202 HIGH
The large room at 202 High Street which Michael shared with Grainger
and Lonsdale was perhaps in the annals of university lodgings the most
famous. According to tradition, the house was originally part of the
palace of a cardinal. Whether it had been the habitation of
ecclesiastical greatness or not, it had certainly harbored grandeur of
some kind; to this testified the two fireplaces surmounted by
coats-of-arms in carved oak that enhanced this five-windowed room with
a dignity which no other undergraduate lodging could claim. The house
at this period was kept by a retired college cook, who produced for
dinner parties wonderful old silver which all his tenants believed to
have been stolen from the kitchen of his college. The large room of 202
High gave the house its character, but there were many other rooms
besides. Wedderburn, for instance had on the third story a sitting-room
whose white paneling and Georgian grace had been occupied by
generations of the transitory exquisites of art and fashion. Downstairs
in the aqueous twilight created by a back garden was the dining-room
which the four of them possessed in common. As for the other lodgers,
none were St. Mary’s men, and their existence was only alluded to by
Michael and his friends when the ex-cook charged them for these
strangers’ entertainments.
Michael was the first to arrive at Two Hundred and Two, and he
immediately set to work to arrange in the way that pleased him best the
decorative and personal adjuncts contributed by Grainger, Lonsdale, and
himself. For his own library he found a fine set of cupboards which he
completely filled. The books of Grainger and Lonsdale he banished to
the dining-room, where their scant numbers competed for space on the
shelves with jars of marmalade, egg-cups, and toast-racks. The
inconvenience of the confusion was helpfully obviated first by the fact
that their collection, or rather their accumulation, was nearly
throughout in duplicate owing to the similar literary tastes and
intellectual travaux forcés of Grainger and Lonsdale, and secondly by
the fact that for a year to neither taste nor intellect was there
frequent resort. With their pictures Michael found the same difficulty
of duplication, but as there were two fireplaces he took an ingenious
delight in supporting each fireplace with similar pictures, so that
Thorburn’s grouse, Cecil Aldin’s brilliant billiard-rooms, Sir Galahad
and Eton Society were to be found at either end. Elsewhere on the
spacious walls he hung his own Blakes and Frederick Walkers, and the
engraving of the morning stars singing together he feathered with the
photographic souvenirs of Lonsdale’s fagdom. As for the pictures that
belonged to the ex-cook, mostly very large photogravures of Marcus
Stone such as one sees in the corridors of theaters, these he took
upstairs and with them covered Wedderburn’s white-paneled walls after
he had removed the carefully hung Dürers to the bathroom. This
transference wasted a good deal of time, but gave him enough amusement
when Wedderburn arrived to justify the operation. The pictures all
disposed, he called for a carpenter to hang Grainger’s triumphal oars
and Lonsdale’s hunting trophies of masks, pads and brushes, and
surveyed with considerable satisfaction the accumulative effect of the
great room now characterized by their joint possessions. Michael was
admiring his work when Lonsdale arrived and greeted him boisterously.
“Hullo! I say, are we all straight? How topping! But wait a bit. I’ve
got something that’s going to put the jolly old lid on this jolly old
room. What’s the name of the joker who keeps these digs? Macpherson?”
He shouted from the landing to the ex-cook.
“I say, send up the packing-case that’s waiting for me downstairs.”
Michael inquired what was inside.
“Wait a bit, my son,” said the beaming owner. “I’ve got something in
there that’s going to make old Wedders absolutely green. I’ve thought
this out. I told my governor I was going into digs with some of the
æsthetic push and didn’t want to be cut out, so he’s lent me this.”
“What on earth is it?” Michael asked on a note of ambiguous welcome.
The packing-case shaped like a coffin had been set down on the floor by
the ex-cook and his slave. Lonsdale was wrenching off the top.
“I had a choice between a mummy and a what d’ye call it, and I chose
the what d’ye call it,” said Lonsdale.
He had torn the last piece of the cover away, and lying in straw was
revealed the complete armor of a Samurai.
“Rum-looking beggar. Worth twenty of those rotten statues of
Wedderburn’s. It was a present to the governor from somebody in the
East, but as I promised not to go to dances in it, he lent it to me.
Rather sporting of him, what? Where shall we put him?”
“I vote we hide it till this evening,” suggested Michael, “and then put
it in Wedder’s bed. He’ll think he’s in the wrong room.”
“Ripping!” cried Lonsdale. “In pyjamas, what?”
That Japanese warrior never occupied the æsthetic niche that Lord
Cleveden from his son’s proposal may have thought he would occupy.
