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Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate

by Charles Turley · English · Gutenberg #28567 · 638,196 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate

Author: Charles Turley


        
Release date: April 20, 2009 [eBook #28567]
                Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28567

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODFREY MARTEN, UNDERGRADUATE ***




Produced by Al Haines










GODFREY MARTEN

UNDERGRADUATE


BY

CHARLES TURLEY



AUTHOR OF 'GODFREY MARTEN, SCHOOLBOY'



LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1904




_All rights reserved_




CONTENTS


CHAP.

     I.  OXFORD
    II.  INTERVIEWS
   III.  THE RESULT OF THE FRESHERS' MATCH
    IV.  UNEXPECTED PEOPLE
     V.  THE WINE
    VI.  JACK WARD AND DENNISON
   VII.  THE INN AT SAMPFORD
  VIII.  LUNCHEON WITH THE WARDEN
    IX.  A SURPRISE
     X.  MY MAIDEN SPEECH
    XI.  A CRICKET MATCH AT BURTINGTON
   XII.  THE USE AND ABUSE OF AN ESSAY
  XIII.  NINA COMES TO OXFORD
   XIV.  GUIDE, HOST AND NURSE
    XV.  MISHAPS
   XVI.  THE SCHEMES OF DENNISON
  XVII.  THE PROFESSOR AND HIS SON
 XVIII.  THE ENERGY OF JACK WARD
   XIX.  THE WARDEN AND THE BRADDER
    XX.  THE HEDONISTS
   XXI.  ONE WORD TOO MANY
  XXII.  A TUTORSHIP
 XXIII.  OUR LAST YEAR




CHAPTER I

OXFORD

The night before I left home for Oxford I had a talk with my father.
He was not of the sentimental kind, but I knew that he had a rare
fondness for my brother, my sister Nina and myself, and I have never
had a moment when I did not return his affection.  He had always been
bothered by my lack of seriousness, and he doubted whether I should
really get the best out of 'Varsity life.  After telling me that the
time had come for me to treat things more seriously, he finished up by
saying: "I am going to give you two hundred pounds a year, which is
more than I can afford, and which, with your exhibition, must be enough
for you.  I have put that amount to your credit in the bank at Oxford,
and I don't expect to hear anything about money from you either during
the term or when you are at home.  You ought to know by this time what
money is worth, and that debt is a thing you must avoid.  Be a man,
Godfrey, and don't forget that the first step towards becoming one is
to behave like a gentleman."

I shook his hand to show that I understood, for he wanted neither
promises nor protestations, and if I had been able to be sentimental he
would have left the room without listening to me.

He didn't say much, but what he did say was beautifully simple, and on
leaving him I felt very solemn and, since I must tell the truth, very
important.  The idea of having a bank account was one which did not
lose its glamour for several days.  There was something about my first
cheque-book which pleased me immensely, for I had not been brought up
in a nest of millionaires, and am glad to confess that until I went to
Oxford the possibilities attached to a five-pound note were almost
without limit.

Fred Foster--who had been staying with me--and I parted at Oxford
railway-station without falling on each other's necks, but although we
did not cause any further obstruction on a platform already far too
crowded, we understood that the friendship which had prospered during
so many years at school was not going to be interrupted because he had
got a scholarship at Oriel while I was an exhibitioner of St.
Cuthbert's.

I began by losing my luggage, which was exactly the way some people
would have expected me to begin, and when I arrived at the college
lodge I must have looked as if I had come to spend a Saturday to Monday
visit.  One miserable bag was all I possessed, and the porter viewed
me, as I thought, with suspicion.  He was a grumpy old person, and when
I told him that I had lost my luggage he grunted, "Gentlemen do,
especially when they're fresh," which I thought very fair cheek on his
part, though I did not feel at that moment like telling him so.

Then having said that my name was Marten, he hunted in a list and told
a man to take my bag to Number VII. staircase in the back quadrangle.
I followed, feeling rather dejected, and I cannot say that the first
sight of my rooms tended to raise my spirits.  They were small and
dismal, the window opened on to a balustrade which, if it prevented me
from falling into the quadrangle, also managed to shut out both light
and air.  The furniture can be described correctly by the word
adequate; there were some chairs and a table, college furniture for
which I was privileged to pay rent.  The chairs looked as if nothing
could ever wear them out or make them look different.  They had been
built to defy time and ill-usage.

I went into my bedroom and was more satisfied, by some strange freak it
was bigger than my sitting-room, and after I had seen other freshers'
bedrooms I acknowledged my good luck.  There was at least room to have
a bath without splashing the bed.  I was still looking disconsolately
about me when my scout came in and treated me with a calm contempt
which immediately raised my spirits.  His air was so obviously that of
the man who knew all about things, and he told me what to do with a
gravity which was intended to be most impressive.  His name was
Clarkson and I stayed on his staircase during the three years I was in
college, though at the end of my first year I moved into larger rooms.
He was in a mild kind of way an endless source of amusement to me,
because every one knew that under his veil of imperturbability was
hidden, not very successfully, a flourishing crop of failings.
Whenever his chief failing overpowered him his gravity increased, until
he became one of the most indescribably comic people I have ever seen.

He told me that chapel was at eight o'clock on the following morning,
and asked me if I should be breakfasting in.  I found out afterwards
that unless I wanted to go to chapel I could go to a roll-call in any
garments which looked respectable, and then go back to bed; but I did
not hear this from Clarkson.  He was far too keen on getting men out of
bed and their rooms put straight to give such very unnecessary
information.  However, he was useful at the beginning, and had he not
told me where to go for dinner I don't suppose I should have troubled
to ask him.

My first dinner in hall was not a pleasant experience.  The senior men
came up a day after us, and most freshers, until they settle down, seem
to spend their time in waiting for somebody else to say something.
That dinner really made me feel most gloomy; things seemed to have been
turned upside down, and in the process I felt as if I had fallen with a
thud to the bottom.  There were two or three freshers from Cliborough
to whom I had scarcely spoken during my last two years at school, and
these fellows all sat together and enjoyed themselves, while I counted
for nothing whatever.

I began to learn the lesson that being in the Cliborough XI. and XV.
was not a free passport to glory.  The man opposite to me looked as if
he had never heard of W. G. Grace, and when I tried to speak to the
fellow on my right about the Australians, he thought that I was talking
about any ordinary Australian, and had no notion that I meant the
cricket team which had been over in the summer.  He was quite nice
about it, I must admit, and when he found out what I was driving at,
said: "I am afraid I don't know much about cricket; I have been over in
Germany the last two or three months, trying to get hold of the
language.  I want to read Schiller and those other people in the
original."

He did not suit me at all, and as I had not the courage to give myself
away by asking the names of the other people our conversation dropped.
I was, in fact, dead off colour, and the sight of those three
Cliborough fellows almost took away my appetite.  Until that moment it
had never occurred to me that I had been in the habit of thinking a lot
of myself at Cliborough, and in self-defence I must add that I do not
see how a public school can prosper unless some of the fellows stick
together and try to make things go on properly.  Any "side" I may have
had was certainly unconscious, but I haven't an idea whether that is
the worst or the best kind.  I know that I should have felt like having
a fit if any one had told me that I was conceited, and apart from that
I don't know anything about it, except, as I have said, that I was
angry that these fellows did not seem to remember that I had been at
Cliborough.  I told myself that they had lost their sense of
proportion, which was a phrase my father used about any one who argued
with him; and I also said vehemently that they were worms; but unless
you are quite sure of it, and can get some one to agree with you, there
is not much satisfaction to be got from calling people worms.

I went out of the hall and found a tall, dark fellow bowling pebbles
aimlessly about the quadrangle.  I bowled a pebble, and hitting him on
the back, had to apologize.  It is rather odd, now I come to think
about it, that the first words I ever said to Jack Ward were in the
nature of an apology.  We strolled out of the quadrangle into the
lodge, and after he had looked at me he asked me to come up to his
rooms and have some coffee.  I was not at all sure that I wanted to go,
but I went.  He shouted to his scout at the top of a very powerful
voice, and I felt that he was much more at home than I was.  I
determined, moreover, to shout at my scout upon the earliest possible
opportunity.

"I had a brother up here," he said as soon as we were sitting by the
fire, "and he gave me some tips.  One of them was to shout at your
scout for at least a week to show that you are not an infant, another
was not to row, and the last was not to play cards all day and night.
My brother's an odd kind of chap, the sort of man who doesn't know the
ace of spades by sight, but it's as easy to shout as it is not to row.
Your name's Marten, isn't it?"

"Yes," I replied; "how did you know that?"

"I scored when you came over last term to play for Cliborough against
Wellingham.  I was twelfth man to the XI., though you needn't believe
it if you don't want to.  It's wonderful what a crop of twelfth men
there are kicking around; you may just as well say you are a liar smack
out, as tell any one you are a twelfth man."

I told him that I believed him.

"That's only your politeness," he went on; "in a week you will be
talking about me as 'that man Ward who says he was twelfth man at
Wellingham.'"

I sat in his rooms and listened to him talking until eleven o'clock;
for almost the first time in my life I had nothing to say, and that
must have been the reason why I felt amused and uncomfortable at the
same time.  He seemed to know all sorts of people, and he spoke of them
by their Christian names, which impressed me, and he referred to London
as a place well enough to stay in for a time, but a terrible bore when
one got accustomed to it.  Now I had only been to London three times,
and one of those could hardly be said to count since it was to see a
dentist.  As I went back to my rooms, I thought that my education had
been neglected in many ways, and that Ward had been having a much
better time than I had.  But I soon changed my mind and decided that he
was the kind of fellow whom I should have thought a slacker at
Cliborough, and I cannot put up with a man, who when he is doing one
thing always wants to be doing another.

When I got back to my rooms I found a letter from my uncle.  He was a
bishop, and there had been trouble between us when I was a small boy at
Cliborough; he had made jokes about me which I did not bear in silence.
But he had spent a month of the summer holidays with us, and had told
my mother that I had greatly improved; I thought the same thing about
him, so we got on together very well.  I may as well say at once that I
had laid siege to the bishop.  Instead of waiting for him to go for me
I went for him, and my mother said that I had discovered the boy in the
bishop.  If he was idle I employed him, and on his last day with us I
finished off by making one hundred and thirty-six against him at stump
cricket.  When he went away I had changed my opinion of him, but my
father was annoyed that he could behave like a boy when it was time for
me to forget that I was one.  "You are as silly as the bishop," became
one of my father's favourite remarks, until my mother asked him to
think of something which was not quite so rude.

The bishop had really been splendid while he was staying with us,
because Nina, having arrived at the age of eighteen, was very difficult
to please.  Some man in my brother's regiment had been down and said
that her pug was an angel, and I being unable to reach such heights as
that was compared to my disadvantage with this man.  I am nearly sure,
too, that she wanted to flirt with Fred, quite regardless of the fact
that he was no use at flirting, and I should have had something to say
if he had been.  In a short year she had changed most dreadfully, and
was no longer satisfied with being liked very much.  She was a puzzle
to me, and had it not been for the bishop, who smoothed things over, I
should probably have worried her far more than I did.

His letter did not contain one word of cant; he just wished me good
luck, and told me to write to him whenever I felt that he could be of
use to me.  A less sensible man might have preached to me and talked
about the "threshold of a career"; but, thank goodness, he knew what I
wanted, and that if I had not made up my mind to let Oxford do
something for me, I was hopeless from the start.




CHAPTER II

INTERVIEWS

I soon found out that Jack Ward was of a most friendly disposition, for
he came over to my rooms before ten o'clock the following morning and
bounced in with an air of having known me all my life.  At the moment I
was talking to a man called Murray, whose acquaintance I had made an
hour before.  My introduction to Murray could hardly be called formal;
he lived in the next rooms to me and at precisely the same time each of
us had poked our heads into the passage and shouted for our scout.  We
then looked at each other and laughed, and the deed was done.  I wish
that I could have made all my friends at Oxford as easily; it would
have saved so much time.

Murray was going as Ward came in, and they nodded and said
"Good-morning" in the way men do when they don't altogether love one
another.

"You seem to know everybody," I said, without much reason, as soon as
Murray had disappeared.

"I can't well help knowing that fellow, considering that he was at
Wellingham with me for five years."

"He didn't tell me he was at Wellingham."

"He would have in another minute, and that he was captain of the school
and the footer fifteen, and what he was fed on as a baby and how many
muscles he had got in his big toe," Ward jerked out as he pulled
furiously at his pipe, which he had already tried to light two or three
times.

"I thought he seemed a nice sort of man," I said.

"I expect you think everybody you see nice sort of men," he replied
rather queerly, though he laughed as he spoke.

"I hope so; it is a jolly comfortable state to be in," I answered.

"But a very dangerous one.  You must get awfully left."

I picked up _Wisden's Cricket Almanack_, which had been one of the
things in my bag, and began to read it, for I had taken a fancy to
Murray and did not see much use in listening to what I felt Ward wanted
to say about him.

"You will probably be friends with Murray for about a month, and then
it will end with a snap," he said.

"I can promise you that if I am friends with him for a month it won't
end with a snap, even if his toes simply bulge with muscles," I replied.

"If anybody warned you against a man you would take no notice."

"It depends who warned me, and whom I was warned against.  And since it
is no use pretending things," I added, "I don't see much wrong in a
fellow because he happens to remember something about baby's food."

"He might be a bore."

"So may anybody," I answered, for Ward's persistence was beginning to
annoy me.  He got up from his chair with a great laugh, and put his
hands on my shoulders.

"We mustn't begin by having a row with each other," he said.

I stood up so that I could get rid of his hands, and felt inclined to
say that I did not want to begin at all, but I stopped myself.  There
was something in the man that attracted me.  I may be peculiar, but I
like people who shake the furniture when they laugh, having suffered
much from a master at Cliborough who never let himself go farther than
a giggle.

"I suppose we must go and see these blessed dons.  They want to see us
at half-past ten, don't they?" he said.

I looked at my watch and found that it was nearly eleven o'clock, so we
bolted down-stairs and across the quadrangle as hard as we could.  It
was a very bad start but I had completely forgotten that we had to go
to the hall at half-past ten, and Ward gave me no comfort by saying
that he did not suppose it mattered when we went as long as we turned
up some time.  Dons would have to be very different from masters if
that was the case, and as I imagined that they would be of much the
same breed only glorified, I had no wish to begin by making them angry.

There were thirty or forty freshers in the hall when we got there, and
a few dons sitting at the high table at the end of it.  Murray and two
or three other men were up talking to them when I arrived, and I
guessed that they were taking the scholars and exhibitioners
alphabetically, and that I was too late for my turn; though Ward, who
was a commoner and fortunate enough to begin with a W, was probably in
heaps of time.

When Murray came down he told me that they had called out my name
several times, which made me, quite unreasonably, feel angry with Ward,
but presently they shouted for me again and I went up.

Though I felt rather agitated as I walked up the hall and saw these
gowned people waiting for me, the idea flitted across my mind that they
looked most extremely like a row of rooks sitting on a long stick.  My
prevailing impression as I approached them was one of beak, they seemed
to me like a lot of benevolent and expectant birds.  As a matter of
fact this impression was false, and I got it because I was looking at
the Warden--as the Head of St. Cuthbert's was called--and not at the
group of dons on each side of him.

The Warden was a little man whose head had apparently sunk down into
his neck and got a tilt forward in the process.  His eyes were grey and
shrewd, the sort of eyes which one watches to see the signs of the
times; his nose, being that of the Warden, I will only call prominent,
and he had a habit of passing his hand over his mouth and chin, which
was merely a habit, but suggested to me at first sight that he was
pleased with his morning shave.  He was nearly sixty years old, and
when he wanted to be nice his efforts were not intelligible to
everybody, but there was no mistaking him when he really wished to be
nasty.  However, he was one of those men who are spoken of at Oxford as
having European reputations, and possibly the burden of an European
reputation gives the owner of it a right to behave differently from
ordinary people who have no reputation at all, or if they have one
would prefer that it should be forgotten.

The Warden held out a hand to me and almost winced at my manner of
grasping it.  My father always said that he knew a man by his
hand-shake, but I ought to have been wise enough to spare the Warden.

"I was in doubt whether or no we were to have the privilege of seeing
you this morning.  Perhaps the fatigues of a long journey by rail
caused you to remain in your bedroom for a longer time than is usual,
or indeed beneficial."

I was on the point of saying that I had been up at eight o'clock, when
it occurred to me that an apology would be shorter than an explanation,
so I mumbled that I was very sorry for being late.  My chief desire was
to get away from an atmosphere which I found overpowering.

I had to listen to some more remarks from the Warden, all of which were
spun out in his extraordinary way, and at last I was introduced to my
tutor, Mr. Gilbert Edwardes, who took me on one side and set to work
telling me what lectures I was to attend.  I think he meant to be
friendly but he had a dreadfully stiff manner, and I am sure that he
found it very difficult to unbend.  He reminded me most strongly of a
shirt with too much starch in it, or whatever it is that makes shirts
as stiff as boards.

Later on in the day I went to see him in his rooms in college and he
gave me a little advice and exhorted me to work.  It was all a
cut-and-dried sort of affair which did not appeal to any feelings I
had, but since he was my tutor I thought I had better tell him
something about myself.

He was even smaller than the Warden and quite the most prim-looking man
I have ever beheld.  His face was colourless and smooth, and as I sat
opposite him in his gloomy room he looked so tidy and sure of himself
that I found a great difficulty in speaking to him.  Having said the
usual things he was very obviously expecting me to go, but I did not
want him to begin by thinking that I was a saint, though why I imagined
that he was in any danger of thinking so I cannot explain.  He had,
however, said so much about work and the great care I must take in
avoiding men who distracted me from my duty, that I thought I had
better tell him that I was a very human being.

I never remember having twiddled my thumbs before but I caught myself
doing it in his room.  He was so placid and demure that I could not
imagine that he had ever done a foolish thing in his life.  It was
impossible for me to think that he had ever been young, and I wanted
him to know that I was both young and foolish.  He must have known the
one and I expect he guessed the other, but at any rate my intention was
to begin fair.  Then whatever happened he would not be able to say that
I had not warned him.

But he made me so nervous that I did not get the right words, and I
made him look more like a poker then ever.  "Thanks, most awfully," I
began, and it was a bad beginning, "for all your advice.  But I want to
tell you that I do the most stupid things without meaning to do them.
I mean that they only strike me as being stupid after I have done them."

Mr. Edwardes made noises in his throat which sounded like a succession
of "Ahems," and I floundered on: "I am afraid it is very hard for me
not to like amusing myself as much as possible, but of course I will
try to work and all that sort of thing as well."  He stood up when I
got as far as that and smiled at me, but I cannot say that he seemed to
be pleased.  "I thought I had better tell you, so that you would know,"
I added before I left him, and I went away with the hopeless feeling
that I had made a complete idiot of myself.  I hated Mr. Edwardes as I
went back across the quadrangle, for I felt that I had tried to take
him into my confidence and that he had responded by getting rid of me.

When I reached my rooms my luggage had arrived and I let off steam--so
to speak--by having a dispute with the man who had brought it.  I did
not get the best of that dispute, but I did make an effort to practise
the economy which my people had advised, and Clarkson saw me in a rage,
which must have been very good for him.  For a solid hour I unpacked
things which I had thought beautiful in my study at Cliborough and put
them about my room, but somehow or other most of them did not seem as
beautiful as I had thought them, and there was a picture--I had won it
in a shilling raffle, and been very proud of it--which filled me with
sorrow.  It had been painted by the sister of a fellow at Cliborough,
and when he was frightfully hard-up he arranged a raffle, and everybody
said I was jolly lucky to win it.  I was even bid fifteen shillings for
the picture by the original owner, but as I suspected that he wanted to
get up another raffle I refused the offer.  When I saw the thing
hanging on my wall I wished that I had not been such a fool.  Having
got the thing I did not like to waste it, but if some one would have
come in and stuck a knife into it I should have been very pleased.  The
name of this burden was "A Last Night at Sea," and the subjects
represented were a small boat and two or three people huddled together
at one end of it, while in the middle of the boat a woman with long
streaming hair was stretching out her arms towards a terrific wave.  If
I had not remembered the name it might not have been so bad, but under
the circumstances no one could say that it was a cheerful thing to live
with.  I suppose the satisfaction of having it in my study at
Cliborough had been enough, for I did not recollect having looked at it
before, and when a lot of fellows are swarming around saying what a
lucky chap you are to have won a thing, it is not very likely to give
you the blues then, whatever it may have in store for you afterwards.
I turned "A Last Night at Sea" with its face to the wall and went on
decorating my room.  Photographs of my father and mother which I put on
my mantelpiece made me feel rather better, but Nina resplendent in a
green plush frame made me think again.  I had been very proud of that
frame some years before when Nina had given it to me; she had sold two
rabbits and borrowed sixpence from Miss Read, her governess, to buy it,
and it had never occurred to me that I could grow out of my admiration
for green plush.  The question of what to do with it puzzled me
tremendously; I didn't want to treat Nina badly but the frame was an
abomination.  Fortunately there was a ring attached to the frame and I
hung it up in a dark corner, but I promised myself that it should come
out the following morning.

