“Certainly not,” said Mr. Stewart, who, if he was not playing the beau rôle to-day, at any rate had been in the confidence of him who was. “The Babe was most urgent that I should not let it get about. Indeed, I have committed a breach of confidence in telling you. Of course I know it will go no further.”
Meantime, the Babe having successfully conveyed his party across the court, and having taken the precaution of sporting his door, was having lunch. Opposite to him sat Jack Marsden, dressed in a black silk gown; on his right Reggie, attired in the height of fashion. He wore a blue dress with very full sleeves, and a large picture hat. He was taking a long draught of Lager beer.
“Stewart and Medingway both saw,” he said, “and they are both at Stewart’s window now.”
“It was complete,” said the Babe solemnly, “wonderfully complete, and the bogus copy of the Morning Post, which I substituted for his, was completer still. It will also puzzle them to know how you get away, for they are sure to wait there on the chance of seeing you again. I shouldn’t wonder if Stewart went to the station. And now if you’ve finished, you can change in my bedroom, and we’ll go round and get a fourth to play tennis. Stewart must confess that I have gone one better than either him or Medingway.”
XI.—The Rehearsal.
They had a rustic woodland air
—After Wordsworth.
Ealing had not been up in the Long, but Reggie and the Babe spent a week with him early in October, before going up to Cambridge again. They arrived on the last day of September, and from morn till eve on the first day the silly pheasants fled before the Babe’s innocuous gun. However, that gentleman said he liked aiming, without any thought of ulterior consequences, and that this was the true essence of sport, and as Reggie and Ealing were both good shots, it is to be presumed that everyone, even including the keeper, was fairly contented.
The October term began as October terms always begin. There was, as usual, a far larger number of Freshmen of unique brilliance than had ever been heard of before, who were duly asked to coffee with men of other years after Hall, and these ceremonies were neither more nor less exciting than usual. There was the Freshman who wore spectacles, and didn’t play games because he had a weak heart, and who when asked from what school he came, said ‘Giggleswick,’ with almost incredible coolness; there was the Freshman who had been captain of the eleven in some obscure school, and already saw himself captain of the University team; there were Freshmen who could play all kinds of music, the Freshman who played the flute, and the Freshman who played the violin, and probably the Freshman who could play the sackbut and psaltery; the Freshman who already seemed to know half the University, and the Freshman who knew nobody at all; the Freshman who called his tutor “Sir,” and the Freshman who very kindly treated him as one man of the world treats another. There were the usual trial games of football played under a tropical sun, and the usual interminable lists of tubbings put up in the Reading-Room.
But after a fortnight or so the world in general, with all its sorts and conditions of men, settled down into its usual routine, the Freshmen who had all started together diverged into the sets where their particular tastes attracted them. Some joined musical societies, and some were put up and blackballed at a meeting of the old Giggleswickians; some played in the Freshmen’s matches, and some bought college blazers, and passed contented and leisurely afternoons in canoes on the Backs. Alan St. Aubyn published his annual humorous libel on what he playfully called University Life, and the Babe moved from Malcolm Street into the rooms he had occupied in the Long in the Great Court Trinity, and Mr. Sykes signalised the occasion by killing the under-porter’s best cat.
No doubt it was primarily the best cat’s fault, for she had taken an independent and solitary walk on her own account down Trinity Street, and Sykes who was waiting at the gate, quite quiet and as good as gold, for the Babe, who had gone into his room to put down his cap and gown, saw her returning. So he killed her. Of course he had to tell the Babe about it, and he thought the best plan would be to take the mangled corpse—she was not neatly killed—to the Babe’s rooms, which, though he was not allowed in college, he happened to know, and the first thing the porter saw was Mr. Sykes racing across the grass with his best cat hopelessly defunct, dangling from his mouth. He followed, but Sykes got there first, and was wagging his stumpy tail with a pleased air, as he deposited his burden on the hearth-rug, when the infuriated porter entered.