by E. F. Benson
It proposed that I should be appointed Master of Magdalen, I forget why at this moment. It contained the results of a plébiscite as to who should be Vice Chancellor for the next year, and the under-porter of King’s got in easily, with Jack Marsden as a bad second. It proposed the substitution of dominoes and hopscotch — I haven’t the least idea what hopscotch is, but it sounds to me simply obscene — for the inter-university contests at cricket and rowing. And that magazine,” said the Babe dramatically, rising from his chair, and addressing Primavera, “that magazine was welcomed, welcomed, Madam, by all classes. The innocent lambs, whose reputation I ought to have ruined came bleating after me and said how they had enjoyed it. It sold by hundreds, when it ought to have been suppressed: people thought it funny, whereas it was only hopelessly foolish and vulgar, though I say it who shouldn’t; while those few people who had the sense to see how despicable the whole production really was, told each other that it was only Me.’ Me! I’m almost sick of the word. I was put ‘in Authority’ in the Granta, when I ought to have been sent down — The Vice-Chancellor asked me to dinner on the very day when I published a most infernal and libellous lampoon about him, and I have already told you how the Proctors treat me. It is enough,” said the Babe in conclusion, “to make one take the veil, I mean the tonsure, and dry up the milk of human kindness within one.”
“Hear, hear,” shouted Leamington. “Good old Babe.”
The Babe glared at him a moment, with wide, indignant eyes and then went on rather shrilly:
“Look at Reggie. I’m older than he is, at least I think so, and any one with a grain of sense would say that I therefore ought to know better, and what is excusable in him, is not excusable in me, but he goes and says ‘Oh’ in the street and he is treated as a dangerous character, sent home, and will be fined. I might say ‘Oh’ till Oscar Browning got into Parliament, and do you suppose they would ever consider me a dangerous character? Not they. (Here the Babe laughed in a hollow and scornful manner.) They would treat me with that infernal familiarity which I so deprecate, and say, ‘Go home, Babe.’ Babe indeed!”
The Babe’s voice broke, and he flung himself into his chair after the manner of Sarah Bernhardt, and hissed out “Misérables! Comme je les déteste!”
Leamington applauded this histrionic effort, and feeling a little better after breakfast, lit a cigarette. The maidservant came to clear breakfast away, and as she left the room the Babe resumed in the gentle, melancholy tones, which were natural to him:
“If I thought it would do any good, I would go and snatch a kiss from that horrid, rat-faced girl as she is carrying the tray down stairs. But it wouldn’t, you know; it wouldn’t do any good at all. She wouldn’t complain to the landlady, or if she did it would only end in my giving her half-a-crown. Besides, I don’t in the least want to kiss her — I wouldn’t do it if she gave me half-a-crown. I wonder what George Moore would do if he were me. We’ll ask Stewart when he comes to lunch. He is intimate with all notable people. George Moore is notable isn’t he? I fancy W. H. Smith & Son boycotted him. Stewart said the other day that the Emperor of Germany was one of the nicest emperors he had ever seen.”
“That’s nothing,” said Leamington. “There’s a don at Oxford who has written a book called Princes I have Persecuted without Encouragement.”
The Babe laughed.
“A companion volume to Stewart’s Monarchs I have Met. Not that he has written such a book. Stewart is perfectly charming, but he thinks a lot of a Prince. If he hasn’t written Monarchs I have Met, he ought to have.”
“We all ought to have done a lot of things he haven’t done,” said Leamington.
“We had a butler once,” said the Babe, “who never would say the General Confession, because he said he hadn’t left undone the things he ought to have done, and it went against his conscience to say he had. He got the sack soon after for leaving the door of the cellar undone, and for getting drunk.”
“So he was undone himself.”
“When I grow up,” said the Babe with less bitterness, but returning like a burned moth to the sore subject — no charge for mixed metaphors— “I shall live exclusively in the society of archdeacons. Perhaps they might think me wicked. Yet I don’t know — my uncle whom you met last night thinks I’m such a good boy, and he’s a dean.”
“I doubt if they would. The other day some one sent a telegram to the Archdeacon of Basingstoke, a man of whom he knew nothing except that he was a teetotaller and an anti-vivisectionist, saying, ‘Fly at once, all is discovered.’ The Archdeacon flew, and has never been heard of since. No one has the slightest idea where he has gone or what he had done. You know you wouldn’t fly, Babe, if you were sent telegrams like that by the hundred.”
“How little you know me,” said the Babe dramatically. “I should fly like fun. Don’t you see if one flew, one’s character for wickedness would be established beyond all doubt. I might send a telegram to myself, telling me to fly. Then I should fly, but leave the telegram lying about in a conspicuous position. After a year’s absence I should return, but my character would be gone beyond all hopes of recovery, and the world would do me justice at last.”
“Poor misunderstood Babe! Why don’t you go to Oxford, saying you’ve been sent down from Cambridge? What time do we lunch?”
“Oh, about two, and it’s half-past twelve already. Let’s go round to the Pitt. This evening we will go to Trinity Chapel. A little walk is very wholesome after breakfast. Besides I shall go in a bowler, and perhaps we shall meet at Proggins. I shall insult him if we do.”
