out."

The hurried arrival of Spots, followed by the extinction of the lights, put an end to further devising of conspiracy. For a long time Martin lay awake, gazing at the ceiling and turning restlessly from side to side. Excitement, that terrible mingling of sheer joy and sheer terror, gripped him, almost physically: as he thought of the splendours and the perils of to-morrow night he felt as he had felt before when he was walking down the study passage to the prefects' common-room and listening to Spots's following tread. What, he wondered, would be the end of it all? There would be a row, inevitably. They might even be kept back a day: that would be wretched. But swiping? He could endure that for the glory of sharing in a rag, a colossal rag with Neave and Cullen as leaders. Besides he hated Randall's, hated them so bitterly that the prospect of soaking their beds and smashing their pitchers was heavenly even at the cost of swipings innumerable. Nowhere is group feeling more obvious and more powerful than in the world of youth. In a single term Martin had become so passionately one of Berney's that his hatred of Randall's and their smudgy type of success made him quiver with anger. He didn't care a straw for Gideon's nose: nobody really cared for Gideon's sufferings. They were all linked by the single bond of hatred.

It was Randall's that mattered ... the swine.

Naturally the last night of term was not distinguished for its discipline. There was, of course, no prep, and the dormitories were open for packing. Consequently it was not difficult for twelve members of the lower dormy to creep out when Randall's had settled down to their gorge and to range themselves along the gym roof. It was beautifully dark and dry: fortune was helping the cause of Gideon and the right. Neave and Cullen were to ascend the fire-escape and enter Randall's two dormies, one taking each. They were to go through the cubicles, removing the jugs, soaking the beds, and handing out the empty pitchers to others who passed them quietly down a line of waiting figures. This seemed the best, the quietest method of transport. Ultimately all the jugs would be awaiting in Berney's lower dormy the great moment of Toffee Randall's speech. Martin formed one of the hidden line and shivered for half-an-hour on the roof of Randall's gym while he passed jugs carefully along. Never in all his life had he known a night like this. He was thrilled by the sense of comradeship in danger and the knowledge that he was working in the company of great ones, working for the pain and humiliation of Randall's. Never did he forget the supreme exhilaration of that night attack: the climbing in the dark, the whispers, the nervous strain, the dread of blundering and betraying his party, the intolerable waiting. Each movement of the trees in Randall's garden made him think that the conspirators had been noticed and that someone was coming.

At length every bed had been duly drenched and forty pitchers had been silently transferred to Berney's lower dormy. Each member of the dormitory took two jugs, and four of them had three. Then they waited. They could see down into the lighted windows of Randall's dining-hall where the enemy feasted; but the supper was drawing to its end. By the resounding chorus of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" they knew that Toffee Randall was "up" for the last speech of the evening. When the singing and cheering were over Randall began his oration. At the same moment Neave gave the signal. Everyone in Berney's lower dormy cried aloud, "For Gideon and the Lord," and, as they cried, forty pitchers crashed on the zinc roof of Randall's gymnasium. No one, not even the manipulators of three jugs, had failed or been late. There was but one cry and one crash: and there on the zinc roof lay myriad morsels of china, glittering in the half light thrown from the windows of either house. The noise had been terrific, the effect stupendous.

It was in the true spirit of the saga.

A moment later Spots dashed into the room. "What the devil's all that row?" he roared.

Everyone was peacefully in his cubicle, putting the last touch to his packing or getting into bed.

"Randall's trying to be funny," suggested Neave.

"But didn't you shout?"

"Well, we helped a bit. That din would have made anyone squeal. Randall's must have been breaking china for the sake of their dirty pot. They are swine."

Spots looked baffled. The row had been tremendous, yet here everybody was calm and quiet. It must have been Randall's, but they were still at their supper. It was amazing, it was a miracle. To save his face he returned to his study.

Meanwhile it was ascertained that, after some confusion, Toffee Randall had continued his speech: then they heard the long-drawn, surging roar of "Auld Lang Syne." It took Randall's twenty minutes to finish "Auld Lang Syne."

"The swine," said Neave. He said it often, but he said it beautifully, with a whining drawl of contempt. "Just wait till they get to their dormies."

So they waited, and presently the pandemonium began. Randall's were discovering that not a bed had escaped, not a jug remained. As they looked out of their windows on to the gym roof they realised the full meaning of the battle-cry and the crash that had startled them at their supper.

"Water, water everywhere," cried Cullen in ecstasy as he heard the tumult rising in the neighbouring house. Randall's, flushed rather with insolence than the weak claret-cup of their supper, bellowed in their dormitories and shouted from their windows: after all none but Berney's could have done the deed. It was sheer joy for Berney's as they listened: wisely they made no answer and Randall's cried aloud in vain.

Again Spots came into the lower dormy. "What are Randall's shouting about?" he asked.

"Joy of life," said Neave. "The swine."

"Well they needn't yell at us."

"They've got no manners, Leopard."

Spots advised his dormy to take no notice of the creatures and again went out.

Shortly before midnight Mr Randall rang at Mr Berney's front door and demanded an interview with the master of the house. Berney came down in his dressing-gown: he was very tired and his eyes ached. He was promptly informed by his raging neighbour that his house had disgraced itself, and he listened to a strange story of soaked beds and broken pitchers. "Must have been your boys," Randall ended fiercely. "The jugs couldn't be thrown on to my gym except from your dormitories. There has been an invasion. It's scandalous."

"But what evidence have you?" asked Berney, who hated Randall as only one housemaster can hate another.

"It's obvious, man, obvious. Jealousy. Footer cup. My boys were at supper when the crash was heard: and your boys shouted, I heard them. Besides, would my people soak their beds? I demand an inquiry. I shall go to Foskett. Your boys shall be kept back a day."

This roused Berney, whose nerves were already strained with fatigue and worry.

"I entirely decline," he said sharply, "to board my boys for an extra day to please you. I shall put the matter in the hands of my prefects. If that doesn't satisfy you, go to Foskett by all means. You won't get much out of him at this time of night: he's probably more tired than I am. If my prefects find that my boys----"

"There's no 'if,'" said Randall.

"If they find that we're responsible," Berney continued icily, "the jugs shall be paid for and the guilty punished. Good-night." And he led Randall to the door.

Randall was renowned for his temper and his powers of self-expression in school. But now he was sublimely speechless.

Berney held a nocturnal consultation with his form prefects. They all smiled as the tale was told. Spots even roared with laughter.

"Er, Leopard," said Berney, "this is--er--a serious matter," and then he broke down and laughed himself. He and Randall had never hit it off. Spots told Berney of the suspicious innocence of the lower dormitory. Moore had been on duty all the evening in the upper room so that its inhabitants were certainly not guilty. The prefects marched in a body to the lower dormy. "Look here, you chaps," said Spots, "it's all up about this jug business. It was done here. Who are the culprits?"

Simultaneously every boy left his cubicle and said: 'Guilty.' It was a triumph of organisation. Neave had foreseen that detection was inevitable and had determined that, up to the very end, the dormy should display its solidarity.

"Well," said Spots, "you'd better all come down to the pre's room."

So shortly before one o'clock eighteen boys in dressing-gowns, led by Cullen and Neave in garments of great colour and splendour, went down to the prefects' common-room. There was just room for all.

Neave had to tell the whole story: he told it simply and well, duly emphasising the Biblical aspect.

"Berney has left the matter with the prefect," said Moore, who was suffering tortures from a half-thwarted desire to laugh.

"You'll have to pay for the jugs next term. Randall wants you to be kept back, but Berney wouldn't hear it. Anyhow, it's been a grave breach of discipline" (here he saw the impenetrable solemnity of Neave's face and almost broke down), "grave breach of discipline. Yes. You're to have four each."

Martin sighed with relief, for he had expected eight. They were taken to the house gym, where space was ample, and with all four prefects at work the business was soon over. They were even allowed to keep on their dressing-gowns. Never had swiping been so farcical or so inefficient. When they were all back in their cubicles Spots came in.

"I'd have given a great deal," he said, "not to have been a pre to-night. It seems to me that we have scored off Randall's. Gentlemen, I congratulate you, and I sincerely hope that no one has been hurt by our recent ministration."

They assured him that they had not suffered. And then, because they were all going away very early the next morning, it was decided, with Spots's permission, to abandon sleep. Gideon had to make a speech and offer thanks for the public revenge: and stories were told interminably.

Martin, as he lay half asleep, came to the conclusion that life's burden was exquisite. It wasn't only that the holidays began to-morrow: the night's achievement had been perfect. There is something essentially satisfying to human nature in the lavish destruction of property: with joy we watch the havoc wrought by the cinema comedian or the pantomime knockabout, and with joy the patron of fairs smashes the bottles in a rifle-range. Martin revelled in the thought that forty pitchers lay shattered and shimmering on the zinc roof below him. And now, more than ever, he felt the pleasures of comradeship. Randall's had been humiliated: Berney's had triumphed. It was for him far the most significant fact of his first term that he had taken part in an enterprise worthy to be recounted for ever in Berney's. He was proud of his dormy, for it had worked as one man. Above all, he was proud of Neave, the contriver, the leader of men. Even now he was saying:

"We've put it across them, the swine."

Then Spots said: "For Gideon and the Lord. It was a great notion. Who thought of it?"

"Young Leigh gave the name," said Neave.

"Good for you, Leigh," shouted Spots. "You're keeping up the reputation of the Leopard's den."

Naturally that seemed to Martin the supreme moment of the whole superb affair.

VI

At one o'clock in the afternoon of December the twentieth a motor car left Tavistock station and tore fiercely westward until it reached the excellent village of Cherton Widger. Then it panted up an abrupt hill and, passing a lodge, ran up a short drive to The Steading, a square low-roofed house surrounded by irreproachable lawns that sloped away to the coverts. The chauffeur descended and carried on to the steps a portmanteau and a corded play-box. Martin, looking uncouthly smart in a new overcoat (with a strap behind) and a bowler hat, stood rather nervously by the door. He had come home for the holidays.

In the hall he met his aunt. He kissed her: or rather she kissed him. His uncle burst out of his study and shook hands with him: his cousin Margaret, aged fifteen, also appeared and shyly shook hands. It seemed that his cousin Robert, aged seventeen, would not escape from Rugby till to-morrow. Everybody began to ask him questions which he mechanically answered.

"You must have left Elfrey very early," said his aunt.

"About seven."

"And in December too! Had you got to?"

"No; but everybody does."

