Chapter III: Part 3

“It is incredible to me,” he said, “perfectly incredible that so much pedantry and narrowness can be compressed into so small a place. There is not a single one of my colleagues whom I could call a man of the world. I was saying just now to my dear friend Abbotsbury who has been very strongly urging me to stand for Cambridge in Parliament, that I am really quite unfit, perfectly unfit to represent the University. I know nothing whatever about my colleagues, and I disapprove of all I know of them. Take your own case. You are of years of discretion, my dear Babe, and if you choose to dress in a tablecloth, no one has any right to prevent you. They wouldn’t have any right to stop you if you chose to dress in two--less right in fact. I’m sure you looked charming in a tablecloth. Why should the Dean of your college exercise jurisdiction over your dress? He is no Prince Regent. For he dresses himself in a cake hat and a tail coat, which is perhaps the least becoming style of dress which can be conceived. Yet he isn’t sent down for it. Why should he be allowed to make the Great Court of Trinity hideous, and you be sent down for--for making it beautiful?”

“The Babe did a skirt dance down Malcolm Street,” remarked Reggie, “and it was a windy night.”

“Well, the Babe isn’t to blame if it is a windy night,” said Mr. Stewart. “They had probably been praying for wind in St. Mary’s, though the only time in my life that I attended a University sermon there was plenty of wind. The sermon was preached by a black missionary, who I think said he came from Iceland, which I don’t believe. He literally swept us away in a hurricane of inconsequent appeal. Really to assume that the Babe is responsible for the wind, is almost profanity. What a delicious night! It quite makes me think of the feasts of Tiberius at Capri. The air is as soft as the air of Naples and all the waiters here, as at Capri, are made in Germany. Germany itself, I believe, is getting gradually depopulated, and I ‘m sure I don’t wonder. Yes, I am staying here for a day or two. There is an expensive simplicity about the Savoy, which almost lets me forget for the time the pompous cheapness both literal and literary of University towns. Oxford is no better. Dons think about croquet and Triposes at Cambridge, and about Moderations and lawn tennis at Oxford. It is six of one and five and a half of the other. And the _cuisine_ of the college kitchens is enough to make Savarin turn in his grave. You order melted butter, and they bring forth milk in a crockery dish.”

“I thought you were devoted to Cambridge,” said Reggie. “I’m sure I’ve heard you say so.”

“Dear Reggie, let me ask you never to remember anything I say. But it is true that I am devoted to what I consider to be the _raison d’être_ of Cambridge, that is the undergraduates, with their fresh bright lives, and their _insouciance_, their costumes of tablecloths and their frank contempt for the class to which I have the misfortune to belong. That is why I always go up in the Long, dons for the time are in eclipse: it is like a whole holiday. I am going there next week, to stop for a month or so. I hope you are both coming.”

“Yes,” said the Babe, “we are both going up to work. I am to go in for a tripos in history instead of a pass. I had a short and painful interview with my father about it. Why are fathers so curt? Do you suppose I shall get through?”

“A tripos,” remarked Mr. Stewart, “is a form of self-mutilation. To go in for a tripos, if you are not by nature tripical, if I may coin a word, and I may tell you that it is to your credit that you are not, my dear Babe, implies a sacrifice of other branches of your nature. Why cannot fathers be content to let their sons be, and not do? No one yet has ever been able to tell me of any good thing that comes out of triposes, except that it keeps the Examiners to their rooms for three weeks afterwards. But they come out like pigmies refreshed with small beer, and talk about quadratic calculus and deliberative genitives with redoubled vigour. The test which triposes apply discovers whether the candidates are possessed of a little knowledge, and so are dangerous things. If they helped them to realise the beauty of ancient Athens, or the picturesqueness of the French Revolution, it would be a different matter and I, as I understood Longridge to do the other day at a College meeting, should advocate having a tripos once a week and twice on Sundays. But all they do is to instil into the minds of the undergraduates a confused and it may be an incorrect idea, that all Athenians were as great a bore as Thucydides and spoke as bad Greek, and that there is a grave doubt whether, after all, Marie Antoinette died by the guillotine, and was not carried off by an attack of acute old age at the age of eighty-seven. Even if it was so, and it is far from certain, why tell any one about it? History rightly considered is a great and wonderful romance, and the methods employed at places of education is to render sterile all the germs of romance it contains, and condense the residue of facts into the smallest possible compass, and Mr. Stanley Weyman then proceeds to write reliable blue books about them, which his publisher libellously advertises as “New Novels,” though they are neither new nor novel. One of my colleagues just before the tripos, circulated among his pupils a half-sheet of paper, not very closely printed. But that infernal half-sheet contained all the procedure of the Athenian law courts, and if learned by heart, quite unintelligently, as he recommended, would insure full marks on any question that might be set on the subject. I had the misfortune to be with him when one of his pupils returned from the examination, and he literally danced for joy all over the Combination Room, though he is a stout man, when he saw that three questions out of nine could be completely answered from his repulsive little half-sheet. And the tripos in the face of these revolting details, is called a test of a man’s ability, and goes a long way to win him a Fellowship. You, my dear Babe, are a man of far more liberal education than that lamentable colleague of mine, though, I may say, in answer to your question, that I would only take very long odds if I had to bet on your chance of getting through.”

