BOOK TWO

UNIVERSITY

I

"These 'ere deemagogues ... it's them as battens on the worker."

Martin woke with a start. He looked round his slovenly 'bedder' vaguely. His scout, Mr Algernon Galer, was slowly pouring out cold water into a bath and continuing last night's conversation. It was typical of Galer that he never dropped a conversation until he considered it completed, until, that is to say, by his fiendish ability to bore he had reduced the other side to silence. At present Martin had no other acquaintance in King's, for he had only come up on the previous evening. On reaching his rooms he found that the cupboard had been filled with a quantity of jam and pickles and other kinds of food, all carefully opened, so that they could not be returned if disliked by the purchaser. Galer pointed them out with pride as though they testified his devotion to Martin's welfare. There was nothing Galer did not know about the ways of looking after a fresher.

This Galer was a small, bunched-up, greasy man with a ragged black moustache, scarlet cheeks, and great watery eyes underhung by bags of loose skin. During the mornings he shuffled about the stair in a pink shirt, green fancy waistcoat, grey flannel trousers, and lurid yellow boots; later on he retired with a large black bag to the Iffley Road, where he was supposed to maintain a timid wife and innumerable children. It was a matter of conjecture among the residents on Galer's stair whether he wrapped up the coal in newspaper or whether the bag contained coal and food exquisitely mingled. By the afternoon the bag had always achieved a certain bulk and wore a swollen look. But it was as a politician that Galer excelled. No truer Tory than Galer ever voted for Valentia or took the Empire to heart. He did not exactly know where the map was red or how it became red; not that that would have mattered, for Galer was not the man to be worried about little points of honesty. But he knew that much of the map was red, and he was genuinely glad about it: it seemed to him a logical inference and a capital idea that the map should be all red.

Of the catch-word he was a master. Few conversations with Galer were allowed to end without some allusion to 'Hands Across the Sea' and the Thickness of Blood (compared with water) and the 'Necessity for a Cash nexus just to symbolise the brother'ood.'

But it was the new type of 'Deemagogue' that really vexed Galer. During the previous evening Galer, after explaining to Martin the ways, the abominably expensive ways of the Oxford world, had gone on to elaborate his favourite theme. And now, before eight o'clock in the morning, he was at it again.

"Clors against Clors," he grunted. "Wot I says is Capital and Labour 'as identical interests. Identical. These 'ere strikes plays the jimmy with both."

Martin yawned, turned over, and pretended to sleep.

"Quarter to eight, sir," continued Galer. "It was orl right when these Unions knew their proper business and kept their contrax. Wot I says is a bargain is a bargain." And with this discovery he went wheezing from the room.

Martin got up at nine, inspected the tin bath which had an inch of icy water on its blackened, paintless bottom, and concluded that it was not inviting. However, moved by his fear of Galer and a desire not to win his scout's contempt at the outset, he splashed feebly with the water. He deferred shaving and went to look at his breakfast. In the fireplace he found two poached eggs beneath a tin cover. They had been standing for over an hour and had become solid, resembling jelly with a tough crust on the edge of it. The fire had been a failure, the kettle sat in obstinate silence, and Martin ultimately made tea with water that had not boiled. The result was a greenish beverage with shoals of tea-leaves floating on the surface. There were four solid boards of toast, once endued, presumably, with the crisp seductions of youth, and an immense roll whose spongy giblets would have beaten the strongest digestion. No one ever ate these monstrous things and what Galer did with them was another matter of conjecture. Some maintained that he fed his family on them neat: others that there was a permanent bread-and-butter pudding on the Galer menu.

Martin had come up to Oxford firmly convinced that he was about to sink into Luxury's softest lap. He found that he had to live in two dingy rooms three storeys from the ground. The "bedder" had a tiny slot of a window opening on to the kitchens of a neighbouring college: the "sitter" was slightly larger but just as dark. All the furniture, for which a heavy rent was charged, had fallen into a state of gloomy squalor suggestive rather of Camberwell than of Mayfair. The carpet, whose flagrant ugliness of colour and design was obscured by the dirt of ages, had actually given way in places and everywhere there was dust. Galer, who, with the aid of a harassed boy, had charge of nine sets of rooms, had neither the time nor the inclination to do any cleaning. He flicked cupboards with a duster in a dilettante way from time to time but further than that he never went.

Martin also discovered that the college did not contain hot baths and that the only method of procuring such a luxury was to heat a large can of water at his 'sitter' fire. All meals, except dinner, were brought through the open air across two quads and arrived in a tepid state; nor was this improved by the fact that Martin lived at the top of his stairs and had to wait till those below had been supplied. There was no service lift and no means of emptying slops on the stairs, and everything had to be carried up and down the tortuous steps, even the bath-water. But Galer would have been the last person to encourage the introduction of lifts; he was at least thorough in his Toryism. Dining in hall meant swallowing four abominably served courses in twenty minutes.

"So this," thought Martin, "is the princely life," and he wondered whether he would suffer the same fate as Uncle Paul, who

"Was driven by excessive gloom, To drink and debt, and, last of all, To smoking opium in his room."

All Saturday he was pestered by invaders who wanted him to row or be a soldier or join the National Service League, or the Men's Political Union, or the Fabian Society, or the Tariff Reform League. In despair he joined everything, except in cases where the man talked about immediate subscriptions: then he boldly refused. But few secretaries had sufficient enthusiasm to collect money. So Martin became a member of numerous societies of the majority of which he heard nothing more. Sometimes he received a printed notice of various meetings which he did not attend. He used to wonder vaguely who paid for all the printing ... certainly he did not.

And so for the first two or three days of his residence he felt pestered and irritable. There were so many things to find out, such as when and where to be gowned, who were freshers and who were unapproachable seniors, what attitude to adopt to one's scout and one's tutor. It was all very perplexing, and although Martin did not suffer the acute agony of apprehension that had made terrible his first few days at Elfrey, he remained, in spite of all the hints given him by his cousin Robert, ashamed of his ignorance and fearful of mistakes.

Soon he was sent for by his future tutor, Mr Reginald Petworth. Martin found him surrounded by undergraduates who called him Reggie and conversed with unconvincing heartiness. He knew that he hadn't ever to say "sir" to a don, but he was not prepared for Christian names. However, that would only begin after a considerable acquaintance. The crowd began to melt away and he was soon the only man left.

"Well," said Petworth cheerily. "Let me see, you're----"

"Leigh."

"Oh yes, of course. You wrote some very jolly hexameters for us in the scholarship exam."

Martin was deeply astonished. Two howlers! "Why, I thought that paper would have done for me," he said.

"Oh, you howled once or twice. But you were jolly, very jolly."

Martin was silent and Petworth produced cigarettes.

"Um, yes. Have a good vac?"

"Splendid, thanks. I was in Devonshire most of the time. Dartmoor way."

"Dartmoor is good, isn't it? I want to go down and dig about in the hut circles. I am sure they haven't done enough. Passingham of Exeter found some awfully jolly bones, besides some arrows and things. Do you like digging?"

Martin confessed that he had never tried: he would have liked to add that he found the hut circles disappointing. But he didn't dare to say so. This conversation was rather trying and he was relieved when Petworth came to business and mapped out his lectures and hours for showing up compositions.

"I'm usually in after ten," concluded the tutor. "Come up and see me and bring any questions. And don't do less than an hour a day."

"That won't kill me," said Martin.

"It's possible not to reach that standard, I find. Oxford is full of things to do. Don't do all of them."

Martin went away with a muddled impression of countless book-shelves, two excellent arm-chairs, some nice prints, a little, bright-eyed urbane man and a general atmosphere of invincible jolliness. He was not at all sure that he liked it.

For the first week or two Martin was the unwilling but abject victim of Galerism. Galer had a way with youths and could handle even the most pronounced, aggressive, 'Damn you, I'm a man of the world' type of fresher. His influence, he knew, would never utterly die, but time would weaken it: and so in the first few days he did his best to train the new-comers on his stair in the best traditions of the college and university. Also he endeavoured to keep them from sowing political wild oats: there was nothing Galer loathed more bitterly than carrying up Radical or Socialist newspapers. Martin soon began to hate the man fervently. He wanted to find out how one could change one's rooms, for he would live in a pigsty to avoid Galer.

"Your cheese, sir," the wheezy voice would say. "I see as 'ow these deemagogues 'ave brought a lot of transport workers out. Wicked I call it. Wot the Gov'ment ought to do is to be firm. 'Ave out the troops and 'and out a bit of sleeping-draught. That's my notion of ruling. One of those there riff-raff killed a loyal worker."

"In other words, a scab," said Martin boldly.

"It's a 'orrid name to give a chap," said Galer. "I don't see no crime in bein' loyal. I 'ope you don't 'old with these paid agitators!"

"I certainly hold with Trade Unionism."

"The Trade Unions aren't wot they were. Oh no! Swelled 'ead too big for their boots and all that."

Martin made no answer and, while Galer rambled on, he saw that the only policy was to declare himself a revolutionary and have done with it. Of course Galer would despise him: but he might cease to argue.

The crisis came at lunch-time two days later.

"By the way, sir," said Galer, bread in hand, "are you 'aving a paper?"

"Yes, I start to-morrow. _Daily Herald_ and _Manchester Guardian_."

Galer sniffed, threw down the food, and left the room in silence.

II

If Baedeker treated of Oxford colleges as he treats of Continental hotels the visitor would probably be informed that King's is 'well spoken of.' King's is small and comfortable but plainly in the first grade. No taint of specialism mars its charming mediocrity. It is not, like Balliol, aggressively successful, cornering the university scholarships and claiming half the important people in Europe as its alumni, nor does it, like New College, combine a gentle attachment to the humaner letters with supremacy on the river. It does not aspire to royalty or rugger Blues. Most class lists contain one or two firsts from King's and the King's eight never falls from the top division. The college has two excellent quads, a garden, a pleasing chapel, and some astonishing beer. Its port, however, is the worst in Oxford.

King's men were essentially Public School men. Few rich young men from Eton came to a foundation which was neither particularly notable nor particularly notorious. Wealth is not scrupulous as to which of those types it favours, but it abhors the mean. Nor did the Grammar Schools or the colonies supply more than a tithe of the college, which drew mainly upon the middle rank of Public Schools. Herein lay both its strength and its weakness. Its strength lay in its freedom from cranks and bores, its weakness lay in its uniformity: a house which is not divided in itself may stand firm, but it is likely to be a dull and gloomy mansion.

Martin would have preferred to go to Balliol or New College, but as he was paid eighty pounds a year to go to King's there was no profit in grumbling. And so he set to work to find company, in which respect he was indeed fortunate. While many of the freshers turned out to be good men and dull, some even bad men and dull, the scholars were all interesting. The uniformity of Public School tone naturally drove the more critical together, and in Martin's year the house was saved from gloom by at least a partial cleavage. Necessity aided inclination in forming the Push.

The Push consisted of five men and contained a governing trinity. These were Martin, Lawrence and Rendell. Rendell, the first classical scholar, was attached to what the others called the ineffable effs--Fabianism, Feminism and Faith. His god was paradoxical, but not so exciting as Mr Chesterton's, and more interested in Social Reform and Municipal Trading than in beer and ballads.

Rendell managed to entertain his various faiths without becoming a prig or a Puritan. During his first months of emancipation from school he had shown a suspicious hankering after beans and djibba-clad women, but Martin and Lawrence suppressed such tendencies with a firm hand. Rendell, though not pliable on the subject of religion, yielded on this point and soon declared his complete contempt for the eating of vegetables and drinking of ginger ale.

Lawrence was primarily noticeable for size. He was six foot three and broad in proportion: he had a ruddy and cheerful countenance and prodigious hands and feet. Essentially he believed in violence. He didn't care twopence, he declared, for Fabianism or Construction Policies and professed an intense desire to smash things, especially religion and the social system. He called himself a Neo-Nietzschean, but he certainly could not have distinguished between Neo- and Palaeo-Nietzscheans. To tell the truth, he had, like many followers of that great dyspeptic, never read a word of him. Lawrence hated music, except the Marseillaise (for its associations) and the Barcarole (for its effects) but he was taught at Oxford to like Sullivan. He read the poems of John Davidson and the philosophy of Georges Sorel. In smoking, eating and drinking he did all that might be expected of him, and he could play rugger amazingly well when he was not too lazy to turn out.

The trinity talked to each other all day and all night, and there were soon very few problems of the universe which had not been satisfactorily settled.

The need for a new point of view became apparent.

"Let's have that fellow Chard in," suggested Martin.

"Coffee in my rooms?" said Lawrence.

"Right-o! To-morrow night, if he'll come."

"Oh, he'll come," said Rendell. "He's rather sick of life. Isolated, you know. He only talks to Davenant."

"Shall we have Davenant too?" suggested Martin.

"The ass with the ties?" said Lawrence; "and the cloak! Oh, not him. Oscar Wilde is a bit played out by now."

"He's no fool," said Rendell. "I had a long conversation with him about Pointillism. He knows some of the Camden Town school."

"Post-Impressionism is less rot than most art," Lawrence growled, "so have him in."

Thus the Push was formed.

Chard was the son of a political K.C. and patently marked out for the acquisition of similar honours in the shortest possible space of time: for he believed firmly in the Liberal Party and himself, a quite irresistible combination in these democratic days. He held no opinion on religion or art, because they were not concerned with his career except in so far as an open declaration of atheism was unwise.

Davenant looked sublimely down on politics. Art was his sphere. Having been appropriately named Aubrey, he had undertaken from an early age to know all about Beauty. He had learned the names of all the unknown painters and could make great play with them: how much taste or feeling he really possessed no one ever discovered, for he was one of those disconcerting people who mingle acute with ridiculous judgments. At times he affected a vague interest in the Catholic faith and had been known to attend Mass. Concerning the love of women he was at once mysterious and supercilious. He laid claim to a vast knowledge of the sex, and by reason of a Continental year spent since leaving school his boast of Experience demanded some respect. In England, however, he never spoke to women. One night Lawrence, being tolerably drunk, told him he was afraid of women. Whereupon Davenant said he hated rosebuds and liked his flowers faded. Lawrence called him 'an unnachral beas',' and made a long speech about purity, in the middle of which he upset his beer and swore most filthily.

Davenant's evening cloak, wrought of a dark but flashing blue, caused its owner more trouble than joy. Lawrence stole it one Saturday night and, clad in it, went roaming through the town, to the great joy of the Oxford maidens who like that kind of joke. He made great play with it in the cinema and ultimately left it in The Grapes. When Davenant called for it on the next day it had vanished, and he was not sorry. The cloak had been an embarrassment, nor had he even really cared for it.

But they didn't mind his posing so long as he avowedly posed. He was, after all, amusing, and at bottom he had a great fund of human kindness. Martin firmly believed that if he had to ask a friend for help or advice he would rather have appealed to Davenant, the apparently supercilious, than to Rendell, the faithful feministic Fabian.

It must not be supposed that the Push became a Push in a day. They only worked up to friendship by rather heavy conversations. They would begin on politics or literature, talking at first with reticence and slight suspicion, but soon their relative isolation brought them closer together and made way for clearer statements and more liberal confessions about sex and religion. It was astonishing how soon after the final breaking of ice they established complete intimacy. Davenant, who had aesthetic friends in other colleges, was least merged in the joint personality of the Push. But all wise men need an audience, and Davenant was not going to desert them while there were still points on which he could gain a hearing.

