Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate Part 22

I think I was fool enough to say that I was not amusing.

"Not consciously," Dennison replied, "but I get more fun from you than from anybody, and when you are in a serious mood you are the most comic man I know. He's delicious, isn't he, Lambert?"

"If you can't see the funny side of our eight, you must be a madman,"

Lambert said to me.

"We used to be head of the river, and now we can't row for sour apples," Dennison chuckled, "the thing's a perfect pantomime."

"And you are the stupidest clown in it," I said suddenly, for although I did not want to lose my temper the "sour apples" expression, on the top of being told that I had "a fair old head," compelled me to say something.

"One to Marten," Lambert said, as he stalked about the room; they were a most trying lot to have anything to do with. Everything they said was just the thing that made me want to get away from them, and Dennison had told me once that he considered conversation a very fine art.

It would have been wise of me to have gone away without waiting for Dennison's attempts to get level with me, but I felt like staying where I was.

"Poor old fellow," Dennison groaned, "he sits up all night, and then his conscience smites him and his head aches, and he thinks the college is going to the deuce and is to be saved from perdition by his being rude. What you want, old chap, is a sedlitz powder; go and have one, and you won't be so gloomy, you may even smile when you see our eight b.u.mped to-night."

"You laugh and jeer at our boat when it goes down, but I'll bet you would be the first to kick up a row if we ever make any b.u.mps again, though you don't care whether we go to the bottom of the river and stop there," I answered.

"I don't see that it matters," Lambert put in, "and I would much rather be bottom than bottom but one or even two, there's something dignified about being absolutely last."

"Take a sedlitz powder and become a philosopher," Dennison suggested.

"I always thought your philosophy was founded on something confoundedly odd," I returned, "and now I know all about it."

"I suppose you think that very witty," he replied, and he almost lost his temper, "but though I may not be much of a philosopher I am a first-rate doctor, so when a man wants medicine I tell him so."

"Thanks," I said.

"You are on the wrong track," he went on, beginning to smile again, "the wretched school-boy notion of being sick to death when you are beaten at anything is all humbug here, the thing to do is to laugh whatever happens, and to-day you look as if you hadn't a laugh left in you."

"That's sitting up all night," Lambert said, "you can't laugh all day and night."

Then I told them that if they wanted to see the college perfectly useless at everything they must be the biggest fools in Oxford, and I appealed to Murray to support me, because Dennison never spoke to him if he could help doing so.

"It is much easier to laugh than it is to row," was all Murray said, and he went out of the room at once.

"That man's the most complete prig in the 'Varsity," Dennison declared, "and as long as a college has a lot of men like him in it nothing else matters. We don't want smugs here."

"Murray," I said solidly, "is neither a prig nor a smug, and as you have never said half-a-dozen words to him you can't possibly know anything about him."

"A smug is always labelled," he answered, "and that man looks one from his hat to his boots, don't you think so, Lambert?"

Of course Lambert thought so, and I, having already said much more than I intended, was just going to say a lot more, when a whole crowd of men came into the room and saved me from the impossible task of making Dennison believe that he could make a mistake.

I went back to my rooms and found Fred waiting for me, but from the way I banged my note-book on the table and threw my gown into a corner, I should not think that he expected me to be very pleasant. Fred, however, understood me, and it seems to me that I have always been very lucky in having one friend who never tried to make out that I was in a good temper when I was in a bad one. Some people when they suspect that you are angry ask silly little questions just to find out if their suspicious are true, but Fred always left me alone. He simply took no notice of me at all, and though that was very annoying, it was not half as bad as a string of questions or a lot of stupid remarks about things which I did not want to hear. I banged about the room tremendously, but Fred went on reading _The Sportsman_ and waited for me to become fit to speak to.

At last I threw myself into a chair close to him.

"For goodness' sake stop reading that blessed paper," I said; "why I take the wretched thing I don't know, who cares whether Kent beats Lancas.h.i.+re or whether Cambridge makes four hundred against the M.C.C."

"You and I do," Fred answered, and tossed _The Sportsman_ on to the table.

"I have been waiting here for half-an-hour to hear what has happened, but you seem to be in such an infernally bad temper that I should think I had better go. There is a very fair chance of a row if I stay here, for I can't stand much to-day," he went on, when I had picked up the paper to see who had made the runs for Cambridge.

"What's wrong with you?" I asked.

"Everything."

"Did you have a good ball?"

"Perfectly rotten."

"Did Nina get plenty of partners?"

"Crowds."

"And you didn't feel like going on the 'Cher' this morning?"

"I have had two pros bowling to me," he answered, "I was bowled about a dozen times. Besides I wasn't asked to go on the 'Cher.'"

"Nina and Mrs. Faulkner said all sorts of things about me last night?"

"Who told you so?"

"They did."

"Sometimes Nina's temper isn't any better than yours," he said. "What happened to you? How's Owen?"

"Owen is very bad," I answered, and while we had lunch I told him what I had been doing. "In a few hours I have made a fool of myself three times," I said, "I've promised to pay for Owen, and I have had rows with both Edwardes and Dennison. This college is going to blazes, and it is men like Edwardes, who is a great lump of ice, and Dennison, who just wants to be a blood in his own miserable little way, who will be responsible. Edwardes never cares what happens, and Dennison is collecting a set round him who can do nothing but wear waistcoats, eat and drink. You have all the luck in belonging to a college where men don't become bloods by drinking hard, and where everybody takes an interest in the place. St. Cuthbert's will never get a decent fresher to come to it if we don't do something to make it alive again."

Fred stretched himself and yawned, all the life seemed to have gone out of him in some way.

"You wouldn't like to belong to a college which has been something and is on the road to be nothing," I said.

"It takes a lot to ruin a college," he answered; "every one knows that St. Cuthbert's is a good enough place, and one man like Dennison won't make much difference."

"Won't he? you don't know him as well as I do. He'd ruin the Bank of England if he could be the only director for a year."

"But there are heaps of other men besides him."

"No one seems to care; we just live on our reputation, and when Dennison is no longer a fresher he will wreck the whole place, he is clever enough to do it."

"You are in a villainous temper and exaggerate everything," Fred said.

"You know that Oriel is all right, and you don't care what happens to us," I retorted, and then Fred woke up and we very nearly had a terrific row.

The remembrance of this day still makes me feel uncomfortable, and I am quite certain that Fred was the only man in Oxford who could have put up with me. I simply walked from quarrel to quarrel, and I seemed to want each one to be more violent than the last. Now I come to think of it, it is possible that Dennison's advice was sound; I must certainly have needed something which I did not take, but after all I think a long sleep was probably what I wanted. At any rate I was a most unpleasant companion, and Fred told me afterwards that he had not known me for so many years, without finding out that I could be thoroughly unreasonable when I had a really bad day.