XIII
Martin spent August and September at The Steading. The weather was kind and he could lounge and play tennis to his heart's content. In his spare moments he read Homer and Virgil, marking the hard passages with a blue pencil, according to advice. His cousin Robert, who had just finished his third year at Balliol, was working in a frenzy of confusion and despair. He had devoted the whole previous year to becoming President of the Union and, having gained his end, was now endeavouring to condense all his Greats work into one year. He had foolishly given way to panic, which meant that his work was as unintelligent as it was ferocious. In the mornings he read Thucydides and Cicero's Letters, smoking and swearing continuously. Martin used to sit in the same room reading his Homer, but concentration was rendered difficult by Robert's habit of roaring when he came to a speech in the text of Thucydides. And when the roar was over he would mutter in his distress:
"But the seeming firmness of those who will join in the contest is not the actual loyalty of those who brought it on, but if, on the other hand, anyone has much the greater advantage..." Having progressed so far, he would look up and say: "Did I speak? I'm sorry!" Then he would return sorrowfully to his speech.
In the evenings Robert read Bradley's Logic and Appearance and Reality; if Martin came into the room he would be met with an outburst on philosophy.
"It's all bunkum," Robert used to assert, throwing Bradley (library copy) across the room. "Just organised bunkum. I suppose philosophers have to make up some twaddle to justify their salaries, but they might have spared us the Absolute!"
Robert was very angry about the Absolute and used to draw obscene pictures of it, adding appropriate lyrics. Martin came to the conclusion that Greats must be bad for the temper, but he was not troubled by the reflection that some day he himself would be a sufferer, for no sane person of eighteen thinks more than a year in advance.
He began now to feel a growing dignity and responsibility. Plainly he was no longer a schoolboy, not even a god-like prefectorial schoolboy, but an undergraduate and a man of the world. Such status implied duties, and he made efforts to cultivate a manner: he smoked a pipe openly instead of cigarettes in secret: he also set about the task of liking wine. This did not turn out to be so big a business as his first experiences had led him to expect.
Further, he began to prefer his tennis mixed: he had been happier before when there were only men and they could have a hard-hitting, vigorous set. But now he wanted to display his newly acquired American service and deadly smashes at the net to the girls who hit patiently from the back line: he was inwardly ashamed of this desire to make an impression on girls, but there it undeniably was.
Margaret Berrisford he had always taken for granted. She was a year older than he was and very often she went away, for her father was taking every precaution to save her from the usual limitations of the squire's daughter. They were cousins and good friends and scarcely ever spoke to each other alone: they merely said 'Good-morning' and 'Good-night' and played tennis together. Because they were practically members of the same family they never took the trouble to find out about one another. Margaret had beauty of a subtle, unimposing kind and a strong athletic figure: moreover, she had brains and could talk. Her interests were wide and she had an astonishing fund of information. If she had been precipitated suddenly into the house as a visitor Martin would certainly have fallen in love with her. As it was, the idea never occurred to him.
It remained, as frequently happens, for a married woman to inflict the first wound.
One afternoon at the end of September Martin was leaving the tennis lawn after a vain effort to play in the failing light on dew-soaked grass. He had stayed behind to collect the balls and was walking slowly with three folded deck-chairs in one hand, while with the other he carried the balls on his racket. Suddenly he became aware of voices and almost ran into Mrs Berrisford and a stranger. He was introduced to Mrs Cartmell.
"You can't very well shake hands," she observed. "We're going in. Suppose I take the balls."
"Oh, please don't bother," said Martin.
But Mrs Cartmell grasped the racket and took it from him without dropping any of the balls.
"Thanks very much," Martin remarked. "Do you play tennis?"
"In a feeble kind of way. I'm out of practice too."
"We'll put that all right," said Mrs Berrisford.
"The court is quite dry, up to tea-time," added Martin eagerly. "The dew is very heavy later on and it gets dark soon, but it's all right if you play early."
Martin's keenness amused Mrs Cartmell. "Of course I should love to play," she said.
To his own astonishment Martin felt greatly relieved.
