Years of Plenty Part 15

"It's quite simple. I believe vaguely in Liberalism, but we live in a busy world where everybody is far too much occupied to think about anything except business. Parliament's busy too: it has got to get certain things done and it hasn't time for too much idealism and spiritual att.i.tudes and things of that sort. And when it comes to the rather dull but very necessary work of keeping things going and administering the Empire, I prefer the Liberals, because they have got leaders with brains."

"I see."

"You think me very worldly?"

"Not at all. But I think you are wrong on your own canons. Liberal leaders may be cleverer than Tory leaders, but that doesn't prove Liberalism to be efficient. Just look at things!"

"And for efficiency you propose Socialism?"

"Not only for efficiency. It's a philosophy as well."

"But we're considering efficiency. Do you really suppose you have got at your disposal the human capacity and good will and reasonableness to build up a Co-operative Commonwealth? I don't say man hasn't the brains to plan things. He plainly has, as you can see by reading the wiser Socialists. But he hasn't a corresponding capacity for cohesion and give and take. You'll have to depend on your Labour leaders and Trade Unionists; but just look at them! They can only squabble and bicker and show up their jealousy and pettiness. That's where the stumbling-block lies."

In vain Martin contested. His opponent confronted him with the old dilemma (new to him), that if, in setting up collectivism, you confiscate property, you act unjustly to many, while, if you compensate, you maintain an idle rich cla.s.s. By the time that they were once more on the march, Martin was becoming a devotee of 'efficient Liberalism.' But he enjoyed his defeat. If this method and insistence had come from a man he would have felt very differently.

At last they reached Two Bridges and had tea at the hotel and waited for the car to fetch them as had been arranged. It pleased Martin to pay for the tea with his own pocket-money (his allowance would begin to-morrow) and to refuse to listen to demands. She thought him silly for the moment, since she did not understand how much he cared.

Dinner that evening was a capital meal. John Berrisford was in his best form and kept up a lively duel with Viola Cartmell. Even Robert managed to shake off the depressing effects of Aristotle. They drank to Martin's career at Oxford.

"You're certain to like Oxford," said G.o.dfrey Cartmell when the men were alone.

"I'm afraid I wasn't much impressed by it in December," answered Martin.

"That wasn't Oxford," interrupted Robert. "That was a dismal city in the Midlands seen at its worst."

"Exactly," said Mr Berrisford, breaking into the conversation. "Oxford isn't a place. Everybody talks about the buildings and the age and the dreaming spires. It goes down with the Yankees and the people who are proud of having read _The Scholar Gipsy_, and I suppose it keeps up the picture post card business."

"But there are good things," said Cartmell resentfully. He was of Magdalen.

"Certainly. But these things are incidental and not essential. After all, the best college--with all due respect to you, Cartmell, and to you, Martin--has a front quad like a toy castle and a chapel--well, I suppose it's the kind of chapel that particular college ought to have, according to all tradition--a Great Speckled Warning against G.o.d. Half the most sensible people in Oxford don't know a jot about the architecture, but they know Oxford."

"Then," answered Cartmell, taking up the argument, as behoved a Liberal, seriously, "would you mind if the whole show--the educational work, I mean--were transferred to Margate or Southend or some place with a little air? On your theory that would be a very sound plan."

"It has its points," added Robert. "Just think of the progs on a seaside promenade."

"And the sea," continued his father, "is limitless. Many young men would go down to the sea in ships and have business in great waters.

What a chance for enterprise! Moonlight trips round the bay."

"But seriously," said Cartmell, still smarting under the implied contempt for Magdalen's beauty.

"The port lingers at your side," was the answer. "Restore the circulation."

"Well, seriously," John Berrisford continued, when his gla.s.s had been filled again, "to move would be fatal, because the traditions would all go if you took them away from their home. But it's the traditions that count, not the place. G.o.d knows I'm willing enough to be sentimental about places. I can even enjoy hearing the song about 'Devon, glorious Devon,' sung by a Dandy c.o.o.n baritone at an audience of c.o.c.kneys at Teignmouth. I can understand a Scottish exile in America going a hundred miles to hear Harry Lauder. To my mind places are the only things about which a man has a right to be sentimental. No causes or catch-words for me: but hills and valleys--as much as you like. That's Nationalism, and therefore Liberalism, Cartmell."

"I agree!"

