Chapter V: Part 5

The performance rose to the level of excellence, and Cassandra maintained it, but Clytemnestra----the pens of the critics failed before Clytemnestra. They couldn’t, they confessed, do her justice. She was a creation, a revelation, an incarnation; she was wonderful, marvellous, stupendous, gorgeous, inimitable, irresistible, unapproachable, inexplicable. She held the mirror up to Nature, the κἁτοπτρον up to art, and the _speculum_ up to drama--this was a little involved, and Dr. Propert is responsible. A shaggy student from Heidelberg who represented his university, thought she was a woman, and, heedless of Agamemnon’s doom, fell in love with her on the spot, and was disposed to take it as a personal insult that the Babe was of the sex that Nature made him. However, as marriage was out of the question, he wrote an appreciative article in the Heidelberg _Mittheilungen_ on Clytemnestrismos (made in Germany), contrasting it with Agamemnonismos, with a great deal about the standpoint of the subjective Ego, in the presence of objective archaism. She held the house, she entranced the audience, she dominated their imaginations; she tore away the veil of realism from in front of idealism (whatever that may mean); she gilded Æschylus’s conception, and enriched his execution. She was Clytemnestra. And then they began all over again with variations.

Every night at the fall of the curtain, the Babe was called back again and again, every night the whole house rose at him like one man, and the florist outside the theatre must have realised a competence for the rest of his days. It had been a rather dull and uneventful term, the University wanted something to go mad about, and stark staring mad it went. If Cambridge had not been in a Christian country, it would have had a Babe-cult on the spot. His photograph, taken at the great moment when he came out with “murder beaming from every line of his countenance” as the _Cambridge Daily News_ finely observed, and slowly wrung his hands free of the blood that dripped from them, was in half the shops in the town. For the second time--a unique distinction--he was in authority in the “Granta,” and the _Cambridge Review_ had a long article entirely about him, beginning, “It must surely have occurred to any thoughtful critic.” Night after night the cry of “Speech”--what could have been less appropriate than that Clytemnestra should make an English speech after a Greek play?--went up from a crowded house, and as regularly the Babe bowed and smiled and shook his black-wigged head, and gracefully declined. Once--it was most indecorous and improper--he went so far as to whistle to Sykes who was always in attendance, and made him bark, but otherwise the attempt to get a speech from the Babe was as unprofitable as trying to get water out of a stone. And his performance was the more remarkable in that he did not repeat himself slavishly: acting was an instinct with him, and each night he acted as his mood prompted him. For instance, his manner of entry after the murder, changed every night. Once he stood at the palace door quite silent for nearly a couple of minutes, until Dr. Propert turned quite pale with the thought that perhaps the prompter might think that he wanted prompting, and spoil the moment, wiping his hands slowly, and smiling a ghastly smile at the chorus; once he came out quickly and threw the axe away from him and plunged into his speech; once, and an audible horror ran round the house as he did it, he broke into the silence by a mirthless laugh as he fondled the axe with which he had done the deed, like a mother nursing her child. In a word, he made it clear, that Æschylus was a most excellent dramatist, and that he was a most excellent actor.

XVI.--AFTER LUNCH.

I shall be by the fire, suppose.
BROWNING.

There were only three weeks more to the end of the term, but as soon as the play was over, the Babe at once settled down again to his social and historical duties. With December a hard frost had set in, and football for a time was at a standstill. But next to football as an after lunch amusement, the Babe preferred above everything else a warm room, a large chair, and congenial company. With these objects in view he asked Reggie and Ealing to lunch with him one day, and entirely refused to go out afterwards. Reggie, who had a sort of traditional notion that people always went out after lunch, or else they were ill, was overruled by the Babe, who sent his gyp out to order muffins for tea, and drew his chair close up to the fire.

“But it’s such a jolly day, Babe,” said Reggie, who was only half persuaded.

The Babe looked out of the window and shuddered.

“By that you mean that there is a horrid smell of frost in the air, that the sun looks like a copper plate, and that by walking very fast and putting on woollen gloves you can get completely warm, with the exception of the end of your nose. I hate woollen gloves, I hate walking fast, and I hate the tip of my nose to be cold. I avoid all these things by sitting by the fire.”

“Fuggy brute.”

“About my being a brute,” said the Babe, “there may be two opinions. But fuggy, as you call it, I am. I confess it, and I glory in it. At the same time I’m no fuggier than you. If you had your way you would go a nasty walk in order to get fuggy. We both want to be fuggy, and I merely adopt the easiest method of becoming so. Dear Reggie, you are so very English. You love taking the greatest possible trouble to secure your object. That is called the Sporting Instinct. Personally I am not troubled with a sluggish liver, but if I was I should take a pill. That would not suit English people at all: instead of taking a pill, they take exercise, purely medicinally, and they always adopt the most circuitous ways of taking it. What can be a more elaborate method of guarding against a sluggish liver than spending three thousand pounds on building a tennis court, which can only be used by two people at a time?”

“What do you play Rugger for, then?”

“Why, because it is the most expeditious way possible of getting exercise. You concentrate into an hour the exercise you couldn’t get under half a day if you went a walk.”

“I have known you get keen about it,” said Reggie. “Was that only because you admired the expedition with which you were getting exercise?”

