Chapter I

1

It will, of course, be obvious that Ivor Marlay’s life would have been quite different if he had gone up to the University of Oxford in the ordinary way. Those who have been to Oxford, or even to Cambridge, will realise how very different Ivor Marlay’s life might have been--if indeed they can retain any interest in him--had his first youth been allowed the natural and wholesome outlets of mind and body which either of those mellow places affords in such ripe and enduring abundance to young men of widely different ambitions. The amazing reason why Ivor Marlay did not go up to the University of Oxford in the ordinary way was because he did not want to.

This Oxford matter was discussed between himself and his Aunt Moira on the very afternoon of his leaving school. It had, of course, been discussed before, but that afternoon it was discussed from a rather acute angle. Aunt Moira was seventy-two years old and was apt to discuss things from a rather acute angle.

The day on which Ivor Marlay left school had, no doubt, a good deal to do with the acuteness of the discussion, for Ivor Marlay left school suddenly. Now when a man has stayed at a public school, and at Manton in particular, until he is eighteen: when a man has become respected, responsible, and a veteran of that system which will so soon be producing him to the world as that system’s finest (as they are all the finest) product--it is surely his plain duty, in fact his only duty, to hold out to the end and to leave school without a stain on his character. He should, if possible, avoid being expelled.

Ivor Marlay’s expulsion was of the straightforward “Damn you, sir, get out!” kind. And the news of his expulsion, and the obvious reason for it, caused the nearest approach to popular feeling that Manton had ever entertained for Ivor Marlay. Manton laughed, and then Manton smiled for weeks. And when, in later days, Manton saw the name of Marlay on the cover of a book, Manton grinned in memory and bought that book, and having tried to read it wondered what the devil had happened to the man. For Manton didn’t know that he had done the thing in any spirit but that of mischief or adventure, both naturally dear to Manton’s heart. If Manton had known that he had done it in any spirit but that of mischief or adventure, it would have thought it all rather odd, and felt a little uncomfortable. The head master, who knew, thought it very odd and made Ivor a little uncomfortable.

But, even on the morning it happened, the College Prefects thought it was not happening quite usually. The College Prefects at Manton have a sitting-room in the school building, a spacious room adjacent to the masters’ sitting-room: and here they will pass a minute or two on their way to and from classes, to which they are allowed to enter a minute or two after Inferiors. (The difference between a College Prefect--Coll Pree--and a House Prefect--House Pree--is that a Coll Pree can do what he likes everywhere, and a House Pree can do what he likes in his House. Inferiors can do what they like in their studies, more or less. Fags can’t do what they like anywhere. New boys are _bacilli_, unclean but invisible.) The Coll Prees, at eleven o’clock that morning, gathered in force in their room for their minute-or-two. They knew that Marlay, the third head of their number, was having a little conversation with the Little Man, and they were waiting to hear about it. And the thing only began to look a little unusual when one of their number called out: “Why, he’s not coming! There he is!” And there, through the window, they saw he was! Walking swiftly down the school steps, across the wide lawn, and down more steps towards his House....

“I’ll risk it,” cried Transome, and rushed out. (Transome and Marlay had been the school rackets-pair for the last two years.) He breathlessly caught Marlay up on the “Senior Turf,” that immaculate turf where Manton whacks other Mantons at cricket. Marlay turned round at his hail.

“What happened?” asked Transome breathlessly.

“Sack,” said Marlay.

“Of course,” said Transome. “Was the Little Man cross?”

“He’s a jolly nice little man,” Marlay told him. “He chewed my head off and it didn’t begin to choke him.”

“It nearly choked me, though,” he added.

“Well, what are you going to do now?” asked Transome, interested. It isn’t every day that the other one of a school rackets-pair is expelled; and besides, Transome wanted to know what Marlay _was_ going to do--he hadn’t the faintest idea what he would do if he were sacked, except avoid his people like the plague.

Ivor dug his hands deep in his pockets.