"You don't, but I'll take your word. But what was I saying? Oh yes, about Oxford. Oxford is all right. I know you get the worst wine in the world there--I suppose it's specially imported for the benefit of the young men of the world who believe that anything is nectar if you pay more than ten bob a bottle for it--but you still find people drinking properly. Richly, I mean, and with conviction. I think I'd rather be a teetotaller----"

"Which G.o.d avert!" put in Cartmell.

"Amen to that. Yes, I'd rather be a True Blue than drink one gla.s.s of wine at dinner. One gla.s.s! It's an insult. Now at Oxford----"

"But, father," Robert interrupted, "the don of to-day is just the sort of person who does drink one gla.s.s of wine. With a kind of ghastly self-conscious moderation he sips some claret and then hurries off to organise a mission meeting. There aren't any good old fogeys left, only some fogeys without the merits of fogeyism. They've got consciences and think about social reform and the possibility of all cla.s.ses pulling together before the last Red Day. You know the kind of thing. By Good Will out of Nervousness."

"Well then," answered Mr Berrisford, "I'm wrong. Oxford is going to the dogs. I suppose they had to let the dons marry, but they might have foreseen that the kind of women who would pounce on the dons wouldn't understand about the good life. I expect it's the women that are destroying Oxford. When Oxford spread northwards, it spread to the devil."

"But this is downright Toryism," protested Cartmell. "You call yourself a revolutionary!"

"So I am. But I'm sound about tradition and things that matter. I don't want soaking: I want proper drinking and proper talking. I thought it might have lingered in one or two common-rooms. Anyhow, the undergraduates----"

He paused a moment and then went on:

"I remember Oxford as a place where I had some excellent pipes and never took my breakfast till I wanted it. It was a place where I worked devilish hard when I hadn't anything better to do. And I worked sensibly. No gentleman works after lunch or dinner. He walks or buys books after lunch and after dinner he talks. You must talk at Oxford, Martin."

"At debates, do you mean?"

"Not at the Union. Oh, Lord, not there. Robert has done that, and look at him. He's a broken man. He used to spend his vacs wondering how he could get the votes of Malthusian Mongols in Worcester without losing the support of Church and State in Keble. Didn't you, Robert?"

"I shall draw a veil over the past," said Robert. "I became President, anyhow."

"Be warned, Martin," his uncle went on. "Speak at college debates, if it amuses you. But shun a public career. Talk all night to your friends, for afterwards you won't get talk like it. You'll get shop talk and small talk and dirty talk, but at Oxford you'll get the real thing with luck."

Martin, remembering the tastes of Theo. K. Snutch, felt doubtful.

"Of course you'll find lots of nonsense there," John Berrisford added.

"Lectures, for instance. They're nothing but an excuse to keep the dons from lounging: it certainly does give them an occupation for the mornings. Just think of it! There they are, mouthing away term after term. Either wisely cut----"

"Hear, hear!" from Robert.

"--or laboriously taken down, by conscientious youths with fountain pens and patent note-books. I suppose the Rhodes scholars use shorthand."

"Possibly," said Robert. "Certainly they have nasty little black books to slip in their pockets like reporters."

"Anyhow the stuff could be got out of reputable books in half the time with no manual labour of scribbling. Sometimes the man's lectures are actually published in book form and yet he solemnly dictates them year after year!"

"But sometimes," put in Cartmell, "a man has got something original to say."

"Well," said Robert, "why doesn't he publish his notes at a price? I'm quite willing to buy his knowledge, but I dislike having to waste time and trouble in a stuffy lecture-room in order to get it."

"The whole thing is preposterous," his father concluded. "But the system will last for fifty years or more. Just like the discipline.

So beautifully English, they drive everything underground, make it twice as dangerous, and then pretend it doesn't exist. Instead of men having open and honourable relations with women, they'll be slinking about in back streets and s.n.a.t.c.hing their kisses in taxicabs."

"Well," said Martin, "you set out to praise Oxford but you haven't made it seem very attractive."

"Oh! you'll find it all right, when you come to it. If a man has got to earn his own living it's about the only time when he can live a reasonable life. You'll be able to say what you like, read what you like, go to bed when you like, get up when you like, work when you like, and, if you use a little discretion, do what you like. Don't become a slave to any one thing, the River or the Union or even the Cla.s.sics. You can get into the Civil Service without straining yourself, so make the most of your time. Doing the kind of work you like is the only really good thing in the world."

Just then Margaret opened the door and looked in.