The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green Part 43

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Flexible Shanks returned, escorting between them the poker. It was cold! that was a relief. But how long was it to remain so?

"Past Grand Hodman!" said Mr. Blades, "instruct the neophyte in the primary proceedings of the Cemented Bricks."

At Mr. Bouncer's bidding, Mr. Verdant Green then sat down upon the lozenged floor, and held his knees with his hands. Mr. Flexible Shanks then brought to him the poker, and said, "Tetrao urogallus orygometra crex!" The poker was then, by the a.s.sistance of Mr. Foote, placed under the knees and over the arms of Mr. Verdant Green, who thus sat like a trussed fowl, and equally helpless.

"Recite to the neophyte the oath of the Cemented Bricks!" said Mr.

Blades.

"Ramphastidinae toco scolopendra tinnunculus cracticornis bos!"

exclaimed Mr. Flexible Shanks.

"Do you swear to obey through fire and water, and bricks and mortar, the words of this oath?" asked Mr. Blades from his throne.

"You must say, I do!" whispered Mr. Bouncer to Mr. Verdant Green, who accordingly muttered the response.

"Let the oath be witnessed and registered by Swordbearer and Deputy Past Pantile, Provincial Grand Mortar-board, and Past Grand Hodman!"

said Mr. Blades; and the three gentlemen thus designated stood on either side of and behind Mr. Verdant Green, and, with theatrical gestures, clashed their swords over his head.

"Keemo kimo lingtum nipcat! let him rise," said Mr.

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Blades; and the poker was thereupon withdrawn from its position, and Mr. Verdant Green, being untrussed, but somewhat stiff and cramped, was a.s.sisted upon his legs.

He hoped that his troubles were now at an end; but this pleasing delusion was speedily dispelled, by Mr. Blades saying - "The next part of the ceremonial is the delivery of the red-hot poker. Let the poker be heated!"

Mr. Verdant Green went chill with dread as he watched the terrible instrument borne from the room by Mr. Foote and Mr. Flexible Shanks, while Mr. Bouncer resumed his guard over him with the drawn sword.

All was quiet save a smothered sound from the other side of the door, which, under other circ.u.mstances, Verdant would have taken for suppressed laughter; but, the solemnity of the proceedings repelled the idea.

At length the poker was brought in, red-hot and smoking, whereupon Mr. Blades left his throne and walked to the other end of the room, and there took his seat upon a second throne, before which was a second altar, garnished - as Mr. Verdant Green soon perceived, to his horror and amazement - with a human head (or the representation of one) projecting from a black cloth that concealed the neck, and, doubtless, the marks of decapitation. Its ghastly features were clearly displayed by the aid of a wax light placed in a tall silver candlestick by its side.

Mr. Blades received the poker from Mr. Foote, and commanded the neophyte to advance. Mr. Verdant Green did so, and took up a trembling position to the left of the throne, while Mr. Foote and Mr.

Flexible Shanks proceeded to the organ, which was to the right of the entrance door. Mr. Blades then delivered the poker to Mr. Verdant Green, who, at first, imagined that he was required to seize it by its red-hot end, but was greatly relieved in his mind when he found that he had merely to take it by the handle, and repeat (as well as he could) a form of gibberish that Mr. Blades dictated. Having done this he was desired to transfer the poker to the Past Grand Hodman - Mr. Bouncer.

He had just come to the joyful conclusion that the much dreaded poker portion of the business was now at an end, when

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Mr. Blades ruthlessly cast a dark cloud over his gleam of happiness, by saying - "The next part of the ceremony will be the branding with the red-hot poker. Let the organist call in the aid of music to drown the shrieks of the victim!" and, thereupon, Mr. Foote struck up (with the full swell of the organ) a heart-rending air that sounded like "the cries of the wounded" from ~the Battle of Prague~.

Now, it happened that little Mr. Bouncer - like his sister - was subject to uncontrollable fits of laughter at improper seasons. For the last half-hour he had suffered severely from the torture of suppressed mirth, and now, as he saw Mr. Verdant Green's climax of fright at the antic.i.p.ated branding, human nature could not longer bear up against an explosion of merriment, and Mr. Bouncer burst into shouts of laughter, and, with convulsive sobs, flung himself upon the nearest seat. His example was contagious; Mr. Blades, Mr. Foote, and Mr. Flexible Shanks, one after another, joined in the roar, and relieved their pent-up feelings with a rush of uproarious laughter.

At the first Mr. Verdant Green looked surprised, and in doubt whether or no this was but a part of the usual proceedings attendant upon the initiation of a member into the Lodge of Cemented Bricks. Then the truth dawned upon him, and he blushed up to his spectacles.

"Sold again, Giglamps!" shouted little Mr. Bouncer. "I didn't think we could carry out the joke so far, I wonder if this will be hoax the last for Mr. Verdant Green?"

"I hope so indeed!" replied our hero; "for I have no wish to continue a Freshman all through my college life. But I'll give you full liberty to hoax me again - if you can." And Mr. Verdant Green joined good-humouredly in the laughter raised at his own expense.

Not many days after this he was really made a Mason; although the Lodge was not that of the Cemented Bricks, or the forms of initiation those invented by his four friends.

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 297]

CHAPTER XI.

