Chapter IX: Book TWO: University (4)

Freda, too, had spent a dull autumn. She had spoken the truth when she said that she was just too good for dull toil and not good enough for real work. The system was gradually devouring her and she had long ago reached the stage at which the one thing in life that matters is six o'clock, the hour of release from the drudgery and sordid gloom of the office. She lived for her leisure and on her leisure she had nothing to spend. There were friends whom she saw at intervals, but their intimacy had limitations and was only close enough to drive home the need for real companionship.

In one matter she had been fortunate. She had found a cheap room at the top of an old house in Bloomsbury and was thus spared the necessity of going to one of those gloomy mansions for working women. It was a small room, high up and chilly: but it was hers, and even the gas-fire could not rob it of real comfort.

Martin had not meant to linger in London as he had work to do. But he soon realised the impossibility of going away. Not only did he need Freda, but she too needed him. There was no advantage in denying the mutual emptiness and mutual satisfaction. So he stayed, and in the mornings and afternoons he read his Indian law and history, or wandered about London, loitering in picture galleries or threading the ways of Bloomsbury with many a passing glance at the house where Freda slept. Squarely and simply it stood, with no flaunting brick-work or Victorian embellishment: its colour was the nameless colour that a London house should have, the sombre blending of grey and red and deepest brown. On one side was a mean street, one of those sad thoroughfares which Chance has brought to destitution: the houses were good and strong, but each contained a score of people and belched out numberless squalid children to play and quarrel in the teeming gutters. On the other side a wide street ran straight up to a square garden and the two lines of houses converged and faded away in a haze of smoke and branches. In the afternoons, when Martin walked there, sunset would stain the gentle greyness with pink or, in angrier mood, would stab dark clouds and leave great rifts of red. It was all so strong and quiet and dignified, seeming actually to exhale the finest quality of London. The street, at any rate, was worthy of her.

When the long day's wait was over he would have Freda to himself. Then London became beautiful in every line and form and colour. The lamps were flaming jewels and the rain-soaked, glittering streets were bands of silver: the murkiest lane threw off its squalor, and the night, with its great glooms and shadows, its sudden bursts of iridescence and its mystery of swiftly moving figures, made him think of Eastern jungles, splashed with fierce colours, cavernous with infinite shade. Then a woman, rouged and powdered and swathed in tawny fur, would sweep majestically past: she was the tiger who burned brightly. Formerly he hated these women, because they charmed him, challenged and held his gaze, hated them too because they brought home to him the fact that he had not the courage of his desires. But now he need not care. That was the great joy of it.

So in this enchanted forest of London they walked and drove, feasted and saw the play: not one play, but all the plays. And after the play they feasted again and were contented. It was a forest that tended to swallow gold rather than yield it, and Martin had to borrow on the security of his position as a probationer in the Indian Civil Service. But there was pleasure in the signing of the bond.

Sometimes they would sit in Martin's hotel, which had a large, deserted lounge with sensible corners and crannies for conversation. Sometimes he would go back with Freda to her room in Bloomsbury and wait until she turned him out.

"I won't have you here after eleven," she told him and quoted from _The Great Adventure_ on reputations, the coddling and neglect of them.

"But if you have me at all----" he protested.

"I'm English and I believe in compromise," she answered.

So he stayed till eleven. It was a neat place and orderly with naked walls: he loved it as he loved its owner. When the washstand and bed had been hidden behind their curtain, the stray shoes kicked beneath the wardrobe, and the arm-chair drawn up to the gas-fire, there seemed to be nothing mean or sordid in the room despite the lack of space and the roof corner that jutted rudely in. What did it matter now if the window looked on to a back yard and a world of chimneys?

"Why are you so wonderfully tidy?" Martin asked.

"Don't you associate tidiness with me?"

"No, you're too wild. Tidinesss is a petty virtue."

"Well I confess it hasn't anything to do with my general character. I hope I'm not petty anyhow. It's sternly practical tidiness. I used to be lazy and find my stockings muddled up with the spoons, but it soon sickened me and now I have come to prefer the fag of clearing up to the discomfort of a muddle. Besides, if I'm going to have you here it oughtn't to be a beddy 'bed-sit,' but a sitty 'bed-sit.'"

"Your precious reputation," he laughed.

On another night she asked him what the Berrisfords thought about his absence from home.

"I don't know and I don't think I care!" he answered.

"Why? They must be interested in you, and you're very fond of them."

"I dare say, but I can't think of them now." He drew her to him. "Freda, I'm too happy to care about them. I just can't imagine that the world has any other place but London, or any other people but you and me. Nothing else is real; nothing counts, not India or Oxford or anything."

She yielded herself to him, but suddenly drew back.

"You mustn't go and muddle things," she said conscientiously. "Supposing you fail next September, what would I feel like?"

"I won't fail next September," he answered defiantly.

"I'm glad you said that. You must be confident, much, much more confident. I'm sure you would have been happier if you had never been afraid of things."