IV. — vs. BLACKHEATH.
For he was very fast,
And he ran and he passed,
And the sun and the moon and the stars
Tried to catch him by the tail, lint they one and all did fail,
And Venus broke her nose ‘gainst Mars.
HOTCHPOTCH VERSES.
THE Babe hurt his knee playing against the Old Leysians, and his language was Aristophanic and savoured strongly of faint praise. Also one of the Old Leysians had grossly insulted him during the course of the game. The Babe was careering about with the ball behind their touch-line, attempting to get a try straight behind the goal-posts, instead of being content with one a reasonable distance off, for he was fastidious in these little matters and liked to do things well, when he was caught up bodily by one of the opposing team and carried safely out into the field again. A roar of appreciative laughter, and shouts of “Good old Babe” went up from all the field, and the Babe’s feelings were hurt. He had the satisfaction of dropping a goal a little later on, but he asked pathetically, “Could aught atone?”
Before “Time” was called he had hurt his knee, and as already mentioned he was Aristophanic for a few days.
The next match was against Blackheath, and the Babe had not yet recovered sufficiently to play. He had bought an Inverness cloak “so loud,” he said, “that you could scarcely hear yourself speak,” and a cross-eyed bull-pup, in order to dispel that universal but distressing illusion about his childishness, which so vexed his soul, and he was going to lunch with Reggie and look at the match afterwards. Bill Sykes, the bull-dog, was coming too, in order to be seen with the Babe by as many people as possible, and his master drove to King’s gate with his Inverness and his bull-dog, and his seraphic smile, in the best of tempers. It was necessary to smuggle Mr. Sykes, as the Babe insisted that strangers should call him, through the court without his being seen, and the Babe hobbled along, still being rather lame, presenting a curious lopsided appearance which was caused by Mr. Sykes, who was tucked away beneath the Inverness. A confused growling sound issued at intervals from somewhere below his left arm, drowning even the loudness of the Inverness, and the Babe murmured encouragement and threats alternately. 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 apparentl
y 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 game had not yet begun when they reached the Corpus ground, and both Sykes and the Babe’s cloak can hardly have failed to be noticed. The Babe hobbled about among the two teams who were kicking about before the game began, and said it was much pleasanter looking on than playing, and that he meant to give it up, as it was a game more suited to savages than gentlemen.
Two of the home team resented these remarks, and removed him, kindly but firmly, beyond the touch-line.
He and Reggie had secured chairs towards the centre of the ground, and it pleased the Babe to affect a childlike ignorance of everything connected with the rules and regulations of Rugby football, and he kept up a flow of fatuous remarks.
“Look how they are throwing the ball about! Why do they do that, Reggie? Which side is getting the best of it?
Look at that funny little man with a flag, why do they all stop when he holds it up? I suppose it must be the captain. Have they got any try-downs yet, or do you call them touches? Oh, the ball’s coming over here. I wish they’d take more care; it might easily have hit me. Why don’t they have a better one? It’s got all out of shape; it isn’t a bit round. Mr. Sykes wants to play too. What a darling! Bite it then! How rough they are! Why did Hargreaves stamp on that man so?”
The effect of Hargreaves’ “stamping on that man” was that he got the ball and a nice clear run. He was playing three quarters on the right, and when he got fairly off he was as fast as any man in England. His weak point, however, was starting: he could not start full speed as the Babe did, being heavy and a trifle clumsy. But he got twenty yards clear now, and making the most of it he was well off before the Blackheath team realised what was happening.
The Babe’s fatuities died away as Hargreaves started and he stood silent a moment. It was clear that there was a good opening to hand, barring accidents. The game was close to the University twenty-five on the far side of the ground, and the Blackheath three-quarters were for the moment much too close to the scrimmage. It was impossible to get through even with the most finished passing on that side, and Hargreaves ran right across parallel to the goal disregarding the possibility of being collared in the centre of the ground opposite to the home goal, but trusting to his own speed. The outside Blackheath three-quarters came racing along, running slightly back in order to tackle him as he turned, but in a few moments it was clear that he was outpaced. Hargreaves ran clear round him as a yacht clears the buoy with a few yards to spare.
“Oh, well run,” shouted the Babe. “Don’t pass; get in yourself.”
Hargreaves and the Blackheath back were now close to each other about the level of the Blackheath twenty-five, and nearly in the middle of the ground. The Varsity centre three-quarters had run straight up the ground while Hargreaves ran round, and was now in a position to be passed to again, but two Blackheath three-quarters were close to him. Then, by a fatal error, Hargreaves wavered a moment, instead of again trusting to his pace, got tackled, and in that moment of slack speed his own centre three-quarters got in front of him. He passed wildly and forward. An appeal, a whistle, a flag, and a free kick.
“Damn,” said the Babe in a loud, angry voice.
