Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate Part 39

"What's the good of that?" I asked.

"I want to see if he isn't having a huge joke all to himself; if he is we may as well help him with it."

As soon as Fred had gone away Jack persuaded me to go with him and call on Thornton. He had got hold of a scheme which Murray and Learoyd had started, and as its object seemed to be to score off Dennison I was not going to be out of it. We found Thornton sitting in an arm-chair with his feet on the mantelpiece, and Jack seeing that he was alone sported the oak so that we could not be interrupted.

"I should think," Thornton said, as he pushed his chair back, "that I must have had over thirty men in here to-day. There were seventeen before twelve o'clock. I am thinking of putting a visitors' book in the pa.s.sage, so that they can write their names and go away. Are you going to back me up to-morrow night?" he asked Jack.

"They have persuaded you to stand?"

"Dennison says it would be such a bad thing for the college if this man Webb got in. Of course it is a great honour for a fresher, but I am used to speaking; we have a debating society at home." He spoke as if the whole thing was not in the least important, and ran his fingers through his hair until it stood straight up on end. It was the sort of hair which looked like stubble.

Jack was so discouraged that he did not know what to say, so I asked Thornton if he expected to be elected.

"There doesn't seem to be any doubt about that; there are only about thirty members, and quite half of them have promised to support me.

Webb of course is better known, but in some cases it does no harm to keep oneself in the background until the last moment. Then I shall speak." He seemed to think that his speech would settle everything completely.

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 a.s.sured 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.

The President then broke his wand of office, which for some obscure reason was a bulrush painted white, and Thornton and Webb, who had been sitting behind the table, were put up for election and called upon to speak. Webb developed a stammer, and although he had his speech written on his shirt-cuff, no one could hear what he said. He was, however, received with a lot of applause, so that Thornton might think the election was genuine; Dennison had certainly packed the meeting with great care.

Thornton's speech was, in its way, almost too amusing, for I found it very hard to believe that any one who was not more or less mad could possibly make it. He spoke at a tremendous pace, sometimes talking utter nonsense, and then as if by chance saying something almost sensible. Voting-papers were given to twenty-five picked men after he had finished, and Thornton was elected President by fourteen votes to eleven. The meeting finished by Thornton thanking everybody in a voice which sounded tearful, and then he announced that the annual dinner of the Hedonists would be held at The Sceptre on the following Friday evening, at which the ceremonies of inauguration would be held, and he would be the only guest of the Society in accordance with its ancient and honourable traditions.

"Don't you think he is mad?" I said to Jack as I walked across the quad with him.

"The only danger is that they may find out that he is rotting the whole lot of them. He overdid the thing to-night. Come and see Murray."

We found Murray waiting to hear what had happened at the meeting, and from the account we gave him he said that it could not have gone off more successfully. "If you think Thornton mad when you know that he isn't, there is no reason for Dennison to change his mind. Besides, these men are quite certain that he is cracked, and as long as we are careful they won't suspect anything."

"We shall have to be most tremendously careful," Jack said, and he seemed to find the prospect oppressive.

"I'll manage Thornton," Murray continued, "and what you men have got to do is to get asked to this dinner. We shall have to take some others into this."

We sat down and chose several men who disliked the Dennison gang, and who could be trusted not to give our scheme away by talking about it, and during the next few days we had to work hard. Dennison and Lambert, however, were so confident that this dinner was going to be the finest rag ever held in Oxford that they did not mind who came to it. Collier got several invitations for us, because he had a nice solid way of sitting down in a man's rooms and waiting until he was given what he wanted; but apart from Jack it was not difficult for us to get to The Sceptre, and at last even Jack was invited. Murray said that his part was to prepare Thornton, and he refused to go to the dinner, because Dennison might wonder why he wanted to be there. I thought that Murray carried caution to extremes.

I should think that there were nearly forty men at this function; but the only guest was Thornton, so he began by scoring something. It was an elaborate affair; Dennison as Secretary of the Hedonists, and two or three men who called themselves Ex-Presidents, wore enormous badges, and Thornton's shirt was covered with orders and decorations which were supposed to have been worn by eighty-eight consecutive Presidents. How any one who was sane could possibly consent to be made such a fool puzzled me altogether, and it required all Jack's a.s.surances to make me believe that we should not be scored off all along the line.

After the dinner was finished Dennison got up to introduce the President of the year, but all he did was to give a short biography of Thornton, which for impudence was simply terrific. Everything had gone so well up to then that I suppose he could not keep himself in hand any longer; but as he was bounder enough to pull Thornton's people into his speech, he succeeded in disgusting several men who had been helping him in the rag. He finished up by saying that Thornton would give his inaugural address, and that afterwards the historic ceremonies of the Hedonists would be performed.