On several matters they were in complete agreement. They were all 'damned if they were going to row.' The secretary of the Boat Club turned out to be the Rhodes scholar, Theo. K. Snutch, whose rooms Martin had occupied during the scholarship exam. He pointed out gently that the tradition of the 'cahlege' laid down that all freshers should be tubbed. Davenant managed to persuade Snutch that he had a weak heart and Snutch, taking stock of Davenant, prudently forbore to demand a doctor's certificate. Chard magnificently refused to go near the river and was henceforward ignored by the college athletes: but he did not mind, for none of them had votes at the Union.

"The thing for us," suggested Lawrence to Martin and Rendell, "is that what-you-may-call-'em strike. Greve perle or something or other. Stay in and rot the show. Catch a crab every other minute."

"How does one catch a crab?" asked Rendell, but no one could tell him.

Like most of Lawrence's intentions (he was rich in schemes), the idea was never put into practice. What eventually occurred was the appearance of the rugger secretary demanding the assistance of Lawrence 'just to stiffen up his pack' and the speedy release of Martin and Rendell owing to their dismal inefficiency. Snutch was entirely charming and Martin, who had feared a terrific, blustering coach, was agreeably surprised at the experience.

Another point of agreement with the Push was the essential loathliness of Hearties. King's had rather more than its fair share of Hearties and the freshers seemed likely to keep up the supply. All Hearties were religious, but all the religious were not Hearties. The Hearties always shouted at one another in the quad, and banged each other on the back. They always called each other Tom and Bill, and when they were not back-banging, they were making arrangements for mission work. They did much solid work for the college athletics, took seconds and thirds in history, and afterwards became schoolmasters and parsons and went to Switzerland in the winter.

Rendell, who had a passion for classification, insisted on distinguishing between neo-cardiacs and palaeo-cardiacs. "Neo-cardiacs," he said, "are more spiritual and more dangerous. They don't shout like the whole-hoggers, but their eyes glitter more and they're keener about the new type of bishop. Look at Steel-Brockley. He's a scholar and a 'mind' and can't swallow all the rot of the old school, but he's more sinister really."

"I suppose that Hodges is the ideal palaeo-cardiac," said Martin.

"Yes, Hodges, the great ass."

"Of course he's out to set up a kingdom of heaven upon earth," said Lawrence. "And can't you imagine his idea of it? It'll be stiff with people like himself, all blustering round and organising things. Football, Rich _v._ Poor. Of course there will still be rich and poor, for our Hodges is a Tory, but there'll be a spirit of fellowship oozing everywhere."

"'Running things' is all these chaps really care about," said Davenant, intervening. "I don't believe they care a straw about their summer camps and boys' brigades as far as the boys go. They like to be in charge of clubs and canteens and order kids about and tell them what a good thing discipline is and how wicked Trades Unions are."

"Those are the neos," added Rendell quickly. "The old ones like to rag about, and there's something to be said for that. Hodges likes ragging. Of course he is an ass, but he's not a dangerous ass. On the whole, we may call him a dear old thing and let him go on shouting. But the bad men are Steel-Brockley's gang. They all suffer from bossing fever and can't live unless they're running something. And they're desperately fair-minded and don't believe in party, which simply means that they are Tory agents, and tell the boys what a sin it is to be discontented with five or six bob for a seventy-hour week."

"And they're dragging in the freshers," said Lawrence. "Ought to be strangled."

So in private they settled the business of the Hearties. But in public, partly because they were freshers and partly because they had not the courage of their convictions, they found themselves being quite polite to these good young men.

Religion had an ever-living appeal for the Push, because it is one of the few subjects about which argument is as fascinating as it is futile. Chard, it is true, couldn't be bothered with metaphysics: he was a history scholar, and his line was a first in history and then the Bar. But the discussions were never metaphysical in the technical sense and it amused him to listen and sum up with an epigram. Davenant used to murmur that he thought Christ rather a beautiful figure and that the Church had saved Art in the Middle Ages, but he did not receive much attention. It became more and more the custom to regard Davenant as a picturesque background to conversations, except when artistic matters were under discussion. Then he held the floor, or rather he stood gracefully before the fire and spoke slowly between puffs of smoke.

They met most often in Lawrence's rooms, which were large and conveniently situated on the ground floor. He had added to the dilapidated furniture some new cushions and a really good arm-chair, and, having no money, he started a colossal bill at Blackwell's, so that his shelves were soon piled with books which he rarely read. But he was not the man to care deeply for his rooms, as did Davenant, who believed in Gordon Craig and used to mess about in the afternoons, putting the light in remote corners or hanging up curtains of a new colour. It was well that Lawrence cared little for his rooms, as he became invariably drunk on Saturday nights, and when drunk he was violent. He would lie on the floor kicking and declaiming Limericks until someone put him to bed: even then he was known to rise again and break things.

Lawrence swilling beer in his rooms was a great spectacle. Usually blasphemous and always obscene, he did everything on such a generous scale and with such a childish innocence and honesty that he was always attractive and rarely repelled even one so fastidious as Davenant.

It was on Sunday nights that the Push talked about religion. Lawrence would pull out the sofa and build up a roaring fire: then with the aid of pipes and much swallowing of beer they would set about it. Every Sunday Rendell was pilloried, but the victim never objected and always returned to the combat. The great point about religious discussion is that you can never be beaten. They treated either with the truth of Christianity or the value of its practical results. In the latter case Lawrence would boom about bishops with fifteen thousand a year, and Martin would demonstrate with irrefutable logic that religion had always resisted freedom and education and had made the world the hole it is. As they both talked interminably Rendell had little opportunity of answering.

One night Lawrence rushed into his rooms shortly after dinner and found the Push assembled.

"My god!" he said, plunging into the sofa.

"I thought you hadn't one," said Chard.

"Don't be obvious. I'm angry, my god, I'm angry."

He was asked to explain.

"Steel-Brockley asked me to go to coffee in his rooms and when I got there I found he had provided a lecturer gassing about the value of faith for us."

"Well," said Davenant, "that was very considerate of our Brockley."

"Exactly. But he might have warned me. It didn't matter. I couldn't stick it long."

"I should think not. It's barely a half-an-hour since dinner now."

"What happened?" asked Martin.

"It was like this," began Lawrence. "Brockley produced a battered chap from the colonies, all pockmarks and freckles, you know the type. Of course he began, as they always do, by saying that he had seen men die in all parts of the world and they all died the better for their faith. None of them seemed to live, or else he had a morbid mind and likes death. I don't know. Anyhow he had the cheek to say that King's spiritual life wasn't as strong as it had been. He was deeply concerned about us. He whined about us. He thought we were all going to the devil because the scholars have taken to cutting chapel. Just imagine a little tick like that coming here to tell us, whom he doesn't know, that we're not so soulful as the clean young men out West. Thank god we're not. I gave him about ten minutes and cleared out."

There was a murmur of delight.

"I suppose no one heard you leave the room," said Martin, but Lawrence never rose to jests about his bulk and gait.

"And there were all Brockley's gang," he went on, "sitting with all the light of grace in their eyes. And when the pock-marked chap got busy in the impressive line you could fairly hear them thinking, 'God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world.'"

"And a very good thought," said Rendell.

Lawrence would always rise to the religious bait.

"Just the kind of thought that you would expect from a well-fed Liberal poet."

Lawrence opened violently a bottle of Munich beer and drained the contents. Then he gave a vast sigh of relief, pulled out his pipe and stood expansively before the fire, exposing, unconsciously, a large gap of shirt between his waistcoat and the grey flannel trousers whose sole support lay in their tightness.

"It isn't God that matters," he declared. "It's the Godites. They're worse than ever."

"They've at least begun to move with the times."

"Exactly," said Martin, coming in as usual to assist Lawrence. "They swallow everything new and say they meant it all the time. I don't mind good old burn-the-devil bigots, but this up-to-date Interpreting and Restatement and Revaluation and Earnest Wash, it makes me sick. Why can't they give up their tribal deity and do something sensible?"

"You're so beastly crude," answered Rendell. "Oxford isn't exactly a brainless place, and it's full of religion."

"It's full of a washed-out, watery, emasculate ghost of a faith," said Martin. "They daren't say what they really do mean for fear of giving the show away. So they talk about Evolution and the Unknowable and 'may be something in it.'"

"The religion of the Oxford don," said Chard magnificently from his corner, "is the sickly bastard of nervousness and inertia."

"I'll give you a quid to say that at the Union," said Martin. But Chard valued his career at more than a sovereign.

"Aren't you men a little out of date?" interrupted Davenant. "Chivvying priests and kings was about 1870, wasn't it?"

"Exactly," Rendell cried in triumph. "You've done for priests and kings. Nobody believes in them any more. They've collapsed, and by collapsing become infinitely stronger. Bradlaugh's brigade never foresaw that, when you take away nominal power, you begin to create real power. The weakest side always wins in the end."

"Don't talk Chestertonian drivel," growled Lawrence. "Nobody believes it."

"It's quite true. Religion is stronger than ever just because it's weaker."

"The last flicker," said Martin.

Then the conversation, having reached an impasse, turned of necessity and they were off once more upon matters episcopal.

"I don't see why a bishop should get thousands a year while the curates are half starved," said Lawrence.

"They don't spend it on themselves," retorted Rendell.

"Only on palaces and motors and flummery. No, my boy, it's all bunkum. Look at the fortunes they leave." Lawrence had collected a list of episcopal fortunes which he read with glee upon every possible occasion. It was an excellent array of figures, starting well up in the hundred thousands.

"Oh, chuck it," said Rendell. "We've heard all this before."

But Lawrence read irrepressibly on.

"What about your needle's eye now?" he roared.

"Oh, don't be a child," said Rendell.

"That's all you ever say. Childish! You with your Athanasian Creed and incense and swindling priests. Ever been to Notre Dame and seen the advertisements? Forty days' purgatory remitted in return for so many prayers! And you call me childish!" Lawrence had a fine flow of metaphors and expletives. He had been known to continue one sentence for ten minutes, his oratorical method being to substitute copulas for full stops. He began jerkily, it is true. But once the lumbering coach was set moving nothing could withstand its impetus.

Rendell yielded and began to discuss with Davenant the personality of Christ. Lawrence continued roaring at no one in particular. At last he sat heavily down in his arm-chair, so heavily that one of its legs gave way. He tore off the broken member and brandished it wildly, as a symbol of his attitude to all things episcopal.

As usual it was Chard who closed the discussion.

"Davenant's faith," he said, "makes me think of a mendicant professor of aesthetics and Rendell's of the first secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (Nazareth branch). I move the question be put."

His advice was taken.

"Beer," said Lawrence. "My god, more beer."

And so the evenings would begin.

III

Incredibly the Push were blind to their amazing superficiality. Even had they suffered from an inclination to be serious, life came so easily and so rapidly that it would have been impossible to do anything but play with it. So they trifled with wisdom and trifled rightly. For when a man is only nineteen and has enough to eat and drink, and more than enough to read and say, it were a crime to stop in thought and laboriously dam the pleasant shallows of an easy-going stream. Alike in the winter nights by Lawrence's fire or by the lingering twilights of early summer when they threaded a maze of back-waters or lay in the cool fastness of the college garden listening to the wind in the great elms or the tinkle of a distant piano, they built great castles of argument, flimsy and fantastic piles untouched by reality and doomed to fade away at the coming of Experience. They talked of great things and small, of God and Woman and sometimes of Man, of futures and careers, of the dons, of the college, of the varsity teams, of books and plays and poets, of the coldness of the pretty girl in this shop and of the wantonness of the plain girl in that.

They lived with an excellent method. In the mornings they lay in bed, thought about breakfast, ate breakfast, and read the papers. In the junior common-room there were all the dailies and on Wednesdays there were _Punch_, _The Tatler_, _The Sketch_, and _The Bystander_, on Saturdays the weekly reviews. They were catholic in the reading, but, if the supply happened to give out, they could always consider what to do in the afternoon. By that time it was one o'clock and they lunched frugally and together. In the afternoon they took their various amusements. Perhaps Lawrence and Martin played rugger, while Chard and Davenant strolled round Addison Walk. Rendell insisted on playing hockey, insisted in the face of opposition.

"You can't play hockey," said Martin. "It's no game for a gentleman."

"It's quite a good game," Rendell apologised.

"It may be all right for internationals who dart about and toss the ball in the air and catch it on the end of their sticks, but it's no game for incapables like you."

"I'm in the team anyhow. And you, by the way, are winning renown as the worst wing three-quarter in Oxford."

"That is probably true," Martin admitted. "But it doesn't destroy my contention that hockey is a scrappy, uncomfortable business and only good enough for men who can't get into any other teams."

"You're a stark old reactionary," retorted Rendell. "Hockey is the game of the future. There'll be a 'full Blue' for it in a year or two. And don't make the obvious remark."

Martin didn't. But he continued to jeer when Rendell went off in the rain and came back with bruised shins and perhaps a black eye. This only encouraged Rendell to take the game very seriously, to turn out always, and to run like a hare down his wing, whereas Martin and Lawrence treated this rugger team with disdain and only played when it pleased them. The secretary, being hard up for players, could not drop them altogether, for even Martin was better than his substitute. In the summer Rendell played cricket as seriously as he had played his hockey, so that he just gained a place in the college eleven. Martin played sometimes for the tennis six and the other three fled, when it was warm enough and at first when it was not--for such is the way of freshers--to navigate the Cherwell in the communal punt.

In the evenings they dined out as often as their college would let them and went to meetings of clubs or, on the rare occasions when there was a play worth seeing, to the theatre. Work they neglected, thoroughly and with a good heart. Chard and Davenant, who were to take modern history, both failed in Pass Mods in March, but passed in the summer after a fortnight's reading. The other three had resolved that Honour Mods could easily be squared in a long vac and two terms: they did not realise that a year of idleness (or nearly two years, for none of them had worked since gaining their scholarships) creates a habit of mind which cannot easily be shaken off. Two stiff terms are easier to contemplate than to achieve. Martin, indeed, had his uncle's blessing, for John Berrisford had told him that the first year was meant to broaden one's point of view: it struck him as a joyous process, this broadening of one's point of view.

His tutor, Reggie Petworth, he did not like. Petworth turned out to be a "neo-cardiac" of the first water: even then he hadn't the decency to be whole-hearted in his heartiness and wavered between complete allegiance with Hodges and the college 'right' and a feeble attempt to conciliate the 'left' as represented by Lawrence and Martin. Petworth had come from Balliol with the Hertford, the Ireland, and a Philosophy of Fun. It was Fun to write jolly compositions and Fun to set proses out of George Meredith which bore no relation to classical thought or idiom and couldn't conceivably be translated into reasonable Latin or Greek. It was Fun to be a High Churchman, Fun to talk about priests and masses, Fun to date your letters by feasts of the Church, Fun to be a Liberal and believe in the people. Fun to have bad cigarettes sent from a remote Oriental town because its monarch was a Balliol man, Fun to collect things without sense or purpose, Fun, in fact, to pretend to be a child.

"One doesn't mind Davenant pretending to be decadent now and then," said Martin to Lawrence, "because decadence always depends on posing for its real point. A man isn't a decadent unless he knows he's a decadent and plays up to it. But childhood is rather different, and I don't see why blighters like Reggie should try and ape it."

"Just the Balliol touch," said Lawrence.

