Off which none else would try to score,
He did not seem to care at all,
But hit it very high for four.
HOTCH-POTCH VERSES.
The Babe was lying at the bottom of a Canadian canoe on his back,
singing low to his beloved. At least he was not exactly singing, but
swearing gently at Sykes, who had laid himself down on his stomach and
the day was too hot to have bulldogs on one’s stomach. The Babe about
an hour ago had landed to see if Reggie was in, and finding his rooms
empty and ungarnished, tied his canoe up to the bank to sleep and read
a little _Ravenshoe_ for an hour, but it had slipped its cable and as
he had left the paddle on the bank it had required only a few moments
reflection to convince him that he was hopelessly and completely at the
mercy of the winds and waters, like Danaë, the mother of Perseus, in
her wooden chest, and that his destiny was no longer in his own hands.
As then, there was nothing whatever to be done, he did nothing in
serene content. He would soon bump against the arches of Clare Bridge,
but until that happened there was no step he could possibly take.
It was just three days before his tripos began, and the Babe, with a
wisdom beyond his years, was taking three complete holidays. He argued
that as it already seemed to him that his brain was one turbid mass
of undigested facts and dates, the best thing he could do was not
to swallow more, but to let what he had settle down a little. For a
fortnight before he had been working really hard, going over the ground
again, and for the next three days he meant neither to think nor do
anything whatever. As he expressed it himself after last Sunday morning
chapel, “I am going,” he said “to eat and sleep and do and be simply
that which pleases me.”
He was roused by a loud injured voice not far off shouting, “Look
ahead, sir,” and he sat up. His boat, as is the ineradicable habit
of Canadian canoes, had drifted broadside across the river and was
fouling the course of an outrigger which was wanting to come up.
“I’m very sorry,” shouted the Babe, “but I’ve lost my paddle. Hallo,
Feltham, is that you?”
“It’s me, Babe. What can I do for you, and what do you mean by fouling
my waterway? Where is your paddle?”
The Babe looked round.
“Oh, it’s up there on the bank, by the King’s Bridge. Can’t I catch
hold of the tail of your boat, then you might tow me up there?”
“All right, but don’t call it a tail, as some rowing man will hear you
and have a fit. Let me get clear. Are you slacking, to-day?”
“Yes, and for the next two days. My tripos begins on Monday, and I
think that if I do nothing for a day or two I may be able to remember
again who the Electric Sophia was.”
“Is she important? She sounds as if she might be the wife of the man
who discovered lightning.”
“Don’t confuse me further,” said the Babe. “Where are you off to?”
“Oh, up the river. There’s no cricket to-day.”
“I didn’t know that people who played cricket ever rowed.”
“They don’t for the most part: but I don’t consider that a reason for
not doing so if I wish.”
“Are you playing for the ‘Varsity on Monday?”
“They have been polite enough to ask me.”
“And you have very civilly consented. Well, good-bye.”
The Babe sat in his canoe for half an hour or more, and got through a
little _Ravenshoe_, and a little meditation. The meditation concerned
itself chiefly with Feltham, who, as was universally acknowledged,
was the best of good fellows, quiet, steady, thoroughbred. And these
things gave the Babe some pleasure not ill-deserved, to think over, for
Feltham had been known primarily as a friend of his. And when he was
tired of meditating he tied up his canoe again and walked up to the
King’s field, for his college was playing King’s and he was certain of
finding company, whichever side was in. It turned out that King’s was
in that enviable position, and of King’s, Reggie and a careful little
man in spectacles. Reggie could not by the most partial of his friends
be called a cricketer, but the most impartial of his enemies would have
had to confess that he often made a great many runs. He had a good eye,
he saw the ball and he helped it to fulfil its destiny by hitting it
hard. More particularly did he hit balls on the off which ought to be
left alone, and he always hit them high in the air over long slip’s
head. It really did not seem to matter where long slip was placed,
for he always hit the ball over his head, and out of reach. Straight
balls he subjected to a curious but very vigorous mowing process, which
took them swiftly past the umpire’s nose. A straight yorker invariably
got him out, if he knew it was a yorker and tried to play it, so that
when he saw one coming he held his bat perfectly firm and rigid and
quenched it, but if it did not occur to him that the ball was a yorker
he treated it with cheerful contempt and hit it somewhere, which
surprised no one more than himself. It seemed to be the recognised
thing that he should be given three lives as at pool, and, as at pool,
if he used them up quickly, he was frequently allowed to star, and
have two more. A sort of extra square leg, specially designed for his
undoing, had just given him his fourth life when the Babe appeared, and
Reggie scored three runs over it. The field luckily could be arranged
solely with a view to catching him, for the careful little man in
spectacles only scored singles, and those by hitting balls with extreme
caution just out of reach of cover-point.