These well-meaning people did not realise that you do not stay at school after term has ended. Though you perish with cold and lack of sleep, the first possible train is the only train. Martin had secured an hour's sleep, breakfasted at six, and caught his train at seven. All the way to Exeter he had smoked. About this smoking he had felt afraid, for here was another new experience: but everyone else in the carriage had smoked and there was no escape. One of the boys had dealt in cigars, another produced a pipe which he cleaned extensively and smoked but little. Martin had kept with the majority to cigarettes and had laboured to disguise the swift nervous action of the novice beneath the languid air of the connoisseur. One thing at any rate was certain: he had not been sick. By the time he reached Exeter he was feeling a little queer, but with a supreme effort he had staved off a disaster which would have been fatal to his reputation. And now he was intensely hungry and found cold chicken and ham a very pleasant substitute for the 'roast or boiled' with which the board of Berney's was laden. It was heavenly to sit once more in a comfortable chair in a fire-warmed room and to have chicken and fresh bread and lemonade.

Martin was an orphan. His guardian, John Berrisford, to whose house he had just come, was his mother's brother. His father had been most things to most men, and despite, or possibly because of, his very considerable ability he had achieved a rich versatility in failure. He had started by being a captain of industry, or perhaps a sub-lieutenant would be a more accurate description; but his complete inability to remain awake in the office between the hours of two and four had put a sudden end to his commission. On parting from his general he had said:

"It's no use your getting chaps from the varsity to give the show tone. They won't work till they have had their tea." The general had sworn and taken his advice.

Richard Leigh then discovered that he had been so damnably well educated that there was nothing for him to do but think. So he thought and wrote and went hungry. Now and then, to give his creditors a run for their money, he became a commission agent or an architect or a producer of plays. But he never paid very much in the pound. At the time when he met Joan Berrisford, a young woman of property, he was once more engaged in thought. She was beginning to feel the need of permanence in her life and was quickly interested in his work and the giant despair which he swore was the greatest of his creations. Virginity bored her: Richard attracted her: possibly her conscience stung her: for she was suddenly struck by the idea that she might repay society for her dividends by rescuing for society an artist whom it didn't want. Nowadays this would seem reasonable enough, because we don't believe in democracy any longer and shower divine rights on anyone who chooses to call himself an intelligent minority and make himself sufficiently objectionable: but at the time when the incident occurred Joan Berrisford was certainly thinking in advance of her age. Everybody said she was a fool to pay any attention to the creature, for she came of the class that thinks every artist has necessarily something wrong with him. Only her brother John pointed out that Joan's husband was, primarily, Joan's affair, and then, to her intense delight, he had added that he didn't care twopence whom she married as long as the rest of the family hated him.

The marriage was a success. Richard threw off his despair and gave society some excellent books of which it took no notice. They lived in Italy, and there Martin was born. When he was only eight his mother died suddenly and his father came to London. He had been left comfortably off by his wife, but after her death the old restlessness returned: he gave up writing and gambled gracefully on the Stock Exchange--that is to say, he bore his continual losses with an exquisite nonchalance. Martin used to go to a day school and was enabled by his brains and some sound teaching to win a good scholarship at Elfrey. Then in August his father had succumbed to a long illness and the boy was left to the guardianship of his uncle, John Berrisford, to whom Richard Leigh had written the following letter:

DEAR JOHN, You are the only one of my relations by blood or marriage with whom neither Joan nor I ever quarrelled. And so, just because you left us alone, I can't leave you alone. I want you to be Martin's guardian, in case this illness should do for me: you have seen something of him and I know you like him. There is no home in the world to which I would sooner entrust my son than yours. I have only a thousand pounds and I want him to be decently educated. You have a family and I should hate to think that I was burdening you. So you must just go for the capital: he has a good scholarship at Elfrey and ought to get one at Oxford. In that case the thousand pounds ought just to see him through. It's plainly no use investing for fifty pounds a year. Don't encourage him to be an artist: he can't afford it. Besides it's a poor life to be a wanderer when you're old, and that's what he would be without money. If he seems inclined for safety and the Civil Service, let him take his chance. Anyhow I trust you absolutely. Yours ever,

RICHARD LEIGH.

So Martin had spent the last three weeks of his summer holiday at The Steading and thither he had now returned.

John Berrisford was a round, ruddy little man who was too English to be like Napoleon and too Napoleonic to be like an English squire. In all matters of theory, especially moral and political, he was fiercely progressive, in all matters of taste a conservative. He combined revolutionary fervour with a strong belief in old customs, old cheese, and old wine. He ran a small estate on which he gave his labourers a twenty-shilling minimum, decent cottages, and free beer on festal occasions, and to the grief of the neighbouring farmers he made it pay. Sport of all kinds attracted him, and on Saturdays in the autumn and winter he would bring down partridges and pheasants with remarkable certainty, but he was sufficiently logical not to cap his battues by going to church on the following day. He made friends with everybody and was criticised by the squires for being a rebel and by the rebels, of whom the village had two, for being a squire. This amused him intensely and his first answer to all criticism was a drink. Then he would start out magnificently to justify his position. "I get the best of everything," he said, and meant it.

Martin, of course, missed his father's companionship: they had lived on very intimate terms and the customary limitations of the parental relationship had been broken through. But it is the privilege of youth to forget easily, and it was fortunate for Martin that almost directly after his father's death he should have been plunged into a new world, a world whose thronging cares and pleasures gave few moments for reflection. By the time he had returned to The Steading his personality had so grown and developed that he was freed from painful memories and able to enjoy his holidays.

The Berrisfords were people of sound sense, and seeing what manner of boy he was made no effort to entertain him. Robert, the son at Rugby, was seventeen and a prefect, so that Martin was afraid of him and kept aloof: of Margaret, as a girl, he was naturally shy. He preferred to wander alone in the fields and coverts, now marking the ways of bird and beast, now plotting out his future and building up strange fantasies of thought. Ever since he had been a tiny boy he had played with himself a game of imagination in which he fused his personality with that of a mysterious hero called Daniel. Always when he got into bed he would become Daniel until he fell asleep and in imagination he would go through great adventures and sufferings and triumphs. Daniel was very strong and brave and perfect: perhaps Martin had been influenced by Henty's heroes. Daniel's life varied with Martin's own vicissitudes. When Martin read Ballantyne, Daniel was the son of a trapper and wrought wonderful deeds among the Esquimaux and Redskins on the shores of Hudson's Bay: when Martin was under his father's influence he abandoned trapping and came home to write wonderful books about grizzly bears: when Martin's thoughts were centred on his preparatory school, Daniel had laboured at the verbs in [Greek: -_mi_] and been the finest athlete in the land. At Elfrey, Daniel had suffered an eclipse, as always happened when Martin had anything very much to think about: at Berney's he had either been tired enough to fall asleep immediately or else he had had something on his mind, to-morrow's repetition, an order of Leopard's, or a game of football. And, besides, Martin had reflected that such methods of amusement as the 'Daniel game' were childish and quite incompatible with the dignity of a Public School boy. But at The Steading the temptation to restore Daniel to life became very urgent and Martin at length swallowed his scruples. While he lay in his bed or wandered in the woods he would become Daniel once more, a Daniel at Elfrey, a prodigious Daniel, who surpassed all records in popularity, played stand-off half for the school at the age of fourteen, endured the most tremendous swipings without a moan or a movement, and was irresistible at every game he took up.

Mrs Berrisford was somewhat distressed by Martin's solitary walks and quiet ways and made several efforts to draw him from his shell. But she made the mistake of trying to base the conversation on his experiences at school and the result was not encouraging.

"And who is your form master?" she began one evening.

"Chap called Vickers."

"Is he nice?"

"Oh, he's all right. Bit of a terror sometimes."

"Does he go for you?"

"Not for me very much."

A pause. "And what's Mr Berney like? Do you get on with him?"

"Oh, he's all right."

"Do you like the house?"

"Yes; it's quite all right."

"Have you any special friends?"

"No one in particular. I like most of the chaps."

"How do you get on with football?"

"Fairly well."

And then she gave it up. Without being openly rude Martin had made it plain that he was not to be bolted from his earth of modified optimism.

When Martin had gone to bed John Berrisford pointed out to his wife that she had taken the wrong line. "Martin is just old enough and wise enough to be thoroughly self-conscious," he said. "He resents questions about school because he thinks you're regarding him as a schoolboy and playing down to him. Talk to him about Botticelli or Free Trade or Beerbohm Tree."

"What nonsense," said Mrs Berrisford. "He's only fourteen. It's just shyness."

But on the following morning she took her husband's advice and found that, as usual, he was right.

There was a good collection of books in the house and Martin was allowed to pick and choose. John Berrisford suffered some anxiety from the problem of free choice: he was not concerned about the boy's morality; because he knew that no power in the world can alter human nature. So when he noticed that Martin took down _Tom Jones_ and read only a portion of it, and later on paid great heed to _The Sentimental Journey_, he had the good sense to say nothing at all. What worried him was the fear that Martin would read many really good things before he was able to appreciate them and might thus be prevented or prejudiced from reading them in after life. For instance, when Martin struggled with Robert Louis Stevenson and called him dull, his uncle knew well enough what was wrong. On the other hand, he dreaded dictating a course of reading or advising the boy in any way, for he knew the value of spontaneous selection and remembered the vivid loathing which he himself had felt for 'advised' books and the infinite lure of the forbidden fruit. So he discreetly held his peace, hoping that Martin would be able to return to Stevenson without prejudice.

A few days before the end of the holidays the whole family went up to town to see the theatres. Martin was old enough to appreciate the pantomime and would have sat there till three in the morning readily. He was bored by the interminable ballet and the garish medley of flashing lights and countless colours which most of the audience liked so much, but the comedians and the more humorous scenic effects he found perfect. Besides, as a Public School boy and grown-up person, he had to admire Robinson Crusoe when, in gleaming fur-trimmed tights, he, or rather she, so irresistibly sang:

"Somebody wants me surely, Some heart bleeds for mine."

No less fascinating was the comedienne with her: 'Cupid got a Bull that Time,' and the comic man's triumph: 'There are Lots of Funny Things about a Clothes-Line.'

At last the end came and Martin went to meet the special to Elfrey. He was afraid that his uncle and aunt were making a great mistake in proposing to see him off. He wondered whether it was done, whether you could possibly appear on the platform surrounded by relations. As usual his fears were not justified and he found the station full of mothers and sisters. Everything went well, and as they walked through the crowd Martin noticed a group of bloods with Leopard in their midst. Spots saw him and greeted him quite effusively. It was a tremendous moment, and afforded Martin a fine thrill of pride.

"Who was that?" asked his aunt.

"Oh, that was Leopard. He's a pre at Berney's. An awful blood, and ripping too."

Somehow or other he had never informed the Berrisfords that he did menial work or wrote Greek prose for another.

Then he came across Cullen and Neave, resplendent with white spats and yellow canes. They too were ready to greet him, almost as if he were one of their chosen circle.

"Got a seat?" said Neave.

"No."

