CHAPTER VIII
LUNCHEON WITH THE WARDEN
Our walk was certainly not a success, in fact I was very sick of it before we reached Oxford, because I am no good at walking and cannot stride along at a steady pace. And it also involved me in what, if real diplomatists will pardon me, I will call diplomacy, in which art or craft, or whatever the right name of it may be, I am most unskilled. I was on the point of telling Fred that I knew the party of peashooters when he, being in a much happier state of mind than he had been in the morning, began to talk about Jack Ward, and to say that I was very likely right about him, and that he was sure to be a nice kind of man when one got to know him. Hearing this made me put off what I was going to say, and when I begin to postpone anything I am lost. Second thoughts with me nearly always lead to trouble, however good they may be for other people. I think I must have taken a fatherly interest in Ward, for what else it could have been which made me wish to shield him I do not know. But I had seen him stand up in the dog-cart, and I thought he had recognized me and had tried to make Langham turn back, so I determined not to tell Fred anything until I had found out what really happened. But I felt very uncomfortable, for I do hate keeping things dark, and when he went on to say that the pea-shooting people must have been unutterable bounders to go away and leave us in the lurch, I was again on the point of telling him that Ward was one of them, only he suddenly began to sing, which gave me time to think, and frightened two children who came round a corner of the road. We were quite close to Broadmoor lunatic asylum at that moment, and Fred walking along with his hat in his hand might easily have been mistaken for some one else. His mood had become most cheerful, and he said that he did not suppose Tom Harrison would ever be heard of again, and that the whole thing had been rather fun; but he added that he should like to tell the men who had been in the room above us what he thought of them. He also told me that he had never known me so quiet, and when I continued to be silent he asked me if I was well, which annoyed me, for I am often asked that question when I do not happen to be talking, and in a lurking sort of way there seems to me to be something insulting about it. I answered that I was thinking, which was quite true, but he only laughed and said I must have changed a lot lately. I was quite tired of him before we separated in the High, and he was angry because I would not go to Oriel and have tea, but I felt that the day so far had been a hopeless failure, and I wanted to see Jack Ward.
When I got back to my rooms at St. Cuthbert's my fire was nearly out and I saw two notes lying on the table, but could not find any matches to light my lamp. I felt more gloomy than ever, and I was already feeling as if I had treated Fred most unfairly. I might say that my end was all right, or I might declare that I meant well, which is another way of saying that I was a fool, and of the two I think the latter is the more correct.
Murray had borrowed my matches and I spoke severely to him without producing any effect except amusement; whether I was thinking or angry the result seemed to be always the same—laughter, silly, idiotic chuckles. I was in a very fair rage before I got my lamp to light, and I upset a large box of matches on the floor. Murray came and helped to pick them up, and he bumped my nose with his head. I felt sure that it was his fault and told him so, and he said I could jolly well pick up my own matches; so I apologized, for though my nose hurt there were a lot of matches still on the floor, and it was no use making my nose out worse than it was to spite my face.
After that I read my notes, and they were not the usual invitations to breakfast, of which I had already received enough. The first was to ask me to play for the twenty against the Rugger XV. in the Parks on the following Tuesday, and the second was from Miss Davenport to ask me to luncheon with the Warden on the same day. These notes were more or less commands, but I neither felt very keen on playing for the XX. nor on lunching with the Warden.
"I shall be glad when Tuesday is over," I said to Murray; "I have to lunch with the Warden."
"I lunched there last Tuesday," he returned.
"What was it like?"
"Like no meal I have ever been at before. Miss Davenport talked all the time and the Warden said precious little, but I was too afraid to listen to her for fear he might ask me something and I should not catch what he said. Apart from saying 'yes' and 'no' and 'please' and 'thank you,' he only spoke once, and then it was the most extraordinarily long sentence I have ever heard. It began about pork, which Miss Davenport said was more wholesome than people imagined, it went on about the Jews, and finished up with a tale about Nero. He chuckled over his tale, but I didn't see much point in it, and Miss Davenport looked as if she had heard it before."
"I know that tale, it's a chestnut; I can't remember it, but Nero behaved like a beast to a lot of Jews who came to see him in Rome. The Warden oughtn't to tell old tales and then chuckle over them; besides, Nero was a brute."
"I don't think that would make any difference to the Warden. He terrifies me; I daren't say anything because I am sure he would remember that it was a stupid thing to say. I felt as if I was a convict, and that if I spoke I should give myself away. I can tell you it was something awful, and for all I know he may have expected me to say something."
