E. F. Benson

“ The stalls and sub-stalls were all full of members of the college, in surplices, but the black crowd beyond stretched up to the steps of the altar, and when the three bars of introduction to the solo began, every one stood up. Mendelssohn, so often only correct, so often ruined by his fatal prettiness, has here struck the right note, full and firm. Even Reggie ceased to think of the evasiveness of the watchman, and only listened, till the repeated call of the minor died away into a long pause before the soprano answered, and the choir took up the full chorus. ”

“ Then it was that the uncomfortable conviction dawned on us, gradually illuminating our minds as some cloudy rain-slanted morning grows clear to half-wakened eyes, that in the majority of cases, remarkable and stirring events do not befall the undergraduate, and that if the book was to be made at all, it must be made of homely, and I hope wholesome, ingredients, a cricket ball, a canoe, a football, a tripos, a don, a croquet mallet, a few undergraduates, a Greek play, some work, and so forth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They ran the boat in at the edge of the copse, and Reggie lighted the spirit lamp to boil the kettle for tea, while the Babe tied up Mr. Sykes, lest he should forget himself at the sight of four bathers.
Among sensuous pleasures, bathing on a hot day stands alone, and Byron’s Pool is in the first flight of bathing places. There are some who prefer Romney Weir, and say that bathing is nought unless you plunge into a soda water of bubbles; some think that the essence of bathing is a mere pickling of the human form in brine, and are not happy except in the sea ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Babe bowed, and began, drawling out his words in a low, slow, musical voice.
“Mr. Sykes and gentlemen,” he said, “the May week is upon us, and we, like the Cambridge Review, are at the end of another year of University life and thought. Some of us—most of us in fact, have experienced for two years the widening influence and varied duties which are inseparable from the minds of any of those who embark upon the harvest of University curriculum with any earnestness of purpose, or seriousness of aim. ”

“ The Babe was in a peculiarly sociable humour this morning, and after a whiskey and soda, “a cigarette” as he remarked, “would not be amiss,” and it was not till he had smoked two, and been told with brutal plainness that he was not wanted in the least, that Reggie discovered that he had forgotten to buy his pencil. This necessitated his and Ealing’s making another journey to King’s parade, and the Babe, who bore no malice whatsoever at being told to go away, took an arm of each, and insisted in walking across the grass in the hard, convincing light of noonday. ”

“ The Babe wobbled industriously about, trying to skate large, and not deceive himself into thinking that a three was finished as soon as he had made the turn, and Reggie practised by himself round an orange, waiting for a four to be made up, until the Babe ate it.
About the third day the Babe was hopelessly down with the skating fever, which went badly with the sapping epidemic. He took his skates round to King’s in the evening, after skating all day, for the sapping epidemic was rapidly fleeing from him like a beautiful dream at the awakening, and skated on the fountain ”

“ I believe that’s the chic thing to do in sapping circles. Fancy waking up some morning to find oneself in a sapping circle. I wonder what Saps think about.”
“Sap, probably. Oh, yes, certainly sap. Either Thucydides, or binomial theories, or is it theorems or aortas. Babe, let us meditate on aortas for a time.”
“By all means. I wonder what an aorta is. Yes, thanks, but only a mouthful, as Reggie says. That’s because he has such a big mouth. I say, I wish I had an object in life: it must be so interesting.”
“Liver,” said Anstruther brutally, “take a pill. What do you want an object in life for?” ”

“ Ealing got up and stretched slowly and luxuriously.
“I must go and change. I believe one oughtn’t to sit in wet things. But if one does it frequently enough, it doesn’t seem to hurt one, and the same remark applies to muffins.”
“I shall try sitting in a muffin,” said Reggie thoughtfully. “I never thought of it before.”
“Do. Are you going into Hall to-night?”
“Yes, unless you ask me to dinner.”
“I have no intention whatever of doing that,” said Ealing.
“Then we’ll both go into Hall. I propose to drink champagne out of a silver mug to make up for the tea out of a glass.” ”

“ 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{114} 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 ”

“ 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.” ”

“ He then went to the Bath Club where he bathed and had tea, returning home in time to dress for dinner, which he usually took at a friend’s house. The evening was spent at a theatre or a music hall, and he finished up if possible at a dance. If he had no dance to go to, he read the evening paper at a club, and went to bed.
“In fact,” as he explained to Reggie, who arrived one evening about seven, “we shall lead a simple and strenuous life even in the midst of this modern Babylon. The bicycle and the Bath Club will minister to the needs of the body, and our minds will minister to each other. ”

“ Somehow in my own rooms everything looks different on Sunday and in consequence they are hardly habitable. I suppose it is the influence of heredity: the rooms are accustomed to generations of dons who always wear black coats on Sundays, and have a cold lunch. Ah, here is the archdeacon. I suppose he has been getting his mind out of its Sunday clothes too. Archdeacons are venerable, are they not? How do you address them, ‘Your Veneration’ or ‘Your Venerance’? Your uncle is a Dean, is he not, Babe? ”

“ Reggie had been performing this precarious feat with admirable steadiness for just nineteen years. Nature had gifted him with a pleasant face, and a healthy appetite had enabled him to show it to eminent advantage on the top of a tall body. He preferred talking to working, cricket to football, and lying in bed to “signing in” at 8 A.M. in the morning. He smoked a good many pipes every day, and blew smoke rings creditably. He played the piano a little, but his friends did not encourage him to take the necessary practice whereby he might play it any better. ”

“ Stewart confessed that the Babe had surprised him. Most people who knew the Babe were never surprised at him, because they always expected him to do something unexpected. But no one had ever supposed that he would do anything so unexpected as to work steadily every day. It would not have been so surprising if he had worked twelve hours a day twice a week, but that he should work four hours every day, upset all preconceived ideas about him. ”

“ The porter stared suspiciously at this odd figure as it passed, but the serenity of the Babe’s smile was as infinite as ever.
The Babe’s hansom had been told to wait at the back gate of King’s, but it had apparently found waiting tedious, and as there were no others about, they had to walk. Mr. Sykes, however, took this opportunity to behave, as the Babe said, “like the dog of a real blood,” and had a delightful turn-up with a mongrel gentleman of his acquaintance, which did him much credit. ”

“ 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{284} his destiny was no longer in his own hands. ”

“ He and Reggie strolled back in the dusk, and parted at the gate of Trinity. The Babe went to work till Hall, and after Hall played picquet with Anstruther, whom he fleeced, capotting him once and repiquing him twice in an hour, and discussed with him the extraordinary dulness of the Lent term, and the impossibility of making it any livelier.
“It’s a sort of close time,” said the Babe, “for things of interest. I don’t know why it should be so, but every day is exactly like every other day, and they are all dull. I feel eclipsed all the Lent term. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I’ve played tennis, I’ve worked, I’ve taken Sykes for a walk, and that’s all. Really one must be extraordinarily clever to be able to talk day after day all one’s life. How does one do it? A priori,{279} one would expect to have said all the things one has got to say by the time one was twenty, and I’m twenty-one. Yet I am not dumb yet. One doesn’t talk about things that happen, and most people, and I am one myself, never think at all, so they can’t talk about what they are thinking about. Give me some whisky and soda ”

“ He says that I shall, by all precedents in such matters, get brain fever and consumption, and that my sorrowing friends will kneel round my expiring bedside—you see what I mean—on the morning the tripos lists are announced and shout out above the increasing clamour of my death rattle, ‘You are Senior Historian,’ and that my reform from the wild young spark to the pale emaciated student, will all date from one evening last year at the Savoy, when he said he would only take the longest odds if he had to bet on my getting through. ”