Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate

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Title: Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate

Author: Charles Turley

Release Date: April 20, 2009 [EBook #28567]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODFREY MARTEN, UNDERGRADUATE ***

Produced by Al Haines

GODFREY MARTEN

UNDERGRADUATE

BY

CHARLES TURLEY

AUTHOR OF 'GODFREY MARTEN, SCHOOLBOY'

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1904

All rights reserved

CONTENTS

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.

CHAPTER II

INTERVIEWS

I soon found out that Jack Ward was of a most friendly disposition, for he came over to my rooms before ten o'clock the following morning and bounced in with an air of having known me all my life. At the moment I was talking to a man called Murray, whose acquaintance I had made an hour before. My introduction to Murray could hardly be called formal; he lived in the next rooms to me and at precisely the same time each of us had poked our heads into the passage and shouted for our scout. We then looked at each other and laughed, and the deed was done. I wish that I could have made all my friends at Oxford as easily; it would have saved so much time.

Murray was going as Ward came in, and they nodded and said Good-morning in the way men do when they don't altogether love one another.

You seem to know everybody, I said, without much reason, as soon as Murray had disappeared.

I can't well help knowing that fellow, considering that he was at Wellingham with me for five years.

He didn't tell me he was at Wellingham.

He would have in another minute, and that he was captain of the school and the footer fifteen, and what he was fed on as a baby and how many muscles he had got in his big toe, Ward jerked out as he pulled furiously at his pipe, which he had already tried to light two or three times.

I thought he seemed a nice sort of man, I said.

I expect you think everybody you see nice sort of men, he replied rather queerly, though he laughed as he spoke.

I hope so; it is a jolly comfortable state to be in, I answered.

But a very dangerous one. You must get awfully left.

I picked up Wisden's Cricket Almanack, which had been one of the things in my bag, and began to read it, for I had taken a fancy to Murray and did not see much use in listening to what I felt Ward wanted to say about him.

You will probably be friends with Murray for about a month, and then it will end with a snap, he said.

I can promise you that if I am friends with him for a month it won't end with a snap, even if his toes simply bulge with muscles, I replied.

If anybody warned you against a man you would take no notice.

It depends who warned me, and whom I was warned against. And since it is no use pretending things, I added, I don't see much wrong in a fellow because he happens to remember something about baby's food.

He might be a bore.

So may anybody, I answered, for Ward's persistence was beginning to annoy me. He got up from his chair with a great laugh, and put his hands on my shoulders.

We mustn't begin by having a row with each other, he said.

I stood up so that I could get rid of his hands, and felt inclined to say that I did not want to begin at all, but I stopped myself. There was something in the man that attracted me. I may be peculiar, but I like people who shake the furniture when they laugh, having suffered much from a master at Cliborough who never let himself go farther than a giggle.

I suppose we must go and see these blessed dons. They want to see us at half-past ten, don't they? he said.

I looked at my watch and found that it was nearly eleven o'clock, so we bolted down-stairs and across the quadrangle as hard as we could. It was a very bad start but I had completely forgotten that we had to go to the hall at half-past ten, and Ward gave me no comfort by saying that he did not suppose it mattered when we went as long as we turned up some time. Dons would have to be very different from masters if that was the case, and as I imagined that they would be of much the same breed only glorified, I had no wish to begin by making them angry.

There were thirty or forty freshers in the hall when we got there, and a few dons sitting at the high table at the end of it. Murray and two or three other men were up talking to them when I arrived, and I guessed that they were taking the scholars and exhibitioners alphabetically, and that I was too late for my turn; though Ward, who was a commoner and fortunate enough to begin with a W, was probably in heaps of time.

When Murray came down he told me that they had called out my name several times, which made me, quite unreasonably, feel angry with Ward, but presently they shouted for me again and I went up.

Though I felt rather agitated as I walked up the hall and saw these gowned people waiting for me, the idea flitted across my mind that they looked most extremely like a row of rooks sitting on a long stick. My prevailing impression as I approached them was one of beak, they seemed to me like a lot of benevolent and expectant birds. As a matter of fact this impression was false, and I got it because I was looking at the Warden—as the Head of St. Cuthbert's was called—and not at the group of dons on each side of him.

The Warden was a little man whose head had apparently sunk down into his neck and got a tilt forward in the process. His eyes were grey and shrewd, the sort of eyes which one watches to see the signs of the times; his nose, being that of the Warden, I will only call prominent, and he had a habit of passing his hand over his mouth and chin, which was merely a habit, but suggested to me at first sight that he was pleased with his morning shave. He was nearly sixty years old, and when he wanted to be nice his efforts were not intelligible to everybody, but there was no mistaking him when he really wished to be nasty. However, he was one of those men who are spoken of at Oxford as having European reputations, and possibly the burden of an European reputation gives the owner of it a right to behave differently from ordinary people who have no reputation at all, or if they have one would prefer that it should be forgotten.

