The trouble was, he thought as he stared at the ceiling, that these were not the sort of people from whom the agitation for Socialism was going to come; it was not to be expected. It was the urban poor who were going to benefit most from Socialism. But the thought that was depressing him as he waited with decreasing optimism for his peppermint tea, was the thought that his own vision of the just society was that the urban poor should be living lives not so very different from these villagers’ lives, except that they would be paid a fairer wage for their labour and would own their vegetable gardens instead of being dependent on the whim of a landlord; and if he were to be honest with himself, he would have to admit that in the first place he was not at all sure as to the economics of the thing and secondly and more worryingly he was not at all sure whether it would really accord with the notions of the urban poor themselves.

He was brought back again to education. Because of course if people were educated to see the excellences of such an Arcadia all would be well. If one was to do without the hierarchy of command, one had to work towards a common understanding. Education had been his first love. He had been a good teacher, a personality. Each class had been a performance; he had consciously played up his eccentricities, and when he heard boys imitating him he was pleased. There was a certain ‘We don’t know’ on a rapidly rising inflection which he often used in trying to open their eyes to the wonders and mysteries of the world. ‘What is the secret of the Universe? We don’t know. How does the human brain function? We don’t know!’ When he heard boys in the passages saying to each other ‘What’s for supper? We don’t know. What did he set us for Prep? We don’t know’, he felt that this showed he was getting through to them, and that their imaginations were quickening even though they were as yet only manifesting their new awareness through an appreciation of the farcical.

One of the ideas thrown out by his friend Rundle and the Tolstoyans had been the possibility of starting an experimental school. Cornelius had been against the idea for the reason that had made him give up teaching before, that one was only reaching a tiny élite of those who could afford the fees; but now the more ambitious thought struck him that if they were able to secure enough financial backing, they might be able to offer half their places free. Of course this would mean an incredible amount of hard work and persuasion; but hard work and persuasion were two things at which he considered himself to excel. Already the phrases he would use in his first fund-raising manifesto were running through his head.

As if to confirm him in his new optimism and preceded by a tremendous crash on the door, his peppermint tea arrived. The girl who brought it, who had pale spotty features, holes in her thick black stockings and a terrible cold, put the tray down on the bedside table, drew the curtains (which released a small cloud of dust from their folds), and withdrew, banging the door, which immediately re-opened.