Dark house by which once more I standHere in the long unlovely street.—Tennyson.
Dark house by which once more I standHere in the long unlovely street.—Tennyson.
Dark house by which once more I standHere in the long unlovely street.—Tennyson.
TheBabe was leaning out of the window of the rooms he had moved into for the Long, which looked onto the Great Court of Trinity, and in his hands was a simple sheet of foolscap paper rolled up big at one end and small at the other. He applied his mouth intermittently to the small end of this really elementary contrivance, and, in his hands, like the sonnet in the hand of Milton, “the thing became a trumpet.” Unlike Milton, however, he was in no way liable to censure for not using it often enough.
He had been working for nearly two hours that morning, and it was only just half-past eleven. He had got up at eight, breakfasted, and had really been at it ever since. As a rule, criticisms on himself did not make the least impression on him, but somehow or other Mr. Stewart’s unwillingness to take any but the longest odds on the subject of his getting through thetripos had struck root and grown up rankling in his mind. He knew quite well that he had as much ability as many undergraduates who tackle that examination successfully, and he believed that if he chose he could acquire a sufficient portion of their industry. Hence the early rising, the history books scattered on the table, and indirectly the inter-mezzo on the foolscap thing.
However, at twelve he was going to his history coach for an hour, and he allowed himself twenty minutes’ relaxation before this. He had watched the porter take his name for making a row in court, so, as the worst he could do was done, there was obviously no reason why he should discontinue making a row, and it was not till the mouthpiece had got sodden and the sides stuck together that he stopped.
The history coach, the Babe confessed, was rather a trial. He lived in dusty, fusty rooms, and he himself was by far the dustiest, fustiest thing in them. During the first lesson the Babe had had with him, he had employed his hands in cleaning his nails with a button-hook, which was, however, better than that he should not clean them at all. On another occasion a spider had dropped down from the ceiling onto the top of his head, and had walked down his nose, and from there had let itself down onto the note-book which he was using. He was short-sighted, and finishing the lesson at that moment and being entirely unconscious of the spider, had shut it up with a bang in the note-book, and the spider was a fleshy spider. The Babe had tried to get Mr. Stewart to coach him, but that gentleman’s time was too deeply engaged already. His own work, he said, “like topmost Gargarus,” took the morning, and he imagined that neither he nor the Babe would care to meet over history, however romantically treated, in the afternoon, while social calls rendered the evening equally impossible for both of them.
So the Babe went three times a week to Mr. Swotcham of the spider. He was a young don, but the habits of incessant study had early bent his back, bleared his eyes, and given him a weak, nervous manner. He rarely took any exercise, and even when he did he only walked a little way along the Trumpington Road. Out of his rooms he was like a sheep that had gone astray, and coasted down the streets, keeping close to the houses, as if afraid that, should he launch himself into mid-pavement, he would lose himself irretrievably. He was a member of an occult, some said obscure, club called the Apostles, the members of which met in each other’s rooms in a shame-faced manner every Saturday night, though there was really nothing in the least shameful about their proceedings. In theory it was supposed that they set the world straight once a week, but no doubt they lacked practical ability. The Babe, whose varied acquaintance included several members of this Society, used to ask them to dinner on Saturday night, in order to have the pleasure of hearing them excuse themselves at a quarter to ten. The excuse offered was always the same.
“I’m afraid I’ve got to go round and see a man.”
The Babe followed this up by askingwho the man was, to which the invariable reply was: “Oh, only a man I know.” Then the brutal Babe throwing the mask aside would say: “Oh, you’re going to a meeting of the Apostles, aren’t you?” Somehow the members seemed rather ashamed of this fact being thus ruthlessly dragged into light, and the Babe in his May week paper had informed the world that the Apostles were the spiritual descendants of the old Hell-Fire Club of Medmenham Abbey, and that their deeds grew darker and darker every year. For the most part they were radical Agnostics, and they disestablished the English Church about once a month. They affected red ties, to show that they disapproved of everything.
Swotcham was not only an eminent Apostle, a sort of Peter among them, but an eminent historian, and the Babe had the sense to attend to what he said. It is true that this morning he watched with overpowering interest the turning over of the leaves of Swotcham’s note-book, until the corpse of the fleshy spider wasdiscovered, blotching and staining the articles of the Magna Charta, but when Swotcham had scratched it off with a J nib, his attention wandered no more.
It was a hopelessly wet and sloppy afternoon, the sort of afternoon when everything looks at its worst, and Cambridge worst of all. Grey sheets of rain drifted and drizzled over the Great Court, driven fretfully against the window panes by a cold easterly wind which struck the spray of the fountain beyond the basin out sideways onto the path. Outside the gate, the lime trees wept sooty tears and leaves early-dead, and the asphalt of Trinity Street looked like the surface of some stagnant dirty river, distortedly reflecting the dull-faced houses on each side. A melancholy gurgle of water streamed into the grating in the centre of the so-called Whewell’s Court, and its more classical name seemed to be divinely apt. The air was close, cold, and infinitely damp, and two or three terriers inhumanely left outside the Pitt, appeared like a realistic rendering of discomfort personified.
So the judicious Babe betook himself to the smoking room of that club, which always maintains a uniformity of gloom and comfort, whatever the weather is, and thought to himself as he settled in a big armchair that until he left, the weather could have no further depressing influence. He took out of the library the inimitableRavenshoewhich he already knew nearly by heart, and read with undiminished enjoyment of how Napoleon and a colonial Bishop whose real name was Jones, gave testimonials to a corn-cutter, who had them printed in his advertisement, and of how Gus and Flora were naughty in church. Later on, he proposed to have hot toast with his tea.
