college: he found a new cinema in Broad Street and went in. Presently
some undergraduates who were stopping up for a few days at the end of
term came cheerily in and shouted vaguely.
An obsequious manager pleaded with them and they wandered down the
gangway looking for company: it did not seem very hard to find. Martin
watched their progress with interest and began to wonder whether the
girl next him wanted to talk. She had dropped her wrist-bag once and
he had picked it up: during the course of the proceedings his eye had
been caught by the glitter of a light grey stocking. She wasn't, he
had to admit, beautiful. But she was alone, and so was he. Did she,
on the other hand, want him to talk? The dropping of the bag might
have been an accident. Besides, what did one say? Martin cursed his
inexperience and racked his brains for a conversational lead. He could
hardly make some remark about the films: that would be obvious and
heavy. Something light was wanted: but what? Why on earth couldn't
she drop the bag again? He would take the hint this time. His mind
became a blank and he felt acutely miserable. At the end of the film
he rose and walked away in despair. He stopped at the back of the hall
and noticed one of the varsity men glance round and then move quickly
into his place before the lights were again turned out. Martin
returned to college, read some more of Snutch's novel, and went to bed.
Till Friday night Martin was kept hard at work doing papers in the
college hall. On Tuesday morning he had to write an essay on the
relations of the artist and the State, an obvious subject, perhaps, but
pleasing. It was the only paper which he enjoyed. Afterwards he was
kept hard at work with Unseens and Compositions. Never in his life had
he felt more irritable or more intellectually impotent. The yellow
blanket of mist hung over Oxford continually: the hall smelled
abominably of stale gravy and recent meals, and, worst of all, the pens
supplied to such as did not bring their own were quills; consequently
the stuffy room was never free from a maddening scratch and squeak. A
youth with a sloping brow and waving, faultless hair who sat next
Martin made great play with his quill: he was a 'dog' whose doggishness
took the form of a graceful abandon in his dress; he wore soft collars
and long woolly waistcoats and dilapidated pumps. He held his quill
between his first and second fingers, and he wrote splashily with brave
flourishes and a spasmodic squeak; also he had a habit of marching out
majestically half-an-hour before the time for a paper was finished.
Martin wondered whether this implied that he was immensely bad or
immensely good: he feared the latter. Altogether he was a fascinating
and disconcerting neighbour, and one morning Martin, struggling with
verses that would not 'come,' wanted to kill him.
Another cause of depression was the presence of boys
from Grammar Schools. Martin was no snob, but he could not keep
himself unspotted from Public School tradition, and he felt that these
smug-looking youths were rivals in a way that the dull Rugbeian never
could be. He was certain that they were far better scholars than he
was, that they had worked like slaves and could translate anything ever
written in Greek or Latin: he might have escaped much mental suffering
had he known that, even if they had been so brilliant (and in reality
they were amazingly dull), the dons are, with a few exceptions, well
rooted in class tradition and are not going to sacrifice the Public
Schools on the altar of modern honesty. But Martin did not know these
things, and when he saw the Grammar School candidates parading the town
with little crested caps on the backs of their heads and greasy curls
sticking bravely up in front, the natural dislike of the rival was
fused with the Public School man's loathing of inferior form. There
was one unforgettable person who came every day to King's wearing a
black overcoat and black kid gloves: his cap had a little silver button
gleaming over the inevitable curl. He looked both wise and good.
On the Thursday evening Martin glanced through the rough copy of his
Latin verse. There he found--
"via strata patebat
Hostibus; ardentes surgunt ducemque sequuntur."
True that the lines did not sound beautiful: in a copy of twenty-two
lines you must have one or two dull moments. But "via strata" and
"ducem"--two false quantities in a line and a half. How could he have
done it? He flung the rough copy into the fire and swore violently.
Silver Button wouldn't make false quantities: Silver Button would have
learned about 'dux' and 'duco' when he was twelve--so had Martin. But
then Silver Button wouldn't, couldn't, forget. Martin was convinced
now that, as far as a scholarship was concerned, he might as well never
have entered.
