O this drear March month.Kingsley.
O this drear March month.Kingsley.
O this drear March month.Kingsley.
Jack Marsdenstopped for a moment under the Babe’s window and called
[Image unavailable: musical notation.]Ba - abe
Ba - abe
Ba - abe
and the Babe’s face looked out vindictively.
“If you call me like that I sha’n’t answer,” he said. “You’re not in Clare.”
So Jack went in, and found the Babe curled up again in a large chair, close to the fire, working. The month was February, which is equivalent, at Cambridge, to saying that it was raining—cold, sleety, impossible rain. As the exact day of the month was the sixteenth, it followed as a corollary that it had been raining for at least sixteen days, and, as it was leap year, it would continue to rain thirteen more.
“Well?” said the Babe unencouragingly. He had gone to bed early the night before, and the consequent length of the morning made him rather cross.
“Oh nothing. It’s raining, you know. TheSportsmansays that Jupiter Pluvius is in the ascendant still.”
“He sends the snow in summer,He sends the frost in MayTo nip the apple-blossoms,And spoil our games of play,”
“He sends the snow in summer,He sends the frost in MayTo nip the apple-blossoms,And spoil our games of play,”
“He sends the snow in summer,He sends the frost in MayTo nip the apple-blossoms,And spoil our games of play,”
quoted the Babe.
“Just so, and he doesn’t neglect to send the rain in February. I’ve just come back from King’s. Reggie’s in a bad temper, almost as bad as you.”
“Why?”
“Weather, chiefly. He says it would be grovelling flattery to call it beastly.”
“Reggie is given to making truisms,” said the Babe turning over the page. “Jack, I wish you’d go away. I want to work. Besides, you’re so devilish cheerful, and I’m not.”
“Sorry to hear it. Oh, yes, and Reggietold me to remind you that you are playing tennis with him at twelve. He’s got the New Court.”
The Babe brightened up: there was an hour less of morning.
“Hurrah! that will suit me excellently. Many thanks, and please go away. Good-bye.”
Stewart confessed that the Babe had surprised him. Most people who knew the Babe were never surprised at him, because they always expected him to do something unexpected. But no one had ever supposed that he would do anything so unexpected as to work steadily every day. It would not have been so surprising if he had worked twelve hours a day twice a week, but that he should work four hours every day, upset all preconceived ideas about him. He had done so for a full month, and really there seemed no reason now why he should stop. He got up before nine, and he worked from ten till one: at one he would be himself again till six, but he would work from six till seven. Stewart considered this exhibition as astriking imitation by Nature of Mr. R. L. Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde: he had not clearly realised before that the Babe had a dual nature. Just now he considered Hyde to be painfully predominant, for that the Babe should cease being absurd for four hours a day seemed to him a sacrifice of the best possibilities of his nature.
But the Babe, like Mr. Gladstone in one thing more, threw off all thoughts of such matters, except during work hours, and having determined to put in an extra hour in the afternoon, to make up for tennis in the morning, he trotted off through the dripping, drizzling rain to the tennis court in the best of spirits.
He went back to lunch with Reggie in King’s Hall and as, contrary to all precedent, the rain had stopped, they went for a walk afterwards round two or three football grounds, to see what was going on, and give Mr. Sykes an airing. Scratch games seemed the order of the day, and they “took situations” on outside wings opposite each other for a few minutes inthe game on the King’s ground, until Reggie charged the Babe and knocked him down, after which they retired, dirty, but invigorated. Then they turned into the tennis court again for a while, and so by Burrell’s Walk across the town bridge, and back into Trinity Street, looked in at the shop windows, which are perhaps less alluring than any others in the kingdom, and admired the preparations for diverting the sewerage of the town from the Cam.
“But how,” said the Babe, “our college boats will be able to row in a perfectly empty river bed, is more than I feel fit to tell you.”
“They’ll keep up the water by shutting the locks,” said Reggie, vaguely.
“But no shutting of locks, Reggie, will ever repair the drought caused by the cessation of the drains. There’s the Master of Trinity. Take off your hat: he won’t see you. I really wish Sykes wouldn’t always smell Masters of colleges. It makes them nervous; they think indirectly that it’s my fault. Bill, you idiot, come here!”