He had not been there long when Reggie came in, and as the Babe was not disposed to talk, and merely grunted when he was sat on, he got out a new book calledGerald Eversley’s Friendship, and proceeded to read about the peculiarities which mark the boys at St. Anselm’s.
A short silence.
“Goozlemy, goozlemy, goozlemy,” quoted the Babe.
“Look here, Babe.”
“Well.”
“Harry Venniker produces from the bottom of his box a quantity of sporting prints, and an enormous stag’s head—a ‘royal’ he called it. Did you ever see a play-box that size?”
“No. There isn’t one. ‘My dear, there is going to be a collection, and I have left my purse on the piano.’ I wish I knew Flora.”
Silence.
“‘After all, in this life the deepest, holiest feelings are inexpressible.’ Oh, I draw the line somewhere—”
“Yes, if you don’t draw the line somewhere,” murmured the Babe, “where are you to draw the line?”
“Gerald of course sobs violently on getting into bed, the first night at St. Anselm’s, and Harry puts his hand on his shoulder, and says he’ll be his friend for ever. Then ‘Gerald laid his head anew upon the pillow, and was at peace.’ Good Lord! This was an ‘incident of which the pale moon, throned in heaven, was the sole arbitress.’ He says so,” shoutedReggie, “and it is a ‘study in real life.’ He says that too, on the title-page, in capital letters. He says it very loud and plain, several times.”
The Babe chuckled comfortably, and shut upRavenshoe.
“I read it yesterday,” he said. “Turn on to about page 90 or so. I think you’ll find the passage marked in pencil. He has to sing a song in which a swear-word comes, and when he gets to it, he breaks down, hides his face in his hands, and rushes from the hall.”
Reggie’s eyes grew rounder and rounder.
“So they propose to send him to Coventry for a month.”
“That’s the place my governor is member for,” remarked the Babe, “and they make bicycles there.”
“The little brute—aged thirteen, Babe, about as old as you,” continued Reggie, “reads books of science (particularly archæology), even sermons and books of controversial divinity, in the college library. If that is real life, give me fiction.”
“Quite a little Zola,” said the Babe,“our new, harmless, English realist. A little later on a churchyard becomes an element in Gerald’s life. Are churchyards elements in your life, Reggie?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Later on again,” continued the Babe, “he gets in a row for cribbing. The author gets hold of such wonderfully new and original situations. The evidence against him is overwhelming, absolutely overwhelming, and the mystery is never cleared up. As you read, your suspense is only equalled by the suspense of the author. He finds it almost unbearable.”
“I can’t read any more,” said Reggie. “Tell me what happens.”
“Oh, all the regular things. Harry gets into the eleven, and Gerald Eversley turns into Robert Elsmere for a time. Then of course he falls in love with Harry’s sister, who gallops away in consumption, and dies. So Gerald determines to commit suicide, and leaves a note for Harry saying what he is going to do, and just as he is preparing to jump into a lake—he has previously thrown his coat with astone wrapped up in it, into the water—he feels a hand on his shoulder. It’s Harry of course. Naturally he has found the letter, which tells him that the writer will be a corpse when he finds it, which is a black lie, and goes off just in time to the place where Gerald very prudently tells him that the deed will be done. So Gerald goes to a town in the North of England, probably Coventry again, and wears a locket of purest enamel, with the name ‘Ethel’ on it. The book ends: ‘He is dead now.’”
Reggie was still turning over the leaves of the book.
“Who is Mr. Selby?”
“The good young master with a secret sorrow, to whom all the boys open their hearts.”
“I see that Harry lies at death’s door, having caught inflammation of the lungs in a football match. That’s another original situation.”
“Oh dear, yes, and old gentlemen cannot meet fifty years after they have left school without saying: ‘You rememberthat catch? My dear fellow, why did you let that ball go through your legs?’ I would sooner be Babe all my life than live to be an old man like that.”
“And Harry gets the last goal just before time. The back’s leg ‘flashed.’ I’ve never seen your legs flash, Babe.”
“No—I’m only a half-back.”
“That accounts for it. Let’s have tea, and then we’ll play a game of pills.”
“All right. Then you can dine in Hall with me. I can’t afford dinner in my room, and we’ll work afterwards.”
“Prince and Princess!” he cried. “That meansWill play at being kings and queens.”—Hotch-potch Verses.
“Prince and Princess!” he cried. “That meansWill play at being kings and queens.”—Hotch-potch Verses.
“Prince and Princess!” he cried. “That meansWill play at being kings and queens.”—Hotch-potch Verses.
