below they could see the long gaslit line of embankment curving gently
towards Westminster, and the river flowing turbidly out with the ebbing
tide. In the middle distance the bridge of Charing Cross with one
great electric lamp high in the air, crossed to the Surrey side, and
every now and then a train shrieked across under the glass arch of the
station. In the street below there jingled by, from time to time, a
hansom, noiseless except for the bell, and the sharp-cut ring of the
horse’s hoofs. A party of shrill-voiced Americans took a table near
them, and discussed the relative merits of English and American cars,
with passionate partisanship. There were of course no oysters to be
had, as it was June, and native devilled kidneys had to take their
place. Tired-looking waiters flitted noiselessly about, and the Babe’s
face caught from the kidneys a livelier animation.
“To-morrow,” he said, “we will go even unto the Oval, and watch the
gentlemen and players. It is strange that to play cricket is the most
doleful of human pursuits, and to watch it one of the most delightful.
When I grow up I shall keep twenty-two men who shall play cricket
before me, as Salome danced before Herod. They shall play a perpetual
match, which shall never come to a world without end. Amen. Have some
more kidneys, Reggie? A few of our small kidneys would not hurt you.
Waiter, bring some more kidneys. Kidneys are not attractive to the eye,
but the proof of them is in the eating. I eat them because they are so
comfortable, as the Psalmist says. By the way, has Sir John Lubbock put
the eating of kidneys among his _Pleasures of Life_? I shall write a
book called _The Sorrows of Death_ as a companion volume.”
“Do; and have it set to music by Mendelssohn.”
“Mendelssohn is dead, and the kidneys are dead,” said the profane Babe.
“Hullo there’s Stewart. He looks like a man out of the _Yellow Book_ by
Aubrey Beardsley. I wish I could look as if Aubrey Beardsley had drawn
me; shall I ask him to supper, Reggie? I wonder what he’s doing at the
Savoy?”
But Mr. Stewart had got a Cabinet Minister in hand just for the
present, and it was half an hour or so before he joined them; even
then it took him ten minutes to get through the amiability of Cabinet
Ministers, before descending to more sublunary topics. But when he
descended, as the Babe said afterwards, he came down with a run, and
talked about music-halls and other things.
He was most sympathetic with the Babe’s misfortune in being unable
to stop up for May week, and inveighed against the government and
management of the University generally.
“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.”
[Illustration: THE BACKS.]
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.