Of all the many dignitaries and functionaries that play a part in the life of a Cambridge undergraduate, perhaps the least appreciated is his bedmaker. Cruel things have been sung and written about “bedders.” Their very name lends itself to ridicule and unkind jokes. They are mocked for the better days which they invariably claim to have seen.
They are castigated for their taking ways—no heel tap, no remnant of tea, butter or sugar is supposed to be safe from their pilfering fingers. I have even heard them accused of being superannuated Girtonians who once took the wrong turning in youth and are now expiating their peccadillos by lives of service and sacrifice. They are, indeed, a much maligned race.
But the sublime Mrs. Bigger of “A” staircase cared for none of these things. She was, in every sense of the word, a bigger and better bedder, and I freely admit that she contributed not a little to my amusement and comfort while I was at Cambridge. In fact, until my encounter with the Profile, she was the nearest approach to a soft, feminine influence in this rugged phase of my life.
Perhaps some womanly intuition had warned Mrs. Bigger that there was a rival near her throne on that Monday morning. Perhaps she took exception to the unconventional hours which the Profile chose to wander about the staircase—at any rate, when I returned to my room, I found the good lady showing unmistakable symptoms of the tantrums which she usually reserved for Hank, her boss, or the unneighbourly Baumann, who was notoriously the thorn in her ample flesh.
“Hembarrassed,” she sniffed, as she emerged from my bedroom with much indignant rustling of grey alpaca, “hembarrassed, that’s wot I was, Mr. Fenton! To be caught a-empt’ing the slops by a young lady in the middle of the morning. I could of blushed for the shame of it.”
(Mrs. Bigger’s sentiments mirror to some extent the views of a great University that does not officially recognize the existence of women students.)
“Do you mean that she came into my room, Mrs. Bigger?” I asked, trying hard to conceal the eagerness of my curiosity.
The purple ostrich plume on her hat quivered with indignation and outraged decorum.
“No, hindeed, sir,” replied the good lady in the tone which was first used on Eve by the Angel with the Flaming Sword. “Nobody comes into your room when you ain’t here, Mr. Fenton—honly hover my dead body, sir. Leastways unless it’s one of yer pertickler friends like Mr. Grayling or Mr. Comstock—folks as has a right on this staircase, sir.”
“The young lady wasn’t looking for me, then,” I asked innocently.
Mrs. Bigger sniffed volubly. “I don’t know wot she was ’ere for, Mr. Fenton, and that’s a fact. A few minutes ’fore you come in, I went out and saw ’er on the stairs. But seein’ as how I ’ad the pail in me ’and, I popped back into yer bedroom and waited as was only modest.”
I casually remarked that our visitor had at least been remarkably easy on the eyes.
“’Andsome is as ’andsome does,” replied my bedmaker cryptically, “and certainly she’s ’andsome enough for that there Mr. Baumann. Not that she’s as pretty as Mary Smith—’er as works as ’ousemaid over to the Master’s Lodge—the girl as Mr. ’Ankin ’as honored with ’is attentions—”
She sniffed again, then added generously, “Haristocratic is the word I would of used for the young lady on the stairs, Mr. Fenton. Haristocratic she was almost to the point of bein’ ’orty! As soon as I kleps me eyes on ’er, I says to meself, Well, mebbe she ain’t dressed like a lady, but you’d never mistake ’er for one.’”
She paused on her way to the door. “But—I don’t ’old with them mecks on a young woman! I onst ’ad a niece as wore a meek, Mr. Fenton, and she come to no good, she didn’t. Two buckles,” she added darkly. (Mrs. Bigger had a decided weakness for pathological conditions and their nomenclature and was never so happy as when she was describing the complicated diseases which carried off her friends and relatives.)
Having fired her Parthian shot at the objectional mackintosh, my bedmaker stalked from the room with one hand on her hip and the other clasping the handle of the aforementioned pail. Her departing gait, therefore, combined the lilt of Patience with the dignity of a prominent royal personage who is also to be seen wearing ostrich plumes in her hat.