He wandered morosely into the streets: it started to rain and he took
refuge in the cinema. For half-an-hour he watched the films and, more
particularly, an amorous couple in front. A girl came and sat on his
right: she was distinctly attractive and her chin, poised daintily in
the air, conveyed an exquisite invitation: the rest of her face was
hidden by hat. He began to feel, as before, self-conscious and
miserable. This time he would speak, must speak ... but how? The
couple in front had reached their limit in proximity. Suddenly her
foot touched his and with a surreptitious glance he saw below the brim
of that entrancing hat. She was perfect. She had taken off her glove
and her hand lay on her lap: before Martin knew what he was doing, he
had taken it and pressed it. The girl turned abruptly round, snatched
her hand away, and said coldly:
"Please leave me alone."
Martin obeyed, blushing furiously. "I'm very sorry," he muttered, but
she took no notice. He sat gazing in front of him, humiliated and
tortured. What a fool he had been! Why hadn't he said something and
made an opening?
The film clicked monotonously on. One fact alone flamed across his
mind: he must get out before the film was over. He couldn't endure the
raising of the lights. But either he would have to crush past the girl
on his right or else go out to the left, a journey which would involve
forcing his way through a long row of stout people. Both alternatives
were unpleasant.
The film was ending. The music had ceased to ripple and begun to sob,
always a proof of impending embraces. The hero and heroine were
rolling great lurid eyes at one another. The lights went up. Martin
pushed his way out to the left past the stout and sulky: then he
hurried back through the rain to Snutch's gloomy chambers. There was
nothing to do but to contemplate his own blunders classic and modern.
He told himself that he had made a rotten shot and received a nasty
snub. If he had only been aiming at something worth having, he
wouldn't have minded. But what, after all, was the use of a girl to
him? And why on earth had he wanted to grab her sticky hand--for it
had been sticky. He knew now that he hadn't really wanted to do it,
for its own sake: he had wanted to do it because other people did it.
Now it all seemed so hugely silly. "I suppose love's all right," he
thought to himself. "But this hand and kiss business is piffle."
On Friday evening Martin returned to Elfrey in a state of advanced
pessimism. Early in the next week he learned that he had been elected
to a classical scholarship at King's College. He gazed blankly at the
telegram and the words 'via strata' and 'ducem' flashed before his mind.
It was quite incredible, but it was true.
XII
Martin spent his last two terms without effort and without emotion.
The fact that he was a scholar elect of King's College, Oxford, caused
him to feel in some strange way that his career was made and that there
was nothing more to be done. So he chattered to Finney on Sunday
afternoons, read poetry (condescendingly now) at Mrs Berney's Saturday
soirees, and enjoyed the modern novelists when he should have been
doing his prep. He had found a copy of Butler's _Way of All Flesh_ in
his uncle's study: this he read with joy and lent to the more worthy
members of the Upper Sixth. A book with an appeal so universal
naturally made an effect: it seemed to crystallise the religious
experience of all. Martin was eager to discover whether Foskett had
read it and consequently alluded to it at some length in an essay on
'Recent Aspects of Evolution,' in which he courageously let himself go.
Foskett made no allusion to Butler and merely wrote on the last sheet:
'Good, but lacks balance. Don't dogmatise on subjects of this kind.
Many of your ideas, though well put, are crude.' Martin groaned as he
read the criticism. If Foskett had been a bigoted parson and had
lectured him on the perils of free thought, he could have looked on
himself as a martyr and enjoyed the nursing of a grievance: if, on the
other hand, the strength and sincerity of the essay had been genuinely
praised, Martin's vanity would have been gratified. But this kindly
tolerance, so well meant, was infuriating; it was typical Foskettism.
Perhaps what contributed most to Martin's disgust was the lurking
suspicion that his ideas were, after all, a trifle crude.