Mr. Stewart, as has been indicated before, had a weakness, and that was an amiable and harmless one. His weakness was for the aristocracy. Compared with this, his feeling for royalty which was of the same order, but vastly intensified, might also be called a total failure of power, a sort of mental general paralysis. So when one day towards the middle of August, the wife of the Heir Apparent of a certain European country caused a telegram to be sent to him, to the effect that her Royal Highness wished to visit Cambridge before leaving the country, and would be graciously pleased to take her luncheon with him, Mr. Stewart was naturally a proud man. He bought a long strip of brilliant red carpet, he ordered a lunch from the kitchen that set the mouth of the cook watering, “and altogether,” as the Babe very profanely and improperly said, “made as much fuss as if the VirginMary had been expected.” He also sent printed cards, “to have the honour of,” to the Vice-chancellor, the heads of four colleges and their wives, and also to another Fellow of his college, who only a term before, had entertained at tea a regular royal queen, and had asked him to meet her. And remembering that he had once met the Prince of Wales at a dance in London given by the Babe’s mother, he also asked the Babe. At the last moment, however, the Princess sent a telegram saying that she was going to bring her husband with her, which would mean two more places, one for him, and one for his gentleman-in-waiting, and Mr. Stewart, whose table would not hold any more than fifteen conveniently, sent a hurried message and apology to the Babe, saying that all this was very upsetting, and unexpected, and uncomfortable, and inconvenient, but that he was sure the Babe would see his difficulty. He would, however, be delighted and charmed if the Babe would come in afterwards, and at least take a cup of coffee, and a cigarette (for the Princessdid not mind smoking, and indeed once at Aix-les-Bains he had seen her, etc., etc.), and sun himself in the smile of royalty.
The Babe received this message at half-past one; he had refused an invitation to lunch at King’s on the strength of the previous engagement, and he was rather cross. It was too late to go to King’s now, but after a few moments’ thought, his face suddenly cleared and he sent a note to Reggie saying that he would come round about half-past two, adding that he had “got an idea,” which they would work out together. He then ordered some lunch from the kitchen, which there was little chance of his receiving for some time, for all the cooks and kitchen boys who were not engaged in serving up Mr. Stewart’s lunch, were busy making little excursions into the court, where they stood about with trays on their heads, to give the impression that they were going to or from some other rooms, in order to catch a sight of Mr. Stewart’s illustrious guests as they crossed the court. However, the Babe went to the kitchen himself as it didnot come, and said bitter things to the head cook who was a Frenchman, and asked him whether he had already forgotten about Alsace and Lorraine.
He lunched alone and half-way through he nearly choked himself with laughing suddenly, apparently at nothing at all, and when he had finished he went round to King’s. He and Reggie talked together for about an hour, and then went out shopping.
Later in the day Mr. Stewart called on the Babe, to express his regret at what had happened, but his regret was largely tempered with sober and loyal exultation at the success of his party. Their Royal Highnesses had been the embodiment of royal graciousness and amiability; they had written their names in his birthday book, and promised to send their photographs. The conversation, it appeared, had been carried on chiefly in French, a language with which Mr. Stewart was perfectly acquainted, and which he spoke not only elegantly, but what is better, intelligibly. The Princess was the most beautiful and delightful of women, the Prince the handsomest and most charming of men. Mr. Stewart, in fact, had quite lost his heart to them both, and he had promised to look them up when he next happened to be travelling in their country, which, thought the cynical Babe, would probably be soon. Best of all, Mr. Medingway, the entertainer of queens, could not talk French, though he was the first Arabic scholar in Europe, a language, however, in which it was not possible for a mixed company to converse, and he had necessarily been quite thrown into the shade.
The Babe received this all with the utmost interest and sympathy. He regretted that he had not been able to come in afterwards, but he hoped Mr. Stewart could come to breakfast next day at nine. Mr. Stewart both could and would, and as soon as he had gone, the Babe danced thepas-de-quatretwice round the room.
That evening Reggie and the Babe went to call on Jack Marsden who had come up for a week. Jack was very short, barely five feet high, but he made up forthat by being very stout. The Babe also got a fine nib, and employed half an hour in copying something very carefully onto the back of a plain black-edged envelope.
He was up in good time next morning, and he had three letters by the post. One of these was black-edged, and had on the back of the envelope a Royal Crown, andWindsor Castle. He opened them all, and left this last face downwards on the table.
Mr. Stewart came in, still in the best of spirits, and walked about the room, expatiating on the superiority of royal families, while the Babe made tea.
“It makes a difference,” said Stewart, “it must make a difference, if one’s fathers and forefathers have been kings. One would have the habit and the right of command. I don’t know if I ever told you—”
His eye caught sight of the Royal Crown and Windsor Castle, and he paused a moment.
“I don’t know if I ever told you of that very pleasant day I once spent at Sandringham.”
“Yes, you told me about it yesterday,” said the Babe brutally.
“I suppose they are all up in Scotland now,” said Stewart.
“No, the Queen is at Windsor for a day or two,” said the Babe. “She goes up early next week. Will you have a sole?”
“Thanks—not a whole one. I asked because I saw you had a letter here from Windsor.”
The Babe looked up quickly and just changed colour—he could do it quite naturally—and picked up his letters.
“Yes, it’s from my cousin,” he said. “She’s in waiting, just now.”
“Lady Julia?”
“Yes. Apparently they are not going straight up.”
The subject dropped, but a few minutes later the Babe said suddenly and in an absent-minded way.
“I don’t think she’s ever been to Cambridge before.”
“Lady Julia?”
Again the Babe started.
“Yes, Lady Julia. She is thinking of coming up to—to see me on Monday. Is there anything in the papers?”
“I only read theMorning Post,” said Mr. Stewart. “There is of course a short account of the Prince’s visit here, but I saw nothing else.”