After she had left me I felt that I could not settle down to work until I had written to the Profile. And while I am on the subject of work, I want to set at rest, once and for all, the anxiety which my over-conscientious readers will doubtless feel with regard to my studies during the course of this narrative.
I am naturally of a fairly studious turn of mind. But I had not come to Cambridge to shun delights and live laborious days exclusively. In fact my tutor had said to me some time previously, “You won’t get a first, Fenton, not if you stand on your head until the date of the Tripos. You can’t fail to get a second even if you stand on your head throughout the whole examination. Read the things you enjoy and develop your own taste.
“But don’t overdo it or get a one-track mind. Just browse in the pastures that suit you best, but vary your diet and always get your full quota of vitamins such as Shakespeare, Milton, Donne and Wordsworth …” In short, I was predestined to mediocrity. My leisurely attitude had the divine sanction of authority. I had no reason to be worried or hag-ridden.
I was worried now, however, as to my best method of approach in writing to the Profile. I had had so little experience with English girls and all my preconceived notions with regard to the British had been proved hopelessly wrong to date. It is not surprising, therefore, that I tore up several highly coloured flights of fancy and wasted nearly half a ream of crested note paper before I finally evolved the following piece of plain, straightforward prose:
Dear Miss Dupuis,
At a dinner party given by the American Ambassador last vacation I had the pleasure of meeting your aunt, Lady Lusinger. She told me that you were at Newnham and suggested that we might meet. I shall be at the “Whim” to-morrow (Tuesday) at one o’clock and shall be delighted if you can join me for lunch.
Sincerely,
Hilary Fenton.
There was nothing in this sober missive at which even Lady Lusinger herself could do more than give one of her milder variety of snorts. It was a harmless elixir of milk and water. I addressed it to Clough Hall, Newnham, and ran down to catch the twelve o’clock post.
It was when I returned to my room, some minutes later, that there occurred the second amazing incident of that already amazing day. As I pushed open my door I found to my intense surprise that Julius Baumann, my misanthropic neighbour, was standing by my fireplace obviously waiting for my return.
Now, to those whose jaded appetites require the constant stimulus of thrills and horror, I am afraid that this chronicle to date must have appeared hopelessly dull and singularly devoid of dramatic incident. A very ordinary (if American) undergraduate has attended a lecture where he has “fallen for” a girl to whom he has subsequently spoken.
He has written her a politely conventional letter, posted it and returned to find another undergraduate waiting in his room. Nothing in that to make a song about—let alone a mystery story. No? Well, the unexpected happens so seldom at Cambridge.
Today it had happened twice, and yet these extraordinary happenings afterwards seemed like the quiet lull before the storm of strange incidents that were to follow—mere hors d’oeuvres preceding a regular orgy of unexpectedness.
It should also be borne in mind that I had lived within twenty yards of Baumann for two and a half terms and he had never once passed my portal nor invited me to pass his. No shortage of cigarettes, no desire for a convivial sundowner, no primal urge for human companionship had led the South African to accord me more than a non-committal grunt when chance brought us face to face upon the staircase.
Nor, indeed, had I ever known him to be more civil to others. His only friend was Hank, the gyp, whose claim to notice lay in the fact that he, too, came from the Orange Free State and could converse with Baumann in a strange language called Afrikaans. Nothing could have surprised me more than to find this arch recluse leaning against my mantelpiece and staring at me from dark, sombre eyes.
“Fenton,” he said abruptly in this thick, guttural accent. “I want to speak to you. Can you come into my room for a moment?”
I was so astonished that I could do nothing but open my mouth and shut it again. I seemed incapable of making any intelligible reply. However, there must have been a certain amount of antagonism in my speechlessness, for he seemed to think it necessary to urge me a second time.
“Please,” he said, and there was a note almost of anguish in his voice. He was no longer the brilliant athlete whose cricket everyone admired and envied, no longer the fine classical scholar who was going to win the Lenox Scholarship and sail into an easy “first” in the Tripos—he was just a human being in what appeared to be a bad jam and, somehow or other, I could not gainsay him.