Ecstasy to know her gladness, to see her quick smile of confidence because he was confident! How could he have feared and doubted? He could not let her draw away: his arms must have her.

"I'm never going to be afraid again," he said. "I know what was wrong now."

"Well?"

"I didn't care about anything. I didn't know what I wanted, while everything lay in front of me. I didn't feel, though I had all the world to feel about. I didn't love, though I had all the world to love. I just drifted. Now I have what I want."

She was silent. Across the tumult of his soul stole things of the senses, the pulsing of her blood, the scent of that brown witchery of hair, the touch of her tired hand, the vision of a glistening bow of silk on a poised foot: above all, the divine sense of his own grasping possession, her clinging weakness.

"I know now what I want," he went on rapidly. "I want the same thing to go on that has just begun, the thing that has brushed all the hardness and ugliness out of the world and made the future easy. You've done all that. I want you."

He crushed her to him roughly, almost hurting her: and he knew by her stillness that it pleased her so to be hurt.

"You're not going back now," he whispered fiercely. "You're not going to knock to pieces the thing you've built. India is a cool heaven now; don't make it a fiery hell. Work is all doing and creating. Don't make it all drudgery. Oh, I'm selfish. You're so perfect, and I can only talk of my own work, my own troubles. Freda, I'm sorry. I----"

Still she was silent.

"Oh, say something," he begged. "Forgive me for being selfish."

"There's nothing to forgive."

"Then say--you've said you cared for me--say you love me."

In a moment he had forgotten his remorse and again was claiming, insisting. And she, knowing that love can be, even must be, selfish and imperious, was glad that he should claim her and obeyed his command.

Of course Martin stayed in London over Christmas and into the New Year, living with a fullness he had never known, seeing the purpose and fineness of things which he had despised and neglected. How strange it was that all the world should be changed by that one weak figure, seemingly so ineffectual! how strange that one mortal should carry for another the keys of heaven! How trivial seemed all his philosophy with its objectivity of this and that when he discovered how subjective all his outlook was, how the presence or the absence of a loved one could make or mar the colour-medley of a sunset or the beauty of a tree against the sky.

One thing was certain: he gloried in possession. All his loneliness was forgotten now and, as he paced the streets, he could look upon the other couples without the pang of jealousy that once had stung him. There would be no more glances thrown furtively at passing women, no turning of an eager eye for bygone faces, no more emptiness and yearning. Deep magic lay in the thought that Freda, with her smile, and her quick mind, and her infinite grace of movement, was his to possess, to own. He was not ashamed to glory in these proprietary relations nor was she ashamed to accept them. She even welcomed them, yielding to Martin with an utter abandonment of self. She wanted only to be his, to be his loved possession, to help him and to share humbly in his triumphs and successes.

One night indeed he repented, not of his love, but of his manner of love. He felt the indignity of ownership.

They had gone, in a fit of intellectual enthusiasm, to see a play called _Drift_. At a small outlying theatre two young men of ideas were completing the noble task of self-imposed bankruptcy by giving the British public a season of "good drama." And the public naturally helped on the work by the easy method of staying away. The house was barely half full when, after the hammerings customary in these circles, the curtain went up.

_Drift_, a play in four acts by Villiers Wentworth, turned out to be a fair specimen of that now antiquated genre, The New Drama. It had the monosyllabic title, the insistent realism, the contempt for form and dramatic convention, the arid conversation with lapses of brilliance, the admirable acting, and, above all, the Great Gloom. It was naturally a play with a point, showing, justly and forcibly, the hopeless inadequacy of modern life to provide the average man and woman with anything like a Unity of Interest. The characters drifted from home which they dreaded to work which they loathed and in the evening they made the return journey. Nothing held their lives together, nothing remained as a permanent, unifying interest. There was love, but, as Mr Villiers Wentworth pointed out, the young man is barred socially and economically from indulging in anything but hole-and-corner affairs just when he most needs real sympathy.

"Not a good play," said Martin as they walked out into the flaring streets and joined the joyous welter of confusion at Piccadilly. "The man's got no sense of humour and he thinks that everyone is miserable who hasn't got two hundred a year. The poor are just as happy as the rich. Of course they oughtn't to be, but they are."

"But there was a point," said Freda, "about unity of interest. It may be obvious, but it's true. Didn't you drift? Haven't I drifted?"

They turned into a restaurant.

As they supped they forgot about the play. But later Martin's mind returned to the subject.

"Come back," said Freda suddenly. "Penny."

"Hand over," he answered, smiling as he started.

"Well, what is it?"

"You, of course."

"I'm sorry for that. You looked so sad."

"I'm feeling ashamed," he confessed.

"What of?"

"Of the way I've thought of you. I've been so selfish. I only cared for my own escape from drifting. It's been my work, my life, my love. I have been thinking of you as the person who would make my life perfect. It's been all me, me, me. When we first met I thought of you and your work. Now it's only me and my work."

