home. And as for India or the Straits! He wanted to be in London with
the rest of them, keeping up the old ideas and intimacies and
enthusiasms. If he had only felt that such a life was absolutely
impossible, he would have taken his fate more graciously. But it
seemed that with an effort, with daring, he might get out of it all and
find a job that would keep him in London without starvation: but he
hadn't the pluck to look for the job, and he was content to drift on
the wave of chance. Circumstance was moulding his life, whereas he
ought to be moulding circumstance. Why couldn't he be strong and do
things? He despised his puny helplessness and cowardly drifting: the
more he gazed into himself the less did he see to admire. Naturally
this did not improve his work.
He lived with Rendell and Lawrence and Chard in a good house in
Holywell: Davenant had gone down. Chard shared a sitting-room with
Rendell, and they both worked with vigour, being men of sense and
ambition. Upstairs in a great low-raftered room Martin dwelled with
Lawrence. He began by labouring with a fond frenzy, but he soon fell
into his companion's easier ways and sat by the window watching the
passers-by. Holywell is a sound and regular street. You either belong
to it or you don't. And if you do belong to it everybody knows that
you belong to it and has a notion of your habits and your time-table.
Martin and Lawrence soon found out about everyone, and their chief
topic of conversation was the late appearance of this man or the
frequent journeys of another, the new hat of the girl opposite or the
names and nature of the young women who came hustling out of St Cross
Road. They despised Chard and Rendell for their ignorance and wilful
neglect of the street and its population.
It was a soothing occupation to watch folk come and go. Soothing, too,
was the soft glory of the street itself as it curved away to the Broad
with its sombre harmony of pink and grey. Behind the sweeping
splendour of the way itself might rise a sunset sky of winter, blue
with the lustre of steel, a tower of strong darkness above the fading
glow. And then lamps would twinkle and windows pour golden floods into
the road and a man would think about having tea. All good men live in
Holywell when they "go out."
But it was not always thus. Often everything was ugly, and Martin had
indigestion after lunch and thought once more of May Williams. He
hadn't seen her at all: perhaps she had escaped from Botley. Really he
didn't care: astonishing how unattractive was the memory of that
affair! No, May had not been good enough, but there was a girl who
walked up and down the street: she too had roses in her hat, but the
colour was not the same. And she was different, remote and
inaccessible. Martin said nothing and did nothing, but he always
looked out when she passed on her way to and from shops: it gave him
more pain than pleasure to watch her pass by, and yet he kept on
looking.
And then there was Mr Cuggy. Cuggy was Martin's tutor in philosophy
and had the reputation of being the most muddled thinker in Oxford: his
claims were based on a certain article in _Mind_ which had broken all
records (already high in English Philosophy) for the amazing
technicalities of its jargon and the vile barbarity of its writing.
But of course he was a dear old man. In his youth a torrent of
Hegelianism had passed over him and he remained always a limp victim of
the drenching he had then received. He clung, this mariner shipwrecked
in German waters, to the rock of the Absolute and dared not relax his
grip because he saw no other prominence amid the devouring waves. And
everywhere, should he slip off, were the pragmatic sharks lurking for
the prey. To this rock he dragged his pupils quite irrespective of
their capacity to understand the process and to cling coherently: as a
result they clung only in their essays and dropped off in private
thinking. Time's ironies are pleasant and Mr Cuggy made many a "prag."
Martin learned all the proper words and delighted his tutor with some
cant about the higher synthesis and the disappearance of all antinomies
in the absolute. In private discussion he differed. "I say. What
shall we do about this philosophy?" he asked Rendell.
Even Rendell had been sickened by Cuggy. "Of course it's all drivel,"
he admitted. "Just systematised drivel."
"My dear ass," put in Lawrence, "has that only just struck you? I
remember being rebuked for my early scoffing. The main object of these
blighters is just to wrap up in a perfectly unintelligible and
ungrammatical jargon what everybody else can see without bothering
about it. They've got to do something to justify their screw and their
measly existence, so, like the politicians, they keep up a nice series
of sham fights which never end."
"The main point for us," said Martin, "or at any rate for unhappy me,
is to find out how to score marks at the game. I can stand fair
nonsense, but old man Hegel is a bit thick. On the other hand,
pragmatism is just as silly and, what's worse, hated by the gods that
be. No marks in that, I'm afraid. We've got to find a middle path."
