Read Ebook: The Babe B.A. Being the Uneventful History of a Young Gentleman at Cambridge University by Benson E F Edward Frederic

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 991 lines and 56272 words, and 20 pages

"The Lord knows," said Reggie. "I was considered remarkably bright for my age at one time."

"Long ago?"

"Ages ago. I don't suppose I've been considered bright for the last six years. Oh, by the way, they've put me into the Pitt."

"How very imprudent of them!"

"Yes. There was a young man in the Pitt."

"Well?"

"That's all. It's me, you know."

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."

"'Not what I wish but what I want,' as the Babe said the other day when he ordered six pairs of silk pyjamas."

"Oh, the Babe has his points," said Reggie.

Reggie's rooms looked out on to a small court, bounded on two sides by the new college buildings, on one by that pellucid river, from which, as Wordsworth might have said, "Cambridge has borrowed its name," and on the other by four or five big elm-trees. Beyond these lay the back lawn, growing a little rank just now with autumn rains, and above that the main buildings of the college, and the Chapel, which is quite worth describing even to the length of four sides of that smaller size of note-paper, which is found so eminently convenient a basis for the purpose of writing letters to relations.

His two rooms were on the third floor, opening the one into the other, and like all college rooms, were very thoughtfully supplied with an outer door which could only be opened from the inside, and by means of which the laborious student can shut himself off from sight and sound of the busy world around. During Reggie's short stay at Cambridge it had, as far as he knew, only been used once, and on that occasion a playful friend, mistaking its real use, had shut him out, having previously ascertained that he had lost the key. This feat has at least the merit of simplicity, and it appears to lose none of its fascination however constantly repeated.

Inside, they were furnished with a small bookcase, occupied by d?butant-looking classical books, several low chairs, which may best be described as rather groggy, and had been taken on from the previous owner at a high valuation, a piano of a harsh and astringent quality of tone, but plenty of it, several high chairs, and two tables. The smaller of these Reggie preferred to call his working table, the only explanation of which seemed to lie in the fact that somebody often sat on the edge of it when the chairs were full. Two or three school groups and a couple of engravings hung on the walls, and the chimney-piece was littered with things which reminded one of the delightfully vague word "remnants," and consisted of candlesticks, pipes, old letters, loose matches, an ash tray, a clock which for the last month had been under the delusion that it was always ten minutes to four, an invitation to play in the Freshman's football match, and another to see the Dean at five minutes to seven, a watch and watch-chain, sixpence, a lawn-tennis ball, a small wooden doll in hideous nakedness , a pen, and a cigarette.

It was a cold evening, and Reggie wandered in and out of his bedroom, in a state of betwixt and between, now clad only in a bath towel, later on in a pair of trousers and socks, in the fulness of time completely clothed. It still wanted five or ten minutes to seven, and he stood in front of the fire warming himself till Hall time, feeling in that deliciously half-tired, half-lazy mood which is the inimitable result of violent exercise. He rummaged aimlessly in the d?bris on the mantel-piece, and suffering the deserved fate of idle hands, found the Dean's note about which he had genuinely forgotten. He gave vent to a resigned little sound, about half-way between a sigh and a swear, took up his gown and left the room.

King, nine, twa, do you play them so? Whae's that a-calling? I dinna ken, and I do not know Whae's that a-calling sae sweet. ON THE BORDER.

And one clear call for me. TENNYSON.

Those Fellows of colleges, who live in college are, for obvious reasons, debarred from the matrimonial state, and should inspire greater respect in reflective minds than almost any other class of persons in this naughty world. For the most part they combine the morality of married men with the innocence of ideal bachelors. Their lives are for nine months or so of the year lived in the sequestered shades of pious and ancient foundations, unspotted by the world. Those who have relations fill their places in the domestic circle where their absence has no doubt rendered them doubly dear, at Christmas and Easter, or join those who have not, and pass their long vacation on the lower slopes of the Alps, or at quiet little sea-side places; some of them visit cathedrals during their unoccupied months, some the lakes, few or none, London, or if London, chiefly the reading-room at the British Museum. But there are exceptions to the most desirable rules, and even among Fellows of colleges there are a few who are reported to know "a thing or two."

On Saturday night it often happened that Fellows of King's asked their colleagues from other colleges to dine with them. After dinner they sat in the Combination Room for an hour or so, or they would break up into parties, which spent the evening at one or other of the Fellows' rooms, and indulged in the mild dissipation of whist at three-penny points, which they seemed to find strangely exhilarating. One such party adjourned directly after dinner to the room of the Dean, Mr. Collins, who two hours before had remonstrated with Reggie for not attending a larger percentage of early Chapels or their equivalent. To undergraduates he was scholastic and austere, but among his own contemporaries he not infrequently relaxed into positive playfulness.

Mr. Stewart, a history tutor from Trinity, was one of his guests to-night, and Mr. Longridge, a Dean of the same college, another. About Mr. Longridge, all that need be said at present is that in body he was insignificant, and in mind, incoherent. But Mr. Stewart was a more conspicuous person both bodily and mentally: he was in fact one of the exceptions to the general run of his class, and he was credited, by report at least, with knowing not only a thing or two, but lots of things.