Otherwise he played an important part in the life of Two Hundred and
Two. Never did any visitor come to stay for the week-end, but Sammy, as
he was soon called, was set to warm his bed. To Lonsdale, returning
home mildly drunk from Trinity Clareter or Phoenix Wine, he was always
ready to serve as a courteous listener of his rambling account of an
evening’s adventures. He was borrowed by other digs to annoy the
landladies: he went for drives in motor cars to puzzle country inns.
Lonsdale tried to make him into a college mascot, and he drove in state
to the St. Mary’s grind on the box seat of the coach. He was put down
on the pavement outside the lodge with a plate for pennies and a label
“Blind” round his neck. But Sammy’s end was a sad one. He had been sent
to call on the Warden, and was last seen leaning in a despondent
attitude against the Warden’s gothic door. Whether the butler broke him
up when Sammy fell forward onto his toes, or whether he was imprisoned
eternally in a coal cellar, no one knew. Lord Cleveden was informed he
had been stolen.
If Michael had tried hard to find two people in whose company it would
be more difficult to work than with any other pair in the university,
he could scarcely have chosen better than Lonsdale and Grainger.
Neither of them was reading an Honor School, and the groups called H2
or C3 or X26, that with each term’s climax they were compelled to pass
in order to acquire the degree of bachelor of arts, produced about a
week before their ordeal a state of irritable industry, but otherwise
were unheeded. Michael was not sorry to let his own reading beyond the
irreducible minimum slide during this gay third year. He promised
himself a fourth year, when he would withdraw from this side of Oxford
life and in some cloistered digs work really hard. Meanwhile, he
enjoyed 202 High as the quintessence of youth’s amenity.
Some of the most enduring impressions of Oxford were made now, though
they were not perhaps impressions that marked any development in
himself by intellectual achievements or spiritual crises. In fact, at
the time the impressions seemed fleeting enough; and it was only when
the third year was over, when Two Hundred and Two was dismantled of
every vestige of this transient occupation that Michael in summoning
these impressions from the past recaptured, often from merely pictorial
recollections, as much of Oxford as was necessary to tell him how much
Oxford had meant.
There were misty twilights in November when Lonsdale came back
spattered with mud after a day with the Bicester or the V.W.H. At such
an hour Michael, who had probably been sitting alone by the roaring
fire, was always ready to fling away his book, and, while Lonsdale
grunted and labored to pull off his riding-boots to hear the tale of a
great run across a great piece of country.
There was the autumn afternoon when Grainger stroked St. Mary’s to
victory in the Coxwainless Fours. Another oar was hung in Two Hundred
and Two, and a bonfire was made in Cuther’s quad to celebrate the
occasion. Afterward Grainger himself triumphantly drunk between Michael
and Lonsdale was slowly persuaded along the High and put to bed, while
Wedderburn prescribed in his deepest voice a dozen remedies.
There were jovial dinner parties when rowing men from Univ and New
College sat gigantically round the table and ate gigantically and
laughed gigantically, and were taken upstairs to Wedderburn’s dim-lit
room to admire his statues of Apollo, his old embroideries and his
Dürer woodcuts. These giants in their baggy blanket trousers, their
brass-buttoned coats and Leander ties nearly as pink as their own
faces, made Wedderburn’s white Apollos look almost mincing and the
embroideries rather insipid. There were other dinner parties even more
jovial when the Palace of Delights, otherwise 202 High, entertained the
Hotel de Luxe, otherwise 230 High, the abode of Cuffe, Sterns, and
Sinclair, or the Chamber of Horrors, otherwise 61 Longwall, where
Maurice and Castleton lived. After dinner the guests and the hosts
would march arm in arm down to college and be just in time to make a
tremendous noise in Venner’s, after which they would visit some of the
second-year men, and with bridge to wind up the evening would march arm
in arm up the High and home again.
In the Lent term there were windy afternoons with the St. Mary’s
beagles, when after a long run Lonsdale and Michael would lose the
college drag and hire a dogcart in which they would come spanking back
to Oxford with the March gale dying in their wake and the dusk
gathering fast. In the same term there was a hockey cup-match, when St.
Mary’s was drawn to play an unfamiliar college on the enemy’s ground.
202 High wondered how on earth such an out-of-the-way ground could
possibly be reached, and the end of it was that a coach was ordered in
which a dozen people drove the mile or so to the field of play, with
Lonsdale blowing the horn all the way down High Street and Cornmarket
Street and the Woodstock Road.
