Merry-Andrew

Front matter

COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr.

<1

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Book I Chapter Page

I Love, a Punt, and the Epistle to the Colos-

SIANS 9

II Andrew Among the Theologians .... 21

III Conduct, Quite Unworthy of a Hero, in a

College Garden 33

IV In Which Events Move Rather Rapidly . . 47

V Andrew Meets Three Editors and Receives

Three Shocks 58

VI In Which a Little Lamb, Having Strayed Into a Den of Wolves, Is Delighted With His

New Friends 69

VII In Which the Wolves Gobble Up the Little

Lamb 84

VIII Andrew, Under Stress of Circumstances,

Takes a Hideous Resolve 97

IX Strange Result of Meeting a Man in Too-

good Boots 108

X Andrew, Having Clashed With the Doubikins,

Cannons Off Them Into Mr. Plumbridge . 119 XI A Very Sordid Chapter. Better Skip It . . 134

XII Most of Which Passes in a Low Public-house . 150

XIII Young Mr. Petch Draws a Picture of Perfect

Bliss at Floodington 157

CONTENTS

Book II Chapter Page

I Depicts Andrew in the Bosom of the Petch

Family 171

II Young Mr. Petch, Having Offered up Prayer,

Gets Into Bed With His Clothes On . . . 186

III Andrew as Usher. Minute Account of a Very

Nervous Day 195

IV A Jolly Game of Football — and Another

Little Game 213

V Shows Young Mr. Petch in a Toga, and Andrew

Beneath a Street-lamp With Calphurnia . 223

VI How Andrew Bearded the Elder Mr. Petch in his Lair, and Brought About a Painful

Scene 238

VII Proves Once Again the Baleful Influence of

the Theatre Upon Youthful Minds . . . 250

VIII Mr. Weevill on the Weevill Family, and High

Life at Warwick Hall 256

IX Mr. Inchboard Sends a Telegram, and Andrew

Goes to Town 268

X Shows Andrew, Not Only in Fleet Street,

But Up to His Neck in It 286

XI A Wild Journey to Warwickshire, and the

Tremendous Result 306

XII Andrew Lunches at the Alhambra Hotel With

an Epicurean Publisher 322

XIII The Mystery of Sylvia — and the Solution . 332

BOOK I

Chapter I Love, A Punt, And The Epistle To The Colossians

I 'M doing two wrong things,” said Sylvia.

'Then you must be perfectly happy.”

"I hate you when you talk like that.”

"Why?”

"It’s so frightfully slavish.”

"I thought you liked me to be slavish.”

"I like you to be natural.”

"Well, when Fm with you, it’s natural to be slavish.” "Don’t be an idiot, Andrew.”

"I thought I was being rather bright.”

"It was so painfully obvious that you were trying to be bright.”

"Thanks. I’m always unnatural when I’m bright.” "No, you’re not. You’re only unnatural when you try to be bright.”

"I was merely endeavouring to keep the conversation up to the correct Eights Week level.”

"Keep it down, you mean. And why on earth should it matter to us how the others talk?”

"I always like to be in the picture.”

“I know you do. That’s one of your most serious 9 weaknesses. You’ve been saying to yourself for the past hour, This is Eights Week, and a beautiful afternoon, and I am on the Char in a punt with a rather nice girl ’ ”

“A very beautiful girl!”

“Yes, I daresay you would even go as far as that in your desire to be pictorial. It’s an awfully bad habit you’re getting into, Andrew. I often feel that your only reason for making love to me is because you wish to be in the picture.”

“Not at all. I’m perfectly natural when I’m making love to you.”

“Just as natural as you are when you’re eating your breakfast. It’s a habit.”

“I was taught to cultivate good habits.”

“But I refuse to be made a habit of.”

“Then what am I to make of you?”

“There’s no necessity — at present, at any rate — for you to make anything at all of me. We’ve both got our hands full trying to make something of you. That’s why I said that I was doing two wrong things.”

“You’re making me very happy. That completely wipes out both the wrong things — whatever they may be.”