For the next day or two the Babe was very busy, too busy to do much work. He went more than once with Reggie and Jack to the A.D.C. where they looked up several dresses, and he had a long interview with the proprieter of the Bull. He took a slip of paper to the printer’s, with certain elaborate directions, and on Monday morning there arrived at Trinity a Bath chair. Then he went to Mr. Stewart, who was his tutor, and had a short talk, with the result that at a quarter to two, Mr. Stewart was pacing agitatedly up and down his room, stopping always in front of the window, from which he could see the staircase on which were the Babe’s rooms, and on which now appeared a longstrip of crimson carpet. As luck would have it Mr. Medingway selected this time for going to Mr. Stewart’s rooms to borrow a book and the two looked out of the window together.
The Trinity clock had just struck two, when a smart carriage and pair hired from the Bull stopped at the gate, and the Babe’s gyp, who had been waiting at the porter’s lodge, wheeled the Bath chair up to it. Out of it stepped first the Babe, next a short stout old lady dressed in black, and last a very tall young woman elegantly dressed. She was quite as tall as the Babe, and seemed the type of the English woman of the upper class, who plays lawn-tennis and rides bicycles. The gyp bowed low as he helped the old lady into the chair, and the Babe, hat in hand until the old lady told him to put it on, and the tall girl walked one on each side of it. The porter who was just going into the lodge, stopped dead as they passed, and also took off his hat, and the Bath chair passed down an inclined plane of boards which had been arranged over the steps into the court.
Mr. Stewart, standing with Medingway at his bow window, saw them enter, and in a voice trembling with suppressed excitement said to his companion: “Here they are,” and though benedictions were not frequent on his lips, added: “God bless her.”
He pressed Medingway to stop for lunch, and the two sat down together.
“Was it in the papers this morning?” asked the latter.
Mr. Stewart took theMorning Postfrom the sofa.
“It is only announced that the Court will leave Windsor to-day. They are expected at Balmoral on Wednesday, not Tuesday, you see. It does not give their movements for to-day.”
Mr. Medingway was looking out of the window.
“They have got to the staircase,” he said. “And she is getting out. Are we—is anyone going in afterwards?”
“I believe not. It is to be absolutely quiet, and strictly incognito. They leave again by the 4.35.”
“An interesting, a unique occasion,” said Medingway.
“Yes; the Babe takes it all so easily. I wish I had been able to have him to lunch last week.”
Mr. Medingway smiled, and helped himself to a slice of galantine.
“They wouldn’t perhaps take a cup of tea before going—”
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Stewart, who, if he was not playing thebeau rôleto-day, at any rate had been in the confidence of him who was. “The Babe was most urgent that I should not let it get about. Indeed, I have committed a breach of confidence in telling you. Of course I know it will go no further.”
Meantime, the Babe having successfully conveyed his party across the court, and having taken the precaution of sporting his door, was having lunch. Opposite to him sat Jack Marsden, dressed in a black silk gown; on his right Reggie, attired in the height of fashion. He wore a blue dress with very full sleeves, and a large picture hat. He was taking a long draught of Lager beer.
“Stewart and Medingway both saw,” he said, “and they are both at Stewart’s window now.”
“It was complete,” said the Babe solemnly, “wonderfully complete, and the bogus copy of theMorning Post, which I substituted for his, was completer still. It will also puzzle them to know how you get away, for they are sure to wait there on the chance of seeing you again. I shouldn’t wonder if Stewart went to the station. And now if you’ve finished, you can change in my bedroom, and we’ll go round and get a fourth to play tennis. Stewart must confess that I have gone one better than either him or Medingway.”
They had a rustic woodland air—AfterWordsworth.
They had a rustic woodland air—AfterWordsworth.
They had a rustic woodland air—AfterWordsworth.
Ealinghad not been up in the Long, but Reggie and the Babe spent a week with him early in October, before going up to Cambridge again. They arrived on the last day of September, and from morn till eve on the first day the silly pheasants fled before the Babe’s innocuous gun. However, that gentleman said he liked aiming, without any thought of ulterior consequences, and that this was the true essence of sport, and as Reggie and Ealing were both good shots, it is to be presumed that everyone, even including the keeper, was fairly contented.
The October term began as October terms always begin. There was, as usual, a far larger number of Freshmen of unique brilliance than had ever been heard of before, who were duly asked to coffee with men of other years after Hall, and these ceremonies were neither more nor less exciting than usual. There was theFreshman who wore spectacles, and didn’t play games because he had a weak heart, and who when asked from what school he came, said ‘Giggleswick,’ with almost incredible coolness; there was the Freshman who had been captain of the eleven in some obscure school, and already saw himself captain of the University team; there were Freshmen who could play all kinds of music, the Freshman who played the flute, and the Freshman who played the violin, and probably the Freshman who could play the sackbut and psaltery; the Freshman who already seemed to know half the University, and the Freshman who knew nobody at all; the Freshman who called his tutor “Sir,” and the Freshman who very kindly treated him as one man of the world treats another. There were the usual trial games of football played under a tropical sun, and the usual interminable lists of tubbings put up in the Reading-Room.
But after a fortnight or so the world in general, with all its sorts and conditions of men, settled down into its usual routine,the Freshmen who had all started together diverged into the sets where their particular tastes attracted them. Some joined musical societies, and some were put up and blackballed at a meeting of the old Giggleswickians; some played in the Freshmen’s matches, and some bought college blazers, and passed contented and leisurely afternoons in canoes on the Backs. Alan St. Aubyn published his annual humorous libel on what he playfully called University Life, and the Babe moved from Malcolm Street into the rooms he had occupied in the Long in the Great Court Trinity, and Mr. Sykes signalised the occasion by killing the under-porter’s best cat.