Martin was supposed to show up two compositions a week to Reggie Petworth and to do occasional translation papers. He attended with some regularity to make up for his complete absence from lectures. Petworth exhorted him mildly to make more strenuous efforts and told him what Fun Demosthenes could be if one read the private speeches, about mining rights and water-courses and assaults. Whereupon Martin was coldly polite and retired to renew his conversations about the world at large, while Petworth would find a 'jolly' man and walk out to eat lunch at Beckley, saying 'What Fun!' if he saw a pig with pleasant markings.

To Martin, as he lazily reclined one September morning in the black woods behind The Steading, the past was a vision of undimmed radiance. Oxford had threatened but it had not fulfilled: rather it had grudged him nothing of its plenty. It had given him friends (miraculously the Push had not quarrelled) and views and a year of fine living. He knew now how tainted by the poison of exams had been his first impressions of that grey and gracious city, he knew that it was not just a Midland town with a liability to fogs and floods. Also he knew that his uncle had been wrong when he said that the place didn't matter and only the institution counted. For he had even learned to love the lambent tongues of mist that crept stealthily from the river to the walls of Corpus and Merton and drifted over roofs and towers to the noise and splendour of the High. The myriad lights of rooms piled on rooms flashing out into a blue dusk of winter, the reds and greys of Holywell, the clatter of the Corn and the bells that told unfailingly the hours of the night were now in his memory the blended symbols of a growing intimacy. He had found out Cumnor Hurst and Besselsleigh, and the sweep of the downs clear-cut against the sky, and the old towns to the West, Burford and Fairford and all the Chippings of the Wolds. But clearest of all in his memory were the canoe voyages made by Rendell and Lawrence and himself at the close of the summer term. Then, while a horde of wealthy trippers came to Oxford to dance and flirt and hold sumptuous revel, they pierced every dim recess of the upper river and probed the secrets of the Evenlode. They had bathed in the morning and in the afternoon and again by moonlight, running in wild nakedness over strewn hay to recover warmth. At Bablock Hythe they had eaten cold ducks and drunk cider in gallons: they had lain for hours on the Long Leas gazing into an infinite dome of stars and waiting for the idle nightingale. And Lawrence had nearly murdered Rendell for quoting Matthew Arnold.

Martin was eager to be back, despite the prospect of two stiff terms. And when he was back once more in Oxford, no longer the leaf-clad city of pleasant waters but grey and dripping with the autumn mists, he found that both he himself and his friends had far too much to say. They were all in new and more desirable rooms and Martin was free from the domination of Galer. He had chosen to dwell high up in the back quad, where the windows were large and the rooms airy, and lately he had revised his pictures. This term he purchased some quaintly luminous and misty landscapes which were the fruit either of startling genius or blank incompetence. As to which was the case there was great argument. Rendell, being senior scholar of his year, had been able to claim the famous rooms of the college, oak-panelled and majestically dark. For Art he relied upon Rembrandt and Duerer: but then Rendell never risked anything.

Undoubtedly they had all a great deal to recount, for sixteen weeks of vacation could hardly fail to bring new friends and new experience, new books and new ideas. And the Push knew that there is no satisfaction in mere discovery: it is the telling of a tale that makes for pleasure. So night after night Martin neglected to settle down after dinner, began to tell tales, and concluded, somewhere about twelve, that it was too late to begin now. Then they would play a rubber of sixpenny auction just to make them sleepy and, playing till three or four, would so succeed in their ambition that they could not breakfast till eleven. Only Rendell refused to be tempted and went dutifully to his books.

Before long Martin quarrelled with Reggie Petworth, sulked foolishly, despaired of the term, and began to rely on the winter vacation and the subsequent six weeks of term to grapple with the problem of Mods. He spent a miserable Christmas at The Steading and came to the conclusion on New Year's Eve that he had forgotten nearly every word of Greek and Latin that he had ever known. He did not look forward to the term, and on January the fifteenth he went to Oxford as a lamb to the slaughter.

It was a term of infinite depression. The early months of the year, everywhere unkind, are singularly uncharitable to Oxford: the glamour of autumn had departed and winter has no majesty in muddy streets. The days were yellow with a sticky warmth that brought exhaustion and despair. Martin, passing from book to book, felt always, at whatever time of day, as though he had eaten too much lunch and would die if he didn't soon have tea: it was that kind of weather. He gave up football because it made him sleep after tea: and then, being without exercise or diversion, yawned all morning and read garbage after lunch. Rendell had his work well in hand and was, men said, sure to get a first. Lawrence had manfully abandoned hope and sought consolation in beer and bridge. Martin, foolishly but characteristically, took the middle path. He had neither the energy to work nor the courage to be idle, but sat mournfully with his books, gazing blankly at the pages and wondering why it was all so new to him. Then he would consult recent papers, and his heart would sink yet lower as he realised his amazing ignorance.

As the weeks slipped away he took to learning up lists of hard words and legal technicalities. He became a master of the Virgilian vegetable and the Demosthenic demurrer, and though he knew the Latin for burrs and calthrops and succory and bogwort, he would have been quite incapable of distinguishing those herbs from one another. Thus do we study the poets and orators. But it was distressing work.

And then he became aware of Pink Roses. He noticed her because of her ubiquity and partly, perhaps, because she was always alone: he noticed her in the Broad, in the High, at a football match in the parks, once in the cinema. She was not beautiful, not even pretty: otherwise she need scarcely have remained alone in a community so rapacious. Usually she wore a coat and skirt of dark blue and a little black hat with pink roses. Beneath her hat Martin had observed light fluffy hair done witchingly about her ears and he had been able to notice that she had a pleasing smile and the tiniest of dimples. But her features, too heavy to be piquant, were not strong enough to be striking.

He pointed her out one day to Lawrence and demanded his opinion.

"Oh, that's your Pink Roses," he said critically. "Pretty poor stuff."

"She may be all right," answered Martin meekly.

"She walks all right, but she has got a face like a milk pudding."

Martin did not attempt to argue against this higher criticism. Lawrence, he thought, was an old dear but he certainly lacked perception. There was something about Pink Roses.

And then one evening, when he was turning into a main street, he walked right into her. He smiled vaguely and apologised, but she had hurried past him and did not hear. He turned and watched her. She stopped outside the cinema and studied the programme: eventually she went in. Martin had meant to do an hour's work before dinner and began walking back to college. Soon he stopped again and stood vaguely on the pavement, gazing at the passing crowd. At last resolvedly he resumed his journey to the college and the poets. Five minutes later he was passing a shilling through the grille of the cinema ticket office. It seemed an age before a film ended and the light went up. Then he saw the Pink Roses flowering alone in the sixpenny seats. As soon as the pictures began he would go in her direction. But when the time came he felt self-conscious and afraid. 'Ridiculous ass,' he said to himself. "You desert Lucretius for Pink Roses and now you don't even gather the rose-buds." And then again: 'Who is the silly girl--after all? Here am I, a scholar of a college, deserting Lucretius for that funny little person! It's too childish.' So he rose to go out and walked instead to the sixpenny seats.

The girl looked round to see who was coming next to her.

"Hullo!" whispered Martin as though surprised. "Didn't I nearly knock you over in the street just now?"

"Someone ran into me," she answered. "I didn't notice who it was."

"I think it was me. I'm so sorry."

"Oh, it didn't matter, thank you."

She said it very nicely and Martin was encouraged to go on. It was rather difficult and he wished he was fortified by a sound dinner.

"You come here a good lot?" he said at last.

"Yes. Nearly every time the pictures change."

"Don't you get bored?"

"It's better than doing nothing."

"But the pictures are so silly as a rule."

"Oh, I like the pictures. 'Sixty Years a Queen'--that was lovely. The girl that did Queen Victoria was just sweet."

To his own surprise Martin did not object to her taste: he would have loathed any other admirer of "Sixty Years a Queen."

"Do you know many people here?" he asked.

"I know some girls I was at school with."

"No men?"

"Not many. I know Mr Carter; Brasenose, isn't he? Do you know him?"

"Only by sight. He's going to be chucked out of the varsity boat."

"Is he? I'm so sorry. He's awfully nice."

"Do you know him well?"

"Only a little. I met him in here. He asked me to have tea in his rooms in Beaumont Street, but of course I couldn't."

So she had ideas about propriety. There was a silence.

"Do you always live in Oxford?" asked Martin.

"We live out at Botley."

"Pretty deadly spot, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's something awful. I want to go to London only my family won't let me go into business. I'm awfully bored."

"So am I."

"Why are you bored?"

"I've got an exam coming on."

"Oh, you poor thing! I could never do exams. I think they're horrid. I do hope you'll get on all right!"

"Thanks very much!" It pleased Martin to have her sympathy.

They chattered on. Her name was May Williams and she seemed to be very, very tired of Botley and her own company. Before Martin went away to dinner he asked her to meet him at the same time the next evening.

"It's Wednesday," he said. "So you'll get your new pictures. I think it's nicer at this time: there's such a crush in here after dinner."

May agreed with evident pleasure and Martin went back to dinner rejoicing in his courage and his first steps to adventure. He had been right: there was something about Pink Roses, indefinable perhaps, but plainly something. She wasn't just one of the Oxford girls.

So they met again and on Saturday night they drove out in a taxi to Abingdon and dined in rather squalid pomp. Henceforward they saw much of one another and had more drives and dinners and were happy: for both had won a release.

They did not at all know what they wanted, but both knew quite plainly from what they wanted to escape. Martin wanted to throw off for a few hours the burden of his work, which was neither mere routine, like copying addresses, nor definite creation, like the making of a poem or a good mashie shot. This minute preparation of books and this learning by rote of variant readings and emendations seemed so appalling just because they defied both a mechanical application and a vivid interest. And May wanted to escape from the frigid respectability of a red-brick villa at Botley, where she lived with her father, a retired Oxford tradesman: she wanted to escape from an existence which contained nothing but meals, a bicycle, _The Daily Mirror_, and walks with the girl next door. So she invented an old school friend who had jolly evenings in Walton Street. Her father had the virtue of credulity and allowed her to go her own way, and Martin's.

So much they knew and nothing more. Martin never discovered whether he actually felt any enthusiasm for May as a real person abstracted from Mods and his own despair and the black mass of circumstance: he didn't think about it, but just took her as she was. There were times when she amused him and gave him pleasure, and times when he thought that the satisfaction of her kisses was as nothing to the boredom of her conversation. Yet, because he was young and simple and far more conscientious than he would have cared to admit to the advanced young men of the Push, he was not prepared to confess to himself that she was just an amusement. The Martin who talked so airily in Lawrence's rooms about women and the world was an innocent impostor: as a matter of fact the Push, also conscious and a little ashamed of their own excessive virtue, were not taken in by his magniloquence. May was equally ignorant about her own attitude and intentions. She was not at all a fast or desperate young woman: an impartial critic might even have noticed in her a leaden morality. But her conscience did not forbid the unaccustomed thrill of a lover's attendance and the subsequent lie of convenience. No one had ever encouraged her to think things out or to formulate her purposes. Consequently she drifted placidly, and if conscience whispered or Martin suggested another evening's pleasure, it was too much trouble to listen to the one or refuse the other.

Mods were to begin on a Thursday. On the preceding Saturday Martin was going down to the Berrisfords to seek fresh air and to forget the existence of Demosthenes. He had wanted to stay and cram to the end, but ultimately he had yielded to Petworth's advice and decided to go. At eleven o'clock on the Friday night he was wandering back alone through Osney. He had walked with May along the Eynsham Road: it had been a perfect night with the moon hanging over Wytham Woods like a silver slit in a cloth of blackest fabric. But May didn't bother about the moon, and they had gone to a deserted barn where they had met before, a good enough place for lovers in the mood but otherwise draughty and forlorn. They had not quarrelled: neither had alluded to the possibility of such a thing. But Martin had thought May dull and May had thought Martin cold. The evening had not been a success, and the fact that it had not been a confessed failure made it all the worse, for Martin had arranged to see her again on Wednesday night before his exam.

Now, as he tramped slowly home, he fell into a great anger and despair. That night at least he might have devoted to learning the long lists of words which he had so laboriously compiled. But he hadn't: he had dallied in an outhouse with a girl who didn't think, didn't know, didn't care, a girl whose only attraction lay in her wistful eyes and an engaging atmosphere of loneliness. To have to philander in back roads and crumbling sheds--how revolting it all was when he looked at it in cold blood. To have to--well, perhaps he hadn't to, but life, with its misery of Mods, wasn't much fun if he didn't. This was the only escape. Martin wanted to meet women openly, if he had to meet them, and to face things clearly and honestly. But he couldn't do so because of morality, official morality with its peeping proctors and furtive pettiness. How Lawrence and he had thrashed it all out! It seemed that men should have honourable and reasonable relations with women, and yet, because of decency, it came to this. Wherever man met woman, there also must be mean slinking and shame-faced meeting, taxis and back lanes and a sordid round of evasion. Earlier in the term the sheer joy of release had blinded him to the squalor of it. Now, when enchantment had been staled by habit, his fastidiousness returned. It wasn't only that Pink Roses were beginning to fade: he was beginning to realise that pleasure demands its pleasance and Pink Roses an adequate rose-bed.

And then came four days of Devonshire, with clear winds from the sea such as never breathed strength and spirit into Oxford's mellow torpor: four days too of The Steading's restful beauty, of real hills and whispering coverts. And there were two days of golf on a distant course, a season of great hitting with driver and brassie, fierce efforts to make "fours" of fives, with rare successes and frequent disaster. In the evenings John Berrisford was more wonderful than ever.

Nor was fresh company wanting. Margaret had a friend staying with her, a Miss Freda Neilson. At first Martin thought her insignificant, but he soon saw that her insignificance was intensely significant. She wasn't just a small and timid person with nothing to be said for or against her. In her quick-glancing eyes of deepest brown lurked courage and speculation, and there was a charming ease about her clothes and the swift movements of her body. She certainly was not a frowsy intellectual, and the fact that Margaret had brought her down for inspection was a guarantee that she wasn't a stupid little thing.

Martin had talked a little to her on Saturday night: after breakfast on Sunday he noticed her on a seat in the garden enjoying the strong sunshine. He went towards her and looked over her shoulder. She was reading one of Mr Berrisford's more private French works. Careless of Margaret to leave it about!

"On Sunday, too!" said Martin.

"Just to counteract the very English breakfast," she laughed. "I don't think I ever ate so much in my life since I came here."

"My uncle's sound about breakfast. Those were true sausages."

"I suppose so. I don't think I'm very good at sausages. I'm afraid I hanker after rolls and fruit and things."

"Then you're all wrong. You've no case at all."

"And who gave you permission to lay down the law about taste?"

"My own common-sense. How can two people talk unless someone starts by dogmatising? Supposing I started off, 'Sausages may possibly, if they are good ones and of sound pork richly fried, seem nice to some people, the world being as it is,' ... we wouldn't get far, would we?"

"And who said I wanted conversation?"

"I ventured to deduce it from the fact that you looked round when you thought I wasn't looking."

"I never did."

"Didn't you? Then I made a bad shot. I'm sorry!"

Martin wasn't very happy about this rather heavy beginning. The conversation was floundering hopelessly. Freda, seeing this, took him firmly in hand.

"Well," she said, closing the sinister work of decadence, "as you've come, you'd better stay and enjoy the sunshine and take an interest in me."

"Will you take one in me?"

