Chapter VIII: Book TWO: University (3)

They went. The journey took some time, for the motor bicycle behaved abominably on Hinksey hill. Not till a quarter to eight did they reach Abingdon. Martin dismounted in the square and left Lawrence with the machine. He walked up to the King's Arms and glanced through the windows of the dining-room, which looked directly upon the street. He had been right in his surmise. Chard was dining with Nixon and Smith-Aitken. Apparently he was making the best of it: they seemed to be a happy party and passed bottles with conviction.

Martin brought the news to Lawrence: "We simply must get hold of him," he said. "It would be the deed of a lifetime."

"That's all very well," said Lawrence. "But what the devil can we do? We can't just go in and knock out our Bullingdon friends. We'd have the manager and the police nosing round and we'd never get away in time."

"We can't do that," Martin agreed. "And we can't afford to wait. It's nearly eight and we must be back by nine. What do people do in cinema dramas?"

"I know," Lawrence almost shouted. "Don't you remember 'Lust or Love?' and how they rescued the white slave. The drama has its uses."

Martin remembered. "We might try," he said.

They entered the hotel and looked into the smoking-room. It was dark and empty. They collected all the old newspapers, took the wood from the unlit fire, and in the grate they heaped a monstrous pile. After blocking up the chimney they lit their bonfire. Smoke belched out into the room in dense, curling waves. When they could endure it no longer they opened the door and let the smoke into the passage. Then they opened the door of the dining-room and shouted from concealment: "Fire! Help! Fire!"

Smith-Aitken looked round, sniffed, and listened. There was an ominous crackling and an unspeakable smell. "So there is," he said. "I wonder if it started in the garage. My god." He fled without dignity to his car. Nixon and Chard went into the passage. The manager, the housekeeper, the waiter, and three maids were gasping and fussing and talking about water. There didn't seem to be any.

Suddenly Nixon found himself pushed into the reeking smoking-room and Chard was hauled swiftly into the square. The turmoil was terrific. A policeman came and a crowd began to collect.

"You," said Chard, when he saw Martin and Lawrence.

There was no time for talking. Martin pushed Chard into the side-car, told Lawrence to follow by train, and let the bike do its best. When they were clear of Abingdon he explained things to the mystified Chard.

It was all so simple, so incredible.

"I never dreamed Smith-A. would try on that game," said Chard. "It was rather a dirty trick, but he was charming all the time. We seem to have toured half England during the afternoon. And it was a capital dinner. He brought the wine with him, the red wine of Burgundy, my boy. And I was looking forward to some of that very special liqueur brandy. He never travels without that. And now you've robbed me of it."

The cold, fresh air coming on top of the red wine of Burgundy made Chard more talkative than usual.

At five minutes past eight the debating hall of the Union Society was not merely full: it was crammed with an unparalleled audience. Normally a large crowd would have come to hear Chard: a dense crowd would have come to hear Bavin. But Bavin versus Chard! It was unique. And Chard was so reliable! He never failed on such occasions: he had his impromptus ready and his answers well rehearsed.

But to the charms of oratory had been added this evening the fascination of mystery. Rumour has swift wings in such a community as a university, and already it was on everyone's lips that a colossal 'rag' had taken place, that Chard wouldn't be there for the occasion of his life, that he had been kidnapped.

So those who didn't want to hear either Chard or Bavin had come to see if Chard was going to turn up. All along the benches sat serried multitudes of members, whispering, chattering, perspiring. Along all those rows of faces, black and brown, yellow and white, spectacled and pimpled, ugly and less ugly, there gleamed expectancy. And by the doorway and up the gangways there jostled and pushed an ever-growing crowd of curious young men. Perhaps they wanted to see Bavin: certainly they yearned, they most definitely yearned, to know the truth about Chard.

At last the officers filed in amid applause. One almost forgot to look at Bavin, such was the eagerness to see if Chard had really vanished. There was a loud murmur of surprise. He certainly was not there. Man said to man: "I told you so. They've nabbed him."

"In the absence of the Junior Librarian," said the President, "I call upon the Junior Treasurer to bring forward the weekly list of books."

