VIII
Martin derived from his study a rich and constant enjoyment. True that it was a diminutive box of a place: true that in winter he had to choose between freezing with an open window or enduring the atmosphere that only hot-water pipes can create. There would be rows too outside, in the passage, scuffling and ragging and the singing of all the latest successes. But after the dusty turmoil of the workroom it was a possession and, though Martin was not at that time the kind of person to care intensely about his surroundings or little pieces of property, he took a definite pride in his books and pictures. He was old enough now to be above actresses: other and greater persons might bedeck their walls with fair women, but Gregson and he had decided that such things were only good for the army class. The Upper Sixth, Classical, should have traditions and its traditions should include the things of art. Gregson, on the advice of a Cubist cousin, brought back to Elfrey some modern studies of the nude, but Mr Berney discovered them and after a close examination came to the conclusion that the objects depicted were women. Then he thought the matter over and nervously demanded their removal. This naturally fanned the flame of Gregson's bitterness against the world of school and led him to hold forth copiously to Martin, who enjoyed his rich outbursts of invective.
"Poor old Berney," he would say. "I suppose we can't blame him. He doesn't understand. Ma B. hasn't got further than Matthew Arnold and I don't suppose either of them ever heard of a chap called Wilde. [Wilde was tremendously the god of Gregson's rebellious soul.] They'll live and learn. I suppose some day schools will be reasonable places."
Gregson was not really a prig or a bore, but at times he ran the risk of combining the parts. The Public School system does just as much harm by isolating the thinker and driving him into an immature and self-conscious spirit of opposition as it would if it crushed him altogether. Gregson did not get on with the prefects. He used to allude to the Iron Heel of their system, despised their methods of keeping order, and exposed to Martin the futility of entrusting matters of conduct to swollen-headed athletes who could only just struggle into the History Sixth.
"They don't know what they're doing and don't care what they do. If they see or hear anything they haven't seen or heard before they trample on it. They all crib in form themselves and go for kids when they crib."
"That's very British," said Martin, who could still mistake a platitude for an epigram.
"British or foreign, it's all alike. Just as capital sits on labour everywhere, so muscle is still on top all over the world. It's worse at school than anywhere, but it's the Iron Heel all the same."
Martin agreed to these sentiments at the moment but gave little thought to their bearing. He was less rebellious than Gregson and was on reasonably good terms with all the present prefects except Heseltine. Also his pictures had not been banned.
Martin combined with the society of Gregson a strong friendship for a pleasant but unintellectual person called Rayner. Rayner was robust and practical and efficient: he took everything for granted, his education, his prospects, and his religion. He never questioned anything, not because he was too lazy, but because it never struck him as a normal thing to do. Naturally Martin had to discriminate carefully between the topics of conversation with his various friends. With Rayner he talked of cricket and football, the chances of this man and the failure of that, the reasons for England's success at Twickenham and Scotland's failure at Inverleith, the prospects of the varsities in their different contests. Above all, Rayner was sound about food. Gregson was too superior to 'brew' extensively, so on half-holiday afternoons in winter Rayner and Martin used to collaborate in the production and consumption of food. They were both well off for pocket-money, and between them they would often devour a dozen or more sausages, a tin of sardines and a large bunch of bananas, not to mention the accompaniments of the feast, cocoa and bread and jam. Martin was a strong eater, but it was Rayner who really achieved the bulk of the work: together they defeated all rivals and established a house record. After feeding-time they would lie torpid in a heavenly frowst reading Wisden's Annual or sixpenny magazines. Gregson secretly despised Martin for enjoying these plebeian orgies, but he could not afford to quarrel since that would have meant the loss of his only audience.
