Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate Part 34

"I can't make out what the deuce has happened," Bunny answered, "he must have spotted the house."

"Perhaps he didn't want to catch us; after all we were not doing much,"

some man, whose experience of proctors must have been limited, said.

We got back to the room and heard a tremendous booing in the street, for the crowd, deprived of their fun, were letting the proctor know what they thought of him.

"That's splendid," Bunny said, "it's a real score if he doesn't send for us in the morning. If he does he will be sick to death with me, I've been progged three times already this term. Pull the curtains and let's light up again."

"It's about time we went," Jack said; "has the crowd gone?"

I looked out of the window and told him there were only a few people left in the street, but just as we were going there was a knock at the door and a man came into the room.

"Halloa, Marsden," Bunny said; "I am afraid we have been making rather a row in here, perhaps you put a towel round your head and went on reading. Didn't you tell me you tied cloths over your ears when you wanted to be quiet?"

"It's not much of a joke having rooms in the same house with you,"

Marsden answered, and looked very solemn.

"Don't say that," Bunny answered. "Have a drink, I'm generally as quiet as a lamb."

Marsden sat on the table and refused to drink.

"It's no joke being in the same house with you," he said again, and began to laugh.

"I'm not going to set fire to the place or blow it up," Bunny replied.

"But the house becomes infested with proctors."

"Did you see the 'proggins?'"

"He came into my room and progged both Carslake and me. He said we were disturbing the peace of the town."

"He didn't, did he?" Bunny exclaimed, and then went off into such fits of laughter that for some time he could do nothing but cough and choke.

"He couldn't have chosen a funnier man. A sneeze is about the biggest row you have ever made in your life. Didn't you tell him you had nothing to do with the rag?" he asked at last.

"I left you to do that; he wouldn't listen to me, he seemed to be in a hurry to get it over," Marsden said.

"Was he Carter of Queen's, or the other man?"

"Carter."

"I'll be at Queen's at nine o'clock to-morrow, so you and Carslake needn't bother to go; Carter knows me. I am awfully sorry he has been shoving himself into your rooms; the worst of this place is, there is no privacy, Carter just goes where he pleases," and Bunny rang the bell and told his servant that he wanted a hansom in the morning at ten minutes to nine. There were only a few of us left in his rooms, but every one said they would be at Queen's to meet him, though he told us not to make fools of ourselves. "I asked Carter the last time I went to him to let me off a s.h.i.+lling because he had kept my cab waiting, and he fined me double for impertinence. I should think this would cost about two pounds, and I've got about thirty sixpences up-stairs, he shall have all those," he continued. "I'll have some fun for my money, so you fellows had better let me see it through by myself, I made the speech and blew the horn," but as we had all been in the affair we couldn't back out of it because we had been caught.

I walked as far as St. Cuthbert's with a New College man, who thought we should have to pay more than two pounds. "Carter will be so precious sick at being hooted in the street, we shan't get off under a fiver each," he said, and when I got back to college I went up to Jack's rooms to wait and see what he thought we should have to pay.

I was nearly asleep when Jack came in.

"Phillips says we shall have to pay a fiver each, what do you think?" I said, without turning round, and instead of answering me Jack went straight into his bedder and seemed to be was.h.i.+ng himself vigorously.

"What are you doing?" I shouted, but Jack went on was.h.i.+ng, so I shut up asking questions.

In a few minutes he came back into the room, and stood in front of me with a candle held up in front of his face. His lips were swollen, and there was a great cut, which kept on bleeding, over his right eyebrow.

"I look nice, don't I?" he said. "I've had a fight with a man who told me that his name was Briggs."

By degrees I got the whole tale out of him, but it is no fun trying to talk when a great coal-heaving man has. .h.i.t you in the mouth with his fist. Jack had come home by himself, and as he was turning out of the High by B.N.C. Tom Briggs, who had followed him all the way, charged into him. Then there was a little conversation, and Briggs called Jack something especially horrid, and gave him a shove at the same time, so Jack hit him on the nose. After this there was a rough-and-tumble, until that most inquisitive man Carter and his bull-dogs came up and caught Jack. What happened to Briggs he did not know.