“Oh, no, it doesn’t. You’ve no business to be happy. You’ve always been happy, ever since you were born, and look at the awful result.”

“Is the result so very awful?” Andrew smiled.

“Of course it’s awful. That self-satisfied smile completely bears out my argument. Young men of twenty-one have no right to be complacent. They ought to be full of anxiety, full of ambition, full of fight, full of — oh, heaps of things !”

“My dear Sylvia, a man may be full to the brim with all those things without getting the chance to show it.”

“That's nonsense. The most serious event in your life up to the present is due to take place in less than a month's time, and yet here you are, stretched out on a heap of cushions, smoking a cigarette, dabbling your hand in the water, and trying to look as much as possible like all the other undergrads., who keep paddling up and down this very pretty, but far too seductive little river. You ought never to have persuaded me to come out with you this afternoon.”

“You appear to forget that your mother warmly approved the idea.”

“Mother warmly approves of everything. If the house caught fire, she’d stand on the lawn, with her head slightly to one side, and say that the flames were lovely. You know that very well. I repeat that you ought not to have persuaded me to come out with you, and I ought not to have allowed myself to be persuaded. You said you could write your essay just as well in the punt as in your rooms, and you haven’t written a line. What time have you got to be with your tutor ?”

“Five o’clock. Isn’t that exactly like old Stiffkey? Stiffkey has absolutely no appreciation whatever of the beauty of summer, or the beauty of Oxford, or the beauty of youth, or the beauty of love. He’s the dullest man in Oxford, and that’s why he took a brilliant First. I’m one of the cleverest men in Oxford, if not the cleverest, and that’s why, in all probability, I shan’t take anything at all.”

“But you must take something !” said Sylvia, sitting up and looking at Andrew with very serious eyes. “Whatever happens, you must take your degree. Think how disappointed your father will be if you don't.”

“Is he so anxious for me to be in the picture?”

“He's anxious for you to be a credit to him, and to yourself, and to your college, and to your school. It’s a most disgraceful thing to go down from Oxford without taking a degree! It would cling to you all your life, and I shouldn’t dream of marrying a man who had such a stigma attaching to him.”

“D’you really mean that, Sylvia?”

“Most certainly I mean it.”

“Then, of course, I'll take one. But you might have said so before. Three weeks isn’t very much time for a chap to cover the work of two years and take Honours in Theology.”

“What have you been doing all these two years, then ?”

“Oh, I’ve been tremendously busy. To begin with, I've been to all Stiffkey’s lectures on the English and Continental Reformation. That’s taken at least ten years off my life. Nobody ever goes to Stiff key's lectures, you know, except his own pupils; and even they drop off long before the end of the course. We started with six, I remember, and finished up with one. I was the one.”

“I'm glad to hear that. It was rather fine of you, Andrew, to attend a lecture that lasted for two years.”

“Yes, I think it showed an indomitable spirit. But I had my own little narcotic. You see, Stiff key doesn't exactly lecture. He merely reads his own notes for an hour, and his wretched pupils are supposed to take it all down. He might just as well print his notes) and sell them to us at five shillings a time. But that would entirely do away with him as a lecturer. He likes to think of himself as a lecturer. Well, my plan was very simple. I just let the man read on, and instead of taking down all his dry rubbish, I wrote little stories and articles for various papers. Stiffkey was awfully flattered, and congratulated me on my industry.”

“Is that true ? Is that the way people are supposed to be taught things at Oxford ?”

“Yes. It's known as the Oxford system. That’s why our fond parents send us up here at a huge expense, and I suppose that’s how we get what the outside world loves to call the Oxford manner.”

“And what became of the stories and articles?”

“Oh, they T,r ere published, you know.”

“In papers?”

“Yes, in papers and magazines.”

“All of them?”

“I don’t think there are enough papers and magazines to publish all the stories and articles I wrote at Stiff key’s lectures. You see, when a man lectures six hours a week for two years, you can get through an awful lot of writing.”

“But why didn’t you ever tell me that you had written all those things and got them published?”

