Cambridge, apparently is proof against all outward chances and inward circumstances. It goes serenely on. Dynasties may totter, currencies may crash and a sick world may writhe in postwar agonies. But undergraduates still attend or cut their lectures. They plan ther rags, they hold their debates at the Union and they continue to exchange rather painful persiflage on religion, sex and communism over pale tea and improbable cakes from Matthews. So it has been, so it shall always be.
Yet I do not mean to imply for one moment that Cambridge is heartless or indifferent. On the contrary, it is as awake and aware as any place in the world. Having been in existence since the 13th century, it has seen cataclysms, wars, heresies, revolutions and schisms. Long years of wisdom and experience have taught it to realize the ephemeral nature of things temporal.
Even a sensational murder within its gates, therefore, could not be expected to clog the wheels of its eternal machinery. One unfortunate college servant had been killed in a small corner of one of its smaller colleges. Hankin undoubtedly was dead; but some 7,000 members of the university were still living. Life—and Cambridge—must go on.
But it did come as rather a surprise to me when, after leaving the somewhat vitiated atmosphere of All Saints Court, I went out into Kings Parade and found that a rag was in progress. Saturday morning at noon is the classical time for Cambridge rags, and this one now seemed like the return to normal after a crisis or comic relief following a period of tragedy.
And it was one of the most amusing and elaborate rags I had ever seen. Apparently it had originated out of a recent debate at the Union. The subject of this debate had been—That this house deplores the growing influence of women in the activities and management of the University. The motion had, surprisingly for Cambridge, been lost. The house obviously was far from deploring the growing influence, etc. Something had to be done about it. Hence this rag.
The streets were lined with undergraduates who stood with bowed heads in postures of mock mourning, as a hearse was pulled slowly by. The coffin bore the inscription in large black letters the last Cambridge male. Following the hearse was a group of plain, intellectual students, dressed in severe feminine garments with spectacles on the tips of their noses and dizzy women’s hats perched on their heads. They bore a banner with the legend Cambridge dons of the future.
Close on their heels was a carefully picked party of pretty youths dressed in the most alluring feminine garments. Each one carried a heavy chain to which was attached a large, hairy-chested football hero, clad in the sackcloth and ashes of desperation and slavery.
Now and again these wretched victims would raise a tattered standard on which votes for men had been scribbled and then defaced by daubs of mud and stains suggestive of rotten eggs. Each movement towards insubordination produced a twitch of the chain from the dainty undergraduette at the other end of it. To an American like myself the whole allegory seemed almost too true to be funny.
The traffic of Cambridge was obliged to come to a complete standstill or go by another street. Proctors and bulldogs rushed madly about in a kind of impotent frenzy. The policemen, however, looked, on with a kind of blasé resignation, though one unfortunate young “Robert” was foolish enough to try to make way through the crush for a passing Rolls Royce. He was promptly deprived of his helmet and sat on by a number of stalwart undergraduates.
The feminists swept all before them. And, as I looked at those young men dressed as women, a sudden inspiration struck me. How clean-cut, how clear their profiles were. Might it not have been some such vision which I saw last Monday on the darkened stairway, the night when Julius Baumann was murdered?
How easy for a nice looking young man to put on the clothes of a woman, drench himself in perfume and thus baffle a chance observer as to his sex. Any one of the boys dressed as girls for this rag—boys who were well-known for their histrionic achievements in the Footlights and C. U. A. D. S.—could have walked down Piccadilly in female attire without attracting undue attention. Supposing one or the other of them had had a spite against Baumann?
This led me to think of the undergraduates in All Saints who might conceivably have passed as women. There were plenty of them. Even the people on “A” staircase were not beyond suspicion on this score. Lloyd Comstock was small, dark, with regular features and unobtrusive extremities. He played female parts occasionally at the Footlights.
Somerville could have been made up to look like a remarkably handsome Amazon, and even Michael, though he was what was technically known as broad in the beam, might have passed muster in an age where the sexes are almost indistinguishable anyhow. The whole thing had given me furiously to think.
The procession had now paused outside the gates of Corpus. The horses that drew the hearse had seated themselves in the middle of the road and were mopping their sweaty faces. The “last male” was sitting up in his coffin and eating a doughnut.