“I got through my last May’s,” remarked the Babe in self-defence.

“Yes, but without incriminating myself, my dear boy, I must remind you that I looked over at least three of your papers, and the marks I gave you were more for your capability of acquiring romantic and delightful knowledge, and for a certain power of giving plausible and voluminous answers to questions of which it was obvious you knew nothing whatever, than the actual knowledge your papers displayed. However if you come down to little half-sheets of useless and absurd facts, no doubt you will be able to get through, and it is upon that, that I would take only very long odds. From what I know of you, I do not think you will come down to that. I am delighted to hear you are coming up in the Long, and we will read some charming French memoirs together. They are much more amusing, and much more picturesque than Zola’s tedious pictures of the Second Empire. Reggie, you are classical, are you not? Read, mark, and learn the _Phædrus_, and the _Symposium_. The former you should read on the upper river under a plane tree if possible, the latter after dining wisely and well in your rooms, and you will know more of the essential Greek than all Mackintyre’s horrid little half-sheets could ever teach you.”

“Then do you think the tripos is perfectly useless and valueless?” asked the Babe.

“Absolutely so: and what makes it more ridiculous is that it is not even ornamental. Most useless things have some beauty or charm about them. The tripos alone, as far as I know, has none. I have only done one thing in my life of which I am thoroughly ashamed, and that is that I took a first in my tripos. Mackintyre of course did the same. It is the thing in his life--he was Senior Classic I think--of which he is most proud. However, to do him justice, I believe that of late years what is called the Philatelic Society has usurped most of his leisure time. No, it has nothing to do with telepathy; it means loving things that are a long way off and is specialised to apply to collections of postage stamps. To me the word denotes ‘Distance lends enchantment to the view.’”

The Babe was continuing to eat strawberries with a pensive air while Mr. Stewart spoke, and having finished the dish he looked round plaintively, and Reggie caught his eye.

“You mustn’t eat any more, Babe,” he said, “it’s after twelve, and we’re going out at eight to-morrow, and we have to get back to Prince’s Gate.”

The Babe sighed.

“Mr. Sykes will be waiting up for us,” he said; “I suppose we ought to go. He will lose his beauty-sleep.”

VIII.--A GAME OF CROQUET.

_Oswald._ Speak to me of this game croquet.
_Odo._ It is the game of King’s.--OLD PLAY.

So the Babe took Reggie’s queen, which for the last eight moves had led a dog’s life, and Reggie lost his temper and upset the board intentionally. Mr. Sykes who was lying on the hearth-rug, pretended that the black king was a rat, though of course he knew it was not, and proceeded to worry it.

In other words it was just after lunch on Monday the 7th of August. They had lunched in Hall, and a Fellow of the college, who rejoiced in the name of Gingham had asked them to play croquet afterwards in the King’s garden at half-past two. There was no cricket going on, and it was too hot to play tennis, so they very kindly consented.

The black king was rescued, and the Babe tucked Mr. Sykes under his arm and shut him into Reggie’s gyp closet, as the sight of a croquet ball always inspired him with a wild, chattering rage, and they strolled out onto the bridge to wait for Gingham, who appeared before long accompanied by a colleague from another college, of mean appearance, who proved also to be of uncertain temper.

