Sinister Street · Book III · Chapter 3 7 (2/3)

“There you are,” chuckled Venner triumphantly. “What did I say? One dozen champagne. Three bottles of brandy. All drunk in one night, for there’s another half dozen put down for the next day. Ah, but the men are much quieter nowadays. Not nearly so much drinking done in college as there used to be. Oh, I remember the Bishop⁠—Stebbing he was then. He put a codfish in the Dean’s bed. Oh, there was a dreadful row about it! The old Warden kicked up such a fuss.”

And, as easily as one Arabian night glides into another, Venner glided from anecdote to anecdote of episcopal youth.

“I thought the old boy liked the governor’s port,” laughed Lonsdale. “ ‘What a pity everybody can’t drink in moderation,’ said Gaiters. Next time he cocks his wicked old eye at me, I shall ask him about that codfish.”

“What’s this they tell me about your bringing out a magazine?” Venner inquired, turning to Maurice Avery.

“Out next week, Venner,” Maurice announced importantly.

“Why, whatever do you find to write about?” asked Venner. “But I suppose it’s amusing. I’ve often been asked to write my own life. What an idea! As if I had any time. I’m glad enough to go to bed when I get home, though I always smoke a pipe first. We had two men here once who brought out a paper. Chalfont and Weymouth. I used to have some copies of it somewhere. They put in a lot of skits of the college dons. The Warden was quite annoyed. ‘Most scurrilous, Venables,’ he said to me, I remember. ‘Most scurrilous.’ ” Venner chuckled at the remembrance of the Warden’s indignation.

“This is going to be a very serious affair, Venner,” explained somebody. “It’s going to put the world quite straight again.”

“Ho-ho, I suppose you’re one of these Radicals,” said Venner to the editor. “Dear me, how anyone can be a Radical I can’t understand. I’ve always been a Conservative. We had a Socialist come up here to lecture once in a man’s rooms⁠—a great Radical this man was⁠—Sir Hugh Gaston⁠—a baronet⁠—there’s a funny thing, fancy a Radical baronet. Well, the men got to hear of this Socialist coming up and what do you think they did?” Venner chuckled in anticipatory relish. “Why, they cropped his hair down to nothing. Sir Hugh Gaston was quite upset about it, and when he made a fuss, they cut his hair too, though it was quite short already. There was a terrible rowdy set up then. The men are very much quieter nowadays.”

The door opened as Venables finished his story, and Smithers came in to order rather nervously a tin of biscuits. The familiar frequenters of Venner’s eyed in cold silence his entrance, his blushful wait and his hurried exit.

“That’s a scholar called Smithers,” Venner explained. “He’s a very quiet man. I don’t suppose any of you know him even by sight.”

“We ragged him last term,” said Michael, smiling at his friends.

“He’s a bounder,” declared Avery obstinately.

“He hasn’t much money,” said Venner. “But he’s a very nice fellow. You oughtn’t to rag him. He’s very harmless. Never speaks to anybody. He’ll get a first, I expect, but there, you don’t think anything of that, I know. But the dons do. The Warden often has him to dinner. I shouldn’t rag him any more. He’s a very sensitive fellow. His father’s a carpenter. What a wonderful thing he should have a son come up to St. Mary’s.”

The rebuke was so gently administered that only the momentary silence betrayed its efficacy.

One day Michael brought Alan to be introduced to Venables, and it was a pleasure to see how immediately the old man appreciated Alan.

“Why ever didn’t you come to St. Mary’s?” asked Venner. “Just the place for you. Don’t you find Christ Church a bit large? But they’ve got some very good land. I’ve often done a bit of shooting over the Christ Church farms. The Bursar knows me well. ‘Pleased to see you, Mr. Venables, and I hope you’ll have good sport.’ That’s what he said to me last time I saw him. Oh, he’s a very nice man! Do they still make meringues at your place? I don’t suppose you ever heard the story of the St. Mary’s men who broke into Christ Church. It caused quite a stir at the time. Well, some of our men were very tipsy one night at the Bullingdon wine, and one of them left his handkerchief in the rooms of a Christ Church man, and what do you think they did? Why, when they got back to college, this man said he wasn’t going to bed without his handkerchief. Did you ever hear of such a thing? So they all climbed out of St. Mary’s at about two in the morning and actually climbed into Christ Church. At least they thought it was Christ Church, but it was really Pembroke. Do you know Pembroke? I don’t suppose you’ve even been there. Our men always cheer Pembroke in the Eights⁠—Pemmy, as they call it⁠—because their barge is next to us. But fancy breaking in there at night to look for a handkerchief. They woke up every man in the college, and there was a regular set-to in the quad, and the night porter at Pembroke got a most terrible black eye. The President of the J.C.R. had to send an apology, and it was all put right, but this man who lost his handkerchief, Wilberforce his name was, became a regular nuisance, because for ever afterward, whenever he got drunk, he used to go looking for this old handkerchief. There you see, that’s what comes of going to the Bullingdon wine. Are you a member of the Bullingdon?”

