by E. F. Benson
Next morning the Babe’s note came, and his suspicion that the Babe had noticed it took definite form. It was no manner of use refusing to see him, but what he could not make up his mind about, was what answer he should give him. To confess it would not help him to make reparation, and to return, as he honestly wanted to do, the £20 he had won and besides it did not seem, in anticipation, particularly an easy thing to do. And when the Babe knocked at his door, he was still as much in the dark as ever, as to what, if the Babe’s errand was what he suspected, he should say to him.
The Babe accepted a cigarette, and sat down rather elaborately. He had determined not to remark upon the weather or the prospects of an early dissolution, or make any foolish attempts to lead up to the subject, and after a moment he spoke.
“I am awfully sorry,” he said, “to have to say what I am going to. In two words it is this: Three men with whom you were playing last night at Marmara, thought that once or twice you saw your cards, or one of your cards, before you staked. I am one of them myself, and we decided that the only fair and proper thing to do was so ask you whether this was so. I am very sorry to have to say this.”
The Babe behaved like the gentleman he was, and instead of looking at Feltham to see whether his face indicated anything, kept his eyes steadily away from him, Feltham stood a moment without answering and if the Babe had chosen to look at him he would have seen that he paused because he could not command his voice. But the Babe did not choose to do so. Feltham would have given anything that moment to have been able to say “It is true,” but it seemed to him a physical impossibility. On the other hand he felt it equally impossible to take the high line, to threaten to kick the Babe out of the room unless he went in double quick time etc., etc., — to do any of those things which thorough-paced swindlers are supposed to do when their honour is quite properly called in question.
“It is a damned lie,” he said at length, quite quietly and without conviction.
The Babe got up at once, and stepped across to where Feltham was standing.
“Then I wish to apologise most sincerely both for myself and the other two fellows,” he said, “and if you would like to knock me down, you may. I shall of course tell them at once we were mistaken, and I believe what you say entirely. Will you shake hands?”
Feltham let the Babe take his hand, and as the latter turned to leave the room, sat limply down in the chair from which the Babe had got up.
But the Babe had hardly got half-way across the room, when Felthan spoke again.
The Babe’s utter frankness had suddenly made it impossible for Feltham to let him go without telling him, but to tell him now was not made easier by having lied about it.
“Please wait a minute,” he said.
The Babe’s cigarette had gone out, and he lit it again over the lamp. Then he sat down in the window seat and waited. Outside, the grass was sparkling with frost and the clock chimed a quarter past seven. Simultaneously Feltham spoke:
“I have lied to you as well,” he said. “What you saw was perfectly true. I cheated twice, at least I saw one of the cards dealt me twice, and said nothing about it. Once the card happened to be immaterial, and once I staked £20 knowing I should win. I have told you all.”
The Babe was a person of infinite variety, and if those who knew him best had seen him now, they would hardly have believed it was he. He sat down on the arm of the chair where Feltham was sitting, and to himself cursed the whole pack of cards from ace to king, and above all Jim Broxton. Then aloud —
“My poor dear fellow,” he said. “I’m devilish sorry for you.”
Feltham, who had been expecting to hear a few biting remarks or else merely the door slam behind the Babe, looked up. The Babe was looking at him, quite kindly, quite naturally, as if he was condoling with him on some misfortune.
Feltham began, “Damn it all—” then stopped, and without a moment’s warning burst out crying.
The Babe got up, went to the door and sported it. Then he sat down again on the arm of the chair.
“Poor chap,” he said. “It’s beastly hard lines, and I fully expect it’s as much our fault as yours. You needn’t trouble to tell me you never did it before: of course you didn’t. I fully believe that. People who would confess that sort of thing don’t do that sort of thing twice. It was like this perhaps — we were playing for far more than you could afford, and you didn’t mean to do it, until somehow it was done. Money is a devilish contrivance.”
“Yes, it was just like that,” said Feltham. “As I told you, the first time I saw a card, it didn’t make any difference, though of course I ought to have said so. But the second time it did, and before I knew what I had done, I had cheated. Why don’t you call me a swindler and tell me I’m not fit to associate with gentlemen? It’s God’s truth.”
The corners of the Babe’s mouth twitched.
“It’s not my concern then. What would be the good of saying that?”
He paused a moment, hoping that Feltham would make a certain suggestion, and he was not disappointed.
“Look here, there’s the twenty pounds: what can I do with it? Can you help me?”
The Babe thought a moment.
“Yes, give it me. I’ll see that the other fellows get it somehow, if you’ll leave it to my discretion. And, you know, it sounds absurd for a fool like me to give advice, but if I were you I shouldn’t play cards for money again. It’s no use running one’s head into danger. If it’s not rude, what is your allowance?”
“Two hundred and fifty.”
“You bally ass! Yet I don’t know. It’s our fault. You couldn’t tell that the pool would behave in that manner, and I know, personally, I should find it out of the question to say one was playing for more than one could afford. Some people call it moral cowardice, it seems to me a perfectly natural reticence.”