The female dons were regaling themselves with large tankards of beer, while the beautiful undergraduates had produced enormous pipes at which they puffed uncomfortably but ostentatiously. The muscular athletes, still in chains, were producing knitting from their reticules and talked to one another in mincing voices.
The proctors were still running up and down, scribbling names and colleges on their pads, and trying to combine an air of insouciance with the I-was-young-myself-once expression which usually means that someone is going to get sent down the next day.
Finally hunger, more potent than police or proctors, dispersed the crowd and the undergraduates betook themselves lunchward. The rag was over but it had left me with the germ of an idea.
After I had made up for my scanty breakfast by a substantial lunch in Hall, I found myself strolling idly about near the college notice boards with a crowd of other undergraduates. The words, “Lenox Scholarship” caught my ear and I pushed myself forward to see the announcement ’round which people were clustering. The results of the examination had been posted. A brief glance showed me that Michael Donwell Grayling was the successful candidate.
With one whoop of delight I rushed over to “A” staircase, barely stopping to pick up a typwritten, unstamped envelope which lay on the bottom step addressed to me. Michael was in his room. Inhibitions, petty misunderstandings and all other complications were thrown to the winds. I ran up to my friend and almost embraced him in my enthusiasm.
“Michael, you old horse thief,” I shouted. “Thank the Lord something decent has happened at last and now you won’t have to leave Cambridge to teach smelly little boys. Oh, you egg, you bright-eyed boy … I’m tickled pink, I’m tickled skinny.”
Michael looked at me soberly. There was a smile on his face but his eyes were still tired. “Thanks awfully, Hilary, old man. It’s ripping of you to be so pleased. I’m bucked about it myself, too, of course. But—”
“But nothing. The thing is over and done with. You’ve won it and there are no buts.”
“There is always the thought of a dead man’s shoes and the knowledge that I could never have got it but for a terrible accident.”
“Accident my foot,” I said tactlessly.
“Exactly,” he replied quietly. And then we both looked at each other awkwardly and did not speak, though each knew what the other was thinking.
Whether or not an explanation might have been immediately forthcoming, I cannot say, for at this moment the door was thrown open and Lloyd Comstock and Stuart Somerville burst in.
“Hail to Grayling,” cried Stuart, who appeared to have recovered from his hangover. “All hail to Grayling who has brought honor to a much dishonored staircase. May his children be many and may his daughters be as the polished corners of the temple.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Michael, blushing furiously as Comstock shook him by the hand. “Polished daughters, indeed! Can’t you wish me anything better than that, Somerville?”
“All right, then,” cried the irrepressible Stuart. “They shall make you a fellow of the college and you shall write dull text-books like Popper Fenton, Senior on Torts. I can see those endless marginal notes—emendavit amplissime Grayling.
“And each year you’ll get grimmer and grimmer like the Merry Monocle, and finally you will discover that Livy didn’t write Livy or that Ovid never had a love affair in his life. You will be famous and then, when you are old and full of years like the Master—”
“That reminds me,” interrupted Comstock, “the Old Pill has invited me to tea tomorrow.”
The nickname, by which the undergraduates of All Saints referred to their venerable Master, Dr. Martineau Hyssop, was not as derogatory as it may sound to American ears. The word “pill” is less a term of reproach in England than it is in the States. In this instance it was merely a play on the purgative nature of the Master’s last name.
“I’ve been asked, too,” said Michael, “But I’ve been wondering whether, in view of Hank’s death and all the consequent fuss, he will expect us to go.”
I tore open the envelope which was in my hand. It was an engraved card announcing the fact that the Master of All Saints requested the pleasure of Mr. Fenton’s company to tea on Sunday, the following day.
Stuart had walked over to the door, thrown it open and was examining the landing outside with mock seriousness.
“What on earth are you doing, Somerville?” I asked.
“Just trying to see if I couldn’t pry the staircase loose from its moorings and take it along with us tomorrow. Apparently he wants the whole show, woodwork, banisters and all. His invitation is wholesale. Even I have been asked, and he actually got my name right!”
Somerville had never forgiven the Master for invariably mixing him up with some obscure and pimply freshman. Another grievance was that, having once seen him in the court, talking to the captain of the college boats, Dr. Hyssop had said kindly, “Well, well, are you two gentlemen up for Littlego?” The mistake had obviously rankled.
