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 readingWisden's Annualor 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.
In the Michaelmas term Martin became a house prefect. He was glad to obtain the position, not only because authority has always some attraction, but also because it brought with it some definite and desirable privileges. No longer need he observe hated bounds, no longer was he obliged to turn up at games if he felt disinclined. Martin now became a person to be consulted, an organiser with a voice in the affairs of a community. Though he was not, like many of Mr Foskett's disciples, fired with a passion for 'running things' indiscriminately and irresponsibly, he quite realised that bossing has its pleasures and possibilities. It was typical of the new situation that he was able to give up playing forward for the house and to obtain a trial as wing three-quarter. He had pace and managed to score in the first game: soon he improved wonderfully and settled down in his position. It struck him that there was a great deal to be said for playing football, even regular, incessant football, when you could choose your own position in the field and play without fear of being sworn at.
Naturally his duties brought him into closer contact with his housemaster and he became intimate with the methodical ways of Mr Berney and the efficient management and culture of his wife. In the evenings he received frequent invitations to the drawing-room, where he would talk about Florence and Botticelli, Oxford and Matthew Arnold. In his younger days he had worshipped Mrs Berney with a flaming devotion. Now he was more critical, but, while he understood the limitations of her culture and suspected her of attending University Extension Lectures in order to be told about the poets, he did not cease to like her. At any rate she did not bubble over with unconvincing enthusiasm, like Mrs Foskett, and she did care in a rather ignorant, muddle-headed, but thoroughly genuine way for the things of art. Martin had of course outdistanced many of her tastes and they would have great arguments about Tennyson and Browning and Swinburne. Mrs Berney, who was deeply religious, could never forgive Swinburne. It seemed strange to Martin that so persistent and so sincere an affection for poetry should be so limited. What did it matter, he asked himself, whether Swinburne liked God or whether he didn't? The point was to him that Swinburne had a great, angry soul and could let himself go. But Mrs Berney insisted that that had nothing to do with it: poetry was the making of a beautiful thing and Swinburne had tried to make ugly things beautiful. Of course Martin urged that poetry consisted in pouring a true thing out of yourself, and then he shocked her by saying he hated the word "beautiful." And so they would be carried away with long arguments on æsthetics, sometimes childish and always futile, for neither realised when they had reached an ultimate or what exactly they were trying to prove. Yet both enjoyed the conversation: Martin was intellectually isolated since Gregson had gone to Oxford, and Mrs Berney always welcomed the appearance of intellectual tastes in the house. Besides, she had sense enough to understand that Martin had made some good suggestions and was armed with a consistent principle of criticism.
The actual work of office was not so pleasing. Heseltine had gone on to Cambridge, where it was hoped that he would be taken in hand, and Rayner was head of the house. Rayner was bigger, stronger, and more reliable than ever and he could keep order successfully without a constant use of penalties: Martin admired him, in spite of his intellectual limitations, and aspired to a similar method of government which should be at once peaceful and efficient. It had occurred that, without becoming 'the boy among boys' or 'the workroom pet' or anything horrible of that sort, it might be possible to avoid irresponsible tyranny. Mainly owing to the influence of his social and political views he had bullied himself into the belief that the workroom would be much better if left alone. What the younger members of the house needed was to be trusted, not beaten. They only fell from virtue's path because so many people were engaged in the task of keeping them straight with whips and scorpions. He had been sickened by the stupid despotism of athletes which had often culminated in acts of cruelty and injustice and he wanted to bring to his work a finer attitude and endeavour. And so it was with the crude, untested idealism of a seventeen-year-old humanist that he approached the formidable task of subduing a fifteen-year-old mob.
The beginning was not auspicious. The trouble began, as trouble always began, with Master J. R. F. Gransby-Williams, a rotund youth with a genius for keeping within the letter of the law. His chief aim in life was to rag, and he worked hard to attain it; but there was a subsidiary ambition to be a nut. Consequently he was very scrupulous about his ties and socks and handkerchiefs; his hair he kept very long and parted with miraculous precision.
During Martin's first prep Granny (for so he was called) showed signs of a cold. He blew his nose perpetually and with skill: the noise was as the blare of trumpets.
"Would you mind moderating your efforts?" suggested Martin from his chair.
"Certainly not," said Granny with supreme urbanity.
It was cheek, and a titter ran round the workroom. Martin had been gifted by nature with an unfortunate capacity for blushing, and he blushed now.
"Don't give me any of that lip or you'll get into trouble," he said without conviction.
"That was not my intention," answered Granny, urbane as ever. "I'm very sorry."
Again there was a titter. Martin blushed and swore inwardly: he knew that he was not beginning well.
