A city in the foreground; a novel of youth

Front matter

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Chapter I

At a certain point in St. Giles’, the Woodstock and Banbury roads, meeting, like two middle-aged wayfarers, engage for a while in lifeless talk and then part, bored with one another, with themselves, with life, and with boredom, to limp past villas to a lingering end.

It is improbable that to an unprejudiced eye they would have looked any less dreary in the moonlight of May 5th, 1913, than they had under similar circumstances on any evening during the previous fifty years. At their best and at their worst, a distinction due to courtesy rather than to truth, they stood for a symbol of the arid desert of North Oxford, and the silver radiance failed to bring either romance or mystery to assist the bleak depression of their perspectives.

Strangely enough, this aspect of the neighbourhood did not reveal itself to Mrs. W instanley. She was giving a ball — the ball she would have said had her opinion been asked — and to her complacent eye the long suburban approach to her house was rich to-night with a thousand irresistible allurements. For many years she had accustomed herself and her friends to think that social Oxford centred, during May, round Kithaeron,” that being the name with which she had burdened the already overloaded fagade of her red-brick villa. She revelled with unruffled dignity in the thought that the steps of her pseudo-Gothic porch were worn by the feet of a neverending stream of visitors. Heads of houses met unerringly within the severe sanctity of her drawing-room ; social reformers from London and the provinces hung up their soft felt hats in the ecclesiastical dimness of her hall; and her garden echoed constantly the gay badinage of politicians at play.

It was, however, in the abandon of the dance that the Winstanley circle attained its consummation. It was, of course, impossible to compete with the splendours of “ Commemoration,” and yet in the very admission of that impossibility Mrs. Winstanley found consolation. There was, after all, something essentially vulgar in the summer orgy of the colleges. It had no distinction. It was metropolitan, lavish, frivolous, belonging, surely, to the season of London rather than to that of Oxford. For one hectic week thousands of visitors poured into the city, overwhelming the few hundred inhabitants who remained to face the feverish excitements and exhausting pleasures of tireless youth. That Norah and Betty should look forward to the general revelry was natural enough. Even North Oxford is young at times, nor would their mother, dimly conscious of the need for worldly tolerance, have had it otherwise. If Oxford permitted its Commemoration, Oxford must patronise it and give it distinction. Nevertheless, the essential truth remained unquestioned, that the permanent spirit of the University realised itself more truly in the restrained and chaster gaiety of the Banbury road. Throughout May and early June, therefore, in a series of dinners, lunches, and dances — Cinderella, of necessity, these latter, be-

A CITY IN THE FOREGROUND ii

cause of certain unalterable college rules — the academic world relaxed to a somewhat wan festivity, kept alive by the timely recruiting of young blood from among the less experienced undergraduates. Of this world Mrs; Winstanley was the self-appointed queen, and her dance was held to be the chief event of the Oxford season. It was talked about and prepared for from the first day of the summer term, invitations were issued weeks in advance, and enthusiasm, born of expectation and nourished by gossip, made up generously for any failure in the realisation.

It had long been a tradition that the main topic of conversation at the Winstanley dance should be the Winstanley s, their eminence, scholarship, kindness, and importance. From these beginnings it was permissible to wander into the domain of general talk, but it was understood that no subject should be dragged so unduly into prominence as to obscure the essential significance of the evening. These conditions did, as a matter of fact, admit of a range of discussion wider than might at first have appeared possible, for Mrs. Winstanley identified herself with every aspect of University activity, and in particular with the life, social, intellectual, and athletic, of the college wherein her husband was senior classical tutor. Nothing in the life of All Saints escaped her eagle eye, and no problem arose which her powerful personality failed to seize upon and her judgment illuminate : no undergraduate rose to prominence or notoriety without incurring the criticism of her caustic tongue. She was, in short, of a “managing” disposition, and her husband had ceased long ago the hopeless task of directing her character or controlling her words. Many generations of guests had acknowledged the supremacy of her personality, and long custom had made it easy for her to dominate the conversation of her friends.