Michael during the year at Two Hundred and Two scarcely saw anybody who
was not in the heart of the main athletic vortex of the university. In
one way, his third year was a retrogression, for he was nearer to the
life of his first year than to his second. The Oxford Looking-Glass had
created for him a society representing various interests. This was now
broken up, partly by the death of the paper, partly by the more highly
intensified existence of the founders. Maurice certainly remained the
same and was already talking of starting another paper. But Wedderburn
was beginning to think of a degree and was looking forward to entering
his father’s office and becoming in another year a prosperous partner
in a prosperous firm. Guy Hazlewood had gone down and was away in
Macedonia, trying to fulfill a Balliol precept to mix yourself up in
the affairs of other nations or your own as much as possible. Townsend
and Mowbray thought now of nothing but of being elected President of
the Union, and as Michael was not a member and hated politics he
scarcely saw them. Nigel Stewart had gone to Ely Theological College.
The Oxford Looking-Glass was shattered into many pieces. Alan, however,
Michael saw more often than last year, because Alan was very popular at
Two Hundred and Two.
Michael more and more began to assume the opinions and the attitude of
his companions. He began more and more rigidly to apply their somewhat
naïve standards in his judgment of the world. He was as intolerant and
contemptuous as his friends of any breach of what he almost stated to
himself as the public-school tradition. Oxford was divided into Bad Men
and Good Eggs. The Bad Men went up to London and womanized—some even of
the worst womanized in Oxford: they dressed in a style that either by
its dowdiness or its smartness stamped them: they wore college colors
round their straw hats and for their ties: they were quiet,
surreptitious, diligent, or blatantly rowdy in small sections, and at
least half the colleges in the Varsity contained nothing but Bad Men.
The Good Eggs went up to London and got drunk; and if they womanized no
one must know anything about it. Drink was the only vice that should be
enjoyed communely; in fact, if it were enjoyed secretly, it transformed
the victim into the very worst of Bad Men. The Good Eggs never made a
mistake in dress: they only wore old school colors or Varsity club
colors: they were bonhomous, hearty, careless, and rowdy in large
groups. Only the men from about eight colleges were presumed to be Good
Eggs: the rest of the Varsity had to demonstrate its goodness.
Michael sometimes had misgivings about this narrowly selected paucity
of Good Eggs. He never doubted that those chosen were deservedly
chosen, but he did sometimes speculate whether in the masses of the Bad
Men there might not be a few Good Eggs unrecognized as Eggs, unhonored
for their Goodness. Yet whenever he made an excursion into the midst of
the Bad Men, he was always bound to admit the refreshment of his very
firm prejudice in favor of the Good Eggs. What was so astonishing about
Good Eggery was the members’ obvious equipment for citizenship of the
world as opposed to the provincialism of Bad Mannery. Unquestionably it
was possible to meet the most intelligent, the most widely read Bad
Men; but intellect and culture were swamped by their barbarous
self-proclamation. They suffered from an even bitterer snobbishness
than the Good Eggs. In the latter case, the snobbishness was largely an
inherited pride: with the Bad Men it was obviously an acquired vanity.
Where, however, Michael found himself at odds with Good Eggery was in
the admission to titular respect of the Christ Church blood. This
growing toleration was being conspicuously exemplified in the attitude
of St. Mary’s, that most securely woven and most intimate nest of Good
Eggery.
When Michael had first come up there had been an inclination at his
college to regard with as much contemptuous indifference an election to
the Bullingdon as an election to the Union. It was tacitly understood
at St. Mary’s that nothing was necessary to enhance the glory of being
a St. Mary’s man. Gradually, however, the preponderance of Etonian
influence outweighed the conventional self-sufficiency of the
Wykehamists, and several men in Michael’s year joined the Bullingdon,
one of the earliest of these destroyers of tradition being Lonsdale.
The result of this action was very definitely a disproportion in the
individual expenditure of members of the college. St. Mary’s had always
been a college for relatively rich men, but in accordance with the
spirit of the college to form itself into an aristocratic republic, it
had for long been considered bad form to spend more than was enough to
sustain each member of this republic on an equality with his fellows.
Now Lonsdale was so obviously a Good Egg that it did not matter when he
played with equal zest roulette and polo or hunted three times a week
or wore clothes of the last extreme of fashion. But Michael and
Grainger were not sure they cared very much for all of Lonsdale’s
friends from the House. Certainly they were Etonians and members of the
Bullingdon, but so many of their names were curiously familiar from the
hoardings of advertisements that neither Michael nor Grainger could
altogether believe in their assumption of the privilege of exclusion on
the ground of inherited names.
“I think these Bullingdon bloods are rather rotters,” protested
Michael, after an irritating evening of vacuous wealth.
“I _must_ ask them in sometimes,” apologized Lonsdale.
“Why?” rumbled Wedderburn, and on his note of interrogation the
Bullingdon bloods were impaled to swing unannaled.
“I don’t think all this sort of thing is very good for the college,”
debated Grainger. “It’s all very well for you, Lonny, but some of the
second-year men behave rather stupidly. Personally I hate roulette at
St. Mary’s. As for some of the would-be fresher bloods, they’re like a
lot of damned cavalry subalterns.”