It was into the life of this Martin, the intermediate Martin, who was neither the servant of Spots nor the commander of servants, that Anstey rushed in. Anstey was a small clever boy who had climbed to the Lower Sixth at great speed: he had not only considerable ability, but also possessed a genius for covering the gaps in his knowledge or reading and he would talk with Martin about authors he had never read. His manners and appearance were charming and he played half-back for Berney's second team with skill and pluck. Without being made conceited by the influential friendships which he found awaiting him wherever he turned, he had a quiet manner of self-assertion which fascinated Martin. And so when Rayner or Gregson came to Martin for a talk they would find Anstey chatting away with his feet on the table. Then Rayner would go away hurriedly, for he thought Anstey a frivolous and unreliable creature, and if ever there was a reliable man at Elfrey it was Rayner. Gregson's objections to Anstey were based on the latter's sentimental attachment to the Catholic faith. On first acquiring a study Anstey had bought 'Peggy' and the usual pictures: three weeks later he was converted, exchanged 'Peggy' for a Madonna, and dotted the room with candles.
To Martin, Anstey would talk on any subject, from religious experience, which he had not undergone, to the beauty of his elder sisters which was equally fictitious. At times they read together, prose and poetry, Classics and English, and after reading they would launch out into vast discussions. In the Christmas holidays Martin went to stay with the Ansteys in Kensington: he was disappointed in the sisters, who indeed took very little notice of him, but Cyril Anstey was more than usually charming. They wandered about London together, went often to the play, and spent far more money than the Anstey family could afford: but of course Martin did not know that. It was not, however, until the summer term that Martin's friendship for Cyril Anstey reached its height; now at last he discovered how limited and pent up all his school life had been. He had had no enthusiasms. Religion had no appeal for him, the ancient literatures had been so fouled by pedantic notes and introductions that they had not moved him as they should have done, for games he had only a lukewarm affection. He liked discussing teams and the chances of teams, but he had never had personal successes in athletics; while he knew that the correct hitting of a ball might be one of life's most splendid things, his experience of that pleasure was too fragmentary to satisfy his appetite. His talks with Gregson had been enjoyable, for they had given him an opportunity to let himself go: but life, on the whole, this life at school which was universally supposed to teem with opportunities, had become monotonous and barren. One could live without feeling.
But Anstey made a difference. On Sunday afternoons or whenever through the week they could escape from cricket, they wandered together on the downs and lay on the short grass watching the white clouds sailing majestically like galleons in the blue dome above them and listening to the larks and the charge of the wind. Below them were the school towers and the green patch of playing-fields and the glittering pool of water where in summer one bathed: behind them ran the smooth sweep of the downs, clear-cut against the sunset and firm and strong as when the Roman came and built his camp upon the brow and threw his road across the hill, despising these grassy slopes as befitted one who knew the Apennines. Here were line and colour and wind and a freshening spirit that was alien to the stuffy town below: here was something to enjoy in peace, something which made the Georgics real and the world something more than a place to live in.
And Anstey had brought him to the downs. The average Elfreyan thought climbing that slippery turf a horrid sweat, connected it with the compulsory runs of winter, and preferred to lounge in his arid house yard. Until now Martin had avoided the downs, because it wasn't the thing to go there: but when he had found the dip to Friar's Hanger and the great wood of larches beyond, he cursed the game of cricket and longed to escape from the tyranny of games. He had taken beauty for granted just as he had taken goodness and truth for granted: somehow they existed and that was all. Now he found the idea suffusing visible things and he knew how much he had missed by lounging in Berney's yard. A new door was opened. It had been opened by Anstey and the light from within was reflected on the opener, transfiguring for Martin the swift grace of his movements and giving to the rapid stream of his thoughts a depth which they really lacked. A dam had burst and Martin had no longer to seek an outlet for his emotions. Gladly he entered on strange paths of sentiment, and he no longer deceived himself with the lie that his friendship with Anstey was comparable to his friendship for Gregson or Rayner. One afternoon they found a new path and a new hollow where the young bracken made a couch softer than the bare hill-side. Here there was no clack of cricket balls, no nets, no shouting of 'Heads' and terrified ducking. Only the wind whispered in the bracken and an old sheep grunted in the sun, for the weather was warm and he should long ago have been sheared.
The two boys lay in silence, pretending to read.
"It's ripping of you to be bothered with me," said Martin suddenly.
"What do you mean?" said Anstey.
"I mean that you aren't my sort. You see things much more quickly than I do. You don't plod like me."
