“Many years ago,” he replied. “The scene at the Railway-Station had been (so they told me) one of wild excitement. Eight or nine Heads of Colleges had assembled at the gates (no one was allowed inside), and the Stationmaster had drawn a line on the pavement, and insisted on their all standing behind it. The gates were flung open! The young man darted through them, and fled like lightning down the street, while the Heads of Colleges actually yelled with excitement on catching sight of him! The Proctor gave the word, in the old statutory form, ‘Semel! Bis! Ter! Currite!,’ and the Hunt began! Oh, it was a fine sight, believe me! At the first corner he dropped his Greek Lexicon: further on, his railway-rug: then various small articles: then his umbrella: lastly, what I suppose he prized most, his handbag: but the game was up: the spherical Principal of—of—”
“Of which College?” I said.
“—of one of the Colleges,” he resumed, “had put into operation the Theory—his own discovery—of Accelerated Velocity, and captured him just opposite to where I stood. I shall never forget that wild breathless struggle! But it was soon over. Once in those great bony hands, escape was impossible!”
“May I ask why you speak of him as the ‘spherical’ Principal?” I said.
“The epithet referred to his shape, which was a perfect sphere. You are aware that a bullet, another instance of a perfect sphere, when falling in a perfectly straight line, moves with Accelerated Velocity?”
I bowed assent.
“Well, my spherical friend (as I am proud to call him) set himself to investigate the causes of this. He found them to be three. One; that it is a perfect sphere. Two; that it moves in a straight line. Three; that its direction is not upwards. When these three conditions are fulfilled, you get Accelerated Velocity.”
“Hardly,” I said: “if you will excuse my differing from you. Suppose we apply the theory to horizontal motion. If a bullet is fired horizontally, it—”
“—it does not move in a straight line,” he quietly finished my sentence for me.
“I yield the point,” I said. “What did your friend do next?”
“The next thing was to apply the theory, as you rightly suggest, to horizontal motion. But the moving body, ever tending to fall, needs constant support, if it is to move in a true horizontal line. ‘What, then,’ he asked himself, ‘will give constant support to a moving body?’ And his answer was ‘Human legs!’ That was the discovery that immortalised his name!”
“His name being—?” I suggested.
“I had not mentioned it,” was the gentle reply of my most unsatisfactory informant. “His next step was an obvious one. He took to a diet of suet-dumplings, until his body had become a perfect sphere. Then he went out for his first experimental run—which nearly cost him his life!”
“How was that?”
“Well, you see, he had no idea of the tremendous new Force in Nature that he was calling into play. He began too fast. In a very few minutes he found himself moving at a hundred miles an hour! And, if he had not had the presence of mind to charge into the middle of a haystack (which he scattered to the four winds) there can be no doubt that he would have left the Planet he belonged to, and gone right away into Space!”
“And how came that to be the last of the Cub-Hunts?” I enquired.
“Well, you see, it led to a rather scandalous dispute between two of the Colleges. Another Principal had laid his hand on the young man, so nearly at the same moment as the spherical one, that there was no knowing which had touched him first. The dispute got into print, and did us no credit, and, in short, Cub-Hunts came to an end. Now I’ll tell you what cured us of that wild craze of ours, the bidding against each other, for the clever scholars, just as if they were articles to be sold by auction! Just when the craze had reached its highest point, and when one of the Colleges had actually advertised a Scholarship of one thousand pounds per annum, one of our tourists brought us the manuscript of an old African legend—I happen to have a copy of it in my pocket. Shall I translate it for you?”
“Pray go on,” I said, though I felt I was getting very sleepy.
XIII
What Tottles Meant
Mein Herr unrolled the manuscript, but, to my great surprise, instead of reading it, he began to sing it, in a rich mellow voice that seemed to ring through the room.
“One thousand pounds per annum
Is not so bad a figure, come!”
Cried Tottles. “And I tell you, flat,
A man may marry well on that!
To say ‘the Husband needs the Wife’
Is not the way to represent it.
The crowning joy of Woman’s life
Is Man!” said Tottles (and he meant it).The blissful Honeymoon is past:
The Pair have settled down at last:
Mamma-in-law their home will share,
And make their happiness her care.
“Your income is an ample one;
Go it, my children!” (And they went it).
“I rayther think this kind of fun
Won’t last!” said Tottles (and he meant it).They took a little country-box—
A box at Covent Garden also:
They lived a life of double-knocks,
Acquaintances began to call so:
Their London house was much the same
(It took three hundred, clear, to rent it):
“Life is a very jolly game!”
Cried happy Tottles (and he meant it).‘Contented with a frugal lot’
(He always used that phrase at Gunter’s),
He bought a handy little yacht—
A dozen serviceable hunters—
The fishing of a Highland Loch—
A sailing-boat to circumvent it—
“The sounding of that Gaelic ‘och’
Beats me!” said Tottles (and he meant it).
Here, with one of those convulsive starts that wake one up in the very act of dropping off to sleep, I became conscious that the deep musical tones that thrilled me did not belong to Mein Herr, but to the French Count. The old man was still conning the manuscript.
“I beg your pardon for keeping you