The Babe enjoyed watching cricket, especially the sort of game that
was going on now. One bowler was extremely fast, the other incredibly
slow, and Reggie hit them both in the air with perfect impartiality,
and the careful little man played them both with as much precision and
delicacy, as if he was playing spillikins.
However, a few overs later, though his own score was small, he did
Reggie, and so, indirectly his side, a signal service. The latter had
hit a fast ball almost quite straight up in the air and extremely high,
and they both started on a forlorn run. Point and wicket-keep both ran
to it, and the careful little man charged violently in between them
exactly at the crucial moment, as they were both standing in front of
his wickets, with the result that out of the midst of chaotic confusion
the ball fell innocuously to the ground. The careful little man went to
the pavilion for a new pair of spectacles after being given “not out”
for obstructing the field, which he certainly had been doing, and point
and wicket-keep cursed him and each other, and Reggie thanked them all.
This was the last ball of the over, so Reggie still had the bowling.
The slow bowler prepared for him a ball with an immeasurable break
from the off upon it, but Reggie very wisely danced gaily out onto
the middle of the pitch, turned straight round and hit it so severe a
blow that the wicket-keep in whose direction it was travelling had
only just time to get out of the way. It narrowly missed Reggie’s own
wicket, but a miss is as good as four runs when it is hit hard enough,
and this one was.
But the service he often did his side, and was doing now, could not
be fairly measured merely by the runs he scored, for the demoralising
effect he always had on the field was worth fifty extra. After a
certain number of catches have been missed, and a large number of
balls hit high in the air just out of reach of a field, a side begins
unconsciously to think “Kismet” and withal to grow discontented, and a
side that thinks “Kismet” is lost.
Reggie was out seventh wicket down, having made sixty-two, and as there
was only another half-hour to the drawing of stumps, he left the game,
and walked down with the Babe. They were going to dine together and go
to the theatre to see a touring _Mrs. Tanqueray_. To the Babe’s great
delight the “theatrical tuft-hair” was in great force, and between the
acts he wandered about in the passage listening rapturously to the
fragments of their conversation.
There was one in particular, who had sat next the Babe, markedly worthy
of study. His gown was about eighteen inches long, and his cap, out
of which he had carefully abstracted every particle of board, drooped
gracefully at all its corners. He was in dress clothes with a smoking
coat (not in a Norfolk jacket,) and he wore a large diamond solitaire,
and a red cummerbund. He was evidently a king among his kind, and
several of them crowded round him as he came out between the acts and
admired him. They called him “Johnny,” and he called them “Johnny”
individually, and “Johnnies” collectively, and the Babe listened to
them with a seraphic expression of face.
“Arfly parful, isn’t it? I say, Johnny, give me a light.”
“Old Redfarn’s put up a notice about not smoking in the passage. I
shall rag him about it.”
“That gurl’s pretty good, isn’t she? Looks rather nice too.”
“You’re quite mashed on her, old chappie. But she’s not a patch on Mrs.
Pat.”
“Johnny can’t think of anything but Mrs. Pat. I say, let’s go and have
a drink.”
“All right. Johnny stands drinks. The gurl at the bar’s an awful
clipper.”
“Johnny will drop his pipe and get her to pick it up for him.”
“Well, come on, you Johnnies. There’s only ten minutes. Keep an eye on
Johnny.”
The Babe’s eye followed them as they walked off to the bar, with
rapturous enjoyment.
“Aren’t they heavenly?” said he to Reggie. “Oh, I wish I was like
that! It must be so nice to feel that one is the light and leading
of the whole place and really knows what life is. I wish I knew what
life was. I wonder how they get their hair to stick out like that. How
I have wasted my time! I too might have been a Johnny by now, if I’d
cultivated them. Reggie, do come to the bar: I want to gaze and gaze on
them.”
But Reggie refused: he said they made him sick, and the Babe told him
that he regarded things from the wrong standpoint.
