Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “I didn’t attend to the play much,” he said. “There was an undergraduate sitting next me, who was more interesting. He wore a red cummerbund.”

  “Ah, yes,” murmured Mr. Stewart. “The kind that talks to the female in tobacconists’ shops, and sits on the counter as it does so. Its father is usually one of nature’s gentlemen, who has married a perfect lady. The two always marry each other, and in the next generation the females dress in Liberty fabric, and the males congregate at the smaller colleges. They are on the increase. I suppose it’s an instance of the survival of the filthiest.”

  Mr. Steward rose from his chair, and crossed over to the window-seat where the Babe was sitting.

  “What can I do to amuse you, Babe?” he said. “I feel that it is the duty of all your friends to distract your thoughts from all subjects for the next two days. Shall I play cards with you — you shall teach me — or shall we talk about the Epsom meeting, or the A.D.C.? I suppose you are going to act in the May week? Why not act Hamlet, and we will persuade Long-ridge to be Ophelia. There is something sublimely inconsequent in the way Ophelia distributes artificial flowers to the company which reminds me of Longridge in his soberer moments. I have been very much tried by Longridge to-night. He asked me to help him to sing glees in the Roundabout. Can you imagine Longridge and me sitting side by side in the Roundabout singing “Three Blind Mice?” I could imagine it so vividly that I didn’t go.”

  The Babe laughed.

  “You can give me whisky and soda, and then I shall go to bed. It is twelve, and I must practise being dressed and breakfasted by nine. Does it require much practice?”

  “I should think about twenty minutes every morning. What is the use of doing a thing you have got to do, before you have got to do it? It is like cutting yourself with a knife to accustom yourself to a surgical operation.”

  “There are points of similarity,” said the Babe. “I shall go to bed now for all that, as soon as I’ve drunk this.”

  XXIII. — THE LISTS.

  List, O list.

  SHAKESPEARE.

  The Babe and Reggie were sitting outside the pavilion at Fenner’s watching the University against the gentlemen of England, who as the Babe said, so far from sitting at home at ease were running out to Feltham’s slow bowling and getting caught and stumped, with very enjoyable frequency. The cricket was a delightful mixture of a fine bowling performance and very hard hitting, which to the uneducated spectator is perhaps the most lively of all to watch. Feltham had in fact, from the Babe’s point of view, just sent down the ideal over. The first ball was hit out of the ground for six, the second bowled the hitter round his legs. The third ball was hit by the incomer for four, and the fourth for four. The fifth ball he also attempted to hit as hard as he could to square leg, and he was caught at point, in the manner of a catch at the wicket.

  The Babe tilted his hat over his eyes, and gave a happy little sigh.

  “Reggie, the tripos is the secret of life,” he said. ‘‘If you want to get a real feeling of leisure and independence, a feeling that you have been told privately by the archangels to amuse yourself and do nothing whatever else, go in for the tripos, or rather wait till you come out. I suppose that considering my years I have wasted more time than most people, and I thought I knew what it felt like. But I didn’t. I had no idea how godlike it is to do nothing. To have breakfast, and feel that it won’t be lunch-time for four hours, and after that to have the whole afternoon before you.”

  “When are the lists out?”

  “Oh, in about ten days now. Don’t talk about lists. Tell me how long you worked this morning. Tell me about the man in your college who works ten hours every day and eleven hours every night. Tell me of the difficulty of learning by heart the Roman emperors or the kings of Israel and Judah. Assure me that by knowing the angle of the sun above the horizon and the length of Feltham’s shadow, you could find out how tall the umpire is.”

  “He s about five foot ten,” said Reggie.

  “That s like the answers I used to give to the questions about the hands of a watch,” said the Babe. “They tell you that if the hands of a watch are together at twelve — there’s no ‘if’ about it, it is never otherwise, — when will they be together next. I always said about five minutes past one. It seems absurdly simple. I’ve often noticed them together then: and the same remark applies to about ten minutes past two. That reminds me,” added the Babe, looking at his watch, “that it’s twenty-five minutes past five. The hour hand seems to have gained a little.”