The game flickered about between the two twenty-fives for the next ten minutes, going fast and loose, with a good deal of dribbling on the part of the forwards, and a corresponding amount of self-immolation on the part of the halves, who hurled themselves recklessly on the ball in the face of the fastest rushes, and seemed to the unaccustomed eye to be feverishly courting a swift and muddy death. Hargreaves made a few futile attempts to run through and failed egregiously.
Half-time was called shortly afterwards, neither team having scored. The Babe hobbled out into the field to make himself unpleasant to his side. Mr. Sykes followed, wheezing pathetically, and the Babe’s Inverness cloak came in for renewed comments and reproof.
“They are weak on the outside,” said the sage Babe to Hargreaves, “and a great man like you can run round as easy as perdition. You ought to stand much wider, and if you think you can get through the centre you are wrong. Stoddard could stop fifty of you. Good-bye.”
The Blackheath team had come to the same conclusion as the Babe, and they kept the game tight. They had quite realised that the Varsity three-quarters on the left was weak, and that Hargreaves on the right was abominably fast. In consequence they did their best to screw the scrimmage round to Hargreaves’ side, so as to hamper him by not leaving him room to get off. Time after time his half fed him persistently, and time after time he was unable to get round between the touch-line and the forwards. Meantime, the Blackheath pack, which were heavier and rather better together than Cambridge, were working their way slowly and steadily down the ground, keeping the ball close and comfortable among them. Hargreaves again and again, following the Babe’s advice, stood right away on the left of the scrimmage when it approached the right touch-line, but his vis-à-vis as regularly stood close to him, and embraced him affectionately but roughly as soon as the ball got to him and before he had time to pass; but for the next quarter the game was very tight, and with the exception of a couple of free kicks given for offside play among the Blackheath forwards, the ball rarely left the scrimmage. Even these were returned by the back into touch, and the forwards settled down on the ball again like swarming bees.
The Babe, meantime, had been insolent to the referee, who was an old friend, and also an old hand. He had gone so far as to leave the game to take care of itself for a moment to tell the Babe candidly and in a loud, clear voice that he should be severely treated afterwards, adding as a further insult, “Of course we all know it’s only you.” The Babe was furious but impotent. The glory of the ulster and the bull-pup was entirely neutralised.
But he soon forgot these insolences; there were only ten minutes left, and neither side had scored more than minor points. To the unprofessional eye it seemed likely that they might go on playing for hours like this without either side scoring. The Blackheath forwards gained ground very slowly, but this was made up for with tiresome monotony by the quick punting of the University halves whenever they got the chance. The three-quarters stood and shivered, and the University back declared bitterly and audibly that he might as well have stopped at home.
But the professional Babe knew better. If once the ball came fairly out, the three-quarters would have a look in, and for himself he placed his money on Hargreaves. And in defiance of law, order, and decorum he shouted his advice to the half who was playing substitute for him.
“Don’t punt,” he shouted, “but pass.”
The half at that moment was busy punting, and the Babe repeated his advice. Two minutes afterwards the half took it, as an exceptional opportunity presented itself, and passed to his centre three-quarters, and the Babe stood on his chair. Centre ran a short way and passed to the left, who passed back to centre, and centre to right. It was as pretty a piece of passing as one would wish to see on a winter’s day.
This was the moment for which the Babe was waiting. The field was broken up and Hargreaves had the ball. He ran: they all ran. He ran fastest — there is nothing like simple language for epical events. He got a try which was not converted into a goal. But as no other points were scored, Cambridge won the match by one point to nil.
The Babe and Mr. Sykes went back to take their tea with Reggie, and Ealing who had been playing the Eton game, joined them. The Babe ate three muffins with a rapt air, and Mr. Sykes drank his tea out of the slop-basin like a Christian. He took cream and three lumps of sugar. His idea of how to eat muffins was a little sketchy, but otherwise be behaved charmingly. But, as the Babe said, to put pieces of half-masticated muffin on the carpet while you drink your tea, is a thing seldom, if ever, done in the best houses.
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Ealing himself eschewed muffin on the ground of its being “bad training,” and the Babe, who held peculiar views on training, proceeded to express them.
“One does every thing best,” he said, “when one is most content. Personally I am most content when I have eaten a large lunch. Nobody could play Rugger in the morning. Why? Simply because no one is in a good temper in the morning, except those under-vitalised people who are never in a bad one, and who also never play games. Of course after a very large lunch one cannot run quite so fast, but one is serene, and serenity has much more to do with winning a match than pace. Yes, another cup of tea, please. Now Hargreaves is most content when he has had a little bread and marmalade and water. Every one to his taste. I hate water except when it’s a hot bath. Water is meant not to drink, but to heat and wash in.”
“Babe, do you mean to say you have hot baths in the morning?”
“Invariably when the weather is cold, and a cigarette, whatever the weather is. I am no Charles Kingsley, though I used to collect butterflies when I was a child.”
“But when you became a Babe, you put away childish things,” suggested Ealing.
A malignant light beamed from the Babe’s eye.
“I ask you: do Babes have bull-pups?”
“I know one who has. I daresay he’s an exception, though.”
“When I was at a private school,” remarked the Babe severely, “and a chap said a thing like that, we used to call him a funny ass.”