Jack Marsden stopped for a moment under the Babe’s window and called

and the Babe’s face looked out vindictively.

“If you call me like that I sha’n’t answer,” he said. “You’re not in Clare.”

So Jack went in, and found the Babe curled up again in a large chair, close to the fire, working. The month was February, which is equivalent, at Cambridge, to saying that it was raining—cold, sleety, impossible rain. As the exact day of the month was the sixteenth, it followed as a corollary that it had been raining for at least sixteen days, and, as it was leap year, it would continue to rain thirteen more.

“Well?” said the Babe unencouragingly. He had gone to bed early the night before, and the consequent length of the morning made him rather cross.

“Oh nothing. It’s raining, you know. The Sportsman says that Jupiter Pluvius is in the ascendant still.”

quoted the Babe.

“Just so, and he doesn’t neglect to send the rain in February. I’ve just come back from King’s. Reggie’s in a bad temper, almost as bad as you.”

“Why?”

“Weather, chiefly. He says it would be grovelling flattery to call it beastly.”

“Reggie is given to making truisms,” said the Babe turning over the page. “Jack, I wish you’d go away. I want to work. Besides, you’re so devilish cheerful, and I’m not.”

“Sorry to hear it. Oh, yes, and Reggie told me to remind you that you are playing tennis with him at twelve. He’s got the New Court.”

The Babe brightened up: there was an hour less of morning.

“Hurrah! that will suit me excellently. Many thanks, and please go away. Good-bye.”

Stewart confessed that the Babe had surprised him. Most people who knew the Babe were never surprised at him, because they always expected him to do something unexpected. But no one had ever supposed that he would do anything so unexpected as to work steadily every day. It would not have been so surprising if he had worked twelve hours a day twice a week, but that he should work four hours every day, upset all preconceived ideas about him. He had done so for a full month, and really there seemed no reason now why he should stop. He got up before nine, and he worked from ten till one: at one he would be himself again till six, but he would work from six till seven. Stewart considered this exhibition as a striking imitation by Nature of Mr. R. L. Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde: he had not clearly realised before that the Babe had a dual nature. Just now he considered Hyde to be painfully predominant, for that the Babe should cease being absurd for four hours a day seemed to him a sacrifice of the best possibilities of his nature.

But the Babe, like Mr. Gladstone in one thing more, threw off all thoughts of such matters, except during work hours, and having determined to put in an extra hour in the afternoon, to make up for tennis in the morning, he trotted off through the dripping, drizzling rain to the tennis court in the best of spirits.

He went back to lunch with Reggie in King’s Hall and as, contrary to all precedent, the rain had stopped, they went for a walk afterwards round two or three football grounds, to see what was going on, and give Mr. Sykes an airing. Scratch games seemed the order of the day, and they “took situations” on outside wings opposite each other for a few minutes in the game on the King’s ground, until Reggie charged the Babe and knocked him down, after which they retired, dirty, but invigorated. Then they turned into the tennis court again for a while, and so by Burrell’s Walk across the town bridge, and back into Trinity Street, looked in at the shop windows, which are perhaps less alluring than any others in the kingdom, and admired the preparations for diverting the sewerage of the town from the Cam.

“But how,” said the Babe, “our college boats will be able to row in a perfectly empty river bed, is more than I feel fit to tell you.”

“They’ll keep up the water by shutting the locks,” said Reggie, vaguely.

“But no shutting of locks, Reggie, will ever repair the drought caused by the cessation of the drains. There’s the Master of Trinity. Take off your hat: he won’t see you. I really wish Sykes wouldn’t always smell Masters of colleges. It makes them nervous; they think indirectly that it’s my fault. Bill, you idiot, come here!”

Bill having come to the conclusion that there were not sufficient grounds to warrant the Master’s arrest, reluctantly dismissed the case, though he would have liked bail, and trotted after the Babe. The latter had just discovered that life was not worth living without a minimum thermometer which he saw in a chemist’s window, and had to go and buy it.

They passed up to the left of Whewell’s Court, by the churchyard without a church, and into Jesus Lane in order to deposit Sykes again at his stables, and then, as tea-time was approaching, turned back towards Trinity.

“And for our tea,” said the Babe, “we will go to the Pitt, where it may be had cheaply and comfortably, and we can read the telegrams, which as far as I have observed, deal exclusively with steeplechase races, and the state of the money market. I noticed that money was easier yesterday. I am so glad. It has been terribly difficult lately. But if it is easier, no doubt the financial crisis between me and my father, which I expect at the end of this term, will be more capable of adjustment. At present I fear my creditors will find me like moist sugar, fourpence the pound. Do you suppose there are any races going on at Newmarket? We might drive over: I feel as if a little carriage exercise would do me good. Here’s Jim. Jim always knows about races. He was born, I mean dropped, at Esher. Jim, is there any racing going on at Newmarket? Why do you look so disgusted?”

“It’s so likely that flat races should be going on now,” said Jim.

“Oh, well, it can’t be helped,” said the Babe. “What nice brown boots you’ve got. Have you been out on your gee-gee?”

“Looks rather like it.”

“I thought so,” said the Babe. “We’re going to have tea. Do you know Reggie? Jim, Reggie, Reggie, Jim.”

