Martin was eager to be back, despite the prospect of two stiff terms. And when he was back once more in Oxford, no longer the leaf-clad city of pleasant waters but grey and dripping with the autumn mists, he found that both he himself and his friends had far too much to say. They were all in new and more desirable rooms and Martin was free from the domination of Galer. He had chosen to dwell high up in the back quad, where the windows were large and the rooms airy, and lately he had revised his pictures. This term he purchased some quaintly luminous and misty landscapes which were the fruit either of startling genius or blank incompetence. As to which was the case there was great argument. Rendell, being senior scholar of his year, had been able to claim the famous rooms of the college, oak-panelled and majestically dark. For Art he relied upon Rembrandt and Dürer: but then Rendell never risked anything.
Undoubtedly they had all a great deal to recount, for sixteen weeks of vacation could hardly fail to bring new friends and new experience, new books and new ideas. And the Push knew that there is no satisfaction in mere discovery: it is the telling of a tale that makes for pleasure. So night after night Martin neglected to settle down after dinner, began to tell tales, and concluded, somewhere about twelve, that it was too late to begin now. Then they would play a rubber of sixpenny auction just to make them sleepy and, playing till three or four, would so succeed in their ambition that they could not breakfast till eleven. Only Rendell refused to be tempted and went dutifully to his books.
Before long Martin quarrelled with Reggie Petworth, sulked foolishly, despaired of the term, and began to rely on the winter vacation and the subsequent six weeks of term to grapple with the problem of Mods. He spent a miserable Christmas at The Steading and came to the conclusion on New Year's Eve that he had forgotten nearly every word of Greek and Latin that he had ever known. He did not look forward to the term, and on January the fifteenth he went to Oxford as a lamb to the slaughter.
It was a term of infinite depression. The early months of the year, everywhere unkind, are singularly uncharitable to Oxford: the glamour of autumn had departed and winter has no majesty in muddy streets. The days were yellow with a sticky warmth that brought exhaustion and despair. Martin, passing from book to book, felt always, at whatever time of day, as though he had eaten too much lunch and would die if he didn't soon have tea: it was that kind of weather. He gave up football because it made him sleep after tea: and then, being without exercise or diversion, yawned all morning and read garbage after lunch. Rendell had his work well in hand and was, men said, sure to get a first. Lawrence had manfully abandoned hope and sought consolation in beer and bridge. Martin, foolishly but characteristically, took the middle path. He had neither the energy to work nor the courage to be idle, but sat mournfully with his books, gazing blankly at the pages and wondering why it was all so new to him. Then he would consult recent papers, and his heart would sink yet lower as he realised his amazing ignorance.
As the weeks slipped away he took to learning up lists of hard words and legal technicalities. He became a master of the Virgilian vegetable and the Demosthenic demurrer, and though he knew the Latin for burrs and calthrops and succory and bogwort, he would have been quite incapable of distinguishing those herbs from one another. Thus do we study the poets and orators. But it was distressing work.
And then he became aware of Pink Roses. He noticed her because of her ubiquity and partly, perhaps, because she was always alone: he noticed her in the Broad, in the High, at a football match in the parks, once in the cinema. She was not beautiful, not even pretty: otherwise she need scarcely have remained alone in a community so rapacious. Usually she wore a coat and skirt of dark blue and a little black hat with pink roses. Beneath her hat Martin had observed light fluffy hair done witchingly about her ears and he had been able to notice that she had a pleasing smile and the tiniest of dimples. But her features, too heavy to be piquant, were not strong enough to be striking.
He pointed her out one day to Lawrence and demanded his opinion.
"Oh, that's your Pink Roses," he said critically. "Pretty poor stuff."
"She may be all right," answered Martin meekly.
"She walks all right, but she has got a face like a milk pudding."