“I’m going,” he said firmly, “down to the House. I’m going to bribe or kick the boot-boy into packing my things and dragging them to the station. I am then going to leap on my motor-bike and shift like hell to London. On my arrival there I shall be made to stand in a corner for an hour. And then I shall dress and go to the Empire----”

“Swank!” said Transome.

“And if you’ve got any sense,” Ivor added, with a grin, “you’ll come with me, Transome. On the carrier. You can come back to-morrow saying you’ve been to see a corn-specialist, and get the sack in perfect order. Your father, being a colonel, would appreciate your sense of discipline.”

“Yes, with his boot. Though I’d come,” Transome thoughtfully admitted, “only I’m leaving at the end of the term anyway. Might as well wait----”

“Well, good-bye, old chap!” And Ivor held out his hand.

He looked extraordinarily happy, Transome thought.

“Won’t your people be sick?” he asked.

“They’d vomit,” said Ivor thoughtfully, “if I had any--in particular, I mean.” And having struck the pathetic note Ivor grinned broadly and Transome grinned broadly back--and then they parted sharply asunder, the one to the conquest of the world and the heavens, and the other back to a routine which was more than usually embittered by an idea that it must be rather amusing to be an orphan.

The only other persons to whom Ivor said good-bye were the boot-boy, whom he tipped; the steward, whom he tipped; the two dormitory housemaids, one of whom he tipped and the other kissed as well, for she was a nice girl; the matron, who kissed him; and the house-master’s wife, a kind and comfortable body who was extremely surprised at having the tips of her fingers very gallantly kissed. Ivor was enjoying himself like anything, and didn’t mind who knew it; for being expelled is not bad fun when it isn’t for dirt, and when you have an “Indian” motor-cycle, T.T. Model, which means that you can do a fabulous amount of miles per hour in an exceeding uncomfortable position and for no earthly reason except to lie about it to your friends....

2

The expulsion came about this way.

At about the middle of that summer term it became obvious to the intelligence of the meanest _bacillus_ that strange things were happening at Manton by night. These strange things were not, of course, defined to _bacilli_, except that they were uncommonly strange. _Bacilli_ had therefore a lovely feeling that history was being made, and some one’s history in particular.

There were rumours, new rumours every morning, delightful and outrageous rumours, so that the lumps in the porridge were swallowed without comment and the fish-cakes were eaten without contumely. The masters looked unusually stern, but it was the sternness of thought rather than of discipline. Coll Prees went about with smiles gravely repressed and an air of being more than usually responsible for everything. House Prees and Bloods (indescribable beings, neither Prefect nor Inferior, amazing centaurs, not divine but certainly not human--just Bloods) were everywhere to be seen in earnest colloquy. For the matter was, that there was some sort of night-prowler about the school grounds. It would have been almost bearable if the night-prowler had prowled only about the grounds, but he prowled into the Houses, he prowled actually into the house-masters’ sides of the Houses; he prowled into their studies, he sat on their chairs, he read their books, he drank their port, he tested their barley water, he smoked their cigars, he left a neat little bit of Greek verse on their desks to thank them for same--and then, as it were for a joke, he bolted the windows from the inside, locked the doors from the outside, and left the keys in such an obvious place that no one ever found them until new ones had been made. And this went on, once or twice a week, for more than a month! Watch was kept, police were stationed about the grounds (for weeks any strange face about the school grounds was held to be that of a “plain clothes man--and jolly plain at that!”) and the Coll Prees were called upon to keep night-watch over the House where each held dominion.... Then there was a memorable night when the night-prowler was chased. Two Coll Prees and Mr. Sandys, of the Lower Fifth and the Hampshire Eleven, were patrolling the borders of the Senior Turf, about which lie the main Houses of Manton in the form of a horse-shoe. Suddenly, just ahead of them, was seen a moving dark thing. They leapt. It ran. They chased, but the dark thing hurled down the slope from the path to the flat darkness of the Senior Turf. “He’s got running-shorts,” grumbled Mr. Sandys, who was in a dinner-jacket. “And gym-shoes,” grunted Mr. Sandys. Then came a laugh behind them, and again they leapt. But the dark thing grew darker and disappeared into the labyrinth of buildings made by the gymnasium, the gates, rackets-courts, and House No. 6. “Blast!” said Mr. Sandys, and gave up. The Coll Prees had given up long before.

