“Thank you, sir,” said Hinton and took his departure, after poking up the fire and removing the dead tea things.
The eight o'clock chimes spoke as Hinton clumped downstairs, and a few moments later Forbes's guests began to straggle in. All were wet and ruddy from rain and wind, and, as they discarded raincoats and caps, disclosed a pleasant medley of types. The Scorpions was a rather recent and informal society, but it had gathered from various colleges a little band of temperamental congenials who found a unique pleasure in their Sunday evening meetings. None of them was of the acknowledged literary successes of the university: their names were not those seen every week in the undergraduate journals. And yet this obscure group, which had drawn together in a spirit of satire, had in it two or three men of real gift. Forbes himself was a man of uncommon vivacity. Small, stocky, with an unruly thatch of yellow hair and a quaintly wry and homely face, he hid his shyness and his brilliancy behind a brusque manner. Ostensibly cynical and a witty satirist of his more sentimental fellows, his desk was full of charming ballades and pieces d'amour, scratched off at white heat in odd moments. His infinite fund of full-flavoured jest had won him the nickname of Priapus. But beneath the uncouth exterior of the man, behind his careless dress and humorously assumed coarseness, lay the soul of a poet—sensitive as a girl, and devout before the whisperings of Beauty.
Stephen Carter and Randall King were first to arrive, and seized the ends of the fireside couch while Forbes poured their coffee.
“A Clark Russell of an evening!” said Carter, stretching his golfing brogues to the blaze. “Don't you love a good drenching, downpouring night? I do!” He was a burly full-blooded blond, extravagantly facetious in convivial moments, and a mournful brooder in solitude. King, better known as “The Goblin,” was a dark, whimsical elf in thick spectacles, much loved in the 'varsity dramatic society for his brilliant impersonations. The Goblin said nothing as he sipped his coffee and gazed at the fire.
“There you go again, Falstaff!” exclaimed Forbes to Carter, as he unlocked a corner cupboard and drew out a bottle of port. “The universal enthusiast! I believe you'll be enthusiastic about the examiners that plough you!”
“What, Falstaff get ploughed?” said a vast and rather handsome newcomer, flinging open the door without knocking. “I think he's down for a ruddy First!” This was Douglas Whitney, of Balliol.
Carter's only answer to both these remarks was to drain a glass of the port which Forbes was decanting.
“I say, Priapus, what vile port!” he said. “Is this some of the vintage you crocked poor old Hinton with?”
“Any port in a storm, Falstaff,” said the Goblin, mildly.
As Forbes was pouring out the coffee loud shouts of “Minters!” greeted the next arrival. This was Johnny Blair of Tennessee and Trinity, the only American among the Scorpions. Blair was a Rhodes Scholar whose dulcet Southern drawl and quaint modes of speech were a constant delight to his English comrades. His great popularity in his own college was begun by his introduction of mint julep, which had given him his nickname.