"It's a sad unpalatable truth," said Mr. Pembroke, thinking that the despondency might be personal, "but one must accept it. My sister and Gerald, I am thankful to say, have accepted it, though naturally it has been a little pill."Their cab lurched round the corner as he spoke, and the two patients came in sight. Agnes was leaning over the creosoted garden-gate, and behind her there stood a young man who had the figure of a Greek athlete and the face of an English one. He was fair and cleanshaven, and his colourless hair was cut rather short. The sun was in his eyes, and they, like his mouth, seemed scarcely more than slits in his healthy skin. Just where he began to be beautiful the clothes started. Round his neck went an up-and-down collar and a mauve-and-gold tie, and the rest of his limbs were hidden by a grey lounge suit, carefully creased in the right places.
"Lovely! Lovely!" cried Agnes, banging on the gate, "Your train must have been to the minute.""Hullo!" said the athlete, and vomited with the greeting a cloud of tobacco-smoke. It must have been imprisoned in his mouth some time, for no pipe was visible.
"Hullo!" returned Rickie, laughing violently. They shook hands.
"Where are you going, Rickie?" asked Agnes. "You aren't grubby.
Why don't you stop? Gerald, get the large wicker-chair. Herbert has letters, but we can sit here till lunch. It's like spring."The garden of Shelthorpe was nearly all in front an unusual and pleasant arrangement. The front gate and the servants' entrance were both at the side, and in the remaining space the gardener had contrived a little lawn where one could sit concealed from the road by a fence, from the neighbour by a fence, from the house by a tree, and from the path by a bush.
"This is the lovers' bower," observed Agnes, sitting down on the bench. Rickie stood by her till the chair arrived.
"Are you smoking before lunch?" asked Mr. Dawes.
"No, thank you. I hardly ever smoke."
"No vices. Aren't you at Cambridge now?"
"Yes."
"What's your college?"
Rickie told him.
"Do you know Carruthers?"
"Rather!"
"I mean A. P. Carruthers, who got his socker blue.""Rather! He's secretary to the college musical society.""A. P. Carruthers?"
"Yes."
Mr. Dawes seemed offended. He tapped on his teeth, and remarked that the weather bad no business to be so warm in winter.
"But it was fiendish before Christmas," said Agnes.
He frowned, and asked, "Do you know a man called Gerrish?""No."
"Ah."
"Do you know James?"
"Never heard of him."
"He's my year too. He got a blue for hockey his second term.""I know nothing about the 'Varsity."
Rickie winced at the abbreviation "'Varsity." It was at that time the proper thing to speak of "the University.""I haven't the time," pursued Mr. Dawes.
"No, no," said Rickie politely.
"I had the chance of being an Undergrad, myself, and, by Jove, I'm thankful I didn't!""Why?" asked Agnes, for there was a pause.
"Puts you back in your profession. Men who go there first, before the Army, start hopelessly behind. The same with the Stock Exchange or Painting. I know men in both, and they've never caught up the time they lost in the 'Varsity--unless, of course, you turn parson.""I love Cambridge," said she. "All those glorious buildings, and every one so happy and running in and out of each other's rooms all day long.""That might make an Undergrad happy, but I beg leave to state it wouldn't me. I haven't four years to throw away for the sake of being called a 'Varsity man and hobnobbing with Lords."Rickie was prepared to find his old schoolfellow ungrammatical and bumptious, but he was not prepared to find him peevish.
Athletes, he believed, were ******, straightforward people, cruel and brutal if you like, but never petty. They knocked you down and hurt you, and then went on their way rejoicing. For this, Rickie thought, there is something to be said: he had escaped the sin of despising the physically strong--a sin against which the physically weak must guard. But here was Dawes returning again and again to the subject of the University, full of transparent jealousy and petty spite, nagging, nagging, nagging, like a maiden lady who has not been invited to a tea-party. Rickie wondered whether, after all, Ansell and the extremists might not be right, and bodily beauty and strength be signs of the soul's damnation.
He glanced at Agnes. She was writing down some orderings for the tradespeople on a piece of paper. Her handsome face was intent on the work. The bench on which she and Gerald were sitting had no back, but she sat as straight as a dart. He, though strong enough to sit straight, did not take the trouble.
"Why don't they talk to each other?" thought Rickie.
"Gerald, give this paper to the cook."
"I can give it to the other slavey, can't I?""She'd be dressing."
"Well, there's Herbert."
"He's busy. Oh, you know where the kitchen is. Take it to the cook."He disappeared slowly behind the tree.
"What do you think of him?" she immediately asked. He murmured civilly.
"Has he changed since he was a schoolboy?"
"In a way."
"Do tell me all about him. Why won't you?"
She might have seen a flash of horror pass over Rickie's face.
The horror disappeared, for, thank God, he was now a man, whom civilization protects. But he and Gerald had met, as it were, behind the scenes, before our decorous drama opens, and there the elder boy had done things to him--absurd things, not worth chronicling separately. An apple-pie bed is nothing; pinches, kicks, boxed ears, twisted arms, pulled hair, ghosts at night, inky books, befouled photographs, amount to very little by themselves. But let them be united and continuous, and you have a hell that no grown-up devil can devise. Between Rickie and Gerald there lay a shadow that darkens life more often than we suppose.