CHAPTER III
IO SATURNALIA!
I
Presently my turn came.
A small, spectacled, and entirely inarticulate gentleman in a very longgown, after a last glance to assure himself that my coat wassufficiently funereal and my trousers not turned up, took my hand inhis; and we advanced mincingly, after the manner of partners in acountry dance, over the tesselated pavement of the Senate House until wehalted before the resplendent figure of the Vice-Chancellor.
Here my little companion delivered himself of a hurried and perfunctoryharangue, in a language which I took to be Latin, but may for all I knowhave been Esperanto. The Vice-Chancellor muttered a response which Icould not catch; impelled by an unseen power, I knelt before him andplaced my two hands between his: an indistinct benediction fell from hislips, gently tickling my overheated scalp; and lo! the deed was done. Irose to my feet a Master of Arts of Cambridge University, at thetrifling outlay of some twenty pounds odd.
Thereafter, by means of what the drill-book calls a "right-incline," Islunk unobtrusively past two sardonic-looking gentlemen in white bands,and escaped through the open north door into the cool solitude of SenateHouse Passage, and ultimately into Trinity Street.
I walked straight into the arms of my friend The Freak--The Freak in capand gown, twenty-two years of age, and in his last year at theUniversity.
"Hallo, Tiny!" was his joyous greeting. "This is topping!"
"Hallo, Freak!" I replied, shaking hands. "You got my wire, then?"
"Yes, what are you up for? I presume it is a case of one more shot atthe General Examination for the B.A. Degree--what?"
I explained coldly that I had been receiving the Degree of Master ofArts.
"As a senior member of the University," I added severely, "I believe itis my duty to report you to the Proctors for smoking while in academicdress."
Freak's repartee was to offer me a cigarette.
"Let us take a walk down Trinity Street," he continued. "I have to goand see The Tut."
"Who?"
"My Tutor. Don't get fossilised all at once, old thing!"
I apologised.
"What are you going to see him about?" I enquired. "Been sent down?"
"No. I am going to get leave to hold a dinner-party consisting of morethan four persons," replied my friend, quoting pedantically from theCollege Statute which seeks (vainly) to regulate the convivialtendencies of the undergraduate.
"Ah," I remarked airily--"quite so! For my part, such rules no longerapply to me."
Fatal vaunt! Next moment Dicky was frantically embracing me before allTrinity Street.
"Brave heart," he announced, "this is providential! You are a godsend--a_deus ex machina_--a little cherub sent from aloft! It never occurredto me: I need not go to The Tut for leave at all now! It would havebeen a forlorn hope in any case. But now all is well. _You_ shall cometo the dinner. In fact, you shall _give_ it! Then no Tut in the worldcan interfere. Come along, host and honoured guest! Come and see Wickyabout it!"
As The Freak hustled me down All Saints' Passage, I enquired plaintivelywho Mr. Wicky might be.
"Wickham is his name," replied The Freak. "He is nominally giving thedinner. We are going to--"
"Pardon me," I interposed. "How many people _are_ nominally giving thisdinner? So far, we have you, Wicky, and myself. I--"
"It's this way," explained my friend. "Wicky is nominally the host; hewill do the honours. But I have dropped out. The dinner will be orderedin your name now. That's all."
"Why is Wicky nominally the host?" I enquired, still befogged.
"We are all giving the dinner--seven of us," explained The Freak; "allexcept yourself and The Jebber, in fact. Wicky has to be host becausehe is the only man who is not going to the dinner disguised as some oneelse. Now, do you understand?"
"There are one or two minor points," I remarked timidly, "which--"
"Go ahead!" sighed my friend.
"Who," I enquired, "is The Jebber? And why should he share with me theprivilege of not paying for his dinner?"
The Freak became suddenly serious.
"The Jebber," he said, "is a poisonous growth called Jebson. He is inhis first year. He owns bags of money, which he squanders in the wrongmanner on every occasion. He runs after Blues and other celebrities,but has never caught one yet. On the other hand, he is rude to portersand bedmakers. He gathers unto himself bands of admiring smugs andtells them of the fast life he lives in town. He plays no games of anykind, except a little billiards with the marker, but he buttonholes yououtside Hall in the evening and tells you how much he has won by backingthe winner of the three o'clock race by wire. I think he has a kind ofvague notion that he is sowing wild oats; but as he seems quiteincapable of speaking the truth, I have no idea whether he is thevicious young mug he makes himself out to be or is merely endeavouringto impress us yokels. That is the sort of customer The Jebber is."
"And you have invited him to dinner?" I said.