“Okay,” I said quietly and followed him into his unfamiliar room. He shut the door behind us and sported his oak. As I sat down and lighted a cigarette to regain my composure, he stared at me so hard and so intensely that a feeling of annoyance and embarrassment crept over me.
“When you get your eyes full, fill your pockets,” I remarked flippantly, the phrase occurring to me out of some dim, kindergarten memory.
He ignored my infantile banality.
“Fenton,” he said, starting to pace up and down the floor, “before I ask you to do what I called you in here for, I want you to swear that you will never, under any circumstances, tell anyone in the world …”
“Stop being so dramatic,” I interrupted impatiently. “Of course I won’t tell.”
“But you swear?”
“Not often, but I will—if you insist.”
“All right. I trust you. I suppose I have to. First of all I want you to witness my signature on a document here.”
I nodded. He opened the door and called out to Hankin who came up from the landing below. Then the South African signed his name and the gyp and I solemnly affixed our own signatures. The proceeding was simple enough and certainly not sufficient to justify all the fuss and tumult.
When we were left alone together, Baumann folded up the document and remarked solemnly, “And now I want to tell you that I am probably going to have to leave Cambridge.”
“Exeat, absit or aegrotat?” I asked, mentioning the only three methods by which one can leave Cambridge without spoiling one’s chance of a degree. I was rather proud of being able to use a sentence composed almost entirely of Latin words to a classical scholar.
“If I go at all, I’m going down for good,” he replied curtly.
Now this was news—real front page stuff, if you like. News of importance in the very highest circles, athletic and academic. Baumann was by far the most consequential undergraduate at All Saints.
“But what about the Varsity match against the M. C. C. this week?” I stammered.
“So much the better for that cocky ass, Somerville. I don’t suppose he will object very strongly to taking my place on the team.” The corners of his mouth drooped in an acid smile.
“But the Lenox scholarship?” I asked again, and this time I could not conceal my interest in his reply. “You must be crazy to give up your chances of that, Baumann.”
“Make things a bit easier for your pal, Grayling,” he remarked. “That’s about all I have to offer you in return for what I am going to ask you to do for me. It’s not that I am considering either Somerville or Grayling themselves—you can be sure of that. They’re like the rest of these blasted Englishmen.
“They hate me because I happen to be good at the things on which they fancy they have a monopoly; they despise me because I don’t interest myself in what they call their college activities—because I don’t waste my time drinking tea with a lot of stupid undergraduates….”
This was too much for me. I am no blind or besotted Anglophile—nor do I subscribe to the popular fallacy that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton—but I still feel that there is something to be said for England and her educational institutions.
“I think,” I said coolly, as I threw my cigarette into the fireplace and rose from my chair, “that you had better ask favours from some stupid undergraduate of your own nationality. I am an American but I do happen to be at an English University. Both you and I have come over here to do or be done by Cambridge, Baumann. It has been remarkably generous to you. And as for me, I happen to like it. My best friends are English. Cheerio!” My hand was on the door knob.
“Machktig!” he muttered between his teeth, as he jumped up to stop me. “I’m sorry, Fenton, but I let my feelings get the better of me for a moment. You see, I’m a Dutchman—a Boer. The English have always treated us badly. We don’t love them, we …”
“We might try staying in our own country then,” I remarked, but I could not help feeling sorry for this creature who was so warped and twisted with bitterness—for a man so friendless that he was obliged to ask favours of a total stranger. Besides, there had been a note of genuine homesickness in his voice.
I sat down again.
“I am going back,” he cried, in a tone that was at once exultant and resentful. “I hate to leave just before I’ve got what I came for, but I see no other way out. Don’t ask me my reasons.”
‘“He who has drunk of Afric’s fountains will surely drink again,’” I quoted lightly. “And—incidentally—I’m in a heck of a hurry. I’m due to lunch with Comstock in ten minutes.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t keep you long.”
He went over to his desk and started to slip some papers into an envelope. I caught a crackling sound suggestive of crisp, new bank notes. There was something desperate, almost final in his purposeful movements. I felt a vague sensation of uneasiness.
