Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  The teapot — one of those in which the handle is invariably the hottest part — had just been filled up with boiling water, and a clear and fervid amber stream flew bounteously out of its spout on to the bare knees of one of those who had played and lost. Thereupon a confused noise arose, and Reggie’s sentence has never been finished.

  After a short but violent interlude, the confused noise ceased by tacit consent, as suddenly as it had begun; Ealing helped Reggie to pick up the broken fragments that remained, and the latter had to drink his tea out of a pint glass.

  “To think that a mere game of football should lead to such disastrous consequences,” he remarked. “Why does tea out of a glass taste like hot Gregory powder?”

  “I never drank hot Gregory powder; what does it taste like?”

  “Why, like tea out of a glass,” said Reggie brilliantly.

  “Reggie, if you want to rag again, you’ve only got to say so.”

  Ealing threw into a corner the napkin with which he had been drying his knees and stocking after the tea-deluge, and as he had finished, took out a pipe, and proceeded to fill it.

  “That pig of a half-back caught me a frightful hack on the shin,” he said.

  “Well, you kicked him in the stomach later on,” said Reggie consolingly. “That’s always something to fall back on. Besides he did it by accident, and it certainly looked as if you did it on purpose. Of course it may only have been sheer clumsiness.”

  “Dry up. You didn’t funk as much as usual this afternoon.”

  “I tried to, but I never had time. And I can funk as quickly as any man in England. Jack, it’s time for you to say something.”

  Jack Marsden was the only one of the three who looked in the least like a gentleman at that moment. Ealing and Reggie were both in change, they both wore villainously muddy flannel knickerbockers, short enough to disclose villainously muddy knees, old blazers, and strong, useful, football boots with bars. Jack, who had taken no part in the confused noise, was sitting in a low chair reading Alice in Wonderland, and eating cake in the manner of a man who does not think about dinner.

  “I wasn’t asleep,” he remarked. “I heard every word you fellows were saying.”

  “Dormouse,” explained Ealing.

  “Dormouse it is. Give me some more tea, Reggie.”

  “I call it so jolly sociable to read a book when you come to tea,” remarked Reggie.

  “So do I. Thanks. And another piece of cake.”

  “Football’s a beastly game,” said Ealing.

  “Especially when one is beaten. Here we are out of the Cup ties in the first round, and what one is to do now I don’t know. I can’t think why people ever play football.”

  “I shall work,” said Ealing. “Have you seen the list of the subjects for the Mays? I think it must be meant for a joke. They have set all the classical authors I ever heard of, and nearly all I haven’t ever heard of.”

  “I want a clean cup,” quoted Jack.

  “You want a clean— “began Reggie slowly in a tone of virulent condemnation. But being unable to finish his sentence in an adequately insulting manner, he left Jack’s deficiencies to the imagination, “He wants a clean pipe,” remarked Ealing. “It sounds like a kettle boiling.”

  Jack shut up his book and yawned. “You fellows are beastly funny,” he said. “I’m going back to Trinity to work. For why? I am dining with the Babe to-night.”

  “The Babe has got markedly madder and several years younger since last term,” said Ealing. “And he was neither sane nor old to begin with. Tell him so with my love. Or I dare say Reggie and I will come round later.”

  “Do. It is November the fifth. The Babe observes all feasts, whether civil or ecclesiastical. He says it would be a thousand pities to let these curious old customs lapse into disuse.”

  “I wish the Babe wouldn’t use such beautiful language,” said Ealing.

  “He only does it in his less lucid intervals. Good-bye. I’ll tell him you ‘re coming round about ten.”

  Jack picked up his hat and stick and went off to his rooms in Trinity, where till half-past seven he drifted helplessly about like a ship-wrecked mariner, to whom no sail breaks the limitless horizon, in Thucydides’s graphic account of the Peloponnesian war. To Jack, however, it appeared that its chief characteristic was its length, rather than its interest, a criticism, the truth of which is rendered more and more probable every year by an enormous mass of perfectly independent, unbiassed critics. But being a short and stout young man, by no means infirm of purpose, he regarded that merely as a reason the more for beginning at once.

  Reggie Bristow and Ealing sat on for an hour or so by the fire. They were old friends, and so they did not need to talk much. Reggie was a year the younger of the two, and he was now half-way through his first term at King’s. They had been at Eton five years together, where they had both extracted a good deal of amusement out of life, and perhaps a little profit. They were both exceedingly healthy, to judge by the superficial standards of examinations, rather stupid, and, in the opinion of those who knew them, on a much more important matter, very liveable-with. Furthermore, they both played games rather well, and, as was right, neither of them ever troubled his head about abstract questions of any sort or kind. Living was pleasant, and they proceeded to live.

  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. He was in fact perfectly normal, which is always the best thing to be.

  “It’s a great bore, our being beaten,” he said, after a long pause, during which he had succeeded in blowing one smoke ring of through another. “We were the best side really.”

  “Of course we were, although we are blessed with a goal-keeper who hides behind the goal-posts, until a man has had his shot.”

  “He stopped rather a hot one to-day.”

  “Purely by accident. He peeped out from the goal-post too soon, and it struck him in the stomach. I hate being or beaten by Pemmer, though I shouldn’t have minded if we’d lost to Trinity. The ground was in a filthy state too. One couldn’t get off.”

  Reverie sighed.

  “I’ve got to write to my father tomorrow,” he said, “and tell him my impressions of Cambridge. It will be a little difficult, because I haven’t got any.”

  “Of course you haven’t. Only people in books have impressions. Describe the match to-day.”

  “I’m afraid it wouldn’t interest him.”

  “Well, describe King’s Chapel.”

  “I might do that; perhaps he’s forgotten what it is like. Oh, yes, and I might describe some of the dons. I’m expected to be very earnest, you know, and the worst of it is I don’t know how.”

  “Do you suppose one will ever become a responsible being?” asked Ealing.

  “No, never,” said Reggie emphatically. “I grow sillier and sillier every day.”

  “Well, you can’t get much sillier.” Reggie shook his head.

  “You wait a year or two,” he said. “I don’t suppose you can form the slightest impression of how foolish I can be if I like.”

  “What are you going to do when you go down?”

  “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?”

  ‘‘Tha
t’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 tonight?”

  “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 debutant-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 (no explanation forthcoming), 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 débris on the mantelpiece, 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.

  II. — IN FELLOWS’ BUILDINGS.

  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 mediævalism 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 th
ere 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.

  “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.”