O bitter world, where one who longsTo be recorded unforgiven,Bewitched and wild, is called a childFit to be seen in any heaven.Hotchpotch Verses.
O bitter world, where one who longsTo be recorded unforgiven,Bewitched and wild, is called a childFit to be seen in any heaven.Hotchpotch Verses.
O bitter world, where one who longsTo be recorded unforgiven,Bewitched and wild, is called a childFit to be seen in any heaven.Hotchpotch Verses.
TheBabe was a cynical old gentleman of twenty years of age, who played the banjo charmingly. In his less genial moments he spoke querulously of the monotony of the services of the Church of England, and of the hopeless respectability of M. Zola. His particular forte was dinner parties for six, skirt dancing and acting, and the performances of the duties of half-back at Rugby football. His dinner parties were selected with the utmost carelessness, his usual plan being to ask the first five people he met, provided he did not know them too intimately. With a wig of fair hair, hardly any rouge, and an ingénue dress, he was the image of Vesta Collins, and that graceful young lady might have practised before him, as before a mirror. But farthe most remarkable point about the Babe, considering his outward appearance and other tastes, was his brilliance as a Rugby football player. He was extraordinarily quick with the ball, his passing was like a beautiful dream, and he dodged, as was universally known, like the devil. It was a sight for sore eyes to see the seraphic, smooth-faced Babe waltzing gaily about among rough-bearded barbarians, pretending to pass and doing nothing of the kind, dropping neatly out of what looked like the middle of the scrimmage, or flickering about in a crowd which seemed to be unable to touch him with a finger.
Last night the Babe had been completely in his element. His dinner party consisted of a rowing-blue, a man who had been sent down from Oxford, a Dean who was to preach the University sermon next day, and was the Babe’s uncle, Jack Marsden, a gentleman from Corpus, who had a very rosy chance, so said his friends, of representing Cambridge against Oxford at chess, and himself. Later on, Reggie and Ealing had come in, who with thehelp of the rowing man broke both his sofas; the gentleman from Oxford had insisted, to the obvious discomfort of the Dean, on talking to him about predestination, a subject of which the Dean seemed to know nothing whatever; the chess-man had played bézique with Jack, and the Babe had presided over them all with infantine cynicism. A little later on, when the Dean had gone away, he had danced a skirt-dance in a sheet and a night-gown, and they ended up the evening by what the Babe called “a set piece” from his window, consisting of a catherine wheel, and four Roman candles, not counting the rocket which exploded backwards through the Babe’s chandelier, narrowly missing the head of the man from Corpus, whose chance of getting his chess-blue would, if it had hit, have been totally extinguished. In order to lend verisimilitude to the proceedings Reggie had gone into the street and called “Oh-h-h-h,” at intervals, and as he had left his cap and gown in the Babe’s room, he was very promptly and properly proctorised.
The Babe breakfasted next morning at the civilised hour of ten, and observed with a faint smile that the rocket stick was deeply imbedded in the ceiling, and he ate his eggs and bacon with a serene sense of the successful incongruity of his little party the night before. The gentleman from Oxford who was staying with him had not yet appeared, but the Babe waited for no man, when he was hungry.
The furniture of his rooms was as various and as diverse as his accomplishments. Several of Mr. Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations from the Yellow Book, clustering round a large photograph of Botticelli’s Primavera, which the Babe had never seen, hung above one of the broken sofas, and in his bookcase several numbers of the Yellow Book, which the Babe declared bitterly had turned grey in a single night, since the former artist had ceased to draw for it, were ranged side by side with Butler’sAnalogies, Mr. Sponge’sSporting Tour, and Miss Marie Corelli’sBarabbas. It is, however, only fair to the Babe to say that Bishop Butler’s volume had beenpart of the “set piece” for his Littlego, and that he referred to Miss Corelli as the arch humourist of English literature. A pair of dumb-bells, each weighing fifty-six pounds, stood by the fireplace, but these the Babe had never been known to use in order to further his muscular development; he only rolled them over the floor with the patient look of one who had the destinies of the world on his shoulders, whenever the lodger below played the piano. It may be remarked that the two were not on speaking terms.
“And herein,” said the Babe, when he explained the use of the dumb-bells the evening before, “herein lies half the bitterness of human life.”
He was pressed to explain further, but only replied sadly,
“So near and yet so far,” and showed how it was possible to imitate the experience of a sea-sick passenger on the channel, by means of “that simple, and I may add, delicious fruit, the common orange.”
It was a most realistic and spirited performance, and all that the Dean could dowas to ejaculate feebly, “Do stop, Babe,” between his spasms of laughter.
The Babe had finished his breakfast, which he ate with a good appetite, heartily, before the gentleman from Oxford appeared, and proceeded to skim theSunday Times. When he did appear he looked a little disconsolately at the breakfast table, and lifting up a dish-cover found some cold bacon, at which he blanched visibly, and demanded soda water.