With Foskett, Martin was never in sympathy. He was out of touch with
all the causes for which Foskett stood, and it was among the small set
of desperately serious and religious boys that the headmaster found his
champions. The very fact that he had not taken orders seemed to them,
perhaps justly, proof of the deepest faith: in after life they would
all have signed photographs in their studies and point him out to their
sons. 'That's old Foskett,' they would say. 'Fine character. Great
influence.' But the popular verdict was against Foskett. The really
strong man can get his way without criticism: he says 'Do' and people
just crumple up and do it. When Foskett said 'Do,' things were done as
a rule, but the doer had a habit of saying, as he went grudgingly to
his work: 'Silly ass, thinks he's a Blood-and-ironer.' Martin said of
him to his uncle: 'He's quite efficient and all that, and he's bound to
get on. As crushers go, he might be a lot worse.'
And that was the common view.
Foskett took the Upper Sixth in composition and Greek plays. Martin
could not help admiring Foskett's fair copies which showed undoubted
feeling for the classical languages, but he could never quite endure
his enthusiasm for the Greek drama. When Foskett enjoyed literature in
public, it always seemed as though he was saying sternly to himself:
'This is good stuff and we've got to like it.' He would stride up and
down the room with the text of a play, chanting the iambics or the
choruses as though they were everything in the world to him, and all
the time Martin felt that it couldn't mean so much to him, just because
he sought beauty with a fervour so literary and so incessant. With
Martin, appreciation was a thing of moods, coming swiftly and as
swiftly departing: he could not understand how Foskett's enjoyment
remained always at high pressure: it must, he thought, be artificial.
Foskett's affection for Euripides was the most unconvincing of
enthusiasms: how could a man so far removed from Euripides in taste and
temperament really appreciate that passionate rebel of genius? Martin
could have tolerated an open enemy, a thorough conservative who called
Euripides a botcher, and a dirty-minded botcher at that: but Foskett's
liberal attitude, sweetly reasonable to the extent of being nauseous,
was harder to endure. It was not so much that Foskett had set out to
like Euripides because Euripides was fashionable once again, though
that of course was possible: but it was his determination to be fair at
all costs that was fatal. Foskett was so pertinaciously fair, so eager
to do justice to both sides of the literary problem that Martin
considered that he didn't in the end properly understand or sympathise
with either side. It occurred to him that compromise is always
necessary in human affairs and usually fatal. And so while Foskett
declaimed the Electra and gave out the points to be noticed for and
against such treatment of the tragic theme, Martin shuddered and
sometimes sulked. Intellectual isolation is not good for the manners,
and Foskett found Martin difficult: the two remained always at a
distance, never openly hostile, and never sympathetic.
Few Public School boys are critical of the institutions amid which they
are brought up, but it was natural for Martin to ponder, as he idled
through his last two terms, on the value of the things he had learnt
and of the habits in which he had been trained. He had been interested
in H. G. Wells' pungent comments on the way we manage education, and he
was fascinated by the sweeping schemes of reconstruction. Was all this
classical business, he asked himself, just a waste of time and effort?
Was he just groping at the door of a treasure-house whose contents had
long ago been rifled? He resolved to consult Finney.
Though Finney was now always charitably treated by the Upper Sixth, his
warfare with the Upper Fourth was telling on him. Even in a few months
he had lost vivacity and ambition, for he was beginning to suffer from
the spiritual blight that attacks every unsuccessful schoolmaster in
his time. In a year or two he would be shrivelled up into an irritable
bunch of nerves, his ability wasted, his hopes stifled. Martin could
foresee no escape for Finney, unless by some lucky chance he could get
back to Oxford: but that was impossible, for those who leave Oxford
rarely return.
Finney was willing enough to talk, but Martin was disappointed with the
conversation. He was a Liberal both in politics and disposition, and
as a result he had no point of view: he was angry about things and
could suggest little reform, but there was no comprehensive unity or
vitality in his ideas. He was the kind of man who makes great play
with the word 'efficiency.'
"We aren't clear enough," he used to say, "about what we want. We
chatter airily at congresses about education, but we never really
formulate our wants and bully people into doing things. We don't train
our teachers or tell them what is needed ... we just plug them down.
Besides the schools aren't to blame: we've got to keep in touch with
the two big varsities, and if they insist on everybody mugging up just
enough Greek to be a nuisance, we've got to see about the mugging.
