At Oxford, however, rather different sentiments prevailed.  The inherent effervescence of conglomerate youth had, during the two months of the term before Black Week, been gradually crystallising out into vivid oppositions.  Normal adolescence, ever in England of a conservative tendency though not taking things too seriously, was vehement for a fight to a finish and a good licking for the Boers.  Of this larger faction Val Dartie was naturally a member.  Radical youth, on the other hand, a small but perhaps more vocal body, was for stopping the war and giving the Boers autonomy.  Until Black Week, however, the groups were amorphous, without sharp edges, and argument remained but academic.  Jolly was one of those who knew not where he stood.  A streak of his grandfather old Jolyon’s love of justice prevented, him from seeing one side only.  Moreover, in his set of ‘the best’ there was a ‘jumping-Jesus’ of extremely advanced opinions and some personal magnetism.  Jolly wavered.  His father, too, seemed doubtful in his views.  And though, as was proper at the age of twenty, he kept a sharp eye on his father, watchful for defects which might still be remedied, still that father had an ‘air’ which gave a sort of glamour to his creed of ironic tolerance.  Artists of course; were notoriously Hamlet-like, and to this extent one must discount for one’s father, even if one loved him.  But Jolyon’s original view, that to ‘put your nose in where you aren’t wanted’ (as the Uitlanders had done) ’and then work the oracle till you get on top is not being quite the clean potato,’ had, whether founded in fact or no, a certain attraction for his son, who thought a deal about gentility.  On the other hand Jolly could not abide such as his set called ‘cranks,’ and Val’s set called ‘smugs,’ so that he was still balancing when the clock of Black Week struck.  One—­two—­three, came those ominous repulses at Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso.  The sturdy English soul reacting after the first cried, ‘Ah! but Methuen!’ after the second:  ’Ah! but Buller!’ then, in inspissated gloom, hardened.  And Jolly said to himself:  ’No, damn it!  We’ve got to lick the beggars now; I don’t care whether we’re right or wrong.’  And, if he had known it, his father was thinking the same thought.

That next Sunday, last of the term, Jolly was bidden to wine with ’one of the best.’  After the second toast, ‘Buller and damnation to the Boers,’ drunk—­no heel taps—­in the college Burgundy, he noticed that Val Dartie, also a guest, was looking at him with a grin and saying something to his neighbour.  He was sure it was disparaging.  The last boy in the world to make himself conspicuous or cause public disturbance, Jolly grew rather red and shut his lips.  The queer hostility he had always felt towards his second-cousin was strongly and suddenly reinforced.  ‘All right!’ he thought, ‘you wait, my friend!’ More wine than was good for him, as the custom was, helped him to remember, when they all trooped forth to a secluded spot, to touch Val on the arm.