Years of Plenty Part 10

"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 d.i.c.kinson 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 d.i.c.kinson.

Moreover, his second effort was more thorough, and d.i.c.kinson 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 a.s.s," answered Rayner, and that evening he spoke firmly to Granny. Somehow or other the combined effect of Martin's treatment of d.i.c.kinson 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.

X

During the winter term before he was to go up to Oxford for a scholars.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d 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 aesthetics 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sions 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, Cla.s.sical, 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 scholars.h.i.+p. He had lingered at Oxford with a view to a fellows.h.i.+p, 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 pa.s.sed a somnolent existence under the direction of an amiable and una.s.suming 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 inst.i.tution: 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 scholars.h.i.+ps; 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 a.s.sault 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 quant.i.ty 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 cla.s.sical authors with them at a great pace and without attention to detail in order to give the compet.i.tors for university scholars.h.i.+ps 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.