He takes these lovers’ side in trying to speed their marriage, offering part of his own inheritance, an offer that insults Gerald. When visiting the Pembrokes during his vacation Rickie has an epiphanic vision of the sexual bond between Gerald, who is coarse but handsome and athletic, and Agnes, a bond he cannot imagine for himself. Rickie is not brilliant at argument, but he is intensely responsive to poetry and art, and is accepted within a circle of philosophical and intellectual fellow-students led by a brilliant but especially cynical aspiring philosopher, Stuart Ansell, who refuses, when he is introduced to her, even to acknowledge that Agnes exists. Agnes, as it happens, is engaged to Gerald, now in the army, who was one of the sturdy youths who bullied Rickie at school. An orphan who grew up living with cousins, he was sent to a public (boarding) school where he was shunned and bullied because of his lame foot, an inherited weakness, and frail body. The Pembrokes are Rickie’s only friends from home. Rickie Elliot is a student at early 20th century Cambridge, a university that seems like paradise to him, amongst bright if cynical companions, when he receives a visit from two friends, an engaged young woman, Agnes Pembroke, and her older brother, Herbert.
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