The examination did not trouble me overmuch. It was not a decisive one; my acquaintances who were taking law degrees, like Charles March, were exempt from it; unless I did disgracefully badly, nothing hung upon the result. Once I got started, I felt a cheerful, savage contempt for those who tried to keep me in my proper station. I had only taken one examination in my life, the Oxford, but I found again that, after the first half-hour, I enjoyed the game. In the first lunch interval, certain that I was not going to disgrace myself, I reflected realistically, as I had done before, that my performance this year would be a guide to my chances twelve months hence in the Bar Finals — on which, in my circumstances, all depended.
I stayed at Mrs Reed’s, for no better reason than habit, but this time I did not have to look in entreaty at the hall table each time I entered the house. Sheila’s letter arrived on my second morning, according to her promise. For I had seen her before I left town, not listening to Jack Cotery, despite the comfort he had given me. The letter was in her usual allusive style, but contained a passage which made me smile: ‘My father has lost his voice, which is exceedingly just. He croaks pathetically. I have offered to nurse him — would you expect me to be good at the healing word?’ And, a little farther on, she wrote: ‘Curiously enough, he inquired about you the other day. He is probably thinking you might be useful some time for free legal consultations. My family are remarkably avaricious. I don’t know whether I shall inherit it. Poor Tom used to have to prescribe for my father. But Tom was a moral coward. You are evasive and cagey, but you’re not that.’
Evasive and cagey, I thought, in the luxury of considering a beloved’s judgement, in the conceit of youth. Was it true? No one else had ever said so. So far as I knew, no one had thought so. She had seen me get on, in harmony, with all kinds of people — while she shrank into a corner. And she alone had seen me quite free.
She wrote in the same vein about her father, her mother, herself. She was unsparing; equally remote from moral vanity or visceral warmth; she saw no reason to give herself or anyone else the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes her judgements were lunatic, and sometimes they went painfully deep. Those judgements were her revenge. People got through life with their lies and pretences, with their spontaneity, with their gluey warmth denied to her. She was left out of the party. So she told them that the party was false and the good-fellowship just a sham, and in telling them so she was sometimes no truer than a hurt child; but sometimes she tore the façade off the human condition, and made us wince at the truth.
Her letter brought her near, and I went undisturbed through the rest of the papers. I saw Charles March at dinner, with his usual party of Cambridge friends. He undertook to find out my marks in detail; he had no idea why I was so curious, nor that next year’s examination was a crisis in my career, but he was a sensitive, quick-witted man, pleased to be of help. I envied his assumption that it was easy to discover what was going on behind the scenes. Some day, I thought, I too must be as sure of myself, as much able to move by instinct among the sources of information and power. Twenty years ahead, and it was ironical to meet Charles March, and for us to be reminded that I had once resolved to emulate him.
I remained in London for an extra afternoon, in order to go to Lord’s and watch some cricket. There, in the sunshine, I felt peace seep over me like a drug, steadying my heart, slowing my pulse. The examination was safe. Soon I should be seeing Sheila. There was not even the shadow of care, as there had been that day — it suddenly came back to memory and made me smile — when my father watched his first and only cricket match and I sat beside him, eight years old.
But that evening, as the train rushed through the midland fields and in half an hour I should be home, that mood of peace seemed separated from me by years or an ocean. I was fretted by anxiety, as though my mind were a vacuum, and immediately one ominous thought left it, another bored in. I had an irresistible sense that I was returning into trouble, every kind of trouble. I struggled with each item of anxiety, but the future was full of pain. I was angry with myself for being the prey of nerves. It was time to remember that I was strained by this kind of apprehension whenever I came home from a journey. I had just to accept it, like a minor disease. If I did not, I should become as superstitious as my mother. But as I stepped on to the station platform I was looking round in dread, expecting some news of Sheila that would break my heart. I bought an evening paper, dreading against all reason that she might have chosen this day to become engaged. I rang her up from the station; she sounded surprised, amused, and friendly, and had no news at all.
For a moment I was reassured, as though in a fit of jealousy. Then I felt anxious about George, and went to see him; in his case, there had been some faint cause for worry, though neither he nor I had taken it seriously; that night, it still seemed faint, though he did produce some mystifying information about Martineau.
My nerve-storm dropped away; and for weeks after my examination all was smooth. George had a piece of professional success, the alarm over Martineau began to seem unreal; Jack Cotery had begun, by luck or daring, to make some money. Sheila was uncapricious and gay, and had set herself the task of teaching me to take an interest in painting. My examination result appeared in The Times, and had gone according to plan. It reappeared in the local papers, having been sent there by Aunt Milly, who had now finally decided to admit that I was less foolish than most young men. Their curious alliance still operating, George impressed on her that I was fulfilling my share of the bargain. He went on ‘to gain considerable satisfaction’, as he said himself, by ramming the fact of my performance in front of anyone who had ever seemed to doubt me.
I received a few letters of congratulation, a bland one from Eden, an affectionate and generous one from Marion, a fantastically florid one from Mr Vesey — and a note from Tom Devitt. My father professed a comic gratification; and Sheila said: ‘I didn’t expect anything else. But if you make me celebrate, I shall quite like it.’ It was my first taste of success, and it was sweet.
Nevertheless, I had returned into trouble. As the summer went on, some of the ominous thoughts of the journey came back; but this time they were not a trick of the nerves, they were real. The first trouble — the first sign that the luck had changed, I found myself thinking, in the superstitious way of which I was ashamed — was a mild one, but it harassed me. It followed close behind the congratulations, and was a disappointment about my examination. Charles March had kept his word. Somehow or other he had obtained the marks on my individual papers. They were not bad, but I was not high up the list of the first class. They were nothing like good enough if I were to make a hit next year.
There was no option. Next year I had to do spectacularly well. It was an unfair test, I thought, forgetting that I had once faced these brutal facts — when I first made my choice. But it was different facing facts from a long way off: and then meeting them in one’s nerves and flesh. It was very hard to imagine a risk, until one had to live with it.
There was nothing for it. Next year I had to do better. I had to improve half a class.
I consulted George. At first, he was unwilling to accept that anything was wrong. I was exaggerating, as usual, said George stormily; I was losing my sense of proportion just because this man March, whom George had never heard of, reported that I had not done superlatively well in a couple of papers. No one was less ready than George to see the dangerous sign. He had to be persuaded against his will, in the teeth of his violent temper, that a disquieting fact could conceivably exist, particularly in a protégé’s career. He denounced Charles March. ‘I see no reason’, shouted George, ‘why I should be expected to kowtow to the opinions of your fashionable friends.’ He denounced me for being an alarmist. I had to be rough and lose my own temper and tell him that, however much he deceived himself about others, he must not do it about me. These were the official marks, never mind how they were obtained. Brusquely I told him that it was just a problem of cramming; the facts were clear, and I was not going to argue about them: I wanted to know one thing — how could I pull up half a class?