“What did you eat for breakfast, Babe?” he asked.
The Babe looked up apologetically.
“I’m afraid I ate all the eggs, and the bacon must be cold by now,” he said. “But I’ll send for some more.”
“No thanks. Where’s the tea?”
The Babe rang the bell.
“It’ll be here in a moment. I drank cocoa.”
Leamington finished his soda water, and sat down.
“There is no end to your greatness. Cocoa! Great Scot! My tongue is the colour of mortar.”
“I’m so sorry. I feel quite well, thanks. Will you have some Eno’s fruit salts? I know my landlady’s got some, because she offered me them the other day when I had a cold. Here’s your tea. Do you ever read the Pink ’un? It’s funny without being prudish.”
Leamington poured out some tea.
“Don’t read, Babe; it’s unsociable. Talk to me while I eat.”
The Babe put down the current copy of theSunday Times, and laid himself out to be pleasant.
“There are some people coming to lunch at two,” he said. “I rather think I asked Reggie. Poor Reggie, he got dropped on in a minute by the Proggins. Oh, yes, and so is Stewart. Do you know Stewart? He’s a don at Trinity, and is supposed to be wicked. I wish someone would suppose me to be wicked. But I’m beginning to be afraid they never will.”
“You must lose your look of injured innocence or rather cultivate the injury at the expense of the innocence. Grow amoustache; no one looks battered and world-weary without a moustache.”
“I can’t. I bought some Allen’s Hair Restorer the other day, but it only smarted. I wonder if they made a mistake and gave me Allen’s Antifat?”
“You don’t look as if they had,” said Leamington, “at least it doesn’t look as if it had had much effect. Wouldn’t it take?”
“Not a bit,” said the Babe. “I applied it night and morning to my upper lip, and it only smelt and smarted. I suppose you can’t restore a thing that has never existed. I think I shall be a clergyman, because all clergymen cut their moustaches off, and to do that you must have one.”
“I see. But isn’t that rather elaborate?”
“No means are elaborate if you desire the end enough,” said the Babe sententiously. “I shall marry too, because married people are bald, and I’m sure I don’t wonder.”
“So are babies.”
“Not in the same way, and don’t bepersonal. I can’t think of any other means of losing the appearance of innocence. Suggest some: you’ve been rusticated.”
“Why don’t you—”
“I’ve tried that, and it’s no use.”
“But you don’t know what I was going to say,” objected Leamington.
“I know I don’t. But I’ve tried it,” said the wicked Babe. “I’ve even read the Yellow Book through from cover to cover, and as you see, framed the pictures by Aubrey Beardsley. The Yellow Book is said to add twenty years per volume to any one’s life. Not at all. It has left me precisely where it found me, whereas, according to that, as I’ve read five volumes, I ought to be, let’s see—five times twenty, plus twenty—a hundred and twenty. I don’t look it, you know. It’s no use your telling me I do, because I don’t. I have no illusions whatever about the matter.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you anything of the kind,” said Leamington. “But you should take yourself more seriously. I believe that is very aging.”
The Babe opened his eyes in the wildest astonishment.
“Why I take myself like Gospels and Epistles,” he said. “The fault is that no one else takes me seriously. You would hardly believe,” he continued with some warmth, “that the other night I was proctorised, and that when the Proctor saw who I was—he’s a Trinity man—he said, ‘Oh, it’s only you. Go home at once, Babe.’ It is perfectly disheartening. I offered to let him search me to see whether I had such a thing as a cap or a gown concealed anywhere about me. And the bull-dogs grinned. How can I be a devil of a fellow, if I’m treated like that?”
“I should have thought a Rugby blue could have insisted on being treated properly.”
“No, that’s all part of the joke,” shrieked the infuriated Babe. “It’s supposed to add a relish to the silly pointless joke of treating me like a child and calling me ‘Babe.’ I’ve never been called anything but Babe since I canremember. And when I try to be proctorised the very bull-dogs come about me, making mouths at me.”
“Rough luck. Try it on again.”