Of course the night-prowler was caught in the end, but he need not have been caught so stupidly. The head-master (the late Canon Sidney Wentworth Carr), himself prowling about the grounds at three a.m. one morning, some days after all hope of finding the miscreant had faded, thought he saw, for a bare second, a smothered cigar-end in the little overshadowed lane that runs between Houses No. 2 and No. 9. He promptly scuttled into the garden of No. 9, darted towards a certain point in the wall, secured an ill-tempered victory over the low branches of the trees for which Manton is famous, and finally got to the wall. The Canon was a little man, so he had to stand on his toes; and he looked over the wall. There was the figure, a yard or so away with his back to him, smoking a cigar. “Silly ass,” the Little Man thought. “As if he liked it!”

And then he struck a match sharply. The figure started round.

“Got you!” said the head-master.

“Ah,” said the figure indistinctly. Or it might have been “Oh!”

“Come to my study t’morrow morning at ten,” the head-master said sharply. “Silly ass, Marlay.”

“Yes, sir.”

Thus, it was all over bar the shouting. And there was very little of that, in the head-master’s study at ten o’clock the next morning.

“Well, what did you do it for?” was fired at Ivor as he came in. Ivor had the grace to be very white in the face. The head-master, fierce little man that he was, always fired his questions like that, briskly, brusquely, indomitably. He always spoke as though he was going to swear, which indeed he sometimes did; but always just at the right moment and about the right thing, always knowing when to be a man, when a head-master, and when a Canon; which made him very efficient and popular as all three.

“Well, Marlay?”

“If you want the absolute truth, sir----”

“Get on, man.”

“I was frightfully bored, sir,” Ivor said heavily; and never was boredom more cruelly punished than by its owner’s white face and by the silence that followed its confession. The Little Man stared at him, and he tapped the edge of the table with a paper-knife. Then he jumped up.

“You go, of course,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“To-day.”

“Yes, sir.”

The head-master swung round on him angrily. He had always liked Marlay.

“Look here, Marlay, you’ve spoilt a good thing, and at the last moment! You’re a damn fool, sir!”

“I know, sir. I’m sorry.” It sounded so lame!

“Don’t lie, Marlay. You are not sorry. You are glad to go.”

Ivor fumbled.

“I’m sorry, sir, to have disappointed you,” he muttered weakly.

The head-master paced the room. Then again, suddenly, he swung round on him; and, small though he was, he seemed to tower above the boy’s drooping figure.

“It’s wrong and nasty, this,” he said steadily. “I suppose you know, Marlay, that there’s nothing fine in what you’ve done, and everything far from fine in the spirit in which you’ve done it!”

“It’s the spirit that’s damnable, man!” the head-master said. “Can’t you see? It’s a silly boy’s trick played by a man. The matter with you, Marlay, is that you think you are a grown man and despise boys, and the matter with me is that I think you are a grown man and despise you for not being a boy. That’s why I don’t thrash you, not because you are a College Prefect....”

The way the Little Man said that! Ivor looked at the ground.

“Bored!” snarled the head-master suddenly. “You have grossly insulted me, Marlay. And you have insulted Manton.”

“You may go, Marlay,” said the head-master.

Ivor went very quickly; but he had not opened the door before he was called back by a sharp voice. The Little Man was still standing by the table, lowering at him. Ivor felt, looked, and was a cur.

“I want to warn you, young man,” the Little Man said. “That boredom of yours is dangerous--to you. I mean! To every one else it is merely offensive. I consider, Marlay, that you have been most offensive. So if I were you I would take steps to cure this boredom of yours. Were you, may I ask, intending to go up to Oxford?”

“No, sir.”

(Ivor had finally decided that moment.)

“I shouldn’t,” said the head-master. “You are the first Sixth Form man of mine I have advised not to. It is not a compliment. If you have been bored here at Manton, you will go mad at Oxford. They take their pleasures even more traditionally there. I will write to Lady Moira.”

