Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate Part 32

But prehistoric men did not seem to appeal to my uncle any more than prize-fighters. He looked very sombre indeed, so much so that I was quite impressed, but I had taken this job in hand and really had to see it through. So I talked, and I won in the way all my few triumphs have been won, by talking until the other man wanted to go to bed.

"I like your enthusiasm, G.o.dfrey," he said at last, "and I wouldn't check it for the world. I will do all I possibly can, both with the Professor and with your people. But you can't persuade me that your father will like the son of a man, who has been dismissed from the army for some cause, to come down and stay with you."

"Don't you tell that to anybody else," I said. "Owen only told me this afternoon, he's only just found it out himself."

"Are you going to tell your father all this?"

"Everything except that the Professor gets drunk now, and you're going to stop that," I added cheerfully.

"Oh, am I?" he answered, "I can't help wis.h.i.+ng that it had not rained this afternoon and that you had been safely at Lord's."

"Well you can't say that I've wasted my time."

"You have got your hands too full, considering that you have promised to work this summer. Don't forget you have got to work, we don't want any fourth in Mods," and then he wished me good-night, and on the next day I went home with Jack Ward, who had a most astounding lot of luggage.

I am not going to describe my first summer vac at any length, because if I once began I should not have any idea when to stop, it was the kind of time which made gloomy people cheerful and cheerful people gloomy; silly, ridiculous things happened, and Mrs. Faulkner was at the bottom of most of them. She even found a niece for me, but that came to nothing, for the niece was a very nice girl and in a week we understood each other beautifully. She stayed a month with the Faulkners and thought of me as a brother, which was most satisfactory; sometimes, however, she treated me like one and then I was not so pleased.

Jack Ward and Nina, in my opinion, behaved none too well; but my father liked Jack and my mother did not say much about him, which explains the whole thing. He was always ready to do anything, and his only fault in my father's eyes was that he was never in time for breakfast.

I was chiefly engaged during his visit in paving the way for Owen's. I told my mother everything and wanted to tackle my father at once, but she said I must wait for a favourable opportunity. I waited a whole week, and it had a most depressing effect on me, so I just walked into his study at last and got it over. It happened to be a damp day, during which he had felt two twinges of lumbago, but he forgot those twinges before he had done with me. I bore everything he said silently, because when he is in a furious rage in the beginning he tails off wonderfully at the end. It seemed that he had a very low opinion of the Professor, and he declared emphatically that he was not going to have his house made into a sanatorium. I listened to a crowd of disagreeable facts about my new friend, and my father declared that even the sight of his son would give him an attack of gout. "It is true," he said, "that I did save his life, and he had, as far as that went, cause to be grateful, and he wasn't grateful but a disgrace to the regiment. I want to forget all about the man and then you rake him up again, and you say that stupid uncle of yours, who plays cricket when he ought to be writing sermons, is going to be a friend to him.

It's more than I can or will put up with," and he banged _The Nineteenth Century_ down on his writing-table so violently that he upset a vase of roses and some of the water went into his ink-pot.

After that he was incoherent for a minute, and I, not knowing what to say, remarked that the Bishop could not be expected to write sermons during his holidays.

"A bishop ought always to be writing sermons," was his only answer, and I guessed that his rage had reached its climax. I tried to lower the flood on his table by means of my pocket-handkerchief, and waited.

"What sort of a fellow is this son who pushes himself upon you in this way? It's monstrous."

"He's quiet and all right, and he has never pushed himself at all. I made him promise to come; he didn't want to, only it's his chance to get well and he must take it. You would have done the same thing."

"What's he like?"

"He's not exactly like any one else I know at Oxford, but----"

"Of course he isn't."

"I was going to say no one could possibly dislike him."

"I suppose he will have to come, but I want you to understand that in future I insist on knowing whom you want to ask here before you ask them. I am exceedingly annoyed, I shall go and see your mother."