Bill having come to the conclusion that there were not sufficient grounds to warrant the Master’s arrest, reluctantly dismissed the case, though he would have liked bail, and trotted after the Babe. The latter had just discovered that life was not worth living without a minimum thermometer which he saw in a chemist’s window, and had to go and buy it.
They passed up to the left of Whewell’s Court, by the churchyard without a church, and into Jesus Lane in order to deposit Sykes again at his stables, and then, as tea-time was approaching, turned back towards Trinity.
“And for our tea,” said the Babe, “we will go to the Pitt, where it may be had cheaply and comfortably, and we can read the telegrams, which as far as I have observed, deal exclusively with steeplechase races, and the state of the money market. I noticed that money was easier yesterday. I am so glad. It has been terribly difficult lately. But if it is easier, no doubt the financial crisis between me and my father, which I expect at the end ofthis term, will be more capable of adjustment. At present I fear my creditors will find me like moist sugar, fourpence the pound. Do you suppose there are any races going on at Newmarket? We might drive over: I feel as if a little carriage exercise would do me good. Here’s Jim. Jim always knows about races. He was born, I mean dropped, at Esher. Jim, is there any racing going on at Newmarket? Why do you look so disgusted?”
“It’s so likely that flat races should be going on now,” said Jim.
“Oh, well, it can’t be helped,” said the Babe. “What nice brown boots you’ve got. Have you been out on your gee-gee?”
“Looks rather like it.”
“I thought so,” said the Babe. “We’re going to have tea. Do you know Reggie? Jim, Reggie, Reggie, Jim.”
“Met before,” said Jim. “Ta, ta, Babe. I’ve got a coach at four.”
The Babe according to custom weighed and measured himself, found as usual that no change had taken place since yesterday,put his hat on the head of the bust of Pitt, whence it clattered on to the floor, let the door into the smoking room swing to in Reggie’s face, and ordered tea. A group of three or four men before the fire were talking about someone called Pocohantas, who turned out on enquiry to be a horse, and the Babe expressed himself willing to lay current odds about anything in the world.
He and Reggie strolled back in the dusk, and parted at the gate of Trinity. The Babe went to work till Hall, and after Hall played picquet with Anstruther, whom he fleeced, capotting him once and repiquing him twice in an hour, and discussed with him the extraordinary dulness of the Lent term, and the impossibility of making it any livelier.
“It’s a sort of close time,” said the Babe, “for things of interest. I don’t know why it should be so, but every day is exactly like every other day, and they are all dull. I feel eclipsed all the Lent term. I make a show of gaiety, but it is all hollow. I suppose really one does depend a good deal on things like cricket and football, and fine weather. One doesn’t know it at the time, but one misses them when they are not there.”
“You’ve taken to sapping: you oughtn’t to mind.”
“On the contrary I mind all the more. When I’ve done a morning’s work, I come out fizzing with being corked up so long, and nothing happens to my fizz. It loses itself in the empty and infinite air.”
“Don’t be poetical, Babe.”
“For instance,” continued the Babe, “what am I to do now? I’ve had enough picquet, and I’ve got nothing to say, and I’ve worked enough, and I don’t want to go to bed.”
“All right, don’t go to bed. Sit and talk to me.”
“But I don’t want to talk,” said the Babe volubly. “There’s nothing to talk about. I’ve played tennis, I’ve worked, I’ve taken Sykes for a walk, and that’s all. Really one must be extraordinarily clever to be able to talk day after day all one’s life. How does one do it?A priori,one would expect to have said all the things one has got to say by the time one was twenty, and I’m twenty-one. Yet I am not dumb yet. One doesn’t talk about things that happen, and most people, and I am one myself, never think at all, so they can’t talk about what they are thinking about. Give me some whisky and soda; perhaps, as Mulvaney says, it will put a thought into me. I hate Mulvaney worse than I hate Learoyd, and that is worse than I hate Ortheris. As for Mrs. Hawksbee, that’s another story. Soda is like a solution of pin points. It pricks one all over the mouth. I wonder if it would do as well to put ordinary pins into water. I shall ask Longridge what he thinks about it. Now he’s an exception, he does nothing but think; you can hear the machinery clicking inside him. He thinks about all the ingenious things he’s going to do and all the ingenious things nobody else would think of doing. They don’t come off mostly, because the door hits him in the face, or the gum won’t stick. Thanks. When! Do you knowStewart is beginning to think I shall get through the tripos, and he warned me not to work too much. He says that I shall, by all precedents in such matters, get brain fever and consumption, and that my sorrowing friends will kneel round my expiring bedside—you see what I mean—on the morning the tripos lists are announced and shout out above the increasing clamour of my death rattle, ‘You are Senior Historian,’ and that my reform from the wild young spark to the pale emaciated student, will all date from one evening last year at the Savoy, when he said he would only take the longest odds if he had to bet on my getting through.”