“You may go, Marlay,” he said.

But, as Ivor was again going, a voice snapped from behind him:--

“You don’t believe in tradition, I suppose, Marlay?”

Ivor swung round with a livid face.

“Yes, I do, sir,” he said flatly. “That’s exactly why I was bored--the tradition here is one of boredom.”

The silence that followed was broken only by a funny noise in the Little Man’s throat. And Ivor was afraid.

“I--I meant,” he stammered, “that it m-must be pretty--boring for you, sir--teaching boys and----”

“You had better go, Marlay,” said the head-master.

And this time it was Ivor who turned round from the door and faced the terrible silence of the room. His face had gone from white to deep red.

“Good-bye, sir,” he said. “And thank you, sir--really.”

The head-master threw the paper-knife on to the table with a clatter, and Ivor Marlay left school.

(It cost the night-prowler a pretty penny, that joke. For, a few days after he had prowled his last, the head-master and house-masters of Manton received each an anonymous box of Coronas. He really hadn’t the face to return the port in kind.)

3

Two hours later he was with Aunt Moira, in the house at Palace Green. He found her alone, erect in a high-backed Queen Anne chair in the bare and gloomy library in which she was wont to pass her afternoons reading, or writing letters. That large room had always awed Ivor: even as a child he had never wanted to play in it, for all that it was so limitless, the parquet floor so vast and shiny and unencumbered, the windows so wide and light with the fairy expanse of Kensington Gardens.

Aunt Moira watched his approach across the parquet floor, an uncomfortable kind of floor to traverse under raking eyes, without remark or sign. Aunt Moira was not given to showing surprise, not even at her nephew coming home alive in term-time.

That nephew approached, stood, grinned sheepishly, but spoke not: unless inarticulate mutterings of scarcely human intelligence be speech. It was Aunt Moira who spoke:--

“That horrible motor-cycle of yours makes a most disturbing noise, Ivor. I wonder the police let you. You might muffle it with something....”

(It was some years later that the Home Office bethought itself to pass a law against the open exhaust.)

And then Ivor explained how it had come about that he had been allowed to use the “red devil” in term-time. It was an idiotic tale to tell, and the telling took him some time, for he was very careful, trying to leave nothing out and to put as little as possible in. Aunt Moira did not interrupt once, she had always too much to say to interrupt; but she listened intently, and still more intently, and she tapped a foot on the floor.

When he had finished she used almost the identical words as the Canon Sidney Wentworth Carr, who was an old friend of hers--and with more weight, if that was possible. But Ivor, crushed already that day, was almost indifferent to this added burden. And though he tried, out of respect for Aunt Moira, to hide his indifference to the mere logic of the situation--for was this not, after all, an epoch in his life?--she must have perceived something of his peculiar nonchalance, for she suddenly cut short the expression of her deep disappointment with a very weary:

“You might just not have done it, Ivor!” Dear Aunt Moira!

“Of course,” said Ivor softly, “it rather puts the lid on my going up to Oxford.” He was so frightfully pleased about not going up to Oxford--he simply could not have told any one why, it was just a tremendous bubbling within him of freedom from all sorts of things--that he couldn’t help playing the fool about it, thus letting Aunt Moira see exactly how pleased he was. She stared at him--at the young man who had so suddenly grown out of her reach! And maybe she realised that the events of that day had somehow released in him something individual which had been in hiding, something unpleasant but individual.

“Then what will you do?” she put to him sharply. “For you must do something, you know. In this world, nowadays. I will not have you live all your life as my nephew....”

“I thought you might go to the Bar,” she said.

“I thought,” said Ivor, “that I might write....”

“Oh dear!” sighed Aunt Moira.

And there was silence. But let it be understood that Aunt Moira had never intended to force Ivor’s preference about a career. Aunt Moira never really forced any one’s preference about anything. Liberty was the one feast to which she commanded her guests--it was only that her invitations sometimes made liberty just a little unrecognisable.

She had always liked people who wrote sensible things. But it seemed so vague, this writing.