"That's as it should be."

"No, no, it isn't. A year ago I should have hated myself for thinking like this."

"Perhaps you have learned as well as lived."

"I've been a brute and there's an end of it." He was deriving a secret pleasure from his self-depreciation. There was bliss in humiliating himself before her, in grovelling at the feet of her whom he adored. If he could not get the conventional thrill from the confession of past affairs and failings, he would achieve the ecstasy of self-torture by laying bare a loftier mistake.

But she laughed at him. "Silly Billy," she said. "Pay the waiter and I'll tell you."

She told him as they drove back together in their taxi.

"After all," she began, "compare my work with yours. Mine is drudgery. Yours is big and important. It doesn't matter what becomes of mine, but it matters a lot what becomes of yours, I hate mine and I love yours. I want to give myself up to yours, to make it easier and better. Can't you see, Martin dear, that isn't selfishness or unselfishness. Those words don't count in such a case. If we love, then I'm you and you're me, and one person can't give to himself or take away from himself surely."

"It sounds so specious," he said. "And yet I still feel greedy, as though I were denying your right to be yourself."

"I don't want to be myself. I want to be different. I'm as greedy as you are and more so, only differently. As it is, the word isn't real. We're both giving and both taking and there's an end of it."

He was silent for a moment. "It's no use my trying to say how perfect you are," he said at last.

"Dear, delightful, serious, conscience-stricken gloomkins," she laughed at him. "What does all this matter ... how we share things, I mean? The only real thing is enthusiasm, wanting and feeling and loving. You were at a loose end until you began to feel; you couldn't work, you couldn't do anything. Nor could I. And now work is all changed and seems better and easier. The office is a palace for me, India a pleasure garden for you. Do stop worrying and be sensible."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'll try and be good. You're always right. This taxi goes far too fast. We're in your street."

"Bother," she said.

"Let's tell him to drive on somewhere else and come back in another one."

"No. You've spent far too much and we've done that often enough. I'm going to be a good girl to-night."

"Tyrant."

"Wastrel."

"He's stopping. One more kiss."

Through streets that more than ever resembled enchanted pathways in a forest of shadow and silver, Martin went back exulting to his hotel.

IX

It was the second week in January when Martin went down to The Steading: he merely stayed to collect books and clothes and returned at once to London. While he was there he told his uncle and aunt that he was engaged to be married.

That night John Berrisford discussed the matter with his wife. "Well," he began, "what about our young Martin?"

"I suppose it's all right," said Mrs Berrisford quietly. "He's very young, but that seems to be the fashion nowadays."

"Yes, that doesn't matter. Long engagements are tragic, unhealthy things, but they'll be apart and he ought to be able to marry almost at once. Quite a lot of civilians do."

"And she's quite a nice girl."

John Berrisford gave the slight wriggle of the shoulders for which we have only the excessive word "shrug."

"Don't you approve?" added his wife.

"Yes and no. On the whole, no." He kicked at the fire testily. "She's quite a nice girl and clever and reasonable beyond the average. If Martin were going to hang about in town, well and good. But really is she the wife of an Indian Civilian?"

"But, John, surely! You with your ideas about freedom! You don't believe in the marriage of convenience, I know. Isn't Martin to have his choice?"

"Of course he shall have every choice. I'm not one to bluster or give orders or interfere. He's going to marry the girl, not I. I know that. But I'd like him to think a little first. Do consider the facts. Freda is clever and quick. Perhaps she really cares for Martin, perhaps she's only sick to death of the hellish existence decreed by modern civilisation for penniless orphans of the female sex. But she has lived in a groove, she has never met people--not the kind of people she'd run up against in India. She doesn't like games or society. She likes talking and arguing and lying in bed. She'd hate the Anglo-Indian just as she hates any kind of pomp and circumstance. She hasn't the vaguest notion as to what they'll expect of her. Worse still, she hasn't even health. She would be invalided home in a year and Martin with a salary of three or perhaps four hundred a year would have to support a wife whom he only saw on leave. You've got to consider his career and his general happiness. There is no reason why he shouldn't find a woman who understands the kind of life and behaviour, a woman who could fit in, and yet has brains and charm enough for an intelligent person."

"Mary Brodrick?" suggested Mrs Berrisford. "The kind of girl who sings about her caravan resting after dinner?"

"We needn't go as far as that. Something between the two."

"You're a heartless old schemer, John. We must respect his choice."

"Absolutely. But I'm fairly confident about the result. Anyhow there is plenty of time and it's Martin's first affair."

"Are you sure?"

"I have watched the signs of times. This is the first time he has taken a month to see the varsity match."

"But he is stubborn when he has once settled on a thing. He doesn't decide quickly, I know, but when he has he is firm."

"We'll see. As it is, I suppose you must have her down for Easter. I got her her present job and I know her employers well. I can easily get them to allow her a holiday then. And when we've got them, we must leave them very much alone."

