Years of Plenty Part 16

"Father," she said, "you're booming terribly. Mother says you must come and play games."

"I never play games."

"Well, mother says you must. All of you!"

"Are we wanted at once?"

"Yes."

"Then, gentlemen, we must yield. We were born too late. The matriarchy has returned. Do you agree to that, Cartmell?"

"Certainly!"

"There was a time when no young lady would have the daring to invade the dining-room and order the men to play games. Games, indeed!"

"Don't start again, father," interrupted Margaret. "I won't budge till you do."

"Just think what you might hear!"

"Oh, I'm not a 'puffick lidy.' They pa.s.sed away with the patriarchy.

Now, come along!"

Games were a success because they were taken seriously. Mr Berrisford a.s.serted that if he must waste time in that particular way he meant to do it properly. So they all exercised great ardour and ingenuity, composed pretty rhymes, and drew the strangest pictures. At the end he insisted, however, that instead of taking famous men beginning with C, they should have infamous people. The test of infamy was to be a referendum. The game began well enough, because no opposition was raised to such people as Cicero or Christopher Columbus. But the inclusion of both Cromwell and Charles I. caused a heated argument and Cartmell was sure that they couldn't both be on one black list.

But Mr Berrisford exposed the crimes of both at great length. Crippen and Calvin both had defenders and the game at last broke up in confusion.

Martin enjoyed the evening, partly from vanity (he had done some quite clever things), and partly because he could watch Viola Cartmell without being noticed. To watch her was heavenly. There was nothing subtle or a.n.a.lytic in his adoration: for him there was just an indivisible whole called Viola. And that was perfect.

At eleven Robert declared that he still had some of the Ethics left and retired to find out about the contemplative life. Mr Berrisford took G.o.dfrey Cartmell to smoke a cigar in his study and the rest prepared to go to bed.

Martin went to his room and then came back and lingered by the staircase window. As he looked out he could see a solid line of fir-trees standing out with black severity against the moonlit sky, and farther away was the long shoulder of the moor--he could see the ridge they had climbed together and the rough peak which broke its symmetry and made its splendour.

Someone was coming up. It could only be Viola: the Berrisfords slept on the other side of the house.

It was she. Trembling, he heard the rustling of her skirts, the creaking of the stairs, her voice by his side.

"Hullo!" she said. "Star-gazing?"

"It's a great night," he answered.

She came and stood at the window. The closeness of her thrilled him.

"I wish those owls wouldn't hoot," she said. "Is that the ridge we climbed?"

"Yes. I did enjoy the walk."

"So did I! The air up there is so splendid. And it's all so gorgeously empty."

"I've been up before. But I enjoyed it much more this time."

Naturally she did not take it as he meant it.

"One doesn't often get such a perfect day, I suppose," was her answer.

Martin was at a loss. He wanted to say all sorts of things: fortunately they stuck.

She turned to go: "I'm sure you'll have a good time at Oxford and make the most of it!"

"Thank you very much. Everyone does seem to enjoy it."

"Good-night!" she said, and left him to go to her room. The door closed behind with a sharpness that hurt.

As Martin lingered in the pa.s.sage it began to occur to him that he was a silly fool, that boys of eighteen shouldn't fall in love with married women of twenty-five or even more, and that, even if they did, there was no point in being tongue-tied and nervous. But what was the good of self-reproach? He wasn't to blame if she was perfect. And she was perfect. To-morrow he would have to go up to Oxford. He would scarcely see her again. There was nothing left of her now, nothing except the boots which stood outside her door, their strong brown leather stained with the peat of Bear Down and Devil's Tor. At last he moved quickly to his room and undressed.

As he lay half naked on his bed he recalled the glories of the moor and the way they had talked. G.o.d, how she had talked! They had defied that leaping wind from whose onslaught his cheeks still burned. It had been a day of days. Then he heard G.o.dfrey Cartmell come up and again the door closed. The sound of it hurt him. How could she waste herself on that correct, that unutterably correct, young Liberal?

Why was life so full of silliness, of waste and bungling? Why ... but one thing was certain--he would never, never forget her.

BOOK TWO

UNIVERSITY

I

"These 'ere deemagogues ... it's them as battens on the worker."

Martin woke with a start. He looked round his slovenly 'bedder'

vaguely. His scout, Mr Algernon Galer, was slowly pouring out cold water into a bath and continuing last night's conversation. It was typical of Galer that he never dropped a conversation until he considered it completed, until, that is to say, by his fiendish ability to bore he had reduced the other side to silence. At present Martin had no other acquaintance in King's, for he had only come up on the previous evening. On reaching his rooms he found that the cupboard had been filled with a quant.i.ty of jam and pickles and other kinds of food, all carefully opened, so that they could not be returned if disliked by the purchaser. Galer pointed them out with pride as though they testified his devotion to Martin's welfare. There was nothing Galer did not know about the ways of looking after a fresher.

This Galer was a small, bunched-up, greasy man with a ragged black moustache, scarlet cheeks, and great watery eyes underhung by bags of loose skin. During the mornings he shuffled about the stair in a pink s.h.i.+rt, green fancy waistcoat, grey flannel trousers, and lurid yellow boots; later on he retired with a large black bag to the Iffley Road, where he was supposed to maintain a timid wife and innumerable children. It was a matter of conjecture among the residents on Galer's stair whether he wrapped up the coal in newspaper or whether the bag contained coal and food exquisitely mingled. By the afternoon the bag had always achieved a certain bulk and wore a swollen look. But it was as a politician that Galer excelled. No truer Tory than Galer ever voted for Valentia or took the Empire to heart. He did not exactly know where the map was red or how it became red; not that that would have mattered, for Galer was not the man to be worried about little points of honesty. But he knew that much of the map was red, and he was genuinely glad about it: it seemed to him a logical inference and a capital idea that the map should be all red.

Of the catch-word he was a master. Few conversations with Galer were allowed to end without some allusion to 'Hands Across the Sea' and the Thickness of Blood (compared with water) and the 'Necessity for a Cash nexus just to symbolise the brother'ood.'

But it was the new type of 'Deemagogue' that really vexed Galer.

During the previous evening Galer, after explaining to Martin the ways, the abominably expensive ways of the Oxford world, had gone on to elaborate his favourite theme. And now, before eight o'clock in the morning, he was at it again.

"Clors against Clors," he grunted. "Wot I says is Capital and Labour 'as identical interests. Identical. These 'ere strikes plays the jimmy with both."

Martin yawned, turned over, and pretended to sleep.

"Quarter to eight, sir," continued Galer. "It was orl right when these Unions knew their proper business and kept their contrax. Wot I says is a bargain is a bargain." And with this discovery he went wheezing from the room.

Martin got up at nine, inspected the tin bath which had an inch of icy water on its blackened, paintless bottom, and concluded that it was not inviting. However, moved by his fear of Galer and a desire not to win his scout's contempt at the outset, he splashed feebly with the water.

He deferred shaving and went to look at his breakfast. In the fireplace he found two poached eggs beneath a tin cover. They had been standing for over an hour and had become solid, resembling jelly with a tough crust on the edge of it. The fire had been a failure, the kettle sat in obstinate silence, and Martin ultimately made tea with water that had not boiled. The result was a greenish beverage with shoals of tea-leaves floating on the surface. There were four solid boards of toast, once endued, presumably, with the crisp seductions of youth, and an immense roll whose spongy giblets would have beaten the strongest digestion. No one ever ate these monstrous things and what Galer did with them was another matter of conjecture. Some maintained that he fed his family on them neat: others that there was a permanent bread-and-b.u.t.ter pudding on the Galer menu.