I went with him, as when I am about I generally manage to absorb most of his anger, but after a few outbursts my mother soothed him, and in the end he even gave a grim sort of smile when I said that unless he had saved the Professor there would have been no bother about his son.

"Don't call that man a Professor," he said, "he's a humbug, he always was and always will be, and if it wasn't that I am sorry for a son who has such a father I wouldn't be talked over by you. But you have given your uncle something to think about," and that idea sent him smiling to the window.

One most splendid thing happened while Jack Ward was staying with us, for just before he was going away Nina fell into the river again and Jack was superb enough idiot to repeat his previous performance and jump in after her. I met them trying to get into the house by a back way, and from the look of them I saw that they were feeling rather silly. It is all very well to fall into one river, but when you start going overboard anywhere the thing becomes comical, and they fell from their high position as rescued and rescuer and had to put up with a good deal of wit, as we understood it at home. I didn't say much, because Nina was better than I was at saying things, but whenever I saw her I gave way to fits of silent laughter. I can't think how I thought of that dodge, it was so extraordinarily successful and so far above my average efforts, and as soon as I saw that it was working properly, I did not mind being called anything she liked. And my father, being particularly well just then, helped me by what, I was determined to believe, were very humorous remarks. Jack did not hear many of them, but the few he did hear must have upset him a little, for he tried to explain himself by saying that he would jump into anything to save a kitten, which from the look of Nina did not seem to satisfy her much.

In the end I don't believe she was as sorry for Jack to go as I was.

She could not stand being a family joke, and I, having suffered in that way many times, could have sympathized with her if I had not thought that it was much the best thing which could happen.

I felt dull after Jack went, for he was the sort of man who does brighten up a place, and he was never by any chance bored; besides, I was wondering how I could make Owen enjoy himself, because the only thing I knew about him was that he did not care for any exercise except walking, and I hoped that he would be reasonable about the distances he wanted to go.

However, the day before he was to come, Miss Read arrived, which was an idea of my mother's, and a very good one. Miss Read had been Nina's governess for eight years, and she knew all of us better than we knew ourselves. She was a kind of tonic when any of us were depressed, and a cooling draught when we were angry; in my case she had seldom been a tonic, but all the same when she had left us at Easter I was very sorry. She was the only person I have ever seen of whom Nina was really afraid. I am sure she could have told some funny tales if she had felt inclined. She was supposed to be coming to see Nina, who was going to Paris in a few weeks to be "finished," but I am sure that my mother thought Owen would like her, and that she would like him. And as it happened, they were both botanists and b.u.t.terfly-catchers, at least Miss Read knew a lot about b.u.t.terflies, though her time for catching them had gone by, and they were always doing things together.

Worcesters.h.i.+re must certainly be a better place than West Ham for a botanist, and after Owen had got used to us I believe he enjoyed himself. We worked together in the mornings, which pleased my father, and he let my mother give him as much medicine as she wanted to, which pleased her, and I feeling virtuous after reading every morning for nearly four hours, was very pleased with myself. But he was in a mortal terror of Nina, though she really never gave him any cause to be, and made the most valiant efforts to learn the Latin names of plants. Miss Read and he made excursions and grubbed about in hedges, and Nina and I often met them at some place to have tea. It wasn't very exciting, for I had always to carry the kettle and the things to eat; but the sun shone most of the time, which was really a blessing, because on wet days Owen persuaded me to work in the afternoons as well as the mornings, and that was more than I had ever thought of doing in a vac.

I suppose Owen was what is generally called a smug, but he was not one by choice but by compulsion, which is the best kind I should think. He was so totally different from any other kind of friend I have ever had that I sometimes caught myself wondering whether I really liked him.

But I could always satisfy myself about that, for there was one thing about him which no one could help liking; he was most tremendously clever and never tried to make out that he was, and having already seen plenty of people who were about as clever as I was, and who talked as if they were Solomon and Solon rolled into one, I was grateful to him.

