like to have your promise. I know I can't compel you, but I ask it as
a favour."
"I think my friends are my own affair," answered Martin, infuriated by
what he considered to be the oiliness, the furtive oiliness, of
Heseltine's methods.
During the next three days Martin was constantly with Anstey and, as a
result, Heseltine declared war. He definitely forbade the friends to
visit each other's studies without permission, and on the following
evening he swiped Anstey for impertinence. To swipe a member of the
Sixth was a violation of tradition but not of law. Not even Anstey
could have denied that he had been sublimely impertinent, but his
appeal was to custom. Heseltine smiled calmly and said that he
couldn't be limited by hide-bound traditions when the maintenance of
discipline was at stake. He enjoyed his triumph and did not spare his
victim.
The news came to Martin through Rayner, who, though secretly pleased at
Anstey's discomfiture, honestly admitted that Heseltine hadn't played
the game. Martin listened to him in silence: he did not volunteer any
conversation and was glad that Rayner went away at once.
He picked up a book and went straight to Heseltine's study.
"Can I speak to Anstey?" he asked quietly, "It's about some words in
Homer!"
Heseltine looked at him suspiciously: he could hardly call him a liar
to his face. "Very well," he said. "But don't stay."
Martin found Anstey in his arm-chair. His face was very white and when
he saw Martin he smiled the forced, flickering smile that is so often
born of an effort to conceal pain.
"It's all right," said Martin, "I've got permission."
Anstey told him to sit down.
"It's frightfully rotten luck," Martin began. "Heseltine is simply a
devil."
"He didn't hurt me as much as he thought he had."
The thought gave Martin a thrill: it was something more than sympathy.
"What did he have you up for?" he asked.
"Cheek. You must have heard what I said. I certainly shouted."
"But I joined in that."
It had been in the tuck-shop. Heseltine's entrance had been greeted
with remarks about the advent of the deity.
"He didn't hear you."
Martin knew that he hadn't shouted: he had only muttered something. He
hadn't Anstey's pluck. The thought was bitter and increased his
admiration of Heseltine's victim. Anstey had suffered for what he had
helped to do.
"But what about this persecution?" he exclaimed suddenly. "I'm damned
if I stand it."
"And what do you propose to do?"
"I don't see why we shouldn't remain friends."
"Nor do I. But the powers disagree."
"Damn the powers."
"Certainly."
"Well, I'm going to see you as often as I like if you'll have me. If
Heseltine says anything I'll tell him to go to Berney or Foskett if he
likes."
Anstey made no reply.
"Do you mean," said Martin, "that you won't go on, that you don't want
me?"
"Of course I want you. But it's no use fighting. I've got a bad name
with the beaks and it's a hundred to one they back up Heseltine. You
know how they drop on this sort of thing. I think they're all wrong:
in this case I know they are. But there it is. They've got the whip
hand and we can't fight against the odds."
"I'm willing to try."
"If you do, you'll be very admirable and very foolish. Look here. You
may be a pre next term. Fighting means you miss that; it means nothing
but trouble all day long. I've been in rows and I know. It's no use.
There's more pluck in surrender."
Martin got up. "I think I'll go," he said.
"I hope you don't think I'm playing a low-down game," interrupted
Anstey.
"No, it isn't that. I just want to think things over. Besides, time
is up."
He went back to his study and tried to clear his mind. At first he was
bitterly angered by Anstey's surrender, but later on he realised that,
after all, Anstey had already been under fire in the war's first
skirmish, whereas he, Martin, had gone unscathed. He was in no
position to make criticisms, much less taunts. Then his thoughts
turned from Anstey to Heseltine. He knew now what Gregson meant when
he talked of the Iron Heel: he could feel its pressure now. More
clearly than ever before he learned that membership of society is a
doubtful blessing and that it means cruelty and waste and sacrifice and
compels us to jettison the rare to save the common. For the sake of
example, to preserve discipline, to keep the house working he had now
to give up the most precious thing in his life. In the last few weeks
something new had burst into his soul like a drunken reveller,
upsetting things and setting things up, something at once beautiful and
terrible: but its beauty had surpassed its terror. Beauty had been
blown into his sight and imaginings on the wind-swept downs and now it
was to be swept away again by the grim forces of convention and
utility. Just because others spoiled things he must be deprived of
them: the high must be of less account then the low, the beautiful must
yield to the ugly. This was morality and the social good, this was the
Law of whose glories complacent philosophers loved to preach. He ought
to fight it; he must fight it. But how? The question was as
unanswerable as it was insistent. At length he gave it up. All that
he could do was to pour out his soul to Gregson, for here, if anywhere,
Gregson might be of use. Together they denounced the Iron Heel, and it
was well for Martin that this outlet was not denied him. He was saved
from despair, perhaps from disaster, by a fortnight's ferocious
Anarchism.
