Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate Part 9

"And you have made up your mind to work?"

"I mean to do a reasonable amount," I replied cautiously.

"It is most awfully difficult to work. I have done precious little, and I went fast asleep at a lecture the other morning."

"What was it about?"

"Logic."

"Oh, that's nothing," I a.s.sured him. "I started cutting my logic lectures altogether until I got dropped on. I didn't understand a word the man was saying. There is heaps of time to work, Mods are nearly a year and a half off. What do you think of Ward, after the thing that happened last night?"

I had to plunge right at it, for Foster had not said a word after I had told him Ward wanted to give me back my money.

"Don't let us talk about Ward," Foster answered, "you know I don't like him."

"I knew you didn't like him," I corrected, for I thought that what I had said ought to make a difference.

"You seem to be egging me on to swear at you, so that you may laugh."

"Oh, skittles," I exclaimed.

"You know perfectly well that you can't afford to gamble."

"That has nothing to do with it, because I am not going to gamble, Jack Ward himself asked me not to play roulette."

"But Ward belongs to a gambling set----"

"I suppose he can please himself about that," I retorted, and it was not altogether wise of me.

"And you will always be hearing racing 'shop,' and how much somebody won, n.o.body ever talks about their losses until they are stone-broke."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Your father told me," was the answer, and instead of having got him into a hole I was badly scored off.

"Everybody has something nasty in him somewhere, Balzac said so, and he was the sort of chap who knew; if we were all perfect this wouldn't be earth," I said.

"By Jove, you have been thinking a lot," Foster replied, and he stood still in the road and laughed until I was very annoyed, for I have heard other people make remarks of that kind without any one else smiling.

"It is no use talking seriously to you," I said.

"Plat.i.tudes are not your line," he answered, and we were as far off settling about Ward as ever. I returned, however, to the main question with energy, for it seemed to me to be most important that these two men should not hate each other, if they were to be my friends. The G.o.ds did not endow me with tact, but they gave me so much courage that in a short time I can make any situation either very much better or very much worse. My mother once took in a paper which contained a Tact Problem every week, and she asked my sister and me to write down solutions and see if they were right; mine were wrong five times consecutively, so I gave up that compet.i.tion, though in a negative sort of way I should have been of a.s.sistance to any compet.i.tor. I remember one of these wonderful problems was, 'At an evening party A tells B that C looks like a criminal. Shortly afterwards A finds out that C is B's husband, what ought A to do?' I said A ought to go and tell B that he liked criminals; but the answer was, 'A should do nothing.' I think it was that problem which persuaded me that I was wasting my time, I thought it too stupid for words.

I explained to Foster how difficult it would be for me if he would not change his opinion of Ward, and I talked so much that he said I had persuaded him that Ward was all right, but I had a kind of feeling that he said it for the sake of peace. The day was very warm for November, and at the end of six miles Foster was not so inclined to resist my avalanche of words as he was when we left Oxford. But I knew that having once said he would try to be friends with Ward, I could rely upon him. What he could not understand was the reason why I was so anxious for him to try, why in short I liked Ward, but I could not explain that; for if you once start explaining why you are friends with a man it seems to me to be half-way towards making excuses for yourself, and should you begin doing that you had better not have any friends, since those who know you the best will like you the least. I have a faculty for liking a large number of people, but if I had to give reasons why I liked most of them I should be terribly puzzled.

You cannot, it seems to me, reduce friendship to a formula, or if you can you would knock all the fun out of it.

This was my second visit to the little inn at Sampford, and as soon as we got there I interviewed the landlord and engaged the sitting-room on the ground floor. Foster threw himself upon the sofa and picked up the book in which visitors write their names and exercise their humour, but I was so hot that I opened the French windows which led into the garden and went out. Only a fortnight before the garden had been full enough of flowers to satisfy me, but the wind and rain had beaten down everything, and in spite of the sun it looked bare and desolate. I walked across the lawn to a little arbour and surprised two belated beanfeasters and their ladies. In appearance the men were aggressive, their hats were on the backs of their heads, and enormous chrysanthemums bulged from their b.u.t.tonholes, and must, I should think, have been a source of constant irritation to their chins. The girls giggled when they saw me, and one of the men asked me what I wanted. I told him I was looking for a comfortable place in which to sit down and that he seemed to have found it first. The girls giggled again and the men swore; it was a most commonplace scene. I went back across the lawn and was just going to join Foster, when I heard a tremendous burst of laughter from the room above ours. There was only one man who could laugh like that and he was Jack Ward. At that moment I wished him anywhere, for I guessed quite rightly that he had driven over to Sampford with some men whose luncheon would not consist of cold beef and beer.

I hoped to goodness we should get away without Foster seeing them, so I began to eat without saying anything, except that there was a most vile noise up-stairs. I need not have troubled to say so much since Foster was not deaf. I ate my luncheon hurriedly and gulped down my beer so fast that something went wrong with my wind-pipe. To the accompaniment of my coughs and peals of laughter from the room above, Fred sat eating with a comical expression of misery upon his face.

"Rowdy brutes," he said, and pointed to the ceiling.

I tried to answer, but failed.

"I should think they will get kicked out in a minute," he continued.

"Aren't you going to have any pickles?"

"The room's so horribly stuffy," I managed to say; "I vote we go when you are ready."