That was all: no hint as to indisposition, no suggestion of Chard's adventure. There were the usual jokes. Of course people asked about Chard. The President said that he knew nothing of the Junior Librarian. He trusted he would appear in time for his speech. And when he read out the motion before the house and the list of speakers he included Chard's name.

At twenty minutes past eight the first speaker began. He finished at a quarter to nine and two others carried on the debate till half-past. The second of them had reached his peroration. The audience paid little heed to his anxiety about the ship of state. Where the devil was Chard? That was all that mattered. Was Chard really lying gagged and throttled in a ditch?

The speaker sat down and the expectant audience forgot to applaud. There was a pause, followed by much pushing and heaving among the crowd at the door. Suddenly Chard was shot on to the floor of the house. He wore a rough grey suit and was liberally splashed with mud. But he walked quietly to his throne and took his seat by the immaculate President.

"The Junior Librarian," announced the President without the slightest sign of emotion. It is not for presidents to be human, and Marshall knew his business.

There was a great roar of joy as Chard, foul with mire, advanced to the despatch-box. "I must apologise, sir," he began, "for my late and unkempt appearance. I have been with friends. (_Cheers._) With very dear friends who would not hear of my going. That is the worst of friends. They are sometimes so pressing. (_Uproar._) But I would have been earlier and in a more cleanly state had not another friend, in his eagerness to save me from my first friends, been over-hasty. Perhaps he meant it as a compliment to our honourable and gallant visitor when he compelled me to lie, providentially not to die, in the last ditch." (_Prolonged applause._) Bavin's 'last ditch' speech had been his most notable success. Then Chard proceeded to welcome Bavin, as was his duty, and to trample on him, as was his pleasure. Not even the wet bed of a Hinksey ditch could damp Chard's democratic fervour or blunt the brilliancy of his wit. He had not forgotten his impromptus: in the ditch he had even devised a new one. For half-an-hour he scored point after point. He surpassed himself, he was unique. Possibly, if he had always taken the red wine of Burgundy for his dinner, he would always have spoken like this.

Martin, himself foul with mud, stood in the crowd. He thrilled with the sense of triumph. He remembered the night on which he had fought for Gideon and the Lord. It was adventure once again, terrifying and superb. And again he had been on the winning side.

Bavin, K.C., M.P., came as an anti-climax. He addressed a dwindling house and failed to rouse it. He lost his motion and concluded that the undergraduate was not only a traitor to the cause of the Right, but an uncivil jackanapes. What business had they to ask him down and then to take notice only of this Chard fellow?

A few days later Chard was elected to the presidency by a record majority. He had surpassed even the majority of Walmersly, the Churchmen's champion, who had had an election agent in every college, who had whipped up an army of country parsons and other dilapidated senior members with a silent promise of increased vacational facilities, who had entertained over three hundred junior members in two terms.

Chard received a polite note of congratulation from Smith-Aitken and sent, in return, a vote of thanks. Nothing was ever heard about the King's Arms, Abingdon: certainly no damage could have been done.

"Good for you," Martin said to him. "It's been a great business. At least one of the Push is a made man."

"It has been fun," Chard admitted. He was intensely happy.

"All the same it was just as well we had that little smash. By Jove, we had some luck. No damage done and just enough mud to be convincing. And then that carrier's cart to get us in absolutely up to time."

"Certainly I owe a good many votes to your enterprise in fetching me and to the terrific blend of eagerness and incompetence which put me in the ditch."

"I can't help a skid," said Martin.

"Whose bike?" asked Chard. It was the first time he had thought of it. "We made it look pretty silly."

"Rendell's," answered Martin. "We'd better pay the damage. I'd forgotten."

"That's my affair," said Chard, who felt like generosity. "Comes under reasonable election expenses surely."

Also he gave a dinner to his "workers." King's had not had a President of the Union for several years. That distinction and the fame gained by the kidnapping incident made Chard into a notable. Freshers stared at him in the High and pointed him out to the ignorant.

As a President he shone with incomparable lustre, and he acquired a fine presence and manner for his official duties. The Push in general and Martin in particular felt the reflection of that brilliant light. It seemed good that Chard's taper should be so radiant. Life for the Push, during that third year, was free of care and free of idleness, fruitful of activity and enterprise, restless and fascinating.