"Oh yes! Fair play. Don't let's talk stilted rubbish any more: it's such an effort. Now then, I'll begin. What about Oxford and Mods?"

So he told her the weary tale. She was sympathetic in a rather challenging, offensive way, which he enjoyed.

"And now you?" he said.

"Oh, I'm just an office girl. I ought to read _The Mirror_ and _The London Mail_, but I don't. You know Margaret was doing some work for the Women's Trade Union Movement: that's how she ran into me. I do the typing in the office where she works. We had a rush of work owing to the strikes in Lancashire and my silly health collapsed. She brought me down here. The Berrisfords have been awfully good to me."

"Do you like being in the office?" asked Martin.

"It might be worse, because the letters I have to type are sometimes about something mildly interesting. Just fancy having to do business letters all day. But the society is so short of funds that they work me hard and don't overpay me."

"I always knew that sweating began with the charity-mongers. But I thought your people might be a bit better."

"I suppose I oughtn't to grumble. Shouldn't I pay a small sacrifice to the great cause of Efficiency?"

"I hate Collectivism. I mean the Efficiency type."

"So young, my lord, and a Syndicalist?"

"In parts. Anyhow, they might treat you better." Martin spoke with conviction.

"It's nice of you to be worried, but you needn't. I used to be a school-ma'am and teach English literature to girls with pigtails and secret societies to giggle about. Can't you imagine me? We always did _As You Like It_ or _The Tempest_. That was just hell. I'd much sooner pinch and scrape in London than live in a school with bells and prayers and the younger members of my own sex. It was quite a good post and everyone said I ought to have stayed on. But I just couldn't. So now I have only myself to blame if I'm unhappy."

"I think it was very plucky of you," was all Martin could think of.

"Oh, I'm safe enough. I don't starve, you know. But there's not much over for books."

"It must be rotten!"

There was a silence.

"Do the Berrisfords go to church?" Freda asked suddenly. "I only came on Tuesday."

"No, rather not."

"Thank God!"

"Then you aren't one of the faithful?"

"No. Taking the girls to church had a bad effect on my temper. Besides, after all----"

"Well?"

"I'm keen on philosophy. Are you?"

"I'm going to be when I begin Greats."

"Don't you like it now?"

"In a crude sort of way. We're always talking about God at Oxford."

"That must be splendid. I have to do it with myself, but I don't get any further."

"Than what?"

"Than a tremendous conviction that there can't be one."

"There isn't."

"You've settled it?"

"Long ago."

"I suppose," said Freda, "that people laugh at you, like they do at me. I don't care. Margaret talks about the Unknowable and says I'm presumptuous. I hate the Unknowable: it seems so cowardly, somehow."

"You're quite right," decided Martin. "The Unknowable is the limit."

"But we mustn't agree about everything," Freda put in: "otherwise it will be frightfully dull."

"Well, let's talk about Art," he suggested. "We're bound to quarrel then."

And they did. It was astonishing how soon lunchtime arrived.

Later on they talked about everything in the world. Martin knew that he had found what he wanted, a woman with an undergraduate's mind. In a way it was like talking to one of the Push, but yet there was all the difference in the world. Why there should be that difference he couldn't tell. But there it undeniably was. To meet men who could argue was good: to meet a woman who said the same sort of things was more than good. Freda walked with him on the moor on Tuesday, and he had the chance of helping her over bogs and chasms. On that evening she accepted a billiard lesson at his hands. Of these opportunities he made the most. May Williams had at least had an educational value.

These four days were magically sundered from the rest of life: he had succeeded, to his own great surprise, in forgetting Oxford altogether. But the day of reckoning was at hand, and when Martin settled down in the train on Wednesday he fell at once from the heights to the depths. To begin with, he was going back to Mods. Before the tumult of his mind flashed visions of texts marked with blue lines, texts which he had omitted to look up. He wondered whether he really knew about Ulysses' abominable boat and whether he remembered which words in the Greek meant dowels and trenails. And he was going back to Pink Roses. The squalor of it! To-night he was to meet her and slink away somewhere. He couldn't, he simply couldn't! He had learned, rather he thought he had learned, what a conversation with a woman ought to be. There could be no more whisperings with May. On reaching Oxford Martin sent a telegram: he was unavoidably prevented from seeing her. He felt that he ought to be angry with himself because it didn't hurt him to treat her like this: but his conscience failed to rise to the situation. Quite plainly he had done with May.

Mods in the actual presence afforded him eight days of consummate torture. It was all right for Rendell, who knew his work thoroughly, and Lawrence, who didn't know it at all. They could view their papers without concern, the one scribbling diligently, the other yawning complacently, guessing words, and tossing up with a penny when there seemed to be two equally probable meanings to a passage for construe. But for Martin every prepared paper was a thing of reminiscence and suggestion. He knew just enough to appreciate his own ignorance: as he stared at the passages on which he had to comment he recognised them with maddening vagueness as a man who cannot put a name to a face he knows. Hauntingly they seemed to cry out at him: "You saw me last January, but you don't know what the devil I'm about." While Rendell used his knowledge and Lawrence his imagination, Martin sweated and racked his memory and got everything half right. His nerve went and he began, he thought, to make a mess of his composition. Afterwards he was left with a blur of sensations and images which included a large clock and a smiling invigilator, aching hands and nights of relentless preparation.

When it was all over he hurried down to Devonshire, leaving Lawrence to forty-eight hours of continuous intoxication. Freda would still be there. But, to his fury, he discovered that she had gone to Paris with Margaret. He sulked obviously, and hated the whole world: life and letters had tended to leave his nerves raw and anything stung him. Finally he went to join Rendell and Lawrence in Belgium, and there, with Memling and Bock and conversation, he forgot his woes. The exam results came to them at Rochefort, rich in grottoes, that notable town of the Ardennes. Rendell had taken a first, Martin a second, and Lawrence a third. Martin had entertained fears of a third and Lawrence of a fourth, so they agreed that things have been worse.

"Anyhow," said Martin, as they went in search of tea and _gateaux_, "that's an end of those infernal classics." Which was both an error on his part--for in Greats, as he later on discovered, one deals mainly with translation--and a commentary on the plain man's attitude to the poets and orators by the time that he has been taught all about them.

IV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Frequently," said John Berrisford.

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

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

"And it works?"

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

"It just occurred to me."

After a silence, John Berrisford said to Martin:

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

"Two or three have gone to Paris."

"Well, go thou and do likewise."

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

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

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

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

"Thanks awfully!"

"Now let's walk in the garden."

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

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

"About the country, you mean?"

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

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

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

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

"Then you'll be very unhappy."

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

"Don't I worship?"

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

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

"And the mystery?"

"The blessed mystery of Ham and Eggs."

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

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

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

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

"And you liked it?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Only on fine nights."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I see that," Martin replied.

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

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

V

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The total amount claimed was twelve pounds ten shillings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was at half-past two.

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

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

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

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

"Are you dead certain about it?"

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

Martin was silent.

"It's damned funny," said Lawrence.

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

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

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

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

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

"It's nearly seven now."

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

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

"Wait for an inspiration."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was all so simple, so incredible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VI

From a long vacation spent with the historians and philosophers and from the clash and challenge of autumnal moors Martin came back to rooms in Holywell and the school of Literae Humaniores. From clean winds and open skies he came back to a gentle greyness or to smudgy days when the rain settled upon the river valley with cruel insistence and on parting left floods and vapours and steamy streets. From working at his ease he came back to work with distaste.

To begin with, he was afraid. The future was big with exams. In eight months his Oxford finals would be upon him, in ten months he would be attempting to satisfy the Civil Service Commissioners. The torture of it! It was all very well for Lawrence, whom a wealthy uncle would make into a chartered accountant, for Rendell, who was to be an amateur barrister and a professional Lib-Lab-Soc, for Chard, with his assured career and Front-bench-in-a-year-or-two prospects; well enough too for Davenant, who had money enough to maintain an adequate, even a graceful, existence while he wrote about the things of art. But for Martin there was only the midnight oil and the wondering about marks.

And he felt helpless. He didn't want to be a Civil Servant, even at home. And as for India or the Straits! He wanted to be in London with the rest of them, keeping up the old ideas and intimacies and enthusiasms. If he had only felt that such a life was absolutely impossible, he would have taken his fate more graciously. But it seemed that with an effort, with daring, he might get out of it all and find a job that would keep him in London without starvation: but he hadn't the pluck to look for the job, and he was content to drift on the wave of chance. Circumstance was moulding his life, whereas he ought to be moulding circumstance. Why couldn't he be strong and do things? He despised his puny helplessness and cowardly drifting: the more he gazed into himself the less did he see to admire. Naturally this did not improve his work.

He lived with Rendell and Lawrence and Chard in a good house in Holywell: Davenant had gone down. Chard shared a sitting-room with Rendell, and they both worked with vigour, being men of sense and ambition. Upstairs in a great low-raftered room Martin dwelled with Lawrence. He began by labouring with a fond frenzy, but he soon fell into his companion's easier ways and sat by the window watching the passers-by. Holywell is a sound and regular street. You either belong to it or you don't. And if you do belong to it everybody knows that you belong to it and has a notion of your habits and your time-table. Martin and Lawrence soon found out about everyone, and their chief topic of conversation was the late appearance of this man or the frequent journeys of another, the new hat of the girl opposite or the names and nature of the young women who came hustling out of St Cross Road. They despised Chard and Rendell for their ignorance and wilful neglect of the street and its population.

It was a soothing occupation to watch folk come and go. Soothing, too, was the soft glory of the street itself as it curved away to the Broad with its sombre harmony of pink and grey. Behind the sweeping splendour of the way itself might rise a sunset sky of winter, blue with the lustre of steel, a tower of strong darkness above the fading glow. And then lamps would twinkle and windows pour golden floods into the road and a man would think about having tea. All good men live in Holywell when they "go out."

But it was not always thus. Often everything was ugly, and Martin had indigestion after lunch and thought once more of May Williams. He hadn't seen her at all: perhaps she had escaped from Botley. Really he didn't care: astonishing how unattractive was the memory of that affair! No, May had not been good enough, but there was a girl who walked up and down the street: she too had roses in her hat, but the colour was not the same. And she was different, remote and inaccessible. Martin said nothing and did nothing, but he always looked out when she passed on her way to and from shops: it gave him more pain than pleasure to watch her pass by, and yet he kept on looking.

And then there was Mr Cuggy. Cuggy was Martin's tutor in philosophy and had the reputation of being the most muddled thinker in Oxford: his claims were based on a certain article in _Mind_ which had broken all records (already high in English Philosophy) for the amazing technicalities of its jargon and the vile barbarity of its writing. But of course he was a dear old man. In his youth a torrent of Hegelianism had passed over him and he remained always a limp victim of the drenching he had then received. He clung, this mariner shipwrecked in German waters, to the rock of the Absolute and dared not relax his grip because he saw no other prominence amid the devouring waves. And everywhere, should he slip off, were the pragmatic sharks lurking for the prey. To this rock he dragged his pupils quite irrespective of their capacity to understand the process and to cling coherently: as a result they clung only in their essays and dropped off in private thinking. Time's ironies are pleasant and Mr Cuggy made many a "prag."

Martin learned all the proper words and delighted his tutor with some cant about the higher synthesis and the disappearance of all antinomies in the absolute. In private discussion he differed. "I say. What shall we do about this philosophy?" he asked Rendell.

Even Rendell had been sickened by Cuggy. "Of course it's all drivel," he admitted. "Just systematised drivel."

"My dear ass," put in Lawrence, "has that only just struck you? I remember being rebuked for my early scoffing. The main object of these blighters is just to wrap up in a perfectly unintelligible and ungrammatical jargon what everybody else can see without bothering about it. They've got to do something to justify their screw and their measly existence, so, like the politicians, they keep up a nice series of sham fights which never end."

"The main point for us," said Martin, "or at any rate for unhappy me, is to find out how to score marks at the game. I can stand fair nonsense, but old man Hegel is a bit thick. On the other hand, pragmatism is just as silly and, what's worse, hated by the gods that be. No marks in that, I'm afraid. We've got to find a middle path."

"There's the Cambridge stuff. Russell and Moore, Business-like and quite unattractive."

"Oh, we can't be Tabs," said Lawrence.

"Well what can we be?"

"Why not bag a bit of James Ward, a bit of Bergson, a bit of Croce, and be Pampsychistic Pluralistic Realistic Modern Young Men?"

"It'll take some doing," said Martin dubiously. "It's no good being sloppy. The youths who think they'll get firsts because they know all about Beauty never get very far. What we need is Philosophy on a Business Basis. Six questions in three hours. Answers to all the problems of the universe guaranteed all correct in thirty minutes."

"Let's draw up a scheme," said Lawrence, "and diddle this damned philosophy."

So they settled down and arranged a system: they made out a plan of what they were going to think about all the possible questions. That is the best of philosophy: examiners may weave words but they have only about a dozen real questions from which to choose.

By the end of the term they had settled the business of wisdom. The schedule was complete and they had a short way of dealing with every problem from the Universality of Nature to the value of the negative and hypothetical judgment. Of course to achieve a "position" they had to sacrifice their consciences at times. It was all quite shameless and quite successful.

"After this," suggested Chard, "you might get made Railway Managers."

"Unless," said Rendell, "we get on to the staff of a certain penny weekly."

In December Martin went down once more to Devonshire. To his surprise he found Freda there. Almost two years had elapsed since he had seen her and he had almost forgotten her existence. But now he remembered vividly and was glad.

She had not altered and he rediscovered her perfect insignificance. How ridiculous it seemed that, while Margaret Berrisford with her health and strength need only work when she chose and as she chose, this wisp of a woman should have been caught up in the machinery of industry: ridiculous that one so fragile should be self-maintenant. He had little chance to talk to her that evening, but on the following afternoon he went with her to the village and along the Tavistock Road. He asked her about herself.

"They soon got rid of me," she answered. "The Trades Union people, I mean. They were naturally sick of my coming late and getting ill and being a general nuisance. Then I got in with some Suffrage Women and they gave me work. One of the new peace-and-goodwill societies. They want to link up the movement and then agitate according to Lor-an-order. They're so peaceful and orderly that, not being engaged in fighting other people like tigers, they just quarrel among themselves like cats. Oh, I do get sick of it."

"What do you do for them? Speak?"

"Oh no. Just the office work. They worked me quite hard and paid me very little, and, when I murmured, they hinted that if I was only loyal to my sex I'd do the whole show for nothing. Never work for lovers of humanity: their love has a background of dividends and West End drawing-rooms. It's none the worse for that, but they expect your love to take the form of more work for less pay. It's not good enough. I'd rather be a genuine wage-slave, thanks very much."

"City office, regular hours, and no nonsense?"

"That's it."

"Have you been ill this winter?"

"Yes. I was rotten for a bit; Margaret has been awfully good to me. When she heard of it she fished me out of my lodgings and made me come here. I was in bed a fortnight and must have been a beastly nuisance. They are splendid, all of them."

Martin agreed.

"And what about you?" she asked.

He explained his hopes and fears.

"You've no business to mope," she told him. "Don't you understand that you're an extremely lucky person? I wish I had your chances."

"I suppose I'm lucky," he said without conviction, trying to feel ashamed of his despair.

"Of course you are. Anyhow it's silly to get despondent. Besides, you're bound to do well."

"Am I? Why?"

"Because I tell you to. Do get firsts and things."

