Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate Part 33

At the beginning of the term I had moved into larger rooms, and I was elected to both Vincent's and the St. Cuthbert's wine club. Murray advised me not to join the wine club, because I was an exhibitioner, and the dons would be sure to fix their eyes steadfastly upon me if I did. But Jack Ward was very anxious for me to join, and every other member, except Dennison, who was only elected when I was, spoke to me about it. So I became one of the twelve Mohocks, which only meant that I could give a guest a good dinner three or four times a term, and after that take him to the rooms of the club where there was a big dessert, and old Rodoski, who was concealed in the bedder, unless some one asked him to show himself, provided music. When we had finished with Rodoski we went out of college and played pool, and then we came back and played cards. There was not much harm about the whole thing, and occasionally it was quite dull, but some of our dons had got hold of the idea that a Mohock must be a rowdy and riotous person. Mr.

Edwardes was one of them, and I found out very soon that he considered that I ought not to have joined the club. I did not, however, feel in the least like resigning, for though there were one or two members who took delight in nothing which was not an orgie, they were generally suppressed before they made much noise. A club of this kind depends a good deal upon its President, and we had a man who thought far too much of the reputation of the Mohocks to insult his guests by a common pandemonium.

My position with Mr. Edwardes had become a critical one when I broke my collar-bone playing against Richmond, and suddenly ceased to be a culprit and became an invalid. At the time I was very sick at my footer ending so abruptly, but my accident was really a stroke of good luck, for I feel certain that I should have been turned out of the 'Varsity fifteen anyhow. An Irish international named Hogan had come up who was, I thought, a really good full-back, and each time I was asked to play for the 'Varsity I expected to be my last. But as soon as there was no chance of my playing against Cambridge I got no end of sympathy, and nearly all the team told me that my absence weakened the side, though previously some of them had said the same thing about my presence. My accident settled the question of who was to be the 'Varsity back quite conveniently; it also made me give up all thoughts of my crusade, and gave me plenty of time to read. I should not think anybody's collar-bone has ever been broken at such an opportune moment.

Fred played against Cambridge, but our forwards were hopelessly beaten, and no one distinguished himself for us except Hogan, who lost two teeth and covered himself with glory.

At the end of the Lent term both Fred and I got seconds in Moderations; mine was not a good second and Fred's was almost a first, so what would have happened if Fred had been smashed up instead of me is not worth inquiring, for there is no doubt that I did more work than he did.

Murray got a first, which was what everybody expected; he was one of the few men I have ever seen who read logic because he liked it.

I cannot say that Mr. Edwardes was very pleased about my second, for he had told me I should be lucky to get a third, and in my case I believe he would rather have been a truthful prophet than a moderately successful tutor. When I asked him if I might read history for my final examinations he was doubtful if I was not seeking a degree by the least fatiguing way, but The Bradder was a history tutor, and although I had found out that he was a very strenuous man, I meant to work with him. So after many warnings against idleness I was allowed to do as I wanted, and Mr. Edwardes got rid of me, which must have pleased him very much. I do not think that any one else ever upset him so completely as I did, and I have never been able to find out why he disapproved of me to such an extent, unless it was that until I got accustomed to him I thought him funny, and when I think anybody or anything funny I have to laugh. No one else laughed at Mr. Edwardes except me, and I should not have done so if I could have helped it, but an unintentionally comic don causes a lot of trouble.

Mr. Grace, the senior history don in St. Cuthbert's, was more like a very benevolent parent than a tutor. Perhaps he was rather old for his work, but he was so extraordinarily peaceful that you could not help liking him, and I had a vague feeling that he was my grandfather. The change from Mr. Edwardes to him was like going to bed in a choppy sea and waking up in a punt on the Cherwell. I can't explain the feeling I had for him, but he seemed to be surrounded by a homely atmosphere, and he reminded me of hot-water bottles and well-aired beds without making me feel stuffy. You worked for him because it struck you as being hopelessly unfair to annoy him if you could help it. He was a most pleasant old gentleman, and a very convenient tutor to have in a summer term. The Bradder, however, to whom I had also to read essays, scoffed when I told him that I had two years and a term before my examinations, and generally speaking allowed me to see that he was going to stand no nonsense. If he had been less of a sportsman I should have thought him more inconvenient, for I never found an excuse which he considered a reasonable one, and after I had done two very short essays for him he let me understand that I must do more work if I wanted him to be pleasant.

"Look here, Marten, it won't do," he said to me when I had read my second essay to him, which even surprised me by its early closing.

"This could not have taken you a quarter of an hour to write, and you have read it in five minutes."

I had tried to lengthen my essay by stopping to discuss any point which might make him talk, but he knew all about that time-worn device, and had told me to finish reading before we discussed anything, and when I had finished there did not seem much to discuss.

