Sinister Street Volume Ii Part 6

"What's the matter?" demanded Lonsdale indignantly. "Can't you see I'm doing a trick?"

"Marjoribanks is drinking your health," whispered Michael in an agony that Lonsdale would be pa.s.sed over.

"Hurrah!" shouted Lonsdale, rising to his feet and scandalizing his fellows by his intoxicated audacity. "Where is the old ripper!" Then "Mark over!" he shouted and collapsed into Tommy Grainger's lap.

Everybody laughed, and everybody, even the cynosures from New College and University, began to drink Lonsdale's health without heel-taps.

"No heelers, young Lonsdale," they called mirthfully.

Lonsdale pulled himself together, stood up, and, balancing himself with one hand on Michael's shoulder, replied:

"No heelers, you devils? No legs, you mean!" Then he collapsed again.

Soon all the freshmen found that their healths were now being drunk, all the freshmen, that is, from Eton or Winchester or Harrow. Michael and one or two others without old schoolfellows among the seniors remained more sober. But then suddenly a gravely indolent man with a quizzical face, who the day before in the lodge had had occasion to ask Michael some trifling piece of information, cried "Fane!" raising his gla.s.s.

Michael blushed, blessed his unknown acquaintance inwardly and drank what was possibly the sincerest sentiment of the evening. Other senior men hearing his name, followed suit, even the great Marjoribanks himself; and soon Michael was very nearly as full as Lonsdale. An immense elation caressed his soul, a boundless sense of communal life, a conception of sublime freedom that seemed to be illimitable forever. The wine was over. Down the narrow stone stairs everybody poured. At the foot on the right was a little office--the office of Venables, the steward of the J. C. R., the eleusinian and impenetrable sanctum of seniority called Venner's. Wine-chartered though they were, the freshmen did not venture even to peep round the corner of the door, but hurried out into the cloisters, where they walked arm-in-arm shouting.

Michael could have fancied himself at a gathering of mediaeval witches.

The moon temporarily clouded over by the autumnal fog made the corbels and gargoyles and sculptured figures above the cloisters take on a grotesque vivacity, as the vapors curled around them. The wine humming in his head: the echoing shouts of his companions: the decorative effect of the gowns: the chiming high above of the bells in the tower: all combined to create for Michael a nightmare of exultation. He was aware of a tremendous zest in doing nothing, and there flowed over him a consciousness that this existence of shout and dance along these cloisters was really existence lived in a perpetual expression of the finest energy. The world seemed to be going round so much faster than usual that in order to keep up with this new pace, it was necessary for the individual like himself to walk faster, to talk faster, to think faster, and finally to raise to incoherent speed every coherent faculty.

Another curious effect of the wine, for after all Michael admitted to himself that his mental exhilaration must be due to burgundy, was the way in which he found himself at every moment walking beside a different person. He would scarcely have finished an excited acceptance of Wedderburn's offer to go to-morrow and look at some Durer woodcuts, when he would suddenly find himself discussing sympathetically with Lonsdale the iniquity of the dons in refusing to let him keep his new dog in one of the scouts' pigeon-holes in the lodge.

"After all," Lonsdale pointed out earnestly, "they're never really full, and the dog isn't large--of course I don't expect to keep him in a pigeon-hole when he's full grown, but he's a puppy."

"It's absurd," Michael agreed.

"That's the word I've been looking for," Lonsdale exclaimed. "What was it again? Absurd! You see what I say is, when one scout's box is full, move the poor little beast into another. It isn't likely they'd all be full at the same time. What was that word you found just now? Absurd!

That's it. It is absurd. It's absurd!"

"And anyway," Michael pointed out, "if they were all full they could chain him to the leg of the porter's desk."

"Of course they could. I say, Fane, you're a d.a.m.ned good sort," said Lonsdale. "I wish you'd come and have lunch with me to-morrow. I don't think I've asked very many chaps: I want to show you that dog. He's in a stable off Holywell at present. Beastly shame! I'm not complaining, of course, but what I want to ask our dons is how would they like to be bought by me and shut up in Holywell?"