A few minutes later one Dickinson said: "Please can we have the window open: there's an awful frowst."
"I suppose so," answered Martin. "It does seem a bit thick in here."
Here was Granny's chance. He sneezed magnificently. "May I go and fetch my overcoat?" he asked mildly.
"Shut up," said Martin.
Granny turned up his collar, blew his nose with gentle persistence, and started to shiver. Others followed his example, and the room began to resound with the chattering of teeth.
Martin felt desperate. What exactly was the right way to deal with this kind of ragging? What would Rayner do? That was where the difficulty lay: the workroom never tried this game with Rayner, so that it was impossible to say what Rayner would have done. Swearing at them wouldn't do: he couldn't swipe the whole company. Besides, there were his ideals. Foolishly he determined to try and work in his idealism under the pretext of a joke: it was a cowardly compromise and it deserved to fail.
"I suppose," he said, "we might take a vote about the window."
There was a genial roar of acclamation.
"Those in favour of keeping it open," he went on} "shove up your hands."
There was much talking and throwing of paper balls. Hoarse whispers such as, 'Jones, you stinker, put your hand down or I'll kill you afterwards,' came to his ears. The counting was complicated by the necessity of disqualifying all those who held up both hands with a view to fraud. When the oppositions were being numbered there were murmurs of: 'Lowsy swine,' 'Frowsters,' and so on. The affair was soundly managed by the mob and a tie resulted, so that Martin had to give a casting vote. Imploring faces were turned towards him: the opening of the window was plainly a matter of life and death to that valetudinarian assembly.
"Keep it open," said Martin, determined to abide by his first order.
There were subdued cheers and moans, nasal snufflings and raucous coughs. Above it all the voice of Granny was heard.
"May I borrow some quinine?" he demanded.
Martin now saw the folly of his actions. The matter had gone too far, he had lost grip, and a tremendous rag was imminent.
"Shut up," he roared with all the authority he could command.
And just then Rayner came in to take his spell of prep. There was an immediate silence. Martin left the room in an agony of despair. What the deuce would Rayner think?
As he sat in his study pretending to read Tacitus the prospect of failure and misery became cruelly imminent. He couldn't make out why the workroom people would shut up for Rayner. Rayner wasn't noted for his severity and didn't make half as much use of the Iron Heel as some of his predecessors in Berney's or contemporaries in other houses. Martin was faced with the eternal paradox of government, that those who can govern do not need to punish, while those who punish do not thereby govern. He had always suspected the common talk about personalities and strong men: but now he began to wonder whether there wasn't something in it after all. Anyhow it seemed that by one action of hesitation he had lost his chance: his prestige was going, and if he once gained a reputation for 'raggability' there would be no more peace. The memory of Barmy Walters and the sordid tumult of his classroom came to him with a new piquancy.
"My God!" he said, "it sha'n't be that." He would have to go for Granny. But how did one go for such a creature? Granny always kept to the letter of the law and protested that he had meant nothing: was one simply to disregard his assertions, to call him a liar? How did Rayner manage? And there were the ideals. Would this method be consonant with the humanism of the new prefecture? It was all immensely difficult.
Later in the evening Rayner came to his study: he was very nice about it.
"I say, old man," he said kindly, "that wasn't a good beginning."
"It certainly wasn't," admitted Martin.
"Granny, I suppose?" asked the other.
"Yes, mainly."
"Well there's only one thing for Master Gransby-Williams. Damp the little beast."
"It's not so easy. He's always on the safe side of the fence. If he swears that he didn't mean what you think he meant, you can't very well do anything."
Rayner smiled.
"Can't you?" he said.
"Well, can you?"
"You jolly well must. Otherwise there'll be no end to it."
"All right, I'll try. But it seems rather rotten."
"Doesn't it strike you as rotten to be ragged by a tick like Granny?"
Martin had to admit that it was.
Three nights later Martin interviewed Granny after prayers. There had been a rag in the prep. A mouse had escaped from Granny's desk and had been the target of many marksmen. The air had been positively black with hurtling dictionaries. The mouse of course escaped and the missiles struck human flesh, compelling recrimination and redress.
"The mouse came out of your desk," said Martin.
"Please, I didn't put it there," whined Granny.
"I don't care. You must have known it was there when you got your books out."
"It may have been asleep," suggested Granny with sudden brilliance.
"Rot!"
"Well, I read in a book that mice sleep fourteen hours out of twenty-four. Anyhow I didn't notice it. It's got to put in its fourteen hours some time."
"The fact remains," said Martin, "that you're responsible for the contents of your desk."