"You mustn't tell Carter that you were at Bunny's," I said, after I had blamed myself, until Jack was tired, for having persuaded him to start to that wretched meeting.

"That's a trifle compared with this," he answered, and he was right.

There was a huge row, and it ended in Jack being sent down for the rest of the term. A man, who had been lurking about somewhere, said that he saw Jack hit Briggs first, which was true as far as it went, but hard luck on Jack all the same.

Bunny wanted to have a procession to the station when Jack went away, but he absolutely refused to have any fuss whatever, and altogether took his luck like a sportsman.

If I had only waited for him, or never bothered him to go out at all, this would never have happened, and tired as I have often been of myself, I do not think I have ever felt more utterly wretched than I was during the last few days of that term when I, who ought really to have been in Jack's place, was still in Oxford, and Jack was with his very angry people.

I went to the Warden and told him that Jack would never have gone out of college that night if it hadn't been for me, but all he said was that the Proctor had taken a serious view of the case, and he would not have anybody in the college brawling in the streets. I also wrote to Jack's people and told them that the whole thing was my fault, but his father's answer was very short and disagreeable; he had entirely lost his temper.

Dennison and his friends made the most of this misfortune, and I suppose it was natural that they should think it a comical finish to Jack's attempts at working. For the rest of the term I did not care what happened to anybody or anything. I was thoroughly sick with my luck, and when you are born with a faculty for disobeying rules and offending authorities and have trampled upon your inclinations for a long year without any result except disaster, it is enough to make you think that fighting Nature is a perfectly absurd thing to do. It was very fortunate that the term was nearly over, for I had a mad idea that the best way to make up to Jack for getting him sent down was to get sent down myself; but The Bradder, who knew how foolish I could be, nipped my demonstrations in the bud, and gave me some of the straightest advice I have ever listened to. He was very rude indeed.

One of the few good things about this term was that Fred batted splendidly, he was not successful afterwards against Cambridge, but we had every reason for thinking that they were an exceptionally strong eleven. I bowled faster than ever, and a little straighter than the year before; I was said to be the fastest bowler at Oxford, and I heard two men saying in Vincent's that their idea of bliss was my bowling on a good wicket. But when I lowered a newspaper and showed myself they pretended that it was a joke.

CHAPTER XIX

THE WARDEN AND THE BRADDER

Of all penalties, sending a man down from the 'Varsity for a short time seems to me the most unfair. For some people treat the culprit as if he was almost a criminal, while others are glad to see him and aren't in the least annoyed. Had I been sent down from Oxford I am sure my father would have stormed and told me that I was going to that universal rubbish-heap, called "The dogs," while my mother would have been very hurt and very kind; but I know one man who went home unexpectedly and was told by his father that if he had not been sent down he would have missed the best "shoot" of the year. In some cases the penalty is nothing, and in other cases it is far too heavy.

From the little I knew of Jack's people I did not expect that they would be as unpleasant as they were, for as far as I could see he had not done anything which was much of a disgrace to anybody.

Unfortunately, however, he went home at an unlucky moment, for his father was mixed up with the Stock Exchange, and there was a slump or something equally disagreeable in the City. Jack wrote to me: "I have often seen my father in a bad temper, but I have never seen him keep it up for so long before. There is a large bear syndicate formed in the City, and my father is a bull, and fumes like one. I am very useful if he would only see it, because he can work his rage off on me, and that is a great relief to everybody else. But it is no use thinking of what is to happen next; he has told me that I am going to start to Canada in a month, and Australia in a fortnight, but wherever I go I am to have only 10 besides my pa.s.sage-money--he does the thing thoroughly. The last scheme, announced at breakfast this morning, is that I am going to Greece, to a quarry which has something to do with either marble or cement; I didn't listen much, because I shall probably be booked for Siberia before night. Anywhere but back to Oxford is really his idea, and the more often he changes the place the better. Meanwhile I flaunt history books before him. I left _Taswell Langmead_ on the lawn, because it is the fattest book I have got, and it looks so like one of the Stock Exchange books that I knew he would look at it. He did and growled, but he put it back on the chair, which rather surprised me, for I expected him to launch forth on the uselessness of me reading such things. If I sit tight for a bit and don't get ready to go anywhere, perhaps I shall get back to Oxford after all."