We got on very well together, though we had not got a single thing in common, except that we both liked suns.h.i.+ne; and that can't be said to be much, for I have only met one man in England who did not like the sun, and he had been affected, permanently, by too much of it.

Men get blamed freely enough for putting on side about playing cricket and football well, and they deserve all they get, but the men who put on intellectual side ought, I think, to be spoken to more severely, because they get worse as they get older, while the first sort of side generally dies an early death. Owen was a kind of encyclopaedia, who did not air or advertise himself, and I thought him a very rare specimen. Athletics meant no more to him than botany or b.u.t.terflies meant to me, but when he went away my father said emphatically that it was refres.h.i.+ng to think Oxford turned out some men who took interest in useful things. I did not answer that remark, because he did not really know very much about Oxford, and his occasional hobby was that the country was being ruined by too many games. "A very well-conducted young man," he said of Owen, "always up in the morning, and always ready to go to bed at night."

"He looked much better when he went away than when he came," my mother said; "I hope we shall see him down here again."

"I think he means to make a name for himself," Miss Read added; "he knows exactly what he wants."

Nina yawned, and although I thought my father need not have described Owen as a well-conducted young man, I was thankful that his visit had pa.s.sed off so well, and I said nothing.

After Owen had gone away we had a fellow to stay with us out of my brother's regiment. He was home on sick-leave, but had quite recovered from whatever had been the matter with him, and was as full of bounce as a tennis-ball. Mrs. Faulkner loved him and wanted Nina to follow her example, as far as I could make out, for she gave a dance and a moonlight supper party on the river. Mr. Faulkner, who was always more or less semi-detached, disappeared before the supper-party, which he told me was a midsummer madness.

"There will be a mist and the food will be damp and horrid, and everybody will be wanting foot-warmers and hot-water bottles before they have done, you had better put on your thickest clothes and borrow my fur overcoat," he said to me. And he was a true prophet, for Nina caught a violent cold in her head, which checked and really put a stop to a more violent flirtation.

Nina went to Paris a few days after Fred came to us, and we all agreed that she would enjoy herself there, though I do not believe that any of us really thought she would. As a matter-of-fact she was so home-sick that my mother would have gone to fetch her back if it had not been for Miss Read, who was blessed with much courage and common-sense. Mrs.

Faulkner tried her hardest to persuade my mother to bring Nina home again, and she came to our house and wept so much that I thought she was sure to win. But Miss Read met tears with arguments, until Mrs.

Faulkner stopped crying, and having lost her temper, forgot that Miss Read had not only been Nina's governess, but was also one of my mother's greatest friends. So Nina stayed in Paris, and I wrote to her twice a week for a fortnight, but after that she began sending me messages in other people's letters, and I was sorry for her no longer.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ENERGY OF JACK WARD

After Nina went to Paris Fred spent most of his time in trying to be cheerful, but for some days he looked as if he had lost something and expected to find it round the next corner. I was very patient, though I do not believe he understood how often I wanted to argue with him.

By the end of the vac, however, he had forgotten to be gloomy, and I hoped that Oxford would cure him altogether, for he had a good chance of getting his Rugger blue, and he had got to read; besides, I have never been able to see that perpetual gloom is of any use to anybody.

I went back to St. Cuthbert's full of desperate resolutions. I wanted to make every one in the college understand that it was the slackest place in Oxford, and having done that I wished to find the men who would make it keener. The scheme was a gigantic one for me to take up; it needed tact, and I went at it so vigorously that in a few days I had offended some men and had succeeded in making others look upon me as a freak. Dennison told me that I had a bee in my bonnet. If he had said that I was mad I should not have minded, but those horrid little expressions of his always tried me very much, and I am bound to confess that my first efforts to rouse the college met with more ridicule than success. Very few men seemed to care what happened to us, and nearly everybody pretended that our eight would rise again, and our footer teams cease to be laughed at, though no one tried to make them any better. Dennison wrote a skit called "The Decline and Fall of St.