“Well, you live a little too near the governor, and the governor doesn’t approve of people who write. They’re not in the picture.”

“You mean that you couldn’t trust me? Thank you very much.”

u

“It wasn’t that, but I wouldn’t place such a burden on your conscience.”

“Is that true, Andrew?”

“Perfectly true. I have my redeeming points, you know.”

“Will you show me some of the things you’ve written next time we come round to your rooms?”

“Yes, if you’ll promise to marry me.”

“That largely depends on what sort of things you’ve written.”

“Oh, then I’m quite sure you won’t marry me.”

“Are they so very ?”

“Their characteristic feature is what Stiffkey would call youthful irresponsibility. I don’t think there’s anything serious in any of them. That’s why they wouldn’t appeal to you, Sylvia. Next to Stiffkey, I think you’re the most serious person I know.”

“And yet you want to marry me.”

“Entirely for my own good. At present I’m like a kite without a tail, and you’re the only girl I know who could prevent me from pitching on my head.”

“I’m not sure that that’s a very splendid career — to marry a man in order to prevent him from pitching on his head.”

“I can’t conceive of any career more full of glorious opportunities. Some women marry men to save them from drink; some women marry men to save them from food; you would marry me to save me from being too light-hearted.”

“I absolutely refuse to listen to any more of your rubbish. You’ll either take this punt home at once, or you’ll write your essay for Mr. Stiffkey. I don’t believe for one moment all the unkind things that you’ve said about him. I’ve always heard of him as one of the most brilliant men in Oxford.”

“That’s exactly what he is, and the most brilliant thing he ever did in his life was to remain in Oxford. If he ever went outside it, he’d discover that there are such things as trams which are not pulled by horses, and that would upset him so completely that he’d die of shock.”

“Will you write your essay or will you take me home ?”

“I’ll write my essay. I must ask you to stop talking for ten minutes.”

“You can’t write an essay in ten minutes, Andrew.”

“Oh, can’t I? You’ll see.”

He threw his cigarette into the water, found a note-book and a piece of pencil, and began to write. It is one of the peculiarities of Oxford, and an internal witness to the insidiousness of the place, that those who spend any length of time in it quickly fail to see the incongruity of anybody working in it, especially young people in the summer term. If there is any excuse for such institutions as Oxford and Cambridge, which is extremely doubtful,* it is that here we have the perfect setting for complete idleness in the flower of England’s youth. Oxford, in particular, was made for happy sloth. The enervating atmosphere, combined with the fascination of smooth flowing water, old gardens filled with old fashioned flowers, grey walls, and the general pervading air of sleeping centuries, all combine to make Oxford the choicest spot

♦This remark has been gloriously falsified since the outbreak of war. Oxford and Cambridge have proved themselves the ideal recruiting grounds of the world. K. H.

in the world for a three years' siesta. Parents and guardians, who have discovered too late in life that there is no such thing as perfect rest in the great world, should form themselves into a gigantic league for the abolition of work at Oxford. They would find a very ready response on the part of the undergraduates, and, to a lesser extent, on the part of the dons. It is true that a fair proportion of young men with stronger characters than the majority have managed to resist the tyrannous convention of Schools and lectures; but their efforts towards the revival of the golden age, though beyond all praise from the point of view of real thinkers, do not meet with the support that they merit.

To the eye of the poet, it would have seemed an almost criminal thing that Andrew Dick, at the age of twenty-one, being of sound mind and body, with a splendid capacity for enjoyment, reclining in a punt within a few feet of an extremely attractive girl, with willows over his head, rushes and buttercups to the left of him, water to the right of him, and not a sin of any consequence to his account, should be covering sheets of paper with preposterous nonsense which could neither be of interest to him nor of benefit to humanity, in obedience to the commands of a stout, rubicund, childish don, who was himself reaping the fruits of a preposterously laborious youth by checking the milkman’s account in a little villa in North Oxford. And yet the youths and maidens who passed to and fro in punts and Canadian canoes saw nothing grotesque in the sight of anybody at work that glorious afternoon, and the girl, who had long since made up her mind to marry him, actually watched

Andrew wasting his glorious youth and his quite exceptional abilities with approving eyes.