The Babe yawned.

“We’ll change the subject,” he said. “I’ve been asked to your Comby on the 6th. I don’t know why a college should celebrate the birthday of their founder by making scurrilous rhymes about each other, but I’m quite glad that they should, and I have very kindly consented to come.”

“Thanks, awfully,” said Ealing.

“Don’t mention it. But really it’s a very interesting point, as Longridge would say. You all go to chapel, and they sing ‘Zadok the priest.’ Then you have a big feed in Hall, and the whole college assembles together, and they libel each other in decasyllable couplets. Luckily there’s no rhyme to Babe.”

“There are heaps,” said Reggie precipitously.

“I think none. Talking of Longridge, he is supposed to be perfecting a plan by which, as you walk up to your door you tread on a spring, and the door flies open. He says it is so tiresome to open a door when your hands are full. And his hands always are full.”

“It sounds very pleasant,” said Reggie. “Has he tried it yet?”

“Only once. That time his door was already open, and when he trod on the spring, it shut with, I believe, quite incredible violence and knocked all his books out of his hands, besides hurting him very much and breaking his spectacles. You’d think that would stop him? Not a bit. He merely rose on the stepping-stone of his dead self to higher things. It only gave him another new idea. He is going to have a second spring inside the door, which, when trodden on will shut it again after you. At least that’s what he means to do, when he is fit to walk about again. At present he is incapacitated. I went to see him yesterday; his nose is in splints. I am so glad I haven’t an ingenious mind.”

“I wouldn’t be Longridge’s bed-maker, if I was paid for it.”

“Bed-makers are paid for it,” said the Babe. “Besides, as he truly says, if you can have a dumb waiter why not have a dumb bed-maker made of some stronger material?”

“He never said anything of the kind, Babe,” said Ealing.

“My dear chap, he has said lots of things of the kind. You force me to contradict you. He hardly ever says anything of any other kind.”

“Babe, will you or will you not come out?” demanded Reggie.

“I will not come out. I’m not going to spoil my tea by going for a horrid walk.”

“I wish you would listen to reason.”

The Babe murmured something inaudible about there being no reason to listen, but when pressed, confessed that he had been reading the _Green Carnation_ and it had affected his brains.

But Reggie, following, as the Babe said, “that blind instinct which makes us Englishmen what we are”--he was taking liberties with the remarks made by his fellow-guest at the T.A.F.--insisted on going out and taking Ealing with him, though promising to come back for tea, and the Babe was left to himself.

He was conscious of feeling a little flat, now that the Greek play was over, and he half wondered to himself what he had done before it began, to get through the time. For instance, to-day it was barely half-past three, he was not going to dine till eight, and he had already done as much work as he meant to do. He thought bitterly that Dr. Watts had very much overrated Satan’s powers of invention. The upshot was that he fell asleep and Reggie and Ealing returning an hour later found him stewing contentedly in front of the fire.

The Babe was rather cross at being awakened, and he said they smelt horribly frosty. Also he wished the door to be shut, and he was very hungry. Why were they so unkind, and what had he done to deserve this? But the muffins came before long, and the Babe recovered his admirable serenity under the cheering influence of most of them.

“And though your muffin,” he remarked, “is said to destroy the coats of the stomach, no such ill effects will be experienced if the patient takes enough of them. My only misgiving is that I have not taken enough. And yet I have taken all.”

“How much dinner do you suppose you will be able to eat?” asked Reggie, who was still gazing incredulously at the empty dish which the Babe had put on the table close to him.

“As much as Stewart will be kind enough to give me. And his board is usually plentifully spread. If he asks me to dinner much oftener I shall feel bound in common gratitude to tell him the truth about my royal visitor in the Long. I wish I’d had a photograph of the group taken, Jack really looked too splendid.”

“Jack has the makings of a comedian about him,” said Reggie, “but just now he’s very serious. There is an epidemic of sapping abroad, but if it wasn’t sapping, it would probably be influenza, so we can’t complain. You’re touched with it, Babe, and Jack’s got it badly. I went to see him yesterday, and he was analysing the second Punic war in a large square note-book with notes on the Wasps at the other end.”

“I know. And he was quite angry when I ventured to speak disrespectfully of Hannibal. He called me a funny ass, and implied that Hannibal was more than a father to him. Also he has taken to red ink which is one of the worst signs. I went into his room in the dark one day last week, and upset something. It proved to be a stone bottle of red ink, rather larger than a ginger-beer bottle and quite full. Also the cork was out, and after that there was no further need for the cork. It would have been like locking the stable door when the steed was spilt--I mean, stolen. I pointed that out to him, for it was surely consoling to know that no more red ink could be spilt in his rooms, unless he was rash enough to buy some more, in which case, so to speak, it would have been on his own head, which would be worse than on the carpet, but he only murmured, ‘Caius Flaminius Secundus,’ and asked if I was sitting on his classical dictionary.”

“And were you?”

“I think it turned out that he was. So I called him a sap, and went away.”

“I hate a sap,” said Reggie with a certain dignity.

“We used to call a sap a groutbags at my private school,” said Ealing.

“Why?”

“I don’t know what else you could call them. I was a groutbags once myself.”