"But surely----"

"My dear, it's the only hope. Keep them apart, hint at the unsuitability of marriage, and they'll elope on nothing in a fortnight's time. That's quite certain. My idea is to bang them together fairly hard. I don't want it to hurt, but I do want them to have a clear idea as to what they are both made of."

"Do you think it's quite fair?"

"Isn't it what they would want themselves? It's the only possible thing we can do. And also," he added quietly, "it will give a certain interest to next Easter."

But there was no need to beg a holiday for Freda. In February, when the winds came driving up the Channel and brought to England a month-long burden of rain and sleet, her health gave way again and she was warned that she was not strong enough for the wear and tear of an office life. For most people it is true that colds are not liable to the laws of cause and effect: they happen or they don't and to be soaked to the skin is no more fatal than to bask in the sun. But for Freda to arrive at the office with feet wet and cold meant certain visitation. And by six o'clock she was always worn out. Now she would have to rely on an uncle and aunt. The uncle had money and had offered already to release Freda from the misery of work, but she had refused, so intolerable had seemed his great Victorian mansion on Sheffield's edge. She had wanted, in her youthful courage, to work and to be free. But now there was no use in fighting and she yielded partly from a consideration of hard fact, partly because her uncle had retired from his business and was coming to London. Idleness in town with an allowance! By privation she had been taught the meaning and the value of both. So it was as a woman of moderate means and unlimited leisure that Freda came to The Steading for Easter.

Martin came from Oxford jaded and tired out. He had had to work hard in order to make up for a vacation of complete indolence. The wet February had brought floods and stinted exercise and despondency: it had been tedious work, toiling over a new language in those lonely Ship Street rooms. His soul hungered for sympathy, his body for the infinite swell and splendour of the moor and for the cold sting of the winds that whirled across it like the thongs of a lash.

For a week he stayed about the house and strolled in the near woods with Freda, whose recent illness had left her far too weak for real walking. She hadn't the strength nor could she risk a strain or chill. So Martin lingered with her all day, while they built fantastic castles of hopes and visions. Then the inactivity grew intolerable to his body, tore at his nerves, and made him ravenous for the moor and the golf-links. Freda despised golf and could not understand how any sane person could be bothered with it. They squabbled about it gently, never suspecting that it might come to matter.

Fate fought against Freda.

Martin, whenever during these days he handled a club, found that he could do nothing wrong: he was "on his game." And the Cartmells came down for the Easter recess. Godfrey had captured the seat two years ago and had settled down comfortably on a back bench from which his wife intended to oust him. But the back-bencher may live strenuous nights and days: he too was tired and wanted air and exercise. And so in the afternoons Martin was called upon as much by civility as by the craving of his heart to motor with them to the golf-course and join in a foursome. Desperate warfare took place in which Martin was Viola's, Godfrey Margaret Berrisford's ally. And Martin was wonderful. His drives flew far and low, straight for the flag or the direction post: no ugly jarring told him of the topped iron-shot: his short putts ran straight into the middle of the hole. He dug his partner's foozled drives out of heather and hedge and laid her wild approaches dead with a niblick. Up on that lonely course with only the wind and the white clouds for neighbours, with no one to keep them back or hurry them on, with turf so springy that a foot could never tire, so spongy-soft that a brassie might be lightly taken and effectively wielded, with the exquisite strain of even conflict, with matches taken to the last green and won, perhaps by Martin's inimitable 'run-up'--yes, it was golf.

The joy of it was almost insupportable. Martin began to live for those afternoons; yet, if he had been off his game, had sliced with his driver and topped with his irons, as was indeed his wont, the golf-club would have lost its appeal: there is little pleasure in playing golf badly, but there is all the world in playing above your form.

Once Freda came up to watch them and walk as far as she could. But she was plainly bored, pleaded fatigue, and went back to the little club-house where she sat reading. To Martin, in his present mood of triumphant exultation, it seemed incredible that anyone could fail to see the point of it.

He tried to convince her. "Perhaps you can't imagine the thrill that conies from a really true hit: really it's one of the few good things in the world. The ball goes off clean and sweet and leaves you with a faint tingling that lets you know you've done the trick. And then you climb a ridge and there's the ball white and glistening on the green. That means you've done exactly what you set out to do and that you've got a long putt to beat Bogey. And if you ram it in!"

"Baby!" she said, laughing. "Did 'ums like 'ums bouncey ball."

At first he laughed too and told himself that naturally they couldn't share all the same tastes. In the morning and evening he stayed with her, neglecting his work. But gradually he came to feel that there was something more than jocosity in her denunciation of the bouncey ball.

Soon after Easter one of Freda's colds kept her in bed for breakfast. It was the Cartmells' last day but one and everything pointed to a final test of strength. They went over in the morning and stayed to lunch at the club-house. There were two great matches, of which each side gained one. Martin had not yet lost his skill: he had dreaded the day of torture when he would go "right off."

