Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Reggie shouted.

  “Good old Babe. Has the referee caught you yet? He belongs to this college, and he may be in any minute. In fact, I asked him to come to tea. I don’t know why he hasn’t.”

  “If you want me to go, say so,” said the Babe.

  “Not a bit of it. It was only for your sake I suggested it. Smoke.”

  The Babe was limping about the room and came upon a set of chessmen.

  “I want to play chess,” he said. “Chess is the most delightful game if you treat it as a game of pure chance. You ought to move your queen into the middle of the board and then see what happens. To reduce it to the level of a sum in advanced mathematics, is a scandal and an outrage. To calculate the effect of a move takes away all the excitement.”

  “You may always calculate it wrong.”

  “In that case it becomes a nuisance. Reggie, will you play?”

  “No.”

  “Ealing?”

  “I can’t. I don’t know the moves.”

  “Nor do I. We should be about equal. Supposing you set two Heathen Chinese to play chess, which would win?”

  “Is it a riddle?”

  The Babe sank down again in his chair.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “If it is, I give up. By the way what are you two chaps doing to-morrow?”

  “Stop in bed till ten,” said Reggie, “it being the Day of Rest: Chapel. Breakfast. Lunch. Pitt. Tea. Pitt. Sunday Club.”

  “Do you belong to that? I thought it was semi-clerical.”

  “Yes, we are all lay readers.”

  “I went once,” said the Babe. “We ate what is described as a cold collation. Then we all sat round, and somebody made jokes and we all laughed. I made jokes too, but nobody sat round me. There was a delightful, decorous gaiety about the proceedings. I think we sang hymns afterwards, or else we looked at photographs of cathedrals, I forget which. Hymns and photographs are so much alike.” —

  “O Lord, what do you mean?” asked Reggie.

  “They are both like Sunday evening, and things which are like the same thing are like one another. At eleven we parted.”

  “The wicked old Babe doesn’t care for simple pleasures,” said Ealing. “Oh, he knows a thing or two.”

  “It’s always absurd for a lot of people to meet like that,” continued the Babe. “The whole point of dining clubs ought to be to have a lot of members with utterly different tastes. Then you see they can’t all talk about their tastes, they can’t all sit round and do one thing, and consequently they all talk rot, which is the only rational form of conversation. If there is one thing I detest more than another it is cliques. Individually I love most of the members of the Sunday Club, collectively I cannot even like them. And the same thing applies to the Athenæum.”

  “Then why do you belong?”

  “In order to go to Chapel in a pink and white tie, and also because I love the members individually. I must go. Where’s Bill? Come along under my ulster. Good-bye, you people.”

  V. — THE WORK-CLUB.

  For men must work.

  KINGSLEY.

  REGGIE and Ealing were working together. They had formed a work club consisting only of themselves, and it was to meet for the first time this morning. In order to ensure the success of the first meeting they had had a heavy breakfast at a quarter to nine, because, as Reggie said, brain work is more exhausting than anything else, after which they had played a little snob-cricket in the archway between the two halves of Fellows’ Buildings, in order to clear the brain, until their names were taken by the porter and entered in the report book. So they adjourned to the bridge for a little to finish their pipes, and about a quarter to eleven sat down one at each side of Reggie’s larger table, with a box of cigarettes and a tobacco jar between them, Reggie’s alarum clock, which had been induced to go, two copies of Professor Jebb’s Œdipus Tyrannus, at which they were both working, one small Liddell & Scott, and a translation of the play as edited in Mr. Bohn’s helpful series of classical authors, in case Professor Jebb proved too free in his translation, “for the difficulties,” as Reggie acutely observed, “of rendering Greek both literally and elegantly cannot be over-stated: indeed, it is to be feared that some of our best English scholars sacrifice literal rendering to the latter.”

  So Ealing threw a sofa cushion at his head, and the alarum clock was knocked over on the floor, and instantly went off. The noise was terrific, and they had to stifle it in a college gown, and put it in the gyp cupboard. Then they began.