"Probably not," I replied; "I should think he hears far too many people jawing. I hope he makes me feel like a convict, and then I shall behave myself all right, but a silence at a meal gives me fits."
"Miss Davenport is never silent," Murray asserted. "If she can talk about pork, you may guess she has plenty to say. The Warden looks at her in a forgiving sort of way—as if he knows she is talking rot, but can't help herself."
"They must be a funny pair. You don't think I shall laugh, do you?" I asked.
"I didn't feel like laughing. I never thought of it in that way, but it couldn't strike you as being funny while you are there."
"I don't know," I said; "I think I had better be ill on Tuesday." But then I remembered I had got to play footer, and I chucked the card over to Murray.
"I've got to play in this thing, too. The Warden kicks you out about two, so it will be all right. You simply must go. Where have you been to this afternoon?"
"I walked to Sampford with Foster, and we had a row there with two men, not much of a row. I must go and see Ward." I jumped up, but the chapel bell began to ring, and I had to postpone seeing him.
"I am all behind with my chapels and roll-calls," I said to Murray; "this will be my twenty-first, and five weeks of the term have gone."
"I kept six chapels last week," Murray answered; "you will have to go hard to keep nineteen in three weeks."
"I mean doing it and getting up very early in the morning. I am going to reform," and I left him at the chapel door, for he, being a scholar, sat in the seats behind all of us who were commoners or exhibitioners.
After chapel, at which the Regius Professor of Divinity preached and told us that Sunday luncheon parties were very wrong, I seized Ward and bore him off to his rooms, where we found Dennison sitting by the fire with his legs stuck up on the mantelpiece. I wanted to see Ward alone, but Dennison had been at Sampford, so he did not matter much, though Ward with Dennison never seemed to be quite the same as he was without him.
Dennison twisted round in his chair, and as soon as he saw me he began to talk. "You ought to have been with us this afternoon," he said, "we had a most lovely rag. Bunny Langham took us over to Sampford in his cart, and I had a peashooter."
The loveliness of the rag was too much for him, and he had to stop his account of it so that he might laugh. I looked at Ward, and although he did not appear to be very amused, he showed no signs of knowing that Foster and I had been at Sampford.
"After lunch," Dennison went on, "I discovered some people in an arbour, the bill and coo business, and I fairly peppered them; I am no end of a shot with a peashooter."
"You missed them about a dozen times," Ward put in.
"Those were sighting shots, you must get your range, and they were about as far off as my shooter will carry; but I got them out of the place at last, and another fellow, Oxford written all over him, walked bang into them. I gave him one on the neck and then we bolted. It was a pity we couldn't stop and see what happened."
"We ought to have stopped," Ward declared and disappeared into his bedroom.
"I can tell you what happened," I said, and I lifted Dennison's legs off the mantelpiece and stood between him and the fire. I had been angry before Dennison described Foster as having Oxford written all over him, but the cheek of labelling Fred as if he was some tailor's dummy made me furious.
Dennison looked at me and then shouted for Ward. "Marten can tell us what happened after we went, come and hear it."
"Wait a second. I am going to dine with Bunny at the Sceptre and am changing."
In a minute he appeared and went on dressing.
"I think you are the meanest lot of brutes unhung," I began, for I had been given time to think of something which would make Dennison see at once that this joke was not such a good one after all. "Foster of Oriel was one of the men you bolted from, and I was the other, and the thing isn't ended yet, for they got Foster's name. You hit one woman in the eye; do you think that very funny?"
"Sheer bad luck," Dennison said, but he did not look quite as unruffled and smug as usual.
Ward stood with his tie in his hand and did not say a word. I knew already that he had wanted to go back when he saw that there was a row, and since he had neither recognized Foster nor me my wrath was concentrated upon Dennison.
"You may call it what you like," I continued, "but if you get up a row and then haven't the pluck to see it out I call it a dirty thing to do."
I thought that must be enough to rouse Dennison, but he actually smiled at me and told me to go on.
"What do you think?" I asked Ward.
"Of course I did not recognize you and Foster, but when I saw those people had buttoned on to the wrong man I said we ought to go back. I wish that we had gone back," he answered.
"What did they do?" Dennison inquired.
"They found out Foster's name, and one of them, an awful man called Tom Harrison, says he is going to get compensation from him because you hit Susan in the eye with a pea and hadn't the decency to stay there and own up to it. There's the dinner bell, and I'm about sick of you fellows."
"I hit Susan in the eye," Dennison said reflectively. "Was Susan Tom Harrison's inamorata?" he asked.
"Talk English and I may answer you. It doesn't matter a row of pins who Susan was as long as she has a black eye," I replied.
