THE MADNESS OF W.E. GRIM
Grim and Wilson had come back to St. Amory's firmly convinced that Biffen's was the most glorious house that had ever existed, and that it would do—thanks to Acton, Worcester, and the dervishes—great things when the cricket housers came round.
"Grimmy," said Wilson, "you'll have to try to get into the team this year. You would last, if your batting hadn't been so rotten."
"All right, old man; don't rub that in too often."
"You put in a lot of extra practice at one of those bottom nets, Grimmy, and you'll find Worcester'll shove you in first choice, almost, this go."
"Serene. Shall we try to raise a bottle of cherries now," said Grim, lazily, lounging from net to net. "It's heaps too soon to think of housers yet."
"You conceited ass, Grimmy! Not for you. Your batting is too awful."
"Don't worry now. Oceans of time, I tell you. We'll try some cherries, eh?"
The pair strolled lazily off the field, and made several purchases in the preserved fruit line, and then adjourned to their common room for refreshment.
But, as time went on, Grim did not fall in with Wilson's arrangements quite as enthusiastically as that single-hearted Biffenite would have liked him to. A fortnight passed, and Grim had only put in the regulation practice at the nets to Wilson's intense disgust, and the time that should have been devoted to extra cricket was "wasted," according to that ardent Biffenite, in doing, of all things, needlessly elaborate translations for Merishall.
"Whatever is the good of getting the very word the beak wants, Grimmy. I always translate Carmen—a song. Does it matter a cherry-stone that it sometimes means a charm? What good does it do you, you idiot? It only means that Merishall is harder on us. Think of your friends, Grimmy, do. If I didn't know you were a bit cracked, I'd say your performance was undiluted 'smugging.'"
"Cork that frivol, do," said Grim, who was stretched full length on the grass and gazing skywards with a rapt expression in his eyes, "and look over there. How beautiful it is!"
"How beautiful what is?" asked Wilson, astonished.
"The sunset, you ass!"
"I don't see anything special about it," said Wilson. "An ordinary affair!"
"Ordinary affair! Ugh, you idiot. Look at those lovely colours mingling one with another, those light fleecy clouds floating in a purple sea, that beautiful tint in the woods yonder, that—that—"
"Steady, Grim. Take time," said Wilson, squirming away from his chum.
"Wilson, you haven't any soul for beauty. A sunset is the loveliest sight on earth, you duffer."
"Didn't know a sunset ever was on earth," said Wilson, sarcastically.
"Is that funny?"
"All serene, Grimmy," said Wilson, elaborately agreeing with his friend as a mother might with a sick child. "Matter of fact, it is rather fine. Not unlike a Zingari blazer, eh?"
"Zingari blazer!"
"Exactly like. And that pink on the trees would do for the Westminster shirts."
"Blazers and shirts," cried Grim, in disgust. "Oh! get out."
"Let's get in, Grimmy, instead. You'd better see the doctor. 'Pon honour, you aren't well."
"I can't help it," said W.E. Grim, resignedly, "if you haven't any soul. Yes, I'll come. I've got Merishall's work."
There was a coolness that night between the two friends as they sat at the opposite sides of their common table doing their work for Merishall, and Wilson was determined to find out what was disturbing their accustomed peace. He had soon done his modicum of prose and forthwith broached matters.
"Let's have this business out, Grim. It will do you a lot of harm if you keep it in."
"The fact is——" began Grim, hesitating.
"Allez! houp-la!" said Wilson, encouragingly.
"I'm going in strong for poetry."
For reply Wilson laughed as though his life depended on the effort, and Grim turned a rich rosy hue. Wilson finally blurted out—
"Grim, you're an utter idiot."
"What do you think about it?"
"Nothing."
"I thought it would surprise you."
"It has, but nothing you do ever will again. Lord, Grimmy, was it for this you chucked cricket and your chance of the house eleven?" Wilson exploded again, uproariously. "I'll tell Rogers and Jack Bourne. You a poet!"
"Why shouldn't I be, you silly cuckoo?"
"Why, you haven't got the cut of a poet, for one thing, and for another, I believe, next to your mother, the thing you like best in the world is a good dinner." Wilson waxed eloquent on Grim's defects from a poet's standpoint. "Your hair is as stiff as any hair-brush; you can't deny you're short and a trifle beefy; and was ever a poet made out of your material and fighting weight?"
"That isn't criticism," said Grim, angrily.
"No," said Wilson, bitterly. "I don't pretend to that. They are a few surface observations only. Just tell this to Rogers or even Cherry, and watch 'em curl."
Wilson and Grim went to bed that night pretty cool towards each other, but in the morning Grim was obstinately bent on being the poet as he was the next week and the week after that. He wrestled with poetry morning, noon, and night, and he made himself a horrible nuisance to his old cronies. Wilson complained bitterly about their study being "simply fizzing with poetry." Grim sprang a poem or a sonnet, or a tribute or some other forsaken variety of poetry, on pretty well everything about the place. He "did" the dawn and worked round to the sunset. He had a little shy at the church and the tombstones, and wrote about the horse pond's "placid wave." He did four sonnets on the school, looking from north, south, east and west, and let himself go in fine style about the school captain's batting. He sent this to Phil, and Phil passed the disquisition on to me; it was very funny indeed. Not a single thing was safe from his poetry, and he cut what he could of cricket to write "tributes."