For ten minutes the pencil scribbled and scribbled; at the end of that time, as he had promised, Andrew threw it down and announced that that was quite enough for old Stiffkey.

“What’s it about?” asked Sylvia.

“About the Epistle to the Colossians.”

“Will you read it to me?”

“D’you really think you could stand it?”

“Of course. If I’m to be your wife I must be able to share all your interests.”

“That has nothing to do with the matter, but it’ll serve you right to have to listen to it. Here’s the subject of the essay:

“The authenticity of the Epistle to the Colossians has been disputed by many commentators. Discuss this.”

“But do you know anything about it ?” asked Sylvia, with some surprise.

“Not a thing,” said Andrew, cheerfully. “That doesn’t matter. I never do know anything about anything, but I can always write about everything. Here goes.”

“In approaching the question of the authenticity of the Epistle to the Colossians , as it has been handed down to us, we must refrain from striving to prove that authenticity by internal evidence ”

“Why must we ?”

“For the very obvious reason that I haven’t got any internal evidence. You mustn’t interrupt.

“We must not even ask ourselves why the writer of this Epistle should address himself to such a com - paratively small audience as the inhabitants of Co - lossce. It should be sufficient for us that the Epistle has been preserved throughout so many generations, and handed down to us, in all probability, exactly as it was written. Attempts have been made to prove that the motives of the writer are not characteristic of the motives that guided the hand that wrote the other epistles attributed to the same author, but it must not be forgotten that the spirit of the times was so troublous that all the ordinary analyses of human conduct should be set aside in consideration of such a subject as the present. It is an undisputed fact that St. Paul indited letters to the Romans, to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Thessalonians, to the Philippians, to Timothy, to Titus, to Philemon, and to the Hebrews. Why, then, we may reasonably ask ourselves, should he not also have taken pen in hand to indite an epistle to the Colossians?

tc Consider the position at this day of the city of Colossce. Though a small city, as compared with Rome or with Corinth, it nevertheless enjoyed a distinction of no mean importance among the trading cities of the Ancient World. The merchants of Colossce, no less than the merchants of Rome and of Corinth, trafficked in the banks and in the market place. Merchandise, passing through busy hands, came and went ; there were, no doubt, innumerable sects and creeds and religions and beliefs and doctrines; there was marrying and giving in marriage; the men of healing went upon their way; there were the professors of poetry and of rhetoric; who shall say, therefore, that Colossce was not a fruitful held for the great message that the apostle was called upon to deliver? In conclusion , then , we must repeat, in the most emphatic manner possible, that we utterly refuse to attach any credence to the somewhat shallow questioning placed by certain commentators upon the authenticity of this epistle. And it should be remembered, in a spectacular age, that it is far easier 'to throw doubt upon the authenticity of this or that sacred document than it is to advance scientific reasons for the acceptance of their genuineness . ”

“Is that the end?” asked Sylvia.

“Yes, that’s all I can think of. Will it do?”

“Of course, it’s most awfully clever. It sounds almost like the sort of sermons that you hear in a cathedral.”

“I don’t know that old Stiffkey wanted a sermon, exactly. We treat Theology as a science up here, you know — not as a religion.”

“I’m very sorry to hear it. They ought to know better — all those old men in long gowns.”

“Oh, that doesn’t apply to their private lives.”

“Then what does it apply to?”

“I don’t quite know, except that the great idea seems to be to make everything as difficult as possible. Still, I generally come out rather well in examinations. If a chap can write like that without knowing anything whatever about the subject, they must see that it would be absurd to turn him down without giving him some sort of a Class.”

“Wouldn’t it be lovely if you got a First?” breathed Sylvia.

“There’s no chance of that. You can’t get a First in Theol. without Hebrew. I might have got a Second if Td swotted, but, as it is, I shall be quite content with a Third or even a Fourth.”

“Is that the lowest of all?”