"If another chap puts a mouse in your desk, I don't see——"
Martin was tired of the squalid haggling. But what was he to do? On his own theories, he ought to give Granny the benefit of the doubt and let him go. That was plainly the idealist's course. But there was Rayner's advice: should he yield to the claim of expediency and try it? Suddenly the impudent whine of Granny's voice became intolerable and he determined to be stern.
But the subsequent swiping was, as Granny told the workroom, sketchy and amateurish.
Presently Dickinson knocked at Martin's study.
"Please," he said, "I put that mouse in Gransby-Williams' desk."
Martin, who was just beginning to repent of his fall from idealism, turned upon him in despair. "Why the deuce didn't you own up at once?" he demanded.
"You never asked who did it."
"I did."
"Well, I couldn't hear. There was such a row going on."
That was a stinging retort for Martin: he was certainly getting the worst of it. And Granny was in a strong position, a painfully strong position. Fortunately, however, Martin acted wisely: he was faithful to the new policy, forswore his ideals, and swiped Dickinson. Moreover, his second effort was more thorough, and Dickinson sorrowfully maintained that this talk about sketchy and amateurish methods was a delusion: the blighter, he said, was an artist.
On the next day Granny, the martyr, organised a meeting of protest. Rayner, hearing of it, asked Martin for an explanation.
"That's capital," he said when he had heard the story. "You've been thoroughly unjust, and now you can go on damping Granny with a free conscience. In for a penny, in for a pound."
"I'm sick of the whole business," said Martin.
"Don't be an ass," answered Rayner, and that evening he spoke firmly to Granny. Somehow or other the combined effect of Martin's treatment of Dickinson and Rayner's conversation with Granny led to a change of policy in the workroom.
That night Martin again took prep. As he sat on his dais regarding the victims of his wrath, he was haunted for a moment by the ghost of his murdered ideals; but only for a moment.
And he sat in peace.
During the winter term before he was to go up to Oxford for a scholarship examination Martin felt more than ever isolated. Rayner was a good enough companion for 'brewing' or a casual talk, but he had, distinctly, his limitations. It was only now, when Gregson had gone to Oxford and the light, that Martin realised how much he missed him and how dark and murky was the cave of school life.
There is little satisfaction to be derived from discoveries which cannot be communicated: to find a perfect poem, or, if you are young, a perfect epigram, is good, but to let your friends know you have found it is doubly delightful. And now Martin had to keep his discoveries to himself: if he devised another argument against the existence of God or detected another logical absurdity in Christian dogma there was no one to whom he could declare his joy: if he stumbled in his reading on a thing which pleased him—well, the rest of the house were swine for such a pearl.
Because Martin was treading the path of knowledge alone he was driven by sheer force of necessity into intellectual priggishness and crudity. When he was not engaged in prefectorial work, he tended to become a recluse and to read in his study for long periods at a stretch: and because he had no opposition and no conversation, save the rather mild stimulus of discussing æsthetics with Mrs Berney, he became, as time went on, more violent in his opinions. He often longed for the bitter tongue and incisive reasoning of Gregson, not least when he had completed a course of Shaw's dramas. There was no escape from attendance at chapel and prayers and the wrath always engendered in the sceptic by compulsory religion should have an outlet. Martin, having no one to talk to, was forced to amuse himself with blasphemous imaginings: but even that began to pall.
It was at this point that he became aware of Finney. Until he had become a prefect and learned by experience that the ruler's task is not always the easiest and most enjoyable, he had always adopted the natural attitude to masters. A 'crusher' was just a person whom, if possible, one ragged. If he could hold his own, well and good: if not, he merited contempt, not mercy, and the more he was ragged the better it would be for the world at large. But when Martin discovered from his own experience that to be ragged is torture, he began to regard the doings and sufferings of the masters in a different light. It suddenly struck him, with all the vivid effect of a surprise, that these people were human beings of like passions with himself.
Following quickly on that discovery came the recognition of the fact that Finney was being ragged. Reginald Finney, B.A., had not left Oxford for more than two years, but he had bravely married, and now he lived in a tiny cottage some distance from the school. Every day he bicycled in to take the Upper Fourth, Classical, and to devote occasional hours to the Upper Sixth. In time, of course, he would become a Sixth form master, for he had excellent degrees—two firsts and a 'mention' in the Ireland scholarship. He had lingered at Oxford with a view to a fellowship, but nothing turned up: at last he had been compelled by economic pressure to take the position offered him at Elfrey.