“Well, I think we ought to call up his secretary and ask if we are really wanted,” said Comstock. “The Old Pill is a pal of your dad’s, Hilary. Why don’t you do it?”
“All right,” I answered. “I’m going up the river this afternoon and I’ll do it on my way out. Coming along with me, Mike?”
Michael nodded.
“Okay. I’ll call for you in about ten minutes.”
I went up to my room where Mrs. Bigger was wearily cleaning up the remains of my breakfast things.
“Oh, me ’ead, me pore ’ead,” she complained. “There’s ’eads in my family, Mr. Fenton. We run to ’eads, so to speak, and mine is splitting like it was caught in a nutcracker.”
“Well, why not sit down and rest a few minutes and take off that heavy hat,” I suggested mildly.
She started and looked at me as though I had made an improper suggestion, as indeed I unwittingly had.
“Mr. Fenton,” she said solemnly, “seeing as ’ow you are a Hamerican you couldn’t be expected to know that there is a statue—a university statue—which says that no bedmaker shall remove ’er ’at in the presence of the young gentlemen. Why, sir, it would cost me my position if I was so much as to take out one of me ’atpins.” The perennial ostrich plumes quivered in asseveration.
The idea that the sight of Mrs. Bigger’s braided tresses might be a snare and a temptation to the hot-blooded undergraduate was too much for my gravity. I laughed weakly as Mrs. Bigger subsided onto my sofa. And indeed she looked completely worn out, poor soul.
Without a word I poured out some of the brandy I had used that morning for Comstock and handed her the glass. Before taking it, she looked furtively around her as though she expected Hank’s admonitory ghost to pop out of the gyp cupboard and summon her to renewed activity.
“Sich goings on,” she said, sipping appreciatively at my Hennessy. “Sich going and carryings on I never did see, not in my long years of bedmaking. But I knew as ’ow it was coming, Mr. Fenton. All last week I had a feeling in me bones that something was going to turn out wrong.
“Three times I dreamed of me great uncle Alfred, ’im as was took with the tapeworms and ate six full meals a day without puttin’ any more flesh on ’is bones than there is on a clothes prop.
“‘Louisa,’ ’e sez, ‘I sees a dark cloud ’anging over you, Louisa. Trouble, trouble and no rest for them weary feet of yours!’ And now what with all Mr. ’Ankin’s work for me to do and me arches falling fast, Mr. Fenton, I sometimes wish as ’ow it was me that was in me grave where there’s no more stairs nor slop pails.”
I made consoling noises in the back of my throat.
“And I wasn’t the only one as knew that there was trouble coming, Mr. Fenton. There was Mr. ’Ankin, too. Unhappy and wretched ’e was, sir, ever since last Monday night when Mr. Baumann was took. Brooding, too, and frightened.
“Why, ’e even forgot to empty Mr. Somerville’s coffee pot two nights running and ’e didn’t draw Dr. Long’s curtains to keep the sunlight off them precious books of ’is. ’E wasn’t ’isself, sir. I could see it with me naked heyes though ’e never did say nothing, not being one to talk. And now ’e’s took too. Well, well….”
With this dreary reflection she wiped her mouth with her duster and walked a trifle unsteadily from the room. I ran downstairs and found Michael waiting for me. As we passed the porter’s lodge, I called the Master’s secretary to ask whether, in view of the recent tragedy, we should be expected to attend the tea-party tomorrow. She replied that the invitations had been issued at eleven o’clock that morning and the Master had expressed himself as particularly anxious that the smooth running of college activities should not be interfered with.
Then Michael took me on the step of his bicycle to the upper reaches of the Cam where the boats were busy practicing for the May races. The banks of the river were crowded with brightly dressed boys and girls who were cheering lustily for their favourite crews.
As the boats cut through the water behind the willow trees, Michael and I talked and ragged as we used to in the old days. We called out rude things to the boats that were planning to bump All Saints off the river.
We cheered the Varsity crew as it rowed majestically by, like a proud swan followed by a flock of ugly ducklings. We acted as though nothing serious or tragic had ever happened in our lives. We were like a couple of kids out on a spree who know that there is trouble ahead of them when they get home. But today we did not care.
And so neither of us even mentioned the topic that was uppermost in both our minds.