“You know,” said the Babe, “they’ve persuaded each other that they are
the very devils of fellows. They really believe it. What a thing it is
to have faith. They will talk quite fluently to the barmaid. I remember
so well trying to see whether I could. I couldn’t: I knew I couldn’t
all the time. I have never felt so hopelessly bored in so few minutes.
They think it’s wicked; and they think that they rag their tutors. The
poor tutors are men of no perception, for they haven’t the least idea
they are being ragged. There they all come again. Their faces shine
with deviltry. Did you hear them talk about Mrs. Pat? They meant Mrs.
Patrick Campbell you know--”
“You’re no better, Babe,” said Reggie, “you used to want people to
think you wicked.”
“Oh, but that’s quite different. You can’t say that I was ever the
least like a Johnny. I never had the courage. Fancy being as brave as
they are, and oh, fancy deliberately sitting down and taking all the
stuffing out of your cap in order to be a blood!”
“I’ll take yours out, if you’ll take mine, Babe. There’s the bell. We
must go in again.”
The Babe went to see Stewart when he went back to Trinity. The latter
thoroughly approved of his holiday.
“You are giving yourself a little space,” he said, “in which it may
be hoped you will forget, or rather assimilate, a few of the useless
and ugly things which our system of examinations has compelled you
to learn. A historian is not a person who knows masses of facts and
dates, but a man who has built a structure upon them. The facts are
the scaffold, which disappears when the house is built. And the
tripos turns out a quantity of promising young men who can only build
scaffolds. I wish I was examining. There should be no questions with
dates in them, and they should all begin “Trace the tendency,” or
“Indicate in a great many words the influence.”
“I wish I felt more certain about my scaffold.”
“My dear Babe, don’t vex your soul. Possess it in peace. I would give
long odds on your getting through. What I did not expect was that you
should have taken the distasteful steps that lead to so immaterial a
result. You got a second in your last May’s didn’t you? Do let us talk
of something a little more interesting than triposes.”
“Well, I didn’t introduce the subject,” said the Babe.
“What have you been doing this evening?”
“I’ve just been to the _Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ with Reggie.”
“An interesting medical case,” remarked Stewart. “I believe the author
consulted an eminent nerve doctor, as to how many months’ living
with Aubrey Tanqueray would drive an excitable female to suicide. He
thought six, but as the author wished her to do it in less, he had to
introduce other incentives. Aubrey Tanqueray would drive me to madness
in a week, and to suicide in eight days. He handed her toast at the
scene at breakfast, as if he was giving her a slice of some cardinal
virtue with the blessing of the Pope spread on it like butter. The real
_motif_ of the play, though the British public haven’t known it, is her
growing despair at being wedded to him, and the immediate cause is the
_Second Mr. Tanqueray’s_ noble forgiveness of her when she was found to
have tampered with the letter bag. He treated her like a candidate for
confirmation, instead of boxing her ears, and said that the incident
only served to draw them closer together, or something of the kind.
Apparently if you commit a sufficiently mean action towards a person
who really loves you, he will be delighted, and love you the more for
it. It sounds a little Jesuitical, baldly stated. Who wrote the play?
Pinero wasn’t it. Pinero is obviously the future from ‘Pinsum,’ I am a
pin.”
The Babe laughed.
“I didn’t attend to the play much,” he said. “There was an
undergraduate sitting next me, who was more interesting. He wore a red
cummerbund.”
“Ah, yes,” murmured Mr. Stewart. “The kind that talks to the female in
tobacconists’ shops, and sits on the counter as it does so. Its father
is usually one of nature’s gentlemen, who has married a perfect lady.
The two always marry each other, and in the next generation the females
dress in Liberty fabric, and the males congregate at the smaller
colleges. They are on the increase. I suppose it’s an instance of the
survival of the filthiest.”
Mr. Stewart rose from his chair, and crossed over to the window-seat
where the Babe was sitting.
“What can I do to amuse you, Babe?” he said. “I feel that it is the
duty of all your friends to distract your thoughts from all subjects
for the next two days. Shall I play cards with you--you shall teach
me--or shall we talk about the Epsom meeting, or the A.D.C.? I suppose
you are going to act in the May week? Why not act _Hamlet_, and we
will persuade Longridge to be Ophelia. There is something sublimely
inconsequent in the way Ophelia distributes artificial flowers to the
company which reminds me of Longridge in his soberer moments. I have
been very much tried by Longridge to-night. He asked me to help him to
sing glees in the Roundabout. Can you imagine Longridge and me sitting
side by side in the Roundabout singing “Three Blind Mice?” I could
imagine it so vividly that I didn’t go.”