“You can’t expect the college to be handed over entirely to the rowing
push,” said Lonsdale.
“That’s better than turning Venner’s into Tattersall’s,” said
Wedderburn.
The effect of enlarging the inclusiveness of Good Eggery was certainly
to breed a suspicion that it was largely a matter of externals; and
therefore among the St. Mary’s men who disliked the application of
money as a social standard an inclination grew up to suppose that Good
Eggery might be enlarged on the other side. The feeling of the college,
that elusive and indefinable aroma of opinion, declared itself
unmistakably in this direction, and many Bad Men became Good Eggs.
“We’re all growing older,” said Michael to Wedderburn in explanation of
the subtle change manifesting itself. “And I suppose a little wiser.
Castleton will be elected President of the J.C.R. at the end of this
year. Not Tommy Grainger, although he’ll be President of the O.U.B.C.,
not Sterne, although he’ll be in the Varsity Eleven. Castleton will be
elected because he never has believed and he never will believe in mere
externals.”
Nevertheless for all of his third year, with whatever fleeting doubts
he had about the progress of St. Mary’s along the lines laid down by
the Good Eggery of earlier generations, Michael remained a very devoted
adherent of the principle. He was able to perceive something more than
mere externals in the Best Eggery. This was not merely created by money
or correct habiliment or athletic virtuosity. This existed inherently
in a large number of contemporary undergraduates. Through this they
achieved the right to call themselves the Best. It was less an
assertion of snobbishness than of faith. Good Eggery had really become
a religion. It was not inconsistent with Christianity: indeed, it
probably derived itself from Christianity through many mailclad and
muscular intercedents. Yet it shrank from anything definitely spiritual
as it would have shrunk from the Salvation Army. Men who intended to be
parsons were of course exceptions, but parsons were regarded as a facet
of the existing social order rather than as trustees for the heirs of
universal truth. Social service was encouraged by fashion, so long as
it meant no more than the supporting of the College Mission in the
slums of Bristol by occasional week-ends. Members of the college would
play billiards in the club for dockhands under or over seventeen, would
subscribe a guinea a year, and as a great concession would attend the
annual report in the J.C.R. There must, however, be no more
extravagance in religion and social service than there should be in
dress. The priestly caste of Good Eggery was represented not by the
parsons, but by the schoolmasters and certain dons. The schoolmasters
were the most powerful, and tried to sustain the legend common to all
priestly castes that they themselves made the religion rather than that
they were mere servants of an idea. Mature Good Eggs affected to laugh
at the schoolmasters whose leading-strings they had severed, but an
instinctive fear endured, so that in time to come Good Egglets would be
handed over for the craft to mold as they had molded their fathers. It
could scarcely be denied that schoolmasters like priests were
disinclined to face facts: it was indubitable that they lived an
essentially artificial life: it was certain that they fostered a
clod-headed bigotry, that they were tempted to regard themselves as
philanthropists, that they feared dreadfully the intrusion of secular
influence. It could scarcely be denied that the Schoolmasterdom of
England was a priestcraft as powerful and arrogant as any which had
ever been. But they were gentlemen, that is to say they shaved oftener
than Neapolitan priests; they took a cold bath in the morning, which
probably Calvin’s ministers never did; they were far more politely
restrained than the Bacchantes and not less chaste than the Vestal
Virgins. These clean and honest, if generally rather stupid gentlemen,
were the wielders of that afflatus, the public-school spirit, and so
far as Michael could see at present, Good Eggs were more safe morally
with that inspiration than they might have been with any other. And if
a touch of mysticism were needed, it might be supplied by Freemasonry
at the Apollo Lodge; while the Boy Scouts were beginning to show how
admirably this public-school spirit could blow through the most
unpromising material of the middle classes.
Michael so much enjoyed the consciousness of merit which is the supreme
inducement offered by all successful religions, and more than any by
Good Eggery, that he made up his mind quite finally that Good Eggery
would carry him through his existence, however much it were complicated
by the problem of Bad Mannery. During that year at Two Hundred and Two
he grew more and more deeply convinced that to challenge any moral
postulate of Good Eggery was merely contumacious self-esteem. One of
the great principles of Good Eggery was that the Good Egg must only
esteem himself as a valuable unit in Good Eggery. His self-esteem was
entitled to rise in proportion with the distance he could run or kick
or throw or hit.