  “Oh, I remember,” said Reggie. “The hour hand gains seven-elevenths.”

  “Seven-elevenths of what?”

  “I don’t know. Of the answer, I suppose. I shouldn’t have thought it was five yet.”

  “But it is, and that compels us to decide between tea and cricket.”

  “We can get tea in the pavilion. There’s another four.”

  “You shall give me a hundred to one that the next ball is not a wicket,” said the Babe.

  “In pennies, and make it fifty.”

  “Done.”

  A very audible click, and an appeal. Reggie got up and felt in his pockets.

  “I should have been ashamed to get out to a ball like that. You’ll have to pay for tea, Babe. There you are.”

  “Twopence more,” said the Babe.

  “Not if I went to the stake for it, Hullo, Ealing, where are you from? Ealing’s got a glorious post-tripos face too. He really deserves to be able to play ‘Praise the Lord, ye heavens, adore Him,’ but he can’t even now.”

  “Composed by Mr. Haydn,” said Ealing, “and performed by Mr, Ealing. It contains a very difficult passage. Your left hand has to go to the left, and your right hand to the right. You feel all pulled in two. Babe, the tripos is the noblest of inventions. I think I shall go in for a second part. I can quite understand how the lower classes get in such boisterous spirits on bank holidays that they change hats with each other.”

  “I’d change hats with — with a bishop,” said the Babe, looking wildly about for suggestions.

  “So would I. Or with Longridge. He wears a blue cake hat. Hullo, they ‘re all out.”

  “Come and have tea, then,” said Reggie. “The Babe stands tea.”

  “Hang the expense,” said the Babe, recklessly. “When a man’s got some tin, what can he do better than to give his pals a real blow out? I’ve got four shillings. Tea for three, and bread and butter for two. The fortune of the Rothschilds sprang from these small economies. Bread and butter for two will be plenty. I’m sure none of us can be very hungry on so warm a day. Oh, there’s a tuft-hair drinking out of a tall glass. I expect it’s gin-sling. What is gin-sling? In any case you can’t say it ten times. Ging-slin.”

  “I thought you could always say Ranjitsinghi, Babe.”

  “I can when other people are just unable to. Sufficient champagne gives me a wonderful lucidity, followed by sleepiness. There’s Stewart. I didn’t know he came to cricket matches.”

  Stewart was delighted to see them.

  “But you, Babe, are not fit for the society of ordinary people,” he said, “your extreme cheerfulness since your tripos argues a want of consideration for others. What have you been doing?”

  “I’ve been looking at cricket, and also talking.”

  “You don’t say so.”

  “I have, indeed,” said the Babe. “What effect does champagne have on you?”

  “Why do you ask these sudden questions?” said Stewart wearily. “It makes the wings of my soul sprout.”

  “The principle is the same. I ate lobster salad the other day and drank port. It did not give me indigestion, but acute remorse.”

  “Remorse for having done so?”

  “No, a vague searching remorse for all the foolish things I had done, and all the foolish things I meant to do, and for being what I was. Food doesn’t affect your body, it affects your soul. Conversely, sermons which are supposed to affect your soul make you hungr
y.”

  Stewart lit a match thoughtfully against the sleeve of his coat.

  “The Babe has hit on a great truth,” he said. “A curious instance occurred to my knowledge two years ago. A strong healthy man read Robert Elsmere. It gave him so severe an attack of dyspepsia that he had to spend the ensuing winter on the Riviera and eat pepsine instead of salt for eighteen months. Then he died. The phenomenon is well established. Poor Simpson, the fellow of my college, as you know, broke his leg the other day. It was supposed to have happened because he tripped and fell downstairs. But he told me himself that he was just leaving his room, and that as he walked down stairs he read the first few pages of Stephen Remarx. It was that, of course, that broke his leg, and so he fell down stairs as soon as he tried to put it to the ground. The Babe is quite right. Sermons, as he told us, make him hungry and lobster and port remorseful, In the same way, high tea, if frequently taken, will make anyone a non-conformist, in the same way as incense induces Roman Catholicism. But, Babe, don’t tell Longridge.”