The Babe yawned.

“I feel rather futile,” he said. “I wanted to be amused, and you fellows would go for a walk. Let’s play ‘Kiss in the slipper,’ or something.”

“I hear you played Van John till two this morning,” said Reggie.

The Babe stopped in the middle of his yawn.

“Yes, a little after two, I think. We played Van John and other things. I lost six pounds. Blow the expense. Do you know Feltham of this college?”

“No, why?”

“Oh, nothing. He was there, that’s all.”

“Nice chap?”

“Nothing particular. Oh, yes, quite nice, I should think, but he went away as soon as we shut up playing. I hardly know him--in fact I never met him before. Hullo, it’s seven. I must go.”

“Where are you going?”

“Only to see a man I know, as the Apostles say. Are either of you dining with Stewart to-night?”

“Yes, I am,” said Reggie. “At eight, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Be punctual, because I’m so hungry.”

XVII.--A LITTLE GAME.

Whist is slow, but baccarat bites,
Baccarat bites, and we want to be bit;
Late comes dawn on these winter nights,
And you need no knowledge to play at it.
HOTCH-POTCH VERSES.

In all his life for two years and a half at Cambridge, and he had associated with very many classes there, the Babe had never come across any man whom he would suspect of being capable of doing that which necessitated his going to see “the man” he knew on such an errand as this, and he concluded rightly that though such people no doubt occurred, they were not to be looked for, with any chance of finding them, at university towns. His errand was not a pleasant one, and it was far from being an easy one, and when he knocked at Feltham’s door a few minutes afterwards, he could not have hazarded the vaguest guess as to what manner of exit he would make.

The Babe was, unfortunately, strongly possessed by the gambling instinct, and when the night before a friend of his had come in after Hall, and proposed whist if they could get a four, the Babe said that if they were going to play cards, they might as well play something more amusing than whist, which seemed to him as a peculiarly unexhilarating mode of enjoying oneself, and which he regarded as a practical application of unmixed mathematics. If Broxton would raise two people to play at something more biting than whist, the Babe would raise two others.

The Babe raised his two without much delay, but Broxton returned with only one. However, he said he had met a chap called Feltham, who, he knew, played, and should he see whether he could come?

The Babe would have played cards with old Gooseberry himself, if he could not get anyone else, so Broxton went off to see whether Feltham would play, found him in and willing, and they played Van John for a while, until the Babe began to yawn and complained he had only lost three and six. Did they know Marmara, which was indifferently called “Only-a-penny,” chiefly because it dealt with sums usually much larger than that.

Some of them, and among these was Feltham, did know Marmara, and the others were willing to learn it. So the Babe, assuring them that no previous knowledge was required, proceeded to enlighten them. Everyone placed a small sum, say sixpence, or its equivalent in counters, in the pool, and the dealer thereupon dealt three cards face downwards all around, and three to himself. He then turned up the next card, and you had all your premises.

Thus--if, for instance, the card turned up happened to be a four of diamonds, each player in turn had to bet, before looking at his three cards which lay face downwards on the table, whether they contained a diamond higher than the four. His stake was only limited by the sum in the pool unless they chose to fix a smaller limit. Thus with the four turned up, it would probably appear to each player that there was a fair chance of his holding a higher card of the same suit, and he would in all likelihood stake pretty well as high as he could. He would then turn up his cards, and if his hand held a diamond higher than the four, he would have the pleasure of taking the amount of his stake out of the pool, if not, the pain of paying into the pool the same sum.

The game, so said the Babe, was amusing, owing to the fact that it was pure hazard, and also because the pool mounted up in a way that would seem to the uninitiated simply incredible. An example of this occurred at the fifth deal. At the beginning of this deal the pool contained four shillings. The Babe dealt, and turned up the two of spades. The first player naturally enough went the pool, but his hand very curiously contained only diamonds, and he paid four shillings into the pool, thus raising it to eight. Even more naturally, since the first player had held no spades, the second player again staked the pool. His hand contained two hearts and a club, and the pool became sixteen shillings. It would have been midsummer madness in the third player, who was Broxton, not to stake the pool, and as it was November and he was perfectly sane, he did so. His hand revealed three splendid hearts, and the pool rose to thirty-two shillings. The chances were thus enormously in favour of the fourth player clearing the pool, and he accordingly staked it. But as he held a diamond and two clubs, he paid the pool the equivalent of thirty-two shillings, in mean bone counters, belonging to the Babe. There was nothing left for the fifth player, who was Feltham, to do but to stake the pool, which he did. His hand, oddly enough, contained the seven, eight, and nine of clubs, and he remarked quite unreasonably, as he paid sixty-four shillings into the pool, that the cards had not been shuffled. Thus the Babe, who had dealt, had a pool of sixty-four shillings to win or lose. He staked the pool, but he held one diamond, one club, and the ace of spades, which counted below the two, and he wrote an I O U for sixty-four shillings, as he had not got enough counters, and paid it into the pool, remarking that this was better than whist at three penny points. Then the pool in one deal had mounted from four shillings, to one hundred and twenty-eight shillings, and it was obvious that if a similar deal occurred again now, there would be a very considerable sum in the pool at the end of it.