It was, consequently, with something like consternation — it would be rash to speak without qualification of any such unbridled emotion disturbing her self-control — that she realised on this particular evening the wilfulness of Fate. The gods had chosen this of all days to let loose upon the University a scandal so unusual and so overwhelming that nobody could resist its fascination. It was in vain that Mrs. Winstanley strove to eject the insidious intruder. In every corner of the house, dismantled for dancmg and murmurous with conversation, one subject only was discussed. She had no part in it, she had not influenced the event, and now she could add nothing to the comments. Providence — God did not exist for Mrs. Winstanley out of church — might at least have preserved the decencies, and, by postponing for one day the dramatic occurrence, have enabled her to withdraw with dignity into the fastness of her own affairs.

Her daughters fully appreciated the family discomfiture, and realised clearly the general tension of the evening. Since, however, they were both eager for all possible details of the “ affair,” they pursued their investigations with tact in hidden corners of the house. In the publicity of the ballroom they maintained loyally the official tradition that nothing in the social or academic life of Oxford was worth discussing except what was controlled directly or indirectly by the genius of their mother. Conversation in the Winstanley sense was, therefore, limited in extent, though within the limits of its prison it strove bravely to assume an air of liberty ranging from matters of University politics, in which the

Winstanley influence was held to be supreme, through the whole gamut of social scandal, to the chances of the All Saints’ Eight at Henley. For, though nobody had ever been brave enough to investigate the precise degree of Mrs. Winstanley ’s athletic knowledge, and few had dared to comment in her presence upon the persistent absence of her husband from the towing-path and the playing-fields, it was accepted as an axiom that games being played by members of the college were of necessity matters of justifiable interest to the family. No wave of heresy had ever as yet been violent enough to shake the foundations upon which this infallibility was built, but to-night the age-old superstition had been, for the first time, seriously called in question. The fact that the attack was not consciously directed did not diminish its strength. The interest of Mrs. Winstanley’s guests was no longer under control : for the time being, at least, she had lost the power of directing the trend of their speculations.

She realised with anger, rather than with disappointment, that even her daughters were but broken reeds, that their loyalty to her banner was only assumed in public, that in their hearts they were just as guilty of treachery as the rest of the world. The first shock of the discovery came to her when she happened upon Betty talking eagerly with Hugh Kenyon in the corner of the verandah steps. Her suspicions were fully active before ever she heard a syllable of their conversation. Kenyon ! ah, of course, he was from Knox, where the whole business had started. Betty, naturally, was curious to hear the most trustworthy account, so she had got as near the fountain head as possible. Probably Norah was behaving in the same way somewhere about the garden. There were others from Knox who could tell her what she wanted to know. Those men ought never to have been encouraged to come to the Banbury road ; it was weakness to have welcomed the alien within her gates. Knox and All Saints — topographically neighbours, but spiritually such leagues apart ! Beneath the shadow of “ her” college had always been this centre of disturbance, this community of “ Protestants,” so resolutely opposed to recognising her infallibility. She might indeed be the acknowledged queen of Oxford, but there had always been at the very steps of the throne this little republic, whose members would never submit. She was laughed at in Knox ; she knew it, not officially, of course; but the fact could not be hidden, and now the very scandal that had divided it against itself was calling her own power in question. Knox and its affairs was monopolising the attention of Oxford : there was no bluffing the truth. Samson had pulled the temple about his ears — that did not matter — but the ruins threatened to engulf her as well.

So sure was she of her daughter’s treachery that the conversation she now heard added nothing to the shock or the bitterness of her anger. For some moments she stood listening, hidden by the discreet shadow of the house.

*‘How horrid you are, Mr. Kenyon,” Betty was saying. “ I do so want to know all about it. Was Mr. Creighton really drunk? I should never have thought he’d be drunk. He used to come to lunch once — he never comes now. I don’t think mother likes him — and he seemed so quiet and shy. It was splendid of him to be drunk; do tell me everything that happened.”

She stopped, apparently from lack of breath. As sometimes happens in academic families, the predominant qualities of her parents were markedly absent from her character. She lacked her mother’s acid tongue as well as the supremely cultured taciturnity of her father.