And in a fortnight the wound had healed. Enforced abstention from
Anstey's society did its work. Anstey easily picked up new friends and
Martin was astonished to find that he was not jealous of them. He was
equally astonished at his own speedy reconciliation with the order of
things and his swift relapse from Anarchism to Socialism. Anstey had
been right: there was, after all, much to be said for social peace and
convenience.
In another week he was beginning to ask himself what he had ever seen
to admire in Anstey. Climbing the downs was a horrid sweat and cricket
with Rayner had undoubted fascinations.
IX
In the Michaelmas term Martin became a house prefect. He was glad to
obtain the position, not only because authority has always some
attraction, but also because it brought with it some definite and
desirable privileges. No longer need he observe hated bounds, no
longer was he obliged to turn up at games if he felt disinclined.
Martin now became a person to be consulted, an organiser with a voice
in the affairs of a community. Though he was not, like many of Mr
Foskett's disciples, fired with a passion for 'running things'
indiscriminately and irresponsibly, he quite realised that bossing has
its pleasures and possibilities. It was typical of the new situation
that he was able to give up playing forward for the house and to obtain
a trial as wing three-quarter. He had pace and managed to score in the
first game: soon he improved wonderfully and settled down in his
position. It struck him that there was a great deal to be said for
playing football, even regular, incessant football, when you could
choose your own position in the field and play without fear of being
sworn at.
Naturally his duties brought him into closer contact with his
housemaster and he became intimate with the methodical ways of Mr
Berney and the efficient management and culture of his wife. In the
evenings he received frequent invitations to the drawing-room, where he
would talk about Florence and Botticelli, Oxford and Matthew Arnold.
In his younger days he had worshipped Mrs Berney with a flaming
devotion. Now he was more critical, but, while he understood the
limitations of her culture and suspected her of attending University
Extension Lectures in order to be told about the poets, he did not
cease to like her. At any rate she did not bubble over with
unconvincing enthusiasm, like Mrs Foskett, and she did care in a rather
ignorant, muddle-headed, but thoroughly genuine way for the things of
art. Martin had of course outdistanced many of her tastes and they
would have great arguments about Tennyson and Browning and Swinburne.
Mrs Berney, who was deeply religious, could never forgive Swinburne.
It seemed strange to Martin that so persistent and so sincere an
affection for poetry should be so limited. What did it matter, he
asked himself, whether Swinburne liked God or whether he didn't? The
point was to him that Swinburne had a great, angry soul and could let
himself go. But Mrs Berney insisted that that had nothing to do with
it: poetry was the making of a beautiful thing and Swinburne had tried
to make ugly things beautiful. Of course Martin urged that poetry
consisted in pouring a true thing out of yourself, and then he shocked
her by saying he hated the word "beautiful." And so they would be
carried away with long arguments on aesthetics, sometimes childish and
always futile, for neither realised when they had reached an ultimate
or what exactly they were trying to prove. Yet both enjoyed the
conversation: Martin was intellectually isolated since Gregson had gone
to Oxford, and Mrs Berney always welcomed the appearance of
intellectual tastes in the house. Besides, she had sense enough to
understand that Martin had made some good suggestions and was armed
with a consistent principle of criticism.