Analyzed sharply, Michael admitted that Good Eggery rested on very
frail foundations, and it was really surprising with what enthusiasm it
managed to sustain the Good Eggs themselves, so that apparently without
either spiritual exaltation or despair, without disinterested politics
or patriotism, without any deep humanity even, the Good Eggs were still
so very obviously good. Certainly the suicide of Prescott made Michael
wonder how much that rather ignominious surrender by such a Good Egg
might have been avoided with something profounder than Good Eggery at
the back of life’s experience. But suicide was an accident, Michael
decided, and could not be used in the arguments against the fundamental
soundness of Good Eggery as the finest social nourishment in these days
of a bourgeoning century.
Meanwhile, at St. Mary’s the Good Eggs flourished, and time went by
with unexampled swiftness. In the last days of the Lent term, after St.
Mary’s had been defeated by Christ Church in the final of the
Association Cup, Michael, Grainger and Lonsdale determined to drown woe
by a triple Twenty-firster. Every contemporary Good Egg in St. Mary’s
and several from other colleges were invited. Forty Good Eggs, groomed
and polished and starched, sat down at the Clarendon to celebrate this
triple majority. Upon that banquet age did not lay one hesitant touch.
The attainment of discretion was celebrated in what might almost have
been hailed as a debauch of youthfulness. Forty Good Eggs drank
forty-eight bottles of Perrier Jouet ’93. They drank indeed the last
four dozen gages of that superb summer stored in the J.C.R., the last
four dozen lachrymatories of the 1893 sun, nor could it be said that
vintage of Champagne had funeral games unworthy of its foam and fire.
Forty Good Eggs went swinging out of the Clarendon about half-past nine
o’clock, making almost more noise than even the Corn had ever heard.
Forty Good Eggs went swinging along toward Carfax, swinging and
singing, temporarily deified by the last four dozen of Perrier Jouet
’93. Riotous feats were performed all down the High. Two trams were
unhorsed. Hansoms were raced. Bells were rung. Forty Good Eggs,
gloriously, ravishingly drunk, surged into the lodge. There was just
time to see old Venner. In the quiet office was pandemonium. Good Eggs
were dancing hornpipes; Good Eggs were steadying themselves with
cognac; Good Eggs were gently herded out of the little office as ten
o’clock chimed. “Bonner! Bonner!” the forty Good Eggs shouted, and off
they went not to St. Cuthbert’s, but actually to the great lawn in
front of New Quad. Third-year men when they did come into college
roaring drunk took no half-measures of celebration. Excited freshmen
and second-year men came swarming out of Cloisters, out of Parsons’
Quad, out of Cuther’s to support these wild seniors. What a bonfire it
was! Thirty-one chairs, three tables, two doors, twelve lavatory seats,
every bundle of faggots in college and George Appleby’s bed. Somebody
had brought Roman candles. O exquisite blue and emerald stars! Somebody
else had brought Chinese crackers as big as red chimneys. O sublime
din! Lonsdale was on the roof of Cloisters trying to kill a gargoyle
with hurtling syphons. Michael was tossing up all by himself to decide
whether he should tell the Senior Tutor or the Warden what he really
thought of him. A fat welterweight, a straggler from New College, had
been shorn of his coat-tails, and was plunging about like an overgrown
Eton boy. With crimson faces and ruffled hair and scorched shirt-fronts
the guests of the Twenty-firster acclaimed to-night as the finest
tribute ever paid to years of discretion.
Next morning the three hosts paid ten guineas each to the Dean.
“I thought you people were supposed to have come of age,” he said
sardonically.
So incomparably slight was the hang-over from Perrier Jouet ’93 that
Grainger, Lonsdale, and Michael smiled very cheerfully, produced their
check books, and would, if Mr. Ambrose had not been so discouraging,
have been really chatty.
After Collections of Lent term, that opportunity accepted by the
college authorities to be offensive in bulk, Michael felt his
historical studies were scarcely betraying such an impulse toward
research as might have been expected of him at this stage. Mr.
Harbottle, the History tutor, an abrupt and pleasant man with the
appearance of a cat and the manners of a dog, yapped vituperations from
where he sat with all the other dons in judgment along the High Table
in Hall.
The Warden turned on his orbit and shone full-faced upon Michael.
“A little more work, Mr. Fane, will encourage us all. Your Collection
papers have evidently planted a doubt in Mr. Harbottle’s mind.”
“He never does a stroke of honest work, Warden,” yapped the History
tutor. “If he stays up ten years he’ll never get a Fourth.”
“In spite of Mr. Harbottle’s discouraging prophecy, we must continue to
hope, Mr. Fane, that you will obtain at least a Second next term.”
“Next term!” Michael gasped. “But I was expecting to take Schools next
year.”
“I’m afraid,” said the Warden, “that according to Mr. Ambrose the
fabric of the college will scarcely survive another year of your
residence. I believe I echo your views, Mr. Ambrose?”