Kenyon thoroughly disliked the conversation. He really knew very little of the business, and had no wish to talk about it at all outside the college. He lacked, however, sufficient strength of purpose to refuse definitely to continue the discussion, and he was too indolent by nature to face the fatigue involved in a diplomatic detour. He took the easiest way, which was to supply a gentle obbligato to the inspired melody of his companion’s speech.

“ I really don’t know any more about it than you do, Miss Winstanley,” he replied. “I don’t think Creighton was drunk; he was only foolish; it was Harding who did the drinking.”

Betty Winstanley interrupted him with another volley of words : “ Oh, but I’m sure it was Mr. Creighton ; Olive Mason told me all about it, and she ought to know. She says he ran right into the Proctor at the corner of the Turl; he was coming home from some

awful club — I forget what its name is ”

The ‘ Bats,’ ” murmured Hugh. “ It’s not so very awful. But Creighton’s not a member, so I don’t think it’s very likely that he got drunk there.”

“ I expect he’d been there as a guest.”

“ He was there as a guest, certainly. I don’t know him very well, but I can’t think he’s the kind of man who’d get drunk in a club he doesn’t belong to ; besides, he’s a don.”

Oh, but that’s what makes it so frightfully thrilling, isn’t it?” Betty was prepared to fight tooth and nail for her theory of intoxication in high places. “ If it had been only an undergraduate there wouldn’t have been any scandal at all, would there ?”

Hugh laughed gently to himself at the unconscious cynicism. “That opens up rather a big question, I think,” he replied ; “ but, honestly, I know nothing at all about the affair, except that Creighton is in disgrace over something that happened last night.”

Betty was not to be denied. “ I believe you don’t want to tell me,” she began. “ I do think it’s rather beastly of you. Oh, there’s Norah with Mr. Farmer; I expect he’ll know all about it. Norah ! Norah ! Mr. Kenyon won’t tell me anything at all; isn’t it unkind of him ?”

Her sister, older by two years, had just drifted into sight from behind the neighbouring laurels. At the sound of Betty’s voice she stopped halfway to the house, faintly illuminated by the dying flicker of a Japanese lantern — part of a general scheme of cultured frivolity — to locate the summons. After a moment’s pause, she came over to the seat, followed at a distance, not easily explained by the laws of etiquette, by a decidedly sulky figure, which proved, on closer examination, to be, in very fact, that of Geoffrey Farmer. Hugh was not quite certain of his identity until he had strolled quite close, but Betty’s practised eye had judged him as soon as he left the cover of the bushes.

“ I’m sure you know much more about it by this time than I do,” she went on enviously, hardly waiting for the pair to approach within reasonable distance. “I’ve had no luck at all. Was he or was he not drunk ?”

“ Who, Betty ?”

“ Why, Mr. Creighton, of course.”

“ I really don’t know — and you mustn’t ask questions like that. Suppose mother heard you, what would she say ?”

Mrs. Winstanley, who had been listening to the whole conversation, knew very well what she was going to say; but a natural sense of the dramatic — an unexplained heritage from some non-academic ancestor — warned her that the precise moment for intervention had not yet arrived.

Betty was irrepressible.

“ I don’t sec why I shouldn’t ask ; everybody’s talking about it, and I want to know. I’m sure you’ll tell me, Mr. Farmer, won’t you?”

Diplomacy was never Geoffrey Farmer’s strong point. When he was annoyed he showed it, irrespective of the company he was in. Betty’s question exasperated him beyond all bearing. His temper, already soured by a long evening of boredom, broke loose.

“ Whether he was drunk or not has nothing to do with anybody but himself. If you really want to know. Miss Winstanley, I think you’d better ask him,” and with this piece of inexcusable gaucherie he turned on his heel, and, ignoring his partner, stamped up the iron steps into the ballroom.

