of person who does drink one glass of wine. With a kind of ghastly
self-conscious moderation he sips some claret and then hurries off to
organise a mission meeting. There aren't any good old fogeys left,
only some fogeys without the merits of fogeyism. They've got
consciences and think about social reform and the possibility of all
classes pulling together before the last Red Day. You know the kind of
thing. By Good Will out of Nervousness."
"Well then," answered Mr Berrisford, "I'm wrong. Oxford is going to
the dogs. I suppose they had to let the dons marry, but they might
have foreseen that the kind of women who would pounce on the dons
wouldn't understand about the good life. I expect it's the women that
are destroying Oxford. When Oxford spread northwards, it spread to the
devil."
"But this is downright Toryism," protested Cartmell. "You call
yourself a revolutionary!"
"So I am. But I'm sound about tradition and things that matter. I
don't want soaking: I want proper drinking and proper talking. I
thought it might have lingered in one or two common-rooms. Anyhow, the
undergraduates----"
He paused a moment and then went on:
"I remember Oxford as a place where I had some excellent pipes and
never took my breakfast till I wanted it. It was a place where I
worked devilish hard when I hadn't anything better to do. And I worked
sensibly. No gentleman works after lunch or dinner. He walks or buys
books after lunch and after dinner he talks. You must talk at Oxford,
Martin."
"At debates, do you mean?"
"Not at the Union. Oh, Lord, not there. Robert has done that, and
look at him. He's a broken man. He used to spend his vacs wondering
how he could get the votes of Malthusian Mongols in Worcester without
losing the support of Church and State in Keble. Didn't you, Robert?"
"I shall draw a veil over the past," said Robert. "I became President,
anyhow."
"Be warned, Martin," his uncle went on. "Speak at college debates, if
it amuses you. But shun a public career. Talk all night to your
friends, for afterwards you won't get talk like it. You'll get shop
talk and small talk and dirty talk, but at Oxford you'll get the real
thing with luck."
Martin, remembering the tastes of Theo. K. Snutch, felt doubtful.
"Of course you'll find lots of nonsense there," John Berrisford added.
"Lectures, for instance. They're nothing but an excuse to keep the
dons from lounging: it certainly does give them an occupation for the
mornings. Just think of it! There they are, mouthing away term after
term. Either wisely cut----"
"Hear, hear!" from Robert.
"--or laboriously taken down, by conscientious youths with fountain
pens and patent note-books. I suppose the Rhodes scholars use
shorthand."
"Possibly," said Robert. "Certainly they have nasty little black books
to slip in their pockets like reporters."
"Anyhow the stuff could be got out of reputable books in half the time
with no manual labour of scribbling. Sometimes the man's lectures are
actually published in book form and yet he solemnly dictates them year
after year!"
"But sometimes," put in Cartmell, "a man has got something original to
say."
"Well," said Robert, "why doesn't he publish his notes at a price? I'm
quite willing to buy his knowledge, but I dislike having to waste time
and trouble in a stuffy lecture-room in order to get it."
"The whole thing is preposterous," his father concluded. "But the
system will last for fifty years or more. Just like the discipline.
So beautifully English, they drive everything underground, make it
twice as dangerous, and then pretend it doesn't exist. Instead of men
having open and honourable relations with women, they'll be slinking
about in back streets and snatching their kisses in taxicabs."
"Well," said Martin, "you set out to praise Oxford but you haven't made
it seem very attractive."
"Oh! you'll find it all right, when you come to it. If a man has got
to earn his own living it's about the only time when he can live a
reasonable life. You'll be able to say what you like, read what you
like, go to bed when you like, get up when you like, work when you
like, and, if you use a little discretion, do what you like. Don't
become a slave to any one thing, the River or the Union or even the
Classics. You can get into the Civil Service without straining
yourself, so make the most of your time. Doing the kind of work you
like is the only really good thing in the world."
Just then Margaret opened the door and looked in.
"Father," she said, "you're booming terribly. Mother says you must
come and play games."
"I never play games."