The limes down to the back gate were in full flower and resonant with bees, and Mr. Gingham made a very felicitous quotation from the fourth Georgic with gay facility. Beyond, the road along the Backs lay cool and white beneath the enormous elms, and the Babe asserted that he heard a nightingale, which Mr. Gingham’s friend said was quite impossible, since it was the end of the first week in August. But the Babe remarked with a fatuous smile, that he had been Senior Ornithologist, and might be supposed to know. Upon which Mr. Gingham’s friend said there was no such thing as an Ornithological tripos, and the Babe replied: “That’s a Loring,” and refused to explain further.

Behind the railings the garden lay deliciously fresh and green. Long, level plains of grass were spread about between the flower-beds, and the whole place had an air of academic and cultivated repose. On one of these stretches of lawn a game of tennis was in progress; the performance was not of a very high class, but the players seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Each game opened with a regularity which to the ordinary mind would appear monotonous in incessant repetition. The first service delivered by all the players was a swift, splendid fault served low into the net, and this was invariably followed by a slow underhand service, always perfectly faultless, but probably easy of execution. Then, however, a pleasing diversity varied the progress of the rest. About sixty per cent. of these services were returned, in which case the partner of the server, who stood close up to the net, hit them cruelly out of court and called the score in an angry, rasping voice, as if it had been contradicted. The other forty per cent. came to an untimely end in the meshes of the net. But the interest of the game to the Babe, who lagged behind to watch it for a few minutes, was, that whereas most people who play lawn-tennis indifferently are exactly like everybody else, these four players seemed to him to be like nobody else. One of them was so glaringly obscure that you would scarcely have known he was there, if you had not seen him returning the balls; the second was more neglected by nature than one would have thought a living man could be, and had the sleeves of his shirt buttoned round his wrists; the third had a face which resembled only the face of an emaciated man seen in the bowl of a spoon, and the features of the fourth were obscured by a hat which resembled a beehive in shape, and a frieze coat in texture, but on the doctrine of probabilities, it seemed likely that, did we know all, he would have proved to be as remarkable as his fellow sportsmen. He whisked about with astonishing rapidity, though he was hardly ever in his right place, and a handkerchief which dangled out of his trousers pocket reminded the observer of a white, badly-trimmed tail.

The Babe’s curiosity to see his face grew unbearable, but, like the Quangle-Wangle, his face was not to be seen. Once the Babe thought he caught sight of a small, round, open mouth, but he could not be sure.

The name of Mr. Gingham’s colleague was Jones, and he and Gingham played the Babe and Reggie. Jones began, but failed at the second hoop, and the Babe having passed it, croquetted him cheerfully away into a fine big bush about one hundred yards distant. He said to Jones, in his genial way: “An enemy hath done this,” but got no reply. He then tried to get into position for the third hoop, and it is doubtful whether in all the annals of croquet, there was ever made so vilely futile a stroke. Gingham followed, and as it was hopeless to mobilise with a ball a hundred yards off, took a shot at the Babe’s ball, got through the third hoop, and secured position for the cage. Reggie mobilised with the Babe, and then there was a pause, broken by a confused but angry murmur from inside a beautiful laurestinus now in full flower. It is almost needless to explain that Jones could not find his ball. When he did discover it, he took it out and made an extraordinarily good attempt to get into position for the second hoop, but just hit the wire, and lay in a bee-line with the opening. He lit a cigarette and tried to kick the match with which he had lit it.

Then it was that Satan entered into the Babe’s soul, and from this point an analysis of Jones’s strokes is worth recording.

(I.) Secured position for the second hoop.

(II.) Tried to regain position for the second hoop.

(III.) Wired for the second hoop.

(IV.) A curious stroke in which the cage was torn up and twisted as if by some convulsion of Nature, and had to be replaced in position and straightened.

(V.) Hit the Babe’s ball, but played out of turn. Ball replaced, and stroke played again. No result, but left near the further stump.

(VI.) Failed to secure position for the second hoop.

(VII.) Secured position for the second hoop.

(VIII.) A cross-country hit from below the willow-tree into the same beautiful laurestinus.