"Yes; it's like this. We stood him as well as we could for quite a longwhile. Then, one evening, he turned up in my rooms when half a dozen ofus were there--he is on my staircase, and I had rashly called upon himhis first term--and after handing out a few fairy tales about histriumphs as a lady's man, he pulled a photograph from his pocket andpassed it round. It was a girl--a jolly pretty girl, too! He said hewas engaged to her. Said it as if--" The Freak's honest face grewsuddenly hot, and his fingers bit ferociously into my arm. "Well, hebegan to talk about her. Said she was 'fearfully mashed on him!' Thatfairly turned our stomachs to begin with, but there was more to come.He confided to us that she was a dear little thing, but not quite up tohis form; and he did n't intend to marry her until he had sown a fewmore of his rotten wild oats. And so on. That settled me, Tiny! Sofar I had not been so fierce about him as the other men. I hadconsidered him just a harmless bounder, who would tone down when he gotinto the ways of the place. But a fellow who would talk like that beforea roomful of men about a girl--his own girl--My God, Tiny! what wouldyou do with such a thing?"
"Kill it," I said simply.
"That's what we nearly did, on the spot," said Dicky. "But--well--onefeels a delicacy about even taking notice of that sort of stuff. Youunderstand?"
I nodded. The reserve of the youthful male on affairs of the heart ismuch deeper than that of the female, though the female can neverrecognise the fact.
"So we simply sat still, feeling we should like to be sick. Then theman Jebson gave himself a respite and us an idea by going on to talk ofhis social ambitions. He confided to us that he had come up here toform influential friendships--with athletic bloods, future statesmen,sons of peers, and so forth. He explained that it was merely a matterof money. All he wanted was a start. As soon as the athletes and peersheard of him and his wealth, they would be only too pleased to hobnobwith him. Suddenly old Wicky, who had been sitting in the cornerabsolutely mum, as usual, asked him straight off to come and dine withhim, and said he would get a few of the most prominent men in the'Varsity to come and meet him. We simply gaped at first, but presentlywe saw there was some game on; and when The Jebber had removed himself,Wicky explained what he wanted us to do. He's a silent bird, Wicky, buthe thinks a lot. Here are his digs."
We had reached a house in Jesus Lane, which we now entered, ascending tothe first floor.
Dicky rapidly introduced me to Mr. Wickham, who had just finishedluncheon. He proved to be a young gentleman of diminutive stature andfew words, in a Leander tie. He was, it appeared, a coxswain of highdegree, and was only talkative when afloat. Then, one learned, he was aterror. It was credibly reported that on one occasion a freshman rowingbow in a trial eight, of a sensitive temperament and privately educated,had burst into tears and tried to throw away his oar after listening toMr. Wickham's blistering comments upon the crew in general and himselfin part
icular during a particularly unsteady half-minute round GrassyCorner.
He silently furnished us with cigarettes, and my somewhat unexpectedinclusion in the coming revels was explained to him.
"Good egg!" he remarked, when Dicky had finished. "Go round to thekitchen presently. Have dinner in these rooms, Freak. May be awkwardfor the men to get into College all togged up."
"You see the idea now, Tiny?" said Dicky to me. "Wicky is going to behost, and the rest of us are going to dress up as influential youngmembers of the University. We shall pull The Jebber's leg right off!"
"Do you think you will be able to keep up your assumed characters alldinner-time?" I asked. "You know what sometimes happens towards the endof--"
"That's all right," said The Freak. "We are n't going to keep it upright to the end. At a given signal we shall unveil."
"What then?" I enquired, not without concern.
"We shall hold a sort of court martial. After that I don't quite knowwhat we will do, but we ought to be able to think of something prettygood by then," replied The Freak confidently.
Mr. Wickham summed up the situation.
"The man Jebson," he said briefly, "must die."
"What character are you going to assume?" I enquired of The Freak."Athlete, politician, peer, scholar--?"
"I am the Marquis of Puddox," said my friend, with simple dignity.
"Only son," added Mr. Wickham, "of the Duke of Damsillie. Scotland forever!"
"A Highlander?" I asked.
"Yes," said The Freak gleefully. "I am going to wear a red beard andtalk Gaelic."
"Who are to be the other--inmates?" I asked.
"You'll see when the time comes," replied Dicky. "At present we have todecide on a part for you, my lad."
"I think I had better be Absent Friends," I said. "Then I need notcome, but you can drink my health."
Mr. Wickham said nothing, but rose to his feet and crossed the room tothe mantelpiece. On the corner of the mirror which surmounted it hung ared Turkish fez, with a long black tassel. This my host reached downand handed to me.
"Wear that," he said briefly--"with your ordinary evening things."
"What shall I be then?" I enquired meekly.
"Junior Egyptologist to the Fitzwilliam Museum," replied the fertile Mr.Wickham.