“And did you give him long odds?”
“No: I wouldn’t have bet against myself even then, for the simple reason that one never knows how much one can try until one has tried. If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody will believe in you. Not that I do believe in myself for a moment, any more than I believe in, in anybody else. You see, six months ago I shouldn’t have believed it possible that Ishould work steadily four hours or more a day. I think I shall take to spectacles, and go for grinds on the Grantchester road; I believe that’s thechicthing to do in sapping circles. Fancy waking up some morning to find oneself in a sapping circle. I wonder what Saps think about.”
“Sap, probably. Oh, yes, certainly sap. Either Thucydides, or binomial theories, or is it theorems or aortas. Babe, let us meditate on aortas for a time.”
“By all means. I wonder what an aorta is. Yes, thanks, but only a mouthful, as Reggie says. That’s because he has such a big mouth. I say, I wish I had an object in life: it must be so interesting.”
“Liver,” said Anstruther brutally, “take a pill. What do you want an object in life for?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It would be something to play about with, when one didn’t want to talk or see other people. I suppose a conscience would do as well. I haven’t either.”
“You said ten minutes ago that you didn’t want to talk. Since then I haveonly been able to get in an occasional word edgewise.”
The Babe laughed, and finished his whisky.
“Yes, I’m very sorry. It’s a great misfortune not to be able to be silent. It’s not my fault. I sha’n’t take a pill; I shall go to bed instead. I always used to think that ‘the grave as little as my bed’ was an independent sentence and meant literally what it said. Not that it meant much. Do you ever lie awake?”
“No, of course not: I can understand the difficulty of keeping awake, but not of going to sleep.”
“I lay awake nearly five minutes last night,” said the Babe, “and so I thought I was going to be ill! But I wasn’t, at least not at present. I suppose people who lie awake, think.”
“I always fancied they only swore.”
“In that case there would be nothing gained. I’m getting silly. Good-night.”
And when the bowler sent a ballOff which none else would try to score,He did not seem to care at all,But hit it very high for four.Hotch-potch Verses.
And when the bowler sent a ballOff which none else would try to score,He did not seem to care at all,But hit it very high for four.Hotch-potch Verses.
And when the bowler sent a ballOff which none else would try to score,He did not seem to care at all,But hit it very high for four.Hotch-potch Verses.
TheBabe was lying at the bottom of a Canadian canoe on his back, singing low to his beloved. At least he was not exactly singing, but swearing gently at Sykes, who had laid himself down on his stomach and the day was too hot to have bulldogs on one’s stomach. The Babe about an hour ago had landed to see if Reggie was in, and finding his rooms empty and ungarnished, tied his canoe up to the bank to sleep and read a littleRavenshoefor an hour, but it had slipped its cable and as he had left the paddle on the bank it had required only a few moments reflection to convince him that he was hopelessly and completely at the mercy of the winds and waters, like Danaë, the mother of Perseus, in her wooden chest, and thathis destiny was no longer in his own hands. As then, there was nothing whatever to be done, he did nothing in serene content. He would soon bump against the arches of Clare Bridge, but until that happened there was no step he could possibly take.
It was just three days before his tripos began, and the Babe, with a wisdom beyond his years, was taking three complete holidays. He argued that as it already seemed to him that his brain was one turbid mass of undigested facts and dates, the best thing he could do was not to swallow more, but to let what he had settle down a little. For a fortnight before he had been working really hard, going over the ground again, and for the next three days he meant neither to think nor do anything whatever. As he expressed it himself after last Sunday morning chapel, “I am going,” he said “to eat and sleep and do and be simply that which pleases me.”
