1

Rudie went down home for the Long Vacation because there seemed to be nowhere else to go. But in his state of adventurous unrest he found home altogether unendurable before a week was out. His father with a manifest disposition to administer discouraging advice, his mother with her general air of asking him not to (whatever it was) for her sake, and his brothers with their ill–controlled jealousy of his Camford advantages, were all so tiresome, and the district when he tried a lonely walk or so, so full of stale memories, that he felt himself driving towards one of those smashing and screaming and abusive outbreaks that had disfigured his childhood. But among the disciplines he was imposing upon himself for ambition's sake, was the practice of self–control. He had buried, even if he had not killed, little Rud the knife–thrower. But he had not buried him very deep. Once or twice his father exasperated him almost to the verge of a resurrection.

"You've got to work hard at Camford, my boy, and mind what they tell you," said his father, "for it's your only chance. And you mustn't make enemies, my boy. You mustn't make enemies."

"Ow! Who's making enemies?" snarled Rudie.

"I didn't say you were making enemies, my boy. I didn't say that. You catch me up too quick. I said you mustn't make them."

"Ugh!"

"What I say is for your good, my boy. You've got a quick tongue and you may give offence before you know where you are. I know. I've lived. I've given way to wit in my time or I might have been a better–off man than I am to–day. When I was young, before I learnt better, I was a good deal like you, my boy. Very like you. Quick. And something of your gift of the gab. No sooner did I think of a thing than I was out with it. It made me enemies. And all this saying things about politics and socialism and people. Seems clever at the time…"

"Oh, Criky!" said Rudie sotto voce…

He decided that somehow he would wangle five pounds out of his mother and go off for a walking tour. Anywhere. He was wasting his time here. He couldn't even study; he had no room to work in and no seclusion. He felt perhaps if he went through the country looking in on meetings, listening to speakers at street corners, talking to people, he might get ideas. He'd wear old clothes, take his stuff in a rucksack, be a university gentleman, incognito, so to speak. A lot of fellows nowadays were doing that. Odd lodgings and doss houses. And weren't there hikers' camps and road–houses? He'd manage all right.

He would head for Birmingham or Sheffield and then turn north. He might find a strike going on and anyhow he'd get a glimpse of industrial conditions. There'd be unemployed men to talk to. He'd find out what kinds of organisation were possible among them. If the weather was fine he might cultivate a sunburn by a few days on the Lancashire moors or in the Peak country. What he would have liked to do was to have gone to New York and prowled with his eyes and ears open. He was now very keen to learn about America, and in the vacation away from the Union he could not even see Time or the New Yorker. He hadn't the money to buy them. And as for crossing the Atlantic, he had neither fare nor time now. America must wait. He might get in touch with those Mass Observers one was beginning to hear about, but they might keep him too busy for his private concerns. He had no desire to do jobs for other people. If he had thought of it before he might have joined one or other of the conferences that were always afoot now in some hostel or other, but that might have involved a subscription he could ill have afforded. But anything was better than stagnation and more father.

Mother had been watching him. She was ready for his appeal and helped him out with it. She got the five pounds somehow. She got together six pounds ten shillings.

"Of course, dear, you want more of a change than you get here…"