The Babe in these matters was, like the Athenians, somewhat superstitious, and he said cheerfully that it was a mounting pool, and they would have some amusement. The pool showed by its subsequent conduct that he was right, and at the end of an hour it held about £50, about half of which had been contributed by Feltham, whose luck had been abominable. This, as they were playing at present, might be won by anybody, since there was no limit to the stakes, and the Babe, with the best possible motives, since he was the only one present who would not be somewhat embarrassed by the total loss of his contribution to the pool, proposed setting a limit, of, say, twenty-five shillings to the stake. Feltham objected strongly, and the alteration was vetoed.

Everyone, with the exception perhaps of the Babe, was a little excited and on edge, for when two or three are gathered together to gamble they often generate spontaneously between them--this is a sober fact--a little demon which hovers about and unsettles their nerves. Feltham especially hardly spoke, except to name his stake, and sometimes to swear when he lost it, and the Babe felt that they were all taking it too seriously and quite spoiling his pleasure. For himself, he liked a “little game” because it happened to amuse him, but the others were behaving as if they cared whether they won money or lost money, and this, to the Babe’s thinking, spoilt the whole thing. The point of gambling, according to him, was not whether you won money or lost money, but the moment when it was uncertain whether you were going to win (in the abstract) or lose (in the abstract). The view is wholly unreasonable, and so is the gambling instinct.

It was Broxton’s turn to deal. He dealt badly, holding the pack from which he dealt nearly a foot above the table, so that if any of them happened to be looking at the cards as they were dealt to him, the chances were that he would get a glimpse or a hint of what the under one was, and once before that evening the Babe had demanded a fresh deal, because as his cards were dealt him, he could not help seeing the corner of a picture card. This time, however, he was handing a cigarette to Feltham, who sat on his right. But as Feltham’s cards were dealt him the Babe saw him look up quickly, and he himself saw the face of one of them, so far, at least, that he would have been ready to swear it was a picture card in clubs. Feltham at the moment seemed to him to open his mouth to speak, but said nothing and only glanced hurriedly at the Babe, who did not look at him again during the game. The turn-up card was the nine of clubs.

The first two players naturally enough, as there were only four cards out of fifty-two which could beat the nine, staked a nominal stake merely, and turned up their cards. One of them held the king of clubs, and this would have won, leaving only three cards in the pack which could win. He took a shilling, the amount of his stake, out of the pool, and said he wished he had trusted to his instinct. It was Feltham’s turn. He staked £20, which was madness. His hand contained the queen of clubs and he won.

* * * * *

Very soon after, the Babe renewed his proposition that they should limit the stakes, and this time there was no opposition, and as it was already after one, they settled to stop as soon as the pool had been emptied. The pool, seeing them change their tactics, also changed its own, and instead of mounting continued to sink steadily. Every now and then it would go up again by a couple of limit stakes, but the constant tendency was to sink, and in three-quarters of an hour it was empty. Broxton gathered up the cards and counters, and Feltham and two of the others said “Good-night,” and left the room, but Anstruther and the Babe sat down and waited. The Babe helped himself to whisky, tore up his own I O U’s which he had paid for, and there was a long awkward silence.

Broxton got up, closed the door, and came and stood in front of the fire.

“That fellow cheated,” he said at last. “I saw him, twice. Did you notice, Babe?”

“I thought he saw the cards which were dealt him once. The turn-up was a nine of clubs and he staked £20. It struck me as unusual, particularly as the king was already out.”

“Then he cheated twice, as Jim said,” answered Anstruther. “I am convinced he saw his cards once before, both times when Jim was dealing.”

“Jim, you damned fool,” said the Babe, “why can’t you manage to deal properly?”

“We’re all damned fools, I think,” said Broxton. “What business have we got to ask a fellow to play whom we don’t know, and who probably can’t afford it.”

“Nor can I,” said Anstruther, “but I don’t cheat.”

“Are we quite sure he did cheat?” asked the Babe.

“Personally, I am,” said Broxton, “aren’t you, Anstruther?”

“Good Lord, yes.”

“Well, what’s to be done?” asked the Babe.

“The men who play with him ought to know,” said Anstruther.

The Babe got up, and threw his torn-up I O U’s into the fire.

“Rot,” he said. “We can’t possibly be certain. And I’m not going to ask him to play again in order to watch him. That seems to me perhaps one degree lower than cheating oneself. It’s our own fault, as Jim said, for asking him.”

“My dear Babe, we can’t leave it as it is.”

“No, I don’t want to do that. I only meant that we couldn’t tell other people what we suspected, unless we were certain, and not even then. And we can’t be certain unless we play with him again, and that I don’t mean to do.”

“What _do_ you propose to do then?”

“I propose that one of us tells him what we thought we saw.”

“And if he denies it?”

“The matter ends there. At the same time to make it clear to him that three people separately thought they saw him.”

“Thought they saw him!” said Broxton.

“Certainly. Thought they saw him. I daresay he isn’t a bad chap. I daresay he was playing for far more than he could afford. It is even possible he will confess he did cheat, and it is quite possible that we are all wrong and that he didn’t. Personally I certainly thought he did, but I wouldn’t take my oath on it.”

“Who’s to ask him?”