He was roused by a loud injured voice not far off shouting, “Look ahead, sir,” and he sat up. His boat, as is the ineradicable habit of Canadian canoes, had driftedbroadside across the river and was fouling the course of an outrigger which was wanting to come up.
“I’m very sorry,” shouted the Babe, “but I’ve lost my paddle. Hallo, Feltham, is that you?”
“It’s me, Babe. What can I do for you, and what do you mean by fouling my waterway? Where is your paddle?”
The Babe looked round.
“Oh, it’s up there on the bank, by the King’s Bridge. Can’t I catch hold of the tail of your boat, then you might tow me up there?”
“All right, but don’t call it a tail, as some rowing man will hear you and have a fit. Let me get clear. Are you slacking, to-day?”
“Yes, and for the next two days. My tripos begins on Monday, and I think that if I do nothing for a day or two I may be able to remember again who the Electric Sophia was.”
“Is she important? She sounds as if she might be the wife of the man who discovered lightning.”
“Don’t confuse me further,” said the Babe. “Where are you off to?”
“Oh, up the river. There’s no cricket to-day.”
“I didn’t know that people who played cricket ever rowed.”
“They don’t for the most part: but I don’t consider that a reason for not doing so if I wish.”
“Are you playing for the ‘Varsity on Monday?”
“They have been polite enough to ask me.”
“And you have very civilly consented. Well, good-bye.”
The Babe sat in his canoe for half an hour or more, and got through a littleRavenshoe, and a little meditation. The meditation concerned itself chiefly with Feltham, who, as was universally acknowledged, was the best of good fellows, quiet, steady, thoroughbred. And these things gave the Babe some pleasure not ill-deserved, to think over, for Feltham had been known primarily as a friend of his. And when he was tired of meditating hetied up his canoe again and walked up to the King’s field, for his college was playing King’s and he was certain of finding company, whichever side was in. It turned out that King’s was in that enviable position, and of King’s, Reggie and a careful little man in spectacles. Reggie could not by the most partial of his friends be called a cricketer, but the most impartial of his enemies would have had to confess that he often made a great many runs. He had a good eye, he saw the ball and he helped it to fulfil its destiny by hitting it hard. More particularly did he hit balls on the off which ought to be left alone, and he always hit them high in the air over long slip’s head. It really did not seem to matter where long slip was placed, for he always hit the ball over his head, and out of reach. Straight balls he subjected to a curious but very vigorous mowing process, which took them swiftly past the umpire’s nose. A straight yorker invariably got him out, if he knew it was a yorker and tried to play it, so that when he saw one coming he held his bat perfectly firm and rigid and quenched it, but if it did not occur to him that the ball was a yorker he treated it with cheerful contempt and hit it somewhere, which surprised no one more than himself. It seemed to be the recognised thing that he should be given three lives as at pool, and, as at pool, if he used them up quickly, he was frequently allowed to star, and have two more. A sort of extra square leg, specially designed for his undoing, had just given him his fourth life when the Babe appeared, and Reggie scored three runs over it. The field luckily could be arranged solely with a view to catching him, for the careful little man in spectacles only scored singles, and those by hitting balls with extreme caution just out of reach of cover-point.
The Babe enjoyed watching cricket, especially the sort of game that was going on now. One bowler was extremely fast, the other incredibly slow, and Reggie hit them both in the air with perfect impartiality, and the careful little man played them both with as much precision and delicacy, as if he was playing spillikins.
However, a few overs later, though his own score was small, he did Reggie, and so, indirectly his side, a signal service. The latter had hit a fast ball almost quite straight up in the air and extremely high, and they both started on a forlorn run. Point and wicket-keep both ran to it, and the careful little man charged violently in between them exactly at the crucial moment, as they were both standing in front of his wickets, with the result that out of the midst of chaotic confusion the ball fell innocuously to the ground. The careful little man went to the pavilion for a new pair of spectacles after being given “not out” for obstructing the field, which he certainly had been doing, and point and wicket-keep cursed him and each other, and Reggie thanked them all.
This was the last ball of the over, so Reggie still had the bowling. The slow bowler prepared for him a ball with an immeasurable break from the off upon it, but Reggie very wisely danced gaily out onto the middle of the pitch, turned straight round and hit it so severe a blow that the wicket-keep in whose direction itwas travelling had only just time to get out of the way. It narrowly missed Reggie’s own wicket, but a miss is as good as four runs when it is hit hard enough, and this one was.