No doubt it was primarily the best cat’s fault, for she had taken an independent and solitary walk on her own account down Trinity Street, and Sykes who was waiting at the gate, quite quiet and as good as gold, for the Babe, who had gone into his room to put down his cap and gown, saw her returning. So he killed her. Of course he had to tell the Babeabout it, and he thought the best plan would be to take the mangled corpse—she was not neatly killed—to the Babe’s rooms, which, though he was not allowed in college, he happened to know, and the first thing the porter saw was Mr. Sykes racing across the grass with his best cat hopelessly defunct, dangling from his mouth. He followed, but Sykes got there first, and was wagging his stumpy tail with a pleased air, as he deposited his burden on the hearth-rug, when the infuriated porter entered.
The porter said:
(I.) That Sykes had no business to kill his cat.
(II.) That he had, if possible, even less business in college.
(III.) That Sykes ought to be poisoned.
The Babe answered:
(I.) That there was no question of poisoning Sykes.
(II.) That the death must have taken place outside college, for he had seen Sykes enter with the corpse in his mouth.
(III.) That the cat had no more business in Trinity Street than Sykes had in college, so it was six of one and half a dozen of the other.
(IV.) That Sykes should be beaten.
(V.) That, though the cat was not worth it, sentiment went for something, and there was such a thing as a sovereign.
So Sykes was beaten there and then with a rug strap, and the porter had a sovereign, and the beaten Sykes was granted safe conduct out of college again.
The Babe took a hansom down to the theatre, for he was going to rehearse for the Greek play, and blew tobacco smoke at Sykes all the way to show him he was in disgrace. He had not much wanted to act, for it meant six weeks of rehearsing and learning his part, but he had consented to read through the play and see whether the part of Clytemnestra in theAgamemnondid not recommend itself to him. This had of course ended in his undertaking it, and he found that though he had dropped Greek for two years, he did not experience much difficulty in learning his part.
The theatre where theAgamemnonwas to be performed was a curiously shabby building, resembling an overgrown barn, one of the “greater barns,” so said the Babe, mentioned in a parable. A low tunnel, resembling the subway in Metropolitan underground stations led into it from the street, and from the tunnel opened various doors, which led into rooms resembling economically constructed kennels. One of these, humorously called the smoking-room, presumably because the audience invariably smoked in the passage, was rendered additionally alluring by a long, low plank, like those supplied to third class waiting-rooms, which ran down the length of it. The outer wall, in all its unveiled glory of brick and mortar, was further decorated by photographs of the Compton Company, in which actors and actresses alike seemed devoured by a futile endeavour to acquire those casts of expression which are associated with “persons of genius and sensibility.” A man was engaged in kindling reluctant footlights when the Babe entered, and hehad time to bestow the minutest attention on the very vivid drop-scene which was down, before the others appeared. It represented a gloomy and nameless marsh, in the corner of which was moored a magenta boat, into which a young lady in a green bonnet was being assisted by a young gentleman of abhorrent demeanour and odiously familiar manner. He wore a straw hat and a blue frock-coat, and was smoking an enormous cigar. Over their heads hovered a gigantic bird of prey, probably a vulture, confident no doubt that the fatal exhalations from the marsh, or their own unfitness to live, would soon supply him with a delicate supper composed of the remains of this ill-attired pair. A painted but unexplained Venetian mast—in popular language, a barber’s pole—stuck out of the bulrushes in the middle distance, and behind, the sun appeared to have just set in a gory sky over the mountains, which stood up brilliantly blue in the background.
It was a miserably cold morning, and Clytemnestra sat in a thick ulster with abull-dog on her knees, till it was time for her to appear, and watched a curiously dressed chorus of Argive elders headed by Reggie in flannels and a blazer, for he had been playing tennis, manœuvre round a stage director, whom a vivid imagination construed into an altar. Two other stage directors quarrelled with each other in the background, till the conductor who was directing the chorus asked them to be quiet. Thus he secured for himself the hostility of all the stage directors, who resented the attack made on their class, and who lay in wait to contradict him rudely on the earliest possible occasion.
The Babe, meantime, had wandered off the stage into the wings, in search of a fire, and Mr. Sykes, left to himself, recognised Reggie as a friend among the heterogeneous elders, and trotted across to him, wheezing pathetically. The conductor had stopped the chorus in order to point out some mistake the tenors had made, and was singing the passage himself in a fruity falsetto voice, and Reggie, who was a bass, was patting Sykes, when the voiceof one of the hostile stage directors broke in—
“The rehearsal,” he said firmly, “will proceed when the leader of the Argive elders has quite finished playing with a bull-dog. Please send the bull-dog out of the theatre.”
“It’s Clytemnestra’s,” said Reggie.
The Babe re-appeared at this moment.
“Where’s Bill?” he asked. “Oh, there he is. Come here, darling. Oh, are you waiting for me?”
The conductor laid down his baton.
“Settle it among yourselves,” he said, “and tell me when you are ready. I may remark that I am very busy, and that my time is not my own.”
Mr. Sykes meantime was sniffing suspiciously round the heels of the altar, and the altar was getting visibly nervous.
The Babe supposing that his entrance had come, began reciting his first lines in a loud voice, and the stage directors and the conductors made common cause against him.
“If Clytemnestra would kindly be quiet,” said one.
“And take away her horrible dog,” put in the altar.
“The chorus might proceed,” shouted the conductor.
