“He’s a cricketer, Venner,” Michael explained.
“So was this fellow Wilberforce who lost his handkerchief, and what do you think? One day when we were playing Winchester—you’re not a Wykehamist, are you?—he came out to bat so drunk that the first ball he hit, he went and ran after it himself. It caused quite a scandal. But you don’t look one of that sort. Will you have a squash and a biscuit? The men like these biscuits very much. There’s been quite a run on them.”
Michael was anxious to know how deep an impression Venner had made on Alan.
“You’ve got nobody like him at the House?” he asked.
Alan was bound to admit there was indeed nobody.
“He’s an extraordinary chap,” said Michael. “He’s always different, and yet he’s always absolutely the same. For me he represents Oxford. When one’s in his company, one feels one’s with him for ever, and yet one knows that people who have gone down can feel just the same, and that people who haven’t yet come up will feel just the same. You know, I do really think that what it sets out to do St. Mary’s does better than any other college. And the reason of that is Venner’s. It’s the only successful democracy in the world.”
“I shouldn’t have called it a democracy,” said Alan. “Everybody doesn’t go there.”
“But everybody can go there. It depends entirely on themselves.”
“What about that fellow Smithers you were talking about?” Alan asked. “He seems barred.”
“But he won’t be,” Michael urged hopefully.
“He’d be happier at the House all the same,” Alan said. “He’d find his own set there.”
“Then it isn’t a democracy,” Alan stoutly maintained.
“I say, Alan,” exclaimed Michael, in surprise. “You’re getting quite a logician.”
“Well, you always persist in treating me like an idiot,” said Alan. “But I _am_ reading Honor Mods. It’s a swat, but I’ve got to get some sort of a class.”
“You’ll probably get a first,” said Michael.
Yet how curious it was to think of Alan, whom he still regarded as chiefly a good-looking and capable athlete, taking a first class in a school he himself had indolently passed over. Of course he would never take a first. He was too much occupied with the perfection of new leg-breaks. And what would he do after his degree, his third in greats? A third was the utmost Michael mentally allowed him in the Final Schools.