I knew nothing about the Stock Exchange, but I sympathized very much with any one who had to live in the same house with a fuming bull.

Even Fred agreed with me that Jack was being treated unfairly, and he never spoke about him at all if he could help it. When Jack and he had met during the last year at Oxford, as they had often, they were so astonis.h.i.+ngly polite to each other that had I not known the reason I should have been very amused, but as it was, I thought they were making a great fuss about something quite unimportant.

To pretend not to notice a thing which is as clear as daylight is not a part which I can play with any comfort, so Jack and Fred fidgeted me terribly, but they had got some idea firmly fixed in their heads, with which I was wise enough not to meddle. They were both such friends of mine that I hoped they would see as quickly as possible that there was something very humorous in the way they treated each other.

Owen took a first in his final schools, and as soon as the list was out he wrote to me and said that he hoped to come up for a fifth year to read for a first in History. This, I thought, was tempting Providence, for he had already got two firsts, and he seemed to me to be collecting them as I had once collected birds' eggs. He decided, however, to give up his plan, and accepted a masters.h.i.+p at a school in Scotland. I must say that I was relieved at this, for I intended to take two more years before my examinations, and if he had got a first in one year I am sure that I should have heard a very great deal about him, when my father felt unwell or wished to make me feel uncomfortable.

I spent most of my second summer vac in France, partly because my mother was not well, and also because an old scheme for improving my French had been revived. When Fred and I had gone to Oxford there had been some idea of us trying for the Indian Civil Service, but for various reasons this was abandoned, and although Fred had determined that he would go back to Cliborough as a master if he could manage it, I had drifted through two years without having made up my mind what was to happen to me when I got my degree. The Bishop wanted me to be a clergyman, my mother thought that if Fred was going to be a school-master there was no reason why I should not be one, and although my father did not say anything he was not the man to see me finish my time at Oxford and then sit down to wait for some employment to turn up. It was really no use for me to decide what I should do, for unless I showed an especial craving for some profession I knew that he would settle everything, and as I had two years before me I thought that there was no particular hurry, which is, I suppose, the dangerous state of mind of many undergraduates.

I did not understand that my father's wish for me to talk French was part of any definite scheme, and for the life of me I cannot make out why he settled upon my profession and told me nothing about it, but I suppose that unless I ever become a parent there are some things which will puzzle me all my life.

"One of the reasons the English are hated on the Continent is because they can only speak their own language, and when they are not understood they shout," he said to me, and I am afraid I did not care much what the English were thought of on the Continent; at any rate I did not see what I could do to make them more popular. "I intend that you shall at least be able to speak French properly," he went on; "you are not going to stay with us at the hotel, but live with a French family about three miles out of the town."

I detested the idea and had to submit to it, but I acknowledge that I enjoyed my visit to France, though I was told that I spent too much time at the hotel. The fact was that my family lived three miles up hill from the town, and on a bicycle I could reach the sea or my people in a few minutes, but after I had bathed I had to think a lot before I started back. I was arrested twice, once for riding furiously and also for not having my name on my bicycle, accidents which my father a.s.sured me would never have happened had I been able to talk French fluently, though it was absolutely impossible that I could under any circ.u.mstances or in any language have talked as fluently as the policeman who stopped me. My French family were very nice to me, and we got on splendidly together after they discovered that I did not mind them laughing at my p.r.o.nunciation. After two months, during which I had attacked the language vigorously, Nina came from Paris to join us.