“It’s a pure waste of time,” said the Babe disconsolately. “I might go out for a drive with all the bed-makers of this college in a tandem, and no one would take the slightest notice of me. Besides I can never make a tandem go straight. The leader always turns round and winks at me. It knows perfectly well that I’m only the Babe, bless its heart. I edited a perfectly scandalous magazine here last term you know, every day during the May week. It simply teemed with scurrilous suggestiveness. It insulted directly every one with whom I was acquainted, and many people with whom I was not. It compared the Vice-Chancellor to an old toothbrush, and drew a trenchant parallel between the Proctors and the town drainage. It suggested that the antechapel of King’s should be turned into a shooting-gallery, and the side chapels into billiard-rooms.It proposed that I should be appointed Master of Magdalen, I forget why at this moment. It contained the results of aplébisciteas to who should be Vice-Chancellor for the next year, and the under-porter of King’s got in easily, with Jack Marsden as a bad second. It proposed the substitution of dominoes and hopscotch—I haven’t the least idea what hopscotch is, but it sounds to me simply obscene—for the inter-university contests at cricket and rowing. And that magazine,” said the Babe dramatically, rising from his chair, and addressing Primavera, “that magazine was welcomed, welcomed, Madam, by all classes. The innocent lambs, whose reputation I ought to have ruined came bleating after me and said how they had enjoyed it. It sold by hundreds, when it ought to have been suppressed: people thought it funny, whereas it was only hopelessly foolish and vulgar, though I say it who shouldn’t; while those few people who had the sense to see how despicable the whole production really was, told each other that ‘itwas only Me.’ Me! I’m almost sick of the word. I was put ‘in Authority’ in the Granta, when I ought to have been sent down—The Vice-Chancellor asked me to dinner on the very day when I published a most infernal and libellous lampoon about him, and I have already told you how the Proctors treat me. It is enough,” said the Babe in conclusion, “to make one take the veil, I mean the tonsure, and dry up the milk of human kindness within one.”
“Hear, hear,” shouted Leamington. “Good old Babe.”
The Babe glared at him a moment, with wide, indignant eyes and then went on rather shrilly:
“Look at Reggie. I’m older than he is, at least I think so, and any one with a grain of sense would say that I therefore ought to know better, and what is excusable in him, is not excusable in me, but he goes and says ‘Oh’ in the street and he is treated as a dangerous character, sent home, and will be fined. I might say ‘Oh’ till Oscar Browning got into Parliament,and do you suppose they would ever consider me a dangerous character? Not they. (Here the Babe laughed in a hollow and scornful manner.) They would treat me with that infernal familiarity which I so deprecate, and say, ‘Go home, Babe.’ Babe indeed!”
The Babe’s voice broke, and he flung himself into his chair after the manner of Sarah Bernhardt, and hissed out “Misérables! Comme je les déteste!”
Leamington applauded this histrionic effort, and feeling a little better after breakfast, lit a cigarette. The maidservant came to clear breakfast away, and as she left the room the Babe resumed in the gentle, melancholy tones, which were natural to him:
“If I thought it would do any good, I would go and snatch a kiss from that horrid, rat-faced girl as she is carrying the tray down stairs. But it wouldn’t, you know; it wouldn’t do any good at all. She wouldn’t complain to the landlady, or if she did it would only end in my giving her half-a-crown. Besides,I don’t in the least want to kiss her—I wouldn’t do it if she gave me half-a-crown. I wonder what George Moore would do if he were me. We’ll ask Stewart when he comes to lunch. He is intimate with all notable people. George Moore is notable isn’t he? I fancy W. H. Smith & Son boycotted him. Stewart said the other day that the Emperor of Germany was one of the nicest emperors he had ever seen.”
“That’s nothing,” said Leamington. “There’s a don at Oxford who has written a book calledPrinces I have Persecuted without Encouragement.”
The Babe laughed.
“A companion volume to Stewart’sMonarchs I have Met. Not that he has written such a book. Stewart is perfectly charming, but he thinks a lot of a Prince. If he hasn’t writtenMonarchs I have Met, he ought to have.”
“We all ought to have done a lot of things we haven’t done,” said Leamington.
“We had a butler once,” said the Babe,“who never would say the General Confession, because he said he hadn’t left undone the things he ought to have done, and it went against his conscience to say he had. He got the sack soon after for leaving the door of the cellar undone, and for getting drunk.”
“So he was undone himself.”
“When I grow up,” said the Babe with less bitterness, but returning like a burned moth to the sore subject—no charge for mixed metaphors—“I shall live exclusively in the society of archdeacons. Perhaps they might think me wicked. Yet I don’t know—my uncle whom you met last night thinks I’m such a good boy, and he’s a dean.”
“I doubt if they would. The other day some one sent a telegram to the Archdeacon of Basingstoke, a man of whom he knew nothing except that he was a teetotaller and an anti-vivisectionist, saying, ‘Fly at once, all is discovered.’ The Archdeacon flew, and has never been heard of since. No one has the slightest idea where he has gone or what he haddone. You know you wouldn’t fly, Babe, if you were sent telegrams like that by the hundred.”
“How little you know me,” said the Babe dramatically. “I should fly like fun. Don’t you see if one flew, one’s character for wickedness would be established beyond all doubt. I might send a telegram to myself, telling me to fly. Then I should fly, but leave the telegram lying about in a conspicuous position. After a year’s absence I should return, but my character would be gone beyond all hopes of recovery, and the world would do me justice at last.”