The actual work of office was not so pleasing. Heseltine had gone on
to Cambridge, where it was hoped that he would be taken in hand, and
Rayner was head of the house. Rayner was bigger, stronger, and more
reliable than ever and he could keep order successfully without a
constant use of penalties: Martin admired him, in spite of his
intellectual limitations, and aspired to a similar method of government
which should be at once peaceful and efficient. It had occurred that,
without becoming 'the boy among boys' or 'the workroom pet' or anything
horrible of that sort, it might be possible to avoid irresponsible
tyranny. Mainly owing to the influence of his social and political
views he had bullied himself into the belief that the workroom would be
much better if left alone. What the younger members of the house
needed was to be trusted, not beaten. They only fell from virtue's
path because so many people were engaged in the task of keeping them
straight with whips and scorpions. He had been sickened by the stupid
despotism of athletes which had often culminated in acts of cruelty and
injustice and he wanted to bring to his work a finer attitude and
endeavour. And so it was with the crude, untested idealism of a
seventeen-year-old humanist that he approached the formidable task of
subduing a fifteen-year-old mob.
The beginning was not auspicious. The trouble began, as trouble always
began, with Master J. R. F. Gransby-Williams, a rotund youth with a
genius for keeping within the letter of the law. His chief aim in life
was to rag, and he worked hard to attain it; but there was a subsidiary
ambition to be a nut. Consequently he was very scrupulous about his
ties and socks and handkerchiefs; his hair he kept very long and parted
with miraculous precision.
During Martin's first prep Granny (for so he was called) showed signs
of a cold. He blew his nose perpetually and with skill: the noise was
as the blare of trumpets.
"Would you mind moderating your efforts?" suggested Martin from his
chair.
"Certainly not," said Granny with supreme urbanity.
It was cheek, and a titter ran round the workroom. Martin had been
gifted by nature with an unfortunate capacity for blushing, and he
blushed now.
"Don't give me any of that lip or you'll get into trouble," he said
without conviction.
"That was not my intention," answered Granny, urbane as ever. "I'm
very sorry."
Again there was a titter. Martin blushed and swore inwardly: he knew
that he was not beginning well.
A few minutes later one Dickinson said: "Please can we have the window
open: there's an awful frowst."
"I suppose so," answered Martin. "It does seem a bit thick in here."
Here was Granny's chance. He sneezed magnificently. "May I go and
fetch my overcoat?" he asked mildly.
"Shut up," said Martin.
Granny turned up his collar, blew his nose with gentle persistence, and
started to shiver. Others followed his example, and the room began to
resound with the chattering of teeth.
Martin felt desperate. What exactly was the right way to deal with
this kind of ragging? What would Rayner do? That was where the
difficulty lay: the workroom never tried this game with Rayner, so that
it was impossible to say what Rayner would have done. Swearing at them
wouldn't do: he couldn't swipe the whole company. Besides, there were
his ideals. Foolishly he determined to try and work in his idealism
under the pretext of a joke: it was a cowardly compromise and it
deserved to fail.
"I suppose," he said, "we might take a vote about the window."
There was a genial roar of acclamation.
"Those in favour of keeping it open," he went on} "shove up your hands."
There was much talking and throwing of paper balls. Hoarse whispers
such as, 'Jones, you stinker, put your hand down or I'll kill you
afterwards,' came to his ears. The counting was complicated by the
necessity of disqualifying all those who held up both hands with a view
to fraud. When the oppositions were being numbered there were murmurs
of: 'Lowsy swine,' 'Frowsters,' and so on. The affair was soundly
managed by the mob and a tie resulted, so that Martin had to give a
casting vote. Imploring faces were turned towards him: the opening of
the window was plainly a matter of life and death to that
valetudinarian assembly.
"Keep it open," said Martin, determined to abide by his first order.
There were subdued cheers and moans, nasal snufflings and raucous
coughs. Above it all the voice of Granny was heard.
"May I borrow some quinine?" he demanded.
Martin now saw the folly of his actions. The matter had gone too far,
he had lost grip, and a tremendous rag was imminent.
"Shut up," he roared with all the authority he could command.
And just then Rayner came in to take his spell of prep. There was an
immediate silence. Martin left the room in an agony of despair. What
the deuce would Rayner think?
