Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate Part 35

I expected that she would find my accent amusing, but I made a mistake.

What my mother had once mentioned to me as her awkward age had been lived through, and after a few days I began to wonder why I had ever found it easy to be irritated with her. If things go well I generally have an attack of thinking them perfect, but all the same Nina and I became better friends than we had been since I had left school, and we were together so often that nothing but a promise to talk French to her prevented my people from forbidding me to come near the hotel.

On Sat.u.r.day afternoons, however, I stipulated that I should do and talk what I pleased, but unless I went to the Casino there was not much to do on my first holiday after Nina had arrived; so I persuaded her to come to a concert, have tea on the terrace, and then watch the "pet.i.ts chevaux." She was ready to do anything, but my mother detested any kind of gambling, and begged me not to take her into the room in which the tables were. I could have imagined the time when to be told that something was not good for her was the surest way to make Nina want it, but now she said at once that she would much rather sit on the terrace than stay in a room with a crowd of people, and after tea I left her for a few minutes while I went for a walk through the rooms. There was a crowd round each table, and not being able to see anything I was going back to Nina at once when I felt some one touch me on the arm. I turned round quickly for I suspected that my pocket was being picked, though that would not have caused me any serious inconvenience, and before I could remember what I ought not to say I had exclaimed "Good Heavens," but if people will turn up in utterly unlikely places they ought not to be too critical of the way in which they are greeted. I should as soon have expected to see Mr. Edwardes at a Covent Garden Ball as the Warden in a French Casino, and I had an intense and immediate desire to ask him what he was doing there. I suppressed it, however, and only shook him so violently by the hand that he winced perceptibly.

"I have been guilty of watching your movements for the last four minutes," he said, as we walked towards the door leading to the terrace. "I observed you as you entered this chamber of horrors, and I was afraid that you were about to give an exhibition of your generosity."

"Did you think I was going to play?" I asked.

"Yes, if that is the right expression for an act of madness. There are, if I have observed exactly, eight chances against you, and the fool, for believe me he is a fool, who is fortunate enough to win is paid seven times his stake. The man who tries to make money in that way must be generous and a fool."

"The bank must win to pay for the croupiers and keep the place going,"

I said.

"In my opinion there is no acute necessity for the place to be kept going, as you express it. I entertain a hope that if you have ever taken part in that orgie, at which every one with the exception of the croupiers looks greedy and hungry, that you will in the future abstain from it. Gambling is the meanest of all vices," he said slowly, and he tapped my arm seven times.

He did not seem to be going anywhere in particular, and as I cannot bear anybody tapping at me, I thought Nina might help to calm him. So I walked down the terrace and introduced her to him suddenly, for he had a reputation for bolting from strange ladies, and I thought it best to leave nothing to chance. But as soon as he saw Nina the cloud disappeared from his face, and his aggressively moral mood changed. In fact I distinctly heard him say "delightful," though I am sure that he did not intend his remark to be audible. He inspected Nina as if she was for sale or on show, but he so clearly approved of her that she did not seem to mind him.

"Won't you sit down?" she said.

"Only on one condition," he answered.

"What is it?"

"That you tell me the name of your dressmaker," but before Nina could speak he had settled himself beside her, and continued: "You are not only successful in being cool but also in looking cool; now I have ten nieces, delightful girls, but they cannot take exercise without rivalling the colour of a peony. They look what I can only describe to you as full-blown."

"But I have not been taking exercise," Nina said.

"That, I suppose, is true," he replied, and forgot promptly what he had been talking about.

After a minute's silence his head began to sink forward, and I was afraid he was beginning to think hard or go to sleep, so I told Nina that it was time for us to go back to the hotel; for much as I liked the Warden I had no wish to watch over him while he slept on the Terrace of the Casino, and I thought that he might expect to find me there when he woke up. Nina held out her hand to wish him good-bye, but he said that he was coming with us, and while we were walking to the hotel I left him to her, for I was debating whether I had better ask him to meet my father and mother or not. I knew that he had offended a great many people who had come to see him in Oxford about their sons, and he was reported to have said that the greatest difficulty in dealing with undergraduates was the parent difficulty.

"If I was dictator of Oxford it should be a city of refuge for young men, and no father or mother should be allowed to enter it during twenty-four weeks of the year," was one of the things he was supposed to have said, and if my father happened to get him upon that subject I foresaw trouble.

But the question settled itself, for my mother was sitting on the verandah in front of the hotel and came down the garden to meet us. I had heard the Warden chuckle three times as we had walked up the road, and though I could not imagine how Nina was amusing him, I thanked goodness that he seemed to be thinking about ordinary things.

"I have the pleasure of knowing your brother," he said as soon as he was introduced; "he and I disagree upon every subject I have ever had the privilege of discussing with him."

"I do not think my brother would ever discuss a subject with any one whom he expected to agree with. It would be hardly worth while," my mother answered, and the Warden looked at her quickly.

"Surely the benefit arising from a discussion does not depend wholly, or I may say chiefly, from disagreement upon the subject discussed. A Cabinet Council, for instance, may conceivably arrive at a satisfactory and at the same time an unanimous conclusion."

"My brother would not call that a discussion," my mother answered shortly, and the Warden said "Ah," which meant, I believe, that however the Bishop defined the word discussion, it was useless to discuss anything with ladies.

"You will have some tea?" my mother said, as soon as we had reached the verandah.

"You will excuse me, my absence from the hotel at which I have taken a room for to-night, has already been too prolonged. You drink tea in France, madam?"

"We brought our tea with us."

"Admirable foresight, but it remains for you to see the water boiling,"

and then as if he knew that he had hurt my mother's feelings and wished to make some recompense, he continued, "The Bishop, madam, is a man for whom I have a most sympathetic regard, neither politics nor pageants divert him from the work he has pledged himself to do; I know of no man more fitted to be a Bishop."

My mother bowed slightly, and said nothing, and really it was not easy to guess from the Warden's tone whether he considered any man fit to be a Bishop.

"We think differently on many subjects, and on one, I may say, I think with perfect truth, we have differed so widely that a little less self-restraint on the one side or on the other would have brought us to the verge of a very vulgar quarrel. The Bishop preaches what is called Humanity, he practises Humanity, he would have a manufactory--which he would manage on a profit-sharing system--for Humanity pills, and make every young man in Oxford swallow two of them every morning. But there is another meaning to the word Humanity which has been lost sight of in this age of upheaval, it is 'cla.s.sical learning.' Oxford has a duty to perform; it has something to teach in addition to the development of kindly feelings which must be taught at the mother's knee, and grow naturally if they are ever to be effective. We are attacked at Oxford by many kinds of outside influence, and you know enough of young men, madam, to realize that there is no influence which appeals to them so strongly as that which is outside, what I must call, const.i.tuted authority. The Bishop, in short, if I judge him with accuracy, thinks that Oxford is the finest playground for the East-end of London which can be imagined by the wit of man. On this point I disagree with him entirely, not from any dislike to the people of the East-end, but from a profound conviction that young men in Oxford, if they are to do their work with success, have already more than enough to occupy their minds."

He leaned forward in his chair and looked hard at me; he did not apparently expect any answer to his oration, but he had touched on a subject which was near my mother's heart, and I felt so uneasy that I moved from my seat and leaned against one of the posts of the verandah.

"Don't you exaggerate what my brother wants?" my mother asked. "He knows too well the value of time to wish to waste that of anybody, and he loves Oxford."

"Too well," the Warden jerked out, as if he was an automatic arrangement and some one had touched a spring.

"I don't think any one could love Oxford too well, and I should be sorry if G.o.dfrey did not learn something from his life there which could help him to sympathize with other people."

I knew that I was bound to be pulled in sooner or later, and I thought of disappearing behind my post and of leaving the Warden to say what he liked.

"The sympathies of your son are already as wide as those of a Charity Organization Society, and, I venture to say, as misdirected," the Warden returned, and seemed to have forgotten that I was standing in front of him, but if he was going to say things about me I decided to stay and hear them. "I find him the most pleasant companion, he has the gift of silence--Meredith wrote--'Who cannot talk!--but who can?'--he is also amusing, always unconsciously. I have great hopes that he may become a man who will not waste his youth in vain struggles with a ball. Had I the power I would banish all b.a.l.l.s from England for one short year, the experiment would be entertaining."

"It would result in a national dyspepsia," my mother said, laughing.

"G.o.dfrey would play catch with an orange," Nina remarked.

The Warden looked up and saw me. "An orange bursts," he said. "I must return to my hotel. Would you find me a conveyance, one with a coachman as unlike a furious driver as possible?" he asked, and as Nina came with me he was left alone with my mother. I don't know what he said during those few minutes, but when we got back I found my mother smiling placidly, though when I had gone away I was certain that she disapproved of the Warden most thoroughly.