"And on the other side there are the parents. We don't get the boys
till they are thirteen or fourteen, fashioned all ready in many ways.
I don't know what the parents do want, but they certainly don't want
education. Ask any housemaster about the letters they write: they're
nearly always economic. Why does this cost extra and why doesn't Harry
get that free?"
"I suppose that's fairly natural," said Martin.
"Of course. But it shouldn't be all. It's typical of the British
attitude. You buy your son an education costing so much, as you would
buy him a suit of clothes. They don't care twopence about the teaching
or the curriculum, except in so far as it concerns passing exams and
leads to money. Parents write about Tom's chances for Sandhurst, but
who ever writes about his classics? It's all taken for granted, even
its sickening narrowness. No one ever heard of a parent slanging the
headmaster because his son didn't know who wrote _The Alchemist_ or
because he thought Chopin was a music hall comedian."
"Do you suppose," asked Martin, "that fifty per cent of the Elfreyan
parents know there is a play called _The Alchemist_?"
"Well, I wouldn't bet on it," said Finney. "Still there it all is.
Ignorance and muddle. We've got so horribly linked up. Union may be
strength, but strength may be tyranny. Capital is all knotted
together. Labour soon will be, and Education is in the same way. We
can't change without the others changing, the others can't change
without the varsities----"
"And the varsities won't change till public opinion blows them to
bits," added Martin. "So it all comes back to the dear old _vox
populi_."
"I suppose so," said Finney wearily. "Come and have some tea."
Although he found Finney's suggestions disappointing, Martin continued
to ponder occasionally on the phenomena of school life, and when he
went to Devonshire for the Easter holidays he took the opportunity of
questioning his uncle, for whose views he had a great respect. John
Berrisford was always willing to talk after his third glass of port and
he welcomed Martin's questions.
"Of course you know," he said, "that though I'm a revolutionary in
politics and economics, I'm a sound Tory about institutions and the
things that matter, like beef and beer. So I believe in the Public
Schools and the Universities, not because they're good, but because
they _are_. Everything that is, must be an expression of human nature,
and, being rather an optimist, I think it has some good in it. Anyhow,
we can't take human nature and twist it about, as social reformers want
to do. The people who cry out for Censors of Art seem to imagine that
Art makes public opinion. It may do so now and then, but it's much
more important to realise that public opinion makes current art. Art
is the emergence of what people are feeling and thinking, and our
schools, like our art, must be an expression of the national self."
"But the national self," said Martin, "is pretty stiff."
"That is true, but it doesn't matter. My idea is that, being
Englishmen, we ought to make the best of it. Smash international
capitalism, which is hellish, and stick to any good things England can
give. Of course if you like to turn your destructive criticism on our
school system you can knock it to pieces in a minute, just as you can
knock out Socialism, or the Co-operative Commonwealth, or any other
sensible proposition. A half-educated person can criticise anything;
it takes a man to appreciate.
"No, it's no use battering the Public Schools. They are there, so
let's make the best of them. They may not teach very much, but men
learn to behave reasonably and not to get on one another's nerves.
Tell me: if you had to live on a desert island for six months with one
other man, would you take a chap with ideas who had been co-educated or
privately educated and generally fad-educated or an unintellectual but
reasonable man from Elfrey, a person you could always rely on, if it
was only to be dull?"
Martin wanted the Elfreyan.
"Well, that says a lot for the schools. You can't smash them until you
have smashed the British Character: of course that would be a capital
thing to do, but it's a stiff proposal, and while we are waiting let's
make the best of it. I quite expect that at times you must have been
sick to death of Elfrey, but didn't you like it on the whole?"
"I think I did," answered Martin reflectively.
"Exactly. You liked the chaps, because, with all their intellectual
limitations, they're reliable. You know they won't play dirty tricks
behind your back. You liked your study and you liked cooking enormous
and hideously indigestible meals and gorging until all was blue. You
liked shutting the window on a cold night and collecting a crowd and
raising such a frowst that the air was solid and the windows steamed.
You liked smoking your secret cigarette and discussing who was going to
be the school wicket-keeper three years hence and who was the worst bat
in first-class cricket. Am I right?"
