Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate Part 2

"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 b.u.t.t 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 a.s.sisted 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 amus.e.m.e.nts of a breakfast given by a senior man to half-a-dozen freshers were princ.i.p.ally 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 friends.h.i.+p. 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 cus.h.i.+on at his head as soon as he began to make some noise which he called "tuning up." That began a cus.h.i.+on 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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 cus.h.i.+ons, 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 pa.s.sage.