There was a short silence. Then--

“I will, if you like,” said the Babe.

“Thanks, Babe,” said Jim, “you’d do it better than either of us.”

The Babe lit a cigarette, and finished his whisky.

“I’m off to bed,” he said, “I would sooner have played ‘old maid’ than that this should have happened. Of course none of us say a word about it? Good-night, you chaps.”

Anstruther and Broxton sat on for a bit after the Babe had gone.

“It’s a devilish business,” said the latter at length. “But I’m sure the Babe will manage it as well as it can be managed.”

“The Babe isn’t half a bad chap,” said Anstruther.

“No, I don’t think he is. In fact, I don’t think I ever knew a better. Are you off? Good-night.”

The Babe wrote a note to Feltham next morning asking him if he would be in at seven that evening, and receiving an affirmative answer, it thus came about that he tapped at his door at that hour.

XVIII.--THE CONFESSION.

Qui s’accuse, s’excuse.
FROM THE FRENCH.

The Babe’s supposition that Feltham “perhaps wasn’t a bad chap” was perfectly correct. At the same time it is perfectly true that he had cheated at cards, which, quite rightly, is one of the few social crimes for which a man is ostracised.

He had cheated, and he knew it, and he was thoroughly, honestly, and unreservedly ashamed of it. He did not try to console himself by the fact that he had never done it before, and by the knowledge that he would never do it again, because he knew that he would fail to find the slightest consolation in that, though it was perfectly true. The thing was done and it was past mending. Twice he had seen the cards, or at any rate had a suspicion of one of them, when they were dealt him, without saying anything. On one of these occasions what he had seen did not help him, for he saw only a card of another suit, but once, when he had seen the queen of clubs, he traded on it, and swindled the company of £20.

How he had come to do it, he did not know. He thought the devil must have taken possession of him, and he was probably quite right. The temptation was the stronger because he had lost, as the Babe had suggested, much more than he could afford, and the thing was done almost before he meant to do it. He more than half suspected that the Babe had noticed it, but to do him justice this suspicion weighed very light in his mind, compared with the fact that he had cheated.

Next morning the Babe’s note came, and his suspicion that the Babe had noticed it took definite form. It was no manner of use refusing to see him, but what he could not make up his mind about, was what answer he should give him. To confess it would not help him to make reparation, and to return, as he honestly wanted to do, the £20 he had won and besides it did not seem, in anticipation, particularly an easy thing to do. And when the Babe knocked at his door, he was still as much in the dark as ever, as to what, if the Babe’s errand was what he suspected, he should say to him.

The Babe accepted a cigarette, and sat down rather elaborately. He had determined not to remark upon the weather or the prospects of an early dissolution, or make any foolish attempts to lead up to the subject, and after a moment he spoke.

“I am awfully sorry,” he said, “to have to say what I am going to. In two words it is this: Three men with whom you were playing last night at Marmara, thought that once or twice you saw your cards, or one of your cards, before you staked. I am one of them myself, and we decided that the only fair and proper thing to do was to ask you whether this was so. I am very sorry to have to say this.”

The Babe behaved like the gentleman he was, and instead of looking at Feltham to see whether his face indicated anything, kept his eyes steadily away from him.

Feltham stood a moment without answering and if the Babe had chosen to look at him he would have seen that he paused because he could not command his voice. But the Babe did not choose to do so. Feltham would have given anything that moment to have been able to say “It is true,” but it seemed to him a physical impossibility. On the other hand he felt it equally impossible to take the high line, to threaten to kick the Babe out of the room unless he went in double quick time etc., etc.,--to do any of those things which thorough-paced swindlers are supposed to do when their honour is quite properly called in question.

“It is a damned lie,” he said at length, quite quietly and without conviction.

The Babe got up at once, and stepped across to where Feltham was standing.

“Then I wish to apologise most sincerely both for myself and the other two fellows,” he said, “and if you would like to knock me down, you may. I shall of course tell them at once we were mistaken, and I believe what you say entirely. Will you shake hands?”

Feltham let the Babe take his hand, and as the latter turned to leave the room, sat limply down in the chair from which the Babe had got up.

But the Babe had hardly got half-way across the room, when Feltham spoke again.

The Babe’s utter frankness had suddenly made it impossible for Feltham to let him go without telling him, but to tell him now was not made easier by having lied about it.

“Please wait a minute,” he said.

The Babe’s cigarette had gone out, and he lit it again over the lamp. Then he sat down in the window seat and waited. Outside, the grass was sparkling with frost and the clock chimed a quarter past seven. Simultaneously Feltham spoke:

“I have lied to you as well,” he said. “What you saw was perfectly true. I cheated twice, at least I saw one of the cards dealt me twice, and said nothing about it. Once the card happened to be immaterial, and once I staked £20 knowing I should win. I have told you all.”

The Babe was a person of infinite variety, and if those who knew him best had seen him now, they would hardly have believed it was he. He sat down on the arm of the chair where Feltham was sitting, and to himself cursed the whole pack of cards from ace to king, and above all Jim Broxton. Then aloud--

“My poor dear fellow,” he said. “I’m devilish sorry for you.”

