Produced by Al Haines
GODFREY MARTEN
UNDERGRADUATE
BY
CHARLES TURLEY
AUTHOR OF 'GODFREY MARTEN, SCHOOLBOY'
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1904
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. OXFORD
II. INTERVIEWS
III. THE RESULT OF THE FRESHERS' MATCH
IV. UNEXPECTED PEOPLE
V. THE WINE
VI. JACK WARD AND DENNISON
VII. THE INN AT SAMPFORD
VIII. LUNCHEON WITH THE WARDEN
IX. A SURPRISE
X. MY MAIDEN SPEECH
XI. A CRICKET MATCH AT BURTINGTON
XII. THE USE AND ABUSE OF AN ESSAY
XIII. NINA COMES TO OXFORD
XIV. GUIDE, HOST AND NURSE
XV. MISHAPS
XVI. THE SCHEMES OF DENNISON
XVII. THE PROFESSOR AND HIS SON
XVIII. THE ENERGY OF JACK WARD
XIX. THE WARDEN AND THE BRADDER
XX. THE HEDONISTS
XXI. ONE WORD TOO MANY
XXII. A TUTORSHIP
XXIII. OUR LAST YEAR
CHAPTER I
OXFORD
The night before I left home for Oxford I had a talk with my father.
He was not of the sentimental kind, but I knew that he had a rare
fondness for my brother, my sister Nina and myself, and I have never
had a moment when I did not return his affection. He had always been
bothered by my lack of seriousness, and he doubted whether I should
really get the best out of 'Varsity life. After telling me that the
time had come for me to treat things more seriously, he finished up by
saying: "I am going to give you two hundred pounds a year, which is
more than I can afford, and which, with your exhibition, must be enough
for you. I have put that amount to your credit in the bank at Oxford,
and I don't expect to hear anything about money from you either during
the term or when you are at home. You ought to know by this time what
money is worth, and that debt is a thing you must avoid. Be a man,
Godfrey, and don't forget that the first step towards becoming one is
to behave like a gentleman."
I shook his hand to show that I understood, for he wanted neither
promises nor protestations, and if I had been able to be sentimental he
would have left the room without listening to me.
He didn't say much, but what he did say was beautifully simple, and on
leaving him I felt very solemn and, since I must tell the truth, very
important. The idea of having a bank account was one which did not
lose its glamour for several days. There was something about my first
cheque-book which pleased me immensely, for I had not been brought up
in a nest of millionaires, and am glad to confess that until I went to
Oxford the possibilities attached to a five-pound note were almost
without limit.
Fred Foster--who had been staying with me--and I parted at Oxford
railway-station without falling on each other's necks, but although we
did not cause any further obstruction on a platform already far too
crowded, we understood that the friendship which had prospered during
so many years at school was not going to be interrupted because he had
got a scholarship at Oriel while I was an exhibitioner of St.
Cuthbert's.
I began by losing my luggage, which was exactly the way some people
would have expected me to begin, and when I arrived at the college
lodge I must have looked as if I had come to spend a Saturday to Monday
visit. One miserable bag was all I possessed, and the porter viewed
me, as I thought, with suspicion. He was a grumpy old person, and when
I told him that I had lost my luggage he grunted, "Gentlemen do,
especially when they're fresh," which I thought very fair cheek on his
part, though I did not feel at that moment like telling him so.
Then having said that my name was Marten, he hunted in a list and told
a man to take my bag to Number VII. staircase in the back quadrangle.
I followed, feeling rather dejected, and I cannot say that the first
sight of my rooms tended to raise my spirits. They were small and
dismal, the window opened on to a balustrade which, if it prevented me
from falling into the quadrangle, also managed to shut out both light
and air. The furniture can be described correctly by the word
adequate; there were some chairs and a table, college furniture for
which I was privileged to pay rent. The chairs looked as if nothing
could ever wear them out or make them look different. They had been
built to defy time and ill-usage.
I went into my bedroom and was more satisfied, by some strange freak it
was bigger than my sitting-room, and after I had seen other freshers'
bedrooms I acknowledged my good luck. There was at least room to have
a bath without splashing the bed. I was still looking disconsolately
about me when my scout came in and treated me with a calm contempt
which immediately raised my spirits. His air was so obviously that of
the man who knew all about things, and he told me what to do with a
gravity which was intended to be most impressive. His name was
Clarkson and I stayed on his staircase during the three years I was in
college, though at the end of my first year I moved into larger rooms.
He was in a mild kind of way an endless source of amusement to me,
because every one knew that under his veil of imperturbability was
hidden, not very successfully, a flourishing crop of failings.
Whenever his chief failing overpowered him his gravity increased, until
he became one of the most indescribably comic people I have ever seen.
He told me that chapel was at eight o'clock on the following morning,
and asked me if I should be breakfasting in. I found out afterwards
that unless I wanted to go to chapel I could go to a roll-call in any
garments which looked respectable, and then go back to bed; but I did
not hear this from Clarkson. He was far too keen on getting men out of
bed and their rooms put straight to give such very unnecessary
information. However, he was useful at the beginning, and had he not
told me where to go for dinner I don't suppose I should have troubled
to ask him.
My first dinner in hall was not a pleasant experience. The senior men
came up a day after us, and most freshers, until they settle down, seem
to spend their time in waiting for somebody else to say something.
That dinner really made me feel most gloomy; things seemed to have been
turned upside down, and in the process I felt as if I had fallen with a
thud to the bottom. There were two or three freshers from Cliborough
to whom I had scarcely spoken during my last two years at school, and
these fellows all sat together and enjoyed themselves, while I counted
for nothing whatever.