"There's the Cambridge stuff. Russell and Moore, Business-like and
quite unattractive."
"Oh, we can't be Tabs," said Lawrence.
"Well what can we be?"
"Why not bag a bit of James Ward, a bit of Bergson, a bit of Croce, and
be Pampsychistic Pluralistic Realistic Modern Young Men?"
"It'll take some doing," said Martin dubiously. "It's no good being
sloppy. The youths who think they'll get firsts because they know all
about Beauty never get very far. What we need is Philosophy on a
Business Basis. Six questions in three hours. Answers to all the
problems of the universe guaranteed all correct in thirty minutes."
"Let's draw up a scheme," said Lawrence, "and diddle this damned
philosophy."
So they settled down and arranged a system: they made out a plan of
what they were going to think about all the possible questions. That
is the best of philosophy: examiners may weave words but they have only
about a dozen real questions from which to choose.
By the end of the term they had settled the business of wisdom. The
schedule was complete and they had a short way of dealing with every
problem from the Universality of Nature to the value of the negative
and hypothetical judgment. Of course to achieve a "position" they had
to sacrifice their consciences at times. It was all quite shameless
and quite successful.
"After this," suggested Chard, "you might get made Railway Managers."
"Unless," said Rendell, "we get on to the staff of a certain penny
weekly."
In December Martin went down once more to Devonshire. To his surprise
he found Freda there. Almost two years had elapsed since he had seen
her and he had almost forgotten her existence. But now he remembered
vividly and was glad.
She had not altered and he rediscovered her perfect insignificance.
How ridiculous it seemed that, while Margaret Berrisford with her
health and strength need only work when she chose and as she chose,
this wisp of a woman should have been caught up in the machinery of
industry: ridiculous that one so fragile should be self-maintenant. He
had little chance to talk to her that evening, but on the following
afternoon he went with her to the village and along the Tavistock Road.
He asked her about herself.
"They soon got rid of me," she answered. "The Trades Union people, I
mean. They were naturally sick of my coming late and getting ill and
being a general nuisance. Then I got in with some Suffrage Women and
they gave me work. One of the new peace-and-goodwill societies. They
want to link up the movement and then agitate according to
Lor-an-order. They're so peaceful and orderly that, not being engaged
in fighting other people like tigers, they just quarrel among
themselves like cats. Oh, I do get sick of it."
"What do you do for them? Speak?"
"Oh no. Just the office work. They worked me quite hard and paid me
very little, and, when I murmured, they hinted that if I was only loyal
to my sex I'd do the whole show for nothing. Never work for lovers of
humanity: their love has a background of dividends and West End
drawing-rooms. It's none the worse for that, but they expect your love
to take the form of more work for less pay. It's not good enough. I'd
rather be a genuine wage-slave, thanks very much."
"City office, regular hours, and no nonsense?"
"That's it."
"Have you been ill this winter?"
"Yes. I was rotten for a bit; Margaret has been awfully good to me.
When she heard of it she fished me out of my lodgings and made me come
here. I was in bed a fortnight and must have been a beastly nuisance.
They are splendid, all of them."
Martin agreed.
"And what about you?" she asked.
He explained his hopes and fears.
"You've no business to mope," she told him. "Don't you understand that
you're an extremely lucky person? I wish I had your chances."
"I suppose I'm lucky," he said without conviction, trying to feel
ashamed of his despair.
"Of course you are. Anyhow it's silly to get despondent. Besides,
you're bound to do well."
"Am I? Why?"
"Because I tell you to. Do get firsts and things."
It pleased him to be ordered. He stopped in the muddy lane between two
stark hedges that stood naked against the grey December sky.
"Do you care?" he asked.
"Of course I care."
"Why? I mean----" he paused awkwardly.
"Don't ask silly questions," she answered. "It's too cold to stand
about."
They walked on.
"It must be pretty sickening for you," he said, "having to go on with
this drudgery."
"It is rather rotten. But it can't be helped."
"Can't you get some intelligent kind of work, writing or something?"
"I'm not good enough. Don't make foolish interruptions. It's quite
true. And remember I chucked up a teaching post."