VI

From a long vacation spent with the historians and philosophers and from the clash and challenge of autumnal moors Martin came back to rooms in Holywell and the school of Literae Humaniores. From clean winds and open skies he came back to a gentle greyness or to smudgy days when the rain settled upon the river valley with cruel insistence and on parting left floods and vapours and steamy streets. From working at his ease he came back to work with distaste.

To begin with, he was afraid. The future was big with exams. In eight months his Oxford finals would be upon him, in ten months he would be attempting to satisfy the Civil Service Commissioners. The torture of it! It was all very well for Lawrence, whom a wealthy uncle would make into a chartered accountant, for Rendell, who was to be an amateur barrister and a professional Lib-Lab-Soc, for Chard, with his assured career and Front-bench-in-a-year-or-two prospects; well enough too for Davenant, who had money enough to maintain an adequate, even a graceful, existence while he wrote about the things of art. But for Martin there was only the midnight oil and the wondering about marks.

And he felt helpless. He didn't want to be a Civil Servant, even at 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.

Once more Rendell took a first, Martin a second, and Lawrence a third. It was the history that kept them apart. Their philosophy had been uniformly good; Mr Cuggy was filled with pride and wrote to congratulate them all: whereat they wondered what would have happened if they had continued to cling to that philosophic rock, the Absolute. Yet it was nice of him to write. That was the worst of Cuggy: you couldn't dislike him.

From an Oxford of glaring streets and searching, irresistible dust Martin went up to London to seek his fortune at Burlington House. Later he remembered that August as a month of blazing heat and tired hands and aching head. He remembered a gloomy place shaped like a theatre where morose men asked him if he had a buff book and tore his papers from under his pen when time was up. There were days of solid labour and nights of anxiety spent with the text-books for to-morrow's exams: and there were unforgettable crowds of candidates sitting upon the steps before each paper and going over their notes for a last time with feverish futility. He remembered hating the people from Wren's as he had hated the Grammar School boys in his scholarship exams, jealously loathing and dreading their preparedness and notes and iron methods. He remembered the filthy temper he was in and his contempt for the scrubby little man who sat next to him and muttered to himself incessantly. Martin had crammed Blankney's notes on the Attic constitution because he had heard a rumour that Blankney was examining, and he remembered a ceaseless effort to display knowledge which he did not possess and to scrape up marks, marks, marks....

But the exams brought him also to Freda.

He found her pale and tired and more fragile than ever: he found her working from ten to six and idling despondently in the evenings. Quite obviously she was not the woman he had known in Devonshire.

Then she was strong and at her ease, full of mysterious confidence, rejoicing in life and her ability to cope with it. He had been to her merely an undergraduate, nicely foolish, he had amused her and she had read his letters, even answered them. He had chattered of affection and she had laughed him gently to scorn.

Now he came to her as a man in a world where men were scarce and men were needed. But it was Freda who had changed, not Martin. The transformation of the boy into the man was due to the heat of summer and the click of typewriters. To one deafened with the city's roar Martin brought memories of perfect woods and lonely pines that stood out against emptiness, starkly black. They used to go out together in the evenings, to Richmond, to Putney Heath, to Hampstead. They went where the others went because they were as the others, hard-worked, tired-out, desperately needing one another. There was no glory of passion in their evenings. Street lamps did not flame as flowers of the East, trees did not tower like giants luring them with soft voices, water was still water. Earth and sky had not altered for them: it had not altered for the others who wandered in the same places.

One Monday at half-past five Martin hurried out of Burlington House after his second paper in English Literature. Never in his life had he written more in six hours: he had drained his soul of platitude and pretence, discreetly praising and blaming men whom he had never read, never, thank God, would read, all the remoter 'C's,' Cowley, Cowper, Crabbe.

His nerves were all frayed. He hated the statues of Liebnitz and Locke and Plato ... what had Platonism to do with that sordid spot? He hated the Burlington Arcade with its lingering odour of stale scent: a woman smiled at him horribly and he hated her. He hated Piccadilly because it was dusty and deserted, and he hated the tea he drank because it was too hot and there were flies on the table. He hated himself for not remembering a quotation. How plain it all seemed now, and yet he had missed it.