"Well come into our carriage. We want to get a gang of Berney's. Two swine from Randall's had the cheek to shove their bags in here, but when they sloped away to get papers we plugged their stuff into the guard's van and now they can't find their carriage. You'd better bag a pew here."

This was fame and ecstasy indeed. Martin hurriedly said good-bye to his uncle and aunt and made certain of his place in Neave's carriage. When the train had left the station they settled down to talk and for a splendid half-hour they refought the battle of the pitchers. Then they talked theatres and ultimately the more experienced told of amorous conquests. Martin had been content to listen for the most part and now he relapsed into complete silence. He supposed there must be something in this girl business, though as yet he didn't understand. But he was not unhappy. He sat with the forefinger and thumb of his right hand in his waistcoat pocket and felt the milled edges of two sovereigns which his uncle had just given him. Two pounds, forty shillings, four hundred and eighty pence! He possessed the equivalent of one hundred and sixty poached eggs or two hundred and forty ham rolls. It was a ravishing thought.

VII

Scholars, like nations, are happiest when they have no history: judged by that standard, both Elfrey School and Berney's house must have been fortunate. Everything ran smoothly and Martin flourished in mind and body. He not only reached the Upper Sixth in the shortest possible time, but also played with average success in his house teams. Without being a brilliant scholar, he always did sound work: without being a born athlete, he could easily hold his own among boys of his size and age. Generally speaking, he had no adventures. Beyond a few petty rows with masters and prefects, such rows as fall inevitably to the lot of all, be they sinners or saints, he pursued an even course and found in life a quite tolerable combination of boredom and excitement. His main interest consisted now, as before, in discoveries.

Religion is always a field for engrossing, if unprofitable, exploration. Until the time arrived for his confirmation Martin had adopted the average position of his kind. He had taken everything for granted, but his acceptance had implied neither strength of faith nor the application of faith to the phenomena of workaday existence. During chapel he had chanted the psalms and sung the hymns when the music or his own mood encouraged him to do so. Hymns like 'Fight the good fight,' which offered an opportunity for a good, throat-bursting yell, he had always enjoyed: his young emotions had at times been touched by the more sentimental tunes and he found 'For all Thy saints' peculiarly affecting. He was not so impassive as the average Elfreyan who could easily forget the sermons of the Reverend Frank Adair, the one master who had the courage to let himself go when he preached and the ability to gain his effect. Adair could grip Martin and make him feel a very weak vessel. Foskett delivered an address from time to time, exhortations, as a rule, on the duties of a gentleman and the traditions of school life. As he never dealt with concrete instances or dabbled, as did one or two preachers, in thrilling casuistry of the study or the cricket field, no one paid much attention to his high-pitched voice and rapt expression. During the repetition of prayers Martin's thoughts wandered to secular subjects, prep, and games, and So-and-so's chances of a cap: and he knew, as he gazed at the long rows of kneeling figures, that nineteen out of twenty minds were engaged upon the same topics.

Most boys took confirmation very much as a matter of form, as something you had done to you at some time or another. Perhaps they prayed a little longer at night, for it was the custom to say prayers, and the traditional shoe, had it been flung, would more probably have been aimed at the shirker than the devotee. But otherwise they were unaffected. Martin took a deeper interest because he had listened closely to an address in which there had been almost a definite promise that the first Communion would bring a gift, a spiritual reality about which no mistake could be made. He was curious to discover what exactly this gift was and how it would feel to be filled with the Holy Ghost. So he awaited with more enthusiasm than most the day of his strengthening in the Church.

Confirmation stirred him because the bishop spoke warmly and, as bishops go, sensibly. But first Communion was a disappointment. He had expected so much, he had looked forward with so tense a curiosity to the receiving of a priceless and unknown gift, and he had to admit that he felt exactly as he had felt before. It couldn't be, he decided, his own faith that was lacking, for he had gone to the sacrament in perfect confidence about the blessing that was to come, and he resolved to continue his search for the truth and the help that it would bring. So for two terms he attended the Communion with fair regularity. But still nothing happened, the promise seemed to him unfulfilled, and he came to the conclusion that it was no use going on. For the future he lay in bed on Sunday mornings and listened to the faithful washing and groping for their studs. The position of the sceptic had, after all, its consolations.

In course of the following holidays he discovered among some paper-covered books of his uncle's a three-penny copy of Blatchford's _God and My Neighbour_. He read it through almost without a break, for he had just reached the necessary stage to appreciate it. The short, stabbing sentences and the obvious good-will of the author made a great impression upon him, and he was thrilled by the peroration and flaming appeal for a world set free from kings and priests and all such evil-doers. He caught the spirit of the book at once and read it aloud to himself, rejoicing:

"'Rightly or wrongly, I am for reason against dogmas, for evolution against revolution: for humanity always: for earth, not heaven: for the holiest trinity of all--the trinity of man, woman, and child.'

"This," he thought, "is literature."

And then the final thunderclap: "'Let the holy have their heaven. I am a man, and an Infidel. And this is my apology. Besides, gentlemen, Christianity is not true.'"

Martin saw it all now: Christianity was not true: it was a lie and a fraud kept alive by priests and bishops with a view to salaries. He wanted very much to speak to his uncle and question him about science and the New Testament authorities, but, though they were on very intimate terms, he dared not approach him on this occasion. The reason was that he had taken the book from a cupboard usually locked. Martin had found the key by accident while his uncle was up in town and could not resist the temptation to look through the hidden literature. So he put the books away and remained silent.

But when he went back to Elfrey he felt that he could no longer restrain the gushing fountain of secularism, and he determined to talk to a Berneyite called Gregson. Martin was sixteen and a member of the Upper Sixth: Gregson was a year older and in the same form. He was much less adaptable than Martin, hated all games, and had taken up the position of school heretic. In the evenings they used to settle the problem of the universe over cocoa and sardines, and there was nothing on which they had not touched. Martin had picked up some revolutionary politics from his uncle and he was delighted to find in Gregson a disciple of William Morris. At one time they had been joint leaders of Liberalism in the school debating society (they had one follower in a house of thirty), but now, to the great joy of the Tories, they turned to Socialism and lashed their former supporter. Consequently it was natural for Martin to approach Gregson on the subject of doubt, and to his great surprise he found that Gregson knew all about it. As a matter of fact there could have been few more fruitful grounds for the seed of scepticism than Gregson's soul. Gregson had an acute hair-splitting brain and an abhorrence of emotion: he came from a country parsonage, and he had to attend church in the holidays whether he liked it or not: moreover he had a brother at the varsity who possessed a great genius for blasphemy and a quantity of rationalist pamphlets. Gregson took up comparative religion, used long words, and became very bitter.

"Why didn't you let on that you were an agnostic?" asked Martin.

"Oh, it's no use. They think you're wicked. It's best to wait till you have escaped from this prison before you open your lips."

"But you might have told me."

"I thought I'd let you find out for yourself. It was bound to happen."

Martin was surprised at Gregson's certainty.

"Bound?" he asked. "Very few people doubt."

"All rational people doubt," said Gregson with decision. "Tell me this. How can God be all-good and all-powerful and leave misery in the world?"

Martin had a vague idea that there was an answer to this. "Training, I suppose," he answered weakly.

"Yes, that's what the bishops say. Good for people to be poor, strengthens the fibre and all that. And back they slope to their palaces. But what I want to know is, why this beastly training? If God was all-powerful, the thing could be done without it and we would all be angels at once. After all, why should people die of cancer or inherit filthy diseases?"

Martin didn't see why they should.

"And then there's the Atonement," Gregson continued. "There's a childish story for you. First, it seems, God made men: then He was angry because He hadn't made them good enough. Then, just to complete the muddle, He found it necessary to kill His Son to pay for the sins of the people whom He might have made perfect if He had wanted to. That's not good enough, thank you."

It was just the type of sharp, bitter-phrased reasoning to complete the extinction of Martin's spark of faith. At first Gregson's violent attitude naturally drove Martin to a modified defence of religion, but Gregson carried far too many guns when it came to a battle of argument. He could make great play with his comparative religion, and Martin used to leave Gregson's study with a wealth of new phrases ringing in his ears: at last he could think of nothing but solar myths and gods of dying vegetation. It seemed to him very strange that the world should continue to pay any attention to the monstrous imposture which the combined efforts of Blatchford and Gregson had shown Christianity to be. But his discoveries did not make him unhappy: he had his secular socialism and, as religion had never formed a vital element in his life, its loss could involve no pain.

VIII

Martin derived from his study a rich and constant enjoyment. True that it was a diminutive box of a place: true that in winter he had to choose between freezing with an open window or enduring the atmosphere that only hot-water pipes can create. There would be rows too outside, in the passage, scuffling and ragging and the singing of all the latest successes. But after the dusty turmoil of the workroom it was a possession and, though Martin was not at that time the kind of person to care intensely about his surroundings or little pieces of property, he took a definite pride in his books and pictures. He was old enough now to be above actresses: other and greater persons might bedeck their walls with fair women, but Gregson and he had decided that such things were only good for the army class. The Upper Sixth, Classical, should have traditions and its traditions should include the things of art. Gregson, on the advice of a Cubist cousin, brought back to Elfrey some modern studies of the nude, but Mr Berney discovered them and after a close examination came to the conclusion that the objects depicted were women. Then he thought the matter over and nervously demanded their removal. This naturally fanned the flame of Gregson's bitterness against the world of school and led him to hold forth copiously to Martin, who enjoyed his rich outbursts of invective.

"Poor old Berney," he would say. "I suppose we can't blame him. He doesn't understand. Ma B. hasn't got further than Matthew Arnold and I don't suppose either of them ever heard of a chap called Wilde. [Wilde was tremendously the god of Gregson's rebellious soul.] They'll live and learn. I suppose some day schools will be reasonable places."

Gregson was not really a prig or a bore, but at times he ran the risk of combining the parts. The Public School system does just as much harm by isolating the thinker and driving him into an immature and self-conscious spirit of opposition as it would if it crushed him altogether. Gregson did not get on with the prefects. He used to allude to the Iron Heel of their system, despised their methods of keeping order, and exposed to Martin the futility of entrusting matters of conduct to swollen-headed athletes who could only just struggle into the History Sixth.

"They don't know what they're doing and don't care what they do. If they see or hear anything they haven't seen or heard before they trample on it. They all crib in form themselves and go for kids when they crib."

"That's very British," said Martin, who could still mistake a platitude for an epigram.

"British or foreign, it's all alike. Just as capital sits on labour everywhere, so muscle is still on top all over the world. It's worse at school than anywhere, but it's the Iron Heel all the same."

Martin agreed to these sentiments at the moment but gave little thought to their bearing. He was less rebellious than Gregson and was on reasonably good terms with all the present prefects except Heseltine. Also his pictures had not been banned.