The Warden held out a hand to me and almost winced at my manner of grasping it. My father always said that he knew a man by his hand-shake, but I ought to have been wise enough to spare the Warden.

I was in doubt whether or no we were to have the privilege of seeing you this morning. Perhaps the fatigues of a long journey by rail caused you to remain in your bedroom for a longer time than is usual, or indeed beneficial.

I was on the point of saying that I had been up at eight o'clock, when it occurred to me that an apology would be shorter than an explanation, so I mumbled that I was very sorry for being late. My chief desire was to get away from an atmosphere which I found overpowering.

I had to listen to some more remarks from the Warden, all of which were spun out in his extraordinary way, and at last I was introduced to my tutor, Mr. Gilbert Edwardes, who took me on one side and set to work telling me what lectures I was to attend. I think he meant to be friendly but he had a dreadfully stiff manner, and I am sure that he found it very difficult to unbend. He reminded me most strongly of a shirt with too much starch in it, or whatever it is that makes shirts as stiff as boards.

Later on in the day I went to see him in his rooms in college and he gave me a little advice and exhorted me to work. It was all a cut-and-dried sort of affair which did not appeal to any feelings I had, but since he was my tutor I thought I had better tell him something about myself.

He was even smaller than the Warden and quite the most prim-looking man I have ever beheld. His face was colourless and smooth, and as I sat opposite him in his gloomy room he looked so tidy and sure of himself that I found a great difficulty in speaking to him. Having said the usual things he was very obviously expecting me to go, but I did not want him to begin by thinking that I was a saint, though why I imagined that he was in any danger of thinking so I cannot explain. He had, however, said so much about work and the great care I must take in avoiding men who distracted me from my duty, that I thought I had better tell him that I was a very human being.

I never remember having twiddled my thumbs before but I caught myself doing it in his room. He was so placid and demure that I could not imagine that he had ever done a foolish thing in his life. It was impossible for me to think that he had ever been young, and I wanted him to know that I was both young and foolish. He must have known the one and I expect he guessed the other, but at any rate my intention was to begin fair. Then whatever happened he would not be able to say that I had not warned him.

But he made me so nervous that I did not get the right words, and I made him look more like a poker then ever. Thanks, most awfully, I began, and it was a bad beginning, for all your advice. But I want to tell you that I do the most stupid things without meaning to do them. I mean that they only strike me as being stupid after I have done them.

Mr. Edwardes made noises in his throat which sounded like a succession of Ahems, and I floundered on: I am afraid it is very hard for me not to like amusing myself as much as possible, but of course I will try to work and all that sort of thing as well. He stood up when I got as far as that and smiled at me, but I cannot say that he seemed to be pleased. I thought I had better tell you, so that you would know, I added before I left him, and I went away with the hopeless feeling that I had made a complete idiot of myself. I hated Mr. Edwardes as I went back across the quadrangle, for I felt that I had tried to take him into my confidence and that he had responded by getting rid of me.

When I reached my rooms my luggage had arrived and I let off steam—so to speak—by having a dispute with the man who had brought it. I did not get the best of that dispute, but I did make an effort to practise the economy which my people had advised, and Clarkson saw me in a rage, which must have been very good for him. For a solid hour I unpacked things which I had thought beautiful in my study at Cliborough and put them about my room, but somehow or other most of them did not seem as beautiful as I had thought them, and there was a picture—I had won it in a shilling raffle, and been very proud of it—which filled me with sorrow. It had been painted by the sister of a fellow at Cliborough, and when he was frightfully hard-up he arranged a raffle, and everybody said I was jolly lucky to win it. I was even bid fifteen shillings for the picture by the original owner, but as I suspected that he wanted to get up another raffle I refused the offer. When I saw the thing hanging on my wall I wished that I had not been such a fool. Having got the thing I did not like to waste it, but if some one would have come in and stuck a knife into it I should have been very pleased. The name of this burden was A Last Night at Sea, and the subjects represented were a small boat and two or three people huddled together at one end of it, while in the middle of the boat a woman with long streaming hair was stretching out her arms towards a terrific wave. If I had not remembered the name it might not have been so bad, but under the circumstances no one could say that it was a cheerful thing to live with. I suppose the satisfaction of having it in my study at Cliborough had been enough, for I did not recollect having looked at it before, and when a lot of fellows are swarming around saying what a lucky chap you are to have won a thing, it is not very likely to give you the blues then, whatever it may have in store for you afterwards. I turned A Last Night at Sea with its face to the wall and went on decorating my room. Photographs of my father and mother which I put on my mantelpiece made me feel rather better, but Nina resplendent in a green plush frame made me think again. I had been very proud of that frame some years before when Nina had given it to me; she had sold two rabbits and borrowed sixpence from Miss Read, her governess, to buy it, and it had never occurred to me that I could grow out of my admiration for green plush. The question of what to do with it puzzled me tremendously; I didn't want to treat Nina badly but the frame was an abomination. Fortunately there was a ring attached to the frame and I hung it up in a dark corner, but I promised myself that it should come out the following morning.