Godfrey Cartmell was prospective Radical candidate for the division. To pass away the time he had been called to the Bar, but he never had any need or any inclination to practise. At Oxford he had, like most people, been President of the Liberal Club, and his faith was nebulous but genuine. He had had the good sense to marry a capable woman who carried him off maternally and saw to it that he didn't hang about any longer, but made his terms with the Whips at once. Viola Cartmell was neither egoistic nor vulgar, but she combined ambition with practical driving power, and she had eaten the bread of obscurity far longer than she liked. Godfrey had chances, but she saw that he had picked up during his first-class education a capacity for doing nothing in a very charming manner. She had already made him a candidate: she intended to make him a success.
The Cartmells were close friends of the Berrisfords, and it was through the connection that Godfrey had been introduced to the local Liberal Association. Now they had come down to look round: the seat was held by a Tory but had sound Radical traditions, so that a change was not impossible. Naturally Godfrey Cartmell spent much of his time with the agent: his wife thought it more tactful not to be too conspicuous at first, for she had resolved that, when the time arrived, she was to direct the campaign. So she had time to play tennis and go for walks and make, quite unwittingly, a conquest.
It was certainly not with any feminine charms that Viola Cartmell won Martin's adoration: rather it was by reason of her difference from the average girl who came to play tennis or to visit the Berrisfords. There was no need to talk down to her or to make conversation, no need to take the initiative and play the gallant male. Viola neither patronised Martin, as did the men who came to the house, nor expected patronage, as did the girls. She treated him as an equal and talked about reasonable things; she had ideas and could think clearly. If a man had expressed her views Martin would have been interested, but the fact that they came from a woman rendered them doubly attractive. During the vacation Martin had begun to form a vision of the perfect woman: it had been the ideal that appeals to most intelligent boys at some period of their adolescence, the union of masculine mind and female beauty. He was old enough now to be troubled by sex, not as something abstract that might crop up in a theoretical future, but as a present pain and pleasure: in his growing restlessness he tended inevitably to find his ideal personified in every woman who was not quite a fool, the wish being always father to the thought. Viola Cartmell's masculine attributes, her managing ways, and her power of thought and argument gave him a genuine excuse for setting her on his pedestal. Yet Martin's attitude was one of adoration, not of passion. Quite apart from the manifest impossibility of making love, apart too from the fact that, even if circumstances had allowed, he did not know how to make love, he did not even want to make love. He wanted to be with her, to watch her, above all to talk with her: and that was the limit of his desires.
On the tennis court Margaret and he were too strong for Robert and Viola; accordingly the two Berrisfords fought great battles against the visitors and as a rule prevailed. But they were not invincible. Once Martin and Viola had lost two sets in succession and in the third the score was five-three and forty-fifteen against them. Viola had said, "Now we're going to win," and Martin had performed the most impossible feats at the net, smashing and cutting and getting back for the lob.
Martin finished the set with a perfect drive down the said line.
"Wimbledon," said Robert, making no effort to reach it.
As they went in to tea his partner smiled upon him and said: "You were simply wonderful."
That moment gave him greater joy than he had ever gained from the avenging of Gideon or the conquest of Randall's with fraudulent googlies.
On the last day of his holidays (it is a nice point whether the two months before a man goes up to the university are to be called 'summer hols' or 'long vac') a discussion was held after breakfast as to procedure. Robert was sorry, but he had to give himself to the Ethics: he had one day in which to settle the business of friendship and pleasure (long neglected), and he had discovered to his horror that some pieces of Aristotle must be learned by heart with a view to translation. Margaret had to go to a dentist at Plymouth. At last Martin asked Viola Cartmell to come out on the moor and to his joy she assented.
They went by car to Merivale Bridge and then climbed up to Maiden Hill and Cowsic Head. It was a superb October day. A great south wind came up from the sea, salt and stinging but with no load of rain. Down in the village the autumn had kindled the first fire in the woods and no hue of flame was absent from the leaves. Shimmering with green and yellow, gold and copper, the boughs made music for ear and eye. And on the moor there was the wind and the sky and the infinite sweep of ridge after ridge, broken with harsh tors and intractable granite. It may be that the brave struggle of the dying year has its effect on man, for there is something challenging in a good autumn day, something that lifts and braces a man as spring can never do. Spring, at its best, is languorous and its pleasures cloying, but autumn is a rousing friend and makes exquisite the burden of life.
As they ate their sandwiches by the Bear Down Man, Martin could not refrain from quoting:
"'And oh the days, the days, the days,
When all the four were off together:
The infinite deep of summer haze,
The roaring charge of autumn weather.'"