MR. VERDANT GREEN BREAKFASTS WITH MR. BOUNCER, AND ENTERS FOR A GRIND.

LITTLE Mr. Bouncer had abandoned his intention of obtaining a ~licet migrare~ to "the Tavern," and had decided (the Dons being propitious) to remain at Brazenface, in the nearer neighbourhood of his friends. He had resumed his reading for his degree; and, at various odd times, and in various odd ways, he crammed himself for his forthcoming examination with the most confused and confusing sc.r.a.ps of knowledge. He was determined, he said, "to stump the examiners."

One day, when Mr. Verdant Green had come from morning chapel, and had been refreshed by the perusal of an unusually long epistle from his charming Northumbrian correspondent, he betook himself to his friend's rooms, and found the little gentleman - notwithstanding that he was expecting a breakfast party - still luxuriating in bed. His curly black wig reposed on its block on the dressing table, and the closely shaven skull that it daily decorated shone whiter than the pillow that it pressed; for although Mr. Bouncer considered that night-caps might be worn by "long-tailed babbies," and by "old birds that were as bald as coots," yet, he, being a young bird - though not a baby - declined to ensconce his head within any kind of white covering, after the fashion of the portraits of the poet Cowper. The smallness of Mr. Bouncer's dormitory caused his wash-hand-stand to be brought against his bed's head; and the little gentleman had availed himself of this conveniency, to place within the basin a blubbering, bubbling, gurgling hookah, from which a long stem curled in vine-like tendrils, until it found a resting place in Mr. Bouncer's mouth. The little gentleman lay comfortably propped on pillows, with his hands tucked under his head, and his knees crooked up to form a rest for a ma.n.u.script book of choice "crams," that had been gleaned by him from those various fields of knowledge from which the true labourer reaps so rich and ripe a store. Huz and Buz reposed on the counterpane, to complete this picture of Reading for a Pa.s.s.

"The top o' the morning to you, Giglamps!" he said, as he saluted his friend with a volley of smoke - a salute similar as to the smoke, but superior, in the absence of noise and slightness

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of expense, to that which would have greeted Mr. Verdant Green's approach had he been of the royal blood - "here I am! sweating away, as usual, for that beastly examination." (It was a popular fallacy with Mr. Bouncer, that he read very hard and very regularly.) "I thought I'd cut chapel this morning, and coach up for my Divinity paper. Do you know who Hada.s.sah was, old feller?"

"No! I never heard of her."

"Ha! you may depend upon it, those are the sort of questions that pluck a man;" said Mr. Bouncer, who thought - as others like him have thought - that the getting up of a few abstruse proper names would be proof sufficient for a thorough knowledge of the whole subject. "But I'm not going to let them gulph me a second time; though, they ought not to plough a man who's been at Harrow, ought they, old feller?"

"Don't make bad jokes."

"So I shall work well at these crams, although, of course, I shall put on my examination coat, and trust a good deal to my cards, and watch papers, and shirt wristbands, and so on."

"I should have thought," said Verdant, "that after those sort of crutches had broken down with you once, you would not fly to their support a second time."

"Oh, I shall though! - I must, you know!" replied the infatuated Mr.

Bouncer. "The Mum cut up doosid this last time; you've no idea how she turned on the main, and did the briny! and, I must make things sure this time. After all, I believe it was those Second Aorists that ploughed me."

It is remarkable, that, not only in Mr. Bouncer's case, but in many others, also, of a like nature, gentlemen who have been plucked can always attribute their totally-unexpected failures to a Second Aorist, or a something equivalent to "the salmon," or "the melted b.u.t.ter," or "that gla.s.s of sherry," which are recognized as the causes for so many morning reflections. This curious circ.u.mstance suggests an interesting source of inquiry for the speculative.

"Well!" said Mr. Bouncer meditatively; "I'm not so sorry, after all, that they cut up rough, and ploughed me. It's enabled me, you see, to come back here, and be jolly. I

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 299]

shouldn't have known what to do with myself away from Oxford. A man can't be always going to feeds and tea-fights; and that's all that I have to do when I'm down in the country with the Mum - she likes me, you know, to do the filial, and go about with her. And it's not a bad thing to have something to work at! it keeps what you call your intellectual faculties on the move. I don't wonder at thingumbob crying when he'd no more whatdyecallems to conquer! he was regularly used up, I dare say."

Mr. Bouncer, upon this, rolled out some curls of smoke from the corner of his mouth, and then observed, "I'm glad I started this hookah! 'the judicious Hooker,' ain't it, Giglamps? it is so jolly, at night, to smoke oneself to sleep, with the tail end of it in one's mouth, and to find it there in the morning, all ready for a fresh start. It makes me get on with my coaching like a house on fire."

Here there was a rush of men into the adjacent room, who hailed Mr.

Bouncer as a disgusting Sybarite, and, flinging their caps and gowns into a corner, forthwith fell upon the good fare which Mr. Robert Filcher had spread before them; at the same time carrying on a lively conversation with their host, the occupant of the bed-room. "Well! I suppose I must turn out, and do tumbies!" said Mr. Bouncer. So he got up, and went into his tub; and presently, sat down comfortably to breakfast, in his shirt-sleeves.