Martin combined with the society of Gregson a strong friendship for a pleasant but unintellectual person called Rayner. Rayner was robust and practical and efficient: he took everything for granted, his education, his prospects, and his religion. He never questioned anything, not because he was too lazy, but because it never struck him as a normal thing to do. Naturally Martin had to discriminate carefully between the topics of conversation with his various friends. With Rayner he talked of cricket and football, the chances of this man and the failure of that, the reasons for England's success at Twickenham and Scotland's failure at Inverleith, the prospects of the varsities in their different contests. Above all, Rayner was sound about food. Gregson was too superior to 'brew' extensively, so on half-holiday afternoons in winter Rayner and Martin used to collaborate in the production and consumption of food. They were both well off for pocket-money, and between them they would often devour a dozen or more sausages, a tin of sardines and a large bunch of bananas, not to mention the accompaniments of the feast, cocoa and bread and jam. Martin was a strong eater, but it was Rayner who really achieved the bulk of the work: together they defeated all rivals and established a house record. After feeding-time they would lie torpid in a heavenly frowst reading _Wisden's Annual_ or sixpenny magazines. Gregson secretly despised Martin for enjoying these plebeian orgies, but he could not afford to quarrel since that would have meant the loss of his only audience.

It was into the life of this Martin, the intermediate Martin, who was neither the servant of Spots nor the commander of servants, that Anstey rushed in. Anstey was a small clever boy who had climbed to the Lower Sixth at great speed: he had not only considerable ability, but also possessed a genius for covering the gaps in his knowledge or reading and he would talk with Martin about authors he had never read. His manners and appearance were charming and he played half-back for Berney's second team with skill and pluck. Without being made conceited by the influential friendships which he found awaiting him wherever he turned, he had a quiet manner of self-assertion which fascinated Martin. And so when Rayner or Gregson came to Martin for a talk they would find Anstey chatting away with his feet on the table. Then Rayner would go away hurriedly, for he thought Anstey a frivolous and unreliable creature, and if ever there was a reliable man at Elfrey it was Rayner. Gregson's objections to Anstey were based on the latter's sentimental attachment to the Catholic faith. On first acquiring a study Anstey had bought 'Peggy' and the usual pictures: three weeks later he was converted, exchanged 'Peggy' for a Madonna, and dotted the room with candles.

To Martin, Anstey would talk on any subject, from religious experience, which he had not undergone, to the beauty of his elder sisters which was equally fictitious. At times they read together, prose and poetry, Classics and English, and after reading they would launch out into vast discussions. In the Christmas holidays Martin went to stay with the Ansteys in Kensington: he was disappointed in the sisters, who indeed took very little notice of him, but Cyril Anstey was more than usually charming. They wandered about London together, went often to the play, and spent far more money than the Anstey family could afford: but of course Martin did not know that. It was not, however, until the summer term that Martin's friendship for Cyril Anstey reached its height; now at last he discovered how limited and pent up all his school life had been. He had had no enthusiasms. Religion had no appeal for him, the ancient literatures had been so fouled by pedantic notes and introductions that they had not moved him as they should have done, for games he had only a lukewarm affection. He liked discussing teams and the chances of teams, but he had never had personal successes in athletics; while he knew that the correct hitting of a ball might be one of life's most splendid things, his experience of that pleasure was too fragmentary to satisfy his appetite. His talks with Gregson had been enjoyable, for they had given him an opportunity to let himself go: but life, on the whole, this life at school which was universally supposed to teem with opportunities, had become monotonous and barren. One could live without feeling.

But Anstey made a difference. On Sunday afternoons or whenever through the week they could escape from cricket, they wandered together on the downs and lay on the short grass watching the white clouds sailing majestically like galleons in the blue dome above them and listening to the larks and the charge of the wind. Below them were the school towers and the green patch of playing-fields and the glittering pool of water where in summer one bathed: behind them ran the smooth sweep of the downs, clear-cut against the sunset and firm and strong as when the Roman came and built his camp upon the brow and threw his road across the hill, despising these grassy slopes as befitted one who knew the Apennines. Here were line and colour and wind and a freshening spirit that was alien to the stuffy town below: here was something to enjoy in peace, something which made the Georgics real and the world something more than a place to live in.

And Anstey had brought him to the downs. The average Elfreyan thought climbing that slippery turf a horrid sweat, connected it with the compulsory runs of winter, and preferred to lounge in his arid house yard. Until now Martin had avoided the downs, because it wasn't the thing to go there: but when he had found the dip to Friar's Hanger and the great wood of larches beyond, he cursed the game of cricket and longed to escape from the tyranny of games. He had taken beauty for granted just as he had taken goodness and truth for granted: somehow they existed and that was all. Now he found the idea suffusing visible things and he knew how much he had missed by lounging in Berney's yard. A new door was opened. It had been opened by Anstey and the light from within was reflected on the opener, transfiguring for Martin the swift grace of his movements and giving to the rapid stream of his thoughts a depth which they really lacked. A dam had burst and Martin had no longer to seek an outlet for his emotions. Gladly he entered on strange paths of sentiment, and he no longer deceived himself with the lie that his friendship with Anstey was comparable to his friendship for Gregson or Rayner. One afternoon they found a new path and a new hollow where the young bracken made a couch softer than the bare hill-side. Here there was no clack of cricket balls, no nets, no shouting of 'Heads' and terrified ducking. Only the wind whispered in the bracken and an old sheep grunted in the sun, for the weather was warm and he should long ago have been sheared.

The two boys lay in silence, pretending to read.

"It's ripping of you to be bothered with me," said Martin suddenly.

"What do you mean?" said Anstey.

"I mean that you aren't my sort. You see things much more quickly than I do. You don't plod like me."

"I haven't your brains--that's the truth."

"No, it isn't. Of course it isn't." Yet Martin was half-conscious that he lied. His affection for Anstey had forced him to tell a needless falsehood in a futile effort to quiet the voice which cried within him: "He isn't good enough for you." Then he added: "You've shown me all this."

"I may see things you miss," said Anstey, "but I've no practical ability, no thoroughness. Anyhow I'm glad if I've given you something in return for what you have given me."

Martin had bought books for Anstey, Synge at five shillings a volume. He had been proud of knowing about Synge at school.

"Oh, that was nothing," he answered. But it had meant fewer sardines and sausages when he fed with Rayner.

"Then we're quits, dear old fool."

"Why old fool?"

"For taking me seriously."

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Nobody else does. I amuse them and they like me all right. But I think you really care----"

"Yes, of course. Honestly, I care."

They lay in silence, looking at one another.

Later on they went headlong down the slopes and assuaged their heat by bathing in the pool, which was almost deserted. It was still warm enough to lie on the soft banks so that the setting sun might dry their bodies.

They were late for house tea.

At this point Heseltine comes into the story.

He was head of Berney's, a fact of which he was most painfully aware. Though not prominent in games, he was sound in all branches of life: above all, he was a man with an influence, a force for good, one of Foskett's darlings. He held strong views on the duty of a prefect and the possibility of 'feeling the school's moral pulse.' Berney's objected to his constant attentions: the house preferred to have its pulse unfelt. Everyone resented Heseltine's new rules and posted notices and petty interference, but of all Berneyites the most opposed to Heseltine in spirit and conduct was Anstey.

That night Heseltine asked Martin to see him after prep.

"Oh, I want to have a chat with you," said Heseltine when Martin arrived. "Just one friend to another."

"Yes," said Martin suspiciously.

"You've been going about a lot with young Anstey," the prefect went on.

"Yes."

"I don't want to seem interfering" (sure sign, Martin knew, that he was going to interfere), "but I think I ought to warn you against him. He's not good enough for you. His record isn't a good one."

"He's in the Lower Sixth."

"I know that. He's clever enough. But we've had trouble with him. He doesn't fit into things: he's dangerous."

Martin wanted to say: "You think everybody dangerous who has more brains than you." As a matter of fact he said: "Oh?" There was something formidable about Heseltine.

"Of course," he continued, "one can't be too careful in matters of this sort. In a community like this sentimental attachments won't do. We prefects are responsible for the moral health of the school and we've got to keep our fingers on its pulse...." He prosed away and Martin regarded the literature he favoured. He read, it seemed, Seton Merriman and the publications of the Agenda Club. Suddenly he realised that Heseltine was saying: "I want you to promise me to see less of him."

Martin flared up at once. "I don't see why," he said angrily.

"I've given my reasons. He's not a fit friend for you."

"Surely that's for me to judge."

"You're not infallible. I'm only speaking for your good. I should like to have your promise. I know I can't compel you, but I ask it as a favour."

"I think my friends are my own affair," answered Martin, infuriated by what he considered to be the oiliness, the furtive oiliness, of Heseltine's methods.

During the next three days Martin was constantly with Anstey and, as a result, Heseltine declared war. He definitely forbade the friends to visit each other's studies without permission, and on the following evening he swiped Anstey for impertinence. To swipe a member of the Sixth was a violation of tradition but not of law. Not even Anstey could have denied that he had been sublimely impertinent, but his appeal was to custom. Heseltine smiled calmly and said that he couldn't be limited by hide-bound traditions when the maintenance of discipline was at stake. He enjoyed his triumph and did not spare his victim.

The news came to Martin through Rayner, who, though secretly pleased at Anstey's discomfiture, honestly admitted that Heseltine hadn't played the game. Martin listened to him in silence: he did not volunteer any conversation and was glad that Rayner went away at once.

He picked up a book and went straight to Heseltine's study.

"Can I speak to Anstey?" he asked quietly, "It's about some words in Homer!"

Heseltine looked at him suspiciously: he could hardly call him a liar to his face. "Very well," he said. "But don't stay."

Martin found Anstey in his arm-chair. His face was very white and when he saw Martin he smiled the forced, flickering smile that is so often born of an effort to conceal pain.

"It's all right," said Martin, "I've got permission."

Anstey told him to sit down.

"It's frightfully rotten luck," Martin began. "Heseltine is simply a devil."

"He didn't hurt me as much as he thought he had."

The thought gave Martin a thrill: it was something more than sympathy.

"What did he have you up for?" he asked.

"Cheek. You must have heard what I said. I certainly shouted."

"But I joined in that."

It had been in the tuck-shop. Heseltine's entrance had been greeted with remarks about the advent of the deity.

"He didn't hear you."

Martin knew that he hadn't shouted: he had only muttered something. He hadn't Anstey's pluck. The thought was bitter and increased his admiration of Heseltine's victim. Anstey had suffered for what he had helped to do.

"But what about this persecution?" he exclaimed suddenly. "I'm damned if I stand it."

"And what do you propose to do?"

"I don't see why we shouldn't remain friends."

"Nor do I. But the powers disagree."

"Damn the powers."

"Certainly."

