ap or by finding its stamps in collections
restricted to the British Empire. India meant nothing to Martin. He
had read Kipling, and certainly no tales of his had, despite the magic
of their narrative, made him responsive to the call of the East. He
still took it for granted that British rulers there would be as British
rulers elsewhere, bigoted, snobbish, and unexpectedly effectual:
corrupt, perhaps, fooling the poor and honouring the rich, bungling and
lying and making money. That, he felt, was the attitude of the men he
met, exaggerated, no doubt, but based on fact. But as he lay gazing at
the cracks in the old ceiling above him his thoughts went back to the
sheer bulk and beauty of The Gable, to Holywell at dusk, to the woods
around The Steading and the cult of his uncle's deity. About the
Oriental world he neither knew nor cared. He couldn't believe in it,
so remote and unimportant it still seemed.

At Oxford during his Indian year he found that the future civilians
took little interest in the place to which they were going. They
wanted the pay and perhaps, though not admittedly, the possibility of a
knighthood and a row of letters after their names. Certainly no one
was concerned about the White Man's Burden. Naturally he did not blame
these people: like himself, they were only seeking for a reasonable
livelihood. But he was sickened by the cant he discovered in speeches
and papers, the froth about self-sacrifice and noble callings: the work
might, he acknowledged, be good and useful, it might promote the
welfare of mankind and bring the peace of Caesar to a troubled world,
but no one was giving anything away in going to do it.

And he was lonely now. He had rooms in narrow Ship Street, and there
he spent solitary days and nights craving the society of the Push:
sometimes one of them would come down for a week-end, but otherwise
there was scarcely anyone to whom he could talk. The winter crept on
dismally, and Martin studied Bengali or rode on horseback over Shotover
and Port meadow. But there was something wrong about Oxford: he felt
old and alien and the college, when he entered it, seemed to be
bubbling over with freshmen, all amazingly young and innocent and
happy. He was vaguely jealous of them, uncharitably hostile. Were
they not talking as he had talked, idling as he had idled? One friend
he had, a poet in his third year, discreet and practical. From time to
time Martin dined with him and