Feltham, who had been expecting to hear a few biting remarks or else merely the door slam behind the Babe, looked up. The Babe was looking at him, quite kindly, quite naturally, as if he was condoling with him on some misfortune.

Feltham began, “Damn it all--” then stopped, and without a moment’s warning burst out crying.

The Babe got up, went to the door and sported it. Then he sat down again on the arm of the chair.

“Poor chap,” he said. “It’s beastly hard lines, and I fully expect it’s as much our fault as yours. You needn’t trouble to tell me you never did it before: of course you didn’t. I fully believe that. People who would confess that sort of thing don’t do that sort of thing twice. It was like this perhaps--we were playing for far more than you could afford, and you didn’t mean to do it, until somehow it was done. Money is a devilish contrivance.”

“Yes, it was just like that,” said Feltham. “As I told you, the first time I saw a card, it didn’t make any difference, though of course I ought to have said so. But the second time it did, and before I knew what I had done, I had cheated. Why don’t you call me a swindler and tell me I’m not fit to associate with gentlemen? It’s God’s truth.”

The corners of the Babe’s mouth twitched.

“It’s not my concern then. What would be the good of saying that?”

He paused a moment, hoping that Feltham would make a certain suggestion, and he was not disappointed.

“Look here, there’s the twenty pounds: what can I do with it? Can you help me?”

The Babe thought a moment.

“Yes, give it me. I’ll see that the other fellows get it somehow, if you’ll leave it to my discretion. And, you know, it sounds absurd for a fool like me to give advice, but if I were you I shouldn’t play cards for money again. It’s no use running one’s head into danger. If it’s not rude, what is your allowance?”

“Two hundred and fifty.”

“You bally ass! Yet I don’t know. It’s our fault. You couldn’t tell that the pool would behave in that manner, and I know, personally, I should find it out of the question to say one was playing for more than one could afford. Some people call it moral cowardice, it seems to me a perfectly natural reticence.”

“Of course I won’t play again,” said Feltham. “Why have you been so awfully good to me?”

“I haven’t. What else was I to do? Oh, yes, and I think I respected you for telling the truth. Most fellows would have lied like George Washington.”

Feltham smiled feebly.

“All that remains is this,” said the Babe. “Of course I must tell those other two fellows about it, the two I mean with whom I talked, but you can trust them absolutely. It is impossible that anyone else should ever know about it.”

“You don’t think--oughtn’t I to tell them all?” stammered Feltham.

The Babe frowned.

“Of course you ought not. Why the deuce should you? About the money--it must be divided up between us all. Six into twenty, about three pound ten each. Rather an awkward sum.”

“Why six?”

“Because there were six of us.”

“I can’t take any.”

“Your feelings have nothing to do with it,” remarked the Babe. “The money in the pool of course belongs to everyone. You return the others’ shares of that £20 and keep your own. Well, I’ll manage it somehow. I will make absurd bets, seventy to one in shillings. That will surprise nobody: I often do it. Good Lord, it’s a quarter to eight. If you’re going into Hall, you’ll be very late, and so shall I for my dinner. I must go. Oh, by the way, did you lose much altogether?”

“About twenty-five pounds.”

“Is it, is it”--began the Babe. “I mean, are you in a hole? If so, I wish you’d let me lend you some money. Why shouldn’t you? No? Are you sure you don’t want some? It’s no use receiving unpleasant letters from one’s father, when there’s no need. Well as you like. Good-night. Come round and look me up some time: I’m on the next stair-case.”

Feltham followed him to the door.

“I can’t tell you what I feel,” he said huskily, “but I am not ungrateful. Half an hour ago you asked me to shake hands with you. Will you shake hands with me?”

“Why, surely,” said the Babe.

XIX.--IN THE FIFTIES.

He sailed his little paper boats,
And when the folk thought scorn of that,
He spudded up the waiting worm
And yearned towards the master’s hat.
HOTCH-POTCH VERSES.

The Babe went off to dress for dinner much relieved in mind. Now that it was over he confessed to himself that he had been quite certain that Feltham had cheated, but that he should own up to it, was fine, and the Babe who considered himself totally devoid of anything which could possibly be construed into moral courage, respected him for it. He also registered a vow that never to the crack of doom--which cracked three days afterwards--would he play unlimited Marmara again, and told himself that he was not cut out for the sort of thing that he had just been through, and that he was glad it was over. He went round at once to tell Broxton and Anstruther what had happened, and after that shook the whole

affair from his mind, as a puppy shakes itself after being in the water.

He was, naturally, late for dinner, and Mr. Stewart who knew the value of soup and also the habits of the Babe, had not waited. When he did appear, he was, of course, perfectly unabashed, and took the bottom of the table with unassuming grace.

“The psychology of punctuality,” he remarked, “is a most interesting study. Some day I mean to study it, and I shall write a little monograph on the subject uniform with those which Sherlock Holmes wrote on tobacco ash and the tails of cart horses. I think there must be a punctuality bacillus, something like a death-watch, always ticking, and if there isn’t one, I shall invent it. It doesn’t take to me. I am too healthy.”

“My dear Babe,” said the Stewart, “you have disappointed me. I always hoped that you were the one person I have been looking for so long, who has never been punctual; But you have been punctual to my knowledge twice, once on an occasion in the Long----”

“When was that?” interrupted the Babe. “I don’t believe it.”