A man with a voice which was a mixture of a street hawker's and a parish clerk's stood up and chanted, "I call upon Mr. Edward Noel Kenneth Thornton to put on the purple presidential cap and to deliver his inaugural address to this ancient and historic Society." The cap, which had a long black ta.s.sel, was then handed to Thornton, and he put it on amidst tremendous applause. It made him look more ridiculous than ever, but he seemed to be perfectly calm when he got up and bowed solemnly in every direction.

"Mr. Ex-Presidents and fellow-members of this justly-celebrated Hedonist Society," he began, and every word he said could be heard plainly, "we are here to-night in obedience to custom and in pursuit of pleasure. Custom is one thing and pleasure is another, but we are fortunate in belonging to a Society which makes its customs pleasant, and which has such skilled hands to guide its pleasures that the word customary fails entirely to describe them." He paused for a moment, and a man near me asked what he was talking about, but Webb answered quickly that he was a hopeless madman, and that the ceremonies would be the real joke. "That I, a freshman," he continued, "should be elected President of this Society fills me with grat.i.tude and even dismay, for I fear that the duties of so distinguished an office will be but inadequately performed during the coming year." Loud cries of "No"

followed this remark, and he went on, "You are good enough to disagree with me, and perhaps the ceremonies connected with my office may help me to fulfil my duties. I will tell you what those ceremonies are."

Dennison tried to stop him, but he was speaking quickly and took no notice of the interruption. "After my address has been given I put on my robes of office and ride on a mule from here to St. Cuthbert's; I am to be accompanied by the band of the Society, and attended by six men who will carry syphons of Apollinaris water and prevent my robes from being soiled by the dust of the streets. Had I known before I came here that so much honour was about to be showered upon me I do not think that I should have considered myself worthy of being your President. I forgot to say that I am provided with an umbrella." I looked at Dennison, and he did not seem to be feeling very comfortable; Thornton, however, had kept up the _role_ of a madman thoroughly, and had spoken of the ceremonies as if he was quite prepared to carry them out. Some men were shouting with laughter, but Jack was almost pale with anxiety, and whispered to me that he was afraid Thornton would get flurried and finish his speech too soon. As soon as the laughter had stopped he went on speaking, and although he looked terribly pale and bothered, he was never at a loss for words. "I am, I have been told, the eighty-ninth man to fill this important office, and when I think of my predecessors, some of whom have doubtless pa.s.sed away, I am filled with a sense of my unfitness for the post which I fill. The whole fate of this Society depends upon its President; without him to guide the members in their pursuit of pleasure they would be left to drift into undignified amus.e.m.e.nts, and might even end by taking such absurd things as degrees. At all cost we must avoid ba.n.a.lity." As if in the excitement of the moment, he swept his hands over his head and knocked off his cap. "However, my fellow Hedonists, I think I may say that your last President has entered earnestly into the spirit of this Society. Its aim, you remember, is pleasure--not any vulgar or ordinary pleasure, but refined and exclusive amus.e.m.e.nt--that is written in the rules of the Society as they were given to me, and I need not remind those who are present to-night that it is their duty to obey them." He rested his right hand on his shirt, and continued quickly, "I, at any rate, have obeyed them to the letter. I have, if I may say so, got more amus.e.m.e.nt out of this evening than I have ever had in my life, and as your eighty-ninth President I declare this magnificent Society at an end." Dennison, Lambert, and one or two others jumped up, but Thornton told them loudly not to interrupt him, and several of us shouted for him to go on with his speech. "I have had an exceedingly good dinner, and my last word must be one of sympathy with Mr. Dennison, who, thinking that I was a bigger fool than he was, has invented a society of which, I am sure you will all acknowledge, he is the only man worthy to be President. I hope that you will see that he performs the ceremonies which he has arranged for me." As he finished he took off all his badges and tossed them across the table to Dennison.

There was a good deal of noise during the concluding sentences of his speech, but the so-called Hedonists were so astonished that they did nothing, and Thornton very prudently did not wait to see what would happen next. Dennison was in a miserable state because he was violently angry and trying to grin, and before the general hubbub had stopped, two men out of our eight, who had never forgiven him for laughing at their rowing, picked him up and carried him out of the room. In a minute Dennison, with the purple cap on his head, was sitting on the donkey, and a procession had started to St. Cuthbert's.

When we got back to college we succeeded in taking possession of the porter who answered our knocks, and in getting both the moke and Dennison into the quad. I was so engaged with the porter that I did not see whether Dennison entered in state, but at any rate he had to ride round the quad two or three times, and crowds of men were there to see him do it. Finally, the Subby and The Bradder appeared, and gave orders that the donkey should leave the college; so as soon as Dennison had dismounted, his steed was handed over to its owner, who was waiting in the street. Then some of us paid a call on the porter to see if he could develop a bad memory for faces, but the only thing we found out from him was that his temper was bad, and that we had known before. As I went back to my rooms I met Lambert, who drew himself up in front of me as if he was on parade.

"Don't think," he said, "that you have heard the last of this."

"We shall never hear the last of it," I answered,

"We know that you played this dirty trick."