(IX.) Captured the Babe’s ball, and sent it to the feet of the man with the beehive hat.

(X.)} Returned by stages to the second } (XI.)} hoop.

(XII.) Sent the Babe through the cage by accident.

(XIII.) Secured position for the second hoop.

At this point Mr. Jones gave vent to a most regrettable remark about the Babe, and his nose swelled a little. Such a result was excusable, for the Babe’s diabolical ingenuity in attacking him had only been equalled by his diabolical luck. Twice,--for the ground was not well-rolled--had his ball come skipping and hopping along, and had pounced upon his adversary’s like a playful kitten, and twice he had cannoned violently off a hoop onto it. But about this point his luck had shown signs of failing, and he sheltered himself for a few strokes near his partner, who together with Gingham had been plodding slowly and steadily round the hoops. Altogether the game had been like “Air with Variations,” the Babe and Mr. Jones taking brilliant firework excursions across the theme. But for a little while it seemed as if the cup of the Babe’s iniquities was full, and for ten minutes he kept falling into the hand of his adversaries with the most surprising persistence. But the end was not yet.

Half an hour later the position was as follows:

Reggie and Gingham were rovers, the Babe had not been through the cage coming back, but Jones had only the two last hoops to pass, and it was Jones’s turn. The Babe was getting a little excited, and the lust for vengeance was on Jones. He had even gone so far as to advise the Babe what to do on one occasion, and the Babe had answered him shortly in a high, tremulous voice.

The Babe’s ball was in position for the cage, and theoretically Jones was wired to him. But his ball, violently and maliciously struck, curled in a complicated manner off the cage wires and hit the Babe’s.

“That’s a beastly fluke,” said that gentleman in an excited contralto.

Jones could afford to be generous.

“It did turn it off a little,” he said pacifically, “but I think it would have hit it anyhow.”

“Then you think wrong,” said the Babe outwardly calm.

The laurestinus quivered.

Jones became a rover, and mobilised with his partner, but not very close.

The Babe failed to mobilise with Reggie.

Gingham shot at his partner and missed.

Reggie mobilised successfully with the Babe.

_Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat._ Jones ought to have separated them but having hit his partner, he tried to put him out, failed, but left himself and his partner both close to the stump.

The Babe smiled, and there was a tea-party of four. He smiled again a little unkindly. He put Gingham out, and he hit Jones’s ball. A moment afterwards a frenzied croquet ball bounded into the net of the tennis-players, and caused the spoon-faced man, for the first time that afternoon, to serve two consecutive faults. Then the Babe went back to his hoop. Gingham was of a peaceful disposition but rather timid. He had, however, caught a glimpse of Jones’s face as he walked off to the lawn-tennis court, and it might reasonably, he said afterwards, have frightened a bolder man than he. So he turned to the Babe.

“You know it’s only a game,” he said, and the Babe replied still rather shrilly:

“Then watch me play it.”

Reggie and the Babe between them could easily keep Mr. Jones’s ball safely off the ground, and the Babe plodded on till he too was a rover, and Reggie and he went out in the next two turns.

“A very pleasant game,” said he smiling.

Jones was ill-advised enough to murmur:

“Insolent young ass.”

The Babe heard and his face turned pink, but his smile suffered no diminution.

“A very pleasant game,” he repeated, “but only a game.”

IX.--TEA AT THE PITT.

Dark house by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street.--TENNYSON.

The Babe 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 the tripos 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 asking who 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 was discovered, 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 inimitable _Ravenshoe_ which 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 called _Gerald 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,” shouted Reggie, “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 up _Ravenshoe_.

“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 a stone 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 remember that 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.”

X.--ROYAL VISITORS.

“Prince and Princess!” he cried. “That means
Will 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 Virgin Mary 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 Princess did 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 did not 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 the _pas-de-quatre_ twice 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 for that 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, and _Windsor 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 the _Morning 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 long strip 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 the _Morning Post_ from 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 the _beau rôle_ to-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 the _Morning 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.”

XI.--THE REHEARSAL.

They had a rustic woodland air
--After WORDSWORTH.

Ealing had 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 the Freshman 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 Babe about 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 the _Agamemnon_ did 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 the _Agamemnon_ was 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 he had 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 a bull-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 voice of 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.