"Well, what's the upshot of it all? Merely that the home matters far more than you imagine, because it's the one place where the Servile State hasn't really got hold of its victims yet. It's true that a middle-class home may be deadly; so far I agree with the paper. But I don't agree that the minor's next step is to smash the home altogether. No, we've got to save it if we want to save men from being turned into mere wealth-producing machines. We've got to save it with all its dangers because it is the expression of genuine and valuable emotion. You people are all for smashing the home before you've smashed the system: my idea is just the reverse. When you have a state in which men can take pride and find beauty in their work, you can go in and smash the home. If you try and put the home on a business basis you may help a few middle-class people who have brains and time enough to quarrel, but you'll be taking from the oppressed their only release and making life more commercial and sordid than it is at present. Set up a society where life has rational interests, where a man can express his desire for beauty without leaving it to nocturnal sentimentality, and I'm with you. In the meanwhile there's a good deal to be said for The Little Grey Home in the West. It answers a need. To kill that need you must smash Industrialism. And that, my Fabian friends, is some business."
After such an oration, not silly and blatant as the words of Lawrence often tended to become, it seemed wrong to talk further. Martin, who was by nature far more sympathetic to the popular taste than was Rendell, had been influenced by the last speech and the defence of The Little Grey Home: in his reply he made a considerable recantation. The society adjourned, the visitors disappeared, and the elect remained to talk. Once more Woman was the theme, and her position and claims were thoroughly discussed until, about midnight, the conversation drifted, like early Greek history, "into the mythical" and fiction succeeded theory. That, from the male talker's standpoint, is the advantage about woman; equally she can point the moral or adorn the tale.
Martin was enjoying his third year. He still had rooms in college and had enough work to keep him contented while the shadow of exams was too remote to cause apprehension. The Push had risen to fame and were running the college: they had taken charge of its societies in a lordly way and talked sense or nonsense as they chose. But the heavy hand of Age was beginning to make them increasingly fond of sense. They were none the less happy, however, for being less superficial, and secretly they were pleased by the admiration of the advanced freshers and the effort made to cultivate their society. Martin's third year was a time of activity, free both from the boundless and discursive idling of his "fresher" period and the anxious strain that pending examinations cannot fail to produce.
Chard, however, was deserting them, for his career at the Union made him a busy man. His triumph (he was Junior Librarian early in his third year) had been mainly achieved by hard work. Office at the Oxford Union can be won either by courting or despising the members: there is no middle path. The latter method needs audacity and ability. The man who never pulls strings, dashes in late to make his speech, and dashes out again to seek reasonable company may win the votes of the people whom he so treats, provided that he is either really witty, a peer, or a Blue. A titled Blue could afford to do anything, but fortunately neither peers nor Blues deign to have much business with so common a place as the Union.
Chard had adopted the other method. He had pulled strings diligently. He had got to know the right people: he had learned up the right epigrams for the right speeches: asked the right questions of the officers and, when himself an officer, had made the right retorts. He had worked hard in search of votes and had addressed, carefully and capably, nearly every debating society in Oxford. He was standing for the Presidency at the end of the spring term and had every chance of success. The Union loved him, because, not being a Balliol man, he had beaten the Balliol people at their own game.
For the visitors' debate Bavin, K.C., M.P., was coming down, Bavin than whom no fiercer lawyer flayed the Government on provincial platforms and was photographed at country houses. His fees were unparalleled, his wife, a peer's daughter, the most beautiful woman in society. Bavin had done everything as it should be done, at Eton, at Balliol, at All Souls, at the Bar, in the social world. His career was an epitome of success.
He would, of course, speak last. Chard, a strong supporter of the Government, would precede him. It was hard luck on Chard, one felt, that he should have to come first: Bavin's oratorical bludgeonings would make a mess of Chard. Still Chard was the only man who had any chance against Bavin. One pinned one's faith on Chard to rise to the occasion. Anyhow it would be fun, and everybody would be there.
Martin liked Chard for his thorough-going pursuit of success, his willingness to borrow brilliance from any source, his capacity for making use of anybody and anything.
"Chard is getting the limit," Rendell complained to Martin. "Do you think he ever has a single thought outside his career?"
"Chard is to me as a modern hotel palace to Arnold Bennett. His methods fascinate me: I can't help loving him."