“Poor misunderstood Babe! Why don’t you go to Oxford, saying you’ve been sent down from Cambridge? What time do we lunch?”
“Oh, about two, and it’s half-past twelve already. Let’s go round to the Pitt. This evening we will go to Trinity Chapel. A little walk is very wholesome after breakfast. Besides I shall go in a bowler, and perhaps we shall meet at Proggins. I shall insult him if we do.”
For he was very fast,And he ran and he passed,And the sun and the moon and the starsTried to catch him by the tail,But they one and all did fail,And Venus broke her nose ’gainst Mars.Hotchpotch Verses.
For he was very fast,And he ran and he passed,And the sun and the moon and the starsTried to catch him by the tail,But they one and all did fail,And Venus broke her nose ’gainst Mars.Hotchpotch Verses.
For he was very fast,And he ran and he passed,And the sun and the moon and the starsTried to catch him by the tail,But they one and all did fail,And Venus broke her nose ’gainst Mars.Hotchpotch Verses.
TheBabe hurt his knee playing against the Old Leysians, and his language was Aristophanic and savoured strongly of faint praise. Also one of the Old Leysians had grossly insulted him during the course of the game. The Babe was careering about with the ball behind their touch-line, attempting to get a try straight behind the goal-posts, instead of being content with one a reasonable distance off, for he was fastidious in these little matters and liked to do things well, when he was caught up bodily by one of the opposing team and carried safely out into the field again. A roar of appreciative laughter, and shouts of “Good old Babe” went up from all the field, and the Babe’s feelings were hurt. He had the satisfaction of dropping a goal a little later on, but he asked pathetically, “Could aught atone?”
Before “Time” was called he had hurt his knee, and as already mentioned he was Aristophanic for a few days.
The next match was against Blackheath, and the Babe had not yet recovered sufficiently to play. He had bought an Inverness cloak “so loud,” he said, “that you could scarcely hear yourself speak,” and a cross-eyed bull-pup, in order to dispel that universal but distressing illusion about his childishness, which so vexed his soul, and he was going to lunch with Reggie and look at the match afterwards. Bill Sykes, the bull-dog, was coming too, in order to be seen with the Babe by as many people as possible, and his master drove to King’s gate with his Inverness and his bull-dog, and his seraphic smile, in the best of tempers. It was necessary to smuggle Mr. Sykes, as the Babe insisted that strangers should call him, through the court without his being seen, and the Babe hobbled along, still beingrather lame, presenting a curious lopsided appearance which was caused by Mr. Sykes, who was tucked away beneath the Inverness. A confused growling sound issued at intervals from somewhere below his left arm, drowning even the loudness of the Inverness, and the Babe murmured encouragement and threats alternately. The porter stared suspiciously at this odd figure as it passed, but the serenity of the Babe’s smile was as infinite as ever.
The Babe’s hansom had been told to wait at the back gate of King’s, but it had apparently found waiting tedious, and as there were no others about, they had to walk. Mr. Sykes, however, took this opportunity to behave, as the Babe said, “like the dog of a real blood,” and had a delightful turn-up with a mongrel gentleman of his acquaintance, which did him much credit.
The game had not yet begun when they reached the Corpus ground, and both Sykes and the Babe’s cloak can hardly have failed to be noticed. The Babe hobbled about among the two teams whowere kicking about before the game began, and said it was much pleasanter looking on than playing, and that he meant to give it up, as it was a game more suited to savages than gentlemen. Two of the home team resented these remarks, and removed him, kindly but firmly, beyond the touch-line.
He and Reggie had secured chairs towards the centre of the ground, and it pleased the Babe to affect a childlike ignorance of everything connected with the rules and regulations of Rugby football, and he kept up a flow of fatuous remarks.
“Look how they are throwing the ball about! Why do they do that, Reggie? Which side is getting the best of it? Look at that funny little man with a flag, why do they all stop when he holds it up? I suppose it must be the captain. Have they got any try-downs yet, or do you call them touches? Oh, the ball’s coming over here. I wish they’d take more care; it might easily have hit me. Why don’t they have a better one? It’s got all outof shape; it isn’t a bit round. Mr. Sykes wants to play too. What a darling! Bite it then! How rough they are! Why did Hargreaves stamp on that man so?”
The effect of Hargreaves’ “stamping on that man” was that he got the ball and a nice clear run. He was playing three quarters on the right, and when he got fairly off he was as fast as any man in England. His weak point, however, was starting: he could not start full speed as the Babe did, being heavy and a trifle clumsy. But he got twenty yards clear now, and making the most of it he was well off before the Blackheath team realised what was happening.