“Of course I won’t play again,” said Feltham. “Why have you been so awfully good to me?”
“I haven’t. What else was I to do? Oh, yes, and I think I respected you for telling the truth. Most fellows would have lied like George Washington.” Feltham smiled feebly.
“All that remains is this,” said the Babe. “Of course I must tell those other two fellows about it, the two I mean with whom I talked, but you can trust them absolutely. It is impossible that anyone else should ever know about it.”
“You don’t think — oughtn’t I to tell them all?” stammered Feltham.
The Babe frowned.
“Of course you ought not. Why the deuce should you? About the money — it must be divided up between us all. Six into twenty, about three pound ten each. Rather an awkward sum.”
“Why six?”
“Because there were six of us.”
“I can’t take any.”
“Your feelings have nothing to do with it,” remarked the Babe. “The money in the pool of course belongs to everyone. You return the others’ shares of that £20 and keep your own. Well, I’ll manage it somehow. I will make absurd bets, seventy to one in shillings. That will surprise nobody: I often do it. Good Lord, it’s a quarter to eight. If you ‘re going into Hall, you’ll be very late, and so shall I for my dinner. I must go. Oh, by the way, did you lose much altogether?”
“About twenty-five pounds.”
“Is it, is it” — began the Babe. “I mean, are you in a hole? If so, I wish you’d let me lend you some money. Why shouldn’t you? No? Are you sure you don’t want some? It’s no use receiving unpleasant letters from one’s father, when there’s no need. Well as you like. Good-night. Come round and look me up some time: I’m on the next stair-case.”
Feltham followed him to the door.
“I can’t tell you what I feel,” he said huskily, “but I am not ungrateful. Half an hour ago you asked me to shake hands with you. Will you shake hands with me?”
“Why, surely,” said the Babe.
XIX. — IN THE FIFTIES.
He sailed his little paper boats,
And when
the folk thought scorn of that,
He spudded up the waiting worm
And yearned towards the master’s hat.
HOTCH-POTCH VERSES.
THE Babe went off to dress for dinner much relieved in mind. Now that it was over he confessed to himself that he had been quite certain that Feltham had cheated, but that he should own up to it, was fine, and the Babe who considered himself totally devoid of anything which could possibly be construed into moral courage, respected him for it. He also registered a vow that never to the crack of doom — which cracked three days afterwards — would he play unlimited Marmara again, and told himself that he was not cut out for the sort of thing that he had just been through, and that he was glad it was over. He went round at once to tell Broxton and Anstruther what had happened, and after that shook the whole affair from his mind, as a puppy shakes itself after being in the water.
He was, naturally, late for dinner, and Mr. Stewart who knew the value of soup and also the habits of the Babe, had not waited. When he did appear, he was, of course, perfectly unabashed, and took the bottom of the table with unassuming grace.
“The psychology of punctuality,” he remarked, “is a most interesting study. Some day I mean to study it, and I shall write a little monograph on the subject uniform with those which Sherlock Holmes wrote on tobacco ash and the tails of cart horses. I think there must be a punctuality bacillus, something like a death-watch, always ticking, and if there isn’t one, I shall invent it. It doesn’t take to me. I am too healthy.”
“My dear Babe,” said the Stewart, “you have disappointed me. I always hoped that you were the one person I have been looking for so long, who has never been punctual; But you have been punctual to my knowledge twice, once on an occasion in the Long—”
“When was that?” interrupted the Babe. “I don’t believe it.”
“On a memorable occasion. At lunch in your own rooms.”
The Babe caught Reggie’s eye, and looked away.
“Oh, yes.”
“And as Clytemnestra, you always killed Agamemnon with ruthless punctuality. 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 bloodcurdling 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. If he really could scream like that, you robbed him of a chance of greatness by screaming for him, although you screamed very well.”
“There are syphons and syphons,” said the Babe, “he screamed like an empty but undervitalised one, which had never really been full.”
“Babe, if you talk about undervitalised syphons during fish,” said Reggie, “you will drive us all mad, before the end of dinner.”
“Going mad,” said Mr. Stewart, “is an effort of will. I could go mad in a minute if I wished, and the Babe certainly determined to go mad when he was yet a boy. No offence meant, Babe. I can confidently state that during the three years I have known him, he has never for a moment seemed to be really sane.”
“I was perfectly sane when I settled to go in for the tripos,” said the Babe.
“You never settled to do anything of the kind. You think you did and it is one of your wildest delusions.”
“Secondly I was sane,” said the Babe, “when I—”
“No you weren’t,” put in Reggie.
“Reggie, don’t be like Longridge. But you are quite right. I wasn’t sane then, though I thought I was for the moment.”
“Longridge is better, though he still has a large piece of sticking plaster over his nose,” said Mr. Stewart. “He came to see me to-day. He insisted on arguing with me in spite of my expostulations. When he talks, I always want to cover him up, as one covers up a chirping canary.”
“I wish you would do it some day. With a piece of green baize you know, and a hole in it where the handle of the cage comes out.”