  “Why not?”

  “He will want to talk about it to me, and then I shall be taken with melancholy madness. Are you coming up for another year, Babe?”

  “I don’t know. I should like to. Of course it will depend on my getting through. If I do, I think a note from my tutor to my father might have a wholesome effect.”

  “Your tutor will do whatever you wish him to,” said Stewart. “At present he is going back to college. I have a hansom waiting because I hate walking. Do any of you want a lift?”

  The others stayed up till stumps were drawn, and walked down together. The tea no doubt had affected the Babe’s soul in some subtle manner, producing acute fatuity.

  The Babe spent the remaining ten days in assiduous inaction. He sat in canoes, he sat on benches watching cricket, he ate, he slept. He appeared at the Senate house on the morning when the lists were read out, in pumps, in pink pyjamas, a long great-coat, and a straw hat. Reggie, who stood next him, thought he detected signs of nervousness, when the names began to be read, but it is probable that he was mistaken, for the Babe had never before been known to be afflicted with that distressing malady. A large number of his more intimate friends were there, and an air of suspense was abroad. But it was over sooner than any one anticipated, for the Babe, contrary to the expectation of even the most sanguine of them all, and that was himself, came out first in the second class. There was one moment’s pause of astonishment, not unmingled with awe, and then a wild disorderly scene of riot and shouting arose, in which the Babe was seized and taken back to Trinity in a triumphal procession, which carried him over the grass in the great court, wholly disregarding the porters who gibbered helplessly around them, until Stewart appeared, who, however, instead of instantly stopping it, seemed to take sympathetic interest in the proceeding.

  Later in the day he wrote a charming letter to the Babe’s father, in which he congratulated him on his son’s brilliant success, alluded to his keen historical instinct and his vivid grasp of events — whatever a vivid grasp may be — and stated (which was undoubtedly true), that if certain five men out of the whole University had not happened to go in for the same tripos the same year, the Babe would infallibly have been Senior Historian.

  An answer came later to Stewart and the Babe. The latter’s was short but satisfactory. Reggie was breakfasting with him when the post came in, or rather he was waiting without any excess of patience while the Babe, whom he had just pulled out of bed, explained precisely how it was that he was not dressed yet, and urged him not to begin, or if he insisted on doing so, to play fair.

  At this moment the porter entered with the letter, and the Babe snatched it from his hand, tore it open, and executed a pas seul round the room, until he stepped on the kettle lid, and hurt himself very much.

  “The Babe B.A. will be in residence another year,” he shouted. “You may eat all the breakfast, if you like.”

  Reggie had a healthy appetite, and the Babe was rather plaintive about it.

  Stewart, who had received a letter from the Babe’s father by the same post, looked in after breakfast with congratulations.

  “I am delighted,” he said, “but, in a way, disappointed, and for this reason: I was looking forward to your denouement with some interest, and I should have found a melancholy pleasure in seeing how you would make your exit from Cambridge, and what piece of extraordinary folly would have been your last. It seems I shall have to wait another year for that.”

  “Oh, don’t mind me,” said the Babe, shrilly. “Say you ‘re sorry I’m coming up again straight out, if you like.”

  “No. On the whole, I don’t mind waiting another year,” said Stewart.

  THE END

  MAMMON AND CO.

  This was Benson’s ninth novel, first published in 1899. It is a melodrama, telling the story of a group of people in the upper echelons of society, who are brought low by their own greed and ambition when they become entwined in the complexities of the stock market. The story is a biting and bitter satire on the vanity of the upper classes, who live for pleasure at other people’s expense.