"Let's have another nine holes," said Viola Cartmell as they took an early tea. "We aren't keeping Martin from his duty. And it's our last chance and such an evening."

They agreed to play and nerved themselves for faultless execution.

An hour later Martin lay upon the steep bank at the edge of the ninth green. Now he had grasped most certainly, what Freda would never grasp, the mystery of Ham and Eggs. In the fine light of sunset the moor seemed to tower inimitably above them, crowned with its eternal tors, clear-cut as by a razor's edge against the vast blue emptiness behind. The April breeze was whispering in the grass and timid larks soared and plunged and hung singing in the void. Before him was the smooth-shaven green, true as a billiard cloth but humped with testing undulations. And there were the three other players awaiting with tense anxiety the future of the match. Godfrey was kneeling to take the line of his putt: the ball would end its journey along the side of a veritable mountain, a glorious stroke to achieve! Farther back were Margaret and Viola. Suddenly the breeze caught them, snatched at a stray wisp of hair, played with their skirts, and gave a last caress to cheeks already kissed to flame. There were grace and strength knit perfectly: to Martin they seemed, after the slight form of Freda, tremendous. Yet why shouldn't women be strong? He wanted them to be strong, to walk with him, to fear neither wind nor weather. And Freda...

His thoughts returned swiftly to the match. Godfrey was on the point of playing: he had this, a ten footer, to halve the hole and the match. There was silence and then the gentle tap of the club on a rubber-cored ball. One gazed, one shouted. The ball had lipped the hole and swung out to the left.

In the car they fought the whole match over again.

"If only I hadn't given you the sixteenth this morning----"

"No, it was my fault. If I miss two-foot putts, you can't be expected----"

And thus during the whole journey superb concentration on an end to be won, superb oblivion to work and wealth and weariness.

Martin found Freda yawning in the porch.

"I thought you were staying upstairs all day," he began.

"Who said so?"

"The maid, I think."

"Well, I never said anything about it. You don't seem very glad to see me."

"Of course I am. Only I meant that I would have come back earlier if I had known."

"I wouldn't keep you from your golf."

He sat beside her, but she did not welcome him. She was hurt.

"If I'd only known, I wouldn't----"

"Day after day," she whispered. "I know you like to be out and about. I don't claim you always, do I? But sometimes, surely."

"I didn't know," he repeated remorsefully. "I didn't know."

"Yesterday you went and to-morrow you'll go."

"No, I won't. Freda, I'm a brute. I've been rotten to you. I've nothing to say for myself."

"You've got to go to-morrow."

"I won't. You don't want me to go."

"You must go. I'm not going to keep you, if you don't stay of your own accord. The ball is much more amusing than I am."

He pleaded, he fought against her, but she insisted on his going.

The punishment was effective. He went in anguish and played with no zest for the game. He sliced, he topped, he missed short putts. The match fizzled out on the fourteenth green, a fiasco.

The Cartmells hurried back to London and Martin remained to make peace with Freda. He had been unspeakably pained by the sordidness and waste of energy and peace that quarrelling had entailed. He hated the suspicions and embarrassments that must linger on: he was passionately desirous of restoring the old intimacy and yet ... somehow or other the wound remained. He couldn't forget that evening on the ninth green. Why wouldn't Freda see the point of these things? Why wouldn't she walk? She was strong enough now for a mile or two. Almost he was angry with her for having been ill, for it is an odd feature of humanity that we sometimes dislike people for their sufferings, hate them for a cough or sniff. And now Martin was on the point of blaming Freda for the weakness he had once adored. Why wasn't she strong like Margaret or Viola? Why didn't she understand about the moor and wind-swept spaces and the miracle of hitting a golf-ball?

While he was bearing the olive branch these questions, dreaded and strongly combated, kept forcing themselves into the narrow passes of his mind as the Persian host flooded into Thermopylae. It was futile to feign deafness: in time they would force a hearing. And there were other less easily worded doubts and apprehensions.

Perhaps the summer-time came as a release. More than he would have cared to admit, Martin wanted to be alone, to see Freda dispassionately, from a distance. And so to Oxford.

Freda, while undergoing all unconsciously this dispassionate appreciation, retired to London. But within a few weeks' time she had received another invitation to Devonshire, and tired not so much of town as of her relations she gladly accepted.

At The Steading were a Mr and Mrs Brodrick with their daughter. Arthur Brodrick had been contemporary with John Berrisford at Oxford and had passed high into the Indian Civil Service. Just before his time for a pension was due he had been invalided home and had missed the full reward of his service. The Brodricks lived at Sutton in a remote mediocrity of wealth more galling than actual poverty.

Was it Chance again, the Chance that had brought a perfect Easter and put Martin on his game, that now seemed to keep the conversation on Oriental diseases and the rigours of imperial service? Certainly Freda heard more of fever in distant stations than of health and company at Simla. But the Brodricks had not been divorced from patriotism by the hardness of their lot: they still believed in the flag, in the pomp and state of the British Raj, in stately dinners at Government House where the couples went down to the feast in order of social precedence, and they recounted squabbles, petty but bitter antagonisms, of rival ladies who considered themselves insulted by their positions in the troop of diners.