"Well, I'm going to see you as often as I like if you'll have me. If Heseltine says anything I'll tell him to go to Berney or Foskett if he likes."

Anstey made no reply.

"Do you mean," said Martin, "that you won't go on, that you don't want me?"

"Of course I want you. But it's no use fighting. I've got a bad name with the beaks and it's a hundred to one they back up Heseltine. You know how they drop on this sort of thing. I think they're all wrong: in this case I know they are. But there it is. They've got the whip hand and we can't fight against the odds."

"I'm willing to try."

"If you do, you'll be very admirable and very foolish. Look here. You may be a pre next term. Fighting means you miss that; it means nothing but trouble all day long. I've been in rows and I know. It's no use. There's more pluck in surrender."

Martin got up. "I think I'll go," he said.

"I hope you don't think I'm playing a low-down game," interrupted Anstey.

"No, it isn't that. I just want to think things over. Besides, time is up."

He went back to his study and tried to clear his mind. At first he was bitterly angered by Anstey's surrender, but later on he realised that, after all, Anstey had already been under fire in the war's first skirmish, whereas he, Martin, had gone unscathed. He was in no position to make criticisms, much less taunts. Then his thoughts turned from Anstey to Heseltine. He knew now what Gregson meant when he talked of the Iron Heel: he could feel its pressure now. More clearly than ever before he learned that membership of society is a doubtful blessing and that it means cruelty and waste and sacrifice and compels us to jettison the rare to save the common. For the sake of example, to preserve discipline, to keep the house working he had now to give up the most precious thing in his life. In the last few weeks something new had burst into his soul like a drunken reveller, upsetting things and setting things up, something at once beautiful and terrible: but its beauty had surpassed its terror. Beauty had been blown into his sight and imaginings on the wind-swept downs and now it was to be swept away again by the grim forces of convention and utility. Just because others spoiled things he must be deprived of them: the high must be of less account then the low, the beautiful must yield to the ugly. This was morality and the social good, this was the Law of whose glories complacent philosophers loved to preach. He ought to fight it; he must fight it. But how? The question was as unanswerable as it was insistent. At length he gave it up. All that he could do was to pour out his soul to Gregson, for here, if anywhere, Gregson might be of use. Together they denounced the Iron Heel, and it was well for Martin that this outlet was not denied him. He was saved from despair, perhaps from disaster, by a fortnight's ferocious Anarchism.

And in a fortnight the wound had healed. Enforced abstention from Anstey's society did its work. Anstey easily picked up new friends and Martin was astonished to find that he was not jealous of them. He was equally astonished at his own speedy reconciliation with the order of things and his swift relapse from Anarchism to Socialism. Anstey had been right: there was, after all, much to be said for social peace and convenience.

In another week he was beginning to ask himself what he had ever seen to admire in Anstey. Climbing the downs was a horrid sweat and cricket with Rayner had undoubted fascinations.

IX

In the Michaelmas term Martin became a house prefect. He was glad to obtain the position, not only because authority has always some attraction, but also because it brought with it some definite and desirable privileges. No longer need he observe hated bounds, no longer was he obliged to turn up at games if he felt disinclined. Martin now became a person to be consulted, an organiser with a voice in the affairs of a community. Though he was not, like many of Mr Foskett's disciples, fired with a passion for 'running things' indiscriminately and irresponsibly, he quite realised that bossing has its pleasures and possibilities. It was typical of the new situation that he was able to give up playing forward for the house and to obtain a trial as wing three-quarter. He had pace and managed to score in the first game: soon he improved wonderfully and settled down in his position. It struck him that there was a great deal to be said for playing football, even regular, incessant football, when you could choose your own position in the field and play without fear of being sworn at.

Naturally his duties brought him into closer contact with his housemaster and he became intimate with the methodical ways of Mr Berney and the efficient management and culture of his wife. In the evenings he received frequent invitations to the drawing-room, where he would talk about Florence and Botticelli, Oxford and Matthew Arnold. In his younger days he had worshipped Mrs Berney with a flaming devotion. Now he was more critical, but, while he understood the limitations of her culture and suspected her of attending University Extension Lectures in order to be told about the poets, he did not cease to like her. At any rate she did not bubble over with unconvincing enthusiasm, like Mrs Foskett, and she did care in a rather ignorant, muddle-headed, but thoroughly genuine way for the things of art. Martin had of course outdistanced many of her tastes and they would have great arguments about Tennyson and Browning and Swinburne. Mrs Berney, who was deeply religious, could never forgive Swinburne. It seemed strange to Martin that so persistent and so sincere an affection for poetry should be so limited. What did it matter, he asked himself, whether Swinburne liked God or whether he didn't? The point was to him that Swinburne had a great, angry soul and could let himself go. But Mrs Berney insisted that that had nothing to do with it: poetry was the making of a beautiful thing and Swinburne had tried to make ugly things beautiful. Of course Martin urged that poetry consisted in pouring a true thing out of yourself, and then he shocked her by saying he hated the word "beautiful." And so they would be carried away with long arguments on aesthetics, sometimes childish and always futile, for neither realised when they had reached an ultimate or what exactly they were trying to prove. Yet both enjoyed the conversation: Martin was intellectually isolated since Gregson had gone to Oxford, and Mrs Berney always welcomed the appearance of intellectual tastes in the house. Besides, she had sense enough to understand that Martin had made some good suggestions and was armed with a consistent principle of criticism.

The actual work of office was not so pleasing. Heseltine had gone on to Cambridge, where it was hoped that he would be taken in hand, and Rayner was head of the house. Rayner was bigger, stronger, and more reliable than ever and he could keep order successfully without a constant use of penalties: Martin admired him, in spite of his intellectual limitations, and aspired to a similar method of government which should be at once peaceful and efficient. It had occurred that, without becoming 'the boy among boys' or 'the workroom pet' or anything horrible of that sort, it might be possible to avoid irresponsible tyranny. Mainly owing to the influence of his social and political views he had bullied himself into the belief that the workroom would be much better if left alone. What the younger members of the house needed was to be trusted, not beaten. They only fell from virtue's path because so many people were engaged in the task of keeping them straight with whips and scorpions. He had been sickened by the stupid despotism of athletes which had often culminated in acts of cruelty and injustice and he wanted to bring to his work a finer attitude and endeavour. And so it was with the crude, untested idealism of a seventeen-year-old humanist that he approached the formidable task of subduing a fifteen-year-old mob.

The beginning was not auspicious. The trouble began, as trouble always began, with Master J. R. F. Gransby-Williams, a rotund youth with a genius for keeping within the letter of the law. His chief aim in life was to rag, and he worked hard to attain it; but there was a subsidiary ambition to be a nut. Consequently he was very scrupulous about his ties and socks and handkerchiefs; his hair he kept very long and parted with miraculous precision.

During Martin's first prep Granny (for so he was called) showed signs of a cold. He blew his nose perpetually and with skill: the noise was as the blare of trumpets.

"Would you mind moderating your efforts?" suggested Martin from his chair.

"Certainly not," said Granny with supreme urbanity.

It was cheek, and a titter ran round the workroom. Martin had been gifted by nature with an unfortunate capacity for blushing, and he blushed now.

"Don't give me any of that lip or you'll get into trouble," he said without conviction.

"That was not my intention," answered Granny, urbane as ever. "I'm very sorry."

Again there was a titter. Martin blushed and swore inwardly: he knew that he was not beginning well.

A few minutes later one Dickinson said: "Please can we have the window open: there's an awful frowst."

"I suppose so," answered Martin. "It does seem a bit thick in here."

Here was Granny's chance. He sneezed magnificently. "May I go and fetch my overcoat?" he asked mildly.

"Shut up," said Martin.

Granny turned up his collar, blew his nose with gentle persistence, and started to shiver. Others followed his example, and the room began to resound with the chattering of teeth.

Martin felt desperate. What exactly was the right way to deal with this kind of ragging? What would Rayner do? That was where the difficulty lay: the workroom never tried this game with Rayner, so that it was impossible to say what Rayner would have done. Swearing at them wouldn't do: he couldn't swipe the whole company. Besides, there were his ideals. Foolishly he determined to try and work in his idealism under the pretext of a joke: it was a cowardly compromise and it deserved to fail.

"I suppose," he said, "we might take a vote about the window."

There was a genial roar of acclamation.

"Those in favour of keeping it open," he went on} "shove up your hands."

There was much talking and throwing of paper balls. Hoarse whispers such as, 'Jones, you stinker, put your hand down or I'll kill you afterwards,' came to his ears. The counting was complicated by the necessity of disqualifying all those who held up both hands with a view to fraud. When the oppositions were being numbered there were murmurs of: 'Lowsy swine,' 'Frowsters,' and so on. The affair was soundly managed by the mob and a tie resulted, so that Martin had to give a casting vote. Imploring faces were turned towards him: the opening of the window was plainly a matter of life and death to that valetudinarian assembly.

"Keep it open," said Martin, determined to abide by his first order.

There were subdued cheers and moans, nasal snufflings and raucous coughs. Above it all the voice of Granny was heard.

"May I borrow some quinine?" he demanded.

Martin now saw the folly of his actions. The matter had gone too far, he had lost grip, and a tremendous rag was imminent.

"Shut up," he roared with all the authority he could command.

And just then Rayner came in to take his spell of prep. There was an immediate silence. Martin left the room in an agony of despair. What the deuce would Rayner think?

As he sat in his study pretending to read Tacitus the prospect of failure and misery became cruelly imminent. He couldn't make out why the workroom people would shut up for Rayner. Rayner wasn't noted for his severity and didn't make half as much use of the Iron Heel as some of his predecessors in Berney's or contemporaries in other houses. Martin was faced with the eternal paradox of government, that those who can govern do not need to punish, while those who punish do not thereby govern. He had always suspected the common talk about personalities and strong men: but now he began to wonder whether there wasn't something in it after all. Anyhow it seemed that by one action of hesitation he had lost his chance: his prestige was going, and if he once gained a reputation for 'raggability' there would be no more peace. The memory of Barmy Walters and the sordid tumult of his classroom came to him with a new piquancy.

"My God!" he said, "it sha'n't be that." He would have to go for Granny. But how did one go for such a creature? Granny always kept to the letter of the law and protested that he had meant nothing: was one simply to disregard his assertions, to call him a liar? How did Rayner manage? And there were the ideals. Would this method be consonant with the humanism of the new prefecture? It was all immensely difficult.

Later in the evening Rayner came to his study: he was very nice about it.

"I say, old man," he said kindly, "that wasn't a good beginning."

"It certainly wasn't," admitted Martin.

"Granny, I suppose?" asked the other.

"Yes, mainly."

"Well there's only one thing for Master Gransby-Williams. Damp the little beast."