I had just sat down to survey my labours when Murray came in and
proposed we should go for a walk in the town, and as I was perfectly
sick of my room I was quite ready to go.  Although the time was barely
four o'clock and the sun doesn't set for another hour in the middle of
October, it was half dark and drizzling with rain as we walked down
Turl Street and came into The High.  But I had got rid of my gloom and
was eager to spend money.  I did not quite know what I wanted but that
was not of much consequence.  We went into a shop which seemed to be
exactly the place for any one who wished to buy things, and did not
care much what he bought.  Before I came out of it I had bought two
chairs, a standard lamp, a small book-case, an enormous bowl--which got
in my way for two years until somebody smashed it--a tea-set, a small
table and half-a-dozen china shepherdesses.  I then went to other shops
and made more purchases, while Murray looked on and smiled until I was
waylaid by an accommodating man in the Cornmarket, who wanted to sell
me a fox-terrier pup, and was ready to keep it for me if I had no place
for it; and then I was told not to be a fool.  That man's opinion of
Murray is not worth mentioning.

When we got back to college it was past five o'clock, and between us we
managed to find everything that was necessary for tea.  I had a fire in
my room, but Murray had not one in his; he had tea-cups, but I had
none; while I had things to eat, which our cook at home had declared
would be useful and I had most reluctantly brought with me.  We were in
the middle of this very substantial meal when Fred Foster came in, and
from his glance round my room I saw that he thought it was a fairly
dismal spot.

"Rather like an up-stairs dungeon," I said.  "Have you got a better
place than this?"

"It is bigger and not so stuffy," he answered; "but it won't make you
very jealous."

"You wait until I have got all the things I have just bought, and then
you will think this no end of a place," I remarked.

"If any one can get inside," Murray put in.

"It will be rather a squash," I admitted; "I've spent over twelve
pounds already."

"That's just the sort of thing you would do," Foster said.

We sat and talked for an hour until Ward burst in, knocking and opening
the door at the same moment.

Murray and Foster had been getting on splendidly together, but directly
Ward came they hardly said a word.  Possibly they did not get much
chance, but any one could see that Foster had taken a dislike to Ward
at sight.

Murray went away very soon and left the three of us together.

"I've been over to Woodstock in a dog-cart with Bunny Langham and Bob
Fraser," Ward said.  "By Jove, that cob of Bunny's can move.  We got
back in five-and-twenty minutes."

As I didn't know how far it was to Woodstock and didn't care, I said
nothing, so Ward went on, "Bunny's a rare good sort; you ought to meet
him."

"What college is he at?" I asked.

"At the House--Christchurch, you know."  I did know, and thought the
explanation cheek.  "I have hired a gee from Carter's to-morrow, and am
going to drive over to Abingdon with Bunny, will you come?"

"To-morrow's Sunday," I said.

"Yes, there is nothing else to do.  The better the day the----"  But I
interrupted him.

"Don't talk rot, I hate those things.  Are you going in a dog-cart?" I
asked.

"Yes, it is Bunny's cart."

"I am jolly well not going to sit on the back seat of a dog-cart if I
can help it; I would rather go about in a perambulator," I said.

"You are so confoundedly particular," he went on with a great guffaw of
laughter, "but since it is Bunny's cart and I am going to drive I don't
see how we can offer you any other seat."

"Who the blazes is Bunny?" I asked, for his name was beginning to get
on my nerves, and Fred Foster sitting as dumb as a mute was enough to
upset any one.

"I know him at home, his father is the Marquis of Tillford and his real
name is Lord Augustus Langham, only his teeth stick out and every one
calls him Bunny," Ward answered.

"Heaps of money?" I said.

"Plenty, I should think."

"Then he is no use to me, though he may be the best fellow in the
world," I declared.

"You are a rum 'un, why he is just the sort of man who is some use."

"That depends," Foster said suddenly.

"Yes, it depends," I repeated, though I didn't know exactly what
depended.

"What depends?" Ward asked Foster.

"Well, if a man hasn't got much money it is no use knowing a lot of men
who have got no end."

"It never struck me that way.  Perhaps you are right," and then turning
to me, he added, "Come to breakfast anyhow to-morrow morning, Bunny
won't be there then."

I promised to go, and then he left us.  I walked back to Oriel with
Foster and he had got a lot to say about Jack Ward.  "Where in the
world did you find that man?" was his first remark after we were alone.

"He found me," I said.

"I should lose him as soon as possible," Fred went on.

"I don't think that would be very easy," I answered, "and I don't
believe he is a bad sort really."

"I'll bet he never came back from Woodstock in five-and-twenty
minutes," Foster said.




CHAPTER III

THE RESULT OF THE FRESHERS' MATCH

If I had to describe in detail the first two or three weeks of my life
at Oxford, I think that accusations might be brought against me of
having eaten too much, or at any rate too often.  Fortunately I had a
good digestion, I cannot imagine the fate of a dyspeptic freshman if he
had to attend a series of Oxford breakfasts.  I have, however, only
once encountered a fresher who suffered from dyspepsia, and if there
was any other man so afflicted at St. Cuthbert's he probably did not
admit his complaint.  For we were supposed to be very cultivated at St.
Cuthbert's, and at that time it was not good form to hold a roll-call
of our diseases at breakfast, to discuss surgical operations at
luncheon, and to provide tales of sea-sickness by way of humour at
dinner.  We kept our complaints to ourselves and were in truth more
than a little ashamed of them.

St. Cuthbert's had a reputation of its own.  Men in other colleges
criticized us very freely.  They said that we were prigs, that the
'Varsity boat would never be any good as long as there was a St.
Cuthbert's man in it, and other pleasant things which did not annoy me,
since I, having been a butt for much personal criticism all my life,
can even get some satisfaction from finding that a crowd of other
people are as bad as I am.  Besides, we had nearly one hundred and
fifty men at St. Cuthbert's, and I thought it was absolutely stupid to
say we were all prigs and that none of us could row.

The truth of the matter was, as far as I could judge, that at St.
Cuthbert's there were often a large number of clever men, and clever
men when young can get on one's nerves most terribly.  It is all right
for men to be clever when they are old or even middle-aged, then
allowances are made for them and they may be as odd as they please.
But if any one happens to be clever when he is at Oxford, he will have
to watch himself closely or he will be called either a genius or a
lunatic, and the one is almost as fatal as the other.

In a college as large as St. Cuthbert's it was natural that there
should be a number of different sets.  We had several men who are best
described by the word "bloods"; two or three of them belonged to the
Bullingdon, a few of them to Vincent's, of which Club most of "the
blues" in the 'Varsity were members, and nearly all had plenty of money
and every one of them lived as if they had plenty.  I cannot call them
athletic, though they and the really athletic set were more or less
mixed up together.  We had also a very serious set who, I thought, gave
themselves far too many airs.  Perhaps serious is not quite the right
word to apply to them, for one of this gang wrote a comic opera and
another wrote a farce; but these were just thrown out in their spare
time, and when I attended a reading of the libretto of the comic opera
I went so fast asleep that I cannot say how comic it was.  But if it
had been very funny I should think some one would have laughed loud
enough to wake me up.  Generally speaking this set seemed to be bent on
the reformation of England, a thing which has happened once and is
rather a difficult matter for a college debating society to bring about
again.  The reformation which they were bent upon was not, however,
religious, for they thought little of the religion which satisfies
ordinary people.  One of them told me that religion was merely
emotional and sentimental, a crutch for a weak man, and went on to say
that their scheme was moral and social, a cry for a better life and
against the oppression of the poor.  That man bored me terribly, but
since one of his own set had told me that he was the cleverest man in
Oxford I did not like to tell him what I thought.  Besides I was only a
fresher who had not yet looked around, and he was the first man I had
met who was the cleverest man in Oxford, though I met several others
afterwards who had arrived at the same peak of distinction.  I even got
so weary of meeting this particular brand of man that I asked Jack Ward
to help me along my way by spreading a report that I was a most
promising poet, but he said that no one who had ever seen me would
believe him.  He meant to be complimentary, I believe.

It was into this medley of sets that I was plunged headlong.  Crowds of
men called upon me and asked me to meals.  Some of them wanted to know
me because I played cricket and football, the captain of the college
boat called because he wanted me to row, some of the "bloods" left
cards on me because they had seen me walking about with Jack Ward, whom
they had marked down as one of themselves.  A few men called from other
colleges who had known me at Cliborough, or had been asked to see
something of me because their people knew mine.  I got to know the
oddest lot of men imaginable, and as long as they looked clean and did
not try to rush me into helping them to reform the world, I liked them
all.

But in spite of Ward, who pretended that Rugby football was an
overrated amusement, I wanted to belong to the athletic set, and I
started by playing footer in a thing which is most correctly called
"The Freshers' Squash."  In this struggle any fresher who had never
played rugger in his life, but thought he would like some exercise,
could play, while footer blues dodged round and took your names, if you
were lucky enough to touch the ball, and booked you for the proper
game.  On the following day I played back in the real freshers' match,
and was most tremendously encouraged before I started by hearing one
man say to another that I had come up with a big reputation from
Cliborough.  Perhaps I was encouraged too much, or possibly I had eaten
too heavy a luncheon, for whatever reputation I might have had before
the game began, was effectually dispersed before we had finished
playing; and Foster, who was playing three-quarters on the other side,
was the man who assisted me in this dismally easy task.  Four times he
came right away from everybody, and once he slipped down in front of
me, but on the other three occasions he simply swerved away from me and
I missed him by yards.  The man who had been full back to the 'Varsity
XV. the year before had gone down, and Foster had put into my head the
idea that I ought to have a jolly good chance of getting my blue.  This
match was a very rude blow, and when I put on my coat and walked out of
the parks I felt that I had been very badly treated.  I was not at all
sure with whom I was most angry, but I had a general feeling that
whatever I tried to do went most hopelessly wrong, and that I was much
better fitted to sit in a dog-cart with Jack Ward, than I was to stand
up in a footer-field and be made a fool of by Fred Foster.

As luck would have it the first man I saw when I went into the college
was Ward, and he shouted with laughter when he saw me.

"I went down to the parks to see you," he said, "but for heaven's sake
don't look so down on your luck.  I don't see that it matters, there
are other things worth doing besides trying to collar impossible
people.  If you don't have to play again I shall think you are
thundering well out of it."

If anybody had said this to me at school I should have thought that he
was mad, but during the few days I had been at Oxford I had somehow or
other got hopelessly mixed up.  Foster wanted me to do one thing,
Murray advised me to do another, Ward kept on asking me to slack, and a
fellow called Dennison, whom I had met several times, seemed to think
that Oxford was a tremendous joke and that the most amusing people in
it were the dons.

At any rate I was not in the least angry at Ward's way of taking my
wretched exhibition, so I asked him and Dennison and two or three other
freshers, who were standing around in the quad, to come and have tea
with me, and that tea was the beginning of my first big row.  I had not
finished my bath when I was sorry I had asked them, for I remembered
that before the game had begun Foster had asked me to go round
afterwards to see him, and I had a sort of feeling that if he had made
an idiot of himself, and I had caused him to do so, he would have most
certainly not been as angry as I was.  However, I had let myself in for
this tea and had to go through with it, and I must say that it was very
good fun.

If, as some wit said, only a dull man can be brilliant at breakfast, it
seems to me that if the converse of this is true St. Cuthbert's must
have contained an extraordinary number of brilliant men.  The
amusements of a breakfast given by a senior man to half-a-dozen
freshers were principally food and silence.  It is, I think, dreadfully
difficult to talk to a batch of freshers, and only one man, as far as
my experience went, overcame the difficulty.  He resorted to the simple
means of telling us what a wonderful man he was.  But when we were
alone we chattered like a lot of starlings, every one talked and no one
listened, so we got on well together.

Ward and Dennison came up to my rooms before I was dressed, and two
other men, Lambert and Collier, arrived soon afterwards.  It was a
party of which Ward strongly approved.  While I was trying to make the
kettle boil, I heard Dennison say that we were the pick of the
freshers, a statement which no one was very likely to deny.  I felt
badly in need of some tonic after my afternoon, and I swallowed the one
provided by Dennison without any hesitation, not stopping to wonder how
often he had said the same thing to other men.  As a matter-of-fact we
were rather an odd lot to be the pick of anybody.

Dennison looked younger than any boy in the sixth form at Cliborough,
and he could, on occasions, blush most bashfully.  His blush was,
however, the only bashful thing about him and he used it very seldom.
Ward had told me that although Dennison looked such a kid he knew a
tremendous lot.  I discovered this for myself later on, but I cannot
say that his knowledge was the kind which is difficult to acquire.  He
professed a wholesale contempt for any game at which he could get his
mouth full of dirt, and said that he would as soon make mud-pies as
play football.

Lambert was hugely tall and walked with a stride which was as long as
it was stately.  He went in for dressing himself beautifully, strummed
on the banjo, and had a playful little habit of arranging his tie in
any mirror which he saw.  His pride in himself was so monstrously open
that no one with a grain of humour could be angry with him.  He talked
about every game under the sun as if they were all equally easy to him,
but I should not think that any one was ever found who believed half of
what he said.

Collier's great point was the beam which he kept on his face, he always
looked so perfectly delighted to see you that he was a most effective
cure for depression.  He was fat and did not mind, which persuaded me
that he was very easy to please.  Nature had prevented him from playing
football with any success, but for six or seven overs, on a cool day,
he was reported to be a dangerous fast bowler.

As Jack Ward thought that no ball yet made was worth worrying when he
could ride, drive, or even be driven, and since I was feeling about as
sick with footer as it is possible for any one who had got a love for
the game in him to be, I confess that we were a peculiar lot to think
much of ourselves.

My room was not made to hold five people, who, with the exception of
Dennison, were all either very broad or long, but a good honest squash
certainly makes for friendship.  We were a fairly rowdy party, because
Lambert had brought his banjo and as soon as he had finished tea he
wanted to sing; in fact it may be said of him that he was always
wanting to sing and could never find any one who wished to listen to
him.  I had already heard him sing some sentimental rubbish about
meeting by moonlight and another thing about stars and souls, and I
threw a cushion at his head as soon as he began to make some noise
which he called "tuning up."  That began a cushion fight, which
resulted in two china shepherdesses, a small lamp, and some teacups
being smashed, but it persuaded Lambert that he could not sing whenever
he felt inclined.  We all sat down again, and Ward, who had been
hanging on to the standard lamp while cushions had been flying around,
said to me--

"You did look down on your luck when I saw you in the quad.  I can't
think why anybody should take these wretched games so seriously; it
seems to me a perfectly rotten thing to do."

"No game is worth playing in which it matters to any one else whether
you win or lose," Dennison said before I had a chance to answer Ward;
"the only games a self-respecting man can play are court tennis,
racquets and golf.  Then there is no one to swear at you except
yourself."

"That's rubbish," I answered.  "Half the fun of the thing is belonging
to a side, and a man must be mad to say that golf is a better game than
cricket."

"Dennison wasn't trying to make out that golf is better than cricket,
but was just saying what games a man can play without being sworn at as
if he were a coolie," Ward said.

"I refuse to take amusements seriously," Dennison continued.  "I would
sooner shout with laughter at a funeral than lose my temper playing a
game."

"The sweetest thing on earth," I said, "is to catch a fast half-volley
to leg plumb in the middle of the bat."

"It isn't in the same street with a comic opera at the Savoy after a
good dinner," Lambert remarked.

"At any rate it doesn't last so long," Dennison, who had a queer idea
of what was funny, put in.

"A punt, good cushions, June, and a novel by one of those people who
make you feel sleepy, are hard to beat," Collier stated.

"You are a Sybarite," Dennison said, "and you will be a disappointed
one before long.  All we do here in the summer is to give our relations
strawberries and cream and run with our college eight."

"How do you know?" Collier asked, but to so searching a question he got
no reply.

"The finest sight in the world is a thoroughbred horse," Ward said.

"You must have gone about with your eyes shut," Dennison declared.

"Don't sit there talking rot," I said.  "If anything ever pleases you,
tell us what it is."

"My greatest pleasure is in polite conversation," he answered.

"Oh, you are a sarcastic idiot," I retorted, for people who are
afflicted by thinking themselves funny when I think they are idiotic
always make me rude.

"Dennison never says what he means," Ward explained, "it is a little
habit of his."

"Why can't you talk straight, it's much simpler, and doesn't make me
feel so horribly uncomfortable?" I asked, turning to Dennison.

"Marten is getting angry," was the only answer I received, and it was
so near the truth that I wanted to pick him up and drop him in the
passage.

Ward, however, calmed my feelings by saying that he could not imagine
any one troubling to be angry with Dennison.  "The one thing he prides
himself on is getting a rise out of people, and we aren't such fools as
he thinks us."

"And he is a much bigger fool than he thinks," Collier said solemnly.

"You are a nice complimentary lot," Dennison remarked, smiling amiably
upon us.

"It's your own fault," Collier continued; "you try to be clever and
succeed in being confoundedly dull.  I was at school with him for five
years and I know his only strong point is that the more you abuse him
the more he likes you."

"I'm fairly in love with you, Coalheaver," Dennison said.

"Naturally, but you might forget that very witty name."

"I'm going," Lambert declared, "for I'm dining in hall, and if I don't
go for a walk those kromeskis and quenelles will choke me."

"Half a minute," and Ward pushed Lambert back into his seat; "now we
are all here, I think we had better arrange a freshers' wine.  There
always is one, and nobody will get it up if we don't, so I vote we do
the thing properly."

Every one seemed to approve of the idea, but as I was no use at making
arrangements I suggested that Ward should manage the whole business.

"I can order everything, but we must have a committee to choose the
people we shall ask and all that part of it.  We can't ask everybody,"
Ward said.

"Half of them won't come if we do.  I should think we had better ask
the whole lot, and then we shall know what they are made of," Lambert
advised.

"We shan't have a room big enough to hold them," Collier said.

After that we all began to talk, and though I had only a hazy notion of
what we decided, I heard enough to know that Ward and Dennison meant
having this wine in about ten days and only intended to ask the
freshers whom they liked.




CHAPTER IV

UNEXPECTED PEOPLE

The idea of working for Mr. Gilbert Edwardes never had much attraction
for me, and for the first two or three weeks at Oxford I found it very
difficult to satisfy him.  However, the excuse that I took a long time
to settle down in a fresh place did not seem as reasonable to him as it
did to me, so I had to abandon it and try to appease him.  The worst of
him was that I never knew whether he was pleased or not; he accepted my
most determined efforts at scholarship as a matter of course and
reserved his eloquence for the occasions on which my work showed
symptoms of haste.  In less than a fortnight I felt that my tutor and I
were watching each other, an element of distrust seemed to have sprung
up; he took it for granted that I would do as little as possible, while
I was searching for something which could tell me that he was human as
well as learned.

I could not understand him in the least, for I had been accustomed to
masters who talked about things of which I knew a little even if they
were bored by doing so; but when I met Mr. Edwardes I felt that he
belonged to the ice period, and that he would think the smallest thaw a
waste of time.

I do like a human being, I mean a man who lets you know something about
him and does not barricade himself against you.  But a man who puts up
the shutters in front of his virtues and faults bothers me most
terribly, and I always seem to be bumping my head against something
invisible whenever I see him, which is a most disconcerting performance.

Mr. Edwardes was also Murray's tutor, but Murray was not afflicted, as
I was, with the desire to know people more than they wanted to be
known, and he told me that if I would only take Edwardes as I found him
we should get on together splendidly.  In spite of Jack Ward, I saw
Murray every day, and the more I knew of him the more I liked him.  He
was in my room one evening after Ward had arranged that we were to have
a freshers' wine, and I asked him if he was coming to it.