He left behind him in the shadow of the verandah a trio struck dumb by that most painful of all forms of embarrassment, the consciousness of somebody else’s breach of good manners. Betty had been foolish, even impertinent; but her question was so obviously the result of high spirits and thoughtlessness that Farmer’s brutality could claim no justification. Norah was too thunderstruck and too furious on her sister’s account to utter a word or to notice the insult to herself in her partner’s sudden disappearance. She stood with heightened colour watching while Betty struggled valiantly with rising tears, incapable even of showing sympathy by a movement or a murmured consolation. Hugh, to whom the situation was intolerable, could find no better comment than silence. He was furious with Geoffrey. It was no good him saying, as he would say, that he was not accustomed to women, that he did not know how to dissemble his feelings. Nobody but the veriest backwoodsman could have behaved as he had done. Of course, the “Camel” — Creighton — was Geoffrey’s friend, but, after all, he had chosen to make himself ridiculous, and one could hardly blame the curiosity that sought confirmation about the details of a public scandal. Impulse was all very well in its way. Geoffrey was always impulsive — sacrificed everything to his violent friendships and his equally violent hatreds ; but, damn it all, the punishment in this case was ludicrously out of proportion to the crime. In crises of this kind Hugh always found himself on the side of the decencies. The sudden shock woke him to the consciousness, rare with him, of certainty. At such moments he discovered the truth about himself : he was eminently respectable, hedged about with a hundred and one curious little elderly prejudices, the result, he supposed, of his strange upbringing. Unconventionality, which he championed in theory, never failed to shock him profoundly when it manifested itself in unexpected forms. Strangeness in dress or habits, irregularity in sexual relationships, he would have upheld from intellectual conviction, but a breach of the simple social ordinances found him unprepared, and spurred him into unaffected hostility. The moment of anger would pass as soon as the first violence of surprise had worn off, giving place, he knew, to one of those interminable debates in his own mind, wherein impulse and reflection, emotion and reason, vapourised and refined, until they lost all human significance, took their places, as mere abstract terms, compared, contrasted, weighed, leading to no conclusion, prompting to no action, until, finally, the problem would be abandoned from mental fatigue, undetermined, to arise again when such another incident should wake him to a sudden demonstration of unreasoned prejudice.

In the heavily charged emotional atmosphere Mrs. Winstanley’s voice took on the dramatic quality of sudden lightning that precedes, in the livid gloom of midsummer storms, the long expected thunder. She had approached the group unnoticed, and stood now, coldly judicial, upon the gravel path. The incident which she had just witnessed was, after all, the belated gift of a repentant Providence. Handled adroitly, it might serve as a weapon with which to deal a deathblow to the intruding topic. No one, after the unfortunate occurrences of the last few minutes, would wish to revive a subject attended by such painful memories. She prepared herself to deliver the coup-de-grdce in a few well-chosen words. Turning to her younger daughter, she broke the silence with a stab of her hard, keen voice.

“ If the authorities of Knox choose to encourage intoxication in the Senior Common Room, I don't know, Betty, that it is necessary to discuss their decision at the top of your voice.”

The words were just sufficient to break down Betty’s last barrier of control. She sank on to the seat in a splutter of self pity. Meanwhile her mother turned to Hugh.

“ It would not be a bad idea, Mr. Kenyon, if you gave Mr. Farmer a few lessons in the elements of good breeding. He seems to combine the most unpleasant aspects of his father’s aggressiveness with all his mother’s gaucherie ! ”

Having thus reasserted her position, the charming chatelaine of “Kithaeron” moved majestically towards the house. She had done all that was necessary. To elaborate the situation would be merely to defeat her own ends by giving undue prominence to an affair which it was far better to ignore. For the rest of the evening the subject of Mr. Creighton and Knox would be carefully avoided by her daughters, by Kenyon, and by Farmer, of that she was quite certain. She had sounded the right note, and dealt with the situation in the only manner consistent with her own dignity and importance. In her own house, and, consequently, as she reflected with satisfaction, in most of the houses of North Oxford, the scandal would henceforward sink to its proper level of squalid unimportance. The dynasty was saved.