"It's not so easy. He's always on the safe side of the fence. If he swears that he didn't mean what you think he meant, you can't very well do anything."

Rayner smiled.

"Can't you?" he said.

"Well, can you?"

"You jolly well must. Otherwise there'll be no end to it."

"All right, I'll try. But it seems rather rotten."

"Doesn't it strike you as rotten to be ragged by a tick like Granny?"

Martin had to admit that it was.

Three nights later Martin interviewed Granny after prayers. There had been a rag in the prep. A mouse had escaped from Granny's desk and had been the target of many marksmen. The air had been positively black with hurtling dictionaries. The mouse of course escaped and the missiles struck human flesh, compelling recrimination and redress.

"The mouse came out of your desk," said Martin.

"Please, I didn't put it there," whined Granny.

"I don't care. You must have known it was there when you got your books out."

"It may have been asleep," suggested Granny with sudden brilliance.

"Rot!"

"Well, I read in a book that mice sleep fourteen hours out of twenty-four. Anyhow I didn't notice it. It's got to put in its fourteen hours some time."

"The fact remains," said Martin, "that you're responsible for the contents of your desk."

"If another chap puts a mouse in your desk, I don't see----"

Martin was tired of the squalid haggling. But what was he to do? On his own theories, he ought to give Granny the benefit of the doubt and let him go. That was plainly the idealist's course. But there was Rayner's advice: should he yield to the claim of expediency and try it? Suddenly the impudent whine of Granny's voice became intolerable and he determined to be stern.

But the subsequent swiping was, as Granny told the workroom, sketchy and amateurish.

Presently Dickinson knocked at Martin's study.

"Please," he said, "I put that mouse in Gransby-Williams' desk."

Martin, who was just beginning to repent of his fall from idealism, turned upon him in despair. "Why the deuce didn't you own up at once?" he demanded.

"You never asked who did it."

"I did."

"Well, I couldn't hear. There was such a row going on."

That was a stinging retort for Martin: he was certainly getting the worst of it. And Granny was in a strong position, a painfully strong position. Fortunately, however, Martin acted wisely: he was faithful to the new policy, forswore his ideals, and swiped Dickinson. Moreover, his second effort was more thorough, and Dickinson sorrowfully maintained that this talk about sketchy and amateurish methods was a delusion: the blighter, he said, was an artist.

On the next day Granny, the martyr, organised a meeting of protest. Rayner, hearing of it, asked Martin for an explanation.

"That's capital," he said when he had heard the story. "You've been thoroughly unjust, and now you can go on damping Granny with a free conscience. In for a penny, in for a pound."

"I'm sick of the whole business," said Martin.

"Don't be an ass," answered Rayner, and that evening he spoke firmly to Granny. Somehow or other the combined effect of Martin's treatment of Dickinson and Rayner's conversation with Granny led to a change of policy in the workroom.

That night Martin again took prep. As he sat on his dais regarding the victims of his wrath, he was haunted for a moment by the ghost of his murdered ideals; but only for a moment.

And he sat in peace.

X

During the winter term before he was to go up to Oxford for a scholarship examination Martin felt more than ever isolated. Rayner was a good enough companion for 'brewing' or a casual talk, but he had, distinctly, his limitations. It was only now, when Gregson had gone to Oxford and the light, that Martin realised how much he missed him and how dark and murky was the cave of school life.

There is little satisfaction to be derived from discoveries which cannot be communicated: to find a perfect poem, or, if you are young, a perfect epigram, is good, but to let your friends know you have found it is doubly delightful. And now Martin had to keep his discoveries to himself: if he devised another argument against the existence of God or detected another logical absurdity in Christian dogma there was no one to whom he could declare his joy: if he stumbled in his reading on a thing which pleased him--well, the rest of the house were swine for such a pearl.

Because Martin was treading the path of knowledge alone he was driven by sheer force of necessity into intellectual priggishness and crudity. When he was not engaged in prefectorial work, he tended to become a recluse and to read in his study for long periods at a stretch: and because he had no opposition and no conversation, save the rather mild stimulus of discussing aesthetics with Mrs Berney, he became, as time went on, more violent in his opinions. He often longed for the bitter tongue and incisive reasoning of Gregson, not least when he had completed a course of Shaw's dramas. There was no escape from attendance at chapel and prayers and the wrath always engendered in the sceptic by compulsory religion should have an outlet. Martin, having no one to talk to, was forced to amuse himself with blasphemous imaginings: but even that began to pall.

It was at this point that he became aware of Finney. Until he had become a prefect and learned by experience that the ruler's task is not always the easiest and most enjoyable, he had always adopted the natural attitude to masters. A 'crusher' was just a person whom, if possible, one ragged. If he could hold his own, well and good: if not, he merited contempt, not mercy, and the more he was ragged the better it would be for the world at large. But when Martin discovered from his own experience that to be ragged is torture, he began to regard the doings and sufferings of the masters in a different light. It suddenly struck him, with all the vivid effect of a surprise, that these people were human beings of like passions with himself.

Following quickly on that discovery came the recognition of the fact that Finney was being ragged. Reginald Finney, B.A., had not left Oxford for more than two years, but he had bravely married, and now he lived in a tiny cottage some distance from the school. Every day he bicycled in to take the Upper Fourth, Classical, and to devote occasional hours to the Upper Sixth. In time, of course, he would become a Sixth form master, for he had excellent degrees--two firsts and a 'mention' in the Ireland scholarship. He had lingered at Oxford with a view to a fellowship, but nothing turned up: at last he had been compelled by economic pressure to take the position offered him at Elfrey.

Nothing could have been more disastrous. For twenty years the Upper Fourth had passed a somnolent existence under the direction of an amiable and unassuming cleric. Much to the general disgust the dear old man had, after a severe attack of pneumonia, resigned. In twenty years, as was only natural, the Upper Fourth had become an institution: terms and times continued to change, but the Upper Fourth did nothing of the kind. Fourth-formers came and went in scores, but their successors always managed to keep up the traditions of their inheritance with spirit and success. There would be four or five clever and energetic children, people rising rapidly to the Fifth, Sixth, and university scholarships; then there would be eight or ten inky and unambitious persons who would never get beyond the Fifth. And lastly there would be four or five monsters of seventeen or eighteen who were engaged in getting the greatest possible enjoyment out of their last year at school. Good athletes as a rule, they were popular in their house and merely stayed on till the fatal day of superannuation in order to win cups and caps and enjoy a serene life before disappearing into the dingy office of an uncle or the rough and tumble of a planter's existence. In the days of the amiable cleric the Upper Fourth had been to them Nirvana.

To such a form came Finney, clever, inexperienced, nervous: not even his physique was imposing. He liked and encouraged the clever little boys and made fruitless efforts to bully the ink-stained loafers; he also determined to assault the fortress of the Olympians and to make the great ones work; but he broke his soul upon a rock. When he adjured them to do a little work they smiled in toleration. When he suggested a change in the quantity or quality of their preparation he was politely informed that Mr Foss never expected so much. He then lost his temper, remarked savagely that he wouldn't be bound by the idiosyncrasies of Mr Foss, and dealt out impositions. A schoolmaster cannot afford to lose his temper unless he has complete self-confidence and the will never to retract. Finney had not been gifted with a forceful personality, and the weak man in a temper is a most pitiable sight. The impositions meant the declaration of war and in that war Finney was beaten all along the line.

To begin with, however, he relied on his hours with the Upper Sixth for spiritual comfort, but his own experiences at school should have warned him that even Upper Sixths are human. It was his duty to read classical authors with them at a great pace and without attention to detail in order to give the competitors for university scholarships a wider knowledge of the ancient literature. When he came to read Tacitus with them he soon discovered that they were quite capable of amusing themselves. Having learned that journalese translations annoyed him, they racked their brains and searched the halfpenny press for new phrases. Finney shuddered and protested: next he whined and finally lost his temper. This display was gratifying to the Upper Sixth, who had just spent two tedious hours listening to Foskett on Greek dialects. Besides, there is always satisfaction in luring fish to one's bait.

Martin loathed and dreaded these hours. Not only did his recent experiences as a prefect compel him to sympathise with the impotent wielder of authority, but he had been attracted by Finney from the first. Finney worked in earnest and without pose or pretension, a fact which set him, in Martin's estimation, on a plane far above Foskett. He worked for Finney as he never worked for Foskett, and consulted him about his reading: naturally Finney liked Martin and did all he could to help him. On several Sundays Martin went to lunch at the cottage and met Mrs Finney, a pleasant little woman whose beauty was somewhat marred by an expression of perpetual surprise. She was, like her husband, a slight and unimposing figure, and she shrank from the society of the college ladies with their continual "shop" conversation, partly from shyness and partly from boredom. When she was not looking after her baby she used to play the violin and read _The Bookman_ and _The Studio_. For several hours every week she struggled with accounts and wondered how things would work out: she managed well, and somehow, miraculously, but persistently, they did work out.

She also liked Martin and he would come often to them. In a world that was hard and unsympathetic he was graciously different; he was essentially someone in whom interest could and should be taken, and this was what the Finneys needed. They saw and, after a time, understood his limitations, realising how his intellectual solitude was narrowing his outlook and how his heretical views about politics and life in general were left crude and immature because he dared not pronounce them openly and demand criticism. Criticism he lacked, and it was criticism they gave him, not the best perhaps, for the Finneys erred occasionally on the side of excessive culture and preciosity, but such criticism as would turn violence into strength and reveal possibilities of reason and feeling where he had seen before nothing but ignorance and sentimentality.

As Martin was destined for Oxford Finney thought it wise to introduce him to the writing of Belloc. "You'll get heaps out of him," he said. "Of course he goes to extremes, but his criticism of Socialism is the only sane one and worth a million of Mallock and Cox and that gang. And his arguments about religion aren't all nonsense. I don't agree with him" (Finney attended school chapel regularly and was a party Liberal), "but it's a point of view. And he can write."

Martin had never considered this outlook on the world before, and, though at times he was angry, he began to read Belloc eagerly, especially the verses. He had often heard his uncle talking about Belloc, but so far he had never troubled to investigate the matter further: now he was glad.

After lunch on Sunday afternoons he would walk with Finney on the downs, and sometimes they would talk about the Public Schools. At first Finney was reticent on their subject, but later he spoke with growing freedom and intimacy.

"It's odd how we get chucked into it," Finney used to say. "Everyone says teaching is the most important thing in the world, and they chatter away about training and so on: and yet when it comes to the point they allow their precious boys to be taught by men who are quite untrained for this profession. No master at a Public School has had any technical training or been taught how to see and shape things. He just clears out of the varsity with some debts and a little despair and then starts casually to do what is perhaps the most difficult and important thing in the world. And they don't get the pick of the varsities either: the standard keeps going down. The best men won't do it if they can keep out."