The Babe laughed.
“You can give me whisky and soda, and then I shall go to bed. It is
twelve, and I must practise being dressed and breakfasted by nine. Does
it require much practice?”
“I should think about twenty minutes every morning. What is the use of
doing a thing you have got to do, before you have got to do it? It is
like cutting yourself with a knife to accustom yourself to a surgical
operation.”
“There are points of similarity,” said the Babe. “I shall go to bed now
for all that, as soon as I’ve drunk this.”
XXIII.--THE LISTS.
List, O list.
SHAKESPEARE.
The Babe and Reggie were sitting outside the pavilion at Fenner’s
watching the University against the gentlemen of England, who as
the Babe said, so far from sitting at home at ease were running out
to Feltham’s slow bowling and getting caught and stumped, with very
enjoyable frequency. The cricket was a delightful mixture of a fine
bowling performance and very hard hitting, which to the uneducated
spectator is perhaps the most lively of all to watch. Feltham had in
fact, from the Babe’s point of view, just sent down the ideal over.
The first ball was hit out of the ground for six, the second bowled
the hitter round his legs. The third ball was hit by the incomer for
four, and the fourth for four. The fifth ball he also attempted to hit
as hard as he could to square leg, and he was caught at point, in the
manner of a catch at the wicket.
The Babe tilted his hat over his eyes, and gave a happy little sigh.
“Reggie, the tripos is the secret of life,” he said. “If you want to
get a real feeling of leisure and independence, a feeling that you have
been told privately by the archangels to amuse yourself and do nothing
whatever else, go in for the tripos, or rather wait till you come out.
I suppose that considering my years I have wasted more time than most
people, and I thought I knew what it felt like. But I didn’t. I had no
idea how godlike it is to do nothing. To have breakfast, and feel that
it won’t be lunch-time for four hours, and after that to have the whole
afternoon before you.”
“When are the lists out?”
“Oh, in about ten days now. Don’t talk about lists. Tell me how long
you worked this morning. Tell me about the man in your college who
works ten hours every day and eleven hours every night. Tell me of the
difficulty of learning by heart the Roman emperors or the kings of
Israel and Judah. Assure me that by knowing the angle of the sun above
the horizon and the length of Feltham’s shadow, you could find out how
tall the umpire is.”
“He’s about five foot ten,” said Reggie.
“That’s like the answers I used to give to the questions about the
hands of a watch,” said the Babe. “They tell you that if the hands of
a watch are together at twelve--there’s no ‘if’ about it, it is never
otherwise,--when will they be together next. I always said about five
minutes past one. It seems absurdly simple. I’ve often noticed them
together-then: and the same remark applies to about ten minutes past
two. That reminds me,” added the Babe, looking at his watch, “that it’s
twenty-five minutes past five. The hour hand seems to have gained a
little.”
“Oh, I remember,” said Reggie. “The hour hand gains seven-elevenths.”
“Seven-elevenths of what?”
“I don’t know. Of the answer, I suppose. I shouldn’t have thought it
was five yet.”
“But it is, and that compels us to decide between tea and cricket.”
“We can get tea in the pavilion. There’s another four.”
“You shall give me a hundred to one that the next ball is not a
wicket,” said the Babe.
“In pennies, and make it fifty.”
“Done.”
A very audible click, and an appeal. Reggie got up and felt in his
pockets.
“I should have been ashamed to get out to a ball like that. You’ll have
to pay for tea, Babe. There you are.”
“Twopence more,” said the Babe.
“Not if I went to the stake for it, Hullo, Ealing, where are you from?
Ealing’s got a glorious post-tripos face too. He really deserves to be
able to play ‘Praise the Lord, ye heavens, adore Him,’ but he can’t
even now.”
“Composed by Mr. Haydn,” said Ealing, “and performed by Mr. Ealing. It
contains a very difficult passage. Your left hand has to go to the
left, and your right hand to the right. You feel all pulled in two.
Babe, the tripos is the noblest of inventions. I think I shall go in
for a second part. I can quite understand how the lower classes get in
such boisterous spirits on bank holidays that they change hats with
each other.”
“I’d change hats with--with a bishop,” said the Babe, looking wildly
about for suggestions.