“But you could write as well,” she suggested, rather brutally. “You must do something, don’t you see? And though I’ve no doubt you are very clever, as every one is clever nowadays, you can’t possibly have enough to write about at your age to take up all your time.”

“But I don’t want it to take up all my time! That’s just the point, Aunt Moira.”

“Now don’t be clever with me, Ivor. What I want for you, don’t you see, is a Position in the world, some foothold or other. And a writer, even quite a nice writer, is nothing at all unless he has written something that every one has read, while a barrister is something even when no one has heard of him. He is _something_, I mean. I insist on your being _something_, Ivor.”

(Naturally one will be “_something_,” Ivor impatiently thought.)

“Of course,” said Aunt Moira, “you are very grown-up for your years. I don’t like it.”

“I suppose,” she said, “you’ve got ideas.”

Ivor’s eyes had been intent on his shoes, but he now looked up frankly.

“As a matter of fact,” he said pathetically, “I haven’t got one. But I’ve got a kind of feeling that I may have--you know, Aunt Moira?”

“I know,” said Aunt Moira, not sympathetically--though really very surprised at Ivor’s candour; it was pleasant to hear a young man who had just made an idiot of himself saying he had no ideas--a very good beginning, she thought, for a writer’s career.

It was decided, over tea, that he should stay on with Aunt Moira for a year or so, studying French and literature--and, added Ivor, sociology.

“Sociology,” snapped Aunt Moira, “is a game that self-educated labourers play with half-educated gentlemen. What you doubtless mean is politics.” Ivor let it go at that.

Later on, Ivor could take rooms of his own; and still later on, when he was of age, he could travel and do what he liked--provided, Aunt Moira insisted, he did _something_! She relied on him to be _decent_, she said. If she hated anything in this world, it was slackness, flabbiness, and shoddiness--μικροπρεπέια, the Little Man would have snapped, for he never missed a chance of remembering Aristotle against you. If he was going to write, well, he must write, but seriously.

“There must be no nonsense about that,” said Aunt Moira. “And for Heaven’s sake don’t begin to write poetry until you have learnt how to write prose!”

The tea things were removed, and they sat on in silence. Now Aunt Moira’s silence was a formidable weapon, but to-day it was as though Ivor did not notice it, his eyes were so intent on the bright prospect of Kensington Gardens. Through a corner window could be seen a part of Kensington Palace, bathed in the rich shadow of the evening sun.

“Ivor!” she suddenly called.

The boy jerked his eyes away from that enthralling moon outside the windows--it is always outside the windows, that eternal and enthralling moon, or just behind the other person’s right shoulder. He smiled shadowily at her....

“I was just thinking,” he said.

“There’s so much to do, to think about, Aunt Moira,” he said. “And one doesn’t know where to begin!”

“That,” said Aunt Moira, “is just what you have to think out. I can’t help you.” Which, of course, she at once proceeded to do. “I suppose you are being eaten up with the idea, that you must see things, do things, live things. When I was young a young man was not happy until he had travelled--but it’s not enough for you to travel geographically. You want to travel emotionally. You are not childish enough....”

“It’s a twilight age,” said Aunt Moira.

“These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.”

“Meredith wrote that,” she explained--and somehow made Meredith very mysterious.

Ivor’s expulsion was never again referred to between them--unless, perhaps, it was in reference to it that Aunt Moira, as he rose to go upstairs to change, called him to her and gave him one of those rare kisses--the last must have been quite three years before--that so unexpectedly clung to his cheek for a warm second; and then she examined him so straightly that he began a confused smile.

“You have intolerant eyes, anyway,” she said at last. For Aunt Moira was one of those who believed in intolerance; not she to advise youth to be tolerant, indulgent. She would tolerate anything in a nation, but she would not tolerate in an individual what she would not tolerate in herself. Always she had wanted her men to be good and great, and with the passing of the years she had decided that men cannot be good and great and tolerant in this self-scarred world. “Certainly, there are two sides to every question; but one of them looks over an abyss.” That is what Aunt Moira said; for she had looked over an abyss.