Just now, his long, languid form, attired altogether elegantly, was spread over a considerable area of arm-chair, his feet rested on the fender, and he was holding forth on certain subjects of the day, about which he was perfectly qualified to speak. The man with the incoherent mind was sitting near him, listening with ill-concealed impatience to his sonorous periods, and getting in a word edgewise occasionally. Mr. Collins was busy attending to the wants of his guests, and two of his friends from the same college, were sitting together on the sofa, resigned but replete.

"The luxury of modern times," Mr. Stewart was saying, "is disgusting,--Chartreuse, please--simply disgusting. What business have men to clothe their floors in fabrics from Persia, their walls in other fabrics from Cairo and Algiers, or stamped leather, and paintings by Turner and Reynolds and, and Orchardson, their lamp-shades in lace and Liberty fabrics--Lace and Liberty sounds like a party catch-word--and leave their minds naked and unashamed? I myself aim at a studious simplicity--Thank you, I have brought my own cigarettes. Won't you have one? They are straight from Constantinople--a studious simplicity. I live at Cambridge, while my natural sphere is London and Paris. I get up at seven, while nature bids me stay in bed till ten. I--"

Mr. Longridge could not bear it any longer. He sprang out of his chair as a cuckoo flies out of a cuckoo clock on the stroke of the hour, and adjusted his spectacles.

"Well, take the case of a man who, say, lived at Oxford. Supposing--or well, take another case--"

Mr. Stewart took advantage of a momentary pause to continue.

"Yes, of course, very interesting," he said. "A delightful town, Oxford. A shadow of the romance of mediaevalism still lingers about its grey streets, which is quite absent from the new red-brick buildings of St. John's College, Cambridge. I remember walking there one morning with dear George Meredith, and your mention of Oxford recalled to me what he said. Poor dear fellow! He is the most lucid of men, but as soon as he puts pen to paper he is like an elephant that is lost in a jungle, and goes trumpeting and trampling along through wreaths and tangled festoons of an exotic style. Lord Granchester was staying there at the time--Sir Reginald Bristow he was then--"

"I had the pleasure of speaking to his son just before Hall," remarked Mr. Stewart in professional accents.

"Reggie, is dear Reggie up here? How delightful! I remember him six or seven years ago. He was like one of Raphael's angels."

"What-was-it-that-George-Meredith-said?" asked the incoherent man, all in one word.

"One of Raphael's angels," pursued Mr. Stewart, taking not the slightest notice. "A face like an opening flower."

"The flower has a stem six feet high now," remarked Mr. Collins.

"Dear Reggie! And--and is he as fascinating as ever?"

Mr. Collins laughed.

"I have not known him long, so I cannot say how fascinating he is capable of being. And as a rule Deans and undergraduates don't put out their full power of fascination in dealing with each other."

"But whose fault is that?" said Mr. Stewart in a slow unctuous voice. "Surely we ought to be brothers, dear elder brothers to the undergraduates. I remember--"

Mr. Collins, who was obviously sceptical about George Meredith's remark, and hoped that Stewart was going back to it, brightened up and interrogated, "Yes?" in an intelligent manner.

"I remember," said Mr. Stewart still sublimely oblivious, "I remember that I myself used always to make friends, dear friends of the undergraduates when I was Dean. If one of them did not attend Chapel often enough, as often, that is, as our odious regulations require, I used to ask him to call for me on his way, and we used to go to Chapel together. One had a rich, lovely tenor voice. I--I forget his name, and I think he is dead."

Mr. Longridge laughed monosyllabically but unkindly.

Mr. Longridge--there is no other word--bridled.

"The beauty of holiness," continued Mr. Stewart, chewing and masticating his words, so as to get the full flavour out of them, "a human soul capable of anything. Venusberg and Rome are alike interludes to him. He goes on his sublimely humorous way from Venusberg to Elizabeth, from Elizabeth to Venusberg, and neither produces any lasting effect. And how supremely natural the end is! He has left an almond rod at Rome, and because one of the pilgrims, one of a dowdy crew of middle-class pilgrims shows him an almond rod in blossom, he rushes to the conclusion that it is his. How illogical, but how natural! And he who has never had the courage of his opinions either at Venusberg or Rome, is 'struck of a heap,' as they say in suburban places, by the flowering almond rod, and instantly gives up the ghost. Maskelyne and Cooke could produce a bundle of flowering almond rods in half the time. We pay five shillings to see them all. Tannh?user paid his life to see one. He died of joy at the sight of that flowering almond rod. And after all it was only artificial flowers twined round a stick."

"Well, of course, if you choose to look at it in that way," ejaculated Mr. Longridge.

"My dear Longridge," said Mr. Stewart very slowly, "there is only one way to look at things, only one way."

"Dear old Longridge," said Stewart with unctuous affection.

"You might just as well say," continued Mr. Longridge, "that because there are people who are colour-blind, we none of us know green from red."

There was perhaps nothing in the world which Mr. Longridge enjoyed so heartily as what he called a good, sharp argument. This usually consisted in his putting forward a great quantity of indefensible and irrelevant propositions himself, and then proceeding to show how indefensible they were: their irrelevancy needed no demonstration. He was a man of mixed mind.

"Dear old Longridge," repeated Stewart. "Some people have the misfortune to be born colour-blind, and no doubt in the next world they will be extraordinarily keen-sighted. But until we have finished with this world, and I have not, we can leave colour-blind people altogether out of the question, can we not? In fact, I don't know how they found their way in. Some things are green, others red, and if you call them by their wrong names, even your own friends must allow that you are no judge of colour."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet