Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate Part 7

"It isn't likely a man would want to be danced down-stairs by Lambert and Webb," Collier said; "I wonder they didn't break his neck, and it would have been a thundering good job if they had smashed themselves."

I got up and seized my gown, leaving Collier to continue his wishes for the destruction of Lambert and Webb if he felt inclined. At any other time they would have amused me, for Collier was generally difficult to move in any way, and he was quite funny when his indignation could be roused.

I am not going to describe my interview with the Subby at any length.

He listened patiently to what I had to say, but if a man came to me and said that he had caught hold of me by accident I confess that I should think it a poor sort of story. I could not tell him that I was trying to save him from Lambert and Webb, because that would have been contrary to what I should have expected them to say about me, if the positions had been reversed. The Subby ought to have guessed it for himself and rewarded me, but he had been so hustled that it was perhaps too much to expect him to guess anything. My reputation for work seemed to have been of the worst. There was no denying that the Subby and I had been entangled, and it was no use for me to say that it was his fault. I spoke of it as a very unfortunate occurrence, and I a.s.sured him most warmly that it should not happen again. a.s.surances of that kind do not, I should say, count for much. He was so occupied by the importance of what had pa.s.sed, that I could not make him see that the future was also important. And I did try hard to point this out to him, I regretted much, I promised more, and I meant everything I said most honestly. I had never been so penitent before, but I must at the same time admit that I had never previously felt quite so unwell.

Perhaps my protestations had some effect, for my sentence was that I should be gated for three weeks, and I received also what must, when translated into simple English, have been a warning that unless I changed the errors of my ways my exhibition would be taken away from me. The Subby jawed badly, he was not to be compared with Mr.

Edwardes, and he hesitated and coughed, until once or twice I was almost inclined to help him out, for I knew what he was going to say and he fidgeted me. I was, however, in too great a hole to risk much, so as soon as he began I remained silent and hoped steadily that he would either end soon or be interrupted. He did not know how to begin or when to finish, and if Collier had not knocked at the door and come into the room, it seemed to me that nothing but the pangs of hunger would have warned him that he had said enough.

I have never seen a more welcome arrival than Collier's, because I had really been with the Subby a very long time, and to stand with an attentive expression for ten minutes at a stretch and listen to the usual remarks is in its way quite a feat. I found Ward waiting for me in the front quad, and he asked at once what had happened to me.

"Gated for three weeks," I answered; "I suppose I ought to consider myself lucky, he might have sent me down."

"It knocks all your fun on the head," he said, "being in by nine o'clock every night is average rot."

"It won't matter to me, I am going to settle down and read for a first in Mods," and I turned into the common room and picked up _The Sportsman_. There were no other men in the room, and Ward stood in front of the fire and kept looking at me as if he wanted to say something and could not manage to begin. I read the names of the 'Varsity XV. chosen to play that afternoon against Richmond, and saw that Foster was still among them.

"Fred Foster's going to get his blue," I said.

"Who the deuce wants to get a blue?" Ward replied.

"Well, it's better than getting into rows, anyway," I retorted.

"You seem to have taken this thing very quietly," he said, "don't you see that your being dropped on is a most wretched swindle. Lambert and Webb are only gated for three weeks."

"It doesn't make a tuppenny-ha'penny bit of difference to me what has happened to them. If they had been gated for two years it wouldn't give me any satisfaction."

"But they had been mixing all kinds of drink."

"And the Subby thinks I had," I said.

"But you hadn't."

"No, but that doesn't make any difference. The Subby may be a fair a.s.s, but I caught hold of him, and I must be a bigger fool than he is.

It's the last time I ever try to rescue a don."

Two senior men, Bagshaw and Crane came into the room and overheard my last remark, so I had to tell them the whole thing over again. Both of them laughed tremendously, but Crane, who was captain of the college cricket eleven, and President of the Mohocks, which was the inappropriate name of the St. Cuthbert's wine club, seemed to be more amused at the solemn way I told the story, while Bagshaw said he would have given anything to have seen the Subby rus.h.i.+ng down-stairs. They laughed loudly, and as soon as I could escape I went back to my rooms, leaving Jack Ward to talk to them.

For once I wanted to be by myself, but there was no shaking off Ward that morning, and he turned up again in about ten minutes and said that he had told his scout to bring his lunch round to my rooms. I had struggled n.o.bly with breakfast, but I hated the suggestion of more food and told him he had better go and eat somewhere else. My head ached abominably, and I wanted to sit by the fire and go to sleep. Ward, however, decided that I wanted cheering up, though how he was likely to enliven me by eating when I had no appet.i.te he did not tell me. As a matter of fact cheering me up was only an excuse, what he really wanted to do was to give me the explanation which he thought I must be expecting. If he had known me better he would not have expected me to wait for anything, had I imagined any explanation was necessary I should have asked him for it at once. But I was not taking any interest in explanations, my mouth felt like a cinder, and when some man had met me in the quad and told me I looked "precious cheap," which is an expression I detest, I had not the energy to retaliate.