Nothing could have been more disastrous. For twenty years the Upper Fourth had passed a somnolent existence under the direction of an amiable and unassuming cleric. Much to the general disgust the dear old man had, after a severe attack of pneumonia, resigned. In twenty years, as was only natural, the Upper Fourth had become an institution: terms and times continued to change, but the Upper Fourth did nothing of the kind. Fourth-formers came and went in scores, but their successors always managed to keep up the traditions of their inheritance with spirit and success. There would be four or five clever and energetic children, people rising rapidly to the Fifth, Sixth, and university scholarships; then there would be eight or ten inky and unambitious persons who would never get beyond the Fifth. And lastly there would be four or five monsters of seventeen or eighteen who were engaged in getting the greatest possible enjoyment out of their last year at school. Good athletes as a rule, they were popular in their house and merely stayed on till the fatal day of superannuation in order to win cups and caps and enjoy a serene life before disappearing into the dingy office of an uncle or the rough and tumble of a planter's existence. In the days of the amiable cleric the Upper Fourth had been to them Nirvana.
To such a form came Finney, clever, inexperienced, nervous: not even his physique was imposing. He liked and encouraged the clever little boys and made fruitless efforts to bully the ink-stained loafers; he also determined to assault the fortress of the Olympians and to make the great ones work; but he broke his soul upon a rock. When he adjured them to do a little work they smiled in toleration. When he suggested a change in the quantity or quality of their preparation he was politely informed that Mr Foss never expected so much. He then lost his temper, remarked savagely that he wouldn't be bound by the idiosyncrasies of Mr Foss, and dealt out impositions. A schoolmaster cannot afford to lose his temper unless he has complete self-confidence and the will never to retract. Finney had not been gifted with a forceful personality, and the weak man in a temper is a most pitiable sight. The impositions meant the declaration of war and in that war Finney was beaten all along the line.
To begin with, however, he relied on his hours with the Upper Sixth for spiritual comfort, but his own experiences at school should have warned him that even Upper Sixths are human. It was his duty to read classical authors with them at a great pace and without attention to detail in order to give the competitors for university scholarships a wider knowledge of the ancient literature. When he came to read Tacitus with them he soon discovered that they were quite capable of amusing themselves. Having learned that journalese translations annoyed him, they racked their brains and searched the halfpenny press for new phrases. Finney shuddered and protested: next he whined and finally lost his temper. This display was gratifying to the Upper Sixth, who had just spent two tedious hours listening to Foskett on Greek dialects. Besides, there is always satisfaction in luring fish to one's bait.
Martin loathed and dreaded these hours. Not only did his recent experiences as a prefect compel him to sympathise with the impotent wielder of authority, but he had been attracted by Finney from the first. Finney worked in earnest and without pose or pretension, a fact which set him, in Martin's estimation, on a plane far above Foskett. He worked for Finney as he never worked for Foskett, and consulted him about his reading: naturally Finney liked Martin and did all he could to help him. On several Sundays Martin went to lunch at the cottage and met Mrs Finney, a pleasant little woman whose beauty was somewhat marred by an expression of perpetual surprise. She was, like her husband, a slight and unimposing figure, and she shrank from the society of the college ladies with their continual "shop" conversation, partly from shyness and partly from boredom. When she was not looking after her baby she used to play the violin and readThe BookmanandThe Studio. For several hours every week she struggled with accounts and wondered how things would work out: she managed well, and somehow, miraculously, but persistently, they did work out.
She also liked Martin and he would come often to them. In a world that was hard and unsympathetic he was graciously different; he was essentially someone in whom interest could and should be taken, and this was what the Finneys needed. They saw and, after a time, understood his limitations, realising how his intellectual solitude was narrowing his outlook and how his heretical views about politics and life in general were left crude and immature because he dared not pronounce them openly and demand criticism. Criticism he lacked, and it was criticism they gave him, not the best perhaps, for the Finneys erred occasionally on the side of excessive culture and preciosity, but such criticism as would turn violence into strength and reveal possibilities of reason and feeling where he had seen before nothing but ignorance and sentimentality.
As Martin was destined for Oxford Finney thought it wise to introduce him to the writing of Belloc. "You'll get heaps out of him," he said. "Of course he goes to extremes, but his criticism of Socialism is the only sane one and worth a million of Mallock and Cox and that gang. And his arguments about religion aren't all nonsense. I don't agree with him" (Finney attended school chapel regularly and was a party Liberal), "but it's a point of view. And he can write."
Martin had never considered this outlook on the world before, and, though at times he was angry, he began to read Belloc eagerly, especially the verses. He had often heard his uncle talking about Belloc, but so far he had never troubled to investigate the matter further: now he was glad.
After lunch on Sunday afternoons he would walk with Finney on the downs, and sometimes they would talk about the Public Schools. At first Finney was reticent on their subject, but later he spoke with growing freedom and intimacy.