"Absolutely."
Mr Berrisford started a new cigar with satisfaction. "Good. Then the
system hasn't altered altogether. Oh yes, and you liked some of your
classics?"
"Most of them, when I could escape the notes and grammarian's drivel."
"The classics are worth sticking to. It's no good these scientists
talking about translations being as good. They aren't and there's an
end of it. Good translations have their uses, but they aren't the real
thing. We don't read Homer to find out what happened. So let's thank
God for Homer and philosophy and leave psychology and applied mechanics
to the Life Force."
Mr Berrisford had certainly a definite point of view, and he did not
fall between the two stools of acceptance and sweeping reconstruction
as Finney seemed to. So Martin was not only amused but influenced and
on his return to Elfrey for the summer term gave up worrying about the
pros and cons of Public School education. He determined to enjoy
himself, and he knew that in order to enjoy himself he must have an
interest. It couldn't be concerned with art, because in that case he
would have to keep it to himself. It must be a common interest, a part
of school life. Ultimately, he fixed upon the bowling of googlies.
His batting had always been respectable and had won him a place in his
house team for two summers, and now, as Rayner was likely to be engaged
in school matches, or practice games, Martin became house captain on
most afternoons. Ever since the day when, as a small boy being tried
in 'firsts,' he had shivered with terror in the field and dreaded more
than death itself the agony of the fumbled catch, he had always envied
house captains. Now was his chance: he could become a slow bowler. He
believed that most things in this world can be achieved by bluff and a
little hard work, and it seemed a simple thing to get wickets if you
had unlimited power of keeping yourself on and had terrorised your
fielders into holding on to anything. And so, weary of the Upper Sixth
and Foskett and even Finney, and wearier far of wondering whether the
Public Schools were right, and how and when the Trade Unions would take
them over, he found comfort in the googly.
During the holidays he had put up a stump on the Berrisfords' lawn, and
practised leg-breaks, waiting patiently for the desired freak which
should turn from the off. Sometimes it had come, but Martin never had
the least notion why it came: still the essential and undeniable fact
was that it had come. On the second night of term he put it to Rayner
that he was intending to bowl googlies.
"My hat!" said Rayner. "And you'll be house captain usually!"
"Exactly," answered Martin. "That is the point."
Rayner smiled grimly. "Think of the house, old man!" he exclaimed.
"I shall. Really I do break both ways."
"And how often do you bounce?"
"That depends. Anyhow it's the googly man's privilege to pitch one
ball in six on his own toss. Have you ever seen young Jack Hearne?"
Rayner neglected the question. "Look here!" he said, "are you really
going to bowl?"
"Rather! But I'll make you an offer. If I don't take ten wickets in
the first fortnight with an average under eighteen, I'll never do it
again."
"Done!" said Rayner confidently.
Martin triumphantly kept his side of the agreement. The ordinary house
pitches were rough and ready, the ordinary house player a slogger.
Martin's ordinary ball was well pitched up and apparently simple. But
he had had his eye on two or three small boys in the junior team who,
though poor bats, could run like hares in 'the country' and hold on to
anything they touched. These he translated to the first, to the vast
indignation of several clumsy hitters who were moved down in their
stead. The policy was a success. Martin used to go on first before
the other side were set and occasionally got a victim in the slips or
enticed a steady man in front of his wicket. Then he made way for
orthodox 'fast rights,' but after the fall of five or six wickets he
would polish off the tail with atrocious slow stuff. His small boys
were scattered far away and interfered considerably with an adjacent
game: they had plenty to do and were given an ice for every catch they
held. Martin soon found it an expensive amusement and became extremely
unpopular with the tenants of the neighbouring pitch.
He never sulked if he were 'knocked off,' an unusual trait in a house
captain and a cause of popularity with his team. And the fielders knew
that he only pretended to mind when catches were dropped: Martin was
incapable of being ruffled by a mere game. As a result the eleven
played keenly and with efficiency. Though Berney's had only one man,
Rayner, in the school eleven they succeeded in reaching the final of
the Cock House matches. They were to play, just before the end of
term, their old enemy, Randall's.