  Cover of the first edition

  CONTENTS

  BOOK I

  CHAPTER I. THE CITY DINNER

  CHAPTER II. SUNDAY MORNING

  CHAPTER III. AFTER THE GEE-GEE PARTY

  CHAPTER IV. KIT’S LITTLE PLAN

  CHAPTER V. TOBY

  CHAPTER VI. TOBY’S PARTNER

  CHAPTER VII. THE SOLITARY FINANCIER

  CHAPTER VIII. THE SIMPLY NOBODY

  CHAPTER IX. THE PLOT MISCARRIES

  CHAPTER X. MRS. MURCHISON’S DIPLOMACY

  CHAPTER XI. MR. ALINGTON OPENS CHECK

  CHAPTER XII. THE COTTAGE BY THE SEA

  CHAPTER XIII. TOBY TO THE RESCUE

  CHAPTER XIV. THE CHAIRMAN AND THE DIRECTOR

  CHAPTER XV. THE WEEK BY THE SEA

  BOOK II

  CHAPTER I. KIT’S MEDITATIONS

  CHAPTER II. THE FIRST DEAL

  CHAPTER III. LILY DRAWS A CHEQUE

  CHAPTER IV. THE DARKENED HOUSE

  CHAPTER V. TOBY ACTS WITHOUT SPEAKING

  CHAPTER VI. LILY’S DESIRE

  CHAPTER VII. THE SECOND DEAL

  CHAPTER VIII. MR. ALINGTON LEAVES LONDON

  CHAPTER IX. THE SLUMP

  CHAPTER X. TOBY DRAWS THE MORAL

  London’s Oxford Street in the 1890s

  BOOK I

  CHAPTER I. THE CITY DINNER

  “Egotism is certainly the first,” said Lady Conybeare with admirable firmness; “and your inclination towards your neighbour is the second.”

  Now, this was the sort of thing which Alice Haslemere liked; and she stopped abruptly in the middle of her rather languishing conversation with nobody in particular to ask for explanations. It sounded promising.

  “The first what, and the second what, Kit?” she inquired.

  “The first and the second lessons,” said Lady Conybeare promptly. “The first and the second social virtues, if you are particular. I am going to set up a school for the propagation of social virtues, where I shall teach the upper classes to be charming. There shall be a special class for royalty.”

  Lady Haslemere was not generally known as being particularly particular, but she took her stand on Kit’s conditional, and defended it.

  “There is nothing like particularity — nothing,” she said earnestly, with a sort of missionary zeal to disagree with somebody; “though some people try to get on without it.”

  Being a great friend of Kit’s, she knew that it was sufficient for her to state a generality of any kind to get it contradicted. She was not wrong in this instance. Kit sighed with the air of a woman who meant to do her unpleasant duty like a sister and a Christian.

  “Dear Alice,” she said, “there is nothing so thoroughly irritating as particularity. I am not sure what you mean by it, but I suppose you allude either to people who are prudes or to people who are always letting fly precise infor
mation at one. They always want it back too. Don’t you know how the people who insist on telling one the exact time are just those who ask one for the exact time. I never know the exact time, and I never want to be told it. And I hate a prudish woman,” she concluded with emphasis, “as much as I abhor a well-informed man.”

  “Put it the other way round,” said Lady Haslemere, “and I agree with you. I loathe a prudish man, and I detest a well-informed woman.”

  “There aren’t any of either,” said Lady Conybeare.

  She sat up very straight in her chair as she made this surprising assertion, and arranged the lace round her throat. Her attitude gave one the impression somehow of a rakish frigate clearing for action, and on the moment came the first shot.

  “I am a prude,” said a low, bass voice at her elbow.

  Kit scarcely glanced round.

  “I know you are,” she said, replying with a heavy broadside; “but then you are not a man.”

  “That depends on what you mean by a man,” said the voice again.

  The speaker was so hidden by the arms of the low chair in which he sat, that a knee, shin and foot, in a horizontal line on the invisible support of another knee, was all that could be seen of him.