"I can't go unless I am asked," he said, "and I shan't go now if I am
asked."

I resolved to say a few things to Ward, but I did not know what to say
to Murray.

"Ward is asking everybody he wants, isn't he?" he inquired.

"Yes it was left to him and Dennison, I believe."

"Then I am not likely to be invited, for he and I never could do
anything but have rows with each other at Wellingham."

"What about?" I asked, for Murray had never said much about Ward to me
and I wanted to hear his side of the quarrel.

"It isn't worth repeating," he answered.  "I was head of the school and
Ward thought a friend of his ought to have seen.  He thinks I am a smug
because I have to work, and I suppose I think he is a fool because he
thinks I am a smug.  He is a queer sort, and it is hopeless for me to
try to be friends with him, even if I wanted to be, and I don't."

"He is a fairly good cricketer, isn't he?" I asked, for I had
discovered that when Murray had once made up his mind no efforts of
mine would change it.

"Yes, he would have got into the XI. quite easily only he was so slack,
and the master who looked after our cricket couldn't stand him.  It was
rather a swindle that he didn't get into the team all the same."

"I hate slackers," I said, and to prove it I set to work on some Homer
for Edwardes.  Murray got his books and we slaved together for nearly
two hours, when a most timid knock sounded on my door, and a man came
in who seemed to be most fearfully nervous.  He was carrying a gown and
a cap in his hand, and he looked at Murray, who was not at all an
alarming sight, as if he had encountered a wild man from one of those
regions where wild men are bred.  I had never had much practice at
putting any one at their ease, for most people hit me on the back and
call me "old fellow" far too soon; but I tried very hard to calm my
visitor, and though it was six o'clock I asked him to have tea and
every conceivable other thing I could think of, all of which he
refused.  He told me his name was Owen, but apart from that I knew
nothing, and the more he fidgeted with the tassel of his cap the more I
wondered why he had come.

Murray, however, guessed that he was in the way and hurried off as soon
as he could.  Then Owen made two or three unsuccessful efforts to
begin, until I felt that I must offer him something more, only I had
nothing left to offer.  The man who said that hospitality covers a
multitude of emotions went nearer the mark than most of those
word-turning people do.  But at last it all came out in jerks, and I
felt most thoroughly sorry for him; if I had been in his place I am
certain I should never have faced such an ordeal.

"I didn't like to tell you why I had come before your friend," he
began; and he still twisted his cap round and round by the tassel.  "I
suppose a sort of false modesty prevented me, but I might just as well
have spoken before him."

"Murray is a most awfully good sort," I said lamely, for I wanted to
help him so much that my head felt hot and I could not think.

"I expect he is," Owen went on, "but I haven't come to be friends with
your friends.  I only wanted to see you, and the reason is that over
twenty years ago in India your father saved my father's life."

I did feel relieved when he told me that, for I had been imagining that
he was the kind of man who is known as a freak, and had come to win me
over to some stupid crank which he would call a noble cause.

"I am most tremendously glad you have come," I said, and then I began
talking about my father's old regiment, and Owen could not get a word
in until I had finished.

"You don't understand," he said, as soon as he got a chance; "when you
talk about a regiment you only think of the officers, my father was one
of the men."

"I don't see what that matters as long as his life was saved."

"It does matter," Owen replied; "it matters here very much, where there
is not much liberality except in offering meals and things not wanted."
I moved my feet and kicked the fender, the fire-irons jangled together
and he went on: "I ought not to have said that, it is my blundering way
to say the thing I oughtn't; what I meant was that Oxford is not very
liberal to a man like I am, who is here by hard work, and not because
his fathers and grandfathers were here before him.  It is impossible in
a place of sets--social, athletic, and all the rest--for a man who has
to work to keep himself, to be treated in the same way as you, for
instance, are treated.  I am not what the world calls a gentleman."

"Oh, confound the world," I said, "it is always mixed up in my mind
with the flesh and the devil," and as Owen did not say anything for a
minute I asked him what college he was at.

"I am unattached, St. Catherine's if you like; we are called 'The
Toshers,'" he answered, and there was a note of bitterness in his
voice.  "Of course," he went on, "I am boring you to death, but I must
say that I should never have come to see you if my father had not made
me promise that I would.  He takes a tremendous interest in both your
brother and you; he knows the place your brother passed into Sandhurst
and where he was in the list when he went out, and last summer he
watched for your name in _The Sportsman_, and when you got any wickets
he was as pleased as Punch.  He writes to Colonel Marten still."

I wished I could have said that my father had mentioned him to me, but
if I had I am certain that Owen would have seen that I was not telling
the truth.  "My father," I tried to explain, "never talks about
anything he has done.  If your father had saved his life I should have
heard of it a hundred times."

"You have the knack of saying the right thing, I shall never get that
if I live to be a hundred;" and then he stood up, and putting a hand on
the mantel-piece looked at the photographs of my people, but he did not
say what he thought about them.

"If I did say the right thing, it was a most fearful fluke," I said,
for I could not be silent.  "I simply hate men who walk about patting
themselves on the back because they have had what they call success
with a remark."

He did not listen to what I was saying, but stood staring into the
fire; at last he turned round and held out a hand to me.

"I must thank you," he began; "and there is one other thing I have got
to ask you before I say good-bye.  My father asked me to make you
promise that you would never mention what I have told you about his
life being saved by your father, or anything about him.  It seems to be
a sort of compact, I don't understand it.  He doesn't want your people
to know anything about me, but only you."

I promised, of course, but I felt rather bothered.

"We may meet some day in the street," he said, and he pushed his hand
into mine; but I let it go, and told him to sit down again.  For this
last speech of his was annoying, he had evidently got a wrong idea of
me.

"It is no use talking rot," I said.  "To begin with, what on earth have
you got to thank me for?"

"If Colonel Marten hadn't saved my father's life, I should never have
been born," he said.

"And you have come to thank me for that?" I said, and I did not mean to
be rude.

"I was told to, you see," he answered.

I looked at him and we both laughed, though I went on laughing long
after he had stopped.  The idea of me being thanked for anybody's
existence was beautifully comic.

"It is very good of you to have come," I said, as soon as I could; "but
I don't deserve any thanks and you know that I don't."

"You haven't got much to do with it, perhaps, but you were here and I
should never have been forgiven if I hadn't come to see you.  I shan't
come again."

"Oh, bosh," I replied.  "What's the good of talking stuff like that?
Of course you will come again, and I am coming to see you, if I may.
How long have you been up here?"

"This is the beginning of my third year."

"What did you get in Mods?" I asked, for I felt sure that he had done
well.

"A First," he answered.

"I wish I had.  Where do you live?"

"I shan't tell you."

"You may just as well, for I shall easily find out."

He stood up again, and talked as he strode up and down my room.

"I have been here two years," he began, "and I know that it is
impossible for us to be friends; and when you have thought it over you
will think as I do.  My father teaches fencing and boxing in London; I
was educated at a school you never heard of; I am helped here by an old
gentleman who discovered that I was more or less intelligent.  He has a
mania for experiments, and I am his latest hobby.  Have I said enough
to put you off, or must I go on?"

"I suppose I can please myself when I choose my friends," I said.

"That you most certainly can't do here," he answered.  "Let me alone
and I won't bother you any more.  Good-night, your bell is going for
dinner."

He walked straight out of my room, and before he had closed the door
Jack Ward rushed in.

"Who is that man?" he asked at once.

"I am not going to tell you," I answered, for I wanted time to think.

"Well he is a funny-looking Johnny anyway, looks as pale as a codfish
and as solemn as a boiled owl.  You do collect an odd set of friends;
there's that man Foster, who seems to be deaf and dumb, and Murray, who
gives me the blues whenever I see him, and then this apparition."

"You can just shut up jawing," I answered, as I hunted round for my
gown; "when I want you to criticize my friends I will tell you.
Foster's worth about ten billion of you any day."

I was very angry, but Ward only laughed and told me to hurry up unless
I wanted the soup to be cold.

"We are going to have a little roulette in my rooms to-night," he said,
as we walked across the quad.  "Will you come?"

"No, I won't," I answered, and I let him go into the hall first, and as
soon as he had chosen his seat I got as far from him as I could.  I saw
him talking to Collier, and they seemed to be amused, which did not
lessen my annoyance.  If the freshers' wine had been held on that
evening, I am very nearly sure that I should not have gone to it.

After dinner I waylaid Murray, and dragged him off to see Foster at
Oriel.  Two days before Foster had been playing rugger for the 'Varsity
against the London Scottish, and I had neither seen the game, because I
had to play in a college match on the same afternoon, nor had I seen
him since.  I wanted to hear whether he was satisfied with himself, but
I wanted also to tell him about Owen.

We found him in the college lodge talking to a whole lot of men, but as
soon as he saw us he grabbed one man and took us to his rooms.  I did
not want this fourth fellow, but since he was there I must say that
Foster could not have got any one nicer.  His name was Henderson, and
he had been so successful as captain of his school cricket XI. that he
had played three times for Somersetshire during August.  His legs and
arms were extraordinarily long and his face was covered with freckles;
one freckle had placed itself on the tip of his nose and I did not get
accustomed to it for a long time--it was the sort of thing which one
kept on looking at to see if it was still there.  He would not talk
about his cricket, except to say that he should not have played for
Somersetshire if half the regular team had not been laid up, and he
kept on clamouring to play whist, so that at last we gave way to him.

I had a good opinion of my whist, though how I arrived at it I cannot
explain.  Henderson was my partner and he seemed to me to do the most
odd things.  For instance when I led a spade and he took the trick,
instead of leading another spade he would begin some fresh suit, which
made me wonder what in the world he was doing.  And he did not seem to
think his trumps half as valuable as I thought mine, but just led them
whenever he felt inclined.  When Nina, Foster and I played whist it was
considered pretty bad form to lead trumps when we had anything else to
lead, and we kept them for a big outburst at the finish.  I pitied
myself considerably for having Henderson as a partner, and I was very
surprised to see Murray doing the same odd sort of things.  So at the
end of one rubber Foster and I played together, but I cannot say that
we had much luck, and just at the end I made a revoke which Murray was
brute enough to notice.  When Henderson had gone I said that he seemed
to be a rare good sort, but it was a pity he did not know a little more
about whist.  I hoped Murray would take that remark partly to himself,
because at the end of every hand he had talked to Henderson about what
might have happened if he had led a different card, and sometimes he
even went on jawing when he had got his fresh hand, which quite put me
off my game.  But all Murray did was to laugh, while Foster said to me
that he was afraid our way of playing whist was all wrong, and I had
some difficulty in persuading him that it was not.  Then Murray said
something about reading Cavendish carefully, but I had heard some one
say that Cavendish was out of date, so I borrowed this man's opinion
and expressed it as my own, which amused Murray so much that if I had
not been sorry for him I believe I should have lost my temper.

At last, however, we stopped discussing whist, and after I had made
Foster and Murray swear they would tell no one else, I gave them an
account of Owen coming to see me.  Before I began Foster declared that
the reason I bound them to keep my secret was because I wanted to tell
it to every one myself.  In fact he expected the whole thing to be some
miserable little affair, for I had a habit, which I have since
abandoned, of extracting the most terrific promises of secrecy from my
friends and then telling them something which they did not think as
important as I did.  I started that game because I had once told
something really funny to a lot of fellows at Cliborough, and they went
and spread it about so quickly that I could never find any one else who
did not know it, which was simply nothing less than a fraud.

But as soon as I had got fairly into my tale I saw that both Foster and
Murray were interested, and at the end of it I asked them what I was to
do.

"Do you think he meant that he wouldn't have anything more to do with
you, or that he just wanted to show you that he would leave you to
decide what was to happen next?" Murray asked.

"I don't know what he meant," I answered.  "He seemed to be in a rage
with the whole of Oxford, only it was not a noisy sort of rage but a
kind of smouldering business, and perhaps I only imagined the whole
thing."

"What was he like to look at?" Foster inquired.

"Pale and dark, and he looked unwell without looking unwholesome," I
replied.

"I saw him," Murray said, "and I thought he would have been rather nice
if he hadn't been so nervous.  He has got great big eyes and about half
an acre of forehead."

"He wore a flannel shirt and a turned-down collar, and looked clean," I
told Foster, for I thought he had better know everything.

"Ask him to lunch and Murray and me to meet him," Foster suggested.

"I can't ask a senior man to lunch, it would show that I thought it
didn't make any difference in his case, and I think he would be on the
look-out for things like that.  Besides, he wouldn't come."

"I should leave him alone," Murray said.

"I shan't do that, it would make me feel a brute," I replied.

"Find out where he lives and I will come with you and see him.  I know
your father, so it will be all right," Foster proposed.

"He has called on me, so he can't mind me going to see him, and I
should like to take you with me.  I'll let you know as soon as I have
found out where his rooms are;" and then, as it was getting late,
Foster came down with us to the lodge, and I was half out of the door
before I remembered to ask him about his footer.

"I am playing against Cooper's Hill on Wednesday," he said; "but I
shall be kicked out if I don't play any better than I did on Saturday."

As we walked up King Edward Street Murray did nothing but talk about
Foster, and since I was always delighted whenever I could get any one
on that subject I did not look half carefully enough where I was going.
Murray was in cap and gown, but I was not wearing what is sometimes
magnificently called "academical attire," but had on a cloth cap.  It
had never occurred to me that we were likely to meet the "proggins,"
but as I turned into The High we ran full tilt into him, and before I
had time to think of running, a "bulldog" had told me that the proctor
would like to speak to me.  There was no way out of it, so I turned to
gratify this unforeseen gentleman and found that he was my tutor, Mr.
Edwardes.  He did not trouble to go through the usual formula of asking
me whether I belonged to the University and all the rest of it, but
told me to call upon him the next morning.  He spoke so quickly that I
could not hear what time he told me to come, but I supposed any time
would do.

"Did you know that Edwardes was a proctor?" I asked Murray, as soon as
we could go on.

"Some one told me he was; he is a junior proctor, I think."

"And a vile nuisance," I added.  "He will be more down on me than ever
now."

"There is no harm in walking about without cap and gown," Murray said.

"I'll bet Edwardes thinks there is," I answered, and as I was feeling
furious at being caught so simply, I gave a tremendous hammer upon the
door of St. Cuthbert's, and when I wished the porter good-night he
glared at me and did not answer.




CHAPTER V

THE WINE

The faculty of making people angry without meaning to do so is a most
fatal possession.  When I remember the men I know who seem to be
constitutionally unpleasant and who walk about saying sarcastic things,
I do think I am unlucky.  For I annoy people quite unintentionally, and
it must be the most stupid way of bringing about a bad result.  I get
no fun for my money, so to speak.  Honestly I did not hear at what time
Mr. Edwardes told me to call upon him, and when I strolled over to his
rooms about eleven o'clock on the following morning, I had no idea that
he was likely to be more than usually displeased.  But it did not take
me a moment to discover that he was very angry indeed.  From what he
told me it seemed that I ought to have appeared at nine o'clock with
many other men as unfortunate as I was, and he evidently considered
that I had not come at the proper hour because I had thought that one
time would do as well as another.  I told him that I did not hear him
mention any particular time, but I do not think he believed me, and
after I had paid him five shillings for being without my cap and gown
he did not even thank me, but looked first at his watch and then at a
long list which he had on his table.

"It is now a quarter-past eleven, and I believe Mr. Armitage's lecture
at Merton begins at eleven o'clock.  May I ask why you have decided not
to attend his lecture this morning?" and he screwed his mouth up until
it seemed to disappear.

His question was difficult to answer, because I could not tell him that
Murray and I had decided that Mr. Armitage lectured very badly, and
that I had expressed my intention of cutting his lectures whenever I
felt inclined.  So I said that I had forgotten Mr. Armitage's lecture,
which happened to be the truth.

"I am afraid, Mr. Marten, that you take a very light view of your
responsibilities," he said.  "It is unusual, I imagine, for an
exhibitioner of a college to interview the proctor as soon as you have
done; the college authorities naturally expect their scholars and
exhibitioners to obey the rules of the University, and they also expect
them to apply themselves earnestly to their studies.  At the present
moment I am unable to consider that you have realized either of these
expectations."

"Well, sir, they are early days yet," I said with a smile, for I
thought it was best to take a cheery view of the situation.

"This is no jest," he replied, and his teeth snapped together very
disagreeably.

"I did not mistake it for one," I said, and I wanted to be amicable;
"but being without cap and gown last night is not a very awful offence,
is it?  The proctors would have a very dull time if they did not catch
men sometimes."

I cannot imagine why I made that last remark, except that he had fixed
his little eyes upon me when I began and it seemed to be dragged out of
me.

"I do not think that you need trouble yourself about the duties of the
proctors, Mr. Marten.  Good-morning, and please remember what I have
said to you."

I left his room smiling, and I am sure he thought I was laughing at
him; but what really amused me was being called "Mr. Marten," for I had
not grown accustomed to my prefix and the sound of it was most comical
to me.  I am afraid my taste for jokes was very different from that of
my tutor.

When I came away from Mr. Edwardes I stood in the front quadrangle and
whistled.  My whistle is unmusical and penetrative, useful only when a
dog has been lost, and some man, whom I did not know, put his head out
of his window and said abruptly, "For heaven's sake shut up that vile
noise;" another man chucked a penny into the quad and told me he should
send something heavier if I did not stop.  The front quad was obviously
no place for me, but before I had made up my mind where I would go the
Warden came out of his house and saw me before I saw him.

"Good-morning, Mr. Marten," he said before I could escape; "it is so
unusual to find a beautiful quadrangle totally uninhabited that you
seem to be undecided whether to leave it or not.  Your whistle as I
stood by the open window of my bedroom suggested to me that you are not
employing your time most advantageously either to yourself or to
others."

He stood by me for a moment, and then moving on with his peculiar
shuffle disappeared through the doorway leading into the college
gardens.  My nerves were becoming upset from these constant encounters,
and as I felt that I could not sit down and work until I had some kind
of an antidote, I went up to see Jack Ward, who had rooms in the front
quadrangle.

I found him, as I thought, most beautifully unemployed, but as soon as
he had asked me whether my temper was better in the morning than at
night, of which remark I took no notice, he said that he was being
worried to death.

There were two telegrams lying on his table, and I thought something
awful had happened to his people, so I tried to look sympathetic and
replied that if he would rather be left alone I would go at once.  Then
he broke forth into the language of towing-paths and barges and asked
me whether I was a lunatic, which was a fairly nasty question when I
thought I was treating his trouble in a becoming spirit.  I was not,
however, sure what was the matter with him, so I did not say what I
might have said but asked him to tell me why he was bothered.

"You see it is like this," he answered, picking up both the telegrams;
"one of our groom fellows at home has a brother who knows everything
about Blackmore's stable, and he has just wired to me that Dainty Dick
will win the Flying Welter at Hurst Park to-day, and I was off to back
it when I get a wire from my tipster, Tom Webb, that The Philosopher
can't lose the same race.  It is Tom's 'double nap' and I am in a hole
what to do."

As I had never heard before of Dainty Dick, The Philosopher, Tom Webb
or Blackmore, I did not feel in a position to give advice, but I
laughed until I felt quite unwell, and Ward walked about the room
asking violently why I was amused.

"I thought some of your people were ill when I came in here," I said
after some minutes, "and the whole thing turns out to be some gibberish
nonsense about Tom Webb, a tipster, and some rotten horses."

"You are most refreshingly green," Ward replied, and he screwed the
telegrams together and threw them into the fire.

"What are you going to do?" I inquired.

"That's just it, I can't make up my mind.  Tom Webb has sent me twelve
stiff 'uns running, and if The Philosopher won and I wasn't on it I
should swear for a month."

"Then," I said wisely, "I think you had better back The Philosopher;
you ought to think a little of your friends."

The only answer I received to my suggestion was that of all the fools
in Oxford I was the most sublime, so I told him that if he backed
either of these horses he would be proving that, at any rate, I was not
absolutely the biggest fool he knew.  But he had begun to read racing
guides and calendars, and every now and then made notes upon a piece of
paper, so he treated my retort with contempt.

"I believe," he said, with a pencil between his teeth, "that Dainty
Dick can give The Philosopher about eleven pounds, and he has only to
give him four, so I shall back The Philosopher."

"That doesn't seem very good reasoning," I ventured to remark.

"My opinion's always wrong," he explained, "but I have a thundering
good mind to back both of 'em."