“So would I. Or with Longridge. He wears a blue cake hat. Hullo,
they’re all out.”
“Come and have tea, then,” said Reggie. “The Babe stands tea.”
“Hang the expense,” said the Babe, recklessly. “When a man’s got some
tin, what can he do better than to give his pals a real blow out? I’ve
got four shillings. Tea for three, and bread and butter for two. The
fortune of the Rothschilds sprang from these small economies. Bread and
butter for two will be plenty. I’m sure none of us can be very hungry
on so warm a day. Oh, there’s a tuft-hair drinking out of a tall glass.
I expect it’s gin-sling. What is gin-sling? In any case you can’t say
it ten times. Ging-slin.”
“I thought you could always say Ranjitsinghi, Babe.”
“I can when other people are just unable to. Sufficient champagne gives
me a wonderful lucidity, followed by sleepiness. There’s Stewart. I
didn’t know he came to cricket matches.”
Stewart was delighted to see them.
“But you, Babe, are not fit for the society of ordinary people,” he
said, “your extreme cheerfulness since your tripos argues a want of
consideration for others. What have you been doing?”
“I’ve been looking at cricket, and also talking.”
“You don’t say so.”
“I have, indeed,” said the Babe. “What effect does champagne have on
you?”
“Why do you ask these sudden questions?” said Stewart wearily. “It
makes the wings of my soul sprout.”
“The principle is the same. I ate lobster salad the other day and
drank port. It did not give me indigestion, but acute remorse.”
“Remorse for having done so?”
“No, a vague searching remorse for all the foolish things I had done,
and all the foolish things I meant to do, and for being what I was.
Food doesn’t affect your body, it affects your soul. Conversely,
sermons which are supposed to affect your soul make you hungry.”
Stewart lit a match thoughtfully against the sleeve of his coat.
“The Babe has hit on a great truth,” he said. “A curious instance
occurred to my knowledge two years ago. A strong healthy man read
_Robert Elsmere_. It gave him so severe an attack of dyspepsia that
he had to spend the ensuing winter on the Riviera and eat pepsine
instead of salt for eighteen months. Then he died. The phenomenon is
well established. Poor Simpson, the fellow of my college, as you know,
broke his leg the other day. It was supposed to have happened because
he tripped and fell downstairs. But he told me himself that he was
just leaving his room, and that as he walked down stairs he read the
first few pages of _Stephen Remarx_. It was that, of course, that broke
his leg, and so he fell down stairs as soon as he tried to put it to
the ground. The Babe is quite right. Sermons, as he told us, make him
hungry and lobster and port remorseful. In the same way, high tea, if
frequently taken, will make anyone a non-conformist, in the same way as
incense induces Roman Catholicism. But, Babe, don’t tell Longridge.”
“Why not?”
“He will want to talk about it to me, and then I shall be taken with
melancholy madness. Are you coming up for another year, Babe?”
“I don’t know. I should like to. Of course it will depend on my getting
through. If I do, I think a note from my tutor to my father might have
a wholesome effect.”
“Your tutor will do whatever you wish him to,” said Stewart. “At
present he is going back to college. I have a hansom waiting because I
hate walking. Do any of you want a lift?”
The others stayed up till stumps were drawn, and walked down together.
The tea no doubt had affected the Babe’s soul in some subtle manner,
producing acute fatuity.
The Babe spent the remaining ten days in assiduous inaction. He sat
in canoes, he sat on benches watching cricket, he ate, he slept. He
appeared at the Senate house on the morning when the lists were read
out, in pumps, in pink pyjamas, a long great-coat, and a straw hat.
Reggie, who stood next him, thought he detected signs of nervousness,
when the names began to be read, but it is probable that he was
mistaken, for the Babe had never before been known to be afflicted with
that distressing malady. A large number of his more intimate friends
were there, and an air of suspense was abroad. But it was over sooner
than any one anticipated, for the Babe, contrary to the expectation
of even the most sanguine of them all, and that was himself, came
out first in the second class. There was one moment’s pause of
astonishment, not unmingled with awe, and then a wild disorderly scene
of riot and shouting arose, in which the Babe was seized and taken
back to Trinity in a triumphal procession, which carried him over the
grass in the great court, wholly disregarding the porters who gibbered
helplessly around them, until Stewart appeared, who, however, instead
of instantly stopping it, seemed to take sympathetic interest in the
proceeding.