Cuthbert's"; and some artist, who thought that my nose was as big as my arm, made a drawing of me in which I was trying to carry the college on my back, and was so overburdened by the weight of it that nothing but my nose prevented me from being crushed to the ground. It was very funny and also very unfair in more ways than one, because I did not start my crusade with any idea of becoming important, and I have no feature which is superlatively large.

This skit of Dennison's really settled me for a time, but I did stir up one or two men whom I had never expected to do anything. Jack Ward stopped driving about with Bunny Langham, and began to play footer, and Collier actually went down to the river every afternoon. Physical incapability prevented him from rowing well, but he persuaded several other men, who did not suffer as he did, to go through the same drudgery, and for self-sacrifice I thought he was hard to beat, because he was quite a comical sight in a boat. What good did come from my first crusade was due chiefly to him; a kind of revivalist spirit was upon him, and many unsuspecting freshers who had only thought of the river as a place to avoid, were unable to resist his entreaties.

The dons heard of my crusade, and I know that Mr. Edwardes did not like it, but I had two of them on my side, and the others did not take any active measures against me. Mr. Edwardes took the trouble to tell me that I was mistaken in thinking that the reputation of St. Cuthbert's depended upon athletics, and I answered that I had never supposed anything of the kind, but that I thought a college which was slack about other things would end by being slack in the schools. This reply of mine surprised him so much that he told me that any campaign to be successful must be managed by the right people, and I agreed with him cordially, for although I knew that plenty of men would have worried everybody out of their slackness much more successfully than I could, I was not going to tell him so.

The Bursar supported me soundly, and we had a new don at the beginning of my second year who took a most invigorating interest in the college.

He was known to us as "The Bradder," and though his real name was Bradfield it was seldom used, and as far as we were concerned he could have done quite well without it. I had become so accustomed to aged dons that I could not understand him at first, he was so very young.

He was also reported to be very clever, but I was so impressed by his youthfulness that it took me some time to believe that he would ever count for much. I ought, however, to have known that The Bradder was not the kind of man who would allow himself to become a nonent.i.ty, for he was full of energy and determination.

I was never able to find out how the dons heard of my scheme, but they find out most things by some extraordinary means, and The Bradder spoke to me very encouragingly about it, though he looked at me as if I amused him in some odd sort of way. He also asked me to breakfast, which I thought was carrying kindness a little too far. I antic.i.p.ated the usual thing--a crowd of men with large appet.i.tes, and a host who abstained from food in his efforts to provide conversation; but when I went to The Bradder's rooms I found that I was in for a _tete-a-tete_, and my opinion of the other kind of breakfast rose considerably. As a don I was not in the least nervous of him, but as a host I thought he might be overwhelming.

That he ever lived through this meal without laughing was a marvel, for when I was sitting opposite to him my nervousness vanished, and I told him exactly what I thought about every subject he suggested, and it was not until I had left him that it occurred to me that I had been talking nearly all the time, and that he had said very little. I determined that he was a most thoroughly good sort, but the idea of his being a don struck me as being absurd. I put him on my side with the Warden and the Bursar, and thought that Mr. Edwardes was in a hopeless minority of one in persecuting me, for I looked upon the Subby as a man who had been born to be neutral. I do not suppose that I should ever have started my first crusade if I had known that it was going to cause the mildest of sensations. As far as I had thought about it at all, I had imagined that everybody in St. Cuthbert's would be glad to see the college take its usual place again, and certainly I had no idea that I should be violently supported and opposed. The captains of everything were in favour of less slackness, but Dennison and all his set said that an Oxford college was not a public school, and talked a lot of nonsense about the iniquity of compulsory games. No further proof is needed to show how unfair they were, for a man must be mad to dream of compulsory games at Oxford, and such an idea never entered my head.

But all this talking made me wish that I had never said or done anything, and before long I was heartily tired of the whole thing, for my own affairs became rather more than I could manage.