“He would continue to make confused noises within,” said Reggie.
“He always makes confused noises,” said Mr. Stewart wearily. “Confused, ingenious, noises. Babe, tell me if that champagne is drinkable.”
The Babe drank off his glass.
“Obviously,” he said. “But it’s no use asking me: all champagne seems to me delicious. I drink Miller’s cheapest for choice.”
A small withered don who was sitting next the Babe, and had not previously spoken, here looked up.
“A nice, dry, light wine,” he said.
The Babe started violently, and if he had not just emptied his glass of champagne, he would certainly have spilled it. He explained afterwards that he really had forgotten that anyone was occupying the chair on the right.
This curious old gentlemen, one of the few surviving specimens of this particular type of elderly don had the classical name of Moffat, and Mr. Stewart at once introduced him to the Babe, a ceremony which had escaped his memory before, and Mr. Moffat who had been shivering on the brink of conversation all dinner, decided to plunge in.
“I saw your performance of the Agamemnon last week,” he said.
“I hope you enjoyed it,” said the Babe politely.
“The stage is not what it was in me young days,” said Mr. Moffat.
The Babe looked interested and waited for further criticisms, but the old gentleman returned to his dinner without offering any. His face looked as if it was made of cast iron, painted with Aspinall’s buff-coloured enamel.
There was a short silence, and Mr. Stewart, looking up, saw that the Babe was fighting like a man against an inward convulsion of laughter. His face changed from pink to red, and a vein stood out on his usually unwrinkled brow. Stewart knew that when the Babe had a fit of the giggles it was, so to speak, no laughing matter, and he made things worse by asking Mr. Moffat how his sister was. At this point the Babe left the room with a rapid, uneven step, and he was heard to plunge violently into the dishes outside. Stewart had been particularly unfortunate in his choice of a subject, because what had started the Babe off, was the very thought that Mr. Moffat’s sister was no doubt the original Miss Moffat, and he had been rashly indulging in wild conjectures as to what would happen if he said suddenly:
“I believe your sister doesn’t like spiders.”
Mr. Moffat had resumed the subject of the Greek play when the Babe returned — he seemed not to have noticed his ill-mannered exit — and was finding fault with the chorus, particularly with the leader, who, in the person of Reggie, was sitting opposite him. Of this, however, he had not the slightest idea.
“I call them a dowdy crew,” he said. “They were dressed like old baize doors. Not me idea of a chorus at all. But it was all very creditable, very creditable indeed, and we have to thank me young friend here for a very fine performance of Clytemnestra. Why, me sister” — here the Babe gasped for a moment like a drowning man, but recovered himself bravely—” me sister came down next morning at breakfast, and said she’d hardly been able to sleep a wink, hardly a wink, for thinking of Clytemnestra.”
The Babe made a violent effort and checked himself.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, with his most engaging manner. “I hope you will apologise to her for me.”
“Not at all, not at all,” said Mr. Moffat. “It’s me own opinion she slept far more than she knew. But she was always nervous,” — the Babe bit his tongue—” easily upset. A very good pheasant, Mr. Stewart, a very good pheasant. Thank ye, yes, a glass of champagne. A glass of wine with you, heh, heh, Clytemnestra.”
Mr. Moffat, as the Babe allowed afterwards, was a very pleasant old gentleman. When dinner was over and he had settled himself into an arm-chair by the fire, smoking one of Stewart’s strongest cigars, he told several stories about the old generation of dons whom he had known.
/> “There was an old fellow of King’s” he was saying, “in me undergraduate days, who must have been eighty, and never a night had he spent out of Cambridge since he came up as an undergraduate. An infidel old lot he was. Many a time I’ve seen him in the evening, when the worms were come out on the grass plot, hobbling about and trying to kill them with the point of his stick. He used to talk to them and make faces at them and say, ‘Ah, damn you. You haven’t got me yet.’ A queer lot they all were, not the worms I mean, heh, heh, but the old dons. There were two others who had been great mathematicians in their time, and they used to spend their evenings together doing, what do you think? Making paper boats, sir, which they went and sailed on the Cam next day. They would start them from the King’s bridge, and sail them down to the willow at the other end of the lawn. And such quarrels as they had over which had won! One of them one morning, his name was Jenkinson, if I’m not mistaken, an old Yorkshireman, got so heated over it, — for he said the other boat had fouled his, as if they were racing for a cup, — that he went for the other man, by gad, sir, he went for him, and tried to push him into the river. But the other — his name was Keggs — was too quick for him, and stepped out of the way, and head over ears into the river went Jenkinson himself, being unable to stop himself, sir, by reason of the impetus he had got up. The river isn’t over deep, there, as you know, perhaps two feet deep, and he stood up as soon as he could find his feet and bawled out: ‘Ah misdoot ye’ve drooned me, Keggs.’”
The Babe was delighted.
“Do tell me some more,” he said, when Mr. Moffat had finished laughing himself, which he did in a silent, internal manner.