on on the way home
from school. Everything came to seem impossible and intangible; Michael
could not conceive that he ever was or ever would be in a class-room
again, and almost immediately afterwards he would wonder whether he ever
had been or ever would be anywhere else. He began to imagine himself
grown up, but this was a nightmare thought, because he would either
realize himself decrepit with his own young mind or outwardly the same
as he was now with a mind hideously distorted by knowledge and sin. He
could never achieve a consistent realization that would give him
definite ambitions. He longed to make up his mind to aim at some
profession, and the more he longed the more hopeless did it seem to try
to fit any existing profession with the depressing idea of himself grown
up. Then he would relax his whole being and let himself be once more
bewitched into passivity by clouds and waving grasses.

Upon this mental state of Michael intruded one day a visitor to the
Abbey. A young man with spectacles and a pear-shaped face, who wore grey
flannel shirts that depressed Michael unendurably, made a determined
effort to gain his confidence. The more shy that Michael became, the
more earnestly did this young man press him with intimate questions
about his physical well-being. For Michael it was a strange and odiously
embarrassing experience. The young man, whose name was Garrod, spoke of
his home in Hornsey and invited Michael to stay with him. Michael
shuddered at the idea of staying in a strange suburb: strange suburbs
had always seemed to him desolate, abominable and insecure. He always
visualized a draughty and ill-lighted railway platform, a rickety and
gloomy omnibus, countless Nonconformist chapels and infrequent
policemen. Garrod spoke of his work on Sundays at a church that was
daily gaining adherents, of a dissolute elder brother and an Agnostic
father. Michael could have cried aloud his unwillingness to visit
Garrod. But the young man was persistent; the young man was sure that
Michael, from ignorance, was leading an unhealthy life. Garrod spoke of
ignorance with ferocity: he trampled on it with polytechnical knowledge,
and pelted it with all sorts of little books that afflicted Michael with
nausea. Michael loathed Garrod, and resented his persistent
instructions, his offers to solve lingering physical perplexities. For
Michael Garrod defiled the country by his cockney complacency, his
attacks upon public schools, h