"But routine must be worse for a person like you."
"It isn't nice. Really I think the most miserable people of all are
those who are just too good for dull work and not good enough for real,
original, creative work."
"That's painfully true," he answered. And there, gloomily, they left
it.
That night Martin reflected on the events of the day. What surprised
him most was the depth and intensity of his feelings about Freda. It
wasn't love, it wasn't mere sympathy: was it just sentimentality? It
is a habit of the younger generation in these days to turn their sexual
emotions into channels of political reasoning: the result is called
feminism. Instead of defending hapless women with strong right arm
they are eager to defend underpaid women by strike or Act of
Parliament. There is little difference, for the reason that Nature
cannot be cheated. The pitchfork of modernity will not keep it out,
and chivalry, loathed in name, comes bravely back in disguise. In
matters of personal relation feminism is dangerous just because it is
insidious. Martin had already formed his picture of Freda, overworked
and underpaid, homeless and driven from pillar to post. The image was
painful, but it pleased him so to suffer.
On Saturday there was to be shooting, the last of the season. People
were coming down for the week-end and, doubtless, neighbours would be
there. In the home coverts cock pheasants still trumpeted in peace,
but their time had come.
Martin had no gun of his own, but sometimes he used a spare weapon of
his uncle's. If he had been more efficient he would have liked the
actual shooting: he could see the point of it and appreciate the thrill
of waiting and achieving. But he had neither the long experience nor
the swift eye and he was glad when the gun was needed by someone else.
Freda would not see his lack of skill, for Robert had brought a friend
from town for whom the gun would be required.
Neither Margaret nor Freda went out in the morning, and Martin also
stayed in to work. The guns came back to lunch at half-past twelve, as
they had begun to shoot early, for that made a better division of the
short daylight. When they went out again Margaret accompanied Robert's
friend and Martin took Freda to watch the first drive. The air was
soft: otherwise Freda, being still convalescent, would not have been
allowed to stand about. But it was considered warm enough for her if
she wore a thick motoring coat of Margaret's. Here and there films of
mist hung thinly over fields, but in the woods it was clear: the wind
spoke gently in the trees or passed in silence down the rides and open
glades. Underfoot rustled the drifting, many-tinted leaves and the
flight of a startled song-bird made the still air reverberate. The
fragrance of distant pines was mingled with the scent of the leaf-mould
and sometimes the glint of the birch's silver broke the splendid
monotony of giant trunks.
The mystery of Ham and Eggs flashed across Martin's mind. The cult
must not exclude woods.
"Aren't these trees wonderful," he said simply.
"I think they're awful, in the proper sense of the word. They make me
excited and terrified and happy."
"Awful is the right word. Why did men spoil it?"
"We've managed to spoil most things."
"Will they begin shooting soon?" asked Freda after a pause.
"The beaters will be coming up soon."
"Why do people do it? It seems so unnecessary, so savage, somehow."
"So it is savage. That's just the point. It answers a need, I
suppose. You wait till you hear an old cock pheasant come crashing
down. There's something very satisfactory about the noise he makes."
"It's too horrible."
"Wait and perhaps you'll find that you have a few primitive instincts
left in you. You may be free of them; some people are. It isn't only
the passion to kill, though. It's the passion to get over obstacles
and do something immensely difficult. That's why walking-up birds is
better than driving. When I've got a gun I want to hit an object which
is incidentally a bird. It isn't the killing that matters."
"But why don't you shoot at targets or clay pigeons?"
"There you have me. I suppose at that point the savagery comes in. It
isn't the same to shoot at disappearing targets, and that's all one can
say. Hullo, they're starting, we'd better stop talking."
Far away at the back of the covert arose the noise of cracking twigs
and trampled leaves: closer and closer it came until the sounds were
distinguishable, now the tapping of a stick on a tree, the beating of a
bush, the long-drawn cries of "Mark" and "Forward," the swift whir of
wings, and at last the sharp crack of guns. The woods, once awful with
still silence, were all sound and movement. The gun, behind whom
Martin and Freda were standing, had only one chance and took it--a
beautiful right and left. The second bird fell close to them, crashing
through branches to a soft bed of leaves. Freda gasped and jumped
forward. The drive was over.