As he sat in his study pretending to read Tacitus the prospect of
failure and misery became cruelly imminent. He couldn't make out why
the workroom people would shut up for Rayner. Rayner wasn't noted for
his severity and didn't make half as much use of the Iron Heel as some
of his predecessors in Berney's or contemporaries in other houses.
Martin was faced with the eternal paradox of government, that those who
can govern do not need to punish, while those who punish do not thereby
govern. He had always suspected the common talk about personalities
and strong men: but now he began to wonder whether there wasn't
something in it after all. Anyhow it seemed that by one action of
hesitation he had lost his chance: his prestige was going, and if he
once gained a reputation for 'raggability' there would be no more
peace. The memory of Barmy Walters and the sordid tumult of his
classroom came to him with a new piquancy.
"My God!" he said, "it sha'n't be that." He would have to go for
Granny. But how did one go for such a creature? Granny always kept to
the letter of the law and protested that he had meant nothing: was one
simply to disregard his assertions, to call him a liar? How did Rayner
manage? And there were the ideals. Would this method be consonant
with the humanism of the new prefecture? It was all immensely
difficult.
Later in the evening Rayner came to his study: he was very nice about
it.
"I say, old man," he said kindly, "that wasn't a good beginning."
"It certainly wasn't," admitted Martin.
"Granny, I suppose?" asked the other.
"Yes, mainly."
"Well there's only one thing for Master Gransby-Williams. Damp the
little beast."
"It's not so easy. He's always on the safe side of the fence. If he
swears that he didn't mean what you think he meant, you can't very well
do anything."
Rayner smiled.
"Can't you?" he said.
"Well, can you?"
"You jolly well must. Otherwise there'll be no end to it."
"All right, I'll try. But it seems rather rotten."
"Doesn't it strike you as rotten to be ragged by a tick like Granny?"
Martin had to admit that it was.
Three nights later Martin interviewed Granny after prayers. There had
been a rag in the prep. A mouse had escaped from Granny's desk and had
been the target of many marksmen. The air had been positively black
with hurtling dictionaries. The mouse of course escaped and the
missiles struck human flesh, compelling recrimination and redress.
"The mouse came out of your desk," said Martin.
"Please, I didn't put it there," whined Granny.
"I don't care. You must have known it was there when you got your
books out."
"It may have been asleep," suggested Granny with sudden brilliance.
"Rot!"
"Well, I read in a book that mice sleep fourteen hours out of
twenty-four. Anyhow I didn't notice it. It's got to put in its
fourteen hours some time."
"The fact remains," said Martin, "that you're responsible for the
contents of your desk."
"If another chap puts a mouse in your desk, I don't see----"
Martin was tired of the squalid haggling. But what was he to do? On
his own theories, he ought to give Granny the benefit of the doubt and
let him go. That was plainly the idealist's course. But there was
Rayner's advice: should he yield to the claim of expediency and try it?
Suddenly the impudent whine of Granny's voice became intolerable and he
determined to be stern.
But the subsequent swiping was, as Granny told the workroom, sketchy
and amateurish.
Presently Dickinson knocked at Martin's study.
"Please," he said, "I put that mouse in Gransby-Williams' desk."
Martin, who was just beginning to repent of his fall from idealism,
turned upon him in despair. "Why the deuce didn't you own up at once?"
he demanded.
"You never asked who did it."
"I did."
"Well, I couldn't hear. There was such a row going on."
That was a stinging retort for Martin: he was certainly getting the
worst of it. And Granny was in a strong position, a painfully strong
position. Fortunately, however, Martin acted wisely: he was faithful
to the new policy, forswore his ideals, and swiped Dickinson.
Moreover, his second effort was more thorough, and Dickinson
sorrowfully maintained that this talk about sketchy and amateurish
methods was a delusion: the blighter, he said, was an artist.
On the next day Granny, the martyr, organised a meeting of protest.
Rayner, hearing of it, asked Martin for an explanation.
"That's capital," he said when he had heard the story. "You've been
thoroughly unjust, and now you can go on damping Granny with a free
conscience. In for a penny, in for a pound."
"I'm sick of the whole business," said Martin.