"It is evidently no good speaking to you until you have calmed down. You remind me of a damp squib, all fuss and no result. I am going to dinner," Dennison said, and went out of the room without looking at either Ward or myself.
"I shall do something awful to that brute before I have finished with him. He makes me mad," I said, and Ward walked across the room to me.
"I am most horribly sorry about this," he began, "and I will come back straight from the Sceptre and see you. Be in at nine o'clock."
"You didn't shoot at those people, did you?" I asked.
"No; but well, you see, Dennison is better than I am at getting in for a row, and I am better at getting out of it."
"He's a low-down hound," I asserted, and after promising to be in at nine o'clock I seized my gown and went away. As I went into the hall I met Collier, and during dinner I expressed my opinion of Dennison very freely. There are times at Oxford when you regret most tremendously that you have left school, and this was one of them.
"A fellow like that would be kicked at any decent school," I said.
"He was kicked at Charbury until he managed to become a sort of blood. He played racquets very well," Collier added, as if by way of an excuse.
"Why do we put up with him?" I asked viciously, for I could see him making Lambert and Webb shout with laughter at the table opposite me.
"I don't know," Collier answered, "I suppose it's his smile. What part of a fowl do you think this is? it looks to me like the neck." He turned it over several times and then called a servant. "Please take this back, and say I have to be very careful what I eat. I keep a list, and this isn't on it. I never saw that joint before," he added to me, and lost all interest in Dennison. I thought it a pity that Collier took so much trouble over what he ate; the sight of that unusual joint made him quite silent and inattentive during the rest of the meal.
I went to his rooms after dinner, as I felt sleepy, and he never did anything on Sunday except sleep, eat, and go to chapel. His room was full of tinted literature, but I never saw him read it, and I believe he bought The Sporting Times on Saturdays so that he could give it to any man who attacked him with conversation on his day of rest. His table was covered by a most miscellaneous dessert, and I asked him if he expected a lot of men.
"Not a soul," he replied, and sank into a chair by the fire. "I have this every Sunday night, because my people pay my common-room bill, and I have to pay everything else out of my allowance. They told me to do myself well, but after this term I expect they will see that this odd sort of arrangement won't work. I can feed a regiment on almonds and raisins without it costing me a sou. Help yourself to coffee, stick the dish of anchovy toast down between us, and if you want to read there are three Sunday papers and a crowd of old magazines."
I sat by the fire and read four short stories to pass the time. Dennison poked his head into the room and withdrew it when he saw me. I congratulated myself upon that little incident, for I felt that if he understood how I hated the sight of him something would have been gained. At nine o'clock I left Collier and went to my rooms to wait for Ward. I did not expect him to be punctual, because I guessed that a dinner given by Bunny Langham would be difficult to leave. He turned up, however, in about half-an-hour, and said he was jolly glad to get away from the Sceptre. "Bunny's all right," he said, "but some of his friends are too much—even for me."
I replied that Bunny was all wrong, and said why I thought so.
"You don't know him," Ward explained; "he would never leave any one in a hole if he thought for a second. He's the most good-natured, weak kind of man on earth, but he would never do the wrong thing. He goes straight over a precious difficult country, for he hasn't got any more will than a rabbit and is as blind as a bat. He will be in trouble to the end of his days, but he will never make any one ashamed of him."
I thought this was rather a glorified conception of the Bunny I knew, so I said nothing.
"You must see that he is a good sort," Ward said.
"Everybody's a good sort," I answered impatiently. "Collier calls the fellow with the green-baize apron who collects the boots a good sort, and some man I met at home, who talked about emperors and kings as if they were all his cousins, declared that the Sultan of Morocco was the best sort he had ever met—when one got to know him."
"I don't wonder you are sick," he returned. "I should be if any one had done to me what we did to you and Foster this afternoon. It looks pretty rotten on the face of it, and I am as sorry as blazes that you had to have a row with those men."
"I'm not sick about the row," I answered; "that would have been fun if they hadn't got Foster's name."
Ward lay back in his chair, and tried to blow rings of smoke from his cigarette.
"Then you are just angry because you think we ought to have come back," he said.
"No, I'm not," I replied, and I felt horribly uncomfortable.
He looked most thoroughly puzzled. "What on earth do you mean?" he asked.
I got up and walked about the room before I spoke. "It's this way," I began. "I wanted you and Foster to like each other, because he is the greatest friend I have, and I like you. And when I had been saying what a good fellow you were, you go and make a most infernal row in a pub on Sunday afternoon and then bolt. I saw you in that confounded cart, and I ought to have told Foster that I knew you were the fellow who bolted. But I didn't."
