The Babe was leaning out of the window of the rooms he had moved into for the Long, which looked onto the Great Court of Trinity, and in his hands was a simple sheet of foolscap paper rolled up big at one end and small at the other. He applied his mouth intermittently to the small end of this really elementary contrivance, and, in his hands, like the sonnet in the hand of Milton, “the thing became a trumpet.” Unlike Milton, however, he was in no way liable to censure for not using it often enough.

He had been working for nearly two hours that morning, and it was only just half-past eleven. He had got up at eight, breakfasted, and had really been at it ever since. As a rule, criticisms on himself did not make the least impression on him, but somehow or other Mr. Stewart’s unwillingness to take any but the longest odds on the subject of his getting through the tripos had struck root and grown up rankling in his mind. He knew quite well that he had as much ability as many undergraduates who tackle that examination successfully, and he believed that if he chose he could acquire a sufficient portion of their industry. Hence the early rising, the history books scattered on the table, and indirectly the inter-mezzo on the foolscap thing.

However, at twelve he was going to his history coach for an hour, and he allowed himself twenty minutes’ relaxation before this. He had watched the porter take his name for making a row in court, so, as the worst he could do was done, there was obviously no reason why he should discontinue making a row, and it was not till the mouthpiece had got sodden and the sides stuck together that he stopped.

The history coach, the Babe confessed, was rather a trial. He lived in dusty, fusty rooms, and he himself was by far the dustiest, fustiest thing in them. During the first lesson the Babe had had with him, he had employed his hands in cleaning his nails with a button-hook, which was, however, better than that he should not clean them at all. On another occasion a spider had dropped down from the ceiling onto the top of his head, and had walked down his nose, and from there had let itself down onto the note-book which he was using. He was short-sighted, and finishing the lesson at that moment and being entirely unconscious of the spider, had shut it up with a bang in the note-book, and the spider was a fleshy spider. The Babe had tried to get Mr. Stewart to coach him, but that gentleman’s time was too deeply engaged already. His own work, he said, “like topmost Gargarus,” took the morning, and he imagined that neither he nor the Babe would care to meet over history, however romantically treated, in the afternoon, while social calls rendered the evening equally impossible for both of them.

So the Babe went three times a week to Mr. Swotcham of the spider. He was a young don, but the habits of incessant study had early bent his back, bleared his eyes, and given him a weak, nervous manner. He rarely took any exercise, and even when he did he only walked a little way along the Trumpington Road. Out of his rooms he was like a sheep that had gone astray, and coasted down the streets, keeping close to the houses, as if afraid that, should he launch himself into mid-pavement, he would lose himself irretrievably. He was a member of an occult, some said obscure, club called the Apostles, the members of which met in each other’s rooms in a shame-faced manner every Saturday night, though there was really nothing in the least shameful about their proceedings. In theory it was supposed that they set the world straight once a week, but no doubt they lacked practical ability. The Babe, whose varied acquaintance included several members of this Society, used to ask them to dinner on Saturday night, in order to have the pleasure of hearing them excuse themselves at a quarter to ten. The excuse offered was always the same.

“I’m afraid I’ve got to go round and see a man.”

The Babe followed this up by asking who the man was, to which the invariable reply was: “Oh, only a man I know.” Then the brutal Babe throwing the mask aside would say: “Oh, you’re going to a meeting of the Apostles, aren’t you?” Somehow the members seemed rather ashamed of this fact being thus ruthlessly dragged into light, and the Babe in his May week paper had informed the world that the Apostles were the spiritual descendants of the old Hell-Fire Club of Medmenham Abbey, and that their deeds grew darker and darker every year. For the most part they were radical Agnostics, and they disestablished the English Church about once a month. They affected red ties, to show that they disapproved of everything.

Swotcham was not only an eminent Apostle, a sort of Peter among them, but an eminent historian, and the Babe had the sense to attend to what he said. It is true that this morning he watched with overpowering interest the turning over of the leaves of Swotcham’s note-book, until the corpse of the fleshy spider was discovered, blotching and staining the articles of the Magna Charta, but when Swotcham had scratched it off with a J nib, his attention wandered no more.

It was a hopelessly wet and sloppy afternoon, the sort of afternoon when everything looks at its worst, and Cambridge worst of all. Grey sheets of rain drifted and drizzled over the Great Court, driven fretfully against the window panes by a cold easterly wind which struck the spray of the fountain beyond the basin out sideways onto the path. Outside the gate, the lime trees wept sooty tears and leaves early-dead, and the asphalt of Trinity Street looked like the surface of some stagnant dirty river, distortedly reflecting the dull-faced houses on each side. A melancholy gurgle of water streamed into the grating in the centre of the so-called Whewell’s Court, and its more classical name seemed to be divinely apt. The air was close, cold, and infinitely damp, and two or three terriers inhumanely left outside the Pitt, appeared like a realistic rendering of discomfort personified.