“He’s a cricketer, Venner,” Michael explained.

“So was this fellow Wilberforce who lost his handkerchief, and what do you think? One day when we were playing Winchester⁠—you’re not a Wykehamist, are you?⁠—he came out to bat so drunk that the first ball he hit, he went and ran after it himself. It caused quite a scandal. But you don’t look one of that sort. Will you have a squash and a biscuit? The men like these biscuits very much. There’s been quite a run on them.”

Michael was anxious to know how deep an impression Venner had made on Alan.

“You’ve got nobody like him at the House?” he asked.

Alan was bound to admit there was indeed nobody.

“He’s an extraordinary chap,” said Michael. “He’s always different, and yet he’s always absolutely the same. For me he represents Oxford. When one’s in his company, one feels one’s with him forever, and yet one knows that people who have gone down can feel just the same, and that people who haven’t yet come up will feel just the same. You know, I do really think that what it sets out to do St. Mary’s does better than any other college. And the reason of that is Venner’s. It’s the only successful democracy in the world.”

“I shouldn’t have called it a democracy,” said Alan. “Everybody doesn’t go there.”

“But everybody can go there. It depends entirely on themselves.”

“What about that fellow Smithers you were talking about?” Alan asked. “He seems barred.”

“But he won’t be,” Michael urged hopefully.

“He’d be happier at the House all the same,” Alan said. “He’d find his own set there.”

“But so he can at St. Mary’s.”

“Then it isn’t a democracy,” Alan stoutly maintained.

“I say, Alan,” exclaimed Michael, in surprise. “You’re getting quite a logician.”

“Well, you always persist in treating me like an idiot,” said Alan. “But I am reading Honor Mods. It’s a swat, but I’ve got to get some sort of a class.”

“You’ll probably get a first,” said Michael.

Yet how curious it was to think of Alan, whom he still regarded as chiefly a good-looking and capable athlete, taking a first class in a school he himself had indolently passed over. Of course he would never take a first. He was too much occupied with the perfection of new leg-breaks. And what would he do after his degree, his third in greats? A third was the utmost Michael mentally allowed him in the Final Schools.

“I suppose you’ll ultimately try for the Indian Civil?” Michael asked. “Do you remember when we used to lie awake talking in bed at Carlington Road? It was always going to be me who did everything intellectual; you were always the sportsman.”

“I am still. Michael, I think I’ve got a chance of my blue this year. If I can keep that leg-break,” he added fervidly. “There’s no slow right-hander of much class in the Varsity. I worked like a navvy at that leg-break last vac.”

“I thought you were grinding for Mods,” Michael reminded him, with a smile.

“I worked like a navvy at Mods,” said Alan.

“You’ll be a proconsul, I really believe.” Michael looked admiringly at his friend. “And do you know, Alan, in appearance you’re turning into a regular viking.”

“I meant to have my hair cut yesterday,” said Alan, in grave and reflective self-reproof.

“It’s not your hair,” cried Michael. “It’s your whole personality. I never appreciated you until this moment.”

“I think you talk more rot nowadays than you used to talk even,” said Alan. “So long, I must go back and work.”

The tall figure with the dull gold hair curling out from the green cap of Harris tweed faded away in the November fog that was traveling in swift and smoky undulations through the Oxford streets. What a strangely attractive walk Alan had always had, and now it had gained something of determination, whether from leg-breaks or logic Michael did not know. But the result was a truer grace in the poise of his neck; a longer and more supple swing from his tapering flanks.

Michael went on up the High and stood for a moment, watching the confusion caused by the fog at Carfax, listening to the fretful tinkles of the numerous bicycles and the jangling of the trams and the shouts of the paperboys. Then he walked down Cornmarket Street past the shops splashing through the humid coils of vapor their lights upon the townspeople, loiterers and purchasers who thronged the pavements. Undergraduates strolled along, linked arm in arm and perpetually staring. How faithfully each group resembled its forerunners and successors. All had the same fresh complexions, the same ample green coats of Harris tweed, the same gray flannel trousers. Only in the casual acknowledgments of his greeting when he recognized acquaintances was there the least variation, since some would nod or toss their heads, others would shudder with their chins, and a few would raise their arms in a fanlike gesture of social benediction. Michael turned round into the Broad where the fog made mysterious even the tea-tray gothic of Balliol, and Trinity with its municipal ampelopsis. A spectral cabman saluted him interrogatively from the murk. A fox-terrier went yapping down the street at the heels of a don’s wife hurrying back to Banbury Road. A belated paperboy yelled, “Varsity and Blackheath Result,” hastening toward a more profitable traffic. The fog grew denser every minute, and Michael turned round into Turl Street past many-windowed Exeter and the monastic silence of Lincoln. There was time to turn aside and visit Lampard’s bookshop. There was time to buy that Glossary of Ducange which he must have, and perhaps that red and golden Dictionary of Welby Pugin which he ought to have, and ultimately, as it turned out, there was time to buy half a dozen more great volumes whose connection with medieval history was not too remote to give an excuse to Michael, if excuse were needed, for their purchase. Seven o’clock chimed suddenly, and Michael hurried to college, snatched a black coat and a gown out of Venner’s and just avoided the sconce for being more than a quarter of an hour late for hall.