He met Freda at half-past six at Waterloo and they went down to Thames Ditton. The river was crowded with punts and canoes and boats of every kind, but they joined the press. As darkness fell lights began to glitter like jewels across the water. Here and there a Chinese lantern swung on a prow, the glowing end of a cigarette flickered and was gone. Ripples of laughter floated from a nook where people supped, the popping of a cork, the tinkling of distant music. But if there was not solitude or silence, there was at least a breeze that shook the parched leaves and whispered in bough and rush. Martin found a vacant berth deeply curtained with bushes and low-hanging trees and there they made fast the punt and lingered.

They talked a little of his exam and of his prospects. And then they talked of her prospects.

"You're too fine for it," he said suddenly. It was what he had said so often before, but now she was no longer maternal or cheerily scornful of his protests. She yielded alike to his thought and to his touch. Never had she so yielded before. For Martin the world became a great, black silence: the only thing he knew was the closeness of her. That she trusted him, and wanted him was joy: that she was there, beside him, his, was magic. Because she for the first time yielded, he for the first time forgot. Never before had he quite escaped from himself, from considering the impression that he was likely to be making, from worrying fears and self-conscious timidity. Now he was free. He was aware only of the intangible fragrance of her hair, the warmth and movement of her body, the curve and rhythm of her limbs, the instant claim of her fragility. Everything became different.

At the end of the month Freda had a fortnight's holiday and went to an aunt in Yorkshire. Martin had arranged to meet Lawrence and Rendell at Seatoller in the Lakes. He went in a bitter mood, hungry for Freda, physically stale, and hopeless. But the traditional rain never came and soon they knew every crag of Honister and Grey Knotts, of Glaramara, of The Gables and the Scawfells, of the Langdale Pikes. The challenge of wind and weather on the hills and the flaming splendour of Borrowdale in autumn drove apprehension and despair from his soul. He learned that in some places a man cannot be morbid.

On an evening of late September they were playing three-handed auction. A telegram arrived from Devonshire. The commissioners had sent the result to his home address, it seemed.

Martin put down his hand and tore open the envelope. He had passed fifty-first on the list.

"Looks like India," he said quietly.

Neither Rendell nor Lawrence knew what to say. He had wanted the Home service, they knew, and fifty-first would not get that for him. They muttered congratulations self-consciously.

Martin took up his hand once more. It was solidly black.

"Five hearts?" he said. "Five royals."

The opposition collapsed and he made his tricks.

They played late, thinking only of the cards. Martin's career was settled, his life mapped out, his whole future determined by that message, and they talked of rubbers and pence. If he had miraculously passed in first or failed altogether they would have discussed it, but, because he had achieved the expected mediocrity, by tacit convention they were silent. The cards were really more important.

VIII

As Martin lay in bed that night it occurred to him with all the violence of a real discovery that he was, under certain conditions, the destined ruler and administrator of a nation far vaster and more ancient than his own, a nation of whose religion, ideals and practical needs he knew nothing whatever. He was equally ignorant of its population, products and methods of life, though of course he had a year in which to learn about these things. Incredible that he, Martin, twenty-two, boyish and superficial, should be a guardian of this people, a pro-consul in the making! And perhaps more strange was his apathy. In addition to his complete ignorance about India he cared nothing for the place, for how can a man, temperamentally inclined to Nationalism rather than to Imperialism, care for a nation which he only knows by a red blob on the map or by finding its stamps in collections restricted to the British Empire. India meant nothing to Martin. He had read Kipling, and certainly no tales of his had, despite the magic of their narrative, made him responsive to the call of the East. He still took it for granted that British rulers there would be as British rulers elsewhere, bigoted, snobbish, and unexpectedly effectual: corrupt, perhaps, fooling the poor and honouring the rich, bungling and lying and making money. That, he felt, was the attitude of the men he met, exaggerated, no doubt, but based on fact. But as he lay gazing at the cracks in the old ceiling above him his thoughts went back to the sheer bulk and beauty of The Gable, to Holywell at dusk, to the woods around The Steading and the cult of his uncle's deity. About the Oriental world he neither knew nor cared. He couldn't believe in it, so remote and unimportant it still seemed.

