CHAPTER VII
ROBIN had been enjoying himself quite stupendously during these last few weeks in London, but to-day, when he woke, he was not disposed to regret that he was going back to Cambridge that afternoon, to pass a quiet and more or less studious month there. For the last month he had dined out every night, and gone to balls afterwards, except when he was down at Grote for week-ends, or had other evening engagements of his own, of a kind both less public and less decorous than the ball-rooms of the great world. Day and night the mad rush had gone on, for a boy of nineteen, handsome, vivid, a genius at enjoying himself, and a son of Lady Grote had not far to look to find companions to enjoy himself with and houses to welcome him. He had flirted prodigiously, he had eaten and drunk and danced, and had not given a single thought except to the delightful diversion that happened to be going on at any particular minute. And some of his experiences had been very diverting indeed.
One of the less decorous nights had ended for him at dawn to-day, about the same time that the little London fog had looked out from his brocaded curtains, and, waking some five hours later, he had lain drowsily for twenty minutes more, thinking on the whole that he was not sorry to go back to Cambridge. At the same time he licked the chops of memory; chop after chop he licked of last night’s happenings.... In this serene morning sunshine, and in the white coolness of his bed they seemed almost incredible ... he almost wondered if he had dreamed them.
He had dropped into bed at dawn this morning, not troubling to put on pyjamas, but rolling himself up cocoon-wise in a sheet, and had slept with the sound tranquillity with which youth so speedily repairs the effects of its extravagant freaks. Now he uncurled himself, and raising his arms above his head and spreading out his legs, he stretched himself till he heard his joints crack. Drowsily he could smell the tea and the bacon which his servant had brought up on a tray for his breakfast, drowsily he could see that there were some letters for him, and interest in correspondence and food made him gradually slip the sheath of slumber off. The bacon smelt delicious, for he was hungry, but mingled with it was an odour of stale smoke, not so pleasant, and one of stale scent. He could conjecture something of the origin of both of these from his memories of last night, but from where now, at this moment, did those reminders come? His servant had taken away the clothes he had worn yesterday evening; there was nothing in his room but himself that could carry these keepsakes about with him. Then, with a touch of disgust, he perceived that these odours undoubtedly lurked in his own hair, and his pillow where his head had rested smelled of them.
He instantly got out of bed and went into the bathroom next door, where the cool water was ready for him, and he jumped bodily into it, letting it go right over his head in a wave of cleansing refreshment. Then, spluttering from his immersion, he soaped his yellow crop till it became hoary with suds, and washed out with his sponge the remnants of the sordid legacy of the night. There were limits, and one of them was that his hair should smell of stale things.
As he rubbed himself into a glow of healthy heat again, he could not help grinning at the recollections that fluttered in and out of his mind. Badsley had been there, slightly intoxicated at first and very full of human affections, but as the hours went by he got more intoxicated and far less sociable. Eventually poor Badders became like Mr. Wordsworth’s heroine, “for no motion had he now, no force;” and they had crowned him with a wreath of flowers round his top-hat, put him into Robin’s car, and told the chauffeur to drive him about quietly until the night air and carriage exercise enabled him to get over the effects of the lobster salad. When he had recovered and been deposited at the hotel he was staying at, the chauffeur might go home. But not long afterwards Badders had turned up again, having made a remarkable recovery, and full of fresh plans as to the proper way to spend an evening. He had given his flowers, so he told them, to a man coming out of the Athenæum Club, whom he took to be a bishop. Then Robin had a rather indistinct notion of having had to walk home a long way, and—well, here he was in a glow from his cold bath, with a nice clean red tongue, quite ready for his breakfast, and not smelling of stale things any longer. But in order to get quite rid of them, he ate his breakfast and read his letters, sitting in the sun by his open window, with nothing more than a bath-towel on him.
His mother’s room was just opposite his, and presently he put on a dressing-gown and slippers and went to pay her a short call.
“Good morning, darling,” she said, as he kissed her. “Robin, you look like a rose-leaf and smell of soap. What a nice clean thing a boy is.”
“This one wasn’t such a nice clean thing half an hour ago,” said he, taking up his mother’s tortoiseshell brushes, and reducing his hair to some sort of order.
“Wasn’t it? What did you do last night? I heard you come upstairs about four o’clock.”