The Dean blinked his gray eye and finally said that possibly Mr. Fane
would change next term, adding that a more immediately serious matter
was a deficit of no less than seven chapels. Michael pointed out that
he designed in his fourth year to go as it were into industrious
solitude far away from St. Mary’s.
“Are you suggesting Iffley?” inquired the Warden.
“Oh, no, not so far as that; but right away,” said Michael. “Somewhere
near Keble. Miles away.”
“But we have to consider next term,” the Warden urged. “Next term, I
take it, you will still be occupied with the fashionable distractions
of High Street?”
“I’ll make an offer,” barked Mr. Harbottle. “If he likes to do another
Collection paper at the beginning of next term, and does it
satisfactorily, I will withdraw my opposition, and as far as I’m
concerned he can take his Schools next year.”
“What luck?” asked everybody in the lodge when Michael had emerged from
the ordeal.
“I had rather a hot time,” said Michael. “Still Harbottle behaved like
a gentleman on the whole.”
Maurice arrived in the lodge soon after Michael, and conveyed the
impression that he had left the tutorial forces of the college reeling
under the effect of his witty cannonade. Then Michael went off to
interview the Dean in order to adjust the difficulty which had been
created by the arrears of his early rising. With much generosity he
admitted the whole seven abstentions, and was willing not merely to
stay up a week to correct the deficit, but suggested that he should
spend all the Easter vacation working in Oxford.
So it fell out that Michael managed to secure his fourth year, and in
the tranquillity of that Easter vacation it seemed to him that he began
to love Oxford for the first time with a truly intense passion and that
a little learning was the least tribute he could offer in esteem. It
was strange how suddenly history became charged with magic. Perhaps the
Academic Muse sometimes offered this inspiration, if one spent hours
alone with her. Michael was sad when the summer term arrived in its
course. So many Good Eggs would be going down for ever after this term,
and upon Two Hundred and Two High brooded the shadow of dissolution.
Alan again hovered on the edge of the Varsity Eleven, but a freshman
who bowled rather better the same sort of ball came up, and it seemed
improbable he would get his Blue. However, the disappointment was
evidently not so hard for Alan to bear nowadays. He was indeed becoming
gravely interested in philosophy, and Michael was forced to admit that
he seemed to be acquiring most unexpectedly a real intellectual grasp
of life. So much the better for their companionship next year in those
rooms in St. Giles’ which Michael had already chosen.
The summer term was going by fast. It was becoming an experience almost
too fugitive to be borne, this last summer term at Two Hundred and Two.
Michael, Grainger, and Lonsdale had scarcely known how to endure some
offensive second-year men from Oriel being shown their room for next
year. They resented the thought of these Oriel men leaning out of the
window and throwing cushions at their friends and turning to the left
to keep a chapel at Oriel, instead of scudding down to St. Mary’s on
the right. Wedderburn was always the one who voiced sentimentally the
unexpressed regrets of the other three. He it was who spoke of the
grime and labor of the paternal office, of Life with a capital letter
as large as any lady novelist’s, and of how one would remember these
evenings and the leaning-out over a cushioned window-sill and the
poring upon this majestic street.
“We don’t realize our good luck until it’s too late really,” said
Wedderburn seriously. “We’ve wasted our time, and now we’ve got to go.”
“Well, dash it all, Wedders,” said Lonsdale, “don’t talk as if we were
going to bolt for a train before hall. We aren’t going down for three
weeks yet, and jolly old Michael and jolly old Tommy aren’t going down
for another year.”
“Lucky devils!” sighed Wedderburn. “By gad, if I only had my time at
the Varsity all over again.”
But just when Wedderburn had by his solemnity almost managed really to
impress the company with a sense of fleeting time, and when even upon
Lonsdale was descending the melancholy of the deep-dyed afternoon,
across the road they could see sauntering three men whom they all knew
well.
“Tally-ho-ho-ho-whooop!” shouted Lonsdale.
The three men saluted thus came upstairs to the big room of Two Hundred
and Two, and a bout of amiable ragging and rotting passed away the hour
before dinner and restored to the big room itself the wonted air of
imperishable good-fellowship.
“Lucky you lads turned up,” said Lonsdale. “Old Wedders has been moping
in his window-seat like a half-plucked pigeon. We’re dining in hall
to-night, are you?”
The newcomers were dining in hall, and so in a wide line of brilliant
ties and ribbons the seven of them strolled down to college.
There were very few people in hall that night, and Venner’s was
pleasantly empty. Venner himself was full of anecdotes, and as they sat
on the table in the middle of the room, drinking their coffee, it
seemed impossible enough to imagine that they would not be forever here
drinking their coffee on a fine June evening.
“Going down soon, Venner,” said Wedderburn, who was determined to make
somebody sad.
