Years of Plenty Part 14

"You certainly bowled muck," admitted Rayner. "But it was all sheer joy."

And though they pretended to treat the matter as a great jest, they both felt a very genuine pleasure because they had won the cup for Berney's.

That evening the captain of the School Eleven, who had heard that Martin had taken seven wickets for twelve and thereby rendered Berney's c.o.c.k house, gave him his Second Eleven colours. He had not seen Martin bowl.

Martin took the news to Rayner. "Well that," said Rayner, "fairly puts the lid on it."

Together they shook the walls with laughter. Life is occasionally dramatic, and the finale of Martin's school career had certainly a touch of comedy.

It is commonly believed that boys undergo regrets and deep emotions when they leave school. But Martin noticed that only a few Elfreyans were moved at the thought of saying good-bye: some were charmed by the prospect of entering a world of unlimited smokes and drinks and girls and motor bicycles, others by the prospect of intellectual as well as practical freedom. There were some who really regretted the end of life's first act, boys who had enjoyed the games and the friends.h.i.+ps and were now pa.s.sing to office work without the freedom of three or four years' residence at the university. But those who were more fortunate were eager as a rule to be up and off. Martin had been amused by his last term with its athletic adventures and he had come to appreciate to the full his uncle's advice about making the best of existing inst.i.tutions. Rayner, too, was a good sort and an excellent friend. But the prospect of Oxford, notwithstanding his gloomy foretaste of the place, attracted him undeniably--no, he could not be moved.

On the last Sunday night Foskett delivered an address and ended with a special appeal to those who were leaving to remember the honour and welfare of their house and their school as well as their king and country. But Martin was wondering all the time whether it were more satisfactory to have won colours for good, solid cricket or to have extorted a cup by mere bluff. There was something pleasant indeed in the thought that a real cricketer would go on with his career, whereas Martin would never dare to call himself a bowler at Oxford: on the other hand, there was an exquisite piquancy in the consideration that he had set out to 'do' cricket and had very successfully done it. Also he had 'done' Randall's, and he was still boy enough to hate the rival house with a fervent loathing. As the organ thundered out the farewell hymn, he decided that to succeed in a fraud which does no real harm is a very gratifying process. Then he pulled himself together and sang dutifully.

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 pa.s.sages 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 bunk.u.m," Robert used to a.s.sert, throwing Bradley (library copy) across the room. "Just organised bunk.u.m. 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 G.o.d-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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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 gra.s.s. He had stayed behind to collect the b.a.l.l.s and was walking slowly with three folded deck-chairs in one hand, while with the other he carried the b.a.l.l.s 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 b.a.l.l.s."

"Oh, please don't bother," said Martin.

But Mrs Cartmell grasped the racket and took it from him without dropping any of the b.a.l.l.s.

"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.

G.o.dfrey Cartmell was prospective Radical candidate for the division.

To pa.s.s 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. G.o.dfrey had chances, but she saw that he had picked up during his first-cla.s.s 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 G.o.dfrey had been introduced to the local Liberal a.s.sociation. 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 G.o.dfrey 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 s.e.x, 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 att.i.tude was one of adoration, not of pa.s.sion.

Quite apart from the manifest impossibility of making love, apart too from the fact that, even if circ.u.mstances 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, smas.h.i.+ng 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sented.

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. s.h.i.+mmering 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 mora.s.ses, 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."