The Babe with a look of injured innocence on his face retired to his chair, followed reluctantly by Sykes, who was not satisfied about the altar, and the practice went on.
But the truce between the conductor and the stage directors was only an armed neutrality. One of them in particular, a bustling little man with a honey-coloured moustache and a Paderewski head of hair, was waiting to fall upon him. He was a student of all branches of what Stewart would have called “delightful and useless knowledge”; on such subjects he has perhaps a wider and more elaborately specialised information than any man in England. He could have told you with the most minute particulars the exact shape of the earrings worn by Greek women of the fifth centuryB.C., the particular way in whichathletes of the fourth century brushed their hair, the conformation of the lobe of the ear in female statues of the third century, or the proportionate length of the little finger nail to the eye-socket in bronzes of the Hadrian epoch. He could have prescribed you the ingredients which made the red in Botticelli’s Tobias, lasting, through the want of which Turner’s sunsets paled almost as fast as the sunsets themselves; he had penetrated into the dens of the forgers at Rome which lie in the street which no one can find between the Via Nazionale and the Capitol; he had been twice round the world, and spoke five dialects of Mexican; he had looked on the city of Mecca, and kodaked the interior of the mosque of the Seven Curses of the Prophet; he had dived for pearls in the Coromandel Sea, and evaded by a hair-breadth the jaws of the blue-nosed shark as it rolled over on its back to snap him in two; he knew intimately a lineal descendant of Adamo di Brescia, the coiner of the Inferno, and asserted that in all probability the forefather was a clumsierworkman than his son, or he would never have been detected. And on all these subjects and many others equally abstruse he could give you statistics, as dry as the facts themselves were interesting. Once or twice, it is true, he had been caught in an apparent error, but he had always been able to give a perfectly satisfactory explanation of it afterwards, with hardly any time for reflection. Such qualifications had eminently fitted him for the part of stage-manager in a Greek play, and he certainly added to these, immense zeal and industry. His name was Propert, and his college was Peterhouse.
For some minutes he stood grasping his hair with both hands in an incipient frenzy, as the chorus proceeded, but at last he could stand it no longer, and he clapped his hands loudly.
“It is all wrong,” he said, “you have not got the spirit of it. You do not sound the note of fate. Those last bars should be a long low wail, prophetic of woe, andpianissimo—pianissimo ma con smorgando tremuloso.”
He patted the air in front of Reggie, with an eloquent gesture.
“They are markedff.,” said the leader of the Argive elders in good plain English.
“Well, you must erase your double forte,” said Dr. Propert.
The conductor folded his arms, and waited till Dr. Propert had retired up O. P.
“We will now begin again four bars back, at the double forte,” he remarked.
“Yes,pianissimo,” said the doctor turning round.
The Argive elders looked puzzled. Diplomacy, to judge by their speeches, was not their strong point.
“Are we to do it double forte orpianissimo?” asked Reggie of the conductor.
“I presume that Doctor Propert has informed Professor Damien of the alterations he has thought fit to make in the music,” he remarked bitterly.
But as Doctor Propert was already employed in showing Agamemnon, who was about to enter, how to lean against a doorin the attitude of a Sophoclean adult, the sarcasm fell innocuous, and the practice proceededfortissimowithout further interruption.
Agamemnon had forgotten his first line, and at Dr. Propert’s suggestion said “Boble, boble, boble,” until he remembered the second or third lines, and the chorus grouped themselves round the watchmen and smoked, while the altar, relieved of its localising duties, quarrelled with the other unemployed directors, and prompted Agamemnon intermittently.
But as the scene between Agamemnon and Clytemnestra proceeded and the Babe warmed to his work, other conversation drooped and died. He found it bored him simply to say the part, and throughout the rehearsals, even when he had to read his part, he acted it all. But at this stage in rehearsal he knew it by heart, and in looking at him one quite forgot his deerstalker cap and long, loud ulster. The stage directors were reconciled and murmured approbation, the conductor ceased talking to the watchmen, and thething began to take shape. Even the subsequent appearance of Mr. Sykes, who sat down in the middle of the stage and smiled at the chorus, caused no interruption. He fell perfectly flat, and no one took the slightest notice of him.
Once only was there an interruption, and that was made by the Babe himself. Dr. Propert was busy hauling a metope on to the stage, and letting go of it for a moment, it fell resonantly onto its back. The Babe stopped dead, and turned round.
“If you make such a horrible row again, while I’m on,” he said, “you may take the part of Clytemnestra yourself. I shall begin again,” he added severely, “at the beginning of my speech.”
The conductor could have embraced the Babe on the spot, and the other stage managers giggled. The Babe waited till they had quite finished, and then began again thirty-four lines back.
The truth was that all the Babe’s flippancy and foolishness left him when he was acting, and only then, for acting wasthe one thing he took quite seriously. He ceased to be himself, for he threw himself completely into the character he was impersonating. He was in fact not an amateur, but an actor, and these two have nothing whatever to do with one another. If a man has dramatic power, he may become an actor with training, without it he cannot. And most amateurs have not got it.
So the play proceeded with vigour till Clytemnestra went off with Ægisthus, and shortly after in a hansom with Mr. Sykes. The cold drizzle of the morning had turned to snow, and the melting snow in the streets looked like thin coffee ice. The Babe was playing in a college match that afternoon, and the prospect filled him with a mild despair.
“This gloomy tone,” he said, “is far too rife;I’ll demonstrate the loveliness of life.”—Hotch-potch Verses.