And just when Michael had a very good answer ready, he found himself arm-in-arm with Wedderburn again, who was saying in his gravest voice that over a genuine woodcut by Durer it was well worth taking trouble.

But before Michael could disengage Wedderburn's Durer from Lonsdale's dog, he found himself running very fast beside Tommy Grainger who was shouting:

"Five's late again! Six, you're bucketing! Bow, you're late! Two, _will_ you get your belly down!"

Then Grainger stopped suddenly and asked Michael in a very solemn tone whether he knew what was the matter with the crew. Michael shook his head and watched the others steer their devious course toward him and Grainger.

"They're too drunk to row," said Grainger.

"Much too drunk," Michael agreed.

When he had pondered for a moment or two his last remark, he discovered it was extraordinarily funny. So he was seized with a paroxysm of laughter, and the more he laughed, the more he wanted to laugh. When somebody asked him what he was laughing at, he replied it was because he had left the electric light burning in his room. Several people seemed to think this just as funny as Michael thought it, and they joined him in his mirth, laughing unquenchably until Wedderburn observed severely in his deepest voice:

"Buck up, you're all drunk, and they're coming out of Venner's."

Then like some patient profound countryman he shepherded them all up to the large room on a corner staircase of Cloisters, where the "after" was going to be held. The freshmen squeezed themselves together in a corner and were immensely entertained by the various performers, applauding with equal rapture a light comedian from Pembroke, a tenor from Corpus, a comic singer from Oriel and a mimic from professional London. They drank lemon squashes to steady themselves: they joined in choruses: they cheered and smoked cigars and grew more and more conscious as the evening progressed that they belonged to a great college called St.

Mary's. Their enthusiasm reached its zenith, when the captain of the Varsity Eleven (a St. Mary's man even as they were St. Mary's men) sang the St. Mary's song in a voice whose gentleness of utterance and sighing modesty in no way abashed the noisy appreciation of the audience. It was a wonderful song, all about the triumphs of the college on river and cricket-field, in the Schools, in Parliament and indeed everywhere else.

It had a fine rollicking chorus which was repeated twice after each verse. And as there were about seventeen verses, by the time the song was half over the freshmen had learned the words and were able to sing the final chorus with a vigor which positively detonated against the windows and contrasted divertingly with the almost inaudible soloist.

Last of all came Auld Lang Syne, when everybody stood up on chairs and joined hands, seniors, second-year men and freshmen. Auld Lang Syne ended with perhaps the noisiest moment of all because although Lonsdale had taken several lemon squashes to steady himself, he had not taken enough to keep his balance through the ultimate energetic repet.i.tion, when he collapsed headlong into a tray of syphons and gla.s.ses, dragging with him two other freshmen. But n.o.body seemed to have hurt himself, and downstairs they all rushed, shouting and hulloaing, into the cool moonlight.

The guests from New College and University and the "out-of-college" men hurried home, for it was close upon midnight. In the lodge the freshmen foregathered for a few minutes with the second-year men, and as they talked they knew that the moment was come when they must proclaim themselves free from the restrictions of school, and by the kindling of a bonfire prove that they were now truly grown up. Bundles of f.a.ggots were seized from the scouts' holes: in the angle of St. Cuthbert's quad where the complexion of the gravel was tanned by the numberless bonfires of past generations the pile of wood grew taller and taller: two or three douches of paraffin made the ma.s.s readily inflammable: a match was set, and with a roar the bonfire began. From their windows second-year men, their faces lighted by the ascending blaze, looked down with pleasant patronage upon the traditional pastime of their juniors. The freshmen danced gleefully round the pyre of their boyhood, feeding it with f.a.ggots and sometimes daringly and ostentatiously with chairs: the heat became intense: the smoke surged upward, obscuring the bland aspectful moon. Slowly upon the group of law-breakers fell a silence, as they stood bewitched by the beauty of their own handiwork. The riotous preparations and annunciatory yells had died away to an intimate murmur of conversation. From the lodge came Shadbolt the unctuous head-porter to survey for a moment this mighty bonfire: conscious of their undergraduate dignity the freshmen chaffed him, until he retired with muttered protests to summon the Dean.