"It's the summer term, and I read very fast," I said, because he was waiting for me to say something.

"Don't," he answered; "poor excuses are worse than none. When I began to read history, I wrote telegrams instead of essays, and I tried to make my tutor talk so that he should fill up the time, just as you have done. But I found out in a month that history is not a joke, and that my tutor was not a fool. You have got to read seriously, whatever else you may do; we may as well understand each other from the start."

I gathered up my essay slowly, for he had, as he spoke, scattered what there was of it over the table.

"It would be better to use a note-book than any odd piece of paper that happens to come your way," he said, and added, "if you are slack about your work, you may end by being slack at other things."

"So you have been talking to Mr. Edwardes about me," I said, and I was annoyed.

"Perhaps it would be truer to say that Mr. Edwardes has been talking to me about you," he answered. "You will probably like history very much if you will only give yourself a chance; don't think a fourth is any good to you--or me."

"I'm only just through Mods," I replied, "you do go at a fearful rate."

"You will have to be bustled until you get interested," he answered, "and I will bustle you all right, you can trust me to do that."

I expect that The Bradder knew that I should not care about being bustled by him, and the result of his conversation with me was that he got a great deal of essay out of me with very little trouble to himself, though I thought that he was mistaken in making me start at such a furious pace, and I asked him, without any effect, if he had ever heard of men being overtrained.

Although no one expected our eight to make any b.u.mps, I think they astonished everybody by going down four places, and as we were being b.u.mped by colleges which were generally in danger of being bottom of the river, a wholesome feeling spread over most of us that as a joke our rowing was nearly played out. We began to talk about what we would do next year, but Jack Ward was so disgusted with everything that he suddenly determined that he had wasted nearly two years, and meant to make up for lost time by doing everything with all his might.

I thought these terrific resolutions came from a row he had with Dennison about cards, a disagreeable row in which Dennison said such nasty things that had I been Jack, I should have picked him up and dropped him out of the window; but by some extraordinary means Jack kept his temper until he told him to shut up, and that ended the whole thing, for Dennison knew when it was wise to be silent. I did not think much of Jack's resolutions, for he had been doing no work for such a long time and with such perfect success, that a complete change was more than I was able to grasp. Every one in St. Cuthbert's was supposed to read for honours in some school or other, and Jack, having scrambled through pa.s.s "Mods," had for a year pretended to read law. I never saw him doing it, but he had a most effective way of fooling dons, and, as far as his work was concerned, he never seemed to be worried. When, however, he came to me three weeks before the end of the term, and told me he was going to give up law and read history, I thought he was seeking trouble.

"You will have to work if you have anything to do with The Bradder," I told him.

"For the last ten minutes I have been trying to make you understand that I want to work," he answered, but still I did not believe him.

"All your law will be wasted," I said.

"I don't know any, so that's all right."

"But the dons won't let you change."

"I can manage them; the history people won't want me, but the law people will be glad to get rid of me, I have sounded them already."

"You will end by reading theology," I said.

He gave a great laugh and said he didn't know where he should end, and that all he wanted to do was to work. But he spoke of working as if it was a new sort of game, and I thought his desire to try it would vanish as quickly as it had come, so I was surprised when he tackled The Bradder, and persuaded him that history was the only subject in which he could ever take a decent cla.s.s. Without the consent of anybody, he stopped going to the lectures to which he was supposed to go, and came to my rooms at all hours of the day to borrow books and read them.

Apparently he had become a kind of free-lance, having shaken off his old tutors and not having got any new ones, but he read through a short history of England three times in a week because he said he wanted a good solid ground-work to build upon. Perhaps The Bradder asked that he might be left alone, for certainly no one bothered him and he bothered n.o.body with the exception of me. I admit that I found him a very great nuisance, for I had been compelled to read during the last two terms, and I had not been smitten with any enthusiasm for an examination which was in the far distance. In fact I wanted to slack, and I did not see why Jack should choose my rooms to work in. The mere sight of him annoyed me; he took his coat off and turned up his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves to read, and whenever I made the slightest noise he told me to be quiet. I impressed upon him most earnestly that he could go anywhere he liked or didn't like, but he had settled upon me, and nothing I did could make him go or lose his temper. After a few days I got quite accustomed to him, and I believe that I should have missed him if he had not come to annoy me, but he showed no signs of slackening off, and I was watching for them every day.

We were within a few days of the end of term before I believed that Jack had any serious intentions of changing his manner of living, and then he explained the whole thing to me.