Freda listened silently and learned.

So this was the life for which she had bargained. Eternal fever--so they implied--eternal society of the Brodricks and their kind! For Martin with his work to love and his career to think about such things might be well enough! But for her! How could she blend with this unknown, this unparalleled society?

Then the Berrisfords suggested that they should all go to Oxford for Eights Week. Mr and Mrs Berrisford had to be in town: would Mary Brodrick come? And, naturally, Freda? Both the girls accepted eagerly. It was soon settled and rooms were engaged at the Mitre.

On reading the letter announcing their plans Martin groaned in the spirit. It wasn't, of course it wasn't, that he did not want to see Freda. Did he not write to her as eagerly as ever? Did she not answer? But Eights Week of all times!

Martin was sufficiently a lover of Oxford, summery Oxford of the still water-ways, to loathe and despise Eights Week, that Whitsuntide holiday of the wealthy, when the city is invaded by a host of rich trippers, whose tripping has not even the justification of beer-bottles and hearty bestiality. He did not wish to eat salmon mayonnaise, to drink champagne cup, to propel, in faultless flannels, a punt among a solid mass of punts, to go for picnics where all London was revelling. His choice would have been to launch a vessel on the upper river, to find some tranquil backwater past Eynsham, with a canopy of willow and the scene of flowering meadows; or else to make use of deserted tennis courts and to enjoy things properly. Now they were going to break in upon him: and indeed another idle vacation had left him work enough to do. They had not come when he was a fresher and such things were allowable, and the Berrisfords knew Oxford well. Presumably they desired to show Freda the city and its ways. But why, oh why, in Eights Week? It wasn't like the Berrisfords.

They arrived duly and lived in state at the Mitre: they mingled with the crowds, tramped the colleges, and demanded to have things pointed out to them. Mary Brodrick said all the right things. Martin shuddered as the phrases came out in turn:

"Can we see the kitchens?" (at Christ Church).

"Where are the Prince's rooms?" (at Magdalen).

"Isn't this the clever college?" (at Balliol).

It was a gloomy ceremony.

There was Freda. And she ... well, he had to admit that she didn't harmonise with this world of fine raiment and expensive bean-feasts. The Freda who glittered in the punt, the Freda clothed sumptuously at her uncle's expense was undeniably different from the insignificant wisp of a girl in plain blue coat and skirt who had hurried out of the office at six and come to Martin for rest and comfort. To have explained his feelings accurately would have been an impossible task for Martin, but he could not put aside a vague sensation that Freda was wrongly placed in this world, that she was pre-eminently a martyr and a rebel, not a woman of leisure.

She did not even know what to say. There is a particular kind of speech appropriate to these occasions: it is neither flirtation nor conversation in the proper sense, but a discreet blend, a mixture as insipid as it is inevitable. It does not demand brains or wit, but a certain quality, a training. Mary Brodrick, with all her limitations, knew the game; she was jolly and made things go. Freda hung back or, when she came forward, made mistakes. Odd that Martin should have been angry with Freda for her inability to play a game which he himself despised. Yet it did pain him that she didn't "fit in."

As a strange word whose meaning has recently been discovered seems to the reader to occur on every page he reads, so Freda suddenly revealed to Martin in a hundred ways her incapacity for "fitting in." And it was to the society of countless Brodricks that Martin would have to take her.

On the Wednesday evening, when the river was rendered invisible by the press of vessels and fair women, when the supporters of the victorious college swam across the river and dived from barge and boathouse, when supper-parties began to disappear up the Cherwell and gramophones to tinkle in shady recesses, Mary Brodrick caught her train to town, Mr and Mrs Berrisford went to see the Irish Players, and Martin took Freda on the river.

To avoid the crowd they were going to the Cherwell above the rollers. She kept him waiting in the taxi that was to take them to Tims'.

At Tims' she found the punt dirty, said the cushions were filthy, and would ruin her dress.

"Eights Week," said Martin. "We've got to be thankful to get any kind of a punt."

Still she grumbled. Martin ran into a projecting bush and, before she knew what had occurred, her hat had been pushed over her eyes, her hair disarranged, and her face scratched. She said nothing at all. Worse than any expostulation! It grew cold and a chilly breeze sprang up.

Inevitably they quarrelled. There was no particular cause for the outburst. A long week of strain, of mutual revelation and discovery, of mingled pleasure and annoyance, was bound to tell.

They had at least the satisfaction of making things clear.

"You only cared for me as a martyr," she ended.

"I didn't, you know I didn't," he protested on the spur of the moment.

But both knew that it was more than half the truth.

Their letters of renunciation crossed.

Chance and John Berrisford had been powerful allies.