"I haven't your brains—that's the truth."
"No, it isn't. Of course it isn't." Yet Martin was half-conscious that he lied. His affection for Anstey had forced him to tell a needless falsehood in a futile effort to quiet the voice which cried within him: "He isn't good enough for you." Then he added: "You've shown me all this."
"I may see things you miss," said Anstey, "but I've no practical ability, no thoroughness. Anyhow I'm glad if I've given you something in return for what you have given me."
Martin had bought books for Anstey, Synge at five shillings a volume. He had been proud of knowing about Synge at school.
"Oh, that was nothing," he answered. But it had meant fewer sardines and sausages when he fed with Rayner.
"Then we're quits, dear old fool."
"Why old fool?"
"For taking me seriously."
"Why shouldn't I?"
"Nobody else does. I amuse them and they like me all right. But I think you really care——"
"Yes, of course. Honestly, I care."
They lay in silence, looking at one another.
Later on they went headlong down the slopes and assuaged their heat by bathing in the pool, which was almost deserted. It was still warm enough to lie on the soft banks so that the setting sun might dry their bodies.
They were late for house tea.
At this point Heseltine comes into the story.
He was head of Berney's, a fact of which he was most painfully aware. Though not prominent in games, he was sound in all branches of life: above all, he was a man with an influence, a force for good, one of Foskett's darlings. He held strong views on the duty of a prefect and the possibility of 'feeling the school's moral pulse.' Berney's objected to his constant attentions: the house preferred to have its pulse unfelt. Everyone resented Heseltine's new rules and posted notices and petty interference, but of all Berneyites the most opposed to Heseltine in spirit and conduct was Anstey.
That night Heseltine asked Martin to see him after prep.
"Oh, I want to have a chat with you," said Heseltine when Martin arrived. "Just one friend to another."
"Yes," said Martin suspiciously.
"You've been going about a lot with young Anstey," the prefect went on.
"Yes."
"I don't want to seem interfering" (sure sign, Martin knew, that he was going to interfere), "but I think I ought to warn you against him. He's not good enough for you. His record isn't a good one."
"He's in the Lower Sixth."
"I know that. He's clever enough. But we've had trouble with him. He doesn't fit into things: he's dangerous."
Martin wanted to say: "You think everybody dangerous who has more brains than you." As a matter of fact he said: "Oh?" There was something formidable about Heseltine.
"Of course," he continued, "one can't be too careful in matters of this sort. In a community like this sentimental attachments won't do. We prefects are responsible for the moral health of the school and we've got to keep our fingers on its pulse...." He prosed away and Martin regarded the literature he favoured. He read, it seemed, Seton Merriman and the publications of the Agenda Club. Suddenly he realised that Heseltine was saying: "I want you to promise me to see less of him."
Martin flared up at once. "I don't see why," he said angrily.
"I've given my reasons. He's not a fit friend for you."
"Surely that's for me to judge."
"You're not infallible. I'm only speaking for your good. I should like to have your promise. I know I can't compel you, but I ask it as a favour."
"I think my friends are my own affair," answered Martin, infuriated by what he considered to be the oiliness, the furtive oiliness, of Heseltine's methods.
During the next three days Martin was constantly with Anstey and, as a result, Heseltine declared war. He definitely forbade the friends to visit each other's studies without permission, and on the following evening he swiped Anstey for impertinence. To swipe a member of the Sixth was a violation of tradition but not of law. Not even Anstey could have denied that he had been sublimely impertinent, but his appeal was to custom. Heseltine smiled calmly and said that he couldn't be limited by hide-bound traditions when the maintenance of discipline was at stake. He enjoyed his triumph and did not spare his victim.
The news came to Martin through Rayner, who, though secretly pleased at Anstey's discomfiture, honestly admitted that Heseltine hadn't played the game. Martin listened to him in silence: he did not volunteer any conversation and was glad that Rayner went away at once.
He picked up a book and went straight to Heseltine's study.
"Can I speak to Anstey?" he asked quietly, "It's about some words in Homer!"
