On this particular afternoon we had both just bicycled back together from lunching with Parker’s aunt at Ely, and she had given me a great bunch of yellow roses for Parker and a melon, and we were to drop them at Parker’s. And here we were at Parker’s, and apparently he was out or asleep, and not to be waked by Barrett’s best cat-call. And as we stood at his door, Barrett clutching the melon, I found the roses were not in my hand. Where on earth had I put them down? At Maitland’s door, perhaps, where we had run up expecting to find him, or at Bradley’s, where we had stopped a moment. Neither of us could remember.
I was just going back for them when whom should we see coming sailing across the court in cap and gown but old Maitland in his best attitude, chin up, book in hand, signet ring showing.
Parker’s aunt used to chaff us for calling him old, and said we thought everyone of forty-five was tottering on the brink of the tomb. And so they mostly are, I think, if they are Dons. I have heard other men who have gone down say that you leave them tottering, and you come back ten years later and there they are, still tottering.
Barrett said Maitland did everything as if his portrait was being taken doing it, and that his effect on others was never absent from his mind. I don’t know about that, but certainly in his talk he was always trying to impress on us his own aspect of himself.
If it was a fine morning and he wished to be thought to be enjoying it, he would rub his hands and say there was not a happier creature on God’s earth than himself. He pined to be thought unconventional, and after drawing our attention to some microscopic delinquency, he would regret that there had been no fairy godmother at hand at his christening to endow him with a proper deference for social conventions. If he gave a small donation to any college scheme the success of which was not absolutely assured, he would shake his head and say: “I know very well that all you youngsters laugh in your sleeve at the way I lead forlorn hopes, but it is a matter of temperament. I can’t help it.”
The personal reminiscences with which his conversation was liberally strewed were ingeniously calculated to place him in a picturesque light. Parker’s aunt says that stout men are more in need of a picturesque light than thin ones. Maitland certainly was stout and short, with a thick face and no neck, and a perfectly round head, set on his shoulders like an ill-balanced orange, or William Tell’s apple. We should never have noticed what he looked like if it had not been for his illusion that he was irresistible to the opposite sex; at least, he was always adroitly letting drop things which showed, if you put two and two together, and he never made the sum very difficult—what ravages he inadvertently made in feminine bosoms, how careful he was, how careful he had learnt to be not to raise expectations. He was always pathetically anxious to impress on us that he had given a good deal of pain. But whether it was really an hallucination on his part that he was hopelessly adored by women, or whether the hallucination consisted in the belief that he had succeeded in convincing his little college world of his powers of fascination, I cannot tell you. I don’t pretend to know everything like Barrett.
Parker’s aunt told Parker in confidence, who told Barrett and me in confidence, that she had once, on his own suggestion, asked Maitland to tea, but had never repeated the invitation, though he told her repeatedly that he frequently passed her door on the way to the cathedral, because he had hinted to mutual friends that a devoted friendship was, alas! all he felt able to give in that quarter, but was not what was desired by that charming lady.
And now here was Maitland advancing towards us with one of Parker’s aunt’s yellow roses in his buttonhole.
We both instantly realised what had happened. I had left the roses at his door by mistake. How gratified she would be when she heard of it!
I giggled.