"What will the Dean do?" asked one or two less audacious ones as they faded into various doorways, ready to obliterate their presence as soon as authority should arrive upon the scene.

"What does the Dean matter?" cried others, flinging more f.a.ggots on to the fire until it crackled and spat and bellowed more fiercely than ever, lighting up with its wavy radiance the great elms beyond the Warden's garden and the Palladian fragment of New quad whence the dons like Georgian squires pondered their prosperity.

Presently against the silvery s.p.a.ce framed by the gateway of St.

Cuthbert's tower appeared the silhouette of the Dean, lank and tall with college cap tip-tilted down on to his nose and round his neck a gown wrapped like a shawl. Nearer he came, and involuntarily the freshmen so lately schoolboys took on in their att.i.tude a certain anxiety. Somehow the group round the bonfire had become much smaller. Somehow more windows looking upon the quad were populated with flickering watchful faces.

"Great Scott! What can Ambrose do?" demanded Lonsdale despairingly, but when at last the Dean reached the zone of the fire, there only remained about eight freshmen to ascertain his views and test his power. The Dean stood for a minute or two, silently warming his hands. In a ring the presumed leaders eyed him, talking to each other the while with slightly exaggerated carelessness.

"Well, Mr. Fane?" asked the Dean.

"Well, sir," Michael replied.

"d.a.m.ned good," whispered Lonsdale ecstatically in Michael's ear. "You couldn't have said anything better. That's d.a.m.ned good."

Michael under the enthusiastic congratulations of Lonsdale began to feel he had indeed said something very good, but he hoped he would soon have an opportunity to say something even better.

"Enjoying yourself, Mr. Lonsdale?" inquired the Dean.

"Yes, sir. Are you?" answered Lonsdale.

"Splendid," murmured Michael.

A silence followed this exchange of courtesies. The bonfire was beginning to die down, but n.o.body ventured under the Dean's eye to put on more f.a.ggots. Under-porters were seen drawing near with pails of water, and though a cushion aimed from a window upset one pail, very soon the bonfire was a miserable mess of smoking ashes and the moon resumed her glory. From an upper window some second-year men chanted in a ridiculous monotone:

"The Dean--he was the Dean--he was the Dean--he was the Dean! The Dean--he was the Dean he was--the Dean he was--the Dean!!"

Mr. Ambrose did not bother to look up in the direction of the glee, but took another glance at Michael, Lonsdale, Grainger and the other stalwarts. Then he turned away.

"Good night," Lonsdale called after the retreating figure of the tall hunched don, and not being successful in luring him back, he poured his scorn upon the defaulters safe in their rooms above.

"You are a lot of rotters. Come down and make another."

But the freshmen were not yet sufficiently hardy to do this. One by one they melted away, and Lonsdale marked his contempt for their pusillanimity by throwing two syphons and his gown into the Warden's garden. After which he invited Michael and his fellow die-hards to drink a gla.s.s of port in his rooms. Here for an hour they sat, discussing their contemporaries.

In the morning Shadbolt was asked if anybody had been hauled for last night's bonner.

"Mr. Fane, Mr. Grainger and the Honorable Lonsdale," he informed the inquirer. Together those three interviewed the Dean.

"Two guineas each," he announced after a brief homily on the foolishness and inconvenience of keeping everybody up on the first Sunday of term.

"And if you feel aggrieved, you can get up a subscription among your co-lunatics to defray your expenses."

Michael, Grainger and Lonsdale sighed very movingly, and tried to look like martyrs, but they greatly enjoyed telling what had happened to the other freshmen and several second-year men. It was told, too, in a manner of elaborate nonchalance with many vows to do the same to-morrow.