The Babe’s fatuities died away as Hargreaves started and he stood silent a moment. It was clear that there was a good opening to hand, barring accidents. The game was close to the University twenty-five on the far side of the ground, and the Blackheath three-quarters were for the moment much too close to the scrimmage. It was impossible to get through even with the most finished passing on that side,and Hargreaves ran right across parallel to the goal disregarding the possibility of being collared in the centre of the ground opposite to the home goal, but trusting to his own speed. The outside Blackheath three-quarters came racing along, running slightly back in order to tackle him as he turned, but in a few moments it was clear that he was outpaced. Hargreaves ran clear round him as a yacht clears the buoy with a few yards to spare.
“Oh, well run,” shouted the Babe. “Don’t pass; get in yourself.”
Hargreaves and the Blackheath back were now close to each other about the level of the Blackheath twenty-five, and nearly in the middle of the ground. The Varsity centre three-quarters had run straight up the ground while Hargreaves ran round, and was now in a position to be passed to again, but two Blackheath three-quarters were close to him. Then, by a fatal error, Hargreaves wavered a moment, instead of again trusting to his pace, got tackled, and in that moment of slack speed his own centre three-quarters got in frontof him. He passed wildly and forward. An appeal, a whistle, a flag, and a free kick.
“Damn,” said the Babe in a loud, angry voice.
The game flickered about between the two twenty-fives for the next ten minutes, going fast and loose, with a good deal of dribbling on the part of the forwards, and a corresponding amount of self-immolation on the part of the halves, who hurled themselves recklessly on the ball in the face of the fastest rushes, and seemed to the unaccustomed eye to be feverishly courting a swift and muddy death. Hargreaves made a few futile attempts to run through and failed egregiously.
Half-time was called shortly afterwards, neither team having scored. The Babe hobbled out into the field to make himself unpleasant to his side. Mr. Sykes followed, wheezing pathetically, and the Babe’s Inverness cloak came in for renewed comments and reproof.
“They are weak on the outside,” said the sage Babe to Hargreaves, “and agreat man like you can run round as easy as perdition. You ought to stand much wider, and if you think you can get through the centre you are wrong. Stoddard could stop fifty of you. Good-bye.”
The Blackheath team had come to the same conclusion as the Babe, and they kept the game tight. They had quite realised that the Varsity three-quarters on the left was weak, and that Hargreaves on the right was abominably fast. In consequence they did their best to screw the scrimmage round to Hargreaves’ side, so as to hamper him by not leaving him room to get off. Time after time his half fed him persistently, and time after time he was unable to get round between the touch-line and the forwards. Meantime, the Blackheath pack, which were heavier and rather better together than Cambridge, were working their way slowly and steadily down the ground, keeping the ball close and comfortable among them. Hargreaves again and again, following the Babe’s advice, stood right away on the left of the scrimmage when it approachedthe right touch-line, but hisvis-à-visas regularly stood close to him, and embraced him affectionately but roughly as soon as the ball got to him and before he had time to pass; but for the next quarter the game was very tight, and with the exception of a couple of free kicks given for offside play among the Blackheath forwards, the ball rarely left the scrimmage. Even these were returned by the back into touch, and the forwards settled down on the ball again like swarming bees.
The Babe, meantime, had been insolent to the referee, who was an old friend, and also an old hand. He had gone so far as to leave the game to take care of itself for a moment to tell the Babe candidly and in a loud, clear voice that he should be severely treated afterwards, adding as a further insult, “Of course we all know it’s only you.” The Babe was furious but impotent. The glory of the ulster and the bull-pup was entirely neutralised.
But he soon forgot these insolences; there were only ten minutes left, and neither side had scored more than minorpoints. To the unprofessional eye it seemed likely that they might go on playing for hours like this without either side scoring. The Blackheath forwards gained ground very slowly, but this was made up for with tiresome monotony by the quick punting of the University halves whenever they got the chance. The three-quarters stood and shivered, and the University back declared bitterly and audibly that he might as well have stopped at home.
But the professional Babe knew better. If once the ball came fairly out, the three-quarters would have a look in, and for himself he placed his money on Hargreaves. And in defiance of law, order, and decorum he shouted his advice to the half who was playing substitute for him.
“Don’t punt,” he shouted, “but pass.”
The half at that moment was busy punting, and the Babe repeated his advice. Two minutes afterwards the half took it, as an exceptional opportunity presented itself, and passed to his centre three-quarters, and the Babe stood on his chair. Centre ran a short way and passedto the left, who passed back to centre, and centre to right. It was as pretty a piece of passing as one would wish to see on a winter’s day.
This was the moment for which the Babe was waiting. The field was broken up and Hargreaves had the ball. He ran: they all ran. He ran fastest—there is nothing like simple language for epical events. He got a try which was not converted into a goal. But as no other points were scored, Cambridge won the match by one point tonil.