"I have worked for a solid fortnight," he said to me, "and if I can go on for a fortnight I can go on for two years. I didn't want to explain anything until I knew whether it was any good, for I have never worked before in my life and I didn't know what it was like. My father has suddenly got very sick with me, and says I have got to read or go down altogether; besides I am tired of doing nothing, and there are enough slackers in the college without me. We have got to pull this place together somehow." He threw himself into an arm-chair and picked up _The Ordeal of Richard Feverel_. "George Meredith," he said, "I tried him once," and he shook his head.

"Try him again."

"I shan't have time, you are always coming out in unexpected places. I should have thought you would have liked a good sporting novel, I can't understand Meredith."

"The Bradder told me to read this."

"The Bradder's an idiot; you be careful, or you'll write stuff which the examiners won't trouble to read. An examiner doesn't like any other style except his own."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"I guess from the look of them, they must get so horribly tired; facts are what I mean to give them, piles of dates and things like that.

Just let 'em know what I know at once and no rot about it."

"You have got to write essays, not answer questions like a Sunday-school cla.s.s," I said, and yawned.

"The Bradder will have to teach me all about essays, but I am going to stick to plain English, no going round corners for me. I mean to row next year, and I am going to be coached in the vac; if I don't get into the college eight next summer, I----"

"Aren't you going to do a lot?" I interrupted him by asking.

"I have always done a lot; hunting three times a week is a lot when you play footer and cards as well. We will read after dinner for three hours."

I yawned again, for I had had very little fun for some time, and I felt as if a little relaxation would do me good. An Irish M.P. was coming to speak during that evening about the advantages of Home Rule, and although I thought Home Rule meant the disruption of the Empire and many other things, I wanted to hear what this man had to say, and to see if anything exciting happened. The Bradder had told me that there was a good deal to be said in favour of Home Rule, but I put him down as a Radical and did not take any notice of him. The first thing I can ever remember about politics was my father saying that Radicals talked nothing but nonsense, and that had remained with me and was mixed up with the things which I most truly believed. The Bradder, however, made me think that Radicals were not bound to be hopeless persons. I don't know how he did it, but I think it was by telling me that I was one at heart. I never thought half so badly of them after that.

But if what I must apologize for calling my politics were rather wobbly just then, ten thousand Bradders could not make me a Home Ruler, and had I not known that other things happen at political meetings in Oxford besides the ordinary programme, I might have been content to stay in college and go on being dull and peaceable. As it was I thought that Jack and I had earned something in the way of excitement, and after a good deal of persuasion he started with me, but when we got to the meeting the place was packed with an audience which, from the noise, seemed to consist largely of undergraduates singing "Rule Britannia." We talked eloquently to the men at the doors, without getting past them. One of them told me that they had already admitted far too many of our kind, and then added that there was no room for anybody else whatever kind he might be, so we went over to Bunny Langham's rooms, which--for he was not living in college--were opposite the hall in which the M.P. was speaking. There were more than half-a-dozen men in Bunny's rooms when we got to them, and I found out that he had been scattering invitations broadcast during the afternoon.

A lot of other men came in soon afterwards, but n.o.body did anything more extraordinary than sing out of tune until the meeting had finished. I was sitting by the window looking down on the people who had been in the hall, and nearly everybody had gone out of St.

Aldgate's when Bunny came up to me and said he thought he should make a short speech. He went away and came back with a horn, which he blew so l.u.s.tily that in two or three minutes he had collected a small crowd in front of the house.

"They are not enough," he said, and he blew on his horn until I should think fifty or sixty people were standing in the street. Then he put his head out of the window and shouted, "Silence. I will, if you will permit me, say a few words to you on burning questions of the day."

The crowd was almost entirely made up of loafers from the town, and they received him with loud cries of approval.

"Fellow-citizens of Oxford," he began, and was told at once to speak up, and asked if his mother knew he was out and other ancient questions, which interrupted but did not discourage him.

"Fellow-citizens of Oxford," he repeated, "who have a.s.sembled in your thousands----" His next words were drowned by a rude man, with a blatant voice, telling him that he was a blooming liar.

"Fellow-citizens and burgesses of Oxford, who have a.s.sembled in your thousands to hear--" Bunny began once more, but the rude man shouted that he was not at a concert, and when he wanted to listen to the same thing over and over again he was not too shy to say so.

"I shall have to ask you to remove that gentleman, he is mistaking me for one of his unfortunate family," Bunny shouted back, and was told to go on and not mind Tom Briggs. It was not possible, however, for him to make himself heard, and instead of continuing his speech he and Tom Briggs talked to each other, until some one behind me threw a banana at Tom and knocked his hat off. At the same moment I saw the proctor and his bull-dogs coming down the street, and in a minute we had turned out all the lights in the room and gone up-stairs. There we stayed until we heard the proctor leave the house.

"That's a bit of luck," said Jack, as we sat down again.