Dennison and his friends made the most of this misfortune, and I suppose it was natural that they should think it a comical finish to Jack's attempts at working. For the rest of the term I did not care what happened to anybody or anything. I was thoroughly sick with my luck, and when you are born with a faculty for disobeying rules and offending authorities and have trampled upon your inclinations for a long year without any result except disaster, it is enough to make you think that fighting Nature is a perfectly absurd thing to do. It was very fortunate that the term was nearly over, for I had a mad idea that the best way to make up to Jack for getting him sent down was to get sent down myself; but The Bradder, who knew how foolish I could be, nipped my demonstrations in the bud, and gave me some of the straightest advice I have ever listened to. He was very rude indeed. One of the few good things about this term was that Fred batted splendidly, he was not successful afterwards against Cambridge, but we had every reason for thinking that they were an exceptionally strong eleven. I bowled faster than ever, and a little straighter than the year before; I was said to be the fastest bowler at Oxford, and I heard two men saying in Vincent's that their idea of bliss was my bowling on a good wicket. But when I lowered a newspaper and showed myself they pretended that it was a joke.
CHAPTER XIX
THE WARDEN AND THE BRADDER
Of all penalties, sending a man down from the 'Varsity for a short time seems to me the most unfair. For some people treat the culprit as if he was almost a criminal, while others are glad to see him and aren't in the least annoyed. Had I been sent down from Oxford I am sure my father would have stormed and told me that I was going to that universal rubbish-heap, called "The dogs," while my mother would have been very hurt and very kind; but I know one man who went home unexpectedly and was told by his father that if he had not been sent down he would have missed the best "shoot" of the year. In some cases the penalty is nothing, and in other cases it is far too heavy.
From the little I knew of Jack's people I did not expect that they would be as unpleasant as they were, for as far as I could see he had not done anything which was much of a disgrace to anybody. Unfortunately, however, he went home at an unlucky moment, for his father was mixed up with the Stock Exchange, and there was a slump or something equally disagreeable in the City. Jack wrote to me: "I have often seen my father in a bad temper, but I have never seen him keep it up for so long before. There is a large bear syndicate formed in the City, and my father is a bull, and fumes like one. I am very useful if he would only see it, because he can work his rage off on me, and that is a great relief to everybody else. But it is no use thinking of what is to happen next; he has told me that I am going to start to Canada in a month, and Australia in a fortnight, but wherever I go I am to have only £10 besides my passage-money—he does the thing thoroughly. The last scheme, announced at breakfast this morning, is that I am going to Greece, to a quarry which has something to do with either marble or cement; I didn't listen much, because I shall probably be booked for Siberia before night. Anywhere but back to Oxford is really his idea, and the more often he changes the place the better. Meanwhile I flaunt history books before him. I left Taswell Langmead on the lawn, because it is the fattest book I have got, and it looks so like one of the Stock Exchange books that I knew he would look at it. He did and growled, but he put it back on the chair, which rather surprised me, for I expected him to launch forth on the uselessness of me reading such things. If I sit tight for a bit and don't get ready to go anywhere, perhaps I shall get back to Oxford after all."
I knew nothing about the Stock Exchange, but I sympathized very much with any one who had to live in the same house with a fuming bull. Even Fred agreed with me that Jack was being treated unfairly, and he never spoke about him at all if he could help it. When Jack and he had met during the last year at Oxford, as they had often, they were so astonishingly polite to each other that had I not known the reason I should have been very amused, but as it was, I thought they were making a great fuss about something quite unimportant.
To pretend not to notice a thing which is as clear as daylight is not a part which I can play with any comfort, so Jack and Fred fidgeted me terribly, but they had got some idea firmly fixed in their heads, with which I was wise enough not to meddle. They were both such friends of mine that I hoped they would see as quickly as possible that there was something very humorous in the way they treated each other.
Owen took a first in his final schools, and as soon as the list was out he wrote to me and said that he hoped to come up for a fifth year to read for a first in History. This, I thought, was tempting Providence, for he had already got two firsts, and he seemed to me to be collecting them as I had once collected birds' eggs. He decided, however, to give up his plan, and accepted a mastership at a school in Scotland. I must say that I was relieved at this, for I intended to take two more years before my examinations, and if he had got a first in one year I am sure that I should have heard a very great deal about him, when my father felt unwell or wished to make me feel uncomfortable.
I spent most of my second summer vac in France, partly because my mother was not well, and also because an old scheme for improving my French had been revived. When Fred and I had gone to Oxford there had been some idea of us trying for the Indian Civil Service, but for various reasons this was abandoned, and although Fred had determined that he would go back to Cliborough as a master if he could manage it, I had drifted through two years without having made up my mind what was to happen to me when I got my degree. The Bishop wanted me to be a clergyman, my mother thought that if Fred was going to be a school-master there was no reason why I should not be one, and although my father did not say anything he was not the man to see me finish my time at Oxford and then sit down to wait for some employment to turn up. It was really no use for me to decide what I should do, for unless I showed an especial craving for some profession I knew that he would settle everything, and as I had two years before me I thought that there was no particular hurry, which is, I suppose, the dangerous state of mind of many undergraduates.