  For ten minutes or so there was silence, and then Ealing in an abstracted voice asked for the Liddell & Scott, and Reggie, not to be behind-hand, underlined one of Professor Jebb’s notes with a purple indelible pencil. The point was blunt, and he tried to make it sharper by the aid of a dinner knife. This only resulted in a gradual shortening of the pencil. Also the point became slightly notchier.

  Ealing, finding it impossible to go on, while this was being done, had been watching the proceeding at first with deep interest, which passed into a state of wild, unreasonable impatience.

  “How clumsy you are,” he said at length “Here, pass it to me. Fancy not being able to sharpen a pencil.”

  There is, as every one knows, only one individual in the world who can sharpen pencils, and that is oneself. The same remark applies to poking fires. So Reggie replied airily —

  “Oh, never mind, old chap. Get on with your work. I can do it beautifully.”

  But the pencil got rapidly shorter, and in order to prove to his own satisfaction that nobody else in the world could do it, he passed it over to Ealing with the dinner knife. His fingers were purple, and should have been so indelibly, but he hopefully retired into his bedroom to see if it could be washed off.

  It was clear at once to Ealing that Reggie’s method was altogether at fault, and he rough-hewed the pencil again so as to be able to set to work properly. Then the clock on the mantelpiece, which had been set going, after the alarum became derelict, struck eleven and Reggie returned from his bedroom.

  “Of course that clock is fast,” said Ealing.

  “It’s ten minutes slow. Why should you think it was fast?”

  “We must have been working longer than I thought. We had breakfast at half-past eight and we began working almost immediately after, didn’t we?”

  “Yes. We knocked up a bit in the arch, you know.”

  “Only about ten minutes. I should say we had set to work well before ten.”

  “Perhaps we did,” said Reggie, “but I haven’t got through much yet. How’s the pencil getting on?”

  “Oh, pretty well: but you went the wrong way about it at first!”

  “There won’t be much left to write with, will there?” asked Reggie, looking at it doubtfully.

  “It will last you for weeks with proper care,” said Ealing. “I think I never saw so blunt a knife. Why haven’t you got a proper knife?”

  Reggie got up from the table, and strolled across to the window, and looked out.

  “Be quick, old chap,” he said. “I can’t go on till it’s ready. I’m in the middle of underlining something.”

  He saw an acquaintance below, and called to him.

  “The work club’s started this morning,” he shouted. “We’re getting on beautifully.”

  (Confused sound from below, inaudible to Ealing.)

  “Yes, he’s just sharpening my pencil. Isn’t it kind of him? He says he’s getting on with it pretty well.”

  (Murmur.)

  “No, not very far, but I’m in the middle of a chorus, and I’m reading Jebb’s notes and marking them.”

  (Murmur.)

  “Oh, hours; ever since about half-past nine or so.”

  (Murmur.)

  “What?”

  (Murmur.)

  “Yes, Jebb’s not literal enough for me.

  I like to get at the real meaning of —

  Oh!”

  The sofa cushion flew out of the window and lay on the grass
below. When Reggie turned round Ealing was absorbed in his book.

  “Where’s the pencil?” asked Reggie.

  “There isn’t any,” said Ealing.

  “Well, I must go and pick that cushion up. What a lot of time you’ve made me waste. Also go to Severs’s and buy a new pencil. I can’t work without.”

  “This is all the thanks I get,” said Ealing bitterly.

  “No, I’m awfully obliged to you, but it hasn’t done me much good, you know. You see you acted with the best intention, which is always fatal. Where’s my cap?”

  “I should think you could borrow a pencil,” said Ealing.

  Reggie considered a moment, with his head on one side.

  “I think not. It would be better to get one of my own. Then I shall have one, you see. Come with me?”