"Don't be an ass," answered Rayner, and that evening he spoke firmly to
Granny. Somehow or other the combined effect of Martin's treatment of
Dickinson and Rayner's conversation with Granny led to a change of
policy in the workroom.
That night Martin again took prep. As he sat on his dais regarding the
victims of his wrath, he was haunted for a moment by the ghost of his
murdered ideals; but only for a moment.
And he sat in peace.
X
During the winter term before he was to go up to Oxford for a
scholarship examination Martin felt more than ever isolated. Rayner
was a good enough companion for 'brewing' or a casual talk, but he had,
distinctly, his limitations. It was only now, when Gregson had gone to
Oxford and the light, that Martin realised how much he missed him and
how dark and murky was the cave of school life.
There is little satisfaction to be derived from discoveries which
cannot be communicated: to find a perfect poem, or, if you are young, a
perfect epigram, is good, but to let your friends know you have found
it is doubly delightful. And now Martin had to keep his discoveries to
himself: if he devised another argument against the existence of God or
detected another logical absurdity in Christian dogma there was no one
to whom he could declare his joy: if he stumbled in his reading on a
thing which pleased him--well, the rest of the house were swine for
such a pearl.
Because Martin was treading the path of knowledge alone he was driven
by sheer force of necessity into intellectual priggishness and crudity.
When he was not engaged in prefectorial work, he tended to become a
recluse and to read in his study for long periods at a stretch: and
because he had no opposition and no conversation, save the rather mild
stimulus of discussing aesthetics with Mrs Berney, he became, as time
went on, more violent in his opinions. He often longed for the bitter
tongue and incisive reasoning of Gregson, not least when he had
completed a course of Shaw's dramas. There was no escape from
attendance at chapel and prayers and the wrath always engendered in the
sceptic by compulsory religion should have an outlet. Martin, having
no one to talk to, was forced to amuse himself with blasphemous
imaginings: but even that began to pall.
It was at this point that he became aware of Finney. Until he had
become a prefect and learned by experience that the ruler's task is not
always the easiest and most enjoyable, he had always adopted the
natural attitude to masters. A 'crusher' was just a person whom, if
possible, one ragged. If he could hold his own, well and good: if not,
he merited contempt, not mercy, and the more he was ragged the better
it would be for the world at large. But when Martin discovered from
his own experience that to be ragged is torture, he began to regard the
doings and sufferings of the masters in a different light. It suddenly
struck him, with all the vivid effect of a surprise, that these people
were human beings of like passions with himself.
Following quickly on that discovery came the recognition of the fact
that Finney was being ragged. Reginald Finney, B.A., had not left
Oxford for more than two years, but he had bravely married, and now he
lived in a tiny cottage some distance from the school. Every day he
bicycled in to take the Upper Fourth, Classical, and to devote
occasional hours to the Upper Sixth. In time, of course, he would
become a Sixth form master, for he had excellent degrees--two firsts
and a 'mention' in the Ireland scholarship. He had lingered at Oxford
with a view to a fellowship, but nothing turned up: at last he had been
compelled by economic pressure to take the position offered him at
Elfrey.
Nothing could have been more disastrous. For twenty years the Upper
Fourth had passed a somnolent existence under the direction of an
amiable and unassuming cleric. Much to the general disgust the dear
old man had, after a severe attack of pneumonia, resigned. In twenty
years, as was only natural, the Upper Fourth had become an institution:
terms and times continued to change, but the Upper Fourth did nothing
of the kind. Fourth-formers came and went in scores, but their
successors always managed to keep up the traditions of their
inheritance with spirit and success. There would be four or five
clever and energetic children, people rising rapidly to the Fifth,
Sixth, and university scholarships; then there would be eight or ten
inky and unambitious persons who would never get beyond the Fifth. And
lastly there would be four or five monsters of seventeen or eighteen
who were engaged in getting the greatest possible enjoyment out of
their last year at school. Good athletes as a rule, they were popular
in their house and merely stayed on till the fatal day of
superannuation in order to win cups and caps and enjoy a serene life
before disappearing into the dingy office of an uncle or the rough and
tumble of a planter's existence. In the days of the amiable cleric the
Upper Fourth had been to them Nirvana.