Ward sat staring in front of him, and did not speak for some time. "I don't think I could ever be friends with Foster," he said at last; "he hated me at sight; but it is deucedly good of you all the same. I will write him a note and tell him I was the man. I was going to do that, anyhow."
"You weren't the man," I asserted; "it was that little brute, Dennison."
"He doesn't count," Ward said.
I was disposed to agree with him on that point, but I thought that he and I had better go round and see Foster in the morning, instead of writing a note. He did not like this at first, but after some talking he said that he would come, and on the next morning we went round to Oriel. We made Foster look a most awful idiot, but that could not be helped. I know that if two men came to me simply bulging with apologies, I should look for the nearest window.
Fred hardly said anything but "All right" and "For goodness' sake don't say a word more about it," but it showed that Ward was not as bad as he thought him. I stayed behind after Ward had gone so that I might put things a little more straight, but Fred would not listen to another word. "You were in a vile temper yesterday afternoon, and now I know the cause. That's enough, so shut up. You seem to have become a kind of guardian to Ward," and then he stopped suddenly, for it struck him that he had said one of those things which funny people say, and he would never have done that on purpose. I assured him that I knew he had said it accidentally, but it stopped us talking about Ward, because, when you hate puns, it is most discomforting to make one suddenly. I made a pun once—I can still remember it, because if I had performed this feat intentionally I should have deserved all I got. What I did get was a dig in the ribs from Collier and the remark, "You are a wag," and then I had to repeat it to his three cousins, one of whom was deaf and none of whom understood it, though they all laughed. It was a Latin pun.
I am one of those people, Oliver Cromwell was another, to whom important things happened on a certain day. Tuesday was my day, I forget which his was, but it does not matter, because it is to be found in histories and almanacs. My day is not a matter of interest to anybody, but all the same I was born on a Tuesday, and things which I have had special reason to remember or regret have generally happened to me—so my mother says—on the same day. And it was on a Tuesday that I lunched with the Warden and began a curious sort of friendship with him. I suppose that I ought not to talk of a friendship between a man like the Warden, who was a mighty man of learning, and myself, but after all he gave me one of his books, and wrote in it, "To my young friend and quondam companion." "Quondam" was rather a pity, perhaps; it sounds pedantic, and the Warden was no pedant, unless he wanted to snub people.
I went to his luncheon, and, having neuralgia, said nothing until he told me that he knew Mr. Prettyman, who was one of the masters at Cliborough. If the Warden knew Prettyman I guessed that he had also heard something about me, and I thought I might as well stick up for myself as far as possible, so I said that Mr. Prettyman was the sort of man who, when you had lost a thing, always asked you where you had put it. He had on one occasion actually done this to me, and annoyed me very much. The Warden took no notice of my remark, and I was left to my neuralgia until the end of the meal. The other men who were there talked a lot; one of them said what he thought of Irving in Hamlet, and another criticized the paintings of Watts; the Warden kept his opinions to himself, and at two o'clock asked us what we were going to do in the afternoon. All of us were bent on active employment, but just as I was leaving the dining-room, he called me back and asked me if I would go for a walk with him at three o'clock on the following Thursday afternoon. I was too confused to remember what I said, and I only recollect that I left his house feeling as if something very awful was going to happen. I changed to play for the XX. against the XV. in a kind of daymare, if there is a state of mind which can be so described, and I had a good deal to say to Murray, as we walked down to the Parks together, about my luck. Murray laughed all the way from St. Cuthbert's to Keble; he kept on breaking out into small cackles, which, of all the bad ways of laughing, must be the worst.
I started to play footer that afternoon without troubling to think how I should play. I could see myself marching slowly along the Woodstock road with the Warden, and however badly I played did not seem to matter much, for there was something far more awful to come. The XV. began to press at once, and I, as full-back, had plenty to do. What I did was reckless; I simply did not care what happened, and everything I tried seemed to come off. Everybody who plays games has an occasional day when things get twisted round, and it is easier to do right than wrong. Those are the days for which we live in hope, and one of mine came on that Tuesday. I knew the whole thing was a fluke, and I told Murray and Foster so after the game, but they both said that I had given Sykes of Merton, who was playing back for the XV., something to think about.
During the next day, visions of my blue floated before me, and the prospect of walking with the Warden lost its terrors, until I went round to see Fred on Thursday morning. I wanted him to give me some hints, but I am sorry so say he saw only the humorous side of my engagement, and was very exasperating when he might have been extremely useful.