Kathleen | Page 6

we meet next week?"
"Falstaff!" cried several voices.
"Why not do two chapters a week," said Carter. "I'll do one, and Goblin
can do another. Let's meet in my rooms."
This was agreed to, and after much scuffling with greatcoats and
scarves the guests tramped off down the stairs and out into the rainy
quad. Forbes could hear them, a minute later, thundering with their
heels on the huge iron-studded college gate as they waited for the
porter to let them out. The room was foul with smoke, and he opened a
window over the gardens letting in a gush of chill sweet air and rain.
Through the darkness he could hear many chimes, counting eleven. He
looked wearily at the scribbled notes for his essay on Danton and
Robespierre: then shrugged his shoulders and went to bed.

III
By the time that Carter and King had written their chapters and read
them aloud, the Scorpions were all frankly adorers of Kathleen; by
midterm she had become an obsession. Eric Twiston and Bob Graham,
"doing a Cornstalk" (as walking on Cornmarket Street is elegantly
termed) were wont to dub any really delightful girl they saw as "a
Kathleen sort of person." At the annual dinner of the club, which took
place in a private dining room at the "Clarry" (the Clarendon Hotel) in
February, Forbes was called upon to respond to the toast "The Real
Kathleen." His voice, tremulous with emotion and absinthe frappe,
nearly failed him; but he managed to stammer a few phrases which,

thought at the time to be extemporaneous, called forth loud applause;
but it was found later that he had jotted them down on the tablecloth
during the soup and fish courses. "Fellow Scorpers," he said, "I mean
you chaps, look here, I'm not much at this dispatch-box business,
but--hem--I want to say that I regard Kathleen with feelings of
iridescent emotion. I feel sure that she is a pronounced brunette and that
the Blue Flapper we all used to see at the East Ocker is nowhere. I've
been playing lackers (lacrosse) this term and I give you my word that
when I've been bloody well done in and had an absolute needle of funk
I had only to think of Kathleen to buck me up. Hem. Now gentlemen,
you may think I'm drunk (loud cries of No!) but I want to say in truth
and soberness that any man who thinks he's got Kathleen for
bondwoman--hem--has me to reckon with!"
The applause at this speech was so immoderate that a party of Boston
ladies dining with a Chautauqua lecturer in the Clarendon's main dining
room, shuddered and began looking up time-tables to Stratford.
By this time the serial story had grown to the length of seven or eight
chapters, and the Scorpions became so engrossed in the fortunes of the
Kenyons (so, for convenience, they had dubbed Kathleen's family) that
at the dinner a separate health was drunk to each character in the story,
and one of the members was called upon to reply. Falstaff Carter
responded to the toast to "Joe," and recounted his secret investigations
into the number of members of the university who bore that name. He
claimed to have tabulated from the university almanac 256 men so
christened, and offered to go into the life history of any or all of them.
He said that he was happy to say that the only Joseph who seemed at all
likely to be a poet was a scrubby little man at Teddy Hall, who wore
spectacles and a ragged exhibitioner's gown and did not seem to
threaten a serious rivalry to any Scorpion bent on supplanting him. "I
also find," he added, "that the master of the New College and Magdalen
beagles is called Joe. He is a member of the Bullingdon, and if he is the
cheese it's distinctly mooters whether any of the Scorpers have a
ghostly show; but I vote, gentlemen, that we don't crock at this stage of
the game."

It was decided at the dinner that during the ensuing Easter vacation the
Scorpions should make a trip to Wolverhampton, en masse, for the
purpose of picketing Bancroft Road and finding out what Kathleen was
really like. And then, after singing "langers and godders" (Auld Lang
Syne and God Save the King) the meeting broke up and the members
dispersed darkly in various directions to avoid the proctors.

IV
Friday the fifteenth of March was the last day of term. The Scorpions,
busy in their various ways with the hundred details that have to be
attended to before "going down," were all pleasantly excited by the
anticipation of their quest, which was to begin on the morrow. Carter,
shaking hands with the warden of New College in the