But the service he often did his side, and was doing now, could not be fairly measured merely by the runs he scored, for the demoralising effect he always had on the field was worth fifty extra. After a certain number of catches have been missed, and a large number of balls hit high in the air just out of reach of a field, a side begins unconsciously to think “Kismet” and withal to grow discontented, and a side that thinks “Kismet” is lost.
Reggie was out seventh wicket down, having made sixty-two, and as there was only another half-hour to the drawing of stumps, he left the game, and walked down with the Babe. They were going to dine together and go to the theatre to see a touringMrs. Tanqueray. To the Babe’s great delight the “theatrical tuft-hair” was in great force, and between the acts he wandered about in the passagelistening rapturously to the fragments of their conversation.
There was one in particular, who had sat next the Babe, markedly worthy of study. His gown was about eighteen inches long, and his cap, out of which he had carefully abstracted every particle of board, drooped gracefully at all its corners. He was in dress clothes with a smoking coat (not in a Norfolk jacket,) and he wore a large diamond solitaire, and a red cummerbund. He was evidently a king among his kind, and several of them crowded round him as he came out between the acts and admired him. They called him “Johnny,” and he called them “Johnny” individually, and “Johnnies” collectively, and the Babe listened to them with a seraphic expression of face.
“Arfly parful, isn’t it? I say, Johnny, give me a light.”
“Old Redfarn’s put up a notice about not smoking in the passage. I shall rag him about it.”
“That gurl’s pretty good, isn’t she? Looks rather nice too.”
“You’re quite mashed on her, old chappie. But she’s not a patch on Mrs. Pat.”
“Johnny can’t think of anything but Mrs. Pat. I say, let’s go and have a drink.”
“All right. Johnny stands drinks. The gurl at the bar’s an awful clipper.”
“Johnny will drop his pipe and get her to pick it up for him.”
“Well, come on, you Johnnies. There’s only ten minutes. Keep an eye on Johnny.”
The Babe’s eye followed them as they walked off to the bar, with rapturous enjoyment.
“Aren’t they heavenly?” said he to Reggie. “Oh, I wish I was like that! It must be so nice to feel that one is the light and leading of the whole place and really knows what life is. I wish I knew what life was. I wonder how they get their hair to stick out like that. How I have wasted my time! I too might have been a Johnny by now, if I’d cultivated them. Reggie, do come to the bar: I want to gaze and gaze on them.”
But Reggie refused: he said they made him sick, and the Babe told him that he regarded things from the wrong standpoint.
“You know,” said the Babe, “they’ve persuaded each other that they are the very devils of fellows. They really believe it. What a thing it is to have faith. They will talk quite fluently to the barmaid. I remember so well trying to see whether I could. I couldn’t: I knew I couldn’t all the time. I have never felt so hopelessly bored in so few minutes. They think it’s wicked; and they think that they rag their tutors. The poor tutors are men of no perception, for they haven’t the least idea they are being ragged. There they all come again. Their faces shine with deviltry. Did you hear them talk about Mrs. Pat? They meant Mrs. Patrick Campbell you know—”
“You’re no better, Babe,” said Reggie, “you used to want people to think you wicked.”
“Oh, but that’s quite different. Youcan’t say that I was ever the least like a Johnny. I never had the courage. Fancy being as brave as they are, and oh, fancy deliberately sitting down and taking all the stuffing out of your cap in order to be a blood!”
“I’ll take yours out, if you’ll take mine, Babe. There’s the bell. We must go in again.”
The Babe went to see Stewart when he went back to Trinity. The latter thoroughly approved of his holiday.
“You are giving yourself a little space,” he said, “in which it may be hoped you will forget, or rather assimilate, a few of the useless and ugly things which our system of examinations has compelled you to learn. A historian is not a person who knows masses of facts and dates, but a man who has built a structure upon them. The facts are the scaffold, which disappears when the house is built. And the tripos turns out a quantity of promising young men who can only build scaffolds. I wish I was examining. There should be no questions with dates inthem, and they should all begin “Trace the tendency,” or “Indicate in a great many words the influence.”
“I wish I felt more certain about my scaffold.”
