On Friday evening Martin returned to Elfrey in a state of advanced pessimism. Early in the next week he learned that he had been elected to a classical scholarship at King's College. He gazed blankly at the telegram and the words 'via strata' and 'ducem' flashed before his mind.
It was quite incredible, but it was true.
Martin spent his last two terms without effort and without emotion. The fact that he was a scholar elect of King's College, Oxford, caused him to feel in some strange way that his career was made and that there was nothing more to be done. So he chattered to Finney on Sunday afternoons, read poetry (condescendingly now) at Mrs Berney's Saturday soirees, and enjoyed the modern novelists when he should have been doing his prep. He had found a copy of Butler's _Way of All Flesh_ in his uncle's study: this he read with joy and lent to the more worthy members of the Upper Sixth. A book with an appeal so universal naturally made an effect: it seemed to crystallise the religious experience of all. Martin was eager to discover whether Foskett had read it and consequently alluded to it at some length in an essay on 'Recent Aspects of Evolution,' in which he courageously let himself go. Foskett made no allusion to Butler and merely wrote on the last sheet: 'Good, but lacks balance. Don't dogmatise on subjects of this kind. Many of your ideas, though well put, are crude.' Martin groaned as he read the criticism. If Foskett had been a bigoted parson and had lectured him on the perils of free thought, he could have looked on himself as a martyr and enjoyed the nursing of a grievance: if, on the other hand, the strength and sincerity of the essay had been genuinely praised, Martin's vanity would have been gratified. But this kindly tolerance, so well meant, was infuriating; it was typical Foskettism. Perhaps what contributed most to Martin's disgust was the lurking suspicion that his ideas were, after all, a trifle crude.
With Foskett, Martin was never in sympathy. He was out of touch with all the causes for which Foskett stood, and it was among the small set of desperately serious and religious boys that the headmaster found his champions. The very fact that he had not taken orders seemed to them, perhaps justly, proof of the deepest faith: in after life they would all have signed photographs in their studies and point him out to their sons. 'That's old Foskett,' they would say. 'Fine character. Great influence.' But the popular verdict was against Foskett. The really strong man can get his way without criticism: he says 'Do' and people just crumple up and do it. When Foskett said 'Do,' things were done as a rule, but the doer had a habit of saying, as he went grudgingly to his work: 'Silly ass, thinks he's a Blood-and-ironer.' Martin said of him to his uncle: 'He's quite efficient and all that, and he's bound to get on. As crushers go, he might be a lot worse.'