At Oxford during his Indian year he found that the future civilians took little interest in the place to which they were going. They wanted the pay and perhaps, though not admittedly, the possibility of a knighthood and a row of letters after their names. Certainly no one was concerned about the White Man's Burden. Naturally he did not blame these people: like himself, they were only seeking for a reasonable livelihood. But he was sickened by the cant he discovered in speeches and papers, the froth about self-sacrifice and noble callings: the work might, he acknowledged, be good and useful, it might promote the welfare of mankind and bring the peace of Caesar to a troubled world, but no one was giving anything away in going to do it.

And he was lonely now. He had rooms in narrow Ship Street, and there he spent solitary days and nights craving the society of the Push: sometimes one of them would come down for a week-end, but otherwise there was scarcely anyone to whom he could talk. The winter crept on dismally, and Martin studied Bengali or rode on horseback over Shotover and Port meadow. But there was something wrong about Oxford: he felt old and alien and the college, when he entered it, seemed to be bubbling over with freshmen, all amazingly young and innocent and happy. He was vaguely jealous of them, uncharitably hostile. Were they not talking as he had talked, idling as he had idled? One friend he had, a poet in his third year, discreet and practical. From time to time Martin dined with him and forgot about India.

Most of all Freda mattered. Now that he was alone and despondent, he relied on her letters and his memories and thoughts of her to make life easier, even more tolerable. He retraced the whole course of their friendship, trying to reshape their relations. He remembered her first as an arguer, a friend to whom he had talked and talked: and then as a martyr, the sufferer for whom he had felt with a genuine, unstinting pity. And at last ... well, at last as a woman, as a person who had the power of making life different, of turning London into an enchanted fairyland and India into a vision of cool beauty, a person of infinite tenderness and understanding, a person whose presence and sympathy could stop things hurting. What rendered him most happy was his ability to meet her on equal terms. Hitherto she had been self-supporting, he a pampered undergraduate. He had had prospects but no certainty, and he had shrunk, even on that summer night upon the river, from saying things that he wanted to say, because he felt that it wasn't fair. One couldn't honourably say these things until one was 'a made man': one couldn't decently make women expect things unless you had some reasonable basis for hopes. With girls like May Williams it didn't matter what one said, because he had been just a 'fellow,' she just a 'girl.' Such affairs had their agreeable conventions. But with Freda it had been different, because there was no such tacit agreement: she might, she would expect him to take her out of her toil and weariness. And now he was free to say and do as it pleased him. He was 'made' and had position, for only by great folly and stupidity could he lose his opportunity.

At the end of term he went up to London. He told the Berrisfords that he had to go to a riding test at Woolwich and wanted to see the varsity rugger match. It is odd that a young man should be instinctively ashamed of love: he will tell his companions of his bodily desires gladly and even proudly, but he will hesitate before he confesses a craving for sympathy. He did ride, it is true, and he went to Queen's Club, where he caught an occasional glimpse of Cambridge three-quarters running abominably fast. It was one of the 'slump' years in Oxford football, the reaction after the reign of the immortals at Iffley Road, when the whole city and university trooped down to watch six elusive Internationals playing with the opposition's defence. Now Cambridge was doing the same and avenging those past defeats. Humiliating to watch those Tabs waving hats and yelling and ultimately carrying their captain from the field of glory! Comforting to reflect that when Oxford won they won soberly and with restraint, as though victory were for them the normal and accustomed thing! Only Tabs would behave like that. With such thoughts he tried to soothe his anger and disgust.

In the evening, because Freda had a headache, Martin dined with Lawrence and became expensively drunk: later he had memories of a crowded music hall, of distant singers and dancers flitting incessantly before white scenery: they worried him and he shouted at them to go away, but seemingly they refused. There were recollections of drinks with an old Elfreyan and the toasting of the school, of an elaborate conversation in French with a woman who only spoke Cockney, of a speech to the Indian nation begun on the crowded promenade and ended magnificently from the fountain at Piccadilly Circus. Probably there was supper somewhere and more noise and then he must have walked miles, for suddenly he became sober and found himself far down the Fulham Road. He picked up a taxi, and managed to get into bed more or less successfully about half-past three.