It pleased him to be ordered. He stopped in the muddy lane between two stark hedges that stood naked against the grey December sky.

"Do you care?" he asked.

"Of course I care."

"Why? I mean----" he paused awkwardly.

"Don't ask silly questions," she answered. "It's too cold to stand about."

They walked on.

"It must be pretty sickening for you," he said, "having to go on with this drudgery."

"It is rather rotten. But it can't be helped."

"Can't you get some intelligent kind of work, writing or something?"

"I'm not good enough. Don't make foolish interruptions. It's quite true. And remember I chucked up a teaching post."

"But routine must be worse for a person like you."

"It isn't nice. Really I think the most miserable people of all are those who are just too good for dull work and not good enough for real, original, creative work."

"That's painfully true," he answered. And there, gloomily, they left it.

That night Martin reflected on the events of the day. What surprised him most was the depth and intensity of his feelings about Freda. It wasn't love, it wasn't mere sympathy: was it just sentimentality? It is a habit of the younger generation in these days to turn their sexual emotions into channels of political reasoning: the result is called feminism. Instead of defending hapless women with strong right arm they are eager to defend underpaid women by strike or Act of Parliament. There is little difference, for the reason that Nature cannot be cheated. The pitchfork of modernity will not keep it out, and chivalry, loathed in name, comes bravely back in disguise. In matters of personal relation feminism is dangerous just because it is insidious. Martin had already formed his picture of Freda, overworked and underpaid, homeless and driven from pillar to post. The image was painful, but it pleased him so to suffer.

On Saturday there was to be shooting, the last of the season. People were coming down for the week-end and, doubtless, neighbours would be there. In the home coverts cock pheasants still trumpeted in peace, but their time had come.

Martin had no gun of his own, but sometimes he used a spare weapon of his uncle's. If he had been more efficient he would have liked the actual shooting: he could see the point of it and appreciate the thrill of waiting and achieving. But he had neither the long experience nor the swift eye and he was glad when the gun was needed by someone else. Freda would not see his lack of skill, for Robert had brought a friend from town for whom the gun would be required.

Neither Margaret nor Freda went out in the morning, and Martin also stayed in to work. The guns came back to lunch at half-past twelve, as they had begun to shoot early, for that made a better division of the short daylight. When they went out again Margaret accompanied Robert's friend and Martin took Freda to watch the first drive. The air was soft: otherwise Freda, being still convalescent, would not have been allowed to stand about. But it was considered warm enough for her if she wore a thick motoring coat of Margaret's. Here and there films of mist hung thinly over fields, but in the woods it was clear: the wind spoke gently in the trees or passed in silence down the rides and open glades. Underfoot rustled the drifting, many-tinted leaves and the flight of a startled song-bird made the still air reverberate. The fragrance of distant pines was mingled with the scent of the leaf-mould and sometimes the glint of the birch's silver broke the splendid monotony of giant trunks.

The mystery of Ham and Eggs flashed across Martin's mind. The cult must not exclude woods.

"Aren't these trees wonderful," he said simply.

"I think they're awful, in the proper sense of the word. They make me excited and terrified and happy."

"Awful is the right word. Why did men spoil it?"

"We've managed to spoil most things."

"Will they begin shooting soon?" asked Freda after a pause.

"The beaters will be coming up soon."

"Why do people do it? It seems so unnecessary, so savage, somehow."

"So it is savage. That's just the point. It answers a need, I suppose. You wait till you hear an old cock pheasant come crashing down. There's something very satisfactory about the noise he makes."

"It's too horrible."

"Wait and perhaps you'll find that you have a few primitive instincts left in you. You may be free of them; some people are. It isn't only the passion to kill, though. It's the passion to get over obstacles and do something immensely difficult. That's why walking-up birds is better than driving. When I've got a gun I want to hit an object which is incidentally a bird. It isn't the killing that matters."

"But why don't you shoot at targets or clay pigeons?"

"There you have me. I suppose at that point the savagery comes in. It isn't the same to shoot at disappearing targets, and that's all one can say. Hullo, they're starting, we'd better stop talking."

Far away at the back of the covert arose the noise of cracking twigs and trampled leaves: closer and closer it came until the sounds were distinguishable, now the tapping of a stick on a tree, the beating of a bush, the long-drawn cries of "Mark" and "Forward," the swift whir of wings, and at last the sharp crack of guns. The woods, once awful with still silence, were all sound and movement. The gun, behind whom Martin and Freda were standing, had only one chance and took it--a beautiful right and left. The second bird fell close to them, crashing through branches to a soft bed of leaves. Freda gasped and jumped forward. The drive was over.

"You wanted it to fall?" said Martin, taking up the warm, motionless body.

"I think I did," she confessed. "But only for a moment."

"It seemed right, didn't it?"

"I suppose so. But I couldn't touch it." She paused. "Yes, I was glad when he hit them both," she added. "The strain of waiting and looking and listening seemed to make it all different. And he was so quick. I can't think how he could have got round to the second. It was all wonderful in a horrible, alluring kind of way."

"I was right," said Martin. "There is something in it, you see."

He was glad that she understood: it gave them another point in common. The next beat would take them some way from home, out to the bleaker side of the woods. Martin proposed that they should wait until the guns returned and Freda was willing. They went to the pines where the ground was clean and firm and there on a bank they waited.

And there too Martin became more than ever aware of Freda. She was digging her toes in the soil and at the same time leaning strongly back upon the dry bank. Thus her body was strung and braced tightly so that she seemed to him to be one strong curve against the ground. And yet she was not strained uneasily and her limbs were all fine sweep and rhythm. He drank in the exquisite grace of her fragility. Everything about her was brown, her hair, her eyes, her borrowed coat, her long boots vanishing beneath brown tweed, even the feather in her adorable hat. Against the brown couch of the bank the various tints joined in a sombre harmony.

"You mustn't stare," she said suddenly. "It's rude."

"How can I help it?" he answered.

"Easily. I'm not a country girl and I'm not at all attractive in this get-up. I hate it. Great, clumsy boots!"

"You mustn't say that. You're just perfect like this. It seems so rotten that you should be dragged away from it all and made to do the world's drudgery and not see these places. You do fit into them, whatever you may say."

She turned and looked right into his eyes. "Dear boy," she said, "you mustn't take me too seriously. I'm quite happy. You mustn't worry about me."

"I can't help it," he broke out. "It's in me to feel for you, to hate the waste of you, to want you happier and stronger and getting more out of things and more out of the things you do get." He told her of his hopes and fears and how she had affected them and drawn him out of them. She had taught him not to grumble about an excellent fortune. And he began to tell her of her own perfection, but she stopped him.

"It's very, very nice of you to care about what becomes of me," she said. "I think you exaggerate my wasted capacities: in fact I know you do. But whether or not you're right about me, I know I'm right about you."

"And what about me?"

"That you aren't in love with me at all. You're rather lonely and afraid of the future and perhaps, well, sentimental. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It shows that you're generous, because you're trying to get rid of your own despair by trying to share mine, which doesn't exist as a matter of fact. You're a little in love with love and very young and very nice. And now I'm getting cold so please take me home and be quite honest with yourself."

As he walked back with her he said very little. Against his conscience he was angry, angry at what he knew was his own humiliation. She had been so damnably maternal and--worse still--so damnably right.

On Monday she went back to town; she had forbidden him to renew the subject and they had talked as they originally talked, with argument, like undergraduates. But for Martin such conversation had lost its charm and he knew such relations could not last. Still he wanted her to be a martyr dragged to the altar of commercialism and she had refused to think of martyrdom. Her happiness galled him, as he confessed to himself with shame. Yet less than ever was he able to forget her.

So Freda went. And Martin remained to work feebly and to write long letters and to sit fidgeting until the second post had come in and he knew that to-day at any rate she hadn't answered.

But sometimes she did answer, shortly indeed but kindly; and he was happy then.

In January he went back to Oxford and the further settling of philosophy on a business basis. Amid all the energies and diversions of terms the memory of Freda did not vanish nor even fade. Hitherto the postman had been neglected in Martin's survey of the passers-by, but now he was more important than any one even of the other sex. Martin had never before noticed how many posts there were in a day, but now he knew all about it.

VII

On an evening of early June Martin, Rendell and Lawrence punted up a backwater of the Thames. It was cool on the water's surface and a lingering remnant of breeze stole across the silent meadows and played gently with the willows. They had escaped from Oxford and the gas-works, from gramophones and the university boathouse. It was a special haunt of their own to which they had come, one of Hinksey's unpathed waters, very narrow and remote. At length they made fast to a stump of wood and smoked in peace.

It was all over. They had lived through a week of sweltering agony, of darting to the Schools in cap and gown and stuffy clothes, of darting out again to see how many words they had got wrong in their translation. Such is the dignity of Greats. Abiding by their plans, they had worked their philosophy according to schedule and answered their questions on grimly practical lines. They hadn't made bold to know about Beauty.

"Well," said Rendell, "that's the end of that."

"What?" yawned Martin. He was tired alike by his exertions and recent celebration of the end.

"Of everything."

"Edified?"

"I think so. It's been rather majestic somehow. To have to know about everything and keep a theory about every branch of thought and action. One doesn't do it, but it's rather good to think one is supposed to do it."

"Depressing enough before the event," Martin remembered nights of wild battling with insoluble problems and days when he had gazed in despair at papers recently set and realised his complete incapacity to inform the examiners about modality or the legal aspects of the Caesar-Pompey quarrel.

"You used to get jolly black?" said Lawrence, remembering silences and outbursts or the lonely walks that Martin sometimes took.

"It's all very well for you," retorted Martin. "You may have to look forward to dull sort of work, but you're secure enough. I'm just beginning this business of getting a job and it's poor fun. I suppose it means India."

"You'll get a decent screw," said Rendell by way of comfort.

"And come back without a liver or an idea."

"Except about curry and cigars."

"I can't imagine our gloomy Martin as a sun-dried bureaucrat," Lawrence remarked. "But I suppose he'll have punkahs and khitmutgars and syces and be the devil of a chap. I daresay it's all right when you're there."

"There are few people who loathe the British Empire more cordially than I do," said Martin. "But there seems to be no way of keeping clear of it. Anyway I've quite settled not to starve as a journalist. Sooner the White Man's Burden than that."

"Anyhow," said Rendell, still eager to comfort, "we don't know anything about the Burden, do we? There may be something in it."

"Well, one thing is quite plain," asserted Martin, "there's no charity going as far as I am concerned. If I have to go and live in a dirty hot hole I go there because I can't get a decent living otherwise. I go on the make and I'll resign as soon as I can get the thousand that they're always chattering about. None of your Burden for me."

"To gather from what one sees," said Lawrence, "the Burden doesn't weigh very heavily on the shoulders of the big pots. They seem to do themselves pretty well."

"Of course they do. That's what they go for. How many varsity men would go abroad if they could live in comfort and get the same wage at home? Not ten per cent. And who can blame them? India pays, and it pays for hard, dangerous, useful work. I don't mind men going for the pay, but I do mind journalists blithering about their self-devotion in taking up the noble load."

"All the same," said Rendell cheerily, "you've quite a good chance for the Home."

"I wish the deuce I had," sighed Martin. "If I'd worked all the time I might have done it. But it's too late now. I don't really know anything and will be lucky to get India. Come on, let's move a bit."

During the next few days Martin managed to forget the looming menace of the East. The heat remained and they lived on the river, bathing and sleeping and feeding in turn. And then here were a couple of farewell dinners. The champagne flowed and Holywell was full of rushing people and strange noises. The passing of Lawrence was worthy of his whole career and on his last night a stalwart cortege bore him like a warrior to his rest.

After the end of term Martin stayed up to work. July was a month of lonely misery, of dust and bad tennis and the cramming of English Literature. At last the time for his Greats viva came and he walked down to the Schools with Lawrence, there to be asked by a nervous little man whether he thought things or thought thoughts. He at once informed the nervous little man that this was an idiotic question and that Descartes ... his knowledge of Descartes was overwhelming. Lawrence was dealt with by a truculent, red-faced man who asked him minute questions about the wanderings of the Phocaeans. Lawrence just smiled wisely and was sent away. Rendell's turn came later. He was asked about the foundations of morality and maintained that while Kant was very wise and venerable he was also very wrong. But he remained respectful of Kant. One can only be offensive to J. S. Mill in Oxford nowadays, but about him one can say anything.

Once more Rendell took a first, Martin a second, and Lawrence a third. It was the history that kept them apart. Their philosophy had been uniformly good; Mr Cuggy was filled with pride and wrote to congratulate them all: whereat they wondered what would have happened if they had continued to cling to that philosophic rock, the Absolute. Yet it was nice of him to write. That was the worst of Cuggy: you couldn't dislike him.

From an Oxford of glaring streets and searching, irresistible dust Martin went up to London to seek his fortune at Burlington House. Later he remembered that August as a month of blazing heat and tired hands and aching head. He remembered a gloomy place shaped like a theatre where morose men asked him if he had a buff book and tore his papers from under his pen when time was up. There were days of solid labour and nights of anxiety spent with the text-books for to-morrow's exams: and there were unforgettable crowds of candidates sitting upon the steps before each paper and going over their notes for a last time with feverish futility. He remembered hating the people from Wren's as he had hated the Grammar School boys in his scholarship exams, jealously loathing and dreading their preparedness and notes and iron methods. He remembered the filthy temper he was in and his contempt for the scrubby little man who sat next to him and muttered to himself incessantly. Martin had crammed Blankney's notes on the Attic constitution because he had heard a rumour that Blankney was examining, and he remembered a ceaseless effort to display knowledge which he did not possess and to scrape up marks, marks, marks....

But the exams brought him also to Freda.

He found her pale and tired and more fragile than ever: he found her working from ten to six and idling despondently in the evenings. Quite obviously she was not the woman he had known in Devonshire.

Then she was strong and at her ease, full of mysterious confidence, rejoicing in life and her ability to cope with it. He had been to her merely an undergraduate, nicely foolish, he had amused her and she had read his letters, even answered them. He had chattered of affection and she had laughed him gently to scorn.

Now he came to her as a man in a world where men were scarce and men were needed. But it was Freda who had changed, not Martin. The transformation of the boy into the man was due to the heat of summer and the click of typewriters. To one deafened with the city's roar Martin brought memories of perfect woods and lonely pines that stood out against emptiness, starkly black. They used to go out together in the evenings, to Richmond, to Putney Heath, to Hampstead. They went where the others went because they were as the others, hard-worked, tired-out, desperately needing one another. There was no glory of passion in their evenings. Street lamps did not flame as flowers of the East, trees did not tower like giants luring them with soft voices, water was still water. Earth and sky had not altered for them: it had not altered for the others who wandered in the same places.

One Monday at half-past five Martin hurried out of Burlington House after his second paper in English Literature. Never in his life had he written more in six hours: he had drained his soul of platitude and pretence, discreetly praising and blaming men whom he had never read, never, thank God, would read, all the remoter 'C's,' Cowley, Cowper, Crabbe.

His nerves were all frayed. He hated the statues of Liebnitz and Locke and Plato ... what had Platonism to do with that sordid spot? He hated the Burlington Arcade with its lingering odour of stale scent: a woman smiled at him horribly and he hated her. He hated Piccadilly because it was dusty and deserted, and he hated the tea he drank because it was too hot and there were flies on the table. He hated himself for not remembering a quotation. How plain it all seemed now, and yet he had missed it.