"It seems the quickest way of losing your money," I said.

"Don't be such a confounded ass.  I know about some of these stables, a
man is a fool if you like who bets and doesn't know."  He shut up his
betting-book with a bang, and I told him the only tale I knew about
racing.

"I have a cousin," I began, "who owned racehorses and all the rest of
it.  He lost every penny he had, and a lot more besides.  He knew, as
you call it."  I did not feel that my tale, though it had the merit of
being true, was a good one.

"It is no use for you to sit there and conjure up tragedies," Ward
replied.  "I can't help gambling, it is in my blood; my father is about
the biggest speculator in England.  If you want a good tip, buy
Susquehambo Consolidated Rubies."

I was not inclined to buy anything except a fox-terrier pup, and I told
Ward that he would come a most howling cropper if he did not look out.
But I have never yet happened to find the man who was inclined to take
my warnings seriously, and Jack Ward, at any rate, was so naturally
optimistic, that I might have known that he would take no notice
whatever of my advice.

"I shall back both Dainty Dick and The Philosopher," he said, when I
had finished; "come down to Wright's with me, and I will have a fiver
on each of them.  I don't get tips like these every day."

He put on his cap and tried to persuade me to go with him, but I was
sick of the man, he seemed to me to be simply throwing his money away;
so I went back to my rooms, and finding that Murray had been to
Armitage's lecture, I borrowed his notes and copied them into my book,
though Murray said, and I thought, that I was wasting my time.

I did not see Ward again until after five o'clock, when he brought an
evening paper and a cheerful countenance into my rooms and told me that
Dainty Dick had won the Flying Welter, and The Philosopher had been
second.  "Two pretty good tips, my boy," he said; "nothing but your
obstinacy prevented your being on."

Collier had been having tea with me, and was to all appearances asleep
when Ward came in, but without opening his eyes he said, "Betting is a
mug's game.  What price did this brute start at?"

"I don't know until I get the next evening paper, but it is sure to be
a good price; there were twelve runners, and they are sure to have
backed The Philosopher."

"You are a rotter," Collier stated; "if you are going to stay here,
don't talk racing to us.  I don't know anything about it and don't want
to."

"I know a real hot thing for the Manchester November Handicap, been
kept for months," Ward said quite cheerfully.

"We don't want to hear it," I said.

"I am thundering well not going to tell you anyway.  You two men ought
to be in bed, I am going to find some one who is not half asleep," Ward
answered, and he went away with unnecessary noise.

Both Collier and I had promised to go to Lambert's rooms after dinner
on that evening; he had asked us because he said we ought to have a
talk about the freshers' wine, but we knew well enough that he intended
to twang his wretched banjo and sing little love songs which made the
night hideous.  If only he would have sung comic things he might not
have caused such wholesale pain, though I should not like to speak
positively upon that point.  I did not go to this entertainment
immediately after dinner, and when I arrived I found the usual gang,
Ward, Dennison and Collier, and one other man who turned out to be
Bunny Langham.  Everybody except Collier was playing a game of cards
called "Bank," the chief merit of which is its simplicity.  The dealer
puts some money into the pool and deals three cards to each player, who
can bet up to the amount in the pool that one of his cards will beat
the card which the dealer turns up against him.  All that seemed to
happen was that Bunny Langham kept on saying, "I'll go the whole
shoot," and then complained violently of his luck.  It was no game for
me and I looked to Collier for amusement, but he had got a bottle of
French plums in his lap and was engaged in trying to get them out with
a fork which was too short for the job.  The banjo had been put back
into its case, and though it was not amusing to see four men play cards
and Collier over-eating himself, I was content to see the banjo put
away for the night, so I got the most comfortable chair I could grasp
and waited until somebody thought it was time to go to bed.  I sat
facing Bunny Langham, and as there was nothing else to do I watched him
losing his money, and I should think he was what is called a very good
loser.  He was a most curious-looking man and wore eyeglasses which did
not seem powerful enough, for when he wanted to take any money from the
pool or--which happened more frequently--pay something into it, he took
them off and put up a single eyeglass which he managed with the skill
of one to whom it was a necessity and not an inconvenience.  His
complexion was pink and white, and he had a small patch of piebald hair
over his right car, which in some lights looked like a rosette.  But in
spite of his odd appearance there was something attractive in his face;
it must, I think, have been either his expression or his forehead, for
it certainly was not his chin, and a nose never looks its best when
shadowed by pince-nez.  Dennison was the only winner at the table, and
smiled benignly round him when he was not lighting his pipe.  Lambert
threw his money about with a magnificent air more comical than
impressive, and Jack Ward seemed to be the one man whose attention was
riveted on the game.  When a remark was made on any subject except bad
luck, Ward broke in asking some one how much they were going to stake
or telling Bunny, who never seemed to know what was going to happen
next, that they were waiting for him.  I thought "Bank" must be the
dreariest of all card games, but it was nearly twelve o'clock before
Langham got up and said he must go.  When the game was over I asked
Ward how much he had won over Dainty Dick, and at once there was a roar
of laughter.

"He lost over three pounds," Dennison said

"But how did he manage that?" I asked, for my knowledge of racing being
limited I did not understand how he could have backed the winner of
this race and yet lost money.

"Why Dainty Dick started at three to one on, so he only won about
thirty shillings, and he lost a fiver backing The Philosopher.  I
thought he had made a fortune by the way he was talking at dinner,"
Dennison answered.

For a moment Ward looked furious, and the exultant way in which
Dennison told me what had happened must have annoyed him tremendously.
I felt that Dennison with his seraphic smile was a much bigger idiot
than Ward, so I said, "Well, I can't see where the joke comes in, I
think it is thundering rough luck," which remark I considered rather
noble, for I did think that Ward had been scored off beautifully, only
Dennison gibing at him was such a sickening sight that I thought I
would put off the few words I meant having with him about Dainty Dick
until we were alone.

After Bunny Langham had gone we began to discuss the freshers' wine,
but Jack Ward looked so down on his luck that I let him arrange what he
liked, though as Collier said to me afterwards, Ward only thought he
was deciding everything while Dennison really managed the whole affair
and simply twisted him round his fingers.

"Dennison is as clever as a wagon load of monkeys," Collier complained,
"he looks like a baby and is as cunning as a Chinaman.  I wonder how we
can put up with him."

I wondered, too, and I should think everybody else, except Dennison
himself, found it difficult to explain his popularity.  For he was
popular, and since no other reason occurs to me I expect the fact that
he was always ready to play the piano must have helped him, Lambert on
his banjo was enough to depress a crowd of Sunday-school children at
their annual treat, but Dennison played the kind of music which made
Collier, Ward and me, who were not exactly musical, feel that we could
sing quite well.  At Cliborough I had established a record by being the
first boy who had tried to get into the school choir and failed, but
the man who made me sing "Ah, ah, ah," until I really could not go on
any longer had told me that I should have a voice some day.  Perhaps he
said that out of kindness, but when Dennison played I always remembered
it, and forgot that when I sang in church people sitting in front of me
had been known to look round as if hymns were not made to be sung.

If discussion beforehand helps to make an entertainment successful our
freshers' wine ought to have been a colossal success.  For days the
thing seemed to pervade the air and I got horribly tired of it, though
Collier, who had been given rooms which compared with mine were
palatial, had more reason to be sick than I had.  Collier had not only
a certain amount of space at his disposal but also a piano, and if
either of us had been any use at guessing we might have known that his
rooms would have been chosen.  I may as well say now that if any one of
the freshers who had been invited had also possessed a little sense
Collier's rooms would not have been chosen, but the last thing we
thought of was a row, until we got into one, which is one of the
advantages of being a fresher.

Dennison and Ward finally asked about fifteen men to the wine, and on
the appointed night we met in Collier's rooms.  It was perhaps not so
great a privilege to receive an invitation as we thought it was,
because each man who accepted had to pay more than the thing was worth.
However, there was no doubt that it was well done, Ward had been to
Spinney's shop in the Turl and had benefited by Spinney's experience,
and Dennison with the assistance of Collier's scout, and in spite of
Collier's mild protests, had prepared the rooms in a way which made me
wonder where the owner of them was going to sleep.

There was a tradition at St. Cuthbert's, and a tradition seems to me a
very dangerous possession unless carefully watched, that no wine was
complete without a large bowl of milk punch.  Ward had been told this
by Spinney, who took what he called a fatherly interest in St.
Cuthbert's, though it must be an exorbitant kind of interest which
makes a man recommend a lot of freshers, or anybody else, to mix punch
with champagne and port.  Spinney had also provided a terrific amount
of fruit and other things, and if Collier's room had only been big
enough to provide space for all of us and for what we were expected to
eat and drink, I think our wine at the start would have been a most
imposing display.  As it was everybody thought it had been done well
except Collier, who told me to look in his bedroom.  I looked without
seeing the bed, which was so piled up with superfluities that they
nearly touched the ceiling.

"When this orgie is over," Collier said, "every one will have forgotten
that I have to go to bed to-night."

"I will stay and help you," I answered, for I was in the mood when
anything seems to be possible.

We went back into the "sitter," where everybody was already beginning
to eat and, I suppose, to enjoy themselves.  There were not enough
chairs to go round, but there is always the floor, and a man who won't
sit on the floor when there is nothing else to sit upon is no use at an
Oxford wine.  Some men even prefer the floor, but that usually happens
later on in the evening.  Ward began the musical part of the
entertainment by singing "John Peel," his voice was admirable, because
it was loud without being very good, and nobody had the discomfort of
wondering whether they could sing well enough to join in the chorus.  I
like a place where you can fairly bellow without hearing your own
voice.  A man called Webb, who had a mole on his forehead and had been
at Cliborough with me, sang the next song, but it was a sentimental
thing, and had a chorus with some high notes in it, an unsuitable
choice which fell flat, and when it was over Webb sat down by me in
disgust, and helped himself lavishly to punch by way of consolation.  I
told Webb that he had taken Lambert's seat, because Lambert for some
other reason had also been helping himself lavishly to punch, and had
become argumentative and almost quarrelsome.  Webb, however, said that
he was not going to move, and when Lambert returned Dennison had to
play the piano very lustily to drown the discussion which took place.
Lambert was six feet two and angry, Webb was the same height and
obstinate, both of them had been drinking punch, and if Ward had not
intervened by asking Lambert to sing, I believe an unexpected item
would have formed part of our programme.  Lambert sang, or rather tried
to sing, and broke down several times; no one minded and he received
tremendous encouragement to go on, but he fancied himself as a singer
and at last became very indignant and abusive.  He was then given
champagne to soothe him, and sat on the floor with a very sad
expression, and his legs stretched out in front of him.  Collier threw
a fig at him which he caught and threw back, hitting another man on the
cheek, figs began to fly about the room until Ward begged everybody not
to make a horrible rag before we had properly begun.  Collier went
round on his hands and knees collecting figs and calling himself a fool
for spoiling his own carpet.  Most people gave him a shove with their
feet when he came near them, which sent him on to his back and
prevented his collection from being a good one.

Then Dennison began to play "The Gondoliers," which was the popular
comic opera of the day.  Solos were dispensed with, and each chorus was
sung many times.  The wine was evidently a huge success, the noise was
magnificent, and everybody was reasonably peaceful.  No one noticed
that Lambert and Webb were now sitting side by side on the floor,
swearing eternal friendship and requiring champagne in which to pledge
each other, until Webb got hold of the idea that he was Leander trying
to swim the Hellespont, and Collier poured a jug of water over his head
so that he might make the scene more realistic.

One or two men went quietly away, saying that it was getting late.  The
music stopped for a moment, while Dennison walked about the room
seeking refreshment and finding very little.  The noise subsided so
much that a knock was heard, and a scout poked his head into the room
and spoke to Dennison who was standing by the door.  Every one asked
what he wanted, and Dennison assured us that it did not matter, which
we were all inclined to believe with the exception of Ward, who went to
the piano and began the National Anthem.  It was the only tune he could
play, and he had to take infinite pains to get the right notes, so he
was forcibly removed, and Dennison installed in his place.  "The
Gondoliers" and the noise began again, while Ward, protesting that it
was time we went away, was disregarded entirely.  From sheer distaste
for punch and only a very limited taste for wine I had not been seeking
my enjoyment in drinking, but I had smoked far more than was good for
me, and my head felt as large as a pumpkin.  It occurred to me,
however, that if Ward wished our entertainment to close he was sure to
be right, so I pulled over Dennison backwards from the piano.  That
caused a very fair hubbub and did not do much good, since everybody
began to sing what they liked, without music.

Ward went round persuading men to go, until Lambert, Webb, Collier,
Ward, Dennison and I were the only ones remaining.  Collier was heavy
with sleep, but Lambert and Webb, who still sat on the floor with their
backs propped up against a sofa, were full of song.  Dennison sulked in
a corner; he told me afterwards that I had hurt his head.  Ward and I
by violent efforts got Lambert and Webb upon their legs and propped
them up against each other.  They stood singing, "For he's a jolly good
fellow," and looking extraordinarily foolish.  At last we got them to
the door and shoved them out, but unfortunately the Sub-Warden, who had
a habit of being in the wrong place, was standing outside the room, and
Lambert, who most certainly looked upon him as an old friend, put an
arm round him, and hurried him at break-neck speed down the stairs.
Webb followed, and when I got into the quadrangle he was on one side of
the Subby and Lambert on the other.

They were persuading him to dance.  I tried to seize Lambert, while
Ward went for Webb; but as I did so they suddenly released their man,
and instead of grabbing Lambert I got my arm entangled in the Subby's.
I let it go quickly, but he recognized me, and said something about a
disgraceful occurrence.  It would have been giving Lambert and Webb
away to tell him that I was acting the part of rescuer, so I stood
looking at him, while Ward drove the other two men out of the
quadrangle.  As he did not say anything I expressed a hope that he was
not hurt, but it was more from a wish to prove myself sober than from
any anxiety as to his condition that I made the remark.  I thought he
understood this, for he neither answered nor wished me good-night when
he went back to his staircase.  I was afraid he had been considerably
jolted and was not quite himself.  I turned round after watching him
out of sight, and found Murray standing by my side.

"You had better come to bed," he said, and his tone suggested that I
was incapable of looking after myself, so I told him that I was as
sober as a judge.

"I waited up for you," he said.

"To see if you could be of any use, I suppose," I asked ungraciously.

"And when Lambert and Webb began to shout the back quad down, I came
out to see what had happened.  What were you talking to the Subby
about?"

"Our arms got interlocked," I replied, as we walked over to our
staircase.  "The fact is the Subby ought to go to bed in decent time."

"He could hardly be expected to sleep with a wine going on in the rooms
below him."

"I forgot all about that."

"And so apparently did everybody else who was there, though I should
have thought the scout would have warned Collier."

"Dennison managed the whole thing, I said, and you can thank your stars
you can go to bed without the prospect of a row and a thundering
headache."

Then I went into my room and sported my oak, for the rumblings of
Lambert and Webb could still be heard in the quadrangle.




CHAPTER VI

JACK WARD AND DENNISON

The morning following the wine was no morning for me.  Of course I
awoke with a headache, but that was nothing in comparison with a
general feeling that the day was not likely to be a peaceful one.  I
lay awake and thought over matters as well as I could until Clarkson
came in to put my bath.  Then I pretended to be asleep, but out of the
corner of my eye I saw him looking at me and I conceived a great
dislike for him.  He seemed to think I was a curiosity of some kind.
He tidied my room, and having finished he asked if I should be taking
breakfast.  I sat up in bed and inquired why he supposed I did not want
breakfast, and my question, I flatter myself, surprised him
considerably.  I told him to get me twice as much breakfast as usual
and to be quick, but while I was dressing I wondered how I should eat
it, so I went into Murray's room and persuaded him to breakfast with
me.  Murray had already begun to eat, but when I explained to him that
this was a little matter between Clarkson and myself, and that it would
not do for me to be scored off, he agreed to come.  Clarkson, however,
was a difficult man to defeat; he provided enough breakfast for four
men, and though I bustled him as much as I could and was very
dictatorial, I could see that he was quietly amused.  Murray ate for
all he was worth, but the amount of food which Clarkson carried away
for his hungry family was evidence enough to prove who had won the
battle.

Conversation did not play any conspicuous part in that meal, but I told
Murray that if everybody at the wine had been as sensible as Ward we
should have got through without any row.  "My opinion of Ward has
changed," I said more than once, for Murray was not inclined to give
him any credit and he certainly deserved some.

At ten o'clock I went to a lecture, and when I returned I found a note
from the Sub-Warden asking me to call upon him at noon.  It was
precisely what I expected, but the prospects of another row depressed
me.  The morning was dark and rainy, and my room was so dismal that I
stood on the ledge outside my window and leant against the parapet.  It
was neither a comfortable nor a very safe position, but it suited my
mood.  I looked down on the back quadrangle below me and watched for
something interesting to happen.  I had not been up long enough to know
that my wish was not likely to be gratified, nothing exciting ever does
happen in Oxford during the morning, or if it does I was always
unfortunate enough to miss it.

A man in a scholar's gown hurried across the quadrangle, rushed up a
staircase, and came back with a note-book in his hand.  The Warden came
out of his house and stood upon his doorstep as if he was trying to
remember what he wanted to do.  Then he turned round and went into the
house again.  Miss Davenport, the Warden's sister, a lady who was
reported to be talkative and in love, came out and observed the
weather.  Two minutes afterwards she appeared in a mackintosh, which
was thoroughly business-like.  She was most obviously bent on shopping.
Two men, regardless of the rain, strolled out of the front quadrangle
and shouted for Dennison, who did not come to his window.  I told them
that he was probably in bed, and they answered that I should fall over
if I did not look out.  It was all most painfully dull, and I was just
going in when the Subby appeared and went into the Warden's house.  I
could guess the reason for that visit, and waited to see no more.  I
sat down by the fire and tried to think out what I should say to the
Subby, and what he would say to me.  I did not know much about him
except that his name was Webster, and that he was a great authority on
Etruscan pottery, facts which did not help me much.  He also had one of
the finest stamp collections in the world, but I had never collected
anything for more than a week at a time.  I felt that he was a
difficult man to gauge, because he had never been what I considered a
sportsman.  His appearance at any rate was not imposing, and I was
depressed enough to feel thankful for very small mercies.  If dons only
remembered what men feel like after their first wine, they would
scarcely be hard-hearted enough to inflict further penalties upon them.
But it was the vocation of the Subby to keep order in the college, and
some one had told me that rowdy men were his pet abomination.  He
regarded St. Cuthbert's as the intellectual centre of Oxford, and
Oxford as the intellectual centre of the world.  No wonder the poor man
looked serious and seldom smiled, for he must have had a lot to think
about.  He covered up his eyes with enormous spectacles, and the lower
part of his face with a straggling moustache and beard, you got neither
satisfaction nor information from looking at him.

It was nearly twelve o'clock before I saw any of the men who had been
at the wine, and then Ward and Collier came into my rooms.  I was still
sitting by the fire, and Ward, who would have gibed at my gloom under
ordinary conditions, simply told me that I didn't look very cheerful,
and sat down on the edge of the table, which tilted up and nearly
placed him on the floor.  Collier threw himself into the nearest chair,
and pulling a pipe out of his pocket, carefully rubbed the bowl of it,
but showed no anxiety to smoke, and considering that I felt as if I
should never smoke again, I was not surprised.

"I should like to flay Lambert, Webb, and Dennison alive," Collier said
quite solemnly.

"I've got to go to the Subby in ten minutes," I said, and Collier's
face brightened.

"I didn't think you would have to go," Ward remarked; "what an infernal
nuisance, and why has he sent for you?"

"I tried to rescue the stupid man from Lambert and Webb, and got
entangled in his blessed arm.  He was as sick as blazes, and I shall
hear more stuff about being an exhibitioner," I answered.

"The man's a fool," Collier said, "but the biggest ass in the place is
Dennison.  He knew the Subby was out to dinner, and wouldn't be back
till goodness knows when, but he must go on and kick up a row on that
piano after he knew the Subby was in his rooms.  And the beauty of it
is that Dennison hasn't been sent for.  I call it a confounded shame.
We have just been round to see him, and the brute is still in bed as
fit as anything, and thinks it the best joke he has heard for ages.  He
wouldn't see much humour in it if he went and smelt my rooms."

"Who has been sent for?" I asked.

"You, Collier, Lambert, and Webb," Ward replied.

"Not you?"