The Babe and Mr. Sykes went back to take their tea with Reggie, and Ealing who had been playing the Eton game, joined them. The Babe ate three muffins with a rapt air, and Mr. Sykes drank his tea out of the slop-basin like a Christian. He took cream and three lumps of sugar. His idea of how to eat muffins was a little sketchy, but otherwise be behaved charmingly. But, as the Babe said, to put pieces of half-masticated muffin on the carpet while you drink your tea, is a thing seldom, if ever, done in the best houses.
Ealing himself eschewed muffin on the ground of its being “bad training,” and the Babe, who held peculiar views on training, proceeded to express them.
“One does every thing best,” he said, “when one is most content. Personally I am most content when I have eaten a large lunch. Nobody could play Rugger in the morning. Why? Simply because no one is in a good temper in the morning, except those under-vitalised people who are never in a bad one, and who also never play games. Of course after a very large lunch one cannot run quite so fast, but one is serene, and serenity has much more to do with winning a match than pace. Yes, another cup of tea, please. Now Hargreaves is most content when he has had a little bread and marmalade and water. Every one to his taste. I hate water except when it’s a hot bath. Water is meant not to drink, but to heat and wash in.”
“Babe, do you mean to say you have hot baths in the morning?”
“Invariably when the weather is cold,and a cigarette, whatever the weather is. I am no Charles Kingsley, though I used to collect butterflies when I was a child.”
“But when you became a Babe, you put away childish things,” suggested Ealing.
A malignant light beamed from the Babe’s eye.
“I ask you: do Babes have bull-pups?”
“I know one who has. I daresay he’s an exception, though.”
“When I was at a private school,” remarked the Babe severely, “and a chap said a thing like that, we used to call him a funny ass.”
Reggie shouted.
“Good old Babe. Has the referee caught you yet? He belongs to this college, and he may be in any minute. In fact, I asked him to come to tea. I don’t know why he hasn’t.”
“If you want me to go, say so,” said the Babe.
“Not a bit of it. It was only for your sake I suggested it. Smoke.”
The Babe was limping about the room and came upon a set of chessmen.
“I want to play chess,” he said. “Chess is the most delightful game if you treat it as a game of pure chance. You ought to move your queen into the middle of the board and then see what happens. To reduce it to the level of a sum in advanced mathematics, is a scandal and an outrage. To calculate the effect of a move takes away all the excitement.”
“You may always calculate it wrong.”
“In that case it becomes a nuisance. Reggie, will you play?”
“No.”
“Ealing?”
“I can’t. I don’t know the moves.”
“Nor do I. We should be about equal. Supposing you set two Heathen Chinese to play chess, which would win?”
“Is it a riddle?”
The Babe sank down again in his chair.
“I don’t know,” he said. “If it is, I give up. By the way what are you two chaps doing to-morrow?”
“Stop in bed till ten,” said Reggie, “it being the Day of Rest: Chapel. Breakfast. Lunch. Pitt. Tea. Pitt. Sunday Club.”
“Do you belong to that? I thought it was semi-clerical.”
“Yes, we are all lay readers.”
“I went once,” said the Babe. “We ate what is described as a cold collation. Then we all sat round, and somebody made jokes and we all laughed. I made jokes too, but nobody sat round me. There was a delightful, decorous gaiety about the proceedings. I think we sang hymns afterwards, or else we looked at photographs of cathedrals, I forget which. Hymns and photographs are so much alike.”
“O Lord, what do you mean?” asked Reggie.
“They are both like Sunday evening, and things which are like the same thing are like one another. At eleven we parted.”
“The wicked old Babe doesn’t care for simple pleasures,” said Ealing. “Oh, he knows a thing or two.”
“It’s always absurd for a lot of peopleto meet like that,” continued the Babe. “The whole point of dining clubs ought to be to have a lot of members with utterly different tastes. Then you see they can’t all talk about their tastes, they can’t all sit round and do one thing, and consequently they all talk rot, which is the only rational form of conversation. If there is one thing I detest more than another it is cliques. Individually I love most of the members of the Sunday Club, collectively I cannot even like them. And the same thing applies to the Athenæum.”
“Then why do you belong?”
“In order to go to Chapel in a pink and white tie, and also because I love the members individually. I must go. Where’s Bill? Come along under my ulster. Good-bye, you people.”
For men must work.Kingsley.
For men must work.Kingsley.
For men must work.Kingsley.