Heseltine looked at him suspiciously: he could hardly call him a liar to his face. "Very well," he said. "But don't stay."
Martin found Anstey in his arm-chair. His face was very white and when he saw Martin he smiled the forced, flickering smile that is so often born of an effort to conceal pain.
"It's all right," said Martin, "I've got permission."
Anstey told him to sit down.
"It's frightfully rotten luck," Martin began. "Heseltine is simply a devil."
"He didn't hurt me as much as he thought he had."
The thought gave Martin a thrill: it was something more than sympathy.
"What did he have you up for?" he asked.
"Cheek. You must have heard what I said. I certainly shouted."
"But I joined in that."
It had been in the tuck-shop. Heseltine's entrance had been greeted with remarks about the advent of the deity.
"He didn't hear you."
Martin knew that he hadn't shouted: he had only muttered something. He hadn't Anstey's pluck. The thought was bitter and increased his admiration of Heseltine's victim. Anstey had suffered for what he had helped to do.
"But what about this persecution?" he exclaimed suddenly. "I'm damned if I stand it."
"And what do you propose to do?"
"I don't see why we shouldn't remain friends."
"Nor do I. But the powers disagree."
"Damn the powers."
"Certainly."
"Well, I'm going to see you as often as I like if you'll have me. If Heseltine says anything I'll tell him to go to Berney or Foskett if he likes."
Anstey made no reply.
"Do you mean," said Martin, "that you won't go on, that you don't want me?"
"Of course I want you. But it's no use fighting. I've got a bad name with the beaks and it's a hundred to one they back up Heseltine. You know how they drop on this sort of thing. I think they're all wrong: in this case I know they are. But there it is. They've got the whip hand and we can't fight against the odds."
"I'm willing to try."
"If you do, you'll be very admirable and very foolish. Look here. You may be a pre next term. Fighting means you miss that; it means nothing but trouble all day long. I've been in rows and I know. It's no use. There's more pluck in surrender."
Martin got up. "I think I'll go," he said.
"I hope you don't think I'm playing a low-down game," interrupted Anstey.
"No, it isn't that. I just want to think things over. Besides, time is up."
He went back to his study and tried to clear his mind. At first he was bitterly angered by Anstey's surrender, but later on he realised that, after all, Anstey had already been under fire in the war's first skirmish, whereas he, Martin, had gone unscathed. He was in no position to make criticisms, much less taunts. Then his thoughts turned from Anstey to Heseltine. He knew now what Gregson meant when he talked of the Iron Heel: he could feel its pressure now. More clearly than ever before he learned that membership of society is a doubtful blessing and that it means cruelty and waste and sacrifice and compels us to jettison the rare to save the common. For the sake of example, to preserve discipline, to keep the house working he had now to give up the most precious thing in his life. In the last few weeks something new had burst into his soul like a drunken reveller, upsetting things and setting things up, something at once beautiful and terrible: but its beauty had surpassed its terror. Beauty had been blown into his sight and imaginings on the wind-swept downs and now it was to be swept away again by the grim forces of convention and utility. Just because others spoiled things he must be deprived of them: the high must be of less account then the low, the beautiful must yield to the ugly. This was morality and the social good, this was the Law of whose glories complacent philosophers loved to preach. He ought to fight it; he must fight it. But how? The question was as unanswerable as it was insistent. At length he gave it up. All that he could do was to pour out his soul to Gregson, for here, if anywhere, Gregson might be of use. Together they denounced the Iron Heel, and it was well for Martin that this outlet was not denied him. He was saved from despair, perhaps from disaster, by a fortnight's ferocious Anarchism.
And in a fortnight the wound had healed. Enforced abstention from Anstey's society did its work. Anstey easily picked up new friends and Martin was astonished to find that he was not jealous of them. He was equally astonished at his own speedy reconciliation with the order of things and his swift relapse from Anarchism to Socialism. Anstey had been right: there was, after all, much to be said for social peace and convenience.
In another week he was beginning to ask himself what he had ever seen to admire in Anstey. Climbing the downs was a horrid sweat and cricket with Rayner had undoubted fascinations.