I began to learn the lesson that being in the Cliborough XI. and XV.
was not a free passport to glory. The man opposite to me looked as if
he had never heard of W. G. Grace, and when I tried to speak to the
fellow on my right about the Australians, he thought that I was talking
about any ordinary Australian, and had no notion that I meant the
cricket team which had been over in the summer. He was quite nice
about it, I must admit, and when he found out what I was driving at,
said: "I am afraid I don't know much about cricket; I have been over in
Germany the last two or three months, trying to get hold of the
language. I want to read Schiller and those other people in the
original."
He did not suit me at all, and as I had not the courage to give myself
away by asking the names of the other people our conversation dropped.
I was, in fact, dead off colour, and the sight of those three
Cliborough fellows almost took away my appetite. Until that moment it
had never occurred to me that I had been in the habit of thinking a lot
of myself at Cliborough, and in self-defence I must add that I do not
see how a public school can prosper unless some of the fellows stick
together and try to make things go on properly. Any "side" I may have
had was certainly unconscious, but I haven't an idea whether that is
the worst or the best kind. I know that I should have felt like having
a fit if any one had told me that I was conceited, and apart from that
I don't know anything about it, except, as I have said, that I was
angry that these fellows did not seem to remember that I had been at
Cliborough. I told myself that they had lost their sense of
proportion, which was a phrase my father used about any one who argued
with him; and I also said vehemently that they were worms; but unless
you are quite sure of it, and can get some one to agree with you, there
is not much satisfaction to be got from calling people worms.
I went out of the hall and found a tall, dark fellow bowling pebbles
aimlessly about the quadrangle. I bowled a pebble, and hitting him on
the back, had to apologize. It is rather odd, now I come to think
about it, that the first words I ever said to Jack Ward were in the
nature of an apology. We strolled out of the quadrangle into the
lodge, and after he had looked at me he asked me to come up to his
rooms and have some coffee. I was not at all sure that I wanted to go,
but I went. He shouted to his scout at the top of a very powerful
voice, and I felt that he was much more at home than I was. I
determined, moreover, to shout at my scout upon the earliest possible
opportunity.
"I had a brother up here," he said as soon as we were sitting by the
fire, "and he gave me some tips. One of them was to shout at your
scout for at least a week to show that you are not an infant, another
was not to row, and the last was not to play cards all day and night.
My brother's an odd kind of chap, the sort of man who doesn't know the
ace of spades by sight, but it's as easy to shout as it is not to row.
Your name's Marten, isn't it?"
"Yes," I replied; "how did you know that?"
"I scored when you came over last term to play for Cliborough against
Wellingham. I was twelfth man to the XI., though you needn't believe
it if you don't want to. It's wonderful what a crop of twelfth men
there are kicking around; you may just as well say you are a liar smack
out, as tell any one you are a twelfth man."
I told him that I believed him.
"That's only your politeness," he went on; "in a week you will be
talking about me as 'that man Ward who says he was twelfth man at
Wellingham.'"
I sat in his rooms and listened to him talking until eleven o'clock;
for almost the first time in my life I had nothing to say, and that
must have been the reason why I felt amused and uncomfortable at the
same time. He seemed to know all sorts of people, and he spoke of them
by their Christian names, which impressed me, and he referred to London
as a place well enough to stay in for a time, but a terrible bore when
one got accustomed to it. Now I had only been to London three times,
and one of those could hardly be said to count since it was to see a
dentist. As I went back to my rooms, I thought that my education had
been neglected in many ways, and that Ward had been having a much
better time than I had. But I soon changed my mind and decided that he
was the kind of fellow whom I should have thought a slacker at
Cliborough, and I cannot put up with a man, who when he is doing one
thing always wants to be doing another.
When I got back to my rooms I found a letter from my uncle. He was a
bishop, and there had been trouble between us when I was a small boy at
Cliborough; he had made jokes about me which I did not bear in silence.
But he had spent a month of the summer holidays with us, and had told
my mother that I had greatly improved; I thought the same thing about
him, so we got on together very well. I may as well say at once that I
had laid siege to the bishop. Instead of waiting for him to go for me
I went for him, and my mother said that I had discovered the boy in the
bishop. If he was idle I employed him, and on his last day with us I
finished off by making one hundred and thirty-six against him at stump
cricket. When he went away I had changed my opinion of him, but my
father was annoyed that he could behave like a boy when it was time for
me to forget that I was one. "You are as silly as the bishop," became
one of my father's favourite remarks, until my mother asked him to
think of something which was not quite so rude.
The bishop had really been splendid while he was staying with us,
because Nina, having arrived at the age of eighteen, was very difficult
to please. Some man in my brother's regiment had been down and said
that her pug was an angel, and I being unable to reach such heights as
that was compared to my disadvantage with this man. I am nearly sure,
too, that she wanted to flirt with Fred, quite regardless of the fact
that he was no use at flirting, and I should have had something to say
if he had been. In a short year she had changed most dreadfully, and
was no longer satisfied with being liked very much. She was a puzzle
to me, and had it not been for the bishop, who smoothed things over, I
should probably have worried her far more than I did.
His letter did not contain one word of cant; he just wished me good
luck, and told me to write to him whenever I felt that he could be of
use to me. A less sensible man might have preached to me and talked
about the "threshold of a career"; but, thank goodness, he knew what I
wanted, and that if I had not made up my mind to let Oxford do
something for me, I was hopeless from the start.