Adele Varens 11

 

 

Chapter 11

 

 Reader, I confess that though I would have sworn that the act of gambling does not thrill me, only the beautiful patterns of probability, I discovered that Devonilll’s gaming rooms were remarkably flat after evenings in White’s.

Of course, my evenings in White’s also involved stimulating conversation with men who knew what they were talking about; which is to say, I listened more than I spoke unless I knew enough to make a comment. It did me no harm that I did not express an opinion until I knew enough to have one.

Irontongue noted that I was playing less.

“Decided to take my advice?” he said, seeing me in the quad on a Friday evening, and not heading out.

“I got bored,” I said.

“Bored?” he was surprised.

“It’s a state when you find yourself without mental stimulation,” I said.

“That was uncalled for sarcasm.”

“Oh? I’m so sorry,” I said.

“You used to be quite assiduous in your play.”

“I made enough money from it to ensure my next two years at university are paid for,” I said.

He actually gaped.

“You risked your savings in a gamble on winning enough to pay your way?” he gasped.

“It’s only a risk if you don’t know that the odds are in your favour,” I explained, patiently. “I understand probability theory. I may lose a little in the short term, but in the long term, I win. It is inevitable, because I know what I am doing. You’re making assumptions about me gambling. It’s not a gamble if you know the overall outcome.”

“But how can you know?” he asked.

“I know in the same way you know, as Tony Rawlins does not know, which declension a noun falls into,” I said. “Your expression is the same as his, when you are telling him how obvious it is.”

“Well, that is obvious.”

“So is knowing who has what cards, and therefore calculating odds,” I said. “It’s a skill I have.”

“I confess I am not a friend of higher mathematics,” he admitted.

“I am not a friend of medieval history, so I appreciate your position,” I said. “I lose count of the Edwards and Henrys, and York and Lancaster; but I never lose count of the court cards.”

“I have to trust your word that you are completely honest about being able to do this,” he sighed.

“I did not know that you had ever found my word untrustworthy,” I said, with some chill to my voice.

“I am sorry; I did not mean it like that,” he said, quickly. “I was not doubting your veracity, only your ability to objectively estimate your skill.”

“I made the climb for the hat, as well,” I said. “I know what I can do.”

I did not say, ‘not that it’s any of your business.’ I did not think I had to do so.

He nodded curtly, and left me.

He was too possessive for my liking.

Tony had greeted me with a handshake which was a little longer than was strictly necessary, a gaze into my eyes, and a smile.

But I did not want to commit myself yet.

 

I decided to tell Tony about my early life; and about Jane Eyre, and how her marriage to the passion of her life was not the idyllic fairytale I had assumed it would be.

He listened, gravely.

“Now I truly understand why you would not want to make a serious commitment, without being absolutely sure,” he said. “I will not put any pressure on you.”

Then I told him how Halliwell’s predicament had got me the entrée to White’s, and the depth of play there.

He drew a long, shuddering breath.

“Rather you than me,” he said. “I don’t have the stones for it… I can’t really say that, can I?”

I laughed.

“I know what you mean, and I take the compliment as it was meant,” I said. “I want to buy Thornfield Hall, and rebuild it. I want to win enough to do so, just so I can sneer at him.”

He nodded.

“You can always sell it, if you find it unsatisfying,” he said.

“What good sense, you have, Tony!” I said. “Why, I do not think I could have a better friend!”

Reader, I cannot explain how it happened, but he was kissing me, and I was kissing him back. I was amazed at the feelings which surged through me by this simple act, and I almost cried out in disappointment when he stepped away.

“I am sorry,” he said.

“I’m not,” I stammered. “I… I had thought that I was very sensible in not believing in anything but friendship. I… I liked that very much.”

“So, there is hope for me?”

“We can marry when we have our degrees,” I said. “But we must not let this get out of hand, or people will say things, and then it will come to a courtcase, and I will have to leave education.”

He nodded.

Love between men being forbidden, and a hanging offence, if anyone made anything of our suddenly deeper feelings, I would have to be scrutinised by a doctor to prove Tony’s innocence.