He met Freda at half-past six at Waterloo and they went down to Thames Ditton. The river was crowded with punts and canoes and boats of every kind, but they joined the press. As darkness fell lights began to glitter like jewels across the water. Here and there a Chinese lantern swung on a prow, the glowing end of a cigarette flickered and was gone. Ripples of laughter floated from a nook where people supped, the popping of a cork, the tinkling of distant music. But if there was not solitude or silence, there was at least a breeze that shook the parched leaves and whispered in bough and rush. Martin found a vacant berth deeply curtained with bushes and low-hanging trees and there they made fast the punt and lingered.

They talked a little of his exam and of his prospects. And then they talked of her prospects.

"You're too fine for it," he said suddenly. It was what he had said so often before, but now she was no longer maternal or cheerily scornful of his protests. She yielded alike to his thought and to his touch. Never had she so yielded before. For Martin the world became a great, black silence: the only thing he knew was the closeness of her. That she trusted him, and wanted him was joy: that she was there, beside him, his, was magic. Because she for the first time yielded, he for the first time forgot. Never before had he quite escaped from himself, from considering the impression that he was likely to be making, from worrying fears and self-conscious timidity. Now he was free. He was aware only of the intangible fragrance of her hair, the warmth and movement of her body, the curve and rhythm of her limbs, the instant claim of her fragility. Everything became different.

At the end of the month Freda had a fortnight's holiday and went to an aunt in Yorkshire. Martin had arranged to meet Lawrence and Rendell at Seatoller in the Lakes. He went in a bitter mood, hungry for Freda, physically stale, and hopeless. But the traditional rain never came and soon they knew every crag of Honister and Grey Knotts, of Glaramara, of The Gables and the Scawfells, of the Langdale Pikes. The challenge of wind and weather on the hills and the flaming splendour of Borrowdale in autumn drove apprehension and despair from his soul. He learned that in some places a man cannot be morbid.

On an evening of late September they were playing three-handed auction. A telegram arrived from Devonshire. The commissioners had sent the result to his home address, it seemed.

Martin put down his hand and tore open the envelope. He had passed fifty-first on the list.

"Looks like India," he said quietly.

Neither Rendell nor Lawrence knew what to say. He had wanted the Home service, they knew, and fifty-first would not get that for him. They muttered congratulations self-consciously.

Martin took up his hand once more. It was solidly black.

"Five hearts?" he said. "Five royals."

The opposition collapsed and he made his tricks.

They played late, thinking only of the cards. Martin's career was settled, his life mapped out, his whole future determined by that message, and they talked of rubbers and pence. If he had miraculously passed in first or failed altogether they would have discussed it, but, because he had achieved the expected mediocrity, by tacit convention they were silent. The cards were really more important.

VIII

As Martin lay in bed that night it occurred to him with all the violence of a real discovery that he was, under certain conditions, the destined ruler and administrator of a nation far vaster and more ancient than his own, a nation of whose religion, ideals and practical needs he knew nothing whatever. He was equally ignorant of its population, products and methods of life, though of course he had a year in which to learn about these things. Incredible that he, Martin, twenty-two, boyish and superficial, should be a guardian of this people, a pro-consul in the making! And perhaps more strange was his apathy. In addition to his complete ignorance about India he cared nothing for the place, for how can a man, temperamentally inclined to Nationalism rather than to Imperialism, care for a nation which he only knows by a red blob on the map or by finding its stamps in collections restricted to the British Empire. India meant nothing to Martin. He had read Kipling, and certainly no tales of his had, despite the magic of their narrative, made him responsive to the call of the East. He still took it for granted that British rulers there would be as British rulers elsewhere, bigoted, snobbish, and unexpectedly effectual: corrupt, perhaps, fooling the poor and honouring the rich, bungling and lying and making money. That, he felt, was the attitude of the men he met, exaggerated, no doubt, but based on fact. But as he lay gazing at the cracks in the old ceiling above him his thoughts went back to the sheer bulk and beauty of The Gable, to Holywell at dusk, to the woods around The Steading and the cult of his uncle's deity. About the Oriental world he neither knew nor cared. He couldn't believe in it, so remote and unimportant it still seemed.

At Oxford during his Indian year he found that the future civilians took little interest in the place to which they were going. They wanted the pay and perhaps, though not admittedly, the possibility of a knighthood and a row of letters after their names. Certainly no one was concerned about the White Man's Burden. Naturally he did not blame these people: like himself, they were only seeking for a reasonable livelihood. But he was sickened by the cant he discovered in speeches and papers, the froth about self-sacrifice and noble callings: the work might, he acknowledged, be good and useful, it might promote the welfare of mankind and bring the peace of Caesar to a troubled world, but no one was giving anything away in going to do it.

And he was lonely now. He had rooms in narrow Ship Street, and there he spent solitary days and nights craving the society of the Push: sometimes one of them would come down for a week-end, but otherwise there was scarcely anyone to whom he could talk. The winter crept on dismally, and Martin studied Bengali or rode on horseback over Shotover and Port meadow. But there was something wrong about Oxford: he felt old and alien and the college, when he entered it, seemed to be bubbling over with freshmen, all amazingly young and innocent and happy. He was vaguely jealous of them, uncharitably hostile. Were they not talking as he had talked, idling as he had idled? One friend he had, a poet in his third year, discreet and practical. From time to time Martin dined with him and forgot about India.

Most of all Freda mattered. Now that he was alone and despondent, he relied on her letters and his memories and thoughts of her to make life easier, even more tolerable. He retraced the whole course of their friendship, trying to reshape their relations. He remembered her first as an arguer, a friend to whom he had talked and talked: and then as a martyr, the sufferer for whom he had felt with a genuine, unstinting pity. And at last ... well, at last as a woman, as a person who had the power of making life different, of turning London into an enchanted fairyland and India into a vision of cool beauty, a person of infinite tenderness and understanding, a person whose presence and sympathy could stop things hurting. What rendered him most happy was his ability to meet her on equal terms. Hitherto she had been self-supporting, he a pampered undergraduate. He had had prospects but no certainty, and he had shrunk, even on that summer night upon the river, from saying things that he wanted to say, because he felt that it wasn't fair. One couldn't honourably say these things until one was 'a made man': one couldn't decently make women expect things unless you had some reasonable basis for hopes. With girls like May Williams it didn't matter what one said, because he had been just a 'fellow,' she just a 'girl.' Such affairs had their agreeable conventions. But with Freda it had been different, because there was no such tacit agreement: she might, she would expect him to take her out of her toil and weariness. And now he was free to say and do as it pleased him. He was 'made' and had position, for only by great folly and stupidity could he lose his opportunity.

At the end of term he went up to London. He told the Berrisfords that he had to go to a riding test at Woolwich and wanted to see the varsity rugger match. It is odd that a young man should be instinctively ashamed of love: he will tell his companions of his bodily desires gladly and even proudly, but he will hesitate before he confesses a craving for sympathy. He did ride, it is true, and he went to Queen's Club, where he caught an occasional glimpse of Cambridge three-quarters running abominably fast. It was one of the 'slump' years in Oxford football, the reaction after the reign of the immortals at Iffley Road, when the whole city and university trooped down to watch six elusive Internationals playing with the opposition's defence. Now Cambridge was doing the same and avenging those past defeats. Humiliating to watch those Tabs waving hats and yelling and ultimately carrying their captain from the field of glory! Comforting to reflect that when Oxford won they won soberly and with restraint, as though victory were for them the normal and accustomed thing! Only Tabs would behave like that. With such thoughts he tried to soothe his anger and disgust.

In the evening, because Freda had a headache, Martin dined with Lawrence and became expensively drunk: later he had memories of a crowded music hall, of distant singers and dancers flitting incessantly before white scenery: they worried him and he shouted at them to go away, but seemingly they refused. There were recollections of drinks with an old Elfreyan and the toasting of the school, of an elaborate conversation in French with a woman who only spoke Cockney, of a speech to the Indian nation begun on the crowded promenade and ended magnificently from the fountain at Piccadilly Circus. Probably there was supper somewhere and more noise and then he must have walked miles, for suddenly he became sober and found himself far down the Fulham Road. He picked up a taxi, and managed to get into bed more or less successfully about half-past three.

Freda, too, had spent a dull autumn. She had spoken the truth when she said that she was just too good for dull toil and not good enough for real work. The system was gradually devouring her and she had long ago reached the stage at which the one thing in life that matters is six o'clock, the hour of release from the drudgery and sordid gloom of the office. She lived for her leisure and on her leisure she had nothing to spend. There were friends whom she saw at intervals, but their intimacy had limitations and was only close enough to drive home the need for real companionship.

In one matter she had been fortunate. She had found a cheap room at the top of an old house in Bloomsbury and was thus spared the necessity of going to one of those gloomy mansions for working women. It was a small room, high up and chilly: but it was hers, and even the gas-fire could not rob it of real comfort.

Martin had not meant to linger in London as he had work to do. But he soon realised the impossibility of going away. Not only did he need Freda, but she too needed him. There was no advantage in denying the mutual emptiness and mutual satisfaction. So he stayed, and in the mornings and afternoons he read his Indian law and history, or wandered about London, loitering in picture galleries or threading the ways of Bloomsbury with many a passing glance at the house where Freda slept. Squarely and simply it stood, with no flaunting brick-work or Victorian embellishment: its colour was the nameless colour that a London house should have, the sombre blending of grey and red and deepest brown. On one side was a mean street, one of those sad thoroughfares which Chance has brought to destitution: the houses were good and strong, but each contained a score of people and belched out numberless squalid children to play and quarrel in the teeming gutters. On the other side a wide street ran straight up to a square garden and the two lines of houses converged and faded away in a haze of smoke and branches. In the afternoons, when Martin walked there, sunset would stain the gentle greyness with pink or, in angrier mood, would stab dark clouds and leave great rifts of red. It was all so strong and quiet and dignified, seeming actually to exhale the finest quality of London. The street, at any rate, was worthy of her.

When the long day's wait was over he would have Freda to himself. Then London became beautiful in every line and form and colour. The lamps were flaming jewels and the rain-soaked, glittering streets were bands of silver: the murkiest lane threw off its squalor, and the night, with its great glooms and shadows, its sudden bursts of iridescence and its mystery of swiftly moving figures, made him think of Eastern jungles, splashed with fierce colours, cavernous with infinite shade. Then a woman, rouged and powdered and swathed in tawny fur, would sweep majestically past: she was the tiger who burned brightly. Formerly he hated these women, because they charmed him, challenged and held his gaze, hated them too because they brought home to him the fact that he had not the courage of his desires. But now he need not care. That was the great joy of it.

So in this enchanted forest of London they walked and drove, feasted and saw the play: not one play, but all the plays. And after the play they feasted again and were contented. It was a forest that tended to swallow gold rather than yield it, and Martin had to borrow on the security of his position as a probationer in the Indian Civil Service. But there was pleasure in the signing of the bond.

Sometimes they would sit in Martin's hotel, which had a large, deserted lounge with sensible corners and crannies for conversation. Sometimes he would go back with Freda to her room in Bloomsbury and wait until she turned him out.

"I won't have you here after eleven," she told him and quoted from _The Great Adventure_ on reputations, the coddling and neglect of them.

"But if you have me at all----" he protested.

"I'm English and I believe in compromise," she answered.

So he stayed till eleven. It was a neat place and orderly with naked walls: he loved it as he loved its owner. When the washstand and bed had been hidden behind their curtain, the stray shoes kicked beneath the wardrobe, and the arm-chair drawn up to the gas-fire, there seemed to be nothing mean or sordid in the room despite the lack of space and the roof corner that jutted rudely in. What did it matter now if the window looked on to a back yard and a world of chimneys?

"Why are you so wonderfully tidy?" Martin asked.

"Don't you associate tidiness with me?"

"No, you're too wild. Tidinesss is a petty virtue."

"Well I confess it hasn't anything to do with my general character. I hope I'm not petty anyhow. It's sternly practical tidiness. I used to be lazy and find my stockings muddled up with the spoons, but it soon sickened me and now I have come to prefer the fag of clearing up to the discomfort of a muddle. Besides, if I'm going to have you here it oughtn't to be a beddy 'bed-sit,' but a sitty 'bed-sit.'"

"Your precious reputation," he laughed.

On another night she asked him what the Berrisfords thought about his absence from home.

"I don't know and I don't think I care!" he answered.

"Why? They must be interested in you, and you're very fond of them."

"I dare say, but I can't think of them now." He drew her to him. "Freda, I'm too happy to care about them. I just can't imagine that the world has any other place but London, or any other people but you and me. Nothing else is real; nothing counts, not India or Oxford or anything."

She yielded herself to him, but suddenly drew back.

"You mustn't go and muddle things," she said conscientiously. "Supposing you fail next September, what would I feel like?"

"I won't fail next September," he answered defiantly.

"I'm glad you said that. You must be confident, much, much more confident. I'm sure you would have been happier if you had never been afraid of things."

Ecstasy to know her gladness, to see her quick smile of confidence because he was confident! How could he have feared and doubted? He could not let her draw away: his arms must have her.

"I'm never going to be afraid again," he said. "I know what was wrong now."

"Well?"

"I didn't care about anything. I didn't know what I wanted, while everything lay in front of me. I didn't feel, though I had all the world to feel about. I didn't love, though I had all the world to love. I just drifted. Now I have what I want."

She was silent. Across the tumult of his soul stole things of the senses, the pulsing of her blood, the scent of that brown witchery of hair, the touch of her tired hand, the vision of a glistening bow of silk on a poised foot: above all, the divine sense of his own grasping possession, her clinging weakness.

"I know now what I want," he went on rapidly. "I want the same thing to go on that has just begun, the thing that has brushed all the hardness and ugliness out of the world and made the future easy. You've done all that. I want you."

He crushed her to him roughly, almost hurting her: and he knew by her stillness that it pleased her so to be hurt.

"You're not going back now," he whispered fiercely. "You're not going to knock to pieces the thing you've built. India is a cool heaven now; don't make it a fiery hell. Work is all doing and creating. Don't make it all drudgery. Oh, I'm selfish. You're so perfect, and I can only talk of my own work, my own troubles. Freda, I'm sorry. I----"

Still she was silent.

"Oh, say something," he begged. "Forgive me for being selfish."

"There's nothing to forgive."

"Then say--you've said you cared for me--say you love me."

In a moment he had forgotten his remorse and again was claiming, insisting. And she, knowing that love can be, even must be, selfish and imperious, was glad that he should claim her and obeyed his command.

Of course Martin stayed in London over Christmas and into the New Year, living with a fullness he had never known, seeing the purpose and fineness of things which he had despised and neglected. How strange it was that all the world should be changed by that one weak figure, seemingly so ineffectual! how strange that one mortal should carry for another the keys of heaven! How trivial seemed all his philosophy with its objectivity of this and that when he discovered how subjective all his outlook was, how the presence or the absence of a loved one could make or mar the colour-medley of a sunset or the beauty of a tree against the sky.

One thing was certain: he gloried in possession. All his loneliness was forgotten now and, as he paced the streets, he could look upon the other couples without the pang of jealousy that once had stung him. There would be no more glances thrown furtively at passing women, no turning of an eager eye for bygone faces, no more emptiness and yearning. Deep magic lay in the thought that Freda, with her smile, and her quick mind, and her infinite grace of movement, was his to possess, to own. He was not ashamed to glory in these proprietary relations nor was she ashamed to accept them. She even welcomed them, yielding to Martin with an utter abandonment of self. She wanted only to be his, to be his loved possession, to help him and to share humbly in his triumphs and successes.