I had just sat down to survey my labours when Murray came in and proposed we should go for a walk in the town, and as I was perfectly sick of my room I was quite ready to go. Although the time was barely four o'clock and the sun doesn't set for another hour in the middle of October, it was half dark and drizzling with rain as we walked down Turl Street and came into The High. But I had got rid of my gloom and was eager to spend money. I did not quite know what I wanted but that was not of much consequence. We went into a shop which seemed to be exactly the place for any one who wished to buy things, and did not care much what he bought. Before I came out of it I had bought two chairs, a standard lamp, a small book-case, an enormous bowl—which got in my way for two years until somebody smashed it—a tea-set, a small table and half-a-dozen china shepherdesses. I then went to other shops and made more purchases, while Murray looked on and smiled until I was waylaid by an accommodating man in the Cornmarket, who wanted to sell me a fox-terrier pup, and was ready to keep it for me if I had no place for it; and then I was told not to be a fool. That man's opinion of Murray is not worth mentioning.

When we got back to college it was past five o'clock, and between us we managed to find everything that was necessary for tea. I had a fire in my room, but Murray had not one in his; he had tea-cups, but I had none; while I had things to eat, which our cook at home had declared would be useful and I had most reluctantly brought with me. We were in the middle of this very substantial meal when Fred Foster came in, and from his glance round my room I saw that he thought it was a fairly dismal spot.

Rather like an up-stairs dungeon, I said. Have you got a better place than this?

It is bigger and not so stuffy, he answered; but it won't make you very jealous.

You wait until I have got all the things I have just bought, and then you will think this no end of a place, I remarked.

If any one can get inside, Murray put in.

It will be rather a squash, I admitted; I've spent over twelve pounds already.

That's just the sort of thing you would do, Foster said.

We sat and talked for an hour until Ward burst in, knocking and opening the door at the same moment.

Murray and Foster had been getting on splendidly together, but directly Ward came they hardly said a word. Possibly they did not get much chance, but any one could see that Foster had taken a dislike to Ward at sight.

Murray went away very soon and left the three of us together.

I've been over to Woodstock in a dog-cart with Bunny Langham and Bob Fraser, Ward said. By Jove, that cob of Bunny's can move. We got back in five-and-twenty minutes.

As I didn't know how far it was to Woodstock and didn't care, I said nothing, so Ward went on, Bunny's a rare good sort; you ought to meet him.

What college is he at? I asked.

At the House—Christchurch, you know. I did know, and thought the explanation cheek. I have hired a gee from Carter's to-morrow, and am going to drive over to Abingdon with Bunny, will you come?

To-morrow's Sunday, I said.

Yes, there is nothing else to do. The better the day the—— But I interrupted him.

Don't talk rot, I hate those things. Are you going in a dog-cart? I asked.

Yes, it is Bunny's cart.

I am jolly well not going to sit on the back seat of a dog-cart if I can help it; I would rather go about in a perambulator, I said.

You are so confoundedly particular, he went on with a great guffaw of laughter, but since it is Bunny's cart and I am going to drive I don't see how we can offer you any other seat.

Who the blazes is Bunny? I asked, for his name was beginning to get on my nerves, and Fred Foster sitting as dumb as a mute was enough to upset any one.

I know him at home, his father is the Marquis of Tillford and his real name is Lord Augustus Langham, only his teeth stick out and every one calls him Bunny, Ward answered.

Heaps of money? I said.

Plenty, I should think.

Then he is no use to me, though he may be the best fellow in the world, I declared.

You are a rum 'un, why he is just the sort of man who is some use.

That depends, Foster said suddenly.

Yes, it depends, I repeated, though I didn't know exactly what depended.

What depends? Ward asked Foster.

Well, if a man hasn't got much money it is no use knowing a lot of men who have got no end.

It never struck me that way. Perhaps you are right, and then turning to me, he added, Come to breakfast anyhow to-morrow morning, Bunny won't be there then.

I promised to go, and then he left us. I walked back to Oriel with Foster and he had got a lot to say about Jack Ward. Where in the world did you find that man? was his first remark after we were alone.

He found me, I said.

I should lose him as soon as possible, Fred went on.

I don't think that would be very easy, I answered, and I don't believe he is a bad sort really.

I'll bet he never came back from Woodstock in five-and-twenty minutes, Foster said.

CHAPTER III

THE RESULT OF THE FRESHERS' MATCH

If I had to describe in detail the first two or three weeks of my life at Oxford, I think that accusations might be brought against me of having eaten too much, or at any rate too often. Fortunately I had a good digestion, I cannot imagine the fate of a dyspeptic freshman if he had to attend a series of Oxford breakfasts. I have, however, only once encountered a fresher who suffered from