“My dear Babe, don’t vex your soul. Possess it in peace. I would give long odds on your getting through. What I did not expect was that you should have taken the distasteful steps that lead to so immaterial a result. You got a second in your last May’s didn’t you? Do let us talk of something a little more interesting than triposes.”
“Well, I didn’t introduce the subject,” said the Babe.
“What have you been doing this evening?”
“I’ve just been to theSecond Mrs. Tanqueraywith Reggie.”
“An interesting medical case,” remarked Stewart. “I believe the author consulted an eminent nerve doctor, as to how many months’ living with Aubrey Tanqueray would drive an excitable female to suicide. He thought six, butas the author wished her to do it in less, he had to introduce other incentives. Aubrey Tanqueray would drive me to madness in a week, and to suicide in eight days. He handed her toast at the scene at breakfast, as if he was giving her a slice of some cardinal virtue with the blessing of the Pope spread on it like butter. The realmotifof the play, though the British public haven’t known it, is her growing despair at being wedded to him, and the immediate cause is theSecond Mr. Tanqueray’snoble forgiveness of her when she was found to have tampered with the letter bag. He treated her like a candidate for confirmation, instead of boxing her ears, and said that the incident only served to draw them closer together, or something of the kind. Apparently if you commit a sufficiently mean action towards a person who really loves you, he will be delighted, and love you the more for it. It sounds a little Jesuitical, baldly stated. Who wrote the play? Pinero wasn’t it. Pinero is obviously the future from ‘Pinsum,’ I am a pin.”
The Babe laughed.
“I didn’t attend to the play much,” he said. “There was an undergraduate sitting next me, who was more interesting. He wore a red cummerbund.”
“Ah, yes,” murmured Mr. Stewart. “The kind that talks to the female in tobacconists’ shops, and sits on the counter as it does so. Its father is usually one of nature’s gentlemen, who has married a perfect lady. The two always marry each other, and in the next generation the females dress in Liberty fabric, and the males congregate at the smaller colleges. They are on the increase. I suppose it’s an instance of the survival of the filthiest.”
Mr. Stewart rose from his chair, and crossed over to the window-seat where the Babe was sitting.
“What can I do to amuse you, Babe?” he said. “I feel that it is the duty of all your friends to distract your thoughts from all subjects for the next two days. Shall I play cards with you—you shall teach me—or shall we talk about the Epsom meeting, or the A.D.C.? I suppose you are going to act in the May week? Why not actHamlet, and we will persuade Longridge to be Ophelia. There is something sublimely inconsequent in the way Ophelia distributes artificial flowers to the company which reminds me of Longridge in his soberer moments. I have been very much tried by Longridge to-night. He asked me to help him to sing glees in the Roundabout. Can you imagine Longridge and me sitting side by side in the Roundabout singing “Three Blind Mice?” I could imagine it so vividly that I didn’t go.”
The Babe laughed.
“You can give me whisky and soda, and then I shall go to bed. It is twelve, and I must practise being dressed and breakfasted by nine. Does it require much practice?”
“I should think about twenty minutes every morning. What is the use of doing a thing you have got to do, before you have got to do it? It is like cutting yourself with a knife to accustom yourself to a surgical operation.”
“There are points of similarity,” said the Babe. “I shall go to bed now for all that, as soon as I’ve drunk this.”
List, O list.Shakespeare.
List, O list.Shakespeare.
List, O list.Shakespeare.
TheBabe and Reggie were sitting outside the pavilion at Fenner’s watching the University against the gentlemen of England, who as the Babe said, so far from sitting at home at ease were running out to Feltham’s slow bowling and getting caught and stumped, with very enjoyable frequency. The cricket was a delightful mixture of a fine bowling performance and very hard hitting, which to the uneducated spectator is perhaps the most lively of all to watch. Feltham had in fact, from the Babe’s point of view, just sent down the ideal over. The first ball was hit out of the ground for six, the second bowled the hitter round his legs. The third ball was hit by the incomer for four, and the fourth for four. The fifth ball he also attempted to hit as hard as he could to square leg, and he was caught atpoint, in the manner of a catch at the wicket.
The Babe tilted his hat over his eyes, and gave a happy little sigh.