Her activities, politic as they no doubt were, had done nothing, however, to relieve the embarrassment of the group she left behind her. Nor ah was the first to find her tongue. She sat down beside her younger sister, and, laying her hand upon her shoulder, spoke gently in her ear.

“Come, Betty, you must pull yourself together. You know what mother’s like : she doesn’t mean half of what she says. Come along, dry your eyes, and let’s all go back and dance. People will wonder where you’ve got to.”

She rose and stood waiting, while Betty, still shaken with sobs, dabbed her eyes spasmodically with a wet pocket-handkerchief. Hugh, motionless where Mrs. Winstanley had left him, felt that he must say something, however foolish, to help the situation. He moved a step forward.

“ I say,” he broke out, “ I’m most awfully sorry this has happened.” So sudden had been the development of the catastrophe that he found it difficult at the moment to retread the steps which had led up to it. With the pleasant weakness born of a natural aptitude for compromise, he felt in a dim way that he might ease the tension by taking some of the blame on to his own shoulders.

“ I’m afraid,” he continued, “ that I ought to have realised what would happen. I ought to have done something,” he ended lamely, while he searched vainly in his mind to discover what exactly he could have done or said to forestall the disaster.

Norah turned smiling from her sister.

“ I don’t see how you can blame yourself in any way, Mr. Kenyon,” she said. “ Betty oughtn’t to have asked all those questions. I knew mother would be angry if she heard.”

“I’m afraid Farmer was frightfully rude,” Hugh replied. “ He’s very fond of Creighton, and — and — well, he doesn’t go to dances very often.” The futility of the remark made him smile in spite of himself.

“ He wasn’t very polite, certainly ; but suppose we forget the whole thing and go indoors.”

By this time Betty was once more presentable, and the three moved towards the verandah, leaving behind them, as best they could, in the shadows of the garden, the unpleasant memories of the last half-hour. In the atmosphere of light and music that filled the ballroom, gaiety was soon recaptured; within ten minutes conversation had returned to the safe topics of rowing, dancing, and river picnics, and the glories of the Winstanley party reasserted themselves over all intruding gossip. From her post by the drawing-room door Mrs. Winstanley observed, approved, and heaved a sigh of relief. The traditions of the Banbury road had been shaken, but not destroyed.

Though Hugh made a conscientious effort to throw himself once more into the business of the dance, he soon realised that the adventure from which he had just escaped had made further enjoyment impossible for him. He was filled with an irresistible desire for flight, and it was with joy therefore that, smoking in solitude between the dances, he noticed Geoffrey rummaging amongst the medley of hats and coats in the recesses of the hall.

“ I say,” he murmured, “ if youVe going. Til come along with you; wait a couple of minutes and I’ll be ready.”

Geoffrey grunted ungraciously, but Hugh, already on his way back to the drawing-room, did not hear the grudging acceptance of his proposal, and hurried on to look for his hostess. Betty and Norah he found, both completely recovered from their discomfiture, and basking serenely in the warmth shed by two All Saints athletes. Of them he took his leave, and, rather relieved than otherwise at his failure to discover their mother, hurriedly joined Geoffrey, who, despite his sullenness, was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. Together they were making their way towards the front door when Mrs. Winstanley, issuing majestically from the library, stepped suddenly between them and liberty. Hugh, ready as ever to meet the superficial demands of polite society with easy hypocrisy (he cursed himself continually for what he called his “ damned gift of happy futility ”), was the only one of the two men to speak.

“ I’m afraid we’ve got to go, Mrs. Winstanley,” he said, with a smile. “ Geoffrey’s in training and I’m working. Thank you so much for a delightful evening.”

Mrs. Winstanley, true to her habit of leading rather than of following conversation, made no reply to his words. The rancour that had soured her pleasure earlier in the evening had vanished utterly with her victory. But she felt it due to her reputation to speed the parting guest with some remark typical of her temper and indicative of her self-imposed duty of general criticism.

Carefully ignoring Farmer, she turned to Hugh with an acid smile. ** Good-night, Mr. Kenyon,” she said. “ By the way, that young man of yours who talks so much at the Union wrote very foolishly in the Magazine last week.”