X

On a still October afternoon Martin lay where the first slopes of Grey Knotts go sweeping up to the great mountain mass of The Gables and the Scawfells. He looked down upon Seatoller, diminutive below him, and on the curving beauty of Borrowdale, burnished with late bracken, aflame with autumnal trees. Behind him he knew, he felt, were the mountains that he loved, stretching crag upon crag to the desolate screes of Wast Water and the glimpse of the shimmering sea. Borrowdale ... there flashed suddenly upon his mind the verse of the Elfreyan poet and he quoted it now to the winds and rocks and a curious stone-finch:

"'The flaming bracken fires the breast
Of bosky Borrowdale,
Down swoops the sun in a riot of red
Behind Scawfell to a watery bed,
And the moon hath clomb o'er Skiddaw's head,
So perfect and so pale."

With that pathetic verse came other memories, flowing torrentially through the opened flood-gates of his mind. For five years he had forgotten Elfrey and Berney's and all his schoolday toils and triumphs. Only one week-end had he spent there and that in his 'fresher' year. He had forgotten because Oxford had been so generous and had given him so much to think and feel and say. But now his recollections seemed strangely vivid despite their long storage in the lumber-room of his mind. Foskett had made another step on the pathway of prosperity, but Berney was still at work: Vickers had moved to higher things, but Barmy Walters lingered on, for he had reached the dotage in which years add nothing to decay. The same old jokes would be played, the crashing of the instrument-boxes, the passing of fruit-bags and biscuit tins, and the pollution of his water with ink. And somehow, against the promptings of conscience, Martin felt that it was right for these things to go on. Poor Barmy! But with his uncle he believed in Institutions.

Then the amazing disappearance of people broke in upon his mind. Spots, for instance. His career had flickered out at Cambridge, where they had despised his athletics. Drink, perhaps. Cullen and Neave, surely they must be in the motor trade. Gregson had vanished utterly. Everything demanded that he should be writing for the Rationalist Press, but where was he? Anstey was at the Bar, Rayner a subaltern in India. 'Granny' had recently been head of Berney's, Granny whom Martin had loathed and swiped. It seemed unreal and impossible. But now, as he looked back over that gap of five years, he realised that Elfrey with all its troubles and its narrowness had been kind. The avenging of Gideon and the night of pitchers, the bowling of "googlies," the friendship of Finney ... astonishing that things so good should have slipped away. Lazily chewing the long sweet stems of grass, he refought a hundred skirmishes.

More recent memories came floating down upon the stream. Galer and his 'deemagogues,' the Push, Chard and his career: very soon he would be paying a long farewell to all this world of evanescence. For such a world it was, good but transitory. It was not real as life's work would be real. True that Chard had taken his Union career as seriously as death itself, true that the Push had been serious about their discussions, those night-long tussles about God and Woman and the Universe: and anything taken seriously has value of a kind. But had their value been greater than that of an amusing prologue or a curtain-raiser which it would have been unfortunate to miss? It was good that these things should have been: it was not good that they should be for ever.

And Freda? World of evanescence again! She had passed so utterly away that Martin could scarcely believe in the events and emotions of the winter. He had no regrets, and he believed that she had none: of late his plans and prospects had moved at such a pace that wounds could not linger and were easily forgotten. They had rendered each other mutual service and mutual relief. Once he had thought that he loved, but now he knew of his mistake: Freda had spoken the obvious truth when she said: "You aren't really in love with me, you're in love with love." He had wanted sympathy and in his quest had idealised the first woman who gave it him. Only a fortnight ago his uncle had said: "Remember you're still only twenty-three. You haven't found out everything about life--or love." He had said it kindly and he had been right.

Now indeed he had fiercely reacted against his search for sympathy. Surely a man should be able to face his work and go through with it, even if it was agony to do so, without running to a woman's arms for comfort. He was ashamed of his cowardice of the winter. Upon the hillside with the exhilaration of autumn in his blood it seemed so easy to face things and be resolute. This love! It was like religion, just Funk. Then he paused, angry with himself. He was erring as much on the one side as he had lately erred on the other. He could understand passionate desire: he could understand sentimentality, for he had not forgotten Lawrence's defence of The Little Grey Home. But this Love--of which one heard and read--what was it? Perhaps some day... He surrendered to his visions ... and he would come back with her to a good house in Devon, very square and grey, with smooth lawns and paddocks and covert-clad hills behind. There would he become an initiate in the avuncular mystery of Ham and Eggs. That religion at least he had it in him to respect.

Rendell and Lawrence were coming up the hill; they had been together for a week at Seatoller, renewing last year's successful holiday, and to-morrow they were to separate. It was the last reunion, for Martin was to sail next month. The other two had stayed in after lunch to answer letters: Martin was to await them on the hill and then they would walk.

As he watched them plodding up to him his mind wandered to the future. When they reached him they were out of breath and demanded a moment's rest before they moved on. They lay in silence, basking in the strong October sun.

"I've been thinking," exclaimed Martin suddenly.