“What a pity you’re not taking a fourth year!” said Venner. “You ought
to have read an Honor School. I always advise the men to read for
honors. The dons like it, you know.”
“Got to go and earn my living, Venner,” said Wedderburn.
“That’s right,” said Venner cheerfully. “Then you’ll be married all the
sooner, or perhaps you’re not a marrying man.”
“Haven’t found the right girl yet, Venner,” said Wedderburn.
“Oh, there’s plenty of time,” chuckled Venner. “You don’t want to be
thinking about girls up here. Some of our men go getting engaged before
they’ve gone down, and it always messes them up in the Schools.”
Maurice Avery came in while Venner was speaking. He seemed restless and
worried, and as Venner went on his restlessness increased.
“But very few of our men have got into trouble here with girls. We had
one man once who married a widow. He was dreadfully chaffed about it,
and couldn’t stand it any longer. The men never let him alone.”
“Married a widow, while he was still up?” people asked incredulously.
“Why, yes,” said Venner. “And actually brought her down for Eights and
introduced her to the Warden on the barge. She was a most
severe-looking woman, and old enough to be his mother. There was some
trouble once at 202 High—that’s where you are, isn’t it?” He turned to
Lonsdale. “But there won’t be any more trouble because Macpherson vowed
he wouldn’t have a servant-girl in the house again.”
“I suppose that’s why we have that perspiring boy,” grumbled
Wedderburn. “But what happened, Venner?”
“Well, the usual thing, of course. There were five of our men living
there that year, and she picked out the quietest one of the lot and
said it was him. He had to pay fifty pounds, and when he’d paid it all,
the other four came up to him one by one and offered to pay half.”
Everybody laughed, and Maurice suddenly announced that he was in a
devil of a fix with a girl.
“A girl at a village near here,” he explained. “There’s no question of
her having a baby or anything like that, you know; but her brother
followed me home one night, and yesterday her father turned up. I got
Castleton to talk to him. But it was damned awkward. He and old
Castleton were arguing like hell in our digs.”
Maurice stopped and, lighting a cigarette, looked round him as if
expectant of the laughter which had hailed Venner’s story. Nobody
seemed to have any comment to make, and Michael felt himself blushing
violently for his friend.
“Bit chilly in here to-night, Venner,” said Lonsdale.
“You are a confounded lot of prigs!” said Maurice angrily, and he
walked out of Venner’s just as Castleton came in.
“My dear old Frank Castleton,” said Lonsdale immediately, “I love you
very much and I think your hair is beautifully brushed, but you really
must talk to our Mr. Avery very, very seriously. He mustn’t be allowed
to make such a bee-luddy fool of himself by talking like a third-rate
actor.”
“What do you mean?” asked Castleton gruffly.
Lonsdale explained what Maurice had done, and Castleton looked
surprised, but he would not take part in the condemnation.
“You’re all friends of his in here,” he pointed out. “He probably
thought it was a funny story.” There was just so much emphasis on the
pronoun as made the critics realize that Castleton himself was really
more annoyed than he had superficially appeared.
An awkwardness had arisen through the inculpation of Maurice, and
everybody found they had work to do that evening. Quickly Venner’s was
emptied.
Michael, turning out of Cloisters to stroll for a while on the lawns of
New Quad before he gave himself to the generalizations of whatever
historian he had chosen to beguile this summer night, came up to
Maurice leaning over the parapet by the Cher.
“Hullo, are you going to condescend to speak to me after the brick I
dropped in Venner’s?” asked Maurice bitterly.
“I wish you wouldn’t be so theatrically sarcastic,” complained Michael,
who was half-unconsciously pursuing the simile which lately Lonsdale
had found for Maurice’s behavior.
“Well, why on earth,” Maurice broke out, “it should be funny when
Venner tells a story about some old St. Mary’s man and yet be”—he
paused, evidently too vain, thought Michael a little cruelly, to
stigmatize himself—“and yet be considered contrary to what is _done_
when I tell a story about myself, I don’t quite know, I must admit.”
“It was the introduction of the personal element which made everybody
feel uncomfortable,” said Michael. “Venner’s tale had acquired the
impersonality of a legend.”
“Oh, god, Michael, you do talk rot sometimes!” said Maurice fretfully.
“It’s nothing on earth but offensive and very youthful priggishness.”
“I wonder if I sounded like you,” said Michael, “when I talked rather
like you at about seventeen.”
Maurice spluttered with rage at this, and Michael saw it would be
useless to remonstrate with him reasonably. He blamed himself for being
so intolerant and for not having with kindlier tact tried to point out
why he had made a mistake; and yet with all his self-reproach he could
not rid himself of what was something very near to active dislike of
Maurice at that moment.