One night indeed he repented, not of his love, but of his manner of love. He felt the indignity of ownership.

They had gone, in a fit of intellectual enthusiasm, to see a play called _Drift_. At a small outlying theatre two young men of ideas were completing the noble task of self-imposed bankruptcy by giving the British public a season of "good drama." And the public naturally helped on the work by the easy method of staying away. The house was barely half full when, after the hammerings customary in these circles, the curtain went up.

_Drift_, a play in four acts by Villiers Wentworth, turned out to be a fair specimen of that now antiquated genre, The New Drama. It had the monosyllabic title, the insistent realism, the contempt for form and dramatic convention, the arid conversation with lapses of brilliance, the admirable acting, and, above all, the Great Gloom. It was naturally a play with a point, showing, justly and forcibly, the hopeless inadequacy of modern life to provide the average man and woman with anything like a Unity of Interest. The characters drifted from home which they dreaded to work which they loathed and in the evening they made the return journey. Nothing held their lives together, nothing remained as a permanent, unifying interest. There was love, but, as Mr Villiers Wentworth pointed out, the young man is barred socially and economically from indulging in anything but hole-and-corner affairs just when he most needs real sympathy.

"Not a good play," said Martin as they walked out into the flaring streets and joined the joyous welter of confusion at Piccadilly. "The man's got no sense of humour and he thinks that everyone is miserable who hasn't got two hundred a year. The poor are just as happy as the rich. Of course they oughtn't to be, but they are."

"But there was a point," said Freda, "about unity of interest. It may be obvious, but it's true. Didn't you drift? Haven't I drifted?"

They turned into a restaurant.

As they supped they forgot about the play. But later Martin's mind returned to the subject.

"Come back," said Freda suddenly. "Penny."

"Hand over," he answered, smiling as he started.

"Well, what is it?"

"You, of course."

"I'm sorry for that. You looked so sad."

"I'm feeling ashamed," he confessed.

"What of?"

"Of the way I've thought of you. I've been so selfish. I only cared for my own escape from drifting. It's been my work, my life, my love. I have been thinking of you as the person who would make my life perfect. It's been all me, me, me. When we first met I thought of you and your work. Now it's only me and my work."

"That's as it should be."

"No, no, it isn't. A year ago I should have hated myself for thinking like this."

"Perhaps you have learned as well as lived."

"I've been a brute and there's an end of it." He was deriving a secret pleasure from his self-depreciation. There was bliss in humiliating himself before her, in grovelling at the feet of her whom he adored. If he could not get the conventional thrill from the confession of past affairs and failings, he would achieve the ecstasy of self-torture by laying bare a loftier mistake.

But she laughed at him. "Silly Billy," she said. "Pay the waiter and I'll tell you."

She told him as they drove back together in their taxi.

"After all," she began, "compare my work with yours. Mine is drudgery. Yours is big and important. It doesn't matter what becomes of mine, but it matters a lot what becomes of yours, I hate mine and I love yours. I want to give myself up to yours, to make it easier and better. Can't you see, Martin dear, that isn't selfishness or unselfishness. Those words don't count in such a case. If we love, then I'm you and you're me, and one person can't give to himself or take away from himself surely."

"It sounds so specious," he said. "And yet I still feel greedy, as though I were denying your right to be yourself."

"I don't want to be myself. I want to be different. I'm as greedy as you are and more so, only differently. As it is, the word isn't real. We're both giving and both taking and there's an end of it."

He was silent for a moment. "It's no use my trying to say how perfect you are," he said at last.

"Dear, delightful, serious, conscience-stricken gloomkins," she laughed at him. "What does all this matter ... how we share things, I mean? The only real thing is enthusiasm, wanting and feeling and loving. You were at a loose end until you began to feel; you couldn't work, you couldn't do anything. Nor could I. And now work is all changed and seems better and easier. The office is a palace for me, India a pleasure garden for you. Do stop worrying and be sensible."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'll try and be good. You're always right. This taxi goes far too fast. We're in your street."

"Bother," she said.

"Let's tell him to drive on somewhere else and come back in another one."

"No. You've spent far too much and we've done that often enough. I'm going to be a good girl to-night."

"Tyrant."

"Wastrel."

"He's stopping. One more kiss."

Through streets that more than ever resembled enchanted pathways in a forest of shadow and silver, Martin went back exulting to his hotel.

IX

It was the second week in January when Martin went down to The Steading: he merely stayed to collect books and clothes and returned at once to London. While he was there he told his uncle and aunt that he was engaged to be married.

That night John Berrisford discussed the matter with his wife. "Well," he began, "what about our young Martin?"

"I suppose it's all right," said Mrs Berrisford quietly. "He's very young, but that seems to be the fashion nowadays."

"Yes, that doesn't matter. Long engagements are tragic, unhealthy things, but they'll be apart and he ought to be able to marry almost at once. Quite a lot of civilians do."

"And she's quite a nice girl."

John Berrisford gave the slight wriggle of the shoulders for which we have only the excessive word "shrug."

"Don't you approve?" added his wife.

"Yes and no. On the whole, no." He kicked at the fire testily. "She's quite a nice girl and clever and reasonable beyond the average. If Martin were going to hang about in town, well and good. But really is she the wife of an Indian Civilian?"

"But, John, surely! You with your ideas about freedom! You don't believe in the marriage of convenience, I know. Isn't Martin to have his choice?"

"Of course he shall have every choice. I'm not one to bluster or give orders or interfere. He's going to marry the girl, not I. I know that. But I'd like him to think a little first. Do consider the facts. Freda is clever and quick. Perhaps she really cares for Martin, perhaps she's only sick to death of the hellish existence decreed by modern civilisation for penniless orphans of the female sex. But she has lived in a groove, she has never met people--not the kind of people she'd run up against in India. She doesn't like games or society. She likes talking and arguing and lying in bed. She'd hate the Anglo-Indian just as she hates any kind of pomp and circumstance. She hasn't the vaguest notion as to what they'll expect of her. Worse still, she hasn't even health. She would be invalided home in a year and Martin with a salary of three or perhaps four hundred a year would have to support a wife whom he only saw on leave. You've got to consider his career and his general happiness. There is no reason why he shouldn't find a woman who understands the kind of life and behaviour, a woman who could fit in, and yet has brains and charm enough for an intelligent person."

"Mary Brodrick?" suggested Mrs Berrisford. "The kind of girl who sings about her caravan resting after dinner?"

"We needn't go as far as that. Something between the two."

"You're a heartless old schemer, John. We must respect his choice."

"Absolutely. But I'm fairly confident about the result. Anyhow there is plenty of time and it's Martin's first affair."

"Are you sure?"

"I have watched the signs of times. This is the first time he has taken a month to see the varsity match."

"But he is stubborn when he has once settled on a thing. He doesn't decide quickly, I know, but when he has he is firm."

"We'll see. As it is, I suppose you must have her down for Easter. I got her her present job and I know her employers well. I can easily get them to allow her a holiday then. And when we've got them, we must leave them very much alone."

"But surely----"

"My dear, it's the only hope. Keep them apart, hint at the unsuitability of marriage, and they'll elope on nothing in a fortnight's time. That's quite certain. My idea is to bang them together fairly hard. I don't want it to hurt, but I do want them to have a clear idea as to what they are both made of."

"Do you think it's quite fair?"

"Isn't it what they would want themselves? It's the only possible thing we can do. And also," he added quietly, "it will give a certain interest to next Easter."

But there was no need to beg a holiday for Freda. In February, when the winds came driving up the Channel and brought to England a month-long burden of rain and sleet, her health gave way again and she was warned that she was not strong enough for the wear and tear of an office life. For most people it is true that colds are not liable to the laws of cause and effect: they happen or they don't and to be soaked to the skin is no more fatal than to bask in the sun. But for Freda to arrive at the office with feet wet and cold meant certain visitation. And by six o'clock she was always worn out. Now she would have to rely on an uncle and aunt. The uncle had money and had offered already to release Freda from the misery of work, but she had refused, so intolerable had seemed his great Victorian mansion on Sheffield's edge. She had wanted, in her youthful courage, to work and to be free. But now there was no use in fighting and she yielded partly from a consideration of hard fact, partly because her uncle had retired from his business and was coming to London. Idleness in town with an allowance! By privation she had been taught the meaning and the value of both. So it was as a woman of moderate means and unlimited leisure that Freda came to The Steading for Easter.

Martin came from Oxford jaded and tired out. He had had to work hard in order to make up for a vacation of complete indolence. The wet February had brought floods and stinted exercise and despondency: it had been tedious work, toiling over a new language in those lonely Ship Street rooms. His soul hungered for sympathy, his body for the infinite swell and splendour of the moor and for the cold sting of the winds that whirled across it like the thongs of a lash.

For a week he stayed about the house and strolled in the near woods with Freda, whose recent illness had left her far too weak for real walking. She hadn't the strength nor could she risk a strain or chill. So Martin lingered with her all day, while they built fantastic castles of hopes and visions. Then the inactivity grew intolerable to his body, tore at his nerves, and made him ravenous for the moor and the golf-links. Freda despised golf and could not understand how any sane person could be bothered with it. They squabbled about it gently, never suspecting that it might come to matter.

Fate fought against Freda.

Martin, whenever during these days he handled a club, found that he could do nothing wrong: he was "on his game." And the Cartmells came down for the Easter recess. Godfrey had captured the seat two years ago and had settled down comfortably on a back bench from which his wife intended to oust him. But the back-bencher may live strenuous nights and days: he too was tired and wanted air and exercise. And so in the afternoons Martin was called upon as much by civility as by the craving of his heart to motor with them to the golf-course and join in a foursome. Desperate warfare took place in which Martin was Viola's, Godfrey Margaret Berrisford's ally. And Martin was wonderful. His drives flew far and low, straight for the flag or the direction post: no ugly jarring told him of the topped iron-shot: his short putts ran straight into the middle of the hole. He dug his partner's foozled drives out of heather and hedge and laid her wild approaches dead with a niblick. Up on that lonely course with only the wind and the white clouds for neighbours, with no one to keep them back or hurry them on, with turf so springy that a foot could never tire, so spongy-soft that a brassie might be lightly taken and effectively wielded, with the exquisite strain of even conflict, with matches taken to the last green and won, perhaps by Martin's inimitable 'run-up'--yes, it was golf.

The joy of it was almost insupportable. Martin began to live for those afternoons; yet, if he had been off his game, had sliced with his driver and topped with his irons, as was indeed his wont, the golf-club would have lost its appeal: there is little pleasure in playing golf badly, but there is all the world in playing above your form.

Once Freda came up to watch them and walk as far as she could. But she was plainly bored, pleaded fatigue, and went back to the little club-house where she sat reading. To Martin, in his present mood of triumphant exultation, it seemed incredible that anyone could fail to see the point of it.

He tried to convince her. "Perhaps you can't imagine the thrill that conies from a really true hit: really it's one of the few good things in the world. The ball goes off clean and sweet and leaves you with a faint tingling that lets you know you've done the trick. And then you climb a ridge and there's the ball white and glistening on the green. That means you've done exactly what you set out to do and that you've got a long putt to beat Bogey. And if you ram it in!"

"Baby!" she said, laughing. "Did 'ums like 'ums bouncey ball."

At first he laughed too and told himself that naturally they couldn't share all the same tastes. In the morning and evening he stayed with her, neglecting his work. But gradually he came to feel that there was something more than jocosity in her denunciation of the bouncey ball.

Soon after Easter one of Freda's colds kept her in bed for breakfast. It was the Cartmells' last day but one and everything pointed to a final test of strength. They went over in the morning and stayed to lunch at the club-house. There were two great matches, of which each side gained one. Martin had not yet lost his skill: he had dreaded the day of torture when he would go "right off."

"Let's have another nine holes," said Viola Cartmell as they took an early tea. "We aren't keeping Martin from his duty. And it's our last chance and such an evening."

They agreed to play and nerved themselves for faultless execution.

An hour later Martin lay upon the steep bank at the edge of the ninth green. Now he had grasped most certainly, what Freda would never grasp, the mystery of Ham and Eggs. In the fine light of sunset the moor seemed to tower inimitably above them, crowned with its eternal tors, clear-cut as by a razor's edge against the vast blue emptiness behind. The April breeze was whispering in the grass and timid larks soared and plunged and hung singing in the void. Before him was the smooth-shaven green, true as a billiard cloth but humped with testing undulations. And there were the three other players awaiting with tense anxiety the future of the match. Godfrey was kneeling to take the line of his putt: the ball would end its journey along the side of a veritable mountain, a glorious stroke to achieve! Farther back were Margaret and Viola. Suddenly the breeze caught them, snatched at a stray wisp of hair, played with their skirts, and gave a last caress to cheeks already kissed to flame. There were grace and strength knit perfectly: to Martin they seemed, after the slight form of Freda, tremendous. Yet why shouldn't women be strong? He wanted them to be strong, to walk with him, to fear neither wind nor weather. And Freda...

His thoughts returned swiftly to the match. Godfrey was on the point of playing: he had this, a ten footer, to halve the hole and the match. There was silence and then the gentle tap of the club on a rubber-cored ball. One gazed, one shouted. The ball had lipped the hole and swung out to the left.

In the car they fought the whole match over again.

"If only I hadn't given you the sixteenth this morning----"

"No, it was my fault. If I miss two-foot putts, you can't be expected----"

And thus during the whole journey superb concentration on an end to be won, superb oblivion to work and wealth and weariness.

Martin found Freda yawning in the porch.

"I thought you were staying upstairs all day," he began.

"Who said so?"

"The maid, I think."

"Well, I never said anything about it. You don't seem very glad to see me."

"Of course I am. Only I meant that I would have come back earlier if I had known."

"I wouldn't keep you from your golf."

He sat beside her, but she did not welcome him. She was hurt.

"If I'd only known, I wouldn't----"

"Day after day," she whispered. "I know you like to be out and about. I don't claim you always, do I? But sometimes, surely."

"I didn't know," he repeated remorsefully. "I didn't know."

"Yesterday you went and to-morrow you'll go."

"No, I won't. Freda, I'm a brute. I've been rotten to you. I've nothing to say for myself."

"You've got to go to-morrow."

"I won't. You don't want me to go."

"You must go. I'm not going to keep you, if you don't stay of your own accord. The ball is much more amusing than I am."

He pleaded, he fought against her, but she insisted on his going.

The punishment was effective. He went in anguish and played with no zest for the game. He sliced, he topped, he missed short putts. The match fizzled out on the fourteenth green, a fiasco.

The Cartmells hurried back to London and Martin remained to make peace with Freda. He had been unspeakably pained by the sordidness and waste of energy and peace that quarrelling had entailed. He hated the suspicions and embarrassments that must linger on: he was passionately desirous of restoring the old intimacy and yet ... somehow or other the wound remained. He couldn't forget that evening on the ninth green. Why wouldn't Freda see the point of these things? Why wouldn't she walk? She was strong enough now for a mile or two. Almost he was angry with her for having been ill, for it is an odd feature of humanity that we sometimes dislike people for their sufferings, hate them for a cough or sniff. And now Martin was on the point of blaming Freda for the weakness he had once adored. Why wasn't she strong like Margaret or Viola? Why didn't she understand about the moor and wind-swept spaces and the miracle of hitting a golf-ball?