“Met before,” said Jim. “Ta, ta, Babe. I’ve got a coach at four.”

The Babe according to custom weighed and measured himself, found as usual that no change had taken place since yesterday, put his hat on the head of the bust of Pitt, whence it clattered on to the floor, let the door into the smoking room swing to in Reggie’s face, and ordered tea. A group of three or four men before the fire were talking about someone called Pocohantas, who turned out on enquiry to be a horse, and the Babe expressed himself willing to lay current odds about anything in the world.

He and Reggie strolled back in the dusk, and parted at the gate of Trinity. The Babe went to work till Hall, and after Hall played picquet with Anstruther, whom he fleeced, capotting him once and repiquing him twice in an hour, and discussed with him the extraordinary dulness of the Lent term, and the impossibility of making it any livelier.

“It’s a sort of close time,” said the Babe, “for things of interest. I don’t know why it should be so, but every day is exactly like every other day, and they are all dull. I feel eclipsed all the Lent term. I make a show of gaiety, but it is all hollow. I suppose really one does depend a good deal on things like cricket and football, and fine weather. One doesn’t know it at the time, but one misses them when they are not there.”

“You’ve taken to sapping: you oughtn’t to mind.”

“On the contrary I mind all the more. When I’ve done a morning’s work, I come out fizzing with being corked up so long, and nothing happens to my fizz. It loses itself in the empty and infinite air.”

“Don’t be poetical, Babe.”

“For instance,” continued the Babe, “what am I to do now? I’ve had enough picquet, and I’ve got nothing to say, and I’ve worked enough, and I don’t want to go to bed.”

“All right, don’t go to bed. Sit and talk to me.”

“But I don’t want to talk,” said the Babe volubly. “There’s nothing to talk about. I’ve played tennis, I’ve worked, I’ve taken Sykes for a walk, and that’s all. Really one must be extraordinarily clever to be able to talk day after day all one’s life. How does one do it? A priori, one would expect to have said all the things one has got to say by the time one was twenty, and I’m twenty-one. Yet I am not dumb yet. One doesn’t talk about things that happen, and most people, and I am one myself, never think at all, so they can’t talk about what they are thinking about. Give me some whisky and soda; perhaps, as Mulvaney says, it will put a thought into me. I hate Mulvaney worse than I hate Learoyd, and that is worse than I hate Ortheris. As for Mrs. Hawksbee, that’s another story. Soda is like a solution of pin points. It pricks one all over the mouth. I wonder if it would do as well to put ordinary pins into water. I shall ask Longridge what he thinks about it. Now he’s an exception, he does nothing but think; you can hear the machinery clicking inside him. He thinks about all the ingenious things he’s going to do and all the ingenious things nobody else would think of doing. They don’t come off mostly, because the door hits him in the face, or the gum won’t stick. Thanks. When! Do you know Stewart is beginning to think I shall get through the tripos, and he warned me not to work too much. He says that I shall, by all precedents in such matters, get brain fever and consumption, and that my sorrowing friends will kneel round my expiring bedside—you see what I mean—on the morning the tripos lists are announced and shout out above the increasing clamour of my death rattle, ‘You are Senior Historian,’ and that my reform from the wild young spark to the pale emaciated student, will all date from one evening last year at the Savoy, when he said he would only take the longest odds if he had to bet on my getting through.”

“And did you give him long odds?”

“No: I wouldn’t have bet against myself even then, for the simple reason that one never knows how much one can try until one has tried. If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody will believe in you. Not that I do believe in myself for a moment, any more than I believe in, in anybody else. You see, six months ago I shouldn’t have believed it possible that I should work steadily four hours or more a day. I think I shall take to spectacles, and go for grinds on the Grantchester road; I believe that’s the chic thing to do in sapping circles. Fancy waking up some morning to find oneself in a sapping circle. I wonder what Saps think about.”

“Sap, probably. Oh, yes, certainly sap. Either Thucydides, or binomial theories, or is it theorems or aortas. Babe, let us meditate on aortas for a time.”

“By all means. I wonder what an aorta is. Yes, thanks, but only a mouthful, as Reggie says. That’s because he has such a big mouth. I say, I wish I had an object in life: it must be so interesting.”

“Liver,” said Anstruther brutally, “take a pill. What do you want an object in life for?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It would be something to play about with, when one didn’t want to talk or see other people. I suppose a conscience would do as well. I haven’t either.”

“You said ten minutes ago that you didn’t want to talk. Since then I have only been able to get in an occasional word edgewise.”

The Babe laughed, and finished his whisky.

“Yes, I’m very sorry. It’s a great misfortune not to be able to be silent. It’s not my fault. I sha’n’t take a pill; I shall go to bed instead. I always used to think that ‘the grave as little as my bed’ was an independent sentence and meant literally what it said. Not that it meant much. Do you ever lie awake?”

“No, of course not: I can understand the difficulty of keeping awake, but not of going to sleep.”

“I lay awake nearly five minutes last night,” said the Babe, “and so I thought I was going to be ill! But I wasn’t, at least not at present. I suppose people who lie awake, think.”

“I always fancied they only swore.”

“In that case there would be nothing gained. I’m getting silly. Good-night.”