"It's odd how we get chucked into it," Finney used to say. "Everyone says teaching is the most important thing in the world, and they chatter away about training and so on: and yet when it comes to the point they allow their precious boys to be taught by men who are quite untrained for this profession. No master at a Public School has had any technical training or been taught how to see and shape things. He just clears out of the varsity with some debts and a little despair and then starts casually to do what is perhaps the most difficult and important thing in the world. And they don't get the pick of the varsities either: the standard keeps going down. The best men won't do it if they can keep out."
Finney could not, in the presence of a pupil, finish his indictment as he wished. Had it been possible he would have added: "The salaries are contemptible and are kept low by the bribe of a house: which in reality means that we have to pinch and scrape now because, if we are lucky, we may be able to make a thousand a year at forty if we don't overfeed our boys."
"And yet," suggested Martin, "don't you think it's rather refreshing to find something left to common-sense. Everything gets into the hands of faddists now. I once met an old lady who spent her life in teaching children how to play. Imagine the cheek of it! You put me on to Belloc and I think he's right about that sort of thing. We don't want too much of the bureaucratic specialist."
"I quite agree," said Finney. "That's the tragedy. Just where spontaneity really does matter, as in children's games, they go blundering in and knock imagination out of their victims, or give them someone else's, which is about the same thing. But just where training might be of some use, they do nothing. The superstition that a man can teach because he has taken a first in Classics at the varsity is childish. I don't claim to know very much now, but when I started my work I was hideously ignorant about the working of boys' minds: I never knew when I was being obvious or when I got beyond them. Of course one picks things up by experience, but it might be done so much better...."
"And then the narrowness," he rambled on, for he found a good audience in Martin. "You'll get a first in Mods, if you take the trouble, and by the time you're twenty or twenty-one you'll know all about Athenian law-courts and what the Greek is for a demurrer or a counter-claim, and you'll know all the hard words in Homer and be able to translate Cicero's jokes. You'll cram up a lot of variant readings for your special play and collect a nice set of texts with all the difficult passages marked. And when it's all over you'll thank God and imagine that you've done with it, only to find out that Greats is rather worse and means spotting the words for Egyptian bogwort in Herodotus and getting up the most meaningless bits of gibberish in Thucydides. It's the same all along. A schoolmaster wants to make some money, a don wants to make a name, so out comes a new reading, a new conjecture, a new edition and a thousand other straws of pedantry to be piled on the back of a poor old camel that collapsed years ago."
"It sounds pretty rotten," said Martin. "But I suppose at Oxford one can read and talk freely and follow up the things one likes?"
"Yes, you must do that. Don't get worried about Mods. Are you thinking of the Civil Service?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Well Mods won't matter much. So take up anything you really care for. That's the only thing in life worth doing, and it may be about the only time in your life when you're able to do it."
Of course Finney never spoke to Martin about school discipline, but it was not hard for Martin to see that he was very much depressed. His sufferings with the Fourth he might have expected: but that the Upper Sixth should rag childishly was a cruel blow. He was so keenly anxious to take an interest in his work and to make those hours of rapid translation valuable: but everything seemed to go against him.
He went through some Tacitus and Juvenal and Pindar at a great pace amid considerable amusement. For Tacitus gave facilities for journalese, Juvenal for obscenity, and Pindar for colossal bathos. In despair Finney turned to the sixth book of the Æneid, "Just to help your hexameters." They surely wouldn't rag that.
Yet trouble did break out. One Cartwright, a large, genial, athletic person who expected to get an exhibition at Cambridge for his games, was always to the fore when there seemed any opportunity of baiting Finney. To him fell the Daedalus passage at the beginning of the book: his rendering was picturesque and contained such gems as 'Intrepid aeronaut' and 'Bird-man.'
"That's not English and it isn't in the Latin," said Finney sharply.
"I don't know, sir," said Cartwright weightily. "'Præpetibus pennis ausus'—note of daring. Intrepid. Intrepid aeronaut. Why not, sir? And then 'levis super astitit'—note of hovering over. Bird-man. Why not, sir?"
Finney paused in silence. The Upper Sixth were tittering like infants of twelve, with the exception of Martin, who stared self-consciously at his desk, hating every moment and dreading what was to come. Fortunately Finney controlled his temper and said quickly:
"Don't be childish, Cartwright. Translate, Warren."
Warren was an intelligent youth and gifted with endless audacity. A week or two later they turned back to the first book (Finney couldn't tolerate their assault on the second half of Book VI.), and Warren had in his section the line:
"Succinctam pharetra et maculoso tegmine lyncis."