"I have seen the Subby already.  I met him in the quad and asked if I
might speak to him."

"Was he furious?" I inquired.

"I tried to explain things to him; he was not altogether furious, but
stuck on a sort of injured dignity business which was rather funny."

"It isn't likely a man would want to be danced down-stairs by Lambert
and Webb," Collier said; "I wonder they didn't break his neck, and it
would have been a thundering good job if they had smashed themselves."

I got up and seized my gown, leaving Collier to continue his wishes for
the destruction of Lambert and Webb if he felt inclined.  At any other
time they would have amused me, for Collier was generally difficult to
move in any way, and he was quite funny when his indignation could be
roused.

I am not going to describe my interview with the Subby at any length.
He listened patiently to what I had to say, but if a man came to me and
said that he had caught hold of me by accident I confess that I should
think it a poor sort of story.  I could not tell him that I was trying
to save him from Lambert and Webb, because that would have been
contrary to what I should have expected them to say about me, if the
positions had been reversed.  The Subby ought to have guessed it for
himself and rewarded me, but he had been so hustled that it was perhaps
too much to expect him to guess anything.  My reputation for work
seemed to have been of the worst.  There was no denying that the Subby
and I had been entangled, and it was no use for me to say that it was
his fault.  I spoke of it as a very unfortunate occurrence, and I
assured him most warmly that it should not happen again.  Assurances of
that kind do not, I should say, count for much.  He was so occupied by
the importance of what had passed, that I could not make him see that
the future was also important.  And I did try hard to point this out to
him, I regretted much, I promised more, and I meant everything I said
most honestly.  I had never been so penitent before, but I must at the
same time admit that I had never previously felt quite so unwell.

Perhaps my protestations had some effect, for my sentence was that I
should be gated for three weeks, and I received also what must, when
translated into simple English, have been a warning that unless I
changed the errors of my ways my exhibition would be taken away from
me.  The Subby jawed badly, he was not to be compared with Mr.
Edwardes, and he hesitated and coughed, until once or twice I was
almost inclined to help him out, for I knew what he was going to say
and he fidgeted me.  I was, however, in too great a hole to risk much,
so as soon as he began I remained silent and hoped steadily that he
would either end soon or be interrupted.  He did not know how to begin
or when to finish, and if Collier had not knocked at the door and come
into the room, it seemed to me that nothing but the pangs of hunger
would have warned him that he had said enough.

I have never seen a more welcome arrival than Collier's, because I had
really been with the Subby a very long time, and to stand with an
attentive expression for ten minutes at a stretch and listen to the
usual remarks is in its way quite a feat.  I found Ward waiting for me
in the front quad, and he asked at once what had happened to me.

"Gated for three weeks," I answered; "I suppose I ought to consider
myself lucky, he might have sent me down."

"It knocks all your fun on the head," he said, "being in by nine
o'clock every night is average rot."

"It won't matter to me, I am going to settle down and read for a first
in Mods," and I turned into the common room and picked up _The
Sportsman_.  There were no other men in the room, and Ward stood in
front of the fire and kept looking at me as if he wanted to say
something and could not manage to begin.  I read the names of the
'Varsity XV. chosen to play that afternoon against Richmond, and saw
that Foster was still among them.

"Fred Foster's going to get his blue," I said.

"Who the deuce wants to get a blue?" Ward replied.

"Well, it's better than getting into rows, anyway," I retorted.

"You seem to have taken this thing very quietly," he said, "don't you
see that your being dropped on is a most wretched swindle.  Lambert and
Webb are only gated for three weeks."

"It doesn't make a tuppenny-ha'penny bit of difference to me what has
happened to them.  If they had been gated for two years it wouldn't
give me any satisfaction."

"But they had been mixing all kinds of drink."

"And the Subby thinks I had," I said.

"But you hadn't."

"No, but that doesn't make any difference.  The Subby may be a fair
ass, but I caught hold of him, and I must be a bigger fool than he is.
It's the last time I ever try to rescue a don."

Two senior men, Bagshaw and Crane came into the room and overheard my
last remark, so I had to tell them the whole thing over again.  Both of
them laughed tremendously, but Crane, who was captain of the college
cricket eleven, and President of the Mohocks, which was the
inappropriate name of the St. Cuthbert's wine club, seemed to be more
amused at the solemn way I told the story, while Bagshaw said he would
have given anything to have seen the Subby rushing down-stairs.  They
laughed loudly, and as soon as I could escape I went back to my rooms,
leaving Jack Ward to talk to them.

For once I wanted to be by myself, but there was no shaking off Ward
that morning, and he turned up again in about ten minutes and said that
he had told his scout to bring his lunch round to my rooms.  I had
struggled nobly with breakfast, but I hated the suggestion of more food
and told him he had better go and eat somewhere else.  My head ached
abominably, and I wanted to sit by the fire and go to sleep.  Ward,
however, decided that I wanted cheering up, though how he was likely to
enliven me by eating when I had no appetite he did not tell me.  As a
matter of fact cheering me up was only an excuse, what he really wanted
to do was to give me the explanation which he thought I must be
expecting.  If he had known me better he would not have expected me to
wait for anything, had I imagined any explanation was necessary I
should have asked him for it at once.  But I was not taking any
interest in explanations, my mouth felt like a cinder, and when some
man had met me in the quad and told me I looked "precious cheap," which
is an expression I detest, I had not the energy to retaliate.

Ward, having eaten his luncheon and gulped down a most horrible
quantity of beer, lit a cigarette, and sat down by the fire.

"You must think me a most awful brute for having got out of this row,"
he began.  I told him that if he felt as I did, he would think
everybody in the world was a brute.

"Well, you see," he went on, "I got the thing up and the Subby didn't
send for me."

"It was Dennison's fault," I said, for I saw no good in dividing the
blame, "and if a man can't take his luck in these things he is no use
to anybody.  My luck's always vile, but that doesn't matter to any one
except me, and I am used to it."

He took no notice of what I said, and continued, "So I told the Subby
it was my fault, but when I saw him I thought only Collier, Webb and
Lambert had been nailed."

I roused myself and looked at Ward, who was staring into the fire.

"You are a fool," I stated, but I didn't mean it.

"I had to do it or I should have felt awful," he said, and then he
jumped up and banged round the room, tossing things about and failing
to catch them.

He stood in a new light, and it took me some time to digest what he had
told me.  Of all the men I had met since coming to Oxford I should have
said that Jack Ward was the one who would watch his own interests most
closely, and he had upset all my opinions by walking into a quite
unnecessary row.

"Why did you do it?" I asked him, and I added, "it isn't as if you
could do anybody else any good," for it is at first very perplexing to
find a man doing exactly the reverse of what you expect.

"I have told you why I did it, I should have felt so confoundedly mean
if I hadn't.  But while I was with the Subby I wish I had known that he
had nailed you as well, because I might have told him that you hate
drinking.  A don seems to me to have the fixed idea that freshers
naturally drink too much, at least that was the impression the Subby
gave me."

"What happened to you?"

"I'm gated for a fortnight, and he talked a lot of tommy-rot."

"Well, I think it is most frightfully decent of you," I said.

"Oh, shut up," Ward answered, "I can't stand that.  I have never done
anything of the kind before and shan't again.  I simply couldn't have
faced you men if I hadn't owned up, and that ends it."

At that moment Dennison walked in wearing an enormous overcoat and a
Wellingham scarf round his neck, he looked as beautifully pink as ever,
and I hated the sight of him.

"This is such a blighted day that I am going to watch a footer match,"
he said, "it amuses me to see thirty people tumbling about in the mud,
and we can go and play pool at Wright's when we have had enough, if you
will come."

I did not intend to tell Dennison that I was ill, so I said I would go
if Ward would come with us, and as soon as we got into the Broad and
the rain fairly beat upon us, I began to feel much better and more
capable of being disagreeable to Dennison.  I was in the state of mind
which makes one anxious to be unpleasant, the sort of mood in which
horrid people abuse servants or try to kick animals, and I was glad to
have Dennison, who deserved every rudeness imaginable, at my disposal.
But the worst of feeling so thoroughly disagreeable is that you are
ashamed of yourself so quickly.  I am either violently angry or not
angry at all, and it is the people who are good at sulks and call them
dignity who get their own way in this world.  I once tried to be
dignified at home, and I am not inclined to repeat the experiment; my
father told me not to be a fool, my sister walked about as if wrestling
with suppressed laughter, and my mother offered me various medicines.
Rudeness is my _rôle_, its intention is not so easily mistaken.

So I hung on to Dennison very earnestly, and though Ward did all he
knew to keep the peace, I had managed before we reached the Parks, to
convince both of them that our walk was a mistake.

We went to the far end of the ground where very few spectators were
standing, for an Oxford crowd always collect behind the goal of the
visiting side, hoping magnificently that by those means they will see
most of the game.  It is very noble of them, but they are sometimes
disappointed, and this happened to be one of the days on which those
who were behind the 'Varsity goal-posts saw a good deal more than they
wanted.  For the day was made for the Richmond XV., who were big, bulky
men, very heavy in the scrimmage, and the three-quarter backs on both
sides spent most of their time trying to keep warm.  Dennison said he
was bored to death, and I told him Richmond never were any good outside
the scrum and were playing a jolly good game.  He answered that he was
not a Football Encyclopaedia, and I assured him that he never could be
anything half so useful.  We kept up this kind of conversation for some
time, while Ward stamped his feet and asked us to stop.

"How long have you been gated for?" I asked Dennison suddenly,
springing the question upon him as had been the habit of one master at
Cliborough when he was going to ask me something very embarrassing.
Ward hit me in the ribs with his elbow, and Dennison pretended not to
hear, so I moved a little further from Ward and repeated my question.
"The Subby didn't send for me," he replied; "I wasn't caught and I made
no row to speak of."

"Oh well, if you like to get out of the whole thing it has nothing to
do with me," I said, and the thought suddenly struck me that if I
really goaded Dennison into giving up his name I should feel a brute
for the rest of my existence.  What I wanted to do was to prove that
Ward was worth about ten of him, but it is very uphill work trying to
convince a man that he is only a fraction of the fellow he thinks
himself, I have often seen people going sorrowfully away from tasks of
that kind.

"There is no question of getting out of it," Dennison said quite
calmly, "because I have never been in it."

"No question at all," Ward put in.

"At any rate you arranged it," I retorted.

"And the very deuce of a job it was," he replied.

"Of course it was," Ward said, and though I imagined I was out of
elbow-shot I got another blow which did nothing to improve my temper.

"It's like this," I began, "Ward went to the Subby and said----"  But
Ward burst in with, "By Jove, that is about the tenth time that man
Foster has fallen on the ball, and now I believe he's hurt."

For quite two minutes Fred lay on the ground, and I forgot all about
Dennison and the exasperating mood I was in.  At last he got up and
moved about in a dazed condition, while some people clapped and others,
more enthusiastic than anxious, began to shout, "Now then, 'Varsity."
The game went on again, but my desire to be nasty had vanished, and I
found that I had moved away from Ward and Dennison.  When I returned to
them I found that my interrupted remark had created a greater
disturbance than I had expected.  Dennison was fuming like anything,
and so far was he from thinking that Ward and I had a grievance against
him that he was treating himself as a thoroughly injured man.

"It is a pretty low down game," he was saying to Ward, when I came
back, "for you to go and give your name up to the Subby and tell me
nothing about it.  What do you think everybody will be saying about me?
Marten has been talking to me as if I was a pick-pocket, while you were
standing there and thinking yourself a sort of tin hero.  If you want
to know what I think you are, my opinion is that you're a confounded
fool, but since you have done this I must go and see the Subby when I
get back to college."

This is only an expurgated copy of what Dennison said, as a matter of
fact he called Ward and me much worse names than a pick-pocket, and
qualified them with adjectives too violent to be recorded.

I looked blankly at Ward, who had his head down and looked thoroughly
ashamed of himself.

"It is one of the few times in my life," he said, "when I have tried to
do the right thing, and it seems to have been all wrong."

There was only one line to take, and I started on it at once.  "That's
rot," I began, "because you suggested the whole thing, and if you felt
like owning up to it no one else has any right to swear at you.
Dennison is altogether different, and if he goes to the Subby everybody
else will have to go.  We are like a lot of school-boys."

I thought my last remark a sound one, for Dennison pretended to despise
boys, because he said they always got up so late for morning school
that they had not time to wash properly.  There was always a faint
smell of scent about Dennison, which did not make me take much notice
of his opinion about school-boys.

I cannot even now tell whether he was really angry or whether he was
just pretending a rage to put us into a hole.  I did find out
afterwards that he knew all the time that Ward had given up his name,
so if he pretended one thing I do not see why he should not have
pretended another.  But the result was the same whether he was shamming
or not.  Ward and I implored him not to go to the Subby, for quite ten
minutes during that damp and shivery afternoon we besought him to leave
things as they were.  And at last with great reluctance he gave way,
and to please us he said that he would forgive Ward for having done
rather a mean thing, and he pardoned me for having been so rude.  Of
course we were most properly taken in, but that was the fate of most
men who had much to do with Dennison, and I was so glad to be at peace
once more that it did not occur to me then that Ward and I were two
colossal idiots.

I went round to see Foster after the match, but found that he was going
to dine early with the Richmond team, so he did not tell me anything
except that he had got a splitting headache.  Each time I had been to
see him for the last fortnight he had either been out, just going out,
or had a room full of men with him.  Whenever he had come to see me the
same kind of things had happened, so we had not managed to have one
respectable talk together.  I determined that this was most
unsatisfactory, so after dinner I wrote him a note, asking him to go
for a walk with me on the following day, and then I went to see Jack
Ward.  My opinion of him had been changing all day, and as I went to
his room I felt that whatever Foster and Murray said about him, he was
at bottom a splendid sort.  Roulette was going on in his rooms, and the
usual crowd were playing.  Ward was banker, and he did not even ask me
to play, but roulette is a very difficult game to watch without
playing, and after black had come up six times consecutively, I thought
it must be red's turn.  It was not, however, and five times I lost my
money; then I had sense enough to stop for a bit until the numbers
began to fascinate me, and I picked nineteen, being my age.  A lot of
people may say I was old enough to know better, but it is so easy to
make remarks of that kind, and until they find something a little less
stale, they will never do any good.  I stood by the table at first, and
then sat down and made up my mind to get my money back.  I tried
everything in turn, but luck was dead against me, and Ward once or
twice said he wished I would win something.  In the end I lost nearly
six pounds, and went back to my rooms a sorrowful man.  Before I went
into my bedder I looked at my cheque-book, and it gave me no
satisfaction.  I had borrowed four pounds from Ward, and I wrote him a
cheque for the amount, and laying it on the table beside me, I sat
thinking.  My door was wide open, and I must have been nearly asleep,
for I did not see any one come into my room, and a hand falling on my
shoulder surprised me.  I looked up and saw Ward standing by my side.

"Sorry to wake you up," he said, "but I felt like coming to see you."
He saw the cheque made out to him, and taking it from the table he tore
it into bits.

"You have wasted a penny," I said, for I could not help guessing what
he meant.

"I don't want to take your money," he replied, "and for heaven's sake
don't make me."

He was most desperately in earnest, but the mere fact that I should
have taken his without a thought of returning it, settled the little
argument which followed.

"I can't help gambling," he said, "but I wish to goodness you wouldn't."

"But only a few days ago you sneered at me for not backing a horse," I
retorted, for though it was very good of him, I felt he was treating me
like an infant.

"I never asked you to," he said, "and I should like to have one friend
who doesn't bet or play cards or anything."

"There's Collier," I suggested.

"He is different," Ward answered, and I suppose I wanted him to say
something like that.

We talked for an hour, at least Ward talked and I listened, but during
the years to come I always remembered what he said about himself on
that night.




CHAPTER VII

THE INN AT SAMPFORD

I do not suppose that my waking thoughts could be called valuable, for
my habit is to lie in bed and wonder vaguely what time it is, and if
you start the day in that way and write it solemnly on paper you may
just as well keep a diary of what you had for luncheon and where you
had tea and all that kind of twaddle, which people write because
blotting paper is provided on the opposite page.  But on the morning
following my conversation with Ward I woke up with the sort of feeling
which ought to have been of value to some one, because it was such a
mixture that I could not stay in bed.  It was the kind of sensation
with which I wake when I am going to cross the Channel, only it did not
make me rush to my window to see how much wind there was.  Nothing I
have been told is easier in this life than to make a mountain out of a
molehill, but in my short experience it is the wretched little
molehills which upset me and not the great big things which sweep me
away with them.  I would rather have to fight one mountain than two
molehills any day, you get so much more sympathy after the struggle.
But I must admit that it is not always easy to tell when people will
sympathize with you, for I remember that my brother was once in a
railway accident, and though he got nothing more than a slight jolt he
was considered a hero for a long time, while, a few days later, I sat
upon a pin and hurt myself quite badly, but was told by my nurse not to
be silly.

During that morning I had a most disagreeable experience.  For the
first time in my life I was conscious that I had done something for
which there was not the least shadow of an excuse, and I found myself
trying to guess what my feelings would have been had I been a winner
instead of a loser at roulette.  There is nothing very profitable in
trying to imagine what would have happened if things had turned out
differently, at the best it is a waste of time, but all the same it is
a game which I, and others I know, play very often.  I came to the
conclusion that had I won I should have been rather pleased with
myself, it is so easy to excuse oneself for winning money, while losing
it seems to be foolishly immoral.  I made no resolutions for the
future, because on the few occasions I have tried to fortify myself in
that way, something has occurred to upset me, and Mr. Sandyman, who was
my housemaster at Cliborough and very wise, told me once that the
weaker the man the more frequent his resolutions.  He did not believe
so much in pledges and promises as in a boy's honour; if a boy had not
a sense of honour no promise on earth could be of any real use to him.

I wished that I had Mr. Sandyman to advise me, but if I had been able
to go to him I do not suppose I should have gone, for although I was
ashamed of myself, I did not think that I had committed any great
offence.  I had just been a fool, and with that decision from which,
odd as it may seem, I derived great satisfaction, I passed on to the
next thing which was bothering me.

I think it was Solomon who said there was safety in a multitude of
counsellors, and I wonder what he would have said about a multitude of
friends, some of whom could not bear the sight of the others.  Ward,
hated Murray, and Foster hated Ward, Collier said he hated Dennison,
and Dennison said Collier looked more like a pig than a human being.
Lambert confided to me that there was hardly a man at St. Cuthbert's
whom he would care to introduce to his sister, but as he said the same
thing to Ward, Dennison and Collier, leaving each of them with the
impression that he was the one man who was considered worthy of an
introduction, it was no use to take any notice of Lambert.  I condoled
with him on having such a remarkably exclusive sister, but he did not
take my sympathy in the proper spirit.

My friends were most certainly getting out of hand.  In St. Cuthbert's,
Murray was the most sensible of the lot, because he enjoyed himself in
a steady sort of way, saw the humorous side of everything and went to
bed in decent time.  I knew just where I was with Murray, he was always
glad to see me in his rooms, and he kept his opinions about Ward and
Dennison to himself, unless I simply pumped them out of him.  No one
who did not object to fat men because they were fat could help liking
Collier, he was so comfortable and peaceful, and Lambert, with his
magnificent opinion of himself, which he expressed frequently in a
half-comical, half-serious fashion, was to me more like a man on the
stage than an ordinary undergraduate.  From morning to night Lambert
was self-conscious, even at the wine, when he was sitting on the floor
with Webb, he did not forget to shoot down his cuffs.  I have already
said that Dennison played the piano, he was also considered a wit, and
fired off things which Lambert said were epigrams, but Collier, who was
full of curious information, declared that most of them were adapted
from the Book of Proverbs.  However that may be, Dennison had a
reputation as a conversationalist, which meant that he wanted to talk
all the time.  He bored me terribly.

But the man who really worried me was Ward.  At first I had thought
that he merely wanted to amuse himself, and did not care what he did as
long as he got some fun out of it.  He did not seem to trouble what men
he knew if they were useful to him, and having come to that conclusion
about him, I felt that as far as he and I were concerned there was
nothing else to bother about.  It was not any wonder to me that Foster,
who only knew him slightly, disliked him most vigorously, but when Ward
came, asking me to take my money back and showing all the best side of
his nature, he gave me more to think about than I wanted.  An entirely
different man had appeared, acknowledging himself a gambler, and not
pretending to be sorry--for which I liked him--but with qualities which
I had never suspected.