So the judicious Babe betook himself to the smoking room of that club, which always maintains a uniformity of gloom and comfort, whatever the weather is, and thought to himself as he settled in a big armchair that until he left, the weather could have no further depressing influence. He took out of the library the inimitable Ravenshoe which he already knew nearly by heart, and read with undiminished enjoyment of how Napoleon and a colonial Bishop whose real name was Jones, gave testimonials to a corn-cutter, who had them printed in his advertisement, and of how Gus and Flora were naughty in church. Later on, he proposed to have hot toast with his tea.

He had not been there long when Reggie came in, and as the Babe was not disposed to talk, and merely grunted when he was sat on, he got out a new book called Gerald Eversley’s Friendship, and proceeded to read about the peculiarities which mark the boys at St. Anselm’s.

A short silence.

“Goozlemy, goozlemy, goozlemy,” quoted the Babe.

“Look here, Babe.”

“Well.”

“Harry Venniker produces from the bottom of his box a quantity of sporting prints, and an enormous stag’s head—a ‘royal’ he called it. Did you ever see a play-box that size?”

“No. There isn’t one. ‘My dear, there is going to be a collection, and I have left my purse on the piano.’ I wish I knew Flora.”

Silence.

“‘After all, in this life the deepest, holiest feelings are inexpressible.’ Oh, I draw the line somewhere—”

“Yes, if you don’t draw the line somewhere,” murmured the Babe, “where are you to draw the line?”

“Gerald of course sobs violently on getting into bed, the first night at St. Anselm’s, and Harry puts his hand on his shoulder, and says he’ll be his friend for ever. Then ‘Gerald laid his head anew upon the pillow, and was at peace.’ Good Lord! This was an ‘incident of which the pale moon, throned in heaven, was the sole arbitress.’ He says so,” shouted Reggie, “and it is a ‘study in real life.’ He says that too, on the title-page, in capital letters. He says it very loud and plain, several times.”

The Babe chuckled comfortably, and shut up Ravenshoe.

“I read it yesterday,” he said. “Turn on to about page 90 or so. I think you’ll find the passage marked in pencil. He has to sing a song in which a swear-word comes, and when he gets to it, he breaks down, hides his face in his hands, and rushes from the hall.”

Reggie’s eyes grew rounder and rounder.

“So they propose to send him to Coventry for a month.”

“That’s the place my governor is member for,” remarked the Babe, “and they make bicycles there.”

“The little brute—aged thirteen, Babe, about as old as you,” continued Reggie, “reads books of science (particularly archÆology), even sermons and books of controversial divinity, in the college library. If that is real life, give me fiction.”

“Quite a little Zola,” said the Babe, “our new, harmless, English realist. A little later on a churchyard becomes an element in Gerald’s life. Are churchyards elements in your life, Reggie?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Later on again,” continued the Babe, “he gets in a row for cribbing. The author gets hold of such wonderfully new and original situations. The evidence against him is overwhelming, absolutely overwhelming, and the mystery is never cleared up. As you read, your suspense is only equalled by the suspense of the author. He finds it almost unbearable.”

“I can’t read any more,” said Reggie. “Tell me what happens.”

“Oh, all the regular things. Harry gets into the eleven, and Gerald Eversley turns into Robert Elsmere for a time. Then of course he falls in love with Harry’s sister, who gallops away in consumption, and dies. So Gerald determines to commit suicide, and leaves a note for Harry saying what he is going to do, and just as he is preparing to jump into a lake—he has previously thrown his coat with a stone wrapped up in it, into the water—he feels a hand on his shoulder. It’s Harry of course. Naturally he has found the letter, which tells him that the writer will be a corpse when he finds it, which is a black lie, and goes off just in time to the place where Gerald very prudently tells him that the deed will be done. So Gerald goes to a town in the North of England, probably Coventry again, and wears a locket of purest enamel, with the name ‘Ethel’ on it. The book ends: ‘He is dead now.’”

Reggie was still turning over the leaves of the book.

“Who is Mr. Selby?”

“The good young master with a secret sorrow, to whom all the boys open their hearts.”

“I see that Harry lies at death’s door, having caught inflammation of the lungs in a football match. That’s another original situation.”

“Oh dear, yes, and old gentlemen cannot meet fifty years after they have left school without saying: ‘You remember that catch? My dear fellow, why did you let that ball go through your legs?’ I would sooner be Babe all my life than live to be an old man like that.”

“And Harry gets the last goal just before time. The back’s leg ‘flashed.’ I’ve never seen your legs flash, Babe.”

“No—I’m only a half-back.”

“That accounts for it. Let’s have tea, and then we’ll play a game of pills.”

“All right. Then you can dine in Hall with me. I can’t afford dinner in my room, and we’ll work afterwards.”