He had a lively time from his own particular knot of friends and enemies, and they jollied him to an extent that, perhaps, reached high-water mark, when Grim found one morning on his table a dozen thoughtful addresses of lunatic asylums, and specimens of the writing of mad people, culled from a popular magazine. But Grim recked not, and persevered. He turned out, as became a budding poet, weird screeds from Ovid, Virgil, and Horace—Bohn's cribs were simple to his tangled stuff—and Merishall beamed wreathed smiles upon him, and told him he was "catching the spirit of the original." After this patent, distinct leg-up from Merishall, Grim took the bit between his teeth and went careering up and down the plains of poesy until the lights were cut off.
Wilson bore with his chum for a month, and then finally delivered his ultimatum.
"If you're still a poet at midsummer, I'm going to cut, and dig with Rogers or Cherry. This den isn't big enough for you, me, and the 'original spirits' you wing every night. I'm off to the nets. Coming? No? Jove! Grimmy, what nightmares you must take to bed with you every night."
But the kindly Fates had the keeping of the chums' friendship in their safe keeping, and I haven't observed yet, that Grim and Wilson are less friendly than they used to be. This consummation is owing to Miss Varley. This young lady, ætat XIV, or thereabouts, was responsible for the reclamation of Grim. What the whole posse of his acquaintances with their blandishments and threats could not effect in the space of a month, she did within four and twenty hours. I cannot account for this, except on the supposition that little girls with long yellow hair and pretty brown eyes, and a perambulating blush, create mighty earthquakes in the breasts of rowdy fags. Miss Hilda Elsie Varley, being Biffen's niece, had taken the house under her protection, was more rabidly Biffenite than even Rogers, adored Acton, reverenced Worcester, and appreciated Chalmers, but despised fags who weren't "training-on" for one of her houses' various elevens. Her sentiments on these matters were mysteriously but accurately known amongst Biffenite juniors.
Grim finally turned his poetical talents upon this young lady. I am not quite certain why he delayed so long. Perhaps he had waited until his gift of song had matured so that the offering might be worthy of the shrine, or perhaps because he had exhausted all other exalted subjects for his muse, but anyhow, he sent Miss Varley an ode on her birthday. This day was pretty generally known amongst Biffen's fags.
When he had finished he read it to Wilson, who unbent from his antagonistic attitude towards poetry when he heard the subject of the verse.
"After all, Grimmy, it doesn't sound more rotten than Virgil, and it is rather swagger to say that Biffen's is to Hilda what Samnos was to Juno. It's a jolly lot more, though."
Grim had cheerfully compared Miss Hilda to the queenly Juno, and said that if she would give Biffen's her protection, the house would give the other houses "fits" when the housers came round again; then he put in something about her hair, unconsciously cribbed from Ovid; and something about her walk—this I tracked to Horace; and wound up the whole farrago by saying he was ready to be her door-mat and to shield her from the furies, etc., which, I think, Grim genuinely evolved out of his own effervescing breast. The ode was properly posted by the poet himself, and even Wilson felt genuinely interested in the result. As for Grim, he was so jolly anxious that he could not tackle any more poems, but divided his time between ices at Hooper's and loafing round the letter-rack for Hilda's answer.
A day or so later Wilson was busy translating for Merishall—carefully putting "songs" whenever he spotted "carmina"—when he heard Grim flying upstairs, and when the poet had smashed into the room, he held up a letter.
"It's come," he gasped.
Wilson laid down his pen and said, "Wait till you're cool, and then read it out."
This is the letter in extenso:—
"Biffen's, Wednesday.
"Dear Grim,
"I don't think you'll ever be a poet, at least not a great one. I believe I could give you the Latin for most of the lines you have written: they are so dreadfully like the translations of my school-books, and it isn't very flattering when one has to put up with second-hand compliments several thousand years old, is it? But I am very glad that you think my good opinion of any value to Biffen's, for I should dearly like to see our house top of the school this year, and how can it be when one, who ought to be in the House Eleven, gives up all his time to writing 'poetry' instead of playing cricket? I hope you will not be very vexed with me for writing this, but I know you would prefer me to be
"Yours very sincerely,
"Hilda E. Varley.
"P.S.—If I see you admiring the sunsets or the rose-bushes when you ought to be at the nets, I know I shall titter ... even if Miss Langton be with me.
"H.E.V."
Grim struggled through this to the bitter end. Wilson made the very roof echo with his howls of unqualified delight, but Grim's face was uncommonly like that sunset he admired so much.
"This is a sickener," he gasped.
"Jove! Grim, you've wanted one long enough," said Wilson, holding his aching sides.
"Crumbs! One would think she was old enough to be my mother."
"That's a way they have, when they're not feeling quite the thing. No wonder, poor girl."
"Look here, Wilson, keep this dark. I'm not going to write any more poetry. I've been thinking that, ever since I sent Hilda the ode. I don't think it's quite the real article."
"No," said Wilson, consolingly; "only original-spirit catching."
"A lot you know about it, old man," said Grim, hotly.
"Granted, Grimmy; but Hilda twigged the fraud, quick enough."
"Well, I'm going to burn it all, right off."
They did. I believe I am doing Grim no injustice when I say he looks less a poet, and acts up to his looks, than any junior in St. Amory's.
Two nights after the receipt of this fateful letter Grim was industriously practising Ranjitsinghi's famous glance at a snug, quiet net, when Miss Varley, accompanied by Miss Cornelia Langton, her governess, went past the nets. Miss Langton told Hilda afterwards that she ought not to speak to hard-working cricketers and distract them in their game. Hilda, I don't think, minded this little wigging, and Grim never went without a friendly nod as he turned from cutting Wilson into the nets, if Miss Hilda Elsie Varley went by.