Sinister Street Volume Ii Part 27

"The speculation is not without interest," declared the Warden. "What does Fitzroy think?"

Fitzroy threw back his shoulders as if he were going to abuse the Togger and said he thought the athletic qualifications were a mistake. "After all, sir, we don't want the Tabs--I mean to say we don't want to beat Cambridge with the help of a lot of foreigners."

"Foreigners, Fitzroy? Come, come, we can scarcely stigmatize Canadians as foreigners. What would become of the Imperial Idea?"

"I think the Imperial Idea will take a lot of living up to," said Wedderburn, "when we come face to face with its practical expression.

Personally I loathe Colonials except at the Earl's Court Exhibition."

"Ah, Wedderburn," said the Warden, "you are luckily young enough to be able to be particular. I with increasing age begin to suffer from that terrible disease of age--toleration."

"But the Warden is not so very old," whispered Miss Crackanthorpe to Lonsdale and Michael.

"Oh, rather not," Lonsdale murmured encouragingly.

"I think they'll wake up Oxford," announced Smithers; then, as everyone turned to hear what more he would say, Smithers seemed inclined to melt into silence, but with a sudden jerk of defiance, he hardened himself and became volubly opinionative.

"There's no doubt," he continued, "that these fellows will make the average undergrad look round him a bit." As Smithers curtailed undergraduate to the convention of a lady-novelist, a shudder ran round the dinner party. Almost the butler instead of putting ice into the champagne might have slipped it down the backs of the guests.

"In fact, what ho, she b.u.mps," whispered Lonsdale. "Likewise pip-ip, and tootle-oo."

"Anyway, he won't be able to ignore them," said Smithers.

"We hope not, indeed," the Warden gravely wished. "What does Lonsdale think? Lord Cleveden wrote to me to say how deeply interested he was by the whole scheme--a most appreciative letter, and your father has had a great experience of colonial conditions."

"Has he?" said Lonsdale. "Oh, yes, I see what you mean. You mean when he was Governor. Oh, rather. But I never knew him in those days." Then under his breath he muttered to Michael: "Dive in, dive in, you rotter, I'm getting out of my depth."

"I think Oxford will change the Rhodes Scholars much more profoundly than the Rhodes Scholars will change Oxford," said Michael. "At least they will if Oxford hasn't lost anything lately. Sometimes I'm worried by that, and then I'm not, for I do really feel that they must be changed. Civilization must have some power, or we should all revert."

"And are we to regard these finished oversea products as barbarians?"

asked the Warden.

"Oh, yes," said Michael earnestly. "Just as much barbarians as any freshmen."

Everybody looked at the two freshmen on either side of the Dean and laughed, while they laughed too and tried to appear pleasantly flattered by the epithet.

"And what will Oxford give them?" asked the Dean dryly. He spoke with that contempt of generalizations of which all dons made a habit.

"Oh, I don't know," said Michael. "But vaguely I would say that Oxford would cure them of being surprised by themselves or of showing surprise at anybody else. Marcus Aurelius said what I'm trying to say much better than I ever can. Also they will gain a sense of humor, or rather they will ripen whatever sense they already possess. And they'll have a sense of continuity, too, and perhaps--but of course this will depend very much on their dons--perhaps they'll take as much interest in the world as in Australia."

"Why will that depend on their dons?" challenged Mr. Ambrose.

"Oh, well, you know," explained Michael apologetically, "dons very often haven't much capacity for inquisitiveness. They get frightened very easily, don't they?"

"Very true, very true," said the Warden. "But, my dear Fane, your optimism and your pessimism are both quixotic, immensely quixotic."

Later on in the quad when the undergraduate members of the dinner party discussed the evening, Maurice rallied Michael on his conversation.

"If you can talk your theories, why can't you write them?" he complained.

"Because they'd be almost indecently diaphanous," said Michael.

"Good old Fane!" said Grainger. "But, I say, you are an extraordinary chap, you know."

"He did it for me," said Lonsdale. "Pumpkin-head would have burst, if I'd let out I didn't know what part of the jolly old world my governor used to run."

CHAPTER X

STELLA IN OXFORD

Alan, when he met Michael at Paddington, was a great deal more cheerful than when they had gone up together for the previous term. He had managed to achieve a second cla.s.s in Moderations, and he had now in view a term of cricket whose energy might fortunately be crowned with a blue.

Far enough away now seemed Greats and not very alarming Plato and Aristotle at these first tentative encounters.

Michael dined with Alan at Christ Church after the Seniors' match, in which his host had secured in the second innings four wickets at a reasonable price. Alan casually nodded to one or two fellow hosts at the guest table, but did not offer to introduce Michael. All down the hall, men were coming in to dinner and going out of dinner as unconcernedly as if it had been the dining-saloon of a large hotel.

"Who is that man just sitting down?" Michael would ask.

"I don't know," Alan would reply, and in his tone would somehow rest the implication that Michael should know better than to expect him to be aware of each individual in this very much subdivided college.

"Did you hear the hockey push broke the windows of the socker push in Peck?" asked one of the Christ Church hosts.

"No, really?" answered Alan indifferently.

After hall as they walked back to Meadows', Michael tried to point out to him that the St. Mary's method of dining in hall was superior to that of the House.

"The dinner itself is better," Alan admitted. "But I hate your system of all getting up from table at the same time. It's like school."

"But if a guest comes to St. Mary's he sits at his host's regular table.

He's introduced to everybody. Why, Alan, I believe if you'd had another guest to-night, you wouldn't even have introduced me to him. He and I would have had to drink coffee in your rooms like a couple of dummies."

"Rot!" said Alan. "And whom could you have wanted to meet this evening?

All the men at the guests' table were absolute ticks."

"I've never met a House man who didn't think every other House man impossible outside the four people in his own set," retorted Michael.

"And yet, I suppose, you'll say it's the best college?"

"Of course," Alan agreed.

Up in his rooms they pondered the long May day's reluctant death, while the coffee-machine bubbled and fizzed and The Soul's Awakening faintly kindled by the twilight was appropriately sentimental.

"Will you have a meringue?" Alan asked. "I expect there's one in the cupboard."

"I'm sure there is," said Michael. "It's very unlikely that there is a single cupboard in the House without a meringue. But no, thanks, all the same."

They forsook the window-seat and pulled wicker-chairs very near to the tobacco-jar squatting upon the floor between them: they lit their pipes and sipped their coffee. For Alan the glories of the day floated before him in the smoke.