“On a memorable occasion. At lunch in your own rooms.”

The Babe caught Reggie’s eye, and looked away.

“Oh, yes.”

“And as Clytemnestra, you always killed Agamemnon with ruthless punctuality. I was always hoping to hear him scream during the next Chorus but one.”

“I did the screaming for him,” said the Babe complacently, “except on the first night. He could only scream like an empty syphon.”

“There is nothing more tragic or blood-curdling than the scream of an empty syphon,” said Stewart. “It shrieks to you, like a banshee of all the whisky and soda you have drunk. The only thing that could shriek worse would be an empty whisky bottle, and that can’t shriek at all. If he really could scream like that, you robbed him of a chance of greatness by screaming for him, although you screamed very well.”

“There are syphons and syphons,” said the Babe, “he screamed like an empty but undervitalised one, which had never really been full.”

“Babe, if you talk about undervitalised syphons during fish,” said Reggie, “you will drive us all mad, before the end of dinner.”

“Going mad,” said Mr. Stewart, “is an effort of will. I could go mad in a minute if I wished, and the Babe certainly determined to go mad when he was yet a boy. No offence meant, Babe. I can confidently state that during the three years I have known him, he has never for a moment seemed to be really sane.”

“I was perfectly sane when I settled to go in for the tripos,” said the Babe.

“You never settled to do anything of the kind. You think you did and it is one of your wildest delusions.”

“Secondly I was sane,” said the Babe, “when I--”

“No you weren’t,” put in Reggie.

“Reggie, don’t be like Longridge. But you are quite right. I wasn’t sane then, though I thought I was for the moment.”

“Longridge is better, though he still has a large piece of sticking plaster over his nose,” said Mr. Stewart. “He came to see me to-day. He insisted on arguing with me in spite of my expostulations. When he talks, I always want to cover him up, as one covers up a chirping canary.”

“I wish you would do it some day. With a piece of green baize you know, and a hole in it where the handle of the cage comes out.”

“He would continue to make confused noises within,” said Reggie.

“He always makes confused noises,” said Mr. Stewart wearily. “Confused, ingenious, noises. Babe, tell me if that champagne is drinkable.”

The Babe drank off his glass.

“Obviously,” he said. “But it’s no use asking me: all champagne seems to me delicious. I drink Miller’s cheapest for choice.”

A small withered don who was sitting next the Babe, and had not previously spoken, here looked up.

“A nice, dry, light wine,” he said.

The Babe started violently, and if he had not just emptied his glass of champagne, he would certainly have spilled it. He explained afterwards that he really had forgotten that anyone was occupying the chair on the right.

This curious old gentlemen, one of the few surviving specimens of this particular type of elderly don had the classical name of Moffat, and Mr. Stewart at once introduced him to the Babe, a ceremony which had escaped his memory before, and Mr. Moffat who had been shivering on the brink of conversation all dinner, decided to plunge in.

“I saw your performance of the _Agamemnon_ last week,” he said.

“I hope you enjoyed it,” said the Babe politely.

“The stage is not what it was in me young days,” said Mr. Moffat.

The Babe looked interested and waited for further criticisms, but the old gentleman returned to his dinner without offering any. His face looked as if it was made of cast iron, painted with Aspinall’s buff-coloured enamel.

There was a short silence, and Mr. Stewart, looking up, saw that the Babe was fighting like a man against an inward convulsion of laughter. His face changed from pink to red, and a vein stood out on his usually unwrinkled brow. Stewart knew that when the Babe had a fit of the giggles it was, so to speak, no laughing matter, and he made things worse by asking Mr. Moffat how his sister was. At this point the Babe left the room with a rapid, uneven step, and he was heard to plunge violently into the dishes outside. Stewart had been particularly unfortunate in his choice of a subject, because what had started the Babe off, was the very thought that Mr. Moffat’s sister was no doubt the original Miss Moffat, and he had been rashly indulging in wild conjectures as to what would happen if he said suddenly:

“I believe your sister doesn’t like spiders.”

Mr. Moffat had resumed the subject of the Greek play when the Babe returned--he seemed not to have noticed his ill-mannered exit--and was finding fault with the chorus, particularly with the leader, who, in the person of Reggie, was sitting opposite him. Of this, however, he had not the slightest idea.

“I call them a dowdy crew,” he said. “They were dressed like old baize doors. Not me idea of a chorus at all. But it was all very creditable, very creditable indeed, and we have to thank me young friend here for a very fine performance of Clytemnestra. Why, me sister”--here the Babe gasped for a moment like a drowning man, but recovered himself bravely--“me sister came down next morning at breakfast, and said she’d hardly been able to sleep a wink, hardly a wink, for thinking of Clytemnestra.”

The Babe made a violent effort and checked himself.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, with his most engaging manner. “I hope you will apologise to her for me.”

“Not at all, not at all,” said Mr. Moffat. “It’s me own opinion she slept far more than she knew. But she was always nervous,”--the Babe bit his tongue--“easily upset. A very good pheasant, Mr. Stewart, a very good pheasant. Thank ye, yes, a glass of champagne. A glass of wine with you, heh, heh, Clytemnestra.”