“Reggie, the tripos is the secret of life,” he said. “If you want to get a real feeling of leisure and independence, a feeling that you have been told privately by the archangels to amuse yourself and do nothing whatever else, go in for the tripos, or rather wait till you come out. I suppose that considering my years I have wasted more time than most people, and I thought I knew what it felt like. But I didn’t. I had no idea how godlike it is to do nothing. To have breakfast, and feel that it won’t be lunch-time for four hours, and after that to have the whole afternoon before you.”
“When are the lists out?”
“Oh, in about ten days now. Don’t talk about lists. Tell me how long you worked this morning. Tell me about the man in your college who works ten hours every day and eleven hours every night. Tell me of the difficulty of learning byheart the Roman emperors or the kings of Israel and Judah. Assure me that by knowing the angle of the sun above the horizon and the length of Feltham’s shadow, you could find out how tall the umpire is.”
“He’s about five foot ten,” said Reggie.
“That’s like the answers I used to give to the questions about the hands of a watch,” said the Babe. “They tell you that if the hands of a watch are together at twelve—there’s no ‘if’ about it, it is never otherwise,—when will they be together next. I always said about five minutes past one. It seems absurdly simple. I’ve often noticed them together-then: and the same remark applies to about ten minutes past two. That reminds me,” added the Babe, looking at his watch, “that it’s twenty-five minutes past five. The hour hand seems to have gained a little.”
“Oh, I remember,” said Reggie. “The hour hand gains seven-elevenths.”
“Seven-elevenths of what?”
“I don’t know. Of the answer, I suppose. I shouldn’t have thought it was five yet.”
“But it is, and that compels us to decide between tea and cricket.”
“We can get tea in the pavilion. There’s another four.”
“You shall give me a hundred to one that the next ball is not a wicket,” said the Babe.
“In pennies, and make it fifty.”
“Done.”
A very audible click, and an appeal. Reggie got up and felt in his pockets.
“I should have been ashamed to get out to a ball like that. You’ll have to pay for tea, Babe. There you are.”
“Twopence more,” said the Babe.
“Not if I went to the stake for it, Hullo, Ealing, where are you from? Ealing’s got a glorious post-tripos face too. He really deserves to be able to play ‘Praise the Lord, ye heavens, adore Him,’ but he can’t even now.”
“Composed by Mr. Haydn,” said Ealing, “and performed by Mr. Ealing. It contains a very difficult passage. Your left hand has to go to the left, and your right hand to the right. You feel all pulled in two. Babe, the tripos is the noblest of inventions. I think I shall go in for a second part. I can quite understand how the lower classes get in such boisterous spirits on bank holidays that they change hats with each other.”
“I’d change hats with—with a bishop,” said the Babe, looking wildly about for suggestions.
“So would I. Or with Longridge. He wears a blue cake hat. Hullo, they’re all out.”
“Come and have tea, then,” said Reggie. “The Babe stands tea.”
“Hang the expense,” said the Babe, recklessly. “When a man’s got some tin, what can he do better than to give his pals a real blow out? I’ve got four shillings. Tea for three, and bread and butter for two. The fortune of the Rothschilds sprang from these small economies. Bread and butter for two will be plenty. I’m sure none of us can be very hungryon so warm a day. Oh, there’s a tuft-hair drinking out of a tall glass. I expect it’s gin-sling. What is gin-sling? In any case you can’t say it ten times. Ging-slin.”
“I thought you could always say Ranjitsinghi, Babe.”
“I can when other people are just unable to. Sufficient champagne gives me a wonderful lucidity, followed by sleepiness. There’s Stewart. I didn’t know he came to cricket matches.”
Stewart was delighted to see them.
“But you, Babe, are not fit for the society of ordinary people,” he said, “your extreme cheerfulness since your tripos argues a want of consideration for others. What have you been doing?”
“I’ve been looking at cricket, and also talking.”
“You don’t say so.”
“I have, indeed,” said the Babe. “What effect does champagne have on you?”
“Why do you ask these sudden questions?” said Stewart wearily. “It makes the wings of my soul sprout.”
“The principle is the same. I atelobster salad the other day and drank port. It did not give me indigestion, but acute remorse.”
“Remorse for having done so?”
“No, a vague searching remorse for all the foolish things I had done, and all the foolish things I meant to do, and for being what I was. Food doesn’t affect your body, it affects your soul. Conversely, sermons which are supposed to affect your soul make you hungry.”