“This gloomy tone,” he said, “is far too rife;I’ll demonstrate the loveliness of life.”—Hotch-potch Verses.
“This gloomy tone,” he said, “is far too rife;I’ll demonstrate the loveliness of life.”—Hotch-potch Verses.
Reggieand Ealing had moved into a set of rooms in Fellows’ Buildings, which they shared together. The set consisted of three rooms, two inner and smaller ones, and one large room looking out on to the front court of King’s. The two smaller rooms they used as bedrooms, but as they each had folding Eton beds, by half-past nine or so every morning, provided that they got up in reasonable time, they were converted for the day into sitting-rooms. The outer room was furnished more with regard to what furniture they had, than what furniture it required. Thus there were two pianos, tuned about a quarter of a tone apart from each other, two grandfather’s clocks, and a most deficient supply of chairs. “However,” as Reggie said, “one can always sit on the piano.”
Ealing’s powers of execution on the piano were limited. He could play hymn-tunes, or other compositions, where the next chord to the one he was engaged on followed as a corollary from it, and anything in the world which went so slowly as to enable him to glance from the music to his hands between each chord, however complicated it was, provided it did not contain a double sharp, which he always played wrong. He could also, by dint of long practice, play “Father O’Flynn” and the first verse of “Off to Philadelphia in the Morning”; and there seemed to be no reason why, with industry, he should not be able to acquire the power of playing the other verses, in which he considered the chords to be most irregular and unexpected, deserting the air at the most crucial points. Reggie, however, was far more accomplished. He had got past hymn-tunes. The Intermezzo inCavaleria Rusticana—even the palpitating part—was from force of repetition mere child’s play to him, and he aspired to the slow movements out of Beethoven’s Sonatas.
The hours in which each might practise, therefore, demanded careful arrangement. College regulations forbade the use of the pianos altogether between nine in the morning, and two in the afternoon, since it was popularly supposed by the authorities who framed this rule—and who shall say them nay—that all undergraduates worked between these hours, and that the sound of a piano would disturb them. Consequently, Ealing was allowed to play between eightA.M.and nineA.M., every morning, a privilege which he used intermittently during breakfast, and by which he drove Reggie, daily, to the verge of insanity, and Reggie between twoP.M.and threeP.M.Ealing again might play between three and five, and Reggie from five to seven. During these hours the temporary captain of the pianos, even if he did not wish to play himself, might stop the other from playing except with the soft pedal down. It had been found impossible to regulate the hours after dinner, and they often played simultaneously on their several pianos, and produced thereby very curious and interesting effects, whichsounded Wagnerian at a sufficient distance. Finally, the use of the piano was totally prohibited by common consent between twoA.M.and eightA.M.
The Babe, like mournful Œnone, “hither came at noon” one Sunday morning. Chapel at King’s was at half-past ten, and that English habit of mind which weds indissolubly together Sunday morning and lying in bed, was responsible for the fact that on Sunday Reggie and Ealing always breakfasted after chapel. But the Babe, unlike that young lady, was in the best of spirits, and as Ealing and Reggie were not yet back from chapel, made tea and began breakfast without them. They came in a few minutes later, both rather cross.
“When there is going to be a sermon,” said Reggie severely, taking off his surplice, “I consider that I have a right to be told. Morning, Babe.”
“Oh, have you had a sermon?” said the Babe sweetly. “Who preached?”
“The Dean. He preached for half-an-hour.”
“More than half-an-hour,” said Ealing.“Totally inaudible, of course, but lengthy to make up for that.”
“Pour me out some tea, Babe, if you’ve had the sense to make it.”
“Sermons are trying if one hasn’t breakfasted,” said the Babe. “They are sermons in stones when one asks for bread.”
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. I hoped that perhaps one of you would know. Why should I know what I mean? It’s other people’s business to find out. And they for the most part neglect it shamefully.”
“Shut up, Babe,” growled Reggie. “I wish you wouldn’t talk when I’m eating.”
“Can’t you hear yourself eat?” asked the Babe sympathetically.
“Wild horses shall not drag me to Chapel this afternoon,” said Ealing. “We’ll go for a walk, Reggie.”
“I daresay: at present I can’t think of anything but food. Babe, you greedy hog, give me some fish.”
“And very good fish it is,” said theBabe genially. “By the way, Sykes is far from well this morning.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“He partook too freely of the anchovies of the Chitchat last night. You will find that in French conversation books.”
“I saw him indulging as I thought unwisely,” said Ealing. “Then it was surely imprudent of him to drink Moselle cup.”
“He wished to drown care, but it only gave him a stomach-ache. Stewart impressed him so with the fact that we were all Atlases with the burden of the world on our shoulders, that he had recourse to the cup.”
“And the burden of us all was on Stewart.”
“Yes. Don’t you remember he said that he felt personally responsible for every undergraduate whom he had ever spoken to? His idea is that each don ought to have an unlimited influence, and that the whole future of England in the next generation lay on each of them, particularly himself. No wonderhis eyelids were a little weary, as Mr. Pater says. But after you went he took the other side, and said that the undergraduates were theraison d’êtreof the University, and that the dons existed only by their sufferance.”
“Did Longridge stop?”
“Yes. He was a little less coherent than usual. I know he took the case of a man at Oxford who threw stones at the deer in Magdalen, though what conclusion he drew from it, I can’t say.”
“Probably that the deer were really responsible for the undergraduates.”
The Babe sighed.