And I would give it all up for Tony.

How amazing!

 

We both buckled down to our work.

It was the best way not to be distracted by each other.

Of course, there were the distractions of those who treated their time in University as a joke; and who thought the best way to avoid a Latin exam was to brick up the doorway to the lecture hall overnight, so that it was sufficiently set by morning when we approached it to make it impossible to just push over.

It was not, however, completely set; and there was unlikely to be anything behind it to brace it.

“Go get a bench from the gymnasium,” I told my friends.

They did so.

“As a battering ram?” asked Tony.

“According to the principles of Sir Isaac Newton, and after the manner of Caesar,” I said. “Turn it upside-down; if we grasp one each side on the legs, we can swing it, which will give more power than just running it at the wall.”

Irontongue was outraged, and he manned one side of the battering ram.

It took four blows, but we hit it right above where it had dried fully, and it fell in on itself. We might climb over the first few courses.

Crawford and Dalley, who had been sniggering, were pretty dismayed.

They would be more dismayed after the exam when Irontongue chewed them out.

“As it is for the poet, so it is for the mason,” I misquoted.

“An excellent misquote which I believe certain people will be writing out many times,” said Irontongue.

 

We were also having trouble with a certain rival college.

A lecture by Feast – Dr. Crispin, who became Crispin Crispian and thence Feast- on the law of tort was interrupted by the singing of various oratorios, accompanied by raucous ‘music’ from brass instruments.

“Oh, this is too much!” Dr. Crispin was a small, round man, easy going on the whole but he had his limits.

“Dr. Crispin, don’t you have a friend in the Royal Engineers?” I asked.

“My brother-in-law. Why?”

“Could he get us a diamond-tipped drill for drilling out gun barrels?” I asked.

He shot me a look.

“You are not the class prankster, Mr. Fairfax,” he said.

“Nossir,” I said. “But I am now irritable.”

 

He got me the drill bit, and it fitted to an ordinary brace and bit.

Tony, Luke, and I repaired to our rivals’ quad. This might have involved me climbing in through one window and out through another to let them in by a locked back door – I had learned something of lockpicking, but the wretched door was bolted on the inside as well. Here, Luke began to gather containers of water from the faucet in the quad whilst Tony boosted me on top of the equestrian statue of some famous alumnus. Bronze statues are always hollow; nobody could afford to make them solid, except the legs, which had to be solid for the strength of the thing.

Having drilled a hole in the head, and placed a funnel therein, I drilled another hole. The horse was a stallion, and fully anatomically accurate; I am sure you get the idea.  This hole I plugged with carved sugar loaf. I had performed experimentation with sugar loaf plugs with one end in water, and they melted in about five hours. It should have dissolved just as the college started its annual parade in the equestrian fellow’s honour, and with luck, with the horse full of water, would keep going for a good few hours. I calculated the trajectory, and we placed some cheap tin trays where the stream should fall, which should rattle nicely, especially the one which was slightly bent and wrung. We made a bucket chain and filled until dawn’s rosy fingers graced the sky; then we slipped out of the unlocked door and were away.

Our only regret was that we could not see the result of our tampering. However, Dr. Crispin managed to fineagle an invitation.

He took us all out to dinner in a good restaurant that evening.

“It was still going when I left,” he said, toasting the three of us.

We had no more trouble.

 

Reader, I should like to say that we completed our degrees in peace, without interference from other pranksters from our own or rival colleges. I should, alas, be lying, for the nature of fools is to mess around; and young men are, on the whole, foolish.

Sir Xeno received various costumes, of course.  Crawford and Dalley managed to get a cow into the Dean’s office, where much mayhem was wrought, and I suspected them of being the ones to affront the townsfolk by dressing up a sheep in the regalia of the Lord Mayor, and leaving the wretched beast trapped by a heavy robe its forelegs were in while the back of the robe went over the back of the heavy chair to hold it there, wig, chain of office, and all.

God help the general public if those two were ever called to the bar.

Filling Dr. Crispin’s bed with eels was a little beneath them so it may have been someone else.