Finney could not, in the presence of a pupil, finish his indictment as he wished. Had it been possible he would have added: "The salaries are contemptible and are kept low by the bribe of a house: which in reality means that we have to pinch and scrape now because, if we are lucky, we may be able to make a thousand a year at forty if we don't overfeed our boys."

"And yet," suggested Martin, "don't you think it's rather refreshing to find something left to common-sense. Everything gets into the hands of faddists now. I once met an old lady who spent her life in teaching children how to play. Imagine the cheek of it! You put me on to Belloc and I think he's right about that sort of thing. We don't want too much of the bureaucratic specialist."

"I quite agree," said Finney. "That's the tragedy. Just where spontaneity really does matter, as in children's games, they go blundering in and knock imagination out of their victims, or give them someone else's, which is about the same thing. But just where training might be of some use, they do nothing. The superstition that a man can teach because he has taken a first in Classics at the varsity is childish. I don't claim to know very much now, but when I started my work I was hideously ignorant about the working of boys' minds: I never knew when I was being obvious or when I got beyond them. Of course one picks things up by experience, but it might be done so much better...."

"And then the narrowness," he rambled on, for he found a good audience in Martin. "You'll get a first in Mods, if you take the trouble, and by the time you're twenty or twenty-one you'll know all about Athenian law-courts and what the Greek is for a demurrer or a counter-claim, and you'll know all the hard words in Homer and be able to translate Cicero's jokes. You'll cram up a lot of variant readings for your special play and collect a nice set of texts with all the difficult passages marked. And when it's all over you'll thank God and imagine that you've done with it, only to find out that Greats is rather worse and means spotting the words for Egyptian bogwort in Herodotus and getting up the most meaningless bits of gibberish in Thucydides. It's the same all along. A schoolmaster wants to make some money, a don wants to make a name, so out comes a new reading, a new conjecture, a new edition and a thousand other straws of pedantry to be piled on the back of a poor old camel that collapsed years ago."

"It sounds pretty rotten," said Martin. "But I suppose at Oxford one can read and talk freely and follow up the things one likes?"

"Yes, you must do that. Don't get worried about Mods. Are you thinking of the Civil Service?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Well Mods won't matter much. So take up anything you really care for. That's the only thing in life worth doing, and it may be about the only time in your life when you're able to do it."

Of course Finney never spoke to Martin about school discipline, but it was not hard for Martin to see that he was very much depressed. His sufferings with the Fourth he might have expected: but that the Upper Sixth should rag childishly was a cruel blow. He was so keenly anxious to take an interest in his work and to make those hours of rapid translation valuable: but everything seemed to go against him.

He went through some Tacitus and Juvenal and Pindar at a great pace amid considerable amusement. For Tacitus gave facilities for journalese, Juvenal for obscenity, and Pindar for colossal bathos. In despair Finney turned to the sixth book of the AEneid, "Just to help your hexameters." They surely wouldn't rag that.

Yet trouble did break out. One Cartwright, a large, genial, athletic person who expected to get an exhibition at Cambridge for his games, was always to the fore when there seemed any opportunity of baiting Finney. To him fell the Daedalus passage at the beginning of the book: his rendering was picturesque and contained such gems as 'Intrepid aeronaut' and 'Bird-man.'

"That's not English and it isn't in the Latin," said Finney sharply.

"I don't know, sir," said Cartwright weightily. "'Praepetibus pennis ausus'--note of daring. Intrepid. Intrepid aeronaut. Why not, sir? And then 'levis super astitit'--note of hovering over. Bird-man. Why not, sir?"

Finney paused in silence. The Upper Sixth were tittering like infants of twelve, with the exception of Martin, who stared self-consciously at his desk, hating every moment and dreading what was to come. Fortunately Finney controlled his temper and said quickly:

"Don't be childish, Cartwright. Translate, Warren."

Warren was an intelligent youth and gifted with endless audacity. A week or two later they turned back to the first book (Finney couldn't tolerate their assault on the second half of Book VI.), and Warren had in his section the line:

"Succinctam pharetra et maculoso tegmine lyncis."

This he rendered: "With a check golf-skirt and a bag of clubs."

There was a wild roar of laughter and Finney went very red. Again he controlled himself and merely said: "Quite good. But you might keep your jokes till the end of the hour."

At last an event occurred which he could not overlook. Cartwright was translating Tacitus and he had a book open under his desk. The words flowed smoothly, with unwonted smoothness, for Cartwright was slow of wit. At the end of the chapter Finney remarked: "Are you aware, Cartwright, that you have reproduced the excellent translation by Messrs Church and Brobribb word for word?"

"Have I, sir?" answered Cartwright with astonishment.

"You have. And what is your explanation?"

Cartwright reflected.

"Only that great minds think alike," he said at last.

"I shall report you to the headmaster," shouted Finney above the roar of laughter.

Hitherto he had shrunk from informing Foskett of the way things went. He had been afraid that any such move might be taken as a proof of his own incompetence. Foskett might reasonably hold that it was a master's business to look after himself and that a man who couldn't deal with an Upper Sixth couldn't deal with anyone. And he had heard in the common-room that Foskett was remarkably fond of his prefects and would even back them against the masters, because he regarded them as more valuable allies in strengthening his own position with the rank and file of the school. After all, the masters were employees and far too deeply concerned with the problem of earning a living to do any harm to Foskett: they would be unwilling to resign, because, even if they found posts, it would mean loss of seniority at the new school. Distinctly he had the whip hand over them; but the prefects were harder to control and demanded more respect. So the masters had grown chary of reporting matters to the Head, and Finney had been warned that such a policy might lead to snubs. But on this occasion there was plainly nothing else to do.

Foskett spoke gravely to Cartwright for ten minutes on the subject of example, and matters went on as before. Cartwright was captain of football at the time.

So Finney continued to suffer, and because Finney suffered Martin inevitably suffered too. The ragging got on his nerves and he began to dread those long hours with their mirth and tragedy. At last he could bear it no longer, and he determined to speak to Cartwright and his allies and to point out how miserable they were making Finney: the man was a human being after all, he would say, and as an enemy he was not worth their efforts.

At first it seemed an easy thing to do, but when the time for action came he shrank from the task. It would be so strange, so opposed to all traditions. And Martin was distinctly one of the class of people who hate asking questions or worrying tradesmen or exacting their rights: he would rather have put up with a badly cut suit than protest to his tailor. He was not afraid of Cartwright, but he was undeniably afraid of asking Cartwright to be kind to Finney: it was just the kind of task which Martin most dreaded. He could imagine Cartwright's tolerant smile, the slight raising of the brows, the polite: 'Oh, certainly!' It would be painful, it would be intolerable!

But it would have to be done. One final jest, one final look of despair on Finney's face convinced him. So he nerved himself bravely for the crusade. Cartwright was, as he had foreseen, quite nice about it: he agreed that it was not good form to behave as the Fourth did, and Warren and the others assented. Martin had struck the right note when he used the phrase 'good form,' for no member of a Public School, young or old, can stand the imputation that he is not a gentleman. Martin was astonished at the ease and success of his task and was angry with himself for not having acted before. Henceforward Finney taught in peace and even made Cartwright begin to display a keen interest in Pindar. It was a thorough change and altered the whole aspect of Finney's work: he could forget the unspeakable Fourth-formers if he could really care about his work for the Sixth. His relief was obvious, and Martin, eagerly watching for every expression of it, felt justly grateful.

Finney could not guess the real cause of the new behaviour. For a moment he thought that perhaps his manner was becoming more imperious and that he had made definite progress in his efforts to acquire authority. But, on reflection, he had to abandon this flattering hypothesis, and he ultimately attributed the change to the growth of a collective conscience and the recognition that scholarship exams were dangerously near and that it might be as well to work seriously. That he could have made such a mistake showed that he still had much to learn about his pupils. But, from the pragmatic standpoint, his ignorance was for his own good: had he known that he was merely the recipient of charity, 'the something bitter' might have risen and destroyed the new-born happiness.

XI

In December Martin, who was now seventeen and a half years old, went up to Oxford to compete for a scholarship in Classics. Foskett had encouraged him to wait another year, but John Berrisford held that boys should be free from the pettiness of school life before they were nineteen and advised Martin to go up early: this course would give him another twelve months for Civil Service preparation if necessary. Martin himself had no desire for another year at Elfrey, for, without positively disliking the place, he wanted freedom. His prefecture had brought him more trouble than release, and the Finneys, while they had undoubtedly refined his tastes and broadened his views, had also inevitably rendered him more discontented with the limitations of a society which drove him to silence or to crudity.

Martin was not a remarkable classic and never learned to sympathise with the somewhat pedantic traditions of a classical training, nor had he the imitative faculty necessary for the composition of good prose and verse in Greek or Latin; his work was always sound and often interesting; but he never acquired the infallible dexterity of touch which is the fruit of perfect sympathy with classical modes of thought and expression. His translation into English showed more style than accuracy, and he preferred rather to play loosely with ideas and to follow the literary and social questions arising from a study of the ancient literatures than to apply himself vigorously to pure scholarship. There never had been any doubt about his being an Oxford man. His tastes and abilities, his family connections and his project of entering the Civil Service all pointed in one direction. Moreover, he had somehow been obsessed with a notion that all Cambridge colleges, with the exception of King's and Trinity, were like public schools continued. Had not Heseltine gone to Cambridge? But Oxford would be very different; for how could Oxford, the home of Shelley and Swinburne and Morris, be anything but beautiful and brilliant? Martin was thrilled by the exquisite promise of life: Oxford would be heavenly, and heaven--well, heaven would be all atheism and epigrams. The paradox pleased him and he wondered whether it was the sort of remark he would make to his college debating society next October. But first of all, he sadly remembered, there was this affair of scholarships.

He entered for a small group and gave King's pride of place. It had been his father's college and was in many ways suitable. Its scholarships were neither too hard nor too easy to win. It was a small college in the first rank and commanded universal respect. It prided itself on being successful, not brazenly, like Balliol, but with discretion, unassumingly.

In spite of the opinions of poets, literary gentlemen and writers of guide-books, it is possible to maintain that Oxford is not a nice place in which to live, much less to work. In December it is, on the whole, at its worst, and it was on the second Monday of that month that Martin arrived in the city. Term had ended on the previous Saturday, and only a few undergraduates were to be seen wandering about the deserted streets with a bored and lost expression. Oxford has a double personality: in term it serves efficiently as a crowded pleasure resort; in the vacation it is one of those cities, like Bruges la morte, whose justification is in the past and the memorials of the past. A compromise is fatal and undergraduates must exist in hundreds or not at all. A soft drizzle fell from a yellow, smudgy sky and the streets were covered with a particularly loathsome mud. As he drove down from the station to King's (he was to have rooms in college), Martin was horrified: he felt that he had never seen a more lamentable place. To be rattled in a hansom down George Street and then brought face to face with the front quad of Balliol is not an inspiring method of approach to beauty. But King's was more presentable.