And indeed it was in the face of a charge as of cavalry that they fought their way down to Two Bridges. There is rough going where the moormen have cut for peat and trenched the heathery ridges in their labour: and now, in addition to the need of leaping the rifts and skirting green morasses, they had to battle with a wind that shrieked and wrenched and gave no quarter. They talked but little until they sheltered in a hollow. Then Martin took up the thread of an earlier conversation.
"Do you really believe in this Liberalism?" he asked.
"Yes, of course."
"But do you think modern Liberal politics have any connection with Liberalism?"
"Not much, I admit."
"Then I don't understand your point."
"It's quite simple. I believe vaguely in Liberalism, but we live in a busy world where everybody is far too much occupied to think about anything except business. Parliament's busy too: it has got to get certain things done and it hasn't time for too much idealism and spiritual attitudes and things of that sort. And when it comes to the rather dull but very necessary work of keeping things going and administering the Empire, I prefer the Liberals, because they have got leaders with brains."
"I see."
"You think me very worldly?"
"Not at all. But I think you are wrong on your own canons. Liberal leaders may be cleverer than Tory leaders, but that doesn't prove Liberalism to be efficient. Just look at things!"
"And for efficiency you propose Socialism?"
"Not only for efficiency. It's a philosophy as well."
"But we're considering efficiency. Do you really suppose you have got at your disposal the human capacity and good will and reasonableness to build up a Co-operative Commonwealth? I don't say man hasn't the brains to plan things. He plainly has, as you can see by reading the wiser Socialists. But he hasn't a corresponding capacity for cohesion and give and take. You'll have to depend on your Labour leaders and Trade Unionists; but just look at them! They can only squabble and bicker and show up their jealousy and pettiness. That's where the stumbling-block lies."
In vain Martin contested. His opponent confronted him with the old dilemma (new to him), that if, in setting up collectivism, you confiscate property, you act unjustly to many, while, if you compensate, you maintain an idle rich class. By the time that they were once more on the march, Martin was becoming a devotee of 'efficient Liberalism.' But he enjoyed his defeat. If this method and insistence had come from a man he would have felt very differently.
At last they reached Two Bridges and had tea at the hotel and waited for the car to fetch them as had been arranged. It pleased Martin to pay for the tea with his own pocket-money (his allowance would begin to-morrow) and to refuse to listen to demands. She thought him silly for the moment, since she did not understand how much he cared.
Dinner that evening was a capital meal. John Berrisford was in his best form and kept up a lively duel with Viola Cartmell. Even Robert managed to shake off the depressing effects of Aristotle. They drank to Martin's career at Oxford.
"You're certain to like Oxford," said Godfrey Cartmell when the men were alone.
"I'm afraid I wasn't much impressed by it in December," answered Martin.
"That wasn't Oxford," interrupted Robert. "That was a dismal city in the Midlands seen at its worst."
"Exactly," said Mr Berrisford, breaking into the conversation. "Oxford isn't a place. Everybody talks about the buildings and the age and the dreaming spires. It goes down with the Yankees and the people who are proud of having read The Scholar Gipsy, and I suppose it keeps up the picture post card business."
"But there are good things," said Cartmell resentfully. He was of Magdalen.
"Certainly. But these things are incidental and not essential. After all, the best college—with all due respect to you, Cartmell, and to you, Martin—has a front quad like a toy castle and a chapel—well, I suppose it's the kind of chapel that particular college ought to have, according to all tradition—a Great Speckled Warning against God. Half the most sensible people in Oxford don't know a jot about the architecture, but they know Oxford."
"Then," answered Cartmell, taking up the argument, as behoved a Liberal, seriously, "would you mind if the whole show—the educational work, I mean—were transferred to Margate or Southend or some place with a little air? On your theory that would be a very sound plan."
"It has its points," added Robert. "Just think of the progs on a seaside promenade."
"And the sea," continued his father, "is limitless. Many young men would go down to the sea in ships and have business in great waters. What a chance for enterprise! Moonlight trips round the bay."
"But seriously," said Cartmell, still smarting under the implied contempt for Magdalen's beauty.
"The port lingers at your side," was the answer. "Restore the circulation."