Stewart lit a match thoughtfully against the sleeve of his coat.
“The Babe has hit on a great truth,” he said. “A curious instance occurred to my knowledge two years ago. A strong healthy man readRobert Elsmere. It gave him so severe an attack of dyspepsia that he had to spend the ensuing winter on the Riviera and eat pepsine instead of salt for eighteen months. Then he died. The phenomenon is well established. Poor Simpson, the fellow of my college, as you know, broke his leg the other day. It was supposed to have happened because he tripped and fell downstairs. But he told me himself that he was just leaving his room, and that as he walked down stairs he read the first few pages ofStephen Remarx. It was that, of course, that broke his leg, and so he fell down stairs as soon as he tried to put it to the ground. The Babe is quite right. Sermons, as he told us, make him hungry and lobster and port remorseful. In the same way, high tea, if frequently taken, will make anyone a non-conformist, in the same way as incense induces Roman Catholicism. But, Babe, don’t tell Longridge.”
“Why not?”
“He will want to talk about it to me, and then I shall be taken with melancholy madness. Are you coming up for another year, Babe?”
“I don’t know. I should like to. Of course it will depend on my getting through. If I do, I think a note from my tutor to my father might have a wholesome effect.”
“Your tutor will do whatever you wish him to,” said Stewart. “At present he isgoing back to college. I have a hansom waiting because I hate walking. Do any of you want a lift?”
The others stayed up till stumps were drawn, and walked down together. The tea no doubt had affected the Babe’s soul in some subtle manner, producing acute fatuity.
The Babe spent the remaining ten days in assiduous inaction. He sat in canoes, he sat on benches watching cricket, he ate, he slept. He appeared at the Senate house on the morning when the lists were read out, in pumps, in pink pyjamas, a long great-coat, and a straw hat. Reggie, who stood next him, thought he detected signs of nervousness, when the names began to be read, but it is probable that he was mistaken, for the Babe had never before been known to be afflicted with that distressing malady. A large number of his more intimate friends were there, and an air of suspense was abroad. But it was over sooner than any one anticipated, for the Babe, contrary to the expectation of even the most sanguine of themall, and that was himself, came out first in the second class. There was one moment’s pause of astonishment, not unmingled with awe, and then a wild disorderly scene of riot and shouting arose, in which the Babe was seized and taken back to Trinity in a triumphal procession, which carried him over the grass in the great court, wholly disregarding the porters who gibbered helplessly around them, until Stewart appeared, who, however, instead of instantly stopping it, seemed to take sympathetic interest in the proceeding.
Later in the day he wrote a charming letter to the Babe’s father, in which he congratulated him on his son’s brilliant success, alluded to his keen historical instinct and his vivid grasp of events—whatever a vivid grasp may be—and stated (which was undoubtedly true), that if certain five men out of the whole University had not happened to go in for the same tripos the same year, the Babe would infallibly have been Senior Historian.
An answer came later to Stewart and the Babe. The latter’s was short but satisfactory. Reggie was breakfasting with him when the post came in, or rather he was waiting without any excess of patience while the Babe, whom he had just pulled out of bed, explained precisely how it was that he was not dressed yet, and urged him not to begin, or if he insisted on doing so, to play fair.
At this moment the porter entered with the letter, and the Babe snatched it from his hand, tore it open, and executed apas seulround the room, until he stepped on the kettle lid, and hurt himself very much.
“The Babe B.A. will be in residence another year,” he shouted. “You may eat all the breakfast, if you like.”
Reggie had a healthy appetite, and the Babe was rather plaintive about it.
Stewart, who had received a letter from the Babe’s father by the same post, looked in after breakfast with congratulations.
“I am delighted,” he said, “but, in a way, disappointed, and for this reason: I was looking forward to yourdenoûementwith some interest, and I should have found a melancholy pleasure in seeing how you would make your exit from Cambridge, and what piece of extraordinary folly would have been your last. It seems I shall have to wait another year for that.”
“Oh, don’t mind me,” said the Babe, shrilly. “Say you’re sorry I’m coming up again straight out, if you like.”
“No. On the whole, I don’t mind waiting another year,” said Stewart.
THE END.