with terror and importance combined. He was inspired, I would
fain believe, by discerning a vague benevolence in my air and demeanour,
to fix his attention on me. He had been staying at a house where there
had been some important guests, and by some incredibly rapid
transition of eloquence he was saying to me in a minute or two, "The
Commander-in-Chief said to me the other day," and "The Archbishop
pointed out to me a few days ago," giving, as personal confidences,
scraps of conversation which he had no doubt overheard as an unwelcome
adjunct to a crowded smoking-room, with the busy and genial elders
wondering when the boys would have the grace to go to bed. My heart bled
for him as I saw the reflection of my own pushing and pretentious youth,
and I only desired that the curse should not fall upon him which has
so often fallen upon myself, to recall ineffaceably, with a blush that
still mantles my cheek in the silence and seclusion of my bedroom, in
a wakeful hour, the thought of some such piece of transparent and
ridiculous self-importance, shamefully uttered by myself, in a transport
of ambitious vanity, long years ago. How out of proportion to the
offence is the avenging phantom of memory which dogs one through the
years for such stupidities! I remember that as a youthful undergraduate
I went to stay in the house of an old family friend in the neighbourhood
of Cambridge. The only other male guest was a grim and crusty don, sharp
and trenchant in speech, and with a determination to keep young men in
their place. At Cambridge he would have taken no notice whatever of
me; but there, on alien ground, with some lurking impulse of far-off
civility, he said to me when the ladies retired, "I am going to have a
cigar; you know your way to the smoking-room?" I did not myself smoke
in those days, so foolish was I and innocent; but recalling, I suppose,
some similar remark made by an elderly and genial non-smoker under the
same circumstances, I said pompously--I can hardly bring myself even now
to write the words--"I don't smoke, but I will come and sit with you
for the pleasure of a talk." He gave a derisive snort, looked at me and
said, "What! not allowed to smoke yet? Pray don't trouble to come on
my account." It was not a genial speech, and it made me feel, as it was
intended to do, insupportably silly. I did not make matters better,
I recollect, on the following day, when on returning to Cambridge
I offered to carry his bag u