So occupied was I in wondering how I could persuade Foster to change
his opinion of Ward that I forgot the day was Sunday, and that I had
intended to go to morning chapel and write some letters at the Union.
It was nearly twelve o'clock when Foster came into my rooms and said he
had been waiting for me at Oriel until he was tired of doing nothing.
He seemed to be rather angry, but soon cooled down when he saw me
hurrying up to get ready, and even proposed that we should give up our
walk and just lounge round the Parks.  But I did not feel as if
lounging would do for me, and I told him that I knew a splendid little
inn about six miles off, where we could get luncheon.  He did not need
much persuasion, and we went down Brasenose lane and the High as if we
had never lounged in our lives.  But before we got to the turning to
Iffley we had begun to walk at a speed which did not altogether prevent
conversation.

I think I must have been setting the pace, because I had a great deal
to say to Fred, and did not know exactly how to begin.  He was the
greatest friend I had, and I wanted him to like Ward, but I knew that
when once he had made up his mind about people he very seldom changed
it.  He had liked nearly everybody at Cliborough, but when he disliked
anybody there was something rather huge in the way he had nothing to do
with them.  And he had a habit, which would have annoyed me in any one
else, of being nearly always right.  It was such a complete change for
him to come from Cliborough, where he was easily the most important boy
in the school, to Oxford, where he was practically nobody at all, that
I wondered how he would like it.  So many freshers who have been
important at school think they can bring their importance with them,
but they make the very greatest mistake.  A fresher who thinks a lot of
himself, and lets other men know that he does, is not likely to do
anything but get in his own way.  Foster never had put on any side, but
he had been accustomed to manage things at Cliborough, and I asked him
how he liked being nobody again, as he had been when he first went to
school.

He did not answer me at once, and I had a suspicion that he did not
care about the change, but I was wrong.

"I like it," he said at last; "there is no bother and fuss, and I like
beginning again and being sworn at when I miss the ball.  I want to get
my blue most awfully, but I don't suppose I have got the ghost of a
chance; I never pass at the right time, and everybody here seems to me
to be always off-side."

I assured him that he must have a chance for his blue or he would not
have played so often.

"They look more and more sick with me every time," he answered, "and
each match I play in I expect to be the last.  The only thing which
riles me is that you never know what they think about you, and the
fellow who writes the Oxford notes for _The Globe_ said last week that
the 'Varsity XV. must be badly off if they could not find a better
three-quarter than the Cliborough fresher, or some rot of that kind.
All the men at Oriel who know about things are either cricket or soccer
blues, so I don't hear much about rugger there, though every one is
nice enough and wants me to get into the XV."

"Doesn't Adamson ever speak to you?" I asked, for he was captain of the
'Varsity XV.

"Yes, but it is generally to tell me not to do something.  He is an
'internatter,' you see, and I don't think he ever forgets it, he seems
to me to stick on more side than any one I have ever met.  Most of the
men are all right, but Adamson is a first-class bounder."

"He swore at me pretty freely in the Freshers' match," I said.

"I heard him," Foster returned, "but although you played abominably
then, you are really much better than Sykes of Merton, who has been
playing back for the 'Varsity lately.  He does the most awful things."

"He can't be worse than I am.  I now play three-quarters and am
thinking of chucking the game altogether.  It is such a horrid grind."

"Don't be an idiot, they are bound to spot you here sooner or later,"
Foster said, but he knew as well as I did that I could never stop
playing any game just because it was too much trouble.

"I have made an idiot of myself, already," I replied; and then I told
him all that had been happening at St. Cuthbert's during the last few
days.  I made out myself a bigger fool than I really had been, because
I wanted to show him that Ward was a much better fellow than he thought.

"You have a real gift for getting into rows," he said, when I had
finished; "you seem to have got all the dons on your track already."

"That doesn't worry me," I answered.  "I have only got to work and keep
quiet, and the Subby will think I am as like a machine as he is."

"And you have made up your mind to work?"

"I mean to do a reasonable amount," I replied cautiously.

"It is most awfully difficult to work.  I have done precious little,
and I went fast asleep at a lecture the other morning."

"What was it about?"

"Logic."

"Oh, that's nothing," I assured him.  "I started cutting my logic
lectures altogether until I got dropped on.  I didn't understand a word
the man was saying.  There is heaps of time to work, Mods are nearly a
year and a half off.  What do you think of Ward, after the thing that
happened last night?"

I had to plunge right at it, for Foster had not said a word after I had
told him Ward wanted to give me back my money.

"Don't let us talk about Ward," Foster answered, "you know I don't like
him."

"I knew you didn't like him," I corrected, for I thought that what I
had said ought to make a difference.

"You seem to be egging me on to swear at you, so that you may laugh."

"Oh, skittles," I exclaimed.

"You know perfectly well that you can't afford to gamble."

"That has nothing to do with it, because I am not going to gamble, Jack
Ward himself asked me not to play roulette."

"But Ward belongs to a gambling set----"

"I suppose he can please himself about that," I retorted, and it was
not altogether wise of me.

"And you will always be hearing racing 'shop,' and how much somebody
won, nobody ever talks about their losses until they are stone-broke."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Your father told me," was the answer, and instead of having got him
into a hole I was badly scored off.

"Everybody has something nasty in him somewhere, Balzac said so, and he
was the sort of chap who knew; if we were all perfect this wouldn't be
earth," I said.

"By Jove, you have been thinking a lot," Foster replied, and he stood
still in the road and laughed until I was very annoyed, for I have
heard other people make remarks of that kind without any one else
smiling.

"It is no use talking seriously to you," I said.

"Platitudes are not your line," he answered, and we were as far off
settling about Ward as ever.  I returned, however, to the main question
with energy, for it seemed to me to be most important that these two
men should not hate each other, if they were to be my friends.  The
gods did not endow me with tact, but they gave me so much courage that
in a short time I can make any situation either very much better or
very much worse.  My mother once took in a paper which contained a Tact
Problem every week, and she asked my sister and me to write down
solutions and see if they were right; mine were wrong five times
consecutively, so I gave up that competition, though in a negative sort
of way I should have been of assistance to any competitor.  I remember
one of these wonderful problems was, 'At an evening party A tells B
that C looks like a criminal.  Shortly afterwards A finds out that C is
B's husband, what ought A to do?'  I said A ought to go and tell B that
he liked criminals; but the answer was, 'A should do nothing.'  I think
it was that problem which persuaded me that I was wasting my time, I
thought it too stupid for words.

I explained to Foster how difficult it would be for me if he would not
change his opinion of Ward, and I talked so much that he said I had
persuaded him that Ward was all right, but I had a kind of feeling that
he said it for the sake of peace.  The day was very warm for November,
and at the end of six miles Foster was not so inclined to resist my
avalanche of words as he was when we left Oxford.  But I knew that
having once said he would try to be friends with Ward, I could rely
upon him.  What he could not understand was the reason why I was so
anxious for him to try, why in short I liked Ward, but I could not
explain that; for if you once start explaining why you are friends with
a man it seems to me to be half-way towards making excuses for
yourself, and should you begin doing that you had better not have any
friends, since those who know you the best will like you the least.  I
have a faculty for liking a large number of people, but if I had to
give reasons why I liked most of them I should be terribly puzzled.
You cannot, it seems to me, reduce friendship to a formula, or if you
can you would knock all the fun out of it.

This was my second visit to the little inn at Sampford, and as soon as
we got there I interviewed the landlord and engaged the sitting-room on
the ground floor.  Foster threw himself upon the sofa and picked up the
book in which visitors write their names and exercise their humour, but
I was so hot that I opened the French windows which led into the garden
and went out.  Only a fortnight before the garden had been full enough
of flowers to satisfy me, but the wind and rain had beaten down
everything, and in spite of the sun it looked bare and desolate.  I
walked across the lawn to a little arbour and surprised two belated
beanfeasters and their ladies.  In appearance the men were aggressive,
their hats were on the backs of their heads, and enormous
chrysanthemums bulged from their buttonholes, and must, I should think,
have been a source of constant irritation to their chins.  The girls
giggled when they saw me, and one of the men asked me what I wanted.  I
told him I was looking for a comfortable place in which to sit down and
that he seemed to have found it first.  The girls giggled again and the
men swore; it was a most commonplace scene.  I went back across the
lawn and was just going to join Foster, when I heard a tremendous burst
of laughter from the room above ours.  There was only one man who could
laugh like that and he was Jack Ward.  At that moment I wished him
anywhere, for I guessed quite rightly that he had driven over to
Sampford with some men whose luncheon would not consist of cold beef
and beer.

I hoped to goodness we should get away without Foster seeing them, so I
began to eat without saying anything, except that there was a most vile
noise up-stairs.  I need not have troubled to say so much since Foster
was not deaf.  I ate my luncheon hurriedly and gulped down my beer so
fast that something went wrong with my wind-pipe.  To the accompaniment
of my coughs and peals of laughter from the room above, Fred sat eating
with a comical expression of misery upon his face.

"Rowdy brutes," he said, and pointed to the ceiling.

I tried to answer, but failed.

"I should think they will get kicked out in a minute," he continued.
"Aren't you going to have any pickles?"

"The room's so horribly stuffy," I managed to say; "I vote we go when
you are ready."

"We've only just come.  I haven't nearly done yet, and I am going to
have a smoke when I've finished."

I resigned myself to the situation and seized the pickles; there was
only one left and that was an onion.  The noise increased and a huge
piece of bread fell on the lawn in front of our window.

"Bloods always throw bread at each other, don't they?" he asked.

"I don't suppose they are any worse than anybody else," I answered;
"there is not much harm in a bread pellet."

"That thing out there is half a loaf," he returned, "and at any rate
they make a fairly bad row," which were statements I could not deny.

We heard a man go heavily up-stairs and knock at the door.  He was
received with clamorous approval, but after a little conversation the
noise ceased and there was a most refreshing calm.  I had hopes that
nothing more was going to happen, so I sat down by the fire and lit a
cigarette.  For ten minutes Fred and I were not interrupted, but I had
already recognized the voices of Bunny Langham and Dennison, and I
might have guessed that there was not likely to be much peace.  Our
windows were wide open, and presently I began to hear a kind of choked
laughter going on at the window above.  What was happening I did not
know, but I suspected that some fresh game had begun and I wanted very
much to know what it was.  I did not, however, wish them to see me nor
was I anxious for Fred to see them, so I suggested that we should start
back to Oxford.  Fred agreed to this, and getting up from his chair he
walked out into the garden.  No sooner was he on the lawn than I saw
him jump like a hare and put his hand up to his neck.  At the same
moment the beanfeasters rushed out of their arbour and fairly went for
him.  While this happened I was standing at the window wondering how I
could persuade him to come back into the room, but as soon as I saw
these two aggressive-looking men, not to mention their ladies, talking
to him in most bellicose language, I went out.  One of them at once
caught hold of me by the coat and spoke so fast and strangely that I
did not altogether understand what he was saying.  He mentioned the
name of Susan a great many times, and when he had finished tugging at
my coat I asked him if there was anything the matter with the lady.

"Look at 'er," he said; "just look at 'er.  I'm a respectable married
man, married, last Thursday as ever was, and I'll 'ave compensation for
this as sure as my name's Tom 'Arrison."

I did not want to hear any more of his autobiography, so I looked at
the lady pointed out as Susan.  I couldn't see much of her face because
she had her hand over it, but I did not think they were an ill-assorted
couple.

"Has she been stung by a wasp?" I asked.  "A blue-bag----"

"Look 'ere," the man interrupted and caught me again by the coat, "none
of your bloomin' innocence.  You spied us out in that 'ere arbour, and
'ave been peppering us with peas for the last ever so long, and one of
you 'as 'it Susan sock in the eye.  Enough to make 'er an object for a
fortnight, and us newly married.  Where, I should like to know, do I
come in?" and I had great difficulty in wriggling his hand away from my
coat.  The man made me angry, and I told him I hadn't the least notion
where he came in, but if he thought we were big enough babies to use
peashooters he was jolly well mistaken.  I looked round at Foster and
found that he was being talked at by the remaining couple, who also
looked as if they were newly married.  I heard the word Bella, and saw
the lady so called endeavouring to draw Foster's attention to a mark on
her arm.  Susan stood in the middle of the lawn and wept; I felt quite
sorry for her, but the other three were really an intolerable nuisance.
Tom Harrison declared it was worth two pounds any day, that Susan's
beauty was spoilt, and that everybody would say they had been fighting
already.  I smiled when he said "already," and for a moment I thought
he was going to hit me.  He thought better of it, however, and I
concluded that if he had intended to fight he would have begun then, so
I turned my back upon him and looked at the window up-stairs.  There
was not a sound coming from the room, and as I turned again to attend
to Harrison I heard hoots of laughter, and a dog-cart passed along the
road which skirted the garden.  As it went by I saw Jack Ward stand up
on the back of the cart and look over the hedge.  When he saw what was
happening he leant forward to speak to Bunny Langham, who was driving,
and as they passed out of sight I thought that he was trying to get
hold of the reins.

The men went on talking; Susan wept steadily, and Bella said her arm
was visibly swelling, and that she must have been hit by something far
more dangerous than a pea.  They were not by any means interesting and
I was glad to see the landlord coming from the house to join us.  He
created the diversion of which we were badly in need, and Tom Harrison
became more eloquent than ever.  But the landlord, as soon as he could
make himself heard, was most thoroughly on the side of peace; he
flourished his arms and declared, until I was weary, that a mistake had
been made.  "These are not the gentlemen who shot at you.  Do they look
like gentlemen who would use pea-shooters?"  I did not know what a man
ought to look like who would not use a peashooter, but I did my best.

"These are two nice quiet gentlemen," he went on; "took their food
quite quiet."

"And haven't paid for it yet," I interrupted; "how much is it?"

"That will be a matter of half-a-crown each," he said, and I paid him.

In the meantime Bella, who ought to have been watched, had walked into
our sitting-room and found the visitors' book.  She returned
triumphantly.  "I know one of their names, and that will be a deal more
use than standing jawing here," she shouted.

I looked at Foster inquiringly.  "I bought a blessed fountain pen
yesterday and wanted to see if the thing would work," he explained; "it
seems to have worked too well."

"'F. L. Foster, Oriel College, Oxford,' in writing as easy to read as
the newspaper.  Which of you two is it that writes just like me?"

Foster solemnly took off his hat.

"Then you, I guess, will 'ear more of this," Tom Harrison declared;
"for the tale that it ain't you is a little too 'ot for us, isn't it?"

Susan stopped wiping her eyes and joined in a chorus of assent.

"I don't know what you expect to get," Foster said.

"You needn't bother about that.  We know," Tom Harrison replied.

After a little more conversation we started on our way back to Oxford,
and as we left the garden I heard Tom Harrison say, "Two beers and two
bottles of stout as quick as we can 'ave em; my throat's like a
limekiln."  And considering the amount he had said at the top of his
voice, I should think it was very likely true.




CHAPTER VIII

LUNCHEON WITH THE WARDEN

Our walk was certainly not a success, in fact I was very sick of it
before we reached Oxford, because I am no good at walking and cannot
stride along at a steady pace.  And it also involved me in what, if
real diplomatists will pardon me, I will call diplomacy, in which art
or craft, or whatever the right name of it may be, I am most unskilled.
I was on the point of telling Fred that I knew the party of peashooters
when he, being in a much happier state of mind than he had been in the
morning, began to talk about Jack Ward, and to say that I was very
likely right about him, and that he was sure to be a nice kind of man
when one got to know him.  Hearing this made me put off what I was
going to say, and when I begin to postpone anything I am lost.  Second
thoughts with me nearly always lead to trouble, however good they may
be for other people.  I think I must have taken a fatherly interest in
Ward, for what else it could have been which made me wish to shield him
I do not know.  But I had seen him stand up in the dog-cart, and I
thought he had recognized me and had tried to make Langham turn back,
so I determined not to tell Fred anything until I had found out what
really happened.  But I felt very uncomfortable, for I do hate keeping
things dark, and when he went on to say that the pea-shooting people
must have been unutterable bounders to go away and leave us in the
lurch, I was again on the point of telling him that Ward was one of
them, only he suddenly began to sing, which gave me time to think, and
frightened two children who came round a corner of the road.  We were
quite close to Broadmoor lunatic asylum at that moment, and Fred
walking along with his hat in his hand might easily have been mistaken
for some one else.  His mood had become most cheerful, and he said that
he did not suppose Tom Harrison would ever be heard of again, and that
the whole thing had been rather fun; but he added that he should like
to tell the men who had been in the room above us what he thought of
them.  He also told me that he had never known me so quiet, and when I
continued to be silent he asked me if I was well, which annoyed me, for
I am often asked that question when I do not happen to be talking, and
in a lurking sort of way there seems to me to be something insulting
about it.  I answered that I was thinking, which was quite true, but he
only laughed and said I must have changed a lot lately.  I was quite
tired of him before we separated in the High, and he was angry because
I would not go to Oriel and have tea, but I felt that the day so far
had been a hopeless failure, and I wanted to see Jack Ward.

When I got back to my rooms at St. Cuthbert's my fire was nearly out
and I saw two notes lying on the table, but could not find any matches
to light my lamp.  I felt more gloomy than ever, and I was already
feeling as if I had treated Fred most unfairly.  I might say that my
end was all right, or I might declare that I meant well, which is
another way of saying that I was a fool, and of the two I think the
latter is the more correct.

Murray had borrowed my matches and I spoke severely to him without
producing any effect except amusement; whether I was thinking or angry
the result seemed to be always the same--laughter, silly, idiotic
chuckles.  I was in a very fair rage before I got my lamp to light, and
I upset a large box of matches on the floor.  Murray came and helped to
pick them up, and he bumped my nose with his head.  I felt sure that it
was his fault and told him so, and he said I could jolly well pick up
my own matches; so I apologized, for though my nose hurt there were a
lot of matches still on the floor, and it was no use making my nose out
worse than it was to spite my face.

After that I read my notes, and they were not the usual invitations to
breakfast, of which I had already received enough.  The first was to
ask me to play for the twenty against the Rugger XV. in the Parks on
the following Tuesday, and the second was from Miss Davenport to ask me
to luncheon with the Warden on the same day.  These notes were more or
less commands, but I neither felt very keen on playing for the XX. nor
on lunching with the Warden.

"I shall be glad when Tuesday is over," I said to Murray; "I have to
lunch with the Warden."

"I lunched there last Tuesday," he returned.

"What was it like?"

"Like no meal I have ever been at before.  Miss Davenport talked all
the time and the Warden said precious little, but I was too afraid to
listen to her for fear he might ask me something and I should not catch
what he said.  Apart from saying 'yes' and 'no' and 'please' and 'thank
you,' he only spoke once, and then it was the most extraordinarily long
sentence I have ever heard.  It began about pork, which Miss Davenport
said was more wholesome than people imagined, it went on about the
Jews, and finished up with a tale about Nero.  He chuckled over his
tale, but I didn't see much point in it, and Miss Davenport looked as
if she had heard it before."

"I know that tale, it's a chestnut; I can't remember it, but Nero
behaved like a beast to a lot of Jews who came to see him in Rome.  The
Warden oughtn't to tell old tales and then chuckle over them; besides,
Nero was a brute."

"I don't think that would make any difference to the Warden.  He
terrifies me; I daren't say anything because I am sure he would
remember that it was a stupid thing to say.  I felt as if I was a
convict, and that if I spoke I should give myself away.  I can tell you
it was something awful, and for all I know he may have expected me to
say something."

"Probably not," I replied; "I should think he hears far too many people
jawing.  I hope he makes me feel like a convict, and then I shall
behave myself all right, but a silence at a meal gives me fits."

"Miss Davenport is never silent," Murray asserted.  "If she can talk
about pork, you may guess she has plenty to say.  The Warden looks at
her in a forgiving sort of way--as if he knows she is talking rot, but
can't help herself."

"They must be a funny pair.  You don't think I shall laugh, do you?" I
asked.

"I didn't feel like laughing.  I never thought of it in that way, but
it couldn't strike you as being funny while you are there."

"I don't know," I said; "I think I had better be ill on Tuesday." But
then I remembered I had got to play footer, and I chucked the card over
to Murray.

"I've got to play in this thing, too.  The Warden kicks you out about
two, so it will be all right.  You simply must go.  Where have you been
to this afternoon?"