An aged man, who looked dyspeptic and morose, staggered out of the lodge and asked Martin's name: then he summoned a brisk underling, immaculately dressed in a bowler hat and dark blue suit. The underling picked up his bag and guided him up three flights of rickety stairs into a dingy apartment, mainly remarkable for the smallness of its windows. Outside the door Martin had seen the word 'Snutch.'

"Mr Snutch's," said the underling. "These will be yours." Then, to Martin's great surprise and at the expense of his own perfect trousers, he knelt humbly down and lit the fire. It seemed incredible that one so magnificent should stoop to light a fire. Then he said: "Your scout will be in at six, sir," and vanished.

Martin turned to survey the room. On the walls were some extraordinary banners or ribbons, on two of which were the words:

Ahwamkee University.

There were some photographs, plainly American, and a large engraving called 'Love's Pathway.' On the wide expanse of shelves there stood six lonely books--five large volumes on Law and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. At the beginning of each was written: 'E libris Theo. K. Snutch.' Martin was tempted to amend the inscription to 'E libris sex Theo. K. Snutch.' On the mantelpiece were some athletic trophies. Mr Snutch's residence at Oxford, at three hundred a year, was not altogether unjustified: he could terrifically throw the hammer.

Next, Martin found a penny paper called _The University_ and eagerly glanced through it to discover the quality of Oxford journalism. There were jokes about Socialists with red ties and there was an open letter to the varsity heavy-weight boxer. It began, 'Dear Chuckles,' and ended with best wishes for 'the dear little girl who will some day take the ring with you.' The reader was not even spared the allusion to the possible appearance of 'Chucklets.'

"My god!" said Martin. He began to wonder whether he hadn't made a mistake in refusing to go to Cambridge.

The room was depressing, so he put on his overcoat and walked out into the rain: he went down St Olde's to the river. In those days horse-drawn trams still rattled slowly through the streets, making a feeble pretence of antiquity. It angered Martin that in this town, with its new yellow banks and new college buildings, such hypocrisy should go on and that people should confuse the relics of medieval squalor with the works of medieval beauty. He came from a clean town of the hills, and the clinging dirt and the sordid grime and meanness of St Ebbs seemed haunting and insistent. Before Tom Tower and the spacious splendour of Christ Church there was a common slum; he had never pictured Oxford a place of slums. The Thames, too, had been in flood for two or three weeks, and in the playing-fields across the river goal-posts stood up amid acres of water, gauntly desolate. As he passed out along the Abingdon Road he found meadows where the floods had receded and left the grass rotten and stinking. The straggling squalor of Oxford's edge only served to increase his despair: he had expected to find a city with dreaming spires, and so far he had found merely a slum, with yellow gasworks. Only now and then did he catch a glimpse which charmed him. As he turned back and climbed the hill to Carfax he began to loathe the place. But it must be remembered that he had had an inadequate lunch and was under the shadow of an exam.

On returning to Snutch's rooms he found that the fire had almost gone out. With the aid of _The University_ he managed to create a fitful gleam, but it gave no heat. Someone was moving about in the rooms opposite, another scholarship candidate presumably, a rival--damn him! Martin began to think about tea: he did not know what to do and his scout was not coming till six. Ultimately he went out to the Cadena Cafe: it was full of young women from North Oxford who sat in mackintoshes, feeding with desperate gaiety.

After he came back to Snutch's rooms and read a shilling novel which he had found in the bedder. Soon after six the scout appeared and told Martin that he could dine in the hall at seven: he was a large, grimy man and sniffed prodigiously. Dinner in hall was very trying. Half-a-dozen dons sat at the high table trying to pretend by forced conversation that they were not thoroughly sick of one another: about thirty schoolboys sat shyly on the long benches, apprehensive, miserable. Here and there would be two from the same school, chatting with animation and appearing to be very much in the know about Life and the varsity: elsewhere strangers were huddled together, some silent, others making fitful conversation. Financial distinctions were not forgotten, and the candidates from Public Schools had gravitated to one table, those from Grammar Schools to another. Martin found himself by the side of a red-faced, ingenuous boy, who asked for the water and then said:

"The Harlequins are better than ever this year."

Martin assented, and added: "What's your school?"

"Rugby. What's yours?"

"I'm from Elfrey. Have you anyone else in here?"

"No. We had four up for Balliol this year."

"That's a lot. Are the results out?"

"Yes, this afternoon. We got a schol. and an exhibition."

"That was jolly good."

The dialogue became more and more technical and immensely dull.

The Rugbeian was plainly a bore and after dinner Martin fled from the college: he found a new cinema in Broad Street and went in. Presently some undergraduates who were stopping up for a few days at the end of term came cheerily in and shouted vaguely.

An obsequious manager pleaded with them and they wandered down the gangway looking for company: it did not seem very hard to find. Martin watched their progress with interest and began to wonder whether the girl next him wanted to talk. She had dropped her wrist-bag once and he had picked it up: during the course of the proceedings his eye had been caught by the glitter of a light grey stocking. She wasn't, he had to admit, beautiful. But she was alone, and so was he. Did she, on the other hand, want him to talk? The dropping of the bag might have been an accident. Besides, what did one say? Martin cursed his inexperience and racked his brains for a conversational lead. He could hardly make some remark about the films: that would be obvious and heavy. Something light was wanted: but what? Why on earth couldn't she drop the bag again? He would take the hint this time. His mind became a blank and he felt acutely miserable. At the end of the film he rose and walked away in despair. He stopped at the back of the hall and noticed one of the varsity men glance round and then move quickly into his place before the lights were again turned out. Martin returned to college, read some more of Snutch's novel, and went to bed.

Till Friday night Martin was kept hard at work doing papers in the college hall. On Tuesday morning he had to write an essay on the relations of the artist and the State, an obvious subject, perhaps, but pleasing. It was the only paper which he enjoyed. Afterwards he was kept hard at work with Unseens and Compositions. Never in his life had he felt more irritable or more intellectually impotent. The yellow blanket of mist hung over Oxford continually: the hall smelled abominably of stale gravy and recent meals, and, worst of all, the pens supplied to such as did not bring their own were quills; consequently the stuffy room was never free from a maddening scratch and squeak. A youth with a sloping brow and waving, faultless hair who sat next Martin made great play with his quill: he was a 'dog' whose doggishness took the form of a graceful abandon in his dress; he wore soft collars and long woolly waistcoats and dilapidated pumps. He held his quill between his first and second fingers, and he wrote splashily with brave flourishes and a spasmodic squeak; also he had a habit of marching out majestically half-an-hour before the time for a paper was finished. Martin wondered whether this implied that he was immensely bad or immensely good: he feared the latter. Altogether he was a fascinating and disconcerting neighbour, and one morning Martin, struggling with verses that would not 'come,' wanted to kill him.

Another cause of depression was the presence of boys

from Grammar Schools. Martin was no snob, but he could not keep himself unspotted from Public School tradition, and he felt that these smug-looking youths were rivals in a way that the dull Rugbeian never could be. He was certain that they were far better scholars than he was, that they had worked like slaves and could translate anything ever written in Greek or Latin: he might have escaped much mental suffering had he known that, even if they had been so brilliant (and in reality they were amazingly dull), the dons are, with a few exceptions, well rooted in class tradition and are not going to sacrifice the Public Schools on the altar of modern honesty. But Martin did not know these things, and when he saw the Grammar School candidates parading the town with little crested caps on the backs of their heads and greasy curls sticking bravely up in front, the natural dislike of the rival was fused with the Public School man's loathing of inferior form. There was one unforgettable person who came every day to King's wearing a black overcoat and black kid gloves: his cap had a little silver button gleaming over the inevitable curl. He looked both wise and good.

On the Thursday evening Martin glanced through the rough copy of his Latin verse. There he found--

"via strata patebat Hostibus; ardentes surgunt ducemque sequuntur."

True that the lines did not sound beautiful: in a copy of twenty-two lines you must have one or two dull moments. But "via strata" and "ducem"--two false quantities in a line and a half. How could he have done it? He flung the rough copy into the fire and swore violently. Silver Button wouldn't make false quantities: Silver Button would have learned about 'dux' and 'duco' when he was twelve--so had Martin. But then Silver Button wouldn't, couldn't, forget. Martin was convinced now that, as far as a scholarship was concerned, he might as well never have entered.

He wandered morosely into the streets: it started to rain and he took refuge in the cinema. For half-an-hour he watched the films and, more particularly, an amorous couple in front. A girl came and sat on his right: she was distinctly attractive and her chin, poised daintily in the air, conveyed an exquisite invitation: the rest of her face was hidden by hat. He began to feel, as before, self-conscious and miserable. This time he would speak, must speak ... but how? The couple in front had reached their limit in proximity. Suddenly her foot touched his and with a surreptitious glance he saw below the brim of that entrancing hat. She was perfect. She had taken off her glove and her hand lay on her lap: before Martin knew what he was doing, he had taken it and pressed it. The girl turned abruptly round, snatched her hand away, and said coldly:

"Please leave me alone."

Martin obeyed, blushing furiously. "I'm very sorry," he muttered, but she took no notice. He sat gazing in front of him, humiliated and tortured. What a fool he had been! Why hadn't he said something and made an opening?

The film clicked monotonously on. One fact alone flamed across his mind: he must get out before the film was over. He couldn't endure the raising of the lights. But either he would have to crush past the girl on his right or else go out to the left, a journey which would involve forcing his way through a long row of stout people. Both alternatives were unpleasant.

The film was ending. The music had ceased to ripple and begun to sob, always a proof of impending embraces. The hero and heroine were rolling great lurid eyes at one another. The lights went up. Martin pushed his way out to the left past the stout and sulky: then he hurried back through the rain to Snutch's gloomy chambers. There was nothing to do but to contemplate his own blunders classic and modern. He told himself that he had made a rotten shot and received a nasty snub. If he had only been aiming at something worth having, he wouldn't have minded. But what, after all, was the use of a girl to him? And why on earth had he wanted to grab her sticky hand--for it had been sticky. He knew now that he hadn't really wanted to do it, for its own sake: he had wanted to do it because other people did it. Now it all seemed so hugely silly. "I suppose love's all right," he thought to himself. "But this hand and kiss business is piffle."

On Friday evening Martin returned to Elfrey in a state of advanced pessimism. Early in the next week he learned that he had been elected to a classical scholarship at King's College. He gazed blankly at the telegram and the words 'via strata' and 'ducem' flashed before his mind.

It was quite incredible, but it was true.

XII

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 proteges, 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.

XIII

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.