"The Warden wishes you to dine with him to-night," she said to me, and without waiting for me to reply she went on to say how sorry my father would be to miss him. The Warden began to express regrets at my father's absence, but forgot what he was talking about in the middle of his sentence, and finished up by telling the driver to go very slowly.

As he stepped into the vehicle I had found for him, he expressed a fervent hope that it was more robust than it appeared to be.

"What a funny old man!" Nina exclaimed as soon as he had gone, "and what nonsense he talks. He is a dear, but he does look odd!"

"He looks like a gentleman, and is one," my mother replied.

"You didn't like him at first," I said to her.

"I thought he spoke slightingly of your uncle and that he meant all he said, which of course was stupid of me. He was delightful after you had gone, and talked most kindly and sensibly about you, I wish your father could have heard him."

But my father had gone to Rouen and was not coming back until ten o'clock, and I am not sure that he would have liked the Warden, so perhaps it was as well that they did not meet.

My dinner was wearisome, for Miss Davenport, the Warden's sister, was with him, and she talked while I listened. I am sorry to say she was in a very bad temper, and it seemed that the naughty Warden had kept her waiting for two hours during the afternoon. She was by no means in love with France, and though I tried to soothe her I only succeeded in making her sarcastic; I thought the Warden ought to have protected me, but he had known his sister longer than I had, and probably had forgotten that she could make any one suffer. He took no part in the conversation, and most obviously did not listen to it. My mother was disappointed when I told her about the dinner, but I think that she had expected the Warden to give me advice as well as a meal. She had formed the highest opinion of him, and said that he was so wise that he was the only man she knew who could afford to say foolish things. But when my father heard that the foolish things were said about the Bishop he did not believe in the folly of them, for he could not forget that my uncle had once played stump cricket for three hours at a stretch.

When the time came for us to go back to England I could talk French without putting in one or two English words to fill up every sentence, but I did not think that Dover Station was the place in which to be told that I must not be satisfied until I could think in French--though what the station at Dover is the proper place for, I leave to people who are cleverer than I am. I was so glad to get home again that the idea of thinking in French was quite comical. My father and I were going to shoot together, and when he is shooting he forgets all the little grievances with which he has riddled his life and he is--though it makes me blush to confess it--the best companion in the world. If he could only shoot all the year round I believe that Ritualists and Radicals would lose their powers of annoying him, and he might even end by admitting that our long-suffering cook makes curry which is fit to eat, and no more generous admission than that could be expected from an Anglo-Indian.

For nearly three weeks we lived in a state of peace and contentment which none of us thought dull, but during the first week of October I had a letter from The Bradder in which he said that he was on a walking tour and should be pa.s.sing near our house. There was only one answer for me to give, but I gave it reluctantly, for though I liked him I thought that if he and my father once started upon politics our calm season would be interrupted abruptly.

"Does he shoot?" my father asked, and I said that as he was walking for amus.e.m.e.nt he would probably only stay a few hours. "We can't treat him like that; tell him to stay a week and send for his gun. For the matter of that he can have one of mine. I don't expect he will be able to hit a haystack," was his reply.

So I wrote again, and to my surprise The Bradder accepted the invitation and appeared a few days afterwards with no marks of the tourist upon him; for there is no mistaking people who are on walking tours, their anxiety to get on stamps itself upon their faces, and their luggage is generally on their backs or in their pockets. He told us that his companion had broken down three days before, and that he had been back to Oxford to get his gun. I never remember having seen anybody who looked quite so fit as he did, and my father, who had a kind of general impression that every tutor in Oxford was anaemic, seemed to be thoroughly pleased with him. Thus I was lulled into a false state of security, for I had intended to warn The Bradder not to speak of politics while he was with us, but as every one took a fancy to him at sight I thought that I need not trouble to say anything.

There was a lot of speculation about The Bradder's shooting, he shot whenever he got the ghost of a chance, but he added more to the noise than to the number of the bag. He tried to persuade my father before he started that he was the worst shot in the world, but he was not believed until he had proved that he had spoken the truth. He was, however, much happier in a bad than in a good place, and he seemed to be perfectly pleased as long as he could see an occasional bird to shoot at. My father said that he was a good sportsman, though had he not liked him he would have called him a rank bad shot.

Two days pa.s.sed by successfully, and then The Bradder discovered that there was an old abbey near us, and arranged with Nina to go over and see it. Why in the world any one should want to see an abbey when he could shoot at pheasants, was more than my father could understand.