Part 3 (1/2)

INMEMORISON (_gruffly and suddenly_): What bird says cuckoo?

GIRL (_with extreme nervous agitation_): The rabbit.

INMEMORISON: No, you fool--it's the nightingale.

The girl burst into tears and said she would not play any more. I think she was wrong. Whenever I hear any criticism of myself I always take it meekly and gently, whether it is right or wrong--it has never been right yet--and try to see if I cannot learn something from it. What the girl should have said was: ”Now it's your turn to go out, and we'll think of something.”

Another occasion when Inmemorison was perhaps more pardonably annoyed was when a young undergraduate asked him to read out one of his poems.

”Which?” said Inmemorison.

I am told that the thirty seconds of absolute silence which followed this question seemed like an eternity, and that the agony on the young man's face was Aeschylean. He did not know any precise answer to the question.

”Which?” repeated Inmemorison, like the booming of a great bell at a young man's funeral.

The young man made a wild and misjudged effort, and got right off the target.

”Well,” he said, ”one of my greatest favourites of course is 'Kissingcup's Race.'”

”Is it, indeed?” said the Poet. ”If you turn to the left on leaving the house, the second on the right will take you straight to the station.”

The young man never forgave it. And that, so I have always been told, is how the first Browning Society came to be founded.

It was a meeting with this undergraduate--purely accidental on my part--in the romantic garden of the poet's house that first turned my mind towards the university town of Oxbridge. I had no difficulty in finding employment as a waitress there in a restaurant where knowledge of the business was considered less essential than a turn for repartee and some gift for keeping the young of our great n.o.bility in their proper place. It was not long before I had made the acquaintance of quite a number of undergraduates. Some of them had a marked tendency towards rapidity, but soon learned that the regulation of the pace would remain with me.

One Sunday morning I had consented to go for a walk with one of my young admirers--a nice boy, with more nerve than I have ever encountered in any human being except myself. It happened by chance that we encountered the Dean of his college. The Dean, with an unusual condescension--for which there may possibly have been a reason--stopped to speak to my companion, who without the least hesitation introduced the Dean to me as his sister.

That was my first meeting with Dr. Benger Horlick, the celebrated Dean of Belial.

No social occasion has ever yet found me at a loss. The more difficult and dramatic it is, the more thoroughly do I enjoy its delicate manipulation. I could not deny the relations.h.i.+p which had been a.s.serted, without involving my young friend. The only alternative was to play up to it, and I played up. The perfect management of old men is best understood by young girls.

I told him that I was staying with mamma, and mentioned a suitable hotel, adding that I was so sorry I had to return to town that afternoon, as I had begun to love the scholastic peace of Oxbridge and valued so much the opportunity of meeting its greatest men. I was bright and poetical in streaks, and every shy--if I may use the expression--hit the coco-nut. Sometimes I glanced at Willie, my pseudo-brother. His face twitched a little, but he never actually gave way to his feelings. The Dean had ceased to pay much attention to him.

For about a quarter of an hour the Dean strolled along with us. At parting, he held my hand--for a minute longer than was strictly necessary--and said:

”You have interested me--er--profoundly. May I hope that when you get back to Grosvenor Square, you will sometimes spare a few moments from the fas.h.i.+onable circles in which you move, and write to me?”

I said that it would be a great honour to me to be permitted to do so.

”I hope,” he added, ”that you will visit Oxbridge again, and that you will then renew an acquaintance which, though accidental in its origin, has none the less impressed me--er--very much.”

After his departure Willie became hilarious and I became very angry with him. He persisted that everything was all right. I had put up a fine performance and had only to continue it. The Dean would no doubt write to me at Grosvenor Square, and Willie a.s.sured me that he had his father's butler on a string, and that the butler sorted the letters. I would receive the Dean's epistles at any address I would give him, and would reply on the Grosvenor Square notepaper.

”I've got chunks of it in a writing-case at my rooms,” he said, ”and I'll send it round to you.”

I had to consent to this. However, the next day I skipped for London, somewhat to the disappointment of the restaurant that I adorned, and still more to the disappointment of Willie. But, as I wrote to him, he had brought it on himself. I could not take the risk of another accidental meeting with Dr. Benger Horlick.

Nor, as a matter of fact, did we ever meet again. But for three years we corresponded with some frequency; it was a thin-ice, high-wire business, but I pulled it through.

No doubt the task was made easier for me by the fact that the Dean was a singularly simple-minded man. Reverence for the aristocracy had become with him almost a religion. When he was brought--or believed himself to be brought--in contact with the aristocracy, his intellectual vision closed in a swoon of ecstasy. Sn.o.b? Oh, dear, no! Of course not. What can have made you think that? It was simply that the aristocracy appealed to him very much as romance did--he was outside it, but liked to get a near view.