“ Do you mean Colquhoun, Mrs. Winstanley?”

“ That may be his name. I think he’d better come and see me,” she added grimly ; “ but when he does he mustn’t wear such a big tie, and I don’t like his whiskers — they’re affected. Good-night.”

Chapter II

Hugh and Geoffrey walked for some distance in silence. The heat of the last few weeks had been oppressive to a degree that Oxford midsummer can alone attain. In the airless darkness of the May night the Banbury road gave the impression of some calcined skeleton from whose bones the flesh has been dried and burned by a succession of blazing days. The moon failed to soften the gaunt facades of the endless villas, and the motionless leaves of the heavily burdened trees shone with a metallic glow in the light of the street lamps. Ill temper once born on such a night, felt Hugh, was likely to grow to its full stature. The only thing was to try to keep Geoffrey from an outburst. It would be difficult if not impossible, for Geoffrey was in everything of that overpowering impulsiveness that flnds relief only in giving uncontrolled vent to its moods. It was not that he could not control his temper, but that he did not want to. His nature, strangely sensitive and appreciative in some respects, was dominated by an arrogance that, in moments of stress, sacrificed everything to its desire for expression. This explosive tendency had naturally made for him many enemies, whose hostility he reciprocated wholeheartedly, and with a sort of gusto. In fact, he took a peculiar delight in irritating still further men who did not like him, and in frequenting places where his loudly expressed 24 opinions and insults could be easily overheard, and resented by those for whom they were intended. He was never spiteful behind people’s backs; he found it far more amusing and satisfactory to be aggressive to their faces. In some respects his friendship was as disquieting as his hostility. He could neither dislike nor like in silence, and his friends found in him a champion whose very loyalty was at times embarrassing. He never dreamed of sacrificing, in devotion, any part of his violent personality, with the result that as a companion — while he usually stimulated — he was frequently exhausting, since his egotism blinded him ever to the necessity of respecting the moods of his friends.

Hugh began softly to whistle the first few bars of “ Im Wunderschonen Monat Mai.” In doing so he was indulging in no conscious satire. Though part of his mind was occupied with the events of the evening and the desire to keep himself free from argument with Geoffrey, other thoughts and emotions were busily at work reacting to the complex influences around him. It was typical of him that, though he was extremely susceptible to the beauties of nature when presented to his imagination through an artificial medium, he usually found contact with them in his own person a trifle disappointing. All through the winter he would yearn passionately for the summer, finding in poetry, painting, and music a promise of fulfilment, breathing through the conceits of Elizabethan lyrics the strong intoxicating air of spring, smelling with strange almost physical concentration as he pondered over “ Thyrsis ” the incense of the High Midsummer Pomps.” And yet, when May and June were upon him, he found himself still lacking something, and he often strove, as now, to remind himself, by quotation, that he was actually where he had longed to be through all the dreariness of the waiting months. Subconsciously, no doubt, the stifling inhuman atmosphere of the long suburban road was impelling him to a reminder that this really was the May of “ wonder beauty,” which was always, for his imagination, the goal of the year. At the same time, he had a dim feeling that by the hint of the song he might woo his companion to a quieter frame of mind. Geoffrey was passionately fond of music, bringing to it the same wild intolerance of like and dislike which marked his attitude to everything in life. To-night, however, he was not to be baulked of his prey. He kicked a loose stone viciously into the gutter.

“ I hate that woman ! ” he burst out.

Now that the storm had broken, Hugh realised that the only course for him was to let it rage to a finish. Agreement would not materially soothe Geoffrey^s bad temper, it would probably only lead to a prolonged fit of sulks, ending sooner or later in a sudden outburst. He nerved himself therefore for a struggle, drawing strength from the memory of his friend’s unforgotten display of bad manners in the garden.

“Well, I don’t think you made much effort to hide the fact when you were in her house,” he replied.

“ Why should I ? I suppose you think I ought to have sat down under it and said ‘ yes * and ‘ no ’ in my best party voice.”