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.