“Not quite. There’s a thing called a Gulf, which means that you can take your degree, and if you’re not even good enough for a Gulf, they generally give you Group D, which is the third part of a pass degree. So that I’m bound to get something out of it. Would you like to hear my essay again?”

“I don’t think so. You’d better go and read it to Mr. Stiffkey.”

Andrew untied the punt, and paddled slowly and luxuriously back to the boat-house. It was characteristic of him to paddle the punt instead of punting it. Punting is a somewhat difficult feat, and Andrew always took the line of least resistance.

He escorted Sylvia to the rooms which he had taken for her and her mother, and then, not altogether without a little nervous fluttering at the heart, boarded one of the slow old horse trams which would land him within a hundred yards of Mr. Stiffkey’s modest villa.

Chapter II Andrew Among The Theologians

T HE Reverend John Gehazi Stiff key, having finished his checking of the tradesmen’s books, and discovered, much to his satisfaction, that the butcher had made a mistake of fivepence in his own (the butcher’s) favour, was now seated in his small study with his feet on a foot-stool precisely the height of the chair on which he was sitting, and a tray containing a pot of tea and a toasted tea-cake on a small table at his side. He was a clean-shaven man about thirty-five years of age, and far too fat for complete health. He played no games of any kind whatsoever, his sole exercise being the walk from his villa to the tram terminus and from the tram terminus to his villa. Having taken First Class Honours in Classical Moderations, and First Class Honours in Theology, he had settled down, at the age of two-and-twenty, to the life of an Oxford tutor. There was no need for him to acquire any more knowledge ; he had enough and to spare for all the requirements of his life. There was no need for him to keep abreast of the times, as the vulgar saying goes, for the goods in which he dealt could never grow stale, having been dead long before he acquired his interest in them. He had neither charm of personality, originality of mind, nor the art of imparting the information which he had so 21 laboriously acquired from the books of others ; but these limitations did not trouble him in the least. The supply of young men coming up to Oxford would never fail; the form of examination through which they would have to pass would never alter; a certain proportion of them would be bound to come his way. Nothing could be easier than to lecture on a subject which one had, if not precisely at one’s fingers’ ends, at any rate in a large number of studiously compiled note-books. Vary the reading aloud of these notes so many hours per week by listening to the essays of one’s pupils, and then dictating more notes from more studiously compiled note-books, and your living was assured.

Mr. Stiff key had quite naturally taken Holy Orders, partly because it was no trouble at all to do so, and partly because Sunday duty was very easy work, and enabled one to add at least one hundred and fifty pounds to one’s income. And then, if one spoke the great ones fair, and attended all such meetings as the great ones attended, and echoed the views and opinions of the great ones with that tone of admiring enthusiasm in the voice which conveyed a pleasing flattery whilst stopping short of sycophancy, there was always the chance that something snug would come one’s way in the natural order of the events of this world.

Small wonder, then, that Mr. Stiffkey grew fatter and more oleaginous as the years rolled over his cherubic head. The busy world outside the sacred gates of Oxford might have said that here was a perfectly useless being, who, having succeeded in jumping through the prescribed number of hoops in his own youth, was quite content to spend the remainder of his days in watching other young men jump through the same hoops in precisely the same manner. But the outside world, knowing nothing of scholarship, had no reverence for it; whilst Mr. Stiffkey passed his days amongst those who revered scholarship for its own sake, and would never have dreamed of ranging themselves with the mere utilitarians by demanding that scholarship should be turned to some useful account in the general progression and betterment of the world.

Mr. Stiffkey smiled when Andrew’s name was brought up to him. One of the pleasant sides of his life lay in meeting young men who would never succeed in jumping through as many hoops or such high hoops as those through which Mr. Stiffkey had jumped. It was no affair of his that Mr. Andrew Dick, for example, had small aptitude for the science of Theology. It was not even any affair of his to see that Mr. Dick bore himself well in his examination. Mr. Stiffkey was no crammer. He did not guarantee that his pupils would acquit themselves with flying colours. Those under him were sent to him in the ordinary course of events, having already decided to take up the Honour Theological School. He was paid to tell them all the things that he had learnt himself at their age; if they were possessed of his aptitude they would acquit themselves as well as he had acquitted himself ; if they were not, so much the worse for them. In any case, as soon as the examination began, Mr. Stiffkey was rid of them, save, perhaps, for the tiresome but quite small matter of sending them their marks when all was over.