"You can know what you please," I said.

"I told you about Thornton, and then you prepare this behind our backs."

"The whole college, and nearly the whole 'Varsity knew about Thornton, so you needn't talk such rot to me. Crowds of out-college men were here to see him come in to-night."

"You arranged the whole thing."

"You may think whatever you like," I replied; and he strode away with a warning that I had better look out for myself.

CHAPTER XXI

ONE WORD TOO MANY

The collapse of the Hedonists placed me in a very curious position, for by some freak of fortune an idea spread through the 'Varsity that I had been responsible for it, and whenever I went to Vincent's I was always b.u.t.ton-holed by men who asked me to tell them what had happened. It was almost as bad as Nina falling into the "Cher," for a tale thirty times told is as flavourless as sauce kept in an uncorked bottle. I could not say that Murray was the man to explain the whole thing, for he was most extraordinarily anxious that his name should not be mentioned. I thought that he carried discretion beyond the bounds of decency, but Jack said that if it had not been for him we should never have made a fool of Dennison, and this was so far true that I stopped myself from making one or two forcible remarks. The immediate result of our procession was that a great many people seemed to be incoherently angry. I had interviews with both the Warden and the Subby, and I am sorry to say that our porter had told them that I had hit him in the ribs. I had done nothing of the kind, but it was necessary that he should be taken for a short walk, and I did put my arm through his and keep myself between him and the donkey until it was safely in the quad. I am sure that the Warden understood that I would not hit any one in the ribs, and I think his annoyance was due chiefly to the fact that some one had told a reporter a lot of things which were not true, and there were accounts of the Hedonists in some of the London papers. But the fact of a donkey being in our quad had got on the Subby's nerves, and he gated me for a month without listening to what I had to say. He also told me that I ought to consider myself very lucky not to be sent down for the term. Several other men, including Dennison, were gated for a fortnight, and I had great difficulty in keeping Jack from going to the Subby, to ask him if he would not do something to him. It was very silly of Jack to think of pushing himself into this row, but instead of thanking his stars that he had not been seen, he was furious with me when I told him to keep away from the Subby; and a lot of other men in St. Cuthbert's who would have been glad to help in squashing Dennison, were angry because they had never been told of our plans.

Collier, who had not been gated, told me by way of comfort that virtue is its own reward, but if this is true, I really think that virtue is badly handicapped, and that those who practise it should get something more substantial to satisfy them. I began to think that if ever there was another attempt to do anything for the college I should be too busy to take any part in it. There was, however, one thing which cheered me during these days of bad temper, and that was a report that Dennison and Lambert were vowing vengeance upon me. I hoped most sincerely that they would try to do something, for I should have received them with pleasure. But their threats never came to anything, for as the days pa.s.sed by and every one knew how completely they had been scored off, their desire for revenge seemed to wane. Ridicule smothered them, and try as they would to live it down, their influence, as far as the college was concerned, disappeared entirely. Some of the set pulled themselves up and became more or less silent, while others continued to shriek at night, and to go to the theatre for the purpose of making a row, which seems to me to be nearly the end of all things.

In a week the Hedonists were almost forgotten, and when the storm had blown over, Murray was not so anxious that I should have all the credit of having caused it. But by that time no one cared to know who had thought of preparing Thornton for the dinner, and Murray treated me as if I had robbed him of something. I think he must have been working too hard, or suffering from some secret illness, for I had already told a hundred men that it was not in me to make a plot of any kind, and that if I had been responsible for this one it would never have been successful. Murray's indignation came too late to have any effect, and as I thought he was quite unreasonable I made no attempt to pacify him.

After things had settled down again no one could help seeing that the fall of Dennison and his friends had done no end of good to the college. The men who can be only described as absolute slackers do not often get the chance of having any influence in a college, but for some reason or other Dennison had become the fashion among a certain set in St. Cuthbert's, and if we were ever to do anything properly again it was time for the fashion to change. There are many ways of making yourself conspicuous in Oxford, and Dennison chose the one which the majority of men never have been able to put up with. I think St.

Cuthbert's during my first two years had most unusually bad luck; we were suffering, like the agricultural interest, from years of depression, and we tobogganed down the hill instead of trying to pull ourselves to the top of it again. I suppose other colleges have their troubles, but while I was at Oxford no college had such a desperate struggle as St. Cuthbert's.

My interviews with The Bradder during the first two or three weeks of this term were most strictly business-like. I was afraid that he would speak to me of the Hedonists, and as I had no intention of saying a word to him about them I never stayed with him longer than I could possibly help. Dons, however, find out things without asking undergraduates, and the man who imagines that they are not troubling themselves about him is in danger of having rather a rude awakening, if he happens to be doing things which do not please them. Our dons must have known all about Dennison, and I believe they fixed their eyes most steadfastly upon him. At any rate, his father, who was a barrister, must have heard something, because he paid a surprise visit to Oxford.