"No. We had four up for Balliol this year."
"That's a lot. Are the results out?"
"Yes, this afternoon. We got a schol. and an exhibition."
"That was jolly good."
The dialogue became more and more technical and immensely dull.
The Rugbeian was plainly a bore and after dinner Martin fled from the college: he found a new cinema in Broad Street and went in. Presently some undergraduates who were stopping up for a few days at the end of term came cheerily in and shouted vaguely.
An obsequious manager pleaded with them and they wandered down the gangway looking for company: it did not seem very hard to find. Martin watched their progress with interest and began to wonder whether the girl next him wanted to talk. She had dropped her wrist-bag once and he had picked it up: during the course of the proceedings his eye had been caught by the glitter of a light grey stocking. She wasn't, he had to admit, beautiful. But she was alone, and so was he. Did she, on the other hand, want him to talk? The dropping of the bag might have been an accident. Besides, what did one say? Martin cursed his inexperience and racked his brains for a conversational lead. He could hardly make some remark about the films: that would be obvious and heavy. Something light was wanted: but what? Why on earth couldn't she drop the bag again? He would take the hint this time. His mind became a blank and he felt acutely miserable. At the end of the film he rose and walked away in despair. He stopped at the back of the hall and noticed one of the varsity men glance round and then move quickly into his place before the lights were again turned out. Martin returned to college, read some more of Snutch's novel, and went to bed.
Till Friday night Martin was kept hard at work doing papers in the college hall. On Tuesday morning he had to write an essay on the relations of the artist and the State, an obvious subject, perhaps, but pleasing. It was the only paper which he enjoyed. Afterwards he was kept hard at work with Unseens and Compositions. Never in his life had he felt more irritable or more intellectually impotent. The yellow blanket of mist hung over Oxford continually: the hall smelled abominably of stale gravy and recent meals, and, worst of all, the pens supplied to such as did not bring their own were quills; consequently the stuffy room was never free from a maddening scratch and squeak. A youth with a sloping brow and waving, faultless hair who sat next Martin made great play with his quill: he was a 'dog' whose doggishness took the form of a graceful abandon in his dress; he wore soft collars and long woolly waistcoats and dilapidated pumps. He held his quill between his first and second fingers, and he wrote splashily with brave flourishes and a spasmodic squeak; also he had a habit of marching out majestically half-an-hour before the time for a paper was finished. Martin wondered whether this implied that he was immensely bad or immensely good: he feared the latter. Altogether he was a fascinating and disconcerting neighbour, and one morning Martin, struggling with verses that would not 'come,' wanted to kill him.
Another cause of depression was the presence of boys
from Grammar Schools. Martin was no snob, but he could not keep himself unspotted from Public School tradition, and he felt that these smug-looking youths were rivals in a way that the dull Rugbeian never could be. He was certain that they were far better scholars than he was, that they had worked like slaves and could translate anything ever written in Greek or Latin: he might have escaped much mental suffering had he known that, even if they had been so brilliant (and in reality they were amazingly dull), the dons are, with a few exceptions, well rooted in class tradition and are not going to sacrifice the Public Schools on the altar of modern honesty. But Martin did not know these things, and when he saw the Grammar School candidates parading the town with little crested caps on the backs of their heads and greasy curls sticking bravely up in front, the natural dislike of the rival was fused with the Public School man's loathing of inferior form. There was one unforgettable person who came every day to King's wearing a black overcoat and black kid gloves: his cap had a little silver button gleaming over the inevitable curl. He looked both wise and good.