"Good," said Rendell. "Let's have it."

"It's about this India business. I think I'm glad on the whole."

"Well, I've had a year of the city," muttered Lawrence, "and I don't recommend it."

"After all, it's doing something," Martin went on. "Good or bad, it's action, administration, government of a sort. If I stayed in London, I would find it jolly hard to work: I'd probably do as the rest, just loaf."

"Thank you," said Rendell.

"I wasn't alluding to you. You haven't the talent for loafing, and I think I have, in a mild kind of way. It won't be bad for me to desert the world of conversations and ideas."

The other two remained silent, gazing at the wonderful valley below. Martin wished they would speak. He did not know whether he really believed in what he was saying or whether he was trying to believe in it because there was comfort in such faith. If only one of them would confirm his opinions!

"Don't you ever feel that it's all petty and limited?" Martin continued. "Living in London, I mean, and never seeing the world and how it's run and the different tastes of men and the tendencies and forces? I want to get into the middle of it and, if I've got to do Government work, then I don't mind doing that. It isn't merely negative, like most of a barrister's work."

Eternal honesty and reliability of man with man! A woman would have caught his anxious tones and given him sympathy and confirmation at the expense of belying her convictions. Rendell merely said what he felt and later Martin was glad of it.

"If that is the case," Rendell answered quietly, "you're plainly the man for the job. It isn't often that the Empire gets an intelligent person who cares about his work."

"I believe I'll like it when I'm there," Martin added. "Of course I know there will be gaps and times of despair. But I feel that I have had my seven fat years and it's up to me to face seven lean ones. Then fatness ought to come again."

"Which, being interpreted," said Lawrence, "means seven years or so in the wilderness and then better jobs and a big screw and no end of a career."

"I won't be as detailed as that. But as I've got to eat the pie I shall dig about for the plums. What do you think, Rendell, K.C., M.P.?"

"I agree."

"And you, Lord Mayor?"

"I have every intention of making at least five thousand a year. My god, yes. If I go into that city I'll damned well fetch something out."

"Anyhow," said Martin after a pause, "we have had years of plenty. It was all good, the Push and digs and everything."

Rendell agreed. "It couldn't have been managed much better," he said. "We had some capital times."

Lawrence yawned vastly. "You emotional lads," he said, "will soon be calling the Old School Ithaca and talking about 'stern nurses of men' and 'dreaming spires.' I can't allow it. Let's walk."

They rose and went up silently into the hills like men who understand about walking.

THE END

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH

SINISTER

STREET

_By Compton Mackenzie_

_In Two Volumes. Crown 8vo Containing_

_in all 1152 pages. Price Six Shillings each_

CONTENTS OF VOLUME ONE

_Book One: The Prison House_

I. THE NEW WORLD
II. BITTERSWEET
III. FEARS AND FANTASIES
IV. UNENDING CHILDHOOD
V. THE FIRST FAIRY PRINCESS
VI. THE ENCHANTED PALACE
VII. RANDELL HOUSE
VIII. SIAMESE STAMPS
IX. HOLIDAYS IN FRANCE

_Book Two: Classic Education_

I. THE JACOBEAN
II. THE QUADRUPLE INTRIGUE
III. PASTORAL
IV. BOYHOOD'S GLORY
V. INCENSE
VI. PAX
VII. CLOVEN HOOFMARKS
VIII. MIRRORS
IX. THE YELLOW AGE
X. STELLA
XI. ACTION AND REACTION
XII. ALAN
XIII. SENTIMENT
XIV. ARABESQUE
XV. GREY EYES
XVI. BLUE EYES
XVII. LILY
XVIII. EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO
XIX. PARENTS
XX. MUSIC

512 pages

CONTENTS OF VOLUME TWO

_Book Three: Dreaming Spires_

I. THE FIRST DAY
II. THE FIRST WEEK
III. THE FIRST TERM
IV. CHEYNE WALK
V. YOUTH'S DOMINATION
VI. GREY AND BLUE
VII. VENNER'S
VIII. THE OXFORD LOOKING-GLASS
IX. THE LESSON OF SPAIN
X. STELLA IN OXFORD
XI. SYMPATHY
XII. 202 HIGH
XIII. PLASHERS MEAD
XIV. 99 ST. GILES
XV. THE LAST TERM
XVI. THE LAST WEEK
XVII. THE LAST DAY

_Book Four: Romantic Education_

I. OSTIA DITIS
II. NEPTUNE CRESCENT
III. THE CAFE D'ORANGE
IV. LEPPARD STREET
V. THE INNERMOST CIRCLE
VI. TINDERBOX LANE
VII. THE GATE OF IVORY
VIII. SEEDS OF POMEGRANATE
IX. THE GATE OF HORN
X. THE OLD WORLD

640 pages

Books by the Same Author

THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT

CARNIVAL

GUY AND PAULINE (_in preparation_)

KENSINGTON RHYMES

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