Michael was glad he had not missed hall that night. In Lampard’s alluring case of treasures he had been tempted to linger on until too late, and then to take with him two or three new books and in their entertainment to eat a solitary and meditative dinner at Buol’s. But it would have been a pity to have missed hall when the electric light failed abruptly and when everybody had just helped themselves to baked potatoes. It would have been sad not to have seen the Scholars’ table so splendidly wrecked or heard the volleys of laughter resounding through the darkness.

“By gad,” said Lonsdale, when the light was restored and the second year leaned over their table in triumphant exhaustion. “Did you see that bad man Carben combing the potatoes out of his hair with a fork? I say, Porcher,” he said to his old scout who was waiting at the table, “do bring us some baked potatoes.”

“Isn’t there none left?” inquired Porcher. “Mr. Lonsdale, sir, you’d better keep a bit quiet. The Sub-Warden’s looking very savage⁠—very savage indeed.”

At this moment Maurice Avery came hurrying in to dinner.

“Oh, sconce him!” shouted everybody. “It’s nearly five-and-twenty past.”

“Couldn’t help it,” said Maurice very importantly. “Just been seeing the first number of the O.L.G. through the press.”

“By gad,” said Lonsdale. “It’s a way we have in the Buffs and the Forty Two’th. Look here, have we all got to buy this rotten paper of yours? What’s it going to cost?”

“A shilling,” said Maurice modestly.

“A bob!” cried Lonsdale. “But, my dear old ink-slinger, I can buy the five-o’clock Star for a halfpenny.”

Maurice had to put up with a good deal of chaff from everybody that night.

“Let’s have the program,” Sinclair suggested.

The editor was so much elated at the prospect of tomorrow’s great event that he rashly produced from his pocket the contents bill, which Lonsdale seized and immediately began to read out:

“Some Reflections. By Maurice Avery.

“What are you reflecting on, Mossy?”

“Oh, politics,” said Maurice lightly, “and other things.”

“My god, he’ll be Prime Minister next week,” said Cuffe.

“Socrates at Balliol. By Guy Hazlewood.

“And just about where he ought to have been,” commented Lonsdale. “Oh, listen to this! Whoo-oop!

“The Failure of the Modern Illustrator.

“But wait a minute, who do you think it’s by? C. St. C. Wedderburn! Jolly old Wedders! The Failure of the Modern Illustrator. Wedders! My god, I shall cat with laughing. Wedders! A bee-luddy author.”

“Sconce Mr. Lonsdale, please,” said Wedderburn, turning gravely to the recorder by his chair.

“What, half a crown for not really saying bloody?” Lonsdale protested.

That night after hall there was much to tell Venner of the successful bombardment with potatoes, and there was some chaff for Avery and Wedderburn in regard to their forthcoming magazine. Parties of out-of-college men came in after their dinner, and at half-past eight o’clock the little office was fuller than usual, with the college gossip being carried on in a helter-skelter of unceasing babble. Just when Fitzroy the Varsity bow was enunciating the glories of Wet Bobbery and the comparative obscurities of Dry Bobbery and just when all the Dry Bobs present were bowling the contrary arguments at him from every corner at once, the door opened and a freshman, as fair and floridly handsome as a young Bacchus, walked with curious tiptoe steps into the very heart of the assembly.

Fitzroy stopped short in his discourse and thrummed impatiently with clenched fists upon his inflated chest, as gorillas do. The rest of the company eyed the entrance of the newcomer in puzzled, faintly hostile silence.

“Oh, Venner,” said the intruder, in loftiest self-confidence and unabashed clarity of accent. “I haven’t had those cigars yet.”

He hadn’t had his cigars yet! Confound his impudence, and what right had he to buy cigars, and what infernal assurance had led him to suppose he might stroll into Venner’s in the third raw week of his uncuffed fresherdom? Who was he? What was he? Unvoiced, these questions quivered in the wrathful silence.

“The boy was told to take them up, sir,” said Venner. Something in Venner’s manner toward this newcomer indicated to the familiars that he might have deprecated this deliberate entrance armored in self-satisfaction. Something there was in Venner’s assumption of impersonal civility which told the familiars that Venner himself recognized and sympathized with their as yet unspoken horror of tradition’s breach.