I wandered round the room waiting for Jack to bring forward his scheme if he could remember it, but he was sitting on the table sucking at a pipe which had no tobacco in it, so I drifted over to a book-case, and nearly the first book I saw was an edition of Omar Khayyam. This surprised me so much that I turned round to see if Thornton really looked like a lunatic, but I got no satisfaction from him, for I had once seen a man who might have been his brother, and then I had been playing cricket against an asylum. He was lying back in his chair gazing at the ceiling, and I pulled Omar Khayyam out of the case and put it on the table for Jack to see. Then I sat down and waited for results, but I had to make no end of signs before he would take any notice of the book, for he was in such a state of despondency that I believe he thought I was trying to talk on my fingers. At last his eye fell on the book, and after I had nodded furiously at him, he jumped off the table and stood in front of Thornton.
"You read Omar Khayyam?" he said, holding the book in his hand.
Thornton stopped staring at the ceiling and sat forward with his elbows resting on his knees. "Yes," he answered; "at least, I used to until I knew it by heart."
"He's a good brand of champagne," Jack went on.
"Are you a friend of Dennison's?" Thornton asked, and there was a kind of hunted look in his eyes.
"I'm not," I hastened to tell him, and at that moment I looked at my watch and discovered that I had already kept The Bradder waiting for ten minutes, so I had to go just as things were becoming interesting.
Jack assured me afterwards that Thornton was not mad. "But," he added, "he's very odd, and I believe he's in a mortal terror that, unless he goes on pretending to be a fool, these men will do something much worse to him than make him president of a society which doesn't exist. So I've put Murray to speak to him; this will be the talk of the 'Varsity, and I don't see what good there is in keeping prize idiots. I have told him to go on playing up to Dennison for a bit, and then we would help him."
I did not think, however, that it would be very easy to save Thornton, and when Collier and I went to the meeting of the Hedonists on the following evening we agreed that whether he was mad or only very simple, he was sure to be in for a bad time. Although Dennison had moved into some of the biggest rooms in college, they were crowded when we got to them, and it was very difficult to get Collier inside the door. Dennison and a few other men were sitting at a table at the far end of the room, and just as we arrived a fourth-year man got up to speak.
I suppose that his business was to explain why the Hedonists existed. At any rate, he said that it was his duty before he, as the out-going President, broke his wand of office to remind the Society that it existed for two definite objects—the pursuit of pleasure, and the suppression of vulgarity. He then went on to state that Mr. Wilkins, formerly of St. Cuthbert's, had kindly consented to give an account of his travels in Central Africa.
"Formerly of St. Cuthbert's," described Wilkins correctly, for he had been sent down after one term, and since then had been living an alcoholic existence in a farm-house a few miles outside Oxford. His appearance was comical, but he was really a dreadful barbarian, who thought that it was better to gain notoriety as a hard drinker than to be forgotten entirely. He began by telling us that he had never been to Central Africa, and hoped sincerely that he never should go. He also told us that the reason why he was addressing the Society was a rumour that his aunt had met several African explorers at dinner, but he wished to say that she was no more of a lion-hunter than he was. In this way he strove desperately to be amusing, but the struggle was very painful, and I was glad when he had finished.