Reggieand Ealing were working together. They had formed a work club consisting only of themselves, and it was to meet for the first time this morning. In order to ensure the success of the first meeting they had had a heavy breakfast at a quarter to nine, because, as Reggie said, brain work is more exhausting than anything else, after which they had played a little snob-cricket in the archway between the two halves of Fellows’ Buildings, in order to clear the brain, until their names were taken by the porter and entered in the report book. So they adjourned to the bridge for a little to finish their pipes, and about a quarter to eleven sat down one at each side of Reggie’s larger table, with a box of cigarettes and a tobacco jar between them, Reggie’s alarum clock, which had been induced to go, two copies of Professor Jebb’sŒdipus Tyrannus, at which they were both working, one smallLiddell & Scott, and a translation of the play as edited in Mr. Bohn’s helpful series of classical authors, in case Professor Jebb proved too free in his translation, “for the difficulties,” as Reggie acutely observed, “of rendering Greek both literally and elegantly cannot be over-stated: indeed, it is to be feared that some of our best English scholars sacrifice literal rendering to the latter.”
So Ealing threw a sofa cushion at his head, and the alarum clock was knocked over on the floor, and instantly went off. The noise was terrific, and they had to stifle it in a college gown, and put it in the gyp cupboard. Then they began.
For ten minutes or so there was silence, and then Ealing in an abstracted voice asked for theLiddell & Scott, and Reggie, not to be behind-hand, underlined one of Professor Jebb’s notes with a purple indelible pencil. The point was blunt, and he tried to make it sharper by the aid of a dinner knife. This only resulted in agradual shortening of the pencil. Also the point became slightly notchier.
Ealing, finding it impossible to go on, while this was being done, had been watching the proceeding at first with deep interest, which passed into a state of wild, unreasonable impatience.
“How clumsy you are,” he said at length. “Here, pass it to me. Fancy not being able to sharpen a pencil.”
There is, as every one knows, only one individual in the world who can sharpen pencils, and that is oneself. The same remark applies to poking fires. So Reggie replied airily—
“Oh, never mind, old chap. Get on with your work. I can do it beautifully.”
But the pencil got rapidly shorter, and in order to prove to his own satisfaction that nobody else in the world could do it, he passed it over to Ealing with the dinner knife. His fingers were purple, and should have been so indelibly, but he hopefully retired into his bedroom to see if it could be washed off.
It was clear at once to Ealing that Reggie’s method was altogether at fault, and he rough-hewed the pencil again so as to be able to set to work properly. Then the clock on the mantelpiece, which had been set going, after the alarum became derelict, struck eleven and Reggie returned from his bedroom.
“Of course that clock is fast,” said Ealing.
“It’s ten minutes slow. Why should you think it was fast?”
“We must have been working longer than I thought. We had breakfast at half-past eight and we began working almost immediately after, didn’t we?”
“Yes. We knocked up a bit in the arch, you know.”
“Only about ten minutes. I should say we had set to work well before ten.”
“Perhaps we did,” said Reggie, “but I haven’t got through much yet. How’s the pencil getting on?”
“Oh, pretty well: but you went the wrong way about it at first!”
“There won’t be much left to writewith, will there?” asked Reggie, looking at it doubtfully.
“It will last you for weeks with proper care,” said Ealing. “I think I never saw so blunt a knife. Why haven’t you got a proper knife?”
Reggie got up from the table, and strolled across to the window, and looked out.
“Be quick, old chap,” he said. “I can’t go on till it’s ready. I’m in the middle of underlining something.”
He saw an acquaintance below, and called to him.
“The work club’s started this morning,” he shouted. “We’re getting on beautifully.”
(Confused sound from below, inaudible to Ealing.)
“Yes, he’s just sharpening my pencil. Isn’t it kind of him? He says he’s getting on with it pretty well.”
(Murmur.)
“No, not very far, but I’m in the middle of a chorus, and I’m reading Jebb’s notes and marking them.”
(Murmur.)
“Oh, hours; ever since about half-past nine or so.”
(Murmur.)
“What?”
(Murmur.)
“Yes, Jebb’s not literal enough for me. I like to get at the real meaning of—— Oh!”
The sofa cushion flew out of the window and lay on the grass below. When Reggie turned round Ealing was absorbed in his book.
“Where’s the pencil?” asked Reggie.
“There isn’t any,” said Ealing.
“Well, I must go and pick that cushion up. What a lot of time you’ve made me waste. Also go to Severs’s and buy a new pencil. I can’t work without.”
“This is all the thanks I get,” said Ealing bitterly.
“No, I’m awfully obliged to you, but it hasn’t done me much good, you know. You see you acted with the best intention, which is always fatal. Where’s my cap?”
“I should think you could borrow a pencil,” said Ealing.
Reggie considered a moment, with his head on one side.
“I think not. It would be better to get one of my own. Then I shall have one, you see. Come with me?”