“Baumann,” I remonstrated, “you are not going to do anything stupid, are you? Not suicide? I want to keep my promise to you but I don’t want to get involved in anything that might be—er—embarrassing. I am an alien, you know. I’m registered with the Police and an object of suspicion. I’d hate to get into any sort of mess.”
He paused in the act of licking the flap of an envelope.
“Suicide? Good heavens, no! But—” he added quickly, “I would like to feel you’d keep your word to me even if anything really drastic did happen. I am not asking you to do something against the law. I’m merely asking you to post a letter for me—to safeguard the happiness of—but, never mind, I know I can trust you.”
“Well, what it is you want me to do?” I looked ostentatiously at my watch.
He put into my hands a large, plain envelope. There was no address, no writing on the outside.
“In this envelope,” he said, “is another envelope, addressed and stamped. I would prefer that you do not try to find out who it is addressed to, but if your curiosity—”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“All right, then. Now I told you that I may have to leave Cambridge. If I do so, it will be suddenly and at a moment’s notice. The method and time of my departure are still doubtful. You will, of course, know that I am gone—if I go. I want you to take this package to the post, open the outer envelope and put the other in the box. If I do not go, I will ask for it back.”
“Seems like an awful lot of fuss and mystery. I don’t see why—”
“There are reasons,” he interrupted, “why I may not be in a position to post it myself. Anything may happen. I may be—er—incapacitated. I might—” here he paused and seemed to shudder. “I might even be worse than that. But, whatever happens, it is a matter of life and death that this letter should be posted within the shortest possible time of my leaving Cambridge, No, I am perfectly sane,” he added, seeing my expression of alarm.
“I’ll do it,” I said, “and if you ever want the package back and I am not in my room, it will be in the second volume of Boswell’s Life of Johnson—on the shelf to the right of my fireplace.”
A look of relief and gratitude had replaced the sullen expression.
“I don’t know how I can ever thank you, Fenton,” he muttered. “You’ve taken a great load off my mind and if there’s anything I can do for you in return—”
“There is something,” I replied in a tone of assumed indifference. “You could tell me who that girl was who came up here about an hour ago. The one in the raincoat. She went into your room, didn’t she?”
While I was speaking I watched his eyes very closely. A hardly perceptible flicker seemed to pass over them but he quickly turned away so that I could not see his face. For a moment I was consumed by an insane, humiliating jealously.
“A girl did some up here some time ago,” he replied, and I felt sure that it cost him an effort to control his voice. “She was—she was looking for a John Bowman. I traced him in the registry list for her. He’s at Trinity.” Not once during this entire speech did his eyes meet mine.
“She told me she was looking for Professor Long,” I said suspiciously.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Perhaps she changed her mind. You know what women are. Sorry I can’t tell you more, Fenton, but I don’t even know her name. And—thanks a thousand times.”
I was late for my lunch with Lloyd Comstock, a nice but rather nondescript youth who occupied a room on the second floor of “A” staircase. He came to fetch me at length and I ran into him just as I was leaving Baumann’s rooms. His cheerful face expressed surprise when he saw the direction from which I was coming and he made a few caustic remarks about “My new friend of two and a half terms’ standing.” Then we went down to lunch.
The rest of the afternoon was peaceful and uneventful. Lloyd Comstock and I played five leisurely sets of tennis and then took a canoe up the Cam to Grantchester. There we bathed and lay naked in the sunshine, talking about nothing whatsoever, reading at intervals, munching biscuits, smoking pipes and enjoying ourselves as only undergraduates know how.
Time seemed to have stood still for awhile and the whole world was bounded by pale blue sky, white scudding clouds and meadows golden with buttercups. There was no shadow to mar the perfection of my happiness.
But, as we paddled back under the college bridges towards evening, the sky had become blotched and angry looking. It was incredibly warm for May. An electric storm was brewing and we felt that we had to race to avoid the rain.
Before going into Hall I procured a students’ registry and went through it carefully from Aaronson to Zymovitch. There was no John Bowman at Trinity. There was no Bowman or John Bowman registered at any college in Cambridge. Someone had been misrepresenting facts….