"You wanted it to fall?" said Martin, taking up the warm, motionless
body.
"I think I did," she confessed. "But only for a moment."
"It seemed right, didn't it?"
"I suppose so. But I couldn't touch it." She paused. "Yes, I was
glad when he hit them both," she added. "The strain of waiting and
looking and listening seemed to make it all different. And he was so
quick. I can't think how he could have got round to the second. It
was all wonderful in a horrible, alluring kind of way."
"I was right," said Martin. "There is something in it, you see."
He was glad that she understood: it gave them another point in common.
The next beat would take them some way from home, out to the bleaker
side of the woods. Martin proposed that they should wait until the
guns returned and Freda was willing. They went to the pines where the
ground was clean and firm and there on a bank they waited.
And there too Martin became more than ever aware of Freda. She was
digging her toes in the soil and at the same time leaning strongly back
upon the dry bank. Thus her body was strung and braced tightly so that
she seemed to him to be one strong curve against the ground. And yet
she was not strained uneasily and her limbs were all fine sweep and
rhythm. He drank in the exquisite grace of her fragility. Everything
about her was brown, her hair, her eyes, her borrowed coat, her long
boots vanishing beneath brown tweed, even the feather in her adorable
hat. Against the brown couch of the bank the various tints joined in a
sombre harmony.
"You mustn't stare," she said suddenly. "It's rude."
"How can I help it?" he answered.
"Easily. I'm not a country girl and I'm not at all attractive in this
get-up. I hate it. Great, clumsy boots!"
"You mustn't say that. You're just perfect like this. It seems so
rotten that you should be dragged away from it all and made to do the
world's drudgery and not see these places. You do fit into them,
whatever you may say."
She turned and looked right into his eyes. "Dear boy," she said, "you
mustn't take me too seriously. I'm quite happy. You mustn't worry
about me."
"I can't help it," he broke out. "It's in me to feel for you, to hate
the waste of you, to want you happier and stronger and getting more out
of things and more out of the things you do get." He told her of his
hopes and fears and how she had affected them and drawn him out of
them. She had taught him not to grumble about an excellent fortune.
And he began to tell her of her own perfection, but she stopped him.
"It's very, very nice of you to care about what becomes of me," she
said. "I think you exaggerate my wasted capacities: in fact I know you
do. But whether or not you're right about me, I know I'm right about
you."
"And what about me?"
"That you aren't in love with me at all. You're rather lonely and
afraid of the future and perhaps, well, sentimental. It's nothing to
be ashamed of. It shows that you're generous, because you're trying to
get rid of your own despair by trying to share mine, which doesn't
exist as a matter of fact. You're a little in love with love and very
young and very nice. And now I'm getting cold so please take me home
and be quite honest with yourself."
As he walked back with her he said very little. Against his conscience
he was angry, angry at what he knew was his own humiliation. She had
been so damnably maternal and--worse still--so damnably right.
On Monday she went back to town; she had forbidden him to renew the
subject and they had talked as they originally talked, with argument,
like undergraduates. But for Martin such conversation had lost its
charm and he knew such relations could not last. Still he wanted her
to be a martyr dragged to the altar of commercialism and she had
refused to think of martyrdom. Her happiness galled him, as he
confessed to himself with shame. Yet less than ever was he able to
forget her.
So Freda went. And Martin remained to work feebly and to write long
letters and to sit fidgeting until the second post had come in and he
knew that to-day at any rate she hadn't answered.
But sometimes she did answer, shortly indeed but kindly; and he was
happy then.
In January he went back to Oxford and the further settling of
philosophy on a business basis. Amid all the energies and diversions
of terms the memory of Freda did not vanish nor even fade. Hitherto
the postman had been neglected in Martin's survey of the passers-by,
but now he was more important than any one even of the other sex.
Martin had never before noticed how many posts there were in a day, but
now he knew all about it.
VII
On an evening of early June Martin, Rendell and Lawrence punted up a
backwater of the Thames. It was cool on the water's surface and a
lingering remnant of breeze stole across the silent meadows and played
gently with the willows. They had escaped from Oxford and the
gas-works, from gramophones and the university boathouse. It was a
special haunt of their own to which they had come, one of Hinksey's
unpathed waters, very narrow and remote. At length they made fast to a
stump of wood and smoked in peace.