Tony and I were responsible for the late night raid on Crawford’s and Dalley’s rooms [on behalf of the unfortunate sheep] to remove every last vestige of their clothing, and replace it with the blousiest gowns we could collect from various pawnbrokers and second-hand clothes sellers. The narrow button boots and slippers to replace their shoes, and lace stockings were, I thought, the icing on the cake. We had let them steal a drugged cake from us so if they ate it, it was their problem; and as they both slept raw, we managed to introduce them into most shocking nightgowns. They were out for the count, and we borrowed a camera to make daguerreotype pictures of them.

“Why?” asked Crawford, plaintively, wrapped in a blanket. “We don’t aim our rags at you, not since you got Halliwell’s geegaw back. And especially since the pissing horse feat.”

“Learned friends, your honour,” I said. “We represent Mistress NellieWoollyfeet, a Ewe of good standing, whose honour was impugned most viciously and feloniously, by the accused, who inserted the said Nellie Woollyfeet into a political chamber, disguised as that most unwholesome of beings, a political officer, to whit, the mayor. How do the defendants plead?”

“Guilty as charged, by God, and with Daguerrotypes to prove it,” said Crawford.

“So have we,” I said, and showed him.

He laughed.

“Oh, it was a thorough job, even getting us to steal your unattended cake,” he said. “Can we have our trousers back now, please?”

We gave them their trousers back; and if Dalley was less able to laugh at himself, and gave us fulminating looks, he was unlikely to try anything without Crawford, and Crawford was not such a fool as to start anything.

“I wouldn’t like to be on opposite sides of the bench to Dalley, though,” said Tony.

“Crawford is the brains of the pair,” I said. “Dalley has a mean streak, and I think Crawford is beginning to see it.”

Dalley’s mean streak showed itself; he dropped hints that we were all mollies, and serviced each other.

We laughed at such rumours, of course.

It is all that can be done to scotch such things.

I was called to the Dean’s office.

Dr. Massey was an ascetic and austere man of great dignity and was plainly filled with distaste at what he felt was his duty.

“Mr. Fairfax,” he said. “I have received a serious and revolting accusation against you. It has been alleged that you… hrr’hrm, service your friends Mr. Rawlins and Mr. Bissett, and are guilty of the heinous crime of sodomy.”

I could not help it.

I burst out laughing.

How very much the wrong way round Dalley had got it; presumably because he perceived me as the leader of our little set.

“It’s hardly a laughing matter,” said Dr. Massey. “Though I suppose if the concept is so amusing to you, you are hardly likely to be guilty of it.”

“It’s a most ridiculous charge,” I spluttered. I fear, dear reader, I was  then suddenly struck by a malicious idea which should silence the rumour forever. I let myself look shocked. “Dr. Massey! Can that be what he was suggesting? That he… found me attractive and wanted to… and this is his revenge for turning him down? I… I did not understand, I thought he was joking when he touched me rather familiarly on the face, and asked how friendly I was prepared to be.”

“You were approached? By whom?” demanded the dean, whose grammar never deserted him, even under stress.

By several upper classmen, as it happens in the first months of my arrival at university, but it was plain that they were looking on me as a boy not a girl so I merely told them I was not thus inclined, and left them to find a more convivial friend. It was none of my business, after all. But I used what I had learned to place a frame on Dalley and take scrutiny off my friends.

“Oh! Must I say? I have tried to forget all about it,” I said.

“My dear boy! You should have gone to someone,” said Massey.

“It was an honest mistake, and he went no further,” I said. “But to spread such rumours… it must be in retaliation over my refusal.  He… he… must I name him?”

“No, my boy, I will not make you,” said Dr. Massey, kindly. “You may go.”

I went.

Dalley left Oxford under something of a cloud; and I heard that Crawford had bloodied his nose before he went.

I had destroyed a man’s career and sullied his reputation; but then, he had tried to destroy mine. I have no illusions that he was concerned about the morals of the college, or fear of scandal, or even shock and distaste towards the love that dares not say its name. He set out to ruin me purely out of spite.  And actions have consequences.

After that, the rest of our course ran smoothly, and we sailed through until we were ready to graduate.