But Maurice went on, unperceiving.
“I hate this silly pretense up here—and particularly at St. Mary’s—that
nobody ever looks at a woman. It’s nothing but infernal hypocrisy. Upon
my soul, I’m glad I’m going down this term. I really couldn’t have
stood another year, playing with the fringe of existence. It seems to
me, Michael, if you’re sincere in this attitude of yours, you’ll have a
very dismal waking up from your dream. As for all the others, I don’t
count them. I’m sick of this schoolboy cant. Castleton’s worth
everybody else in this college put together. He was wonderful with that
hulking fellow who came banging at the door of our digs. I wonder what
you’d have done, if you’d been digging with me.”
“Probably just what Castleton did,” said Michael coldly. “You evidently
weren’t at home. Now I must go and work. So long.”
He left Maurice abruptly, angry with him, angry with himself. What
could have induced Maurice to make such a fool of himself in Venner’s?
Why hadn’t he been able to perceive the difference of his confession
from Venner’s legendary narration which, unfettered by the reality of
present emotions, had been taken under the protection of the comic
spirit? The scene in retrospect appeared improbable, just as improbable
in one way, just as shockingly improbable as the arrival of an angry
rustic father at some Varsity digs in Longwall. And why had he made the
recollection worse for himself by letting Maurice enlarge upon his
indignation? It had been bad enough before, but that petulant outbreak
had turned an accidental vulgarity into vulgarity itself most cruelly
vocal. Back in Two Hundred and Two, Michael heard the comments upon
Maurice, and as Grainger and Lonsdale delivered their judgment, he felt
they had all this time tolerated the offender merely for a certain
capacity he possessed for entertainment. They spoke of him now, as one
might speak of a disgraced servant.
“Oh, let Maurice drop,” said Michael wearily. “It was one of those
miserable aberrations from tact which can happen to anybody. I’ve done
the same sort of thing myself. It’s an involuntary spasm of
bad-manners, like sneezing over a crowded railway-carriage.”
“Well, I suppose one must make allowances,” said Grainger. “These
artistic devils are always liable to breaks.”
“That’s right,” said Michael. “Hoist the Union Jack. It’s an
extraordinary thing, the calm way in which an Englishman is always
ready to make art responsible for everything.”
Next day Maurice overtook Michael on the way to a lecture.
“I say,” he began impetuously, “I made an awful fool of myself
yesterday evening. What shall I do?”
“Nothing,” said Michael.
“I was really horribly worried, you know, and I think I rather jumped
at the opportunity to get the beastly business off my chest, as a sort
of joke.”
“Come and dine at the Palace of Delights this evening,” Michael
invited. “And tell Frank Castleton to come.”
“We can’t afford to be critical during the last fortnight of jolly old
Two Hundred and Two,” said Michael to Lonsdale and Grainger, when they
received rather gloomily at first the news of the invitation.
Maurice in the course of the evening managed to reinstate himself. He
so very divertingly drew old Wedders on the subject of going down.
The last week of the summer term arrived, and really it was very
depressing that so many Good Eggs were irrevocably going to be lost to
the St. Mary’s J.C.R.
“I think my terminal dinner this term will have to be the same as my
first one,” said Michael. “Only twice as large.”
So they all came, Cuffe and Sterne and Sinclair and a dozen more. And
just because so many of the guests were going down, not a word was said
about it. The old amiable ragging and rotting went on as if the college
jokes of to-night would serve for another lustrum yet, as if Two
Hundred and Two would merely be empty of these familiar faces for the
short space of a vacation. Not a pipe was gone from its rack; not a
picture was as yet deposed; not a hint was given of change, either by
the material objects of the big room or by the merry and intimate
community that now thronged it. Then the college tenor was called upon
for a song, and perhaps without any intention of melancholy he sang O
Moon of My Delight. Scarcely was it possible even for these Good Eggs,
so rigidly conscious of each other’s rigidity, not to think
sentimentally for a moment how well the turning down of that empty
glass applied to them. The new mood that descended upon the company
expressed itself in reminiscence; and then, as if the sadness must for
decency’s sake be driven out, the college jester was called upon for
the comic song whose hebdomadal recurrence through nine terms had
always provoked the same delirious encore. Everything was going on as
usual, and at a few minutes to midnight Auld Lang Syne ought not to
have been difficult. It had been sung nearly as often as the comic
song, but it was shouted more fervently somehow, less in tune somehow,
and the silence at its close was very acute. Twelve o’clock was
sounding; the guests went hurrying out; and, leaning from the windows
of Two Hundred and Two, Grainger, Lonsdale, Wedderburn, and Michael
heard their footsteps clattering down the High.
“I suppose we’d better begin sorting out our things to-morrow,” said
Michael.