"Well, mother says you must. All of you!"
"Are we wanted at once?"
"Yes."
"Then, gentlemen, we must yield. We were born too late. The
matriarchy has returned. Do you agree to that, Cartmell?"
"Certainly!"
"There was a time when no young lady would have the daring to invade
the dining-room and order the men to play games. Games, indeed!"
"Don't start again, father," interrupted Margaret. "I won't budge till
you do."
"Just think what you might hear!"
"Oh, I'm not a 'puffick lidy.' They passed away with the patriarchy.
Now, come along!"
Games were a success because they were taken seriously. Mr Berrisford
asserted that if he must waste time in that particular way he meant to
do it properly. So they all exercised great ardour and ingenuity,
composed pretty rhymes, and drew the strangest pictures. At the end he
insisted, however, that instead of taking famous men beginning with C,
they should have infamous people. The test of infamy was to be a
referendum. The game began well enough, because no opposition was
raised to such people as Cicero or Christopher Columbus. But the
inclusion of both Cromwell and Charles I. caused a heated argument and
Cartmell was sure that they couldn't both be on one black list.
But Mr Berrisford exposed the crimes of both at great length. Crippen
and Calvin both had defenders and the game at last broke up in
confusion.
Martin enjoyed the evening, partly from vanity (he had done some quite
clever things), and partly because he could watch Viola Cartmell
without being noticed. To watch her was heavenly. There was nothing
subtle or analytic in his adoration: for him there was just an
indivisible whole called Viola. And that was perfect.
At eleven Robert declared that he still had some of the Ethics left and
retired to find out about the contemplative life. Mr Berrisford took
Godfrey Cartmell to smoke a cigar in his study and the rest prepared to
go to bed.
Martin went to his room and then came back and lingered by the
staircase window. As he looked out he could see a solid line of
fir-trees standing out with black severity against the moonlit sky, and
farther away was the long shoulder of the moor--he could see the ridge
they had climbed together and the rough peak which broke its symmetry
and made its splendour.
Someone was coming up. It could only be Viola: the Berrisfords slept
on the other side of the house.
It was she. Trembling, he heard the rustling of her skirts, the
creaking of the stairs, her voice by his side.
"Hullo!" she said. "Star-gazing?"
"It's a great night," he answered.
She came and stood at the window. The closeness of her thrilled him.
"I wish those owls wouldn't hoot," she said. "Is that the ridge we
climbed?"
"Yes. I did enjoy the walk."
"So did I! The air up there is so splendid. And it's all so
gorgeously empty."
"I've been up before. But I enjoyed it much more this time."
Naturally she did not take it as he meant it.
"One doesn't often get such a perfect day, I suppose," was her answer.
Martin was at a loss. He wanted to say all sorts of things:
fortunately they stuck.
She turned to go: "I'm sure you'll have a good time at Oxford and make
the most of it!"
"Thank you very much. Everyone does seem to enjoy it."
"Good-night!" she said, and left him to go to her room. The door
closed behind with a sharpness that hurt.
As Martin lingered in the passage it began to occur to him that he was
a silly fool, that boys of eighteen shouldn't fall in love with married
women of twenty-five or even more, and that, even if they did, there
was no point in being tongue-tied and nervous. But what was the good
of self-reproach? He wasn't to blame if she was perfect. And she was
perfect. To-morrow he would have to go up to Oxford. He would
scarcely see her again. There was nothing left of her now, nothing
except the boots which stood outside her door, their strong brown
leather stained with the peat of Bear Down and Devil's Tor. At last he
moved quickly to his room and undressed.
As he lay half naked on his bed he recalled the glories of the moor and
the way they had talked. God, how she had talked! They had defied
that leaping wind from whose onslaught his cheeks still burned. It had
been a day of days. Then he heard Godfrey Cartmell come up and again
the door closed. The sound of it hurt him. How could she waste
herself on that correct, that unutterably correct, young Liberal?
Why was life so full of silliness, of waste and bungling? Why ... but
one thing was certain--he would never, never forget her.
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.