"We've only just come. I haven't nearly done yet, and I am going to have a smoke when I've finished."

I resigned myself to the situation and seized the pickles; there was only one left and that was an onion. The noise increased and a huge piece of bread fell on the lawn in front of our window.

"Bloods always throw bread at each other, don't they?" he asked.

"I don't suppose they are any worse than anybody else," I answered; "there is not much harm in a bread pellet."

"That thing out there is half a loaf," he returned, "and at any rate they make a fairly bad row," which were statements I could not deny.

We heard a man go heavily up-stairs and knock at the door. He was received with clamorous approval, but after a little conversation the noise ceased and there was a most refreshing calm. I had hopes that nothing more was going to happen, so I sat down by the fire and lit a cigarette. For ten minutes Fred and I were not interrupted, but I had already recognized the voices of Bunny Langham and Dennison, and I might have guessed that there was not likely to be much peace. Our windows were wide open, and presently I began to hear a kind of choked laughter going on at the window above. What was happening I did not know, but I suspected that some fresh game had begun and I wanted very much to know what it was. I did not, however, wish them to see me nor was I anxious for Fred to see them, so I suggested that we should start back to Oxford. Fred agreed to this, and getting up from his chair he walked out into the garden. No sooner was he on the lawn than I saw him jump like a hare and put his hand up to his neck. At the same moment the beanfeasters rushed out of their arbour and fairly went for him. While this happened I was standing at the window wondering how I could persuade him to come back into the room, but as soon as I saw these two aggressive-looking men, not to mention their ladies, talking to him in most bellicose language, I went out. One of them at once caught hold of me by the coat and spoke so fast and strangely that I did not altogether understand what he was saying. He mentioned the name of Susan a great many times, and when he had finished tugging at my coat I asked him if there was anything the matter with the lady.

"Look at 'er," he said; "just look at 'er. I'm a respectable married man, married, last Thursday as ever was, and I'll 'ave compensation for this as sure as my name's Tom 'Arrison."

I did not want to hear any more of his autobiography, so I looked at the lady pointed out as Susan. I couldn't see much of her face because she had her hand over it, but I did not think they were an ill-a.s.sorted couple.

"Has she been stung by a wasp?" I asked. "A blue-bag----"

"Look 'ere," the man interrupted and caught me again by the coat, "none of your bloomin' innocence. You spied us out in that 'ere arbour, and 'ave been peppering us with peas for the last ever so long, and one of you 'as 'it Susan sock in the eye. Enough to make 'er an object for a fortnight, and us newly married. Where, I should like to know, do I come in?" and I had great difficulty in wriggling his hand away from my coat. The man made me angry, and I told him I hadn't the least notion where he came in, but if he thought we were big enough babies to use peashooters he was jolly well mistaken. I looked round at Foster and found that he was being talked at by the remaining couple, who also looked as if they were newly married. I heard the word Bella, and saw the lady so called endeavouring to draw Foster's attention to a mark on her arm. Susan stood in the middle of the lawn and wept; I felt quite sorry for her, but the other three were really an intolerable nuisance.

Tom Harrison declared it was worth two pounds any day, that Susan's beauty was spoilt, and that everybody would say they had been fighting already. I smiled when he said "already," and for a moment I thought he was going to hit me. He thought better of it, however, and I concluded that if he had intended to fight he would have begun then, so I turned my back upon him and looked at the window up-stairs. There was not a sound coming from the room, and as I turned again to attend to Harrison I heard hoots of laughter, and a dog-cart pa.s.sed along the road which skirted the garden. As it went by I saw Jack Ward stand up on the back of the cart and look over the hedge. When he saw what was happening he leant forward to speak to Bunny Langham, who was driving, and as they pa.s.sed out of sight I thought that he was trying to get hold of the reins.

The men went on talking; Susan wept steadily, and Bella said her arm was visibly swelling, and that she must have been hit by something far more dangerous than a pea. They were not by any means interesting and I was glad to see the landlord coming from the house to join us. He created the diversion of which we were badly in need, and Tom Harrison became more eloquent than ever. But the landlord, as soon as he could make himself heard, was most thoroughly on the side of peace; he flourished his arms and declared, until I was weary, that a mistake had been made. "These are not the gentlemen who shot at you. Do they look like gentlemen who would use pea-shooters?" I did not know what a man ought to look like who would not use a peashooter, but I did my best.

"These are two nice quiet gentlemen," he went on; "took their food quite quiet."

"And haven't paid for it yet," I interrupted; "how much is it?"

"That will be a matter of half-a-crown each," he said, and I paid him.

In the meantime Bella, who ought to have been watched, had walked into our sitting-room and found the visitors' book. She returned triumphantly. "I know one of their names, and that will be a deal more use than standing jawing here," she shouted.

I looked at Foster inquiringly. "I bought a blessed fountain pen yesterday and wanted to see if the thing would work," he explained; "it seems to have worked too well."

"'F. L. Foster, Oriel College, Oxford,' in writing as easy to read as the newspaper. Which of you two is it that writes just like me?"

Foster solemnly took off his hat.

"Then you, I guess, will 'ear more of this," Tom Harrison declared; "for the tale that it ain't you is a little too 'ot for us, isn't it?"

Susan stopped wiping her eyes and joined in a chorus of a.s.sent.