It was all over. They had lived through a week of sweltering agony, of
darting to the Schools in cap and gown and stuffy clothes, of darting
out again to see how many words they had got wrong in their
translation. Such is the dignity of Greats. Abiding by their plans,
they had worked their philosophy according to schedule and answered
their questions on grimly practical lines. They hadn't made bold to
know about Beauty.
"Well," said Rendell, "that's the end of that."
"What?" yawned Martin. He was tired alike by his exertions and recent
celebration of the end.
"Of everything."
"Edified?"
"I think so. It's been rather majestic somehow. To have to know about
everything and keep a theory about every branch of thought and action.
One doesn't do it, but it's rather good to think one is supposed to do
it."
"Depressing enough before the event," Martin remembered nights of wild
battling with insoluble problems and days when he had gazed in despair
at papers recently set and realised his complete incapacity to inform
the examiners about modality or the legal aspects of the Caesar-Pompey
quarrel.
"You used to get jolly black?" said Lawrence, remembering silences and
outbursts or the lonely walks that Martin sometimes took.
"It's all very well for you," retorted Martin. "You may have to look
forward to dull sort of work, but you're secure enough. I'm just
beginning this business of getting a job and it's poor fun. I suppose
it means India."
"You'll get a decent screw," said Rendell by way of comfort.
"And come back without a liver or an idea."
"Except about curry and cigars."
"I can't imagine our gloomy Martin as a sun-dried bureaucrat," Lawrence
remarked. "But I suppose he'll have punkahs and khitmutgars and syces
and be the devil of a chap. I daresay it's all right when you're
there."
"There are few people who loathe the British Empire more cordially than
I do," said Martin. "But there seems to be no way of keeping clear of
it. Anyway I've quite settled not to starve as a journalist. Sooner
the White Man's Burden than that."
"Anyhow," said Rendell, still eager to comfort, "we don't know anything
about the Burden, do we? There may be something in it."
"Well, one thing is quite plain," asserted Martin, "there's no charity
going as far as I am concerned. If I have to go and live in a dirty
hot hole I go there because I can't get a decent living otherwise. I
go on the make and I'll resign as soon as I can get the thousand that
they're always chattering about. None of your Burden for me."
"To gather from what one sees," said Lawrence, "the Burden doesn't
weigh very heavily on the shoulders of the big pots. They seem to do
themselves pretty well."
"Of course they do. That's what they go for. How many varsity men
would go abroad if they could live in comfort and get the same wage at
home? Not ten per cent. And who can blame them? India pays, and it
pays for hard, dangerous, useful work. I don't mind men going for the
pay, but I do mind journalists blithering about their self-devotion in
taking up the noble load."
"All the same," said Rendell cheerily, "you've quite a good chance for
the Home."
"I wish the deuce I had," sighed Martin. "If I'd worked all the time I
might have done it. But it's too late now. I don't really know
anything and will be lucky to get India. Come on, let's move a bit."
During the next few days Martin managed to forget the looming menace of
the East. The heat remained and they lived on the river, bathing and
sleeping and feeding in turn. And then here were a couple of farewell
dinners. The champagne flowed and Holywell was full of rushing people
and strange noises. The passing of Lawrence was worthy of his whole
career and on his last night a stalwart cortege bore him like a warrior
to his rest.
After the end of term Martin stayed up to work. July was a month of
lonely misery, of dust and bad tennis and the cramming of English
Literature. At last the time for his Greats viva came and he walked
down to the Schools with Lawrence, there to be asked by a nervous
little man whether he thought things or thought thoughts. He at once
informed the nervous little man that this was an idiotic question and
that Descartes ... his knowledge of Descartes was overwhelming.
Lawrence was dealt with by a truculent, red-faced man who asked him
minute questions about the wanderings of the Phocaeans. Lawrence just
smiled wisely and was sent away. Rendell's turn came later. He was
asked about the foundations of morality and maintained that while Kant
was very wise and venerable he was also very wrong. But he remained
respectful of Kant. One can only be offensive to J. S. Mill in Oxford
nowadays, but about him one can say anything.