"I walked to Sampford with Foster, and we had a row there with two men,
not much of a row.  I must go and see Ward."  I jumped up, but the
chapel bell began to ring, and I had to postpone seeing him.

"I am all behind with my chapels and roll-calls," I said to Murray;
"this will be my twenty-first, and five weeks of the term have gone."

"I kept six chapels last week," Murray answered; "you will have to go
hard to keep nineteen in three weeks."

"I mean doing it and getting up very early in the morning.  I am going
to reform," and I left him at the chapel door, for he, being a scholar,
sat in the seats behind all of us who were commoners or exhibitioners.

After chapel, at which the Regius Professor of Divinity preached and
told us that Sunday luncheon parties were very wrong, I seized Ward and
bore him off to his rooms, where we found Dennison sitting by the fire
with his legs stuck up on the mantelpiece.  I wanted to see Ward alone,
but Dennison had been at Sampford, so he did not matter much, though
Ward with Dennison never seemed to be quite the same as he was without
him.

Dennison twisted round in his chair, and as soon as he saw me he began
to talk.  "You ought to have been with us this afternoon," he said, "we
had a most lovely rag.  Bunny Langham took us over to Sampford in his
cart, and I had a peashooter."

The loveliness of the rag was too much for him, and he had to stop his
account of it so that he might laugh.  I looked at Ward, and although
he did not appear to be very amused, he showed no signs of knowing that
Foster and I had been at Sampford.

"After lunch," Dennison went on, "I discovered some people in an
arbour, the bill and coo business, and I fairly peppered them; I am no
end of a shot with a peashooter."

"You missed them about a dozen times," Ward put in.

"Those were sighting shots, you must get your range, and they were
about as far off as my shooter will carry; but I got them out of the
place at last, and another fellow, Oxford written all over him, walked
bang into them.  I gave him one on the neck and then we bolted.  It was
a pity we couldn't stop and see what happened."

"We ought to have stopped," Ward declared and disappeared into his
bedroom.

"I can tell you what happened," I said, and I lifted Dennison's legs
off the mantelpiece and stood between him and the fire.  I had been
angry before Dennison described Foster as having Oxford written all
over him, but the cheek of labelling Fred as if he was some tailor's
dummy made me furious.

Dennison looked at me and then shouted for Ward.  "Marten can tell us
what happened after we went, come and hear it."

"Wait a second.  I am going to dine with Bunny at the Sceptre and am
changing."

In a minute he appeared and went on dressing.

"I think you are the meanest lot of brutes unhung," I began, for I had
been given time to think of something which would make Dennison see at
once that this joke was not such a good one after all.  "Foster of
Oriel was one of the men you bolted from, and I was the other, and the
thing isn't ended yet, for they got Foster's name.  You hit one woman
in the eye; do you think that very funny?"

"Sheer bad luck," Dennison said, but he did not look quite as unruffled
and smug as usual.

Ward stood with his tie in his hand and did not say a word.  I knew
already that he had wanted to go back when he saw that there was a row,
and since he had neither recognized Foster nor me my wrath was
concentrated upon Dennison.

"You may call it what you like," I continued, "but if you get up a row
and then haven't the pluck to see it out I call it a dirty thing to do."

I thought that must be enough to rouse Dennison, but he actually smiled
at me and told me to go on.

"What do you think?" I asked Ward.

"Of course I did not recognize you and Foster, but when I saw those
people had buttoned on to the wrong man I said we ought to go back.  I
wish that we had gone back," he answered.

"What did they do?" Dennison inquired.

"They found out Foster's name, and one of them, an awful man called Tom
Harrison, says he is going to get compensation from him because you hit
Susan in the eye with a pea and hadn't the decency to stay there and
own up to it.  There's the dinner bell, and I'm about sick of you
fellows."

"I hit Susan in the eye," Dennison said reflectively.  "Was Susan Tom
Harrison's inamorata?" he asked.

"Talk English and I may answer you.  It doesn't matter a row of pins
who Susan was as long as she has a black eye," I replied.

"It is evidently no good speaking to you until you have calmed down.
You remind me of a damp squib, all fuss and no result.  I am going to
dinner," Dennison said, and went out of the room without looking at
either Ward or myself.

"I shall do something awful to that brute before I have finished with
him.  He makes me mad," I said, and Ward walked across the room to me.

"I am most horribly sorry about this," he began, "and I will come back
straight from the Sceptre and see you.  Be in at nine o'clock."

"You didn't shoot at those people, did you?" I asked.

"No; but well, you see, Dennison is better than I am at getting in for
a row, and I am better at getting out of it."

"He's a low-down hound," I asserted, and after promising to be in at
nine o'clock I seized my gown and went away.  As I went into the hall I
met Collier, and during dinner I expressed my opinion of Dennison very
freely.  There are times at Oxford when you regret most tremendously
that you have left school, and this was one of them.

"A fellow like that would be kicked at any decent school," I said.

"He was kicked at Charbury until he managed to become a sort of blood.
He played racquets very well," Collier added, as if by way of an excuse.

"Why do we put up with him?" I asked viciously, for I could see him
making Lambert and Webb shout with laughter at the table opposite me.

"I don't know," Collier answered, "I suppose it's his smile.  What part
of a fowl do you think this is? it looks to me like the neck."  He
turned it over several times and then called a servant.  "Please take
this back, and say I have to be very careful what I eat.  I keep a
list, and this isn't on it.  I never saw that joint before," he added
to me, and lost all interest in Dennison.  I thought it a pity that
Collier took so much trouble over what he ate; the sight of that
unusual joint made him quite silent and inattentive during the rest of
the meal.

I went to his rooms after dinner, as I felt sleepy, and he never did
anything on Sunday except sleep, eat, and go to chapel.  His room was
full of tinted literature, but I never saw him read it, and I believe
he bought _The Sporting Times_ on Saturdays so that he could give it to
any man who attacked him with conversation on his day of rest.  His
table was covered by a most miscellaneous dessert, and I asked him if
he expected a lot of men.

"Not a soul," he replied, and sank into a chair by the fire.  "I have
this every Sunday night, because my people pay my common-room bill, and
I have to pay everything else out of my allowance.  They told me to do
myself well, but after this term I expect they will see that this odd
sort of arrangement won't work.  I can feed a regiment on almonds and
raisins without it costing me a sou.  Help yourself to coffee, stick
the dish of anchovy toast down between us, and if you want to read
there are three Sunday papers and a crowd of old magazines."

I sat by the fire and read four short stories to pass the time.
Dennison poked his head into the room and withdrew it when he saw me.
I congratulated myself upon that little incident, for I felt that if he
understood how I hated the sight of him something would have been
gained.  At nine o'clock I left Collier and went to my rooms to wait
for Ward.  I did not expect him to be punctual, because I guessed that
a dinner given by Bunny Langham would be difficult to leave.  He turned
up, however, in about half-an-hour, and said he was jolly glad to get
away from the Sceptre.  "Bunny's all right," he said, "but some of his
friends are too much--even for me."

I replied that Bunny was all wrong, and said why I thought so.

"You don't know him," Ward explained; "he would never leave any one in
a hole if he thought for a second.  He's the most good-natured, weak
kind of man on earth, but he would never do the wrong thing.  He goes
straight over a precious difficult country, for he hasn't got any more
will than a rabbit and is as blind as a bat.  He will be in trouble to
the end of his days, but he will never make any one ashamed of him."

I thought this was rather a glorified conception of the Bunny I knew,
so I said nothing.

"You must see that he is a good sort," Ward said.

"Everybody's a good sort," I answered impatiently.  "Collier calls the
fellow with the green-baize apron who collects the boots a good sort,
and some man I met at home, who talked about emperors and kings as if
they were all his cousins, declared that the Sultan of Morocco was the
best sort he had ever met--when one got to know him."

"I don't wonder you are sick," he returned.  "I should be if any one
had done to me what we did to you and Foster this afternoon.  It looks
pretty rotten on the face of it, and I am as sorry as blazes that you
had to have a row with those men."

"I'm not sick about the row," I answered; "that would have been fun if
they hadn't got Foster's name."

Ward lay back in his chair, and tried to blow rings of smoke from his
cigarette.

"Then you are just angry because you think we ought to have come back,"
he said.

"No, I'm not," I replied, and I felt horribly uncomfortable.

He looked most thoroughly puzzled.  "What on earth do you mean?" he
asked.

I got up and walked about the room before I spoke.  "It's this way," I
began.  "I wanted you and Foster to like each other, because he is the
greatest friend I have, and I like you.  And when I had been saying
what a good fellow you were, you go and make a most infernal row in a
pub on Sunday afternoon and then bolt.  I saw you in that confounded
cart, and I ought to have told Foster that I knew you were the fellow
who bolted.  But I didn't."

Ward sat staring in front of him, and did not speak for some time.  "I
don't think I could ever be friends with Foster," he said at last; "he
hated me at sight; but it is deucedly good of you all the same.  I will
write him a note and tell him I was the man.  I was going to do that,
anyhow."

"You weren't the man," I asserted; "it was that little brute, Dennison."

"He doesn't count," Ward said.

I was disposed to agree with him on that point, but I thought that he
and I had better go round and see Foster in the morning, instead of
writing a note.  He did not like this at first, but after some talking
he said that he would come, and on the next morning we went round to
Oriel.  We made Foster look a most awful idiot, but that could not be
helped.  I know that if two men came to me simply bulging with
apologies, I should look for the nearest window.

Fred hardly said anything but "All right" and "For goodness' sake don't
say a word more about it," but it showed that Ward was not as bad as he
thought him.  I stayed behind after Ward had gone so that I might put
things a little more straight, but Fred would not listen to another
word.  "You were in a vile temper yesterday afternoon, and now I know
the cause.  That's enough, so shut up.  You seem to have become a kind
of guardian to Ward," and then he stopped suddenly, for it struck him
that he had said one of those things which funny people say, and he
would never have done that on purpose.  I assured him that I knew he
had said it accidentally, but it stopped us talking about Ward,
because, when you hate puns, it is most discomforting to make one
suddenly.  I made a pun once--I can still remember it, because if I had
performed this feat intentionally I should have deserved all I got.
What I did get was a dig in the ribs from Collier and the remark, "You
are a wag," and then I had to repeat it to his three cousins, one of
whom was deaf and none of whom understood it, though they all laughed.
It was a Latin pun.

I am one of those people, Oliver Cromwell was another, to whom
important things happened on a certain day.  Tuesday was my day, I
forget which his was, but it does not matter, because it is to be found
in histories and almanacs.  My day is not a matter of interest to
anybody, but all the same I was born on a Tuesday, and things which I
have had special reason to remember or regret have generally happened
to me--so my mother says--on the same day.  And it was on a Tuesday
that I lunched with the Warden and began a curious sort of friendship
with him.  I suppose that I ought not to talk of a friendship between a
man like the Warden, who was a mighty man of learning, and myself, but
after all he gave me one of his books, and wrote in it, "To my young
friend and quondam companion."  "Quondam" was rather a pity, perhaps;
it sounds pedantic, and the Warden was no pedant, unless he wanted to
snub people.

I went to his luncheon, and, having neuralgia, said nothing until he
told me that he knew Mr. Prettyman, who was one of the masters at
Cliborough.  If the Warden knew Prettyman I guessed that he had also
heard something about me, and I thought I might as well stick up for
myself as far as possible, so I said that Mr. Prettyman was the sort of
man who, when you had lost a thing, always asked you where you had put
it.  He had on one occasion actually done this to me, and annoyed me
very much.  The Warden took no notice of my remark, and I was left to
my neuralgia until the end of the meal.  The other men who were there
talked a lot; one of them said what he thought of Irving in _Hamlet_,
and another criticized the paintings of Watts; the Warden kept his
opinions to himself, and at two o'clock asked us what we were going to
do in the afternoon.  All of us were bent on active employment, but
just as I was leaving the dining-room, he called me back and asked me
if I would go for a walk with him at three o'clock on the following
Thursday afternoon.  I was too confused to remember what I said, and I
only recollect that I left his house feeling as if something very awful
was going to happen.  I changed to play for the XX. against the XV. in
a kind of daymare, if there is a state of mind which can be so
described, and I had a good deal to say to Murray, as we walked down to
the Parks together, about my luck.  Murray laughed all the way from St.
Cuthbert's to Keble; he kept on breaking out into small cackles, which,
of all the bad ways of laughing, must be the worst.

I started to play footer that afternoon without troubling to think how
I should play.  I could see myself marching slowly along the Woodstock
road with the Warden, and however badly I played did not seem to matter
much, for there was something far more awful to come.  The XV. began to
press at once, and I, as full-back, had plenty to do.  What I did was
reckless; I simply did not care what happened, and everything I tried
seemed to come off.  Everybody who plays games has an occasional day
when things get twisted round, and it is easier to do right than wrong.
Those are the days for which we live in hope, and one of mine came on
that Tuesday.  I knew the whole thing was a fluke, and I told Murray
and Foster so after the game, but they both said that I had given Sykes
of Merton, who was playing back for the XV., something to think about.

During the next day, visions of my blue floated before me, and the
prospect of walking with the Warden lost its terrors, until I went
round to see Fred on Thursday morning.  I wanted him to give me some
hints, but I am sorry so say he saw only the humorous side of my
engagement, and was very exasperating when he might have been extremely
useful.




CHAPTER IX

A SURPRISE

When I left my rooms to walk with the Warden, I imagined that every one
I met was laughing at me, and being intensely on the alert for insults,
I was very displeased with the butler when he came to the door, and
surveyed me.  "What can you want with the Warden?" was written plainly
over his face.  I have never met a man who could be more gravely
condescending than the Warden's butler, and I know several first-class
cricketers, two headmasters, a popular novelist, and a rising
politician aged twenty-four.  I should have enjoyed telling that man
what I thought of him, but a doorstep is a poor place for an
altercation, unless it is with a cabman, and I saw the Warden advancing
upon me clad in a cloak, and carrying a most useful umbrella, which
must have been rolled up by himself.

The appearance of the Warden might have surprised any one, but it could
have impressed nobody.  You had to know that he was a Warden, and wrote
books about religion and philosophy, before you could feel afraid of
him.  If he was a precisian in the choice of words, he certainly was
not one in the matter of dress.

"I think," he said, with just a glance at me to see if I was the right
man, "that we will enter the Parks by the gates opposite to Keble
College; we shall be more or less interrupted by the noisy, if
necessary, shouts of football players, but we shall escape the
authoritative note of the bicycle bell."

There wasn't much that I could say in answer to this, so I walked down
the Broad in silence, and tried in vain to keep step with my companion.
Before we had reached Wadham his shuffle had got upon my nerves, and I
wished furiously that he would say something to me.  He seemed to have
tucked his head into his neck, and to have retired into the world of
contemplation.  As we entered the Parks I was seized with a wild desire
to run away.  I had not uttered a word, and I had arrived at a state of
mind which prompted me to give a terrific yell, just to see what would
happen next.  When I feel like that I must speak at least, so I said
that it looked as if it might rain.  It is not likely that I should
have made such a remark if I could have thought of any other, and it
had the merit of not being startling and also of being true.  But if I
had given the yell which I wished to give, I could not have produced a
greater effect upon the Warden.  I think that he had forgotten my
existence, and for a moment he could not remember why I was with him.
He poked his head forward, and looked at me until I regretted my effort
at conversation, and was dreadfully afraid I should have to repeat it;
a remark about the weather in some way or other seems to lose all its
sparkle when it is repeated.

The Warden, however, had heard what I said, and when he had detached
himself from whatever he was thinking about, he answered me.

"I am not one of those who pretend to any extraordinary knowledge of
weather symptoms," he began, and he stood in the middle of the path,
while a gardener leant on his spade and watched us; "indeed, I have
often noticed that those who make the greatest pretensions of that kind
are themselves most frequently mistaken.  In fact, my friend Dr.
Marshall, who wrote the meteorological reports for _The Times_
newspaper, was frequently himself in doubt whether or no to take out an
umbrella for a walk."

I did not venture to interrupt him again for some time, and my next
outbreak was quite unpremeditated.  We were passing a college rugger
match, and a pass which was palpably forward escaped the notice of the
referee.  I joined in the cry of "forward" which was raised, and the
Warden stopped once more and actually smiled.  On this occasion I had
forgotten all about him, and my shout probably surprised him as much as
me.

"I am sorry," I said to him, "but I really couldn't help it."

"There is no occasion to express or even to feel regret," he answered,
and his eyes twinkled delightfully; "if youth lost its spontaneity it
would at one and the same moment lose its charm.  Did your cry refer to
this?"  He pointed with his umbrella to a scrimmage which was taking
place a few yards away from us.

"Some one threw the ball forward, which he is not allowed to do," I
explained, and a man was hurled into touch close to the spot where we
were standing.

"The game of football which I believe bears the honoured name of Rugby
appeals, or it seems to me to appeal, to the more violent of the
emotions.  Do you play this game, which strikes the eye of the
observant, but not initiated, as the relic of an age in which brute
force rather than science was the aim of the athlete?"

He walked on as he finished speaking, and I told him that I played
Rugby football and liked it.  "I like nearly every game," I added.

He glanced at me quickly, and after we had walked a little way he began
again.

"The excellent Lord Chesterfield in his _Letters_ stated that it was
very disagreeable to seem reserved, and very dangerous not to be so;
most of my young friends impress me with the fact that they have
learned that maxim too well.  But you on the contrary----" He waved his
umbrella and did not finish the sentence.

"There is no harm in liking games," I answered; "if I did not take
heaps of exercise I should never be well, or able to read."

"Heaps of exercise," he repeated, and looked oddly at me.

"I mean a fearful lot of exercise," I explained.

"You did not quote 'Mens sana in corpore sano,' for which I have to
thank you, even if your use of the English language affords reasonable
grounds for protest.  Heaps of mud, heaps of rubbish, but not, I think,
heaps of exercise."

"Heaps of money," I ventured to suggest, but he shook his head sadly.

"We were talking of athletics," he said, "which represent to me the
most sweeping epidemic of the century.  Do not let athletics spread
their deadly, if in one sense empurpling, pall over your University
life.  Oxford has many gifts for those who are willing to receive them;
do not, my friend, be content with the least which she can give.  The
maxim of Mr. Browning, that the grasp of a man should exceed his reach,
if not an ennobling maxim, must not be forgotten entirely."

I walked by his side in silence, for I knew that the Warden did not
often give advice to an undergraduate.  His language even seemed to
have become less carefully chosen, and I felt that he intended to be
not only human but kind, for there was no special reason why he should
talk to me unless he wished.

He did not speak again until we reached St. Cuthbert's, but when we had
reached the back quadrangle he stopped, and after poking the ground
with his umbrella, said--

"I would do nothing willingly to lessen your enthusiasm, you have, I
believe, been endowed liberally with that most exhilarating virtue; I
would only suggest to you that your enthusiasm need not of necessity be
expended solely upon athletics.  I hope that we shall be able to enjoy
very many walks together."

I thrust out my hand, but he hesitated; I forgot that I had nearly made
him shout with pain a few weeks before, but he, as far as I know, never
forgot anything.  He trusted me, however, and I treated him very gently.

As soon as the Warden had disappeared into his house I heard a bellow
of derisive laughter at a window above me, and looking up I saw
Dennison standing there; but at that moment I hated him even more than
I did usually, and I walked off to see Jack Ward without even saying
what I thought of him.

Jack was having a bath when I got to his rooms, and while he was
dressing he told me how he had been spending the afternoon.  I never
knew what he might do next--he flew off at tangents so often--but I was
surprised to hear how he had been employing himself.

"Perhaps you will think me a fool," he began, "but that Tom Harrison
affair gave me the jumps, and I couldn't wait to see if Foster was
going to be tackled.  So I rode over to Sampford, and the man said that
Harrison lived in a village a few miles off.  I had lunch at Sampford
and then went on, and, to cut it short, the whole thing is settled."

"You paid?"

"Not very much; and Tom said I was the first gentleman he had ever
known come from Oxford--you must pay for a remark like that.  He
described us as 'bloomin' 'aughty,' and 'not enough brass to buy a
moke.'  Do you know that you are playing for the 'Varsity on Saturday
against Blackheath?  I want to go up to town, so I shall come and see
you play."

