Michael left Viner with a sense of the pathetic sameness of the mission-priest’s existence. He had known so well before he went that, because it was Monday, he would find him sitting in that armchair, smoking that pipe, reading that novel. Every other evening he would be either attending to parochial clubs in rooms of wood and corrugated iron, or his own room would be infested with boys who from year to year, from month to month, never changed in general character, but always gave the same impression of shrill cockney, of boisterous familiarity, of self-satisfied election. To-morrow morning he would say Mass to the same sparse congregation of sacristan and sisters-of-mercy and devout old maids. The same red-wristed server would stump about his liturgical business in Viner’s wake, and the same coffee pot put in the same place on the same table by the same landlady would await his return. There was a dreariness about the ministrations of this Notting Hill Mission which had been absent from the atmosphere of Burgos Cathedral. No doubt superficially even at Burgos there was a sameness, but it was a glorious sameness, a sameness that approximated to eternity. Long ago had the priests learned subordination. They had been absorbed into the omnipotence of the church against which the gates of hell could not prevail. Viner remained, however much as he might have surrendered of himself to his mission work, essentially an isolated, a pathetic individual.
As usual, Michael met Alan at Paddington, and he was concerned to see that Alan looked rather pale and worried.
“What problems have you been solving this vac?” Michael asked.
“Oh, I’ve been swatting like a pig for Mods,” said Alan hopelessly. “You are a lucky lazy devil.”
Even during the short journey to Oxford Alan furtively fingered his text-books, while he talked to Michael about a depressing January in London.
“Never mind. Perhaps you’ll get your Blue next term,” said Michael. “And if you aren’t determined to play cricket all the Long, we’ll go away and have a really sporting vac somewhere.”
“If I’m plowed,” said Alan gloomily, “I’ve settled to become a chartered accountant.”
Michael enjoyed his second Lent term. With an easy conscience he relegated Rugby football into the limbo of the past. He decided such violent exercise was no longer necessary, and he was getting to know so many people at other colleges that the cultivation of new personalities occupied all his leisure. After Maurice and Wedderburn came back from Spain, they devoted much of their time to painting, and The Oxford Looking-Glass became a very expensive business on account of the reproduction of their drawings. Moreover, the circulation decreased in ratio with the increase of these drawings, and the five promoters who did not wish to practice art in the pages of their magazine convoked several meetings of protest. Finally Maurice was allowed to remain editor only on condition that he abstained from publishing any more drawings.