"Well, seriously," John Berrisford continued, when his glass had been filled again, "to move would be fatal, because the traditions would all go if you took them away from their home. But it's the traditions that count, not the place. God knows I'm willing enough to be sentimental about places. I can even enjoy hearing the song about 'Devon, glorious Devon,' sung by a Dandy Coon baritone at an audience of Cockneys at Teignmouth. I can understand a Scottish exile in America going a hundred miles to hear Harry Lauder. To my mind places are the only things about which a man has a right to be sentimental. No causes or catch-words for me: but hills and valleys—as much as you like. That's Nationalism, and therefore Liberalism, Cartmell."
"I agree!"
"You don't, but I'll take your word. But what was I saying? Oh yes, about Oxford. Oxford is all right. I know you get the worst wine in the world there—I suppose it's specially imported for the benefit of the young men of the world who believe that anything is nectar if you pay more than ten bob a bottle for it—but you still find people drinking properly. Richly, I mean, and with conviction. I think I'd rather be a teetotaller——"
"Which God avert!" put in Cartmell.
"Amen to that. Yes, I'd rather be a True Blue than drink one glass of wine at dinner. One glass! It's an insult. Now at Oxford——"
"But, father," Robert interrupted, "the don of to-day is just the sort of person who does drink one glass of wine. With a kind of ghastly self-conscious moderation he sips some claret and then hurries off to organise a mission meeting. There aren't any good old fogeys left, only some fogeys without the merits of fogeyism. They've got consciences and think about social reform and the possibility of all classes pulling together before the last Red Day. You know the kind of thing. By Good Will out of Nervousness."
"Well then," answered Mr Berrisford, "I'm wrong. Oxford is going to the dogs. I suppose they had to let the dons marry, but they might have foreseen that the kind of women who would pounce on the dons wouldn't understand about the good life. I expect it's the women that are destroying Oxford. When Oxford spread northwards, it spread to the devil."
"But this is downright Toryism," protested Cartmell. "You call yourself a revolutionary!"
"So I am. But I'm sound about tradition and things that matter. I don't want soaking: I want proper drinking and proper talking. I thought it might have lingered in one or two common-rooms. Anyhow, the undergraduates——"
He paused a moment and then went on:
"I remember Oxford as a place where I had some excellent pipes and never took my breakfast till I wanted it. It was a place where I worked devilish hard when I hadn't anything better to do. And I worked sensibly. No gentleman works after lunch or dinner. He walks or buys books after lunch and after dinner he talks. You must talk at Oxford, Martin."
"At debates, do you mean?"
"Not at the Union. Oh, Lord, not there. Robert has done that, and look at him. He's a broken man. He used to spend his vacs wondering how he could get the votes of Malthusian Mongols in Worcester without losing the support of Church and State in Keble. Didn't you, Robert?"
"I shall draw a veil over the past," said Robert. "I became President, anyhow."
"Be warned, Martin," his uncle went on. "Speak at college debates, if it amuses you. But shun a public career. Talk all night to your friends, for afterwards you won't get talk like it. You'll get shop talk and small talk and dirty talk, but at Oxford you'll get the real thing with luck."
Martin, remembering the tastes of Theo. K. Snutch, felt doubtful.
"Of course you'll find lots of nonsense there," John Berrisford added. "Lectures, for instance. They're nothing but an excuse to keep the dons from lounging: it certainly does give them an occupation for the mornings. Just think of it! There they are, mouthing away term after term. Either wisely cut——"
"Hear, hear!" from Robert.
"—or laboriously taken down, by conscientious youths with fountain pens and patent note-books. I suppose the Rhodes scholars use shorthand."
"Possibly," said Robert. "Certainly they have nasty little black books to slip in their pockets like reporters."
"Anyhow the stuff could be got out of reputable books in half the time with no manual labour of scribbling. Sometimes the man's lectures are actually published in book form and yet he solemnly dictates them year after year!"
"But sometimes," put in Cartmell, "a man has got something original to say."
"Well," said Robert, "why doesn't he publish his notes at a price? I'm quite willing to buy his knowledge, but I dislike having to waste time and trouble in a stuffy lecture-room in order to get it."
"The whole thing is preposterous," his father concluded. "But the system will last for fifty years or more. Just like the discipline. So beautifully English, they drive everything underground, make it twice as dangerous, and then pretend it doesn't exist. Instead of men having open and honourable relations with women, they'll be slinking about in back streets and snatching their kisses in taxicabs."
"Well," said Martin, "you set out to praise Oxford but you haven't made it seem very attractive."