“I have to read a paper next week. I think it shall be on some aspects of Longridge. That is sure to give rise to a discussion if he is there. Give me a cigarette, Reggie.”
The Babe established himself in a big chair by the fireplace, while the others finished breakfast.
“I am going to found a club,” he said, “called the S.C.D. or Society for the Cultivation of Dons. Stewart says hewill be vice-president, as he doesn’t consider himself a don. We are going to call on obscure dons every afternoon and speak to them of the loveliness of life, for, as Stewart says, the majority of them have no conception of it. Their lives are bounded by narrow horizons, and the only glimpse they catch of the great world, is their bed-maker as she carries out their slop-pail from their bedrooms. They live like the Niebelungs in dark holes and eat roots, and though they are merely animals, they have no animal spirits. He says he knew a don once who by a sort of process of spontaneous combustion, became a dictionary, but all the interesting words, the sort of words one looks out in a Bible dictionary, you know, were missing. So they used him to light fires with, for which he was admirably adapted, being very dry, and in the manner of King Alexander, who, as Stewart asserted, became the bung in a wine cork, other dons now warm themselves at him. Stewart was very entertaining last night, and rather improper.He said that a Don Juan or two was wanted among the dons, by way of compensation, and he enlarged on the subject.”
“Give us his enlargements.”
“I can’t. He enlarged in a way that belongs to the hour after midnight on Saturday, when you know that when you wake up it will be Sunday. He was very Saturday-night. He called it working off the arrears of the week, and complained that he hadn’t heard a mouth-filling oath for more than a month. He never swears himself, but he likes to hear other people do it; for he says he is in a morbid terror of the millennium beginning without his knowing it. He skipped about in short skirted epigrams, and pink-tight phrases. At least that was his account of his own conversation when we parted. Oh yes, and he said he didn’t mind saying these things to me because I was a man of the world.”
“He knows your weak points, Babe,” said Reggie.
“Not at all. He referred to that as my strong point.”
“Good old Clytemnestra! I’m better now, thank you, after my breakfast, and it’s ‘The Sorrows of Death’ this afternoon. I shall go to chapel again.”
Reggie lit a pipe, and picked out the first few bars on the piano.
“The watchman was a tiresome sort of man to have about,” he said. “When they asked him if it was nearly morning, he only said, ‘Though the morning will come, the night will come also.’ Of course they knew that already, and besides it wasn’t the question. I should have dismissed him on the spot. So the soprano has to tell them, which he does on the top A mainly.”
“When I was a child I could sing the upper upper Z,” said the Babe fatuously. “Then my voice broke, and the moral is ‘Deeper and deeper yet.’ Don’t rag: I apologise.”
Ealing finished breakfast last, and strolled across to the window.
“It’s a heavenly morning,” he said. “Let’s go out. We needn’t go far.”
“I will walk no further than the King’s field,” said the Babe.
“Very well, and we can sit outside thepavilion. I’m lunching out at half-past one.”
“Meals do run together so on Sunday. Sunday is really one long attack of confluent mastication,” said the Babe. “It’s a pity one can’t take them simultaneously.”
Though November had already begun, the air was deliciously warm and mild, and had it not been for the fast yellowing trees, one would have guessed it to be May. But there was a shouting wind overhead, which stripped off the leaves by hundreds and blew the rooks about the sky. Already the tops of the trees were bare, and the nests of last spring swung empty and half ruined high up among the forks of the branches. During the last week a good deal of rain had fallen, and the Cam was swirling down, yellow and turbid. The willow by the river was already quite bare, and its thin feathery branches lashed themselves against the stone coping of the bridge.
They went through the Fellows’ gardens, for Reggie by some means had got hold of a key; there a few bushes of draggled Michaelmas daisies were making pretence that the summer was not quite dead yet, but they only succeeded in calling attention to the long, desolate beds. The grass was growing rank and matted under the autumn rains, and little eddies of leaves had drifted up against the wires of the disused croquet-hoops. But the day itself seemed stolen from off the lap of spring, and two thrushes were singing in the bushes after an excellent breakfast of succulent worms.
“We play you to-morrow at Rugger,” remarked the Babe as they walked across the field, “and we play on this ground. It’s sticky enough, and I shall vex the soul of the half opposite me, because I like a sticky ground, and he is certain not to. In fact,” said he confidently, “I purpose to get two tries off my own bat, and generally to sit on this royal and ancient foundation.”
“The Babe has never yet been called modest,” said Ealing.
“If I have, I am not aware of it,” said the Babe.
“We’ve got three blues,” remarked Reggie.
“I am delighted to hear it,” said the Babe. “You will need them all. And you may tell our mutual friend Hargreave that if he attempts to collar me round the ancles again, I shall make no efforts whatever to avoid kicking him in the face. He did it last time we played you, and I spoke to him about it more in sorrow than in anger.”
“Upon which the referee warned you for using sorrowful language.”
“He did take that liberty,” conceded the Babe. “Let’s sit down outside the pavilion. I wish we could kick about. The Sabbath is made for man, and so is Sunday, and so are footballs.”
“But on Sunday the pavilion is locked up by man, and the footballs put inside.”
“It appears so. English people take Sunday too seriously, just as they take everything else, except me.”
“Anyhow, Stewart says you are a man of the world,” said Ealing.
“He does, and who are we to contradict him? Good Lord, there’s one o’clock striking. I must go home. There’s somebody coming to lunch at half-past. Reggie, get me a ticket for King’s this afternoon, will you?”