“Good afternoon,” said Mr. Stiffkey, putting the last piece of tea-cake into his mouth, and elaboratelywiping his fingers with a not very clean pocket handkerchief. “Sit down there, will you ? You’ve brought me an essay, I think.”

“Yes, sir,” said Andrew, considerably less composed in manner than when he had been reclining at Sylvia’s feet in the punt on the Char.

“Very good. Just read it, will you?”

So Andrew read his essay. It was dreadfully short, and dreadfully silly, and seemed all the shorter and all the sillier now that he was reading it to his tutor. He made the most of it, however, reading as slowly as possible, and lingering on the high sounding phrases. None the less, in about two minutes he came to a full stop, and looked at Mr. Stiffkey. Mr. Stiffkey was smiling — a half tolerant, half contemptuous smile.

“D’you write for the papers, Mr. Dick?” he asked.

Andrew flushed with pleasure at the compliment which he felt was coming. “Yes, sir, I write a good deal for various papers.”

“I thought so. Your essay, though short, Mr. Dick, shows a certain amount of ingenuity which reveals the touch of the writer for the papers. (Mr. Stiffkey mentioned the word ‘papers’ in the tone of one who had heard, somewhat vaguely, of all those fluttering sheets of printed matter, but for whom they had no actual concern, living, as he did, in a world so far apart and so vastly more rarefied.) I need hardly point out to you, Mr. Dick, that you know nothing whatever about the subject, and the time of your examination is now very near. The question is, how are you likely to fare in that examination? In the jargon of the Schools, what do you expect to get ?”

“I thought perhaps I might get a Third, sir.”

Mr. Stiffkey pursed up his lips. “I see very little chance of it,” he said, “unless you can accomplish wonders between now and the first day of the Schools. Is it of very great importance to you to secure your degree ?”

“I should certainly like to do so, sir,” said Andrew, remembering Sylvia’s words on the river.

“Yes, of course, but what I mean is, is it of very great importance to you as a means of earning your living after you leave Oxford?”

“Oh, no, sir. My father is very well off, and I am the only child. I shall never have to earn my own living.”

“Then you are taking the Honour Schools of Theology, Mr. Dick, in much the same mood as you write for the papers — that is, just for fun.”

“Well, sir, not exactly. The fact is that I have a great-aunt who is extremely anxious that I shall become a clergyman, and as she has always been rather a trump to me I don’t like to disappoint the old lady.”

“I see. And will your great-aunt be satisfied, Mr. Dick, if you secure nothing better than a Fourth Class, or even less than that?”

“Perfectly,” said Andrew, with engaging frankness. “She’d never know the difference between a Fourth Class and a First. So long as I take a degree oT some sort, and can eventually write M.A. after my name, the old lady will be as pleased as a cricket.”

“In that case,” replied Mr. Stiffkey, with a sudden gush of unwonted humour, “we’d better set our combined wits at work to make your great-aunt as pleased as a cricket. Mr. Dick, I may tell you frankly that the only chance you have of getting anything at all in this School is to go to a coach for six hours a day, and put in another six at your own rooms. I will get into touch with a very good man — an old pupil of my own — who will be precisely the person you require. In the meantime, just take down these notes.”

And Mr. Stiff key, like the conscientious tutor he was, filled in the remainder of the hour by reading slowly from one of his fat note-books.

Sylvia and her mother left Oxford directly they heard of the solemn warning spoken by Mr. Stiffkey, having faithfully promised that Andrew’s father should remain in ignorance of the exact state of affairs.

“After all,” as Andrew put it, “why worry the old man? He can’t do anything in the matter — it’s all up to me. If I get utterly ploughed he’ll know quite soon enough, and, if I scrape up a Third, he’ll be no end delighted.”