"Oh! you'll find it all right, when you come to it. If a man has got to earn his own living it's about the only time when he can live a reasonable life. You'll be able to say what you like, read what you like, go to bed when you like, get up when you like, work when you like, and, if you use a little discretion, do what you like. Don't become a slave to any one thing, the River or the Union or even the Classics. You can get into the Civil Service without straining yourself, so make the most of your time. Doing the kind of work you like is the only really good thing in the world."
Just then Margaret opened the door and looked in.
"Father," she said, "you're booming terribly. Mother says you must come and play games."
"I never play games."
"Well, mother says you must. All of you!"
"Are we wanted at once?"
"Yes."
"Then, gentlemen, we must yield. We were born too late. The matriarchy has returned. Do you agree to that, Cartmell?"
"Certainly!"
"There was a time when no young lady would have the daring to invade the dining-room and order the men to play games. Games, indeed!"
"Don't start again, father," interrupted Margaret. "I won't budge till you do."
"Just think what you might hear!"
"Oh, I'm not a 'puffick lidy.' They passed away with the patriarchy. Now, come along!"
Games were a success because they were taken seriously. Mr Berrisford asserted that if he must waste time in that particular way he meant to do it properly. So they all exercised great ardour and ingenuity, composed pretty rhymes, and drew the strangest pictures. At the end he insisted, however, that instead of taking famous men beginning with C, they should have infamous people. The test of infamy was to be a referendum. The game began well enough, because no opposition was raised to such people as Cicero or Christopher Columbus. But the inclusion of both Cromwell and Charles I. caused a heated argument and Cartmell was sure that they couldn't both be on one black list.
But Mr Berrisford exposed the crimes of both at great length. Crippen and Calvin both had defenders and the game at last broke up in confusion.
Martin enjoyed the evening, partly from vanity (he had done some quite clever things), and partly because he could watch Viola Cartmell without being noticed. To watch her was heavenly. There was nothing subtle or analytic in his adoration: for him there was just an indivisible whole called Viola. And that was perfect.
At eleven Robert declared that he still had some of the Ethics left and retired to find out about the contemplative life. Mr Berrisford took Godfrey Cartmell to smoke a cigar in his study and the rest prepared to go to bed.
Martin went to his room and then came back and lingered by the staircase window. As he looked out he could see a solid line of fir-trees standing out with black severity against the moonlit sky, and farther away was the long shoulder of the moor—he could see the ridge they had climbed together and the rough peak which broke its symmetry and made its splendour.
Someone was coming up. It could only be Viola: the Berrisfords slept on the other side of the house.
It was she. Trembling, he heard the rustling of her skirts, the creaking of the stairs, her voice by his side.
"Hullo!" she said. "Star-gazing?"
"It's a great night," he answered.
She came and stood at the window. The closeness of her thrilled him.
"I wish those owls wouldn't hoot," she said. "Is that the ridge we climbed?"
"Yes. I did enjoy the walk."
"So did I! The air up there is so splendid. And it's all so gorgeously empty."
"I've been up before. But I enjoyed it much more this time."
Naturally she did not take it as he meant it.
"One doesn't often get such a perfect day, I suppose," was her answer.
Martin was at a loss. He wanted to say all sorts of things: fortunately they stuck.
She turned to go: "I'm sure you'll have a good time at Oxford and make the most of it!"
"Thank you very much. Everyone does seem to enjoy it."
"Good-night!" she said, and left him to go to her room. The door closed behind with a sharpness that hurt.
As Martin lingered in the passage it began to occur to him that he was a silly fool, that boys of eighteen shouldn't fall in love with married women of twenty-five or even more, and that, even if they did, there was no point in being tongue-tied and nervous. But what was the good of self-reproach? He wasn't to blame if she was perfect. And she was perfect. To-morrow he would have to go up to Oxford. He would scarcely see her again. There was nothing left of her now, nothing except the boots which stood outside her door, their strong brown leather stained with the peat of Bear Down and Devil's Tor. At last he moved quickly to his room and undressed.
As he lay half naked on his bed he recalled the glories of the moor and the way they had talked. God, how she had talked! They had defied that leaping wind from whose onslaught his cheeks still burned. It had been a day of days. Then he heard Godfrey Cartmell come up and again the door closed. The sound of it hurt him. How could she waste herself on that correct, that unutterably correct, young Liberal?
Why was life so full of silliness, of waste and bungling? Why ... but one thing was certain—he would never, never forget her.