  The two went down together. As the cushion was lying on the grass, it was necessary to take shots in turn at Reggie’s open window, to avoid going upstairs again. This was much more amusing but it took a little longer than the other would have done, and the University clock struck half-past eleven in a slow regretful manner. The successful shot, about which an even sixpence was laid, was made by Ealing, and they crossed King’s parade to buy a pencil. As they got to the lodge they were further gratified by the sight of the Babe in the road opposite on a bicycle, which he rode exceedingly badly and with a curious, swoopy, wobbly motion. Mr. Sykes trotted along at a distance of some twenty yards off, with the air of not belonging to anybody, thoroughly ashamed of his master. They called to the Babe, and he being rash enough to try to wave his hand to them, ran straight into the curbstone opposite King’s gate, and dismounted hurriedly, stepping into a large puddle. His face was flushed with his exertions, but, as he wrung the water out from the bottom of his trousers, he said genially:

  “This is dry work, though it doesn’t look it. A small whiskey and soda, Reggie, would not hurt me. No doubt you have such a thing in your room.”

  “What about Bill Sykes?”

  The Babe thought for a moment and mopped his forehead, but in a few seconds a smile of solution lighted his face.

  “William shall be chained to the bicycle,” he said. “Thus no one will steal the bicycle for fear of William, and William will not venture to run away, as he wouldn’t be seen going about the streets with a bicycle in tow for anything. He despises the bicycle. I can hardly make him follow. Come here, darling.”

  But Mr. Sykes required threats and coaxing. From the first, so the Babe said, he was utterly opposed to the idea of the bicycle, and had, when he thought himself unobserved, been seen to bite it maliciously.

  It struck a quarter to twelve.

  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.

  It was now seven minutes past twelve, and opposite the fountain they met the Provost, at the sight of whom the Babe assumed his most affable manner, and they talked together very pleasantly for a minute or two.

  “Indeed,” as he remarked as they went on their way, “this little meeting should quite take the sting out of the fact that the Porter of your colleges has just retired into his hole in the gate, with the object no doubt, of reporting you both for walking across the grass. And as you have already been reported for playing squash, this will make twice.”

  Bill Sykes meantime had been the object of much attention on the part of the casual passers-by, and he was sitting there chattering with impotent rage, the centre of a ring of people, in the humiliating position of being chained to a bicycle, which he despised and detested. At the sight of the Babe, however, he forgot for the moment about the bicycle, jumped up, and tried to run towards him. Thus it was not unnatural that the bicycle toppled heavily over onto the top of him. Mr. Sykes was very angry, the bell rang loudly, and one handle of the bicycle was bent.

  Mr. Sykes was released, and the Babe who was not expert at mounting, though he said he was the very devil when he got going, hopped slowly down King’s Parade for a hundred yards or so with one foot on the step, making ineffectual efforts to get into the saddle. There seemed to be no reason to suppose that he would ever succeed, but about opposite the north end of the Chapel, he accomplished this feat, and after describing two or three graceful but involuntary swoops to the right and left, secured the treadles, and settled comfortably down into one of the tram lines. At this moment the tram came round the corner by St. Mary’s, and the bicycle, with its precious burden, seemed doomed to instant annihilation. The Babe, however, got off just in time, and consoled himself by swearing at the driver, and he disappeared among the traffic of Trinity Street still hopping.

  “It’s like the White Knight riding,” said Ealing. “Look sharp, Reggie, with that beastly pencil. It’s struck a quarter past.”

  Between one thing and another, it was creditable that they were ready to begin work again at half-past twelve. Reggie finished underlining his note, the point of which he could not quite understand, and so put a query in the margin, and Ealing went back to the word he was looking out in Liddell & Scott, an hour and a quarter before.

  Ten minutes later Reggie observed that the Babe had forgotten his cover-coat, which was lying on a chair, and they debated with some heat whether it had better be taken to him at once. Eventually they tossed up, as to who should do it; Ealing lost the toss, and they both jumped up with alacrity.

  “It’s a beastly nuisance when one has just settled down to work again,” he said.

  “I won,” remarked Reggie, “and I am going. By Jove, there’s that Varsity clock striking a quarter to one. Here, let’s both go. It’s no use working for a quarter of an hour. One can’t do anything in a quarter of an hour, and I must lunch at one, as I’m playing footer,”

  “All right. Of course we work after tea for two hours more as we settled. That will make five, and one more after Hall.”