While he was bearing the olive branch these questions, dreaded and strongly combated, kept forcing themselves into the narrow passes of his mind as the Persian host flooded into Thermopylae. It was futile to feign deafness: in time they would force a hearing. And there were other less easily worded doubts and apprehensions.

Perhaps the summer-time came as a release. More than he would have cared to admit, Martin wanted to be alone, to see Freda dispassionately, from a distance. And so to Oxford.

Freda, while undergoing all unconsciously this dispassionate appreciation, retired to London. But within a few weeks' time she had received another invitation to Devonshire, and tired not so much of town as of her relations she gladly accepted.

At The Steading were a Mr and Mrs Brodrick with their daughter. Arthur Brodrick had been contemporary with John Berrisford at Oxford and had passed high into the Indian Civil Service. Just before his time for a pension was due he had been invalided home and had missed the full reward of his service. The Brodricks lived at Sutton in a remote mediocrity of wealth more galling than actual poverty.

Was it Chance again, the Chance that had brought a perfect Easter and put Martin on his game, that now seemed to keep the conversation on Oriental diseases and the rigours of imperial service? Certainly Freda heard more of fever in distant stations than of health and company at Simla. But the Brodricks had not been divorced from patriotism by the hardness of their lot: they still believed in the flag, in the pomp and state of the British Raj, in stately dinners at Government House where the couples went down to the feast in order of social precedence, and they recounted squabbles, petty but bitter antagonisms, of rival ladies who considered themselves insulted by their positions in the troop of diners.

Freda listened silently and learned.

So this was the life for which she had bargained. Eternal fever--so they implied--eternal society of the Brodricks and their kind! For Martin with his work to love and his career to think about such things might be well enough! But for her! How could she blend with this unknown, this unparalleled society?

Then the Berrisfords suggested that they should all go to Oxford for Eights Week. Mr and Mrs Berrisford had to be in town: would Mary Brodrick come? And, naturally, Freda? Both the girls accepted eagerly. It was soon settled and rooms were engaged at the Mitre.

On reading the letter announcing their plans Martin groaned in the spirit. It wasn't, of course it wasn't, that he did not want to see Freda. Did he not write to her as eagerly as ever? Did she not answer? But Eights Week of all times!

Martin was sufficiently a lover of Oxford, summery Oxford of the still water-ways, to loathe and despise Eights Week, that Whitsuntide holiday of the wealthy, when the city is invaded by a host of rich trippers, whose tripping has not even the justification of beer-bottles and hearty bestiality. He did not wish to eat salmon mayonnaise, to drink champagne cup, to propel, in faultless flannels, a punt among a solid mass of punts, to go for picnics where all London was revelling. His choice would have been to launch a vessel on the upper river, to find some tranquil backwater past Eynsham, with a canopy of willow and the scene of flowering meadows; or else to make use of deserted tennis courts and to enjoy things properly. Now they were going to break in upon him: and indeed another idle vacation had left him work enough to do. They had not come when he was a fresher and such things were allowable, and the Berrisfords knew Oxford well. Presumably they desired to show Freda the city and its ways. But why, oh why, in Eights Week? It wasn't like the Berrisfords.

They arrived duly and lived in state at the Mitre: they mingled with the crowds, tramped the colleges, and demanded to have things pointed out to them. Mary Brodrick said all the right things. Martin shuddered as the phrases came out in turn:

"Can we see the kitchens?" (at Christ Church).

"Where are the Prince's rooms?" (at Magdalen).

"Isn't this the clever college?" (at Balliol).

It was a gloomy ceremony.

There was Freda. And she ... well, he had to admit that she didn't harmonise with this world of fine raiment and expensive bean-feasts. The Freda who glittered in the punt, the Freda clothed sumptuously at her uncle's expense was undeniably different from the insignificant wisp of a girl in plain blue coat and skirt who had hurried out of the office at six and come to Martin for rest and comfort. To have explained his feelings accurately would have been an impossible task for Martin, but he could not put aside a vague sensation that Freda was wrongly placed in this world, that she was pre-eminently a martyr and a rebel, not a woman of leisure.

She did not even know what to say. There is a particular kind of speech appropriate to these occasions: it is neither flirtation nor conversation in the proper sense, but a discreet blend, a mixture as insipid as it is inevitable. It does not demand brains or wit, but a certain quality, a training. Mary Brodrick, with all her limitations, knew the game; she was jolly and made things go. Freda hung back or, when she came forward, made mistakes. Odd that Martin should have been angry with Freda for her inability to play a game which he himself despised. Yet it did pain him that she didn't "fit in."

As a strange word whose meaning has recently been discovered seems to the reader to occur on every page he reads, so Freda suddenly revealed to Martin in a hundred ways her incapacity for "fitting in." And it was to the society of countless Brodricks that Martin would have to take her.

On the Wednesday evening, when the river was rendered invisible by the press of vessels and fair women, when the supporters of the victorious college swam across the river and dived from barge and boathouse, when supper-parties began to disappear up the Cherwell and gramophones to tinkle in shady recesses, Mary Brodrick caught her train to town, Mr and Mrs Berrisford went to see the Irish Players, and Martin took Freda on the river.

To avoid the crowd they were going to the Cherwell above the rollers. She kept him waiting in the taxi that was to take them to Tims'.

At Tims' she found the punt dirty, said the cushions were filthy, and would ruin her dress.

"Eights Week," said Martin. "We've got to be thankful to get any kind of a punt."

Still she grumbled. Martin ran into a projecting bush and, before she knew what had occurred, her hat had been pushed over her eyes, her hair disarranged, and her face scratched. She said nothing at all. Worse than any expostulation! It grew cold and a chilly breeze sprang up.

Inevitably they quarrelled. There was no particular cause for the outburst. A long week of strain, of mutual revelation and discovery, of mingled pleasure and annoyance, was bound to tell.

They had at least the satisfaction of making things clear.

"You only cared for me as a martyr," she ended.

"I didn't, you know I didn't," he protested on the spur of the moment.

But both knew that it was more than half the truth.

Their letters of renunciation crossed.

Chance and John Berrisford had been powerful allies.

X

On a still October afternoon Martin lay where the first slopes of Grey Knotts go sweeping up to the great mountain mass of The Gables and the Scawfells. He looked down upon Seatoller, diminutive below him, and on the curving beauty of Borrowdale, burnished with late bracken, aflame with autumnal trees. Behind him he knew, he felt, were the mountains that he loved, stretching crag upon crag to the desolate screes of Wast Water and the glimpse of the shimmering sea. Borrowdale ... there flashed suddenly upon his mind the verse of the Elfreyan poet and he quoted it now to the winds and rocks and a curious stone-finch:

"'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."

With that pathetic verse came other memories, flowing torrentially through the opened flood-gates of his mind. For five years he had forgotten Elfrey and Berney's and all his schoolday toils and triumphs. Only one week-end had he spent there and that in his 'fresher' year. He had forgotten because Oxford had been so generous and had given him so much to think and feel and say. But now his recollections seemed strangely vivid despite their long storage in the lumber-room of his mind. Foskett had made another step on the pathway of prosperity, but Berney was still at work: Vickers had moved to higher things, but Barmy Walters lingered on, for he had reached the dotage in which years add nothing to decay. The same old jokes would be played, the crashing of the instrument-boxes, the passing of fruit-bags and biscuit tins, and the pollution of his water with ink. And somehow, against the promptings of conscience, Martin felt that it was right for these things to go on. Poor Barmy! But with his uncle he believed in Institutions.

Then the amazing disappearance of people broke in upon his mind. Spots, for instance. His career had flickered out at Cambridge, where they had despised his athletics. Drink, perhaps. Cullen and Neave, surely they must be in the motor trade. Gregson had vanished utterly. Everything demanded that he should be writing for the Rationalist Press, but where was he? Anstey was at the Bar, Rayner a subaltern in India. 'Granny' had recently been head of Berney's, Granny whom Martin had loathed and swiped. It seemed unreal and impossible. But now, as he looked back over that gap of five years, he realised that Elfrey with all its troubles and its narrowness had been kind. The avenging of Gideon and the night of pitchers, the bowling of "googlies," the friendship of Finney ... astonishing that things so good should have slipped away. Lazily chewing the long sweet stems of grass, he refought a hundred skirmishes.

More recent memories came floating down upon the stream. Galer and his 'deemagogues,' the Push, Chard and his career: very soon he would be paying a long farewell to all this world of evanescence. For such a world it was, good but transitory. It was not real as life's work would be real. True that Chard had taken his Union career as seriously as death itself, true that the Push had been serious about their discussions, those night-long tussles about God and Woman and the Universe: and anything taken seriously has value of a kind. But had their value been greater than that of an amusing prologue or a curtain-raiser which it would have been unfortunate to miss? It was good that these things should have been: it was not good that they should be for ever.

And Freda? World of evanescence again! She had passed so utterly away that Martin could scarcely believe in the events and emotions of the winter. He had no regrets, and he believed that she had none: of late his plans and prospects had moved at such a pace that wounds could not linger and were easily forgotten. They had rendered each other mutual service and mutual relief. Once he had thought that he loved, but now he knew of his mistake: Freda had spoken the obvious truth when she said: "You aren't really in love with me, you're in love with love." He had wanted sympathy and in his quest had idealised the first woman who gave it him. Only a fortnight ago his uncle had said: "Remember you're still only twenty-three. You haven't found out everything about life--or love." He had said it kindly and he had been right.

Now indeed he had fiercely reacted against his search for sympathy. Surely a man should be able to face his work and go through with it, even if it was agony to do so, without running to a woman's arms for comfort. He was ashamed of his cowardice of the winter. Upon the hillside with the exhilaration of autumn in his blood it seemed so easy to face things and be resolute. This love! It was like religion, just Funk. Then he paused, angry with himself. He was erring as much on the one side as he had lately erred on the other. He could understand passionate desire: he could understand sentimentality, for he had not forgotten Lawrence's defence of The Little Grey Home. But this Love--of which one heard and read--what was it? Perhaps some day... He surrendered to his visions ... and he would come back with her to a good house in Devon, very square and grey, with smooth lawns and paddocks and covert-clad hills behind. There would he become an initiate in the avuncular mystery of Ham and Eggs. That religion at least he had it in him to respect.

Rendell and Lawrence were coming up the hill; they had been together for a week at Seatoller, renewing last year's successful holiday, and to-morrow they were to separate. It was the last reunion, for Martin was to sail next month. The other two had stayed in after lunch to answer letters: Martin was to await them on the hill and then they would walk.

As he watched them plodding up to him his mind wandered to the future. When they reached him they were out of breath and demanded a moment's rest before they moved on. They lay in silence, basking in the strong October sun.

"I've been thinking," exclaimed Martin suddenly.

"Good," said Rendell. "Let's have it."

"It's about this India business. I think I'm glad on the whole."

"Well, I've had a year of the city," muttered Lawrence, "and I don't recommend it."

"After all, it's doing something," Martin went on. "Good or bad, it's action, administration, government of a sort. If I stayed in London, I would find it jolly hard to work: I'd probably do as the rest, just loaf."

"Thank you," said Rendell.

"I wasn't alluding to you. You haven't the talent for loafing, and I think I have, in a mild kind of way. It won't be bad for me to desert the world of conversations and ideas."

The other two remained silent, gazing at the wonderful valley below. Martin wished they would speak. He did not know whether he really believed in what he was saying or whether he was trying to believe in it because there was comfort in such faith. If only one of them would confirm his opinions!

"Don't you ever feel that it's all petty and limited?" Martin continued. "Living in London, I mean, and never seeing the world and how it's run and the different tastes of men and the tendencies and forces? I want to get into the middle of it and, if I've got to do Government work, then I don't mind doing that. It isn't merely negative, like most of a barrister's work."

Eternal honesty and reliability of man with man! A woman would have caught his anxious tones and given him sympathy and confirmation at the expense of belying her convictions. Rendell merely said what he felt and later Martin was glad of it.

"If that is the case," Rendell answered quietly, "you're plainly the man for the job. It isn't often that the Empire gets an intelligent person who cares about his work."

"I believe I'll like it when I'm there," Martin added. "Of course I know there will be gaps and times of despair. But I feel that I have had my seven fat years and it's up to me to face seven lean ones. Then fatness ought to come again."

"Which, being interpreted," said Lawrence, "means seven years or so in the wilderness and then better jobs and a big screw and no end of a career."

"I won't be as detailed as that. But as I've got to eat the pie I shall dig about for the plums. What do you think, Rendell, K.C., M.P.?"

"I agree."

"And you, Lord Mayor?"

"I have every intention of making at least five thousand a year. My god, yes. If I go into that city I'll damned well fetch something out."

"Anyhow," said Martin after a pause, "we have had years of plenty. It was all good, the Push and digs and everything."

Rendell agreed. "It couldn't have been managed much better," he said. "We had some capital times."

Lawrence yawned vastly. "You emotional lads," he said, "will soon be calling the Old School Ithaca and talking about 'stern nurses of men' and 'dreaming spires.' I can't allow it. Let's walk."

They rose and went up silently into the hills like men who understand about walking.

THE END

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH

SINISTER

STREET

_By Compton Mackenzie_

_In Two Volumes. Crown 8vo Containing_

_in all 1152 pages. Price Six Shillings each_

CONTENTS OF VOLUME ONE

_Book One: The Prison House_

I. THE NEW WORLD II. BITTERSWEET III. FEARS AND FANTASIES IV. UNENDING CHILDHOOD V. THE FIRST FAIRY PRINCESS VI. THE ENCHANTED PALACE VII. RANDELL HOUSE VIII. SIAMESE STAMPS IX. HOLIDAYS IN FRANCE

_Book Two: Classic Education_

I. THE JACOBEAN II. THE QUADRUPLE INTRIGUE III. PASTORAL IV. BOYHOOD'S GLORY V. INCENSE VI. PAX VII. CLOVEN HOOFMARKS VIII. MIRRORS IX. THE YELLOW AGE X. STELLA XI. ACTION AND REACTION XII. ALAN XIII. SENTIMENT XIV. ARABESQUE XV. GREY EYES XVI. BLUE EYES XVII. LILY XVIII. EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO XIX. PARENTS XX. MUSIC

512 pages

CONTENTS OF VOLUME TWO

_Book Three: Dreaming Spires_

I. THE FIRST DAY II. THE FIRST WEEK III. THE FIRST TERM IV. CHEYNE WALK V. YOUTH'S DOMINATION VI. GREY AND BLUE VII. VENNER'S VIII. THE OXFORD LOOKING-GLASS IX. THE LESSON OF SPAIN X. STELLA IN OXFORD XI. SYMPATHY XII. 202 HIGH XIII. PLASHERS MEAD XIV. 99 ST. GILES XV. THE LAST TERM XVI. THE LAST WEEK XVII. THE LAST DAY

_Book Four: Romantic Education_

I. OSTIA DITIS II. NEPTUNE CRESCENT III. THE CAFE D'ORANGE IV. LEPPARD STREET V. THE INNERMOST CIRCLE VI. TINDERBOX LANE VII. THE GATE OF IVORY VIII. SEEDS OF POMEGRANATE IX. THE GATE OF HORN X. THE OLD WORLD

640 pages

Books by the Same Author

THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT

CARNIVAL

GUY AND PAULINE (_in preparation_)

KENSINGTON RHYMES

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