Sinister Street · Book III · Chapter 3 12 (3/3)

“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 tonight, 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 tonight 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 tomorrow,” said Michael.