  “And six hours steady work a day,” said Reggie cheerfully, “is as much as is good for any man. I begin not to attend after I have worked, really worked, you know, for six hours.”

  VI. — THE BABE’S PICNIC.

  Row, brothers, row,

  The stream runs slow,

  We don’t know how to row

  And the oars stick so.

  LIGHT-BLUE LYRICS.

  THE Babe was no waterman, and he never pretended to be, but this did not prevent his getting up a quiet picnic on the upper river one delightful afternoon towards the end of May. There were only to be four of them, not counting Mr. Sykes — though it was impossible not to count Mr. Sykes, the others being Reggie, Ealing, and Jack Marsden.

  Marsden, who had once, when a Freshman, been coached on the river, by an angry man in shorts, and had been abandoned as hopeless after his first trial, was naturally supposed by the Babe to be an accomplished oarsman, and to have probed to its depths the nature of boats and oars and stretchers, so he was deputed to find a boat which held four people, several hampers, and a dog, and which was warranted not to shy or bolt, and to be quiet with children. It was understood that the Babe was not going to row or steer, his office being merely to provide food for them all, and if possible to prevent Mr. Sykes from leaping overboard when they passed the bathing-sheds, and biting indiscriminately at the bathers, whom for some reason of his own he regarded with peculiar but perfectly ineradicable disfavour. The Babe had taken him up the river only the week before, but opposite the town sheds Sykes had been unable to restrain himself, had jumped off the boat into the water and chased to land a bland and timid shopkeeper, to whom the Babe owed money, so it looked as if it was a put-u
p job; the man had regained the steps of the bathing-shed only just in time to save himself from being pinned in the calf of the leg.

  The Babe and Jack were to start from the raft by Trinity at three, and pick up Reggie and Ealing opposite King’s. They were then to row up to Byron’s Pool (so-called because there is no reason to suppose that Byron was not extremely fond of it,) bathe and have tea, and afterwards go a mile or so farther, and have dinner. The Babe who just now was gated at ten, confidently hoped to be home at or before that hour, on the sole ground that Napoleon had once said there was no such word as impossible.

  They paddled quietly up to the Mill just above the town, and here it was necessary to haul the boat over the bank separating the upper river from the lower. The Babe who was beautifully dressed in white flannels, yellow boots, and a straw hat with a new riband, courteously declined giving the smallest assistance to the others, but watched the operation with interest and apparent approval, in consequence of which he was advised by Reggie, who had got hot and rather dirty with his exertions, to drop that infernally patronising attitude. Here too Mr. Sykes first sniffed the prey, for he had caught sight of the bathers at the town sheds across the fields, and was trotting quietly off in their direction, secretly licking his lips, but outwardly pretending that he was merely going for a little airy walk on his own account. The Babe had to run after him and haul him back, for he affected to hear neither whistling nor shouting, and on his return he kept smelling suspiciously at the legs of casual passers-by as if he rather suspected that they were going to bathe too.

  Though the lower river is one of the foulest streams on the face of the earth, the upper river is one of the fairest. It wanders up between fresh green fields, bordered by tall yellow flags, loosestrife, and creamy meadow-sweet, all unconscious of the fate that awaits it from vile man below. Pollarded willows lean over the bank and listen to the wind, and here and there a company of white poplars, the most distinguished of trees, come trooping down to the water’s edge. The stream itself carpeted with waving weeds strolls along clear and green from the reflection of the trees, troops of bleak poise and dart in the shallows, or shelter in the subaqueous forests, and the Babe said he saw a trout, a statement to which no importance whatever need be attached. Looking back across a mile of fields you see the pinnacles of King’s rise grey and grave into the sky; and in front, Granchester, with its old-fashioned garden-cradled houses, presided over by a church tower on the top of which, as a surveyor once remarked, there is a plus sign which is useful as a fixed point, nestles in a green windless hollow.