The two went down together. As the cushion was lying on the grass, it was necessary to take shots in turn at Reggie’s open window, to avoid going upstairs again. This was much more amusing but it took a little longer than the other would have done, and the University clock struck half-past eleven in a slow regretful manner. The successful shot, about which an even sixpence was laid, was made by Ealing, and they crossed King’s parade to buy a pencil. As they got to the lodge they were further gratified by the sight of the Babe in the road opposite on a bicycle, which he rode exceedingly badly and with a curious, swoopy, wobbly motion. Mr. Sykes trotted along at a distance of some twenty yards off, with the air of not belongingto anybody, thoroughly ashamed of his master. They called to the Babe, and he being rash enough to try to wave his hand to them, ran straight into the curbstone opposite King’s gate, and dismounted hurriedly, stepping into a large puddle. His face was flushed with his exertions, but, as he wrung the water out from the bottom of his trousers, he said genially:
“This is dry work, though it doesn’t look it. A small whiskey and soda, Reggie, would not hurt me. No doubt you have such a thing in your room.”
“What about Bill Sykes?”
The Babe thought for a moment and mopped his forehead, but in a few seconds a smile of solution lighted his face.
“William shall be chained to the bicycle,” he said. “Thus no one will steal the bicycle for fear of William, and William will not venture to run away, as he wouldn’t be seen going about the streets with a bicycle in tow for anything. He despises the bicycle. I can hardly make him follow. Come here, darling.”
But Mr. Sykes required threats and coaxing. From the first, so the Babe said, he was utterly opposed to the idea of the bicycle, and had, when he thought himself unobserved, been seen to bite it maliciously.
It struck a quarter to twelve.
The Babe was in a peculiarly sociable humour this morning, and after a whiskey and soda, “a cigarette” as he remarked, “would not be amiss,” and it was not till he had smoked two, and been told with brutal plainness that he was not wanted in the least, that Reggie discovered that he had forgotten to buy his pencil. This necessitated his and Ealing’s making another journey to King’s parade, and the Babe, who bore no malice whatsoever at being told to go away, took an arm of each, and insisted in walking across the grass in the hard, convincing light of noonday.
It was now seven minutes past twelve, and opposite the fountain they met the Provost, at the sight of whom the Babe assumed his most affable manner, andthey talked together very pleasantly for a minute or two.
“Indeed,” as he remarked as they went on their way, “this little meeting should quite take the sting out of the fact that the Porter of your colleges has just retired into his hole in the gate, with the object no doubt, of reporting you both for walking across the grass. And as you have already been reported for playing squash, this will make twice.”
Bill Sykes meantime had been the object of much attention on the part of the casual passers-by, and he was sitting there chattering with impotent rage, the centre of a ring of people, in the humiliating position of being chained to a bicycle, which he despised and detested. At the sight of the Babe, however, he forgot for the moment about the bicycle, jumped up, and tried to run towards him. Thus it was not unnatural that the bicycle toppled heavily over onto the top of him. Mr. Sykes was very angry, the bell rang loudly, and one handle of the bicycle was bent.
Mr. Sykes was released, and the Babe who was not expert at mounting, though he said he was the very devil when he got going, hopped slowly down King’s Parade for a hundred yards or so with one foot on the step, making ineffectual efforts to get into the saddle. There seemed to be no reason to suppose that he would ever succeed, but about opposite the north end of the Chapel, he accomplished this feat, and after describing two or three graceful but involuntary swoops to the right and left, secured the treadles, and settled comfortably down into one of the tram lines. At this moment the tram came round the corner by St. Mary’s, and the bicycle, with its precious burden, seemed doomed to instant annihilation. The Babe, however, got off just in time, and consoled himself by swearing at the driver, and he disappeared among the traffic of Trinity Street still hopping.
“It’s like the White Knight riding,” said Ealing. “Look sharp, Reggie, with that beastly pencil. It’s struck a quarter past.”
Between one thing and another, it was creditable that they were ready to begin work again at half-past twelve. Reggie finished underlining his note, the point of which he could not quite understand, and so put a query in the margin, and Ealing went back to the word he was looking out inLiddell & Scott, an hour and a quarter before.
Ten minutes later Reggie observed that the Babe had forgotten his cover-coat, which was lying on a chair, and they debated with some heat whether it had better be taken to him at once. Eventually they tossed up, as to who should do it; Ealing lost the toss, and they both jumped up with alacrity.
“It’s a beastly nuisance when one has just settled down to work again,” he said.
“I won,” remarked Reggie, “and I am going. By Jove, there’s that Varsity clock striking a quarter to one. Here, let’s both go. It’s no use working for a quarter of an hour. One can’t do anything in a quarter of an hour, and I must lunch at one, as I’m playing footer.”
“All right. Of course we work after tea for two hours more as we settled. That will make five, and one more after Hall.”
“And six hours steady work a day,” said Reggie cheerfully, “is as much as is good for any man. I begin not to attend after I have worked, really worked, you know, for six hours.”