Part 3 (2/2)
”What do I care what they all say?” was the answer, delivered with a kind of plaintive snarl.
”But we care.”
”Care then! I pity you.” And he turned his back fiercely on them, and then groaned by way of half apology. Another tried him: ”Come, give us a civil answer, please.”
”People that intrude upon a man's privacy, racked with pain, have no right to demand civility,” replied the sufferer, more gently, but sullenly enough.
”Do you call this privacy?”
”It was, a minute ago, Do you think I left the boat, and came here among the natives, for company? and noise? With my head splitting?”
Here Julia gave Mrs. Dodd a soft pinch, to which Mrs. Dodd replied by a smile. And so they settled who this petulant young invalid must be.
”'There, it is no use,” observed one, _sotto voce,_ ”the bloke really has awful headaches, like a girl, and then he always shuts up this way.
You will only rile him, and get the rough side of his tongue.”
Here, then, the conference drew towards a close. But a Wadham man, who was one of the amba.s.sadors, interposed. ”Stop a minute,” said he. ”Mr.
Hardie, I have not the honour to be acquainted with you, and I am not here to annoy you, nor to be affronted by you. But the university has a stake in this race, and the university expostulates through us--through me, if you like.”
”Who have I the honour?” inquired Hardie, a.s.suming politeness sudden and vast.
”Badham, of Wadham.”
”Badham o' Wadham? Hear that, ye tuneful nine! Well, Badham o' Wadham, you are no acquaintance of mine; so you may possibly not be a fool. Let us a.s.sume by way of hypothesis that you are a man of sense, a man of reason as well as of rhyme. Then follow my logic. Hardie of Exeter is a good man in a boat when he has not got a headache.
”When he has got a headache, Hardie of Exeter is not worth a straw in a boat.
”Hardie of Exeter has a headache now.
”Ergo, the university would put the said Hardie into a race, headache and all, and reduce defeat to a certainty.
”And, ergo, on the same premises, I, not being an egotist, nor an a.s.s, have taken Hardie of Exeter and his headache out of the boat, as I should have done any other cripple.
”Secondly, I have put the best man on the river into this cripple's place.
”Total, I have given the university the benefit of my brains; and the university, not having brains enough to see what it gains by the exchange, turns again and rends me, like an animal frequently mentioned in Scripture; but, _nota bene,_ never once with approbation.”
And the afflicted Rhetorician attempted a diabolical grin, but failed signally; and groaned instead.
”Is this your answer to the university, sir?”
At this query, delivered in a somewhat threatening tone, the invalid sat up all in a moment, like a poked lion. ”Oh, if Badham o' Wadham thinks to crush me _auctoritate sua et totius universitatis,_ Badham o'
Wadham may just tell the whole university to go and be d----d, from the Chancellor down to the junior cook at Skimmery Hall, with my compliments.”
”Ill-conditioned brute!” muttered Badham of Wadham. ”Serve you right if the university were to chuck you into the Thames.” And with this comment they left him to his ill temper. One remained; sat quietly down a little way off, struck a sweetly aromatic lucifer, and blew a noisome cloud; but the only one which betokens calm.
As for Hardie, he held his aching head over his knees, absorbed in pain, and quite unconscious that sacred pity was poisoning the air beside him, and two pair of dovelike eyes resting on him with womanly concern.
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