I thought that he was trying to prevent me from thanking him, and I did
not really believe that I was going to play until he took his oath that
I was.  Then we had tea, and I thanked him; for if there is one thing
in the world of which I will not be baulked it is thanking people.  I
hate doing it so much, that it has got to be done.  Jack, however, did
not pretend to listen to what I said, and after I had finished we
talked about Dennison; both of us were sick to death of him, but when
you are always meeting a man in other people's rooms, and he won't see
that you don't like him, it is not very easy to get rid of him; for
when you are a fresher you can't choose your friends so easily as you
can when your first year is over.

After dinner Fred came round to tell me that we were both playing
against Blackheath, and as Jack came in as well, I said that I would
get another man to play whist.  I went to Murray, because I was most
anxious that he should be friends with Jack; but I did not tell him
that Jack was one of the four, or I am sure that he would not have
come.  I liked both Murray and Jack, and I thought that when I got them
together each would see what a nice man the other was, for I was again
in the mood when everything seems to be easy.  But I cannot say that my
efforts were successful; their politeness knocked every spark of
cheeriness out of the game, and we played in dreadful silence, which
may be all right for very good players, but it does not suit me in the
least.

When Murray looked at his watch and said that he must be going, I felt
quite relieved, and I decided then that I would stop trying to make
Murray and Jack like each other, for the process was too painful and
slow for me.

After he had gone I told Foster what Ward had been doing, and it was
really quite funny to see how confused they were.  Fred said how good
it was of Ward to have taken so much bother about nothing, which was
not quite what he meant, but it did very well; and Ward mumbled
something in reply, which neither of us could hear.  Altogether they
managed it most successfully, and when Fred went away Ward said that he
would see him to the lodge.  I found out afterwards that he stopped me
going with Fred, so that he might tell him nothing would have happened
if he had not seen Tom Harrison; he was the kind of man who never tried
to get more credit than he deserved, unless it was from Oxford
tradesmen.

Playing against Blackheath on the Rectory field before a large crowd of
people was good fun, and at the end of the game I thought that I had
managed to escape without making a very pitiable exhibition of myself.
But on the following Monday the sporting papers criticized me most
unpleasantly.  "Marten was obviously nervous, and did not seem to
settle down until the game was lost."  "As full-back Marten had much to
learn; his tackling was good, but his kicking left much to be desired,
and he seldom found touch."   I turned from _The Sportsman_ and
_Sporting Life_ to _The Daily Telegraph_, and found that I had shown
"more pluck than judgment."

I felt that Sykes of Merton must be having an enjoyable morning, and
even the fact that the critics unanimously praised Foster was of little
assistance to me.  My chance had come, and I had not taken it; there
could not have been a more miserable man in Oxford, and for a whole
solid week I never cut a lecture or did anything of which even Mr.
Edwardes could disapprove.

Sykes reappeared in the 'Varsity team, and Foster declared that the
whole thing was a swindle; but he was more prejudiced in my favour than
I was myself.  The last match of the term at Oxford, and the one
previous to the 'Varsity match, was against the Old Cliburians, and the
O. C.s having had a disastrous season Adamson, who always played centre
three-quarters with Foster, did not play, but put a man from Queen's in
his place.  This man, whose name was Pott, had been laid up all the
term, and two or three people said it was lucky for Foster that Pott
had not been able to play before.  I played back for the O. C.s, and
the game was enough to make any Cambridge man who saw it stand on his
head with delight.  The 'Varsity could do nothing right; the passing
broke down time after time, and the forwards got impatient and kicked
too hard.  I thought Foster was the one man on the side who played
decently, but five minutes before the end, when we were leading by a
goal to nothing, Pott made a very good run and got a try in the corner.
It seemed to me that this was the only thing he did during the whole
game, and it was my fault that he got the try, for I went for him a
second too late and he fell over the line, but the place-kick went
crooked, and we won by a goal to a try.

Adamson, who was touch-judging, said what he thought about the 'Varsity
team, and he could be the most uncomplimentary man in Europe when he
liked.  His temper was awful, and it did not seem to be improved by the
use of expletives.  This game was played on a Saturday, and on the
following Wednesday week we had to play the 'Varsity match at Queen's
Club.  The Cambridge team was published in the papers on the Monday,
but some one told me that our committee were not meeting until the
Monday evening.  This did not interest me much, for apart from wanting
to see that Fred had got his blue, and I thought he was a certainty, I
did not mind who else was chosen.  Sykes had played better against the
O. C.s than he had ever done before, and even Fred said that he was
afraid my chance had gone for this year.

After dinner on Monday evening I was sitting in my rooms with Murray,
and although it was not nine o'clock, I was wondering how soon I could
go to bed, when Ward suddenly burst in, fairly bubbling over with
excitement.  He turned me right out of my chair, and hitting me
violently on the back, said he had never been so awfully glad in all
his life.  My first impression was that he had been made glad by wine,
and I told him to clear out if he could not behave himself, which made
him catch hold of me and dance me round the room.  By the time we had
finished I found that Dennison, Collier, Lambert, Webb and a host of
other people had come to my rooms, and at last I discovered that I had
got my blue.  For a moment I did not believe it, but I managed to push
Ward into a corner, and told him I would never speak to him again if it
was not true.  Then he swore that he had seen the names of the XV. to
play against Cambridge stuck up in the window of Howell's shop in the
Turl, and the first name he saw was G. Marten (St. Cuthbert's), back.

"And Foster, of course?" I said.

Then Jack Ward's face fell.  "No, they've gone mad," he answered; "it's
that man Potts, of Queen's."

Men buzzed about congratulating me, and one part of me felt most
tremendously glad, and the other part most outrageously sorry.  I said
a lot of things about the committee, and everybody except Ward and
Murray thought I had gone mad.  The college clock struck nine, and old
Tom's nightly warning began to sound over the city.  I seized a cap and
bolted down-stairs, leaving my rooms full of astonished men.  But Fred
Foster was the only man I wanted to see, and by making a tremendous
rush for Oriel I got there before the gates were closed.  I cannot
describe how I was feeling that evening, but I knew that Fred was
infinitely better at footer than I was, and in my wildest moments I had
never imagined that I should be put in the XV. while he was left out of
it.

I found him sitting in his room alone, but directly he saw me he jumped
up and began to talk.

"I came to St. Cuthbert's to congratulate you," he began.

"It is a confounded swindle," I interrupted.

"But there was such a row in your rooms that I couldn't face it."

"I have never been so sick about anything in my life," I said; and he
looked so miserable that in spite of the comfortable sensation of
having got my blue I meant it.

"It was a vile knock for me, but I don't mind half so much now one of
us is in.  Your people will be most awfully glad."

"They will think the committee are mad to leave you out and put me in.
It upsets things altogether."

"Pott's in his fourth year, and I must have another shot, that's all,"
he said.

"You are bound to get your cricket blue," I declared.

"When a man begins to miss getting in as I have done, he very often
keeps on doing it," and he mentioned the names of two or three men who,
with any luck, would have played both cricket and footer against
Cambridge, but were never chosen.  "Don't bother about me," he went on,
"but get yourself as fit as possible, and play like blazes at Queen's
Club; you will be doing me a good turn if you play well, because at
present they have got an idea up here that Cliborough fellows can't
play footer.  I heard Adamson saying so."

I expressed my opinion of Adamson and went back to college, for I ought
not to have been out after nine o'clock, because my gating would not
finish.  But I must say that when the Subby sent for me, and I
explained what had happened, he congratulated me on getting my blue,
and said that under such exceptional circumstances he would excuse my
forgetfulness.

For the next few days I got up and went to bed very early; I ran round
the Parks before breakfast, which took me some time and was a most
dreary occupation, and I kicked a ball about nearly every day.  All of
my people went up to town for the match, and Fred and I joined them at
the Langham on the Tuesday night.  My mother was dreadfully sorry for
Fred, and Nina seemed to have forgotten that she was nearly grown-up,
and gave herself no airs at all.  I think that Fred, who forgave
swindles very quickly, found some consolation in the fact that he was
going to watch the match with Nina, which would have amused me had I
not been so anxious about the morrow.

There cannot be a more cheerless spot in London than the Queen's Club
on a foggy December afternoon, but when I arrived there and found that
we had got to play in semi-darkness my nervousness almost disappeared.

After being photographed, and running about the ground to stretch our
legs, we began, and for some time I should not think a full-back ever
had less to do than I had.  The game settled down into one long
scrimmage, and apart from making a few kicks, which were neither good
nor bad, I was almost a spectator, and at half-time I was, in
comparison with every one else, quite disgustingly clean.  We played
towards the pavilion during the second half, and before ten minutes had
passed I was covered with mud, if not with glory.  The Cambridge
three-quarters got the ball, and after a round of passing one of them
got a try right behind our posts.  Adamson promptly told me that it was
my fault, but as a matter of fact Pott had slipped up at a critical
moment and left his man unmarked, so I did not get much chance of
preventing the try.

After this Cambridge pressed us hard, and I had to fall on the ball
continually, which is a dismal performance until one gets warmed up to
it.  Pott's knee had given way, and though he stayed on the ground and
limped about, the Cambridge forwards seemed to be always rushing past
him and hurling me to the ground.  Luck, however, was on our side, and
though they were often on the point of scoring nothing really happened,
and at last our forwards got the ball down to the other end of the
ground.  I hoped for a little peace, but the man who plays full-back
and expects such a thing is an idiot.  Only a few minutes were left
when the Cambridge three-quarters got off again, and, Pott being
useless, two men came at top speed for me.  Their centre had the ball,
and had only to throw it to the wing man for a try to be a certainty.
The wing man was an international and about the fastest three-quarter
in Scotland, so I tried a little device, which was bad football, though
in this case it came off.  My only chance was for the centre man to
lose his head, and he lost it quite beautifully; if he had only gone on
himself instead of trying to pass there was nobody to stop him, for I
had made up my mind to prevent the fast man getting the ball whatever
happened.  I ran in between them, and the centre passed right into my
hands; at the same moment the wing man slipped up, and I was going for
the Cambridge line as fast as I could.  No one being near me I think
that I made one of the fastest runs of my life, but not having been
blessed with speed I had to pass at last, and I happened to make quite
a good shot, for one of our halves got the ball and ran in behind the
posts.  Adamson kicked the goal all right, and the game ended in a draw
directly afterwards.

I don't mind saying that as I walked off the ground I should have been
glad if there had been less fog; I had suffered so much after the
Cambridge try, that I should have been pleased if everybody had seen
the finish; but after all Fred had managed to discover what had
happened, and if there had not been a fog, I expect I should not have
tried to intercept that pass, for it would have looked quite awful if I
had not happened to do it.  All kinds of people congratulated me, and
Adamson was good enough to acknowledge that I had atoned for my
previous mistake; but I could not help wondering what he would have
said if the Cambridge man had not happened to make such a bad pass.
There was a condescension about Adamson which roused my worst passions,
for of all the blues I have seen he was the only one who ever took an
insane delight in himself, and unfortunately he belonged to a college
which so seldom had a blue, that when they did get one they almost
worshipped him.

After the game was over I went back to the Langham, for Fred and I had
arranged to go to a theatre with Jack Ward; but I have only the vaguest
idea of the performance I watched.  I had slept badly the night before,
and now that the match was over, nothing could keep me awake, so I had
to be given up as hopeless, though Fred gave me an occasional dig with
his elbow just to keep me from snoring.  By the time the play was over
I was properly awake again, and so satisfied with myself, that when I
met Dennison going out of the theatre I was even glad to see him.

"Ward told me you were coming here," he said.  "What are you going to
do now?"

"Going home, I suppose," I answered; but I cannot say that I cared much
where I went.

"Let's go to the Parma, there is sure to be a rag on there," he said to
Jack, and after some discussion we walked down Shaftesbury Avenue.

I think the air of the town must have got into Dennison's head, for I
had not walked far before I was in more than my usual state of rage
with him.  He ordered us about most abominably, and seemed to think
that I was sure to lose my way unless I kept close to him.  As a matter
of fact, neither Fred nor I knew London well, but I resented being
treated like an infant, and if Dennison only looked after us out of
kindness, I did not see why he should do it at the top of his voice.  I
had an inexplicable feeling that it was the duty of every one to know
something about London, and although I should not have recognized
Piccadilly Circus when I saw it, I was quite prepared to put that down
to the fog; for if Dennison had not taken so much for granted, I should
never willingly have given myself away to him.

When we reached the Parma I was very thirsty, but there were so many
people in the place that it was impossible to get near the bar.  We
were jolted about by men who, having nothing else to say, shouted "Good
old Cambridge!" and "Now then, Oxford!"  The pandemonium was deafening,
and Jack said to me that the whole thing wasn't good enough, and unless
you happened to feel like shoving into people and then pretending that
you were very sorry he was quite right.

A man standing on the steps at the top of the room began to make a
speech until somebody shoved him down, and his top-hat, having been
knocked off, was kicked about by everybody who could get near it.  Men
whom I never remembered having seen before, shook me warmly by the hand
and treated me as if I was their greatest friend, but none of them
could get me anything to drink.  This scene was subsequently described
as disgraceful, but it was really very dull, and after a few more
minutes spent in trying to make my voice heard in the noise, the lights
were turned out.  The word "Johnnys" ran round the place, and there was
a big rush for the door leading into Piccadilly Circus.  Fortunately I
got out at once, and I found myself marching clown Piccadilly in the
second row of a procession.  Foster was next to me, though how he got
there I cannot conceive, and Ward and Dennison were in the front row.
We sang as we walked, and people cleared out of our way.  I heard one
man who met us say "Poor fools!" and the fellow who was with him
answered "We did that kind of thing years ago, didn't we?"  Outside The
St. John's we came to a dead stop, and the men in front of me began
arguing with an enormous man who stood at the entrance.

"No one else is to be admitted to-night," I heard the giant say.

"But it is not closing time," some one answered.

"These are my orders, gentlemen," he said, and it was really rather
nice of him to address us as he did.

Ward did not say a word, but tried quite amicably to get past the
giant.  It was a kind of Goliath and David business anyhow, but
whatever chance Ward had of getting into the restaurant ended abruptly;
a bevy of policemen who seemed to drop out of the skies simply pounced
upon him, and if he had been guilty of some real crime he could not
have been treated more severely.  It was my first experience of
policemen, and unless some one had very kindly caught hold of me, my
first impulse was to go for the men who had seized Ward.

"You had better keep quiet, or you will be taken to the station as
well," one policeman said to me, but I went on talking until some one I
did not know touched me on the arm.

"Was the man they collared a friend of yours?" he asked.

"Yes, and it is a most wretched swindle," I said.

"I don't think he did anything to speak of," Foster added.

"I was just coming out of the door as it happened," our friend said,
"and I have never seen a more unfair thing in my life.  If you will
come to the police-station to-morrow to give evidence, I will come too.
You had better go now and see if you can do anything for him."

We assured him that we would turn up the next morning, and then Foster
and I made our way to the police-station.  I cannot say that the
Inspector, or whoever the official was who talked to us, took much
notice of what we said, but we found a more sympathetic man outside the
station who asked us if we wanted to bail out our friend.  The official
had told us that Jack Ward would be quite comfortable during the night,
but when I saw another person brought in by the police we doubted this
statement very much, and we discussed things with our sympathetic
friend, who was a shabby-looking man when he happened to get near the
light, and he gave us much advice in exchange for half-a-sovereign.  I
gave him the half-sovereign, though what prompted me to do so I cannot
remember, but I had met so many aggressive people during that evening
that a kind man appealed to me strongly.  He was, I heard afterwards, a
professional bailer-out, and I do not think he could have been a very
good one, for although Fred and I went about with him for over an hour,
and rang up various people who treated us with unvarying rudeness, in
the end we had to leave Jack Ward where he was.

It was no easy matter to escape from my people in the morning, but we
got to the place all right, and soon after we got there Jack Ward
appeared, and was charged with creating a disturbance in Piccadilly.
Policemen gave evidence, and the man who had told us that he would come
and speak up for Ward turned out to be a barrister, and did not appear
to be in the least afraid of the magistrate.  His evidence was very
different to that of the police, and I thought Jack Ward, who looked as
if he had been having a dreadful time, was bound to get off.

When my turn came to kiss the book I was in a terrible state of
nervousness, and the magistrate asked me my name twice, and where I
lived at least three times.  I am sure he must have been deaf, for I
spoke plainly enough, but I thought him a most disagreeable man.  After
bothering me until I really felt quite unwell, he asked me how many
drinks I had seen Jack Ward have, and when I answered "None," he said
very angrily, "I shall not want to ask you any more questions."  He
might just as well have told me that he did not believe a word I said.

In the end Ward was bound over to keep the peace for a month, and the
magistrate said what he thought of the disturbance which had been made.
He supposed undergraduates to be a far more vicious lot than they
really are, for at the very worst we were only extremely noisy and very
foolish, and Jack Ward was just the victim of horribly bad luck.

I was glad to get away from the police-court, and I am not searching
for such an experience as this again, but principally we were sorry for
Ward, who said he had never spent such a night in his life.  However he
was very cheerful about it, and took the view that it might have
happened to any one.

After luncheon Foster and I had to start on tour with the 'Varsity XV.
in Wales, and I was exceedingly glad that Adamson had to stay in town
to play for the South against the North, or Fred would not have come.
On that tour I played very badly and Fred very well, which is what some
people would call the irony of fate.  But I must say in excuse for
myself that more difficult people to get hold of than those Swansea,
Newport and Cardiff three-quarters I cannot conceive, and I had no end
of chances of trying to collar them.  How many of those chances I took
can be guessed by any one who is curious enough to look up records and
see the lamentable results of those three matches.




CHAPTER X

MY MAIDEN SPEECH

As soon as the 'Varsity football tour was finished, I went home and
Fred Foster came with me.  Any exultation I might have been inclined to
show over my blue was completely checked by the way I played on the
tour, and I was very glad when we got away from Wales and the sarcastic
remarks of the Welsh newspapers.  As a matter of curiosity it may be
satisfactory to find out what famous Oxford teams of former years think
of the one you happen to be in, but it was exceedingly disagreeable of
the Welsh papers to suggest that we should not like to hear the
opinions of these heroes, and one sporting reporter went out of his way
to be nasty to me.  "When I saw Marten at back and remember the
brilliant exponents of the game who have filled his position in
previous Dark Blue fifteens, I really cannot refrain from smiling.  But
it is a pity all the same."  If I could have got hold of that fellow I
think I might have curtailed the length of his smile, but Foster gave
me a little satisfaction by saying that if a man was ass enough to
write about "exponents of the game," he was probably paid a penny a
line for what he wrote, and had sacrificed me for the sake of
threepence.

We had a very good time during our first "vac."  I think that Nina
expected me to come back from Oxford with a very fine equipment of
airs; in fact I know that she did for she told me so, but I was in a
humble mood and gave her no chances to squash me, and she and Fred got
on splendidly together.  My first term had taught me that I did not
know in the least what I wanted, which was an upsetting lesson for any
one to learn who had always done what came next without bothering about
the consequences.  This result had been brought about by the Warden and
Dennison, the one had in his curious way tried to urge me on, the other
had sickened me of men who rag from morning to night, and I felt
bothered for several days in succession.  Then, however, I stopped
worrying myself and regained my normal spirits, to the annoyance of my
father who was at that time inveighing against Russia and the
ritualistic vicar of our parish, and had a lot to say about the thin
end of the wedge.  He told me that I must take more interest in
politics, and he made both Fred and me promise that we would speak at
debating societies during our first year.

But when I recollected the discussions I had listened to at our college
debating society I could not remember a single one at which I could
have said anything to the point; how could I know whether "It is better
to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," or what could
I say about marriage being a failure?  There was, indeed, only one man
at St. Cuthbert's who could possibly know anything about marriage, and
he had a wife and three children, but from the appearance of the lady I
do not think that he was likely to give us his honest opinion.

I wrote to Jack Ward but did not get an answer, and when we got back to
Oxford I found that he had been staying with a mining magnate whose
name I could not pronounce.  He had been gambling every night, I forget
how much he won in a week, but it is of no consequence as he lost all
of it and a lot more before he had finished.  During this term he
became a complete blood, and was constantly dining at wine clubs or
with somebody like Bunny Langham.  He joined the Mohocks, and men who
did not know him, and thought that our wine club made far too much
noise and was a nuisance to the college, said that he would get sent
down at the end of his first year for being ploughed in pass
Moderations.  I, however, saw a good deal of him at odd times, and the
fact that he absolutely refused to have anything more to do with
Dennison than he could help delighted me.  When Jack had no use for any
one 

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