Ward, having eaten his luncheon and gulped down a most horrible quant.i.ty of beer, lit a cigarette, and sat down by the fire.

"You must think me a most awful brute for having got out of this row,"

he began. I told him that if he felt as I did, he would think everybody in the world was a brute.

"Well, you see," he went on, "I got the thing up and the Subby didn't send for me."

"It was Dennison's fault," I said, for I saw no good in dividing the blame, "and if a man can't take his luck in these things he is no use to anybody. My luck's always vile, but that doesn't matter to any one except me, and I am used to it."

He took no notice of what I said, and continued, "So I told the Subby it was my fault, but when I saw him I thought only Collier, Webb and Lambert had been nailed."

I roused myself and looked at Ward, who was staring into the fire.

"You are a fool," I stated, but I didn't mean it.

"I had to do it or I should have felt awful," he said, and then he jumped up and banged round the room, tossing things about and failing to catch them.

He stood in a new light, and it took me some time to digest what he had told me. Of all the men I had met since coming to Oxford I should have said that Jack Ward was the one who would watch his own interests most closely, and he had upset all my opinions by walking into a quite unnecessary row.

"Why did you do it?" I asked him, and I added, "it isn't as if you could do anybody else any good," for it is at first very perplexing to find a man doing exactly the reverse of what you expect.

"I have told you why I did it, I should have felt so confoundedly mean if I hadn't. But while I was with the Subby I wish I had known that he had nailed you as well, because I might have told him that you hate drinking. A don seems to me to have the fixed idea that freshers naturally drink too much, at least that was the impression the Subby gave me."

"What happened to you?"

"I'm gated for a fortnight, and he talked a lot of tommy-rot."

"Well, I think it is most frightfully decent of you," I said.

"Oh, shut up," Ward answered, "I can't stand that. I have never done anything of the kind before and shan't again. I simply couldn't have faced you men if I hadn't owned up, and that ends it."

At that moment Dennison walked in wearing an enormous overcoat and a Wellingham scarf round his neck, he looked as beautifully pink as ever, and I hated the sight of him.

"This is such a blighted day that I am going to watch a footer match,"

he said, "it amuses me to see thirty people tumbling about in the mud, and we can go and play pool at Wright's when we have had enough, if you will come."

I did not intend to tell Dennison that I was ill, so I said I would go if Ward would come with us, and as soon as we got into the Broad and the rain fairly beat upon us, I began to feel much better and more capable of being disagreeable to Dennison. I was in the state of mind which makes one anxious to be unpleasant, the sort of mood in which horrid people abuse servants or try to kick animals, and I was glad to have Dennison, who deserved every rudeness imaginable, at my disposal.

But the worst of feeling so thoroughly disagreeable is that you are ashamed of yourself so quickly. I am either violently angry or not angry at all, and it is the people who are good at sulks and call them dignity who get their own way in this world. I once tried to be dignified at home, and I am not inclined to repeat the experiment; my father told me not to be a fool, my sister walked about as if wrestling with suppressed laughter, and my mother offered me various medicines.

Rudeness is my _role_, its intention is not so easily mistaken.

So I hung on to Dennison very earnestly, and though Ward did all he knew to keep the peace, I had managed before we reached the Parks, to convince both of them that our walk was a mistake.

We went to the far end of the ground where very few spectators were standing, for an Oxford crowd always collect behind the goal of the visiting side, hoping magnificently that by those means they will see most of the game. It is very n.o.ble of them, but they are sometimes disappointed, and this happened to be one of the days on which those who were behind the 'Varsity goal-posts saw a good deal more than they wanted. For the day was made for the Richmond XV., who were big, bulky men, very heavy in the scrimmage, and the three-quarter backs on both sides spent most of their time trying to keep warm. Dennison said he was bored to death, and I told him Richmond never were any good outside the scrum and were playing a jolly good game. He answered that he was not a Football Encyclopaedia, and I a.s.sured him that he never could be anything half so useful. We kept up this kind of conversation for some time, while Ward stamped his feet and asked us to stop.

"How long have you been gated for?" I asked Dennison suddenly, springing the question upon him as had been the habit of one master at Cliborough when he was going to ask me something very embarra.s.sing.

Ward hit me in the ribs with his elbow, and Dennison pretended not to hear, so I moved a little further from Ward and repeated my question.

"The Subby didn't send for me," he replied; "I wasn't caught and I made no row to speak of."

"Oh well, if you like to get out of the whole thing it has nothing to do with me," I said, and the thought suddenly struck me that if I really goaded Dennison into giving up his name I should feel a brute for the rest of my existence. What I wanted to do was to prove that Ward was worth about ten of him, but it is very uphill work trying to convince a man that he is only a fraction of the fellow he thinks himself, I have often seen people going sorrowfully away from tasks of that kind.

"There is no question of getting out of it," Dennison said quite calmly, "because I have never been in it."

"No question at all," Ward put in.

"At any rate you arranged it," I retorted.

"And the very deuce of a job it was," he replied.

"Of course it was," Ward said, and though I imagined I was out of elbow-shot I got another blow which did nothing to improve my temper.