Mr. Moffat, as the Babe allowed afterwards, was a very pleasant old gentleman. When dinner was over and he had settled himself into an arm-chair by the fire, smoking one of Stewart’s strongest cigars, he told several stories about the old generation of dons whom he had known.

“There was an old fellow of King’s” he was saying, “in me undergraduate days, who must have been eighty, and never a night had he spent out of Cambridge since he came up as an undergraduate. An infidel old lot he was. Many a time I’ve seen him in the evening, when the worms were come out on the grass plot, hobbling about and trying to kill them with the point of his stick. He used to talk to them and make faces at them and say, ‘Ah, damn you. You haven’t got me yet.’ A queer lot they all were, not the worms I mean, heh, heh, but the old dons. There were two others who had been great mathematicians in their time, and they used to spend their evenings together doing, what do you think? Making paper boats, sir, which they went and sailed on the Cam next day. They would start them from the King’s bridge, and sail them down to the willow at the other end of the lawn. And such quarrels as they had over which had won! One of them one morning, his name was Jenkinson, if I’m not mistaken, an old Yorkshireman, got so heated over it,--for he said the other boat had fouled his, as if they were racing for a cup,--that he went for the other man, by gad, sir, he went for him, and tried to push him into the river. But the other--his name was Keggs--was too quick for him, and stepped out of the way, and head over ears into the river went Jenkinson himself, being unable to stop himself, sir, by reason of the impetus he had got up. The river isn’t over deep, there, as you know, perhaps two feet deep, and he stood up as soon as he could find his feet and bawled out: ‘Ah misdoot ye’ve drooned me, Keggs.’”

The Babe was delighted.

“Do tell me some more,” he said, when Mr. Moffat had finished laughing himself, which he did in a silent, internal manner.

“Ah, some of those old fellows did things not quite fit for boys to hear about. _Maxima reverentia_, eh, Mr. Stewart? But there was an Irishman, a fellow of Clare too, in my time. I might tell you about him; he used to live in the rooms above the gate. He had a quarrel with the Master, and as often as the Master went in and out of the gate, egad, the old chap would try to spit on his head. If the Master was out to dinner, he would wait up, sitting in his window till he came back, be it eleven o’clock or twelve, or later than that. At last the Master had to put up an umbrella when he walked under the gate of his own college and then the old fellow would shout out, ‘Come, out o’ that, ye ould divil, and let me get at ye.’ A disreputable old crew they were!--Ah well, it’s half-past ten. Eleven’s me bedtime, and I must be going. Good-night to you Mr. Stewart, and many thanks for your kind hospitality. And good-night to you, sir,” he said turning to the Babe; “I heard them shout ‘Clytemnestra, good old Clytemnestra,’ after you all down the street. And you deserved an ovation, sir, you richly deserved an ovation, and I’m glad you got it.”

After Mr. Moffat’s departure, they settled down again, and Stewart remarked:

“You’ve made a conquest, Babe. But you behaved abominably during dinner.”

“I couldn’t help it. I could think of nothing but Miss Moffat. On the top of that you enquired about his sister. I ask you, what was I to do?”

“You needn’t have danced in the dishes outside,” said Reggie.

“I only danced in the soup, and we’d finished with the soup. And there’s a soupçon of it on my--”

“Shut up.”

“Pumps,” continued the Babe. “May I have some whisky? Thanks. For what I’m going to receive. What a funny undergraduate Moffat must have been.”

“I believe he was born like that,” said Stewart. “I know when I came up, ten years ago, he was just the same. That’s the best of getting old early: you don’t change any more.”

“That’s one for you, Babe,” remarked Reggie.

“The Babe is the imperishable child,” said Stewart.

“You called me a man of the world the other day,” said the Babe in self-defence.

“I think not.”

“You did really. However, we’ll pass it over.”

“By the way, Babe, you are corrupting the youth of the college. Two men went into their lodgings last night at ten minutes past two. It transpired that they had been playing cards with you.”

“Well, it is true that I was playing cards last night. But they could have gone away earlier if they had wished.”

“Your fascinations were probably too strong,” said Reggie.

“Now you’re being personal, and possibly sarcastic,” said the Babe with dignity. “I must go to bed. I was late last night.”

“The night is yet young, Babe,” said Stewart.

“So am I. But if I don’t go, I shall continue to drink whisky and soda, and smoke.”

“You are welcome. How is the tripos work progressing?”

“Oh, it’s getting on,” said the Babe, hopefully. “A little at a time, you know, but often. I’m not one of those people who can work five hours at a stretch.”

“I suppose not. Is it to be a second or a third?”

“I believe there are three classes in the tripos,” said the Babe stiffly. “You have only mentioned two. Well, yes, perhaps one of your small cigarettes would not hurt me. But I must go at eleven, because I am sapping. Oh, isn’t that the _Shop Girl_ on the table? There are some awfully good songs in it. May I go and get my banjo?”

“Do. I got it expressly for you to sing.”

The Babe slept his usual eight and a half hours that night. He did not awake till 10.30.

XX.--THE BABE’S MINOR DIVERSIONS.

Where three times slipping from the outside edge
I bumped the ice into three several stars.
TENNYSON.